Hinata had just finished warming up and begun sparring lightly against Naruto when she noticed the barest flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. As she was about to activate her byakugan to take a closer look, she felt a sharp pain in her chest and, looking down, saw that she had been hit by a kunai--poisoned, she realized a moment later when she fell heavily to the ground, her muscles limp and completely unresponsive. Her head lolled around until she could see the hut, though Naruto was outside her natural field of vision, but she could hear a thump as his body hit the ground moments after her own. Despite the panic threatening to overcome her mind, she found her training taking hold, and she forced herself to remain calm and consider the situation—until the front door of the hut banged open and Sakura ran out, looking terrified.

We're not dead! she wanted to yell out, as she saw her friend's face turn white with shock. Run! had quickly followed; judging by his choice of poison, the enemy ninja, who had walked over to them and retrieved his kunai before assuming what almost seemed to be a waiting posture, likely intended to take her and Naruto as hostages rather than kill them. Sakura possessed neither a powerful family nor a famous father, though, and so the danger to her was much greater, or so Hinata assumed. Then the man began to speak, and as he detailed his plans for her and Naruto, Hinata found herself overwhelmed by memories.

Fear, quickly shading into absolute terror as the men dragged her from her room. Wishing she could scream, but the gag shoved roughly into her mouth muffling her panicked cries. She had tried to struggle, but they only laughed off her childish efforts. As she grew more violent, drawing strength from her fear, one of them had commented sharply that her head had to remain intact, but that didn't say anything about the rest of her. Able to understand the implications of that even at her young age, she had stopped fighting them.

No! It wasn't like that any more. She was a ninja of the Leaf now, not a helpless five-year-old girl. She was her father's student and heir, and though she was unable to match her cousin's raw skill or greater experience, she knew that she was not as far below him as he liked to think. While she had no father or uncle to save her this time, some inner core of stubbornness, reinforced by her friendship with Naruto, refused to allow her to break down. She would not meekly submit to her captor this time, and while she was helpless at the moment, her paralysis would have to wear off eventually.

What did he mean by 'demon-girl'? she couldn't help but wonder, refocusing her attention on the confrontation between Sakura and the enemy ninja. She had heard some of the villagers say things of that nature to Sakura before, though they were always quickly hushed up by the people standing near them, and she hadn't understood what they could possibly mean. Her pink-haired friend was about as far from a demon as it was possible to get; she was quiet, studious, and, despite several years' exposure to Naruto and Ino, still quite shy in public. That this man—who most obviously was not from the Hidden Leaf—would call her that name began to set off warning bells in Hinata's mind.

All that was forgotten, though, when she saw Sakura grimly step forward and square off against the enemy ninja. If Hinata had had her voice, she would have begged her friend to run, to at least try to save herself, though the rational part of her knew that Sakura would never do such a thing. Even if it was the only option that made any sense—even if standing her ground meant dying in a fight she could never hope to win—she would never leave her friends behind. Of all of them, she had taken Kakashi's words about ninja who abandoned their teammates closest to her heart, and while at any other time that would have comforted Hinata, here and now she found she couldn't bear the thought of watching as a powerless spectator while her friend died needlessly.

That sickening feeling of helplessness only increased as she saw Sakura's eyes clench tightly shut and her body begin trembling—not in fear, as the enemy ninja seemed to think, but in what Hinata could tell was great pain. If not for his misplaced gloating, she would have assumed it was some genjutsu performed by their attacker. As it was, though, she was as clueless as he was. While the outward symptoms matched what she had heard of extreme chakra coil damage, Sakura simply didn't have enough chakra to stress her system that way; no genin did, not even Naruto or Sasuke.

Then, as Sakura stopped trembling and opened her eyes, Hinata's world seemed to drop out from under her. She knew those eyes, not first-hand, but she had heard her father speak of the blood-red eyes of the Nine-Tailed Fox during lectures on why it was so important that the Hyuuga remain strong. As if in a dream, she silently activated her byakugan and gazed in mute horror at the blazing red chakra aura clinging to the thing that wore the body of one of her closest friends.

No, she thought, her mind chasing itself in circles. No, not Sakura-chan, it can't… But her sight could not lie to her; that was not human chakra. Whatever it was, whether the Nine-Tails itself or some other demon, the not-Sakura kept its eyes fixed firmly on the enemy ninja, who no longer seemed like quite so great a threat compared to the thing confronting him. Even the barest glimpse of its eyes woke frightened animal memories in the back of Hinata's mind, instincts screaming to her that she must run and hide—that she was prey, and her only chance of surviving the next few moments was to hope that those terrible eyes would never fix their gaze directly on her.

"You will not touch them." The voice was Sakura's, but a low, distant growl seemed to echo around its edges, filling in the spaces between the words with unspoken menace. Behind his mask, the enemy ninja's face paled, and Hinata could see chakra flood his coils as he prepared to fight.

Without warning, he blurred forward almost too quickly to follow—not at the demon in Sakura's form, as Hinata had expected, but at Naruto and her. She barely had time to realize what was happening, though, before the Sakura-thing made a strange hooking gesture with its left hand. As if summoned by the motion, flaming streamers of chakra split off from its aura, curving around the ninja and impaling themselves through him, one through each of his tenketsu.

Hinata watched in horrified fascination as the demonic chakra began spreading through the man's body, burning away his own chakra and leaving his coils in shattered ruins. He began jerking spasmodically, though somehow the chakra spears held him pinioned in place, and she could see blood begin to seep from the corners of his eyes.

"You will not touch them," the Sakura-thing repeated, and this time the menacing growl laced through its voice was so strong that Hinata was sure her heart had stopped for a moment out of sheer fright. It stepped forward, unconscious grace and power evident in each stride, until it was barely a foot away from the enemy ninja, who by now was audibly groaning in pain. Its aura began to thicken around its right hand, spreading out into long, thin ribbons of chakra so concentrated that they were visible even to her normal eyesight as wavering heat-distortions in the air.

Claws, she realized a moment later. It's given itself claws made of chakra. And, as she came to that realization, Hinata desperately wished she could close her eyes—for she was sure she didn't want to see whatever it would do next. With a lashing gesture that she could only track by the trails the demon's chakra left in her byakugan-enhanced vision, it swept its hand forward, and the left side of the enemy ninja's chest all but exploded in a shower of blood and bone fragments and other things that made Hinata sick even to think about.

Feeling bile rise in the back of her throat and desperately hoping she could manage to keep from vomiting, she forced herself to focus past the man's broken corpse and look at the creature that had once been her friend. Blood and other less wholesome substances spattered the front of its clothing, though its skin was disturbingly clean, and Hinata felt terror seize her mind again as its eyes briefly focused on her before glancing away. Perhaps most frighteningly, its face was locked in a neutral expression, as though the fact that it had just killed meant less than nothing to it.

Yet, beneath the clinging layer of bloody red chakra surrounding it, she could see glimmers of Sakura's own cool, pleasant chakra signature, and she dared to hope that her friend was not completely lost. It began to walk forward again, this time almost tentatively compared to its previous movements, and with each step the demonic chakra aura seemed to flicker and fade just a little.

Finally, when it was standing nearly on top of Hinata, she heard it give a low, pained moan. As she watched helplessly, she saw its eyes—now somehow returned to the clear jade color they had always been before this day—roll back in their sockets, and she collapsed to the blood-soaked ground like a dying flower. Hinata had no time to consider the implications of this, though, as she felt the world begin to fade around her, and she gladly followed her friend into unconsciousness.

- - -

Sakura's stomach roiled as she leaned against the cool stone wall. She had already thrown up once, and now she fought to control her nausea at what she had just done—never mind that at the time she had felt like a passenger in her own body. The killing blow she had struck replayed itself over and over in her mind, and what scared her more than anything now was how casually she had delivered it, as though she had been swatting a fly rather than eviscerating another human being. At the same time, though, she found herself unable to regret his death; against all her instincts, she had even left him the option of escape, yet he had moved to attack her helpless friends instead.

Gradually, as her thoughts cleared, she began to wonder where she was; all of the buildings in the farming community were made of wood, and they were smaller than the ones surrounding her. Looking around, she noticed to her confusion that she was back home, though she had no idea how she had gotten there. Perhaps she had fallen unconscious after the fight, but she couldn't think of any injury severe enough to keep her that way for at least three days that would still have left her in good enough condition to be moved such a long distance.

More than that, she couldn't think of any reason she would simply have been left here, of all places, directly in front of the orphanage where she had lived until she was nearly six years old. All her friends knew how much she had hated the place, and surely Naruto and Hinata wouldn't have just dumped her on the pavement and left.

Unless they saw, some dark corner of her mind whispered to her. Unless they know what you really are, now. She couldn't even say she would blame them, not after what she had done. Yes, she had done it to save them, but she had killed as brutally as anything she had heard of in the stories of the Nine-Tails itself. If she were in her friends' positions, she might very well have left herself for dead on the sidewalk as well. Helpless tears beginning to streak her face as she stumbled forward, away from the wall's solid support, she walked on unsteady legs into the hell that had been her home for the earliest years of her life. It was no more than she deserved, after all.

As she moved numbly through rooms and hallways that seemed so much smaller and more cramped than in her memories—of course, she realized, I've grown taller since I was here­­—she wondered why the building appeared to be deserted. Normally, there would have been children playing in the corridors or eating their meals, but now the only sound to break the silence was the echo of her own footsteps. Once or twice, she thought she caught glimpses of a tiny pink-haired girl in ragged clothes, hiding in corners and shadows, but she dismissed the sightings as tricks of the light and her own tear-blurred vision.

Though she had initially been content to wander aimlessly through the building, at some point she realized she was walking towards a specific room, one she never wanted to see again. The more she tried to avoid it, though, the closer to it she drew, stepping through corridors that looped around in an impossible fashion and doorways that led to places they never had in reality. Finally, after some time—a few minutes? an hour? Sakura had no idea—she stood in front of a simple wooden door with a sign that still haunted her nightmares from time to time: Room 14—Okamoto Kairi and Haruno. Her old bedroom.

She saw her hand come up as though it moved of its own volition, pushing open the door to reveal a tiny room with a dusty wooden floor and stained walls that might once have been white. A lamp stood in one corner, by the head of a wooden bed, and a colorfully striped rug covered the floor next to it. On the other side of the room, as far from the bed as it was possible to get, a thin, flat futon lay on the floor. In place of a pillow, a few clothes, patched almost to the point of being unrecognizable as such, sat in a neatly-folded pile on one end of the futon. A dressing table and free-standing wardrobe filled most of the remaining space in the room, though Sakura had never been allowed to touch anything in either.

And, sitting on the edge of the bed, her legs swinging idly back and forth, was…herself? Sakura blinked a few times, jarred out of her dreamlike state by the sight; she had half-expected to see Kairi here, but instead, she could have been looking into a mirror—if she had somehow reverted to the age she had been when she lived in this room. Only the younger girl's eyes, a deep red color with slitted black pupils, marked her as different from a nearly six-year-old Sakura.

"Welcome," the girl said in Sakura's high, clear voice, smiling so coldly that any sincerity in the greeting was lost at once. "I must say, you haven't led a very pleasant life, have you?"

Mutely, Sakura shook her head. She knew who—or, more accurately, what—she was speaking to now, and she was sure she had never been so frightened before in her life, not even when she had seen what she thought were the corpses of her friends lying on the ground in front of her. Somehow, she had broken her seal, and now the Nine-Tails was loose within her mind.

"Not exactly," it said, answering Sakura's unspoken question. "Think of your seal as a locked door. The satellite seals form the lock, and the primary seal is the door itself. What you've done is like unlocking the door, allowing me to step out a little ways. Unfortunately, the door 'wants' to stay shut and locked, and even I cannot keep it open for very long."

"Oh." Sakura felt as though her mind was spinning in circles. Foremost among her thoughts was relief that she hadn't let the demon free after all, assuming it was telling the truth. She also felt a bit confused, though; how did it know so much about fuuinjutsu, and why was it even telling her this? Shouldn't it want to keep her as frightened as possible?

The Nine-Tails shrugged, an oddly sinuous gesture that looked out of place on its girlish body. "Why bother?" it asked. "No matter how much I terrify you, it won't keep me free of my prison any longer, and we have things to discuss. As for your other question, I know everything you do. If you had stopped to think about it rather than panicking like any other human, you would have realized the same thing."

Flushing at the insult, Sakura frowned, then nodded. Demon though it might be, the Nine-Tails was telling the truth in this case, based on what she had learned about her seal so far—not much, as the Hokage hadn't yet allowed her to read the scroll detailing its exact composition and construction, but enough to know that what it had said about the function of the primary and satellite seals was correct. That raised another question, though. If it could read her mind, then what could it want to discuss with her?

"Not so much discuss with you as inform you of," the demon said, again smiling its cold smile, and this time its eyes seemed almost to glow with an inner light. "You drew on my power today, to save the ones you call your friends. By 'opening the door' to me, though, so to speak, you have allowed me access to your mind—obviously, or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

"Right now, I could burn your mind and soul to ash if I wished, leaving your body a helpless shell alive only in the most technical sense. If you ever try to use my power again, I will do just that, even though it might well mean my own death. I may be a prisoner, but I will not allow myself to be used. Do you understand?"

Unable to keep herself from shivering beneath its awful stare, Sakura nodded once, jerkily. "I…I understand," she whispered, then, unable to help herself, asked, "But…why not now?"

The thing that looked so much like her tilted its head to one side, as though in thought, then grinned in such a way as to display far more teeth than Sakura had ever suspected she possessed. "I have lived a long time," it said. "Longer than you can imagine. Your lifespan is as nothing to me, yet I find myself with the knowledge that I will die when you do—and I will welcome it as a release from the prison in which I have been sealed, though once I feared dying more than anything else. The one who sealed me here has taught me that there are things worse than death, and now I wish to pass on that lesson.

"One day, you will find yourself in a situation much like the one you encountered today. It is inevitable, given your…occupation. When that time comes, you will be faced with the knowledge that you can save your friends if only you draw upon my power, but by doing so you will not merely die but forfeit your soul as well. The pain you experience in that moment of indecision will be far worse than any quick death I could mete out to you now, and in that I will have my repayment in full for being forced to endure this imprisonment."

With a mocking half-bow, the Nine-Tails stood up and, closing its eyes, faded away like a shadow in the morning light.

- - -

Finally, Kakashi thought, watching as the girl on the bed in front of him ceased her restless stirring and seemed to relax into a more peaceful slumber. He had returned to the hut where his team was staying after losing the trail made by the foreign ninja only a few hours into the chase. Even Pakkun had been unable to pick up their scent, and so, reluctantly, he had abandoned his efforts.

What he had found when he returned, though, made him wonder how anything could have gone so spectacularly wrong in such little time. All three of his genin had been unconscious, with two of them also affected by a poison he was able to identify as a paralytic neurotoxin made from the venom of a rare snake. Lying nearby had been the savagely mauled remains of an unknown ninja, and when Kakashi saw the poison-coated kunai still gripped in the man's right hand, it had not been difficult to figure out what had happened.

After unsuccessfully searching the dead ninja's body for any type of identification, he had moved his genin into the hut and, separating Sakura from the other two, settled back to wait for them to wake up. At first, he had seriously considered killing the pink-haired girl before she could regain consciousness, but he had changed his mind upon considering what he had seen of the situation outside. Even if she had somehow tapped into the Nine-Tails' power, as seemed likely from the nature of the unknown ninja's wounds, it was clear from the positioning of the bodies that she had been protecting her friends—and as they had both been unharmed when the Nine-Tails itself would just as soon have killed them as their attacker, Kakashi could only conclude that Sakura had been able to control the demon.

Just to be safe, though, he had checked her eyes—perhaps the most obvious sign of possession, whether by a demon or any other type of spirit—and found them to be as human as ever. Whatever she had done to herself, it was gone now. Much to his consternation, she had begun thrashing around in her sleep not long after he put her in her bed, muttering incoherently as though arguing with someone. Not wanting her to harm herself involuntarily, he had stayed with her, part of him wondering at the change in his attitude from the time he had first met her.

"Is…is she going to be okay, Kakashi-sensei?" The quiet voice of his other female genin caused him to turn around, and he saw her and Naruto both peering around the doorframe, worry evident on their faces. Good; now that they were awake, he could find out exactly what had happened to them.

"She'll be fine," he said, hoping it was the truth. Just because the Nine-Tails' influence appeared to have faded from Sakura didn't mean that the experience had left her unharmed. "Now, I believe we need to talk."

Both genin nodded and followed him from the bedroom to the single larger room they used as a kitchen and dining area. Sitting down across from them, he could tell by their pale complexions and sluggish movement that the poison hadn't fully flushed itself out of their systems yet. At least it was one that would wear off relatively quickly, as he had brought only a basic medical kit with him for this mission, one which notably did not include any types of antidotes.

Hinata began to speak without having to be prompted, with Naruto interrupting every so often to fill in information she had either not noticed or left out, and Kakashi grew more concerned with every sentence she spoke. Not only had he failed to notice not one, but two independently operating foreign ninja in the immediate area, it seemed clear that the one who attacked the genin had been working for Orochimaru of all people. That in itself was disturbing enough, but his plans for Hinata and Naruto were even more so—not only the plans themselves, but also the implication that the snake sannin was confident enough of his position to risk a conflict with the Hidden Leaf if his actions were discovered.

To his relief, though, the two genin's account of Sakura's actions confirmed his earlier suppositions that she had been able to control herself to at least some extent. That she had actively moved to defend her friends proved that, as did the fact that she had only attacked in response to the enemy ninja's own aggression. Now he needed to make sure Naruto and Hinata understood that, as he could tell that both of them had recognized what had happened to her and were torn between concern for their friend and fear of the demon that had nearly destroyed their home. Naruto, especially, seemed worried, something for which Kakashi couldn't blame the boy.

"What I'm about to tell you is something you cannot repeat to anyone," he said after several long moments of silence. "This information is protected by law, and the penalty for breaking it is death—and yes, that sentence has been carried out in the past. Is this clear?"

Now visibly frightened, the two genin nodded in unison, causing Kakashi to sigh. Technically, he shouldn't even be telling them this now, but they deserved to know. It wasn't like the law had had its desired effect in the first place, and he wondered why the Hokage hadn't abolished it years ago when that became clear. If nothing else, doing so might have forced people to admit that they hated the girl for something that had been done to her, rather than something she herself had done. He doubted it would have made a difference—he was honest enough to admit that it wouldn't have in his case—but it would have been something, at least.

Done is done, he told himself, shaking his head. He couldn't change what he had done or thought in the past, but hopefully he could ensure that at least two people would not turn their backs on their friend.

"You know about the Nine-Tails' attack nearly thirteen years ago," he began. "The histories record that the Fourth Hokage sacrificed his own life in order to deal a death blow to it, but, as you must have realized after what happened this morning, those histories have been deliberately falsified. Instead, the Fourth—my own jounin-sensei, though I and my teammate weren't with him at the time—performed a ritual technique that required the sacrifice of his own life. In exchange, the Nine-Tails was sealed away in the body of a newborn girl, its life bound to her own.

"According to the Third Hokage, who assisted him in that ritual, his last wish was that the girl be honored as a hero of the village. For all of his intelligence and fighting skill, he was idealistic to the point of naiveté, and, as Sakura herself has no doubt told you, that is hardly what happened. The Third was afraid she might actually be killed, and so he forced the passage of a law forbidding anyone to speak of what happened to the Nine-Tails, in the hope that it would be forgotten and she would be allowed to grow up normally."

Hinata's eyes were threatening to brim over with tears, and she shook her head as though she wished she could disbelieve what he was saying. "So…her mother…" she whispered, so softly that he nearly failed to hear her. "That's why…oh, gods. Does she know about this?"

"I don't know," Kakashi answered her honestly, though he was unsure whether she had actually intended the question for him. "She shouldn't—the law was extremely strict on that point—but given that she has been studying fuuinjutsu, of all things, with the Third himself, she might. You'll have to ask her that."

Concerned at Naruto's silence, Kakashi looked over at him, then wished he hadn't. The normally cheerful genin seemed torn between anger and disgust, and Kakashi subtly readied himself to stop him if he decided to try anything drastic. That fear proved unfounded, though, when he spoke a moment later.

"So my father sealed the most horrible demon ever encountered inside a baby girl, and people call him a hero for it? And they hate her?" The blond boy's voice was getting louder with ever sentence, and Kakashi winced as he realized at whom Naruto's anger was directed. "Did you know that the first thing she remembers anyone ever saying to her was 'I hope you die in a gutter'? Or that her roommate at the orphanage tried to kill her, and that's why she's had to live in a dump of an apartment all by herself since she was six years old?"

Of course I know—maybe not everything, but enough, Kakashi thought, watching as Hinata pulled gently on Naruto's arm, shooting a significant glance at the closed door into the room where Sakura was sleeping.

The boy frowned, but nodded in acquiescence, and continued in a softer voice, "And that law…maybe they were just trying to protect her, but it sounds to me like they were ashamed of her, or maybe of my father—like they wanted to try to forget what he did to her. It's wrong."

"Yes, it is," Kakashi admitted. "Don't be too harsh on your father, though. The Nine-Tails had wiped out nearly eighty percent of the Leaf ANBU and upper-level jounin by the time he performed the sealing ritual, and it wasn't going to stop with them. If he hadn't done what he did, there wouldn't be a Hidden Leaf today. And, don't forget that he sacrificed his own life as well."

Grudgingly, Naruto nodded, though judging by the expression on his face, he still wanted to argue some more. Kakashi hadn't expected anything else; it was hard to remember sometimes that his genin were not just young but had grown up in a time of peace, and despite their training, they didn't really have any concept of the kinds of sacrifices that were made during a war. It was not an innocence he had ever possessed, at least not that he could remember, and today had gone a long way towards disillusioning them. Not only had they seen their first death, they had found out that they had been systematically lied to about the most important event in recent village history, one in which Naruto's own father had been instrumental.

"What about my mother?" Naruto asked suddenly, and for a moment Kakashi was confused about what he meant. "She said something to me about a debt that my family owes Sakura. Is that what she was talking about?"

Kakashi felt himself flinch visibly, and he cursed his momentary lapse in self-control. He had hoped not to have to talk about his own role in certain matters, even though he was sure Yukie would inform her son of everything when he returned home. He knew that what he was about to say would likely cause the boy to hate him, and he found that that thought bothered him more than he cared to admit. He had been annoyed at first that he would actually have to teach a genin team for once, but all three of them had grown on him over the past several weeks, and losing the respect of his own jounin-sensei's son was an unpleasant prospect.

As if she sensed that something unpleasant was about to happen, Hinata quietly stood up. "I don't think this is something I need to know about," she said, resting her hand briefly on Naruto's shoulder before turning away. "I'm going to check on Sakura." When she had gone into the bedroom, Naruto fixed his gaze on Kakashi, still clearly angry but curious as well.

"I told you that the Third forced the council to make the law forbidding people to talk about the Nine-Tails," Kakashi finally said, considering his words carefully. "It would be more accurate to say that he made a deal with them. As part of that deal, if anything were to happen to Sakura's mother, she would be made a ward of the village. That is the reason she ended up in an orphanage after her mother's death, rather than with the Hokage.

"When the orphanage proved…unsafe for her, your mother petitioned to be granted custody of her. The Hokage argued in her favor, but it was a civilian matter, so the village council had the ultimate authority. Due in part to testimony from a number of high-ranking ninja, all of them survivors of the fight against the Nine-Tails, her request was denied. That, I believe, is the debt your mother mentioned—not only that your father used Sakura to seal away the Nine-Tails, but also that she was forced to grow up alone rather than as part of your own family."

"She would have been my sister?" Naruto murmured, his voice filled with some emotion Kakashi could not identify, as he glanced briefly at the door leading to Sakura's bedroom. "There's something else you're not telling me," he said, and Kakashi marveled at the resemblance to his father at that moment.

"I was one of the ninja who argued against her," he admitted, "and as your father's only surviving student, my opinion carried a great deal of weight with the council." Naruto's face went white, and for a long moment the two simply looked at each other. Then, taking care to look anywhere but at Kakashi, Naruto nodded and stood up, the scraping of his chair against the floor seeming terribly loud.

"Thank you for telling me the truth," he said, his voice every bit as cold as his mother's had once been. With that, he disappeared after Hinata into Sakura's bedroom, leaving Kakashi to wonder at how choices made so long ago could have such unexpected consequences.

- - -

Mmm…warm, Sakura thought, burrowing deeper into her covers and pulling her pillow closer to her body. Gradually, the realization that her pillow was quite a bit larger than it should be—not to mention that a strange buzzing noise seemed to be emanating from her comforter—filtered through her sleep-muddled mind, and she reluctantly blinked open her eyes.

"Ack!" she yelped, upon finding that the 'pillow' she had been cuddling was in fact a certain Hyuuga heir and, furthermore, that her third teammate was slumped over half on top of her and half about to fall off of the chair he had drawn up next to her bed, his snoring causing the buzzing she had heard. The sudden noise and movement as she reflexively backed away from them were apparently enough to wake them up, and, upon realizing their respective positions, they both jumped back from her. Part of Sakura mourned the loss of the warmth she had been enjoying, while part of her was mortified by the picture they must have presented—an opinion apparently shared by her friends, judging by the matching scarlet blushes on their faces.

"Um…good morning?" Sakura finally managed to get out, after what seemed like an eternity of embarrassed silence.

Naruto laughed, a bit nervously, Sakura thought. "I guess we fell asleep, huh?" he said, appearing to find something fascinating about his feet at the moment.

"We were worried about you," Hinata said quietly, and Sakura noticed the telltale signs that she had been crying recently. "Kakashi-sensei said you would be okay, but…do you remember what happened yesterday?"

Desperation/agony/fury/blood/loneliness/terror/surprise. Sakura's peaceful mood shattered under the onslaught of memories, and, not trusting herself to speak, she simply nodded. Unable to repress a convulsive shudder at what she had done, she glanced down at her hands as though expecting to find them stained with blood. Her conversation with the Nine-Tails, she put out of her mind as best as she could; she never wanted to think about that again.

"Then…do you know about…it?" Naruto asked tentatively, looking as though he wished he could be anywhere else at the moment.

Again, Sakura nodded. "Since I was eight," she murmured, and this time it was her turn to cast her eyes downward. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I—"

"Couldn't," Naruto finished for her. "We know. Kakashi told us about the law, and about what really happened to the Nine-Tails."

That hadn't been what Sakura was going to say. Truthfully, the existence of the law hadn't even entered her mind as a reason not to tell her friends the truth about her, at least not before she became the Hokage's apprentice; she had been afraid—no more and no less. Judging by their expressions, though, she had had nothing to fear, and she felt tears begin to cloud her vision at that realization.

"It doesn't matter what my father did to you," Naruto said, now staring directly into her eyes. "You're still Sakura—our friend—and you saved us yesterday."

Now Sakura began to cry in earnest, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as the utter sincerity in his voice struck her. Beside him, Hinata simply nodded before leaning forward and hugging her tightly, and, after a moment's hesitation, Naruto joined them as well.

"I was scared when I saw your chakra change," Hinata admitted. "And your eyes…" Sakura could feel her shiver as she trailed off, but she continued, "You're still you, though, and somehow I know you would never hurt us."

At that moment, Sakura knew the Nine-Tails had been utterly wrong. If it ever came down to a question of letting her friends die or allowing the demon within her to tear apart her soul in exchange for the power to save them, she wouldn't have to hesitate for even an instant before making her decision. She would do anything for them, anything at all for the ones who trusted her when she wasn't even sure she trusted herself.

- - -

Author's Notes: Well, judging by the reviews for last chapter, at least it seems people are still enjoying this little project of mine. Thank you all very much for the kind words; they're very appreciated, as is any criticism people may have to offer. In response to one question I received, no, I don't plan to make a habit of ending chapters with cliffhangers (as I would hope would be evident by the fact that I've had a total of one in the past ten chapters); as a dramatic device, I think they can be very useful at times, but when overused they lose their impact. Will there be more? Probably. Will there be many more? Not according to my story outline.

As for this chapter, I hope the new plot threads and character interactions are proving interesting. When originally plotting out this story, I toyed with the idea of making Naruto and, to a lesser extent Hinata, less trusting of Sakura for a while, but I just couldn't justify it based on the way I had established their characters already. So, you get the Naruto/Kakashi tension instead, which ends up working much better anyways, in my own not entirely humble opinion--plus some other things which will be coming up. Rest assured, the repercussions of the events in the past few chapters are far from over. In any event, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and, as always, thank you for reading!