An affair to forget

But i just cant keep myself from updating any longer cause all of you guys have been poking me so much. with all the poking and crap.
So here you go this chapter has finally been beta'd yay! so lets all thank NAcht and all her hard work!

I abuse her so much no wonder she avoids me. (just kiddin)
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An Affair to Forget
Chapter 8: Swim to the surface


Sakura sighed as she dug the burnt end of the stick into the wall, giving it an extra hard twist in retaliation. She checked the corridor ahead and then looked up at her handmade torch, making sure that it was still burning. She refused to look behind her knowing HE was there, following her, and tracking every movement with his black eyes.

She made sure her mark was fully visible before she went down the corridor to the right. She had been following every right hand turn, going deeper and deeper into the mountain. Sakura didn’t honestly know what she was looking for but having him follow her every step of the way was grating to her nerves.

She had no idea why he was following her, but considered the thought that he was bored out of his mind, just like her. She still hadn’t forgiven him from the incident three days ago. She had managed to keep their conversations as short as possible, using every opportunity to escape from his company. After spending the morning stretching and trying to heal her hip, she had decided to explore the vast caves that lay buried in the mountain. She hadn’t considered that he might follow her, ignoring him had seemed the best option, and she still considered it the best.

She felt his chakra signature fade away, which didn’t mean he was gone. Sakura felt her teeth grid and she forcibly relaxed her jaw. She walked ahead trying to hold the torch well out to the side, she had already been burnt twice this morning by the stupid thing. Felt the two others swinging from her hip where she had tied them into her confiscated belt, bumping and rubbing her knee raw as she walked. She suddenly stopped as she felt raw pebbles crunching beneath her feet and brought her torch forward to see a massive cave-in blocking the way in front of her.
Sakura sighed and blew her bangs out of her eyes as she turned to back track, again. She was getting sick of this game. She thought of quitting and going back to the cabin to let Itachi stare at her for a while. That really should pump up her ego and yet, somehow, it didn’t. Just as she turned to go she felt her nose grind into a warm mesh covered wall of bricks….AKA Itachi. He had been two freaking steps behind her the whole time and she hadn’t even known it. Sakura felt her nerves snap as she jumped back and nearly out of her skin.

“Leave me alone! Why do you keep following me?! Why cant I get rid of you?!” she shrieked as she clutched at her chest, dropping her torch. It rolled into the corner next to the landslide where it hissed and guttered, but thankfully, stayed lit.

“I can't leave you alone until you wake up,” His voice cracked but nothing about his demeanor changed. “Sakura, just wake up.”

With that, Itachi turned and walked away into the darkness leaving Sakura alone. She hugged her sides and tried to keep from crying. She wouldn’t cry. She refused to. It wouldn’t do ANY good to cry now. She felt her teeth chatter and she crouched down on her knees, hugging them to her chest.

“Why won’t he leave me alone? What kind of sick game is he playing at? Does it have to do with Sasuke? He knows about the baby but it's gone now. So why is he keeping me here…I don’t understand ANYTHING!’

Sakura found no answers to these questions and she could only ponder, at what seemed to her, the very strange behavior on Itachi’s part. As far as she knew, Itachi wasn’t the kind of man who formed strange romantic attractions with any woman, so why was she here? And why would he lie to her about being his wife? That’s what seemed the strangest to Sakura, but she came up with nothing to explain any of it.

She jumped out of her thoughts when her only light began to flicker and crawled over to the torch where it still lay on its side. She picked it up and flicked little bits of dirt off it, trying to decide whether she should switch it over for one of the others. A soft sound made her look down where several small stones had bounced down the shaft and landed against her feet. She stared for a moment then shivered when she heard vast groaning sounds from the rocks above her. She looked up in time to see them shaking loose from their haphazard configuration and fall in a giant crushing wave towards her. Using every bit of strength and skill she had, she leapt out of the way but it wasn’t enough, her lower body had been pinned.

Sakura lay with her arms covering her head as small rocks and pebbles pelted her, coughing as dust tried to steal her last breath. Soon enough, she felt the last of the quakes stop around her and she cracked her eyes open, everything around her was in darkness. She cautiously brought her hand to her face attempting wipe the worst of the dust from her eyes and she tried one more time to open them. This time she was rewarded by a small weak light, the torch had been knocked across the room by her struggle and lay underneath a mound of debris.

The light wouldn’t last long, most of the wick was choked with dirt. Sakura ignored the searing pain in her legs and carefully brushing away dirt and rocks she came up on her elbows. She felt the massive weight on top of her groan and shift. She froze in terror as she was again pelted by small rocks. Never before had she been so aware that she was underneath a mountain, those big things with all the snow and trees and rocks. Sakura felt the ominous presence of the mountain now as it oppressively pressed in on her, wanting to crush her insignificant life away beneath its earthen bones.

Sakura took stock of the damage, trying to control her breathing in order to bring her shivers under control. She was going into shock and she knew it. She had no way to feel what was going on in her legs so she couldn’t assess how much she was bleeding, if any. The weight of the rocks might prevent bleeding but it could cause far worse problems. The longer she was stuck the worse they would be. There was a more urgent problem, her fingers were broken, two were dislocated.
After she pulled them into place and set them her troubles weren’t over, several of them refused to move despite all her tricks. If your fingers are broken it doesn’t matter how good of a medic you were if you just couldn’t make the signs. She sobbed as she tried once more to manually force her fingers into the sign but they had started to swell and movement was impossible.
She lay her head down, exhausted, as the light began to flicker. The hissing and popping became worse. She couldn’t reach the extra torch at her side, not that she could manage to light it, she had some idea that she would throw it close enough that it might catch. She stared at the wall as crazy shadows were thrown in relief and disappeared just as quickly. She tried flexing her toes and legs to see what happened but quickly stopped when she received nothing but pain. She tried to reach behind her and shift the rocks that were pressing into her lower back but they couldn’t be budged. As she stared at the wall she heard the crunch of rocks and she squeezed her eyes tight in terror as she waited for the shift that would completely entomb her.

She realized that the sounds were coming from the wrong direction and she gasped as she looked up into Itachi’s face just as the final light went out. Everything was complete darkness, she couldn’t even hear him breathing. She reached for where she last saw him and she tried to keep from sobbing as she lay her hand on his foot. He didn’t move at all and she could feel his eyes staring at her, what he saw in the complete darkness she had no idea.

“Itachi….please” she choked out as she coughed up dust and what tasted like blood.

“Sakura…..wake up. Wake up and it will all be over.” his voice bounced around the room.

“But I am awake,” she quietly wailed as she gripped his ankle tighter. “I can't BE any more awake. Please Itachi, help me.” she gasped and held onto that one lifeline, not willing to let go for any reason, no matter what. She felt him crouch down and his warm fingers rested on her cheek before wiping away the grit and dirt.

“I can't help you until you wake up Sakura.” he stood and kicked her hand off his ankle.

“Itachi! ITACHI! Wait please please don’t go ITACHI!” she started screaming his name, caring very little that her thrashing had endangered her precarious position. She didn’t even hear the rocks this time as they crashed around her completely covering her whole body.

She lay beneath the crushing weight completely trapped, unable to move a single muscle. She sobbed quietly as she tried to listen for any sounds that meant he was trying to dig her out, that he had just been playing a sick game to tease her. But nothing……silence.

‘He told me to wake up but I AM awake. Maybe I should sleep, maybe I should just go to sleep and then I will wake up.’ Sakura shut her eyes tight and willed herself to sleep.

‘Don’t want to be here. I just want to sleep….I just want to sleep, far away from here….just sleep.’

And with that Sakura drifted away.


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“Hold her down! She’s going into arrest!”

Sasuke stood to the side, helpless, as the woman on the bed thrashed wildly while doctors and nurses attempted to hold her down. It seemed odd to him that there could be so much movement after such a long time. How does someone go into arrest while seeming to have a seizure?

Monitors beeped like crazy as they attempted to figure out why she would suddenly go into a fit like this. Sasuke could only watch quietly as she was poked with needles and strapped tightly to the table. He thought to protest at the way they were handling her but was held back by a hand on his shoulder. He felt Kakashi squeeze his shoulder as he too, looked on in helplessness. Unable to do anything for their fallen teammate than to watch and to hope that this might signal an end to the waiting. And end to…something.

Finally, someone turned around to see the two of them standing there and against their wishes they were shuffled from the room. Banished to wait with the rest of them, the ones who had come when they heard there was a change.

Sasuke slumped against the wall staring at the nurses' station without seeing anything, baffling the nurses with his apparent blank expression, showing nothing of his inner feelings. He didn’t turn when he felt Naruto and Sai run up to greet him, both of them blowing hard and sweaty from their efforts to get there.

‘What happened?!? I heard something happened!” Naruto screeched, staring between Kakashi and Sasuke, ready to burst into the room, and demand answers from the medical staff until he was appeased.

“We don’t know Naruto. We just have to wait till someone decides to clue us in.” Kakashi sat nonchalantly in a chair, his book covering his face, as he rested his chin on one hand. Sasuke had noticed that none of the pages had been turned for quite some time, Kakashi might not want them to know it but he was just as concerned as the rest of them.

“Sasuke, you were with her. What happened?” Kakashi asked finally.

Sasuke had been dreading this question, he had been watching her, all of them had taken shifts even when they had said that she had been gone too long. That she would probably not wake up. They had decided in the beginning that one of them would always be with her, no matter what. It didn’t matter how long it took or how much of their lives might be wasted in that room, waiting for her to come back to them. Someone was always there so that she wouldn’t feel alone. So that she wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night and feel alone and go back to sleep, this time forever.

He had sat there in disbelief when her eyes shot open and she had started Saying THAT name…not saying Begging That Man to help her. Sasuke clenched his fist in pain as it ran through his head again. Why would she say that man's name now?

“Tch” was his only reply and he looked away, ignoring their crestfallen looks at his avoidance of their question. Its not like he didn’t feel bad about it, he just didn’t want to tell them.

They all stood around getting in the way of nursing and hospital staff unwilling to budge a single inch. Their heads jerked up as the on call doctor excited the room, pulling off his gloves, and starting in their direction. There was not one person in the hospital who could have failed to notice their devotion to her. It was to them that the news had to come first.

“She suffered a massive seizure. We still don’t know the cause of it, but the good news is that it seems to have woken her from the coma. We were able to get some response out of her and I am glad to say that she was able to recognize herself and even a few of us.” he beamed at them as they all breathed a sigh of blessed relief, they stood to move into the room but stopped as he held up his hand.

“She is sleeping now, but I can assure you it is just a normal sleep. She will wake up in due time but until then…”

They ignored the doctor as they all entered the room, pulling up their usual chairs. Naruto by the bedside with Kakashi sitting across from him in the pull down chair…a most uncomfortable place to sleep. Sai sat in the window with his sketchbook across his lap staring into the street below. Sasuke leaned against the wall watching as monitors clicked and beeped, transcribing every moment of her continued life.

Her hair lay across the pillow, a vibrant splash of tawdry color in a room soaked in emotion. Her hair was the only colorful thing about her now, her eyes had been closed for so long. He had forgotten how green they were. Her cheeks were sunken and grey with dark circles around her eyes. It was funny that someone who had gotten so much sleep could look like she just spent the last five months without it. But there were changes, the breathing machine that had steadily, day and night, caused her lungs to compress and depress was gone as she was finally able to regulate it on her own. The ugly intubator that had been shoved down her throat was replaced with a simple mask. They all breathed a sigh of relief as they waited for her to wake up, ready to greet her with all their love.

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It was like swimming up from the bottom of a lake, coming awake after so long. You could look up and see the distant murky top the sunlight filtering down to the bottom but your body felt weighted down like a stone as you slowly struggled to the top. Guided by hollow noises and senseless muttering that was familiar enough that you were compelled to follow it to its source.

She drifted as she looked up through the top and tried to figure out how she could break the surface. Swimming in circles as she touched its glass like bottom but had no strength to break that final barrier.

“You just need to wake up.”

She nodded at the voice in her head, remembering now how to do it.

And then she opened her eyes.

“Hi, Sakura-chan…welcome back”

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Yaya updated ness!! i have already started on the next chapter cause i'm just cool like that. hopefully i wont take so long next time. anyways WELCOME BACK hiatus is Over!

A/N: i turned on the anonymous review button so feel free to review people....no seriously review. Cause i have to say for as long as i have had this update up the number of reviews has been lame. its very....upsetting
I feel like you don't love me or this story any longer, well thats partly my fault cause i took so long to update but REALLY.

If you guys are having issues with the review button read the first page, i turned off the button that made it so you had to log on to review and also if you log on to your page the site wont log you off for three hours instead of the old fifteen...which is nice cause i have lost more then one edit that way.