Hunting the Shadows 1: SasuSaku Fanfic

Chapter 8

He looked just the same as if he'd walked right out of my textbook. As if I could run my finger over his face and it would feel like the flat surface of a piece of paper.

The planes of his face danced with the shadows of the flickering flames. His eyes hard and unwavering as he stared into my own.

My knees shook and I slid down on them to the floor. Hands shaking, I brought them up to my mouth, to cover my lips lightly.

"How..." I whispered, barely able to get the sound to come out.

He remained standing, staring down at me. His face an unreadable mask.

This couldn't be real. This wasn't possible.

No.

"What are you doing here?" his voice came out fast, breathy. He appeared calm, though his eyes had changed from a blankness to comprehension.

He knew who I was. He'd met me before. Many years ago, when I was still a young girl.

He took a step towards me, causing my eyes to focus on his dark boots. They stayed glued there, unable to look back into his eyes.

"Sakura," his voice was quiet, smooth through the air. "What are you doing here?" he repeated his question.

There was no way the voice from my memories was Sasuke Uchiha.

His hand came into view, and I flinched away from it, almost completely falling backwards, but I was able to dig my heel harshly into the ground to stop it from happening.

I gritted my teeth together, refusing to speak.

His hands gripped my shoulders, and I wanted to shove out of his grasp, but he didn't let me do so.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

The sadness in his voice had me look up, made me need to see his expression.

I know, I wanted to say, but still couldn't find my voice.

He kept his grip on me and brought us back up to a standing position. His eyes held mind, as dark as the forest in my dream was, pulling me in and holding me there.

"Help me understand," he pleaded, his eyebrows knit together.

And I saw them then, in the parting of his lips laced through his words, were fangs.

It was easy for me to put the impossibility of him being alive to the back of my mind when I wasn't really looking at him. But now, it was staring at me straight in the face. As if he recognized what my gaze was focusing on, the fangs in his mouth retracted, replaced by a normal set of teeth, and then he closed his mouth in a grim line.

Sasuke Uchiha really was a vampire.

How did the village get that wrong? Maybe they knew all along, and gave us a different history. I didn't want to think on the components of that.

"I..." What could I say? Years I'd been wondering as to how it would feel if I were to ever know the owner of the voice, and now that I was at that point I had no idea what to do with the information given to me.

"You found her!" Suigetsu came rushing into the hall behind Sasuke. He was relieved at the sight of us, but then when he looked at Sasuke's expression, he stopped completely.

I was glad for not being able to see it as he'd turned away from me, it must have been truly terrifying based on the way Suigetsu looked like he wanted to run away and keep on running.

"What have you done?" Sasuke's voice came out even with an undercurrent of cruelty. His arms brought me in closer to his side, though I wasn't sure if he knew he was even doing it.