A.N.

To those of you that are reading this please not that there are two stories before this one. They are called Slowly Slipping Awayand Gravity both are found on my profile. The other two stories followed the manga as closely as I possibly could, but this part of the series is completely original and takes place 4 years after the war.

Thank you for reading!

Disclaimer: Naruto and its characters do NOT belong to me. Naruto belongs to Misashi Kishimoto.

Sayuri and any characters that have not and will not appear in the manga/or anime are completely original.

Reviews are welcomed and encouraged! Thank you!

Marking

The buzzling of the festival could be heard from her room. People were arriving to Sunagakure in masses. From the windows one could see the bright lights of the many stalls and games that were set up within the village center. Children ran happily tugging their friends and family members as the passed their tower. They yelled and squealed in delight, adults laughed and talked amongst themselves, their voices muffled as they went by.

Inside her own room, Sayuri rubbed her arm, mismatched eyes shifting from the green kimono to the yellow kimono. She let the towel slip off, the white fabric pooling at her feet as she reached for the black one piece first then for the yellow kimono, slipping on the white juban, tying it securely around her waist, and making sure the collar was folded correctly. She then slid on the yellow kimono, wrapping the smooth fabric around her and finally tying it with the belt. She stopped and turned to the mirror making sure that it was on straight and adjusting uneven parts. She moved to get pick up the purple obi and tied it around her torso. When she was done she looked at herself in the mirror and frowned.

"I need to fix my hair." She mumbled and with a sigh picked up the brush.

XXX

Gaara and Naruto were catching up when the door to the Kage's office opened. "Sakura!" Naruto exclaimed, bright blue eyes blinking a few times as his smile widened. "You look amazing!" he complimented without a second thought. At his comment the medic blushed, a giggle escaping her lips, eyes flickering to the wooden floor.

"Thank you." She replied, lifting a hand to brush away stray bangs.

Naruto smiled warmly at her. She really did look great. Her red kimono, decorated with white sakura blossoms complemented her. Sakura returned the smile, feeling oddly giddy at the fact that he had thought she looked good. The door opened and Sasuke stepped into the room, donning his usual ninja attire, like Naruto.

The Uchiha examined the pinkette and nodded. "You look good." Was his compliment for her, to which Sakura smiled and quietly thanked him but not with as much enthusiasm as she had Naruto. At the realization, she wondered why exactly it was that she wasn't getting the same tingling feeling in her chest with Sasuke like she did before.

"Oh, hey!" the group turned to Kiba and his team as they entered the office as well. "I thought you'd take longer to get ready."

"It appears that you were wrong." Shino said as he held open the door for Hinata who entered the room gracefully, whispering her thanks to her teammate as she patted down her own lavender kimono. Hinata looked over to the redhead sitting at his desk, who noticed and sent a warm smile her way along with a short nod.

"Hey wait up!" Hajime's voice was heard down the hall. Shino turned and continued to hold the door open for the team. "C'mon you two we're late!"

"Actually you're on time…" Shino began but stopped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. The bug user turned to Diachi.

"Don't bother, he's a lost cause."

"HEY!"

"Stop it."

Green orbs slid to the shorter auburn haired young woman as she stepped into the room. She moved across the room with as much grace as she could muster, which wasn't much considering she tripped twice on her way over to stand before the kage. Hajime watched as she moved her hands from her sides to her front, trying to figure out where to put them until she finally decided on clasping them at her lap. With a frown he watched Sasuke's eyes on her until the man realized he was being watched, at which he turned to the redhead.

"As you know the ninja at the gates will be carefully monitoring everyone that comes in and out of Suna. There are also more ninja on active duty tonight, and since it's women they are after Sayuri and Sakura will be posing as civilians. If Naoki shows up or anyone else you might suspect of being involved with them, do not engage."

"Why not?" asked Hajime.

"Because we could be wrong and be wasting our time and there could be more people involved therefore more kidnappings right under our noses. Correct?" Diachi turned to Sayuri and Gaara.

"Yes." The two nodded.

"We need to find out if there are more, and why they are doing this, so getting captured is most likely an outcome. Hinata will be with me and her team to keep up a semblance of normality amongst the increased security. The rest of you will be shadowing Sayuri and Sakura in search of suspicious activity. We need to lure this man or men out, find out what they do, and what they want."

"Aww! Why can't we go too?" Kiba whined while Akamaru barked.

"That is because, we were sent here as ambassadors. In order to keep up appearances we need to be with Lord Kazekage. That is why." Shino said as he pushed up his glasses.

"Bah!" Kiba grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Everyone else gets to have all the fun."

"That's even if they take the bait." The dog master tilted his head to Sayuri. "I don't know what exactly they're looking for in these women, they may be picking them out at random, they may not." She turned to Sakura who crossed her arms over her chest. "We have no idea if they're bringing other people or if it's just going to be Naoki. I'm not even sure what he does to the girls when he picks them. You need to be on alert." She emphasized.

"You don't have to tell me that." Sakura smirked. "Tell them." She gestured to the boys.

"Hinata, will you be able to keep track of them once we're out there?" Gaara asked.

"Yes." The young woman said with clear determination.

"And if they get lost you've got me!" Kiba announced, rubbing his nose with a wolfish grin.

"I will attach a kikaichū on both you any way." Shino added raising a finger.

Both girls tried to smile at the sight of two of the female bugs crawling out of jacket. "T-thanks, Shino…" they said uneasily as the beetles flew up to them crawling behind the neck of their kimono. At the feeling of the insect moving on their back the two froze.

"Please do your best." Said Gaara as he moved to the entrance. "You are dismissed."

XXX

Children pushed past Sayuri, squealing in delight as they did so. They couldn't care less about the young woman who frantically waved her arms at her sides to keep her balance.

'Careful there, you might ruin the kimono.' She heard Hajime snicker through the intercom.

Pursing her lips, Sayuri patted her yellow kimono and straightened up. She moved from one stall to the next smiling at the men that stared at her for a bit too long, but none of them approached her and the one that did won her a stuffed animal but was called by his friends not too long after.

"Any luck, Sakura?" she whispered as she left a stall, turtle in hand.

'Nope.' Came her response. The pink haired medic sighed, holding two stuffed animals and the contact information of three men but nothing else.

'Hey maybe if Naruto does his Sexy Jutsu we'll get their attention!' Hajime joked.

'Not a chance!' the blonde replied.

Sayuri thought about Naruto walking around in his version of the perfect woman and giggled. Not really looking where she was going another child ran into her making her loose her balance and falling forward into the arms of another gentleman who groaned as the two hit the ground.

"Well you must be an angel." Sayuri stiffened, light and dakr blue eyes on the red kimono of the man. That voice she recognized that voice. She looked up, her mismatched blue eyes meeting his purple. "Yup, definitely an angel."

'Is that…?' She ignored Diachi and forced a shy smile.

"Well…I wouldn't know about that." She pushed herself up fighting back a recoil at his hand sliding down her side as she did so. "Sorry." Said when he stood and offered her a hand.

"Oh, no." he smirked. "No need to be sorry, I was actually thinking that there would be no one interesting in this entire festival." He leaned down and plucked the turtle from the ground, lifting it to eyelevel and examining it. "Boyfriend?"

Sayuri forced herself to look embarrassed. "No, someone won that for me."

'Who is Sayuri talking too?' Naruto asked, he was perched on top of a roof, blue eyes on Sakura who had stopped to listen to the conversation, while nodding and pretending to listen to another man that stopped to talk to her.

'Naoki.' Sasuke said, eyes narrowed at Sakura's back.

'What where!?' Naruto demanded.

Hajime moved closer to his female teammate, but kept a good amount of distance between them. 'He's with Sayuri, by the masks.'

'Don't let her out of your sight!' Sasuke warned.

Naoki handed her the turtle. "A husband?" She shook her head.

"No."

"Good." He smiled. "Husbands can be…troublesome."

"Oh?" she titled her head, playing coy. "How so?"

"They get in the way, for one." He offered his hand to her. "My name is Naoki, and yours?"

"Sayuri."

"Well Sayuri, how would you like if I accompanied you at the festival?"

Sayuri giggled. "I would like that." She responded taking his arm and following his lead.

XXX

Sasuke listened intently to what the other two were saying. His fist tightened each time Naoki spoke to her, or when his voice would get louder indicating that he was leaning very close to Sayuri. He gritted his teeth at every giggle or flirtatious reply from the auburn haired girl. He hated everything about this mission. She shouldn't be out there with that man, what if he recognizes her.

'You have beautiful eyes, Sayuri.' He heard him say over the intercom. 'I've never seen anything like them.'

'Thank you, you've got beautiful eyes yourself, Naoki,'

Naruto looked away from the laughing Sakura to the pissed off Uchiha. He looked just about ready to set a building on fire. He turned back to Sakura who shook her head at the man currently flirting wither her. He knew exactly what Sasuke was feeling.

'It's almost time for the fireworks.' They heard Naoki say. At that they all perked up. 'I would like to take you somewhere special, so we could watch them quietly.'

'I've got a visual on them. They're by the games, there are a lot of people, please be careful.' Hinata said. The young Hyūga stood by Gaara, Byakugan activated.

'Don't worry, we got her.' Hajime assured.

'Would you like to see it?'

'Where is it?' they heard Sayuri ask feigning interest.

'Over there.' There was a pause and a rustling of fabric.

'Shit!' They all heard Hajime's curse.

Sasuke felt his heart drop and a sudden emptiness at the pit of his stomach. "Where the fuck are they!?"

'I don't know! They vanished!' Diachi replied in a panic.

'I can't see them, they're out of my range.' Hinata said, voice rising in nervousness. 'He used a reverse summon.'

'Will you look at this…' they all froze at the male voice over the intercom. 'An undercover ninja.' Naoki chuckled. 'I hope it was worth risking her pretty little head.' They all cried out in pain, pulling out their ear pieces at the high pitched whistling sound that came from the other end.

Recovering quickly, Sasuke raised the earpiece to his other ear. "Tell me you know where she is, Shino." There was no hiding the urgency in his voice.

'Yes.' That was all he needed to vanish in a blink of an eye. Bellow Sakura watched her boyfriend disappear from his spot, emerald green orbs turned to Naruto as he landed next to her effectively scaring the flirting man off.

"Let's go." She said firmly.

XXX

"Sasuke…SASUKE!"

The familiar scream brought her back to her senses. Sayuri groaned at the pain all over her body, she began to mover her hand to ease the headache developing but found that she couldn't. Suddenly more alert, Sayuri first heard the complaints and groans of the other women. There were eight of them in all. Each tied to trees that surrounded a very small clearing. At the center of it all stood eight men, writing on the ground beneath their feet. She followed a trail of writing that pointed in her direction and found that it ran up the center of the kimono and around her torso to her arms and up to her neck.

"You're awake, my little Sayuri." Sayuri turned to her right watching Naoki as he smirked at her, leaning against the tall tree. "You know for all of this to work, you have to be awake." She pulled at the restraints but found them impossible to break without help. Above her Naoki laughed as he moved to squat before her. "You know, if it wasn't for the intercom I would have never found out you were a ninja. Tell me, did the Kazekage warn you about me?" He laughed again. "Actually I bet he didn't even know what to warn you about!"

Sayuri glared at the laughing man. "Why are you doing this?"

Naoki tilted his head, moving to push a strand of hair behind her ear, but she recoiled back in disgust. "I guess you should know, since you might just die tonight. It's a marking, my boss is looking for the perfect vessel but in order to do that he needs to mark them…We mark you and if you survive we take you back to him and he does what he needs to do."

"Mark us? What kind of twisted ass hole do you work for!?"

"He didn't give us his name, he just hired us." Naoki shrugged. "He didn't really give us too many specifics, just to look for young women." He smiled "And I think I found myself a good one."

"Go screw yourself."

Naoki's black brows shot up in amusement. "You've got quite a mouth on you." He moved to tilt her head up to him. "I like that." A smirk formed on his lips as he pulled back. "Maybe if you survive this, He'll let to spend some more time with you."

"We're ready." A man shouted a man who stood at the center of the clearing.

"Are they all awake?" Naoki asked.

"Yes, sir!"

He turned his purpled orbs back to her. "Time to go." He laughed as he strolled over to the center of the clearing facing her. "Start the marking!" he ordered and soon they eight men began to go through five seals, as each seal was formed the writing began to glow. At the final seal the glowing red writing began to slither back to the girls, crawling up their laps and to their wrists and necks.

Sayuri sucked in her breath, biting her lip at the burning sensation. Around her the women screamed and cried for it to stop. One of them, a pretty blue haired one, slumped forward, eyes wide open and mouth ajar. The man standing before quickly moved up to her taking her vitals. Sayuri tried hard to concentrate on what the man was doing. Watching through barely opened eyes how he pulled her head back and quickly formed three seals than, placed his hand over her face watching it burn and disappear leaving the woman faceless. To her right another young woman slumped to her side, not moving and again the man that brought her there ran to her and the process was redone.

Sayuri felt the searing hot pain shift to a biting cold, her wrists and neck hurt to the point that she cried out, but found that she could hear nothing, she cried but nothing would come out. Every part of her burned and begged for the pain to cease, but that wouldn't come until the red glowing stopped, replaced by silence. Sayuri slid to her side, and found that all the pain, the burning, and the cold were gone, as if nothing had ever happened. She looked around her still in shock and found that the remaining seven women were dead. Still disoriented she managed to look up at the grinning Naoki. He laughed and pointed to himself, but she couldn't understand what he was saying, it all sounded muffled and far away. Suddenly Naoki was thrown off to the side by a blur of yellow. One of the men doubled over and fell, the ground in front of her broke and sand threw another man off to the side like a rag doll.

Something dark moved in front of her and she could feel a warm hand cupping her cheek. Her mismatched red and blue met mismatched sharingan and rinnegan eyes. Suddenly those eyes vanished replaced by bright green ones.

"Son of a-"

"Sayuri, Sayuri, can you hear me?"

"WHERE IS HE!?"

"Sasuke, calm down."

"Hinata, are you alright?"

"Diachi, are they…?"

"This is a mess…"

"My bugs can't detect him within the area."

The voices were loud, assaulting her hearing. It felt as if everything around her shattered, all of a sudden she could hear again, but there were too many voices, too many sounds, it was hard to concentrate.

"Sayuri!" Sayuri blinked and her hands were at her throat. "You're ok…" Sakura spoke in a soothing tone. "I've got you."

"Sa-Sakura…?" the pink haired medic nodded. Her eyes shifted to the women still tied to the trees. "They're all…?" Sakura looked over her shoulder to Diachi who looked away. "I couldn't do anything…I'm sorry."

"Sayuri? What's wrong?" she heard Sasuke call out.

"Sayuri!" She heard Sakura call her name but she couldn't see anything anymore.

XXX

"I don't know what they did to her, but it seems that she'll recover just fine." Sakura said, green glow vanishing from her hands as she stepped back. She reached for the hair tie and pulled it off, letting her pink hair fall. Sakura turned away from the resting Marihasha to the standing Uchiha. "I can't find anything out of the ordinary."

"I see." He nodded.

Sakura bit her lip, hands clasped together. "Can we talk?"

Sasuke's eyes shifted to her, watching carefully as she walked to the door and pulled it open waiting for him to go. Quietly he did, stepping out into the hall, letting Sakura close the door to Sayuri's room, and following her to the rooftop. Once outside the chilly air made his skin prickle but he ignored it and kept his eyes on the quiet medic before him.

"We should break up." Sasuke blinked, a bit taken aback. "You don't love me, that much was obvious…you never really did." Her eyes were downcast, and her fists clenched tightly at her sides. "But you love her. I could see it…even before it was actual love, back when we were genin." His eyes widened at that and Sakura looked up at him. "I don't know when it turned into love, but it was already there when you were at the Land of Iron and again the year before we-" her voice broke and her eyes swam with tears. "…But you said yes anyway and I was so happy. I thought that you could love me the way I did when we were genin." She laughed and wiped away the tears. "I should have known better honestly. Seriously, you're always aware of her even if you're not conscious about it. Your body is always aware and you go after her without a second thought, and last night…you didn't even go after Naoki, you went straight to her."

Sasuke averted his gaze, feeling uncomfortable by the extent of which Sakura had seen and learned about him. When he found her at that clearing, he didn't think he just reacted and his reaction was to go to her. He took pride in knowing himself better than anyone, yet here was his teammate telling him about things that he didn't notice he did. A feat he thought only Naruto could do.

"Sakura…" he began, eyes meeting her again. "I'm sorry."

Sakura laughed, hands wiping away tears again. "You don't need to apologize. It's ok…I'm going to be ok. I just…I don't want to lie to myself anymore." She smiled sweetly up at him. "Thank you for showing me that."

"You're a good friend."

She shook her head. "I'm starting to picture myself as more of a sister."

Sasuke offered her a smile. "Sister, then." He said with a short nod. She walked past him, patting his shoulder, but paused at the door.

"Whatever happened last year, you two can fix it." She said with so much certainty he almost believed it, but Sasuke didn't reply, and she didn't expect him too. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open and left Sasuke to himself.

A.N.

I hope you all enjoyed the chapter! Thank you for all the reviews I really appreciate it! You are all amazing! Please let me know how I'm doing by leaving me a review! Thank you all for all the support!