Welcome back! Just finished my midterms and somehow survived. Hope you enjoy the next chapter!

Chapter 47: Sing the Dead to Sleep

Yuki found herself with less than a month to train for the chunin exams. She was surprised that she wasn't being punished at all for her long absence from Konoha. She was still more surprised that she wouldn't be taking the exam with the rest of Team Five, even though they, too, were escaping a life-long grounding by enrolling in the chunin exams.

According to Naruto's recommendation, Yuki was going to be paired up with an older boy, the son of Kurenai and Asuma: Sarutobi Aiji. Meanwhile, Saki, Hoshiko, Cho and Hayato would be entering as a four man team. Yuki had also heard that Tadashi would be enrolling in the exams as well, and was pairing up with other boys from the Hyuga clan. She hoped she would not cross paths with him.

But as time wore on, Yuki found she had little appetite to train for the chunin exams. For one thing, her dream-space was taken up by training with Aya-sensei. When she woke from her lessons, she had no official sensei to train with for the upcoming exams, nor did she have the inclination to find one.

The situation didn't quite bother her, as she preferred going for walks in the forest and thinking, anyway. She had become quite uncomfortable in the village as of late: due to her long hair, more developed features, and overall older appearance, it seemed that many did not recognize her. When they did know who she was, they were extremely uncomfortable around her. She was different. Powerful. Worst of all, she was other—associated with members of a strange, potentially threatening village.

Naruto had wanted to publicly honor her for saving Konoha, but Yuki declined. After all, she hadn't done any of the real work. Ryuu and Itachi had finished off Madara, and Sasuke had delivered the final blow at the last minute. Saki and her team had valiantly snuck their way into Akash and saved the Hokage's life, their naive bravery more inspiring than anything she had done. She wasn't looking for a medal. She had just done what needed to be done. That was all.

Ever since she had returned to Konoha, it seemed like life had lost its luster. The grass seemed gray instead of green. The flowers, drying on their stalks in the autumnal cool, were like rust in her eyes. The sun was pale, and the moon was dark. The only time life seemed to be brilliant was in her dreams, when Aya would take her on journeys around the world and revealed to her the inner-workings of the universe.

And so, she spend much of her daily life alone, wondering aimlessly in the Konoha forest, wondering why the trees didn't speak to her, why the air didn't glimmer like it did in the other world. Even her movements felt heavy, as if her body was made of lead moving through thick, gelatinous air.

The full harvest moon waned and the next full moon came into the sky, as if the moon had grown pregnant with Yuki's musings. She knew she should start preparing for the chunin exams, but she couldn't quite shake her melancholy. Under the light of the moon, she wove her way out of the dark forest and walked home through the silver streets of Konoha when something finally pulled her out of her stupor. Without warning, she saw people hovering around the Uchiha district she had never seen before. Their faces were mournful, as pale and bright as the full moon. And their eyes—

When they turned their sorrowful faces to her, she saw that their eyes whirled with the Sharingan.

"Who are you?" Yuki asked, confused, but strangely not afraid.

But the people didn't answer. They just shimmered in the moonlight. And that's when Yuki realized that she was seeing the ghosts of dead shinobi—the ones that could not find rest in the next world.

That night, when she dreamed and Aya visited her, she saw those same Uchiha undead wandering aimlessly through the other world. "Aya-sensei," Yuki asked, "why am I seeing these people?"

"It is because they want you to sing them to sleep, Yuki-chan," Aya answered, her eyes trained on the wandering souls, her voice seeming to come from far away.

"But—how?" Yuki asked, her eyes wide. Aya just smiled a sad smile and opened her hand. The air shimmered, then Yuki's flute materialized in her palm.

Yuki woke up at midnight, moonlight streaming in through her window and brushing her face. She blinked, remembering the lesson from Aya. She gathered her things, then leapt out of her window, a dark shadow on the face of the night.

The streets were empty and glowing bone-white in the light of the sallow moon. It was silent. She could see no one. Then she activated her mangekyo sharingan, and she could clearly see the ghosts of the Uchiha swirling around her. Blood dripped down their ghostly forms and glimmered on the pavement, ethereal silver and red.

Yuki reached into her bag and withdrew her flute. She had not played it since Ryuu's funeral. Maybe when I played for Ryuu…maybe I sung his soul to sleep, Yuki thought, feeling strangely happy. Now, she must play for the sake of the lost souls of the Uchiha, their spirits trapped in this world after the Uchiha massacre.

She lifted the cold metal to her lips and began to play, a cold, mournful tune. A song of the moon pulling at the waves of the sea. A song of salt and aether. A few of the ghosts stopped moving. They stared at her, listening to the music flow out of her flute.

When the song was done, a few of the forms smiled gracefully before soaring into the sky like birds, dancing with the stars and leaping over the full moon. However, many more remained. Yuki recalled Aya's words: it would take more than just one song to sing so many of the dead to sleep. After all, they had been wandering the earth for years now. It would take many night of her vigilance to soothe them into slumber. But she felt happy that she had sent at least a few to beyond the curtain of the sky, and those who remained seemed less sad.

"I promise I'll come back tomorrow," she whispered to the ghosts. They nodded their glowing heads and dissolved back into the night. She felt strangely peaceful, and, for the first time since returning home, she felt like she finally had a purpose. Turning around to leave, she bumped into the firm figure of a living person, and grunted in surprise.

"Yuki-chan—I saw them," came a startled whisper.

"What?" Yuki blinked, realizing that it was her father, and shook her head. "Otousan, you can't see anything," she protested. "You're blind. What are you…?"

"I saw the spirit of Uchiha Tamiko, the girl who used to run the bakery when I was just a child. And Gouta, the old man who worked in the post office. Yuki, why I am seeing these people?" Sasuke asked, his voice cold and quiet.

Sasuke hadn't had an easy time reentering back into Konoha society, either. Many avoided him, probably because his body had recently housed the undying soul of a mass murderer. He had created chaos, a war replete with zombies. He had tried to kill his wife and children. He was an abomination.

At least, that's what Sasuke thought that others thought about him. Especially Sakura. She had been avoiding him again. Ever since he had come home from the hospital, Sakura had insisted that she should sleep on the couch to make sure he got his "rest." But Sasuke knew it was because he had tried to murder her, cold knife clenched in his cruel hand, his lips twisted and turned in a smirk not his own. He didn't blame her. After all, they had a long past, and had tried to kill each other multiple times before. He resolved to give Sakura some space, to let her deal with her own feelings. So he agreed. He slept alone while she slept on the couch. He needed his rest.

But Sasuke couldn't rest. Rather than be tortured by his never-ending thoughts, he had left the house that did not quite feel like home any more. He stalked the moon-drenched streets of Konoha, looking for solace in the familiar cobblestones and storefronts, drifting in and out of memories. Here was where the old Uchiha police station used to be, back in his childhood. Here was the ice cream shop where Itachi had insisted on buying him a treat, even though Sasuke insisted he didn't like sweets.

Sasuke couldn't see anything, of course. He had long since gone blind since the final battle between himself and Madara. But he used his sensory chakra to find his way, to trace over the familiar, bittersweet memories preserved in the shadows of the new Uchiha quarter.

As he walked, he sensed a large amount of chakra coming from his daughter, and he heard the sounds of mournful music floating on the air, notes chilling and lilting as only a flute can produce.

And then he saw.

He saw the faces of people whom he had not seen since he was a little boy, faces whose twisting features relaxed with the sounds of the flute. He could see Yuki's face, her eyes closed and her fingers traveling up and down the cold metal body of the flute, shining like misty silver in the moonlight.

He stood, transfixed, while ghosts—the form of a child, her black hair done up in two pig tails, and her mother, a soft and sorrowful face—rose upwards towards the stars.

Then it was over. Before he could rouse himself to make a sound, she bumped into him, and he saw her eyes. Her mankegyo was different from the one he had worn in the past, the one he had given to her. The mangekyo in Yuki's eyes was a six pointed star, its points whirling on her irises like a pinwheel in the breeze.

When Yuki finally explained herself in awkward, halting voice, Sasuke's vision faded back into darkness, and he suddenly understood.

"You're singing the dead to sleep," he blurted out.

"How did you know?" Yuki asked, surprise evident in her tone.

"I just know," Sasuke answered, not sure how he knew, except that he did. The knowledge didn't frighten him. But it made his fingertips feel cold, as if his blood forgot how to circulate properly. "I...I could see them. Yuki, I could see them..." he said, his voice trembling, not with fear but with something else entirely. It was as if the moonlight were a tangible thing that could wash his soul clean; as if the music was the voice of his soul.

#

On clear autumn nights when the waning moon glowed like burnished bones, Sasuke began helping Yuki to sing the dead to sleep. She would play the flute and he would play guitar. No one but the dead ever heard them. When the month was about up, and it was time for Yuki to take the chunin exams, there was not one ghost left wandering the streets or graveyards of Konoha.

The people in Konoha began to remark that there were more stars in the sky. The sky seemed somehow brighter, and there was soft music in their dreams, but they didn't know why, just that it was. Even the air around Konoha became lighter, crisper and cleaner. And finally, Yuki felt at peace with her return to Konoha.

Sasuke, too, felt like he had finally come home, that the stars were the eyes of the sky and that they were looking down on him without judgement. The night when the last ghosts whirled up into the sky like a shooting star in reverse, that's when Sasuke entered his house, picked Sakura up from the couch and held her in his arms. He traced a hand over her bulging belly and smiled.

When she opened her eyes, she flinched away from him, but he held her tightly in his arms. Itachi had forgiven him, hadn't he? Itachi had smiled and when Sasuke had pushed Madara out of his soul, when he had finally decided that his life was worth living. The darkness had left at last. Sasuke was Sasuke, himself and no one else. He could sing through the movement of his hands on the guitar, he could see beyond the film of his eyes. He was alive, and so was Sakura, and he loved her.

That was all that mattered.

"I love you, Sakura. Please. Please. Please," he repeated, not knowing how to ask, just repeating please like it was a prayer.

"Sasuke. I can't. I... I almost killed you!" she moaned, trying to push him away. "How can you ever trust me again? It's not safe..."

But he ignored her, and kissed her neck, her mouth, her trembling chin; her tear-covered cheeks. "I almost killed you too," he whispered. "But I didn't…"

Sakura hid her face in her hands. "No! I almost let you kill me. It's my fault, my fault," she managed through her tears, her voice shuddering.

"No. If anything, it's because of you that I was able to escape, that we were able to win. Sakura, please—Madara is gone." He continued to hold her firmly in his arm as she wept. At last, after the front of his shirt was throughly soaked with tears, and her ragged cries stilled to uneven breathing, he resumed kissing her. "I love you, Sakura."

"I love you too," she whispered, curling up against him, still crying. Slowly, he walked with her in his arms, up the stairs, into their room, and settled her into the bed. He continued to hold her until she silently drifted off to sleep. But Sasuke could not sleep: eyes closed, he saw stars dancing across the insides of his eyelids, across the wide expanse of inner sky.

#

Yuki had entered through the window to her bedroom, there to sleep and dream and train more with her sensei. But there, on the embroidered quilt over her bed, was her younger sister Saki, her eyes wide and glowing a phosphorescent green where they shone with moonlight.

"Yuki—train me. Please."

Yuki stared at her a moment, taken aback. They had been through too much together for her to refuse. And Yuki was lonely, damn it. Even her old teammate, Cho, hadn't been by to see her. Though the Akamichi always had a kind hello to say to her in passing, Yuki could tell that she was keeping her distance. Aiji, her new partner, was tied up in Suna and would be returning with just a few days to spare before the chunin exams. So far, the only people she had had company with were her father, when he was out on his lonely walks at night, and with the ghosts of long dead Uchiha.

Most importantly, Yuki remembered the promise she had made to herself when she had first landed in Akash: she had vowed she would be a better older sister. And training is what older sisters did. Yuki stared at Saki some more, until Saki became uncomfortable with the scrutiny in her gaze.

"Well?" Saki demanded. "Will you train me or not?"

Yuki nodded and silently beckoned for Saki to follow her outside. The training grounds would be better, instead of inside the house where she could feel, rather than hear, her parents crying in the other room.

#

Saki and Yuki closed their eyes under a large oak tree, entering the other world to meet with Aya-sensei. Dead leaves fluttered down on the night breezes from time to time, rattling like dry bones. Tama, Yuki's cat summons, watched over them with lidded eyes. When dawn came, Saki yawned and stretched.

"Let's spar!" she ventured with sleepy enthusiasm.

Yuki grinned wryly and ruffled her sister's unruly hair, which had frizzed dramatically overnight. "After breakfast. But yes."

Yuki's bizarre, nocturnal schedule continued like this for many days: wandering the dark forest from dusk until midnight, then training Saki until dawn. Yuki mused that she probably needed more sleep than she was currently getting, but she found that she often rose refreshed after her work in the dream world with Saki. One night, Sasuke was worried about them and went into the forest to find them, but Tama shooed him away. "They're training," she said. "Leave them be."

A few days before the Chunin exams, Aiji finally arrived in the village. He had been training in Suna, and had been delayed on a mission until that point. He was sorely upset that he had missed the zombie invasion, but his sensei, Nara Shikamaru, snorted when the fifteen year old genin said as much. "Idiot," Shikamaru muttered, "you're better off having trained in Suna."

"Agreed," Naruto said, looking pale but healthy as he sorted papers on his desk.

Yuki couldn't stifle her derisive snort. She had been waiting in Naruto's office for hours for Aiji to show up, and now that he had arrived, it seemed like her future teammate was a naive child.

"Aiji," Shikamaru said with a weary sigh, "Uchiha Yuki is going to be paired up with you for the chunin exams. Since you two know advanced jutsu, and you're about the same age, the Hokage and I thought you two would make a good team."

Aiji scrunched up his face. "Isn't Yuki...ten?"

Yuki looked away from his annoyed glare and shrugged. She really didn't know too much about Sarutobi Aiji. She knew that he spend a lot of his time in Suna with Shikamaru, and had been taken as a pet prodigy by Gaara himself. Even when Aiji was in Konoha, he spent so much time training under Shikamaru and working on intelligence missions with the ANBU that he honestly hadn't spend much time with the younger generation.

Shikamaru's mouth twisted, and he tapped his chin as if he wasn't sure where to begin. "Technically, Yuki is ten, but for reasons I don't quite understand myself, she's basically aged by traveling through some kind of time space continuum." He shook his head. "In any event, you two are evenly matched."

Aiji raised an eyebrow. Evenly matched? True, he was a genin, but that was only because there weren't many other ninja his age with which to take the chunin exam. Though Yuki did come from an illustrious bloodline, he wasn't enjoying her stuck up attitude. Was it just him, or did this girl lack facial expressions?

Shikamaru motioned for the two genin to follow him out to the training grounds. Aiji and Yuki were silent the entire journey, glaring surreptitiously at each other. Measuring each other.

I can take him, Yuki thought, unconcerned. Aiji had a slight build, and she doubted that he had any real combat experience, despite his age. She wondered if she should take the exam by herself and not bother with a partner at all…

"Alright," Shikamaru said with a wave, once they had reached an empty training ground. He found a spot to sit in the shade, leaned against a tree, and closed his eyes. "Spar."

At first, Aiji hit her with a genjutsu. Child's play, Yuki thought, dispelling it easily. Without even activating her sharingan, Yuki cast her own genjutsu, something designed to paralyze the mind's thought processes, making the opponent's brain operate more like jello than anything. But much to her surprise, Aiji was able to break through.

Shikamaru cracked open one eye, yawned, and closed his eyes again. To any bystanders, Aiji and Yuki looked like they were having a prolonged staring contest. Genjutsu was deadly in the field but dead boring to watch in training sessions. In a few moments, Shikamaru was lulled off to sleep.

When he finally woke, he rubbed his eyes and saw that both contestants were still standing in the field: Aiji was panting heavily from exertion, and even Uchiha Yuki was looking worn, beads of sweat trailing down her face.

"That's enough," Shikamaru droned. "Tomorrow we work on taijutsu. Dismissed."

"Tch. I could keep going," Yuki retorted, ignoring the fact that Aiji's dark eyes were quite beautifully illuminated by the setting sun, and his red cheeks made him look quite handsome. Not that she ever thought of these things...

"Ha," Aiji countered, trying to keep the breathlessness out of his voice. "I could keep going too."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "The chunin exam is only a few days away. Get some rest, and tomorrow, we'll work on your taijutsu and your teamwork."

"Yes sensei," Aiji replied in an undertone.

Yuki simply bowed and raced home. After all, she only had a short amount of time before she had to train Saki later that night.

#

All too soon, the day of the chunin exam came. Yuki wasn't quite sure if she was ready or not. It wasn't that she didn't think she wasn't advanced enough in jutsu—no, she was quite confident that she could win against everyone and anyone entering the exam. No, she was worried about her teamwork with Aiji.

Perhaps it was the fact that she admired his feral smile when they trained, the way he showed the whites of his teeth juxtaposed with his red lips. The way he would take off his shirt when they sparred, and Yuki could clearly see the rippling of his muscles when he lunged at her, the sweat glistening on his bare back.

These distractions had even made her, Uchiha Yuki, lose a sparing match or two, even while she was using her sharingan. She liked to think it was because she was evenly matched with her teammate, but she knew the real reason. Damn these hormones, she would think to herself after a particularly excruciating defeat at Aiji's hands. She tried her best to be the cool, calm, collected kunoichi whose only thoughts revolved around how many ninja she could kill, but she only managed to succeed most of the time. And for Uchiha Yuki, most of the time was not enough. She needed to be perfect.

But despite her desire for time to slow down, the day of the chunin exams had indeed arrived. That morning, Yuki got up before the dawn, tied her cumbersome breasts down with as many bindings as she could find, stuffed weaponry into every available pocket, and sauntered down the hallway, hoping that no one else would be awake.

She was wrong though. Saki was in the kitchen, practically pacing a rut in the tiled floor.

"Saki?" Yuki called her name as if it was a question.

"Hn." Saki paused mid pace and looked at her older sister with ire

"Saki, don't be nervous. You'll be fine."

"That's so easy for you to say! Miss-perfect-at-everything," Saki grumbled. "I've been training my butt off with Konohamaru-sensei and the gang, but I can't help but feel like it's not enough." Saki turned to face Yuki, her face scrunched up in despair.

"Saki. Enough. I trained you, I know you're good. Your taijutsu is decent, your genjutsu is almost as good as mine—"

"See!" Saki hissed between clenched teeth. "Almost! Almost good enough is not good enough, Yuki!" Saki continued to pace, her hands planted on her hips. "What if I have to fight you?" Saki wailed. "I'd be doomed, that's what!"

Yuki gently took her sister by the shoulders. "You won't have to fight me," she managed with a sad smile. "I'm on your side. I'll be looking out for you during this exam, Saki-chan. You're my sister."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Saki snapped waspishly. "If you're matched up against me in the exams, you'd better go all out!"

Yuki smiled her sad smile again, the smile that she never had before she left the village, but now that she was back, would not leave her. "Saki. Don't worry. You're going to be just fine." She patted the younger girl on the head before continuing, "How about a quick morning spar? It will help you relax before the big day."

"Fine," Saki snapped, slamming open the back door and stomping into the yard.

#

But all too soon, the spar was over, and Saki only felt like a small portion of her nervous energy was exhausted. They filed their way into the academy with their respective teams, Saki with Hoshiko, Cho, and Hayato, and Yuki with Aiji. The written exam was easy for the two Uchiha; after all, nothing makes cheating easier than a sharingan. In the end, both teams passed.

The second exam took place in the Forest of Death. Each team was given one token. They had to gather at least two more tokens from opposing teams before they could head to the tower. It seemed like an easy enough test, but it was far from being truly easy. Of course, Yuki and Aiji managed to con their second token off of a group of unsuspecting Mist nin. It was all too easy to put them under genjutsu, replace their token with a pine-cone, and then make them believe that said pine-cone was a token while they got away, completely unseen.

But just as Yuki and Aiji were about to head to the tower, Yuki felt the world lurch under her feet. The sun shimmered like a heat mirage, and all at once, Yuki could pinpoint every single ghost of every single genin who had died in the forest. Their ghosts called out to her, grieving, their faces contorted with sorrow.

"Damn," Yuki muttered under her breath. "And I was going to break Kazekage-sama's record."

"Yuki? Why did you stop? Did someone put you under genjutsu?" her worried teammate asked.

Yuki tried explaining the ghost situation, but Aiji looked at her askance. "Ghosts? There's no such thing," he replied, worried about his teammate's sanity. "I simply don't believe in them."

Yuki rolled her eyes. "Believe. Ha. I don't believe in ghosts, I see them. Aiji, watch my back." Yuki took out her flute out of her pocket and began to play a dark melody before her teammate could protest.

She was surprised, though. She had never seen ghosts in the daytime before, only in the hours between twilight and dawn. But as she played her song, the answer came to her: the Forest of Death, so aptly named, was so full of tortured ghosts that it was practically overflowing with them. It was so obviously a haunted forest that she did not need the enhancement of darkness to see them.

No less than ten teams in the vicinity heard her plaintive music, but instead of trying to find the source of the sound, they all bounded away, repelled as if by a jutsu. Even the most war-hardened shinobi would have wept at those sounds, and these were only genin. As Yuki played, all activity in the forest stilled. It seemed like the sunlight became pale, and the air itself ceased breathing. And slowly, slowly, like a reverse whirlpool, the moans of the dead ground stilled, and white light spiraled up from every tree top. When the flute stopped its music stilled, no more spirits were left walking the forest. Yuki supposed that she had become skilled enough in the jutsu to do it quickly.

She turned to Aiji, but he had his back to her. He wiped his face with his sleeve, then gestured, silently, towards the looming tower just ahead.

Shikamaru was there to meet Yuki and Aiji when they entered the tower. To her chagrin, they were the fourth team to enter.

"Well," Shikamaru asked, "where are your tokens?"

Yuki opened her hands, and a myriad of object fell from them: scrolls, token, kunai with special inscriptions. Shikamaru looked over the various items in fascination. These were the different objects that teams had competed for over the last fifty years of chunin exams.

Yuki shrugged. "I suppose we did break one record then…"

"But it was much too troublesome," Aiji replied, rolling his eyes. "I'm just glad we finished the second part of the exam.

Yuki speared him with a glare, then turned away. Aiji really didn't understand anything.

Still, Yuki could not relax. Though she had made it through, Team Five was still out there… Aiji retired to a waiting room in the inner tower, but Yuki stayed with Shikamaru. Watching. Waiting. When Saki and her team make it to the tower unscathed the next day, Yuki smiled, her first real smile in days. It seemed Saki had nothing to worry about after all. Not that she would ever admit to being worried, though…

On the third day, lots were picked for the upcoming rounds of fights, and Yuki's good mood withered:

The first match was destined to be Uchiha Yuki versus Hyuga Tadashi. If Yuki won that match—and obviously she would—then she would be slated to fight Uchiha Saki, if Saki won her own match.

"Don't forget," Saki hissed at her, "when we fight, go all out."

Yuki quickly looked away from her, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Thanks for reading and please, review! ;)