[log] Rude Awakenings

[eternalscorpion]

Who: Sasori and Sakura
Where/When: Konohagakure, Sakura's house, pre-dawn on September 3rd
Status: Closed, Complete
Style: Paragraph
Warnings: Angst

Comments

[ground_breaker]

Sakura was started awake by Sasori's sudden motion and sat up quickly, turning toward him. She was only half-awake, but her breath still caught.

He looked...

Dangerous.

Wild and disarrayed and dangerous. Something twisted painfully, a deep knowledge. Something wasn't right. Why would he look at her like that, like she was about to attack him? His arm was extended toward her and he'd never raised her hand against her like this--

--except--

Under his reach and she twisted his arm, felt it crack off as it over extends, and she raised her arm to stab down, the kill shot...

The kunai was in her hand and Sakura was shooting out of bed, across the room from him until her back was to the opposite wall, the weapon extended in front of her as a warning. All her instincts rushed ahead of her head's realization that she'd killed him, he'd killed her.

They were dead. Weren't they? He'd died, and she'd died (Naruto was there, god, he'd been there, and there was so much pain, her intestines and insides all aflame, and she'd blacked out trying

[eternalscorpion]

Everything blended together in Sasori's mind as it flooded back, reality and false reality intertwining.

They'd met on a battlefield, but as enemies, not allies. Hiruko had been smashed by her, not in the process of protecting her.

Whispered words of affection turned into cutting insults. A gentle grasp of his arm at a festival turned into her snapping the limb off. A soft kiss against his heart container blended into a kunai she'd embedded within it.

Soft panting and moaning as she straddled him under the moonlight turned into whimpers through gritted teeth as blood poured out of her where he'd stabbed her, where he'd poisoned her, where oh god he'd killed herHis self-control was completely shattered by then, and his conflicting emotions passed over his face openly. His raised arm started to tremble

[ground_breaker]

Her arm--her traitorous arm--was already lowering, just as his did. Don't be stupid enough to trust him but she did it anyway because the limb was just not listening to her head. She kept her grip tight on it, though, her knuckles white around the handle.

"Yeah," she confirmed, shakily. "Yeah, it seems that way. We should--"

We.

There was no we. There was a false sense of togetherness, of having been a unit, but it never really existed. Sasori had smiled at her and Sasori had kissed her and held her and led her through things that--oh god--made her blush to think of under a comfortable blanket of darkness and maybe those things had happened, but the feeling behind them was a sham.

If it was a genjutsu, it was excellently crafted, just the right shape and size to pierce the heart without her knowledge until it twisted.

She'd never been loved back.

Of course that was false.

Stupid girl.But the really stupid thing was that she wanted that lie, she wanted so badly for him to act on the impulse she saw in him to approach her, take

[eternalscorpion]

Sasori bristled at this, even as the distrust in her eyes cut through him again. Distrust, even after all they'd shared, after he'd opened himself to her so much. Even if the feelings that had led to it were false, everything he'd shared with her of himself had been real.

He could tell that she was already putting up a barrier between them within herself. It was a practice that he was intimately familiar with, after all. Just another reminder of why it was foolish to trust too deeply, to allow oneself to be so vulnerable, because it only led to deceit and betrayal.

“Do you really think we'd willingly subject ourselves to this kind of manipulation?” he snapped. “Leader-sama would never allow such a thing

[ground_breaker]

This was easier.

This was so, so much easier.

Being antagonized and getting angry in response was so natural, so normal, that Sakura could almost forget the ache of the loss of something she'd never had.

So she attacked, again, because she's not sure what the alternative would be but she was fairly certain it would involve her being foolish.

"What makes you think we'd willingly subject ourselves to this, either?"

She knew her words were a cutting edge, because she knew Sasori even if she didn't. She'd seen parts of him that he never showed to anyone else through some contrived privilege, but the knowledge was still there. She knew the words would hurt but she couldn't help them from spilling forth because it was easier to lash out than to think.

But she couldn't keep looking at him after that jab, even if it was a bad idea to take her eyes off an enemy (lover).