A/N: This is a very… talky chapter. Not dialogue-y but monologue-y. Also, long. One of the reasons I write fic is so that I can spend more time with the characters - and I suspect that's a reason that a lot of people read fanfiction. No Sakura today, but check back within the next two weeks to see what our girl is up to. Enjoy!

Nara Shikamaru was on the floor of his family home, laying flat on his back and watching the old ceiling fan spin in circles. From the open window, he could hear the sounds of the ancient Nara compound trees rustling in the breeze. By all accounts, the day should have been a relaxing one.

It wasn't.

He had that feeling. That feeling he got when things were about to become very, very troublesome. That feeling he gets when he's about to be useful, his father used to say. That feeling he gets when he's about to make himself scarce. Shikaku was right - all Shikamaru wanted to do right now was take a nice, long medical leave and mind his own damned business.

This isn't your business? He could hear his father ask, one eyebrow arched.

Shikamaru sighed and dragged one hand over his face. He wished he could talk to Shikaku now. The old man always listened well, didn't jump to conclusions, didn't scoff at his ideas. His father had been loyal to the village. But he was even more loyal to the truth, and to doing what was right. Once upon a time, Shikamaru thought those loyalties were one and the same.

It was majorly inconvenient how false that was turning out to be.

There were a lot of things that bothered Shikamaru about Sakura's death. From the day he heard of it, it didn't really sit right with him. But he tried not to think about it - not out of laziness, but out of guilt. Shikamaru felt somewhat guilty for how… underwhelmed he had felt, while Ino had sobbed on his shoulder and later when Naruto wept at her funeral. It's not that he didn't like Sakura, or care when she died. She was nice, if a little temperamental. He had seen her make a lot of bad, selfish decisions, like when she told Naruto she loved him, and then tried to go off and kill Sasuke herself after knocking out all of her friends. On the other hand, she would also sign off on five days of medical leave for him when he should only get three, and she was nice to him. But both Asuma and Shikaku had recently passed on, and Shikamaru felt nothing close to the grief he had experienced after losing his father and teacher. So she died, he felt sad, the world spun on.

For him it did, anyway. Others had it more difficult. Naruto and Ino both took it hard. Kakashi looked more and more tired with every passing day. And Sasuke… well, there had been something there. Not a huge something, but a something that couldn't be denied. And he looked lost without it.

And when Sasuke had been standing there next to him in front of her grave, Shikamaru felt weighed down with the implications of what he had seen - or hadn't seen - and he couldn't help opening his mouth. Sasuke had been reticent, but Shikamaru supposed that was the man's way of being friendly.

Sure, shinobi died all the time. And she was a recent jonin, promoted after the war, and jonins are tools at the disposal of the village. But she was also a healer, and healers are valuable - especially after a war. Too valuable for solo missions. Keeping your medics alive kept the rest of your numbers up. The only reason for Sakura to be sent out was as medic support for the hokage, or on a mission they were sure that only she could complete.

But she died. So she couldn't complete it. And losing even one healer decreased the hospital's capacity by an order of magnitude, much less the head medic. Training a new healer took years before they could work unsupervised. And not to insult the dead… but what mission was there that only Sakura could complete?

A sharp rapping at the door jolted him out of his thoughts.

"I know you're home, Shikamaru. Are you going to make me let myself in or are you going to get your lazy butt up for your hokage?" There was a frustrated edge to Kakashi's voice that Shikamaru was all too familiar with.

Ah, shit. Shikamaru thought. Was supposed to give my report yesterday….

"Nara!" Kakashi snapped.

"Coming." Shikamaru called, sighing, and pulled himself up off the floor. When he answered the door, a seriously bedraggled Kakashi had a look in his eyes that was nothing short of murderous. Shikamaru stood aside to allow the rokudaime into his home.

"You and I are going to have a talk." Kakashi muttered. "What is this I hear about you spreading rumors?"

"Me? Rumors?" Shikamaru frowned. "That sounds… like a lot of work."

"Trust me, it is a lot of work." Kakashi deadpanned. "For me. If you've got a problem with something, you should be coming to me, your boss, not my former students."

So that's what this is about. Word of his unease had gotten back to Kakashi quickly - and since Shikamaru had only really talked to Sasuke, it was an easily traced leak. "Sasuke?"

"Either one of them." Kakashi growled. "What's this about you poking your nose where it doesn't belong, either?"

"I didn't poke my nose in anywhere." Shikamaru held up his hands placatingly. "What did Sasuke tell you?"

"You had him in my office demanding to see classified mission reports and threatening to walk out of the village himself to go see the place that Sakura died. I don't think you understand the kind of ramifications that are in store for Sasuke if anyone else hears him talking that way."

"Wasn't it just you that heard him?" Shikamaru shrugged. "I didn't send him after you."

Kakashi sighed; his fingers found their usual perch on the bridge of his nose. Shikamaru could tell that he was doing his breathing exercises. "Think of Sasuke as a rehab patient. He's in recovery; he doesn't act rationally with this kind of information. And think of Naruto as the village idiot. He doesn't react rationally with any information."

"What does Naruto have to do with it?" Shikamaru frowned. Village idiot might not be too far off the mark, no matter how much he liked and respected the guy, but he wasn't sure how Naruto had become involved.

"Anything you tell Sasuke, you're telling Naruto. And vice versa. It's something we all have to keep in mind." Kakashi sighed.

"Right." Shikamaru decided he would have to find Naruto later. He'd already been considering it.

"But anyway, Shikamaru. Sakura - it doesn't make sense, I agree. Because it's senseless when someone so young and healthy dies so suddenly. Same with Asuma and your dad." Kakashi clapped Shikamaru on the shoulder. "I've seen it too many times. It's hard on all of us. And we try to justify it to ourselves, that it had to be that way, so that we can understand it. But it's the life we signed up for - you, me, her - and she knew the risks."

"I just…." Shikamaru trailed off, and for the first time he wondered if he could trust Kakashi. He wondered if it might be best to keep his gut feelings to himself. "Yeah. I guess I just don't want to believe she could be picked off like that."

Kakashi let his hand drop from Shikamaru's shoulder. "I promise you, she didn't go down without a fight. You know she wouldn't. I saw the aftermath for myself."

Shikamaru kept the frown off of his face. He'd heard that before - that's exactly what Kakashi had said when he dropped the news, now over… what, eight, nine months ago? And it's exactly the suspicion that had begun to nestle into his brain. Because Shikamaru had seen the aftermath for himself, too - or the lack of aftermath. He let his shoulders fall before speaking again. "I know."

"What were you looking for, when you went to the place in her file? There were no witnesses that we could find."

"I thought maybe you missed something and I could find it myself." Shikamaru replied, knowing that was believable. He had a bad habit of thinking that way.

"Is that what Sasuke meant when he said you found nothing there?"

"I guess." Another shrug. Shikamaru resolved to strangle Sasuke later. Sharingan and exertion be damned. "I thought if I could find something that it would cheer Ino up a bit."

Kakashi sighed. "I wish there was more to find. It would cheer all of us up."

"Yeah." That's all Shikamaru could muster. He wasn't a great actor. He wasn't a great anything. Not until he needed to be.

"Next time you start feeling like something is off, come to me first. I value your intuition highly," Kakashi said seriously. "Higher than some of my own staff, if I'm honest. So don't keep me out of the loop."

"I won't." Shikamaru lied through his teeth.

With that, Kakashi took his leave, threatening a repeat visit if that mission report wasn't on his desk tomorrow morning. Shikamaru promised it would be, and shut the door behind him.

When it rains, it pours, he thought with a frown on his face. He watched the rokudaime walk away through his window.

He couldn't see that the frown Kakashi wore was just as deep as his own.

.

.

.

Sasuke pushed open the door to Sakura's old apartment and flicked on the light. His first impression was that it was aggressively grimy - he was immediately attacked by a combative cloud of dust.

His second impression was that the place had been ransacked.

Papers and books were scattered across the carpeted living room, curtains torn from the windows, cabinet doors ripped from their hinges and hanging askew in the tiny kitchen. It was all covered in a thick layer of gray dust – whatever had happened, it had happened long ago, and no one had returned since. There were no footprints, no handprints smearing the grime. Likely, this was exactly how she left it, he realized.

Her coffee table was cleaved in half, splintered wood sticking up like a shipwreck. Sasuke stared at the fractured table and realized that he was looking at something he'd seen before. It was the aftermath of a hurricane of a woman. He'd seen more than one table left like this in her wake - after losing a game of cards to a cheating Kiba, and at a restaurant after slapping the table in a fit of drunken giggles after Naruto did his best Gai impression.

Sasuke had been in her apartment the day before she left – the last he'd seen that table, it was intact, with Naruto's bare feet propped on it as they waited for Sakura to get ready for a dinner to casual to require her to take twenty minutes to brush her hair….
Focus. He waved the memory away and concentrated on what a scene like this might mean.

The night she disappeared from his life, she had left her apartment angry. She came to his apartment scared. She left the village alone, spent three months doing God knows what, and then some fucking nobody ambushed her and left her body in pieces, giving up his own life in the process. That was where Sasuke's relevant information ended. If no one was going to tell him what happened after she left… maybe there were answers in the before.

You're going to try to be happy, right, Sasuke?

He stared around the apartment, a frown creasing his face. There had to be something inside these walls that told him the secrets he desperately needed to know. There was something in her words that told him she knew she was going to die, she knew she was never going to see him again. Try to be happy. Just the day before she'd been dragging him and Naruto down the streets of Konoha, rambling about Shizune this and Ino that and Hinata said. That girl had been so different from the one that had shown up at his doorstep. What changed in that one day?

You're going to take this chance to have a real life, a happy one?

Why would she say that? Did she know she wasn't going to be around to see it for herself? She was scared, he could tell that much.

Maybe get a painting or some throw pillows?

She was too vibrant, too alive to just be cut down in the middle of nowhere, no fanfare, just a spurt of cold blood and a last stutter. He wondered if anyone heard her last words, if she even bothered to say them out loud.

Who wanted her dead? He could think of no specific enemies that she had, although he knew very little about her professional life outside of the hospital. Many people would capture a healer. Very few would kill them on the spot. So it was either personal or contracted. There was an enemy somewhere, an enemy to her or an enemy to the village. Sasuke felt that his life hinged on the difference.

He walked through the door that lead to her room. Pictures clung to the walls, held there with tape or thumbtacks, a mosaic of her short life. He stood in front of them, tracing his fingers over faces he knew, squinting at the ones he didn't. It was so easy to tell who she considered important - Naruto, Hinata, Lee, Ino, Tsunade. Shikamaru playing Shogi with a genin frustrated to tears. Shizune holding that strange rotund pig. A picture of Sakura and Kakashi on his first day as hokage, her tongue sticking out while the old man frowned underneath that ridiculous hat.

There were photographs of parties and dinners and awards he missed. Eyes changed in pictures before and after the war. Some people disappeared completely from the newer, glossier pictures - Asuma, Jiraiya, Neji - and some people appeared, like himself or Sai. Sasuke found his own face frowning out of an uncomfortable amount of pictures.

Looking at all of these familiar faces created a pit in his stomach. He wondered what kind of people they would all be now if they had not been forced to be child soldiers, competing amongst each other to be the most effective weapon of mass destruction. Maybe, in another life, in another world, they could have been… bakers, accountants, shop-owners? None of those things sound right to Sasuke. Like him, they had all been born for this exact existence.

And they didn't all make it out alive.

He turned away from the photographs - he didn't want to look at them any longer. He went to her desk - it was undoubtedly the desk of a very busy person. A calendar hung on the wall, still stuck on the month she left. He went back several months before her death; days were marked with work or Hinata's birthday or meeting. There were several long swathes of empty days where she had left on missions. He studied them carefully; there was no pattern that he could deduce.

The Atlas of Amputations and Limb Deficiencies sat on her desk, riddled with sticky notes. He opened it to a bookmarked page; it was gibberish to him, but by her apparent color-coded highlighting, it made sense to her. Nonthrombotic… arteriovenous… he shut the book. If anything there was of interest to him, he wasn't going to understand it anyway.

She was not the type to keep a diary. No ninjas kept diaries - it was against protocol. He had no hope of finding anything like that as he thumbed through her planner. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

But then, something on her desk caught his eye - a scroll peeking out from underneath a stack of ruffled papers. He recognized the color of the binding - blue scrolls were profiles. They could only be checked out from the Hokage's personal library with special mission clearance. Those clearances didn't come easy - profiles contained every inch of information that the village had on an individual.

Sasuke pulled it out from underneath the stacks of chart notes and doodles. He peeled it open with a fair amount of difficulty - it seemed that opening scrolls was an activity exclusive to two-handed beings. He felt slightly discriminated against.

As soon as it was open, he nearly dropped it on the floor.

Orochimaru's snakelike face was staring back at him. He didn't read any further - he already knew everything that could possibly be contained in the scroll. Maybe more.

Why would she have the clearance to get a profile scroll on Orochimaru? They should have nothing to do with each other. He hoped they had nothing to do with each other. Sasuke had not had any contact with Orochimaru following the war, and he hadn't really had any designs on changing that. It appeared that his plans might have to change soon.

His hand clenched around the scroll – even if it wasn't an answer, it was something. He shoved it in his pocket, making sure its blue edges were completely concealed. If anyone was found with a blue scroll they shouldn't have, punishment was to be stripped of rank. If Sasuke was found with a blue scroll that he shouldn't have, well…. better to not wonder. He had what he came for.

As he left her apartment, Sasuke wondered what kind of hole would be left in the world if he were to die. A very small one, if any at all, no doubt. He closed the door, the scroll pressing against his thigh, and walked home with his head down.

When he finally got home, Naruto was standing at his door, arms crossed, expression sour. "Where were you? I've been waiting here for like, half an hour."

Sasuke, feeling equally unpleasant and restless, lied. "None of your business."

"Man, that is so typical of you. Anyway, open the door. I've got news."

He let Naruto in and they sat on the couch. Sasuke looked at him expectantly, knowing that Naruto needed to invitation to start talking. In fact, Sasuke knew there was nothing in the world that could stop Naruto from opening his mouth if he felt like it.

"Shikamaru says Kakashi ripped him a new asshole because you couldn't keep your fat mouth shut."

Sasuke frowned. "The same way he ripped you a new one when were genin? Two finger death poke?"

"Was that you making a joke? It's not funny. I'm damaged goods." Naruto complained.

"I thought it was funny."

"That's because you don't have a sense of humor. Anyway, Shikamaru wanted me to come tell you that you're an idiot, and to lay low for a while."
"Why wouldn't he come tell me that himself?"

"First of all, you have a bad temper. Second of all, I - we - think it would be a better idea if you and Shikamaru weren't seen talking a whole bunch, now that you totally blew it to Kakashi. Because now if Kakashi hears that you and Shikamaru are getting all buddy-buddy, he's going to be suspicious that you guys are up to something."

"Are we up to something?" Sasuke asked, trying to keep his voice casual, picking stray lint off of his pant leg.

Naruto shrugged. "We all just want to know the truth, don't we? If the village is playing politics behind our back and it got our friend killed, then I think we have a right to know. And nobody's just gonna come out and tell us, so…"

Sasuke nodded in agreement, still focusing on the lint on his clothing. He worried that if he looked Naruto in the eye, the idiot would be able to tell that Sasuke felt… well, he felt relieved. He felt relieved to have someone on his side, someone who didn't think he should just get on with his life. Someone else cared as much as he did. Someone else thought something just wasn't right.

"So here's what Shikamaru thinks is best. You lay low for a while, and stop bugging Kakashi so much. Don't make a show out of it, like, don't just ignore him. And then Shikamaru is going to do some thinking, and then when the time's right… I guess he'll clue us in."

"Does he have any sort of plan?" Sasuke inquired, leaning forward. "I don't think it's going to be as easy as just walking out of the gates."

"He thinks he can get us out. All three of us. But separately - it's going to take him a while. He's going to leave on a mission, and then I am, and then we are going to find a low-key way to get you out. And you have to start laying low with Kakashi. He's suspicious."

"Eventually my probation will be up and I can leave the village whenever I want."

"Do you really think that they're going to let you out just to cause more trouble?" Naruto snorted.

"I don't cause trouble."

"Only, like, five years of my life worth of trouble. Anyway, let's go get some food, yeah? Your treat, since you made me wait."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. Not like you were invited. But he didn't say anything - instead, he stood and followed his friend out the door, and maybe a part of him was actually looking forward to a meal shared between friends. Maybe he needed this.

Not that he'd ever tell anyone. When Naruto tried to trip him on his way out, Sasuke casually smacked him upside the head. He felt twelve years old again, and for once, that wasn't the worst thing.

A/N: Thanks for reading! If you want, go check out my new fic called Now More Than Ever. It's an AU where Sakura follows Sasuke home the night of the massacre and witnesses Itachi's carnage. I promise it will not be a rehash of the canon manga events.

Love reading your reviews and starting a dialogue about the story. Please let me know your thoughts. Have a great day!