(Re-Edited Version)
Former note pointed out:
1. Sasuke is a misunderstood emo prick and totally not evil. No.
2. Sakura and Orochimaru are cowards.
And the special format of the first chapter is reserved for another major one in the middle of the story in Sakura's POV. I enjoyed the rewritten version more, so I hope you do too. :)
Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto.
Gods of Vindication
Part Two: Exodus of Feelings
"Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it all, and then some you don't want."
What kind of horrible person was she to do this?
They were walking to where she stayed at to gather a few things before heading to Sound and Sakura stopped, right in the middle of the yellow circle on the ground cast by the streetlamp overhead. The realization of her idiotic actions began registering in her normally sharp mind and it simply ate at her from the inside out. The pressure Sasuke had been wielding over her earlier was losing effect, allowing clear thoughts. Clearer than ever. She had agreed to leave Leaf and everyone she loved, and betray it as well by agreeing to heal Orochimaru's arms.
The urge to drop to her knees was strong, to just stay there. To wait for someone she knew and trusted to walk up and take her with them to where she knew she would be safe. It was hard to fight the hysteria building up inside and exerted so much effort to remain calm, not go screaming murder where she stood. She took a shaky breath and closed her eyes, telling herself she could, and would, suck it up.
Unfortunately, Sasuke noticed something was amiss and stopped as well, turning back and watching from the shadow of alternating gloom and circles of light on the streets.
"Is there something wrong?"
She looked back at him, trying one of Naruto's supposedly effective ways to calm down. He was a hyper loudmouth, so there was no reason not to believe him. She tried thinking of a happy place.
Nothing came to mind. She then realized she was being as much of an idiot as he was to actually believe happy places worked. Covering her mouth with trembling hands she fell to her knees, fighting tears with intensifying panic, trying to stabilize herself as she met Sasuke's prying eyes. Help. Anyone. Anything.
"You..." she started surprisingly collected, loosening her hands just enough to speak, afraid she'd open her mouth and let loose a scream, "Do you really want me to answer?"
From the end of his cloak she could discern at the edge of her vision, Sakura could easily tell he fully faced her from under the darkness. She realized if he was to ever attack her again, she wouldn't know what was wrong from right anymore and winced, bracing herself for an emotional defeating.
But minutes passed, and nothing happened.
The cold, hard stones of pavement bit into her knees, the wind blowing unhelpfully all around them and leaving her to tremble violently from the cold. Hair thrashed about her face, the whiplash of the pink locks stinging. Biting. Desolate buildings on either side of the road stood devoid of any conscious life.
They were before an abandoned alley, empty except for weathered posters peeling off bricks and wood and the myriad of sprayed graffiti. Some worn words were changed, some faces on the old announcements grown strange additional features. Walls bore names paired with hearts or mashed together, gang labels and signatures, the occasional obscene drawings, all splattered in multi-colored paint and permanent markers.
Engulfed by gloom where he was, there wasn't any easy way to tell what Sasuke's expression was. The least she could make out was he was looking at her.
The place was at the seedier, more abandoned parts of the village. To both her and the Uchiha, it was a much safer to be in here than out in the open. They were away from most of the strong lights and nosy people, lowering the risk for someone to recognize familiar pink hair and the runaway traitor. His dark features were currently hidden by the surrounding murkiness of the shadows, so anyone who wasn't at Kakashi's level would fail to pick up his presence. He wasn't illuminated at all, and might be able to melt away into the shadows.
"You're changing your mind," he said in a soft, low voice.
Sakura remembered the time where she used to love it when he spoke in that manner. Now it certainly wasn't the same any more, causing dread to dig deep in her heart.
"It's ridiculous," she answered, holding his gaze through the halo of golden light surrounding her and reflecting off his eyes as he stood in the dark. She could almost see herself in the clarity of those eyes, glowing in the nimbus the streetlamp created.
"Everything is ridiculous, you just have to look at it in a certain way."
"No, it isn't," she answered tentatively as she held her own against him, licking her dry lips. It was worth a shot. "You're too blinded by your chase for power to see the way Orochimau is controlling you."
"You don't know a thing," he responded blankly.
"I do! You just expect too much of yourself," she fired back, remembering of the mockery she underwent minutes ago. All possibilities of her actions flashed through her mind, right to his kusanagi splitting her spine. "Sure, you'd be there after I heal his arms. But Naruto's right. Orochimaru only wants you for your body and your eyes. If I go to Sound and help him, then you'd... you'd be gone!"
There was another moment of silence before Sasuke's response, smooth and unwavering. "If I told you I'm not planning to go through with the body transfer, would you come with me?"
Sakura's heart almost stopped with what she heard. That was an answer she never expected to hear, a bubble of hope swelling inside her. She, along with Naruto and the rest of Rookie Nine, had anticipated Sasuke was desperate enough for power to agree to even lose control of his body. To hand it over to Orochimaru with a cherry on top just so his brother wouldn't live.
But now... it was like he was telling her he would come back. Return to them. Complete Team Seven once more.
As soon as the bubble of hope appeared, Sakura tried to stifle it into nonexistence. There was no use in trying to raise up her hopes if it was all another farce. How would he be so sure the transfer won't go through?
"He doesn't care about killing Itachi," she told him distrustfully, carefully watching him. She saw him flinch at the name of his brother.
"I know," he answered, scathingly intoned. "I'm not that dense to not see through Orochimaru's lies, if that's what you're worried about."
Sakura still felt something was amiss, her blood almost curdling at the thought of the Uchiha brothers finally meeting. Sasuke being the one to take her himself here must certainly mean something. She just couldn't quite put her finger on what was wrong.
"What about how you tried to manipulate me? That's nothing to you?" she said, hurt. Bitter. "You used me. Why wait until now to tell me your real intentions?"
The cold was getting to her, her extremities turning numb from the adrenaline rushing in her veins. The urge to hit Sasuke with a punch to that alabaster skin of his pretty face was growing more appealing. Her eyes narrowed at him, ignoring the fact he was dead silent.
"Is this some kind of desperate move? You couldn't think of anything else to make me go with you?" she asked, voice rising. "That's a new low."
"Think of it what you will. This conversation is over."
"Well, then go back to him and tell him I said no!"
"I can't."
A chill of dread consumed her. Black eyes glinted angrily and her breathing quickened.
She couldn't grasp the magnitude of what she was seeing in him. Whatever Orochimaru's reason to have her in Sound was unmistakably a ploy for something, an underlying purpose to all this. Not matter how she looked at it, Sasuke was trying to get her to agree to his plans. He could as easily have knocked her out by now, but he didn't. He had the grace to offer her time to acquiesce to what he wanted. He was... too keen to destroy her to get his way.
"I can't," he repeated, clearly frustrated as she watched him run an aggravated hand through his hair, just a silhouette in the dark. He was very far from the menacing demon-like being when she first saw him. "I'll be taking you by force if you don't shut it."
It may have been unintentional but Sakura remembered him striking her out and leaving her on the bench three years ago. She still didn't understand why he wanted so much the power Orochimaru was offering. There were a lot of people here in Leaf who had been willing to teach him to become stronger, and yet he ran away from that too.
She could do this. She could try. They were in the village. She was in her element.
Hope amplified within yet she felt as if she were grabbing at lost strings. He was master of blinding speed, of powerful descent, and she knew he'd take her down if need be. But she had to take a chance. She had to. Naruto...
"Since you won't go through with the body transfer then stay here," she said, feelings soaring, hoping to persuade him and silently praying he would listen. "Kakashi can continue training you, and Naruto is stronger now, he'd be your match. Everything's right here—"
"No!" he snapped, his sharingan blazing angrily to life and starkly lighting his eyes.
That very moment alarmed Sakura even more than when she faced the Akatsuki with Chiyo back in Suna. The extensive amount of energy radiating off him made her skin prickle and caused his clothes to flutter.
"Did you see with your own eyes what my brother did to Kakashi? He's no match for that monster, so what good will his teachings be to me? And Naruto? I don't need some Akatsuki magnet to be around me. This village doesn't care about me and you're still expecting that we can live together in perfect harmony and all the bullshit that comes with your kind of thinking."
Heart thudding in her chest she rose shakily to her knees, wringing her hands together at what she was about to do.
"But—"
"Enough."
One moment she was standing in the yellow-pink luminescence as a sandaled foot entered into the safety of her circle, the next she knew she was slammed painfully into the ground and staring up at the bulb circled by moths and night insects, choking as an arm guard pressed into her throat. Her heart welled painfully as she struggled. Sasuke's silhouette hovered above her, black as the night sky and only the sharingan glaring visibly.
"I don't know what's wrong with you. Either you're trying not to notice it or you really don't know," he asserted in a dangerously monotone voice before he leaned closer and hissed, "but if you open those eyes, you're still so fucking naïve to see this village is what's trying to stop me. And it's using all of you to do it. That's the big fat truth, Sakura. You, and Naruto, and Kakashi, and that fucking Hokage of yours, you're keeping me away from what I need to do."
The rough cotton of the arm guard did nothing to allay the metal inside digging painfully into her neck when he suddenly pressed harder that she choked, fingers fighting for leverage to pull his arm away.
"Did you see how Orochimaru actually helped me instead of telling me that I couldn't goddamn use my own potential? Did you see how he brought out what I didn't even know I could do? Are you that fucking blind to actually think I'd get somewhere if I stayed here, wearing those rose-colored glasses and telling me everything will be fucking okay?"
"Sasu..."
Splotches of black were edging closer, amassing in her vision. She could feel his pressing weight at her sides as he straddled her, the coarse cloak pooling on her legs. Unable to physically overpower him, she began directing chakra to her hands. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't...
"You're stopping me from avenging every death in my clan, every murder by Itachi."
She pulled with chakra-powered fingers, gasping for air, when he snatched his arm back from her grip and the weight of the heavy cotton around her thighs disappeared, leaving her free to turn over on the ground and cough hard to catch her breath. Funny. She was still trying to contemplate the enigma that was Sasuke even as he wrecked her.
From what she knew of nindos, if shinobi were able to keep to those goals, it was what satisfied them the most in life. It was their nirvana, what they gave their whole existence for. And from what she'd seen so far that night, Sasuke's was to exact revenge on his brother, the crux of everything he did and stood for in the last seven or eight years of his life. Nothing could possibly change that, she now realized that.
And as much as she didn't want to believe his words, she did. He made a very real point. A painfully realistic slap to her face as she tried to catch back her breath, hacking her lungs on all fours.
"I'm coming with you," she said softly to the ground.
"Good. Get up," he replied, cold and distant like nothing happened. "We need to get moving."
She looked up from at him from where she was, onyx spikes high like an illuminated crown and extremely recognizable, and pushed herself to her feet a second time. She could see a condescending smirk edging at his lips even as he tried to suppress it, feeling a flutter and ache in her chest at the same time. Why she still wanted to do this for him, she didn't know. Why she still felt this for him, she didn't know. She just knew she did.
Standing up for the second time, she shakily dusted herself off and felt self-conscious as he watched her. She felt vulnerable. He made her feel weak, and she hated that, how it reminded her she was and always will be the dead weight of Team Seven. For a moment she considered their situation, and slowly reached a hand out towards his head.
Cold fingers wrapped around her wrist before she could get close, dark eyes boring into her. Her eyebrows drew together at his touch lacking the viciousness he earlier used. Holding her breath for what might follow, all that greeted her were dark gray irises washed out of all emotion.
"What are you trying to do?"
She hesitated, then without answering nor looking back, continued as slow as ever, choosing instead to focus on his fingers still wrapped around her wrist, on how her own closed around the thick curl of the hood on his shoulder before tugging at it, blanketing it over his wild hair. Someone might notice him. The guards might notice him.
When she looked back at him once more and tried not to falter, the upper part of his face only belayed the steely glint of his eyes from cryptic shadows. She tried to pull back her hand but his grip suddenly tightened, and he stepped closer, causing her heart to drum up in rhythm as his emotion spike drastically.
"What aren't you telling me, Sakura?" in the light, sarcastic stab of his old self. The void feeling emanating in the air was so contrasting from the quirk on his lips it made her wince.
She wanted to smack him. This was not right, and he was reckless. He may not know it, but he was reckless.
"I... I live with Tsunade-sama."
The tightness making its way to his well-formed lips knotted her stomach. She could tell he didn't expect that, apprehension stalling her thoughts on whether to tell him the rest. Reason won out, for the sake of her safety. "I stay at the Hokage quarters now."
"And you thought to tell me this just now?" a disturbing connotation in his voice lay like a snake in the grass.
"She wants to… treat me like I'm her daughter. So I was moved in," she replied without looking at him, rubbing her arms in an attempt to warm herself. She didn't care to acknowledge the questioning look in Sasuke's eyes before she led the way.
ooo000ooo
The mansion was dark and foreboding, the only source of visibility being the bright light from the entrance at the gates. Personal guards were posted up front, and most likely others lurked invisible and silent. This was where the Hokage stayed, after all. And what better way to infiltrate one of the heaviest fortresses in the village?
Sasuke had to admire her plan. However, he also felt disdain at how she came up with it. The feeling it spilled inside him was a new one, a mixture of something like anger and distrust of her brazenness as they stood just beyond the line of sight of the gate. She was mussing her hair and rubbing at her eyes with a vehemence. Once she was done, he made a soft, disapproving tsk at her disheveled appearance. How much of this was based on past experience, he didn't like to find out.
"Just... go with it," she told him, and without asking linked her arm in his before uncouthly tugging him with a strength he found lurking beneath her frail exterior.
They had taken the full attention of the security up front, as expected, and he wondered how boneheaded these people were to not have an inkling that someone they had in the bingo books could slay them before they figured it out. Definitely no surprise. Sakura beside him was weaving as she walked and he had to support her, inelegant laughter ringing across the barren courtyard.
At least they had the decency to decide and stop them. Chunnin, he judged by the vest. He wondered what would happen if he killed these two right then and there and if it was Sakura's intention that he do so, but he stilled his hand from reaching for his kusanagi. ANBU might be lurking. He was no idiot.
"Sakura-san, you're drunk again," throwing a worried glance at him as the pink-haired bumbling mess tripped. Sasuke's hold on her arm was too lax and she rammed right into the idiot boy in a fit of cheap laughter.
Again? This was new to him, knowing she hated the drink three years ago. How often did she come home like this, who did she drink with? Strangely enough, he found he wanted to know, his dislike for her growing more for it.
She wobbled in trying to stand up and grabbed the hand he lent her, chortling like it was a bad joke. Two pairs of searching eyes now pried into the lighted swatches of his face to determine his identity. The ignorance astounded him, when she waved delicate fingers (that he wanted to break with a small twist) in their faces to try to shush them away and let them pass. At least they had half a mind to stand their guard.
"Sakura-san, you know we can't keep letting you have people sleep over," the other guard pleaded, a girl with auburn hair and blue eyes and worried airs just urging him to draw his blade across her throat right then and there.
This was not the Sakura he knew. She was supposed to keep her head, she was reasonable, was very meticulous about rules. She did get pissed drunk, nor did she throw herself around like a ten ryou whore. Apparently, he didn't know her well enough. It made him seethe at the temerity of his former teammate.
"Oh, whatever."
He didn't get a chance to ask them nor them to determine who he was, as his companion used monstrous strength to suddenly shove them both, sending them sliding across the dewy grass to opposite sides of the compound and quickly dragging him into the enveloping warmth inside the abode.
ooo000ooo
In the safety of her room, she shut the door behind her with a relieved sigh. They encountered no one else on their way up, the house seemingly empty and free of any patrol for now.
She blinked in the unlit room and watched Sasuke walk over to her window and look outside, his right hand on the cold glass pane. Warmth reacted with the chill and fogged a surrounding imprint. She wouldn't be surprised if he appreciated what he saw beyond him, which she didn't know if he was or not, because the view of the village from her room was remarkable in the least. A glimpse from above the village from a building overhanging the Hokage monument.
Ignoring him, she bent over to pick up the empty bag lying at the foot of her bed, something she had forgotten to fix that morning. As if she'd known at the time the surprise in store for her that night.
Suddenly a loud high-pitched whistle pierced the air made her look up at Sasuke who seemed just as surprised, standing still but dark brows drawing together. Dread poured into her insides at what it implicated. She knew he wouldn't understand what the signal meant, but she knew and Kami-sama, What have you done?
"What is that?" he asked, turning his head to hold her eyes prisoner, the shrill sound fading away into the night before it was picked up again and sounded once more. The second whistling was long and ringing in the air before Sakura decided to answer his question. She felt a lump rising to her throat, choking her like he did.
"What did you do?" she asked slowly and softly, her hands holding the closet door for support.
The shrieking from outside continued a couple more seconds before fading away like the first one, and left a heavy silence between them. From where they were, they could hear a few of the shinobi responding to the call take to the direction the alarm had come from, running feet shuffling on the street below.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I don't care if you don't know," she whispered and tried to keep fear from overpowering the anger in her voice. He was surely capable of killing someone, but why? He was still Sasuke. He was still an Uchiha. He still came from this village and was born and raised and why, Kami-sama, would he be spilling blood in the same place...
He must have read her so clearly that he cursed loudly, enough to make her cringe. He still was innately attractive with a scowl on his face, lit from beneath by the glare outside the window. He would always be captivating to the eyes, this Sakura knew, however now it was darkly so. Blood tainted his hands easily this time, innocent and fresh. For some reason the latter one was the more chilling cause.
"Are we safe here?" he asked.
"No. The mansion is one of the first searched."
"Then we have to go. Take only what can't be replaced," he ordered, searching for the latch of the large window.
Her automatic response was to be torn between taking as long as possible to pack or do as she had been told. To stay or leave, she remained bitter about this sudden proposal and she shivered as the metal hasp gave way between her former teammate's ministrations, a pull of gusting wind entering her room. It rustled paper at the back of a shelf and she paused, withdrawing it to find a dusty worn notebook bound in leather, its pages crinkly and yellowed.
Between her fingers, she remembered the personal content it had in its fragile pages and settled her bag at her feet before flipping open the thickness of it with the pad of her thumb. Falling open to a random page, its lines were filled with black, spidery handwriting long seeped into the lined paper. It belonged to Tsunade and had been given to her in a drunken fit where she babbled about lost loves and hardheadedness.
It contained a story, a diary of a series of events over more than a week but less than a month, she wasn't sure. Memories grazed the pages, something along the lines of an illicit love story without names, however there was nothing of much importance she could find and had not returned it to the Godaime.
"We need to go," came Sasuke's hushed tone.
Sakura barely had looked up when her hand was snatched and she was roughly pulled to the window's ledge before being helped up to it. The dizzying drop from the edge to the city below caused her to sway slightly, updrafts stealing her balance as she stared directly down. Pinpricks of light beneath her feet glowed like fireflies as her sandals were rooted half on the windowsill and half hovering over the abyss.
She then realized only the notebook was in her hands.
"Wait, my bag!" she said, turning around and hoping to retrieve the sling still lying on the floor. She was about to take a step down when sounds of quick footsteps were heard through the wooden floors and she froze.
There was an insane moment where an arm shot out around her torso from behind and gripped her powerfully, her breath hitching at the graze of Sasuke's knuckles against her elbows, her mind going completely blank.
"No time," was whispered almost mockingly against the shell of her ear and blood rushed to her head when what he was about to do hit her. She was still facing the room when white light spilled across the floorboards from the hallway through the crack under her door. Before Sasuke was the wide expanse and the abyss of howling wind. The footfalls were getting louder, closer, and she felt him tilt her backwards as his knees bent for momentum... I'm not rea—
Push off.
There was a momentary lull where it seemed they were drifting in the air and she held on for dear life, clutched at his arm and his shoulder as the gray cloak billowed out behind them. They were going against gravity and she could only watch in petrified horror from afar as the door opened and shadows moved on the floor.
Then they dropped. Heart racing and stomach lurching, she squeezed her eyes shut as she was pinned to Sasuke, the wind whistling as they plummeted headfirst towards the looming ground. This was crazy, because damn it, she didn't know what he had in mind, but as she forced her eyes open against the blistering rush of air whipping everything unsecured into a mad frenzy, the Uchiha's visage was calmly facing the earth as if greeting the expected crush of death, raven hair thrashing about them.
Closer and closer to a concrete rooftop, quickly materializing and zooming in like an inescapable menace. She tore her eyes away at the last moment, feeling an arm around her let go, then in an instant she felt radiating pain as they shot through a massive chakra mattress, landing hard and jarring powerfully through Sasuke's body into hers. Her world was thrown in disarray as she was released and sent barreling to expend powerful momentum, digging a hand deep into the rooftop and sent herself skidding away.
Coming to a ragged stop, Sakura looked up with bruising skin and nicked open wounds dragged over the stony surface, checking on her companion. Sasuke was in a similar condition, getting up and dusting himself off. His hood came down, exposing the aristocratic face turning to look for her, dirt smudged on his white cheek.
He walked over to her with a narrowing of disapproving obsidian eyes.
"You're bleeding."
"It's nothing. I'll be fine." She reddened under his scrutiny and found herself pillowing energy throughout her body to speed up the medical chakra coursing through her systems. Flesh wounds weren't a problem at any rate. At least she hadn't sprained anything. Still, she felt shaken from the experience. Never had she tried to do anything of that sort.
"We need to get to the Uchiha grounds."
She had no time to ask as he already snagged her hand and was dragging her along, silently landing on the street below and dashing through mazes of alleys and weaving along narrow passages between buildings. He kept well into the shadows, avoiding detection from the slowly nearing shinobi guards who were spreading. The inner city wall soon hovered into view, formerly used to separate prestigious bloodlines from the rest of the village's view and reach. Sakura recognized this priggish fence by the similarity it bore the one surrounding the Hyuuga compound, the only difference that it bore painted clan symbols of the fire breathers. The Uchiha.
She found it hard to keep up with the pace of Sasuke's speed as her knees threatened to buckle at anytime and take them both down. Her lungs taxed when she inhaled, feeling the rawness in her throat and the searing burn with each breath. "Slow down!"
Sparing her only a passing glance, he disregarded her problem as they neared the awning gate of the complex and pushed her by stepping up his pace.
She was at the point of giving up and letting herself go when he suddenly slowed down. Only then did he release her hand to let her double over, breathing in long, ragged bursts of air and perspiration dampening her temple and neck. His eyes roamed across the lighted streets, checking where the sentries may come.
Tsunade would be smashing buildings into ruins if she got wind of this, she knew, looking up at the village's dark haired avenger and her personal ruin. Her heart was overworked, too much blood running too fast in her veins and heat rising under her collar. Trying to match his speed was more than she bargained for, but it seemed it wasn't enough.
She knew he had picked up on somebody when there was the sound of metal sliding against wood, the black sword unsheathing from beneath the folds of his cape, its blade ominously catching the orange light of the lamps. Blood of innocent shinobi flashed before her, funeral wreathes and pyres and mothers crying, children, sisters, brothers...
"Stop!"
Before she knew it she had grabbed back his swordhand, fiercely staring up at glittering sable irises glowering at her. He appeared as if he would slash through her instead but she steeled the emotions cowering her and clenched down on his wrist and forearm with both hands. His voice was malignant and deep in angry response.
"Let go before I—"
"Sasuke. Stop."
Beseeching, voice soft yet firm. She had to draw the line somewhere on this. Any bloodshed this night was enough, there was no need to spill anymore.
Something in him changed, the anger marring his features barely placated. Relief sagged her shoulders when he slowly returned the gleaming sword to its home, yet tension rose when they heard someone approaching.
"Hey, who's there?" called out across to them.
Her companion's silhouette suddenly collapsed and she caught him, causing her to bite her tongue for fear she'd give anything away.
This was Sasuke she was holding, she was dead sure. But he did not look like the traitor. A man with snow-white locks tangling in her fingers was spewing blood in her arms, Konoha chunnin vest ripped with slashes and wet with crimson dripping all over the stones. Piercing blue eyes froze her into place as the person who found them jogged up to the fallen form, kneeling and taking a hand in his.
"What happened here?" the man asked, brown hair and golden eyes passing right over the Godaime's apprentice to who she was tending to.
"I saw him like this," she replied, watching the jounin flinch as more coughing sprayed blood everywhere. Why didn't he notice the genjutsu? Was Sasuke this competent as to fool a special jounin? She bit her lip, troubled at the implications this meant.
"I didn't see their faces," Sasuke suddenly answered, stained lips so real it made her ache. "They were wearing... red clouds. Two of them."
The man's eyes hardened and was now watching her, sharp eyes suspicious.
"What were you doing here?"
The question was accompanied by hard, indicting amber eyes of the older ninja and an analyzing glance. She was at a loss for words, her throat refusing to cooperate. This is Sasuke. Please notice the illusion. Please...
"Sasuke..."
Cold blue eyes of his mask sliced through her soul, watching her. Warning her. Silencing her.
Sakura didn't have the chance to reply, as the jounin misunderstood her, a petulant Ah! since she was, after all, on Uchiha ground. It made her feel relieved, in a way. His condemning jounin eyes suddenly changed into those of understanding. The man was now nodding to himself, completely ignoring her as he looked past them to the arc over the entrance of the compound.
"You can heal him, right?" he asked as he stood up.
No. He's not hurt. He's Uchiha Sasuke. "Yes. I can take over from here."
"I'll leave him with you so I can inform the others," he told her. "Take care."
He disappeared in a flashy swirl of rocks and dust that soon settled to reveal an empty street once again.
Sasuke sat up, dark eyes and dark hair like the illusion never was there, then turned an arresting glare at her. She remained rooted where she was kneeling, still processing what had happened. She didn't know if she should feel shame her village knew she was still to attached to the Uchiha betrayer, or that the Uchiha betrayer now knew.
Three years and I'm still...
She covered her face with her hands before his cold touch once more enveloped her wrists and yanked her to her feet, his face unreadable.
"That bought us enough time. We need to go." His baritone resonated through her chest,, constricting a deep seated ache, Sasuke smoothing away the hair from her face and gently tucking it behind her ears. "It's time."
She hated how she was so weak when it was him.
ooo000ooo
Back in the Hokage mansion, Tsunade entered her apprentice's room, finding the forgotten bag resting at the foot of the closet. A clearly worried look etched her face as she walked over to sit on the unmade bed. Sakura was too dear to her. She rubbed manicured fingers on her forehead, her untied golden hair flowing off her shoulders and cascading down her back.
Sakura never made brash decisions. She never taught her to. Where are you?
It's when she noticed the small piece of paper with a note hastily scribbled peeking from the side of the closed closet door. She opened it and it fluttered to the floor, where she bent down to pick it up. Upon reading it, the worry on her pretty face deepened. This time, the worry was no longer for the unknown. It was now for Sakura's safety, as the Hokage sighed and shook her head. The words were as clear to her as the difference of day from night is, knowing well who would need her student.
When she looked up she perceived the fog handprint on the glass of the open window, and bit her lips, moving closer and pressing her hand beside it. This wasn't Sakura's. Someone had come to take her.
She crumpled the note and shoved it into her pocket, to be thrown in the trash later that morning. This was something she decided no one else must know about, because it was personal. More personal than anyone can imagine.
Tsunade stood up and walked to the door, pausing and remembering the words in the note, hoping no one would get hurt. In any way. To where Sakura had gone, it would be a double-edged sword.
"I'm fine. He's taking me to his master."
ooo000ooo
The leatherbound notebook lay beside her pillow, peeking out of her pouch. As of now it had no value whatsoever aside from being a good read, though keeping it for the fact it was the only thing she was able to take. Sakura turned to her side on the bed, Sasuke deciding to check into an inn the moment the sun started peeking over the mountain tops.
The sheets smelled strongly of laundry soap, but she would pick this anytime over the other places where they found moldy pillows and unscrubbed floors. However, the only drawback was apparently this wasn't an inn at all. It was a place where prostitutes brought their clientele. What had made it obvious was the single circular bed in the middle of the small room, mirrors all over the place, the fancy cheap lighting, and the most incriminating being the bathroom wall made of only glass.
She tried keeping her imagination uncreative in regard to what must have already happened on the bed she was lying on.
From where she was, she could see the back of Sasuke's head as he lay silently on the floor, overlaying the cement with an extra blanket. He was turned away from her as she watched his slow breathing, the constant rise and fall of his shoulders in a lazy rhythm. However at ease he seemed to be, she knew he was aware of his surroundings. He always had been, even during Team Seven.
The only sounds were the start of activity outside the inn. Merchants were rolling out their carts to the market, mothers preparing food, morning birds chirping, the dogs barking and hushed conversation keeping the quietness of the hour. Sasuke had closed the curtains the moment they entered to keep the light from coming in and disturbing them while they rested. He mentioned they would only be traveling at night to avoid discovery.
"Stop staring and sleep," his voice suddenly came from behind his pillow, breaching the silence in the room.
"I wasn't," she answered, pink eyebrows rising.
"I can feel your eyes on me."
"I was just thinking."
"You're still looking at me," he said with finality. "Go to sleep."
She relented, pulling the blanket up to her chin and curling up under the covers. She had been awake for almost twenty-four hours now. When he found her around midnight, she would have given anything for a nap. However, as of now sleep eluded her, the direct consequence of what happened in the last hours of her day.
The anxiety and nervousness exhausted her, not to mention the physical toll, but she still couldn't sleep. It was just too much to take in at the moment, and the adrenaline in her blood that kept her going was only beginning to thin out.
She turned on her back and let herself relax, stretching out and facing the ceiling, which hadn't been forgotten by the substandard designer who decorated the place. Inlaid with a huge mirror and she stared back at the girl on the bed, pink hair fanning across the pillow and tired green eyes stark against a rather pallid complexion. She made a face at herself.
They had been running at top speed for hours, because Sasuke deemed stopping at the villages near Konoha was a precarious move where they would be furtively searched. The place he chose wasn't a village, only a small town meant for ordinary travelers frequenting the roads.
At that moment she noticed him change his position through the mirror, silently watching the way he fixed his pillow before lying down again. He had been doing that for the last fifteen minutes.
"Sasuke," she called before she realized what she was doing, wondering why she even bothered. "We can share the bed. It's big enough."
"Don't mind me."
His eyes were closed, the relaxed shoulders, the calmness of how he just lay there like it was nothing. He always had been a great pretender.
"Sasuke."
"Stop bothering me," he rebuked, velvet tone edgier this time. She bit her lip and sat up on the bed.
"Sasuke."
She waited for a reaction that never came.
"Sasuke," she tried again, keeping her voice the same to avoid provoking his nastier side.
"Can't anyone get some peace with you around?" he finally asked out of irritation, he himself sitting up and facing her, her toes digging into the mattress at how he stared questioningly. It now seemed like a bad idea to be doing this.
"You don't have to sleep on the floor," she pointed out tentatively. "We can share."
"I've slept on worse."
"Sasuke." His face darkened. "I wouldn't mind."
"What are you getting to?" he finally asked acerbically, leaning back on his hands, nebulous eyes boring into her. She found herself unable to meet them directly, heat rising to her face. Stupid her, opening her mouth in the first place. She could have left him alone.
"Is it really... is it bad to even worry about you?"
A short, forced laugh came from Sasuke, scorning.
"I'm not getting in bed, nor am I sleeping with you," he told her darkly.
Sakura kept still, frozen shocked and embarrassed by his words, a red flush spreading down her neck and across her chest. Her fingers slowly curled into fists as tears stung behind her eyelids. She hadn't meant it that way at all. No. No more sobbing, weak Haruno. She was not going to cry on this. Not openly, at least. She had to play strong, even though the offensive remark stung like a direct insult.
"I haven't said anything and yet you blush?" he asked, suddenly straightening and watching her with an unreadable mask trimmed in curiosity. She couldn't reply. If she tried to, her voice would only break and that would cause her to break. She took a deep breath, then her heart gave an awful throb.
He had risen and was stalking toward her, the mattress dipping from his weight as he sat down. He was too close, even more so when his fingers pressed at the center of her chest. She was sure he could feel the frantic beating beneath.
"Of course, you would like that, won't you?" he sibilated, lips languidly moving against her cheek, causing her to stiffen and a shudder sweep across her skin, sliding down her sides.
Her hands twisted the blanket as he pulled back slightly, his actions confusing and muting her. Watching carefully, his fingertips remained uncomfortably pressed between her collarbones and when he pushed her backward she did not relent, forest-hued eyes imploring as they rose to meet his. The threadbare sheet in her palms was being mangled, almost tearing.
Sakura swallowed hard when power backed his action and she was slowly pressed down into the mattress, his knees on either side and his body warm over hers. Those accursed lips were brought near her ear and the ceiling mirror brandished her a view of them, Sasuke positioned risquely above her with his shoulders tense and black hair stark against the cream bedcovers. The treacherous looking glass also exposed her in all her crimson-faced shame.
His voice was a drawl, a low tremor smoothly masking his words' harshness.
"Go the fuck to sleep."
He drew back and the springs beneath them creaked when he rolled over to the other side of the bed, pulling his blanket over himself.
It felt like someone let back the air in the room to Sakura, remembering how to breath again as she tightly closed her eyes. A shaft of sunlight escaped the heavily curtained window and a golden ray sliced through the center of the circular bed, warm across her torso. Sasuke was unperturbed and appeared to be downed by easy sleep beside her. The oblivion she was seeking did not come fast enough and she prayed with the will of fire for strength to be able to survive this.
Whisper.