It was an early, gray morning in the business district of Konoha; water droplets were suspended in the air, not quite fog and not quite rain, and Sasuke was standing in the middle of it. He was frozen in place, staring across the street from where he stood, his eyes unwilling to blink. If his eyes shut, she would not be in front of him when they opened again.

She was standing in front of a cafe, wearing a black turtleneck under her medic vest, checking her watch, brushing her pink hair out of her face, frowning. She glanced back in the direction of the hospital twice. Morning shift starts in half an hour.

Naruto was next to her, tugging the collar of his jacket, peering into the crowd, muttering something to her that she nodded along with, rolling her eyes.

Then she saw Sasuke, and her eyes lit up, and Naruto started waving frantically and shouting at him from across the street. Late again, dobe.

A bustle of old women, shopping bags full of lettuces and tomatoes nestled into their arms, walked through the old memory of his friends, and their forms disappeared like smoke in the sunlight. It had started raining; Sasuke hadn't noticed.

Sasuke was living in his memories, as his father had, as all of his ancestors had. It was the Uchiha way.

The three of them meeting for coffee twice a week had been Sakura's idea that Naruto had enthusiastically agreed to. Sasuke knew that neither she nor Naruto drank coffee. It made her anxious and Naruto didn't need the extra energy. Sasuke took his black, but dropped a sugar cube in when he thought no one was looking, two if he could get away with it. Sasuke had been late more often than not, always greeted with the same scene: his teammates, impatiently waiting for him on the sidewalk, exchanging shorthand quips that came naturally after years of close friendship. He had been vaguely uncomfortable, almost envious of their familiarity - he knew it was something hard won between them and not shared with him.

She always looked tired. He knew she didn't sleep well. None of them did. He saw the three of them for what they were: child soldiers with guilty consciences and broken hearts that were healing in some places and necrotizing in others. But they were his; his to keep, and his to lose.

Sasuke began to understand the desperation Naruto felt to bring him back to Konoha.

It felt like Shikamaru had raised her from the dead with his words. Even though Sasuke knew she was gone, hearing someone else question the circumstances surrounding her death had been enough for him to start seeing her around every corner, hearing her voice in every crowd. He'd never been one for moving on, not really, not when he should.

He tore himself away from the wet sidewalk, trudging forward with his shoulders hunched against the stinging rain. He was not out and about on a pleasure stroll; he had a destination ahead of him: the Hokage's office.

When he arrived and had been let through the heavy double doors into the office, Kakashi frowned at him. The Hokage was not happy to see his student. Sasuke couldn't blame him.

"Any updates?" Sasuke asked. The thing he missed most about having two arms was being able to cross them. The one arm just felt so awkward, hanging there like a christmas ornament.

Kakashi sighed. "I wish you wouldn't make me say no so often. Can't you ask something else? Like Kakashi, do you have a lot of paperwork today?"

"Then find something new and I'll stop asking."

"It's been over a year, Sasuke. There's nothing left to find. All that's left is for us to move on with our lives."

"So you're trying to tell me that you've stopped looking."

"I am not trying to tell you that. I'm trying to tell you exactly what I said: there's nothing left to find. We know everything that we will ever know about how she died."

"Fine. Then since it was an official investigation, I want to read the official report. I want to know the mission she was on."

Kakashi leaned over his desk, settling his chin into his palm. "You don't have that kind of clearance."

"What kind of clearance do I have?"

"Absolutely zilch. No clearance whatsoever."

"Well, if it's an empty report that doesn't say anything that I don't already know, then why can't I read it anyway?"

"Because of the paperwork," Kakashi snapped, starting to become frustrated. "Sasuke, everyone else in the village has moved on but you. Who knows how many times you've been in here asking about a long-closed investigation that you asked to have opened. It's not healthy. Move on."

"You haven't moved on."

"I'm old and she was my student. I'm not supposed to move on. You're young and you have your best years ahead of you. You are supposed to get on with your life. Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Kakashi's tone suggested that he found nothing even vaguely pleasant about an ambush by his former student.

After several beats of silence, Sasuke leaned forward, trying to keep his voice nonchalant. "I ran into Shikamaru a few days ago."

Kakashi frowned, leaning back in his chair. "He was supposed to come straight here. I still haven't had a report from him yet."

"Maybe you just don't have the clearance to read it."

"I'll show you clearance," Kakashi grumbled. "Where did you see Shikamaru? I'll go strangle that report out of him."

"At Sakura's grave."

Kakashi's frown deepened. "Why do I have the feeling this is why you're here? Tell me this isn't why you're here."

Sasuke ignored him, deciding to press his luck. "He told me that he went to where she died. He told me something seemed off… that there was nothing there at all. What was he expecting to see?"

"He was probably just in the wrong spot. It's a very tricky place to get to, that edge of the border."

"Does Shikamaru make a lot of little mistakes like that?" Sasuke asked, focusing on keeping his tone light, even though he knew the answer. Bile and anger were rising in his throat. Someone was hiding something from him. Something about how she died. Innocent people did not act this way.

"We all make mistakes, Sasuke," Kakashi said pointedly.

"Naruto seemed to know what Shikamaru was talking about," Sasuke needled, hedging his bets.

"Naruto is full of hot air and you know it. It's unfair of you to dangle this in front of his eyes. You know better than anyone what he'll do or believe where old friends are involved."

"I want to go see it for myself. So does Naruto."

"No."

"You can't stop me."

"You would be surprised at what I can stop you from doing," Kakashi murmured, his eyes narrowed. "You might think you can do whatever you want these days, but you can't. The investigation is very much closed."

They stood in angry silence for a moment before Kakashi sighed once more.

"I don't want to be hard on you. But it's for your own good. Let the happy memories be what they were. Let her rest in peace instead of dragging her soul with you everywhere you go. Go home, Sasuke."

"Just tell me one thing."

"If I can tell you, I will."

"Did her mission have anything to do with me?"

"No," Kakashi said, and Sasuke knew from the look in his eyes that it was best to leave it alone. "No, it didn't."

"Thanks." Sasuke said, not feeling particularly thankful. In fact, he had the distinct feeling that he had just been lied to.

After a terse goodbye, he left. But he did not go home, as he had been instructed.

Instead, Sasuke did what he had been meaning to do for months now. After leaving Kakashi's office, Sasuke did not turn down the road that lead to the outskirts of the village where he lived. Instead, he turned toward toward the center of town.

Speaking with Kakashi had done nothing to quell the uneasiness that had settled over him, as he had hoped; rather, it had worked to increase it. He could think of no reason for Kakashi to deny his request to see for himself the place where she died. Theories were building in his mind, wearing into pathways that he had long since stopped walking down.

After a short but brisk walk through crowded buildings, he stopped in front of a muddled red three story pile of apartments with mustard yellow doors and decaying handrails decorating the building like a shitty Christmas tree.

This building was one of many reserved for active-duty ninja. No one had had the heart to clean it out. Tsunade, the only person who might have done it, had left town not long after the war and never returned. Her parents had refused, Ino had her own father's belongings left to sort through, and Naruto couldn't bear it. And since the post-war reduction in demand for ninja housing, it had remained untouched.

Sasuke had steered clear of it until now, telling himself that another day would be better, another time.

Time had run out.

Less than an hour after Sasuke had finally left Kakashi's office, it was once again full of people asking questions regarding his pink haired former student. Kakashi sat in a council meeting, pressing his fingers into his eyes, trying to quash a burgeoning headache.

"She struggled more than we had expected," an old man with a craggy, scarred face muttered, impatiently tapping his fingers on the table in front of him. "Were we wrong about her?"

"It was out of character. She's stronger than that." Kakashi snapped, and his head was spinning from how quickly he had to switch from discussing her death to discussing her life. Today was all about the girl, he supposed. "She's not a soloist. You should have given her more information than just a single stupid name. You didn't follow protocol because you wanted her to fail."

"What more does a shinobi need than a name and location?" the old man snapped back. "That was all of the relevant information, and it was given to her. Be careful with your accusations, boy."

"Tsunade herself told me that the girl had long since surpassed her master. She is young and alone for the first time; perhaps she needs time to adjust," murmured a woman with soft gray hair piled high on her head.

"Not only did she nearly die herself, she went off-target. The other man she killed was not slated for assassination. I would consider that an insubordination."

"What does it matter if she killed him now or later? She was being efficient. Showing initiative. You were going to send her after him sooner or later." Kakashi did not fail to notice the glances exchanged between the elders at the table, and they made him uneasy. He'd had a feeling for months now that there were undercurrents of agendas that he had no access to.

"That is not the job of a shinobi. Obedience, silence, and skill. None of which she has shown us so far. Shinobi who show initiative are a liability. Shinobi who decide their own targets, who decide they know better than their superiors are dangerous. We are disappointed, Kakashi."

"She just needs more time. It's not strength she's lacking. It's nerve," he said through clenched teeth.

"We were able to control the narrative this time. Her sloppiness was able to be obscured as a civilian with improvised explosives taking revenge for a murdered friend. But there can be no next time. You know as well as anyone that she cannot be brought home, and a loose cannon cannot be allowed to reel around, ownerless."

Kakashi's retinas began to burn, the way they always had when anger curdled his blood. "You sent her out there out of spite for me and my team. You gave her nothing. And now you're upset that you've reaped what you've sewn, that your horribly stupid plan turned out to be horribly stupid, and so you're just going to terminate your own ninja for your own short-sightedness?"

"Nobody is being terminated yet," the old woman cautioned, her voice placating. "We can overlook this one misstep. But you must have known what cards were on the table, Kakashi, as does she."

"As did you," Kakashi spit.

"We thought we did," the old man seethed in return.

"We can table this discussion pending future development. Is there anything else to discuss before we end this meeting?" Another elder asked, eyes sweeping the room.

Kakashi kept his mouth shut. He could not tell them that suspicion had started to mount among his ranks, in the three worst soldiers for it to take hold of. His smartest, his most obsessive, and his jinchuriki, all looking for more information, asking questions he couldn't answer. No, he couldn't tell them now, when they were already wondering if it was worth the risk of keeping her alive. No, this was a fire Kakashi would have to put out on his own. He knew they could be placated. He would just have to spin the yarn a little further.