Ripple Effect

by rayemars

Sasuke's return to Konoha, and everything that comes after it. Some people have changed more than they wanted or deserved to. Vaguely AU. B.Y.O.Subtext

21. ripple 21: Sasuke part trois

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

This is the final chapter, since the story of Sasuke's return ends here. Thank you to everyone who's reviewed or left constructive criticism or advice--I've appreciated all of it.
—————

-'

Sakura came to get Sasuke when work finished that evening. Hinata was with her, which made him suspicious; and the suspicion only increased when she had them walk along the streets until they reached a section that wasn't so crowded.

Hinata tried to make small talk as they moved. Sasuke answered her just enough to keep up appearances for anyone who was watching them, but Sakura was distant and distracted when she actually did reply. Finally, while still walking, she wrapped her scarf around her throat and mouth and then spoke.

"I'm leaving Konoha," she said quietly. "I'm taking Naruto with me."

Hinata froze. Sasuke--staring at Sakura--put a hand on her arm and pushed until she stumbled back into a walk. Sakura paused long enough for the other teenager to catch up to her, and then hooked an arm through Hinata's, so that she wouldn't give them away by slowing again.

"If--I need you guys to find a way to get out just long enough for the surgery. Hinata-chan said that it isn't as dangerous as the other time, so you should both be able to make it back within a day. I'll contact you later, and we can work out the details then." She paused, and added, "It'll have to be a while from now, because they'll be watching you two after I go."

Hinata didn't seem to know what to say. Sasuke began buttoning up the coat, and then flipped up the collar so it hid his mouth as well as possible.

"The surgery's not a permanent solution. You'll have to keep doing it over and over again," he said.

"I know," she replied.

"It tried to kill you already," he said. "It hates us."

"I don't care," she replied.

Sasuke paused, and then hunched his shoulders so that his mouth was a little more hidden. "Do you think it's possible?"

Sakura nodded. "I . . . Konohamaru has gotten a lot better with henge than he used to be. I checked. I'm going to ask for permission to be the one who kills Naruto, and if he agrees to be a distraction for me . . . if he makes it look like I took Naruto to the crematorium afterward, that'll buy me an hour to get away."

"'If,'" Sasuke repeated neutrally.

Sakura tucked her chin further into her scarf. "It'll be a hard run," she agreed quietly. "But I can do it. I have to be able to do it."

"Why not teleport?" he asked. "It makes more sense than relying heavily on a genin."

"No," she replied, "I'm sure someone will be standing outside. The chakra use will let them know immediately what I did, and the anbu are faster than me." She shook her head. "I need that hour."

Sasuke thought it over, and then nodded once. "When do we leave?"

This time, Sakura froze. Sasuke kicked her in the heel, and Hinata tugged at her arm lightly until she began to move.

"No," she said. "No, Sasuke. No way."

"If you leave with him, I'm the first person that they're going to come to for information. I'm not going to stay here just to be thrown in prison."

"But. . . ." Her hands clenched into fists. "I won't give you information. You won't know anything about where I'm going. Just say that I didn't tell you I was leaving, and they won't even be able to accuse you of treason by withholding information."

"They don't need to accuse me of that kind of treason to arrest me," Sasuke reminded her. "Do you think she'll care? If her student betrays her, she'll need to pacify the village somehow, and she doesn't have the personality to do it in whatever way the Third managed."

"That's. . . ." Sakura shook her head in a small but violent gesture. "No. They won't even put you on trial this time, they'll--" she exhaled. "They'll just kill you where you're found. No."

"I hate it here," Sasuke said, ending five months of effort with a harsh breath. "If you two are gone. . . ."

He hesitated, and then corrected himself. "Three." He looked at her.

Sakura stared at the ground. ". . . I don't know yet."

Sasuke didn't have a reply for that. After they had continued walking in silence for a minute, he clenched his hands into fists in the coat's pockets and began running over the plan.

"What about Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura said, recapturing his attention. "And Anko-san? And . . . and Lee, if he stays?"

"Anko and Lee and Kakashi-sensei are not Naruto and you," he replied.

". . . No," Sakura replied after a moment, slowly, in a tone that told him she was supplying her own other people into that sentence, "no, they're not. . . ."

They had crossed a block of the village and had begun to turn back towards the more populated parts when Hinata tucked her chin beneath her jacket collar.

"When do we leave, Sakura-chan?" she asked softly.

Both Sasuke and Sakura looked at her.

"No." Sakura bit her lip, and then pressed her hand against Hinata's arm. "You can't--Hinata-chan, we're going to become missingnins."

"I understand that," Hinata replied. "But . . . Naruto-kun's surgery . . . you'll need help."

Sakura shook her head. "I do, but that just means you need to sneak out of the village one of these days! You don't have to run away with us. I wouldn't ask that."

Hinata began fidgeting with her fingers, even as she continued speaking. "Like Sasuke-kun said . . . they'll come to me. I was also there the first time; if you both leave with him, won't they assume that you're going to try it again?"

Sakura tried to temper the look she gave Hinata. "But your family will protect you. And if you get questioned, and say we didn't tell you, that would be even more believable! It would make sense for us to want to find somewhere to hide before trying that surgery."

Hinata shook her head. "My family won't . . . can't protect me," she said quietly. "I used all that up the first time. And, Hanabi-sama has just been instated as the clan head. She's still young . . . she doesn't have enough power yet to argue with the Hokage if something is demanded of her."

"She has a point," Sasuke commented. Sakura gave him a sharp look.

"If we leave her behind, they'll watch her constantly, waiting for us to contact," he continued. "It's as good as cutting her out of the process. Can you do it without that?"

"I . . . it'll be hard, but. . . ."

"Do you really want to leave her up to Tsunade's method of questioning?"

"Don't you dare," Sakura snarled, jerking around to glare at him and pulling her arm free from Hinata's--but Sasuke could see from the expression in her eyes beneath the anger that his meaning had sunk in.

"Please, Sakura-chan," Hinata said urgently. She rested a hand on the other teenager's arm. "I . . . I don't want . . . I'll be helpful, I promise. . . ."

Sakura pulled her arm away, and pressed her hand over her face. "Hinata-chan, please think about it--you're not obligated or anything. We'll manage ourselves. Do you really want to leave here?"

Hinata had pressed her fingertips together again when Sakura pulled away from her, and now she interlaced them as she stared at the ground. "I . . . I know, but. . . ."

She bit her lip, swallowed, and then said, "Konoha won't be home without Naruto-kun."

Sakura saw, from the corner of her eye, Sasuke start to say something; but then he stopped and remained silent.

She started to reach out to touch Hinata's arm, but changed her mind and instead folded her hands together. "Just . . . think about it, okay? Hinata-chan."

"I will," she replied. "Please, when the plan is decided, keep in contact with me?"

"All right," Sakura said, with a tired nod. Then she slid her hands into her pockets and asked, "Can you make it home yourself? I need to talk to Sasuke about some things."

"Yes," Hinata said, nodding just deep enough to be a small bow, and the inherent politeness in the other girl made Sakura shift a little guiltily. "Thank you, Sakura-chan, Sasuke-kun."

They said their goodbyes and parted at a street corner; and when Hinata was out of hearing distance, Sakura glared at him.

"Why did you do that?" she said angrily. "You shouldn't have encouraged her! We don't need to drag more people into this!"

"Because we can use her," he replied. "Even half the byakugan will see someone coming after us sooner than you or I."

Sakura let out her breath with a hiss that told him his logic only irritated her more.

She dropped it a minute later, though, when they had crossed another street and were beginning to be around more people. When she spoke again, her tone was hushed and weary.

"She won't go," Sakura said. "Her teammates, her teacher . . . Neji and whatever other family members she likes . . . it's just a crush. She won't choose to leave them. Not . . . just for. . . ."

She folded her arms and tucked her hands into the crooks of her elbows, and then changed her mind and slid them back in her pockets.

Sasuke glanced over, reading her expression, and turned back toward the street. "He loves you. You should know that."

Sakura pulled her scarf down, away from her mouth. "If just loving someone was enough to get anything in this world . . ." she murmured. ". . . You would never have left us, would you?"

". . . Probably," Sasuke agreed, as he folded the collar back down and grimaced at the wind. If it was enough, I never would have had a reason to.

—

Sakura later asked to spend the night at his apartment. She couldn't go to Ino's or her parents without being asked a lot of questions (and in Ino's case, harassed mercilessly until she gave an answer that sounded like truth), and she didn't want to sleep at her and Lee's apartment.

"It doesn't seem . . . right?" Sakura had said. "To be there when he's . . . I should let him make up his mind without influences."

"Fine," Sasuke had replied.

——

Sasuke had gone over the plan in his head all through the evening, questioning Sakura for more details and developing them where they were lacking. He easily found the major flaw.

They would be traveling with one, possibly two injured people, one of whom still had imperfect sight, and an unconscious body. They would desperately need to put as many kilometers between them and Konoha as possible before the plot was discovered and people sent after them. It also didn't help that the weather continued to intermittedly threaten snow.

In Sasuke's opinion, there was no way to pull it off with just Konohamaru. Even if the boy was good with henge, once he got to the crematorium, he would be found out. They might get a few extra minutes if Naruto had ever taught him the jutsu that allowed clones to be solid, but Sasuke didn't want to bet on uncertain chances. What they needed was someone to cause a big enough distraction that their absence wouldn't be noted until the following morning.

He didn't come to the decision he made easily, despite what anyone would think from his future words and actions.

But the two days' advance that Sakura had managed to drug Naruto was up, and now they were working with an uncertain amount of time until he regained consciousness and had to be put down. Sasuke needed someone who would agree to be the distraction, and he needed to do it with speed.

Sasuke teleported out of the apartment while Sakura was showering, and took only the katana with him.

—

It wasn't really a clearing that he appeared in so much as a wide space between the surrounding trees. He wanted to appear somewhere closer and then walk to the area, to give himself time to think; but he had done something like that once before and it had only ended badly.

Besides, he didn't really need time to think on it. One of the best and worst traits about Sasuke was that when he decided to do something, he would go through with it with all the determination and severity of a self-destructive idiot.

He unstrapped the katana from his back and laid it on the ground, checked that it was firmly locked in the sheath, and stepped back so that it was no longer within reach. Then he removed his right boot, pushed up the leg of his pants and pushed down the sock, gritting his jaw against the cold.

The tattoo was still faintly visible from when he had summoned the snakes previously, before the battle; but even if it hadn't been, Sasuke knew exactly where it was.

He stared at it for a long, silent moment, while the dampness of the ground began soaking through his sock and chilling his foot further.

Then he bit down harshly on his thumb and ran it up the center of the markings, streaking blood across them.

Using the tattoo made the summoning automatic; Sasuke jerked as an extreme amount of chakra was ripped out of him and concentrated on getting his boot back on before the snakes appeared.

—

The wind blew the residual smoke away easily, revealing over twenty snakes, the largest being the width of an old tree trunk and the smallest being Kyomamushi.

Sasuke bent his head. "Thank you for honoring me with your appearance."

"What the fuck do you want, human?" the largest snake asked. "It's freezing."

"I've come to beg a favor from you," Sasuke replied without looking up.

One of the first things Orochimaru had told him after Sasuke signed the contract was to never, ever appear vulnerable before the snakes. Polite, obviously, and mildly subservient, but never vulnerable. The man had said it in a tone that Sasuke rarely heard him use--no undercurrents to it, no innuendo or condescension, but complete seriousness. Sasuke had taken the warning to heart. He was breaking it deliberately.

There was a murmur of low hissings from the snakes. Sasuke didn't shift position, but his head was angled so that he could see none of them had made a motion towards him yet.

The largest snake spoke again. "Who cares?" it said. "Some of our kin are dead now because of you."

Sasuke swallowed once, hard. And then he knelt down and touched his forehead to the forest floor, tilting his chin up enough that he could be heard.

"I will sacrifice whatever you want," he replied.

There was another, more prolonged set of hissings, and Sasuke couldn't keep his muscles from tensing. He was painfully aware that his back and neck were open to attack, that he was humiliating himself, that no one person on earth should be worth what he had just offered.

"Even humans?" a different snake asked. It was promptly snapped at by the larger one for speaking, and retreated behind a nearby companion. Sasuke didn't see this, but he heard and interpreted the noises.

"Even humans," he replied. "Please don't request any of those close to . . . anyone from this village."

"Qualifying your offers?" the largest snake mocked. Sasuke couldn't think of a proper response to that, and so remained silent.

There was another conference of hisses in front him. This one went on even longer than the others; Sasuke had to force down the beginnings of panic that someone would arrive from the village before he could state his request. He was taking the fact that they hadn't eaten him yet as a sign he would be able to make it.

"What do you want?" the head snake finally asked. "We might do it, if it's not too much of an annoyance."

Sasuke pushed himself up enough that he was sitting back on his heels, but he continued to keep his back bent and his face down. "I need you to find Ichiro and give him a message from me. I don't know where he is, but I beg you to find him as fast as possible."

The snake made the sharp hissing noise that resembled laughter, but there was still mockery in it. "And what's the message?"

"I'm calling in the favor he owes me," Sasuke replied, focusing intently on the ground and not on his katana, out of reach, or the three snakes that had begun to slither closer to him. "I want him to come here immediately."

There was a very long silence after that. Dampness had soaked into his pants legs from the prolonged bowing; Sasuke first ignored it and then concentrated on it when the silence began to threaten refusal.

"Very well," the snake said, and Sasuke started in surprise but kept himself from reflexively looking up. "We'll do it. You'll be informed of the payment later."

"Yes." Sasuke touched his forehead to the ground again and closed his eyes. "Thank you."

That same mocking laughter of a hiss, and then the sound of the snakes slithering off rapidly in different directions. He didn't move until everything was quiet again, with only the sound of one snake shifting in the dead grass.

Sasuke sat back on the ground, crossing his legs, and focused on simply breathing and not thinking for a few moments. Then he stretched an arm out toward Kyomamushi.

He was surprised to see that his hand was trembling when he did so. It wasn't until the viper draped itself over his shoulder and lap, soaking up what heat he had, that Sasuke realized he was shaking all over.

"You're a fool," Kyomamushi announced neutrally, head resting on Sasuke's collarbone.

"I know," he said quietly.

"Why don't you just cut your eyes out, Sasuke?" it asked. "It'd be faster."

Sasuke touched the skin just above Kyomamushi's still healing wound, and stroked it absently for a while. When the snake hissed once, he finally replied.

"He's my best friend," Sasuke said, and there was an undertone of helplessness in his voice that he never would have allowed in front of a human being.

The snake made a noise very much like a sigh, and slid off his shoulders to pool on his lap and spill over onto the ground. Sasuke bit back a wince as the movement carried it over a few lingering bruises and pulled at the freshly healed scars on his back.

"Fool," it repeated.

"Are you able to do me a favor?" he answered, touching the wounds lightly again.

The viper opened one eye and looked at him.

"Several people heard me imitating Orochimaru's voice when I went back to Oto," Sasuke said. "And I did it again during that mission with the Sand. And no one saw him die but Naruto. There may be rumors."

He shifted slightly, trying to find a comfortable sitting position with several pounds of snake on him. "Will you find Ichiro and give him my message personally? Even if one of the others finds him first. He knows you didn't answer to Orochimaru after I came."

Kyomamushi didn't reply immediately; but soon it undulated once, like a shrug. "Fine."

"Thank you," Sasuke said.

"At least you seem determined to kill yourself quickly, kid," it replied, sliding off his lap. "That's better than being bound to an immortal summoner."

It slithered off to the right, slower than usual but still fast enough for Sasuke to almost hope this would work.

He picked himself up, brushed the dirt from his katana, and began to the walk back to Konoha.

—

Because Sakura hadn't alerted anyone about his disappearance, getting back into Konoha wasn't difficult--he just had to move from place to place between patrols until he was far enough from the walls that he could walk openly.

He didn't want to go back to his own apartment. Sasuke picked the opposite direction, strode down the streets like he had a purpose, and ended up in front of Kakashi's home.

He hesitated on the doorstep. He started to knock, stopped, stood there for a minute, and then realized that the shutters were pulled closed but the slats were partially opened and there was a distant light behind them and Kakashi probably already knew he was there, so he rapped hard twice and then slouched against the frame so that passerby wouldn't be able to see the sword on his back.

The man answered the door sooner than he would have been able to do if he had been asleep, and he was still wearing his normal clothes. He raised an eyebrow faintly at Sasuke, but the teenager stepped into the apartment without speaking and set his sword against the wall beside the door.

"Do you have anything to drink?" he asked, trying to make his voice neutral and having it come out quiet instead.

——

Kakashi only drank for anniversaries, so the alcohol in his apartment consisted of a lone bottle of good sake. He set it on the table with two small cups, and filled them both halfway for Sasuke and himself. He raised an eyebrow again, this time the one hidden by his forehead protector, when Sasuke drained the cup, coughed, and then refilled it to the brim before Kakashi had taken three sips of his own.

When Sasuke finished that one within a minute as well and had started on his third, Kakashi decided he was trying to get drunk as quickly as possible. "How good is your tolerance?" he asked casually, taking another small sip.

"Don't know," Sasuke replied.

"Well, when did you start feeling drunk the last time?" Kakashi asked.

"I was drinking beer then, when Anko had sake, so I didn't have to drink much to get her talking."

"Before that, then."

"Alcohol's a poison to the body," Sasuke replied, taking another swallow. "Wasn't allowed to have it."

". . . Ah," Kakashi said, and took another sip.

He filled his cup halfway again, and let Sasuke refill his a fourth time, and then mimicked sipping it as he carefully questioned Sasuke in an attempt to lead the teenager to giving him an explanation.

Sasuke caught on to what Kakashi was doing when he was about to start complaining about Sakura. He instead began insulting the man, his pitiful dead excuses of teammates, his beloved bastard of a teacher, his intelligence because any idiot would have known that a team composed of a loudmouth braggart and a cold bastard and a girl just smart enough to be dangerous would never turn out well, and then the Fourth one last time for good measure.

Sasuke was slurring badly by that point, so Kakashi forced some toast and water into him and tossed him into bed. He thought that he understood why Sasuke had shown up by then, anyway.

Kakashi and the others should have realized what Sakura and Sasuke were planning, because they were adults and as such they knew it was a fallacy of youth to believe that a bad situation could be healed by moving to a new location. But, in Kakashi's case at least, it was an understandable mistake.

—

Sasuke looked half-dead the next morning, so Kakashi skipped the lecture. The teenager refused breakfast, and while he was yanking the laces of his boots tight, Kakashi asked, "What's the Amaterasu?"

Sasuke's hands tensed. Then he went back to tying the laces. "It's a clan secret."

Kakashi rested his chin on his fist. "I warned you, you no longer have enough political power to keep the Hokage out of those."

Sasuke finished with his boots, and sat silent for a few moments. Then he stood abruptly, staring Kakashi in the face.

Kakashi began to get a bad feeling.

"It's the highest level of the mangekyou," Sasuke replied. "I gained it during the fighting."

He thought that over, and his eyes narrowed slightly. "How?"

Sasuke was still looking him straight in the eyes. "It's gained by killing a blood relation of equal strength."

Kakashi didn't say anything for a while. Sasuke didn't move.

"How long have you known that?" he finally asked.

"Since I was eight," Sasuke replied.

Kakashi just looked at him.

Soon, the man stood up and cleared his dishes off the table. As he dropped them in the sink, he said unemotionally, "You should take some vitamin B when you get back to your apartment."

Sasuke left without replying.

——

As soon as the door was shut behind him, Sasuke shoved his hands deep in his pockets and began walking away as fast as he could without drawing attention.

The wind was very cold; it made his eyes sting.

—

Sakura started to ask where the hell Sasuke had been, and then took a better look at his face and refrained.

"I made breakfast," she said. "I can pack it quickly--you need to be at work soon."

Sasuke grunted, shucking off Lee's coat. "Do you have any vitamin B on you?" he asked.

"Sorry," she said, managing to sound apologetic and not smug.

He grunted again and locked himself in the bathroom.

Sakura was gone by the time he came out. Sasuke ate a few bites of the breakfast, then stowed the rest of it in the small fridge and left again.

——

Sasuke wasn't sure what the protocol was for talking to Lee, and didn't feel able to think hard on it that morning, so--since they were working on different parts of the building, anyway--he said nothing. Lee sought him out during their lunch break.

"Sasuke-ku--" Lee frowned. "Sasuke-kun, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said shortly.

"Ah," Lee replied, sitting down near him. "I wanted to ask. . . . Have you spoken to Sakura lately?"

He didn't sound accusatory, just worried. Sasuke looked over. "Yeah. I don't know where she is today, though."

Lee nodded, the motion eventually slowing down until he was still once more.

"She. . . ." He hesitated again. "Is she angry with me?"

Sasuke put down the beef bowl he'd bought, and shook his head carefully. "No. She said she wanted to let you make a decision without feeling like you were being pushed into anything by her being around."

"Ah," Lee repeated, sounding both relieved and slightly more saddened than before. Sasuke looked back down at his food.

—

A few hours later, all the reds and the lines of chakra belonging to the people working on the roofs bled out of Sasuke's vision, leaving him with normal sight again. He spent fifteen minutes staring at the dots of gray nails on the dark wood slats before he thought to release the henge that had become second nature to him.

After that, he found the chuunin in charge of the site and said he was leaving early. He tore across the roofs until he reached his apartment, trying not to look at more than he had to.

—

Sakura was back in the apartment, to his mild annoyance, sewing something at the table. Sasuke only got a brief glimpse of her as he was shutting the door before he sank to the floor, a hand pressed hard against his eyes.

"Sasuke?"

He waved her away. She paid no attention. "What is it?" Sakura demanded, setting down whatever she had at the table. "Geez, what did you drink?"

"Nothing," he muttered. "It hurts to see."

Sakura cursed under her breath, and strode across the room. Sasuke waved more violently when she knelt next to him.

"There's nothing wrong!" he snapped. "They're back to normal again."

He could hear the frown in her voice. "Then what. . . ?"

"The colors," he replied.

A moment later, he felt her palm press against his temple, and he jerked his head to the side before the chakra could sink in.

She sighed, but pulled it back. "What were you seeing before, if it wasn't colors? Or . . . have they gotten sharper? I don't remember reading a side effect like--"

"Red," Sasuke interrupted, pulling his hand away. He tried to focus solely on the floorboards, but there were subtle color changes in the wood, as well as the different rings and the darker places where the boards had been laid beside each other. He wound up closing his eyes again. "Just reds."

". . . Okay," Sakura replied.

—

They had to turn the lights off, and leave them like that for half an hour, before she could convince Sasuke to let her examine his eyes.

She determined that he'd lost more cone cells, but he wasn't able to say whether it had affected his perception of color. Sakura decided the only thing she could do was wait until he'd re-adjusted and then ask again.

—

Lee came to the apartment once he got off of work, to determine that Sasuke was okay and to ask Sakura if she would join him for dinner. She agreed, but said she wanted to check Sasuke's eyes one last time.

Lee waited by the outside door while Sasuke and Sakura were in the bathroom. Sasuke sat on the rim of the tub, staring at the floor, trying to ignore Sakura as she pressed her forehead to the small mirror over the sink and focused her breathing until she looked calm and not like she was trying not to cry.

"It's okay," Sakura murmured. Her breath fogged the glass.

She looked over at him, eyes bright. "It's okay, right? If he were going to say yes, then it would . . . we'd feel like we were obligated to love each other after all that, right? So it's better this way."

". . . Yeah," Sasuke said quietly, still staring at the floor.

"Yeah," Sakura repeated, looking down at the sink.

Sasuke stayed in the bathroom until he heard Sakura and Lee close the door behind them.

——

Lee found him early into work the next day--Sasuke was nailing the frames for the second floor of a shop, and Lee climbed up to it with his bare hands rather than taking the extra time to go up the stairs.

"Sasuke-kun! Come have dinner with us tonight!"

Sasuke stared at him for a few moments, wondering if that meant what he thought it did.

"I . . . I will," he finally replied.

Sasuke paused, and then smiled slightly. Lee returned it with a grin. It wasn't a completely happy one, but it wasn't entirely sad, either.

He nodded once, and returned to his work. Lee jogged back over to his section of the construction.

For the next hour, Sasuke kept catching himself wanting to smile, almost as much for his sake as Sakura's.

—

It was a day of good tidings, though not for the group of genin working under Lee, as they had to bear the brunt of his renewed enthusiasm. Half an hour before everyone would have been let off for the day (early, because the snow from last night was starting to fall again), a goldfinch landed on a rafter next to the board Sasuke was nailing in and whistled.

Sasuke returned the call quietly, and then checked the area, hunching his shoulders and tucking his chin as far into his collar as he could without drawing suspicion.

"How soon will they be here?" he asked.

"They're a few kilometers outside the walls," the bird replied, fluffing its feathers up.

Sasuke's fingers tensed around the handle. "That's impossible. Even flying on one of you, they couldn't have gotten into the country that. . . ."

He paused, and then gritted his teeth.

They were in Fire. I didn't have to summon. . . .

"Fine," he said, cutting his own thoughts off. "Follow me, but stay outside the apartment until--or is it too cold for you?"

"I am not a weakling snake," the goldfinch replied with condescending pride. "A little cold won't kill me."

Sasuke let the comment pass.

He pulled his right sleeve over his hand and then, cradling it to his chest, sought out the chuunin overseeing the store. He explained that he'd broken his pointer finger with the hammer and was leaving to get it set. The man nodded and waved him off.

Sasuke tried to remember if this deep indifference was the same thing that people had given to Naruto, or if it had been something worse for the blond. He wasn't sure--for the first time in a very long while, it was harder to remember past events than immediate ones.

—

When he reached Sakura and Lee's apartment, she was there, boiling leaves over the stove. Sasuke noticed that she was wearing a small mask, and pulled the collar of his shirt up to cover his mouth.

"Where's the masks?" he asked.

"It's okay," she replied. "This is just a test batch. The fumes won't do anything but aggravate your nostrils and make you a little nauseous."

"I thought you went back to work today."

Sakura snorted and stirred the water. "I did. They let me work about an hour, and then one of the doctors suggested I looked like I hadn't had much sleep and would be better off getting more rest."

Sasuke gave her a sideways look. "Your eyes are red."

"Ah." Sakura rested the stirrer on the counter and swiped at them once with her forearm. "That's . . . I sent a slug to Hinata-chan, asking her to get rid of all the plants for poisons in the Hyuuga compound. And then I went and talked to Konohamaru-kun."

The edges of her eyes crinkled slightly, and Sasuke guessed she was smiling. "After I got around to . . . he said he was glad we were going to do this. That way he can rightfully become the sixth Hokage." She chuckled. "Apparently, he has to kick Naruto's butt in a fight before he can do that."

". . . When did they--" Sasuke cut off and shook his head. "Idiots."

"Aren't you back early, too?" Sakura retorted, picking up the stirrer again.

"It's going to snow again," Sasuke replied.

"Ah," she murmured, looking over to the window. "Crap. If it snows the night we have to go. . . . Well, as long as it doesn't stop before we get far enough from the tree."

Sasuke watched her begin to stir the leaves. "Does that require delicate attention?"

Sakura started to reply, paused, and looked over at him. ". . . What did you do?"

"I'll tell you when you're done." He tugged his shirt back down again, and left the kitchen. Sakura muttered something under her breath.

—

When Lee came home about half an hour later (the group of genin having rebelled and refused to stay there any longer), he didn't manage to shut the door before the bird flew inside.

"Ah!" He stretched out a hand, looking a little surprised when it settled on the back of his wrist, and frowned. "Do you think it's--no, it doesn't have a message. . . . Have they started using canaries?"

"It's a goldfinch," Sasuke corrected, from his seat on the couch, sharpening a kunai. "That's its winter plumage."

"Ah," Lee said again. He stroked the bird's back tentatively. It puffed its feathers slightly, but didn't move away, so he continued, absently bringing his arm closer. "I wonder if it got lost. Sakura, do we have any bread?"

"It didn't," Sasuke replied.

Lee looked at him curiously, but by then Sakura had already entered the room. She was giving the bird a hard look.

A moment later, her eyes widened, and she shifted her gaze to Sasuke. "You didn't. . . ."

"Did you really think we'd be able to pull it off with just Konohamaru?" he replied.

"Sasuke--"

The goldfinch made a small, impatient stepping motion. "Megumi wished me to remind you that the sooner you give me the information, the sooner they can make a decent shelter and not compromise the mission by catching hypothermia."

Lee held the bird out at arm's length.

"Tell Ichiro to come here at eight o'clock tonight," Sasuke replied. "I'll relate the information to him then."

"Do you think I can't get it back myself?" It sounded offended.

"I want to make sure he can get in here," Sasuke replied. "Otherwise, he's useless. And I also want proof that he's out there. Considering Megumi's background and the circumstances, you'll forgive my suspicion."

The bird ruffled its feathers. "Fine. One of you, open the door."

"You can go out the window in the bedroom," Sakura replied. "That will draw less attention."

"As long as I can go," it replied acerbically.

As Lee went to let the bird out, Sakura glared at Sasuke. He returned the look impassively.

"It wasn't possible," he said. "You knew that too."

"It wasn't impossible!" she snapped. "It was better than resorting to--to them!"

"Use the weapons that are available to you," Sasuke replied. Sakura made a disgusted noise.

"If you don't even trust them, how can you say that to me?"

"I trust Ichiro," Sasuke replied. "He owes me. If he's here, he'll want to cancel that debt."

Sakura folded her arms. But Sasuke didn't offer any more information, so finally she set her jaw. "Then why all that?" she asked, waving a hand to indicate the hall to the bedroom. "That sure as hell sounded like you didn't trust them."

"Because I don't trust Megumi," he replied, starting to look annoyed but keeping his voice neutral. "She's sanka."

Sakura frowned. "Sanka. . . ."

"Gypsies," he clarified.

". . . oh," she said a moment later. "Them."

Lee, who'd been standing just inside the hallway for a while, decided to step back into the living room. "The term sounds familiar, but--I don't remember hearing it."

"They used to be scattered across the countries," Sakura said. "There's probably still some up in Earth and the non-village countries. They're thieves."

"They had a bad habit of hiring themselves out as ninja when trade wasn't bringing in enough money," Sasuke replied. "So when the five countries consolidated power, there was no place for them."

He sat back, resting one leg on the edge of the couch. "When a group of them wandered into Sound country, Orochimaru welcomed them to Oto unconditionally. And he punished anyone caught discriminating against them. So the second generation was raised brainwashed, thinking that because of him, they were free from persecution and dispersion for the first time in decades." He folded his arms. "And since Orochimaru died here, I don't trust her. But if Ichiro is out there, she won't make trouble for us."

Sakura let out a breath. "That man. . . ."

"He was a genius at understanding people," Sasuke replied unemotionally.

She looked at him again. "Are you certain we can trust . . . that kid?"

"I told you about him before," Sasuke said. "He was my replacement. The night I left Oto, I warned him I was going." He gave Sakura a look. "He owes me his life. He'll pay it back."

She was silent for several long seconds.

"I don't like it," she said finally, with a frustrated noise. "But I guess that doesn't matter." She turned and stormed back into the kitchen, yanking her mask up as she went.

Sasuke gave her back another annoyed look, and then glanced to the door before standing.

"I'll be back before eight," he told Lee.

Lee nodded, but Sasuke was already pulling on his boots.

—

Sasuke went to several clothing stores, comparing the prices of fingerless gloves.

Then he went to the grocery on the far side of the village, bought milk and cheeses, crackers and some dried meat, and had it packaged. He stored it in Lee's refrigerator when he returned. Sakura deliberately refused to ask what the package was.

She also didn't ask when he only pulled two of the kitchen chairs into the living room, to stand opposite the couch, one further back than the other. She didn't need to--she had enough diplomatic training to understand the power setup he was arranging.

—

Six minutes to eight, there was a knock at the door. Sasuke answered it.

Sakura frowned when the boy entered. "Mitate-kun? Did your uncle--is something wrong at the hospital?" She gave Sasuke a sideways glance, stepping closer. "Do I need to go over there?"

The boy looked at her briefly as he stepped inside, unzipping his jacket but not removing his shoes, and then sat on the couch and stared at Sasuke. "You owe me."

Sasuke took the chair closer to the couch. "You're alive," he replied. "You still owe me for that."

"You killed Tadashi," the boy responded. "And you didn't even do it yourself, you gave him to the Sand."

"He didn't make it to Suna."

"He's still dead."

"Fine," Sasuke replied, and Ichiro blinked.

To cover the lapse, he unsnapped one of the pockets on his shirt. "Do either of you smoke?" he asked, addressing this comment to Sakura, and speaking a level politer than he had to Sasuke.

She sat down on the other chair, and Lee moved to stand to the left behind her. "No."

Ichiro snapped the pocket shut again. He gave the three of them a long look, and Sakura made herself fold her hands in her lap, to show she didn't have immediate access to weapons.

Ichiro scanned Sasuke one last time, and then finally let his guard drop enough to sit back against the couch. "That snake you sent trashed the town we were in."

Sasuke's hands tensed. "What?"

Ichiro nodded once. "We went back after we met Kyomamushi-sama and tried to get rid of the survivors, but I'm sure we missed some."

Sasuke brought one of his hands up to his face, hiding his mouth. Sakura was watching him from the corner of her eye.

"How far away was it?" he asked.

"Over a week, for normal people," Ichiro replied. "Maybe five days, if they take a boat over the gulf instead of land traveling."

"You were out on the peninsula?"

"Yeah. It was a decently isolated town, so they shouldn't be able to demand investigators before then."

"Fucking things," Sasuke hissed under his breath. Then he let his hand drop, and briefed Ichiro on the plan.

Sakura filled in other parts of it, such as where he and Konohamaru would need to meet and the exact location where they would be waiting to trade places. She silently noted that Ichiro wasn't asking why or what they were doing, only what he needed to know to for his part. Sasuke said if anything changed because of the incoming news, he would contact them.

"You don't have a time frame?" Ichiro said, when everything was covered.

"It's circumstantial," Sasuke replied.

Ichiro pursed his lips in a way that, to Sakura, looked completely wrong on Mitate's face, but he didn't speak. Instead, he indicated the faded scar along Sasuke's throat, from the time he'd briefly returned to Oto to raid the library and had made the Leaf-ingrained mistake of being merciful to non-enemies. "Is that the only change?"

"No," Sasuke replied. He pulled up his left sleeve, to reveal the scar tissue that remained from when his wrist had been broken during the last fight with Orochimaru. The fang marks were still mostly visible.

Ichiro shifted a little closer. "Those look like. . . ." He glanced at Sasuke's face, and then back at his arm.

"They are," Sasuke replied.

"Kyomamushi-sama turned on you?"

Sasuke pulled the sleeve back down. "He saved my life."

Ichiro's eyes narrowed, but Sasuke was already pulling down his collar slightly, shifting his shoulder enough to show the secondary seal around his curse seal.

"And there's this. Henge your clothing right so it won't be necessary to know."

Ichiro nodded. "What about that necklace?"

Sasuke let the collar slip back up, straightening it slightly. "Only my teacher knows I'm wearing that. If you get caught so badly that you're brought before him, you should just kill yourself."

Ichiro nodded again, lips slightly thinned.

"Do you still have that?" Sasuke asked, touching his forehead protector.

"No," Ichiro replied. "I threw it away once I left."

"Idiot," Sasuke said, and pulled off his forehead protector. "Don't waste weapons."

Ichiro frowned. "I won't--how strong is he?"

". . . Above Kabuto's level," Sasuke said, unfolding a small, handleless blade from the cloth of his forehead protector. "Probably above mine, too."

Sasuke held the blade out. "If you actually manage to disable him, you should still kill yourself," he added, and left the rest of the threat unspoken.

". . . yes, Sasuke-sensei," Ichiro replied, taking it after a long pause. "Anything else?"

"What the fuck were you doing in Fire?" Sasuke said, voice neutral. "I told you to stay away."

"This is the best place to get caught," Ichiro replied. "We split paths with the others for the winter, so they aren't here."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "'The best place'?"

Ichiro shrugged a shoulder. "Whatever battle you had made the Leaf really heavy on its foreign treaties. Other countries run a risk if they even imprison us instead of executing us immediately. But at least here, they do it quick. I heard if a Soundnin's caught in Wind country, they cut off his head with a bamboo saw." He dragged his hand across the back of his neck.

"Don't make unnecessary gestures in enemy territory," Sasuke said reflexively, noting from his peripheral vision that Sakura had clenched one hand around the other. "How long as this been going on?"

Ichiro raised an eyebrow. "Since Oto lost its contract, and we all got declared missingnins." At Sasuke's faintest look of surprise, he added: "You didn't know?"

"The Hokage doesn't share her decisions with me," Sasuke replied.

"It's a common policy everywhere," Ichiro answered. ". . . Damn, they were keeping you really sheltered here, weren't they?"

Sasuke stood up. Sakura rolled onto the balls of her feet smoothly, almost at the same time that Ichiro stood, but Sasuke only made a small gesture and turned toward the kitchen.

Ichiro studied Sakura and Lee warily. She kept her face neutral, imagined what Lee's looked like, and wondered if the boy had deliberately let his guard drop so much while talking to Sasuke or if it had been a reflex. She didn't like the implications either way.

Sasuke came back, henging the package from the fridge into three scrolls similar to the kinds medicnins kept records on. "Here. Eat it soon, or most of it will spoil."

Ichiro gave the scrolls a look. "I don't need that. We're getting by fine."

"Fine," Sasuke said evenly. "It doesn't matter to me. If you starve to death, I don't have to pay back my debt."

Ichiro took them, but gave Sasuke an irritated look. "Don't you get sick of being so soft-hearted?"

"Idiot," Sasuke said again, "kindness isn't a weakness. If you use it right, it's better than poison."

Ichiro glanced poignantly at Sakura and Lee again. "Sure."

"You came, didn't you?" Sasuke replied, sliding his hands into his pockets.

Ichiro stared at him for a few moments. Then he shifted the scrolls under his other arm, and left.

When the door shut behind him, Sasuke sat down again, bracing his elbows on his knees and folding his hands in front of his mouth. Sakura went to the window, barely pushing the curtains aside to see out. Lee leaned on the back of the other chair. It was quiet.

Sakura broke the silence a full minute later. "The snake you sent to them was over a meter, wasn't it?"

"Snakes," Sasuke corrected. "Yes."

"Kakashi-sensei was there when you told us about them."

"I'm sure Tsunade and Jiraiya know, too," he replied. "Can you pull this off without me?"

"Why did you do that?" Sakura demanded, angry and tired.

"The two days you said you'd been able to drug Naruto for were up by the time you told me this plan." Sasuke sat back in the chair, folding his arms. His voice was quieter when he said, "I didn't know they were so close."

". . . How many?" she asked.

Lee was looking between the both of them by now, trying to figure out what they were talking around instead of about; Sasuke ignored him. "They said they would contact me about the price later."

"You say that so easily--"

"How do you do the work you don't like, Sakura?"

There was a dark silence, and then Sakura let out a long breath.

"A kunoichi must be able to kill her heart when necessary," she muttered, and turned away from the window.

Sasuke was still facing the couch, but Lee was watching her. His fingers tightened against the chair slightly as he saw the calm, emotionless look on her face and in her movements.

He'd seen the expression on her before, though not often. And as a jounin, Lee was familiar with the inner detachment that granted it. It wasn't something he liked.

"I think I can do it," Sakura replied, walking to the sofa and then changing her mind and returning to the chair. "Unless they increase security around me."

"I can get back inside if they do."

"We can't fight a whole ANBU squad."

"We don't need to fight," Lee said. "Just to run."

He reached down and took her hand. "Sasuke-kun and I can trade places; we'll say I went with you as emotional support. As long as we can get outside the wall, we'll still be able to teleport to the tree and follow the plan."

Sakura nodded slowly, thinking it over, and absently rubbed her thumb over the back of his hand. "That'll have to do . . . is that boy good at henge? Will he be able to pull off looking like Lee?"

"Yes," Sasuke replied. "It won't be perfect, but it will be enough to get you out."

"Right," Sakura said, and her thumb stopped even as her voice stayed the same. "Is he the one that you talked about before? The one that can alter his DNA to someone else's with a sample of it?"

"Get to the point," Sasuke replied.

"Tell them to send Mitate-kun back," she said coldly. "Tonight."

Sasuke closed his eyes. "He'll already be dead."

Sakura's hand was painfully tight around Lee's own, her other fist clenched on her lap. Lee was beginning to worry that she was going to go for Sasuke's kidneys, and wasn't sure if he wanted to make her stop until at least the second punch.

"I work with his uncle," Sakura hissed. "How can I. . . ."

"His uncle's going to autopsy the hunternins we kill," Sasuke replied, opening his eyes and staring at the couch again. "He would have been able to describe them if he lived."

Sakura didn't speak.

Finally, she stood, yanked her chair up, and carried it back to the kitchen. Sasuke took the cue and left.

—

When Lee brought the second chair into the kitchen, Sakura was sitting with her arms folded on the table, forehead pressed against them. Lee set his chair down next to her and rested a hand lightly on her upper back.

"He was only there for two years!" she burst out, voice choked and muffled. "Why can't he figure out he's not supposed to act like--he's ours!"

Lee wrapped his arms awkwardly around her waist and rested his cheek against her back. "I'm sorry, Sakura. This wasn't. . . ."

"It's perfectly logical," Sakura whispered. "But so many people . . . is he--it really . . . worth. . . ?"

It took Lee a long time to reply, and when he did, his voice was so quiet and careful it was almost incomprehensible. "Could we still go back?"

Sakura was still for a long time, and Lee waited.

At last she sat up, and shifted so that she could sit with her head against Lee's shoulder. Her eyes were dry.

"I . . . don't . . ." she murmured, staring at the table and the cabinets beyond it. "--I hate that chair," she said suddenly, "that stupid fourth chair. I hate that second set of guest dishes. I see them in here everyday and I hate them so much and I don't want to throw them away. I don't want to. . . ."

Sakura tilted her neck so that her temple was resting against his jaw. "I already lost them before. . . ."

Lee closed his eyes. They stayed there for a long time.

——

Earlier that evening, there had been a small fire in the Hyuuga compound's main garden.

As Hinata told the clan head and elders when she was called in to explain, she had been weeding the herb beds in the late afternoon, and since she had almost been finished when the sky began to darken, she decided to bring a lamp out and finish the last bed rather than waiting until morning. As she was cleaning the gardening tools, she accidentally knocked the lamp over with her heel. Hinata had immediately straightened it, but she'd failed to notice that a small bit of spilled oil had caught fire. It continued burning after she left the garden through the gate to the branch house area, the gate which was cattycorner on the left to the two wintry poisonous plants kept in the Hyuuga garden, a large patch of wolfsbane and several plants of water hemlock. Both plants were almost completely burnt by the time someone in the main house looked through the wall and called the situation to attention.

When Hinata was asked how she could possibly justify allowing the fire to happen, she replied quietly from the position where she was kneeling, face tilted to the floor: "I didn't see it."

None of the elders spoke for a moment. Finally, Hinata's uncle on her mother's side cleared his throat.

"Even with your injury, Hinata-san, this is an inexcusable mis--"

"No," Hanabi interrupted. She raised a hand when her uncle tried to continue. "It was a small fire, and they're just plants. They can be replanted later."

She looked down at Hinata. "You're a member of the branch house now. There's no reason for you to come to the main house's garden any longer."

"Yes, Hanabi-sama," Hinata replied.

—

A few people protested about the decision with Hanabi, but they sent Hinata out of the room first. Neji was waiting for her in the hallway.

"That was foolish of you," he said quietly, as they were walking down the path between the main and branch houses. "That story was too flimsy to last for long."

"I know," Hinata murmured. "But . . . I was desperate."

"Obviously," Neji replied.

——

The next morning, Sasuke woke up before dawn and began packing.

The unobvious things went first, paper money lining his weapons pouch and folded into the double-hemmed waist of his pants, coins separated by tissues packed flat into small bags that could be strapped around his legs with bandages--impractical, but the metal coins were uncommon in normal villages, so he had to spend the paper ryo first anyway.

There wasn't much money; he planned to visit the bank in the afternoon, and withdraw more than he needed to buy gloves. There were no spare clothes to pack until he did the laundry. The weapons would be on him even indoors.

He had a light breakfast, getting rid of some of the vegetables, and then put everything in the apartment away. The dishes and cooking utensils were packed into the cabinets, and he stowed the bedding, table, and chest for his clothes and weapons in the bathroom. The curtains were already pulled closed, and the sunlight was too weak to force itself through the dark fabric (he liked sunlight, his old apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows and a large balcony, but it was possible to see into his room from the opposite roof and when Sakura had asked him to store those scrolls for her he couldn't take the risk of flimsy curtains) when Sasuke began practicing his sword work.

The first movements were spoiled--his muscles were tense, and it affected his swing. Sasuke made himself resheath the katana and begin over again and again until he had returned to the graceful state he'd mastered by the time he left Oto. Once he was able to draw the katana, make three sweeping cuts, and sheath it again fluidly five times in a row, he began adding the shake, footwork, and additional cuts.

The apartment was too small for him to move properly--the bathroom intruded offensively into the room, cutting away almost a fourth of his space. It interfered when he practiced taijutsu, too, same as the kitchenette. The main room of his apartment at Oto had been larger, had been intended for him to practice in it. He'd spent most winter mornings training in there--though Orochimaru had chosen the location of Oto to guarantee mild winters, the man had still hated the cold, and the rare snowfalls and frosts in the Sound had generally signaled complete if temporary freedom. The children had ditched their classes en masse and held snowball fights; Sasuke had trained through the mornings and then spent the afternoons hunting down students with Kazuo if it was a frost, or trained through the afternoons and evenings if it was snow.

There had been something quiet in opening the curtains there and knowing that snow was falling outside his window, even if he couldn't always see it in the course of his movements. He didn't know if the snow that was threatening last night was falling now.

Sasuke decided if he drew one more parallel, he was going to drag the table back in and hack at it with the sword until one or the other broke; and he needed the sword. He dropped the footwork and returned to the basic pattern of draw, cut, shake, sheath until the tension was gone again.

After half an hour, the work had made him hot enough to remove his long-sleeved shirt and just keep the short-sleeved one beneath, despite the fact that the room was as cold as he could stand to cut down his heating bill. He threw it into the bathroom and the necklace--hanging loose without the heavy shirt to cover it--shifted as he moved.

As he drew the sword again, Sasuke reflected that the items he'd collected from his various teachers didn't match their natures. Orochimaru's katana was a weapon, it almost fit; but Itachi's necklace was nothing but a frivolous piece of jewelry, something that weighed Sasuke down while serving no purpose and that had the potential to give him away with the faint noise of its links. Kakashi's indecipherable patience was tattooed on his skin in a seal he could negate at will--Sasuke would have assumed it symbolized trust, if he thought Kakashi was a fool.

He had nothing from Naruto. Kabuto had healed the burn marks of the rasengan without his permission.

His next cut was tense, the tip wobbled and he didn't remember to push his hips forward with the motion. Sasuke stopped, sheathed the sword, and breathed.

When he finally drew it again, he had stripped away his emotions like layers until there was nothing beneath his skin but muscle and organs and chakra and bones; a body that was a tool, the weapon he worked best with because it had been his since birth.

He didn't keep track of time after that. When Sakura knocked on his door, his back and shoulders were beginning to ache.

Sasuke sheathed the sword but carried it with him to the door, tucking the necklace beneath his shirt. Sakura had never met Itachi, wouldn't recognize it--but the scorch marks on it would've been enough of a clue for her.

She didn't say anything when she came in. Sasuke shut the door behind her and said, "Any news?"

"About . . . no. Nothing." Sakura wandered over to the kitchen sink. "I guess he's still asleep."

Sasuke set the katana against the wall and folded his arms; Sakura leaned against the sink and stared at the floor.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Sasuke paused. Then he caught himself and shrugged a shoulder. "You were righ--"

"No," Sakura interrupted, "you're not heartless, Sasuke, even if you're still trying to pretend like it. I'm sorry I forgot that."

He looked down at the ground, fingers tightening around the loose fabric of his sleeves. ". . . I knew he would probably imitate someone to get in. I should have added that the timeframe was indefinite, and they would have left him alive. That was my mistake." Sasuke made himself look at her. "I'm sorry it was someone you knew."

"He won't be the first," she murmured after a long pause. Sakura looked over at him. "One of the hunternins is going to be Kakashi-sensei, isn't it? He's the only one left with the sharingan. He'll be sent for you."

Sasuke looked away and nodded. Sakura stared back down at the floor.

"I don't want to fight Tsunade-sensei," she said quietly. "She did a lot more for us than I understood. She kept letting Naruto live, she let us try to rehabilitate you instead of. . . ." Sakura wrapped her hands around her upper arms. "She only restricted me to missions in Fire. I could have been executed for espionage. Anywhere else. . . . I don't want to make Lee fight Gai-san."

Sasuke leaned back against the wall. "Jiraiya will come for Naruto." He paused, and then shook his head. "And Tsunade's going to be hell to fight, if her strength's natural. If they come for us together. . . ."

Sakura looked a little wide-eyed at the thought, and let out a breath. "We'll have to get Lee drunk."

Sasuke looked at her.

"He's a master of the drunken fist," Sakura explained.

". . . ah."

She fidgeted her fingers against her sleeves for a moment. ". . . What do we do? About Mitate-kun?" Sakura asked.

Sasuke looked to the stove past her and didn't answer for a moment. "If Naruto doesn't wake up before that kid's absence starts to raise alarms, I'll leave earlier," he said. "That will draw their attention, and when the news of the snakes comes in, they'll probably assume I killed him for some reason. Stick to the plan as much as possible."

Sakura exhaled and shivered.

She covered it up a moment later by starting to rub her arms, and glanced around the room. "Why's it so cold in here?"

Sasuke welcomed the change in topic. "Heat's expensive."

Sakura gave him a look. "How long have you--oh, never mind." She paused, and then let her hands drop and folded them in front of her. "Come back to our place after work. You'll get sick like this."

"It will be more trouble if I'm over there when the news comes in," Sasuke warned.

Sakura raised an eyebrow slightly. "Do you think that kid lied about the time?"

"There's no way to gauge how fast unknown people will travel the roads."

"Don't answer me like that," Sakura muttered, but there was no real irritation in her voice.

"We're already gambling everything," she added. "One more factor isn't going to make things much worse."

"Fine," Sasuke said.

—

Lee wasn't happy about what had happened--Sasuke could tell from the way he didn't speak much during their lunch break--but he seemed to have accepted the inevitability of it. He still wasn't talking as vibrantly by the time they returned to the apartment, and found that Sakura had been sent home early again and had cooked too much food for dinner for a lack of anything else to do.

Sakura brought over Sasuke's laundry and the rest of his weapons while Lee was putting the leftovers away and Sasuke went to the bank before it closed. She told him to buy some extra clothes for Naruto, in winter colors, and two coats.

——

Sasuke woke up early the next morning when he realized someone was shaking him. Sakura caught his fist and yanked him off the couch.

Sasuke blinked the sleep from his eyes, frowning in groggy irritation. "What--"

And then he saw the bird sitting on the small table in front of Lee, preening its feathers. There was a message attached to its leg.

Sasuke, like Sakura and Lee, could first only react with silence.

". . . It has to be Naruto," Sakura finally said. "There would have been some noise, fighting, if he woke up and it was. . . ."

"Tsunade would have made contingency plans," Sasuke replied, still rubbing his wrist.

Sakura gripped her hands around her arms. "It's the fox demon," she whispered. "We would have heard something."

"Maybe," he said, unwilling to hope.

They continued to stare at the bird; it was Lee who finally picked it up and removed the message from its leg. He hesitated at opening it, however, and after several more seconds Sasuke held out his hand.

Lee dropped the message onto his palm. Sakura moved closer to Lee as Sasuke opened it, leaning against him and wrapping her hands around his arm. He tilted his head toward hers.

Sasuke skimmed the message and said, "He's awake."

Sakura exhaled, Lee pulled her into a hug, and Sasuke read the message again.

"We're supposed to meet her in her office at nine p.m.," Sasuke added. "She'll supply the poison you're to use." He held the paper out to Sakura. "Apparently, she doesn't trust you."

Sakura laughed once, breathily, and studied the message herself. Lee read it over her shoulder.

"Tonight--that's more time than I thought we'd--" Sakura shook her head. "Why would--unless she thought we have a lot to say and didn't want to risk him being moved in daylight . . . so lucky. . . ."

"Breathe," Lee said, with a shaky smile.

"Hah," Sakura breathed. She looked down at the message once more.

Then she started folding it, looking up at Sasuke as she creased the corners. "Can you get a message to those Soundnins? Now, while it's still dark?"

Sasuke nodded and went down the hall to the bedroom.

Sakura pulled away from Lee and began pacing along the living room. "I'll have to send a slug to--no, I can't use them." She frowned. "I shouldn't get her involved, anyway. . . ."

"I can speak to Hi--" Lee paused when they heard a whistle from the bedroom. A few moments later, Sasuke began giving instructions.

Sakura glared at the short hallway. "Has that bird been following--augh!" She turned her back to it and looked at Lee. "You can get a message to Hinata-chan?"

"Yes," he replied. "Her room is around Neji's--I'll find a way to see her."

Sakura nodded. "That'll do." She looked back to Sasuke, who was returning to the room. "Lee's going to contact Hinata-chan. Will that bird get to them in time?"

"It said it will," Sasuke replied. "Either he'll be in the alley with Konohamaru or he won't."

"Konohamaru-kun," Sakura exhaled. "I've got to speak to him, too, and tell him the timeframe. Okay. Anyone else?"

She looked at Sasuke and at Lee, who shook his head. Sasuke thought over it, and repeated the motion.

"Okay," Sakura said. She breathed quietly for a few moments, and then looked down at the folded square of paper in her hand and said: "I need tea."

—

The sun was just starting to break the horizon when they finished breakfast. Lee looked at the clock, and stood abruptly.

"All right!" he announced. "This is almost the time Gai-sensei will be at the training fields. I'm going to go start my workout early. I'll go to Neji's after that."

"I'll pack our things," Sakura said. "Ino-chan's shop won't be open for hours, and Konohamaru-kun won't leave his house for at least another hour. . . . Sasuke?"

"Do you have cleaning supplies?" he asked.

———

Lee trained with Gai until the sun was fully in the sky, and then he suggested that they see if Tenten and Neji wanted to join.

Neji was still under technical house arrest. As he tried to convince Gai that there was no reason for the man to speak to Hanabi on his behalf, Lee slipped aside and told Hinata the news under pretext of relating a question from Sakura about some herbs. He was surprised to learn about the incident with the garden, but thanked her for trying her best and promised to tell Sakura about it.

Neji was still losing his argument with Gai when Hinata said stumblingly that she had been hoping to train with him that morning. Lee immediately said that family came first--they could have a full-team sparring match another day.

Gai agreed, and they left for Tenten's house.

——

Sakura contacted Konohamaru when he left his house to meet his team for another day's training.

He grew a little pale as she explained when he needed to be at the alley and who would be with him (she referred to Ichiro as someone Sasuke had called a favor from rather than as a Soundnin), but said that he would be ready. After she sent him on his way, she went back to the apartment and finished packing, and then headed to the Yamanaka flower shop.

"Ino-chan!" she called as she pushed open the door.

"Huh? Sakura?"

"Can you sneak out?" Sakura asked, leaning on the counter. "I found some great patterns for my wedding kimono, but I can't pick between the five of them."

Ino studied her face for a moment, and then smirked. "Yeah, sure. Let me talk to my dad--if I tell him you'll wind up making a horrible choice without my better taste to guide you, he'll let me leave."

Sakura rolled her eyes and made a shooing motion. As Ino went into the back room, yelling for her father, she picked up a pale asphodel and smelled it.

—

The woman running the fabric store they went to allowed them to look around all they liked if they promised to come back for an hour tomorrow and help her finish moving her merchandise into her newly-patched storeroom.

"I can't decide!" Sakura moaned, staring at the two bolts they had narrowed the selection down to. "What do you think, Ino-chan? The white and gold or the shades of green?"

Ino gave the green a critical look. "The pattern is nice, except for the brown twigs. Brown's not a good marriage color. But the white and gold is so standard . . . and white washes your complexion out. . . ."

Sakura leaned her elbows on the counter and gave her a look. "Don't feel the need to soften your opinion, Ino-pig-chan."

"You asked."

She stuck out her tongue and looked back down at the bolts. "I think I like the green."

"I don't like the brown in it." Ino dropped the green bolt on top of the white and gold one. "Maybe we should look at another store."

"Ugh," Sakura muttered, "I don't want to be beholden to work somewhere else, too."

"Lazy!"

Sakura shoved away from the counter. "I'll look at them again when we come to move stuff. Maybe I'll be able to decide then." She frowned thoughtfully as she put the bolts back on their shelves. "I really should go with the green, though . . . it almost matches my forehead protector. . . ."

Ino paused and stared at her. "You're not seriously going to wear your forehead protector at your wedding. How tacky is that, Sakura?"

"Well, I don't have anything else to keep my bangs out of my eyes!" Sakura retorted defensively. "They won't be long enough by then to pull back, and I don't want to have to shop for a headband. It still makes me feel uncomfortable."

Ino stared for five more seconds, and then grabbed Sakura's arm and started dragging her out of the store. "You're hopeless!"

"OW! Ino-chan! Let go!"

—

Ino tossed a white scarf, a gold headband, a green ribbon and a brown scarf to Sakura and shut her dresser drawer. "There. Try those on, and whichever one looks best on you, that's the color fabric you're getting."

After trying all the colors in several different hairstyles, they both decided that the green worked best. Ino kept trying to get Sakura to take off her headband so they could fix her hair properly, but Sakura consistently refused.

"I told you, it got scarred during the battle. I'm not showing it off."

"Showing it--" Ino put her hands on her hips. "Come on, Sakura, do you think I care? It's just a scar. We're kunoichi; it's not going to be the first. Stop being so vain."

Sakura cast a very significant look to Ino's right ear. The bandage was still visible through the bangs she had brushed over it.

(While Chouji was possessed, he had hooked a shuriken through the earring in Ino's right ear and ripped it out, taking most of the lobe with it. Ino had let him, because the action enabled her to land a non-fatal blow and knock him back just far enough that Shikamaru--who hadn't been able to move fast because of a shattered ankle--could reach him with his shadow.

Ino had made Shikamaru promise never to tell Chouji how it'd happened on threat of her taking over his body and doing horrible things with it. Shikamaru had rolled his eyes and said he wasn't going to, anyway.)

"That's different," Ino said primly. "I actually have to rely on my looks on a mission."

Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Bandages are so stylish these days."

"They're going to come off in another day or two," Ino said grumpily. "You're the one who said I'd be risking an infection."

Sakura frowned. "Let me see it. It shouldn't be that bad by now."

After Sakura pulled Ino's hair up and removed the bandages, she burned away a small infection that was beginning, and gave the healing-over skin just enough of a nudge to finish. Then she studied her work.

"Mm, it might scab a little more, but you'll be okay." Sakura looked over at the dresser. "Where do you keep your brush? With your hair's body, I'm sure it can be styled to hide it."

"It's in the bathroom," Ino replied.

When Sakura had fetched the brush and some lock-picks that doubled as bobby pins, Ino let her make several attempts to fix her hair. She complained with each one, and told Sakura she really needed to stop doing more than shoving some gel in her hair and tearing out the door each morning. Sakura told her to shut up, they didn't all have time to primp.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," Ino said suddenly.

"Huh?" Sakura replied.

Ino waved a hand at the mirror Sakura had angled to face the bed they were sitting on. "The last time we went shopping, you looked like . . . you were about to go on a suicide mission the next day, or something." She let her hand drop. ". . . I'm glad you're okay now."

"I'm not," Sakura replied.

Ino twisted her head around to glance at her. "What?"

Sakura made an exasperated noise and forced Ino's head back to the front. She began fixing the pins that had pulled loose as she explained: "It shouldn't have happened like that. He shouldn't be gone . . . and I hope I don't get over that. I don't care 'what' he was, he was my teammate." Sakura paused, and then shrugged a shoulder and picked up another pin. "But he's dead. I can't fix something like that, so. . . ."

". . . Right," Ino said a moment later. "At least you and Lee are alive."

Sakura sighed, but it was silently and to herself--she'd long ago gotten used to the fact that Ino didn't catch some things unless they were spelled out. "Yeah. . . ."

—

When she was planning to leave, Sakura picked up the brown scarf and held it over her hair again. "Hmm. . . ."

"No," Ino replied, pulling bobby pins out of her hair and brushing out the tangles. "We already decided on the green."

"I know, I know . . . Ino-chan, will you let me borrow this?" Sakura dropped her hands and turned partly around to look at the other teenager. "Maybe if the scarf is brown, it'll even out the tones."

Ino gave it a deliberate look. "I don't think it's the same color. It's too light."

"Really? I thought it was almost similar. . . ." Sakura draped the scarf over the top of her head again. "Please let me borrow it, so I can go by the store again and check? I'll give it back when I see you tomorrow."

Ino glanced upward. "All right, all right! You can have it, if you want," she added, looking aside to the mirror. "I've got plenty."

". . . ." Sakura smiled. "Thanks, Ino-chan."

"Did you deliberately put all these tangles in my hair or what?" Ino replied.

——

The first thing Sasuke did was teleport into Naruto apartment and search through it until he found the metal box containing the most secret of the Uchiha clan's scrolls. It was still buried under the same pile of junk in the closet; Sasuke almost mistook it for a sock before he noticed the faint trace of chakra that gave away the henge.

He forced Naruto's henge off and put his own on, turning it into another bottle of cleaning solution. Then he made his way to the compound and spent the morning and early afternoon cleaning the graves of his parents and close relatives.

By the time his stomach was growling irritatedly, his parents, immediate aunts and uncles, and first cousins had been taken care of. Sasuke debated leaving offerings, but decided they wouldn't want them.

After he set the cleaning supplies on the street out to the main gate, he returned to his parents' grave and stared at it for a long time, tugging absently at the ends of his new gloves.

Then he bowed from the waist.

"I apologize, Father," Sasuke said. "I taught our jutsus to an outsider. And I too have found something more important to me than the clan. I renounce my right to call myself your son.

"But I swear I will never follow after my brother."

He straightened and turned away.

The necklace felt heavier as he walked off. Sasuke told himself he was imagining it.

—

The next place he went was the storage building near the back of his house, where he rummaged around until he found a slightly rusted chisel and hammer. Then he made his way to the Takano shrine.

Once he was underground, Sasuke lit one of the torches and then set about methodically destroying every line of information on the stone. By the time he was finished, the hunger had turned to nausea which had faded back to nothing again, and his hands ached. He rubbed them together as he scanned the chipped-up stone, making sure that no line was visible enough to give anything away to those who would eventually find this place.

When the soreness had mostly left, Sasuke brushed away some stray fragments of the rock face and thought, I should have done this last time. If there had been nothing at all to come back for. . . .

. . . If I had never seen him again. . . .

He let his hand drop and set about the business of burning all the scrolls, trusting that Sakura had memorized them.

—

Sasuke had intended to force himself to enter the house, to go through and see if there were any small items they could carry and pawn later--his mother's few bits of jewelry or some particularly finely crafted weapons--but once he was standing outside he realized that he couldn't. He touched the door and immediately thought back, not to the night of the murders, but to Itachi's last mangekyou, where the house was safe and clean and his parents might have been just down the hall, and stepped back so abruptly that he almost tripped over the edge of the porch.

You'll regret this when we run out of money, Sasuke told himself viciously. Every job we get may attract the hunternins' attention. It's just a fucking empty house.

Then he thought: Let it die. I don't have to confront anything. It's not about. . . .

Sasuke stared at the ground for a few more minutes, and finally snorted. There's nothing here to be redeemed.

He picked up the bucket containing the cleaning supplies from where it had been sitting in the street, and left.

—

He didn't visit Kakashi. He didn't feel the need to--they would be able to say their goodbyes later, when the man was sent after him.

———

Sakura had taken over the kitchen with herbs and scrolls and syringes, and was stewing leaves in a pot, so Sasuke put the cleaning supplies back and ate the few remaining rice crackers before packing his things.

Later, he heard the rustle of Sakura removing her mask, and then a sigh. Sasuke glanced up from the weapons packs he was rearranging to see her bracing her arms against the counter.

"What is it?" he asked.

"This is my best," she replied bleakly, and Sasuke looked up fully.

"What's wrong?"

"This is basically poison," Sakura replied, still staring down at the counter. "If I give him too much, he'll die. If I give him too little, he'll wake up too early. I don't know the exact dosage I need to give."

Sasuke frowned. When he didn't speak, Sakura turned around, leaning back against the counter and folding her arms. "He's always required a little more than other people in anesthesias and stuff once the fox demon's chakra got a hold," she explained. "It used to only be a couple milligrams, but at the worst point, he had to have two and a half times the regular amount for drugs to have the same affect." She made a little frustrated motion with her hands. "And now I don't know how much he's affected by its chakra."

"Why can't you just under-drug him?" Sasuke asked.

She folded her arms again. "The side-effects. When it starts to wear off, he'll be vomiting, disoriented, blurry sight . . . until it's out of his system, there's no way we'll be able to move." She started to rub at her eyes, aggravated from the poison's fumes. "I made it to keep him out for an hour to give us a decent head start, but if I dilute it, he could wake up in anywhere from 45 minutes to less than fifteen."

Sasuke leaned his arms on his legs, and studied her.

"What dosage do you think you should give him?" he asked a few moments later.

Sakura folded her arms once again, and stared down at the floor for a few moments.

". . . Based on what Hinata-chan told me about his chakra, I'd give him 1.8 of the regular dose," she replied.

"Then do that," Sasuke said, looking back to the weapons packs.

"But I'm only doing this on hearsay and guessing from what he was like earli--"

"When was the last time you screwed up with medicine, Sakura?" Sasuke asked without looking up. He removed another two shuriken from one of the packs and tested the weight. "If you think that's what's right, do it. Stop vacillating."

". . . You are such an ass," Sakura replied, but she was biting down the start of a relieved smile as she turned back to the counter.

—

Sakura teleported to Naruto's and packed his weapons while Sasuke was cooking and Lee was cleaning down the apartment. Sasuke had borrowed some of the clothes Lee was leaving behind long enough to wash his own with unscented detergent, the same as Sakura and Lee had done earlier.

Their dinner was mostly rice and the few stray vegetables that hadn't been finished off yet. Lee had bought two anpan rolls on his way back, for Sasuke and Sakura, since he didn't like sweet things much.

Lee left as soon as the night fell, after changing his clothes for ones in winter grays and browns. He took all the henged backpacks and weapons pouches, and Sasuke's sword, with him. Sasuke and Sakura kept two older packs which contained only as many kunai and shuriken as were necessary to prevent them from being too light.

Sakura's hair was still damp from the shower she'd taken when she pulled it back in a ponytail and dressed in the same colors. She stuck an unpoisoned needle in it, and also hid two short poisoned ones in her belt--one behind the buckle and the other at the small of her back. She henged the syringe she'd filled into a small, thin cylinder and tucked it into her bra.

Sasuke managed to fit a single shuriken behind the plate of his forehead protector. His hair had dried by the time he pulled his own clothes on, folded Lee's, and set them back in the drawer. His clothes were still black, but he'd bought a dark brown coat when he picked up the new clothes and jacket for Naruto.

They had a quarter of an hour before they needed to start out for the Hokage's tower. Sasuke spent the time walking slowly around the apartment and examining everything. He rearranged a few of the scrolls in the shelves, filling in the gaps from where Sakura had either taken or destroyed scrolls, and then went to the kitchen and checked again that all the appliances were unplugged.

Sakura was sitting on the couch, legs crossed, hands folded, and eyes closed. She'd been like that for the last ten minutes.

Sasuke came back out of the kitchen and stood in the living room for a few moments, hands in pockets. Then he sat down on the floor and began to stretch his legs. He kept an eye on the clock.

When they had five minutes left, Sasuke straightened and said Sakura's name.

She unfolded her hands first, and let them rest palms down on her knees before opening her eyes.

"We can't tell him," she said. "About the plan. If we do, he'll never agree to let us be missingnins. He'll yell and alert the whole tower if he thinks he has to."

"I know," Sasuke replied.

"1.8 percent will be enough," Sakura said, "it won't be too much," and the tone of her voice made it hard to figure out which one of them she meant to convince.

"I trust your skill," he said. "Are you ready to go?"

Sakura looked him in the eyes.

"We're not going to play their game of falling apart in pieces," she said with icy conviction. "Either all three of us get out or they take all three of us down. Right?"

Sasuke studied her face for a moment, and nodded.

Sakura let out her breath.

". . . This is so not the way I expected things to be," she added, with a faint, wry smile. "At our team assignments. You know?"

"I didn't expect anything," Sasuke replied, standing. "Except to be held back."

Sakura rolled her eyes and stood as well. "Glad we proved you wrong."

He gave her a look from the corner of his eye, and she smirked.

Sasuke turned off the lights in the kitchen while Sakura buttoned up her jacket. She held his coat out to him when he reached her, and turned off the living room and entryway lights as he pulled it on. Then she set the key on the window ledge, hidden from outside sight by the curtain, and didn't bother to lock the door when they left.

—

After a strange walk through the village that felt longer than it was, they arrived at the Hokage tower. Tsunade's note had been to Sakura, but she looked less than surprised to see Sasuke walk through the door as well. Jiraiya was standing to the side of the windows behind her, leaning against the wall with his arms folded.

"Weapons," Tsunade said, indicating a space on the desk that had been cleared.

When they had unstrapped their packs, and Sakura removed the needle in her hair, and set them on the desk, Jiraiya stepped forward. Sasuke kept his face blank as the man patted him down.

Sakura did the same at first, but when Jiraiya moved to her torso, she pulled back. "Can Tsunade-sama do that? Please?"

Jiraiya gave her a look, but Tsunade sighed and stood up, and he stepped aside. She shot him a glare as she cursorily patted down Sakura's chest and stomach, and he held his hands up in irritated innocence.

Tsunade found the needle behind Sakura's belt buckle and pulled it out, giving her a hard look. "Why were you concealing this?"

"In case," Sasuke answered.

"In case what," Tsunade replied in the same flat tone, looking at him.

Sasuke slid the shuriken out from beneath his forehead, hoping that they wouldn't choose to search them all over again, because he doubted Tsunade would be distracted enough to miss the syringe in Sakura's bra this time. Sakura pulled the second needle from the back of her belt and held it out as well.

"In case we had to convince anyone that we are going to bury him alone," Sasuke said, keeping his eyes focused on Tsunade as she took the last of their physical weapons. "We don't want him to end up in a grave like Orochimaru's."

Sakura managed not to fidget at Sasuke's words; with the looks Jiraiya and Tsunade were giving him, it wasn't easy.

Finally, Tsunade turned and walked back to her desk. "You can bury him however you like," she said, dropping the needles and shuriken on top of the two packs, "after the anbu has ascertained that he's dead and he's been cremated. As long as no one sees you."

She opened one of the drawers and pulled out a small, capped syringe, before motioning for Sakura to step forward. Sakura tucked the syringe into the front of her belt with a blank expression as the older woman gave her instructions on the way to administer the poison.

"You two can go," Tsunade then said, sitting back down in the chair. "Be done before sunrise."

"Yes," Sakura replied. Sasuke said nothing.

——

"Son of an arrogant bastard," Jiraiya muttered after the door closed behind the two teenagers, and added a few more comments on the Uchiha family as a whole. Tsunade raised an eyebrow, staring down at the packs, the needles and the shuriken, with her hands folded in front of her mouth.

Jiraiya sank down into the chair that he'd pulled up to the desk earlier and leaned back, staring past Tsunade's shoulder, out the windows.

"I don't like that that brat Kakashi chose to train him instead of Naruto," he added angrily. "Never did, even if it wasn't because of prejudice. They both lacked families."

"Naruto was a lot stronger," she replied quietly, thinking back to the reports she'd read on Itachi.

"I didn't say I didn't understand it," Jiraiya said, folding his arms. "Just that I don't like it."

"I wish he hadn't smiled at us," Tsunade said, and fingered the necklace that had returned to her for the last time.

Jiraiya looked away from the windows and didn't reply.

——

A masked anbu escorted them to the short corridor, and left them in Yuugao's care. She unlocked the door, then stood aside and held it open for them.

She shut it behind them, and they could hear her lean against it outside. Naruto, who'd been kicking the roof of the cage for lack of anything better to do, had quit and was staring at them with pale red eyes.

". . . Yo," he said after several silent moments.

". . . Hi," Sakura replied.

The cage was too short for Naruto to be able to sit on the bed, so he wound up bracing his elbow on the cot and holding himself as high as he could. "Are you guys okay?"

"Yeah," Sakura said. "Yeah. We're okay."

"That's good," Naruto replied. After another lapse into awkward silence, he shifted the weight on his elbow.

Sakura cast a sideways glance at Sasuke, and realized from the look on his face that he was still trying to figure out where to start. She interlaced her fingers and pressed them against her stomach lightly, trying to hide the syringe in her belt with her forearm, and she wasn't hard enough to look at his face as she said, "We . . . we came . . . we were sent to, to. . . ."

"I know," Naruto said, and Sakura looked up.

He was pulling off a good smile. "They--I knew this would happen, eventually. When that crap with the wards first started, Jiraiya told me if I wasn't careful. . . ."

"What?" Sasuke said.

Naruto shoved his bangs back. "Hey, don't sound like that. They're not happy about it, they're just . . ." he lapsed, looking for a word, and went with "old. You know, good at covering stuff. . . ."

He trailed off again, and glanced down at the cot. Then he looked back up.

"I kind of hoped it would be you guys," he said. "If it couldn't be a mission."

Sakura swallowed, and Sasuke glanced over to note that she was pressing her fingers tightly enough that the knuckles were white. He looked back to the cage, not quite at Naruto.

". . . How's the rebuilding?" Naruto asked.

"You heard?" Sasuke replied, when Sakura didn't speak.

"Yeah," he said, with a nod. "When Kakashi-sensei came in, he mentioned it."

Sasuke frowned. "Kakashi-sensei was already here?"

"Yeah," Naruto said again. "This morning, I guess. He said some stuff about the village and you guys, and. . . ." He shrugged. "Teacher stuff."

He paused, then added: "He said I'd grown up well." Naruto tried another grin. "I think that's when I knew . . . I mean, a compliment from that guy. . . ."

When he dropped the sentence, Sasuke slid his hands in his pockets and said, "Most of the buildings are getting rebuilt. They're still working on the part of the wall Gaara trashed."

Naruto snorted. "Way to treat your allies," he muttered without irritation, "smashing their defenses. . . ."

"Why are you just accepting this?" Sakura demanded quietly. "Naruto!"

He paused, and then said, "Sasuke, can you get rid of the damn barrier on this thing?"

The barrier on the cage was a strong one--it had been done by a real onmyouji, and it was also reinforced by several seals painted on the floor around the room. Sasuke had to burn away an entire side before it finally weakened. Naruto was still looking at Sakura when he said, "Come here."

She stepped up to the cage, but when Naruto reached out to pull off her forehead protector, she jerked back. He just watched her.

Sakura clenched her fists. "Look," she said roughly, "I don't care what they told you--"

"Nobody had to tell me," he replied. "I remembered." He wouldn't look away from her eyes. "I couldn't get control back. I'm sorry, Sakura-chan."

"Don't--" and then her words choked off. A moment later, she turned around.

Naruto looked away from her, to the ground. Then he glanced up at Sasuke, started to say something, and stopped.

"Hey," he went with instead, "what about--Itachi?"

"Dead," Sasuke said. Naruto nodded.

". . . I took care of the shark-guy," he added. "Like I said I would."

"I noticed," Sasuke replied dryly, but that wasn't what he wanted to say, it was reflex, ". . . thank you."

Naruto scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "Did they have to rebuild those walls, too?"

"Not as much."

"Damn," Naruto muttered, "it got that out of hand. . . ."

"Don't say it in that tone," Sakura replied, still facing away from the two of them. "There was no way to kill them without a lot of destruction. And they did worse."

"Yeah, but--"

"I'm glad they're dead, those real monsters," Sakura added viciously. "The wall can be rebuilt."

". . . Yeah," Naruto acquiesced. He shifted the weight on his elbow again.

"What about Iruka-sensei?" he asked, looking at Sasuke since Sakura still had her back turned. "He didn't come. Is he okay? All I could get out of the hag was that he was one of the possessed ones."

"He's okay," Sakura lied, turning around, and Naruto's gaze shifted back to her. Sasuke noticed that she had traded out the syringes. "He's still in the hospital--he had a lot of damage, so it would have been too obvious to let him come over. He wanted to, though."

"Damage?" Naruto repeated, pushing himself up higher and narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the top of the cage.

She shook her head a little. "Just a lot of broken bones . . . it was hard to get those guys to stop fighting. But, nothing was fatal or severe, so he was shunted off to the side like all the other non-criticals." She smiled. "Now that we're getting over the crises, we'll be able to work on those people. I'll put him at the top of my list."

". . . Okay," Naruto said. "Thanks, Sakura-chan."

She nodded.

". . . What are they saying?" he asked. "That happened? No one would tell me."

Sakura glanced at Sasuke, before going on to describe how Neji's statement that Naruto had led the Akatsuki out of Konoha had been taken as truth by their group and some of the older and younger people as well. (No one knew whether this was his assumption based on the events or his way of paying Naruto back, save Neji himself.) Naruto genuinely laughed when he heard about Konohamaru.

"Heh," he mumbled a few moments later, after he stopped chuckling. "All right. That's a pretty good story. Man, that brat's gonna be after the mountain next. . . ."

"It's just a story. Someone will contradict it eventually," Sasuke muttered, and gave Sakura an annoyed look when she kicked him in the heel.

"Pssh," Naruto replied, "of course they will, it's not true. But if it's better than the contradiction, it's what'll be remembered." When Sasuke gave him a skeptical look, Naruto made a little 'no, really!' gesture. "Only boring history people remember the truth--everybody else just remembers the good stories. As long as it sounds cool, it'll stick."

Sasuke paused, and then narrowed his eyes. ". . . Most of those tales you told about training with Jiraiya weren't true, were they."

Naruto pursed his lips. "They were based in truth. Like, sure, that one with the bordello didn't happen exactly the same--but who'd want to see that pervert sannin in a kimono, anyway? We got in fine using just me!"

"Wait," this was starting to feel so close to normal that it just emphasized how surreal everything was and the too-high pitch to Sakura's giggles told Sasuke she felt the same, "Jiraiya pimped you out?"

"Hey!" Naruto looked offended. "Have you seen my sexy jutsu? It's not like he had to try."

Sakura couldn't hold back her laughter at the petulant tone of his voice, and wound up sinking to the floor with a hand over her mouth. Sasuke just stared at him.

"And you called my snakes bad," he finally said.

"They are," Naruto replied with aggressive cheerfulness. "I think we all just learned from perverts. I mean, Tsunade still looks like a twenty-year-old! Hey, Sakura-chan, has she ever told you any stories about picking up young guys in bars before she came here? I bet she did."

Sakura's shoulders were shaking from trying to suppress her laughter, and Sasuke had pressed his lips together hard in an attempt to keep away a smile.

Sakura's last chuckle cracked slightly, but she covered it well, and Sasuke and Naruto pretended not to notice. They lapsed into silence again.

Eventually, she moved to stand up again, and Sasuke held out a hand to help. Naruto cleared his throat.

"I hope--" he started, but then hesitated when he met Sakura's eyes. "You and Lee--you'll be happy. He's a good guy. He deserves you."

She smiled faintly, and nodded. "Ye--. . . thank you. Naruto."

He looked at Sasuke.

". . . You're an asshole," Naruto said decisively, and held his hand out through the bars with a small but real smile. "I'm glad we were friends."

Sasuke was still for several heartbeats, and then took it.

"Yeah," he said. "Me too."

After several long, silent moments, Sakura pulled the syringe out of her belt. Sasuke felt the sudden tension that ran through Naruto's arm, even as he kept his face in almost the same expression, and it took so much effort not to tell him It isn't over between us yet.

Sakura prepped the syringe for air bubbles, and then stepped closer and turned Naruto's outstretched arm slightly so that she could reach the inside of his elbow. She pressed her thumb over the main vein in the juncture and said, "This won't--I mean, the needle will sting, but you're not a wuss, and then it should . . . should just be. . . ."

"Hey," Naruto said gently, tilting his head until he could almost catch her gaze, ". . . stop making that face. I've told you, nothing could make me hate Sakura-chan."

Sakura smiled shakily, and slid the needle in.

She depressed the plunger evenly, though, and Sasuke absently noted that she was skilled enough not to let her emotions interfere with her medical work even in a situation like this. Naruto made a face when she pulled it out, and muttered a little whined "Oww."

"Wuss," Sakura said half-heartedly, tucking the syringe back into her belt plunger first.

"You guys," Naruto said, looking back and forth between them, "don't fight. Got it? If you do, I'll--haunt you!"

"'Haunt' us," Sasuke repeated in a voice that almost pulled off disbelieving.

"I will," Naruto snapped. "Don't be assholes to each other."

"Okay, okay," Sakura murmured. "I promise."

Naruto fixed Sasuke with a glare. After a moment, he closed his eyes and made an annoyed noise. "I'll try."

"Hey," Sakura retorted. "If you only have to try, I only have to try too."

"If I said 'I promise' I'd be lying."

"All the more--"

"Whoa," Naruto said quietly. "Dizzy."

They both fell silent.

Naruto soon slumped back against the cot, arm falling. Sakura stepped forward and grasped his wrist. Several moments after that, Sasuke let his hand drop to his side. He took a step closer to Sakura.

He wasn't sure if it was four minutes or three before she dropped Naruto's wrist and held a hand over his mouth. Sakura paused again, then touched two fingers behind his ear. And then she rolled her shoulders back, and moved his arm so that it wasn't hanging through the bars anymore.

". . . He smiled at me," she said quietly.

"We don't have time," Sasuke replied.

Sakura shook her head, and then nodded once. "I packed my gloves," she said. "So they wouldn't get taken."

"Does that render your strength useless?"

"No," she replied. "But it cuts it down a lot."

He bent down and burned away several more of the ofuda holding the cage to the floor. Sakura helped him turn it over.

Sasuke was settling Naruto on his back when Yuugao knocked on the door. Sakura and Sasuke looked at each other, and then Sakura fingered the needle of the syringe and called, "Come in."

"Please forgive my rudeness, Yuugao-san," Sakura said when the woman entered, "but we don't want any witness of the location where we bury him, to absolutely prevent a leak."

"Of course," Yuugao replied, keeping emotion out of her voice. "Hokage-sama already radioed me of your wish. You're free to go as soon as I check him." She made a motion, and Sasuke let Naruto slide off his back and onto the cot again.

Sasuke positioned himself at Yuugao's side as she checked Naruto's pulse. Sakura stepped up to her other side, but not so close as to make Yuugao even more cautious than she already was.

"Where did you inject the poison?" Yuugao asked quietly.

"The elbow of his left arm," Sakura replied.

Yuugao was already reaching for a scroll as she said: "The Hokage's poison is supposed to leave an immediate black mark."

Sasuke went for her arm.

His position was completely open--she could easily land a blow to his side or sweep out his feet in a quick movement. Sasuke wasn't trying to fight her; his only intention was to wrench her arm hard enough that she was forced to turn towards him with the momentum, putting Sakura at her back.

Even without her gloves, one punch to the vertebrae of Yuugao's neck was all Sakura needed.

Yuugao pitched against Sasuke, sending the both of them to the floor, even as Sasuke shoved himself back to keep as little of himself trapped under her as possible. He jerked her sword out as he checked for a slowing pulse, and then tossed it to Sakura.

Sasuke yanked Naruto back over his shoulders, and then hooked his arm through the one of Sakura's that wasn't holding the sword, and teleported them to the roof he had once been on that was closest to the alley Ichiro and Konohamaru were waiting in.

—

Sakura was still breathing shallowly when they appeared there, so Sasuke took three seconds they couldn't afford and adjusted Naruto to a more carry-able position.

"I didn't want--in our own village . . ." Sakura whispered.

Sasuke said, "Let's go."

The instinct that would tell them the anbu had been silently alerted and sent out hadn't activated by the time they reached the shadows in the alley. Konohamaru had already henged himself into Sakura, and an old backpack into a good version of Naruto, except that it was lacking the claws. That was what had been had planned, in order to make the few seconds they would pause in the alley appear to be the result of Sasuke and Sakura trading the weight, in case they were followed despite all protests. Ichiro was a perfect imitation of Sasuke, scars and all, except for the fact that he was a few centimeters too short--but that wouldn't be visible when he was running.

"I'm sorry," Sakura told Konohamaru, at the same time Sasuke said "Go!" to Ichiro.

Ichiro took off for the other exit of the alley, with Konohamaru a heartbeat behind. Sasuke and Sakura pressed against the wall that gave the most shadow, dropping Naruto between them.

Hinata wasn't in the alley, like she was supposed to be.

Sasuke reached back and took Yuugao's sword from Sakura. It was a proper ninja sword, shorter than his katana, and uncurved, but he could use it well enough if necessary. He pressed the blade along his leg to prevent any light from catching and reflecting.

"She's not coming," Sakura said under her breath, as she pulled out the syringe and held it as a needle.

"Thirty seconds," Sasuke replied just as quietly, scanning the area in front of him with the sharingan. "She's been late before."

Eight seconds later, the first blaze of fire went up on Sakura's side, indicating that the anbu had been deployed and that they hadn't run past Sasuke's gaze. He kept the sharingan activated.

Sakura let out a sharp breath. "That's your fire ju--"

"Count," Sasuke interrupted, refusing to look behind.

Nineteen seconds after that, there had been two more fireballs and he saw someone coming towards the alley. Sasuke tightened his grip on the hilt and shifted it out slightly, and heard Sakura tense in an echo. Then the person's chakra got close enough for Sasuke to recognize Hinata's features, and then she jumped over a roof and into the alley. She had the same colors of clothes as Sakura and Lee.

She started to speak, but Sasuke cut her off with a sharp motion from his free hand. Hinata nodded once and scanned the area with her already-activated byakugan. Sasuke shoved the sword partially into his boot and pressed his hands into the seal for teleporting. Sakura dropped the needle, reached back, slung Naruto's arms over her shoulders and then did the same.

Hinata finished scanning the area and turned back toward them, deactivating the byakugan and forming the same seal.

"Front gate," Sasuke said. "Sakura, left side, Hinata, right, three meters out. That's close enough."

"Right," Hinata murmured. Sakura left, and Sasuke and Hinata quickly followed.
-

Sakura and Hinata landed on their respective sides of the gate, and Sasuke in the center.

"The tree," Sakura called, and barely stopping to refocus chakra and breathe, the three of them teleported again.

—

Finding a location far enough from Konoha's walls that all four of them had seen was difficult, but when Sakura thought of and mentioned the tree, they all had known which she meant.

It was an extremely old maple, just under twenty kilometers from Konoha, which had been hit by lightning twice and was thus gnarled into an unforgettable shape. Lee was already waiting a meter away when they arrived. He hurried over with the packs, and then pulled Naruto off Sakura's back.

Hinata was already carrying her backpack and her weapons, so Sakura pointed her to the small bag containing Naruto's new clothes. "Help Lee dress him, quick?"

Lee traded Naruto's pants first while Hinata looked away, and then she fixed the socks and boots while he forced Naruto's arms into a shirt and a pale gray jacket. They both hooked his pack on, and then Lee tried to position Naruto across his shoulders in a way that wouldn't wrench his own backpack off but would allow him to carry the other teenager relatively comfortably until he woke. Sasuke strapped the katana to his back before reaching for his own pack.

"Are you okay?" Hinata asked, noticing Sakura's still-pale face.

"Fine," she answered, finishing with the first of her weapons pouches and reaching for her backpack. "Just . . . adrenaline."

"Ah," Hinata murmured. She hesitated, and then said: "I'm sorry, for being late."

"It's okay," Sakura replied. ". . . We almost went on without you. What happened? You were followed?"

"No, no," Hinata replied. "But I wasn't able to get out when I meant to . . . but Neji-niisan created a distraction while he on patrol duty, and that gave me an opening."

Sakura turned to face her, one hand stilled in the action of pulling Ino's scarf out of her backpack. "Wait, Neji knows?" She glanced at Lee, but he looked just as surprised. Sasuke also looked over from where he'd been studying the goldfinch that had settled on a branch near him.

Hinata nodded. "Yes. . . . He guessed a while ago."

Sakura started to swear, and then saved her breath and looked back in the direction of Konoha. "Then why didn't . . . isn't. . . ."

Hinata fidgeted. "I--I know it was presumptuous of me, but . . . I did ask him, if he wanted to come. He chose to stay in Konoha."

Lee nodded, slowly, and that was enough for Sakura to accept the answer as a likely truth. She finished tightening the straps of her back pack and began attaching her second weapons pouch to her belt.

"He . . . he wanted me to tell you all thank you," Hinata added, and then looked to Lee. "And, um, that--" she reddened slightly "--that you're a sentimental idiot."

Lee nodded again.

"Yes," he said seriously. "I get it from my father."

Sasuke, as the one who had done this before, gauged that everyone would have gotten their breath back from the large amount of sporadic chakra use that teleporting demanded and looked around. "Are we ready? Sakura, keep behind Lee so you'll be able to reach Naruto first when he wakes up. Hinata, stay near to the rear and keep checking for anyone following."

"Let's go," Sakura said, tying the scarf over her hair. "We have to get as far as possible--it'll take Naruto at least half an hour to get the drug out of his system." She tugged on the ends, and then let her hands fall and eyed the trees above.

Sasuke glanced back at the goldfinch, and it twittered before flying off. Lee adjusted Naruto one last time. Hinata checked that the weapons pouch on her leg was firmly attached.

And then they left.

——

Six nights and one extremely loud, frustrated, tearful and angry conversation between team seven later, they knocked on the door of Tazuna's house. Inari was thrilled to see Naruto again.