"It's time to go."

Yamato checked his watch. It was six thirty on a summer evening. barely enough time to make it out of this dark, underground labyrinth and to home camp before nightfall. Nightfall meant danger from all around. The dark of Konoha's ANBU headquarters was dangerous enough in ful day, but night meant much worse. Sighing he shoved one more stack of papers into the fire, grabbed his pack full of scavenged medical supplies, and stood to lead the way back outside.

He knew these laths better than she, having spent so much of his life among them. So, when he took a detour to a mess hall, Sakura didn't think to object before they were already in one of the food storage rooms. With a wink, he opened up a door to reveal cases upon cases of field rations.

" We don't have room for all of this," Sakura reminded, clearly annoyed.

"We can take a few now and get more tomorrow," Yamato told her, already holding three. "We could use it."

"Fine. Don't overload yourself."

They each randomly grabbed three a piece before he lead the way back out. Quiet ruled the land they stepped into. Not even birds made a noise. There were no people, no stray dogs, not even a breeze to ease the humidity brought on by a mid day rain shower. Instantly, the pair began to sweat, their breathing becoming slightly labored with the drastic changes. It was going to be a long trek over the mountain just to sleep in a tent. Sakura looked longingly at all the homes and apartment buildings in the distance. Each of them had a soft mattress and a comfortable pillow somewhere inside. It sucked that many of them were currently filled with rotting corpses.

Shaking that thought out of her mind, she trudged forward, walking side by side with her former captain.

Three weeks ago, when they walked this road together every morning and evening, people would wave and say hello, often asking about her daughter. She would tell them Kimiko was doing well in school, still loved playing with her puppy, and still hated eating broccoli with a passion.

Sakura fought the urge to pull out the little family photo she kept in her vest pocket along side the photos of her parents and two team photos. The girl looked far too much like her father. Anyone who didn't already know them should swear there was no way Sakura cod be her mother. That lasted only until they got to know the girl. Kimiko may have been a quiet, well mannered, unfussy baby, but she was a bold, friendly, unreserved toddler with a vocabulary miles long.

She was the kind of child that would wake her parents up in the middle of the night to ask questions like "are there more stars out there than we can see?"

Yamato stopped and looked back, suddenly losing Sakura wasn't at his side any longer. The blank stare in her eyes said all he needed to know. "Come on. We can't take any personal time today."

She wanted to scream. She hadn't had any personal time in weeks. Not to prepare her daughter for the deaths that word happen in the streets, not to get her daughter to safety with the others, and certainly not any to grieve. If it hadn't been for Yamato, she wouldn't have had the time to bury Kimiko in the first place.

"Sakura!" he yelled at her, commanding her attention. "Get .moving. People are counting on us to get these supplies."

"Yes, Captain," she bit back harshly. If she was looking, she did have seen the hurt in his face. She hadn't called him that in four years

"So, it's that way now?" He asked, lowly.

"Don't raise your damn voice at me... especially here."

"Sakura," he reached out to take her hands in his, "I had to. You know why. After tomorrow, we will get our day's rest. We can take it all in then. Not now. Not here."

Lips pursed, she yanked her hands from his and started marching onward again. They made their way up the cliff side in silence.

Had it not been for the unnatural quiet over the land, they probably never would have heard the man yelling down in the streets below. One loud noise, kept short, was safe. The racket this idiot was making far exceeded anything the scavenger parties cod hope to survive without one hell of a fight after.

Looking back down to where they had come from, they could see what appeared to be an elderly man waving his arms frantically. He was calling directly to them from the top of an apartment building. Behind him came a chord of other figures at an increasing rate of speed.

"Shit!" Yamato yanked off his overstuffed pack and shoved it at Sakura. "Get this back to camp. I'll see what I can do for the idiot."

"But-!" she began to protest.

"No. I will kill him if he can't keep up and shut up, but you have to get this to the medics as fast as possible. They need you back tonight or Lee might not make it. You know that. Get going. I will be there by tomorrow afternoon with or without that guy. Now GO!"

She hated that he brought up Lee. He was a new father, and a single one at that. It didn't help much that he was currently almost out of antibiotics to fight off the infection the mother of his child gave him with a poisoned dagger an hour after their son was born. At that point, she was already too far gone to save. Lee took the hit to protect their son while Sakura herself drove a pair of clamps into Tenten's skull. It was the quickest method available to stop the oncoming potential slaughter Sakura had available. At least the kid wouldn't have any memory of it later. Lee and Sakura would have to live with it for the rest of their lives, however short that may be.

Sakura reached out and grabbed Yamato by the sleeve. Before he had time to protest, she said everything with a fast kiss on his lips. She said she was sorry, she wanted him to be safe, she would worry, and she loved him all at once. He replied in kind.

"Go," he whispered, pushing away and launching himself off the side of the mountain towards the man below.