Like all expected battles, a few hours beforehand everything began moving too fast to be properly understood.

The onmyouji from Lightning country hadn't arrived by the time that a report--bloodstained and uncoded--came in from an outside scout that probable Akatsuki members were on their way. Sasuke was bullied into making rough wards for the Inuzuka family.

"It's stupid," he told Sakura, as she helped him dry the wards and box them to be carried over. "You have to be born with this kind of power, and you can't rush the process. If they have any affect on the fox spirits, it'll be because they hate dogs, not because of these."

"Well," Sakura said, "at least it won't feel like we're relying solely on Kakashi-sensei's dogs."

"False comfort," Sasuke replied, and went to put out the fire.

Even so, he'd made extras. Sasuke gave Sakura two of the ofuda for herself and Lee, and pocketed the last three for himself, Naruto, and Kakashi.

The Sand siblings had shown up with no warning or notice, and for a while there had been the suspicion that they were possessed. After that rumor was put to rest, a new one started circulating that their arrival was somehow connected to Shikamaru; but by the time that started getting confirmed, Sakura was busy explaining to the Inuzukas what Sasuke had told her about the wards and Sasuke and Naruto were in a more deserted area of the village with Kakashi, summoning their animals.

The majority of snakes that answered when Sasuke summoned them were vipers, with a few cobras and a garden snake. Sasuke was glad to see a second Gaboon viper besides Kyomamushi--those had the longest fangs, and when (if) they shook off their lethargy enough to attack, the venom could kill a grown man in fifteen minutes or less.

"Hello, Gamakouchi," one of the cobras said to a large horned toad. "Haven't seen you in a few decades, since that Valley of the End mess."

Sasuke glanced over at Naruto. He shrugged a shoulder, looking confused as well.

The frog took a drink from the jug slung over its back before it deigned to reply. "Don't be cocky, dirt-eater. You're only alive because Jiraiya didn't want us to kill him."

"Foolish," the cobra replied with a verbal smirk, curling around once and lashing its tail.

"How long are we supposed to stay in this nest of toads and vipers?" a rottweiler asked loudly. A basenji, sitting beside it, agreed with a throaty whine. Both the snakes and the frogs made irritated noises.

The dogs had all moved to higher ground when Naruto and Sasuke had summoned their animals. Kakashi was sitting on a wall above them as well. "Not long," he replied, and began explaining about the expected situation of the upcoming battle, and how the animals needed to be on the lookout for people who were probably possessed and to chase them away from others whenever possible. The dogs and toads listened. The snakes didn't.

After the dogs had taken off, and the toads had managed to leave without turning their backs on the snakes, Nahash lifted its head.

"What do you request, child?" it said.

"There will be two--maybe more--people coming here, wearing black cloaks with red clouds. I ask that you kill them." Sasuke paused, and then added, "Except for the man who looks like me."

"Can we maim him?" Kyomamushi asked.

"Bring him to me," Sasuke replied.

"Maimed?"

Sasuke adjusted the katana on his back, fingers lingering on the hilt for a moment. Then: "Yes," he said. "Maimed. If you can manage it--don't get yourselves killed."

Kyomamushi flicked out his tongue with a little amused motion. "Got it." It uncurled and turned around. "I told you he'd grow up," it added to the other snakes, before slithering off. The rest followed.

"Damn things," Sasuke muttered when they were out of earshot. Behind him, Naruto was snickering.

—

Less than an hour later, the twenty-five who would be possessed began to be taken over by violent seizures. Itachi had shown a remarkable knowledge of village relationships, if no understanding of them, and gave Sen--the Cloud missingnin--the names of not only anbu and jounin but also chuunin and genin who would cause a significant amount of damage and emotional grief to those who would be fighting them.

Gai, Jiraiya, Chouji, Neji, and Iruka were some of the first to be fully possessed.

—

Paranoia was a typical part of ninja wars, but it was twice as bad this time. The foxes couldn't access people's memories, so the only real way to verify who a person was was to question them about something personal, and hope they didn't attack you in the moment you took to do so.

The three of them hadn't managed to meet up with Sakura again before the fighting began, and Sasuke had slipped away from Kakashi as soon as he saw the opportunity. Naruto had followed him, but Jiraiya came up not long after and said that Tsunade had ordered they be kept separate lest they blow up half the village if one of them became possessed (neither Sasuke nor Sakura had mentioned the extra ofuda to her, and Naruto didn't get a chance to tell Jiraiya), and dragged Naruto off with him. Sasuke ran across Anko while he'd been looking for Sakura, and sneered at her about still using clove soap, at which point Anko mocked him for still pretending that he hadn't had sex with Orochimaru, and then they nodded to each other and might have gone separate ways had they not been attacked.

Sasuke had wanted to find Sakura because, regardless of how much stronger and better at planning she had become, the fact that Tsunade had kept her missions cloistered in Fire country meant that she lacked the practical battle experience that he and Naruto had gleaned. But when several people began to attack him and Anko--or just one person with several clones, since they stayed hidden in the shadows--he briefly hoped that she was staying close to Lee, and then pushed it out of his mind and concentrated on not dying.

None of it mattered much, anyway, since the bitter chakra of the fox demon lashed across the village a few minutes later.

Sasuke jumped over one of Anko's snakes--they weren't summons, but pets that she had raised, so they weren't flexible in fights around anyone else--and landed a few steps from her. The only attacks were coming from the north and the southwest shadows, now, so he kept his focus on the latter.

"Can he control that much of it?" Anko called back, watching the north.

"No," Sasuke replied.

Anko shifted her footing so that she could see both areas in her peripheral vision. "Beat it, then," she said. "Don't get your ass possessed."

He didn't bother to tell her about Tsunade's order. Sasuke watched on the area to the southwest for a few moments, but there was no motion he could see. "Don't die," he said shortly, and then sprang away from the area. He barely heard her give a throaty, 'not damn likely' laugh before he was out of hearing range.

The chakra was outside the village walls. Sasuke didn't waste breath swearing, and kept as low as he could.

He spotted two jounin fighting with taijutsu in the street a head of him--one that he vaguely remembered had taught a few classes at school, and the other whose face he couldn't see. Sasuke kept a slight track of fight as he moved to pass it, saw that the jounin with his back to him was moving jerkily, and sacrificed a shuriken, aiming it between the third and fourth vertebrae of the man's spine. He then slid down the opposite side of the roof, so that the first jounin wouldn't be able to catch his face.

Naruto's chakra had almost doubled in little more than a minute--what the fuck were they doing to him? Sasuke jumped off the roof, used the wall of an opposite building as a springboard, and leap to another roof a few meters away, clinging to the shadows offered by an overhang.

A kunai hit him in the back, below his left shoulder blade.

The attack threw him forward, and Sasuke forced the momentum into a roll, shoving himself back onto his feet and clenching his jaw as the weapon cut flesh and muscle with the motion. If he was fast enough, it'd be someone else's problem, he had to get--

"Still running, little brother?"

Sasuke's feet skidded on the shingles.

—

In the end, Sasuke won the fight for one reason and one reason alone: the snakes had obeyed him.

Itachi's right wrist was crushed and roughly bound with one of the wrappings from Kisame's sword, his left calf was only slightly less damaged, and three different snakes had managed to get venom into his blood before being killed. It said something about the difference between them that Sasuke still had to resort to the second level of the curse seal before the end.

The curse seal was ripping chakra out of him faster than usual, and Sasuke vaguely guessed it was because he was bleeding so profusely. The blood loss was bad enough that it was making him dizzy, and his eyes were burning . . . except that could be the sharingan, Sasuke wasn't sure. He only knew that the area around them was blurring into indistinct patches of red, and Itachi was crystal clear in front of him, blood flecking his lips and Sasuke's katana buried one rib too low to have killed him immediately.

It can't . . . is this it? Sasuke wondered blankly, frozen in place. One wing had curled around automatically, to protect his throat and chest while he started at Itachi. This is it?

Itachi coughed once, and then spat blood to the side, not taking his eyes off the vestige of what remained familiar in Sasuke's face.

"I expected too much of you," he said quietly.

Then, still staring, he reached out and grabbed the hand clenched around the katana's hilt, and yanked Sasuke closer.

No, he thought, not again, but it was already too late, the color of the world was inverting itself and becoming distinguishable once more.

—

It was the entrance hall of his former home, but there was no blood. The doors to the surrounding porch had been opened, letting in the sunlight and a gentle breeze, and Sasuke felt very cold.

He made his way to the porch and began walking along it. He was moving louder than he wanted to: if Sasuke had it his way, he would have been walking on the outsides of his feet, and distributing his weight better over the old wood slats, but instead he padded barefoot down the porch as if he were safe here.

Before he reached the corner, he turned and went inside the doorway that led to the kitchen, then passed through that and into the hallway that led to the inner rooms.

It was warmer near the center of the house--their father, like his father before him and his father before him, had seen no reason to muck up the ancestral home by installing air conditioning, even though some of the lesser relatives' houses and most of the other buildings had it. Sasuke had learned there was no use complaining to the man, but once he had harassed Itachi to agree that when he became clan head, he would install it. Itachi had laughed and promised to think about it.

Sasuke knew the room that his feet stopped at before he even heard the faint clink of metal. When he slid open the door, Itachi was strapping on the left arm guard of his anbu uniform. He didn't shift away from his position in front of the mirror when the door opened, but Sasuke knew he saw him--for a moment, there was a trace of a smile on his face, the greeting he had always given Sasuke when he didn't feel like speaking.

"You're dead," Sasuke said, stepping into the room. "You're dying. I killed you."

Itachi glanced over long enough to give him an indulgent look.

"You're dead!" he snarled, hands clenching into fists. "You failed! Just--die!"

"Little brother," Itachi answered, tightening the strap of the guard and letting his hand fall, "you missed the point of everything."

"I understood," Sasuke said tightly. "You wanted me for the Amaterasu. I stayed alive for your sake. I understood perfectly."

Itachi was still smiling faintly, and Sasuke had to remind himself that that mouth had been spitting blood just a few minutes ago, to keep himself from diving forward and punching it.

Not that he could have anyway. But at least this way, he could pretend it was his own decision not to move.

"You mistook me," Itachi replied. He picked up the mask and turned to face Sasuke. "Do you still intend to 'revive your clan'?"

"I--what's . . . you don't care, just die!"

"Foolish," Itachi said, walking towards the door. "You can try, little brother, but it's pointless."

When he passed Sasuke, he rested a hand on his shoulder, and dug his blunt nails into Orochimaru's curse seal. Sasuke winced.

"You are no longer an Uchiha, after all."

Itachi let his hand drop, and walked past, slipping on his mask.

Sasuke shuddered once, after the cool hand was gone, and then turned sharply. "You--!"

Itachi flicked a finger at his forehead, causing Sasuke to freeze in silent rage. "Tomorrow," he said, voice slightly muffled by the mask, and then closed the door behind him.

Sasuke swiped a wrist roughly against his forehead, reaching out to grab the handle, and the skin caught and tore.

The rest of Sasuke froze again, even as his fingers grabbed the torn area and pulled. The skin came off easily--it was paper-thin, fragile, he remembered it, he'd felt it before, shedding beneath his hands, once when he'd landed an open-palmed chakra attack on Orochimaru, other times when. . . .

The delicate skin ripped when it got past his cheekbone, and Sasuke stared down at it. It was getting harder to breathe.

No. . . .

The mirror was behind him.

No, no, no, no, no, no. . . .

He was turning toward it even though he didn't want to. . . .

No, no, no, please brother, not this, not him, please, stop it, no. . . .

But he could already see the reflection.

—

It was bright when he woke up.

The room had no curtains, so the late afternoon sunlight was reflected on the far wall and part of the ceiling. Sasuke stared at it for a while, watching the blurry reddish light fade a little as the sun sank lower.

Then he clenched his hands into fists, noting that there was a sharpness in the back of his left hand.

"Every time," he said, roughly. He squeezed his fists, ignoring the increased tightness around the IV needle. "Every time. . . ."

There was a shift below his feet. Sasuke lifted his head high enough to see a lump of snake and bandages.

Sitting up wasn't easy: his back hurt, his shoulder ached, his eyes were killing him, and he had to drag the IV pole forward a half a meter before he was fully up so that it wouldn't tip over. Kyomamushi was curled gingerly around the foot of the bed, with its middle half swathed in bandages. Its eyes were closed, but it spoke before Sasuke could ask.

"That filthy dog vet managed not to kill me while she was 'treating' the cut," it said caustically, before adding, "and the tree-girl has a message for you."

"Saku. . . ." Sasuke rested more of his weight on his less bandaged arm. "What is it?"

Kyomamushi opened an eye. "Good news about the fox."

Sasuke blinked at him.

He understood a minute later, and ripped out the IV needle before throwing himself out of the bed and stumbling towards the door.

Compared to the quiet, pale-ish pink room, the hallway was an explosion of noise and shades of red. Sasuke had to close his eyes before he had taken half a dozen steps, slumping against the wall and pressing the heel of his palm hard against the bridge of his nose.

Footsteps. "Uchiha. . . ." A male voice, didn't finish the sentence, irritation almost covering the trepidation. Sasuke yanked his hand away and glared at the source.

"Where's Naruto?"

He couldn't make out the man's expression, but he could see him stop short. That and the silence said enough. Sasuke shoved away from the wall and started making his way down the hall in the opposite direction. He had to keep bracing himself against the wall, or more often the gurneys and chairs and trays lined against it. Behind him, the man ran off, calling something that got lost in all the noise around him.

All so fucking bright--he couldn't even see the shapes properly, so why did it feel like the reds were trying to blind him? Bright and loud and irritating!

"Where's Naruto?" he snarled at the next person who tried to stop him, and pushed past him when they froze as well.

He made it another meter down the corridor before a woman planted herself firmly in front of him, hands at chest level. A seal--rat or serpent, he couldn't tell.

"Uchiha-san," she said firmly, and it was too blurry--damn this!--to read her body language. "You're still injured. Please return to your room and I'll get a doctor."

Sasuke could see two people, mostly hidden behind the growing crowd, who'd already activated their chakra. They weren't moving yet. "Where's Sakura?" he snarled at the woman. "Where's Naruto?"

"Dead," said a voice behind him.

Sasuke swung around. Sakura was there, and behind her were three more people who'd activated their chakra. None of them were going to move at him yet, they were still stationary--no, the one on the far left was going to feint right while reaching for the weapons pouch on his hip, what was there in the area that Sasuke could use to block it--

"Naruto's dead," Sakura repeated.

This time, it sunk in.

Sasuke stared at her, throat constricting. ". . . What?"

"He's dead," she said for the third time, tucking a piece of hair beneath the protector tied around her forehead before stepping forward. "Come on, Sasuke, we don't have time for this. Come back to your room."

Her voice was too casual, forcedly too casual, and when she set a hand on his shoulder, she moved it past his face close enough that he could see she was shaking.

It didn't match up. Even if . . . did it mean . . . it had to mean. . . .

"Come on," she whispered, barely audible, and tugged him forward, "later, later, come on."

One of the three people in front of him had released their chakra. The other two were going to move aside.

Sasuke clenched his right hand into a fist, and then strode forward, trying to move fast enough that his own shaking wouldn't be noticeable. Sakura had to shift quickly to get out of his way, but she caught up within a few seconds and followed him down the hall.

People moved aside. Sasuke didn't know if it was because of him or because she was gesturing for them to, and didn't care.

"This one," she said soon, catching his elbow when he walked past the room and then dodging the reflexive slam backward. "This door."

She shut it behind her, and didn't move away. "Sit on the bed, you're swaying all over the place."

Sasuke didn't move. "He's not--"

Sakura pressed a finger to her lips, but half a second later she also shook her head. Sasuke was still for long enough to notice that it was getting easier to breathe, and then moved to the bed.

"Then why di--"

Sakura pressed a finger more vehemently to her lips, and added a glare. She was still standing beside the door.

Sasuke exhaled harshly, but waited. He threw a glare at Kyomamushi, but the viper merely flicked its tongue out once, lazily, and didn't open its eyes.

"Were they expecting me to wake up today?" he asked, forcing himself to change the topic. "Or did you just happen to be on the same floor?"

Sakura laughed, but it sounded more like a tired exhalation. "I was on the floor below, but Mogusa-san came running down." She threw the viper a dark look. "I get Hinata-chan to ask Kiba to harass his sister into taking care of you, and you repay the favor by sending Sasuke out like that?"

"I only told him the truth," it replied.

Sakura gave it a highly skeptical look, and Sasuke made a gesture telling her to drop it. She glared back at the door, but when he remained silent, she managed a small half-smile. "Don't worry, you probably could have thrown someone into a wall, and you still wouldn't have been as creepy as Gaara was, when he. . . ."

"He's here?"

"He was," she replied. "The group from the Sand was only here unofficially, and they decided to . . . return to Suna, after he learned. Just in case an attack was aimed there, as well, you know?"

"What'd he do?"

"Nothing," she said quietly. "He . . . after the ru--news spread around, he came here and starting asking if it was true." She fidgeted with the needle tucked into the band of her sloppy ponytail, the sole weapon she had on her besides the gloves in the back of her belt. "It should have been Tsunade-sama that spoke to him, or Shizune-san, but they were both in surgeries . . . so one of the clerks got me. This was before the story got around," she added, with a bitterness that told Sasuke this was a different subject. He squinted, trying to get a less blurry view.

"And I told him it was true," she said. "And he stared for . . . about a minute, I guess, and then he turned and walked away. And that's when Temari-san gave the explanation for returning to Suna, and Shikamaru went to wait for Tsunade-sama to get out of the surgery, in case they stayed long enough for her to thank them formally . . . well, that was the excuse, I'm sure Kankuro-san and Temari-san got him out of here immediately, but she needed to know so we'd understand the situation for dealing with them later on. . . ."

Sakura laid a hand against the door, turning towards it slightly. Her voice dropped further.

"He was so quiet, I could hear that sand rattling the whole . . . I've never seen Temari-san so nervous before," she murmured. "I didn't think she could look like that."

She stood there, listening at the door, for another half a minute. But finally she stepped away from it, walking around to the far side of the bed to look out the windows.

"What happened?" Sasuke demanded, and didn't need to clarify.

"Akatsuki got him," she replied. "Jiraiya was one of the possessed ones, it looks like he brought him almost straight to them--" she paused for a few moments, while Sasuke swore violently under his breath "--and they . . . whatever they did, it looks like it wiped out the seal you did, and it might have . . . might've cracked the Fourth's . . . that's what it looks like, at least--"

"But he's alive?"

She nodded. "He's alive."

Sasuke's voice abruptly grew harsher. "Then why the fuck--"

"Because Tsunade and Jiraiya have decided to kill him."

Sasuke slung himself around so he was sitting on the side of the bed facing her, ignoring the dizziness and the annoyed hiss from Kyomamushi. "Why!"

"Because a weapon's no use if it's as likely to kill you as your enemy," Sakura said viciously, glaring out the window. Then, after a moment, her tone diminished. "You need to see him, Sasuke. It's . . . like we never did that surgery at all."

Sasuke let his breath out in a long hiss, because it was the only option besides ripping the sheet in half or punching the wall. Sakura didn't say any more; she was staring out the window as if transfixed.

After a while, more to herself than anything, she murmured, "I can't believe four people did this. Just four. . . . It's inhuman."

"Isn't there anything--?"

"No." Sakura shook her head, and then absently fixed the needle when it started to slip. "They were going to kill him right then, but . . . I . . . asked her to let us say goodbye. But as far as the village is concerned, he was killed in the fighting."

That tone was back, though not as bitter as before. Sasuke was quiet for another moment, and then said, "Why are you wearing your forehead protector like that?"

She looked over at him.

"It's blurry," he said, "not blind."

"Geez . . ." Sakura murmured, with a sound that might have been impressed in a different time. Then she looked over at the viper and asked "Can we trust it?" in a voice that made it clear she didn't. Kyomamushi flicked its tongue out again, eyes still closed.

"He's the only one," Sasuke replied.

She nodded a few times, slowly, and then closed the curtains. "I did something really stupid."

She dragged the chair that had been sitting against the far wall over to that side of the bed, then sat down and started untying the knot. "I miscalculated how much of Naruto was left."

Sasuke was spared from trying to react to that, because she'd pulled the protector off and he could see a small spot of darker red in the middle of her forehead. He leaned forward until he could see that it was teardrop-shaped, and then squinted and realized that it wasn't a teardrop but a deformed diamond. And--though he couldn't get closer without bashing his nose into hers to confirm it--the skin around it looked puckered, like a healed burn.

"There's this jutsu," Sakura said, and Sasuke sat back. "It can heal the worst damage, anything, but it does it by accelerating cell life rapidly." She started twisting the cloth in her hands. "Tsunade refused to ever teach it to me, she said it would only encourage me to take life-threatening risks, but I found it hidden in the forbidden scrolls cabinet. . . ."

She jerked the cloth sharply, pulling it taut. "I should have guessed it was in code. I should have . . . but she'd never done anything like that before, and I thought. . . . And then, after Naruto--after it--. . . after, I was . . . I could see Lee running over but I couldn't get enough air to tell him to stop, and Shizune-san was distracted and I kept bleeding too much to keep my hands focused and it hurt. . . ."

Sakura shook her head once, sharply, and started twisting the cloth again. "It's my fault. I should have known it was coded, but I panicked."

"You were dying," Sasuke replied.

"I panicked."

"It's the same thing."

Sakura was quiet for a moment, then set the forehead protector on her lap and made a futile effort to smooth out the wrinkles. "I missed most of what happened at the end, because of that. I didn't really get myself together until I heard her tell Shizune to . . . open his jacket so she could get a clean strike, and then. . . ."

Sakura pursed her lips before she finished, and then put the forehead protector back on.

"She told me if I start aging five years for every one, it's my own damn fault," she said neutrally, tying the knot. "And then she said she'll teach me the jutsu she uses to look younger, so I guess there's no way to fix it." She was silent for a moment, and then let out her breath and rubbed at the dark bags under her eyes.

". . . I'm sorry," he said quietly.

Sakura looked over at him. She didn't say anything for a full minute, but finally asked: "Did you try to get to him? When it first. . . ."

"Yes," Sasuke said.

Sakura nodded.

She sat back in the chair, fidgeting with her fingers. "I thought so. Not . . . most people, they don't believe it, but. . . ." She let out a breath. "I knew, if he wanted the Amaterasu even half as much as you wanted to kill him, he wasn't going to let you go."

She pressed her palms flat against her pants. "Lee . . . he believes that I believe it, but I didn't tell him why."

She looked over at him with that, and her voice lifted at the end of the statement. Sasuke correctly interpreted it as asking if she could tell, and shook his head once. Sakura made a small shrugging gesture, and looked back down.

"I told Kakashi-sensei, too, but I don't know what he thinks. He didn't say anything the whole night after he brought you in."

Sasuke started. "He's the one--?"

She nodded.

Then. . . . Sasuke lifted a hand, reaching back to the still slightly sore patches where the wings had breached his skin. Did he see. . .

He forced himself to drop his hand. It doesn't matter. Even if he . . . I never have to use it again. It doesn't matter.

Very little mattered, now that he had learned Naruto was going to be taken from them, but Sasuke couldn't bring himself to think on that. Thinking on it meant he had accepted it.

". . . Did she disown you as her student?" he asked after another stretch of silence, bringing up the absence of 'sensei' in Sakura's explanations.

He wasn't certain, but it almost looked like she smirked. When she answered, though, her voice was tired. "That was the other stupid thing I did. I told her if she tried to kill Naruto, I'd kill her first."

He had missed a lot, it seemed. "You threatened the Hokage."

"Mm." She pointed absently to her shoulder, and Sasuke leaned forward enough to see that there were finger-shaped bruises on her left collarbone and right upper arm. "I probably would have attacked her, too, but I was lucky. Lee held me back."

Sasuke chuckled once, mirthlessly. "All we need now is for Naruto to attack Jiraiya."

Sakura made an attempt at a laugh, but it didn't work out. They fell silent again.

After the silence had stretched out for half a minute, there was a single sharp rap at the door, and Shizune stepped in. Sakura and Sasuke eyed her warily.

"I'm here to run a check up on you, Sasuke-san," she said clinically. "Sakura-kun, if you could bring in the tray outside?"

—

Sasuke tolerated having his temperature taken, the bandages on his arms and face redressed, his blood pressure and vision checked (Shizune recorded his poor eyesight without changing expression, which only made him more suspicious), and a note being made of the stitches in his leg that had popped when he'd run out of the room, while Sakura and Shizune discussed the recovery of the possessed patients with a professional distance.

As Sasuke learned, the reason the onmyouji had failed to arrive at Konoha in time was because he'd had stopped on the way to convince an exorcist to come with him and the escort, there being none in his own village. Tsunade was apparently suspicious of his lingering, but Sasuke told Shizune that the man's actions had been reasonable--more than one person would be needed to exorcise an entire family of fox spirits in any decent amount of time, and a professional exorcist would have more experience than an onmyouji.

Jiraiya had been the first person that had been exorcised, because Tsunade found it unsatisfying to yell at him when he didn't recognize her, and because she felt it right for him to know the situation. The two of them stopped in the room while Shizune was replacing the needle on the IV.

Sakura straightened in her chair when Tsunade entered, but didn't look up. Kyomamushi slithered slightly closer, so that its head was resting against his calf, but did so slowly. Sasuke made a note to ask how wounded it had been when everyone was gone.

Tsunade folded her arms and looked down at him at him with a carefully guarded expression.

"Why, exactly, did you decide to go tearing through the halls like that, Uchiha?" she asked.

Sasuke kept his expression equally blank. "Because I wanted to know what happened to Naruto."

"He died," she said shortly.

"Sakura-kun already told him," Shizune replied, finishing with the needle and shifting Sasuke's hand so that she could insert it.

Tsunade made an annoyed but not entirely surprised noise in the back of her throat, and didn't look away from Sasuke. "Maybe if you'd shown that kind of determination during the battle. . . ."

Sasuke focused on keeping his hand relaxed and loose while Shizune inserted the needle, and didn't reply. He saw Sakura make a small, angry motion with her foot, but she kept silent. Shizune tsked under her breath, but it was quiet and easily lost under the noise from the corridor.

"How's your arm, Jiraiya-kun?" Kyomamushi asked, tail lashing once. "I never did get to see if we damaged all the nerves before he chose to leave."

Neither of the man's arms were bandaged, and the viper hadn't opened its eyes once since they'd come into the room; and the wording Kyomamushi used for 'he' left Sasuke with no doubt that it was referring to Orochimaru. Jiraiya's eyes narrowed.

"Please don't taunt the legendary sannin, Kyomamushi-sama," Sasuke said, resting his free hand on its head.

"I'll speak to you later," Tsunade said to Sasuke, cutting off anything Jiraiya was about to say. "Now that you're conscious, you'll be moved to a communal room--we need this space. Sakura, please return to your work."

"Yes," she replied, standing up. She followed the two of them out.

Shizune finished taping the gauze swatch over the needle, and set everything back on the tray. She made a final note on her clipboard, set it on there as well, and then looked at him. "What's the Amaterasu that Sakura-kun mentioned?"

Sasuke blinked at her once, slowly and insolently.

She waited for a few moments, and then told him: "You're only hurting yourself by doing this. If there's a reason that you were distracted. . . ."

"Jiraiya-sama came up to Naruto and I early into the fighting," Sasuke said. "He told us the Hokage had given orders for us to keep separate, so we wouldn't destroy the place if one of us got possessed."

"I see . . ." Shizune said quietly. She paused, then asked, "What does that have to do with Amaterasu?"

"Nothing," he replied.

Shizune watched him for half a minute, and finally shook her head and left.

—

Sasuke tried to sign himself out of the hospital that evening, after his stitches had been replaced. Tsunade listened to Shizune's description of everything she had heard (she'd walked up to the door in the middle of Sakura explaining what had happened to Naruto), reviewed the record the younger woman had made, and upon verifying that Sasuke was as stable as could be expected--barring his eyesight--said there was no reason to keep him in the hospital.

She also said that he would be better off in his own apartment than in a room with other bitter and injured people, but that was only to Shizune, who wouldn't repeat it.

—

Sakura showed up at his apartment late in the evening, and found Sasuke cleaning up a glass he'd broken by setting it too close to the edge of the counter. He hadn't been able to move his arm fast enough to catch it.

"Can you come with me?" she asked, as she set a piece on the table. "To see Naruto?"

Sasuke frowned. "Where are they keeping him? The basement of the jail?"

She shook her head. "In that room, in the tower, since it's an easily guardable location."

"What?" Sasuke replied disbelievingly. "Somewhere so populated? What if someone overhears him?" His eyes narrowed. "Or are they keeping him gagged?"

"Ah," Sakura murmured, "I forgot to--he's unconscious. He's been like that since the battle."

Sasuke dropped the last piece on the table and turned to leave. She closed the door behind them and had to remind him to lock it.

—

The hallway only opened in one place, and it was impossible to enter it without passing by a desk where Yuugao sat, adding names for the memorial marker whenever a new report came in from the hospital. She refused to let Sakura and Sasuke enter until she had radioed Tsunade and gotten her permission to do so. Tsunade also told her to stand beside the door while the two of them were in there.

Sasuke had stopped short when he first saw the room, but Sakura pushed him further in and shut the door behind them. Sasuke made his way slowly over to the cot lying on the ground and wondered Where did they get the cage?

"The onmyouji put those ofudas up," Sakura explained, indicating the slips of paper pasted all along the bars of the short cage that surrounded the cot. "They're supposed to be a barrier or something . . . can you get in it? And look at his seal?"

Sasuke nodded, and examined the ofuda. After several moments he settled on his knees and burned away two near the bottom; but he hesitated at putting his hand through the cage. Sakura stepped away and found something distracting at the counter in the corner, turning her back to him.

Sasuke slipped his hand through the bars and carefully touched the heavy scars on Naruto's cheek.

The other teenager's eyes were closed, as was his mouth, so the scars and his nails were the only signs that something had gone wrong again. Someone had taken his jacket, and his boots; there was a cord that disappeared beneath his t-shirt, and Sasuke wondered when Naruto had started wearing a necklace only to remember a moment later that long, long ago, when they'd been traveling back to Konoha and Sasuke hadn't realized what a spectacularly bad idea it was, Naruto had shown it to him.

He pulled his hand away from the scars, and tugged up the hem of Naruto's shirt to examine the seal. He had to press his face against the bars, and even then, he couldn't get close enough to see well.

Sakura turned around again when he let out his breath sharply. "What is it?"

He motioned towards the seal, and she moved to sit down across from him.

"They took off mine," he said, "but that was obvious. And the Fourth's does look frayed, but only at the end. . . . What were they trying to do?" he muttered, mostly to himself.

"Then, what are these?" Sakura asked, indicating four markings that were placed in a square around the other seal.

"Backups," Sasuke answered. "Like . . . nets. They must have. . . ."

He trailed off, and shifted closer to the bars to study the markings. When he started frowning, Sakura prompted: "Must have?"

"Fox spirits have an excess of yin energy," Sasuke explained. "So they're always lacking in yang energy and trying to acquire it. That seal I did was a yang-based one, so I balanced it by using a yin essence like blood. But here--" he indicated the seal again "--it looks like they used a yang-based releasing seal with a yang essence."

She started to bite her lip, then stopped and asked, "Like what?"

"Semen, probably," Sasuke said, eying the area.

". . . Ew," Sakura muttered half-heartedly.

"They would have put this seal here to keep it from taking over immediately, but they . . . must not have made it strong enough. . . ." He shook his head, frown deepening. "We only got away with what we did because Naruto was holding it back; if he gave it free license to kill them, all they did was force-feed it enough yang to rip their throats out. But I don't . . . why were they even tampering with it in the first place, right in the middle of an attack?"

"How bad is it?"

Sasuke considered the seals for several more moments, and finally pulled his hand out and sat back. "It's not impossible. It's only barely frayed, and a stronger seal can counter for that. I don't know how much it's affected his chakra, though."

She shook her head. "That's okay. I'm going to try to get Hinata in here, to see what it's like."

He looked over at her. "Do you think they'll let us try to fix it?"

"No," Sakura said. "But . . . I don't know, if. . . ."

Her voice grew fainter and trailed off; and after a little bit, she reached in hesitantly, and smoothed Naruto's shirt back over his stomach. "If it's not worse than before . . . if we can buy some time. . . ."

She didn't even sound as if she really believed it, so Sasuke saw no reason to say anything. They both watched Naruto in silence.

—

When they left the room several minutes later, Tsunade and Jiraiya were waiting for them in the hallway.

"Have you both said goodbye, now?" she asked them, and they looked at her. After a couple seconds of silence, Tsunade nodded once and began to step forward. "Then. . . ."

Sakura jolted, and stared, eyes wide. "You're not--now? You can't!"

Tsunade gave her a hard look. "You asked for enough time to say goodbye. Now--"

"You can't" Sakura made a frantic motion, shoving herself in front of the doorway. "You can't just--just kill him and not even tell him why!"

Tsunade let out a breath, but when she spoke again, her voice was almost gentle. "Do you really think it will be kinder to wait until he's woken up only to tell him he has to die?" she asked Sakura. "I'm not going to allow you to keep endangering your life and the lives of others in an attempt to prevent the inevitable. Don't get caught up in thoughts of false hope."

Sakura clenched her fists, and then--startling all three of them, as well as Yuugao, who was watching the scene with two shuriken concealed in her hand--bowled deeply from the waist.

"Please," she whispered. "It's not right! Tsunade-sama, please!"

Tsunade didn't say anything for a moment. Sasuke looked away from Sakura, and then bowed himself--not as deeply, but that might have been because his back was still aching.

"Please," he said as well. "I need to apologize. I should have stayed with him."

Jiraiya's eyes narrowed slightly at that, and he folded his arms. "It won't be any easier if you keep delaying this," he told them. "You should accept that he's gone and begin moving on."

"It's not right," Sakura repeated quietly.

Jiraiya sighed and leaned against the wall. "Kids--"

"Fine," Tsunade said.

Sakura and Sasuke looked at her.

She held up a hand to cut Jiraiya off before he could begin. "But only until he wakes up. You can see him one last time, and then he dies." She gave them both a hard look, willing them to understand. "There's no place for him here anymore."

Sakura swallowed, and then nodded and bowed again. Sasuke did the same. "Thank you," she said. "It--thank you."

"Now go home," Tsunade replied. "You're on call tomorrow morning."

Before they passed the desk again, Yuugao dropped her eyes and acted as though she'd been absorbed in paperwork the whole time. Sasuke was almost grateful for the small courtesy.

—

By the time they got outside, Sakura was swearing violently and desperately under her breath. Sasuke slid his hands into his pockets, hunching in against the sharp, cold wind.

Sakura ran out of steam when they were a few blocks from the hospital, and finally just let out a strangled, pained cry and fell silent. Sasuke's leg ached from the stitches and the deep bruise that covered almost the whole of his left calf, but he walked home with her.

He wound up sleeping on their couch. Sakura ordered him to stay over because he'd left the hospital too soon for his own good and he would be better off here than alone in case something happened; but later that night, she told Lee that if anyone tried to use this time to finally arrest him for treason, it was damn well going to happen where she would know about it.

"She's not taking both of them," she said harshly, throwing back the covers, and Lee rubbed his palm against the nape of her neck and murmured whatever comforting words he could think of.

——

Jiraiya managed to convey through extremely displeased silence that he wanted to speak to her further, so Tsunade--instead of going home and going to bed like she wanted to--waved a hand over her shoulder and led him up to her office.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said, as soon as he'd closed the door behind him. "You know they're going to plan to something."

"Of course they will," Tsunade replied, collapsing into her chair. Jiraiya dragged another seat up to the desk and sat on the edge of it. "But there's no way they'll be able to pull off a coordinated stunt like that again. Besides, the Hyuuga girl is useless now."

When Jiraiya only continued to glare at her, Tsunade snarled and slammed a palm on the desk, making it creak. "What was I supposed to do, after that! Say 'too bad' and walk in there and kill him?"

"Send them home," he replied. "They don't need to see it."

"They wouldn't have gone."

"I could have taken them!" Jiraiya replied. "Or you could have, and I would have done it! But you handled it badly, agreeing to give them more time to suffer over--"

"If I kill Naruto without letting them say goodbye, those children are never going to forget it," Tsunade snapped. "Twelve--twelve--reports I got on Uchiha's reaction within one hour, Jiraiya! And she seriously intended to attack me!"

Tsunade faltered slightly with that, remembering the look on Sakura's face when she'd been trying to break out of Lee's grip and throw herself in front of Naruto. A small trickle of blood had been running down her forehead where the ruined diamond had formed.

Lee had managed to keep her on her knees, and had finally been able to talk her down to a slightly calmer state, despite the fact that Shizune had been standing in front of Tsunade for almost the whole time, darts aimed.

Tsunade hadn't missed that even as he kept his arms wrapped around Sakura, he angled them so he was protecting her heart and throat.

She shook her head. "They're still young enough to form lifelong grudges. I already can't send my second best medicnin on any mission outside of Fire--do you want me to have to restrict her solely to the hospital and let her become a chuunin in name only?" Tsunade made a violent gesture, cutting Jiraiya off when he started to argue more. "And I'll never be able to trust the Uchiha with anything above a D-rank mission within the village walls, and that's a waste of talent that Konoha can't afford. There is no good way to handle this!"

She glared at him, but it was tired. "It's better to let them suffer through their own doing than to try and make it easier on them." She snorted once, mirthlessly. "We've seen how well they take that, anyway."

"Coddling them isn't going to make it easier in the end," Jiraiya said darkly. "And what if it's not Naruto in--"

"I know!" she said sharply. "Damn it, Jiraiya, give me some credit for having planned for that!"

She glared at him for almost half a minute, until he finally raised his hands and muttered, "Sorry. I didn't mean it as. . . ."

Tsunade snorted again. Then she kicked away from her desk, and started rummaging through a bottom drawer. She didn't speak again until she'd brought up a cup and a bottle of plum wine.

"What do you think would have happened if it had been you that left, instead of Orochimaru?" she asked as she poured.

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "You would have thrown a party?"

She gave him a look over the rim of the cup, and he let the frivolousness seep out of his expression. "It doesn't matter," he replied, sitting back. "This isn't the same situation."

"I know," Tsunade said quietly. "That's what makes it worse. He means more to them than you did to us."

She drained the cup in silence.

"Where'd you bury the bastard?" she asked abruptly, setting it down.

"Beside Sarutobi-sensei's grave," he replied. "Stand at the left back corner and take two steps diagonally." Then, when she started to pour another cup of wine, he added, "Where's mine?"

Tsunade filled it to the brim, set it in front of him, and then took a swig out of the bottle.

Jiraiya shook his head as he picked the cup up carefully. "So decorous, Tsunade-hime," he said with an empty smile.

"Oh, shut up," she muttered.

——

Sasuke spent the next couple nights sleeping on their couch as well. He was gone before either of them woke in the morning, however, and he made dinner and packed breakfast bentos both nights as a kind of payback.

The meals were interesting, because Sasuke usually misread an amount or a label because he had quickly grown sick of squinting and holding things immediately in front of him. He and Lee once tried throwing in some additional spices to balance things out, and after that they decided the only solution was to brew the tea extra strong and take a gulp after every bite.

Sakura didn't notice the mess being made in the kitchen until the second day--she was too tired from working long hours at the hospital to manage to eat much, let alone taste it. She worked the day shift, so by the time she got back, Lee and Sasuke were already returned from the area that they had been assigned to help rebuild.

(Konoha was once again taking on a ridiculous amount of jobs to prove to other countries they were still strong--most of the reconstruction was being done by genin and low level chuunin.

Neither Lee nor Kakashi remarked on the fact that they were quietly being passed over for assignments at the moment, though in Kakashi's case he had a handful of still-healing ribs.)

"Oi, Sasuke," she called, toeing off her boots, "are your eyes getting any better?"

"A little," he replied. "Why?"

"That rice ball in my breakfast had bits of pickle in it."

She collapsed on the couch as he swore under his breath. "I'll look at them later. I think things are going to start slowing down soon--pretty much everyone in critical condition's stabilized or died."

"Is that why the memorial service is tomorrow?" Lee asked, looking up from his stretches.

"It is?" Sakura asked. She started to sit up again. "Do we have anything black washed?"

"I'll do it," Lee replied, leaning over and pushing her arm gently. "Try to get some rest before dinner."

Sakura didn't argue and flopped back down on the couch. Lee went to do the laundry after finishing his last set of stretches, and Sasuke managed to make a fairly good curry, though it burned slightly when Lee called him into the other room to see if he could fit into an old jacket of his.

(Lee was almost glad that Sakura spent most of her time home sleeping--when she was awake, she and Sasuke were picking fights more and more often over smaller things. They usually dropped it a few minutes later and acted as if nothing had happened; but they never apologized. Lee couldn't help thinking in the back of his mind that he was watching the beginnings of a team falling apart.)

—

Sasuke disappeared for a good portion of the night after dinner, and when he came back his clothes were soaked and muddy, and his hands were chapped red from the cold. He wouldn't tell Lee where he'd been.

——

It was threatening snow on the morning of the memorial service. Sasuke met up with Sakura in the street outside her apartment and walked there with her, while Lee went to meet with Neji, Tenten, and Kakashi.

(The three of them had cornered Kakashi and convinced him to help them talk to Gai, who was too ashamed at having attacked his students to talk to them, despite them doing everything short of breaking into his apartment to see him. Kakashi had agreed to drag the other man off after the service for drinks, but told the group they had better have a plan to corner him there, because his ribs wouldn't allow him to chase him down.)

Sasuke used a henge to hide his eyes, but they stood at the back anyway.

Less than a minute had passed when the faintest scent of cloves reached his nose and made him tense, and then he heard Anko say: "I'd heard a rumor you were killed."

"Wishful thinking," Sasuke replied, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. Her right arm was bandaged from shoulder to wrist and there was a still healing slash along her throat. "I heard nothing about you."

"Like I'd let myself get killed," Anko snorted, but her tone was uncharacteristically subdued, and she was looking ahead, at the memorial slab.

"I didn't assume you would," Sasuke replied, shifting his gaze back to the front. "Not considering who your teacher was."

Anko slapped the nape of his neck with the back of her good hand and moved into the crowd. Sasuke resisted the urge to rub his skin--both to ease the sting and to remove the deliberately familiar gesture.

Sakura made a amused noise in the back of her throat, but didn't comment. Lee and his team, and Hinata and Shino, found their way to them not long after Anko left.

Sasuke had learned that Lee had been more badly damaged in the fighting than he appeared, but one of the advantages of being engaged to a medicnin was priority treatment--now, he only looked more wrapped in bandages than usual. Tenten had also been one of the first people Sakura treated away from her duties; the burns she'd suffered when Gai had deflected one of the explosive weapons she'd thrown at an Akatsuki member were healed over to fresh scars and shiny pink skin. Enough of her hair had been burned, though, that she'd just cut it until it was even shorter than Lee's. Lee had raved over the new style; Neji had pointed out a singed spot she'd missed behind her right ear, which she'd sliced off with a shuriken as they walked.

Neji, of course, had been treated by one of the Hyuuga family's medicnins. His right leg was broken, as was his left wrist, and both of his arms and his torso were heavily bandaged after a surgery to treat the damage that had been done to his chakra system, so that he was currently using a crutch. His hands were perfectly fine, though; Hiashi had left them untouched, and had consequently been killed for it. The Hyuuga clan was in as close to a panic as it ever came, with instating Hanabi as the new head and deciding what kind of punishment Neji should receive, or if he even should receive any--he had been possessed when he murdered the former head, and he was that generation's genius.

Most of the Hyuuga knew he would a superficial punishment, at the most, since it had been within their own clan and there was no need to pacify a different family head. But until the official decree was made, he was only technically allowed to go to the service because he was escorting Hinata.

Sakura had wanted to treat Hinata's right eye herself, so that it would at least scar over sooner, but the other teenager had politely refused her help. The family medicnins had tried to save it, but it had been too damaged, and the best they could do was bandage it over and stitch up the cut below that ran to her cheekbone. She could still see for roughly a hundred and eighty degrees on her left side, and she could still activate the byakugan on that side to see farther and through objects, but her sight cut off from the bridge of her nose to a little to the right of the back of her head. Hinata compensated for the loss by twisting her head to the left, but doing so for the majority of the day was giving her cricks in her neck.

Sasuke was just able to see that Shino had bandages wrapped around his neck. His clothes covered the rest of his body, and he'd been treated by a medicnin that Sakura wasn't on a casual relationship with, so she didn't know any details, and he didn't seem interested in sharing. Sakura was the only one of them who looked uninjured, barring her black headband. It was assumed that she--like the majority of the other medicnins--had healed herself first to better be able to care for others. She wasn't telling otherwise, and Lee and Sasuke took their cue from her.

It was hard to hear the speeches being made in the back, but they stopped listening anyway once Neji deactivated his byakugan and said: "His name's not on there."

Hinata made a pained noise. Sasuke slid his hands into the pockets of the coat that Lee had loaned him, pulling it a little closer around (it was too tight across the chest for him to be able to button it and still move efficiently). Lee clenched a fist, then opened it when the skin over his knuckles threatened to split again.

"That's not fair!" he said. "This wasn't Naruto-kun's fault!"

"And he led them out of the village," Neji added coldly. "There would be more names on there if he hadn't."

"It's political," Sakura replied, arms folded in front of her and holding her elbows. "There was no way, so soon after . . . it'll be added later. I'm sure it will."

Sasuke snorted. "And then a few nights after that, someone will have chiseled it out."

"There's no reason for people to keep holding those grudges if he's gone," she replied, and Sasuke gave her a disbelieving look.

"Do you think that just because--"

"If you can't pretend to be an optimist for a few hours, then please shut up!"

"Sakura, Sasuke-kun, please!" Lee whispered.

They fell into a stony silence and looked back to the front.

But a few moments later, she said, "Stop thinking the worst." Before Sasuke could say anything, she added: "There were others, like Gaara and Naruto."

All six teenagers looked at her. A few of the adults in front of them stiffened.

"We found out that Akatsuki was after all of them," Sakura continued, staring over the other people to the where the memorial stone stood. "When they came to the other villages, some of them just handed their bijuu over."

She gave Sasuke a look. He was quiet for a few moments, and then shook his head. "They attacked us head-on here. . . ."

"If we'd just distracted ourselves with quarantining the possessed people, and paid no attention to their taking him, no one might have died," Sakura retorted. "Maybe they didn't like him, but they still fought. That's something."

When another silence began to stretch out, it was Tenten who broke it.

"Of course we fought," she said. "We're shinobi of the Leaf. It's what we do."

None of them spoke for the rest of the service.

—

When it was over, Kakashi led Gai off, and Lee, Neji and Tenten followed soon after. Hinata began to head back to the Hyuuga complex, but Sakura caught her by the right elbow, and then quickly apologized for startling her.

(Hinata would, months later, confide to Sakura that she didn't know how other people could be brave enough to live day in and day out with such a large blind spot.)

"Ah, Hinata-chan, could you . . . can you come with me? There's something I need you to see."

Sakura looked over her shoulder at Sasuke, who shook his head once.

"Not again," he said.

"Okay," she replied. "I'll see you." She began leading Hinata off. "It's at the tower . . . let's take the rooftops, I have to explain something first. . . ."

"Sakura-chan?" the other teenager said, having noticed that Sakura was leading them away from Kiba, who was making his way over.

"Out of the crowd, c'mon Hinata-chan, please. . . ."

Shino watched them go with a crease in his brow, but shrugged off Kiba's question when the other teenager reached him. Sasuke had disappeared before they were onto a side street, while he could still pretend that he hadn't seen Shizune try to flag him down.

Of the three Akatsuki bodies that had been recovered and set aside to be dissected and cremated after the rites for the Leaf shinobi were given, one had gone missing, you see.

——

It was impossible for him to avoid being questioned for long; the next day, a note came just before lunch that Sasuke needed to come to the hospital for a second checkup on his eyes. Shizune included at the bottom that he should leave immediately--he could eat lunch with her, and do the checkup afterward. He abandoned the section of the wall that he'd been laying and, after wiping the mortar off his trowel, left. Lee was working up on the roof of the building across the street, so Sasuke didn't ask if there was any message the other teenager wanted him to relay to Sakura.

He was not surprised to find, upon entering the hospital cafeteria, that Shizune was sitting at a table with Tsunade. Sakura was also there, but she looked surprised to see him.

Kakashi was sitting at another table two meters away, seemingly absorbed in a battered copy of Icha Icha Violence. Sasuke didn't look at him as he made his way to the table.

"I buried it within the Uchiha complex," he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "I trust it was in my familial rights to do that."

Shizune choked slightly at his bluntness, and took a sip of water. Sakura had stopped eating.

Tsunade retained an expression of utter composure. "You stole a corpse out of the crematorium," she replied. "I'll overlook that, since its nothing compared to the rest of what you've done, but Uchiha Itachi was much too powerful to be allowed to go uncremated."

"I already did that," Sasuke replied. He hadn't cared to let the secrets of the mangekyou sharingan get out, either. "I didn't see a reason to trouble the already overworked crematory assistants."

Tsunade gave him a hard look. "It's going to be in your best interest to start selling off some of that land soon," she said. "I don't think the people who'll buy it will be pleased to unearth an urn when they're trying to put in a garden."

"It won't be found," he replied.

"He's dead," Sakura interjected tiredly, having pieced things together. "You can quit now."

Sasuke looked at her coldly. "Maybe you believed that 'an enemy should be treated with respect once they're dead' bullshit, but I considered the source."

Sakura shifted away slightly, but after a couple seconds she caught hold of herself, and made her face blank.

"You should respect your older brother, Sasuke," she said, turning back to her meal and picking up her chopsticks. "After all, you wouldn't be who you are without him."

"Sakura-kun!" Shizune hissed, and Sakura took a bite of rice.

Sasuke was silent for several long moments. Then he stood up, said curtly, "My eyes are fine," and slammed his seat back beneath the table.

It missed hitting Sakura in the elbow by a centimeter. She gave no indication of noticing.

Tsunade watched Sasuke stride out of the cafeteria, jerking sharply to avoid accidentally touching anyone. Then she glanced over at Kakashi. He tucked the novel back in his vest, took a last bite of food, and followed, throwing away his tray as he left.

"That was uncalled for!" Shizune snapped. "Regardless of how--"

"It was the truth," Sakura interrupted. "It won't kill him to hear it." She set her chopsticks down and started to stand. "I'm going back to work."

Tsunade caught her by the elbow before she could get all the way up and pulled her back into her chair.

"You're going to finish your lunch," she replied. "One dramatic exit is enough. And you're no use to anyone if you pass out from a lack of food."

Sakura simply sat there, tense, for a moment; but she finally picked up her chopsticks and began eating. It was harder this time, since her hands were shaking faintly.

Tsunade didn't say anything else for a while, and gestured for Shizune to remain quiet as well. When Sakura had finished over half her beef bowl, however, Tsunade drank the last of her water and set the cup on the table before saying, "You two are going to gain nothing, acting like this."

"Yes," Sakura muttered.

"Sakura," Tsunade said evenly. "I have lived through two wars, several dead loved ones, and losing my own teammate to betrayal. I'm not going to be guilt-tripped over one boy. You two will learn to get along without him."

"He's not just one--!" Her hand clenched around the chopsticks. "Don't you understand, you're killing everyone who ever believed in him!"

"Your generation is strong," Tsunade replied. "They'll survive."

The chopsticks began to splinter. Sakura set them heavily on the table.

". . . Please excuse me, Tsunade-sama," she said a moment later, staring down. "I'm not hungry."

Tsunade gave her a long look.

". . . Of course," she answered. "I made a mistake in giving you such long hours--you're obviously too young to handle so much chakra exertion. Take the next three days off, and then return here."

Sakura's eyes widened, but she replied, "Thank you, Tsunade-sama," and pushed away from the table.

When she was out of hearing, Shizune murmured, "Tsunade-sama, do you think that was a wise--?"

"She's been drugging Naruto when we go in there to check on him," Tsunade replied quietly, making Shizune start, "to keep him unconscious longer. This needs to be finished."

Shizune closed her eyes and let out her breath. She pressed a hand to her temple, tiredly, before opening them again and turning back to her food.

—

Sakura was nearly at the bathrooms at the end of the corridor, rubbing the heel of her hand angrily against one of her eyes, when Sasuke walked out of the men's. He was drying his face with a paper towel. They paused when they saw each other.

Sasuke looked her over once, and then held out the damp towel. Sakura took it and swiped it across her eyes, hard.

When he started to move away, she turned slightly and said, "Come have dinner with us?"

Sasuke slid his hands in his pockets. ". . . I'll be late."

"Okay," she replied. They walked past each other.

Kakashi waited until Sakura was in the bathroom before sliding around the corner of the other hallway that he'd been lounging in.

——

Sasuke had become remarkably adept at disappearing over the years--Kakashi lost him by the time they were out of the hospital.

But one of the traits of a good hunter was not only the ability to track, but also the instinct for where the prey would go. Kakashi didn't bother trying to pick up Sasuke's scent, and instead made his way toward the Uchiha compound.

The teenager had already reached it when he got there--he must have teleported at some point. There was a kunai lodged in the ground in front of the main gate.

Kakashi eyed it for a moment, and then scooped up a rock and threw it at the gate. It bounced back a moment later, scorched, while the barrier flickered into view. Kakashi sighed in annoyance and went to examine the setup.

The barrier didn't contain all of the compound, but instead a rectangular swath to the center and left of the main entrance. At the corner closest to him, Kakashi found another kunai in the ground, with blood smeared on the blade.

The barrier had been hastily and a little sloppily thrown up, but Sasuke had used blood, which was one of the strongest components to any jutsu that there was. It would take a hefty amount of effort for Kakashi to break it on his own.

He considered for a few minutes, and then left it alone. Instead, he jumped to a nearby rooftop that was high enough to let him to see a good distance into the compound, settled into a crevice that kept some of the wind at bay, and waited.

—

Nearly half an hour passed before Sasuke came into view, up the road that went past the Uchiha household and led to the Nakano river. He was carrying something wrapped in a lot of wet and mud-stained cloth.

Very good, Kakashi thought to himself, eyes flicking once more to the barrier and then back to Sasuke. By the time he'd gotten off the roof, jarring his ribs slightly with the last jump, Sasuke had broken the barrier and was wiping the kunai off on one of the few non-muddy places on his pants.

His boots were still fairly clean, which made Kakashi suspect that Sasuke had taken them off before wading in the river. He hated to think of what that had done to the teenager's feet.

He wondered how Sasuke had known that that was where Shisui was found.

When he got closer, Kakashi also noticed that there was something hanging around his neck, beneath his shirt. He would study the outline several times during the walk back when Sasuke wasn't looking, but the shirt wasn't damp enough for him to be able to make out the shape.

Sasuke shoved the package at him wordlessly, then folded his arms and hunched over. He was shivering badly in the winter wind, and didn't move out of that position except to pick up the other kunais.

"What about the last two?" Kakashi asked, as they headed back toward the more occupied parts of the village.

"I'll get them later," Sasuke replied.

After they'd passed down three more streets, each growing more populated, Kakashi said: "You know, my teacher once told my teammate and I that redemption isn't about dying."

". . . Hn," Sasuke replied neutrally.

"He said that the day before he was killed sealing the fox demon into Naruto," Kakashi continued. He shifted the package over to his other side, and then regretted the motion as soon as the wind hit the damp places that had been left behind. "I guess he wanted at least us to understand why he was doing it. Rin figured it out sooner than I did, though," he added with a faint grin.

Sasuke frowned. When Kakashi didn't go on, he repeated, "'Understand why'?"

"Well," Kakashi said, "technically, that's still forbidden to talk about." He looked over at Sasuke and might have smiled, though it was hard to see through the mask at that angle. "I'll explain it to you guys when the statue of limitations runs out."

Sasuke looked back down the road, tucking his hands further beneath his armpits. "Do whatever," he replied. "I don't care."

Kakashi could tell that this time he meant it.

—

After Sasuke had turned down a street, leaving him behind, Kakashi shifted the cloth around until he could see inside. He found a small, round tea caddy, tied shut with two lengths of rope.

Must have raided the storage area, Kakashi concluded. I guess they don't usually have funerary urns lying around in those.

—

Shizune gave the tea caddy a long look when Kakashi turned it over to her, but didn't comment.

Instead, she asked, "Kakashi-san, have you heard of something called Amaterasu?" When he frowned slightly, she added, "It would probably be related to the sharingan."

He was silent for almost two minutes.

"Hm," he finally said. "I haven't, but if I had to guess, I would say it's a level of the mangekyou. Sasuke once told me that the roughest version of it is called the 'Susano,' and the Tsukiyomi is a version of it that both Itachi and Sasuke have mentioned. So. . . ."

"Amaterasu must be the highest," Shizune finished. "Do you know anything else about them?"

"Unfortunately, no," Kakashi replied. "The Uchiha clan only told me as much as they felt was appropriate for me to know, and Sasuke inherited their restraint."

"Mm," Shizune replied, giving the tea caddy another look and guessing that Sasuke wouldn't have left even a bone fragment large enough to eke out a clue. "Well, thank you for your help."

——

Sasuke returned to the apartment to find Sakura slumped at the table in the living room, a cup and an open sake bottle beside her. She was toying half-heartedly with the cards that had been left out from last night. She wasn't wearing her forehead protector.

"How many of those have you had?" Sasuke asked, kicking off his boots.

She glared at him. "Just o--what the hell happened to you! Sasuke! You weren't walking outside like that, were you?"

"I'm taking a shower," he replied, moving past her.

"You idiot . . . borrow some of Lee's clothes when you get out. Sasuke, what did you do to him?"

"I left him where he belonged." The bathroom door closed, cutting off further conversation.

—

When he came out half an hour later, skin no longer blue-tinged, the sake was still open. Sakura's face didn't look more flushed, though, and Sasuke didn't get a chance to comment on it anyway, because as soon as he sat down she began to explain everything.

"It's hopeless," she said quietly, resting her head on the table and pushing her hair up out of her face. "I gave him enough to keep him asleep for another day or two, but after that. . . ."

Sasuke reached out and gathered up the cards. "Fine."

Sakura looked over at him. "'Fine'?" she repeated derisively.

"You tried," he replied. At her disgusted look, he added harshly, "What do you want? To flee the village with him and hope that when he wakes up, it'll be him in there and not the fox?"

Sakura shoved away from the table. "Is running away always your first thought?"

She stalked off to the bedroom and closed the door hard behind her.

Sasuke shuffled the deck for a few minutes, falling into the repetitive motion and concentrating on making it smoother each time. Then he moved his clothes to the dryer and laid out a hand of solitaire.
-

When Sakura had remained in the bedroom for over twenty minutes, Sasuke borrowed a bottle of metal polish from her and Lee's supply shelf and cleaned the necklace he was wearing.

Even with that, scorch marks remained in some places. A few of the links were soldered together, so it hung awkwardly when he tucked it back beneath his shirt.

—

By the time Lee returned home, Sasuke had changed back to his own clothes and had played enough rounds of solitaire to become extremely frustrated with his eyesight, and his back ached from continually leaning forward to see the numbers and symbols more clearly.

"Sasuke-kun! Why didn't you come back to work?" Lee admonished as he removed his shoes.

"Too wet."

Lee blinked once at that, but before he could ask, he noticed the bottle of sake.

"That's Sakura's," Sasuke replied, correctly interpreting Lee's disapproving silence. "But she didn't have more than two drinks." He explained--slightly more succinctly--what Sakura had told him, as Lee put the bottle away and set the cup beside the sink.

Lee exhaled heavily when Sasuke was finished, and went to check on Sakura.

He came back soon after, not looking any better. "She's asleep."

"She needs it," Sasuke replied. "She's taking everything too hard."

Lee looked at him. "And you aren't?"

Sasuke pushed the cards into a pile and began sorting them to be shuffled again. Lee sat down across from him.

"I know I don't know you that well, Sasuke-kun, but you don't have to act like nothing's changed." Lee folded his arms on the table, gingerly resting them so that he wouldn't put any pressure on the bruise near his elbow. "I'm going to miss him, too."

"I don't care," Sasuke replied.

Lee wondered briefly if this was what Sakura and Naruto dealt with on a daily basis. "He was your teammate, Sasuke-kun. I can't believe that you would feel that kind of apathy at the news--"

"It's not apathy," Sasuke interrupted, staring down at the cards. He was still shuffling them. "It's endurance."

Lee furrowed his brow. "'Endurance'? But that's . . . endurance is striving past your limits. Continuing on after you're so exhausted that your eyes feel like they're tied down with lead weights! It's not--"

"Not caring is also endurance," Sasuke replied. "You can survive anything if you don't let it matter."

Lee was silent for a while, and watched Sasuke shuffle the cards.

". . . I guess I can see how that works," he finally acquiesced. "But it still doesn't feel right to me."

For a moment, it looked like the corner of Sasuke's mouth quirked up.

Whether he'd imagined that or not, Lee noticed that when the other teenager spoke again, his face didn't look quite as closed off as it had before.

"It's something I learned in Oto," he replied, and began dealing out the cards for himself and Lee. "It shouldn't feel right."

—

After dinner, Lee said, "There's something I want you two to see."

Sakura and Sasuke gave him vaguely curious looks. Lee stood up. "I heard about it from Tobitake-san while we were working on the roofs."

"What is it?" Sakura asked.

"It's outside!"

"That's where, not what, Lee. . . ."

"Let's go," Sasuke said, standing as well and carrying up his plate over to the sink.

—

Sakura began redoubling her effort to make Lee tell them once he brought them to the path that would lead to the re-placed memorial tablet, but he remained firm in his intention not to give the secret away. Sasuke turned on the flashlight once the trees provided sufficient cover from the village, and said nothing.

"Here!" Lee said once they reached the stone. "I don't know exactly where it is, though . . . Sasuke-kun, could I borrow that?"

Sasuke handed over the flashlight, and Lee crouched and began studying the side of the stone with the most new names chiseled on it.

Sakura glanced over at Sasuke. He shrugged briefly.

"Ah!" Lee called. "It was true!"

"What was true?" Sakura asked exasperatedly, pressing a hand to her forehead.

"I heard that Konohamaru-kun got in trouble for writing Naruto-kun's name on here," Lee replied. He gestured to a bottom left corner of the stone. "See?"

Sasuke and Sakura crowded around him.

The name was a little smeared, as if someone had tried to wipe it away, but the permanent ink was still there. The last character of Naruto's name trailed off abruptly, as if Konohamaru had had to run as soon as it was finished.

". . . oh," Sakura said quietly, a hand to her mouth. "That crazy little brat . . . where did he even find a marker that color. . . ."

Sasuke had knelt next to the stone, but he looked over at her with that. "What color?"

"It's orange," she replied, and then frowned. "Can't you tell?"

He turned back to the stone, brushing off her question with a shake of his head. "He's an idiot," he commented, in a voice lacking causticness.

"It's a good testament to Naruto-kun's influence on people," Lee said seriously, and Sasuke almost made an amused noise.

"Passing on the legacy of vandalism," he muttered, sitting back on his heels. "Hn. He'd probably be proud."

They remained there, in the noise of the night, for a while. Eventually, Lee looked up at Sakura, and then squinted to make sure he was reading her expression right.

He reached up and took her hand, causing her to start. "Sakura? Are you--is something wrong?"

"No," she said faintly, still staring at the stone. "I'm fine. Just . . . thinking."

Before Lee could question this, she shook her head once, vehemently. Then she pressed a hand against her forehead again.

"I didn't put on my protector," she said. "Can we . . . is it okay if we head back? Before someone notices?"

"Yeah," Sasuke said, straightening. Lee stood as well, keeping his hand in Sakura's, and as they began the walk back she intertwined their fingers.

—

When they were a few blocks away from the apartment, Sasuke turned down the street that would lead to his own.

"Wait, you're going home?" Sakura asked.

"I'm paying so much for the privilege of living there, I might as well get my money's worth," Sasuke replied.

Sakura frowned. "But--"

"If anyone comes to arrest me in the middle of the night, I'll set the place on fire," he said. "If you don't notice that, too bad."

She shook her head tiredly. "Don't joke about that, Sasuke."

"I'm not," he replied, and turned back down the street.

"Oh . . . whatever," Sakura muttered. "I just want to sleep."

Lee squeezed her hand slightly. "Let's go home."

——

When Lee got up for work tomorrow, Sakura managed a wave and mumbled something that was either a "Good morning," or half of a "Good luck at work." It was hard to tell with her face buried in the pillow to keep out the light.

Half an hour after he left, she was already up and on her way to Ino's parents' shop. She wasn't back until almost after dinner. She didn't talk much after she returned.

Sasuke hadn't come back for dinner either, and it made Lee wonder if they'd gotten into another fight sometime after work had finished for the day.

He was wrong, but he didn't learn that until late that night.

—

At some point past midnight, Lee woke up on his own before Sakura could wake him. She'd been sitting up in the bed for almost a half an hour and still hadn't thought of a good way to begin what she had to say, so she started badly when Lee pushed himself up onto an elbow beside her.

"Sakura?" he asked worriedly, reaching out to touch her arm.

"It's okay if you say no."

He frowned. "What?"

Sakura was hunched over, staring at her knees. "I just . . . it's okay. If you say no. I wanted you to know that first."

Lee sat up, still frowning. "I don't understand."

"I can't let him be killed," she said quietly. "I don't--I know it's in everyone's best interest, but I can't just stand here and let it happen!"

"Sakura. . . ." Lee wrapped an arm around her waist and shifted a little closer. "I know it hurts, the thought of losing him, but. . . ."

She was shaking her head. "I can't," she murmured. "I can't just . . . I can't."

"What else is there to do?" Lee asked, trying to coax her around to reason.

"Leave," she answered.

His arm tensed.

"It's possible," she said. "I didn't think so before, but . . . if I beg to be the one who kills him, I can make it seem like he died without really doing it. Getting him out was the impossible part, but if there was someone who'd be willing to take a risk to be a distraction . . . it would only need to be a henge, and as long as Konohamaru didn't get caught--and even if he did, with his family, he wouldn't be in as much trouble as other people--"

"You're talking about becoming a missingnin," Lee said quietly.

"I know," she replied.

"How do you even know if it's still him?" Lee asked. "Isn't that what Hokage-sama was afraid of?"

"I don't," Sakura replied. "If he isn't, then. . . ." She splayed her hands palms up briefly. "Then none of it matters. But if it's still him there, I can't let him die."

Lee was silent, and Sakura let her hands drop to her sides. "I . . . I tried to give this up," she whispered. "I really did. I helped Ino-chan with repairing her store, and I dragged her with me to shop for wedding kimonos. I went and had lunch with my parents. I visited some of my old teachers, after the academy let out for the day. I tried."

Lee wrapped his other arm around her, and pulled her closer.

"Sakura," he said, very quietly, "he almost killed you."

She shook her head loosely, as if she didn't have the energy even for such a small action as that anymore.

"I know," she replied helplessly. "I couldn't make it matter."

Lee pressed his temple against the side of her throat.

"I'd have been dead years ago without him." She clenched the blankets, twisting them slightly in her grip. "When the Sand and the Sound first attacked, and we were sent after Gaara . . . and then before, with those two from the Mist. . . . We'd both have died long ago, and Kakashi-sensei might have, too."

Sakura let go of the blankets, and made another small, fluttery gesture. ". . . He's my teammate," she whispered, and Lee closed his eyes.

Neji and Tenten had visited him in the hospital, the day before his surgery. None of them had said anything about it, and Neji had spent most of the visit acting as though the whole thing was a waste of his time, because Lee was too annoying to die until he'd finally gone through with that threat of defeating him; but Tenten had lingered after Neji had had to return home.

"Are you sure you should do this?" she'd asked, sitting on the edge of his bed. "Wanting to prove that an honorable ninja only needs taijutsu is a good dream, but. . . ."

"I know it's risky," he'd replied. "But I have another reason."

He hadn't said more, and Tenten hadn't pushed. Instead, she'd shaken her head, sighed dramatically about how he always had to push too far, and had wished him good luck.

He'd gone through with the surgery, despite all the risks, because he couldn't imagine his life without being a ninja, and he couldn't imagine being a ninja without having Gai, Neji, and Tenten beside him. Death would eventually break them apart, they had all accepted that, but to be left behind. . . .

". . . I understand," Lee said quietly, despite how much he wished he didn't understand at that moment. "But, Sakura . . . everything I have here. . . ."

"I know," she murmured. "It's okay if you say no."

She was making a sincere effort to sound as though she meant it. Lee appreciated that.

"I can't . . . say, now . . . I have to think about it," he said.

She nodded, not turning to look at him. "I know. Of course."
-

Lee stayed awake long after Sakura finally fell asleep.

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