Ch: 3 Severed Bonds
"Send me if we're short. Just me. Whatever the hell we have to do, we need her back home!"
Naruto faced her from the other side of her desk, his whisker-like shadows dark and pronounced—the way Tsunade learned they usually got when he was dangerously close to losing himself to the innate hatred inside of him.
At any time now, one of the assistants would burst in, scolding Naruto's audacity to scream at the Hokage.
Tsunade knew better.
He wasn't screaming.
He was begging.
They were notified by Shikamaru's Genin of Akatsuki's arrival. But by the time they found Sakura's last known location, the trail went cold.
Sai then sent scout mice.
There was not one single trace of evidence. All they found at the scene told them Sakura fought back and little else.
Equally upsetting to Tsunade was the vulnerability of their current situation. Shikamaru's mission had stretched her thin, and sending out a bunch of Jonin in pursuit of Sakura, leaving Konoha vulnerable to attack, or sending Naruto out alone could've been what Akatsuki hoped she'd do all along. She couldn't figure out what motive they had for taking Sakura otherwise.
"We're going to get Sakura back. But it's not the best play right now," Tsunade said through gritted teeth.
Sai stood by the door in silence. His heart ached for his family, but he said nothing.
Naruto sat with his elbows on the kitchen table and his hands covering his face.
It wasn't real. She wasn't gone.
Wasn't it just last night when he took Sakura to dinner at their favorite spot? Not Ichiraku. The spot that made her favorite version of BBQ pork over rice—the same dinnertime bento special that she, without fail, got every single time.
He ordered ramen, of course, even though the place didn't specialize in making noodles. It was okay. He didn't go to that place for the ramen. He went there because of Sakura.
He picked out the ground soybeans from the soup out of habit and made an offhanded remark that the bits reminded him of the little bug-eyed monstrosities that Granny Toad forced him to eat whenever he visited the mountain. Then, he managed to make the ugliest face imaginable, imitating what the sage toad would say if she saw him picking out the most nutritious part of her dish.
Sakura almost choked on her food.
He was just making a fool of himself.
Still worth it in the end, because he got to see her smile, and then they burst into fits of laughter.
Sakura's laugh was like a bell and it could light up any room.
It filled all of his heart.
If Naruto had a family, it would feel like Sakura.
It wasn't until he opened his eyes to a black apartment when he realized that the sun had set. The dark corners of his home had completely engulfed him, swallowing him whole.
He looked at the clock. 21:34.
Hours had passed. Four, to be exact.
He didn't get up to turn on the lights. What was the point?
An abrupt knock at the door jolted him out of his head. "Naruto! Open the door!"
He frowned, debating if he should ignore the intruder. He didn't feel like talking to anyone. Not while he was stuck in Konoha, while Sakura was probably—
It was better to not finish that thought.
"Open up!"
It was a man's voice, muffled by the door.
Naruto slumped against the ridges on the back of his wooden chair.
He just wanted to be alone. Maybe if he acted like he wasn't home, the man would just go away.
…
…
Knocking turned to pounding.
Naruto sighed. Sluggishly, he peeled himself up and made way to open the door for Jiraiya.
The hermit took one look at him and whistled.
"Hey, old man," Naruto said, motioning for him to come inside.
"Damn, kid. That bad, huh?"
He only ever promoted "pervy-sage" to anything else when it was.
"I brought you something." Jiraiya held out a plastic bag from the 24-hour convenience shop around the corner, and pulled out an orange icy pop—the type made for two people.
The corners of Naruto's lips tugged at him. It was his favorite flavor.
Jiraiya followed him to the couch, unwrapping it as they sat down.
Naruto grabbed the other half, and like always, on the count of three, they snapped it in two. "Thanks," he said.
They sat next to each other eating in comforting silence, listening to rain.
They dashed through the slippery trees on the border of River Country, their heads and shirts drenched in sweat and cold rain as they raced away from their pursuers. Hunter-nins, from the looks of it.
Sasuke and Karin had been running at full speed for almost an hour.
"Karin—what the fuck?!" Sasuke yelled. His voice was barely audible over millions of heavy droplets falling from the sky all around them. "I thought you were taking care of that!"
They were being chased down by a squad of hunter nins who probably recognized them from a few towns back. And for some reason his red-headed teammate, who was supposed to be a chakra-hound, was completely caught off guard.
Sasuke was sure he could take them. But Karin insisted that he didn't. And now he knew why.
"I was taking care of it," Karin snapped back, eyes glued ahead of them. "I took care of it every fucking time you got off. If you didn't want to knock me up, at the very least you could've—"
A shuriken flashed in her peripheral vision and she expertly brought a kunai to block its trajectory into the back of her skull. It fell through the branches and faded behind them.
"How long—"
A tree branch almost smacked him in the face. Sasuke's chakra flared with frustration.
"—before you were going to tell me?"
Karin flinched. "I— I… wasn't going to, okay? I was going to take care of it. I just—"
"You just what Karin?"
"I didn't—I just… I thought—"
She couldn't stop stammering. Her hands were trembling, but she didn't know if it was from the cold or from fear.
"I couldn't do it," she whispered quietly. "I started to want it. For us."
X
Listening to the rain reminded Sasuke about that night from one and a half weeks ago. The night he found out about his unborn child.
The night when everything changed.
At first, he needed a solid 48 hours completely to himself to contemplate if he was better off asking Karin to get rid of it. He wasn't ready to father a child. Not with her.
He spent 47 of those 48 hours devising his new plan, because deep down, he knew he had to do the right thing.
After killing Orochimaru, he thought killing Itachi would be a natural next step. He never would have fathomed that he'd return to Konoha before then. It angered him that he would.
But the village was the home of his clan.
He looked beside him, at how she nuzzled her head comfortably against him, at the rise and fall of her chest. He couldn't remember the exact moment it happened—when she went from a plain nuisance to someone he spent his nights with.
Karin bothered the shit out of him. She still kind of did.
When they were teenagers, she basically followed him around until he finally acknowledged her, and even if the majority of that began reluctantly, she somehow was able to get him to lower his guard.
Sasuke was always honest about his feelings—that he didn't have any. Not for her.
She understood. She continued to come onto him anyway. It was a nice arrangement between two consenting adults until one of them got careless and pregnant and attached.
He should have known better. It wasn't Karin's fault. It was his.
And the more important question—where would returning to the village put him, in terms of his ambitions?
Konoha might decide to keep the baby; kill him.
Fucking hell.
That's where.
At their hideout, Itachi watched Sakura as she slept.
He sat forward on his chair with his elbows on his knees, his breathing labored and forehead sweaty.
They were in Furuhoro, in one of their temporary hideouts tucked away on the edge of Fire Country. Akatsuki repossessed a small abandoned farmhouse here and it was safe as long as they didn't stay for too long.
Itachi's legs ached. His arms were sore. His back hurt.
But it was still only the beginning of a long process and he couldn't allow himself to rest just yet.
Activating the jutsu in itself was unexpectedly taxing. Even so, he set a second short term genjutsu on the road so that any tails would run themselves in circles. It was the only way he could ensure they wouldn't be followed to this hideout.
Then, Kisame carried Hidan, and Itachi had to sling Sakura over his shoulder all the way back to their hideout.
Itachi was grateful for the last minute opportunity. It would've been an entirely different ending if he tried to take down Princess Tsunade. Still, it was best to keep their little deviation from plan under wraps and on a need-to-know basis. Leader didn't have to know that they took Sakura instead of the Princess as long as the end result was the same.
From here, there were only two required elements for the new plan to succeed.
He'd first sever Sakura's existing emotional attachments. This part was completed the second she fell into the jutsu and onto the ground. She'd keep most of her memories, but when awakened, she'd feel no kinship with Konoha. She'd feel no love for her teammates. And she'd have no hatred for Akatsuki. This was important for the next part.
His jutsu was an illusionary technique mixed with Sasori's Senno Sosa no Jutsu. The difference from his late colleague's technique was that his own jutsu would make Sakura believe that she was a sleeper agent placed in Konoha, even if she wasn't actually one. She'd believe that she was recently awakened by Itachi because it was the right moment. But that wasn't all.
He'd even give her a backstory for how she came to be part of Akatsuki.
How about a tragic story of her parents' demise at the hands of careless Konoha elders? He could craft the memory that her Genin parents were sent ill-prepared on a mission kept secret from the Hokage. In a cover-up, their deaths would be unjustly marked as "lost in unnamed battle". When Sakura woke up, she would remember that she sought Akatsuki of her own volition, volunteering herself to spy on her village with the help of Sasori's memory-concealing jutsu.
And that closed the loop—how she was awakened by Itachi during their run-in.
What a scandal.
All it would take was a couple weeks of "memory restoration" sessions. Then, with Sakura's training completed, Akatsuki could send her to Konoha as their agent.
And bring them the Jinchuriki's head on a stick.
To be continued...