It took three days for Sakura to get the reconstructive surgery she needed for her chakra coils, since Tsunade herself had to be present for the procedure. It then took another four days for the medics to discharge her, but Sakura is still surprised to be allowed out so soon, everything considered.
The surgery had hurt. She'd had to be awake for it, for that final stage of rebuilding her network, and since chakra was neither nerve nor muscle, there was little by way of anaesthetic that the medics could give her for the pain.
She'd bitten through her lip. Then through the gag they'd quickly stuffed in her mouth. Then thrashed so hard she'd torn clean through the restraints on one of her wrists, and when one of the newbie medics had tried to pin her back down, she may have grabbed the pen from his pocket and stabbed it through the hand he'd touched her with.
Maybe.
Tsunade had ended up numbing her spinal nerve to keep her still, and Sakura had worked herself into a horrible panic attack when she'd woken up from the surgery with no chakra and no control over her limbs.
She doesn't remember much beyond the gnawing anxiety and the phantom pain from the surgery, doesn't remember who had calmed her down or how. All her mind remembers from post-surgery is that the next time she'd been lucid after her panic attack, a nurse had come in to tell her she could be discharged the following morning.
Yet, instead of relieved, by the time she's out of the hospital and heading home, all Sakura feels is exhausted.
For all that she'd technically been in a coma and able to get weeks of dreamless, uninterrupted sleep, she hadn't slept well after Tsunade had dropped her diagnosis on her, the helplessness of her sudden vulnerability keeping her awake. It certainly didn't help matters that the little sleep she had been able to catch before and after her surgery had been plagued with nightmares. She'd woken to the cruel gleam in Orochimaru's yellow eyes and the knowledge of what could've, would have happened if she hadn't intercepted him. Woken to the memory of fighting Gaara and how it had taken her and Kakashi and Inosuke to get the redhead down, and the realisation that even with the three of them, they almost hadn't survived it. Yet her brain seemed most insistent on torturing her with the memory of having her entire chakra network reforged.
She's been a shinobi for over twelve years combined, suffered innumerable injuries and wounds, yet she doesn't think she's ever experienced something more excruciating than that procedure.
But she got discharged regardless, the nurses, desperate to free up her bed for more patients, deeming her healed enough, forcing Sakura to grit her teeth and make herself scarce. Now that she's alone, however, hobbling down the side streets to avoid the reconstruction efforts, crutch attached to her right arm, her left in sling, the through-and-through wound in her left shoulder not fully healed yet despite over a month in the hospital, she's too exhausted to pretend that she isn't in pain.
Her muscles ache as she walks, whether from suddenly not being reinforced with chakra or simply from being upright after a month in bed. The crutch is digging into the friction-burn on her arm, and the walk from the hospital to her apartment is infinitely, tiresomely long now that she can't roof-hop.
Rationally, Sakura knows that the physical exhaustion she feels from something that she wouldn't have even registered as exertion less than a month previous is normal, her medic brain reminding her that she has been reinforcing her muscles and joints with chakra for the past eight years, so to be suddenly without that aid is a shock to her system. But the part of her that was ROOT, that got used to ANBU and being able to keep up with the best of the best finds the weakness galling, and she feels resentment mix with self-loathing, mix with panic and hopelessness, and she dedicates most of her focus that is not on putting one foot in front of the other to trying to keep the frustrated tears from blurring her vision as she stumbles home.
When she unlocks the door to their apartment, almost a full hour after she walked out of the hospital, all Sakura wants to do is take her sleeping pills, fall face-down in bed and sleep for an age.
Instead, what greets her when she steps into the house makes her freeze mid-step, breath catching in her throat.
Her eyes track over the details she'd forgotten, the changes she hadn't been there to witness, from the laugh lines around the man's eyes and mouth, to the grey highlights in the woman's hair, the tension in the pinch of her mouth.
Her mind wants to call it a genjutsu, wants to flex her chakra and make sure it isn't, but Sakura knows what she's looking at is no illusion.
It's almost too impossible to be one.
She's looking at her parents.
Sakura watches the people whose happiness she'd sacrificed for the 'greater good', notes how they look comfortable in her living room, in the house she'd helped Sai turn into their home. She takes in the loving look in her father's eyes as he watches the little Uchiha girl, feels a twinge in her heart when her mother sneakily places more meat on her father's plate when he's distracted, tries not to feel envy at the way her replacement seems to fit so seamlessly into the family unit Sakura had once grown up with.
She takes it all in and her tired brain allows her one single moment of weakness, one second in which she contemplates the 'what if', the 'what could have been'.
What could have been if she'd been normal, the innocent civilian child her parents had deserved, not the traumatised, war-ravaged, grieving soldier who'd stolen her parents' daughter from right under their noses.
It could have been nice, she reckons, a life with people who love her unconditionally. A life where half of her identity isn't built around how good a killer she is.
Then, the idyllic moment shatters like glass when Sakura's already fragmented mind viciously reminds her that she'd given up on this dream for a reason, that her parents had had the time to mourn her, to grieve her, that she had spent almost half of this life intentionally not thinking about them to save herself the pain from the knowledge that she was losing them again, though this time not to Orochimaru, or Pein, or Obito, but to her own ambition.
She can't do this. Not here, not now, not again.
She doesn't realise her grip on her crutch had slackened until it clatters to the floor, startling her and the civilians in the sitting room and drawing all eyes to where she'd frozen in the hallway, the door clicking shut behind her.
Sakura has about two seconds to take in her mother's gaping mouth and her father's look of horrified disbelief before Shin's head pops out from the kitchen, his eyes wide with surprise.
"…Fuck." he mutters, and Sakura stills.
Her shock at seeing her parents in her own house, in her safe space, had felt like a bucket of cold water thrown over her head, and her heartbreak had slowed her reactions. But now, as she studies the boy she's called brother for half of her life and realisation dawns, slow yet brutal, Sakura's heartbreak quickly turns into a molten, burning rage.
Shin had known.
"Sakura, shit, I can explain-!" Shin rushes forward, almost stumbling in his haste to get between her and her pa- and the civilians, but Sakura whips up a hand and glares. She wonders, with the part of her mind that's not torn between panicking or breaking down then and there, what Shin sees on her face.
Whatever it is seems to do the job of the words that she can't quite push past the lump in her throat, because Shin freezes mid-step.
"…Sakura?" Her father's voice makes her flinch, and she realises she's too weak, she can't not look, but when she meets the man's gaze, she almost wishes she'd turned on her heel and walked right back out of the apartment.
She swallows, but the words don't come.
Her mother exhales, and it sounds like a sob, but her wide eyes are still flickering wildly over Sakura's body, her face, her hair, her too-large shinobi blues which were the only thing the hospital could offer her on short notice and with resources stretched as thin as they are.
"Who're you?" A high voice breaks the silence, and Sakura flinches again when her attention switches to her repla- to the Uchiha girl, and she finds herself meeting inquisitive dark eyes, though there's a hint of defensiveness on the child's face, too.
"I'm-" Sakura starts, then has to swallow again to wet her dry throat. She licks her lips, measuring her words, and takes a deep breath before she continues. "-I'm a shinobi. My name is Sakura."
She hopes that will be enough to pacify the girl, but if anything, the Uchiha's frown only deepens, and the expression looks oddly at home on her young face, Sakura's mind notes half-hysterically.
But instead of subsiding, the child crosses her arms over her chest.
"Why's your hair like papa's?" she demands sharply, eyes darting between Sakura and her mother. "And- and you scrunch your face like mama!"
"Kimiko-!" Sakura's mother starts, but the admonishment dies in her throat, her eyes returning to Sakura almost desperately, like she thinks Sakura will disappear if she lets her out of her sight.
Sakura wonders how Mebuki would feel if she were to find out how much Sakura is currently wishing she could disappear.
"Sakura is-" Kizashi starts, and Sakura's gaze snaps to him, trails over the cast on his leg and the new wrinkles on his face, stress and pain etched surprisingly deep into the skin. "We had Sakura before we had you, Kimi-chan. She was – is – our daughter."
Mebuki finally breaks, dropping her face into her hands as her shoulders begin to shake, but her cries are soundless. Sakura feels like what remained of her heart has been ripped out and stomped on, but she knows that she needs to – has to – do worse to her parents.
Because Kizashi is right, but he also isn't.
"No." She manages, and she barely recognises her voice, her eyes trained on the way Mebuki stills, but she doesn't lift her face from her hands. Sakura licks her lips again, hating herself in that moment, but she knows it needs to be said.
This is not a reunion. This is a serrated knife in an old wound.
And she needs to rip it out before someone can grab the handle and twist.
"No." She repeats, her voice a little more stable. "Your daughter is dead."
Mebuki keens at that, and the sound reminds Sakura of the wounded, broken whine that had left Yu's throat when Ryu-
Oh, heavens above, Ryu-!
Sakura shakes her head, trying to physically dislodge the thought at the same time as she mentally grabs it and forces it into the deepest corner of her mind, to be dealt with when she's not already pulling apart at the seams.
"I- I am not the child you raised." She forces out and feels something in the back of her mind rise up, bringing with it a wave of cold so potent Sakura shivers, but just as she thinks she's going to lose control, the presence recedes.
Sakura breathes out, the exhale shaky and far wetter than she cares to admit, but the admission also brings with it a wave of relief.
"It's- it's better if you forget this ever happened." She finally chokes out, taking a blind step back towards the door.
"We mourned you." Mebuki speaks up, her voice wet and unsteady, but her eyes, when she looks at Sakura again, are angry. "We left this Village because we couldn't- couldn't stand to be reminded of losing you everywhere we went." She hiccoughs, and Sakura wonders if her parents can see how her heart is breaking right in front of their eyes. "And- and you're asking that we let you go again?!"
Sakura takes a deep breath that stutters as a sob catches in her throat, but she forces herself to meet Mebuki's gaze. "Yes."
"Stop making mama cry!" The Uchiha girl screeches, apparently finding her voice as she scrambles to Mebuki's side when the woman fully dissolves into sobs, tiny hands fluttering over Mebuki's back and hair in a desperate attempt to comfort.
"I'm sorry." Sakura whispers, taking another step back, reaching blindly behind herself to find the doorhandle. Before she can push it down, she catches movement from the corner of her eye and she suddenly remembers that Shin is still in the room, and when their eyes meet, her brother steps forward, his expression entreating as he opens his mouth.
"Sakura-" he starts, that same grating, faux-patient, almost patronising tone that Sakura remembers him using sometimes in ROOT, and Sakura sees red.
She's beyond words so she hisses, the sound dark and primal and laced with warning, and Shin seems to have retained at least some common sense because he heeds the warning and stills for the second time, his expression wary.
"Do not." she snarls, the words a full sentence by themselves. "Get out of my sight, aniki, I'm- I can't stand you right now."
"Don't be mean to Shin-san!" the girl demands immediately, tiny face scrunched up in anger, and Sakura's patience runs out.
"Don't tell me what to do in my own house." She snaps at the child, and she has no idea what her face or voice are doing, but it's enough for the girl to shrink back against Mebuki's side, cowed.
Sakura takes a breath, trying desperately to quell the anger boiling within her, but she knows that the anger is only masking all the other, far more complicated emotions hiding beneath, and she's not ready to deal with them just yet.
Definitely not on her own.
She exhales. One step at a time. And this step just happens to be-
"Goodbye."
She pushes down on the handle and turns, stepping through the open door, but her father's voice stops her in her tracks.
"Sakura," he calls, and he sounds so small and defeated that she can't help but pause, though she adamantly doesn't turn around. She can't afford to. "Are you- are you happy, at least?"
Sakura laughs, sudden and startled, the question shocking it out of her, and she hopes it masks the sound of her heart shattering to pieces.
Mebuki sobs again and Sakura can sympathise; she would too, if all of her attention wasn't focused on ripping out the metaphorical knife before she loses her nerve.
She glances over her shoulder, just once, just briefly, a bitter smile curling her lips, and keeps her mouth shut.
Then, before she can see Kizashi's reaction to her reply – or lack thereof – she closes the door behind her and bolts.
("Did you know? Did you know who we were when you took us in?"
"I- yes."
"You've been with her for the past six years?"
"…Yes."
"Can you tell us what happened? Why she's…like that?"
"I…It's not a happy story."
"We figured."
"And you want to know anyway?"
"Our daughter is dead. We might as well learn what killed her.")
Sakura doesn't get far.
Between her shoulder, her exhaustion, and how shaken she feels after the confrontation with her parents, she manages to half-run, half-stumble a street down from their apartment before she has to duck into an alley and lean against the wall, chest heaving, her hands shaking as she raises them to her face.
She stays there for a moment as she pants, trying desperately to push the pain to the back of her mind, annoyed at herself for this weakness and the tears that spring up.
She let her parents go six years ago. She can do it again. And her body needs to remember all the hell she's put it through; this pain is nothing. Besides, she was discharged: she's fine.
She has to be.
In her haste to get going, she forgets that she's not reinforcing her limbs with chakra; her leg buckles and she stumbles, crashing to the ground on her knees. She barely manages to catch herself from smacking nose-first into the dirt, but the lack of chakra to cushion the impact means that the fall sends fire licking up her legs and a dull, throbbing pain through her wrist and forearm. She curses and feels the skin of her knees and wrist burn where it tore, and a pained, defeated noise escapes her throat before she can smother it.
Then, there are suddenly hands on her shoulders, pushing her back, and Sakura hisses again and thrashes desperately to free herself before her mind concentrates enough to process the stream of words her ears are picking up.
"-hai, kouhai, it's me, it's Kakashi, ease up, I don't want to hurt you, kouhai, come on, come back to me-"
"'kashi?" she chokes past the lump in her throat, her shoulder screaming, her whole body feeling like a giant bruise, the tears that she refuses to shed making her eyes burn.
"Hurts." Slips out before she can bite it back, her voice weak and pathetic. But Kakashi's grip on her gentles immediately and Sakura, despite herself, lets out a relieved half-sob when the pressure on her aching shoulder eases.
"What do you need?" he asks quietly, pushing at her lightly until she turns around and falls from her knees to her backside, slumping against the wall as soon as she can with a shaky exhale. "Hospital?"
"Just got out of there." she manages weakly, making an aborted gesture to her sling-arm and her oversized jounin blues. "Need senpai. Inosuke."
Something flashes through Kakashi's visible eye, but it's gone before Sakura can pin it down, and she's too woozy to press. "Then hospital it is. I don't think he's been released yet."
"What're you doin'ere?" Sakura slurs in response, exhaustion catching up to her, though she grunts when Kakashi grabs her free arm and starts manoeuvring her to her feet. She hasn't been monitoring anything with her chakra, too scared to reach for it with the half-remembered pain of the reconstructive operation to dare touching it, so she doesn't know if Kakashi had been in the area or actively looking for her and-!
-She really hates not knowing.
"I was playing hide-and-seek with a Gai and a collection of genin." Kakashi announces, then bends and unceremoniously sweeps Sakura's legs out from under her, picking her up bridal style.
"Kakashi-!" she exclaims, indignation pushing through her exhaustion, but Kakashi cuts her off, suddenly cheerful as anything.
"-Turns out, clean up and rebuilding duties are mightily boring when your previous mission had been hunting down the Senju Princess!"
Sakura shelves her indignity long enough to pin Kakashi with a frown, her sluggish mind trying to sort through what he'd just told her. "…what?"
"Are you sure you should've been discharged?" Kakashi asks suddenly, meeting her gaze with his own worried one, and Sakura would have been touched if she wasn't so completely overwhelmed. "You had a pretty bad concussion from what Sai said."
"How is Sai?" Sakura forces out, losing the fight with herself and closing her eyes. She lets her head drop limply onto Kakashi's shoulder, taking comfort in his strength and tight grip on her back and legs and the knowledge that she can trust Kakashi.
(unlike someone else, a voice in her mind whispers, but she pushes the thought aside, unable to deal with it just yet.)
"Serving out his punishment alongside Shikamaru." Kakashi tells her lightly, and despite her exhaustion, Sakura can tell that Kakashi isn't half as unbothered about what he's telling her as he's pretending to be. "You see, when you and I were indisposed, your brother and his Mist boyfriend fought Uchiha Itachi and Hoshikagi Kisame."
Sakura isn't sure what sound leaves her throat, but Kakashi just hums agreeably, hopping onto another roof. "Well, 'fought' is a bit of an overstatement according to Gai. Intercepted is probably better. Tried to turn the Kiri-nin, too. Did you know the Godaime Mizukage is willing to accept even S-Rank criminals back into the ranks?"
"You're not making any sense." Sakura groans, a headache making itself known in her temples, and she worries that if Kakashi's not careful about distributing his momentum, she might end up throwing up over him with the combination of her growing headache, dizziness, and the constant swaying motion.
"I'm gonna stop talking, I think." Kakashi shoots back, then drops and lands hard, planting his feet, and Sakura curls into his shoulder a bit more when he starts walking again.
She tunes out whatever Kakashi says next and keeps her eyes stubbornly shut, only registering that they're now inside of the hospital, again, by what she can smell. She clings to the man as he makes his way up the stairs, but finally, finally, Kakashi comes to a stop.
"Brought you a visitor." Kakashi announces cheerfully as he carefully sets her down, and it takes Sakura a moment to realise that he isn't speaking to her. "Look after her."
Suddenly remembering where she'd asked him to take her, she pries her eyes open and blinks at the white walls before her gaze focuses on the man on the only bed in the room.
"Senpai." She breathes, relieved beyond measure, and stumbles the two steps that separate her from the plastic chair at Inosuke's bedside. She allows herself to fall into it gracelessly, the pain barely registering, all her focus on seeking out Inosuke's sleeve with her free hand and tangling her fingers in it, a real, tangible anchor to the present.
"Did Hatake steal a patient?" Inosuke asks dryly, and it takes Sakura a second to realise that Kakashi is no longer in the room with them.
She licks her lips and moves to shake her head before her dizziness rears up again and she stills. "I was discharged this morning."
"Then your medics are morons." Sakura opens her mouth, half-thinking to protest, but the words don't come, displaced by the realisation that she doesn't actually remember any of the medics that had tended to her apart from Tsunade. Inosuke seems to notice her turmoil and pushes, "When was the last time you slept? Properly?"
Sakura blinks, surprised by the non-sequitur. But the answer comes to her easily, the memory a fond one and still fresh despite everything that had happened afterwards. "When you let me sleep in your office."
Inosuke's face does something complicated at that reveal, but the flicker is gone quicker than she can identify it.
"I know you probably came here for a reason." He tells her evenly, holding her gaze, "But you're not going through it with me until you get some sleep."
"Is that your magic remedy for everything?" Sakura asks, her tone more biting than she intends, but she can't hide her incredulity.
"It is when my patient is chronically sleep deprived." Inosuke shoots back, not looking in the least bothered by her short temper. When Sakura gestures around roughly, trying to indicate that there isn't exactly space for her to sleep without letting anymore of her temper out, Inosuke sighs and rolls his eyes. "Get up here."
Sakura tracks the way he juts his chin at the foot of his bed, the space just big enough that she could- She jerks her eyes back to him, hopeful and disbelieving at once, but Inosuke only nods.
"I figured sending you home to sleep might not go over well." Inosuke points out when she meets his gaze, and Sakura can't help the tired, breathless laugh at the apt assumption. She hesitates, but Inosuke waves her over, the look in his eyes verging on exasperated. "Come up before I change my mind."
Sakura clambers up, the action made more difficult by the fact that her left arm is still in the sling, but within a minute, she's arranged herself on her right side, her body curled around Inosuke's blanket-covered legs. Lying over the blanket rather than under it, the bed seems almost invitingly soft, and she lets her head drop slowly to Inosuke's knee, wondering whether she's allowed.
When the man doesn't so much as twitch, much less attempt to shake her off, she finally allows herself to relax fully. She has a vague memory of Chie once lying like she is now, back when Sakura had ordered the summon to stay with Inosuke in the hospital while the man recovered from the Bat Mission what feels like a lifetime ago.
The last thing she feels before she passes out is a soft, gentle pressure on her head, then she knows no more.
"Alright, Yamanaka, we gotta move you, so don't throw a hissy f-" Tsunade cuts herself off as the door fully swings open, freezing momentarily in the doorway.
There's a kid curled at the foot of the Yamanaka's bed. The same Yamanaka whose presence makes her nurses give the room a wide berth currently has a kid cuddled up to his leg. To add insult to injury, the kid seems deeply asleep, like she's curled up around her teddy bear and not a man so notorious that jounin avoid him.
Worst yet is that Tsunade recognises the kid.
It's the Mokuton girl – because of course it is – the one Shikaku suspects to be part of Tsunade's own line, the child who's had the worst case of burnt-out coils Tsunade had ever seen, yet the one who had somehow figured out how to reverse-engineer her grandfather's jutsu.
(the jutsu that Tsunade herself hadn't dared touch, not sure if she had the necessary control.)
The child who also, if rumours are to be believed, fully lives up to the legacy of being Hatake's kouhai. Who was one-third of the trio that restrained a half-transformed jinchuuriki despite being half the age of the other two. The child who is supposedly at least partly responsible for putting Shimura Danzo six feet in the ground four years ago.
What the hell is she doing with this Yamanaka, though?
"I didn't quite catch that." The Yamanaka in question drawls, eyeing Tsunade idly, a book of some sort in his functional hand, paying seemingly no attention to the kid hugging his leg.
Because that's what the girl is doing, Tsunade realises with a start, and almost turns around and goes back to her office for a drink.
"We're moving you. Got more people who need a private room, and whatever intimidation tactics you pulled on the nurses won't work on me." She snaps instead, jerking her eyes away from the unconscious girl and meeting the Yamanaka's eyes boldly.
"…Alright." The man agrees, not contesting the accusation, his gaze leaving Tsunade's without much fanfare and focusing on the child.
"Kid." He calls, shaking his leg a little, and Tsuande isn't sure whether the motion is restrained so as not to startle the girl clinging to it or because that's the extent of the range of movement the man is currently capable of.
"Sakura." He tries again when the first attempt brings no response, scarred hand falling on the kid's head with surprising gentleness.
At that, the girl finally moves, blinking blearily as she lets out a disgruntled sound.
"Wha'timesit?" she mumbles, stifling a yawn as she pushes herself into a sitting position, and Tsunade tries to marry the girl in front of her with the bitter, wounded, disoriented war-child she'd treated barely a week previous.
"Seventeen hours later." Yamanaka informs her dryly, and there's something like disapproval in his gaze when the kid meets it.
"Mm, good nap," the girl has the gall to mutter, rubbing at her eye and shooting the Yamanaka a smile that still somehow looks tired, "thanks, senpai."
Then, before the man can reply, the girl seems to realise that they're not alone.
"Tsunade-sama." She greets respectfully, and Tsunade watches, bemused, as the girl's posture becomes suddenly wary, her expression guarded, none of the sleepy softness she'd been showing not ten seconds previous to be found. "Did you need anything?"
"Need to move your senpai into a shared room." Tsunade replies once she finds her words, scrutinising the girl. Now that she's looking for it, the kid looks exhausted, and Tsunade can't help but wonder what Sarutobi-sensei was thinking if a preteen is so chronically sleep-deprived that sleeping for seventeen hours doesn't help. "You gonna object?"
But before the kid can reply, the Yamanaka interrupts, completely ignoring Tsunade – his Hokage – and pinning the girl with a measured look. "What did you need to tell me?"
"I'll tell you when you're discharged." The girl replies after studying the man for a beat. Then, she turns her attention back to Tsunade, eyebrow raised. "When might that be, Tsunade-sama?"
"Another week at the least." Tsunade manages, deciding to spare the girl the details of the extent of her senpai's condition.
"Mongoose." The Yamanaka says, and it's not quite an order, could almost be called a threat, but the girl just waves him off, a smile of all things worming its way onto her face.
"I'll be fine, senpai. You were right, I really needed the sleep." She reassures, beginning the careful process of climbing off the bed. "I'll just…hide out in HQ. We'll talk when you're better."
Tsunade can see that the man wants to protest, but his eyes slant to her for the briefest of moments before he sighs and gives a single nod of acknowledgement.
"Let me know if any of the nurses give you trouble again!" The girl throws over her shoulder as she steps past Tsunade and half-limps out of the room, the line of her shoulders tense with pain though she somehow manages to keep it out of her face and voice.
Tsunade watches her go, then turns to the bedbound Yamanaka, assessing what she's just witnessed with new eyes. There were layers to the conversation she knows she missed, a whole explanation to the origins of the dynamic that she does not have, but all she can really say is:
"Sarutobi-sensei made a kid an ANBU?!"
Sakura does go to HQ, but she heads straight for the Commander's office before anything else. She slips into the room when she hears the invitation, and though the man's face is covered, she feels his surprise at the fact that hers is not.
"Commander." She greets respectfully, inclining her head. "You wouldn't happen to have a spare mask, would you?"
"Did anybody see you?" Bear asks instead, studying her intently.
"No." Sakura replies, taking comfort in the certainty she feels about that fact. "You were the one who called me one of your best infiltrators, Commander."
"That I did." Bear agrees lightly, watching her closely until he suddenly looks away and pulls out one of his drawers. "Which is why I'm willing to let it go today, but if you come in without your mask again, you won't stay ANBU for much longer."
Sakura catches the mask he throws her, the unpainted kind worn by the HQ staff instead of its agents, and nods stiffly. "Understood. Thank you, sir."
She secures the mask to her face and pulls the hood over her hair as she turns to head out, ignoring the quiet sigh that comes from the Commander until it's followed by;
"Mongoose."
She stops and turns respectfully, waiting, almost curious as to what the man has to say.
"Good job on not-dying." Bear tells her dryly, the mask's modulator ridding his voice of any inflection, but Sakura thinks he sounds almost pleased.
She huffs, torn between incredulous and wryly amused, and pulls off a mock-curtsy. "I do my best."
When no further response comes from the man, she pulls the door open and slips out, heading for the lowest level training grounds.
It's time to finally access her chakra.
Every agent gets assigned a room keyed into their signature when they join the ranks. While the space is just big enough for a single bed and a locker, all Sakura really needs is the comfort of her own four walls to pass out in at the end of the day. She gets food from the HQ canteen, showers in communal bathrooms, medical treatment in the small infirmary, and trains in whatever free training salles she can find.
A week passes by in a blur and she doesn't go home once.
Instead, she works on her chakra; the first time she tries to walk up the wall, the concrete explodes under her foot. When she tries the Great Fireball, she ends up in the infirmary, the jutsu coming out so wild that it blows up in her face and would've probably blinded her if not for her mask; her Water Bullet jet nearly drowns her, her Earth Wall leaves a canyon in the floor.
Any further attempts at ninjutsu provide similar results.
The only things that seem to be unaffected are her aim, speed and strength.
But even after a week, she's no closer to understanding why.
And then, Crow comes.
The Hyuuga listens to the hasty 'I'm actually Mongoose' explanation Sakura throws at her before she can leave to look for another training hall. Then, to Sakura's surprise, Crow agrees to help her figure out what's wrong with her chakra once she learns of what had happened to her during the Invasion, though she seems to regret the offer when Sakura ambushes her with a quick hug of thanks.
But when Crow activates her Byakugan, she recoils almost immediately, cursing so wildly and vividly that Sakura freezes for a moment before the instinct to check on her teammate gets her moving again, though she freezes again when Crow wrenches off her mask and rubs at her eyes, still swearing.
"What the fuck is wrong with your chakra?!" the woman demands, and when she looks up, blinking blearily as if trying to clear away spots from her vision, Sakura finally sees the woman's real face.
To her surprise, she finds that Crow is around Tsume's age, hints of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, her hair short instead of the usual long sleek locks of the Hyuuga, and shot through with streaks of grey.
"What is wrong with it?" Sakura checks once she's done with her assessment, extending a hand to help Crow to her feet from where she'd crumpled to one knee.
"It's like staring at the sun." Crow huffs, none of the usual restraint in her voice, and she eyes Sakura shrewdly when she straightens. "Let me try again."
When Crow concentrates and reactivates her dojutsu, Sakura carefully reaches up and takes off her own borrowed mask, letting it fall to the ground by her feet. She produces a small Fire jutsu when Crow asks for it, then does the same with the other elements, and obediently runs to the end of the training hall and back, pushing off the wall and leaving a sizeable dent in her wake.
Crow deactivates her Byakugan, stills briefly when her eyes fall on Sakura's face, then sighs and launches into an explanation.
"Your coils are bloated." She declares, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at Sakura with a mix of concern and exasperation. "They're stretched beyond their usual limits, so when you recovered your chakra, you got more of it than you're used to having."
Sakura absorbs that, but before she can fire off the questions that immediately spring to mind, Crow carries on.
"You seem to know instinctively what proportion of your chakra you need to use for a jutsu, except now, because you've got more chakra, with the same proportion, you pump more of it into the jutsu. That's what's messing with your execution. And then there's the bizarre interference from the natural energy you've somehow absorbed into your cells. Your coils might go back to their usual size if you keep exhausting your chakra, but I can't promise that." Crow pauses, eyeing her worriedly. "Mongoose, what did you actually do?"
Sakura takes in the explanation, and it seems so simple that she almost wants to smack herself. Tsunade had said 'dilated', but that could've meant anything really; Crow's explanation puts the problem so simply that Sakura can't believe she hadn't figured it out herself.
Then, after a few seconds of expectant silence, she registers Crow's question and smiles wryly.
"Accidentally-on-purpose channelled natural energy from the Shodaime's forests to restrain a jinchuuriki." She admits dryly, delighting in Crow's slow, confused blink.
"…You should be dead."
Sakura snorts, stretching her arm above her head to pop her shoulder. "If it helps, I still have twigs growing out of me whenever I lose control of my chakra before I finish the jutsu."
Crow eyes her sharply, her brows drawing together in a frown.
"How could that possibly help?" she demands, seemingly not finding anything humorous in Sakrua's quip. "Your suffering brings me neither pleasure nor joy, Mongoose."
Chastened, Sakura winces and tries to backpedal. "Sorry. I-"
But Crow's frown persists, and she waves aside her apology, pinning her with a demanding look.
"-Have you tested it?" She asks instead, pushing right through Sakura's attempt at explaining herself. "Is it only external jutsu that are affected, or internal manipulation too?"
It's Sakura's turn to blink. "I can augment my muscles normally, but-"
"-perfect." Crow cuts her off again, then gestures impatiently. "Come spar with me."
Sakura stays rooted to the spot. "Beg your pardon?"
"Spar with me." Crow repeats, shaping the words slowly and clearly like Sakura is being intentionally obtuse. "You seem to be operating under the delusion that just because you can't use ninjutsu right now you're somehow vulnerable. You're one of the best taijutsu users I know, and I come from a Clan of taijutsu experts. Now come here and fight me."
Unable to argue with that logic, Sakura does.
On the fifth day of training with Crow, Yugao joins them.
Sakura finds out that Hayate had woken up a week before her, given the all-clear by Tsunade and discharged before Sakura had had her own operation.
They're sparring, her, Yugao, and Crow – or rather, Yugao and Crow are sparring while Sakura stretches, exhausted from her own spars and still not fully recovered from fighting Gaara, when Crow suddenly stills.
"Oh, I'm sorry." She breathes, kick stilling inches from Yugao's stomach, prompting Yugao to freeze, though she doesn't lower her guard. "Congratulations."
"…What?" Yugao asks, sounding as baffled as Sakura feels.
Crow lowers her leg and straightens, inclining her head. "You should've mentioned something, I nearly hit you."
"Wasn't that the point?" Sakura asks at the same time as Yugao says 'mentioned what?' though something has changed in her tone that Sakura can't quite pinpoint.
"That you're pregnant, Fox." Crow tells Yugao bluntly, only to curse when Yugao freezes. "Oh, no. Tell me you knew."
"What? I'm-?" Yugao starts, though she trails off, as if unable to bring herself to say the word. "No, I-I can't- I- this-!"
"Are you sure?" Sakura demands as she rushes to Yugao's side, catching her senpai when the older kunoichi sways, as if unable to keep her balance in the face of her shock.
"How- how far along?" Yugao asks breathlessly, leaning most of her weight on Sakura as she reaches up with her free hand and removes her mask, rubbing at her eyes and trying to wipe at the tears gathered there.
"I'm not a med-nin." Crow replies flatly, though she seems to soften when Yugao makes a quiet sound almost like a sob. "Far enough along for a foetus to start developing its chakra network."
"That's after twelve weeks." Sakura's medic brain kicks in, but most of her attention is on Yugao and the unconscious way her senpai's hand drops to cradle her stomach, a small, disbelieving smile lighting up the older kunoichi's face. "Do- senpai, do you want to go to the medic?"
"Come with me?" Yugao asks back, looking down at Sakura with that same awestruck expression, reaching out a hand which Sakura took without hesitation.
"Of course."
They make their way to the infirmary hand-in-hand, Sakura leading a somewhat shell-shocked Yugao through the corridors. Dove is the medic on call when they get to the infirmary, and Sakura lets out a relieved sigh when Dove not only confirms that Yugao is pregnant, but also assures them that the foetus is healthy, and Yugao is, in fact, fifteen weeks pregnant.
"I just- I don't understand how- how this could happen?" Yugao manages once she sits up and pulls down her shirt, and Dove actually snorts, laying a reassuring hand on the nape of Yugao's neck.
"You've been taking less physical missions recently, right? More infiltration, espionage, bodyguarding, the like?" they ask, and Yugao nods; Team Four's usual missions far less combat-heavy than Team Ro's had been. "Well, believe it or not, but not getting regularly kicked in the stomach is a good way to prevent a miscarriage."
Sakura snorts before she can control herself and even Yugao huffs an incredulous laugh, letting her head drop back against Dove's upper arm in a way that clues Sakura into the fact that the two are likely friends.
"Now, I better not see you in HQ unless it's for a check-up, understood?" Dove orders, and this is a message Sakura can get on board with. "Go tell your boytoy the news and come to me if you have any problems or concerns. I'll get on with updating your file."
Taking the dismissal for what it was, Sakura leads Yugao out of the infirmary, the older kunoichi still a little out of it.
"Go on, senpai." She ushers, pushing Yugao in the vague direction of the exit. "Go see Hayate-san. Celebrate. I'll see you around."
Yugao nods and starts walking, though she pauses right before turning the corner, turning around to glance over her shoulder and Sakura has the bizarre impression that her senpai is grinning behind her mask.
"I hope you're ready for honorary aunt duties." She calls, and Sakura trips over nothing, the realisation that Yugao wants her there, in her future child's life serving to plaster a giddy grin over her face.
"Always, senpai."
Tsume remembers telling the ROOT child that her home was always open to her and hers.
In light of what the girl had given her, doing anything else would've been a dishonour. Still, she can admit to being surprised when she's called down to the clinic and finds the child waiting outside, an unconscious tiger draped over her shoulder while another trots anxiously around her.
"Inuzuka-sama." The girl greets when she spots Tsume, inclining her head, barely seeming to notice the weight of the tiger despite the fact that its body dwarfs her small frame. "My apologies for coming by unannounced. My summon is injured."
"It's no bother." Tsume replies honestly. "And I did tell you that my Compound and house are open to you, whatever you need. Come in."
She leads them into the clinic and navigates between the pups being treated, only belatedly realising that she should've probably given the kid some warning about how a feline will be received by a clinic-full of ninken.
She can't say she's surprised when two of the younger pups growl at the tiger that walks in after the girl, nor when the giant tiger predictably hisses back, fangs bared and fur standing on end, and she can see her ninken's initial bravado fade when faced with the presence of a Noble summon.
But before Tsume can say anything, the girl – who is still carrying the unconscious tiger – reaches out, lightning-fast, and grabs her hissing summon by the scruff. Tsume watches, more than a little dumbfounded, as this slip of a girl lifts the feline off the ground one-handed. The girl is short; shorter than Kiba, even, barely reaching past Tsume's elbow, so the tiger's hind legs still touch the ground, but it doesn't change the fact that a child is now carrying two adolescent tigers probably triple her weight.
Tsume shelves her disbelief for the moment and turns to her ninken, a reprimand on the tip of her tongue, but before she can do anything more than glare at the two that had growled, the girl speaks, her tone chilling.
"Do that again and I'll cut our contract." She tells the tiger evenly, the one she's still holding by the scruff, and her voice sends a shiver down Tsume's spine, empty and hollow just like her scent. Because she is not scent-blocking, which had been Tsume's initial assumption, no. There is simply nothing coming from her scent, like she's not feeling anything.
The tiger whines, but the sound suddenly dies in its throat, and Tsume wonders whether the summon has realised the same thing that has dawned on her along with a good heaping of horror; that the words don't sound like an empty threat.
"These are not Hatake's mutts," the girl continues, and for the supposed familiarity she has with Kakashi, Tsume's surprised by the last-name address, "these are battle ninken and you are in their territory. If you want to heal Ryu, you will behave."
or I will make you, goes unsaid, but Tsume hears it regardless.
ROOT, she reminds herself, taking a quiet breath and steadying herself, trying not to think of the chilling emptiness in the girl's eyes. She'd been blank when Tsume had hosted her that first time, a forced emotionlessness to hide what Tsume quickly figured was likely years of trauma at Shimura's hands, but she hadn't been cold. Tsume has never been particularly maternal, always too wild and sharp around the edges, but she can't help but wonder what had happened to the girl since Tsume had last seen her. Because last time, when the girl had given Tsume a link to one of her clansmen, she'd been quiet and polite and withdrawn but still human, especially when she'd clung to Tsume's back like it had been the first positive physical contact she'd received in years.
The way she's standing now, threatening her summons with the worst punishment imaginable, no love nor warmth in her eyes; Tsume doesn't know her, not really, but she knows with a certainty that she can't explain that this is not the same child from before.
This is not a child at all.
Sakura dismisses Yuu with a quiet apology once they leave the Inuzuka Compound, her mind regaining control of her body with a feeling not unlike breaking the surface of the water after a long time.
Along with her control, though, comes the guilt at how she'd spoken to her summon, the memory hazy at best despite how recently it had occurred.
She'd left the safety of ANBU barracks two weeks after her discharge from the hospital with a firmer grasp on the unbalance in her chakra and a desperation to see her summons. She nearly cried when her first attempt at summoning the twins resulted not in Yu and Ryu but in Boshi-sama, her control too rough.
Boshi had taken one look at her with his eerie, mismatched eyes and sighed, ordering her to keep their connection open before he disappeared. Sakura had, the tie between her and the massive summon making her chakra leak out of her like water from a sieve, but she'd gritted her teeth and pushed through it until Boshi returned, Yu and an unconscious Ryu in tow.
"Time passes differently in the summoning realm." Boshi boomed once he'd laid Ryu's limp form at her feet. "We'd kept him unconscious, but we can't heal the damage. That's on you, two-spirit."
Sakura had sobbed, feeling her control over her emotions slip at the sight of Ryu's still body, the only reassurance that her summon was still alive being the shallow rise and fall of his ribs. Yu looked slimmer too, worn and tired in a way he hadn't been before, in a way he shouldn't be for a barely teenaged tiger.
"I'll do my best." She'd vowed, staggering when Boshi unsummoned himself and the chakra-draining tie between them folded in on itself, leaving Sakura panting for breath.
She'd had no idea what to do, healing chakra beyond her reach for the first time in over a decade, and the wave of hopelessness that rose up within her masked the wave of cold that swept over her and took away her control of her body. Sakura could only watch, powerless within her own body, as whatever was driving her picked up Ryu's unconscious form and headed in the direction of the Inuzuka Compound.
It had been one of the better choices she could've made, but it rankled that it hadn't been her choice, not consciously, at least.
She shakes the memory off, focusing back on the present. She knows that she really needs to talk with Inosuke, and soon, but before that, she's got one more stop to make.
She finds Team Seven at Ichiraku's, five bowls already stacked in front of Naruto while Sasuke and Sai are still on their first, Kakashi's already somehow empty.
"Aneue." Sai greets when he spots her, a small smile pulling at his lips as he rises from his stool, and Sakura gives in to the impulse to close the remaining distance between them and pull Sai into a crushing, desperate hug.
"Tadaima." Sakura whispers into Sai's shoulder, knowing he hears her when his hold tightens briefly before he pulls away.
"Okaeri." He replies just as quietly, then turns and reclaims his seat right before Naruto barrels into her, wrapping his arms around her waist.
"Sensei!! You're back! I've been asking Kaka-sensei to go visit you but he said you were discharged! Where were you? Did you get a mission? Did you-mmpf!"
Sakura finds herself suddenly overwhelmed by the barrage of questions, and she's guiltily grateful when Sasuke wraps an arm around Naruto's head and slaps his hand over the blond's mouth, using his hold to start hauling Naruto back to his seat.
"Welcome back." Sasuke greets her evenly once he manhandles Naruto to the stool, a distantly familiar measured look in his eyes as he looks her over.
"Thank you, Sasuke." Sakura replies with a relieved sigh, offering him the closest she can manage to a smile as she studies him right back. "You look well."
To her surprise, the reply comes not from Sasuke, but from Kakashi, who snickers.
"Sasuke's found inner peace." Kakashi informs her as he pats the seat next to him in invitation, amusement radiating from his expression even with the mask covering most of his face. "Gai's Hyuuga has been teaching him meditation."
Sakura blinks, her mind stalling as it tries to parse through the news even as her feet take her to the stool at Kakashi's side seemingly without conscious thought.
"Meditation?" she echoes, hoping that the word won't sound as ridiculous the second time around, but no, 'Sasuke' and 'meditation' still don't sound like they belong in the same sentence unless separated by 'hates'.
"Mm. After they do their level best to beat the shit out of each other, of course." Kakashi divulges, lowering his voice so only she hears him, and Sakura chokes, shooting the man an incredulous look. "Don't think Sasuke would be able to sit still for that long otherwise."
Then, Kakashi raises his voice to normal levels and adds; "Naruto, how about you catch Sakura up on all she's missed, hm?"
And so Sakura listens and makes her way through the bowl of noodles Teuchi places in front of her, half her mind dedicated to concentrating on sorting out the changes in this time from what she remembers, while the other half tries not to think about how overwhelmed she feels.
As she listens, she tries to force herself to relax; there do seem to have been some changes, but mostly, Sakura thinks they're favourable.
Naruto still went with Jiraiya to find Tsunade, only this time, Sasuke and Inuzuka Hana went with them.
Naruto still got Tsunade's necklace and helped her get over her fear of blood, but they never fought Orochimaru and Kabuto and Sasuke never fought Itachi.
Kakashi, unconscious in the hospital as he had been at the time, never got caught in Itachi's Tsukiyomi, either.
The Akatsuki had been intercepted by Sai and Haku, and diverted away from the Village by other jounin.
Gaara is apparently in TI, a prisoner of war while Suna plugs its power vacuum, and Naruto has somehow been visiting him, 'bonding' – if Sasuke is to be believed – over their shared jinchuuriki status, though Gaara remains unreceptive.
("You've been going with him, then?"
"…Hn."
"Sasuke's barely let Naruto out of his sight."
"Shut up, Sai!")
Most importantly, Sasuke is still in the Village, and sans Curse Mark.
Sakura breathes a sigh of relief when no other information seems forthcoming after that, wondering when the other shoe is going to drop; it doesn't seem possible that she can have so many things go well at once without something going horrendously badly to balance it.
"Oh, and Kaka-sensei gave us a house!"
Sakura stills, shooting Kakashi a startled look when he coughs, then watches in disbelief as her taicho disappears in a swirl of leaves.
Without paying.
Again.
(Asshole.)
"A house?" She echoes finally, frantically trying to process the words, looking from Naruto to Sasuke to Sai, but none of them move to contradict Naruto.
"Yeah! It was really old and dusty and a bit rundown so we had to get the other Rookies to help us clean it up, but it's massive! We've all got our own bedrooms and there's still spare rooms!"
"It's- it's his Clan Compound, isn't it?" Sasuke asks quietly, and Sakura shoots him a surprised look. "You mentioned Hatake Sakumo during the Preliminaries. The house was registered to him."
"I…I don't know." Sakura says honestly, because this had never happened in her original timeline. "But if it is, then do you remember something else I told you, the day after I was assigned to your team? About family?"
She sees the exact moment Sasuke remembers, and his eyes widen briefly, then narrow thoughtfully. "Kakashi- he's the last, too, isn't he?"
Sai makes a sound suddenly, but when Sakura glances at him worriedly, he's got a hand over his mouth, though he flickers quickly through the ROOT sign for 'hot' when he notices her looking, and Sakura relaxes, returning her attention to Sasuke.
"As far as we know." She confirms carefully.
She'd been jealous of it the first time, but now she understands why Kakashi had taken Sasuke under his wing when they'd been genin. She'd had her parents, then Tsunade and Shizune. Naruto, for all that he, too, was an orphan, had had Iruka, and the Sandaime, and Teuchi.
Sasuke had had nobody.
But for Kakashi to reach out like this, to offer their team what was probably his childhood home until his father's suicide… it makes Sakura realise just how much Kakashi, too, has changed. That maybe he, too, thinks of their team as pack.
Any further discussions of family and legacy are interrupted by a sudden call of 'Sai!' followed almost immediately by a different voice that calls 'Tori!'.
Sai turns around immediately, a tiny smile pulling at his lips, but Sakura freezes.
There are only three people in the Village who know of that moniker for her, and one of them is sitting next to her.
She turns almost robotically, wanting to know and simultaneously dreading what she may find. Her gaze lands on Shino and lingers on the hug Sai pulls the Aburame into as soon as he gets close enough, then flickers to the three shinobi next to them.
One is tall, probably Shin's height, with long auburn hair and amber eyes, dressed in an incomplete set of ANBU blacks with a burnt-orange kimono thrown over the top. The other is shorter, undeniably an Aburame going by the sheer number of layers he has on, with an odd mask-like headpiece that seems to have glasses built into it, leaving only his mouth, chin, and the tip of his nose uncovered.
Sakura has never seen the two before in her life.
But the last one, the man standing at the Aburame's shoulder, him, she knows; she'd recognise that happuri anywhere.
Yamato.
Sakura stands, crossing the distance between herself and the newcomers, coming to a stop a few feet from Sai, eyeing the unknowns uncertainly.
"You have me at a disadvantage." She greets carefully, gaze flickering from the Aburame, to the redhead, then settling on Yamato. "I'm afraid I don't know you."
"Usagi and Kaeru." The redhead replies, pointing first to himself, then the Aburame. "But our names are Yamanaka Fu and Aburame Torune."
Sakura's eyes fall on Yamato, and the man doesn't smile, but he inclines his head in recognition. "We've met, but you may call me Yamato."
"I didn't realise you were back in the Village." She admits honestly, surprised when Yamato simply shrugs.
"Nara-sama apparently told the Godaime about ROOT, and then she found out about us and called us back to the Village." Torune murmurs, though he doesn't seem to be looking at Sakura, gaze glued to where Sai and Shino are still holding hands, a tiny but surprisingly soft quirk to his lips.
"Where have you been all these years?" Sakura asks, realising that she should've known this, but in all that had happened after they'd brough the evidence to Sarutobi, she'd never actually checked that the Sandaime had upheld his end of the bargain regarding the reconditioning of the non-hostile ROOT agents.
"Uzushio ruins." Yamato tells her tightly, a grimace twisting his lips briefly. "Over sixty shinobi and a mission of indeterminable length demanded permanent lodging."
"Ruins?" Shino demands, turning towards Torune suddenly, speaking for the first time since he'd called Sai's name, though he doesn't release Sai's hand. "You lived in ruins, nii-san?"
Nii-san. Sakura's mind trips on the title, but suddenly, she understands the unexpectedly soft expression on the taller Aburame's face and why Shino is casually hanging around ROOT agents who'd likely been ROOT longer than her.
"ROOT wasn't supposed to exist." Torune explains quietly, his tone betraying nothing, his body almost unnaturally still. Reconditioned, yes, but not normal, Sakura realises with a start. "The Third couldn't offer us any financial support without explaining who we were and why we needed it."
"And the ROOT base had been underground, chibi-chan." The Yamanaka cuts in, a humourless smirk curling his lips. "At least in Uzu we had natural light."
In the silence that falls at that morbid declaration, Yamato sighs. "Wasn't there something you wanted to say, Fu?" he asks patiently, prompting the Yamanaka to start, suddenly snapping to attention.
"Ah." He starts, glancing between Sakura and Sai, an unreadable expression on his face. "Okami informed us what happened, what the three of you did. We wanted to thank you."
Sakura blinks, shocked speechless by the admission, Sai faring little better if his sudden stillness is any indication.
"Realising that we'd be reconditioned instead of decommissioned felt too good to be true, but I never once imagined that I could get my family back." Fu continues, seemingly noticing that they need a minute. "Inoichi-oji barely let me out of his sight the past week."
Inoichi-oji, Sakura's mind repeats numbly, and she sort of wants to laugh, but she's worried she'll start crying instead.
"So, thank you." Fu concludes with a shrug and an easy grin, though it doesn't reach his eyes. "I don't know how you did what you did, but thank you for doing it." He seems to consider something, then his grin dims, but grows a touch more real. "You'll probably get the others coming by to say thanks, too, so just…be aware of that."
"Others?" Sai echoes curiously, faster to regain his ability to speak than Sakura.
"Fifty of us came back altogether, not counting Yamato-san and my clansmen who came with us." Fu elaborates, glancing briefly at Sakura, their eyes meeting for a second, before he looks away and refocuses on Sai. "Most of them are still testing to see where in the ranks they fit, but once they're done, I'm pretty sure at least some will seek you out."
"How do they know it was us?" Sai presses, and Sakura's glad he seems to be reading her mind and giving voice to the questions she can feel rattling around her brain.
"Okami – sorry, Jackal – told those of us testing for ANBU." Fu answers easily, but Sakura freezes.
Finally, her speech returns, but all she manages is a croak of; "Okami is ANBU?"
Fu's smile falls off his face as if it had never been there, and his eyes widen momentarily. "…shit."
"I didn't know, aneue." Sai murmurs into her ear, suddenly right next to her, his hand seeking out hers and answering the question she hadn't dared ask. "I haven't…been by the apartment in a while, either."
(By the apartment. Not home.)
"I'll- I'll catch you later, Sai. Fu-san, Torune-san, Yamato-san, a pleasure." Sakura manages, turning on her heel and walking in the opposite direction from Ichiraku's though she barely makes it a block away before she ducks into an alley and leans against the wall, her mind whirring.
She barely gets ten seconds to get her thoughts into some semblance of order before a figure blocks the mouth of the alley and snaps her out of her scrambling thoughts.
"Sakura-san." Yamato calls, stepping deeper into the alley, and Sakura takes a steadying breath, trying not to let it tremble on the exhale.
"Yamato-san." She returns, drawing a quiet huff from the man.
"I was informed that we share the dubious honour of being Kakashi's kouhai." Yamato says flatly, and Sakura snorts before she can catch herself, not having expected the dry tone nor the non-sequitur.
"Where are you going with this?" she asks, unable to keep the suspicion from her tone, her heart still too raw.
"I was also informed that we share something else." Yamato continues, gaze not leaving hers, seemingly ignoring her question. "With each other…and the Shodaime."
Sakura's breath catches.
"Mine is a bastardisation compared to what you can do, Yamato-san." She confesses after a beat, not seeing much reason to hide her ability when the man clearly knows about her already. "But yes, to an extent, you're right."
"Walk with me?" Yamato offers, something hesitant and strangely vulnerable in his voice.
There's little Sakura can do but agree.
Yamato asks questions, tries to understand what had happened to the girl since he'd last seen her in the Sandaime's office almost four years ago, tries to understand how a child the age of an Academy graduate could have brought down a warhawk that had kept even Orochimaru under his talons.
But most of all, Yamato listens.
And the more he listens, the more horrified he feels at the nightmare of a life unfolding before him.
"Why do you call it a bastardisation?" he asks when the girl finally stops talking, almost an hour after Yamato had first asked her to walk with him.
Her story is horrific, as is the damage that the natural chakra had done to her coils, but her dismissal of her mastery of their shared element is what truly baffles him.
"Because it's not a jutsu, as such. It's not a kekkei genkai either, and it's not really a technique." She explains, and that somehow makes even less sense.
"I guess that's part of why it works still, even when all my other ninjutsu fails." She muses, seemingly thinking out loud. At Yamato's inquiring hum, she elaborates, falling into a tone that wouldn't have sounded out of place on an Academy teacher. "Because the most difficult part of my Mokuton occurs internally; I have to mix Water Release in one hand and Earth Release in the other and bring them together to simulate Wood, and use natural chakra as the life force. But even then, I'm not creating wood or vines, I'm just...reaching out to existing trees with that mixed chakra and commanding their roots to do my bidding. Kind of like medics adjust to the frequency of the patient's chakra wavelength."
"...You reverse engineered the Shodaime's Wood Release and it's not even a jutsu?" Yamato checks, and he can't quite hide how incredulous the realisation makes him feel.
"I mean, I know he had jutsu and I know he could create wood, but I just don't know his techniques or how he did it." The girl huffs, waving her hand around wildly as she tries to explain. "I don't have any of his scrolls and I didn't have anyone who might've been able to describe the process beyond what the end result looked like. I just have the most basic, instinctive, almost wild part of the Mokuton down, not the whittled down, battle-ready version you've got."
"Would it be more difficult if you were to use your version in Iwa? Or Kumo?" Yamato pushes, a more scientific interest making itself known in the back of his mind, his respect for the slip of the girl before him somehow growing even more.
"Definitely." She agrees immediately, her surety almost concerning. "I remember getting whipped when I couldn't get it to work in ROOT, but you know what ROOT HQ was like. Endless feet of concrete. The only time I got it to work the way I just did was when I got so angry that I lashed out with my chakra. I guess it reached farther than I had been sending it beforehand and managed to connect to something beyond those walls, but otherwise I could only make my Mokuton work on life forms that were already there, like an apple or something."
Yamato takes a deep breath. The girl's casual dismissal of her skill as well as the brutality of ROOT is worrying, but he supposes he can see why Kakashi pointed him at the girl.
Before he can lose his nerve, he pushes out a breathless; "I can teach you."
The girl does a visible doubletake, and he would almost be offended if not for the fact that he feels the same. "Excuse me?"
"I…I did get scrolls." He tells her quietly, and he sees the exact moment she understands what he's referring to. "I had to give most of them back, but I know what I learned from them. You can do something I can't, even though I've got the Shodaime's DNA. I don't think it should be too hard for you to learn the 'battle-ready' Mokuton, as you called it."
"And you'd be willing to teach me?" she asks, and now there's not suspicion but awe shining in her eyes, and Yamato feels wholly undeserving of it.
"You've kept senpai alive these past three years," he manages after a beat, giving voice to the first thought that comes to mind, "and I know how difficult of a task that can be. Beyond that, you helped rid the world of Danzo. That alone is enough for me to feel indebted to you. Let me give you this."
The girl stares at him for a few more seconds, and then, like the first rays of sun peeking through the clouds, a brilliant grin pulls at her lips, lighting up her face and making her look years younger.
"It'd be my honour, Yamato-san."
A month and a half after she got discharged from hospital, Sakura finally decides to brave going back to the apartment.
She's been seeing Sai almost every day for team training, but she's been actively avoiding Shin, both in ANBU and outside.
At first, she'd been angry. Then, she'd wanted to avoid the house in case her parents were still there. Then, she just kept finding reasons and excuses to stay away, and with the room key Kakashi had offered her, she didn't even need to stay in ANBU HQ anymore.
But she knows, rationally, that they have to move past this, have to try and fix their relationship.
She lands on the windowsill, feeling a little ridiculous to be breaking into her own house, but the memory of what had greeted her when she'd used the door the last time is still too fresh in her mind. Her fingers automatically fall to the edge of the window where she knows she'll find the latch to push it open, but when she forces herself look inside the apartment to make sure her parents are gone, she freezes.
Her parents are gone, which is a relief.
But what she finds in their stead, is not.
Because that is undoubtedly Shin sprawled on the sofa, his hair out of its usual ponytail and spread like a halo around his head, an expression of such unadulterated contentment on his face that Sakura wants to look away.
But she can't.
She can't, because Shin's head is resting on somebody's lap, and somebody's fingers are carding through his hair and scratching at his scalp, while their other hand lays on Shin's chest, fingers twined with his own.
There's a headpiece not unlike what Torune had worn discarded on the coffee table beside the sofa, the lenses too dark to see through, the leather supple and worn. It's not a headpiece Sakura recognises, but she forces herself to look away, to drag her eyes away from the glasses and to the stranger petting Shin like a cat.
Her eyes trace from the strong hands to the visibly muscled torso and wide shoulders. She takes in the strong jaw, the thin lips, the straight nose and high cheekbones, the unruly mess of curls falling over the stranger's forehead.
She takes in the empty sockets where the stranger's eyes should be.
Sakura feels frozen in place, her heart beating almost painfully against her ribs, but for all that her rational mind knows what – who – she's looking at, she can't quite bring herself to believe it.
They may not have seen each other in over a month, but she knows Shin would've found a way to tell her. To warn her. She can't allow herself to accept that the rift between them has grown big enough for that to no longer be the case.
As if sensing her turmoil, those empty sockets lift from Shin's peaceful face and turn unerringly to her, and Sakura feels that they see her in a way that someone with no eyes should not be able to accomplish.
She relaxes her muscles and lets herself fall off the windowsill, twisting at the last moment so she lands in a crouch instead of on her back on the street below, barely noticing the swearing civilian that has to swerve the cart he's pushing to avoid crashing into her.
She knows that she's not in control, but for the first time, the wave of cold that she's come to associate with her dissociative episodes seems to hesitate, as if it, too, finds itself at a loss of what to do.
So she sits there, crouched on the street below the apartment she's called a home for the last three years, simultaneously overwhelmed and empty, feeling everything and nothing at once.
Finally, the cold settles over her, and Sakura finds herself grateful to relinquish control, to settle back in her mind and let her body move on autopilot while she tries to process what she's just seen.
Who she's just seen.
She's almost not surprised when she surfaces some time later and finds herself in Inosuke's office, that moment during the fight with Gaara having cemented the fact that even her unconscious self trusts the man.
She's on the chair that has become hers over the few months she's known Inosuke, and Sakura forces herself to go through the process of unlocking her frozen muscles, managing to pry her fingers apart and straighten her legs from where she'd drawn her knees to her chest, feeling and hearing the joints pop as she does.
When she's done, legs stretched out in front of her, her back against the chair, and hands splayed loosely over her thighs, Inosuke gives up the pretence of reading the file and looks up at her, his expression guarded but the look in his eyes patient.
"I need to tell you something." Sakura murmurs, meeting and holding that gaze, and she doesn't know what expression is on her face, but it's enough for Inosuke to put his files away and give her his full, undivided attention.
"What?" he asks when she doesn't continue, his voice just as quiet, but even now, there's no expectation in his eyes. No pressure.
Sakura knows that she could tell him about Shin, about Shisui, about her parents, about the room Kakashi has offered her, about her feelings on her fucked up chakra network, about everything the Invasion had brought to the surface.
Any one of those would be enough to fill a full session, would be able to help.
She also knows that it wouldn't be enough.
She wants, needs, to tell him-
"Everything."