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The taste of blood doesn't leave her mouth. Or won't. She's half-convinced it's sentient, at this point, because it's clinging to her teeth and tongue with a determination too great to be incidental. But she's not thinking about it.
Sakura traces swirls in the dirt, a garbled mess of half-remembered seals smashed together from the endless books she's spent endless nights pouring over. That girl from the Sound had told her to spend less time conditioning her hair and more time conditioning her body, and she was right, probably, but honestly, it really wasn't that hard to throw a hair mask in before sprawling on her bedroom floor with a new scroll--
But Sakura stops herself there, because she's not thinking about it. Remembering what that girl said means remembering what came after: the knife through her hair, and then the knives in her arms and legs, and then her teeth -- her teeth -- sinking into that boy's arm. She hadn't meant to break the skin, hadn't even known she could bite hard enough that she could, but then he just kept hitting her, over and over, and it hurt so much, but she wasn't going to let go, not when that was the only thing she could do, but then her teeth were ripping into his flesh, and then--
No. Sakura sinks her fingernails into the soft ground, takes a deep breath, and scourges four very straight lines into it. No, again, firmer this time. And once more for good measure, No. Think about something else .
She looks at her drawings. The curve of a summoning seal arcs out from beneath the new valleys, and she tries to remember where she saw it. Sakura remembers every book she's ever read, every papercut she's ever absentmindedly sucked on while leafing through them, and wonders why she ever thought blood tasted like metal.
Ugh.
"Sakura-chan?"
She lurches at the sound of her name. Naruto is peering at her from across their small fire, his face scrunched up into something halfway between concern and confusion. It's the same face she'd seen him make during every written test at the academy. The thought makes her want to laugh -- maybe because those were the only things she'd ever been good at, so maybe she's becoming them, paper-thin and incomprehensible and utterly useless in anything that matters -- but Sakura stops herself from doing that too. She doesn't want Naruto thinking that she's laughing at him, because that would be mean of her, and there's not a single cell in her body that wants to be mean to him anymore.
Instead she forces on a smile that feels like meathooks are being sunk into her cheeks -- close-lipped, because she doesn't know if there's still blood between her teeth -- and asks, in a voice she hammers into normal tones, "What's up?"
The look Naruto is giving her says that whatever her face is doing looks approximately as awful as it feels. He drums his fingers in midair, fidgeting with nothing as Sakura watches him try to figure out what to say.
Finally his hand comes up to scratch at the back of his head, and he settles on, "Are you, like...? I mean. Just. Like, about what happened, y'know, with the Sound ninja."
Oh no.
"Just, I mean...are you okay?"
Oh fuck no. She doesn't know how much Shikamaru told him about what happened, but it doesn't matter -- Sakura doesn't want to be mean to him anymore, but that doesn't mean she wants to talk about her feelings with him either. They're teammates, but they're not friends. So she ignores the pressure building in her chest and lets the meathooks pull the corners of her mouth higher and says, "Yeah, of course. Don't worry about it."
It takes her approximately six more hours to completely lose it.
It's a productive six hours. They'd still been sitting where Ino and Lee's teams had left them, and eventually Sakura remembers that the enemy knows exactly where they are and pries herself out of the dirt and into action.
Sasuke is still essentially dead weight, and while Naruto is at least moving again, he's still too pale and too quiet. So Sakura stamps out their fire and scouts for new camps. She doesn't have any particular destination in mind -- they don't really have a goal anymore, the scrolls and the exam so much less important than keeping everyone alive in this hell forest -- but she knows they're much too easy a target right now, so she keeps them close to the water and she keeps them moving. She and Naruto take turns half-carrying, half-dragging Sasuke from place to place, and she makes them relocate three more times before they settle down for the night in a small copse of trees near the river.
Naruto offers to take the first watch. Part of her wants to insist that he rest, that she's fine, she can keep going, but he's still giving her that look and it's not really funny anymore, so she lets him go.
Sasuke is awake -- for now -- but they don't talk. Sakura knows if they'd been left alone like this a few days ago, she would have been chattering at him nonstop, and Sasuke squints at her from where he's propped up, like he's thinking the same thing and isn't sure why the onslaught hasn't started yet. Or maybe he's just annoyed that she'd dropped him instead of setting him down gently. She doesn't know. She's surprised by how little she cares either way. She sits down ten feet away and for once, she's the one ignoring him.
The thought shoots a small, vindictive thrill up her spine, and Sakura lets herself feel it. It's mean, maybe, but Sasuke wasn't the one she had promised herself not to be mean to. It's a distraction, too, and at this point she'll take anything because she can't even breathe without choking on the blood that's still haunting her mouth.
For the first few hours it'd been bearable -- they're stuck in the middle of a forest from hell and she hasn't brushed her teeth in two days, she reminds herself, of course it won't happen that quickly, of course, of course, just wait, it'll go away -- but then it's not, because they had caught fish and boiled water, and she had thought -- prayed, more like -- that one of those would wash it out of her mouth, and they didn't.
She curls up on her side and digs her nails back into the dirt and tries to pretend its doing anything to help. Minutes inch past. Shadows trip and fall across the clearing. It's so much harder to pretend in the dark.
She's not sure if Sasuke is asleep, but even if he's not, he still doesn't say anything when Sakura throws herself to her feet so fast her vision blacks out and sprints for the river.
The moon is full and it's making everything glow. The pebbles on the bank skitter and run like tiny silver spiders as she crashes through them, collapsing in a jangle of limbs at the edge of the water. Sakura jams her hands into the river, only bothering to give her dirty nails a cursory scrub before she scoops desperate handfuls of water into her mouth.
Scoop. Rinse. Spit. Again and again, over and over, and it doesn't go away. Her hands are shaking with tiny earthquakes that keep getting bigger, and they're sending water slopping all around her face and down her front. The night air is pricking into her wet skin, but there are also hot tracks burning down her cheeks, and that's when she realizes that she's crying.
It doesn't go away.
She chokes on a sob and shoves her fingers into her mouth frantically, trying to claw the phantom blood from her tongue. She scrapes it once, twice, but reaches too far back on the third go and gags. Yanking her hands out of her mouth, she clutches at her hair and falls into a retching fit that goes on and on and on.
When her coughing finally winds itself down, Sakura finds herself hunched over with her nose half an inch from the river. Her hair floats in lazy, ghostly tendrils across her field of vision, and she stays there, curled in on herself, sucking in slow, wet breaths through her teeth. Whatever frenzy had taken over her body has fled, leaving her cold and heavy and so, so tired.
"Sakura-chan?"
She doesn't jump this time. Instead she pulls herself into a sitting position as she slowly, slowly drags her hands down her face, as if she could just wipe away the past two and a half days and go back to being Sakura Before, who could throw off Naruto's concern with a toss of her hair over her shoulder. But when she pushes her soaking hair out of her face, combing up and over her head, she barely reaches her neck before the last strands slip through her fingers and her hands are left floating aimlessly in the air in front of her, marking her undeniably as Sakura After.
She brings each hand to rest on the opposite elbow, and she doesn't let herself dig her nails into the soft skin she finds there. For a moment, Sakura thinks about ignoring Naruto, or at the very least not looking at him. She can feel his gaze scraping up and down her side like sandpaper, and she hates it; she doesn't want to know what that gaze would feel like if she met it head on. But the seconds trickle by and he's still just standing there, quietly waiting for her to be ready, and for a wild moment she hates him, too, because how dare he be so considerate, how dare he care, when she's never done anything nice for him, never done anything for him, when they're not even friends?
But it passes just as quickly as it came, leaving her somehow even emptier than before, and when Sakura meets his eyes she doesn't feel anything at all.
"I can't get the taste of his blood out of my mouth," she tells him, and watches as somehow Naruto's eyes get even bigger.
She's just as surprised as he is -- it's the first honest thing Sakura's said all day, and they both know it. And probably more importantly, neither of them expected her to say it. But Naruto doesn't say anything back. He just holds her gaze, concern without pity. And then he crouches down next to her on the riverbank, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and drawing her against him when another sob bubbles past her lips.
It doesn't last very long -- Sakura's neck is bent at an impossible angle and Naruto's balancing precariously on the balls of his feet, so when she tries to twist into a less excruciating position he goes tumbling backwards with a surprised yelp, and the arm around her means Sakura goes shrieking down with him. They hit the ground in a tangled heap, Naruto's legs trapped under Sakura's torso. It takes her a moment to recover enough to pull her face out of the gravel and roll off him. Naruto is groaning and rubbing the back of his head, and Sakura is sneezing dirt out of her mouth, but then she catches his eye and they're quiet for half a second. And then Naruto's eyes crinkle and the corner of Sakura's mouth twitches, and they both explode into laughter loud enough it shakes bats from the treetops.
It's the worst thing they can do, strategically speaking, broadcasting their position like this when they're both so tired and weak and -- shit -- Sasuke is still half dead back at camp, but they don't stop. All she can taste is dust and laughter and they'll probably never talk about this again, but -- maybe, Sakura thinks. Maybe they're becoming friends.