A/N: I've been spoiled while away writing this chapter. Not only by your reviews—which were all received and read with gleeful avarice, but by more fanart. Yes, that's right. More fanart.

Head over to brokenreveriesworld on tumblr to catch some really neat fanart by vonxia featuring the characters from FFoS, or scurry back on over to deviant to catch some more commissioned work by MariosDamakotto courtesy of Mordacious Moratorium.

Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Forty-Eight

Philia (Part I)

"To our very own, very cute Witch of the Woods!" Gemna crowed, one arm draped across Sakura's shoulders, the other thrusting his glass into the air. This gesture was echoed enthusiastically around the room, accompanied by enough noise that Sakura thought they were in real danger of incurring the ire of the owner of the establishment. But no, there he was, glass raised as part of the toast and she suddenly remembered that it was Genma who'd made the arrangements—there was no way he hadn't anticipated that things wouldn't become a little rowdy, especially since the older attendees were making liberal use of the bar.

Sakura had her own glass of celebratory…something in her hand and she sipped it cautiously, both relieved to find that it tasted like some sort of fruit juice mix and suspicious of just how much alcohol was lurking beneath that sweet taste. Alcoholism being a serious problem among shinobi, underage drinking laws were generally enforced even more strictly for young ninja than their civilian counterparts, but Tsunade-sama had declared tonight a special exception from her own seat at the end of the bar. She'd limited it to one drink and Genma had immediately and forcefully insisted that he was going to be in charge of Sakura's "virgin night."

Sakura had refrained from smacking him, but had felt extremely smug when Kakashi-senpai had "accidentally" tripped him a few minutes later.

"Why 'Witch of the Woods'?" Sakura asked as she pinched the skin on the back of Genma's hand to get him to stop draping himself across her shoulders.

"Well," Genma said with a laugh as he retrieved his abused hand, "you deal in poison and illusion and you lure in unsuspecting men with that harmless, candy-pink look of yours, so what else were we supposed to call you?"

"I'm in favor," Mariko said as she leered at Genma over the rim of her own glass. Genma, if she was interpreting his expression correctly, didn't seem to be put off by Mariko's forwardness. Ew, Sakura thought, because there was something a little off-putting about watching these two and their shameless hedonism. "If you've got it, own it."

"Still, 'Witch'?"

"Better than 'Bitch'," was Mariko's instant reply. "Not many women get nicknames that catch on, y'know, and the ones that do aren't always flattering. Just think of it as witch being a step below goddess and walk away satisfied. Actually," she amended critically, "make that one step below junior goddess. You're going to have to do some serious cultivation in the chest area before you can even consider full goddess status."

Sakura drifted away from the group on the wave of laughter that followed that pronouncement, finding her way to the corner where an unnaturally subdued and sullen Naruto had somehow managed to keep an entire table for himself despite the crowd that had gathered. Not even Genma was friends with this many people, but she was enough of curiosity that plenty of shinobi had showed up to gawk. She could almost feel their stares as a physical weight as she crossed the room, which made her almost as uncomfortable as the whispered speculation she couldn't help but overhear.

Once upon a time, Sakura had been the member of Team Seven most likely to fade into obscurity, becoming some footnote in the histories of her teammates. Nowadays, even though it was the jinchūriki and the emerging threat of the Akatsuki on the minds of those in command positions, it was this one young kunoichi who was the topic of the hour among the rank-and-file. She was both young enough for her rank to be notable and female and, being female, was subject to more rumors and criticism than she would have faced had she been male. But more than just those two things, it was also that she was a genjutsu-type.

Konohagakure did not have a rosy history with young, powerful genjutsu-types. Even well-intentioned, pink-haired ones made them somewhat nervous, which was why, alongside the praise, Sakura was left with the feeling she'd somehow turned into some kind of feral animal while she wasn't looking. It gave her some taste of her teammate's childhoods and made her feel guilty—again—for some of her own callousness, but she herself wasn't a child. With time and good behavior on her part, the interest and the wariness would both fade.

Naruto only glanced up at her when she slid in beside him at the table, before he returned to crumpling a napkin already well beyond saving.

She was actually surprised to see him here—for the first time since she'd known him, Naruto hadn't wanted to talk in the aftermath of their reunion with Sasuke.

"So…," she began awkwardly, all her slyness shattered on the treacherous rocky shores of their friendship, somewhere she didn't dare navigate carelessly. She supposed part of growing up was becoming both more cautious and more cowardly in relationships; she didn't remember ever being this hesitant before those three short, excruciatingly long years had changed them. She'd been depending on Naruto to be as forthright and honest as ever and yet here they were, neither of them willing to talk about the elephant in the room.

Eventually, though, Naruto lost to the silence. His voice was somewhat hoarse, as if he'd been crying or shouting or some combination thereof. "I just don't get it. Neither of you hesitated. It wasn't like I wasn't listening when you said that you wouldn't, I just didn't think you'd really do it."

"Naruto…"

"But it wasn't just that," he said, interrupting her. "When Sasuke moved, I could hardly follow it. I could hardly see you move to counter him. And then, those eyes—I couldn't do anything, in the end."

It was probably the first time she'd ever heard Naruto's tone turn bitter. "Hey," she said softly, "if you dedicate yourself to just one thing in life, of course you're going to be better at it than other people. Sasuke's spending his waking hours training himself to be a murderer and dreaming of it when he falls asleep—most people aren't going to be able to compete with that kind of dedication."

"You could."

"It's just because our skill-sets were well-matched," Sakura said flatly. "Sasuke has an overreliance on his eyes, but I'm resistant to genjutsu. My shunshin is excellent, so I can match his speed and with my chakra control, I'm stronger than he is. I can't match his raw power or the depth of his chakra reserves, but my style is tailored to suit my strengths rather than my weaknesses; I know better than to let anyone draw out a battle. It helped that he was underestimating me due to our past together. I doubt he would have let a stranger surprise him like that."

"…next time—"

"What next time?" Sakura asked, her tone sharp but her voice low. "Naruto, Tsunade-sama isn't going to send us again. At least not with Orochimaru keeping such a close eye on Sasuke. If she does send anyone, it'll be an ANBU squad." Sakura knew that the Hokage wouldn't, not with Itachi to consider, but to any outsider unaware of the elder Uchiha's true self that would be the obvious conclusion. Unable to retrieve a valuable doujutsu and unwilling to risk it in Orochimaru's hands, the next step would be to send a Black Ops team to either bring him back or eliminate the threat entirely.

Judging by his expression, Naruto hadn't considered the possibility that in the end, it would be the remnants of Team Seven deciding Sasuke's fate. "But, she wouldn't…!" he spluttered.

"Naruto, no matter how much Tsunade-sama might like you, she wouldn't be much of a Hokage if she made decisions based on her personal feelings," she hesitated, then forged ahead, because Naruto was willfully stubborn, not stupid, "Which is something you should also think about. I know you've got this idea in your head that you're going to save Sasuke no matter what, but if you really want to be Hokage one day, you're going to have to understand something. To be a good shinobi means you won't always be a good person; to be a good Hokage means you won't always be able to be a good friend."

"If you really want to be Hokage, give up on Sasuke," she told Naruto bluntly. "You're already at a disadvantage, so you're going to have to work hard if you don't want people desperately scrambling to block your appointment to the office. The Hokage is the strongest is just something they tell us in the Academy; if that were true, it would have been Orochimaru who would have taken the fourth seat. Instead of chasing after somebody who's willing to throw everything away to achieve their goals, you should be worrying about being assigned to a team, putting together an impressive list of successfully completed missions, and being promoted. Spend some time begging Shikamaru's father to let you shadow him, so you can see what the administrative side of shinobi life is like. Read some books on personnel management. Make connections with the clans, so that you have people of influence backing you when you actually make it into the office. And for kami-sama's sake, do something about your handwriting."

By the time she had finished speaking, Nartuo was staring at her incredulously.

"What?" she demanded.

"You've actually thought about this," Naruto marveled.

It was her turn to stare incredulously at him. "You—how exactly were you intending to become Hokage? It's a political office, idiot, not the championship trophy in a tournament."

Naruto laughed and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, before his expression sobered and for a moment it was almost like she was sitting next to a stranger. "By now it's mostly habit. "Hokage, hokage"—it's not like I don't want it, but really, it wasn't ever about being Hokage. It was about being respected and acknowledged. But when you're five, seven, eleven, who wants to say that your goal in life is to be respected? I mean, c'mon, everyone was obnoxious enough already, I didn't need them laughing in my face for something like that. If they were going to laugh, I thought I might as well go all the way. And how much higher can you aim than Hokage, right? After a while, I think I really started to buy into myself, but when you lay it out like that—give up on Sasuke or give up on being Hokage—it makes me realize that I'm probably hopelessly stupid. Because I can't give up on my friends. Even the cynical ones," he said, smiling at her with only a hint of that wide fox grin.

"Besides, you shouldn't underestimate how annoying I can be—I bet I can have baa-chan sending us out again before the end of the month. Which means I have the rest of the month to do something to close this dumb skill gap," he thumped a fist into the palm of his hand, eyes set not in the kind of 'believe it!' pluckiness of their childhood, but in a quieter kind of resolve.

"Have crows pluck out his eyes," Sakura muttered sourly, taking another cautious sip of her drink. Forget a skill gap, there was a wide, yawning chasm of understanding between this realist and the most determined optimist she'd ever met.

Naruto glanced over at her sharply. "Sakura…."

"I'm still against this," Sakura replied with a sigh. "But if you want to do something about the skill gap, I'll help you pester senpai."

"Pester senpai about what?" the senpai in question asked, surprising Sakura so much she almost sloshed the contents of her class onto her hand.

"Kakashi-senpai? What are you doing here? Doesn't this violate some sort of code? You know, showing up at a semi-respectable public place with a lot of people in it? On purpose?"

Kakashi-senpai swatted her head with his ever-present novel and said, "Even I have to do things like my laundry and grocery shopping, you know."

"Senpai, what you do can't be considered grocery shopping," Sakura told him with exasperated fondness. "And you've been doing your laundry at my house."

"All those ryo add up after a while. Thriftiness is something you should look for in a man."

"I think that can safely be said to cross the line into miserliness. And if I have to use you as my yardstick to choose a lover, I'll be the one regretting it later, so no thanks."

"That's cruel," Kakashi-senpai replied in a tone that didn't reflect his words at all.

"You know," Naruto said dryly, "I can't decide if this sounds like flirting or not. Just how much time is Kakashi-sensei spending at your house, if he's doing his laundry there?"

"Enough that he should probably be paying part of the utility bills," Sakura quipped.

"Now, now, that would be a little too much like living together. And what would your parents say to that?"

Sakura hummed thoughtfully. "Well, because they don't know you very well except as the dashing and mysterious Hatake Kakashi, I don't think they'd mind taking you in as a son-in-law."

"You don't think I'm dashing and mysterious?"

"Um, no."

"Seriously, the two of you," Naruto grumbled. "Hey, dashing-and-mysterious-sensei-sama!"

"…that feels a little disgusting, hearing that from a man."

"I could—"

"No. Absolutely do not," Sakura said, anticipating exactly what Naruto was about to do.

Naruto rolled his eyes and unlaced his fingers from the handsign that would have triggered his 'Sexy no Jutsu.' "Sensei, I need to be able to face Sasuke evenly and I can't do it with the skills I have. Will you help me?" In an abrupt movement, he stood from the table and then, shocking both of them and probably anyone else who was watching, he properly did dogeza.

"Did you check him for genjutsu or a henge?" Kakashi-senpai asked, leaning down so he was closer to Sakura's ear as he spoke as if it was meant to be a secret, but speaking loud enough that Naruto could hear him.

"Hey," Naruto said grumpily, "you're supposed to respond to the question, not make fun of me."

"You're requesting special training from a wise master. It's practically an obligation to give you a hard time. Especially since you're doing this in public. Luckily for you, I've had some thoughts on your training—Yamato will be meeting with you tomorrow to discuss the details."

"Yamato? Not you, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked curiously as he picked himself off the floor without a shred of embarrassment. Are all the men in my life shameless? Sakura wondered silently.

"What with things being as they are, I've decided that Sakura and I could use some training ourselves. We'll be leaving the village for a while, but you shouldn't worry. You'll be in good hands."

"…you know, you really should tell me these things before you tell other people about them," Sakura complained as she glanced up at Kakashi-senpai. Panic blossomed in the back of her mind, but she kept it well hidden. She'd already sent the birds to Itachi requesting a rendezvous; if she was training with Kakashi-senpai it was going to be very difficult to slip away. And for all he teased her about it, there was no way he'd believe that she was slinking off to meet a boyfriend.

To admit to a secret mission or not admit to a secret mission, that was the question.

Though it wasn't much of a question. When the time came, she was going to have to tell him something and while she could just give a brusque explanation and trust that he wouldn't pry, she trusted and relied on Kakashi-senpai more than anyone. Therefore the temptation to confess everything and ask his advice was almost overwhelming.

Almost.

Because he was all those things, and because Itachi's house of cards was built on nothing more substantial than mad hope, she wouldn't allow him be touched when it collapsed in razors. She'd never talked with Kakashi-senpai about the Uchiha who'd given him the eye that had made him infamous, but however he'd felt about his genin teammate—she'd returned to the library and its highly useful newspaper archive more than once—or any of the other Uchiha, he'd have far more decided feelings than a self-involved little girl who'd once almost forgotten that it had even happened.

Almost as if he'd recovered his usual exhaustingly good humor by sheer force of will, Naruto soon left the two of them to their own devices and she and Kakashi-senpai parted ways soon after that. Much improved or not, senpai was a corner-lurker and she was determined to enjoy the company of the people who made being a shinobi something less horrible, less terrifying, and less soul-killing than it might otherwise have been.

She had a strange thought in this moment. These people were hers—but other than the brother who'd made it his single goal in life to destroy him, who did Itachi have? What power compelled him to keep making choices that were dangerous and miserable?

That kind of single-minded devotion—Sakura didn't know whether to admire it or call it madness.

[Kill Your Heroes]

Somehow, despite having spent most of the party apart, Sakura found herself being walked home by Kakashi-senpai and Naruto, which only half-surprised her. Senpai she'd expected, because all joking aside his neatly folded laundry was really was waiting at the house—and one day her parents were going to come home unexpectedly and probably have a very reasonable misunderstanding, but that was a problem of the future, not the present—but Naruto was a surprise.

She said as much, which made Naruto roll his eyes. "I'm jealous of all the time you get to spend with mysterious-and-handsome-sensei; you'll just have to learn to share."

"Now, now, Sakura, you shouldn't make fun of Naruto when he's making an effort to be gallant," Kakashi-sensei chided. "Someone has obviously told him it's good manners to walk women home after dark."

"I outrank him by magnitudes," Sakura retorted, half of her teasing because it was sort of sweet, and half in earnest because she was a highly ranked female shinobi existing in what was still essentially a man's world. There still existed in the social consciousness an ingrained place for women and sometimes that place grated. There was a certain comfort in it all, but it was also annoying as hell on occasion, when praise was handed out condescendingly, or with surprise, or not at all. So she was a little prickly, when it came down to it, about things that toed the line between they're being nice and they're getting ideas.

She was especially conscious of it when it came to Naruto, who would have gladly allowed her to stand on the sidelines of their entire career, though she wasn't certain whether that was because she was a girl or if was because she was the girl he'd had a crush on.

Whichever it had been, she wouldn't allow them to slip back into that.

"See, that's just it," Naruto said, interrupting her thoughts, "both of you are already jounin and you're partners. Even once we drag Sasuke home, it's not like that's going to change. I mean, no chance that I don't get promoted soon, but I'll be working with a different squad. And even when I make jounin, our specialties will probably be different, right? Unless we're putting down rebellions or something, no way does Tsunade need to send in a bunch of heavy hitters like us all at once. So it's kinda lonely, y'know, thinking about the two of you leaving me behind."

All Sakura's worries about being treated like a girl in the worst sense of the term evaporated and she looked at Naruto with amused exasperation. "You put zero effort into becoming Hokage the way any sane person would do it, but you've a lot of time thinking about this, huh?"

"Hey, emotional trauma is forever," Naruto protested. "Pervy-sage might've not been exactly a shining example of humanity, but he did say at least one smart thing—the content of your life is decided by the people you meet in it and the quality of it is decided by the ones you keep in it. And stop giving me that look, Sakura. I don't think it's entirely Sasuke's fault that he grew up to be kind of an asshole, but even if it was, you don't leave people with someone like Orochimaru."

"Maybe you should give up on the Hokage thing and become a teacher instead," Sakura advised him. "That way you can catch all these self-destructive tendencies early and put to use all that experience in playing ninja with Konohamaru."

Naruto grimaced. "Spend my days with sticky, rude brats? No thanks. And stop trying to throw me off track. We're having a deep, touching moment, in which I'm confessing that I feel lonely when you two rush off to do jounin stuff all the time by yourselves and then you feel guilty about that and you make a real effort to be a present and contributing member of this relationship."

"…Jiriaya-sama spent a lot of time catching hell from women, didn't he?"

Naruto cleared his throat. "Um, maybe? At this point his people-watching might be more of a weird fetish than anything else; he has this thing for watching public break-ups—he says it's important research for his novels." There was a long pause and then, "Hey, don't just walk away!"

"If you're coming, then hurry up!" Sakura called over her shoulder, grinning genuinely at Naruto for the first time since their reunion with Sasuke.

Naruto immediately returned the expression fivefold, loping to catch up with them and tucking his arms comfortably behind his head as he walked at Sakura's side. Dusk had already fallen, bringing that strange, still moment where the warmth of the day lingered while darkness shrunk the world into something small enough to hold only these three people in it.

When they arrived at her door, Sakura found a package waiting on the stoop, bearing the seal of one of the courier services. Having not ordered anything and it not being her birthday, Sakura eyed it as she approached but a quick check yielding no obvious traps. When she picked it up she discovered that it wasn't very heavy. Maybe the size of a large textbook with less than half the weight, wrapped in plain brown paper bound with thin jute twine.

"Who's it from?" Naruto inquired as he followed her inside, the three of them slipping off their shoes in the genkan before they adjourned to the living room and its low table.

"No return address," Sakura answered him absently as she unpicked the knot in the twine.

"Ooh, secret admirer?" he teased.

Sakura scoffed as she carefully unfolded the paper to reveal an unvarnished maple box whose lid bore an unfamiliar brand.

Or, at least, unfamiliar to her and Naruto. Judging by the sudden stillness from senpai, he recognized it. She paused before opening it, looking to Kakashi-senpai in a silent question.

"Go ahead and open it," he advised.

Brows rising, she did as she was told, but as the thing in the box was revealed, her hands went just as still as Kakashi-senpai. Even her heart seemed to stutter, her lungs quieting until there was only the sound of ringing silence in her ears.

In a bed of port-colored silk there was a mask.

But it was only a mask like the Kyūbi was a fox or the Ichibi was a tanuki. You could call them that, because that was the closest known, named thing that they resembled, but it couldn't encompass the spirit of the thing.

It was like Gozen-san's mask, more ominous and powerful than something that neither lived nor breathed had any right to be. Only this wasn't a fox, but a cat, so dark a grey that it was almost black except for a wide Cheshire grin and the red markings around its eyes. That toothy grin was the first thing to draw the eye, unflinching white made brighter for the surrounding darkness. Sakura had an awful sensation creeping up her spine as she realized that it in imperfect light, it might be the only thing someone could see, that too-wide smile filled with tearing teeth.

Not that perfect light made it any less disturbing. The red markings around the eyes, which were represented as malicious crescents, only fed into the impression of smug self-satisfaction, as if while it was having fun it didn't care how much not-fun everyone else was having. Even its ears curved toward one another like the horns of a devil.

"It looks like it's going to eat your hand if you touch it," Naruto commented as he eyed it, leaning slightly back as if he anticipated having to run if it moved.

"Looks like there's a letter underneath it,' Kakashi-senpai observed impassively.

It can't bite, it's just a mask, Sakura coaxed herself as she reached in and retrieved it the folded sheet of paper. She didn't even know if it could be called a proper letter, as it contained only one line.

From your friends.

Kakashi-senpai sighed. "I thought so."

"Thought what?"

"That mark on the box—it's the artist who designed all the masks for the original ANBU Team Nine. He's infamous. And retired. Just like all the surviving members of the squad."

ANBU Team Nine. Nine. Ku. Pain and suffering. What better number to assign to a saboteur squad? Sakura understood then that this was another gift from Gozen-san and the others.

"You have scary friends," Naruto commented as Sakura exchanged the letter in her hands for the mask.

It really was a pity, she thought as she examined the mask. If it was only scary-looking, it would be easy to stuff it back in the box, nail the box shut, and stuff it somewhere where it didn't seem to be looking at her. For all their sharp edges, traps, and pitfalls, however, Gozen-san's "gifts" weren't things she could afford to turn down.

Like her combat glasses, it used a combination of seals and more mundane technology to create something not unlike a gas mask. With this, no matter what airborne toxins she used, she'd be safe from her own attacks without compromising her field of vision—from what she understood, most ANBU masks provided similar functions. They were also just as prohibitively expensive as sealing scrolls, which is why they weren't in common use. Examining the sigils lining the interior, she had a suspicion that was confirmed as she put the mask on and cautiously used her chakra to activate its functions. It didn't just muffle the sound of her breathing, it canceled it out entirely, which would make her even more eerie in that badly lit room in which one could only see that awful smile.

"Um, could you maybe take that off?" Naruto asked. "It's sort of freaking me out."

"You're not the only one," Sakura muttered as she lifted the thing free of her face, wondering what Gozen-san meant by sending this sort of gift. Especially following so close on the heels of that bloodstained notebook.

What sort of plans do you have for me, Gozen Reiji?