Heart pounding, Sakura awoke with a painful snap, hands clawing at an invisible foe. She fumbled with the zipper of sleeping bag, coughing and struggling to see in the darkness through the film of moisture in her eyes. Kicking it aside, she showed less restraint with the tent and tore it in two. As it fell behind her, she pitched forward onto her arms and took in greedy swallows of air -- only to find it was just as thick with smoke.

It felt like someone was grabbing a hold of her lungs and squeezing, her throat as raw as if she had swallowed razor blades. Panic seized what was left of rational thought and she pushed to her feet, looking around wildly. The tents were on fire, the grass a circle of hellish light as it greedily tore through the foliage, heading for the trees and anything else it could find to feed on.

Pressing her hand to her mouth, she ducked her head and moved in the opposite direction. The rough ground bit into her bare feet, and she stumbled, falling to her knees. Behind her, she could hear someone shouting, but couldn't make out the words through the roaring in her ears. It was painful to breathe still, but the oxygen rich air outside the heat of the blaze was clearing her head and the mantra of any medical-nin kept pounding through her mind: stay uninjured or you can't help the others.

"God, what am I going to do?" The words came out barely a whisper, before she was shrugging off the sharp pains in her chest and turning back.

From out of the smoke, a figure was running in her direction, arms waving as they weaved a shaky path. Training put her on guard, but the healer in her won and she made herself meet the person half-way, glad she did when she recognized Haya. The right side of his face was red, as if he was out in the sun too long, but it was his arms, both burnt down to the muscle that gave her a swift kick to the guts.

"Haya!" Voice stronger now, she caught him as he nearly barreled through and wrestled him to the ground. She recognized the glazed, wide cast to his eyes, as impending shock and oxygen deprivation. Since he wouldn't quit struggling, she did the only thing she could think of: she sat on his chest, grabbed his arms, and began infusing her own chakra into the wounds.

The pinched expression was leaving his face, but in the light from the fire she could see he wasn't entirely in control of himself. But the others... She couldn't coddle him now, not if it was possible to save Saki and Iwao.

Jerking him up, face so close she could feel the heat of his burn and smell the smoke that clung to clothes, she snapped, "The others! Haya! Are they alive?" He blinked, once, sleepily, as if caught up in a nightmare and she slapped him, wincing as she did. "Hayabusa!"

"S-Sakura... Nothing I could do. They were already dead..." His hands came up to wrap around her arms, smearing soot into her skin.

Closing her eyes against the pain she felt at the loss of their lives, she turned her attention to the fire. It was impossible. Neither of them knew water jutsu and at the rate it was spreading, it was going to be too late to save anyone else. Hopelessness swept through her and her thoughts spiraled into one another as she scrambled for any way to reverse it.

Something worked loose inside her, pressing painfully, as if her mind were splitting in two. "Wake up!"

The scene melted away, and she found herself standing in a clearing, a few feet from the campsite. Each tent was intact, but the bodies of her teammates lay outside, as if strewn about carelessly by a child's hand. Shock slammed her heart into her throat as took a step forward, reaching out with her chakra to see if any of them were alive. A heartbeat, barely, by Haya's tent had her trying to clear the haze of the genjutsu from her mind.

It had felt so real... No. Shaking her head, she clenched her fists and put herself in the moment, away from the horror of a tragedy that hadn't even occurred.

Sensing no immediate danger, wondering why one of those bodies wasn't hers, she hurried to where Haya lay and knelt down. As she began to heal him, feeling the tears in his muscles, the bruises in his organs, begin to knit she hoped with everything she had that it wasn't too late.

Drawing a hand across the moisture on her forehead, she drew back after a time and sat down hard on her butt, trying to catch her breath. It had taken a strangely large amount of her chakra to repair him, making her believe his injuries had been far-reaching and beyond her detection. Though that was rarely the case since her years of experience mounted, she supposed it wasn't prudent to be arrogant. Not when two men lay dead beside her.

"Sakura?"

Pushing aside her black thoughts, she felt a brief surge of joy as Haya rolled over and smiled up at her. Helping him to sit up, she watched his face contort as he took in Iwao and Saki. Knowing he was a decent person, and sensing over the days spent with him that he was sensitive to others, she reached out and put her hand on his back.

"What... What happened?"

Counter-productive though it was, guilt gripped her. "I don't know..."

"Oh my god... The Hero Water? That's why they attacked us, isn't it?" He leaned forward, gripping her shoulders tightly. "Sakura, you still have it, right?"

"Haya!" She pushed him away from her. "You're hurting me." Rubbing her shoulders, her gaze narrowed in on his face, wariness having her ask, "Why does that matter? Saki and Iwao are dead."

Sighing, Haya dropped his chin and made circles in the dirt with his fingers, before raising his head, something ugly twisting through his expression. "Do you know how patient I've been over this last week? How hard it was to play such a simplistic fool?"

Sakura was up and on her feet, backing away. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't be stupid. I'm not interested in wasting anymore of my time." And before she could react, his hands shot out and she found herself caught and lifted, invisible strings cutting into her skin with the threat of drawing blood. "I'm not about to let you get anywhere near me with your impressive strength."

Mind working furiously, she bent and twisted, testing the binding.

"Don't try to break free. You can't. They're chakra ropes, and right now they're siphoning away what's left of yours."

He was right. She could feel herself growing slowly weaker, and knew she had to stall him somehow. There had to be a way out of this. It was just going to require her brain, not strength.

"Why did you do this?"

"Why do anything?" He approached, smoothing a finger down the side of her face, stopping at the pulse hammering away in her neck, before clenching her chin in his hand and forcing her face close to his. "Silly woman. Haven't you figured it out? You have the Hero Water."

Anger and fear warred within her for dominance. "You could've just taken it from me! You didn't have to kill them to get it! I would've let you have it."

"Yes... You're primary function is to preserve life. A waste of time, if you ask me." He stepped away from her, watched her hanging in the air impassively. "Where is it?"

"Tell me why you killed them first."

"Because I like you, I'll humor you."

This was what he called 'like'? Deceiving them all, making friends of them all, only to kill them? And all for what, some stupid water that promised to give an increase in chakra, but at the cost of your life?

"It was for fun."

Disbelief tore through her, and she choked out, "Fun? You ended the lives of two good men for fun?" The last ended on a near-shout, her voice wavering with the effort it took to hold back her disbelief.

"I wouldn't expect you to understand, not someone who values worthless lives. I had made up my mind to spare you by leaving you in the genjutsu while I found the Hero Water, you surprised me by breaking out of it. So... I suppose I'll have to kill you too." He looked behind him. "But first, the water."

"Why don't you just go get it out of my tent?"

"Nice try. You know I've already searched it, or we wouldn't be standing here having this stupid conversation. I'm assuming then, it's either on you, or you've hidden it. Don't make me search you..." The menace in his tone, the glitter of something dark and unpleasant in his eyes, chilled her.

As more and more of her chakra bled away, Sakura tried not to become frustrated. It was beginning to seem as hopeless as the fire in the genjutsu. How was she going to break the bonds if she couldn't use her hands? He seemed to be exerting hardly any effort to hold her in place and she couldn't see where the ropes were anchored, if they even were. This was where having teammates came in, why they were taught from the academy that going in alone was dangerous and almost always resulted in death.

"Sakura? I'm not going to wait here until dawn. Don't make me hurt you."

Closing her eyes to block him out, she worked to concentrate what was left of her chakra. If she could only... Movement pressed them in further, breaking skin, and she clenched her teeth at the resulting sting.

"Now look what you've done. I told you it's useless. You need a teammate to break those. Oh... Silly me. I killed them, didn't I?"

Fury at his words had her opening her eyes, and then helpless fear tumbling after as he walked to her again, taking the fabric of her shirt in his hand. There was a lazy ease in his stance, an obvious triumph in his face. And when unnaturally warm fingers slipped inside to press against the swell of her breast, she felt a flash of pain and then weightlessness, as she went tumbling to the ground.

Rolling into a crouch, hating the way her legs trembled beneath her, she damned the loss of the pouch holding all of her kunai.

"What in the hell...?" She watched Haya, or who she thought was Haya, step back and become guarded. His bewilderment told her they weren't alone, though she couldn't feel the imprint of another. What was more, it was obvious by his reaction that this hadn't been planned.

"I thought something like this would've been beneath you, Toumichi."

Toumichi jerked as if he'd been slapped, a strange, crazed expression twisting his features. Not understanding what was happening, Sakura kept her palm pressed to the ground for support, ignoring the blood seeping between her fingers and mixing with the disturbed soil. Whatever was left of her strength, she wasn't going to fall without fighting to keep standing.

"What are you waiting for? She obviously can't resist you, not after you've siphoned away most of her chakra."

The darkness seemed to dissolve, as if bowing to the will of the voice, and when he stepped out, dark hair, dark eyes, and an impossibly blank face, she felt a physical jolt and was unable to keep herself from losing her balance. Everything flooded back without warning; emotions, memories, Naruto's face... bandaged and promising "I'll bring him back, Sakura-chan. I promise."

Not again. There was no way she could get out alive now. So she did the only thing that she could think of; she reached into her shirt, pulled out the small vial of Hero Water, and drank it while Toumichi and Sasuke watched.