a/n: Unbeta'd because I didn't want to inflict this on either Paige or Christine.


Part VII

The first thing Tsunade sees is the blood dyeing the grass red. There's no other sound except for the wind whistling through high reeds in the rice paddies and Naruto's harsh breathing at her back. For a devastating second the woman thinks that she might be too late, her apprentice dead with nothing but all the blood to show for it (again), but then she feels the chakra flickering weakly at the edge of her senses, and the darker, muted power roiling near.

Naruto notices before she does and he wastes no time in running towards a house she hadn't seen before. Tsunade follows in a split second, tracking Sakura's wavering chakra frantically, hoping that it holds, that it has to, has to.

The blond slams through the door a second before she does, veering through a hall that she's only vaguely aware of and straight into the heart of her student's flickering signature.

"Where is she?" There's a small group of people gathered in the the room, clustered around the small coffee table in the middle and hiding whatever's lying on top of it from view. With a sickening lurch in her stomach Tsunade realizes—

The man who'd been bent over the table turns to look at the two newly arrived nin. Tsunade sees a flash of red-mottled pink before her view is blocked again.

"Ah, Tsunade-sama! It's an honor to—"

Tsunade doesn't stop to ask how someone in this tiny village knows her name; she doesn't stop to return his greeting. She only says, "Move."

The youngest in the group—a civilian girl by the looks of her—opens her mouth to maybe protest, eyebrows drawn and angry, but the man only dutifully steps aside to make way for her.

"I think she's stable now, I moved her when the injuries closed over. If there's any sort of internal damage I wouldn't know because we have no equipment out—"

There's red smeared all over his gloved hands, and there's red—there's red all over Sakura too, and her skin is deathly pale underneath that, and she is still, so still, her chakra fluctuating like a wavering sigh.

There's a raw, broken noise coming from somewhere by her side, but Tsunade ignores Naruto, ignores everyone in the room because the man knew nothing—couldn't sense the damage Tsunade could and the only thing she says is leave, leave. Everyone but Naruto does, and she lets him stay because she knows he wouldn't have left anyways, because she knows exactly how he feels.

A small sound comes from the doorway, and she turns to find Uchiha Sasuke standing on the threshold of the room with blood dripping from his hands and smeared all over his clothing. His face isn't the blank slate that she remembers from the past, rather his eyebrows crumble and the line of his jaw is so tense, so drawn that she postulates that the bones might shatter under the force of his grinding teeth.

Tsunade shuts the door in his face.


He sits with his back to the wall and his head between his knees; he slumps there for so long, avoided and unnoticed, that the blood dries and begins to crust underneath his nails. His heart beats to the thrum of memories, to the thrum of regrets until the door finally opens, and then it stops beating at all.

She lives—he can recognize the faint feel of her chakra.

She lives.


Naruto isn't surprised when Sasuke appears next to him like a ghost: noiseless, and with a distinct feel of insubstantiality. He thinks that Tsunade finally lets him in for the same reason that Naruto only looks up once before going back to staring at Sakura-chan's grey, bloodless face. He'll yell at the Uchiha later, if Obaasan doesn't get to him first.

Naruto doubts it, though.

There's the sound of a chair scraping back, and neither men say a word as they watch Sakura breathe, her small body drowning in white, pristine sheets.


Sasuke never once leaves the room. Naruto comes a close second, but he has to leave to eat, furiously fast; he has to leave to talk to the family members, to use the bathroom and because Tsunade makes him.

She never once tries to force the same on Sasuke.

In fact, the man doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, doesn't even move once from her side. If his eyes ever closed, Naruto's never once caught him.

Watching Sasuke from across the bed, Naruto wonders how he'll react when the Hokage gives him the news.

He'd passed Tsunade in the halls once as he was going back to the room, and when he notes Sasuke's clenched fists inside he doesn't have to ask to get the gist of what she must have said to him. That, and the fact the entire house had heard her.

Naruto, all the way in the kitchen scarfing down a quick bowl of food, had braced himself for an explosion from the normally volatile Sasuke. Instead, there had only been silence. The Hokage had cornered Naruto next, and in no uncertain terms told him what their options would be for the last living Uchiha.

Right now, returning to Konoha would mean his death one way or another.

He was surprised but grateful that the Hokage hadn't decided to personally execute his friend herself on the spot, but Naruto had learned enough over the years from both Sakura and hanging around Tsunade's office to know the options that were open to Sasuke right now. Frankly, he hadn't liked any of them.

Now, counting the spare seconds in the suffocating silence by Sakura's bed, Naruto can't predict which path Sasuke will take. Once upon a time he had understood what motivated Sasuke like the lines etched into his own palm. But now?

Taking a shallow breath, Naruto frowns at the motionless Uchiha; Sasuke had regained his memories, but how much of each person—the avenger, the friend, the stranger—remain?


Sasuke is very glad that he had never bothered to put a clock in his room; the ticking of the hands as he waited would have driven him insane.

Time passes around him; people coming in and out of the room, Naruto, the Hokage and her rage—everything becomes an ebb and flow that Sasuke himself is never a part of. The only things that stay still are himself and Sakura, lying pale on his bed.

Tsunade had called him a coward, had called him worse than trash in the vein of someone else he once knew. Sasuke hadn't met her eyes until the very end, his fists clenching in the fabric of his pants as he stared at the proof of his cowardice, at the girl that he could still imagine covered in red.

His knuckles bled white but there was nothing he could do—no fight that he could win; his teeth ground against each other until his jaws felt like dust, but there was nothing he could say—nothing that wasn't true; and in the end, in the end he could do nothing with the anger at himself, at his inabilities and all his failures. He'd looked up at Tsunade, maybe in the hopes of—of some kind of…absolution, of anything, of a way to make things right or for someone to tell him where the world went wrong, but she'd only stopped mid-sentence and held his gaze for a long moment before leaving the room again.

Sasuke could have cared less.


Amaya brings Naruto food once.

After giving the blond the tray of rice and sides, she wastes no time in rounding on Sasuke with a scowl on her face.

"Wake up, Kun-san, it's not your fault; she got in the way herself. Okasan and Otousan are worried to death about you, can't you show the least bit of consideration for them?"

The girl ignores Naruto's indignant oi and moves closer to Sasuke. When his eyes remain on the girl in the bed, she makes a frustrated noise. "We were the ones that took you in—these stupid ninja show up once in five years and all of a sudden it's like we don't exist. The past is in the past, Kun-chan! You were happy living with us until she—"

This time Naruto actually stands up, the tray of food in his lap toppling to the floor, but Sasuke speaks first, his voice rusty from disuse.

"That's enough."

"But—!"

"I said, that's enough." There's steel in his words, and Naruto recognizes in the tone the Sasuke-that-once-was.

The girl still glares, but now she's trembling too. With a tremulous hmph, she turns around and leaves the room with a slam of the door that reverberates long after she's gone.

Naruto immediately looks to Sasuke, but the man has already gone back to watching Sakura.


"You know, she's right. It's not your fault."

Sasuke looks up at his words, and Naruto doesn't need any help reading the contempt written across every line of the dark haired man's face.

And then, "If I say that it wasn't your fault either, would you believe me?"

He doesn't look down to his hands, but Naruto knows what he's seeing—her blood staining everything red. It's the same thing that he sees on his own, and the thought suddenly makes him angry, and it isn't just because he knows Sasuke is right.

"You don't—you don't get to feel so guilty over this, you don't even have the fucking right. Don't you have all of your memories back?" He never raises his voice, but his words ring loud and clear in the silent room.

"You don't get to sit there and feel shit when back then you would've willingly killed her yourself." He nearly feels his eyes spark red, and the sight must have triggered something in the Uchiha, because he finally speaks up, voice even lower than Naruto's had been. "People do change, dead-last."

That's the last thing that he says for a long while.


Everything always comes full circle, and in the end, Sasuke leaves Sakura. He feels the fluttering of her chakra steadying into the strong, even rhythm of her heart first, and then watches as her lashes flutter too: once, twice. Her fingers catch at the sheets like the tips of broken wings, and Sasuke stays just long enough to count sixty strong beats of her heart.

Naruto's asleep, and as Sasuke pass by on the way to the door, he makes sure to shake the man awake.

He wakes up with a jerk and none of the spluttering that Sasuke dimly remembers from his genin days, eyes instantly snapping to Sakura when Sasuke dips his head towards the bed.

Naruto's by her side in an instant, and he does not take his eyes off of her even when Sasuke shuts the door behind himself.


She lives.

tbc


a/n: At the very, very least, I hope this will bridge some gaps between the last part and the original part seven (now part eight). Working on the epilogue now, and it'll definitely be out before the new year. :)

Thank you for the feedback! And I apologize for typos and general, uh, ughness. (Wow, I'm eloquent.) I'll probably gives this a reread for more mistakes later tonight.

Also, if you've already reviewed the original chapter I don't think you can review again, but I'd really appreciate it if you left your thoughts in a review directed to part eight, if that makes any sense. Thanks again!