Title: Birds in the Sky

Summary: The worst case scenario after war. Will Sakura cope?
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Prompt: Classified
Rating: T
Warning(s): Death in all of its variety. Blood. Alcohol drinking. Proceed with caution.

Comments: Five pages. I should seriously stop myself from writing so much in one go...


The Fourth Shinobi War ultimately ended in a victory of the Shinobi Alliance, though it was occupied with great losses. Despite the hospitals working overtime and medic-nins practically not sleeping anymore, doing everything in their considerable power to prevent the deaths of loyal Alliance soldiers, the overall death count took slightly more than a half of entire workforce of the five hidden villages. It was a time of rejoice as the world was saved from the nefarious scheme of Uchiha Madara, which would have put everything and everyone under his infinite control, but it was also a time of great mourning for all those who died for the sake of peace.

For Haruno Sakura, it was also a time of a new hope. Her former teammate and international criminal, Uchiha Sasuke, turned sides during the final battle and helped in bringing on the defeat of Madara, choosing to protect Konoha and his old comrades. Sakura had never been more happy than at that moment. She was sure nothing would now stop Sasuke from returning home. Team Seven would be reinstated and all her dreams and hopes would be thus realized.

However, the fate dealt cruel cards to her once again. Just after the battle, instead of being rightfully lauded as a hero, Sasuke was immediately taken into custody by Morino Ibiki and his I&T squad. Sakura, swamped by the sheer amount of wounded she had to attend, could barely spare a thought to Sasuke's imprisonment. She was just glad that he was in Konoha's hands and not, for example, Raikage's. Believing he wouldn't be held for long, she focused completely on her work.

But then, the initial turmoil slowly receded, the shinobi were recalled back into their countries' borders for missions and just to return order, as the criminals had taken the opportunity the war had provided to expand their activity, growing bolder with the bulk of the able-bodied shinobi away on the battlefronts. Situation when it came to the national security of the Elemental Countries was becoming too perilous – the shinobi forces, already weakened, simply couldn't afford to dally any longer. Even if all of the available ninjas were posted in their respective lands, they would have been stretched very thin.

Sakura's return to Konoha was accompanied by such an atmosphere of urgency, but the kunoichi didn't doubt that when she entered her beloved village's walls, Sasuke would be waiting for her as the newly reinstated ninja and they could go together to a team meeting with Naruto, Kakashi and Sai. It came as a shock when she reported in to Tsunade-sama's office and learned the truth about Sasuke's status. Sakura argued against it till she turned blue in the face, she raged, screamed and in the end resorted to begging, but the decision of the Hokage and the Council of Elders in agreement with the leaders of the Shinobi Alliance was final and undisputed. As a loyal kunoichi, Sakura had to submit and accept it, no matter how much her feelings were opposing it.

Uchiha Sasuke was to be executed for his crimes.

Understanding that she couldn't prevent this decision from coming to life, Sakura asked to see him before the execution and her request was denied, "because of security measures". She wasn't allowed to watch it – the execution was attended only by the Hokage, the Elders, the executioner and, of course, the convict.

The night before Sasuke's death Sakura for the first time in her life got herself drunk, thinking that the alcohol could dull the pain of her heart being ripped into tiny shreds. It only made her feel even worse and she still cried herself to sleep.

In the late morning she went to Sasuke's brief funeral at the Uchiha cemetery. There was no body as it had been cremated immediately after the execution had been carried out, so she couldn't even see his face one last time. A few words about his deeds were said and without much ado Sasuke's gravestone joined his mother's and father's. As a last desperate attempt to do something Sakura tried to persuade Tsunade and the Elders to add Sasuke's name on the Memorial Stone in remembrance of his part in defeating Madara, but they didn't agree to even that.

Swallowed by sorrow, pain and grief, Sakura grew distant from her team, burying herself in her work. She was seen more at Sasuke's grave, bringing him flowers and offerings regularly, than at social outings with her living friends.

Uchiha Sasuke was dead. And her heart was dead with him.


A few months later, Sakura was standing before Hokage's desk. Tsunade assessed her apprentice from above the steepled fingers she put in front of herself on top of her desk. Sakura was clad in standard chunin uniform – a green flak vest and the black shinobi garb. There was no trace of red on her, even the material of her headband was changed to black. Her spine was perfectly straight, her hands clasped behind her back in a military fashion. Sakura's face was a stone mask, her once vibrant green eyes subdued and expressing absolutely nothing.

Tsunade's heart constricted as she recognized just how broken the kunoichi before her was. She remembered a similar time in her life when she had gone through exactly the same thing Sakura did – losing the love of her life. However, Tsunade at least had the comfort of knowing that Dan's death was an honourable sacrifice for the well-being of the village he had loved so much and his name was carved on the Memorial Stone as a hero's.

The Hokage regarded her apprentice worriedly. Her own grief made her hate Konoha and leave it for twenty years to waste her life away on drinking and gambling, which had never really helped close the wound on her soul. What the same feeling could drive Sakura to?

"Hokage-sama," the kunoichi spoke formally and the guilt and regret ate away at Tsunade. No more was she "Tsunade-sama" or just "shishou" to her apprentice. With sentencing the Uchiha to death, she lost the close bond with her student. "I would like to request a week off-duty."

"Is there any particular reason?" Tsunade asked. There were quite a lot of missions that could use an experienced medic-nin, not to mention the hospital was still understaffed.

"I need to recuperate. It can be a shorter time, if a week is too long," Sakura explained in a monotone voice. Tsunade hated that mechanical, emotionless way of speaking her apprentice had adopted.

"Alright, I can grant you a week out of the roster. You will be with your friends? Naruto complained that you don't show up to the team meetings."

Sakura inhaled sharply, then closed her eyes for a brief second. When she opened them, they were once again cold. "Yes, I'll be with my friends," she said without inflection.

Tsunade gave her a searching look. It could be a first step towards Sakura's recovery, but for some reason the Slug Sannin felt uneasy. When her student exited the office, she signaled her ANBU guard to come forward.

A man in a bird mask appeared kneeling before her desk in a flash. Although he's been inducted into Hokage's personal service just a few months ago, he was already one of her most trusted and dependable agents.

"Tori, you will shadow Haruno Sakura for the duration of her vacation. It's an A-rank mission," Tsunade ordered. "Under no circumstances you are allowed to let her see you. She must remain unaware of your presence."

Tsunade didn't want the rift between herself and Sakura to deepen, which would undoubtedly happen if her apprentice caught a wind of an ANBU on her tail.

The agent bowed his head. "As you wish, Hokage-sama."


The agent followed Sakura skillfully as she made her way home. After the war and Sasuke's execution she'd had a big falling out with her parents, who didn't approve of her "mourning of the traitor" and binge drinking. Unable to stand their good intentions anymore, at first she had stayed for a bit in her cramped office in the hospital until she had started renting her own small one-bedroom apartment.

Looking through the windows, the ANBU surveyed the drab interior of Sakura's place. It was simply furnished, without any personal touches or affects. The only thing that stood out in the room was the small home altar. A few pictures of Uchiha Sasuke were placed within it, most from the genin days, but there was also one clearly cut out from the Bingo Book that had been updated before the war.

The agent observed as immediately upon her arrival, Sakura went to the shrine and knelt, her hands clasped together. She burned incense and appeared to be talking to her dead teammate, but the ANBU couldn't read her lips because she was turned away from the window, only half of her left profile visible to him.

Only after her evidently daily ritual was completed, she rose from the kneeling position and proceeded to unpack her groceries, which she had bought at the market earlier. The agent frowned noticing the amount of sake bottles she acquired.

Sakura made herself a meager dinner consisting of tamagoyaki. She ate it halfheartedly, taking often sips from the first bottle of the evening. When her friend, Ino, visited and tried to drag her out to the bar, Sakura refused politely.

Later, she curled on her bed, staring into distance in a deep thought and drinking leisurely. Then she took out yet another picture of young Sasuke from her pocket and traced his boyish features tenderly, a small sad smile on her face. Finally, she lied down tiredly and cried herself to sleep, clutching the photo to her chest.

The next few days Sakura spent in her apartment following the same depressing routine and only leaving for an early morning run, to visit Sasuke's grave and to do her shopping when she ran out of food and other necessities. The ANBU trailed her inconspicuously, sending out a Kage Bunshin with a daily report to the Hokage when Sakura fell asleep.


Sakura knelt before Sasuke's grave. She was dressed in a white, silk kimono decorated with delicate cherry blossom print. Her hair was twisted into a bun and held up with ornamental chopsticks. A tiny, peaceful smile graced her features as she gazed lovingly at the name carved into the tombstone.

She was finally alone with Sasuke-kun, having gotten rid of the pesky ANBU that had been following her around. He must have really taken her for an incapable mess of a kunoichi if he thought she wouldn't notice his presence. Since this was something she wanted to do without interference, she had gone to the bathroom and had made a Kage Bunshin to act as her double. The ANBU had been fooled and had tailed it, leaving her alone to come to Sasuke's resting place in secret.

Sakura burned the incense and poured an offering of sake in a flat dish, setting it on the gravestone.

"Sasuke-kun," she said conversationally, "it's the last time I'll be talking to you like that. Aren't you glad? I am. These months without you were the worst. I..." she choked on a sob, "... I think I understand now what you went through when your family was killed. How lonely you were... Do you remember that I told you that night you decided to leave that I would feel lonely without you? It wasn't entirely true, but I didn't know it then. It was so hard for me, when you were away, but at least I knew you were alive. And now..."

The tears spilled from green eyes and landed on the tombstone. She wiped her eyes, trying to find the words that could describe the chasm that had opened in her soul and the encompassing grief and anguish that threatened to crush her with every moment of living in the world in which Sasuke didn't exist.

"It's hell," Sakura whispered brokenly.

Coming to a decision she has been meditating on for the past few days, she deftly reached to her obi and took out a kunai hidden in its folds. She bared her forearms and sliced, making deep, clean incisions and cutting major veins purposefully. The blood ran in rivulets down her white skin and she let it to spill on Sasuke's gravestone as her life's offering.

Sakura observed the stream of red, smiling softly. She felt her clone dispel but she didn't pay its memories much attention. She was happy because soon she would see Sasuke-kun again...

The blood was overflowing from the tombstone on the ground and her vision was getting blurry. She thought she heard Sasuke calling her name from beyond the veil.

"Sasuke-kun..."

Sakura was smiling.


Tsunade was frothing at the mouth.

"I told you to keep an eye on her!" she bellowed angrily at the ANBU standing in front of her as she paced. "How could you not do something so simple?! You fool! Imbecile! Brainless idiot!"

The agent bowed his head in subservience as she raged at him. He felt he deserved all the insults hurled at him by the Hokage and much, much more.

A quiet, pained moan interrupted Tsunade's tirade. The attention of the room's occupants was turned to the stirring form laid out on Hokage's desk.

Sakura opened her eyes. If this was afterlife, it looked a lot like her shishou's office.

"Sakura? Do you hear me?" her shishou leaned over her.

So, she wasn't dead. It was... disappointing.

"Hokage... sama?"

Tsunade gathered Sakura in her arms and hugged tightly. "Why did you do it, Sakura? Why did you try to kill yourself?" she asked, her eyes growing wet. "It isn't what I taught you. Don't you dare do it again," she tried to sound commanding through the tears.

Sakura didn't answer, her expression becoming distant and cold again.

"Stop! Stop ignoring me!" Tsunade snapped, her relief being replaced by anger at Sakura's unresponsiveness. "Tell me what's wrong and I'll do anything to make it better!" she pleaded in the end.

Sakura slid her indifferent gaze onto her shishou.

"Can you bring back the dead? Then bring back Sasuke-kun," she knowingly demanded the impossible. "Bring him back and I won't try to kill myself but if you can't, just let me die! Let me die and be with him!"

Sakura panted harshly from her outburst, the first one in months. Even when she had moved out from her parents', she hadn't really screamed at them. She hang down her head, awaiting the rebuke from Tsunade.

"Hokage-sama..." the bird-masked ANBU said hesitantly.

"Be silent," Tsunade ordered him and paced in thought. Finally, coming to a resolution, she stood before Sakura once again.

"Sakura," she waited for her apprentice to raise her head and look at her, then continued, "I'm about to tell you something that under any circumstances can't get out beyond these four walls. It's a triple-S village secret. No one but me and the Elders knows. If I find out you told someone, you will be executed. Do you understand?"

The kunoichi nodded, regarding her curiously.

"Alright," Tsunade sighed, praying that she wouldn't have a reason to regret it and gestured to the ANBU to come over to them. "Tori, take off your mask."

The agent slipped the hood of his cloak off his head and slid the mask up, revealing familiar thin lips, straight nose and intense, black eyes which bored into Sakura's shocked green ones.

"Sasuke-kun...?" she whispered out, not daring to believe, to hope that the apparition of her beloved was real.

"Sakura," his voice, not distorted by the mask, rang clear in her ears. "I'm alive."

To prove his words, he laid his hands on her shoulders. She shuddered at the warmth he exuded, allowing it to finally sink in that he was really there. With a sudden laugh, she embraced him, burrowing her head in his chest. She was mumbling gibberish, sobbing and laughing as she held him, the dam on her emotions broken.

After a few minutes, when Sakura calmed a little and was capable of coherent speech again, she turned to Tsunade, looking for an explanation.

"Shishou, but what about the execution?"

"It was a sham to fool the Raikage and the other leaders. We need all the well-trained shinobi and the Uchiha was willing to work for us again, why would we do something so stupid as killing him?" Tsunade snorted.

"If you wanted to fool the Raikage, why did you keep it from me?" Sakura asked, annoyance and hurt seeping into her voice. "Do Naruto and Kakashi-sensei know?"

"I didn't keep it just from you, I kept it from everyone, even Shizune," Tsunade told her and reached into her desk's secret compartment for some sake. "How could I have known that you'd decide to kill yourself?"

Sakura blushed in embarrassment and ducked her head into Sasuke's chest again. He didn't seem to mind it as all the while he was returning her embrace gently.

"Both Naruto and Kakashi know," Sasuke announced.

"Did you tell them?" Tsunade asked with a dangerous edge in her voice.

"Of course not. Naruto has the Sage mode, he felt my life force and found me himself. And Kakashi's back in ANBU, I'm sure with that sense of smell he or his little dog recognized me by now," Sasuke explained.

Tsunade nodded thoughtfully and poured herself a drink. "I'll have to talk with them both too."

"Shishou, what happens now?" Sakura asked her bashfully, still latched desperately on the Uchiha, as if she was afraid he'd disappear once again if she stopped touching him even for a second.

Tsunade gave her an amused look and rummaged through her desk. "Now, since you don't look like you'll let him go anytime soon, I need to find the damn brush and ink, so I can induct you into ANBU..."


AN: I'm wiped out and there's probably a ton of mistakes, but it's finished. Personally, as funny as I find the fics with Sasuke on probation and doing D-ranks, it seems really impractical to not use ninja like him to do high rank missions. It's more logical to risk the life of a past traitor than a loyal ninja, right?

The title idea I got from a song "Feeling Good" by Muse. I could have given Sasuke codename Taka, but it would've been too obvious, eh?

So please review, tell me what do you think about this installment. Are there any blatant mistakes? How did you like it overall? Were you surprised about Sasuke being the ANBU?