Matchmaker, Matchmaker,

Make me a match,

Find me a find,

catch me a catch

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Look through your book,

And make me a perfect match

-Fiddler on the Roof

You never had a family in the first place, Sasuke had once accused Naruto – in the harsh, tactless way angry little boys do. You can never know the feeling of what it's like to lose them!

Perhaps it was to tether Sasuke to what meager human emotion he still possessed – ones that superseded the feelings of vengeance and fury that had propelled him forwards for so long. Maybe it was to prove to Sasuke that there yet burned a small ember of hope for a better future, that his actions weren't so irredeemable that he couldn't attain the peace that had eluded him since his childhood had ended in a violent spray of blood.

Sakura didn't know – she wasn't even there in the aftermath of the final battle against Madara and Kaguya, when Naruto decided to exert his dwindling new powers for one last act of mercy before they disappeared.

All she knew, flitting from friend to friend and stranger to stranger with glowing hands, was that one minute Naruto and Sasuke were there, dusty and blood-strewn and wonderfully victorious, and the next they had slipped away amidst the shouts of elation at defeating an unspeakable evil and the mournful wails as loved ones and teammates were discovered among the fallen bodies.

But as a medic (and one of the more senior ones at that, given that Sakura had just dragged an unconscious Shizune to the makeshift medical tents, and her Shishou was still recovering from a chakra expenditure that was nearly fatal for a body that was regularly abused with alcohol and subjected to the natural shortcomings of age), Sakura hardly had more than a fleeting thought to spare towards the boys' leaving before her name was being bellowed again and she was hurrying over to the next straggling group of wounded shinobi.

It seemed as though she was barely finished with hugging a sobbing Ino, poking worriedly at Kakashi-sensei's newly-formed eye to ensure that Naruto's hocus-pocus wasn't having any weird side effects, offering Lee a soft squeeze to his shoulder before mending a grateful Gai's more serious wound, and allowing an fretful pair of Sand Siblings to drag her off to inspect a swaying and annoyed Gaara when two shadowy figures emerged onto the rocky horizon.

Two shadowy figures that rapidly assumed the shapes of one blonde Jinchuuriki and broody Uchiha….with a third horribly familiar person supported between them.

And when Sakura used the term 'familiar', she meant it in the sense that she'd seen his face as sketchily captured in the Bingo books, encountered a false version of him in a long-ago attempt at rescuing Gaara from the Akatsuki, and recognized his comely, sharp-faced features and dark hair as unmistakable genetic similarities to the Uchiha boy she had grown up with.

Uchiha Itachi.

Well, shit, was the most eloquent comment her stunned brain could summon.

After battling a madman resolved upon immersing the world within a sempiternal dream state, and finding herself being tossed about by a reincarnated pseudo-goddess who had decided to 'save' the world by purging it of humanity….well, Sakura had vainly hoped that she would get a reprieve from unpleasant surprises.

Obviously not, if the distant group she was squinting at was anything to go by.

Naruto and Sasuke had obviously gone to retrieve his brother's body. Although why Itachi's corporeal form hadn't dissipated into oblivion like the others after the release of Kabuto's jutsu was a pressing question, and one that Sakura was just too damn tired to fruitlessly conjecture about right then.

So she decided to go and see what her impulsive teammates had done now.

With one last pass of her hand over the deep gash that had been liberally stretched over Gaara's torso, she stood up. "He'll be fine," she told Temari kindly, seeking to alleviate the worry haunting the other girl's eyes.

Although whether Sakura would be fine was another question. Already she could feel the subtle advance of chakra exhaustion, her feet unsteady beneath her and protesting at having to support her weight.

Still, she pushed away her own plight and pasted on a smile in answer to Gaara's soft-spoken gratitude and Kankuro's more boisterous thanks, abandoning one half-heartedly displeased Kazekage to be engulfed by his siblings' adoring hugs.

As she sprinted heavily towards her two boys, Sakura was thankful that everyone had more crucial matters to attend to instead of wondering at her abrupt departure. She had the distinct feeling that Naruto, and maybe even Sasuke, would be cheeringly swarmed should others catch sight of their approaching figures.

After all, in this glut of tearful reunions and affirmations of vitality, she selfishly needed a few moments alone to reconnect with her teammates – to ensure they were really alive and healthily intact.

She did this by flinging herself at the two of them (well, three, if one included the dead Itachi propped up between the boys), encircling Naruto and Sasuke in a suffocating embrace. Naruto's happy grin was evident against the top of her head, and even Sasuke made a stunted effort at reciprocation by stiffly resting his fingers on her shoulder.

"Welcome back," she whispered. She basked happily in their presence, despite the permeating smell of sweat and blood that surrounded them, despite the unhappy memories of past encounters that still lingered between their little group.

Sakura had her family back – consisting at its core of Konoha's number one hyperactive ninja and the taciturn and grumpy heir of the Uchiha clan, no matter their newfound strengths or discoveries of reincarnation linkages.

But as most of Team Seven's touching moments were traditionally ruined by Sasuke opening his mouth, this time was no exception.

"Sakura," the dark-haired boy drawled with impatience. "Could you move away?"

Sakura's eye twitched at the demand, but she worriedly drew away when Naruto's body quivered against her own, as though he were on the verge of collapse.

"Yeah, S-Sakura-chan," Naruto wheezed, helping Sasuke to gingerly ease Itachi's limp form off their shoulders and onto the ground. "Some help here please?"

But where Sakura might have once flocked to fuss over Sasuke, or gawked fearfully at the deceased body of a former enemy, she ignored both in favor of flinging herself besides Naruto and examining him with alarm. "What did you do to yourself, idiot?" she groused, noting his uncommonly pale face and lackluster movements.

Naruto patted her hand with only an echo of his usual exuberance. "I'm fine, Sakura-chan," he reassured her, but was cut off by the monotonous sound of Sasuke's voice.

"He merely overtaxed himself, helping me with my brother. It's nothing to concern yourself over."

Sakura's eyes flashed, and Naruto flinched. Because Sasuke had been absent for the last few years, and had therefore missed a few developments in Sakura's personality.

Like the fact that one did not disparage Sakura's worries about her precious people.

Her back snapped straight, her fingers clenching on Naruto's arm defensively.

"If I want your lofty medical opinion, I'll ask for it, Sasuke-kun," was her heated retort, humorously at odds with the old, affectionate suffix she automatically tacked on. The blissful pink dust of reuniting with them was gradually fading, replaced by the angry remembrance of Sasuke's rankling tendency to be an asshole. "You may not give a damn about what happens to our teammates, but I do. So – "

In what could only be described as a bizarre role-reversal, Naruto found himself playing mediator between a narrow-eyed Sasuke and a progressively tetchy Sakura. "Hey! C'mon, guys, enough. Sakura-chan, I really did go a bit overboard trying to get Itachi back from the dead…."

What?

Sakura nearly choked, her eyes swiveling to the man she had dismissed as a corpse only minutes before.

Apparently, she had missed the tremulous rise and fall of Itachi's chest in her elation at seeing Sasuke and Naruto again – something her shocked gaze absorbed all too keenly now.

"Back from the dead!" Green eyes flicked dangerously from the aforementioned 'dead' person to Naruto, pinning him in place with a glare. "Naruto, what the heck did you do?"

The Kyuubi Jinchuuriki, the hero of the Fourth Great Shinobi War, and the would-be Sixth Hokage, quivered in place with a panicky laugh at the look his beloved female teammate was leveling him. "Eheheh, I mean, I didn't really bring him back from the dead dead. His body was still in the cavern where he and Sasuke kicked Kabuto's ass, and there was still some of his residual chakra lingering from the zombie reincarnation thing….so I all did was kinda give it a boost with what I had left of old man Hagoromo's sage chakra, and bam! Insta-Itachi!"

Only Naruto could describe such a feat with words like 'zombie reincarnation' and euphemisms that made Uchiha Itachi sound like a frozen chicken dinner.

It was a testament to her worrisome lack of sensitivity to weird things happening in her life that Sakura didn't argue any further.

Sakura gave a gusty sigh, ominously promised to subject Naruto to a very thorough checkup when they finally got home as a result of this revivification stunt (with lots of extensive, invasive tests as payback for making her worry so darn much), and finally turned her attention onto Sasuke and his unmoving – and alive – brother.

She tried to muster up a brief smile for a clearly worried Sasuke in an effort to perpetuate the delicate peace Naruto had forged between them, and then deliberated for only a beat before sliding probing hands onto Itachi's body.

Itachi's wanly delicate face was illumed beneath the soothing glow of her chakra, but he didn't so much as twitch beneath her bewildered scrutiny.

Tinged with the characteristic green radiance of healing, Sakura skimmed her fingertips over his major chakra points. Testing the gentle ebb and pull of Itachi's chakra and finding it relatively strong, she had to concede that Naruto was right – that little boost of his had restored the natural flow throughout Itachi's body.

And Sakura could only speculate that subsequently, that chakra stream had probably substituted as a source of kick-starting nourishment for his deprived body components.

Satisfied (if still a bit mystified by the whole anomaly before her), she switched from examination of the intangible to the visceral. Namely, making sure all of Itachi's organs weren't threatening to rebel at the renewed usage.

Trying to ignore that she was, for all intents and purposes, feeling up a very notorious S-class criminal (or former criminal, whatever), she drew her hand along his side, coaxing a sluggish heart into assuming a more normal pace and helping the contractual movement of his diaphragm and lungs so as to aid with his labored breathing.

For one terrifying moment spiky blonde hair replaced inky black strands, and Sakura vividly remembered doing this for another man ("Breathe, Naruto, BREATHE! PLEASE!") not too long ago, her abilities rendered practically useless as she fought to restart his heartbeat. Her breath caught in her throat at the nightmarish recollection, her palm flattening against Itachi's chest.

But she could sense the overwhelmingly comforting sensation of Naruto beside her, and that was enough of an impetus for her to shake away her silly fear. Naruto and Sasuke were regarding her with identically confused looks, but she resoundingly ignored them in favor of finishing up and leaning back on her haunches to survey her unexpected patient.

Now, the only problem was rousing the sleeping prince and seeing if any changes had been wrought elsewhere. Namely, in his brain. While his body seemed to be reverting back into its old physiological processes with ease, there really wasn't any way she could account for his mental state.

And by god, if he awoke with an insatiable urge to gnaw on brains and body parts, she was tossing him at Naruto and Sasuke and letting them deal with it, seeing as those idiots had rashly decided to raise a dead person. Sakura firmly drew the line at playing nursemaid to zombies that might eat crucial appendages she rather needed, after all.

"So what now, Sakura-chan?" Her morbid reverie was broken by Naruto's curiosity.

"Is he…is my brother alright?"

Her tone was gruff when she answered, exhaustion and a reluctance to be the bearer of bad news taking their toll. "I honestly don't know, guys. Physically, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with him but….I'm used to doing this at the hospital, with a whole host of equipment available for telling me what my chakra can't ascertain. Besides, there isn't exactly a whole lot of precedence for the whole reviving-the-dead thing."

Too bad Kabuto had wisely scattered after the war. Sakura would have liked to have had the chance to throttle the four-eyed bastard for putting her in this situation.

Sasuke's stare was burning a fiery hole in her back. Sakura resisted the urge to cock her head and make sure he hadn't actually used a katon fireball to vindictively set her aflame.

"Then can you wake him up?" Sasuke asked quietly, with an undercurrent of longing that Sakura was loath to destroy.

She bit down on her lower lip, her hands curling reflexively at the resultant twinge of pain. "I might be able to, yes. But I don't want to try it."

"And why is that?" Sasuke fairly snarled this at her, the emotive display startling Naruto into a coughing fit and prodding Sakura to whirl furiously about to meet his icy gaze.

"Because I don't know what he'll come back as!" she gritted out, the strain of keeping her voice from escalating into the realm of thoroughly pissed off seeping through. "I don't know if he'll remember anything, or retain his same personality, or be brain-damaged from, oh, you know, all the oxygen he wasn't getting while he was dead. That good enough for you?"

But if there was one thing she should have known about Sasuke, it was that he was inherently merciless. Also, he had a distinct lack of pity for those who took a cautious approach to things.

"You're being a coward. If you think there's even the remotest chance it will work, then do it." His brow furrowing thunderously and mouth twisting sharply downwards added to the denigrating words.

Annoying. Useless. A coward.

Pride was all that stymied a miserable laugh from leaving Sakura's lips.

Why was it that this boy's verbal barbs could hurt like no other's? Years of training under a Hokage, of slaving away to improve upon her abilities and better the lives of others….and yet Sasuke always knew the precise thing to say to make Sakura doubt herself.

Naruto, who had remained oddly silent until then, stirred at the insult. "Oi, Sasuke! That's – "

"Fine," she said curtly, talking over Naruto's indignant outburst. She exhaled noisily, blowing her sweat-slicked bangs out of her face in the process. "Fine."

Then she touched two fingers to Itachi's temple, and forced herself to cajole the last meager drops of chakra she had into them.

A long minute passed. Then another.

Itachi wasn't exhibiting any of the telltale signs of regaining consciousness – his pulse maintained its slow throb, his face remained in stern repose.

Sakura was beginning to get uneasy, and Sasuke's relentless hovering about her shoulder indicated he was of a similar mindset.

Perhaps one could chalk it up to nerves – it was an observance dating back to their childhood that when Sasuke was anxious, he became even more of a bastard than usual – or maybe it was merely plain old callousness.

But when he stared down his perfect patrician nose at a tired and dirty Sakura, who was struggling to push the remnants of her chakra throughout the prone body of his brother, and asked doubtfully, "Sakura, are you sure you're really capable of waking him up?"….

….well, even ten years in the future, upon retelling this story Naruto would swear on every bowl of ramen he'd ever gobbled that he literally heard a snap! as Sasuke finally succeeded in provoking the legendary temper that Sakura had always managed to quell in his presence.

"That's it, Sasuke!"

With a dexterity that would have made Kakashi beam with pride, and a glorious right hook that would have had Tsunade boasting of being the one to have taught Sakura that, the pink-haired girl was on her feet and a very surprised Sasuke was skidding haphazardly over rough, pebbled dirt and protruding rocks that were only too glad to catch harshly on skin and clothes alike.

And it was at that moment that Uchiha Itachi decided to awaken, eyelids fluttering and a disoriented gaze settling on the first thing that would greet him in his newfound life.

And that defining first sight?

It just so happened to be Sakura, her purpling bruises and crimson cuts lit proudly by the morning sunrise, grinning with triumph at having sucker-punched the boy who had once deemed her to be little more than a hindrance.

So I always seem to get a burst of writing energy once summer hits, studies end, and I suddenly find myself getting more than two hours of sleep and am therefore awake enough to form half-proper sentences. I love all my readers out there – many thanks to the people who have taken the time in my absence to review and message me about their love for my stories, and their hope that I'll keep writing :) It seriously means a lot to me. I had fun writing this little drabble thing, and hopefully I can scribble out a few more short chapters. Since Naruto's been going around doing magical crap left and right, I thought it'd be wonderful if he managed to revive Itachi.

Manga rant: So Sasuke's been a giant poo-head in the manga recently – I have no problems expressing my disgust at how easily he dismissed Sakura. WHO IS COMPLETELY AWESOME WITH HER FREAKIN' NEW ABILITIES BY THE WAY. I kept waiting for Itachi to materialize from the netherworld and slap Sasuke upside the head and then promptly charm Sakura with his bishieness and be magically revived by the power of their love. And while I love Naruto, his powers are getting a little over-the-top lately. I sort of miss the days when he was a kooky, struggling shinobi who had to work like hell for his new powers rather than getting them handed to him on a silver platter thanks to some plot-convenient pre-determined-due-to-reincarnation thing.