Sakura's Fall to Middle Earth

Chapter. Five

Sakura sat by the fire and looked over the map of Middle Earth, seeing how big of an expanse of traveling they were going to be doing just to get to the mines of Moria. Sakura almost sighed in exasperation, but didn't want to disturb anyone of her friends that had fallen asleep, she was on watch duty for the last quarter of the night before she had to awaken everyone and be on the move again. They had been walking for days, hardly without any rest, for Saruman's spies were always watching and following.

Gandalf had early stated that they should come to resting place near the end of Caradhras. Where the trees were tall and cold was less likely to chill them to the bone. She looked at the gooseflesh on her arms and scoffed. It was cold as hell out there and she had half the mind to kick a rock at the old wizards head just for saying that the "chill will not hit us here". "Not hit us, my ass." She grumbled to herself out loud.

She saw Pippin shuffle in his sleep, she envied him, really. He was able to sleep through anything, while she hadn't slept for days, only staying on her feet by over consumption of soldier pills... Which, regrettably, she was running out of. She grabbed for her bag and pulled out some of her herbs and a little notebook she always kept with her and wrote some things down with a tiny pencil. There was many medicines she was able to make with all that nature had to give. Middle Earth was booming with medicinal herbs that she didn't know existed. Of course, they were just a series of balms that she had made during the nights where she was especially restless.

There was a loud snore from Gimli, she could bet the whole forest could hear how loud he was snoring. Even cute, quiet Frodo was snoring. Of course, not as loudly as Gimli, but a snore was a snore nonetheless. The only one that hardly looked to be asleep was Gandalf, who slept with his eyes open... That took her a little while to get accustomed too. It was weird, and not natural, but nothing in her life was normal, which she slowly had to come to terms with.

She bowed her head with a burst of air, life was not going according to plan. She scribbled something on her notepad and let her mind wander away for a little bit, but keeping her senses alert just in case something dangerous came to disturb their makeshift camp.

She sometimes thought back on Sam's question, of whether she missed home. Of course she did. But as the weeks passed, and no more dreams of returning home came, her view of returning ceased to come up in her mind, to where she almost believed that she wasn't as homesick as she would have expected to be. It was peculiar, really. She got the sense of how Sasuke must have felt when he left the village. Of course, he left on purpose, and she practically fell out of the sky. As Frodo liked to recall it. But, either way, being out, journeying the wide world... It felt good. Not to be misunderstood, she missed her home and friends just as much as Naruto would miss his daily meals of ramen every hour.

With the threat of war behind her and nothing much to do in Konoha anymore but continue to help the building committee repair a new and improved version of Konoha, Sakura rather enjoyed the change of scenery. She was much more worried about the people she had grown close to, now, in this world. Frodo and the other hobbits had become her close friends. She'd grown to love and respect them, and if she had a chance to help all she could, then by hell or high water she was going to do it!

She stared at the fire for a long moment when she heard it. The sound of breathing, no more than a few yards away. If she were anyone else, say someone who wasn't paying attention, she would have missed it. She bet if Legolas had been awake and alert, he would have heard it too. But she digressed. The sound of breathing was low, and throaty. She heard the footsteps grow closer, a twig snapped, a bush moved. These were the things she was hearing as she reached for her kunai at her leg, her back was towards the intruder, who seemed to think she was of no threat, or surely he would have more stealth.

"The thieves." It hissed.

The hair on the back of her neck stood as the words were whispered into her ears. She swiftly turned, swinging the kunai in the voice's general direction, spinning around in her place, only to hit air. She was breathing hard and her chest was pounding a mile a minute. Her eyes searched everywhere they could see to find the thing that had come so close to her. How did she not notice it?

"The filthy little thieves!"

The voice was behind her again, so she turned, struggling to her feet she stumbled around as she tried to search for the intruder. She was telling herself to focus, for the dark was hiding a lot more things that she would have noticed in the day. She stumbled back against the ledge of the hill they were atop of, thinking that would keep her safe from any attacks from behind. What she didn't consider was the full on frontal attack of a creature launching itself at her in mid-air.

She screamed, stabbing the creature in the arm, making him scream in anger and pain, as his long fingers wrapped around her neck just as they started to fall backwards into the depths of darkness at the end of the hill.

Her scream had alerted the others and they had risen just in time to see Sakura and an unknown being fall before their very eyes.

"Sakura!" Frodo shouted in fear, running to the ledge, seeing nothing but darkness.

Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas rose with their weapons at the ready, calling for the hobbits to stay with Gandalf as they ran down the hill in search for Sakura.

Pippin looked at Gandalf fearfully. "What was that?"

Gandalf pursed his lips and leaned against his staff, his blue eyes meeting Frodo's terrified ones. "That was the creature, Gollum."

Frodo's eyes widened. "Gollum?!"

The three hobbits were lost, not knowing who the creature was.

Gandalf nodded. "He's been following us for three days."

…

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Sakura fell with a thump on the hard ground, the wind knocked out of her as she had landed on her back. She gasped for air as the creature still held tight to her windpipe. She grit her teeth and slammed her fist multiple times into his head, her other hand surging chakra to her hand that was clasped to his wrist, she heard the snap and then the creature was off with a terrifying screech. She blinked the spots out of her eyes from lack of oxygen and took mouthfuls of air as she scurried back against a tree as the howls of pain from the creature grew louder as he held on to his wrist from when she broke it.

She could do nothing but watch, she had never seen anyone quite like him before, and from where she was from that was saying something. He was quite pathetic really, in a pitiable kind of way. She felt bad for him, even though he attacked her and tried to strangle her. "Who are you!" She said sternly, standing over the creature and holding a chakra scalpel to his throat, her eyes glowed dangerously as she heard Aragorn and the others call out her name. She turned at the sound of their voices for a split second, and when she turned back, the creature was gone.

Aragorn suddenly broke through the brush and came up to her in a jog, he grasped her shoulders and looked her over. "Are you alright?"

Legolas came up soon after and fixed his eyes on the bruising on her neck, his hand reached and touched the tender area and Sakura held his gaze a bit longer than was necessary before she finally looked away at the sound of Gimli who struggled through the bushes and wound up falling a minute later. She held in a laugh and without having to think about it reached up and healed the bruises on her neck.

"I'm fine, no worries." She reassured them, wiping at her brow to check for any blood from when she hit her head. "What was that?" She asked the three, looking around to see if she could sense anything close by, though it was useless, without any chakra, besides her's, her senses were lessened greatly.

"I believe we must ask Gandalf, maybe he would know. I hadn't gotten a good look at the creature." Legolas said, even with his heightened eyesight the darkness still shrouded the area.

Aragorn took Sakura's arm, still worried about the young girl, and led her back up the hill. With, of course, protests from Sakura that she was fine and he didn't need to fret.

She limped back up to camp with Legolas and Aragorn still crowding her; she felt it best to just let them be. As soon as she was in sight of the campfire, four little hobbits surrounded her legs and was asking her many questions. "Sakura, are you alright?" Frodo said over them, looking more worried than the rest if that were even possible.

Sakura smiled and nodded, tapping her temple. "Yes, I'm fine. Nothing can daunt me, well, except this bump on my head, but it'll heal in no time."

"Why don't you just use your magic?" Pippin piped in.

Sakura shrugged. "I need to conserve my energy." She said, putting it more simply.

Gandalf walked up to Sakura and placed a hand on top of her head. "That was quite a tumble you took, my dear girl. Maybe you should sit down for a while, Boromir has taken up watch, just up that ridge, and we decided to keep the fire put out, so we don't attract anymore attention than necessary. The moon will have to be our guide for the night." He said wisely, leading the group back to the middle of the camp.

"Who was that creature that attacked Sakura?" Legolas asked, coming to stand by the rosette, placing his arm around her shoulders as she worked to sitting down, feeling dizzy all of a sudden. She thanked him quietly and used him as leverage to getting back to the ground.

Gandalf sat down with his staff on a boulder. "I'm afraid that was the creature we all feared would find us."

Sakura blinked, not knowing what the older man was talking about.

"It was Gollum, then." Aragorn stated, crossing his arms over his chest. "Just as I had suspected before. He had been trailing us."

"Yes, Aragorn. Though, I do not know if he is a spy of Saruman or not, regardless we should stay on our guard more than ever. Saruman has eyes everywhere." Gandalf said solemnly.

"Why don't we kill the beast and be done with it?" Gimli said in exasperation.

Sakura looked away. "I tried... He's too pathetic to kill. If you saw him, you'd understand what I mean."

"Yes," Gandalf agreed with a nod. "he is quite pitiable indeed. I fear his story in all of this is not over, though I do not know where he begins. For now, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. We have quite a travel ahead of us, so why don't we all try to get some sleep, hm?" He said, removing his hat, and placing it next to him as he leaned back and started to relax.

When everyone was settled and things all became quiet again, Sakura stayed up and let her mind wonder, for the first time in a while she was feeling drowsy, and she couldn't understand what brought on the sudden bought of sleepiness, but before she could even think more on it, her eyes began to close and things suddenly became dark.

"Sakura, hey."

Sakura groaned and opened her eyes blearily as she met with dark irises. "Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke nodded and moved her hair out of her face. "Are you okay? You've been asleep for a long time, I knocked about an hour ago and you never got up. So, I let myself in."

She looked around as she sat up, still in a daze, things not really registering as she looked at the calendar, realizing it was the next day from when she was last in Konoha. "What am I doing here?" She asked herself in confusion, wincing when she rubbed her head.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed as he saw the bruise on her temple. "You live here. Did you hit your head?" He touched the tender area, making Sakura squirm in discomfort.

"Mou, that hurts." She said, pushing his hand away. "Was there something you needed?"

"What," Sasuke said, moving in close until he was almost nose to nose with Sakura. "I can't come visit you?"

The rosette pushed his face away playfully. "Nice try, what really brought you here?" She stretched and waited for Sasuke's answer.

Sasuke sighed and stood up from her bed. "Naruto made me come check on you, I told him I'd probably be the last person you'd want to see, but he wouldn't listen to me." He shrugged and looked away.

Sakura sighed and placed her hands on her lap. "You know I don't mind seeing you, it's just..."

"Awkward." Sasuke finished.

She nodded and tried to fix her hair, which she just realized was up in odd angles. "Yeah." She said lamely.

Sasuke nodded, sitting down on the bed. "You know they don't have to be, we were friends way before we even decided to be in a relationship... We just weren't ready."

Sakura bit her lip and nodded once again. "I know." She really didn't want to have this conversation right now. Not while her mind was on other things. More like Middle Earth and why she kept coming back and forth between worlds, or wherever she came from, during her sleep. Talking with Sasuke about their break up was one thing that was not on her mind and she didn't want him to think she didn't care, but really, there were more pressing matters at hand. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

Sasuke looked up and nodded.

"Do you believe in other dimensions?"

Sasuke blinked in surprise. "You mean, like other worlds?"

Sakura blushed, realizing what her question sounded like.

Sasuke scratched his chin. "I guess, Madara was known for crossing through time and space, I believe there are jutsu that also send you off to other dimensions, like somewhat of the Mangekyou, that's a whole other dimension in itself, but you'd have to meet someone pretty powerful to do something like that. Why do you ask?"

Sakura shook her head and leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, more confused than ever. "Nothing, I was just curious. And you're right, things don't have to be awkward between us, we're friends first and foremost!"

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Later that day, Sakura sneaked into the Hokage's personal library, knowing that she would get in trouble if she were caught snooping around. But she had some things she needed to figure out, and she doubted she'd find it anywhere else but in this very place. It was risky, and without the permission from the Hokage she could possibly lose her medic license, but it was a risk she needed to take.

She needed to figure out what was going on in her life. How was she able to go from one place to another? And if she was actually going to different dimensions, or if she was just having a dream? If that were the case, then which one was the dream? Time seemed to move a lot faster in Middle Earth, things went on without her, but in Konoha, everything stops when she's away, nothing happens. So is everything in Middle Earth. . . just a dream?

She shook her head to rid herself of those thoughts, she went through too much for everything to be just a dream, she didn't believe that for a second. She needed to figure things out, fast. Especially before she went to sleep again, things started to change when she fell asleep. Which didn't make sense, being she fell asleep all those months Gandalf left her in the care of Hobbiton. She never remembered going back to Konoha.

She groaned and rubbed her head wincing when she felt her bump. She removed her hand and stared at it in wonder. Middle Earth couldn't be a dream, how could it if her injuries made it through one place to the other?

"Strange..." She said to herself in thought, reaching for another book at the top of the shelf.

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It was a few hours later when Sakura finally left the library, giving up on any hopes of ever figuring out what had been going on in her life. She didn't know if she'd be back in Middle Earth the next time she fell asleep, or if everything was all just a dream. She wished she had all the answers, and that life would make it easy for her.

With nothing else to do, Sakura walked back to her apartment, without any ideas or answers to all her many questions. The only good thing that happened today was that she got to see Sasuke after so long of him being off on missions.

She hoped Frodo and the others were all okay. That was all that mattered right now, she hoped nothing bad was happening to them while she was gone. She knew they could very well take care of things on their own, but she was much more comfortable when she was with them. Her main concern was Frodo, and how he was handling things, she noticed how different he's been. Like he was slowly changing, she didn't know what sort of powers the ring had, but she knew they had to be strong with they way Frodo had been acting as of late.

She wanted to try and fall asleep and see what would happen. She was even going to be prepared, she was quickly running out of soldier pills, so she was going to slip a few in her pocket and see if they would wind up in Middle Earth. If a bruise could pass through, why not soldier pills, and why not be prepared for whatever was going to happen? She was beginning to think that she could be in two places at once, but she knew that had to be a crazy idea.