She ran so far Sakura thought she might have reached a completely different section of Konoha. The circular village which would take about two hours to walk a straight line across (if she could ever find a bunch of streets in a straight line) meant walking along the circumference of it would take anybody a lot longer. Sakura kept running. Her legs sprinted as fast as they could go with chakra, pushing the muscles which shouldn't be able to do this. Even so she didn't get 1/8 of the way around the wall before someone found her. When the next person appeared in front of her, she swung her arm back, and with another scream Sakura lunged at them.

His body flickered one step to the right. Her fist met air. He stepped back to avoid her next adrenaline induced hit.

"Woah woah, calm down, it's me."

She swung again, almost fell off the wall, and only saw through the sweat and blood crusting over her eyes when a hand grabbed the back of her ragged dress in a familiar hold. He slung her up and held her high enough she looked him straight in the face. Her mouth was so very dry.

She croaked out, "Shisui?"

His eyes narrowed, he looked at her civilian dress, her cheap shinobi sandals, and finally landing on her school purchased hip pouch all students got their first week. Then he let out a bitter, sad laugh, "A little academy student knows my name. How do you know my name?"

"They mention you in books."

"Those wouldn't have pictures. Did someone send you to target me?"

"No!" Sakura pleaded.

She felt creeping horror at how this was turning out. He didn't like her answer. He shook her, the jerking motion made her limbs knock back and forth in the air. Her toes dangled above the far away apartment buildings. How he held her so far out from the wall, she thought he might get sick of her and drop her off the edge.

Her voice came out quiet, "Please stop. I'm an academy student."

"A little academy student hiding in the trees and getting in fights she should have well stayed out of."

"You're a hero. I couldn't let him hurt you. Even if he hurt me. At least you'd be okay," Her lip was trembling by the end of it.

Today had been too much: the bullying, the temper of the one girl she thought might eventually be her friend, running through the trees, attacking the councilman, the chase, the fireball jutsu which nearly incinerated her. Sakura's breathing started to shudder. It turned into big gulping intakes.

The assassination and dismemberment of their pursuing masked ninja. The one who'd remembered her and chased after her. The sound he made as she broke his leg and left him to fall over the wall. If she hadn't killed three people today, her actions had led to their deaths. The man she'd punched in the forest, she'd seen his eyes roll as the nose collapsed and punctured into his head. Her lip trembled harder.

Shisui was so sad and angry already she didn't want to cry in front of him. What did she have to worry about? He was the one who people wanted to steal parts from.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it worse."

He heaved a sigh. With this sound his arm lowered her body so she dangled around the height of his chest. He seemed to be thinking heavily about something. His arm lowered again, this time swinging her body back over the wall. Her toes barely brushed the surface. He continued to let her dangle as he muttered.

"It was going to be bad no matter what. You saved me."

"You don't seem happy about that. I'm sorry you're sad."

He let her go and her legs collapsed under her. Her cheeks, already flushed and sweated from her run, they flamed with her embarrassment. She tried to stand and discovered the muscles of her legs shook so bad she wouldn't be able to do anything more than sit down right where she was. He sighed again. A reaction, she could only assume, to the pathetic failure of her limbs. Her lip trembled harder and she had to wipe her eyes before they released all the tears she'd been holding back.

"Hey none of that."

She hid her face.

"Kami I'm such a dobe. Please. Please stop."

She sensed him moving back and forth in front of her. But the tears, no matter how her hands tried to hold them in, they just kept coming. She wished she wasn't here. She wished she was anywhere else. Sakura pulled up the torn and singed collar of her ruined dress and buried her face inside it. Another presence full of chakra appeared beside Shisui, the hero who'd rather she hadn't saved him. She cried harder.

"Who's this?"

"No idea. The girl who saved me when the councilman tried to take my eye. He almost got it too, see?"

There were a few quiet words she couldn't hear above her own balling and only the order, "Calm her down. We'll need to talk with her."

Then the presence was gone and she was alone with Shisui again. She felt the teenager move from his stance above her, felt his presence lower till he was smaller, not so looming as before. He still had that hardness to him which made him as dangerous as a kunai. He looked small now and with less bright colors, but he'd just killed people and shook her over the edge of a 100 meter wall. This had all been so scary.

"Hey can you look at me? I promise everything will be ok. At least tonight. No one will hurt you."

She snapped her face up, disbelieving he'd just said that. If he was trying to make her feel better he was terrible at it. The moment of her incredulity made her tears lesson to a dull stream. Still holding her dress collar to her leaking nose, she peered at him. He really was terrible at this. He'd made his chakra go away, it no longer burned bright as an inferno, but looked as small as an academy student's.

Her next question was muffled by her dirty dress collar, "Why are you angry?"

"So many reasons." Shisui looked at her, really looked at her, his eyes flaring bright, dangerous red. But then they flickered back to black and his shoulders slumped, defeated, "None of them have anything to do with you. I'm sorry I took it out on you. I'm not used to talking to people, not honestly."

"If you're nice you can talk to me."

That sad, broken smile was back. All the anger was gone and in its place this shell remained.

She didn't know what to say, so offered what her okaasan always did, "Do you want a hug?"

He looked as if she'd fed him old food from the fridge. Not daring to wait she lunged at him. From his crouched position next to her he caught her and when she wrapped her arms around him he stiffened. She clung on as gently as she could around his neck. His hands fell as if he'd no idea what to do with them, they stayed that way for a minute before he began to pat her back.

She loosened her hold. Sakura leaned back to look at the teenager's still bleeding face. The eye partially dislodged had been put back inside the socket but it was bloody and still oozing. Damaged. Just like her scratches, she thought about the way green chakra could come from her hands if she was real careful. Sakura raised her left hand and stared at it. Her brow squished with the effort, but when the green appeared the flow of the color was stronger and more steady than it'd ever been before. The boy stiffened again under her. She looked up, raising her hand to cover that small part of his face. His bloody eye under the glowing green of her hand. He didn't move. She pressed her palm as gently as possible over it and held it there as long as she thought she could control the chakra. When it began to sputter and her arm was shaking she lowered it.

She examined the eye. It was still crusted with blood, but didn't appear to be actively bleeding so much. Perhaps not at all. It was hard to tell. She stared so intently at the injury she didn't immediately react when that chakra presence from before returned. The eye was more interesting than anything else in that moment. She'd never seen eyes flash different colors before, and his when he'd done it had flared with a swirling flow of chakra, a flow which had dimmed and snuffed out the red. He might be a sad boy who had to kill people, who was bad at talking, but he'd taken her away from the bad people. He could have run and left her alone in the forest. He hadn't left her there. He was still a hero. The idea took root in Sakura and she felt it all the way to her core. That place her own colors flowed from.

It was the boy she still clung to who greeted the man's return, "Hokage-sama."

"Are you both ready to report?"

"I believe so."

Shisui stood up. With her arm still flung around his neck he simply lifted her as well.

"She knows my identity Hokage-sama."

"And she saw you with the councilman."

"Unfortunately."

She didn't know why seeing Uchiha Shisui meeting in the forest with the councilman was bad. Besides the man attacking him. That shouldn't cause trouble for Shisui should it? Sakura twisted to see an old man with a short cropped white beard, a hard face, and penetrating eyes. He nodded and gave his shinobi directions. Sakura heard these, but in that very minute she didn't understand what they truly meant. They spoke words she knew, but without any context to understand their true meaning. It was another code she realized.

"Take her for questioning at T. and I. If she's above board she can stay under lock in the ANBU's joint headquarters and barracks."

Sakura was too shocked to ask why she couldn't go home. She was too tired to cry. Despite what the man in white said, she hadn't expected to be taken to the depths of a concrete building. Shisui disappeared, she watched the empty place he'd been standing a moment before. Her wide eyes hoping he'd come back. He didn't, he'd been ordered to leave her here, she realized. She wished he'd come back. He might be scary, but she felt better having him with her.

This place was worse. No one smiled. Their colors were as muted as the grey uniforms they wore and the walls they worked in. It's like the colors couldn't survive past the building's threshold. The feeling got worse when they escorted her to a room with a big, shiny window. She couldn't see any colors outside of the room. It was cold and the metal table they placed her at was colder. When they strapped her to the chair she shivered and it was as if all the colors inside her were frozen. They couldn't move, they couldn't flow or grow.

Her mouth felt so scratchy and dry now she coughed. But her hands weren't free so she just coughed onto the surface of the table. She could see the reflection of the people in it. The one who'd strapped her down stepped aside, made way for two older, more serious men. One was blonde. He was the blonde man she'd seen speaking to the Jōnin Commander outside of the academy on the first day. Ino's relative, her dad? Sakura stared at him, feeling mulish, tired, and not at all liking the way he looked down at her.

"You are an academy student." He looked at her and it took Sakura a moment to realize he wanted her to respond.

"Yes."

It didn't come out smooth and nice. Her throat was scratchy and tickled in a bad way. She didn't think they'd give her water if she asked for it. Not with the way they'd looked at the burn on the side of her neck and shoulder and done nothing. Sakura was beginning to think she didn't like Ino's dad.

"You come from a civilian family, but you have the top marks of any student in your year."

Another statement. He waited for her to answer. Why was he doing this? She didn't understand.

"Yes?"

He had a stack of files next to him. He flipped through them, picked one out and opened it. She saw a flash of her own picture.

"Your instructor writes you excelled in the chakra control exercise. Sub-par forms shown in class, not even attempting to hit or kick back." He lowered the file, her academy record, she realized. Then he picked up another paper, "Yet it says here you were seen channeling chakra to trunk walk, to run, to channel it to your fists the same way Tsunade of the Sannin would. You've been hiding your abilities."

She burst out, "I haven't."

"You have. Who trained you?"

"No one trained me!" She burst out again. She looked back and forth between them. They didn't believe her. An edge of panic crawled through her. She rushed to explain, "I read it in a library book and figured it out. I've been practicing on my own, but I can't make it so it won't hurt people. I couldn't hit my classmates."

She'd never felt miserable, not the thing people describe it as. She did now. It got worse the longer Sakura talked to the blonde man and the man with that wide, mean looking face with scars peaking out of his bandana. They questioned her. Demanded to know why she'd been in the forest, why she'd attacked the councilman, why she felt Uchiha Shisui was a hero. At this question she'd stared at the blonde interrogator as if he'd lost his head, just like those people on top of the wall, he may as well have had it cut off if he couldn't understand why Uchiha Shisui was a hero. She probably shouldn't have told him that in so many words.

After that little outburst big man had grabbed her arm and lifted her up. A lot of people had been lifting her up today. With her legs dangling in the air he towed her down a twisting passage, snapped an order at a man in a grey uniform who quickly unlocked a metal door and shuffled ahead to open a set of bars. Sakura was dropped on the floor and when she turned around she found she'd been placed into a cell with bars blocking her from an equally cold and grey hallway. No one stayed with her. Once the two men left with the heavy bang of a door the hallway light dimmed. It was so dark and quiet, she curled her arms around herself.

With a half-hearted sniff she realized she could see her own colors again. She stared at them, stared so long she nodded in and out of sleep. The floor beneath her too hard and chilled to let her truly sleep, she spent hours holding onto herself.

She spent the night shivering in that cell. Sakura wondered if anyone had noticed she hadn't shown up at home, hadn't shown up for class. Her okaasan sometimes worked so late and so early it would be a few days before she'd see her daughter. Childcare in Konoha always relied on the children becoming self-reliant and Sakura had become independent faster than most. She hoped her okaasan wasn't worried. She hoped they would let her go home soon.

When she next saw the white robed man he was covered in blood. It soaked into his coat and matched the red kanji on the back. The haori looked like it'd been made to be dripped in blood. Sakura thought this with a fuzzy head. She was too cold to think straight.

He unlocked her cell's door and when he stepped through the entire space seemed barely able to hold all of him. He had such bright colors. They swirled and stormed with energy. She thought the man must be upset something great to make his chakra respond like that. Sleepy, cold, and not quite aware of who she was dealing with Sakura lifted a glowing green hand and touched his oozing arm. The slash just above the short man's elbow began to knit close. He looked down at her hand, then at her. His face lost some of that expression so ridged in hard and serious edges. That penetrating gaze softened ever so slightly.

"Child, what is your name?"

Sakura realized he was the first person all night to ask her that. Instead the blonde man had brought out files with pictures they'd taken the first day of the academy. Her record of shinobi schooling was so short it only took up a single page. At the time Sakura thought the blonde man incredibly rude for not just asking. The corners of her lips tilted.

"Haruno Sakura, Sir."

She wondered if she asked nicely if he'd be willing to tell okaasan where she was. So she did ask. Instead of answering immediately he prodded, "And your otousan or siblings?"

"It's just the three of us. Otousan is away on a trip for the rest of the month."

"I'll send someone to your mother. However, as she is going to be housed in a secure temporary apartment, with open access to leave for her job, that means you'll have to stay here with us."

Sakura looked to the bleak, cold hallway, "Here?"

"Barracks. A spare bunk with the younger members. We're low on staff right now so you'll get a whole room to yourself. I will ask you not to attempt to leave the facility."

"Is it warmer there?"

He hmm'ed in answer. The old man with his white beard and his stained robe didn't look so mean anymore. Maybe he was cold and tired too.

ANBU Joint Headquarters and Barracks, as she soon found out, was a mostly underground facility connected to the most essential parts of the village by tunnels. They took one of these tunnels. It was a bit creepy how dim the lighting was. She thought if she had to spend all her time here she'd be as grumpy as the scarred man in the bandana. He probably didn't have very many pleasant visitors if he stayed here every day.

They went through four thick metal doors the old man had to open by bursting out colors through his hand. It happened so quickly and then he was swinging the doors open she never quite got a look at what he was doing. The way he stood blocked her view.

They went by what might have been a bathroom, passed a sink and set of counters, passed three empty rooms with bunk beds and gear strewn about. They stopped at one with three teenagers inside. The man in the bloody white robe stood in the hallway waiting for them and it only took a moment for one to look up and jump to attention.

"Hokage-sama."

The old man looked down at her instead.

"How many of these boys do you recognize?"

Uncertain of his intentions, she nervously looked from him to the room. Last time she'd admitted to something like this she'd spent hours in a cell.

"Two," the single word came out quiet.

"Their names?"

"Uchiha Shisui and Uchiha Itachi."

"Is that all you know about them?"

Sakura's cheeks flamed. She stammered, "No Sir."

"The interrogators said you'd never met before. Where did you see their pictures?"

She really, really didn't want to answer that. If the old man wasn't covered in blood she might have considered lying. But he was covered in blood and she didn't want to go back to a cell. She didn't want to get dropped off a wall due to a misunderstanding. So Sakura told them. Told them she'd been in class for a month, told them how the kids from ninja clans were trying to one up each other by telling stories of their older siblings. Itachi's face slipped into an expression she couldn't decipher. It wasn't a happy look.

She finished to rush out, "He showed us their family picture, that was it, I swear. I didn't know they were in ANBU or that they knew the councilman."

Her eyes flicked to the boys. Shisui and Itachi seemed to be having an entire conversation without saying a word. The one behind them, with blood spattered gear at his feet and a cleaning bucket and rag at hand, he stood up and walked over.

He knelt down to her, "Well since you know everybody else. I'm Genma."

He held out his hand only for the Hokage's hand to snake out and pull him back into the room. The old blood stained man stepped closer to the teenagers and spoke in words too low for her to hear. Words of, "Yes Hokage-sama," and then a minute later "No Hokage-sama," got to her ears.

Sakura for the first time all night since meeting the old man, was beginning to remember Konoha's leader wasn't the Kazekage, the Raikage, or any of those other titles, but called the Hokage. He was the Hokage. Sakura's hands twisted together, her fingers fretting on her behalf. Aghast at what they'd inadvertently done. She'd touched the Hokage. She should have kneeled or something. What had her okaasan told her about meeting important people? She honestly couldn't remember.

When the man turned back to her she looked up at him, face drooping in disappointment and exhaustion.

"I'm sorry Hokage-sama. Please forgive my disrespect." She bowed. Bowing was always good wasn't it?

"It's alright. These boys," the high ranked shinobi behind him grimaced at the belittling term. The Hokage waved two fingers in case she didn't understand. "They are now in charge of feeding you. You'll be staying in the room next door. They'll find you blankets or anything else you need while they're off duty. Think of it as an A rank mission, free of charge."

By the boys' faces she was thinking this was a punishment for them. What about their involvement with the councilman, or their picture getting into the hands of Academy students, was so dire she didn't know. Sakura wondered if it had anything to do with the sequence of events that led the leader of a military village to be personally covered in blood. Didn't Kage's usually lead from the tower? What exactly was happening that involved these three ANBU?

The Hokage continued, "When they're not on shift they'll be locked in here the same as you. Please feel free to ask them any questions you need to."

The boys didn't look at all happy with this. Sakura was thinking she didn't want to ask them anything. She didn't want to be blamed for anything else. He looked them over and the ANBU responded in unison.

"Hai Hokage-sama."

"If that is all, oyasumi."

"Oyasumi."

Sakura was quick enough on the uptake to bow out of the way. When she looked up, Shisui stared with an empty gaze at the floor, Itachi looked fretfully at the older boy, and Genma stood in the corner with a huge grin on his face. Looking right back at her.

He then kicked aside his still bloody ANBU armor and rustled through the black bag under his bed. He pulled something out, sniffed at it, then held it out to her with a grin.

"That one should be clean. You can wear it till we get you something else."

She tentatively stepped forward into the boys' room and grabbed it.

"Thanks."

"While these two sour pusses talk it out, I'm going to find you some blankets. Do you want to come along?"

She looked between the Uchihas and him then quickly shuffled back toward the door.