A/N: This chapter clashes with the manga. It's not canon. Like anyone cares anyway.

We've done this before, this song and dance,

long ago in a place such as this.

It seems long, far away,

Do you still remember?

Regrowth - Ch. 5

Sakura wiped her brow, bent over a beeping monitor, checking several statistics. The advanced medical equipment here had been surprising, but then again, this whole country seemed to have things everywhere that just boggled her mind. Half the time she had spent at this machine so far had been figuring out what this thing was. However, she was smart enough to figure out the equipment quickly, hooking Nagato up to an IV and forcing him to eat. She supposed she should have put him out to force him to sleep too, but a look from him made her choose otherwise. Meanwhile, Konan stood vigilantly by, silent, simply watching.

Nagato's mouth twitched slightly as he watched her progress. "How long?"

Sakura sighed with exasperation. How many times had he asked that? "Like I told you, I don't know. It could take days, it could take weeks, it all depends on how quickly your body can recover. I can speed up the process a little bit, but not a lot. I have to let you heal as naturally as possible to prevent problems in the future." He said nothing to that, simply closing his eyes with resignation and clasping his hands on his lap. It was small things like that, simple mannerisms, that reminded her of Itachi. The two were actually startlingly similar, except for that blood red hair and spiraling ringed eyes. His eyes, though, even those reminded her of Itachi. The Rin'negan was mesmerizing, staring in them felt much like gazing into the Sharingan, only much more powerful, and somehow... different. Yes, it felt different, just like coffee tasted different from chocolate, but both had the same rich, powerful texture.

Pinching her nose, her eyes tired from staring at the screen so long, Sakura moved back from the panel, checking the fluids in the IV bag before addressing both of them. "You have a couple hours on this bag. Konan, I showed you how to put in the next one, so I need to go take a break for a while. If you need anything I'll be... well, I don't know where I'll be."

Nagato's mouth twitched again. "I'll let you know." He held his ring, Zero, in his palm, showing her briefly. Next to him, Konan showed her own ring, White. For a moment she was puzzled. Did they know she still kept her ring? No, no, of course they did. It was like Kisame said. Shinobi simply never gave up that kind of thing. They knew. She only smiled in response, holding up The Void.

"Right. I'll know." She stretched, her back popping, sounding utterly abused for those past hours. With one last snap, she rubbed her lower back, heading out of the eerily empty medical ward and heading toward the main lounge. A fire burned invitingly, though she expected this room to be empty too. However, Kisame sat nearby in a heavily worn chair. Wait. This wasn't the main lounge. Where was this? No, this was a side lounge, she remembered now. Her tired brain was playing tricks on her. She knew this place, she had come here during the first real talk she had ever had with Kisame. Here he was, too, in the same place, reading a book. In the past, she had never imagined him to be a book lover, but she eventually learned better. He did read quite a bit, though not as much as Itachi. She flopped down into the chair right across, incidentally the same one she had taken before. He looked up briefly at her, noticing her tired expression.

"Found something good on the shelf, if you feel like reading." He didn't wait for a yes or no, tossing the book at her, knowing she would catch it even if she was nearly dead with fatigue. "Figured it would be something you'd read." With that, he went back to reading his own book, so old and worn she couldn't make out the title.

She turned over the book he tossed at her to look at the cover. Anthology of modern philosophy? It wasn't something she would pick up at first glance, but out of curiosity, she paged through it. It contained several essays by many authors about theories on the world and why things went the way they did. Something like this would never have caught her eye, but now she couldn't turn away from it. She had always found philosophy as a curiosity, something she often had to ignore in favor of medical journals. Eventually, though, she was distracted by the increasing heat in the room as the fire burned full force. He must have just started the fire before she entered.

Kisame fidgeted in his seat noticeably. "Ugh... it's fucking hot in here." He unzipped his cloak hastily, chucking the heavy load away. His defined muscles seemed to ripple with every movement, though with that kind of muscle mass it wasn't surprising. A slightly faded ANBU tattoo moved along with his shoulder as he turned in his chair, stretching after reading so long. She didn't want to look like she was staring, but she couldn't look away. Everything in life was interesting in its own way, and she hadn't really gotten to have a good look at him like this. The extent of his demon possession had left him with a different kind of musculature, bigger in some areas, especially the shoulder and pectorals. Her eyes darted hastily back to the book when he turned back around.

Sitting next to the fire didn't help her situation. It was already stifling in here, and somehow she was getting warmer by the second. She couldn't take it anymore. The cloak was the first to go, followed by her heavy sweater, leaving a plain black camisole. Relief was almost instant, and she couldn't help but sigh at the cool draft.

If Kisame had been a weaker man, he would have done something inappropriate in the company of an attractive, sweaty kunoichi. Fortunately he wasn't a teenager anymore. He had learned his manners long ago. The hard way. He grimaced to himself, remembering that very painful lesson. What had become of that woman? he wondered. Was she still in Kirigakure, being a good citizen, unlike him? Probably still emasculating every man in her presence. That testy brunette knew well how to put a man in his place, and he still bore the scars. Not to mention her technique, a liquid that could melt anything, even hard stone. He thanked every male conscience he had that he knew better than to mess with a woman. After all, Sakura could undoubtedly think of something far worse.

She turned the page, now only halfway interested in the reading. Honestly, she was tired. It had taken the good part of three hours just to get Nagato out of critical state. How had he managed to last so long without medical care? Maybe Konan knew the basics. No, she doubted that, Konan wasn't very good with that, she was all battle. Who had done the medical business? Kakuzu had needed to patch Hidan back together now and then, same with Deidara. Maybe he was the medic. That made more sense. Without Kakuzu, Nagato would have begun to decline from that time. Had Kakuzu known about Nagato's secret? No, probably not. She shoved the thoughts out of her mind. It didn't make sense, and didn't matter now. Her eyes glanced up from the text, growing weary from all the reading. "So what are you reading about?"

He jumped slightly, so absorbed in his book that she startled him. "Oh, it's foreign mythology, from other countries. They have some pretty strange legends in here."

At the moment, she found that even more intriguing than the book on philosophy, so she walked to stand behind him, peering over his shoulder. An illustration of a large sea monster, a kraken, sprawled over one of the pages, grabbing boats and eating them. She chuckled lightly and pointed to it. "Figures you'd like something like that."

"That too, but hey, it's strange how a lot of foreign legends match up with ours, you know? They have myths about dragons, kinda like we do, except their dragons fly and destroy everything. Look here." He flipped a few pages, turning to the section about dragons. Sure enough, the illustration wasn't like any kind of dragon she had heard of in their own mythology, but there were similarities, for sure. "Tales about dragons come from all over the world, not just here. You suppose that dragons could have been real?"

She scoffed at that. "After looking at bijuu, I wouldn't be surprised about anything."

"Yeah, true. But then again, they have another story here about a guy that waxed a bunch of feathers to his arms and used them to fly."

"Now that is definitely idiotic and not true."

He closed the book with a laugh. "Hard to tell what's real and what's not, isn't it?"

She barely caught the bitter undertone in his voice, that long-suffering tone that she recognized all too well. His casual humor nearly hid it, but she understood him too well to miss such a thing. Her hand reached to touch his lightly, looking at him with an unreadable gaze. "Sometimes the mystery is what makes it more alluring." His eyes widened slightly at her implication, but she ignored that, moving steadily closer, her face close enough to feel the warmth rising from his. Her lips hovered a bare centimeter from his own when a knock on the door made her jump.

Konan let herself in, carrying a tray with two bowls perched upon it. She took in the scene. Kisame, blushing madly, Sakura, her hand on his, and dangerously close to his face. The book on his lap, forgotten. She conveniently ignored the scene, setting the tray down on an empty nearby table. "He's asleep, and nothing urgent to take care of, so I thought you might be hungry."

Kisame recovered first with a small grin. "Your cooking always was some of the best I've had."

Sakura could smell the inviting odors already. "It smells delicious!"

With a small smile, Konan nodded. "Someone had to feed the masses. Bottomless pits, all of them. I had to learn to cook, so with that, training, and keeping Nagato well, I've had my hands full. Now, though, I think I would like to learn more about healing, to help Nagato more. I'm sure he would like to learn some techniques as well, just in case."

"Right... well, while I'm here, I should be able to do that. I don't want to leave until I see him well on his way to recovery, and most of that time will probably be him sleeping, so might as well. In return, you'll have to teach me to cook!"

"Of course." She made to leave the room, though before she exited, she paused under the doorway. "Life is short, you know?" She glanced back, her golden eyes glimmering. "It's best to take every opportunity you can." With that, she left as silently as she came, leaving the other two behind to contemplate what she meant.

Kisame sighed, glancing back at Sakura. "She has a point, maybe I should learn to cook a thing or two."

She smirked, her hand grazing his cheek. "That's not all she meant." Before he could even react, she tilted his head up, lips honing in for the kill, pausing only briefly to make sure that this time was not interrupted. The kiss began small and chaste, though a surge of emotions rushed to the forefront of her mind despite its simplicity. This fire that sparked between them was so much more intense than the fire that burned desperately in the fireplace. His lips moved smoothly against hers, slowly increasing the pent up passion between them. Things only turned more intense as the seconds ticked by, the overbearing heat finally causing them to break apart.

Sweat dripping down his face and breathing heavily, he recovered enough to speak. "It's really too fucking hot in here."

Her lips tilted in a playful smile. "Let's take our food outside, then." She grabbed the tray, two bowls of udon soup laden with meats and vegetables steaming invitingly. Before leaving, she shouldered her long cloak, noticing that he did the same. Not far from the side lounge was a terrace with a long overhang, protecting them from the relentless rain. After being in the desert so long, they had both lost track of the seasons, the desert an unchanging, hot waste. It was now early spring, and the chill air was a welcome relief from the overheated lounge. She placed the tray on a low wrought iron table and sat on a nearby cushion, breaking her chopsticks and taking a bite. Damn. Yes, she needed cooking lessons from Konan. Badly.

Next to her, Kisame had a similar reaction. "This... is the best udon soup I have ever had in my life. She's really improved in the past two years."

"There probably hasn't been much to do in the last two years."

"Probably not." He smirked slyly, pointing at her. "Hey, maybe you could try to be a chef."

She made a disgusted face at that. "I hate cooking, even with the really simple recipes I know right now. I just hate it. It's not like I'm lazy, I put so much time and energy into my training. I guess I just have an inborn hatred of it."

"Maybe you hate it because you're no good at it." With a low chuckle, he ducked just in time to avoid a punch to the head.

"I'm not bad at the recipes I already know! I guess I just never had the time or the motivation to do it after spending so much time each day training my ass off. I'd be so tired I could barely hop into the shower and then into bed."

He smirked. "Getting into bed won't be a problem now." He ducked another blow. She only smiled, her eyes glinting with mischief. Somehow, it was easy to ignore the innuendo, though of course she reacted out of habit, and because it was expected from someone of her temperament. Yet, she couldn't be mad with him, she only sighed lightly, eating more of her soup before responding.

"No, maybe not." Her look slowly grew somber. "At least now, we don't have to worry about being murdered in our sleep."

He also sobered at the thought. "That was always the hardest part of being a missing nin. No, of being a ninja. You never knew who was going to suddenly die overnight, you know? You never knew if it might be you next. But here, in Amegakure, Pein... no, Nagato, created a safe haven for us. It was one of the few places where we could sleep easy, and take some time away from the world. And now, yeah, it's even more so. In the desert, there was always the odd chance of a hostile ninja coming around, or something just as nasty, but not here. Maybe now I can get some real sleep."

"Real sleep..." She leaned back against the stone wall, looking up into the overcast sky. "I don't even remember what real sleep feels like. I've been running and hiding for so long. Well... I guess I don't mind, then, if we have to wait long enough for Nagato to fully recover. It would be a relief to finally get rest." A small smile finally graced her lips, her gaze slowly drifting to his. "You know, despite all the rain, this is a pleasant village. The people here have had hard lives, but relatively safe ones. It's easier to relax. It may be wrong, but sometimes I wonder if this massive destruction was actually a good thing. But... then again, so many people died... I guess I don't know what to think about this."

He nodded slowly, his face grim. "Don't think you're alone there, you're not the only one who has wondered from time to time. But then I would see a half crazed ninja wandering the desert, looking for all the world like demons were after them, and I would see that this was no life that anyone wanted. The only people benefiting from this are the civilians and the neutral countries."

It was so similar to something Itachi had said before. To the people of neutral countries, all ninjas were evil. They did nothing but disturb the peace and cause casualties. "In a way, so do we, the sane ones left behind. We can finally rest safe in our beds. We can finally not worry about the children of the villages, or the wounded in the hospitals. We can find other hobbies, we can find out what else there is to life besides killing enemy ninjas. Whether it was right or not, it did happen, and we might as well take advantage of whatever benefits we can."

"Yeah, might as well. We can't take it all back. Although, whether Madara was around or not, there still would have been massive conflict. There still would have been another major clash. We just faced the inevitable."

She tilted her bowl to her lips, finishing off the last of the warm soup. On a cold day like this, it was a comfort. Her hand rested on his shoulder once he finished as well, his eyes darting in her direction. "Thanks, Kisame."

"For what?"

"For listening, I guess. I couldn't always talk about things like this with the people I knew before. Sometimes my thoughts would turn to something dark but realistic, and many of my friends were too set in their ways to think of such possibilities. They didn't like my sometimes morbid fascination with some things. But I think you can understand, at least somewhat. It's easy to talk to you."

He sighed heavily. "I know what you mean about that. I haven't exactly had a lot of people to talk to either. You know. Blue skin and all that. ...well, and the mutilation thing. I kinda had this thing about mutilating corpses once in a while. But hey, I got carried away! Anyway... being in this organization was a good chance to find people to talk to, at least for freaks like us. Everyone had their own strange problems, and I guess we all appreciated that, if nothing else. Hell, you were the most normal member we had in there. Even so... I found you easy to talk to also." He offered a saucy grin. "Maybe we both have a strange penchant for the complicated and messy."

Her loud laugh resounded off the walls of the terrace, providing a strange echo around the patter of rain. "We're ninjas, everything is complicated and messy, it's just our way of life." She paused suddenly in mid thought, sitting straighter and staring at him with wide eyes. "Wait... it... it's not. Not anymore. It's not our way of life now. Nobody needs ninjas now. What does that mean for us?"

He shrugged. "Well, like you said, we just find something else to do. You can be a chef, and I can provide the sushi!"

"There is NO way you are making me be a chef." Though she was adamant on that one, her gaze seemed to be away in the distance again. "No, that's not for me. But I think... for now, we'll just stick together. Maybe we'll travel around, see the different countries like you suggested. Maybe then we can find something we would like to do."

"You'll stick with me... huh?"

"Yes. I'll stick with you." Even in the overcast, dim light, he could plainly see her warm smile, reassuring any doubts he might have had.

"Good. I was starting to get really sick of being ditched all the time." He smiled once more for good measure, his gaze returning to the skies above. What was it out there that she was always looking for? What was it that she saw in those vacant skies, lost in thought?