Sakura found a chance to talk to Hinata roughly a week later, when she learned that Hiashi and several other upper-ranked Hyuuga shinobi were on a mission in the Hidden Mist.

(The Mist village had allied itself with the Sound two years ago, and there was still some fighting going on over there—but since Orochimaru had been declared dead, it was now a case of the Leaf assassinating the strongest or most powerful members of the Mist in the shadows while negotiating peace in public.

A lot of things could be said about Tsunade, but she didn't take chances where the lives of Konoha were involved.)

Sakura had gone to the Hyuuga complex and asked Hinata to sell her some herbs. Hinata had given them over and waved off payment, since the Hyuuga garden typically furnished a portion of the medical supplies for the village, and then Sakura had asked for help in carrying them back.

Hinata had noticed that as soon as they were out of view of the walls, Sakura began leading her toward Lee's apartment rather than to the Hokage's tower, where she'd implied they were going. When she asked what had happened, Sakura had shook her head imperceptibly, murmured "Naruto," and continued walking. That was enough to keep Hinata following her.

Twenty minutes later, Hinata was sitting on Lee's couch, carefully reading the notes and scrolls that Sakura had given her. Sakura was arranging the herbs in packets and setting them on one of the shelves, studiously not looking at her.

"Sakura-chan," Hinata said trepidly, "this is . . . how dangerous is this?"

Sakura paused from where she was tucking oregano into a packet. "Very dangerous," she replied. "There's a chance we could all die, if the fox demon fights back hard enough."

Hinata set the notes back on the table and touched the scroll that contained an extensive drawing of the human chakra system.

"You've seen Naruto lately, right?" Sakura asked. "I can't see the chakra, but what it feels like . . . you've seen it?"

Hinata nodded.

Sakura set the packet of oregano leaves aside, saving it in case she had to make a poultice for snake venom later. "It's . . . if no one does anything, pretty soon it's going to become impossible. At least now it's just dangerous."

Hinata looked at her.

Sakura shifted to face the table and picked up a sheet of paper with a sketch of Naruto's seal. "I'm not going to mess with this," she said. "That would be insane. But--I know someone who is talented with seals. I have to talk to that person first and get their advice; but if they say they can do a secondary seal, then if you'll help me with the byakugan, I can do my part." She smiled. "And if we only do this with people who are precious to Naruto, I think he'll be able to keep the fox demon from fighting us too much."

"But . . . even if we manage . . . you'll have to use so much. . . ."

"I can do my part," Sakura repeated. "If you'll make sure I don't miss anything. We can't just leave this alone anymore, Hinata-chan."

Hinata pressed a thumb to her lip, staring at the chakra scroll and the drawing of the seal for several long, quiet minutes.

But at last she nodded.

——

Because Konoha was surrounded by forest, there wasn't much arable land—not enough to feed an entire village. In times of relative peace it could import necessary foodstuffs from other villages and countries, but in times of war, Konoha had developed the practice of using the bodies of enemies to fertilize extra land.

The Leaf was no longer technically at war with the Sound, but still, there had been a lot of dead ninjas left in the forest; and Naruto had made it too difficult to tell individuals apart to make even the most rudimentary of funerals spiritually practical.

Jiraiya had commented to Tsunade—on a public street, just a bit too loudly—that any seeds planted with Orochimaru would probably come up poisoned. That afternoon, a few of the clan heads put in a request that as much of the man's body as could be recognized be taken from the others and cremated. Tsunade signed the form and told them to take care of it without bothering her further.

Orochimaru's ashes disappeared from the crematorium that night. A small plot of upturned earth appeared in the public cemetery by the next morning, just off one of the secondary paths, barely noticeable to anyone not trained to constantly look for suspicious discrepancies.

When a legendary sannin of your village does something inexplicable, you look the other way. People who had reason to visit the cemetery walked over the spot if they remembered to, and it no one talked about it.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura had passed by one day, on their return from another (though more toned down) three-way sparring match, and saw a woman who was visiting. They watched her deviate from her path just enough to walk over the spot, before looping back around and heading toward her original destination.

Sasuke snorted. "What a waste of time."

"He tried to destroy the village," Sakura replied.

"Then they should find where he's really buried," Sasuke said. "Not get caught in an obvious diversion."

Sakura blinked at him, glanced at the cemetery, and then looked over at Naruto.

He scratched the back of his head. "Jiraiya said an enemy who's strong should be respected once they're dead."

Another derisive noise from Sasuke. Sakura didn't comment.

——

Near the shrine that had been set up to honor the third Hokage, there was a piece of land that had been dug up and so carefully replanted that it was impossible to see where the dirt had been disturbed.

Anko and Sasuke each found the place separately within a week, and then ignored its existence.

——

The day after Sasuke and Naruto spoke to Tsunade, Kakashi's food supplies had run low enough that the remaining individual items couldn't be combined to make a non-lethal meal. He and Sasuke ate lunch out with the intention of grocery shopping afterward.

Kakashi noticed her first, since Sasuke was sitting with his back to the entrance.

(It had taken a month before Sasuke would sit or stand anywhere in public without his back against a solid surface. And it wasn't until the teenager identified the majority of Orochimaru's current vessel's face that he finally started taking the less strategic positions.)

When Anko walked past the restaurant, Kakashi had no reason to distinguish her from the rest of the people on the street—except that two seconds after she passed by, she returned, came inside, and strode up to their table.

Anko ignored Kakashi's languid, curious look. "You," she said to Sasuke's back. "Come with me."

Sasuke finished his piece of chicken tempura without a change in facial expression. Then he set down enough money to pay for his half of the bill and, avoiding Kakashi's eyes, left with Anko.

The restaurant was noticeably quieter once they were gone.

Kakashi rummaged in his vest, pulled out his copy of Icha Icha Paradise volume two, and returned to his meal as if he had no problems with letting two volatile former students of an S-class criminal talk without supervision.

For a few minutes, the quiet remained. The noise level in the kitchen increased first, as someone was yelled at to wash the dishes faster before they ran out, and it spread outward until the building was filled with the normal amount of chatter. Kakashi ate at a slightly slower pace than usual, lingering over his last few bites until he was certain that the people were at least relatively comfortable with what they'd seen.

Then he combined his money with Sasuke's, paid, and did the grocery shopping by himself.

—

Sasuke didn't return until past nightfall, limping, bleeding, and grinning in a way that unsettled Kakashi.

The expression was gone when Sasuke looked up from removing his sandals, though. The teenager cleaned and wrapped his wounds in the bathroom, and then immediately fell asleep, skipping dinner. And avoiding speaking to him, which Kakashi didn't fail to notice.

He also noticed, when he spotted Anko in the center of the village the next morning, that she was just as badly bruised as Sasuke and was favoring her right arm.

Sasuke and Anko unofficially began their brief and intense—outsiders would have argued irrationally deadly—training together from that day.

Kakashi could have objected. If he mentioned how things looked to other people, there was even a chance of Sasuke listening to him. He didn't for two reasons: Anko was seemingly on equal footing against Sasuke, not above him, and neither Naruto nor Sakura appeared to have a problem with the arrangement. Sasuke was spending almost more time with them than with him since the night after his fight with Orochimaru, and Kakashi felt they had a better chance of noticing anything detrimental in his actions.

It didn't mean that they would tell him about it; but they would notice and try to take care of it, and then he would be able to spot the signs from Naruto if not from Sasuke or Sakura.

He didn't like the new secrecy between the three, but none of them were his students anymore, so there was only so far he could push.

—

A week and a half after her conversation with Hinata, Sakura still hadn't spoken to Sasuke. She could have told herself it was because she didn't have enough information on Naruto's chakra or about the seal itself to be certain of the details of her plan, and that was true; but it wasn't the real reason.

(Two days after Orochimaru's death had been confirmed, Sakura noticed that Sasuke was doing some of the small things that he had done when he left Konoha the last time. They were only sporadic, and occurred even more rarely once he started training with Anko—but she saw that he consistently avoided Kakashi's eyes, and she remembered that that had been the first sign.

Sakura put the conversation off because she was planning. She knew Sasuke was used to people trying to manipulate him, so she was going to have to be obvious, and she was going to have to be good.)

She had returned from a two-day mission the previous night, and walked over to the tower from her parent's house the next morning. There she learned that Tsunade had expected her to sleep in and had set up a meeting that ran into the time the woman usually set aside to teach. Sakura said she would wait and settled in the library.

Tsunade came in while she was reading through a scroll she'd taken from the locked case containing the fourth Hokage's work. Sakura tilted the parchment up a fraction when the woman sat down on the couch, and looked up from her place on the floor. "Hello, Tsunade-sensei!"

Tsunade nodded at the greeting, but there was an odd, distant look in her eyes. Sakura paused for a moment, then began thinking of a way to roll the paper up without the inside being made visible. She'd already pulled down several more neutral scrolls, and intended to take this one out buried in the middle of them.

"You know, Sarutobi-sensei was still our teacher when he was made third Hokage," Tsunade said.

Sakura blinked and looked over at her again. Tsunade was leaning back in the couch, arms draped over the top, and staring at the room with a slight smile.

"He brought us up to see the office the week after the initiation ceremonies," she continued. "Jiraiya was babbling about the view and hot springs when we noticed we'd lost Orochimaru somewhere."

Sakura listened.

"We found him here in the library, crying . . . he'd realized that with training and missions and life, it would take him at least half a decade to learn everything in here. And this place was smaller then, ha!" She smirked. "We didn't let him live that down for years."

After a few seconds of silence, the smirk faded. Tsunade pursed her lips. "It took longer, since he hadn't expected Sarutobi-sensei to pressure him into teaching a genin team. But I guess he finally managed it, because one day he left, and when Jiraiya came back from chasing him he nearly had his arm bitten off by one of those damn snakes."

Sakura took a breath, changed her mind, and started rolling up the scroll. "I thought he only trained Anko-san . . ?" she said instead.

"No," Tsunade corrected, "Anko's the only one of the three that survived his preliminary tests."

When Sakura looked up at her in surprise, Tsunade added: "He wouldn't have gotten away with that if Sarutobi-sensei hadn't been Hokage. He managed to talk Orochimaru's charge down to negligence, and Anko kept insisting that everything had been an accident and Orochimaru had tried to get to the other two boys as quickly as possible. Hell, she defended him more than he did himself." Tsunade lifted a hand to her neck, then paused and let it drop again.

It was a habit of hers that Sakura had noted a few times before—she guessed that Tsunade had worn her necklace for decades before giving it to Naruto and still hadn't fully adjusted to its absence.

"He didn't even serve the sentence in the end," Tsunade continued a little more quietly, staring past Sakura again. "Anko was in the top of her class, so she couldn't be left to sit for a year until the next graduation . . . but moving her to another team would have thrown off the ratio. And she refused to learn from anyone but Orochimaru. So finally they decided to push his trial back until she'd learned more and there was a space open, and then time just passed by and nothing ever happened. . . . I don't know what he promised her, but it worked."

"Promised?"

"That was his way," Tsunade said flatly. "He found a person who had something he wanted, figured out what they desired most, and then promised to either give it to them or help them get it."

Sakura placed the rolled and tied scroll on the ground, and then picked up another one and checked its cords. "I thought . . . you said you didn't know how he managed to get people to follow him."

Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "When was that?"

"Those Soundnin spies who were captured—when the one who. . . ." Sakura trailed off before touching her mouth. "That one."

"Ah," Tsunade said, recalling the Soundnin who had used a tiny hidden blade to cut out her tongue and had tried to sever her right hand before the blood loss left her unconscious, while Tsunade had been preoccupied with trying to force information out of the second spy. "That time. . . ." She was silent for a moment, and then shrugged. "I was trying to make a point to you."

I knew that, Sakura thought. For almost three years, Tsunade and Jiraiya had been trying to make a point to her and Naruto.

But what they didn't seem to see themselves was that things weren't the same. Sasuke had returned after three years, not thirty, and he and Naruto had come back together, and Sasuke hadn't killed Kakashi, and she and Naruto had never left Konoha, and Lee was alive, and Sakura had never had a reason to be afraid of blood.

Things weren't the same; and Sakura and Naruto and Sasuke were all individually coming to the opinion that if Jiraiya and Tsunade wanted to make up for the mistakes of the past, they should have done it in their own time and leave team seven alone.

Sakura set the scroll she'd been holding on top of the fourth Hokage's. "I understand that," she replied. "And . . . and I understand what you're trying to prevent. But, Tsunade-sensei—we're different people." She looked up and gave the woman a smile. "I think we can turn out okay."

Tsunade scrutinized her for half a minute, before replying, "Good luck," and sounding like she meant it.

Sakura nodded. Then she pulled the pile of scrolls closer to herself, shifting them with the movement so that the fourth Hokage's was hidden at the bottom, and asked, "Can I take these home with me? I'll return them tomorrow or the next day."

"Sure," Tsunade said, "as long as you bring the others back as well."

Sakura didn't freeze at the implication. She just paused for a moment, before nodding, and didn't look at the woman's expression.

—

Sakura went to Lee's apartment afterward, though she knew that he wouldn't be home yet. She had to move the notes and papers immediately . . . but the problem was that none of them had enough privacy but Lee. Naruto had constant guards on his house and if he were found with the scrolls there would be an uproar, and Hinata lived in a house where there was no such thing as privacy, and Sasuke was living with Kakashi, and she had her parents.

This is not going to work, Sakura decided. What gave it away? Where was I careless?

She was unlocking the door when she noticed the drops of blood beside the frame. Sakura frowned at them, then turned and leaned over the railing, glancing along the street.

There was no one there, so she jumped onto the roof for a better vantage point.

In an alley on the opposite side of the building, someone was walking away, cradling their left arm. Sakura slid down the roof to conserve a little chakra, then jumped off before she hit the gutters. She used a neighboring wall as a spring and hit the ground halfway into the alley.

In front of her, Sasuke had turned around. The first thing Sakura noticed was that the cloth wrapped over his arm was very red. And very sodden, though he had it pulled against his stomach and cradled in a way to keep the dripping to a minimum.

Sakura pursed her lips, but she avoided yelling at or chiding Sasuke. At least, she did until he was in the apartment and she'd pulled away the cloth to find that his arm had been torn open to the bone. Then she yelled, before forcing him to take three painkillers and lie down on the couch.

"I think Anko-san is trying to kill you," Sakura mentioned, adjusting the towels under his arm so that no blood would stain the table.

"Yeah," Sasuke agreed, surprising her.

"She's mad that he taught me to summon the snakes and not her," he added with proud condescension.

Sakura didn't reply to that, and began using chakra to reconnect the deep muscle fibers to each other and to his ulna.

"And she's mad that Orochimaru's dead," he added, startling Sakura enough that she had to pull the chakra back. "And she's mad that she didn't get to kill him, and she's mad that I didn't kill him, and she's really fucking angry that I let an outsider do it."

Sakura began to worry she had messed up the painkillers' dosage somehow. "Okay," she said evenly, and went back to working on the muscles.

"He had no right . . ." Sasuke muttered under his breath. "What did he ever lose to him?"

Sakura blew a strand of hair away from her forehead. "If I didn't know you, Sasuke, I'd swear you're blind by choice."

He frowned at her, but didn't ask.

When enough of the deep muscles were reconnected, Sakura stopped using chakra. She rinsed out the rag and water bowl, and then fetched a needle, thread, and a match.

She measured out the length of the thread and sterilized the needle before making the first stitch. When it had been pulled through until the knot caught on his skin, Sakura asked, "Could you feel that?"

"No," Sasuke replied.

"Okay," she said. She began the second stitch before adding: "Did you know that Akatsuki is still after Naruto?"

Sasuke stiffened. Sakura tsked at him. "Don't do that, you'll mess these up."

She pulled the thread through again and went on to the third stitch. "That's the real reason Tsunade-sensei keeps him under anbu guard. We knew that they wanted him, but they've been waiting until this year to attack. Jiraiya-san's been spending most of his time collecting information."

She wiped away some of the blood still trickling from his arm with the cloth. "They were waiting for a while as we fought the Sound, since we were just weakening ourselves, but now there's no reason for them to hold back. And I think they've been spying at the Sand, too, but that's information that Tsunade-sensei's keeping away from me."

Sasuke's free hand was clenched into a partial fist. "Why are you telling me this?" he demanded in a low voice.

Sakura picked the needle up again and wondered if Sasuke would ever understand how much the next words cost her.

"He'll come to you, Sasuke," she said calmly, starting the fourth stitch. "I don't know if there's anyone else who trained under Orochimaru with a reason to help you besides Anko-san, but I do know that Kakashi-sensei is the only other person with the sharingan. If you stay, they can train you in those areas, and you'll be fighting him on your own ground when he comes."

Sasuke had tensed again. Sakura slapped his fingers. "Quit it. Do you want a worse scar?" she asked as she began another stitch.

Sasuke made a noise in the back of his throat, shifting his head and looking away from her at the ceiling.

The room was silent then, but when Sakura reached the tenth stitch she explained quietly, "You know I watched you all the time back then. You've been doing some of the same. . . . I tried to understand. I really did. But all I keep thinking is that you could be happy here, with us, if you really wanted to be."

She looked up at him. "You can get your reputation back—you're strong, eventually they'll have to respect you, even if they don't like you. In a few more years . . . even if things stay the way they are, the three of us. . . ."

Sasuke continued to stare at the ceiling. "If someone killed Lee—he didn't die on a mission, they just murdered him because they could—what would you do?"

"I'd kill that person."

"What if you couldn't? What if you lost the fight because you were too weak and they got away?"

"Then I'd get stronger. And I'd go looking for them. And after three or four years, I'd quit, because Lee wouldn't be happy if I squandered my life like that." Sakura paused, and then asked, "Do you really think this is what your family would want? For you to ruin your life to avenge them?"

Sasuke was quiet for almost half a minute.

"Yes," he said.

He had hesitated before answering, and that's what proved to her that he had thought about it and genuinely believed it was true.

Sakura's shoulders dropped slightly, and she gave him a sad, resigned look. I wish I'd known you when we were children, she thought. Was it really always like this, and Itachi just made it worse?

She picked up the rag and started cleaning his arm again. "It's your fight," Sakura conceded. "I told Naruto that, too. It doesn't mean he won't interfere when it happens, but he'll do it knowing you'll hate him and not caring if it means you're alive to do it. Just. . . . Just don't think you're the only one who hates Itachi."

Sasuke snorted. Sakura rubbed his arm a little harder than necessary. "He's the reason we lost you. Indirectly, but it's still his fault. Maybe Naruto and I don't hate him the same way you do, but we'll be glad to see him dead. The last two years hurt."

"I make it clear I didn't want anything to do with the Leaf," Sasuke replied, closing his eyes. "If you two chose to hang on to something useless, that's your weakness."

"It's more than choice," Sakura said, picking up the needle once more. "I don't think I'd choose this feeling."

Sasuke didn't reply, and she finished the last four stitches in silence.

When it was done, Sakura wiped his arm once more and stood up. "I'd like it if you stayed," she said, "but if you have to leave, give me a warning so I can drug Naruto. I don't want to see him hurt like that again. And I'd really appreciate it if you waited until you've done me a favor."

"What," Sasuke said flatly, not opening his eyes.

"I've found a way to return Naruto to normal," Sakura said, picking up the bowl and rag. "But I need you to handle the seals." She looked at Sasuke, who had shoved himself into a half-sitting position and was staring at her with wide eyes. "I'll show you the plans, after you get a couple hours of rest."

"How—?"

"I'll show you later," she repeated. "Get some rest—and stop putting pressure on that arm! Geez!"

—

She kept her word, and when Sasuke woke up an hour and forty-three minutes later, Sakura set a bowl of curry rice on the table and showed him the various scrolls and sketches. Sasuke ignored the food and began shifting through the papers, using only his right hand since Sakura had fixed the left one into a sling while he slept.

"This is dangerous," was the first thing he said when finished.

"I have eyes," Sakura replied with annoyance.

"The procedure could kill you."

"I know."

"The fox demon might kill both of us, and him too."

"I don't think so," Sakura said. "If it's you, and me, and Hinata-chan, I believe Naruto will do everything to stop it from hurting us."

"Her too?" Sasuke asked.

Sakura nodded. "I need her to use the byakugan to watch while I separate the two chakras, to make sure I don't accidentally miss a place. I'm going to be exhausted by the end, and leaving even one strand loose will let it start to take Naruto over quicker again."

Sasuke's lips thinned slightly.

Sakura pulled a sheet of paper with a rough sketch of a person on it out from beneath the scroll he'd been reading. "This is the drawing Hinata-chan did for me." She pointed to the note written in neat lines beside the torso. "Here's the bad part. Most of him—" she waved a hand over the paper "—the fox demon's chakra is just growing on top of his own. With really precise chakra use, I can separate it from his, and that will . . . I think that will force it down."

"You think?" Sasuke repeated.

"I'm trying to find more information," Sakura replied. "Because if it doesn't, this is going to be twice as hard. But there's only so much I can take out of the Hokage's library at a time."

"What's the problem here?" he asked, pointing at the stomach.

"Here . . . the fox demon's chakra isn't growing on top of Naruto's, it's bled into it." Sakura rested her chin on her hand. "It's like your curse seal—I don't think they can be separated there, not without hurting him badly. That's what I need you for. Can you put a seal around that area, to prevent the fox demon's chakra from leeching out again? Or at least to slow it down?"

Sasuke picked up the paper. Hinata had drawn thicker, darker lines in the places where there were two strands of chakra—they ran from Naruto's knees almost to his neck and down his forearms. It was all the way to his fingers in his right arm.

"Do you think it's safe to tamper with the Fourth's work?" he asked seriously.

"This isn't tampering, you'd be working in the area around it—but it can be done. Orochimaru did it."

Sasuke looked up.

"In the chuunin exam, when he hit Naruto in the stomach," Sakura explained. "Naruto told me that man put a seal over the original one, and Jiraiya-san took it off later. That's why he sucked at using chakra for the last half of the exam. So it can be done, at least by them . . . and I figured. . . ."

He nodded. "Most of them I learned from . . . get me something that will tell me more about what the fourth Hokage did, and I'll see what will work without counter-reacting."

Sakura leaned over and pulled her bag closer. She rummaged through it for a few seconds before pulling out the small scroll. "This is a description of the Eight Divination Sealing Style—the outer layer of the seal. I've looked everywhere I could, but this is all I can find. The rest of what he did . . . I can make guesses, but I don't know."

Sasuke stared at the scroll in her hand. "That. . . ."

"I'm the Hokage's student. I have access to the library."

"This isn't part of the library." He looked up at her. "If anyone found out. . . . You knew I was—and you still took it?"

"Irrational hope." Sakura smiled. "If you spend too much time around Naruto, it wears off."

Sasuke stared at her in silence for several long seconds, and finally took the scroll from her hand.

—

When Lee returned half an hour later, Sasuke was too engrossed in the scroll to bother with a verbal reply to his greeting. Sakura called out from the kitchen, and Lee joined her there.

"He's going to stay?" Lee asked her, very quietly.

Sakura nodded. "It's about Naruto," she replied in the same low tone, with a small shrug that conveyed the near-inevitability of the thing.

Lee nodded, and grinned. "That's good."

"Yeah," she agreed.

—

After Sasuke was gone, and before she left herself, Sakura rearranged the herbs on the shelf so that the packet of oregano was no longer separated and ready to be easily moved.

——

It annoyed Kakashi now that he had ignored Sakura in favor of Sasuke and Naruto when he had first started training them. It had seemed logical back then—one of the jobs of a genin team's teacher was to determine the ones that would rise above, and Sakura had been a very late bloomer—but it meant that he hadn't noticed her skill at concealing things until Tsunade told him to pay attention to any discrepancies she showed about Naruto.

Sakura was accidentally responsible for him discovering what else Sasuke was doing when he disappeared all day, every day, during those four weeks.

She had come to his apartment one morning, asking if Sasuke could spare a day to train with her and Naruto; and when Kakashi told her that he had already left to meet Anko, there had been just the faintest flicker of confusion in her expression before she huffed in annoyance and left.

He went to the area of the village around the tower, asked a few casual questions about the upcoming jounin announcements, and found out what Sakura had already known: Anko had left yesterday on a three-day mission.

Kakashi studied Sasuke when the teenager returned that night, and noted that he was pale and moving slowly, the same as the previous day. It was the same for the next day as well, but the one after that—when Anko had returned—Sasuke came back with a few signs of a physical fight.

The pale-or-bruised pattern continued, and at the beginning of the fourth week Kakashi mentioned it over dinner. "You shouldn't overwork your sharingan and your body at the same time."

Sasuke paused briefly, chopsticks in mouth, before finishing his bite of squash and resting them on the rim of his bowl. "I've been practicing the mangekyou," he replied. "I can use it to see through others' illusions, and I've figured out how its illusion works."

"We can test it tomorrow," Kakashi replied, still reading.

That might have been the beginning of a smile on Sasuke's face, but he took another bite of squash and started chewing before it was obvious.

—

Kakashi wondered if Sasuke had any idea how nerve-wracking it was to willingly stand still and wait for the teenager's eyes to change from black to red to the mangekyou sharingan.

If Sasuke was just reading Kakashi's body language, then he wouldn't. But if he remembered the side effects from years before, then he could probably guess.

Sasuke opened his eyes, Kakashi closed his normal one, and then the colors of the world inverted themselves.

This was much different from last time; instead of a perfectly detailed room from a traditional house and a double dozen Itachi clones with katanas, there was one of Sasuke and an indistinct mass around them.

"It's not good enough," Sasuke said, folding his arms and glaring at what was probably a wall. "Everything is malleable, but shaping it is hard. I did a better job when just practicing by myself, but it's useless if I can't effectively force it on someone else." He pressed a hand against the wall, leaving a print in the material.

"Hm," Kakashi said. He did the same, but the wall remained firm. "It's more real for me," he said, and Sasuke looked over. "Cruder than the Tsukiyomi, but effective."

"Yes," Sasuke asked, looking away again. "This is the Susano. It's a lower level illusion."

Kakashi frowned beneath his mask, and wondered just how much Itachi had told Sasuke about the mangekyou.

The world returned to its normal colors soon after. Sasuke surprised Kakashi by thanking him for the help, and the man assumed that Sasuke still remembered.

By the time they returned to the apartment, Sasuke was moving slower than he had the other times he'd come back. He fell asleep before lunch, slept until evening, took double the recommended dose of Kakashi's headache pills, and fell asleep again in a few hours. Kakashi took note.

He also noted the small illusion Sasuke had used to hide the fact that his eyes had remained in the sharingan for an hour after using the mangekyou.

——

The only reason Kakashi put that much trust in Sasuke was because of events several days previous.

Sakura was returning from the administration quarter of the village, with a new assignment for the day after tomorrow and another scroll of the fourth Hokage's hidden in her bag, when she met Sasuke. He was officially out to buy dinner for when Kakashi returned from a meeting since they were low on food again, and secretly testing how many restrictions on his freedom were still standing by going out alone. Sakura made a comment that informed Sasuke what she was carrying, and he decided there was enough time to stop at Lee's and look over it before heading back to the apartment.

If he had stopped at a different store rather than the first one on route to Lee's, or if he had just waited until a time when he wasn't with Sakura, nothing would have gone wrong. Mihara didn't personally hate him—just her and Naruto.

"I don't get what's so great about it," Sasuke told her. "I read it, and it was sub-par. Jiraiya's sense of humor is terrible."

"You read it?" Sakura repeated, flabbergasted.

"A few weeks ago. Kakashi-sensei left it out, and there was nothing better to do," Sasuke said as he placed two packages of yakisoba noodles on the counter. Sakura smothered a giggle.

The teenager behind the counter pulled the packages off the counter and shoved the money back at him. "We don't serve traitors or freaks here," he snapped. "Go away."

Sasuke was startled and gave him a cold, assessing look to hide it.

Sakura leaned on the top of the case next to the counter and smiled. "I don't think a family that's turned out nothing but genin for five generations should be talking about 'freaks,' Mihara."

Mihara sneered at her. "I don't think someone whose family didn't even enter the Academy for two generations should be so insulting, Haruno. Especially not when the only reason you went in is because you were following Ino-san."

Sakura shoved away from the counter. "You—"

Sasuke nudged her foot with his and pushed the money back over the counter. "Ring up my purchase and we'll leave."

Mihara shoved it back at him, harder, and one of the coins rolled off the counter and onto the outside sidewalk nearby. "We don't want your business, traitor."

"I thought you could use all the customers you could get," Sakura commented, hands on hips, "since you had to skip meals just to pay your yearly fees."

Sasuke decided it would be wisest to leave and picked up the coins that were still on the counter.

"Listen, you self-righteous bitch—"

There was a loud bang on the metal awning, as someone used it sloppily for a springboard. That wouldn't have attracted much notice, except that half a moment later Naruto hit the ground in a crouch and shifted around to glare inside the building. Mihara froze.

"What the hell did you say to Sakura-chan?" he growled.

Most people would have stood up before speaking. Naruto was still crouching.

Sasuke heard Sakura curse under her breath, and closed his eyes. Then he opened them enough to see, but lowered enough that the sharingan wasn't obvious.

"It's nothing, Naruto," Sakura said, taking a step towards him. Sasuke nudged her foot again, this time pushing her out of his line of movement. She shifted accordingly.

"Nothing?" Naruto repeated, barely glancing at her before looking back to Mihara. "Then why's he so scared?"

"Naruto," Sakura said more firmly. "It's not a big deal, okay? It was just a little argument."

"I told you not to talk to her anymore," Naruto said, ignoring her and focusing on the teenager who had taken several steps back. He shifted onto the balls of his feet.

"I didn't do anything to her!"

There's enough room, Sasuke decided. He took a step to the left to get further clearance, and said boredly, "Sakura can fight people herself if she wants to, idiot. She didn't bother because fighting weaker people makes you look weak." He paused, and when Naruto looked over at him, smirked. "But in that case, you don't have to worry."

Mihara moved further back. Naruto surged onto his feet. "Hey! Dammit, take that ba—!"

Sasuke moved forward, aiming for the place Naruto's shoulder was going to be.

He grabbed hold and flipped himself over the blond, tucking in his legs to avoid hitting the top of the store's entrance and yanking Naruto's forehead protector off with his free hand. He winced when a few of the stitches in his arm ripped.

"Ow!" Naruto held the side of his head where Sasuke had inadvertently pulled out some of his hair. Then he started and turned around. "HEY!"

Sasuke had turned as well after landing, and dangled the forehead protector from one finger with another smirk. "Pathetic, dead last."

"Sasuke!" Naruto started to grab at the material, but Sasuke leapt onto the awning and took off across the roofs.

"Bastard! Get back—Sasuke!" Naruto tore after him.

The street was relatively quiet for a moment after they were gone, as a lot of people had gravitated towards buildings and weapons when Naruto arrived.

Sakura closed her eyes for a few seconds and let out her breath.

Then she turned around, pulled out her purse, and said, "Get me three more of those, and ring them up."

Mihara started. "Hey!" he sneered, though his voice was still shaky, "don't just think—"

"Matsuo!" a man further back in the store yelled. "Just do it."

". . . Yes, sir," he mumbled, setting the yakisoba back on the counter and moving to get the rest.

When he rang up the total, Sakura put the one coin of Sasuke's from the sidewalk back on the counter and added her own.

"You're a hundred years ahead of yourself if you thought you could replace him," she told Mihara with a cold smile. Then she took the grocery sack and left.

—

Sakura could feel Sasuke and Naruto getting closer when she was halfway up the stairs of Lee's apartment building. It was impossible to miss the fox demon's chakra even if Naruto was only using a tiny bit of it, and Sasuke's chakra had the cold, slick feel that it got only when he was using his curse seal.

She was unlocking the door when Sasuke slid down the roof and hit the hallway. Sakura noticed that the curse seal was only slightly outside the secondary one.

He's gotten better control, she realized, right before Naruto skidded down the roof.

Sasuke ducked, and Naruto landed on the railing backwards. He grabbed it with his hands and managed to stabilize himself into a perch.

"Give it back! I'll break your fucking hand if you don't!"

"That's getting old, dumbass," Sasuke replied, straightening.

Sakura turned around. "Naruto."

He recognized her tone.

Naruto was already jumping back when Sakura's fist connected with his jaw. Luckily, Lee's apartment building was only two stories tall.

He wasn't kidding about her being stronger, Sasuke thought, right after, What the hell kind of punch was that?

"IDIOT!" Sakura yelled, leaning over the railing. "You can't pull that kind of crap in public! Threatening people won't fix anything!"

"Neither does picking fights with them," Sasuke said, though from a safer distance.

Sakura clenched her jaw. ". . . You owe me three ryo," she replied, holding the sack out.

Sasuke took it, giving her an expectant look. Sakura ignored him and returned to unlocking the door, with much more violence this time.

Below, Naruto had gotten onto his feet and was staggering toward the stairs. "Sakura-chaaaaaaaan!"

"Don't whine to me!" she yelled back, shoving the door open.

Sasuke opted to stay outside until Naruto reached him.

"It's all the hag's fault," the blond muttered, rubbing his jaw. "Sakura-chan didn't used to be so mean," he called into the doorway.

"Shut up!" came the reply from the apartment. "It's your fault for showing up before we could leave! Stop moving so fast—you're gonna give the anbu stress heart attacks!"

Naruto snorted, but let her get away with the half-hearted retort.

"How did you get there that fast?" Sasuke asked. "We were barely talking for a minute."

". . . Sakura-chan smelled angry." Naruto kicked the doorframe. "I wasn't that far away; I figured out where she was and figured it was that bastard Mihara."

It was the part of the answer concerning smell that Sasuke had wanted to know. He nodded curtly. "Who the hell is that guy?"

"No one," Naruto replied. "Now give me my forehead protector back or I'll throw you off the balcony!"

Sasuke pulled it out of his pocket and shoved it at Naruto's chest. Naruto wrenched it from his hand and began tying it back on.

"Don't do that again! That's fighting dirty!"

"Don't let it get taken," Sasuke replied, walking inside.

"Asshole," Naruto replied, and Sasuke could picture the gesture the blond was making at his back.

—

Either he had misinterpreted Sakura's comment, or she had yet to inform Naruto about her plans, because she made no attempt to show Sasuke the scroll. Instead, she snipped away the stitches that hadn't ripped before healing his wound to just a scab. Then she informed Sasuke that she and Naruto were going to spar tomorrow, and he was coming with them.

". . . Fine," Sasuke agreed, because Anko would be busy that day, and because Sakura's expression was not to be argued with, and because Naruto was trying to subtly communicate with her via hand signals when he thought Sasuke couldn't see him.

She smiled. "We're going to meet by that huge tree to the north—the one with the scars from lightning? At ten."

"The one eight kilometers out?"

"Yeah," she said, and Sasuke nodded. While his head was dipped slightly, Sakura gave Naruto a look, and he gave up and decided to trust her judgment.

Sakura and Naruto decided to stay at the apartment until it was dark and they could attract less attention going home. Sasuke left a few minutes after Lee returned.

There were now two anbu members outside the apartment, he noticed—one was lounging on the roof and one was half-hidden by an awning across the street. Neither of them said anything when Sasuke left alone. He, for his part, didn't smile to himself. Outwardly.

—

Sasuke arrived at Kakashi's apartment an hour before the man returned from his meeting, and a few hours before dinner, but he put off his question until then anyway.

A lot of their conversations occurred during meals. The food gave Sasuke a prop equal to Kakashi's perpetual volumes of the Icha Icha series.

"Who's Mihara to Naruto and Sakura?"

Kakashi looked up. "Is this about this afternoon?"

Sasuke kept his expression blank. "What else would it be about?"

"Hm." Kakashi let his noodles drop back into his bowl. "For a while, Naruto was still allowed to go on missions with Sakura. Matsuo was placed in team seven after he graduated, to even it out."

Sasuke just looked at him, waiting for the rest, and Kakashi realized he was going to have to clarify. "Sakura and Naruto didn't take well to it. They felt like he was trying to replace you."

Sasuke gave him a disbelieving look. "That's it? That's what all—that's stupid. What, did they think he rigged the assigning process?"

Kakashi shrugged a shoulder. "Sakura and Naruto never handled being told to forget about you very well. They might have been friends if he'd been on any other team."

"The way they acted. . . ."

Kakashi swallowed another bite of noodles before replying. "It wasn't like that immediately. At first they just ignored him outside of training. But then Sakura took a month off to go through some specialized study with Tsunade-sama, and after she came back things disintegrated. By the end, she was always sniping at him and Matsuo wasn't watching either of their backs on missions."

". . . Why would Sakura act like that?" Sasuke asked.

"I don't know," Kakashi said. "Never did figure that one out."

There was a brief silence, and Sasuke bit off some of his noodles. "Is that why she isn't a chuunin yet, the lack of teamwork? Naruto made sense, but not her."

"Yes," Kakashi replied. "When Naruto stopped pulling his punches during training, I disbanded the team and had Matsuo moved to another group."

Sasuke had paused. "Disbanded?" he repeated.

"I won't teach people who abuse their teammates," Kakashi said, looking back down at his book. "Physically or mentally."

The chopsticks made a small click when Sasuke tightened his grip. He went back to eating in silence.

When he saw that the teenager was almost finished, Kakashi said off-handly, "You did a good job of getting Naruto out of that crowd."

"Orochimaru went on a lot of trips," Sasuke replied. "He would leave Kabuto in charge of everything, but since that guy didn't have a curse seal, the people who did wouldn't always listen to him. It was my responsibility to keep them in line." He scraped the last of his noodles together. "Naruto was easy in comparison; his reactions are too predictable."

"Ah," Kakashi said, carefully preventing the sound from revealing either his surprise at Sasuke willingly talking about the Sound village for the first time, or his mild approval at the analyzing, or the realization—which Kakashi had not yet determined an emotion for—that Sasuke had apparently had to leave Konoha entirely to gain any semblance of maturity.

But something leaked through, or Sasuke just interpreted correctly, because the teenager didn't even finish chewing his last bite before standing and taking his dishes to the sink.

"There was nothing impressive about it," Sasuke said as he began to rinse out his bowl. "I was Orochimaru's vessel. Disrespecting me was like disrespecting him."

"Ah," Kakashi said again, in a modified tone, and watched as Sasuke's shoulders tensed and then forcefully relaxed.

——

Sasuke had just finished dropping the breakfast dishes into the sink when Sakura and Naruto knocked on the door. At eight in the morning.

Sasuke gave them a look, but Sakura talked too fast and too cheerfully for him to get a question in before Naruto had shoved him out the door. Sasuke assumed that the plan had changed for some reason, and—after pushing Naruto away—went along.

They were only a few streets from Kakashi's apartment when Sakura said "Bye!" in an extremely bright voice and teleported somewhere too far to sense her chakra. Sasuke didn't have time to wonder Now what? because Naruto was already tearing off across the roofs.

By the time the anbu member trailing them managed to swear and reach for his radio, Sasuke was gone as well.

—

When he appeared at the base of the tree, Sakura called out from the branches.

"What—" he started to demand, but then he sensed Naruto coming—he's getting faster, Sasuke noted, this is insane—and less than two minutes later, Naruto was there. Sakura jumped down, still grinning.

Sasuke folded his arms and waited.

Sakura propped her hands on her hips, tilted her head, and said with the same excessive enthusiasm: "We're going to fight each other. For real." She pointed at Naruto. "You, stop pretending, we can trust him and you'll notice first when the anbu are about to find us, and you—" the finger was now at Sasuke "—you must have learned something at the Sound, so you better use it, or I—" and she reached into her pack and pulled out a pair of gloves "—am going to kick both your asses."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. Sakura smiled. A smirk slipped onto Naruto's face as well.

"You've been hanging around Naruto too long," he decided. "His boasting's worn off."

Sakura tilted her head in the opposite direction and began pulling on the gloves. The smile was still there, but it had changed while she was looking at him. "We'll see if it's boasting."

—

Once she'd gotten the gloves on, Naruto—who'd been down this path before—immediately got the hell out of range. Sasuke imitated him. In retaliation, Sakura spread a basic genjutsu over the nearby area.

Okay, Naruto went left, but Sasuke went—

Behind!

"Heh."

Sakura spun around, aiming a kick at his side. Sasuke caught it midway and threw her backwards.

His eyes were that strange form of the sharingan again, Sakura noted, as she flipped and landed. She focused her chakra to her soles of her feet and grabbed a handful of dirt.

The chakra let Sasuke see where she was going to be even before she pushed herself back off the ground, and he moved accordingly. As he kicked her feet out from under her, he moved to block what he expected to be a punch, and Sakura threw the dirt in his eyes.

Sasuke immediately shoved himself backwards, and the blow Sakura had aimed at his shoulder blade glanced off. She took advantage and darted away.

She heard Sasuke laugh, and glanced back to see him rubbing his eyes with a grin. Then Naruto's clones attacked the both of them.
-

Sasuke hadn't cancelled the illusion—she would have felt that, the way she'd felt Naruto do it—he'd seen through it. She hadn't expected that . . . but okay. Fine. Naruto had precise enough chakra control to avoid low level illusions, too.

She decided it was necessary to use something stronger.

Sakura had taken down the two clones after her, but Naruto had stopped using chakra a moment ago and she couldn't pinpoint his location. Sasuke had disappeared from view, but Sakura could feel him using a lot of chakra to the south-west.

. . . And then the south-east . . . and then. . . .

All right, Sakura thought a moment later, when the barrier went up. I didn't have to ask!

Naruto had locked on Sasuke's location and was heading there, so she followed suite.
-

Sakura had to avoid using chakra when fighting with or around Sasuke, and she made a note to start joining Lee on his morning runs, because her normal speed was not fast enough.

But then Sasuke copied all her taijutsu, too, and Sakura started mentally cursing bloodline geniuses and went after Naruto for a while.

She resorted to a high level genjutsu that Naruto didn't have the skill to cancel, one that tripled the amount of trees in the area until there was barely room to move between them and no way to see, and managed to catch the blond in that.

But before she could attack, the roots of the tree she was crouching behind spread and began to tangle around her feet.

Wha—Cancel! Sakura shoved herself away from the spot, clapping her hands into the necessary seal. Cancel!

The whole illusion disappeared. Naruto saw her moving to the right, but Sasuke was already coming out of the trees from the other side; so Naruto created a clone to tail her before sideswiping him.
-

Sakura perched in a nearby tree, alternately looking for where the clone was hidden and watching the two of them fight. He took over my illusion! That's—

. . . a forbidden jutsu. The user had to undermine the other person's chakra to apply it, and if it wasn't done carefully, both would suffer the backlash.

You better have expected me to know that, she thought at Sasuke, and began planning a way to keep him distracted long enough that she could fight Naruto hand-to-hand.

But it confirmed Sakura's theory. Sasuke hadn't used any new jutsus since returning to Konoha. That could have meant that he was being intelligent, since all his sparring matches were either with the man who was technically his parole officer or the teenager who constantly had an anbu member monitoring him or the female jounin who didn't like him much. And even barring that, shinobi were taught to rarely reveal their tricks to people they had to leave alive, including teammates.

But it also could have meant that a lot of what Sasuke had learned was forbidden. In that case, he couldn't use them because Tsunade probably would have decided the only safe options were either to jail him, or to find a way to prevent him from using chakra ever again.

Sakura had been suspecting the latter. Apparently, she'd been right.
-

After almost an hour, the fight was ended on account of Sasuke and Sakura having hit a dangerous low in their stamina and Sasuke announcing that someone was trying to break through the barrier.

"Hey, hey, so who won?" Naruto demanded, flopping onto the lone patch of grass left in the area.

Forty minutes ago, Sakura had slammed him out of a tree and into Sasuke and the ground. That had broken the rocky dirt, and when she jumped down herself, the impact had sent large portions of it jutting up.

Sasuke's expression had been great. Naruto had just run for cover.

"Aaaaurgh! At least act like you're tired!" Sakura snapped. She was sprawled out on one of the upended chunks.

"Hey," she called a second later to Sasuke, who was sitting against another chunk, "how did you see through my illusions?"

"How did you get so freakishly strong?" he replied.

Fine. "Do you know how Tsunade-sensei fights?"

". . . I heard stories. She taught you some kind of chakra manipulation?"

Sakura started to shake her head, then decided that was too much effort. "No, her strength is natural. I found a way to copy it."

Sasuke tilted his head back almost enough to look at her, but the angle was wrong. "It can be copied? Why doesn't everyone with your kind of control have it, then?"

Sakura grinned and held a finger to her lips. "Because there's a secret!"

Sasuke made a small amused noise. Then his almost-smile faded and he looked down again, toward Naruto. "How come you've been faking shitty chakra control all this time?"

Naruto folded his arms under his head and stared up at the sky. "Because . . . I've gotta work to separate mine from the fox's. If people knew I was in communication with it that much, they'd freak."

Sakura shifted on the rock. Sasuke paused for a moment, then nodded.

"I'd been working on it with Jiraiya before we had to come back," Naruto added defensively. "And then Sakura started sparring with me to help. And Oukei—he's an anbu, but he's cool—he'll fight with me sometimes too. So I can do it easily now."

"Good," Sasuke replied, with a tone that wasn't easily interpretable.

Naruto bent his head back over his arms and started to speak, but then he frowned. "Hey, the fight's over. Why're your eyes still weird?"

Sasuke closed them. "They won't go back."

Naruto blinked and rolled over onto his stomach. Sakura pulled herself a little closer to the edge of the rock.

"It's not—is it because of the dirt?" she asked, and started to sit up. "Let me look at them."

"It's not that," Sasuke replied. "I used the mangekyou sharingan to see through your illusions. My eyes don't go back to normal immediately afterward."

Naruto propped himself on his forearms, still frowning. "What? Why?"

"I don't know why," he said. "They just don't."

There was a slightly awkward silence at that. Sasuke shrugged a shoulder. "They'll be fine in half an hour. Just seeing through illusions isn't difficult."

"Okay." Sakura wasn't sure what he meant with that last sentence, but she let it go and flopped back down. "I'm not moving until at least then, anyway. How much longer until the barrier falls?"

"They left," Sasuke replied. "They're probably getting an expert."

"We are screwed when the hag gets a hold of us," Naruto predicted.

"It was worth it," Sakura replied with a faint smile.

"Yeah," Sasuke echoed.

Naruto grinned.

—

Roughly twenty-seven minutes later, Sakura was starting to doze off. Naruto had curled up in one of the shady holes near the epicenter of the damage, and he was fast asleep if the snoring was any indication. Sasuke was still sitting back against the rock, eyes closed, but he seemed awake.

"They're coming," he said, right before the barrier disappeared. "From the north-west. They'll be here in under a minute."

Sakura rolled onto her back and stared at the sun in an attempt to wake up.

When the anbu reached their location—and it was a four-man squad, which Sakura felt was excessive—she could imagine their expressions beneath the masks as they took in the surroundings.

The leader stepped over the tree that one of Naruto's attacks had felled and cleared his throat. "Haruno-san, Uchiha-san, Uzumaki, if you three would like to return to the village now. . . ."

Naruto poked his head out of his lair. "What if we don't wanna return yet?" he said sleepily. "I was comfortable."

Sakura rolled her eyes and sat up. "Don't be a brat." She looked over. "Sasuke?"

Sasuke was still for another moment before opening his eyes. He blinked once, and then pushed himself onto his feet. "It's fine. Let's go."

Sakura slid off the rock, and Naruto pulled himself out of the crevice, and the anbu firmly escorted them back through the gates and to their respective homes.

Naruto whistled the whole way.

Back to team seven
Back to the main page