towerofanimus | Arrival

Entry tags:

Arrival

Characters: Sakura and YOU! And at one point Sasuke
Setting: Various places in the tower, as listed.
Format: Starting with action, but will match your preference.
Summary: Sakura's first explorations in the tower.
Warnings: None to start, will update as appropriate.

[Floor 5: Security Center]

[Staring through the cameras at the various ruined worlds is nearly gut-wrenching, but Sakura steels herself against the emotional onslaught, studying each one, trying to divine some sort of order or secret behind them. She can't believe it's real -- although she knows that her own world was facing devastation in her last memories of it, it still doesn't seem real to her that this many worlds have found their end. (It doesn't help that the entire concept of there being this many worlds is a little difficult.)]

[But she's studying them nonetheless, her expression stony and determined.]

[Floor 2: Infirmary]

[It's natural that this floor has caught her interest, and she's giving it a particularly thorough examination. If this is all the medical facilities she's got to work with, then she'd better be clear on what she can do.]

[The stock of medicines is beyond disappointing -- small and basic things, here, as well as a couple extremely specialized formulas she quietly imagines to be ones required by specific residents -- but nothing that she considers truly needful, and no facilities for formulating her own, at least not here. She'll have to see if anywhere else in the Tower is more profitable than this. But she knows the treatment area, at least, and she's reasonably certain it will accommodate any work she needs to do.]

[Cafeteria]

[She's been given the obligatory bowl of oatmeal, and is regarding it with an expression of distrust. Not that oatmeal is necessarily an objectionable meal -- she's not exactly been enjoying gourmet since leaving Konoha to join up with the Joint Shinobi Army -- but the simple fact that she has been told she must eat it before partaking of anything else has her wary. What exactly does this oatmeal hold that it's so obligatory?]

[She stirs it around a little with her spoon, then takes a tiny bite, holding it on her tongue and trying to sort through the tastes, trying to use chakra to work through it as though it were a poison, searching for what makes it special.]

[Floor 28: Lab]

[Sakura is moving through the lab with a frown on her face; not working on anything, not yet, just investigating, figuring out what she'll have to work with in the future. Wherever she is, she's stuck now, and she'll have to make the best of it -- and she's already figured out that in a place like this, her skills will probably be extremely useful. So she needs to know where she can formulate antidotes -- and quite possibly poisons as well. She's investigated the infirmary already, and while it's decent, it won't do for formulating the more complex antidotes she's expecting to need.]

[This is the last place she'd want to work on them in, with poor instructions, no labels on some of the materials in stock, and no idea how much of the equipment works. However, she'll do her best with what she has.]

[Sasuke's room]

[Exploring the dormitories found her the door with Sasuke's name on it, sending her blood running cold. Sasuke, here? There are certain assumptions that she feels almost driven to make; while she doesn't act immediately, within a day or two of her arrival, she finds the room unoccupied and slips into it, tamping down her chakra as best she can and concealing herself.]

[Waiting.]

[He has to come back, this is where he sleeps, and when he does, she will do what she failed to before. Naruto's not here now to suffer the consequences of her attempt. It will just be the two of them.]

[She'll do it this time. She'll kill him. She'll end this destructive tension that's been tearing the remnants of their team apart for years. For Naruto, for Kakashi, for herself... she'll do this.]

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Sasuke is tired, and that's the only reason he isn't moving before she is. He sees her chakra surge - sees it and it's familiar and that almost shakes him, but he can see the way it moves and he doesn't have time for sentimentality.

He jumps back into the hallway, giving himself a little more space, whipping his katana around to block her strikes. "Sakura...!"

Painful thoughts flicker across his mind, painful what-ifs. Itachi told him. Itachi told him what he, Sasuke, was like in the world Itachi came from. What world is this Sakura from?

The kunai clangs off the katana with a note that's almost musical in its clarity, but Sakura doesn't let herself hear it. She can't -- nor can she let herself hear that note of surprise, of pain, in Sasuke's voice. If she lets anything intrude, she'll lose her nerve entirely, lose all the determination that she pulled together for this.

"This is for Konoha!" she grits out, slashing again, lower. He has a sword, she only has a knife -- but she's a medic, and he isn't. She can keep herself going in a fight. Long enough -- just long enough. It has to be.

"For Naruto... for Kakashi... and for me!" She has to get through. A nick, just a nick, that's all it will take. Again, again, quick small movements, quick precise movements, around his guard, with all of her fresh energy and the chakra flowing into her muscles.

A scratch. A scratch was all it would take.

That's more affirmation than he needs. More than he ever wanted to hear and gods, he didn't want to believe it. Didn't want to believe Itachi's words, didn't want to think any part of him could ever push everything so far aside, but here's his proof. Here's his proof, and it comes in the form of one of his teammates trying to kill him. He can almost smell the killing intent.

And she's good. She's good, and she's fast, and she has better chakra control than he does - she's always had better chakra control than he does - and he's spent his on the frivolities of the Tower.

He keeps his blade moving, just blocking, just dodging away, no strikes, never a strike (he's not sure he could hurt her if he had to) and fuck, doesn't she see that? "I don't want to hurt you!"

He can't spare breath for more than that, though, can't tell her everything it would probably take to slow her down and dammit, why did she have to find his room like this before he even knew she was here?

She's good, is why. She's good, and as he arches away and dips a hand for his kunai pouch - just something else to block with, not to hurt her, never to hurt her - her blade glides up his katana and he can't turn it in time, feels metal parting through the bandages he keeps wrapped around his left forearm, parting through his skin. Feels a sting, a heavy thick sting and his eyes widen.

Poison.

He jumps back, just back, far as he can, three jumps back down the hall while he can still move.

"Look at what I'm wearing!" he yells, hoping she'll actually do so before she catches him. Shakes his head. It's too late now if he doesn't get her attention; if he keeps blocking he'll just move the poison faster through his veins -

He drops the sword. Drops the kunai he'd snagged. Turns his left shoulder toward her and yanks his sleeve up, baring the unmistakeable ANBU tattoo of Konoha. "I'm not the Sasuke you know!" And fuck, how much it hurts him to say that.

Got him!

Knowing he's taken her poison, knowing she's effectively won, she falls back, falls a little out of that intensive, all-consuming focus -- and then his words, his appearance, his clothing, his surprise, all penetrate.

I'm not the Sasuke you know. He's wearing Konoha fatigues. And that's an ANBU tattoo. And his weapons, flung to the floor, disarming himself willingly in the face of her attack.

His chakra is different. She remembers, she knows what it felt like, the first time she tried to kill him. This... this could nearly be a different person entirely, from the story told in his personal energy. And he's wearing Konoha's clothes like they've never left his body.

"You're..." The single word slips out of her lips as her eyes go wide, struggling to understand, to realize what this means. The Sasuke she knows would never do any of this. And this... this, she knows is not a genjutsu. Her awareness of her own chakra is too good. He would have had to use the Mangekyou on her to entrap her, and she'd ambushed him, before he could have made eye contact.

No. This is real, as real as anything else in this damnable tower can be.

"Sasuke." She takes a slow step forward, still unsure, still grasping only the very edges of what this means. "Who are you?"

His teeth grit at that question. This isn't his Sakura. This isn't his Sakura but it's still Sakura and that...

Sasuke lifts his other hand to pull at the bandages on his arm, to pinch one tight near the elbow in a makeshift tourniquet, keep the poison from spreading too fast, too far.

"I am still Sasuke Uchiha," he answers, the words coming out harsh from his tight chest. "I've met others from what I think is your world and they told me -" He takes a deep breath.

"I never left Konoha. I'm still Team 7. I'm 18, I'm jounin, I'm ANBU. And I promise I don't want to hurt you."

Can she believe him? Can she let herself? Her heart is contracting, is pounding with hope, with the need for him to be telling the truth, but she's a ninja. A product of a whole world of deception, of appearances contradicting reality, of lies and illusions as weapons in the hands of every master over the age of ten.

Can she accept that he isn't lying? That somehow, this tower has brought her a Sasuke who is everything that she and Naruto and Kakashi have ached for, all these years?

She draws in a shaky breath, eyes fixed on him, as though willing herself to see down to the core of him, to see if there is truth or falsehood here. Sasuke has always been her weakest point, has always been the one person who never, ever fails to throw all of her rationality into utter disarray. Can she trust her rationality now to give her the right answer?

Her vision wavers, and she realizes there are tears in her eyes from just how badly she wants this to be true.

"You're... but how?" A hard swallow, and she takes a step forward, wondering -- wondering if he is a liar, if this is her Sasuke -- why would he bother? He never cared enough to lie to her.

"You left us so long ago..." Left her with a concussion, left Naruto covered in bandages, a closer scrape with death than ever the blond will understand.

She swallows, and take a slow, hesitating half-step toward him. He's unarmed, and she tells herself again, Sasuke never cared enough to lie to me. Which meant... did it mean? Could it?

"Sakura..." Oh fuck, there's his vision going hazy (even with the Sharingan? fuck), and he clenches his eyes shut to try to stay upright, right hand tugging harder on the tourniquet until his left-hand fingers start to go numb. "I can't know what you've been through but I'm sorry anyway. I'm sorry anyone with my name hurt you."

Because this is Sakura and he's pretty sure he would die before he let anyone hurt her as deeply as this other version of him must have.

"I went to the Valley and I put my hand through Naruto's lung but I came back and -"

But no Sasuke of hers came back.

His eyes open again, and they're bloodshot and there are no tomoe in the flat red plane of his Sharingan and he can't see but that doesn't matter because he looks up toward her anyway. "Who found you? On the bench - fuck, Sakura, I'm sorry -"

He cuts off only because something gags in his throat, and he can feel foam on the back of his tongue.

Those words, that stream of words that should be everything in her dreams, Sasuke saying I'm sorry when it wasn't even him, wasn't this Sasuke in front of her, but he's sorry anyway because it was someone, someone with his face and name, and they hurt her, her and Naruto both... The tears are spilling down her cheeks now, unbidden, unrestrained. She doesn't care, because this is the Sasuke she should have had, and what he's saying goes right to her heart, lodges there with heat and warmth and light.

And then she sees foam bubbling at his lips and throws out a few very unladylike words as she realizes how fast the poison is hitting him.

"Sit down, sit down!" Even before the words are fully out she's tugging him to kneel, sinking down with him because his legs aren't going to support him much longer, she knows that damn well. He needs healing, and he needs it soon -- she's too good at poison-crafting. Even Naruto's life was endangered when she worked the craft.

"I can fix this." She made it, she can unmake it; she knows the poison well, every connection. More than simply drawing it out or curing it, she can unmake it if she has to. But she has to act quickly or her knowledge and mastery won't matter. One hand, glowing with chakra, presses over the cut -- not hovering over it as she normally does, but presses firmly against it, calling her poison back to her. Trickier this way, less safe, but more effective. Effective is what she cares about.

He could be tricking her. This could be nothing more than an elaborate ruse, an elaborate mockery. But she doesn't think so -- can't think so, can't believe it, because this is all too right. Too much of what should be.

"Sasuke, I'm sorry," she whispers as her chakra courses through his veins, hunting the poison and drawing it away from vulnerable tissue. "I'm so sorry, forgive me..."

Sasuke doesn't resist as Sakura pulls him down - probably couldn't, at this point - but it's not until he feels the dim sensation of chakra tingling at his skin that he releases his hold on the bandage-tourniquet, lets it loosen so her chakra can radiate out into his.

It's a warm feeling. Not the sickly warm of the poison, but a light green summer warmth that he's always associated with her. Yes. This is Sakura. He'd know her chakra anywhere, even if he's never had to feel it slipping this deeply into his veins.

He shakes his head when she says she's sorry - gags, when he opens his mouth, spitting foam in a spatter to the floor. A dribble of saliva follows, running from the corner of his mouth down his chin, and his breath wheezes into his lungs - once. Half of twice. But halfway through that second breath, he can feel his throat loosening, can feel the air rush into his lungs.

He turns toward her even though he can't see. "Don't..." A cough. "Don't apologize." Slowly, the bloodshot spiderwebs start to back out of his eyes. A few moments later, the pupils reappear in the center of the red, expanding out from the pinpricks they'd shrunk to. After a blink, he focuses on her at last, frowning to see the tears on her face. "You thought I was someone else..."

"How can I not?" The words are reassuring -- the fact that he can speak is reassuring, tells her she's doing well, she's gotten to him before anything gets permanently damaged -- but her heart is still crumpling, hurting almost as keenly as when Sasuke -- her Sasuke -- left. "I hurt you... I could have killed you." There's no contradicting that -- she knows exactly how deadly this poison is.

Her chakra keeps moving through him; the poison is neutralized, and now she's sweeping for damage, healing what it already ate away. She can't stop until she knows she's done, knows he's fully healed -- and she doesn't want to. This contact between them, the brush of her chakra against his, tells her so very much. It's comforting, almost an embrace. This is the teammate she should have had. Sasuke as he should have been. A Sasuke who came back.

She tries to force herself back to medical impersonality. "You did well, blocking it. There shouldn't be any lingering ill effects." No, there won't be, and technically she could pull back now, but she finds herself so very reluctant to let go...

He doesn't doubt her words, doesn't doubt her poison. He'd be an idiot to doubt any Sakura's skill with the human body, whether for damage or healing. Which is why he isn't afraid, with her chakra inside his veins and coils; he trusts the skill of her healing absolutely.

Slowly, one by one, black tomoe reform in his irises. He looks at her with utter clarity, the perfection of his bloodline's vision, all illusion and altered focus washed away. She's younger than he is, he can see that now. And he can see how hurt she is, as much as she tries to hide it, and the frown deepens in his face.

He shakes his head, slightly, when she slips on the mask of the medic, seeing it as tangibly as if it was a real thing. Reaches out, no thought to the possible impropriety, and skates fingertips along the lines of her face until they slip against her ear, until he can cup her cheek. She's warm, she always was. "You didn't kill me," he reassures her softly. And then smiles, just a little, just at the very corners of his mouth. "And if you had I still wouldn't want you to apologize."

That touch...!

It's far more than her Sasuke had ever given her, would ever give her, more than she has ever expected from him, even when they were kids and her heart was set on him. Now, after so much hurt, after that abandonment...

She can't help leaning into it. Can't help herself for drinking up that touch, that small smile. Can't help herself for taking everything that this Sasuke will give her, because at least it's something that she can treasure against all the time when there's just... nothing.

His words are... ridiculous, aren't they? Wouldn't want her to be sorry, even if she had killed him? This Sasuke, this Sasuke who with every passing second shows how much he isn't the Sasuke she wanted to end?

But maybe this should make her wary. It's everything she's hoped for, all wrapped up with Sasuke's beautiful face... and she's already seen that this Tower is a place of nightmares. Is this just setting her up for a deeper one?

The thought makes her faintly nauseous. To doubt him... and yet, she can't not. She's far too much a ninja for that. But if it is a trap, a snare for her emotions...

But if it's not. If he's not.

She can't turn her back on him. So she'll just have to walk into things with her eyes wide open, and hope to catch the trap before it triggers, if there really is one.

"Come on," she says, still trying to be the medic, even with the way she's pressed herself into his touch. "Let's get you up off the floor here. You should be able to stand..." She can't aswer his words, answer his statement that he wouldn't want her to be sorry if he'd died. There's just nothing she can say to it. He's too good, too much.

He can see it, in her eyes. It's not difficult to read a person using the Sharingan, but Sasuke can't help but think that if he didn't have it, he'd be able to read Sakura all the same. Not because she's an open book, but simply because he knows her so well.

The fact that she doesn't know him is heartbreaking.

He takes the opportunity, while he's still cupping her cheek, to thumb a few tears from the corner of her eye. She shouldn't be crying over him. She should never cry over him.

He lets her help him up, though he's sure now he would be able to stand on his own. She's good. She's very, very good. He has to keep reminding himself that this is a very different Sakura, because the similarities are staggering. It makes him wonder what the differences are.

She sets her jaw as they stand together, forcing the tears -- forcing, as best she can, the emotions underlying them -- to a back burner of her mind. He's no longer in danger from the poison, and she has to show him her stronger side, not all the underlying weakness that she thought -- until just now -- she'd so successfully defeated.

Searching for something to say, she finally settles on a relatively neutral question. "How long have you been here?" It's not much, but hopefully it will get easier words flowing. She needs to know this Sasuke, to find out who he is -- how different he is. Because utterly, totally really isn't enough to go on.

For a long moment, he just looks at her. Searching. Almost calculating, though the expression is nothing so cold. He can tell she's trying to keep up her resolve, and he doesn't want to take that from her. But at the same time...

"A few months," he answers at length. "A little more than three." He runs a hand back through his hair, a gesture of the mildest discomfort. Feels that it's slick with sweat, between the fight and the poison, and sighs sharply through his nose. He suddenly feels his previous tiredness sagging back onto his shoulders, thinking consciously of what just happened between them. Thankful for what didn't, more for Sakura's sake than his.

"Come on," he says abruptly, nodding his head back down the hall and moving toward his door once again. "Come inside, and let's talk." Privately. And with some invitation for her, this time.

"Months." To be trapped here so long... is it real, then? That their worlds are gone? She can't let herself believe that, hasn't, not since the moment she awoke.

She nods, feeling a little numb suddenly as the last of the adrenaline rush leaves her. She's burned chakra so recklessly, first in the attack and then the healing, that she desperately needs to have a quiet place, at least relatively safe, to sink down and rest. Not as bad as Kakashi gets, but more than enough to feel it.

"Yes. We... I think we have a lot to talk about." And it's probably going to hurt.

She follows him into the room, settling herself and looking to him, studying him again, just tracing his features -- the difference in how he holds himself, how he looks. He's older than her -- 18, he'd said -- and she can't help admitting that the extra years have only made him more heartbreakingly handsome. Maybe especially him, because the lines of coldness and cruelty aren't setting themselves in his face.

Sasuke closes the door gently, quietly behind them. He's bone-tired, suddenly, more so even than he had been upon first coming back here tonight.

He lets Sakura study him, doesn't object or squirm. He's so familiar, so close with his own Sakura that it doesn't really strike him as uncomfortably as it should. Even if he knows that isn't her, that this isn't the Sakura he knows, but he can't bring himself to be discomfited or wary all the same. It's still Sakura.

He does sink down onto the edge of the bed, feeling heavy and sore. "Have a seat, if you like." He gestures toward the bed next to him, to the trunk beyond that if she wishes. He wishes he had a chair or something to offer.

For a moment, he's silent, hands folded in front of him, leaning over his knees.

"I'm sorry for anything you've been through because of me." He can't even imagine. "Or any version of me."

"Stop apologizing," she says as she sits down on the bed nearest his, the words almost automatic. "It's nothing you did." There's a bit of her usual fire coming back into those words now. It's a shock, but entwined with it, there's hope -- because she's here now, with this Sasuke. Maybe... maybe she can have just a little bit of what his teammates have had.

Okay, so... talking. They need to talk. Because they're here now, and if he's the kind of person he seems like... then she has a feeling they won't just go their separate ways after this.

"I'm not going to lie," she adds after a moment of thinking. "What he put us through... was pretty bad. But I don't hold you responsible for any of it. You're not the same person." Because Sasuke, the Sasuke of her world, the last time she'd seen him...

...Well. There was little question in her mind that that Sasuke was absolutely, utterly insane. This one, though, his only madness was in that absolute forgiveness, even of her attempt to kill him.

"I still feel responsible." It's quieter, and Sasuke isn't looking at her when he says it. But all the same...

"I did a lot of stupid and selfish things when I was younger. I still put my hand through Naruto's chest." There's the barest hint of tightness in those words. Sasuke still hasn't forgiven himself for that. "If your Sasuke left... I can't help but guess we had the same path up to a point." Sakura still knew who he was. She'd mentioned Naruto. So much had to be the same.

"That... yes." She lets out a slow breath. "... He left. I tried to stop him, and he just left me on a bench with a concussion. Naruto went after him, and... yes. That." Sasuke drove the chidori through his chest. She knows those words would hurt Sasuke -- this Sasuke -- to hear, just as they'd hurt him to say.

The same path up to a point -- was that it? Was everything else before it the same? She considers it, then takes a slow breath, asks cautiously, "If you fought Naruto -- at that valley, right? Then the big things, the reason you were out that far, that will probably -- maybe? -- be the same." Not wanting to say it directly, too much discretion to blurt out, what happened to your family?

There's so much to say, so much hurt to pour out, and she doesn't want to hurt him with it. This isn't the Sasuke who deserves to suffer for what she and Naruto went through.

"... Are you sure you want to compare it?" she asks. "It won't be good."

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Arrival

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