It had been over four cycles of sleep and travel since Sakura’s unfortunate discovery -Kisame had been the only one to sleep, she had sat cross-legged staring at the sky- and she hadn’t said a single word since. Occasionally she would start crying in silence, tears cutting clean lines down her cheeks that she did not bother hiding from him.
He didn’t like it and for reasons he was fairly certain of and fairly determined to ignore, Kisame decided that her silence needed to end. Normally it would not have been such a big deal to him -a silent traveling partner- but normally he was not thrust into situations quite so… extreme. And while he didn’t know her personally, beyond a few random quirks, he did know her well enough to realize that she was slowly self-destructing. Collapsing in on herself in despair and that -for reasons he would never speak aloud- did not sit well with him.

“Sakura,” She didn’t acknowledge him but Hell, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t hear him. “Look…” Shit… he should have prepped himself a bit better for the ‘heart-to-heart’ chat. “I’m not going to debase your feelings by telling you I know how you feel.” She was looking at him now and he could not tell if it was good or bad so he pressed on. “I understand that you’re hurting-”

“Hurting?” Her voice was sharp and grainy, very very different from how she usually sounded. “I could break every bone in your body. I could slice a centimeter off of you starting with your toes and moving up and cauterize every fresh centimeter with a fire jutsu until you were nothing but burnt meat!” Her voice was steadily rising in volume but the harsh grainy quality remained steady and Kisame steeled himself for the screaming he knew would come. “I could create an artificial anti-coagulate in your bloodstream and watch you bleed to death out of every orifice!” Sakura was yelling now, her hands fisted at her sides and shaking. “I could stimulate every nerve ending on your body to make it so every breath you took felt like liquid fire!” Now she was screaming at the top of her lungs and Kisame had absolutely no clue what to do or say. “So until you’ve felt something like that…DON’T FUCKING TALK TO ME ABOUT HURTING!” He was actually relieved when she took a swing at him, and actually surprised when it connected and only broke three of his ribs. “IT’S ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT!” She screamed lunging at him; Kisame managed to dodge in time, her foot leaving a crater in the earth that he was certain would have been his end.  At this point he was glad that she was talking… err… screaming… but it was much better than the silence. This way she could get it all out, every iota of pain expressed in primal screams and powerful strikes that occasionally left gaping holes in the already damaged ground.  

Sakura was in a rage and where most people would be swinging blind and easier to defeat, her attacks were still perfectly controlled; not a single wasted movement, even if she missed hitting him she’d use the momentum and chakra from the failed blow in her next attack.
And that was why Kisame was vaguely concerned, she was getting faster and accumulating more and more chakra and while he had managed to avoid all but the first attack, he knew it was only a matter of time before she got another hit on him and ended up killing him. As much as he wanted her to wear herself down and get as much pain out and away from herself, he also wanted his body parts intact and relatively undamaged. So with a vague plan in mind he acted.
Kisame ducked her fist and strafed to the side, as he had hoped she swung her body wide and gave him the perfect opportunity. Grabbing her cloak he yanked it from her shoulders, tearing the makeshift garb off at the collar easily, leaving her with a cloth necklace and off balance.
Sakura pivoted on the ball of her foot and twisted around as she leapt at him, fist cocked and murder flashing in her darkened green eyes.
Kisame was ready. Dropping Samehada he grabbed her extended arm and twisted it around, she moved with the motion as Kisame had hoped and he twirled the blanket-made-cloak around her body, essentially swaddling her like a baby and dropping her onto Samehada for the barest few seconds -just enough to take the edge off of her chakra and snap her out of the rage- before rolling her away.

The sudden shock of having her chakra sucked out did it’s job and Sakura stilled in the cloak, eyes narrowing slightly as she favored Kisame with a rather nasty glare.

“Alright,” Kisame said picking up Samehada and brushing the soot off his sword. “I’m not going to let you kill me out in this wasteland, and if that’s all you plan on doing then,” He paused, thinking of the best way to get her to calm down and come back into her right mind. He wasn’t fond of having his bones broken but he was equally displeased at the idea of continuing through the desolation alone. Therefore, he decided to make a play on her fear and see where it led. “Then I’m going to drain all of your chakra and leave you out here alone. Do you understand?” Sakura stilled, her glare dissipating as she looked at him with eyes much darker than they should have been. She closed her eyes and drew in a breath, calming herself before speaking.

“I’m… sorry.” Her voice no longer had the sharp graininess and when she opened her eyes they were bright again. “You said all that… and I just saw red… I‘m… I‘m not certain what happened… everything just got…dark…” Sakura trailed off with a sigh. “I had no right to lash out at you like I did… you were trying to help me… and I’m sorry.” He was skeptical at how easily and quickly she’d been cowed, but the air of desperation and rage no longer hung about her… only embarrassment and sorrow.

Abandonment still seemed to be a big issue with her… Kisame withheld a grin and tucked the information away in the folds of his memory.

“Hmm.” He rubbed his chin and gave her a calculating look. “I don’t know that I believe you…” The incredulous look she gave him was what broke his control and Kisame couldn’t hold back his laughter.

“You ass.” She stuck her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout. Still chuckling Kisame moved towards her and picked her up, unwrapping her body from the cloak.

“Feel better?” He asked for the sake of conversation, trying to prevent her from lapsing back into silence and tears.

“Yeah…” Sakura said as she tied the cloak around her shoulders and adjusted it again. “Burning off some chakra always helps with the whole Catharsis process.”
Kisame had opened his mouth to reply but a breeze blew past him, carrying a scent teasingly across his nostrils and his head quirked to one side as he tried to place the smell. Sakura looked at him oddly before turning her nose upward and inhaling deeply. “Pollen…” She exhaled the word, wide-eyed and breathless; as if the concept had left her in awe and wonder. For the barest second they looked at each other, and before either of them blinked they had both taken off at top speed, chasing the wind.
Chakra fueled their mad dash through the desolation, the advent of life -even if it was just a tree- had made such blind hope well up inside both of them that their brief, one-sided fight was completely forgotten and after several minutes of full out running Sakura spotted something mercifully wonderful.

Both of them stopped dead, observing the thin, dull green-yellow hints of pollen that striped over the ash before them. Already nature was working it’s magic over the disaster area.

They stood there, both panting slightly as they observed the ever so slight and ever so appreciated change to the color palette of what had temporarily become their world.
Sakura let out a primal scream of pure, uninhibited delight and frog-hopped onto Kisame, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders in a full contact hug as she continued shrieking and laughing. He had caught her oddly with his free arm and had to take half a step back to stop from falling over; while he did not join her in the screaming, Kisame did express his joy at the sight and spun her around, laughing.

“We’re gonna be free!” She cried out throwing her arms up and arching back, almost throwing him off balance and pressing her thighs painfully against his ribs. Kisame pulled her off with a grunt and set her down slowly on the ashen ground. “What?” Sakura pushed his hand away from his side and began probing the area with her fingertips.

“They broken?” He grunted as her lips thinned into a frown.

“No… just cracked. They’ll heal on their own.” And so with her professional medical opinion hanging in the air both ninja turned back towards the pollen stripes, for a moment, observing the places that they thickened… the way they’d been carried in by the wind. With no indication towards the other both man and woman moved on, not as frantic, but just as fast as before. Their footsteps tempered by hope and skepticism, child-like wonder and a deluge of pessimism that went hand in hand with aging in that rapid way their lifestyles had demanded.

Sakura did her best to not think. To give herself over to mindless repetition; launch off the ball of the foot, feeling the chakra build and flourish and die out as she expelled it downward before being replenished by further reserves. The ascent, she’d close her eyes and hold her breath, trying to keep that weightlessness, the thrill off having nothing holding her back and keeping her down… for a brief glimmering moment of laughing at gravity and spitting on the idea; just before the zenith of her arc, just before gravity said ’Real cute bitch. Get back where you belong’ and pushed her down to the earth with a singular, all encompassing force. Sakura would open her eyes, in time to see her feet connect with the ground and watch the soot make tiny mushroom clouds bloom around her ankles before being dispelled by her removing the propagating appendages, pulling up from the center and destroying her diminutive creation in seconds.

It hit her as almost a surprise that she immediately began thinking of Konohagakure’s destruction. Had it been quick? A massive living wave of fire that consumed everything with such deadly, precise totality that no living creature had any idea they’d even died… had it been a slow, unstoppable spread? Perhaps ringing the city and moving inward in a reverse ripple pattern? Did the Kyuubi face the ninja forces in battle? Was it losing and instead of being committed back into a fleshed cage it had imploded it’s power, self destructing and taking it’s hated tormenters and all they held dear with it to the depths of oblivion?

At least, she thought in a bitter manner that came all too easily, Naruto isn’t alive to see what has happened. But then… he wouldn’t have collapsed… not Naruto… not Konoha’s number one ninja. No… he would have spent the rest of his life rebuilding. He would have moved the earth and halted the skies before he would have disintegrated into a shell and given up for a life of solitude and self-pitying grief.
Sakura found a minor, cold comfort at the thought. He would have held on and picked up the pieces and moved on. The memories and images would have haunted him, no doubt there, but he would have devoted his every breath and every movement towards healing the scabrous mar on the earth that had once been all that he loved and held dear.
So she would do the same. She would not break down and succumb to grief. She was stronger than that damn it she was Haruno Sakura and She. Was. Not. Weak.
Sakura felt her spine straighten minutely and she tilted her chin up, warding off the tears and looking straight ahead. The pollen stripes had become a carpet across the land, covering the soot with a green-yellow hue that was distorted by the blood-drenched sky the peered through the clouds suspiciously. The grass and trees would grow again, the earth would heal itself of this most recent blight and life would go on. Unmindful of the agony and suffering a patch of soot in unfathomable dimensions had created.

Kisame bounded forward, out of her peripheral and almost directly into her line of sight. She found a strange amusement in his movements. He was galloping. For a moment her eyes squinted and she tried to picture him as a wild blue-hued stallion, loping across the plains, wind blowing, sun shining, and him exuding a sense of unrestrained freedom. It was terribly romantic and about twice as funny so she made her brain switch subjects before she burst out laughing and would -undoubtedly- have to explain her humor to her temporary companion.
I probably look as silly as he does.
And she could not help the image of a distinctly pink mare galloping across the field alongside the horse incarnation her mind had given him. That image almost broke her control completely and she allowed a tiny smile of mirth to tweak the corners of her lips.
It wasn’t so bad really. True she’d never been in a worse situation, and she knew repressing it all was a bad idea but what else could she do? Curl up in a nest of incinerated bodies and buildings and wallow in misery, begrudging the fact that by some wild roulette selection of chance and circumstance she had lived while so many, many had died? No… the situation, that was bad. Very, very, bad. But the current moment? That… was okay. By no means was she happy about it but… things… things were okay. She was okay, and moving towards… well something that was alive and well and at the very least she was not alone in this fantastically monstrous situation.
Her eyes drifted inexplicably to Kisame and for a while she watched the rolling motion of his cloak, fanned out behind him and moving in a strange wave like manner. Sakura remembered the first time she’d seen waves, big waves, long ago and far away when she had been small and little. Family vacation, a boat ride she’d slept through to one of the more prodigious tourist islands that peppered the coast and didn’t quite fall under any ninja jurisdiction. She’d been scared of them then, they were so big, and she so little. It had seemed, at the time, the waves were going to keep on coming, that the barrier of the shore would not hold them back and that the water was going to envelope the beach and drag her out and keep her forever. Sakura had cried when her father tried to put her in the water, ran wailing to her mother to clutch at her thighs and make her promise to not let the ocean take her away.

Sakura knew for a fact that had been the last time that she’d run with tears in her eyes and snot dripping on her lip to her mother for comfort. Her father had teased her on the way home and she made a promise to herself that had become a pathos -backed up by the ninja rules, all of which she had remembered after reading the doctrine twice.
And now… now that waves really had come and taken her away, taken so many away, if given the chance she would have run from one end of Konoha to the other, screaming and crying hysterically, making a spectacle of herself and losing all respect of her fellow shin obi if at the end of it she could have fallen into her mothers lap and wept while her hair was petted and soft words were cooed sweetly.

Sakura closed her eyes and inhaled, trying to banish the thoughts that all seemed to revolve around fire and destruction.
Opening her eyes didn’t help when the only thing she could see -aside from the galloping blue man- was the destruction in the aftermath of an immolating fire.
At least Naruto doesn’t have to see this.

Oh Naruto… Her heart keened and broke just a little bit more. His smile was seared into her mind, the big goofy ones, the small comforting ones, the sly I’m-so-witty ones, the rare -but more predominant- sad one that she alone had been privy to. A singular, bare second expression of his that she couldn’t displace from him anymore than she could his overabundance of energy and love.
It was both unbearable and comforting to think of him in a series of moments, expressions, and the occasional lewd gesture.

It was some hours later, -it could have been days for as much attention she actually paid to time- after the carpet of pollen had thickened and gained a richer but still sickly tone that they had paused for another ‘lookout launch’. They both put more energy and chakra into this one particular jump and Sakura cleared the oily clouds in the manner of nano-seconds. What she saw with her temporarily enhanced sight made her scream and draw her appendages tightly to her body to hasten the descent.

Kisame was at her side the second her feet touched the ground with a look of questioning and concern that she found damnably touching.

“I saw…” She panted out, the quickened descent had all but sucked the air out of her lungs and she tried to gulp in enough breath to tell of what she had seen. “I saw…” Sakura repeated, wheezing slightly and almost enjoying the expectant look of trepidation on Kisame’s face. “I saw-”

“WHAT?!” He interrupted, grinding his teeth and clutching tighter to Samehada’s burnished hilt.

“…green.” Sakura burst out with a breathless laugh. Kisame looked stunned, as if she’d just told him she was pregnant and it was his.

“Green…” He repeated, as if the thought of it were much too outrageous to be considered truthful.

“I couldn’t tell… if it was grass… or trees… it was on the very edge of my sight.” She paused, placing a hand on her chest to quell the tremor of purest excitement that fluttered around in her ribcage and sent electric shocks vibrating through her body. “I almost didn’t believe I actually saw it but…” Sakura trailed off, unsure of what she could say to refute any doubts in her own mind as well as Kisame’s.

“We’ll keep moving… and check again in a few hours. Which direction?”

“Same way we’ve been traveling.” He smiled, wide, toothy, and utterly pleased. She almost yelled at him for looking too much like Naruto for the barest second. But the feeling passed and he took off with an exceptionally powerful leap, leaving a mushroom cloud of ash to waft around her knees before she moved similarly to him and caught up in two strides.
There was freedom on the horizon and Sakura just knew her mind was playing tricks on her but she’d have sworn to every deity she knew of that there was a scent of loam on the air, and that teasing tickle in her nose almost made her weep.