A/N: If you don't like Karin, you should click out. In this AU, Karin is not in love with Sasuke. This is my goddamn excuse for SasuKarin and SakuKarin broship and no one can take it away from me. Also, Sakura isn't buddy buddy with Suigetsu (but it doesn't last because SuiSaku broship is apart of my life dreams).
For this chapter I had to go back and reread a lot of chapters in the 300's and it makes me feel so NOSTALGIC about reading Sasuke hurrying to find Itachi and Jiraiya fucking dying and all these Akatsuki that lived (at that point lol they were dropping like flies). I've also realized that to finish this, I'm going to have to go back and do a lot of rereading, even if the dialogue and plotline to this isn't going to follow the manga completely. It'll take time to skip through things I don't need as well as putting it together to fit my own plot here. So chapters WILL be slow in coming. Be patient with me.
The SasuSaku month theme to this chapter would be "impulsive". Get it? My body moved on its own? Haha. Ha. Dear god I hate Sasuke so much.
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Sakura didn't like bathroom lights - they ended up being too bright and illuminated every little flaw her body held. She stopped and stared at the mirror's reflection for a moment, paddle brush dangling in her hand as bottle green eyes roamed over her the reflection before her. Her small bandaged chest, her thick scar running over the right side of her ribs, her thighs that were too skinny to be healthy.
She was a nukenin now, but she would always be a girl first. (A very insecure girl).
So in the harsh florescent lights, she gave herself a quiet moment to pick away at every ugly piece of her until she breathed again and went back to work.
"Which base are we going to first?" Sakura called out, brushing through her hair and wincing as she got out the tangles. She still heard Sasuke shuffling around and getting ready. They hadn't spoken much this morning – more so grunting and a few kisses to his jaw. The sky was still black with night outside. "And have you decided on who you want to bring?"
Sasuke appeared through the open bathroom door, pulling an arm through his shirt and frowning disapprovingly at her. "Why aren't you ready yet?" he said, eyes trailing her form. Sakura snorted
"Because I felt like doing my hair and we have the time," she replied smoothly, still brushing out her hair. "Answer the question already."
"Karin is a proficient tracker," Sasuke said, leaning against the door frame and watching lips twitch in a smirk. "Her techniques would help us locate Itachi more quickly than just using summons."
"It would," Sakura replied. Her lip twitched again until she ended up biting down on her bottom lip. She put down the hair brush on the counter and brought all her hair over to her left shoulder. Her fingers ran through the damp tresses, trying to make them lay down evenly. "Who else?"
"Juugo and Suigetsu," Sasuke replied. He watched the mirth trickle out of her eyes and be replaced by irritation. "Good combatants."
"You like ruining my fun," Sakura snapped. He didn't spend a lot of time thinking about his choices, did he? "Who are we getting first?"
Sasuke smiled just a bit. "Suigetsu."
"Oh goddamn it," Sakura muttered.
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She managed to weasel him into taking her out for breakfast. There was a lot of bickering and more kissing - a trail of her lips following the line of his jaw and throat and collar bones until he pinned her against the wall where his teeth found her neck and his thumb found her clit.
The walk out of the inn was infinitely more quiet, though. The villagers were just starting to come to life. It was foggy outside, the sun too pale to peak through the faint clouds overhead. Gravel roads crunched under their feet without an echo, air fresh and clean against their skin. It was cleansing for her soul, extracting all the anxiety and hatred that boiled inside of her. The oxygen in her lungs was too sweet and this world they'd stepped into was too small to be anything but grateful.
She'd left her hair unbraided just because, letting it fly around her as he breeze picked it up and played with it before passing away.
Sakura threaded her fingers through Sasuke's and reached up to place a soft kiss on his cheek. He blinked, looking at her with question, but she just shrugged and squeezed his hand inside her own.
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Suigetsu was simpler than she thought it'd be.
Sasuke pierced through the canister holding Suigetsu brutally. The glass shattered, and the water spilled out, his half-formed body following along. Sakura breathed in the familiar stench of lab chemicals and mold with reluctant lungs that made old images float to the surface just behind her eyelids. Unconsciously, she stepped closer to Sasuke as the liquid oozed onto the floor and closer to her shoes. Being in the vicinity of Suigetsu and literally inside his element would only serve her anxiousness further.
Memories of the vicious smile and teeth sharper than kunai blades linger in the back of her head when she sees him.
She has always been wary of Suigetsu.
"Me first, then the others?" he asked, raising his body from the water. His voice was a cold after thought to her subconscious - bringing back experimentation she'd refused to be apart of, the sharp screams of people she could not remove from her head.
"Two others," Sasuke clarified, watching his every move with precise intent. He seemed to be a bit wary himself. "We'll take Juugo from the Northern Hideout and Karin from the Southern Hideout."
"Really?" Suigetsu prompts. He's bringing his hip out from the water just as Sakura looks away, jaw set with embarrassment.
"What?"
"Nothin," he says, voice managing to echo. "Just don't like 'em. Just thought we won't be able to get along."
Sakura scoffs despite herself, granting them an eye roll. "Obvious, much?"
"Try lookin' me in the eye when you want to say somethin' smart, Sakura-chan," Suigetsu replied playfully, standing to his full height and grinning in Sakura's direction. "What's wrong? I don't mind if you take a little peak. I've got nothin' to hide."
"No thanks. I don't want to set myself up for disappointment," Sakura answered. He laughed loudly, still grinning with too-sharp teeth as the pink haired girl stared coldly at him. "And the point isn't to get along. All we need to do is to work together efficiently."
"Well, that's fine. You guys did save me after all, so I can play along for a little while," Suigetsu answered, eyes lingering onto Sasuke. "You're still crazy for choosing them."
"I know. He's kinda stupid sometimes," Sakura murmured, more to rile him up than anything. Sasuke glared indignantly at her, looking betrayed and annoyed. "Let's just go."
"There's somewhere I want you guys to take me first. Do you mind?" Suigetsu asked, crossing his arms at his chest. "I need to recover a little somethin'."
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They come to Wave Country, and Sakura's heart swims to her throat.
Standing in front of Zabuza and Haku's grave markers carves out memories into her chest that she doesn't want to remember. Naruto's loud, unwavering voice echoing through her ears and the image of Kakashi standing between the three of them and danger will always linger, no matter how hollow she makes her heart to them. Maybe it's fitting that they return to the very place that they became a team. Now, coming back home travel-weary to a village encased with greenery and sun instead of a never ending mist, it seems more ironic than anything.
Returning to where Team 7 was born as the two to abandon it, into a flourishing little town instead of a desolate, dreary thing.
But the sun still remains stagnant in the sky, whether hidden behind clouds or not, and the grass still grows impossibly thick around the two graves. These things don't easily change.
And even if she has come back in the same body with the same skin wrapped around her bones, Sakura has not. remained the same. Neither has Sasuke. There has been no constant in their strength, their loyalties, their goals for the future. It's more sad than ironic, Sakura decides.
He stands beside her, hands to his sides as Suigetsu picks up the executioner's blade and tosses it over his shoulder with triumph.
Sakura tries very hard blocks out the smell of salt water in the air as she purses her lips into a tight line.
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Karin was easy enough.
"So it really is you three," the redhead drawled, hands at her hips as she smirked mischievously at Sakura and Sasuke, then gave a sneer to Suigetsu. "Long time no see, Sakura."
Sakura could have burst into laughter at the callousness of the girl. "It's good to see you too, Karin," she said, moving forward and pulling her into a hug, wrapping her arms around the taller kunoichi's shoulders and breathing in the expensive perfume she doused herself in every day to hide the scent of the prison despair that clung to her. It was familiar and brashly feminine.
Karin only sighed and hugged back for a moment.
"Whatever, you sap. Why are you guys here in the first place?" she asked as her hands found their way to her hips. Suigetsu started grumbling about not getting a hug in the background, but he was ignored. Sakura stared sheepishly at her and shrugged. "Orochimaru isn't with you. Are the rumors true, then?"
"They are. And this isn't really a friendly visit," Sakura replied.
"We have a proposition for you," Sasuke explained, stepping forward to answer her.
"Can you take us somewhere that we can talk?" Suigetsu asked. "That's not in the middle of the hall?"
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Juugo was harder.
One second Sasuke was opening the door to the jail cell, and the next, she was pinned to the concrete walls by a large, rough thing molded with scales by the throat. She choked, eyes bugging out of her head but not quite seeing as her entire body went into overload. She felt her left shoulder being crushed and her ribs being bruised and an indesernible throbbing somewhere in her chest, piercing through her.
Something hard pressed down on her throat and for a long moment she wheezed for hair. There was high pitched noises and shouting, that barely registered through her ears, everything moving too fast for her brain to comprehend. Muted voices called out her name.
For a single moment, she went still and hoped for a kind death.
Before she could fully open her blurred eyes, the rough scales that pressed down on her throat disappeared.
"Do you want me to kill you?" Sasuke hissed, Sharingan spinning a fresh-blood red. The suffocating murderous intent radiated around him, sharp and unyielding in the expanse of his chakra. Sakura saw his chukoto shoved into Juugo's side, not piercing through any vitals.
She found her lungs again.
Juugo shrank back, his gaze shifting from her own to Sasuke, and he began to shake. "I-I'm so-," he gasped out, winced in pain, stepping away and shifting from the sword stuck inside of him. Her heart hurt, abused ribs and his wounded gaze making everything thump with a terrible ache through her body.
The man - the boy - hidden in the monster.
"He came willingly for rehabilitation." Karin's words echoed inside her head, clinical precision and pity pulling at her tone.
The half-finished jutsu of earth encasing the lower half of her body and pinning her to the wall fell away - she thought wryly about how and Sakura dropped onto her feet with the concrete floors scraping beneath her shoes. Karin rushed to her side, hands finding her shoulder and searching for more damage.
"You idiot," she hissed.
He looked at her for a long time before he sprinted back into this cell.
Sasuke glared in boiling anger and irritation, and Suigetsu stared in question, his giant butchering sword still grasped in his hand.
Karin ignored everyone, holding Sakura upright and pressing her wrist to her lips. She bit down as hard as she could, drinking in the healing chakra and feeling her bones shift back into place. After a moment, she could sit up on her own, giving the redhead a grateful smile and looking down on her bloodied and battered clothes.
"Um, Juugo?" Sakura called out. "You need to come out here for a little bit."
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After healing Juugo, they were at the mercy of the rock formations once more, three of them staring down her and Sasuke. There was still bits of concrete and dust stuck to her skin, and the sun was relentless against her pale skin, but Sakura just squinted and endured.
When she saw them all together this time - the tracker who could pinpoint a single person through a hundred different chakra signatures, the monster hidden in a man who could obliterate anything in his path if he got enough mind to with shackles left to Sasuke's grasp, and the swordsmen who could split anyone in half with a blade bigger than himself - she saw the threads stitch together in her head. He may not have spent much time thinking on cultivating a team very well, but she understood now. Maybe she would always be weary of Suigetsu's presence, and maybe Juugo would have very little control of himself away from Sasuke's gaze, and maybe Karin would just end up killing them all in their sleep.
But the maybe's wouldn't change the picture whichever way she twisted her gaze. Hebi would be ruthlessly efficient. Lethal.
And when the end goal was killing Uchiha Itachi, she needed Sasuke to have every advantage he could get. It wasn't just him against his older brother any more. The world would be hunting them down soon.
Sakura was willing to accept any power she could get her hands on to keep this boy safe.
She'd proven it before - stealing away in the dead of night to men who would sooner slit her throat than save her.
Just for him. Always for him.
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"What the hell is this?" Sakura said aloud, green eyes following the line of abandoned buildings sharply. "Didn't have a hideout in Fire Country."
"Not to mention none have been this much of a," Suigetsu cut in.
"He didn't," Sasuke said, continuing to walk forward. His gaze held no curiosity - just quiet intent. "My clan used this place as a weapon's store house. We'll get ourselves equipped here."
The city looked gloomier and colder with the storm clouds raised above - gray downcast casting shadows everywhere. She wasn't sure if it was run down by war, or just simply age. There was decay and mold coating every surface that made it look like rot was in the very presence of the buildings. There was a stale taste to the air, and a weight that she couldn't quite comprehend, like high altitudes making it harder to draw breath.
Sakura turned her gaze to him as the walked, cocking a brow. She was not fond of being lead blindly.
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The two cats led them to an old woman.
Sakura didn't pay her much mind - a much younger girl, possibly her grand daughter, immediately gave her a new set of clothes, a black cloak, two senbon pouches, a roll of bandages, a medical pouch (filled with a surprising amount of things she'd needed), and new boots.
The girl smiled at her. "I don't think you'll be needing anything else," she said. Sakura shook her head and smiled politely. She was pointed to another room off to the side so she could change, and before she could be thanked, moved onto Juugo and began looking for a shirt that could actually fit him.
Sakura stepped into the small room and began undressing. She dropped her tattered clothes onto the floor and kicked them aside. When she was down to her underwear and chest bindings, she reached down and slipped a senbon from the weapons pouch on the floor and used it to cut free her breasts.
She dropped the senbon and began wrapping her chest once more when the door opened suddenly.
Sakura was hissing, covering her breasts with one arm and aiming a fistful of senbon in the other when she saw Sasuke.
"Can you at least knock?" she snapped, tossing the weaponry in his direction anyway. He knocked them sideways neatly with the back of his arm guard.
"Do you need help with that? he asked, pointing to the roll of bandages that she'd dropped to the floor. Sakura nodded reluctantly, holding out the bandages to him. Sasuke stepped forward, the edges of his shirt sleeve brushing against her skin and making her shiver.
He was quiet for a long time, busying himself with unwinding the bandages and wrapping them around her form. He was closer than he had been for days, since the morning they'd left to find Suigetsu. Sakura didn't like when he'd pulled away from her, slipped between a detached barrier than separated between them.
But now, with his breath warm and hot against her neck, all she felt was increasingly tired that they couldn't find another bed to settled under for a few days - a few weeks. It felt like he was trying to touch as much skin as possible, sending errant shivers down her spine. She fought hard against the little gasps trying to slip through her throat.
"You shoved me out of the way when I was unlocking the cell," Sasuke said finally, staring at her when he finished. He dropped the bandages on the floor somewhere, forgotten, while his hands settled on the dip of her waist, his thumb brushing over the scar on her ribs. "You could have died."
"I'm not that easy to kill, Sasuke-kun," Sakura murmured, settling her forehead to the base of his throat.
"He came out of the cell and just had to by the throat," the dark haired boy continued. "It wouldn't have been that hard to snap your neck. If I'd have given him another second, he would have done just that."
"But I you didn't."
"You put too much faith in me."
"I honestly don't." There was nothing in the world that she would leave this boy to just conquer on his own without preparation, without prayers, without a trump card. If she couldn't, she'd bury him deep in the earth and never let him surface. "I'm not apologizing for it. I don't need a lecture."
"And I don't need you protecting me," he growled, fingers suddenly hot and tight against her skin. "Especially when you're attempting to do so poorly."
She sighed, stepping away from him and scratching at the back of her head. "I've always been trying to protect you. Why did you think I even wanted to follow you to Sound?" Sakura muttered, waving him away as she reached down to pull her shirt over her head. Words began spilling from her lips without her conscious effort. "You were about to leave Konoha to go to Orochimaru. I watched him put that fucking thing on your neck. Protecting you was the only reason I stayed."
"Do you know why I even brought you to Sound?"
"Enlighten me. Why?"
"On a whim."
Sakura's head snapped up, skirt half way up her thighs and hands suddenly bunched into fists. "Excuse me?" she hissed, jerking on her clothing and reaching for her shoes.
"I wasn't doing it out of this twisted urge to protect you. I wasn't in love with you. I did it because I wanted to," Sasuke said, crossing his arms and raising a brow neatly at her. He stepped forward slightly, linger with each step as she stepped back equally, resent melting in her eyes. "And you were very useful to me. Your were trained according to my own abilities. You were taught medical ninjutsu because it would be useful to me."
Her mouth twisted hatefully, not meeting his gaze as Sasuke reached forward held her chin between his fingers. "Looking back on it, I knew it was a mistake. The path my life follows isn't a kind one. And that never mattered to you," he murmured, making her look him in the eye. She pushed him away but he reached back and gripped her by the arms. "You are the best mistake I have ever made."
Sakura stopped breathing for a moment, swallowing her pulse back down her throat and staring at him with terse eyes. "I'm not a mistake. I've never been a mistake. Not when I'm doing everything I can to keep you safe," she muttered, not meeting his gaze.
"You standing right here is a mistake. I can't offer you a life that you deserve," Sasuke said, squeezing her arms tightly.
"But it's the life I chose. Beside you," Sakura answered in a muted tone. She managed a breath and a weak grin with eyes still stuck to her shoes. "You're the best mistake I've ever made."
He huffed out a laugh, his forehead falling onto her shoulder. "I better be."
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"Hey! One last thing. Do you know where I can get my boyfriend an exorcism?"
"Sakura."
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Rain pelted down on hair and cloak, squelching loudly beneath her shoes. Karin stood to her left, focused intently, and Sasuke to her right, unchangingly impassive. Sakura stood between them, smaller and meeker and much more painfully apprehensive.
At that moment, looking out into the rain and the forestry that lay before them, she thought that she felt very much like a child ready to go into a war, she thought that sixteen was too young for chasing after a man's blood, she thought that Sasuke very much reminded her of a hawk with mutilated wings on the verge of a crash landing, and she thought that they were all about to send themselves straight into hell.
"Let's move out," Sasuke commanded.
Regardless, when Hebi sprinted away, she followed.