A/N: Motivated to write this, although it's probably going to be one of my darkest pieces so far.
Sorry for the typos, I can never see them srsly. And thanks for pointing them out.
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Wolf
- Chapter One -
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There are no words; no words directed to him, and no words directed to the other twenty men.
A nicely scratched, foul metal is thrown non-too-gently across the first few feet of the room—he cringes, for there is an evident lack of truth to the description. Splattered food is on the white tiles, contrasting with highly saturated colours—he does never wonder what the food exactly is. The food itself, he never comes near it. There are a few steps before he feels a similar metal sound in the neighbour's space.
But there are no words.
Sitting on the hard cement floor, his back starts feeling the negative effects of staying in the same slouching position for hours; his body begins aching at his uncomfortable angles. And so he shifts a little, little enough for the cameras to catch it and little enough for the guards to not notice. His back is resting on the wall once again, but this time it's not slagging like an old man, this time it's erect and calm.
The guards outside finish their rounds for the day, and there is laughter he can hear at the end of the hallway, before big doors close off the sounds.
But there are no words.
The cells in the restricted ward are submerged in complete silence, in complete and utter darkness, and for once, he can close his eyes and finally find his own peace. Away from the screams and the pleas of unrested souls. He's not like these people. With his eyes closed against the blackness of the cell, he can't discern from reality to the world of his dreams. A black—purer and darker and denser black than the one in the lightless ward—greets him behind his eyelids.
He misses the words directed to him, for a moment, when there is a month before they're due to come. He misses the words, for a moment, before he drifts into a dreamless, light sleep.
Sasuke listens to every tray of food as it lands on the cold floor, always a few feet away from his form, everyday. He watches the rough movement without haste until there's a pile of wasted, rotten remnants lying forgotten. By the time the amount of trays reach half the steel door, several insects he had never imagined existed, before he got imprisoned here, are crawling their way up and around to get every grain of what looks—what could be, though he's not sure—rice.
This is when he stands up. The camera catches the swift motion, and instantly follows him as he stands in front of the door.
His bones are wasting away, and his muscles are in a tense kind of anxiety everyday. He doesn't do anything but walk toward the door and stand there, rigid—tired.
A nurse opens his door and barely looks at him, already knowing the procedure of every month. She gingerly sweeps the trays into a rubbish bag, later putting it next to the garbage van. When she closes the door, he sits again against the wall, and sighs.
He patiently waits.
By now, his back has been numb for days and his patience has been prolongued, elongated, enough. His throat is rasp and tight without the necessary water he needs; his stomach growls from lack of food. He feels his fingertips grasp at air silently; the blood coursing rapidly through his veins. There's nothing he can do—all has been planned out.
Still, he patiently waits.
And waits, and waits, and waits. He waits until the glare he directs toward the camera is strong enough to make the receiver at the other end look away. He waits until the insects crawling atop the forgotten food have long since died. He waits until he can't remember if it's day or night, and the guards haven't visited the ward in three days. He waits until sounds of distress and hunger are heard throughout the long hallway, through his door and through the doors of many others.
It's tiring, oh so tiring, just waiting for the time to drift away and pass before his eyes—the same routine every fucking day. It's tiring, how he's waiting for something that he has not done, for something that no one can investigate deep enough—dig until they find the truth. It's tiring. Yet he waits, because if he ever learnt anything from his childhood, it was patience.
He waits until the time comes.
And when it does, his patience is exhausted. The blood in his body has been unable to reach his toes, for he can barely feel them anymore.
The guards come the next day (a week after the nurse came to pick up the trays of food), early in the morning. He is already awake—sitting on the floor, back against the cold wall—when they enter his cell and look at him. They order him to go with them. He complies, not because it's an order, but because he has been waiting.
Standing up from the straining position, he doesn't get to stretch out his muscles before the middle-aged guards lead him out of his cell, out of the ward, and along another bigger, longer hallway.
There are no cells on the sides, and for that he is slightly grateful. Plenty have been the times when he had to be walked along and out of the ward, the demented people in every cell at his sides; they always knock and pound and throw themselves against their respective steel doors, as if they just knew he was walking. His vision focuses on the present.
The bright light of the hallway makes him flinch, for a moment.
The steps take too long and his hands are balled into fists at his sides with the, surprisingly, still-there strength. Months of inactivity and lack of food are present on his physique, yet he is relieved not all his past form has wasted away.
He can see the outline of a secluded room at the far end of the way; he silently follows the guards' steps faster. He's been waiting for so long that he can't believe it's come to this already.
The room is closer.
The man that he hates; the man that he wants to slaughter; the man that took so damn long to make himself appear; the man who knows the truth and is not willing to share it. That man is here, a few steps ahead of him. Ironically, isn't he always ahead of him?
The guards stop. One of them opens the highly secured door and the other one pushes him inside roughly; Sasuke doesn't pay any heed.
Finally he can see him; he takes a step forward, and his face morphs into cold atmosphere, one that can be probably be felt through the concrete walls.
The hateful man he wishes dead is not sitting in the room; instead, the only thing he can see is a woman he doesn't know at all, sitting and leaning forward, smiling at him with an excitement he can not comprehend.
"Leave us, please," she orders to the guards, voice happily suave and feminine. The guards leave the room silently after they make him sit, the metals around his wrists tied to the chair now. They close the door and stand idly by outside the room.
He stays next to the iron door—rotten and old, too old for the technology in this place. Confused and frowning at her smiling face, he suddenly wants to ask her why she's here and not him. He refrains from doing so, though, because her face is so foreign to him that he knows—he just knows—that she didn't know of his brother's arrival.
Passively looking at her, he notices she's been looking at him since the guards left, but he doesn't have any will to talk to her; he wants to step out and up-front demand where he is—the only person he's willing to talk to.
"Uchiha Sasuke," she starts, but then rufles through papers on her small suitcase and otherwise stays silent.
He sits, fists balling and opening with nothing to grasp. His knuckles pop in giant sounds of underuse, especially since he's had the handcuffs for months; ever since he got there.
The chair squeaks a bit before they fall into silence once again. There are papers in front of her now—she starts fumbling through them, trying to find something in specific.
Her hair is pastel pink, her eyes a light green, her form petite; her hands are smooth and there are no visible veins, no sign of hard work. And then his eyes follow her wrists, the pale trail of her arms.
He wonders what kind of trick this is, for he maybe got mistaken with someone else. The fact that this woman knows his full name makes him doubt it, though. Sasuke resists the urge to scowl—he had already met his lawyer, and she was not him.
She finally finds it, for she gasps and whispers an "oh" upon recognition.
"What a pleasure to finally meet you." Their eyes lock. "I have been asking the prison for weeks but they wouldn't let me visit," she smiles a gentle curve, "until now, of course."
She reads something from the paper in front of her eyes in her head, and then she puts it down on the metallic grey of the table, apparently getting all the information she needed. "We only have ten minutes, that's all they gave me, but it's enough." Crossing her arms on the table, she leans a little forward and takes him in.
After studying his composure and characteristics, she presses her lips together in a failed attempt to smile anymore. "Possibly charged with first degree homicide, first degree arson, and looking over the horrible, immoral state in which you left your victims," he stares, "you have been sentenced here until your trial."
He stays silent. She continues.
"Moreover, and strangely, the date is yet to be set as there is no solid evidence for the killings." She stares into his eyes and smiles a little, looking at him down her nose from the taller chair, and he thinks he wants to step outside and into his cell for a moment, because the confidence from a tiny woman while talking to an almost convicted murderer is too grave. She keeps talking, but he tunes it all out.
Stealthy and watchful, he slowly leans forward and frowns his dark eyes at her own from across the table. He thinks he sees her shrink in her chair, although her demanding and proud eyes don't let her body merge with the seat any further than what gravity exerts.
"Uchiha Itachi was supposed to be here."
Sakura looks around the bare room like a remarkable fool, taking her attention away from his form. Then, he hears her click her tongue and look at him once again with a glint in her eye. "Well, I guess whoever you were expecting couldn't make it today; the lady at the front office gave me permission to, though. Again, I'm surprised they let me in here."
He answers faster than his heart can beat.
"You've been stating facts since I came in." He leans back, back straight, " Here I thought you had ten minutes."
Her smily, content, silly face is wiped off before he can finish the second sentence.
Clearing her throat, she strongly grabs a few papers in a stack from her right and hands them to him from her side of the table. He barely looks at them; her unasked confidence unnerves him.
He doesn't inquire what the messy stack of papers is, for she beats him to it.
"This," she looks at him and smiles, "is a proposition I want to make."
It is then that he realises she hasn't introduced herself.
"I've come here to get you out of prison."
He frowns ever-so slightly and stares at her for an explanation—surely she didn't pass through all the security to liberate him. True, this place is not the most guarded and secure prison in the country—it's just the only one that wants to have him. But it is not quite weak if it's holding him, after all.
"Care to elaborate?" It is barely a question, barely there at all but she hears it.
"As the co-director of the psychiatric department," he stares, "I, Haruno Sakura, along my coworkers, have agreed to file a request for your future stay in Konoha Hospital."
Sasuke keeps staring—maybe she notices this, for she quickly averts her eyes and looks at him again after a second, having found her next words, perhaps.
"As I mentioned earlier, the trial is taking too long without any definite proof; before the trial takes place, you can get installed as a patient in the hospital ward." She's calm and collected and serious and he takes a moment to think this through.
Before he can make a decision, he hears the door open and the guards come in to stand by his side, ready to take him back. Sakura's eyes widen and look at the unsigned papers she'd left for him for what could've been a contract, a step closer toward freedom.
"Wait! I can come by another day—soon, hopefully." The guards make him stand up. Sakura stands up herself, too. "I will need an answer by then."
Sasuke doesn't doubt it.