VII. Sasuke

Sasuke had Sasu bathed and in bed in record time, sitting silently at the boy's bedside until he fell asleep. Sasuke waited a minute or two longer before creeping his way out of the room. He left Sasu's door ajar, making sure the hall light was on as he entered the kitchen. He made quick work of the dirty dishes before glancing at the clock. He still had a few hours to go before he needed to make his way towards the shrine, so he forced himself back down the hall. He'd been putting it off long enough.

He entered Itachi's room with several boxes in hand, expression grim as he set the empty boxes down on Itachi's bed. Observing the room around him, Sasuke sighed before heading towards Itachi's closet. He pulled his brother's clothes off their hangers, not paying too much attention to them as he folded them and set the clothes within one of the larger boxes. He started collecting the already folded clothes from on top of the shelf above the hangers and then he paused for a moment as his hands met a softer material.

Much to Sasuke's shock, his hand pulled down a soft light blue blanket, the Uchiha clan's symbol stitched into the upper left most corner of the blanket. Sasuke ran his fingers lightly over the stitching, a soft smile making its way onto his face.

He remembered this blanket.

A few years before the massacre, Sasuke had started having nightmares. Sasuke couldn't remember what they used to be about, only that he would wake up crying and calling out for Itachi. Itachi would make his way to Sasuke's room even before his mother could make her way out of bed to check on him. Itachi would crawl into his bed, pulling Sasuke close and running his fingers through his hair. Sasuke would drift off to sleep with Itachi's familiar scent in his nose.

And then Itachi had advanced in rank and he wasn't there every night like he used to be. Suddenly Sasuke no longer had his older brother to comfort him. His mother had tried her best to settle him at night, singing to him or reading from his favorite books, but nothing helped.

Itachi had returned from some classified mission with a soft blue blanket in his hands. He had smiled when he gave it to Sasuke, assuring him that whenever Itachi couldn't be there, the blanket would be. Sasuke hadn't gone through Itachi's room the last time, so he had never known what had happened to the blanket he had used for comfort. Itachi had always been quick to assure him that his blanket was okay to have and that no matter what anyone said, it wasn't something only babies had. Sasuke could remember the look on Fugaku's face whenever Sasuke would drag the blanket along with him; it didn't take a genius to figure out why Itachi felt the need to reassure him about his comfort item.

Inspired, Sasuke made his way towards his old room, sneaking past the slightly open door and carefully laying the blanket next to Sasu's curled up body. The boy didn't even move as Sasuke lifted one of his small arms to rest on the blanket. Sasuke made a hasty retreat once he was done, smiling along the way.

Glancing at the hall clock, Sasuke made his way through the house and to the front door, exiting and stealthily making his way to the Naka Shrine. The moon was half full and the light was shining down softly as he made his way down the street. He slipped within the shrine, once more lighting his way as he had just a few days ago.

"Sasuke," Kakashi greeted from the shadows, slipping forward to nod his head in greeting.

Before Sasuke can return the nod, a second figure comes forward. "Orochimaru?" Sasuke questioned, blinking in surprise. Then Sasuke looked into the snake Sannin's eyes and unconsciously relaxed, a fond smile given in recognition. "Sakura!"

"Hey, Sasuke-kun," Sakura replied. The soft smile Sakura sent his way made him feel slightly uncomfortable, not used to seeing such an expression on Orochimaru's face. The smile was all Sakura, but Sasuke doubted he would ever get used to seeing such an expression. The pale mint eyes made the expression softer, but it was still vaguely unsettling.

"Our favorite kunoichi assaulted me in my office the other night," Kakashi cheerfully stated, chuckling at the glare Sakura sent his way.

"I didn't know you were Danzō," Sakura grumbled, crossing her arms in a pout.

"Did you manage to get a hit in?" Sasuke asked, amused.

Sakura scowled in response while Kakashi let out another chuckle, replying, "I figured out who she was. I shouted her name while falling right out of my chair! She stopped her attack and helped me up. She's been staying at the manor for now."

"I found some correspondence between Danzō and Orochimaru while exploring Orochimaru's base. I managed to decipher it while making my way here; it was a confirmation that Orochimaru would be willing to make Danzō an arm with embedded Sharingan in it."

Sasuke hissed, his teeth clenching tightly as he snarled. It wasn't exactly a surprise that Orochimaru had something to do with Danzō's cursed arm. Sasuke knew how amoral Orochimaru was, and yet he still felt a burn in his chest that felt far too much like betrayal. Orochimaru conducted his experiments long before Sasuke became his student. He had been obsessed with the Sharingan longer than Sasuke had been alive; and yet, the very idea of his old sensei experimenting with his clan's closely guarded dōjutsu made him want to vomit. Sasuke had come to care for Orochimaru over the years, even if that care was occasionally resentful.

"None of us are surprised that Orochimaru is a monster," Kakashi cut in, his lips pursed as he glanced at Sasuke with sympathy. "We need to think about making new plans. Any plan we had before coming back is completely out of the window."

"I can only assume that we still don't know where Naruto is?" Sasuke asked as he struggled to put his anger aside. It had a time and place and it wasn't now.

"I don't even know how to begin to figure out how to find him. I stumbled upon you two completely by accident," Sakura replied.

"It was the same for us," Kakashi admitted, shrugging. "There's no way to figure out where Naruto ended up until we figure out how we ended up in our own foreign bodies."

"And we have more important things to worry about," Sakura nodded, acknowledging Kakashi's point. "Sasuke, you told Kakashi that you figured out what went wrong with our sealing array?"

Sasuke nodded, quickly explaining what he had found out during his last visit to the shrine. Both Sakura and Kakashi listened intently as Sasuke explained the mysterious words he had found.

" When seeking absolution, one may change the past ," Sakura muttered, a furrow in her brow. "That can very easily mean that the Sharingan holds some type of time traveling ability."

"That's what I thought as well," Sasuke confirmed. "Kakashi hypothesized something similar when we first found ourselves in the past."

" When one holds both eyes of the eternity, when one wishes with more than heart, the eternal eye will take the holder to the place of their deepest regret, " Kakashi continued the script, humming to himself as he shifted his stance slightly. "Mentioning both eyes probably references having both the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan and the Rinnegan at the same time. The 'when one wishes with more than heart' and the 'place of their deepest regret' portions aren't as cut and dry as the rest of it."

"I'm not sure about the wishing aspect," Sasuke started slowly, "but I might have an idea about the regret part." Sasuke stopped, forcing himself to take a calming breath. He hadn't ever admitted what he was about to tell his two teammates, always too ashamed to even think about it for too long. But, if it helped them figure out their situation, he supposed that he'd just have to suck it up. "When I was younger, I was severely jealous of Izumi because she had Itachi's attention in a way I never would. When I was at my worst, I wished she was dead. I threw a fit one day, crying because Itachi was going out with Izumi when he had promised to spend the day with me. I stormed out of the house and spent the rest of the day wishing she wasn't there to get in the way. The massacre happened three days later."

"Oh, Sasuke," Sakura sighed sadly, her gaze sad.

"You couldn't have known what was going to happen," Kakashi said, the pity on his stolen face an odd sight.

"I wished it and then it came true," Sasuke shrugged, the feeling of dark bitterness eating at him.

"When I was part of Root," Kakashi shared, his speech stilted as he stared over Sasuke's shoulder, "I was ordered to assassinate the Sandaime. Obviously, I didn't go through with it; but, for far longer than I have ever wanted to admit, I had intended to do it. I was already planning what I was going to do when I had some sense knocked into me. I've always regretted following Danzō's orders without questioning them. Good people would probably still be alive today if I had clawed my way out of my depressed funk sooner."

Before Sasuke could offer any type of sympathy, Sakura let out a shuddering breath, an anguished grimace on her face. "I don't know if mine is so much a regret as a dark secret, but as soon as I started training to become a medic-nin, I briefly understood why Orochimaru was the way he was. The human body is so fascinating, biology and chemistry mixing to make something truly unique. I thought about how I would've gone about Orochimaru's experiments; how I would've been smart enough not to get caught. I know hundreds of ways to take out other shinobi, all excruciating. I probably would've been even more effective than Kabuto if I had kept following that train of thought. It took a single nightmare to dissuade me of those thoughts."

"We're all a mess," Kakashi let out an unamused laugh, shaking his head.

"So," Sasuke huffed, a tired sigh leaving him. "I'm stuck in the body of the girl I wished dead, Kakashi is stuck with the man he unquestioningly followed, and you're stuck in the body of the man whose morals you almost succumbed to."

"Yeah, pretty much," Sakura nodded, looking just as exhausted as Sasuke felt.

"The question, of course, is where does that leave Naruto? What is his deepest regret?" Kakashi asked.

Sasuke thought about that, thinking back to Naruto's bright eyes and a friendly smile. He thought about the way he had held his smile until he thought no one was watching, how his eyes had dimmed when he had believed he was alone. He wondered about what haunted Naruto at night when he only had himself and Kurama for company. What regrets did he hold when it wasn't him that made his life miserable, but everyone else?

Neither he, nor Sakura, could give him an answer.

"Well, now that we've all successfully made ourselves feel awful, there's something I need to tell you two," Kakashi grumbled, an uncomfortable look spreading across his face. Sasuke watched him warily, his mind racing. They had talked several times since coming back, though most of it had been brief as not to raise suspicion. What had Kakashi kept to himself until they were sufficiently alone?

"What is it?" Sakura asked, her head tilted slightly in question.

"It's about Sai..."