A/N: I don't know if it shows, but the interchanging chapters- past to present- and so on, with the exception of the interchapters like ch. 4- act as mirrors of each other, either reflecting or expanding on an idea or event introduced in the other. As with this chapter and the previous one.

I won't promise we'll have another update as soon as this one- It was spring break, and this chapter was the shortest and easiest to write to date- but I'll be working hard . Let's blame the evils of AP US History. I know I do. Either way thank you so much to those who favorited, reviewed, and are following the story :) I promise to finish the journey with a bang.

And The Fingers Linger Here

{There is a high that comes with holding that knife to anyone's neck, and you can take that, and multiply it by ten, and get the high you feel at saving someone's life. You never think it like a bad thing; makes you sound like an angel. But something makes you tick, and something makes you want, and halfway down the road, saving people, you become immortal, and even in a different way, she has seen that happen, and this is what frightens her most.}

Chapter Six: present

Sunday the rain begins to pour again, after what had been only a short respite. Sakura closes the kitchen window just as the worst of the water begins to hit the glass; huge globulous droplets of water that make a noise like furious tapping when they make contact. She briefly imagines being caught out in the rain, like the first night back with Shikamaru, and recalls the sting of the water falling sharp on her skin. It never rained when she was in Suna. It was summer.

Slowly, she turns to face the rest of her apartment, messy, smelling of dust instead of her bath things because she wouldn't let anyone come in for cleaning while she was gone; she doesn't like strangers rifling through her things- she'd left at least three research papers unfinished before she'd left. Tying back her hair as neatly as possible she walks across the living room, slips into a sweater, and turns off the lights. She sits, knees drawn to her chest on the floor next to the sofa, in the dark, and stares at the pile of unopened mail she dumped unceremoniously on the living room coffee table as she came in ten minutes ago. At the top of the mess there's a stately white envelope with a red seal stamped over it the way she knows the kazekage seals his letters.

She stares and she stares, but the letter won't burst to flames, and he's still there, humming, rattling in the back of her mind.

You and I, he whispers faintly. YouandIyouandIyouandIyouandIy-

Sakura screeches once, a growl and a sob simultaneously, before her face grows slack, and her breathing slows. Her eyes wander towards the alarm clock set at her bedside table, just visible through the bedroom doorway. It's still early, only nine am, and she wonders if Naruto has awoken to find she has gone yet. He'll be happy, she thinks, that she's gone back to her apartment for the first time since she got back.

{x}

" You're back," his voice comes muffled from underneath the bed sheets as she opens the house door. She sets her shoes at the entrance, and pauses in the hallway. Their dirty clothes have gone, probably to be washed by the maids, and she carefully notes that means Naruto has been up, called them in, and has likely only just clambered back to bed. She forgets he's got quite the tolerance for alcohol sometimes.

" Yeah. You had the place cleaned, I see!" she calls to him and looks tiredly for any other changes. A silk bag with a change of clothes for her sits on the sofa where they first camped out at the beginning of the week. She loosens the tie, and pulls out a set of pretty blue robes, not at all to her taste. She stuffs it back into the bag, and walks to the bedroom, leans against the doorframe.

" Hey. I went back to my apartment today," she crosses her arms and tries not to let her head loll.

" But you came back so soon," Naruto pulls out from under the covers, looks languid and messy in the dark. " It's a pigsty. " Sakura frowns, and with the least amount of resistance slips off her trousers and her socks, and slips under the covers with him.

" It's lonely." She whispers, and it's not necessarily a lie.

As Naruto holds her, the envelope she's stuffed somewhere between the pages of a textbook weighs heavy on her mind, and somewhere in her consciousness, she expects Naruto to get one too- if he hasn't received it already. This thought has her shoulders stiffen for a moment, and Naruto taking this as sign that she is cold, squeezes her tighter to his chest.

{x}

YouandIyouandIyouandI, Sakura-

{x}

Three hours later she wakes in a cold sweat to find Naruto has left the bed. Frowning, she dips her head into one of the pillows and inhales Naruto's heady scent, holding her breath like she could keep his essence, breathing him in. Naruto, who loved her, who was warm and alive looking. Pushing herself up on her elbows, Sakura listens and distinguishes the furious tapping of the rain on the tower from the buzzing of the shower in the bathroom. She climbs out from the sheets and steps across the wooden floor boards towards the bathroom. The wood is cold to her feet- a sensation she welcomes, to assure herself she's flesh made. The floor creaks under her weight when she stops in the halo of light coming through the cracks of the bathroom door. She can hear the sound of Naruto washing himself as she pushes the door all the way open; the soap bubbles coming down the drain under the force of water. A hot wave of steam hits her face as she walks in, the warm water mingling with the cooling sweat on her forehead. She licks her lips, before she speaks to disprove her nightmares, and what the voice that swims in knots in her head told her in the desert.

" Naruto," She sits on the toilet seat lid and waits for him to respond. Naruto seems to wash the soap out of his hair before he answers sheepishly. " Sakura?"

"What's it like to be hokage?"

There is a pause, and Sakura stands, and walks towards the sink. There is a mirror there. When she looks the bridge of her nose and her cheeks are pink and shiny like rubber. The tender new skin that comes in after a vicious sunburn. Her eyes are a lot greener than she remembers. They don't remind her of anyone in particular. Her mother had brown eyes. Her father was dead before she turned six.

" …Hard." Naruto decides after a short while.

" You're powerful." Sakura intones. She shakes her vision away from her ugly green eyes and traces the pattern on the shower curtain with her fingers.

" You've always been powerful," she adds. " By yourself." She can feel him smile softly to himself, and in the parts of her that are unsoiled, alright, she wants to smile back. She thinks she feels his hand skirt hers on the other side of the shower curtain. She wants to hold him too, the way she had before. " And it's what you wanted."

" It's hard," he amends. " But it's worth it."

What will this be? She thinks, ten years from now. What will the history books say? The ancient texts will read about falsified romances and backdoor trades for a girl between monarchs. She's not even something special. "He's been fucking her…" she remembers they said. It's true. How will that read, she wonders, in an academy history book?

Consequences. You can love someone and they can love you back, or you can let someone love you, and love them back for it too. You can love someone and never hear from them again, and you can love nothing and know only ever the backs of your hands and a knife. Career girls are like that, she thinks. She remembers watching girls with political weights on their backs- people like Hinata, and pretty Akari, gray and stiff with rigor mortis now, and maybe even Sakura herself- get suited up for a marriage of convenience to men of power. Love is ineffectual. In the end, she ponders, shrugs out of her sweater, unfastens the clasps of her bra, fear is the motivator. Will you die alone? Will you take what belongs to someone else, or will you take what you deserve, and not die alone? The most vivid encounter with love she remembers is one she represses. And she didn't even love anyone. You cannot empathize with monsters and expect to come out unscathed. Your ego will come looking for you. Show you what he means when he says same.

The naked woman staring back at Sakura in the mirror now wears a twisted visage. The features of her face blur at the corners of her eyes. It's one of those ridiculous outcomes.

" You still there?" Naruto's voice echoes off the shower walls, behind the curtain. Consequences. Sakura knows love exists. She sees it everytime Naruto looks at her. She saw it back in Suna; in the library. But love is a choice, too. Sakura made a choice, and though it was driven by terror- a thick fear corrosive to her mind even now- it was made for love. She is just sorry it eats at her this way. She is sorry she must sully Naruto too.

" Mhhm," she turns away and smiles, and if she were looking in the mirror now, she'd see how wrong it looks.

" Oh," he laughs. " I was afraid you'd left."

" I'm here," she soothes. "I'm back now. I'm sorry," she means it out of context.

" You never left!" Naruto is thick, but she'll take him that way.

" 'course." She lets loose her hair, leaves the band wound around the sink faucet.

"…So what's it like, then?" She can hear him finishing up, muscles warm and head up towards the water, darkening his hair.

" What?" she slips off her underwear.

" Being a doctor? A medic? Saving people?"

" Oh," she says casually, runs her fingers along the edge of the curtain, takes hold, and pulls back, seconds before she knows he would have shut off the water. It was too cold outside.

" Oh," he mirrors surprised. His big blue eyes are bright under the soggy yellow hair sticking long to his chin and forehead.

" It's worth it," she grins wide, and she's a sight to behold, eyes twinkling and turned up, eye lashes brushing the turn of her cheeks as she steps under the water and wraps her long swan arms around him.

-Like playing god.