Chapter 17
Chapter Summary
"Think you lost your mind,
Well don't worry about it,
Happens all the time,
In the morning you'll be better,
Things are only getting better." - Better, OneRepublic
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"Don't ever do that again." Kushina commands Sakura with a hint of a shake to her voice. She sounds angry, but Sakura suspects her hands and voice are shaking for a different reason. "I hated it. Every minute of it. I'm not cut out to be a Clan Head."
"Bullshit." Sakura says, so suddenly that Kushina stares at her blankly.
It is, Sakura realizes suddenly, probably the first time anyone outside of Akihito and Tsuru has heard her cuss since the fall of Uzushio.
"It's not, though! I almost killed that Hiatari asshole. You should've seen the way he looked at me-"
"Couldn't possibly be worse than the way he looked at me when I was thirteen years old claiming to be one of them." Sakura cuts in mildly.
Kushina's lips move soundlessly for a moment before she makes a wordless groan. "You're impossible!" She complains. "I almost had to buy you a fish!" Kushina cries, suddenly throwing herself forward.
Sakura catches the woman carefully, gently redirecting her away from her bad side, and sets a hand on the back of her head. She sobs against Sakura's left shoulder, her hands awkwardly clutching at Sakura's sheets. "I hate it. I had to look at a koi fish to replace you, and it was horrible."
Sakura grimaces at that. "I know." She says earnestly.
Sometimes she wants to curse whoever started the koi fish tradition without her knowing - but the rest of the time, she reflects that it was almost certainly Akihito who did it, and she can't argue with that. She'd never been able to argue with him.
Then again, she'd also never had to.
"I'm sorry, Kushina."
"And Minato!" She wails, sobbing against her. "He lost his genin, and I lost you, and we didn't know what to do, and we thought he was dead and you were too or being tortured and we couldn't do anything!"
Sakura hushes her, absently running her hand down the back of Kushina's head soothingly. "It's alright. We made it out."
"I know, but we didn't know."
The door creaks, interrupting Kushina's sobbing, and Sakura blinks at the sight of their new visitor.
She could honestly say she'd never thought she'd be happy to see Sarutobi, but there she was. "Kushina." She nudges the woman gently and she straightens, pulling away from Sakura to look at the Hokage. She instantly straightens, lifting a hand to rub at her eyes.
"Hokage-sama." Kushina chokes out, bowing once she's blotted her eyes dry.
"It's alright, Kushina-chan. I'm sorry for interrupting - but if I may have some time alone with Uzumaki-hime?" He asks politely.
Sakura instantly makes a gentle shooing motion at Kushina. The woman sniffles once before she nods and moves to the door. She mutters something quickly before leaving, and Sarutobi quietly closes the door behind her.
After a short pause, he steps closer and sits at her bedside. "I'm glad to have you back with us, Uzumaki-hime. I wanted to ask you about your experience."
She looks at him intently for a long minute, gauging his expression. He doesn't seem to have any idea at all what happened. Sakura glances sideways at Obito, who sleeps curled on his good side, his 'arm' strapped down to his side still. Her brow furrows with a new worry. She hadn't seen him wake up, but she's barely been awake herself. She hadn't taken that to mean that he wasn't waking up. "Obito?" She questions, looking back to the Hokage.
Sarutobi frowns softly and she immediately knows she isn't going to like this. "We're treating him as an unknown right now. We've kept him unconscious while we examine his… adjustments… and wait for permission from a medic-nin to have him observed by a Yamanaka."
"That's a little much, isn't it?" She demands instantly, offended. "He doesn't deserve that treatment. He's earned better."
"Has he?" Sarutobi inquires, brow rising. "Tell me about it, then. Your experiences. How a dead child was returned to us alive, and what it is that is keeping him that way." Sarutobi glances pointedly at Obito's right side and Sakura grimaces.
"I can tell you everything. What you'll believe, I'm not so confident of." She says firmly, raising her head to meet his gaze. "I abandoned my post - I'll admit that freely - when I felt Obito's seal flare. It alerts me to injuries, you understand. So when I felt it flare, I rushed in, and with good timing. You'd have three dead children and one intact bridge without me." She pauses. "...It isn't intact, is it?"
"No." Sarutobi confirms, frowning as he pulls out his pipe. "The mission was, in the end, successful - but with irrecoverable mortalities. Or so we thought." He nods to her and Obito again.
"Good." Sakura exhales a breath. "I'd worried." She admits. "Regardless, back to the report. I found Rin and Kakashi surrounded by enemies, so I fought them and cleared a path for them to travel to the Bridge. When I was done dealing with them, I searched for Obito." She pauses, hesitating for a moment. "I suspect he was at some point crushed by a boulder?"
Sarutobi blinks at her. "...Yes. Are you saying you did not find him in such a state?"
"I did not." She confirms. "I found blood on and under the boulder - I threw it, slightly." She says a little sheepishly, because she rarely uses her 'super strength'. "But he wasn't under it anymore. You may want to consult an Uchiha before a Yamanaka, because I've never heard of the Sharingan allowing dying children to teleport to safety, so I have to assume it's some sort of clan secret." She clears her throat at Sarutobi's uncomfortably intense stare. "I found him beside the boulder. I'd started to heal him when I was attacked…"
"Madara Uchiha." Sarutobi repeats quietly, the room darker now that the sun has fallen. It had taken nearly three hours to finish her tale - and for him to believe it. "To think he still lived… and you're sure you killed him?" He asks.
"Yes. He was drawing on chakra from a… statue, thing, that had been imbued with the Shodai's lifeforce, in order to stay alive. But I punched his heart out. He's dead now, there's no doubt about it." She confirms grimly and Sarutobi exhales a long, smoky breath.
"To think…" He repeats softly, staring past her and at Obito. "And to think that a thirteen year old boy stared him down like you claim." He murmurs, and before she can get offended at the implied doubt, he looks at her with an odd expression. "I met Madara when I was young, and he was young too. I was perhaps twelve. Never before had I met anyone so singularly terrifying, and never have I since. I could barely stand in his presence, much less hold so stubbornly against him."
"He had a scythe. Obito thought he was a shinigami at first." Sakura adds blandly. "I discovered the scythe the hard way."
"Ah." Sarutobi glances at her ribs before nodding in understanding. "Hm. A brave child."
"Stubborn. Impossibly stubborn. No one else would get up and walk days after having a quarter of them cut off and replaced. The boy's… what do you call it here? Will of Fire? Is unquenchable." Sakura informs him matter of factly.
Sarutobi nods slowly and hums thoughtfully. "I hear he wishes to be Hokage."
"I hear you already have your eye on someone." Sakura notes mildly and Sarutobi offers her a bland smile.
"I do. Minato's earned quite a name for himself already. I've never seen someone get a flee on sight order so quickly."
"I've always been kill on sight. I'm much more annoying than terrifying, it seems."
"On the contrary," Sarutobi says lightly, "you underestimate yourself, Uzumaki-hime. Anytime I station you to a battlefield, the enemy suddenly finds themselves ordered to a different place. They give up the fight as a lost cause once they see your seals, Uzumaki-hime."
Sakura stares at him, surprised. "...Do they really?" She asks, stunned, and he nods. "I always thought you just shifted me around so often to keep me from getting killed."
"Hardly. If I could, I'd station you in one place forever - Amegakure. But alas, your reputation precedes you now, just as my successor's does."
"Successor already?" She muses. "Officially speaking?"
"Unofficially speaking. I would like to wait until tensions ease somewhat before I paint a target on his back."
"His back is a very difficult back to target, Hokage-sama."
"You aren't wrong there, Uzumaki-hime." He agrees lightly, puffing at his pipe.
The mood darkens moments later as their minds catch back up to the subject.
"These… Zetsu, you called them. You tell me they can blend into any surface. Travel to any place. Is there any way they can be tracked?" He asks softly and Sakura hesitates for a moment.
"Only one that I can think of." She admits slowly, bracing for the backlash. "It's said that Mito-sama could sense the negative will of her enemies. I wouldn't suppose that has anything to do with the Kyūbi?"
Sarutobi stiffens, gaze going calculating as he eyes her balefully. "...That sort of knowledge isn't easy to come by, Uzumaki-hime." He tells her with a hint of a threat.
She arches a brow at him. "No. Not the least of which because I, myself, have kept that knowledge to myself. But I do know it. Our people kept thorough records, though they're now very much gone."
He stares her down for a very long minute before nodding and pushing to his feet. "I will speak to Kushina-chan. I will also sign off the order to allow Obito-kun to wake up. You two will remain together for now - it will be easier on your minds than separating you."
"The mentality of the tortured." Sakura notes wryly and he inclines his head faintly. "Thank you Hokage-sama. It will help." She confirms without shame. After two and a half weeks of captivity with only him (mostly unconscious) to work with, Sakura wouldn't easily be separated from the boy.
Not so soon.
Sarutobi leaves with a small bow and Sakura's left to her thoughts, which immediately go back to her previous train of thought, before Sarutobi had interrupted.
She had a plan to plot, and a seal to design.
It isn't until the next day that Obito wakes up - and Sakura immediately starts to talk to the boy. He seems stricken by his situation, a combination of shocked and utterly horrified. "You'll be different." Sakura tells him quietly, sitting next to his bed with her IV stand dragged over. She's not supposed to be up and walking around, but she did it anyways.
The boy is only thirteen, and to see him staring down at his unwrapped arm, discolored hand limp in his lap, is unbearable. "Different." He repeats blankly.
"I know. It's an understatement. You'll be unlike anyone else, ever." Sakura admits softly. "But that doesn't matter, you know it doesn't. Rin won't care, it'll only make her want to protect you more fiercely. Minato won't care - you're his genin, and he thought you'd died." Horribly. He thought you died horribly. "And all Kakashi will care about is that you're alive and have two hands to fight with."
"Two hands." Obito repeats again, but there's a note of confusion - no, uncertainty - in his tone now. "Both?"
"Both." Sakura confirms, reaching out to take his discolored hand. He flinches and so does she, just a tiny bit. It doesn't feel like real flesh. It's a bit too squishy, not quite settled into it's new shape yet, and colder than skin would be. "Both hands, Obito. Just give it time." She swears, holding the hand gently.
"How much time?" He chokes out and she looks up to see tears running down his face - from one open eye and one closed socket.
It breaks her heart a little bit.
How could she ever have looked at this child and seen the man he'd once become? The difference was astronomical.
She'll never forgive herself for hesitating as long as she had. For condemning him to this experience.
"Not long." She lies. "A month. Maybe two. You've only had this for two weeks and look at it already." She lies and she lies some more.
It's barely progressed at all. It'll be maybe half a year before the boy can even throw a punch without outright losing the damn thing, even with her coaxing.
"Obito." Sakura prods gently, turning around. She turns too much, but she ignores the pain flaring warningly at her side, reaching out and grabbing her bed tray with her free hand. It rolls over at her command, coming to a stop beside Obito's own bed tray. "Will you help me with something?" She asks, gesturing to the pile of papers on the tray that she'd turned into a makeshift desk. "I'm inventing something. I could use a second set of eyes, and maybe you can even pick up a bit of fūinjutsu while you're at it." She suggests, and without waiting for a response, she picks up the first sheaf.
There's a small part of a very big seal on the paper and she holds it up for Obito to see, carefully breaking it down to every tiny piece.
It takes nearly an hour to finish lecturing on just that one piece alone, and through it all, Obito remains silent.
But his eye follows her hand when she gestures with it, and Sakura will take what she can get.
Sakura wakes up early the next morning to muffled chatter and sobbing, and she opens one eye just enough to see Rin on Obito's bed, hugging him tightly and crying, while he hugs her back, his head buried into her shoulder. Kakashi stands at the foot of his bed, watching with the kind of haunted expression no nine year old should ever wear - and Minato standing guard by the door.
She drifts off for a while, not quite sleeping - not with other people in the room - and perks up again when she hears Rin speaking. "Maybe he needs his own room. Maybe he needs privacy. Should we ask…?" Rin asks quietly and Sakura tenses a bit.
She regrets it immediately, because Minato's gaze flickers instantly to her, eyes narrowing a tiny bit in consideration. "No, Rin. That wouldn't help either of them right now."
"But-"
"No." Obito cuts in, speaking of his own accord for the first time since their return. Everyone - even Sakura, through slitted eyes - looks at him. "No." Obito repeats firmly. "Don't separate us." He adds more quietly, like he's ashamed to say it.
"I wasn't about to let that happen anyway, Obito." Minato promises.
Obito relaxes, slumping against his bed, and Sakura allows her eyes to close again.
She listens silently as Minato explains to Rin just why separating them was such a bad idea, the kind of anxiety it would cause them both, and Sakura contents herself with the knowledge that the girl wasn't about to make that same, unknowing mistake again.
There are rules in place for survivors of torture for a reason, and she's glad to be spared the panic of suddenly being alone after weeks with just him by her side.