Two Seals, Three Demons

Kakashi had nearly finished the inner part of the seal when he came across the symbols written for Father and Mother. Actually changing Minato's seal was where his work got particularly sensitive. He had never directly studied Fuunjutsu regardless of how much he had seen with the Sharingan. He could read and write them perfectly, but anything else was beyond his understanding.

Silently he cursed his younger self's ignorance and then examined Naruto's seal once more in his Sharingan's memory. He had no idea what some of the symbols were for in the innermost ring of the eight-trigram seal and why would the shinigami be included? And why did it include sealing Kushina's and Minato's chakra?

Making sure that the pattern didn't stray, he carefully left out the parts that had a personal connection to Naruto, the demon, and those that made no sense to him. According to Sakura's original seal, all the new one needed to do was store chakra, not capture and store a soul.

They only had minutes before Sakura's seal was completely destroyed. Kakashi finished before Sasuke and walked around the entirety of the seal, checking his genin's work. Everything was done as perfectly as if Kakashi had done it himself and his pride in Sasuke grew even bigger.

Now that the seal was almost complete, Kakashi looked at the reality of Sakura's twisted chakra system and compared it to the new seal. It was getting sharper and sharper in the Sharingan's eye as time passed and he felt confident that he could make the additions perfectly.

Kakashi added a sealing ring in the same pattern around the edge of the eight-trigram seal, walking around the shimmering ink on the ocean with his brush. This one restricted the rest of the seal to only giving out enough chakra to fill Sakura's coils with as much as they could hold, which hopefully wouldn't overload her system. Then he added another inner ring, closest to Sakura's original. This ring he designed to constantly store her chakra, but instead of only leaving her enough to live by, it only stored as much as she made that didn't fit in her system.

The chakra from the soldier pill was slowly running out, but he had enough to fully activate the new seal. They didn't have time to double-check it.

"Done," Sasuke announced, wincing as he straightened up.

"Good. I am too." Kakashi and Sasuke walked over to Sakura and Naruto. He watched as she tried to meditate, but she couldn't hide her tears. Naruto was concentrating more than Kakashi had ever seen him do before and he glowed with chakra.

"Sakura, we finished writing it," Kakashi said gently, bending down to kneel on the ocean's surface next to her. "I'm going to fully activate it now."

Sakura nodded, her eyes still shut. She took a deep breath and her whole body shuddered. Kakashi filled his hand with as much chakra as he dared and set it on her new seal.

Glowing chakra ran down each line, starting from the middle and spreading out to the ends of the rings. Every line lit up and Kakashi breathed out a sigh of relief. The seal was good.

Kakashi, Sasuke, and Naruto watched as the original seal burned into nothingness and a blue light so bright they had to turn away filled the core of Sakura's new seal, spreading through her body. A high ringing noise filled the sky and the air around Team 7 grew warm, then got so hot Naruto cried out. With a sound like a thunderclap the huge seal suddenly expanded and shrank onto Sakura's body. It glowed faintly once and disappeared.

Everything around Team Seven was normal once more.

"It worked!" Naruto crowed, nearly letting Sakura fall into the ocean.

Sasuke caught her with a glare at his teammate. "She's unconscious and her burns are still there," he said with a frown.

"We need to start dressing her wounds," Kakashi said as he stood upright. "She's the most injured out of all of us." He covered his Sharingan and immediately felt the constant drain of chakra to his eye slow down. For the past few minutes, his Sharingan had been using up chakra faster than it usually did.

Sasuke followed Kakashi, holding Sakura as he jumped off the water (this took a few tries with Naruto) and onto the bridge again.

"Are you guys alright?" Tazuna and Inari hurried over to them. "We saw a huge light and heard something-"

"We might need to impose upon you a little longer," Kakashi said. Tazuna's eyes widened as he caught sight of Sakura in Sasuke's arms.

"Of course!" he said.

"Thank you," Kakashi said gratefully. He felt the world tip sideways.

Sasuke frowned at his sensei, who was lying face-down on the bridge.

"Chakra exhaustion, again?!" Naruto exclaimed. Sasuke didn't bother telling him that Kakashi had already taken a chakra-boosting pill.

The fact that he was a jinchuriki made Naruto's limitless chakra make a lot more sense. And also incredibly annoying. No wonder no one in the village liked him, and it wasn't just because he was an obnoxious idiot. The fox demon killed as many people as his - that man - did.

Tazuna carried Kakashi back to his house while Inari and Naruto finished cleaning up the bridge. "I've got it here gramps," Inari crowed cheerfully. Sasuke glanced at the kid in surprise. He sounded a lot like Naruto.

Tazuna smiled at his grandson. "I trust you Inari." The boy beamed.

To Sasuke's shock, Sakura's leg and shoulder wounds had already mostly closed by the time they all arrived at Tazuna's house again. Sasuke hadn't left her side once, even when he had to re-dress his own wounds.

Naruto had brought back everything from the bridge. Sakura's armor, two swords he didn't recognize, Kubikiribocho (which had taken fourteen Naruto clones to lift and carry to the house) and an odd assortment of weapons and gear was sitting by the wall.

"I feel so useless," Naruto ground out through clenched teeth as Sasuke scraped away the dead, charred flesh on Sakura's stomach and applied an antibiotic.

"That painkiller she took causes hallucinations," Sasuke said, after a long silence. "She might try to fight us."

"What, really?" Naruto's jaw dropped.

Sasuke glared at him. "You think I would joke about this?" he hissed. Naruto's face went hard, but then he looked back at Sakura with a hollow expression.

"Arrogant bastard," he said, but to Sasuke it sounded just as lifeless as when he had admitted he was a jinchuriki. He jumped out the window. Sasuke felt uneasy as he turned back to Sakura. How the hell was he supposed to know what to say?

When Sakura woke up that night, she whimpered and curled around her burns. Sasuke reminded himself to breathe.

"Sakura," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We dressed your wounds, you have to stay as still as you can or they'll open up worse than before." Sakura's eyes flicked to him and she slowly uncurled her body with a tortured expression that cut into Sasuke. Damn it, he thought.

Sakura's midsection glowed green and Sasuke fell backward in a panic. Was the seal failing?

Don't worry, he saw Sakura sign shakily. I've done this before. After a while, the glow faded and Sakura opened her eyes to look at him. She gave him a tiny, pained smile and Sasuke tried to smile back.

I promise not to die, she signed as she closed her eyes. Sasuke let out the breath he'd been holding and sat against the wall by her.

"You'd better not," he muttered.

The two of them stayed like that for a long time.

Kakashi woke to Sakura screaming.

He shot up out of bed with a kunai in his hand but blinked as he saw Sasuke, shirtless and still covered in gauze bandages, trying to calm down Sakura.

"Naruto, help," Sasuke hissed at the jinchuriki genin, who was staring at Sakura with his mouth open and fear written across his face. Sakura had her eyes open, struggling to break Sasuke's iron grip around her wrists and kick him. The bandages around her waist, thigh, and shoulder were soaked in fresh red blood and a wet washcloth was forgotten at her side.

No.

"NOW!"

Naruto twitched, and then bent to help hold her legs down.

"Sakura, Sakura," Sasuke said desperately. Sakura kept fighting. "Calm down, he's not here." Sakura jerked her hands against him uselessly; Sasuke was unmovable. "You're safe," he said.

"Damn she's strong," Naruto muttered. He promptly got kneed in the jaw. "Ow, dammit!"

He's not here?

Her uncle?

The kunai dropped from Kakashi's hand with a clang.

No...

Sakura was already in the worst stage of withdrawal, the one people didn't make it through. A wave of dizziness forced Kakashi to his knees. He shook his head and unsteadily made his way to Sakura and the boys. She would bleed out if the bandages weren't re-wrapped.

"How long has she been this bad?" he asked Sasuke. The boy gritted his teeth together and didn't reply. He had dark shadows under his eyes and a bruise was beginning to form on his shoulder.

"Two days," Naruto answered dully. He'd resorted to just laying across Sakura's legs. "Tsunami had Inari stay at his aunts' house because she keeps waking everyone up at night, but she's never been this violent before."

"This stage usually lasts three more days, if she doesn't die from it," Kakashi said emotionlessly.

"She won't," Sasuke replied, after a long moment. Kakashi hoped he was right and silently tied her bandages tighter.

"How do you know?"

At first, Kakashi hadn't even registered that it was Naruto talking. He sounded so broken.

"I just do, idiot," Sasuke snapped. "Believe it or just keep sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, I don't care. But don't give up on Sakura." He glared at Naruto, who couldn't even bring himself to be mad. Naruto was so tired. Every time he looked at Sakura or heard her, he felt this tightness in his chest that he didn't understand.

He had done this to her. Maybe everyone in the village was right. Maybe the demon would take over and kill everyone. It had killed Iruka's parents, probably Naruto's own parents, and now it would kill Sakura.

How could he put everyone in this kind of danger? "But..."

"You have something inside you that can kill everyone you love, so what?" Sasuke cut him off with a sardonic smile. That snapped something in Naruto.

"You BASTARD," he yelled. "You don't know what it's like, to have everyone hate you, afraid of you. To be afraid of yourself." Naruto shook. The only thing keeping him from socking Sasuke in the face was the fact that Sakura was still struggling underneath them both.

"Don't I?" Sasuke smirked at him, but it didn't reach his eyes. His voice was dark and cold. "I don't have someone that killed everyone I knew, everyone I loved, who could show up to do it again whenever he wanted to and then kill me? You're lucky," Sasuke sneered as Naruto stared at him, openmouthed. "You know where the demon is, and he's sealed. Itachi isn't. And because of that, everyone who knows me is in danger. Including you and Sakura. So shut up."

Naruto shut up.

A/N: See my profile!