The first thing that went through Naruto's dazed and bleary mind, as he started the long and slow trek back to conscious thought, was recognition, mixed with confusion. Someone nearby was sobbing, quietly. Someone familiar. He couldn't understand why, but it hurt him, for some reason, and he struggled to rouse himself to silence it.
His eyelids felt leaden and heavy, but after a moment they slid back over his eyes. He looked around blearily, and saw Sakura, curled up by his bedside with her head in her hands. And then it all came back, so horrible that he could barely breathe with the shame of it.
He'd broken his promise. And here she was, the girl betrayed, crying by his bedside like a lonely child. He tried to speak, but his mouth was dry. He tried to reach for her, but his arms were heavy with the drugs he'd been dosed with. He tried to move, to say how sorry he was, but his body was bound and broken, and the weight of failure held him prone.
Uchiha Sasuke was gone. And in a tiny room in Konoha, the pain of his leaving bore bitter fruit.
XXXXX
The first impression of Sound that Sasuke got was when three shuriken buried themselves in the tree he was leaning against. In later years, he would find this bitterly appropriate, but at the time, his first reaction was to fling himself into the air and activate his Sharingan. His attackers were two hundred feet away, hiding in the foliage. They also wore Sound forehead protectors, which was pretty much the only thing that kept him from fireballing them to death.
He alighted gracefully to the ground again, and glanced expressionlessly up at the trees where they hid.
"Something I can help you with?" he enquired, tone carefully blank. Rule two of infiltration: the less you give them, the less they have against you.
The two of them dropped out of the trees and looked at him, hard. The one nearer to him was glaring daggers. His chakra level seemed relatively minor, compared to Sasuke, but he filed him away anyway for future reference. The other one was far more interesting. She was short, and stocky enough for her age, her hair a vibrant shade of green and closely cropped around her skull.
And there was something oddly wrong about her. His Sharingan couldn't tell him what it was, but he could feel it, just looking at her. The fact that she was in charge (and she was in charge, whatever her companion seemed to think) just added to his sense of unease. What, precisely, had been done to this girl?
"Yeah, you can fuckin' help us with somethin'," hissed the boy. Sasuke glanced back at him. "You can fuck off, that's how you can fuckin' help us."
"Shut up, Kenrate ," said the girl, absently. She continued staring at Sasuke, silently.
"Sasuke Uchiha, right?"
He nodded.
"Thought so. Kabuto said you'd be showing up." Beside her, Kenrate went red.
"How do we know you're not a fake?" he snarled. Sasuke managed not to roll his eyes. This was face saving of the worst ilk, and he had no time for it.
"You know anyone else with a Sharingan? Because I'd like to meet them if you do." He tilted his head, birdlike, and gazed blankly at the boy.
Kenrate, still blushing from embarrassment, went redder still.
"Yeah? Well last I checked, fuck-face, you were supposed to have company. Where's the Sound Four?"
The girl sighed.
Then she flooded the entire clearing with enough killing intent to drain the blood from Sasuke's face and send Kenrate staggering away, eyes too wide.
"I told you to shut up," she said, calmly. "Maybe you could try obeying orders?"
Kenrate mumbled something incoherent. She rolled her eyes, and stalked over to him. Sasuke was deeply impressed that Kenrate didn't try to escape. He wasn't sure he would have shown such metal, in similar circumstances.
"You shouldn't embarrass me in front of the new guy, Kenrate," she said, quietly. Kenrate's mouth was open, but no sound came out. "It's upsetting. It really is. Okay?"
There was a long, tense moment. Kenrate nodded. She gave a smirk, and all of a sudden the killing intent was gone. Sasuke didn't let himself relax. She was one to watch, this one. One to be very careful around.
Rule three of infiltration. If you know them, then you know where to stick the knife.
Corollary: you also know where they'll try to stick it in yours.
He filed her away too. In a file that he suspected would be far better documented then Kenrate's.
She stood up straight again, and smiled at him. "I don't think I've introduced myself. I'm Kyoko Kiko. Nice to meet you." She gave a girlish little wave, and then started walking away.
"Welcome to Sound, Uchiha-San," she called over her shoulder. "Orochimaru wants to say hi!"
XXXXX
Tsunade managed to meet Jiraiya's eyes, but only just. This really wasn't how she wanted to have this conversation. It was supposed to happen in her office, where she could lock the door, use a couple of privacy aids to keep anyone from prying, and if worst came to worst get hold of large amounts of sake to render him pliable.
Instead, it was happening on the hospital roof. She honestly couldn't think of anywhere worse, but she wasn't in a position to argue this. She owed Jiraiya a lot, right now.
"So this is the part where you explain why Naruto's in a hospital bed looking like someone's taken a razorblade to him for a couple of hours, right?" He said, voice sunny and bright and so full of rage she had to fight down the urge to flinch.
"Yeah, this is that part." She was proud of how calm she sounded. Right now she needed something to be proud of. "A couple of days ago, Uchiha Sasuke went Missing. I put Naruto on the retrieval team- figured I owed him a shot at bringing back his boy. Thing is, Sasuke had company. You ever hear of the Sound Four?"
"Orochimaru's honour guard." Jiraiya's tone was low, considering.
"Yeah. Well, he sent them to make sure the Uchiha brat didn't get lost. Retrieval team managed to neutralise them- all of them, which is impressive, considering the situation- but Naruto and Sasuke got into a little fight in the Valley of the End. Sasuke won. Naruto's alive, which is something we can probably thank our nine-tailed friend for, but he's still gonna take a while to put himself back together again."
She paused.
"That's the official story."
The silence was dark and charged with violence.
"And the reality?"
Tsunade forced herself to meet his eyes.
"Uchiha Sasuke is on mission to infiltrate Sound, learn what he can on the village, and then get out before Orochimaru takes his body. He's off-book. Danzo's running the op through ROOT." She crushed a sob out of her voice. "The retrieval team was a necessary evil to keep up the pretence. We had to fool Sound, and Leaf."
Silence howled.
"What?"
Jiraiya's face was slack with shock. Then it tightened into a glare white-hot with fury.
"You endangered the life of my student- and four other poor motherfucks you stuck on that team- for a fucking alibi?"
Tsunade forced defiance into her response. "Yes. Yes I fucking did. Because I'm the fucking Hokage- at your request- and Orochimaru isn't just our problem anymore, not since he left half the fucking village in ruins. I read the KIA lists when I took office. We've got a crop of orphans big enough to ensure our next generation of Ninjas will have fewer parents then any other in history, and that's counting the fucking KYUBI attack. Do you understand that? Orochimaru managed that in one. Fucking. Attack. And he is still out there.
"So yeah. I set up your apprentice, and his squad, to ensure that our infiltrator had a better cover. Yeah, I'm dealing with Danzo so that Sasuke might possibly make it out of this alive. Yeah, I'm jumping into bed with the worse elements of this village's political spectrum to ensure that we have an idea what the FUCK Orochimaru's up to. Because if I don't, then I'm not doing my job properly, and I will burn in hell before that happens."
Silence, blessed and white as snow. Jiraiya had gone still.
Tsunade was panting. She wasn't sure when she'd started shouting. So much for security, she thought ruefully. Let's hope no-one interesting heard any of it.
After another moment, Jiraiya spoke. "I... hadn't realised you were taking this so seriously."
"I didn't either. But acting as a placeholder for Naruto isn't going to do this village any good, is it?"
They stared at each other for a long moment.
"If Sasuke's training with Orochimaru," said Jiraiya, picking his words with care, "then he's going to have a certain advantage over his team-mates when he gets back."
"No, he's not. Three students for three teachers."
XXXXX
Woah. So... this one took even longer then the last one. It's also nowhere near as good, for which I apologise, but I wanted to have something to put up before I drove you all stir-crazy. It's not a good excuse, I admit, but I'm fucking sticking to it!
Okay. So a quick explanation. Someone asked why Tsunade gave in to Danzo's suggestion to keep this whole affair off-book. The reason's actually relatively simple. This whole operation is something that the council, let's be honest, will not approve of. From their point of view, she's either risking the last of the Uchiha on a suicide mission, or putting far too much effort in keeping a traitor in the village as opposed to just killing the little brat and using blood samples to clone them up a couple of new Uchiha. And no, this is not particularly sound thinking, but they're all still very scared by Orochimaru's attack, and that fear can make otherwise very smart people stupid. On top of that, Tsunade's still a relatively new hokage, and that means she's still relatively politically weak- especially considering how long she's been in the village. She needs time to cement her powerbase and take command of the village properly.
This operation, however, is also very much necessary, as her little speech above outlines. Thing is, she needs Danzo to run it at all, and he's a very ambitious man. In the last chapter, he threatened to leak the details of the op to the council, which would then tie up Tsunade in politics she really doesn't want to be involved in and muddy the waters something wicked. As a result, Sasuke wouldn't get a handler- the other half of an infiltration team, who stays in contact with Konoha and relays instructions and information back and forth via chakra taint- and would thus be left in Sound with no exit strategy and no one to tell him what to do; not quite a death sentence, but considering he wouldn't know he's on his own it might as well be one. So she had to give in and let Danzo run the show his way.
I realise that's a lot of exposition I should maybe have done in the actual story, for which I apologise. Anyway, yeah. Enjoy! And if you have any comments or criticism, please feel free to let me know!