Chapter Text
The metal wrapped around her dainty wrists clanked as she shifted. She blinked awake, her eyes taking in the sight of metal handcuffs tying her hands together through the post-sleep haze.
Regrettably, Sakura hadn’t died.
The pain of her bound wrists was the worst pain she could feel, much to Sakura’s disbelief.
She’d had many wounds on her body when she’d lain next to Chuuya in the cave. Wounds she should’ve died from, by all means.
Not only was she alive, but she couldn’t feel any of those wounds.
The rustling of clothes to her right made Sakura’s head turn sharply in anticipation of an enemy.
A mess of silver hair tickled her cheek, and she finally realised just how cramped the cell was.
“Kakashi…?” She muttered uncertainly, trying to see anything other than strands of silver obstructing her vision.
The man shifted and turned to face her, his breath tickling her face. It was then that Sakura realised this was the first time she was seeing him, maskless.
Were the situation not so dire, she might’ve taken satisfaction in that fact, especially since she was pretty confident she was the only person from Team 7 to have seen his face.
Sakura stopped that train of thought and focused on their current situation.
“What happened?” She asked quietly.
His brows furrowed together. “I thought you might have an answer to that. There was an Akatsuki member with a swirled orange mask that appeared out of thin air and knocked me out,” he said, sounding deeply troubled.
“And you don’t know why we’re being kept alive?” She guessed the source of his confusion.
“They haven’t bothered asking me for any information since I’ve woken up. I assumed they would want to know how we found them and then kill us,” Kakashi said, his tone flat, much like it was whenever he gave the Hokage a mission report.
Sakura understood it was his way to distance himself from their situation.
“We’re being kept by the Akatsuki, then?” She prodded.
Kakashi nodded, and she could see his silver lashes gently fanning against the tops of his cheeks every time he blinked from this distance. It made her uncomfortable.
Physical closure had always unsettled her. It made her feel vulnerable and trapped.
Sakura shifted, but the cold wall digging into her back didn’t let her move any further back. She decided to focus on the implication of Kakashi’s answer instead.
Sakura had many questions. Most of them, Kakashi wouldn’t be able to answer.
For example, why was she alive? How had she survived her wounds, and why hadn’t Tobi finished her off when he’d been determined to do so the last time she saw him?
“One of the Akatsuki members asked about you,” Kakashi said after a while of silence, his murmur breaking through her thoughts.
“Oh?”
“The one with the orange mask. Tobi,” Kakashi continued, his Sharingan eye open alongside his other eye, the scrutiny causing her to tense up more than the mention of Tobi did.
“He seemed to be under the presumption that your name isn’t Rei.”
Sakura felt a slight chill run through her. Perhaps it was irrational, but she felt the desperate need to cling to her fake identity.
The memories she slowly started to recover threatened to break through the dam of her mental defences. Her eyes squeezed shut, and she reinforced the dam further.
The last thing she needed was to think of warm green eyes and the tousled pink hair of a boy whose name she’d rather forget all over again.
Sakura had a feeling that in the coming days until she would die at the Akatsuki’s hands, her past would haunt her more than not.
“Who did he think I was?” She asked uselessly, her mind scrambling for an excuse.
If there was one thing Sakura feared more than the excruciating torture and death she would no doubt suffer through in the coming days, it was being stuck in the same room as Kakashi, with him fully aware of exactly who she was and all the lies she’d woven into the thin veil that was her disguise.
“Someone I know very well. You remind me of her,” Kakashi spoke. She hated how the warmth of his breath contrasted the coolness of his searching eyes.
The Sakura who’d once longed for acceptance would’ve sputtered awkwardly and given herself away. The Sakura of months ago who’d laughed in Kakashi’s face would’ve retorted that he most definitely did not know her well.
The person she was today was a mix of both. She felt the full weight of the awkwardness that came with Kakashi’s presence and the uncertainty of how to deal with him, but she also felt the bitterness and anger that came with years of his utter disregard for her.
“Was her last name also Ookami?” Sakura said unexpectedly, catching Kakashi by surprise.
“... What?” Kakashi asked.
Sakura had never been considered a good liar, but that was because where she spoke truth, others saw lies. Who needed to lie when you were never believed anyway?
But just because she didn’t typically lie didn’t mean it was a foreign concept to her. In the last year, she’d had to lie a lot, crafting identities and backstories wherever she went for the sake of Chuuya’s mission.
His name almost rattled her focus, and she quickly hid it back behind the dam of her mental defences, which it had slipped past, and focused on deterring Kakashi’s suspicions.
The best of lies contained truth.
“Do you remember when you rescued my friend from the mineshaft in the Land of Wind?” Sakura asked carefully. As if it were possible for Kakashi to forget an encounter with the Akatsuki.
When Kakashi didn’t answer, she continued. “He was from the Akumu clan. It’s a clan descended from an older clan; the Akatsuki are determined to wipe out. But there is also another clan descended from that clan that the Akatsuki are trying to weed out,” she said.
She could see that Kakashi had more questions than answers. That her lie was making him so confused that he didn’t even seem to consider she might be lying.
The more implausible a lie from someone who seemed like a good liar was, the more believable it was. After all, why would a good liar make up a nonsensical story that wasn’t even understandable?
“There’s another clan descended from them. The Ookami clan,” she said. “Not the family I’m from. We share the same surname, but the coincidence made the Akatsuki wary of me. It’s why Chuuya wanted me not to travel with him. He’d said it would be too dangerous, and that I should go back to my brother instead.”
She could see she’d pretty much lost Kakashi. “What does this have to do with the Akatsuki calling you a different name?”
Sakura hummed. “I’m not sure who they seem to think I am since you won’t tell me, but I’ll assume they’re talking about Ookami Sakura.”
Kakashi blinked. “Ookami-?”
Sakura nodded, as if she hadn’t made the name up. “I’m not sure if she even exists, but I’ve heard she’s the last remaining descendant of the clan the Akatsuki are against. It actually makes a lot of sense that they’d think I’m her now that I think about it. It explains why they haven’t killed me yet. They want to be certain,” she mused.
Kakashi seemed to relax slightly. “You seem to know a lot more about the Akatsuki than you let on,” he said. “I know you mean well, Rei-san, but it’s dangerous to lie to a Kage,” he was referring to when Gaara had asked her for details, of which she’d given him none. “There was a reason why you and your friend were in that mineshaft that day. Just like there is a reason why you’ve gone to find your brother all the way here.”
Then, he frowned slightly. “Where is your brother, anyway?”
It was this innocent question, asking about Chuuya and his fake identity as her brother, that finally made Sakura’s fully awake mind understand the depth of what had happened.
Chuuya was dead.
He’d died in her arms.
She was supposed to die with him.
And here she was, talking to Kakashi as if nothing had happened. Thinking about being stuck with him was the worst thing that could happen to her while the dead body of her only friend gradually chilled in a cave somewhere.
“Rei-san?” Kakashi asked.
She didn’t answer him.
For the rest of the day, Sakura didn’t say a thing as she lay comatose on the cement flooring of their cell, her back to Kakashi and the bars of their makeshift cell.
You make one friend, and you can’t even protect him, a callous voice whispered inside of her head. Despite its harsh words, it sounded young. It should’ve been you. You should’ve died, not Chuuya. You should’ve been taken, instead of Take–
“Shut up, shut up,” Sakura whispered, tasting the salt of her tears rolling past her parted lips. She didn’t need to be told such things. She was all too aware of their truth.
How was it fair that she, the one who’d never had much to strive for in life or reasons to live, got to live on while the two people closest to her, who both had such strong wills to live and to achieve something, died?
Kakashi murmured something next to her ear. For the life of her, she couldn’t hear what it was through the static in her ears and the incessant whisper of her inner voice.
It was only the heavy sound of footsteps that quieted the voice enough for Sakura to concentrate.
“Oh! Rei-san is already awake?! Tobi had thought her injuries would’ve worn her out for longer?” The annoyingly fake voice of Tobi cut through the silence. He seemed cheerful, but there was a slight limp to his step.
His back wound had yet to fully close, then. Which, presuming he had access to at least a semi-decent medic, meant that Sakura hadn’t been out of commission for long.
Three days at maximum, really. The dull sensation in her stomach that wasn’t yet overbearing also confirmed that.
Which made it inconceivable that her body had fully stitched itself back together. There wasn’t even a single scar left behind. And if Tobi still carried the physical signs of their battle, how could Sakura, whose injuries had been much worse, be fully healed?
“Go to hell,” she rasped out.
Tobi giggled slightly. “But don’t you know, Sakura-san?” He said sweetly. “We already are in hell.”
Sakura tensed up. “My name is Rei. I don’t know who you’re confusing me with,” she said, knowing fully well Tobi had heard Chuuya call her by her real name that day in the cave.
She fixed him with a steely glare.
Tobi chuckled. The sound came out deeper than intended. “Of course. My bad. Ookami Rei,” he humoured her anyway. “Ookami, is that right? Where has Tobi heard that name before…?”
His single eye swept over her with a thinly-veiled predatory glance. He was toying with her.
“Oh!” Tobi exclaimed. “Tobi knows. The Ookami clan, right? Tobi had thought that the clan had died out with poor Ookami Takeru. He was just a child, too. What a terrible shame. You must be his cousin, or sister, then!”
Half-sister, her brain corrected. Did that even matter? What use was it remembering a boy who’d been a fragment of the past of a Sakura who’d sold her memory and identity to forget? The boy she’d forgotten all about until her memories decided to resurface with Chuuya’s death?
The conversation was taking a dangerous turn. Tobi was the type of person to murder people for less than sharing the name of a clan he’d likely had a hand in bringing to extinction.
“I know you think I’m one of them, but I’m not,” she said sharply. “I share the name, but that’s the extent of it. Ookami isn’t a terribly rare name, don’t you think?”
She didn’t see under Tobi’s orange mask, but if she could, she imagined she’d find a dangerous smile plastered underneath it. “Rei-san is right, Tobi didn’t think of that! What a coincidence that Rei-san happened to find herself in the company of an Akumu then. It feels like fate, doesn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?” Kakashi demanded, speaking for the first time since Tobi came in front of their cell. “What do the Akatsuki want with these clans? I was under the assumption that the tailed beasts are your priority.”
Tobi looked at Kakashi almost pityingly. “There are things and beings out of the limited scope of the hidden villages’ tightly leashed dogs. Loyal, obedient dogs like Hatake-san can’t possibly understand the extent of the Akatsuki’s mission for world peace. Their loyalty to their villages clouds all their senses.”
“It is easy to hide your skewed morals behind pretty words and talk of world peace. Unlike the hidden villages, which are actively making strides towards actual peace, all of your actions contradict the end you claim to be after.”
There was something about Kakashi that seemed to set Tobi off. She could see it in the wavering laxness of his posture and the way his right hand balled into a fist ever so slightly, as well as the decidedly glaring expression of his Sharingan eye.
“Yet the hidden villages fall into one war after another, and cause one another pain that will inevitably lead to yet another war. And when a bigger threat comes, all of you blindly loyal ninjas are too caught up in your struggles and grudges to do anything about it. The nature of humanity alone is a promise of war. As long as we are alive, it’ll always loom over the horizon. This world is hell.”
His eyes fell on Sakura, the glare of his eye subsiding into something darker. “You’re too blinded by your never-ending cycle of hatred your village keeps feeding into to see the enemy hiding in your midst,” he spoke, “and by the time you see what the Akatsuki sees, you’ll all be dead.”
Sakura could tell that the words were directed at Kakashi still. But the look in his eye? There was no mistaking it. He considered Sakura a threat.
“Oh, Tobi apologizes! He didn’t mean to get all philosophical. It’s not usually his forte, haha. If Deidara-senpai were here, he would probably scold Tobi…”
The switch of his personality was concerning, though Sakura was becoming used to it. Was it a fake identity, or did Tobi have a split personality disorder?
Sakura found that she didn’t care.
All she felt was a deep, dark hatred for Tobi and everything he represented. She wanted to wrap her hands around his neck and twist, she wanted to knock that orange mask off his face with a punch and gouge that irritating Sharingan eye out, and most of all, she wanted to stab a kunai into his back again again to reopen the wound she had left behind, and to burn his body until he was dead like Chuuya–
There were many things she wanted to do to Tobi. Never before had Sakura felt hatred this strong. Never before had she felt hatred.
She’d learned bitterness as a child, a feeling that had followed her into her adulthood. Regret and sorrow were also feelings she was intimately familiar with. She’d learned dislike, in the last months she’d been with Team 7.
But never before could she recall hating someone the way she did Tobi.
“You must be wondering why Tobi is here? Well, Tobi wanted to visit, of course! The two of you are very interesting. But Tobi also came because his leader wants to have a talk with Ookami Rei-san. Would Rei-san come with Tobi, please?”
Sakura gathered saliva in her mouth and spat it out in Tobi’s direction.
Tobi dramatically jumped back with a whoop. “Rei-san should be more mindful of her surroundings!” He exclaimed.
Then, his eye fell on her pathetically small and frail form. “Tobi apologises, but that wasn’t a question. Rei-san will come with Tobi as instructed.”
She wasn’t given any time to think about that before Tobi’s hand shot out through the bars of their cell and grabbed her, before she was whisked away into a swirling vortex of darkness.