Kakashi had been asleep when Kabuto barged in to give him the vaccine. Sakura couldn't tell whether she was annoyed or grateful for the fact. On the one hand, she didn't want to have to deal with tension between Kakashi and Kabuto, but on the other hand, that third presence could have been a nice buffer between whatever the hell was happening with her and Kabuto now.

After injecting Kakashi with the vaccine, Sakura sat beside his bed and ran her fingers absently through his hair. His condition, unlike Tsunade's, was incrementally improving by the second. Sakura could tell by the sound of his snoring that breathing was becoming easier for him. She almost wanted to wake him up to ask him if he was feeling better, but perhaps it was better to let him rest.

Besides, she could just as easily monitor him while he was sleeping.

Kabuto sat in the far corner of the room, watching with his glasses positioned just so that the glare from the window obscured Sakura's vision of his eyes. She wondered if he realized that or if it was pure coincidence.

She wanted to pay him no mind. She wanted to be angry with him, but she didn't really have a great reason to be. All of this weirdness was completely on her, and she was well aware of that. Determined to keep the awkwardness at bay for now, Sakura instead refocused her attention on Kakashi. He shifted in his bed, trying to find a more comfortable position in his sleep, and inadvertently, Sakura touched the hem of the mask near his cheek.

With a wince, she pulled her hand away. She didn't know why, but even touching his mask seemed like a violation of his trust somehow.

"Now would be a perfect opportunity to sneak a peak at his face," Kabuto said.

Sakura's eyes flew over to him, searching his face for any sign of the reason he would suggest such a thing.

"I wouldn't break Kakashi's trust like that," she said dryly. "He's my comrade and my friend, and I respect him. Besides, I've seen his face before."

She kept her eyes on Kabuto, wondering what his reaction to that news would be. Perhaps he was curious, too, about what was underneath Kakashi's mask. But he showed no outward reaction to her words.

"Right," he said, "when you collected the polyp samples."

Sakura nodded, not wanting to tell him that had been the only time she had seen his face – and under such duress that Kakashi would have let himself get close to death before allowing her to see his face. Kabuto didn't need to know that.

"So what did he look like?"

Sakura blinked then gave Kabuto a disapproving frown.

"My theory is poorly managed facial hair," he continued.

Sakura rolled her eyes. She and Naruto had thought much worse things than that. "He doesn't have facial hair," she said. "And there's nothing weird under the mask. He's just a regular person. A stunningly handsome, normal person."

Kabuto's face was expressionless still. "Then why wear a mask?"

"Why don't you ask him when he wakes up?" she snapped.

"No need to get testy," he said. "I'm just making conversation."

"How about you worry about your own face instead?"

He cocked his head to the side with an amused, curious grin. "What's wrong with my face?" he asked.

Sakura wasn't blind to the fact that Kabuto seemed to respond better to her meanness than her niceness. She had noticed it before, of course, but most of the mean things she had to say to him were genuinely mean, which wasn't good for the sake of their bargain.

"All I'm saying is if I find a cure for ugly, you'll be the first person I give it to," she sassed, turning her shoulders away from him to glance back at Kakashi.

"You don't think I'm ugly."

"You mean because of how in love with you I am?" she scoffed. "Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're not the charming womanizer you think you are."

He laughed at her joke – they both knew he was no womanizer. But there was something dark in his eyes now, something that set Sakura on edge. She stood up quickly, glancing one last time at Kakashi's sleeping form.

"I think we're done here," she said. "His condition has improved, and he's stable now."

Kabuto nodded. "We can check on the both of them in the morning to see their progress," he suggested. "Would you also like to give round one to Ino, or would you prefer to wait until the next round?"

Sakura bit her lip as she mulled it over. "Let's wait until tomorrow," she said. "We can decide then."

Kabuto nodded in agreement.

/

By the next morning it was apparent that round one had been at least partially successful. Tsunade had been up and walking around when Sakura had gone to check on her that morning. With renewed vigor and a shockingly earnest work ethic, she had gone back to her office to get some work done.

Sakura was insanely grateful for this having been shirking some of the more boring aspects of her temporary Hokage duties. It was nice to have the actual Hokage back in her office.

Unfortunately for Naruto, her first order of business had been to recruit the blond as her temporary assistant while Shizune was still under the weather. At first he had seemed excited, referring to his tasks as practice for when he became Hokage himself. That ambition quickly morphed into dread as Tsunade worked him to the bone, sending him on constant errands.

Kakashi, too, had greatly improved since receiving the vaccine, though it was apparent that he was still sick. He was able to walk around, though he had to take frequent breaks and couldn't make it any farther than the greenhouse. Sakura stayed with him for most of the morning, closely monitoring his vitals, checking for any signs of something amiss.

Down in the greenhouse, Kakashi leaned against a wooden planter, his smile visible even through his mask.

"It feels great to finally be out of that room again," he said to Sakura, who stood in the corner, watching him like a hawk.

"I can imagine," she said. "I'm so glad you're feeling better. Hopefully the worst of all this is behind us now."

"You must be pretty relieved," he said. "Tsunade-sama is back at it and you won't have to be working with Kabuto for much longer."

Sakura shrugged apathetically. "We renegotiated our bargain, so after he's done here I have to go back to Sound with him to help him with a poison," she explained. "I'm not totally in the clear just yet."

"You're going back to Sound with him?" Kakashi asked sharply.

"Just for a couple of days," she answered. "And honestly at this point I'm not worried he's going to hurt me or anything. He legitimately needs my help and it's the least I can do. Besides, if he wanted to hurt me he's had a thousand opportunities to do so."

"What about Orochimaru?" Kakashi asked. "Will he be there? Has Tsunade-sama approved of this?"

"Yes," she said dryly, "Tsunade-sama nudged me into accepting his reduced offer. She really didn't want to give him that list of jutsu, but I guess her apprentice's time and safety were an acceptable trade."

Nervously, Sakura began to rub at the seal on her wrist. She wanted to tell Kakashi the truth. It was beginning to get to her that no one beside Kabuto knew about the seal. She was worried about the long term affects of it and for a few brief seconds last night as she was trying to fall asleep, she mused that the weird connection, the kiss, all the strangeness going on between them had something to do with the seal. She knew Kakashi knew a thing or two about seals and perhaps he would have been able to shed some light on it for her.

But she didn't trust him not to tell Tsunade, and she would never have approved of a seal like that – certainly not under these conditions. And she definitely wouldn't have wanted Sakura to give that same seal to Sasuke.

"So you're going alone?" he asked. "All the way to Sound? To Kabuto's bunker?"

"Well Kabuto will be with me, obviously."

"How reassuring," he said sarcastically. He shifted until he was reclined nearly all the way on the ground, gazing up at the glass above with detached interest. "I want to go with you," he said, glancing briefly at her to see her reaction. When she showed no outward indication that she had heard him, he frowned. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to be going to Sound alone."

"I don't need a babysitter, Kakashi-sensei."

"Sakura, there's a reason shinobi work in squads," he argued. "You need someone to watch your back."

"Like I said, I'll have Kabuto with me," she explained. Truthfully, she would have preferred to take Kakashi along with her, but she obviously couldn't do that if they were going to run into Sasuke. Even just thinking about Sasuke sent a pang through her heart. She couldn't do that to Kakashi. Or Naruto. They were better off not knowing.

"You say that like it's supposed to make me feel better."

A cleared throat at the entrance of the greenhouse caught both of their attention. They had both sense him coming, but turned to look in his direction nonetheless. Kabuto stood in the doorway, his expression neutral but his posture rigid. He didn't cross the threshold into the greenhouse, but stood just outside, watching Sakura with alert eyes.

"I have no interest in harming her," he said to Kakashi, his voice relaxed in spite of his tense body language. "She's a handy little thing to have around."

Sakura reached down to grab a rock from a nearby planter and lobbed it at Kabuto's head. He sidestepped it with only a mild glance of irritation in her direction.

"We need to get to work now," he said to her. "You've wasted all morning flirting with Kakashi, so let's get a move on. We're inoculating Ino today and we have to start on round two."

"Oh, Sakura, if I had known you were flirting I'd have flirted back," Kakashi said, slowly getting to his feet. His eyes never left Kabuto and Sakura realized that at some point after Kabuto had appeared, Kakashi had lifted his hitae-ate to reveal his Sharingan.

"Trust me, if I was flirting you would have known," she joked, moving to help him get to this feet.

"Undoubtedly," Kabuto murmured under his breath, watching Sakura help Kakashi walk back to the entrance.

"What?" Kakashi snapped at him, his eyes blazing and curious. Sakura, too, had narrowed her eyes to glare at him.

"Nothing," Kabuto said, shaking his head.

/

The mood was dark in Kabuto's lab. He was glowering as he scribbled furiously in his notebook while Sakura separated batches of the first round of vaccines to go out to the civilians. He was pouting, almost, and Sakura couldn't figure out why.

She knew he was working on the second round of the vaccine – going over his notes for the first one. That couldn't have been the issue because now that they had at least figured out how to improve the condition they were almost in the clear. Besides, Kabuto didn't seem like the type to get flustered by a lack of progress – certainly not for this, which he had no personal involvement with.

But his pouting was unmistakable, and probably intentional. After all, Kabuto was usually careful to keep his emotions to himself (save for an occasional burst of anger). If there was something he was showing outwardly, it was because he wanted Sakura to see it.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked, trying to keep her tone casual, though she was deeply curious. She kept her eyes focused on the collection of syringes in front of her, but she listened intently to hear Kabuto's reply.

She heard him sigh and the scratching of his pencil against paper stopped. "Everyone is worried that I will hurt you," he said, his voice bordering on a whine. "I'm beginning to worry about that myself."

Her eyes flew over to him, not sure if he was making a joke.

"Obviously I wouldn't hurt you, Sakura," he said, rolling his eyes. "I mean maybe after all this is over, but I need you in one piece until you've placed the seal."

"Ugh," she grimaced. "What a charmer you are."

"I'm obviously charming enough to get Konoha's golden girl to kiss me," he said bitterly. "If they knew that maybe they'd be more hesitant to think I'd kill you for no reason."

"I'm sure you could come up with some reasons to kill me," she retorted. "Kissing you seems to be at the top of that list."

"It was cruel," he said defensively. "I'm not saying I'd kill you over it, but I think anger is justified."

"How was it cruel?" she demanded.

"You think it wasn't? You didn't have any regards for what I wanted in that moment, did you?" he asked. "No, you were selfish. You just did what you wanted without considering me at all."

Sakura dropped the case of syringes onto the table and turned to give him her full attention. It was true that she hadn't considered his feelings – he made it seem like he didn't have feelings at all. But was that really true? What exactly had he felt when she kissed him? That had been her goal, after all, to provoke him (though she'd never tell him that). Maybe it had been cruel. She wanted to make fun of him for being such a baby about a little kiss, but she realized he was right. She had been cruel to him.

"What if I had asked you first?" she asked. "Would that have made it better?"

"The point was to catch me off guard," he said, shaking his head. "Do you think I'm a fool? You were messing with me. You've got everyone here wrapped around your finger and yet that wasn't enough. You were bitter because I didn't want to be your friend, so you kissed me to get a rise out of me. Don't pretend you did it for any other reason. Asking would have defeated the whole purpose."

She wanted to narrow her eyes at him, but she caught herself. "Can I kiss you now?" she asked instead.

Kabuto's jaw clenched and she swore she heard him growl under his breath. "Knock if off, Sakura, we have work to do."

"I'm serious," she insisted. "I mean I'll respect your answer, whatever it is. I won't kiss you if you don't want me to. But don't you think it could be fun?"

"Fun? That's what this is about? You want to have fun?" he demanded. "Well, pardon me if I don't believe that."

"I wasn't lying to you when I said that I'd never kissed anyone before," she said, trying to keep her voice calm and not angry. She could feel her pulse racing, which meant Kabuto could feel it, too, though his seemed normal. She had no idea what possessed her to say these things to him, but for some perverted reason, she actually did want to kiss him again.

"So you're using me for practice or something?" he asked. "Oh, this is for Sasuke's sake, isn't it? Are you going to try this bullshit on him when you get to Sound? You just want a practice buddy until then?"

"Forbidden topic," she said through gritted teeth.

"Fine," he bit out. "I'll be sure to tell Sasuke that I taught his girlfriend everything she knows."

"He's not my—"

Her words were muffled by Kabuto's mouth when he grabbed her hair and pulled her into a kiss quite similar to the one she had forced on him. She squealed into his mouth, but didn't push him away, because, well, this was what she had wanted, right?

Instead, she curled her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him closer, kissing him back with fervor she didn't even know she had. Kabuto tasted sweet like mangos and she could feel the light stubble on his jaw she didn't even realize was there. In his shock, his fingers loosened in her hair, but he didn't let go. Both of their pulses were wild now, and Sakura reached up with her free hand to press her fingers to Kabuto's wrist just over the seal.

She had wanted desperately to believe that the seal had been the cause of her desire to kiss him. She wanted to blame it on anyone but herself. Kabuto had been right – she was cruel, she was mean. But she felt no spite towards him now, no residual anger for his coldness, his determination not to be her friend. The seal on her wrist didn't matter at all, because it wasn't what made her feel sexual attraction toward Kabuto. Closeness, she could understand. They shared each other's heartbeats, which was very intimate.

But they shared no legitimate intimacy. They weren't friends and she didn't feel anything for Kabuto that removing the seal could have taken away. What she felt now was fire, a heat stoked by the flames of the taboo. Kabuto was a criminal, one of the men who had taken Sasuke away from her.

And she was kissing him.

And it felt good.

Her fingers tightened around the back of his neck and she let out the tiniest whimper, praying to whatever gods there may be that he wouldn't stop because she was definitely sure she'd never felt like this before. Her skin was tingling all over, heat began to curl in her stomach.

It wasn't just her, though. She could feel Kabuto's newfound fervor as well. Perhaps he hadn't expected such a vigorous response from her. She could feel his fingers trembling and his heartbeat had skyrocketed. Feeling emboldened by his reaction, Sakura pressed herself even closer to him, pulling their bodies flush together. He gasped, surprised by the contact, and Sakura greedily took the opportunity to deepen the kiss.

But a second later he was pushing her away, his eyes darkened. She wished so badly that he didn't seem so angry. He almost looked handsome with his skin flushed and his chest heaving.

"Why are you mad?" she asked, wanting to sound mad herself, but sounding rather sad instead. Inwardly, she cursed because she knew Kabuto didn't respond to that, but she was surprised to see his expression immediately soften.

"I'm not mad," he said.

She widened her eyes, twisting her fingers together as if she were nervous. It was almost too easy. Kabuto believed her to be wildly emotional, which wasn't too far from the truth. But she was a good actress, too.

"Why are you worried about what people think you'll do to me?" she asked.

"Because aside from the Sasuke fiasco, we don't have conflicting goals – Konoha and Orochimaru," he replied. "Even now we're both benefitting from a mutual agreement. I may have defected from Konoha, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to be useful to one another."

"I see," Sakura said. "You want to leave here with a relationship in tact so that you can continue to call on Konoha for favors."

"And vice versa," he supplied. "I'm here now, aren't I?"

"Yes," she said, reaching for his hand and twining their fingers together. "You are."

Kabuto shuddered in disgust and jerked his hand away from her.

Sakura crossed her arms and pouted, though she was actually somewhere between amused and delighted. "So it's acceptable to put your tongue in my mouth, but holding hands is where you draw the line?" she demanded.

"Stop playing mind games with me, Sakura," he said, seething. "What are you even getting out of this?"

Sakura didn't exactly know the answer to that. She hadn't planned it, of course. It had just sort of happened. She hadn't had the intention of luring Kabuto into some sort of sexual minefield. She was winging it, and having a grand time doing so. She hadn't even felt guilty about it up until about four seconds ago.

"If our roles were reversed in this, I'd probably just chalk it up to you being a pervert," Sakura said, watching Kabuto's face carefully to see any hint of a reaction. "Has it ever occurred to you that I might just be a pervert?"

"Apparently you are," he said dryly.

Sakura giggled – a tittering sound so beneath her position, the power she held in her healing hands. If Inner Sakura still existed, she'd be lamenting the degradation of Sakura, her devolvement into some sort of bumbling sexual fiend.

Current Sakura was too preoccupied to care. When was the last she'd had some real, exciting fun?

"You don't do this stuff to Sasuke, do you?" Kabuto asked.

Sakura narrowed her eyes, but her guilt ultimately consumed her. She understood why he would ask that. Even though Sasuke was a forbidden topic, she felt the least she could do was indulge him.

"I'm certain at this point that Sasuke will never show a romantic interest in me," she said, her tone cautious. She knew she had a tendency to over share. That was not something she wanted to do with Kabuto, who would have the ability to feed that information straight to Sasuke. "As much as I want to, I couldn't just kiss him. It would irreparably damage our relationship – what little of it we have left. I still want to be his friend. I still care about him."

"I can see why Sasuke finds you so annoying."

Sakura growled lowly – a sound she hoped Kabuto missed. He could call her a bitch, a slut, whatever mean thing snapped into his head. She probably deserved it. But annoying… That word never ceased to get under her skin.

"Do you think he'll come back to Konoha after he avenges his family?"

Sakura was startled by the abrupt change of topic. She wished she had an answer to that, but even if she did she wouldn't tell Kabuto.

"We're all motivated by vastly different things," he continued. "You want to protect the people you love. Naruto wants to be Hokage. Sasuke wants to kill his brother. But what will he do when he's completed his goal? Will he feel satisfied or will he feel empty? Can you imagine what Sasuke would be like happy?"

"I've seen Sasuke happy before," she snapped. She had known him before the massacre, of course. And even after, there had been moments – fleeting as they were – where Sasuke showed happiness.

Kabuto frowned and made a noise of disagreement.

"New topic," Sakura said sharply. Kabuto's eyes locked with hers. She could see him searching for something in her eyes. As close as they still were, Sakura could see hesitance in his and it thrilled her a little bit.

"What about you, Kabuto?" she asked. "What are your motivations?"

For a moment he merely stared at her. If he hadn't just kissed her, she might have felt annoyed, but there was something strangely erotic about the way his eyes were glued to hers and she found herself unable to look away. She didn't want to be the first to break their eye contact or the silence, so she stared back. When he finally did break eye contact to drift his gaze down to her mouth, Sakura felt it like an electric shock. She knew Kabuto had felt the spike in her pulse. His gaze flicked down to his wrist and then back up to her eyes.

"Tell me what you want, Kabuto," she commanded. She longed to reach out for his hand again, but that seemed too intimate. This time she knew that a reaction of disgust would upset her and she didn't want to risk it.

"Do you want me to tell you what I want or what motivates me?" he asked.

"Are those not the same thing?"

Kabuto shook his head.

"Fine. What motivates you?"

His eyes connected with hers again and lingered there. By now Sakura felt intimately familiar with the darkness of his eyes. He usually exuded such great self-confidence, but somewhere in the depths of his eyes she swore she could see his uncertainty. She wondered what he saw in her eyes, whether he was as entranced by them as she was by his.

He averted his gaze then, clearing his throat. "My early childhood is unknown to me," he said, his eyes cast down at his feet. "I don't know who I am or who my parents were."

Sakura's eyes widened. Now they were getting somewhere. "Oh," she said cautiously. She was aware of how precarious this conversation now was and she didn't want to say anything that might dissuade him from speaking. "So you're looking for your parents?"

He shook his head. His eyes came back up to meet hers and there was a new determination in them. "Ultimately, they do not matter. I've lived an entire life without them. Orochimaru-sama was the one who convinced me to forget about them, to forge my identity without them."

Sakura remained silent, watching him with rapt attention. Was that why he chose to stay with Orochimaru?

Then she noticed his eyes narrowing. "Are you turned on by trauma?" he asked accusingly. "Is that why you like Sasuke, too?"

"What? No," she snapped. "I liked Sasuke before the massacre. Fucking hell, I kissed you before you told me all this."

She crossed her arms and pouted again, and this time Kabuto seemed faintly amused by it.

"Well," she said as an afterthought, "it is kind of hot."

The amusement disappeared from his face. "We should get back to work now," he said, moving away from her abruptly.

Sakura didn't argue.