Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Wilting Blossoms ❯ Of Kisses and Demons ( Chapter 3 )

Thanks for making it this far, mina-san! Hope you're enjoying it ^_^;;

 

*****

 

Sakura held her fellow Missing Nin in her arms, rocking him back and forth as she softly sang songs and fought back tears. A good quarter of his shirt was missing, torn from the neckline down to below the arm, ripped off while she performed her emergency jutsu. The exposed skin gave clear view of her crude jutsu, which had slowly come into existence as a black circle around the curse seal. Sasuke's face had recently lost the frightening pallor which she had noticed after the sealing, and his skin now had a healthy, pink coloring. She could feel him stirring, and she tensed as his eyes opened. After all… her last experience with him waking up to her being in close proximity hadn't gone well.

 

He hesitated as he took in his surroundings, and the feelings in his body. “You… you managed to contain the curse?” His voice was raspy, but she could hear faint traces of surprise and admiration too.

 

She averted her eyes with a blush. “Well… yeah. Not very well but… I read a book on it once.”

 

He rubbed the curse tenderly. “It feels… caged. Barely.” He hesitated, realizing perhaps for the first time that her arms were draped around his shoulders. “Um… I'm okay now.”

 

`Is he asking me to let go? Probably…' She started to withdraw her hands, but then decided against it and let them rest where they were. She nuzzled against his exposed shoulder gently, a faint smile on her face. “I'm glad you're okay.”

 

His hesitated, uncertainty in his voice and demeanor. “Thank you.” The closeness unsettled him greatly. His body was tense, as if he wanted to leap away from her and out of her grasp, but he took a deep breath and laid still. “No one detected chakra burst from the seal being unleashed?”

 

“If they did, they didn't come to investigate. You've been unconscious for nearly a half hour.”

 

“Idiot… what if someone attacked?” His voice had regained its normal lazy arrogant quality, and there was no heat behind the insult.

 

She tilted her head up, eyes squinting into the rising sun shining through the trees, to grin at him. “Then I would have beat them up.”

 

He snorted. “You've changed.”

 

She lay quiet for a moment, digesting his comment. “In a good way?”

 

He shrugged, not deigning to respond to her question. “Why did Kakashi's jutsu fail? We traveled too far away from him?”

 

She nodded, then her eyes fell. “Either that or… maybe Kakashi-sensei intentionally released it.”

 

Sasuke's eyes hardened with cold anger. “Maybe we really are on our own.”

 

Sakura watched him seethe, his mind pouring over the possibilities. Perhaps their sensei really had intentionally released his jutsu containing the curse seal… but more important than that, Sasuke's anger as he dwelt on the issue was already weakening her work. If she didn't distract him from his negative thoughts, the tentative jutsu she had worked would be unraveled. She sucked in a breath to steady herself, then pulled her face up to his level and placed her lips on his, kissing him gently. She wasn't sure what reaction she anticipated, but she knew she had to try.

 

Sasuke's body went rigid, every muscle went taut, and his lips were pressed shut in a thin line. Feeling his discomfort, she pulled back and cast her eyes to the side. `Eh… Not exactly a wonderful first kiss…' She ignored Inner Sakura's wild cheering, and silently chided herself. `It was his first too… not counting Naruto's accidental one during the final exam of the academy. This isn't going to be easy on either of us.'

 

Sasuke's mind had gone blank during the kiss, but now worked rapidly in the aftermath. It wasn't any sort of newfound realization that Sakura had romantic feelings for him… half the girls in Konoha did. But it had always been a distant knowledge... something always taken for granted. Now the issue was being pushed to the front of his mind, and he didn't like the feelings it invoked.

 

He knew what his reaction was supposed to be. His reflex reaction was to do something cruel, to ward her off. His whole life, he had ensured to react swiftly and harshly to any signs of affection from girls… there was no room in his life for romance. `My life is revenge. That's all there is for me.' He had said it to himself a thousand times… it was his mantra. And it was true… to an extent. Caring for someone… taking revenge on his brother… they were mutually exclusive, weren't they?

 

His whole life, he had entertained fantasies of how things would play out. His brother, beaten and bloody, yielding before him. His own Sharingan blazing in the darkness, as his brother's eyes dimming, never to see again. But that wasn't how it had happened at all. The gap in power between his brother and himself hadn't narrowed at all since the day of the massacre of his family, and when they fought, he had ended up in the hospital, after landing nary single blow upon his anathema. He had succeeded in focusing all of his being into a single goal, of shutting out everything else that made life worth living, and yet it had gotten him nowhere. Doubts clawed at him.

 

He looked down, only able to see one half of her face. While he was mulling over his thoughts, Sakura had taken his lack of reaction as rejection. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but the golden daybreak shined across the pink locks of hair that spilled over her face, creating delicate shadows on her blushing cheeks. He felt… guilty… a very foreign feeling. He closed his own eyes as well, his vision swimming. This worry that gnawed inside him, the realization that he was important enough to someone to inspire a genuine reaction like that… it scared him.

 

He drew her face towards his, kissing her in return. He couldn't say why, exactly… it was part a need to apologize for his cold reaction, part because the grudging acknowledgement of life outside revenge had sparked a morbid sort of curiosity in him. What would it be like to actually care about someone other than himself? He couldn't help but wonder.

 

Sakura's eyes shot wide, then closed again as she returned his kiss softly. They lay pressed together for a time, kissing experimentally and learning from each one. The kisses were slow and unhurried, but Sakura was still short of breath when Sasuke broke it off to talk for a moment.

 

“Sakura… I can't promise you much…”

 

Her lips curled up with a content smile. “I know you can't. Just promise me that you'll try. That you'll see if there's room in your life for me.”

 

He nodded slowly. “I guess… I guess we'll see.” His fingers brushed an errant lock of her hair behind her ear.

 

She felt a thrill run through her, an exultation of victory. She drew his body in close, kissing him fiercely, feeling him hesitantly return the emotion. Sakura's boldness rose with each passing moment, cradling his head with her one hand while the other interlaced fingers with his free hand.

 

How long they lay together kissing, Sakura couldn't say. She would have been content to lie with him in their bed of leaves… letting her imagination run wild over what might happen if they continued. Her blush intensified, though she doubted Sasuke could tell. Their tongues' danced, the pair quickly adapting to the newness of the experiences. She was pushing her luck, since change did not come quickly to her fellow runaway. He was pulling away now, she knew. She had achieved more today than she had ever allowed herself to hope or dream for, though, and she didn't want to push him. Sakura sighed regretfully, disentangling herself from him, and they rose.

 

“We should get going.” His voice was its usual curt tones, but there was a softness to his voice that she hadn't ever heard before.

 

Sasuke looked uncomfortable as he glanced at her sidelong, an expression Sakura found bizarre on his face. He wasn't exactly a man of many emotions… usually limited to arrogantly haughty or stoic, with brief bursts of anger. She cast her gaze to the ground, smiling at him. “Of course… you're right.”

 

With her quiet ascension, he tore of at his normal breakneck speed. She launched herself into the trees with a kick from her legs, her heart rejoicing, her mind calculating, and Inner Sakura having a temper tantrum that she had let him out of her grasp.

 

“One step at a time…” she whispered.

 

*****

 

Shikamaru petulantly contemplated his fate, leading a mission like this. “Bring back Sasuke and Sakura… willing or unwilling.” He mulled quietly as he moved through the foliage. Someone had kidnapped two members of the village, and he had to find them? In all of Fire Country? How troublesome…

 

And yet it was worse. Kakashi-sensei had sent a small tracking dog, Pakkun, along with them. When they had been alone, Kakashi had given him a vague warning… not to underestimate Sasuke. It was ominous, and more troublesome… a variable in his plans that he couldn't even begin to predict.

 

He looked back over the team. The Nin-dog trailed behind him, using his nose to direct the team towards Sasuke and Sakura's likely position. The third in line was the most troublesome of all: Naruto. Shikamaru had watched Naruto fight during the Chunnin exam twice… and he had never seen that boy like this. Naruto had started the journey a burning ball of hate, and he was still drenched in fury as they flew through the trees. Shikamaru had tried to get out of having him on the team, but Tsunade insisted he stay for some reason… more troublesome unknowns. The one thing Shikamaru did know was that he couldn't rely on Naruto to follow orders… or even make rational decisions. It didn't seem possible for a human being to stay so angry for so long. Normally it would cool into brooding… but he was still a bundle of pure rage. Shikamaru could have sworn he saw Naruto's eyes physically change to red a few times.

 

Next in line was Neji, who was powerful, reliable, and could supplement their scent tracking with his byakugan. In rear guard was his cousin Hinata, easily the weakest in fighting skills, but she refused to be dissuaded from coming after she heard Naruto was going. In a high level fight she was going to end up a as a liability. He didn't really want her along either, but she happened to be in the room when he found Neji and there was no time to wait for a more opportune moment.

 

He rubbed his forehead in resigned dismay. His team was a mishmash of talented but oh so troubled genin who had never worked together before. He doubted they would be able to take on anyone powerful enough to kidnap both Sasuke and Sakura without alerting anyone… or rather if Kakashi was right… Sasuke and Sakura themselves.

 

“Horribly troublesome…”

 

In the middle of the pack, the boy in an orange jacket sprung with feral leaps, trying not to not outdistance his companions… trying not to lose himself. Kyuubi was dashing against it's jutsu-forged bonds, and frankly, he wasn't in the mood to try and keep it down. His eyes flashed with dangerous power, and he blinked to make them go their normal aquamarine color again.

 

“Wait until we get to Sasuke…” He whispered under his breath. “Just… wait.”