-Sai-

For a couple of minutes, Sai just looked at his old friends, and let them get over their shock. He knew that it was a bit to get used to – seeing him in drag and all, but he didn't have a choice. Sai had a pretty face, and if he dressed as a woman, men didn't even take the time to wonder if he was a man in disguise, they just accepted him as some cute chick and went on about their business. That was pretty important to a fugitive. Especially because at this point, he was old enough to go to prison if they caught him. Some days, he wondered if confessing was even worth it, but he didn't linger on that for too long. He had his reasons for doing every single thing that he'd done in the last three years, and he wouldn't question them now.

"To answer your question, Neji, I'm here to talk to Shikamaru and yourself. I'd figured that finding you together would be rather simple, Gaara says you two have gotten even more close, which is difficult to imagine, considering how close you already were."

Neji completely disregarded the last portion of Sai's statement, and went on questioning about the first. "Here to talk to us about what?"

"About the Sakura Haruno case, of course. I think we all need to be very clear about certain things if we plan on escaping the situations we're in, and you two are the closest to getting out of this Asylum and helping me with the case."

Shikamaru frowned, and looked longingly at his bed, only two paces behind him, as if he was perfectly content to stay at the Asylum and didn't want to be bothered with an appeal. Neji looked elated at the thought of freedom.

"Okay, if we're all working together in this then we'll tell you everything we've worked out, in exchange for what you know. Before we start though, I've got another question for you. You were always-"

"I was always the closest to Sakura, yes. I was her best friend, yes – and I ended up wanting her dead just as much as anyone else could have. In fact, I'd threatened to kill her just two days before she died, and would have done it at the exact time she died if I could have. Surely you realized that suicide note bullshit was just her trying to save her own ass?"

Shikamaru nodded, probably having been the first to see the note for what it really was, but he had a slight frown on his face now. Sai didn't know if that was at the prospect of leaving his new comfy room – or if Shika was really that put off by talking about the murder.

"You say that it would have been you who killed her if you could have. Why couldn't you?" Neji asked, but Shikamaru answered for Sai.

"He was in the hospital, remember? He had a broken leg, and shards of glass were..." Shikamaru's eyes widened as he put the pieces together. "You fell out of the window, didn't you?" He asked Sai. "That's why the window was broken and covered in blood, but..." He frowned then, and Sai could see his mind racing as he worked out the rest. "It wasn't your blood they found on the crime scene, it was Gaara's. You got into a fight with him, and he pushed you out of the window, and you tried to drag him down with you, didn't you? That's how he got all of those gashes on his chest."

Sai shook his head, although he was impressed with Shikamaru's deductive skills. "Not quite, I'm afraid. Itachi pushed me out of the window, Gaara was trying to pull me up."

"Why would Itachi push you out of a second floor window? Surely he's smart enough to know that such a short fall wouldn't kill you." Neji asked.

"Oh, no, he wasn't trying to kill me. How about I just tell you what happened, so that you don't have to ask so many questions. The week before that, I had confided in Sakura about something. She was my best friend, you see – and I had such a juicy secret that I simply must have told someone. This secret was given to her in confidence, with specific instruction that if she had to go running her mouth, she do it to anyone but the Uchiha brothers."

"What was the secret?" Neji said at the same time that Shikamaru blurted, "Well of course she'd tell Sasuke! She lived to impress him!"

Sai ignored both of their outbursts. "Itachi and Sasuke were very unhappy to hear what my little secret was, and they gave me a bit of an unpleasant ultimatum. When I was furious enough with Sakura to really want to kill her, I asked her to meet me for lunch in room two-thirty-four. She knew what I was going to do though, so she took two very wise precautions. She wrote all of us suicide notes, hoping that I would feel so guilty about her suicidal condition that I wouldn't kill her, and that if I still did want to kill her, I wouldn't – because you would all be there to see. Her second piece of security was that instead of sending Sasuke one of those ridiculous notes, she told him and Itachi that they could find me in room two-thirty-four."

"A genius plan," Shikamaru said lightly to himself.

Sai nodded. "It would have been, except that Itachi and Sasuke aren't the only Uchihas that had discovered my secret, and Shisui thought they were overreacting."

"So he warned you, and he and Gaara were with you when they came looking for you."

Sai smiled at Shikamaru and continued. "Yes, so around eleven in the morning, Itachi, Sasuke, Shisui, Gaara, and myself were in that room having a bit of an intense argument. I said something that was rather rude and got under Itachi's skin rather easily, and then the most curious thing happened. Sasuke punched me in the face. Odd, isn't it? That I would insult his brother and he'd react so aggressively? I hit him back, and the next thing I knew, Itachi sent me flying through the window. I still have no idea how Gaara grabbed onto my hands as quickly as he did, but he couldn't keep his grip and I fell anyway. From what I understand, Shisui took Gaara out of the room then to tend to his wounds, but my little comment inspired Itachi and Sasuke to have a bit of a bone to pick with Sakura themselves. They stayed, and they waited, and that's all I know. I'm assuming they killed her."

Shikamaru frowned. "No, they didn't kill her. I know what Sasuke and Itachi's secret is, I think that we're all aware of that, now – but it's still imperative that the authorities not find out, and not just for Sasuke's sake." Shikamaru looked pointedly at Neji, "It gives us all much more motive than I'd care to have, if we were trying to keep our lips sealed about something as scandalous as that. Sasuke came to me when he and Itachi first became lovers, and asked my advice on a few things. One of them was whether or not telling Sakura would get her to stop hitting on him all the time. I told him that if Sakura loved him as much as she said she did, she'd keep the secret and back off. I can see why it would have unsettled him that she'd actually told you."

"Arrogant bastard. Breaking her heart just because he didn't want to be bothered with a few winks and fluttering eye lashes..." Neji muttered in annoyance. "Still, he didn't even have the decency to let anyone else who was in love with him down easily. No, everyone else just suddenly got an inexplicable cold shoulder."

Shikamaru offered his pale-eyed friend a sympathetic look, before turning back to Sai. "We don't know who killed her, but we know it wasn't Itachi or Sasuke, though they were in the room when she died, so they would definitely know who did it. However, I feel as if I need to amend your strategy slightly. We're not the easiest to get out. Gaara is. The only reason he confessed to murdering Sakura is because of his loyalty to Shisui."

Sai frowned. "Explain."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes as if it should have been obvious. "Gaara's blood was found on the crime scene, even though it got there before Sakura did. In reality, it was there because Itachi pushed you out of the window and he tried to save you. Now, here on the other hand, we have Itachi, who didn't murder Sakura, but would have been charged without his confession if the courts knew that only an hour before Sakura was killed, he'd gotten angry enough to push someone out of a window. Shisui would want Itachi to be able to get out of prison, which would mean that he'd have to be held there based on his confession, not the ruling of the jury. If Gaara admits the actual reason that his blood is on the crime scene, Itachi's status as a convicted murderer becomes permanent. No one will believe that you jumped out of the window, because of the glass shards in your back, and the fact that the window was technically closed when you were pushed. If Gaara admits to pushing you, then he gets transferred to the prison for attempted murder. He probably thinks himself to be rather stuck, and thinks that his only way to freedom is through convicting Itachi, but his loyalty to Shisui won't allow him to do so."

Sai nodded. "And yet you're saying that he'd be the easiest to get out?"

"Of course."

Neji and Sai were both looking at Shikamaru like he was contradicting himself and wasn't making any sense.

"Neji, why is Sai the number two suspect in Sakura Haruno's murder case?" Shikamaru asked, as if he was guiding elementary students to do a mathematical word problem step by step.

"Because he was mumbling in his sleep about killing her, then woke up and checked himself out of the hospital and disappeared."

Shikamaru nodded. "Yes, we all confessed to killing her. Why is Sai specifically so high up on the list of probability?"

"Because no one could reach him, so he had no way of arguing his case in court."

Shikamaru nodded and smiled, as if now they surely understood how obvious it was. Still, he was met with two blank faces. "You two need everything spelled out for you, huh? Sai is such a heavily weighted suspect because the police department can't speak to him to prove him otherwise. If you aren't able to say that you didn't do it, everyone's going to easily believe that you did." Blank stares all around, again. "Ugh! Have Gaara tell the lawyers that Sakura tried to push Sai out of the window."

"Ohhhhhh..."

Sai nodded along, understanding it now. "She has no way of saying that she didn't do it, and they have no way of reaching me to ask if it's true or not. If we can get Shisui to testify that that's how it happened, Gaara could walk."

Neji nodded. "Further more, with Sasuke talking, and Gaara out of the Asylum, once the case gets re-opened it's likely Shikamaru and I will be released anyway. There's no possible way that Shikamaru could have been on the crime scene, he only confessed because he knew Sasuke didn't do it, and he and Naruto came up with the idea that with so many confessions the police wouldn't be able to really put a lasting sentence on any of us."

"It was Naruto's idea, I'm just the one who formulated how to make it work." Shikamaru modestly amended. "It's true though, I was at the youth shogi championships in Tokyo that day, and I won – so that's a pretty solid alibi. Neji was proven innocent in his first trial, but his lawyers insisted he plead insane in case the city called for an appeal. They can't legally hold him here if he can prove his sanity, but no one would even take that to court in the first place unless the Haruno murder was re-opened."

Sai made a sound of agreement, knowing that everything really did depend on the case being re-opened. That's why he'd waited for Sasuke to speak before coming here. He had an itching suspicion that Sasuke still wouldn't speak to him, but that really didn't matter at the moment, even as hypocritical as it was. Of all people to understand that love is love – you'd think Sasuke would be a sure believer.

But Sai had learned that apparently there were certain taboo's that Sasuke himself refused to accept.

-Fugaku-

Fugaku Uchiha was not in the best of moods when he got home. He'd been to see his sons that day, which was never fun, but still something he considered necessary as their father. He'd gotten the most difficult over with first, and gone to see Sasuke. The young man looked much like a child, he was sitting on the floor, playing with a bunch of paper animals, making little voices for them and prancing them about against the white padded substance that was not quite rubber, not quite carpet.

He was speaking now, but didn't acknowledge his father. Being ignored was something that Fugaku hated, and it always stung him more than Itachi's cruel words. Well, not exactly cruel, just statistically calculating, and always spoken exactly when Fugaku didn't want to hear them. Itachi would say things like "It's okay, Pop. I know the marriage has gone to shit. Why don't you just divorce her before she does it to you first?"

But Fugaku wouldn't divorce his wife. He loved her too much, even if that love never did reach her eyes anymore when she proclaimed that she loved him too. As Fugaku slid his front door open and stepped inside, he was not at all surprised to see that his wife's best friend was visiting. Ami was always here, which was seriously annoying, but if Mikoto cherished her friendship with that woman more than her marriage, then that was her own personal business.

Mikoto rose from the sofa and gave Fugaku a kiss when he entered, and Ami looked the other way, with that twitch of annoyance that she got whenever Fugaku and Mikoto made contact. It was damn annoying that twitch, but the woman never said a word against him as far as he knew, so he decided he didn't mind it.

"I was just talking to Ami about the boys," Mikoto said, sounding more delighted than she looked. She'd always been good at that, sounding happy even when she was at her most miserable. Her body looked happy to see him, and her voice was excited that he was home, but her eyes detested him, and said a silent prayer that he could be anywhere but here. Fugaku ignored her apparent sadness, knowing that it never went away anymore and it was pointless to ask her what was wrong when she thought she was covering it up so flawlessly.

"And what did Ami say about the boys?" He asked, sitting down across from them.

Ami cleared her throat in a way that Fugaku found to be obnoxiously lady-like, and began to speak in an obnoxiously feminine voice. "I had read in the newspaper this morning that the trial is being re-opened," She said with a sweet smile, as if this was good news. As if their sons hadn't been caught in a pool of that girl's blood, and reopening the trial would magically make them less guilty the second time around.

"Isn't that great?" Mikoto asked, and Fugaku hated that when she looked at her friend the smile reached her eyes. "I mean, maybe our boys still won't get off, but I'm sure some of the others will make it out of their current unfortunate situations, right?"

Maybe Mikoto was just super maternal, but Fugaku wondered sometimes if her goals in following this case over the past three years even had anything to do with their sons at all. Maybe she was just better than him when it came to looking at the bigger picture. He smiled and nodded along as she babbled about her day, and all of the clever ideas Ami had come up with for the boys. Fugaku wasn't listening.

"I should go," Ami said, sounding lady-like, resigned, and pissed the fuck off all at once. Fugaku envied women their ability to do that. "It's been lovely having this little chat, Fugaku. Mikoto, always a pleasure." Ami kissed his wife gently on the cheek, gave him a slight bow, then exited their home.

Mikoto went back into her usual depression, and Fugaku was again faced with the truth that his wife didn't love him anymore, and didn't even have the energy to pretend to love him if there was no one around to appreciate her efforts.

"Dinner's on the counter for you," Mikoto said in a detached voice. "I'm sleeping in Itachi's room again tonight."

Why did she say that? That she was sleeping in Itachi's room again tonight. She hadn't slept with Fugaku for nearly four years. Yet she still verbally reminded him of it. Every. Single. Day.

Itachi was right, their marriage was going to shit – but Fugaku wouldn't let it go. Not until he understood why.

A/N: I have no idea why this chapter is this long... A lot of stuff had to happen, and it took me more words than I expected to get it out, I guess. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it!

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-Beloved