Somebody
By. Misery's-Toll
Chapter 25: A Fairy Tale (Part Two)
Should have stayed home in bed
when the walls are out of focus
Nervous instead
and I wish that I could save you
each time
- "Nervous (Bonus Track)" by Mew
-=Ino=-
It's like a movie scene.
The evening of the Spring Fling seems like its going through fast forward, the girls happily dressing up and giggling and doing each other's make-up while Ino watches longingly from the doorway. She lets Sakura borrow the dress she was saving for herself for prom, as she was expecting to still have a long line of junior or senior boys willing to take her to in exchange for something else she would have willingly offered before, but come May, Ino knows she'll be around five or six months pregnant (that's what she gets for buying birth control pills from the girls at school -- she only wonders when they'd started to turn on her and give her faulty batches) and there's no line now.
Both of the girls look gorgeous, like princesses only without the ridiculous poof-skirts. She herself is dressed in jeans and a baggy shirt she stole from her dad's closet for her date with Sai. She admires the unfamiliar silken scarf that Sakura wears that the girl touches with tender appreciation, something that appears she's owned for a long time, though Ino has never seen it before. And she realizes that a few months ago that scarf would have been the kind of thing Ino would have taken from her and then she realizes why she knows so little about her sister, and she understands why she is alone while each of these girls is so dearly loved.
"Sakura," Ino says, breaking the girls' conversation, "Can I talk to you?"
Hinata stares at the blonde, and for the first time, Ino notices how pretty the girl's eyes are. But Sakura walks up to her and breaks their connection. Hinata pretends to busy herself with fixing the hem of her dress as to not intrude.
Ino pulls Sakura into the hallway, "Um. I'm sorry."
"For what, Ino?" Sakura cocks her head a little, a small smile on her prettily made-up face. For a second her sweaty face, bruised and crying, fills Ino's mind and she feels sick.
"Um... I think I love you. And I'm glad you're my sister. And I want you to forgive me," she says. The words come out differently and a bit more rushed than she intended, but she feels like a tiny weight has been removed from her shoulders.
"Ino..." Sakura starts, looking away, "A lot...has happened."
Ino's heart drops in her chest and for a second they're both little girls, she a plump, curly-haired doll with no purpose and Sakura a gangly, carefree child who likes to dance on her daddy's shoes. But instead of Sakura, standing there wide eyed and asking for acceptance, it's Ino, and their childhood has flashed by so fast, Ino realizes, and it's dizzying.
"How do you do it?" Ino asks, suddenly starry-eyed and slightly pleading, "You keep living even though everything is horrible."
Sakura smiles at her, eyes crinkling and caring and just what Ino thinks she needs, "I forgave you a long time ago, Ino...you've changed...so much..."
Just before returning to her friend, Sakura says, "...I looked it up yesterday, and your baby should be able to hear your voice either already or pretty soon..."
Ino looks down at the tiny bud of her belly and rubs it softly, "Is that true, baby? Can you hear me?"
The returning silence is comforting.
-=Sasuke=-
The dance started almost an hour ago by the time Sasuke shows up. Even so, spotting Sakura on the dance floor isn't difficult. She's the only one in the room with a pink head of hair (besides Tayuya, but Sasuke would never get the two of them confused), and also the most amazing. He runs up to her, sliding in between people crowding the area, and putting a tentative hand on her back.
"Took you long enough," Kiba says, jokingly, "Way to be a sucky date."
Sasuke ignores him and instead looks directly into Sakura's eyes, "Sorry I'm late. First Itachi caught the stove on fire and then the car wouldn't start."
She smiles a little and nods and takes his hand, hers small and warm and his large and cool and a little bit damp, and then everything is complete. Because while just being close to her is better than any needle-candy fire or a stolen puff from Itachi's cigarette that could leave his mind spinning and his chest tight but unburdened, seeing her is so normal that he just couldn't imagine being without her. It's not an addictive love. It's something he thinks is much healthier.
With Sakura, he doesn't need her to be there for him in any way more than her presence and by her simply being Sakura. He just wants to be there for her. He wants to be her Guardian Angel and love her and protect her so that she doesn't need to be flown away, because with him around life would be enough, even without the promise of angel's wings. Because as long as she's around he has some sort of incentive to believe that maybe the world isn't as jacked-up as he once thought it was.
-=Sakura=-
I'd never had a
slow dance, and with
this feeling of something about to happen like
the rise before the climax
it's a nice, warm feeling to cling to.
Sasuke has his head lowered
next to mine and I can feel his
breath
soft
on my clavicle.
His hands rest on my hips
thumbs tracing absent-minded patterns
in my dress.
We swing gently,
in time, in tempo, in rhythm and
for the first time in my life everything seems so completely
in sync
with everything else and
I want him to kiss me.
"Sakura, I..." he mumbles, his nose slightly brushing my cheek, his
mouth seeking mine and
just before they touch
Naruto rips us apart, shouting.
It takes my mind several seconds of catching up because all I can hear in my head is the sound of my own voice shouting,
"HE WAS GOING TO KISS YOU!"
before I suddenly understand that
"Gaara is trying to fucking kill himself!"
-=Gaara=-
(i'm going to kill you)
"Mother! Get him out of my head!"
Naruto approaches him tentatively, outstretching her hand slowly towards him, "Gaara, put down the knife..."
"No, no, no! Get away from me!" He swipes the weapon haphazardly through the air, and Naruto jerks his hand backwards, the blade just barely nicking his arm. Naruto backs away, pressing a hand over his wound.
(you're going to die little boy and it will be by my hands)
"Mother!" Gaara wails, and then turns the knife and plunges it into his own body, letting out a groaning cry and a shudder before wrenching it back out, blood splattering across the bathroom tile. Sakura's terrified screams cause him to drop the blade on the floor in disoriented fright. He rubs at his face and head violently, smearing red across his cheeks and temples as his body seizes. Sakura's wails and Naruto's curses filling the room.
(because its your fault she's dead and I hate you)
Tears oozing down her face and choking sobs erupting from her body, Sakura crawls up to Gaara, wrapping her arms around him while Naruto runs to find a phone. Sasuke's looming form looks lost and confused.
"Shh, Gaara, it's okay. I'm here. Mother is going to make it all okay," her voice cracks on the last syllable and she chokes on her tears, Gaara's blood filling her hands and spilling down her arms, "He can't touch you while I've got you."
He murmurs something under his breath, his eyes half lidded and rolling back into his head, his body trembling and leaking red-black. Sakura wipes her nose and cheeks to remove the wetness that still pours steadily, painting her own face to match Gaara's, and moves her ear to his mouth.
"What's that, Gaara?"
"...feel loved. I want to feel loved. I want to feel loved. I want to feel..."
She runs her bloodied hand through his hair and kisses the tattoo on his forehead, more tears streaming down red cheeks, making it appear as though she is crying bloody tears, "You're loved, Gaara. You're loved."
-=Sakura=-
Everything moves by in unclear
faded blurs
and people keep talking,
shouting,
whispering but
I want it to stop I want it to stop I-
I'm so confused and where is Gaara?
Is he dead did he die he's gone isn't he oh no oh no and-
breathe Forgetting how to breathe Forgetting...BREATHE!
I wonder if Ino's having a good time with Sai because I was worried and-
Sasuke where are you, are you with Gaara oh god is Gaara dead and are you, I can't remember-
I hope Hinata's and Naruto's night together wasn't ruined because Hinata looks so pretty in her dress, I wish I looked as pretty as she does and-
God damn it all, just breathe!
It's so cold it's so hot and I can't stop shaking and...
"Sakura. Sakura!"
---
Sasuke holds her upper arm in one hand and brushes her blood-sticky cheek with the other, whispering words to her that don't make sense, and every one of his movements whirrs in front of her and she thinks she might vomit. She wants her mother, she wants to crawl back into the womb and never have been born because everything has stopped making sense and she can't even remember if it ever did.
"Sakura, it's okay, Gaara's okay, you're okay," his voice breaks through the fog for a moment, but her ears are still thick with cotton and spots dance in front of her eyes and for a second she can't remember how to stand and she falls and doesn't even feel the pain of falling awkwardly on her leg. Sasuke is gently patting her cheeks and Naruto is trying to hand her a cup of water and Hinata is staring off into the distance, wrapping her arms around her middle and Sakura knows she's thinking of her child and the bloodbloodbloody mess and even then she only saw Gaara's sickly, mutilated body as they loaded it onto the stretcher. But Sakura is covered in it.
"He was okay! He...coming to school and normal! ...and sitting with us at lunch and happy until now, so how could I have known? But I should have, he was upset --I should have known because...he was right there and I should have known, I should have known, I should have..." Sakura words come out in choppy half-sentences and Sasuke smoothes her hair behind her ears but has to go.
"I'm going to go check on the situation and I'm going to leave you with Naruto and Hinata, okay? You're going to be fine, and I'll see the ambulance off so that I see that Gaara is okay with my own eyes, and then we'll know, okay? And then you won't have to worry about anything," Sasuke says, looking down at her with worried eyes for one last time before running off to the bulky white vehicle that just makes Sakura think of her mother and her own almost-death.
"We're going to get you cleaned up, okay, Sakura?" Hinata whispers to her, helping the much taller girl up, Naruto throwing the pink-haired girl's arm over his shoulders.
It'll be alright and then you can breathe again but things aren't alright and they're wrong and everything is dead...
---
When Sakura sees herself in the mirror, she looks almost okay. The blood stains on her dress are hidden by Sasuke's bulky academics jacket and her face and hands and arms are washed besides the red-brown still encrusted beneath her nails. She looks pallid and sickly but the spots in her vision are gone and she can almost breathe again but she cannot think because that hurts a little too much.
Dead dead dead dead dead deadeadeadead
The three of them walk down the halls, quiet and somber, ready to get their things and go home, but guarding the entrance to the gym is Karin.
"This is all YOUR FAULT!" she screams, her hair frazzled and mascara oozing down her face in black ink smears. Sakura hears the words but they don't process and all she can do is stare at the miserable girl.
deadeadeadead
"Listen, Karin-" Naruto starts, but is cut-off by a large hand clamping down on his shoulder, "Hey! What do you think you're do-"
Kidoumaru wrenches Naruto off of Hinata, throwing him aside and giving Hinata a hefty shove into Zaku's awaiting arms.
Sakura reaches out a hand to grab Kidoumaru's arm, but is quickly restrained by Karin who grabs her by the crooks of her elbows from behind. She lets out a grunt and tries to shake the girl off of her, but Karin holds her struggling form so tightly it hurts.
"What are you doing? Bastard!" Naruto shouts and scrambles to his feet to go to Hinata, but Kidoumaru turns and punches Naruto directly in the gut. Both Hinata and Sakura let out a cry in protest as he chokes and falls to his knees with a wheeze. His eyes go out of focus as Zaku throws Hinata against a wall and hits her across the side of the face. Sakura shrieks and tries to pull away from Karin, trying to stomp on the inside of the girl's foot as she's been taught to do, but Karin side-steps it and throws Sakura down, pulling her back up by a chunk of her hair and slamming her head against the tile floor. Her vision goes in and out of focus and she almost wants to cry but she can't seem to remember how.
run away now they're all dead and gone and runaway
Naruto emits a loud growl as he stands and barrels into Kidoumaru, who grabs the smaller boy and throws him down against the water fountain near Sakura. She watches as he quickly speed-dials a number, but Kidoumaru grabs his shoulder and pulls him up, slamming him down on the floor, causing his phone to fall and slide away from him. Naruto crawls backwards and gets up shakily, and then it's all kidney jabs and blows to face.
Karin grabs Sakura by the collar of her jacket and drags her down the hallway, the pink-haired girl's pretty high heels getting lost somewhere during the trek, "I've got personal business with you, bitch. The others just wanna mess around with Naruto because he owes them. They're real sweeties so they let me have you."
Karin kneels down by the girl who is sprawled on the ground, dress hitched up and exposing her underwear, "Look at you. You're just a pretty little whore, aren't you?" She stands up and kicks Sakura brazenly in the side. The pink-haired girl lets out gasping wheezes and choked sobs, trying to lift her hands to defend herself but is too exhausted and cloudy-minded to think of anything but the blood and Gaara, Gaara, Gaara...
She manages to grab Karin's foot and tug the girl down on top of her, letting out another gasping cough. She catches the girl's cheek as she claws blindly with her still blood encrusted fingernails and leaves the girl shrieking and screaming angrily on the floor. She takes the tiny delay in beating to raise herself to a staggering run and stumbles down the hall.
Sasuke.
Save me.
-=Sasuke=-
As the ambulance finally disappears down the freeway, Sasuke's phone vibrates in his pocket. He lets out a heavy sigh before opening it.
"Naruto?"
He listens for the blonde's voice, and at first all he can hear over the sound of the heavy rain is static, but after a few moments longer he realizes someone is screaming. He starts running, shoving past every person in his way, all of the clueless dance attendees. Finally, what seems like ages later, he makes it to the end of the gym corridor where the druggies usually hang out, and an ever-growing crowd has gathered. He barrels through and closes his phone with a snap.
["I feel safe here."]
"Sasuke!" Naruto shouts at him with a gored face, his hair tousled and his forehead down to his neck bloodied, his nose looking smashed into his skull, "Help Hinata!"
Sasuke grabs Zaku by the shoulder and tears him away from Hinata, who if possible, looks even worse than Naruto, gasping loudly, her eyes clouded over. Unadulterated anger sends a rush through Sasuke's veins and he tosses Zaku to the floor, straddling him and punching him in the face repeatedly, blood spattering across the floor in both directions, swearing he will look worse than Hinata and Naruto when he's finished with him.
["Nothing can touch us here."]
A tear-laced voice drowned out by the pounding of his blood in his head shouts, "Sasuke! Stop it! Stop it! You're going to kill him!"
Someone grabs his arm, and in the heat of his anger, he jerks away and strikes his attacker across the face. She falls down to the floor with a cry. Pink. Pink. Red.
["They look like they're reaching for each other."]
She looks up at him through a curtain of blood-plastered petal-pink hair and sobs.
Sasuke feels suddenly sick to his stomach, and his entire body goes numb. He wants to vomit. He just hurt Sakura--
And the world is spinning and and flashes of Sakura feeling his wings for the first time and he can only hear false words projected from her unmoving mouth, What is wrong with you? You said you'd protect me. Why are you turning into a monster?
["You don't have to protect me. I just want to be friends."]
Zaku, beneath him, long forgotten, takes his stillness as a chance to shove Sasuke off of him. He grabs him by the shirt and tries to throw him into a wall, but he dodges under the boys arm and-
His shirt rips, buttons popping and making tiny pings on the floor.
There is a collective gasp through everyone watching, and Zaku stumbles backwards, tripping over his own feet, "What the fuck are you?"
Then, Karin is jerked by the arm away from Hinata, Zaku pushed far away from Sasuke, sending him sprawling, and Kidoumaru is grabbed by the collar and thrown in to the throng of watchers.
"Break it up!" Kabuto's voice booms, standing over everyone with a smirk, "Karin, Zaku, Kidoumaru, Hinata, Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke...to the principal! Now!"
Then there is no sound but Hinata's choking and gasping. Sasuke watches her writhe and her bloodied eyes widen. Kabuto walks over to where the blue-haired girl is curled in a ball, and crouches before her, "I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner."
(I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry)
---
"So you're the angel boy, huh?" Principal Tsunade rests her chin on her fist, "The one all the newspapers always used to print about. It's funny, Kakashi assured me you were a good, calm kid. I know you, Uchiha, you've come through here to run errands for him on countless occasions. So why the change of heart? I understand that you might have been in some sort of shock due to the events surrounding Gaara, but you pulverized Zaku and hit Haruno, which is inexcusable."
(You. Hit. Her.)
"Hitting Sakura was an accident."
"Ah, yes, but that's what you risk when you've gone out of control, isn't it, Uchiha? Injuring an innocent person, that is."
[Why are you turning into a monster?]
"Hitting Sakura...was an accident."
"Yes, you've already said that. Now, I want to know what you were doing there in that hallway-"
Sasuke throws the chair against the desk, sending reverberations through the wood as various knickknacks and papers fall. He grabs at his hair and tugs at the roots, "It was..."
[What is wrong with you?]
He walks out, ignoring Tsunade's shouts of protest, refusing to meet Sakura's eyes as he passes by her.
[What is wrong with you?]
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or 'Nervous' by Mew. If you listen to the songs I put up top, then I'd recommended YouTube-ing it because it's a bonus track you get from playing "New Terrain" backwards.
A/N: And there's part 2. The response for the last chapter was kind of...lacking. I only got one review (Thank you Inferno Phoenyx!), which is kind of disappointing, since I used to get close to thirty, though I supposed its my own fault for having so much time pass between updates. But I would greatly appreciate it if you guys would tell me what you think.
So please review and give a thank you to my beta, Ira Feye, who has stuck with me for so long despite my laziness!
-MT