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Covenant
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Synopsis: Four years into the Fourth Shinobi War, Orochimaru offers to turn.
He all but requests Sakura by name to be the contact.
It is, quite clearly, a trap—least of all because he's supposed to be dead.
But what is a losing side to do except take the hand that's offered?
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8. The Extraction
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IWA DIVISION'S base was high in the rock mountains.
It was grey and brown and all manners of dreary in-between. The monotone landscape made for a stark contrast between the shinobi that roamed within. Iwa ninja tended towards outfits of red and yellow; Sakura's own short qipao dress blended quite nicely.
Beyond that, Sakura assuredly did not fit in.
Iwa and Konoha were only very recent allies, and only due to necessity. Four years of fighting and dying against the same enemy had smoothed over much animosity, but it'd be a stretch to say the two divisions were friendly.
Shinobi from Iwa were challenging to interact with for outsiders. They were overtly frank and audacious—elitist about rank and quick to attack any perceived failure.
And they disliked that a Konoha kunoichi was coming to command a portion of their army.
The fight was less than two days away, however, and there was no miracle coming from within Iwa Division's ranks to fill Sakura's position. She was the best they'd get. The best in the whole army, in fact; outside the Hokage, who couldn't fight anyway.
Within this context, Sakura's presence and instruction were begrudgingly accepted. She imagined if it were anyone but her, none of the Iwa medics would listen at all.
Iwa could field about 30 battle-capable medics. Far less than Konoha Division. Of those 30, fewer than 20 were devoted to medical. The rest were trained fighters with some proficiency in healing.
Sakura learned that Iwa lost not only their medical commander in an ambush months ago, but also the next two highest-ranking medics.
In that sense, she was relieved she came. Iwa would've most certainly suffered massive casualties without a field medical commander.
But in another sense, she was swallowing the nauseous worry that threatened to spill over any second her mind stilled too long. Iwa's strategy for medical was terrible. Nearing suicidal. As soon as they briefed her, she immediately deduced how they'd lost so many medics.
Medical was treated like an afterthought.
And Sakura lacked the authority here to change that.
She was told to pick five medics to join her at field medical. That part was fine—she'd survived larger battles with fewer and was cleared to summon Katsuyu.
But field medical would be directly behind the battlefield, no more than a few hundred yards away. They'd be underground in a section of excavated earth, covered and supported by two Earth Release users standing guard above. Two more guards would station nearby, warding off any would-be attackers.
Four guards total—two half-dedicating their attention and chakra to maintaining the artificial cave where Sakura's squad would be buried.
A medical tomb.
And the two non-Earth Release guards were chunin.
For all but those who climbed to the very top, formal promotions in rank paused while the war dragged on. There was always a chance, then, that any rank-and-file chunin had the skill and mastery of a join. But having seen both guards, neither any older than the girl who froze in Sangosho, Sakura was confident they were chunins closer to genin than jonin.
"We need our strength on the battlefield," was the crisp answer she'd received from the Tsuchikage when she breached the topic.
"You'll lose all that strength if field medical falls." She'd tried to keep her voice settled. "Two chunin won't withstand an ambush. If medical goes down, your army will soon follow. You know that. That's why you requested this assistance."
"You'll have two jonin, as well. Are you insinuating that the shinobi I've picked for you are incompetent, Haruno?"
Some choice words had dashed through her mind. "Not at all, Tsuchikage. Iwa Division has fine shinobi. But all the reports indicate that Madara's troops are beginning to aim for medical. They know just as well that if my team falls, our potential losses increase. If two or three squads come, it will—"
"Iwa's medics are well-trained combatants. Should an attack come, I expect them to defend themselves. I understand that Konoha Division employs a strategy of running away, but we fight with different values here. You have your guard, and you have your medics. With you, that's ten shinobi. Do you think yourself incapable of commanding a ten-man squad against one ambush?"
"I can do it, but I believe there's a more effective and efficient method. Although I'm prepared to battle and am more than capable of doing so, I'm not typically in command of battle squads. Someone from our guard or our intelligence unit Calls when we're attacked. I only take up Calling in battle if our Caller goes down. All I'm asking is that medical have a dedicated jonin guard. Even a single squad will do."
"You have more than enough. You came to assist us, not to run the show, Haruno. Iwa Division's employed the same strategies since the war began. We've not fallen yet. I heard high praise for your capability in action, yet you stand here admitting that you lack the confidence to Call in battle?"
"That's not—"
"It's completely unbecoming of the student of a Sannin—of the Hokage, no less." He'd waved her out of his tent, turning to the pile of papers on his desk. "I suggest you spend more time setting up medical and less time arguing, complaining, and degrading yourself any further."
The conversation had brewed a strong resentment in her gut.
There was absolutely nothing unbecoming about being realistic when analyzing one's strengths and weaknesses.
She perfectly capable of leading a battle team. First and above all, however, she was a medic. An intelligence unit or lead guard would be much more equipped to Call than a medic. That was just a fact.
She wouldn't expect Kurotsuchi to thrive as medical commander no more than she'd expect Shikamaru to beat Hanabi in a taijutsu match. No one could do everything.
There was no advantage to overselling one's strengths in war.
When she mentioned the irrationalness of the plan to the second-in-command Iwa medic, he'd simply regarded her with a disparaging look.
"We're perfectly capable of defending ourselves. We don't need guards," he'd said.
It demonstrated a lesson Sakura had forgotten in the past four years of war, primarily stationed within Konoha's ranks.
The shinobi world was allied for the moment, but they differed considerably in values and beliefs. Many more years of bad blood existed between the five shinobi villages than the mere four the war had compelled them to work together. Without Tobi and Madara, the Allied countries would still be fighting one another.
And if—When, she had to remind herself—Tobi and Madara were gone, there'd be nothing binding the divisions to cooperation.
What would happen then?
Could a war in which one side was allied simply because they shared an enemy really just…end when the enemy was gone?
After all these years of conditioning themselves to live next to death and pain to survive, could the world just…stop fighting?
When every Kage knew the strengths and weaknesses of every other army, their numbers, strategies? Knew who commanded which portion of which army, who was the most skilled or relied upon on the battlefield, what releases were most common in which battalion?
Four years of collaboration had undoubtedly left every division compromised in one way or another.
Those were the kind of thoughts Sakura drowned in the lake of her mind each time they surfaced, praying they didn't bob back up. There was no point in thinking of future possibilities when the future may never come.
Now was the time to stop thinking and keep moving.
When it came time to enter the battlefield 40 hours later, she was focused. She'd drilled her five-man medical squad on her strategy, chosen a runner, and cleared her mind of all thoughts beyond the upcoming battle. Her ten-man unit was concealed behind a large rock formation, two miles from the small village the intelligence indicated would be attacked.
They were in the far north-west corner of Earth Country, near the Land of Mountain Streams' border. A strategically useless location that housed thousands of refugees, most likely traveling this far north precisely because of that deterrent.
The refugees were secretly evacuated yesterday, their numbers replaced with just under 3,000 Iwa shinobi. The Allied army within the village masked their chakra and played the part of civilians.
Sakura's team would move closer when the attack started to set up field medical.
Iwa Division had no Yamanaka-clan equivalent to disseminate their plans mid-battle, instead relying heavily on their jonin squad leaders to Call teams accordingly. It was a wholly new and unnatural system to Sakura. None of the strategists were interested in using Katsuyu to relay commands, stating that their army was already too accustomed to this dispersed power structure.
Also probable: The Tsuchikage simply didn't want Katsuyu, an exclusively Konoha summon, privy to all of Iwa Division's battle tactics.
Intelligence said the town would be attacked by two generals, each leading a battalion of 500 shinobi and 200 Zetsu. The Allies had a clear numbers advantage.
Although, the town itself was on a large, rocky plateau with almost no coverage. A hundreds-meter straight drop cut the western edge.
The plan was to create a bulwark using Earth Release from various shinobi to fill the whole plateau with hills and walls as soon as the attack started. It ran the risk of creating numerous blindspots for the Allied army, but it was safer than attempting an all-out battle on a flat plane maimed by an abrupt cliffside.
Crouched by the rocks, the ten-man team barely breathed, waiting for the signal.
A little past noon, the sun was high and bright. Sakura staved off the sick feeling its warmth gave her.
War at night was a chilling thing, when the dark narrowed one's vision until there was barely any difference between enemy and ally. It called for intuition, mandated the senses; death could land without ever being seen. And that was the draw—you didn't have to see your target's eyes when it was you doing the killing in the darkness. Didn't have to watch it happen. Could simply turn away into the night and almost pretend it never happened at all.
But war in the daytime was like a nightmare.
Everything was laid bare—the blood of your teammate, his dismembered arm, intestines ripped from a belly and trailed on the ground. The teenage boy screaming, his entire right side missing from him. Piles of endless bodies, endlessly squashed and perverted into a carpet of wet nothingness, trampled until they were just bits of meat and bone and purple and red and clinging to your shoes.
Intuition was useless under the sun; survival hung on brute force. To kill under the bright, sunny sky was to watch the life drain from an enemy's eyes with your own. There was no pretending you weren't a killer in the light.
And the hot stench—
Giant rock formations jutted up across the plateau in the distance without any discernible pattern.
The signal that the battle was starting.
"Move into position," she ordered.
Her squad took off.
When they arrived at their mark, the two jonin guards opened up a massive square hole in the ground. At least 20 feet deep and 50 wide in each direction.
Sakura jumped into the pit, biting her thumb, summoning a portion of Katsuyu close to one of the walls. The slug's body took up almost the entirety of the hole, its head towering over the opening.
"Hello, Sakura," she greeted, as calm as she always was.
"Hello, Lady Katsuyu. Please enter the battlefield. There should be roughly twenty-eight hundred."
"Of course."
Katsuyu split into thousands of pieces and sunk into the earth to move towards the plateau. A portion of the slug fell onto her shoulder.
Sakura surveyed the room and her team. The runner, a girl who looked no where near 18, stood ready in the center with six unlit torches. As she'd instructed, the other four medics were stationed in the room's corners. They'd have to move their own patients with this small of a group.
The ground closed its mouth overhead with a thunderous thump, pitching them into darkness. Sakura's eyes flitted left to chase the sound of rushed footfalls, squinting when a torch flickered to life on the wall. The runner's small shadow bounded across the floor under its glow, splitting itself like Katsuyu each time another torch burned into flame. Soon the room was fully illuminated, the medics' shadows casting off in every direction around them.
"We'll need Healing Ground across this whole room, Lady Katsuyu. And help on each of these medics, please."
Her portion of the slug broke apart, most of it sinking into the floor while smaller shares slid towards the medics.
The first body popped in—an unconscious, hemorrhaging shinobi with a hole for a chest. Then another, awake but motionless on the floor, shouting that his body was unresponsive.
Sakura turned away, facing the wall, and sat cross-legged in her summoning circle to focus. She tuned out the growing chaos behind her as the pops multiplied in frequency.
"Has the Hokage summoned you in Konoha base?"
"Yes. Tsunade-sama says to stay calm and have confidence."
"If she's close enough from her position, some help with the five medics and the Healing Ground would be appreciated." The ground beneath her pulsed seconds later as a familiar chakra entangled itself with hers in the jutsu. "Thank you, shishou," she whispered, smiling unseen.
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The smell of the enclosed medical space was almost unbearable. Sakura had gotten pretty good over the past four years at tuning out the frenzy of field medical to focus on maintaining and feeding Katsuyu where needed. But the smell in this underground enclosure was unlike anything she'd ever experienced.
It was not like a days-old, sun-baked battlefield.
It was like a morgue without air-conditioning, or a hospital without any cleaning supplies. Every breath was a battle with her gag reflex. Without ventilation, it was absolutely suffocating. The first four hours were manageable, but they were nearing hour seven and Sakura struggled to breathe to the extent that she might pass out.
So when the ground above them abruptly parted, Sakura leaned over and emptied her stomach before gulping in the fresh air. Even if the "fresh air" was tinged with ongoing battle.
Hundreds of footfalls were rushing past the hole above. The sun was so low on the horizon that it couldn't touch inside the large ditch, but the shadows of the retreating shinobi moved across the tops of the walls like ghosts.
"We're withdrawing!" a jonin guard shouted down.
Not good, she thought. Sakura stood and turned back to the room. Her Iwa team had performed magnificently quick up to that point, but at least a hundred injured shinobi were left in the dug-out room. From the cursory look of it, more than half of them weren't well enough to move. Not good at all.
It was a moment of necessary choice; it fell on Sakura to make.
She grit her teeth—there was still time to not have to make it. Sounds of fierce battle and carnage still echoed in the distance. The Allies were withdrawing, but some share of the enemy was still caught up on the battlefield.
"Lady Katsuyu, please ask Tsunade to pump as much chakra as possible into the Healing Ground immediately. Tell her we're evacuating medical in ten minutes." She moved to the closest body she knew to be doomed and knelt to heal the man. "All patients able to move must withdraw!" The injured shinobi who could followed the order immediately, jumping out of the ditch and disappearing into their pre-planned withdrawal route. "Medics! Heal those left so they're well enough to evacuate. We depart in ten minutes!"
A guard was beside her as soon as the command left her lips, an iron grip sinking into her shoulder, yanking her up.
"Kurotsuchi's order is to withdraw immediately!"
She grabbed his wrist with a glare. "Let go of me this instant or I will break your arm." The man flinched and withdrew. Her voice grew loud for the room to hear, "I am the commander of field medical, and I say we withdraw in ten minutes. Heal everyone you can—that's medical's order!"
To their merit, all five Iwa medics obeyed without hesitation. The guard before her left with a scowl, joining two others who stood on Katsuyu's summoning circle, observing the healers with twitchy unease. The fourth guard was on the ground above, on watch.
She channeled her chakra furiously into the Healing Ground, her hands moving from one body to the next without thought. Just moving without thinking, moving without thinking—close that stab wound, set that femur, stabilize that artery—ignoring any injury that could be dealt with later. There was no time to make it painless. Screams resonated through the cavern as bodies forcibly mended against nature, much too fast. Shinobi trickled out as the most severe injuries were healed, but—
"That's ten minutes, Haruno," the guard above shouted down.
Sakura caught the eye of a middle-aged man in a bloodied Allied uniform, lying on the ground some feet away, missing both legs from the knee down. She hadn't reached him yet. The only reason he could still look at her was that the Healing Ground staunched the blood flow, preventing him from being drained. His gaze held a wild resignation. She cursed under her breath.
"We have to withdraw now!" The guard shouted. "The enemies will give chase soon!"
There was no avoiding the choice anymore.
"Fuck!" she screamed, voice high and savage. "Tag everyone left with black tags! You three there doing jack shit, fucking help us! We'll withdraw then circle back to the corpse location as soon as we can to heal the ones we tag out!"
They'd just have to hope those tagged survived the teleport and then survived long enough for the medics to return and heal them properly. There was no telling when Sakura could get there, though. It depended entirely on how long the enemy gave chase to their withdrawing troops.
Sending these potentially mortally wounded people to where all the dead bodies were piled up was insanely cruel, but Sakura was out of options.
"Everyone place your portion of Katsuyu on someone before you teleport them!" she ordered, jumping to the dismembered man and placing her slug on his shoulder. "When you arrive, Lady Katsuyu, set up a Healing Ground with these portions. I'll channel remotely with Tsunade to maintain it."
"Understood. But Tsunade-sama is likely too far from that location to maintain a strong channel."
Sakura pulled a black tag from the pouch on her back. "Whatever she can manage." She placed it on the man, who never once dropped her gaze. He didn't look afraid of the death that called to him. "I'll come to heal you soon," she promised. "Hold on."
"It's an honorable way to go if you don't." He nodded at her before vanishing. Perhaps it was his way of easing her guilt if she didn't make it. She desperately jumped around, tagging every body her arms could reach.
"They're on us!" someone yelled, and someone else—
"Hold the walls, they're trying to close us in!"
"EVERYONE OUT! MOVE!" yelled Sakura.
She'd kept her squad there too long. She made a mistake trying to save the patients. She shouldn't have—
She shoved those thoughts from her mind. It couldn't be changed.
Sakura jumped from the pit and heard her team land around her. Three guards were already fighting a large throng of enemies, slipping back towards the medics and the retreat route. The sun kissed the tall mountains to the west, bathing their battle in deep orange and shadow. An unfitting beauty for such an ugly event.
It was nine on…at least 20. Probably more. One of the chunin guards lay dead by the edge of the pit. She looked down into the cavern; eight shinobi were still too wounded to leave. Chakra scalpels were summoned between her fingers the next moment—it was her most efficient long-range instant-kill ninjutsu. Aiming for the space between their eyebrows, she threw two groups of three from each hand, and two more whistled after them.
A swift end. Painless.
Sakura shut her eyes and turned away before the weapons landed. Shino's critical gaze clouded her thoughts. It's a quicker death than Madara's forces would give them, she argued with the phantom. Or worse, a death Madara's forces might not give them at all. There's no worse fate than being captured for torture, Shino. She imagined even he wouldn't argue with that.
Still, she couldn't bear to watch it happen. Could barely bear to think about what she'd just done. The young Iwa runner looked at her in horror when Sakura opened her eyes to the real world again.
The three remaining guards were next to them now, the jonin raising huge walls between her squad and the enemy.
"Orders?" asked a medic. He was already pulling off his medical robe.
"We fight," she answered. "I'm close-range, so I'll be in the thick of it. I can't Call every move." Without a Linker it felt like she was blindly leading the blind. "I trust you all know each other well enough to handle the micro without it. Our goal is still to withdraw. As soon as you see an opening, make a run for it. I can cause disruption in their formation, so use it to retreat. Don't stay and fight just to fight. Leave as soon as you can."
The group nodded, though she already knew that the jonin and the older medics would refuse. They were clearly preparing for a fight, shaking their limbs out and popping soldier pills. Two of the medics, including her second-in-command, wore feral smiles.
But the runner had a look of death, and the chunin guard was out of breath. The young ones would certainly withdraw as soon as the fight started—and that was precisely what Sakura wanted them to do. Live today, fight again tomorrow. The more experienced of the team would gift that chance to them.
"I'm going to crater their position as soon as these walls drop. If you can leave, then leave. I'll cover with whoever can't get out. Okay? Ready?"
"Dropping the wall now," responded a guard.
Sakura lept towards the group of shinobi before she could even think. It was a noticeably smaller group than had been attacking before the wall went up. Some of the enemies likely left to chase the main army, or they were trying to flank her squad.
The next moment she slammed down on the ground with her feet, the earth rippling on impact. It cleaved and shattered out, tearing 50 yards in every direction. The enemies were forced to scatter, splitting them up and disrupting any formation they might have hoped to establish.
She glanced over her shoulder for what numbers she had left. Two medics and the last chunin guard were gone. The others were surging toward the enemy shinobi to engage. They were six against…whatever enemy remained. Kunai and shuriken flew at her, and that was all the thought she could give to the macro-battle.
Now it was only about staying alive.
She sprung away using a series of replacements, dodging weapons in a practiced dance. They were coming from three separate directions, but with the number of bodies clashing at one another around her, it was impossible to pinpoint them without some distance and cover.
But there was no cover on this barren, jagged landscape.
A senbon dug deep into her shoulder and she hissed in pain. She popped another replacement as three shuriken slammed into the log where her chest had been. Sakura's style was at a disadvantage on this terrain, and she was surrounded by enemies who seemed to be intentionally maintaining space.
Anytime she dodged toward one to attack, they dodged away as she was corralled back with ranged attacks.
A terror seized her, flushed through her body with a tremor that nearly caught her a kunai to the throat. They're countering me specifically, she realized. With the same method that the Allies employed on Hidan.
This was bad. She and her squad needed to get away from this fight as soon as possible, but their position was dangerous. They were on the slope that led up to the plateau. Downhill was their way out, yet moving downhill meant exposing their backs or fighting backward.
She pulsed her chakra into the ground as she crouched to avoid a speeding boulder. Her chakra pulsed back: at least 15 enemies surrounded her. Some were nearing chakra depletion. All of them stood far outside her area of impact, and in her dodging, she'd been shepherded away from her squad.
They were successfully countering her.
Sakura fanned out a shell of chakra across her body; with a layered hand, she caught three consecutive ice spears and sent them sailing back at the caster. The protective shield was not enough to stop a kunai aimed for her back. Sakura hopped in the air, spine twisted as effortlessly as a feline's, corkscrewing out of a known harm's way. But unknown harm found the back of her thigh up to its metal ring, the kunai's path only stopped by her femur.
Flooded with adrenalin, she felt nothing.
It was a losing battle. This group of enemies clearly had intelligence on her. There were too many, she was failing at creating favorable conditions for herself, and the terrain didn't play to her strengths. Like this, she'd be pecked down until she was dead.
It was unavoidable. Sakura released Hundred Healings.
The diamond's power snaked across her forehead, past her neck, over her arms and chest, down her legs. Her neck's seal hammered when the black ribbon crossed over it. Pulling the kunai and senbon from her body, she shot toward an enemy with new speed. She was on him in a second, slamming a chakra scalpel into his chest before he could blink.
She couldn't give them time to think—she was on the next enemy in a heartbeat, punching the woman with enhanced strength. The kunoichi's skull collapsed around Sakura's fist.
Ninjutsu and weapons flew at her. The nature releases broke and parted around her body like the ocean against rock. Weapons sunk into her and were pushed out within seconds, her body unscathed.
In this mode, she was like a God.
For the sake of being a battle medic in the upcoming months, however, she couldn't afford to waste her chakra in this mode for long. Every minute maintained was a drain on her reserves that she couldn't quickly restock.
It would be brutal, but she had to make it quick.
She flew at her enemies like wind. None were fast enough to avoid her for long. She decimated their bodies with direct blows or caught them with lightning-fast chakra scalpels.
Her fighting was nothing flashy or novel, just ruthless efficiency.
Moving as fast as she was with her chakra reserves, some enemies were hitting their own allies in ill-aimed attacks.
Only a few left, and then she could help her squad—if they hadn't escaped already. Shuriken sliced into her body left and right, her technique sealing the wounds instantly. Just a few more—
"Enough!" roared a dark voice from behind.
The seal on her neck ignited, its unexpected internal ache knocking her off balance. Flashing a triumphant look, the enemy before her shot out an arm to grab—
He collapsed.
Other bodies slapped against the earth around her. Sakura was hardly a sensor, but it was immediately apparent that none of the signatures still alive were conscious anymore.
In the brief reprieve, she watched two medics and the enemy they fought crumble in the unobstructed distance. There wasn't time to assess what was happening—without thought, she made to go to them.
A hand wrapped itself around her elbow and yanked her back with a force that nearly ripped her shoulder from its socket, even in Hundred Healings.
"Enough, I said." It was uttered with such threat the hair on her neck stood on end.
And she should be afraid. She should try to fight her way from this hold.
But—she knew that voice.
His grip was bruising.
Sakura didn't dare look behind her, afraid to see what she wanted to see. She didn't need to see to know. The seal beat like a marching drum; his chakra signature smothered her very existence with its potency.
This man could absolutely kill her if he wanted, even if she fought. So he didn't mean to kill her since she was still breathing.
With bated breath, she released her technique. His clutch tightened as the black lines slunk back into the diamond.
"...What are you doing here?" asked Sakura, training her eyes on a sleeping enemy. The genjutsu hovering around him was palpable even from a distance. "I was handling it," she felt the need to add.
Because she was handling it. Her body craved the battle it'd prepared for. Called for the blood she intended to spill. Only a few more enemies were still alive—her mind seemed to demand the payment her instincts had promised.
"You shouldn't have stopped me," she continued. "They'll kill me if I don't kill them."
The hand disappeared; she felt him step away. "Your squad was supposed to have withdrawn."
Odd. His voice was stiff.
"How would you know that? Regardless, as you can see, we were trying." She kept her back to him, discretely feeling his chakra for clues. He had excellent control, but…there—that was…was he—"Are you angry?"
Instead of a reply, she felt the telltale tickle of a genjutsu trying to take hold of her psyche.
"Kai!" Scowling, she finally looked over her shoulder at him.
How dare he—
Sasuke was unmasked.
Every thought fled her mind, every bit of air left her lungs.
What had she even been doing today? All there was, was him. The universe drew its breath.
It'd been over two years since she'd seen him. Over three since she'd been close enough to really see him. Five or six since they'd been this close.
Her eyes widened; her mouth might have never closed.
He didn't need to put her under a genjutsu, she was already helplessly captured.
Then he was scowling. Sakura couldn't even move as he stalked toward her. He was impossibly close now, so close she could see the dirt on his neck and the white of his eye, and—
Good God it was a cruel joke, no human had the right to look like that—
Sudden pressure hit the base of her neck.
Her vision went black, mind etching Sasuke's face even as she felt herself fall into his waiting arms.
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She jumped awake with a shout.
Her surroundings swirled into focus slowly. Confusingly.
She was in a tree, on a high branch. It was dark. A forest encircled her, but not the thick, familiar forest of Fire Country. A rope tied around her hips, anchoring her to the tree. The back of her neck ached.
Sakura's head swiveled to the chakra presence behind her. Sasuke stood on her branch, leaned back against its trunk. Jerking up to meet him, she was swiftly stopped by the knotted rope. Her face flushed hot. Embarrassment had her summoning chakra to both fists to snap the cord in two.
She focused on her breathing—on anything but the man behind her, still unmasked, as she stood and brushed herself off.
The shock of everything staved off the anger she ought to feel about being pulled from battle and knocked unconscious for no reason. The shock of: He was probably the most beautiful man she'd ever seen. No—not probably—he almost certainly was.
She didn't even want to look. She couldn't. Here next to him like this, she could barely form a thought with just the memory of his face at the forefront of her mind.
Sakura slid her eyes sideways instead, out into the forest.
It wasn't fair. She couldn't look.
Sasuke had lost the teenage softness around his jaw. His hair hung long, down over his left eye. He towered above her. Without the robe covering him, his full-black attire fit snugly across his firm frame.
Stop thinking, she begged, her heart stuttering so hard she was sure the tree might shake.
But there was nothing else to think about but him, and her, alone in this tree in the middle of nowhere. The only two people in the whole world sharing this night sky. They could be anyone in this wilderness. They could go anywhere, do anything—just run and forget the war, and who would ever find them?
Here in the cool silence of nature, they were just a man and a woman with a history. With a covenant between them.
The seal warmed down her chest and up her neck, creeping a hot blush into her eyes. Its heat offset the chill of darkness that—
Her attention shot back to the moment, eyes wide in horror. "How long have I been out?"
"...Nearing two hours."
But she already knew. Already felt the lack of that familiar chakra drain. Was already aware she couldn't sustain Katsuyu when unconscious.
Katsuyu's summon had terminated. No Healing Ground maintained the injured they'd tagged to the corpse pile for safety.
The dismembered man was dead. She hadn't kept her promise—and it felt like the man had known all along she wouldn't.
Sakura burned with shame.
She'd let them die. He had let them die.
"You just killed at least thirty injured shinobi," she growled, knowing he probably didn't even know what she was referring to. The butterflies in her stomach turned to stone.
Sasuke held her gaze, his left arm resting casually against his hip. "Probably ten times over that."
His callousness had her vision heating up for entirely new reasons. She stepped to him, shaking with fury, a hand raised like she meant to hit him. He cocked his brow.
Then she turned away, kneeling to retch over the side of the branch. It sank into the darkness as she remained crouched, huffing in ragged breaths.
When the silence broke, she couldn't pretend they were just a man and a woman. She was Sakura Haruno, and he was Sasuke Uchiha, and he was so quick to remind her of his cruelty.
It was enough to dash his physical beauty from her thoughts.
She kept her back to him. "Did you kill my team members?"
"One."
"Who did you kill?" But did it matter? They were dead either way. Sakura felt like she'd be sick again. It was one thing to know a teammate was killed—another to know that Sasuke had killed them.
"All of Madara's army and the medic that was closest to you."
"You didn't have to—"
"That medic saw my face before the genjutsu knocked her out, and all of Madara's men know my voice. I had to."
"I don't care about Madara's men," she spat.
He scoffed. "So death itself is only bothersome depending on who it takes, then?"
Sakura peered up at him.
What an odd question. Unlike any of the very few statements he'd spoken to her since their agreement. If she didn't know any better, it might've sounded like he intended to start a real conversation. Or like he was displeased with her way of thinking.
His face remained passive, giving nothing away.
What did he want to hear?
"Death isn't bothersome. It just isn't always necessary. Then, sometimes it is—and sometimes, it's deserved." She shrugged. "Of course I'll worry more about some deaths than others. Why would I care about the deaths of strangers, or enemies?"
Sasuke gave her no response. It barely looked like he was listening; adolescent Sakura would've thought he wasn't. But it was just the two of them, alone in the trees beneath the crescent moon, and nothing was forcing him to stay here.
What else could he have been doing but listening?
A rage simmered in her gut as he looked upon her without expression. Didn't he feel anything? Couldn't he explain himself, or apologize, or anything except just fucking stand there brushing off death yet demeaning her for the same?
She stood and faced him, straight as a spear stabbing the sky, eyes leveled on his. "But I do care about the patients I tagged away, who probably died minutes after you knocked me out, Sasuke. I cared about that medic who was under my command. I care about the Allied army you just bragged about killing."
"None of them care about you," he drawled.
"You don't know that."
"You don't even know them."
It was so...dismissive. Was he shaming her for caring for some deaths over others or for caring at all? The ambiguity made her tongue thick against her throat.
He felt nothing like that child she'd begged on the road outside Konoha's gates. Nothing like the boy she'd grown up with—the boy she knew.
Were there any words left that would reach him? Was there any point in trying to reach him at all?
Why did she still want to, after all these years?
With so much time and distance between them, how had they arrived again at this very same crossroads?
"Well I feel like I don't know you, yet I still cared when I thought you died," she whispered.
It passed her lips sounding too much like a confession, and he stood there wholly unmoved.
Clearing her mind of any thought that might reduce her more, she turned her back to him again. What did she care if he cared? He'd never cared, and it'd never stopped her before. She fought the shame and embarrassment plunging into her stomach with anger she tried to direct towards the man behind her.
The covenant's seal hummed gently. She tried to fight that too.
Then Sasuke was nudging himself off the trunk and holding a teleport tag out to her. "Come for information in three hours."
The anticipation of going to him later seemed like torture. "Let's just go now," said Sakura bitterly, snatching the tag, careful not to activate it.
"No. I have to report first. I'm already—" His mouth snapped shut.
It was the first slip of his control, and she didn't miss it.
Tilting her head, she studied his too-tight expression. "You're already…?"
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "Three hours." Of course he was ignoring her. "Your army's battle base is just north of our position. Go there."
The seal pulsed.
"Don't order—"
"If you want."
He flash-stepped away without another glance. The seal unwound from its excited state, the command withdrawn.
Not wasting a second more, Sakura dashed north immediately, her thoughts tumbling into how much she might've missed in two hours. She hoped beyond hope that Tsunade was close enough to maintain a weak Healing Ground where the injured were teleported...but there was no way to contact her and find out without summoning Katsuyu. And she was too afraid of the answer to do that.
Peripherally, she prayed no one reported her missing to Konoha Division.
Her mind was everywhere except the bizarre encounter she'd just shared with her ex-teammate. On his random appearance. His unnecessary extraction. The comments that invited her to speak.
There was no time to dwell on these matters; Sakura was sure they held no answers she'd like to find, anyway. No space to think that, probably, she was merely pushing meaning into interactions that held no deeper meaning at all.
Today, she was on the losing side of a battle.
This was war. War was no place for the hopeful pinings of a never-dying teenage heart.
There would be counts to check the losses to match the names. Mutilated bodies to turn over, those only half gone begging for mercy. Reports would be drawn up on why they had to retreat, on the numbers they'd lost, and failures on the field. Waiting for her were corpses to burn, tears to shed, and death's eternal meaninglessness to swallow.
But just for a passing moment there, in a forest under the cover of soft stars, symphonied by crickets calling for lovers, when she was just a woman with just a man—Sakura had almost escaped that battlefield.
Almost.
But here it was again, consuming her, surrounding her in the trees and awaiting her at the base. A battlefield that chased her more desperately now, as if it'd felt her nearly slip away.
War was like that.
Like a festering wound, war demanded one's complete attention. Not something to forget or disregard—or it'd slip under defenses, crawl into one's head, and crack it from the inside. It was always there, waiting to catch prey vulnerable and unaware. Sinking deeper in every time it noticed someone turn away.
There was no escaping this battlefield. Not ever.
So there was no room for Sasuke Uchiha right now, lest she break..
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I managed to convince a poor soul to beta this story...
BIG big shout out to LEECH for some seriously amazing line proofing and prose additions.
Thanks for all the support!