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deception in how the moon shines, it's a pretty silver lie

-o-

The evening was awash in dark grey mist and there was the promise of a cold night on her shoulders.

Sakura left the clinic with an eight hour shift behind her and a list of exercises from Tsunade still ahead of her. She might have been a ghost as she drifted past street stalls filled with crowds and the tempting smoke of freshly cooked food; neither her loneliness nor appetite stirred as she walked by. She wanted to be in the library stacks, surrounded by books and scrolls and maps and answers.

She wanted to be back in the secret room with her former sensei turned handler, loud and unrestrained in her frustration with him and her resentment. But that was a part of her she hushed away, stored down in her middle with all her fears and doubts and other worthless things. All her hindering facets she didn't need any more.

Sakura wanted to be secure in her knowledge more than anything. Already she was planning on limiting her sleep again, sneaking out after midnight, making her way to restricted records.

She wasn't planning for company, but it still caught her.

Sai caught her by the wrist, to be more precise.

He was in different clothing than she was used to, but he hadn't quite managed a casual look. To any critical eye he looked like a shinobi on duty, even without his standard gear. He dropped her wrist to stick his hands in his pockets, mimicking a carefree pose or perhaps trying to hide his discomfort.

"Nice night," he said, a bland smile on his lips. He was stiff and imperfect in the act; his body language was an inflexible imitation and his words too practiced to her ears.

Taking on some airiness of her own, Sakura replied, "I think I've seen better."

"Oh yeah?" Sai hedged his footing, then tightened his smile at the unintentional slip. He might have had a script as he told her, "I find that it's nights like these that the colors of the city shine brightest. All the lights once hidden now seem so clear."

Double-speak, as she had suspected. She felt an awful clenching in her chest, and at the same time, she bounced in her step and her shoulders were straight with eagerness. There was some tangible evidence of her previous conjecturing and it was making her fingers tingle.

Sakura 'hmmed' thoughtfully. She kept with his metaphor, "there is some illumination in the village that I've never before noticed."

"There's an even better viewing spot," Sai returned, lightly spoken and very simply stated for what she thought his words meant. It was almost a distracted thing to say, as he was busy pulling something from his pocket to occupy some movement. Not a stick of gum or even a cigarette, but what looked like another soldier pill.

"A better vantage point?" Sakura persisted, ignoring the way Sai crushed the pill between his teeth and let out a relieved little sigh.

"It's the most illustrious view of Konoha." Meeting her eyes, Sai assured her, "I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."

Perhaps the most honest and sincere she had ever seen him. Sai's eyes were dark and the skin around his lashes was a deep pink. Tiny red veins showed there and Sakura let herself trace them to their short ends. Something about his eyes reminded her how tired she was.

A drizzling of rain had started in the village around them and Sakura was very cool as the water traced paths down her bare skin.

Was there warmth there yet for it to take?

"Did you find this particular perspective on your own?" She asked Sai.

"I showed him."

Sakura was upset with herself for not noticing Ken's arrival. He was too close, too sudden for her to feel at ease. …And she didn't feel calm, but neither did she feel something entirely unpleasant. The man was under another genjutsu, another non-threatening visage; he knew how to blend in without sacrificing the unnamed something in his appearance that made her -that would make any person- feel confident in approaching him and keeping in his presence.

"I'll take it from here, kohai. She'll be there for your morning spar." Ken was youthful, assured, enticing. He held out an umbrella over Sakura for them to share.

She watched Sai dip his chin and turn away, and thought she wasn't very distraught to see him go.

"Let me show you, too?" Ken said to her, the two of them alone.

Sakura flushed and her veins were thrumming; she was alive yet.

She nodded.

-o-

Kakashi disliked their cramped and dividing meeting space in the One-Eleventh Street Clinic.

He didn't like how it was always under the yellowing, flickering lights that he now saw his former student.

He was certain Sakura hadn't eaten anything since the day before. She was barely present in the room, he thought. She had showered, had found clothing that looked almost new, let alone clean, but there were bruises on her body and a lag in her movements as if she hadn't bothered with her healing after a sparring session. Her eyes were distant.

Kakashi would have lifted an arm to touch her just to make sure she were really there, but it was an abstract and ridiculous impulse so he ignored it.

With his regular lack of empathetic intonation, Kakashi said bluntly, "you're a kunoichi, Sakura, you need to take better care of yourself."

He had meant to say it more kindly, had once been so capable, but alas...

Kakashi shifted to the amendments Tsunade and Shikaku had made in the mission parameters. "From now on you'll be reporting on the full scope of your interactions with 'Ken.'"

Conversations, meeting places, anything to do with the man in question. She seemed unsurprised by the new objective.

"Who is this man?" Sakura asked Kakashi, seemingly far away from their place together in the tiny room. Quiet and buffered by some invisible layer between them. Her tone was strange enough that he didn't even reprimand her for the out-of-line question. "Who is he, really?"

What more is there to him? What is the end goal of her mission?

Those were her intended questions, Kakashi thought.

"He's a nobody," he said in a standard sort of response.

Kakashi was in one of the two seats at the lone table in the room, balancing on the hind legs again while Sakura stood at attention in front of him. He rocked back and forth, squeaking something loose in the chair as he did so, and waited for Sakura to twitch at the grating noise. No response, to his dismay, and he went back to studiously not looking at the wisp of a kunoichi.

"Anyway, you're not cleared to know anything more than what's already been shared in your objectives," he said. "And our friend Ken has been kind enough to share more than is acceptable with you already."

That was as close as they came to addressing the rest of their former team.

Kakashi sensed more than saw the slight bowing in Sakura's posture.

"My mission is more extensive than you're telling me..."

He glanced back to Sakura, snapping his head up a little clumsily to do so. He thought he had heard a change in her voice just then. She had sounded like her old self for a moment – albeit the timid, uncertain Sakura he might have once known.

Her face was showing a hint of emotion: a line at her brow and a wavering shine in her eyes as she considered the clasp of his jounin vest.

She asked in that same, weary tone, "if he's a nobody, then who's the somebody?"

Before he could answer her, Sakura regained her detached demeanor. Her eyes went elsewhere in the room, away from him once more.

"Excuse me, I shouldn't have spoken casually."

She used to make fun of him to his face and loudly call him out for being late to their training sessions, Kakashi remembered. Those times seemed so long ago.

Sakura was rigid in her stance and blank in her expression.

He breathed out a heavy, muted sound, and dragged a hand from his hitai-ate to the bridge of his nose. "You're free to go."

"Yes, sir."

"And – I'm saying this as your superior officer – eat a decent meal." He could have shaken her for emphasis. It was a warning and an answer to her question, but he wondered if Sakura understood as much as she parroted another, 'yes, sir.'

Kakashi felt a jerk in his hand as she disappeared through the sliding panel, an itch for some desired movement he hadn't taken.

He would wish he had.

-o-

Sakura pivoted on her right foot, brought up her left leg to connect a kick at Sai's neck.

He must have had very good intuition because he ducked from the hit instead of blocking it – a good thing because the tree that had been at his back, the one Sakura grazed with the end of her boot, cracked with a shattering, thunderous noise up its entire trunk and then exploded into hundreds of thousands of splinters.

Sai had the reaction to move away instantaneously. Sakura did not. She fell from her spin to land hard on her hands and knees, didn't have the thought to protect herself from the wooden projectiles that punctured her like an abused academy class dummy. Each splinter was a glass shard pushing into her skin.

A moment after the dust settled, Sakura had enough wits to push herself from her cowering and ease onto her calves. She coughed and dribbled out a harassed swear.

"You look like one of those needle-backed creatures," Sai observed, crunching his way to her from where he'd taken cover. He toed aside some debris to lean down to her level. "Was that on purpose? If that kick had landed, I would be a smudge right now."

Sai had a habit of not holding back in spars. He had that luxury in their fights. Sakura did not. Every moment was dedicated to making perfect calculations, maintaining perfect concentration and control throughout every inch of her body. She always had to hold back.

Usually a fine enough thing but just then Sakura was pretty sure she had blacked out mid-step of that kick.

"No, I did not intend to do that," she said, words parched from her mouth.

She tried to form seals to heal herself, but her hands were uncooperative. Finally she was hitting her very overdue threshold for exhaustion and it kept any nimbleness from her fingers. They were reddened, swollen, disobedient things.

Noticing her temporary handicap, Sai reached out to pluck pieces of tree from her hair but he stopped when an ANBU hit the ground next to him.

"Hey, apprentice, lookin' a little beat up right now." Ken shooed his student aside and smartly made the signs for a basic healing technique as he knelt down next to Sakura. "I'll treat the bigger splinters with my first aid kit. Sai, hand over a Nocturne. She could use one."

Murmuring, Sakura said, "do you always stalk around after your student or was this just my luck you happened to be around?"

"I'm not here for him. Watch your eye, there's a bad one here."

For all the deftness she currently lacked, the ANBU seemed to have over tenfold. His chakra was pleasantly warm at her hairline, and Ken had particular skill in masking the pain that came with regeneration. His fingers were a careful, reassuring pressure at her temple and his work was soothingly methodical. Next to hers, his control was unflinching.

The realization made Sakura hiccup a pathetic sound in her throat. Her eyes were closed and yet she felt a stinging heat that burned past her eyelashes. She was every bit a fourteen year old girl as she whimpered out a low, stuttering admission, "I could ha-have killed him..."

She assumed her vulnerable mumbling went ignored.

"Nocturne, please, Sai. Thank you," Ken said. He promptly directed his student to make himself scarce and Sakura thought she was going to be reprimanded for her actions or boxed out in silence. But the ANBU was gentle in their solitude. "Come on, apprentice, accidents happen. You've been in a difficult position lately."

Her heart doubled on a beat and Sakura gave the man a guilty look.

"Can't be easy being under the pressure of someone like the Fifth, eh? You're alright. My student's fine. This is no trouble at all."

His were nice words to hear. She had started to forget what support sounded like. Tsunade was her Hokage and her style had been hands off as of late, and it had been awhile since Sakura's own former teacher had spoken anything likewise. She had the thought those attitudes from her supposed mentors had been engineered in some way.

Had they hoped for her to become this vulnerable thing, ready for the taking?

"Take this. It'll help with your fatigue." Ken held out a pill for her to examine.

"A soldier pill?" Sakura said, and her voice was embarrassingly shaky. But she knew the little capsule on sight as one of Sai's.

Ken shrugged. "It's an ANBU take on one, sure. Bit more advanced than what the other divisions get. Less kickback, promise, and no more near 'friendly fire casualties' with this."

Most seasoned members of the ranks had experience with soldiers pills. Again - Sakura did not. She had never wanted to use any, had never even considered using medical ninjutsu for such an application.

Sakura nodded her head and let the man place the pill at her lips. He had shared so much with her already, she almost couldn't say no to the offer. And she was tired, so damned tired and cold. Even his gloved hand at her mouth was a comfort. She was curious. She was weak and obliging. She wanted to understand -

Her teeth split the tablet and a clothed thumb brushed over her lip, letting nothing escape.

"There we go. No worries, apprentice. You'll get right back to fighting form."

She was a kunoichi and she needed to take care of herself...

Sakura wondered what Kakashi would say of her just then.

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-o-

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