Just Communication (Naruto, Itachi/Sakura, #17)
I don't like this one >.> I was writing it in my dad's office, then the computer deleted it, so this is the rewrite. It's really...blagh. And Sakura's characterization is trippy.
Title: Just Communication
Author:
darksylvir
Pairing: Uchiha Itachi/ Haruno Sakura
Fandom: Naruto
Theme: #17 kHz
Disclaimer: Naruto is copyright Masashi Kishimoto.
“Onshuu.”
Call-word echoed into silence, then static, soft and relentless. The buzz filled her ears and filled her head, tightening her limbs in a mild anxiety. She held the radio above her head, staring at it in cool annoyance, sakura hair spilled across the pillow in a messy halo about her face.
“Onshuu.”
Static still. She frowned and the small device danced flips about her fingers. New technology stolen from the Otoga, still in its developing stages in the Konoha’s clumsy hands. So rare and delicate that she, even with her close affiliation with the Lady Hokage, had a hard time getting her hands on it. The sound waves were so refined that they went unnoticed even by a bat’s auditories, much less the shinobi’s struggling sonar. Rat-a-tatatatat went rough fingertips on the black casing.
It was perfect. There would be no sign. So there was no reason.
“On-“
A break in the static, a hiss of voice in the silence.
“Sakura.”
She glared at the radio, almost as if willing it a camera. “Have you no sense of secrecy?”
A pause for the sound to transfer. She knew that he would not be in Akatsuki if he lacked the care for covert. His carelessness was more for lack of concern about her. If their communication were discovered, she would suffer. His hands would be clean of her blood.
The static roughened his voice from its smooth-sound seduction. “You assured me this line is private. The codes are trivial.”
“Where are you?”
“Nowhere of your concern.”
“Is Hoshigake-san with you?”
“I would not be talking to you.”
“Give me a straight answer, Uchiha-san.”
“Ask me the question, then.”
He was never one to talk much and she was growing irritated. She flipped the radio through her fingers again, the special way she had discovered that turned the static droning into a nails-on-chalkboard whine. “No question, Uchiha-san. I just thought you might want to know we received word that…that Sasuke-kun has become Orochimaru’s vessel. Successfully.”
Of course it hurt, would be madness if it didn’t. She had failed. But in the fast-pace apocalypse that could and probably would happen, there was no time to cry. Besides, there would always be hope, right? There would always be…hope…
Silence on the line, for awhile now. Rat-a-tat fingers on the radio again. When he spoke again, his tone hadn’t changed; the no-emotion doll that she was in quick-danger of becoming.
“I see.”
She flipped the device over fingers again, catching it deftly. She was so very glad he couldn’t see her face. “He will come after you, Uchiha-san.”
Play her cards right and they might destroy each other. Konoha would lose two of its greatest threats and deal blows upon two enemy forces. There would be no looming Armageddon. Maybe they would annex the Otogakure. Naruto-kun would be safe from Akatsuki, at least for awhile. That girl down the street, the one who always gave her flowers, she would live to at least see forty, much longer if she didn’t choose the kunoichi way. Sakura would have all the time in the world to hate herself, to cry and cry and cry…
It was strange to see how much she’d lost of herself. Here she was as a kunoichi, and there she had been, a brave (abysmally stupid) girl-woman who had caught up with an Akatsuki member and risked her own life and the safety of her village for the crush she just couldn’t let go of. The radio had been a last ditch attempt, her desperate belief that the one person who could bring Sasuke-kun back was the man who had broken him in the first place. Three months of midnight on-and-off information exchange, and nothing had changed.
“He was meant to.”
Itachi’s voice startled her. She had thought the conversation had ended. Though she had set up rules for their communication, Itachi seldom followed. Their talks often dropped without warning, just the long silence and her poised their like an idiot, arm in the air till it ached. Now she wished it had been over, because she didn’t know what to say. She had never known what to say with Sasuke either…
But this was radio communication. She wasn’t staring them in the face, feeling the pressure of the eyes and the coldness and disgust rolling off in waves. She was invisible. Even the static blurred her voice.
“Sasuke will have a fighting chance now, Uchiha-san.”
She meant be careful, but he would know that. He wouldn’t care, of course. Maybe he would think she was playing a game. Maybe she was. Or maybe he had been gone from emotion so long he wouldn’t know what to think anymore. She didn’t know. She didn’t have the time to care.
Maybe she loved both of them. Maybe she had never loved at all.
The sound of a kiss wouldn’t carry very well, swallowed by static. All her lips would feel was the cold buzz of the radio. And he would feel nothing at all, even if she were standing right before him and it was skin that she touched and not metal and mesh and wire. He wouldn’t feel. She wasn’t exactly sure she would, either.
“Goodnight Uchiha-san.”
But the long silence had already begun.