All that was stated in Chp. One remains true in Chp. Two

Tenten screamed with a voice gone hoarse as the white hot metal touched the mangled flesh of her inner thigh. Her whole body was a mass of burning agony; she had lost two fingers that, she suspected, had been sent back to Konoha in separate boxes.

A hand grabbed her hair, pulling her head back as the poker was removed. "You could end this at any time, you know," the one holding her hair said persuasively, "Just answer a few questions about your village and its forces and all this pain will end."

Tenten stared at his blurred face through one eye nearly blind with tears, the other gummed closed with blood from when they were carving out her eyebrow. She knew he'd love to have the excuse to hurt her more. This frightened her.

But she was more frightened by how badly she wanted to answer whatever they asked of her. Anything, anything to make it stop. It was through force of will alone that she kept the words caged inside of her as another round of questioning began.

Eventually they left her and she sagged against the chains, barely able to breathe. There was no longer hope of rescue, not after this long, in this place, and that knowledge was suddenly, horribly, freeing.

She worked her tongue inside her bloody mouth, searching for the small pill tucked between cheek and jaw. Idiots hadn't thought to search her mouth, she thought with grim satisfaction as she bit down on the pill until the plastic casing popped and the bitter, burning poison was released. Wouldn't take long now.

She really hoped Lee and Gai-sensei didn't cry too much.

7) ----A jilted love is not one of them.

"Sakura honey, we know you are upset, but please don't do anything drastic!" Haruno-san called through the door to her daughter's bedroom.

"Drastic?! He's just getting married to someone else, why would I do anything I drastic /I ??" There was a clatter as something was knocked to the floor.

Haruno-san bit her lip and turned to her husband. "Oh, she's so heartbroken! I'm really worried."

Her husband frowned with concern and stepped around his wife to knock gently on the pink-painted door. "Sweetheart, why don't you unlock the door and let us in? I can fix my special cocoa for you."

There seemed to be pause inside the room, then something soft, presumably a pillow, went 'fuwhuumb' against the wall. "I'm fine! I just want to be alone!" Sakura's voice broke slightly. "Go away!"

Haruno-san gasped at the pain in her only child's voice and clutched onto her husband's arm.

"She has all those knives in there," she whispered fearfully. She really didn't know much about being a ninja?Äîshe'd only attended the academy for one year for the basic self-defense training?Äîbut surely it was a bad idea to let impressionable young girls freely handle such dangerous items. Why, she'd just read a book about teenage depression and cutting and oooh, it made her blood run cold.

"Sakura, you open this door right now!" her husband said in his too-be-obeyed voice.

"Please, just leave me along for a while!"

Haruno-san couldn't stand it and cried, "Baby, please, we love you! Don't hurt yourself!!"

Another pause and suddenly the door flung open, showing Sakura puffy eyed and surprised. "Don't b what /b ?!" she demanded in aggravated confusion.

Her parents didn't respond; her mother taking the chance to enfold her in a supportive, teary embrace while her father pushed past them to begin scouring the room for all of Sakura's ninja tools.

Sakura sighed, distracted from her distress over Sasuke's recent engagement. Why couldn't she have been born an orphan?

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