"Is he okay?" was the first thing Sakura asked, as she slung her pack onto the floor and kicked off her shoes. When Kakashi replied in the negative, she didn't bother removing her shin guards and just strode into the bedroom. After that, she took over the rough care that he had been trying to provide, and Kakashi spent the next ten minutes mainly keeping out of her way.

Naruto had taken a small scroll and a bottle of ink from his shelves, and was (so Sakura briefly informed him) writing out a report on the kitsune-tsukai; but he had dragged Kakashi's table around so that he could see into the open door of the bedroom. Kakashi slouched beside the door and watched Sakura delicately study Sasuke's eyes with her chakra.

Eventually, the chakra dissipated, and Sakura let her hands fall to her lap with a tired sigh. She glanced over at him. "Kakashi-sensei . . . I . . . can I examine your eye?"

He nodded and pulled off his forehead protector, but kept that eye closed. Sakura didn't say anything about it; she just held a hand to the left side of his head, and soon Kakashi felt the odd buzz of foreign, friendly chakra invading his own system.

Sakura pulled her hand away a few minutes later, and absently rubbed her forehead with the back of her wrist.

"He has twice as many layers of chakra connecting to his eyes as you do . . . and the additional ones are . . ." she searched for an adjective, and settled on "crackling so much that they must be new. . . . And the curse seal is trying to intertwine with them. That's probably what's making him this sick."

Kakashi frowned. "Intertwine?"

Sakura made a small motion with the hand against her forehead. "The strands of the curse seal are connected to all of his chakra system--which is normal, right?" The question was rhetorical, but Kakashi nodded once anyway. "But, with this one . . . it's still connecting itself to strands that weren't there when it was placed on Sasuke."

Kakashi looked over to the bed again. In the other room, Naruto made a disgusted, angry noise.

Sakura sat down from her crouch, but a moment later shifted onto her feet again. "I don't know how to settle his chakra down. I'd say to just wait it out, but the curse seal makes that dangerous. What was in that bottle you had?"

Kakashi offered it to her and explained about headache medicine. "It's not a general kind--it was written for me by a medicnin when I first got this eye. The hospital refills the prescription when necessary."

Sakura was examining the pills inside the bottle carefully. "The medicnin who wrote the recipe. . . ?"

"She died several years ago," Kakashi said.

Sakura nodded and stood up. "Can I take this to the hospital? If I can get a list of the ingredients, that might help me figure out how to help him."

Kakashi nodded in agreement, and Sakura left. Naruto looked up when she walked into the other room.

"Don't you think we should take him to the hospital, no matter how it looks?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Remember what that snake of his said the last time something happened with his eyes? Not to put him around a lot of people. I don't know what could happen that's so disturbing, but. . . ."

"Yeah," Naruto agreed. "Then . . . I know this treatment that could help him," he said, glancing at the bedroom. "It's got . . . magnesium and feverfew, and willow bark--wait, you're supposed to add vitamin B to the feverfew. And . . . valaran root."

Sakura moved to pull on her shoes, but she looked at his face as she did. "Valerian root?"

"Yeah, that thing," Naruto said. "And yarrow and henbane."

"Henbane is poisonous . . ." she murmured. "Those others are good for headaches and fevers, but combining them . . . where did you hear about this?"

Naruto looked down at the table. ". . . it's a hangover cure I picked up while traveling."

Sakura gave him a slightly disbelieving look, but Naruto was absorbed in reading over the scroll he'd written for Tsunade. "He doesn't exactly have a hangover," she said at last.

"Yeah, but . . . I think it'd help."

Naruto obviously wasn't going to tell her where he really picked the recipe up from, so Sakura let it go. She finished pulling on her second shoe and rested her arm on her leg. "Are those all of the ingredients? And, can you tell me the measurements for them?"

Naruto started rattling the scroll, checking how fast the ink was drying. He still wasn't looking up, at either her or Kakashi leaning against the bedroom door's frame. "Give me an hour," he said. "Let me get this to Tsunade, and then I'll go find out."

Sakura pressed her lips together slightly. "Even if that works for his eyes, it's the curse seal that worries me. And I don't know how his body would react to that." She held the bottle up a little. "I think it's better to just keep him on this until he regains consciousness. He'll be able to control the seal himself, then, and he can tell me more about the mangekyou's side effects. Okay?"

"Okay," Naruto muttered, rattling the paper again.

"Sakura," Kakashi said, "after you go by the hospital, get two hours rest before you come back."

She started to frown. "Kakashi-sensei, you're the one who's had the least sleep. . . ."

"I know," he agreed. "That's why I want you to get some now, so I can leave his care over to you afterward and sleep through the afternoon. He's stable right now."

She let out a small, amused breath and nodded. "Okay. But, if he regains consciousness, will you send me a notice?"

"Yes," Kakashi said. "Where will you be? At your parents', or Lee's?"

"Lee's," Sakura replied, tucking the bottle into her pack. "Send any messages there from now on--I moved in with him when I left the hospital."

Naruto's head jerked up with that, but he quickly looked back down again. Kakashi gave her a careful look. "Sakura, do you think--?"

"I already had this fight with Lee," Sakura replied as she pulled on her pack. "Thank you for your concern, Kakashi-sensei, but this was for the best."

Kakashi didn't exactly have room to chide her, since he had moved out on his own after getting the sharingan eye and had lost track of his own mother until he'd been informed of her death on a mission. And he doubted Sakura would have listened even if he mentioned that, since the three of them seemed hell-bent on learning from their own mistakes and not those of their elders.

Plus, Sakura's parents weren't shinobi--barring another attack on the village, they were more likely to bury her.

"Okay," he said. "Come back in three hours, and I'll send a note if he wakes up before then."

Sakura rested a hand on the doorknob. "If he does, treat this like a fever--keep up the compresses, and ask how his vision is. And try to make him eat some soup. And punch him for me."

"Are those official medicnin orders?" Kakashi asked, making an effort to sound serious.

"Yes," Sakura retorted. She gave Naruto one last look, and then left.

—

Sakura returned to the apartment promptly three hours later, looking a little better for the sleep.

"Is Naruto here?" she asked with a slight frown, after kicking off her shoes. Kakashi replied that he hadn't come back after leaving to give his report to Tsunade, and asked why.

"It's nothing," she replied. Kakashi gave her a look, which she brushed off by going into the bedroom to check Sasuke's temperature.

Sakura understandably panicked a bit on finding that Sasuke had a fever of 41 degrees. She fed him two of the pills, struggled to get a full glass of milk down him while he was still unconscious (because Kakashi had told her that the pills also gave him a stomach ache if he took them without food), and put some ice in the bowl that the compresses were soaking in.

"Maybe we should take him to the hospital," she murmured, disbursing her chakra and letting her hand fall away from Sasuke's eyes. "As long as he's put in a private room. . . ."

"I think the fever may be part of the sharingan's transformation," Kakashi said from his seat on the bed beside her. "When I managed to increase the visual magnitude of it--gaining the 'third comma'," he explained at her look, and tapped his forehead protector, "I was knocked out with a fever for a few days. It reached 43 degrees at the worst point."

"43--! That could have killed you!" Sakura's eyes were wide.

Kakashi nodded. "That's what they thought would happen for a while," he said with a faint smile. "But I had a good medicnin keeping track of me." He looked at Sasuke. "Even if the curse seal is aggravating him, as long as it doesn't get any higher, he should be safe staying here. I don't want to put him around other people, either, unless it's absolutely necessary."

Sakura bit her lip and turned over the cloth on Sasuke's forehead.

—

Kakashi laid out the spare futon in the shadiest part of his front room. He learned that Sasuke had woken up a little past sunset from the crash of pottery on the floor and Sakura's startled yell.

By the time Kakashi had thrown aside the covers and skidded inside the doorway, he found that Sasuke was sprawled halfway over the bed and the floor, and Sakura had managed to pin his arm and neck.

She let him go when Kakashi appeared, but Sasuke didn't move. Sakura checked his face.

"Ah," she muttered, standing up and brushing off her knees, "crap."

"What happened?" Kakashi asked as he started to heft the again unconscious Sasuke back onto the bed.

"He started to wake up right when I was changing the compress . . . I guess I startled him." She checked the side of Sasuke's face again. "That's going to bruise. . . ."

Kakashi picked up the bowl, and the two pieces that had broken off when it fell. "Ah."

"His eyes haven't changed back," Sakura said quietly.

". . . Hm," Kakashi said, keeping his voice casual. "He probably hasn't been conscious long enough to revert them back from the sharingan."

Sakura accepted his answer simply because it was the best she could hope for, until Sasuke woke up and answered everything.

—

When the hour ended and Sasuke's fever had dropped a degree, Kakashi sent Sakura home. He then summoned Pakkun and asked him to stay hidden by the window until a little while after Sasuke woke up.

It took Kakashi about three hours to write up his report of the mission, and half the night to decide what to include in it.

He had started with the easiest part, the description of the trip before they reached Kamogaya, and wrote that the team had settled together well enough to work cohesively. He chose his words carefully to lack emotional connotations when he reached Sakura's admission of knowing too much, and included Naruto's reaction. He left out the oblique references the three of them had made to their teachers shortly after.

He had gotten to Kamogaya and had just described how the bird had given away their concealment when he heard the faintest sound of cloth rustling in the other room. Kakashi continued writing, but slowed down enough that the rustle of the brush over the paper wasn't loud enough to cover noise from the other room.

After a few moments, Sasuke moved off of the bed and began walking carefully across the floor. Kakashi had moved the table back after Naruto left, so he only saw it from his peripheral vision when Sasuke paused at the doorway. There was the quiet sound of dry lips parting, but then Sasuke changed his mind and stumbled towards the bathroom.

He's walking too heavily, Kakashi noted. His sight must still be blurred.

Kakashi remained at the table up to the point he heard the mirror shatter.

When he stepped into view of the bathroom, he found Sasuke trying to grind the shards with his bare heel.

"Please don't break my house, Sasuke," he said, leaning against the doorframe.

Sasuke glared at him, fists clenched. Kakashi took the one second risk and looked him in the eyes, and found that they were still in the sharingan, but not the mangekyou.

"You," Sasuke snarled. "You . . . fuck you! I--it's just a mirror!"

Kakashi wondered what he had been about to say. "Sasuke--"

"Shut up! Just because you stole an eye doesn't give you the right to lecture me on my clan!"

Kakashi narrowed his gaze slightly, but kept his casual pose. "Sasuke."

Sasuke took a step back, fists still clenched, shaking slightly. "Everything, it's either meaningless or a disappointment to you! If--what was the point!" he demanded, staring at him. "Everything that--what the hell was the point? I would have killed h--and I left them with those bastards to be--"

Sasuke choked that sentence down before he could say too much, and regained some control over himself. He glared at everything in the small bathroom but Kakashi and the broken mirror.

Kakashi waited a few moments for Sasuke to loosen his fists, but when he decided that that wasn't going to happen, he let his head tilt slightly to the side.

"You have other people to get stronger for, you know," he said calmly.

Sasuke was quiet for a little bit, but then he shook his head slightly. "It's not that ea. . ." he muttered tiredly, taking another step back. "I already told her. . . ."

Sasuke finally seemed to notice he was walking on broken glass. He maneuvered away from it and sat down on the edge of the tub.

Kakashi pushed away from the doorframe with his shoulder and got a rag from the replaced bowl. He cupped a palm under it as he brought it back, to keep the excess water from dripping on his floorboards.

When he walked back into the bathroom, Sasuke was staring at the opposite wall. He had pulled up the foot that had been cut on the glass, and was resting it on his opposite leg. The motion had rucked up his pants leg, and Kakashi noticed what he hadn't seen when he'd tugged off Sasuke's boots--a faded-looking tattoo a few centimeters above his right ankle.

He held out the cloth, and Sasuke took it without looking at him.

". . . I'm sorry," the teenager said, as he pressed the cloth to his bleeding knuckles. "I didn't have the right to say that."

Sasuke didn't specify which of the several things he had said that he was sorry for, but Kakashi could guess.

He should have removed that photo when Sasuke first came to stay with him months ago. While Obito hadn't been wearing any visible mark of his clan in it, and the Uchiha hadn't had a monopoly on dark hair and eyes, there was also a very limited amount of people that Kakashi could have received the sharingan from without being legally charged by the clan. And since it obviously hadn't been his teacher, that left one of his teammates.

He should have . . . but, hindsight.

Kakashi leaned against the sink. "You don't remind me of him," he said.

Sasuke's fingers tensed slightly against the cloth, and he moved to press it to his heel. He had to shift his foot forward to do so, to keep the cloth from dampening his pants, and the motion revealed more of the faded tattoo.

Sasuke didn't say anything for a moment, but he glanced over at Kakashi long enough to determine that the man had noticed the marks.

". . . It's the first place I got bit," he said, shifting his face away so that Kakashi couldn't see it directly in the shards. "It shows up when ever I summon them too often. I don't have to use it, because I don't summon the big ones."

If Sasuke was apologizing and offering information on himself, then he genuinely regretted what he said.

Kakashi held out hope that in a few more years, Sasuke would learn enough self-control to not say things he wanted to apologize for in the first place. But for now, this would do. He nodded, and Sasuke turned the rag over and pressed it back against the cut.

They were both quiet after that. When a couple minutes had passed, Kakashi pushed away from the door again and returned to the table. He heard Sasuke rummage through the cabinet and tape down a bandage before throwing the glass in the small trash can.

When the blanket was no longer rustling and Sasuke's breathing had gone back to sleeping mode, Pakkun stretched and scratched behind his ear.

"So, I don't need to warn anyone?" he asked.

Kakashi shook his head. "No, things are okay," he said, absently using one of Sakura's words. "Thanks."

Pakkun shook himself once, and then disappeared.

—

By the time Kakashi had completed his report, he had included how Sasuke had chased off the raven, Sasuke's conversation with the Soundnins which had revealed the Hidden Grass's involvement in their presence, Sakura and Naruto's suspicions about Akatsuki and how they had come by them, that he had let slip enough information about the bijuu for Naruto to guess what it referred to, Sakura and Sasuke's fight, and Sakura warning Naruto that people were beginning to be suspicious of the team's closeness. He left out the last words Sakura had said regarding Tsunade in the fight, and her accidental implication that she felt obligated to Tsunade because of what the woman had done for Lee, and the viper's unanswered question about killing the Soundnin.

He included the fact that Sasuke could mimic Orochimaru's voice, because the Sandnins had heard it as well, and what Sasuke had said about Naruto having the right to record the mangekyou's secrets when he became Hokage. Kakashi knew that that would irritate Tsunade, but he hoped in the long run it would be better than if it looked like Sasuke was keeping it a secret from everyone.

He also included the fact that Sasuke had disclosed some of the specific information within his hearing, but that he had not added it to his report in order to maintain a trusted position with the teenager. At a later time, he would likely turn it over. Kakashi spent a half an hour finding the right wording for that particular paragraph.

He also left out the most disturbing detail he had noted in Sasuke's fighting style. That decision took longer than any of the ones regarding the Soundnins.

What Sasuke had done to the Grassnin he captured had been malicious, deliberately so, and his reasoning behind it could be anywhere from questionable to dangerous--especially since his words to Sakura and later Kakashi had indicated he was angry about what had happened to the Soundnins and had coldly used that anger to increase the mangekyou's power. But that wasn't what troubled Kakashi the most.

What troubled Kakashi the most was that when Sasuke had yanked his katana from one of the ninjas he had killed, he had wrenched it to the side instead of pulling it straight out.

That action had been unnecessary, and all it had served to do was leave the ninja in more pain before he died. But there had been nothing cruel in Sasuke's motions. The whole move, from the thrust to the kick, had been executed with the smooth ease of practice.

It reminded Kakashi that someone other than him had taught Sasuke how to kill.

It was not, in comparison, the most damning thing against Sasuke. In fact, it probably would have been met with simple expectation and then passed over--in peace time, the Leaf didn't teach its genin to kill, so of course Sasuke had to have learned at the Sound.

But Kakashi left it out anyway.

—

He dropped the scroll off at the tower early in the morning, and came back to the apartment to find Sakura sitting on his front step.

"I asked you to contact me when he woke up for good," she mentioned. When Kakashi raised an eyebrow at her, she added, "You wouldn't have left him alone if he were still unconscious, and Tsunade-sensei is keeping Naruto with her until she hears back from Jiraiya."

"Ah, well," Kakashi said, scratching the back of his head while unlocking the door. "I was busy trying to get that report written and turned in. . . ."

"Hmph," she replied, looking down at the sack of food she was carrying.

When they got inside, the shower was running. Sakura banged on the door and yelled for Sasuke to hurry, because she had other things to do. He didn't bother to answer.

"Oh," she added, turning back to the door, "I'm sorry about your face."

Sasuke cut the water off long enough to reply, "That was you?"

"You don't remember?"

". . . Just that someone was attacking me."

Sakura pursed her lips slightly. "I was changing the cloth on your forehead, Sasuke."

There was a pause, and then he turned the water back on. She rolled her eyes and left the bedroom.

When she was near Kakashi again, Sakura indicated the sack and asked, "Can I keep this in your fridge? Just for a little while."

He nodded. "That's a lot of food."

"Lee's birthday was two days ago," she explained as she started putting things away. "He's supposed to be back from his mission today, so I wanted to cook something he liked."

——

It took Sasuke less than ten minutes to be dressed and out of the bathroom, but his hair was still wet. Sakura took his temperature first of all, and was glad to see it was down to a bearable 37 degrees.

"Dry your hair," she commented as she put the thermostat away. "It'll make things worse."

"I'm not going to catch a cold," Sasuke said with mild annoyance.

She ignored him. "Kakashi-sensei? Can I borrow your mirror?" she called to the front room.

"Probably not," he replied.

Sakura gave him an odd look through the doorway as she walked to the bathroom.

When she came out a minute later with a large shard of the mirror that she had fished from the trash and washed off, Sasuke had shifted so that he was sitting with his bandaged heel tucked beneath his other leg. His hands were resting palms up on his lap.

Sakura sat on the bed beside him. "Did you know your eyes look like this?" she asked, and held the shard up half a meter from his face.

Sasuke gave her a flat look. Sakura countered with an impassive one.

Finally he took the mirror from her and held it a hand's span from his face. Sakura folded her hands in her lap, and didn't comment on his knuckles.

Sasuke studied his reflection. "They look like the normal sharingan."

"I know," she said. "How long has your sight been that bad?"

"It started almost immediately," he replied. "But I can still see chakra clearly. I made it back following Naruto and Kakashi-sensei."

"And it's not permanent?"

Sasuke let the hand holding the shard drop and gave her a cold look.

"You're stupid when it comes to him," Sakura said flatly.

"It's not permanent," Sasuke replied, holding the mirror out to her with a sharp movement. "It happened when I first gained the mangekyou, too. It's just taking longer to go back to normal this time."

"Is that a part of the increase in the illusion, or does it feel like the curse seal is tampering with it?" she asked.

Sasuke shrugged a shoulder, and Sakura's eyes narrowed.

"You knew other stuff about this jutsu," she said, folding her arms. "Don't try to tell me you don't know whether this is normal or not."

"The descriptions of the effects are too sparse," he told her. "I don't know whether the curse seal is amplifying them or not."

"There's descriptions" Sakura said disbelievingly. "Why didn't you tell me that? That would have helped me a lot more than just making guesses on what would work!"

"No," Sasuke said.

Sakura was silent for a long time.

Finally, she pushed herself off of the bed, and folded her arms again before turning to glare at him.

"Fine," she said. "Then tell me the name of the medicnin you trust more than me. I'll go get them, and they can treat you."

Sasuke watched her impassively.

Sakura snarled under her breath and stormed out of the room. Kakashi looked up from where he was gluing the bowl back together.

"If he starts dying again, take him to the hospital," she told the man as she wrenched on her shoes. "But I doubt they'll be able to do anything either."

She slammed the door so hard behind her that Kakashi winced for the frame. When he glanced into the bedroom, Sasuke had laid out on the bed, facing the wall, with his head pillowed on one arm.

Sakura's dramatic exit was lessened somewhat by the fact that she had to return two minutes later to get the food she had left in Kakashi's fridge. Sasuke was still glaring at the wall, and didn't acknowledge her entrance and second exit. She didn't slam the door this time, for which Kakashi was mildly grateful.

Occasionally, he forgot that Sakura was just fifteen, the same as Sasuke and Naruto. He made a note of this event to remind him of it when she started acting too old for her years again.

He checked the bedroom after setting the bowl to dry, and found that Sasuke had fallen into another light doze.

The teenager woke up in the early afternoon. He said that his eyesight was almost back to normal, before apologizing for imposing on the man's hospitality. Kakashi passed over Sasuke's retreat to the cover of formal language, and made him eat a light lunch and take one last pill before letting him go.

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