a/n: sorry for the delay! my computer randomly died for good and i'm now using my brother's ten-year-old laptop, which has been...an adventure. also, i lied-there will be five (5) parts to this prequel instead of three. keep ur eyes peeled for those in the next couple of weeks.
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you live in my cavities
empty spaces of my body
your voice, your memory
planted deep
a pit inside me
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Sakura had never wanted to join ANBU. And if fate were on her side, she would never have to.
The biggest reason she didn't want to have any part in it was that it would take her away from her work at the hospital, the aspect of her life that fulfilled her on the most basic but perhaps most necessary level. She'd have little to no time for throwing herself into research, into surgeries or the odd jobs for Tsunade, into unearthing new ways to approach kekkei genkai and healing shinobi and civilians alike. In an organization like this one, there was far too much red tape to perform even simple tasks without obtaining permission first—not to mention that she would be at the mercy of superiors who had little regard for personal matters. She wouldn't sacrifice the freedom she had now for a life like that.
The other reason was deeper, one she felt down to her core. One she never wanted to admit to. It was fear.
She knew, besides the obvious need for discretion, why no one ever talked about their time there. Not Kakashi. Not Sai. Not Yamato. Not even Naruto. Sakura had always known the former three to be rather subdued individuals, all with a distinct lack of outward or visible emotion, but Naruto…Naruto was different. He was extremely open and still stayed his true self no matter how jading the fight or the truth that sometimes hit him in the face.
But she'd been able to tell since he joined nearly two years ago that he'd changed. Even if it was by the smallest amount, only enough to see if one were really searching for it, whatever he'd seen had stolen some of his optimism and light. And that was what truly unnerved Sakura—it made her angry, too, but more scared than anything. If something could shake Naruto, the most resilient and unequivocally good person she knew, then she wanted nothing to do with it other than to be there waiting when he returned from missions.
As she was guided down the headquarter's shadowed corridors, she was reminded of exactly why she turned down their offers time after time. There was a forbidding, culty aura to this place, its dark, cramped hallways and cloaked operatives, the strange formality required to retain the anonymity of said operatives. And, of course, there was the lack of courtesy to outsiders. The one showing her the way she already knew had hardly acknowledged her presence since she arrived—it wouldn't have surprised her if they simply happened to be headed the same direction.
The further they walked, the more claustrophobic Sakura was starting to feel, especially with the dim, purple-tinged fluorescents dotting the way with only enough light to see the person in front of her. It agitated her—she was already so antsy about why she was here, and none of this smoke-and-mirrors bullshit was helping.
"How much longer?" she asked, trying not to hiss. "He's practically in critical condition, so every second counts."
"Incorrect," they replied in a muted voice. "He's been stable since he was brought into the facility."
Sakura wanted to roll her eyes, but they were right. She couldn't get anything by them. Instead, she settled for silently marching along the path with thoughts whirring hotly in her head.
This had been a remarkably awful week, and not just by her own standards. This whole situation seemed to have gotten the better of everyone. Naruto was extremely down about the fact that the procedure hadn't worked and had been pestering her left and right for updates she didn't have—no doubt he was trying to break down every door of this building to get information. Tsunade was angry, pissed, and was scouring archived texts and drinking sake with a swift, burning desire to finish what she started. Kakashi, who had gotten physically ill from the sheer intensity of the operation, had disappeared since he left her house that day. It was like he'd vanished into thin air, elusive as ever.
Sasuke hadn't woken up yet, and it had been three days.
And Sakura herself had been tense as hell, because not only was it her responsibility to help fix something this unbelievably delicate, but it was her responsibility to do it for Sasuke. She still had no idea how to feel about it—but judging by the sleepless nights she'd been enduring and constant line of worry threading itself through her chest, it wasn't pretty.
The operative stopped short and she walked right into them. Their masked face turned on her sharply, almost as if to reprimand her, but Sakura didn't care. They'd arrived where they were supposed to.
"You may enter," they said brusquely. "Our medic is inside—"
"They better not be," Sakura instantly fired back, glaring up at the shadowed eyes behind the bird mask. "Sasuke isn't a member of ANBU or one of your prisoners. He's only in here because of Tsunade's orders." It was for privacy's sake, yes, but also because of his sentencing. He would be monitored and guarded around the clock here. That, however, did not include the time she was supposed to be evaluating him herself. She ignored the growing lump in her throat. "This is my patient. Not yours."
"Haruno-san, if you have a problem—"
She interrupted them by opening the door and stepping inside the room. It was white, blindingly so, and sterile. Stainless steel equipment tables. Monitoring machines. No windows. A bed in the middle with an unconscious Sasuke in the center. An unwelcome ANBU medic standing beside it.
"Out," Sakura barked. She was not in the mood for this—she hadn't been kidding when she said every second counted. This needed to be solved sooner rather than later. "I'm under direct orders from the Hokage herself, so you need to leave and let me do my job."
The agent, this one in a fox mask, stood their ground. "I'm here to observe and report only. You may proceed as you wish."
"What I wish is for you to get the hell out of here."
Sakura stared at them, their eerie figure gray and hauntingly still in such a harshly bright room. It was so silent for a moment that she could hear the faint buzz of the fluorescents in the ceiling.
"Kitsune," the operative behind her finally said, neutral but firm. The one in the fox mask made no move to budge for a moment, but then they responded and walked toward the door where she was standing. Once they were passing her, they turned to her. The eyes in the mask were too dark to see as they stared down at her, and for a second, she wondered if this was someone she knew.
"Don't forget that we have other ways to monitor you, Haruno-san." Their voice was low, clipped. Yep, she thought. Definitely personal. "I'll be waiting outside for your report regardless."
"Fine by me," Sakura replied with a tight smile, motioning toward the door. She made sure to shut it completely once the agent joined the other in the hallway. A sigh escaped her lungs so fast that it shook in her chest.
She took in Sasuke's condition as she leaned against the door, palms pressed to the cool metal behind her back. From what she could gather at this vantage point, his pallor was healthy; his heart rate was indeed stable as the first operative had mentioned. From what she'd studied of Tsunade's official diagnosis his brain function was normal as well. This unconsciousness was either from the severity of the pain induced by the operation or from his body rejecting foreign chakra. If she had to hazard a guess, it would be that both factors played a part.
Her pulse was hollow where in rang in her eardrums. She couldn't believe that she was here, alone with him, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, and that she had to heal him like this. It was like the world was playing some long, awful joke on her. The space between her ribs twisted with each step she took closer to his bed.
There weren't many wires hooking him up to the machines, and there was just enough space for her to slip behind the bed frame to stand at his head. He was so tall now that his feet nearly hung off the other end; his shoulders were broad and his chest was rising and falling steadily. It wasn't strange to see his face like this—neutral, smooth, passive—but it felt weird to be able to stare at him in this capacity. She could see the bluish webs faint beneath the pale skin of his eyelids, their lashes black and feather-light, his straight brow.
To see him look vulnerable like this, she realized, was something else entirely. It reminded her of a day she wouldn't wish on anyone.
Threads of chakra, gossamer and green, were alight at her fingertips once she stopped thinking long enough to summon her energy. She noticed how they cast a ghostly sheen in his dark hair when she slid it off his forehead and back toward his pillow. God, she hated this, hated the way an infinitesimally small part of her still acknowledged that this was the boy she'd loved with so much of who she was. That she remembered exactly how his hair felt—thick, glossy black, slipping over her skin like ink in water. She hated it. She couldn't let it get to her, though, not when her fingers were at his temples and her chakra was seeping into his bloodstream.
Sakura had to close her eyes to try and map out those clusters of capillaries and veins around his eye sockets. Sasuke's chakra networks were the most complicated she'd ever been privy to. Even in sleep his pathways were rejecting her, thrumming hard with a suppressor that was already making sweat form at her brow, and she didn't know whether to credit the sealing jutsu or his lack of trust taking on a physical form.
She quickly determined that despite this, his brain function was entirely normal. His sharingan seemed fine, too, with dormant chakra humming at the back edges of his optic nerves. She winced when she noticed this—that flare before the unfortunate end of his operation must have felt like a straight dagger to the eye, and that was being generous. But right now, for all intents and purposes, the eye was fine, and thankfully she could say this with authority. The sharingan wasn't so unfamiliar to her—not when she'd had to learn how to heal Kakashi without the help of Tsunade back in the day.
The rinnegan, however, was a completely different story.
In all its glory, it was a truly frightening thing. Not only as a ninja but from a medical standpoint as well. Her fingers tapped reflexively against Sasuke's temple as she felt her chakra curve toward the nerves behind his left eye. There was this horrible sludge-like sensation that only grew worse as she got closer—like her chakra was coagulating, unable to spread into any of the thousand attachments to his nerves. A drop of sweat trickled down and ran over her cheekbone. Had Tsunade experienced this? Why hadn't she said anything?
She focused harder. There had to be some way around this, whether it was the sealing at fault or the eye itself. The village had so little knowledge of the rinnegan save for one of the corpses Jiraiya had sent back from Amegakure, and at that point they'd only been working with a dead one. There was no telling how much unknown was left to uncover here or what they would find when they did. She had to find something.
Something grabbed her arm with a furious snap. Her eyes flew open to find that it was Sasuke, jaw set as he held her hard enough to bruise. His own eyes were still closed.
"Get your fucking hands off of me," he spat, almost too low to hear. Sakura couldn't even process the fact that he'd woken up—she despised the way she'd flinched and was instantly determined to correct it.
"Do you want me to figure out the problem or not?"
He slowly opened his mismatched eyes, one plain black and the other that multifaceted ripple of foreign color. He scowled and closed them immediately after seeing her.
"Oh." He dropped his arm. "It's just you."
Anger boiled in her gut, bitter and hot, heating the blood that rushed in her ears. She could feel her forearm throbbing painfully where he'd grasped it.
"Yeah, it's just me," came her reply through clenched teeth. "May I continue?"
"Hn." That was as affirmative of an answer as she would get. She willed her hands not to shake against his skull. "How long have I been in here?"
She summoned her chakra again, that hum of energy stirring once more, and hoped that things would run more smoothly now that he was awake. "Three days."
His chest stilled in its rise, but he said nothing. The only noise in the room was the steady beeping of the machines, the cold whir of the air conditioner in the vent above her head. Every ounce of the air that pumped through it was like ice on the back of her clammy neck.
"Do you remember what happened?" Sakura asked after a minute, measuring her voice. Even if he didn't there was a good chance that he could tell it hadn't gone in their favor. Chakra flow was a pretty difficult thing not to notice. She couldn't imagine what it felt like to live without it.
"I'm assuming it was unsuccessful." His voice was muted. Tight. He definitely knew.
If this conversation were happening a few years before she would have done whatever it took to comfort him. Even if that meant having her words fall on completely deaf ears, ones that never seemed to care about anything she said; even though he'd left a bruise on her arm and dismissed her so easily in this moment, she would have made the effort. But now Sakura couldn't quite find the desire for it. And she wouldn't. The compassion was there—it always was, unfortunately—but now, it wasn't for him.
"Yeah." She sighed a bit sharply as her chakra found that thick, murky area behind his rinnegan again. "Tsunade is finding the issue so that we can try again."
"Then why are you here and not her?"
The way he asked was so inflectionless, so insulting to her. She wanted to be stronger than this, but—but the hurt was so much fresher, so much rawer than she'd thought. Time and distance didn't help some things. She may not have cared enough about him anymore, but insulting her work was something she did not take lightly. Her fingers began to tremble despite her efforts to still them.
"I'm doing my job, Sasuke." The name tasted heavy on her tongue. Strange. A stranger was what he was, but yet not. In more ways than one, he was exactly the same as always—ungrateful, self-centered, cold. Sakura snapped her chakra back into her own system, leaving him flinching, grinding his teeth this time. She had enough ready for a report and that would be that. It'd be enough for the ANBU operative, though probably not enough for Tsunade—that bridge would have to be crossed when she came to it.
Right now, however, she needed to get out of here—out of this cramped, bleak room with Sasuke, out of this creepy fucking maze full of death and secrets and whatever other horrors lingered in these walls. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her medic's coat, shaking as they were, and made her way to the door.
The second she reached for the knob, Sasuke made this noise from the bed. It was something like a scoff, so close to that pompous thing he used to do back when he could actually fight.
Something that said she was an idiot, incompetent. Weak. She didn't have to ask or even think to know what he meant by it.
Her stomach twisted so violently in reaction that she was almost disappointed he couldn't sense chakra anymore—he would have found hers brimming at a disconcertingly rapid pace, ready to leave this room crumbled to dust in her wake. He has nothing, Sakura had to remind herself, the too-fast rush of blood in her ears. He has nothing to fight back with. Nothing to prove himself with. Not right now, anyway.
She exited into the dark hallway, kick-slamming the door shut behind her. The impact echoed through the chamber.
"Well?" Kitsune said expectantly from their place in the half-shadows, though they'd given her a pause in acknowledgment of her anger. Good, she thought. I hope they're scared of me.
"His condition is stable. That's all I have to report." She looked them dead in the black eyes of their mask. "And he's awake now, so have fun dealing with him."
Her pulse beat hard in her wrists as she walked away, coat billowing out behind her. She could sense a presence just behind her.
"I can find my own way, thanks." She wasn't being rude, per se, but manners had left the equation the moment Sasuke had woken up. The agent followed closely still.
"Protocol states that I'm to—"
"Your protocol can kiss my ass," she growled, whipping around to face the one in the bird mask. "I'll see myself out."
And without another word, she broke into a dash, leaving in the exact same path she'd come in. The operative didn't follow her.
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It wasn't until she'd made it back to the hospital that she started to breathe normally again—or at least attempt to. A moment alone in her closet of an office helped ground her; a trip to the coffee machine was a balm to the frayed ends of her senses. She sat on a bench in a quiet hallway of the geriatric ward, watching the steam rise off the top of her styrofoam cup of tea, the color seep and bloom into the water.
Sakura hated keeping things inside. She was so bad at it anyway—in one way or another, her feelings always found a way out. She'd always been the kind of person to cry, scream, hit her way out of whatever was bothering her so that she could create a line of sight toward a solution. Letting it out allowed more room for change, growth, acceptance; it gave her an opportunity to look for whatever lingered when the impulse and the initial wave of emotion were gone. The parts that mattered.
She'd been even more open back in her genin days. If she'd thought things were fucked up back then, back when Sasuke had left for the first time and Naruto was off training with his own sannin…she never would have come close to guessing that this would be where they ended up. Hope was a simple but stupid thing when it wanted to be—and when it came to Sasuke, it was probably the most misplaced and unwelcome it could ever be.
A sigh left her mouth. Bittersweet as they were, she missed those days when she was the only one of them left in Konoha. Some—most—were more bitter than sweet. She remembered days so similar to today where she'd felt so out of control and impossible. Like she wasn't enough. She'd broken her hands several times under Tsunade's tutelage and had gone home with ripped clothes and bruised legs more times than she could count, and with that kind of slow, painful progress—not to mention Tsunade's tendency toward blunt abrasiveness—feeling down was unavoidable.
It always seemed like just when she was about to sit down and pout, cry, and feel sorry for herself, Kakashi would appear out of nowhere. Maybe he'd be sitting in a tree near her training grounds reading, or he'd be passing her in the street on the way home, or he'd suddenly stroll down the hall while she rested on a bench like this somewhere in the hospital. He'd been here a lot those days because of his sharingan. It was strange to think he didn't have one anymore.
But he'd always made a point to greet her with those slow, lazy words of his—hello, Sakura-chan—lovely weather we're having today, hmm, Sakura-chan?—or he'd pretend he didn't see her until she called out to him. Back then he had always seemed so quirky to her. He was this insanely talented man who did nothing but nap and read porn; he was a powerful ninja in every country's bingo book who bought girly shampoo to wash his dogs with. Odd as he was, though, he always knew how to lift her tender spirits, especially in those subtle ways of his.
She missed his placating head pats and the way he never treated anything like it was a big deal. He always made any situation seem possible. Small, even. She missed how he could minimize every worry she'd had about their team. How present he used to be—relatively speaking, of course, because it was in his own way. Just like everything else he did.
She sighed again, leaning back into the bench. He'd told her they would handle this. They would figure it out as they went. She remembered his steady stare, his even steadier tone. She would always, always believe him when he gave her that calm reliability.
Their talk the other day had been on her mind since he'd left, though, eating away at the corners of her thoughts. He had become so distant, so quiet and just…tired. If it weren't for how she could tell he'd lost some weight, despite his muscles being in good shape from whatever missions he'd been taking the last few years, she would have simply figured it was a result of Sasuke's procedure backfiring. But the knowledge that those missions were mostly ANBU-oriented…well, it didn't make her feel good. About anything. She'd been worried about him since he went on that extended mission last year. Sometimes she felt like all she did was worry. Like it was her only important role on their team.
She took a sip of her tea. Ugh. Too bitter. She wanted some honey but it didn't matter either way—not when she would likely be staying up all night in the archives searching for an answer she had no desire to find. Not on a personal level, anyway. On a medical level she was beyond curious.
Her uncomfortably cool hand found her forehead and brushed the loose pieces from her ponytail away. This was all starting to be far more than she'd bargained for.
And wasn't it always?
"Saaakura-chan!" a chipper voice sang from her left, dissolving the cloud her thoughts were creating. Naruto.
So he'd bounced back already. Just like that. She should have seen that coming from a mile away.
He was traipsing down the hallway with his arms swinging at his sides; he wore his typical orange sweatpants with a jacket of the same color tied around his waist. She loved when he wore white t-shirts. They made his skin look even more tan than it was, healthy and brown, and made his hair and eyes look bright. Sunny. A few passing nurses smiled at him.
"Hey, you," Sakura said fondly. Naruto grinned, but it fell when his blond eyebrows knit together. He came to a stop beside her bench.
"What's wrong?"
There were a few negatives to being around Naruto. Not many, but they existed. For one, he had the energy of a child, so much that it bounced off the walls of whatever room he occupied, and that could get old very quickly when she wasn't in the mood to deal with it. Secondly, he was a particularly oblivious person—which was frustrating in its own right, but also meant that when he did notice something, he wouldn't drop the issue unless satisfied with its resolution, or unless he could be sufficiently distracted out of an explanation.
A third, worst of all, he reminded Sakura of the things she had to hold inside. The few things, the worst things, that had to sit and fester because she didn't have anyone to talk to about them or any way to erase them. The things that she couldn't tell Naruto because she didn't want to squash his optimism. Because she wanted not only to protect him, but herself.
"I'm just tired," she said, opting for neutral ground. He'd bring up Sasuke soon enough anyway. "You're not hurt, are you?"
Naruto's face crinkled. "Why would I come here for that? I would've just gone to your house."
As she stood up, Sakura shook her head in amusement; she put her arm around his waist so that they could walk together. "Don't you see anything wrong with that statement?"
He shrugged and threw an arm across her shoulders. She basked in how warm he was and felt like he really was the sun, the way he radiated energy. "Eh, not really. I was gonna see if you wanted lunch, though."
"I probably shouldn't. Shishou will kick my ass if ANBU reports to her before I do." Shit. She hadn't meant to let that slip.
"Screw ANBU! And screw baa-chan!" he hollered in that raspy yell of his, arm tightening around her head. Sakura could smell the dried sweat in his shirt. "She m—min…what's that word? Like when she takes up all your time?"
"Monopolizes?" She watched his whisker marks move when he twisted his mouth. Thankfully he seemed not to have picked up on her fumble.
"Yes! Monopolizes! Baa-chan literally monopolizes all your time." All of a sudden he stopped and stood resolute. "I'll go with you to report or whatever, and then I'll scream at her until she kicks us out, and then we're gonna go to Ichiraku. Just 'cuz I said so."
"Well, if you say so, I'm sure shishou won't object." She rolled her eyes. "The screaming thing might work for you, Naruto, but not for me. She only kicks me out if I try to push paperwork on her."
"Then get some paperwork! Let's go!"
He was practically vibrating in place, blue eyes wide and urging. Sakura feigned annoyance and huffed, pulling him into a walk again.
"Come on, then," she said. "I guess it's worth a try."
And if it got her away from this disaster with the unsealing for a little while longer, she thought, then it absolutely was.
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She couldn't avoid it for too long, however. And she knew the Hokage would be less than pleased by her absence this afternoon.
When focused, Tsunade was a force to be reckoned with. These were the times when Sakura saw how truly alike they were, how the comparisons between them were more accurate than she realized. Both of them wouldn't rest until they pinpointed where they problem lay and consequently worked themselves to the bone trying to force their way through it. They were both determined in that ardent, almost crazed way. The only difference was that Tsunade's fuel was alcohol—and with that came unpredictability.
Sakura hadn't seen the Hokage's office like this since before the Pein attack. Even during the war the office hadn't looked this much like a whirlwind had hit it. Empty sake bottles and untouched takeout boxes were perched on various surfaces, as much a part of the room as the sparse decorations the office had accumulated over the years, most of which sat overturned or knocked to the floor. They were as bad an omen as Tsunade standing on the balcony outside her office, hair completely disheveled, face in her hands.
"Sakura," she growled loud enough to be heard through the half-open door. But she didn't move. "Please say you have something for me. Something that isn't a load of fucking"—there was a pause, and she raked her painted nails through her hair. "Just—come here."
Of course, Sakura had already been wading through the chaos to get to her mentor. Wind whistled thickly in the narrow opening the door left, swallowing her when she pushed it fully open. She made a point to shut it behind her.
The railing of the balcony was cold to the touch, despite the early summer digging its heels into Konoha. Green was everywhere. The streets below were busy, pedestrians out shopping or going to dinner, C-rank ninja leisurely making their last deliveries for the day. Evening was falling. With it came the glow of street lamps, the faded halo of light coming from the office behind them as it diffused the bruised air of dusk.
Tsunade looked haggard. It was partly the youth-serum jutsu falling from fatigue, partly the alcohol, mostly the strain of inconclusive study. The pressure of the situation. The repercussions that would come with not succeeding. The shadows beneath her eyes were dark. A hand clawed through her lengthy hair again and caught in the tangles. The anger, the fury, the alcohol had faded, leaving an old, exhausted mind in its wake.
"Shishou," Sakura declared simply, quietly. Reporting for duty. Showing her concern. Broaching the hardest subject. All of them at once, and more. "He's awake."
It was silent for a long, long moment, but she knew she'd been heard. She tried to brace herself for whatever was coming.
"You felt it," Tsunade said lowly, foreboding, into the quiet. "Didn't you."
It wasn't just the wind that gave Sakura a chill. This was why Tsunade hadn't warned her about what was living in Sasuke's skull—because she'd already seen that at best, there was a very, very slim chance of this whole operation succeeding—and that at worst, it was utterly impossible.
"It was...I can't lie; it was terrifying." She hated to admit it, but it was okay to be vulnerable here. It was okay. "I've never—not even with the sharingan—"
"I know." Tsunade's amber eyes met hers, their depth far betraying the years she only seemed to have. "I know. I've been studying doujustu for so much of my life, Sakura, and even I don't know how to pull this off." They closed again as a line formed between her brows. "It makes me wonder how exactly we managed to seal him in the first place. Must have been some real dumb luck. I know I'm damn good at my job," she laughed humorlessly, "but…"
She didn't finish, but Sakura knew what was left unspoken. She knew because she felt it too. I'm not good enough if I can't solve this.
"I understand what I'm missing, and I understand why." Tsunade's gaze was heavy. Serious. Grave. She directed it toward the streets below. "The sharingan, the byakugan—these are genetic mutations. Miracles. It's not just that we've had decades of access to them. We're lucky enough to be able to comprehend them because they naturally occur. Kekkei genkai naturally occur."
She watched her bite her thumbnail, chipping some of the red paint off, not even aware of the motions. Silence.
"But the rinnegan...it's not a human thing. We're not supposed to know it. Fuck that logic, but it's true." She paused and let some vitriol smolder in her tone. "Sasuke knows that better than anyone. He understands this thing, more than likely, and he isn't going to share what he's learned."
Sakura understood that sourness down to her bones. The wind caressed her neck as it blew by, carrying the scent of food, life, impending summer. She wished she could enjoy it. Right now, she just felt ill and uneasy. Hating that she'd consider being fair about this. And so she wouldn't defend him, but facts were facts:
"He will if it means getting his power back."
One of Tsunade's perfect brows arched at her. "True." The word mulled in the air. "That is very true."
Sakura hesitated. She wasn't quite ready to go down the manipulation route—not with him. And not from herself. The words caught painfully in her sternum on their way to her throat. It wasn't that she didn't trust her Hokage. No, she trusted Tsunade implicitly. But she didn't want to do this. Nothing about this situation was right.
It wasn't that it wouldn't be easy; that would never matter to her. It was that there was a block every single step of the way, and they were blocks that not only couldn't budge, but refused at their deepest, most central levels to reveal themselves. Tsunade was correct: there had to be a reason why.
There was this cold thread of fear that was waiting in the shadows, waiting to jump and overtake Sakura at the slightest slip of her guard. She had faith in herself, but she didn't have faith in all of this working in their favor.
It was right then, though, that she remembered her team.
Naruto. His undying loyalty. His perseverance. His capacity to love, and to try, try, always try. How much she loved him. The lengths she would go to to make him happy.
And Kakashi. She remembered his patience. The wise, sure way he was resigned to this decision. How he'd told her they would figure all of this out. But most of all, she remembered that he wasn't sure how he felt about it, and his willingness to stay the course anyway. I don't know, Sakura, he'd said. I guess we'll find out.
He would be there. Naruto would be there. She had to be there, too.
And if she agreed to be a part of this, she would do it right.
"I think we need to push harder, shishou," she finally urged, partly backtracking and partly moving forward with her conviction. It was conclusion she felt the most comfortable with: diving in headfirst, fully thrusting herself into her work. "I think we can get it if we just...if we push past that one area in there where the chakra jams up."
It was like the life had instantly returned to Tsunade. The gears were visibly turning in her mind. Like it or not, she knew Sakura was right. It was simply a matter of needing to hear it. To be enabled into it.
"God, that's just so dangerous, though." She pushed away from the railing, began pacing. "If that eye rejects us hard enough, our abilities could be permanently damaged. You felt that. I know you did. It was a warning sign, that blockage—you push far enough, you'll get bitten right in the ass. Hard."
"Are you suggesting that we don't at least try?" Sakura watched the silhouette of her mentor, backlit by her office's lamplight glow. She saw it stop and whip around to face her. Bingo.
"I know what you're trying to do, Sakura. Don't think I don't." The smugness in that tone was amiable, fond, despite the lingering roughness in her voice. "There's not a chance in hell I'd ever say that if I were confident we could succeed. I'm only saying that we need to be extremely careful. More than we've ever been. We don't know what to expect, or what we'll find. If anything."
"I still want to try, though."
There was a long moment of nothing—no movement, no speaking. And then Tsunade began to step toward her with a slow, measured pace. Her face was visible again, halfway golden, softening the harshness of the day. The intensity there made Sakura self-conscious.
It's okay to be vulnerable here.
"Not for him, shishou. I just...I need to know."
It's okay.
"I don't—"
I don't want to be vulnerable, though.
"I need—"
I need to have this power over him.
The warm hand on her cheek stopped her, holding back the words she was already choking on with a short gasp of breath. It was rare that Tsunade was affectionate with her. It jarred her every single time.
"You don't have to explain." The thumb ran over her cheekbone. That fierce, unyielding gaze sent a message: I know. And I understand. Her hand moved to smooth over Sakura's hair. "Listen to me. I think that you should be the one to do this."
Sakura could have leaned forward to embrace her right then.
"But."
She could feel that hand holding the back of her neck, commanding full attention. "But?"
"But: I am not letting you do this alone." Tsunade's beautiful face, even more so when the age was slipping through the cracks, was set in a quiet blaze, absolutely sure. "I don't feel right putting you at risk like this at all, but I know that if it can be done, you'll do it."
What remained simmering behind her irises was more like You need this. It wasn't even close to untrue.
"Okay. That's okay." Sakura couldn't smile, but the relief was clear in her voice, in the way she could breathe again. "I won't let you down, shishou."
"Oh, please." That drier note had finally returned to Tsunade's voice. "You couldn't if you tried."
With a wordless, resolute pat on her shoulder, their decision had been made.
Sakura would remember this moment days, weeks from now. How the night was wrapping itself like a blanket over Konoha, settling between the buildings and homes, in the rocky crags of the monument, on the concrete of their balcony with a lovely, welcome warmth. How Tsunade looked halfway to insanity, but never more focused; how funny that would be after they finally cracked this code and pulled it off without a hitch. How they were so blindly hopeful despite themselves, despite the looming danger that pulled at Sakura like phantom puppet strings. How they were so sure they could figure this out.
It would be the moment of clarity amidst the storm: the exact point in time that Sakura had decided to go through with this. That Tsunade was complicit in it. The moment that she had made the choice to permanently alter the course of their lives—and not just their own two, but those of everyone else involved.
It would be the moment that would offer her one single question, the smug hand of fate twisting its rise to the top of everything, the cruelest puppetmaster:
Can you live with yourself knowing what you've caused?
.
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