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silentvoicescryingout · 1 year

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in love & war

For selin, by silentvoicescryingout

Twenty-one

Hyuga Neji stands before her, a perfect four paces away, for propriety's sake. He offers a small, respectful bow. Sakura tips her chin in response. They stand silent, observing each other as those around them exchange greetings and kenin bustle about in an organized fashion. A restrained, but excitable energy fills their surroundings, but does not quite reach the pair.

His long hair flows to the silken belt holding his robes together, the top half swept back into a neat bun high on his head. The strands shine, chestnut brown and glossy like oil in the sunlight. His eyes are pale like the moon, near-white with the barest lavender tint. The goddess’ favor, the histories say: irises as powerful as they are ethereal. A fine nose, shapely lips and arched brows give a delicate facade to a man known to be stern, far more likely to frown than smile.

“A pleasure to see you, Hyuga-san,” Sakura murmurs, tipping her chin once more, slowly and gracefully as she had been taught.

Everything from the perfect posture she held when she straightened again to the shifting of her gaze slightly to the side of his face was second nature. Truly second as this delicacy, this gentile performance was so at odds with the way she spent the majority of her time.

Her muscles were used to being bunched tight, head constantly swiveling to and fro, poised to attack or be attacked.

“The pleasure is mine, Sakura-san,” with these words, he takes a single step forward. The swishing of his fine robes accompany the movement, bringing with it a gust of his scent.

He smells of patchouli and the slightly spicy-sweetness of persimmon. Pleasant, but it does not compel her to take a deeper breath, to inhale and experience more of his essence. His appearance is fine, his body tall and lean and strong, but she does not experience any quickening in her heart, nor heat in her veins. If anything he is simply…familiar. Someone she is used to, and can be comfortable enough sharing her presence with.

“I do wish you would call me by my given name,” he says. The words sound sincere, but his delivery is lacking. Bland, even. “You have long permitted me to use yours.”

“Aa, I have,” Sakura replies, her lips spreading into a small, demure smile. So well practiced, she does it without thought. “But I know how highly you value your family name.”

They had been children of only five and seven years old, the first and last time she had called him by his first name.

It is Hyuga-san, to you! Do not address me so casually, girl! He had said. And so she had not, ever since.

His lips curve in a shadow of a smirk before he tilts his head in a small, rueful bow. In the next moment, his hands emerge from their place tucked into his billowing sleeves, revealing pale flesh marred in a few places with thin scars. He offers a long-fingered hand.

Sakura curls her fingertips lightly around his, their callouses scraping slightly against each other. A gaggle of maids gather at their backs, waiting until the pair has taken about five steps before following after them as they begin to walk about the garden.

“The cherry blossoms are blooming beautifully,” Neji murmurs, cutting a glance at her with his pale eyes.

Sakura stares back into them until he looks away, turning to glance up at the hanging branches, tracking the few petals that float to the floor with each gentle breeze.

“They are,” she finally agrees, smiling gently.

“As they should, being your namesake,” he adds. A small giggle bubbles in her chest and she glances at her companion once again.

“Do you flirt with me, my lord?” she asks. His head turns and he glances down to study her face.

“I suppose,” he says, arching a fine brow. “It is part of courting, is it not?”

Sakura rolls her eyes, emboldened by their distance from the other people meandering about as they take a less-beaten path, wandering into the less tamed sections at the very edges of the garden.

“Courting does not make much sense for us, does it?” she huffs a quiet laugh. “We have been betrothed since I was born.”

“Longer than that,” he corrects. With a gentle squeeze over her fingers, he draws them to a stop. Her hand drops from his as he steps— sweeps — a few feet away to stroke a finger against the delicate petals of a brightly colored flower. “It was actually since I was born. And you took a terribly long time to show up.”

Their chaperones have stationed themselves just outside of the enclave they disappeared into, within technical earshot. But, they had been engaged for years. If they had not completely scandalized each other yet, it was unlikely to happen now.

Sakura leans into the thin trunk of a small tree and relaxes her posture, crossing her arms and ankles.

“You are only two years my senior, Hyuga-san,” she drawls. “Too young to even note the difference when your soon-to-be bride came into this world.”

“That is what you think,” he mutters. His fingers sweep over the differently colored petals, almost startlingly gentle. Those same hands had spilled much blood. “I was waiting for you, of course. Most impatiently.”

“You joke so masterfully, my lord,” Sakura deadpans. Neji hums in amusement, as close to a laugh as she has ever heard from him in more than two decades.

He turns, capturing her gaze as he moves toward her slowly. His steps are steady and sure, but graceful. Raw power and nobility wrapped in one man who has been bathed in gentility and blood for as long as he could read his letters and hold a sword.

Just like her.

When he finally stops, his steps have brought him within two paces of her leaning form, close enough that he does not have to reach far to rest a hand at her shoulder. His palm brushes featherlight over the topmost fabric of her luxurious robes, stroking down to tickle his index and middle finger at the sliver of exposed flesh at her wrist.

“Never would I joke about my affections toward you,” he says in a low voice. His hand withdraws, and he straightens, peering down at her with a haughty expression.

Sakura has been in his company long enough to know that it is simply the way his face looks.

“You do all the time,” Sakura mumbles. “We both know this is not a love-match, my lord.”

“Is it not?” He raises a dark brow, pale irises tracing every line and curve of her face. “Love exists in all its varying forms.”

The attention is not discomfiting for it is familiar. As is the barest hint of heat in his gaze.

As is the press of his lips to her mouth, chaste and soft. First, to her upper lip, then the lower. When her mouth parts on a sigh and she sinks more fully into the rough bark behind her, he presses deeper, shaping his mouth to hers perfectly. Practiced.

She can nearly predict how long it will be before he pulls away, having become used to the routine. She knows that his tongue will slide out to flick lightly over her lower lip next; then he will dip his head to press a peck to the side of her throat. On the spot that he will place his mark on her, as he’d promised when she was eighteen and he, twenty.

When he pulls back to stare down into her face, they will smile. His small, restrained, and hers gentle.

“How scandalous, my lord,” she whispers, watching the way his nearly nonexistent pupils dilate in their proximity. “Accosting a maiden behind the backs of her chaperones.”

His eyes roll dramatically and he hums his quiet laugh again, straightening and reaching up to swipe at the dot of saliva lingering beneath her lips with the pad of his thumb.

“At this point, I believe they wish I would accost you,” he scoffs. “We have been engaged for longer than many people have been wed.”

“Because there is a war raging,” she reminds him, quirking her brow. His tiny smile tamps the fire that began to spark in her veins.

“That there is,” he nods. “And so I do not believe it is a sin for me to want to share at least a kiss with my betrothed every once in a while. Considering the battlefield may take me before you ever will.”

“Speak not of such things,” she frowns and he sighs, leaning in to press his lips to her temple before sliding back smoothly, stopping at a distance of four paces. Proper.

“Apologies, my lady,” he nods, his features taking on a sterness and stoicity. “I meant that perhaps the battlefield will take you before I have had the chance.”

Sakura barks a laugh, pressing her finger tips to her lips to muffle the sounds after the initial outburst. Shaking her head, she straightens and steps away from the tree, once more taking Neji’s outstretched hand.

The two of them reemerge and melt back into the promenade. They complete a circle around the huge koi pond, their steps small and graceful, each dip of their chins and tilt of their heads so refined it might have been choreographed.

Neji’s pale eyes sweep their surroundings one too many times, and once Sakura follows his gaze, she knows.

“Lady TenTen is a vision, is she not?” she smiles at the young woman standing a few yards away, toying with a tiny, ornate blade of glass and metal. “Her beauty is nearly as impactful as her skill with the blade. And the ax. And the bow.”

“Indeed,” her fiancée says dryly.

TenTen dips her head to Sakura before her chestnut eyes shift a bit higher, focusing behind her. They soften before slipping away quickly as she turns her head.

“You know I would never fault you,” Sakura says softly, squeezing his fingers lightly. “What was it that you said of love?”

“I have arranged with my father to build us a small estate, away from the center of the compound,” Neji’s voice holds a sharp edge that pricks like needles against Sakura’s skin. “By the time we are wed, it will be complete. I know living with my clan, and their archaic ideals troubles you. We shall have our own space to live and grow together.”

“Hyuga-san,” she sighs. “I know you heard what I said.”

His hand squeezes hers and they come to a stop, mere feet away from his parents and her master. “My commitment, my loyalty and my protection are yours. My life is yours. So it has been since you came into this world, and so it shall be, until the goddess reclaims our souls.”

No such declarations are made of his heart. She knows the truths unsaid, in her own soul feels them deeply.

With a heavy exhalation, he frees her from his grasp, gliding away and leaving the scent of patchouli, persimmon and the tang of pain behind. He disappears, graceful, behind another wall of green, the length of his robe teasing the petals of low-bearing flowers.

She pulls a fan from her sleeve and waves it open to demurely shade half of her face.

A few moments pass as she gazes around with her practiced, pleasant smile, and shifting movements engages her peripheral vision. Lady TenTen bids her graceful goodbyes with a bow, and trails with small, careful steps in the direction Neji has just gone before.

Her mouth twitches, and she wonders not for the first time how well she and the weapons-mistress know the taste of each other’s lips.

Taking leisurely steps around the pond, peering about the garden, she thinks of the future, the children she might bear. She imagines what kind of parents she and her soon-to-be husband will be, having spent their formative years in battlefields flooded with blood. Ponders the sacrifices she is willing to make for her husband-to-be’s happiness and levity of heart.

Just twenty-one and twenty-three.

She reflects on the warm fingers attached to hers, the pale irises that flick toward her face every few moments. The same ones who stray whenever a certain iron-forged lady draws near. Those eyes, so beautiful, dangerous, reminiscent of the moon that they all pray to.

Yet she can only appreciate them for a moment before her mind is taken with visions— of black, of deep blood red, circling about in a burning iris.

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

Fifteen

Pain. Cold. Wet.

It is these sensations that bring Sasuke from the abyss, back into the world of the (unfortunately) living. His limbs tingle to awareness slowly, and through the fog of his mind he finds that he is shivering, soaked to the bone. He wonders if the pool of liquid at his back is water or his blood. His dulled senses cannot yet tell the difference.

Air rushes into his lungs and agony throbs at his side, causing it to whoosh immediately back out. If he had command of his body, he might open his mouth to scream, yell to the heavens or to hell to decide who will take charge of his soul and let him die .

Pressure at his side jerks him fully into consciousness and then he does scream.

His throat feels bludgeoned, so his voice comes forth more as a whimper, hoarse and quiet.

“Be still,” a soft, distinctly femnine voice sounds near his ear, whispering close under the sound of pouring rain. “I will get you mended. Please, do not move.”

Sasuke’s lids peel open and his cursed eyes bleed, the dojutsu passed down through his bloodline whirring to life.

As if he is just a boy again, blinded by the pure intensity of his new sight, he only makes out the finite details at first. Pearlescent droplets of water clinging to pale, fuzzy hairs the color of ripe peaches, ripples of jade, emerald and prasiolite, specks of pale brown like drowned, fallen leaves during the start of the rainy season.

His cursed eyes hones in on pale skin spattered with freckles, wide-set green eyes taking up a heart-shaped face. Hair strands the color of dampened pink rose petals drip water onto his face. She is beautiful. Exquisite, even.

Goddess? he thinks. Have you come to collect this unworthy son? Perhaps to breathe life into him once again?

“You must stay awake,” she speaks again, bites her full lower lip till it dots cherry-red. “I will help you.”

A small hand, streaked with blood reaches to push back the hair from her face, reveals a lavender diamond at the center of her forehead and suddenly he knows–

This is no goddess.

“ Senju ,” he croaks, clenching the fist he has just remembered he has. “You are…the enemy.”

“Yes,” she nods, bracing both hands against the right side of his ribcage. “I am your enemy in every moment except this one. Right now, I am your savior. Take a deep breath, Uchiha-san, and pray do not bite your tongue.”

The palms resting on his torso give a mighty push and any air he might have breathed is forced out of him as pain lances through his form, the sound of bone grinding to bone echoing in his ears.

Surely, he slips into darkness once more, the reapers’ claws brushing at his ankles before he slams back into himself, groaning like the animal deep within as his ribs are forced into their natural place. He is reminded that the hands bending his bones and body to their will could easily disturb them even more, press them until they become nothing but dust if so she wishes.

He has seen enough of his kin crushed between those insultingly small hands to feel rage and terror in waves.

“Demon,” he curses, spitting blood with his words. “ Senju scum .”

She ignores him, takes his flayed skin in her hands and pulls, drawing it together and then bathing it in cool, fresh chakra, weaving his flesh together like his cousins in the compound do their quilts.

“Easy,” she murmurs as he writhes, cringing away from the sensations.

“Why do this?” he bites out, panting, eyes rolling wildly as she sinks her fingers into him to grasp at the edges of more torn flesh. “I could kill you. Your kindness here could be your end.”

Rainwater fills his gaping mouth as she presses her sharp fingers into a spot near his hip where a blade had sunk in deep, then broken off.

“Aa, it is a good way to end, is it not?” she mutters. The shard of metal slices him on its way out. “I have been spilling blood since I could count my age on both hands. I would much rather die in an act of kindness– even if it is to you.”

“You have the fantasies of a child,” Sasuke scoffs, biting back a growl of pain. “There are no good deaths.”

“There are honorable ones,” she replies.

“There is no honor ,” he hisses. Her lovely, hateful face sways into his line of vision, fingers prodding at the aching spots sprinkled over his chest. “There is only war. And we two stand on opposite sides of it.”

“If honor did not exist, you would be dead, Uchiha-san.”

The girl continues her work of piecing him back together and Sasuke can only swallow the taste or iron down his throat. He knows her words to be true, and has seen the havoc she can wreak with her own two hands many times, if only from a distance. His kin spit on her name, yet shudder when they speak of it.

A woman warrior who can crush a man’s skull between her palms– she offends the Uchiha twice.

“Nearly done,” the angelic face above him turns away as she rifles through the pouch belted at her hip. When she turns back, a small, round container that carries with it the smell of pungent herbs and oils even when sealed shut is clasped in her hand.

The scent of its contents prick at his sensitive nose as she flips open the canister, scooping up the muddy-looking substance with two fingers. It is cold and thick when she smears it over the now-closed gash at his side.

The girl’s hand pauses in the air mid-withdraw and her face jerks up to squint into the distance. Her nostrils flare, green eyes flashing and taking on a luminescent glow.

“Your comrades approach,” she mutters, upper lip peeling away from her teeth. She straightens her posture, rising to her knees as she surveys their surroundings, inhaling deeply. “They are coming, quickly. I must go.”

Sasuke wants to blame his weakness from the injuries he has sustained for his inability to sense his kin before his unlikely savior was alerted to them. Something deep within, where everything is dark and no lies can be beheld growls in disagreement.

“I expect no thanks,” the girl–Sakura is her name, bringer of death and life in equal measure– rises to her feet, still crouched low enough to speak into his ear. “Let this be a testament of a possible future, where maybe our peoples will find peace together.”

The small, round container of her foul-smelling ointment is pressed into his limp hand and then she is gone, her lithe form zipping through the trees before disappearing completely.

In the next moments, while his mind is reeling and his body growing stiff from the cold, he hears a deep voice calling to him.

“ Sasuke! ” it is his brother calling, his voice loud and desperate.

He groans when a large body slams into his shoulder, hands gripping his arms and hauling him up into a half-sitting position.

“Otōto,” Itachi gasps, his fingers slick with rain, trembling as they grip at Sasuke’s face. “You live. We thought-”

“I am fine,” he cuts in, his voice hoarse. He bites back a groan, pulling himself from his brother's hold and sitting upright. “We must return home and report back to Father.”

Despite his (and his unlikely savior’s) best efforts, Sasuke is too wounded to stand on his own. He chooses not to imagine what his fate would have been, the state in which his brother and kinsmen would have found him were it not for the healing hands of a girl who he was duty-bound to hate.

“I wish you would just let us take you to shelter and rest, brother,” Itachi murmurs, walking beside Sasuke’s head as he is carried by four men in a makeshift gurney. “What is so urgent that it cannot wait to be reported to Father for one more day?”

Sasuke blinks water out of his eyes, staring up at the stormy gray sky. The edges of the heavens are darkening, blackness creeping in amidst the swollen rain clouds. He feels that same darkness snaking about the corners of his mind, creeping through the gaps of his ribs and swirling in his gut.

“Senju’s most prized warrior,” he finally says. “She saved my life.”

Itachi is silent for a stretch of time that could have been moments, could have been hours. Eventually, he barks an order, urging the men in their party faster, tightening his lip when Sasuke is forced to bite back pained sounds as he is jostled about.

┍━☽【❖】☾━┑

Eleven

Sakura sits seiza, hands folded neatly in her lap, fingers soft. Her spine is a straight line from tailbone to nape, her chin parallel to the tatami beneath her knees. She has been in this position for nearly an hour while awaiting the end to the intense talks happening on the other side of the shoji.

Pins and needles prick at her calves, a numb sensation verging on pain creeping through her thighs. Still, her face remains unaltered, expression smooth and pleasant, just as Tsunade-shishou taught her.

“They have been talking for so long I believe the war will be over by the time they finish,” a voice calls her attention outward.

Sakura blinks, focusing on the boy sitting directly across from her. He holds himself in the same position, save for his hands which rest on either of his thighs. His long hair is pulled back from in a long, ornate braid, the face-framing portions held in place with a thick hair-band.

“I am sure they will be done soon,” Sakura murmurs. Their chaperone sighs from her post in the corner of the room, unfurling a small scroll for likely the fifth time.

“Neji,” his father’s deep voice booms. With the grace of a prince and the agility of a killer, the Hyuga boy rises to his feet.

He shuffles a few steps forward, stopping alongside Sakura’s kneeling form and offers a low bow to someone (Sakura’s own guardian, most likely) before pivoting smoothly on his heels to offer her the same.

His braid slides off his shoulder, swinging to brush against hers.

“Good-bye, my betrothed,” he whispers, “let us hope we always return from the battlefield and meet again.”

Sakura nods to him, keeping her eyes lowered as he straightens and glides smoothly out of the room behind his father and their accompanying kinsmen.

She inhales through her nose, lifting her chin once more to look straight ahead. The rustle of robes and a soft brush of air touches over her hands as multiple figures pass by quietly.

She watches as Senju Tsunade sinks down to the floor, flanked by her closest maidservant and another woman–Haruno Mebuki. Sakura’s own mother.

She was not allowed to call her such by name. The woman had nursed her, bathed her, taught her how to be a lady since birth, but she had been claimed by someone else immediately after her first breath.

“Sakura,” spoke the woman who named her heir to the Senju. Her parent by right, if not by blood. “There is a matter I…we wish to discuss with you.”

“Tsunade-shishou,” Sakura murmurs in response, dipping her chin and curving her spine ever-so-slightly in a modest bow. “I am always ready to listen.”

A beat of silence and then Tsunade’s fingers twitch. In the next blink of the eye, they settle into a relaxed position in her lap once more, prone against the layers of her robes.

“While your marriage is many, many years off yet,” Tsunade sighs and her trinkets and jewels clink together with the movement of her shoulders, “there are…details which you must be informed of in advance, for your safety and peace of mind. You are now at the age where it is appropriate to receive them.”

As unnatural as it was for Sakura to sit on her knees swathed in layers and layers of fabric with painted eyes and painfully combed hair, Tsunade’s formal approach to this conversation and circular speech was moreso.

“I see,” Sakura utters, uncertainty lacing her tone despite her best efforts.

Tsunade sighs deeply again before her golden eyes flick over her left shoulder, to the woman who has eyes green like young spring leaves and a mouth full and pink and just-barely downturned.

Just like Sakura’s.

“Sakura-san,” the woman begins, dipping her chin. “With Tsunade-sama’s permission, I will explain to you what…what it means to be a wife. How it will be, after the ceremonies and celebrations end and you are taken to Hyuga-sama's marital house.”

She sits, silent and still as her mother–no, she is not– tells her of a night in which she will be asked to bare herself in both mind, body and spirit to the boy who makes jokes of the war and demands she call him by his formal title. She hears a warning of the changes that will occur in her body, spurned and forced upon her by the ceremonial bloodletting, ceremonial joining, and the ceremonial release of her spouse.

Sakura learns that she will be ceremonially bitten, bedded, and then locked in coitus with her one-day husband for an entire night before the beast inside her is forced awake. Then her body will become something she does not know– fragile, sickly, feverish. She will become ill with a hunger for ceremonial breeding for as long as three days in which her husband will satiate her with his seed and then-

Then she will carry the pups that come forth from this honorable union and never see the battlefield again. Left to raise young, manage a house and destined to hunger desperately each month again and again until her death.

“There was a time when things were different,” her mother says in a soft voice. Her green eyes hold a sheen, long, dainty fingers sliding together in an uncomely show of nerves. “When our ancestors first presented and evolved into creatures who shifted with the turns of the moon. They found mates that were destined for them, and these changes in the body happened as a natural progression, with less pain. True Matings are what we call them. It is different now, in our time–”

“True matings are the stuff of legends and fairytales,” Tsunade cuts in brusquely. “We do not know if half of those stories are true, but we do know that your joining with Hyuga Neji will be vital to our victory in a war that has lasted for generations. Peace will come to this land, finally. And your future pups will be the key to the new world borne from it.”

Haruno Mebuki lowers her head, but her green eyes linger on Sakura’s for a long moment. In those mirrored irises, Sakura sees oceans of regret.

Sakura swallows past the lump in her throat, leaning forward to place her fingertips to the floor, hunching over in a deep bow.

“Thank you for your wisdom, Lady Tsunade,” she croaks. “I understand and will honor my duty.”

With the rustle of layers and layers of silk and the tinkle of jewels, Tsunade floats to her feet and sweeps out of the room, her lady maid following closely behind her. Sakura lingers, prone in her bowed position, forehead pointing down toward her wrists.

“Lady Sakura,” comes a soft voice, a trembling whisper. Hands slide up her curved back to grasp at her shoulders. “Come, child.”

“ Mama ,” she chokes. The woman hushes her, shaking her head vigorously before tugging at her shoulders until she sits straight once more.

Tears prick at her eyes and she bites the inside of her cheek.

“Do not fret, my lady,” says Mebuki, green eyes glistening. “It will be alright.”

“I do not want a ‘heat’,” she says thickly. “I do not want to be made into something other than myself.”

Thin arms pull her into a warm chest. Her intricate hairstyle is smashed on one side, but neither of them care.

“You will overcome this,” her mother says. She presses one hand to the side of Sakura’s face. “As you have overcome every challenge brought to you. I cannot protect you…I never could. But trust that this lowly woman will always be on your side. And please…you must remember not to call me ‘Mama’, Lady Sakura.”

Sakura cries quietly into the woman’s chest, shoulders shaking and chest throbbing with an ache.

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

Twenty

“That girl,” Uchiha Fugaku’s voice is a growl, an echo of a time when their kind was feral and closer to the beasts laying dormant inside. “How is it that these so-called men that have been trained by my hand fall to a mere waif of a girl ?”

The room is silent. Men and boys kneel at the edges, positioned by rank, class, age. The few women deemed worthy enough to listen to the proceedings are farthest to the back, kneeling perfectly still and with their heads pointed to the ground.

On a raised dais sits only one man, in an intricately carved chair instead of seiza on a mat. He is the most still, the quietest of them all.

Sasuke keeps his chin tilted down, but traces his father’s predator-like steps as he stalks around the space. His robes are heavy and black, disturbing the air each time he passes by. He carries with him the stench of rust, of aged blood and woodsmoke.

Sasuke hates it. He hates him .

“The Senju’s heir is a force, Otōsan,” Itachi’s deep voice breaks the silence. Their father’s head whips to the side, a hard gaze falling on his eldest son. “Not many men who face her live to tell the story. It is by no fault of their own…her defense is impenetrable. Such is her strength.”

“Such is her trickery, you mean,” the patriarch growls.

Sasuke’s eyes slide shut for a moment. Jade green and pastel pink dance behind his closed lids, the sounds of earth breaking apart and a soothing, gentle voice ring in his ears. He thinks–despite himself–of the cool pressure of her hands, so dainty despite the power they hold as they pushed chakra into him, through him, changing him on a molecular level until he was sure he could never be the same again.

Not trickery , but something otherworldly, to be sure.

“Perhaps we should investigate such trickery for our own purposes, then,” Sasuke says dryly. The silence becomes even heavier, if possible. After a beat he adds, “Father.”

“What exactly is it you say, boy?” His father approaches, and stands a tall, looming presence. Sasuke keeps his eyes on the floor, the protruding tendons in the man’s feet.

“I say, maybe this trickery the enemy utilizes would serve us well,” he continues, “since we are losing this war.”

Here, a ripple through the room. Greater men hunch their shoulders inward while the ladies–his mother and sister among them–clutch their hands in the silken fabric of their clothes.

He dares not lift his head, but his mouth moves unendingly, “The enemy’s trickery , honorable Father, is utilizing the whole of their populace to supplement their military force. Women are for more than bedding, breeding and bludgeoning in the Senju clan.”

“Dare I think my very own son has been poisoned by his enemy’s ideations?” Fugaku says coolly. He steps close enough that his toes brush against Sasuke’s knees. “Perhaps the Senju girl saved your life with a welcoming mouth and sucking cunt? Is that why you spout nonsense?”

“Father,” Itachi calls softly.

Finally, he raises his gaze to meet that of his sire.

“That girl has been trained in battle since she was less than half her age,” he says, voice cold. “She has mastered the healing art, can close any wound and mend any shattered bone. The Senju have crafted a weapon and curative in one. But this is beside the point. They have numbers , twice as many as we have.”

“Half of their number of the Uchiha’s men make three times their forces,” Fugaku hisses. “Our people have been forged by fire and blood.”

“Our people are dying by the hundreds. As our Clan Head, should that not concern you?” Sasuke fights the urge to shrink into himself as his father’s lip curls in a snarl, irises bleeding a deep, blooded red.

“Father, I believe my brother begs a solution that perhaps…requires a different approach than the one we have been using,” Itachi cuts through the intensifying moment.

“My sons seem to be full of thought this day,” Fugaku sneers. He takes one step back, pivots to face the eldest of his children. “Pray that my eldest will actually speak sense.”

“I must agree with Sasuke, my lord Father,” his brother dips his chin only briefly before boldly meeting the clan leader’s gaze. “Our numbers dwindle at a startling rate. The…traditions we uphold mean that we are always at a disadvantage due to our civilian populace far exceeding our military count. Battling outright, no matter the skill of our warriors, will bring slow and hard-won progress. I fear the cost to our clan will far outweigh the benefits.”

Silence again. Sasuke’s fingers dig into his thighs, his chest aching with the need to exhale as he traps his breath between closed lips.

Fugaku paces a step closer to his better son. “What, then, would be your suggestion?”

Itachi swallows visibly. His eyes flit side to side quickly as he searches for an answer.

A tremulous, aged voice fills the space instead: “Sabotage.”

A sharp laugh that holds no mirth falls from his father’s lips, “A tried and true method. We have burned hundreds, thousands of military camps to the ground. Forgive me, Grandfather, but I expected a new solution.”

The entire room swivels their heads to look up at the man sitting on the dais, back curved and hair colored with an abundance of silver and the rare streak of black. His face is a canvas of wrinkles and scars, signifying age and many battles won.

Destruction and mayhem made his story–the man who fought in the first war with the Senju, who rivaled the best of their own in every way:

Uchiha Madara.

“What exactly does the Elder suggest, if I may ask?” the voice of his father’s second-in-command sounds from across the room. “We have already blocked trading lines and taken numerous villages bordering their territory. We have poisoned wells and food and yet they persevere.”

“Today you have told me the most pressing matter is this supposedly indestructible weapon the Senju have in their arsenal,” Madara responds, casually resting his hand over his cane. “This weapon is a girl. A skilled warrior, healer and bargaining chip to solidify their alliance with the Hyuga.”

The commander nods, visibly uncomfortable with the bleary gaze of the nearly ancient man fixed on him.

“To weaken the enemy,” the elder intones, slowly as if to ensure those listening can keep up, “take away their most valuable weapon.”

A beat of silence. Then a gruff sound, what Sasuke supposes is meant to be a laugh, breaks out into the space.

“Your suggestion is to kidnap the Senju’s so-called heir,” Fugaku states. Madara only tips his chin in a nod.

“It is near-impossible to get close to the girl on the battlefield without the risk of maiming or death,” one of their kinsmen pipes up.

More muttered protests and uncertainty filter in from various sides of the room. A common theme among them– retrieving such a dangerous individual would prove nearly impossible.

Nearly, but not completely.

“What say you, boy?” Uchiha Madara interjects, and Sasuke stiffens, meeting that almost-blank gaze.

He swallows, eyes flicking around the room as suddenly everyone focuses their attention on him. His brother watches with a keen eye, wary and concerned.

Green and pink swirl in his mind’s eye, the sound of a soft voice speaking of peace and dainty hands providing relief from pain, safety from death. He thinks of the girl who pulled him back into the world of the living when by all rights, he should have died. Those bone-breaking hands had felt so gentle then…a kinder touch than he had known in years, if ever in his life.

Sasuke clenches his jaw.

“It would be impossible to retrieve the Senju heir in the midst of battle. We would waste manpower and lose many in the process. Even then, the probability of success is low,” he states, voice steady despite the erratic thudding of his heart.

“So?” Madara watches him like predator to prey, patient, waiting for the perfect moment.

“We would need to move when the enemy least expects it,” he continues. Another thick swallow works down his suddenly tight throat. “When she is likely to be unarmed and her comrades unsuspecting.”

“And when would we come across this golden opportunity?” Now it is Fugaku who prods for clarification, his gaze heavy on the side of Sasuke’s face.

He does not turn away from the elder’s watchful eyes, “On the day Senju’s heir is to be wed to the Hyuga prince. Taking her then, we weaken and humiliate our enemies in one.”

Uchiha Madara slides back in his seat, a satisfied grin marring his ruined face. Sasuke feels a heady combination of pride and trepidation roil in his gut. It nearly sickens him, the concoction that makes him think of the cloying scent of blood underscored with the sweetness of early-spring flowers.

┍━☽【❖】☾━┑

Eighteen

Sakura often ponders the fact that she prefers the weight of thick-woven pants and heavy plates of armor to flowing, finely made robes. With her hair tied back in a long tail, bare of any ornaments or paint, she feels her truest self. Simply a body, covered in armor, free from society and all of its conditions and proclivities.

The muscles in her legs and lower back throb with a distant ache. They have been walking for miles, nearly a full two days' journey toward their destination. The horses would tire if they rode them the entire way, so she and her clansmen and women trudged for hours on foot, the sun and sometimes rain beating down on their heads.

Most of the time, the goings and coming backs were a blur–her memory fixated on the moments of action, when warm blood slicked her hands and a forceful enemy tested her grip. What came to her in her dreams were the faces of those who perished before her eyes, some with snarling faces, others peaceful and smiling.

This time, Sakura has the feeling that she will acutely remember the cool brush of the wind, the crunch of sticks and soil under her feet. She thinks that she will remember the sun glinting off the helmets of the soldiers at the frontline, the texture of her favorite weapon’s belt at her waist.

The scent of fire and ash, burning wood, and the sound of screams.

“ENEMY AHEAD!” comes the roar of the general at the front line.

They are caught in an unfortunate position, surrounded by trees and un-level ground. Shouts and growls of aggression filter to her ears as her eyes flit around the mayhem happening at the front. She turns to the rear of their party, where the youngest of their forces, the medics who do not fight and their supplies are being slowly surrounded by men with inky black hair and glowing red eyes.

Sakura is facing off against an opponent before she takes her next breath, using the plated metal at her forearms to block a blow meant for a girl who is likely at least five years younger than she.

Red irises spin, capturing hers and thrusting her into a word of gray and black. In the next second, she is pulsing her chakra, pulling herself back into reality and swinging her blade in an arc, cleaving the man’s head from his body, blood spurting thick and hot over her face.

The young girl plastered to her back shrieks, body rocking with fearful shudders. Sakura forces her backward, step by step as she blocks attacks and sends her fists flying at anyone who attempts to breach the barrier being erected around the supply wagons and non-fighting healers.

“Go, child,” she hisses, reaching back to shove her hand against the girl’s thin chest. “Take to the supply wagons, hide yourself and keep your weapons close.”

Before she can ensure her directions are followed, she is forced to spin around and catch the wrist of a man swinging an ax toward her head in a deadly downward motion. His muscles bulge and tremble with strain as she forces his arm away, fingers clenching so tight that his tendons begin to bend and bones fracture in her grip.

“Yield and you may live,” she mutters quietly, gritting her teeth. Sakura avoids his bloody eyes but catches the snarl that shapes his mouth.

“Senju scum ,” he grunts, one of his hands slipping from the handle of his ax.

That hand reappears clutching a glinting blade which he slices against the small portion of flesh at her side not covered in armor. She hisses in pain and snaps his arm with her left hand, thrusting her sword deep into his stomach with her right.

Ignoring the bleeding in her side, she glances at her surroundings with her pulse thumping in her ears. Tens of bodies litter the ground, most of them–and she feels sick at the rush of relief that sweeps through her–wearing the uchiwa insignia of their enemy.

A chorus of shrieks snatches her attention to the rear where the supply wagons are gathered, healers frantically treating some wounded on the ground. The youngest of their party are crowded behind a few older warriors, Neji in front of them. He rotates in his specialized technique, Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven. Raining arrows are rebounded away from the cowering children– soldiers –while other officers wrangle a second wave of men who had snuck behind during the chaos of the initial confrontation.

She sprints toward the scene, swinging her long blade as she goes and cutting down two. Another meets the end of her fist, flying yards away to collide with a tree with a sickening crack and thud . Skirting in front of Neji, she ignores the pain of arrow tips slicing at her arms and stomps a foot, creating a crack in the earth and a rumble that takes many of the enemy off their feet. From the high branches of the trees, three men drop.

Sakura freezes. Inky black hair tousled and falling to obscure one eye catches her attention, next a shapely mouth and sharp jaw. His eyes, scarlett with black patterns spinning in dizzying revolutions, take the breath from her lungs.

Tall, handsome, terrifying.

It is the boy she once saved, now a man grown. Standing on the opposite side of battle, as always, but nearer to her than he had ever been before.

Her knees buckle and Uchiha Sasuke visibly inhales before releasing a stream of fire over the crack in the ground, scalding the tip of her braid as she ducks under it just in time. The wave of heat against her back causes goose pimples to prickle across her skin, smoke quickly filling the air as the surrounding brush and trees ignite with flame.

More screams and grunts and clanging metal sounds and she pulls herself up to avoid the thrust of a thin blade right where her head was before. This man, dark of mane and pale of face just like that particular warrior falls by her hand.

Even the surprise attack does not weaken them and soon the Uchiha heir calls for a retreat, he and the remainder of his men sinking back into the shadows of woods.

Blackness spots across her vision and her sword clangs to the ground. Sakura finds herself falling to her knees. The forgotten wound at her side throbs with its own heartbeat, a burning sensation spreading to the surrounding flesh.

Uchiha Sasuke stands alone in the distance, close enough still to make out the glow of his visible iris. He watches her for long moments, as her breath rattles through her chest and her form slumps forward heavily. It is only as her face draws near to the blood-soaked soil that she blinks and he disappears.

“ Sakura!” comes Neji’s shouting voice and she finds herself airborne, cradled against a broad chest fastened with slick armor. “What has happened?”

“Poisoned blade,” she guesses, her voice merely a croak. “It will heal.” She does not explain that while she is resistant to poison, she is not resistant to pain. It hurts too much to say.

Instead she slurs, “I will be fine.”

Neji ignores her, roaring orders for water, for medicine and for someone to secure the area and someone else to pitch a healing tent.

Time passes blurrily and at some point she comes to full awareness with a fur-covered palette at her back and nearly white, glowing eyes peering down at her from the darkness.

“Hyuga-sama, it is improper–,” a tremulous voice murmurs.

“She is soon to be my wife,” he bites out. Long fingers stroke underneath her eye and she tilts her mouth in a small smile. “Leave us.”

He scowls down at her face and she smiles wider.

“Greetings,” she breathes.

“Quiet, fool,” he snaps. “You were nearly burned to death and then poisoned all at once. I should ask my father to expedite our ceremony so you may be barred from the battlefield. What possessed you to stand there like an imbecile and be poisoned? Almost incinerated?”

Sakura only smiles more, allowing her eyes to slip shut. More words of admonishment and rather extravagant insults fall on her ears before a just-slightly shaking hand grasps her own, squeezing her fingers tightly. Warm breath exhales unsteadily against her face before a mouth covers hers, lingering there for a deep, slow kiss. It has much more edge, more desperation than usual.

She starts slipping back toward unconsciousness before it is over, her heart thumping steadily and belly filling with a fluttering sensation. For a moment, she wonders what another’s kiss would feel like. Red and black swim in her mind's eye.

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

Twenty-two

Sasuke lurks at the edges of the garden, tracing his surroundings with black eyes. Dressed as a kenin and occasionally finding something to tinker with under the guise of righting one of the extravagant decorations. Finely dressed people–individuals who in any other setting would have slit his throat on the spot–glide by without sparing him even a cursory glance.

In comparison to the hyper vigilance of his clan’s compound and the battlefield, he almost enjoys the sensation of being invisible.

A murmur rolls through the assembled crowd, heads dipping in reverent bows as a tall figure cloaked in a fine black kimono sweeps into the garden.

The man is tall, his features delicate from his long flowing hair to his aristocratic facial structure. His walk is graceful, steady and light despite the weight of near one-hundred eyes tracing his every movement. Hyuga Neji is every bit the prince the nation quietly calls him, bred so well he seems too good even among the most privileged of figures from the most powerful clans.

But his eyes are that of a predator. So pale that light merely reflects off them, lavender in hue but nearly white from afar, his eyes trace his surroundings with practiced accuracy. The civilians in attendance might think it a show of etiquette, but any warrior can see him searching for ill will, for shadows creeping about the edges of this bright, early-spring day to wreak havoc and disturb peace.

Sasuke slinks behind an artfully trimmed bush, lowering his gaze to the vibrantly colored blossoms, fingering one in the illusion of coaxing it into place. He waits long enough that he is sure the groom has made it to the large temple nestled into the very back of the garden before lifting his head.

A priest emerges, waving his hand expectantly to a shrine maiden who moves forward meekly. Sasuke takes this moment to fall into step beside a handful of kenin carrying golden platters holding sake and various small food items, delicately cut and placed on sparkly-white porcelain.

When a lanky young man with dark hair casts him a sideward glance, Sasuke allows the black of his irises to swirl with red, pinning the stranger’s attention as he mouths quick words under his breath.

The platter containing the ceremonial sake is placed in his palms and Sasuke takes measured steps toward the altar where the groom now stands.

Pale eyes meet his as he follows the silent command of the priest to place the sake down gently on the raised platform. They analyze his face for a moment before slipping away in the next. Sasuke exhales slowly as he dips his chin, backing away to stand just behind the shoulder of the shrine maiden.

A minute that feels like an eternity passes. And then a hush goes over the small crowd, and the sound of tinkling metal, and the brush of cloth over grass and stone can be heard.

The Senju heir enters the garden with tiny, careful steps, her head raised high and cherry-red lips drawn in a small, gentle smile. The guests sigh and grin giddily as the bride sweeps past them toward the temple, flanked by two young girls that ensure her crisp white outer robe’s long trains did not become dirtied on the ground.

Pale lashes flutter and Sasuke is suddenly struck by the green of her eyes, somehow brighter among the plant life. They hold a glossy look to them as she offers more smiles and tiny nods as she makes her way to her soon-to-be husband.

The man himself stands taller, if possible. His eyes no longer rove around, instead remain fixed on his bride as she draws near.

The bride, in all her beauty and poise comes to stand beside the Hyuga and they share a knowing, if slightly stiff smile.

Sasuke watches, hands clasped tight behind his back as the ceremony begins. The priest speaks words he does not hear, motioning with hands and purification tools. His gaze remains on the couple who stand a careful distance apart, not even their robes brushing. The Hyuga glances at the woman at his side now and again, but her green gaze remains fixed on the priest.

It is when they both are compelled to reach for the ceremonial sake that Sasuke’s stance loosens by a fraction. Sakura’s eyes trace the movement of her own hand as it takes hold of the small, delicate cup. They linger for a moment before flitting upward, landing directly on his gaze.

Her eyes widen, pupils narrowing to pinpoints but his swirl red and she is slumping in a faint before she has the chance to even take a breath. The guests gasp and Hyuga Neji jerks to grab at his almost-wife as she slides toward the ground. Sasuke stalks forward, casting his gaze to the startled priest who hits the ground with a thud. When pale-purple eyes jerk up, he captures the groom, too.

Weapons are being drawn, voices screech in alarm and confusion but Sasuke hears only muffled sounds. He focuses inward, churning his chakra until it blankets the area and slowly the cries die out, some bodies slumping to the ground and others standing stock still, frozen in place– many with hands reaching for or holding weapons drawn.

He bends, snags the front of Sakura’s carefully folded kimono and tugs her into his arms, swinging her limp form over his shoulder.

Then he is sprinting, taking bounding leaps over small ponds and bushes as voices begint to groan and growl, battling against the restraints of his genjutsu.

He runs, and runs and runs, skirting around the edges of the sprawling estate and throwing himself into the thick of the woods. He runs until his back is slick with sweat, his lips and throat dry like autumn leaves from his heavy, panting breaths.

Miles stretch between the Senju territory and his home and he hardly pauses more than thrice to shift the weight of the slumbering warrior princess onto his back, and creep quietly around base camps manned by more enemies than even he is equipped to handle.

A few times his mind wanders and a startling thought takes him–

Why am I doing this?

He only grits his teeth and continues to run.

┍━☽【❖】☾━┑

Twenty-two

Sakura jerks to awareness, her thoughts sluggish and her eyes bleary. Browns and greens and blacks rush by her vision and it takes a spasm of blinks to take in her surroundings somewhat clearly.

She should be standing beside her groom, taking a small sip of sake and binding herself to him for the rest of her life.

Instead, she is being carried somewhere. And fast .

Her fist slams into a flexing back, landing with brutal force directly on the spine and the figure holding her crumples.

She crashes to the ground, wet dirt immediately soaking into and ruining the pristine white of her wedding kimono. She scrambles to her feet and swings her leg in a kick that sends blood splashing at the hem, her captor reeling back from his partially raised position.

Dropping a knee to his throat and a palm to his head she hisses, “ Who are you? ”

Red eyes stare up at her face, features twisting into a grimace of pain and fury. And Sakura buckles, losing her grip on her opponent and her sanity as she stares into the face of the boy she saved once upon a time.

The boy who haunted her dreams from that day.

Uchiha Sasuke takes full advantage of her moment of shock, slamming a palm into the center of her chest and sending her reeling back, head smacking hard against the ground.

She kicks at him from her prone position, shutting her eyes as he attempts to trap her in his gaze. She slips away from his hold, her steps unsteady and imbalanced due to the weight of her clothes and the heavy ornaments tilted in disarray about her head. They hit at each other with bruising punches, clawing and scrappling for the upper hand.

Thunder claps and rain pelts over them, causing Sakura to slip from her stance in the mud. A sharp dagger materializes in Sasuke’s hand and he moves to swipe at her side, which she avoids by the skin of her teeth. He manages to slice into the outermost of her coverings, leaving it hanging open, limp and drenched.

“Why are you doing this?” she gasps, grunting as she dodges another of his attacks, catching his forearm and bending it until he groans.

“For obvious reasons,” he rasps, freeing himself and attempting to swipe her feet from under her with a low kick. She springs away, ducking as flame bursts briefly from his hands, sputtering out in the rain. “You are valuable to the Senju. Powerful. They will either fight and be weakened without you, or bargain away their victory to have you back.”

“I am no more valuable than the people who clean your estate,” she hisses, dancing away from his attacks. Anger rises within her as she realizes he toils to subdue, rather than kill. “I am Haruno Sakura, a lowly common girl born to a kenin woman who serves in Senju Tsunade’s house. She claimed me in name, but by your clan’s standards, I am nothing. Nothing worth losing a war.”

“You are wrong,” he bites out, growling in frustration as she darts away from his grasp, kicking up a mound of earth to block his advance.

“If you think I will be tortured into revealing my clans secrets,” she shouts, gritting her teeth at the sharp pain as she pivots away from the swipe of his blade and her ankle rolls in the unstable sludge, “you are highly mistaken. I would never betray them.”

“You would betray your dashing groom least of all, I am sure,” he says tauntingly, taking light, predator-like steps as they circle each other. “The Uchiha care little for your cooperation. Having you in our territory, away from the battlefields is more than enough. You might even find your treatment pleasant, should you behave accordingly.”

“Behave?” she chokes on a laugh, her words squeezing past the lump in her throat. Her ruined hair sticks to her face and neck, her opponents inky locks doing the same. Cold water slips between the layers of kimono that had been wrapped so dutifully around her likely mere hours before, ruining the fine fabric and weighing heavily on her back.

Sakura darts forward with all her speed, slamming Sasuke to the ground, her body holding him prone with inhuman strength. Black patterns seep from her seal and snake over her wrists for a second before they retreat and she slumps forward, gripping at the wrist the wields his weapon.

“Kill me here,” she demands, lips trembling but voice deadly quiet and firm. She jerks his hand, his blade until the glinting edge presses to her jugular. “I will die before I am prisoner to a clan like yours.”

“You will die?” he spits his words, blood and spittle joining with rain and salt water on her cheeks. “Just so? You will let me kill you?”

“Aa,” she mutters, and her traitorous fingers begin to shake. “I choose to die knowing I cannot be used for such dishonorable schemes. You will find no victories in me.”

“Dishonor,” he laughs, tossing his head back and guffawing up to the stormy sky. “There is no honor. Only fighting and death and more fighting. You should know as well as I do that there is no place for honorable creatures in war.”

“You are wrong,” she shakes her head. “You are still wrong.”

“I suppose this is your good death, then?” he grins, and it is a beautiful and an ugly thing. “Me slitting your throat, leaving you here to bleed out in the rain and in your wedding clothes is the honorable end you once spoke of?”

“So you do remember,” she mutters. An odd stillness comes over her, seeps into her veins and she inhales deep.

Petrichor, iron, wet grass, soil. Him . Smelling of sage and smoke, ash and spice. She inhales it all, and exhales her resolve.

Pressing forward, she bears down on him with her weight until the blade knicks her flesh, blood trickling down with contrasting warmth to her chest. Her lids lower and mouth softens, her body not even flinching at the spark of pain.

His eyes widen, irises switching from red to black, from black to red in the span of a single second.

Then he snatches back with surprising force, jerking both hand and weapon away so that the latter is discarded feet away in a muddy puddle.

The hand that at one point sought to strike her down rises, shakily, and moves to cup her face.

“What horror have these jade eyes seen to look into death with such a blissful expression?” he whispers.

“The same horrors as your rubies,” she breathes. “Too many, too terrible to name.”

Sasuke’s face tightens and the organ in her chest squeezes in tandem. She finds herself battling the most peculiar urge to laugh, to cry, to scream into the heavens and drown her gaping mouth in the pouring rain.

Here she is, mere inches from the enemy, gazing at his full, blood streaked mouth and wishing, hungering with all her being to kiss him.

She had never hungered for Neji’s kiss before.

Sasuke’s form goes limp under hers, head thumping lightly against the wet ground.

“I am a failure,” he half-coughs, half-chuckles. “My kinsmen would be kind to string me up and leave my brother’s crows to pick at my eyes.”

“What?” she asks, recoiling slightly.

“I cannot kill you,” he sighs, shielding his scarlet eyes with a dirt-smudged hand. When he reveals them again, they are black.

Perhaps closer to a dark gray, this close .

“I cannot kill you, and you will not kill me,” he continues, breaking her away from her wandering thoughts. “Your darling honor makes it so. What will kill us is the storm brewing–we must find shelter. Build fire.”

Sakura can only blink down at him for a long while. Then a chill creeps under her skin while a peculiar burn starts in her belly and she decides to drag herself in a standing position, watching warily, but following willingly as he leads her deeper into the woods.

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

Twenty-two

For as long as his memory serves, Sasuke has known this place to be a home away from home. A tiny bit of paradise where danger was far too afraid to come near, whether that be from the enemy or from within his own household.

His brother had brought him there once to hide away from a battle that had turned south even before it had truly begun. Another time they visited was when his father was raging at another loss and took to lashing out his anger on his smallest child. As the years crept by and he grew strong enough to hold his own in battle and in domestic affairs, Itachi had stopped escorting him to this little haven.

“This way,” he mutters in a low voice, swerving to the left and reaching to push aside a thick blanket of handing vines. He holds still as she slips past him through the opening, the scent of soil and water doing very little to camouflage her own scent.

Fragrant oils like lavender and rose waft from her skin, underscored with something deeper, like jasmine leaf and sweet, juicy fruits.

He is horrified to find that his mouth waters.

It is pitch black inside the passageway and so he takes hold of her elbow, engaging his doujutsu to guide them through safely. Once they enter the heart of the hovel he breathes fire to the lanterns set at the edges of the room, casting it in a sudden, orange glow.

“This is…,” Sakura’s whisper trails off as she pivots on her heel to take in her surroundings.

Weapons and small wooden carvings grace most of the walls, baskets of dried and preserved food anchored to the ceiling. Deep in the space a fire pit is dug out, a makeshift chimney curved upward toward ground level to let smoke filter out somewhere it is likely for others to find.

“We can warm ourselves and shelter here,” he states, swinging damp locks away from his face. “And then…”

He trails off as their eyes meet, jade green and blood red. He knows not what will come next and it appears, neither does she.

What will this temporary truce, if it can be called such, bring?

A visible shiver wracks through his captive-turned-companion’s form and he shakes himself from dooming thoughts and steps toward a pile of quilts. They had been stowed away to this place one-by-one over many years.

“Undress,” he orders, voice edging on too-sharp. He supposes his peacefulness does not have to come with kindness. “You must get dry and warm else you will come down with a devil of a fever. And then all of the drama of me sparing you will be for naught.”

A soft, husky chuckle causes the tips of his ears to heat despite the cold water dripping from his hair.

“Goddess forbid I think you a benevolent soul,” she drawls. “You worry for no reason. I am not susceptible to sickness, nor disease. But I do not enjoy being wet and cold, either.”

Sasuke nearly turns to throw her a bemused glance when the sound of wet fabric slapping onto the stone ground causes him to freeze. The sound comes again, again, again and again for what seems like an eternity as she peels what he imagines is nearly one hundred layers of clothing from her body and drops them to the floor.

His neck heats and a thickness forms in his throat as the wet thwack sounds once more, and then silence. He realizes then that the woman he has just kidnapped, who he had at many times between this day and years before tried to kill is standing behind him– nude.

Worse yet, unarmed. It is humbling and startling in equal measure.

“Here,” he fists a handful of blankets and shoves them behind him in her general direction. Cold fingers brush against his as she reaches for them and he jerks his hand away as if he had touched hot metal.

“Arigatou,” she murmurs. More rustling sounds and she clears her throat before stating in a small voice, “I am decent. I shall turn so you may change as well.”

Sasuke grits his teeth as he slacks off his own wet clothing, shivering as he bundles a thick blanket around his waist.

Without a word, he stalks over to the fire-pit, ignoring Sakura’s suspicious eyes and the way she turns to ensure her front is always to him, a few feet of distance keeping them apart. Inhaling deeply, he exhales a stream of flame, maintaining it until the dried logs catch fire and it spreads to a roaring blaze.

“Convenient,” she mumbles from her spot near the wall.

He scoffs as he goes about ruffling through a bamboo bin for bed rolls, shaking them out onto the floor with more force than is strictly necessary. The skin at his back warms as it faces the fire, but his toes flinch away from the icy stone ground.

As he draws nearer to Sakura, arranging the larger bed roll slightly further from the fire with the intent to create a safe boundary, his ears pick up the sound of her teeth chattering.

“Move closer to the fire, Senju,” he grumbles. “It will not warm you from over there.”

“I am not a Senju,” she retorts pausing briefly before amending, “Not by blood or name, at least. I am Haruno . Sakura. You may call me either of those things.”

“Haruno? Is that even a known house?” Sasuke shakes his head and says, rather nastily even to his own ears, “I suppose you are indeed common.”

“You sound like my betrothed,” she scoffs, kneeling down so close to the fire he for a moment wonders if her blanket will set ablaze. Her back stiffens and she glances over her shoulder with a faraway look in her eyes. “He used to call me common. Lowly, too.”

“Charming,” Sasuke says dryly. “I wonder what other sweet nothings he liked to whisper in your ear.”

Sakura only cuts him a sharp glance before rotating back toward the flames, huddling into herself for warmth. A sharp chill causes Sasuke to move forward despite himself, drawing closer to the fire as well.

“My mother is favored by Tsunade-shishou,” a quiet voice suddenly murmurs. “She was her companion when she was a young girl, a lady in waiting by the time she was my age. When she fell pregnant with me for a traveling merchant, Tsunade shielded her. Mama was stripped of her status and privilege, but remained by her mistress’ side.”

Sasuke finds himself torn between cutting her off and demanding silence so he might concentrate on organizing his wayward thoughts and blocking out her scent, her nearness. A larger part of his being perks in curiosity, hanging onto each word spoken in her soothing, lilting voice.

“When she gave birth to me,” Sakura inhales shakily before expelling a tiny laugh. “Tsunade saw me, and said that she would take charge of me. I was from then on heiress to the Senju clan, future inheritor of the Strength of One Hundred Seal– but I was not her daughter. I was not my true mother’s child, either. Just a lowly, common girl provided with the privileges and opportunity of a princess.”

“And was the honorable Hyuga Neji terribly displeased when he learned the origins of his destined bride?” Sasuke speaks without thought.

Kidnapping, battling and then finding a shaky truce with the enemy was one thing. Fraternizing, conversing about her history and inquiring for details regarding her life was another completely.

The flickering flames cast dancing shadows across her cheeks as they curve with a small smile. “Hyuga-san was disgusted with me for much of our early years. It was not until we nearly died together in battle that he seemed to see me in a different light.”

“You love him dearly,” Sasuke mutters, voice gruff. Why do you care?

Silence reigns for a while. He watches her profile unabashedly, tracing his gaze over the curve of her forehead, the ridge of her nose and slopes of her full, pouty lips. At some point he forgets that he has even made a statement, no longer expecting her to respond as he conducts his distracted perusal of her visage.

“I do not love him,” she whispers, jerking him to the present. “I respect him. I care for him. Deeply . I would lay down my life for him.”

“But you do not love him,” he murmurs, shifting slightly on his feet and wrapping his arms around himself. Despite the crackling flames, the air in this hovel is icy-cold. “You did not wish to marry him. So why today were you walking so beautifully to the altar to do just that?”

He chooses not to acknowledge the compliment that managed to sneak past his lips, and is shamefully glad when Sakura seems to miss it altogether.

“Because it was my duty,” she whispers. “It is my duty. Our marriage is the key to solidifying the relationship between the Hyuga and the Senju.”

He rolls his eyes, “Your clans have been allied for nearly a century. Longer, depending on who one asks. Marrying off the sole heir of the Senju to the Hyuga would only serve to fan their hubris and stoke their pride. That is their lifeblood, of course.”

“And the Uchiha are not prideful?” green eyes land on his face, tinted orange from the flames. “Is it not your clan who refuses to permit women and lower-class members to participate militarily despite your dwindling numbers?”

“We do not need to rely on women and servants to aid us in war,” Sasuke’s retort is knee jerk, but weak-willed. He has questioned these choices on his own, many times–has challenged the idea of his clan setting itself at an inherent disadvantage for something so fallible as ‘tradition’.

“Ah, because women are too weak and commoners’ blood is not worthy to be spilled,” she drawls. Her tone is biting, but her voice is frustratingly musical to his ears.

“That is the belief of the clan,” he mutters, watching her gaze swim with deep disappointment. His chest tightens and he shakes himself mentally. “Whether I hold the exact same beliefs as my clan is neither here nor there.”

Why he feels the need to defend himself to this woman is beyond him. He wonders in a moment of restrained exasperation if perhaps his father was correct and the Senju women were indeed mistresses of trickery.

It would explain the lump that forms in his throat each time her long lashes flutter and her gaze meets his own. It would provide an excuse for his constant staring, his horrendous desire to draw close and inhale her scent of fruit and flowers once more. Perhaps it would make it clear the reason he finds himself stiffening with an emotion he refuses to call concern when he notes that the edges of her mouth are blueish and her hands and legs are shaking.

“Why did you take me?” her voice draws him out of his frantic musings.

“You are a valuable hostage,” he says flatly.

“And when I am no longer that?” she questions. Her voice is softer than it was before, less accusatory and more resigned. “When I am eventually found to be useless for information, and end up being killed…what will the point have been? How was it worth the risk?”

“Any risk is worthwhile when it could be the key to turn the tides for my clan,” he growls, the sound rumbling low in his throat. “ Anything is worth an end to this war.”

“Does one side have to come out victorious for the war to reach an end?” she sighs, drawing her knees to her chest.

“Are you a pacifist then?” Sasuke questions, a cruel edge to his tone that something deep within him manages to regret. “After taking the lives of hundreds of men, of my kin , you yearn for a peaceful end to it all?”

“I bled to the blade before I bled to become a woman,” her voice is tight, as if she is just-barely reigning in her frustrations. “That is not the kind of life I would wish for my own children. This fighting…there is no joy in it. No victory, either. Only death, and pain.”

Sasuke prepares to retort, but then Sakura’s face screws in a pained expression, eyelids drooping as her shoulders quake with a violent shiver. He hesitates for a moment, before moving to drag the bedrolls he found and his remaining quilts closer to the fire.

Then he sits beside her, so close that their covered arms brush. Her head whips to the side and she peers up at his face with a squint.

“What are you doing?” she asks weakly. Her voice is small, her lips pale and quivering.

Yet a deep flush has residence on her cheeks, crawling over the lightly freckled bridge of her nose.

“Sharing warmth,” he mutters.

Ignoring his own trepidation and her small gasp, he reaches an arm around her shoulders, slowly, drawing her slightly closer until her head is underneath his chin. When she shifts, tilting her chin to look up at him with wide eyes, her cheek brushes against his and he jerks.

“You are feverish,” he murmurs, cupping his palm over her forehead before he can gather his suddenly racing thoughts. “I thought you could not fall ill.”

“I do not-,” her voice breaks off on a violent shudder and a feeling like needles piercing his skin washing over him.

He inhales to speak again when her scent floods his senses, somehow more intense than before. It is almost cloying, thick and…alluring. Sasuke exhales harshly, clasping a hand tightly to her shoulder before shifting the hand at her head down to rub briskly at her arm, gathering the covering closer around her form. By the moment, the weight of her feels heavier against him and alarm spikes through him when her lashes flutter sluggishly and her virident eyes gaze up at him with a glittering sheen.

“Stay awake, Sakura,” and he shivers, too, because somehow he can taste the syllables of her name against his tongue. “Tell me what I can do. I am no healer.”

“You wish to care for me, Sasuke-san?” her lips curve in a lazy, tiny smile. The expression falters and her brow furrows. “Perhaps this is…your repayment for me saving your life?”

Her words become more slurred as she goes on.

“Call it what you wish,” he snaps, gathering her closer until she is all but in his lap. Her scent is dizzying, spurning something within that he cannot understand. “Simply tell me what to do .”

“You know, I dreamed of you after that day,” she is panting now, beads of moisture gathering at her temples. “And when…when I kissed my betrothed, I thought of your eyes. Red like rubies.”

“ Sakura ,” he growls. Then he freezes, flaring his nostrils and inhaling deeply again. Fragrance like nothing he has ever known seems to wrap around him, seep into his insides and curl around his vital organs. “It is heat. You are…you are going into heat.”

┍━☽【❖】☾━┑

Twenty-two

Sakura feels strange, each of her thoughts cycling slowly as if through a heavy, suffocating fog. Outside stimuli struggles to reach her through the sensation of her pulse pounding in her ears and the chills creeping over her flesh.

When the word ‘heat’ filters through her consciousness, though, her entire being freezes and time seems to come to a halt.

“What?” she breathes. Rather, she tries, as her air is caught and held hostage in her chest.

“You have begun going into heat,” the man holding her against his chest replies. She can hardly remember how he got to be so close.

“No,” she mumbles. Pulling herself away is like attempting to move a mountain, and her head spins when she manages to peel herself away by a meager inch. “I cannot.”

“You are,” he whispers huskily. “I can smell it on you.” Distantly, she wonders why he bothers to speak so low.

“I cannot ,” Sakura rasps. A sudden cramp in her lower abdomen like no other pain she has felt, even during her monthly courses, takes her breath. “I have not been marked. This is…it is not–”

Her voice breaks on the precipice of another contraction, pain radiating from her pelvis down the backs of her thighs. She clenches her legs together in response and feels a surge of wetness between them as if she has soiled herself.

Sweat trickles over her brow and a low whine falls from her lips. She has never made such a sound.

“What is happening to me?” she asks, looking up at his face. Heat builds in the pit of her stomach, making the pulsing pains more acute.

“Did no one teach you of these things?” Sasuke’s dark brows furrow, his irises slowly bleeding into red. For once, her instincts do not urge her to look away, and she is almost ready to beg him to pull her into a genjutsu, into a world in which this is not happening to her.

“I have not been marked yet,” she gasps around a sob, water building in her eyes and blurring her vision. She reaches out a shaky hand for something, anything and finds the fabric of her quilt, suddenly suffocating and near painful where it brushes against her flesh.

“It seems that it does not matter,” says he, his voice both quiet and somehow booming in her ears. Strong fingers wrap around hers and she chokes, nearly crying out when that small touch brings minute relief. “Heat is only spurned by marking when a mating has been...manufactured between partners.”

Sakura struggles to maintain their eye contact and so allows her lids to squeeze shut, slumping down until her weight is entirely pressed against the man who she calls enemy ’s chest. She wishes to rip off her coverings, to flay her flesh from her bones and crawl outside of herself, if only to escape the contradicting sensations of hot and cold, of pain and–

And something boiling to the surface from somewhere deep inside, from a place she has yet to fully explore. Something that shallows her breath, slickens her thighs and draws her aching breasts into swollen, tight peaks.

“Sakura,” a deep voice calls softly and she peels her eyes open to stare, to drown in vibrant pools of red. “Listen to me, and hear what I will say.”

A warm palm slides over her flushed, dampened cheek and she lets loose a guttural sound, halfways between a growl and a moan. She experiences a sudden reprieve from the clenching pain, a soothing rush flooding her body, beckoning her to tilt her head into the caress, seeking more of the blissful contact.

“Touch me, touch,” she mumbles, nuzzling her face into his broad hand as she has seen foals do against their mothers’ hides. “I ache .”

“ Listen ,” he barks.

Sakura’s spine snaps into rigid attention, her head lifting to peer fully into his face. His hand slips away and she trembles when the pain bites again. He sighs, reaching to cup the side of her neck gently.

“A heat only comes on like this,” Sasuke sucks in a breath, blowing it out unsteadily and Sakura nearly moans again as she is awash with his scent, “when a true mating occurs. Do you know what that is?”

“True mates are the stuff of legends,” she croaks, tracing the line of his jaw and curve of his mouth with her gaze. She continues in a daze, “Just stories.”

“No,” he murmurs, and the movement of his lips is hypnotizing, alluring. “We have simply chosen to forgo our true selves in the pursuit of power. Political arrangements have made matings like this…like ours so rare they sound like fantasy.”

“Ours?” she mouths, her head lolling on her neck as he reaches to grasp at her cheek with the other hand. The secondary touch does wonders against the cramping, but stokes the flames licking at her insides higher and higher.

“A day ago I was your enemy,” his voice sounds rougher, accented with a low rumbling that causes her very bones to quake. “Now, I am the only one who can help you through this. It is my nature to relieve you from this pain.”

Their skin-to-skin contact, while minimal and arousing , has managed to clear her mind enough that she is able to distantly recognize the consequences of her situation.

An array of emotions swirl with the heat building inside–shock, that everything she was told was legend should come to be true, fear that she is weak, vulnerable and literally within her supposed-enemy’s grasp. Shame, because she must admit now that she is not unhappy to be in this situation, to be held in this particular man’s arms.

“You hate me,” she manages to say, lips trembling as if she has chills despite her insides feeling like a cauldron boiling over the rim of her sanity.

“I surely do not ,” he replies, voice rasping. “I hate many things, but somehow I never could hate you.”

Something within her breaks, the pulsing pain spiking in intensity once more in her belly. She disentangles her hands from the thick quilt around her shoulders and claws at Sasuke’s chest, climbing upward and pushing aside his coverings until she can dig her fingertips into the flexing muscles of his shoulders.

Her mouth crashes over his and he growls, tongue slipping in between her lips in a plundering kiss. She moans, whines as he licks at her mouth, sucking at her tongue, one of his arms shackling around her waist.

She detaches for a mere breath of a moment, long enough to gasp, “It hurts. Oh, Goddess, I ache .”

He kisses her more deeply, if possible, smoothing a hand down her back and sliding the quilt down in tandem. The press of his fingers on her bare skin, kneading into her bunching muscles pulls a whimper from her throat. She smashes her breasts to his torso, seeking more points of contact, praying to the goddess that she would douse this fire in her veins and loosen desire’s grip on her lungs.

“Shhh,” he hushes as she whines into his mouth, “I shall take away this pain.”

“Please,” she gasps out, “I hate it. Please, Sasuke- kun .”

Were she in her right mind, she might have balked at using such an honorific. But it hardly matters when the man’s body vibrates with a resounding growl and the word spins around her as he flips her onto her back, shoving her into the pile of quilts haphazardly strewn across the bed roll.

“Show me where the pain is, Sakura,” he pants. Their flesh sticks slightly when he peels away, planting himself on his knees between her splayed thighs.

Her eyes fall away from his beautiful features and stormy expression, tracing down her body to gaze at the elenching muscles of her abdomen, and lower to the slick sheen of wetness spread over her thighs. A sharp clenching inside results in another spilled stream of the clear, viscous liquid and the muscles above her pelvis draw tight.

“Here,” she groans, pressing her hand to the slight curve of her lower stomach.

Long fingers brush hers aside, sliding over the spot with gentle pressure and she gasps in relief. His hand glides over the spot in slow, soothing circles and Sakura’s head falls back heavily, her eyes lowering to slits.

Without her express permission, her lower half begins to shift, hips circling in time with his ministrations. Through the slim line of her vision, she catches his glowing irises fix their focus between her legs and his lower lip slipping between his white, shining teeth.

“Tell me where else it hurts,” he breathes. His hand stops its circular motions, finger tips trailing in a featherlight touch as they descend toward the pink curls at her pubis. “Here?”

She can only nod, the muscles of her thighs tensing and lower back curving as his fingers comb through her curls and make contact with swollen, slick flesh.

Her body screams for more, but her mind combats her instincts, eyes widening and her chest rising and falling rapidly. Anxiety swirls and begins to cut through the haze as his fingers trace a path up and down the weeping slit in her flesh.

“Sasuke?” her voice does not sound like her own, too high-pitched, too shaky. Her mind whirls as her hips curl into his hand as if tethered to some outside will.

“Sweet Sakura,” he whispers, voice just barely audible over her own panting breaths and the crackling of wood burning in the fire alongside them. “You are more than anything I could have conjured in my dreams.”

“Dreams?” she stutters, eyelids fluttering as one of his fingers slips between her folds, sliding up and down slowly. He makes contact with the erect nub of her clitoris and she keens quietly.

“Yes,” he all-but purrs. Then, his form is looming over hers, their foreheads brushing as he speaks quietly, lips brushing her mouth. “Since the day you saved my life, you have haunted me. My enemy turned savior, object of my darkest desires. I should have known it was the beast inside, trying to tell me that you were mine .”

The possessive tone of his voice should have frightened her. Instead, she feels comforted, her own anxieties slipping away bit by bit, being replaced by more of the surging, dizzying heat.

“Let me care for you, as only I can,” his breath brushes against her ear, his teeth catching against the lobe.

Sakura’s voice breaks on a desperate moan when he shapes her pulsing clitoris with his fingers, stroking in small, addicting circles until her hips are pulsing off the ground into the cradle of his hand. A fluttering begins in her most private parts, wetness spilling from her like an over-run fountain. Pleasure like no other washes over her, swelling within her chest, between her hips like a tide and she clutches at the hot skin of his back, pulling him closer.

“I feel…,” she gasps, swallowing his tongue in her mouth as he interrupts her briefly with a languid kiss. “I feel strange.”

“Trust me,” he murmurs. The long fingers strumming her into a frenzy slip down, reaching lower through her folds until they brush against her entrance.

Before she has the time to tense, he sinks into her with one digit, sliding slowly and gently. She inhales sharply at the sensation, her lower half shifting as it accommodates the intrusion and adapts to the stretching sensation.

It takes a beat for her to acclimate, and by the next she is sighing, “More.”

A smile curls his lips and he slides out with his single finger slowly, pushing back in at the same pace. At the second outward stroke, a second digit joins the first at the rim of her opening, sinking inside bit by bit as her back arches and she mewls and writhes.

It feels as if he has slightly filled up a gaping emptiness she did not know existed. Now she hungers for more, to be filled completely to bursting.

His lips trace a line down her jaw and plant themselves at her neck. She hears him inhale deeply, exhaling on a quiet growl as his fingers begin to thrust in and out of her core, stirring up her wetness and mixing up her thoughts. She can only dig her fingertips into his flexing muscles, her inner thighs trembling as she strains to press into his hand in time with each motion. The swelling sensation builds, her body becoming so sensitized she imagines she can feel the smoke wafting from the fire against her dampened skin, the thud of Sasuke’s heart slamming against her chest.

A particularly deep stroke and she is gasping desperately, sucking in air around keening whimpers and shaking moans. His digits curl upward, fingertips grazing over a spot that makes her vision blur, every muscle in her body tensing up for a heart-stopping moment before they all loosen at once, her inner walls pulsing and her hips bucking outside of her control.

She cries out, his name spilling from her lips along with other nonsense words. He hums an approving sound, taking her lips and drinking her sounds until she finally comes down from the euphoric high, blinking away the tears that have welled and obscure her vision.

Her body is buzzing with sensation, her skin practically pulsating as she watches in a daze as Sasuke draws back slightly, allowing her to drink in the sight of his glistening, heaving chest and flexing abdominal muscles.

When her gaze dips lower, she swallows hard. Standing proud between his hips is a long, thick shaft, the reddened end reaching above his navel. Pearlescent droplets linger about the tip of him, a glistening trail marking a path toward his heavy-looking sac.

“I can soothe you with my hands and mouth,” he murmurs, drawing her gaze back to his. Red eyes trace her features, a hungry look to them that sends gooseflesh creeping over her skin. “But it will not rid you of the pain. For that I must…take you. Place my mark on you and satisfy the beast inside.”

Sakura can only stare, her eyes dipping low again to stare at the intimidating organ bobbing with its own pulse between them. Climax has alleviated her symptoms but already she can feel echoes of the cramping in her belly again, sweat trickling between her breasts and slick between her thighs.

“If this is not what you want,” Sasuke says gruffly, drawing her attention to his face once again. “If I am not what you want, we will press no further. I will will return you to your betrothed where he may tend to you–”

“No,” she blurts. Her fingers curl into the blankets at her sides, chest heaving. She can feel herself slipping once more, is forced to hold tight onto her senses as the heat and her hunger for fulfillment attempts to drag her consciousness away. “I want you. ”

The black tomoe in his irises spin faster, the red of his eyes somehow more vibrant, perhaps due to the reflecting light of the dancing flames. She is held captive by his gaze as his palms slide up the side of either of her legs, grasping behind her knees and sliding her across the ground until her lower half is slung over his lap. He hooks her legs behind his waist before leaning over her, brushing their mouths in their most chaste kiss.

“You will suffer no longer, my mate,” he whispers. His mouth takes hers more deeply then, and he rests one hand lightly at her throat while the other slides between their bodies to cup her mound.

She moans into his mouth as he thrusts into her with two fingers once more, coaxing her into wave after wave of release. She crashes each time like the tumultuous ocean tide during a storm.

By the time she feels his engorged length slide over her sensitized folds she is all but begging for him, raking her nails down his back and baring her neck to him, mindless in pleasure and wanting for the final act. The hot tip of him notches at her entrance, burning somehow hotter than she herself and she pries open her eyes, sinking into his gaze as he sinks into her depths. Her insides part and stretch around him, a distant ache settling between her legs while the one in her belly loses its intensity.

He moans, deep and gravelly, pushing forward so slowly an eternity might pass, Sakura becoming lightheaded as she contains her breath.

Air is expelled from both their lungs when Sasuke finally slides all the way inside, the fine hairs at his pelvis mingling with her own. She feels stuffed tight, so full that she might split apart were she to move.

So she simply relaxes in his grasp, tilting her chin toward the wall behind her head when he growls and clasps his fingers at the underside of her jaw. His hips pull back, shaft stroking against her slick walls in a slow, mind-breaking drag before pushing forward again, thrusting him deep inside her until she feels that they will never be separate beings again.

Sage and spice, ash and smoke fills her nose, her eyes bombarded with flashes of his reddened mouth and glowing eyes. The sound of wet flesh meeting filters in her ears, underscored with her own whines and moans, his pants and deep, rumbling groans.

The climax that builds this time rushes over her like a waterfall, yanking her away from the earth for a moment until it is as if she is floating, her soul being brought forth for the goddess to bestow her with a kiss to her face before she tumbles back down to where her limbs writhe and quake, fingers digging into the flesh of her hip and around her jaw as she screams worship and praises to the dark ceiling above.

“ Sakura ,” her mate– mate– growls, slamming so deep that her entire body jolts from the force. His face buries in the side of her neck, hot breath washing over her throat as his mouth opens wide.

Sharp pain pricks at her neck and warm liquid trickles down her skin as he sinks his teeth into her, locking his jaw as he lets loose a series of hungry moans and snarls. Between them, fit snug inside of her core, he begins to pulse and throb, his shaft thickening deliciously until she feels him pressed against every part of her there is.

Then he grows further, a bulging growth at the base of his member pressing hard to the top of her mound and growing to the point of pain, a throbbing ache that sends a confusing spasm of discomfort and acute pleasure rolling through her entire form.

“Sasuke-kun,” she chokes, digging her hands into his back and thrashing in his hold.

His teeth retract from her flesh and her laps at the wounds, mumbling in between, “It will be alright. I am with you.”

Another sudden orgasm takes her sight, so quick and intense that she is left reeling, panting. She feels a powerful spurt of hot, thick liquid spill inside of her in a series of pulses and Sasuke shivers in her arms, latching on to her new mark with his lips and sucking soundly.

She is rocked with wave after wave of pleasure, the throbbing between them near-constant until she is practically sobbing with strain.

“Sweet, sweet Sakura,” Sasuke slurs into her neck, flicking his tongue at frequent intervals at her neck.

Time stretches into what could be many minutes or many hours with them intimately joined and locked together, their skin dripping with sweat and combined essence, clutching each other tight as they lay prone in front of the slowly-dying flames. She is tired, deliciously warm and sated. Yet her mind spins, pondering their fate now that they have both committed treason against their clans. She wonders what sort of future the world beyond this tiny, hidden shelter might hold.

Eventually, Sakura speaks, voice and mind mostly clear, “What happens now, Sasuke-kun?”

Her head is on his chest, leg hitched over his hip as he pillows her waist with his arm. A pulse between them causes her to gasp quietly and he to shiver, his eyes sliding shut.

Forehead bumping against hers he whispers a reply, “I do not know. But I shall not be without you, no matter what the future holds.”

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

Twenty-seven

“You were blessed with a lucky catch this day, Haruno-san!” a boisterous voice bellows, and a heavy palm smacks hard at the center of his back.

He offers a tight grin, glancing at the horizon as the sun peeks over the rolling peaks. It grows late, and he hates to be behind schedule.

“Indeed, I was,” he says with a nod to the talkative merchant. “I am blessed to have you as my best customer, as well.”

The flattery rolls ungainly off his tongue but the older man laughs riotously, smacking his back again. Any awkwardness of embarrassment is soothed by the weight of the coin ban he tucks into his coat. His pitiful attempts at socializing–and his skill for fishing–had brought in twice the coins he usually received.

He was wise to take another’s advice, for once.

The sun has risen high in the sky by the time he steps into the clearing filled with wildflowers, forcing him to shade his face with his hand as he squints at the small house nestled among them. The outside is handsome enough although he cannot help but take a mental note of the slightly leaning awning and the tiny tear in the shoji.

When he slides open the door and kicks off a sandal, quiet squealing filters to his ears along with the scent of poppies and sugar. A tiny body slams into his knees and he pretends to teeter off balance, leaning down to scoop the wriggling form into his arms.

“What is this? A wild creature tearing about my house?” he questions with mock seriousness, wrangling the thrashing body around until it goes limp in a fit of giggles.

“It is me! ” the small voice shrieks. “It is Sarada, not a creature!”

“Sarada is a wild creature, anata. Do not fall for her tricks,” another voice sounds from a few feet away. There is a smile in her words. “Okaeri.”

Sasuke lifts his head and inhales deeply, taking in the scent of jasmine, of sweet, perfectly ripened fruits. And there is a hint of himself there as well, a bit of sage and a little smoke.

“Sakura,” he murmurs, mouth curving in an indulgent smile. His eyes fall to her hands, resting on the curve of her belly. They are littered with scars, remnants of a long-abandoned, but never forgotten lifetime.

“I am home.”

┍━☽【❖】☾━┑

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

End.

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beyondthescenes37 · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Naruto, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke Characters: Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Lemon, Smut, Shameless Smut, Fluff and Smut, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Anbu Uchiha Sasuke, Rough Sex, Rough Oral Sex, Anonymous Sex, Anonymity, Masks, Pining, Kinktober 2021, SasuSaku Smut Week 2021 Summary:

Sakura decides, in that moment, to leave all rationality at the door for the nameless, faceless ANBU in her clinic.

Written for @ss-smutweek “Rough” and Kinktober 2021 for “Anonymous Sex” + “Uniform” + “Masks” Happy Halloween!

#sasusaku #sasusaku fanfiction #sasusaku fanfic #sasusaku fanfics #sasuke sakura #sasuke x sakura #sasuke x sakura fanfiction #sasuke x sakura fanfic #sasuke x sakura fanfics #sasusaku smut week 2021 #sasusakusmutweek2021 #sasusaku smut #sasusakusmut

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theclosetpoet7 · 5 years

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Cover your Eyes

A collection of smutty fics I’ve compiled over the years, starting with the Classic Ones all the way to the most recent additions.

Sick Cycle Carousel by Kineticfairy

Kawarimi by asteriskjam

Marionette by Kineticfairy

In Nine Days by cutecrazyice

A Full Circle by Lady Momo

For When the Fire Burns Bright by xxSilverEchoxx

Threads of Desire by Kineticfairy

We Do the Dance Electric by Lady Momo

Duplicity by Never Stray

the fire’s out but it still burns by DeepPoeticGirl

In Times of Peace by SouthSideStory

Kaleidoscopes by twilightdazzle

We Draw the Lines in the Leaves by Lady Momo

Vengeance by sincerelyLen

The Atrophy and Redemption of Uchiha Sasuke by Awsaya

Intimacy by T a C o C a T

Reflective by blackrosedrippingred

King of Gods by Mrs Scorpius Malfoy

We Did It by DeepPoeticGirl

The Jonin Exams by HowdeeCoyote

Jump by merinXD

Mixtape by merinXD

Midlight Delights by Allison Mitchel

I’d Be Yours, If You’d Be Mine by DeepPoeticGirl

The Valley of the End by SouthSideStory

Trust by chickypeg

A Cornucopia of Conundrums by zunaira ghazal

Forbidden by blackrosedrippingred

Heat by Lady Otori

Endurance by Ombreecha

Fresh Toxin by Ombreecha

#sasusaku #sasusakufanfiction #sasusakusmut #sasusaku fanfiction

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happiestwriter · 6 years

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Hi beautiful humans.

This is my second story; PLEASE go easy on my life. I’m learning! Much love to all the humans who ship this amazing ship, and cheers for the suffering we must endure.

Chapters: 6/6

Fandom: Naruto Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke Characters: Sakura Haruno, Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi Additional Tags: Fluff and Smut, Shameless Smut, Lemon, Angry Sex, Love, Love Confessions, Obsession, Obsessive Sasuke, Friendship, Oral Sex, Rough Body Play, Passion, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Strong Haruno Sakura, OTP Feels Summary:

The thought of him kept her awake at night. The thought of her stoked the fires of his obsession greater. He can't control his desire; he stalked her like a demon in the night. He is her demon, a demon who owns her heart.

#SasuSaku #SasuSakuSmut #Lemonade #OTP #IWillGoDownWithThisShip #SakuraHaruno #SasukeUchiha #hardcoresmut #Shippuden #why am i like this

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thelittlechook · 4 years

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full here: patreon.com/thelittlechook

#sasusaku #サスサク sasusakusmut

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xxlovendreamsxx · 5 years

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Sasuke and Sakura's sex would be like the most passionate thing ever. Like so passionate and reckless and possessive. All of that pent up emotions and feelings they've had for each other since they were little that they've been trying to suppress all gushing out when they are in bed. Their sex would be so overwhelming. I think they'd be screwing the daylights out of each other from dusk till dawn.

I agree that it would be the most passionate ever, but personally I’m of the mind that it’s definitely move lovemaking than any type of rough or mindless fucking lol. I think Sasuke really strives to keep them close and connected, so there’s always eye contact and proximity of the whole of their bodies, positions where they can hold each other. That’s why his absolute fave is when she’s when his lap with her legs crossed behind his back. It’s all the intimacy they could want.

But lovemaking doesn’t mean it’s any less intense!! Like you said, all those pent up emotions and love like... that definitely still comes rushing out. But I don’t think it means they get reckless and rough and possessive. They just get very caught up in the flurry of it all and it makes the whole mood very heavy with all their feelings. Sex with them is the most intimate and intense ever despite being most times slow.

That’s just imo, tho!!!!

#sasusaku #otp: a once in a lifetime love #sshc #sasusakusmut!hc #Anonymous #asks

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meliiiiyy · 3 years

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Schau dir "Sasuke Otome CD R18" auf YouTube an

youtube

😳😳👀 can someone pls translate it?

#sasusaku #sasusakusmut #sasukesmut #nsfwaudio #sasukeaudio

#Youtube

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sasusakuaudios · 2 years

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SASUSAKU SEX AUDIO- 5 Part 2 (final)

Check out Part - 1 too!

*USE HEADPHONES*- R18

#sasusaku #sakurauchiha #sssnippetaday #noriaki sugiyama #uchiha sakura #sasusakuaudio #sasusakusmut #sasusakusex #uchiha

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silentvoicescryingout · 1 year

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yūgen

For Chupamaru, by silentvoicescryingout

Yūgen (幽玄)

(n.) An awareness of the universe that triggers

emotional responses too deep and mysterious for

words.

She is floating. Or, perhaps, tied and tethered to something solid–stone? The light is bright, shining white like the reflections of the sun; no, it is pitch-dark and she is blind. She sees nothing, hears nothing, only feels the brush of a million fingers over her skin, exhalations uncountable whispering against her nape.

Actually, she can feel nothing. She is nothing, only space, only air and water and earth and fire itself. All around her, inside her, below and above creatures coo, they roar, they pray and beg and…and…

Someone calls. For something. They are… He is desperate. Seeking.

She opens her eyes.

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

Sasuke’s eyes are itching and burning, his joints aching and throat dry like sand. His vision seems to warp for a moment before he blinks as much moisture as his body can produce over his lenses. A deep exhale at his side ruins his concentration and he whips his head in that direction.

“ What? ” he snaps, voice hoarse and terribly un-threatening. The electricity crackling between the webs of his fingers, though, is nothing but.

“You have been at this for days,” his brother drawls, dark eyes foggy-looking and expression virtually blank. His face is like porcelain, smooth and delicate. Exhaustion and age creep about the edges, held at bay by determination and lucky genetics. “This is not an exaggeration. You have been in meditative stasis for four days. The masters always warned us to never go past two.”

“The masters,” Sasuke croaks. He inches out of his meditative position slowly, his muscles protesting as he uncurls his stiff legs and straightens his arms. “The masters of today pale in comparison to those of old.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Itachi sighs when he brushes off his attempt to offer a helping hand. Rising on his own two feet and slightly trembling legs is a balm to his ever-fickle pride. “You know better, as an expert of the ancient ways.”

“The ancient ways are the way ,” Sasuke retorts. His swimming vision ruins the impact, though, and he is forced to bite his tongue when his brother brackets an arm around his waist and shuffles him to a seat.

A light broth, rice and a steaming cup of tea are placed there already.

“You are a powerful caster, Sasuke,” Itachi stares at him as he sips spoonfuls of broth. He can feel his gaze, but refuses to lift his own to meet it. “It is imprudent to go to such lengths when you have advanced farther than most of our direct line, even in the entire clan. This…inordinate preparation does not serve you.”

“Are you my mother, now? Or is it father this time?” he spits the words with more vitriol than necessary. He draws near to regret until he hears the heavy sigh fall from his elder brother’s lips.

“The living cannot replace the dead,” Itachi says gravely.

“The living can surely try,” he mutters, shoveling a large spoonful of rice in his mouth and pretending he does not see the older man arch an inky brow from his peripheral vision.

His brother speaks throughout his meal and Sasuke’s mind wanders. Sustenance helps to clear his addled brain and pull his focus away from the weakness of his flesh into the recesses of his psyche where he cycles through ideas and plans.

The Summoning Ceremony is but a week and a hand away. Sasuke has immersed himself in meditation and spent hours and days honing his skills, stretching the limits of his mind, body and soul to flow in such a way that his essence draws nearer and nearer to all that is natural and long-standing. He toils in a venture to entice the most majestic of creatures into a contract with him; he hopes to prove himself a worthy majin and counterpart to a companion from the otherworlds.

His greatest, everlasting wish is to summon the infamous hawk of old, the companion animal that had accompanied his most legendary ancestors in battle. Such a companion was rare and difficult to come by; only a very strong majin would be able to even call the animal forth, much less entice the creature into a contract and to lend its power for as long as the caster lived.

Sasuke is determined to be among that number.

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

Sakura can sense a shift in the world’s axis. It is slight, just barely a hint of change, the tiniest ripple over the surface of what is the balance of all things.

The fact that she knows she has a name, that she knows herself (at least a bit) is proof that something is happening, a change has occurred that is outside the cyclical monotony of all that exists. For the first time in…she knows not how long, she can pick out individual sounds, scents and smells and see kaleidoscopes of colors and hues with startling clarity.

But most of all she can feel a tugging sensation at what must be the center of her dissipated form (was it a body , once?). A call without words, pleas without sound filter in above the buzz of natural things and ring inside her consciousness.

Flashes of images ripple through her mind, of faces, eyes, curving mouths and fluttering fabrics. She cannot truly grasp on to any one thing, and they cycle faster and faster until it is dizzying and feels as if she is plummeting, drowning in a sea of…something.

How can she catch a breath with no lungs?

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

The day of the Summoning Ceremony brings with it a muted sense of excitement and anticipation. Young men attempt to remain confident and maintain their humility all the same–they receive their blessings from the masters, send prayers and commune with the spirits and place offerings at the altars of their kin.

Sasuke’s hands are slick with oil, his hair wet and pushed back from his forehead. A cool breeze trickles between tall, thin trees, causing the flames of small torchers positioned around to flicker and spit. His entire body shivers, skin wet and blanketed by the light, soaked fabric of his robes, smelling of ash and herbs from the ritual cleansing.

He treks away from the central gathering point, opting to crest a tall hill and move further than any of the other majin participating in the summoning. The air grows colder the higher he climbs until his entire form quakes, teeth chattering as he peers toward the horizon where the setting sun bleeds red across the sky.

His bare feet sink into cold, damp soil, long and spindly grasses tickling at his ankles. Rolling his head back, eyes slipping shut and face pointed toward the ombre of the red and orange sky, he inhales slowly, deeply through his nose.

The breath rushes past his lips in an equally long exhale and he repeats the process again. He does so until his breaths filter in and out of his lungs in pace with the steady beat of his heart behind his ribs. He breathes until he can home in on the myriad of scents that make up his surroundings, until his own essence spills out of him and fills the space.

A thrumming beneath his feet, a roiling from deep in the earth rolling over the arches of his soles overtakes his own thudding pulse.

Heat pools in his fingers and toes, tingling in his appendages before it spreads inward, reaching to his navel, coalescing into an orb of energy in his belly that strengthens him and weakens him in equal measure.

Sasuke feeds the power seeping into the center of his being with each breath in, blowing out the excess to be reabsorbed into nature, balancing himself as he toils to tune himself with his surroundings.

The Hawk is the apex predator of his realm, the closest sentient being to the ancients. He, the creature who served the first men of civilization and turned the tides of the first wars, his origins reaching so far back only the trees and soil could comprehend.

Sasuke focuses on the warmth of the sun's rays, building heat in his limbs and chest before exhaling flames over a patch of brush, to honor the creature with a delight of fire. Next, he hisses a sharp gust of air between his teeth, wielding it like a fine whip through the leaves, a symphony of sounds to make a song worthy enough to accompany the beast’s entrance.

Electricity crackles between his fingers and a spear of lightning splits the slowly darkening sky, a display of power to prove that he, second son of a once great and long-standing clan holds power enough to stand alongside and utilize the raw energy the Hawk wields for its summoner.

His knees meet the soil and his sparking hands rise to center, palm against palm, at his chest. He clicks his sharpest teeth at the corner of his lips, allowing warm dribbles of blood to slide over his chin and pool in sporadic droplets on the ground.

And he pleads.

Great Hawk, is the whisper of his soul, his voice merely an echo among the vibrations of his power as it undulates around him.

Honored Primogenitor, come to my side.

The air whips around him, his flames blazing higher and the electricity between his palms becoming so caustic that his skin grows raw.

“Ancient among ancients,” Sasuke rasps, iron bathing his tongue and the force of his efforts rattling his bones, “Conductor of the wind, sire of fire and flight, tamer of earth and soil, join me at my side. Stand beside me and share with me your strength.”

Make of me something that is more than I am.

The wind whips faster, slicing cold over his damp, feverish skin. His bones rattle with strain, muscles convulsing and joints throbbing as he toils to channel the energy of everything around him and simultaneously release his own into the sucking void leading to what he hopes is the path to his future.

His pulse thunders in his ears, so loud that he fears the pumping organ in his chest might fail him, fears that his brother will prove himself right, that his body is not strong enough to wield such intense power and that he should have simply reached for lower hanging fruits.

Then he hears a sound of disturbance in the wind, the flapping of huge, powerful wings. A hoarse, shrieking caw echoes in his ears, his heart crashes harder against his ribs and then–

The forest around him goes silent, the flames sputtering out and leaving everything dark save for the white glow of moonlight from the clear, starry sky.

I have done it .

Falling forward on to his hands, Sasuke pants, trembling fingers sinking into the damp soil. A few violent coughs rip from his chest, leaving behind a tender ache and the faint taste of iron.

“Great Hawk,” he breathes, awe and trepidation filling him in equal measure.

He pulls his gaze up to meet the beady eyes colored like blood, to stare upon the deadly sharp beak the tales told of.

It takes a moment for his vision to clear, blurry swathes of color slowly coalescing until he sees what is in front of him with full clarity.

Sasuke sees not the Hawk of old, the famed warrior companion of his forefathers and their forefathers.

He sees a woman, with cherry blossom hair in a flowing white dress.

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

Soil feels odd– both wet and dry, soft and rough somehow as it slides between her toes and sticks to the skin at the bottoms of her feet. Sakura finds herself playing the small digits through the stuff, scrunching and wriggling them about, fascinated by the texture and sensations.

A chill seeps into her, surpassing flesh and sinking deep to her bones. With a shallow breath, she locates the point within her being that allows her to circulate chakra, molding and manipulating it until it feels like warm, dripping honey to be smoothed under the surface of her skin, chasing away the biting sensation of cold.

“Who are you?” The sounds are unlike any she has heard– well, perhaps she has. If she strains to grasp at the flickering images in her mind, memories she now knows, she thinks she might just know a sound like that.

She pries back the thin layer of flesh that shields the roving orbs positioned high on her face. Tiny, curved hairs border the top and bottom, obscuring her vision only briefly every few moments.

Eyes , her helpful memories supply.

Before her stands a tall, lithe, pale figure. With an inky mane, and glossy black eyes , they resemble none of the creatures she has become or met before.

None that she remembers, at the least.

“Speak, woman,” the figure rumbles, the sounds from their mouth so deep it seems to rock the earth beneath her. “Tell me why you have interrupted this summoning ritual. This is no place and no time to wander.”

Sakura stands still, inhaling the sound of that voice. It is this being, this person who had called so desperately that it reached her non-hearing ears and awakened her slumbering and static mind to create thought. An echo of a moment long past that her mind could barely brush against to comprehend and recall, his voice had stirred her into activity, true existence once again.

This night, he was calling for the Hawk. She arrived instead.

She opens her mouth, a screeching caw ripping from her chest. Since he has so fervently toiled to summon the Hawk, she figures he might understand the beast’s tongue.

Rather than reply, he stumbles back a step before electricity crackles at his fingertips, eyes taking on a reddish glow.

Tilting her head to the side, Sakura studies him more closely.

If not a hawk’s cry, then to which tongue will he respond?

She opens her mouth, looses a bellowing roar. Then small yipping barks, low hisses, gentle purrs that make her chest vibrate. With each sound she attempts to relate to this being, to understand the reason behind his call and offer her help.

“If you are sick in the head, woman, you will find no healing here,” he finally shouts, his voice somehow sounding deeper, a hard edge that seems unique compared to the baser sounds of the creatures she mimics.

A short wall of fire springs forth between them, the flames licking up to a height level with her navel. They burn intensely enough that she can feel the heat emanating over her skin, creating on it a peculiar damp and sheen.

She studies it curiously before stepping forward, the soil shifting beneath her feet as she does. Three paces bring her over the line of the casted flames and as she steps through them, they part, fading slowly as she sweeps her hands to her sides.

The man elicits a startled gasp and a bolt of electricity strikes out at her. She catches it between her fingers, lowering her hand to study this as well, molding the raw, crackling energy into a spherical orb of dancing white and blue.

Colors , she muses. They are so vivid and varied .

The orb buzzes out after a few seconds and part of her laments the loss. It was a beautiful display, so many colors and such sensation to hold in her grasp.

“I seek to answer your call,” she curls her lips and tongue around each word carefully. It requires a bit more finesse and concentration than does the languages of beasts.

“I have certainly not called for you,” he spits, chest heaving. Her eyes trace the movement, up and down, up and down. “You speak ?”

“Your cries for help pulled me from a slumber,” she continues, taking a small step closer. The tall man retreats an equal distance and a strange burning sensation pools in her face. “Before you called into the void, I was…not. But now I am.”

“Woman, speak your insanities and strange mumblings elsewhere,” his voice is more like the beasts who crawl on their bellies, now, a hiss instead of a growl. “Return home to whomever it is that cares for you and leave me be. I must complete the summoning ritual before this night ends.”

“Summoning?” she murmurs, tilting her head in question. A moment later a flashing image and accompanying voices pull from her memories a meaning. “Ah, this night you summon a companion. That is why you were calling so desperately. And yet, you have been calling out for much longer than this night alone.”

“ Away from here,” a long-fingered hand slashes the air like a blade. “Leave. I came here to summon the Great Hawk to be my companion. And summon the Hawk, I will.”

Sakura stands close enough to see beads of moisture dotting his temples, inky strands of hair slicked away from a smooth, fine forehead. Dark brows furrow over even darker eyes and she sees flashing images of vast pools, of depths underneath the underneath, further down than even she can conceptualize in this form.

“The Hawk?” she questions. He only stares, full, shell-pink lips curling away from pearlescent teeth. “He will not come.”

The man’s eyelids lower until only slits of his near-black iris peek through.

“If it is a hawk you desire,” she hums, moving a couple steps backward. “A hawk you may have.”

Inhaling deeply, she closes her eyes and focuses her awareness inward, to the knot of energy tangled up behind her belly button.

Her bones begin to shift under her new, but familiar skin, pores widening and allowing tufts to break through. Her jaw disengages, lips lengthening and hardening, finger and toenails growing sharp and extending far past their size.

When she blinks her eyes open, the world is near-fluorescent, the colors much brighter and almost glowing in her vision.

A sharp gasp and quiet thud jerk her attention downward, where the man who stood so tall and proud before rests on his buttocks, scrambling on unsteady palms through the damp soil.

“Great Hawk?” he rasps, eyes so wide the white of them seem to overtake his face.

“Are you now satisfied?” she asks. It is difficult to shape a beast’s mouth around the tongue of man, but she is certain that she accomplishes the task nonetheless.

When the awed face below grows pale and his mouth gapes silently, she fears her assumption is incorrect.

“Are I not bigger than that beast you call the Great Hawk?” she tilts her head, stretching her new feathered limps wide and rustling the long, glossy feathers. “Do my wings not stretch wider? Is my beak not as sharp? My eyes are the keenest, and I can show you the heights to which I can soar in the air if you so wish.”

“You-,” he chokes. “You…y-”

Sakura frowns. The air around them whips faster as his discomfort feeds into her confusion. “Perhaps it is not this beast you desired to contract with, after all. A feline, perhaps?”

She falls to four limbs, a thick, striped coat of fur sweeping over a muscled back. She bares long, glinting teeth and a gaping maw, undulating the coiled muscles of her shoulders as she takes slow, measured steps.

A quiet, growling purr vibrates her ribcage, “How is this? Will you tell me what it is that you are so desperate to find, now?”

“This is a mistake,” he whispers. Her furry ear twitches, listening closely as his breath filters in and out of his trembling mouth in harsh pants. “No, I am dreaming. Hallucinating. I have meditated too long. Itachi was right.”

“I-ta-chi?” she mutters. The word is fine, but it does not taste lovely in her mouth. “What is that?”

Silence reigns as the man simply stares. After what feels like both a long while and only a blink of time passes, she sighs heavily and reaches for the energy concentrated in her belly again and returns to the first form she appeared in. On two feet, she stands, with two arms and hands dangling at the sides of her waist.

This one, she finds, is the most natural. It feels like… her .

“What are you?” he whispers.

She tilts her head.

“I…am not sure,” she replies, thoughtfully. “I know that… before, I was not. And now, I know that I am. What I am, I have not figured out yet.”

She blinks as he stares without sound once again.

“What are you?” she questions, if only so he will move his mouth and she may listen to the sound of his voice again.

“I am a man,” he mumbles. “A person, a human being. A majin .”

“Man?” she drawls. Somehow, somewhere she understands. “ Majin . This, I know.”

“You know?” he questions. His gaze darts to either side of her before leveling at her face again. Slowly, he rises to his haunches and stands straight. Soil sticks to his fingers.

She nods, “I know. The word is…something I feel is familiar. I am sure I will recall its meaning. It means, at least, we are similar enough.”

“I am not so sure about that,” he says in a low voice. “Is it…is it true what you have said? Will the Hawk truly not respond to my call?”

“He will not,” she says.

There is a shift in the placement of his features, a dampening of the glow in his eyes. The thrumming organ behind her ribs seems to clench, her throat becoming dry and tight.

“He was going to,” she adds, spurned by some unknown instinct to offer a more detailed response. “It was I who bid him to stay away.”

Those dark eyes widen once more, colors shifting until it is as if flame dancing about their pupils.

“ Why? ” The sound from his chest is raw, so strong the earth seems to quake beneath the soles of her feet. “ Why would you do such a thing? How?”

It is this , the familiar sensation that pulled her into consciousness and then into materiality before. A desperation that ignites her veins, that she can taste with her ears and feel on her tongue. It reverberates between her bones and joints and slips between the spaces of her teeth and muscle and she is .

“The Hawk is powerful, and has been a companion to many since it all began,” she murmurs.

She feels untethered, rocked from her perch at the way his eyes glint in the moonlight, how that dizzying kaleidoscope of color crackles like tiny lightning bolts between his knuckles.

“He is not I,” she continues, dragging her gaze away from the raw energy cradled in his hands. “The power you hold is like the heat of the earth’s center, like the expanse of the waters below and above. No single beast could tame or awaken it.”

“And you can?” he rasps. Her gaze is filled with his face, his jaw and lips and eyes. Heat emanates from his chest to hers and she raises her hands slowly, grasping at the crackling electricity dancing in his palms and slipping it away.

She holds her hands before his face, allowing his energy to dance about her upturned palms.

“Yes,” she says in a breath. Flame roars to life behind her, water pelts over their heads from above. Her voice rides on the wind, is the wind when she says, “I can.”

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

Sasuke has watched the sun disappear behind the horizon and rise over it once more. He stands, feet fastened deep in the cool, soft soil and peers at the ever-brightening sky. His attention is eventually drawn downward, to a small thatch of long green grass and colorful blossoms, where a small, pale figure lays.

The strange woman who had shaken his entire world by appearing during his most vital and vulnerable moment the evening before sleeps fitfully in the bed of plant life that she seemed to summon with merely a touch.

She had spoken her riddles for a time after toying with every bit of casting he attempted to throw at her. He was loath to harm her, peculiar as she was. A woman, young by his observation (no less and no more than his age, likely), and so delicate-looking he feared she might be swept away by a strong gust of wind.

Yet she had snatched his lightning in her hands, once from the air and a second time from his very palm. The balance of nature that he toiled so hard to meld himself seemed to be at her very whim, all the more to his pure confusion and the fear he would admit to none but himself.

And now, the woman sleeps. After scrambling his mind with her odd musings and shifting forms, she had dropped to the ground and slipped into a snooze, accompanied with light snores and nonsense mumblings.

Sasuke considered leaving her to her slumber and returning to his home to face the fact that his summoning ultimately failed. He would have had to stand among his peers, endure their introductions of their new would-be companions and pretend to be happy and congratulatory. All the while planning to participate in the Summoning Ceremony for a second time come the next turn of the moon.

No , he thinks, for the umpteenth time. He would rather face the strange, possibly mentally unwell woman who had promised to lend him power beyond even his over-ambitious imaginings than endure the shame that would come from returning to his home sans a contract with the hawk of old.

His gaze roves over the delicate features of the stranger's face, her pouty mouth and long, pale lashes. Her blossom-colored brows are furrowed, bringing attention to a lavender rhombus positioned at the center of her forehead. The mark is reminiscent of something he has seen before–perhaps from the histories, a decorative feature carried on from the days of old.

He wonders if perhaps she is a student of the ancient ways, like himself. If, even, her strange powers come from such study; he begins to ponder the opportunity to be found in such a person who can wield such power with such ease.

She does not look so terrifyingly powerful at this moment, though. Rather, she looks delicate and vulnerable and…lovely.

Sasuke shakes himself mentally, pushing that thought out of his head. He is not currently sure if the woman can be classified as such, or as a creature . Her current form’s aesthetic appeal should not– does not–matter to him.

“Woman,” he calls, maintaining a distance lest her power be unleashed as she comes to consciousness. “Awaken.”

Thin, venous lids flutter before peeling back slowly to reveal bright green irises. For a few moments, her long lashes slip down a fraction, before lifting up in lackadaisical blinks. Her pouty pink mouth opens in a wide yawn, slender fingers braiding into the brush of her bed of wild shrubbery as she lifts herself into a half-sitting position.

“I do have a name,” she says. “I have recently remembered it.”

Sasuke’s spine stiffens at the sound of her voice. It is clearer than it seemed the evening before, amongst all the confusion and chaos. The quality of it is soft like down feathers, smooth with a raspy edge, like silk drawn across dunes of sand.

“Keep it to yourself,” he grunts.

“Why?” she asks, tilting her head. The gesture is similar to that of the stray pups that often run about and beg for scraps at the compound.

“Exchanging names solidifies a contract between summoner and summoned,” he states stiffly. Her eyes look like wide jade pools as she blinks at him, a sprinkling of golden specks catching the sun about her iris. “I have not summoned you. I will not enter into any contract until I discern exactly what manner of creature you are.”

“But I already know your name,” she chirps. After rolling over to her knees and arching her back, like a cat, she rises slowly to her feet. “You are Sasuke.”

A cold spike shoots down his spine. Gritting his teeth together, he demands, “Tell me how you know my name.”

She only smiles.

“What shall we do now?” she wonders on a sigh, tilting her head side to side in a languid stretch. Bits of long grass and tiny petals cling to the mussed pastel strands of her hair.

“You shall tell me how you know my name,” he says in a low voice.

It must be hubris that bids him take a threatening step toward her. His chakra boils at his center, awaiting for him to call it forth and shape it into a weapon of fire or electricity.

The woman watches him with a placid, if ever-so-slightly amused expression. Her chin dips low, following the movement of her eyes as she sweeps her gaze from his head to his feet. It rises when she trails her look back up.

“Brave majin ,” she murmurs. “I can smell your chakra, how your energy shifts beneath your flesh and bone. This is good.”

“ What is good?” he spits.

“Many things,” she replies.

He stares at her. She gazes back with that nearly blank, pleasant expression.

Eventually his frustration mounts high enough that he fails to maintain his grasp on the energy he built up within himself. He turns with a huff, bracketing his brow with his pinky and index.

“Follow me. And when I ask…change into the form of the Hawk.”

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

Sakura is nearly overwhelmed with the visuals before her transformed eyes. Deep reds, bright reds, inky blacks, cloud-pure whites. Deep sea blues, vibrant yellows, pinks, greens make up a mosaic before her as she moves toward the towering torii, feathers sweeping over the lightly pebbled ground.

No sight is clearer, more mesmerizing than the man she follows behind, though–Sasuke. His name came to her in a vision while she slumbered– dreamed . It was first a garbled murmur, warbled as if intoned under the surface of unsteady waters. Then it was a whisper, at the back of her neck like the wind, then a shouting chant thrumming in her ears and through her blood.

Sasuke , the man who called for her. He who yearned with the force of the rising moon and sun.

He had asked her to take on the form of the hawk when they crested the hill that led back to his compound , as it is apparently called.

In warning her away from erratic behavior, he had described the place as one where his kin and clansmen lived and studied, worshiped and worked. A stretch of land where he was born and raised, hidden behind the mountains at the bottom of a hill.

Home , is what her memories whispered. She was still unsure if that was a wholly specific place, or this one only.

She stands tall as a hawk, beady eyes taking in everything around her, hidden ears caching on to every slight sound. The wind feels sharp, whizzing past with the energy of a hundred people milling about. All manner of creatures crawl or walk or bounce around, trailing after or leading their two-legged companions. Some young men practice breathing fire, laughing and wiping sweat from their eyes. A pair of young women wave their fingers and hands in sensual patterns, pulling water up from the earth to dance about their shoulders and wrap around their wrists and ankles.

Sasuke stalks through the throng, barely sparing a glance to people who call out to him as he passes them by. When Sakura meanders through behind him, sharp talons scraping over the ground and dislodging handfuls of rock, they intake sharp breaths, backing away from her path.

She clicks her beak and extends her wings slightly to either side of herself, the tips of her feathers brushing against square-shaped structures, disturbing the air below them with a current that disturbs floating bits of fabric and colorful sheets.

They come to a stop in front of a large, flat-topped building with steps leading up to a tall, white door with dark brown borders. Sakura can smell water and grass, some tart and tangy fruits. It causes her mind to flash through images, again, of thin white walls and doors that slide over a frame with a whoosh . Tatami floors, gardens of multicolored flowers and the bubbling of water flowing through apparatuses– fountains, she remembers.

“Brother,” comes a deep voice.

“Itachi,” Sasuke says, his voice a modicum less deep, but doubly resonant. Like the sound of earth, forever shifting.

“You are a success,” the other man, Itachi, says. His lips spread wide, baring pearl-white teeth. “The Great Hawk has answered your call.”

“One would think,” Sasuke mutters. “I have indeed summoned…a hawk.”

Sakura finds herself distracted, pulling away from their murmuring conversation as a buzzing begins to overtake her hearing. An itch builds underneath her feathers, the gargantuan form of this hawk seeming too heavy, its beak too burdensome.

“It would be an honor to greet the Great Hawk,” Itachi’s voice spears through the overwhelming sensations. She uses that sound to anchor herself to reality.

Slipping her eyes shut, she focuses inward until her body shifts, her form collapsing in on itself until she plummets downward.

When she reforms, she slithers on a broad, scaled belly, her head weaving high above as a pointed tail dashes against the ground behind her.

“ Greetingssss ,” she hisses.

A sharp intake of breath sounds, and footsteps pad over the ground in her direction. She undulates, reveling in the freedom of this form without limbs, fanning out the hood around her skull.

“That is a snake.”

“The Great Hawk did not come to me,” Sasuke says. There is a quality to his voice that elicits that strange thrumming in her chest. “Instead, he apparently was intercepted by…this.”

“And what is this?” the other questions. Through her serpent’s eyes, their two bodies are but silhouettes and mosaics of color–green, blue, yellow, orange and red. Somehow, she knows that these eyes see the heat of them, rather than their physical appearances.

“I do not know,” says Sasuke. A disturbance on the wind and the quiet crackle of electricity calls her attention.

Sakura tugs at the well of energy in her center until she stands before the pair on two limbs.

“I have a name,” she announces. Her mouth twitches against her express permission and a warm feeling fills her chest. “I have remembered it during my slumber.”

“Wonderful,” the man standing at Sasuke’s shoulder whispers. “Sasuke… who is this?”

“Sasuke does not wish to know my name,” she continues. The electricity forming in his palm has doubled in size and force. She tilts her head. “He does not wish to have a contract with me.”

“You are not what he expected, I fear,” Itachi says. His voice feels less like the edge of a sharp thorn, and more like the downy, soft texture of chenille. It is pleasant. “Perhaps we may remedy this. Can you tell us where you came from?”

Sakura runs her eyes over his features, noting similarities as well as differences between this man and the one who she might call her companion.

Sharp lines mar the undersides of his eyes, and his skin is so pale it seems near-reflective. His irises are not so deeply black, rather a very dark gray. Everything about his face is like an echo of Sasuke’s, but more refined, sharper, signifying something like the numerous rings radiating from the center of sky-tall trees.

“I come from everywhere,” she eventually replies, fashioning the words carefully. “Or perhaps it is nowhere.”

Something like a shadow passes over Sasuke’s face, yet a glance upward toward the sky shows it blue and bright, unmarred by even a single white cloud. When her gaze lowers again, Itachi is watching her with a strange furrow between the lines of hair above his eyes.

“Perhaps, we should visit the healer” he murmurs. With a movement that reminds her of a feline, he sweeps toward her. A thin, long-fingered appendage extends in her direction. She can see paths of what seem like blue-green rivers underneath his skin.

“I am not injured,” Sakura informs. She inhales deeply, finds her nose filled with the scents of incense and petrichor. “Look, see how healthy and vibrant am I.”

Her chest swells with a deep inhale and with a winding motion of her wrists, small vines and tiny flowers begin to snake their way through the spaces between the pebbles on the ground. They spring upward, and she exhales, causing them to sway back and forth according to the direction of her current.

“I believe you have summoned a very powerful companion, indeed,” Itachi mutters.

Sasuke’s voice grinds like stone when he says, “She is not my companion and I did not summon her.”

An ache pangs behind Sakura’s ribs. She brings a hand up to it, pressing her palm over the throb of the pulsing organ in the center of her chest. When her eyelids lower in a blink, she feels as if she is absent from her body once again, floating in the nothingness as images flash by and sounds echo around.

You go too far, Sakura-chan.

Lavender eyes, swirling lines concentrating toward a fine pupil.

I will be the strongest, I must be.

Fire blazing, burning so hot the sky seems to ripple and dyes orange and red.

Hashirama should have known better. Such power does not belong in the hands of a girl.

“Uchiha Sasuke,” Itachi’s voice snaps her back to the present. “Hold your tongue. There is no need to be crass.”

“It is easy for you to say, brother ,” Sasuke hisses. When she looks up toward his eyes, they seem to be circled in red. “Your summoning was not intercepted and ruined by some strange woman-”

“Uchiha…” Sakura murmurs, and Sasuke’s voice falls silent.

The name brings with it a knowing, deep in the marrow of her bones, calls back to something, some one she can remember .

“Uchiha Madara,” she blurts. “He knows who I am and what I am capable of.”

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

Sasuke feels Itachi stiffen beside him. He fails to meet the gaze he knows burns into the back of his neck, instead remaining frozen and staring at the figure of the woman before them.

Her eyes glitter like freshly-polished jade, a sharp yet dazed expression on her face. Once more, he finds himself nearly taken by the fineness of her features, as well as the ethereal aura she emits. It is as if with each word she speaks or movement she makes, the energy of all living and natural things around them shift in tandem.

“Madara?” Itachi breaks the silence with a whisper that somehow carries over the brisk wind and the distant sound of chatter and celebration.

“Aa,” the woman says. Her gaze flits behind him for a moment before fixing on his own. “Take me to him. If with him you share a name, perhaps you will trust his judgment.”

“My lady,” Itachi steps forward and takes on the tone of voice and turn of phrase he utilizes when speaking with the most delicate beings. Elderly women, confused children, frightened and lost girls.

It is not a language Sasuke has himself ever learned to speak.

“If I find him, perhaps my eyes will open to more that I can see,” she says, sounding breathless. The grass beneath her feet undulates.

“Madara has not been…with us,” Itachi says softly, “for quite a long while. Though we do know of him, he is gone.”

Before Sasuke can make a move to stop him, his brother has drawn close to the woman, has placed his hand over her shoulder.

“Let us go inside, I shall brew some tea.”

“Gone?” she mutters. And for the first time since she has materialized, unwelcome, in his life, Sasuke sees something so very human in her. “A while?”

“Yes,” he says stiffly, before he has explicitly given his mouth permission to speak. “A very long while.”

Madara, the progenitor of his clan and conqueror of the grounds his village stands on had been gone for centuries . His name passed down only through the histories.

“Exactly how many times has the moon risen and set since he went?” she demands.

Her voice seems to quiver but retains its otherworldly resonance. Or perhaps it is Sasuke’s sleep deprivation that makes it sound so.

“How many turns of the sun? I wish to know how many times the snow has melted and the flowers bloomed again since Uchiha Madara has been gone .”

“Many, many times,” Itachi interjects gently. His hand tightens around her shoulder and a fist grips around Sasuke’s thumping heart.

“Senju Hashirama,” she breathes. “What of him?”

“No man lives long enough for those people you claim to know to still exist,” Sasuke states. His fingers twitch in agitation, confusion warping his thoughts as the woman who had descended and commanded nature to her whims like a goddess begins to tremble and wilt before his eyes. “They are all dead. Ancient figures that are only known by name because of the histories and legends.”

Sasuke refuses to acknowledge the pinching feeling in his chest when her features seem to crumble, her eyes growing wide with confusion and what could be panic.

“How far did I go?” she gasps quietly, eyes falling to her hands as flames lick around her wrists and droplets of water fall like rain from her fingertips. “How long have I went?”

“Come now,” Itachi slides his arm around her hunching back, either woefully ignorant or uncaring of the tumultuous magic being held haphazardly in her shaking hands. “Let us go inside.”

Sasuke watches as the woman grows pale and sways into his brother’s hold. He watches with his pulse pounding in his throat, and blood rushing in his ears as the pair take slow steps past him and climb up to the entrance into his home.

The last glimpse of her face before it is shielding from him reveals one single droplet of water sliding down the lush curve of her cheek, catching on the blazing light of the beating sun.

It is not until they have disappeared fully through the doorway that he moves to follow.

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

Uchiha Itachi is more pleasant than Sasuke, but far less interesting. His chakra ebbs and flows like the softly bubbling current of a stream. His energy thrums like a steady, quiet buzz, nearly lulling like early morning birdsong, like honey-bees tracking their daily routes for nectar.

Sasuke, his brother, is a different creature. His chakra burns hot like wildfire, stings like a crackle of electricity against the senses. Yet it is kept tightly contained, compartmented between slabs of solid rock. When unleashed, Sakura can smell it like ash and oak on the wind, and can taste it like the spicy broths she sips over her tongue.

It excites her, ignites her own center and sets it ablaze. She appreciates the hunger, the raw desire wrapped beneath the layers of his self, wants to take of it and be surrounded by it so it can remind her of what she once was.

The two siblings likely do not believe her still, cannot grasp the pictures she tries to paint with her limited memories and the thoughts that she finds difficult to grasp and impart. Yet they welcome her into their home, their temple and the gardens. They feed her spiced soup and steamed rice and salty flesh singed over an open fire. She slumbers each night on the mat in a small room directly between the two.

Some nights, sleep does not find her, nor do dreams. Instead she listens and feels for the thrum of Sasuke’s pulsing energy, strains for whiffs of his scent. She slips her eyes shut and visualizes the way he wields his crackling power in strong, flexing hands and breathes fire from his lush, shapely mouth.

In the daylight hours, Itachi frets over them both and handles her like a fragile thing, as if she is an ill person undergoing recovery. Sasuke is colder, more distant. He is slow to engage in conversation, slower still to occupy the same space as her for extended periods of time.

There are times when she catches his gaze, notes how his eyes trails over her form from the top of her head to tips her toes. Often, they narrow as if his thoughts urge him to seek some hidden answers by his perusal.

She knows that she can at least answer some of them, if only he would ask.

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

“You meditate well,” a soft, feminine voice breaks him out of his meditative state, upsetting the careful balance he had just begun to create.

“Leave,” he grits. His hands clench into fists until he peels each finger away from his palm to rest against the curves of his knees once more.

“Would you like me to take the form of a hawk? Or did you prefer the snake?”

“ Leave .”

“Many things have changed since my time,” she murmurs, ignoring his protest and coming to sink to her knees beside him.

Her slender, lithe fingers run lightly over the items lined in front of him–the tiny pot of soil, a burning chip of bamboo in a flat dish. She dips her finger into the cup of water, letting it cling to the pad of her index before flicking it away.

“Your time,” he repeats, feeling the muscles of his face draw tight.

Her time , centuries past.

“To truly balance with all natural things,” she continues, as if he has not spoken. She does this often, to his utter irritation. Just as she often offers these unsolicited pieces of advice and anecdotes. “Taking pieces of nature and bringing them into a temple work, to an extent. But to reach your goals, you must do more, Sasuke.”

“What know you of my goals?” he demands. Her hand freezes just as it reaches toward the dish holding the burning wood, hovering just above the fluttering flame.

That appendage redirects itself after a beat, reaching toward him instead. Where his fingers tingle with licks of heat as small flames dance over his knuckles. She covers his right hand with her left, allowing the tips of her fingers to slide into the dips between his knuckles, reaching into and then smothering his fire.

It continues to burn, yet, underneath his skin, underneath her touch.

“You push so hard against nature, trying to create balance within and outside of yourself,” she murmurs. He watches as three fat droplets of water rise slowly from the cup set in front of them, joined seconds later by floating orbs of orange-yellow flame. They circle around each other as she continues to speak:

“Nature must be allowed to push back,” she whispers. “Achieving the perfect balance is not possible through force alone. You must relinquish control as well.”

“I have done,” he says, his voice almost a rasp.

Dryness tugs at his throat, exhaustion aching behind his eyelids. He spends his waking hours in practice and contemplation, and in the late night lies awake, unable to fall to sleep while sensing the presence of the extraordinary creature sleeping in the room beside.

When Sasuke drags his gaze away from the hypnotic revolutions of the water and the fire, he is faced with two green pools, the depths unbreachable and unknown. She watches him rather than her own work, lips tilted in a peculiar sort of smile.

“The fire comforts you, for it is strong and it is powerful,” she brings up her hand, palm facing upward as the elements dance above it, “the earth is solid, steady. Constant. It brings with it security and resilience. Air is flighty, but you master it because it represents a weakness–the wind can upset, redirect or blow out any flame. To tame it, is to tame your own shortcomings.”

“Who do you think you are?” he asks, a dizziness taking residence at the center of his forehead. His vision swims and yet the spinning, spinning of her tricks are so clear.

“What you lack is the fluidity of water,” suddenly the balls of fire are engulfed by the three water orbs as they combine into one infinite ring. “You lack its movability. It is nature's conduit, it moves and strengthens earth, it douses fire. It fills the air and spreads itself through everything . It takes on multiple forms. Failing to give attention to this element is what holds you back from true balance.”

“I have a mastery of all the elements,” he retorts. His face feels warm, his palms becoming sticky with sweat as frustration becomes him. “For years I have toiled, have mediated and circulated my energy, my very essence and given all of the elements their equal share. My affinity for fire, for electricity is out of my control.”

“Perhaps,” she muses. “And yet I have an affinity for all of them.”

“You are different,” he mutters. “You are a strange being who speaks in riddles and holds power this world has never seen and yet does nothing with it save for interrupting my time of contemplation.”

“If only you would allow me to,” she breathes, and the water stops spinning and falls with a quiet splash into her palm, “I would show you the way to accessing such power. When I intercepted the hawk you summoned, it was for this reason. I sensed you from beyond this place. Your efforts called to me, your yearning. It brought me back to myself . And so I wish to help you, to guide you. As any other beast of a companion would.”

Distantly, he feels lost once more in her odd manner of speech, in the way she says so much but very little makes sense. But he feels as if he can see through her skin, how the chakra flows through each of her pathways, how her very essence surrounds him and the space they occupy. It reminds him of the moments he sinks deeply into meditation, when he feels most connected to the world and how everything gives and takes, how energy ebbs and flows.

It feels right . Free.

“You are no companion of mine,” he says, his voice hoarse. Whether it is from dehydration or the weight of this moment, he refuses to consider. “But I will accept your guidance. To become like you, powerful the way you are.”

The woman kneeling beside him smiles again, the curve of her mouth more natural, her eyes glowing so bright they seem lit from within.

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜

They two are submerged in the waters of the lake, its ripples lapping at their chins. In the moonlight, Sasuke’s face reflects a bluish hue, his eyes glittering with the images of the stars.

His chakra is calmer now. Similar to a slow boil rather than a shock of heat and flash. Many nights have they spent floating atop this body of water’s surface, swimming down to its depths, cycling at its center. He toiled until the exchange of energies between himself and the natural world was as simple as taking in a breath and exhaling it a moment later.

“Ready yourself,” she breathes now, lifting her wet hands, sliding her palms over his eyes. The tips of her thumbs touch at the center of his forehead, the other digits sliding through the dampened, silken hair at his temples.

He rests his hands at the crook of her elbows and she hears the deep inhale whoosh through his nose, before the warmth of his breath brushes over her face when he releases it. The cycle continues, and the breaths grow deeper, the inhalations and exhalations farther and farther apart.

Mist rises around them, eventually coalescing into hundreds, then thousands of small spherical droplets hanging in the space above the lake’s surface. Slowly, she slides her hands away from his face and slips out of his gentle hold. His hands float together gradually, palm pressing against palm.

She blinks and, for a moment, he is gone. She sees nothing, but then she sees a star-filled night sky, the lake and herself floating like a mirage before her.

When she opens her eyes, Sasuke’s shoulders and chest hover above the meniscus, rivulets of water dripping down the portion of his breast exposed by the gaps in his thin, white robes. A pearlescent glow accents his silhouette, and he looks pale but lively yet, ethereal.

Take me as yours, make me one with all that is living and nonliving. All that is and was and will be.

It is her voice in her ears, like an echo, close like a whisper but also a faraway cry.

I humble myself before thee... I offer all that I am to taste all that is.

“ Universe ,” Sasuke’s voice and hers both filter to her ears. Yet she is not speaking.

Or is she?

“ Take of me, ” he murmurs and the words resonate through her mind, memories unraveled. “ Give to me. ”

“Sasuke,” she rasps.

Long locks the color of cherry blossoms flow like silk as she rises above the surface of the water, until liquid drips from her toes in tiny plinks that hardly disturb the surface. The winds sing in the trees, the earth quivers and groans, a gate of fire bursts to light and circles the bank. Ripples and ripples turn to small waves and she remains still, untouched. Light emanates from her skin, an iridescent glow, until she grows pale, paler still.

Sakura can see her veins, her muscle, tendon and bone as the light grows brighter. A lavender mark materializes at her forehead, center and her mouth falls open in a silent cry, spilling light like the rays of sun.

Her green eyes are revealed with the lifting of her eyelids, glowing brighter than ever seen before.

“Stop,” she chokes. “ Stop .”

The water laps at his knees, the column of his throat stretched long as his head tips back. As if the moon hides behind him, a glow surrounds him that causes Sakura’s eyes to burn and her throat to draw tight.

Even with human eyes, she can see how his skin has grown less opaque, the barest hint of blue-green beginning to show through his face and chest. Crackles of electricity snake across his arms and legs, the wind picks up. She smells pungent scents of ash, soil, rain.

It is nirvana. It is the opening of her eyes for the very first time, her first breath as a babe, the last she will ever taste. It is life, it is death, all that falls between. For one single moment, a single eternity she is everything –

And then she is nothing. There is nothing, no one, nowhere at all.

… Sasuke .

“ Sasuke! ” she shrieks, the sound pulled from her throat like the ripping of a soul from its flesh.

She draws from the neverending pool of chakra deep in her core, drains it to her fingers, her head, the tips of her nose and toes and reaches up from the water to snatch at his ankles.

With a mighty tug that strains her muscles and all-but breaks her spirit she pulls Sasuke down, down until he breaches the water’s surface with a great splash.

All at once, the air grows light once more, the light disappears until she can only rely on the dim glow of distant stars to see him. He sputters, spits water from his mouth and claws at her wrists until she is pulled toward him, her chest pressed to his as he gasps harshly against her face.

“What are you doing?” he croaks. Her teeth rattle as he uses his grip on her arms to shake her violently. “I felt it. What-what you spoke of. I was there, with nature, with the universe. It accepted me. It would have gifted me that power.”

“I stopped you,” she whispers.

“ Why? ” he roars. This close, she can see how his inky lashes clump together into long, luscious spikes. A dark hue rises to his cheeks and creeps toward his temples.

“Because,” she replies, “now I remember.”

Lips trembling, she reaches for his face. His teeth gnash and he flinches, but she rests her quivering palm against the curve of his cheek nonetheless.

“You have tricked me,” he chokes. More wetness clings to his lower lashes.

“I nearly sentenced you to an existence that is not an existence at all,” she says thickly. Her eyes fill and overflow.

“You and your cursed riddles ,” he cries. His hands knock against her chest and she is pushed a few inches away. In the next second he is crowding her once again, squeezing his long fingers around the sides of her skull–

“I was going to ask you for your name this night.”

A throbbing ache lances through her chest, a thick, poisonous affliction snaking its way between her ribs and taking hostage of her lungs.

“Nature does not give of itself freely,” she murmurs. He groans, as if pained, turning his face away even as his palms press tighter about her head. “The cost of this –”

She lifts her free hand from the water, summons a swirling mass of wind and water, earth and fire.

“--is everything .” She flings the display away from her as she wishes she could cast away the memories that had resurfaced, cast away the foolishness that brought her to this very moment.

“You tempted me,” Sasuke speaks in a voice like rocks grinding together underneath a tumultuous current. “With your fanciful tricks and your eyes of jade, hair of cherry blossoms. You pulled me under your spell and made me believe I could actually be something. All to make of me a fool.”

“Not so,” she gasps, whimpers.

“Is this your answer to a poor, foolish man’s yearning?” he asks, his mouth curving in a heartbreaking mimicry of a smile. “What a cruel, fickle creature.”

Sakura braces her hands on his shoulders, calls forth the strength of one of the beasts lying dormant inside of her and pushes him down, down, until the water grows icy cold and she can see nothing in all directions for the absolute darkness of the depths.

Sasuke struggles in her hold, thrashing and tugging at her until her thin gown tears around her. She uses her grip to pull him toward her through the thick pressure of the water, locking his chest against hers.

She finds his mouth with her own, parting their lips wide and exhaling her very own breath, her essence into him until she can feel his lungs seize as they fill with air, his heart beating an intense tempo against her ribcage.

“Breathe,” she whispers against his lips, the words impressed into the cavern of his mouth.

And he does. He inhales and exhales, and his skin burns amidst the cold and dark. The pressure of hundreds of feet of water pressed down upon them lifts as she reaches outside and inside of herself and him , and it is as if they are simply floating.

“Feel this,” she says. She pulls away enough to gaze into his face, so clearly visible now due to the glow emanating from both of their skins. She reaches for one of his hands, links their fingers. “Does the water not hold you? Does it not grant you the privilege of keeping your breath?”

Dark eyes stare at her so intensely, the silky black locks of his hair floating about his head and revealing to her all of his wonderful, beautiful face.

“I was once a weak little girl,” she says. The water only serves to ripple the sound of her voice, his breath around them. “Sickly, clumsy. Useless in a world of warriors and conquerors. Forever neglected in a world of boys and men.”

“I care not to hear of your history,” Sasuke retorts, his voice deeper still than even the depths to which they’ve sunk.

“Senju Hashirama healed my body by pulling from a well of energy that existed within himself,” she continues. “He made me whole, made my body strong and my mind clear. And when I begged to remain at his side, he taught me how he came to find this ability.”

Her other hand seeks out his and despite the dark, tightened look on his face, he does not pull away when she links these fingers, too.

“We called it chakra ,” she smiles, blinks wetness that cannot be seen from her eyes. “And I theorized and hypothesized and submitted my life to learning until I figured out that it not only existed in us, but all living things. Then I learned that it could be channeled from these places, these things, too.”

There is curiosity, and a handsome portion of hesitance, in his gaze. It makes her smile, makes her feel sadness as well.

“We spread the information to anyone who would listen,” she says, closing her eyes for a moment to allow her to experience the full burden of her memories, of a time long, long past. “Many people thought we were mad. Others were hungry to learn. Your clan’s forefather was one of the first to submit himself to tutelage. It was I that taught him to breathe fire, myself. It is funny that this has become a tradition for your people.”

“You were Uchiha Madara’s master.”

“There were no masters,” her mouth curves in another small smile. “We were all students of the natural world, and we were all teachers to one another. Still, I was different from the rest. No matter how much I learned, how skilled I became, I hungered for more. The sick girl I was once still existed in me, and I wanted to cast her out. To become powerful, to have all of nature’s unlimited energy at my disposal.”

She shakes her head, sends a curtain of pink between them, obscuring her vision. Sasuke raises their joined hands and pushes it away.

“I was a fool,” she whispers. Perhaps the water carries the sound not as her voice, but as the bubbling of water, as a quiet current. Her shame radiates throughout. “I cannot tell you how it felt, to have my very soul torn from its temple, to have my body dematerialize into nothingness. For…for however much time has passed, I was not all-powerful. I was not everything , as I hoped to be. I was absolutely nothing . Unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling of all things. What I knew was what all natural things do–it was not a life, and not a death. I was suffering and not even sentient enough to know it until…”

“Until?” he asks. The strain has nearly melted away from his face and her chest feels lighter for it. His gaze burns her, creates a lump in her throat as he watches her with keen, glittering eyes and slightly furrowed brow.

“Until I heard you,” she chokes. “I heard you, calling for something greater than what existed within your grasp. The first voice I had experienced, the first face I could see in such a long time. And you sounded like me , so much that I remembered what it was to be myself. ”

“What if I am willing to pay the price?” he asks, voice small.

She shakes her head again, “I can teach you to wield power based on what nature is willing to lend in a fair exchange. I will not teach you how to lose yourself to infinity.”

Sasuke’s eyes dart back and forth between hers, and his chest begins to rise and fall more quickly. His plush lips part and his breaths veer toward gasps, and Sakura wades closer, concerned and prepared to share her breath with him once again, or pull him up to the surface if she must.

When her mouth hovers mere centimeters from his and her own lips part, he frees both of his hands from her fingers and grasps at the sides of her face.

Their mouths meld together, but instead of her breath pushing through his mouth, a flexible, hot muscle sinks into hers. It plays around, running against the inside of her cheeks and the roof of her mouth until her own tongue rises to its call, twisting and swirling in a slow, sensuous dance.

Bright, glittering shards of light shine around them as Sasuke steals her breath, returning it back within the same moments. Her hands find a place against the back of his nape and her waist sways toward his until their bellies are flush, hearts throbbing against each other's ribs in a brisk staccato.

Sakura’s eyes slide shut.

Somewhere, a sound, a deep, rumbling groan filters to her ears and her fingers sink into the waving, dark locks about Sasuke’s head. His hands slip away from her face, slide down the contours of her shoulders, and stop at her waist. The floating fabric of her gown is bunched against her thighs, exposing her to the gentle current of the unknown below as their feet twist together.

“Sasuke,” she murmurs into the minute spaces between their gliding, flowing lips. Heat pools in her belly, in her cheeks and between her thighs.

The fingers of one of his hands slip lower, reaching under the fabric of her dress to cup the enclave of her center, the tips of them brushing feather light over sensitive, tingling flesh.

Aa, this, I remember, she thinks as her leg rises to notch around Sasuke’s hip and she feels the press of something warm, hard, thick under his robes.

Their kiss becomes frenzied, a symphony of sighs and quiet groans filling their ears as they rock together, upheld by nothing like gravity, her essence seeping into him and his into her like an infinite fountain.

She hooks her foot into the loose waistband of his coverings and pushes them down, letting them float or sink away into the vast unknown. The tear in her gown is split further by his desperate hand, parting so that her breast brushes against the softly wrinkled fabric of his robes before those, too, are pushed away.

Euphoria dances behind her eyelids as his teeth nip at her lips and the broad width of his hand burns hot pressing into her lower spine. She feels and feels, becoming nearly dizzy with the overflow of sensation. After so long as nothing, she lives once again. And she is touching, feeling the brush of his hair against the tips of her fingers, the sucking warmth of his mouth, and tiny bumps overlapping his tongue. The heat of his chest, the prod of his turgid length at her lower belly and his heart, throbbing and racing in a rhythm she can feel against her own.

The hand between her legs slides up and down, delicious pressure causing the tips of his fingers to dip between her slick folds. An errant slide over the throbbing bundle at the top of her mound sets her breath hitching and voice spearing in a high-pitched moan.

This time, when Sakura forgets herself it is as she is lifted by the tangible, iron-clad grip of strong hands before being lowered over a thick, intruding shaft that splits her apart and puts her back together again directly thereafter.

She is torn and mended over and over and over as his strong thighs thump against her buttocks, his teeth rasping over her lower lip and breath mingling with hers in desperate pants. The insides of her spread to make room for him, they wrap tight and pull him in deep, flowering like blooming petals and let him reach further still.

She curls her legs around Sasuke’s waist, throws her head back away from his plundering mouth and cries out so loud she is sure the sound tunnels through the water and breaks its surface, echoes between the towering trees and overpowers the song of the nighttime.

Sasuke is a mosaic of light and color, his irises tinged red and electric courses racing over the planes of his chest and flexing abdomen as he sinks his teeth into his lips and rams inside of her with enough force to break her in a way even the Universe could not.

Yet, she feels whole, more than ever, in his arms. With his body against hers and reaching into herself as far as he can go.

“You,” he gasps, choking on a groan when she twists her hips in a way that she knows , remembers she has done before, “It is because of you that I will be unmade.”

The yearning that drew her to life again, the burning want for something, anything builds between them, slips around and is mixed up inside of her with each plunge into her depths, spills out between both of their lips and floats on the current soft each gasping breath, each gentle sigh. She knows with certainty, then, that despite his declarations and protestations Sasuke had summoned her to be his companion, to be many things other than that, evermore.

The muscles of her lower body clench and her softest flesh tightens around him, grasping, hungry to lock him where he belongs. She grips at him with her fingers, rolls into him with her hips and starts the journey to crest a peak she could not reach even if she flew with wings to the highest mountain.

“You addling, perplexing, exquisite creature.”

Her breaths hitch and her voice stutters on the rhythm of his thrusts as she pleads–

“Call me Sakura, please.”

As if she has taken her very first breath all over again from a time even she cannot remember, like the flower buds peeking up through the soil after months of snow, like the sun edging over the horizon and casting away the dark of light, something fills her, her very essence brighter, more tangible.

He thrusts so deeply, then, that she finds herself almost aching, but his hand is gentle as it comes to cup her chin.

“Sakura,” Sasuke whispers, drawing her forward to drink from her mouth again.

Sakura is my name, Sakura is who I am.

Climax breaks her and oozing warmth fills her as Sasuke anchors his body inside of her and calls her name and she is.

*ೃ༄ End .ೃ࿐

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beyondthescenes37 · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Naruto, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke Characters: Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Lemon, Smut, Shameless Smut, Hokage Uchiha Sasuke, Office Sex, Rough Sex, Roleplay, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Roleplay, Dirty Thoughts, Dirty Talk, Kinktober 2021, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, SasuSaku Smut Week 2021 Summary: The new Hachidaime has his eye on Haruno Sakura, and he’s not above mixing business with pleasure. He wants her, and is determined to have her and make her his. Written for @SS-smutweek “Office” and Kinktober 2021

#sasusaku #sasuke x sakura #sasusaku fanfiction #sasusaku fanfic #sasusaku fic #sasusakusmutweek #sasusaku smut #sasusakusmutweek2021 #sasusaku smut week #sasusaku smut week 2021 #sasusakusmut #sasuke x sakura smut

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theclosetpoet7 · 6 years

Text

Revolution

One

Rating: MA/NSFW

Chapter Two

Begin

"The red balloon flew up and up into the air, with no particular destination in mind, it went on its own way. There was nothing more satisfying than flying because it was what it was meant to do"

It didn't start with her healing him when he was at the brink of death.

It also didn't start with a drunken one night stand.

And, it didn't start with a proclamation of love.

The way things started with them didn't involve the usual cliché things Sakura had pictured in her mind. Though she had oftentimes wondered how in the hell they ended up being intimate with each other. It still astonished her. Honestly, if someone asked her how she was able to share a bed with Uchiha Sasuke, though no one would ever be able to ask her about it, she would probably surprise that person.

Because it was so unlike her.

And it wasn't something you would expect from her.

What would they say if they knew what sweet, innocent, warm-hearted Haruno Sakura had done? Aside from the fact that when she had run into the enemy four years ago, valuable information which should have been reported to the hokage as soon as it happened, Konoha's most promising medic had continued to meet him in secret.

And since she had seen him for the first time after three years.

She had not asked him to come home.

Not once.

If she was asked about the beginning, all she could say was that it was random. So random that no one would probably believe that she didn't do what was typical of her. The first time they ran into each other, she couldn't even remember where, because they had not even acknowledged each other's presence. She had been so scared that all she wanted to do was run as far away as possible. Who wouldn't be?

She was his enemy right?

They had been walking in a sea of people going about their daily lives. The sun was at its highest peak and she had taken her cloak off because of the heat. When she had folded the cloth over her forearm, his black robes caught her eye. She looked up to see him headed in her direction. He looked the same as when she last saw him. Maybe a bit taller. She couldn't see his face clearly because unlike the people around them who found the weather to be too warm and had taken off their jackets and what-not, he had decided to keep his cloak on. But she knew it was him. And he was closing their distance.

In her mind, she had stopped when he reached her side. It all happened in slow motion, the slight swish of his robe on her lateral, the shift in the ground beside her own two feet and the subtle way his eyes almost met hers. She wanted to look at his face, felt the urge to say his name, but her body continued to move. And he went on his own way. They crossed paths, but they didn't even say anything. It was like they didn't even know each other.

They were strangers.

And she didn't know why she didn't do anything.

She should've run after him.

But she didn't.

The second time they saw each other was in a civilian village located along the route from Suna to Oto. That day, she just felt like having a strong drink. It was a random bar she picked because it was the first one she saw. She had been tired from her mission to the sand village that she didn't even notice him at first. But, in the same way one's eyes search for something interesting in a room, he captured her attention.

He was sitting at a booth with Uzumaki Karin by his side. They were drinking alcohol and as expected the red-head was stuck to him. Sakura had felt a bit jealous at that. But she refused to admit it, concluding that she should just ignore they were even in the same place.

She had left again without saying anything, but before she made her exit, their eyes met but as quickly as they were in each other's line of vision, both of them looked away without so much as a hello.

It was excruciating, seeing him but not talking to him.

A week later, she came to the same bar, wondering if he was there.

He was.

Still with Karin.

Sakura fought the urge to stomp out of the pub but decided not to. Their oculars met again but like before, they didn't linger on each other's presence. She had drunk two bottles of sake that night. When the bartender had woken her up the next day she was too groggy to even contemplate about the fact that the bastard had just left her alone without a care for her well-being.

Two weeks later, she went back.

He wasn't there this time.

And though she felt the disappointment inside, she sat in the same booth she saw him in, and ordered her drink, emerald eyes immediately scanning the room for the familiar chicken-butt hair, but never finding him.

She went there weekly after that.

Naruto had once asked her why she wanted to go to Suna. She said that she was just beginning to like the weather there. She used this as a lame excuse but she was lying because she never really went to where she said she would.

Instead, she went to that civilian village.

Hoping to see him.

She didn't even spot Sasuke again until about two months later. She had actually come back from Suna at the time and as usual, she wanted to see if he was there.

He was.

And he was sitting alone in the same booth.

As soon as she entered, their eyes met. Sakura tried to ignore the fact that her heart just skipped a beat when he didn't look away this time. The young medic attempted to hold his stare but found that she couldn't, so she turned away first.

She sat in her previous seat at the bar and ordered her usual sake. The young medic sipped on the liquid and allowed it to calm her nerves. She could feel someone looking at her but told herself that it wasn't him. She almost choked when his voice, deep and dangerous, reached her ears.

"Does he even know that you're here?"

He wasn't going to say his best friend's name.

"Nope."

She didn't bother facing him as she took another swig of her drink.

"More please."

She signaled to the bartender. She was then handed another drink in no time and she downed it all in one gulp.

On the outside, Haruno Sakura appeared calm and collected as the kage loomed behind her. However, on the inside, she was anything but. Her heart hammered in her chest and her back felt really hot at the proximity of his body at her posterior. She was afraid because after about six months of randomly running into each other and happening to be in the same bar but never speaking, acting like they were strangers, he had finally decided to acknowledge her presence.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

She gulped and thought hard. What was she doing here? It was far from Konoha and a long way from where she came from. Truthfully, she was beginning to question her saneness. Because who in their right mind would go to a bar just so that they could chance a glance at the enemy? She told herself that she was merely checking up on him. Maybe to get some information.

No, if she was being honest, she just really wanted to see him.

And she shouldn't.

"It's neutral territory." She starts.

Her heart stops when he takes the seat next to her.

"And?"

"I happen to like bars."

"There are a lot of bars in Konoha."

He was regarding her with a look of suspicion. Of course, he was questioning her intentions. But in her mind, she was also questioning his.

"There are also a lot of bars in Otogakure." She retorted.

"Hn."

This was true. It didn't make sense for him to come here, the same way it didn't make sense for her as well.

"How are you?"

She doesn't know why she asked this question. She had been wondering of course, though she never planned on asking him. She doesn't know what they're doing, casually talking as if they weren't on different sides.

He looked at her and she knew that he found her annoying in this moment. He has an eyebrow raised and is probably analyzing her motive.

"Hn."

He didn't even honor her with an answer. What a jerk. Although, she supposed that this was expected. He didn't need to tell her how he was, they weren't friends. They didn't even know each other. Still, her mouth moves on its own.

"I'm fine. These past three years have been great. I am so ecstatic that both my teammates are kages and even more so that they are doing whatever they can to achieve their dreams." She said it sarcastically.

She expected him to leave her alone then because she had gone too far. She mentally kicked herself for saying what she did.

He surprised her however by smirking.

"You're still annoying."

Her heart clenched at his usual reference to her. Sakura Haruno, Lady Tsunade's apprentice, beloved medic of Konoha, loved and admired by all but to Uchiha Sasuke, always an annoyance. She unconsciously grasped her chest to stop the hurt. He had told her that she was annoying too many times now, the last time was something she could never forget. It was a vivid memory, his hand inside her chest, crushing the life out of her. It had felt like she was being torn from the inside. And he had broken her heart into pieces, even if it was a genjutsu. She inwardly told herself to be strong. Instead of crying, she smiled at him and said.

"I know."

He turned to her with an expression of surprise and after a few seconds, smirked.

And that's how it all started.

They didn't talk about the war.

They didn't even talk about their homes.

They simply talked about random matters.

As if they were normal young adults who met at a bar. And they continued to exchange words, frequently meeting at that very spot. Though sometimes they ended up being alone in most days, the gods somehow wanted them to see each other because they had good timing.

Yes, they were doing something crazy by starting something. Neither of them knew where this was headed. It was bound to blow up in their faces at some point. But they were slowly pulled by each other's existence. It was a slow friendship that didn't make sense because when they left that small village, they went back to their normal lives, going on missions, making plans to kill the bijuus, trying to work their way into defeating each other's side. However, weeks, sometimes months would pass and the two ninjas would find themselves wondering then their bodies would bring them to that village to chance another meeting.

It confused them, worried them.

It didn't make sense at all.

______________

" when it finally reached the point where it could go no further, its insides started expanding and expanding at the heat, was that the sun? but it refused to give up, and it refused to feel anything other than its love for flying"

"Hey, Sasuke-kun. Have you ever done it?"

He tried to fight the urge to turn his head to her with wide eyes. She surprised him with her question. This topic was private right? He decided on not answering her. But, she was looking at him and she looked serious. It had been a year since they started seeing each other and Sasuke wondered why she even asked.

They had built an invisible wall in front of the other, never mentioning their lives at their villages. It was shocking how long they managed to keep whateverthis was going. But he found that with this woman, they could never run out of topics. Be it the weather, the alcohol they were trying or the regulars at the bar.

He realized that a lot had changed about her, she was tougher and more opinionated. Also, she was more knowledgeable about everything in general. At the same time though, she was essentially the same twelve year old girl. She took good care of her hair still, and she was a sweet and caring person. He noticed this in the way she was kind to the bartender or to someone she met twice.

After twelve months of getting to know Haruno Sakura all over again, the question she asked was something he did not expect to come from her mouth.

"It's none of your business." He mutters.

"I haven't."

"So?"

"I'm curious though."

He didn't say anything back because his mind is suddenly filled with the thought of Sakura naked and lying in bed.

Under him.

He blinks to erase the image.

"So, have you ever done it?" she asked again.

He knew she wouldn't leave him alone if he didn't answer her.

"Yes."

"With Karin?"

"Aa."

"How many times?"

He looked at her then, now he wasn't able to hide the look of disbelief on his face. Was she seriously asking him how many times?

"I don't know."

He noticed the bewilderment in her green eyes. She quickly hid the hurt by drinking her sake. They stay silent then. Sasuke starts to feel guilty, though he couldn't understand why.

Why should it bother him that he slept with another woman too many times to count?

And why should it bother him that Sakura had looked betrayed because of that?

He doesn't want to stay in her presence now, so he pushes his stool back and starts to get up. She surprises him again when she too stands from her seat. He continued to ignore her as they slowly exited the establishment. The streets are empty except for a couple of civilians drinking and laughing at the nearby stores.

He could hear her footsteps behind him. Cautious and slow. But she was still there. She was following him. He walks aimlessly because he doesn't know where he is supposed to go. Why was he in this village again?

Somehow, he couldn't remember because he was becoming too aware of the woman behind him.

And he found that, like her…

He was also curious.

Not about sex in general.

He had done it several times before. At the age of twenty, he was an experienced lover. There was nothing remotely new about having a woman's body. He had only one constant partner. Even if they weren't really "together", she was always present, and she had shown him techniques he didn't even know about.

It was a mutual thing, finding that physical release which could only be brought about by another person's body. And he found that it was a good way to let go of pent up emotions. He doesn't go looking for someone to sleep with, Karin just goes to him and he sometimes, though this was a rare occurrence, went to her if he felt the urge to do so. It was purely physical and he wasn't curious about finding out what it was like with another woman.

That's why he is on edge as of the moment.

Because Sakura had stirred something inside him…

And he wanted to know what it would be like.

What would it be like if he claimed this ex-teammate's innocence?

Her steps halted and he turned to see what made her stop.

His eyes widened as he saw her, standing there, her body slightly turned to a building. It was a love hotel. His heart pumps faster as he registers that face, contemplating on something, and he knew what she was thinking. He swallows as she turns to him then. Her eyes told him everything she was saying even if she didn't open her mouth to utter the words.

His control shattered.

He walks to her, grabs her wrist and takes her inside. He was probably going to regret it but he didn't care at this point. Why should he? She wanted him to show her what it was like right? A normal man wouldn't be able to say no to this pink-haired medic. She was attractive and she had a physique that promised any male that she would be good in bed. Sasuke knew that he wouldn't be able to say no. Especially if she looked at him with a face that said.

"Fuck me."

______________

It was a simple room with just one bed, a table and a lamp at its side. This room was made for one purpose and one purpose only. Sex. He allowed her to enter first. When she steps in, she anxiously sweeps her hair out of her face as she pretends to look interested in the furniture.

What the hell was she thinking?

Showing Sasuke that she wanted to try sex for the first time with him.

Her body shivered as she felt him come closer. His tall frame emanated a dangerous aura as he stood behind her fit body.

"Having second thoughts?"

Sakura could feel her goose bumps at the sound of his voice. There was just something about Sasuke's voice. It was dark and sexy. Finding that courage which got her into this situation in the first place, she turned to him and hesitantly reached out to his face.

Her soft hand caresses the side of his cheek as she looks up at him to make out the handsome structure of his face. The way he looked back at her had her whole body turn red because it simply told her that he knew how to make a woman scream his name. She sadly notes that Karin had probably received a look similar to this. Maybe something even more meaningful.

She bites her lip to stop herself from becoming bitter. Her hand almost falls back but he holds it to his cheek with his.

"Close your eyes."

Sakura follows his command and shuts her eyelids. That was the only warning she got before he crashed his lips to hers. They felt soft as they brushed on her pink ones ever so slowly, as if he was testing the waters, checking to see if he wanted to take a dip in it.

She moaned as she felt his tongue come out to ask for entry and she immediately opens her mouth to let him in. It was a battle of the appendages. He angled her head closer so he could dominate her and soon he does.

When they felt the need to come up for air they separated, a thin trail of saliva connecting both their mouths.

He pulls away.

She is almost disappointed but he steps back, and pulls the zipper of his high collared shirt down. After, he pulls the purple obi away from his form, leaving him in his dark pants that narrowed around his legs.

Her breath caught at the sight. He was too beautiful. White alabaster skin, muscles toned from years of hard physical training. Faint scars adorned his chest and she thought that they only served to add to his beauty. Her throat dries at the sight of his stomach. Her eyes go to his face again and she almost faints when she finds him staring at her.

"Sakura, take your clothes off."

It takes her a moment to understand his demand but when she does, she instantly blushes again. Dainty fingers come up to shakily pull her zipper down. She notes the massive difference in the way she removes her clothes in contrast to his confident stripping. She turns around to take off the sleeveless red blouse from her shoulder, leaving her in her white bra.

She turns slightly to regard him over her shoulder. When she finds him still staring at her she turns away and almost wraps her arms around herself when he grabs both her wrists and puts them to her side. His lips then go to her neck and he inhales deeply. She almost jumps at his display of affection.

When he senses her arms losing their tenseness, he grabs her waist and turns her to him again, immediately engaging her in another round of french kissing. She responds to him with more eagerness than before, fingers wounding through his dark tresses.

As he pushes her to the mattress, and places himself between her legs, he continues to skim his hands over her skin, soon, he unclasps her bra and wastes no time in grabbing her full breasts and sucking on one of them. She gasps his name at the contact. The sensation immediately radiates to her core and she finds herself in need of more of him.

Out of instinct, she started grounding her pelvis to his. He pulls slightly away to grit his teeth at the pleasure.

"Stop."

Her movements immediately halt, and she starts to feel the stinging slap of rejection. However, he pulls her closer to press his arousal to her. She gasps at the hardness of him.

"Let me do this first."

Sakura doesn't understand what he means and gasps when he grabs her shorts in his hands and pulls them down along with her panties. She almost shies away from the exposure but he holds her thighs firmly and spreads them apart.

"Sasuke-kun, please."

She pleads for him to let her go because she knows that she couldn't take it if he stares at her innocence.

And he does.

His dark coals gaze at her womanhood, and then they went to her eyes. They stay like that for a second before he lowers his head to taste her, tongue coming out to lap at her essence.

Sakura's hands immediately grab the sheets beside her and she arches her back to him. Her body heats up at the pleasure he invokes in her. Slowly and hesitantly her hips start to rock against his mouth and he lets out a growl of approval. His wet appendage moves higher and she suddenly couldn't help but scream his name in utter satisfaction as he stroked her nub. It was all going too fast, she wanted it to go on forever but at the same time she wanted to reach that absolute euphoria.

His name comes out in a strained gasp when she finally reaches her peak. Her body shakes at the intensity of the first climax Uchiha Sasuke has given her. But it was not the last. He doesn't give her a chance to recover because he swiftly takes off his pants, pulls his length out and thrusts into her.

"Ah!"

Her eyes widened at the painful feeling of him stretching her. Her teeth dig into her bottom lip as she tries to adjust to him.

"Relax."

"I, I'm sorry, it just took me by surprise." She says, slowly wrapping her arms around him and pulling him closer.

"Hn."

Sasuke settles into nuzzling her neck, tongue coming out to lick her skin. After a while, he feels her calm down. Then, he starts moving.

It was blinding sensation from then on out.

His thrusts, hard and fast, had Sakura gasping his name as she shuts her eyes and focuses on the man moving above her.

They were really doing it. Fucking each other. It was more than she could imagine. He was passionate and giving. She grabs his hair when he hits a spot inside of her that almost makes her come.

"Sasuke."

"Sasuke…"

His name is all that she could remember in this moment of unadulterated pleasure. And she is drowning in the overwhelming scent of his sweat mixed with his soap. She reaches a new high when he changes his angle and charges into her faster than before.

In a matter of minutes she comes again, biting into his shoulder. Her walls clamping hard on him seemed to have done the trick because so suddenly, he is emptying into her, thrusts becoming frantic.

He pulls out of her, spent and satisfied and goes to lie on his stomach next to her heated body.

The sight of him, exhausted and seemingly at peace makes her heart beat ten times faster and she finds herself unable to hold back any longer. The feelings she had for him, instead of disappearing, had only grown the past year. It was like they were given a second chance to be together when they went to that bar. Sakura hoped that was what it meant because she doesn't know if she is ever going to be happy without this man by her side. Before she could stop herself, she lets out those three words.

______________

"I love you."

Onyx eyes opened. His throat felt constricted upon hearing her. Really. She just had to say it didn't she? She was really too open and he suddenly felt the need to put distance between them. This woman was too annoying, she didn't even give him time to fully catch his breath. Sasuke feels the need to get away but finds himself unable to stand from the bed. Instead, he opted to just turning to his side, his back to her. He closed his eyes and listened. He was positive she had something else to say.

Sakura surprised him again by turning to him, wrapping an arm around his stomach, pressing her body close to his. He almost groans at the contact but stops himself. Already, he was regretting sleeping with her.

A few minutes passed by when the dark-haired nin finally decided that he couldn't take the silence any longer.

Did she expect him to say something back?

If she wanted him to tell her his feelings then she would be deeply disappointed because he knows that he doesn't even love her.

He finds the right words to tell her to stay away from him. That she should go home and forget this ever happened. Because this was all too much.

Her feelings.

She was suffocating him with her heartfelt confession. Deciding to break the quietude, he utters one simple word.

"Why?"

He had always wondered why she claims to love him. After her second love confession almost four years ago, he found himself pissed at her for professing her love for him when he was betraying the trust Naruto placed in him. What did she think it would get her? It puzzled him then, and it still puzzled him now. What did she see in him? Does she actually know who he is?

He stiffens when he hears her quiet laughter. Her hand comes up to stifle her girlish giggles but he could still feel it vibrate through his back. He glares at the table beside the bed.

This isn't exactly the right time to be laughing.

His glare bores through the furniture as he waits for her to answer his question.

"Orokana."

Her voice echoes into the room. He feels her shift her position on the bed as she pulls herself closer to him. He could feel her naked form against him now. Soft and smooth.

"You don't need a reason to love someone."

His breath hitches at the easiness of her answer.

"I mean, there are a lot of things I like about you Sasuke-kun, things that make me remember how happy my life was when you were in Konoha and things that make me believe that despite this charade of not caring and not letting anyone in, you do care."

This time, he turns to look at her. He expects her to look straight into his eyes but she doesn't. Instead, her hands go to his chest, slowly forming into small fists as she lowers her head to rest it against them. He feels her breathe deeply.

"At the same time, there are also things that I dislike. Like how easily you casted us, your comrades, aside, and how arrogant you are for starting a war against your best friend because you simply do not agree with him."

This was the first time she ever mentioned the war to him. He is curious if she is about to delve into it but is relieved when she pulls away and holds one of his hands, this time green eyes stared into his soul.

"But, it's all those things that make you. . .You. Just you. Uchiha Sasuke. . . You must think I'm crazy, but that's the truth. I simply love you."

It takes her a second to realize the passion in her words and she instantly turns red when he doesn't reply.

"Gomen, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable…"

He silences her with a kiss. A kiss projected with so much emotion that he couldn't help but deepen it. This was something he hasn't felt in a long time. The feeling of being accepted as who he was. The same way a family does. He didn't want her to take her words back.

He pushes her to the mattress again and touches her with the familiarity of a lover. Already she was responding to him.

When he enters her and feels her gasp at the pleasure he is giving her, he pulls her closer and tries to imagine that they aren't enemies.

He tries to forget about the fact that she chose Naruto over him.

And he tries to ignore the wild thumping of his heart as he feels something so foreign to him that he couldn't even give a name to it.

He just knows, as she comes from his hard thrusts, screaming his name, that after tonight…after she offered her heart to him again…

Things would never be the same.

"….it didn't care if it was putting its existence at risk, it kept on flying and flying…choosing to be free….it didn't care as long as it keeps on doing what it loves, higher and higher...

...until it finally bursts"

______________ To be continued

AN: Orokana - foolish / silly

I have no idea where this balloon thing came from. Lately, I've been searching for pictures of balloons in the great blue sky. Anyway, this is how things started with them. Actually, I was hoping to just focus on the romance between these two but a part of me wants to explore this little world that I created (ehem, based on Kishimoto's awesome manga). So maybe it will be longer than I intended? Maybe not.

Is anyone else feeling like the world is ending because Naruto is nearing its final chapter? Let's all raise our hands and cast our energy into Kishimoto-sama to just let Sasuke and Sakura be together. :D

It might take a while for me to update on both my stories so I hope this satisfies you for now.

#sasusaku #sasusakusmut #sasusakunsfw #sssmut #sasusaku+fanfic

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happiestwriter · 6 years

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Hiiiiiiii guysss.

Many apologies for not posting updates on my little story, BUT! It is complete! Please go enjoy some love from our fave Uchiha couple!

#SasuSaku #SasuSakuSmut #NarutoVerse #SAkuraHaruno #sasukeuchiha #hardcoresmut #sakura #sasuke #uchihasexeverywhere

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xxlovendreamsxx · 6 years

Note

Who do you think initiates more? Sasuke or Sakura? I reckon it's Sakura but i think she wants Sasuke to more, but gets impatient of waiting and jumps him.

honestly i think sasuke because of a number of reasons. a) it’s the only way he knows how to really convey all that affection and love he holds for her. b) he’s more impulsive. c) relating to the last, i think sakura knows how to wait for a later time when it’s more convenient, but sasuke is so ruled by his emotions and feelings that he’s like, here and now. like everyone (in the naruto world that is) always thinks sakura initiates so much more, or is more impulsive because sasuke looks so composed and cool. but nah. he does. heh.

#sasusaku #otp: a once in a lifetime love #sshc #sasusakusmut!hc #Anonymous #asks

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sasusakuaudios · 1 year

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Sasusaku new audio!

Hi everyone,

I haven’t posted anything lately, wasn’t keeping well and had some emotional stress.

All fine now! Plus, my lovelies are doing so well out there~ just watched Sasuke Retsuden episode 2 and damn! I am melting.

So, with a totally new spirit this new year, I will start working on a NEW SASUSAKU AUDIO. STAY TUNED.

#sasusakusex #sasusakusmut #sasusakuaudiosex #sasusakuaudio #sasuke retsuden #sasusakusexaudio

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silentvoicescryingout · 1 year

Text

as the rivers run

For Pomeyasha, by silentvoicescryingout

NSFW 🔞

A cool breeze whispers through the treetops, rustling the leaves and bringing forth the scent of pine and bark, of sweet air and nighttime. Murmurs sound all around—the fading song of birds falling to rest, the chirp of insects and crackle of fauna swaying to and fro.

Water bubbles and splashes gently against tiny, smooth pebbles. Tiny flowers bud along the grassy edges of the riverbank, petals pointed skyward.

Gentle light from above casts a glow upon the rippling waters— reflecting silver-blue on the gentle swells. The moon is big, full, bright enough in the night sky that the trained eye can make out the shapes and filtered colors of plants and shrubbery about the bank.

Moonlight casts a glow on Sakura’s hair, making it more lavender than cherry blossom. Wet strands cling to smooth, slightly flushed cheeks, droplets of water beading on her nose and below the plush of her bottom lip.

Sasuke cups a handful of cool water, bringing it up to trickle over the back of her neck, flattening the fine, pale hair into soft waves at her nape. A quiet hum sounds from between her lips as his hand reaches out to comb through the damp strands of hair framing her face, pushing them back to reveal the purple-colored diamond gracing her forehead.

“Is the water getting too cold?” he murmurs. His own hair, dampened into the inkiest black, sticks against the side of his throat, the shortest locks clinging to the curve of his jaw.

“No,” Sakura responds, shaking her head. The surface ripples as she shifts, turning slightly to present him with her right shoulder, so he may dribble more water down her back and wash away the sparse suds that remain.

“Good,” his fingers sweep gently over her skin, slick with cool water, the warmth of his flesh beneath.

“It was so hot out today,” she sighs. Her head tips back, and she cups water to splash over her chest. “The cool water feels nice in comparison.”

“Hn,” Sasuke mutters. His hand reaches out, drawing her close before rotating around her so his front is at her back. Water splashes at her hips as he takes a small step closer.

He gathers water by the palm-ful, cascading it over her body. At her collarbones, her breasts, the notches of her elbows and dip of her belly button. Fingers press gently to her forehead, urging her to tip it back against his chest so he can drip water at her hairline.

The cool liquid running over her scalp in streams elicits a shiver in Sakura’s form, the ticklish sensation both soothing and thrilling. Gooseflesh pricks on her skin, the peaks of her breasts tightening into plump, dusky buds.

She sighs, leaning further back into the strong chest behind her. Sasuke’s warmth at her back and the cool air nipping at her from the front is a cornucopia of sensation— a quiet, purring hum falls from her lips and the chest behind her vibrates with a deep chuckle.

“Are you planning on falling asleep here?” Sasuke asks, a hot palm sliding to brace itself at the swell of her hip.

“Maybe,” she mumbles. He huffs again.

“You’ll catch a cold,” he drawls. The hand resting against her tightens momentarily before his thumb begins moving rhythmically, sweeping in tiny circles against her skin.

“You’ll keep me warm,” she retorts. A quiet tch sounds above her head and she laughs quietly.

A shiver creeps down her spine when Sasuke fills his hand with water once more, then allows it to wash over the slightly warmed flesh of her back. She titters in half-hearted protest as he scoops more, lazily spilling it over her chest, causing her nipples to tighten further.

Sasuke’s hand slips around the dip of her waist, sliding up smoothly, casually until his finger tips brush against the underside of her breast. Then higher, it skims slowly upward until he is cupping her entirely in his palm.

Sakura blinks, her knees loosening, her weight falling slightly back into him once more. His hand is a gentle, but purposeful weight at her chest. He holds her with a confidence that is comforting; it feels long-tended, despite it being so new, their physical, intimate understanding of one another.

The wind whistles quietly again, rustling the treetops and accenting the sound of their deep breaths: in, out, pull, push, in sync.

Sakura’s head falls back once more, allowing her to peer up into the face tipped down to gaze at her. A shadowed flush crawls across the bridge of her nose, pools in her dampened cheeks. Her jade eyes, turned pale chrysoberyl in the moonlight, twinkle as her lips curve into the echo of a smile.

Sasuke’s hand slides away from one breast to brush over the other, before sweeping upward to allow his fingers to dip into the shallow nook of her collarbone. His fingers splay, reaching to touch gently at the soft skin of her throat, up to trace the line of her jaw, his index tapping light at the apex of her chin.

Her eyes slip closed as his fingers stroke against her petal-soft cheek, feather-light over her delicate eyelids.

His head dips, nose brushing into the soft, wet strands at her crown as his hand retraces its path, coming to rest at her breast once more. Her chest heaves with deep, slow breaths as he curls his hand over her mound, plumping it with the barest squeeze of his fingers.

“Beautiful,” he breathes, lips pressing into her hair. Or it could be the breeze, whispering like a lover into the shell of her ear, rippling the surface of the water until it laps in cool shocks against their ever-warming skin.

She is like the finest silk under his fingers, so smooth and supple it makes him ache. Wrapped up against him like so, this pink-haired spitfire, larger than life hero and savior seems small, delicate, breakable. She fits into him like a puzzle, plush where he is unforgiving, downy-pillow to his rusted steel.

Pure in the eye of the moonlight, illuminating his shadows.

They stand for long moments until the sky is more midnight than blue, the stars ever brighter, the moon shining, beckoning. Sasuke cradles her sofests parts, caging her in the bracket of his flesh, lest the gentle current sweep her away.

Sakura shifts, rolling her neck in a sensuous semi-circle, “Anata.” His favorite name. The best one of them, at least. Her voice is quiet, smooth and seeming one with the rustling grasses and murmuring waters.

Yes , he breathes into her ear, leaning low so his mouth is centimeters from her nape, eyelashes tickling against the highest point of her cheek.

She only has to turn the barest bit to peer into his mismatched gaze– only tilts her head an inch to allow her mouth to press against his. Lips meld, parting together to allow breaths and tongues and affection to slip between.

The hand at her breast tightens ever-so slightly again, anchoring her closer, warming her further. Sasuke’s breath drips from his lips, half a hum, half a sigh. Sakura drinks it in, sips from his mouth and is well acquainted with the flavor.

A pair of teeth nip gently at giving flesh, another tongue slipping out to soothe the sting. Sakura’s hand rises from under the river’s surface, sprinkles droplets that get whisked away by the brisk air as she reaches to grasp behind her lover’s neck, pulling him further down to slant her mouth against his with a ferocity belied by her playful nature and bashful tendencies.

A shudder works through Sasuke’s form– finally his hot-blooded body giving in to the chill of desire–and Sakura leans in, encouraging a rocking motion. They sway in time with the ripples of the water, until they don’t– then they disturb the surface, passion bringing with it its own kind of current.

“Turn around,” he rasps, licking into her mouth again as if to deny himself his own request.

She grins, catches his lower lip between her teeth and pulls away gently until the contact is broken, and she can twirl around to face him front-to-front. Her palms find his chest, pressing against each flexing muscle, index and thumb creating a frame in the center where his heart beats strong. Hard, fast and well within her grasp.

Sakura smiles wider. She traces the shadows of his muscular torso in the lowish light with her eyes, drags her gaze up and away from another feature vying for her attention. Jade meets lavender, and red, and she scoffs.

“Unfair,” she murmurs, trailing her finger tips in lazy swirls, drawing closer and closer to small nipples beading in anticipation. A dark brow arches in challenge. “You get to see me better than I see you.”

“Hn,” he hums, chest heaving on a deep breath as the tip of her pinky nail catches on one of his peaks. “I suppose I’ll have to let you feel me twice as much, then.”

How swiftly that loving gaze turns to liquid heat astounds her. Long fingers curl around her hip, calloused fingertips pressing in and dimpling her flesh. She feels the water part around her thighs as Sasuke tugs her forward, until there is not even room for a breath between them. The rise and fall of his chest and hers are forced to move in tandem.

Pale pink lashes lower, green eyes glittering in shadow as Sasuke draws himself to his full height, rolls his shoulders back and pelvis forward to meld them flush together, hip to abdomen. He throbs between them, an aching pulse below his waist superseding the entrapment of the water’s meniscus and breaking through the surface.

Sakura holds his smoldering gaze, but allows her hands to succumb to the gravitational pull: down, down they slip until her fingers are just barely tapping to the top of the water. Fluttering the digits of her right hand a few inches to the left brings them to graze against something smooth and hot, bulbous and peeking just above the lapping ripples.

Before her hand has the chance to dip beneath the surface, to explore the pillar looming below, the hand at her hip plunges down, reaching to wrap around the back of her thigh. Her left leg is pulled above the water, hooked wet and cool around a warm and trim waist. That dark stare looms closer as he bends to reach more of her, adjusting and fortifying his grip.

Sakura catches the stump of his right bicep with her left hand, the right shooting up to hook behind his left shoulder. An insistent tug behind her suspended knee compels her to hook one foot behind Sasuke’s muscular buttock. When he rises again to full height, she is dragged away from the sandy river floor, forced to balance on only her biggest toe until she swings her other leg through the water, to its place around the other side of him.

“Hold onto me, Sakura,” he susurrus. “Tight.”

Sakura clings to his shoulders, clenching her legs about his hips as he wades away from the center of the stream. The water level kisses at her navel, her pubis and then slips away completely as his strong steps move them toward the edge of the bank, where large, smooth rocks make an enclave of darkness speared only by a single rill of moonlight spilling from above.

When he finally stops, and the backs of her thighs meet cold, wet stone as he sits her upon it, she can hardly make out the fine features of his face. Only his eyes are clear to her, shining purple and crimson: her very own waning and waxing moons.

Her features are as clear as day to him. Gooseflesh litters nearly every inch of her skin, her eyes big and bright and closer to their true shade when sheltered from the filter of the moonlight. Cherry red lips part, plumped and swollen as her chest hitches with trembling breaths. Blossom colored locks cling to her neck and brush against her collarbones, trickling tiny rivulets of water down to her flushed, swollen breasts.

Sasuke moves forward, still encased in water down from the center of his thighs. He loosens one pale, supple thigh from its grip around him, encouraging the bend in her faintly scarred knee, fixing her foot flat against her seat. She gasps and he slips into the space created for him, notching their hips together and bracing his hand above her head on the rougher, dryer parts of the rocky ledge.

“I can feel you, Sasuke-kun,” she breathes. Her back arches, bringing her chest closer to his. Her lower half shifts as well, until it presses hot, slick against his center. “Let me feel more.”

A low groan falls from his lips before they come down to smother hers. Sakura braces her dainty fingers against the hard line of his jaw, swirling her tongue in dizzying patterns around his, sucking at his lips and sliding her way around his mouth in a way that makes him burn hot from the top of his head to his submerged toes.

Sasuke’s fingers dig into the divots of the rocky wall behind her, calluses scraping as he cants his hips forward, indulging himself in a warm, slick glide. A breathless moan squeezes out between their entangled mouths and he exhales harshly, shifting the lower part of his body back, then forward again to repeat the sensation.

Sakura’s crooked knee begins to buckle inward, falling against his side. He moves his hand to cup it, pushing gently, slowly until she is spread wide for him again.

“Stay like this, Sakura,” he murmurs into her mouth, peppering a sprinkling of chaste kisses to her mouth before pulling back to gaze at her fully.

Even as the flush on her face spreads to her chest, she lets her bent leg fall open more, the other sliding to her side, sweeping at the water with her foot. Graceful fingers rake through her hair, pulling it back away from her cheeks as she stares up at him with wide, trusting eyes.

A small smirk curls his mouth, causing Sakura’s pulse to thrum more insistently within the cage of her ribs. Long fingers trace a path from the knobs of her knee down to the crease between her thigh and calf. Further down, his digits slide, trailing over the inside of her thigh. Slower and slower the closer they draw to the place they belong.

“Sasuke-kun,” she pants, hips swiveling against her slick perch in an unconscious attempt to urge him to his destination.

He smiles in earnest, leaning forward once more to capture her lips. She whimpers into him as his palm presses hot and heavy against the flesh just at the crease between her thigh and mons. Sasuke tightens his grip, fingers kneading the muscle under the thin layer of fat, scorching her down to her bones and sparking each nerve ending.

Sakura’s cry is muffled by his mouth when he allows his hand to slide over her center, cupping her gently. He holds his hand there for a moment, relishing the heat and texture of her soft, petal-like folds against his palm. Then, he slides his hand up, down, using his fingers to separate those petals and test the nectar seeping from within.

He wets his fingers at her entrance before sliding them over the pearly nub peeking through the short, pink curls at the top of her mound. He frames the protrusion with his index and forefinger to open her more completely, and uses his middle to circle around the nucleus with a feather-light touch.

Sakura inhales sharply, reaching out with trembling hands to grasp at every part of him within reach. A set of fingers clench tight at the firm flesh above his elbow, the others cupped against the side of his neck. Her head tilts back and she blinks dizzily at the swirls of purple and red glowing down at her as Sasuke’s finger gradually increases its pressure, toying her with a heavier, maddeningly slow touch.

“Don’t tease me,” she says tightly, swallowing a gasp as he inches down to gather more of her spilling wetness before returning to the task of tracing circles around her throbbing bundle of nerves.

“I’m not,” he replies, his voice a charming combination of smooth and gruff. When he shifts, she feels the proof of his desire, burning hot and rigid against her resting leg. “I only want to take my time.”

To enjoy you better . Sakura knows this is what he means, even without him speaking the words allowed. Because she knows him so well, or because he has said the same each of the times they have come together since the first.

Sasuke lets her rush and persuade him anywhere, for anything– except in this.

A half-frustrated, half-fulfilled groan falls from her reddened lips and Sasuke bites back a chuckle. He lightens his touch, but allows his three fingers to press over her distended clitoris, moving in tight circles at a steady, consistent pace. Her breaths quicken, knee swaying inward for a second before swinging back as Sakura sighs out a moan, her hips curling toward his hand, small fingertips digging deliciously into his skin.

“ Yes , anata,” she gasps. Sasuke hisses before leaning forward to drink from her mouth again, trapping his hand between himself and her thighs as he stokes the flames of her desire.

He weathers his own swelling arousal, pressing into her thigh as she moans against his lips and grinds herself against his hand. Withdrawing for the barest second causes her to snap away from their kiss, but whatever protest she has primed is swept away on a hitched inhale as he slides one finger into her core.

Sakura’s hips rock into his hand, her walls fluttering around the sweeping, dexterous intrusion. Sasuke quickly finds that spot inside that causes stars to flash across her vision– she is a very good teacher of anatomy, and he a terrilbly good student–curling the digit against that special bit of flesh. The pressure is gone too soon as he withdraws, but she is rewarded tenfold when his finger returns accompanied by another, gliding inside smoothly, coaxing her into what could easily become wanton frenzy.

“Lean back,” he orders quietly, his voice no louder than the waterfall rushing somewhere in the near-distance, but potent nonetheless.

Sakura’s body slumps backward, her head tipping back against the smooth stone behind her, back arching toward the night sky. Pearlescent drops of water, sweat or both bead over her chest, slipping down the slope of her mounds and pooling in the divots of her abdominal muscles. A particularly deep thrust of Sasuke’s fingers evokes a twist in her waist that causes those muscles to ripple underneath her smooth skin.

She can only suck in gasping breaths, eyes wide and nearly-useless for the lack of light, only able to see the glowing moon and glittering stars through the haze in her vision. Sasuke shifts to brace the stub of his left arm against the wall of rock behind her, shifting so close that his chest obscures her vision. He crowds her, a wall of solid warmth and pure masculine strength. Her gaze roves over him in a daze, catching on the shifting of his muscles as he works her body from below.

“Sasuke-kun,” she whispers jerkily, swallowing a mouthful of saliva and straining to lift her chin higher, to catch a glimpse of his face. “I’m going to come.”

A low groan breaks from his chest and his fingers move more rapidly, filling her and withdrawing within the span of a second each time. The breath is siphoned from her lungs as sparks begin to ignite in her veins. Lewd, wet sounds filter to her ears, soon to be drowned out by her own keening moans.

Sasuke’s tomoe spin in piercing, whirling revolutions as Sakura breaks apart before him. His eyes catch every minute detail: the way the fine hairs on her body rise to attention, the flush that creeps upward from her budding nipples to the soft skin beneath her eyes. The string of saliva connecting the roof of her mouth to her tongue, the vibration of her vocal chords in her throat as she lets loose a guttural moan, her flexing calves, her furrowed brows– every moment recorded perfectly, forever stored in his mind.

It is moments like these that make the curse of his kin all the more worthwhile; some moments, like these, he would never choose to forget.

Quick little breaths puff from her red, wet mouth and Sasuke leans down to kiss it. Gently, his lips brush over hers, suckling lightly at first the upper, then the lower, before he covers her entire mouth with his and parts his way between them with his tongue. Pale pink lashes flutter spasmodically, her body still shifting with tiny jerks as he lazily slides his fingers in and out of her core, teasing the outer rim of her entrance and spreading the abundant nectar seeping out over her folds.

When his fingers slide in deep once more, he feels the fluttering of her inner muscles, the throb of her pulse from within. A sweet sigh fills his mouth as Sakura begins to shift about her perch; she undulates in tiny circles, dancing to a rhythm only she can hear as he continues his gentle, lackadaisical ministrations.

Soft fingers meet silk-covered steel as she reaches for him, gripping dainty digits around his heavy, pulsing shaft. She gives him a gentle squeeze before opting to trail her fingers lightly over the engorged flesh, tracing a path down from the weeping head resting at the middle of her thigh toward the smattering of fine black hair at his pelvis. He moans softly into her mouth and she smiles, nipping at his full lower lip with her teeth.

Water splashes against her leg as Sasuke shifts to center himself in front of her. She curls her fingers around him to keep him within her grasp, peeling open heavy lids to blink up at glowing purple and red orbs. A knee brushes against the calf of her still-submerged leg, nudging it to the side until she is spread wider, cool air rushing between the small space that separates them. A shiver works down her arched spine as the breeze catches on the wetness between her legs.

Sasuke’s eyes slip shut for a brief moment when the hand holding him intimately slides in a gradually upward motion, before slipping down once more. He reopens his eyes to gaze down into Sakura’s face as she sweeps her hand up, twisting her wrist slightly at the end so the very tip of him strokes against the soft center of her palm before stroking back down, tightening her grip along the way. Jade irises glitter up at him between half-open lids and thick pink lashes. Her full bottom lip slips between her teeth as she strokes him again, setting a building pace that has his hand clenching over the flesh of her inner thigh.

Bracing his palm against the taut muscle there, he extends his thumb to press over her sensitive nub, applying gentle pressure and moving it in small circles. Her nostrils flare on a quick intake of air and the rhythm of her hand falters. Gazing into her widened eyes, he continues to stroke his thumb over her, only straying from his target to gather a bit of the juices leaking from below to aid in the slip and slide over that tiny bundle of flesh. Her lips part, cheeks flushing as she tightens her grip, trying to renew her urgent pace. His arousal is quickly forgotten as he continues to stoke her building climax, her small hand loosening until he is only but cradled between her finger tips.

“You’re distracting me,” she accuses breathily. Her eyes roll back slightly before fixing themselves on his face again.

“Aa,” he murmurs, leaning in to brush his lips over the lavender rhombus on her forehead. The pressure of his thumb strengthens and his stroking motions become more focused.

“You want to make me come again,” these words fit around panting breaths are not a question.

“Aa,” he allows himself a small grin before he presses ever-closer to Sakura again. He sucks a red spot into the underside of her jaw before moving to join their mouths.

“Sasuke-kun,” she moans around his lips.

Her breasts brush his chest as her leg breaks through the surface of the water to hook, cool and wet around the back of his thigh.

“Won’t it be better if you make me come with you inside me?” she whispers, peeking at him through her full, pale lashes. In response to a flex of her leg muscles, Sasuke sways forward until his hips are nearly flush against hers.

His hand never pauses in its movements between them. “Aa, and I will. When I’m ready to. I’m taking my time, remember?”

Sakura moans quietly when two long fingers sink deep inside of her again. Sasuke’s thumb presses over her sensitive nub while his digits slide forward and back, curling on each outward stroke. He puts the force of his body behind each thrust of his hand, disturbing the water around his hips. Quiet swashing sounds accompany the slick glide of his fingers, accented by her gasping breaths and hushed cries.

A night bird starts up a lilting tune, crickets chirping and the rustling of grass swaying in the breeze echo back. Sakura joins in the forest’s midnight song, her groans and utterances increasing in pitch and volume until her back arches up again, each muscle bunching tantalizingly under her smooth skin. Syrupy wetness spills over Sasuke’s hand as he continues to glide his fingers within her fluttering and grasping walls, reaching deep and spreading his digits wide in increments, scissoring them open and closed.

Ecstasy rolls inside of her as the rivers run, near constant ebbs and flows leaving her gasping for breath, hips jerking against her lover's hand unconsciously, out of her control. At some point, Sakura’s moans fade into hoarse little whimpers, the blurred line between exquisite pleasure and oversensitivity drawing closer and Sasuke’s fingers tease her on the outside and within at a leisurely pace. Her bent knee swings inward in response to a gentle flick against her pulsing clit and she curls her hips away from his hand in a flinch.

Sasuke’s voice rumbles out in a soothing murmur and he carefully retreats, sliding his fingers away slowly, gently. That hand, still slick with her juices, trails featherlight over warm, prickling flesh until long fingers grasp at her forearm, encouraging her to slump back into the wall behind her.

Delicate lids lower to shutter her vibrant green eyes and he leans down to pepper light kisses over each one. His affections move upward to her temple, then down to her flushed, damp cheek. Warm breaths puff against his face as her quivering form relaxes by the moment. His hand slides up to cup her nape as her head lolls backward, eyes blinking open sluggishly. Viridian green shines in the darkness, contrasting against pitch-black, blown out pupils. Sasuke’s mouth curves in a small smile as he sweeps his gaze over her face, taking in the lax expression and lingering on her flush, swollen lips.

Those lips curve into a weak smile of their own before the lower is slipped between pearly white teeth. Two small, warm palms press firm against his chest, creeping over the corded muscles of his torso until they rest in the divots of his hips. Sakura allows one hand to venture further, grasping his heat in her fingers once again. She drowns in his gaze as her hand slips over his hardness, path slickened by the pearlescent liquid seeping from his tip.

“Sakura,” Sasuke whispers, leaning down to brush his mouth against hers.

She slips her tongue in between his lips, curling it around his as her hips inch forward, her thighs bracketing his as she shifts until her shoulders press into the stone behind her, buttocks hanging over the edge of her seat. Cold water laps lightly at her flesh as she hovers over the ripples, causing goosebumps to rise on her skin. Sasuke’s rough palm slides down to rest at the center of her back, fingers splaying wide as she tightens her grip over his straining shaft, guiding him forward until the wet, hot head of him bumps up against her slick and swollen folds.

A deep groan falls from his mouth into hers as she guides him to slide against her, parting her petals with his tip and allowing him the briefest taste of her warmth, coating his end in her juices to spread and mingle with his own. His fingertips press into the soft skin of her back, dimpling the flesh and digging into her lean muscles. Deep breaths cause his chest to heave, expanding until he can feel the scrape of her hard nipples against him. Hips flexing, he rocks into the motions of her hand, letting his shaft slide over and between her folds.

Sakura nudges her hips upward, undulating against him and allows his head to bump against, even notch at her entrance. He slips away from the temptation each time, brushing upward and delighting in each of her shivers as his arousal swipes over her clit.

“Sasuke-kun,” she murmurs between languid kisses. Her breath hitches when he catches at her entrance again, rushing out of her in a gust when he again slides past her soaking core. “That’s enough.”

“Is it?” he breathes, licking at her mouth and grinding forward with a touch more force until her thighs clench tight around him.

“I want you,” she whispers. They speak to each other in such low voices, as if the river or the trees or the creatures of the night would speak and spread word of such intimate moments.

“Aa,” he smirks slightly, pulling back just enough so that only their foreheads brush. He treats her to another excruciating, grazing thrust, stoking her flames higher but leaving her burning and empty within. “You have me.”

Sakura whimpers, and a dark chuckle filters to her ears. He nuzzles his face against hers as his hips continue their gentle rocking, his own breaths quickening and fingers flexing with restraint.

“You know what I mean,” Sakura gasps, turning to press her mouth against his cheek, warm breath spilling over his face. “I need you, my love.”

She feels when he falters, when the endearment slips past his defenses and renders him hers for the taking. A shudder works its way through his imposing form and a deep, sucking inhale expands his ribcage. His lips press hard into hers, claiming her mouth in a deep, searing kiss. She murmurs between them, breathing soft pleas and calling to him, Anata , and her love , a couple more times for good measure.

The hot palm at her back slips down to cup her behind, tilting her hips up as he slowly draws his own back, raking the bottom of his shaft over her folds for one last time.

His thick, hot crown rests at her fluttering, waiting core and she sighs in satisfaction. Her lashes tickle his cheek as he presses butterfly kisses to the edge of her jaw. When his body sways forward, the head of him parts her folds, breaching inside of her with a gradual, aching stretch. The inner muscles of her thighs tighten, trembling as she opens for him, pulling him into her warmth. Her heels dig into the back of his legs, urging him to press deeper, come into her faster.

“Easy,” he coos, rolling his hips and feeding her another half inch of himself. She pants, her insides clenching around him before she exhales deeply and her muscles relax. A languid, circular wave of her hips brings him a fraction deeper and his lips curl. Another kiss falls on her cheek.

“More,” she sighs.

Sakura runs her fingers over every inch of his torso, reaches high to tug at the hanging strands of his hair. She murmurs sweet nothings, soft encouragement, voice dripping seduction and urgency and desperation all as he sinks into her slowly.

By the time his hips press flush against hers, the downy black hairs at his pelvis intermingling with soft, pink curls, his chest is rising and falling rapidly, his fingers clenched tight over the plush flesh of her buttock.

His hips swing back, only barely faster than they came, and they both glance down to watch his shaft reappear by the inch, glistening under the moonlight with a thick coat of Sakura’s nectar. He pauses when only the very head of him remains wedged inside of her, shifting his feet in the soft, pebbled sand below. Anchoring his toes and moving his hand to clasp at her hip, he pushes forward again, a long, smooth stroke that tears a moan from both of their chests.

Water sloshes around his hips, splashing lightly in shocks of cold against the back of Sakura’s thighs at startling intervals as he strokes inside of her at a maddening pace. He glides deep, until she feels the pressure high in her abdomen before pulling nearly all the way back each time, her slick walls grasping at him and clinging together to fill the gap he leaves behind.

A flush has taken permanent residence in Sakura’s cheeks, splotches of red spread over the upper part of her chest. Her breasts, full and rose-tipped jiggle gently each time Sasuke’s hips bump into hers. The muscles of her abdomen flex and release, the area just above her mound distening slightly with each long, inward stroke. Sasuke moves his hand briefly to brush over, to press his fingers gently into that spot and they both take a hitching breath. Her spine curves, thrusting her chest up and head back as she mewls and cries into the night.

Deep moans underscore her musical sounds, in time with the rhythm of wet flesh smacking together, sloshing water wetting her perch and contributing to the slickness between her thighs. Red and black and lavender orbs swim in the darkness, rotating dizzyingly as they fix on the shaft plunging between blushing, puffy folds, capturing each drip of her essence.

The splashing sounds grow louder and more frequent as Sasuke’s movements quicken, just ever so slightly. His teeth sink into his lower lip briefly before attaching themselves to hers, tugging the soft flesh into his mouth to suckle as he pushes himself as deep as he can go, daring to attempt going further. Despite her pleas for more, for faster, her insides begin to undulate around him, guttural moans and gasping cries filing the air between them as her hips buck into each of his thrusts, his flexing thighs taking on her weight as passion pulls her from the stability of her perch.

“ Sasuke ,” she rasps, one small fist clenching around a handful of his locks and the other hand splaying over the center of his chest.

He leans more fully into his thrusts–tilting his hips to that with each outward stroke, he brushes up against that textured patch inside of her. Her back arches more, pulling her face away from his reach. Pretty red lips part into an o shape, the tendons of her neck straining as a sharp cry squeezes out and her hips stiffen against him before roiling like an unsettled current.

With a violent, stuttering breath, she shatters. Warmth and wetness gush around him as his name echoes around him and his eyes slip shut, nostrils flaring and catching onto the scent of flowing water, wet grass and budding flowers. His member is bathed in liquid heat and squeezed in dizzying pulses, urging his hips faster.

The sudden increase in pace incites a choking gasp, and his lover's fingers dig near-painfully into his chest. That bite of sensation causes his eyes to flit open and he slips his hand up to press into her back, stepping forward to tug her flush against his body as he works into her faster, deeper. Moisture compromises his grip and he bends his knees, replanting his feet to bear more of her weight.

“Hold on tight, Sakura,” he murmurs breathlessly, stroking his hand up and down soothingly as he anchors her against him to receive his forceful thrusts. “Wrap your arms around me.”

A half-moan, half-sob rings in his ear as she throws her other arm around his neck, sharp nails digging into the flesh of his shoulder. He bites back a groan, pressing his forehead into the side of her neck and sucking a bruising kiss into her throat before laving at the spot with his tongue.

He pants into her skin, whispering nonsense and affection. His words, a mixture of praise, of promises, detailing his devotion and describing how good she feels.

Sakura clings to him with her arms even as the grip of her thighs around his waist falters, sending her legs splashing back into the river, the water feeling icy against her hot, flushed skin. His hand falls from the place it had found on her hip just long enough to snake under the back of her left knee, pulling it from the water and hooking it into the crook of his elbow. He slams into her, pace steady and strong, the new position sending him careening into her at an angle that sends tears rushing down her burning face.

When she falls apart this time, Sasuke only increases his pace, and ferocity, a long, deep moan spilling from his mouth. His teeth latch on to the flesh between her neck and shoulder and he groans her name, shaft thickening inside her before jerking and pulsing in her depths. His hips continue to piston in and out as he spills all of himself inside, grinding against her as if to reach deeper than ever before, coating her insides and himself with milky white seed. Blackness and then blinding white light obscure his vision for a few stretched out seconds before it fades back in, bringing with it the image of his lover, glistening and beautiful within his grasp.

For long minutes they clutch at each other, muscles twitching and little gasps filling the air as their bodies slowly come down from the peak. Sakura mewls quietly at the last faint bite Sasuke gives to her shoulder, sighing sweetly when his mouth traces up to brush against her slack lips in a chaste kiss.

A strong gust of cold wind rushes over the damp flesh between them and when Sakura rocks with a shiver, Sasuke straightens slowly. A shudder wracks through his own form as he slowly drags himself from her depths, his sensitive skin tingling with satisfaction and a distant revival of his arousal. His arm curls around a slender, cool waist, tugging her high up on his chest.

Sakura’s legs tremble as the wrap around his back, squeezing weakly as he begins to wade slowly through the water, his own muscles quivering as he trudges toward the bank. Soft kisses sprinkle over his chest and clavicle like warm raindrops as the water level lowers from his hips, then knees until he stands at the edge of the river, submerged only a few inches higher than his ankles.

Smooth skin slides down his front as he lowers her to her feet. She sways, resting a hand on the stump of his left arm for stability as he bends down. He cups water in his hand, murmuring an earnest apology when it trickles cold between her thighs as he goes about washing their combined essences away. His fingers brush against her intimately, but featherlight as he cleans his remnants away. Perhaps his touches linger longer than is strictly necessary, but he is careful with her reddened, sensitized flesh nonetheless.

He rises to stand tall again, beckoning her with a tip of his chin as he reaches to draw her into his chest.

“I can walk,” Sakura states, a chuckle underscoring her words. She steps back away from his arm and its attempts to bracket around her waist and pull her up again.

“Sure about that?” Sasuke mutters, face seemingly stoic save for the glint of mirth shining in his dark gray and lavender eyes. His gaze sweeps down over her quivering thighs and the just barely noticeable knocking of her knees before flitting back up to her face again.

A dark brow arches and a tiny smirk tugs at his lips.

She rolls her eyes, hugging her arms around herself as she steps away from the shore and reaches for her towel. Sasuke comes to stand behind her, quickly plucking the cloth from her grasp and fanning it around her shoulders. He rubs at her briskly, brows drawn in concentration, in an attempt to bring warmth back into her goose-pimpled skin before she bats him away with a laugh that feels too loud in the dead of night.

After practically being forced back into her clothes, and swallowed by Sasuke’s too-long cloak, Sakura is able to convince Sasuke to postpone building a fire in favor of returning to the resting spot.

His fingers hold hers tightly as they venture, shoulder-to-shoulder, through the lightly beaten path in the woods, meandering toward the cave they will call their shelter for the night.

Despite the air being cool and their hair being damp, warmth blossoms in both of their chests. The scent of wood and wild herbs fill their noses with each breath, rustling leaves and cooing creatures making nature’s song. Their bodies bask in shared warmth, lingering aches and tingles and echoes of sensation.

If they strain their well-trained ears, they can still hear the bubbling of water over small, smooth pebbles far behind them as the river flows.

End.

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