Sakura didn't mean to fall asleep. Dusk loomed in the horizon, and with it, Tsunade's decision about Sai. But no matter how much much she wondered how Sai was doing or how Naruto was holding up or what in the hell Kakashi was thinking, really, at any time—her body simply couldn't keep up.

She'd become a terrible sleeper over the last few years, prone to long periods of time without rest altogether. When she did sleep, therefore, Sakura was somewhat used to closing her eyes and waking up only to find the moon peeking through her curtains once more.

That was, partly, why she woke up with the feeling of terror. When she felt a breeze wash over her (she hadn't opened the window?) she tripped out of her bed and stumbled over to the window, terrified of what she would find once she pulled open the curtain—

Perched on the ledge was a singular creature, almost as black as the expanse of sky behind it. If not for the unusual coloring of its eyes—one normal, the other red—she would have had trouble distinguishing it in the darkness.

"Not now," Sakura began, voice hoarse from lack of use. But she was too late. Before she knew it, she had already been transported to the discomfiting dream-illusion plane that was the backbone of Shisui's genjutsus.

For a moment, she stared at it, speechless with rage. She quickly broke out of her stupor.

"You," she stalked toward it, voice low and dangerous, "I have put up with your shit for years now, I've done almost everything you've wanted, sure, to some extent, because I started to see something in it for myself, but also because you made it very clear that you weren't interested in giving me much of a choice. I accepted that back then, but I'm stronger now—you made me that way—and you are going to listen to me, when I say that I don't have time for this—"

"We're hours from dawn," the crow interrupted calmly. "I can make months of time one minute in the real world. I have no interest in making you hate me, despite what you might believe. "

Sakura wrestled with what to say next. In the end, she demanded, "Well, why are you here?"

The crow turned its head until just its red eye gleamed at her, almost accusingly. "It's time."

It took a few moments for Sakura to understand. Her eyes caught on the sharingan and widened, a passerby viewing an impending collision.

"Why now?"

"Because you're ready."

Her face twisted at that. "Am I?" she challenged. "Or do you just need me to be?"

Shisui gazed indifferently at her.

"I don't understand how you can possibly believe I would trust you anymore," she muttered.

"And once again, I am shown that humans truly are the most ungrateful of living beings," was the creature's swift response. "I have given you every tool you possess now. I taught you to survive, when others would have left you groveling in the dirt. I taught you to become someone who would hunt those who would ever dare to harm you."

"And?" Sakura snapped, "Don't paint yourself as a selfless benefactor. The entire time, you've made countless demands on my person. I've shed blood for you, and I still don't know why. All those missions, forcing me into ANBU, making me live with this—"

Illusions, scent distorters, disguises, lies, secrets: all manners of means used to make sure no one would ever know Sakura and Saori Mori were the same person. Sakura wouldn't be surprised if she spent the latter half of her life (assuming she hadn't lived past the half-mark already) spending the admitted small fortune she had made on therapists.

"Don't be naïve," Shisui snapped back. "Nothing is free in this world. Your anonymity was part of the price for your training. And of course, your training serves its own end."

"What end?" Sakura exclaimed, frustration taking over. "Why, of all people, me?"

The crow shifted its weight—in other circumstances, she would have read it as hesitance, perhaps even discomfort. Now, though, she saw only layers upon layers of deception, and that Shisui was likely delicately manufacturing a very superficial reveal.

"I needed someone who could use my sharingan to fight another pair. You had the chakra control and…seemed easily moldable. Of course, even I err now and again."

Sakura blinked dumbly. "You want me to fight Itachi?"

The crow was silent for a long pause, but Sakura read a lot in that silence about its estimation of her.

"Not Itachi," it revealed tonelessly. "Sasuke."

And that—well, that wasn't what she had expected. Though, given how bizarrely protective Shisui was of Itachi, and the fact that Sasuke wanted to avenge his clan…

"Itachi can't handle Sasuke himself?" Sakura asked doubtfully.

"Itachi doesn't want to handle Sasuke," Shisui cut her off brusquely. "Not in any way that ends with his survival, at least."

She squinted at it. "Not sure how you missed this, but: Itachi is part of the Akatsuki. I don't think he'll have any trouble—"

"Is today the day you want to cross me, Sakura?" the crow asked softly.

Sakura looked at it stoically. "To be perfectly honest, I don't mind the odds."

"Is today that day?"

Sakura didn't believe she needed a sharingan to confront Sasuke. Something else was at play here, something Shisui was still hiding.

Eyes narrowed, she evaluated the crow.

"Fine," she said finally, softly. "Get on with it."

She wasn't quite sure what she expected. In the end, the ritual amounted to a small fire, copious provisions of blood, chanting, and a small seal placed at the space just beneath her ribcage. At first, nothing seemed to happen, and Sakura wondered if it all been a part of an elaborate prank, if the crow had finally come to possess some sort of ill-informed sense of humor.

But then a searing, terrible pain suddenly split her head, the focal point her left eye socket. She stumbled back.

"If the fighting can be stopped, I'd like to stop it."

"Me too."

A solemn pact, made between one breeze and the next, beneath the yellow-green canopy of leaves.

She curled over her knees, eyes scrunched. And then, she was flooded by a deluge of memories that were not her own.

They were cousins, but somehow—until this moment—Shisui couldn't remember having really ever spoken to Itachi. Had not realized until today that the ally he had been searching for could possibly be his own blood. Well, it was no surprise it had taken so long to find him. Shisui had many, many cousins.

They didn't understand each other at first. At least, not beyond this one tenet they shared. Potentially, this was because of Itachi being so…odd. Naturally talented, yes, but glum too.

"What is the purpose of a shinobi?" Itachi asked him again and again. "What is the meaning of a village?"

It was the sole content of their first conversations. Itachi really wasn't a verbose personality—precisely, Shisui guessed from the few remarks he did share, because he spent so much time thinking. And if his mood was somber, it soon revealed itself to be a result of the fact that so many of his cousin's thoughts were decidedly unhappy ones.

Shisui himself, of course, wasn't built for such sustained introspection; and, more pointedly, he was considerably better at concealing his own bouts of grimness with noncommittal smiles. Still, clan members began to mention their names as a pair, a scarce breath of pause between—a phenomenon that baffled him every time he observed it.

Because no matter how outwardly comparable they were, there was no question as to how crucially they were dissimilar as well.

Shisui was cognizant enough of himself to realize that his decisiveness at times veered into impulsiveness; his judgement, admittedly, was swift and unforgiving. But Itachi, especially as he grew older, was increasingly quiet and somber, reflecting and reevaluating in cycles.

There were other differences as well. The fact that no matter how much time Itachi time spent with his lofty philosophizing, his love for his family was as steadfast as the mountains surrounding Konoha. Shisui watched it all with confusion, and if he was being strictly honest with himself, not a little resentment.

Since learning about the coup, Shisui had long-forsaken his clan. A quick, clean—and mostly unobserved—break. Itachi's persisting love—even knowing about the coup and resolving to prevent it—would be a profound weakness, Shisui guessed.

It wasn't a sudden progression, but slow, like the water trickling out of the spout in front of his house.

(Until, one day, the earth below started to bevel, to cave in and crumble.)

They spent time together. They talked. But the final blow was when he could see the way Itachi listened to him carefully, looked to him for guidance, as though Shisui were—

Shisui had no family. Except, maybe, for Itachi.

A blind man would have been able to tell that the care he had nurtured for Itachi was one his cousin really only returned similarly toward Sasuke. Still, Shisui didn't bother resenting him for it. Itachi would shoulder the world for his little brother, if that was what the universe required of him. And, possibly, Shisui would do the same for Itachi, simply because he had no one else left.

Sakura groaned, eyes fluttering. Blood began to seep from her closed eye.

Months pass, seasons come and go. Shisui grew wiser and harder.

He entered a state of self-imposed isolation, and Itachi—a bit baffled—let him. He couldn't help but hate himself a little during it. It was only because he had allowed himself to care so much, that he felt such a keen sense of loss after.

He began to share less and less. He began to tell Itachi "Don't worry, it'll be fine," even though Shisui knew better.

"Shisui," Sakura gritted out at the crow, "what…" Her throat closed on the words.

"Something didn't feel right, so I came back."

"I'm glad."

They were of a height then. It struck him keenly as he continued to speak: explained Danzo's involvement, the inevitability of the coup, and what must happen to the Uchiha. He knew that silently Itachi was being broken down, piece by piece, from each word. But, now, it was beyond whatever Shisui wanted—it was necessary.

"They'll come after my left eye too." It was almost night, the oranges and blues of dusk so beautiful his heart hurt. "I need you…to take it."

"Shisui." It was the first time Shisui had ever seen anything like anger on his cousin's face. He wished he would have had the time to see more.

(Who would have known they would end up here, years after they made a pact with beneath the yellow-green canopy of leaves, with Shisui's death the price of their clan's salvation?)

"You're the only one I can trust. Protect the village, and the Uchiha name as well."

"I will, but where will you—"

"That isn't the only thing that I need to give you."

The wind rustled through the leaves, the edge of the cliff brushed against his heels, and his head exploded with pain as he removed his eye.

What he didn't say was "You'll be forced to walk down a long, dark path, one that's filled with pain and suffering, and you'll only have to take it because I was too weak."

"Don't worry, Itachi," Shisui smiled instead, softly, fiercely. "It will be fine."

And then he plunged from the cliff.

Sakura's eyes snapped open, and the world was split in front of her. On one side, she seemed to peer through a dusty, near-opaque window. But the other: she saw with a clarity she could never have even conceived of before. It was as though she had been blind before and only now was seeing for the first time, color and texture little more than abstract concepts to her until this moment.

Her face was wet, she realized, wiping it. Blood. Then her gaze moved upwards. In place of the crow's left eye was an empty socket.

"Was that…even real?" she asked tonelessly. "Or just another one of your attempts at stringing me along."

The creature met her gaze without reservation.

"Is he really dead?" she asked softly, confused by the tight feeling in her chest. These…feelings, they weren't hers.

"Yes," Shisui said, blunt.

"And Itachi," she exhaled, hands tightening into fists at her side.

"Yes," he repeated again.

Even saying the name now inspired something in her that had not been there before—it was a foreign emotion, alien to her. And yet, its hold was compelling.

Sakura groaned and rubbed at her eyes furiously. "Is this going to stay here forever now," she demanded. "It hurts—"

"Already unbearable?" Shisui mocked. The crow, Sakura reflected, was nothing like its namesake. And yet—

"You were affected by it," she realized abruptly. "Did you know—?"

"That this imprint would be tied to the eye when I accepted it? That something of the original Shisui's outlook, his sensitivity, his motivations could remain in what I considered then only to be an ownerless weapon?" the crow finished for her, curt. "No."

"And now you've infected me too," Sakura noted with a humorless smile. It soon fell flat.

Danzo. Both for Sai and now for Shisui—he deserved to be toppled from his pedestal.

"Something still doesn't make sense," she muttered. "How did someone like...that Itachi end up massacring his whole clan?"

"He was left with no other choice."

Something about the crow's words were fierce, impenetrable, though he was as unreadable as ever.

"But—"

"Enough," Shisui snapped at last. "No matter how much time we have, there is much to do. And you'll have to master the basics before you can get anywhere near the mangekyou sharingan."

When Sakura entered the real world again, she felt like she had aged far more than the time she had actually spent in the genjutsu—and even that had been months.

She was relieved, as well, that the world was blurrier around her and that her regular left eye was in its usual place. With a few hand signs—that was all the ritual now required—she could access Shisui's eye when she needed; and Sakura was determined to keep that time to as minimal as possible.

The streets of Konoha were mostly abandoned, the only sounds from birds and the few shopkeepers who were still closing up. She reached the door to Tsunade's office just as Naruto did. Once seeing the other, both paused.

As the sunset in the horizon, they shared a grim look of understanding. Then, they entered.

The sight of Sai chained with ANBU guards on either side of him proved to be a little too much for Naruto.

"Look here, Tsunade-baa-chan," Naruto growled, "I know technically you're the hokage, but the way I see it—"

Sakura's voice rose to join his. "He was coerced, and he was sealed to prevent him from telling anyone—"

"And that's why he's only being suspended from active duty for the foreseeable future," Tsunade cut them both off irately, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

Sai straightened, blinking like a newborn chick: wondering and a bit lost.

"Come on, baa-chan," Naruto groaned, but his face was regaining its usual pallor now. "It's just Sai. He already went through T&I and everything."

"Well 'just Sai' was working for an organization that I thought was long-dead. So just Sai is going to make sure he keeps an extremely low profile until I can manage looking at him without getting a migraine from the requisite anger, understand?"

Her amber eyes narrowed on Naruto and Sakura. "And you two—keep an eye on him. That's an order."

Sakura examined the clock above the hokage's head, foot tapping rapidly. "Sure. But if Sai really is such a security risk, then why isn't our jounin captain here?"

Tsunade's lips curled humorlessly as she looked at Sakura. "If he were a security risk, Sai's throat would be slit and he'd be lying in a ditch somewhere at your captain's hands. As it stands, regardless of what Sai wants, the people previously in charge of him may attempt to make contact with him again when he is alone."

"Ah," Naruto remarked, brow clearing. "Well. See you later then!" It was clear his plan was to leave before Tsunade can change her mind.

"Make sure later isn't too soon, brat," Tsunade muttered. She swirled her cup and downed it in one go.

"Impressive," Sai reflected as the ANBU removed the chains from his wrists. Sakura couldn't quite stifle her laugh, and she quickly found her mentor's ill-tempered attention on her.

"Get out of here," the hokage snapped, "Give me some peace. Out!"

They high-tailed it out of the building before objects could be thrown in their direction. Once they were a few blocks away, they slowed down to a more moderate pace. Her gaze darted to Naruto consideringly. Then, she recalled the near-level of toxicity in his apartment's air.

"You'll have to stay over at my place," Sakura declared, resigned.

Sai nodded peaceably, but Naruto's eyes widened. "You're having a slumber party," he exclaimed, hands flying out, "Without me?!"

"You can come along," Sai generously granted, nodding his head in self-affirmation. Sakura's mouth moved soundlessly for a few seconds, aghast yet again at the true failure of Sai's social skills, this time in his offering her meager apartment up like it was his own.

But then her eyes landed on Naruto, and she grunted and gave up.

"Let's do takeout from Ichiraku's!"

Sakura's stomach grumbled obligingly as they made their way over to the ramen place. Thankfully, given the late time, there wasn't much of a line ahead of them. Within twenty minutes, they were shouldering their way through Sakura's door with full cartons of ramen in their hands.

Her apartment was by no means big, but she had some open space near the foot of her futon where she planned to lay out the two mission pallets that she had. She started pulling out some extra pillows and quilts as Naruto and Sai began digging into their dinners.

"You know," Naruto slurped loudly, "your place looks a lot different from what I imagined."

"Really?" Sai responded. "What did you expect?"

"A lot more pink," Naruto confided.

Sakura was in the middle of rolling her eyes when Sai chose to chip in. "From what I've seen, Sakura seems to wear a lot more red than pink," the black-haired boy said, forehead scrunching contemplatively. "That, for example."

Her head swiveled too late in the direction Sai pointed to. A lacy, more-sheer-than-solid-material bra in crimson red—and which clearly belonged to a much more blessed woman than Sakura—hung from the edge of her dresser.

Her hand twitched belatedly to remove it.

"A sleepover?" the blonde tried, face a little red. While the size discrepancy had clearly gone above Sai's head, it hadn't Naruto's, apparently. Great. The one time Naruto opted to be observant of the details.

Sakura felt her cheeks heat up a little despite herself. "Of a…sort."

Sai's head shifted slowly from her to Naruto, expression sage. "I think that was a euphemism for intimate relations—"

"I got that, Sai," Naruto said a little high-pitched, digging intently into his ramen. "Thanks!"

The conversation lapsed into a brief period of silence. Sakura dumped the quilts in her arms onto their respective pallets and then went to retrieve pillows.

"So you like girls?" Naruto spoke up again, clearing his throat and clearly making a concerted effort into looking as relaxed as possible. It didn't help that he leaned his chin into his hand, only for his elbow to slip against the lacquer surface of her coffee table.

"Yes." She dropped the pillows. They landed with twin thuds.

"Oh." Then, his face scrunched up in confusion. "Wait a minute, but you were crazy about the teme when we were—"

"I didn't say I liked them exclusively, idiot," she snapped, grabbing her own ramen with a little too much force. She settled down on an unoccupied side of her coffee table and began eating viciously.

"Oh." Naruto's expression took on an introspective look.

"I never liked anyone," Sai said primly. "Until Shikamaru, that is."

At this, their other teammate's calm fractured. "You and Shikamaru? Since when?"

"Around the same time as Yamanaka-san and Hyuuga-san, I believe."

"WHAT?! HINATA IS SEEING INO—!"

"Obviously not, dickless. The other Hyuuga close to our age."

Naruto exhaled a giant sigh of relief, fanning himself like an elderly civilian who had just been put through the paces climbing his own staircase. "You can't scare me like that, Sai. Like, Hinata is way more adventurous than I thought, but I don't think I could ever be on board with—"

"Too. Much. Information," Sakura grunted.

"Er, right."

Somehow, they managed to scarf down the rest of their ramen without any more outbursts or mishaps.

They spoke some more: inane, idle conversation, really. Sakura had some ice cream in her freezer that hadn't yet gone bad, so she grabbed that too and served it to them. Not long after, though, Naruto began to yawn loudly—wide, jaw-cracking yawns—and they started to settle down for sleep.

"Thank you. Both of you, for…" Sai paused for a while, as though he too weren't sure what to say. "For standing by me," he settled with finally.

Sakura, who had just stepped into her bathroom to change into a pair of sleep pants and a loose shirt, stilled. "You don't have to thank us," she said at last.

"Yeah," Naruto echoed, voice dark. "Don't. Or maybe wait until we've actually done something to make up for what happened to you."

Sakura stepped out from the bathroom, eyes narrowed. "Exactly."

Sai's dark solemn eyes honed in on her. "Are you going to kill him?"

"Um, well," Naruto said a little uncomfortably, "maybe that's—"

Sakura's gaze flicked to Sai. "The thought has crossed my mind," she commented calmly, eyes locked onto him.

"Uh, Sakura?"

"You tell me, Sai," she said quietly. "Will someone like him stop unless he's dead?"

The boy shook his head slowly.

Sakura's lips twitched humorlessly, head tilting back. It still wasn't the case that she—Sakura (not the Voice)—liked enacting the violence she was capable of. But certain individuals certainly made it easier than others.

"You can't," Naruto said lowly, standing up. "Planning someone's murder like that: that's a line you can't ever uncross. That's what the black ops are for. Not us."

"Until now, the black ops have done nothing," Sai observed, voice unprejudiced.

"Tsunade knows the truth now," he argued, "so they will."

And that was…probably true. But if that particular mission was deemed to be a particular classification, it might actually be passed to her team—and then, in some way, it could actually be Sakura's responsibility to kill Danzo.

Sai seemed to sense that there was more truth than exaggeration to her words. He looked at her solemnly, even as he stretched out along the pallet. He had, since joining their team, grown leaps and bounds in reading the people around him: she and Naruto especially. And, in equal turns, Sakura felt some measure of discomfort and some measure of relief in being seen.

"It's a non-issue now, anyway," she finished diplomatically. She walked to the opposite end of the room to grab a hair tie from her nightstand.

Naruto, for a moment, looked like he didn't want to let the issue go. But another yawn broke out—this time from Sai—and his shoulders slackened a little. Sighing, he shook his head and settled down onto the pallet.

Sakura moved towards her bed as well, but paused as she heard a scratching noise at the window. Her gaze landed on Shisui waiting impatiently at the window.

She exhaled, disbelieving. Sakura stalked toward the window and yanked it open. Again? She hoped her expression conveyed the monumentality of pain she would bring on it if it pulled anything now.

Giving her an unreadable glance, the crow turned away from her and offered up a scroll. Her throat tightened.

Red. Red scrolls were—

She snatched it blindly and unraveled it, fingers trembling.

"Sakura," Naruto mumbled tiredly. "What is it?"

"Just a message from the hospital. They have a shortage of medic-nins today, so they need me to come in." Pitch-perfect. Unfailingly even.

"Will it be all night?" Sai, this time.

"Yes," Sakura said, almost soundless.

"Feel free to take the bed," she added a second later.

She grabbed her ANBU mask, her back covering her actions, and left the apartment.

"No," Bear said blankly. "Just—no."

They all looked at Raccoon's dead body, swathed in ceremonial cloth and ornamentation, with incredulity.

"We just saw him," Snail whispered, eyes shining. "Just the other day."

"Yeah," Hyena said, tone formal and distant. But it only took one look at her face to realize that she was struggling too. Everyone liked Raccoon. Raccoon was likable. Even when it had been the last thing Sakura had wanted—being on this team—she had liked Raccoon.

"Reconnaissance," Sakura choked out. "Fucking reconnaissance."

The other ANBU members stiffened, looking almost hostile to her interjection. Unconsciously, her hands tightened at her sides. She could understand. She was too new: almost a voyeur here compared to them—to the grief they probably shared.

But then, unexpectedly, Bear grunted out an earnest: "Yeah. Fucking reconnaissance."

Sakura stared at him, taken aback. Once she recovered, she could do nothing more than nod tightly.

"All it takes is one slip," Hyena remarked.

"Shut up," Bear growled, shoulders trembling. "Why was he even on this team, if he had…"

They all tensed.

It was custom as part of the ceremony to—at least here, in the privacy of the ANBU headquarters—commemorate the lives the fallen operatives had lived outside of the headquarters. A hollow attempt at softening what was objectively a shitty end, Sakura thought. Because there would be no recognition for any of them outside these walls; at least, not for what they had done as ANBU. Even in death, relatives and loved ones could become targets of revenge, and names and identities could be dangerous.

And Raccoon—calm, likable Raccoon—has left behind a two year old daughter, for whom he had been sole guardian.

"Piece of shit," Hyena managed, eyes scrunched.

Snail recoiled. Her hand tightened around the other woman's bicep. "You shouldn't—"

"No, that is some bullshit," the black-haired woman raged. "How the hell could he have been so irresponsible? What's going to happen to his kid?"

"He must have had his reasons," Snail said softly.

"Well, fuck his reasons!"

Sakura rocked onto her heels and then back forward again, blinking rapidly. All of them were wrapped and suffocated in the misery of this place, in each other's misery. She could see the others shifting as well, perhaps victims of the same discomfort.

"I need to be alone," Bear whispered.

"And I need to get out of here," hissed Hyena.

Snail nodded shakily, and Sakura offered no protest. The two nodded stiffly to them in farewell, before disappearing.

"Crow," the other woman said quietly, after an eternity of staring at Raccoon's unbreathing form. "I'm not sure if you've been in ANBU long enough on any one team before to grow close to someone like this, to…experience a team member's death that matters. What I can tell you, is that we all…manage only because we have our support mechanisms, whatever they are. And whatever works for you, it might not be what works for anyone else. But…if—if you need—"

"Thanks," Sakura interrupted, chest aching from the strain Snail was clearly going through—to try to be helpful, to be nice, even now. And she meant it. "I've got it handled."

That last part—that was the part she wasn't sure of.

"A bottle," Sakura demanded, seated perhaps ill-advisedly at an ill-reputed inn she had seen self-respecting individuals only skirt around during daylight hours. Probably contributing to its poor reputation, the inn was outfitted with a sizable bar. Another contributing factor: its clientele.

"You paying now or charging to a room?" the bartender asked, raising a brow.

"To my room," she grunted, writing the number down on the parchment handed to her.

She ignored the glances around her. She still wore the sleep pants and shirt from earlier, unmasked, but with the appearance of Saori Mori. She knew she made an odd visual ultimately, at odds with the inn's other occupants, who composed the non-shinobi half of Konoha's seedy underbelly: thugs and loan sharks and the like. She didn't care. Not like there had been anything in the room for her to change into.

"What's a nice girl like you doing here—"

"Thanks," Sakura bit out, grabbing the bottle from the bartender before he had actually made the motion to hand it to her. She twisted the cap loose and brought it to her lips, swallowing the burning liquid like it was water.

"Take it easy there, lady," a boy—younger than her—with a scar bisecting his eyebrow warned. An older woman stood beside him with a thin smile, watching indifferently.

"You his mom?" Sakura sneered, jerking the bottle at him.

Her smile widened. "If I am?"

She swung forward, the alcohol hitting her hard and burning through her veins, until her face was inches from the other woman's.

"Then that's fucked," she spat.

A hand, from somewhere behind her, landed on her shoulder.

Sakura shook it off violently, eyes slitted. "Don't touch me."

A tall boulder of a man bumped into her from the right, and she honed in on him like a moth to a flame.

"Look at you," she sang, giggling, "you look like exactly like the kind of thing good people think goes bump in the night—" the smile fell from her face, and she craned upward with a ugly snarl—"want to go?"

"Hey," the bartender snapped, fingers connecting in front of her face. "I'm not having any of that here. Go back on up."

Sakura twisted violently, nostrils flaring. "What?"

"I said go the hell back on up," the man repeated, liking he was talking to a child. "I'm not having the authorities over here because a stupid girl tried to rebel and got murdered."

A bark of laughter burst out of her, sharp and animal. "Fine," Sakura allowed, "But I'm taking this—and this with me."

She grabbed her own bottle and her enraged neighbor's and made her way toward the rickety stairs, uncaring of the shouts behind her. The stairs curved ever so slightly—which made them a little tricky to navigate—but she reached the landing of her floor in less than five minutes. All in all: a win.

Glowering at nothing in particular, Sakura shoved the key into her door; after a bit of noisy scrabbling, the lock twisted finally, and she stumbled in.

There was already someone in the room.

In one instant, Sakura burned all the alcohol from her body and twisted in the direction of the foreign presence. Through the door-less, worn frame of the entrance to the tub, a lone, pale figure with silver-grey sat in bloodied water.

The blood drained from Sakura's face.

He turned, slowly, emotionlessly. His face, she saw, was covered in blood too—just like the uniform he still wore, which painted the water around him an ugly brown-red.

"Where were you?" Sakura whispered, ice-cold. Her lips felt bloodless too, numb. Why are you here now?

He stared at her, right through her, as though she had said nothing.

Anger lanced through her veins and she stalked forward, hands slamming into the sides of the tub.

"Where the fuck were you! When the rest of us were there—"

"They're dead," he said, eyes at last sharpening. His voice was a rasp, almost inaudible.

Sakura rocked back for the second time that night, this time more violently than the first. "What?"

"I killed them," he stated, now clinically. Simple. Factual.

She glanced downward, into the water. Blood of the ones who had killed Raccoon, then. Not just anyone's blood. She kneeled blankly, palming it.

And then she couldn't stop herself, couldn't stop the words and hated their pleading quality.

"How did it—how did it make you feel?" Did it help? she needed to know.

Did it feel good? the Voice wanted.

He twisted in one fluid, deadly motion to face her, and his gaze was cruel.

"Don't test me, shinobi," Kakashi snarled, each word like a knife.

Sakura grabbed him by his matted hair. Shinobi? She would have laughed, if she had had it within her now to find anything humorous.

"Don't even try it, asshole," she hissed, gaze boring into his. "Tell me the fucking truth."

She rested her forehead against his, and there was nothing but desperation and resentment in the act, that she needed him to say it.

"You came here," she rasped, accusing.

His sharingan spun, a dizzying endless loop of motion. And then…and then—

"Like suffocating."

And then he was gasping, trembling: full-body tremors shook through him, and all Sakura could do was watch. His hands sliced into the water and then drove toward his face, scrubbing desperately. And the entire time he was silent. Disconcertingly silent.

It took her a long time, longer than she would like to admit, to understand what she was seeing—that this was, perhaps, what lay beneath it all: an injured, self-loathing animal, at last cornered. An animal, Sakura could see, that was as liable to lash out, deadly and uncaring, as it was to curl in on itself, cowering from its own violence.

His breathing was erratic; his hands attempted to rend and also to cleanse and failed at both. For every portion of skin he cleaned of blood, he opened long, crimson lines elsewhere, until Sakura could no longer watch and stopped him.

He snarled and snapped, and Sakura held the straining pale muscle of his biceps effortlessly.

"Who are you," the copy-nin growled, surfacing at last. His eyes, when they met hers, possessed their sharp, predatory edge once more. "Who are you?"

Sakura's hands curled and then began to scrub, working to remove the blood from him as well.

"I don't know," she returned, angry and confused. Her hands passed over his skin, and each self-made wound she encountered, she closed.

He grabbed her wrist, lifting the inner part to his nose. "Your scent," he said darkly, his regular eye metallic in the flickering light, "Why do you wear distorters?"

Sakura's pulse stuttered.

"Why do you think? When there are trackers like you out there," she bit out, "I try my best to make your job as hard as possible whenever you decide to kill me."

"Am I going to have to kill you?" His lashes, long and dark, dripped water.

"You've threatened it more than once."

"And you've never believed it."

"And you pretended," she whispered, livid. "The perfect shinobi; the perfect weapon, blood-hungry and remorseless. You've pretended—and you've let us all believe it, when it never existed. When it never could exist."

His perfect, lying mask.

She shoved away from him before he could respond, before he could try to lie again. Even without words, all it would take was one condescending, uncaring look, one distant sneer. And she didn't care to entertain it. She made quick hand signs to summon of a blast of air that dried her in seconds. And then with determined resolve, she yanked the thin duvet over herself and shut her eyes.

It was silent for so long, that she was almost certain that he had left. Possibly through the window, though she hadn't heard it open. That seemed to be his modus operandi. She didn't open her eyes to check.

An infinity later, however, she felt a brush of air near the side of the bed—as though there were someone standing beside it. She stiffened in response, debating how to react. But he moved with incomprehensible speed. A hand landed on the middle of her back, brief, so transitory it had to have been a blur to the eye, and with such terrifyingly controlled force that it was enough to displace her from the center of the bed to the side.

Another body—hard, compact—settled beside hers.

(Heat, some part of her noted, radiated from him like a furnace.)

"Seriously?" Sakura drew herself up onto her elbows, incensed. He didn't say anything. Just stared at her, eyes lidded. She watched him, lips thin.

Get out, she meant to say. "How long did you know him," was what came out instead. She paled in the dark.

His face could have been chiseled from stone.

"A year."

Sakura turned over onto her side, away from him. "Is that long?"

"Longer than most."

Sakura's lips curled. "How long do you give me?"

The distance between them disappeared. Abruptly, she felt the full force of his body against her, crushing her as though to punish her, weighing down on her as though he meant to be oppressive. She saw red and twisted, about to spit vitriol.

She would have done it too. Had she not then noticed it: his hands, and the way they curled around her ribcage carefully—softly.

And she realized then that his…hold had not been what she had thought it had been.

Author's Note: Heyooooo how's it going I know I did a lot here hope you don't hate. I know this was a slower chapter, but I think I needed to lay a lot of groundwork finally / tbh might come back and edit things / add things later. Also.

Also.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR WONDERFUL WORDS! You have no much idea how much time I spent beaming and thinking about this fic. I'm finally starting to see the end (still pretty far away though, no fear), but that is definitely a first for me.

Also, I guess I write slow burn... I, uh, just noticed? Oops. Is it tolerable out there lol or are you all dying of the thirst :D

Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Let me know how felt / what you thought by leaving behind wonderful comments/kudos!

With all the love in the world,

madstoryteller999

P.S. Anyone recognize the chapter title? :)

P.P.S. YAY TO THE U.S. WOMEN'S SOCCER TEAM ON THEIR WIN AND FOR BEING FEMINIST AND LGBT ICONS, WE LOVE YOU (AND ALSO TO ALL FEMALE ATHLETES YOU KICK ASS HARDCORE) 3