Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond - Chapter 2
Title: Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond
Fandom: Naruto
Type: Multi-chaptered
Rating: Pg-13
Pairings: Deidara/Sakura
Word count: 1,712
Summary: Naruto had been bragging all day that his new jutsu was his best yet. Sakura and her new situation beg to differ. Post time-skip. DeiSaku.
~~~ Chapter 2 ~~~
Having recently suffered through the most violent waves of her adolescence, there had been many moments in Sakura’s life that ranked high up in her book of ‘Well, That Was Awkward’.
As she gazed down, shocked, at the face of the person she’d landed on, Sakura thought that she was likely about to add another chapter to that book. She would entitle it, ‘In which Sakura gets hit by her own teammate’s technique and subsequently awakens upon the body of their enemy’. At least he hadn’t woken up yet. Maybe no one would have to know. Time to make her stealthy escape.
She had barely started to move off of him when a hand grabbed her wrist.
Crap. So maybe this wasn’t going to work itself out as easily as she thought. She looked back at him, his blue eye focused on her, scope smashed over the other, and blond hair in disarray. Along with various cuts and bruises courtesy of her teammates, he looked an absolute mess.
“Mind explaining what exactly is going on here, yeah?” The hand that wasn’t occupied with crushing her wrist peeled off the broken remains of the scope, revealing his other eye. Considering the oddity of the situation, Sakura drew a small amount of comfort from the fact that, compared to the rest of the Akatsuki, he looked surprisingly normal.
Then something on his hand bit into her wrist.
As Inner Sakura screamed and ran circles in her head, she wrenched herself out of his grasp. In her haste, she tumbled into the spiny tree next to them, but its needles were, in her opinion, a vast improvement over being bit by… By what?
When she noticed a mouth full of teeth vanish back into the palm of his hand, Inner Sakura fainted dead away. The real version of herself hoped dearly that she wasn’t failing as badly as she suspected at keeping her shock and fear from showing.
He raised himself up slowly to rest against the tree, his injuries still bleeding. “I asked you a question.”
“Did your hand just bite me?”
He glared. “You’re almost as bad as that idiot Tobi. Now what happened, and where are we?”
Extricating herself from the prickly tree, Sakura glanced at her surroundings before replying. “I’m… not entirely sure. I got caught in Naruto’s new jutsu and woke up here. But I don’t recognize this place.”
Sakura was used to warm temperatures and the tall, green and leafy trees of Konoha and the neighbouring villages. This was something else entirely. A bitterly cold wind made her shiver as the tips of her fingers and nose went numb, and more of those strange spiky trees surrounded her. There were some trees that looked normal enough, but they were bare. Instead, their brightly coloured leaves littered the damp ground and she could see her breath in the air. That’s strange, she thought, it’s summer in Konoha.
The same realization came to both Sakura and Deidara at the same time, as their eyes widened and met with each other’s.
Wherever they were, they were far enough away from home for the seasons to be opposite.
Rather than panicking, Sakura’s well-drilled survival instincts kicked in.
Food. Shelter. Get away from the harmful person.
Two sets of eyes fell upon a hole in the rock face a little ways away. They both took off towards it at the same time. As they reached the mouth of the cave, Sakura checked the Akatsuki member into the wall with her shoulder. There was no way she was sharing her shelter with someone so dangerous.
“I saw it first, yeah,” Deidara growled, clenching his hands into fists to make explosives.
Despite his injuries, it’s likely that Deidara would have won in a fight between them, considering his extra experience and S-class status. Unfortunately for him, the real occupant of the cave decided at that moment to have a say in the matter.
He had the warning of a low growl only seconds before a sharp set of claws tore into him.
They both sprung into action immediately, leaping backwards, out of the cave. The attacker, a bear with its hackles raised, began to follow them out.
Deidara chucked his bombs at the assailant, and Sakura’s swift reflexes were the only thing that allowed her to twist out of the explosion’s way. Singed, she hit the ground hard, rolling to a stop. Her right arm had taken most of the impact, and was scraped and bleeding freely.
The bear, now more frightened than angry, retreated back into the safety of its cave. Sakura rose and turned towards Deidara, as he clutched the new gash in his side, his other hand holding himself shakily up against the rock face, and hobbled off in another direction.
“That blast almost got me too!”
He didn’t bother looking at her. “That would have been a shame, yeah.”
Sometimes, Sakura hated sarcasm.
Unsure of what to do and increasingly feeling the cold, she followed him at a careful distance. He felt his way along the rock until coming across a small opening. This time, he threw a bomb in first. It exploded weakly. When nothing came charging out at him, Deidara deemed it safe and went into the cave, leaving a scattering of small bird-shaped explosives around the entrance.
A good few metres away from the mouth of the cavern, Sakura realized belatedly why he’d put them there. “That’s incredibly stupid. You’re cornered. If I make them go off, you’ll get caught in the blast too.”
He looked at her, annoyed, and made his way to the very back of the cave. “You think I don’t know my own weapons? They’ll be enough to blow off your feet, but they don’t have enough range to hurt me.”
Irritated at both herself and him, Sakura gave up trying to talk her way in. She rubbed her arms and stamped her feet, attempting to stave off the cold but failing miserably.
He tried to look relaxed against the cave wall, smirking at her, but Sakura knew that his extensive injuries were making even that difficult for him. “It’s kinda cozy in here, yeah.”
Maybe he would just bleed to death and then she could clear the bombs and steal the shelter.
“Hope you find your own cave soon. Good luck!”
Shivering and hating him ever so much, Sakura paused trying to keep warm for a minute and applied a tiny bit of chakra to the scrapes on her arm, just enough to stop them from bleeding.
Smirk disappearing, Deidara stared. “You’re a medic-nin.”
She wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted a confirmation on that obvious fact, but she was too cold and wishing horrible thoughts at him to reply anyway.
He sighed, looking vaguely uncertain, as he tugged on some loose strands of his blond hair. “Look, I’ll make you a deal, yeah.”
“Does the deal involve me getting to come inside that comfy warm cave?”
“Yes --”
She marched towards the entrance.
“-- don't you want to hear the deal first? Also those exploding traps are still there, you know.”
She stopped. “What’s the deal? Be quick about it.”
“In exchange for getting to share my cave, you heal me up nice and good, yeah?”
“Deal. Now let me in.” She decided to neglect mentioning that she didn’t have nearly enough chakra left to heal him completely.
He got up slowly, wincing from his injuries and using the wall as support, walked over to the entrance and picked up the clay birds. They vanished back into his hands. Sakura tried not to think that she was going to be in an enclosed space with an S-rank criminal who had mouths in his hands. Oh gross.
Entering into the cave, she was at once relieved to feel that it offered a good amount protection from the wind. Wearing her clothes meant for Konoha’s more tropical weather, she wasn’t well-suited for these conditions. The inside of the cave was cold, yes, but no where near as frigid as outside.
“Hey I hope that healing’s coming along sometime soon. You’ll forgive me for being a little pushy on the subject, yeah.” He nodded towards where the bear had hit, the blood escaping through his fingers at he tried to stem the bleeding.
She made her way to the back of the cave and knelt down beside him cautiously. She wasn’t entirely convinced of her safety, but Sakura kept her word. Not speaking, she helped him out of his Akatsuki cloak and lifted up the side of his shirt that was sticky with blood. Some of it had already started to dry, and the material clung stubbornly to his skin as she peeled it away
“OW.”
She ignored him.
The wound was as bad as it looked. In combination with the beating he’d taken earlier from Team 7, he was in very bad shape. She was surprised he was still conscious. For an instant, Sakura considered doing a superficial patch-up, telling him he was good to go, and then just let him die from internal bleeding. One more Akatsuki down.
But the part of her conscience that no amount of cold-hearted shinobi training could wipe out, the same one that had made her so desperately want to save Sasuke from himself even when she knew in the back of her mind that he was gone, refused. A deal was a deal, and she was a woman of her word.
She set her mouth in a hard line and got to work. He was just another patient like all the others. She pressed two fingers against his side and channeled her chakra into repairing all that had been ripped apart. She knew she didn’t have enough left to finish the job right away, but she’d close what was crucial. He wouldn’t die.
She worked in silence for a few minutes, until he finally spoke up again.
“So, you got a name, yeah?”
“It’s Sakura.”
“Hm. I’m Deidara.”
Although still concentrating on the task in front of her, this was too good of an opportunity for Sakura to pass up.
“I hope you won’t be too offended if I don’t want to shake your hand.”
“…”
++
Chapter 3
Fandom: Naruto
Type: Multi-chaptered
Rating: Pg-13
Pairings: Deidara/Sakura
Word count: 1,712
Summary: Naruto had been bragging all day that his new jutsu was his best yet. Sakura and her new situation beg to differ. Post time-skip. DeiSaku.
~~~ Chapter 2 ~~~
Having recently suffered through the most violent waves of her adolescence, there had been many moments in Sakura’s life that ranked high up in her book of ‘Well, That Was Awkward’.
As she gazed down, shocked, at the face of the person she’d landed on, Sakura thought that she was likely about to add another chapter to that book. She would entitle it, ‘In which Sakura gets hit by her own teammate’s technique and subsequently awakens upon the body of their enemy’. At least he hadn’t woken up yet. Maybe no one would have to know. Time to make her stealthy escape.
She had barely started to move off of him when a hand grabbed her wrist.
Crap. So maybe this wasn’t going to work itself out as easily as she thought. She looked back at him, his blue eye focused on her, scope smashed over the other, and blond hair in disarray. Along with various cuts and bruises courtesy of her teammates, he looked an absolute mess.
“Mind explaining what exactly is going on here, yeah?” The hand that wasn’t occupied with crushing her wrist peeled off the broken remains of the scope, revealing his other eye. Considering the oddity of the situation, Sakura drew a small amount of comfort from the fact that, compared to the rest of the Akatsuki, he looked surprisingly normal.
Then something on his hand bit into her wrist.
As Inner Sakura screamed and ran circles in her head, she wrenched herself out of his grasp. In her haste, she tumbled into the spiny tree next to them, but its needles were, in her opinion, a vast improvement over being bit by… By what?
When she noticed a mouth full of teeth vanish back into the palm of his hand, Inner Sakura fainted dead away. The real version of herself hoped dearly that she wasn’t failing as badly as she suspected at keeping her shock and fear from showing.
He raised himself up slowly to rest against the tree, his injuries still bleeding. “I asked you a question.”
“Did your hand just bite me?”
He glared. “You’re almost as bad as that idiot Tobi. Now what happened, and where are we?”
Extricating herself from the prickly tree, Sakura glanced at her surroundings before replying. “I’m… not entirely sure. I got caught in Naruto’s new jutsu and woke up here. But I don’t recognize this place.”
Sakura was used to warm temperatures and the tall, green and leafy trees of Konoha and the neighbouring villages. This was something else entirely. A bitterly cold wind made her shiver as the tips of her fingers and nose went numb, and more of those strange spiky trees surrounded her. There were some trees that looked normal enough, but they were bare. Instead, their brightly coloured leaves littered the damp ground and she could see her breath in the air. That’s strange, she thought, it’s summer in Konoha.
The same realization came to both Sakura and Deidara at the same time, as their eyes widened and met with each other’s.
Wherever they were, they were far enough away from home for the seasons to be opposite.
Rather than panicking, Sakura’s well-drilled survival instincts kicked in.
Food. Shelter. Get away from the harmful person.
Two sets of eyes fell upon a hole in the rock face a little ways away. They both took off towards it at the same time. As they reached the mouth of the cave, Sakura checked the Akatsuki member into the wall with her shoulder. There was no way she was sharing her shelter with someone so dangerous.
“I saw it first, yeah,” Deidara growled, clenching his hands into fists to make explosives.
Despite his injuries, it’s likely that Deidara would have won in a fight between them, considering his extra experience and S-class status. Unfortunately for him, the real occupant of the cave decided at that moment to have a say in the matter.
He had the warning of a low growl only seconds before a sharp set of claws tore into him.
They both sprung into action immediately, leaping backwards, out of the cave. The attacker, a bear with its hackles raised, began to follow them out.
Deidara chucked his bombs at the assailant, and Sakura’s swift reflexes were the only thing that allowed her to twist out of the explosion’s way. Singed, she hit the ground hard, rolling to a stop. Her right arm had taken most of the impact, and was scraped and bleeding freely.
The bear, now more frightened than angry, retreated back into the safety of its cave. Sakura rose and turned towards Deidara, as he clutched the new gash in his side, his other hand holding himself shakily up against the rock face, and hobbled off in another direction.
“That blast almost got me too!”
He didn’t bother looking at her. “That would have been a shame, yeah.”
Sometimes, Sakura hated sarcasm.
Unsure of what to do and increasingly feeling the cold, she followed him at a careful distance. He felt his way along the rock until coming across a small opening. This time, he threw a bomb in first. It exploded weakly. When nothing came charging out at him, Deidara deemed it safe and went into the cave, leaving a scattering of small bird-shaped explosives around the entrance.
A good few metres away from the mouth of the cavern, Sakura realized belatedly why he’d put them there. “That’s incredibly stupid. You’re cornered. If I make them go off, you’ll get caught in the blast too.”
He looked at her, annoyed, and made his way to the very back of the cave. “You think I don’t know my own weapons? They’ll be enough to blow off your feet, but they don’t have enough range to hurt me.”
Irritated at both herself and him, Sakura gave up trying to talk her way in. She rubbed her arms and stamped her feet, attempting to stave off the cold but failing miserably.
He tried to look relaxed against the cave wall, smirking at her, but Sakura knew that his extensive injuries were making even that difficult for him. “It’s kinda cozy in here, yeah.”
Maybe he would just bleed to death and then she could clear the bombs and steal the shelter.
“Hope you find your own cave soon. Good luck!”
Shivering and hating him ever so much, Sakura paused trying to keep warm for a minute and applied a tiny bit of chakra to the scrapes on her arm, just enough to stop them from bleeding.
Smirk disappearing, Deidara stared. “You’re a medic-nin.”
She wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted a confirmation on that obvious fact, but she was too cold and wishing horrible thoughts at him to reply anyway.
He sighed, looking vaguely uncertain, as he tugged on some loose strands of his blond hair. “Look, I’ll make you a deal, yeah.”
“Does the deal involve me getting to come inside that comfy warm cave?”
“Yes --”
She marched towards the entrance.
“-- don't you want to hear the deal first? Also those exploding traps are still there, you know.”
She stopped. “What’s the deal? Be quick about it.”
“In exchange for getting to share my cave, you heal me up nice and good, yeah?”
“Deal. Now let me in.” She decided to neglect mentioning that she didn’t have nearly enough chakra left to heal him completely.
He got up slowly, wincing from his injuries and using the wall as support, walked over to the entrance and picked up the clay birds. They vanished back into his hands. Sakura tried not to think that she was going to be in an enclosed space with an S-rank criminal who had mouths in his hands. Oh gross.
Entering into the cave, she was at once relieved to feel that it offered a good amount protection from the wind. Wearing her clothes meant for Konoha’s more tropical weather, she wasn’t well-suited for these conditions. The inside of the cave was cold, yes, but no where near as frigid as outside.
“Hey I hope that healing’s coming along sometime soon. You’ll forgive me for being a little pushy on the subject, yeah.” He nodded towards where the bear had hit, the blood escaping through his fingers at he tried to stem the bleeding.
She made her way to the back of the cave and knelt down beside him cautiously. She wasn’t entirely convinced of her safety, but Sakura kept her word. Not speaking, she helped him out of his Akatsuki cloak and lifted up the side of his shirt that was sticky with blood. Some of it had already started to dry, and the material clung stubbornly to his skin as she peeled it away
“OW.”
She ignored him.
The wound was as bad as it looked. In combination with the beating he’d taken earlier from Team 7, he was in very bad shape. She was surprised he was still conscious. For an instant, Sakura considered doing a superficial patch-up, telling him he was good to go, and then just let him die from internal bleeding. One more Akatsuki down.
But the part of her conscience that no amount of cold-hearted shinobi training could wipe out, the same one that had made her so desperately want to save Sasuke from himself even when she knew in the back of her mind that he was gone, refused. A deal was a deal, and she was a woman of her word.
She set her mouth in a hard line and got to work. He was just another patient like all the others. She pressed two fingers against his side and channeled her chakra into repairing all that had been ripped apart. She knew she didn’t have enough left to finish the job right away, but she’d close what was crucial. He wouldn’t die.
She worked in silence for a few minutes, until he finally spoke up again.
“So, you got a name, yeah?”
“It’s Sakura.”
“Hm. I’m Deidara.”
Although still concentrating on the task in front of her, this was too good of an opportunity for Sakura to pass up.
“I hope you won’t be too offended if I don’t want to shake your hand.”
“…”
++
Chapter 3