Of Princes and Princesses

by WishingAgain

A Narutoverse adaptation of Disney's Snow White, made for the Summer of Love Kaka/Saku livejournal community. Rated T for some intense moments and language. Read and enjoy!

This story is for the Kaka/Saku livejournal community Summer of Love contest! The theme was to take a movie from the 1920s to 1960s and remake the movie in the Narutoverse with this couple as the main pairing and to end on a happy note. It's 20,726 words, so I hope you don't get too bored with it!

Information on this movie can be found on wikipedia when you search for the 1937 Disney version. The main voice actress is Adriana Caselotti. Unfortunately, the male lead in this movie isn't exactly seven short, old men. I was allowed a little leeway on this.

But, please, read and enjoy!

"Run..."

Sakura clutched the wound at her side, pushing as much pressure as she could muster to stop the heavy bleeding.

"What are you waiting for? Go, now!"

Tears from the whipping wind stung her eyes. No, it must have been her speed. There was no wind in these woods.

Brambles and branches scratched at her, grabbed at her, it seemed.

The poison was working, and it felt like everything around her was alive, wanting her dead.

"Please, Sakura. Hurry!"

The words registered strongly in her mind, echoing off each other as her legs, now heavy with chakra-induced adrenaline. The sounds of her footsteps pounding against forest boughs filled her ears with crunches of the bark and leaves, though she tried her hardest to concentrate to clearing her saturated mind.

"Shit," she muttered through clenched teeth.

An armed shinobi rose from the shadows of the tree she stepped on. The malicious glints of the steel kunais he bore only added to the dark intensity of his exaggerrated presence looming over her petite form. In reponse, Sakura jerked away and kicked off from the branch, dodging the forward lunge of her enemy.

However, in her confused haste, she faltered and slipped.

Looking above to gauge her fall, she squinted and found the haziness in her mind disappearing, being replaced with a massive migraine. The toxin playing with her sight must have stabilized, and she swore when her clouded eyes reshifted to see that the ninja had never even been there. Her mistake would have costly consequences.

Judging from the soft moonlight peering through the foliage, she was falling from the top of the canopy.

When she attempted to summon her strength and chakra to right herself midair, she found that chakra depletion had struck again at her most dire situation. Stamina-wise, she could laugh in the face of death after years of training with her master and confidant, the Fifth Hokage of Konoha, but after traveling for three days at a strenuous pace she was without an ounce of energy.

Euphoria filled her head as she fell, but her entire body felt like lead, speeding the rate at which the light butterflies in her stomach turned into a whirlwind of pangs.

The dark eyes and contorted hands that had been grabbing at her for forty-eight hours had finally returned to their leafy foliage forms, and her half-lidded eyes stared blankly at the moving bark and brambles.

A crack sounded when her back hit another jutting branch and her body turned, forcing her to face downward at the tall ferns hundreds of feet below. The blood-stained fabric of her top smeared and tore against the splintered wood as the weight and force of her body brought part of the tree with her toward the earth. She would have cried out in sheer pain, but the weakness consumed her, forcing her to swallow it back and look onto her descent with half-lidded eyes.

Why did have to be, of all people, HER boys who tried to assassinate her? She asked mentally. A voice inside her mind chided her, telling her it was what guareenteed her life. Still, she couldn't help but curse. She wanted to curse at the world, at this war, at herself. It was a bad habit.

She had healed them during and after missions, expressing sincere and sometimes adamant concern about their well-being. She would insult them and praise them in every affectionate way possible, expressing that motherly side of hers that she never showed to anyone else. They shared unspoken secrets, heartfelt wishes, priceless moments, and a true friendship that few shinobi would ever be lucky enough to know. She loved them: Naruto and Sai.

Sakura had paid her dues, so why was she here again, falling to her doom in these godforsaken woods miles away from home? A niggling feeling tugged at her brain, as if trying to remind her. She shut her eyes, racking her brain for the reason and hoping that not seeing her fall would lessen the inevitable pain.

"Please! Just run as fast you can before she finds out!" Naruto pleaded with teary eyes.

Sai nodded grimly and quickly picked up the senbon Sakura had thrown earlier and punctured his own neck with it.

"Don't forget, Hag, she won't stop until she finds you." He nodded his head, signaling for her to leave, before his eyes rolled back and his body went slack. She would have angrily protested at her so-called nickname had it not been for the current situation.

Sakura winced, feeling her body retaliate violently against the fresh poison Naruto managed to infect her with using his sharp nails, previously dipped in the stuff. She already had enough trouble with the onslaught of Sai's animal paintings and became overwhelmed with the sheer numbers and the saturated smell of ink in the air. Her side also bled profusely, unable to clot due to the poison.

It was the fact that Naruto ripped out a chunk of her liver after slashing at her side that bothered her the most. Her escape from the village would have warranted her death, of course, but what did anyone want with a piece of an organ that wasn't even a vital one? Naruto was stupid, but was he really that stupid?

Guessing about that wasn't a good idea at the moment. Sakura steadied her stance, swallowing back a bitter flavor that kept coming up with blood, most likely from the soldier pill she previosly ingested. She watched Naruto lower his claws, which slowly morphed back into the usual nubs of his fingernails. The red, bubbling aura floating about him dispersed.

"Use your chakra wisely, and get as far as you can." Naruto spoke seriously as he pivoted his stance. "She wanted this to prove your death," he raised his bloodied fist, knowing Sakura could identify what was in it, "and she'll get it too. We can't hold her off forever, but we know you'll be fine, Sakura. I believe you'll be fine." His expression changed, softening into that goofy, determined smile, before he lifted a poison-tipped kunai to his thigh.

"No, Naruto! Sai! What are you-" Sakura choked on dry spittle and blood. She watched through one eye, the other shut from pain, and saw Naruto stab himself, hissing through his teeth, before he too had fallen like his comrade.

Then, she heard others coming.

"Right, I need to find-"

Her mind went blank, words interrupted, before her body smashed into a large fern, an audible crunching noise coming from her newly-broken bones and the snapped twigs underneath her.

"Bastard..."

Kakashi opened his single eye slowly. His body hurt terribly, but he couldn't look down to see what damage he did to himself. From where he was sitting, or laying, he couldn't tell, he saw rays of sunlight shining through leafy branches above his head.

"You awake, Kakashi?"

That voice, it couldn't be?

"Genma?" Kakashi grunted. He tried to move, but found that anything he did besides breathing slowly was extremely painful and difficult.

"Whoa there, hold it, big boy." Genma scrambled over to his friend, pulling up Kakashi's gloved hand and handing him something small and round. "Eat this, you'll feel better. I'm no good at this healing stuff." He gave him an assuring smile and turned back to keep watch from the trees.

"What is it?" Kakashi pulled down his mask feebly and popped it into his mouth anyways, regretting the action when the bitterness attacked his taste buds. Eating medicine like this, he felt like an old man taking supplements for arthritis.

"It's a soldier pill. Your old student made 'em. Sakura-chan, I think that was her name."

"Ha, student, indeed." He chuckled against the bad flavor in his mouth as he gulped. True to Genma's word, he felt better immediately, sparking a little pride in his relationship to the pink-haired medic. "She called me a bastard."

"Better than a pervert, right, old man?"

"Asshole."

"Prick."

"Man-whore."

"Kakashi, I don't think this is going anywhere." Gemna scoffed, knowing the pill worked too well. "The Matriarch is pissed though. Kudos for you and Sakura."

Kakashi quirked an eybrow.

"The rebellion was...successful?"

"The hell it was!" Genma smiled brightly to his friend, giving him a thumbs-up.

The exhausted jounin sighed in relief and closed his lone eye to sleep, thinking about the cherry blossom.

"Cl...!"

"No...it again!...hurry...for her!"

Sakura felt dizzy. There were so many voices, but she couldn't make out what they were saying or what they even looked like, except for the dim blobs of white and blue in her peripheral vision. Slowly, these colors grew brighter and more vivid, but she could barely open her eyes, let alone blink them.

For some reason, her chest felt like it was being hammered with a huge boulder, to which she could easily relate with her profession.

"Bring th...up now!"

"Charg...Clear!"

A horrid pain erupted from her chest, traveling through her body with an undescribable speed and magnitude to her fingers and toes, and she felt her heart throb painfully. Why did it seem so familiar?

The voices immediately became clear and her eyes flickered open, her senses jolted awake.

"We got a pulse! Stop the compressions and get her to the ICU, stat!" Someone barked.

White buzzing lights, squeaky wheeling noises, and the tingling smell of alcohol all lead to her favorite place to be, next to the one on the battlefield. But she knew this place was nowhere near home.

"Where...am I?" Sakura mumbled through her oxygen mask. Oddly, she felt herself becoming nourished. A quick glance at her arm told her that an intravenous device was feeding her what looked like sugar water and saline. Her body drank the concoction greedily, slowly feeding and hydrating itself after days of no food and little water.

"You're in the hospital, Miss. Now, don't talk. You need to save your strength." A short and stout bespectacled man in a white coat instructed her. He was jogging along the bed with some difficultly, huffing and puffing as a stethoscope bounced erratically off his chest and his clipboard in rhythm with his pace. A pair of thick glasses was perched on his round nose, the ends of the thin frames disappearing into curls of white hair which made a receded line on his shiny scalp. He reminded her of a children's story. A western tale of a mythical man bringing gifts to the deserving youth.

"Get her to Sleepy! We need to operate!" He shouted to the staff pushing her bed and IV stand.

If she had been well, then a vein would have popped in her large forehead. However, this was not the case. She ded felt her anger rise though, as did her impatience.

"I know I'm in the hospital, but where exactly am I? What city?" She snarled as best as she could. As soon as she found out about the glucose in her veins, she began to exercise any chakra she regained to her heaviest areas of damage.

"And furthermore, I don't need to be operated on. I can heal myself." Sakura lifted her IV-free arm meekly only to confound the nearest nurse with her inhuman strength. She slipped her blood-encrusted fingers around her wrist and threw the screaming nurse against the corridor wall, stopping the entire operation.

"Whoa, lady!" The doctor yelled, waving his arms and clipboard. "W-what are you-"

"Sensei, look!" A nurse shouted, pointing at the patient's abdomen.

The hospital staff looked in awe, completely ignoring the groaning nurse on the ground, and watched the dried gash on her side slowly swell up and inflame itself with rushing blood. Her skin glowed an unnatural green-blue light until the coagulated blood began to crack and peel off, revealing purple, but smooth skin.

The buzz of the lights overhead mingled with the sounds of Sakura's healing flesh and her occassional groan. Sweat began to form on her dirt-smeared face and she furrowed her brow in effort to continue sewing her body together, focusing on closing blood vessels to prevent any further blood loss and identifying her overall status. She recognized broken bones, mostly vertabra, and her damaged organ, the torn liver.

"Damn..." she grunted, blinking back tears once she felt her senses reawakening. Sakura remembered why she hated healing herself.

However, she knew she was lucky, as the liver was one of the few parts of the human body which could regenerate, aside from things like the skin or nails. As for bones, well, they just hurt like hell when she needed to heal them quickly.

She forced her remaining chakra into the tips of her ripped liver and increased her hormone output to speed the rate of regeneration and clotting. However, she fisted her hands into the sheets of the bed and gasped with a wince from her exertion.

"Give me a shot of morphine," Sakura gasped through clenched teeth, halting her cell production, "and another bag of glucose. Don't bother diluting it, I can take it. If you have any chakra concentrate, I'll take that too."

The nurses looked to the amazed doctor who quickly gave them consent.

After several injections, Sakura tried once more with the chemical boosters, not worrying if she would scar, and increased her hormone output. Her injury could have been fatal and time was not on her side for the sake of her mission.

Still, she had worse. There were times when all sorts of weapons and jutsus would come at her. Half she avoided, the other half she threw back or blocked, but occasionally someone would have the accuracy and audacity to incapacitate her; genjutsu, torture, or poison optional.

By the time the nurses wheeled her bed to a room, the last splotch of purple bruising beneath the skin of her belly disappeared, and she was already working on stitching her fractures together, unworried about any open wounds with her funcitonal liver now helping with the clot factors it produced.

Both doctor and nurses chattered amongst themselves excitedly, completely astounded by her performance. She hadn't even come close to finishing her healing, but she smiled, knowing her skills really were the best of Konoha, though not necessarily comparable to Tsunade's yet.

An hour later, her nurses had already left except for the lone short doctor, persistent to witness the final measures she took for a full recovery.

"Gracious, you must be from one of those shinobi villages, am I right?" The doctor ran his hand through his what messy hair he had left. "This is the first I've ever seen one!"

"Hell yeah." Sakura muttered with a smirk. The time needed to heal was shortened by her impeccable abilities, but she was left exhausted. In the end, she succumbed to the comfort of her sweaty pillow shortly after seeing the doctor sigh at the bluntness of her comment.

"So, what's the plan now?" Naruto rubbed his hands together like a little boy with candy on a successful Halloween night.

"We wait." Kakashi replied, flexing his stiff arm. He hated hospitals more than ever now. It seemed like no one knew how to treat him like Sakura did. She knew him so well down to the knots in his lower back. However, although Sakura's massages were something to enjoy thinking about, there was a rebellion at bay. "Sakura is still on there. We have to wait until the searches die down a bit and she comes back with the scroll or evidence. That was the original plan and we are sticking to it, right, Naruto?" He gave the Kyuubi container a stern look.

"Aww, come on, Kakashi-sensei!" He groaned in reply. His grumbling was exagerrated, but then again, everything else about him was and has been. "We finally get this far and then we have to hunker down in hiding like snakes in hibernation?"

"Snakes don't hiberate, dick." Sai interjected monotonously. The blonde snapped up, his flame of fury blazing.

"What the hell, Sai? You're the dick!"

"At I have one."

Kakashi massaged the bridge of his nose. This wasn't going anywhere.

He let the twenty-year-olds duke it out the old-fashioned way, with their fists and more name-calling, and left them to think up any creative ways of changing the mission, though he highly doubted that would happen. Walking briskly through the forest, he made sure to hide his chakra and any sound he made as he padded silently over leaves and twigs.

They were still near Konoha, but they couldn't get too close or else someone would detect them. The mission was successful so far, but there was only so much luck a ninja could have, excluding Naruto, when it came to these events. Rebellions never turned out well, in Kakashi's experience.

The Copy nin continued along the tree roots, flexing his arm occassionaly to see if it would still work as well as it would before, only to be crestfallen that it probably needed the attention of the same medic his team was waiting for.

It had been so long since the team was together like this, even if it was incomplete. The sounds of Naruto and Sai's battling died down from grunts and punches to moans and profane comments. Their fights would never get this far if Sakura were here. He missed the way her soft hair felt when he ruffled it playfully.

Kakashi shook his head. Why do I keep thinking about her? He asked himself. The question was left unanswered as the voice in his mind stayed silent, unwilling to give a justified reason. He shrugged it off and started heading back, thinking about green eyes instead of pink hair.

"Miss? Miss, wake up."

Sakura felt herself being prodded. She smacked the hand touching her shoulder as a horse swats a fly with its tail.

"Stop that." She grumbled. "I'm waking up."

The nurse poking her immediately stepped back, knowing the aggressive tendencies of her patient. She tugged at her blue scrub nervously as she watched the filthy kunoichi lift herself off the bed, squinting at the IV in her arm, as she sat up.

"So, where am I again?" Sakura asked, rubbing her pounding head to no avail. The smell of dirt and pine coming from her was obvious, but the pink-haired kunoichi had more to worry about.

"You're in the Fuseya Hospital." The nurse replied meekly.

"Fuseya? Is this Fire Country?" Sakura shifted her gaze to the nervous nurse suddenly.

"N-no, Miss. This is Earth Country."

Sakura groaned, rubbing her temples in frustration.

Then, she proceeded to remove the IV from her arm and jump off the bed, causing the nurse to go into a frenzy.

"Uh, Miss? You have to stay here until the doctor discharges you!"

"I'm fine," Sakura waved the bumbling nurse away, "I'm a medic nin, I've dealt with worse. Where can I find something to eat?"

"Ma'am?" A male voice called into the room.

Sakura could feel a blood vessel enlarge in her forehead at the person calling her inferred her age. The nurse, seeing this, ducked as a precaution.

"Excuse me?" Sakura turned around with a glare of pure fury at the doctor. "I'm twenty years old, not some old lady!" He stood at eye-level with the little kunoichi, but he seemed even smaller now in his cowering stance.

"I-I'm sorry! Please, I have some questions for you!" He cried, hiding behind his little clipboard as his papers shuffled onto the floor in a mess. His feeble entrance made Sakura catch herself and soften her expression, remembering what she needed to do.

"If you tell me everything I need to know about this place and get me something to eat, I'll answer your questions." She replied, feeling how hungry she really was.

The doctor instructed the quavering nurse to fetch Sakura some gelatin. While she left, the two exchanged questions and answers, and eventually, Sakura gathered enough information.

She was on the border of Earth Country, one of Fire Country's neighbors, in the small city of Fuseya which had been famous for its flourishing economy from rare gemstone mining. It was common for the people in this area to use gems in exchange for currency, mostly because it was worth so much more in other countries to sell and barter, and was even done in this hospital.

However, with a decreasing number of population and a stab at money circulation, Fuseya had slowly become destitute over four years.

"The staff and I are extremely backed. We have patients coming in everyday in large numbers and we can't possibly keep up. Perhaps you could offer your qualified services to this hospital. I assure you that you will be paid in full." The doctor pleaded.

Sakura bit her lip, noting the ward they were in was indeed packed full. Her bed had been right next to another bandaged patient's, covered from head to toe in stained wrappings. The smell of the room was close to foul, unlike the corridor halls which still had been cleaned for the sake of spreading noscomial infections.

"But, you don't even know who I am, except that I'm a medic nin. You do know I can kill you right here and now, don't you?" Sakura reasoned as the nurse dropped the food tray of gelatin at the comment.

She knew that desperate look the doctor had. Everyone had that look for years, since the Fourth Ninja War started.

After Pain attacked the village, Konoha was weak and threatened to fall. Danzou, knowing it was his chance to put Root and himself in power, took charge while Tsunade had been suppressed from chakra exertion, and thus was in a coma during the prerequisite of war. As the new Hokage, he focused on remaking the village in his own image, unaware that a darker force was stirring.

It was pitiful the way Danzou was taken down by Sasuke and Uchiha Madara, then Madara by by Sasuke's hands. It seemed like everyone was trying to kill for power. That day, when Sasuke came before his peers and the entire village, Konoha held its breath, waiting for this moment.

What the village never predicted, including herself, was the rise of a new maternal power, as Sasuke introduced the new Matriach and knelt down before a dark-haired woman to pledge his loyalty in public. When he stood up to face them again, only a handful of people knew something about him had changed, including Sakura.

Okaa-sama, they had to call her, but she was the farthest thing from a mother in Sakura's mind. No, in everyone's mind.

However, her word was law, and anyone who disobeyed was punished, be it shinobi or civilian. She in mercenaries from villages all over Fire Country and even from the west and northern areas of Fire, including River, Wind, Oto, and Lightning Country.

Things changed much too fast during the restoration of Konohagakure. What was taught in the academy was not the basics and virtues of a shinobi, but the unmoving faith and allegiance to the Matriarch. She was everywhere; in flyers of supermarkets, on flags at public buildings and homes, and even on speakers set up at markers in the village, blasting morning and nightly messages to her children until no one could go a day without her name on their lips.

With everything organized under the Matriarch, people also began to disappear and those who questioned the actions followed the same path.

It started with a few leaf ninja. They were just a couple of genins, playing and sassing in a simple game while skipping school a day early for the upcoming summer vacation. However, it was law that stated every child must attend classes, lest they miss the daily lessons of the teachers served under their leader. Before the sun rose the next day, both the children and their respective families were gone. Only a sign on the doors of their homes stated an unfortunate eviction, signed by the ANBU.

Thus, the war began. It first started when Okaa declared sharing her love with the entire continent, and then the world, angering the already agitated populace. It was official when some shinobi found out her secret.

A month after Okaa's regime, Sakura had left the hospital a little early, intent on speaking to Sasuke who she knew would come back to Konoha after a mission from Sound.

When she put her hand on his shoulder, he turned and greeted her, praising the name of their leader all the while. Sakura could only stare at his blank eyes. It didn't contain the coldness from his past burdens, nor did it have the warmth that lifted them when he was accepted back into the village. It didn't have anything.

Then, she felt it. An erratic pulse under the vein in his shoulder, caused by toxins only professional medic nins heard of. He was being controlled.

A little later, Shizune, Sakura, and Kakashi, were able to scrape by a sample taken from Sasuke. A "physical" it was defined as, and the Matriarch would never know that her number one henchman had been put under a genjutsu of his former teacher and have his blood drawn by the poison expert. Sakura set it up, knowing the information would help once Tsunade woke up.

Things couldn't get any worse when Sakura went to Tsunade's room in the hospital only to find it empty. Even when she searched through the entire village, she could not find Shizune. The whole time, she felt eyes watching her. That was all she needed to know that the Matriarch knew a lot more about poisons than she led the village to believe.

When word got out, she found herself rewinding the events, watching them play until she found herself back in the Fuseya Hospital staring at the same desperate look of the doctor.

"Please, Miss. We need help." He begged, hands folded together like an old woman praying on her deathbed.

Truthfully, she wanted to help. Her instinct to stop by any ailing person and heal them was strong due to her vigorous training, but mostly her genuine feelings. She supposed it was her nindou, reminding her of Naruto's ambitions.

"All right, Sensei, I'll help." Sakura replied. She knew it she answered much too quickly, but perhaps her stay here would benefit her. She needed supplies, information, and definitely a plan to help her village in its greatest time of need. "But I can only stay for a week at most!"

"Excellent!" The doctor nearly jumped a foot in the air, his excitement clearly uncontainable. He grabbed her bloodied, dirt-smeared hand, shaking it with a contagious enthusiasm that made her smile. "Call me Doc, please. I am the head doctor here at Fuseya Hospital. I do wish that your stay here would be longer, but I can assure you that your services will be repaid in full!"

"Please take good care of me." She bowed politely to the minute man. "My name is Haruno Sakura, professional medic nin at your service!"

"We can't keep hiding like this. We'll get caught." Sai murmured to his team leader from a high-collared jacket.

The male trio of Team Seven dressed in high collars, hats, and hooded jackets, but nothing too heavy to look suspicious in the warm evenings of summer of Konoha.

This time, the rendevous was in a secluded bar a little ways from the residential areas. The time of night was good, since there would be lots of people out to blend into, but at the same time they couldn't drop their guard.

"She keeps watching us, since we failed in bringing her back." Naruto mumbled, agreeing with the artist uncharacteristically. "I actually saw what she did. It was so gross..."

"Hm?" Kakashi lifted his head a little and glared at the blonde from behind a scarf that replaced his mask. "Speak quietly. They might even be working here."

Naruto scanned the room in a very conspicuous manner and Kakashi groaned. Sai said nothing.

"I saw...what she did. You know, when we came to that night. I gave her the thing."

"What thing?" Kakashi hummed quietly, sipping at his shochu inbetween refrains.

"Sakura's...liver." Naruto gulped.

The Copy nin spluttered on his beverage, wiping away the alcohol burning his nasal passages, as Sai took another swig of his beer. "Yes, I saw that too, Senpai. She had someone boil it for her and then she simply took a bite out of the-"

"That's enough, Sai. I think we get the point." Kakashi swallowed uncomfortably. That woman is sick, he thought, clenching his fist. Knowing that his student and partner-in-crime was actually being eaten as very disturbing and it made the seasoned veteran shiver.

"She wanted to know that she was dead." Sai stated simply. "It was the same for the..." his tone registered into a whisper, "the Hokage."

Kakashi drummed his fingers on the dirty bar counter. Anxiety, he recognized it. He never got anxious. It had been how many days already? Three? Four? She couldn't have possibly kept running the whole time? Unless, dare he say it, she was actually caught?

"I have to go, Senpai. She'll start to get suspicious." Sai stood up and nodded at the bartender, leaving a bill on the counter.

"Me too. Hey, could you pay for me? I forgot my wallet at home." Naruto drank and dashed, following the emotionless Root ninja.

Kakashi sat there staring at the clear liquid in his shot glass, looking intently at the reflection of his downcast eye. He downed the whole thing in one go, erasing the image of his apparent apprehension.

"I made a promise, Sakura. Don't make me break it." He breathed, becoming lost in the swirling feeling building in his head.

"Haruno-san, to the Sleepy Unit, stat. Haruno-san, to the Sleepy Unit, stat." The intercom recited over the general chatter of the hospital.

.

The nurses watched with amazement as one pink-haired head nurse ran down the corridor of the ward, yelling at some interns to bring her saline flushes and bandages, while another one came out of the Unit office, jogging past the swinging doors of the operating room where she was summoned.

A few minutes was all she needed to learn every nook and cranny of this staircase and secret path she knew, including the ventilation system and underground pipes.

Fuseya Hospital was easy enough to understand. The hospital was split into six units. There was the operating room and emergency receiving area, which was cleverly named the Sleepy Unit for the heavy use of anesthesia and sedatives. Another was the waiting rooms and incoming area for regular patients, called the Grumpy Unit; the respiratory and isolation wards was called the Sneezy Unit; the psychological ward was the Bashful Unit; the neurological ward was the Dopey Unit; and the Happy Unit was for recovering patients about to be discharged.

A few days on the floor and she had figured it all out. With her shadow clones, she could easily run three different parts of the hospital, giving orders, healing patients, and cleaning equipment. Her help made the hospital function faster and more efficiently as she showed nurses and interns what to do while dazzling doctors with her extensive knowledge of drugs. Training with Tsunade for years helped her to become ones of Konoha's best assets after all.

However, her actions had serious repercussions. The clones did eventually run out of chakra and would disappear in a cloud of smoke, surprising many people all at once. Although, her main concern was the fatigue that each clone absorbed, giving it back to her in full. Also, she was always eating to make sure her chakra had time to replenish. By overexerting her abilities, she found that she could only keep up by constantly running her hormones to speed up her own bodily functions, keeping both her energy and stamina high whenever a clone disappeared and another had to be summoned.

By the end of each day, she would nearly buckle from the self-inflicted chakra depletion, only to sleep for an alotted two hours before beginning the cycle all over again.

Only two days passed before dark circles marred the pale skin under her dull green eyes. Still, she kept at it, ignoring the rational thoughts of her jaded, shinobi side, and allowing her inner self to come into play for once in years.

"Amazing! This needs to be written down!" The doctor threw up his hands to stretch from the three-hour emergency procedure.

"I've done this before," she giggled. "I was fifteen when I had to figure out how to extract poisons that had been ingested long before the patient received medical help." Her words reminded her of Kankuro's near-death experience and her first ever duty as a medic nin. The event in Suna made her famous in the Village of Sand, and the kazekage's right-hand man was forever in her debt.

"By pushing a stable fluid through the organs, the toxins in the GI tract can be filtered out as long as it doesn't interrupt or shock the body too much. But, I think it's weird how the patient had such a dangerous toxin lying around in the first place." Her eyes narrowed, counting the number of patients with this particular strain of toxin which she also collected. The tests were all the same and the traits of the toxin were very similar to the one she expelled from her own body only days before.

"Prognosis said that he came in feeling sick after eating fruit sold to him by a vendor. 'Imported,' he said, before passing out and turning blue. It must be Fire Country again."

"What?" Sakura stopped and the short doctor turned around, confused.

"Don't you think? The Matriarch currently centered in Konoha began killing off those who defied her or threatened her position with a rumored sleeping poison, including dukes, barons, anyone with money or diplomatic power. Word from Fire Country says even the Hokage suffered from it before she disappeared."

"I believe the patient was a Lord of sorts, straight from the border as well, and was taken in by his servants."

"Also, since food prices have increased to accommodate today's cost of living, it makes sense for someone to switch from meat to fruit, which is easily five times cheaper, considering the poor economy we are in. That could explain how he got sick in the first place. But, you know, I could be wrong." He quickly noted, repositioning the frames on his face with his clipboard-free hand.

"Hey, aren't you the sharpest tool in the shed!" Sakura smiled brightly at his reasoning. Though, the mention of her old shishou brought a pang to her chest.

The creeping blush from his cheeks could not hide his expression.

"Well, it's only expected of me. I am the head doctor after all and I have to manage all six units." He mumbled, fingering the data on the wooden board. The action reminded the pink-haired kunoichi of a certain Naruto-obsessed Hyuuga.

She would have kept grinning had not more patients been rolled into the operation area, crying out in pain almost as if they knew they would die the moment those swinging doors closed. Sakura's face fell.

"Haruno-san?" Doc looked at her with concern, noticing her expression. "Have you been sleeping enough? Maybe you should take a break." He tried not to stare at her sullen, dark eyes. Even her complexion had started to pale and her skin was breaking out.

"Doc," she sighed, "I already decided to help as much as I could. This is nothing." She raised her fingers to her eyes and gingerly touched them, emitting that same glow for a moment before lifting them away to show the same bright jade orbs more determined than ever. "I've got a few days left, so I'll make the most of it."

Sakura took out her pleather gloves, loving the way they stretched and made a sound as she pulled them on tightly.

"You have your own gloves?" The old doctor look at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Hell yeah."

The next few days were certainly eventful for Sakura, if not for the staff. One day, in the wee hours of the morning, Sakura mustered the energy to call a meeting for all the staff and give them a long lecture on washing hands.

"Alcohol-based gels aren't enough!" She shouted, throwing the gel dispenser at an intern. "You have to physically wash the dirt, bacteria, and viruses away or else it won't just be you lying on a hospital bed, you hear? I've known people who died of noscomial infections, infections easily prevented but circulate anyways due to the lack of initiative and responsibility! If I see another person leave a room without washing their hands, then I will personally rip their spine out through their asses, you understand? Now get to it!" She barked, throwing a finger at every guilty-faced person in the room.

Doc had been right about the war. It brought calamities that would easily overwhelm any city's medical centers and start a panic amongst the population, leading to complete pandemonium. It also led to poor practices, since more and more people were wheeled in everyday and materials grew scarce, like drugs and even simple things like bandages. Often times, Sakura would see people substituting wrappings with torn pieces of dirty cloth, which was risky since nothing was sterile anymore.

Infection and disease was rampant, and no one could do anything, at least, until Sakura showed up.

"You, wrap the bindings tighter! We need to use more pressure to make sure the wound clots, not wipe at the infection. The infection is not the priority; it's the blood loss!" Sakura yelled at another uncertain nurse who kept dabbling at a patient's wound, trying hard not to retch at the smell of the oozing yellow pus.

It was another Rock nin, but this time it was just an infected gash cut clear from his belly button to his neck. Nowadays, it took a lot to make Sakura queasy, like Naruto's apartment, but this was nothing compared to what she had seen on the battlefield many times before.

"No, instead of using bleach to clean everything, we need to save it for cleaning medical equipment of isolation patients! Another shipment of bleach was intercepted by enemy nin two days ago, so we have to make this batch last until next week! Use household remedies and tactics whenever you can, like vinegar!" She smacked an young intern hard on his back, making him shudder in fear and pain.

And Sakura was right. There were untold benefits of working here, though it took her several days to support that hypothesis. Her pay was given in gemstones and ores like any other employee, though she often traded her rubies, sapphires, diamonds, silver ores and gold ores for emeralds, pink sapphires, and blocks of jade. She couldn't help it. They were just prettier to her.

Many people looked up to her, addressing her grandly or giving her gifts that were nothing short of royalty. Interesting too was how they looked at her like the people of Konoha used to. The girl with hair as pink as blooming cherry blossoms, skin so pale and creamy, and eyes brighter than jade itself. She really was glowing with beauty, especially when she wasn't angriliy pummeling the daylights out of a careless employee. Sometimes, interns would flock to Units upon hearing a clone's trademark profanity ringing through the corridors every time she succeeded in some body-sewing, soul-raising, or some equivalent action.

Some brought her gifts, others did her favors. Some even called her a princess of healing, which made her furious.

It bothered her a little to be called a princess, since it made no sense that princesses would even get down and dirty in a place like this. Except for Tsunade. She was...different.

One evening, after all the ruckus settled down for the peaceful two hours of every night, she headed over to the cafeteria neart the Bashful Unit for her hourly snack. Along the way, however, two nurses approached her, armed crossed and lips pursed.

"Haruno-san, we need to talk." One of the nurses called out. Her voice was as sour as her expression, but Sakura stopped and listened anyway, too hungry and tired to think.

"Yes, Maru-san, Tanaka-san?" Her anger was going to bubble to the surface again, she just knew it, but kept her voice even and calm.

"Why are you driving us so hard? We're not cattle to be prodded around and most of us are at our limits!" The other complained, throwing her an accusing look. "All you've done is-"

"Increase the number of discharged patients? Saved thousands of ryo with simple changes in the supplies and practices? Helped all the staff learn something new everyday, as most of them are no better than new interns with a head full of hot air?" Sakura replied hotly, one gloved hand on her hip.

The nurses quietened, taken aback by her answer. Technically, she was correct.

"Listen, ladies," A voice behind the nurses surprised them. It was another Haruno Sakura. The clones were seen fairly often, but it still took a lot to get used to, since Fuseya was a city with hardly any shinobi at all. Ninja were a lot scarier than their peers led them to believe.

"Oh my gosh, Haruno-san! Don't do that!" The nurses jumped, hands on their beating chests.

"It's a simple enough jutsu, get used to it." The copy replied in the same manner, in the same pose. Now that there were two of each, the nurses didn't feel as confident as before. They said nothing until the Sakuras spoke, alternating each time.

"This is a war, ladies, not some hospital drama." The real Sakura lectured.

"Keep in mind that people die everyday, sometimes because we weren't fast enough or good enough to save them." The other continued.

"Stop getting your panties in a twist. You're nurses because you chose to be, so do what you're supposed to do."

"Take it or leave it."

"Grin and bear it.

The nurses were shaking in their boots, and they knew it. Sakura only added to their fear when another clone, one that had been walking on the ceiling and hanging above the nurses, came close to their ears.

"And whistle while you work." The ceiling clone finished, smiling mischieviously at the pair with her arms crossed.

The nurses stifled a cry, as the patients of the Happy Unit were still asleep, and booked it. Their clacking boots faded as Sakura sighed and released the jutsu, a little disappointed by the lack of fervor among the staff.

There was only about an hour left until someone would wake up in complete panic, unsure of where they were or in a convulsing case of seizures. It always happened around three in the morning, since many of the patient's sedatives had been diluted or cut back. Sakura would have to eat quickly to make up for the two minutes of wasted breath.

The pink-haired medic raided the tiny refrigerator in the nurse break room. No one had been complaining about the missing lunches for the past few days, so she figured she could just milk it for a little while longer.

Grabbing a half-eaten sandwich, she unwrapped the crinkled wax paper and stuffed the wheat and bologna combo into her mouth as she walked to the little cubby the hospital provided for the staff. Her pouch and backpack were still there, completely undisturbed, as the nurses already assumed correctly what kinds of sharp and shiny weapons the kunoichi kept in there. Sakura pulled out the pay for the day and started to stuff it into her pouch when her headband fell out and clinked noisily on the ground.

She bent down slowly, knelt on the ground, and picked it up, remembering about her deadline. It was only about a week ago when she ran away from the village. Her fingers found the insignia on the metal protector and touched it lightly, feeling the grooves of the cool metal and what it stood for, what she was still fighting for. The week-old memories flooded her mind all at once.

"Kakashi, we can't steal the scroll! It's too heavily guarded!" Sakura panted, pressing herself firmly against the tree she hid behind. Throwing a quick glance over a thick branch, she analyzed their position, trying to figure out the best way to abort the mission without getting caught.

"There's no turning back now, Sakura," Kakashi replied through his ANBU mask, unable to hide his heavy breathing, "this is the only way we can make the elders understand what's really going on in this hellhole." He spat, the mask slightly muffling the anger in his voice. Had he been any louder, the wind would have caught the noise and brought it to alert ears.

Below, shinobi from all over the continent, including Konoha's own ANBU, patrolled the area. It was mind-boggling that they weren't caught yet after using countless genjutsus against the other high-ranked shinobi. By then, Sakura's head was spinning with fatigue from casting so many jutsus, and Kakashi knew his eye could only last so much longer.

"I know, but at least let me heal you." Sakura whispered urgently, fumbling through her pockets for her third soldier pill of the night. The ones she manufactured secretly in her own kitchen with stolen supplies from Konoha's hospital and basic herbs were something like super stimulants, steroids that could chemically open the chakra gates similarly to Rock Lee and Might Guy, may they rest in peace, but with a a safeguard to protect the body from too much harm or potential shortening of the user's lifespan. She had Tsunade to thank for that, who unfortunately...

"No, stop," Kakashi pulled his mask off, taking a deep breath, as his other hand grabbed hers. His voice was rough and husky among his ragged pants, showing how tired and maybe even how old he really was.

Sakura looked into in mismatched eyes, panicked by the sheen of sweat on his brow and the eye she knew was nearly deteriorated to destruction. His wounds from the previous attack when he protected her were obviously obstructing his movements.

"Please, Kakashi, I can't be that crybaby genin who needed protection all the time. What you did was careless and could have killed you. I can help you and we can do this together!" She protested indignantly, feeling those genin tears right about now.

"We will do it together." He reassured her, hand still firm on the large drug between her fingers. Her face lightened a bit, but it did not convince her completely.

"What are you planning?"

"Look, there." He pointed at the dark-haired woman seated in the office next to a glass box with a roll of paper tied with a red ribbon. "If I can take her out-"

"Stop that! You know that's suicide!" Sakura slapped his hand away from her soldier pill. The pill sat heavily in her hand, the potency of it just burning in her palm. It was hard to believe that she could die very, very soon. As a young kunoichi, she knew that potentially dying on the field was very likely and had to be acknowledged, but did it have to loom over the two of them like so?

What had she done with her life? She had chased Sasuke for too much of it, only to find that his last coming to the village was not even of his own free will. She had rivaled against her best friend, constantly competing with her in every vain aspect shinobi were never to harbor. She even ignored the pledges from so many innocent hearts. It took her too many years to realize, too many too late, to understand how unfulfilled her life really was.

The pill would probably be sweeter than the bitterness of her soul.

She popped it into her mouth and was about to swallow it until she felt his the rough muslin of his gloved palms and the hard calluses on his fingers grip her lower jaw and force her face upwards, startling her as she felt his hot mouth on hers. The movement was too quick and made her gasp, creating an opening where his tongue could slip in and snatch the large capsule from hers with a deep sweeping motion, allowing her to taste his bleeding lip and the limber muscle invading her mouth.

Sakura stared straight at his eyes, half-lidded from exhaustion and furrowed with concern. His mask was layered down at his neck, finally as the turtleneck shirt it was meant to be, but the move stunned her as his black and red orb stared into her wide green ones.

It felt like time slowed down. Or, was it because they lingered like that for a moment?

Their mouths separated, the taste of blood still on their tongues.

Kakashi had already pulled his mask up, but his hand was still on her cheek, never breaking his gaze as he crunched down on the capsule, revitalizing his abilities for only a few precious minutes. The sound of him gulping down the bitter drug made her heart jump with dread.

"A young woman can't die until she knows love." He told her gently, brushing his hand on her cheek and tucking a lock of bubblegum pink hair behind her ear. "As my favorite student, I'll make sure of it."

His hand lowered after what seemed like an eternity before he jumped backward off the branch, landing in the middle of the courtyard outside the building as shinobi swarmed upon him like an angry hive of a queen's jealous drones.

Sakura knew what she had to do. She waited a moment, allowing the shinobi to be distracted by Kakashi's sudden summon of his ninken pack.

Kunai, senbon, and dogs seemed to fly everywhere. There was almost no sound though, just the occasional breeze through the trees.

By the time Kakashi had secured half of the shinobi, he had already lost most of the feeling in his arms, but continued to push the limits of the gates. He felt the drug subsiding quickly as the exhaustion settled into the very bones of his body.

However, a quick glance to the office showed a smirking dark-haired woman, watching him grow weaker in his inevitable downfall. One by one, his dogs disappered in a cloud of smoke, returning them to their summoning grounds with heavy injuries; some, however, came back immobile, never to pant, or sniff, or howl, or be petted ever again.

Kakashi, on the other hand, gave her a wink, of all things.

She cocked an eyebrow, then suddenly turned around.

The scroll was gone.

Her mouth opened unnatrually wide and a shrill scream issued from her throat, signaling two ninja into a state of emergency. The blurs disappeared toward the woods to follow the smell of salt and sweat among the cherry blossoms of the forest trail.

Sakura wiped the tears from her face, cursing at herself for being weak, being slow, being emotinally unstable, being everything her teammates weren't; strong, brave, courageous.

"Bastard, I'm your only student."

She knew she was lucky to be alive.

The wilted sandwich hung forgotten in her mouth as she remembered the ninja following and attacking her. She was so incredily lucky that it was Naruto and Sai.

The two younger male members of Team Seven left soon after the Matriarch came to power. Sakura knew they joined her side in an effort to get closer to Sasuke and sneak information to their other shinobi peers. This opportunity also got them closer to Okaa, giving them a higher chance of throwing a succesfful coup d'etat.

If they hadn't been the ones to attack her, she probably wouldn't have survived with the precious scroll.

"Ah, right." Sakura groaned, raising her hands to cradle her aching head. "The scroll."

"Haruno-san, there you are!"

She tilted her head slightly toward the voice to see the portly Doc in the doorway, a bit startled and wearing his unbuttoned white coat over his t-shirt and boxers.

"It's Yamaura again. She's having a seizure and her heart rate is erratic!"

"All right." Sakura sighed, raising her hands to perform another clone summon. Two more copies of herself appeared. "Go help him." Sakura instructed her first clone. "And make sure the patients in the other Units get an extra shot of morphine if the sedation wears off." She nodded at the other.

"We understand." They replied, taking off to their designated occupations.

"You can...go first." Doc eyed the clone stepping up to him nervously. "Room four-twenty, bed six. In the Sneezy Unit."

It made a quick salute before jogging off.

Doc turned to look at Sakura again, pushing his spectacles up his nose, and saw that she lowered her arms from her head to hug her shoulders loosely as she stared blankly into space with glazed green eyes. She was still kneeling on the hard linoleum of the break room, a half-eaten sandwich in front of her.

"Haruno-san?"

"Doc," she said after a moment, picking up the remains of her stolen goods, "please give me today off. I'll make some more clones, but I need some time to rest."

"Haruno-san, if you were being overworked, then you should have said so." He said, walking over to her and buttoning his coat simultaneously. "You know, you're our greatest asset. People know you for miles around." He rubbed her on the back, which she found comforting, but his words struck a chord. Being popular was never a good thing for a targeted shinobi.

"I know."

That night, she snuck out of the break room. Doing it there could prove to be dangerous.

It had been the only room available to the staff after disaster kept coming and taking all the other rooms, including all of the Grumpy Unit. The break room used to be where nurses took their lunch hour, but now it was converted into a tightly knit room with hammocks strung all over the place, some occupied, others still warm from doctors, nurses, or interns waking up from their short 2-hour sleep cycles.

In the open compound outside the hospital, there was a shed used to store gardening tools for the flower beds decorating the entrance of the hospital. Now, the flowerbeds were trampled from continuous rushes and the shed was dusty.

It was good enough.

The pink-haired medic locked herself in the shed, taking time to scan the area for any presence potentially harmful to the mission. Then, she raised a barrier around herself to make sure her activity would be well hidden from any ninja, including those still alert in the medical center just twenty or so meters away.

She knelt down and pulled off one glove, stuffing it into her worn-out pouch. Then, she shoved her bare finger past her tongue and uvula.

Immediately, her gag reflex kicked in and she felt her insides churn. However, she held back the urge to empty her bowels and pushed a second finger down as well, feeling the tight fit of her semi-fist squeezed between her cheeks, teeth and tongue.

Feeling around with her fingers, she gradually scraped up a tiny, saliva-and-chakra-enveloped tube that had been sticking comfortably against the back of her throat.

Even though she was successful at removing her hidden item, she couldn't help but retch and vomit her previous meal in the form of a sour, rancid mixture of saliva, stomach acid, and rice porridge with small broken grains here and there.

But, the scroll was here. It almost made her leap for joy had not the rice porridge been rejected.

She broke the thin capillary tube in half. It was thin enough to absorb liquids and retain them. Inside the tube halves was approximately two drops of her own blood, infused with a small bit of parchment from the scroll with a concentrated amount of chakra. By doing this, she made an impossibly convenient summoning technique that tossed out the required scroll for this particular jutsu. Currently, she carried two other summoning tubes inside her body; one behind her left ear underneath the skin, Tsunade-shishou's personal copy of her summons; one fixed against the lining of her small intestine, two soldier pills to be released simultaneously if she released the small barrier around it to open all but one gate for the more dire situations which would be easily absorbed in their location.

Slowly, she traced a thin blood line on a leaf she grabbed from a tree earlier, marking the characters swiftly, accurately, and without wasting a smear. She brought her hands together into a hand sign and directed her chakra into the leaf to summon the item.

A puff of smoke hid the blood-stained leaf and a scroll tied roughly with a white ribbon took its place.

I have to memorize the rest before I destroy it, she though.

The parchment of the scroll was smooth and fine against her hardened hands, but she couldn't waste a second appreciating the artistic beauty and meticulous craft of it. The last time she tried to read it, the old members of Team Seven took an important something, or rather, a piece of a something, of hers.

She bit her lip as Naruto and Sai's faces flash through her mind. Shaking her head, she continued skimming the part where she left off.

One minute, two minutes. Her eyes widened with each passing second, mouth barely moving as her brain took in the shape of the words and the meaning behind them.

With a quick jutsu, she set the scroll aflame, then mixed the remaining ashes into her acrid vomit. Just in case. Anyone could have vomited in the shed. This is hospital property, duh.

As she released the barrier and left the smelly shed, she organized her thoughts, planning her next move.

The moment she stepped past the swinging doors, her nasal passages burned from the smell of rubbing alcohol.

Must be the new shipment, she thought.

However, it reminded her of her ex-sensei and his aversion to hospitals.

When she announced that she would leave Team Seven to work at the Konoha Hospital as per Matriarch's orders, he would try his hardest to never get injured when she occassionally accompanied them for an assassination or some theft mission. Sometimes, he would come back wounded anyways, pretending his blood-spurting cut was "just a flesh wound," and run for the hills the moment the village gates were in view. Usually, he would pass out in a bout of anemia. She would always haul his sorry ass back into his apartment or, if it were really serious, the same room in the same wing of the hospital, as if his name were written all over it.

Now, she realized how much she missed her former partner.

After Naruto and Sai joined the Special ANBU Branch for the Matriarch, she and Kakashi partnered to find out her secrets, planning rendevous spots and meeting each other in disguise.

She missed the way he was always late for those meetings late in the night in passages dug underneath her parents' apartment complex. She missed the way he read his porn nonchalantly in front of Tsunade's old office, just to spite the Matriarch, sometimes reading aloud the graphic parts, before shinobi shooed him away for "her majesty's sake!" He knew they couldn't dispose of a jounin of his seniority without causing a panic among the Konoha ninja, and took full advantage of that.

Sakura even laughed aloud in the middle of the break room upon remembering how they disguised themselves as a couple once, using a secret code to speak private, political matters aloud in a bar. They argued so much those days. Sometimes, they would just go to those bars to drink, still in disguise, and forget why they were waking up in each other's apartments flung over their beds with pounding migraines.

Realizing her thoughts were full of a certain Copy Ninja, she shook her head and threw a glare at those who stared at her uncalled behavior.

"Hey, you all right?" An intern lying in the hammock on her left inquired her as she sighed heavily, trying not to think about home and her former teacher.

"Hell yeah, I'm fine. What did you think I was doing?" She responded a bit harshly. Sakura hadn't intended to, but it came out anyways.

He smiled from ear-to-ear, familiar with that tone used with his older sisters back home. "Are you thinking of someone?" He said teasingly, poking her in the shoulder.

"Shut up and go to sleep, Arita-baka." She turned over, shunning him with a nice view of her back.

"Don't worry," he stretched his arms above his head before resting them underneath his neck, "after the war, you'll get together with him."

Sakura bit her lip anxiously. His words lightened her mood a bit, but in an odd, warm way she couldn't quite describe. It was true, that she wanted to meet him again. Besides, she had information to relay.

"Who knows?" He laughed, scratching at his nose. "Maybe, in a year, or no, next month even! Well, someday, your prince will come."

What the hell?

"Excuse me?" She twisted around violently, a blush creeping into her cheeks. "My prince? I don't have a prince!" Sakura's lip quivered. What kind of perverted relationship is that? He's fourteen years my senior and he even used to be my sensei!

Arita jumped in his hammock, if that was possible. He held up his hands in defense at the snorting cherry blossom dragon. He could almost feel the flames of her threatening tone licking his face.

"I-I'm sorry." He stuttered. "I mean, you don't have to have a prince. You could, you know, have someone else, if you swing that way, because I'm okay with it, honest!" The nervous intern's smile was completely unbelievable as it was cheesy.

So now you think I'm a lesbian?

Those two hours were something else.

"Kakashi-senpai! This is it!"

The Copy nin blinked blearily into dark orbs much too close too his face.

"God, Sai, didn't you ever learn about personal space?" He pushed the pale cheek away drunkenly. He couldn't stop drinking the last few days, and even took it to his hideout in the woods. It was dangerous, but he couldn't help it, his thoughts swarming with images and moments of the pink-haired, green-eyed kunoichi that made him chuckle and want to hold or else she would disappear like she never even existed. Okaa could make that happen.

"The new regime stated that such books were unnecessary, so I had to dispose of all my self-help books. I haven't read anything of the like for weeks. However, I think this is more important. Take a look at these." Sai handed his leader some crumpled documents.

Kakashi's mind cleared, though still slightly fuzzy from the hangover, and took the papers. Whenever he was on a mission, his focus was clear. He intended to keep it that way from now on as he pored through the documents.

After a moment, he looked up, surprised. "A schedule? You were able to steal a copy of the schedule of the circulating shinobi?"

"No," Sai replied, seeing his leader's expression fall accordingly, "I didn't steal the copy. This is the original and is the most recently updated."

The silver-haired jounin could have been charged for sexual harassment right then, but he contained his overflowing joy and replaced it with his serious tone instead. "Good job, Sai. According to this, the administration building is going to be unguarded for two minutes around seven in the evening in tonight. That's only a few hours from now. Have you heard from Naruto?"

"He is keeping the Matriarch busy with his usual antics. This will give him a chance to prepare his clones and keep them hidden in different places of the village, just in case it doesn't end well."

"All right then, send the word and we'll do it. Tonight." Kakashi took a deep breath. It would finally happen. Konoha's future was just around the corner.

Apparently, Naruto's "antics" included finding the Council of Elders. The poor, old folk were surprised when a frumpled, blonde ninja fell out of their broom closet when one of them said they heard noises and went to investigate. He relayed what was going on, knowing the real Naruto was still accompanying, and distracting, the Matriarch with gesticulative story-telling, which amused her so.

Upon hearing his claim, the Elders were shocked that the Matriarch had kept the knowledge of running out Konoha's best medic a secret. They gave Naruto the consent to procure the leader, though he had to have his own method for it as the Elders too feared the power of Okaa and her poison-powered army.

Nonetheless, the clone pumped his fist in the air and dashed out of the small office hidden underground of the public bathrooms near the administration building. It seemed no one bothered to look there, so the Elders had met secretly for weeks, coming and going undetected as old folk with bowel problems.

Naruto was able to spread the word at an incredible rate, allowing the participating nin to prepare for the upcoming rebellion. They would surge the office in a couple hours, ready on Kakashi's command.

Kakashi, on the other hand, had been biding his time with Sai, hiding out in the trees. He and Genma had already set up communications around the perimeter, backed by their most loyal friends, and made sure the connections were tight, fast and effective. All they had to do now was wait for those precious minutes to come.

One, two, three ANBU waved to their partners outside the office. Neji, fueled by the vindictive anger of his fallen cousin, had watched carefully with his Byakugan and only had to count two more nin to leave before they could officially begin the attack. For a minute, all of Konoha seemed eeriely quiet.

Suddenly, Neji flagged his partners with two fingers, and chaos broke out as nin surged ath administration building and all the streets of the village.

ANBU and Root were taken by surprise, though the battle was still fierce and many casualties were taken on both sides. Civilians ran and screamed about, cheering on the rebels as soon as they saw the animal masks fall from the skies.

All Kakashi had to do was get to the office and find the Matriarch.

The moment screams and shouts began pulsating through the streets in a chant, Kakashi was already padding lightly on the roof of the building, close to the window he normally jumped out of after he was assigned a mission. He waited, sensing no ill intent or chakra signatures, and jumped through the glass, surprising the dark-haired woman mixing a white powder on her desk.

Oddly enough, a box of powder was set above the windows and doors of the office, and, similar to his first day of teaching Team Seven, a cloud of dust spread over his head. The dust smelled of a faint sweetness, he noticed, before landing behind the confused woman.

She had already stood up only to have her wrists caught behind her back and a weapon at her neck.

"You're finished, Okaa." Kakashi held the kunai up against the smooth skin of her throat. His free arm bound hers behind her back and she was trapped against the steel knife and his solid form. "Everything you've done has been recognized as crimes against Konoha. You're currently an S-class criminal and can be put to death unless you agree to a trial in court where you'll serve a sentence set by the Council of Elders. What do you choose?"

She actually had the gall to laugh in her situation, starting in a low chuckle until it became a full, mirthless cackle. Her movements made Kakashi's immobile hand nick her skin several times, but she kept at it.

"Do you have any idea how stupid you are?" Okaa panted for breath, recovering from her bout of laughter.

Kakashi narrowed his eyes, the red one circling with his activated mangekyou. "You're in no position to make a comment like that." He gripped her dainty wrists tighter, demonstrating his control over her fate. "Now, decide what you want to do. Remember, I can kill you right here, right now."

"Haruno Sakura. Is she the one who turned the Elders' opinion?" She asked casually, staring contently out the window over the village. "Then I must meet with her. That is my decision."

"That's not a choice you have." The silver-haired jounin growled dangerously into her ear. The name of his former student on her gaudy lips made him want to slash her throat, but he knew extracting more information from her was key. Trial or not, she was going to end up being studied until ANBU got what they needed for all her poisons.

"Remember that powder you inhaled before coming in here?" She murmured quietly, just loud enough for him to hear. "That sweet smell will be the last thing you'll remember, before you die."

"What?" Kakashi's eyes widened, his silver brow threatening to rip past his hairline. "What are you talking about?"

"It's a sleeping draught. The same one I tested on the Hokage before she died. It works very well, if I don't say so myself, but I have yet to tweak it completely." She sighed, taking a deep breath of the powder cloud still in the air. "Too bad it doesn't affect me, hm? It only works on humans right now, but if I'm planning on expanding my empire, then I'll at least have to make sure it works on everyone and everything."

About then, Kakashi felt his legs shake. The kunai in his hand quivered, quickly becoming harder to keep steady until it dropped with a thud to the carpet.

Unable to stop from shaking, Kakashi loosened his grip on the woman, using his kunai-free hand to steady himself on the wooden desk.

She smiled, pulling her hands out of his grip easily, and pushed him in the chest hard. He fell over with a heavy thump, the carpet doing little to cushion his fall. He twisted and rolled about, feeling the mask come down from his face.

"Y-you," he choked out, feeling the seizure rack his body, cramps attacking every muscle randomly, "what did you d-do to m-me?" His breathing started coming in gasps.

"That's weird." She stooped over him, examining the lone eye that was rolling back and forth. "It looks like you're having a more severe reaction, and it was much slower. Well, I'll have a better version once I find that pink-haired student of yours. Good-bye, Hatake Kakashi. You wouldn't have been a fine shinobi in my army." She winked before packing the powders, herbs, and tools on her desk and leaving the room.

Kakashi remained shaking, jerking about on the floor. He tried to get up, but the movement only got him to lift himself on a quavering arm before his face hit the ground, his support buckling.

However, the blood on his lip was enough. Some of it was wiped on his finger when he twitched and turned about. He mustered all the willpower and strength he had left to make a hand seal and stutter out an incantation. If it could only affect humans, then he still had a chance.

"Yo, what's up, Kaka-oh my god!" The brown pug poofed onto the desk, shocked by the sight of his unmasked master writhing about on the floor, slightly foaming at the mouth.

"C-cure...i-in...r-r-oo-om..." the Copy nin choked out in broken grunts.

"All right, s-stay where you are," Pakkun said baldly, not exactly remedying the situation, "I'll find it!"

Using his sensitive nose, he pawed through every crack in the floorboards, books in the shelves, and even on his master. After a minute of unrestrained gasping and twitching, Kakashi slowed in his breathing, feeling the drug take over his consciousness.

"Hold it, Kakashi! I think I smell it! Just a bit longer!" The wrinkled dog pawed even faster at tiny hole in the wall. "It's here! I know it is! Hold on, Kakashi!"

Sure enough, a small tube of an electric blue liquid was found in the crack and Pakkun brought it over to his master, unsure of how it was applied.

"How do I give it to you? Kakashi? Answer me!"

The staccato of breaths finally stopped and the silver-haired shinobi stopped moving, a layer of sweat shining on his skin. His eye deactivated and was staring blanking with that half-lidded look at the ceiling.

"Damn it!" The pug swore, holding the tube between his paws and taking the cork out the top with his teeth. Then, he slowly poured the concoction into his master's mouth, getting it all over his cut lip and splashing it on his teeth.

"Haruno-san, what are you doing?" Doc asked curiously as he wiped the dust from his glasses with his white coat. He peered over her bent form as she scribbled another unreadable note onto a sheet of parchment and performed a foreign chant to it as she entertained an imaginary audience with her ten lithe fingers. The medic then rolled it up, tied it with a rubber band, and tossed it onto a pile of what looked like thousands of little scrolls.

"I'm making some medicine scrolls for the Fuseya Hospital. I have to leave by tomorrow, and this is all I can do while my clones are running all over the place." She stated in a clinical manner, hoping for a professional reaction from the head doctor.

"Wait, you're leaving?" Doc's face fell. "Why?" His slight pout made her want to roll her eyes but also hug him at the same time.

"I have my reasons for staying and going, Doc," the kunoichi sighed, finished another quick scroll for healing deep cuts, "and I've said it when I started working here. I finally found out what I needed to know and, well, it's my time to go." Her writing slowed a bit as she chewed her lip in deep consideration.

"You say it like you're going to die." The bespectacled man pouted, fingering the piles of assorted scrolls.

"Don't do that," she smacked his hand away from the scrolls taped shut. "I've sorted them. There are several different kinds here."

Sakura picked up one of the taped ones and held it up for him to see.

"These are all sealed medical scrolls. However, certain ones need incantations or hand signs to release, while others will release just by breaking the seal." She pointed accordingly to the tape. "Most of these are ones with breakable seals." Sakura gestured to the masses of scrolls taped, glued, waxed, and even paperclipped shut.

"What about these?" Doc picked up one with a rubber band, suddenly intrigued about this new pseudo-technology. He seemed to have forgotten about her upcoming departure.

"This one needs to be unrolled and released with an incantation. All you have to say is, 'release,' and the jutsu will do its thing. I've labelled them all, see?" She tapped the small line of inked characters on the parchment.

Doc blinked in disbelief. "How do ninjas do it? Could you imagine what your kind could do for the health and science industry? You could seriously save millions of lives."

"Doc, listen to me." The medic gripped his shoulder and looked into his face at eye-level seriously. "As a shinobi, I've seen and learned things normal citizens are blessed to never see in their lives."

"Anyone could save millions of lives, not just by healing them. People die everyday from hunger, thirst, disease, homocide, weakness, and, you know, some people aren't even strong enough to save themselves when they decide life isn't worth living anymore."

The short doctor's mouth formed a thin line and his apprehension was evident in the lines of his brow, but Sakura continued anyway.

"Furthermore, people don't just die when their hearts stop or when their eyes close. They die even as blood pumps through their veins while their mind is gone or their soul is damaged. Those people die because others ignore them, sneer at them, scowl as they walk by, or don't even spare them a passing glance, or-" Sakura caught herself, hesitating. Her listener lifted an eyebrow, wondering what she would say next. "Or reject them."

Her hand fell from his shoulder and she turned away, suddenly immersed in memories of her friends and family as they died during the war. She remembered the cruel self-punishment the third Hokage, and many others, inflicted on themselves when they bound their very souls to Hell just to never know that their forever torture would do almost nothing to protect their loved ones. Sasuke still left, completely taken in by the undeniable power Orochimaru offered, even though his arms were rendered useless.

The memory of Sasuke's death when Naruto took him out as per orders of the Matriarch rattled her very being when the image of his dead eyes and cold hands came to view. It looked like she grew tired of the cool, taciturn shinobi, even under her control. Both Naruto and Ino died a little that day; he regretting the final blow to the head of his one true friend, she hating Sakura and blaming her for the way Sasuke had ended his potentially-wonderful life.

"He wasn't Sasuke anymore, Sakura-chan." Naruto muttered, wiping the dark, coagulated Uchiha blood from his broken arm. He snarled, flashing his reddened, primal eyes and lengthened, sharp canines, but couldn't hide the light wetness on his whiskered cheeks. "That bastard."

Sakura could only pull at the matted hair on the teen's bloodied scalp. Her words weren't caught in her throat, rather, they weren't even there. Her feelings for the Uchiha had changed dramatically as she watched her peers grow, learning how to empower themselves with abilities their families offered and what they could do for themselves. Eventually, she had outgrown the emotionally-dark genin who always thought of murdering his brother and village, of replenishing his clan in the most irrational manner.

But, could she really have done anything for him?

"Yo-you, you BITCH!" Ino shrieked. Her eyes were shut tight, trying to keep the salty tears that were for Sasuke inside as she continued her verbal onslaught. "It's all your fault! If you hadn't stopped him from leaving, if you would just, w-would just," she sobbed, clutching the vase of roses she had been working on when Sakura interrupted his shift at the Yamanaka shop. The jaded medic couldn't express the same emotions as her best friend, but she knew that only she could deliver the dreaded news.

"Ino, I-"

"Get away from me! Get your fucking, huge forehead away from me!" She cried at the top of her lungs until they sounded raw and painful. She threw the glass container of untrimmed roses at the unmoving, pink-haired kunoichi, who did not even bother to step aside and allowed the glass to break noisily into millions of sharp pieces while the prickles of the rose stems scratched mercilessly on her pale skin. "You're unforgivable! Unforgivable, I swear. I-I, I swear on it, Sakura, I'll never forgive you."

Ino's eyes were never as dark as they were that day. Those normally bright, lavender eyes of hers that told stories of hopeful young love and a long line of beauty in both floral art and physical form, were now burning with a deep hatred known only to the S-class criminals Sakura rarely had a chance to encounter. She didn't have much of a choice but to leave the shop with cuts from the shattered glass and rose thorns.

Of all the things that could have marred her skin, it had to have been the last time she met Ino before the matriarch made her disappear too, leaving the Yamanaka Flower Shop closed forever.

And finally, Rock Lee. Poor, stupid, naïve, dolt-brained Lee.

His body was still twitching from a forbidden jutsu, causing most of his joints to bend in all directions, forcing them in the opposite direction, when he was brought into the basement of the Konoha Hospital by ANBU. The matriarch hadn't allowed for his deception, his so-called radical thoughts of "celebrating youth."

The medic for that night just had to be Sakura, waiting for him to die before she could begin his autopsy, then cremate his body, erasing his very existence from this world.

"Sa-Sakura-chan," he blubbered inbetween random jolts and twitches, "m-my hand."

The teary-eyed medic wiped her eyes furiously while trying to force the leotard-wearing shinobi's impossibly powerful hand open to find the remains of a heavily wrinkled yellow petal. It was...

"A daffodil." Sakura breathed, completely bewildered and speechless and horribly, horribly heartbroken by the sentiment of the gift and the sight of him. "Lee-kun, how did you..."

"I-I..."he began, trying so hard, even to his last seconds of life, "l-love...I-I...love...ou..-y-you." A pained grunt, followed by an agonized whimper, came from him as he unintentionally bit down on his tongue, cutting off at least two centimeters of bloodied flesh.

Sakura's body functions must have stopped. She didn't know what to say because, truthfully, she couldn't lie to him. Lee was honest and true, and she, with her vanity, her years of avoiding him, and her sinful, killing hands, couldn't even lie to him and set his soul free.

"Th-th-ak-ku-a-a?" His last word ended in an unanswered question for the one thing he ever yearned for, and he couldn't even pronounce it with his shortened tongue.

The kunoichi held tightly onto his quivering, disfigured hand, even after it stopped moving.

If someone could have died twice, it must have been Lee.

Then, when she couldn't think anymore, forgotten words attacked her mind like a bullet to the head, repeating over and over.

"I'll make sure of it." A certain smut-reading, late-arriving, hospital-hating, low-slouching, silver-haired, bell-carrying, deep-chuckling, eye-creasing, heart-comforting, confidence-boosting, know-it-all Copy nin said.

"A young woman can't die until she knows love. As my favorite student, I'll make sure of it."

"Haruno-san, I'm sorry for what I said."

"Huh?" Sakura blinked, small tears sliding down the corners of her shiny jade eyes.

"You're right," Doc sighed, pulling his hand through his hair as he usually did in an awkward moment, "you know, about life, and death, and...people. I'm sorry."

"No, no, I'm sorry for the outburst." Sakura shook her head. "I didn't mean to get upset like that."

Once again, the intercom blasted overhead and the urgent message delivered echoed through the break room, interrupting the followed silence.

"Doc, code blue in the Dopey Unit. Doc, please come to the Dopey Unit, stat. Code blue."

"Well, you should go...now." Sakura sniffed, turning around to gather her scrolls. "I'll finish up here. I've got three clones out on the floor anyways." She sat down, her dead-tired ass thudding on the hot metal of the folding chair, and buried her fingers in her unruly hair.

Doc looked forlornly at her slumped shoulders. His clipboard hung low and solemnly at his side as he watched her drown in her relentless past of sin and death. The tension was visible in his face even after he left the break room to deal with the unexpected heart attack in the neurological ward.

A few minutes passed by as Sakura sat still, trying to meditate and release the profound stress in her mind and body, until she let out a sigh and decided to do it manually. Normally, using chakra to reduce stress was a good technique for any ninja for camouflaging in silence and for healing purposes, but this time, with three other clones pushing all but the inkling of energy required to keep them from poofing away, she was just being foolish.

She brought a gloved hand to her lower back and issued the smallest trickle of glowing chakra into the aching knots present. Immediately, she moaned in relief and felt her burden lighten a bit, her back less tight and tense and her mind that much less full of dark thoughts.

The late noon sunrays poured into the poorly-shaded windows like molten lava when Sakura sealed the last scroll with an adhesive bandage she scraped out from the bottom of her now empty medical pouch. It was pink with five tiny imprints, circling perfectly like a little cherry blossom. Anyone who got this scroll would know who made it.

Sakura brought her arms above her head and stretched with a satisfying pop of her bones.

I hope they like my good-bye present, she thought to herself. It was a pretty good idea, making something as convenient as these, but she knew it completely drained her of energy, even after all the snacks she pilfered from the small refrigerator packed with the staff's homemade lunches.

However, her self-righteous thoughts were interrupted when she noticed the unladylike smell wafting from her underarms. Not to mention, she felt a sudden surge of exhaustion enter through her chest and spread to the tips of her fingers. Stupid clones, she cursed. Her stamina would never compare to Naruto's unending hyperactivty and unending chasm of chakra, her regards to the Kyuubi.

"I need a shower before I leave." She muttered, packing up her pens and ink. Sakura left the pink-bandaged scroll in the middle of the desk, a small note of thanks and good-bye attached, before she closed the door of the break room for the last time.

Although a shower was needed, food was apparently more important as her belly erupted into a symphony of gurgles while passing the food stands near the community bathhouse.

It looked like business had been good in this area. There was cheap food and an even cheaper source of water and sanitation, attracting an entire bustling crowd of civilians. In actuality, the food was sketchy in the sense that people cooked and served whatever was at hand, literally, and the bathhouse was no better than a waterhole as the owner charged people a "reasonable" fee from a tollboth near a fenced waterhole. People of all ages and sizes were there, bathing and washing their clothes, and they were even taking some of the murky water to drink! Buy, hey, it was water, and Sakura guessed it was better than nothing. At least the hospital was nearby.

"Excuse me, can I get one boar tempura and another to go?" Sakura ordered, eyeing the wizened, bald man and his single deep-fryer and mountain of meat slices. It was the food stall that looked the least covered in buzzing flies, and it didn't have cicadas or roaches climbing up the sides of the walls or near the food. The boar was a little odd, but livestock was hard to come by, and if this old man was able to procure some meat, then he must have bought it, meaning it potentially was better quality than the roasted crickets being sold just a few stalls down.

Also, she needed as much energy as possible. Her stash of gems were actually few. She usually passed a couple to a particularly poor patient whenever he or she was discharged, forever scarred from war with a missing limb that forbade them from the workforce. Her meal consisted of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, lots of fats. She needed as much as possible to go the distance, and stopping to hunt or buy food with an valuable bunch of gems was not a good idea either.

"Here ya go, Missy," the old vendor slapped a two hot snacks, one messily wrapped, the other bare and sizzling hot, into her inviting hands. He peered at her pink hair, as if she had the most atrocious sense of fashion. "Kids these days." He muttered quietly above the sizzling of his work.

"Ehe, thank you, Sir," she giggled nervously, aware of his reaction to her uncommon hair color, "er, will this be enough?"

The vendor's eyes widened, nearly smoothing out all the wrinkled skin on his temples, when Sakura pulled a coin-sized pink sapphire from her pocket and showed it to him in a discreet manner. Even if he disagreed with her "rebellious" nature, she knew she was grateful for the meal, and the last thing an elderly man needed was a bunch of thieves mugging him for something she could have passed quietly to him.

"Ah, yeah, sure, that'll be enough." He stammered, forgetting his previous attitude toward her.

"Thank you." She smiled, leaving the vendor to quickly stuff the gem into his pocket before he too smiled back at her.

She was about to take a ninja-sized bite of her meal when she felt a tug on her cloak.

"My lady, my lady, please, would you spare a morsel?" A weak voice called up from below her.

Sakura looked down behind her to find a pitieous sight.

The hand on her cloak left a dusty mark where his only two fingers gripped weakly. His other hand was gone, and his shoulder ended with a cloth-wrapped stump. A worn, dirty blanket had covered his lower body, but judging from the way it sunk low to the ground, his bottom half was just like his hand. The pink-haired medic stifled a grunt when she smelled the fecal odor rising from the ragged blanket. His face was covered, bandaged with a cloth as well, his eyes hidden by the straw hat he wore to block the hazy sun. Two word came to her mind; "war" and "leprosy."

"Please, my lady. I am hungry." He begged, not intending to let go of her cloak.

Sakura couldn't help it. She left the busy area empty-handed, leaving her food in the fingers of the beggar, the rest on his "lap." He gave her a look of appreciation before swiftly pouncing on his meal like a leopard on a mouse.

Still, her stomach protested, scolding her for relinquishing a basic necessity. She sighed, blaming herself for not thinking to cook up a makeshift soldier pill while she was still in the hospital.

Oh well, at least they're doing better than before, she mused inwardly.

A bellow issued from her bowels. Her hands flew up to cradle her abdomen and massage it, hoping the action would trick it into believing there was a solid in there, but knowing full well that stomachs weren't that stupid.

"Damn." She swore aloud.

But then, she stopped in her tracks. A faint aroma of sweetness tingled her heightened sense of smell.

She scanned the area. Her location was far from the hospital area, but the geography looked similar to the border of Fire Country a few miles from where she stood. She must have been at least three days away from Konoha, less if she sprinted and was jacked up on her stimulants. Would she stop for something to eat, or maybe go the whole distance and save the time needed to tell the village elders what they needed to know?

Once the smell doubled in strength, Sakura lost all self-control and strayed from her path to seek out the source.

Squinting, she saw a light wisp of black smoke coming from an open area surrounded by tall trees.

"It must be coming from there." She mumbled, petting her persistent tummy. Besides, if I don't quiet Sir Eats-a-Lot down, someone or something will hear me, she thought.

A quick dash led her to a clearing in the wooded area where she found a campsite and a small fire. A large mortar and pestle lay among the grass with a large blanket spread out near it, covered in various foodstuffs like rice and herbs; some powdered, some not.

The smell was unbearably strong now. It smelled just like...

"Dango..." Sakura breathed, inhaling the scent like an addicted junkie. Of all the rice-based sweets in the world, she loved dango the best.

"Hello?"

Instinctively, the kunoichi's eyes flashed open and she threw a kunai at the speaker, cursing herself for not noticing the presence due to her affinity for desserts. As she turned to see what she had apprehended, her sharp eyes blinked in embarrasment.

"Oh my god! I'm so sorry!" She rushed over to a quivering, old woman, a good foot or so shorter than herself. Sakura could tell she was shaking even under the thick layers of her Suna-style robes.

The woman's mouth was open in a wide "o," and she stared at the medic, completely terrefied of the weapon piercing the tree just next to her cheek, scratching her liver-spotted skin just slightly.

"I apologize, I didn't know! I thought you were-"

Sakura bit her lip, catching her words once again. Revealing herself as a kunoichi was a bad idea, even if it was to a frail, elderly woman. Her short stature, white hair, and long robes reminded Sakura of an old friend, long gone, from Suna, who had taught her an important lesson in chakra-healing and in life.

"A boar or something?" The woman completed Sakura's sentence nervously, her movements starting once more but in an agitated fashion. "Gracious, child, I'm just an old woman!"

"I'm very sorry, Ma'am," Sakura removed the kunai and replaced it in her sleeve before bowing low to her victim. "I just got distracted from...from hunting!" She lied through her white smile. "My family has been starving, and the game isn't very good anymore, but whatever you got over there smelled so good, I guess I got distracted."

"It's all right, dearie," the old woman suddenly changed her shaken tone to one of a worried grandmother, "it's not your fault that food has gotten so scarce!"

Sakura breathed a sigh of relief. She was nearly discovered, but thankfully the woman believed her lie. Still, it was completely unprofessional of her to lose her guard like that and go unawares into a campsite. Even her team used to make camp like this! She hoped she wasn't getting rusty after those days in the hospital.

"Ah, it's all right. I'll just be on my way then." Sakura bowed humbly once more. She turned and began to leave.

"Oh, wait!" The elderly woman called back, causing the pink-haired kunoichi to freeze.

Shit, did she find out?

"You must be starving, attacking innocent people with a clouded mind like that! Come, I can spare a little something for you." The woman ushered.

"Thank you, Obaa-chan, but I think I'll-" Sakura tried to deny the offer, but her belly accepted it with an excited rumble that echoed through the trees. A flock of birds flew up from the branches, obviously disturbed by the offending noise. The medic felt a blush creep up to her face before shuffling over toward her speechless hostess.

"My name is Kao. I was making trying to make some mochi, but I ended up messing up my ratios, so I made some dango instead." Kao gestured at her stone items lying on the grass. The mortar still had some white powder at the bottom, probably rice, since there was a mound of grains on the blanket next to it. "Would you like some?"

"Ah, yes, please. But just one bite, and I'll pay you." Sakura sat cross-legged on the grass, letting her cloak pool out behind her.

"Nonsense! You'll eat at least one skewer of the stuff before you head off and accidentally kill someone!" She scolded, shaking a crooked finger at her.

Sakura couldn't really argue with the woman, it seemed. Besides, her hunger beat her out and she guessed a quick snack could help her get back to Konoha faster. After all, it was carbohydrates, right?

A few minutes later, Sakura was still sitting on the ground, waiting for the dango to finish cooking as she tried to think out a plan.

I've been out here a week. If Okaa couldn't find me, then I guess I'm in the clear. Naruto and Sai did the job well. Kakashi, well, he's strong enough and smart enough to know when and how to escape, but they'd all better be alive when I come back, so I can pound the hell out of them!

"Dearie, they're done! Could you go get the cooking pot from the mound over there?"

Kao's chipper voice brought Sakura to reality to find her fist clenched, chakra-loaded and ready to kill. She pushed the thought of her boys from her mind and stood up accordingly, smiling her acknowledgement and jogging over to the flames to dig up her first meal all day.

The smell and presentation was impeccable, at least, in her mind. It was still a little dry, no doubt from the lack of water sources, but the aroma of the sweet bean paste and rice could deter her no longer as she gripped the slightly charred skewer close to her mouth.

"Thank you for the meal, Kao-obaa-chan!" She announced before taking a bite of the first rounded rice ball, savoring the flavor while wincing from the sudden pain of activated salivary glands.

"Oh, it's nothing, Sakura-chan." She smiled in return, merely holding her dango stick instead of eating it. She watched Sakura munch on the rice ball, gulping it down excitedly.

She was about to take a second bite when she realized her biggest mistake. Her hand stopping centimeters from her mouth, stirring the old woman.

I never told her my name.

"Baki! Now!" The old woman stood up, suddenly taking on a deeper, much younger voice. A much more familiar voice.

Sakura threw the dango at the woman like a sweet spear, who dodged it easily by jumping into the foliage, and dashed away from her, but keeping her distance close enough to figure out what was happening.

Then, she did what she had done earlier and shoved her gloved finger roughly down her throat again, trying to force what she had eaten out of her system.

The mortar and pestle. The herbs! It's all-

"Yes, Okaa-sama," a deep voice replied to his mistress.

Sakura didn't have time to look when her body was smashed into a tree, held up by some large, powerful wall that took her hand out of her mouth and pinned both arms to the tree above her head. When she tried to retch, a hand shot out and stuffed more melting sweetness into her mouth before slapping her jaw and holding it closed.

"You know, you brought it upon yourself."

The trapped kunoichi opened her wincing jade eyes to see the same dark-haired woman in the office.

"Oo-aaa!" Sakura tried to say that hateful name, but her mouth was closed by...a person with bandages and a straw hat!

Damn it! He was in disguise, and I fell for it! She tried to bite the hand that fed her, in an odd, oxymoronic way, but was unable to with her weak body being overpowered by her captor's decievingly powerful, flexing arms. When she attempted to kick at him or twist her body, he responded with his own kick to her empty gut or a slap to her already red and swollen face. She never felt so angry, being caught with such a careless mistake and forcefed with her arms pinned by one arm.

"Okaa-sama, she won't eat it." Baki, as he was called, spoke low. His hand's grip tightened on Sakura's wrists, making her grunt, but not enough to force her to swallow. She could start to feel her mouth filling with saliva, the dango ready to slide down her throat. However, hunger was far better than death.

"She'll eat it." Okaa floated over to her henchman, putting an arm over his shoulder. "You did, like an idiot too. Rock nin were never that smart."

Sakura's eyes widened, startled by the cruel comment of the woman.

"Does it taste good, Sakura? I know you like dango. I know what everyone likes, because I'm everyone's friend, everyone's mother." She spoke fluidly, fingering the bandages on Baki's face. "It's got a lovely poison you're probably familiar with. You know, the basics: some hallucinogens, a couple of narcotics. You had a little taste of it before you left the village with something of mine."

Fine, if I eat it I'll metabolize it right out.

"But the best part is, I changed the chemical content." Her mouth curved into a malicious smile, showing white, even teeth.

The kunoichi's breathing halted, and she chuckled darkly before continuing.

"I tossed in a new draught of sedatives. It's similar to the coma your Shishou was in, but it's a little more interesting. I call it a 'sleeping death.' Nice ring, hm? You can't run chakra into your system if you're knocked out, and this will keep you down for just about...forever." She laughed, as if Baki's dirty bandages were the funniest thing in the world. "And, you know, I still won't be satisfied until you're worse than dead. You know why?"

Sakura's mouth was starting to leak from the mixture of thick saliva, sweetened rice flour, and drugs, when Okaa's manicured hands gripped her jaw, replacing Baki's, squirting a good amount onto Sakura's chin.

"Because of you, I was driven out, by my people no less! You're old, perverted friend didn't seem to give up, and he told the elders about you before he rushed my office!"

What? Sakura's mind reeled from the desire to eat, to metabolize the drug she already ingested, and to think about Okaa's comment. Kakashi? How did he get the elders to listen?

"It seems that you're one of Konohagakure's best assets, next to your former Shishou's healing skills. Too bad she's long gone, what with her drinking habit." Okaa's hand fell from Sakura's jaw.

The mention of Tsunade was too much. Sakura, now released from any hold on her mouth, spat the slimy concoction of sweets and spittle in Okaa's spotless face, causing her to take a shaky step back, hands on her sticky face.

"You! You killed her!" Sakura screamed, wriggling despite the sudden slam of Baki's thick body against her petite frame. "I read the scroll! I know where Shishou's body is! When I tell the elders and have proof, you'll be marked as a dangerous criminal and taken out of this continent!" Sakura couldn't help the tears streaming out. They wouldn't last though, since her body had been dehydrated for a long time. The salt stung her eyes and swollen face.

However, Sakura's voice seemed to falter a bit, her eyes slowly becoming hazy.

"My, my," Okaa's grim face suddenly changed into a smug smirk, "it looks like it's finally working. Like I said, I changed the chemical content. The drug is much smaller, so it can be more easily absorbed. There's no way for you to get it out of your system, and when you're dehydrated, it's basically impossible. There's only one antidote, and it's still hidden in my office. Even the elders can't find it." She wiped the rest of the spittle from her face, smearing the remains on Sakura's puffy cheeks.

"I-It doesn't matter..." Sakura found it hard to keep her consciousness clear and her mouth moving, "since the elders a-already...kicked you out...of the, the...village..." Her tongue seemed to grow thick and heavy, making it difficult to make syllables.

"Whatever the case, I can make more drugs. Baki here is a prime example of my latest experiment. He used to be a Rock nin, completely loyal to the shinobi code, but with a little injection he makes the most lovely pet." She sneered at the fading kunoichi. "Apparently, the elders really liked you. Or maybe, they were just as perverted as your dirty teacher. Ah well, hope you don't like sleeping, because you'll be half-awake as you lie sleeping, starving, thristing, and dying, just like your handsome friend." She chuckled.

"Also, you should have taken to drinking more. Your shishou's liver tasted better than yours."

With her final word, she snapped her sticky fingers, signaling her pet to drop his luggage.

Sakura's eyes glazed over, her green irises darkening into a deep, unfocused jade, as she felt her body give and fall onto the thick roots of the tree, then rolling face-up onto the soft grass, to stare at a blurry red sky. The sun hadn't even set.

Kakashi...is dying just like me? He..."liked" me?Oh god...Oh god...

She silently said a prayer, laying motionless on the grass, although she knew whatever god there was out there would have no forgiveness on her soul. She already had killed so many people, hurt others, and lied over and over again. Still, her prayer was for the souls of her dead peers, her demolished family, her ravaged village, but most of all, for Kakashi.

The dying medic's stomach twisted uncomfortably, probably even painfully in a few more hours. But, she guessed it wasn't too bad. Hopefully, she's get used to it and then slowly drift off to rest, like Kakashi did.

Hell no, Kakashi...You promised. Of all the things you had to promise me, why did it have to be love?

Her optimistic thoughts were thrown aside by that tiny voice inside of her. The voice that was suppressed until recently, coming out whenever she thought about the lazy bums in Fuseya Hospital, her past memories of the war Okaa alone had caused, and of...Kakashi.

He was dying, or already dead, from the same thing, and with the last of his dignity stripped from him. Okaa said it so cooly, but it hurt Sakura, hurt her so much it made her want to cry freely for the first time in a long time. He was hungry, parched, maskless, and fuzzy-minded like her, contemplating death and enduring unbearable pains for his few remaining days without water and care. Without anyone.

He's alone, just like me. Liar.

When she realized she couldn't even get the chance to cry, she felt her soul rack with the pain and pure bitterness of being alone and never having loved anyone, or saving more lives, or watching her friends be happy, or having children and raising them to be fine shinobi, or growing old to bicker with her peers about kids these days, or being surrounded by her loved ones on her deathbed, staring into the face of...of...someone she truly, whole-heartedly loved with every fiber of her being.

You know, you're my favorite teacher too.

Her mind grew so blurred with the drug and the pain of human necessity, she couldn't think anymore and succumbed to the churns of her belly, the sand caught in her open throat, and the insects picking at her face, hoping that death would come swiftly.

The war ended two days later, recorded as the shortest-term war ever fought. Information spread from Konoha, the epicenter of the war itself, to the surrounding countries, and a joyous celebration took place in every shop, home, and stable.

Okaa disappeared from the continent. Rumors spread that her abilities to make drugs were excellent, but her test results didn't usually last long. Last word was that her previous henchman turned on her, confused by her presence, and accidentally leaned on a boulder set precariously atop a hot spring she had been bathing in. The body found in the spring was actually old and wrinkled, not from the hot water. Baki, more confused than ever, felt terrible about killing an old woman, but not too bad, since he didn't even remember what had been going on for the past few days.

Konoha's elders re-established power with a new Hokage. They selected the man best suited for the job. He was a top jounin, smart, and a senior in his game, even though he opposed the position. Still, he took the Hokage robes reluctantly and set to having the villagers and shinobi rebuild the village while he went to neighboring village as an amabassador of peace to clear up any hostile feelings.

Sakura's body was found three days after the war had ended. No one actually recognized her when a traveler brought her into Fuseya Hospital, except for the handful of staff still remaining there that night while others had gone to celebrate.

It was her pink hair that helped identify her, according to the reports of a food vendor and the head doctor, as well as some nurses and interns. Her body had deteriorated heavily, leaving an emaciated shell of dirty, dry, and insect-covered skin. Her eyes had dried as well, nearly destroyed by hungry bugs. The open wounds on her body were infected, and the contusion or black and blue underneath her skin started to yellow too.

Doc, who had been revered as the one who saved thousands of lives during the last peak of war, renounced his title, revealing the talent behind the hospital to be a princess of beauty, power, and hope. He then locked himself in a small part of the operating room for the next week, never coming out.

"Sai, can you and your paintings stand guard instead? I don't think Naruto can handle this job as well." The new hokage instructed, cocking an eyebrow at the fidgeting blonde jounin. "I need to go to Earth Country to fetch someone, and I can't do that if Naruto falls asleep and lets the village get plundered by some pirates or something."

Naruto scowled and began to shout a bunch of slurs to his village leader, who promptly ignored his childish behavior.

"Of course," the artist began to open his sketchbook and furiously scribble a complete zoo with a piece of charcoal, "but aren't you supposed to head to Suna? I thought the kazekage needed to settle some disputes over the sudden change of power." Sai set down his drawing utentsil and brought his hands together, summoning life into his personal creatures.

"Gaara-kun can handle himself. He's got his siblings and a wonderful ambassador too. Shikamaru knows what he's doing, at least when he's not distracted with Temari-chan."

"Ah."

"Right then, I'll see you in a few days." The hokage tipped his hat and dashed off past the gates of Konoha, robes whipping behind him.

"Hey, Sai, you sure he's supposed to go by himself?" Naruto piped up.

"Naruto, go help the villagers. The mountain needs to be recarved." Sai put an arm around Naruto, making him shudder from the contact.

"Sai, you bastard! What the hell is this?" Naruto jerked out from under Sai's embrace.

"Oh?" Sai raised his eyebrows. Then, he bent down to pull a book from his pack and flipped the book open, reading it thoughtfully. "I thought close contact was supposed to be a good way of keeping friends close, even though you just insult them, so it makes the truth seem more like a joke."

"Insult? Hey!" Naruto jumped up and slapped the book from the artist's hands, who stared blankly as Naruto stomped on the pages roughly. "Don't insult me in the first place! If you wanna be my friend, then tell me something that's true and mean it. Real friends give the straight true, dattebayo!" He crossed his arms, expecting an answer from the block-headed fool.

Sai tapped his chin lightly, then proceeded to use the same reference he always though back to.

"Naruto, you are intelligent as your penis is-"

"You bastard!" Naruto began to chase after Sai across the half-demolished rooftops of Konoha, who was still, after all these years, was clueless about the social norms of men. "I'll kill you this time!"

Doc paced in the operating room, rubbing his thick beard. He felt guilty about leaving the other patients alone and just letting the nurses deal with them, but he knew where he was needed as well.

Sakura's body had been restored, for the most part. Her eyes were bandaged over, protecting them from light even though the room was always kept dark, while her fluids and body systems were replenished with saline and IV nutrition. Any other injuries healed on their own, thanks to her body's automatic chakra healing.

In fact, Sakura had trained herself to heal, even when not alert, but it did little to permanently reject the drug circulating through her veins and her brain, still active in its wake.

"Doc, get some rest. You haven't slept in days." Tanaka urged her superior, handing him yet another cup of instant coffee.

"Yeah, you'll be able to think of something once you sleep. And Haruno-san has been stable for days anyways. We'll call you if something comes up!" Maru piped up.

The two nurses looked onto their pink-haired counterpart. This young woman had come back as if from purgatory, but still managed to survive. Her entrance had inspired and motivated them to work even harder than before to return their friend back to her angry, righteous self. They constantly kept checking her blood pressure and oxygen saturation levels, occassionally taking shifts to sleep or watch the monitor connected to the many tubes attached to both her arms as IV's and to her chest as electrodes.

"Maybe." The short doctor contemplated, taking a huge swig of caffeine. "But if I haven't been able to think of anything for Haruno-san, then what good will sleeping do for me but worry me more?"

The three of them began to feel crestfallen, unsure of what other drug to inject into Sakura's system only to have it flushed out by her excellent self-healing process.

The phone rang suddenly and the nurses looked up, jogging off to retrieve the unexpected call at such an early hour.

"Doc? Someone called. It looks like the Hokage of Konoha wants to see...Haruno-san?" The girls looked at each other, confused.

"Tell him that she's not available for visitors. Don't disclose any other information." He sighed, rubbing his unruly hair once more.

His clipboard lay forgotten on a nearby desk, covered in scribbles, formulas, and lists of drugs. Doc, for once, was completely at a wall. He slunk into his chair, proceeding to scribble more notes onto his messy board with one hand while his other played with the edge of his thick frames.

"I'm sorry, Doc, but it seems that he insists on seeing her. Doc, he says he can help her."

The doctor bolted upright, his white coat caught under his wide butt, and jumped up to the nurses.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Send him in!" He grabbed the phone from Tanaka, smashing it to his ear. "Come in, Sir! Please, come in!"

The operating room doors swung upon and the silouette of a tall, but slouched, man came into view. He tread over to Sakura's side, pulling his hat off to reveal a wild head of gravity-defying silver hair. He fingered a lock of her soft pink hair, gazing at her with warm, mismatched eyes, his mouth evidently open even with his mask on.

"Can I ask the nurses to leave?" He asked, still staring at Sakura's bandaged eyes. His gaze roved over her pink, half-open lips, down to the round curves underneath the loose hospital gown she usually kept bound, over the slender, full hips, to her long, creamy legs before settling back up on her mouth underneath the oxygenmask. A cloud of condensation steamed the sides of the mask with every other breath she took, and her hair splayed out beautifully, framing her pale, innocent face.

"Yes, Sir, of course!" Doc nodded, mouthing words to the nurses who seemed to be a bit distraught by the situation.

After the doors swung closed, the visitor looked to Doc.

"What happened?"

"Ah, she was poisoned, I think. We aren't sure, but can't find out what the poison is. Her body functions are normal, but she isn't physically awake, even though her heartbeat, breathing rate, and brainwaves clearly say she is." Doc readjusted his spectacles, eyeing the masked man carefully. What could the Hokage offer that his skills didn't?

"It's a sleeping drug. I have an antidote that will wake her up. Would you allow me to give it to her?" He asked, his gaze returning to the pink-haired kunoichi.

"Why exactly are you doing this?" Doc inquired seriously, eyes glinting behind his lenses. "What relationship do you have with Haruno-san?"

"I made a promise." He said simply, pulling the bandages carefully from her head to reveal long pink eyelashes.

He proceeded to lift the oxygen mask off her face, making the machine next to them warn them with a loud beeping.

"Sir! You can't do that! She can breathe, but the oxygen levels here-"

"Trust me on this. I know what I'm doing." He looked at the doctor as his Sharingan activated, swirling dangerously, but not actually in use. It was enough to make Doc take a step back and sit down with a slight "eep."

With one hand, he cradled her head softly. With the other, he balanced himself on the soft padding of the bed and leaned closer.

"Sakura, can you hear me?" He bent low, whispering into the shell of her ear.

Ah, yes I can, she thought. Her pain had ended long ago, so she figured she was already dead. Perhaps, she had ended up in some sort of heaven, considering the floating feeling present about her. But then again, she had done so many terrible things in her life, and the voice she was hearing was unmistakably familiar. Nah, it must be hell. There's only one place that guy would go.

"Do you remember what I promised?" He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, sucking at it so it wouldn't drip on her beautiful face. Then, he leaned down once more.

What a weird feeling. It's soft and warm. I wonder what that is...

Her lips were covered by his own, slowly caressing them until he parted them slightly with a slanting motion of his head. With his teeth, he bit lightly on her lip, making a little cut and tasting blood. His tongue passed over her teeth easily and swept over her own, similarly to the last time he did it. The taste of their blood mixed together was sweet, unlike Sakura's usual medications, and his ministrations, the hands smoothing over her hair and cheek while his tongue padded lightly against her palate and the muscle in her mouth, encouraged a quiet moan from her throat, making the doctor jump up in surprise.

I know that smell, and that voice. It couldn't be though, she though. That musky, masculine scent of pine and parchment only belonged to one person. But she felt a soft, enjoyable sensation on her mouth, knowing what it was, doubting who was doing it.

His mouth was still on hers when she gave a small moan, much louder than the quiet ones she made earlier. He massaged her gums and felt the contours of her teeth and tongue until her eyes fluttered open.

Sakura's vision was still hazy, but she did feel something light tickle her forehead. A beeping sound that had been annoying earlier disappeared and she also heard a slight gasp somewhere closeby.

"She's, she's waking up!"

A whimper came from the back of her throat and her rescuer retreated, his lips separating from hers with a wet pop.

"Ka...kashi?" His name came out as her vision cleared. She knew it was him from the dark, coal orb and the red, spotted one, as well as the long scar on his eye. But, from the tip of the nose down, she couldn't possibly guess.

"Yo." A deep voice issued from his reddened lips, slightly bleeding.

He smiled. A wonderful, handsome, warm smile.

She scanned the room once and chuckled. "Hospitals. Of course, that makes sense."

"Hm?" Kakashi's eyebrow quirked upwards. It was quite attractive to see him like that, but there were more important matters at hand. Or was there? She was dead after all, though the taste of blood on her mouth was strangely sweet, like dango. Was this what death was like?

"You hate hospitals. That's why it's your hell." She whispered staring back into those red and black orbs as she slowly gained the feeling in her fingers and toes. She began to notice a nice, soft feeling on her head and cheek, and realized it was his rough, calloused hands caressing her, a thumb rubbing lightly under her eye. "And you're clothes. You're the Hokage? Well, then it's obvious." She laughed lightly, weakly pulling at the cloth of his sleeve. "We must be in hell."

"Really? I figured we were in heaven, right, Sakura?" Kakashi nodded toward the IV jutting prominently from her elbow.

Suddenly, her focus became clear and she gasped, piecing everything together mentally.

"Wait," she breathed, eyes darting about, "if I'm here, and you're here, then we..."

"Sakura, I keep my promises." Kakashi bent low again, lips a breadth's away from hers. "Especially for my favorite students."

Ah, hell. Just go with it, that inner voice of hers commented smugly.

"Well, then," Sakura lifted her arms slowly, ignoring the IV's trailing from her them, and set a hand lightly on his shoulder, the other on the back of his neck to touch the short hairs there, "I guess my prince finally came." She mused, smiling as he did while nuzzling her nose lightly. "Thank god it was my favorite teacher, right, Kakashi-sensei?"

Sakura didn't know if it was the sudden flow of blood draining from her head as she sat up on the bed, or if it was the warm, chaste kiss that made her shiver and feel dizzy. Whatever it was, she didn't care if she was alive or dead, in heaven or hell, as long as he was there with her.