Chapter 34: Exodus
In another universe, she might have had the chance to finish those eggs. They might have argued some more, snarling and spitting at each other. She might have taken off without another word, then, and returned to her apartment. Or—and this was miraculous, improbable, but this was another universe, so maybe it was possible— she might have stayed, their arguments petering out into silence and some ineffable understanding achieved between them: an impasse and an acknowledgement. She might have had the chance to lie alongside him that night and stare at him—not sleeping, but staring and wondering: why it was him that she was able to show the worst parts of herself to, why she trusted him to withstand her worst and understand it, why she hoarded every morsel of authenticity he ever showed her for close examination, and why she wanted to understand him—everything about him—in turn.
In this universe, she didn't have the chance.
"Gone," Sakura said. "What do you mean gone?"
Shisui's horror pounded through her brain, immobilizing her. Itachi— No, not Itachi. Surely, some other Itachi, absurd as it was. Why this, after everything else that had happened to him? Why couldn't Itachi just live in peace, unbothered, like he had only ever wanted, like the whole world seemed to conspire to never—
Sakura gritted her teeth, shoving herself through the hysteria to the present. These were not her feelings.
"They broke into the house. Four of them, wearing masks. They killed the ANBU watching us and attacked." Sasuke's gaze fell dazedly to his hands. A virulence took over his face, straining his handsome features until they seemed garish. He rammed his fists—no, she realized, the chakra shackles—into the wall. They went through the plaster.
"He was right there," he explained, black eyes manic, "right in front of me. And they TOOK HIM, because of these—"
Kakashi's hand caught Sasuke's wrist effortlessly as he moved to slam it again. The Uchiha reared back, sharingan spinning in instinctive defense. The copy-nin batted aside the paltry genjutsu like it was a fly.
"They left you behind, Sasuke," Kakashi said, cold with command. "Why?"
Sasuke shook. "I don't know," he muttered. "I don't know. They weren't interested in me. They knocked me out, and they took him—"
"Did Itachi say anything?" Sakura interjected urgently.
Sasuke looked more rattled, hand—the one that was still free—rising to his hair to comb through it. "I—I don't know. It happened so quickly. I don't..."
"Think," Sakura snarled into his face.
His gaze snapped to her, quick and vicious. "He said your name."
She could feel Kakashi's gaze pressing into her now, as he stifled Sasuke's enraged struggles. "Anything else?" It was unclear whether he was asking her or Sasuke.
Sasuke's mouth twisted, eyes working furiously. "He was looking at me when they knocked me out. He was saying something. I couldn't hear it, but his lips were moving, and I remember realizing what it was just before I became unconscious. But I can't—" His voice broke off, frustrated.
He bent his head, face twisting in intense concentration. The part of Sakura that held Shisui's memories made her grow stiffer by the moment, her hold on her katana tightening increasingly.
"T&I will be able to extract it," Kakashi said, eyes narrowing.
"Something about trees," Sasuke said suddenly, head lifting. "Or leaves? No, not leaves…"
No.
"Root," Sakura breathed.
Sasuke's eyes widened. "Yes. That. He looked at me, right at that moment, and said that. What the fuck is Root?"
Sakura took a step backward, mind and heart racing. Danzo had been prepared—he had been oh so prepared. He had had a plan when he had left, to act immediately. And now he had Itachi. Why Itachi? Of course, if Itachi couldn't testify in front of the council, then there would only be hearsay against him. Or it could have nothing to do with the trial at all, and everything to do with Itachi's eyes. But then, why take Itachi and not Sasuke, when both were ripe for the picking?
Why leave Sasuke behind?
"Sakura," Kakashi snarled.
She jolted, realizing belatedly that she had been inching towards the window, body tensed as though to jump. Her gaze flew to his, hardening.
"You seem as though you might have your own idea of how the next few hours are going to go," he told her, voice low. "If you jump out the window now, you won't get very far. Like last time, I will hunt you down."
Sakura's mouth twisted.
Sasuke's chest heaved. "I don't know why you know so much about my brother," he said, mouth trembling with rage, "but by god, if you don't share everything you know now, Sakura…"
"I told you about Danzo," she said bitterly. "I told you who was responsible for everything that happened to you. Root is the task force he created for himself—to carry out his bidding."
Sasuke inhaled sharply, jaw clenched painfully tight. "What else?"
There were tears streaming silently down his face, which he seemed determined to ignore. Sakura felt discomfited. She had never seen him like this. Maybe Naruto had—but never her.
"Itachi and I share a summon—the crow," she said, voice rough. "The crow was tracking Danzo, last I talked to it. I don't know how it found out, but it told me that Danzo had stolen sharingans, had an interest in collecting them. Itachi thought that it might have been the motive behind the massacre."
"You knew this, and you didn't say anything to me?" Sasuke exhaled.
Something awfully like guilt lanced through her. She averted her gaze, mouth dry. "I tried— I wanted to, today. It didn't happen."
"How many sharingans?" Kakashi's voice was cold, detached.
Sakura's gritted her teeth, trying to find the same distance. "Unknown."
"Please," Sasuke said, sounding like he hated himself for saying it. But he said it anyway. "He's all I have left. You have to help me fix this. I need to get him back. He's all I have left."
Kakashi still had his wrist caught above their heads. His shirt arm had slipped down, exposing his forearm. All the names there, except one.
Sakura inhaled, and it felt like the air burned her lungs. Sasuke's eyes met hers, dark and resentful and desperate, before he turned to Kakashi.
"Do you want me on my knees?" he questioned the copy-nin, spitting the words. "Do you want me to beg you, you arrogant son of a bitch?"
Sasuke's frame staggered forward, and Kakashi watched him, unreadable. Sakura watched the pair of them, shoulders tense. She had told Itachi that he would help them, back when she had thought they had had time—she had been so certain then. (And where had that fucking certainty come from?)
Glaring, Sasuke began to bend one knee. Before he folded completely, Kakashi yanked him up by his arm and shoved him into the wall.
"There's no worth to your begging, Sasuke," Kakashi told him, a superficial insouciance to his voice. His eyes were dark, complex. "But unlike you, Itachi never did anything wrong—his loyalty to this village is far better justification for my assistance than your abrupt humbling, satisfying though it is to see."
"Will you, then?" Sakura asked, voice low.
His face turned partially to her.
"To what extent?" she pressed. "Will you act without the council's approval?"
Kakashi's head cocked to the side, gaze narrowing at her. She had the sudden, mad urge to kiss him into compliance. Her teeth tightened.
"Danzo is a problem. The hokage knows it," he said, toneless. "She's asked me to lead the mission to bring him in—but not yet."
"But time is working against us. By the time Tsunade meets with council and gets the go-ahead, Itachi might be dead," Sakura urged, brow dark.
"It might have occurred to you," Kakashi said slowly, eyes locked onto hers, "that bringing the equivalent of two pairs of the sharingan right to him might be exactly what Danzo wants."
This caught Sasuke's attention. "Two?"
"It has," Sakura said, ignoring Sasuke entirely. She glanced at Kakashi, intent. "Still. I've learned to appreciate our odds."
His gaze shifted away from hers, but she could see him calculating.
"The kyuubi could be useful against Danzo," Sasuke muttered. "Naruto will be easy to persuade. And perhaps that…ink moron too, could be handy—"
"No," Kakashi snapped. "If Danzo has stolen sharingans, then only those with high tolerance against genjutsus can stand to fight him directly. As Kurenai is currently on a long term mission in Suna, that leaves three such candidates, all of them in this room."
A brief silence lapsed between them.
"You need to get these shackles off," Sasuke said, voice dark.
Kakashi's eyes narrowed. Then, sharply, he rotated Sasuke's wrists in his hand, until the welded seam of the shackles faced outward. A high-pitched screech filled the room and blinding light flooded Sakura's gaze.
In this, his decision was understood. Sakura's mouth parted, despite herself.
The shackles clanged against the tile floor with laughable simplicity, as though they hadn't caused Sakura a world of pain before when Sasuke hadn't been able to protect himself in the cave. Of course, after that precise incident, the shackles had been keyed to Kakashi's chakra in case of similar emergencies (how unknowingly easy the council had made this for them, she wondered). As soon as they left his skin, the Uchiha shuddered. His eyes flew open wide, filled with some indescribable emotion. And as Sakura watched, he seemed to grow bigger as the chakra trembled through his veins. A pink flush washed over his and his eyes flashed with enough chakra for the first time in months to activate the sharingan.
His face contorted in instinctive, primordial triumph.
And Kakashi, quick as lightning, slammed him face first into the wall of his apartment, demeanor entirely calm.
"Just a reminder, Sasuke," he warned indifferently. "If your priorities suddenly reorient themselves now."
Like a switch had been flipped, Sasuke's face paled again. "No. Just— Itachi. That's all."
"What about Root?" Sakura asked, looking out the window. The moon was still high.
Kakashi turned to her, eyes hard. "Most of the operatives will still be here. A sudden mass exodus would have brought too much attention before the kidnapping."
"...the three of us against Danzo and his sharingans and whatever fraction of Root might be too optimistic."
He inclined his head, but the imperiousness in his voice negated the indication of that acknowledgement entirely. "We will bring others to engage Root."
"Naruto and Sai," Sasuke said.
"And?" Sakura persisted, unsatisfied. Over her dead fucking body was she going to allow Sai and Naruto to contend with Root on their own.
"A squad of ANBU, as was the hokage's intent," Kakashi said shortly.
Sasuke's head raised sharply, mouth twisting. "Yours? They'll do it?"
"Don't worry," the copy-nin said lowly, "I'll lead with your brother and leave your name out of it."
Kakashi was moving throughout the apartment now, shoulders deceptively lax like he was already on the hunt. He drew a katana from behind the one, standing mirror in the whole apartment and strapped it to his back.
Sasuke's response was venomous. "I don't have much faith in ANBU right now."
Sakura crossed her arms, biceps straining, but she forced herself back instead of forward. "ANBU has a policy of never leaving its own behind. Those who were watching you two—they died, they didn't run. Remember that."
"And their deaths mean nothing to me. What does it matter? They failed. They deserved it," Sasuke raged, spittle flying from his mouth.
"You get the team," she said tightly to Kakashi, ignoring Sasuke. "I'll get Naruto and Sai."
He glanced at her, effortlessly cold. "Village border. 0300 hours."
They met at the border ten minutes before 0300. Naruto kept darting concerned glances at Sasuke. Sai watched them all with a calm smile. Snail, Bear, and Hyena flanked Kakashi, silent and deadly.
"To be clear," their captain said, voice harsh against the temperate night breeze, "this is categorically against the law. You will not be penalized for staying back; you will be for coming. Consider, now, whether or not that's a sacrifice you're willing to make. Because if you turn back midway, if you change your mind midbattle—"
"There'll be a special place in hell reserved for you," Bear growled. Righteous fury flooded his gaze. Itachi's story, which by now every shinobi in Konoha knew, had clearly moved him.
Kakashi surveyed them, eyes narrow, as no one voiced protest.
When someone did speak, it was on another subject.
"With all due respect, taichou. I understand why the Uchiha is going with you. I don't understand why it's strategic for Haruno to go with you as well," Hyena said, voice placid. "Even if she is a genjutsu type, against the sharingan—"
"It's strategic."
"We don't know anything about her," Bear muttered.
"She's an ANBU," Snail said suddenly, blinking. "That hair…"
Hyena's and Bear's eyes widened, and then, they were both looking at her too closely.
Sakura blanched. She recalled, now, that she had shunshined with Kakashi in front of all of them in the middle of the headquarters, a conspicuous ANBU with pink hair, the same height and build.
"She has a sharingan," Kakashi said curtly, so uncaringly that, for a moment, she doubted that she had heard correctly.
"What?" Naruto choked out.
This paled in comparison to Sasuke's reaction. He lit like fire, gaze ablaze. "That's how you—"
Sakura watched, stoic.
"Thief. How are you different from Danzo?" he breathed. In the same breath, he lunged for her.
Before could Kakashi could deign to intervene in the mess he had created (why not save this particular revelation for the battlefield, when there would be too much distraction to contemplate?), Sakura moved in a blur. She met Sasuke half-way and shoved him back, blood dripping from her left eye.
She opened it, and Sasuke froze.
"I did not steal this," Sakura hissed, pressing her forearm savagely into his throat. "I didn't fucking ask for it. But it's the only reason I had any inclination to save your brother that day, still half-believing he was an enthusiastic participant in the Akatsuki. So you might be thankful that I have it."
Sasuke's gazed roved over her face. "Whose?"
Sakura's mouth tightened. "Shisui."
A hand wrapped around her bicep, long-fingered and calloused, pulling her sharply back. She turned her head and Kakashi stared down at her, head angled down. "Not now," he said, voice emotionless.
Sakura stared at him for a moment, mouth hard, before she shook him off. She stepping back and hovered at Sai's side. Only he looked relatively unperturbed among their makeshift team.
Kakashi's fingers flexed through a series of signs. A pack of wolf-dogs—some pure dog, some pure wolf, some an indefinite combination of the two—emerged, eyes razor focused and teeth bared. A single one sauntered forward, muscles shifting smoothly beneath ash brown fur. Kakashi held Sasuke's bloodied shirt from earlier to its nose.
"There are two direct scents, in addition to his," the dog affirmed, black eyes sliding to Sasuke. "A third, indirect, distinct but similar. A relative. Faint, though. Proximity, not contact."
"Track the first two when you lose the third," Kakashi ordered. "We want the third."
The dog emitted a short, rumbling growl and then took off.
The sun broke over the horizon. And then another sun. Then another. They traveled for a little under seventy two hours, before they finally stopped for the night.
In the course of the journey, Sasuke's shocked desperation evolved to volatile rage. He vibrated with discontent the second they slowed to a still. Naruto was never usually one to take a fight lying down, but he had indeed been more than once the compassionate victim of an ill-timed outburst as they followed Kakashi's summons. It was a bit like seeing someone get kicked repeatedly in the face.
When Sasuke stormed into the tent, face dark as thunder, Sai dragged Naruto out and shot Sakura a pointed look.
She sighed into her porridge. There was only one reason Sai would look to her to deal with Sasuke, and that was because he wanted her to bully the Uchiha back into relative civility. Why the fuck was she delegated that role, here?
Sasuke scooped porridge viciously from the pot. Specks of the food landed on Sakura's face. She lifted her hand upwards to wipe her cheek, shoulders rising.
"Careful, Sasuke," she said, voice low.
He slammed his bowl down and stood. "You think you have the right to talk to me?" he said, malice rendering his features harsher and older. "You think you have the right to even look at me right now?"
"You think I'm impressed by your anger?" Sakura sneered, standing as well.
"Aren't you angry, Sakura?" he asked, mouth cruel. "Angry at everyone else but yourself, everyone else but the one who deserves it, for being that weak, pathetic, mewling girl—"
She wrapped her hand around his chin, fingers digging into his cheeks. "I told you to be careful," she said softly, eyes flickering.
"When we fought, I'd already been weakened by killing Orochimaru and half-killing Itachi," Sasuke said, jaw working hard to move through her forced muzzling. Something brewed in his eyes. "You won't beat me now."
"And if it were any other time, I might have even indulged that pathetic gauntlet," Sakura said coldly. "But your brother is gone, and you're angry because it's easier than feeling anything else. You know what that makes you?"
His eyes were slitted. "Don't."
"A coward."
"Don't call me that."
"But it flows easily off the tongue," she said, smirking. "A coward left Konoha almost half a decade ago and—"
"Didn't you say you used to love me?" he asked, face deathly pale.
His face flashed with cruelty, and then he smashed his lips against hers.
She saw red. Pure, unequivocal red.
Rage thudded through her veins and her hands scrabbled against his collar, finally latching around his neck.
Black eyes, callous and hungering to hurt, met hers as she threw him across the room. "Isn't this that what you've always wanted—?" he mocked.
And Sakura realized two things. First, that her katana was well within arm's reach. She could grab it and unsheathe it now in the same motion and then continue, along the same trajectory, to slash his throat, just before he left the radius of her reach. Naruto would cry, of course, and Sai would be disappointed, and there would be such a mess to clean up, but wouldn't it be worth it?
Her second realization followed a brief second later. And it was this: they were no longer alone.
The Voice hummed in the back of her mind, and her head snapped towards the tent entrance. Standing there was Bear, eyes screwed in disgust and hands loose at his sides.
But it was the figure behind him that made Sakura's eyes widen in alarm.
He was unnaturally still. His gaze shifted slowly from Sasuke—who had now careened into the side of the tent, taking a portion of it down—to her.
Fuck. Fuck.
Naruto would cry endlessly, she thought again. And Sakura would have to be around that—for years, possibly forever— just because Sasuke had had the fortune to be immortalized by a tragic end. Nothing could be worth that. Nothing.
She shifted just slightly left, resentment thick in the back of her throat, to block Sasuke from Kakashi's line of sight.
As killing intent surged through the room just, hysterical laughter suddenly burst forth from the fallen figure on the other side of the tent, loud and high-pitched. Sakura's head turned, incredulous at Sasuke's gall. Didn't he know that two people in this tent were contemplating his death?
But Sasuke was doubled over, frame wracked by almost violent bouts of humor, self-preservation instinct all but gone. He laughed like there had never been anything funnier in his life. But then—and it was hard to tell what marked the shift, because the sounds he made stayed the same—his laughter turned into something else. His chest heaved desperately, and suddenly, he was hyperventilating, hands scrabbling at his eyes.
Bear grunted, discomfited.
Sakura averted her gaze, hatred broiling in her with no object to release it on. No adequate one—not Sasuke, not now, even she could realize that. She left the tent without looking back, teeth bared. She didn't pause until she was at the bank of the river that had made this their camp site. She kneeled into the sand and cupped water in her hands, bringing it to her mouth to scrub violently.
Someone broke through the trees behind her, stopping a few feet from the river bank.
"What happened?" Sai asked, calm.
"I think I affirmed that I'm the last person who should have talked to Sasuke," Sakura said. She rose from her crouch and turned to pierce him with a resentful look. "That was never going to end well."
"I see."
Sakura faced him fully. "You've been sympathetic toward him lately. I'm not sure what Sasuke has done to earn it. He barely acknowledges Naruto—he treats you even worse. It's tragic and lamentable what happened to his family, but he still put a fist through Naruto's chest. That was his choice."
Sai frowned, contemplating her words. "Have you ever considered that what happened to Sasuke made him the person who put a fist through Naruto's chest?"
"Obviously. But this is the thing, Sai—we're not slaves to the things that happen to us," Sakura said coldly. "We always have some element of choice in what we become. What we do. If I ever become a person who kills indiscriminately, who would try to kill you or Naruto, that would mean that I lost that battle and gave in. And in that scenario, the only justifiable course of action would be to put down whatever imposter had taken my place."
She didn't say it just for argument's sake either. If the Voice took over, if she became that indiscriminate vehicle of killing intent she had always feared... There was no use living a life where she wasn't herself. Certainly not if it was the Voice who replaced her. Her mouth curved downward in disgust.
Sai inhaled and exhaled, the sound washed away by the river, before he spoke. "Is there any such thing as you or me absent of the things that have happened to us?" he pondered, voice light. "A 'true' self, as you seem to suggest, who can or should fight against the traumas imposed on it—does it exist? Perhaps, if any of us have the strength to resist torture or loss, it is only because other life experiences equipped us better to withstand it. Don't you think?"
Sakura stared at him, expression blank.
Sai's eyes shone, reflecting the moonlight. "You never talk about what has happened to you or what you've done."
She shifted slightly back, and her foot sank into the water.
"Doesn't it get tiring," Sai said, a wan smile on his face. "Hiding?"
"Hiding what?" she said, voice even.
His eyelids dipped. "Everything."
Sakura felt like she had lost track of her anger, misplaced it somewhere. Her face was pale, now.
"I hid everything, before. Every single emotion, every possible thing I could feel."
"Sai—"
"It's hard to know what's better, to succeed or to try and fail, like you do." He lifted his head. "But the point is: whatever any of us has faced, Sakura, I've come to believe that it merely inures us against different types of temptation. What could break Sasuke could hardly faze you. And what I could easily turn away from—maybe it could destroy you. Isn't that…funny, somehow?"
Sakura's emerged again, lower and harder. "Even so. None of us are so far gone that we can't choose to learn to be better—to learn to resist those temptations. Sasuke's more than capable of it."
"He is," Sai agreed. "And isn't he learning? Hasn't he changed since he's been around us?"
"Has he?" Sakura said, sardonic.
"He has, even if you're blind to it." His voice sharpened, somehow, now. She clenched her teeth. "But he can't make himself better any faster, any more conveniently for the circumstances, just because you expect it. But perhaps, you have even the same expectations for yourself."
He paused, voice softening. "Do you blame yourself, too, when you fail to meet them?"
Sakura spun, livid. "Enough. You might be a great deal emotionally smarter than you used to be, but you need to back off. Now."
And she meant it. Her temper was surging now, having been scraped raw by Sai's words, and it compounded on her previous rage. Her frame shook with it.
His brow furrowed.
"Go," she ordered, shuddering. "You can't handle this." She wasn't even sure she could.
Sai watched her, dark eyes on her face. "Can he?" And Sakura knew that he referred now, voice lowering, to Kakashi.
She combed a hand through her hair in a vapid bid to calm herself. Her temper hung tenuously in the balance, growing dangerously volatile. "I don't know— No. Yes." It left her mouth unbidden, strangled.
His mouth curved, slightly, his gaze calm. "Then go."
Sakura's mouth twisted, and she took an unthinking step back, both her feet instantly submerged in the water. Before she could even pause to regret that, her body was moving again—past him, past the cluster of trees, until she was stepping back onto camp ground. The ANBU were scattered around an open fire at the center, Sasuke and Naruto nowhere to be seen. And Kakashi sharpened his blade on a whetstone at the outskirts of the clearing.
She moved forward.
As she passed them, the ANBUs' heads subtly shifted, tracking her progress. Kakashi's eyes snapped up, the skin around his eyes contorted as his head cocked coldly to the side.
His head straightened quickly at whatever he saw on her face.
She stopped just short of a foot away. He stood, gaze flicking with astonishing speed to the ANBU behind her, before he shifted, positioning his body with a precision that was meaningless, nonsensical to her.
Rough breaths rattled through her as her eyes searched him. Now, as she stood in front of him, cynicism coiled in her, hot and poisonous, mixing into her earlier rage and mutating it. It warped her features, possibly turning her face into something terrible. What could he do? Why had she come here? What the fuck was this—
He moved with the greatest economy of movement, arm tight against his body. Furious, shaky breaths rattled through her and the ANBU were behind her and his hand hovered above her mouth.
Dark eyes locked onto her for a brief instant, impossibly acute. In a single breath, he pressed his thumb into the corner of her mouth.
Sakura's eyes fluttered shut.
In the next breath, he dragged the calloused pad across her bruised lips, searing, grounding.
(She understood, now, why he had positioned himself precisely where he had—the ANBU could only see her back.)
On the second pass, he pressed firmly, and her face strained, chest aching, rage slowing. Her eyes opened, dazed. He made one more sedating brush against her lips, a quick glance of a touch, and then, after a too-brief eternity, his expression became distant again.
Sakura caught his hand as he started to pull back. With vicious strength, she dragged it to her face and, gaze darting up, she placed a sweet, trembling mouth to his palm. His muscles flexed, body bending unerringly toward her. For a moment, Sakura's eyes drank in the sight greedily.
Then she turned, dropping his hand. And she went to find Naruto.
Chapter 35: Uragiri
There was an undeniable tension in their tent as Team Seven shifted into their sleep pallets—and not just because Sakura had to tamp down killing intent whenever she looked at Sasuke's face. They all knew that there was only one reason they would have stopped to rest now: Kakashi expected them to be mid-battle tomorrow.
The crow, Sakura thought not for the first time. Where the fuck was it? She had known it had been tracking Danzo with some success. She had been expecting, for some time now, for it to appear with more intel. Had it overheard plans regarding Itachi's kidnapping?
She rolled onto her back.
They had four hours, now, to catch whatever amount of sleep they could muster for a fight none of them knew how to prepare for. But as Sakura's gaze bored into the canvas of the tent, she doubted even sheer boredom (if she could even achieve it) could get her to a state of unconsciousness.
Sai adjusted beside her, rustling his pallet softly.
"Shut up," Sasuke hissed.
"Apologies," Sai said. "Just trying to get comfortable."
He moved again, angling his neck to avoid a bump in the ground below his pallet.
"I swear to fucking god."
Sakura growled under her breath and moved to stand from her pallet. Dark, clear eyes evaluated her. Then, as she watched, Sai seemed to come to a decision.
"I've been unfair, I think," Sai said quietly.
"Huh?" Naruto said from the other side of the tent. His wary attention shifted from Sasuke to Sai as well.
Sakura shifted onto her elbows, beginning to push herself up.
But Sai had already turned his face away from her. "I should have spoken to you first, before either Sakura or Naruto, Sasuke. Because I understand, perhaps better than they ever could, your current circumstances."
Her gaze flicked to Naruto, catching his instinctive wince, as though this was the worst possible thing Sai could have uttered.
"What was that?" Sasuke said, his voice a deathly whisper.
Sai remained stolid. "I don't believe you misheard me."
And then Sasuke was casting off his thin blanket with sudden violence, surging upwards. As he rose, the fire turned his gaze molten gold.
"You would dare?" the Uchiha repeated, dark and loathing. "You would dare try to explain to me how anything in your pathetic, mundane existence could possibly compare to the sheer amount of shit I have gone through?"
Sakura's eyes narrowed dangerously.
Sai stood as well. Upon reaching his full height, his legs shook for a brief moment before firming. It could have easily been dismissed as fatigue, but it made her uneasy.
"I'm not sure if Naruto or Sakura ever told you of my condition," Sai said, voice soft. "But it can occasionally make truth-telling…complex."
"Fuck off," Sasuke snarled, face as white as the teeth his lips pulled back to reveal.
Naruto's hand landed on his shoulder. "Some of the work Sai did in the past required his tongue to be sealed," he said carefully, face hard. "For…security reasons."
"No, Naruto," Sai said—and was that nervousness on his face?—"tell him the full truth."
Naruto stepped back, frowning. He darted a look at Sasuke, and the frown deepened. "I'm usually for full-honesty, but maybe not now."
"Now," Sai said, tone brooking no argument.
Naruto struggled.
"Naruto, please."
They stared at each other for a tense second—one of the two weakened.
"Danzo sealed his tongue because Sai used to work for him as a part of Root," the blonde said in a quick rush of words, "But he defected ages ago, and it doesn't matter anymore because it's in the past—"
Sasuke moved quicker than a blink of an eye. Shouting, Naruto's hand latched onto his shirt at the last possible second.
"Let me go, Naruto." Sasuke's hands, holding two, gleaming kunai, swiped at Sai and missed him by inches.
Naruto's face grew red. "Sai couldn't have had anything to do with that, bastard, he was a child—!"
"There are four year olds who have higher body counts than you! You think age vindicates him?"
But Sai didn't shift even an inch back. Sakura, who had been on her haunches, shifted sideways, fingers combing to pick up her katana. She had let this play out long enough.
"I…had…a…brother…too," Sai gasped with great difficulty. A second later, he leaned forward. Blood poured out of his mouth.
"No," Sakura said. She dropped the blade. "No. Stop talking now—"
"Danzo…k-k-kill—" The blood sprayed out of his mouth, and he made a high-pitched noise as he choked.
Sasuke reared back.
She lunged forward and slapped her hand, lit with green chakra, against his throat. The damage, she was glad to see, was not so extreme as to be unhealable. Still, her heart pounded. Sai had only said a handful of words—none of which could have been high-level intel—and the seal had acted so viciously.
A smooth sigh left his bloodless lips at the sensation of her chakra. But then his eyes met hers, and she knew what he intended before his mouth even opened.
"Was me or him—" Blood flooded his mouth and nostrils.
Her hand left his sternum. She forced it into his mouth instead, crude as it was, forcing him into silence. Sai gave a weak groan as she increased the amount of chakra she fed into his throat. She gritted her teeth.
Sasuke, to his credit, looked like he could hardly think of words, let alone vicious ones, to spit out. His hands were clutching the kunai so desperately that it appeared that he had forgotten that they were weapons, perhaps believing they were lifelines instead.
Sakura stared Sai dead in the eye. "If I hear one more incriminating word, I'll knock you out and tie you to a tree. Got it?"
His mouth curved ineffectually around her fingers. Giving him a final look of warning, she pulled out her hand.
Sai swallowed tentatively, long fingers grazing his throat.
"Are you okay?" Naruto asked urgently. He let go of Sasuke, deeming him to no longer be a threat, and moved toward Sai.
"You had a brother," Sasuke said, voice blank.
Sai nodded carefully, wincing slightly. He gave Sakura a placating look as she straightened.
A complicated series of expressions crossed the Uchiha's face. Finally, he averted his gaze. "He's gone?"
Sai didn't affirm this statement. The sudden, stunning look of grief—so easy to miss but obvious for anyone who bothered to look—answered the question clearly. Naruto made a wordless noise, a hand brushing Sai's arm.
A long silence passed, before Sasuke turned and stretched along his pallet like nothing had happened. Naruto met her glance over the fire, grim and wary. She looked in turn at Sasuke, mouth tight.
Rubbing at his face, Naruto settled back onto his pallet, resting his forearm over his eyes.
Sai lowered himself behind her into his own pallet. Sakura forcibly loosened her shoulders before shuffling back into hers as well.
The fire blazed warmly at their backs. After a few minutes, a light sheen of sweat dotted her forehead. Inexplicably, the body beside her shivered. Her hands burned at her sides.
She raised her arm and draped it over his waist. Sai stiffened.
"Okay?" she whispered.
He didn't answer immediately. Then, his diaphragm deflated, in a long, smooth exhale, and she didn't move.
"Yes," Sai sighed.
In the early hours of the morning, as they all strapped on their weapons and armor, Sasuke came up to her.
"Something you need?" she said indifferently. She slid a kunai inside her arm guard, nudging it into place with her thumb.
He exhaled through his teeth, the sound emerging like a hiss.
She bent to strap a dagger to her calf.
"I shouldn't have," he said. The words were barely enunciated.
Her eyes narrowed, before she looked up. As each second passed, the temper on his face seemed to double.
"You shouldn't have," Sakura agreed, cold. She clipped the fronts of her back away from her face.
Odd, how it had turned out. Sai—where Naruto and she, assuredly, had failed— had managed to force something like the return of sanity, if not quite civility, in Sasuke.
"Is it," he started, before scowling and pausing.
"Yes?" she snapped, gaze returning to him.
"Can it be—forgiven?" he spat.
Sakura paused, hands dropping from her head. Her mouth flexed. What would she do, to crumple that ego like paper in her hand, right now?
But now, she acknowledged grimly, was not the time.
"We'll settle this later." The ANBU squad emerged from their tent. She shifted closer, lowering her voice. "For now, we forget it happened. Agreed?"
He grunted in assent, pulling quickly back like her proximity repulsed him. Sakura sneered as he headed back to the tent.
Hyena rested her weaponry on the same boulder. "You mind?"
She tried not to tense. "No. Of course not."
Bear whistled, sidling up to them. His eyes widened as she caught sight of the leather sheathe resting on the grass beside Sakura's feet. "That looks like a damn nice blade. Mind if I—"
"Wait—" Sakura hissed, the warning far too late.
The black blade, not one of a kind but definitely fucking rare, glittered like obsidian beneath the purple-orange dawn sky.
Bear dropped it instantly. Sakura stammered, except nothing emerged from her mouth.
"How the fuck do you have that," Hyena asked, deceptively polite.
"This?" she said as normally as possible. "Off a pawnshop near the Ryu brothers' laundromat. It was a steal, actually—"
"You're lying," Snail said, voice faint behind her.
Sakura's mouth opened and closed silently. "I'm not sure what you're accusing me of."
"I'm not sure either," Snail said, laughing a little incredulously. "But there are so many things that are off about you. And I've had alarm bells ringing in my head this entire time. And you know what? I'm starting to listen to them."
"Our recently deceased teammate," Bear said, voice deceptively light, "had a blade like that."
Sakura raised her hands immediately. "It's a trend down south. I wasn't involved in anything like taking it from a corpse, if that's what you're suggesting. I would never—"
"That would make the most sense, wouldn't it," Hyena said, eyes watching her carefully.
"It would, but," Snail muttered, blond hair swinging as she stepped forward, "a pink-haired ANBU who's comfortable enough with our captain to shunshin with him right from headquarters when he was in one of those moods. There was only one other person I've ever seen approach him like that and keep their head on top of their body. And now, this katana, that looks an awful lot like another one we've seen before?"
"What is happening here?" Kakashi asked, voice cold.
Sakura's gaze flew to him. She watched as his eyes landed on her blade. A second later, that mismatched gaze burned into hers.
She stiffened, glaring back. It was the only katana she trusted, and the only blade she carried with her besides the chokuto. Besides, she had never planned to whip it out in front of them here—mid-battle, perhaps, when no one was scrutinizing, but not here.
But it was true that she had underestimated their willingness to contemplate the seemingly impossible—or, perhaps, it was their attentiveness and skill she had underestimated. They were, after all, among the highest-ranked in ANBU.
(Or maybe it had been willful self-delusion all along to believe she could be herself—allow Sakura to live the life Crow had—and escape scrutiny for long.)
Sakura strangled down a groan, glaring savagely into the dirt.
"Taichou," Hyena said stiffly, "we just had— the most ludicrous thought."
"Then keep it to yourself," Kakashi said, sounding like his lips were barely moving. "This isn't the time for any thoughts beyond the mission."
"Yes," Sakura said, pale.
"What?" Hyena exhaled.
"Yes?" Snail echoed, eyes round.
Bear took a step back, staring at her like she had indeed risen from the dead. But Snail noticed who didn't react. She stumbled toward Kakashi. "H-how could you let us believe—?"
"Not. Now," the copy-nin said soundlessly.
And they stopped.
"We need to head out," Kakashi told her, just as cold as before.
Sakura nodded stiffly. She shouldn't have done that, she knew. But they had half-believed it, anyway, and it had felt-
He turned to the ANBU squad now, just as curt. "The trail for Root splits off from here. One of the summons will lead you to them."
"Yes, taichou," Hyena said. She visibly struggled to leave behind her previous shock and any lingering resentment.
Kakashi stepped forward, heading past them. Just before he crossed them fully, however, he paused; his fists revealed more than his face did. "Be careful."
A long pause transpired, then, the coolness in Hyena's gaze shifted to something more complex. "Yes, taichou," she repeated finally.
He bent his knees and took off into the trees.
Sakura took a few shuffling steps back.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It wasn't my choice."
"You need to go now," Hyena said calmly, all emotion removed from her voice.
Sakura recollected herself, nodding sharply. Glancing at them one final time, she turned and then sprinted into the trees. Sasuke fall into step behind her, emerging from the tents. In short time, they broke through the trees to a ravine.
Kakashi stood there, eyes tight with visible impatience. The large, growling canine beside him turned its baleful gaze on them.
"Ten miles from here there's a stretch of barren ground. Danzo's projecting his chakra like a beacon."
Sasuke exhaled. "And Itachi?"
"Faint, but present," Kakashi answered. "He's alive."
Sasuke's legs tensed to propel him forward. Sakura stepped in front of him before he could move, eyes locking onto Kakashi's.
"So it's definitely a trap," she said.
Kakashi's forbidding expression said just as much.
"But he doesn't know about your sharingan," Sasuke said lowly.
Mismatched eyes narrowed. "We'll let him think for as long as he can that she's our medic. You and I will engage him first to gauge his strength and weaknesses. When I give the signal, you fall back—" he looked now at her—"and you take his place. "
She nodded. If they didn't win, of course, Kakashi had ensured one of them was well-positioned to retreat with vital intel to Konoha. That it was Sasuke made sense, as much as it was grating. With two matched sharingans, he was probably Danzo's goldmine-or something perverse like that. As far as maintaining the element of surprise, she couldn't think of anything better. She couldn't taking the risk of removing the sharingan now and summoning it back—not if Danzo fought with genjutsu—but as a medic-nin, she could stand behind them and avoid scrutiny. That and a lowered gaze were, sadly, the best chance her sharingan would go unnoticed. It would have to do.
Sasuke's mouth twisted. "Itachi's my brother."
"And wouldn't it be sad, if you didn't live to avenge us all?" Sakura said sourly.
"If I don't believe you'll follow my orders right now, Uchiha," Kakashi said, head tilting down to peruse Sasuke, "I'll leave you here."
Sasuke's feature contorted. Sakura could hear his teeth grind against each other. He didn't voice any more protest.
They crossed the ravine.
Trees blurred past them, an endless stream of reds and oranges and gold in these parts. Sakura could taste the ocean on her tongue, even though they were nowhere near salt water.
Sasuke didn't speak a word the entire way. He had withdrawn into himself, but the anger that had clung to him for the last three days grew with each passing second, making his face increasingly vicious.
As for Kakashi—he was ahead of them, but so close that she could just stretch her fingers and graze the sharp angle of his shoulder. His heartbeat was slow and steady, despite their furious pace. (She found herself, absurdly, listening to it.)
They arrived at a border: a harsh, purposeful line between forest and barren ground. The earth was dry and cracked, like it had been razed by fire. A massacre had probably taken place here once, she thought, examining it. It wasn't uncommon to find ground like this in Konoha, unfortunate legacies of the Warring States period.
It didn't feel, therefore, especially like foreign land that they stepped onto as they crossed that border, but like Konoha's. There was no way, from looking, that one could tell the difference.
As they left the cover of the trees, sunlight beat down on their faces. From this new vantage point, ironically, it seemed like the ground lit by the sun was coated in flames.
She had known where they were the instant she had stepped forward, but her gaze went to them last.
Sakura had seen Danzo before. Intellectually, she knew this to be true. He might have spoken at the academy once or twice, as high-ranking council members were often brought in to do. Her gaze might have passed over his face at the sandaime's funeral. Possibly, she had walked across him in a grocery aisle.
But she had no recollection of what he looked like, and the point stood that before now, she wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a crowd (how odd, when she had aspired to kill him, and that he had—until very recently—shared the same village as her).
Sakura saw him now, and found it hard to believe that it was a face she could have ever forgotten.
It was clear that Danzo had once been handsome, possibly exceptionally so, and that those features had long since been harshened and weathered, like a cliffside beside the sea, by time. His singular exposed eye, olive and slightly sunken, maintained an uncomfortable, penetrating intensity despite the overall appearance of being battered. It wasn't a face that immediately engendered good will, nor one that transparently spoke of cruelty. But it carried an inexplicable dignity, perhaps, that had led council members and hokages to listen to him too well.
One sandaled foot protruded from his black robe to rest on a pale neck. Beneath his foot, Itachi kneeled, head to the ground, limbs loose like he was unconscious.
"ITACHI!" Sasuke roared.
Itachi jolted suddenly upwards at the sound of his brother. Danzo responded, without expression, by shifting his weight from his cane to press more firmly down on Itachi's neck.
"How momentous it is, for all of us to stand here," the old man said, voice deep and gritty. His head cocked to the side in an oddly familiar way. "The last sharingans in existence."
He did not speak loudly, but the words carried with a peculiar sort of force, even in the open expanse. He seemed larger than life in the curious wasteland they stood in, lifeless as it was but achieving a certain pretense of life beneath the sun.
Sakura stood behind Kakashi and Sasuke, as a good medic would. Her brow darkened as she stared downward.
"Don't mistake me," he said, gruff. "I'm not one of those fools who believes dojutsus give birth to inherent talent, skill, or even efficiency. Any individual with ambition possesses the means to make something extraordinary of him or herself."
He stepped forward, lifting the foot from Itachi's neck to follow his cane. His mouth curved downward. "But the sharingan, capable of bending the rules of time, reality, even mortality—it's almost cheating. Even the byakugan can't compare. How can any of the normal rules abide when such a monstrous, absurd thing exists…"
"How long shall we pretend that it's vindication you're after, Danzo, and that you didn't leave a very obvious calling card in Sasuke," Kakashi drawled. As he spoke, his head shifted minutely to peruse their surroundings with militaristic intent.
Danzo raised his eyebrows. "You appear to be very confident in your odds."
"There are three of us against one of you," hissed Sasuke. His face was distorted by hatred as he took in the man responsible for his clan's massacre.
"Make no mistake—I am not alone, young Uchiha."
Sasuke's eyes widened and flew to Itachi.
Danzo followed his gaze, entirely at ease. "No, not him. In his current state, unfortunately, he can do neither you nor me any benefit. He has been useful in other ways. He brought you here. And later, when I have a medic-nin with the necessary expertise, I will be able to make better use of his eyes."
The council member's attention returned to Sasuke. "I have wondered about you too, I admit. The younger brother," he declared gravely. "After Shisui, Itachi was the most formidable of the clan; I had no other candidate in my mind for the massacre. But, perhaps, if I had waited for you… I wonder. It might have been wiser to choose someone not so…capable, in retrospect."
Sasuke shook with rage. She shifted forward to whisper something to the effect of 'calm the fuck down'; before she could, she was distracted by something else. In the corner of her eye, she saw Kakashi's head lift sharply as well.
A black object hurtled down from above. No, Sakura corrected, not an object, but something terribly familiar. It emitted a shrill caw and then swooped down to land on Danzo's shoulder.
No, she thought.
She staggered back. Then forward.
But it was. It was the crow.
What was it doing?
Her mind worked rapidly. Perhaps, this was some deception, meant to buy Itachi and thus them time. Or, it had negotiated some stupid, messy deal to save Itachi's life. She wouldn't put it past—
"I would say that it is good to meet you in person, Sakura," said Danzo, "but in a sense, this isn't the first time we've met, is it?"
There had been a time, long ago—before she had switched to the academy, before Ino—that Sakura had been enrolled in civilian classes. Fundamental classes, really, that taught civilians how to read and write as well as basic mathematics.
At that age, many of her classmates had had that embarrassing affliction of fumbling between 'sensei' and 'okaa-san' and 'oto-san.' Sakura had been one of the few to escape that particular faux pas.
But she had, on occasion, made another mistake. Her mathematics sensei and her writing sensei had both had a similar way of clearing their throats, with a peculiar, high-pitched noise. Sometimes, when she hadn't been looking, she had called one by the other's name.
This was the memory, bizarrely, that surged in her mind now. Later, she would wonder if it was merely because one part of her brain was working faster than the rest.
Itachi, who had been straddling that fine line between unconsciousness and consciousness until now with limited success, lifted his head, features colored with bruises and blood, with sudden urgency. "Shisui's sharingan…" His voice died out, too weak.
She glared at him out of panic, feeling like she had been given half of a puzzle and been left to finish the rest of it without the necessary pieces. What about Shisui's sharingan? And why the fuck was the crow sitting there, so placidly, on Danzo's shoulder when Itachi was clearly in atrocious shape-
Danzo tilted his head to the side, surveying her. In an eerily synchronized motion, the crow did too.
And the taste of blood roiled thick in her throat, choking her. A rushing noise, like wind, filled her ears. "No—"
He seemed amused by her horror. "Have I not taught you well?"
Sakura stumbled back. "No, no, you sick fuck, it can't be possible."
"You were a miserable, groveling excuse for a kunoichi before, and now look at you," he reasoned, uncaring.
"It's impossible," she snarled.
Danzo's mouth curved. "On the contrary, as Itachi was trying to explain, I learned an incredible amount when I implanted Shisui's other sharingan."
Her blood curdled. "But Shisui knew—"
"Naturally," he continued unblinking, tone almost didactic, "Shisui took measures to mitigate the damage I would cause: a technique to preserve the memories and desires of a sharingan's original owner— notoriously difficult to master, but Shisui mastered it in his remaining eye to protect Itachi, to ensure my destruction. Itachi implanted that eye into his summon, as you are aware."
As she watched, he slowly unraveled the bandage on his face. "But, as it turns out, neither imagined the influence I would have, what I could learn to do, using Shisui's other eye."
"Sakura," Kakashi said to her suddenly. His voice whipped out like a lash, a forceful command.
But she was beyond listening to him, because thoughts were hurtling through her mind, too quick to wrangle into submission, to control their damage. All those hours she had spent with the crow, listening to it, learning from it, selfish and greedy under its attention even as she had resented it. If that had all been this man, the one who had massacred the Uchihas, the cause of Sai's seal, his brother's death, his rapes—
A wave of sickness surged inside her as the last of the bandage fell, revealing a sharingan with a damningly familiar pattern.
She bent over and dry-heaved. Nothing came up.
"Alas, remnants of that pathetic, groveling kunoichi remain in you," Danzo said coldly. "Even so, I confess, you are among my best. And what a fortuitous find you were. Itachi, out of reach with the Akatsuki; for years, no feasible means to retrieve him. And then you walked into that library, of all people, with the particular skillset I required, to pick up that scroll…and at last, there was a glimmer of an opportunity."
Get UP, the Voice hissed.
She straightened, breath ragged. With the back of her sleeve, she wiped her mouth. "So your grand plan," she said haltingly, "was to make me…save him, bring him back to Konoha, so that your role in the massacre could be outed?"
She tried to muster some venom. She sounded instead—gutted.
"The success rate of transferring a sharingan diminishes drastically after death. He needed Itachi in Konoha, where he would be vulnerable to Root and quick access," Kakashi explained swiftly, voice cold. His last words, low and vicious, were for her. "Sakura. Get back here."
"Indeed," Danzo said, eyebrow arching. "And Itachi's eyes were the greater prize, to be clear, though I suspected Sasuke would come running after him. But you, copy-nin, were an unexpected boon entirely. I had plans for you, of course, nowhere near ready. As it turns out…"
His eyes examined Sakura in a way that the crow never had before. Kakashi made a vicious, inhuman noise behind her.
"She's certainly no beauty. Still, the delicacy it must have taken to influence you, when so many others have failed, I cannot imagine—"
Sakura snarled, feet practically flying over the ground as her muscles shifted to vicious movement. But Kakashi caught her around the chest. For a moment, she didn't understand why. Then, she realized, he was saying something with urgency into her ear.
"Take it out."
Danzo watched them, knowing. The eye with the sharingan flared just subtly, and she didn't have time to flinch. It felt like a bomb went off in her head. She shoved the base of her palm into her eye and screamed.
"What Shisui failed to appreciate," Danzo said patiently through her guttural cries, "is that no sharingan exists alone. The pair are inextricable, interconnected. After experimenting with many pairs—separated as such—after understanding this, it was no hardship to…rewrite the imprint Shisui left behind. This, you see, allowed me to control Itachi's summon, the crow."
Blood poured from her mouth. Kakashi held her up, face strained.
"This is what will allow me to control you."
Chapter 36: Kill Your Darlings
Someone was holding her. Tightly.
Her lids felt onerously heavy. With concerted effort, she lifted them. The sudden emergence of light caused black spots in her vision. When those cleared, a pale, masked face sharpened into focus. It was an unusual face, some distant part of her processed. Unusually pale. Unusual hair. Harsh features.
She could taste blood, she realized vaguely—in the back of her throat. She swallowed, unperturbed.
Kill him, a voice thundered in her mind.
Without conscience, Sakura moved.
He reacted with inhuman speed—drawing a katana from his back, he plunged it into the ground between them. She side-stepped the blade, her fist flying by his face, and missed him by millimeters.
"Sakura." The curt, strangled word slipped into her ear before he was gone.
Her target was quick, she observed.
She launched herself after him, drawing her katana from her back as she sprinted across the barren ground. She kicked up infertile dirt as she ran, gaining momentum, then kicked off a boulder and sprung backwards, blade slicing through the air with a high-pitched ring as she drove downward with the force she had accumulated.
The target brought his blade up, face tight. They collided again, and she felt his arms buckle; as the blade neared the crown of his head, however, his muscles rolled with chakra and pushed back, copying her technique with limited success. Enough to save his head.
In a blur, he passed his blade behind his back to his other hand to fend off her next strike, this time on his left.
A streak of black raced past them. Sakura tensed.
I can handle the young Uchiha, that same voice said. Keep him occupied.
Sakura rotated the blade smoothly in her hand and lined it up with the target's throat.
"Don't," the man said.
His face revealed none of the strain in his voice, eyes tracking her with the ease of an experienced predator. Sakura rolled her shoulders back, cracking her neck.
Then she shifted forward and feinted, dropping her blade in exchange to drive forward instead with bone and muscle in the smaller space between them. He deflected with dizzying speed, palms curving with precise calculation to divert her fists.
Sakura changed tactics. His hands met hers, face shifting at her sudden decreased strength. He deflected her fists again, but this time, she angled her palms inward, forcing his fingers to contort against hers.
Horse.
His eyes met hers, dark.
Tiger.
Fire swelled up in her throat. Teeth bared, she expelled it from her mouth.
She watched his body contort with surreal ease, as though his muscles weren't flexing in less than a fraction of a second. Again, with improbable chance of escape—he managed it. The blast hurtled past him.
Blinded and deafened by the flame, she didn't sense him pick up her katana from the ground. A quick, vicious slice crossed her thigh. The pain sank into her, cold and sharp, momentarily jolting her. He took advantage of her distraction.
The wheels in his sharingan rotated, and she found herself abruptly in a genjutsu. They stood on the same barren landscape—now, however, it was just the two of them.
Sakura glanced around her, taking in the utter ordinariness of her surroundings. No make-believe demons. No ghostly figments. Her gaze returned slowly to him. If this was the best he could conjure, he wouldn't be able to keep her here for long.
"Break it," he commanded, voice low.
What a bizarre instruction, given he had been the one to put her here in the first place.
Do not listen to his words. They do not mean anything.
She directed her attention back to the terrain to begin the complex process of cutting through layers of the genjutsu to search for its edges. She could only kill him in the real world, after all.
Wind brushed her cheeks, the stagnant air around her disturbed by what could only be movement. She shifted her head fractionally to the side as he appeared beside her.
A hand wrapped around her chin and yanked her face toward him. "I won't tolerate this aberration," he warned.
She continued parsing through the genjutsu coolly. Her mission was to kill him, and that could only be done when the genjutsu was broken—
"LOOK AT ME," he exploded.
Her eyes flew to him without thought.
"I won't do this," the target told her, voice tight.
Ignore him, the gritty voice in her head snapped. Focus on your task.
He held her in place, hands affixed to her biceps. "Not to you," he finished coldly, voice like gravel.
KILL HIM, FOOL. The words screeched painfully against the walls of her skull. She shook her head like a dog, beginning to stumble back.
She broke his hold, elbows driving into his abdomen. He withstood it, even as his ribs caved fractionally. Sakura's attention returned unflinchingly to the genjutsu now. She was almost there. She started pumping chakra into her eye.
The genjutsu fractured around them. She didn't pause—as soon as her eyes settled on reality once again, she shot across the yards between them, fire coiled in her hands.
Raikiri sang through the air in response, lancing from his own. They met halfway, the impact of their collision causing her muscles to ripple out, shocking her bones, as she went flying back. She landed messily, rolling over a few times. She dug her hands into the dirt and skidded back the last of the stretch, upright.
She lifted her head and found him crouched as well, sweat dripping from his hairline into the edge of his mask.
"Submit," she said, voice even.
He stood a second later, hands tight at his sides. "Not to this aberration." There was a foreboding coldness to his features, disguising utterly the temper he had betrayed earlier.
And again, that word. Aberration.
He lies, the presence in her head hissed. Do not listen to him.
For the next minute, as it were, they were at an impasse. She was infusing healing chakra into her arms. He was doing the same, across from her. Short of putting her fingers into her ears, there was nothing Sakura could do but be audience to his words.
She stood, arms swinging as she tested her muscles. A little weak, but they would be as good as new with some healing.
You do not care for his opinion, the voice in her head insisted.
Sakura straightened. "I do not care for your opinion," she repeated faithfully.
"Fair enough." His expression was complex, mutating quicker than she could catch. His eyes narrowed, and he turned away. "I've never predicted anything about you correctly."
Her gaze flicked in the target's direction. His attention, in turn, rested on the horizon now. He applied the most rudimentary of healing jutsu, channeling chakra without much finesse beneath this skin.
"When you've seen as many people die as I have, you begin predicting the deaths of those around you," he said suddenly, voice dark.
Sakura's face sharpened.
Was this a threat? She knew, from how this battle had proceeded thus far, that her opponent's skill was considerable—prodigious, even. She didn't quite know how she knew this (she couldn't remember, actually, a single fight she had been a part of before now, though she knew they had occurred). What was she comparing him to?
Stop thinking, fool, the voice seethed. Your arms are healed, attack—!
Sakura's mouth twisted, head feeling muddled.
"I knew that my teammates would die—" his profile was inscrutable; the veins in his arms, however, protruded—"Over time, I managed to convince myself it was only an irrational fear. Then they died. And so did the others, after them. Each and every one of them, over the years. But you…"
His mouth twisted beneath his wrecked mask.
"I don't know how you did it," he raged, closing the distance between them. "But you made me…trust, that you would never be like the rest. You made me trust that you would be stronger than anything I could...than I would ever have to—" He cut himself off with an ugly, inhuman noise.
Sakura felt cold. "Why do you act like you know me?"
His eyes burned into her. She felt something stir in the back of her mind.
MOVE, the presence barked. The singular word cut through her mind like a blunt instrument. Her head pulsed in agony. She clenched her teeth, a small groan spilling from her lips.
"Fight it," he ordered, eyes blazing at her, "or the gods help Danzo, there will be none of him left to bring back after."
Amaterasu, the voice in her head said curtly.
"Amaterasu," she found herself saying.
Black, unholy fire erupted and consumed the barren ground between them, finding fuel despite the absence of all life. It unfurled in waves, covering meters at a time, surging higher each time. Sakura could feel her hair, even her eyelashes, becoming singed from the heat emanating from the flames.
She had never seen anything like it.
For a second, it seemed like the man across from her had been consumed by the flames. For a second, Sakura believed it. What force could exist in reality to combat flames like these?
Then a vortex appeared, distorting the unnatural shape of the fire. The flames, she realized immediately, were being pulled in (though they resisted, almost vengefully).
Kamui, the presence grunted, sounding reluctantly admiring.
Sakura raced forward, uneven hair whipping past her face. Funneling chakra into her left arm, she rammed her fist into the ground. Already weakened by amaterasu, the earth caved with pathetic protest. As the target darted upwards, Sakura did too. She passed him midair, leg lashing out and meeting flesh. Her head whipped to the side from a reciprocal fist that left her head ringing.
It wasn't a particularly hard blow, but the impact resounded in her mind. Something—something else—in the back of her head…stirred again.
Sakura's eyes widened.
The constant force the presence had maintained until now, an aching pressure in her head, suddenly tripled.
Why does the copy-nin still live? the original presence thundered. It seemed more intent now, perhaps even urgent. Sakura shook her head. She must have imagined it.
Her attention return to the target.
Sakura's hand flashed through hand signs, causing the earth around the target to ripple upward, taking on the form of serpents.
This is taking too long, the voice said coldly. End it quickly. I don't care about the damage to your body.
She twitched, briefly hesitating.
NOW.
Sakura flung herself onto one of the serpents, shifting her weight on its back to keep from being thrown off. She rode it until she was within radius.
He obliterated the first serpent with raikiri, slitting it all the way until its tail. As he weaved between the second serpent, Sakura met him. Her fist clipped his jaw. His elbow sank into her chest. She headbutted him.
Then his hand, still crackling with faint echoes of electricity, brushed her shoulder.
And that unnameable, deeply buried thing in the back of her mind roared to life.
The Voice felt like a mountain had been dropped on her.
She opened her eyes and glowered. Her body—their body, she was forced to acknowledge scathingly—fucking hurt; somehow, though, her head hurt worse.
Usually, she was privy to the events that had led to her seizing control. The Voice saw everything, after all, even if the Other rarely allowed her to act. Eyes darting, she scanned the destroyed ground around her. A fight, indeed. A fucking good one too, it seemed.
She hadn't seen any of this.
The last thing she remembered clearly was that they had stepped onto this field to fight the old man. The old man had said some things; she couldn't remember what. It probably hadn't mattered, anyway.
More importantly: where had she gone? Had the Other, weak as she was, terrified as she was, suppressed her somehow?
That hadn't been possible for years. The mere thought of it caused the Voice's mouth to contort in a snarl. She had been caged in the beginning, left to shout at nothing but the Other, who never fucking listened. Then the attack in the park had happened, and she had broken free for the first time.
For years, she knew, the Other had been reinforcing once more against her. It had been working; the Voice came out less, spoke less—because what was the fucking point?
But the Voice hadn't known the Other had gotten this far.
A shift in movement caught her attention.
The Voice's muscles tensed instantly, teeth bared in feral warning. She straightened as her eyes took in familiar features—features the Other had spent hours contemplating, staring at. She knew who this was.
"Ka-ka-shi," the Voice said slowly. It felt odd to have to move a mouth to communicate—she didn't talk often when she controlled this body, usually just slaughtered. She had to sound out the syllables.
The tall, lean body stilled, eyes flashing. "Who are you?"
The Voice eyed him. "I am Sa-ku-ra," she insisted.
"No," the copy-nin said shortly. "You are not."
The Voice was momentarily stumped. What had happened while she had been…dormant? The Other didn't like others knowing of her existence. The Voice also preferred to remain unknown—she knew she wasn't normal (the fewer who meddled in her existence, the better). Why had the Other gone and fucked this up?
Incompetent bitch.
The Voice pondered what to do. Her gaze flicked back to the copy-nin. He was watching her too closely, too carefully. He knew too much. His eyes said as much.
"I'm not what you've been calling Sakura," the Voice acknowledged, mouth cracking open into a gory smile, "but I've been here the entire time."
He did not respond. Instead, he continued to watch her, deadly still.
The Voice twitched with impatience. Hadn't he heard? Perhaps, she needed to be more explicit.
"I was here, when you fucked this body," she mocked. Her eyes traced his muscles, his strength. "Until then, I was advocating for splitting your insides, slicing you up, to see all those pretty ligaments and tendons. It's neck and neck now."
The smile dropped from her face.
"Or maybe not," the Voice snarled. "I've been electrocuted. You did this." Was that why her head hurt so much?
So the copy-nin had tried to kill them. Even the Voice hadn't seen this coming.
"You're what takes over when she can't remember?" the copy-nin said coldly.
"She told you that, didn't she?" the Voice said, equally cold. "Actually, I'm what takes over when there's killing that needs to be done, and she can't bring herself to do what's necessary."
His expression was unreadable. "Is that why you're here? To kill me."
She bared her teeth. Having lifted her head, however, her gaze now caught onto figures engaged in combat in the distance.
She squinted.
The old man and the better-dead-than-alive teammate, she identified. It didn't appear to be going very well for the Other's teammate; his moniker could now be changed to soon-to-be-dead, she pondered off-handedly.
She spotted the crow an instant later, a foreign sharingan in its gaze as it attacked-seemingly at the old man's command. Her eyes flew wide open.
"I never trusted that infernal thing," the Voice exhaled, muscles trembling, "Should have made her strangle it as soon as we were capable—"
"Danzo controls the crow through its sharingan," the copy-nin said shortly.
The Voice stiffened. "What?" she barked.
Danzo. She gritted her teeth and moved to close the distance between herself and the old man, with the intent of hurting. The moment she shifted, however, she felt like her body had been thrust into molasses.
The overbearing force that had pressed down on her mind surged suddenly, like an anvil had dropped on her head.
The Voice gnashed its teeth, trying to form words. Choked noises left her mouth instead.
The copy-nin's eyes widened. "What—"
She didn't hear the end of his sentence.
The Voice did not know how much time passed, after that. When she did return, it was abruptly and painfully. She found the copy-nin directly above her.
The smell of lightning was thick in the air.
"You electrocuted me again," the Voice shrieked.
"It's bringing you back somehow—if only temporarily," he answered curtly, frustration on his face. She was gratified to find new injuries on his body too. He had had to sacrifice blood to touch her.
She shifted onto her elbows.
"How much time do we have?" he demanded. Droplets of blood fell from his face onto her collarbone.
The Voice glared. She could feel that sickening pressure in her head growing already. "Explain yourself, now. Or die."
He didn't seem to hear. "You need to take the sharingan out."
Her hands became claws at her sides. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"There's no time for explanation," he seethed, arms bracketing her. "Danzo has the other one. He's been using it to control you. Take it out."
If it had been the Other, the copy-nin would have had to wait until she had taken the time to process the ramifications of this remark, lamented over them, and consequently entered a state of mental crisis before doing anything useful.
The Voice went straight to rage.
"That fucking cunt," she spat. Her hand moved without hesitation upward to yank the offending object out of her body.
Just as the tip of her middle finger brushed an eyelash, however, her body locked down.
"Fuck," she hissed weakly.
And then it all went black again.
The third time the Voice returned, she found the copy-nin's enraged face below hers. She hovered above, this time.
His hand crackled still with electricity between them.
"I will tear you apart inch by measly inch, copy-nin," the Voice breathed, livid. Pain coursed through her body, stealing her breath. She sat up a second later, however, scowling furiously. "It's impossible to take out. Trying was like a—a fucking kill switch."
His gaze cut to the side, slitted. "Quiet. Let me think."
She might have gone for his throat at this, if not for the fact that the main focus of her attention had already shifted somewhere else. The pain in her head was building again, and it was quicker this time.
It was getting quicker each time.
Her breaths increased, her chest aching with a foreign feeling. Was it—panic? No. Surely not.
Still, she knew it wouldn't be too long until she would only have seconds of freedom. Her fingers trembled; she tightened her hands into fists to force them still.
By then, it would be too late.
The Voice simmered with this realization as the copy-nin continued to calculate, both of them in silence. There was something else, something other than the anger she regularly bathed in, that loomed over her now—like a tidal wave about to come crashing down.
She could taste it; it tasted like vomit, bitter and vile. To be caged, again, possibly for all eternity—not even by the Other, but by some decrepit, pathetic old man—
She didn't have long to make her choice. Which was a future she would tolerate?
"You'll have to kill us," the Voice realized, breathless with anger. She shook with the effort it took to utter these words.
She was so immersed in her own outrage that she wasn't prepared for the volatility of his response. (Perhaps, she would allow a little later, she couldn't have expected him to react the way he did.) His body erupted with sudden violence, but not the kind her words warranted. He shoved her back, pinning her to the boulder. The Voice flexed in his hold, shocked despite herself.
He was…restraining her.
"Not an option," he said, voice as hard as steel.
"Your opinion doesn't matter," the Voice said through a clenched jaw, words barely enunciated. She looked past him, imagining that the hatred in her gaze could possibly cause the old man to combust. "The alternative isn't acceptable to us."
She shoved him off.
"This is a rare instance where our priorities align," the Voice said, head raising. "Her reasons are different, maybe. Me? I've been caged all my fucking life. I refuse to be caged by him. You'll do it because neither she nor I will abide living under that old man."
Like a fucking samurai, she thought with self-loathing. An honorable end.
He stood as well, swaying. "No," he said, unyielding.
The Voice strangled down a scream. She didn't want to think about it more than this. She didn't want to have to persuade. "Weak, miserable worm," she accused, eyes wild. "Is this what you are in the end?"
He didn't appear to be listening to her.
The weight bearing down on her in her mind had her hands shaking now. She was barely holding it back. Desperate, the Voice bellowed, "Where is your sense of duty now, COWARD?"
Kakashi blurred and reappeared inches from her face. He looked down at her like he hated her.
"Quiet," he demanded. His hand lit up, lightning crackling from his fingers. As she watched, the electricity molded into a sharp point like the end of a spear. She forcibly locked her muscles, stifling her instinctive reaction to throw herself backward.
So he was going to kill her, the Voice thought.
Her eyes narrowed into slits. Why the duplicity? Did he just not like the act being acknowledged out loud?
Pathetic.
The Voice huffed, shaking her hair back from her face. He approached her steadily, eyes intense with focus. She tried to look away. Somehow, she found her eyes returning again and again to the electricity coated fingers.
"Wait," she grunted with sudden urgency.
The hand stopped instantly.
The Voice's eyes flared. She hadn't meant to say that. Still, an absurd thought had occurred to her, and her mouth had opened without thought. The Other was incomprehensible to her, in so many ways, and among the many that bothered her— If this was to be her only chance to attempt to understand—
Her shoulders tightened.
(She moved.)
Their lips collided, hard, hers contorted in a grotesque snarl, his unmoving. The contact was painful. Her teeth cut into the insides of her lips. He burned.
The Voice pulled back, eyes wide. A scowl formed on her face. She hadn't known it would…hurt.
The copy-nin stared at her, his own face shifting starkly.
"Just wondering how you made her go mad," she said to the side, scathing.
He averted his face, jaw tight. A second later: "Brace yourself."
The Voice scoffed. "I laugh in the face of death—"
His hand plunged into her shoulder.
And she screamed.
Not only because it hurt—and it hurt exactly like she was being murdered. But because the idiot had fucking missed her heart.
Again, it all went black.
It felt…like a dream.
Like the best dream she had ever had. No faces. No blood. No screams. Just an endless black lake.
And Sakura was swimming.
She swam and swam and encountered no horrors. There was nothing here, after all, except for her. Was this what sleep had once been like?
She swam until a flash of lightning made her vision go white.
Her eyes snapped open. Sakura reared back as soon her mind processed what she was looking at.
Pale green eyes, glowing malevolently, watched her. Pink-white hair fell over sharp shoulders like an overgrown creeper, untended and coarse. The thing—and it was a thing, there was no doubt, it could not be human, not in any appreciable way—had no eyebrows. Its teeth were unlike any human teeth Sakura had seen as well, sharp and jagged, like a shark's.
It was the Voice.
Sakura's hands flashed to her sides. She grasped at empty air.
Its body shifted along with hers, primed for attack. "There are no weapons here," the Voice confided, voice higher pitched than Sakura's. "No chakra either. Just hands and feet and teeth."
The Voice's stretched in a macabre smile, an open challenge.
"What did you do?" Sakura demanded, hateful. "Why can I see you?"
"Did you not notice we got a new roommate while you were busy sleeping?" the Voice retorted, mocking. "Lazy bitch."
Roommate? Sakura twisted around, following the Voice's gaze. This endless stretch of plane they stood on could only exist in her head, she pieced together. It didn't feel like a genjutsu. Her head turned to peer in the other direction.
Her mouth went slack with horror.
Towering over them, what could have been meters or kilometers ahead of her, was a giant humanoid form. Her eyes scanned wizened features, filled with dread.
Dim memories were coming back to her. Danzo having controlled the crow. Danzo possessing the other half of Shisui's sharingan pair. Danzo using it to control her.
Was it her imagination or was the giant getting bigger—
"The old man's been growing," the Voice informed her.
"You don't look like you were doing anything about it," Sakura accused under her breath as she stood.
The Voice looked strangely shifty. "I just got here. I thought we were dead. At least I wasn't sleeping."
Despite their situation, she paused to look at it. It was a version of herself she had always known existed, but it was another thing entirely too look at it, like this—in the face. The Voice seemed entirely unabashed of its own monstrousness. In fact, each time she looked at it, it seemed to preen at the attention.
Sakura looked back toward the giant.
"We pushed Ino out, once," she muttered.
"His limbs look…chewy. That one was a blonde twig," the Voice murmured in astute observation.
"I see your point." The larger-than-life golem of Danzo was…a bit more substantial than a blonde teen.
Nevertheless, she walked toward it. The Voice followed, panting through its jagged teeth.
The golem shifted his giant head to peer down at them. Danzo—or whatever fraction of him existed in her head, attempting to control her—surveyed her with a slight curve of the mouth.
"At the strangest of times, you do surprise me," Danzo said, voice rumbling over the plane, "I did not expect you to wake."
Sakura peered up at him, craning her neck. How the fuck was she supposed to kill this thing? She tensed her fists and felt none of the chakra half of her had still expected to respond appear.
"Let's twist his head off," the Voice proposed, cackling. "POP! Like a bottle cap."
The golem's head moved deliberately from Sakura to the creature beside her. "I told you, once, that you would be stronger together," he said, mouth curving. "I did not lie. A shame you never listened to the most obvious lessons I imparted to you."
"Doesn't seem to matter particularly right now," Sakura responded, expression unchanging.
"You've formed an alliance, then. Admirable. But shall we test how strong your ties are?"
Danzo shifted one foot back, crouching down until large eyes—each the size of them—hovered above them.
"It's like he's kneeling to help us," the Voice exhaled, pleased. "Twist. Pop."
"You've grown a mouth," Danzo observed, "despite what your…master has done to suppress you."
The word 'master' seemed to set off some invisible trigger. If Sakura hadn't expected it, she might have flinched in shock. The Voice transformed into rage incarnate, muscles rippling. "I CANNOT BE CAGED!"
The high-pitched shriek raised the hair on Sakura's arms. She shook her limbs loose, wary.
Danzo's eyes moved slowly toward her. "But isn't that exactly what she'll do?"
The Voice's head rose, eyes narrow. As Sakura watched, confusion bled into its rage.
"From what I've observed, she rarely lets you do anything," the golem continued, voice grave. "She's gotten better at controlling you over the years, as well. Will you even exist in a year? Two?"
"Don't listen to him," Sakura said, sneering. "He's just trying to manipulate us—"
The Voice straightened slowly.
"Oh, she can tell truth from lies," Danzo said, gaze not moving from the Voice. "She's far, far smarter than you think, Sakura. Perhaps, in some ways, smarter than you."
Sakura's eyes widened, incredulous. Was he— was he seriously trying to flatter it?
"I am not an unreasonable man," he announced, head tilting to the side. "Name your price."
"You can't be serious," Sakura exhaled, head shifting from Danzo to the Voice. Her voice became cold. "You can't be serious."
But something had changed in the Voice's expression. Its eyes glowed a little brighter.
"Very well," it said suddenly, smiling sharply. "Fifty, fifty."
Sakura's mouth parted, face straining with incredulous rage.
"Give me control half the time, old man," the Voice clarified explicitly, incisors flashing, "and we're in business."
Chapter 37: Behemoths
The golem seemed vaguely amused.
"Bold words," Danzo acknowledged, giant eyes focused solely on the creature beside her. "Seventy, thirty."
The creature beside her stopped grinning. "Sixty, forty, old man—minimum. Or this conversation ends now."
"I could be convinced, potentially," Danzo said after a pause, still looking coolly entertained. "There must be a down payment, of course."
The Voice's eyes flickered, uncharacteristically enigmatic.
Sakura, in turn, was trying to grapple with what was occurring in front of her. Having lived with its constant commentary, she knew the Voice could only see negotiating—regardless of circumstances—as conceding defeat. And yet, if the Voice was lying—Sakura had had no idea was capable of this level of performance or deception.
"And what would that be?" the Voice said, equally cool.
"Kill her," Danzo instructed, his giant hand shifting to point in Sakura's direction.
What was it planning, Sakura wondered, teeth on edge, her spine as stiff as a rod.
The Voice let out a spiteful laugh. "And kill myself too?" Its humor seemed to disappear swiftly as it bellowed, "I won't be tricked—"
"Let me assure you that death has different repercussions here," the golem said coolly. "Out there, you war over one body. Here, however, you exist—distinct. There is no notion of body in this plane of reality, not in any meaningful sense. Your perception of this body you speak out of, even my body, is all merely deceptive paint on plaster: a thin veneer your consciousness has constructed so that you may process this experience in a way you can understand."
"Then how will it kill me," Sakura said coldly, "if I do not have a body that can be killed."
"Try it," Danzo commanded, unblinking.
Her face darkened in warning. Ludicrously, the Voice obeyed instantly, paying no heed to her.
It surged forward with a clenched fist.
In the fraction of the second in which the attack occured, Sakura's eyes roved over its face, trying to understand its actions. There was no meaningful violation of trust, here, of course, because she had never trusted the Voice—but it was a departure from all that she had known about it. To be ordered? To be made to obey, when it had the choice to remain free?
She stared at it, incredulous, as she rotated her body. She drove her elbow down into the creature's neck.
"Fuck!" it hissed out. It pulled back in a blink of an eye, creating distance between itself and her. The upturned face that examined Danzo was accusing. "If we don't have bodies here, wherever we are, then why the fuck did that hurt, old man?"
"Pain is a metaphor," Danzo responded, face smooth. "You feel it, but it is not real."
The Voice shook its head like a rabid animal.
He continued after a short pause. "Death as well becomes, shall we say, metaphorical. Nothing will happen to the physical body you share. But the act of killing her, in this particular plane, will mean that the Haruno Sakura that exists separate from you will cease to exist."
"And then it will only be you and me," the Voice concluded, voice low.
Sakura strove for stoicism.
"Indeed."
"And you're growing," Sakura snapped, not quite aware of the words coming out of her mouth.
Danzo smiled.
"Yes," he said, head tilting to the side. "Can you theorize why?"
The Voice let out an angry noise, scoffing. Sakura's hands felt so cold, she wasn't entirely certain they weren't numb.
"I suppose the instinct to teach never quite leaves, does it? Even at one's student's end," Danzo said, inclining his head in well-feigned, gruff remorse. "Simply put, my foothold into this consciousness strengthens as time passes."
"So you will grow," the Voice grunted, "bigger and bigger. Until you can…smother the both of us out of existence?"
"As I said earlier," Danzo commented almost conversationally, "I did not expect you to wake before then."
The Voice's shoulders rose like a wet cat's.
"But I am not unreasonable," the infamous commander of Root placated the Voice, "I realize now that she is a lost cause, but that you...might not be. And it has always struck me as regrettable to see potential go to waste. Her death, regrettably, is inevitable. Yours need not—should you prove your loyalty, like I mentioned."
The ground trembled beneath their feet as he stood again.
"Make your choice soon," Danzo said lightly, "you do not have much time left to decide."
The Voice turned to Sakura—it didn't really possess a face that could hide calculation, Sakura thought.
It shrugged. Then it flung itself at her.
Sakura buckled under its weight, grappling to keep its clawed hands away from her face. "You can't possibly be stupid enough to believe him," she hissed below her breath.
"Maybe I'm buying us time," the Voice huffed, smiling a little cruelly as it raked its nails across her jaw. "Or is it—playing the odds?"
Sakura punched it in the stomach. It let out a roar and drilled its elbow into her face.
"Cut the bullshit," Sakura whispered, blood pouring out of her nose. She pivoted as she spoke, avoiding the Voice's fists by millimeters. "How did we…do this…with Ino?"
"Bullshit," it echoed, mouth trembling, almost as though it were suppressing laughter.
"Ino," she pressed, and she spoke so quickly that her words ran into each other, "What do you remember?"
Its eyes snapped to Danzo, so fast she might have missed it. And then, for a second, she thought—no, she knew—she saw hatred cross its face.
"You're pretending," Sakura exhaled.
The Voice knotted its hands painfully in her hair, tugging with malice. In the same motion, however, seemingly coincidentally…it pulled her head in close.
"Obviously, you cunt," it said into her ear, eyes locked on Danzo the entire time, "But how the fuck am I supposed to know how that happened when you were running the show."
Sakura might have felt relief—as it was, she wanted to scream. Because Danzo was still watching, she barreled into its midsection and tackled it to the ground.
"Try," she tried not to shout.
"I am," it spat back.
They rolled over several times. Sakura felt a knee plant solidly below her ribcage. She retaliated by punching her in the same spot.
"I grew," the Voice said suddenly, gasping for air.
"What?" she choked out, similarly out of breath.
Why was she wasting time? Why couldn't her brain process these words?
"Back then. I grew. Like the old man's growing now."
Her eyes narrowed as she hovered over it. Sluggishly, her mind churned through these words.
They were…true.
Funny, she had always considered the incident in the park to be the start of the Voice's concerning agency. She wondered, now, if she hadn't…opened the floodgates, to some extent, somehow, during that fight during the chunin exams. (Truly, it seemed like that everything that had sent Team Seven down their current paths had, if not started, accelerated then.)
The question was: what had Sakura done?
"My patience thins," Danzo warned above them.
The Voice twisted like a snake, trying to wriggle out of Sakura's hold. In turn, Sakura locked her legs around it and pressed down on its bent arm.
"How could you have gotten like that?" Sakura muttered urgently to its ear, her hair covering her moving mouth. "How did you suddenly—"
"I told you I don't know—"
"You have to remember," Sakura grunted, straining to keep calm.
But she was shaking. Because this—
Fuck. Fuck, she thought.
Because it looked like the end, didn't it. When the crow had trained her, molded her, had been in her head…Danzo had every advantage he could possibly have—had truly out-maneuvered her here—and…
If it all ended here, she thought incredulously, like this—
Sakura shut her eyes. She opened them again and glared at her own trembling hands.
She didn't want to be— No, no, that wasn't right, Sakura thought. She wasn't sentimental, she insisted to herself. And she wasn't fucking scared of dying—how could she be, when she had put her life on the line so many times? (Or so she had thought, then again, because it had never been quite so hopeless as this, had it?) But this…this couldn't be what she was like at the very end. Not this pathetic, paralyzed mess that couldn't stop remembering that—
Oh god, Sakura thought, heart racing. She wanted to live.
She wanted to sink into her cramped tub in her matchbox of an apartment and fall asleep there one more time; wanted to guzzle mugicha tea until she was sick of it, just one more time; wanted to comb her hands through Konoha's soil, through rich, bitter earth, and also—
Naruto's sunburst of a smile, Sai's quicksilver earnestness, Sasuke face-first on the training ground, Ino's warm, smug sneer, and still—
She wanted—
Sakura's chest ached.
To bury her face in Kakashi's neck and sleep a whole day away, ignorant to the whole world—what would that be like? To curl her limbs around his, unconscionably, and never let him go. To cut him into pieces and turn over each shard and know?
And she, she, Haruno Sakura, if she were to be split down the middle just so too, to be rent in half—her insides utterly exposed—so that she could be known. By him. What would that be like?
Would it be intolerable?
Or would she hold him, gasp for air with him—wail with him? And what would the deities see then, looking at that pair of miserable, self-loathing wrecks? Would they be able to see where they parted? Or would they point and hesitate, to see where one began and where the other ended?
The Voice's eyes were wide, seemingly transfixed by her.
"You trusted me," it said softly. "That was it. In that moment—"
She shook her head, returning to the present. "No. Not even then."
"You have guards against me now that you didn't before," the Voice insisted, childish. "If you lower them—"
Her jaw clenched. "It's not possible."
"Even to save our life?" the Voice choked out, trembling.
"I'm not suicidal," she responded, red with rage, "but you can't ask me to do the impossible on a ticking clock!"
"How is it impossible?" it snarled. "How? How? How? What have I done that's so atrocious—"
"Your mere existence," Sakura said icily, "makes you untrustworthy. You take control away from me, you act without my permission. You've murdered without my consent. You're violent, cruel, insatiable—"
"No, no, Sakura," the Voice laughed icily, head knocking into hers as it shoved their heads together, "we are violent, cruel, and insatiable. You're not thirteen anymore. You don't get to pretend anymore."
Her arms buckled slightly. Sakura held herself aloft through sheer force of will.
The Voice reached its clawed hands upwards, infinitely slow. Sakura stared at it, stoic, as its cold hands wrapped around the sides of her face.
"There was no one for you that night in the park," it hissed into her face, holding her as softly as a lover. "There was no one for you after, when you were bleeding out, silently, invisibly, like an open wound."
Sakura tried to pull back.
"No one for you but me." The words whipped out, hard and cold. "I've never left you, Sakura. When you were alone, I was there with you. When no one paid attention, I paid attention. When everything shattered around you, who was there?"
"You're revising history," Sakura said, voice strained.
"I don't lie," the Voice challenged, face darkening.
"Have you changed your mind?" Danzo asked benevolently above them. Sakura looked up and paled even more. He seemed staggeringly, endlessly large now.
It was too late. It had to be too late. Why was she entertaining anything otherwise?
"Trust me," the Voice urged, face screwed up with murderous anger.
"Fine," Sakura yelled back. "I trust you!"
They stared at each other as nothing happened.
The Voice's rage swiftly turned on her. "You—"
"Of course you aren't fucking inflating," Sakura laughed humorlessly. "I told you. Nothing can change in the span of a few seconds."
The Voice let out a loud, feral noise, then grabbed her hands. It slammed one of her palms onto her chest. The other hand, it slammed onto its chest.
"What—" Sakura's voice broke off.
Yet, bizarrely, inexplicably, it was. Somehow, she had expected the Voice to be hollow, a façade of humanity. And yet, a heart thudded beneath that cold, icy skin.
Stranger still, she realized, eyes narrowing, it thudded in exact time as her own.
"See," The Voice ordered, voice guttural.
Sakura's face changed.
"My patience has run out," Danzo said, voice harder now. Her gaze darted up. As she watched, he began to bend down, face cold.
She glared helplessly.
"So your hatred extends so far," the Voice murmured, mouth stretching into a unfeeling smile. Its gaze flashed, and it yanked her close, sharp teeth dangerously close to her neck. "Then believe this: I'm the vilest fucking monster you'll ever encounter in your life. I am. Not him. None of them can hold a candle to what I can do to you."
Sakura's heart pounded in her ears. The same, swift heart beat vibrated beneath her fingers.
"Between me and him? Don't make me laugh. I'm worse."
Danzo's hand, as large as a house, beckoned death over them now, lowering as each second passed to crush them.
"You're worse," Sakura echoed dumbly, voice hoarse.
Oddly, it took her brain a second to catch up with her mouth. And when it did, she found her pulse quickening.
This, perhaps, she could believe. What else had dogged her every step? What else had haunted her at night, eating her alive from the inside out? What else in her life had she possibly feared more than it?
"You're worse," she whispered again, face straining with all the fury she could muster to make sure it was true.
And this time, something happened. The Voice doubled over, frame wracked by large shivers.
Then, as Sakura looked on, it grew.
When the behemoths collided, Sakura's world shook.
Her knees buckled and she fell onto her hands, but her gaze went instantly upward. It was a monster, to be sure, but in this moment, it was her monster—the one she was betting on.
The Voice shrieked its rage into the black, endless sky, head craning backwards. Danzo watched it, expression tight and unmistakably wary. No chakra, no tricks. Each movement now was an exertion of will power.
And who, on that count, could bet against the Voice?
Sakura blinked rapidly, vision strangely blurry. Could she be hallucinating this whole thing, she wondered. It suddenly felt incredibly surreal, everything she had witnessed. It seemed more likely now that she had imagined it all.
Or maybe she was already dead, and she simply hadn't noticed dying—?
They collided again, and the noise that resounded was like thunder. The golem grappled with the Voice, bearing down with its full weight to push it to its knees. The Voice snarled, muscles straining with the effort it took to resist.
It locked its arms around Danzo's legs and pulled. They both went toppling backwards, the ground beneath Sakura rippling from the resulting impact.
Cursing, she scrambled upwards immediately, eyes searching the direction she had been displaced from.
The golem—still larger than the Voice, impossibly—had managed to pin its challenger down. His face gleamed as he forced the Voice into the ground.
The Voice roared its displeasure, whipping its head back and forth. "I'll gut you—"
Danzo looked down at it, condescension untempered across his features. "I gave you a choice," he said coolly.
He pressed down ruthlessly, unblinking. The Voice let out a strangled noise, then raised its head, inch by inch—no matter how this act further suppressed its airflow—to glare at its oppressor.
"It is a shame to see you put down like this," said Danzo. "Any last words?"
The terrible creature panted, face contorting. Its gaze landed on Sakura.
She stared at back it, face hard.
And the Voice's head craned upwards, impossibly, like a snake, to sink its teeth into Danzo's throat.
The vocalization that left the golem's mouth pierced Sakura's ears like nails. She slammed her hands into her ears.
Danzo shoved himself backward, attempting to dislodge the Voice. The vicious creature held on staunchly, grunting with effort. Black liquid poured from the puncture word, viscous and repugnant.
Sakura watched, breath caught in her chest. It had landed a blow—an impossible blow. But where from here?
She need not have underestimated its creativity—or the lengths it would go to. The Voice let out a muffled shriek of laughter as it began gnawing through the flesh at his neck.
Danzo's mouth tightened, managing something like disapproval, even while under assail, at the Voice's sudden cannibalism.
His hands wrapped around the Voice's own throat in retaliation. Even from her distance, Sakura could see the strength the golem exerted to strangle it. She watched, fists tight at her sides.
Even as its face began to turn purple, however, the Voice did not relent. Eyes blazing, its sharp teeth continued sawing through meat and bone, focused unflinchingly on its task. Sakura's gaze rested on those teeth and found that they were no longer white but pitch black—as black as the liquid that seeped from Danzo's neck.
"Home territory…advantage…is it?" the old man sputtered in a wrecked voice, eyes tight.
Slowly, if only infinitesimally, Danzo's hold weakened. Black liquid sprayed all around as the Voice began to chew more swiftly; it fell from their height like a noxious waterfall from the heavens. Increasingly the golem weakened, head sliding back.
Sakura approached, heart rising in her throat.
The Voice's teeth reached the halfway point through the golem's neck. Unblinking, it brought one hand swiftly up.
She paused where she was, mouth parted. Its fingers locked onto the thick, dark strands on the back of Danzo's head.
"I—"
In a blur of motion, the Voice pulled Danzo's head clean off. The entire golem disintegrated, liquefying into the dark, abhorrent substance.
The Voice stared at it for a second and then bared its teeth in a savage smile. It crowed its victory into the sky, painted in Danzo's remains.
Sakura blinked rapidly, pale. She reached a hand slowly up toward her opposite arm, then pinched viciously.
As though remembering her existence only now, the Voice's head turned downward to look at her. Its eyes narrowed. It lowered into a crouch, descending kilometers and kilometers at a time, until it watched her as closely as it possibly could.
"I am worse," the Voice affirmed maliciously, sounding smug at the same time.
"Am I next?" Sakura asked after a brief pause.
The Voice's gaze cut to the side.
Her throat burned with some odd emotion.
She could feel something else now, too, that she hadn't been able to before: an indescribable pull. She twitched, feeling sudden, visceral discomfort like ants were crawling all over her body.
The Voice's eyes returned to her, an ineffable quality contained within.
"He saved us," it said shortly, face contorted like it was disgusted to admit this.
"He—?"
"You know who."
Sakura's eyes narrowed fractionally.
"I won't tolerate being in debt," the Voice said lowly.
Before she could saying anything in response, the force tugging at her surged in sudden strength. She wasn't meant to be here, she understood abruptly. She had never been meant to be able to look inside herself like this.
And so Sakura found herself pulled away from the strange plane in which she could gaze upon the Voice and back to the real world.
Haruno Sakura shuddered back to life in a fit of coughing.
Agony pierced her left shoulder, causing her vision to spot—which was about when she realized that coughing was very bad for her current predicament. Grunting weakly, she forced her back flat onto the ground.
I forgot to mention, the Voice sang vindictively in her head.
She bit down and shifted painfully to peer at her injury.
Her expression grew disgusted as she surveyed the charred, weeping mess of her shoulder. Blood poured liberally from it, trickling back from the wound into her neck and hair. The wound, however, was otherwise medically clean: the break through muscle and bone had been brutal but —almost surgically precise.
Sakura's face strained.
It was abundantly clear who had made this wound while she had been under Danzo's control. It was also clear that he had injured her so precisely so as to—
Even a fraction of less skill—of less diligence— And at what potential cost? If it had not been Sakura who had returned?
Why, she wanted to know, but was utterly incapable of asking.
I don't know, the Voice answered, uncharacteristically curt.
The sound of battle filtered into her ears behind her.
Panting, she lifted her uninjured arm to begin the laborious process of healing. She worked quickly and without finesse; she didn't need full flexibility of her arm right now, she just needed it to be functional. As the muscle began to knit back together, brutally forced together without much delicacy, Sakura was able to bring herself into a sitting position.
Her eyes searched around her.
She found Sasuke immediately. Somehow, it was his outstretched arm her eyes landed on, the names scrawled across his forearm angry and dark against his pale skin. She could only see his profile, but it was enough to see the pain drawing his face tight as he inhaled. Blood ran down his arms in rivulets, pouring onto the ground.
He's in better condition than I would have thought, the Voice acknowledged dismissively, but not good enough to win.
Sasuke gritted his teeth and darted forward.
Only for another figure to cut him off, shoving him effortlessly away. Sasuke veritably flew back through the air. The copy-nin didn't spare him a glance.
With cold focus, Kakashi pursued the former's attack. It had been accomplished violently…but the act had been one of seeming, if brutish, protection. Sakura's eyes lingered on him for a second too long.
Does he even need our help? the Voice murmured, resentful.
And indeed, as she watched, it became clear that while the commander of Root was a wily combatant, he was not among the best. His strengths clearly lay in leadership. So why had he been so confident?
He shouldn't have been, the Voice hissed warily. Maybe he only intended to take on the Uchiha, and meant for us to handle Kakashi.
More plausible—but even that seemed ambitious. No shinobi could plausibly claim assurance at being able to 'handle' the copy-nin.
The Voice was restless. He knew what happened between you two, it reminded her.
She examined Danzo closely, lips thin. The last of the bandage on him had unraveled, exposing the full length of his arm. Her brow darkened as she examined the thick, uneven skin there. It was patterned oddly, covered in raised rings, and at the center of each ring: a slit—like something else might penetrate through.
What was it? Some spear-like body modification? A deadly gas that would poison them?
Her gaze traced upward, and she found out. There, at the break between upper arm and forearm, was a sharingan, nestled at the center of concentric, raised skin. And another just above it.
He had shoved them into his own body—the sharingans—not just in his eye.
She watched as Kakashi ripped Danzo's intestines out of his body. The second to last sharingan on his arm slowly slide shut.
But Danzo remained standing. In fact, a second after doubling over, he straightened again, a sharp curve to his mouth.
The Voice bellowed incredulously in her head. Sakura stared, disbelief twisting her face.
"Two left, and then your time runs out," Sasuke said, voice as brittle as ice.
"And yet it is all I require, young Uchiha," Danzo said, face smooth. "I have learned everything that I need to."
"All you've done is die eight times," Sasuke spat.
Her mouth tightened. Were the sharingans…prolonging his life somehow? Was that possible?
"And look at how weak you are, having taken my life only two of those times," she heard returned calmly.
"You think that if I don't kill you, he won't?" Sasuke shouted, face ugly.
Danzo's eyes turned to Kakashi. "I have learned his weaknesses too," he said after a pause.
Sakura's hand spasmed on her shoulder, chakra fluctuating.
Is it possible? the Voice hissed. No. He's lying—
"Nothing you think you have learned will matter," said Kakashi. "You will die anyway."
And her blood chilled at the sound of that voice, because this was not the usual, pitch-perfect cruelty, nor the familiar pretense of cool interest. Not even the wild, savage guise he often adopted.
He sounded like— Why did he sound like that? Sakura's stomach clenched.
Wariness crossed Danzo's face in a flash, as quickly gone as it appeared. Sakura pulled her hand away from her shoulder, green chakra fading.
She soon discovered why the fight had stayed away from her—more specifically, her foot rebounded off of it. Her mouth parted as her eyes flew upward. A barrier surrounded where she had lain, forming a dome of solid chakra around her. The hair rising on her arms—as though she had been electrocuted—told her instantly whose chakra fueled the barrier protecting her.
She inhaled sharply.
On her exhale, Sakura punched through the barrier. It shattered with a shrill noise that carried easily across the barren battlefield.
Wide eyes—one dark as ink and the other red like blood—landed on her instantly like a magnetic pole yanked to its counterpart. His mask hung in tatters around his neck, so she saw every shift in his expression, the way he paled as he shifted towards her, almost thoughtlessly, just ever so slightly—
"Sakura," Sasuke grunted, with something like relief.
Kakashi caught himself, jaw clenching as he pulled himself back. His gaze, however, did not move away from her for even a second.
It searched her mercilessly.
He's trying to determine if it's us, the Voice considered. Shall we fool him?
Sakura shunshined and closed the distance between them.
Warning flashed across Kakashi's face, body hunched over like he might meld himself to her or crush her. Sakura's mouth thinned. A droplet of blood clung to the edge of a long, fine cut on his face. It was too fresh to have been made by her.
Sakura pulled the tie from her hair and retied it, making sure all her hair was secured. Her hands dropped to her sides, fingers curling into loose fists.
"You kept us waiting," Danzo said softly, voice indecipherable.
We'll kill him for this, the Voice cackled madly, and pay our debt.
"And you," she responded, voice high and cold, "have touched what is mine."
Chapter 38: Abomination
The sun set on the horizon.
Damp strands plastered to Sakura's face as she bent over, breath rushing out in ragged huffs. Her head ached from both physical exhaustion and the mental strain of casting multiple genjutsus. She scowled, knowing that a migraine was surely impending.
Danzo smirked at her as he adjusted the remainders of the bandage still clinging to his person.
"Did I not say so?" he said, sly. "I learned quite a lot while you were otherwise occupied."
Sakura's eyes narrowed.
"You. What the fuck did you teach him?" she snapped, turning to her left.
Kakashi leaned calmly against a boulder, outstretched hand applying rudimentary healing chakra to Sasuke's wounds. "I killed him six times in four hours. You've been at it how long—one hour?"
"You killed him when it was easy! And in those four hours, he says that he managed to learn your weaknesses," she exclaimed, gesturing wildly, "which he's now using very efficiently against me."
"You're doing very well, Sakura. Keep at it?" he said lazily.
Had she been inhaling some hallucinogenic vapors earlier, with that ridiculous sentiment of wanting to spend a whole day with him?
She twisted her body, unblinking, to dodge a wind-based jutsu that would have sliced her body clean in half. She shot Kakashi another look.
"His left side is weak," Kakashi offered offhandedly.
Her mouth flattened.
She rotated her katana in her hand. Stalking Danzo with her gaze, she reached behind her and yanked Kakashi's katana out of the ground as well. She wasn't exceptionally practiced at wielding two katanas, but the notion of doubling her opportunity to slice into the commander of Root seemed tantalizing just about now.
"Let me," Sasuke grunted. The final gash across his arm closed up as he staggered to his feet.
She shot him a look, evaluating.
"No. Let me," Sakura returned, toneless. "I have more experience than you, and I outrank you—don't bother arguing either point. That means that this is my battleground, so you listen to me."
The skin on Sasuke's cheeks drew taut as his jaw clenched. "Fine," he bit out.
"You attack in between my attacks—when Danzo's regaining his balance. If that's not enough time, you wait it out."
He nodded sharply, thrumming with impatience.
Danzo surveyed Sasuke with ostensible pleasure as the black-haired boy stepped forward. "A fine pair of eyes you have, Sasuke. It's a shame that you have very little idea of how to use them."
He stretched out his hand. "Shall I show you?" the older man asked softly, mouth curving. The crow settled on it with a sharp caw, malice burning in its gaze. Sakura bared her teeth at it.
They both watched as weathered hands moved with unassuming dexterity. Her wariness tripled, however, when she realized that the hand signs he made…were familiar.
The sharingan in the crow's head glowed a blazing red and began to spin with dizzying speed. Sakura tensed.
She blinked disbelievingly when she found that the pattern of the sharingan in the crow's head had changed.
Then what she saw sank into her brain.
Sakura's hand jerked upward, panic jolting through her system. Those hand signs—! But, no, it could not be possible; it had been the crow's blood, not Danzo's, in that ceremony, and the crow was not capable of the hand signs to take the eye from her.
But the pattern that stared back at her was…Shisui's.
It wasn't hers, she affirmed dazedly, hand dropping from her face. The sharingan in her head was still intact. It had not taken hers.
….but, possibly, she and the crow had not been the only ones to take part in those ceremonies.
Her gaze flew to Danzo. There, she found that the eye that had been in the crow's head but seconds earlier. She scanned the council member's body, hands tightening to fists at her sides. The pattern of the sharingan in his arm reflected that of the sharingan in his right eye.
The crow and Danzo had switched sharingans, like it was child's play. Now, like Sasuke, Danzo's body held a matching pair.
Danzo shut his eyes, the lines on his face utterly relaxed. Then, his lids snapped upwards, and both the eye in his arm and his right eye spun in eerie synchronization.
Sasuke made a low, incomprehensible noise.
"Susanoo," Danzo growled.
Red burned into her sclera. A hulking avatar erupted from Danzo, encasing him in blinding white. Nearly every inch of it was covered in armor, except for its eyes, which peered through all the glowing white in a putrid yellow.
"Do you recognize these eyes, Sasuke?"
Sasuke was eerily still.
"I take some care in the sharingans I place in my body," the old man continued conversationally. "Even I haven't figured out how to safely implant all the ones I have collected—the natural limitations of the human body, regrettably. But I've developed workarounds so that I can still maintain some flexibility. Switch them around as I please."
"Normally," he continued, as the susanoo raised a weapon unlike anything Sakura had ever seen before, "I keep eyes like your cousin's on me. Izumi, was that her name?"—Danzo pointed to the lower portion of his arm—"Ordinary Uchiha eyes, still remarkable, but with limited functionality."
Danzo's lips spread into a small smile. "On special occasions, however, I reserve eyes like these." he finished. "Your father, he was a formidable opponent once."
Sakura kept her voice deliberately harsh in order to cut through the haze on Sasuke's face. "He's trying to goad you. Don't let him. Listen— can you do that with your eyes?"
His mouth contorted. But slowly, steadily, his pale cheeks flushed a pale red. "No. I would need the mangekyou."
Begrudgingly, Sakura dropped the remaining katana in her hand, and she peered upward at the creature called susanoo.
Sasuke suddenly jerked beside her, an inhuman noise leaving his mouth. She might have seen that as sufficient warning of his lapse in relative sanity, because in the next second, he was swinging back and then sharply forward, hands crackling with lightning. Sakura glowered after him as he zipped across the barren ground toward Danzo.
"What did I say, Sasuke?" she bellowed after him.
We could just let him become mincemeat, the Voice considered. Sakura slapped the thought aside like an errant fly.
Pulsing dangerous amounts of chakra into her legs, she sprinted forward—faster, faster, faster—until she surpassed him. Then she launched herself upward into the air.
Chakra coiled into her fist when she reached the zenith point of her trajectory. For a second, she seemed to be suspended, momentarily motionless. Then, she drove downward, a snarl forming on her face.
The susanoo's yellow gaze flicked up to her. In a fraction of a second, it raised the outlandish weapon in its arms up. Her fists had shattered bodies and bones and mountains and forests, but this time, she felt the shock of the blow ripple upward through her arm as they collided.
It did not break; instead, the susanoo skidded back, yellow gaze narrowing warily. Sakura went hurtling back through the air as well. She cursed out loud, wind rushing loudly in her ears. She was going too fast for her to control her descent.
Fuck, she thought, annoyed, this was going to hurt.
Before she hit earth, another body collided with her. Rough hands snatched her mid-air and changed her direction, slowing her momentum. They hit the ground together, hard, but with far less force than she would have otherwise.
Sakura rolled over, breath punched out of her lungs. Kakashi's eyes met hers, as dark as she had ever seen them.
"How protective you are, copy-nin, in the novel case that someone interests you," Danzo reflected, eyebrows raised.
The susanoo encasing Danzo shifted suddenly. It poised its weapon with the dignity of a samurai at battle to protect its feudal lord, preparing to swing.
But Kakashi moved quicker. Lightning lanced from his fist as his foot slid forward in the dirt, grounding his stance. The powerful bolt arced upward, impossibly high.
She felt his hand grasp the back of her shirt. Without a word, he flung her upward into the air as well.
Sakura stared at him as the air whipped in her ears, glaring. Right before she collided with the giant mass behind her, she flipped mid-air and found herself positioned right at the joint between its right arm and the larger mass of its chest.
She called forth amaterasu, brow furrowing as pain surged throughout her head. A sphere of cursed black fire expanded from her eye. The flame grazed its shoulder, and it let out an enraged roar.
But Sakura wasn't finished. As she crossed its shoulder, she neared the crow that had been circling idly above the entire while. The sharingan in its eye glowed as they made eye contact. Smiling savagely, she pushed off the avatar toward it.
She saw the susanoo's yellow eyes widen.
The crow released a shrill caw, flapping its wings. Black feathers flooded her vision—she felt them fill her throat, suffocating her—but Sakura broke through this genjutsu with sheer force of will in seconds. Her hand, clawed and greedy, locked onto a wing.
Her feet hit the ground with a thunderous crack. She looked down at the small feathered body clutched in her grasp for a second before she swarmed her fingers with chakra and crushed.
It seemed like an eternity passed as she stared down at the mangled corpse—thin, skeletal bones and delicate vessels and veins having given way with laughable ease.
That was it. The end of the crow, she reflected incredulously.
Sakura found herself laughing out loud, almost bewildered—that this small, meaningless thing had been the vehicle for so much strife in her life.
And here it was, so easily, pathetically disposed of.
She could have done this long ago. It had been a profound mistake, that she had not. But then, for years, it had always been the crow's insidious words, its mind, that had prolonged its life—not her fear or lack of ability.
"Congratulations, Sakura, if you wish to be lauded for destroying a mere puppet," Danzo's words were calm, but there was a strange tension in his face.
Her expression grew cold. "One less sharingan, old man."
"You cannot conceive of how many more I have." The odd look on his face remained for one more moment, before his expression abruptly cleared, some decision having been apparently reached.
Was he cutting his losses?
In the distance, she saw Kakashi pull water from the tree line at the edge of the barren expanse, molding it into an attack. Sasuke charged alongside the resulting water dragon, his blade coated with chakra.
Danzo's attention smoothly turned away from her.
And Sakura stared blankly down at the dead crow in her hand.
"Take…the eye out."
Her shocked gaze flew a meters ahead and found Itachi. He had shifted, with seeming great difficulty, into an upright position. She shunshined to him.
"Quickly," he whispered, face clammy with pain, "or it will be unusable. Susanoo is the sharingan's strongest technique for defense, and Danzo's is fully fledged. You already have one of Shisui's eyes, if you have both…"
As soon as she heard it stated explicitly, she knew her answer. The reaction from within her—and this was entirely Sakura, no one else—was violent.
"No," she exhaled, disgusted.
No, the Voice agreed, surprisingly emphatic. Look at how much trouble the other one brought us.
Itachi's subtly trembling hands stilled in the ground. He seemed to pierce through the muddled cloud of his infirmity, gaze suddenly sharp. "Why not?"
"I don't want it," Sakura finished simply, looking away.
Itachi's face convulsed. "It is not a question of want," he said tightly.
Sakura's eyes flew upward, teeth on edge. "Do you not think that Shisui's been tied to this miserable place for far too long? Why not let this eye…die," she asked. "Let this part of him be at peace?"
Itachi's voice was as unbending as steel, even as there was a mournful edge to it. "As long as his mission went unfinished, he would desire that these eyes survive. That would be his will."
Her shoulders rose subconsciously.
"Fine." Her expression smoothed, and she severed the sharingan from the crow with practiced precision, fingers glowing green. As it dropped into her hand, the fingers on her other hand flexed through some rapid signs.
"A stasis jutsu," Itachi decoded with remarkable speed. His attention returned to her. "You will not use it now."
"It's Tsunade's own invention. Yes, it works. I'm probably the only non-medic-nin who knows it—now you too, I suppose."
She placed the eye carefully in Itachi's open palm. His fingers curled around it.
"I'm not conducting eye surgery on a battlefield," she muttered. "And I'm rather partial to my own eyes."
"But are you certain that you can win without it?" he questioned her.
Sakura's answer was in her departure. Hair whipping past her face, she cut across the ground. It had been a mad, wishful thought as she had turned—and yet, miraculously, she found the amaterasu flames shaping themselves around her palms obediently instead of raging mindlessly.
It was fucking time something went her way, she thought.
Kakashi's head turned to track her. "It's advanced further now," he called out calmly.
She slowed to a standstill, brow furrowing as she turned to look at the susanoo. She examined it for a moment before she realized what he had alluded to. It had gotten magnitudes faster in the time she had been talking to Itachi. It certainly hadn't moved like this before.
Sakura stared at Kakashi. What she saw there made her head roll back, until she stared at the sky. "Oh, fuck you," she scoffed.
They heard Sasuke exclaim above them, receiving what sounded like a bulldozer of a fist.
"You're pleased. A more exciting challenge, is it?" she mocked. "You didn't seem all that enthused earlier. Or was I not challenge enough for you?"
Kakashi grew utterly still.
When he spoke, his voice was as cold as ice. "Shall we make a game of pretending that I have not betrayed myself entirely by now?"
Sakura's mouth went dry. She could have drunk this in, swallowed it whole—this childish resentment. Her mouth parted, and then shut. She let the silence sit between them for a moment.
"The armor is not impenetrable," Sakura said eventually. "Amaterasu damaged the susanoo, just not enough to dismember it." But her mouth curved as she looked at him.
"We need to pin it down," Kakashi said, eyes piercing.
Like a butterfly, pin him in place, the Voice fantasized.
Her gaze was only deflected when Sasuke plummeted toward the ground from a failed attack at the avatar's neck. Her body was so wired that she felt nothing when he made impact with her arms, though she knew from the sound that he landed like an anvil.
"Put me down," Sasuke wheezed.
"My pleasure," she said. She dropped him unblinking.
Her lips pursed belatedly. Perhaps, given the circumstances, she could cut him some slack. Yes, Sai or Naruto would probably say something like that, if they were here now.
After a moment (not looking at him), she stretched out a hand.
She was surprised when he took it.
"I've been landing attacks," Sasuke responded, frustrated. His mouth twisted, reluctant. "You and Kakashi as well."
"It's too fast. We're not degrading the armor quickly enough." Sakura said sharply.
Sasuke paused. "It was known for its speed," he said eventually, stiffly. "That susanoo."
Kakashi brushed their shoulders as he stepped forward and settled into the space between them. "His aim is to outlast us," he rasped, cold eyes scanning the avatar.
"Not a farfetched prospect at this point," Sakura muttered. She wiped a smear of mixed dirt, blood, and sweat from the front of her shirt with disgust.
"Are you beginning to see reason, now?" Danzo called out, his features blurred slightly by the susanoo's armor covering him. Despite this, Sakura had the impression that he was looking directly at her. "Can you see the odds are as stacked against you as they could possibly be?"
Sakura's mood darkened.
"You've had a few paltry victories, I will allow," the commander of Root chuckled. "But they are small and too insignificant to change the tide. My chakra reserves have fully replenished each time I've resurrected my body. Yours? You have been fighting for hours on the same reserves."
"Annoying, indeed," Kakashi murmured, eyes glinting.
Danzo contemplated them, gaze calm. "I will merely recollect the eyes you took after. As I suspected…you were ultimately too sentimental to use Shisui's other eye yourself."
She was certain, now, that he looked at her.
"That was always your greatest weakness. Sentimentality." He shook his head with seemingly earnest disappointment. "Sentimentality blinds you now from what is inevitable. From what you already know to be the case."
"And what do I know?" Sakura asked, lips barely moving.
"That I have executed plans—outrageous to those with lesser foresight and vision—without flaw; you've experienced this personally through the crow," Danzo said in a measured voice. "And your knowledge of my hand in the Uchiha massacre would tell you that, in addition to the same, I stop at nothing to accomplish what I deem necessary."
He straightened, an eerie gleam coming to his eyes.
"Your only chance of winning against me would have been if you had taken me by surprise today," he finished, solemn. "But I knowingly drew you here. I orchestrated this encounter precisely."
"How do you scratch a diamond?" Kakashi posed suddenly, utterly nonsensical.
Sakura and Sasuke both shot him a look.
"With another diamond. A shame, therefore, that another susanoo is now impossible," the commander of Root continued coolly. "Sakura's sentimentality precluded her from accepting Shisui's sharingan from the crow, even when she had the choice. Now, it is unusable."
Sakura shifted her weight, eyes snapping to Itachi. This wasn't…quite true. It wasn't unusable. But she still vehemently did not want it.
"Oh, I don't mean to use that."
Danzo's eyes narrowed. "Impossible," he charged. "All the Uchiha literature is expressly clear—" he pointed upwards—"Two eyes, if you even dream of matching this."
Kakashi raised his eyebrows.
Then, he declared, curtly: "Susanoo."
At first—because in great moments of suspense like these, nothing ever happened instantly—nothing happened.
They all waited. Eventually, Sasuke let out a forceful sigh; it sounded both unsurprised and vaguely wistful.
At its tail-end, a loud, cracking noise split the air—and something grotesque emerged into existence.
It was a crude imitation of what Danzo had summoned, if it could indeed be called a susanoo. For one, it possessed none of the exoskeleton that formed the armor of Danzo's susanoo. It was nothing but skeleton—simple, stark bone. More to the point, however, it was clear that it was malformed (or, perhaps, under-formed was the better term, Sakura considered, as she looked at it).
As soon as it burst onto the battlefield, it keeled over onto its side.
This was unsurprising because, indeed, as though someone had taken a knife and cut the original avatar down the middle, there was only half of it.
Half a head, one arm, half a torso, one leg.
The susanoo hit the ground unblinking, red gaze focused solely on Kakashi. Ostensibly, it awaited instruction, despite its miserable state.
"Useless," Danzo exhaled. His wide eyes, which had taken in the susanoo with something like shock, finally narrowed with condemnation. "This is an abomination."
Sakura…had to agree. No wonder the 'literature' was so stringent about the two eye requirement. How much could this crippled echo of Danzo's susanoo accomplish?
It had been an interesting idea, but that was all. Fuck.
Gritting her teeth, Sakura summoned more cursed fire, wincing at the strain it put on her eye. As they had before, the flames molded to the shape she found herself longing: a long blade extending from her hand.
Sasuke's hands steadily built up lightning chakra, the crackling growing to deafening decibels.
"Go straight for the susanoo's ribcage," she commanded under her breath. "When he moves, I'll be there."
"And if he dodges again?"
Sakura's eyes narrowed. "You have two hands filled with lightning, right? Save one for after—"
Wind blasted her in the face, cutting off her words. She watched in disbelief as Kakashi's mangled susanoo suddenly braced one hand on the ground and, impossibly, propelled itself upward. It windmilled through the air with obscene speed, managing to collide with Danzo's susanoo.
Danzo's eyes widened to perfect circles as his susanoo lost its balance.
"….Fuck," Sasuke breathed.
Sakura's mouth parted in incredulity. What. The. Fuck.
Kakashi was insane. It couldn't even stand. And yet…
YESSSSS, the Voice shrieked.
Its fervent glee was contagious. Despite herself, Sakura found an incredulous grin spreading across her face, and she lunged forward, taking advantage of Danzo's shock.
What proceeded was not something that could ever be praised for its elegance. Sasuke's usual fighting style, cool and utilitarian, was almost entirely absent given his current emotional state. Kakashi's susanoo, malformed as it was, was consequently manipulated by Kakashi to move only in the most primitive of manners—it shoved itself off of the ground, falling face-first into it seconds later, again and again, like some masochistic ragdoll.
There was no such great departure from normalcy for Sakura, however, who had never been accused of exceptional elegance or detachment.
It felt like adrenaline was jetting through her veins as she flipped from limb to limb on the susanoo's body, amaterasu blade slashing indiscriminately. She was vaguely aware that she was laughing—short, violent bursts of cruel humor—as she hacked at the giant thing like a pig at a butcher's shop.
The Voice's exhilaration was a heady drug, paired with her own adrenaline. Or, perhaps, they were one and the same.
"MOVE," Danzo bellowed at his susanoo, face ruddy with anger. The giant creature let out a short, rumbling noise as it all but threw itself to the side. Kakashi's susanoo's clawed hand passed through empty air before it arced to the ground again.
Sakura followed Danzo's susanoo, twisting the pseudo-katana in her hand. Sasuke flipped over her back, driving straight for its head, while she drove straight forward for its quadriceps.
The susanoo caught Sasuke, but was forced to let go as lightning crackled from the Uchiha's body, burning its hand. Sakura's eyes widened slowly.
She saw a new opening, a better opening than she had imagined, and abandoned her course for its legs.
Kicking off the ground, she hurtled straight toward its arm, the same one she had targeted that very first attack. But this time, she called forth amaterasu, molded into the more maneuverable form of a giant blade.
This time, her aim was unerring. The flame sliced solidly through the join between upper arm and lower, severing the forearm and hand entirely.
The susanoo let out an animal shriek, a high-pitched noise that had Sakura recoiling with pain. Because of this, she was blind to the fist that flew through the air in instinctive retaliation. It hit her like a boulder, fully in the midsection.
Worse, the impact of the blow was angled sharply to the ground. She had no time to slow her trajectory or change direction to have a softer landing. She hit unforgiving rock, hard and fast.
She coughed up blood. The Voice snarled wordlessly, her pain infecting it too.
Sakura rolled onto her side, gritting her teeth as she leaned on her forearm to push herself back up. Her eyes stung viciously as she reached an upright position.
The susanoo was still releasing that unearthly wail, its yellow eyes blazing as it stumbled in pain. Sakura smirked, watching it.
Until, abruptly, it stilled.
Sakura's gaze searched the battleground, following the direction of its gaze. She found its target in Sasuke. He was kneeling near the tree line, face tight with focus as he swiftly bandaged a bleeding wound with last remnants of his shirt. If Sasuke hadn't seen her get hit…he would have no reason to think his back wasn't covered as he took a moment to recoup. Why hadn't he been paying attention?
The blood rushed out of her face.
Danzo's susanoo moved with single-minded focus, even before Sakura could open her mouth to shape a warning.
"SASUKE!" she roared, even as she knew that she was wasting her breath.
The susanoo's weapon flashed through the air, ringing like a death bell.
It hit something else—not Sasuke. She blinked rapidly.
It was Kakashi's susanoo trapped under the weapon. There were skid marks on the ground, like it had dragged itself on its stomach—a serpent with too many bones—to cover the distance in time. Its partial ribcage encased Sasuke, shielding him. Kakashi watched from afar, eyes slitted.
Danzo's susanoo's gaze narrowed, surprise turning into cunning. It pressed savagely down and began to slide the edge of its weapon back and forth like a saw. Kakashi's susanoo flinched then held absolutely still, paralyzed because moving would only aid the sawing motion.
She saw Kakashi's jaw clench. His susanoo's bones were far more fragile than Danzo's, which had withstood attack after attack—these were starting to creak, beginning to cave.
Imminently, she could tell from the sound, they were going to shatter.
Her mind worked rapidly. Both she and Kakashi could cover that distance in less than a fraction of a second—only she could reliably muster the power to move Danzo's susanoo with pure chakra and muscle in that short time span (there was no time for complex jutsus).
There was no excuse at all for the wild, impossible alternative that crossed her mind.
What had it required, she wondered abruptly. Prodigious skill or sheer force of will? Complete faith or that indefinable edge of skepticism? Did she possess what was necessary? Some of it? None of it?
(If he could do it…why couldn't she?)
Her body braced to surge forward in the eventuality that nothing happened—and, at the same time, Sakura's head tilted slowly to the side.
"Susanoo," she murmured.
She didn't expect it to work. Not really.
Not, in fact, because she lacked faith in herself—but because she had all but turned herself wholly over to cynicism for years now.
It was with an embarrassing jolt of surprise, therefore, that she found her vision going black as soon as her mouth shaped the last syllable. The chakra she had been (as a back-up measure) gathering to shunshin poured out of her without warning—along with, indeed, almost all of her remaining chakra. It stupidly took her a few seconds to understand what was happening.
But then, even as she was momentarily blinded…she heard it.
The other susanoos had emerged silently. Hers—it roared into existence, a bizarre noise unlike anything she had heard emerging from its throat.
When Sakura's vision finally stopped swimming, she saw the mangled, skeletal creature corporealize out of thin air. It burst into existence lunging forward, as though it knew exactly what it had been summoned for.
She stared up at it, this absurd, unlikely thing, mouth falling open.
It's nothing compared to what I would be if I existed on this plane, the Voice insisted, poisonous with envy.
With its one arm, her susanoo caught onto a leg and yanked Danzo's susanoo backward.
I thought it would have boobs, the Voice muttered, displeased. We have boobs, don't we?
(At any other time, she would have been tempted to roll her eyes).
At this current time, she watched, rapt, as Kakashi's susanoo flipped itself—committing a full revolution—taking advantage of its granted reprieve. Its better side now closer to Danzo's susanoo, it lashed out with a skeletal hand and managed to lock onto an arm.
And this, Sakura realized abruptly, was probably the moment they had been waiting for.
In less than a blink of an eye, she was at ground-zero. She gritted her teeth, then punched the ground with precisely calculated force on her exhale.
The mix of dirt and bedrock gave way with laughable protest, the damage radiating outward instantly from her point of contact. Yellow eyes burned maliciously into her as an exact crater formed—exactly where it stood—dragging it down.
Kakashi's susanoo held fast to the wrist it had caught. Sakura's abandoned the leg it had imprisoned in favor of catching what remained of its opposite arm, snatching it as it scrabbled at empty air. Together, each half-susanoo pinned its full-fledged counterpart in place, bearing down with all its weight as the rest of the susanoo's body fell into the crater.
Danzo's susanoo shrieked into the air as it found itself shackled.
Its cries were quickly drowned out by raikiri's chilling song. A veritable blur, Kakashi went savagely for its knees. With one pass, the susanoo's previously sturdy legs shook. Sasuke caught on, cutting across the same exact line with his lightning chakra from the opposite direction, weakening it further.
On the third pass, Kakashi brought the susanoo crashing down. His head snapped to her, eyes searing.
Sakura launched herself upward, soaring through the air until she stood level with the susanoo's yellow eyes, her feet braced on his collarbones.
"FIGHT," she heard Danzo roar. "You cannot possibly be outmatched by these miserable copies. These abominations—"
She pulsed the last of her chakra into her hands, rubbed them together, then crouched to grip the susanoo's giant head.
Twist the head off, the Voice cackled, POP like a bottle cap—!
She hefted upward for all she was worth. It stretched like rubber, resisting her.
More, More, MORE
"aaaAAAGGHHH," Sakura screamed senselessly, pumping chakra she didn't know she had into her legs. She was pulling the energy from somewhere else—from places that should not have been perturbed. She felt other parts of her body begin to burn concerningly.
But she ignored all these things and pulled swiftly, brutally back.
The head snapped off.
Sakura panted at the sky, tears and sweat streaming down her face in a miserable mess as she gasped for air.
"She did it," she heard Sasuke state below her, tone flat and disbelieving.
And it was delicious, the Voice moaned.
Biting down hard to ground herself as her vision swam again, Sakura rolled her head back up and tipped forward, bracing her hands against the edges of the torn neck.
She peered inside.
"Are you going to come out," she rasped, "or do I need to pull you out myself, sensei?"
Wind lashed out like a whip through the opening. Sakura flung herself back, lip curling as Danzo launched himself out of the susanoo's damaged shell, face red with wrath and something that looked, finally, like fear.
They were on him in seconds.
Sasuke stabbed him right through the middle, a sibilant hiss of satisfaction rising from the blade as it sank home. When the older man staggered back, Sakura wrapped both her hands around his right arm and twisted, tearing the arm that held the stolen sharingans, which even now still held one, clean off.
"You ungrateful worm," Danzo spat at her. "How dare you? After all I have done for you—"
His words devolved into an inarticulate scream as Kakashi shoved his hand into his eye, burning the sharingan right in its socket with lightning.
Danzo crumpled to the ground. Rough, pained breaths rattled his solid frame as he shuddered in agony, cradling his face.
Finally, the Voice whispered.
Sakura twitched, nostrils flaring. Bloodlust keened inside her. She stepped forward, head snapping to each side as she cracked her neck, breath rising greedily.
She could see it now. Decapitation was tempting, but it would all be over too fast. Slitting his throat would mean she couldn't hear his screams. She would go first for his belly, slice upward torturously slow, so slow that she could see each one of his organs spill out, one by one. Yes, this was the perfect way to kill him—
"Sakura," Sasuke said, voice rough.
She flinched.
He has the GALL? the Voice growled, restless.
(…It hadn't been her family that had died. It hadn't been her brother who had been forced to commit mass murder. It hadn't been her clan that had gone near-extinct.)
Don't you dare, the Voice screeched. Sakura shut her eyes.
Fuck, she thought, hating herself.
"Fine," she snarled. "Your choice, Sasuke."
Her blood boiled. It was impossibly hard, forcing her hands into tame, useless fists at her sides. The Voice railed against her in her mind, nearly insane.
Kakashi's dark eyes grazed her like a physical touch.
"I want him to pay," Sasuke choked out.
"How?" Sakura bit out, forcing her attention back to him.
Make the decision for him, the Voice whispered, the words sly and seductive in her mind.
"I want the world to know what he did." His voice grew voice harsher and stronger. "What he did to the Uchihas. How he was hunted down for it."
Danzo's face craned upward. He stared at them like he wanted nothing more than to burn the hearts out of them.
"I don't want to you to die here, forgotten," Sasuke whispered, expression contorted with hate in return. "I want everyone to know what you've been reduced to. I want them to see you, forced to exist in this miserable condition."
"Coward," Danzo rasped. "You're too weak to kill me." Over Sasuke's shoulder, his gaze locked with hers.
Sakura knew he was goading her. It didn't stop her muscles from flexing just slightly.
As though he knew it too, Kakashi withdrew something metallic from his pocket with lightning speed, tossing it through the air. Sasuke caught it—it was the chakra-blocking cuff Kakashi had removed from Sasuke's wrist earlier.
Sasuke roughly locked the cuff around Danzo.
Sakura stepped backward, one slow step at a time—it felt like trudging through cement—to create distance between them. She stopped only when she felt herself brush another body.
She turned her head sharply toward him, and it burst out of her in a harsh whisper. "I'll kill him long before we ever set foot in Konoha," she barely managed to confess.
It felt like a weakness, to admit it. To the Voice, it was betrayal.
You stupid cunt, the Voice hissed.
"You better knock me out," she spat.
He did not react to her vitriolic tone. He merely received it, gaze unmoving from hers. Then, a calloused hand grasped her chin, oddly soft, and he forced her head up.
His sharingan spun, hypnotizing her.
Her body went almost instantly slack.
The persisting whir of a ceiling fan penetrated first, then the sensation of unfamiliar sheets: rough but freshly washed. Hospital sheets, she pieced together, feigning sleep still.
She was in Konoha, in a hospital room.
And there was a figure beside her. She couldn't detect chakra—so not a nurse or a doctor. If it was a shinobi, they masked it well, she thought.
She rolled over, eyes sliding open. She discovered she was wrong on most counts.
A civilian. More specifically, it was her father.
Sakura stared at him. He observed her return to consciousness with a slight shift in his eyebrows.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, voice deathly quiet.
The room was entirely dark though the shades were open. Her body was too sore for a full day to have passed, so that meant it was the same night—but she couldn't tell how many hours had gone by. The others. Where were the others?
She shifted upward, ignoring her limbs' protest. "Where are my teammates?"
"My understanding is that there were no fatal casualties. A few—forgive me, I cannot remember their names—are in intensive care but expected to make full recovery. They were the ANBU, though, not your teammates."
"Those ANBU are my teammates too."
"Ah," he said softly, after a moment. His lips twitched into an apologetic smile. "I forgot about that."
Sakura's eyes narrowed. She doubted he had forgotten.
"Why are you here?" she asked again, surveying him coolly.
Her father leaned back into his chair with a thoughtful expression. "We were notified when you were brought to the hospital. Your mother was beside herself. Apparently, you haven't been brought in like this in years."
Sakura brushed the knotted mess of her hair back from her face. "Usually I heal myself. Where is she, then?" she said shortly.
"Oh, she was in no fit state to come here," her father said, noncommittal. "I came instead."
She paused, mouth thinning. "How long have you been here?"
"I know what you really mean to ask," he said, laughing slightly. "You've hardly been here an hour. I was informed that you were chakra-depleted and could look forward to about a week of recuperation. I arrived here only really in time to sign off on some administrative paperwork and handle some expenses for the hospital stay."
Sakura's eyes narrowed. "You didn't need to do that."
"It was a paltry amount of money."
"I wish that you hadn't," she finished, expressionless.
He looked carefully at her, suddenly. Pale eyes like her own scanned her, and she didn't like having to guess at what they saw.
"Why are you here?" Sakura pressed again, voice harsher.
His expression changed. He seemed amused now.
"I do not have ulterior motives, Sakura," he said, standing and smoothing his clothes. He tipped his head with a wry smile. "Well, maybe a few. But not the kind you've been conditioned to consider, I think. Is that what you've been imagining this entire time?"
"What kind would that be?" she asked, even as her brain still processed his words.
"I don't intend you bodily harm," he stated, expression curious. "I don't, in fact, intend to take control of your life or compel you to commit acts you would find detestable. I am not involved in anything so nefarious that you could consider yourself endangered—at least, no more than any other profitable merchant is."
"And I'm supposed to take you at your word," Sakura said coldly.
Her father shrugged. "That is all merchants are good for, until money exchanges hands." His fingers tapped thoughtfully against his chin. "I don't imagine you would put much stock in a solemn promise from a father to his only progeny."
She was silent.
He nodded amicably, sliding the chair he had been sitting in seemingly back to its former position. He turned then, as though to leave—only to pause as he opened the door.
"I should confess something, however, as I detest being anything less than straightforward," he admitted lightly.
Sakura's mouth hardened. "Oh?" She shifted partially out of her bed, feet brushing the ground.
Was there anything he could say that could compel her to violence, she wondered. Obviously, it depended on the lie. In the eventuality that it was serious, Sakura detachedly considered her options.
"I told you that you were an uninteresting child, that I found nothing redeemable in you."
"Yes, I remember," Sakura said, indifferent.
He turned back slightly, a slight smile visible on his face.
"That isn't quite the whole truth," he revealed, after a short pause. "In the beginning, actually, you were quite unusual."
Sakura's expression didn't change. "How possibly so?"
"If memory serves," he began, affably, "you got into an altercation with a boy twice your size at one of the first parties your mother dragged you to. I quite enjoyed it. It was a welcome departure from the other children I saw in your mother's social circle—my new social circle—who were little more than trained show ponies and silent dolls. Your mother, naturally, was mortified."
Sakura's gaze had abandoned her militant sweep of the room for weaponry; it now rested on him, mildly shocked.
He laughed suddenly. "I was more than indifferent to fatherhood back then. This is old history you are no doubt uninterested in, but: I found the very notion unpleasant. Fatherhood has imposed on me as a requirement of me your grandfather's will, in order to maintain the business; he hadn't told me this before he had passed, before the marriage. So you might understand that even that moderate fondness that I held for your…oddness was not enough to keep me in that house, play-acting the role of a father. I left as soon as I could."
A wry edge formed in his ever-present smile. "But when I returned, I found you changed. Your mother got to you, I assume, among the others of her kind who disapproved of your behavior. You curtsied and smiled sweetly and said please and thank you and begged kindly for sweets. I found that you had committed the worst crime of all: you had become boring. Now, it seems, you have regressed."
Her eyes had narrowed. This was unexpected information—and its implications… The crow—Danzo, she acknowledged hatefully—had told her that the Voice embodied her worst self, her most violent tendencies. Clearly, the distinction between Sakura and it was somewhat nebulous, because she wasn't what anyone would comfortably call 'sweet' these days.
But if all this had started then, from something so innocuous… What could it have been? A lecture from her mother? She doubted it. Or had it been someone else—one of her mother's friends or a relative. Had it been the composite of numerous interactions? What had persuaded her to alienate parts of herself so intensely, that the Voice came to be? Would she ever know?
(It occurred to her, suddenly, that the Voice never spoke when she was with her father.)
"If it was so aggravating to you," Sakura said coolly, "why didn't you try to…undo it?"
"It seemed to me it was irreversible. I wasn't invested enough to try," he answered simply.
Sakura considered him. "Fine. So now I'm marginally more interesting to you again. And?"
He looked at her strangely for a long moment. For a while, Sakura considered that he might never answer.
Then, the charismatic, genial smile spread across his face, weaponized effortlessly. "I find myself wondering," he confided easily. "Even as I realize that it is far too late."
Sakura's nostrils flared.
There was no doubt in her mind that if she were less exhausted, this conversation would have had no impact on her. As it was, hearing these words—even as she knew that they changed very little—left her feeling…oddly raw.
"Alas, look at the time," he announced after a pause, tone absolutely even. He winked through the open door at a nurse who walked by. She blushed, clearly flattered by the forwardness of a handsome stranger.
Her father grinned at Sakura. "I'll leave you to rest. Until next time?"
He left with admirably little noise, for a civilian. Sakura stared after him.
She was able to tolerate about ten seconds in the hospital room, alone only with her thoughts, before she found herself stepping onto the cold tile with bare feet and leaving the room as well.
She walked without a destination in mind, roaming the halls until they all seemed to blur together. A few nurses voiced their concern, but she waved them off. She was mind-numbingly tired, not bleeding out. Minutes could have passed or hours—either way, she couldn't seem to get her brain to shut off.
Sakura turned the corner into a new hallway, eyes still not quite seeing what was ahead of her—it was a loud shout that snapped her back to attention. Examining her surroundings now, she caught sight of what looked to be a growing commotion. Shrill voices shouted from inside a hospital room, expressing alarm and fear.
Her eyebrows raised as she spotted the line of nurses at the door, peering nervously inside.
This looked promising—with regard to casting everything else that had happened since she had woken out of her mind.
"What's happening?" Sakura asked one of the nurses she knew, a usually very level-headed man named Tsuki. She tried to peek inside but couldn't quite find an opening.
Tsuki was shaking his head, back and forth. "He's a nightmare," he said, almost in wonder.
She had been to the hospital many times while training under Tsunade, and she had never seen a mob of medical professionals like this. Even when patients were on the brink of death, they maintained effortless cool.
Her brow furrowed, incredulous. A single person had caused this? "Who?"
A small, portly body, visibly on the verge of breakdown, scuttled out from the room, jostling Sakura to the side. As she glared absentmindedly, she realized that it had cleared a path right through the mob blocking the door. Intrigued, Sakura pushed her way through until she stood right at the entrance, now with a superb view of the room.
As she took in the scene before, she realized—with something like a profound sense of stupidity—that she could have guessed.
A small army of medical professionals cowered at one corner of the room. The head nurse, whom Sakura had learned more than one handy technique from, was part of the army, normally flawless hair in complete disarray. The room was in a jarring state of carnage, medical apparatuses and files strewn about.
Resting coolly against the opposite wall was the culprit himself. He still wore his makeshift mask from the battlefield; the gaze that peered out above it was both forbidding and darkly weary—but there was a thread of subtle amusement as well, at the terror he had wrought.
"H-Hatake-san, please," one of the medic-nins stammered. "This is not an invasive procedure. We just need to do a standard check-up."
"Just your vitals!" another one negotiated.
"It won't take long," the head nurse stated, smiling painfully like she had already said this many times. A telling look crossed her face, communicating that she didn't think she was paid nearly enough.
Sakura crossed her arms as she leaned silently against the door frame.
One brave women ventured slowly forward, hands raised. Kakashi tracked her progression, bored. When she crossed the half-way mark, his sharingan eye lazily opened. She stopped dead, swallowing loudly.
Sakura huffed an incredulous laugh.
His head snapped in her direction, eyes widening briefly. Sakura noted it. It was rare for the copy-nin to be in a state where he could be taken by surprise.
She arched a brow.
His expression abruptly went blank. She had no idea what passed through his head—if he were surprised to see her, pleased, or displeased.
"Sit down," she murmured.
After a moment, he tilted his head in return, eyes boring into her.
Without breaking her gaze, but with a certain derision, he crossed the room—stepping unnecessarily close to the army of medic-nins, who jumped in fear—and settled on the bed.
Silence rang throughout the room, before several voices spoke to her at once.
"Can you get him to put the eye away?
"Tell him we mean no harm!"
"Ask him how long he's been operating without rest—"
She did not look away from Kakashi.
"Take off your shirt," Sakura said slowly, "so that the expert medic-nins here can examine you."
His legs spread slowly where he sat. She let her gaze fall, for less than a second, to where they joined. When she looked back up, only a dark gleam in his eyes betrayed that he might have noticed. He leaned back, without rush.
Slowly, then, his hands rose, grasping the edge of his shirt. Without breaking her gaze, he pulled it swiftly upward.
Lean, firm muscle was revealed to the room, scars all the more harsh under the clinical light. Sakura traced them slowly, mouth curving—
"What on earth are you doing here, Sakura?" asked Tsunade, right behind her.
She choked on spit.
The hokage brushed firmly past her as she coughed, batting at her chest. How the fuck had she missed the clack of those heels?
"Get out, I'll deal with this," the amber-eyed woman barked at her personnel as she entered the room. They bowed hastily to her and fled.
Sakura turned to exit as well, still coughing.
"Not you," Tsunade called out lazily.
Stiffly, she turned back around.
"I don't know what gods made the two of you to harass me," the hokage started lowly, snapping on a pair of gloves, "but I know that I did not deserve this. I won't ask what compelled you, because I am sure you have an infuriatingly good excuse. No, what I want is compensation for the ten day migraine the stress of the past two days is going to cause. You're lucky Danzo looks like he'll survive to stand trial, or both your asses would be on desk duty for the next ten years!"
Sakura tried not to wince as the woman's normally husky voice reached a rather shrill pitch.
"Saké?" she suggested, hovering uncomfortably at the doorway.
"You couldn't afford nearly enough. Come inside. You're making me nervous," Tsunade snapped, chakra-lit hands scanning Kakashi's body. He withstood it expressionlessly.
Sakura forced her features to stoicism as she sprawled into a chair at the corner of the room. "How are the others?" she asked quietly.
Amber eyes flashed to her quickly. "They're fine," the older woman answered gruffly. "Sai had some trauma to the head that was easily handled. The ANBU team took most of the damage in that fight, apparently, but their prognoses are good. Naruto and Sasuke had some minor injuries, all things considered; like you two, they'll primarily need rest. And Itachi? Well, medically, he's a mess-but what's new?"
Sakura's shoulders relaxed infinitesimally.
"This entire debacle was reckless, insane, and stupid," Tsunade charged.
She nodded automatically. It was best to indulge the hokage in moods like these.
"You will never do it again."
Sakura nodded again.
"You're lying right to my face, aren't you."
She nodded once before she caught herself. She winced a second later.
Tsunade's nostrils flared like a bull's. She glared at both of them. "I don't know which one of you is worse. The one who tells me nothing or the one who lies right to my face."
Sakura lowered her head, deciding that keeping a low profile was probably the best tack for her for the foreseeable future.
The hokage huffed as pulled off her gloves, tossing them in the bin. "You'll be fine with a week of rest," she sneered at Kakashi. "And the gods help me, if I find either of you out and about—if I find you using chakra—within the week, I will put you permanently out of commission myself."
She marked some things down on Kakashi's file, eyes narrow. When she snapped it shut, her head rose again. "You're both spending the night in the hospital. I'll check on you tomorrow morning, and we can discuss the possibility of leaving then."
She stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.
A few seconds passed. Sakura exhaled, head rolling back until she stared at the stucco ceiling.
"I'm so fucking tired," she sighed.
She heard the automatic switch flick. Abruptly, the room was cast into the dark.
She lifted her head up.
He hadn't moved an inch from where he sat on the bed...but she stared, brow furrowing, because it was like a switch had flipped in him too. The bravado-that indefinable arrogance, superiority-seemed utterly absent all of a sudden, replaced now by visible strain. She could see, now, the effort it took to hold himself upright. Had the signs always been there or was he only allowing her to see them now?
His arms tensed viciously. Instinctively, Sakura shifted forward.
"I hate this place," he rasped.
Her eyes passed over the clinical white of the room, the spots where bleach hadn't quite removed either the look or smell of death. She saw them in a way she hadn't exactly before. On a battlefield, people were meant to die. Here, perhaps, they were supposed to be saved. Perhaps, this was what he saw.
"Oh," she said. She approached him, unblinking.
Hands wrapped loosely, almost reluctantly, around her forearms. Sakura stepped forcefully into him, pushing him back. As he sank into the bed, she climbed over him to the other side.
A moment of silence lapsed between them.
"They'll be back in the morning," he said darkly.
"I know," she muttered, pillowing her head into her arms. "I'll leave before then."
She stretched out a foot to press cold toes against his calf.
"Nurses might come in during the night."
"I'll handle it, now shut up," she yawned, eyes already shutting.
He pulled her roughly close, face settling into her shoulder even though she probably smelled like blood and sweat. The breath shuddered in both their chests. They were stiff, at first.
But at some point, that must have changed, because she didn't remember falling asleep.
Notes:
This has been a wild ride with you all. I know this isn't actually the end, and I'm beginning to write this author's note like it is, but I really do want to say thank you all SO MUCH for reading and sticking with this fic 3 As always, would be honored to hear your thoughts :)
P.S. Seriously, again, thank you so, so, so much. And I hope you are all staying safe and that your loved ones are as well.
Chapter 39: To Absolve (Or Not)
It was the sound of footsteps, soft and hurried, that woke Sakura up. She stiffened, body shifting toward the window. Just when she expected to hear the door knob turn, the steps passed by, growing fainter. She sighed loudly, then rolled her head in a swift scan of the room, finding nothing of particular note other than the man next to her.
Despite their ostensible close call, Kakashi leaned against the headboard, expressionless and unnaturally still.
She traced the dark shadows painted beneath his eyes, thumbprints of ash. "You can't sleep here…can you?"
The words were too jarring against the silence, abrasive and unintentionally harsh. But he said nothing, as though he hadn't heard her. His gaze didn't deviate from its examination of the ceiling.
Sakura felt both unsatisfied and inexplicably relieved by his lack of response. She twisted out from under the sheets.
"Eiko. An ironic name, all things considered."
She paused, toes brushing the cold tile. Eiko—flower or eternity or glory or something entirely else. Depended on the kanji, she thought.
Good god, what was he talking about?
"They told me, when I was old enough to ask," he said, voice barely louder than the hum of the wind outside, "that she had fallen asleep here and forgotten to wake up. It wasn't long after that, that I learned what death really was."
Her head snapped back.
But his pale features were utterly unfathomable to her, shadowed except for where pockets of moonlight peeked into the room, highlighting a singular eye, a fraction of a nose, a portion of that masked mouth.
He was too still.
"She wasn't alone for long." The words were as detached as his gaze, strangely matter-of-fact. "Her husband was brought here for treatment from self-inflicted wounds just four years later. He succeeded—ultimately. It took twelve hours. I waited," his eyes shifted down, briefly, to land on the chair she had sat on before, "there. Or, the equivalent, in that room."
Sakura, in contrast to his seeming paralysis, was overcome by movement. Her shoulders tightened, cutting her breath short. Her knees knocked clumsily into each other. Her hands flexed to— To what? she asked herself. It was impossible to merely rip out the misery that had been sewn into the lineaments of his body, to strangle it like she had the crow, with her bare hands.
"Kakashi." It sounded like little more than a wheeze, a strangled breath at its birth.
"Go back to sleep," he answered, stoic.
The air conditioning kicked off somewhere in the room, blasting cool air at them. She inhaled.
Then she swallowed against the sleep-dryness of her throat. "I can't."
His gaze narrowed. She watched as his features contorted more as each second passed, until his face turned back toward the ceiling.
"Why did you put a barrier around me," she whispered finally, "when you should have killed me?"
"Go back to sleep," he repeated, voice tighter now.
Air whistled out through her mouth.
"If I hadn't broken Danzo's control, if it hadn't been me who had returned. We were already at a disadvantage." She stared at her palms with unforgiving intensity, like she had never seen a pair of human hands before. "You must have known. You had to have known—"
"I knew." His eyes burned with venom. "Is that what you want to hear from me?"
A dull bell could have rung by Sakura's ears, then; she wouldn't have reacted to it.
"Very well, I'll confess it," he said, and his voice was like the edge of a broken glass—cruel and thin—"I knew I had to kill you. Out loud, I equivocated, I sought other solutions even though I knew-in my mind-that I couldn't risk attempting any one of them. That other part of you was going to let me, even. But I didn't trust that she wouldn't change her mind. So I lied until the end. Better she thought me reluctant, undecided, if she aimed to resist."
His voice lowered, until it became as biting as gravel. "I was going to kill you. For both the mission and the team, weighing your one life against all of theirs-I had to. I had resolved myself to it."
Sakura drew closer, struck silent and otherwise inanimate.
"And then the decisive moment came, and I realized then that I hadn't been vigilant enough. That when I had pretended I was in denial, I was in denial." His eyes drank her in, half-mad. "When I hadn't been looking, you had managed to burrow those presumptuous fingers in like hooks—" his teeth flashed in the dark—"The prospect of you escaping, before I had had the chance to ruin you in return—"
The darkness of his gaze competed with the pitch black of the room.
"Do you understand?" Kakashi snarled, "I've seen clan heads give away half their wealth for just one thrust into a pretty mouth, daimyos kneel, giggling, for boys and girls a third their age. I've seen the most wretched, the most pathetic, and I've killed them and let them live, and I used to wonder how they could be so utterly blind to the madness in themselves. And still none of them could be as mad as me now! What I felt in that moment—when I have barely touched you— How high would the stakes had to have been, before I killed you? Can you comprehend that kind of madness?"
His features were overwhelmed by a strange of mixture of rage and terror.
Her teeth ached. She shuddered, leaning into him, fingers scrabbling at his shirt. "You think," she said, breath ragged, "that you haven't driven me mad too!"
Long, rough fingers grabbed her chin, harshly pulling her head toward him. His hand left her face, the pads of his fingers leaving scalding trails across her throat as it fell.
"You want too much," he breathed against her, "with too little inhibition."
"I want and want and want," she agreed. Her eyes hardened. "And you do too."
"Quick to anger," he mocked.
"Look at yourself!"
"Careless." His tongue lingered at the roof of his mouth, dragging out the sibilant hiss of the 's'. His eyes darkened, warning.
Sakura surveyed him coldly. "Whatever greater amount of inhibition you think you have," she started. She drew sharply back. "But madness or not, I told you I would not chase you."
His jaw clenched.
"And I will not." She slipped out of the bed and stood facing the window.
But she stared, then, out this window-at the village she had grown up in, bled in, suffered in, changed in. Unlike her, the landscape before her had scarcely altered.
"One last question," she found herself saying.
Her fingers wrapped tightly around the window trim, head craning back, but not enough to see him.
"Why?" she demanded. "Why did you see potential in Naruto, Sasuke, and not me."
He made a harsh noise. She was tempted to turn fully back, to see. She didn't.
"You might not like my answer," he said, equally cold.
Her mouth twisted into a sneer. "I'll hear it anyway."
When he spoke again, his voice had completed the transformation. He had retreated behind the fortress yet again, the veneer of callous indifference restored. "Teaching was a measure to muzzle me by the council; they were frightened by what I had become. I didn't accept the position without retaliating. I failed every team."
Sakura's nails dug into the wood of the window trim, as easily as a knife through melted butter. Splinters fell to the ground. "Not mine."
Derision colored his tone. "The sandaime wouldn't allow it. Team Seven was intended to be the powerhouse team of your year. You couldn't have been oblivious to that, even then," he said. "The kyuubi's container, the last Uchiha in Konoha, and a placeholder. He was frank about that as well."
Sakura's mouth went sour. "I see." What else had she expected? "So that's why you—"
"It wasn't a question of potential, but your willingness to cultivate it," he said, cutting her off, voice intent. "On another team, another captain may very well have been pleased with you. On this team, it was only a matter of time until your death. I gave all three of you the same lessons. You had little interest. The sandaime watched me closely—I could not shove you out; he would not permit it. So I made a point of focusing on the other two. I imagined you would catch on and drop out yourself. It was a calculated risk, but one I deemed better than the alternative. Ironically, you didn't appear to even realize you weren't learning anything."
"You're not answering the question I'm really asking," she said, irritated. "They both had their flaws. I won't bore us both by listing them. Why was I irredeemable?"
The air-conditioning unit gave a long, groaning whine.
"The kind of steel that they had that you lacked, that mania to become stronger at the expense of all else," he said, "it cannot be taught. Or. Perhaps it can—and I decided, implicitly, that it shouldn't."
Her chest ached, like a terrible weight had been placed down on it from the outside.
"It was impressed on me, in the end." Her shoulders brushed the cold glass of the window. "A freak anomaly, I'll grant you that. Does that change your mind?"
She gave in, finally, and angled her head backward. She watched his hands spasm in the sheets, turning into jagged claws.
"They didn't deserve the deaths you gave them then, not compared to what either of us could do to them today," he snarled. He trembled with rage. She didn't realize, until these next words, that some of it was self-directed. "I took what I thought was an acceptable risk. But I will not defend myself against your blame for what happened, anomaly or not. You told me it was my fault, once, and you weren't wrong."
Sakura's mouth flexed, trembling. "I don't want your martyrdom!" She shoved a fist against her chest. "I thought I did, but I was…I don't know who was right or wrong anymore. Maybe none of that even matters. I don't know! But this—this has festered in me for years now. It's become this rotting, putrid knot of insecurity and resentment, right here, and I want it gone. Not for your self-flagellation. For me. Make me understand," she hissed.
He bowed, expression shadowed by his hair.
"Would you have preferred," he rasped, "that I robbed you of your contentment and normalcy, when it was abundantly clear that you had no idea what you had signed up for? You know what that means now, to lose both. If you had the choice, would you choose it again?"
Sakura staggered back, only the window was right at her back.
"I—" she said. Her voice died.
"You wouldn't," he finished for her. "No one would."
She tilted her head back, unseeing.
"And now?" she asked finally.
He paused. "Now?"
"Now," she repeated, eyes cutting to him. "What am I now?"
His face changed. The look in his eyes disassembled something in her.
"I could not break you," he admitted, voice filled with something like disbelief, "even if I tried."
"Right," she said in a rush of air, standing on the window sill. And then she straightened to her full height, expression clearing. "I had no interest in learning anything from you then, and I'm not looking for answers from you now either. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
He didn't answer.
Sakura's mouth quirked into a small, meaningless smile.
Just as the door knob to the hospital room turned, she swung herself out the window. She kept any eye out for other ANBU as she scaled the side of the building, shoving her fingers into every nook and cranny she could find. Muscles burning from overuse, she slid into her own hospital room and collapsed onto her bed.
Hours passed until she was yanked from her daze. It was a popping noise, like a punctured balloon, that typically accompanied a shunshin—and it was right outside her room.
She felt the figure who had opened the door pause, their silence pointed. Sakura pushed up on her elbows to see her visitor. She straightened immediately.
"Rest well?" Tsunade asked, one golden eyebrow arched.
"Oh—yes," Sakura found herself saying, patting the bed. "Very…soft."
"Right," the hokage said, mouth pursed.
She crossed the room and grabbed Sakura's head, tilting it this and way that. Sakura submitted herself to the older woman's scan.
"You do appear to have slept," Tsunade said finally, crossing her arms.
"Not all shinobi are terrible patients, Tsunade-sama," she said, but the humor wasn't felt.
"Hm," the hokage grunted, amber eyes scanning her. "And any plans about that eye? You realize it's draining chakra, don't you."
This sufficiently tore her from her state of grim distraction.
"What—" Sakura turned toward the metal cabinetry and spotted a haze of red. She stepped back, gaze widening.
It was still in her. Shisui's eye. And the crow was dead. And Sakura's real eye—
Her brain short-circuited.
She had…simply always accepted that the eye would come back if she made the hand signs, while the crow had been alive and told her so. But now that the crow was gone—
Given that the crow was dead, did that break whatever tenuous mechanism was in place following that cursed ceremony? It wasn't like the crow had ever received her eye in turn, unlike what had transpired between it and Danzo. So…where exactly did the eye go? Sakura knew she was more impulsive than necessarily contemplative, but how had she never thought about this?
Her trembling fingers moved with panicked speed through the sequence of hand signs. She messed it up the first time and had to restart again. She could hear her heartbeat thudding in her head. God, she didn't want this foreign thing in her head all the time, she bemoaned, praying.
(Had her father seen her like this and said nothing?)
"That jutsu...Are those hand signs displacing it to —? Also, didn't I say no chakra use?"
Sakura could have sunk to her knees in relief when she felt a familiar burning sensation in her eye. Her head swung to the metal cabinets, affirming the restoration of her own eye.
She would research it, she resolved to herself. The jutsu must be sending her eye to some…other fold of reality, another dimension, or—
"Sakura!"
"I had to get it out," she snapped back.
"Don't get smart with me." Amber eyes flashed.
"Sorry, hokage-sama," Sakura answered, but it was purely lip service.
Tsunade's mouth thinned.
"My ANBU team," she said quickly, changing the subject. "Do they know that I can't use chakra for the week?"
The hokage waved her arm dismissively, still looking discontented. "I told the commander to block out the week for training. It's not uncommon for newly formed teams, so they won't think twice of it. You'll be expected to run the sessions without chakra or your ass will be back here quicker than you can say ANBU."
Sakura nodded.
Tsunade contemplated her, lips pursed. "Very well," she said finally.
"I can go?" she asked, hopeful.
"Yes, I'll sign off on it," the older woman said, irritated. "But the first news I hear about you violating my instructions—"
"I understand, hokage-sama," Sakura said swiftly, before she could go off on another tirade.
Tsunade scowled at the obvious maneuver. "Thin ice, Haruno. Got it?"
Sakura nodded, already moving toward the cabinet to pull out one of the spare uniforms stocked to change into. She heard a loud sigh as the door swing shut behind her.
She yanked off the pink hospital gown, shivering as her skin prickled with cold. She quickly slipped on the plain black pants and shirt she had retrieved. Just as she pulled down her shirt, she heard the door swing open with enough force to hit the opposite wall.
"Sakura!"
Her eyes widened. Scratches crisscrossed Naruto's face; even so, he looked no worse than after a particularly grueling training session.
She grabbed him in a tight hug.
"Can't…breathe…" he wheezed.
She spotted Sai and Sasuke in the hallway over his shoulder. They formed an odd pair, both pale and dark haired with eyes to match; where Sasuke's face was determinedly blank, almost cold, however, Sai's was uncharacteristically expressive, pale lips curving tentatively.
She was gentler with Sai than she had been with Naruto, wary of the bandage wrapped around his head.
"I'm really glad you're okay," Sakura said awkwardly, voice gruff, wrapping her arms softly around him.
Her eyes drifted to the stiff figure at the corner of the corridor. "Even you, asshole," she allowed.
Sasuke's expression didn't change. Perhaps, though, some of the stiffness in him seemed to dissipate.
Naruto's stomach growled loudly. The noise echoed in the hallway.
"I'm hungry," he said, unabashed. He groaned dramatically a second later. "And I don't have any food at home."
"Ah. Me neither," Sai said, after a short pause.
Sakura squinted at the ceiling, trying to remember if there was anything usable in her refrigerator. She had a feeling that there wasn't.
"I have produce I need to get rid of," Sasuke said, tone absolutely indifferent. "Might as well put you all to use."
He turned on his heel without another word.
Sakura raised her eyebrows. Naruto shrugged, stuffed his hands into his pants, and sauntered after their teammate. She rested an arm around the back of Sai's neck.
"Why don't you fill me in on what happened as we walk over," she murmured.
"Let's just say we're lucky the ANBU were with us, because they definitely took the brunt of that fight. And then Naruto…well, he lost his temper, and I cleaned up his mess."
Sakura nodded, sighing. That sounded about right.
"Ah, fuck," Naruto sniffed, wiping at his eyes. He took a fortifying breath and then bent again toward the onions. Beside him, Sai huffed a laugh as he peeled a bowl of potatoes.
"Why can't I help with the food again?" Sakura drawled, sitting crisscrossed on an open expanse of the counter.
"Because you're the worst cook I've seen in my life," Sasuke answered, eyes narrow with focus as he tossed some noodles in a wok pan. "And I used to live in a hideout with rogue-nins who didn't know the difference between a zucchini and an eggplant."
Naruto sniggered.
"At least I've never been a rogue-nin."
"That's a lie."
Sakura paused. "Your brother is alive because of me."
"I know!" Sasuke shouted back, glaring.
Naruto's dropped an onion, gaze wide.
Sasuke, for the matter, looking like he profoundly regretted the words that had come out of his mouth, and Sakura—well, she rather regretted them too. They both averted their gazes, faces twisted with disgust.
"Cooking," Sai said with a beatific smile, "requires harmony. Isn't that right, Naruto?"
Naruto nodded. "Yeah. So…" he said, sobering. "What happens now?"
Unsurprisingly, no one spoke immediately.
It was clear that the trial with Danzo was going to drag on for weeks, possibly even for months. As Itachi had alluded, more than one council member had backed Danzo to allow for his covert side-agendas. Their support wasn't obvious, but false witnesses were already crawling out of the woodwork in his defense.
What was there to do? She could only leave it to Tsunade's hands.
Should have killed him, the Voice grunted.
Sai cleared his throat. "I have yet to receive formal permission, but I would like to work with the Root operatives."
"Work with them?" Sasuke repeated, mouth flat.
"I am in a...unique position to understand their conditioning," Sai explained, eyes lowered, "and what is required to be rehabilitated. I do not believe that they are lost causes."
"No," Naruto agreed sharply, blue eyes burning at Sasuke as he placed an arm on Sai's shoulder. "They aren't."
Sakura bit down hard. Sai still hadn't talked to them about what he had gone through in any level of detail, even though Danzo had been forced to remove the seals the previous night. Neither she nor Naruto were going to push. But when even Yamato couldn't speak to what those who had been part of an underground Root, without any semblance of oversight, had gone through—when she remembered the face the older man had made as they talked about Sai—Sakura's fury grew.
She should have tortured Danzo before they turned him in.
We should have, the Voice snarled.
"That doesn't address the origin of the rot."
Sakura glowered, elbows resting on her knees. "What?" Naruto demanded.
"Itachi," Sasuke said, mouth tight, "he believes that Root survived because the organization that is supposed to keep Konoha's shinobi forces in check became a hollow mockery of what it once was."
Itachi, Sakura thought. There was a pending conversation between them that still needed to be had.
"You mean the keimu butai," said Sai.
Naruto's face scrunched in confusion. "The military police force? They used to chase me sometimes when I graffitied the hokage faces."
"My clan used to run the keimu butai, bottom to top." Sasuke's gaze cut to the side. "Itachi does not think that was...to our advantage. But when the Uchihas were massacred by Danzo, nonetheless, the keimu butai fell into incompetent hands."
They waited. In a sudden, violent motion, Sasuke shoved away from the stove, wok noodles forgotten.
"Root was allowed to flourish," Sasuke said, eyes glittering, face pale, "because the institution that had functioned precisely to monitor Konoha's shinobi forces fell apart."
"But ANBU-?" Naruto questioned.
"ANBU is supposed to be for black ops, the unsavory kind of work no official wants to talk about publicly," Sakura muttered. "Mainly external threats, maybe the rare case of a high-level internal threat."
Sai nodded. "ANBU wasn't built to monitor Konoha's own shinobi population like the keimu butai were. "
Sasuke's furious, quick breathing filled the silence.
"So?" Sai challenged finally. "What will you do?"
"Me," Sasuke uttered, tone flat.
"Or will you run?" Naruto added, voice harsh.
A familiar look returned to Sasuke's pale features. That same intensity from their academy days, which had looked so much like hate but couldn't have been farther from it, sparked now between Naruto and Sasuke, indifferent to their transformations to adulthood.
"I'm no coward." His gaze slid to Sakura, contracting. "And I pay my debts."
"Whatever excuse you need, Sasuke," Sakura said, knowing.
His nostrils flared. He turned sharply back to the wok pan and removed it from the flames.
Naruto watched him for a moment, then exhaled. He cracked his fingers and bent again, attention returning to the onions.
"And you, Sakura?" Sai prompted.
Her eyebrows raised. Both Naruto and Sasuke paused, turning back to her. She crossed her arms and leaned back. "Ah. You know how I mentioned I, I'm, formally joined ANBU recently?"
"Yes?"
"Well, they made me a captain. Or—Tsunade did, because she's insane. And told me this morning I'm on thin ice. So I'll be on the straight and narrow from now on." She flashed a two-fingered salute.
"If we require your assistance, make sure there's no paper trail?" Sai summarized curiously.
She smirked.
Sasuke shoveled the noodles into a four separate bowls, making a metallic clang each time his ladle wacked against the pan. "Captain?" he remarked, sour.
"Captain?" Naruto pondered as well. "What comes after that?"
Sakura thought about it. "Commander, I think."
"Is that you want to be? Someday, I mean."
"Well." Sakura crossed her arms and thought about it more. "The current commander kind of hates me. If I replace him, I guess that would make for a huge improvement on my quality of life…and I wouldn't have to worry about any annoying overhead in ANBU. So. Not a bad idea, actually."
Sasuke scoffed.
Naruto grinned. "Long-term planning is my forte, obviously. Hokage is my agenda, of course—" his mouth twitched—"but…I get the sense that there might be someone ahead of me in the line, and he might take a long time to step down. So I had a conversation with Tsunade baa-chan yesterday, which was mostly her yelling at me, but also helped me realize I have a few other options while I wait!"
Sai arched an eyebrow. "What did you talk about?"
Naruto scratched back of his neck. "Ah! Haha! Did I mention that my dad was the yondaime? No? Well, he was. Which I guess means that, now that I'm old enough, I can take his seat on the council for his clan, the, um, Namikazes."
Sakura's eyes widened. "The yondaime- But, wait, you mean," she said, lunging off the counter to grab his arm, "you can decide what happens to Danzo?"
"Sort of," Naruto answered, blinking. "As much as the other council members. Baa-chan said that since Itachi's innocence has been proven, the Uchiha seat is his too. I asked about Kakashi, but apparently his clan's seat was taken away because of something that happened with his dad."
Sakura's mouth contorted. "You're telling me these morons want to make him the next kage, but they won't give his fucking clan council seat back?"
"My understanding is that there's a process to contest a rescinded seat," Sai intoned, voice even.
Naruto nodded. "Tsunade baa-chan said it takes a long time and the whole council needs to agree. I guess Kakashi never bothered."
Sakura frowned.
"But if I'm on the council," Naruto continued optimistically, "I can advise the hokage! Help make laws, too. Even travel sometimes like I did with Jiraiya-sensei, just not to help find women to inspire his porn stories!"
"A blessing for us all," Sasuke muttered.
"I think Naruto has great taste in women, actually," Sai said with a bland smile. "Hinata is considerably out of his league, after all."
"Exactly—SAI!"
"It's really a wonder she's stayed with you this long. She must have a heart of gold to make up for your dickless—"
As Naruto tackled him, the bowl of chopped onion went flying through the air, decorating all of them in the astringent vegetable. Sakura flicked a few pieces out of her hair.
"Hand me that bowl." She pointed to one of the steaming bowls of wok noodles.
Not looking at her, Sasuke smacked the bowl with the back of his hand and sent it skidding across the counter.
Sakura plucked it and began digging in.
The next day, she managed, somehow, to get herself out of bed. It was a good thing ANBU wore masks, Sakura thought as she came up to the training ground, or the sheer fatigue on her face would have been glaringly obvious. Neither Fox nor Deer, thankfully, voiced complaints about the fact that their team had been abruptly removed from their usual mission schedule for training if they had any. Robin was an altogether different matter, but Sakura had been more or less threatened by Tsunade to be on her best behavior…so she strove for Buddha-like patience.
Well, initially. The second day, Sakura remembered that taijutsu didn't require chakra.
After, she graciously allowed Robin two days off to recuperate.
"I'm not sure that was very…" Fox attempted in the locker room, in the aftermath.
"Nice? No," Sakura said, toweling her hair dry. "Necessary? Yes."
He didn't voice his disagreement.
And so, a week of (relative) medical rest passed.
Team Seven had been put on a one-month suspension thanks to their unauthorized Danzo-hunt. Sakura rather felt that the hokage would have suspended her from her ANBU team too if she could have—punishment under the guise of medical rest. But ANBU captains didn't grow on trees, and her team would have to sit on their asses if she didn't return.
After the one week, regardless of how Tsunade felt about it, Sakura returned to ANBU duty fully.
Like before, their missions were fairly straightforward (or maybe Kakashi's team's missions were just unusually complex)—and blessedly less annoying now that she had brought Robin to heel. Despite some of her misgivings, it occurred to her—in the middle of decapitating a grown man, to be precise, with Deer helpfully applying a wind jutsu to misdirect the blood splatter—that she had been given a team that had the potential to do very well.
Fox's wealth of experience was invaluable as a second; his unfailing calm, moreover, was an effective counterforce to the worst of Sakura's temper. Deer, admittedly, had more ground to make up than the others given her non-combat background, but she was a quick learner and hungry to improve (and very adept with a wind jutsu). Even Robin, Sakura could be pressed to admit under duress, was considerably above-average compared to other ANBUs their age. And now, better yet, he had a healthy fear of her.
"Why do you think the commander's calling us personally?" Robin muttered, head sullenly tipped in deference.
Sakura tied her hair back into a pony tail, feeling generally pleased. "I'm probably getting a medal, I think."
"Is she serious or kidding?" Deer asked Fox, tone curious and not at all quiet. "I can never tell."
"Our streak of mission successes is nothing to bat an eye at, you know," Sakura observed, crossing her arms as they waited to be let into the commander's office. Her eyebrows flew up. "I'm way more talented at this than I thought I would be."
"Kidding, I believe," Fox answered politely.
The double doors in front of them parted, heaved open by the commander's harried-looking assistant. Sakura wondered if he ever got a day off; he certainly didn't look like it.
"Quickly, he doesn't have much time," the man hissed at them.
She didn't bother stifling the yawn that erupted from her mouth as she sauntered in, followed closely by the rest of her team.
"Ah," she said, blinking at the irate gaze affixed to her. "Pardon. Late night."
The broad-shouldered man seemed to expand as he stood up from his desk. "If there were quite literally any other team other than yours available, I would send them instead…But given the time constraints…" His hands tightened into fists.
So it was a mission, as she had thought. And the commander had personally called them in to deliver the news.
Sakura considered him coolly. Finally, she crossed her arms and waved a hand, gesturing vaguely for him to continue.
"Taichou," Fox warned softly.
Remarkably, the older man visibly restrained himself.
"The mission you'll be joining is technically high-A, borderline S. Another team has been working on it for the past week; they've accomplished most of the legwork," the older man growled. "As of last communication, all that remains is assassinating the target."
Sakura's brow furrowed. "But we're being called in for support. Is there a reason you think they don't have it all in hand?"
The commander glared. "I don't doubt that they do," he said tightly. "The original mission was the result of an important ally's request—the team was chosen precisely to minimize any chance of error."
She waited, fingers tapping impatiently against her thigh. Her hand froze, when a sudden thought occurred to her. No, surely not. She laughed internally. The commander wasn't possibly that stupid. Stupid thought.
"This morning, however, we received a missive from another entity with whom the hokage has…determined it would be greatly beneficial to cultivate a relationship. They've requested that the same target be assassinated."
Sakura blinked. "Why's that a problem? Let the team that's already been sent out finish the job and pocket double the goodwill."
The commander laughed without an ounce of amusement. "This is what happens when upstarts get promoted barely a year in." He looked upwards, as though to address this remark to the heavens. His head snapped back down, tone scathing. "Missions like these are contracts between our nation and them. Your assignment isn't to conduct the actual assassination—the original team will handle that. But we will receive neither their money, nor their goodwill, if our records do not at least reflect that a team was sent out after we received their missive."
"ANBU records are sealed so that they can only reflect the truth," Fox informed softly, "to instill trust in our allies when they send representatives to verify our follow through."
"I see," she muttered. She sighed, finally. "And I suppose this is the mission brief?"
Without waiting for an answer, she stepped forward to swipe a manila folder from the shining desk.
"Yes. Now get out," the commander said simply.
"Charmed as always," Sakura returned, saccharine.
"Thank you, commander." Fox announced loudly, bowing at the waist. He tugged her hurriedly back.
Sakura made sure to send a wave behind her as they left the room.
Ten hours later, skin chilled by the crisp evening weather, Sakura stood with her team in a lavishly decorated room—one, she could guess, of many that composed the private complex they had infiltrated. Even now, she could sense the vibrations of bodies populating these other rooms, overflowing with easy conversation and laughter.
She took a moment to survey her surroundings, mouth slack.
She had thought the daimyo's palace was extravagant; this singular, unoccupied room in the entire private residence she now stood in managed to outclass it. Somehow, it was not distasteful. She had the inexplicable impression that every item had been chosen for aesthetic, not for the presentation of value; if that aestheticism required tremendous expense, however, the owner had clearly not shied away.
"So do we just wait here," Robin grunted, throwing himself into one of the plush chairs. He seemed to succumb to the comfort of the expensive cushion, annoyance draining slightly from his voice, "and then head back to Konoha? What a waste of time."
"Well," Sakura said. "No."
"What?" Deer tore her wide-eyed gaze from the chandelier.
Fox cocked his head to the side.
"The original mission rank is a little high for a mid-level team," she admitted, "but the commander himself said that the more complicated aspects, the, ah, legwork, have already been addressed. At this point, I see no reason to not act as though this mission isn't ours. For all we know, the original team hit a snag or two, and we're better positioned to complete it."
Fox blinked.
"Unlikely, probably. And obviously, if they make their presence known to us, we won't step on any toes," Sakura allowed, crossing her arms. "Alternatively, if it is down to us and it seems to get out of hand, I'll step in to take over the assassination myself. Other than that, though, why shouldn't we aim for another mission success under our belts?"
"You must really want that medal," Deer commented after a pause.
Sakura huffed a laugh. She tossed the other woman the file with the mission details. "This seems rather your area of expertise, to be honest. Why don't you tell us what you think?"
The blonde woman's eyes widened. Her head ducked down, absorbing the contents of the pages in front of her.
"Who's the target?" Robin pressed, body thrumming with impatience.
"Masamichi Ieiri," Sakura replied, considering the name.
"She's the owner of this complex and the host of tonight's gathering," Deer relayed, eyes still darting over the page. "Her own family background isn't impressive, but she's apparently made a name for herself by, um, conducting affairs with the wives of strategic individuals. She seems most…prolific in the kage and daimyo spouse demographic."
Robin whistled.
"Less guarded than their husbands and more easily accessible," Fox summarized. "So she trafficks in information."
"And seems to be doing very well for herself," Sakura noted, glancing again at her surroundings. "But she must have been less than discreet recently if more than one nation now wants her dead."
Deer snapped the file shut, green eyes calculating. It was obvious that, unlike field combat, this was an area she was less student and more the teacher in. Sakura fittingly kept her mouth shut, allowing her to continue.
"Women are noted to be her personal sexual preference," said Deer. "Impersonating a person of significance without proper foreplanning is a bad idea, so we'll have to appeal to her personal interest, not as one of her occupational prey."
"Complications?" Sakura asked, arching an eyebrow.
"I see two. First, we don't have enough information to purposefully solicit her attention—she could have particular tastes in women, and we wouldn't know. Second, as someone who herself seduces as common practice, she will not be easily seduced. She'll be able to see through a novice performance and possibly even an above average one."
Robin leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head. "Those seem like rather significant complications if you ask me."
Deer shrugged, eyes glinting. "It will be a challenge. Is our taichou opposed to that?"
"Me?" Sakura blinked. She grinned after a beat. "Never."
"Then— if I may make a few more suggestions?"
Sakura raised her eyebrows. "You should. You'll be taking point, after all."
"Oh." It was an utterance of frank, pleased surprise.
"As I said, I'll observe from afar and step in if needed," Sakura clarified. "But go on."
Deer inclined her head, voice lowering. "It's hard to sell artifice without experience in this area. Obviously, to maximize our chances, we should all wear female henges—but beyond that, make small but impactful changes to your features and keep what you can the same. Your movement and expressions will seem more natural this way, even if you lack experience."
They watched as Deer performed a series of jutsus. Her long, blonde hair changed texture, becoming slightly curled, and then darkened a few shades, strands of bronze and brown intermingling with her original color. She pulled off her mask to reveal that the positioning of her eyes had changed as well, drifting slightly farther apart. As for the rest of her face, who was to know what was real and what was illusion?
Sakura scanned her build, however, and noted then the softened musculature, slightly more angled shoulders, and wider stance. All of which changed her gait markedly as she stepped forward.
Deer swiftly directed her attention at Fox and Robin. "Now you try."
Fox nodded, serene. Exactly as instructed, he manipulated his form into the opposite gender and then added only minute adjustments. Deer nodded, Fox's henge quickly approved of. Robin's, however, took more refinement.
"No," Deer said after a less than a second of contemplation, lips pursed.
Robin sighed, aggrieved. "What's wrong with them?"
"That size doesn't occur naturally."
"She could be into that sort of look," Robin tried, looking down at himself.
"I doubt it," Deer said, grave.
His henge's full mouth twisted. But then—perhaps sensing Sakura's curling lip—Robin made the suggested adjustment. Sakura moved to pick idly at some odd tidbits displayed around the room.
"And you, taichou?" Deer called from behind her. "You said you would be observing."
Sakura waved her hand. Although she was no expert in information gathering subterfuge and seduction, she had experience with disguise jutsus. More than average. Her expression grew bleak.
Blinking and returning to the present, she manipulated her fingers through some hand signs, lengthening her hair, changing its color to a pale blond like Ino's. She altered her eye color and mouth shape as well before removing her mask. Like Deer, she then removed the most obvious of her musculature.
"I'll pretend to be someone's abandoned lady companion," she explained, sweeping some of her newly long hair back over her shoulder. "It'll give me an excuse to keep roaming the room, looking somewhat neglected. Keeping a very subtle eye on you all."
Deer stared at her, looking deep in thought. "You've done more manipulations than I suggested," she said after a pause.
Sakura locked eyes with her, mouth curving sharply. "I'll be fine."
Fox pointed meaningfully at the dresser. Robin cracked it open, and it made a sharp whine in protest; clearly, it had been years since it had last been used. Brushing away dust and cobwebs, they each slipped on the first kimono they grabbed, helping each other with the layers and ties.
"Won't she recognize that these are hers?" Robin asked, skeptic.
Deer shook her head, finishing his obi. "Women of her stature go through more dresses than you or I go through kunai. I would, frankly, bet my life on it. Luckily, they're pretty simple, so they shouldn't be obviously out of season. Probably."
The grandfather clock in the room struck the hour.
"That would be our signal," Fox said, head bent as Sakura swept his hair into a tidy knot.
They exited the room and joined a flurry of other excited bodies hurriedly exiting their own private rooms, seemingly given for them to primp themselves for the evening's gathering. As Sakura fell into line, she braided her hair with quick fingers and tossed it back. She wasn't the only person making last minute adjustments and ducked a second to avoid a puff of perfume sprayed by an anxious maid.
She allowed herself to fall to the back of the mob, eyes carefully tracking her teammates.
As they spilled into the gathering hall, she kept a sharp eye out for the other ANBU as well. The mysterious other team would not be broadcasting their chakra, of course, but there were secret signs Konoha ANBU were taught to announce themselves to their own in situations like these.
Until then, Sakura shrugged internally, the mission was theirs.
Music, slow and with a certain, ineffable quality of seduction, started up, weaving between the excited laughter and chatter of the attendees. Her gaze darted to the opposite end of the hall, where she found a troupe of women, all dressed in sumptuous red with dark red lips, wielding instruments.
Although everyone in the room was very much dressed, the hall took on a rather different air, as their collective attention acknowledged these women. Shy looks turned bolder. Mouths curved with more edge. Bodies drifted closer-closer than was usually allowed in public for civilians.
Sakura took her post behind a bowl of saké. She lowered a cup to fill it and brought it to her lips. With a casual air, her gaze passed over the gathering's attendees.
Robin had apparently decided the best course of action was to flirt relentlessly with every person around him, both male and female. It seemed in line with Deer's advice, however, because it seemed to come naturally to him.
Fox, she found, had taken a subtler approach. His henge was similar to his ANBU form—skin sun-browned, like wood's bark, and hair pitch black. His breasts and flared hips were subtle modifications, but he positioned them carefully, and his eyes swept over his conversation partner with an emphasized gentleness which nevertheless seemed second-nature to him as well.
Sakura's eyes passed over Deer last. She had expected to be shocked, and she was. The other woman had—even in a small amount of time—accumulated a small entourage that seemed to hang on to her every word. As Deer more or less held court, she let out a laugh, a little too loud to match the ambiance, a little too free.
It rang like a temple bell, throaty and bold. Heads turned in her direction. One notable head turned as well.
Given that she was the host, Masamichi Ieiri had drawn little obvious attention to herself until now. She stood at the far end of the hall, arm still twined loosely around the cinched waist of a woman easily wearing the most expensive jewelry in the hall. At the sound of Deer's laughter her head tilted lazily back—but it was unmistakably the instinct of a bloodhound catching a scent.
She contemplated Deer, blinking slowly.
Sakura could guess the calculation that went through Masamichi's head, though none of it appeared on her face. Her prize—the well-dressed, undoubtedly very influential woman looking beseechingly at her—was well in-hand. Deer had sparked her interest, ostensibly...but apparently not enough. Masamichi began to turn her head back to her prey.
At this precise moment, as though Deer knew what had gone through their target's head, she reached forward for one of her entourage's hands. Deer drew the girl's palm against her chest, intwined with her own, eyes luminous as she relayed something innocently. The touch drew attention to the soft, plump curve of her breast, which Deer arched her back just slightly to exaggerate—even Sakura's distracted gaze dropped to contemplate it for the first time, before she caught herself, impressed.
The girl whose hand Deer grasped blushed furiously.
Masamichi smirked.
She was in no rush, however. She conversed with the wealthy woman for several more minutes, attention unwavering. She grasped the woman's chin to deliver a lingering kiss before pulling away. The woman she left looked dazed.
The crowd parted as their host strode down the length of the hall, offering comments in passing to various groups, mouth curled. Her attention was only superficially deterred from her target, however—unerringly, each step Masamichi took brought her closer to Deer's orbit.
It was fortunate, she reflected, that Deer had been the one to align with her tastes. This Masamichi looked like she could easily eat someone alive.
Sakura watched from the corner of her gaze as Deer feigned surprise when Masamichi entered their circle. Green eyes, wideset and giving her a slightly unearthly appearance, grew large; a second later, however, her mouth curved, in defiance of her own presentation of demureness. Masamichi saw this, and her eyes flared with heat.
Sakura couldn't hear them, not from this distance—not with the white noise of countless other conversations in the same hall—but she read their lips.
"I don't believe we've met."
"I don't believe we have."
"A pity," the target said, "one that I feel fortunate to be able to rectify now."
Deer's entourage—signaled, perhaps, by Masamichi's obvious indifference to their existence—blended back into the masses, leaving the two women alone.
Sakura hummed along with the music, gaze drifting away. She had been covertly making ANBU hand signs—when she had filled her glass, as she brushed back a wisp of hair, while she adjusted her kimono—but still saw nothing in return. Was this ANBU team even here?
Sakura's eyes narrowed. Perhaps something had happened, and it really was down to them to finish this.
She shrugged, gaze returning covertly to examine the intimate distance now between Deer and the target's bodies. Fortunately, at least, everything that seemed to be going well.
It was, of course, precisely as she had this thought that the hairs on the back of Sakura's neck prickled—responding to a brush of air. What concerned her was not the rush of air, but that she had positioned herself purposefully by the saké bowl because the bowl reflected what was behind her, and there had been absolutely nothing behind her.
But there had been. It simply hadn't been…visible.
Fuck.
So the 'invisible'-nin (as they had been dubbed) were here, Sakura thought wryly. Now that she was aware of them, she fed just a sliver of chakra—no more than something a civilian might naturally possess, but with precision—to her pain receptors. The jolt of pain, thankfully less than she had required last time to break the illusion, allowed her to see through the genjutsu.
They were tracking Masamichi. No, Sakura corrected a second later. They were…guarding her.
Apparently, whoever controlled the invisible-nin had clued in and started offering them for hire.
She allowed herself a second internal fuck and then focused, face cold.
So, obviously, Deer could no longer be in any room alone with Masamichi; she would be killed as soon as she tried assassinate her, by opponents she couldn't see. No, someone with a genjutsu affinity would have to be in that room, meaning Sakura herself.
Which meant that all of Deer's effort had gone to waste, and now Sakura had to shift Masamichi's attention from the very attractive bait Deer had made herself to her.
Sakura sighed loudly and downed her saké in one go.
She stalked into the crowd until she was fully submerged in the leviathan of bodies. She stood precisely where Deer could see her and made a casual hand sign as she twisted to evade an inebriated pair of men. Disengage.
Deer's eyes narrowed fractionally.
Moving smoothly through the crowd now, Sakura swiped a dark wine from a man too drunk to drink more and took a sip, staining her lips a dark maroon. She then moved forward in a sudden burst of speed. She caught her foot on an unsuspecting ankle and tripped forward, directly into the pair.
The invisible-nin were behind her in less than a second, weapons poised.
Sakura straightened slowly, blinking dumbly as though she couldn't see them. "Oops."
Deer let out an anguished cry, staring at her ruined kimono. "Excuse me," she said, pouting, "I'll need to clean this up. I'll be back soon."
She gave Masamichi a look of coy promise before she disappeared, obi fluttering behind her. Sakura watched, sipping what remained of the wine in her glass. She looked up and found Masamichi watching her in turn, irritation and taunt intermingled in those dramatic features.
"Is there a reason you decided to dump the contents of your glass on her?"
Ah. So she had noticed.
Deer had simpered some, but Sakura was positive it would seem like she was being stabbed if she tried the same. No, if the requirement was to be natural, Sakura's inclination was to do the absolute opposite. It held some promise, possibly, she realized. The moments that had captured their target had been when Deer had seemingly departed from her guise of innocence: the brazen laugh, the not-so-innocent smiles. Perhaps…
Sakura shrugged, head cocked arrogantly to the side. "Charity, if you would."
The target's head followed, in the opposite direction—amused. "For whom?" Masamichi drawled.
Sakura shifted forward to place her glass on the tray of a passing servant. She used it as an opportunity to press herself flush against the other woman, to whisper in her ear, "She was punching above her weight. A pouting, meek little thing like her wouldn't begin to know what to do with you."
She rocked on her heels, about to shift her weight back, when two hands, slim and long-nailed, wrapped around her hips to hold her exactly in place.
The other woman turned her head to face Sakura, darkly lined eyes framed by thick lashes, smoldering. "And you would?" she murmured, snapping her head playfully forward.
This close, however, Sakura could see a chilling blankness in her eyes. The woman in front of her was far more than just a prolific seductress. No, whatever Masamichi had done had been terrible enough to warrant an ANBU death sentence—and for more than one request for her death.
She hooked her hands behind Masamichi's neck and pulled her the rest of way forward, until their lips were a breath away from each other.
"I would make you scream yourself hoarse," Sakura said with an air of laziness. Her eyes were sharp, however, watching her closely.
"Oh?" Masamichi smiled, presenting sharp teeth. "And what if that's what I intended to do to you?"
Sakura smirked. "Well, I would welcome the challenge."
She was keenly aware of the eyes on them. She was keenly aware, as well, of the invisible-nin who drew slowly back, content that their client was safe. Good.
Without warning, Masamichi tossed her head back and laughed.
"Oh, you are darling," the woman murmured, brushing soft, hot lips against her cheek. "I agree with your assessment—you'll do far better as a third. And I'm in the mood to impress. Come to the gold doors at the end of the corridor in the east quarter in one hour."
And then she was gone, leaving behind the lingering scent of poppy.
Sakura pursed her lips, confused. She had followed her words at the beginning, she was sure, and then…lost her. Third? Third what? Third woman of the day? Of that night? She supposed that was impressive. She shrugged. She had gotten what she needed.
But things would have been much easier if she could simply mow through those invisible-nins and the target in the hall itself, she pondered longingly. It wouldn't even take long. A pity about the crowd.
She sighed and went for the saké bowl again.
At one hour later precisely, Sakura knocked on what was, in fact, a solid golden door at the end of a very long corridor. She had slipped out from the hall minutes earlier and then been forced to walk at civilian pace the entire way. She hadn't bothered to change much about her appearance in the lengthy interim, though she supposed her hair had gotten a bit unruly. Not that it mattered.
She evaluated the weaponry she currently carried on her person. Two kunai tucked into the back of her chest binding near her shoulder blades. And her hands. She frowned. She hated it when the blood got beneath her nails.
The doors swung open and Masamichi stood there, dressed in a pure white kimono that revealed just much as it (barely) hid, hands curled around the edge of each door. Her mouth curved as she examined Sakura, violet eyes committing a full sweep over her body.
"Come in." She raised an eyebrow.
Sakura stepped forward. Lamentably, the door revealed only a narrow pathway; just a few more inches forward, just to peek around the corner, though, and she would be able to see into the room and determine where the invisible-nin were positioned—
"Ah," Masamichi remarked, "but first." Her hands rose with surprising speed to tie a blindfold around Sakura's eyes.
Sakura's mouth flattened.
"What's this?"
"Don't worry," Masamichi said silkily, tugging her into the room. Sakura heard the doors shut behind her. "It's just to warm you up. You'll be more sensitive this way."
"Then let me tie one around you," Sakura retorted lightly, turning to where she sensed the other woman. Internally, she was unamused. Until she could remove the blindfold in a way that didn't alarm Masamichi's guards—meaning, until Masamichi herself removed the blindfold—she would have to entertain the target.
She felt herself get pushed into a wall, Masamichi's hands snapping up to hold her wrists. Sakura fought her body's instinct to break the hold, forced herself to allow being restrained even though it set her teeth on an edge.
A thigh slid between hers, then pressed up.
"Where's the bed?" Sakura asked, brushing her lips down a cool throat.
She felt the vibrations against her mouth as Masamichi responded. "Right behind us."
Sakura stepped forward and kept walking, until she felt Masamichi's legs hit something. And then they were toppling onto the bed, and Sakura was on top, hands bracketing her on either side.
"Well?" Masamichi breathed into her ear.
It was best to do well and make her amenable, Sakura understood coolly. Then, the woman would remove the blindfold, and Sakura could kill her.
She pressed down and claimed the mouth below her. She held onto the bottom lip with her teeth, tugging in lighthearted warning. She heard a long, languid sigh. Masamichi's hands settled on her hips in response, pulling her sharply down for a slow grind.
As Sakura's hips twisted compliantly, those hands began to drift—first over the small of her back, then up further, approaching dangerous territory. Sakura grabbed her hands and pinned them to the bed.
"Let go of me," Masamichi said softly.
Sakura felt the air disrupt behind her. She didn't doubt that there was a sword inches from the back of her neck, ready to decapitate her. How much had Masamichi paid, for this level of security?
She loosened her hands from the woman's wrists, dancing fingers up along her arms to her sternum, where her kimono was loosely tied. "Let me undress you," Sakura coaxed, flashing a smile.
She didn't hear a negative; blindfolded, she could only take it as assent.
She made quick of the knot and pulled the whole thing off, tossing it onto the floor. Sakura's hand curved around a soft, silken thigh and yanked it up over shoulder. She grazed her lips across a calf, then traced her way to the back of a knee with her tongue—
The doors opened.
"You're late," she heard Masamichi drawl.
Sakura's eyes narrowed into slits, body primed to attack.
"Shouldn't we be alone?" She pressed a kiss into her thigh, digging lightly in with her teeth. Why had someone else entered the room? Who was Masamichi addressing?
"Didn't I tell you," the woman answered, sounding breathily amused, "that you're the third."
Fingers laced into her hair. It took Sakura a moment to realize that the blindfold was being removed. As soon as it fell, her head snapped toward the new figure in the room.
The newcomer was a tall woman with a lean build and piercing grey eyes. She was absurdly attractive. Sakura shifted onto her side.
"I think we'll all be very pleased," Masamichi added. Her next words were solely for the newcomer. "I've tested her myself, as you can see. Didn't I promise you I would impress you?"
Sakura's head rolled back.
The third. As in the three of them. Together.
"Come now," Misamichi said sharply to this new woman. "You've strung me along me long enough."
Sakura frowned.
Her head rose in time to see those grey eyes flicker coolly. Slowly, the woman stepped forward, untying her kimono—but she left it hanging on her glorious frame, barely revealing anything at all. One long leg peeked through the open parting. Her gaze fell absentmindedly to it.
Then stayed there, dumb.
Because she had seen that leg before (and what an absurd thought that was). She was certain. And it had been in another country, on another mission. In a love hotel.
"Fuck me," Sakura uttered. Masamichi laughed.
She felt like laughing too—in hysteria.
Of course the commander would do what she had deemed would be too stupid to be possible, sending her team and his on the same mission. Of course, this would be the one time it would have been perfectly okay not to interfere, and yet she had.
Sakura's eyes scoured the body in front of her with barely repressed hunger, now that she knew it was Kakashi.
He stepped toward them, body sinuous and unperturbed. It wouldn't have been possible for a stranger to read the condescension in him, but she could see it now—now that she knew it was him—in the set of that mouth, in the cut of those eyes. Even though it was a different mouth and those were different eyes.
Had they—? Her furious gaze darted between them.
Then, she remembered this was a mission, and all other thoughts halted except for this: did he know it was her?
She stared at him as he sank onto the bed beside her. He moved with practiced, mechanical ease, fingers skating expertly up the leg Sakura did not hold, fingers spanning her thigh—
All without a glance in Sakura's direction.
No, he didn't, she thought. If did, he would know what danger he reckoned with.
Her lips curled into a sneer. As he made Masamichi writhe, his eyes swept below lowered lashes, cutting covertly to Sakura with lightning speed. If he didn't know who she was, Sakura understood, then he would be debating now what to do with her. He would act quickly now to subdue her, so that he could kill both the target and the invisible-nin in the room with them.
"Did you know, Masamichi-san," Sakura said, leaning back with dark eyes, "that I have a tattoo on my back?"
Kakashi's attention left the target's thigh. He palmed a breast and smoothly took control of her lips.
"Do you," Masamichi sighed in between hot presses of mouths.
"It's a fairly large piece, actually," she said icily, "of a woman and a demon, interlocked in battle."
Every muscle stiffened in that lithe back.
"Or, maybe, they're dancing," Sakura considered, blood rushing in her ears. "It's hard to say."
Masamichi disconnected from Kakashi, violet eyes hot on Sakura. "Kiss me," she commanded.
Very much aware of the gaze now drilling into her, Sakura bent angrily, hands wrapping around the seductress's head, purposefully covering her ears. As they locked lips, her eyes snapped up to Kakashi.
Do it, she ordered impatiently with her gaze.
Masamichi's eyes fluttered shut.
And in the time it took her to blink, Kakashi murdered every other living person in the room.
Sakura's tongue had just begun to curl around the other woman's when a hand knotted in her hair and forced her head up. Her face was turned, controlled still by this hand, to another pair of lips, and these were starkly different from the ones she had left—these pressed down on hers, possessive and cruelly demanding. Sakura's body, which had not held an ounce of genuine arousal before, reacted like a livewire.
A rough, greedy groan spilled from her mouth.
"Yes," Masamichi hissed, coming between them. She watched them with carnivorous lust, blind to the dead bodies strewn across her own floor. "Just like that—"
Sakura yanked the hair needle holding Kakashi's henge's hair up out and slashed it across her throat.
The stunned woman choked, violet eyes bulging. Her hands scrabbled at her neck as she tried to scream. Only a weak, airy wail emerged, before she collapsed. And then there was silence—a deathly silence, because the space between them was filled with death instead of words.
Sakura's gaze fell to her hand, still holding the needle. Blood had sprayed from Masamichi's throat; it covered her hand now, trickling down her wrist.
She dropped the needle onto the bed, expressionless. Rotated her hand to stare beneath her nails. Stained.
Most days, Sakura didn't even blink.
It wasn't one of those days.
That manic need to get it off, get it all off, right now! rose abruptly, a tsunami threatening to knock her over—but her expression didn't change. She was utterly still, except for her fingers, which trembled. She tightened them into a fist, nails cutting into her own palm, and pushed off the bed.
The mission was over. Her team was waiting for her at their agreed upon meeting point. Their report would be expected, which she would have to write—
A hand caught her wrist to hold her in place. She felt the grip change as he dropped his henge.
She didn't turn to look at him. She was balancing on a kunai's edge right now, and she would do nothing to disturb her tenuous stability.
Before she could react, he tugged her fingers into the folds of his kimono. Right where the blood had sunk the deepest, at the bridge between nail and skin, he pressed her fingers against the cloth and dragged—roughly, forcefully. It hurt. It felt like her skin was being scraped off.
And her shoulders caved inward, breath rattling in her chest, not because it hurt—but because he was wiping it off.
Sakura gasped for air and shoved herself into him. He shifted back, stabilizing them.
She shut her eyes. Locked her arms around him and tightened her hold.
He was marble beneath her hands.
"You would regret it," he said into her ear.
Her fingertips throbbed.
"You would realize," he said, voice like gravel, like the rubble left behind when fertile ground was razed by fire, "that there is nothing I have to offer but misery and regret. And you would wish that you had left it a mystery rather than known."
She could feel the bones of his ribs against her, the thud of his heartbeat, just as fragile as any other.
"I am not capable," he strangled out, "of making someone happy."
She shook her head, incensed. "No one's capable of making someone else happy."
"No," Kakashi affirmed, voice dark. "But that doesn't mean humans aren't perfectly capable of making each other miserable."
She was silent. Her fingers tightened their death grip of his kimono.
"What makes me miserable is a long list that ultimately has very little to do with you, Kakashi," she said, icily. She gave a short exclamation of rage, then, for the words would not easily come. "My point is…Can't people struggle, if…they…must struggle…Together?"
There was a short silence, and then he gave an acidic laugh, shaking his head. Her face paled, then went red. But she realized soon that she had misunderstood. Not with me, he meant. She didn't let him say it.
"Don't laugh, you conceited bastard," she snarled. "Perhaps, I would make you miserable. Did you consider that?"
His eyes flared slightly. He looked guarded, as though he hadn't anticipated this particular attack.
She burrowed her face into the burning line of his neck. His hands gripped her, in response, with more strength than his usual, precise control allowed.
"How do I compare, after all," she said, voice sardonic, "when there are daimyo's daughters and oirans to compete with?"
His fingers grabbed the hair at the back of her head and forced her gaze up to his. He looked livid. "Don't mock."
"I'm not!" She was, a little.
Their foreheads came painfully together as he glared into her eyes. "You think there's anyone alive who's seen me in the way you have?"
"Then give in," she hissed, smooth as a snake as she twined her arms around his neck. "We don't need each other, but that doesn't change that I want and that you do too. If it's not today, it will be next week. Or next year. You'll give in someday. Why do you think I've been letting you run?"
He blinked at her, astonished.
"No," he instead, voice sounding like it had been raked over by nails.
"Yes," she said, grave.
And it was like the string holding him was cut, because he believed it too. He crumpled into her, powerful muscles and fearsome strength and all, supported only by her.
She crushed him into her; she wanted to sink his body into hers, swallow him whole, that was how much she had hungered—still hungered. It was only as she had him here, so tantalizingly close, that she finally realized the full extent of the gluttonous craving. How insidious it had been, to hide for so long.
"Promise me," he hissed against her hair. "That I cannot break you."
She gave a laugh she didn't feel. "I would challenge you to try—"
He shook her, just once, but hard enough that her teeth clacked together.
"You couldn't if you tried," she whispered. She clutched him to her and still felt that he might slip out of her hands if she didn't clutch tighter. Her eyes slid shut.
But a bird call reached their ears—one she recognized—and she remembered where they were. Guards. Official ones, not the invisible-nin, were approaching.
"In Konoha," she told him.
His eyes met hers, dark. She saw every bit of iron and steel that had melted away, just for these few moments, reform with blinding speed in front of her as he pulled back. When she blinked, he was the copy-nin once more, a caricature of savagery, coldness, and utter indifference.
But he nodded, even as his face turned away—just once, short.
And victory bloomed in her mouth. It tasted, strangely enough, like milk.
They both shunshined out of the bedroom.
Chapter 40: Sing, Muse, of the War to End All Wars
The sun broke over the horizon as two teams exited ANBU headquarters. Sakura cracked her neck, glowering.
They had made ridiculously good pace, all things considered, only to be held for two hours by the commander himself. The de facto interrogation that had transpired in the older man's office had required more patience than any of them had had, though mostly Kakashi and she had fielded the irate questions. It was small consolation that they had both probably ruined the commander's day as well, despite the resounding mission success.
Outside, Sakura winced as her eyes adjusted to the sunlight. When they had entered Konoha, the streets had still been dark, cloaked by a blanket of cool air and light mist. Now, with the burst of sun, the dirt roads baked golden brown as shops opened and began to populate.
Vulnerability was always more distasteful, somehow, under the brazen light of the day.
Her eyes grazed Kakashi as she looked over the intersection—a fleeting, intangible contact—before she turned. Tonight, she thought. Or, better yet, tomorrow night. By then, she could gracefully muster the same pretense of calm he did now. Right now, as it were, Sakura was anything but calm, and she was determined there would be no more stuttering or rambling from her—never again.
Except.
Except when the others shunshined, she lingered. And when she turned, to see if he was still there, he was.
He stood with his back to her; his hands were stuffed into his pockets, shoulders slouched. For all his appearance of indolence, the crowd didn't voice a cry of complaint, only gave wide berth. They recognized, even the ones who didn't know that mask or those eyes, that he was dangerous.
More the fool she, perhaps, to go toward him.
More the fool he, to turn to meet her.
And then they were both folding into the shadows, their bodies vibrating in a violent rush of chakra and want. The impact of her feet hitting the stairway leading up to her apartment jarred her whole body, right to her teeth. But he was there, with her, and suddenly, she couldn't stand to just look anymore.
They were artless about it. They half-dragged each other up the stairs, toes skating across the ground, in their urgency. They didn't kiss so much as inhale, mouths brushing senselessly, insistently, and yet conversely, only for sensation—to feel that skin against this skin, to press with just this much force and no more—to explore perhaps in a way neither of them had bothered or deigned to explore anyone before.
Her elbow slammed into the metal railing. He tripped upward, heel catching the edge of step. Her skin felt like it stretched too tight over her face and her palms, like she could burst with yearning, and he snarled at her to be quiet. She hissed the same at him, because they were shinobi, supposedly elite ANBU operatives, and they were making a racket at seven in the morning.
The mother who lived down the hall, the one whom Sakura could hear screaming at her son to get up every morning, stopped dead at the sight of them. Sakura mustered no more than a sliver of detached embarrassment—because usually she was far more discreet than this—before she ripped her door open and shoved them both inside.
She felt her shoulder knock into something, heard it shatter—was that the one vase she owned?—and then his hips hit the edge of her kitchen table and Sakura pulled back, gasping for air.
As she stared at him, the yearning transformed, gained specificity. It had been everything until now, hunger without rationale, without name or precision. Now, that fathomless wave sharpened into a point, an arrow, and Sakura's gaze sharpened into one of lust.
Slowly, purposefully, she pressed a hand into his chest, pushed him down onto the wooden surface. She saw those intricate muscles lurch instinctively to push back. But he caught himself, held himself still. Allowed her to push him down.
"You don't like not having control, do you?" she taunted, voice soft.
He watched her through half-lidded eyes as he laid splayed on the table below her.
She leaned over him, hair brushing her cheeks as it hung by her face. This lust, she thought, felt like a tremendous agony, made her fingers shake as she tore his shirt into shreds. Pale, scarred skin, stretched over rippling muscle, met her gaze. He didn't have much hair on his body, except for a thin trail that led downward. She traced the path with a swift hand.
He hissed as she opened his pants, lunging up onto his elbows to watch her. His cock snapped up, just as angry and tortured as the expression on his face—just as unabashedly lurid. Her stomach clenched.
Sakura lowered herself in a flash, until the scalding flesh was level with her, just brushing her cheek. Eyes flicking up to him, she tilted her head to the side and slipped her tongue out of her mouth, traced the extension of his cock until its very top.
He convulsed beneath her. Sakura's hand, which still spanned his abdomen, pressed him ferociously back down. His back hit the wooden table with enough force to make it creak.
"Sakura," he warned, voice barely human.
"I'm not done," she sighed, eyes fluttering back down, as pleased as the cat that caught the canary.
Smug and hungry, she lowered her head again, and this time she placed a messy kiss—full of tongue and saliva—just on the head. Returned the favor.
His hands crushed the edges of the wood table until it crumbled into dust.
And Sakura slipped a frantic hand down her clothes, thrusting her fingers into herself, mouth parting.
When she looked up, she found him looking down at her, eyes slitted.
"What are you doing?" The words were deceptively calm, almost silken. His eyes were hot on the bulge her hand made beneath her pants, right where she penetrated herself, fingers soaked with her own arousal. He crept upward, abdomen pushing against her restraining hand.
Her knees skidded further apart too. "Opening myself up," she said, wetting her lips.
He sat up now—she let him—until his elbows rested on his knees. He leaned forward. "Don't remember you doing that before," he said.
Fuck. She couldn't think. She spoke without filter. "Wanted to feel it then—feel myself stretch and burn and the—ah—the ache."
There was an inferno in his gaze. "And now?" he asked.
Sakura's head fell back, as she felt the vice grip on her fingers finally relax, giving under her coaxing. "Now?" she exhaled. Her eyes drifted back to him.
And then she was pulling her pants off and scrambling atop him, thighs bracketing his narrow hips. She hovered above him, balanced that place where she opened just above his cock. Droplets left her and hit just the top of his arousal. His nostrils flared and his cock jerked obscenely, as though lurching to enter her.
She huffed a delirious, hungry laugh, then leaned into him, lips brushing his hair. "Now I want you to slide in all at once, want to feel full in just an instant. Never felt you like that before—"
His fingers pressed into her, savage, like he wanted to leave marks on her that lasted forever. She felt his calm shatter.
She sank down, swallowing him all at once.
It wasn't quite as she imagined, not the simple, silken slide because she had underestimated his size, hadn't stretched herself quite enough—felt herself rearrange just a little for him now—but it was close enough. He was too deep in her in too little time, and she felt like someone had cut the puppet strings from her body, because she had no idea any longer what to do with herself.
She let out a wrecked groan right into his face. It felt good. Too good. Better than before. How was that possible?
"Are you going to move, Sakura?" he said into her ear, voice strained like rubber stretched to its maximum. He was exquisitely tense, every inch of him.
Her eyes drank him in.
"Beautiful," she murmured and pushed him down. She followed him, holding herself above him with so that their heads aligned, her hands flat on the table.
His pupils were blown wide, teeth clenched too tightly.
She caught his lips in a long, soft kiss. As she felt his jaw relax, she rolled her hips in short, languorous motions, fucking him impossibly deeper into her.
His arms encircled her.
"Feels…so good…" she bemoaned. She rocked his cock carefully, with precision, right into that spot that caused her thighs to tremble. Each subtle thrust made a lewd, wet noise; she was dripping, rivulets trickling down from where they joined.
"Enjoying fucking yourself on my cock?" he breathed.
She let out a weak, breathy laugh. Her head fell back, hair sticking to the back of her neck. "What—hah—does it—hah—look like?"
"Looks like you're going to use this—" his gleaming eyes traced the base of his cock, the only part of it outside her body—"with little mind to me."
In response, Sakura clenched her internal muscles. His body flexed viciously against hers.
"Is this not pleasurable for you too, Kakashi?" She cupped his chin, raised his obliterated expression for her perusal.
His eyes blazed. "Move."
She took pity on him—on the both of them.
She swiveled her hips with single-minded focus, feet slipping against the table, thighs shaking with drunken pleasure, mouth filthily, messily entangled with his. His hands, rough and presumptuous, razed over every inch of her skin—her bare breasts, the pebbles of her nipples, the swell of her clitoris, the insides of her thighs, the soft, vulnerable skin at the back of her legs (surprisingly, it was this that caused a stutter in the rhythm she had set, caused her to pitch forward, voice wrecked).
She touched him, too. Any notion of self-awareness or, indeed, self-possession was long gone. She sucked marks into his neck, drew red lines across the steel cut of his abdomen, gnawed at his ear and fucked him until he shook with her.
"Sakura," he snarled.
Her hips drove forward faster, with blurring speed. Her head tilted back, gaze dazed. Her mouth fell open and she felt his fingers scale her neck until two were slipping in, depressing her tongue, far enough back to make her breath stutter.
She felt like was plummeting through the trees, a roar of wind rushing in her ears. Her vision went black as ecstasy rolled through her, right from deep inside, where he filled her, to her extremities. She tightened unforgivingly around him. When her vision returned, she saw his face as it pressed against hers, as those hoarse, gravel groans left his mouth. He looked like he was on the verge of—
She pressed forward until his fingers hit the back of her throat, orgasm still coursing through her, eyes hooded, and then—deliberately, with all the hunger she had to consume him whole—swallowed.
It was as though she had dealt a mortal blow to him. With this, the madness tore across his face, like she had merely removed what had been but a flimsy mask of self-restraint until now. Before she was aware of what was happening, he twisted with lethal speed to reverse their positions, until it was her back that hit the table—hard, a crack splitting the wood on impact—and he was the one above her.
And then he was thrusting ferociously into her. And it was—
It went on and on, almost cruel for how relentless it was, until she was scrabbling against the table, incoherent. His mouth spewed filth against her throat, into her hair, along her ear, and her eyes widened, astonished, even as she panted, eager for it.
When he finally spilled inside her, her ankles locked thoughtlessly behind him, pressing him further into her as though to aid him. Dazedly, she felt long, rough fingers—his—slid sinuously between them as though, ludicrously, to prevent any of it from slipping out. She wondered, as she stared incredulously up at the ceiling, when she had become that person, who enjoyed this sort of thing: a meaningless act because of the birth control jutsus all shinobi used, but not an insignificant one of…
Possession, she realized, some part of her suitably mortified.
She felt her ears burn. She cleared her throat. "This table. We need to— Get off it. It's going to break any moment."
He stood and lifted her with him.
Sakura gaped, bewildered.
"You—" she hissed. "Hey, you're still—?"
"I am," he answered. And then he was walking and she was wheezing, eyes wide, because he was still very much hard inside her, and each step—with gravity's aid—felt like being newly impaled. "Did you think that was nearly enough?"
"Didn't seem to be an issue before," she said, voice strained.
"Before, Sakura, I was…" He dropped her onto her bed, eyes dark and burning, "restraining myself."
"Oh," she exhaled, struck dumb. "Yes. Those pesky inhibitions."
"Pesky," he agreed, drawing her hand up to his lips.
His face left no doubt that he intended to devour—that he, indeed, scorned the notion that they had even meaningfully begun.
"I'm glad you've gotten rid of those," she said, very formally. She tried for arrogance and didn't quite manage it.
His mouth curved, sharp and all teeth. "I'm glad you agree," he said, hands grazing down her sides—just that, a graze, "because I intend to fuck you until you can't walk without feeling this—" he pushed sharply into her in demonstration—"tomorrow."
Blessedly, some of her usual self returned at these audacious words. "Hm," she hummed, smirking. She cocked her head to the side. "Well."
She turned her smirk upwards. How conceited, she thought. Hadn't he seen her punch down an entire section of the ANBU stadium? Or tear off a susanoo's head?
She rolled her eyes.
He couldn't possibly.
Except, it turned out he could.
That fucker.
In the end, sweat covered every inch of her sticky body, sealing her to the sheets. Not that she could have moved if she had tried. Her limbs had turned heavy and lifeless, like all the life had been gloriously, deliriously fucked out of her. Maybe, she had hallucinated it.
Sakura half-thought she could sink into the mattress herself. She wasn't sure where he had gone, but she wasn't shifting an inch to make room for him when he came back. Her eyes slid shut. She wasn't sleeping. Just…resting her eyes.
Her eyes opened sluggishly when an arm curled around her legs, another around her back, and lifted her up.
"Where—?" she murmured.
Her eyebrows rose as they crossed the door to the bathroom. She looked down and saw that he had already filled the tub. Steam floated tantalizingly from the water, ready for her to soak her lethargic body in.
Her gaze didn't move from the tub. "I'll carry you next time," she said, unblinking. "But, as it is, if you would—gently place me in."
She felt a breath of something possibly like silent humor against her hair—except that it had been silent, so she had probably imagined it—and then her limbs were encased in otherworldly warmth. Heat crawled into her muscles through the thin layer of skin, and Sakura groaned with feeling, head falling back against the porcelain rim.
Her eyes snapped open when she sensed him move.
"Where are you going?" she drawled. "Sit down."
His gaze flicked from her to the tub. His eyebrow arched. "This must be one of the smallest tubs in existence."
"You fit last time." Her hand caught his wrist, and she tugged him in. Water splashed out of the tub and onto the floor. Neither of them paid any mind to it.
She rested her elbows on the cool edges and leaned her head against her shoulder, perusing him. She huffed scornfully a second later.
"Should have practiced more before I carried on with you," she muttered.
He leaned sharply forward, eyes flashing. But there was a thread of amusement in his voice when he spoke. "Do you plan on walking tomorrow, Sakura?"
Her eyes widened, legs snapping reflexively shut even as her core burned at the mere thought. Shameless, insatiable thing, Sakura thought absurdly, didn't it care for the rest of her?
Her eyes narrowed. "I am stronger than you, you know."
"I don't disagree. As for practice, if that's your concern—you'll be welcome to practice on me going forward," he said silkily, swirling steam hiding his gaze from her.
Sakura stared. She averted her gaze a second later. "I'll make you beg on your knees," she said out of the side of her mouth.
"I don't doubt it," he rasped.
She stared sullenly out at the bathroom wall, chin resting on her propped forearm.
"You know, it's not a unique talent to have. I'm also quite good at fucking women—"
"Sakura."
"Right," she said curtly. "Yes, I plan on walking tomorrow."
"I thought so."
She shifted her weight absentmindedly. She paused when she felt a little bit of that leak out of her with the motion. Her gaze darted down. Matter-of-factly, then, she lowered her fingers and began to thrust into the parting of her legs, cleansing herself there.
She felt more than saw him bristle across from her. "Are you deliberately testing me?" he exhaled.
"Look the other way, asshole," she said, uncaring.
When she finished, even she felt a little, distantly impressed with her own temerity. She looked up and found that he had, indeed, looked the other away, face sharp and hungering even in profile.
Sakura curled a hand around his ankle, summoning his attention. Dark eyes turned immediately to her, razor sharp. She blinked slowly at him. He blinked in turn. A few seconds passed by, and a few more, and then, silently, the tension drained from him.
He leaned back, eyes sliding half-shut at the warmth of the water. Eventually, she did the same.
"Do you think that I should have killed him?"
Lifting her head, her gaze focused intently on the grout of her tile, cheek resting on the muscle of her bicep, arm still propped along the tub rim.
Kakashi's lids flicked up in her peripheral. The lazy quality in his gaze held for just a fraction of a second before that animalistic acuity returned, summoned by her words. Some vague part of her regretted seeing its departure.
But she didn't regret asking the question, when it had been haunting her ever since she had left the hospital.
He surveyed her, eyes roving over her features. "You would have been subject to the council's wrath again," he said, curt. "This time they wouldn't have let you go unpunished."
"That's not what I mean."
"You have little faith in the council."
"Do you have faith?" Sakura said, eyebrows lifting.
"The godaime believes she can handle it." His head tilted to the side, eyes warning. "So, for now, you wait."
Sakura's lips tightened. Her fingers tightened as well around the edge of the tub. Neither she nor he moved.
"Do you think," she said finally, in a harsh whisper—it emerged from the deepest, most unwilling part of herself— "that Danzo was…necessary?"
She couldn't lift her gaze willingly. Eventually, entirely without her conscious consent, her gaze drifted up. She found him expressionless.
Sakura shifted up, the hair on her shoulders rising as they left warm water for chilled air. "Root was formed under the sanction of the sandaime originally," she recounted. "The third allowed it. It was a task force to…"
"To supervise the work the third's own conscience could not condone." He paused, staring somewhere past her. "In the beginning, I imagine Danzo did what was necessary: what the kage was unwilling to order himself—" he smiled without an ounce of warmth—"It's obvious now that, under those conditions, Root would inevitably grow corrupt."
Sakura paled. The water was beginning to cool now, the steam dissipating from the room. She shivered.
"Why do you think he did it?"
"The sandaime was not without conscience; he stopped the practice of child soldiers, after all," he said curtly, "But he was also pragmatic. The work he could not do, he delegated to someone else."
"Do you resent him?" she asked.
There was a pause in which, except for the leaking tap, there was stark silence.
"For his weakness?" he said. His voice was strange. "He was only a man, placed in a position that requires perfection."
Her head jerked toward him, mouth working. "And you're supposed to be next," she said finally.
His eyes flickered.
Her teeth cut into her lips. "Do you want it?"
"Irrelevant. I've been told that there's no one else."
"Kakashi." She grabbed his forearms, fingers pressing punishingly.
His face contorted, and he yanked her forward. Water spilled over the sides of the tub, coating the tile, as she collided into him.
"It terrifies me," he said, voice cold, looking down at her as she leaned on him to straighten herself, half her head drenched. "Not unlike you."
They stared at each other, transfixed in a strange battle of will, neither of them certain of whose victory was ultimately desired.
The thought solidified in her head, nearly a minute late. Somehow, though the conversation had moved on since then, it struck her only now. "You were in Root, weren't you," she said softly.
He didn't have to answer. She knew from the sudden wreckage on his face.
His hand entangled roughly in her uneven hair, tugging her back to look at her. "Is that the appeal of this companionship in misery you've proposed," he asked, "that you strip me bare and leave no terrible act for me to mourn or deplore in private?"
She pressed in until they were flush, from groin to chest, interrupted thereon only by a pocket of air between their necks and millimeters between their lips.
"And I tell you every terrible thing I've done in return," she said, voice tight, because she recoiled too from the prospect. "That's the bargain."
His abdomen reflexively curved with hers, adjusting to her weight.
"Fine," he snarled into her neck, voice rough. "Tell me every terrible thing, and I'll tell you mine. And let me— let me hold you anyway."
And despite her earlier words, she pressed him into her again. And they rocked, like that, until daylight shone.
When morning arrived—as it had to—its advent cast a musty haze over her room. Whites and greys mutated into their golden cousins and Sakura watched the transformation through her fingers, rays of light peeking through to warm her face.
He turned in the sheets to watch as well, hair mussed and quiet. Her eyes left her hand to trace him.
"So this is what you're like in the mornings," she murmured.
His gaze drifted to her, unreadable, yet as reflective as a still lake. "What am I like?" he said.
Viscous and resisting, like honey—somehow, more malleable. Sakura shook her head.
She pulled a smirk onto her face. "More beautiful than any nymphet that's warmed my bed," she whispered, leaning forward. She pulled back a second later, head tipping up. "And me?"
"Not a nymphet."
Sakura lay flat on her back and laughed at the ceiling. "No, not that."
She felt his grip change, tightening, where he had absentmindedly been holding her thigh.
"You were too brutal, too debilitating for that."
She turned toward him, strands of hair following the motion to web across her face.
"You didn't try all the usual things they did," he said, voice low.
"Pink-lipped smiles, jasmine perfume, soft, gasping kisses." She blinked, slow, sedate. "It would have been ridiculous. But maybe…"
She drew his chin up, lifting his face to hers.
She smiled, mean. "Maybe I should have tried calling you sensei."
He stared at her for a moment. "You're a menace," he said slowly, lip curling.
She held the pretense for a second more. "It's your fault, you know," she said, both amused and annoyed. She pointed a finger at him. "Who told you to be some sort of child prodigy? Couldn't you have waited like me?"
"Say my name," he demanded, as though he hadn't been listening to her.
Her gaze flicked up.
He drew her close, hands rough and forceful. She moved the rest of the way, sliding beneath him, head sidling against his.
"Kakashi," she mocked.
Except his gaze didn't break from hers.
And then she felt it—felt herself change, reshape, in response to him—and she was curling her hands into tufts of his riotous hair, swaying him into her.
"Ka-ka-shi," she said again, softly this time. Watched him, rapt.
S haringan no eiyū, nakamagoroshi no Kakashi, reiketsu Kakashi.
"Kakashi," she pressed into his neck, voice as unyielding as steel.
"You're different too," he said after a moment, tilting her head up for his perusal, eyes cool. "In the morning."
"I'm not," she insisted, pressing her nails into the back of his neck, testing.
"You are," he retorted, pushing forward, forcing her to lean back too.
She turned her head away, scoffing.
"Maybe," he said, tugging her face back, like he too couldn't countenance the distance for long, "I am as well."
"How do you suppose?"
He gazed at her with a look she had never seen before on his face. A moment later, and it was gone. His gaze darted to the corner of her room and then back to her, darkly amused. "Because I've tolerated the brazen red undergarment there this entire time—" his teeth flashed, warning—"and I know very well it isn't yours."
Sakura's head snapped toward the offending garment.
"Oh," she said, blinking. She laughed nervously. "Oops?"
As the sun rose to its highest point, the corridors of the hospital seemed to become even colder. The hospital's crisp temperature was a preventative measure to combat bacteria, but she was certain something was off with the seals today. It was outlandishly cold.
"Uchiha Itachi," Sakura prompted when she arrived at the front desk, rubbing her arms. Impatience made her voice hard. She had put this conversation off for too long.
The nurse looked up, an irate frown on her face. Her gaze drifted lower, then, and her eyebrows flew up.
Sakura discovered what she was looking at a second too late.
The sheer gall, she thought. He had had more than enough opportunity that morning and he had said nothing.
Sakura yanked up the collar of her shirt. "Well?"
"Ah—yes. Room seven, just to your left," the nurse said belatedly.
Sakura turned on her heel to stalk down the hall.
As she pulled the door open, she didn't expect to find two figures occupying the room. Perhaps, had she even known there were two, she would never have predicted the particular pair she found herself looking at.
Similarly pale faces swung to her, similarly dark eyes sharp.
"Am I interrupting something?" Sakura said, bemused.
"Not at all," Sai said. Belatedly, his lips quirked into a genial, returning smile.
She shut the door softly behind her.
"Hm." Her gaze shifted to peruse Itachi. His face—as serene as the painted visage of Buddha—revealed nothing more than Sai's. "What brought you here?"
Sai blinked. "I thought to visit Sasuke's brother personally and share my well wishes for his speedy recovery. I've read that this is considered fundamental in teammate best practices."
She didn't buy it for a second. But—what on earth would Sai and Itachi have to talk about? Sakura tilted her head to the side, pondered the issue briefly. And realized, possibly, a lot.
"What brings you here, Sakura?"
She narrowed her eyes. Nicely deflected. "Itachi and I have some things to discuss."
Itachi's head shifted toward her.
"I see. Should I leave?" Sai asked.
Sakura's gaze rested on him. "No," she said slowly. "It's…fine." It wasn't like there was a point to keeping secrets any more. Not that she had been especially good at keeping them from Sai anyway.
"You are curious about what I did with the eye," Itachi guessed, calm.
"Not particularly," she replied casually. "I am curious about what you're going to do with it."
Sai examined them both with equal interest from his position by the window.
"I have discussed the issue of the sharingans Danzo stole with the hokage," Itachi relayed. "She has agreed that, in the case of most, the best of course of action is to destroy them."
Sakura stilled, easy demeanor slipping away. "Most?" she asked, soft.
"Yes."
Her shoulders stiffened. "Does that include Shisui's?"
"It does not."
"Are you serious?" Sakura said, voice flat. Not that she could imagine why he would make a joke of it.
"Yes," he said, even.
And sheer rage roiled in her veins, so visceral and volatile, that it took her by surprise. She shifted unthinkingly toward the man in the hospital bed—only realized it when Sai stood in front of her, palms soft but strong on her upper arms, to halt her.
She stared at him, a bit disbelieving at both Itachi's remark and her own reaction.
"I noticed before that you've grown protective of him," Itachi pondered. His gaze had changed in some way Sakura could not discern. "Of a man you have never even met."
"You're not wrong," Sakura laughed, and the noise was swollen with, full-bodied by, anger. "I've had bastardized fragments of his memories crawling through this brain, which is already too crammed, for too long now. So forgive me if I haven't been handling this all particularly well. The idea that you won't put him to rest after what the crow did with his eye, after what Danzo did—it feels like you're spitting on my bones in my own fucking grave."
"Do you know that those are solely your feelings?" he said evenly. "You might not be able to tell the difference, but I knew Shisui, the man."
She took a step back, sliding away from Sai's hands. Her face hardened.
"What, so you want to weaponize his eye again?" she rasped.
He didn't answer.
She bared her teeth. "Funny that the crow—excuse me, Danzo—used to complain about your alleged pacifism," she said. "I don't believe you're a pacifist at all, actually."
Sai brushed her.
"—Maybe that you want to be. But you've never quite managed it, and I think there's a reason for that. Maybe, you're not quite as sold on the idea as you think. Hard to let go of what you're good at, hm?"
"Sakura."
Her gaze snapped to her teammate and widened. She didn't think she had ever quite seen this expression on Sai's face. Exasperation, maybe. Disappointment because of how she treated Sasuke, possibly.
But this was something remarkably like anger. Directed towards her.
Sakura heard the words that had come out of her mouth, then. She began to feel discomfited. Not too long ago, she herself had felt that Itachi had been seeking his own death through Sasuke. That, potentially, he might still be considering it.
The discomfiture turned into a sense of vague sickness. That was Shisui's phantom, now, infecting her.
Itachi was right. She wasn't Shisui.
But even she knew this was not how she should have gone about it. There was no white and black here—only murky, complex greys. Even if she resented the presentation of seeming hypocrisy before her now, she certainly didn't have any moral high ground.
She opened her mouth to—rectify? alleviate?—her earlier words.
"Fifteen years ago," he said before she could, "it was par for the course for shinobi children to learn their lessons on war ground instead of in classrooms or training."
Sai exhaled.
"I know," Sakura said.
But Itachi wasn't looking at her. His head was turned away from the both of them, his words orphaned from any emotion they might have glimpsed on his visage.
"Perhaps to Danzo, I was a pacifist," he reflected, voice light. "He and I had similar instincts in the decisions we made—often. But where I sought at times to curb myself, I think he did not. If pacifism, as you've put it, is acting with the motive to prevent war, then I may very well be deemed a pacifist. I killed my clan to prevent civil war and the loss of a greater number of lives, for the greater good of the village."
He paused. "And yet the use of violence, even to prevent a war, does not strike of the same, does it?"
"It does not," Sai acknowledged.
Itachi turned back to them. His gaze was placid. "I've had ample time here, in this room, to contemplate this. That my earliest lessons were forged in war, that I never managed to—or made any real effort to—forget those lessons." He said it with remarkable little reservation, indeed, as if he were merely remarking on someone else, such was his ostensible apathy. "War taught me the efficiency of striking fast and unforgivingly. It instilled a duty in me to Konoha and its kind, abstractions that inevitably accrue profound importance on any battle ground—especially in war—that I was willing to die or kill for. It is possible, philosophically, that I have…aspired for something like pacifism. But you're not wrong to point out that when confronted with a real problem, it is rarely what my mind rationalizes. I acknowledge it."
Sakura's gaze darted over his face. "I didn't mean—" she said, voice low. She shut her eyes. "I'd be a hypocrite to take issue with your use of violence, and I have no standing to judge you. I certainly have never tried anything else. But..."
"But," Sai added, evenly and with a great deal more care than she had earlier, "perhaps some of the decisions you have made recently and in the past have been unclear."
"Yes," the older man said briefly. "I can see that."
Subtle lines had formed along the pale expanse of his face, making him seem suddenly older than he was. There were seven years between her and Kakashi; she knew Kakashi was older than Itachi. But Itachi wore the weight of his crimes on his face, more so, perhaps, than any man or woman she had seen.
"When you killed your family, you spared Sasuke," Sai prompted softly. His throat fluttered.
I…had…a…brother…too. Sai's confession, she recalled, as blood had spilled from his mouth.
Sakura's chest ached. Was that why Sai was here? Was that what the two of them had talked about?
"An exception I made for myself," Itachi said.
Sai blinked, solemn. "Because you loved him."
Of course.
But this didn't garner the reception she might have expected. His lips trembled briefly in his pale, stoic face. "Love?" he said, voice distant.
Sakura straightened, brow furrowing.
"I loved my parents, and I killed them," he said. His gaze fell. "But perhaps it is true, that I loved Sasuke more than I loved them." He paused. Then continued: "Could I have avoided it, when someone so...unknowing and vulnerable looked at me with so much trust? I wonder."
"In other species parents devour the vulnerable, even their own young," Sai reflected out loud, "in humans, our biological instinct to protect is said to increase with perceived vulnerability—"
"But?" Sakura cut in.
His eyes focused on her. "But I spared Sasuke, not because of my love for him, but for his love for me."
"The other children. Were they really threats?" Sai said, eyes narrowed. He didn't understand.
But Sakura thought she did—or was beginning to.
"Uchihas are raised from the cradle to believe in their own superiority, in clan above village. I determined, then, that the seeds of discord were already sown within them."
Or so war had taught him, Sakura filled in. ANBU, undoubtedly, had not helped.
"But you broke away from that indoctrination yourself," Sai pointed out.
Itachi's eyes were complex. "I couldn't rely on the unlikely chance they would—not after I had killed the rest of our clan. They would have only placed clan further above village and repeated the same mistakes."
Sai's eyes narrowed. "But you believed Sasuke would be different?"
Itachi's head lowered.
"He believed that Sasuke could hate him more than anything else, beyond any other impulse, exactly because Sasuke had loved him so much," Sakura said, grim. "He chose his own executor in his brother."
"I won't deny," Itachi said, his voice a monotone, "the selfishness of that act."
Sai stiffened beside her, a mix of emotions crossing his face.
"You shouldn't take all of the credit," Sakura said, voice darkly wry. "Danzo and your instincts were similar, you said? It's not a stretch to imagine you were manipulated to feel that way."
Itachi shook his head, without an ounce of defensiveness. "I knew what I was doing."
"Take it from someone who dealt with him when I was older than you were," she said, voice hard. "You didn't."
He blinked at her.
While Sai ruminated over this revelation beside her, Sakura found that she wasn't as concerned with what was morally defensible and what wasn't—at this point, she only cared to know enough to determine what Itachi planned to do now.
Her fingers tapped impatiently against her sides. "After you left Konoha, why did you join Akatsuki?"
His expression smoothed. "They are a threat to Konoha."
"So was Orochimaru," Sai interjected, almost distractedly. "So were several hidden villages. Both more imminently at that time."
Itachi's fingers interlocked where they rested on the pristine bedsheets, starched white and stiff. "The reason I went to Akatsuki," he imparted, "is precisely the reason that not all the sharingans Danzo stole can be destroyed."
Sakura bristled with irritation. He was stalling.
"Why are you circling the point?" she ordered, gaze suspicious.
"It isn't an easy revelation to swallow," Itachi returned, mouth barely moving. "Even I am not certain I am correct."
"Try us."
Itachi straightened, back leaving his pillow. "Very well. I wasn't alone the night I murdered the Uchiha. Someone helped me," he revealed. "He went by the name Tobi."
Sakura scowled. "Tobi of the Akatsuki."
"Yes." Itachi's voice firmed. "Though I am certain that is not his true name."
Sai's head cocked to the side. Sakura stared.
"I believe his true name is Uchiha Madara."
She shrugged a beat later. "Who's that?"
"Sakura," Sai said, sighing, "surely you know—"
"Of course I do," she said, irritated. "But as that Madara died a very long time ago, I am certain this must be some other Madara."
Itachi leaned back into the hospital bed, expression clear of his thoughts. "I'm not sure how it's possible," he remarked.
Sai gasped quietly. But Sakura— Sakura's head tilted toward the ceiling, and she belly-laughed. Because of course. Of fucking course.
It occurred to Sakura, after, that this was all information Itachi had likely already disclosed to the hokage herself. Suddenly, indeed, Tsunade's cryptic remarks of passing on the torch to Kakashi "soon but not too soon" made a lot more sense. If there was to be a war, she pondered, one with (ludicrous as it was to seriously contemplate) one of the strongest shinobi to ever exist fighting on the opposite side, it made sense.
But still—why would Madara help his own clan's demise? Why Akatsuki? Why—?
A rapping noise from her left disrupted her thoughts. Sakura's gaze snapped to the window. She leaned over to open it.
A hawk hopped inside, golden eyes flitting over her room disinterestedly. She loosened the scroll from its body and twisted it open. She found a blunt and utterly uninformative summon to the headquarters.
She sighed, and even though her head reeled with too many recent revelations, she tied on her mask, changed into her uniform, and left.
She was immediately caught in a wave of bodies as she entered the headquarters. The operatives around her whispered to each other, eyes darting about with varying amounts of excitement and nerves. This did look familiar…
"Rounds?" she asked out loud of no one in particular.
"Seems like it. You should hurry— Oh."
Sakura processed the familiar quality of this voice then.
"Oh," she exhaled as well.
They stared at each other in silence, unable to speak.
The other ANBU were none too pleased by the sudden standstill in their path to the stadium. Annoyed voices called out, urging them to get a move on. When that didn't work, one particularly impatient woman tried to shove her way through. Bear shoved her irritatedly into the wall.
After that, they started to split around on either side of Sakura and her former team, much like a river around a particularly large boulder.
Sakura rocked back a step when a body slammed into her.
"I'm glad," Snail said fiercely. "I'm really, really glad that it was a lie."
Sakura's shoulders lowered. "Oh…good. That is, I'm sorry that you had to believe—" she started. Her voice was weaker than she would have liked. "If I had had a choice, I would have let you know—"
"We know how it works," Hyena said quietly. Her long hair hung over one shoulder, like black silk. Her head rose. "But I'm glad you broke that particular order, anyway."
Bear grunted, clearing his throat uncomfortably.
Snail sighed, stepping back to send him a look. A shrill bell rang throughout the whole headquarters.
"We don't have much time left," Hyena said, straightening. She gripped Sakura's shoulder briefly. "Looks like you're a captain now? You should go talk to your new team before rounds start."
Sakura felt vaguely disarmed again. She didn't appreciate the whiplash. "I…should?"
Bear rolled his eyes. "Baby ANBU—"
"Also mid-level," Snail said, exasperated.
"—sometimes need positive reinforcement from their captain before. Shameful practice, if you ask me. Then again, not sure whose bright idea it was to make a brat a captain of other brats."
Sakura huffed out an amused breath of air. "Wow. Missed you too, Bear."
He made an odd noise.
"Yeah?" Sakura said, eyebrows raising.
He made another discomfited sound, like he was choking. "We should do…"
The bell rang again and Hyena tilted her head, looking displeased. "We'll see you soon," she said, calm. She tipped her chin and Bear and Snail followed her, the latter waving until the crowd consumed them.
She watched for a moment, dumb.
It took someone bumping into her to remember that there was apparently another item on her agenda. Sakura turned, then, eyes scanning the clamoring crowd around her. She couldn't see her team anywhere. Maybe they were still in the locker room? She spotted the doors and made a beeline for them.
She found a few straggling teams huddled in various corners, strapping on armor and sharpening their blades. She craned her head toward the other side of the room and at last found the trio she was looking for, nestled right next to the showers.
Deer's head was the first to rise at her approach.
"Taichou," Fox greeted a second after.
Sakura nodded back. She frowned at Deer, examining her tense posture. "Is something wrong?"
"…No," Deer muttered.
Sakura sighed and sat on the bench, resting her elbows on her thighs. She peered up at Deer. "Really," she said flatly.
Deer looked rather like how Sakura was beginning to feel, actually. Danzo in the bag, but a war with Akatsuki and Uchiha Madara on the horizon.
Fuck.
Deer stiffened. "I—" she started. "I'm probably going to lose all my bouts."
Her shoulders sagged.
"It doesn't matter," Sakura said evenly. Deer twitched, her incredulity communicated even with her face hidden by a mask.
Sakura bulldozed on. "I know your background and so does the commander. He's not going to suggest dropping you from ANBU. And if any of the other captains try to suggest it, I'll make it clear you're a damn quick learner who's going to be able to put most of them on their asses in a couple of years. That's how great I am. So, don't doubt yourself. But if you can't manage that yet, then don't doubt me. Got it?"
Fox stifled a laugh with a polite cough.
Deer nodded, still glum but looking slightly eased.
Robin bumped her shoulder. "You'll be fine," he muttered. "I'm the one who should be worried."
Sakura's head rolled to him. "You're kidding me," she said blandly. "You?"
She had never known Robin to suffer from lack of confidence. He crossed his arms, bravado imbued in every inch of his stance. "I'm not blind," he remarked. "I know you're itching to get rid of me."
His shoulder twitched. "Don't get me wrong—I'll be glad to leave. You're kind of a no-name captain too."
Sakura shook her head, fingers reaching instinctively to massage the bridge of her nose. She paused when she remembered there was a mask in the way.
"Kill me now," she groaned under her breath. She lifted her head, teeth grinding. "You're a little shit, Robin, don't get me wrong, but I'm kind of an asshole too, so I…can sympathize."
Fox stepped forward. "I think what she means to say is—"
"You are…" Sakura said with difficulty, looking determinedly away, "also a…valuable part of this team."
"Oh," Robin said, tone strained by something like shock, pleasure, and disgust all intermingled. "Well. Let's never do this again."
"Agreed!" she snapped. "Now get a move on. Or do you need a speech too, Fox?"
"Not this time, taichou," Fox said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
"Good!" She turned on her heels to find that the locker room had become entirely deserted in the time they had talked. "And now it looks like we're really late."
They rushed out to find the corridors entirely empty—a bad sign. When they did, in fact, made it into the stadium, hundreds of gazes zeroed in on them.
"Salamander," the commander roared, pointing a quivering finger at her.
"Menstruation. Who knew it was a monthly thing?" Sakura muttered.
Her team, she noticed, were covering their masks like they no longer wanted to be associated with her as they took their seats.
"SIT DOWN SO WE CAN START!"
Sakura straightened. "Of course, commander." She made her way to the edge of the long table, sliding in beside a captain who looked like he sorely wished he had sat somewhere else.
"Now, let me—"
"We're actually missing…one more…" the assistant stuttered.
The commander's eyes glinted with comprehension. "You," he said to Sakura, "and him. I will string the both of you up on the roof of this building."
The large door cracked open. A lanky figure slid unconcernedly into the stadium.
Kakashi flicked a disinterested, two-fingered salute as he crossed the arena to the one remaining seat. When he walked past her, his head turned casually to the side. For the briefest of moments, they made eye contact—not in the slightest accidental, just for an instant—and then his long steps took him past her to a chair he pulled back with a loud screech.
She leaned back, gaze determinedly returning to the center of the stadium.
"All members are accounted for, commander," the assistant said softly.
The commander stared, the bellicose in his posture unrelenting for several, long seconds. Unexpectedly, he took a deep shuddering breath.
"Very well."
And then he nodded to his assistant, and the nervous, trembling wreck of a man nodded solemnly back.
There was something off about their demeanors, Sakura realized. There had been since she had entered the stadium—a strange gravity in the commander's gaze, almost somber, even when he had yelled. The assistant seemed different too. He looked suddenly less liable to be knocked over by a stray wind, like iron had been poured into his body to line his bones while no one had been looking.
She pursed her lips.
"Shall we begin the rounds?" one of the captains closer to the commander asked.
"I have not gathered you here today to conduct rounds," the commander revealed to them after a pause. For once, he did not raise his voice; it carried easily nevertheless throughout the stadium though.
An uneasy murmur went through the ANBU gathered, the nervous excitement that had previously influenced the air dissipating, leaving something more oppressive in its place.
The commander straightened. "As you all are aware of, Shimura Danzo was brought in two weeks ago—" he straightened, head tipping back to sweep broadly over his audience with mere flicks of his gaze—"I won't pretend to believe he is the end, but he was the sizable stride we required to clean house before we turned our attentions outwards. As we now must."
Sakura exhaled.
"We have made strategic moves in the past decade to halt the rise of Akatsuki. But our kage has determined that we must now address this terrorist organization head on."
It was like a bomb had dropped—but the gazes that watched did not react with surprise, even as they narrowed with wariness.
Itachi's revelation from the hospital, Sakura acknowledged darkly, had been the unassuming death knell of normalcy. What convenient timing. Had he told her only now because he had known this to be the case?
"The hokage has instructed me to inform ANBU, as she has the leaders of a select list of other organizations," the commander said, voice gritty like he had swallowed debris, "that we will be at war soon. This is not yet public knowledge. You will not tell this to your families or friends, however tempting. This intel is conveyed to you now because we must be among the first to make changes."
He turned, now, to his assistant. The meek man stepped forward, sliding his glasses upwards.
"Until now, ANBU squads have been optimized for varied purposes," the assistant spoke quickly. "This is not to say that the notion of a squad will be lost. As needs demand, you will still go on missions together. But our primary goal now will be to prepare our…lines."
"Battle lines," the commander grunted explicitly. He straightened to his full, hulking height. "The strongest of Konoha will go into our front lines. When I say strongest, however, make no mistake: this is only shorthand for a particular breed of strength, the kind that excels in war. Subtlety and restraint are what define many of our best in ANBU. Most of you, therefore, who have nonetheless honed your skills and risen in our ranks, may very well form the backbone of lines farther back. I stress that this is not a comment on your skills; your arena of strength is merely a different one."
He paused. "I say this," he said, warning, "to appease any petty tempers that might be sparked in the next hour. Let me remind you that your ego has no place here. Your rank is but a title, one that can be stripped as easily as it was granted. Is this understood?"
No one spoke. This silence, apparently, was taken as understanding.
The assistant opened a file that had been tucked under one of his arms. "These lines will necessarily be a mix of ANBU and non-ANBU, those higher level shinobi who have chosen other paths," he began. "We will cut back on our mission load to give—particularly soldiers at the front—time to acclimate and train together. The hokage has reviewed your files along with the commander and produced a rough list of assignments."
An uneasy rumble went through the stadium.
The commander's assistant didn't blink. His head tipped down to his file, and he began to list those composing the inner most layer of defense. He went on to the next line without pause—and then the next.
By the time he finished, his voice was a croak.
So, Sakura thought, this was the bell that rang in war.
"From both of your attitudes, you would think that you had gone through rounds and been placed on another team," Fox observed, wry, as they sat in the Shush-ya.
"I only made it to second line at the front." Robin tossed back the last of his drink with resentment.
"Well," Deer shrugged, "I'm first on defense, which is pretty far back. Considering that Fox made it to third at the front, other than taichou, you're the highest on the team."
Robin's ire seemed to grow even more with this recollection. He turned to Sakura. "How exactly did you get so good?"
Sakura didn't bother acknowledging this; instead, she rotated the saké in her cup idly.
Her gaze flicked over the Shush-ya, which was beginning to look rather sparse in ANBU though the hokage was footing the bill. It was tradition following rounds; only, it hadn't been rounds this time, Sakura reflected, had it? Most who had filed into the establishment had barely mustered one drink before trickling back out. They had probably gone to their homes, to their families, to cherish what would be—in many ways—the last night of relative normal. Every night from now would only be haunted by the prospect of war.
Sakura, unusually contemplative, gazed at the saké without seeing it at all.
She wondered if there were things that she had yet to learn, despite all that she had done and witnessed, that she would in war. Would she comprehend now why Itachi spoke of it with such regard? Had it been his youth or war itself that had impressed those 'lessons' he had mentioned so deeply?
A group of ANBU passed by their table, shoulders bowed as they left.
"We should probably do the same," Fox intoned. "There's nothing left to do tonight but get good rest."
Deer nodded. Sakura placed her cup firmly back on the table.
Robin, in the end, was the only one who managed to finish his drink. Deer appeared to consider hers but ultimately abandoned it as well. Fox didn't even pretend to touch his.
They stood.
"Head on out without me," Sakura said lightly, jerking her head toward the door. "I'm going to wash my face in the restroom."
She gave them a curt nod as they waved and left through the arched entrance, splitting in separate directions to their respective homes. She turned then on her heel after and submerged herself even more deeply into the Shush-ya.
She pushed open the restroom door and found the stalls thankfully deserted. She made straight for the mirrors, pulling off her mask. Bending, she considered the sink, reaching out a hand to turn the knob. As the stream warmed, she cupped the water into her face. She swallowed some of it for good measure before dragging her wet hands into her hair, pushing it back.
She stared at her reflection as she shut the knob, not sure of what expression she found on her own features. Sakura looked away a beat later.
Movements short and rough, she tugged her ANBU flak jacket off and sealed it along with her mask into the scroll where she stashed her mission clothing.
She wiped some stray droplets off the bow of her mouth and then shunshined to the front of the bar, shaking the last of the water from her hands. The night was strangely balmy—humid like it had rained, but no rain marked the ground.
Sakura tilted her face to the black-blue expanse of sky and wondered: what next? She might have been there ten seconds or ten minutes, contemplating the issue with a bleak expression.
At some point, another body came up to her side.
Expression unchanging, she swiveled her head to the side to gaze at her new companion. Kakashi looked back at her, equally calm.
Water dropped steadily from a damp strand of her hair onto him.
"Yakiniku." The word was delivered blandly.
Sakura thought about this. "You're paying?"
"I never carry my wallet."
So she would have to pay.
Her eyebrows lifted. "Don't tell me you're afraid of someone robbing you."
"None of us are without fault." The words were delivered disinterestedly. "You, for example, cannot cook."
They had started walking.
"I've seen the inside of your refrigerator," he finished, gaze sweeping lazily over the populated intersection they approached. Men's and women's faces went pale with alarm when they accidentally made eye contact.
"Fair enough." She observed the figures who deliberately turned the other away. Some stared at her with incredulity, like she was supposed to be afraid too. "They don't fear me at all, like they do you," she added conversationally.
His eyes went to her. "Not yet," he said.
"Because of this war," Sakura grimaced.
"Because no one wears masks during a war."
They walked in silence until they reached the restaurant. A host stepped forward to greet them, expression impeccably smooth, though his eyes widened briefly.
"Welcome to Yakiniku Kyū. Do you prefer indoor or outdoor seating?"
"Either," Sakura said, subdued.
The host nodded. "I believe outdoors will be an excellent choice for an evening such as this. Please, right this way."
He led them to a table nestled against the edge of the restaurant. The table was large enough to fit at least four, if not more. It gave Sakura ample room to get comfortable; she stretched her legs beneath the furniture, where no one could see.
"Can I bring you any drinks to start?"
Kakashi was silent.
"Just water," Sakura said.
"I will be back shortly with two waters." He bowed and left.
Sakura managed a minute before she nabbed a plate of grilled meat from the neighboring table, a large party too distracted to notice. Snapping her chopsticks apart, she picked up one of the slices swiftly and began chewing.
"Go on," she told Kakashi, eyes narrow. She nodded toward the food.
Her head flicked briefly to the side to ensure their neighbors hadn't noticed the missing plate. When she looked back, she found that half the meat from the stolen plate was gone.
Sakura arched a brow and then focused on doing her part too.
They managed to finish the plate just before the waiter returned. Sakura placed it back on their neighbors' table just as he reached them.
"Here are your drinks. Have you decided what you would like to order?"
"Whatever you have as your set menu," Sakura said.
His impenetrable calm fractured slightly. "Oh. The set menu is intended for a party of six or more."
Sakura said nothing.
His mouth twitched. "Of course. I will place the order now," he said and left.
Her attention returned to her newly deposited water. She lifted the glass to her lips.
"You're angry," he observed. She looked up, however, and found that his whole body had shifted. A table still existed between them, but the projection of careful distance—practiced on both their parts—had been violated.
She set the glass aside. Her mouth curved into a weak sneer. "Of course I am," she said. "I'm certainly not pleased. Are you?"
He stared at her. "No," he said, eyes dark.
She wanted to reach across the table and knot her fingers in his hair, grasp his skull, feel that word vibrate through him into her.
"Your gaze hides none of your thoughts," he said.
"Good," she returned.
His forearm, pale with intricate veins that weaved between muscle, was an exquisite picture of restraint. He was utterly relaxed—except that his eyes burned into hers.
Only—
"Sakura?"
—that was Naruto's voice behind them.
It took Sakura about five seconds to process that—no, she hadn't hallucinated them. They were actually there.
"We knocked on your apartment door," Sai said with an apologetic smile. It dripped of insincerity.
Kakashi's gaze was still locked with hers.
"But you were here the entire time," Naruto said unnecessarily, blue eyes shadowed by bemusement.
"With the infamous copy-nin himself," Sasuke finished, gaze flicking coolly between the two of them. "How…unexpected."
"Well," Naruto said, scratching his head, "he is our captain—"
"We've all been promoted to jounin, Naruto," Sasuke cut him off again, expression unreadable. "He's no longer our captain."
Sakura had pulled back when she had realized they had an audience; Kakashi, she noted, hadn't moved an inch.
"Is this a Team Seven dinner?" Naruto muttered. "Did the rest of us miss the memo?"
It was, she determined, very clearly impossible for Naruto to comprehend why else Sakura and Kakashi could be found together. She had no desire as of right now to enlighten him.
After a second, she gestured broadly at the table. "By all means."
Kakashi's eyebrow slowly arched.
Sai slid into place beside her, smiling. Naruto and Sasuke settled on either side of Kakashi, the former with a nervous chuckle, the latter with the air of one granting a tiresome favor.
"Have you ordered yet?" Naruto asked.
"The set menu." She tore her gaze at last away from Kakashi with difficulty.
Sasuke leaned back, mouth twisting. "You were called to ANBU headquarters to receive your assignments, weren't you."
"We received ours too," Naruto revealed. His tanned knuckles interlocked on the table. "That's why we were…looking for you."
Sakura had—probably poorly—attempted to mask her grim mood until now; the farce dropped abruptly. She turned to Sai first.
"I've been assigned to the long-range flank," Sai told her, calm.
"And Naruto and I are first line, ground-combat." Sasuke's mouth curled. "I assume that you two are as well."
"Our chef's special for the night, courtesy of the kitchen," a waiter announced, swooping in from seemingly nowhere. He blinked twice at them as he placed the platter on the table. "I was told this was a party of two."
"We unexpectedly grew," said Sakura tightly.
He flashed a rehearsed smile, though she could see the vague annoyance in his gaze. "Not a problem. Are there any drinks I can bring to the table?"
"Shōchu," Sasuke grunted.
"Your largest bottle, please," Sai smiled.
The waiter walked away.
"Well?" Sasuke said sharply, eyes resting on Kakashi. "You've been through this before, right? Might as well share every bloody detail, if only to provide us with some entertainment tonight—" his gaze cut to Sakura—"or do you only share with ANBU members now."
Naruto made a sharp noise of warning.
"The issue is, Sasuke," Kakashi said, eyes crinkling in a terrible smile, "that there isn't much one can learn second-hand. Shall we step outside so I can personally teach you?"
Sakura was gratified when Naruto reached around Kakashi's back to punch Sasuke.
"Ignore him," Naruto laughed uncomfortably, glaring at Sasuke. "We ordered some shōchu, didn't we? Wonder where that's at?"
With unnerving timing, a new waiter came into view. She left the bottle of shōchu on their table with a flourish but seemed to sense the tense atmosphere, beating a hasty retreat after.
Sasuke uncorked it with too much force, glowering all the while.
"What the fuck, teme," Naruto muttered. "How long has it been?"
"Have you had trouble, as they say, 'pulling' lately?" Sai commented casually.
"You should really ask Sakura," Naruto grunted, digging into the chef's special. "She's never seemed to have a problem."
Kakashi's gaze drifted coincidentally back to her.
"Naruto?" she said through gritted teeth. "Shut up."
"What?" he said shrugging, chewing vigorously, "Just saying you've been on a streak. First there was that chunin from Suna, and then that pair of tokubetsu jonin at the same time, followed by, ah, what was her name? The very wealthy Kikyo, widowed tragically young, but apparently not that sad about it after all—"
With a beautiful, heaving bosom to match. Not that Sakura could muster much fondness for it at this particular moment.
Kakashi's eyes tracked her with vicious precision as she went swiftly for a glass.
"Everything's going to change now, though, isn't it," Naruto said in a sudden rush, eyes cobalt and intense.
"Don't be maudlin," Sasuke said finally, but with uncharacteristic care—without his usual venom.
Even so, Naruto flinched.
"Nothing changes," a cold voice remarked.
They turned to the unexpected source of these words. Framed by the moonlight, Kakashi seemed unrelentingly hostile to human touch, only his profile visible. Even Sakura was skeptical, now, that she had once touched him. Her fingers twitched on the table.
"Nothing changes," he repeated, clinical. "You don't discover anything new about human nature, good or otherwise, in war. You only affirm what you suspected was there all along."
Naruto's posture was tense to the point of fragility—like he might shatter.
Kakashi rotated the cup Sasuke had grudgingly slid to him, surveyed it dispassionately.
"But when someone believes relentlessly in only the good," he finished, blinking slowly, "perhaps that's all they find."
A strange sentiment rose in Sakura's chest, then—one she didn't have a name for. She exhaled and felt it swell, as though releasing air only made more room for it.
Oh, she thought, baffled.
Naruto's gaze glinted under the outdoor torch light. His shoulders drew up. "Does that make me naïve?"
"No," Sakura said, dazed still. She shook her head briefly. "Naïve isn't the right word. Just— incomprehensible, maybe."
Sasuke made a scathing noise of agreement.
"If some Akatsuki member tries to take advantage of your do-gooder tendencies," Sai remarked sagely, "I'm sure Sakura will be there to tear their genitals off while Sasuke laughs."
"She has a demonstrated talent for that," Kakashi pronounced lazily, head angled away as he sipped some of the shōchu.
They all stared at him.
Sakura let out a disbelieving bark of laughter, eyes tearing. She stared at him through the blur and wanted. Fuck.
"It will be alright," Sai predicted, smiling as well. "You'll see."
Sasuke swallowed the rest of his glass. And Naruto stared, eyes vibrant in their intensity, without any restraint or abashment at all.
And Sakura—
Sakura was almost ninety percent sure that Sasuke would revert to his rogue-nin status once or twice before giving it up for good, that Kakashi would try to get rid of her or her him—possibly both on separate occasions—and that Sai would probably try to renounce them all in that same time.
But instead of saying this, any of this, she remained silent.
Maybe because some delusional, deeply hidden part of her did believe it—that it would be.
Epilogue
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men...
Four months later, fall had set in, injecting blooms of blood-red and fire-orange into the leaves. And Sakura stood on a battlefield of dying grass, ignorant of the wind rustling her hair and nipping at her reddening ears.
This, she reflected as she gazed around her, was what war looked like. She scanned their opponent's forces, taking her time to absorb the seemingly endless expanse. Like ants, she thought, scrabbling atop each other to mount a hill they themselves had contrived. Herself included, as it were.
A low, rumbling horn pierced the air.
"Front line, brace yourselves."
Kakashi stepped forward first, hands stuffed into his pockets, just as if it were any other day. Sakura stared at him, mouth curving. Eventually, she followed suit, shoulder just ever so lightly glancing his.
His half-lidded gaze slid to hers, sharingan glowing.
She cracked her head to either side, shook her limbs loose, warmed her body until she felt primed, the violence just barely tamped back. She blinked—and two sharingans rotated, sharpening everything into painful focus, returning the sentiment.
From a distance, kilometers and kilometers away, Uchiha Madara's head turned.
Finally, the Voice whispered.
Ant, Sakura thought.
She felt Sasuke and Naruto shift into position behind her, bodies preternaturally still. Sai's ink beast shrieked from above, flanked by the other long-range fighters.
"Kneel for your kage," Shizune shouted.
A shiver raced down her back as Sakura lowered. When her head tipped up, she found Tsunade staring fiercely down at them, haori soaring behind her like a flag in the wind. They waited.
When their hokage spoke, her words were simple.
"Unleash hell on them."
Finally, the Voice roared, let them all BEHOLD.
Even now, Sakura thought dryly, it had neither shame nor modesty. It was an endlessly attention-seeking black hole. Would this finally be the stage to satisfy it?
Sakura let out a bark of incredulous laughter. (As if it could ever be satisfied).
She rose, then, and she did exactly as she had been ordered.
THE END
