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Chapter Text

The beat of drums reverberates through the heavy air. There are dark clouds gathered in the sky, a veil through which filters the grayest, dullest light. Sakura trembles with the knowledge that death is coming. Perhaps for her, perhaps for him.

Regardless, it is coming.

Silky black hair sways into her line of sight, white skin, golden eyes. He glides away behind her, an arm snaking out to settle heavily around her waist, pressure, heat, then gone. Just a reminder.

Death is coming.

-

Sakura swallows heavily, kunai clenched in one sweaty fist, legs shaking with the effort of holding her slight frame upright. Well. Relatively upright. Her other hand is clasped to her side, trying to hold flesh together where it has been deeply parted. Blood seeps between her fingers, hot. Her chest heaves and she blinks droplets of sweat from her eyelashes.

The bastards surrounding her are the only ones left of a band of eight. She ripped holes in the rest and they are scattered throughout the forest, bleeding out or already dead. But these three... they are relatively unharmed and she is verging on passing out from blood loss and exhaustion. She thinks she has sustained several internal injuries on top of her obvious external ones, and her head rings and spins, but there is no time for a self-diagnostic, and certainly no chakra left for her to spare for healing.

They are wary still, prowling around her in an ever-tightening circle, growing more sure of themselves with every shaky breath she heaves through dry, cracked lips. She is out of time, out of weapons, out of ideas. She strains to stay conscious as the world tips and blurs before her, but no force of will can keep her broken body from falling now. They see her collapse and swoop in with cries of victory, kunai glinting viciously in their hands.

And all they had to do to beat me was wait me out...damn.

Chapter Text

Consciousness returns all at once, a force slamming through her body; awareness, sentience. Her eyelids spring open and she blinks rapidly against the harsh light. Tries to move her hands to cover her eyes - even closed there is a horrible, brilliant redness that pushes against them, burning, pressure - but they will not move. She is tied down, immobilized. Why? How?

It's not just her hands, but her legs, her torso. She can feel the iron bands holding her down, tight and heavy, now that she knows they are there. She must open her eyes, must see, understand. Fight her way free.

Though the harsh, artificial light burns her retinas, the kunoichi forces her eyelids to stay open. Pained tears well and she blinks them away, desperate to know- where is she?

The fight, she remembers that, soaring through the treetops, ramming her fists through skin and flesh and bone. And then that lucky blow, the kunai buried in her side, the rapid blood loss, the way they wore her down, darting in and out, weaving and chipping away at her until she had nothing left. Bastards.

"Ah, you're awake. Time to see just how recovered you are."

Grey hair and glasses, glinting in the cold clinical light.

"Kabuto," she spits, eyes narrowed, teeth bared in an almost-snarl.

"Well, at least your memory appears to be intact," the medical ninja twitches an insincere smile her way as he begins to run glowing green hands over her body in an advanced diagnostic jutsu.

She grits her teeth and struggles to rise, forgetting that she is immobilized. Her wrists feel heavy, dragged down, dangling from the edges of the- whatever it is she is strapped to (her mind shies away from the words operating table, though they resonate with her as being accurate).

"Ah-ah-ah, don't struggle, Sakura, you'll only reopen your wounds. You don't want to invalidate all my hard work, do you? After all, I did save your life."

Sakura swallows hard against the pain that is slowly making itself known to her battered nerve endings and subsides. Kabuto pauses in his movements to smile condescendingly at her. "That's a girl."

She inhales sharply against the urge to scream as he pokes at her injured side with tendrils of chakra. He is not gentle with his probing, but he is thorough, methodical.

"Hmm. I think that'll do for now," Kabuto straightens up, adjusting his glasses with one finger and disappears from her view. She hears a door slide open, closed, and then there is only darkness.

Chapter Text

The next time Sakura awakes, it is to the sting of a needle being slid out from beneath the tender skin on the inside of her elbow. She is slumped on the floor, one arm pulled upright, chained at the wrist to a wall. The other arm is lifted and a cuff snapped efficiently around that wrist too. She blinks dazedly, head drooping, chin bumping her chest, and stares at the floor. And at the black-sandaled feet at the very edge of her vision. Slowly, her gaze travels upwards, eyes rolling in their sockets - she lacks the strength to lift her head.

It is Kabuto again, eyes hidden behind glinting glasses. His vague smirk seems triumphant. Fear worms its way through her heart and up into her throat, lodging there and constricting the flow of air to her lungs.

"Hello again, Sakura," he says simply, as though he's pleased to see her in the most perfunctory and vague of ways.

She cannot convince her lips to part, let alone her voice to emerge, so she simply drops her gaze, eyes closing, sore from the extreme angle.

A faint sigh comes from some dark corner of the room, and a raspy, lilting voice follows behind it, "Another failure, Kabuto. This is becoming tedious."

Soft rustling, near-silent footsteps. Sakura opens her eyes, worried at this new arrival. She senses that the medical ninja's whole body has tensed, though she only sees his feet and shins.

"I do not believe this one to be a failure, my lord. I think-"

The feet are yanked from Sakura's view, accompanied by a choked off gasp.

"Perhaps, in future, you should wait to show me your 'great triumph' until you know, Kabuto!" The voice is harsh, the words hissed and spat with great venom, and an aura of heavy, undulating power rolls through the room, oppressive and choking.

There is a thud, the crack of breaking glass, and then silence. The heavy feeling in the air recedes, and Sakura slowly becomes aware of quick, sharp breaths that are not her own. She slowly raises her head, a little strength returning to her via the flood of adrenaline that her body released in response to the dark chakra in the air.

Kabuto is half lying on the floor, holding his torso upright on trembling arms, elbows locked straight. His glasses lie in pieces before him and he stares into the middle distance, unseeing. His jaw works, teeth grinding, eyes sheened with a layer of moisture.

Sakura lowers her head again and closes her eyes. He hurts a little to look at and she is too tired to care what any of this means for her. Her knees are beginning to ache from bearing her weight against the cold, hard floor, and her shoulders hurt, her arms pulled taut by the cuffs. The only way to relieve any of that is to stand, and she cannot.

Unconsciousness it is, then...

Chapter Text

Her shoulders are on fire, her knees burning, her hands numb. She slowly opens her eyes, though she quickly sees there is no point - everything is dark. She moans piteously and tries to pull herself up off her knees, but the circulation to her legs has been cut off for too long. They may as well not even be attached, for all that they respond to her. She grits her teeth and groans, heaving her body up, just enough to get the pressure off her legs. If she can get the blood circulating again, she should be able to stand.

It takes hours of agonizing work, shifting as often as she can, this way and that, relieving her knees and her shoulders and then her legs in turn, until finally she is utterly exhausted and her mind threatens to shut down, back into nothingness. But she can't let it- if she does, all of her work will have been for nothing. If she doesn't manage this now, she never will.

With herculean might, the leaf kunoichi heaves herself to her feet, screaming through clenched teeth as her numb feet drag uselessly across the ground. She throws herself back, until she hits the wall just behind her and leans against it for support. She is covered in sweat, her chest heaving, her heart pounding. But she is upright, and that's damn good start.

Relieved, triumphant giggles soar from her chest straight out of her mouth, and she can't help the tears that slide down her cheeks. Success.

Hours later, in the dark, Sakura has realized she is stuck, trapped, imprisoned. There is no guarantee that she will not be completely forgotten about, left to rot in this... dungeon, basement, cell... whatever it is. She is thankful it is not cold here, but that is the only comfort she can take. There is no sound, no light, nothing but the scrape of concrete at her back and the itch of the rough cotton shift she has deduced she is wearing.

Whatever drugs Kabuto had been giving her have now completely worn off, and Sakura is almost completely lucid. Aside from being faint with hunger and the vague ache in her side from the kunai wound - which is all but entirely healed - she is healthy enough.

An hour ago she tried to summon chakra to her limbs, to tear her way free of her shackles. But, to her great alarm, nothing happened. There was no response from her usually eager, biddable, energy. It is still there, humming along through her body, but it is as though it cannot feel her will, does not know that she commands it. She thinks it must be the shackles, some jutsu cast on them to prevent her from harnessing her chakra, but a small, terrified part of her is convinced Kabuto has done something to her - taken away all her control. Snipped the threads that pass command from her brain to chakra, as neatly as cutting a piece of string. It's not something Sakura has ever heard of being done before, but Kabuto is nothing if not sadistically inventive.

She shuts down these thoughts and shivers, though there is no chill in the air. There has to be a way out somehow, she just needs to find it.

Kabuto does not return for a very long time. Sakura cannot tell just how long, but it feels like days. It cannot be days, she is sure, but... her internal clock insists.

The door opens - the lights come on - and the grey-haired man enters, glasses perched on his nose as though they had never been broken. There is no sign of the trembling, furious wreck that had been deposited on the floor by... her mind flinches away from the name, the identity... no, no sign of any emotion.

He strides over to her where she stands against the wall, eyes assessing, calculating. He reaches out, hands glowing green, and begins the same set of diagnostics he performed before.

Sakura holds herself still, forces down the urge to lurch away, to shout and beg and rage. She will be a willing, model patient, if that is what will keep her alive.

After an interminable amount of time, Kabuto pulls away, and she thinks she can see triumph in his eyes again. She clenches her jaw around the words that want to escape and watches him leave in silence.

The door slides shut. She is returned to darkness once more.

Chapter Text

There are voices outside, rising and falling and rising again. She strains to make out the words, holding herself perfectly still as though she can will her heart to beat more quietly, her lungs to not require breath. Despite her efforts she cannot make out the words, nor even the tone, and she slumps with a frustrated huff.

The door slides open, a virtually soundless glide, as the lights flicker on with an electric hum. She blinks rapidly against the sudden stab of light, trying to see through a blur of moisture. She can make out two shapes, one grey (that must be Kabuto, she thinks), and the other black, except for the approximate oval of white that is obviously his face. She swallows down a burst of adrenaline, her eyes abruptly clearing. His features resolve into the face some part of her had vainly hoped to never see again; long, straight nose, wide lips, wicked golden eyes.

He and Kabuto are apparently still arguing over something, and he cuts off the shorter man with an impatient gesture, turning to focus on the girl hanging from the wall. His eyes rake over her before settling on her face with an expression of utter disdain, and she has the sudden impression that he feels she is wasting his time. She stiffens indignantly - as though she can be blamed for wasting his time! She would almost rather die than be in his presence! He narrows his eyes, as though reading from her posture that she is offended, and a spark of something approaching humour quirks his lips. It is a passing thing, and his expression returns to neutral irritation again as he stalks toward her.

She is almost grateful for the chains holding her up - she doesn't have to fight the urge to cower, for she couldn't do so in this position even if she tried. The way he moves imparts the impression of some great predator; graceful, languid, his prey trapped before him with no hope for escape. She doesn't think he moves this way on purpose; he doesn't seem conscious of it, as though it is simply the manner of his body now. He is no longer human, not really. He has molded himself into something... else. Something other.

He stops before her, standing much closer than she would like (although that is not difficult - she would like him to be on the other side of the world), and gradually eases his aura out, loosing it from his absolute control. It is a black thing, though it could not truly be called ugly, she thinks. It is sinuous and powerful in the way of a snake's muscled coils, curious as it strokes against her skin, testing, pressing. Orochimaru shifts impatiently (she thinks he doesn't actually move, it's merely an impression from his aura), and the coils press harder, wrapping around her chest, sweeping against her lips until they part with a terrified gasp. That is all it needs - it dives into her, down her throat, into her lungs, squeezing, filling, drawing power out of her in rising waves the way one might wring a soaking sponge. She struggles now, gasping for air against the thick cloud of chakra in her lungs and throat, fighting with instinct and desperation as her vision goes dark and black stars burst against the backs of her eyelids.

Then, all at once, it is over. She drags in gasping breaths, trying to fill her lungs where it feels like they have collapsed from the sudden absence of his chakra, her body hanging limply from the chains. She manages to glance up at him, panting and terrified, reduced to an animalistic state of survival instincts and terror-fueled urgency. His face is curiously blank, though a strange, almost wondering light peeks out from the corners of his eyes. She would almost say he looks pleased.

The impression of pleasure she gets from him does absolutely nothing for the wrenching fear in her guts. If anything it makes it worse - what could he possibly be pleased about? Her terror, maybe. That certainly wouldn't be out of character for him, she thinks.

"Brave, little one," he murmurs, ever so softly. He turns his head sharply to address Kabuto over his shoulder, though his golden eyes never leave hers. "Very well, Kabuto. Perhaps you will not be adding this one to your ever-growing list of failures," the sneer in his voice is palpable, but below it thrums a note of approval.

Sakura's frame is wracked with shudders as adrenaline dumps through her system, and she closes her eyes against the sight of him before her. She doesn't want to know what any of this means.

Chapter Text

She breathes deeply, the scent of trees and grass and open sky a welcome change in her lungs. Her eyelids flutter, and she squints against the bright sunlight. She is disoriented for a moment, her world tilting oddly on its axis, as though she shouldn't be here. Or, not shouldn't be, but... wasn't?

She pushes herself into a sitting position and brings her hands to her head, cards her fingers through her hair, feeling for an injury. She's a little dizzy, and her fingers encounter a small bump near her parietal bone. She winces as she gently presses around it, quickly running through a couple of math questions in her head, muttering the answers to herself out loud. Her language and math skills seem to be intact, and she can definitely see okay. She runs a quick diagnostic jutsu over the rest of her body, noting only cuts and bruises here and there, before carefully probing her head injury with chakra. There is some bruising, but the swelling is only minor, and her skull is intact. She resists the urge to let her chakra delve deeper, to make sure her brain is uninjured; Tsunade would kill her for attempting diagnostics on her own brain.

Reassured that she will be able to make the journey home, Sakura turns her attention to her surroundings. She is in a small clearing, with an assortment of headbands piled beside her, insignias slashed through. Her memories return, then, in a flood of disparate images; soaring through the trees, hunting the rogue-nins, picking them off one by one. She reaches out and plucks the topmost band from the pile, rubs her thumb across the slashed leaf insignia, smudging away dirt and blood. What would drive someone to not only abandon their village, but to betray it, she wonders. She closes her fist around the head band, crumpling the fabric of it in her hand, and shakes her head. It's no use trying to fathom the reasons behind the evil some people do.

She stands then, gathering up the rest of the bands and tying them together to hang from her belt like a trophy. It's time to figure out where she ended up.

She casts around for a tall tree and heads for the nearest one she can find, scrambling up its its broad trunk, fingers and boot-toes digging foot-holds in the bark, arms propelling her from branch to branch. When she's sufficiently far above the treeline, she inches her way out from the trunk until she's crouching nimbly on a precariously dipping branch. She knows approximately where she should be, in relation to Konoha, but as she scouts the landscape she realises her hunt must have taken her further north than she'd expected. Familiar landmarks mark her position well enough, though, and she hops down from the branches, eager to begin the trek home.

She spends the journey knitting together her fragmented memories into a patchwork that she guesses must be somewhat close to correct. There is a gap where she assumes her head injury took place, but that's not unusual for head injuries, so she eventually gives up on trying to recall the circumstances around it. She will feel better once Tsunade has taken a look at her, but she manages not to worry too much, though she hates the helpless feeling that goes hand in hand with memory loss. It's a sharp reminder of how fragile life is. How fragile she is, despite her incredible strength.

It takes most of the afternoon for Konoha's giant green gates to come into view, and the sun dipping low on the horizon casts a burnt orange hue over the world. She decides against slipping in one of the shinobi entrances toward the back of the village; they all require a degree of agility to access that Sakura is not convinced she is currently capable of. She has grown more exhausted as the day wears on, and she is beginning to suspect that her injury might be slightly worse than she initially thought.

She passes through the gates with a wave at the guards stationed to either side, and slowly makes her way towards the Academy so she can drop off the head bands and notify admin of her return.

The russet coloured roofing of the Academy peeks between the buildings at the end of the main street, and Sakura sighs with imminent relief. She just wants to drop off the head bands and find Tsunade so she can be given the all clear to take a long nap.

Of course it was never going to be that easy.

“Sakura!”

Her shoulders slump at the exuberant shout, and Sakura briefly laments her choice in friends.

“Hey, Naruto,” she says tiredly, turning towards the flash of orange and yellow in her peripheral vision. Her eyes widen with alarm at the way he is barreling towards her at a dead run. “Wow, wow, slow dow- oof,” all the air is forced from her lungs as the scruffy-haired man-child lifts her off her feet with the enthusiasm of his embrace.

He puts her down again almost immediately and holds her at arms length, blue eyes examining her intently, as though searching for injuries. They clear quickly enough, and he scowls at her, “You took way too long to finish such an easy mission, Sakura! You should've been back days ago!”

“Wh- I didn't take that long, Naruto!”

He's shaking his head, eyes serious, “You need to be careful when you're out on your own, y'know. I don't know what I'd do without you.”

He ruffles her hair the way a big brother might, and Sakura snorts indelicately at the treatment, punches him none too gently on the arm. “I'm fine, Naruto. You worry about yourself, mister 'I'm gonna go off on my own and nearly die every two minutes'.”

He pulls back with an indulgent chuckle that makes her hackles rise, and lifts a hand casually over one shoulder as he walks away, “Yeah, yeah. Meet you at Ichiraku's for dinner later?”

He doesn't wait for a response, disappearing onto the rooftops with an effortless leap. Sakura huffs out an annoyed breath. She'd like to catch up with him, but she needs sleep more than anything at this point.

With an exhausted groan and a shake of her head, the pink-haired kunoichi continues on her way to the Academy, thinking longingly of her bed.

Chapter Text

Sakura grumbles to herself as she drags her aching body up yet another flight of stairs in her mission to get to Tsunade's office. Head bands dropped off, she is so close to being able to head home to her apartment and collapse onto her nice, soft bed. But she knows better than to ignore the ache in her head, and so to the Hokage's office she goes.

The door is propped open when she finally mounts the last step, and Sakura is relieved that Tsunade hasn't gone home for the day. It would not be unusual for the blonde woman to cut her work day short purely because she happened to be feeling lazy that day. Her work ethic outside of emergency situations is seriously lacklustre.

Sakura snorts with amusement at the sight that greets her when she slips through the door; Tsunade is snoring peacefully with her head propped on a pile of paperwork. Typical shishou.

Sakura gives the blonde woman's shoulder a gentle shove, rolling her eyes as her head comes up with a grunt, paperwork stuck to her cheek.

“Shishou, if you're going to be lazy why not just do it properly, and go home?”

Tsunade blinks owlishly and peels the paper off her face, turning to Sakura with narrowed eyes.

“You're late, Sakura!”

The pink-haired woman splutters indignantly for a moment, “Wh-but. We didn't have a meeting scheduled! What do you mean, 'I'm late'.”

Tsunade heaves a put-upon sigh and runs her warm brown eyes over Sakura in much the same way Naruto had earlier. “I mean, you should've been back from your mission three days ago. What the hell happened?”

That pulls Sakura up short. Three days ago? That's... not possible. Is it? She couldn't have been out for that long with her head injury, could she?

Her heart accelerates rapidly and her hand goes to the back of her head, touches the bump there for just a moment, as her eyes glaze over. Something in her urges her to make something up, don't tell Tsunade about her head wound, lie, lie, lie.

She snaps back to reality, meeting Tsunade's eyes without a waver. “Oh yeah, the rogue-nins caught on faster than I expected. They scattered after I'd taken out four of them and I had to spend a few days tracking down the rest,” she shrugs easily, “not my best work, I'll admit.”

Tsunade holds eye contact longer than Sakura is comfortable with, but ultimately she shrugs and waves the younger woman away with a dismissive flick of her fingers. “Go get some rest, Sakura, you look like shit.”

Sakura manages to roll her eyes and mutter sarcastically under her breath about Tsunade's facial ink-stains as she makes her way out of the round office. She doesn't let out the sigh of relief that's waiting in her lungs until her apartment door closes behind her. She sinks into a crouch against the inside of the door and rubs her face exhaustedly. She's not sure why she lied to Tsunade. It makes her feel itchy and wrong, like the woman's going to bust down her door any moment and start yelling about trust and betrayal. Sakura hates lying, but she especially hates lying to the one person who believed in her when she was just a weak little girl.

She groans and pushes herself to her feet. She needs a quick shower to wash away the dried blood and dirt and then she's determined to sleep for, like, fourteen hours straight.

Chapter Text

Sakura pushes open the door to the research lab and enters the artificially cold room with a grin on her face. She has been making leaps and bounds over the past few weeks, ever since Tsunade insisted she take a month off from missions outside the village after her late return, and she's eager to take a peek at her latest samples.

She carefully removes a single culture dish from storage and places it on the bench. Cracking her knuckles in preparation, Sakura curls her fingers as though holding a pen, and summons a chakra scalpel to her fingertips. She lowers the energy-blade carefully to the sample and drags it through the flesh in one smooth motion. Almost as soon as the movement is completed, the flesh has come together, perfect and unblemished. As though it was never parted.

Sakura takes a deep breath, supressing her excitement ruthlessly, and repeats the motion. Again and again, noting each attempt, tallying the strokes it takes for the flesh to give way and finally remain divided.

Fifty three.

It takes fifty three strokes of her scalpel for the sample to finally stay parted. Her hand trembles with adrenaline; this is an incredible discovery. It has all sorts of implications, both good and bad, and she can't contain her excitement. She stills after a moment, though, wondering how Tsunade might react to her find. She can think of no circumstances in which her mentor's excitement might outweigh her anger.

With a heavy sigh, Sakura deposits the sample into the steam sterilisation chamber, latches the door and switches it on. She should dispose of all of her samples, but... it's so risky to procure more from the hospital without anyone noticing. All of her work over the past few weeks has been outside the strict guidelines of the research and development lab, and while it hasn't hurt anyone, it would land her in a great deal of hot water were it to be discovered. Stealing biological waste products from the hospital and using them in research is definitely against the law. She shifts uncomfortably and removes her sample from the chamber. It's well and truly sterilised now, and she reluctantly folds it into a thick, black, plastic bag and seals the opening.

Sakura shoots one last reluctant look at the storage chamber, wondering how long she can afford to keep her samples, and tosses the black bag into the biohazard waste bin on her way out of R&D.

The night air is cold on her face as she exits the building and carefully locks the door behind her. She has to come at night when there will be no one around to wonder what she is doing; everyone will likely leave her samples alone, but if she is bent over the bench slicing something over and over again for half an hour they might get curious about her work. She can't explain to them that since she returned from her last mission she's had a number of amazing ideas that she couldn't possibly get past the ethics committee, even as lenient as they are in a hidden village built for subtle warfare. She has tentatively hypothesised that her head injury may have something to do with her sudden upswing of inspiration, but doesn't examine the idea too carefully for fear of the many holes in it.

All in all, the past few weeks have been strange, Sakura concludes. From her out of character urge to experiment, to her hitherto unknown surgery techniques, she thinks she should be more concerned. But it all just feels so right, so... inevitable, that she can't quite bring herself to question it.

-

It's been several months now, since she returned from her last away mission. It's strange how her life has been divided into 'before the head injury' and 'after the head injury'. Life before was probably simpler, she thinks, easier in some ways. There was certainly less sneaking around the village in the dead of night, less hand-wringing about the ethical concerns even she has about some of the things she is doing. But she was less sure, then, more prone to second guessing herself.

She has become consumed by her work, unable to sleep with the preponderance of ideas and epiphanies that spark in her mind as she lies in bed in the wee hours of the morning. She's sure people have noticed the shadows under her eyes, the milky-pale cast to her skin, the way her clothes hang off her body in a way they never used to. But she can't bring herself to care; the work is all that matters. There are so many things she needs to know, to understand. She can make things better for the village, if only they will let her.

And there's the rub.

They will never let her help them, not the way she can now. They will argue that her methods are too risky, that she will kill more than she will save. But she knows better.

She will help them, she decides. Whether they want her to, or not. She cannot keep all of this knowledge to herself; it needs to be used.

-

The day they figure it out, she is wrist-deep in the chest of a man, rewiring his heart for some purpose known only to her mind. She is deft and sure, every movement considered; a little adjustment here, catch the bleeding there. She is utterly focused, does not notice the ANBU surrounding her until it’s far too late. They wait for her finish her work, on Tsunade’s orders.

The blonde hokage stands by, tears shimmering in her honey eyes, trembling with disgusted confusion and pained resolution. There is something wrong with her beloved protege. The girl who has been like a daughter, a friend. Using all the knowledge shared between them to do… this.

The sound of her shihou’s hitching breath breaks Sakura’s concentration, and she startles, turning towards the sound.

“Tsunade-shishou?” Her hands withdraw and she glances around, taking in the ANBU surrounding her with dawning horror on her pretty face. Tsunade strangles an agonized sob and gestures to the ANBU.

'Take her' she mouths soundlessly. Words are far beyond her now.

Chapter Text

Sakura's eyes widen with surprise as the ANBU operatives swing chains around her body, binding her hands to her sides in the blink of an eye. Her head snaps up, eyes locking with Tsunade's for the briefest moment, just long enough for Sakura to feel the full weight of her mentor's sense of betrayal, before the pink-haired ninja blinks away. She reappears beside the wall of the operating room, chains collapsing around a convenient substitution log, and slams her chakra-charged fist into the wall, sending spiderwebbing cracks through the thick concrete, which immediately collapses into dust and rubble. Sakura leaps through the opening without looking back, unable to pause and allow her eyes to adjust to the night outside, and vaults onto the roof to disappear into the shadows of the outer wall.

Tsunade will not pursue her herself, she is certain, and if she can reach the border of Fire Country, the ANBU will probably let her go. Maybe.

She dashes behind the admin office, scurries up the great tree that grows behind it, and swings up onto the outer wall of Konoha. There is always a guard positioned here in case of escaped prisoners or defecting shinobi, but the tree itself remains as an emergency escape route just in case the village falls. The guard tonight is unprepared for an escapee, Sakura thinks, noting his wide eyes as she drives the heel of her palm into his chin, snapping his head back and knocking him out in one smooth movement. She lowers him to the ground swiftly, but carefully – she thinks she recognises him – and swings her body over the other side of the three metre wide wall. She dangles for a moment by her hands, aiming her feet so that when she drops, she lands catlike on a thick branch several metres below.

It is a matter of moments for her to swing from branch to lower branch, until her feet touch the ground, and she takes off running. She makes a wide arc through the forest that surrounds Konoha in order to set her course north. She's not sure why she feels compelled to head north; one direction would surely serve as well as any other, but something tugs at her, turns her that way.

She speeds through the forest, sometimes soaring through the branches, sometimes sprinting along the ground. She knows she must get away, must make it beyond the borders of Fire Country. They will give up, then, surely?

-

Night turns to day and then night again, and Sakura knows she cannot slow down, though her body aches to do so. She is rapidly exhausting her chakra, trying to maintain her blistering speed, but she's coming up hard against her limits. She's panting now, her legs numb and impossibly heavy. She's fortified herself with chakra for the past eighteen hours and she knows she has to have damaged herself considerably. Her leg muscles must be fraying from the pressure, and her chest is in constant pain. She doesn't want to know the condition of her heart and lungs. She must find somewhere to rest, she cannot continue this way.

There has to be some hiding place that will shelter her for a few hours...

Caked in sweat and dirt and tiny lines of blood from the whipping of branches and leaves, she skids to a stop in a likely looking clearing and casts about for somewhere to hide. There is a hollowed out tree, great branches still reaching away from its magnificent trunk, but the whole thing is clearly on the edge of collapse; it will have to do. She climbs in, brushing beetles and ants out of her way, and curls her knees to her chest. It is the only way she will fit without being easily visible, and the position confers some measure of comfort; all her softest places are surrounded by the shell of her spine and the girders that are her legs and arms. She presses her face between her knees and tries to rest, but she finds herself on endless high alert; every sound startles a jolt out of her hunched form. The rush of wind through leaves, the sound of some night animal foraging at the base of her arboreal hidey-hole. Surely, she thinks, she must be so depleted as to be incapable of producing more adrenaline? She will sleep soon, she decides, determined that as she must, she will.

The thoughts come unbidden, just as she is on the precipice of unconsciousness, surprising the girl with their almost visceral impact.

"You're a monster, Sakura. There should not be any safe places for people like you."

Her breath hitches and she wonders at the words – "people like you." People like me? Who am I like? The answer comes swiftly and without mercy. And it almost sounds like Naruto. "The bad people, the ones we fight. The murderers and traitors. The ones who stick their hands inside people and change the way their insides work."

The tears surprise her, creeping up behind her gritty eyes and snaking delicate tracks through the dirt on her cheeks. Grieving and confused, the girl is barely cognizant of time passing, of the faint sound of footsteps outside her hidey-hole. When she finally becomes aware of the noises outside, she curls in on herself tighter, trying to be as small as she can. She wonders what the point is, though. She cannot go home, will never see her family and friends again without the bars of a cell or the blade of a kunai between them.

The footsteps cease, the wind picks up, and Sakura knows a fleeting moment of peace. If her actions make her one of the bad people, perhaps it would be best to simply embrace that as her new truth. And do what follows naturally from that realisation.

She unfolds her weary limbs and climbs ungracefully from the tree. Her knees buckle as she slips free of its protection, hitting the dew-damp ground, slumped and kneeling. She is prepared to accept her fate. What would be the point in fighting, now? In her exhaustion-addled mind, this seems the only reasonable course she can take. She is a traitor. And this is her execution.

She swallows thickly, head bowed. She has not looked at her executioner, has discerned solely from the press of his chakra that he is (probably) male, and that he is (probably) alone. She is too tired to expend the energy trying to identify him.

The moment stretches, and Sakura becomes aware of the cold on her skin. Distantly she realises that she is shivering, but makes no move to warm herself. It matters not. Her blood will soon warm the earth beneath her.

"Do you want to die?"

The voice is low, rasping, a nonchalant slithering of syllables that gathers at her ears and prods her numb mind. Sakura struggles with the air in her lungs for just a moment, all too aware of just who that voice belongs to. Her blood lurches in her veins, then, fighting against arteries and skin and she has the fleetingly nonsensical thought that it is being called home. Her chakra mingles freely with her blood, rising in a tidal wave of scorching power, and she is wrenched bodily forward, as though her bones are riddled with iron filings that are being drawn by a powerful magnet.

The force hauling her forward abruptly dissipates, and her hands catch on the forest floor, elbows locking to hold her in place. She chances a quick look up, her misery overcome momentarily by a startling mix of terror and curiosity. Her whole body shudders in a kind of sympathetic, visceral shock at the sight that greets her. There is no one standing before her, but bodies (and body parts) litter the small clearing, heads cleaved messily from shoulders, arms wrenched from sockets. Moonlight catches on broken porcelain and glistens against white bone that peeks out from beneath dark blood. Her eyes sweep the tableau in a hurried assessment before she lurches backward, gagging on the tangy wafts of blood-infused air that she gasps into her lungs.

Sakura's mind whirls, connecting information much more slowly than it would were the scant contents of her stomach not attempting to escape through her mouth. Why would he save her? Where had he even come from? Konoha hadn't heard from Orochimaru in years, and it was the fervent hope of just about everyone that he had somehow managed to get himself killed. So why would he show up, out of nowhere, just in time to save a girl he had, if not outright attempted to kill himself, at least spared no thought for as collateral damage.

She finishes emptying her stomach onto the forest floor and shakily climbs to her feet. There is nothing for it but to keep moving. She cannot bear the thought of remaining here with the dead Konoha nin drenching the ground with their blood just metres away. She has a little more time, now. It will be days before anyone realises they are dead.

She hunts through the body parts with her eyes in broken glances, hoping against hope that she will not recognise any of them. She doesn't, though that is the smallest of comforts; they are still dead whether she knew them once or not.

With a last, regretful glance at the bodies and masks strewn about like broken toys, Sakura turns resolutely north and puts one foot in front of the other.

There is no use fighting her instincts.

She is heading north.

Chapter Text

The sun grazes the treetops, casting the under-forest in a slightly warmer light. Dawn has come and she's still alive. Her strained heart thuds a little harder at the understanding that she is only alive and free because of some whim of Orochimaru's. If he hadn't slaughtered the ANBU squad, they would have found her, curled up in her hidey-hole, and dragged her back to Konoha for execution or imprisonment. She's not sure which, nor even sure which she would prefer. She shivers slightly at the memory of being on her knees before him, waiting to die. That, too, had been a whim. A suicidal whim, but it was backed by the very real understanding that she is now alone. That her purpose and her loved ones will forever be out of reach.

She shakes herself loose from the grip of her thoughts. She has gone over the events of the night so very many times that she is virtually numb to the shock and the horror of it. There is nothing more to be gleaned from her recollections at this moment; she has combed through them endlessly, trying to pick apart the pieces and find the angle. The information she has is minimal, she could never divine Orochimaru's purpose from such a brief and strange encounter. That his motives led to her survival draws out conflict in her mind, over just how grateful she should be (she's leaning heavily towards 'not very'), and over why and how he came to be in just the right place at just the right time. She half wants to think it was coincidence. The other half of her doesn't believe in things like luck, and that half wants answers.

Those answers are not going to be found in her own head, and if she she is to continue living long enough to discover them, she needs to find some place to hide. Not just for an hour, but for longer, some place that will afford her the time to explore the very many things that appear to be wrong with her world and her life. There may yet be an explanation for her own abnormal – for lack of a better word – behaviour. There may yet be a way for her to go home (the half that doesn't believe in luck and coincidence winces at the naivete displayed by the rest of her).

Sakura heaves a pained sigh, wincing as the air dives into her aching lungs and back out again. She really needs to recover some chakra so that she can assess the damage she's done to her body. Her legs tremble with every step, the muscles in her calves and thighs jumping as though they are half-shredded from the inside, and feeling as though they are at least a bit on fire. She reflects tiredly that her skeleton seems to be protesting holding her flesh upright, and her heart is definitely not one hundred percent as it bucks unevenly in her chest.

On the bright side, she no longer feels a driving urge to continue north. Instead, she is circling a well worn clearing as though there is an invisible tether preventing her from leaving it. This is just one more thing she cannot fathom an explanation for. She hasn't actually [i]tried[i] to leave the track she is wearing, but that's really the sum of the problem; she doesn't want to. If she leaves this clearing she doesn't know where she will go. All this time running, she has been pulled along by a sensationless tug centred in the tissue behind her now-shuddering heart. It's not there any more, like a rubber band with all the tension gone out of it, it lies dormant and quiet.

The pink-haired kunoichi groans and scrubs her filthy hands over her face, trying to rub the stars out of her eyes. She's growing dizzier by the moment, and she's fairly convinced that her heart is about to just give up. She has no chakra to feed it to keep her going. No chakra to heal the damage, either. She has, quite literally, worn herself out.

She is beginning to silently berate herself for her foolishness (though, really, she wouldn't be alive now if she hadn't poured all of her energy into her flight), when the ground moves nearby. Sakura comes to a wobbly standstill and tries to focus her fuzzy, sparkly, vision on the strange bit of earth. It's moved from where it was before, and now there are stone stairs visible, leading down into the ground. She sways unsteadily and tries to marshal some brain cells into pondering the mystery, when a grey-topped head pokes out of the hole.

“Would you like to come in? You look awfully tired,” a bland, and slightly condescending, voice emanates from the pale oval that must be a face. Sakura wishes she could clear her starry vision.

She knows this voice, too, and despite her exhaustion she manages a stab of fear at the coincidence of it all.

She cannot afford to turn down any offer of shelter now, though. If he doesn't kill her, Kabuto might even be kind enough to see to her overstrained heart.

With nowhere else to go, and no other option but a quiet and painful death on the forest floor, Sakura nods her heavy head and murmurs a tired “Yes,” with no small amount of effort.

She thinks it's a good thing he's coming closer because the ground is rushing up to meet her face very quickly. The night spins down into darkness just as hands close over her shoulders.

Chapter Text

She awakens slowly, and to a generalised ache that throbs throughout her entire body with every heartbeat. Her eyelids feel like they're glued closed, and she doesn't bother trying to open them. Wherever she is, she is alive, and if there is danger nearby she could do nothing about it in her current state, anyway.

Her mouth is dry, but she thinks that must be the result of deep sleep because she doesn't feel otherwise dehydrated in the least. She is, in fact, quite comfortable. Aside from the overall aching of her body and the way it seems to protest that this whole 'lying down' business is really much too strenuous. The muscles in her calves cannot relax any further than they have already, yet they feel as though they are immensely strained, like she's at the end of a marathon even though she's lying down. That dichotomy brings her memories of the past two days into sharp relief against the shadowy backdrop of her eyelids.

She sees her own gloved hands, chakra scalpel delicately slicing into heart muscle, parting the fibrous tissues to reveal a bead of darkened meat, where unnatural cell death has occurred. This man was a regular in the hospital; he had suffered a string of heart attacks, resulting in a severely weakened heart. He did not have long to live, but she thought she might be able to fix him, and he had nothing to lose. She remembers being excited to find this damage, because it meant there was indeed something she could do for him, and if her rewiring had been allowed to be completed he may have gone on to live for many years. He may also have died, but that was the choice he made when he accepted her offer. He was no doubt dead by now. If only Tsunade had given her just a little more time, she may have been able to save him.

Then again, Tsunade was a legendary healer. If anyone could understand what Sakura had been attempting, it would be her shishou. Maybe he was still alive. Maybe Tsunade saved him.

Tsunade. Sakura feels hot tears well up behind her closed eyelids, despite her exhaustion. Even through the familiar haze of painkillers, she can feel more than just her lungs hurting in her chest. If only Tsunade would have talked to her, given her a chance to explain instead of leading with an ANBU squad.

She sighs gently, trying to expel a heavy ache from her lungs that has nothing to do with her injuries.

When her tears are drying on her cheeks, and the painkillers have overtaken her grief, Sakura gives in and drifts down under a soft narcotic cloud.

-

She floats in and out of consciousness over the next twenty four hours, vaguely aware of someone checking on her every once in a while. In her cloudy brain she thinks it might be Naruto, but the footsteps are too soft, the presence too quiet to be her loud-mouthed friend. Sometimes she hears a soft humming, as though whoever is checking on her is displeased with her progress. In her more lucid moments she acknowledges that her caretaker is probably Kabuto, but her body hurts enough that she can't quite bear the added discomfort that accompanies that thought, so she pushes it aside.

She suspects that the dosage of whatever painkillers she is being given has been increased, because she doesn't manage to string together a coherent train of thought again for several more days.

-

The next time she wakes is different. Her head is clearer, her body doesn't hurt so much, and her eyes actually open this time. She darts a glance around the room from her prone positon, and notes that she is alone, and that wherever she is, they really don't believe in decorating. The walls are bare concrete, as are the floor and ceiling. There is a stand to her left, hung with an IV bag full of what she assumes is a saline solution and a minimal quantity of pain medication, judging by her alertness. A heart monitor, oxygen saturation monitor, and various other machines are pushed up against the walls and she's relieved to realize that the only thing attached to her body is the IV inserted into the back of her hand. She can only assume that most of the varied apparatus' arrayed around the room have been hooked up to her at one point or another over the course of her recovery.

No catheter... someone must be expecting her to wake up, and wake up in good condition, too, she muses. She breathes carefully, but deeply, testing the limits of her lungs, and notes only the faintest twinge when she holds her breath for a beat too long. Her legs are not bothering her, so she pushes herself up into a sitting position, and stretches them out before her. They move beneath the sheets without complaint, again only twinging when she holds her toes pointed for too long.

She has to admit, Kabuto did a decent job. She doesn't like admitting it, but there's no denying he saved her life.

She glances up from reacquainting herself with her body when movement catches the corner of her eye.

“Ah, you're awake. Excellent,” Kabuto nods as he enters the room. He takes small steps, she thinks, but he takes them quickly- as though he is not quite as self-assured as he would like people to think.

Sakura nods slowly, “I am.” The moment hangs and she wets her parched lips uncomfortably. “Thankyou, I suppose.”

She doesn't mean to sound quite so ungrateful, but... this is Kabuto. She would never, in a million years, have pictured owing him her life. In all honesty, it genuinely grates.

He fixes her with an insincere smile, “You're welcome, I suppose.”

Sakura snorts her appreciation softly, fair enough, and attempts to swing her legs over the side of the bed. He may have saved her life, but she'll be damned if she's going to remain lying down in his presence if she can avoid it. Of course, while she has recovered to a frankly remarkable degree, she has been prone for the past several days, and a wave of dizziness overtakes her the moment she is vertical. She sways back against the bed, bracing herself with her hands and waiting for her nervous system to compensate for the change in blood flow to her brain.

As the dizziness clears, Sakura becomes aware that Kabuto has moved closer, and she shoots him a wary look.

The grey haired man raises his hands in supplication and comes no closer. Sakura relaxes slightly and waits out the normalisation of her blood pressure.

“Am I,” she clears her throat, frustrated with how croaky she sounds, “am I a prisoner, here?”

Kabuto shakes his head and quirks a small smile at her, “No, Sakura, you're free to leave if like. Although, I wouldn't advise travelling in your current state.”

Sakura sighs and rubs her forehead, abruptly wishing she could just lie down and go to sleep again. She is not quite as recovered as she initially thought, and she doesn't have the mental capacity right now to puzzle out why on earth Kabuto would waste time and resources saving her, if she is not going to be used as leverage of some kind.

“Right,” she mutters, unable to keep all the skepticism out of her voice, but she has a more pressing issue at the moment, “where is the bathroom?”

“Ah,” Kabuto clears his throat minutely, and indicates she should follow him, “this way.”

Kabuto leads her slowly out of the room and down a concrete hall that is equally as grey as her room. This is apparently some kind of medical wing, she thinks, as she peers discretely through doorways, catching glimpses of makeshift hospital rooms.

“Here,” he nods to a door clearly marked with the kanji for 'bathroom,' and Sakura nods her thanks and escapes through the door.

A long room with several stalls, and basins, and a mirror running down one side greets her. At the other end of the room lies another door, and Sakura thinks it might lead to showers. She quickly (as quickly as she is capable of at the moment) finishes up in one of the stalls and confronts herself in the mirror. She looks half dead, she thinks. Although, she probably looked rather haggard before she even left Konoha, if her friends' comments on her physical state were anything to go by. Her skin is pale, her cheeks hollow, shadows smudging beneath her eyes. She is clean, she notes, though she truly doesn't want to think about how she got that way.

She presses her fingers to the hollows of her cheeks and frowns. Her forehead has never needed any help looking bigger than it is, and her almost gaunt appearance only emphasises it.

Sakura shakes her head and pulls away from the mirror with a tiny chuckle. Even now she can't help but be a little vain. She wonders where her vanity had been hiding while she worked herself into the ground with her research. She almost feels... more herself now than she has in months. As though she's woken from a strange, hazy dream that wasn't quite real. Except that it was real, and it kind of ruined her life.

She puts that thought aside for now. Her physical weakness is enough for her cope with at the moment; the mess that her life has become is one problem too many for today.

Kabuto is gone when she exits the bathroom, and she can't help but be thankful for small mercies. He has always been her enemy, and being weak in front of him – not to mention knowing that he has no doubt seen her naked, unconscious, helpless – is enough to make her shiver with undiluted fear and humiliation.

She returns to her room, checks the door for a lock – frets when she discovers there isn't one – and settles for closing it and pushing one of the machines up against it. It won't stop anyone from coming in; the machines are all on trolleys for easy maneuverability, but hopefully the sound of the wheels on the concrete floor will wake her.

Sakura gently lays her tired body down on the bed and stares up at the ceiling. She is mostly healed, but she has never been more exhausted in her life.

She screws her eyes closed before she can get any deeper into thoughts about that.

Chapter Text

The days pass slowly in the hospital wing. The occupants Sakura manages to discover are one and all civillians, which she thinks is a little strange all things considered. Surely there should be injured shinobi? She has been operating under the assumption that she is in Orochimaru's underground compound, but perhaps this is something else?

She recovers her physical strength quickly enough, but her chakra returns far sooner than she had expected it to. Within a couple of days she feels as though she is at full strength, and it doesn't stop there. It is almost as though her capacity has grown throughout this ordeal, and her resting chakra levels have increased. Or... something like that, anyway. She's not entirely sure that that sounds right. If she's honest, it's more like the chakra she has is more potent, rather than that she has more of it.

Sakura tries not to think too long on these issues, and even less about her exile from Konoha. That last one is a little harder to ignore, though. Much and all as she is trying not to fall, she is straddling a pit of despair that she fears has no bottom, and her balance is faltering. She needs to distract herself, and so she tries to strike up conversation with her fellow invalids. They are few, and not overly talkative. Sakura finds herself spending a lot of her time with a little girl who apparently fractured her collarbone falling from a tree. She doesn't really provide any insights into the world Sakura has found herself thrust into, but she chatters away about her family and her friends, and that is enough to stabilise a shaky Sakura.

Soon the little girl is gone, well enough to return home to her family, and Sakura is without any distractions at all. She listlessly wanders the halls, trailing her fingers along the slightly rough surface of the concrete walls in an effort to distract her mind with sensation. She has come to know these halls like the back of her hand, and a couple of days after the little girl is gone Sakura realises she cannot stay here any longer. She is healthy, she has no reason to linger.

She has no belongings, and she is dressed in her own clothing again, having found it lying on her bed when she woke this morning, freshly laundered. She has nothing holding her here, so she makes her way to the waiting room.

She hovers before the large double doors that lead out of the hospital, hesitating and wringing her hands, her mind a cacophonous cloud of discomfort. She doesn't know where to go. When she leaves here, she will be on her own. She's never... really been alone before. Not like this, with no home, no friends, no family.

Tears well, hot in her eyes, and she blinks as she fairly staggers under the weight of her despair. She has no place to go. Does her mother even know she's alive? What must they all think? Naruto... Naruto must hate her! He would forgive her for her experiments if she could only explain, but he wouldn't forgive her for running. For leaving him like his mom, like his dad, like the third hokage, and like Sasuke.

She doesn't realise she has sunk to the floor until her knees begin to ache, but she just curls in on herself and sobs harder. It has all become very real now that she cannot hide here anymore, now that she doesn't have the excuse of needing rest. She hugs her knees to her chest and lets the fear and grief pour out of her in wracking sobs.

-

He sweeps silently through the double doors, letting them drift closed behind him, and almost trips over the girl curled on the floor. He steps back, surprised, and takes in her huddled form, hears her pathetic whimpers. His lips twist with instinctive disdain; he has always found overt displays of misery repulsive, and this one seems particularly self-pitying.

There is a small corner of his mind that points out that her situation is patently Kabuto's fault. Perhaps he himself might have some small measure responsibility, but as this is Kabuto's mess, he feels it should fall to the medic-nin to deal with this... frankly disgusting display.

Unfortunately, Kabuto is not currently available, being off somewhere doing who knew what.

Orochimaru tilts his head and surveys the scene before him, considering simply turning around and leaving the girl to her misery. He can always come back when she is not quite so indisposed and sate his curiosity then. Of course she may leave before he can return, and that cannot be allowed. She must stay.

With a resigned roll of his eyes, Orochimaru swoops down and turns the girl onto her back with one firm hand on her shoulder. Her eyes spring open and she scrambles back, squeaking with fear. He stays crouched and holds his hands up, maintaining silent eye contact as she stills, shuddering with either fear or the dregs of her misery.

He isn't entirely certain what to do at this point. He has no words of comfort to offer her, and she wouldn't take them even if he did, he is sure. He really does wish Kabuto was the one dealing with this.

“Your name is Sakura, yes?”

She flinches, but nods, swiping at the moisture on her face and keeping her eyes on him.

He falls silent again, watches her and waits for something to happen.

Silent moments pass, and finally her eyes harden and she straightens where she sits. “What do you want, Orochimaru?”

Oh, this, he can deal with.

“Is that any way to speak to your gracious host,” he asks, voice syrupy warm and amused.

She blinks at that, the certainty falling from her face. “I... no, I suppose not,” she seems to wither before his eyes, curling in on herself again, and he huffs out a frustrated sigh.

She glances up at the noise and recoils from the hardness of his expression. He rolls his eyes and decides to get to the point. She cannot be allowed to leave, but he would prefer her to stay willingly.

“Do you have anywhere to go, child,” he asks, pitching his voice so that the words sound... not entirely unkind. He knows he is salting open wounds, but there is nothing else for it. He braces himself for incoming tears.

As predicted, her eyes fill again, and she shakes her head miserably. Fortunately, she doesn't immediately revert to a sobbing ball of self-pity.

He forces his expression to soften into something that might almost be called sympathetic, if one were being generous. “I see,” he allows the moment to stretch, letting her feel the full weight of her circumstances. “I suppose you might stay here, if you wish. What use might you be to my village?”

She swallows hard, he can see her throat work, and she waits a long time before she answers him. “I... I'm a jonin med-nin,” she murmurs, eyes staring into the middle distance and swimming with tears.

He tilts his head in a show of thoughtfulness, and tries to capture her eyes with his, draw her out of her memories. She blinks, tears slip down her cheeks, and her eyes meet his. She is blank and hurting at the same time, and he feels a rare twinge of empathy. He knows that expression, he's felt that way before. The mutilated bodies of his parents flash before his eyes for a split second before he can stop them. He ruthlessly squashes the memory down, and his expression hardens again.

“Very well. You may stay,” he nods, and rises to his feet, running an assessing gaze over her. She is in no state to join his shinobi at the moment; they are an undisciplined rabble who would eat her alive in her misery. “I will arrange your accomodations, but you must stay here for now. Do not leave this wing of the compound until I return for you.”

She doesn't raise her eyes, just nods as she stares unseeingly at the floor. He hisses with frustration and strides over to her, grabs her chin and tilts her face up to his. “Do not leave this wing,” he rasps, gold eyes boring into hers as though trying to compel her to understand.

Her green eyes are wide as she nods, a strained whisper, “A-alright, I won't. I promise.”

Satisfied, he pulls away, and sweeps out of the hospital wing as silently as he had entered it.

Chapter Text

Sakura rubs at the place where his fingers had gripped her chin, trying to work the tingling sensation out of her skin. It's an uncomfortable feeling, like sparks of static electricity in her flesh. It almost feels a little familiar, but she can't quite place it.

The adrenaline from her encounter with Orochimaru briefly supressed her sadness, but it begins to return now, a low ebb of despair lapping at the edges of her. She swallows, forcing back the few tears that spring to her eyes. The floodgates have opened, but there is barely anything left to pour forth now. She is wrung out and raw.

He didn't say how long she would have to wait before he came back for her, so she returns to what she thinks of now as 'her' room and sits on the edge of the bed. She can't bring herself to lie down when she knows he will be coming back for her; she has no intention of allowing herself to be even more vulnerable than she already has been in front of him. If she had any energy left for emotion she thinks she would be mortified to have let him see her in such a pathetic state.

She brings her fingers back to her chin, and rubs again at the place where his fingers had been. The tingling has faded, but she finds herself wondering about it; why did it feel familiar? Where has she felt it before?

No answers come to her, and she puts the matter aside. She is exhausted from her breakdown; maybe she will be able to place the sensation when she has slept and recovered some.

It is several hours later that Orochimaru returns, and Sakura has barely managed to keep her eyes open while she waited for him. His appearance in the room shakes her fully awake, and she stares at him for a long moment. She had been so preoccupied with her pain earlier, that she failed to take in his appearance. In fact, she has always been distracted in his presence, by pain, by fear, by adrenaline. This is the first time she has ever seen him clearly.

He is of average height (she'd always assumed he was tall), and slim build. In fact, if you look directly at him, he almost seems ordinary, apart from the gold eyes and long black hair. But the impression out of the corner of her eye is one of immense power, of the kind of magnetic presence that draws the eye. She would not be surprised to see the air around him shimmer with heat, such is the magnitude of his tightly compressed chakra. His eyes are gold, yes, but that is not the most interesting thing about them, she thinks. It is the intense intellect that lends his gaze a sharp, hawklike quality, as though he is always hunting prey of some kind. She has always had an impression of white and black and gold from him, a blurry, menacing figure. She finds now that, although he is intimidating merely by the way he holds himself, she isn't afraid. She supposes that comes from the fact that he could easily have harmed her earlier, and yet he hadn't.

He shifts impatiently as she takes her time standing from the bed, and she feels a spark of fear then. It dissipates when he turns his back and strides from the room, and she is left to hurry after him.

She doesn't ask where they are going, or why he is allowing her to stay. She supposes she is a fugitive now, much like he, and no doubt all of his shinobi, are. She is being allowed to stay because she may be of some use to him, and recruiting ninja must be difficult when the only ones willing are criminals.

As they leave the hospital wing Sakura takes to looking around. The area immediately surrounding the hospital is quiet and empty, but not far beyond there are crowds and markets and even a tavern. Sakura is amazed by just how many people there are, all living underground. The crowd falls silent around Orochimaru, as though he occupies a curious bubble of space that prevents loud noises, and part before him with respectful bows and mutterings of “Otokage.” She sticks close to him and keeps her gaze lowered, avoiding eye contact with the people who stare at her with questions in their eyes. She doesn't have any answers for them, only questions of her own.

It takes a good fifteen minutes to traverse the compound, but Sakura feels certain it is in fact much larger again than it appears. So many people, they must live somewhere.

Orochimaru makes an abrupt right hand turn just as they break through the other side of the crowd, and leads Sakura through a winding maze of twisting hallways. She is certain she will never remember how to come back this way, and experiences a stab of fear that Orochimaru is going to lead her to some laboratory and use her for his experiments. She can find no reasonable argument that refutes this theory, and her steps falter.

Orochimaru slows as she does, and she fights the sudden urge to turn tail and run. She is utterly lost among the labyrinthian halls, with no way out; running will not save her.

When her steps cease altogether, the otokage pauses, and she watches him for any sign that he is going to attack her. When he turns to look at her over his shoulder, he seems irritated. She takes this as something of a good sign. If he were tormenting her, playing with her before he closed in for the kill, he would be gloating and fairly vibrating with amusement at the gullibility of his prey. He is none of those things, just annoyed, judging by the narrowing of his eyes.

Sakura licks her dry lips, and tries to keep breathing evenly.

“Where are you taking me,” she asks, voice shaky despite her best efforts.

Orochimaru's eyes roll skyward as though he is asking for patience, and he turns to fully face her. “Are you addled in some way, girl?”

His voice is dry and it rasps like stone. She can feel his impatience in the air.

She swallows, shakes her head, “No, I just want to know where you're taking me.”

She just barely resists the urge to preemptively cower from his response to her boldness.

His eyes narrow further, “To the quarters I have had prepared for you. At this rate I may make a detour to my lab; it seems you are in need of cognitive testing.”

Sakura's eyes go wide and she hopes against hope that his threat is an empty one. “I, no, I'm fine. Nevermind,” she ends on a breath and lowers her eyes, annoyed with herself for being embarrassed by his assessment of her. She shouldn't care whether he thinks her cognitively impaired or not. He is, and always has been, her enemy.

She can feel him looking at her and she is uncomfortable under the weight of his judging gaze. After a long moment, he turns and continues down the narrow, concrete corridor, and Sakura glares for a while at the swaying ends of his black hair as she follows him.

At least he doesn't seem to want to hurt her, she supposes.

A short while later the endless, winding corridors become speckled with doorways and eventually, Orochimaru halts before one. Sakura stops several feet away, with no desire to get any closer to him. The pale man eyes her with a mixture of amusement and impatience, and gestures to the door. “You will stay here, for now. Food will be brought to you, and when Kabuto deems you fully recovered you may join the rest of my shinobi.”

Sakura nods slowly and, at his raised eyebrow, enters the room. The door locks behind her the moment it is closed, and the pink-haired woman sighs.

So she is a prisoner, then.

Chapter Text

Kabuto does not return for days, and the time spent waiting is agonising for Sakura. Her room is small and uninspiring; a bed, a chest of drawers, and a tiny, attached bathroom. She takes to lying on her bed and staring at the grey ceiling, trying to imagine patterns in the grain of the concrete. Her mind starts out slowly, thinking about what she has done, the people she's fixed. She wonders if they realise yet that she has helped them? Wonders if, when they do, perhaps she might be allowed to come home? She pushes this thought aside whenever it rears its unlikely, naive head. That is not a thought for now. In fact, none of the thoughts she has are thoughts for now.

Her frustration grows as the days pass and the only stimulation she has is the groan of the door opening and her food being slid inside. One of the people responsible for feeding her is none too careful with the sliding of the tray, and sometimes half her meal ends up on the floor. She cleans it up out of sheer boredom, and because she figures that the people who are feeding her probably assume she is some kind of dangerous criminal. No way they'll come in just to clean up spilled food.

When that thought first crosses her mind, that they seem afraid of her, it stirs something deeply uncomfortable in her mind. That she is, in fact, a criminal, and they may be right to fear her. She has done some terrible (wonderful) things. The thought brings tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She wants to not be here, to not have done the things she has done. She wants to be home, wants to see her friends and family, and be seen again. Seen as Sakura. As who she is, and always has been, not as some dangerous criminal, as the monster who changed people.

Saved people.

She blinks away the tears. Yeah, she saved people, but at what cost? They never wanted the things she did to them, never gave their permission for her to change them that way. Maybe some of them will be grateful, but she's certain that others will hate her for what she has done to (save) them.

Anger swirls in her then. Frustration, that they won't see her brilliance, her innovation, only the terrible steps she took to get there.

Her heart feels heavy and violent as it beats against the cage of her chest, and the immense pressure that builds behind her eyes makes her think they might burst from her skull and drain down her face. Her body shudders and the room begins to quake around her, though she thinks that is simply her mind unpicking itself, neurons unwiring, unfiring. Reality feels as though it is folding in on itself, as though her entire being is about to explode in a bloody corona of molecules and chakra.

She thinks it has happened, she has broken into incalculable numbers of pieces, though she can't have, surely, if she can locate a sensation on a part of her body? There is pressure on her chest, from the outside now, not just the inside, and she gets the impression that she is horizontal. The cacophonous roaring in her ears parts just so, to allow a hissed “enough!” to reach her conscious mind, and she feels a curious obeisance from the overwhelming rush of chakra hurtling through her body. It slows, just enough for her vision to clear of the black and static lightshow she had been experiencing, just enough for her to see narrowed golden eyes. They look angry, she thinks, and maybe a little uncertain?

She watches his thin lips move, sound reaching her slowly through her overloaded synapses. “Enough, Sakura.”

She heaves a great sigh as the burning pressure in her body eases to a merely unbearable tingling. It makes her twitch and she is grateful when he draws his elegant hands down her arms, rubbing the patchwork static from her flesh.

She hunts out his eyes with her own, and once they are caught, asks “more?” in a tiny, pleading voice.

He looks strangely like a trapped animal for a moment, but then huffs out a raspy, annoyed breath, and presses his palms to her hands with a curt, “where?”

“Everywhere,” she whispers, squinting her eyes against her own discomfort at the situation, but she cannot process this many sensations at once; she thinks she might go crazy. The tingling hurts, makes her want to claw her own skin off, but he makes it better somehow. His touch is like a magnet, drawing all the tiny bursts of energy into a point, and then dissipating it. She doesn't care how or why it works at the moment, she's just immeasurably grateful that it does.

His face twists into a displeased frown, lips thinning into a line, and he continues to press his hands to her only when her entire body twitches and spasms and her face contorts into a rictus of pain. “Please,” she groans through clenched teeth.

She keeps her eyes closed, trying to spare them both some discomfort, and focuses on the receding sparks of arcing sensation. He focuses mostly on her arms and lower legs, lays his hand on her forehead once, and she almost cries with relief as the itching, dancing energy drains from her brain, through her skin where his palm makes contact.

She is utterly drained, and drifts off to sleep at some point when most of the erratic hurt is gone.

She doesn't see the disconcerted golden eyes glaring at her, nor hear the muttered “Kabuto you arrogant little cretin.”