Feel free to insert the "four years later" Spongebob card when you read this intro, but: hi. Long time no see, guys (if any of you are still active on here to begin with). The past few years I've been focused on finishing university and crafting "real" fiction. Now that I've graduated, I wanted to get back to my roots a little bit. This story was always in the back of my head. Now it's time to put it on the page once and for all, hopefully.

Hopefully, it was all worth the wait.

Disclaimer: I have no claim to Naruto or anything it encompasses.

Following Sasuke would be a stupid choice. Leaving and keeping his secret would be a traitorous choice. To say nothing or do nothing, to leave the world oblivious or throw it into the same disarray which swarmed Sakura's brain like a halo of angry hornets; there was no out. Only disruption, likely to the mission, to Sasuke, and the Leaf. She neglected to simmer on the personal consequences for herself. Exiting from the equation was the fastest path to resolution, she knew.

After Sasuke stormed off and abandoned her in the field, she wandered somewhat aimlessly amongst the wild flowered weeds and leaping bugs. Although she was meant to reconvene with Yuri at her cottage, the fight and argument left her disoriented and emotionally drained. She drifted and emptied her head. She walked, a hand outstretched, and watched the sun slide over her choppy nails, mix with the beads of moisture and sweat slipping over her arm. The light around her was gilded yellow and fading as if the sun itself was withered, hazy and almost leathery where it hovered over the tops of the tall grasses, and the dissipation was quaking over and through her like a heatwave in which she was disintegrating. She felt dramatic. She felt like the epitome of digression, of a crumbling bridge. Shaken to her core and washed onto the beach of an alternate universe, the granules of sand scratching at her cheek.

Rinsing her face before bed in the stream on the edge of the town, she welcomed the icy slip of the water over her nose, dripping onto her lips. At home, she used to leave her apartment windows ajar so the rustling leaves could sing her to sleep, and she closed her eyes, pretending that was all this day was. A long, long trip to unconsciousness. And then, in the morning, she would wake up. Naruto would be knocking on the door for breakfast, nuzzle himself into the couch while she stirred eggs in a buttered pan. There would be the little hole, the gap of tenderness in her mood and mentality, but nothing she could not patch and heal and replace over time like any other seeping wound.

Her masquerade as a woman steeped in patience was disassembling in the palm of her hands. Pitifully, scraping for resolve, she whispered to herself before sleep to lure a dream from the trenches of her unconscious, hoping for an unseen answer, an emerging symbol or totem which could lead her toward the brighter, better thing. But the choice, regardless of what might be objectively correct, remained a riddle. And still, she found herself, though minorly distraught, concerned with the sheer act of it all, needing to pretend that she was unaffected. The lapse of breath that took over her when turning a street corner was nothing. Her thoughts succumbing to the riptide of her imagination and wading back into the murky water of old, undead habits was nothing. Just tired, she told herself. Just exhausted.

Waking in the morning, dusting spare blades of grass from her sleeping bag, the shock was substituted for a bone-deep disappointment. Not with the circumstances, but with herself. She stretched her legs experimentally and focused on the pressure of the ground beneath her. Ironically, she mused that before this she assumed she had hit bottom, but she had come to know better. She came to the little village determined to ascend, maybe not to the level of her former glory but to go somewhere upward or ahead. To some higher plain of knowledge or fulfillment. Of course he would appear now in the midst of her plight. All of the nights spent under the stars, hiding in ditches, sprinting through trees with rogue weapons flying past. They could never be him. They never were. Even when her expectations of him were so low, he kept surprising her. He stayed invisible. He appeared for others but never for her, a ghost whose summons she never uncovered. Only now. Only now when she wasn't looking, when she was hiding, too, hoping in the back of her head that he could be dead and buried like so many of her comrades left blown to bits in the pursuit of redemption. She wanted to wonder why – why now? But the thought just left her bitter and feeling strange, bisected from her identity.

Regardless, there was still the mission. She stifled a harsh chuckle as she traced the tree bark beside her head. There was always a mission.

She trudged, sleepless, back to the bakery, watching for sudden movements in the forest and street puddles. The clock tower, too, lacked its previous looming shadow. She didn't think Sasuke would insist on another fight, but then again, she couldn't claim to know him anymore. The kunoichi wasn't even sure if Yuri would still expect her or if she would grow sourly suspicious from her absence at the cottage. But as she breached the path leading down the main strip of town, she saw the old woman waiting.

Yuri draped her legs over the little honey wooden steps leading into the storefront, dragging on a cigarette when Sakura glided up. Beside her lay a slice of the polished cake from yesterday, perfect and neat, the frosting still lightly fluffed.

"I saved you a piece," she said without greeting Sakura. She smiled close-lipped and blew smoke from her nose, the tendrils curling up like indigo vines spreading and growing under her jaw. Sakura stroked the end of her choppy braid, then knotted her fingers around her pack straps.

"I apologize for yesterday. I had trouble finding the house you mentioned." She eyed the cake. "You were so sure I'd come back here before it spoiled?"

"You could say I've got good instincts." She nudged the plate with the cigarette balanced between her fingers. "Not going to check it for poison?"

Sakura watched her dry laugh unfold, but Yuri didn't let it ring, just turned back to her forward staring and smoking. "Ninjas are supposed to be suspicious, aren't they?"

"We generally prefer the term 'cautious.'"

Yuri laughed and flicked the plate closer, a flutter of ash twirling down. Sakura snagged a dollop of cream on her fingernail, tasting the icing and savoring the crisp tingle of lemon and the morning quiet.

"I owe you an apology, too, anyway. For how my daughter reacted yesterday," Yuri said, a little gruff. Across the way the other merchants were sliding back their doors, letting the morning crawl inside, hoisting bells on carts, propping wheels into stillness with chipped bricks. There was even the hat seller Sakura had seen yesterday, posture crooked as he rearranged the flimsy things on their individual hooks.

Sakura nodded and wiped the corners of her mouth.

"Ever since Koto went missing — left — any mention of his name has her on edge," Yuri continued. "She's usually more . . ."

"Receptive?"

"Compliant," Yuri said. Sakura peered at the old woman, perching there with her cigarette, utterly steadfast and battle-worn and maybe – Sakura lapsed into a moment of nostalgia – not unlike her own mother after her father passed away and the wars were won. Sakura's chest inflated involuntarily, a balloon tensing and filling her chest and awaiting puncture. She had to stop lingering. A taunting glimmer of smattered images flashed and then went, like the sun peeking through the canopy. Her thoughts immediately rushed to that place, that figure of darkness shattering itself and absorbing light, refracting the world around her into dizzying rainbows and blindspots. Sasuke could be hiding here. The realization chilled her. He probably was. He probably knew as well as Yuri that she would come back to harvest information from her only current source. Sakura glanced over her shoulder, sensing for any chakra around..

An ember flew loose from Yuri's cigarette and embedded itself in Sakura's ankle. She slapped the burn like a feasting bug and grunted. She needed to focus.

"So what's this about, then?" Yuri said and coughed. "You thought the house was just a trap, so you've come back? Do you think we keep him in the attic?"

"Your bakery has no attic," Sakura said evenly. Yuri rolled her eyes. "If you were hiding him, I'm sure you would come up with a place much more clever."

"More clever than a house in the middle of the woods?" Yuri's glasses glinted as she adjusted them on her nose bridge.

"I'm not in the business of underestimating anyone, Yuri-sama," Sakura said.

She watched Yuri's skin pull and then resettle with her responding frown. She wondered how many of those lines were due to a sliding cake or a burnt cookie or her grandson, dirtying dishes, sneaking out at night, torturing innocents.

"I bet you know where he is," Yuri said and scowled, "you're just trying to suck us dry."

"I'm simply trying to gather some information on your grandson in order to figure out the motivation behind his insistent crimes. Then, perhaps, I will know where he is."

Yuri snorted. "And what, Haruno-san, makes you think I've got any idea what sort of plans that troublemaker has drummed up?"

"You raised him." Sakura slid her plate of cake, mostly untouched, back onto the porch steps. The raspberries were slick and glossy in the climbing sun as if freshly picked. Sakura moved closer to the old woman, sitting beside her and lounging back while Yuri's concentration darted, bouncing from each person filling the street, drilling staccato beats onto the rough embroidery of her skirt with dancing fingers.

"I fed him, sure," Yuri said, jaw firming up. "I wiped his ass and sewed his stitches back together when his clothes would rip from all the running around he was doing. Running around, making messes, sticking his nose where it never belonged. I fixed him up. I tried to get him on his feet for more than five minutes at a time. But I didn't raise him," she scowled.

Sakura bent closer. "Then who did?"

For a moment Yuri seemed to contemplate seriously, then huffed again. "I don't know. Probably the devil." A passerby in the street waved at the pair, heading to the small shop next door, making her bristle. She pulled away from Sakura's pressing stare and gathered herself to stand, resting a hand on the door of the stop and avoiding eye contact.

"I have nothing to say about that kid. I can't help you."

"Usually when people say that, the opposite tends to be true," Sakura said, picking up her plate and moving toward the door.

Yuri crossed her arms and widened her stance, blockading the way into the shop.

"You think I'm hiding something," she said, more of a statement than a question. Sakura's lack of response spoke for itself. Yuri rustled her apron, retrying where it twisted

and tied over her petite, fleshy belly. Her skin dented under the strain of the strings.

"Stick around and see for yourself if that's what you need to do. Nobody here has anything to do with a Koto anymore, and if they did, they wouldn't be coming into this shop." She gestured to the surrounding buildings. "Go on. Take your post on one of them. Watch and see. I know you were planning to anyway."

"Because ninjas are suspicious?" Sakura asked.

"If the Devil didn't raise Koto, then a ninja surely did," she spat back, grabbing the plate from Sakura's outstretched hand. "How else would he learn all that snooping around and street scrapping?"

"This is a civilian village, Yuri-sama," Sakura said. The old woman looked away, but swerved back and raised her voice before Sakura could continue.

"Stories are powerful things, Haruno-san," Yuri said. She withdrew into the shop, pulling the sliding glass pane between them and pushing the last of her words through the crack in the doorway. "I wonder how many stories about you are out there, blowing from village to village."

The sun's glare threw a harsh square between them, blocking out Yuri's face. But from the back of the shop, Sakura could make out a dark silhouette, quivering and scurrying away, bread flour twirling in the open doorway of the kitchen like the thick, rolling smoke of a desert storm.

A light headache breached the back of her eyes. For a few moments, Sakura simply stood, surmising gravity as Yuri retreated farther into the shop. She surmised the truths of the world that were beaming and guiding her but which she could not sense. She pressed her fingertips against her forehead, tracing the little purple diamond. Something was off, obviously. But all she had so far was a stubborn old woman and her mute daughter. Pen-and-paper questioning wasn't beneath her, but she would have to isolate Akami somehow, which she imagined was practically impossible. Answers were not self-evident. Missions never unfolded themselves comfortably, she knew. There was no simple way forward or backward, but the truth of the difficulties lying ahead ached despite her intimacy with things cloaked in unknown instincts. She never asked for things to be easy, but weakly, the voice in the back of her head moaned – Couldn't they be? Just this once?

Whether or not a cabin in the woods truly existed, she wasn't sure. But, her eyes skimming over the dusted cobblestone path leading toward the edge of town, it seemed that the kunoichi would have no choice except to find out.

Scraping one foot in front of the other, she dragged herself back to the fields. Despite the pouring sunshine, her gaze never left the rooftops, waiting to see a lurking figure transform into a stalking predator.

The cottage was easy to miss. This is how she rationalized her earlier mistake to herself, anyway, as the epitome of its discovery filled her with temporary gratification. Wildflowers and kudzu cascaded into a small grove sloping over the back edge of the small, ruddy shack, camouflaging it to the point where it blended into where the pasture bled into the thicket of field trees. The cherry wood of the house was porous in places, roasted from the constant sun. The portion of the cottage facing the path was entirely overtaken by greenery. The only giveaway that any structure was hidden inside was the guiding sunshine again; it slipped into the small windows embellishing the sides of the house and illuminated a chopstick lazily abandoned on the counter. The shine flared in her periphery as she was walking and called her attention. All the while she had been berating herself for what she was sure was just beneath her nose and then there it was, practically growing out of the earth. Half a garden, half a home.

She expected something much tidier. More occupied, as well. The likelihood of the cottage being utilized as Koto's hideout was slim, but she expected at least one other person to linger on the property while Yuri and Akami were away. Bakeries ran such long hours. The delicate pastry shops back in Konoha were bustling from evening until dawn, leeching the streets of the air and spitting back out a lush aroma of butter and sugar and a melted, concentrated decadence that made her sigh and close her eyes on her strolls home. She had only seen it closed once or twice, during the holidays or war. It was difficult to believe that their sole house was so far from town and left, defenseless, in the middle of the woods. She supposed the concealment was decent enough to justify the emptiness. She had missed it herself, after all.

Scoping out the entrances, she found the back door both unlocked and slightly ajar. A box of unopened rice was keeping the door propped open, and the space between inside and outside was hissing with the gentle flow of air about the house. She detected no chakra signatures inside. Still, she positioned her hand on the hilt of a kunai for precaution.

Yuri's sneering voice echoed in her head. Ninjas were suspicious.

Contrast to the outside of the house, the interior was strikingly modern, if not plain. The walls were stark and crisp, white like the tender underside of an eggshell. The room she entered was clearly an addition to the house, a small mudroom with a single pair of house sandals. A tower of embedded shelves on her right side was stacked with precise lines of practical shoes, while the rest of the room remained staunch and bare. She slid the shoji at the end of the nook to the side, the door smooth and velvety on its tracks, to reveal an equally bare kitchen. Everything was so utterly neutral, from the appliances to the countertops, the hazelnut-colored floors, flawlessly polished, and the overgrowth of the lush word outside was borderline garish the way it screamed through the window, throwing an ivy tint to the virgin, milky walls. Sakura tinkered with the few odd objects stamping a corner here, a corner there – a chiseled steel figurine of a boar propped beside the bread box, a sewn strand, perhaps a bracelet, which hung in the window of the open living room and shimmied with every couple of breezes carried inside, its yarn colorful and exotic like a jungle caterpillar. There was even a picture frame on the mantle of a fireplace, which appeared to be sealed and painted, but no image sat behind the glass. Like the rest of the house, it stood empty, as if waiting.

A hallway was attached to the far end of the open living room. She walked softly and slowly, listening for any movement from the two doors dimpling the smooth walls. This part of the house continued the themes of remarkable cleanliness and unremarkable decoration. There was a single, small bathroom on one side of the hall with nothing interesting to report. Opening the door to the only apparent bedroom was the first moment when she saw something unkempt. The sheets and dark blanket were unmade and tossed in a twirl, entangled. The fabric was knotted and heavy in her hands when she grasped them, feeling for a trace of chakra. And, her breathing hitched – they were still warm.

Thrusting herself around and over the bed, expecting a surprise appearance from some undetected person, she landed instead into the clutches of a foot snag partially hidden beneath the bed. Gravity fell out from beneath her as she was twisted and turned into a cocoon of fibrous threads. Flailing, every twist was met with another punishing thread, binding her into alignment until she was rod straight and hanging from the ceiling, her hair half-loose from her braid and hovering above the floor.

The wait was longer than anticipated. Almost torturous. Purposeful, certainly, so the perpetrator could gloat from wherever they hid and watch her chagrin build. She flashed her chakra to prevent the blood from rushing to her head. She was sure she looked ridiculous, childish. She wondered who she was attracting, pulling closer, wondered how many more times she would fuck up and plummet herself back to rock-bottom. She wasn't sure she could afford many more slips.

Around the corner, a sound from the kitchen echoed. Small, as if a salt bowl had shifted across the countertop. Then footsteps, not loud but not muffled, not ashamed of themselves. She had been seen somehow crossing the treeless pasture. Yuri was out of the question; she couldn't have set such an intricate trap on her own. Sakura hardened and stilled, trying to quell her fury and anticipation as the footfall grew nearer. Mulling over the mistake wasn't in the interest of time. Bigger threats stood looming.

Before he turned the corner into the bedroom, he released the suppression of his chakra and allowed it to bloom fully. The intensity was punishing, so heavy and sudden it was almost unreal. She would have preferred a shuriken to the throat over the level of pride cemented in his dark eyes as he absorbed the sight of her. His hold on emotionlessness had slackened, it seemed, even more so than their fight yesterday. She could see the smug frown twitching over his mouth as he stopped in front of her, his arms crossed over his chest. She half-expected him to push a tactless finger against her and watch her body sway, encapsulated.

"Following me will always be unwise," he said.

"Oh, bite me, would you?" she huffed. A pink lock shook in front of her eyes. "I didn't follow you anywhere."

"My last instruction was for you to leave." His shell slowly reformed. Stoicism froze the curves of his face into a bored, porcelain mask.

Sakura wiggled within the constricting hold. There was no give to the material. "Where did you even get this stuff?"

"Resistance aggravates the effects."

"I'll tell you what's aggravating," she spat. She pulsed her chakra, attempting to trigger the rows of senbon she kept installed along the edges of her gloves. They sprang and released, but immediately after she felt a reverberation within the thread, shooting her own pulse back at her. A scramble of clipped yells escaped from her throat as she writhed.

Sasuke glided to the edge of the bed and sat amongst the wrinkled sheets. He pushed them to the side; the tenseness of his hold betrayed his coolness.

"Always such a hypocrite," she said. She used the mass of needles as a makeshift saw, chipping away at the threads binding her arms behind her lower back. Sasuke hardly ticked an eyebrow at her words, yet seemed to wait for her explanation.

"Swearing up and down that you want isolation just to keep popping your head back into where it doesn't belong. Interfering–

"You are interfering," he said. His hands slid to grip his knees as he inclined toward her a scant inch. "I will not return to Konoha, Sakura."

"No one is asking you to," she said between gritted teeth. She wanted nothing more than to imitate his stony expression, but distraction had always been her strong suit.

Black plunged into blood-red and tomoes emerged from an agonizing, hypnotizing whirlpool. Sakura slammed her eyes shut and concentrated on her breathing. The threads were slowly submitting to the slicing needles, one by one.

"I'll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine," she said. Sasuke grumbled softly, and Sakura was alarmed to feel how much closer he'd drawn to her. The puff of air fell over her face.

"Look," he said.

She plucked and plucked. One thread, then another. Two, then three, then another.

"Look at me, Sakura," he said.

"Let me go," she said. His breath cascaded over her in a hot mist. She squinted and stammered. "Just let it go, Sasuke."

"Look at me," he growled, grabbing a fistful of hair. She yelled and squinted harder. Four threads, eight threads, a handful, now, and she would wiggle her right hand freely. She focused on the other. If she could just sign . . .

The grip on her hair tightened as he pulled her closer. She felt the strands would rip directly out of her skull. Despite her best effort, she yelped.

"This is what you wanted to see, isn't it?" he rasped, nearly touching her face. His voice was a strangled whisper, like a seething cobra. "Open your eyes. Look at me so you can see the monster you were searching for."

The threads sprung loose beneath the most internal layer, just enough for her to clasp her fingers together for a jutsu. But before she could strangle out a technique, Sasuke's fingers tore over her scalp, thrusting her backward. The last thing she felt was an explosion of pain at the nape of her neck. She succumbed and opened her eyes, the Sharingan spinning wildly and absorbing her world.

Then everything went black.