It takes Sai three days to head home.
He wasn't actively avoiding home or his siblings, but the time just...slipped away from him.
First, after the invasion had ended, he'd gone looking for Haku, since they'd gotten separated sometime during all the fighting. After he'd ascertained that the Mist-nin would live, he had gone to make sure Naruto and Sasuke were fine. Then he went in search of Shino and Shibi-oji.
Then Haku had found him again, almost a full day after they'd initially parted ways, and the other boy had looked pale and more shaken than when they'd been in the middle of fighting. Sai soon found out that it was because, out of the two Mist teams who had stayed for the final stage, only Haku, his jounin sensei, and a girl from the other team had survived the invasion.
"One of my teammates wasn't even ten." Haku had murmured after Sai had taken him to the edges of the Uchiha compound, near the trapdoor to one of the tunnels that led out of ROOT HQ. The Uchiha district was empty even of Sasuke, since Sai had somehow succeeded in persuading his teammate to stay at Naruto's, and was also untouched by the Invasion, so Sai felt safe taking Haku there.
He'd briefly considered taking Haku into ROOT proper, but instead they'd settled on the edge of the cliff over the Naka river, carefully not touching, both still too shaken up from the hours of fighting to be fully confident that they would be able to restrain their instincts.
Sai himself had no reaction to Haku's words. It was this dissonance between the two of them that made him realise that, despite Haku's difficult childhood and association with Zabuza, he was still, at his core, more human than Sai. That no matter how much Sai sometimes wanted to run away, to leave Leaf behind and find out who he was on his own terms, Shin and Sakura were and would forever be the only people who would ever truly understand him.
Who would look at his non-reaction to the thought of children dying and not even raise an eyebrow.
Because, despite Shin and Sakura's best efforts, he'd still been ROOT. The masks were a requirement for anonimity, but also because the faces behind them changed at such rates that keeping track of the people behind the masks - the orphans, the rejects, the failed experiments - would have required its own division, and time that neither Danzo nor the average ROOT agent could spare.
The meaningless deaths of children fighting other people's wars stopped affecting him long ago.
"I'm sorry." He had said regardless, the words tasting like ash in his mouth, not feeling much of anything at all.
Haku had smiled, though, a small, broken thing, and ducked his head, and Sai knew they were both aware that Sai did not share in his horror at the news.
But instead of recoiling, instead of demanding how he could be so cold, Haku had simply let himself list sideways, slowly, carefully, until his arm was pressed against Sai's and his head was resting on Sai's shoulder.
"Sometimes, I'm jealous of you." He'd murmured, his voice so quiet that Sai had to strain to hear over the roar of the river below. "And other times, you make me really, really sad."
They had fallen into silence after that, Sai not sure how to respond, Haku having seemingly said his piece. Minutes, maybe hours passed, neither of them moving, the only sounds around them the roaring river and the critters coming out of the woods once nighttime fell. Then, when Sai's arm had gone well and truly numb, and his fingers stiff from cold, Haku had sighed, a small, almost wistful sound, at odds with the situation that had brought him here.
"What are you thinking about?" the question had slipped out almost involuntarily, a whisper on the nighttime breeze, so quiet he hadn't been sure Haku was awake enough to hear.
"That I wish you could come with me to Mist." Haku had replied, still with that wistful air, and Sai had frozen, though not just from the cold. "Hunter-nin in Kiri work in pairs."
I wish you could come with me to Mist.
Sai had not foreseen this development.
He...had not had a clue what to do.
He'd been surprised, but pleasantly so at Haku partaking in a certain camaraderie with him - their friendship, after all, hadn't been so unfounded as for that behaviour to be completely unexpected. Haku joking about the odd sense of kinship that had developed between the two of them from growing up with even odder 'family models' had been fun, and discovering that Haku had a sense of humour had been one of the highlights of Sai's 'preparation month'; Haku consenting to and ocassionally initiating the stolen kisses between them during their 'training' for the final round had been another surprise, also pleasant, undeniably, but for Haku to form an attachment?
For the Kiri-nin to express wanting Sai around long-term?
"I thought that was a cover." Was what had come out of his mouth, his brain desperately needing more information while it processed the fact that someone that wasn't his siblings wanted him. "You being a hunter-nin."
"All good lies are forged with a grain of truth." Haku had replied, and Sai had known the other boy was smiling even though he couldn't see his face. "I certainly have the anatomical knowledge for the part, and I'm stealthy enough. With Zabuza-san taking over the jounin training role, I'll likely be assigned to the hunter division at least part-time when I get back."
Haku had very carefully not mentioned Sai's potential, hypothetical role in that assignment, but Sai had known they were both thinking it.
He could fit in the hunter-nin division, too. His creatures could track. He was solid in close-combat. He was almost fast enough to keep up with Haku without Shunshin. Their fighting styles were, as evidenced by their 'battle' and the team-up in the invasion that ensued, more than complementary.
It could work.
They could work.
And that had been a terrifying thought.
So when Sai drags Haku into his apartment two days later, needing a shower and food that hasn't been picked from a bush or found in a forgotten sealing scroll, he's not expecting to find his living room unexpectedly occupied by strangers.
A middle-aged man with greying pink hair and his leg in a cast is sitting on one end of their sofa, his cast stretched along the length of the couch. A blond, stern-looking woman is perched on the armchair next to him, looking similarly exhausted to the man but with additional lines around her mouth and eyes from stress. Oddest of all is the girl, maybe five, six years old, slight and black-haired, with a scarf tied around her eyes. She's sitting on the floor, a bunch of apples and potatoes around her, some peeled while others not, and Sai watches as she slowly drags the peeler around another apple she's got in her hand, seemingly trying to navigate not-seeing while also not breaking the ribbon of apple peel she's cut so far.
Sai blinks and closes the door behind Haku, and it's with the sound of the door latching shut that the adults on the sofa - civilians, they must be - both startle and turn to look at the newcomers.
"Shit." Sai hears from the kitchen, and then Shin emerges, looking tired and with hair far shorter than Sai remembers, and a scowl appears on his face the moment his eyes fall on Haku. "Let me know next time you think to bring strangers here." Shin snaps, his eyes sharper than the katana he wields, and Sai feels Haku tense beside him.
I wish you could come with me to Mist.
Before Haku has the chance to remove himself from the situation or imply that he should leave, Sai snags his wrist and keeps him there, because no. Shin doesn't get to do that.
"Likewise." Sai replies, feeling similarly cold to how he'd felt at the cliff-edge, but this time, he can't blame it on the temperature or his revelation. He sees the moment Shin does a slight double-take, apparently not having expected Sai to meet him head-on, so he presses. "Care to explain?"
Shin scrutinises him, the scowl he'd shot at Haku now directed at Sai, but his hand eventually flickers through distantly familiar signs.
Signs Sai has not had need for in almost four years.
Girl. Uchiha. Sharingan. Shin's fingers spell out, the ROOT code coming to him far too easily. Instead of contemplating that, Sai's gaze flicers back to the girl on the floor in the living room. If the people on the sofa are her parents, then they are definitely not biological, that much is obvious, even with the scarf obscuring half her face. If she is one of the Uchiha orphans they rescued...
Active Sharingan? he signs in response, the signs feeling clumsy and unpracticed, but Shin understands regardless and nods.
Sai sighs. He thinks he understands the problem.
"She can't turn it off?" He asks quietly, and Shin nods again. "Aneue helped Sasuke in the tower."
Shin's face flickers through a few complicated emotions too quickly for Sai to catalogue them, but he eventually shakes his head. "She's in the hospital. Concussion. Hasn't woken yet." Shin doesn't give Sai the time to process that news before he barrels on. "I thought to ask Hana, but it's- it'd be unfair."
Sai ignores the flash of bitterness that sweeps through him at Shin's declaration and turns to Haku.
"Your knowledge of anatomy wouldn't happen to extend to medical ninjutsu, would it?" He asks quietly, almost rhetorically, and Haku opens his mouth, but is interrupted.
"You're an idiot if I think I'm letting him anywhere near her." Shin declares, and when Sai turns back to him, there's an unfamiliar iciness in Shin's eyes. Or, familiar, but Sai has never seen it directed at him.
Sai takes a breath. Lets it out. Wonders, not for the first time, how he could've missed that Shisui had been the only thing keeping Shin's sharp edges from cutting them all.
"And you're an idiot if you think keeping her like that is better." Sai throws back, gesturing at the girl who's since stopped peeling the apple and is sitting, tense and wary, and clearly eaves-dropping.
"That's a civilian child, and that dojutsu is a leech." it'll kill her is the part he leaves off for her parents' benefit, but he knows both Shin and Haku hear it.
And then, not giving Shin the time to formulate a response, Sai turns back to Haku, trying to wrangle his face into something warmer, because Haku has done nothing to deserve his anger.
"I don't have a dojutsu." Haku replies evenly, keeping his eyes firmly on Sai's as he turns the wrist Sai still holds captive and grabs Sai's hand, interlacing their fingers and squeezing once. "But I do have some degree of proficiency with medical ninjutsu and experience with the ocular nerves and the associated chakra channels."
Sai apparently can't manage to keep all of his surprise off his face, because Haku smiles slightly.
"I move too fast for the naked eye to keep track of, but that also extends to my eyes. If I didn't enhance my sight, I wouldn't be able to orient myself, but if I didn't support the ocular pathways to handle the adjustments, I would've long burnt out my ocular nerves." Haku swallows, glances briefly at Shin, then the still-unnamed girl, then finally turns turns back to Sai. "If the problem is just...'turning it off', as you said, I should be able to do that."
Sai nods and releases Haku's hand, watches as Shin escorts Haku to the girl and let's him get to work. Shin watches Haku like a hawk, but Sai's focus is on his brother. It's not that he doesn't trust Shin, but Shin encapsulates ROOT's 'the ends justify the means, always' philosophy even if he tries to hide it, and Sai doesn't want Haku to get caught up in that.
He loses track of time, but eventually, after what the clock on the kitchen wall informs him was less than half an hour, Haku pulls away and gently urges the Uchiha girl to open her eyes.
A familiar muted onyx stares back at them, squinting in the sudden light that assaults her eyes, and Sai swallows, a quiet sound escaping him. Immediately, Haku is by his side, Shin startling at the sudden movement and Sai has a moment of incredulous satisfaction at the realisation that Haku is faster than Shin.
"Thank you." Sai manages, knowing that the words won't pass Shin's lips, and he reaches out for Haku's hand and laces their fingers again, drawing a smile from the other boy.
"Yes, thank you, shinobi-san." the civilian man offers with a tired grin, while the woman pulls the girl to her chest and buries her face in her hair with a shuddering breath. "We're in your debt."
"You don't owe me anything, sir." Haku replies, turning his head to the man but keeping his body facing Sai. "Heal well. And allow your daughter to stay a child as long as she can."
Something complicated passes through the man's eyes at that, and Sai realises that the civilian realises the gravity of having a child with a Sharingan far more than he'd initially assumed. Instead of replying, the man merely nods then turns to his daughter and opens his arms for a hug.
At that, Sai squeezes Haku's hand, drawing the teen's attention.
"You ready?" he checks, and Haku smiles, nodding, though he tilts his head at Shin, a question in the arch of his brow, but Sai shakes his head.
But before they can head off though, Shin speaks up. "You're not staying?"
There's an odd note in Shin's voice, but Sai is too tired and distantly upset to read into it more.
"No." he replies curtly, wondering whether it's wishful thinking on his part to think that the brief flash in Shin's eyes is hurt. "You need to learn to be kinder to and about my friends, aniki. I love you, but I don't love you enough to keep apologising for you."
And so saying, Sai turns on his heel, his hand still in Haku's, and leaves his home and his brother behind.
"I hope you don't fall out with your brother because of me." Haku murmurs once they're out on the street, tugging Sai closer to get him out of the way of an oncoming Akimichi reconstruction team.
Sai blinks, looking up at Haku curiously, wondering how he could've come to that conclusion. He frowns, dropping eye-contact in favour of staring ahead and trying to collect his thoughts and explain his relationship with his siblings to an outsider.
"Shin and I, our relationship is...difficult." he settles on eventually, glancing briefly at Haku as he says it. "He's so busy honouring someone who's not here that he forgets about those who are."
Haku just hums, squeezing his hand again, and doesn't comment. Instead, he smiles, turning to Sai and tilting his head. "So, where to now?"
Sai tries for a smile back, and hesitates briefly, but, screw it. "Want to come with me to visit aneue?"
Haku brightens and waves grandly with his other hand. "Lead the way."
Pushing his gloomier thoughts to the back of his mind, Sai does.
Shin sighs, waving off Mebuki's protests with more aggression than she probably deserves, but he's past repeating that it's honestly fine if her and Kizashi take his and Sai's bedroom, it's not like him and Sai are going to be using it anytime soon if the way Sai had all-but stormed out of the flat is any indication.
Instead, Shin manages a tight smile as Kizashi steers his wife towards the room and grabs the scroll with his uniform from the bookshelf, glad that neither Sai nor Sakura are big fans of rereading the scrolls they've collected, as it allowed him to keep his second biggest secret literally hidden in plain sight.
As the door closes behind Mebuki, Shin hops onto the windowsill and out onto the busy street, navigating between the haggard shinobi, shell-shocked civilians, and determined reconstruction efforts as he tries to find a quiet alley he can change in.
But he's interrupted by a familiar howl, and he turns, just about twisting out of the way of the enthusiastic tackle of one of the Haimaru.
"Hana." He greets evenly, a thread of amusement warming his insides when all three of Hana's ninken gravitate to him for pets and scritches, much to Hana's mock-annoyance. "Good to see you."
"Likewise." Hana grins, sharp teeth on full display, and she rolls her eyes when one of her ninken whines when it deems that Shin hadn't paid it enough attention before switching over. "How's your protégé?"
Shin blinks, not following, and Hana snorts before she elaborates obligingly. "The Uchiha you saved-slash-traumatised."
"Oh," shit, Shin thinks but doesn't voice, having been too preoccupied with the developing situation of Kimiko's Sharingan and having three civilians in his space to remember to check on Sasuke and Naruto, "he was alive last time I checked."
"The bar is so low it's basically underground." Hana mocks, but there's no sharpness in her comment, having grown used to Shin's more callous ways. "Just wanted to let you know that the Toad Sannin is making noise about taking the blond one out of the Village to look for the Senju Princess."
Shin processes that, then squints at Hana, taking in her outfit. Nothing too suspicious, but- "Guard rota?"
Hana sighs, looking exasperated, but nods. "I hate that you just know these things. Some things are meant to be secret, y'know?"
"If you wanted them to stay a secret, you wouldn't have told me what you overheard." Shin points out shrewdly, scratching one of the Haimaru absently when the dog paws at his knee. "Which I appreciate, by the way. Thank you for telling me."
Hana shrugs.
"With Hatake-senpai and his co-teacher hospitalised, you're the next of kin, so you're kinda the next person who's got any say about what happens to the members of that team." Then, Hana's grin sharpens, growing more vicious than friendly. "Plus, the old man is a pervert and a misogynist, so anything you're going to do to ruin his day will bring me joy."
Shin feels an answering sharp smile grow on his face.
"While I would normally contest the assumption that I'm going to go out of my way to ruin someone's day, you've just given me the perfect tool to do so." He replies, thoughts whirring as he considers the possibilities of what to do with the information he's just been offered.
Then, his focus switches to Hana, and the girl takes half a step back, apprehension appearing on her face at whatever she finds in his expression. "I don't like that look. What are you thinking and how much do I stand to lose on it?"
Shin laughs, short and startled, his earlier ire temporarily forgotten. "How do you feel about going on a wild goose chase after a princess?"
He laughs again at Hana's flabbergasted expression and stashes his uniform in his pocket.
He may not have spoken with Kakashi since the final stage, and he may not have interacted with the Toad Sannin at all one-to-one, but he reckons an out-of-the-Village mission to bring back the next Hokage might be the sort of 'friendly competition' that will put Naruto and Sasuke back on their feet. And if he manages to get Hana on it as a guard-slash-medical-specialist, all the better. Hana's crush on young Tsunade is just as legendary as the Sannin herself, after all, and Shin can ocassionally be a good friend.
Shin gives out a few more pats and scritches, lets Hana pull him into a quick hug, then Shunshins towards the Hokage tower. Yes, checking out the results of the seeds he had sown in HQ is important, but first, he has an interim kage to accost about mission add-ons.
Shikaku isn't sure why the Commander had called him to ANBU HQ. Beyond the exchange immediately after the invasion had ended and the man's presence at his swearing-in as interim kage, the two of them didn't exactly interact regularly.
He also can't recall doing anything in his fortnight on the post that could have incurred the other man's annoyance to the point of summoning him to his lair. He got a weird mission add-on request from the civilian brother of the artist on Hatake's team, but his approval of it was more likely to upset Jiraiya than the ANBU Commander, so he should still be in the clear.
But, when a vaguely bird-like mask shows him to the empty training hall the Commander is waiting in, he has a feeling it's going to be a lot worse than getting bitched at for pawning potential ANBU recruits in the post-invasion round of jounin field promotions or approving the Toad Sannin to snatch two genin and an Inuzuka chunin for an out-of-the-Village mission of indeterminable length.
"Fourteen." The Commander greets when the doors close behind Shikaku, and he holds out a stack of folders until Shikaku comes close enough to take them. "Fucking fourteen."
"Fourteen what?" Shikaku asks as he begins flipping through the folders absently, aware that he doesn't have the information to even know what it is he's supposed to be looking at beyond redacted candidate profiles.
"Fourteen ex-ROOT that have been masquerading as my shinobi." The Commander hisses, the sound cold and vicious and haunting through the voice altering seals of the ANBU mask.
Shikaku stills, slowly lifting his gaze from the files to the man's masked face. His voice, when he speaks, is perfectly level, lacking even the barest inflection needed to make his words a question. "What."
The ANBU Commander snorts, angry and humourless, and gestures to the files in Shikaku's hands.
"All of them took the place of agents that had been KIA, though not on my missions. Fourteen fucking ROOT plants in ANBU, almost four years after Shimura went down."
Shikaku considers the information with the gravitas it deserves, not liking the potential explanations his mind offers. He's been toeing the line between loyalty to the Sandaime and the realisation that there are too many blanks and unknowns in the man's personal log since he took up the hat a fortnight ago, but this...
There are too many conspicuous gaps in information around key dates of the Village's history, too many cases of the evidence being right there yet still not pursued. Too many people too conveniently disappeared or disgraced or deprived of power, but there's still a leap between recognising that and-
-well. The obvious conclusion from this.
"How did you figure it out?" He asks instead of voicing his thoughts, and he feels the weight of the Commander's gaze on him and he almost thinks the man won't answer, but he's surprised yet again when the man huffs.
"One of my new recruits clocked number fifteen." He says casually, the line of his shoulders loose and relaxed despite the contained rage that had been in his voice not minutes previous.
"Can you call them down?" Shikaku pushes, and he gets the impression that the Commander is almost amused at the request, but he just shrugs.
"If they're in the building."
And then the Commander flares his chakra, a quick, stuttered pattern that means nothing to Shikaku yet must hold some significance nonetheless for those who regularly frequent ANBU HQ.
Shikaku doesn't feel any reply, but the Commander seems content to wait, so they do so in silence. Almost two minutes after the Commander's signal, the door slides open and a vaguely canine mask pokes into the space between door and frame, a hood covering their head and their chakra so carefully suppressed that Shikaku would've struggled to say it was a person at the door.
"You called, Commander?" a clearly male voice asks, the tone dry, almost mocking. He slips into the room when the Commander gestures for him to do so and nods at Shikaku, but keeps his attention on his direct superior.
"Jackal." The Commander greets, helping Shikaku put a name to the face. Or, mask, as the case may be. "Shikaku wants to know how you clocked Mouse."
The man – Jackal – turns to Shikaku and tilts his head, raising his hand to point his thumb at himself.
"I'm a sensor." he says simply, and Shikaku wonders whether he can name a single person outside of the shadow ranks who would have the same confidence in their voice when admitting that. "I'd felt their chakra before. They didn't speak a word the entire time, and I knew of someone else who had had a mission with an agent who'd turned out to be a ROOT plant, and they didn't speak a word then, either."
"Who? When?" The Commander asks, and Shikaku stands up straighter when he realises that the Commander hadn't known that and that, more importantly, Jackal hesitates briefly before he answers.
"Lizard. Around the time Hound had been pulled from the ranks." He informs, and Shikaku feels the Commander's chakra flare in indignation.
"That wasn't one of my missions." the Commander replies, and if it weren't for the mask, Shikaku would've said that the man sounds almost...earnest. "I knew Lizard had been KIA. I would have never approved that mission if I had known about it."
"I know, Commander." Jackal repeats, and he sounds almost amused now, though there's an undercurrent of what Shikaku almost wants to call gratitude. "Sensor, remember? I know you care for your agents."
And then he waves around the hand he'd raised to point at himself and waggles his fingers in a wave, a jaunty little thing that somehow reeks of Kakashi, and Shikaku officially has no clue who this man is. "Anything else?"
"If you recognised the ROOT plant, you'd have had to have known them before they were ANBU." Shikaku observes, having figured out what had rubbed him wrong about the comment that Jackal had felt their chakra 'before'.
"The Commander knows the circumstances of how I came to know Mouse, Hokage-sama." Jackal replies evenly, and it's not challenging, not outright, but Shikaku can read the carefully neutral tone and relaxed posture just as well as if the man had squared up to him. But instead, when he doesn't say anything to acknowledge the claim, Jackal glances between him and the Commander before asking, "If that's all...?"
"Go." the Commander sighs, sounding reluctantly amused though Shikaku has no idea why. "I'll let you know the time of the second phase sometime later this week."
"Looking forward to it." Jackal replies, and there is definitely amusement in his voice.
"You really shouldn't." The Commander replies dryly, and Jackal snickers and raises the fingers he'd waggled earlier to the forehead of his mask and snaps off a sharp salute. And then he's gone, a shunshin so fast and swift that there was nothing but the slight disturbance in the air around them to betray his departure.
"Sensor division?" Shikaku asks, because there were layers to the conversation he'd missed entirely, but there weren't many of those around the village.
And the Commander's chakra warms at that, cat-like in its satisfaction, and Shikaku is willing to bet that the smile he can sense beneath the man's mask has too many teeth to be friendly when he replies:
"Hunter-nin."
Inosuke wakes slowly, feeling groggy and disoriented.
He must be on a truly spectacular amount of painkillers because he can't feel anything, yet what he can see of his arms is covered either by gauze or a plaster-cast.
His muscles feel stiff and his mouth tastes like something died in it, so he must've been unconscious for a good while if even the med-nin's treatments haven't been sufficient in staving off the muscle atrophy.
He sighs, staring woodenly at the ceiling and wondering whether he isn't getting a tad too old for field work is he's averaging long-term hospital stay every three months. Then he remembers the inescapable ennui of desk-jobs and shakes the thought off so vigorously that his neck and side twinge angrily, and he feels it despite the morphine saturating his veins.
He presses the call button, suffers patiently through the check-up, cringes at the summary of his injuries and approximate recovery time, and heaves a relieved sigh when the nurse leaves his room and leaves him alone once again.
A solitary room despite the hospital likely being at max capacity after the invasion. Either the details of his last stint in Psych when he'd been this heavily drugged have spread to the hospital too, or Mongoose's intervention with the nurse the last time he'd been hospitalised has had an effect.
He snorts, then goes through the arduous process of arranging everything he can remember of the final round of the Exams into a coherent timeline, since, unless Hatake is already awake and has regaled anyone who asked with tales of vanquishing a teen jinchuuriki, he's near-on convinced that someone will come knocking for a report as soon as the higher-ups learn he's awake.
An undeterminable amount of time later, the window to his room slides open and Bear slides in, and Inosuke knows even before the man speaks that he's unlikely to be the bearer (heh) of good news.
"How do you look like even worse shit now than you did on the field?" his friend of too many years to count asks snidely, and Inosuke barely has the energy in him to raise a hand and flip the man off. "Regardless. I've come with what constitutes as entertainment for your bed-bound ass, so listen up."
Invasion, dead Hokage, Kiri kage out for blood over four of her genin dying, and oh, ROOT agents in ANBU. Fantastic. Fifteen altogether, not counting Mongoose, most of whom ended up in Assassination or Sabotage from what Makoto is saying, with a handful scattered across Infiltration, Bodyguarding, and Hunter-nin divisions.
"Did you also know," Makoto begins, having settled comfortably into the ugly hospital chair and relaxed in the relative safety of the silencing seal on the floor between them, "that there was a whole battalion of ROOT kids who were sent to fuck-nowhere with Cat and a bunch of your clanmates to be reconditioned ?"
Inosuke laughs, hoarse and breathless, hearing the note of annoyance mixed with genuine mirth in Makoto's voice.
"Is that where Cat disappeared to?" he asked roughly, recognising the wisdom of sending an ex-ROOT with ROOT kids, though it would've been nice to have been told about it beforehand, particularly from Makoto's perspective. "And there're so many of us that I didn't actually notice, believe it or not."
"The fact you mostly sleep in HQ wouldn't have helped that either." His friend grouches, tilting his head to scratch at the burn scar on his throat, more than used to Inosuke's weird sleeping habits. "But yeah, Jackal led us to a sealed drawer in the Sandaime's desk. Shit was Byakugan-proof, can you believe that? Probably Sharingan-proof, too, but we didn't exactly have a tester."
"Uzushio-made, then." Inosuke concludes easily, trying to shift in his bed to a more comfortable position, especially if it happened to be one which allowed him to see the now-open window better. "Probably commissioned during his first term."
Makoto's mask turns to him, and Inosuke gets the feeling that the man is studying him, though his signature reveals nothing.
"For some reason, I expected you to be more thrown by this." His friend observes, and Inosuke snorts before he can catch himself.
"What? The Sandaime having his own secret drawer full of shady mission reports literally hidden in plain sight? Nah." He replies, stretching as best as he can without moving either of his arms and feeling his neck crack pleasantly. When he next speaks, it's idle, joking, almost a drawl, "Next you'll tell me the Massacre was a cover-up or something."
Makoto is silent for a moment too long.
Inosuke snaps to attention, his humour long forgotten, and pins his friend with a disbelieving stare, daring him to deny it. Waiting for him to, if he's being honest.
"There's paperwork." Makoto says slowly, not even trying to deny it. "A paper trail, even."
Inosuke's about to ask why, how, when, but in testament to how long they've known each other, Makoto just holds up a hand.
"It's coded, so Shikaku himself is on it, but…we've got Weasel and Dove, so far." That's almost damning by itself. Uchiha Itachi and Uchiha Shisui, and, oh, does Inosuke wish Mongoose hadn't told him about Shisui, because now he has to tell Makoto, but-
"I know Dove's alive." Makoto says dryly, cutting off Inosuke's spiralling thoughts. "Jackal told me."
"You trauma bonded?" Inosuke drawls, purely to get his mind off the impossibility of the scenario of Mongoose's brother actively sharing secrets.
"Oh, fuck off." Makoto scoffs, though he doesn't deny it. "But sort of. I pressed him for details on the extent of ROOT fuckery. Then had to put him on border guard duty for when the funeral's scheduled, cause I'm pretty sure he'd defecate on the old man's casket then set it on fire if given the chance."
Inosuke cringes at the imagery, scowling at his friend.
"Charming." He retorts dryly, really wishing for full use of his arms so he can properly flip Makoto off. "And Mongoose?"
Makoto hesitates, and Inosuke's attention on his friend sharpens even more.
"Don't look at me like that." Makoto huffs, and Inosuke can read his annoyance even through the mask. "Shikaku tagged along when the kid's summons led me to your dumb ass. He saw the Mokuton and the summons."
Inosuke waits, because while that it not fantastic news, it doesn't explain why Makoto has hidden his chakra completely and adjusted his posture to his more business-like one.
"Beyond her physical injuries," Makoto starts, and Inosuke doesn't consider that to be a good start, "kid also used natural chakra. Don't know how she didn't turn to stone, but I'm citing Shodaime bullshit, since it was his forest that you decided to fight a jinchuuriki in."
Inosuke still doesn't speak, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and Makoto doesn't disappoint.
"Well, whatever she did, she overloaded her coils with nature energy. She fucked up her pathways and had twigs and leaves growing out of her skin when we found her, and removing one twig just resulted in another two growing in its place." He sighs, a frustrated, explosive thing, and scratches his scar again. "At least until they sealed her chakra."
Inosuke's own chakra must do something at that, because Makoto laughs, short and bitter, and holds out a hand again. "Temporarily. She's too good a tool to cripple permanently, and at least for now, they've got the convenient excuse of waiting until she wakes up naturally from her concussion."
"And then?" Inosuke presses, because that doesn't sound like the conclusion Makoto had seemed to be building up to.
"And then they'll let the Senju Princess decide what to do with her." Makoto concludes, finally sagging back against the seat. "Shikaku's citing Mokuton and her medical prowess as 'proof' of her heritage, since Gekko's magical recovery was in full view of the normal corps and she's too young to have been the snake's experiment."
"Fucking fantastic." Inosuke sighs, wishing yet again for the ability to move his arms and pinch the bridge of his nose, but he settles for a very empathetic rolling of his eyes. He can't help Mongoose in his current state, and getting angry at Shikaku won't solve anything. "Alright, tell me about the new recruits now. How dumb is this batch?"
"So dumb." Makoto sighs as well, and he actually sounds despairing, though there's also the thread of schadenfreude in his voice that they long ago stopped hiding from each other.
New recruits are like puppies; mostly hapless and clueless and overenthusiastic, but occasionally, they get one or two who know when and where to bare their teeth and bite, but those're getting fewer and further between with every war-free year that passes.
That's Makoto's problem, though. Inosuke's happy to get his info second-hand so he knows who to look out for, and, at the same time, be an outlet for his friend to bitch and be petty. It's therapeutic, almost, if he tilts his head and squints.
And incredibly funny.
"My left sandal has a higher IQ than Ferret, I swear-!"
Kakashi sighs as he climbs leisurely up to the top of the Hokage Mountain, for once obeying the medic's orders to avoid strenuous activity and chakra use, his thigh still feeling tender despite Tsunade herself checking him over.
The Sandaime's funeral had been rough for them all, but especially for Asuma, and while Kakashi was occasionally a dick, he was not so much of a dick as to abandon Asuma to face it alone. While he wasn't as close to the Third as Naruto, the man had been a constant presence in his life even before his father had died. Kakashi had been intent enough on the ceremony to ignore the panic clawing at his insides, (anotheronegone!!!) but then the damn Elders had walked up to where he'd been standing with the other jounin and dared asked Asuma whether he 'planned to take his father's seat anytime soon'. He'd been grateful Aizawa had had the foresight to clamp a restraining hand on Kurenai's shoulder, because the look in her eyes had been far from kind when she'd glared at the Elders.
Asuma had paled beneath his tan and gone nearly catatonic for the remainder of the ceremony. Afterwards, Kakashi hadn't had a good enough reason to refuse when Kurenai had wordlessly started steering them both towards the bar.
And so Kakashi had been tugged along, resigned to nursing a beer and watching Asuma and Kurenai drown their sorrows, waiting for the moment they got far enough into their bottles to not mind him slipping away. They're friends, have been for over two decades, but things have been a bit tense between them since the Chunin Exams, so Kakashi didn't feel as guilty as he probably should've about planning his escape.
So he waited until Asuma shifted his priorities from 'drowning his sorrows' to 'getting horizontally drunk', Kurenai more than happy to match him, then drained the last of his beer, wincing at the wet patch on his mask pressing against his lips, and slipped out.
Asuma hadn't so much as lifted his head, but Kurenai had glanced at him long enough to shoot him a small sad smile and nod a goodbye, then turned back to her bottle and Asuma.
Which is how he ended up on the stairs to the top of the Hokage Mountain, needing the peace and quiet and serenity that came with perching on sensei's hair spikes and gazing out over the Village he'd died to defend. The memorial stone would probably be too busy still, a lot of people likely running with the mood brought on by the funeral to do their rounds and pay their respects, and Kakashi isn't too keen on the prospect of human interaction when he still feels so raw.
He gets to the top and heads for Minato's head, then pauses.
Someone is already there.
A familiar someone.
Kakashi blinks a few times, but the image of Shin, perched on Tobirama's hair, his own hair shorter than the last time Kakashi had seen him, and a bag of what looks like multiple bottles of alcohol by his thigh, doesn't go away. Kakashi hesitates, not sure whether to pretend he didn't notice the teen or to approach, not sure whether he'd be welcome if he tried to. Shin is volatile and callous and rough around the edges, yet something in him is also familiar enough that Kakashi feels himself relax almost without conscious input from his brain.
And then, Shin makes the decision to approach for him, because he glances at him, and Kakashi's somewhat taken aback by the small smile pulling at the corners of the teen's lips; there's none of the usual hostility in his gaze, and once he makes eye-contact, Shin lowers the bottle from his mouth and blinks at him.
"Hey Kakashi." He greets absently, and Kakashi startles at the casual address. He takes in the group of five empty bottles placed strategically on Shin's other side and raises an eyebrow, slowly ambling closer when he's not immediately chased away.
"Drowning your sorrows?" He asks dryly, and Shin surprises him by snorting, his lips curling into an almost grin, amusement in his eyes when he lifts his bottle in a mock toast and replies:
"Celebrating."
Kakashi watches as the teen brings the bottle to his lips and drains the last of its contents, then puts it aside with the other empty bottles and glances consideringly at Kakashi.
"You need anything?"
The amusement from earlier is still apparent in Shin's eyes, and a small, self-deprecating smile joins the fray when he asks, and Kakashi wonders how it's possible for the teen to have been more expressive in the last two minutes than the almost year Kakashi's known him.
He gives himself a brief moment to wonder whether he isn't walking into a trap, then carefully settles on the Nidaime's hair spike about three metres to the left of Shin's, giving the teen enough space to hopefully prevent him from feeling crowded and lashing out.
Once seated, Kakashi takes the chance to look out at the Village and take a deep breath.
Expressive Shin. He's not sure he knows how to deal with that. Also, Shin who drinks, and apparently drinks regularly enough that five bottles isn't enough to affect his speech.
"Here." Shin says some time later, maybe seconds or minutes, Kakashi isn't quite sure, and he turns to find Shin rifling through the plastic bag by his thigh and holding out a bottle to Kakashi. "Cheers."
"Thanks." Kakashi replies after a beat, accepting the offering and lifting his bottle in silent toast. Shin nods, then turns away when Kakashi unscrews the cap of the beer, seemingly to peer out at the Village, but Kakashi finds the movement too conveniently timed to be accidental.
Still, Kakashi pauses before he actually pulls down his mask, a habit more than genuine hold up, then bites the bullet and bares his face, taking a sip of the beer and promptly finding himself surprised at the sharp aftertaste.
"It's ginger, not poison." Shin informs him dryly when Kakashi pulls his mask back up and tries to relax against the unforgiving rock. He glances at Shin and finds the teen is still not looking at him, though he can see the amused smile that's playing around his lips even from his side-profile. "Just in case you're wondering."
When Kakashi only huffs, Shin looks at him properly, studying him, then turns to properly face Kakashi and cracks his neck, settling back against his more bench-like spike with a sigh.
Kakashi can't help noting how relaxed the teen seems, and it's not the tense-relaxed posture most shinobi adopt between missions but genuine calm. His shoulders are loose, his muscles lax, and there's something in Shin's expression that Kakashi has never seen on the teen before, and he's voicing his thoughts before his brain quite catches up.
"You seem comfortable." Kakashi muses, lifting his bottle to his lips again to quash the instinct that demands he Shunshin away and hide out at his apartment, because his brain is clearly intent on looking a gift horse in the mouth.
To his surprise, Shin just snorts, and it's not derisive but entertained, and he shoots Kakashi a considering look.
"You ever lived in fear, Kakashi?" He asks absently, swirling the beer around in the bottle before he takes another drink.
Kakashi hums instead of commenting on the non-sequitur, and he lets himself study Shin right back.
"Once or twice." He deflects, because he's not going to think about those first few months after Sakumo's death, the death-glares he'd received on the streets, the merchants refusing to sell him their wares, the outright threats that didn't cease until Minato took to escorting him around the Village-!
Kakashi shakes his head to try and physically dislodge the thoughts from his head and he focuses back on Shin, only to find the teen already looking at him, an unreadable expression on his face.
"Yeah, well." Shin huffs, and Kakashi's surprised that he's willing to let his obvious spacing-out go without comment. "I've done it for the last twelve years. Now, both of the shadows that loomed over me and my family are gone. So yeah, I guess I'm comfortable."
Kakashi blinks, trying to assimilate the information.
Twelve years is a long time, for one. And it could be a coincidence, but-
"You were taken after the Kyuubi attack?"
Kakashi resists the urge to groan and cover his face, the question having once again slipped out without conscious input from his brain, but it seems Shin is in a really good mood because he just hums.
"Mmhm." He swirls the beer around in his bottle and doesn't look at Kakashi when he adds, "The Yondaime was dead, half the Village levelled. Nobody cared about a few disappearing orphans." Something bitter twists his lips then, and the expression is the most familiar to Kakashi out of all Shin's shown so far, though it's a lot more pronounced than he's used to seeing it on the teen. "Wasn't like the Village was going to run short on orphans at that point."
Kakashi doesn't hide his wince at the words and finds himself wanting something stronger than the beer in his hand. He's contemplating another drink, wondering whether he's willing to deal with wet-mask against his face, when Shin sighs again.
"I don't care about your face, Hatake." He huffs, pointing at him with the neck of his bottle. "You could have fish-lips or be model-gorgeous or completely faceless and I'd still think you're an overgrown child who never learned to play nice with the other kids in the sandbox."
Kakashi stares at the teen for a moment then shakes his head, feeling reluctantly amused despite himself at the complete assassination of his character. And the fact that Shin's not exactly wrong.
"I'll feel naked." He complains, mostly to be a brat, though he's also somewhat wary of someone as perceptive as Shin seeing all his expressions uninhibited. "And it's not just the Inuzuka who have sensitive noses, you know."
Shin scoffs, and he finally sends him the judgemental look Kakashi's been expecting since he sat down.
"Twenty-six years on this earth and you haven't figured out how to block your nose with chakra?" he asks, sounding long-suffering. "Come here, idiot."
And Shin extends a hand, raising it to Kakashi's eye-level, making an impatient gesture with his fingers, clearly expecting Kakashi to cover the distance between them.
And Kakashi has no idea what to do, because he's not familiar with this Shin in the least. He blinks, considers the outstretched hand, presses the bottle against his masked lips and takes a long sip anyway. Then, he lowers the bottle, decides fuck it, stands up and makes his way over to Shin.
When he crouches again, an arms' length away from the teen, Shin grins, sharp and pleased, and-hello, sharp canines, Kakashi thinks absently, but then as Shin's fingers make contact with his nose, there's a tiny pulse of chakra, and suddenly Kakashi can't smell anything.
He startles, jerking back, eyeing Shin warily. He can still breathe through his nose perfectly fine, it's not blocked in the slightest, it doesn't hurt, but he can't smell anything. Not the late summer air, not the gardenias blooming a few dozen metres up the mountain, not the sharp tang of the beer stain on his funeral shirt from when he'd leant against the bar ordering drinks. He can't even smell the subtle detergent he uses to wash his mask.
He blinks, more than a little disbelieving, and considers Shin. He gives it five seconds, then yanks his mask down so it pools around his neck and brings the bottle to his lips, draining the remaining three-quarters of its contents in one go.
"Okay." He says when he's done, feeling only a little hysterical, and he raises a hand and wipes his mouth with the back of it, pushing his empty bottle to join Shin's collection at the same time. "Okay. What the fuck?"
Shin laughs, short and startled and entertained, and takes another drink.
"You looked uncomfortable. I had a solution. It's not as complicated as you're making it seem." Shin eyes him then, amused and comfortable, and nothing in his expression implies that he so much as noticed that Kakashi pulled his mask down.
"Besides," Shin adds when Kakashi just stares, "I always go by your chakra when I want to know what you're thinking, so this doesn't change anything."
Kakashi stills.
Then, he grabs the second bottle from Shin's bag and unscrews it with gusto, taking another large drink before he even tries to process that.
"Sensor?" he asks at last, a good minute later.
"Took you long enough." Shin grins, and he sounds so smug that Kakashi wants to smack him. He kicks his foot out instead, knocking a loose stone so it hits the teen's thigh in retribution.
"Oi." Shin protests, but his smile doesn't fade, something which Kakashi is both glad for and disturbed by.
"How drunk are you?" Kakashi demands, though even he can hear the amusement in his own voice. He's oddly relaxed, and he's scared that if he studies the feeling too closely it'll go away, so he just leans back on his hand and takes another drink.
"Not enough as to be able to blame what I'm about to say on alcohol, alas." Shin replies with a heavy sigh, though he's still smiling, smaller now, but no less there. "But I'm in a good mood and feeling charitable, so." he adds with a loose shrug.
Kakashi tilts head, but when Shin speaks, he realises that nothing would've been able to prepare him for the words that come out of the teen's mouth:
"Shisui's alive."
Shin says it casually, like a simple fact of life, and with so much certainty that Kakashi suspects he confirmed that fact for himself quite recently.
"I know you ran a few missions together, before." Shin continues casually, gazing out over the Village again, as if unaware that Kakashi's higher brain functions have completely left the building. "He always considered you a friend though, even if it wasn't reciprocated, and I know he won't mind you being one of the first to know."
Kakashi hasn't moved, hasn't blinked, he's not even sure if he's breathed since the words 'Shisui's alive' passed Shin's lips.
To his surprise, Shin lets him process in peace, falling silent after delivering his bombshell. Kakashi's not sure how long he spends staring into space, but he blinks back to awareness when Shin rustles through the bag and presses another bottle into his hand.
"This one's vodka." Shin informs him when Kakashi woodenly raises his eyes from the clear bottle in his hand to the teen. "You look like you might need it."
Kakashi wonders whether he really looks as shaken as he feels if Shin got that impression, then he decides that he'd probably rather not know. He raises the bottle to his lips and takes a gulp, feeling the burn of the alcohol snap him out of his stupor somewhat.
"You knew." He rasps, putting the bottle down on the rock between them and eyeing Shin flatly. It's not a question. "For five years, you knew."
"I did." Shin agrees, and he doesn't look amused anymore, but he's still unusually open, more guarded than before but still forthcoming, and Kakashi doesn't know what to do. "And I'm not sorry for keeping it a secret. It wouldn't have been safe for Shisui here, no matter how much I would've liked to have him near, or how helpful it would've been for Sasuke to be with family."
"But now it is?" Kakashi presses, reaching for another beer, giving the vodka a wide berth, even if his goal has officially shifted from 'keeping a semi-friend company' to 'getting sloshed'.
"That's a conversation we both need to be sober for." Shin replies, the corner of his lips ticking up in a rather wry smile. "But yes."
"I'm not planning to be sober for a while after this." Kakashi confesses, lifting the bottle to his lips again as if to make a point.
"Lucky for you, neither am I." Shin grins, toasting again, before he too takes another drink, which Kakashi is only too happy to mirror.
Despite himself, he finds himself laughing. It's a rough, exhausted, incredulous huff of a laugh, but it's evidence of more mirth than he thought he'd be capable of feeling so soon after the funeral. He pushes his headband up briefly and rubs his eye, his Sharingan feeling oddly teary, and wonders what Sakura would say if she found out that Shin of all people succeeded at keeping Kakashi's depression at bay.
Sakura wakes slowly.
Her senses feel sluggish, almost lagging, her brain taking far too long between registering a sensation and translating it into something intelligible. Her head feels simultaneously full of cotton and like someone is tightening a vice around her temples, and there's a profound, disquieting feeling of wrongness lurking just under the surface of her immediate thoughts, though she has no idea what is causing it.
She doesn't know how much time passes before her ears register a beeping sound, and it takes her longer than it should to realise that it's the familiar slow, regular beeping of the heart monitor.
That tells her two things: one, she is in the hospital; two: she doesn't remember how she ended up in the hospital.
She tries to move her arm but only manages to twitch a finger, her muscles feeling stiff and alien to her body. She repeats the process with the rest of her limbs, relieved to account for all four, but the feeling of wrongness persists even once she assures herself she survived Gaara more or less in one piece.
And then she reaches for her chakra, needing to confirm, with the same anxiety that she'd checked her arms and legs, that it's fine.
And finally, the sense of wrongness is explained: her chakra is hollow.
She feels the heart monitor pick up speed, the beeping growing faster and sharper, but Sakura is busy trying to find even a little spark of her chakra but coming up empty. When she concentrates to the point that her head starts to pound, pushing back the panic clawing at her chest, she feels something alien over her central chakra coil, carrying with it something foreign.
Foreign chakra.
A seal.
"You can open your eyes, kid." A voice breaks through her panic, a familiar voice, and with a feeling not unlike breaking the surface of water after a long time under, Sakura gasps, blinking her eyes open.
For once, she doesn't have to squint at the sudden brightness, someone apparently having had the foresight to dim the lights in her room, and Sakura blinks quickly a few times, trying to clear the blurriness from her vision and get her eyes to focus.
Finally, when she can see more than blurry splotches of colour, she focuses on the body beside her bed and the owner of the familiar voice, almost unwilling to let herself hope that she'd been right that it was familiar.
Yet, Tsunade is indeed there, standing next to her bed, one hand on her hip, one loose by her side, and Sakura knows that, despite appearances, the woman is far from as loose and relaxed as she's pretending.
She can't fight the lurch her heart does at the sight of her mentor standing there, yet looking at her with not even a hint of warmth or familiarity in her gaze. This is Tsunade, yes, but it's not her Tsunade, and Sakura has to take a shuddering breath and ignore the lance of pain that shoots through her at the thought.
"Why-" Sakura croaks, her voice raspy, her throat feeling like sandpaper, and she instinctively raises a hand to her neck but stopped mid-motion, remembering that her chakra is sealed. She shivers as the full extent of her sudden vulnerability hits her, and she swallows, her throat burning. She looks around her room, partly for water, partly to avoid meeting Tsunade's eyes, but there is nothing on her bedside table.
She jumps, sudden movement from her right startling her, and when she focuses back on Tsunade, she finds the woman looking at her with a raised eyebrow, an unreadable expression on her face despite Sakura's familiarity with her shishou's many faces, holding out a green-glowing hand in silent offering.
Nodding, Sakura tilts her head, fighting all her instincts that are screaming at her not to, and gives Tsunade access to her neck. She feels the healing tingle of medical chakra soothe her throat and concentrates on the tiny excess that sparks off of Tsunade's fingers and siphons it into her own dried-up coils. It's too little to do anything with, maybe enough for a chakra scalpel in one finger, but the relief of tracking it as it zaps along her chakra network is worth the pulsing headache the effort costs her.
"Why is my chakra sealed?" she asks again as soon as her throat is healed, pinning Tsunade with a sharp look that she hopes hides the true extent of her anxiety.
"Why can you use Mokuton?" Tsunade returns equally sharply, and this is not the way Sakura had hoped to meet her mentor in this life. "You're too young to be Orochimaru's, and I've been the last Senju for decades."
"Everyone assumes Mokuton is a kekkei genkai." Sakura informs her shishou, parroting the words that the Tsunade had told her herself in another life, and her voice is colder than she wants, but the woman is not her shishou yet, not here, and that hurts more than she can explain. "But nobody ever stopped to think about what it could be if it wasn't one."
Tsunade stills, her face paling even in the dim light of Sakura's hospital room, and Sakura presses, pushes, injects all the confidence she doesn't feel into her voice when she repeats: "Why is my chakra sealed?"
And Tsunade wordlessly points at Sakura's hand, at the finger she'd tried to send the tiny zap of stolen chakra to, and Sakura freezes.
Her chakra never reached her finger. Instead, on the back of her hand, just under the knuckle of her index and middle fingers, where she absently recalls losing track of her stolen spark, is a tiny green sprout, a thin stem and two little leaves growing out of her very skin.
Sakura stares for a moment, then turns wide-eyed to Tsunade, needing an explanation yet being terrified of what it might be.
Tsunade, not quite sympathetic, but not as apathetic as she'd looked when Sakura had first laid eyes on her, smiles wryly.
"You should be dead." Tsunade says simply.
Not the first time that's happened, Sakura wants to quip back, but finds her gaze glued to the tiny sprout on her hand, her breath quickening at the sudden, vivid memory of throwing all caution to the wind and calling on the energy of the Hashirama trees around her to help her contain Gaara.
She'd used natural energy.
Tsunade is right.
But, despite how overwhelmed, scared, and confused she feels, Sakura knows that the consequences can't be as simple as having to deal with twigs growing out of her skin.
"What are you not telling me?" she asks quietly, her voice even, the panic that's eating at her insides somehow not bleeding over into it. Instead, she sounds calm; the way she'd been taught to talk with the nurses even during the most hopeless-scenario operations.
Tsunade appears both regretful and wryly amused, doubtless recognising the voice, though she probably doesn't realise that she'd been the one to teach it to Sakura.
"Medic, huh?" she muses, before she sighs, and her face takes on the business-like, no-bullshit expression Sakura's most familiar with. "I was advised to wait until you'd seen your shrink, but you look like a 'rip the plaster off in one go' person, hm?"
"Just tell me." Sakura huffs, finally meeting her old mentor's gaze, and Tsunade nods.
"Jiraiya can handle natural chakra but only in Sage mode, with his summons as conduits, but he had to learn how to do it for years. You channelled natural chakra, with no summon, no training, and no safeguard – which was moronic, may I add – and after overdosing on chakra pills barely a month previous." Tsunade shoots her a sharp look, and Sakura can't help the bitter snort that escapes her, the notion that her fight with Orochimaru had been only a month before her fight with Gaara seeming like an absurd concept. "The fact that you're alive is, frankly, a miracle. But what you need to understand is that you took on waves of wild, uncontrolled natural chakra. You overloaded your coils. We're still trying to understand the twigs, but my bet is that they're the leftovers of my grandfather's natural chakra, since you did draw on his forest. But, point is, your coils are still a bit fried, since you need to be conscious of the final stage of the reconstruction process, but even once the damage to them is healed, they'll still be too dilated for your usual use."
"My control?" Sakura asks, needing yet dreading the answer, but 'burnt and dilated coils' isn't filling her with a lot of hope.
"Shot through to hell, I'll bet." Tsunade replies bluntly, and while a part of Sakura's brain revels in the familiar bluntness, another part of her is freaking the fuck out. "You'll definitely need to go through the same training you ran your hyperactive student through, but it'll be months before you're back to so much as getting a fish to flop."
Sakura's breath catches in her throat.
She can no longer hear the beeping of the heart monitor, her ears ringing, the vice around her temples tightening to the point that her vision swims with tears. Months.
She can't afford these setbacks.
She'd been waiting for the Sandaime to die, hoping to start putting her plans into motion the moment she could be sure that her and Shin and Sai wouldn't have to keep looking over their shoulders or fear sabotage or suddenly being assigned suicide missions. Tsunade's presence in the hospital proves that Sarutobi is dead, but never in any of her plans did Sakura ever envision that she'd end up like this.
Crippled.
'All I have is good chakra control' she remembers snarling at Boshi-sama, back when she'd first summoned him, when Shisui's absence was a fresh, gaping wound, and their biggest worry was getting out of ROOT, 'That's all I've ever had'.
Now she doesn't even have that.
Shin was right, another voice whispers, but Sakura doesn't have the facilities to process that thought yet. Weakened, overwhelmed, and stressed beyond belief, her body gives up.
She passes out.