hello everyone! hope y'all have been well! i am smack dab in the middle of exam season, so if there are any weird syntactical mistakes, it's cause my brain has been operating in french or spanish non-stop for the last two weeks, so be lenient when you call me out ;)
also, please accept this 11k+ monster to tide y'all over till - and i know this is very mean of me - but at least mid August. i, unfortunately, do not write for a living, and as such, life sometimes takes precedence, so the earliest i'll be able to have a new chap out will probably be mid to late august. sucks, i know, but hey
now, i am as always ecstatic when y'all compliment my characterisation, and i am seriously over the moon that you seem to like my Orochimaru (also, to the small but vocal corner campaigning for more Sakura-Oro scenes? i got u, boo)
a lot of the stuff in this chapter is scene-setting for the ultimate showdown of my Fuck You to canon, but if anything seems to edge past Worldbuilding and more into WTFLand, please do raise it in the comments and I'll try my best to explain.
(Disclaimer #1: a line towards the end is inspired by AO3 halfwheeze's 'from ash and dust' so y'all who also operate in the MCU TeamIronMan circles, dont be surprised
Disclaimer #2: the mental breakdown was imminent and inevitable. hooray, the wait is finally over!
Disclaimer #3: Obito as the Big Bad FTW!
Disclaimer #4: gay rights!)
also, trying to science the Sharingan is impossible. enjoy the onslaught of nonsense that is this chapter's attempt to do exactly that 3
enjoy!
and happy 3 year anniversary to this fic 33
"You're dealing with Uchiha Obito."
Sakura frowned; she knew that name, of that she was sure. She'd definitely seen it before and she was almost positive she'd also read his file at some point.
Then she noticed both Inoichi and Anko had tensed, as if waiting for an explosive tag to go off, and she realised with a start that both were very obviously avoiding looking at Kakashi and –
Oh.
Oh no.
Sakura didn't have the same reservations as her senpai – she looked straight at Kakashi, wondering how he'd taken the words that came out of Zetsu's mouth.
Judging by his posture – shoulders stiff with tension, guard up, visible eye wide in disbelief – she was willing to wager that not well at all.
The door to the interrogation cell swung open and Ibiki's head poked out, a stern, stubborn scowl on his face even though Sakura's familiarity with the man's many expressions allowed her to read the underlying shock he was still feeling.
"Hatake," he began warningly, and Kakashi's head turned slowly, like a marionette's, until he faced Ibiki, though his eye was unseeing, "be reasonable about this. There's no proof that-!"
Between one blink and the next, Kakashi seemed to come back to himself, and before Ibiki was even finished speaking, he bolted.
Sakura was suddenly reminded of what Yuki had said all those months ago – 'Even Hatake, if he ever took you seriously, on an even playing field, would be out of your league' – she hadn't even seen Kakashi move. She just saw the door out of the interrogation viewing room swing open and listened as the vilest curse she'd ever heard escaped Ibiki.
"Damn it, Hatake on a rampage is the last thing we need." Anko groaned, but even she looked slightly shell-shocked.
"I can go look for him." Sakura volunteered, her mouth moving before her brain quite caught up with what she was saying.
Within seconds, she was being ushered out of the interrogation room by an apologetic-looking Inoichi and a smirking Anko; "Better you than me, kid!"
Sakura's obvious first bet had been Team 7's old training grounds, then the Memorial Stone, but even before she peered through the foliage, she knew she would not find Kakashi there. Wandering through the streets in the hopes of finding him in one of the bars also seemed futile – while Kakashi had many vices, she didn't think he'd immediately resort to day drinking.
Twenty minutes later, she had no more idea of where Kakashi might have gone than she had upon leaving T&I. Frustrated, Sakura tilted her head back with a groan, eyes sliding shut as she tried to think – in the last moment before her eyelids completely covered her vision, she glimpsed the stone spikes of the Yondaime's hair.
Minato.
It was definitely a farfetched idea, but as it stood, it was the only one she had.
Sakura fell into herself and found the Hiraishin tag she'd planted on the Hokage Monument, and with a swirl of chakra, she let herself fall through the disorientating here-but-not, and when she opened her eyes, she was looking at the Village from up high. Sakura made her way closer to the edge of the cliff, not realising she was holding her breath in anticipation until she released it with a gusty sigh once she spotted Kakashi's curled form on the Yondaime's nose.
Relieved, Sakura stepped out of the treeline and, not bothering to hide her chakra, walked over till she was just a couple metres short of Kakashi's precarious perch, choosing instead to sit on one of the hair spikes.
Kakashi showed no indication of having seen or felt her arrive, but Sakura knew he was far too good a shinobi, even in his emotional state, to have missed her presence.
Still, she knew better than most that trying to force conversation would have the opposite effect from the one desired and simply sat there, content to people-watch.
She didn't know how much time passed with her and her old sensei sitting in complete silence, but it was only once the red rays of the setting sun bathed the Village in a soft orange glow that Kakashi finally spoke.
"Twenty years." He murmured, voice raspy as if he'd been screaming. "Twenty years of-" he cut himself off with a sigh, and Sakura stayed carefully silent, letting him work it out. "And now this."
The sigh that Kakashi let out seemed to age him a decade – his shoulders slumped, defeated, and even with the mask covering ¾ of his expression, Sakura could see the despair writ deep into the lines of his face.
Then he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, to the same count Sakura had been taught, and cocked his head at her.
"You're an Interrogator, are you not?" He asked out of nowhere, and Sakura took the deflection for what it was. "Should you not be trying to get me to talk about my feelings and whatnot?" he sniped, and Sakura huffed a laugh.
"I think you're confusing interrogation with therapy." She pointed out, not rising to the bait, and smoothed the humour from her face into something softer; more open. "And I could. I just got the impression you wouldn't appreciate it."
She was paraphrasing what Anko had said to her after she'd interrogated Sai that first time, and it spoke to just how messed up they both were that some of the tension actually seemed to bleed out of Kakashi's frame.
"I didn't think you gave a damn about what I would and wouldn't appreciate, Sakura-chan." He pointed out, and Sakura refused to let the remark sting – he was right.
"You're right. When you were my sensei, and for a few months afterwards, I really didn't." she agreed, and Kakashi's posture shifted ever so slightly to face her more fully, tilting his head in an obvious 'but…?'. Sakura allowed her lip to quirk, the expression wry, even if her next words were sincere. "But you're the ANBU Commander, Hokage regent, and the most powerful shinobi in the Village bar maybe the Sannin."
"Flattery will get you most places, Sakura-chan, but I don't think it'll work here." Kakashi observed, but he didn't look quite so defeated anymore. "And besides, you did beat me in the bell-test."
"Maybe it will, maybe it won't." Sakura admitted easily, then shrugged. "I did. The same way I beat Sasuke. Through tricks, misdirection, and relying on you underestimating me." She swallowed, then repeated what Yuki had told her a few months back, the same phrase that had been bouncing around her head since Zetsu's announcement. "In a fair fight, you'd have wiped the floor with me."
"Maybe I would've, maybe I wouldn't." Kakashi parroted, and Sakura rolled her eyes, but it was undeniable that Kakashi was more human now, less like the despairing husk of a man she'd first found. "Is that why you won't fight Sasuke, then? Because you're worried he'll win now that he knows what you're capable of?"
"No," Sakura denied with a laugh, though it was devoid of humour, "I won't fight Sasuke because I don't trust myself to stop, even though I know he's not half the villain my heart says he is. I'd still kill him if given half the chance."
Kakashi studied her for a few seconds, half-lidded onyx uncomfortably sharp, then he sighed.
"So will I." something must've shown on her face because Kakashi almost smiled. "Not Sasuke. The other Uchiha. The fake-Madara." Then, face screwing up as if it physically pained him, he finished with, "Obito."
Sakura regarded her old sensei, a man she had first dismissed, then feared, then resented, and now, finally respected – a man who was perhaps the most human shinobi she'd ever met – and allowed her sorrow to show.
"It'll break you." She murmured at last, the words quiet and soft and weighing a ton.
Kakashi, in turn, just shrugged, the motion half-hearted at best; the expression on his face fragile.
"There's not much left to break."
That evening, Sakura did not go home. Not to Genma, not to Shikamaru, not even to the Ambassadors' Quarters; she went straight back towards T&I after depositing Kakashi in front of a nondescript block of apartments, having been unwilling to leave the jounin until he'd made his way safely down to the ground.
Whether Kakashi realised why she was so insistent on seeing him get down from the Hokage Mountain, she wasn't sure, but it was a risk she wasn't willing to take.
Then, a flash of familiar platinum blond caught her eye, and Sakura's mouth was moving before her brain had a chance to process what was going to come out.
"Ino!"
The blonde turned around, eyes searching for who had called her name before they fell on Sakura and widened.
"Sakura!" she greeted, though along the enthusiasm, there was also a fair bit of surprise. "Is everything alright? Does someone need me?"
"Ah, no?" Sakura replied, confused, wondering why that was Ino's first thought. "I just thought I'd…say hi?" she trailed off lamely, only realising how awkward she sounded once the words were out of her mouth.
"Oh." Ino managed, still visibly surprised, before some of that trademark brightness that Sakura remembered from her childhood took over. "That's fine then! I was just surprised, is all. How have you been?"
"I've been well. I mean- 'well' as could be, considering all that's been going on these last few months." Sakura explained, tripping over her words. "And busy. Mainly busy, to be honest."
"Yeah, I heard from Shikamaru about the Summit – you must've been under so much pressure!" Ino exclaimed, a sympathetic expression on her face, and Sakura remembered why Ino had been such an integral part of her childhood – the blonde's capacity for empathy was admirable.
"That's one way of putting it." Sakura agreed with a sigh and a lopsided smile. "How about you? Last I heard, you were revolutionising Seduction in Intel." She added, remembering Kiba's words all those months ago when she'd first met with both him and Neji about the latter's Hokageship.
Ino looked pleasantly surprised and a little flattered. "You heard about that?" She asked incredulously, cheeks tinging a little pink. "Yeah, I wanted something a little different and, well, Yugao-senpai was very encouraging when I first floated the idea when we got back from the Kiri Chunin Exams."
Sakura's shock was genuine. "That was over two years ago." She pointed out, trying to figure out whether there was something obvious she was missing. "I didn't realise you'd been at it for so long."
Ino nodded, looking, for the first time Sakura had known her, a little flustered. "Like I said, I wanted something different. Dad keeps pushing me to become a psychological profiler like him, but I think he's just uncomfortable with me working in Seduction." She explained, then her chin jutted out in the same way Sakura remembered it did when they were kids, and Ino was facing down some bullies on her behalf.
"Well, I like Seduction, and the stigma against it is precisely the reason I'm planning on staying in it as long as I can. Besides, I've only got one more mission to go before I can officially apply for a promotion to Tokubetsu."
Sakura, not for the first time since she'd met Ino, was seized with admiration, and an unexpected wave of nostalgia washed over her. Some of what she was feeling must've shown on her face because Ino gave her an odd look, shifting uncomfortably.
"What is it?"
"You're incredible." Sakura managed, her mouth jumping ahead of her brain, but once the words were out, she found she wasn't particularly pressed to take them back, especially when she saw how Ino gawked and blushed.
"I- what?"
"You're incredible, Ino." Sakura repeated simply, shooting her old friend a small, albeit completely genuine smile. "I could never do what you do."
Ino blinked, pupil-less blue eyes puzzled. "Why?"
Sakura shrugged half-heartedly. "I'm not half as pretty or determined as you for starters, and I've never been good with subtle cues and, y'know, the self-confidence you need to even qualify for Seduction. Plus, you're just, well, you." She explained awkwardly, waving the question off.
For the first time since they'd started speaking, Ino looked cross. "Everything that just came out of your mouth was so blatantly wrong I don't actually know where to start." She announced, crossing her arms with a huff and pinning Sakura with an unimpressed stare.
It was Sakura's turn to blink uncomprehendingly, feeling more than a little thrown by the sudden shift in tone of their conversation. "What?"
Ino rolled her eyes, throwing her arms up in clear exasperation. "Do you know how impressive you are?" she asked rhetorically. "You started out as this shy civilian girl, and now you parade around dressed like a samurai, you're friends with some truly terrifying people and you're one of the strongest shinobi I know! You're a legend, Sakura! Like one of the kunoichi of old my dad used to read me bedtime stories about."
Sakura could feel her cheeks heat up with every word that left Ino's mouth.
"I s-still don't see how that makes me in any way suited for Seduction." She stammered, feeling her mortification grow when the expression on Ino's face turned sly.
"Oh? Don't you know men love domineering women?" the blonde asked, almost leering, her eyebrows wagging in a way that reminded Sakura distinctly of Aoba and she resisted the urge to use her Hiraishin seal to escape the conversation.
"Not in my experience." Sakura managed, barrelling through her embarrassment, seriously considering just letting herself sink underground when Ino laughed.
"Shikamaru lets you walk all over him." She pointed out, and Sakura shook her head.
"He doesn't. The times he lets me have my way without issue are either when I'm right and he knows it or when it's the path of least resistance."
"What about your sword-boy then?" Ino pressed, and even though Sakura realised she was teasing, she still felt herself careening straight past embarrassed and into exasperated.
"Why does everyone keep calling him that?" she asked exasperatedly, mimicking Ino in throwing her hands up. "He has a name."
"Fine." Ino conceded, but Sakura didn't feel like she'd won. "What about Chojuro of the Mist? He seems so cute and docile, how he ended up with you and Shika of all people is a mystery."
Sakura blinked, afraid she'd misheard. Cute and docile? Chojuro?
"Cho is…probably the bossiest of the three of us." She told Ino slowly, wondering how her life had come to this. "But enough about me!" she exclaimed, jumping on the split-second of silence while Ino processed what she'd said. "Are there any boys in your life you'd like to tell me about?"
Ino burst out into bell-like laughter but cut off sharply when she realised Sakura wasn't joining.
"Boys?" she repeated sounding a mix of amused and horrified. "Are you for real?"
Sakura bristled a little, unsure what the issue was. "What?" she bit out, and Ino rolled her eyes.
"I don't like boys, Sakura. I like girls."
Sakura blinked.
Then blinked again, waiting for her brain to reboot.
Huh?
"But…"
"If you say 'but Sasuke', I'm going to hit you." Ino warned, and Sakura shut her mouth with a click. "I was a kid, he was popular, I was popular – it made sense for me to like him."
"But now…?" Sakura trailed off, trying to reconcile Ino, Sasuke's #1 fangirl, flirt extraordinaire if the rumours in the Chunin HQ were to be believed, with the girl who stood before her now and seemed to dare her to say anything.
"But now I'm dating Hinata, and I could not be happier." Ino finished with a dazzling smile, and Sakura's brain officially left the conversation.
"Hinata?" she parroted incredulously. "Hyuuga Hinata? Neji's cousin, Hinata? Has a crush on Naruto Hinata?"
"Had a crush on Naruto Hinata, yes." Ino corrected, looking amused, if a little impatient, and Sakura could see she was a step away from rolling her eyes. "She upgraded to the new and improved model in terms of blond-hair-blue-eyes. And yes to the other two."
Sakura laughed, happy and incredulous at once.
"How did you manage that?" She asked, genuinely curious. "I mean, I know you're amazing and once you get past your charming personality you're truly amazing to be around, but I didn't think your personalities were, ah… compatible."
"Well, they are." Ino announced, a tad defensively. "But we're keeping it on the down-low as long as we can. Hinata is training to take over the Hyuuga from her father, and he won't let her do it if he finds out we're together."
Sakura was speechless at the heartbroken expression that momentarily took over Ino's face. "He…won't?"
Ino scoffed. "Of course not. As the Heir, Hinata will be expected to have children. I can't give her that."
"Couldn't you adopt?"
"Byakugan-bearing children, Sakura." Ino explained patiently, and Sakura felt like she was five years old again. "Even if it were genetically possible, our dojutsu are incompatible."
"So…what are you going to do?"
"Hinata will become Clan Head. She'll dissolve the Branch Family as her first act as Head and remove the Caged Bird Seal. Then she'll abdicate and leave the Hyuuga to her younger sister. And then, she'll live with me."
Sakura stared at Ino, as if seeing her for the first time.
"Has she…told Neji about this?" She asked eventually, dreading the answer.
Ino blinked, then scoffed. "Of course not! It's a surprise for his birthday!"
Sakura let out a hysterical chuckle, feeling her head spin a little, hearing Ino's concerned 'Sakura?' as if the other girl was worlds away or under water.
"Just," she waved Ino's concerned, reaching hands away and leant against the wall. "Just tell Hinata to talk to Neji. They might find out some… interesting things about each other."
Her childhood friend raised an eyebrow, sceptical, but when Sakura waved her off, she nodded, darting in for a quick hug and wishing Sakura well before she disappeared in a shunshin.
Sakura took a few seconds to compose herself, trying to imagine how the confrontation between cousins was going to go, then took off in the direction of T&I.
Once in T&I, Sakura grabbed snacks from the vending machine and a thermos of coffee from the canteen and made her way down to the lowest levels, slipping unseen through the door to the shared Intelligence and T&I archives and resigning herself to not sleeping a wink.
She had the whole archives to comb through – her goal? Everything she could find on Uchiha Obito, along with anything that had been written or seen about the mysterious Uchiha in Akatsuki.
About three hours into her self-imposed mission, the door to the archives creaked open and Sakura's breath caught. She didn't relax even when she realised that it was Anko who'd stepped in, a paper bag in one hand and a notebook in the other.
"I'm not going to sic Ibiki on you, you can relax." Her senpai announced before tossing the bag right into the middle of all the papers Sakura had spread out over the floor, uncaring of the mess it made. "But if you're planning on pulling an all-nighter, you'll need a lot more sugar, so eat up!"
Sakura raised an eyebrow as Anko plonked herself on the floor opposite her and reached into the bag, pulling out a stick of dango and stuffing one immediately into her mouth.
"How'd you know I would be here?" She asked, because really, she was willing to accept that her and Anko thought in similar ways, but surely, even her senpai shouldn't have been able to predict just how stupid Sakura could sometimes be.
Anko shrugged, cheeks bulging with the half-chewed dango when she grinned. "It's one of the two places you shouldn't be in, but ones which contain information about Uchiha Obito. It seemed obvious." When Sakura just gaped, speechless, Anko shrugged and reached for another stick. "It was a toss-up between here and the Missions Office, to be fair. Thought you might've wanted the Uchiha's mission file."
"Oh, no, I've read that already." Sakura dismissed, turning back to the papers she'd spread out before her and adamantly ignoring Anko's raised eyebrow. "Back when I broke in to read Kakashi's record."
"Ah," Anko acknowledged with a nod, like that explained everything – and, in a way, it did. Sakura's teenage angst at her genin sensei had been something Anko was well familiar with. "So, what we looking for?"
With a relieved sigh, Sakura picked up her notebook and ran through the notes she'd made, taking a moment to work through her stream-of-consciousness scribbles of ideas that had struck her over the three hours she'd spent researching.
"Well, all we have as proof that presumed-Madara is, in fact, presumed-dead Uchiha Obito, is Zetsu's word." She began, and Anko snorted.
"And we'd rather not rely on that since it's, y'know, a dude with a plant growing out of him." She cut in, and Sakura bit back a laugh.
"Precisely." She agreed. "So, I thought to look through the files on Uchiha Obito to see whether it could be him, then I found the old Konoha PD files and was going to cross-reference any records of missing-persons since before the Massacre to see whether it could be any other Uchiha."
Sakura chanced a glance at Anko and found her nodding along, brown eyes narrowed in concentration as she scrutinised the papers on the ground between them.
"Then," Sakura continued, hesitating slightly – this was where her brain was stalling, jumping from rumour to conjecture to myth, but there was something shining at the end, some thought she couldn't quite grasp but found promising nonetheless, "then I realised that there's one more unknown."
And as she spoke, Sakura rifled through the files before her until she found the right one and pushed it over to Anko.
"Hoshigaki's new partner?" Anko double-checked, frowning as she flipped through the file. "All we have are ANBU reports and they're not exactly great literature. From what I've read, they generally tend to agree to him being goofier than you'd expect a member of a mass-murdering organisation to be, bit of a klutz, and-!" Anko cut herself off this time, eyes wide.
"-And his main defence is making himself intangible and teleporting." Sakura finished for her, having already had the same moment of disbelief.
"What are you implying?" Anko asked quietly, perhaps the quietest Sakura had seen her since her coma, looking up to meet Sakura's eyes so Sakura could see her sharp mind working diligently to put this puzzle together.
"I don't know." She admitted with a frustrated sigh, raking a hand through her hair. "I keep pulling a blank when I try to push this thought further, but it seems significant, I just don't know why."
"Break it down." Anko advised immediately, scooting closer, and Sakura breathed a laugh even as she diligently set pen to paper and paused to gather her thoughts.
"Right." She whispered, then began: "Zetsu said Madara is not Madara but Uchiha Obito." She murmured, scrawling first Madara, then Obito on the same line at the top of the page and drawing a tiny 'equals' sign between the two. "But… what if Hoshigaki's new partner, Tobi," she paused to jot down the name beside Obito's, "is Obito too?" she finished off, drawing another equals sign between Obito and Tobi.
"Which begs the question: what if the intangibility and ability to teleport are effects of Mangekyo?" Anko continued, grabbing the pen from Sakura's hand and sketching a line going down from Obito and Tobi's names, and where they connected, she wrote: Mangekyo=Teleportation?
"But then," Sakura pushed, playing devil's advocate to her own idea, biting at her nail in concentration, "what about Kakashi?"
Anko stared at her for a second, uncomprehending, before her eyes widened. "Sharingan. Shit." She put pen to paper once again and drew another offshoot off Obito's name, this one titled 'Hatake's Mangekyo?'
"Hiashi said," Sakura remembered suddenly, eyes wide and unseeing as her teeth worried at her nail and her mind worked in double-time, "that the key difference between the Sharingan and the Byakugan is that the latter is stable while the former volatile."
She let Anko tug her hand away from her mouth, almost unaware of the action as she recalled what the Hyuuga patriarch had said. "When I asked what he meant, he said that the Sharingan was always evolving, always mutating, while the Byakugan had plateaued, stabilised. He said that was why no documented second stage of the Sharingan was the same."
"And if the Sharingan is always evolving," Anko hazarded, staring at the paper between them, a frown creasing her brows, "then how different would it be, having been split between two different users for over two decades?"
"It's not teleportation." Sakura breathed suddenly, an idea hitting her with all the subtlety of a clap of thunder. "It's space-time manipulation."
"And Hatake can do it, but only up to a point… Find me that report about his fight with the puppeteer!"
Sakura scrambled to her feet, delving into the archives and coming back not three minutes later, already leafing through the aforementioned report.
"'Slowly, a small vortex opened up, not swallowing the target's heart as intended, but managing to absorb a barrage of senbon before they had a chance to deploy.'" She read out, almost tripping over the words in her haste to get them out. "'Destination of the senbon: unknown. Chakra expended: considerable'."
Anko leant back on her hands, her expression at once smug and wondrous.
"Hatake isn't an Uchiha. His body isn't built for the Sharingan. Hell, the bloody thing causes blindness in actual Uchiha, on him it must be a parasite!" she exclaimed, and Sakura nodded.
"On our first mission outside the Village," she recalled, her words matter-of-fact rather than nostalgic or bitter, "we faced Momochi Zabuza. Kakashi only beat him thanks to his Sharingan, and after the fight, he was comatose for three days. And that was just using the first stage of the Sharingan. I don't want to think what sort of damage the second one would wreck."
"But the few times he has used it, like in this report," Anko jerked her chin at the mission write-up still held in Sakura's hands, "he has managed a form of space-time manipulation."
"Like my hammerspace seal." Sakura realised with a start, drawing a confused glance from Anko. "My hammerspace seal is a pocket dimension I store things in." Sakura explained, baring her forearm. "Only difference is that I can access it at will because it's contained in a seal."
"And Hatake's is keyed into his Mangekyo." Anko breathed, catching up. "And his inferior mastery of the second stage means that he can send things to the dimension, but he can't pull them back."
"Which then means that Obito's intangibility and teleportation are him putting himself, or parts of himself into the other dimension." Sakura continued, grabbing the pen from Anko and crossing out 'time', and instead adding 'matter'. "Kakashi's Mangekyo affects space-matter rather than space-time."
"God." Anko sighed, running her hands over her face. "Right. Great. This makes sense. Pocket dimensions. Perfect." She mumbled, a tinge hysterically, and dropped her hands. "I fucking hate dojutsu."
Sakura couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up past her lips at her senpai's disgruntled grumble. "You and me both, senpai." Then, she sobered. "So, how are we going to present this?"
Anko did a double-take. "Present this? We're not presenting shit just yet, kiddo."
"But we have all the facts!" Sakura denied, bristling and confused, gesturing at the files spread out between them.
"No. What we have are leaps in logic and conjecture." Anko corrected, insistently but not unkindly. "And you might've never had the direct association with Orochimaru that I did, but you're my student and there's that unfortunate running parallel courtesy of Jiraiya, so trust me when I say that logic and conjecture just won't fly. We're not Nara."
Sakura frowned. "So… what can we do?"
"We can prepare an iron-clad case to present our theory in, and come up with answers for questions people likely won't even think to ask. Then maybe they'll take us seriously."
Sakura blinked.
She wanted to ask 'how many times has that happened to you?' because Anko's face was shuttered in the way it got when she thought back to the first few years after Orochimaru's defection, a time she still hasn't shared fully with Sakura despite their half-decade of acquaintance. Instead, she bit her tongue and reached out to lay a gentle hand on her senpai's thigh, offering her a small but genuine smile.
"Where do we start?"
The next morning, Sakura stood in Tsunade's office, her eyes bloodshot and underlined by bruise-blue shadows of sleep deprivation.
There were more people than she had expected to see – instead of just Tsunade and maybe Kakashi, it seemed like everyone of importance had been called in. Beside Tsunade, Jiraiya towered over everyone; Kakashi, Ibiki and Shikaku were all there, as was Shizune, in the most unobtrusive corner imaginable, and, to Sakura's surprise, Orochimaru.
Anko had, luckily, volunteered to take over most of the explanation, and Sakura had been content to stand back while her senpai went over everything in excruciating detail, and catalogued the reactions to what was being said.
For the most part, only Orochimaru looked unsurprised, and he was also the only one to not have asked a single question the whole time Anko had been speaking, and Sakura was justifiably suspicious.
"And you, Haruno?" Tsunade asked once Anko was done, arching an inquisitive eyebrow. "What's your part in all this?"
In her periphery, Sakura saw Orochimaru shift, but she ignored him.
"It was my idea to look through the archives in the first place." Sakura replied easily. "We didn't have anything to corroborate Zetsu's claim, but the Madara-pretender was clearly powerful enough and believable enough as an Uchiha to convince Uchiha Itachi that he was the founder of his Clan."
When Tsunade's reaction seemed to amount to a wordless 'and?', Sakura sighed and carried on.
"So I realised that we could also work through elimination. I wanted to see whether there were any records of MIA Uchiha who could've fit the profile and matched the rather narrow time-frame. And since I don't have the clearance to enter the archives by myself, I ran the idea by senpai and she agreed to take me there." She explained, sticking to Anko's suggested alibi.
"And were there?"
"No." Sakura denied, shaking her head in answer to Shikaku's question. "Like senpai has already said," she continued, perhaps sharper than necessary, and it may have been a trick of the light, but she could've sworn a corner of Orochimaru's lips quirked up, "there are only five documented Uchiha to have ever unlocked the Mangekyo, and barring Uchiha Fugaku, none match the profile or the age-bracket we're working with."
"Fugaku died during the Massacre." Kakashi pointed out, his voice devoid of inflection, and Sakura had almost forgotten he was there, he'd kept himself so still. "I positively identified the body myself on the night."
"Right," she nodded in acknowledgement of Kakashi's words, "and Uchiha Izuna died during the Warring States Era, as did, presumably, the real Madara. Uchiha Shisui's body was never recovered, Fugaku died in the Massacre, and Itachi in Pein's Invasion." She listed off. "So while I am loathe to agree with a psychopath, the theory of Uchiha Obito being the Madara-imposter is the only one that holds weight, especially when we consider the similarity of his dojutsu to Kakashi's."
Kakashi himself looked physically pained by that addition, and Sakura tried her best for an apologetic smile, but knew it likely fell flat. With a sigh, she allowed herself to fade into the background once again as she watched the reaction her contribution caused.
Thirty minutes later, Sakura had been dismissed, and she hoped that her relief at the dismissal hadn't shown on her face as obviously as she was worried it might have.
At the same time, she was far too tired to be truly concerned; the thirty-hour sleep coma she'd enjoyed when they got back from Iron had been enough to put her on neutral when it came to sleep levels, but with the all-nighter her and Anko had pulled to make this meeting possible, she was straight back in the sleep-deprivation zone.
It was that very exhaustion she would later blame for not noticing her company until a quiet "Haruno-san," rang out from behind her.
Sakura could recognise that calm, sibilant voice anywhere, and even as she turned around, knowing she would see Orochimaru behind her, her stomach still dropped with dread at the sight of his face.
"Yes?" she asked simply, of half a mind to just call on one of her Hiraishin seals and escape this conversation.
There were no witnesses, after all, and she was far too tired to deal with Orochimaru without feeling like she was playing catch-up the whole time.
"Would you walk with me?" he inquired, and it took Sakura a moment to process the words, not just because of the overly-polite phrasing, but when she did, she snorted before she could catch herself.
"Do I actually have a choice, or is the open-endedness of your question just performative?" she shot back, sharper than perhaps justifiable, but she was weary to the bone and Orochimaru had unique talent of putting her instantly on-edge by his mere presence.
"Of course you have a choice, you can always say no;" he began, but Sakura didn't let him finish.
"Great!" she exclaimed with a cheer she did not feel. "No, then."
She turned on her heel, simultaneously turning her back on one of the most dangerous shinobi the Shinobi World had ever produced. She got about five metres away before she had to stifle a groan; damn him and damn her curiosity for always getting the better of her. Her fear and fatigue momentarily forgotten, she turned back around.
Orochimaru was still standing in the same spot she had left him, and there was something – an air that was not quite amused, but almost…smug? – around him that made Sakura bristle.
"You were saying?" she asked sharply, breezing past the Sannin and not turning to see whether he would follow – she could feel that he was, that eerie presence mere inches behind her.
Later, she would marvel at her insolence, but fatigue was dulling her fight-or-flight instinct until Orochimaru became 'just another person keeping her from the sweet embrace of sleep' instead of 'the Sannin Orochimaru, madman extraordinaire'.
"I was saying that you can always say no," he replied, almost as if she hadn't interrupted him in the first place, "but I had a feeling you wouldn't want to."
Sakura shot the man a flat glare. "You don't know me." She bit out, deciding there and then to screw decorum.
"No." Orochimaru agreed easily, an undercurrent to his voice that Sakura didn't have the facilities to analyse just then. "But I know myself."
Sakura stumbled.
It was subtle; she caught herself a second later, and it would've been unnoticeable to genin, perhaps even most chunin. But the man at her side was so far from a chunin it was laughable, and Sakura knew there was no way he'd have missed that.
She gritted her teeth and elected to ignore it, barrelling through the conversation with the same mulish bullheadedness that got her started on this path to begin with.
"Was there anything in particular you needed me for?" she asked, aiming for amiable and managing icy politeness instead.
Orochimaru didn't laugh, but he radiated the same kind of lazy amusement she had once hated Kakashi for, and that was almost worse.
"No, although I must admit, I very much enjoyed yours and Anko's performance in Tsunade's office." He said, his voice smooth like honey and his words like barbed wire around Sakura's suddenly frantically-beating heart.
"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean." She denied coolly, adamantly not looking at the Sannin beside her as she let her feet take her through the Nara forest with a confidence she did not feel.
"Mm." Orochimaru hummed, as if he hadn't just accused her of lying to the most important figures in Konoha's power structure. "I have known Anko since she was half your age. She has gotten better over the years, but her tells, such as they are, are still the same."
In her peripheral vision, Sakura could see slitted liquid-gold turn to regard her for a second, then return to staring at the path ahead of them.
"While I would not go so far as to say she was 'lying through her teeth'," he continued, and Sakura could hear the quotations he somehow managed to put around the colloquialism, "the tale the two of you spun was just that. A tale."
Sakura could see three ways out of this accusation, and none of them ended in her winning.
Instead, she settled on 'what would amuse him the most?', because, really, who knew? Maybe if Orochimaru found her entertaining, he would be less likely to denounce her to Tsunade the second he was back in the office.
"Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't." she replied at last, taking the evasion for what it was, before adding, "But I'd like you to know that if we had just spun a tale, as you say, then the only reason we needed one was because of you."
Sakura stopped and turned to face Orochimaru, her eyes narrowed and her heart in her throat. "Her association with you hurt her. Still hurts her now. Without this tale," and here she spat the word, running out of patience and cares, "nobody would've even thought to take her seriously."
To her surprise, Orochimaru seemed almost…thoughtful. Melancholy.
"I had thought as much." He confessed at last, then resumed walking. "Konoha is very good at attributing blame to those least deserving of it."
Once again, Sakura couldn't quite help herself: she laughed.
"You can say that again." She muttered, tired and bitter and sick to death of hidden meanings. "It's quick to start you on the spiel of nationalist propaganda, but slow to forgive any transgressions, even if you commit them in her name."
Orochimaru hummed again and tucked his hands into the overlong sleeves of his kimono, a motion so innocuous Sakura almost expected him to pull a dagger out of one of them.
"I find it curious that you bristle at the term 'traitor', yet you criticise Konoha freely, often to her enemies. Don't you think that's contradictory?" he asked mildly, and for the first time, Sakura recognised herself as the prey in the power dynamic – when Naruto had used the word, she'd bristled, hurt but confident in her superior skills and connections. With Suigetsu, she'd put her foot down and ended the conversation when he mentioned the word, because she could.
But here, with Orochimaru of the Sannin, Sakura was so outmatched she knew that she'd get obliterated before her strike even had a chance to connect.
So she settled for honesty once again and shrugged uneasily, resolutely keeping her gaze forward to avoid the knowing glint in Orochimaru's golden eyes.
"I just don't think having critical thinking skills should be the same as treason." She said at last, voice quiet and weary.
At that, Orochimaru made a sound that on any lesser man would've been a snort.
"Then you've come to the wrong Village." He replied, silence falling on them in the wake of his words.
Sakura was content to let the silence linger for a few seconds while she tried to wrap her mind around the confusing exchange of the last few minutes, or at the very least compartmentalize.
Then, she sighed and came to a stop for the second time.
She looked up at the man who had haunted her nightmares since she made chunin, a man who she was still wary of, despite having had her world burn down around her, despite having faced another who had called himself god and won, despite having died and come back. But even she could admit that she no longer truly feared him, not in the way she used to.
(and in the deep recesses of her mind, she could even admit that what she really feared was that she didn't fear Orochimaru himself. He was death personified, yet she was no stranger to death anymore. What she feared most of all was the fact that she was beginning to respect the man almost as much as she hated him.)
Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and asked the burning question.
"While this has certainly been…thought-provoking," she settled on after a moment's deliberation, "I need you to tell me the truth. Why did you ask me here?"
And then she let her eyes slide open, met the Devil's gaze, and stared him down.
The Devil considered her for a few seconds, a universe of destruction behind those golden eyes, and then-
-the Devil blinked.
"Uchiha Itachi is still alive."
Orochimaru didn't know what made him do it.
He was not a man used to having whims. He was also not used to acting on said whims.
But it was a whim, and nothing more, that had pushed him to wait for the girl to come out of the Hokage tower, and that very same whim that then asked for her to accompany him.
When he was under the seal, he hadn't had the presence of mind, nor the need to reflect on his motivations; the seal controlled everything. Once he had been unsealed, there had been little time in which to make personal choices. He had then been allowed to leave and return to Oto after Pein's invasion, and once there, he was too busy trying to take the Village – his Village – out of the disrepair that his last decade of madness had wrought upon it.
His first truly free decision had been to offer the Uchiha the post of Jounin Commander.
His second had been to free all the subjects of his Cursed Seal experiments.
In light of those decisions, asking a little Leaf jounin to walk with him seemed benign. He could attribute it to curiosity; to the desire to see whether there was any truth to the rumour Jiraiya had started, to the accusation that she was like him. Like Anko had been. Like Kimimaro.
Why then tell her about Itachi?
These thoughts flitted through his mind within the second it took Haruno to process his words, and then it seemed as if her earlier exhaustion had been wiped clean – the girl's mouth was slightly agape in surprise, her eyes wide and fever-bright. But the fear he had expected to find at the mention of Itachi's name – the fear Sasuke had assured him he would find there – was conspicuously absent. Instead, all he found was shock and cold calculation, before those viridian eyes narrowed and pinned him with a sharp glare, her mouth now twisted down into a fierce frown, so very different from the studied, exhausted indifference she'd displayed earlier.
"My first instinct," she murmured, her voice deceptively calm but icy-cold with the promise of pain at the slightest misstep, and in the deep recesses of his mind, some part of him was almost delighted, "is to call you a liar and cut out your tongue, for good this time." She told him mildly, then closed her eyes and took another deep breath.
Orochimaru would've marvelled at that, once, had he not been captivated despite himself – even Jiraiya hesitated to relax in front of him, and this child who had been terrified of him not three moons ago now stood before him, voluntarily vulnerable.
"But." She breathed out, cutting off his thought process before he could contemplate that bizarre shift some more. Her eyes slid open, and the earlier cold was replaced by something darker, more resentful and resigned, "But, your last piece of advice, as convoluted as it had been, was true. And it was useful. So I will not. Instead, I would like to know one thing – what makes you think he is, in fact, alive?"
Orochimaru very nearly smiled.
It had not been his intention to get the last jinchuuriki dropped on him and his Village. It had not been his intention to get involved in the bijuu war. Warning Tsunade's Ambassador after she'd almost killed his Jounin Commander about Zetsu and Genbu had been another whim. And, despite the headache that the latter had caused, her solution to it had provided him with the perfect opportunity to put Oto on an even playing field with the other Nations, and give him the kage-ship he had been denied by Sarutobi.
Provided they survived, the Nations would be indebted to Oto. Indebted to him. And, by her choice of wording, so would she.
Orochimaru could not wait to call on that debt.
But for now, he banished the glee at that prospect and focused on responding to her query.
"There is a crow, outside my compound, by Sasuke's quarters." He admitted, and the girl's frown only grew more severe, the violence lurking in wait behind her eyes more pronounced.
"There are many crows in the world." She pointed out sharply, more impatient now, and Orochimaru could not help the wry curl to his lip no matter how he resisted.
"There are." He agreed easily. "But only one carries Uchiha Shisui's Kotoamatsukami in its eye-socket."
There was a moment that Orochimaru was sure she was going to call his lie. His fingers tightened on the hilt of the dagger strapped to his forearm, unnoticeable under the cover of his kimono sleeve, but reassuring in its solidity.
But instead, all that she did was grit her teeth and ball her fist to the point where he could see her knuckles go white and blood begin to drip from the creases. Seeing that violence turned inwards was an…unexpected and not wholly comforting prospect.
"Does Sasuke know?" she asked tightly, but whether it was fury that weighed her voice or fear, Orochimaru could not be sure. "Does he know his brother is alive?"
When Orochimaru slowly inclined his head in confirmation, her fist relaxed, the tense line of her shoulders eased, and expression smoothed out; the anger and roiling mess of feelings was no more. Instead, he was left staring at an empty husk of a girl, her eyes empty, her face devoid of all emotion.
"I need to find him." She said simply and turned on her heel.
Amused and, despite his best intentions, intrigued, Orochimaru followed.
Sakura was shaking.
Her mind was the same disquieting, cold emptiness devoid of errant thoughts or feelings it had been when she'd first been ordered to look at Orochimaru's seal.
Her hands, however, would not stop trembling, and fine, yet unmissable tremors that she could neither hide nor supress shook her hands, the shock too great to supress.
Uchiha Itachi was alive.
The fear she had felt in the cells where she'd freed him and Sasuke to fight Orochimaru for her was gone. Much like her fear of Orochimaru, much like every other emotion that she'd have expected to feel at the news.
Gone.
As if it had never been there in the first place.
Rationalisation, her mind had whispered at first, by dying, you eliminated the fear of the unknown. You don't fear him because you know what lies at the other end, should your fears come true.
But now, she knew better, knew what the real culprit of her lack of fear was, even though the realisation was distant, as if not her own.
Apathy.
She knew what lay at the end of the tunnel, yes. And she no longer cared what end she was at.
And worst of all, she was just plain tired.
But she pushed those realisations to the back of her mind and ignored them with practised ease for the time being – she'd found Sasuke's chakra signature and she had a bone to pick with her old teammate.
Her eyes hard and mouth set into a grim line of determination, Sakura stepped onto the clearing that was Team 7's old training ground and met Sasuke's gaze.
Sasuke had been trying to train, to blow off some steam and forget about the weird feeling that sat determinedly in his gut after his earlier spar with Naruto.
It seemed he'd finally managed to get the blond to walk away from him. It was unfortunate, however, that all it took was Sasuke breaking into his mind and using his Sharingan to control the manifestation of the Kyuubi that the seal allowed to seep through.
He'd been tempted to release the beast, just for a second, but the thought had been there. Have it raze this Village to the ground and start again from the ashes. But he'd dismissed it quickly enough – if he let the Kyuubi free, he was one of the first obstacles in its path, and Sasuke wasn't planning on dying just yet.
But when he pulled himself out of Naruto's mind, the blond had looked at him with so much disgust and betrayal in his eyes that Sasuke had been too startled to avoid the punch aimed at his face before Naruto stormed off.
And because of the orange chakra surrounding Naruto's fist, he was willing to believe his left cheek was now covered in chakra-burn scar tissue. Maybe that was why it hurt so fucking much.
But no matter how much he hit the goddamn training post, the weird feeling in his gut would just not fuck off.
So maybe he was a little frustrated.
And because of that frustration, he would've preferred to have been left well the fuck alone. Alas, lady luck didn't seem inclined to smile upon him and not an hour after Naruto had left, Sakura marched into the clearing, Orochimaru of all people on her heels.
But when Sakura came within twenty feet of him, Sasuke could tell that something more than just shit luck was at play; Sakura's face was dead. Not even the familiar expression of disdain and barely-disguised hatred greeted him when he met her gaze – there was simply no expression on the rosette's face.
"Uchiha." she greeted, and Sasuke nodded, instantly on-guard. Her voice gave him the creeps, and he'd been living with Orochimaru for four years. "I need you to tell me where your brother is."
Sasuke startled violently, then quickly slammed the brakes on further expressions, but Orochimaru's pursed lips and small shake of his head told him that his slip had been noticed and noted. Goddamnit.
"Six feet under, last I checked." He snarled at last, with far too long a delay to be natural. "Buried under a fallen building in Pein's Crush."
Between one blink and the next, there was suddenly a blade under his chin and he was staring into cold emerald and seeing his face reflected in the flat gaze.
"I don't have time for this, Uchiha." She informed him sharply, and though the words were dismissive, the tone was sans inflection. "I know you know he's alive, so tell me where or I'll get it by force."
Sasuke stepped back, his own kunai appearing in his hand, even though he refused to raise it.
"Or what, hm?" he challenged, but Orochimaru shook his head for the second time, out of Sakura's sight, thee earlier pursed lips giving out to an amused smirk. Drop it. He seemed to say, and Sasuke bristled but shifted tracks. "Why do you need to know?"
Sakura made eye-contact, her expression still horribly blank, but to Sasuke's surprise, she still answered. "I need to ask him about the Mangekyo."
"Why?!" the word slipped out before Sasuke could bite it back, the tinge of incredulity raising his voice half an octave.
If possible, Sakura's expression grew even more indecipherable. "That's not something you need to concern yourself with. Just tell me where he is and I'll leave you be."
Sasuke was about to refuse, to bite back, but then an idea struck him. "Fine." He agreed, and when Sakura raised an expectant eyebrow, he added, "But the information has a price."
A-ha!
Sakura's lip curled, a scowl and a snarl in equal measure, before it once again smoothed out. "I'm listening."
"I want a spar."
"No." she didn't even pause to be surprised or to consider his demand, just shot it down without a hint of hesitation.
"Then I'm not telling you shit." He snarled, and a conflicted mix of emotions flickered momentarily across Sakura's eyes before her brow scrunched in a frown and the expressionless mask gave way to anger.
"Fine." She spat, then whirled in the direction of Orochimaru's retreating back. "Orochimaru-sama!" she called, and Sasuke would be the first to admit gaping at the honorific attached to the Sannin's name.
Orochimaru, it seemed, would be the second. While he wasn't quite gaping when he turned around, there was a surprising slack to his mouth and his narrow eyes were wider than usual and for a split-second, he looked delighted.
"Yes?" he asked, composed once again, stopping obediently to hear what Sakura had to say.
"Would you mind staying to make sure I don't kill your Jounin Commander?" Sakura requested, and there was something Sasuke was missing between the two, he was sure.
When Orochimaru merely inclined his head and shifted course to settle at the treeline, Sakura finally turned to face Sasuke, and it was only then that he realised the earlier blankness was covering up exhaustion. The same haunted look Sasuke normally saw in his own eyes after a nightmare stared back at him, the only difference being emerald instead of onyx.
"Come on then." Sakura sighed, dropping into a half-hearted ready position, and Sasuke didn't need to be told twice.
He lunged.
Sakura twisted out of the way, letting Sasuke's overeager lunge take him off-balance before she kicked at his knees and watched as he turned a fall into a roll, a ball of chakra-fire sailing her way even before he'd fully caught his balance.
She leaped over the fireball, sending a barrage of kunai and shuriken at the Uchiha while airborne, which he dodged easily. Sakura had no desire nor energy for this fight, that she could confess freely, but she knew Sasuke wouldn't simply give up.
Still, when a lighting whip lashed out at her as soon as she landed, it was instinct more than willingness to fight that guided her fingers into a Wind jutsu Temari had once taught her, letting the Fūton: Toppa blow Sasuke's jutsu, and, coincidentally, Sasuke himself, fifty feet away from her.
"Wind?" Sasuke grunted as he stood up, and Sakura almost wanted to call him disgruntled. "Fine."
A fire dragon flew towards her and the seals for a water wall came much easier than Wind had. The sizzle of fire on water and the resulting steam cloaked Sakura's movements for a second, and she let herself sink underground, already-depleting chakra masked, leaving a clone in her place.
She kept close to the surface and therefore heard Sasuke's angry 'fight me, damn it!' quite clearly. She felt the moment her clone engaged Sasuke and her hand reached through the dirt and snagged his ankle, but when she moved to pull down, she felt her the skin on the back of her hand split when Sasuke slashed at it.
Sakura hissed and switched hands, pulling Sasuke's foot down then climbing up onto the surface, her bleeding hand glowing blue as she slashed at his calf and upper thigh, a mimicry of their battle back when she'd first beaten him.
"No!" Sasuke snarled, apparently remembering the same fight, and then Sakura was thrown back with the force of the current that pulsed through his upper body and she felt her own muscles spasm. She turned the fall into a backwards roll and came up in time to see Sasuke shaking the last of the dirt off his foot.
Sakura didn't think. She let instinct take over and lunged straight at Sasuke's centre of balance, staying low, drawing a wakizashi as she covered the few feet between them in a split-second.
Sasuke cursed, clearly not having expected her to ignore the electrical storm going off around him, and didn't manage to dodge in time. Sakura sunk her wakizashi into Sasuke's side, altering the trajectory at the last minute so it passed safely under his liver and just barely scraped the gall bladder. When Sasuke staggered left, Sakura veered right, ripping her blade out and rolling out into a crouch as she waited for Sasuke's reaction and shook off the last of the electrical shock, though she could still feel her heart beat in double-time.
"You stabbed me." Sasuke accused, visibly shocked, and Sakura bit back a laugh at the dumbfounded expression as he pressed a hand over the freely-bleeding wound. "This is a spar."
"And I've told you that I don't spar non-lethally anymore." Sakura hissed right back, then grabbed her second wakizashi and lunged.
Sasuke's single Sharingan bled to life and he met her strike with a kunai of his own, and it was then that Sakura realised that her window for making this fight a quick one had just ended.
Sakura let the fireball Sasuke blew into her face serve as a chance to retreat and regroup, and ignored Sasuke when he scoffed at the two Earth Clones she called up. She tasked one with rushing Sasuke while the other buried him under genjutsu.
Even Sakura had to admit that Sasuke's reaction time to genjutsu had improved, though she wasn't sure whether to attribute it to him having worked at it, or the eye-and-kai method he seemed to be employing. Still, just like the last time, the Vertigo genjutsu took him off-guard, and when he staggered, Sakura created another clone, taking care that it appeared underground instead of beside her, and sent it discreetly to the treeline, with instructions to scale the tallest tree it could find.
Then, Sakura reached down and scooped some dirt and tossed it into Sasuke's face, joining her other clone in close-combat once again.
Disorientation leant Sasuke a vicious edge and Sakura's clone was soon dispatched, while she almost earned a Kakashi-esque scar across her eye. She had to twist and jump out of the way of a barrage of shuriken Sasuke threw at her with unerring accuracy, to the point where Sakura felt some cut through the material of her pants and score shallow gashes across her legs.
Then, Sakura had much greater concerns at heart, because no sooner had she caught her balance after dodging the last of the shuriken than she heard the chirping of Sasuke's signature move.
Only he seemed to have learnt how to throw it, and now there was a massive ball of lightning chakra sailing at Sakura's face-!
Sakura didn't think she'd ever performed kawarimi faster in her life, but in one moment she was staring lightning in the face, and in another, she was at the top of the tree her clone had been in, staring at the battle from above.
While her clone took the hit, Sakura concentrated and made a great show of another one climbing out of the ground behind Sasuke, appearing unscathed, and she definitely wasn't imagining the angry snarl that twisted Sasuke's features.
Sakura shifted her focus to the field at large, confident her clone could handle Sasuke for a few seconds while she searched for a field advantage she could use. But when her eyes ventured to the opposite treeline, she found Orochimaru already looking up at her, and she could read the amusement in his posture even from a hundred feet away.
Goddamn him.
But there was a stream close by. And while Sakura's control was good enough for most elements, water was still hers. And Sasuke, fire-inclined as he was, still had a penchant for lightning jutsu.
With a grin, Sakura started on the forty-four handsigns needed for the technique while mentally instructing her clone to press Sasuke's close-combat once again.
Her Water Dragon broke the surface of the river at the same time Sasuke called for his full-body Chidori, and Sakura had no qualms against using a B-Rank technique as a glorified shower-head.
She crawled down from her post on the tree when Sasuke finally stopped sparkling and was instead on his hands and knees, shaking and convulsing with the remnants of electrical shock.
Not dead though, and the relief she felt at that was at odds with the disappointment that surged from the most bitter parts of her heart.
"Do you forfeit?" she called, hesitant to get too close to the human sparkling fuse in the puddle her technique had left.
Sasuke coughed, spitting up blood and bile, and Sakura could see red spiderwebs of busted blood vessels that crawled up his arms and legs where the lightning had coursed through his body and she tried not to feel too vindictively satisfied.
Then, Sasuke looked up, his single Sharingan spinning, and Sakura saw darkness.
Fuck Sakura and fuck her cowardly fighting style and fuck him for falling for the misdirection every time!
Somehow, Naruto spamming the fields with his Shadow Clones was less annoying than Sakura's half-dozen carefully placed clones, because Naruto could always be counted on to be somewhere in the melee, his ego and subpar chakra control not allowing him the flexibility Sakura fought with.
God, he could already hear Orochimaru laughing at him.
When the last tremor passed, Sasuke opened his eyes and finally took in Sakura's mindscape.
Where Naruto's had been dominated by the Fox and the seal that kept him at bay, Sakura's was similarly utilitarian but in the style of somebody who had done it intentionally.
"Paranoid even in here." He scoffed, breathing hard, as if the atmospheric pressure had plummeted once he opened his eyes. He stepped closer to the edge of what seemed to be a cliff overlooking where he assumed her mindscape was hidden, but even glancing out at the expanse made Sasuke's temples pulse with white-hot pain.
"That's because fucks like you haven't quite realised that you need consent for a mindwalk." A voice rang out from behind him and Sasuke whirled around, eyes widening at the grotesque figure that greeted him.
It was Sakura, of that he had no doubt. But she was black and translucent, with a chalk-like white outline and 内なるサクラ scrawled on her forehead.
Instinctively, Sasuke launched a kunai at the figure, but it passed through her head harmlessly, drawing a snort from the manifestation of psychosis.
"Did that make you feel better, little Uchiha?" the voice asked mockingly, crossing her arms over her chest.
Sasuke was wont to call the figure Sakura because it just…wasn't. And the voice was sharper, colder; cutting, but flat in a way Suigetsu's sometimes got when he forgot to be a clown.
"What the fuck are you?" Sasuke demanded, trying to call on his chakra but coming up with nothing, as if the pressure around him was crushing his coils. He felt justified for the way his voice shook at the question; he could feel his Sharingan spinning, but it was having no effect on the figure.
"I'd have thought it fairly obvious." She waved at her forehead, drawing Sasuke's gaze to Inner Sakura. "I am a manifestation of the id. Outer is the embodiment of the superego. Simple."
"You're a psychosis." Sasuke snapped, backing up. "Sakura's insane."
"Who can really say they're sane in this job?" the psychosis asked flippantly, and Sasuke was torn between laughing hysterically and throwing all his weapons at the figure in the hopes that at least one would connect.
"But, more importantly, you're trespassing, little Uchiha." 'Inner' informed him with a grin that was all teeth. "And it just so happens that you're trespassing on my domain."
Before Sasuke's eyes, the figure grew, stretching to twenty times that of an average man, and then those previously incorporeal hands reached out and wrapped themselves around Sasuke's midsection, trapping his arms to his sides and lifting him clear off his feet.
"Leave, Uchiha." She snarled, and Sasuke felt his lungs constrict and got the phantom feeling of blood dribbling past his lips. Then, there was a 'pop' and suddenly, the previously empty expanse he could see in his periphery was filled with flickering images, a patchwork of movie clips of memories and Inner's hold tightened in response.
Lapse in control, Sasuke realised belatedly. Loss of concentration. She's the one hiding the memories.
Despite his lungs screaming for air, Sasuke felt the pressure suddenly ease, and the remnants of his chakra all migrated to his Sharingan, overloading the eye to the point Sasuke felt blood vessels burst as bloodied tears dribbled out.
Then, he turned his head towards the carefully structured mindscape, a single word at the forefront of his mind.
Destroy.
The hands around him tightened and crushed his midsection, but the screams that filled the mindscape were not just his own.
Sasuke had enough presence of mind to cancel the technique before everything around him went dark.
Where Sakura hadn't heard Inner in years prior to Inoichi's mindwalk, she heard her screams now loud and clear.
Her hands wrapped in her hair and pulled, but even that pain wasn't detracting from the pounding in her head and the screams that would not stop.
Her last glimpse before her eyes rolled to the back of her head was that of Sasuke laying in his own blood, and she thought she felt cool hands catch her seconds before she lost consciousness.
When Genma opened the door, the last thing he was expecting to see on the other side was the Snake Sannin with Sakura unconscious in his arms.
"What the-?!" he gasped, reaching out instinctively before the Sannin's sharp glare made him retract his hand. "What happened? Is she alright?"
"Unconscious." The Sannin reported flatly, arching an imperious eyebrow. "Adverse reaction to the Sharingan, I believe."
Genma took a few seconds to process that, relieved and terrified in equal parts. Then the sheer impossibility of the image of Orochimaru of the Sannin with Sakura in his arms hit him with a vengeance, and he reached out again.
This time, the Sannin obligingly transferred his hold, and Genma couldn't help the question that spilled out if he'd tried.
"How'd you find me?" he asked, shifting Sakura into a more comfortable hold.
"I tracked the residual chakra in the seal on her arm." The Sannin offered bemusedly, then held up a familiar suppression seal. "Although I had to remove this beforehand."
Genma's gut churned with guilt and he nodded tersely, shoving the hysterical panic at the sheer level of skill needed to trace such a negligible amount of chakra firmly down.
His silence must've been a wrong answer, because the eyebrow climbed higher. "Unless I'm mistaken?"
"No, no!" he denied quickly, pulling Sakura closer. "I'm her partner. She lives here." Then, he swallowed and forced out a tense, "Thank you."
The Sannin seemed unimpressed by his thanks, tilting his head almost imperceptibly, almost cat-like.
"Your discomfort is unwarranted," Orochimaru pointed out idly, almost dismissively, then added, "after all, was it not you who brought her to me when I was still sealed?"
Genma froze.
"I'd reconsider if you're still deserving of the title before you go throwing 'partner' around." The Sannin continued absently, musingly, and if not for the glint of mischief in the golden eyes, Genma would've almost said it was well-meaning.
Then the Sannin disappeared, there one second, gone the next, not a seal nor pulse of chakra to betray him, and Genma was left with an armful of unconscious teenager who also happened to be his estranged partner.
He reckoned the frustrated kick he delivered to the door to close it was more than justified.
Sasuke's Sharingan had brought everything crashing down around her.
The good memories and bad; the repressed and the cherished and the forgotten, every moment of bitter jealousy, every sting of betrayal, every smug snippet of satisfaction – Sakura's very life was wreaking havoc on her mind, and if not for Inner, she would've gone mad.
Instead, Inner sorted painstakingly through every thought and feeling and memory: the neutral was allowed to fade into the background, not forgotten but dismissed. The good she put aside and condensed into a neutron star of love and positivity and hope, and held close to heart as protection for the dark times still to come.
Unfortunately, the bad, bitter, belligerent thoughts and memories got the same treatment, unifying into a festering mass of anger, desperation and betrayal, kept close as a lesson in unearned trust and inevitable expectations.
And through it all, over the fifty hours Inner spent painstakingly restructuring and rebuilding her psyche, Sakura gained a new perspective.
No matter what she did, she was too strong, or not strong enough. Praised for her individuality and criticised for it; praised for the connections she made outside of Konoha and doubted for them in the same breath. A useful tool in one moment, a loose cannon in the next.
With Inner's help, she learned not to care.
If a morally-grey, selfishly-motivated, well-connected villain with ambiguous loyalties was what everyone expected of her, she wouldn't just play the part, she would become that.
When Sakura rebuilt herself from the ashes of her broken psyche, it was with all the fire of a phoenix and none of the humble beginnings.
She opened her eyes, ready to use every bit of her hard-won charisma and contacts to make sure her and hers would see the brewing war through in one piece.
Then, she saw Genma.