IT'S SUMMER BREAK, YO! Sorry to keep you waiting.

One edit: There was a brief mention of Katsuyu in the last chapter, which I've now removed. I had assumed Shizune could summon her, but that turns out to be incorrect (probably?). I'm also working with the belief that Sakura can't summon Katsuyu right now.

This jumps right in, no summarizing. Might want to reread the previous chapter. Enjoy the angst. See you on the other side.

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Chapter 13

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Rocky peaks towered above us as we shifted from shadow back to human form. We were a few hours outside of Konoha. We had trained here once with Kakashi-sensei. We'd raced. I'd won. All I'd had to worry about then was an invasion by Sand and Sound and a rampaging one-tailed bijuu.

Sasuke surveyed the location, Sharingan whirling. His clothing was charred, his Anbu braces askew. Blood was smeared across his chakra blade. Seeing no one to fight, he didn't calm. He sheathed the sword and rounded on me. "What the hell just happened?"

His words echoed in my mind. I felt hollowed out. He still didn't understand. I didn't understand. Pieces of it, yes, but the enormity…

"Shikako. Why'd you bring us here? We have to go back."

His chakra smoldered angrily at my side, defensive and demanding. He'd been wronged, but he still thought there was a way to fix what had happened. He had zero concept of what he'd done—of what I'd let happen.

His hands grasped my shoulders. "There's been an attack," Sasuke insisted. He spoke slowly, as though I was an imbecile. "Orochimaru managed to—I don't know what he did. I killed one of his bodies, but it was a trap. Everyone turned on me. Towa and Komachi—but you—you saw through it."

By the end, his voice was every bit insistent as it was wary.

"You don't think…" he said slowly. "You know I would never—"

"No, of course not," I managed.

"What did you see?"

Blood. Shadow. Fire. Tsunade bleeding out, chakra flaring wildly.

"I saw what everyone else saw."

His grip tightened. "But you know me, so you knew something was off. You saw through it."

I nodded, unable to do much of anything but agree. The truth was worse than what Sasuke believed, and somehow, I had to tell him. Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation was usually correct. Not a mass delusion making everyone think Sasuke had assassinated Tsunade. Instead a single, subtle, perfectly-timed genjutsu, one powerful enough to overcome the Sharingan's innate ability to dispel them.

Mangekyo Sharingan. Why hadn't I seen this coming? I knew—I knew what Danzo was. We'd been on the cusp of unraveling his Foundation. The end was in sight, but I hadn't pushed. I'd gone back to my old standby and withheld information.

Sasuke's grip tightened. "You saw through it," he repeated. "You pulled me out of there, but we have to go back and make things right. Tsunade will believe us."

"No. We can't go back—not until…" I swallowed. Breathed. "Tenzou has to work things out. I left clues—he'll work things out, then…the truth—"

God, how was I supposed to tell him?

"It was Danzo," I managed.

"Danzo." His voice promised a world of pain. "Danzo and Orochimaru. But where the hell was Tsunade? Red Team was guarding her, but she body-flickered across half the village. We lost her—but Tenzou—wait, that was a body scroll you gave him—what happened?"

I was shaking my head. Then I just shook. No, I did not shake. I was not weak. I turned and sat. I really, really needed to sit down. And just…think.

He dropped down beside me and lifted my head. "Shikako?"

We stared at each other. His eyes spun red-black-red-black. Hypnotic. Safe. Then Sasuke was pulling on my arm and gently tugging down a sleeve of my Anbu uniform. I saw then what Sasuke had noticed. The skin was pink and mottled. It tingled faintly.

"He went after you first, didn't he?"

The Rinkaichu. Gelel had healed the damage, but my little stone had never needed to work quite so fast before. So there were some limitations. Time, primarily. That and contact with the wound. I should store the stone inside my body from now on. I'd be relying on it more than ever. There would be no medics, not for us. I'd made a choice. The wrong choice. The right choice. There were no right choices, not even less bad ones. There were only unknowns. I'd chosen the least of them.

Had I made the best choice?

Had I been thinking of Sasuke or of myself? Or was it the fear of losing Sasuke that drove me to choose as I had? Worse perhaps—it might not be fear. It might be guilt. I'd withheld information. From Tsunade. From Sasuke. He didn't know the worst of it. A scream echoed through my skull: How did I tell him?

I was going about this all wrong, but there was no right. It was always my rule to act when I had evidence, when I could substantiate my wild theories with fact. It had worked, up until now, but…look what had happened.

The scream kept echoing. I shut my eyes against it. Opened them again when Sasuke crouched in front of me, his own confusion put aside, utterly focused on my wellbeing. I touched his face. Withdrew.

"I'm sorry." I wasn't good enough to conceal this. I wasn't good enough to play my part. I just—wasn't good enough.

"Why would you apologize?" said Sasuke slowly. His face was flushed. His voice shook. "You got away from him. You couldn't have predicted what he would do. I should have realized he'd go after you. He tried it once before. And no one knows." I realized then that Sasuke was nearly vibrating with anger, that he was about half a second from charging back to Konoha or to the war front, wherever he thought he might find Danzo. I forestalled him by clamping onto his wrist. He tried to stand, but all that did was pull me up alongside him.

"Sasuke, there's no point—"

"Screw evidence," he swore. "We kill him before he has a chance to wreak more damage."

"I think I took care of that." When he stopped trying to charge off, I released his wrist and tapped my chest. "Eighth Gate Snip. I missed the gate, but the Raijin no Ken should have scorched major blood vessels along with the heart itself. At the absolute least, it induced severe arrhythmia, more likely a heart attack. Then I blew him up. There's really no surviving that sort of trauma."

"You don't sound certain."

"When I stabbed him, a tree shot out of his arm. Having Wood Release somewhat complicates matters."

"Wood Release?" His voice was faint. "So…so not only is he a traitor conspiring with Orochimaru. He's a bloodline thief!"

How true that was, more than Sasuke could know. I doubted, though, that Tenzou, Ibiki, and whoever else would reach that conclusion so quickly. Danzo wouldn't be on their radar for a while. No, they would invade my home because I was Sasuke's accomplice. They would confiscate, scrutinize, and utterly ravage my room—my books, my seals—interrogate my friends, my family, Shikamaru—

I shuddered. Shikamaru.

I'd left my house through the window. I hadn't wanted Shikamaru to see me. That way. Hadn't wanted to burden him, to take on his judgement, his heartfelt worry. So I'd left, like a coward. Had they surrounded him the moment we'd fled, my brother—my twin—

"Good," Sasuke muttered. "That's good. "

"Is it?" I snapped, to his surprise. "I just attempted to murder an Elder without a directive from the Hokage, without a shred of hard evidence. That's treason, Sasuke."

He paled but said, "We don't need to bother with evidence of conspiracy if we nail him for bloodline theft. Once he's in prison, if he survived, T&I can get the rest from him. Look. We'll give them a few hours to work out what happened. No one will touch you. Tsunade will—stop shaking your head—what aren't you telling me?"

Hah, I thought bleakly. It was so damn loaded, that question.

"You tell me first," I said. "What happened?"

He huffed. "We received word that the hospital had come under attack. Suspect, Orochimaru. Tsunade advanced ahead of Red Team. We encountered two Anbu engaged with an enemy identified as Orochimaru."

"The one you said you killed?"

"The same," he agreed.

"Describe the target. Please."

"Male, dark hair past the shoulders, sturdy build," he rattled off. "Brown, knee-length mesh pants and a tan haori, green lining. It wasn't his standard body, but the chakra was Orochimaru's."

"He went down pretty easily then. For Orochimaru."

Sasuke stiffened. "I took him by surprise."

I'll bet you did. What must she have been thinking? Did she even have a chance to comprehend what was happening? A glowing chakra blade, Hawk's mask, the shock of betrayal.

"I couldn't confirm the kill before Towa and Komachi attacked."

It hurt. The kill, he'd said. Because this was Tsunade: a trusted Hokage, a visionary, an admired leader, in some ways closer to a confidante than members of my own family. Someone I'd fight for without knowing why I was fighting, such was my faith in her. The kill.

I closed my eyes. "What about the body dimensions?"

He was perplexed but played along. "Height, 163cm. Weight, 46kg."

Average height for a man, but above average height for a woman. We were almost there.

"Shoulder width?"

"37cm."

"Hips?"

"65."

"Leg to body ratio?"

He was silent. Finally, he began to see. The Sharingan would help him arrive at the truth. To facilitate a successful assassination, Danzo couldn't have altered Sasuke's perception too much.

Softly, I said, "I'm guessing those are Tsunade's dimensions, or near enough."

Blood drained from his face.

"Not possible," he finally croaked.

I was silent for a long moment before repeating his own question. "Then where was Tsunade?"

"Caught up in a fight somewhere."

"By the end, the only fight was ours. I saw her, Sasuke."

He shook his head, denying. "You only saw what everyone else saw."

"Exactly," I whispered. "I saw her bleeding out from a chest wound. Her chakra was erratic. Eighth Gate Snip. When I figured out what had happened, I did to Danzo what he caused you to do to Tsunade."

Then I'd made my choice. And Sasuke had gone along with it, believing that I had a plan, but had that choice been the best for him, or was it my own fear at work? Fear of Orochimaru, obviously. Fear of Danzo's schemes, already set into motion. My own deep-rooted fear of exposure, of my past and my lies and withheld truths becoming known. Fear of interrogation: I'd sat across the table from Ibiki once before as he ferreted out the information he wanted. That? That had been nothing. Nothing in comparison to this. Everything I had to hide was so intimately linked with everything I had to make known.

Underestimating Danzo was my first mistake. Not confiding in Tsunade was the most glaring, especially with the stakes so high. Maybe there'd been a host of smaller mistakes that I would recognize only in retrospect, but those were the two that stood out to me as egregious. How could I not have guessed how far he would go?

Danzo, who plotted with Hanzo in a scheme that birthed Pein—

Danzo, who had betrayed his comrade, the Third Hokage, kidnapped children alongside Orochimaru, and attempted a coup—

Danzo, who had engineered a smoke screen at the war front and scurried back into Konoha to carry out his second coup—

Danzo, who was dead or dying and would therefore remain mysteriously absent from the absolute shit storm that surely engulfed Konoha at this very moment—

Everything was for nothing if Sasuke was captured. Orochimaru was the greater threat now. Konoha, too. They would track us, because they had to. That's what happened to fugitives on the run.

"There were other Anbu fighting him…or her first. Two of them."

"Pretty sure those would have been imposters, Orochimaru's ninja or Danzo's. They added to the deception. They would have slowed Tsunade down, even positioned her for Danzo to act. He had to have been there."

"How?" said Sasuke. "How could he—what sort of power—? It's not possible. The Sharingan can't be fooled like that."

"But if it could…" I said before hesitating. Now wasn't the time. Soon, though. Entirely too soon and far, far too late. "Listen, Tsunade may well be dying, and at least a handful of ninja will testify that you were responsible. I took you away from there because I believed Orochimaru would wait about half a second to kidnap you after you were restrained. And that's what would happen if we went back right now. Danzo's out of commission; he can't manipulate the narrative and seize power. That can only be good for us, but Orochimaru's still out there. Right now, we need to move. We've been in one place too long."

Sasuke was pale and silent. He was going into shock.

I took his hand. His skin was cool to the touch. I tugged. "Sasuke, we need to move."

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A/N: Sorry to cut it here, but I was eager to update to let you know the story wasn't dead and also to give myself a slight reprieve from the excessive cutting, pasting, rewriting, and re-rewriting I've been doing with this chapter and the next part. By posting this now, it means there are no more do-overs, right? :)