Countdown

Ten days of captivity, ten days of corruption.
What should have been the most beautiful of relationships,
constricted and mangled.
Then ended.

Day One

"You're going to kill me, aren't you?"

The girl sits hunched on the bed - a cheap, bare mattress on an unadorned steel frame - in the small, empty room, her pastel hair spilling over her shoulders, hiding her face. Hers is the image of a broken, defeated spirit. But when she looks up, Sasuke sees something calm and bright in her lovely green eyes, something that is not resistance, but not acceptance, either.

"Yes," Sasuke says, because it is the truth, and he can tell that she knows it as well as he.

She nods. "Well, there's something to be said for certainty, I guess." She looks at him, and if he were prone to such nonsense, he might have wondered what she saw.

Day Two

"Why?" she asks the next day.

Sasuke thinks he might know what she is asking, but he doesn't reply. He shouldn't. There really isn't any point interacting with her, speaking to her - she, Haruno Sakura, daughter of the country's leader, he of trailblazing progressiveness and controversial policies. She, Haruno Sakura, who will die for her father's beliefs.

Sasuke personally does not have anything against her father, but the people he works with do, and he needs those people, because through them he has the means to carry out his goal.

"I know my father isn't...popular, but..." Her voice quivers, and she watches him with something like desperation. "What does my death solve?"

Nothing, Sasuke knows. "You're annoying," he says.

Day Three

He brings in that day's meal, and she waits until he sets the tray down to announce, "I don't know whether I blame my father or not." She seems to think about it. "I probably do. I shouldn't. But I do."

Sasuke wonders why she is telling him this, but he does know. She is lonely.

Well, isn't that the same old tune.

Day Four

"What can I call you?"

"You can't."

Day Five

Every time he enters her room, she talks to him, tells him things - about herself, but also seemingly random musings, comments, thoughts. She always makes a point to ask him about himself, to leave an opening for him to add something, to offer anything. He doesn't, not really, but sometimes he wants to, if only because it might make this faded girl happy. (And such a desire is damning.)

So she tells him stories, voices memories, expresses opinions. Finally he asks her why.

She blinks, pauses, smiles sadly, tiredly. "Well," she says. "I'm kind of hoping that if you fall in love with me, you won't want to kill me." She raises her eyes to meet his.

Sasuke turns away. "I'm not that weak."

"Love isn't weakness," she says.

He works a sneer onto his face. "Words from the weak have no meaning." But he gets the feeling that a lot of her words have meanings that he can't bring himself to examine.

Day Six

On her sixth day of captivity, she makes a break for it. She almost makes it, too. Damn if this girl isn't smart, but she wouldn't have gotten nearly as far had Sasuke not been so careless. Weak.

She sighs and looks up at him from where she is lying on the floor. There is resignation and weariness in her eyes, but she is strong, this girl, and Sasuke knows that she would have grown up to be extraordinary. "You wouldn't have respected me if I hadn't at least tried, right?"

And it's true, he wouldn't have. But still he strikes her, because it is his duty, because he just wants her to give up already, to stop trying, to accept her fate. He thinks that, and yet there is something in him that is proud of the way she struggles and fights him every step of the way.

The blows he rains on her are not as hard as they might have been.

Day Seven

When he sees her again, it seems she really has given up. He offers her the tray of food, and she stares at it dully.

"What's the point?" she asks.

Sasuke does not have an answer.

Day Eight

She is corruption in its purest form - eroding his apathy, tainting his mindset, diluting his hatred, hindering his goal. She instills so many weaknesses in him that he is appalled. Pity. Remorse. Doubt. Compassion. Mercy.

He resents her for it, but he cannot help but be captivated by the lilt of her voice, the dark of her eyelashes against the green of her eyes. She is well-versed in irony, can quote all of the masters. She was going to be a doctor.

And had their story been different, their roles rewritten - she might have been his.

Day Nine

"Tomorrow," she says, and he nods, confirming.

She draws a deep, sharp breath, and they sit in silence for a while, before -

"Kiss me," she orders, and Sasuke doesn't know why he does, why he listens to her, this silly girl with her all-too-soon expiration date, this girl that corrupts him.

But their lips meet, and it is dizzying and sin-sick, sin-sweet.

"I don't even know your name," she whispers. He nods and kisses her again.

It tastes like what-should-have-been.

Day Ten

Sasuke watches her fall to the floor and, cursing his own weakness, wishes it could have been different.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
--Bertrand Russell

This made me happy. ^^

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.