She wondered the first time she'd seen him how he'd gotten like that. Was it from birth? Maybe after birth by demon sealing, like Naruto? Was it was it a strange concealment jutsu? His skin and hair were so blue, his eyes so strange, his teeth like a shark's, his cheekbones accented by those gill-like markings. He was so strange… so odd looking. The exotic uniqueness that was like no one else defined him and made her wonder. Even when the Akatsuki captured her she wondered.

She was to be bait for Naruto and an unwilling nurse for them. She refused. Beatings didn't break her body permanently, verbal torture about Sasuke, Naruto, or Konoha didn't break her heart, and even a trip through Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan didn't break her mind. She was too strong spirited to be destroyed. When the evil men took to violating her body, she didn't break, not totally. In the end, it was his injuries, his fading life force, which broke her resistance.

She cried then, a thing she hadn't done in years, when she was dragged into the room with the wheezing blue male. Her healing chakra flowed into his gaping chest, trying to connect the gaps between skin, muscle, meat, and bone. She worked herself into exhaustion, passed out with her tear-streaked cheek to his bloody skin. She hadn't even noticed the other Akatsuki in the room.

Seeing her true feelings had been enough to connect the dots, why the blue man seemed upset when she was sad, why he glared hatefully at the ones who hit her, why the killing look came to his eyes around the ones who raped her. Pitiful that they'd had to do something as stupid as to fall in love with each other. Sakura and Kisame never woke.