*Untitled* (Naruto, WIP)
This is what basically amounts to the second draft of the first chapter of an idea that smacked me between the eyes recently. However, I’m not sure if I should continue with it. So, I’m putting it up in the hopes of getting some outside opinions on it that could help me make up my mind whether to keep writing it or not.
As far as Naruto canon is concerned, it can be assumed that everything up to and including the timeskip occurred as it did in the manga. After that, I’ve gone into AU territory.
Minor canon information that may be useful for the story (for those not past the chuunin exams in the series). Spoilers are vague enough to be practically nil:
Sound is bad, mmkay?
Not too long after the chuunin exams Sakura entered training to become a medic-nin.
Tsunade is in her fifties, but she uses a genjutsu (illusion) to make herself appear to be in her late twenties or early thirties.
[EDIT:] Edited on 05/11/06 to add intro/teaser.
Series: Naruto
Word Count: 2,002
Genre: Drama
Rating: T
Spoilers: There is a spoiler or two offhandedly contained for the chuunin exams and beyond, but they’re not major ones.
This is me not owning Naruto. Yep.
Sound has fallen, crushed in a final offensive by the village of Konoha. The last few years have been spent in an uneasy almost-peace as the surviving ninja of the Leaf attempt to rebuild their lives.
But there are those who are either unwilling or unable to move on from the final days of the war. And, as enemies begin to stir, it remains to be seen whether it is better to try to forget the past or to drown in it...
Chapter One: Wouldn’t Even Recognize Me Anymore
It took him just under an hour to find the right restaurant. Not in the best part of town, or the worst, neither too busy or too empty. Finding her was rarely difficult, just time-consuming.
Sakura was seated alone at a table across the room, her back to a wall. A cup of tea sat on the table before her. She had her face turned away from the door, apparently preoccupied with staring out a window to her right.
He paused just inside the door, taking the opportunity to study her.
She was wearing her ‘working clothes’ of course. An off-duty ninja is still a ninja, after all. Besides, over the last few years he’d come to doubt that she owned anything else anymore.
She’d abandoned the red dress she’d used to wear years ago. Now black fishnet covered her, from just below her knees, to her neck, to nearly her wrists. Over that, she wore a pair of dark khaki-coloured shorts. They only just covered her, and exposed a great deal of smoothly-muscled thigh, but Sakura had apparently gotten long past caring about that sort of thing.
Over that, she wore a loose navy t-shirt with a collar so wide that it fell off both shoulders, dipping low enough to expose the upper curves of her breasts. He supposed the neckline was attached to the mesh under it in some way, since he’d never seen it shift much, even in the middle of a fight. He wasn’t about to risk losing a hand to check, though.
It was completely unlike the way she’d used to dress, back in their genin days. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the brilliant bubble-gum pink of her hair, the shoulder-length locks currently held back with a cream-coloured headband.
As he was watching her, she reached for her tea and drained it, grimacing at the taste of the dregs. Catching the eye of the waitress, she gestured for another, which was delivered to her promptly. As the waitress continued on her rounds, Sakura produced a small paper packet from her pouch, ripped it open, and dumped the powder it contained into the hot liquid. Wrapping her hands around the cup, she stirred the contents with a careful, controlled burst of chakra.
Her eyes looked faded and tired. A kind of tired that had very little to do with how much sleep she had or hadn’t been getting. Not that he knew whether or not she even slept anymore. She certainly didn’t on missions.
As she looked up from her tea, she noticed him. Looking straight at him, she tipped her head slightly to the side, her lips pursed in a faintly thoughtful manner. Her voice cut across the room to him.
“Shikamaru.”
It was as close to an invitation as he’d get from her, he decided. He crossed the room to her table.
“Were you sent to get me?” she asked as he sat down across from her.
“No.” He sighed. “But I thought I’d come looking anyway.”
“Why?” Sakura produced a cigarette package from somewhere, extracted a slender black cylinder, and lit it with a silver lighter. Both package and lighter vanished away again from whence they came as she took her first draw.
The heavy, slightly sharp scent of clove-smoke filled the air as she exhaled.
Shikamaru sat and just watched her smoke. It was hard to say when she’d picked up the habit, since she didn’t smoke on missions and had a tendency to simply vanish when she wasn’t. It would also be hard to say how she’d started, either. While plenty of people in Konoha smoked, Sakura was the only one that he knew of that smoked clove cigarettes instead of plain tobacco.
She always smoked the same way. A long, slow drag, and an even slower exhale, making each pull last as long as possible.
“Well?” she prodded.
Shikamaru leaned his elbows heavily on the table, sighing again. “You didn’t report in today. Or yesterday. Or the day before. Or all of last week.”
She took a sip of her tea. “So?”
Shikamaru considered stealing a gulp from her cup, just to get some sort of reaction from her. Then he thought better of it. He had no idea what it was she’d put into it.
“So, you do this every year,” he explained wearily. “It’s not healthy.”
Sakura arched a single eyebrow at him. “Since when do you care?”
“I don’t.” He frowned at her. “But some people do.”
Her face was blank and cold. “I think I know what’s healthy for me.” She took another sip of her tea.
“Dammit, even I can tell doing this every summer isn’t good for you, and I don’t even care!” he snapped. “It’s been five years, Sakura, when are you going to let them go?”
A flash of something like pain showed in her eyes before she turned her face away from him. Staring out the window again, she took another of her slow drags on her cigarette.
She exhaled a long streamer of pungent smoke, and spoke without turning to face him again, her tone flat and controlled.
“You don’t know shit, Shikamaru.”
The conversation was over.
“Fine, you’re right, I don’t know,” he sighed, standing up. “Just... report in tomorrow, okay?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even turn her head to watch him as he left.
*****
Shikamaru sighed heavily and shoved his hands into his pockets as he made his way down the street. Dealing with Sakura was getting harder and harder with every year that went by.
She was supposed to be their next Tsunade, he recalled. The operative part of that statement was ‘supposed to be’. Now that Sakura had all but abandoned being anything like a medic-nin he supposed the only real similarity between the two women was that you couldn’t be certain how much of what you saw was the actual person, and how much was genjutsu.
And probably the only reason why Sakura kept ending up in his squad for missions was that he was one of the few who were willing to put up with that dead-eyed stare of hers for any significant length of time.
Ino was waiting for him as he turned down the lane to his house. She fell into step beside him.
“You said you were going to go look for Sakura, did you find her?” she asked.
“Yeah, I found her.” He assessed her reaction with a sidelong glance. As she bit her lip uncertainly, he idly noted that the tank-top she’d chosen to wear this evening made her look even more top-heavy than she usually did.
“Is... Is she alright?” Ino asked, her tone as uncertain as her face. “When she stopped reporting in...” she trailed off, biting her lip again.
“No. But she’ll report in tomorrow.” Shikamaru paused at his door. She was still chewing on her lip and looking unhappy. He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “She’s the same as she always is, Ino. Now, go home, and get some sleep. I know you have a mission tomorrow.” He nudged her shoulder gently, urging her in the direction of her house.
Though her expression was still clouded, she gave him a faint smile. “You’re right, I should do that.” She turned away and took a few steps before pausing and turning back to look at him. “Thank you for finding her.”
Shikamaru waved a hand in a lazily dismissive gesture. “Naah, I just know where to look, that’s all.”
That got him a slightly brighter smile before she walked away.
*****
It was well after dark when Sakura unlocked the door and let herself into her apartment. It was large - entirely too large for just one person - and its almost complete lack of furniture or decorations only made it seem larger in the darkness. Without bothering to turn on the lights, she kicked off her shoes and ghosted silently across the floor to the bathroom.
Most of the bulbs in the bathroom light fixture had burnt out, so only one flickered into life when she flipped the switch. For a few long moments, she simply stared at the empty metal panel and frame of the door to the medicine cabinet over the sink. Then she took a few steps forward and, ignoring the eye-level dent in it, opened the door.
The cabinet was almost completely empty. It contained only a toothbrush, a half-used tube of toothpaste, and an unlabelled bottle.
Her face wearing an unreadable expression, Sakura took out the bottle, tipping it gently from side to side and studying it as if she were judging how much of the thick syrup inside was left. Then her expression twisted into something halfway between anger and pain and she thrust the bottle back into the cabinet, closed it, and left the room, turning off the light on her way with an almost violent flick of the switch.
*****
It had been a long day for Tsunade, full of meetings and mission reports. Now, though it was already past midnight, at least the end was in sight.
“Thank you for your mission report, Kiba,” she said, tapping the edges of the pages she’d been reading as he spoke even. “I’m glad to hear it went so well.”
Standing at something resembling attention across the wide desk from her, Kiba grinned wolfishly. “Smoothest mission I’ve been on in months,” he agreed.
It was also possibly the first time in a year that he’d managed to come back from a mission completely uninjured, too, Tsunade considered, studying the whipcord-lean man across from her with a doctor’s eye.
“And is there anything else to report?” she asked.
Kiba clasped his hands behind his back. “There are rumours floating around that someone is trying to revive Sound,” he reported.
“Rebuilding Sound?” Tsunade felt the muscles across her shoulders knot up. “Who?”
“Don’t know.” Kiba shrugged. “None of the rumours came with a name attached.”
Tsunade frowned. It was not news she wanted to hear. “Thank you for letting me know. I’m definitely going to have it looked into.”
“You’re welcome, Hokage.”
She nodded. “Four days vacation for a successful mission.”
Kiba’s grin was nearly bright enough to light the room on its own. “Thank you, Hokage-sama!”
Tsunade shook her head, and waved him out of her office. “If you’d just manage to finish more mission in one piece, you’d be rewarded more often, mutt,” she advised. “Now go home and go to bed. It’s late. And take that massive great thing you call a dog with you before he wakes up and raids my kitchen again.”
*****
The room was dark. There was only just enough light show the shape of a bed and of the person huddled alone in the middle of it, knees to chest and hands clutching their head.
“Shut up.” The figure curled even tighter into itself. “Shut up, you’re dead.”
A moment of silence passed, then a shudder wracked over them. “You’re dead. Shut up. Please, just shut up.” The plea was broken by a sudden sob for breath, then continued in a near-wail. “Leave me alone! Shut up! You’re dead! You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead, why won’t you shut up? Please!” The last word came out as a shriek.
The ensuing silence was broken by dry, wracking sobs. Then, even those died away. The night wore on, broken only by faint, nearly incoherent whimpers.
“Stop ... shut up ... please, just shut up...”
.
As far as Naruto canon is concerned, it can be assumed that everything up to and including the timeskip occurred as it did in the manga. After that, I’ve gone into AU territory.
Minor canon information that may be useful for the story (for those not past the chuunin exams in the series). Spoilers are vague enough to be practically nil:
Sound is bad, mmkay?
Not too long after the chuunin exams Sakura entered training to become a medic-nin.
Tsunade is in her fifties, but she uses a genjutsu (illusion) to make herself appear to be in her late twenties or early thirties.
[EDIT:] Edited on 05/11/06 to add intro/teaser.
Series: Naruto
Word Count: 2,002
Genre: Drama
Rating: T
Spoilers: There is a spoiler or two offhandedly contained for the chuunin exams and beyond, but they’re not major ones.
This is me not owning Naruto. Yep.
Sound has fallen, crushed in a final offensive by the village of Konoha. The last few years have been spent in an uneasy almost-peace as the surviving ninja of the Leaf attempt to rebuild their lives.
But there are those who are either unwilling or unable to move on from the final days of the war. And, as enemies begin to stir, it remains to be seen whether it is better to try to forget the past or to drown in it...
Chapter One: Wouldn’t Even Recognize Me Anymore
It took him just under an hour to find the right restaurant. Not in the best part of town, or the worst, neither too busy or too empty. Finding her was rarely difficult, just time-consuming.
Sakura was seated alone at a table across the room, her back to a wall. A cup of tea sat on the table before her. She had her face turned away from the door, apparently preoccupied with staring out a window to her right.
He paused just inside the door, taking the opportunity to study her.
She was wearing her ‘working clothes’ of course. An off-duty ninja is still a ninja, after all. Besides, over the last few years he’d come to doubt that she owned anything else anymore.
She’d abandoned the red dress she’d used to wear years ago. Now black fishnet covered her, from just below her knees, to her neck, to nearly her wrists. Over that, she wore a pair of dark khaki-coloured shorts. They only just covered her, and exposed a great deal of smoothly-muscled thigh, but Sakura had apparently gotten long past caring about that sort of thing.
Over that, she wore a loose navy t-shirt with a collar so wide that it fell off both shoulders, dipping low enough to expose the upper curves of her breasts. He supposed the neckline was attached to the mesh under it in some way, since he’d never seen it shift much, even in the middle of a fight. He wasn’t about to risk losing a hand to check, though.
It was completely unlike the way she’d used to dress, back in their genin days. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the brilliant bubble-gum pink of her hair, the shoulder-length locks currently held back with a cream-coloured headband.
As he was watching her, she reached for her tea and drained it, grimacing at the taste of the dregs. Catching the eye of the waitress, she gestured for another, which was delivered to her promptly. As the waitress continued on her rounds, Sakura produced a small paper packet from her pouch, ripped it open, and dumped the powder it contained into the hot liquid. Wrapping her hands around the cup, she stirred the contents with a careful, controlled burst of chakra.
Her eyes looked faded and tired. A kind of tired that had very little to do with how much sleep she had or hadn’t been getting. Not that he knew whether or not she even slept anymore. She certainly didn’t on missions.
As she looked up from her tea, she noticed him. Looking straight at him, she tipped her head slightly to the side, her lips pursed in a faintly thoughtful manner. Her voice cut across the room to him.
“Shikamaru.”
It was as close to an invitation as he’d get from her, he decided. He crossed the room to her table.
“Were you sent to get me?” she asked as he sat down across from her.
“No.” He sighed. “But I thought I’d come looking anyway.”
“Why?” Sakura produced a cigarette package from somewhere, extracted a slender black cylinder, and lit it with a silver lighter. Both package and lighter vanished away again from whence they came as she took her first draw.
The heavy, slightly sharp scent of clove-smoke filled the air as she exhaled.
Shikamaru sat and just watched her smoke. It was hard to say when she’d picked up the habit, since she didn’t smoke on missions and had a tendency to simply vanish when she wasn’t. It would also be hard to say how she’d started, either. While plenty of people in Konoha smoked, Sakura was the only one that he knew of that smoked clove cigarettes instead of plain tobacco.
She always smoked the same way. A long, slow drag, and an even slower exhale, making each pull last as long as possible.
“Well?” she prodded.
Shikamaru leaned his elbows heavily on the table, sighing again. “You didn’t report in today. Or yesterday. Or the day before. Or all of last week.”
She took a sip of her tea. “So?”
Shikamaru considered stealing a gulp from her cup, just to get some sort of reaction from her. Then he thought better of it. He had no idea what it was she’d put into it.
“So, you do this every year,” he explained wearily. “It’s not healthy.”
Sakura arched a single eyebrow at him. “Since when do you care?”
“I don’t.” He frowned at her. “But some people do.”
Her face was blank and cold. “I think I know what’s healthy for me.” She took another sip of her tea.
“Dammit, even I can tell doing this every summer isn’t good for you, and I don’t even care!” he snapped. “It’s been five years, Sakura, when are you going to let them go?”
A flash of something like pain showed in her eyes before she turned her face away from him. Staring out the window again, she took another of her slow drags on her cigarette.
She exhaled a long streamer of pungent smoke, and spoke without turning to face him again, her tone flat and controlled.
“You don’t know shit, Shikamaru.”
The conversation was over.
“Fine, you’re right, I don’t know,” he sighed, standing up. “Just... report in tomorrow, okay?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even turn her head to watch him as he left.
Shikamaru sighed heavily and shoved his hands into his pockets as he made his way down the street. Dealing with Sakura was getting harder and harder with every year that went by.
She was supposed to be their next Tsunade, he recalled. The operative part of that statement was ‘supposed to be’. Now that Sakura had all but abandoned being anything like a medic-nin he supposed the only real similarity between the two women was that you couldn’t be certain how much of what you saw was the actual person, and how much was genjutsu.
And probably the only reason why Sakura kept ending up in his squad for missions was that he was one of the few who were willing to put up with that dead-eyed stare of hers for any significant length of time.
Ino was waiting for him as he turned down the lane to his house. She fell into step beside him.
“You said you were going to go look for Sakura, did you find her?” she asked.
“Yeah, I found her.” He assessed her reaction with a sidelong glance. As she bit her lip uncertainly, he idly noted that the tank-top she’d chosen to wear this evening made her look even more top-heavy than she usually did.
“Is... Is she alright?” Ino asked, her tone as uncertain as her face. “When she stopped reporting in...” she trailed off, biting her lip again.
“No. But she’ll report in tomorrow.” Shikamaru paused at his door. She was still chewing on her lip and looking unhappy. He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “She’s the same as she always is, Ino. Now, go home, and get some sleep. I know you have a mission tomorrow.” He nudged her shoulder gently, urging her in the direction of her house.
Though her expression was still clouded, she gave him a faint smile. “You’re right, I should do that.” She turned away and took a few steps before pausing and turning back to look at him. “Thank you for finding her.”
Shikamaru waved a hand in a lazily dismissive gesture. “Naah, I just know where to look, that’s all.”
That got him a slightly brighter smile before she walked away.
It was well after dark when Sakura unlocked the door and let herself into her apartment. It was large - entirely too large for just one person - and its almost complete lack of furniture or decorations only made it seem larger in the darkness. Without bothering to turn on the lights, she kicked off her shoes and ghosted silently across the floor to the bathroom.
Most of the bulbs in the bathroom light fixture had burnt out, so only one flickered into life when she flipped the switch. For a few long moments, she simply stared at the empty metal panel and frame of the door to the medicine cabinet over the sink. Then she took a few steps forward and, ignoring the eye-level dent in it, opened the door.
The cabinet was almost completely empty. It contained only a toothbrush, a half-used tube of toothpaste, and an unlabelled bottle.
Her face wearing an unreadable expression, Sakura took out the bottle, tipping it gently from side to side and studying it as if she were judging how much of the thick syrup inside was left. Then her expression twisted into something halfway between anger and pain and she thrust the bottle back into the cabinet, closed it, and left the room, turning off the light on her way with an almost violent flick of the switch.
It had been a long day for Tsunade, full of meetings and mission reports. Now, though it was already past midnight, at least the end was in sight.
“Thank you for your mission report, Kiba,” she said, tapping the edges of the pages she’d been reading as he spoke even. “I’m glad to hear it went so well.”
Standing at something resembling attention across the wide desk from her, Kiba grinned wolfishly. “Smoothest mission I’ve been on in months,” he agreed.
It was also possibly the first time in a year that he’d managed to come back from a mission completely uninjured, too, Tsunade considered, studying the whipcord-lean man across from her with a doctor’s eye.
“And is there anything else to report?” she asked.
Kiba clasped his hands behind his back. “There are rumours floating around that someone is trying to revive Sound,” he reported.
“Rebuilding Sound?” Tsunade felt the muscles across her shoulders knot up. “Who?”
“Don’t know.” Kiba shrugged. “None of the rumours came with a name attached.”
Tsunade frowned. It was not news she wanted to hear. “Thank you for letting me know. I’m definitely going to have it looked into.”
“You’re welcome, Hokage.”
She nodded. “Four days vacation for a successful mission.”
Kiba’s grin was nearly bright enough to light the room on its own. “Thank you, Hokage-sama!”
Tsunade shook her head, and waved him out of her office. “If you’d just manage to finish more mission in one piece, you’d be rewarded more often, mutt,” she advised. “Now go home and go to bed. It’s late. And take that massive great thing you call a dog with you before he wakes up and raids my kitchen again.”
The room was dark. There was only just enough light show the shape of a bed and of the person huddled alone in the middle of it, knees to chest and hands clutching their head.
“Shut up.” The figure curled even tighter into itself. “Shut up, you’re dead.”
A moment of silence passed, then a shudder wracked over them. “You’re dead. Shut up. Please, just shut up.” The plea was broken by a sudden sob for breath, then continued in a near-wail. “Leave me alone! Shut up! You’re dead! You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead, why won’t you shut up? Please!” The last word came out as a shriek.
The ensuing silence was broken by dry, wracking sobs. Then, even those died away. The night wore on, broken only by faint, nearly incoherent whimpers.
“Stop ... shut up ... please, just shut up...”