Somebody
By. Misery's-Toll
Chapter Eighteen: Somebody
Hate, feed the hate
Feed the hate of the country you love
And beg, you will beg
You will beg for the lives and their souls
And burn, you will burn
You will burn in hell
Yeah you'll burn in hell
- "Take a Bow" by Muse
It's Wednesday. Six days since Sasuke left for his trip with Itachi. Sakura spends her days mostly alone, walking with Hinata from English to Speech every other day, and sitting next to Gaara in Biology in those days in between, passing Naruto in the hallway and catching fleeting glimpses of Ino disappearing in the mornings, but not really speaking to any of them.
To Sakura, its almost enough, just seeing that Hinata is nearly beaming with the happiness of knowing that she and Naruto are an item.
Almost enough knowing that Hinata has found love and you have not, knowing that you can't ever be like her, can't ever be with her again.
Just seeing that Gaara is safe, back at school, relatively unharmed.
Almost enough, knowing that Gaara is suffering the same thing you once did, the beatings of someone he loves.
Just seeing that Naruto stands strong, capable of keeping Hinata protected.
Almost enough, knowing that he lives all alone, knowing that every moment he's not with Hinata, he's all by himself.
Just seeing that Ino doesn't need Shikamaru.
Almost enough, knowing she doesn't need you either.
Almost enough.
Can't ever go back.
Sakura knows its selfish, in a way, to want more. To want to feel Hinata's happiness seeping into her, to want to protect Gaara, to want to joke with Naruto, to want to feel Ino's acceptance.
To want to feel his arms wrapped so tightly around her.
Even if it suffocates you.
It's grating against her. She feel so lost, so empty. She's pushing everyone away, but she expected to be able to keep everyone at arms-length, to keep them within reach. She didn't expect them to keep moving, to drift away like a ship without an anchor. And Ino's still as unreachable as ever.
Even wanting to speak to her friends, at this point, she doesn't think she can. They don't spare glances in her direction anymore. As if she's already lost, irreversibly. There's nothing to say anymore; she's given up that right.
Hurts, doesn't it?
Sakura heads to Biology, looking forward to nothing but maybe checking that Gaara is still arriving to school regularly. She quietly shuffles to her desk and drops her bookbag on the floor, sliding into her seat.
"DISSECTION OF FOETAL PIGS FRIDAY!"
The message is written on the chalkboard in dusty pink. It makes Sakura sick, just seeing the words. Her hands get clammy, her entire body seems to begin to sweat, her head spinning. Her tongue feels like cotton in her mouth. She can only hear the sound of her own breathing. She has to lay her head down on her desk just to make the room stop tilting.
She feels that familiar sensation of her nose and eyes stinging, and can feel the tears pricking at her eyelids. She bites her too-thick tongue to keep from crying.
Class goes by too quickly. Everyone files out of the room, leaving only her and Orochimaru-sensei behind. She doesn't know where Kabuto is. She just vaguely remembers there being an announcement of his birthday coming Friday as well.
She stumbles up to Orochimaru-sensei's desk, her hollow breaths ringing in her ears, the panic setting in.
She chickens-out. Leaves the room under the watchful eye of her biology teacher.
Home is empty. Sakura doesn't know where her father is; she figures he's out somewhere getting drunk. She figures Ino is probably at that same gas-station, talking to Sai as he told her she always does once in art class.
Sakura walks tepidly into her parents room. The bed smells faintly of whisky and sweat, but she presses her face into her mother's old pillow. There's no scent of her left. Just that same musky smell of alcohol and body odor. The tears she held back before nearly make it to the surface, but she pushes them back down.
Not now. Not today. Save them for another time.
She rolls out of the bed and lands unsteadily on the floor. She wants to scream. She sucks in the breath to do so until she hears the sound of padding feet and Ino walks past the door, their eyes locking for a moment before the pallid girl shuffles of into the direction of her bedroom.
Sakura releases the breath silently.
Don't let her see how weak you've become.
Thursday.
Hinata doesn't walk with her from English to Speech. The girl is already sitting at her desk when Sakura runs in, two seconds before the bell.
After class, Karin approaches Sakura for the first time in months, a sneer marring her perfect features.
"What did you do to him, bitch? What happened to my Sasuke?"
Sakura stares at the girl, bewildered, saying nothing. This angers Karin further, and she slaps Sakura across the face, "Speak, bitch!"
Sakura's brain jars in her skull from the force of Karin's hit, surprised by the pain that had been slowly becoming foreign since the car crash. She raises her own hand and slaps Karin, herself, before walking away, leaving the red-headed girl speechless in the middle of the hallway.
This isn't you.
Friday comes
too soon.
I feel that heavy stone of pure
dread
in my gut from the moment that I
wake up.
The biology classroom reeks of
formaldehyde.
I sit in my chair
hyperventilating.
Gaara
isn't
here.
A smarter one than you.
Kabuto passes out large
rectangular
pie trays.
The deathbed.
Orochimaru-sensei goes around
dropping the plastic sacks
in the pie trays,
baby pigs inside,
slitting the material open with a
razor blade.
The pungent odor is
stupefying.
Girls squeal
and guys
laugh out loud.
Eventually
Orochimaru-sensei gets to me
and my chest feels tight
and I can't seem to
suck in enough oxygen.
He slits open the sack.
And all of a sudden I'm crying.
Crying in front of the teacher
Why are you crying?
over something that everyone else can do
without a problem. But
You're weak.
I can't stop thinking about how
proud a mother I could be and
the words, And she was beautiful. repeat in my head
over
and over
and over
Why won't it stop?
and I can't shake the idea of
someone taking my baby
and
cutting her open, and giggling and "ew"ing over his/her innards flowing over their fingertips.
And I can't help but wonder how family could
mean so much to a person who
doesn't have one.
Because
even though they're mostly still here
it sorta feels like they're dead.
Like mindless dolls
Because
I didn't know why
Ino doesn't smile at me anymore
Why doesn't she smile back?
or why
she wears so much make-up and perfume
She didn't used to care what boys think
that
it makes me cough when she bumps shoulders with me
when I enter a room
and she immediately leaves it.
And I can't remember
when mother and father stopped kissing
and started shouting instead
The screaming still rings in your ears, doesn't it?
And at some point
I stopped caring. Maybe
when mother died
and father
didn't even
care
to take care of us
anymore.
Why should you? They never even looked at you.
And maybe now and then
I'll catch him
laughing
laughing so hard
over something that had belonged to her, clutching it
to his over-weight stomach
that's full of the beer
he's been guzzling down
That's why no one outside of the family ever enters anymore.
can after can
day
after
day.
And it makes me want to scream.
And bury myself
alive
Without a coffin
just so that I could feel the earth
surrounding me
hugging me
loving
me.
and then at least
I'd be a part of something
something big.
so big
I wouldn't be ignored
couldn't just
be ignored.
Because being inconspicuous is impossible when you've painted a bright red target on your back.
Because "the earth determines the book"
applied to all people's stories.
And maybe I just needed to be
lovedlovedlovedlovedloved
a little bit
by
SOMEBODY.
...Anybody? Please help me...
-=Ino=-
[my baby]
Ino skips Biology.
She spends the class period in the girl's restroom with black and red permanent markers. She was never an artist, and she thinks that maybe Sakura or Sai would be better candidates for something like this, but she doesn't think Sakura could understand and she sure as hell knows that Sai never could.
So she draws. And writes. And laughs.
Pictures of unborn babies, lying in puddles of their own amniotic fluids, dead pigs, blood, and the word 'MURDERER' written over and over and over again.
She pulls morbid photographs of aborted infants printed off the internet from her backpack, and as she posts them on the mirror and stall doors and throws the rest on the floor to scatter. This feels vaguely reminiscent of when the jealousy first seeped in and she stuck those flyers of her party [Sakura, I'm sorry, but you could never understand] all across the school and fed off of her sister's mistreatment.
She places a somehow protective hand over her belly and sneers at herself in the mirror.
"Disgusting."
-=Hinata=-
It's at lunch when Hinata hears that Haruno Sakura had an episode during Biology, and then passed out.
Gaara arrives at the school half-way through lunch, and sits across from Naruto and her with a curious expression when he sees their worry.
"What's happened?"
"It's...It's Sakura," Hinata says, biting her lower lip and looking down at the picnic table.
"I don't really know the details, but it's been going around that she burst into tears in Biology class before fainting. They were dissecting the pigs today," he glances at Hinata, "So I'm guessing that may be a part of it."
Hinata can feel it when Gaara's mood abruptly changes. There's not much difference in his blank expression, but all of a sudden the air around him is thick and smothering. His eyes are dark and blazing and she can't help but feel afraid. Naruto takes her hand and squeezes it, sending a shiver up her spine and her blood rushing to her face.
"Where is she now?" Gaara's tone is deep and dark. Threatening, almost.
"Uh --the nurse's office, I think," Naruto says, obviously startled by Gaara's intensity, "But they're not letting anyone out of the courtyard until lunch is over."
Gaara grunts in response.
When the bell rings, the three go together to check on Sakura.
The nurse is a tall woman with hair in a dark bob with dark eyes to match. Her office is decorated with pigs. Her nametag says Shizune.
"What's the problem?" she asks, looking over the three, as if trying to comb out the sick one.
"We're here to see Sakura!" Naruto shouts a little too loudly, and Hinata bites her lip and fumbles with the hem of her skirt.
"I'm sorry, but only one person at a time. So two of you have to go to class and come back later. She ended up spilling formaldehyde all over herself when she fainted. Poor thing knocked over her pig and had the stuff spill all over her. So she'll need some help changing, thanks to her cast," she points to Hinata, "So I suppose you should go in first and help her out."
Hinata can feel Gaara seething and she worries about what he might do before he abruptly becomes calm and still. He turns and stares into Hinata's eyes, "Take care of her."
He and Naruto exit, leaving Hinata more nervous than before. She goes behind Shizune's desk and through the door leading to a small room where a girl lays on a cot. Sakura.
The girl looks awful. The make-up she doesn't remember Sakura wearing long before she started drifting is smeared down her pallid cheeks, her eyes red and swollen, making the vibrant green of her irises even more outstanding in a pitiful sort of way.
For some reason, Hinata feels an unfamiliar sort of rage bubbling in her chest.
"Are you happy now?" the Hyuuga asks, surprised when tears start to pool on her lower eyelid.
Sakura opens her mouth and lets out a dry breath. She slowly sits up, her greasy hair limply unsticking from the side of her face where it was pressed against the pillow. The thick aroma of formaldehyde hits Hinata's nose and makes her cough a little.
"Happy?" Sakura asks with a hoarse voice. Her expression is hollow. Empty. Her body is too thin.
Too thin too thin too thin too sick
"What have you been trying to accomplish b-by blowing us all off?" Hinata trips over her words, the anger dissipating a little, but she holds on to it, "Gaara's father has been hitting him. And w-where have you been? Off with Sasuke?"
Sakura's eyes go out of focus for a minute and she looks down at her chemical-stained jeans and for a minute she resembles the broken girl she was when they first met. (brokenbrokenbroken) And it hits Hinata that maybe now is not the time for yelling, for drilling into the girl's head how stupid she's been. Now is the time for consoling, for comforting, and the lecturing can always come later, when the girl doesn't look so defeated.
"Yes."
The reply is so simple and answers the question, yet somehow it seems completely irrelevant but so so heartfelt. As if her entire apology and explanation and all of her tears have gone into the effort of saying that one word.
"Oh, Sakura!"
Hinata hugs the girl tightly, but loosens a bit when she feels the girl's bony arms beneath her and she's worried that if she hugs too tightly the girl might snap. She strokes the girl's hair, untangling it with her fingers as she goes, and she somehow feels fuller when Sakura finally returns the embrace.
Sometime later, after Sakura has changed clothes, the two are lying down in the cot together, Sakura's arm wrapped over Hinata's stomach, "How are you going to do it?"
"Do what?" Hinata's asks, curling into herself.
"Dissect."
Hinata tightens all of the muscles in her abdomen, and she's sure Sakura can feel the difference.
"Sometimes it pays off to have a g-guardian working in the school's system," she says it with a humorless smile that could burn like venom, and she's glad that Sakura cannot see it, "Kurenai got me out of it."
"I'm glad for you," Sakura says, her voice a breathy whisper, and her pale fingers (nothing but bones) twitch.
"But that isn't really what this is all about, is it?"
Sakura doesn't answer.
"Sakura," Hinata brushes her hand over the girl's and angles her head back to see her, "You need to eat more."
Sakura offers a bitter smile of her own, "I'm trying. I'm just not ever hungry anymore. And when I am, I get full so quickly..."
"You're so thin. You could probably blow away."
Sakura's smile disappears, and she closes her eyes and rests her head deeper into the thin, cotton pillow, "That doesn't sound so bad."
-=Sasuke=-
He lied when he said he needed the money.
Inheritence is a funny thing. When the Uchiha's parents died, Sasuke and Itachi recieved their entire fortune, having done nothing to earn it (unless years of tears and agony and disrespect can be recompensed with money). They stored it away in a bank account, rarely accessed, hoped to be forgotten about (because no one wants to remember riches recieved by the death of those beloved who maybe weren't so beloved after all).
He isn't sure what made him accept this offer in particular, to have his mutation examined, prodded, sampled. All he knows is that maybe he wants them gone. He wants his wings to disappear. He wants to live normally. He wants to love normally.
["Will you fly me away from here?"]
Sakura. She thinks she wants to see them. But she's wrong. Naruto is the only person to ever accept them, and that's just because the boy was a little too innocent when they met. Sasuke can never have a normal relationship for as long as these deformities plague him. If Sakura were to see them, understand them for what they are, she would surely turn away.
["Will I ever get to see them?"]
(You don't want to see them.)
He hopes that maybe the doctors can tell him whether or not it is possible to get them surgically removed.
["Someday you'll unfurl your wings and fly again, and maybe I'll get to watch, but maybe I won't, because maybe you'll disappear, because angels don't stick around forever."]
(Maybe. If you weren't mistaken. If I could fly. If I were an...an angel.)
But then, would he be nothing more than a boy to her?
["You don't have to protect me. I just like being friends."]
The table is hard and cold against his bare chest. His arms and legs are strapped down to keep him still. He wears nothing but a pair of mint-green cotton pants. With his face pressed against the table, he can see nothing, but he can smell the cleaning alcohol used on the examination table he lays on, and he can hear appreciative murmurs, the clanging of metallic instruments on a steel tray.
Someone is pulling on his wings, stretching them as far as they can go. He speeds up the process by unfurling them himself. They're small things. His full wingspan doesn't even reach his elbows. Whoever is examining him is startled by the movement and gasps. Whether its in delight or in horror, he isn't sure. He knows what his wings look like. White, feathery, dappled in brown. The feathers generally limp and unattractive, as they're usually crammed tightly against his back beneath heavy layers of clothing.
Another person --this time female, strokes the feathers with dainty fingers. She pauses and removes her hand from him, and then he can hear the sound of pen scribbling on paper.
A needle in his back as they take a spinal fluid sample. He clenches his teeth from the pain.
"Funny, how in long ago times, had someone with your mutation been born, you would have been worshipped as an angel of sorts," says one of the scientists with a snort as she places the cold face of a stethoscope beneath his shoulder blade.
["You're the epitome of an angel."]
Sasuke just lets out a grunt in response.
These people don't see him as human. He's just a guinea pig that speaks their language.
"There's no way to remove them without paralyzing you for life," says the doctor, crossing her legs and showing off quite a bit of thigh. She knocks a folder off her small, make-shift table, and she bends over to pick it up, exposing a large amount of cleavage.
Sasuke finds it difficult to take this woman seriously.
"Is there anyone else I could talk to in your facility? Some other doctor?" he deadpans.
She gives him a well-practiced look of sympathy, "I'm sorry, but any other doctor would tell you the exact same thing. Those...wings...they're integrated into your spine, the nerves and muscle tissue twisted around your vertebrae impressively. But it doesn't appear as though they'll grow anymore. They should stay that size."
"Could you just remove the outside? No need to do any of the inner work," he presses.
"I suppose we could...there's no guarantee that they wouldn't grow back at least a little. And it would leave horrible scarring. And if they did grow back, it wouldn't be the full wings, but small, raised nubs."
"What if I was willing to take that chance?" he counters, just imagining what it would be like, not possessing these useless endowments, "I don't care about scarring."
She pinches her lips tightly together over her teeth, "Possibly. We would need to perform further testing and we'd need the consent of a guardian, not to mention sufficient funding. And you should probably think this over a little more. We're going to be closed for the next week for some reconstruction of a room that suffered heavy water damage, so please return after that amount of time with your decision."
["I just wanted to see you fly."]
Sasuke returns to the motel room to find Itachi gone. He isn't surprised.
Sasuke sits on the edge of a bed covered with moth-eaten blankets, stained with spilled beverages and what was left behind from couples who made love, and he imagines himself as one of these people, wonders what it would feel like to be with another person in that sense, wonders at that feeling of completeness. He imagines himself with a faceless person, loving her, making her complete, and he wonders at what it would feel like knowing that he, the demon-angel-mutant-deformed child made someone else feel full and alive.
That faceless person turns into Sakura, and he can feel her running her hands down his back until they brush his scarred nubs of once-were wings. And then she screams.
He jolts when he realizes the screams are just Itachi opening the door, it easing open with a harsh screech. His brother is wincing, "You sure can pick motels, little brother."
Itachi tosses him a can of soda, chugging a can of beer, himself. He locks the door and turns on the television and to a program on Animal Planet. Sasuke watches as Itachi tosses the beer can somewhere into the small kitchenette area, and then sheds his pants and shirt and pats into the bathroom.
Sasuke kicks off his shoes and pulls off his shirt and then falls back on the bed. He falls asleep with the light on to the sound of a running shower and 'mothers of the sea,' still replaying the image in his head of Sakura screaming.
[Would you fly me away from here? Would you?
...Would you?]
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or "Take a Bow" by Muse.
A/N: There you have it. This is the first chapter of Somebody I ever wrote, back in March 2008. Why, you may ask, did it take me so long to upload it, then? Well, you see, I have a very amazing beta who I've been waiting to hear from, but I haven't heard a word from her in a month, so I decided that maybe then it was passable to update without getting a response. But if anyone sees any spelling mistakes or anything I should adjust, please tell me in a review or a pm!
Sorry if the first part of the chapter is a little repetitive. I don't really like it, but I figure I'll just have to deal. And so that no one has to ask, the parts in italics in brackets with quotation marks is Sasuke remembering things Sakura has said, while the underlined italicized paranthesis are Sasuke's silent responses to those memories. The last part has no quotation marks, meaning that Sasuke is imagining Sakura saying these things. :)
I'd like to begin updating every week. If not that, then every other week. I'm hoping to have this story finished before May 21st though, because I will be going to California to start the summer, and I will have no internet access.
Thank you for being patient! Please review (and thank you for all of your fabulous reviews last time)!
-MT