In the hallway outside Tsunade's door, Sakura stopped to give Kabuto a piece of advice. He had an air about him – one Sakura could only describe as haughty. She just knew that this was going to be a disaster, but she'd be a fool not to at least try to mitigate some of the damage.
"Kabuto-san," she began, "I know you won't want to hear this, but I think that it's best if you only speak when spoken to. I'm fully aware of this awkward position you're in, but in order to minimize the amount of arguing and fighting that will no doubt occur, I think you should just try to speak as few words as possible."
Kabuto shifted his face downward and pushed his glasses up further onto his face. "Of course, Sakura-san, whatever you think is best."
With a grateful smile, Sakura pushed Tsunade's door open and led Kabuto inside. Tsunade was out of bed for the first time since she'd become sick. She stood near the window, gazing out to the streets below. Her back was turned to them, but Sakura could see by her posture that she was tense and angry. Slowly, she turned to face the duo, her teeth gritted so hard Sakura could see veins bulging near her temple.
"Kabuto," she said lowly, her honeycomb eyes lit with a spark of fire Sakura was sure she had never seen on her mentor before.
"Ah, Tsunade-sama," Kabuto said, giving her a curt nod. "It's lovely to see you again."
A kunai whizzed through the air toward Kabuto's face, nothing but a black blur until Kabuto easily sidestepped it and it embedded itself in the doorframe behind him.
"There must be some reason why your master saw fit to lend you to Konoha," Tsunade said, her eyes never wandering from Kabuto's face.
"Jumping right into things?" Kabuto asked. "I was hoping maybe we could catch up first. It's been ages since I've seen you, Tsunade-sama."
Sakura reached over and smacked his arm, glaring at him with barely repressed rage. What had happened to being quiet and respectful? Kabuto flicked his gaze over to her, though he seemed more amused than upset.
"No?" he continued. "I thought not. So if we aren't going to participate in these polite formalities, then there is no need to pretend that I wasn't kidnapped and brought here against my will."
In an instant, Tsunade had crossed the room and wrapped her hands around Kabuto's throat, pressing him against the wall with what could easily become deadly force. Kabuto, for all his bravado, showed a glimmer of fear behind those thick-rimmed glasses before he schooled his expression into something smugger.
"Listen here, you little brat—"
"Tsunade-sama, stop," Sakura implored, tugging on her mentor's arm. "He hasn't done anything wrong—"
"His list of crimes is a mile long!"
"—since he got here."
The room seemed to freeze, everyone locked in place. Sakura could feel both her own pulse and Kabuto's pulse racing, and though she wasn't exactly pleased by the way things were going so far, she was glad to know that Kabuto at least feared Tsunade properly.
"If you hurt a single person in this village I will make your life a living hell," Tsunade whispered heatedly. "You will be begging for death when I'm done with you."
"Yes," Kabuto said, reaching underneath Tsunade's arm to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose again. "Naruto issued a similar warning. I can assure you I have no death wish. Sakura-san and I have come to a mutual agreement."
Tsunade looked over to Sakura, her hand still tight around Kabuto's throat. Sakura felt panic seize her own throat. She hadn't come up with an alternative agreement to explain to her. She couldn't tell her about the seal without outing herself as having putting it on Kabuto.
"Tell me about this mutual agreement, Sakura."
"Umm, well—"
"In exchange for my help, Sakura-san has agreed to give me a list of all of the names of Konoha's forbidden jutsu," Kabuto said.
Tsunade's eyes narrowed as they drifted back to Kabuto's face. "She did not agree to that," she said firmly.
"Well, not a detailed list, of course," Kabuto amended. "I only want the names. No hand signs or anything so revealing."
Tsunade shook her head fiercely. "If you think I'm just going to hand Orochimaru a list of all the ways he could destroy Konoha, you are out of your mind."
"Don't be so naïve, Tsunade-sama," Kabuto said, a smirk somehow worming its way onto his face, in spite of the precarious situation he found himself in. "Orochimaru-sama has no interest in destroying Konoha. Besides, the information I've requested in innocuous enough without the accompanying hand seals."
Forcefully, Tsunade pressed Kabuto back into the wall before releasing him and taking several steps backwards. Her eyes flew to Sakura, who was doing her best to appear invisible.
"Sakura, did you really agree to this?" she demanded.
Sakura tried not to wince, bowing her head low in her mentor's direction. "I did agree to it, Tsunade-sama," she lied. "It was the only way I could get him to agree to help."
"Well, you can forget about it," she said dismissively. "I'm not giving illegal information away."
Kabuto tsked, shaking his head with disapproval. "Tsunade-sama, I thought you of all people would understand. Sakura-san is in such a vulnerable position here. She needs help and here it is, offered to you on a silver platter," he said. "Surely those staunch rules of yours have a little leeway in them. What other option do you have?"
"Don't put this on me, asshole," she snapped. "You have the ability to help by your own free will and you're choosing to extort information from us instead."
"Nothing is truly free, is it, Tsunade-sama?"
Tsunade gave Kabuto a look of sheer disgust before she flicked that same unnerving gaze to Sakura. Sakura flinched, more than a little afraid of the fury she felt radiating off her mentor.
"Sakura," she murmured, her voice calm, but lethal. "This was your idea and your bargain, so for Konoha's sake, I hope you know what you're doing. Kabuto is on your leash now. If anything goes wrong, if he does anything suspicious, malicious, or whatever other iteration of evil comes between, I will hold you personally responsible. Do you understand?"
Shaking so badly that she could feel strands of her hair vibrating against her face, Sakura bowed her head respectfully, averting her gaze. "Yes, Tsunade-sama."
"Good," Tsunade replied, standing up a little straighter. "Now both of you get out of my sight. I'm not feeling so good."
"Perhaps you'd like to let Kabuto take a look at you," Sakura ventured, ashamed of the trembling in her voice. "He's done a good—"
"I don't want that bastard's hands anywhere near me," she snapped. "Now get out."
Sakura glanced over at Kabuto, who still seemed smug in spite of this solid admonishing he'd just received. Quickly, Sakura grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the room.
"Wow, she really, really hates me," Kabuto drawled once they had made it back to his makeshift laboratory, "enough to hold her favorite student personally responsibility for my misdeeds. How does that make you feel, Sakura-san?"
Sakura was really not in the mood to bite back. Given Tsunade's understandable distrust of Kabuto, she was more determined than ever to find a fix for this situation as quickly as possible and get Kabuto out of Konoha. So instead of dignifying his taunting with a response, Sakura kept her head buried in a book of herbal medicine, looking for antibacterial plants.
"Here I thought you were Konoha's golden girl," he continued.
Annoyed that for once, she had extra chakra to spare for research and yet couldn't maintain focus because of his unwarranted teasing, Sakura snapped the book shut and gave him a dry look.
"I must say, it's quite a feeling to know that my missteps could affect the illustrious, Sakura Haruno, medic of Team 7," he said, his eyes locked onto hers now that she had set aside her book.
"Big deal," she sighed, "like the reputation of the weakest member of Team 7 means anything. Don't overestimate yourself."
"Don't sell yourself short, Sakura-san," he urged. "The weakest member of Team 7 is still a member of Team 7, and I certainly wouldn't call her weak. After all, you did defeat Sasori. And here you are now, running an entire village by yourself."
Sakura's brow furrowed as she let his words sink in. She didn't like the idea of being complimented by him, even if they were observations more than praise.
"You know it was quite foolish for Tsunade to make me aware that you are responsible for my actions," he mused. "It's like she had little regard for you, if any at all. Why should I go out of my way to protect you? What happens to you is of no consequence to me."
"You need me to place the seal," she countered.
"Sure, but Tsunade doesn't know that," Kabuto said. "It was an unwise move, if you ask me."
"Nobody asked you," she muttered under her breath.
She heard him chuckle and she glanced away from him, her mood shifting a bit. She was still irritated and worried, but now she was tired and resigned, too. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep, like she would usually be doing about this time. But she didn't want to waste the chakra she had left, so she shook her head and blinked, lifting her book to resume reading.
"Shouldn't you be more worried about what I'm up to?" Kabuto asked. Glowering, Sakura lowered her book to glare at him again. "You're responsible for me, aren't you?"
Kabuto was seated at the table where the microscope sat, and though he had prepared a few slides to look at, samples pulled from the patients he saw earlier that day, he had pushed his chair away from the table and given Sakura his full attention.
"Come on, Kabuto, haven't you done enough today?" she demanded. "You coerced me into a deal I'm not overly fond of, and you finagled Tsunade-sama into one I never agreed to. Can't you give me a break? Just for the rest of the night?"
A faint smile quirked up on Kabuto's lips, and unlike the others she had seen so far, this one was not so smug. "You're right, Sakura-san," he said. "Forgive me. We have work to do. I will resume annoying you in the morning."
Sakura didn't doubt that.
The next few days went by with no incident. Kabuto continued to shadow Sakura until he felt he had gleaned enough information to begin proper research. They had avoided seeing Tsunade again, at least Kabuto had. Sakura had still gone in to see her for her nightly check-ups, though the terse silence had been a bit uncomfortable. Sakura wondered if she had somehow damaged her relationship with Tsunade by making this deal with Kabuto.
Unfortunately, she didn't have the extra energy to spend thinking about it. Instead, she was back to square one, healing everyone by herself again while Kabuto spent his days on research and development.
Sakura thought that this routine would make things easier on her. In reality, it only added one more thing to her list. Instead of letting Kabuto research alone, Sakura would find him at night, after she had finished with her rounds and help him in what ways she could. It wasn't that she wasn't confident in Kabuto's abilities. She had been the one to recruit him, after all. It wasn't even that she didn't trust him, though the level of trust she had for him was certainly small enough to be concerning.
Though she didn't like to admit it, the reason she came to help him with the research each night was her own damned sense of pride. She knew in her heart that she was exceptionally capable and smart. She could come up with this cure, this vaccine, whatever it was that Kabuto was trying to do to fix things on her own. It tore her apart that she needed to rely on his help when she was just as capable of everything he was doing.
If only she had a near infinite amount of chakra like Naruto.
It was with these depressing thoughts in mind that she lugged herself into Kabuto's lab to see what he needed help with. His face was pressed to the microscope when she entered. He spared no acknowledgement for her as he adjusted the slides beneath the scope.
"Kabuto-san," she said, a little unsure of herself. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
Kabuto peeled his face away from the microscope, rolling his chair back so he could look at her. And look at her, he did. His eyes wandered from her face down the length of her body with languid scrutiny. Sakura tried not to fidget nervously under his gaze, adopting instead a power pose, her feet spread shoulder width apart and her hands clasped behind her back as she waited for him to decide not to be rude anymore.
"Your chakra is low," he stated.
"No shit. I've been healing people all day."
"You're tired," he continued, ignoring her. "You can't do your best work in this condition. What could you possibly help me with?"
Irritated, Sakura pulled up another chair and sat down beside him, rifling through the papers that were scattered across his worktable. "I don't know," she said. "Anything. I'm not just going to let you do all the work, even if you're doing most of it. I have to at least check to make sure you aren't poisoning Konoha's entire population with whatever sick thing it is that you fancy."
He ripped a scrap of paper from her hand and shoved it into a nearby folder, giving her an exasperated look. "I'm serious, Sakura-san," he said sternly. "There's nothing you can do right now except go home and get some sleep."
"I'm serious, too!"
"If you seriously want to help, then go home," he said firmly. "This research you've done with antibacterial plants has been exponentially helpful, so don't worry that you're not doing your part."
"No," she snapped, standing up so abruptly that it knocked her chair over backwards. It hit the floor with a hollow, loud thump. "I have spent all day funneling my own chakra into others, cleaning up vomit, changing sheets, placating every grouchy, inconsiderate patient in the village. The only thing I want is to fast track this cure. I will do anything you need, even if it's just fetching something for you."
Silence settled over the room. Kabuto watched her with his mouth slightly agape. Her fists were clenched so tightly that she felt the crescents of her nails biting into her skin. Feeling ashamed of her own volatility, a dam exploded inside her and she felt tears begin to prickle at the back of her eyes. She wasn't going to cry in front of Kabuto, though. She didn't really need to cry at all. She didn't even feel sad, just overwhelmed. It didn't matter that there wasn't anything he needed her help with. Even the smallest task would make her feel productive, and that was what she really needed.
"Good god, are you crying?"
Bitterly, Sakura reached up to wipe away the pesky tear that had somehow managed to escape in spite of Sakura's monumental effort to keep it in.
"Don't be such a princess," he said, rolling his eyes. "Here." He extended a piece of paper to her. Sakura snatched it from him with a wary glance and read the list of herbs written down. "If you absolutely must do something, then go fetch those from the greenhouse. Tomorrow I'll begin testing them to see what works with what I've got so far. If you'd like to be a part of that process, then come with a bit more chakra next time."
"Don't call me princess," she hissed. Her eyes scrolled over the page, gauging how much time it would take her to collect his requested herbs. It wasn't much, but at least it was something. "But thank you," she added, feeling an odd mixture of relief and agony.
Kabuto frowned, lowering his face until the glare of his glasses obscured her vision of his eyes. She wondered if he did that on purpose. She didn't wait for him to say anything else before she was gone.
Down in the greenhouse, Sakura realized exactly how much Kabuto was relying on the information she had gathered regarding antibacterial herbs. The list seemed to isolate the few plants she had found that contained both antibacterial properties as well as chakra stimulating effects. It was rare to find a plant in nature that stimulated chakra, but given Sakura's skill with plants, medicine, and perfect chakra control, she had been able to engineer a few plants to include such traits.
It wasn't her invention by any means. She had noticed from past missions in Suna that the sand-nin had also developed such plants. They were also common around small towns with herbalists and healers, though on a much smaller scale than what Sakura had prepared in the greenhouse.
What was different in this case was that most of the time, the chakra stimulating parts of the plant were mainly meant as a conduit for the healing properties that were already nascent in said plant. But judging by the list Kabuto had given her, he had something different in mind. The plants he had listed weren't necessarily ones that used the infused chakra to aid in fast healing, but instead clung to bacteria without doing much else.
In any other instance, this might have been seen as a defect, but Sakura thought she had an idea of where Kabuto was heading with this idea. If the chakra from infused plants clung to the bacteria, it would make it easy to track, to find exactly how the bacteria spread. If they found out how it spread, they could also find out how to stop it.
Feeling the tiniest bit better about her predicament, Sakura grabbed the closest pair of gardening sheers and got to work. Oddly enough, she also felt grateful to Kabuto. At least he had been willing to give her something to do. She wasn't sure how she felt about him calling the shots, but in her state of mental exhaustion, she was just too relieved to care.
The greenhouse was warm and fragrant, and the work was monotonous and only the slightest bit tedious. After only half an hour, Sakura realized that Kabuto had been right (though if she were pressed, she might have admitted that she had known that from the beginning). She was tired, exhausted, and the greenhouse was just the sort of place she'd want to curl up and take a nap in.
However, Sakura didn't have time to take a nap – not since she had already cut the plants and they needed to be taken immediately up to the lab. Unfortunately, she had only managed to harvest a little less than half of what Kabuto had requested. Nonetheless, Sakura couldn't continue until she had rested, so she gathered her basket of herbs and made her way back to Kabuto's lab.
Kabuto's back was turned to her when she opened the door. His head was buried deep in some sort of scroll. Sakura watched him chew his lip as he tried to decipher whatever it was he was reading. Without the grouchiness or the smugness on his face he looked sort of peaceful, sort of like Naruto almost, when he was trying to work out the answer to a difficult question. It made Sakura wonder what Kabuto might have been like had Orochimaru not sunk his fangs into him.
"I've got your plants," Sakura murmured, her voice weak. She nearly stumbled into the room and placed the basket on his desk.
Kabuto did not turn to face her and said nothing, his brow furrowed as his eyes scanned over the scroll. Sakura cleared her throat, but again, Kabuto remained motionless
"Kabu—"
"What, Sakura?" Kabuto snapped, his eyes fierce as they finally wandered in her direction. Sakura blinked, not expecting his volatility, or the casual way he had dropped the suffix from her name. It was probably unusual for them to have been using them in the first place, but still. She felt the weirdness of the dynamic between them acutely. They were still enemies, still on opposite ends of the morality spectrum. Being thrust into a position where he had to answer to her must have felt strange to him.
But that wasn't exactly the case because he didn't answer to her, and she didn't answer to him either. They might as well have been working solo, except Sakura needed Kabuto more than he needed her. She was aware that left them with an undefined power dynamic. She couldn't say she was pleased about being snapped at, but she had done so to him already, so she wasn't exactly clear on where they stood on that front.
And she was far too tired to worry about it now. She just needed some sleep, some time to think on it and decided how best to approach the subject at a later time.
"I've got your plants," she repeated, her voice louder, but still soft. "In that basket on the table."
"I heard you the first time," he said, returning his attention to the scroll in his hands.
Sakura opened her mouth to speak, but she didn't quite know what to say. She wanted to snap at him. She certainly would have snapped at anyone else who had spoken like that to her. Instead, she turned on her heel and left.
When Sakura arrived back at her apartment, she was surprised to find Naruto there, waiting for her on the steps. They had hardly spoken to one another since Kabuto had woken up aside from idle chatter during their daily healing sessions.
"Naruto," she said, rubbing her eyes. "What are you doing here?"
"Sakura-chan," he said, rising to greet her. "How are you feeling?"
She brushed past him and began to unlock her apartment. "I'm tired," she replied dryly. "I was about to go to sleep. What are you doing here?" She pushed open her apartment door, but Naruto's arm shot out to block her path.
"Sakura-chan, we're worried about you," he said, his eyes filled with concern. He looked so charmingly apologetic that Sakura felt it crack her heart a little bit.
"Who's we?" she demanded.
"Tsunade-sama," he answered bashfully, "and Kakashi-sensei."
Sakura scowled and pushed her way into her living room. They were right to be concerned, of course, but what could anyone do about it?
"Tsunade-sama thinks it was a mistake to bring Kabuto here," he continued, following her into her living room. "I kind of agree. I mean it seemed like a good idea at the time, but we can't trust him. What if he betrays us?"
"It's certainly a possibility," she replied, "but there isn't anything we can do about it now. We'll just have to keep a close eye on him."
"Tsunade-sama wants you to back of your deal with him."
Sakura froze, her eyes locked onto Naruto's. "I'm not going to do that." Nervously, she pressed her fingers into the seal on her wrist. She could feel Kabuto's heartbeat slow and steady. Hers, not so much.
"Sakura-chan, think about what he wants," Naruto insisted. "A list of Konoha's forbidden jutsu? Can you even imagine the chaos he'll cause with something like that?"
"Look, Naruto, I don't want him to have that any more than you do," she said, poking her pointer finger into his chest. "But we're desperate right now. He's already making far more progress than I could have made alone. I can't go back on our deal now."
"Then offer him something else!"
Sakura scowled, angry with Naruto for chiding her like this and Kabuto for forcing his hand into a greater deal than she had agreed to. While she agreed with Naruto and Tsunade and Kakashi, there wasn't much she could do to fix it now.
"Sakura-chan, you can't give him that list," Naruto said. "We can't let Orochimaru get ahold of those jutsu."
"I know, Naruto."
Naruto calmed down, his eyes losing a bit of their blaze. He deflated a bit, now watching her with a mixture of pity and helplessness. "I was thinking that maybe there was something else we could offer," he said, "something that Orochimaru would want."
"What's that?" Sakura asked, her curiosity piqued.
"We could agree to stop chasing after Sasuke."
Sakura blinked, positive that she had heard him wrong.
"I know it sounds crazy," he said hastily, seeing the look on her face, "but Orochimaru will find it a relief to have us off his back. That's at least something Kabuto could bring back to him."
"So you're just giving up on Sasuke?" she demanded.
"Of course not!" he said fiercely, "but we can't put everyone else in the village at risk just for Sasuke's sake. Sasuke is free to come back to us at any time and he chooses not to. Once he's done with Orochimaru, we can drag him back to Konoha whether he likes it or not."
Sakura felt her lower lip trembling and for the second time that day tears pricked at the back of her eyes. "What if Orochimaru kills him?" she asked. "What if he takes Sasuke's body?"
"Hey," Naruto said, grabbing her shoulders forcefully and lowering his face until they were nose to nose. "That's not going to happen, okay? I will make sure of it."
Sakura sighed and felt herself leaning into him. She was almost too tired to stand up now, and coupled with this new emotional exhaustion, it was all she could do not to crumple into his chest. Sensing her discomfort, Naruto lifted her up off her feet and began to carry her toward the bedroom.
"Don't you worry, Sakura-chan," he said as he placed her down against her mattress. "Everything is going to be fine."