Nascence

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XI: Chance to Hope

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Neji sat with his back against the window, his lavender eyes closed, his breathing heavy and even. He seemed totally asleep, but Sakura knew better. There was a stiffness in his posture, a rigidity. His shoulders lifted with his breaths instead of his stomach, which meant he wasn't working his diaphragm for a truly deep breath. And one fist kept clenching and unclenching as he searched for a thought, an idea, that was beyond his reach.

Two hours left, and we still haven't found the bunshin.

"How long were you planning on staring at me, Sakura?"

She jolted but smiled slightly, going to sit next to him on the window seat. "Until you got suitably annoyed by it. What are you doing?"

"Thinking about how we're going to defeat this bunshin."

Sakura frowned. "It's only one clone."

"But it's Uchiha Sasuke's clone. It's strong, and it doesn't disappear like regular bunshin when you hit it. We've seen that."

Sakura was silent for a long time, smoothing her ANBU-regulation silver vest only to be doing something with her hands. "Neji, what if we don't get home?"

His eyes opened for the first time since their conversation started, and he turned to her with a small frown. "I thought you were confident we would. What happened to the Haruno optimist?"

"There's still a 'what if' in there somewhere, Neji, I know everyone's thinking it." She pushed her hair from her face, and he found himself searching the line of her jaw with his eyes, yearning to touch it, to pretend that everything was normal. "I don't want to die."

Neji sat up fully, not knowing exactly what to say. "I don't think many people look forward to it, exactly," he managed lamely. "But we're not going to die."

"Neji, how can you be so confident? What if Sasuke's stored chakra runs out in five minutes? What if the bunshin kills us? What if the battle is still going on when the reality manipulation dissipates? In any of those cases, all of which are perfectly logical, we die. We disappear. Forever."

Neji could think of nothing to say to this.

"I mean…" Her voice cracked slightly, and he could tell she wanted so badly to cry-- "I mean, can you imagine never seeing Hinata again, Neji? And even Gai-sensei? And… Ino, TenTen, Lee, Shikamaru and Sai, and Naruto…" Sakura's voice wavered uncontrollably. "I can't imagine a world without Naruto… and now he's Hokage…"

He didn't look at her-- he didn't think he could stand to see the pain in her face. It was enough to hear it in her voice.

"That's… I mean… who would punch him and Sai when they're being stupid?" She gave a weak warble of a laugh. "And… buy Naruto ramen, and go to Ino for beauty tips, and beat up Kankurou with Temari, and… you, Neji, who'd I love if not you? There'd be no love in me to love..."

To his extreme anger, he felt his throat start to burn, as well.

"And punch them for being stupid… especially that…" She shook her head. "Being stupid… I'm being stupid."

She turned to leave, took a step, actually was towards the door when Neji caught her by the wrist, spun her around, and pulled her roughly to his chest.

Sakura wasn't crying now, but Neji was; her hands twined shakily around his neck and he put his chin on her shoulder, a single tear streaking down his face. All the feelings filling him up were so incredibly alien-- there was the feel of Sakura's body meshed with his, and then there was the aching rise of grief, and there was the overwhelming feeling of crying-- actually crying, which was something he hadn't done in years.

"We're not going to die," he whispered to her.

She lifted her face from his chest and stared at him in disbelief. "Neji, you're crying," she murmured, and took a trembling hand from his neck and brushed her thumb against the curve of his cheekbone, taking the tear away as surely as if it had never been there.

Neji was reminded forcibly that he loved this woman more than words could possibly express.

Sai burst through the door in an uncharacteristic display of panic, TenTen and Shikamaru following him, and the two looked at him with rising feelings of both dread and determination. They knew what he was going to say. And, maybe for the first time since the whole mission started, they were ready for it.

"We found the bunshin."

---

Lee had barely broken a sweat by the time Neji and Sakura arrived with the others, but he certainly had his hands full.

He was engaged in a one-on-one taijutsu match with the bunshin, and he couldn't for the life of him land a single hit. The Sasuke clone wove in between his punches and kicks like he was made of water, melting into nothingness and then reappearing behind him so fast Lee had to fairly collapse to the ground in order to escape a back-breaking punch.

Sai quickly drew in his sketchbook, and a bird made completely of ink unfolded spectacularly from the page, spreading its wings with a flourish. "TenTen, Sai, get on the bird," Neji shouted. "Shikamaru, Sakura, try to distract the clone… TenTen, launch your scroll at Uchiha when Lee is out of the way."

The bird swept to the side, doing a circle around the bunshin as Lee ran to it for another barrage of punches and kicks. "Konoha Senpu!" the taijutsu user called out, and ducked quickly as the bunshin's fist lashed out at him. Lee gathered his energy and slammed his foot into Sasuke's chest, causing the black-haired bunshin stumbled back, anger sparking in his eyes.

Lee's next series of attacks, however, spawned no results; the bunshin merely dodged them all and sent a bruising kick to Lee's chest, followed by a barrage of punches that were too fast and too hard even to be seen-- only Lee's bruised body on the ground five seconds later showed the running Neji, Shikamaru, and Sakura the damage that had been caused.

Sakura gasped as she ran towards the fighting duo, tightening her gloves. "Why hasn't Lee taken off his leg weights yet?"

Neji's voice was quiet as he pointed to two pairs of strips of heavy bars on the ground. "He has."

Sakura's green eyes widened as she realized the implications of this-- Lee was, right now, at his fastest, and the bunshin could still keep up with him. The bunshin could dodge every attack. "It's fast!"

"Too fast," Shikamaru grunted with a frown as they sprinted. Neji had his Byakugan activated and Sakura was furiously summoning her chakra into her fists, ready to beat the Sasuke look-a-like into a bloody pulp. "He can dodge anything. We need to find a way to slow him down, or stop him."

"But if he can escape your Kagemane no jutsu, there's nothing we can do…" Sakura muttered with a furious scowl as they got closer.

Neji felt his fists clench. "We need a strategy." He did one last push with his legs and landed in front of the clone, closing a tenketsu point in the arm of the bunshin whose fist was heading straight for Lee's head. Sakura followed, quickly delivering a bone-crunching side kick to the enemy's stomach while the Sasuke clone was caught off guard.

Shikamaru nodded and slowed his pace, seemingly unaware of the battle before him as he thought. "We need a strategy."

Neji continued his tenketsu-closing onslaught, and Sakura dragged Lee away, pressing a green-glowing hand to his bruises and cuts. "Be careful," she whispered to him in a warning. "I only healed your major wounds, and those could be only the beginning. Don't you dare do anything drastic."

Rock Lee's eyes glimmered, and he used her hand to stand himself up. "Sakura-san, I promised I would never give up, did I not?"

Sakura watched with concern as he stood up straight, putting his hands together.

"HACHIMON!"

The Inner Eight Gates.

"Lee, please!" Sakura begged, worry flooding throughout her brain, but he paid her no heed-- blue chakra burst around him, circling him as his first three Gates opened.

---

From above, an army of black and white tigers leapt into the fray, clawing and biting at Sasuke. But the bunshin merely withdrew his katana and ran straight through Sai's ink cats, leaping off of one and slicing at Neji with the ink-soaked sword. The Hyuuga prodigy quickly slid his feet sideways to get into a defensive position and put his hands in front of his face.

"Hakke Kusho!"

A stream of air shot from Neji's hands, forcing the bunshin backwards and into the point of Shikamaru's own outstretched katana. Sasuke reached up and around, grabbing the handle of the sword and flipping it and its handler back with incredible power, sending Neji and Shikamaru scattering into the dust.

There was a flash of pink that leapt over the bodies, and Sakura was rushing at him, a blur of fists and feet and chakra. The bunshin dove under her high kick and slammed an elbow into her spine, cracking a vertebrae. Sakura cringed in pain but turned immediately, sending a punch of pure anger towards the bunshin's face. Sasuke flew back, over Neji and Shikamaru, who were rising quickly, and straight into Lee's super-powered kick.

The bunshin roared in fury and turned in midair, attacking Lee with what Sakura recognized as Sasuke's Lion Combo. Lee hit the ground hard, and she made to run after him, but Neji grabbed her arm. She turned to face him, but he was smirking slightly. "TenTen."

Sakura looked up, and a similar smile graced her features. The bunshin was dead meat.

The sky was raining metal.

The bunshin was already up and racing towards Lee when he looked up to the sky in what seemed to be irritation and alarm; the heady scent of metallic death was only yards away when he stopped running, a curious smirk on his face.

"What's he doing?" Sai muttered to TenTen from atop the ink bird. "He's not even trying to dodge them… he's just standing there." The bunshin pulled something from his teeth and flicked his wrists several times, but nothing happened. Sai frowned in confusion.

And then the weapons suddenly changed course.

TenTen gasped in pain and surprise as the wires wrapped around her fingers tightened, immediately cutting off her circulation. "He's using wires!" she shrieked, trying desperately not to topple off the bird. "He's controlling the weapons! I'm-- I'm not strong enough to put them where I want them, he's taking control!"

Sai cursed loudly as the onslaught of weapons suddenly turned from their path straight down and headed instead towards the group on land.

"Shit!" Neji shouted, forcing Shikamaru and Sakura back. "He's controlling TenTen's wires with his own!"

There was a flurry of hand signals, and the three shinobi quickly vanished in replacement jutsu. The weapons clattered to the ground or stuck in trees, forgotten as Lee ran towards the bunshin from behind, his fourth and fifth Gates opened. His skin glowed maroon red as he fought with the bunshin-- and this time, the majority of his attacks hit Sasuke.

The bunshin coughed up blood and wiped his mouth, something akin to evil lighting up his eyes as he drew his katana again. Lee drew his own, and the two engaged in a sort of swordfight, Lee incorporating a couple kicks and punches into the battle that were swiftly deflected.

TenTen and Sai leapt from the ink bird, and TenTen quickly drew out another scroll, biting her thumb and crisscrossing it over the paper, leaving swirling bloodstains that morphed into a sharp, horrifying array of weaponry. Twirling in midair, she threw the weapons with deadly accuracy towards the killer, landing heavily on the ground with the scroll draping over her shoulders.

It seemed to happen in slow motion from Shikamaru's point of view… Neji and Sakura were running towards the bunshin, fists clenched or fingers pointed, respectively, when they stopped short, eyes widened; TenTen's face changed from an expression of triumph to one of horror as her projectiles soared towards Lee and the Sasuke clone; Sai's mad scribbling stopped in mid-stroke, and his usually expressionless face morphed as he dropped his brush…

The bunshin had, in a moment of spectacular speed, grabbed Lee's arms, pinned them at his sides, and held the ANBU member directly in front of himself a split-second before the weapons hit.

Lee's body jerked as the weapons pounded into his form… his red skin dimmed to several shades paler than its normal color, and blood spurted from the many wounds. The bunshin laughed cruelly, without mercy, and Shikamaru felt a chill go down his spine and his face drain of all blood. "You thought you could save him? You killed him!"

"LEE!"

TenTen ran towards the bunshin, katana withdrawn, nothing short of murderous intent contorting her face. But the bunshin threw Lee aside, grabbing his own sword and Lee's, facing her with a sickening smile.

"TenTen, NO!" Sakura snapped out of her trancelike state and delivered a swift kick to the Uchiha clone's side, knocking it out of the way before the two swords it held impaled one of her best friends.

Neji seized TenTen by the arms and dragged her away from danger as Sakura went into a mad sort of spar against the bunshin, both kunai and katana drawn as the two shinobi fought with a mixture hand-to-hand and weapon combat.

TenTen could only glibber at Lee's pale face, the way his body twitched, the way her scroll, her weapons, her attack, had maybe killed her teammate, her friend, her lover. "Lee, no, please, no, Lee… I'm sorry, Lee…"

Sai picked up his brush and quickly drew another array of frightening creatures: bears, more tigers, giant snakes, scorpions-- that streamed towards the bunshin, keeping him busy while he and Sakura and Shikamaru joined Neji and TenTen.

Sai took TenTen's arm over his shoulder, helping her to rest against a tree and calm her down while Shikamaru consulted with Sakura and Neji. "I have… a plan, of sorts."

"Will it work?" Neji asked.

"I think so."

"Will it kill one of our team?"

Shikamaru opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. "Maybe."

Neji frowned, looked at Lee's unmoving body, looked at the bunshin mauling the ink animals as if they were pieces of paper. "Let's give it a try."

---

"Forty-five minutes!"

The Sasuke clone's call echoed throughout the empty clearing. "Forty-five minutes and I'm not dead yet. Have you given up, Sakura?"

He strolled around the perimeter of the clearing, polishing the bloodied katana along the ground. "You've picked up your poor dead friend and left," he called to the trees, pointing to the pool of blood where Lee had lain. "Surely not to heal him? You, of all people, a medic, should know he's beyond healing.

"A waste of chakra," he continued aimlessly, sheathing his sword. "That's what all of you are."

"Don't fucking bet on it."

Sakura dropped from a tree to the right of the bunshin and landed neatly in a crouch, one hand steadying herself on the ground.

"So you arrive? Alone? I don't sense your other teammates, Sakura-- have you been abandoned?"

She didn't answer, but there was a strange kind of light in her green eyes when she clenched her fists that told him she meant business. "I have forty-five minutes to beat you into a bloody stain on the ground," she hissed. "Let's get to it."

The Sasuke bunshin threw three shuriken at her with a flick of the wrist, and she ran at them, deflecting them all with a kunai. He saw Sakura allow herself a small smile as she molded chakra into her feet-- she did the same thing at the first chuunin exam-- and pound into the ground, leaving little dents in the rocky soil as she increased her speed. She launched herself at the bunshin, who quickly pulled out his own kunai and blocked her attack. Sakura turned three times with her leg outstretched, but the bunshin ducked under her kicks easily; she reversed her turns and kneed Sasuke in the face instead.

The clone flew back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Bitch!"

Sakura's eyes turned more gray than green as she simply smiled... did her skin have a blackish tinge, or was that just his eyes? And then, as the bunshin rushed towards her in anger, she disappeared in front of his very eyes.

Sasuke wheeled around, looking for evidence of a replacement jutsu, but she was nowhere to be seen. There was only the stirring of the wind in the trees behind him. He felt a presence behind him and turned around quickly, but saw only a large cherry blossom tree… so what had he felt creeping around his ankle?

He looked down--

the roots of the tree were twining around his legs!

The clone roared in fury and struggled against the tree as its branches wound its way around his torso and neck, a couple tendrils circling his head. Once fully entrapped, he saw Sakura come from the tree as if she herself were one of the branches, still holding a kunai.

Her eyes were steely as she plunged it downwards.

But those eyes widened in surprise as her dagger hit not flesh, but metal-- the clone had somehow broken free from the genjutsu's hold and was blocking her attack with his katana.

Sasuke laughed loudly and raucously and flicked his wrist, sending her kunai spinning into the dirt.

And then he lunged.

Caught off balance, Sakura tumbled backwards ungracefully, pulling out her katana as she went. She forced herself back on her feet and turned quickly, parrying his attack and putting one hand on the ground in the same crouch she'd landed in from leaping off the tree.

"Kagemane no jutsu!"

What?

The bunshin suddenly found he couldn't move… with effort, he cast his eyes downward, only to find that his shadow was joined with Sakura's. But only Nara clan members could do that jutsu…

And then another Sakura walked out from behind the trees, her fingers interlocked. "Kai."

The Sakura whose shadow was now joined with his immediately turned into Nara Shikamaru, who was surveying the bunshin with a small smile on his face.

Sakura had put a genjutsu over Shikamaru to make him look like her, and then even confused Sasuke further by casting another genjutsu to make it look like it really was Sakura. And now he was trapped. The bunshin gave a grimace of anger and started pulling at his shadows. With enough effort, he could break out of the jutsu.

"TenTen, Neji, now!" Shikamaru called, sweat breaking along his hairline. The clone's struggling tugged at the shadow. If he only held on for a couple more minutes…

The two others rushed out from trees and bushes while Sai appeared on the edge of the battlefield, carrying Lee's body. TenTen pulled out her weapons scroll again and prepared to fire, but the bunshin laughed. Even if he got punctured by all the weapons, so would the shadow-user. They would both die. Sakura stood behind him, stabbing his pant leg with her katana, into the ground.

Neji took his stance in front of Sakura, and then the bunshin understood.

"Soshoryu!"

TenTen's Twin Rising Dragons scrolls leapt into the air, her between them. She touched each seal, and soon a vast array of weapons, sharpened to a flesh-puncturing point, were hanging in midair. TenTen took aim, a gleam of revenge in her eye, and fired.

At the same time, Shikamaru let go of his jutsu, and Neji spun quickly around Sakura, blocking any of the weapons that might hit her as she held the bunshin down with her katana.

Metal death rained down upon the Sasuke clone.

He was hit about fifteen times before he managed to break away from Sakura's katana's hold. He leapt out of the way and ran towards Shikamaru, powerfully kicking the shadow-user into a tree and knocking him out cold before rounding on the others.

Sakura looked at the sun frantically-- ten minutes. He should have been dead by now, and now their strategist was unconscious… the bunshin was now rushing towards them, hands behind his back, a glint of madness in his eyes that seemed terribly familiar… what were they going to do?

TenTen's shriek broke through her reverie, and she heard Neji shout her name. "SAKURA!"

Sakura wheeled around, putting up her fists, ready to fight…

Her eyes widened dramatically, and she gasped.

The bunshin was rushing towards her, screaming, blue lightning enveloping the fist behind his back. It was Sasuke's signature technique, the one he'd almost used on Naruto, almost killed him with… and now he was trying to kill her…

He's not Sasuke. He's not trying to kill me. This is all an illusion, all an illusion, all an illusion… it's not real, it's all an illusion…

She felt herself start running away from the bunshin. If it's all an illusion… not real… I'm not really here… reality… reality manipulation… Her thoughts tumbled over one another as she ran away from the clone, fists clenched. He can only go in a straight line with this attack, but the Sharingan deduces where I'm going… the Sharingan…

THE SHARINGAN!

Sakura stopped in mid-leap and grabbed two shuriken from her pack… her last shuriken, her last defense. She wasn't the shot TenTen was, but it was all she could do… she had to try to blind him.

She sent the projectiles spinning towards the clone's eyes.

They came so close, brushing the skin, curving at the last moment to slice two lines down his cheeks so like his brother Itachi's…

She had failed, and now she would die…

You're a medic-nin, Sakura, and that means you can do things to other people no one else can do. You can use your body as a platform, you can use your fingers as knives…

Tsunade…

Sakura reversed course and charged directly at the bunshin.

Vaguely, she heard TenTen's screaming and Neji's shouting and Sai's yelling obscenities… in the back reaches of her sanity and consciousness, she saw Shikamaru, out cold, and in her imagination she saw Lee, dying slowly even though she'd healed him as best she could. Was this for them, then? Was this for Tsunade? Neji? All of them?

She couldn't think. All she could do was fight.

Because she was a soldier.

A shinobi.

She and the bunshin were inches from each other-- both of them bloodied, bruised, tired… she lifted her hand, and he lifted his fist, and they both delivered their final blows.

Sakura managed to get him, first-- the sliver of chakra she'd forced into her fingertips cut through his chest, through his skin and muscle and bone, and found its way into his heart, his bunshin heart-- and it killed him just as his Chidori sped its way into Sakura's own.

To Neji, it was like watching the end of the world from the first row. The two shinobi clashed, and blood spurted from both wounds; the bunshin fell first, chakra still glowing around his wound, but Sakura stayed up, wobbling on unsteady feet as she looked down at the hole in her chest.

"SAKURA!" TenTen and Sai ran to her, calling her name, and Neji did, too, mostly because he felt obligated to. He had no desire to see her this way, no need to see her bloody and dying, in pain, wracking her body for one extra breath.

But he caught her as she fell, because he loved her and that was what he had to do, and he felt the alien feeling of tears again, welling up in his eyes and spilling over, gliding down his cheeks and dripping onto her shirt, onto her face and neck and hair. The face he loved to stare at and the neck he longed to kiss and the hair he'd always wanted to run his hands through.

He choked, and held her close to him. He stared at her face and he kissed her neck and he ran his hands through her silken rose hair because he might never get the chance to do it again. She turned her head towards him-- the face he loved was so contorted with pain-- and smiled slightly, reaching up to touch the curve of his jaw. Something glowed a bright red on her shoulder… was it blood? "We're not going to die," she whispered.

And the world turned upside-down.

Everything slid into each other... colors mixed like paint being stirred, and Neji felt the ground leave his feet. Sai fell to the ground, TenTen yelled, and Sakura laughed. The world turned around again, everything patching up like puzzle pieces, swirling up and down, turning backwards and front-side back and who-knows-which-way-is-up.

And they were back.

Right in front of the memorial stone, in the clearing that surrounded it. TenTen's weapons were gone, and so was the bunshin. It was only them, lying on the ground. Lee and Shikamaru were still unconscious, Sakura still bleeding, TenTen, Sai, and Neji all grouped around them.

TenTen blinked in amazement, looking around her. "Konoha," she murmured, as if in prayer. "I can't believe it."

Sai looked around, and then down, grabbing Sakura's hand. "Ugly!"

Neji looked around frantically and ran to Shikamaru and Lee's bodies. "TenTen, get the medics and Nar- the Hokage. Hurry!"

And though he was supposed to be watching over Lee and Shikamaru, Neji couldn't help but steal glances at where Sakura was lying, motionless, while Sai held her hand.

---

Naruto was frantic.

He was pacing about ten times a minute, going so fast one of the medics asked him to sit down before they had to treat him as well as the others-- "Wait till your friends are on the brink of death, and then we'll talk, girly"-- and quickly backed away.

Neji, Sai, and TenTen sat almost numbly in the chairs in the Emergency Room's waiting area while Naruto paced, clutching the ends of their chairs. A male medic had quickly patched up their injuries, and then had hurried off to see to the others.

After a while, the blond Rokudaime sat down. "Tell me what happened," he demanded hoarsely.

TenTen glanced at Neji and Sai, but they said nothing, merely stared at the ground, and so she told the story for them. "Sakura and Neji found out about the reality manipulation, and then she and Shikamaru figured out that defeating the bunshin was our gateway into the real world. So we kept a watch going for the clone for about two-thirds of the day until we found him with only two hours left. We started a direct approach, but that didn't work… he was fast, and he put Lee up in front of him as a shield from my weapons. We retreated after that to think of a plan.

"Sakura put a genjutsu over Shikamaru to make him look like her, and then cast another genjutsu to make it seem like it was really her fighting. Shikamaru held the bunshin's shadow still, and I readied another weapon attack. Sakura held the bunshin with a katana once Shikamaru let go of his shadow, and Neji deflected any of the stray weapons that could have hit her. The Uchiha clone was hit a lot, but still managed to tear away before it could get fatal. He knocked out Shikamaru and ran towards Sakura with a Chidori."

Naruto gave a weak sort of groan and buried his head in his hands. "How did you kill the bunshin?"

"We didn't," Neji interrupted, speaking for the first time. His voice was a monotone. "We weren't fast enough. Sakura put chakra into her fingers and used them as a blade to cut through the bunshin, right before he hit her with the Chidori. The reality manipulation ended, and we landed in the clearing around the memorial stone."

Naruto shook his head. "Sai, you were with her last before the medics came, right?"

Sai nodded.

"How did she look?"

The artist looked away, as if he couldn't look at Naruto's face directly for fear of breaking down. "Not as ugly as usual," he murmured.

Naruto's face crumpled almost visibly, like a paper bag falling in on itself. He gave a half-choke, half-sob and shook his head. "She can't leave me, I love her…"

Neji ran a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristically emotional manner. His fingers shook. "I know the feeling."

Everyone in the room looked at him, but he paid no attention, staring at his other hand. It, too, was trembling. How long ago was it that those hands had held Sakura?

"Hyuuga?"

He glanced up, trying to keep his voice level. Naruto's wasn't. "Hn?"

"If… if she doesn't…" The Rokudaime Hokage swallowed hard, choking down regret, sorrow, grief. "Never mind. I give you my blessing, for what it's worth."

"And mine," volunteered Sai, so quietly it was almost impossible to hear.

Was it prudent-- even possible-- to feel the same insane mixture of happiness and deep grief that was rising in his chest at this very moment?

"Thank you," he murmured, and it was very quiet for a long time, until a scream broke the silence.

"Where is Sakura?" Shizune burst into the room frantically, her dark eyes widened in fear and anxiety. "Where the hell is she?"

"She's in there," the Rokudaime answered, looking up in alarm. "You aren't thinking of healing her, are you? You were just on duty with Lee and Shikamaru."

Shizune turned on him with fire in her eyes. "Of course I'm going to heal her! Half the medics working on her are still apprentices, they don't know what they're doing! The only person left in Konohagakure with more medical knowledge than myself is the one that's being operated on! So, if you'll excuse me, Hokage-sama, I'm going in there and healing her." She pushed open the door and ran inside, screaming instructions and questions and grabbing a clipboard from the latch of the door.

Naruto sighed and put his head back into his hands.

"Was it Uchiha, really?" Sai asked awkwardly, playing with an ink brush.

Neji gave a half-shrug. "There's no way of knowing. Someone might have the Sharingan that we don't know of. But that's the only logical answer."

"I've been sending out teams for information on Sasuke," Naruto said dully, his voice muffled with his tears and his hands. "I haven't gotten anything back, yet, but when I do I'll tell you. There's a chance he still might be out there."

"A chance," TenTen said hoarsely.

"Yes, a chance," Sai repeated. "There are always chances."

Damn them and their hope, Neji thought with a vicious brutality that surprised himself. How can there be anything good out of this? There's a 'chance' that Sakura will live. There's a 'chance' that it wasn't Uchiha Sasuke. I don't want chances-- I want guarantees. Is that too much to ask for?

The next wave of people to walk through the door, five minutes after Shizune, were Kakashi, Ino, and Chouji, the elder one's one visible eye filled with fear. "Is she all right?"

No answer.

The silver-haired ninja went over to his once-student's chair and shook Naruto's shoulders, completely disregarding the fact he was Hokage. "Naruto, is she all right?"

"Nobody knows," he answered quietly.

Neji was struck, for once, with the knowledge that he was not the only one who cared so much for Sakura he'd rather commit seppuku than see her die. A feeling of embarrassment and self-loathing swirled inside his chest at his selfishness… how could he possibly think that Kakashi, Naruto, Sai-- any of them, really-- could love Sakura any less than he did? As her brothers, her father figure… they were no doubt feeling just as much pain as he was right now. Maybe even more.

"And Shikamaru, is he okay?" Chouji asked, an arm around Ino's trembling body.

"He'll be fine, he was just knocked out," TenTen replied.

The two teammates let out a breath of relief and sank into chairs, and Kakashi did the same… all seven of them waited for the next hour with bated breath. TenTen, Sai, and Neji's clothing were still blood-and-dirt stained, marks of the battle.

After what seemed like an eternity, Shizune opened the door, her face cast to the ground.

Neji sat straighter in his seat. "How are they?"

"Lee-san and Shikamaru will make a full recovery," Shizune answered quietly, shutting the door behind her. "Lee-san was halfway healed by Sakura, anyway, and Shikamaru was merely unconscious."

"And Sakura?" Naruto asked, his voice full of fear… it was easy to tell he dreaded the answer, dreaded the horrors Shizune's reply could give him.

The black-haired medic crumpled into a chair next to Kakashi. "It's hard to tell," she answered hesitantly. "Her body is doing something strange."

"Strange, how?" Kakashi asked.

Shizune frowned. "It's like she's using Creation: Rebirth… but she can't, she's not asleep. She's… she's in a coma," she added quietly, wincing as the entire room stiffened in horror, "…but at the same time, her cells are regenerating, and the blue diamond on her shoulder is glowing. She has a red aura around her. It's obviously Creation: Rebirth, but we're not sure how she's doing it."

Neji suddenly stood. "She started it right after she got hit," he said quickly.

Sai looked at him. "How do you know?"

"I… I was holding her, and I saw something glow red on her shoulder. It was hectic, I thought it was blood." His glance flickered up to Shizune. "If she started it while she was conscious, doesn't that mean--"

Shizune's smile was delighted, bordering on ecstatic… her eyes glimmered with barely-contained excitement. "If she started Creation: Rebirth when she was awake, she'll most definitely heal herself!"

"And the coma?" Naruto voiced his last concern, not daring to let the hope he felt leak through his voice.

"It'll end when the healing is complete," Shizune practically squealed. "Two days, at the most… it'll take longer if she's unconscious."

TenTen leapt to her feet, laughing and crying in relief, and so did the rest of the room. Ino and TenTen hugged, Chouji and Shizune were grinning and laughing with each other, and Sai, Naruto, and Kakashi were simply looking at each other with smiles that looked like they would slice their faces in half.

Only Neji felt alone in the crowd, as if the upsurge of emotion in him wasn't to be shared with anyone else. It was amazing… it couldn't be true… Sakura had saved herself while saving all of them at the same time.

She was a genius, she was strong, she was his Sakura…

and she would live…!

Neji decided right then, at that instant, that he would be there the moment she woke.

She was alive.

Sakura was going to live.

Neji sank weakly into a seat, staring at his hands as the rest of the room rejoiced, laughing, talking, smiling with uninhibited glee-- and he smiled, really smiled, a warm and foolish smile he felt spreading over his face.

Fucking hell, yes, she was going to live!

---

Author's Note: WE ARE ALMOST DONE. Seriously, only one more chapter before Nascence is over. It's been fun, guys, really… my first mystery didn't turn out too damn bad, I think. Today was a battle day, and though I'm not sure it was my best… oh, well. Next chapter will be PURE FLUFF. So hold onto your hats.