come away to the water

in the eye of the beholder

It seemed wrong that the air was growing warmer, the skies clearer and the sun beating down hotter and happier when Sakura felt heavy, dull, and cold. Sakura kept herself together as best she could, but she had the feeling that Hinata could see right through her, and not because of that vision of hers.

Sakura knew it by the way a hole was dug up in the earth by dawn the next day; perfectly rectangular, six feet deep, and situated on the quietest, most picturesque corner of their farm. Sakura knew this place well. It housed a modest headstone engraved with her mother's name and denomination of her short life. Now, the lonely headstone was a little less lonely.

Sakura did not tend to her chores that day. Instead, she sat by that headstone and considered her father's name scrawled delicately beneath her mother's. Hinata's script was much neater than what Kizashi had managed to engrave himself when his wife died. She cried most of the day. Her head was achy and her heart heavy. She felt her bones were tired; too tired to get up and head back to the cottage. Even when the sun began to set, she stayed put.

Hinata found her there, bringing with her a bowl of soup and brown bread. She had cuts on her fingers. Sakura stared at them as she accepted the food she wasn't sure she could stomach. Sakura knew those cuts well, having had many of them herself. Hinata had tended to the chicken coop.

It was a small thing; inconsequential even. The farm could survive for a day without them dutifully tending to it, but the thought of Hinata leaving her to grieve while she cared for their home made tears spring to Sakura's eyes all over again. They plopped heavily into her bowl of beige mush.

"Is this my fault, nee-chan?" Sakura whispered as her eyes and nose dripped into her food. "Perhaps if I had never tried to be anything more than a farmer's daughter, he would still be alive."

"If you were anyone but who you are," Hinata began softly, "I would be dead." Her words contradicted everything Sakura was saying, but there was no argument in her voice. Only sweet understanding and sentiment, and Sakura's tears flowed heavier as she gazed up at her sister. Hinata was the only person she had left in this world, and Sakura had to wonder if Hinata felt the same way.

Her sister was soft-spoken and well-mannered, but Sakura could see her strength so clearly now, as she herself crumbled beneath the weight of her grief. Hinata's eyes swam with deep sadness for the father she'd chosen; the father to replace the one she'd been stolen from. Her pretty face denoted a delicate sort of sadness, but her mouth was firm. As Sakura's lips trembled and quivered, Hinata's stayed put.

Sakura had only seen Hinata cry twice; on the night Sakura had found her, and then the next morning when Sakura's father welcomed her into their home indefinitely. The first time had been the closest Sakura had ever seen to Hinata being hysterical. She had been shaking like a little leaf, from head to toe. Sakura had always attributed her lack of sobbing to the state of her; she looked starving and her throat had probably been bone-dry. She had come to learn, though, that even a healthy Hinata did not make much of a peep while steeped in the throes of misery.

It was a jarring contrast to Sakura's sniveling, sobbing, drippy mess. She blinked at Hinata, taking her in, solid and real, warm and alive. Not a speck of blood on her, and none on Sakura either, because Hinata had taken good care of her. She had been so diligent in cleaning every millimeter of skin. Sakura thought that perhaps it wasn't just the blood she had cleaned up.

While Sakura sat here all day in mourning, Hinata had collected herself and gone about her chores. Sakura's chores, too. Sakura felt herself grow irked at the thought.

In the recesses of her mind she recognized that she was perhaps being unreasonable, but it didn't stop the ire from building. Was she not upset? Did she not love him, or appreciate him? Did she not realize what had been lost, what Sakura had lost?

Hinata said nothing, even as Sakura let the bowl fall to the ground and seep into the earth, the dry bread rolling and coating itself in dirt. Even as Sakura stood and marched off back to the cottage, Hinata remained where she was, quiet as ever.

Sakura lay in their bed and crying until her headache and rumbling stomach exhausted her into a deep slumber. She only rose when the whisper of light fabric brushed over her skin, and an even lighter kiss ghosted over her forehead.

"Sleep well, Sakura-chan," Hinata said softly before a rustle of fabric and a small breeze alerted Sakura to her exit.

When Sakura's mother died, Sakura had been too young to understand. She didn't actually remember her; she only knew her from the portrait in her father's bedroom. She felt a little sad when she looked at it—when she thought of all the girls who had mothers to teach them how to be proper young ladies, and to braid their hair, and all the other things mothers did with their daughters. Sakura didn't really know what that entailed, truthfully.

But her father had been truly devastated. In the years that followed, she could still catch him looking at that portrait and weeping for her. Still, no matter how dense that black cloud of death loomed over him, he got up every morning before the sun, and got to work on the farm. He had taken one day to himself, just for the two of them to sit in their cottage by the fire in silence, cozying up together and enjoying the warmth of their home on a cold, sad day.

Sakura fell back to sleep thinking that she had had her one day. Tomorrow, she would be up with Hinata, and she would do her work, just as her father did. It would hurt, and it would be hard work, but this farm was his, and it was hers, and it was Hinata's. This was the only home she had ever known, and her father's life was stamped into every part of it. She had to protect it, the same way she always had.

Sakura had never feared death. Not that she had really considered her own, but the thought of death had never saddened her in the abstract. Her favourite goat had gotten ill when she was six years old, and her father had had to put him down. She had said her goodbyes and that was that. She felt sad, but overall, she understood that this was life. It had to come to a close.

Perhaps that was a strange lesson for a child to learn, but on a farm she learned many strange lessons. Perhaps girls were usually taught how to darn socks, and prepare dinner; how to serve tea, and arrange pretty bouquets of flowers for the table every other day. Sakura knew how to pluck and pull feathers, how to shear and herd sheep, and how to put a dying animal out of its misery. She thought that was probably more important than darning socks anyway.

It was two years after she'd received that tough lesson that she encountered the greatest catalyst of change in her short life.

He happened upon her accidentally, but he was interested in the way she was kneeled over a dying bird, cooing softly before she reached out to deftly twist its neck. She hadn't thought twice before doing it.

"Why are you doing that?" he asked. It was what she always did on the farm; end the animal's life quickly so it would not suffer. It was neither here nor there to her, whether the animal was here at the edge of this valley, or on her farm. Pain was pain, and if she could help, she would. She told him as much as she lay the bird back down onto the dirt.

When she looked up to see the face of the person so interested in her and the bird, she was startled. Her face must have shown it, because the boy flinched. It wasn't that she was scared of his appearance, really. She was just startled. She had never seen anything like it.

"I'm sorry I scared you," he said hurriedly.

"I'm not scared," she said as she rose from her knees. "Why does your skin look like that?" The boy lifted a gloved hand to gently brush against his cheek, gnarled and twisted.

"Um, I got injured in the war," he said, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.

"What war?" she asked, baffled. She had never heard of a war.

"Seriously? The—there's a war between all the great nations. You've never heard of it?" Sakura shrugged.

"This land isn't one of the great nations. We don't have a hidden village, or fancy shinobi," she said. She was also eight years old, which probably meant that these things could escape her. She considered that things had been changing around her, but she thought nothing of it. Things changed. She changed. The only thing that never seemed to change was her father and their farm. The boy looked mildly troubled.

"Valleys is in a very dangerous place," he warned gently. "Fire and Water will use this land against each other."

"Are you a shinobi?" she asked. "Are you using this land?" She wasn't sure how he could be, with his bizarre limp. He moved even more slowly than she did, but he did have that look about him. She'd seen shinobi before, in the village down the road from her farm. He had that sort of appearance, she supposed.

"I am. Or, I was."

"How can you not be anymore?" she asked, turning her attention back to the dead bird. She wondered if she ought to give it a little grave.

"Well...I sort of got left behind. They thought I was dead." Sakura looked up at him in surprise. "Someone saved me."

"Who?" she asked. He shifted awkwardly on his feet. She wasn't sure if it was because he was dodging the question, or if the one good side of his body was growing tired. He considered her carefully before he pulled his glove off, displaying a stark white hand.

"Someone that could heal me," he said simply. She didn't think that was much of an answer, but then, what did she know about healing the hands of dead boys? Dead shinobi. Almost dead. It was all very confusing.

"Well, you don't look so good to me," she said. "You may have your hand but you look like you haven't eaten in a month." She looked at him a little harder. "Where do you even sleep?"

"In that cave," he said, pointing over his shoulder to a well-hidden alcove. She hummed in thought, looking at this strange boy again.

"Shouldn't shinobi keep those sorts of things secret?"

"Why, are you planning on killing me in my sleep?" he challenged.

"I could," she said with a shrug. "What if I was a shinobi, too?"

"Trust me, kid. You wouldn't be able to get the drop on me."

She thought that was a little arrogant, but she quite enjoyed speaking with him, so she didn't mention it. Instead, she sat back onto the grass and enjoyed the warm weather as long as she could. He stayed with her, even accepting her offer to help him down to sit with her in the grass. He was a funny sort of person, she thought. Goofy. She didn't think shinobi could be like that.

She had to help him up and over to his cave dwelling. She resisted the urge to point out that she could absolutely have gained the upper hand over him in this situation, had she been trained or wanted to. Truthfully, she hoped he was more formidable than he looked. She wanted him to be able to protect himself.

Unfortunately, she came to find it disappointingly easy to catch him unawares. That night, she crept out of her cottage and made her way to his cave to peer in on him while he slept. She'd brought with her a sack of dried bread that was going to be ground up for the pigs, as well as some spare vegetables from their yield; a smattering of things that she could skim without her father noticing.

She was crouched above the boy's head while he snorted and drooled. He was lucky she was just a farmer's daughter, she thought. A shinobi could have killed him easily.

She was considering that when his one eye flew open and stared straight up at her.

Sakura woke with a start, jarred so completely out of her rest that she had even woken Hinata, who had been gently curled into Sakura's side on the small bed they shared. But it wasn't Hinata's gentle features she saw as her eyes darted frantically around the room.

Red.

Red hands, red blood, red earth. Red splattered on the walls. Red splattered through the grass. A glowing red encompassing her vision as fury overtook every other emotion in her arsenal. The glow of a red eye staring up at her through the mist. The glow of a red eye staring up at her in a cave.

Discarded in the corner of their shared bedroom were Hinata's cloaks and bindings, splattered softly with red.

"Are you alright, Sacchan?"

Sacchan. The red of her father's blood, spilled out onto the earth.

"You got blood on your bindings," Sakura mumbled.

"Yes."

"You killed one of them?" she asked. Hinata shifted softly beside her until she was sitting upright.

"Yes, Sacchan. I waited for them to come," she confessed.

"Why?" Sakura asked, finally tearing her eyes away from the bloodied cloaks to stare at Hinata. Her big eye shone in the moonlight that filtered in through the curtains.

"For Ojii-san. For you." Sakura watched her sister for a moment longer, feeling the weight of her words.

"You shouldn't have put yourself at risk like that," Sakura said. It was a reprimanding sort of thing to say, but Sakura said it out of fear. She couldn't bear to lose the one person she had left.

"We're already at risk, Sakura-chan," Hinata said softly, her eye wide and sad. Sakura stared at her a little longer, feeling herself deflate. She knew Hinata was right. They had been in denial for too long. Her father had been in denial, thinking that they were safe on their little farm. Sakura had been in denial, thinking she could not choose sides in this war, when she had been so wrapped up in it for so long now.

Looking at her sister now, Sakura thought that perhaps Hinata was the only person who had understood the gravity of it all from the beginning. Sakura no longer had the luxury of closing her eyes to it.

"So, this is it then," Sakura whispered. Hinata climbed slowly out of the bed and towards her discarded cloaks, sifting through them until she found what she was looking for. She crawled back under the blankets and into Sakura's warmth before holding it out to her.

"I am and always will be a shinobi of the Leaf."

Sakura took the stolen hitae-ate in her hand and ran her fingers softly over the leaf symbol.

"Why don't you wear it?" Sakura asked as she considered the strange headband in her hands.

"And tell everyone I'm a ninja from Konoha? What better way to get myself killed," he said with a roll of his dark eye. Sakura rolled her eyes right back at him.

"Right, because you're so secretive. You told me who you were after five minutes," she reminded him.

"I knew you were safe to confide in," he mumbled around a big bite of brown bread. She handed him the water skin pointedly. He took a big, sloppy sip. "I'm an excellent judge of character."

"You were delirious and half-starved," Sakura argued, taking a swig from the skin herself, and dribbling water down her chin just as he did. "Anyway, why don't you just go back to Konoha?" He shifted uncomfortably at the question and took another bite of bread. "Eat the veggies," she reminded him absently. He grunted in displeasure but took a bite of a carrot anyway.

"I hate carrots," he grumbled, giving her a nice view of his chewed up food.

"They're good for your eyesight," she informed him, mostly because she'd heard a mother say it to her children when she was in town with her father once.

"I have amazing eyesight."

"You have one eye."

"Yeah, but it's a cool one."

Hinata practiced everyday, dutifully and for hours. Sakura was a little jealous that she had such a clear direction for her training. She trained her vision, testing its limits, compensating for her blind-spot and the limitations that came with having only one eye. Sakura thought it was amazing, one eye or not. She was certain that the recipient of her stolen eye would never be quite as proficient as this. Hinata was amazing.

Meanwhile, Sakura struggled to even find where to begin. Hinata was wonderful and patient, but her knowledge outside of her clan abilities was limited at best. More often than not, Sakura spent their training time honing her chakra control. It was tedious, and progress was hard to monitor, but she could only assume she was getting better. Her reserves were growing; that much she knew from Hinata.

She grew physically stronger and faster, too. They both did, but Sakura had found what Hinata seemed to think was a unique way to enhance her strength and speed with chakra. Hinata monitored it with her Byakugan, seeing how Sakura applied her chakra, timing it perfectly with a thrust of her hand, or a step of her foot. It became second nature to her with time.

The more proficient she got, the quicker she was able to get through her duties on the farm, and all that extra time meant more training.

Eventually, they made an attempt at sparring. Hinata really only knew the gentle fist fighting technique of the Hyuuga clan, and Sakura didn't really know any style in particular. Their first few weeks attempting it were disastrous, but eventually they adapted and learned from one another.

Sakura's instincts were generally to go for the direct hit. Her hits were powerful enough that, should they land, they would best her opponent. Hinata's style was more evasive. She was able to take her opponents down from the inside out. Hinata learned power from Sakura, and Sakura learned patience from Hinata.

It was gruelling work, but the rewards it yielded were undeniable.

In the months Sakura had been stealing away to visit the boy ninja in the cave, she began to see things more clearly. She started to notice that people didn't smile as often at one another. The people in the village were not as friendly, her father never lingered long when they went to do business, and he never travelled on the same side of the road as other passersby.

It happened slowly, then all at once. Faces were gaunt, bodies were frail, smiles were rare, and eyes were dull. They were caught in a war.

"Things are getting worse," she said as she sat by the little fire in that cave. She brought forth a small bag of goods she'd taken from the cellar. He was always very grateful.

"You should stop coming here," he warned, not for the first time. "You're vulnerable."

"I saved you, didn't I?" she sassed. Usually, he was always ready to abandon a serious conversation for something lighthearted. Not tonight, though. His dark eye was hard when he looked at her over the flickering firelight.

"You can't protect yourself with a bag of brown bread, nee-chan," he said. There was a weight behind his words she'd never heard from him before. He sighed after a long moment, during which time she wondered if she ought to leave and never return. She hoped that wasn't what he wanted. He was her friend. Besides the goats, he was her only friend.

He turned away from her to rifle through his pack. When he faced her again, he was holding a blade.

"This is a kunai," he said. "I want you to take it." He held it out to her insistently. She took it carefully, feeling its weight in her hand. It felt awkward and unfamiliar, but not anything she couldn't grow accustomed to. She turned it over, looking at the grooves and edges in the handle.

"This is the same symbol that's on your headband," she said, trailing her thumb over the engraved marking.

"That's the symbol of Konohagakure," he explained. "When you carry that blade, just remember that you carry the strength of the Hidden Leaf Village with you."

It was a strange thing for her to go from mercy killings to lying in wait for shinobi that were very much alive. She had spent months training her body, but it was her mind that needed to be whetted. Plunging her hand into the heart of a person who had committed no crime against her wreaked more havoc than she ever dreamed possible.

For the first time, she was killing for the sake of killing. Her goal had always been to help. With every strike, her intentions had always been good. She wasn't sure what this made her. She couldn't help but think that her father would never understand this.

Hinata did not seem to have the same struggles. Sakura thought that perhaps her sister still harboured hatred for the village that had once held her captive. If she did, Sakura could not blame her.

She just had to keep reminding herself that she had a part to play. She was in a position to make change, and her middle of the road approach was no longer working. More and more Konoha nin were dying, and Kiri did not answer their deaths with blood. The carnage was never-ending. She had spent so many years telling herself that she could not choose sides; that there was no side to choose.

She was probably right, at least for awhile. She had no business as a child to interfere and make judgement calls on acts of war, or on who had the moral high ground. From her standpoint, there was only one ground, and it was littered with bodies. But as time went on, she became wiser. She saw more, understood more of the world and the people who were in charge of it.

She may not have been from a strong nation with a hidden village, but she knew some things of the world. Her people were suffering and she could do something about that. That something started with stepping to one side of the road. And she chose Konoha.

She had spent many nights contemplating her change of mind. Was it wrong to persecute Kiri nin because her father had been killed? It still hurt to think of him; sometimes her chest constricted so harshly she could hardly stand to take a breath.

But while the sting of his death remained, the rage had passed with time. It had been two years since his murder, and she could still see it so clearly. It still filled her with dread, and the nightmares still found her, but she was not one to persecute every Kiri nin for the act of some.

So, that brought her back to her initial question; what had brought about that change of mind? She wasn't deluded enough to think that Konoha was infallible and innocent, but she could only see one way out of this. There was only one way for her to help her people. Konoha may not have been innocent, but it was Kiri that was wreaking havoc on the minds, bodies, and spirits that inhabited this land.

She was tired of being a weak farm girl from a weak little country, nestled between two great powers.

Sakura carried that blade with her as she'd promised, but she'd never had to use it. She began to forget it was even there, buried in the waistband of her pants. Her friend was still uneasy and growing more anxious everyday. He was getting stronger, slowly, which she was happy to see, but she worried that once he was recovered he would leave this place forever.

It would have been reasonable, of course. He was a Konoha shinobi, and a boy who had a family and a home. He ought to go back to it, the way she returned to her cottage every night. Still, it filled her with sadness to think of never seeing him again.

She was lost in that thought when she was struck to the ground.

This was no shinobi, she knew that much. This was just some man who had suffered the consequences of a land flanked on either side by a war, and he was intent on sharing his suffering with her.

With her arms pinned, she had no means to reach for her blade. She looked over to the bag of brown bread that she had tossed aside in the attack. Her friend had been right; it would do her no good now. When she raised her gaze to the man that held her down, she was only able to meet his eyes for a moment.

Faster than she could comprehend, the man's weight was knocked off of her and his body rolled away. She didn't look at it. She had seen the blood spray into the air, and that had been enough for her to understand what had happened. She closed her eyes for a moment. She just needed a moment, she told herself. When she opened them again, a red eye was staring down on her.

"Are you okay, nee-chan?" he asked, holding a hand out to her. She took it gratefully, keeping her gaze locked on that strange eye of his. This was only her second time seeing it. When he noticed her stare, blinked slowly, and when he looked at her again, his eye was back to its rich, dark colour.

"So much for the strength of the Hidden Leaf Village," she mumbled. He sighed and picked up her discarded bag of food. Together, they made their way slowly back to his cave. They didn't speak much. Sakura was shaken by being attacked, and he seemed to be in some pain from the exertion of saving her.

"You need to be able to protect yourself," he said after awhile. For once, she agreed with him without argument.

"I'm no shinobi," she said. "I'm just a farmer's daughter." He considered her carefully before his eye shifted back into that red one.

"Does it scare you?" he asked.

"No," she said honestly. "I just don't understand it." He explained to her that people with this eye—the people in his clan—had certain abilities. She didn't understand how that could help her. She was no Uchiha of the Hidden Leaf. She was just Sakura. But he went on to tell her about chakra, and different techniques; jutsu, he called them.

He told her everyone had chakra, even her, and the ability to control and manipulate it.

"I can see it," he said, that red eye fixed intently on her. "Your reserve is small and dormant, but it just takes practice." She didn't know the first thing about practicing chakra use. Truthfully, he didn't know much either. Her friend was quite fierce, she thought, and he was strong, too, but he was no scholar. "Maybe I can show you," he proposed.

She stared into the spinning tomoe in his strange red eye until the world around her fell away, and instead, she was seeing everything differently. She was seeing a strange place unlike any she'd seen before. Charts and diagrams. She could see herself sat in this cave, and all the little blue lines of thrumming energy that flowed through her.

It felt like she had been looking at those blue lines flowing through her body and his for hours. She watched as the lines in his body sparked to life under his control. She could even feel what it was like.

When she was released from his visions, mere minutes had passed; made evident by the fire that was still crackling on as if nothing had happened at all.

And so they continued; Sakura brought him food and supplies. Whatever she could scrounge up, she brought to him. She watched him grow stronger every week. He helped her get stronger, too; by trapping her in his visions and showing her what she needed to know.

He seemed to think she was a natural with chakra control. She didn't see how it was possible, but she didn't argue. It seemed unlikely that a civilian girl with no background or experience could excel at something like this. Great shinobi did not come from the Land of Valleys.

That was alright, she thought. She didn't need to be a great shinobi. She only needed to keep herself, her family, and their farm safe. Every night she left him in that cave, she thought that her family had expanded to one more. She wanted to keep him safe, too.

"Did you hear what the last one said?" Hinata asked as she unwound her bloodied bindings.

"She compromised them," Sakura said, feeling a tingle run down her spine. It was what they had been waiting for. All their lingering, silent killing, lurking in the mist and shadows—this was what they'd been waiting for.

"We'll need our strength," Hinata said with a sigh, rolling her shoulders and neck in exhaustion. Sakura hummed in agreement.

"A week. That will be plenty of time to rest and plan," Sakura suggested. She stared at her hands, caked with blood and wondered if Hinata would let her get away with hopping into bed in her current state.

"It could be a trap," Hinata thought out loud. "She revealed their location so easily…"

Hinata was right; it could very well be a trap, but Sakura didn't see any way around it. Sooner or later, they would need to head into the lion's den. The only way to permanently stop Kiri from taking Konoha nin as prisoners was to eliminate the option for them.

"We'll be smart about it, nee-chan. We have each other," Sakura promised. It was easier to say than to believe, but she was certain that if nothing else, they could rely on each other. Sakura had lost her family three times over, and she was not about to lose Hinata.

Her sister nodded at her, her eye losing the edge of worry and creasing with a soft smile as she headed for bed. Sakura was right behind her.

"Go wash up, Sacchan," Hinata said firmly. Sakura sighed and headed for the washroom.

"They're torturing Konoha nin," he said when she walked in one night. He was up and pacing by the fire. She noticed that his steps were more sure-footed now. Quicker and stronger. He no longer winced in pain when he moved.

"Who?" she asked.

"Kiri. They're capturing the injured and torturing them," he explained, and as he spoke, his pacing grew more fitful.

"Well, what can you do? This is a war. Isn't that the sort of thing that happens in war?" she said with a shrug. He ceased his pacing abruptly and turned to face her. She could see now that his face was twisted with despair. "People are dying everyday."

"To die in battle is a shinobi's duty," he said, slowly sinking down to the ground beside her. "But to be captured alive and tortured…" he sighed and kicked his leg out, sending a cloud of dust into the fire. "And I can't do anything to help."

She listened to him and tried to understand. These ideas were so foreign to her—battle, war, duty, torture—but he spoke of it so passionately, so heartbreakingly that she couldn't help but feel for the shinobi. All she knew of the war was the turmoil it brought her country. She hadn't asked for that, and she was embittered toward the shinobi world for bringing it to her.

But it occurred to her then, as he continued to lament the ways in which is would-be comrades would suffer, that perhaps they had also had no choice. Perhaps they were as embittered toward their world as she was.

A few days later, Sakura was so excited to show him what she'd been practicing that she nearly dropped her sack of veggies three times on her way to his cave. He would probably be upset she had only brought vegetables and no bread today, but she had also procured a pair of socks, so she figured it balanced out in the end.

She followed the familiar path to his alcove, ducking behind the bushes that hid its entrance so well, but for the first time, she didn't see the telltale orange flicker of a fire as she approached the opening in the rock's surface.

By nightfall, he always had his fire blazing. She wondered if he was beginning to grow paranoid with the increasing tensions in Valleys. She rolled her eyes and smiled. He was such a goofy fellow, and yet he could be so serious sometimes.

But when she stepped into the cave, there was nothing left of his makeshift fire pit. The blankets she'd brought him were gone. His pack was gone. She felt a twisting in her chest and a stinging at the back of her eyes. He hadn't even said goodbye. She hadn't even thanked him for everything he'd done.

She stood there for a few minutes, hoping that maybe he would come back, or pop out from behind a boulder and tell her he was just playing a joke. That never happened, though. She had known on some level that he would leave this place at some point. His home was far from here, and he spoke so valiantly of the Leaf, that she knew he wanted nothing more than to return there and take up his mantle as a Konoha shinobi.

It was important to be with family, she told herself. She would always return to Papa, and he had to do the same. She sniffled as a few tears fell.

It was just that she had thought she was his family, too.

Sakura could hear Hinata fighting not far off in the distance. It was always a distinct sound; the coughing and grunting of an opponent well-struck without the sound of impact. That was her method; that was the way of the Hyuuga. There was a grace in the way she fought, just as the way she did everything. She was a perfect contradiction to Sakura's brute force and blunt attacks.

Opposite as they were, they worked well together. Kiri nin fell at their feet, swiftly and unexpectedly. This had been the way of things for awhile now; she and Hinata assumed that Kiri hardly sent their best out to collect half-dead prisoners. It was sad for the shinobi that lost their lives to the girls, but worked well in their favour.

This one she was fighting, though; he seemed to have a little more fight in him than the others did. He was forming seals with her hands—too many of them for her to follow—and she knew she had to stop him from completing his jutsu. She swiped with her kunai and managed to slice a finger clean off his hand.

When he lunged for her, she sidestepped him, but not before he took hold of her veil. It wouldn't matter if he saw her face, she supposed. It would be the last thing he saw.

Her reveal seemed to stop him in his tracks. Better for her, but she found it odd that a shinobi would get distracted by something so menial.

"Pink hair. The little shit was right," he said. Sakura felt her throat tighten as she struck him down. She wanted more information, but that wasn't her prerogative right now.

"Where is he?" she asked anyway, tightening her hold on his neck as she pinned him down.

"Same place you're gonna be, you little bitch. In hell."

Unhelpful, but he was dead now. At least she knew one thing; they were still taking prisoners, and the odds were that the tip they'd gotten from the Kiri nin a week before had been legitimate.

Hinata appeared at her side silently, still shrouded completely in her cloaks. She was holding Sakura's discarded veil, and she appeared to have been trying to hand it to her, but something else caught her attention. She looked deeply troubled.

"Someone is coming," she whispered almost too softly for Sakura to hear. "Someone different. Strong."

"Can we—?" Hinata was already shaking her head. There was no way for them to outrun whoever this person was. Hinata's frown deepened and Sakura watched as she tensed.

Sakura braced herself for a fight, but one never came. The mists parted around a tall figure, cloaked in black. When it raised its head to look upon them, Sakura felt herself expel every bit of air in her lungs.

"Sacchan?" Hinata whispered as Sakura relaxed out of her stance and approached the figure.

"I thought you were dead," Sakura said quietly, her voice breaking. She knew Hinata was scared, but she had no reason to be. Sakura knew this glow well. A gloved hand reached out to touch her hair.

"Nee-chan," he whispered. She looked upon his face, so different yet so familiar, and breathed his name out in a sigh that was carried away by the sound of waves in the distance.

"Obito."

A/N: kksk month is upon us and I am busy writing for that so updates will be a lil slower i HOPE YOU ENJOY OBITO i know i do

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