Promises Kept
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Summary: Oneshot. Sasu/Saku. What had gone wrong? She'd promised to wait, to love him forever? Yet what had gone wrong? This thing, (this monster) wasn't the dream held long ago.
"Talking"
Thinking
Angst/Romance/Horror
Sanity
It had been a long time since he'd seen his old team. His broken bonds. There was one bond he'd never had the strength to break, he felt he couldn't let go of it ever. Years ago it had been her who had needed him to be complete.
It was the other way now.
But his fantasy was slowly falling to pieces at the sight before his eyes.
It wasn't that she was dead. She was alive and vibrantly filled with life. But…no that statement was wrong and right; she was definitely alive that was the correct part.
Naruto was here too, close by, ever the protector. The replacement-Sai had fought valiantly and hard. But he had lost.
This pathetic team had lost long before the battle even began. Team Heibi shifted nervously behind him, feeling out of place, Karin strangely silent; as if she knew.
Kakashi was in a nearby tree, seemingly relaxed and preparing another well-thought attack. The extra-sensei Yamato also hovered close-by ready to attack or control Naruto's seal if need-be.
But that wasn't what concerned the youngest Uchiha. It was the girl they all shielded him from. Haruno Sakura. His angel.
He remembered the days long gone, washed faint by the tides of time, by the decades apart. At least to him it had felt like decades…centuries, but she seemed ever youthful, trapped in her never-withering beauty. Her sun-kissed pink hair, that had felt like satin the time he'd accidentally touched it, the creamy smooth skin still to this day unmarred by training, her figure had changed filling out making her more desirable. Karin had every right to be threatened. She was mere trash in comparison. Her lips soft and full like rose petals, her eyes. Those eyes full of innocence, waiting for him to fill with delight so they'd spark up like the endless light of stars she reminded him of. His light in the darkness; His Angel…
He'd dreamed what felt like forever to hold her again. This is what he'd come to Konoha Village Hidden in the Leaves for. Sakura. He needed her.
It wasn't because she'd gotten strong. It wasn't to do with being the Fifth's Apprentice and healing him. It had nothing to do with his goals he'd said so long ago-
I will restore my clan, and kill a certain someone.
-No. He'd come for one simple and complex thing. Sakura. Love. He desired not her body or her strength.
He just desired and needed her to live.
She was worse than a drug or life-support machine. He couldn't put it down to addiction-he'd never tasted her in the first place, he couldn't say he needed her to heal him or keep him alive. He needed her to exist. She was the new goal. He needed her to protect and devote to.
He'd come back for her. He'd planned it all out. She'd come with him willingly just like she'd promised. Then everything would be better. He'd grow stronger than Itachi, than Orochimaru, than the entire world! All for her.
He'd become so lost in his need for her he couldn't see the problem before him-all the hints and warnings that had tried to stop him. It had been like the World itself was trying to stop him from coming here.
Sai's form shook slightly, the wind brushing passed him slightly with a cold shudder and howl. He didn't respond to its warning.
It was too late.
Suigetsu, Juugo and Karin were silent, because they couldn't move. They were rooted in place by utter, irrevocable fear. But it was beyond fear. Sasuke had become so lost in his need he couldn't see the truth…
Karin remained silent as she stared at the blood that dripped from the once life-occupied trees…
Suigetsu looked to the village below them…not a soul was moving because there was nothing left to move…
Juugo watched the wind make the lifeless form of Sai shift again, as the blood further stained once-white skin…
The eyes of the Fifth Hokage stared down at them from the Hokage monument, that was once unpainted rock…it was stained with the blood of many now, the surfaced marred with a message written in the paint of lives lost forever.
Sasuke moved closer, too lost in his dreams of his angel who'd make him feel whole to notice that Naruto's eyes never once blinked…his demon gone with him…
"…Sakura…I came back for you…" Sasuke began not noticing Kakashi's blood fall behind him. He knelt beside her and reached out to touch the kneeling young woman. Grasping her shoulders, feeling warmth not truly there, he raised her head and gazed into lost faded eyes. His hands slid from the shoulders to the curve of her back. He pulled her cold body closer to him so her head rested on his shoulder.
The wind moved the bodies again. But it never touched Sakura, who was like a cold, lifeless rag-doll in Sasuke's warm grip.
Strange how no one ever expected the roles to be reversed.
Twenty five years was a long time…but time never has been one for mending wounds. Only making them. Bigger.
Sasuke forced the tears down, so happy to be able to touch her again. His team of misfits watched on, too terrified on what to do.
Karin's gaze focused on the girl's face, hidden slightly by her long pink hair. She'd heard once Sasuke had liked long hair. But that had been after she'd learned she'd never have a chance. But she still felt for him. She didn't know whether to break him into little pieces by telling him his dream was nonexistent or let him carry a corpse around for the rest of his life.
The pink-haired girl's body shifted slightly, the ex-Sound ninja blaming Sasuke's movements.
That did not explain the sudden soft music of someone singing…but…there was nothing left alive to sing.
A sound snapped the silence. But still they couldn't move, and Sasuke was in his dream too far to notice. Yamato's body had fallen out of the tree. He lay disfigured at an odd angle. Half of his face was merely bone; his neck was showing the muscles as the skin was missing. The limbs appeared to have burned from the inside out, and his chest had seemingly imploded like his heart had been converted into an exploding tag.
The ribs had ripped open the skin like tearing apart a tissue, the fragmented pieces lying around his tree and in the tree itself imbedded into the bark and leaves, the heart-or its remains had been burnt by pure chakra.
This was the same in all of the bodies around them. Save for Sakura and Kakashi.
Kakashi was bleeding from everywhere, it was slowly escaping his body even through he had no open wounds. And as the body was slowly drained of blood it withered and collapsed in on itself.
He looked like a ghost decapitated from the inside.
But he made no signs of life…not even un-life.
The music continued. Juugo felt a small pain in his heart, his ears beginning to drown in the eerie song. Suigetsu tried to shake his team mate that had started to grow into a friend. He shook the other young man desperately. Looking to Karin for help he shuddered at the expression in his gaze, she weakly pointed over to where Sasuke was.
Suigetsu followed her finger coming to rest at the sight of the bent-over-a-body youngest Uchiha. He felt all hope and warmth drain away from him.
Glazed-over green eyes stared unblinking at them from the shoulder where Sasuke's old Cursed Seal was. Her creamy smooth skin, they suddenly realised, was not as pale as it should be for a dead body.
The music continued.
Suigetsu dropped Juugo and slowly backed away wary of even giving off the slightest movement. Juugo gasped soundlessly, trying to breathe desperately. But it was hopeless for him now. The bones in his arms started to collapse in on themselves, the skin folding in on itself without anything structurally to hold it up anymore. The skeletal muscle lost an attachment and the flesh rolled up and down twisting around on nothing but empty space.
The ex-Sound ninja stared at them reaching out to grab Karin as his legs suffered the same fate as his arms.
The music continued.
Juugo managed to grab Karin's dangling hand as she was too slow to escape his flailing boneless arms. She could feel the sickening squelch as the muscles tried to grip onto her without anything to contract against.
Suigetsu tried to pull her away, as Juugo's skull started to slowly cave in like his limbs had. "Can't you hear it?" the skin on his neck began to burn away revealing pulsating muscles, the pair could see every spasm and twitch of the steadily dying muscle. The skin on one side of his face started to burn away as it neared the bone they could see what was happening. His own chakra was eating away at him. From the inside out.
Juugo coughed up blood, but smiled, half his face missing burnt away by his own energy. "Can't you hear it? It's so beautiful." His voice was barely recognisable as anything but a grizzled noise like a kunai scraping against a blood-slicked metal surface. He wasn't saveable. He was going to die here. Just like the rest of Konoha. His remaining eye was dazed, only hearing the music as it marched him to his destruction. "So beautiful…too much for mortals like us…so beautiful…we burn up from the inside…" he started coughing up blood rapidly. Chakra signature going wild focusing towards his heart…it was overloading it…
Suigetsu yanked Karin back as Juugo's chest exploded sending the shrapnel of his ribcage everywhere. Karin couldn't take it anymore she screamed…
Green eyes snapped into focus.
Sasuke was still lost in his fantasy.
The music continued.
Suigetsu quickly performed a jutsu on Karin, blocking her chakra. Making it inaccessible to her or anyone else. He had to save her…even if it sacrificed himself. She had to warn the rest of the world. And he couldn't abandon his first best friend.
The green eyes watched them.
They blinked.
That was definitive. The pink-haired woman was not as lifeless as she appeared. But her eyes…her eyes screamed out the difference.
There was not a shred of sanity or innocence left.
She wasn't even human anymore.
Suigetsu carefully grabbed Karin's arm and started to slowly pull her away. But the girl wouldn't move. Her words terrified him. His jutsu wasn't working.
"Juugo was right…it's so beautiful that it burns…burns-SUIGETSU!" the girl screamed not yet fully under the relaxing Genjutsu the music induced in any chakra within hearing distance.
He took that chance and ran, Karin behind him running as best she could before the song got to her legs…
Kakashi's blood fell onto Sasuke's head, sinking through his dark blue near-black hair to his scalp cooling it. The blood cold from a long-dead body.
The fantasy faded. The cold seeped in.
The tears worsened actually falling.
"This is my entire fault…Sakura…"
The once lifeless rag-doll merely buried her head deeper into his shoulder. Humming the same song that had killed Juugo.
The music continued.
Sasuke could hear it now…the song…yet it did nothing to him. He gazed around the clearing that had once been Team Seven's training ground the stumps where Naruto had been tied now rotted away. He could see the bodies that surrounded them, the scent of the massacre of an entire village by one single kunoichi.
He remembered the stories his mother told him, about a clan that once lived in Konoha.
"The Sirensong is a powerful kekkei genkai; no one can ever stop it. Not even the deaf. Not even the gods. It stimulates the chakra of an individual and chakra will always respond to its call no matter how inactive it is. Even if someone can't use their chakra, the song will affect them. Some say the Sirens created all other kekkei genkai, and can weave time and destiny. But they are always girls. The males of their clan are powerless even to their sisters."
"Why don't I ever meet them?"
"Well, they died."
"Died? Like grandmother?"
"No. Their own kekkei genkai was used against them. The clan leader's only child, her daughter was overcome by her own bloodline and destroyed them all."
"Was she punished Kaasan?"
"No. She was far too young…they expected so much…but she was overtaken by Chaos. She's about your age actually. She needs someone to take care of her so she'll never remember being lost and broken."
"Then I'll take care of her! I'll be her hero!"
Sakura must be that girl. I swore to protect her…this need? Did I know all along?
The young woman sighed, nuzzling closer.
"Sakura I-"
He paused. Not sure if she was human enough to still understand or far too gone into chaos.
"I love you."
"I did all of this for you Sasuke-kun."
I failed in my promise…I failed as a team mate…a friend…and as a lover…
I needed you more than you needed me…
"I love you…I promise to never leave you again."
"I love you…so my song won't harm you…I promise it won't hurt."
"I think I understand."
"A kiss goodbye?" she asked softly and gently. He nodded.
The music changed tune as they kissed…it became fevered and light-heart but still deep and melancholic. The pair kissed with fever and passion…then they stilled and exchanged tongues.
The bodies around them the only witnesses.
A surge of chakra flooded from Sakura's larynx up to her mouth and into Sasuke's. It burned its way through his entire chakra system, opening all eight gates.
Sasuke fell down lifelessly to the floor. Body still intact. Soul still intact. The Siren was ruthless and merciful all the same.
She'd kept all of her promises.
She'd waited for him.
She'd loved him.
She'd brought him back with a melody of destiny.
She still loved him.
She'd shown mercy where she never had before-even to her long dead family.
Trust them…and you are a fool who cannot see what true Chaos is.
Sakura stood, and looked over the desolate Village filled only with death. She smiled.
The Sanity never reached her eyes. Neither did the happiness.
Authoress' Note: Yeah. I wrote a 'Oneshot'. I couldn't help myself. No I haven't forgotten about my other fics; I just lack inspiration for them at the moment. They WILL get finished, because they have endings. But I've lost one of my notebooks that had an ending in it somewhere. Then I've got Uni to prepare for, and college assignments to do. AND then there's the all important SLEEP! I hate not updating but I need my notes and a zest to do it!
Anyway, this was the result of reading way too much angsty Sasu/Saku. Yes. I like that pairing. It probably won't happen so I'll write about it. Rebellion against canon!
I gave Sakura a bloodline limit. Basically she sings a song that stimulates chakra a certain way encouraging it to do what she wants according to the song she sings. Does that make sense? Oh well. I guess after I finally finish the other stories I'll start one completely about this…or not. Not entirely sure. But I'm rambling.
Please review!