The Sharingan's Voice

Chapter 1: To Seal a Deal

This is obviously a work of FanFiction, I don't own the characters nor the universe.

The suspension had come completely unexpected. Sakura had been healing wounds, researching poisons and various other medication when she wasn't busy with saving lives and working overtime. As apprentice of the current leader of the city, the Godaime Hokage, Sakura had benefited from an excellent tutelage over the years. Her dedication to the job as a medicin ninja had seemed to pay off, everything had seemed just fine - until the day when she was given that "new assignment". Sakura knew pretty well what it actually was: An administrative suspension.

It had struck her by total surprise and left her confused. The mission scroll said to buy one slave of her choice and to get both of them situated in her home to live there from now onwards. Furthermore it clarified that the slave was there to support her, not to be freed. And to top it off, it even forbid her to return to her hospital job for the time being. And that was essentially all it said.

The fact that the so called assignment had been personally ordered and signed by the Hokage herself, didn't much help her to keep contenance. Suspension. It more felt like being expelled. Sakura knew she hadn't done anything wrong, so it was no use to go for that question. It rather rose her curiosity what else her tutor might have in mind. She was also a bit disappointed to not have received further background information, about that purchase of a slave and moreover as to WHY. But she trusted her female leader and thus she took it just like any other mission.

And so she found herself on a horse a few days later, heading towards the next city featuring a slave house. The road was framed by trees and quite abandoned for the time being, the area rather rural. The monotonous and unspectacular landscape eased her thoughts to wander, which ended up in her medical mind taking over. She started wondering if the selection in the slave house would allow her to pick a healthy human body to study for once instead of the disease ridden ones she was used to. She could also pick an interesting case of some rare kind of sickness and study that up closely. After her first doubts about that task, a smirk passed her face finally. She wondered if Tsunade had thought this through. Sakura might be suspended from the hospital, but not from her profession. She perfectly knew how she'd pass her newly gained freetime.

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The annoying sound of a guard's rod pulled along the bars was reaching his ears just as the vibrations reached his back directly through the metal. He'd been leaning against the stanchions in his usual corner. Were they already handing out meals or just patrolling the hallway? They'd probably skip him again, so why bothering about it? As if he'd care for their disgusting slob.

There wasn't much of light carried to the end of the corridor where his cell was situated. He was used to the darkness, adjusted to the hard ground and cold steel bars that would dig into his body whenever he leaned against them. The lack of direct neighbors didn't bother him, as he wasn't of the social kind anyway and with his reputation, the guards rather wouldn't risk it. Still, a few doors down the hallway he could hear the other inmates conversing. There were no walls to hold back the noise and whatever wasn't drowned out by the suckish ventilation system, carried over through the air. His hearing was good, had even improved since he'd been captured, but he preferred still the somewhat quiet of the night. There was nothing of interest in the conversations he could listen to: They usually were all pretty much something along the lines of what he'd already heard and he couldn't care less.

It was one day like any other. Down in this shit hole time lost its meaning. Wandering thoughts, that was all he had and was nowadays. Like other detainees having the same conversations repeated, his mind walked the same frayed lines of thought. He was trapped in his memories. Like a tiger pacing circles in a cage, they returned him to the same shitty thoughts like an echo would. The overlapping sound of his thoughts would play games with him, send him chasing for figments of thought that had graced him without staying, leading back to more solid concepts after having been utterly lost. And so his thoughts returned to the same shitty things, over and over again... only that he had never voiced them.