Ravenous eyes stalked his prey in eager anticipation. His line of sight was closing in on her, but she wasn't alone; the Hyuuga half-breed whose name's so unimportant that it kept escaping him and then Neji Hyuuga, the full-blooded vampire and supposed "friend." The three of them were talking to that receptionist when Sasuke mentally swore and dodged into a nearby restroom. The herd was coming this way. The last thing he needed was for the one of the Konoha's founding families to see him like this.

His back was against the door when the footsteps quieted as they turned the corner – but he could still smell her, hear her, taste her. And just like that, his power and patience were completely drained. Sasuke leaned against the sink counter and glared at his bloody reflection.

I should've FUCKING sliced her in half when I had the FUCKING chance…

He fought the urge to turn the mirror into a million pieces with a solid punch. Instead, he paced uncontrollably, like a starved lion in a cage. Balled fists were as his side as he thought of theories for such madness…

She wasn't a vampire. He knew he didn't turn her; there was a delicate process to it and it was a process that was forbidden among the Konoha founders. Plus, if he hated her now, why would he possibly tolerate her for an eternity? The idea made him scoff and then return to his train of thought.

So, what was she? A zombie? Coming back to life and walking around in search for brains? Maybe – no. That would just be ridiculous; this wasn't some sci-fi movie flick at the local theatres. And even if it was, he wouldn't waste any moment in his existence to see it.

Or she could still be a human? He brooded over that notion but it was the only logical option left. But she can't just revive herself, she would've needed help, but from who?

'That would explain why the Hyuugas are here… The Hyuuga girl was friends with Sakura, she wouldn't just let her die,' thought Sasuke as his pacing slowed. Naturally, she would save Sakura by giving her some life-plasma. And Neji, a member of the Hyuuga branch family, has a sworn duty to the half-breed to protect her or whatever the hell his binding contract told him to do.

Whatever the details were, all he knew was that Sakura was still human, somehow survived, and now she has two superhuman body guards protecting her. Seemed impossible.

We'll see about that.

[12] The Memories

Sakura tried to smile in a way that said: "Hey, I'm fine! Don't worry about me!" But even the muscles in her face were killing her. She settled for a somewhat depressing, but welcoming smile as the visitor entered the room.

"Sakura? I didn't expect to see you here," said Shizune, slightly shocked at the girl's presence and complexion. "You're usually helping patients, not spending time being one of them, hahaha. Anywho, I'm going to be your doctor," she explained as she scribbles on a clipboard. Among the notes on her page, she underlined pallor with three, very solid lines.

"I'm starting on the papers," Sakura remarked and the woman nodded in return. As the patient busied herself with the mandatory contact information, Shizune started basic examinations. She pulled out a stethoscope and listened to the heart. She wrote another comment: heart palpitations.

"What'd she do to get in here?" asked the physician, directing the question towards Hinata and Neji.

"She…um… cut herself when she tried to cook… something."

"That's it? You have a cut and you get yourself a private room?" Shizune asked in disbelief. With a heart this bad, she should be rushed to an emergency room, but Sakura remains responsive and aware of her surroundings…

"She bled out all over the kitchen floor," answered Neji this time, with a heavy hint of seriousness in his voice. "Sakura almost collapsed from the blood loss."

Sakura started to feel uncomfortable with the giant fib they were telling. It was certainly better than walking in, saying they were involved in underage-drinking, and getting the police involved, but…

Was all this really necessary? Sakura sighed as she overanalyzed everything, but Hinata gave her a reassuring smile. Sakura raised an eyebrow at all the trouble they were going through. It was almost as if they were up to something…

"Uh… I-I'll be right back." Shizune quickly strutted towards the door. All the signs were there: the pale iced skin, the lethargy, the rapid yet weak pulse. Tsunade needs to hear about this. With her trusty clipboard in hand, she power-walked out of the room.

"Wait! The pape-…Okaaay then." Sakura chucked the papers onto the side table and lay back down on her bed. With the remote control in hand and pillows nicely fluffed, she clicked through the HD channels in search for something to pass the time. Bedridden and sore, she eagerly waited for the recovery process to begin.

.

Heavy heels clacked against the hard flooring as she walked with authority and anger. If I get my hands on that boy, I swear to GOD…

Tsunade trusted Shizune's judgment, especially when it came to Sakura. Normally, a blood volume determination test would be done, but after seeing the girl every week for hours on end, it would be hard to miss just how pale she became. "…a ghostly white," Shizune had explained back at the office, which led the chief to think of the only the worse possible situation. She skipped waiting for the elevator and dashed down the stairs with vampiric speed.

She couldn't just leave Sakura waiting with a slowly dying heart.

.

Sasuke jammed the bathroom door with a cleaning mop that was previously against the wall. He grabbed sheets of paper towels, dampened them, and started cleaning off the dried vampire blood clinging to his skin. In a few minutes, the self-inflicted gashes were mending swiftly.

He was just about ready to step outside, but the sound of high heels threw him off. Someone was moving towards Sakura's room, and he already had an idea who this person was. Everyone was just flocking to her rescue…

It was making him sick.

And being stuck in a hospital restroom wasn't helping. The acidic smell of cleaning product was messing with his senses and his hunger was already getting the best of him. His jaw clenched along with every other muscle in his body. Bitter thoughts entered his mind.

I'm going to be in here forever.

"S-Sakura!" Hinata rigorously shook Sakura's arm, causing the remote control to fall out of her limp hand. "Sakura, Sakura, wake up! …Neji, she's not moving!"

Just when he stood, he felt a stronger force holding onto his shoulder. He looked to his side to see the chief of medicine, appearing out of thin air and gracing them with her presence.

"Syncope, the loss of consciousness from low blood flow to the brain," she recited as if reading straight from some medical text.

"Lady Tsunade," greeted the shy girl standing next to the patient bed.

"It's a pleasure to see you again," greeted Neji, returning to his spot on the couch. Considering vampires never really needed medical assistance, it's been a while since their last encounter.

"Likewise, although the circumstances could be better." The blonde woman took a look at Sakura and immediately listened to her pounding heart. No stethoscope needed. "She's been blacking out often, correct?"

"Y-Yes." Hinata stepped out of the way.

"Hmm. It seems she has even less than 1% of her blood volume pumping through her systems. How she's even alive is beyond me." Tsunade routinely checked the patient's neck and wrists.

"She's free of bite marks, I checked earlier," Neji called from the sidelines.

"That can't be right… what was your cover story?" questioned the doctor who was secretly insisting on a vampire attack.

"Kitchen accident, knife slices through her–"

"Ulnar artery…Clever. That would explain the massive hemorrhaging," Tsunade said as she unraveled the bandages surrounding the left arm. Once they were off, she made a face at the pathetic-looking cut.

"You're lucky Shizune didn't get a closer look at this." She lifted up the motionless hand to show the shallow, 2-inch cut remaining. "This unquestionably wouldn't cause traumatic blood loss or even a visit to the hospital."

"Hold on," Neji spoke in a hurry, pushing off his seat. "I personally made the cut myself and bandaged it. The cut was running from her mid-forearm all the way to her palm..." He demonstrated by pointing at his own forearm and running his pale finger to the edge of his hand. "How can it possibly shrink to less than half its original size in just a few hours?"

"S-She's healing on her own?" asked Hinata in a surprised tone.

"At an alarmingly fast rate," Tsunade added with her hand against her chin. "Her body isn't even making scar tissue… If that is the case, that would explain why there are no physical signs of feeding."

"Because the wound would have been repaired flawlessly within a few hours," Neji deduced. The elder of the three nodded as she followed along with Neji's theory.

"But why is she like this? Sakura's not…one of us…," Hinata said with hesitation.

"That's what I need to find out," replied the blonde woman with dread in her voice. The doctor pushed a button to signal for assistance. It flashed on the wall as she prepped the patient. "I'll run a series of tests and see what I can find. In the mean time, you two should head home. I'll take it from here."

The boy stood without complaint, but Hinata was reluctant to leave.

"Wait... Wh-what if he comes back for her?" she directed her question to her cousin.

An annoyed smile reached Tsunade's face. "I presume you're talking about the Uchiha."

"Before Sakura passed out, she said Sasuke the only one there…"

"What are your thoughts?" asked Neji, halfway out the door.

"I agree, he's definitely a prime suspect. He came in before looking for Sakura. I don't know why, but he was…uncomfortable to say the least," Tsunade answered. She looked down at the pale-faced girl who was teetering on the brink of death. Tsunade felt her unbeating heart tighten. "If anything, this mess was definitely premeditative…"

Hinata's pearly eyes widened. "You really think he planned on killing Sakura?"

"He was definitely up to something, I just couldn't figure out what…"

Then, the two assisting nurses arrived. All conversation was dropped the second the living walked through the door. Neji stepped out of the way as they prepared to move Sakura upstairs to an examination room; Tsunade spoke: "You two need to get going. She's in very capable hands."

Neji nodded and walked into the hallway to call for a ride home. Hinata paused and got one last look at Sakura before following after him. If she didn't know any better, Hinata would've mistaken Sakura for a corpse, being wheeled away to the morgue to be lost in metal cabinets and labeled by numbers. She hoped that would be the last place Sakura would end up in, but for now, she couldn't be so sure.

Sakura was safely returned to her room: sleeping, passing out, or a combination of both. Tsunade, on the other hand, was hard at work looking into microscopes of Sakura's numerous blood samples. With one eye closed, she peered into the eyepiece and turned knobs to focus the image.

Pink circles showed without difficultly but the inadequate amount of them was staggering. She was willing to issue a blood transfusion for the girl after she fully understood her condition. The doctor was able to distinguish between the red and white blood cells with ease, but a strange blackish cell appeared as well. She pulled away, mystified, and sifted through the numerous scans and reports that returned from lab technicians around the hospital. The materials were laid out on the desk as hazel eyes reviewed every piece of information. She stayed glued to the scans despite the incoming piles of other folders and documents that would have to wait their turn.

"Dr. Tsunade," She didn't bother to look up, having recognized the voice instantly. "Sorry to bother you, this needs your signature."

"Shizune," the blonde woman said, still eyeing her work and taking no notice of the papers in the young doctor's hands. "What does this look like to you?" Tsunade pulled out a magnified image of a cardiac PET scan and pointed towards a small darkened mass.

"Dead tissue…? Maybe the result of a heart attack?" said the black-haired physician with a hint of uncertainty. She tried squinting to get a better look at the tiny spot on the image. "But most heart attacks cause ten times more damage. This person's kind of lucky if you think about it…"

"Hmm… lucky…" Tsunade's voice trailed off as she studied the information intently for a minute longer.

Except this person didn't have a heart attack…, she thought, but she nevertheless smiled at Shizune's uplifting ignorance.

In the end, her hunch was right. It was indeed dead tissue on Sakura's heart, but it wasn't the kind from a heart attack like Shizune had suggested...

Dead blood cells and heart tissue…?

She was taken away from her thoughts as the other presence in the room cleared her voice.

"Um, Doctor? Your signature?"

"Oh, of course," A black pen left her script on the dotted line. "…and thank you for your input."

.

On the outside, the persistent beeping, buzzing, and humming of the countless machines rang throughout the room. The inactive body lay under the thin sheets that crinkled like paper.

On the inside, the conscious mind was just as still. It wandered back into the depths of the subconscious, losing all sense of direction and reality. The darkest recess of her mind kept creeping its way forward every time she closed her eyes. And this time was no exception.

"A drink?"

Sakura looked ahead and saw her prevalent weakness, offering a full glass. The crimson liquid spilled slightly over the rim and slid down the crystal ever so slowly. A drop splattered against the small table the two were seated at.

"No? More for me…," he said, downing the entire glass's contents in one swallow. The drink stained his lips and Sakura watched as his tongue licks the rest. He exhaled in delight and situated the glass in the middle of them.

In an instant, she was in the black room again.

"Why am I here?" she asked more forcefully this time around. "Again?"

With his fingers intertwined, he leaned forward in his seat. "You brought yourself here."

She was taken back.

"This never ends well for you," Sasuke reminded quite harshly. A bone trembling chill shook her entire body as his sinister eyes fall on her. Her frantic nature made Sasuke roll his eyes.

"I'm here to warn you."

.

What is going on?

Tsunade was getting more fascinated as the night went on. The hours kept ticking and the piles of backed-up work kept rising, but that didn't stop her from following her lead. After going through her outsized books on vampiric science, Tsunade was ready to "diagnose" her patient. Half-breeds like Hinata Hyuuga were already a rarity, but Sakura's case was especially rare. In her over 500 years of life, Tsunade has never seen anything like it.

All vampires are born as humans, even if they were conceived by vampire parents. By the time the human-destined-to-be-vampire reaches puberty, the transformation begins; the human heart is readily invaded by still cells, or vampire cells that are technically considered "dead." In pure vampires, the entire heart is killed and replaced with still cells, while in half-breeds, only half the human heart is destroyed. In most cases, the half-human heart can't withstand the still cell takeover and the half-breed tends to die out – making half-breeds uncommon.

Here's where the medical mystery comes into play. Tsunade surmised that Sakura was less than 1/1000 infected with still cells even before the attack, meaning her line of heritage must've carried half breeds for centuries; mixed-breeds that somehow survived and married into human families further diluting the vampiric nature. Nevertheless, Sakura's heart was still fragile compared to the average human heart, but her minuscule vampire part manages to keep her alive, even in near-death experiences. A genetic code that has adapted to being alive and dead for centuries. A human that could survive vampire attacks over and over again.

The perfect prey.

.

His voice was flat and emotionless. She took a second to breathe and process what he just said.

"Warn me? Of what?"

"Myself," he stated matter-of-factly. Another bottle appeared out of thin air and he poured himself another glass. "But you never listen."

"I don't really follow…," replied Sakura, confused beyond her wits.

"Let's say I'm a part of your subconscious, a personification of… a darker side of you that you never knew existed…"

"So you're like, a part of me," she said, cautiously. He nodded and swished the liquid in the wineglass. "But then, why do you look like Sasuke?"

"Tch… He's in your subconscious – a lot."

A scarlet hue reached her cheeks, but she doesn't deny the indisputable truth. Her subconscious has definitely done its research because he looked exactly like the real thing. He sounded like him, talked like him, and even smelled like him. This dream-Sasuke was hands down the sexiest pigment of her imagination. Ever.

"Well, I never imagined you drinking wine…," she noted innocently, eyeing the drop of crimson splattered on the table.

A dashing devil's smile appeared on his face.

"I never said this was wine."

.

"Lady Tsunade called," said Hinata, placing the phone down on the receiver. Her cousin looked up from his book as he sat at the dining room table. "She said she called Ms. Haruno and told her our story. She also said that everything's under control…"

"That's it?"

"That's it…"

Neji pulled the book in front of his face and lost himself in an array of words and plotlines. A minute later, he lowered the book and saw his younger cousin still standing by the kitchen phone, biting her nails down to their beds. Her anxiety got the best of her as she opened her mouth again.

"Y-You don't think that's…odd? She should've found something by now…"

"Are you second guessing her? Now that's odd. Not very Hinata of you."

"W-Well…what's really odd is Sakura coming back to life…like magic, or something."

"Even so, if Tsunade is keeping secrets, she most likely has a legitimate reason for doing so."

The early morning rays shimmered against the polished kitchen counters. It caught Hinata's eye and she turned to watch a line of birds fly across the ginger sky. With a heavy heart, she asked, "Neji, Do you think she'll be all right…?"

He turned a page in his book. "She's in the process of healing all on her own. If nothing disrupts her, I'm sure she'll be the pinnacle of health in no time."

.

"…Change the subject," Sasuke suggested. The sick, warning feeling was lying dormant in her stomach, but she successfully ignored it.

"Okay then… Why are you still wearing your Halloween costume?" Sakura laughed when she glanced at his designer suit and flamboyant cape. She noticed her clothes changed every time she entered this candle-lit room. The baby blue hospital gown she was currently wearing was barely covering her, but that was the least of her worries.

It was his turn to laugh. "It's not a costume."

"So what? You're supposed to be a vampire every day?" she giggled harmlessly, but soon noticed a dark gleam in his eye. The lighthearted feeling in her chest quickly turned into fear that was now boring holes in her stomach.

She gulped nervously. "…You're not kidding."

Sasuke sighed roughly and placed both hands on the table to push out of his seat.

"It seems your conscious mind likes to protect you… by suppressing painful memories, experiences…" he spoke agonizingly slow, walking closer to her. "I want to help you remember."

His ominous presence was getting too close for comfort. It was suffocating her. In a hysterical rush, Sakura stood, knocking over her chair in the process. She backed into the curtained wall behind her and forgot just what little space there was between them. In a split-second, he's in front of her – with a disturbing smile plastered on his beautiful face.

White fangs appeared and her eyes closed tight. Then, the rush of agonizing sensation pounded through her entire body. Flash memories appeared in each and every direction. The drunken haze lifted and with her own eyes, she witnessed everything. The moonlight gleaming against the metal bed frame, the bristled yarn from the quilt scratching against her skin, the sound of his demonic laughter…

She experienced his touch, his lips, his words…

"I'm going to kill you, Sakura…"

The blood.

The pain.

The night she died.

The flood of recognition was beyond excruciating. It shook her to the core and the only reality she now knew would forever change her. It wasn't a hangover that brought her here. It wasn't spiked drinks or food poisoning. It was him. The identity of her fatal flaw – Sasuke Uchiha, a blood-obsessed vampire, drunk with an unquenchable thirst.

A vampire.

A killer.

A monster.

The realization was too overwhelming to take in.

The memory of her death generated enough pain to jolt her awake. Upon waking, her eyes widened in sheer terror. Her body was coated with sweat and frozen tremors whether it was from fear or heavy medication. A dreadful scream lodged in her throat and a weight crushed her chest. She was hoping for a dream, a nightmare, but this was…

Reality.

Towering over her was her prince charming of darkness that has been tormenting her since the day they met. His remorseless eyes watched her like they always have. She only now realized the deranged air that was emitting off of him and filling the room.

But it's too late. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

In a twisted sense of courtesy, he opened his mouth and the voice of a fallen angel rung in her ears.

"Welcome back."

The Memories

.

.

Please Review.