#misschih

I’m drowning. The rational part of Sakura’s mind acknowledged and accepted the feeling. It felt like too much effort to raise her head from its position on her chest. Her tongue filled her cotton dry mouth, making it difficult to breathe. Sakura wheezed a breath into her lungs then hissed at the pain. Her entire right side ached like she’d been beaten within an inch of her life. She had at least two broken ribs, probably more.

Before Sakura could complete her cursory examination, something pinched her nose. When she opened her mouth to take another breath, sticky liquid flooded across her tongue. Before she could gag or spit it out, someone forced her jaw shut. The deep pain on her neck suggested that this wasn’t the first time she’d been forcibly drugged. Something nagged at the back of Sakura’s mind, but she couldn’t grasp it. Consciousness slid beyond her reach, and she went willingly.

Fire, agony, death. Something dragged Sakura from the comfortable numbness of unconsciousness. She tried to catch the pieces of memory before they fled to the dark edges of her mind, but they wouldn’t come. She blinked, trying to figure out where she was. Blurry vision made it impossible. When Sakura went to wipe her eyes, her right arm wouldn’t move. Panic gripped her chest, sobering her as she looked for the cause.

A slim metal restraint bound her right wrist to the wall. Her left remained free which seemed a terrible mistake of her captors. Sakura frowned, wondering why she’d allowed something so flimsy to stop her from escaping. She reached her hand forward and immediately doubled over in pain so intense her vision darkened. Dry heaves spent themselves until she managed to control her body the way she’d been taught. A distant part of Sakura’s mind noted that she didn’t vomit the sedative. It must have been hours since she’d ingested it.

Frown deepening. Sakura studied the wall and chain, but couldn’t find anything remarkable about either. She raised a trembling hand to her head, wincing at the tender, swollen spot on her temple. In the back of her mind, she felt a gnawing emptiness that threatened to overwhelm her, but she couldn’t think about that. Death lay down that path. Sakura could only deal with the things she could change. The weakness in her body was more than deprivation and torture, it was chakra exhaustion. But how—

Screams tore through Sakura’s mind, sharp and panicked. Even so, she could differentiate the voices. Nami was crying on the ground, great sobs that wracked her entire body. Genki lay beside her, an ugly gash bisecting his middle. Usagi was nowhere to be seen but her wordless roar of pain filled the room. The world exploded in a roar of heat and brilliant light that threw Sakura backward. Chakra flowed through her body when her seal released its stored power. She jerked to her feet and pushed through the flames. Sakura’s skin bubbled and sloughed away, renewing before it could kill her. She reached two of her genin, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at their faces. Sakura threw her body over them like a shield.

And then, nothing. Sakura didn’t know. She’d used up her stored chakra, but she’d still been taken captive. Her body hadn’t healed itself, so her current injuries must have come after the seal spent itself. The memory of her genin struck something deep and primal inside Sakura’s chest, but she couldn’t remember what happened to them. Her stomach locked tight as a second bout of nausea passed through her.

Another memory surfaced, and Sakura felt the air leave her lungs like she’d been punched. Her hand dropped to rest on her stomach as she rested her head against the stone behind her. “Oh fuck,” she hissed in the silence of her cell. Don’t think about it. There’s nothing you can do yet. “I can’t stay here.”

Sakura pulled against the chain a second time, putting as much pressure as she could against the metal without touching it. It didn’t give way, even when she fed a tendril of chakra into her arm to strengthen it. She continued, grunting with the pain that her efforts produced in her ribs. After a couple of minutes, Sakura released her chakra and sank back to the ground. A sob threatened to rise through her throat, but she pushed it away. She had to be stronger, who knew when her captors would be back.

Nodding sharply, Sakura infused her arm with chakra a second time and pulled until her muscles ached. Nothing happened. She studied the chain, then decided to focus on the anchor point in the stone behind her. If she could pull with enough force, she’d be able to jerk it free. Blowing out a breath, she counted down from three and jerked with enough force to pull a door from its hinges.

Pain exploded through Sakura’s arm, sharp and sudden enough to steal her vision. She collapsed. Every shift of her body sent pain stabbing through the bones that he’d broken. Her arm hung limp at an awkward angle, unmovable. Angry, frustrated tears worked through the grime on Sakura’s cheeks. She wiped her eyes with her free arm, then steadied her resolve.

Then, the solution came to Sakura as clear as if someone had whispered a plan in her ear. Her chakra reserves were dwindling, she couldn’t afford to waste them with healing until she got free. Fumbling with the knot of her hitai-ate, Sakura pulled it free. She tied it around her arm just below the elbow and searched around for something to use as a windlass to make it tighter. Sakura waited until the pain in her wrist numbed, then she formed a chakra scalpel with her other hand.