"It's medically futile," Tsunade says, latex gloves slapping harshly as she all but rips them off. Sakura leans against the sink and hones in on the plip plop of the leaky faucet behind her. She tries to swallow the burning feeling in her chest but finds her mouth is dry.
"There's no family to notify, is there?" Shizune asks. She is wringing her hands together again, as if it they will leak a miracle cure if she twists long enough.
Tsunade scoffs. "No." She tosses her gloves into a plastic bin and stares down at the linoleum tiles by Yuuto's bed, arms crossed. "Just Kakashi." The sporadic beeps of the EKG monitor cuts through the air—a haunting mantra. Sakura tries to block it out.
"Sakura-san, you're quiet," Shizune says.
"What's there to say?" Sakura asks, her eyes tracing the strands of damp, teal hair. She thinks of the white droplets that had drifted outside her bedroom window. "He'll be dead in a few hours."
Tsunade and Shizune don't respond to this. Shizune continues to fidget nervously and pretends to look over the chart. Tsunade clinically studies the body in front of her. Her face is a trained expression built from the purple beneath her eyes that harbour too many years of disappointment.
"We're fucked if we don't eventually find an antidote for this," she says.
"We will," Sakura says, her nails biting into her palms. The words come out with more passion than thought. She has Yuuto's smile playing in her head, the carefree one that was there before the more careful ones started to come. Now he's this, and his clan will be no different. It's just like those two little orphan boys, kin lost like shogi pieces.
Sakura's hands are shaking. "I'll be in the lab," Sakura says, because she can't stare at Yuuto's lying in his white grave anymore and something has got to give.
"S—Sakura-san," Shizune calls, half surprised, and half admonishing. "You should res—"
"Don't come back out until you have something," Tsunade interrupts, "I'm sick of this, we're running in circles." She shifts, meeting Sakura's eyes. "And I want you to be the one to meet with the Hokage."
Sakura's breath catches in her throat, not harsh enough to make a sound but enough for her to feel it. This is a statement—an honor that speaks of her coming advancement.
But it feels like a punishment.
"Yes, shishou."
Sakura is barely present on her walk to the lab room, hardly registers the greyness of its features. Her head is swimming in white pulses, her steady hands possessed as they reach for beakers and measuring cups and not-so-docile lab rats. She has to do something. They're going to die. A whole clan. Another family. Lost to political warfare and this time there won't be a survivor. The guilt, the guilt—the pulsing. Her head roars. Her heart aches.
She has to do something.
Her notes are sloppy but her solutions and procedures fastidious. Cancer she thinks. This thing is like a blood cancer. It spreads quick and confuses the body. Her previous antidotes have all been much too gentle. She needs something aggressive, like chemotherapy, but maybe with more precision. She needs the patient to live through the treatment.
Eventually she injects a new solution into four new rats, writes copies more notes, and heads off into another lab where the first rat had been implanted with poison. She looks down and exhales forcefully, fingers trailing along an unbearably stiff and cold body.
Rigor mortis, she knows, staring into its dead, dead eyes. She remembers sliding the needle in its lithe body and embraces the guilt that comes with taking an innocent life. In truth, it lasted much longer than she thought it would. But it's dead all the same and it's her fault.
Sakura slides the eyelids shut and remembers she did this with her okaasan too. She whispers half apology, half prayer and turns off the lights before leaving the room.
When Sakura returns from her shift, she returns with a body made of lead. She wonders how the sheer weight doesn't have her plunging past layers of dirt and into the molten hellfire of the planet's mantle. She wouldn't mind it if it happened. Not right now.
She desperately wants to pass out on her bed, to strip off this cognizant despair and slip into blissful unawareness. But she worked with chemicals that were far too strong today. She doesn't bother to turn on any lights as she sheds off her clothes in the hall and slugs into the bathroom.
She has to pat around cold tiles to find the knob for the shower, but once it's on, Sakura finds she might even prefer bathing in darkness. She scrubs herself quick with full intention to leave fast, but the water is too warm and outside too cold. She sighs and tilts her head up to meet the warm spray, mind falling through the wormhole of away. Towards a graveyard and into the embrace of a black and white ghost.
Teme would do anything for you. Naruto had said. The bastard loves you! And Sakura was absolutely certain he was out of his mind to suggest such a thing. Sure, she had thought, maybe Sasuke thinks he loves her. He's got so little left of what once was, he probably clings to all things familiar like a child to a mother's palm. She knows this and doesn't blame him for it. Still, that's not love. Not the sincere kind, anyway.
But that morning, she saw it—felt it. The respectful distance, and yet, the tenderness and acknowledgement in his gaze. That instinctive knowing, gut churning. Familiar, but foreign. Powerful.
Sakura throws her head back and cackles at the absurdity of it all. The sound is disturbing and high pitched behind the rush of water, but it does not compare to this harrowing game of push and pull with the loves in her life. It's too bad Sasuke electrocuted her in a genjutsu. It's too bad her mother swallowed pills till she dropped dead. Oh, how she just wanted to drown in the white torpor. Anything to shut it off.
Sakura walks back into her bedroom dripping wet, too tired to bother finding a towel. Her eyes lazily take in the sight of her room, illuminated by the pale blue of her open windows. It's slightly messy, small appliances and clothes scattered here and there, which is a sure sign she's been doing better, despite it all.
Her eyes set on the black cloak sitting on the floor in the same place she had numbly tossed it in when she had returned to her apartment. It is the one article that seems out of place. It is ghastly, threatening, and somehow—in Sakura's exhausted mind—the most inviting thing in her room.
She lifts the cloak off the floor steadily, and is once again taken aback by the weight of the material. Languidly, she presses her nose to the fabric and is hit with the sweet smell of petrichor intertwined with a 12 year old genin she once knew. Sakura sighs into the cloth, and she could almost feel a sweeter version of Sasuke with her then, palming her waist. No more games.
She lays down on her bed, wrapping the thick cloak around her nude form, and a slight breeze wafts into the room, chilling the air. Sakura bundles the black garment closer and it sticks to her wet skin like a coat of glue. She's so tired and so far that she sinks her face into the cloth and imagines. His powerful chakra hovering over hers, his stern, stern gaze, his deep musk—it all crawls through her then.
How did she used to think of him, again? With his chest bare, and eyes hooded, and that permanent frown on his face quirking in anticipation. She thinks he'd be easy, despite it all. He's been so starved of love, he couldn't say no. She would usurp him from his throne with a reverent kiss against his jaw and a cradle of his nape.
His eyes—those intense, meticulous eyes, that can rake through every emotion with a glance—is submerged in pure, unadulterated need.
Sakura, he says in her mind, almost teasingly. His hands trailing down the length of her side. You're still mine, aren't you?
"Always," she breathes. "Always yours."
Good. And he kisses along her collar, shapes her breast against his palm before plucking at the peak. She likes him this way. Touching her lewdly, murmuring hotly and not even meaning to. His hand tucks itself between her legs, and a single digit drags her moisture up and down and Gods, she aches. Then he circles around her hidden gem and she is mewling.
Sakura, I love you too. He'd suck on her lobe and move along her jaw. Always have. He whispers, and it didn't feel empty to think of it as real when she was younger. Always will. Sometimes this did. But everything dissolves when a finger manages to brush a puckering nub, making her cry out.
It's fucked up, Sakura knows. It's fucked up how she has a panic attack over him one night, then masturbates to the thought of him the next. But as Sakura imagines his eyes on her, his hand on her breast and his finger strumming her sweetly instead of her own, she can't get herself to care. She is too fucked up. Too fucked up and too tired and she never gets wet this fast, and gods does it feel so good. She wants him. She needs him.
In moments she's gasping and moaning, gripping his cloak as her hips buck off the bed. Her hand spasms as she moves her fingers harder and faster. Then her mind blanks and her back arches.
And Sakura swears she can feel him then—his chakra spasming with hers, his eyes ablaze and roaming, his sage scent invading her. She can taste the burden of eternity on his tongue, she can hear his desperation inside his (no doubt) stifled grunts and hot breath and—oh how we need this—him finally filling that persistent hollowness as he sinks into her. Her hips buck into her hand, her lips part to cry nonsense.
Her first orgasm violently tears through her, and she is so starved and needy, she moves a single finger in and out of her to get started on a second. She only tires out as her fourth ripples through her—the tips of her fingers, her toes, and her heavy heart. She buries her face in the cloak then, gasping for air against the thick material, mind swimming in an immortal circle.
It's the moon that she sees first, when her senses resurface. A full moon painted in the sky with rich yellows and whites. And Sakura doesn't think about what she's just done because she doesn't want to. But there's remnants of Sasuke everywhere, and it's haunting and easing all at once.
The moon doesn't look right. Too white. Too yellow. It's skewed through the window. Genjutsu, she thinks. No. Paranoid. It's the adrenaline—the orgasm. You're being paranoid. But she can't help it.
Sluggish, Sakura raises a sticky hand up towards her face, still panting from the aftermath of her last climax. Her eyes focus on one particular tree, black bark shadowed in the foliage. Two fingers stretch out, and the others curl in—the hand sign for ram, but she doesn't circulate her chakra. She inhales against the cloak again, reminds herself it's okay. Baby steps. We'll check just this once. (She's getting better, she thinks, but isn't sure.) A breeze slips through the night and then her chakra pulses. Kai!
...nothing.
Sakura's hand drops to fist into Sasuke's cloak, relieved. She catches her breath, shuts her eyes, and lulls away.
.
.
.
And she dreams of that strange man again.
"And here you call me the ridiculous one," she says, in a body that feels like a distant home, sprawled along lush green beside him. The sun is molten hot, but the draft of wind settles cool and perfect. She can see it sweeping up the loose tresses of his dark fringe. "How could you ask for that? I'm surprised he didn't behead you."
"I can have whatever I want," he says, calm and matter-of-fact. "I'm a deva."
She stares up, thinking how every inch of him falls in tandem with his words. The blase confidence and mystic beauty echoes all over.
"How arrogant of you." She stretches her arms out and sighs, heavy and dramatic, and frought with a taunting quality. "Will you ever learn?"
"Guess not," he says, in utter apathy. For a debilitating moment, she thinks that maybe she's offended him. But then she turns and sees his coy smile.
His slender fingers roam over the fine green blades, then plucks a flower out of the field. "But if it's so important I learn philosophies of complacency, I'll let you teach me." His lips thin, although she thinks he might be trying not to smile, Sharingan eyes pretending to study pink petals.
She snorts. "How gracious of you," she mocks, propping up on her elbows to face him properly. "And it's not complacency. It's peace," she says, "There's a difference. And it's a difficult way of life even for someone as humble as me." She ignores his mocking scoff. "You're so stubborn, it would take more lifetimes than I have to offer for you to learn such a thing."
"I'll just have to give you some of mine, then." He tucks the small flower neatly in her hair, brushes her dark tresses out of her face.
"I hope not. You're a descendent of Kaguya," she says, slides a hand to pet the plush petals on her head in approval. It feels soft, velvety. "No matter the era, you're our guardian. We need you."
"I didn't realize I requested a novice's cryptic reading of my soul," he says, and his smile only grows when she tilts her chin up and pops out a pink tongue. "Well, if that's the case, there's always my otouto," he says, looking back up towards the sky. "Dull-witted as he can be, I think he could carry the torth in my absence."
"Ah, your brother." She sighs, closing her eyes and nuzzles her face in the mossy grass. The smell is fresh, and pollinated and she loves it. Almost as much as she loves the sound of his voice. "I'm not so sure. He is wonderful, but he is not you."
He scoffs. "He is not wonderful."
She giggles light and edges close enough to press against his leg. When she looks at his face she sees a beacon of tenderness in his gaze. It's beautiful, shining inside the contrast of ruby eyes and the sapphire liner coating his bottom lids. "Those gifted eyes give you away, my deva. He is dear to you."
He looks down at her then, stares for two beats too long, and reaches to trace the curve of her cheek. "You are dear to me," he breathes.
She sighs in mock disappointment in his grasp. "And we have come full circle," she says, fingers reaching to explore the edges of his yukata. "With you wanting that which can't be had."
"Oh?" He asks, then lowers himself so dangerously close, his hand sliding down the curve of her jaw, tilts her chin just enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath on her lips. He whispers, low and husky, "Are you not to be had?"
Her hands knot in his white yukata. He's so close that maybe she can't see his mouth, but she sees the mischevious smile in the creases of his taunting eyes. "N-no." She gulps, before regaining her footing. "I'm struggling to get away from one man, I'm not going to tether myself to another," she says, defiant, before pushing against his chest with a playful shove. "And certainly not to one as impossible as you!"
His smile widens incrementally. "I beg to differ." He brushes his warm fingers along a sliver of her exposed collar. "I think you want this impossible man. And who better to suit an impossible woman?"
She laughs. "Is this how you court, my deva? You Ōtsutsuki have awful etiquette."
He hums before lying backwards, pulls her close enough for her to meet the heat of him. "Another subject you'll need to teach me," he murmurs into her hair. "Maybe you should ask your otousan to relieve you from that busy schedule."
"Oh yeah?" she asks. "On what pretense? I don't think he'll approve if I tell him it's to flirt with an arrogant ass."
"International relations," he suggests.
"Mmm," she sighs contentedly, inhaling the scent of sage. "If only," she says. "Gods, I really miss you all the time. I wish we could steal more of these moments."
She feels him stiffen, before he eases her off him and sits up again. His voice is still soft, despite the sudden density in his tone. "You know we can."
She frowns. The ground feels rougher than before, and almost painful compared to the contrast of his warm body. She turns from him and stares at the field of flowers, not feeling a single one. "Not this again."
"I'm not going to stop," he says, and when she steals a glance, she sees him staring at her with a frightening, wolfish quality. She can't tell if he wants to violently attack her or slowly undress her. Probably both.
"Another token of your stubbornness, huh?" she says, meeting the haughty challenge in his voice.
"My name and power is known everywhere. Fool that Puloman is, he won't say no if I asked for your hand. You're the one who invites me on these little trips, only to say you don't want me," he says, sounding calm, but she knows he's frothing at the mouth with a well fermented bitterness. His eyes always give him away. "And you won't even give me a reason."
"Has it ever occurred to you that some matters are private?" She asks, before sitting up, shoulders squared and arms crossed. "I'm not doing this again. It's none of your concern, Ind-"
"It is," he hisses, leaning forward. His arms shake, as if they're holding back from reaching forward. "You are my concern. I'd have dropped this ages ago if it wasn't absurdly obvious that you're not refusing me because you actually want to."
"Gods, you really are arrogant," she says, feeling hot all over and not in a good way.
"Are you denying it?" He asks, lifting a short brow.
She thinks to spit at him. She hates how sure of himself he is, how there isn't a pinch of vulnerability in his expression because he's so damn dogged in his convictions.
But it's why she loves him too.
And she remembers that more and more the longer she stares at that beautiful, regal face. "No," she finally says. "I want you—a fact I wish I could refute."
She sees the tension in his jaw slacken, and then his arms finally come to palm her cheeks on each side. His fingers are callous but perturbingly gentle. "Just tell me," he says, and leans his head close. Close enough for her to feel his hot breath fanning against her mouth. "Tell me, and I will fix it. I am no one's guardian more than yours."
She melts into his touch, more than she expects to. The tension rolls out with her words, the tumult of years sitting on the tip of her tongue. "My imouto is everything to me," she says. "Don't you understand? You have a little one too. I can't leave her there with him," she pauses, searching, "She's…she's not like me. She's good."
He frowns, pulls his right hand away to gently wind his fingers through her clenched fist. "You haven't been telling me everything."
"I thought you would have figured it out," she murmurs, breaking away from that hot look in his red eyes. "A cruel king is a cruel king. Maybe we have privileges, but we are his subjects too."
"You are not subjects, you are family."
"Some would argue there's no difference."
"Some," he parrots mockingly, turns his head away, "the only person who thinks that is my idiot otouto."
She lets out a breath that is as much amusement as it is relief, before sinking forward into his chest. "I happen to agree with him, you know." He ignores that.
"I guess I have no choice," he mumbles, rubs her arms repetitively, like he's trying to keep her warm. "I'll have to take you both."
She snorts. "Still as ambitious as ever," she says. "What will you do? Abduct us? You would start a war."
"I wouldn't abduct you," he scoffs. "I have some tact, you know."
"So a diplomatic approach then? Would you marry the two of us?" She hears him nearly choke on his spit, his chest rumbling as he clears his throat. "I suppose you could," she muses, and she fingers the pale skin around his neck, palms his nape soothingly. "Polygamy isn't celebrated in your culture, nor is incest. Your otousan would probably have your head for it. But you could."
"Shut up," he grunts, before tenderly pressing his lips to her temple. The pressure lingers sweetly before he pulls away. Her stomach is in knots. "I'll find a way."
She hums, trying to hide the heat in her cheeks by keeping close to his chest. "You and your circles," she chides, tracing rings on his skin—a sore excuse to touch him.
He takes her hand in his, lifts to fit the back of her fingers against reverent lips. "All for you, my love," he teases, mouth trailing over to the underside of her small hand. She feels him smile against her palm. "All for you."
The meeting should be more formal than this. But they're Team 7, with experiences as loving and loaded as they come, and it extinguishes all the facades of etiquette. Kakashi looks exhausted as ever, staring blankly at a piece of paper in front of his desk. Naruto, who has nothing better to do than pretend to prepare for his inevitable promotion to Hokage, is slurping noodles by his desk.
Sakura helps herself to a corner by the window, just far enough so she doesn't have to smell the heavy broth of his ramen. "Yuuto Ashi is dead," she says.
Kakashi doesn't look at her, but his body is tense all over. If she thought he wasn't reading the paperwork in front of him earlier, she's sure of it now. "When did he pass?" he asks and his voice is even enough to fool most.
"This morning," Sakura says. "We're still working on the antidote."
Naruto, for once, is quiet, occupying his mouth with clumps of noodles. His eyes are keen, attentive to his sensei more than his teammate. Kakashi folds his fingers together and leans back on his chair. "Do you think you're close?" He asks.
Sakura hesitates, before her eyes fall on her lap. She gently slides her hand along her thigh, smoothing her skirt instead of wrinkling it with her distraught. "I always think I'm close," Sakura says, and she can't quite manage to keep the regret from her voice. "But it's more like an infection than a poison. Every time I think I'm finally going to kill it, it adapts."
"Hm," Kakashi hums in mock nonchalance, despite the quiet terror in his eyes. "This is more serious than I thought."
"This is connected to the incidents in Suna, isn't it?" Sakura asks then. "And that mission you were going to put me on with Sasuke too."
There's the briefest moment of hesitation before Kakashi nods. "Yes," he says. "That's what I'm worried about."
"Ah don't worry about him," Naruto chimes in with a grumble. "With that damn Susanoo and the Rinnegan, nothing can kill that bastard."
"Naruto," Sakura says gently. It's not that she disagrees with him, because she's absolutely certain both of her original teammates are irrationally and disturbingly impervious in battle. But neither of those stated attributes make one immune to toxins and she can't help but ask, "Do you have any concept of how poison works?"
The jinchuruuki scowls. Kakashi turns to Sakura then. "What should I tell the Mizukage?" he asks. "Should they be prepared to lose a clan?" She knows his question isn't meant to be accusing, but it feels like it is. She hears it in Naruto's loud, forceful gulp.
Sakura looks out the window. "Yes," she says. She's so close she can see the snowflakes coming down, sticking to the pane like tiny white spiders. "Even if we find an antidote, I don't think it'll come fast enough to save them."
Kakashi says nothing for a long moment, but she sees him turning away in her peripheral. "I see." The subtle sorrow in his voice tells her he is as disheartened as she feels. Sakura places a finger on the glass just where a snowflake has landed, as if to melt with it.
"Still, don't let up or postpone this project. Under no circumstances." Kakashi says with a thick authority that calls her attention back onto him. "The Ashi may not make it, but that poison will inevitably show up again. Hopefully we'll be ready next time."
Sakura nods, head dizzy at the prospect. She's considered this before, of course. But the pressure to find a cure has never felt greater. The quivers in her stomach are punishing and she begs to be good enough this one time. "Of course, sensei."
"Don't worry, Sakura-chan," Naruto gleams, voice vibrant. "You'll figure it out." He says it with such blaze confidence, if it were anyone else she'd be downright confused.
"He's right," Kakashi says, "You're the best poison expert in all five nations." Sakura has to bite back a retort, because that's not true if someone has already bested her. She wishes they would just stop trying to hand her false confidence. The compliments skin her alive.
"We have a medicine," Sakura says, unsure whether to fight the hesitation in her voice because this piece of information is nothing but appeasement and she is all too aware of it. "It's not a cure, but it'll slow the venom down. We can send them as much as they need, the materials are easy to gather."
Kakashi looks at her, pensive, before seeming to come to a decision and nodding. "Last I heard there were about twenty clansmen left. Assuming they're still alive, when can this medicine be ready to ship by?"
Twenty. She's not surprised to hear that.
"Tonight." Sakura says. It will be a hassle, but it's the least she can do. "It won't make a difference in the outcome," She says this with a raw and agonizing certainty. "But it's something."
"I assumed as much," Kakashi says. "Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be worth the resources," he admits. "But...just in case."
"Just in case," Sakura echoes.
Naruto grumbles, gripping his ramen bowl so hard it looks like it'll break from the pressure. "Geez, under normal circumstances? What the hell, Kaka-sensei! You should always try."
For a moment, Kakashi is silent, and Sakura catches the slight tremor of his fingers before they smooth out along thin papers. "I do, Naruto." He says, and there is a subtle sadness in his voice, almost reverent. "We always do."
Naruto isn't quite sure what to say, his mouth curves strangely before he stuffs it with more ramen.
When Sakura looks back at her sensei, she sees him studying her. It's neatly intense and focused, and this is one of the handful of traits that make him the most similar to Sasuke. It's the worst among them, in her opinion.
Sakura swallows her nudity and says, "I'll have the medicine packaged and ready by 9pm, if that works."
Kakashi stares blankly, holding her captive for a single moment longer before tenderly crinkling an eye. "Perfect. I'll send someone over at 9 then."
Sakura nods, and stands, brushing the slight shake of her hands over her skirt. "Well, I guess I should get to it then," she says.
Kakashi nods. "Thank you for coming in, Sakura. Daunting as this news was, I'm glad I got to hear it from you, at the very least." His eyes are as sweet as his words, and she can tell he means it.
Sakura nods and smiles with a tender and grace that is nearly foreign to her face. "Thank you, sensei," she murmurs.
"Will you two stop flirting?" Naruto says with a scowl. "You always do this!"
She can see Kakashi smirking under the mask. "Maybe I would flirt with you too if you were a little easier on the eyes," Kakashi says, and Naruto makes mock gagging noises. "And I'm kicking you out too, today. Sorry, but there's an omen about having too many blondes in one building, and we're about to reach capacity when the secretary comes back in."
"Pffft, yeah right," Naruto says, though stands anyway. He tosses his empty ramen bowl. "You probably just want some alone time to jerk it after seeing Sakura-chan in that tight skirt."
"Naruto!" Sakura admonishes, horrified. Kakashi merely chuckles, entirely amused before they both leave with a tender goodbye.
Sakura and Naruto are halfway down the hall before rounding on a familiar chakra signature. When they turn the corner, it's to see Hinata.
She's just standing there, eyes pasted to the floor, wide-eyed and red in the face. Her lips are terribly swollen, chewed up between pearly teeth.
"H-Hinata?" Sakura asks, watching the Hyuga's white hands cradle her abdomen like it is going to fall out any second.
Naruto is in front of her in an instant, pulling her close, his face hard and soft at once. "Hinata-chan, what happened?"
"I-I-..." Hinata stutters, trembling everywhere, and Sakura thinks she might as well be a 12 year old genin with no sense of self or security all over again. "I d-didn't know what t-to do...I…S-so I came …here. I knew you w-were here so..I..came."
Sakura places her hand on Hinata's shoulder and rubs comfortingly, "It's okay. We're here. We got you, Hinata."
Naruto punctuates her words, gripping his wife closer to his chest and running a bandaged hand through her silk hair, tilting her head enough for her eyes to find his. "What is it?" he asks gently. "What happened?"
"Naruto, I—" Hinata chokes on oncoming tears, but she turns and looks at Sakura then. White eyes cry out to her green, pleading—begging—on the last legs of a coveted denial. "I'm bleeding."
A/N: I'm really sorry, I know this update took long. It's partially because this chapter was a pain in the ass to edit, but mostly because life just sucker punched me into the fucking twilight zone. It's insane how much can go wrong in only a few days.
I hope y'all find it worth the wait, this chapter originally went through a lot of drafts because of that dream sequence. I had so much trouble with it and I still really hate it but fuck it
The next chapter was a personal favorite for awhile, partially because I have an uncanny love for writing unorthodox shit lol. I promise to have that one out as scheduled, since it shouldn't be nearly as much editing. We're gonna be checking in with Sasuke again ! :)
