So, nobody suggested a scene for an omake. Oh well. Still, 100+ reviews is pretty damn nice. Also, I'm glad people like Saichi/Sai. I wasn't sure how that would be received, between the way I have him talking and how I kept expecting someone to start ranting at me about chan/yaoi because of the way I wrote the scene last chapter. But I survived, so yay.

After this chapter, please tell me: is anyone bothered by Daisuke-san? And, alternately, is the random Japanese pissing people off? Cuz I'm sorry but I honestly don't notice it until it gets pointed out to me. Anyways, on with the chapter.

Also... Don't kill me.

Nadeshiko had experienced far too many shocks within the last few months. Her daughter had suddenly decided to be a shinobi. The child most people in her village considered to be a pariah was the child of a survivor from her beloved original village and probably a very distant cousin. There was a force somewhere in the world that wanted to destroy her entire family and had nearly succeeded. Now, there was a messenger at her door in the middle of the day.

And, under the gazes of many curious onlookers, he was saying that her husband was dead.

"E-excuse me?" Nadeshiko managed to reply, feeling her mind begin to haze over. "I... D-daisuke...?" Even as she stared in to the dark, solemn brown eyes of the chuunin standing in front of her, still holding out that horrible black envelope for her to take, the woman could feel herself becoming faint. "...My Daisuke... Is...?" The redhead could feel her throat beginning to tighten and her eyes starting to sting as she slumped, letting the door frame take most of her weight. "N-no... Y-you're not... No..." A low, mournful keening noise from the back of her throat replaced the words as large tears began to spill out of her eyes.

"...Haruno-san? ...Haruno-san...?"

But her world was already falling into gray tones. The words sounded distant and faint in her ears as Nadeshiko tried to ground herself, feeling as if she was both heavier than she'd ever been in her life and floating away like a child's lost balloon. ...My Daisuke-kun...?

"...Haruno-san...!"

She couldn't breathe. Her throat was too tight. Nadeshiko abandoned her death grip on the door frame in favor of clutching at her neck, trying to open an airway of some sort. Yet, even as she slowly slid down to the tiled floor, choking on nothing but pure grief, the redhead could feel herself stop caring about breathing. He was gone. The man she'd loved for seventeen, almost eighteen years was gone.

Her world was fading from gray to black. No, no, no, no, no, no, no...

...And then she woke up. Seeing the light filtering through the shades on what was obviously her bedroom window, Nadeshiko sat up slowly, feeling hope begin to bloom in her chest. "A dream," she whispered to herself. "Just a dream..." But then she noticed that her throat was sore, and her nose felt stuffed. When she reached up, her cheeks were still wet from tears. When she looked at her hands, she realized that she was still wearing the blouse and pants that she'd adorned in the 'nightmare.'

And there, on her lap, was that black envelope. At the sight of it, the green eyed woman froze, before absolutely panicking. She screamed at the top of her lungs, tossing the envelope as far away from her as she could, and nearly fell off the bed in her haste to move away from the paper. She only screamed louder when she felt arms keep her from falling off the bed, and it wasn't helped by the cold rag that landed on her face.

"Will you please calm down?"

Nadeshiko froze and became wide-eyed at the calm baritone voice she heard, then almost fell limp as she was carefully lifted bridal style and set down in the center of her messed up cotton sheets. The rag fell off her face with a wet plop sound, and landed on one of her thighs. It was freezing, but she didn't feel it at all. She was still too busy staring at the indifferent face of her husband as he settled her back into the pillows, making her comfortable and acting like she hadn't just been told that he was dead.

She didn't notice as she slowly began to hyperventilate, but Daisuke did, and the man quietly swore before gripping both her hands tightly in his own. "Nadeshiko-hime. Shh. Calm down. It's me. I'm here. Shh... You need to breathe, koishii. Breathe. I'm here... Yes. Another deep breath, just like that..." The white-haired man allowed his face to soften as her breathing began to even out. But he couldn't smile. She hadn't had a panic attack in years, and here he was, probably about to cause another.

He'd never deserved her from the start.

After a few minutes, Nadeshiko was finally well enough to whisper, "Daisuke-kun...?"

"Hai, Nadeshiko-hime. I'm alright. I'm here," he stressed quietly. Despite his calm face, on the inside, Daisuke was fighting hard not to let the panic well up inside of him. She didn't need to hear the words he was about to say. He should've never come here. She would be better off without him, and certainly without knowing that he was alive. But... Love makes you stupid, he thought.

"You're alive," she almost whimpered out. She had yet to blink as she stared at his face; it felt as if the moment she blinked, he would disappear, and she would be alone with that disgusting black envelope again. "Then... Why... Why did... A mistake?" Nadeshiko was painfully confused, in addition to being so overwhelmed with joy that she couldn't move as well as five seconds away from panicking and beginning to sob. She hadn't felt so emotionally overwhelmed since she was pregnant with Jinya over a decade ago.

Daisuke's face hardened again, and although he didn't wish to, he gently disentangled their hands. It hurt his soul to hear her whimper when they lost contact. "It wasn't a mistake, Nadeshiko-hime. It was necessary that the people outside see your reaction, because... To the rest of the world, I am dead." He spoke as gently as he possibly could, and still found himself shushing her when the word 'dead' almost made her panic. "I'm alive, Nadeshiko-hime. But only to you and Hokage-sama."

"But...!" Nadeshiko found herself wiping quickly at her eyes as she was gently hushed again. Hokage-sama? Daisuke-kun isn't a shinobi, so why...?

"Just let me speak, koishii." Kneeling next to the bed, Daisuke took a deep breath, and then interlaced his fingers and rested his forehead there, unable to look at her as he completely broke her trust and her heart. "When we first came here thirteen years ago, you told me, 'I want us to have a civilian family, happy and peaceful.' Your smile then..." He stopped, shivered a bit, and then continued: "I... I also wished for that. We bought a home, decorated, you opened your tea shop and I continued my work... It was peaceful, for a while. But even though we tried so hard to hide your roots," he found himself scowling at the word, "There was someone... A man... Who still found them out."

Nadeshiko's entire body became even more still than before, if possible.

Daisuke squeezed his interlocked fingers tighter together, and continued, "I was very stupid. He gave me an offer. And I said yes. Looking back... If I had thought things through clearly, none of this would have happened. We could've moved to Otafuku Gai. We could've gone to live in Ta no Kuni. We could've stayed here, and asked Hokage-sama for his assistance. And I'm sure that, had I let you know, you would've suggested all of that. But you were so happy..." Stop trying to save yourself, Daisuke, he mentally admonished. "However, I kept it a secret. I played along with Shimura Danzo. And the consequences are still showing themselves today..."

It was hard, forcing himself to remain next to the bed as he slowly related each and every secret he'd been keeping in the past thirteen years. He recanted the dates of every diplomatic mission that had actually been an assignment from Root. He explained every anniversary or birthday or trip to Nami no Kuni that he'd missed when really, he'd been watching from the shadows, gathering information. He told her of the nights when he came home late not from work, but from being trained to use weapons and learn the art of assassination. He gave her the names of those whose blood he had on his hands. And, finally, when he had exhausted every other avenue, he told her of his final shame, and the way that only the kindness of the mother he'd almost helped kill had saved his life in the end.

In his mind, where he kept the mental snapshot of his injured daughter, looking up at him and crying, Daisuke also stored Nadeshiko's teary face as she backed away to the opposite side of the bed, wide-eyed with shock and disbelief. It's almost like a full collection, he thought morbidly as she raised her hands to cover her mouth, as if she felt sick. If I didn't know that Jinya gets angry long before he becomes sad, I would have an album... As it was, he would have to make due with his own pale appearance in the mirror each morning. He didn't think he'd ever be seeing his children again, not up close.

When he couldn't bear to listen to Nadeshiko muffling her own sobs anymore, Daisuke slowly stood, and bowed low to her. "Shitsureishimashita. I am below your notice, Nadeshiko-hime, but at the behest of Hokage-sama, please open the envelope and read the contents." With all the willpower he had, he slipped a slim golden band off his finger, and set it on the bedside table. "I love you."

And then he let himself disappear under her gaze, as he'd wished to throughout the entire time that he was talking. He'd had his confession. Now, it was time to atone for his sins fully.

"Hm... Let's try 'constitutionality,' okay?"

"Con-sti... Consti... Consti-tu... This is hard, Sas'ke-san."

The younger boy just huffed and replied, "My aniki says 'practice makes perfect,' so you have to keep practicing! Come on, Saichi, it'll be easy when you get it!"

As Sai scrunched up his nose but consented and began to try and say the word again, with no pauses between syllables, Sakura was gratified to feel herself smiling. Whereas Naruto stayed pressed close to her whenever Sai was with them, Sasuke had taken to the other dark-haired boy like a duck to water. After being the 'baby' of their little group for so long, he'd easily picked up on the fact that they treated Sai the same way, and seemed to think it was his duty to be a proper 'big brother' to the other boy (even though Sai was, age-wise, the oldest of the four of them.) It was ridiculously cute, not to mention amusing, and that was exactly what Sakura needed.

Ever since she'd returned home to the message that her father was dead, the world had felt... Fake. Even though she knew that everything was real and that, as of that moment, her father would never be coming back, she seemed to be in denial. She'd seen him chained up, after admitting everything that he'd done and helped with to her grandmother. She'd known that he was as good as dead for nearly a week before the actual message came. She'd cried out all the tears for him that she had, and probably more than that.

Yet she couldn't seem to comprehend that he was never coming back.

Sakura had yet to see Jinya react, not really. She suspected that he'd used the 'pillow' method more than a few times, and besides an increase in the amount of time that Jinya spent at home, cleaning up and trying to assist their mother, he hadn't seemed to change. But he still had moments were he stilled and stared off into space, or at the door, or at the chair where nobody had sat for breakfast since before they left to Nami. She knew that her brother was grieving in his own way, even if he was trying to seem strong.

And her mother... Sakura truly worried about her mother. More than once, she'd gone into the kitchen or the living room to see Nadeshiko rolling her father's wedding band around in her palm or tracing her finger along the edges of framed photos, brushing away imaginary dust. Her mother's smile, one of her defining traits, had disappeared. Although the woman tried to put on smiles for her children, they were forced, and as soon as she thought she was alone, her face became as blank as porcelain. The transformation was bone chilling.

"...Consti-tution-ali-ty."

Her mind flew back to reality as Sasuke suddenly began cheering and Sai plopped down into the grass next to her, smiling in a relieved-looking way. "I think Sas'ke-san is happy that I almost did it," Sai told her. Then he tilted his head to the side, thoughtful. "He is strange."

"Hey!"

Sakura couldn't restrain the bit of laughter that left her mouth as Sasuke began to protest. Sai calling anyone strange was an amusing thing, although privately, she couldn't help but agree. She'd never really reconciled the Sasuke of her future to the one in this past. It was more like they were two different people, and one of them hadn't been created until his family had been killed.

As she joined in with teasing Sasuke, Sakura suddenly realized that Naruto had never returned from going inside the house to use the bathroom quite some time ago. For a moment, she was worried, but then she remembered his strange expression when he insisted that he had to go. He probably drank expired milk again, she thought, feeling bad for finding the thought amusing. That's just like him...

In truth, just as Sakura was thinking that, Naruto was doing something completely different. Inside the Uchiha main house, sitting nervously at the kitchen table, the blonde was currently doing something that one might regard as a huge accomplishment for him: he was speaking to Mikoto-san of his own volition.

Originally, on New Year's day, Naruto had saved up all his extra money and won a pair of red goggles for Sakura that were just like his, since she looked at his a lot and didn't really like having her hair hanging in her face (he didn't really understand why she couldn't just clip it to the side or something.) But he'd forgotten his present at the ANBU dormitories in his haste to see her, and when they finally did meet, she'd given him a present so much greater that his goggles definitely weren't enough. And then her father died and he wanted to make her happy again even more.

He'd tried asking Inu what to get her to make it a better present, but the ANBU captain had just started making weird jokes about him being 'whipped,' which didn't sound like anything remotely similar to a cool present for Sakura. He'd also gone to Crow for advice, which had been only marginally better: 'ask a female.' However, he only really knew four females (the secretary lady in the Tower didn't count.)

One of them was Sakura, who he obviously couldn't ask. Then there was Neko, who was either taking a break or off on a mission somewhere, and couldn't be questioned. The next was Sakura's really nice mother, Nadeshiko-san, but she was very sad because Sakura's father had died, and even if she hadn't been sad, Sakura had a habit of eavesdropping on conversations and would've found out before he even got the gift together. With those three knocked out, there was only Mikoto-san left.

So he'd worked up his courage, made an excuse while Sakura was distracted, and went inside the house to try and explain what he needed.

"...and, um, I still don't know what my okaasan looked like, but now I know her name, Kushina, and I know about Uzushiogakure, and I have all these little scrolls that tell me a bit about what my family was like when they were still alive, and, well, it's really all because Sakura-chan decided to be my friend and she wasn't scared of me or nothin' and I really really really want to give her a nice present to say thank you and I already have these goggles but it's kinda not enough because her gift was so much better and I really want to make her happy too because her otousan died, and, um, can you please tell me what would be a good present for Sakura-chan and help me pick one?"

After listening to Naruto's long, nervous, disjointed rant, Mikoto was experiencing several conflicting emotions and responses to those emotions.

She was happy; she wanted to squeal and hug the little blonde boy, because he was cute and tiny and sweet and he was picking out a present for his friend... But she also wanted to put on a dry expression and go find all the people he'd asked for assistance before, who couldn't put in the tiny bit of effort it would take to help the child... And she felt a large swell of gratitude towards Naruto, because he'd obviously put a lot of courage and trust into coming to her for help at all, which she really deserved after the way she'd treated him... And she was angry and ashamed and wanting desperately to take it out on someone.

Mikoto shelved the last one quickly in the back of her mind, and worked through her thoughts, looking at the reasons and the reactions before choosing the emotion she wanted to present. After a process of elimination, she decided that gratitude and happiness were the best for the moment, especially since they gave her the chance to be helpful to Naruto as well.

So, only a few seconds after the whiskered six year old finished speaking, Mikoto widened her already-present smile and clapped her hands together. "Of course, Uzumaki-kun! These goggles are such a pretty red color; I think I saw something that would go with them perfectly in the market, which would definitely be a great gift for you to give Sakura-chan. If you can buy two pretty red ribbons and bring them to me, I'll get the rest of the present for you to give her. Is that alright?"

Naruto beamed at her in a way that was usually reserved for Inu or Crow, and nodded enthusiastically. "Arigatou gozaimasu, Mikoto-san!"

"No problem, Uzumaki-kun. Now, why don't you go back outside and play with the others? I'm sure that your snacks will be ready for everyone soon enough."

"Hai!"

She watched him run back out the house, vaguely wondering how she'd ended up being some kind of after-school caretaker for the group of children, and then went back to fixing the simple dishes she'd chosen to make that day. As she fell into a rhythm of chopping, mixing, and rolling, Mikoto allowed herself to take her anger and shame back to the forefront of her mind.

...Kushina...

With the exception of his younger brother, who he freely admitted to spoiling, Itachi had never actually comforted a single person in his life. He'd seen plenty of emotionally distraught people, of course, but the truth of the matter was that he did his best to edge away from them and let them work whatever troubled them out on their own. He dealt in matters of the mind, not the heart.

For the past few days, however, he'd found himself at a loss. Jinya did an admirable job of acting like everything was normal in his life, but the smiles Itachi had gotten used to were few and far between, his usually astonishing appetite for sweets had all but disappeared, and their meals together lacked the characteristic trade of quips and short stories that used to be commonplace. Itachi usually preferred silence over noise, but this quiet disturbed him.

Truthfully, Itachi didn't know why he still met with the other boy. He'd stopped looking for information about the younger Haruno sibling ages ago, especially after conversing with her several times and coming to the conclusion that she was, without doubt, a very talented child... And nothing more. The free lunches and treats also weren't enough to entice him, since his ANBU pay alone was enough to buy out any of the places they frequented, even without digging into the Uchiha bank account that he had unrestricted access to. So... What was keeping him here?

All he had to do was stop showing up to lunch, really. Then he wouldn't have to deal with awkward silences or trying to figure out how to make someone feel better when he'd obviously never dealt with similar feelings in his life. The problem was that he didn't particularly want to stop showing up. It was nice to just sit around, eating cheap food and not worrying about how he looked to the people around him. The meetings were just relaxing, most of the time.

Having established that he didn't want to stop showing up, Itachi was back to his original dilemma: how could he help Jinya? ...This is aggravating, he found himself thinking, roughly skewering a piece of beef as he did so.

Sitting across from him in the barbecue place, Jinya found himself feeling slightly amused as his eating partner seemed to glare at nothing, destroying his meat more than eating it. "You know, you don't have to try and think of something to say. I'll be fine..." His smile faded. "The world just doesn't feel very real right now." And then, like a light flickering back to life, he smiled at Itachi again. "Maybe we should spar sometime, ne?"

"Spar?" Itachi couldn't keep the confusion out of his voice at the sudden subject change. But it was also a bit comforting to hear something more similar to their normal conversation. "Why spar?"

"Well, I think you'd have to agree, nothing says 'this is real' like a nice dose of ass-whooping."

The Uchiha heir raised an eyebrow, but nodded, privately amused. I suppose he really will be fine, if he can be cheerful about getting an 'ass-whooping'...

Thirty year old Yamanaka Inoichi had been the Head of the ANBU Intelligence Specialists as well as Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Division for nearly nine years. In that time, he had interrogated people from almost every shinobi village currently known and some that likely didn't exist anymore. The sheer amount of information Inoichi had gathered and memorized since becoming a jounin made him one of the most prized and most dangerous people in all of Konoha, if not all of the elemental countries. He knew everything from the names to the shoe sizes of thousands of people that he would likely never meet in his life; however, should he ever have the desire to do so, he could destroy every last one of their lives with just a few messages to the right people and not an ounce of blood spilt. While his jobs could never be described as pleasant in any facet, Inoichi wouldn't choose any other profession, because he'd come to love having that kind and amount of knowledge far too much.

In the last three months, however, Inoichi had begun to consider that perhaps, when he'd been offered the chance a year ago, he should've retired and returned to regular jounin missions. Despite the numerous plots he'd foiled and counter-intelligence he'd sowed in many different countries, the man had quickly come to the conclusion that the case a very select few in his department had most recently taken over was the most momentous that he'd ever been assigned in his life, which truly said something.

It had started a little over a week after New Year's day, when Inoichi and his apprentice, Morino Ibiki, had been called to the Hokage's office early on in the morning. They, along with Nara Shikaku, Yamashiro Aoba, and an ANBU known only as Wolf were then taken out of the actual office and into a small, private room literally crawling with what he'd recognized as security seals of every type.

The tension levels had skyrocketed as the door closed and the silence was finally broken by the Hokage, who only gave them one cryptic sentence: "Spread out your senses as strongly and far reaching as you can."

Intrigued, each of them had done so. Inoichi had found himself fighting to keep from shivering as he felt not only the different chakra types of the four who'd been ordered to expand their senses, but also the dense, heavy chakra of the Sandaime, who usually kept his energies completely hidden. Still, their searches had turned up fruitless, and he was the next to break the silence as he spoke, "There is nothing here, Hokage-sama."

"If I were to rely on my senses, I would believe the same," Hiruzen had replied lowly with a decidedly odd smile on his aged face, as if he were both pleased and disturbed. "Kindly reveal yourself to us, Daisuke-kun."

The words had seemed strange, just until a man appeared right between the five men and the Sandaime. There was no release of chakra, no smoke, no shift in the air around them, not a single sound. He was just there, and if Inoichi was correct, he had been standing in the same exact spot since they'd entered the room. And it wasn't as if he'd been hiding in shadows, either; the man had catlike gray eyes, hair that was possibly whiter than fresh snow, and he was dressed in a white t-shirt, blue sweat pants, and clunky looking brown boots. Honestly, he stuck out like a sore thumb once visible.

It was one of the scariest moments in Inoichi's life, barring the night of the Kyuubi attack and the day his daughter was born.

After all of his soldiers had collected themselves (Inoichi had been the only one not to draw a kunai at the sight of the man), the Hokage had further introduced the new person. "Gentlemen, I would like you to meet Haruno Daisuke. You may know him as one of Konoha's regular political delegates. You may also know him as a civilian council member. Or perhaps, if you heard the recent news, a dead man. From now on, however, none of that matters; you will know him only as Ghost, reconnaissance and infiltration specialist, personal soldier of Sarutobi Hiruzen... And former member of the organization known as Root." The Hokage's smile had become grim and slightly sadistic at the automatic shifts in the men's stances. "Also known as your teammate and informant for this SS-Rank Operation, codename Rabbit Hole."

And with those words, Inoichi had been drafted onto the riskiest mission of his life: the complete sabotage of Shimura Danzo and his entire Root division of ANBU. If he hadn't been clued into the danger by the double 'S' ranking of the mission, then he would've eventually guessed just by analyzing his team members for the operation.

Morino Ibiki, tokubetsu jounin at age twenty three, had been his apprentice in the art of Interrogation for two years. He was a genjutsu specialist with a rock hard demeanor and a level of pain tolerance that would allow him to ignore any wound up until a fatal injury, even with the addition of salt or acid to the flesh. Ibiki was in line to be the top interrogation specialist in Konoha's forces for his ability with making the enemy give up information.

Similar to Ibiki, Yamashiro Aoba was an information gathering specialist. The twenty-six year old jounin was mainly a reconnaissance-type, but his true addition to the team was a jutsu he'd developed himself which allowed him to project his consciousness into the actual brains of other people, where he gathered information by stimulating the neurons in different sections of the brain with his chakra and interpreting the electromagnetic waves into usable information. He was still perfecting the technique after seven years, but it was already classified as a kinjutsu.

The Wolf masked ANBU, codename 'Unabara,' was well-known to Inoichi. Unabara was usually one of the watchers on Uzumaki duty, and unlike others on the team who focused on the boy's protection, Wolf watched for the more hidden threats, and only stepped in if absolutely necessary. He was the one that stopped many assassination attempts before they actually went into motion, simply by following patterns of body language in the people around Naruto and using subtle illusion techniques as well as hypnosis to bring them in for questioning. He had a ninety-eight percent success rate in judging the intentions and reactions of others.

Nara Shikaku, who was also on of Inoichi's regular jounin teammates, was both a combat specialist and a master tactician. Unlike the others on the team, he was considered the 'heavy-hitter.' He analyzed the information that they gathered, searched through it with a fine-toothed comb for any discrepancies, and then used that information to create tactics to interrogate, suborn, apprehend or dispose of targets. Every plan he made had at least four different back-ups. Of course, most of his tactics were created in concert with the final member of their team.

Haruno Daisuke, or Ghost, was a stealth and infiltration specialist. Even without the haunted look in his eyes, his codename fit. Although he had the chakra levels of an academy student and the physical strength of maybe a strong genin, the man honestly lived up to the original ideals of the word 'shinobi.' Unless he wished it so, he was not seen, nor sensed, nor heard. He could be walking down an empty street in broad daylight, but nobody would see him if he didn't want them to. And it wasn't a jutsu, either; he simply moved and breathed in a certain way that made his presence disappear.

The man also carried around metric tons of hidden information, just the way that Inoichi did. Often, it seemed as if he'd picked his data straight from the brain of Danzo himself. What was more likely, however, was that he'd gotten the information from other Root members before coming to Konoha. After all, information wasn't the only thing Ghost brought to the team.

The operation wouldn't be possible at all if he didn't have the scroll with the key to Danzo's security seal on it. The man had already confirmed that he wasn't the person who'd created the release seal, nor did he even know anything about seals. But apparently, part of the price for the information he was giving was that the originator of the seal and the person who'd made the mission possible would remain anonymous and uninvolved.

Reading over some of the things they'd discovered, Inoichi thought that it was a smart idea. He would like to remain anonymous and uninvolved for as long as possible as well. One sentence of the information he carried was enough to have his young daughter killed and his entire clan decimated if it got out that he was involved. Nobody on their team needed any motivation to keep everything they were doing close to their chests.

If their security was pierced, their hearts would soon follow.

This will be a very long year...

A/N: Well, it's long again! So yay. And now you see why I'm asking about people's opinions on Daisuke. I usually hate OCs, but I kinda need plot developers, so I'm trying not to make them... Iunno... Irritating as fuck. Also, can you spot the similarities both Sakura and Jinya have with their father? Tell me what you think!