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Sai.
Sakura's thoughts are a maelstrom.
This had been the whole point of reviving an extinct Nature Transformation, of getting caught by ROOT, of risking desensitisation and death willingly and consistently: kill or expose Danzo, and save Sai.
But now, having the boy actually in front of her, the abstract idea of saving Sai becomes a must.
He is so small.
At his introduction, he peaks his tiny head out of the nest of blankets and blinks sleepily at Sakura, then goes right back to sleep.
Sakura's even more thrown by the fact that there's life in his eyes!
Operation: Save Sai has just become a priority. She thinks wryly, feels the surge of protectiveness in her heart at the soft, snuffling snore that comes from the bunk not a few seconds later.
She turns back to Shin, and she's not sure what he sees on her face, but the look in his eyes softens just a touch more.
"Do you want something to eat?" he asks, and Sakura nods, only just realising that she's starving.
She's a bit woozy and still casually topless, because she's six and even at eighteen she didn't have much in terms of breasts so it hardly fazes her, and also she's got big, painful wounds all over her back. Still, Shin must take her sudden silence for discomfortand she barely catches the shirt he throws at her face.
For a kid only about ten or eleven, he's scarily perceptive and rather hilariously motherly.
Sakura accepts the manju gratefully though she raises an eyebrow at the surprising freshness. Shin's lip quirks upwards the tiniest bit.
"Our third roommate has… special circumstances." He says cryptically, and Sakura knows even without asking that that's all he's going to say on that matter.
She shrugs and gets the manju down, then lets herself ask the uncomfortable question that had been bothering her since Shin offered to treat her wounds.
"Why did you help me?" she asks quietly, because she's in his room with his gauze across her back, dressed in his shirt and eating his food, and yet they're both in an organisation whose very goal is to encourage the 'every man for himself' mentality.
It just doesn't add up.
Shin sighs, but that peculiar quirk to his lip doesn't disappear, and if not for the fact that Sakura knows otherwise, she would wonder if he too had travelled in time because the look in his eyes is old.
"The first thing they stamp out in ROOT isn't emotion." He replies, and he looks tired, world-weary in a way someone who's not even a teen yet has no right to be.
"It's aggression. That's why you were punished; not because you couldn't do what they wanted you to, but because you resisted. You're young and you're new, but you fight it, fight the conditioning. You remember that there's another way."
Sakura frowns, tries not to acknowledge the shiver of sheer dread that runs down her back, instead says;
"You do too, don't you? You helped me, dressed my wounds, brought me to your room. Clearly, you must remember too."
She's reaching, testing her luck, testing Shin, because she had planned to keep the fact that she was resisting the conditioning as much she could a secret, but if she could have an ally, someone who clearly also cared for Sai, then maybe…
"I almost don't." Shin denies, and the almost-smile turns into an unhappy frown. "It's been too long for me. But I try to. Because I can't let Sai forget."
And that, right there, that devotion… Sakura wonders just how long it had been, and before her brain quite catches up, she asks;
"How long has it been? How long have you been here?"
"Almost three years." Comes the immediate response, and Sakura's heart aches.
She sucks in a sharp breath.
"I'm sorry." She whispers, even though she should be putting more effort into her cover, into convincing him that she really is six and doesn't know exactly what she's signing up for, being in ROOT, but he's just a child and to think what he must've endured… "I'm so sorry."
And then, because she can't not, she adds, "And, I'm also sorry but I have to ask... How do I know that this isn't some kind of test?"
To her surprise, the almost-smile comes back, and there's a glint that looks almost like hope in Shin's eyes.
"You may yet survive this." He murmurs, settles on the bed beside her. "You don't. How about a trade?"
Sakura's eyes narrow, but she nods hesitantly.
"I am ill. They think it's terminal." He says, and Sakura thinks she remembers Sai mentioning something of the like, but to hear Shin say it so matter-of-fact still breaks her heart. "But before I die, I'm going to do everything in my power to bring this organisation down for what it did to my brother."
Sakura tenses, shocked. "I…" she hesitates. "I could report you for this, you know."
Because she could. She should, and he has to know that.
"I know." And the quirk to his lips is bittersweet this time.
He doesn't say but you won't, he doesn't need to. They both know she won't.
Sakura is suddenly struck with the realisation that if Shin survived, he would've been terrifying. That level of manipulation, the skill at reading the tells and responding in kind, of saying a lot while not saying anything much at all, the constant control of trust and the power-balance… Sakura swallows nervously.
"What's the trade?" she asks, almost inaudibly, and a victorious glint passes through Shin's eyes for just a millisecond, before it's hastily wiped away.
"If me and my partner die before we succeed, will you finish what we couldn't?"
Sakura nods, because that's what she planned for anyway, then a thought registers. "Who's your partner?"
Shin smiles, and it's the first proper smile she's seen from him since this whole ordeal began, and she's suddenly breathless.
"I think you're about to meet him, actually."
Then, the door opens and Sakura's breath catches in her throat.
Shisui limps into his dorm, exhausted and bruised, and he wants nothing more than to sleep and report in the morning, and then maybe he'll be allowed to go home and see Itachi and play with little Sasuke and forget how the rivers of blood he leaves behind him grow deeper after every mission he runs.
He's not prepared to find Shin on Kuma's bed with an unknown, pink-haired child beside him, who's staring at him with a look he's only seen on one person before. The thought of his cousin is a fond one, as is seeing the smile Shin directs at him, but the child is still an unknown, and unknowns are dangerous.
"Shin." He greets and shuts the door behind him, grabs an apple from his pack before dropping it and his mask on the floor. "Where's Kuma?"
He doesn't like his bunkmate, but he's necessary if Shisui wants to gain Danzo's trust and be allowed on the guarding rotation.
To his surprise, it's the child who answers.
"I killed him." she – or Shisui guesses she's a she – says, and Shisui shouldn't be surprised, god knows Itachi started young too, but it's the girl's eyes, a mix of curiosity and wariness when she looks at him, but not a hint of guilt, that draw his attention. "Training accident."
What sort of monster must hide behind the pink hair and guileless eyes, Shisui wonders as he nibbles at his apple, if she can get the drop on the shinobi who'd been ROOT even during the Third War and survived?
"Was it now?" he asks coldly and leans against the opposite bunk, expression intentionally unreadable. He trusts Shin, but he should know better than to bring random children into their room or he might jeopardise their whole operation.
His eyes flicker to Shin's hand which has been twitching annoyingly since he walked in, then he frowns when he realises there's a pattern to the twitches:
-L-L-Y-A-L-L-Y-A-L-L-
He scoffs, and relaxes, letting the tension fade from his shoulders.
"Must've been some accident." He says at last, and he knows he sounds dubious, but the girl just smiles wryly instead of looking offended.
"Tends to happen when you're messing around with an extinct Nature Transformation." She replies tartly and shrugs, though Shisui doesn't miss the wince of pain that flashes over her face at the motion.
Huh, so she was punished. Interesting.
"'Extinct'?" he echoes, when her words fully register, and a peculiar expression flickers over the girl's face – she's surprisingly emotive for a ROOT recruit, but the look in her eyes at his question is sharp and challenging.
There's a second of silence, and then Shisui nearly has a heart attack because the half-eaten apple in his hand suddenly dries up and goes brown, and then it sprouts and a seedling is growing out of his hand in the next second, growing to almost two feet tall before Shisui finally unfreezes and drops it.
The tree doesn't stop growing once it hits the floor, and he watches, transfixed, as it goes through a many-years' life cycle in the span of seconds, roots growing out and wrapping around the metal legs of the bunkbeds, winding around Shisui's ankles, slithering along the floor like wooden snakes, and his brain kicks into gear when flowers begin to bloom on the tree and the scent of spring fills the air.
He flashes through the necessary seals and spits a small fireball at the tree, and for a moment, he's worried that it won't be enough, that it'll keep growing, but within seconds, the tree is reduced to a pile of ash at his feet, and the smell of spring in the air is overwhelmed by the smell not unlike that of a bonfire.
He stares at the girl, momentarily speechless.
There are three options for what he just witnessed, and they're all insane. Genjutsu, some time-controlling technique, or Mokuton?
Then, he realises that she'd said 'extinct Nature Transformation' and he almost doesn't want to believe, but asks anyway;
"Mokuton?" and his voice is quiet, disbelieving, like speaking any louder will break the magic of the moment and he'll wake up still in the field, delirious from some topical poison.
But the girl nods, and even Shin looks serious so he knows she's not lying. Shisui sighs and lets himself slide down the bunk and drops on to his bum on the floor, leaning back against the bed.
"Wow." He murmurs, because he may have the Mangekyo and Itachi may be the youngest in their Clan's history to unlock the Sharingan, but being one of three people to have the Shodaime's legendary technique is still something that makes his jaw drop.
"I'm Uchiha Shisui, mask Risa." He adds belatedly, and the girl offers him a small smile.
"Sakura. My mask is Tori."
"Well, Sakura," and Shisui isn't normally so quick to trust, but Shin must've already tested the girl and found her worthy, so he lets the grin he normally keeps for Sasuke surface and moves to sit on his heels, "how do you feel about revolution?"
The smile that blooms on the girl's face is brilliant and mischievous and bloodthirsty and just a touch unhinged, and Shisui has his answer.
Things fall into a routine from there, and Sakura is startled when she realises she's been a ROOT agent for almost half a year.
She barely sleeps in her room anymore, staying instead on Kuma's old bunk in the boys' room, and every night, the adrenaline rush at the possibility of being discovered makes her tremble, but the dopamine rush afterwards, when she makes it to their room without detection is totally worth it.
Sakura doesn't spend time with her bunkmate save for the obligatory weekly training sessions, yet she feels sorry for Neko. The other girl is very obviously an Inuzuka, but her ninken is nowhere to be found, and, Sakura suspects, she never had one. Neko has all the marks, all the aggression and animalistic qualities of a trained Inuzuka, but none of the comfort of partnership that Kiba got from Akamaru, and it shows in their fights. Neko is brutal and aggressive and always first to strike, but she's also reckless and careless, so despite the advantage of age she has over Sakura, she's not beating Sakura by an enormous margin in terms of spars won.
(Sakura also wonders how someone from a Clan linked with dog spirits feels at being called 'Neko', and can't help but wonder whether it was intentional.)
As for the boys…
Shisui is insane. He's thirteen and he's a jounin and an ANBU operative and he's fast. Sakura's willing to bet that he might even be faster than Kakashi, and she hadn't, in her old life, been able to match Kakashi in terms of speed even with the Strength of a Hundred seal active. The fact that he's got the Mangekyo only adds to the insanity.
Shin's quiet calm occasionally breaks to reveal a sharp sense of humour that reminds Sakura a lot of Shiranui Genma, and the boy's skill with a blade, be it a tanto or a katana or a nodachi is a little terrifying.
And Sai. Sai is the artist Sakura remembers, even if he has trouble animating anything bigger than a mouse at the moment. Sakura finds out that, Shin and Shisui have been taking turns training him in other areas, and that his speed is at the level of genin Sasuke and he can comfortably hold his own against Shin for a minute with a blade in hand.
She adds a touch of her old life to the boys' training regimen, regaling them with lists of naturally-occurring poisons and their effects and which parts of the body should be struck to knock-out, and which to weaken, and which to kill.
That's not to say Sakura doesn't get drilled by the others. Shisui takes her role as co-conspirator to mean I will train you until I can be certain you'll survive and Sakura finds herself thinking that Tsunade was a gentle mistress. Her speed, however, quickly increases to equal or even superior to Sai's.
Shin puts a blade in her hand and is promptly appalled and Sakura snarls, because in her previous life, she had never had the need nor the interest to pursue bukijutsu, but she doubts she can whip out her enhanced strength without making her new allies suspicious. But she tries hard and feels most comfortable with twin kodachi in her hands, and though Shin laments that she holds them like a barbarian, she's efficient, and that's all that matters.
She improves at a rate that would've been alarming had she not been surrounded by child geniuses, and while she can feel the mental strain of trying to pretend the ROOT conditioning is working, the reprieves she gets with the boys are her saving grace.
Nevertheless, she is self-aware enough to know her psyche is fracturing. She's being torn into three, split into Sakura-the-emotionless-ROOT-agent, Sakura-the-eighteen-year-old-veteran-with-PTSD and Sakura-the-six-year-old, but she's also aware enough to know that there's nothing she can do except hope that she doesn't have a mental breakdown while on a mission.
It's a worrying thought, but at the moment, it's just that – a thought.
She has made friends in ROOT, a concept which seems oxymoronic at its core, but it's true.
Her, Shin and Shisui are united in their desire to burn ROOT to the ground, and she knows that if she stays loyal to the goal, they will stay loyal to her.
Sai is content to just have her around to talk to or sketch with, and she sometimes ends up modelling while he works out the kinks in his drawings, and the surge of fondness and protectiveness doesn't wane. Sai is subdued, colder than most children their age, but he's lightyears away from the boy Sakura met in her teens in her previous life, and she's determined to keep him that way.
Overall, despite the soul-staining missions she's assigned, and the almost-impossible tasks Saru sets her when she's working on her Wood Release, and the shift she can feel in her psyche caused by the conditioning, Sakura's content.
And, as long as her Wood Release keeps improving and she comes back after completing missions, Danzo has no grounds on which to question her continued loyalty.
After eight months in ROOT, Sakura has run more missions than she did in her six years as a kunoichi of Konoha in her previous life. Things are going well.
Then, Shisui introduces her to his cousin, and it doesn't click just who that is until Sakura's staring Uchiha Itachi in the face.
