Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own Naruto or any of its affiliations…I am merely borrowing its characters and settings to indulge my own fantasies and then share said fantasies with other people who equally do not own Naruto. I am not making any profit off this.

O O O

holding your scarred heart in hand, it's all the same

O O O

Nara Rei had two things she truly enjoyed: the first, napping when 'she had better things to do;' the second, watching her lovely partner, Fumiko, working.

Especially when the work involved Fumiko using her Yamanaka clan techniques and she got that cute, screwed up look of concentration on her face before she went completely slack. It was also nice because Rei's duty was to then look after said slack body. Not at all a disagreeable task.

More disagreeable, maybe, when her superior was in the room like some hovering, battered old owl that kept giving them a side-eye.

But there was good reason for Danzou to see the results of their efforts first hand; it involved sensitive information that Iwagakure had attempted to withhold though a seal on the inside of Haruno Sakura's throat.

Oh, right, it did involve compromising one of their operatives, so it was good that he was there for that reason as well.

They had known about the thing months ago upon Haruno's first, temporary return to the village for the Chuunin Exams. A subtle difference in the way she had started answering questions when they got to a certain subject – but between Fumiko's surveillance and Rei's ability to pick up patterns and discrepancies in said patterns, they had discovered the jutsu compelling the responses. It seemed she could only relay so much and what she did say conflicted information from other sources and remained too vague even under scrutiny.

It was a clever trick and it opened a lot of avenues for problems. Had Iwa learned about the information Haruno had been relaying back to Konohagakure? Had they coaxed anything else from her? Just how extensively could they have delved into her head?

But that was the life of spies; the give and take of knowledge, the anticipation of seizure and loss – and Fumiko would be able to tend to most of those bothersome variables through her own jutsu.

Back then, those many months ago, they hadn't tampered with the seal for the sole reason of not wanting to give up their trump card. There had been the hope Haruno would return to Iwa and, feeling confident, their shinobi would continue sealing more information.

Typical Iwa pride, assuming they had the upper hand when really Konoha knew the seal.

And specifically, Rei had the wonderful know-how of completely undoing it. Seals were sort of her thing– she'd been developing and modifying them since she was a child. She was perfectly able to work on Haruno's without any harm coming to the girl.

Well, any side effects, at least. Rei couldn't speak for other types of harm – like catching the attention of both Iwa and the preying owl.

But any attempts to work on the seal would have left a trace and they hadn't needed Iwa to know they were able to break the seal since she was scheduled to return. Now they had no such reservations about unlocking the information held within the thing.

Rei would unseal it and Fumiko would act as the conduit for the information, keeping it from Haruno's awareness. They were a good pair in that way.

"Do you insist on holding onto Yamanaka like that throughout this procedure?" Her superior asked, eyeing the two of them slouching against the wall, one peppy and smiling and the other knocked out.

Rei shrugged. "No available chairs."

"Get on with it, then." Danzou turned to the genin resting on the examination table.

Manoeuvring so that she could hold out a hand, Rei sent out chakra through her shadow technique up and around the girl, seals forming in their wake. It was a little disconcerting to see the pink-haired and rosy-cheeked girl wrapped up in black and purple chakra, but more disconcerting was that she had had so many people messing with her head. Must not have been very nice.

Someone had tampered with and rewritten the seal several times to account for different bits of information being stored. But it was little work for Rei to bypass it.

"I've got it," the girl said, rousing some and Rei knew it was Fumiko assuming control. "You were right, it's much better to go about this when she's under. Less resistance this way."

The first interrogation months ago had hit the smallest of snags from Haruno's unusual ability to struggle while under Fumiko's jutsu.

"Danzou-sama," Fumiko went on, "the information most recently sealed is concerning one Deidara no Iwa. Former jounin operative of Iwagakure, ex-student of the Tsuchikage-dono, and current affiliate with a mercenary group."

Rei looked away from Haruno to her superior. Danzou had no expression. "And what information do we have on this mercenary group that they've tried to hold from us?"

"No names, sir, aside from the aforementioned. Their goal was to take out an engineer and her tech designs for a future project between Earth and its neighbouring countries. They weren't successful, so far as she knows; her cell was able to intercept the mercenaries. She had a run-in with Iwa no Deidara, though it was brief and indirect. He does have a partner, however, that she fought. A puppet and poison user who is responsible for her shoulder injury. No country insignia. ...There is a memory of a distinctive pattern he wore, sir."

Ah, there. It looked like a minor twist or muscle spasm, but Rei knew it to be the hint of a smile on the man's marble face. Or a sneer, maybe. Whichever it was, he was pleased by something.

"And what is this pattern?" Said like he knew the answer.

"A black cloak, sir, and on it red clouds lined in white." A pause. "Actually, looking back now, there's more concerning that pattern, sir."

"Very good," a grumble of words that was rather ominous to Rei. "Record all of the restricted memories. I want the file in my hands tonight. When you are finished, Nara may restore the seal."

Poor Haruno, she didn't even know of the talons so slowly, ever so slyly sinking into her.

Rei dipped her chin, bowed. "Yes, sir."

O O O

Three months since she had walked out the village gates, five hours after she had walked back through them, and four hours after her debriefing with the Hokage – Sakura learned that Sasuke had defected from Konohagakure a week and a half prior to her return.

"Oh, you didn't know?"

She was very certain that she had heard that sentence before. More than once, Sakura thought. There were many things she didn't know that others around her did.

"No," she said and she didn't know how to process the information, how to react appropriately to it when she was surrounded by so many strangers.

It was evening and to mark the official end of the first year of the Exchange Programme, Konoha was hosting a formal ceremony to say, 'we did it! And almost no one died!'

Looked and sounded that way to Sakura. They might as well have put up a banner.

Crowded into the largest room of the city's most modern hotel were shinobi, clan leaders, established merchants and business owners, and dignitaries – representatives from both Earth and Fire, as well as other surrounding villages who were on good terms with both parties. The guests, shinobi and civilian alike, were cleaned up, dressed up, and they all pontificated and mingled, attempting to one-up the other.

And as Konoha's proud representative, Sakura was there to be shuffled around and shown off. Short, stilted conversations with people who weren't actually that interested in what she had to say, some who were too interested in how she looked, and some who didn't even look at her at all.

The whole thing was too much for Sakura. She felt conjuring smiles was a thankless task beyond her and the damn sling around her arm was digging uncomfortably against the seam of her dress at her neck. She didn't know anyone and didn't care for anyone she met.

It was somehow both extremely tense and exceedingly boring.

But Teru was there, too, and acting buoy to one another, they had sneaked off together like true ninja to hide in the corner of the room behind the open bar and a row of ficus.

He had been the one to ask her how she was doing, and through a series of questions and answers, gotten to the truth that Sakura was entirely out of the loop of recent events.

"Huh," he said, watching her face, waiting for cracks to show. "Well, this is a story, so I'm going to prepare and get some drinks and a snack if you don't mind."

And, for privacy reasons, the two escaped to an unoccupied balcony off the hotel's ballroom. The night was chilly, but there was freedom on the balcony. Teru had swiped a bottle sake and they sat with their legs hung through the bars of the railings, looking out over the village as the sky darkened to a deep blue and little flickering lights came on above and below.

Teru talked and she listened.

Of her Team Seven from the Chuunin Exams, Sakura was the only student remaining; Sasuke had abandoned them, Naruto had left to pursue his own training with Jiraiya of the Legendary Three, and although Kakashi was still around, according to Teru, his cell had been officially disbanded as of that morning. Even Yamato-taichou had rejoined his old squad.

Teru filled in what he had gleaned from Sasuke's defection and the failed mission to retrieve him and Sakura let the story wash over her. It was unbelievable in some respects, awful in many, and wonderful in others.

"That means Lee-san's surgery was a success..." To think their Hokage was so capable. Brilliant. Sakura resolved to see Lee as soon as possible. And Ino, too, considering the state of her team mate. She had a few visits to make.

"Wonder why that bastard even left... All those genin... Naruto went mad over it, seriously."

But Sakura knew what Sasuke hoped to find outside the village. Not that she knew why, exactly, beyond his vendetta – but it was strength, power he was seeking. And she knew from whom he was looking for it.

"I'm thankful everyone else came back..." Alive. Shallow and trite to say, but she was.

How could she or Naruto have ever forgiven Sasuke if it had gone differently? She thought it would have been like how Meiko and Yuuji had looked at Sakura after the mission in Kusa. If Sakura hadn't been there, if it had only been three on the mission, then maybe the one to get the last antidote might have been Otsuka... No strong ill-will behind the looks, but simple questions born from mourning.

Shaking her head at the thought, Sakura reprimanded herself for making everything about herself again. A despicable habit, that.

"And how was my lovely hometown, Iwa?" Teru asked, playful, ironic, and a little warm in his cheeks. He was doing much better with his sake than she.

Sakura stared into her nearly full cup. She didn't care much for the drink, and so she swirled the alcohol in her hand before making herself tip its contents back at once. It was a mild burn compared to ones she had known before, and Sakura made a sad twist in the crux of her lips.

She couldn't hold the expression.

"It wasn't good," she said. The muted sound of bland music and conversation humming out from indoors. "Otsuka is dead."

"Oh..." Tactfully, Teru waited a long moment before he asked who that was.

Less tactfully, Sakura started crying. She didn't know what to say, what she was allowed to say, and so she hiccuped into her clutch as Teru skilfully and quietly moved the sake away from between them. He let her work through it and patted at her shoulders, making soft, consoling sounds.

"Sorry about that," she said when she finally found her breath again.

Teru shrugged. "Eh. It's okay to be sad, right? You just got to keep moving, too."

"Right."

"Besides, Otsuka would probably rather see you kick some ass in the Chuunin Exams than cry, right?"

There was another Chuunin Examination scheduled in a few weeks as part of the treaty; Iwa and Konoha were in a joint tournament for the first time in decades. Sakura and Teru would be competing on opposing sides. Which was strange to acknowledge because it didn't feel that way, not always.

Sakura smiled, didn't quite mean it, but she could do the routine. Letting the subject move, she teased, "if I'm able to go, if I see you there, I hope you won't be as lazy in the ring as you were in team training."

He laughed, stole one of the little shrimps she had brought out on a napkin and forgotten about, and winked at her.

Taking a shrimp for herself, "do you think we'll be in the same match up?"

"Eh, I hope not. I'll just forfeit if that's the case." He grinned, "yeah, if that kunoichi from Suna is there, then I'll have a reason to really show off."

And her smile became a little less forced.

The next day Teru was gone as well.

O O O

During her debriefing, the Hokage had mentioned finding a cell for her, but days passed and there wasn't any news on that front. Sakura was left to continue her training on her own for the time being. Which was fine, fine. She would simply draw what she could from her former teachers.

She didn't feel like waiting on her arm to heal and it never really had fully, and she thought that it might never be quite normal again. Whenever the shoulder pulled too taut or some muscle or nerve snapped and her fingers went numb she kept to meditating. And the strain only pushed her to work more on using less hand seals for jutsu, condensing them through excellent control whenever she could.

But simply because she didn't have a complete team didn't mean she wasn't busy or her time wasn't in demand. She spent hours in the library studying seals, preparing for potential challengers in the upcoming exams, and there was that one persistent sparring partner who showed up at her training grounds some mornings.

"Sakura-san."

Out at a river on the edge of the village proper where Sakura was doing sets of shunshin steps between different designated spots, working on her split times and chakra conservation when the ANBU found her. The idea was tracking energy signals she had placed in the river current, getting back and forth between those moving points.

She didn't answer him, not too interested in breaking her stride. If it was urgent then he wouldn't wait, but Sakura didn't hear him again until she had finished. It was the fourth time he had sought her out and she thought it would be another hour or so of fighting and testing one another's techniques.

He surprised her, however.

"I've been thinking about your situation, Sakura-san," he said, moving to stand next to her as she moved back to shore for water and a break. It was unusual for him to want to talk.

"What situation is that?"

"I noticed, recently – since your return – that you're a genin without a jounin instructor."

Sakura snorted, a bit indelicately, and thought she had noticed, too. Covering her frustration, she said, "Tsunade-sama is busy. I'm sure she'll get to it soon. Maybe she's just waiting for the next academy class to graduate and they'll fit me in somewhere with those students..."

Not that she wanted that. Not at all.

"Wouldn't that be an unorthodox arrangement?"

"There have been worse arrangements in the past." During times of war, for one thing.

The ANBU let that comment go, continuing on the route he wanted to take. "I mentioned your situation to my superiors."

Sakura lowered the canteen she had at her lips. "Why?"

"Don't you want another instructor, Sakura-san?"

She laughed, but it wasn't a nice sound. Ticking off her fingers, "let's see... I don't have the greatest track record with teachers: my first sensei abandoned me, the second ignored me, and the third died."

Not to be dramatic and to make it all about her, but damn was there a pattern. If it involved Haruno Sakura, things seemed to have a way of going wrong.

"If anything," she winced, "I can't imagine someone wanting me as a student given my history..."

"Died, huh?" The boy was thoughtful. Sakura had moved to sit on the grassy, leaf-covered knoll looking down at the water and the ANBU dropped to the ground beside her. He tipped back his porcelain mask – a new one to replace the mask she had broken – enough to scratch at his chin. A hum. "That must mean...now things can only get better."

It was almost something like a joke, the way he said it. Sakura gave him what she hoped was an unimpressed look.

"So what is it, then? Are you going to teach me, ANBU-san?"

"No. My superior suggested you apprentice under the Godaime Hokage-sama."

It was cooler out now that winter was closing in, so Sakura could have shivered from her dropping temperature just as much as from excitement. It was a ridiculous suggestion, of course, to train under the Hokage, but for a second, she thought just maybe...

"Right, yeah," she said, pushing down that hopeful idea. Making her sarcasm as clear as possible, "I'll just waltz in there, no reason, and ask for the Hokage to take me in as her student."

The ANBU nodded. "You should probably walk in, Sakura-san, but yes. Like that. My superiors think the chakra control you exhibit, combined with its dual nature, makes you a natural successor for her techniques. Were she willing to teach you."

Another huff, but less bite. Sakura leaned forward to poke at her toes peeking out from her sandals. Cold to the touch, so she warmed them up. "...If she were willing."

"My superiors think – "

"What do you think?" Sakura asked, cutting him off. She was curious; he'd become a friend, or at least she had started to appreciate his opinion when it came to fighting, and even if she didn't know his name, his identity, little things like that, she wanted to know what he thought about this. "Well?"

"I think...it would be okay for you to ask her. And that she can't punish you for something like that."

"Hm..." Sakura thought it would still be a little presumptuous.

"As well, you both have that monstrous strength so –"

Sakura punched him in the arm, but after awhile, she thought she would take his advice – and she didn't even have to wait very long to act on it. In the middle of their spar, a bird interrupted their grappling with a summons to the Hokage Office.

The months old promise for another meeting with Tsunade had finally come to fruition.

O O O

From their meeting together, Sakura learned the Hokage liked terms and conditions.

Another fortnight and the year's second round of Chuunin Exams had started, this time taking place in Kusagakure. The set up of the exams was different and Sakura found that along with herself, only a two other rookies from her class were competing: Aburame Shino and Inuzuka Kiba. Team Nine, in its entirety, was also there, even though a three man cell was not required for entrance.

On the opening day of the exams the genin were lined up in a room for registration, waiting to hand in their applications and verify their participation. Sakura was busy scanning the room, looking for familiar faces other than the Leaf shinobi around her, when she realised she was standing next to Hyuuga Neji.

At the same time, both she and Neji noticed they were each wearing slings on opposing arms; and they were each silently offended by this mirror image. It was uncomfortable. Neji hadn't quite figured her on his list of mild to severe disdain towards others and Sakura still questioned his sanity and judgement after he had nearly killed Hinata.

Kiba was the one to pick up on their tension and, to Sakura's surprise, defend the other boy. "He's getting better, Sakura-chan. Slightly smaller stick up his butt these days."

And she had heard from Teru that Neji had just about given his life in order to help Naruto. Grudgingly, she used her own injured arm to gesture to him, catching his attention. "What happened to yours?"

"I was stuck through by an organic projectile from an Oto nin." His eyes dropped to her arm, returning the question.

"Sword stab wound on a mission. Happened not far from here."

"Was your mission successful?"

"It was..." She thought about that fact. "My squad leader didn't make it."

"Ours was a failure." Your team mate left us for dead. "We lived."

"Oh." Sakura wanted to say something – to him and Lee and Kiba. All she really thought, however, quietly and to herself, was that – "I wouldn't have been able to stop him, either."

Her admission, though softly spoken, was heard by the Konoha genin around her. Feet scuffed at the floor and no one said anything, too aware of her. Which made the timing of Sakura being called forward to the clerk rather awkward.

Presenting her identification and forms to the man, the Kusa chuunin read aloud, mumbling to himself, "Haruno Sakura...Mission status is good... Nominated by Senju – Senju Tsunade? Tsunade-sama?"

Sakura shrank a little from the sudden fervour around her, but mostly it was Tenten's exasperated, "seriously? Everyone in her cell gets to train with a Sannin? That's a thing now?" that made her want to disappear.

For one thing – it wasn't like that. She wasn't yet a student of the Fifth; Tsunade had only agreed to teach her if Sakura did well in the exams, and so had to nominate her by extension – being that Sakura didn't have a cell and jounin sensei. The Hokage had acted sponsor and entered her out of necessity. It wasn't anything to get excited about.

But the word of having a Kage as a sponsor was hard to stop from spreading, and it wasn't exactly helpful that Sakura had such a unique appearance and memorable name to tag along with the news. It made pointing her out between other genin and shinobi a lot easier and whispers tended to follow her wherever she went when she had downtime.

Until, finally, several weeks into the exams and the night before the third stage matches, she heard something worthwhile from some of those whispers.

"Isn't that the one sponsored by a Kage that you were talking about?"

Sakura slowed her steps ever so much. She was in the hotel lobby, tagging behind Shino, Kiba, and their jounin sensei after a shared meal together.

Answering the first, the second genin whispered, "oh, no, not that one. I meant the Oonoki-sama's legacy, that prodigy of his. Kurotsuchi..."

And like that, the entire atmosphere of the tournament started to revolve around the rivalry between Sakura, student of the Godaime Hokage – apparently – and Kurotsuchi, granddaughter of the Sandaime Tscuchikage. It didn't matter that the two had yet to speak their entire time in the tournament, and had not seen one another in the first two stages, they were now pitted against each other in a growing, very epic, highly anticipated battle.

When the third stage arrived, Sakura stared at the board showing the map of their matches, and thought that the finals seemed to have been structured around their rumoured rivalry. At one end of the pyramid, Kurotsuchi, and at the other, Sakura, with the intent – if they were each good enough – that they would end up in the culminating fight together.

After her fist match win against a Kusa nin, all Sakura had to do was get past Shino, beat either Neji or Suna no Temari, and survive with enough energy to still face Kurotsuchi in the fourth.

Simple.

But Kurotsuchi had to defeat Gaara in her second match, so Sakura didn't feel like she had worry.

Until Kurotsuhi turned Gaara's sand to glass with her impossibly hot ninjutsu and literally shattered the Demon from the Sand in the ring.

"Oh...shit, oh shit, I'm gonna die, man!" That was Kankurou, standing a few paces from Sakura in the participants' observation box. The set up was similar to the arena in Konoha, if not a bit smaller and a bit older, a bit wilder in its mossy, ivy-vines-heavy presentation.

Shino and Sakura, again having the luck to be present for the finals, were standing next to each other and they each eyed the Sand genin and puppet user with no small amount of sympathy. Kankurou had won his second round match against Teru, to Sakura's great disappointment, and was scheduled to fight the winner of the Gaara versus Kurotsuchi match in the third.

To Temari, who stood next to her brother with something like a mixture of anger and awe on her face as she watched the Iwa kunoichi, Kankurou went on, "what am I going to do? I mean, Gaara would have let me live at least, but this girl! She's going to slay me..."

"You could always forfeit again," Temari suggested, a little too cheerfully.

"And what, give myself some sort of reputation? I can't keep doing that at every exam..."

Neji, who was on Shino's other side, and furthest from the Suna siblings, laughed, short and dry. He hadn't quite lost all of his arrogance. Said, "forfeiting is a coward's way out."

"Wasn't forfeiting how Shikamaru got promoted?" Sakura wondered aloud, and actually saw how she dropped more in the Hyuuga prodigy's standings.

Neji twitched his nose and looked away, only to be greeted by what he must have thought was an even less appealing sight.

"Our match is next up, Prince Pretty Eyes," Temari said, calling out to Neji as she unlatched the fan on her back. "You should rethink about that opinion on forfeiting."

"I would never," he promised.

It was just a little bit satisfying for Sakura to see him lose to Temari. Her wind jutsu had been powerful enough to counter the spin of Neji's kaiten and she had used a split second opening to attack him with her summons. The weasel acted decoy to blind Neji with a system of flares, the light strong enough to overwhelm his Byakugan. His greatest weapon proved to be his greatest crutch and the boy fell in his uneasy, uncertain blindness.

In the second round match between Sakura and Shino, Sakura took her second victory. While it was gross being swarmed by bugs while attempting to fight, and while it was nauseating to have those bugs drain her chakra, it was possibly the worst to let those bugs absorb said chakra only for her to then manipulate it into a torrent of churning energy. She ended up covered in chikai pulp and she had to endure listening to Shino crying out at the sight and feeling of losing half his colony in an instant.

A cruel move, but the match went quickly and her stamina didn't suffer much.

"Damn," Kankurou said of her when Sakura returned to the box, "and I thought that guy was something scary."

"Isn't it time for you to get back in the ring," Sakura reminded him, scraping the film of insect remains off her hair. She glanced over to the end of the box where Kurotsuchi was lounging in a chair she had made from a douton jutsu. The girl was sticking senbon needles into the ceiling in the shape of a hangman. Sakura made a grim smile. "Good luck."

"Hey, disciple of the Godaime Hokage," Kurotsuchi said, not stopping her movements and not looking up, "I really want to face Deidara-nii's student."

As it went – the two did meet in the fourth and final round. Sakura's third win had come from Temari hanging up in the air on her fan, thinking she was out of Sakura's reach after the girl retreated from their taijutsu brawl. But with the aid of chakra tagged onto the girl's shoulder, Sakura had brought Temari down with shunshin step and a single hit. Without her fan to deflect chakra enhanced hits, the Sand kunoichi was wide open to a debilitating strike. All of Sakura's practice on the river's surface had been for reaching an airborne opponent – one person in particular – and it paid off in the ring.

In the fourth, Kurotsuchi had no intention of letting Sakura get close.

She turned the earth of the arena beneath Sakura's feet to quicklime, heated it with a suiton jutsu and intended to melt Sakura into oblivion. Sakura avoided the initial burn by leaping into the air and sticking her tanto into the ground as a temporary perch. She pulled the water up from under her into her own retaliatory suiton jutsu, a boiling wave to crush Kurotsuchi.

The ring offered little area of reprieve for Sakura to hide from the depths of the quicklime, which the girl seemed to make in inexhaustible amounts, and without anywhere to retreat to, with only so much chakra left to keep using suiton jutsu, Sakura was eventually backed into a corner. She split the ground open under her foot, aimed to swallow Kurotsuchi whole, and still – painfully so – lost in the eleventh minute.

...But in the end, she got her promotion and her apprenticeship under the Fifth.

O O O