Lightning Field

"These little girls, they make me feel so goddamned exhilarated.
I fill them up, I can't give it up, the pain that I'm just erasing.
I tell my lies and I despise every second I'm with you,
So I run away and you still stay, so what the fuck is with you?
Your feelings, I can't help but rape them
I'm sorry, I don't feel the same.
My heart inside is constantly hating.
I'm sorry, I just throw you away."
-Korn "Trash"

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Chapter 9: Trash

Sakura realized she was in love with Kakashi the second to last time they were together. Something in his ministrations had changed. He had shifted from pushing her roughly against a wall to playing her body like an aficionado. For the way he made her feel, the man may as well have been.

She mused on the slow, careful way he had held her, trembling so slightly, as she was washing out a glass at the bar. In the low-lit atmosphere of That Place, she envisioned the darkened bedroom at Kakashi's.

The roseate remembered him holding her in their shared after glow, murmuring nonsensical words in her ear. She had always loved his voice, even more so with the husky undertone of desire lacing his tembre. Her small smile dropped when she remembered more of what he was saying.

"We have to stop this, Sakura." Even now, she felt he was placing responsibility on her to end their affair. As though he would simply go back to his philandering the next day without missing a beat. And he had.

The night after she resolved to leave him, she had seen him at The Silver String. His masked face had been buried in the neck of one of the waitresses. Sloppy and giggling, the young brunette stumbled into the stock room, masked Jounin in tow.

Sakura herself had caught Ino's eye after that. The blonde woman had been every bit the best friend, patting her hand and offering to walk her home. The sentiments had only lasted as long as it had taken Naruto to leave with a civilian woman of his own.

After that, the two women had drank until last call, singing bawdy songs and loudly complaining about insensitive men.

"Dangly downs are only good for one thing!" Sakura announced to a bar almost full of people possessing said anatomy.

"Obviously not even really good at that," Ino murmured, motioning to the disappointed woman now exiting the stock room. Sakura's eyes narrowed unknowingly, as the waitress wiped at her eyes and plastered on a fake smile for the rest of the room to see.

When Kakashi had exited a few minutes later, the waitress's smile wavered and she brought her attention sharply back to her patrons. Shortly thereafter, Kakashi left, another woman on his arm.

This time, with strawberry blonde hair, bordering near Sakura's own bubble gum hue.

When the waitress from Kakashi's store room romp approached the girls to refill their drinks, her smile dropped into a frown when she recognized Sakura.

"You're a terrible woman," she said, while pouring a pale ale into Sakura's stein.

"How do you figure?" Ino butted in. The girl, Lin, by the name tag pinned to her apron, glared at Ino's intrusion.

"Because," she began matter-of-factly, "Pinky, here, ruined the Copy Nin for the rest of us." Lin jumped back as Sakura spit the contents of her mouth in her vague direction.

"Wh-what?" Amidst Sakura's sputters, Ino chuckled like a mad woman.

"Lemme guess, he said her name." Ino declared, wringing her hands together.

"And then some. He seemed embarrassed by it. It would have been endearing any other time." Lin sighed and began to meander away.

"Wait!" Sakura yelped, a little too loudly. A touch too desperately. Lin paused and gazed back. The sharp look in her green eyes- she had green eyes!- was immediately replaced with a mixture of empathy and sympathy.

"He... Haruno-san, that man is not the man to love." Sakura was stunned into silence. Love? No, she didn't love Kakashi. Far from it. She simply preferred the way he made her insides turn gelatinous, and how his calloused hands felt rubbing up her back, only to bury themselves in her hair. Not to mention the way he moved her hair behind her ear in the after glow, or when...

Oh shit. "Shimatta..." Ino's crystalline eyes moved back to regard Sakura.

"Forehead? Are you okay? You look kind of pale. Are you sick?" The blonde placed the back of her hand on Sakura's forehead and immediately took it back. "Eww! You're sweating!" She exclaimed, wiping her hand with a napkin.

Sakura stood abruptly, knocking her stool backward.

"Sakura?" Ino stood, as well, reaching for her friend.

"Ino... I- I gotta go!"

"Oh, well, shit. The bathroom's that way." Ino pointed toward the nearest end of the bar, near the now defiled store room. Sakura blanched even more as she finally noticed her own jealousy, which had only gained fire with the consumption of all the alcohol. She stumbled backward into a man she would later recall as Iruka-sensei, and wove her way to the door.

"Sakura!" Ino's voice was drowned in the masses of people, as the petite pinkette tripped outside.

Kakashi had never felt dirtier than he did at that moment. His companion had left some twenty minutes ago, and he was left with only his morbid thoughts to entertain him.

'She was only 19.' He was sick with himself. He had slept with someone 16 years his junior. A part of him recognized he had only done so to forget about the woman who was 14 years younger than himself, but that part was swiftly kicked down in denial. If Sakura knew...

Of course she knew! She was sitting right in the bar, watching as he not only entertained the young waitress, but as he left with a girl whose looks were not too dissimilar of her own.

He was a sick, sick man.

"Was she worth it?" A voice entered his thoughts. He opened his mismatched eyes to regard the woman lingering uncertainly on his fire escape. Her green eyes were bright with unshed tears and her full lips were thin with something else. Maybe fear of his answer, maybe jealousy. Knowing her, a mixture of the two, and more.

He rolled his eyes back toward his ceiling. "You don't think my elderly neighbor is worth the dog sitting? I'm appa-"

"You know who, Kakashi." She didn't even bother to hide the anger, now. "Did you even know her name?"

"..."

"Tch, I thought as much." She sucked her teeth at his as she stepped into the room. He didn't move, but the slight tension in his muscles confirmed he did not want her there. It was too soon. He hadn't showered, his previous companion's scent was stuck on him like a thick, wet blanket of Chanel and regret.

Rei. Her name was Rei. But he would not tell that to Sakura, fully believing if he put a name to his indiscretions, they would never leave him.

"So," he said after a moment, "what are you doing here?" He flinched when she sat on the bed by his bent elbows. Her fingers clutched at his rumpled comforter, knuckles turning white, before she sighed and finally released it. Her head was cocked toward the full moon outside, and he would later recall how his breath caught at the tragic beauty set in her face.

Snapping to, she turned toward him. Her eyes, the windows to her emotions, were hidden behind her bangs. Finally, she lifted her head.

"I'm here to say goodbye." She bent and kissed him softly. The joining of their lips broke something in Kakashi, and he raised himself onto his elbows to keep her from moving away. The vest she wore, red like her lips, was tossed haphazardly behind her. His tongue ventured out, and, when she sighed into the kiss, he ended it with a pop.

"We can't." Regardless of his words, he gripped her head to roughly kiss her again. His other hand toyed with the clasps on her skirt, unclasping them with ease. He pulled her astride, the bed voicing it's protest.

With another wet pop, he relinquished his assault on her rose-red lips. "We really can't." His actions betrayed his words as he drew the curtains.

"Why not?" Sakura questioned lowly, sounding nothing like the Genin he had trained. "I want to, you want to..."

Sakura snapped back to her present locale, remembering the almost desperate way Kakashi had made love with her their last night together. As if he were repenting, and she were his redemption.

"Hey, Sakura!" Hollered her drummer, Jingo. She tilted her chin up in greeting and waved to Hoshi and Kaya, her lead guitarist. The odd trio made their way to the bar.

"What's on tap?" Kaya asked, flipping her long brown hair behind her. The tall girl sat and lowered her trademark sunglasses onto the crook of her nose to see the labels clearer.

"Nothing good," Sakura sighed back. She tossed Jingo a bottled water from the cooler next to her, and slid a shot of whiskey to Hoshi. Turning back to Kaya, she filled a pint glass with a lager on tap, remarking, "Here you go, honey."

"So what time do we go on?" Jingo asked. His spiky black hair was styled into a faux hawk, and his aquamarine eyes were shadowed with black and grey. The effect was devastating.

It took Sakura a moment to get her breath back after he fixed his eyes on her. "Um, 9, I think." She grabbed the draught spout away from Kaya while she spoke. "Nuh-uh. Pace yourself. We don't need another incident."

"Pfft," the other girl waved her off. "I'm good now. See, then, I was a sloppy drunk."

Smirking, Hoshi leaned on her stool back. "And now?"

Kaya tilted her head back to fix a smile at him. "Now, I don't spill a drop." They all shared a laugh at the fun-loving brunette. She looked at her watch, and sighed. "Well, guys, we should get back and tune 'em up."

As they walked away, Sakura could hear Jingo asking, "So, Legs, how, exactly, does one tune drums?" He put his arm around the girl and grinned.

Kaya's fading reply was, "I don't know how other percussionists do it, but I like to use the phallus of a particularly annoying band mate."

Sakura laughed and shook her head. Her band mates were something else. In the short time she had been in Kyoko, they had become her surrogate family. Her depression in the first few weeks. Had spawned a lot of self-effacing poetry and spiteful songs. When she had gotten the guts up to perform one of them at an Open Mic Night that had been put on by the mediocre cafe down the street, Jingo had been the one to approach her.

Her first impression of the handsome young man had been one of a female hygiene product. He looked the type to expect a woman to bow to his whims, and give nothing back. After conversing with him for a short time, she had learned what a misconception that was. He had been funny, understanding, and intelligent. His blue-green eyes were always shifting depending on his mood, and his lips were quick to smile disarmingly. Even when insulting someone blatantly, Sakura found he had a placating manner that allowed his words to be taken with much injury, but with quick understanding and even appreciation.

She wouldn't even delude herself into believing there wasn't an attraction to him. He was a mixture of all her teammates' best parts, with his own life experiences driving him. When she looked at him, she could see a hint of Sasuke's aristocratic features in his high cheek bones. Naruto's mischief lay in his azure gaze, cunning and fun-loving. The feature that twisted the knife in Sakura's heart, however, was not physical; Jingo's intelligence and love for the complexities life offered rivaled, if not exceeded, Kakashi's. Her former sensei-turned-lover loved puzzles, and found them in almost anything, from the newspaper every morning to the world and the people who lived in it. His favorite activity was not reading. In fact, it was people watching, and he would do it over the top of his signature orange book for hours.

Jingo was the same way. Unlike Kakashi and very similar to Sai, he rarely grasped the human condition. He and Sakura would sit at the same cafe every friday morning and watch people pass by. The same middle aged man would sit nearby, interjecting his thoughts on the interactions they witness. Once, when a girl walked by in tears without the companion she had had the day before, they had both explained relationships to Jingo. How one could feel something the other did not. It had been obvious the poor girl's counterpart had not felt the same way by the wanting looks he shot the other girls passing by.

When Jingo had asked why two people could feel so differently about one another, Sakura had calmly explained, "It's about priorities. Sometimes, one person's priorities don't match with another's, despite the attraction that they may have for one another. Like, you could see your whole future mapped out in someone's eyes, and they could see nothing in yours."

He had nodded, then. "So... sort of like why you came here?" Sakura's eyes widened in shock, turning subdued only seconds later.

"Yeah," she sipped her tea, "sort of like that."

"Pinky!" Sakura snapped to attention at her boss's voice. She whirled around wearing a guilty expression.

"Motoki?" The thirty-something chuckled, plopping a large hand on her shoulder. He broke out in a grin, splitting his weathered face.

"Hey, I'm gonna have you punch out at 8:30 to go backstage. Just finish up on the two-stage until then." The pinkette nodded and put down the glass she was cleaning, now spotless.

She looked in the direction Motoki thrust his thumb and sighed in happiness. The two-stage, as it was called, was a bi-level bar. The lower end was used to serve the drink to customers, and the higher platform was used to mix them. The whole thing was for show, as the bartenders mixed all the beverages with as much flair as possible. With Sakura's shinobi training, she was exceptionally gifted in this area.

Moving toward the rounded edge of the counter, she served a few businessmen before leaning against the back rail.

'20 more minutes,' she thought. The butterflies were already starting up, and her mouth had suddenly become as dry as a desert. This would be their third time performing, but it still felt like the first. Tonight was sure to be their biggest crowd, that was for sure. Hoshi and Kaya had canvassed the whole city, putting up flyers and doing word-of-mouth promotions.

She was shaken from her thoughts by a burst of chakra from the direction of the door. Her head snapped up and she eyed the darkened entrance. Obviously a few other ninja that were on leave in the bar had felt it too. The burgundy headed Kumo nin in the far corner had reached for his holster, and the stocky Ame nin was already twirling their kunai. They both eyed Sakura for confirmation. Sensing no ill intent, she waved her hand at them, and they relaxed. Kind of. That was good enough for her.

The person at the door had stopped and was eyeballing the place. Now that Sakura thought of it, she didn't sense anything from this person, only that they were extremely powerful. Still, that chakra signature was familiar.

Upon spotting her at the bar, the person, clad in a dark cloak that seemed to shift with the shadows, moved toward her. He stopped, or at least she thought it was a he, and rubbed the space where his chin would be.

"Haruno, Sakura," it came out as a purr, but there was nothing docile about it. His voice was even more familiar, but still, Sakura couldn't recall it. Like a trying to catch butterflies with a broken net, she failed to make the connection. Even more unsettling than the voice was the idea that he, she was certain now, knew her name.

"Um, yes?" Her intelligence and cunning when faced with a potential enemy ninja was astounding. The figure's shoulders moved as though he was chuckling.

"You don't remember me, then? Perhaps I can help you." The same gloved hand reached up and began to remove the hood. Light played off of his frames, slimmer than they once were, casting a blindness into her eyes. When the spots stopped swimming, she took in his hair, now let loose, and the signature smirk still held on his lips.

Her eyes widened in recognition.

"Kabuto."