Second Time Around
By Frozzy
Chapter Three
The sheet was wrapped loosely around her lithe form. It slipped down one shoulder when she moved to sit up against the headboard. Giving the dark skinned man on the opposite side of her bed a brief look, she gathered her damp curls from around her naked body and quietly fixed them into a braid.
"You may leave," she said.
The young man hesitated. Adoration was painfully visible on his boyish features.
"Did you hear me? You may leave," she said. She was trying to be nice. But then the young man let his eyes wander down her naked body and playtime was over. He thought he was special. The young ones always did.
"Get the fuck out, bellboy. We're done."
He flinched at the harsh tone, but he was still slow in getting up from his spot on the mattress. She pulled the sheet back up over her shoulder and turned her back on him.
"Show some respect and get yer skinny ass off the bed when the lady tells ya to," a third voice made itself known from the open doorway. The owner of the voice stood leaned up against the doorframe. His thick arms were crossed in front of his chest, arms that boasted a vast array of tattoos. The tattoos covered the rest of his body, too, and they stood out sharply against the man's otherwise pale skin. He had one jagged scar that ran along his chin, and his eyes looked small and dead like the button-eyes of a nightmarish teddy bear.
"She'll make me move ya if ya don't do it yourself, kid," he said. Needing no more incentive, the young boy scrambled off the bed and scurried out of the room with his clothes tucked under one arm.
"Ya sure do pick 'em young."
The woman ignored the comment. She stood up from the bed and let the purple sheet fall to the ground. Alabaster skin stretched across a toned body that most men would have admired for its athletic strength if it had been put on display on a battle field and not in an extravagantly furnished bedroom like this one.
"Come inside and close the door after you," she said. The man did as she asked and stepped inside the room, shutting the door after him.
"Is something wrong?" she asked and walked across the room towards her vanity, presenting her smooth back to the man as she sat down in front of the old antiquity. "You know better than to come here for a chit chat."
The man snorted. "I don't chit chat."
There was a pause in which the woman studied the man's face through the mirror.
"You have not asked for me to put on a robe," she said.
"I keep my mouth shut and enjoy the view. What I really want right now is fer ya to get on yer knees and suck me off."
She broke into a pearly laughter at his blunt attitude, although she had not expected anything less from him.
"Well, I do the orders around here and not the other way around, pet."
"Careful with the names now, Tora. We both know I could kill ya where ya stand. Gloriously naked or not."
"You flatter me," Sakamoto said, her playful mood gone. "Now tell me what brings you here, Hisashi."
"The men want to free Sasaki from the piss ass village he got caught in," Fukuda said. "They don't want to leave him behind."
"You are warning me," she said softly, picking up her hairbrush from the vanity and running her fingers up and down the handle thoughtfully. "How cute."
"This is no laughing matter, Tora," Fukuda said. Sakamoto sighed and put down the brush.
"I am perfectly aware of that, Hisashi. However, there is nothing I can do about your incompetence as team leader. You were the ones to get Sasaki captured and imprisoned in the very first place. You failed and this is the consequence of failure."
To his credit, Fukuda faced Sakamoto's blunt words standing ramrod straight in the center of the room. He didn't fully acknowledge her superiority over him, but he didn't cast it aside either. Granted, he got away with a lot of disobedient stuff, but that was only natural since the two of them were cousins. When your boss was also your cousin, you got a lot of work perks. Such as lenience and an overabundance of do-overs.
"If ya don't give the order to go back and free Sasaki, I can't guarantee that my men won't start a riot," Fukuda said.
"You underestimate me."
He waited and tried to gauge his cousin's mood before he said more.
"Are ya willing to risk it?" he tried a last time.
Sakamoto's eyes lowered to her lap, looking deceptively demure even though she was stark naked. Most men would take it as an invitation that she was prancing around naked in front of them. But Fukuda knew an invitation would be her telling him to fuck her and not anything else. His cousin wasn't subtle. Finally Sakamoto gave another sigh and caught Fukuda's eyes in the mirror.
"I will take your advice into consideration," she said. "But for the time being you will stay put and not leave your posts. Give me time to think about this. And, speaking of posts, did you hire a new piano player for Aiko's stage show? The poor girl was devastated when Rika quit."
"It's been taken care of."
"Perfect. Do me a favor and tell her she'll be back on stage Monday night."
"Sure."
"Good. Now get over here."
Fukuda made no move to come near her. "Clumsy kid ain't good enough, so ya ask for my cock instead?"
"Something like that, yes," Sakamoto said and overlooked the vulgarity of his words. She gracefully turned around in her seat to face him. Fukuda looked away to hide his scowl. Nevertheless, his groin was stirring, obviously delighted with the direction that the conversation was taking. Fucking woman had him hooked and wrapped around her finger. She said 'jump' and he did it.
"Manipulative bitch."
Sakamoto rolled her eyes and stood up, fed up with the banter. "Stop with the whining and fuck me, Hisashi."
There was the invitation.
"If the lady commands it."
Okada village was the sort of community where a new face would be the headlining attraction of the year if the harvest had failed. It was isolated, small and inbred within the next decade. It was the ideal place to sneak off to if you were planning to either have an affair or give birth to a bastard child. It in, in short, a horrible place that Sakura never ever wanted to live in herself. She wasn't surprised that Grass was inept at securing their treasures if this was how the majority of the villages in the country looked like.
"That is your conclusion?"
"Theory," Kakashi corrected the village leader.
Imagawa Kaito was a man of many words and his responsibility as village leader of Okada village had taught him how to use them well. Unfortunately, words didn't come all that quickly to him when three foreigners stepped forward and slapped him in the face with their theory about Sasaki Fumio. Imagawa's imprisonment of Sasaki Fumio was his catch of the week, and three strangers were trying to steal his catch from him, despite the fact that he himself had asked these three strangers for assistance in the first place.
"If it is possible, we would like to interrogate the suspect as soon as-"
"He is no suspect," Imagawa said. "He has already been charged with theft and will be judged guilty of the crime."
The proclamation reeked of corrupt governing, but Sakura doubted that the man himself was aware of it. He fit her criteria for 'thickheaded chauvinistic simpleton' down to the last letter. She hated small villages like these. They never listened to reason. The smaller theplace, the greater the conceit. Sakura couldn't help but feel pity for the village that was led by a man who obviously didn't know how to lead for the sake of the greater good.
"Imagawa-sama," Kakashi said. "It will serve all of us best if we speak with the suspect today. Could you tell us how he was caught?"
"I caught him," Imagawa said. "Should we move outside my office and have a look at him?"
Sakura was pretty sure that Kakashi had asked how and not who, but unsurprisingly Imagawa hadn't heard it that way. But, nonetheless, Sakura gave Kakashi props for appealing to Imagawa's vain side and thus trick him into showing them Sasaki.
They kept Sasaki Fumio in a guarded cell located next to Imagawa's office building. The office building was nothing more than a hut, neither was the prison cell, but it was definitely one of the prettiest huts in the village. The medic in Sakura noted with some satisfaction that unlike any of the prisoners that she had been sent in to heal after Ibiki's interrogation sessions back home, this prisoner looked remarkably well and healthy. He wasn't pacing the cramped space of the cell like a caged animal, but he wasn't huddled in the corner either. While this pleased her, she didn't know if it was a good thing. He would have been easier to interrogate if he had been on his deathbed. But you didn't just wish for people to die, no matter how evil or cruel they were. That was inhuman.
Imagawa gestured for the two guards that flanked Sasaki's cell to move aside.
"Sasaki," Imagawa spat. Unprofessional didn't even begin to cover his behavior towards the prisoner, but maybe he had a reason for it. Maybe this was a matter of personal vengeance. Who was Sakura to know? Sasaki had, after all, helped steal one of the village's most treasures possessions. Inside the cell, Sasaki lifted his head at the sound of his name. Sakura was stunned by the intensity of the clear green eyes that stared back at them from behind the bars. It was eyes that belonged on a cat, not a human. Those catlike eyes came to rest on Sakura and didn't move away. Naruto's shoulder bumped Sakura's when the Jinchuuriki took a step closer to the cell, simultaneously threatening Sasaki and shielding Sakura partly from the prisoner's view. Normally this would have pissed Sakura off. Today, for some reason, she felt grateful. Kakashi stood behind her, his quiet strength reassuring everyone in the room that there was nothing to be fidgety about.
"You here again already?" Sasaki asked Imagawa in a voice as bright as his eyes. "And you brought friends."
"They are here to interrogate you," Imagawa said and tried to look nonchalant while keeping a safe distance between him and the prisoner. It didn't work.
"This freak show?" Sasaki asked and laughed. "They are here to interrogate me?"
"I take it that he's injured?" Kakashi asked Imagawa, referring to the simple metal bars and how a shinobi easily could escape those under normal conditions. Yet Sasaki had done nothing of the sort.
Imagawa nodded. "According to one of our medics, we were lucky enough that he sustained an injury during his capture that has damaged his access to all chakra deposits."
"Bullshit," Sasaki said, his hands tightening around the bars. "I'm perfectly fine."
He looked like a feral cat caught in a cage.
"If you were fine, you would have attempted to escape by now," Sakura said. Sasaki removed his hands from the bars and took his sweet time looking her over, his eyes roaming across her body in a way that could not be mistaken for anything else than primal lust. If Sakura hadn't been a professional, the disgust she felt in that moment would have exploded her face. But, as it was, she kept her face blank and smiled a pleasant smile.
"Maybe this is a part of my plan, bitch," Sasaki said. "Did you think of that?"
"Don't talk to her like that," Naruto said. The leer on Sasaki's face grew more pronounced. He stepped up closer to the bars and pressed his forehead against the metal. Sakura noticed how Imagawa backed up until he stood a safe distance behind Kakashi and Naruto.
"And who is to stop me from doing it? You, kid?" Sasaki asked Naruto. "Now, that's what I call a fucking joke."
"Naruto," Kakashi said and reached out to place a restrictive hand on the younger man's shoulder. The green kitty cat eyes were back on Sakura.
"It seems like I have brought out the jealous streak in your boyfriend, hm?"
Sakura didn't take the bait.
"What's your real name?" she asked instead. Sasaki's leer was wiped clear off his face. He stepped away from the bars, almost as though they had burnt him. Sakura considered that a small victory.
"The little bitch wants to play adult games," he said. Sakura would have to go punch down a couple of trees after this. She could only quietly accept being called a bitch so many times before it started to piss her off.
"Answer," Imagawa said and took charge now that Sasaki's threatening behavior had cooled down and he no longer felt deathly afraid of his prisoner. Imagawa was a coward. Sakura had no respect for him whatsoever. She almost empathized more with Sasaki. Almost.
"What's in it for me?" Sasaki asked.
"You weren't willing to make a deal before," Imagawa said.
"Actually," Sasaki said, now with yet another nasty grin plastered onto his face. "I wasn't willing to make a deal with you. Imagawa Kaito. But I am interested in knowing what these freaks can offer me in return for my services."
Imagawa blanched and Sakura sent Kakashi a subtle look. He didn't respond to her look, but she was sure he could feel it. Naruto was vibrating with barely contained anger. To his credit, he hadn't blown up yet. Sakura knew that Sasaki was the exact type of person that Naruto absolutely loathed. Naruto had experience. He had smarts. He could lead a mission. He didn't normally get this upset over a simple interrogation session, but Sakura understood. She understood that Sasaki embodied everything that Naruto hated in a person and that Naruto was struggling hard not to barge into the cell and kick the man to a bloody pulp.
"One of us is a medic," Kakashi said. "She can heal your injury before it inflicts permanent damage. I doubt that Imagawa-sama will offer you this opportunity."
"He will escape," Imagawa piqued up. "If you heal him, he will-"
"No," Kakashi said. "He won't. You will tie him down and he won't."
He reached up to readjust his headband until it no longer sat skewed on top of his head. He kept his left eye, the Sharingan, closed for now, but both Sakura and Naruto understood the simple gesture and what Kakashi intended to do.
"Little bitch has skills?" Sasaki asked.
There was no collective gasp when Kakashi activated his Sharingan. Sasaki averted his eyes to the ground, obviously recognizing the bloodline limit for what it was. The thick muscles in his neck tightened, purple veins standing out in stark contrast to his skin.
"What's that for?" he asked, no trace of emotion in his voice.
"To see if you should choose to lie," Kakashi said. "It's my personal lie detector."
"What do you wanna know?" Sasaki asked. His entire demeanor had changed. He was strong, Sakura realized. He was strong and powerful enough to understand when he was outnumbered and had nothing more to bargain with.
"The location of Sakamoto Tora," Kakashi said.
"Fuck, I don't have that," Sasaki laughed. "Who do you think I am?"
Not Sasaki Fumio, Sakura thought briefly.
"Fukuda Hisashi's location?" Kakashi asked.
Sasaki shrugged a shoulder. "Ain't got his location either."
Sakura stepped forward, almost all the way up the bars, and Sasaki's feline eyes studied her face closely. She could feel Naruto's familiar presence behind her and thought for a fleeting second that he must have shadowed her when she stepped forward.
"I'm also quite skilled at vasectomies," she spoke softly, holding Sasaki's gaze so he would know she wasn't bluffing. "Sometimes I find satisfaction in performing them on my most obstinate patients. You would be in that category. If there was ever any doubt."
His face darkened and he seemed to be weighing his options.
"Waterfall. Close to the border would be my guess," he said. "That's where I've heard her to permanently stay when she ain't doing business. They don't keep us near her, though. Only Fukuda goes there."
"Business?" Kakashi asked. "What business is she doing?"
"How many fucking questions do you get?" Sasaki asked, obviously uncomfortable being a snitch. "Shit, if I was her confidant, don't you think she would have broken me outta here by now?"
Sakura looked towards Kakashi. She figured that Kakashi would have made some comment by now if Sasaki hadn't been truthful in his answers. Which meant that he was truthful. And that meant she had to stick to her end of the deal. She had to heal him.
"I need to get inside the cell," she said and looked at Imagawa.
Imagawa blinked at her, his face an ashen grey color. "Why?"
"I need to heal him."
"But he already gave you the information."
"Yes. And we need to uphold our part of the deal," she said. Imagawa looked at Kakashi, but Kakashi was still focused on Sasaki.
"Guards have the key. I'll be right back," he said and left the room.
"And you say we have no honor," Sasaki mumbled from inside his cell. Sakura was relieved that the man didn't know of any sick jutsu that would have allowed him to read her thoughts, because in that moment the two of them shared the exact same thought.
"If you try anything I won't hesitate to kill you," Sakura said to the man behind the bars.
He sent her a wolfish grin. "You're kinda feisty."
"And you'll be kinda dead if you keep that up."
She woke up because her mouth felt like she had swallowed a huge wad of cotton.
It took her a full minute to realize that what really had awakened her was the sweltering heat inside the room. It was worse than the summer nights back home, and Fire Country was known for its intolerable summers where it often got hot enough for your skin to melt off your bones. Not a very beautiful image, but nevertheless true.
They were spending the night in Okada village. Imagawa had been immensely pleased by that, seeing that his captive no longer was handicapped and they had had to restrict him with chains and rope.
Tomorrow, they would move on to Waterfall and try to locate Fukuda and the stolen jewelry. Perhaps they would bump into Sakamoto and perhaps they wouldn't. At any rate, they couldn't engage in a fight unless she outright instigated it herself. Their mission objective was to fetch the jewelry, not to play cat and mouse with a mistress of poisons. They could still try to snatch up some information regarding Sakamoto, information that would benefit other teams and other missions that directly involved breaking down Sakamoto's empire. Their mission did not involve that, however, and so they had to stick to the jewelry and try to avoid Sakamoto personally. They simply didn't have the manpower or resources to do anything bigger than fetching the stolen jewelry.
"Air," Sakura said groggily and sat up in her bed. Why was the furnace on so high? She had seen a window in here earlier, hadn't she? Naruto was asleep in the bunk across from hers, blissfully unaware of her predicament. If she had bothered to look at the third bunk behind her, she would have noticed that it was untouched.
Grabbing Naruto's jacket from where he had thrown it on the floor earlier, she slipped it on and padded over to the window. It was hot, swelteringly so, but she wouldn't risk getting attacked outside in her underwear. She pushed the curtains aside with a sweep of her hand. Then she spent a few good minutes trying to figure out how to open the damn thing.
When she finally figured out locking mechanism and pushed the window open, she banged it directly into someone's head. Her instincts kicked in and her hand grabbed for a kunai in a belt pouch that wasn't there. Then another realization hit her.
She knew that head.
But what was Kakashi doing sitting outside their window at three in the morning?
"That was a little unnecessary," Kakashi said from the other side of the window, rubbing the back of his head where the window had hit him. His voice chased back the adrenaline that had arisen within Sakura. She felt her muscles flutter once and relax into their natural state.
"What the hell are you doing?" she asked him and discreetly zipped up Naruto's oversized jacket, before she leaned her torso out the window to get a better look at Kakashi.
"Making sure that no one should try to molest my daughter in her sleep," Kakashi said. Sakura stared at him, uncomprehendingly.
"What?" she asked. "Oh, right. That time with the brunette. I guess I should apologize for introducing myself as your daughter. Did I botch your chances with that woman?"
"Your apology doesn't sound very sincere when you're smiling like that," Kakashi said.
"Well," Sakura said. "Take it or leave it, sensei."
She grabbed hold of the upper frame of the window and maneuvered her legs outside into the crisp nighttime air. The rest of her body followed until she was sitting on the dewy, uneven ground next to Kakashi.
"Really, what are you doing out here?" she asked and pushed stray locks of hair away from her eyes. She tried to ignore how the dew from the grass stuck to the back of her bare legs where Naruto's jacket wasn't long enough to cover her skin.
"Clearing my head," Kakashi said.
"To make room for porn, I see," Sakura said and pointed to the open book in his lap. She wouldn't have been so forward with him if it hadn't been for the dark skies and the quiet, calm atmosphere of the night around him. She was still embarrassed that she had asked him if he had ever thought about bedding her. Not in those exact terms, of course, but still.
"You say that as if it's a bad thing," Kakashi said and ran a loving hand across his book.
"I've seen the illustrations," she said, looking up at the sky because it was too dark to look anywhere else, really. "Naruto and Sasuke bought one for shits and giggles last year."
And she remembered the incident very clearly. After having seen one illustration, she had studied them all down to the last detail. At the time she had wanted to blame it on her blossoming medic career. It was the human body and she worked with the human body. But then Naruto had caught her doing it a second time and he had called her a closet pervert. After that episode she had been forced to admit that perhaps Naruto hadn't been completely in the wrong after all.
"Is that what men want?" Sakura broke the silence. Her eyes were now fixed on the book in Kakashi's lap and no longer the sky.
"Hm?" he asked, turning his head to look at her.
"Is that what men want?" she said again. "The book. Is that what you want?"
He stared at her unblinkingly.
"Are you asking me about my preference in women?"
"I already know that, I think," Sakura said with a small smile. "No, I meant generally."
She ransacked her brain to think of an example and came up with one quickly.
"If I asked Sasuke, he would want someone docile. Someone that would be compliant and not question his decisions. If I asked Naruto, he would want someone homely, someone domestic, that would wait at home for him and cook him dinner each day. Does this apply to all men?"
"Sasuke and Naruto are not very good examples of the average man, Sakura."
"Well," she said. Embarrassment had begun to catch up with her. "That's why I'm asking you what you want."
"I'm not a very good example either," Kakashi said and picked up his book, flipping it open. He must have put the book down when she had smacked him with the window. The cold from the ground was starting to seep into Sakura's body, but now she was fully awake and she didn't want to go back inside the sauna that she had woken up in. She had to think of something else to warm up her legs. Experiencing a sudden epiphany, she looked down at the small gap that was in between her and Kakashi's bodies and thought that Kakashi would be too preoccupied with his precious book to notice if she scooted closer.
She should have known that Kakashi would notice.
"Cold?" he asked with his eye still roaming the pages of his book. Sakura froze before she had even fully convinced herself to move in the first place.
"A bit," she said and forced her body to relax. There was no way in hell she was scooting closer to him now.
"Where does that bruise come from?"
She looked at him confusedly. "Huh?"
"The one on your leg," Kakashi said, slowly flipping a page with a slender finger that Sakura probably shouldn't have noticed was beautifully slender to begin with. Oh well. Boundaries had blurred a little lately. That was nothing new.
"Naruto gave it to me the day before we left," she answered, carefully poking at the darkened skin on her lower left thigh with a finger. Half of it was visible, but the top part of the bruise was hidden by the hem of Naruto's jacket. She hadn't healed it. It was only a minor bruise. Tsunade always reminded her that just because you were a medic, it would still be unwise to forget how the simplest of bruises felt on your body.
"I broke a few knuckles of his, but I healed them afterwards," she smiled fondly and looked up to find that Kakashi had lowered his book. He stared at her leg as though it had mutated into a mossy log. She had to look down a second time to assure herself that it really hadn't mutated into a mossy log.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
"You should probably heal it," Kakashi said, closing his book and standing up.
Something was off with the conversation, but Sakura couldn't pinpoint exactly what. And Kakashi gave her nothing to go by. As usual. There was nothing to read on his face. It was carefully and deliberately blank. This had nothing to do with his mask. Sakura had learned to read Kakashi's face from behind his mask. So had Naruto and Sasuke. This was a blankness that extended beyond the cover of his mask.
"I've travelled with worse," Sakura said. She also stood up, though not as gracefully as Kakashi.
"With two broken arms I would still be up to par with you two slackers," she said.
"Willing to put that to a test?" Kakashi asked. She gave him an unamused look.
"Try it and I'll break your neck."
"Somehow that threat doesn't work when you're wearing that outfit," Kakashi said.
"Outfit?"
"Too much leg, don't you agree?" Kakashi asked. "I don't feel threatened."
Sakura's mouth dropped open. When she finally managed to piece together an intelligent reply that didn't involve her sputtering profanities and gaping like a fish out of water, Kakashi's silver mop of hair had disappeared back inside the window.
Something had been off, yes. Kakashi had taken notice of her legs. And, what was more, the swirling warm low in Sakura's stomach told her that the attention was not unwelcome. If Ino had been, there she would have laughed. It would have been cackling and shrill sound that would have irritated Sakura to no end, yet Sakura couldn't help but wish that Ino really had been there. Then Sakura could have joined in on Ino's laughter and pretended to laugh it off.
As it was, she just shook her head and climbed back inside through the window.
"How much?"
"203.012," Fukuda reported and put the money down on Sakamoto's desk.
"Not as good as yesterday," she said.
"It'll even out after tomorrow. It's the weekend. Lotsa customers and Aiko will be back on after Sunday."
"I suppose," Sakamoto said and ran a hand through her matted hair. "Fucking cheapskates are killing my business. Where did all the pervs disappear off to? It sure as hell ain't my reputation that has gone down in the drain."
"I hate to bring this up right now, but my men are getting restless. Did ya make a decision yet?"
"Fetch him. Get Sasaki," Sakamoto permitted with a flippant flick of her wrist. "And while you're there, find out who the idiot Imagawa has hired to track you down in order to retrieve the jewelry you fetched for me. There's no way that that jerkoff would ever consider retrieving it himself, and he's too vain to let the theft slide by quietly. He must have hired somebody."
She held a short pause, thinking matters over.
"And be subtle, Hisashi," she added.
"When am I not?"