(Utter silence reigned through the forest on that day, as if a vacuum were covering the battlefield and nature itself were afraid to be a part of a new dawn. As I ran through the night and into the morning, I could only force the thought from my mind that, if any wounded had been left behind, they had been abandoned in the chill hours of dark. They came for you, Sasuke, and were abandoned for you. I paused to tighten the straps on my backpack and again leapt into the air, travelling at the same frantic pace.

You had left in the dark hours of the previous day's morning; Shikamaru and his team only a few hours later. I, on the other hand, hadn't left until almost a full day later, leaving in the morning of that day's dark hours. There was too much time to make up, too much ground to cover to run at a safer pace. The branches trembled at my passage, shaking and threatening to crack under my weight. I could only hope my speed was great enough to keep me from falling or snapping an ankle.

Already, I could sense the explosions of Chakra in the distance ahead of me, miles, miles, miles in the distance. I had no hope to possibly catch up, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't give up. I'd come too far to go back, but not far enough to make a difference. At this rate, I realized that you would make it to Orochimaru before I caught up. I wonder now what I would have done had I caught up. What would you have done, Sasuke? In retrospect, I had no plan. I simply assumed you would beat me there, even as I tried to make it there myself.

I hope the others are okay, even now. I could have stopped to see if they were all right... but it's too late for regrets now. Touching the top of my head where I usually tie my forehead protector, I reminded myself that I am no longer a shinobi of Konohagakure. And I ran on. I knew I would have made a difference to the wounded... but I'd have lost the chance that I might reach you.

And I ran on.

–Haruno Sakura)

(chapter two: day of reckoning)

Something was wrong. Everything had ceased to be. Sakura paused on a branch, muscles protesting angrily at the sudden stop, and then with a rising chill, she sprang into the air again, a single raindrop shattering on the branch below her as the skies opened up and began to cry.

The battles were over. It felt like the awkward feeling of missing a step on the way down a staircase. There was no other explanation for the sudden stillness following the wake of the violent Chakra that had spilt everywhere, painting the landscape with a broad brush of energy, evil, evil energy. "Sasuke-kun!"

She couldn't be too far now, though she'd been forced to skirt a huge swath of battle-residue; a massive clearing had erupted from someone's frenzied battle, explosions of sand and white material piercing the sky. Water dripped from her pink hair and streamed down her face, raindrops peppering her skin like a stinging storm of ice shards.

There was something up ahead; she could hear the sound of pounding water, even as the skies cleared. Her heart hammering in her chest, her breath burning her throat with every gasp, Sakura forced herself to go even faster, so fast that she'd maybe she'd overtake–

A flash of movement, a burst of white and green and orange...

Slowly, slowly, her head turned, green eyes wide and sopping hair flying before her face. Time froze, solid ice dripping down her spine as she nearly missed her footing on the branch ahead, gaze captured by the man staring back at her. One eye visible in a masked face, carrying an unconscious Naruto on his back, Kakashi stared back over his shoulder.

More than mere words could express passed between them at that moment, a yawning pit gaping in her stomach and clawing her heart with icy talons. Every memory that the two of them had shared as Team Seven, every dream expressed and every terror conquered was almost clearly visible in the air between them. Fear like liquid nitrogen flowed in her veins, and as she exerted her Chakra to hold her balance, a single tiny drop of sweat dripped down her face and landed on the wood below her.

"Sakura–!"

And then she was gone, dissipating into a blur of motion and blending in with the trees ahead, heart beating in her ears louder than the pounding waterfall surging inexorably into the river.

"Sakura!" His voice echoed from the stones and trees, but she ran on, fleeing the sound of her name, leaping across the swirling water by the statues of two men locked in an eternal struggle. One foot touched lightly on the stone, and slowly, as her other foot descended, she realized with shocking finality that she could never go back. Having set foot in another country in direct violation of orders, she could never go back. More than abandoning her forehead protector, more than fleeing from Kakashi-sensei, this simple action forced her mind to accept that she could never go back and call herself a shinobi of Konoha. As surely as if she'd taken a knife and scratched out the symbol centered in the metal of her forehead protector, she could never go back.

Her other foot landed softly, and she ran forward, fleeing deeper into the tree's darkness. The last echoing rumbles of thunder resounded from the mountains around her, a death knell to unrighteous tears as she fled onward. There was nothing to follow; that massive Chakra explosion had wiped away all traces of other energy, but she simply ran. There was only one path they both could take, and she followed it without hesitation, squinting through the shadows and fleeing to the darkness.

(And so it was I came upon a simple compound, deceiving in its unobtrusiveness but radiating such an evil energy that, against my will, I slowed to a stop and stared up at it. What was I to do, Sasuke? The very structure itself, squatting in the ground, marked only by two red snake-like designs above a single door, warded me away with such a sense of 'you do not belong here' that it physically restrained my movements, cold claws scratching at my heart. Do you remember that place? The leaves covering the ground were dead and rotting, the trees around were withered and twisted, half-dead creatures fighting to survive. My knees gave out, and I collapsed to the ground, forgotten tears gathering in my eyes and mixing with the rainwater soaking my body.

This was what I left everything behind for? This horrid shrieking nightmare that seemed to sweep from the open door before me and engulf me in a swirling wave of despair and anguish was what I was to live with? I don't know how long I knelt there, unable to move as pure fear paralyzed my muscles as surely as if I had been struck.

That's when he came to me, Sasuke. That's when I found a path of my own to parallel yours.

–Haruno Sakura)

"Haruno Sakura-san, was it?"

Unable to move, she started to shake at the sound of the voice emerging from nowhere and everywhere all at once. "Orochimaru...sama." Sakura closed her eyes, bile rising in her throat at the addition of the honorific suffix "master" to the name of the man she hated more than any other.

A burst of movement so quick that even as she sensed it and her eyes flew open, he was already there, a single kunai at her throat. Cold steel scraped her pale skin, and green eyes met black, framed by sheathes of glass. "Kabuto-san?" Her muscles, already tightened to the point of snapping, somehow tensed even further, and a single drop of sweat mixed with water dripped down her face to land on the curiously hooked blade. Its point digging into the side of her neck, she knew with chilling certainty that it would take no effort on his part to simply tighten his grip and twitch his wrist, gouging the flesh from her throat and ending her life in a bloody rain. His eyes were different than she'd remembered them being during the Chuunin exams, darker and somehow restrained. All it took was for her gaze to flick up, and the music note engraved on his forehead protector was all she needed to see. This young man, only a few years older than her yet possessed of such incredible strength that she could sense it, now made a little more sense. "You were working for him all along, weren't you?" Her voice shook, but her eyes remained steady. Like prey before a predator, she had to show no fear to survive.

A tiny smile and twitch of the muscles around his eyes was the only response he offered, but it was enough. "If you've come to take Sasuke-kun back, I'm afraid you're too late," his voice dripped like venom into her ears. "He's already chosen his path, so what right have you to take–"

"I'm not here for that," she cut him off, body shaking and paralyzed, unfathomable terror shuddering through her veins like a drug, her own rapid heartbeat propelling it through her entire body. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, trying to minimize her shaking as much as possible. "Orochimaru-sama... I want you... to please..." Breathing deep, the scent of decaying vegetation filling her nose, she managed to finish strongly, opening her eyes and addressing the whole clearing, "...take me as your student."

Kabuto's eyes before her widened the slightest bit, and his grip on the kunai tightened. Slowly, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a card. "Haruno Sakura," his eyes flicked between her face and the card's. "Age: 12. Height: 148.5 centimeters. Weight: 35.4 kilograms. Blood Type: O. Strengths: Chakra control and intelligence." With a deft flick, the card disappeared back into his pocket, a tiny smirk crossing his face. "No talent in taijutsu, limited potential in ninjutsu and genjutsu... what makes you think you have anything to offer us, impetuous fool?"

Faster than she could register, the kunai slipped from her throat as he backhanded her across the face. The entire left side of her face exploded with agony, the metal plate on the back of his fingerless glove tearing a jagged slash across her cheek, but she refused to cry out in pain. Unable to move from paralysis, she collapsed to the side, but didn't scream. Sluggishly, red blood oozed from the cut and dripped to splatter on the dead leaves and mix with the dirt. Kabuto's eyes twitched oddly, and he raised his fist for another strike, a strange combination of hate and ecstasy buried deep in his eyes. "Who do you think you are, thinking that you can just be taught for free, huh?!"

"Kabuto..." Orochimaru's voice echoed through the clearing, halting the young man's movement in mid-strike. Face bandage-wrapped, only one eye visible, he emerged from the darkness shrouding the single entryway. Like the gaze of a basilisk, her eyes remained locked on his and her shaking stopped as if the paralysis had halted that too. Physically unable to shrink away, unable to blink or move her mouth or even breathe, she choked under that invisible pressure, his Chakra pressing down on her, crushing her lungs and eyes and–

He knelt before her, that single snakelike eye glinting with an unidentifiable emotion as she silently, motionlessly warred for her very life, that terror-stricken blood pounding in her ears, tears in mid-fall freezing as her eyes collapsed into blackness, silently screaming, screaming, screaming–

Blood splattered across her face as her kunai stabbed into the chest of a child, his eyes once bright and full of promise, but now only empty. From outside her own body, she watched herself coolly fling that same kunai into the throat of his screaming mother and fall to her hands, kicking back with both feet under the chin of the boy's father. She forward-rolled with the momentum and tumbled through the door, shuriken loosely held in her hands as she let fly with only the barest effort, nameless, faceless victims falling before her. The sky blood-painted and the sun blood-stained, the ground blood-soaked and her face blood-smeared, she laughed.

And he blinked, and it was over. Her chest heaved with a deep, shuddering breath as the pressure snapped. Sakura huddled deep inside herself, futilely chasing his back and crying for him. "Sasu...ke...kun..." was all she managed to whisper, green eyes burning from tears and face throbbing from pain.

"That is the kind of power I can give to you, if you want it." Though invisible behind the bandage, Orochimaru's lips twitched in a smile as Kabuto stood impassively to the side, her blood dripping silently from his glove. "That is the power I have promised Sasuke-kun."

Coughing, she vomited and winced, then shakily rose to her hands and knees. She forced her green eyes to meet his, resolve strengthening instead of weakening as she stared up at him, then bowed her head to touch her forehead to the ground. She wiped her mouth with one hand, smudging the blood on her cheek across the back of her hand. "Please... Orochimaru-sama.

"Teach me."

A/N: I'd like to thank my three reviewers, to whom I've already replied personally... Thanks very much to: shortiegotpwndXD, Sakurachan1345, and TeMaRi - SwEeTeSt SiN... thanks a lot, guys!