Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Masashi Kishimoto, etc. Just borrowing.

Warning: Read up to 231 in the manga when this chapter was finished. Again, no spoilers really.

Chapter 7: Untitled

"I'm sorry for bothering you, Hokage-sama. The disappointment must have been so great a shock for her that she just... snapped. Ino's been well, actually. I guess, she was so bent on her husband arriving with the others that..."

Sakura broke off.

They were in the Nara kitchen. Ino was in her bedroom, sedated by a cocktail of herbs personally administered by the Godaime Hokage, after she succumbed to an inconsolable bout of hysterics upon reaching her front door. Sakura had been terrified of her friend hurting herself, so unhinged by the sight of the strong woman she had relied on during her misery breaking in front of her. Before things could escalate any further, Tsunade, who had followed them as they stumbled away from the gates, briskly took charge of the situation.

"Nobody's expected to be as hard as steel all the time," Tsunade was saying presently. "Ninja rules are ideals. We stretch possibilities to stick to those ideals, but we balance that with practicality. In order to survive, we have to be realistic. Whether we like it or not, we're humans. We cannot be forbidden to cry. In fact, cry, cry all you want when given an opportunity. There are times when we're not given chance to grieve properly----or we don't give ourselves any. Squashing those emotions is hard work you know. It's what breaks many ninjas."

Sakura nodded solemnly. Then... "You know from experience?" she asked tentatively. "Hokage-sama?"

"You can say that." The Hokage shrugged. "She'll be fine. It won't be necessary to bring her to the hospital. Overwhelmed, I'd say."

"She's been keeping it together much better than I was doing," murmured Sakura, shamefaced. "Thank you for your help, Hokage-sama."

Tsunade stood up to leave. "Take care, Sakura."

"Yes, Hokage-sama. And if it's not too much trouble, please send messengers for Ino-chan's sake."

The other nodded.

Sakura was then left alone in the Nara's kitchen.

A few hours later, she was awakened by a wry greeting. She didn't even know she was sleeping till she was startled by the man's voice.

"Oi, Sakura. Don't drool on my table. Baka."

She opened her blurry eyes to stare blearily at the huge, yawning mouth of a dark-haired jounin.

"What?" he asked in response to her stare.

"Shi–SHIKAMARU!" she yelped, scrambling out of her seat and shaking him hard by his shoulders. "You're alive!"

"Uh... the last time I checked... yeah."

"And you're here!" Sakura pounded on his back ecstatically. "Good. Ino was so upset when you didn't turn up with the others."

Shikamaru nodded. "So I heard from the Hokage," he said.

"They said nobody else was coming." Sakura hesitated. "I was afraid, too."

The tactician grunted. "We managed. Not without casualties."

"Oh, I see." A pause. "Within acceptable range, the report would say."

"Yeah. Even though there's no such thing in reality."

Sakura sighed. "Ino'll probably sleep for a while. Try not to shock her to death when she comes to. Might think you're some sort of ghost."

He nodded again. "The Hokage asked me to pass a message: go home and rest."

"Yeah, yeah." Sakura said again. "You do that, too. Rest, I mean."

"Aa. Thanks for looking after her."

"And thanks for bringing him home again."

The sun was shining overhead, but its pale light added little warmth to the early fall afternoon. In that placid day, many went through their daily routines with ordinary speed, ordinary attention. Some would pause once in a while to look up the sky to gauge how much of the day had progressed. There was a blissful sort of unwariness about that normalcy; invisible sentries skulked in the most unexpected corners, the most blatant spaces. Konohagkure was both the stronghold of formidable ninjas and the home where in they grew up and were currently growing their families; living conditions addressed both seriously.

One ninja girl, flitting above the homey, slapdash wooden village, could easily be mistaken for a feisty little brook trout skimming the water surface. There was nothing particularly fish-like about her, except that her glistening sweat-coated skin, combined with her nimble leaps from roof to roof, reminded one of a fish—if one had eyes quick enough to spot her, that is.

The problem with this village is most people do. Vigilance was all well and good, she opined, but she didn't really want to be curiously ogled as she ran around in circles, and triangles, and squares.

Because she had known that he was already home and safe, she harbored hopes of enjoying some measure of peace and for her enormous relief to sustain that. It did, actually, on the first day.

Shikamaru had arrived several minutes before midnight of October 2. He barely lingered, only sparing a minute or so to reassure his wife the he was safe and home before leaving for the rigorous debriefing. Thus, Sakura didn't end up going home that night either, opting to stay with the emotional Ino. Sakura wasn't sleepy anyway, and she giggled and cried about the most inane things with the former till about four in the morning. In the end, both were depleted of their energy reserves and had spent the last few minutes of wakefulness sitting in silence, locked in a surreal blocking only produced in the dark theater of the wee hours.

The next day (or the next few hours, to be precise) was not so bad, except that she had to rise before dawn for a string of uncomplicated B and C solo missions. Though she was exhausted enough to collapse after completing her responsibilities, she found herself wide-awake late into the night. The quietness of her solitude was suddenly eerie; the tininess of her pad grew to a monstrous vacuum that loomed about her consciousness.

There was a gap there now. It was going to take a lot of getting used to.

The strange thing about it all was that gap had never been filled before. The hole just became pronounced, was all, since somebody took a proverbial pen and underlined, scored, and encircled the damned blankness several times.

How could she miss something that was never hers in the first place?

In the end, she resorted to poring over manuals of foreign espionage equipment. For once, she was able to get what she wanted from those convoluted, highly-technical instructions: deep sleep.

Now, the next day was bad. That was when he started showing up at the most unlikely places. That was when she started to note that somebody up there had an excellent sense of humor.

First, she nearly bumped into him on a side-street people rarely use due to accumulated rubbish. He missed seeing her----or so she hoped----when she tripped behind a particularly foul pile of refuse, thanks to the sheer, gut-wrenching terror that tore through her. As she shakily washed off the worst of the gunk from her clothes and limbs at a nearby artesian well, she resolved to make an effort not to run into him again. Thereafter, the respites between her missions morphed into unbearable stretches of little eternities. It was a very nervous business.

As if to rub salt into her wounds, he popped up again that afternoon. Sakura had departed for the neighboring town and back again to fetch and deliver stock for the only boutique in all of Konohagakure. Who else was there, skulking about the rows and rows of expensive designer clothing he could certainly afford but couldn't possibly need with his type of social life? She hid among floor-length dresses hanging in display, ignoring the disapproving, disparaging look of the proprietress.

When she decided to take a very late lunch afterwards, she decided not to chance any more meetings and headed for the Hakusai's ramen house, a rival establishment of the Ichiruka. Apparently, he decided that, too, for he was already at the counter, brooding over an untouched bowl of congee. Sakura thought to hell with lunch and completed the rest of her missions on the last of her tiny breakfast hopefully still digesting in her stomach.

That evening, dreading another long night alone in her pad or an even worse one of having to keep a cheerful facade in her childhood home, she decided to go for a little nightcap. It had been perfect; drinking on empty stomach resulted with faster intoxication, so she wouldn't have to linger for hours before becoming sedated enough to go home. She was immediately invited to a table by Naruto, who was boisterously joking with other jounins over jugs of sake. Sakura scolded him for hiding from her with mock harshness and demanded to know where he had been all that time. He nervously evaded the question----something about a misunderstanding with an icy, overprotective bastard.

"A fight with Sasuke?" Sakura had asked in surprise.

"Not him!" Naruto had answered, taking a swig from his beer. "Not that he isn't icy or overprotective, that asshole. Hey, hey! Maybe you can help us get him drunk. We've been trying to squeeze out that story about that... that crossdressing prince he had to bodyguard last summer for a month now! Where the hell is he anyway?" He paused to peer about the jaunty bar. "Must be taking a piss somewhere. Hah! Real men hold it in, that emotional wimp!"

And so, Sakura had to plead exhaustion and headed straight home.

The third day, she purposely volunteered to help out the Bora family in making soap. A whole day of skinning farm animals and boiling lard was a welcomed relief from the suspense, since the Bora compound was a considerable distance from the village center, too out of the way for him to possibly saunter by casually. By sunset, she was stinky, scalded in places, and quite happy. She didn't hear from him until that night, when her mother received a visitor at the front door and excused herself to see if her daughter was still in the house.

Sakura had to escape through the bathroom window, soap suds and all.

And now, the fourth day. The man couldn't take a damned hint. He had resorted to stalking her every movement, trailing her like a gnat-----slowly, disinterestedly, but surely. Why didn't he just confront her to get it over with?

By lunch time, Haruno Sakura was reduced to running. Even her application of appropriate ninja skills for concealment became half-hearted. If he meant to catch her, he would.

She paused behind a thick overgrowth of weeds on one roof and stumbled unto her haunches. Nausea struck her at the sudden change of position, and the world spiraled around her sharply. She hadn't eaten lunch or breakfast that day. She prayed her stomach wouldn't insist on hurling more of its contents----there were none left, and it would be horribly undignified for a ninja to throw up in front of a pursuer.

"Sakura."

She fought her bodily urges to the ends of her control. Her stomach stayed in her abdomen, her heart she swallowed back to her chest. She turned to face her stalker, schooling her face into a wary expression, hoping the mortified guilt wouldn't leak out of her conscience to stain her facade.

He was standing there, still clad in mourning black after all these years. The sun behind him gave his lean figure a severe cut, a shard that drove straight to her chest.

He had always been beautiful to her... He remained so, even now, even as his very countenance wrenched her apart with pain. And he would always look at her with those dark, dark eyes-----she could never tell whether they were vexed, revolted, or condescending when he was serious like that. It was almost better when the anger or resentment made his eyes honest.

He had always drawn her, even now, now that she was mature enough to know his unconscious control over her was debilitating, even though she knew their inexplicable link was a vulnerability for both of them. He was a dark, brooding man. It was strange that she would be so attracted to his tortured nimbus, like a firefly dancing for its death around an unforgiving flame.

Even his stance had her rapt with the mystery. It was as if he was only half-there, only transient in this reality, and, true enough, he always did leave her behind. She had harbored fantasies of catching him, touching him, as if the very contact would allow him to become substantial, ephemeral enough to grace a mere mortal like her. But that was not so. Sometimes, she was even jealous of their mutual best friend; Naruto could reach him, have touched him, in planes she couldn't even imagine to breach. Naruto was an equal, and she... was not.

All these years, she had hope to pull him out of what she thought was his hell----that hell was his world. She didn't have the right, or the power, to drive him out of his own or force herself into it.

She had to relinquish herself from a prison of her own making.

"You've been avoiding me," he accused, bandaged arms folded across his chest.

"Me?" Sakura feigned a mixture of indignation and puzzlement that only managed to flop into a despairing yelp. "Why on earth would I do that?"

She swallowed hard and snatched her eyes away before they could fully rest on his expressionless visage.

"What?" she stammered. "I was busy. I didn't mean to----"

"You did."

Briefly, her eyes closed. She couldn't really deny anything.

"Sasuke," she finally said, sighing. "I think I need some time and space to adjust. Please give me this. Please?"

That would be sufficient, she had hoped. He was the cold, reclusive one, after all. Maybe he would be deterred by that. Maybe he would leave her alone, seeing that she was no longer nagging him, no longer obliging him.

She faltered at his confused expression but was forced to elaborate. "You see, it won't be easy for me to just slide into a sort of normalcy." Her voice was calm now, almost whimsical; it was unbelievable how it had departed from her previously pleading tone. "You told me you can't give me what I wanted. You're right, and I understand you. But I need to get used to this for a while. Okay?"

"Sakura----"

She smiled at him and shook her head. "If it's about that..." she patted him, gently commiserating. "You're human, Sasuke-kun. We both are. And it's a normal biological response in such a situation----or so Shikamaru would say." She laughed softly.

"..."

"If it's any comfort at all, I'm happy for you," she continued. "At least, I am assured that your instincts for survival in that aspect is quite intact." She giggled wickedly, hollowly. "Ne, Sasuke-kun. You're not as suicidal as you seem to be, after all."

She kissed him on a cheek.

"Take care of yourself. Always."

She left. He didn't pursue her. She found a private place where she could cry. She cried till she ran out of tears, till her voice was spent. She wallowed in her weakness and hated herself.

In the end, she accepted the fact and took stale comfort in the numb silence.

Ino realized there was something weird going on when she saw the previously fresh and perfectly healthy greens she was rinsing now crumpled and bruised on the sink. She glared at her prune-like fingers in exasperation. At least, she had yet to wring out anybody's neck, she thought to comfort herself. As for the 14-time washed napa, they were still edible once cooked.

Right?

She abandoned the vegetables and continued with the puttering she had been doing all morning.

Everybody was missing. Her husband, her best friend, Chouji, the neighbors, even the two kunoichi her age Hinata and Tenten. There was nothing to do.

That morning, she had gone to the market to get some fresh produce. While standing before a stall, mouth and hands stained with the sweet, sticky juice of the golden, heart-shaped mango, she remembered that her grocery list was still on the kitchen counter. She nearly choked on the fruit in her annoyance, but nonetheless regained composure enough to buy several pounds of various other fruits.

She didn't really manage to buy most of what she intended to, but she didn't think the trip wasted. Oh no, not at all. It was a fairly satisfying thing to glare at a certain somebody's direction. Of course, the lone Uchiha didn't react much when she deliberately walked past him, gave him a once-over, and looked away with a disdainful sniff. Hah! Sasuke has always been an insensitive bastard, that son of a–

Ino gnashed her teeth and tried to calm herself.

After she reassured herself again and again that Shikamaru really was there, Ino's concern had shifted back to Sakura. She had been worrying about the pink-haired kunoichi, especially since they haven't talked for days. Ino knew she was close with Sasuke, had some vague ideas about their relationship, though Sakura rarely talked about him. Obviously, something was wrong with Sakura, but Ino didn't know just how wrong things can get, and that's what's worrying her.

Worrying over Sakura usually converted to anger after a few minutes. Ino would impotently rage against an imaginary Sasuke, demanding him to stop playing games with the precious few people who actually cared for his ass. Despite what Sakura told her about Sasuke not loving her the same way, Ino didn't think a person like him would actually let Sakura that close unless he needed her in some way. And maybe, just maybe, that emotionally crippled fool simply didn't know what to do about his feelings.

People always assumed Uchiha Sasuke was cruel. Maybe he really was just clueless. A stupid clueless moron who needed a good beating for doing nothing but hurt her best friend.

Then again, maybe Sakura didn't really deserved the likes of him. Sakura shouldn't be saddled with that man. She shouldn't. She deserved much better.

Ino sighed as she began straightening up the bedroom she shared with her husband. The protective anger she felt was starting to get out of hand. And no, Ino was prudent enough to realize that murdering Uchiha Sasuke in broad daylight was extremely bad form, not to mention downright impossible.

Now, Shikamaru, that hardheaded ass, wasn't helping things! How many time have she told him to empty his pockets before tossing his clothes in the laundry basket? That idiot.

She shook her head as she removed remnants of fuda paper and dried leaves from the pockets of his uniform. On one pocket, she found a bloodied cloth and nearly broke down. That man was hiding things from her, was he? Why didn't he tell her he was injured enough to bleed that much? What the hell happened to no holds ba—

Her thoughts broke off. There was a crumpled piece of paper inside that balled cloth that was folded suspiciously like...

"A love letter?" Ino growled.

One of her eyes twitched. Sakura did say something about the Sand Nins' possible involvement in the Southern Crack mission. Maybe the letter was from that shameless, fan-toting hussy who...

"Hell no!"

Privacy or no privacy, Ino nearly tore the paper as she scrambled to read the neat, albeit smudged, handwriting. It was obviously not Shikamaru's.

If you're reading this, then obviously I'm dead.

The first line was without preamble, blunt enough to hook her interest instantly. Ino scanned to the bottom of the lengthy stationery but saw no signature.

"Yes, dead," she continued reading, aloud this time. "I'm not going to use euphemisms. I died for sake of mission, comrades, and village. This is our way of life, not a romance novel. So don't begrudge me of my honorable death. I don't want you chasing the ends of the earth trying to undo what's been done, what cannot be done.

"Believe me. I've tried it before.

"Incidently, mention that to the dead-last who taught me that in the first place, just in case the notion has gotten lost in his vapid skull over the years.

"I've written you, at the eve of the final step of our operation, because you still annoy me like hell, even here. I can't stop—HEY!"

Ino dove for the paper that had been so rudely snatched from her. That person is going to pay, she swore mentally. Things were just about to get interesting, dammit!

She glared at Shikamaru. He had easily dodged her attempts to retrieve the letter and was tucking it somewhere inside his vest.

"Give it back!" she demanded

"Not for your eyes, Ino," said her husband. "You must have figured that out a while ago."

"But Shika!" Ino was whining, and she didn't give a fig she was acting like a child. "It's important I finish reading it!"

Shikamaru raised a lazy eyebrow at her.

"Mou!" she grumbled in disappointment. "What are you planning to do to it?"

"Burn it. The person who wrote it managed to survive, after all. The contents are now void."

"I disagree. And if I were you, I'd give that to the intended person."

Shikamaru only sighed.

"So you're giving it to her?"

"No. It'll burn, as arranged."

"Arg, I hate you."

He merely yawned. "No, you don't."

"Overconfident jerk."

Ino found that sticking out her tongue at him was amazingly gratifying. At least, it was, until he came to her and did something that rendered her all gooey and lapping at his feet.

"I really do hate you," she muttered as she returned to the kitchen to finish her cooking.

Finished writing/encoding: September 19, 2004 (1:32am)

Thanks to seiyo for pre-reading these two chapters. I'm sorry for badgering you and putting you through my weirdness and all my psycho-crap issues. Ahehe...

Wait's over, ne Neptune? Shika and Sasuke are back. As for deception... (innocent eyes) I wouldn't really call it that. : P LOL But really, most of the fics in Sakura's POV, right? : ) I didn't really think Ino the crying type, but I thought her showing a vulnerability like that, especially regarding Shikamaru was sweet and, well, human.
Karine, trickmaster, Analogue Cat, seiyo, I hope these two chapters make up for the "evil" ending of that one. Ehehehe... I suppose, chapter 5 was a cliffhanger, Mikazuki. I was hoping I wrote the tension effectively, so thanks for feedback on that. As for the Temari comments... LOL.

Sakura is chuunin, Ayce Shade. She just mentioned D class missions because she's that desperate for distraction. And both genins and chuunins handle C class missions, so she does have competition.

mikki05, I'm glad you like how Ino and Sakura interact. Ino seemed to be a v. important person to Sakura in the series despite appearances. And I've always thought Sakura broke off with Ino not only because of their rivalry over Sasuke, but also because she needed to gain some independence from her best friend.

Finally, I have good news & sort of bad news. The good news you already know of. Two chapters were posted this week, because I realized Chapter 6 was another cliffhanger. (Yes, I do have a conscience.) Also, I wanted to get it out of the way. Which brings me to the sort of bad news. Chapter 8 won't be posted next week. Why? Because it's not written yet. I won't be able to write it in a week or two, especially with school. But rest assured. I will definitely finish this fic, most likely before the year ends. There's only 3 chapters left at most, and if ever I have to chop up one of those chapters for being too long, I'd post both at one go. (All I need is time, basically --sweatdrops--). So please be patient, and thanks for reading, as always.

Chapter 8 will be released on: 112104