Hey all! Thanks for all the reviews and everything so far. Here's the next chapter. Just a heads up, but there WILL NOT be an update this Thursday, as I will be away from my computer doing RealLife things. Sorry!

beta: Icescim

The Philosophy of Self

Chapter Five

"…You'll have noticed the seals painted on your wrists. Those are in place to keep you from accessing your chakra. I would advise you not even try to circumvent them; the results won't be pleasant. Nonlethal, but uncomfortable. And very futile," Sakura slanted a Look on her erstwhile patient.

"I understand," he said, but there was something that bothered him somewhat. It was wise of them to seal his chakra, but was it really enough? A skilled ninja was just as deadly without ninjutsu. In that same vein, why weren't they putting him in ANBU's maximum security prison? He'd been a nukenin. A traitor. There was little as dangerous as one of those. A traitor knows how the Village works, knows its weaknesses, can pick his target with a horrible accuracy for what would do the most damage with the least effort. And…

:I think I killed my family.: He felt a muscle jump in his jaw as he kept himself from clenching his teeth. Why weren't they treating him like the most depraved criminal there could be?

Caution warned him to keep silent and watch, and listen. Caution that had been trained into every fiber of muscle, every coursing bloodcell, every singular cell in his body. More than anything, he remembered his training, retained his instincts.

What did that make him, he wondered. He was a ninja, with everything that made him human stripped away. No self, only skills.

:Isn't this what they wanted?: The thought drifted up from the depths of his mind, and he went still, as if afraid to scare it away. Gently, he grasped hold of the thought, and turned it carefully, observing it from every angle.

Who were 'they'?

"Uchiha-san?" Sakura's voice broke into his revere, and the memory that had been surfacing sank back down into the mire. He restrained his frustration and responded civilly.

"Haruno-san?"

"Sakura," she corrected absentmindedly. Her head tilted to the side. "Are you alright? You were just… blank."

He paused. "I was remembering."

"Oh!" she said, chagrin sweeping her face. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," he said, even though it really wasn't. Then, in complete truth: "It wasn't a good memory."

"Oh," she said, softer. She dropped her eyes, and he saw a quick flash of teeth as she bit down on her bottom lip.

:What is it that she thinks she knows?: He watched her, but he couldn't see anything beyond mere discomfort in her careful avoidance of eye contact. When she looked up, her face was composed.

"Hospitals aren't really good for calling up good memories," she said, in an obvious segue. "So it's good that we've got your discharge papers all in order now. I'll let you change into the clothes I brought, and then I can show you to where you're to be housed."

He nodded, she left, and he once again inspected the clothes she'd left. They were another step up—this time they were comfortable, generic, and nothing that would have looked out of place among either ninja or civilians. He changed quickly and put his feet into the nin-sandals Sakura had also brought.

There was nothing else in the room that he wanted or could take with him, so he opened the door and stepped into the hall. Sakura was waiting nearby, speaking to a nurse.

"If you could just file these away, I'd appreciate it, Oono-san," she said, handing a small sheaf of papers to the bland-faced young woman. The nurse flicked a glance at him, then murmured a hurried acknowledgement to Sakura, grabbed the papers, and fled.

:She was afraid of me,: he realized. Sakura turned to face him.

"All ready? Let's go."

It was immediately obvious why Sakura had taken him on a walk in the hospital's courtyard before, and not the Village itself. Now, walking in the streets, they were given a wide berth by everyone around them. He was treated to a succession of stares ranging from terrified to hate-filled. Civilians hissed condemnations ('Traitor!'), and shared judgments with each other in whispers deliberately audible ('Isn't that the Uchiha boy? How can they let him out in the streets like that?'). Ninja glared with prickly spikes of killer-intent.

He walked with Sakura and ignored them all. He remembered such hate and fear from before; he was familiar with it, and was familiar with ignoring it. As a testament to her training and control, Sakura ignored them also, pacing easily beside him, speaking and gesturing and occasionally asking questions.

"That way leads to the top of the Hokage Monument, and over there is the restaurant that has the best shabu-shabu in the Village. And there's the Academy. Do you remember the Academy, Uchiha-san?"

I'm sure you're already aware, Uchiha-sama, but your son is very gifted. If he continues at this rate, he will likely graduate early.

"Yes… I remember the Academy."

"You'll get to see the rest of the Rookie Nine again eventually," she continued blithely. And then, apparently recalling that he might not remember to whom she was referring: "They graduated from the Academy with y—Sasuke."

"Hm," he said. They walked a while silently, and then he asked: "You also believe I am Sasuke."

She stopped, so he did too. "I…um." She looked away, then back. "You have to admit, the evidence seems to point to it."

"Yes, it does," he agreed. :But the fact remains…:

"You still don't think you are, though, do you?" she asked quietly, her eyes searching his face.

His eyes' focus slid from her face, turning inward. "Uchiha Sasuke was born July twenty-third, the year of the Kyuubi's attack, to the Head Family of the Uchiha Clan. He had a brother. His father—"

As expected from my son.

Blink. Swallow. Continue: "His father taught him one jutsu, the trademark Uchiha Katon. He graduated top of his class from the Academy, and was placed on a Genin Team with Haruno Sakura and Uzumaki Naruto, under the tutelage of Hatake Kakashi… And then…"

:Foolish, foolish child. Seeking strength and power from so wretched a creature as Orochimaru, a man so afraid of death he killed himself to try to escape it. Little by little, his experiments paring away what made him himself, replacing it with fake parts until what had been Orochimaru was gone and all that was left was artifice. What strength could be gleaned from such a coward? What power won by unmaking yourself?:

"And then Orochimaru happened, and he left Konoha," Sakura said tightly. He didn't respond to the anger and hurt buried (not deep enough) in her tone.

"I remember all of this," he said softly. "I remember it. But when I try to think of myself as Sasuke, my mind recoils. It is wrong."

"But if you're not Sasuke, who are you?" Sakura whispered. "Why do you wear his face?"

He didn't answer. But a memory feathered across his mind, a brief touch whispering against his consciousness. It was gone before he even knew it was there, leaving only a vague sense of unease behind it. So he stood, and did not answer, and wondered.

Sakura showed him his quarters, a small suite of three rooms—an entrance/sitting room with a kitchen tucked in the corner, a bedroom, and a bathroom—within the large building the Village had built to house visiting diplomats. He was familiar (or at least, he had some memories of) the building. What he remembered did not reassure him that Konoha was taking this seriously. What was their game? These rooms were plush and comfortable, designed so as to not give visiting dignitaries any grounds to claim insult. It had safe-guards in place to at the very least slow any hostile action taken by a resident within its walls, but those safe-guards had to be activated to be of any use. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a place to keep a known criminal or enemy.

It was almost like they were inviting him to escape.

Sakura's silence as he gazed over the rooms seemed questioning. He said, blandly: "It seems very comfortable."

Her eyes narrowed a little. "I detect some disapproval in your voice."

He lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. "I merely wonder why I, a Konoha nukenin, am being given a diplomatic suite, as opposed to a maximum-security room in the ANBU cell block."

"Don't assume," Sakura replied stiffly, "that we can't keep you in check, just because you're not surrounded by bars. Where do you, a prisoner, get off lecturing us on our security?"

"It is an unnecessary risk," he said coldly. She barked a derisive laugh.

"Are you planning on wrecking havoc? No? Then what, does it insult you that we haven't chained you, muzzled you, and locked you away? So sorry." She sneered in anger. "I'm going now. Try not to give your weak and stupid Leaf-nin guards too hard a time. You might make them cry."

She left him standing in the middle of the room.

Her fury carried her out of the diplomatic building, up onto the roof of the restaurant across the street, and all the way to the residential district on the other side of the Village. She found Naruto's apartment with the ease of long practice, and popped in through the open window.

Her blond Teammate was in his small kitchen, standing over the small stove, stirring something. She walked right up to him, and dropped her head forward so that her forehead pressed against his back between his shoulder blades.

"What's wrong, Sakura-chan?" he asked. And then: "No, wait. It was Sasuke, wasn't it?"

"Hmmmnnnggrrr," she said, and then lifted her face out of the muffling fabric of his characteristic orange jacket. "It's 'Uchiha-san'. It might bother him if we call him Sasuke, since he can't remember that that's who he is."

"You sound like you want to bother him," Naruto said. He reached up to grab a bowl from a cupboard as she grumbled. "Want some?"

She glanced over his shoulder. Ramen, of course. She supposed she should count it as a victory that she'd persuaded him to start making his own from fresh ingredients, rather than depending on the instant stuff. "No, thanks."

Sakura watched a moment as Naruto filled the bowl with noodles and ladled miso broth from a steaming saucepan over the top. He finished it off with some strips of what looked like chicken, and a handful of chopped green onion. For a teenaged boy, the meal was a culinary masterwork. But considering that it was Naruto, and it was ramen, the easy grace with which he made it was unsurprising.

She followed him to the little folding table and sat across from him. "So," he said as he dug in, "What'd he do?"

She sighed. "It sounds stupid now, but… He complained that we didn't have enough security on him. It just pissed me off because…"

"Because he's an arrogant jerk?" Naruto suggested. She snorted.

"Yeah, that." Sakura felt tired, now that her fury was fading, and a new suspicion was creeping up on her. It questioned her anger and indignation. It wondered if a part of that anger wasn't directed at herself.

:A part of why his comment pissed me off so much was because I didn't expect it. Since he's woken up, Uchiha-san's been nothing but polite and quiet. I was… I was almost getting used to it.: She held back the grimace, knowing that even though Naruto seemed fixed on his noodles, he'd notice. :Is it… bad, that I am almost wishing he would stay like this?:

It made her feel guilty. She should want Sasuke back, not this confused—if polite—ghost of him. But she liked that he didn't just ignore and insult her, like he had before.

And it was her job to get the old, abrasive Sasuke back. There was no winning.

She glanced at Naruto. At least he would be happy. She could remember very clearly how upset he'd been when Tsunade had told him to stay away from their amnesiac former-Teammate. It made sense why they shouldn't have that much contact, but it still hurt Naruto. Sasuke was one of the first people he'd had a bond with, even if it was only a bond of rivalry.

"Hey, Naruto," she said, in a spur-of-the-moment decision. "What do you say we taken Uchiha-san to Ichiraku's for dinner tonight?"

Nevermind that Naruto was already having ramen for lunch—he would never turn down Ichiraku. Sure enough, the blond's face brightened. "Really? Can we do that?"

"I'm under orders to help Sasuke retrieve his memories. The three of us eating together at Ichiraku's ought to shake something loose in his brain," she reasoned with a faint smile.

"Hell yeah!" Naruto exclaimed.