WhenInMiddleEarth:Theedited,revisedandface-liftededition:
When in Middle Earth, do as the Middle-Earthlings do. Sakura finds herself in the midst of Middle Earth, immersed in a war she has no part in, saving a world and people she doesn't know, and why? Because Naruto would be disappointed in her if she ever got back and told him she hadn't...
Chapter Ten:
In which grievous bodily harm is quite grievous indeed. Also in which Sakura discovers a use for Hobbits
Disclaimer:
The Lord of The Rings, it's associated characters and components are copyright and property of its author J. R. R. Tolkien, the actors that played them, and the director of the trilogy of films of the same name, Peter Jackson. The character Sakura and any components associated with the manga and anime 'Naruto' are property and copyright of Masashi Kishimoto
The story continues:
There is a state of being which exists between sleeping, and waking, and is not quite either. In this state, the body sleeps, but the mind has jumped the gun. The mind is awake; and long before the rest of the body catches up the brain is cataloguing every sound, every texture, every feeling of its surroundings that it can. It is a probably a defence mechanism; a survival instinct left over from wilder times, when people still lived in trees and grunted.
It is in this middle-ground between conscious and unconscious, that dreams become solid: A dream about a singing monkey becomes the alarm clock, and the duvet scrunched up in your arms; a dream about meeting and marrying your perfect man turns into a passionate embrace with your pillow; and a dream about marshmallows…well, we all know how that one goes.
For Sakura, there was no dream. There was only darkness, and warmth, and comfortable ignorance. And then, slowly into her oblivious world came an obnoxious, repetitive sort of noise. The warmth that coated her arms became hotter, and pricklier, until it was much less like comfort and much more like pain, and it concentrated itself in the crux of her elbow and throbbed. The darkness lightened to a dull red, and then a bright red, until Sakura could take the sun on her eyelids no longer, and opened her eyes.
She opened them blearily, wincing and blinking rapidly as the bright sunlight shone through the window and straight into her face. Her whole body felt heavy, sore and aching. Her joints felt stiff, and she couldn't feel her left arm at all. Carefully, she turned her head; feeling a bit like her brains would all tip to the side and fall out of her ears if she did it too quickly. Her fears were laid to rest when she saw that the arm was still attached firmly to her shoulder. It was, however, completely numb, and wrapped up like a mummy right down to the tips of her fingers. She flexed them experimentally. They curled, but the bandages over her knuckles suddenly became damp and red. She looked at it in shock – she hadn't even felt a twinge. Carefully, she spread her fingers again and laid the arm back down on the bed, disconcerted by the sudden, numb bleeding.
Her right arm bore a bandage tightly wound around her elbow – she'd been stabbed there, she remembered with a grimace. The wound felt like it was pulsing and made her feel ill to concentrate on it too much. The gashes in her right arm were bathed, and dressed, and periodic lumps under the fabric told her that some of them had been deep enough to need stitches. Her muscles felt stiff and tight, and looking at her fingers, she noticed that her hand was blotchy and purple with bruises.
As anyone waking up in a strange place will tell you, it is a disconcerting experience, and three questions invariably pop into your head as soon as you wake up. Sakura was no exception and even as she took stock of her treated wounds, the questions: 'Where the heck am I?' 'How did I get here?' and 'What happened?' each ran through her head.
Her ribs hurt when she tried to sit up, and in any case she couldn't support her weight on her arms, so Sakura resigned herself to lying on her back and assessing her situation as best she could from her prone position.
She was alone. She was in a room, specifically in a bed. Her clothes were missing; but she didn't feel cold – the bed was piled high with thick blankets. It was a very comfortable bed, with crisp white sheets and neatly folded corners. She peeked under the bedclothes and saw that she'd been left in her undergarments, but that her ribs were strapped and bound. Broken ribs then, she mused, wondering if she would find a horse-shoe-shaped bruise under the wrappings.
The walls of the room were exposed wood, and polished, and the whole room had a distinctly hospital-esque feel to it. The window was wide, without glass, and was framed by wooden shutters, and through it came the chattering of birds and the crisp smell of a cool morning.
Fresh air, Sakura mused. It carried with it the scent of leaves and dew that Sakura normally associated with Konoha. For a moment her heart gave a foolish little flutter, before logic ruthlessly stomped it down. She couldn't be home. Sakura looked again at the room, face twisting in pain as the muscles of her neck and shoulders protested movement. Adjusting her position as best she could, Sakura concluded that she must be in Rivendell. But who had found her, and brought her here, Sakura couldn't even begin to guess.
Which brought her to the next item on the mental checklist: What happened?
She ran through her memories as if trying to check that they were all still there.
The chase through the forest – her use of clones to allow her to go ahead and set traps – and Arwen flooding the river. The Wraith with the dented breastplate - she'd pulled it into the flood. And then the battle that took place on the banks of the river: she'd figured out a weakness and how to overcome it; the wraith tricked her into coming within range of its poisoned blade and it had struck her; she'd managed to use that to her advantage. The horrifying agony she'd experienced when her hand was inside the Wraith, and finally the burst of chakra that killed it.
Sakura looked over herself as she went through it all, mentally ticking off the dressed wounds. So, somewhere between falling unconscious and now, somebody had found her and brought her to this room; where somebody had then cleaned her, stripped her and bandaged her up. Rather professionally, she noticed, and examined her left hand with some consternation. The bandages across the back of her hand were bloody and stained a little orange with what she could only assume was pus. That wouldn't do.
She made to move her right hand across her left, only to flinch violently before she'd even moved it as far as her stomach. Her muscles spasmed and she abruptly turned her head and bit the pillow to stop herself crying out in pain.
Right. Poison. Sakura's jaw clenched. With pained determination, she moved her arm inch-by-inch across herself, her elbow feeling like it was on fire. Her jaw was so tight shut as to make her teeth ache and by the time her hand had reached the other side of her body, her fingers were trembling.
'Bloody hell' Sakura thought, swallowing a whimper. Frodo put up with this for six days? It felt like her arm was burning off! And she was a ninja – she was supposed to be used to pain!
At last she managed to manoeuvre onto her side, with her palm covering her bloodied knuckles. The skin of her left hand was ice-cold to the touch and she shivered at the feel of it under her aching right. Exhaling slowly, Sakura summoned her chakra to her fingers and-
-and there was nothing. She reached for her chakra, but it bent away from her will, twisting like a snake out of her grasp; utterly unusable. Her eyes widened in shock. What was wrong with her chakra? It had never done that before!
Worrying her lip between her teeth, Sakura closed her eyes and concentrated. She breathed deep, reined in her focus and turned it within herself. She visualised a gentle wave pulsing through her chakra pathways – clearing them and replenishing them like water through a tunnel – and slowly let the breath out. Her chakra resisted – it was a feeling like pushing against thick glue. Her eyes squeezed together as she sucked in a breath and pushed. A violent twang snapped through her body, only to stop and rebound abruptly at the junction of her left shoulder. Knocked breathless and in pain, Sakura collapsed onto her back, eyes wide and wild with panic.
Her skin prickled with pins and needles in the aftermath of the chakra-backlash. Sakura stared up at the ceiling, face frozen in a look of horror.
She couldn't use her chakra. She couldn't use her chakra!
Her chakra was there, her reserves well replenished, but she couldn't control it. It simply lay under her skin, twisting and coiling, erratic and unbendable. The chakra paths in her left arm seemed to be blocked or – she gulped – gone, dead, destroyed. She couldn't tell.
Unseeing, her eyes went glassy, vacantly staring at the ceiling while her throat felt like it was closing up. Her breathing began to become harsh and short; quick pants that shook her frame. On some level medic-Sakura was aware that hyperventilating was a very bad way to go. The majority of her, however, was busy panicking.
"Daro i!" a voice barked suddenly in elvish.
Her head snapped to the side.
Glorfindel stood in the doorway. In his hands was a wide shallow bowl and several lengths of linen were draped over his arm – clearly he was here to change her dressings or some such thing. But Sakura didn't register that. She looked at him wild-eyed, and tensed. Brow deeply furrowed, the elf stepped towards her, recognising clearly the signs of panic, bordering on hysteria. But what had alarmed the girl so he could not begin to guess. He placed his free hand atop the crown of her head, and she flinched away with her hands clenched in fists. He held her still; his other holding her shoulder. Sakura struggled as he murmured something else in elvish. She didn't understand, but her muscles began, involuntarily, to relax. She immediately resisted the sensation.
"Breath deep," he instructed, "Calm yourself."
"Calm myself!" she near screeched. "I can't use my chakra! What the hell have I got to be bloody calm about?"
The elf frowned at her uncomprehendingly. "Chakra? What is chakra?"
"Something which I have been able to use all of my life," she all but snarled at him, "and which is a vital part of me. I can no longer use it. And I repeat: That is nothing to be calm about!"
She glared at him, anger taking the place of her fear.
"Why are you here?" She lashed out suddenly, as he moved toward her bed. It was an accusatory question.
Glorfindel did not change his expression. He had been expecting more hostility from her.
"I have come to monitor the progress of your wounds, and to change the dressings as necessary," he told her in a detached voice. To this she gave no reply, only a short huff of acknowledgement. After all, she could hardly do those things herself, now; she thought bitterly.
Sakura watched the elf resentfully as he lifted first her right arm, unwrapping first the elbow to examine her poisoned flesh. Much like Frodo's, the gash was deep and narrow. The edges looked burned – but it was the bright red of skin after sunburn, rather than the seared flesh she'd seen on Weathertop. Though the edges looked peeled and tough, Glorfindel appeared approving. She took that to mean it was healing. He performed what she could only assume was more elvish healing – placing his hand flat against the skin and muttering what sounded like a spell or a blessing of sorts. He then applied a strange-smelling salve to the wound and re-wrapped it with a clean bandage. The long cuts in her forearm met with a similar result, and the elf spent a few moments carefully flexing and kneading her arm. Privately Sakura nodded to herself, reluctantly accepting his claims of being a high-class healer. Physiotherapy – he knew what he was doing. Her muscles could atrophy if she spent too long bedridden and without exercise – they were already pretty stiff…
"How long has it been?" she asked, the thought suddenly occurring to her. Glorfindel glanced up at her face.
"You have been unconscious for three nights and two days. In all honesty we expected you to remain so for many more."
She merely grunted in response.
After much testing, during which he carefully watched her response, Glorfindel finally put down her arm and moved to the left side of the bed. He frowned to see the red-stained cloth over her knuckles and immediately set to peeling the bandages away. Sakura grimaced to look at it. Her arm looked awful.
It would have looked dead if the skin weren't cracked and oozing blood and gunk all over her lovely white bed-sheets. It was black and the skin was crusty and dry – like a withered tree root. The scratches that she'd obtained during the fight marred the flesh like the cracks of an earthquake, and they were glued together by crusted, dry pus. A neat little row of spots ran parallel to one of them – she could only guess that somebody had tried to stitch this arm too, without success. The condition continued up her arm and above her elbow, with the skin of her upper forearm whole, but pale, dry and flaky.
Glorfindel examined her hand and prodded the skin around her knuckles. He glanced at her for a reaction, but she felt nothing. Her hand currently resembled a sausage that had burst its skin in the frying-pan, and Sakura couldn't feel a thing. Displeased, the corners of his mouth tightened. In silence, he retrieved a damp cloth from a basin by the wall. Somewhat surprised – the basin and pitcher were out of Sakura's field of vision – she let him lift her hand toward him and clean away the blood.
"Frodo recovers," Glorfindel spoke suddenly, breaking the tense silence as he fetched a shallow bowl and filled it with a clear concoction. He encouraged her to move her injured hand to the bowl and had her bathe it for some minutes.
Sakura stared at the ceiling and grunted again.
"I'm so very happy for him,' she muttered.
It was a perfect angsting night. The moon and stars were obscured by cloud, the air was heavy with the promise of rain, and there wasn't a light in sight. It was the perfect setting for brooding. Sasuke would have appreciated it.
Sakura swallowed the egg in her throat and stared at the ceiling. Glorfindel had left several hours ago, and she had refused food, desiring to be left entirely alone. Sakura didn't want to talk to curious men or hobbits or elves. She didn't want to relive the gory details of her fight with the Ringwraith, or hear people exclaiming over her injuries. She didn't want to see the pity in their eyes. Unconsciously she clenched her fists, and was unaware of her scabbing knuckles beginning once more to leak.
She didn't care that the poisoned arm was hurting – at least she could feelthat arm. She glanced to the left and with a curse released her fist. Her teeth began to grind almost of their own accord. Her mind went bitterly to her earlier thought. She wouldn't know what Sasuke would appreciate, because he was still gallivanting around with his little group that kept changing names.
'Stupid names', her inner voice said petulantly. It was a painful thought and one that she knew better than to probe, but Sakura was in something of a masochistic mood. What did it really matter anyway, if Sasuke preferred his new team to his old one? She thought this to herself over and over again – even if the wizard was here, even if this 'Gandalf' character could send her home – what did she have to go home to? She had one arm that she couldn't feel, and which she couldn't move without re-opening. She had another that would recover ("Mostly," Glorfindel told her) but unusable chakra. No chakra meant no jutsu. In other words, no more missions.Sakura couldn't be a ninja without it. She couldn't even defend herself without it – she'd shown that when she'd gotten herself stabbed. Her eyes were burning with unshed, bitter tears. No more treetop races with Naruto; no more training with Tsunade; no more healing…not even silly competitions with Ino, anymore. She wouldn't be able to smack Sai halfway across Konoha for his 'ugly' comments. She wouldn't be able to help Naruto bring Sasuke back.
The last blow of the Nazgul could not have been more bitter.
She didn't even have her weapons. Her trap-wire was lost in the Trollshaws, her shuriken were lost in the river and those remaining in her pack were AWOL ever since the elves had stripped her. Glorfindel had permitted her a short tunic designed for sleeping in, only to ward off the chill, but it was open fronted and held together only by a slim tie, since the medic needed to reach her ribs. He wouldn't tell her what they had done with her clothes or her gear.
He wouldn't tell her much at all. She'd been awake and abed for a grand total of 14 hours and she already hated it. She already new she was useless without her chakra; she didn't need to be reminded of it by being forbidden to leave her bed. Just lying around alone and doing nothing about her situation was driving her crazy; but the idea of lying around in company made her blanch. Sakura couldn't stand the thought of being weak – it had become almost a complex over the years.
'But what can you do now?' was her last thought, and with it she descended into unhappy dreams.
There were voices talking. Two of them, to be exact.
This was not what Sakura wanted to hear first thing upon waking, for two very important reasons: One; she had specificallyasked Glorfindel to tell people that she wasn't having visitors. ('Just tell them that I need to rest or something. It's technically not lying' had been her exact words.) And two; the voices belonged to Merry and Pippin. They were whispering. Or rather, they were attemptingto whisper, and were in fact 'whispering' just loud enough to be heard by everything within the mile.
"Merry, I think she moved. Is she awake do you think Merry?"
"Shush Pip," Merry shushed loudly, "She will be awake if you keep up that racket."
"I'm not making a racket," Pippin began to object, but:
"You are both making a racket, and since you are giving me a headache, I would dearly appreciate it if you would both shut up," Sakura growled without opening her eyes.
She heard them both gasp softly, and figured that they hadn't actually expected her to be awake or to speak. There was a muted fumbling, and the scrape of a chair, and the room fell silent. Sakura gave a minute, half expecting them to launch into a passionate tirade on food or something equally daft, but they were completely quiet. She cracked open an eye.
They were sat in straight-backed wooden chairs, by her bedside. Both seemed to be sat on the very edge of their seats; wide-eyed with worry, hands pressed to their knees and mouths tight-shut.
She let out a resigned sigh and opened her eyes properly.
"Fine. You may talk now. Quietly," she added quickly as Pippin opened his mouth. He sagged a little.
"Are you alright Stranger?" the little hobbit whispered.
"How do you feel?" whispered Merry at the same time.
Sakura considered this.
"A bit like I was swallowed by a giant toad, chewed up, digested a bit, and belched back out again," she confessed. "Or alternatively, like I stuck my hand inside a Ringwraith and nearly killed myself."
The hobbits looked suitably horrified and impressed by this revelation.
"A Ringwraith!" they shouted in unison, only to guiltily drop their voices again when she winced violently. The noise did nasty things to her eardrums.
"You fought a Ringwraith?" Merry hissed quietly. "Alone?"
"I have done that before," she reminded them a little testily. "And technically I fought all nine," she added without thinking.
The hobbits' shocked faces went unseen as Sakura engrossed herself in checking that all her limbs were still firmly attached. Glorfindel had mentioned last night that if her left arm continued to show no improvement, then the best option may be to amputate. Sakura had told him in as many words, that if he amputated her arm, then she would amputate his head. The matter had not been brought up again.
She glanced up again to see the hobbits looking shell-shocked and rolled her eyes irritably.
"What did you think was going to happen when we galloped off with Frodo? That we'd just go for a jog?" she sneered unkindly. She wasn't much in the mood for small talk, or for revisiting the source of her current state of ninja-less-ness. Pippin's eyes zeroed in on her bandaged up arms and she instantly cut him off.
"Ho no, matey," she growled, "If you just came here for a story then you can both leave now. I'm not going there."
He shrank back into his seat. "I'm sorry," he said guiltily. "I've upset you again. I didn't mean to." He looked so contrite and guilty that Sakura's conscience gave her a swift kick in the gut.
"It's fine," she muttered, looking away. For a while the silence stretched out like an uncomfortably thick blanket. It was Merry that finally ventured to break it.
"We thought you might like to know what's been going on," he offered. He shifted uncomfortably when she fixed her attention on him. "I mean, since you've been in bed and all?"
"Yeah, that's fine I guess," she mumbled, not particularly wanting company but neither wanting to encourage them too much. She'd be much happier left to brood over her current situation.
The hobbits brightened.
Sakura suddenly had the sinking feeling that she should say goodbye to her eardrums.
"And then he went white as a sheet-"
"-like he'd seen a ghost-"
"-and steals Glorfindel's horse off him right then and there!"
"Snatched the reins and galloped off to find you!"
Pippin punctuated his final sentence with a swift sweeping gesture – presumably to imitate Aragorn's sudden snatch. Merry nodded along, not in the least fazed by Pippin's interruptions. They'd been telling her about their own journey to Rivendell – after all, she had missed two whole days worth of happenings and absolutely must be informed of them all without delay. So far she'd found out that Aragorn had barely left her bedside except to check on Frodo or to lock himself up in a room with Gandalf and 'Lord Elrond' to discuss who-knew-what; that Frodo's relative had been discovered staying here and that a whole motley crew of people were expected to begin arriving in the coming weeks. Right now, however, the two hobbits were in the midst of describing Aragorn's dark daring dash to find her, having more or less worked backwards through the news.
"It was hours before he came back," sighed Pippin dramatically.
"It seemed like hours," Merry corrected with a sniff. "It can't have been really." Pippin looked very much like he wanted to argue the point.
Finally sensing an opportunity to get a word in edgeways however, Sakura wasn't about to let the opportunity go. With a deep sigh, she butted in.
"Not that I haven't appreciated the company and the news, boys," – and, surprisingly, she wasn't being entirely sarcastic – "but, why are you here?"
Their faces fell.
"I mean, not with Frodo?" she amended, feeling just a tiny bit guilty as she finally remembered the conversation she'd overheard in the woods. Hobbit loyalty was a strange thing, she thought.
"Well, he's been spending a lot of time with Bilbo you know, since he woke up…and well, since we heard how you helped get him here…and what happened…and Weathertop too…" Merry began, fidgeting. He seemed to realise that he was rambling and flushed, "We, that is to say, Pippin and I, well we just wanted you to know that we're grateful." He smiled at her a little unsurely.
"I…see," she said somewhat nonplussed.
Pippin leaned forward eagerly. "And if there is anything at all that we can do for you Miss Stranger, we'd be happy to," he babbled happily, "We owe you a great debt you know, and hobbits always settle their debts."
Sakura was about to tell them that she doubted that they could help her with anything worth bothering about; or that they could help by leaving her alone to sleep; but at the last minute something occurred to her. Perhaps it had been Merry's story about the Barrow Downs that had put the thought in her head ("That's where we got the swords from"), or maybe even Pippin's innocently delivered news ("Gandalf is here Stranger, you might be able to go home soon!") but Sakura was inspired.
"Actually," she mused slowly, looking over the hobbits, "There might be something you can help me with."
Sakura was sneaking. It was significantly more difficult than she remembered it being.
For starters, she was on the ground – without chakra her favoured method of ceiling-travel was impossible. She could only go as fast as she could run on her own; and she could only use the shadows and her own stealth to hide – after all, no chakra also meant no genjutsu, or enhanced speed, or super strength. For the first time since she started the academy, Sakura had nothing at her disposal but herself. This was why, in the middle of the night and with only half the number of working limbs, Sakura was sneaking out of Rivendell to find her weapons.
An elf watchman stood on guard, his dark hair and clothes blending seamlessly into the night. Breath held; Sakura crouched in the lee of a low wall. If her little jog with Arwen had taught her anything about elves, it was that their hearing and sight were far and above the level of a human. She couldn't afford to make a sound.
Her bare toes and light step allowed her to pad silently away from the guard. A pebble from the border of the flower-bed seemed such a primitive tool for a seasoned Kunoichi to use, but it served its purpose. Her aim was true. She skimmed it lightly across the footpath – tacka tacka rustle thump – and it came to a stop in the bushes on the other side. Not bad, for a pebble, she mused. It had sounded almost – but not quite – like a very good distraction. The elf raised a delicate eyebrow in the direction of the noise, and snorted indelicately.
"Oh my," he drawled to a second watcher in the common tongue, "Did you hear that suspicious noise? I do believe I shall have to abandon my post and go over there to have a look."
The other elf smirked amusedly. "Oh yes," he answered, sarcasm dripping from every word, "You go all the way down there, and I'll stay here on guard. Certainly nobody is going to try and pass us by on the side over there." He nodded with mock-gravity to the right of them. Both sniggered.
"Come now," called the first guard in a more serious tone. "Come out and don't make us look for you. We can see much better than you in the dark, my little friend, and we will not fall for juvenile tricks."
They watched as the bushes behind them gave rise to a small, lithe shape. The shape was resigned, with hunched shoulders, and stepped out of the bush reluctantly.
"You caught me," sighed Pippin. "I'm sorry." The hobbit looked awfully contrite.
The two elves were kind enough not to laugh at him a second time. The second guard clapped him on the shoulder and shook him gently.
"And where were you off to in the middle of the night, little hobbit? It is nie on the eleventh hour. Is it that our hospitality is not to your satisfaction?"
Pippin looked instantly appalled and embarrassed. "Oh no!" he cried, "Your hospitality cannot be faulted. The elves of Rivendell are most generous hosts and I am humbly grateful for it," he said, sketching a little bow. They cocked their heads like curious cats. He shuffled his feet embarrassedly. "It's just that, well," his flushed skin was visible only to the elves in the dark, who found it incredibly amusing. "Miss Stranger seems to be very unhappy," he told them.
"The injured human girl?" the first guard clarified. Pippin nodded.
"Well," the little hobbit continued, "She has done so much for us – she saved our lives as well as Frodo's you know – that, well," he was aware that he was starting to babble and cleared his throat nervously. "I just thought that I could do something for her - maybe if I could find the weapons she lost, she'll be happier." He finished the sentence in a quick jumble, looking for all the world like a scolded child.
The elves shook their heads and admonished him for going out at night alone. He nodded meekly in all the right places, and consented to be led back to his room by one of the guards.
From her place in the bushes Sakura watched the exchange. The elves seemed more amused, than angry, and as soon as she'd verified to herself that the hobbit was unlikely to be punished, she smirked, rose, and padded silently and unseen across the path.
Hobbits were useful creatures after all.
The river was wide, flat and slow. The waters had receded at long last; in their wake lay soggy mud-banks and flattened grasses. Mud or silt must have been washed down from further up, because the water was a muddy brown – in the limited light allowed by the sliver of moon, it looked near-black. She eyed it hesitantly. Under normal circumstances, she'd have just run across the surface without so much as blinking. Now however, she needed a way to cross without splashing – which would attract attention – and without getting wet – which would tell everyone where she'd been. If everything went according to plan nobody would ever know that she'd left her room at all. First though, she needed to cross. Everything that she was looking for was on the other side.
Deciding that it was too wide at the Ford – though it was the shallowest place to cross - Sakura picked her way downstream. She could hear the rushing of the rapids ahead. It was remarkably loud in the otherwise silent night, and roared and crashed with enough noise to wake the dead.
'Or to hide, say, the noise of someone crossing the river?' The thought was sudden, unexpected and inspired, and absolutely brilliant. Sakura grinned to herself, but soon wiped it from her face as she once again approached the water. The river here was fast moving. Rocks jutted haphazardly from the spray and the water rushed over and around them. Some of them were quite far apart.
There was nothing for it. She was going to have to jump.
Steeling herself, Sakura squinted at the nearest boulder. Judging distances in the dark, without chakra to enhance her vision, was much more difficult than she'd expected. Once more, Sakura berated herself for letting herself get too reliant on chakra. Wasn't the first Ninja rule to be prepared for any eventuality? She ground her teeth in frustration. Taking a half a step backwards, Sakura ran two strides to the waters edge and pushed off the wet mud. She slipped and landed short. With a pained 'oof' and a splash, she landed on her stomach on the rock; legs from the knees down in the river. She scrabbled with her left hand for a hold, and finally hauled herself up with a distinctly uncomfortable grimace… Her right arm was throbbing again, and once again her left knuckles had split and blood was seeping down her arm.
So much for that plan.
Sakura took stock of her situation. Ok, so her legs were wet. That wasn't so bad – they were bare and they would dry. The hem of her tunic only reached her knees anyway, and when she reached down and pinched it, she was relieved to find that it had ridden up enough to miss the water. Her ribs now hurt like buggery, but she could pass that off as remnants of her fight with the Nazgul. Likewise, she must have been clenching her hands in her sleep and cracked her knuckles again. Nothing that couldn't be explained. And more to the point, nobody was running down the bank to catch her, so the rapids must have done their job – nobody had heard her.
With newly refreshed determination, Sakura began eyeing the distance for the next jump. She eyed it a little more carefully this time. She couldn't afford another slip.
The sudden appearance of an ominous black shape had given her a fright, about half way across. But it had turned out to be nothing more than the sad body of another wraith-horse. Excepting one small stumble, and one bad landing where she'd banged her knee quite painfully on the rock, she made it across without further instance. She spared a moment, on the opposite shore, to turn and examine the far bank. She couldn't see anyone. Satisfied at last that she had remained un-followed, Sakura finally turned to the low, deeply shadowed Trollshaws on this side of the Bruinen. She crept along the edge of the wood, headed upstream, with one eye on the river and her entire concentration on staying low and hidden. She was forced to leave the relative shelter and expose herself as she once more neared the Ford, searching the ground for the Shuriken which she'd thrown at the Ringwraiths as they tried to escape the flood.
She wasn't certain what it was that had fixed a midnight search for her weapons in her mind as a good idea. All that she was certain of was that she had no other way of fighting anymore. And the desperate, weak thirteen year old inside her had hated the thought of returning to the level of baggage – to be protected and hidden away whenever things got rough. So, she was searching the banks of the river in the dark, for weapons which she may or may not actually be able to use in the future, because she couldn't stand the thought of sitting by uselessly and waiting for the world to pass her by again.
Much to her disappointment, she found nothing. Concluding at last that the throwing stars must have been washed away in the flood, Sakura forced herself to be optimistic. This mission wasn't a loss yet. She daren't retrace her steps through the wood entirely – she didn't have the time tonight, and she was acutely aware that as a 'normal' chakra-less human being she would never manage the journey. She winced as an uneven step aggravated her sore ribs.
'For a medic, I really am bad at this whole rest-and-recover thing' she thought with a self-deprecating snort. She rubbed the area idly, only to quickly drop her hand as her elbow throbbed. Right. Poison. She sighed. Of all the alternate worlds to fall into, she just had to get the one with the cursed jewellery and the poisonous weapons of mass-evil. Why the heck had she thought that killing one of those things was a good idea again? She must be picking up on Naruto's hero-complex or something.
As best she could, Sakura stuck to the tree-line, following the road. In the dark, injured and more or less defenceless, she didn't want to risk going too deep into the woods. The track was more or less straight, and in a shorter time than she'd expected Sakura came to an area that was blocked with fallen trunks and bits of tree. It took her an hour to unravel the wire, and longer to search through the burnt paper and trees to find four exploding tags that had avoided the detonating wire. The tags she tucked carefully into the inner lining of her tunic, while the wire she wrapped carefully around her hand as she walked back toward the river. It wound around her bloodied knuckles in a neat circle, while Sakura winced and grumbled every time her right arm protested the movement. It protested fairly frequently.
By now Sakura knew it must be drawing near two'o'clock, if not later. She had done what she had set out to do, and retrieved her trip-wire and even some tags that she had not expected to find. Even if she had not found her shuriken, she had succeeded in part. She reached the river and prepared to return to Rivendell and to her bed.
But something made her hesitate, and turn her gaze down-river.
'I used a kunai down there,' she remembered. Or had it been two? She couldn't recall exactly, but she'd used them. She hovered indecisively on the riverbank, eyeing the darkness doubtfully. It had felt like a long way down but…how far was it really? Were one or two kunai really going to make so much of a difference that it was worth risking her cover for? If she wasn't back within the next few hours she'd lose the dark and expose herself…
'It might' said a sly little voice in the back of her head. 'Didn't all your problems stem from not being prepared enough? How else will you defend yourself in your state?'
Sakura bit her lip. She couldn't defend herself – she was too weak. One of her arms bled every time she so much as twitched her fingers and she had no chakra. Even if the elves successfully got all of the poison out of her system, she'd still only have one arm to fight with. She was going to have to retrain herself entirely to have any hope of surviving the next ninja war, and even so, without chakra there would be no more missions for Haruno Sakura. Assuming of course that she even gothome. What if the wizard couldn't help her? She'd have to survive a war here with absolutely nothing to give her an advantage. Her gut was telling her to go look for the kunai.
Even as she debated the matter, her feet took a hesitant step, and then another toward the battleground. With one last look to the Ford, Sakura sped into a jog. She'd just have to make it fast.
Sakura let herself fall against an upthrust rock. Her thighs were aching, her calves were aching, and her feet were aching. It had been a long jog, and now she was berating herself for being so reckless and stupid. Even if she headed back right away she'd be cutting it fine now. Not to mention the fact that Glorfindel was sure to notice her exhaustion and question her about it, and she wasn't entirely sure that she could come up with a convincing lie.
Just what was she expecting to find anyway? A bunch of uninhabited Ringwraith armour and her kunai in clear sight? She sighed heavily, feeling the strain of the poison on her body. She was sore, and tired, and once again she was cross with herself for doing something stupidly un-ninja-ish. And still she had the ridiculous urge to keep walking, just a little further, to find her kunai. With a resigned groan she forced herself back onto her feet. Surely it couldn't be that far now? After all, she thought bitterly, she'd already come this far – she might as well make it worth the walk.
As it happened, it wasn't much further. Soon, Sakura stumbled and narrowly avoided losing her balance entirely. The cause of the stumble turned out to be a stretch of over-turned ground, riddled with footprints. She reached out blindly and traced one of them with her fingertips. Definitely footprints.
She vaguely remembered dropping it when it had stabbed her, and wandered around in circles trying to find it. Just as her frustration was reaching its peak, a cloud shifted, a sliver of moonlight escaped and…something glimmered. Sakura greedily rushed to it, digging into the silt with her fingers. Only the ring at the end was visible, but if she just dug a little deeper…
But there was nothing below the ring. For a crushing moment, Sakura had the irrational thought that her kunai had been destroyed…but the metal was stronger than that, wasn't it? And that was when a sobering thought occurred to her. Sakura rushed down to the river and began to scrub away the mud. She sat back, uncaring or unaware that she was out in the open and clearly visible as the clouds gave way to a brighter sky.
In the dim light afforded by that sliver of moon, Sakura saw in her hand not the silver metal of a kunai ring; but instead, dull gold.
Bumm-bum-buuuummmmm.
All new, never before seen content. Back to the basics: Sneaking 101. I suspect Gollum also took that class.
What happened to Sakura's chakra?
What happened to Sakura's arm?
What will happen now?
These are questions which no doubt you will all be pondering, and hating me for not providing the answers to. Don't worry my little readers; I will answer all in time. In the mean time I am curious to hear your guesses.
Also, I am sure that on some level Sakura really is glad that Frodo is getting better and is going to be ok. But let's face it; it's a little bit hard to be happy about somebody else's recovery while you are still suffering grievous injury and bodily harm. It would be rather like sitting in the hospital and having the doctor tell you: "Oh, well there's not much hope of recovery for you I'm afraid, but hey, at least this guy over here is fine." Gee, thanks Doc.
Also, the internet tells me that what Glorfindel shouts up there translates to: "Stop that!"
~Devi1OnUrShou1der~