Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Flamethrower	By : LostinThought8 Category: Naruto AU/AR > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1349 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I make no money off of writing this fanfiction.

Chapter List
- 6
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- 8
Author’s Note: Wow I’m back. Remember how I said that I was going to try for shorter times between updates? Yeah, I’ve been lazy. I’ve also been filling prompts on the Assassin’s Creed Kink Meme, since Assassin’s Creed III was so wonderful that it flung me headfirst into the Assassin’s Creed fandom, and I was hooked. ^^;;; My deepest apologies, loyal readers who probably thought I abandoned this fic. I have not abandoned it, as you can see.

There’s going to be one more chapter of Sakura’s backstory after this one. I wanted to finish it in this chapter, but it already clocks in at around six pages and I didn’t want it to be longer than that. Sakura’s part will definitely be over by the next chapter, though, and then we can get back to the boys.

As always, this chapter is being uploaded to my FF account, Light Within Darkness. The link can be found in my profile.

WARNINGS: Minor Character Death (it’s a very minor character though), language, imprisonment, and blood/gore.

And now, without any further ado:

    My first stop was Iwagakure, in order to find a group of people to travel with. Even though I grew up in the middle of nowhere, I wasn’t stupid. I knew it would be suicide to travel the wilderness alone. As the largest town in Earth Country, Iwagakure was a popular stop for traders. This made it a good place to pick up supplies and prepare yourself for a journey, especially if you were a young person like me, who was leaving home for the first time.

   I stayed in Iwagakure for a few days, hanging around the marketplace and letting it drop that I had medical training. Before long, I found a group who was willing to let me tag along with them. It was always a good idea, I learned, to have someone in a traveling party who could treat illnesses and injuries along the way. Such people were in high demand, especially for long journeys. It wasn’t long before we set out.

The people I traveled with were a well-outfitted, careful group who always made sure that everyone had ample food and rest. We kept a rotating watch at night and displayed our weapons prominently when on the road, so we didn’t get much trouble from bandits. All the same, it was difficult for me to get close to anyone. Whenever we got to a settled area, either someone new would join us, or someone else would decide to stick around in order to find work or leave with a different traveling party. I didn’t want to get attached to people I might never see again. It had been hard enough leaving my parents and Ino, I didn’t want to be exchanging tearful good-byes every time I reached a town or village.

   I traveled the different lands for what must have been over a year, though it was difficult to tell with no reliable calendar. However, I couldn’t seem to find a place where I was comfortable enough to settle down. I’d stay a few weeks or months in one place, helping to gather crops, or caring for the sick or injured, in exchange for food and a place to sleep. But my wanderlust always seemed to return, and before long I’d find myself joining up with another group and setting out again.

   Eventually I ended up in Wind Country, living in Sunagakure with a kind old woman everyone called Granny Chiyou. Granny Chiyou was Sunagakure’s healer, and one of the oldest people I’d ever met. It seemed to me that even her wrinkles had wrinkles! Despite her age, though, Granny Chiyou was incredibly strong. She’d sometimes treat as many as twenty people in one day, if she needed to. I’d seen her lug two large, heavy buckets full of animal dung for the fire for half a mile back to the house, and not once stopping to rest along the way. It was Granny Chiyou who taught me how to fight, how to use my body and feet and fists as a weapon. She taught me all about poisons and antidotes, and how the human body processed and reacted to different substances, in her experience. She taught me how to be a stronger person, how to stand and fight on my own instead of relying on others for protection. I cared for her as if she was my own flesh and blood. I like to think she thought of me in the same way. She was certainly very fond of me, anyway.

   I lived with Granny Chiyou and her grandson, Sasori, for two years. Sasori’s parents had died when he was very young, and Granny Chiyou was the only family he had. I was never close to Sasori the way I was with his grandmother, though. He almost never spoke, either to me or to Chiyou, and spent most of his days playing with these little wooden dolls Granny Chiyou had made for him that were crafted to look like his parents. Sometimes I’d catch him just staring at me, blankly, with those creepy, dark eyes of his. It gave me chills. I could never figure out if he liked me or not, or even how he felt about his grandmother. He never showed any emotion, and seemed to me as blank and empty as the dolls he coveted.

   One morning, I woke up around dawn, as usual, and went to the kitchen to make breakfast and start on my chores for the day. I was surprised to see Sasori sitting in the kitchen, since he didn’t usually get up until a few hours after I did. But there he was sitting at the kitchen table, playing with those little wooden dolls of his like he always was.

   Then I noticed Granny Chiyou, slumped down on the floor at Sasori’s feet in a growing puddle of blood. Sasori was covered in blood too, on his hands and face and all down the front of his clothes. His dolls had large splotches of blood on them, too. It was, and still is, one of the most horrible things I’d ever seen in my life. I wanted to scream, but no sounds would come out of my mouth. I could only stand there and stare at Sasori, who had what I suddenly knew was his grandmother’s blood smeared all over him.

   He looked up, then, and smiled at me, for the first time since I’d started living with Granny Chiyou. Those intense eyes of his seemed to cut right through me like a knife. I knew, then, that Granny Chiyou was dead and Sasori had killed her. I had never been more scared of another human being in my life. I turned and ran out of the house, out of Sunagakure and into the desert. I didn’t stop running until I was in a little village on the outskirts of Wind Country, where I collapsed in the sand and just sat there, breathing harshly, for what must have been hours, since it was dark when I got up again.

   I knew I could never go back to Sunagakure. I was terrified of what Sasori might do to me, and worried that I might be blamed, somehow, for Granny Chiyou’s death. The people of Sunagakure, like everywhere else, were deeply distrusting of outsiders. I didn’t want to risk going back there and getting locked up or killed for Granny Chiyou’s murder.

   I didn’t think about Granny Chiyou much after that. It was too painful for me. I had nightmares for weeks, of standing in that kitchen while Sasori laughed over her corpse. Sometimes, in those dreams, Granny Chiyou would get up as well and scream at me for running away and not stopping Sasori. I always woke up in a cold sweat afterwards, panting as if I’d just run a mile.

    I felt much better once I’d scrounged up some supplies and started traveling with a group again. Being out on the road kept me too busy to think about Granny Chiyou, and too tired to dream at night. And so during these travels, I made my way into Sound Country.

   The people I was traveling with weren’t planning on staying in Sound Country long. We were only going to spend the night near a small village on the outskirts before continuing on to Water Country. However, I was running low on supplies, and most of the things I had with me were travel-worn and on the verge of falling apart. I thought that it would be a good idea for me to work for a few months in order to get fresh traveling gear and supplies. The next morning, I said goodbye to my traveling companions and went into the village to see what work I could find.

   I asked around at a few places, offered up my skill at treating wounds and illnesses in exchange for supplies, but I was having no luck. I was starting to get desperate when a man came up to me. He was wearing a forehead protector with the Sound Country guard symbol on it. “Excuse me, miss?” He said.

   “I haven’t done anything, I swear!” I said, almost automatically. I couldn’t keep the fear out of my voice, much as I would have liked to. This guard was huge and bulky, with at least two knives strapped to his hips and the biggest gun I’d ever seen. I knew I had no chance in a fight with him. “If…if you want me to leave now, I’ll go.”

   He smiled at me in response. “There’s no need for that. You haven’t done anything wrong, miss. I thought I heard you say earlier that you had medical training?”

   “Err…yes, I did. Is there something I can help you with?”

   “Not me, no. Actually, I work for a man not too far off from here who’s been looking for a medic lately. He runs a…hospital, of sorts. Would you be interested in coming with me and speaking to him?” The guard kept smiling down at me, and I found myself relaxing just a bit. He had a kind face, despite all the weapons.

   “OK,” I said, ignoring the nagging feeling in my gut that said this was a bad idea. The guard seemed nice enough, and I really needed the work. I figured that I could just talk to his boss and leave if I didn’t like the place.

   I was such an idiot.

   The guard only told me that his boss’s name was Kabuto. When I asked him what sort of hospital it was Kabuto ran, and what might be expected of me there, he only shook his head. “You’ll have to ask Kabuto-sensei that yourself, I’m afraid,” he said, and that was all I could get out of him about it.

   The guard took me to a place a mile or so away from the village. It was easily the biggest building I’d ever seen in my life, made entirely of dark stone and gleaming metal. It was surrounded by a metal fence topped with barbed wire, and I could see and hear sparks of electricity all along the metal wires. Only the gate seemed like it wasn’t electrified, but that was guarded by men just as big and burly as the guard who accompanied me, and were armed to the teeth. The sight of it made my throat dry with fear. This looked more like some sort of fortress than a hospital.

   I didn’t have time to process my fears before I was being swept inside through a heavy stone door. I followed the guard through what seemed to be endless twisting and turning corridors, narrow passageways with thick stone walls that made me feel claustrophobic. There were no windows, only electric bulbs stuck in the walls to light the way. The floor was made of something I’d never seen before, some kind of shiny, tiled stuff that my shoes squeaked against with every step. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined a place like this existed, yet all I wanted to do was leave as soon as possible. All this technology from Before in one place was rubbing me the wrong way.

   I saw nothing in that place that gave me the idea it was a hospital. There were no doctors or nurses, no patients, no treatment rooms. Occasionally we passed another guard, or someone else would dart out from a darkened room along the corridors and hurry off without meeting my eyes. But the place seemed pretty deserted.

   Finally, we came to Kabuto’s office, down two flights of stairs at the end of the hall. We were granted admittance after the guard knocked and stated his business. The room seemed to be filled entirely with gleaming metal countertops and strange equipment that I had no words for. Different liquids and substances bubbled and hissed away in glass containers on some of the counters. There were so many lightbulbs that the harsh glare hurt my eyes.

   Kabuto waved the guard out and told me to take a seat on a hard plastic chair near the counter he was currently working at. I disliked him immediately. He asked me all sorts of questions, about how long I’d been working at medicine, why I was traveling and for how long, and what sorts of healing I knew how to do. The entire time he leaned against one of the counters and smirked at me, as if I was a small animal that had crawled into a trap. The lights flashed off of his glasses in such a way that I couldn’t see his eyes, only the flashes of his thin, round spectacles. It made him seem inhuman.

   I answered Kabuto’s questions as briefly as I could. It felt like I was sitting in that room with him for ages. Finally, Kabuto stopped asking questions and simply looked at me for several long moments. I felt like he was analyzing me, and I could practically feel his eyes as they moved across my body. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, and then Kabuto finally said, “Congratulations, Sakura-chan. You’re hired. I could use someone with your skills around here.”

   “Thank you very much for the offer, Kabuto-sensei, but I’m afraid that my answer is no,” I said, as firmly and politely as I could, resisting the urge to get up and spit in his face before running out of his horrible office. “I don’t feel that I’m really capable of helping you. I think that it would be better if I looked for work elsewhere…” I trailed off when Kabuto’s only response was silence, and a slowly widening smirk.

   “So, um, I guess I’ll be going now…” I said, getting up from the chair and turning to leave.

   I stopped when I heard Kabuto’s low chuckling behind me. “Ah, Sakura-chan,” he said, shaking his head at me as if I were a small child who’d done something particularly amusing. “You make it sound as if I’m giving you a choice.

   “You see, I have a terribly hard time finding people with the right sort of knowledge and expertise to work around here. So I’m afraid that I really can’t let someone with your medical skills go. I do hope you’ll understand.” He reached out and gently pressed a small button on the counter next to him. It made a quiet buzzing sound, and a moment later the door burst open and two guards came rushing in.

   “Take her,” Kabuto said, waving a hand in my direction. In the next instant the guards had grabbed a tight hold of my arms and legs, and were dragging me out of the room.

   “Wha…NO! No, let me go! I said no! HELP! HELP ME, SOMEBODY!” I shouted, twisting and writhing in the guards’ grip to no avail. Kabuto was already turning back to his work, as the wooden door slammed shut behind him. I yelled myself hoarse as the men carried me off, back through the stairs and more narrow corridors. I cursed and wriggled and tried desperately to break the guards’ grip, but their hands were like iron bands around me. At one point I managed to free one of my legs and kick one of the guards holding me, but he only frowned at me before grabbing it again and holding onto it even more tightly.

   The guards threw me into a small, dark room. One of them forced me into a headlock while the other took away all of my weapons. Then they were gone, shutting the heavy door behind them. I heard the clattering sound of what had to be a very large, heavy lock, and then I was alone.

   My new quarters were made entirely of stone, hard and cold to the touch, with only a single flickering candle in the corner throwing faint light upon a sleeping mat of rough cloth. It was a miserable place that only served to remind me that I was now a prisoner in this terrible place.

   I didn’t take my situation sitting down, however. I banged on the door and yelled for help until my hands were raw and bleeding and my throat was too raw for me to speak. The door didn’t even budge no matter how hard I hit it. I couldn’t hear anything outside, not even footsteps. I’d never felt more alone in my life. Part of me wondered if I’d been thrown in here to die. Finally I curled up in the corner and sobbed, trying desperately to control the feeling of panic clawing its’ way through my chest.

   I don’t know how long I was in the room for that first night. There were no windows or any other method of keeping track of the time. Eventually the candle burned out and I was left in complete darkness, not even able to see my own hand in front of my face. I was too scared to try and sleep, but I still must have dozed off eventually, because the next thing I remember was the door opening and two guards coming in. I squinted, the light from the hall hurting my eyes after so much time in the dark.

   “Come on,” one of the guards grunted at me. “You’re coming with us, kid. Kabuto-sensei says you’ve got work to do.”

   “No,” I hissed at them. “I said I wasn’t going to help him. I don’t care how long you keep me in this fucking hole for, I will never help someone like Kabuto.”

   In the next instant a gun was being pointed at my face. “You work or you die, bitch. Kabuto-sensei’s orders.” I could see the glint of the guard’s teeth as he leered down at me.

   As you might imagine, I wasn’t keen on the idea of dying, not on that day or on any day after. I got up, and followed the guards out.

Author’s Note: The next chapter marks the end of the focus on Sakura. After her backstory is finished, Sasuke and Naruto and their relationship will be the focus for the rest of this story. Sakura is here to provide some needed exposition, as well as to help show Naruto’s imprisonment in Sound from an “outsider’s” perspective.

REVIEW RESPONSES:

Lil-lo: Thanks so much for reviewing! I’m glad you’re enjoying the story so far. There will be more to come, believe it! Everything will be explained before the end, I promise.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading this story and leaving me reviews. It really does motivate me to write more of this. So remember to feed your author and review!
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