Into The Night

The fight to get back out again is horrendous.



Sakura can feel the poison working its way through her body now, leeching her of her strength, her concentration, even her coordination. She stumbles and for a moment, cannot see Kakashi.



As she struggles to her feet, one hand clamped to her throat, using pressure to ease the pain, another Missing-Nin arrives. He spots her before she can react and she suddenly sports shuriken in her right thigh. This new pain simply adds to the crescendo, beating behind her temples. She clenches her fist and draws kunai.



Sakura manages to hold him off for fully thirty seconds before his fist connects with her solar-plexus. She staggers, winded, to her knees, choking, coughing, her neck bared to him invitingly, unwittingly.



As his swords bares down on her, she pulls her last strength and blocks, her forearm shattering under his combined weight and thrust. Finally, her self imposed silence is broken, her anguished cry rising through the compound. Adrenaline surges her forward, kunai finding his heart.



Kakashi is by her side in a moment, lifting her to her feet and pulling her onward. She cradles her arm, but moves as fast as she can, bloodied kunai still gripped tight in her left fist. As he tries to coax her onto the roof, that is when she realises the full scope of the poison – her chakra is gone. There is nothing she can do, her chakra store is tiny and plummeting still – she can barely walk, let alone leap to a roof.



The only way out of the compound is through the now alert guards – Kakashi cannot carry her and she cannot climb. Stealing herself against the pain, Sakura readies herself to fight.



And fight she does. Even in her near-helpless condition, one broken arm and three seeping wounds to her thigh, she still fights. She still knows the weak-points on a persons body, still knows her katta. She’s weak, but not yet defeated and guard after guard goes down before her.



Kakashi’s sword sings as they move, slicing limbs and torsos. She is glad for his presence now; his methodical movement is a comfort. If she stumbles, he barely breaks form to catch and right her; if her foe is too much, he steps in and clears the way. That is, until more Missing-Nin appear.



No Bingo-Book members, but sufficient to send chills down her spine. On any other day, she would square up and beat them seven ways from Sunday, but not now. Now she has an unknown, chakra sapping poison coursing her veins and she is forced to rely on Kakashi.



She crouches down, holding her wounds, as Kakashi steps forward. In seconds, the battle begins. She finds his eye-patch fluttering to the floor beside her, enforcing how difficult the situation has become. She grits her teeth – she hates being a liability. She hates having to rely on other people for help or protection.



Sakura pulls concealed weapons from various hiding places on her body, shurriken, senbon, kunai and she begins to pick off the remaining non-ninja guards around them. Her aim is not true, she misses more than she aught – but enough are killed for the rest to flee.



Slumping a little with the effort, Sakura does not notice a shadowed form to her side. Not before he has grabbed her good arm. She kicks out, but he simply dodges, slamming her upright against the wall. The breath is knocked from her lungs again and she can’t help the pained gasp from escaping her lips.



He grins at her, leering and she finds herself dragged away from Kakashi. He hasn’t even noticed. She struggles against her enemy, but he simply laughs, she is too weak now to be of concern to anyone. Two of her fingers break in the strain, the sick crunching sound reverberating through her whole body. Tears of pain and frustration slide from her eyes, she tastes salt on her lips. In a last ditch attempt, as he pushes her up against a wall, hand shifting to pull away her mask, she knees him in the groin.



She feels something break against her knee-cap. The man goes cross-eyed, jerking his hands to his crushed manhood; she drops to the floor and hacks at his heels with her bloody kunai, trying to hamstring him. The blood is too slick, her fingers too painful and she causes only minor damage before crawling away from the groaning, whimpering man.



Kakashi’s body language is frantic when she finally crawls back into the open. The Missing-Nin are dead, there are no guards left. Apparently, her new lack of chakra makes her impossible to find. He pulls her to her feet once again, his body language suggesting he wants to do more, before pulling her good arm over his shoulders and half-carrying her the rest of the way from the compound.



She had been right about the rain. It is a torrential downpour when they finally leave the building. It masks the sounds of their movement and hides any traces of their footprints. She feels, for a moment, that the rain is her ally against the repugnance of the mission. But only for a moment, before the water seeps into her uniform, chilling her clammy skin.



Sakura is left shivering, clinging to her team-mate, for warmth as much as support.



Kakashi doesn’t stop until they are miles away from the compound, so far into a near-by forest that no-one but the most elite of ANBU could find them in the storm. When they stop, Sakura realises she is crying, almost sobbing, heaving with the effort to draw breath into her lungs.



Kakashi props her against the thick trunk of a tree and pulls the canvas and rope from her bag, as well as his own. In a matter of minutes, he has created a sheltered space to keep out the rain and the wind, hidden between two trees and under a large bush.



Gently, slowly, he takes her weight and sits them down in the dry space. He strips off his gloves, unwrapping the bandages and unclipping the armour in quick practiced movements. Their porcelain masks are dropped uncaringly to the floor and he strips her own gloves and armour from her.



Sakura barely even flinches as he pulls her sodden top over her head, her breasts goose-pimpled in the cold, despite the bindings. He inspects the senbon wounds to her throat and shoulder, but shakes his head; there is nothing he can do at the moment.



Next, he moves to her ribs, checking for breaks. Luckily, she is only bruised – it hurts like hell, but there is little a non-medic can do for ribs anyway.



Taking her arm gently in his hand, he inspects the broken bone. It hasn’t broken skin, but she knows it has shattered inside. And her two fore-fingers have been broken in three places due to her struggling. He leaves the canvas for a moment and returns with scrounged solid twigs and a branch. Using the bindings from their gloves, he sets her fingers tightly and then tackles her arm.



At this point, she starts to laugh. She doesn’t know why – only that she can’t stop. It hurts her ribs, pulls against her broken bones, reopens the slowly scabbing wounds on her thigh. All the added pain and the fact that she’s still crying, just serve to make her laugh more. And she can’t stop.



Through her sobs and her laughter, she can tell Kakashi is worried. He’s watching her with his eye, concern etched into every visible line of his face (he still wears that stupid half-mask; she’s never seen his face). When he sets her arm, she cries out and he pulls her to his chest. She doesn’t have the energy to protest, and he’s so warm that she presses herself to him, still sobbing and brokenly laughing.



He unhooks her hood, pushes it back off her tightly bound hair and with one arm wrapped around her, strokes her head with his free hand. Unable to stop her sobs or laughter, she simply lets him, curled into his embrace. After a while, her laughter ceases and her sobs quieten enough for her to realise she is shivering uncontrollably. Kakashi notices and pulls a rolled blanket from his pack. Silently, he wraps her in it, balling her up against the cold and wraps his arms around her.



“Sleep,” he whispers, “I’ll watch.”



Sakura nods and obediently closes her eyes, but she does not sleep for long hours. She listens to him breath, feeling his warm breath ghosting over her cheek. She listens to the rain, pattering on the canvas of their make-shift tent.



She listens to her heart, screaming at her in the darkness.