AN: Can I just say how big of an honor it is that so many of you guys have either said this is your favorite fic or that this story is canon for you? That's the highest compliment! When I set out to make this story, I wanted it to be something that I could see being canon so that means a lot to me. Speaking of which, I love how many of you pick up on the references I leave in my story from the novels and episodes. I hope you pick up on the reference I dropped in this chapter as well, as it's a scene that I've been looking forward to working on.

I tried to have this chapter out yesterday but things were hectic with the holiday (plus I was on call at work). Hope everyone had a happy Fourth of July to those of you who celebrate it. Enjoy!

Chapter Fifteen

The Land of Waves wasn't the easiest place to travel to. With that area of the country being surrounded by water, it was difficult to ascertain exactly how long the trip would take them. Sasuke calculated that it would take at least five to seven days to reach their destination. It was day two and Sasuke poked at the logs on the fire, causing the flames to flicker beneath the moonlight. Sakura sat on the other side of the fire they'd prepared, sifting through her medical gear and ninja tools. Sasuke watched as she carefully placed needles onto a thick cloth.

"What are those?" Sasuke asked out of curiosity.

"Hm?" Sakura blinked up at him, clearly preoccupied with her work. She glanced down at the needles. "Oh, these are just some needles dipped in poisons I concocted."

This heightened Sasuke's interest and he asked, "What do they do?"

As they always did when Sasuke asked about her work, Sakura's eyes lit up and she described in term what each poison did to its victim. As Sakura explained her work, Sasuke couldn't help but be impressed by her skill involving poisons and vast knowledge on how the nervous system worked. During his intense training under Orochimaru, Sasuke had been exposed to non-lethal amounts of poison to build immunity most strains. However, that didn't exactly mean Sasuke was completely immune to every poison in existence. There were many different strains of poison and as Sasuke listened to Sakura talk, he realized how intricate they could truly be.

Sakura turned back to her work and carefully folded the cloth to secure the needles in place. Sasuke watched in silence and tried to remember the last time they'd traveled together. He knew it was back when they were genin, but it never felt this... intimate. Back then, they had spent many nights sleeping in the same area and working closely as a team. However, they were always accompanied by their sensei and loud-mouthed teammate.

He watched as the orange glow of the fire made patterns on Sakura's skin and the way the shadows it created danced across her face. During Sasuke's travels on his redemption journey, he had been alone during times such as these. He hadn't minded being alone, but Sakura's mere comforting presence warmed him more than the fire that separated them. Sasuke had become an expert at handling the stifling silence and convinced himself that he preferred it that way. It seemed that Sasuke hadn't realized how soothing it was to have Sakura's quiet company. During the last three days alone, she'd been a welcome addition who made him smile during unexpected times and always seemed to light up the surrounding area. Sasuke couldn't help but wonder, is this what it would have been like if he had brought Sakura with him on his travels as she'd asked several years ago?

"Why are you staring at me? Do I have something on my face?" Sakura flushed in embarrassment and rubbed at her cheek.

Sasuke started, so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't realized how close he was watching her. He cleared his throat and mumbled, "It's nothing."

Sasuke and Sakura had arrived at a small fisherman village on the coast and found a boat that could carry them to the Land of Waves for a small fee. Not due for departure for at least another hour, the pair decided to grab lunch as they waited. Once the meal was finished, they wandered around the area to kill the little time that was left.

"Oh wow!" Sakura exclaimed. Her eyes lit up and she rushed towards the bench that faced the scenery of a seaside cliff. Sasuke trailed after her and the corner of his lip twitched upwards in amusement. Sakura sat on the bench and patted the right side of her, indicating that she wanted Sasuke to have a seat.

Sasuke sat and watched her out of the corner of his eye, observing the way she tucked a lock of pink hair behind her ear when the wind started to move it. She hummed in contentment and leaned back on the bench to soak in the calming view. Sasuke's eyes shifted and he looked out over the water. He pondered how different this moment sitting on a bench with Sakura felt compared to the day he'd left her on the bench back in Konoha during their childhood years. The thought of it pulled at his chest and Sasuke sighed sadly.

"Sakura..."

"Hm?" Sakura hummed, not noticing the torment that was beginning to build inside of him.

"I think... We need to be clear about something."

Recognizing the change in his tone, Sakura sat up and looked at him. "Is something wrong, Sasuke-kun?"

"I don't know what it is that you're expecting. But you need to know that-" Sasuke stopped and searched for the words. "A life with me... It will never be easy."

Sakura looked at him questioningly. "What do you mean?"

Sasuke sighed and continued hunting for the words to make sense of the trouble he felt. He'd never been good at things like this. "You and I... We could never be like anyone else. I can never be like anyone else. This eye... This power that I have, means that there are certain things that only I can do. After what happened with the Otsutsuki, it made me realize that there are threats beyond this Universe and something like that could likely happen again." Sasuke looked at her sorrowfully. "There are some threats that only I can investigate. I may be gone a lot. Maybe years at a time."

The pink-haired woman gave him a small smile that made the skin around her green eyes crinkle. "What is it that you think I want or expect from you, Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke shifted uncomfortably and diverted his gaze. "Uh. Well."

Sakura giggled and Sasuke looked back at her when he felt her tug the fabric of his empty sleeve. Her cheeks were pink as she said, "I know being with you won't be normal. That we could never be like other..." Sakura's face flushed deeper. "Couples. But I don't care about that. I just... I want to be with you. It's all I've ever wanted."

"I won't be able to make you happy," he admitted, sadly.

"You already make me happy, Sasuke-kun. So please, just keep protecting everybody. Okay?"

Sasuke nodded, still feeling unsure. He failed to understand how he could possibly make Sakura happy. He would never be the kind of man who would comfortably hold her hand or kiss her publicly. He couldn't be in Konoha as much as she would want him to be nor could he declare his heart's deepest desires to her the way she deserved. Sakura thought she was okay with that now, but what would happen if Sasuke had to leave the village again and was gone for three or five or even ten years? Even if he thought it impossible, Sasuke wanted to make her happy. Sakura filled a void in him that had been missing for as long as he could remember. She had become his new family. Sasuke wanted nothing more than for her to allow him to stay by her side.

"When you left the village after the war, I knew you would come back."

When Sakura broke the silence, Sasuke peaked at the woman next to him who was gazing out over the water, still clutching the sleeve of his shirt.

"How did you know?" he asked.

Sakura looked up at him with trusting green eyes. "Because you promised me that you would. I held onto that promise." She smiled sweetly up at him. "As long as you say it, I'll always know that you'll come back to me, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke sucked in a small breath, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. He had felt this inkling before but Sakura finally put it into words for him. Sakura was home. She was the home that Sasuke would always return to.

The former rogue ninja reached out with his right hand and tapped the pinkette's forehead. "Thank you, Sakura."

Sakura blushed and lifted her hand to touch the spot on her forehead. "You keep doing that. What does that mean?"

Sasuke breathed out a laugh. "I'll tell you next time." Sasuke stood from the bench and held his hand out to her. "Come on, we'd better get going."

Finally arriving in Kirigakure, the first stop they made was to visit the Mizukage. Sakura was acutely aware that the last time Sasuke had laid eyes on the woman, he had been trying to kill her at the Five Kage Summit. This fact wasn't lost on the woman and she certainly didn't skirt around the subject. Instead, she made some off-handed comment about being glad that such a "handsome boy" managed to not completely throw his life away. The way she kept a close eye on him made it clear that the Mizukage harbored little trust for Sasuke and was placing her faith solely on the Leaf.

Attempting to alleviate the tension, Sakura got right down to business and offered her hand to accept the intel that had been gathered thus far. The Mizukage offered her a map of the area with marked locations of the attacks that highlighted the most recent assaults.

Sasuke glanced at the map that Sakura was studying in her hands and asked, "Any connection between the victims?"

"The children vary in gender and age. However, they all come from poor villages and seemed to have recently recovered from illness."

"Illness?" Sakura asked. "What kind of illness?"

"That varies as well," the Mizukage stated and laced her fingers on the desk in front of her. "Birth defects, cancer, pneumonia, you name it... They seemed to suddenly be on the road to recovery before they lashed out on their families."

Sakura bowed to Mizukage. "Thank you, M'Lady. This has been helpful."

"We'll assist in whatever way we can," she said. As the pair made their leave, the Mizukage called out, "Bye, handsome" as they walked out the door.

Sakura tensed and once they were down the hall and out of earshot she lifted her eyebrow at Sasuke. "What was that?" she asked.

Sasuke sighed. "Nothing. That's just how she is, I think."

Deciding it would make the most sense to hit the villages known to be most recently afflicted, Sasuke and Sakura made their first stop to a town no more than three hours from the Hidden Mist. As they spoke to the villagers, they found a small group of three huddled outside of a shop who felt particularly chatty. They chauffeured the couple down a few streets to point out a tiny home.

"That's where it happened," the lone woman in the posse stated.

Although the home looked much the same as the buildings surrounding it, the aura around it felt different. Haunted was the only word Sakura could use to describe it. The group of friends seemed enamored with this kind of town gossip that was foreign to a village of their size. Without any need for convincing, they led Sasuke and Sakura into the home to look around as they described the family in detail.

"And she just attacked them? Out of nowhere?" Sakura asked.

"It was completely out of the blue!" A skinny boy with curly hair exclaimed with wide eyes. "One second she was on the road to recovery and finally playing with the village children and the next she starts acting... possessed or something."

"Possessed?"

"Yeah! Like, I heard she would start yelling things that were completely unrelated to what people were saying around her. Just completely crazy."

The woman nodded. "Her mother was preparing lunch like any other day. That little girl walked right up behind her and stabbed her in the back with a pair of kitchen scissors."

"Where is she now?" Sakura asked.

Whereas they had been chatty before, the man and woman stopped short and shifted uncomfortably. A taller man who had mostly remained silent behind the two with his arms crossed decided to step forward to say one word. "Dead."

"Dead?" Sakura asked, her eyes widening.

Sasuke had been listening in the background as he searched throughout the house. His head snapped up at this. "What happened to her?" he asked.

"What do you think happened?" the tall man sneered. "That child was a murderer. She killed her entire family! She's buried in the ground where she belongs."

"Why you-!" Sakura burst, gritting her teeth and balling her gloved hands into fists. She instinctively stepped forward but Sasuke grabbed hold of her arm to stop her.

Sakura looked back at her traveling companion who was staring at the tall man before them and the duo of friends who were now trying to fade into the background behind him. She noted the loathing behind those mismatched eyes as Sasuke asked, "Did you kill her?"

"Of course not!" The man scoffed at the accusation. "But someone had to put her down."

Sakura took in a breath to keep her cool. She watched Sasuke closely, knowing how hard this must be for him. Sasuke glanced back at her and they exchanged words with one look. His expression said to her "there's nothing we can do about it now." Sakura swallowed and pushed the anger deep down inside of her to use on a later date. The important part now was to gather the intel they needed to prevent further tragedy.

Before exiting the home, Sasuke asked one last question. "Did anything seem to be wrong with her before she began acting differently?"

"W-well..." the woman stammered, clearly uncomfortable now. "Hitaru had been sick for quite some time. Her family came across this amazing doctor who treated her for practically nothing. They were poor like most of us here, after all."

"A doctor?" Sakura asked.

The skinny boy nodded. "A traveling doctor. He was a nice guy. Hitaru started getting better but then she started mumbling things about being a burden on her family and how much they probably hated her."

The woman shrugged. "I guess she thought she'd been too much of a financial strain on her family and that they hated her for it. I wonder if that disease she had caused some kind of incurable damage to her brain or something because she wasn't acting quite right." The woman shook her head sadly. "The poor thing."

"Poor thing?!" The tall man snapped, breaking his silence once again. "That family did everything for Hitaru and how did she repay them? They should've just let her die-"

"I think it's time we go," Sasuke interrupted and made his way to the exit.

Sakura turned her attention to the woman and said, "Thank you for your time." Only after cutting the tall man a sharp look did Sakura catch up to Sasuke outside.

As she fell into step beside him, Sakura asked, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Sasuke nodded. "Yeah. But the only way to know for sure is to visit the next village."

The next day when Sasuke and Sakura arrived in another small village, Sakura was attempting to push aside the sinking feeling that more children may have been killed such as Hitaru. How anyone thought the solution to such a tragedy was to put down a child like a rabid dog was beyond Sakura's comprehension. As the pair worked their way around the village gathering intel, Sakura's worries subsided when they learned that the child involved in this particular attack was being confined in a rundown hospital.

A meek-looking nurse ushered them down the musty hallway towards where the boy was being held. "Please don't be alarmed when you see him. We've had to keep him restrained for his own safety."

"Restrained?" Sakura asked.

The nurse nodded with sad eyes. "He lashes out at anyone who comes near and tries to hurt himself. He won't eat or talk to anyone. He mumbles every once in a while."

"What does he say?"

"Vague things about being unloved, that no one understands. He repeats the word 'die' more often than not. Ah, here it is." The nurse stopped in front of a door and pulled a ring of keys from her pocket. As the door swung open, a fowl stench poured out of room and assaulted their nostrils.

Sakura tried not to make a face and peered past the woman's shoulder to get a look inside. A small boy, no older than eight if Sakura had to guess, sat on the edge of the bed with his head hung low and his dark brown hair obscuring his eyes. His arms were pinned in a dirty straightjacket that had a chain attached from it to the bed. Sakura covered her mouth in horror, the sight of it difficult to bear.

Sakura's reaction wasn't lost on the nurse and she responded solemnly, "I know it's awful. But we had no other choice."

Sasuke, who had been silent this entire time, approached the boy and knelt in front of him several feet away. The boy didn't so much as acknowledge their existence and continued to sit on the bed unmoving, looking right through them with blank eyes.

"Careful-" the nurse began to say, but Sakura stopped her by silently placing a hand on her arm.

Sasuke remained still and kept a watchful eye on the boy. A few silent moments passed with nothing more than a ticking clock on the wall to fill the void. Abruptly, the boy lurched from the bed and bolted towards Sasuke, mouth opening wide and teeth reaching for Sasuke's neck. Sakura gasped in surprise but Sasuke remained unfazed and unmoving as the boy's jaws snapped mere inches from Sasuke's neck. The chain clanged against the bed frame as it halted the boy in place. Sakura let out her sharp intake of breath in a sigh of relief and the boy growled at her traveling companion with eyes full of hate.

The nurse turned her attention to Sakura. "This is exactly why we've had to keep him locked up. He took a bite out of one of the nurse's arms."

Sakura's stomach twisted as she observed the boy. Who the hell would do such a thing to a child?

Still kneeling before the boy, Sasuke activated his Sharingan and placed a hand on the child who tried to jerk out from beneath his grasp. Sasuke frowned deeply.

"What is it?" Sakura asked.

Sasuke withdrew his arm and his the red in his right eye faded back to pure onyx. He looked back at the two women and said, "It's not genjutsu."

"W-what?" Sakura asked, her eyes widening. "Then how-?"

Sasuke shook his head. "I don't know. It's something, but it's definitely not genjutsu. I can't break it."

Sakura swallowed and stepped into the room. As she did, the boy began to sway back and forth mumbling, "Die... They had to die... Must die..."

Sakura knelt next to Sasuke in front of the child. "Why did they have to die?" she asked.

"Hated me... They all hated me..."

Sakura turned to her companion and asked, "Can you search through his memories?"

Sasuke nodded and activated his Sharingan once more.

The boy's mind was a cloud of fog and hazy images that cast a heavy presence on Sasuke as he sifted through them. The first image Sasuke registered as the boy's eyes fluttered open was a woman with long dark hair crouched next to him on the bed. She smiled kindly down at her son as she patted a cool, damp rag against his forehead.

"Momma? I-" the boy stopped and coughed raggedly into his hand, blood splashing against his open palm.

"Sshhhh... Please don't talk, my sweet boy," the woman said as she used the rag to wipe the blood from his hand. With sad eyes that fought back tears, the kind woman said to her son, "You rest now. You'll be better soon, I promise."

The woman stood and turned to face a tall man with shoulder-length dark gray hair and spectacles perched on the tip of his nose. The man said something to his mother that the boy couldn't quite hear but she stepped back and held her arms around her body as if she was trying to hug herself for comfort.

The man stepped forward and knelt in front of him, setting a heavy suitcase on the floor next to the bed. The boy blinked slowly, fighting to keep his eyes open. Unlatching the suitcase to reveal a row of syringes inside, the man grabbed one and said, "No need to stay awake. Rest as your mother said. When you wake up, you'll feel like a brand-new person."

As the foreign substance shot from the syringe into the boy's arm, his eyes fluttered closed and everything went dark.

From inside the dark, a sinister haze seemed to wrap around Sasuke's consciousness. Nothing seemed right and every small thought felt distorted. The boy's memories began to return and when he regained consciousness, he sat up in the bed with relative ease. He flexed his hand in front of him, indeed feeling as good as new. His body felt whole, but not his own. His mind was a puzzle that he couldn't quite solve and things seemed to warp around him.

The boy looked up and a woman knelt in front of him. She had been kind before but her eyes were full of hatred now. She sneered down at him and said, "Look who finally decided to get up. Decided to contribute to the family, huh?" The woman shook her head and stood, turning her back to him. "You've done nothing but bleed us dry. All of this money I spent trying to make you better. And for what? What are you worth?"

Bodyless voices whispered in the boy's ear.

Die.

Die.

Wouldn't it have been easier if you'd just died?

The next image Sasuke saw was the boy standing over his mother's sleeping form. As the voices urged him on, the boy lifted the knife over his head and plunged it towards the bed.

Sasuke's Sharingan faded and Sakura quickly caught the boy as his body began to crumble towards the floor.

"What happened?" Sakura asked as she laid the boy down on the bed.

"Something is definitely not right here," Sasuke said, frowning. "His memories are... distorted. Someone has messed with them."

"The doctor?" Sakura asked.

Sasuke nodded. "He was there and he treated him. He injected him with something before it happened."

"Doctor?" The nurse asked, who was still standing in the doorway watching the scene unfold. "You mean the one who saved this boy?"

Their heads snapped towards the nurse. "You know him?" Sakura asked.

"Not really," she said, shaking her head. "He's a traveling doctor. His name is... eh... Ryu, I think."

"Is he here?" Sasuke asked.

"He left a few days ago. I'm not sure where he went."

Sasuke stood and shared a silent look with Sakura. She nodded in response, understanding the meaning in one glance. "You go," she said. "Gather more intel. I'll stay here. I'm sure there's something I can find out." Sakura turned her attention back to the nurse. "I'm going to need a blood sample. Please bring me all of the equipment you can."

"Yes, ma'am!" The woman said, quickly bowing and scurrying out the door.

Sasuke stood and began to take his leave. He stopped at the door and turned to look back at her. "You'll be okay?"

Sakura scoffed at the insinuation. "You saying that I can't handle it?" she teased. "I'll figure out what's going on here. You just focus on finding out where that son-of-bitch went."

Sasuke's eyes glinted with what looked like pride as he flashed out of the room.