A/N: This is the self-indulgent, trashy romance spy thriller I've always wanted to write with ninja fights. I'm a sucker for a redemption arc, and my middle-school OTP will always have a piece of my heart :) This will be canon through episode 478 of Shippuden (pre-epilogue) and diverge before the girls all become housewives.

There is a fair bit of SakuOC, in case that is not your cup of tea. I will add pertinent content warnings at the start of chapters. Overall, this fic contains mature themes inc violence and sexual themes. Reader discretion is advised. Enjoy :)

Edit 2/4/20: I've added ~2 chapters worth of material to the first 10 chapters. If you're re-reading, I'd love to hear your thoughts! The original drafts can be found on my Tumblr at never-stray (two hyphens).

Chapter 1: The Swallow

One month ago:

On the fifth anniversary of the Allied Forces victory, Sakura could not feel her right hand. Whoever invented charting, she decided, ought to be dragged before a military tribunal for their crimes against medic-nin.

She shoved her operative note into the patient's folder. Twelve more. It was only midnight. She could do this. The rice balls that she'd packed for breakfast sang a stale siren's song from the corner of her desk.

The workroom door swung open. A wizened man with bushy eyebrows and a fleshy nose sauntered in. His white coat was pressed and starched, still embossed with Head Medic, a title he'd long relinquished.

She stifled a groan. "Welcome back, Honjo-sensei." When was he going to retire?

"The cafeteria has dango tonight." He set four trays onto his desk. "Are you still working on notes? I finished mine long ago." With a flourish, he presented his notes: two patients with cough and one with pimples.

"My case ran late." Sakura opened the next patient's chart.

"I'm telling you, assistants slow you down. During the Third War, I did above-the-knees with no help in less than two minutes—"

Honjo's reedy voice faded into the background as Sakura read her incomplete note:

Uchiha Sasuke. Vision follow-up. Oct 1 st .

Sakura closed his chart. Sasuke missed his appointment again. This time, he hadn't sent a note at all. Was he busy, or was he avoiding her?

"— lost a thumb but that was child's play to reattach—"

After the war, Sasuke was tried and sentenced. The first year of his probation required him to accept any mission he was given, and the council had a great slew of assassinations for the Leaf's deadliest asset. Naruto mentioned that things had eased up since he joined ANBU, but he still seemed no less busy. Sakura couldn't ask about it herself because, well…

Sasuke didn't really talk with her.

"—are tricky. Now, do you remember what the most common cause of a cough is?"

Sakura realized Honjo was quizzing her. "Uh, post-nasal drip."

He grinned. "See? You're learning so much already. Aren't you glad you have me all November?"

Dear gods. Sakura raced to the bulletin board.

CHIEF MEDICS ON CALL

July: Shizune / Haruno

Aug: Iou / Haruno

Sept: Sarutobi / Haruno

Oct: Honjo / Haruno

Still the summer schedule. She breathed a sigh of relief and flipped through the old schedules out of curiosity. Haruno, Haruno, Haruno… Had she been on service for ten months straight?

A knock sounded at the door. "Haruno-sensei?" A man poked his head into the door— Yokaze, her apprentice. "I'm putting the fall schedule together. Are you unavailable any dates?"

"I told you to put her down for everything," Honjo snapped. "She's always here."

"Hey, I take missions," she protested.

Honjo harrumphed. "To other hospitals. It's a waste of resources, if you ask me. Any chunin would do."

"I do other things too! I can fight."

Honjo waved a hand. "You shouldn't. Tsunade-chan giving you kids these crazy ideas. I remember when she couldn't close a paper cut."

Sakura opened her mouth to object and faltered. The last time she took a non-clinical mission was… Suna, last year, and even that had been to retrieve poison samples. It felt like a distant dream that her nemeses were once malignant tree-men and despotic celestials and not the stern-faced cafeteria lady who adhered to lunch hours with such militant vehemence that she refused to serve Sakura a single second past three, even though the fryers were still on—

Oh dear. Was she losing her edge?

"Medic-nin belong in the hospital in times of peace. Leave the dangerous stuff to the shinobi." Honjo dug into another tray of dango. "Besides, why wou' you wan' to leave when you can sleeb in your own bed?" he asked, jowls quibbling.

Sakura eyed the stack of files on her desk, her musty white coats, roughly cuffed and stained with ink, and the old call schedules on the bulletin board. Naruto was on sabbatical to Mount Myoboku, training senjutsu. Ino was with troops from Suna, quelling an insurrection in the Land of Silence. All her classmates were full-fledged jonin, taking missions abroad and seeing exotic lands that she only got to hear about when they limped into her waiting room, exhausted but bright-eyed.

Once, she'd gotten to do that too. Things changed after she made Chief. The hospital sucked her into its whitewashed halls.

"You should smile more, Sakura-chan," Honjo said cheerfully. "Boys get nervous when girls look too serious. That's why you don't have a boyfriend—"

Yokaze coughed. "Haruno-sensei?"

She missed the burn of wind on her neck and chakra in her fists. The rush of impending battle in her blood. Sakura trashed her cold rice balls and slipped Sasuke's file in her drawer. "Let me get back to you with those dates."

She had a Hokage to see.

Present day:

Sakura always wondered what the Intelligence Division spent their money on. Evidently, costumes. They'd packed her enough clothing to last a year of espionage. Sakura tottered to the village gates with a precarious stack of luggage in her arms.

She was to meet her teammates there— two ANBU jonins. Normally, Kakashi briefed deploying teams together, but the three of them had spectacularly conflicting schedules the past month. She only knew a handful of people in ANBU, and they mostly kept to themselves. Shino, maybe? He'd vanished off the radar the last few years.

No, most likely, her teammates for this mission would be strangers. She'd have to make a good first impression.

A sliver of Konoha's front gate peaked over her stack of suitcases, and she ground to a halt. Momentum sent the top-most suitcase off-kilter, tipping, sliding off the stack. "Uh oh—"

She grimaced, waiting for impact. It never came. Hurriedly, she set everything down on a stone bench. A stranger stood, holding her suitcase. Her teammate! "Hello! I'm Haruno Sakura," she said, bowing.

The man loomed over her in ANBU fatigues: grey vest, bracers, and a sword jutting from his back. Black hair cut in careless layers framed his wolf mask, and his broad shoulders were bare, the left tattooed with the insignia of the village. His long legs tucked into a pair of cold-weather boots that looked like they'd seen some mileage.

Wow.

She really needed to start dating again. "Looking forward to working together," she said.

"Sakura."

Even his voice was nice. Sakura froze. "Sasuke-kun?"

He crossed his arms. The gesture was achingly familiar.

"You switched masks," she said lamely. His hair had grown out too, but that was no excuse. Her pulse picked up. "I haven't seen you in so long. How have you been?"

"Fine," he said. "You?"

"Great! Just the usual at the hospital."

After the war, he'd dodged her for months. It wasn't until she performed his arm transplant and accepted him on as a patient that they rekindled their friendship. But their appointments were few and far between, and he made himself scarce, despite Naruto's best efforts.

If it weren't for the souvenirs that he'd occasionally leave at her apartment— usually theory books or samples of poison— she would've wondered if they were still friends. But even those felt more like polite gifts for her care.

"I finished that scroll on herb cultivars from Grass." Last March. "It was a great refresher. Thanks."

"Sure."

They fell into silence. It was always like this when they were together. Sasuke didn't appear at all bothered by the distance between them, and Sakura had never worked up the courage to ask. "It's been so long," Sakura said. "When was the last time we went on a mission together?"

When they were genin. And so, the months turned to years, and the chest of Memories They Shared But Did Not Speak Of settled deeper and deeper in the ground. "Did you bring the poison?" he asked, instead of answering.

"Yes," she said.

"Good."

They stood under the gates, listening to the morning chorus of songbirds, until a raccoon-masked man appeared in a puff of smoke.

"Taichou. Ugly."

Sakura groaned. Sai was another recluse, but she saw him more often than Sasuke, which was saying something given how busy Sai was with ANBU internal affairs.

Sasuke picked up the luggage, and Sai pulled out his ink. Whatever animosity that lingered between the two of them after the war had dissipated into the wordless camaraderie of old teammates.

"Draw us a big one," she said.

His head canted. "Of course. I have to accommodate your massive, heavy—" Sakura rested a chakra-laden palm on his arm, smiling "—luggage."

With a hiss of tearing parchment, a great ink bird burst from his scroll.

They lurched off the ground, brushed past the tree-tops of the forest, and ascended with each powerful beat of the ink-beast's wings.

The Land of Stone was an insular nation nestled between Earth and Wind, bordered by formidable mountain ranges on all sides. Its population was small but diverse, a mixture of enterprising immigrants from the five nations and natives who maintained their ancient traditions. Sakura settled in for the long flight.

When they leveled off, the men removed their masks. Sakura allowed herself one cursory glance at Sasuke's face. "Do I get an alias too?" she asked.

"Hag," Sai suggested, unzipping his backpack.

After so many years, his insults slid off her back like a water off a duck. "You packed light."

He shrugged. "No disguises."

"You're not going undercover?"

"I'm the support," he said, as though it were obvious.

She supposed after twenty-odd years in covert operations, it was second nature to him. Meanwhile, she was still learning to use the lengthy list of espionage vocabulary ID had provided her with.

"You two are the plants," he said.

Sakura flipped through the dossier one last time, reviewing the details: Their mission target was Higa Masao, a leading member of the ring of weapons and mining oligarchs who had amassed billion-ryo empires in the boom after the Fourth War. His reputation for fomenting bloodshed had earned him a colloquial title of warlord. "How long has ID been investigating this guy?"

"Hideo started right after the war." Hideo was an ANBU chunin who'd lived undercover in Stone, building his reputation among the network of procurers. Five years without coming home. Sakura couldn't imagine.

The air chilled around them and Sakura pulled on her cloak. They had cleared the forests and were sailing over straggly rocks of the Land of Earth.

The operation was part of a larger effort investigating the spike of violence in Iwa since the new Tsuchikage took power. A mole in their council reported that the two men were close allies. Sakura's team was to infiltrate and gather hard evidence— grounds to terminate Konoha's sizable contract with him before their image was dragged through the mud by association.

"Questions?" Sasuke asked, when she closed the sheaf of paper.

She shook her head. "This guy sounds like a treat." Higa lived in seclusion, apart from a private security army of well-paid mercenaries and a revolving-door ensemble of female escorts.

"Better hope he feels that way about you too." Sai snapped fresh batteries into a two pair of wired mics and handed them to her. "One for you, one for the target."

Sakura admired the thin wiring and how tiny mic was. ANBU had all the newest stuff. "What do you mean?"

"Your legend."

Legend was a shinobi's fake identity, crafted by the intelligence division. "I read it," she said. "I'm playing a server." Sakura'd memorized her documents to the letter— her birthday, village, and the name of the upscale restaurant where she used to work before seeking employment in Higa's complex.

Sai turned to her. "Former server. You're the swallow."

"What am I swallowing?" she asked.

"Like the bird," Sasuke said sharply.

The term rang a bell. Sakura thought back to Anko's training bootcamp from seven years ago that she'd taken with the other kunoichi preparing for the chunin exams. Kunoichi are swallows; shinobi are ravens. Also called honey traps.

Higa's sexual proclivities. Seeking employment. Realization sunk in. "I'm playing an escort."

"A courtesan," Sasuke said, his brows furrowed. "Kakashi didn't tell you."

Her visions of eavesdropping on Higa's dinners while filling his glass with wine evaporated. Out of all the para-ANBU missions in the stack, he'd had given her this? With them? Was she being bullied for her fervent and undying childhood crush, or was this retaliation for all the billing inquiries she made him review last month? "Oh no."

"You did the training," Sasuke said, with a hint of accusation. "Your name was listed in the registry."

Well yeah. They all completed the training. "It was for the chunin exams." Suna's examiners were notorious for covering niche topics, and certification after the training only required a written exam and a practical, during which she'd made a suggestive pass at a mannequin while Ino heckled her from the back of the classroom.

And a mannequin was not a living, breathing man.

What had Anko taught them?

Your body is a weapon, but sex is your last resort, she'd said. Cue the class breaking into giggles. Charm him. Exploit his vulnerabilities. Make him want to talk to you. The Mitarashi Method— unironically named— was infallible if utilized properly; unfortunately, Sakura could only remember three steps off the top of her head.

"Better than nothing," Sai said, at her reluctant admittance.

"How long before we arrive?" she asked.

"Not long."

Sakura nodded. She was to present to his estate tonight, and her first contact with Higa was scheduled for tomorrow at noon. That gave her an evening to prepare. She had experience— one man, her inner mind hissed— but one fumbling relationship was a well of carnal knowledge not. Sakura took a deep breath.

"I— uh— need a volunteer."

"For what?" Sasuke asked.

She'd tackle this like she tackled big surgeries: plan ahead, ask for help, and— "Practice."

Sai and Sasuke exchanged a slow glance.

Sakura steeled her resolve. She couldn't back down now, and slink back to Honjo with her tail between her legs. She would complete this mission, and prove that she was still a real kunoichi, if to no one but herself.

A/N: And so we begin :)