Author's Note:

To those wondering about Ino's well-being and general state: she'll be fine. But things will get worse before they have any chance to get better. Unfortunately and unfairly, there's nothing that can be done about Sasuke. Yet.

Hang in there, readers. It'll all work out.

Thank you, and take care of yourselves.
- Rii

Chapter 28 - Familiar Blood

Sasuke asked Yakata to wait outside while he went to talk with Sakura in her office, after briefly, briefly introducing them.

Sakura's eyes were still wide when he came back inside. He waited for her to say something. She didn't. "Well?"

"Well… well what?" she stammered, leaning against the back of her desk, barely standing.

"Surely you've got something to say about all of this."

"Well, of course I do, but…"

"But what?"

"I'm still kind of trying to process this, Sasuke! Give me a moment, will you?"

"Hm."

Sakura rubbed her hand over the top of her forehead, pushing back her bangs. They fell back into place. "That… that's Itachi's clone?"

"More or less," Sasuke replied.

"How in the… Where did you find him?"

"Land of Rice. But I didn't think to bring him here until after I talked to Karin, she changed my mind."

"You went to Karin? When?"

Sasuke sighed. And he had expected her to at least ask different questions than Ino had.

Well, he had to get it out of the way. "A few days ago. After you showed me those reports I… thought to check on some facts with her."

"Really!"

"Don't sound so surprised," he said. "I'd known about Yakata for a few months, but the reports you showed me convinced me that maybe my theories weren't so… unrealistic."

"Known about him?"

"I ran into him but I dismissed his appearance as nothing more than a coincidence, may we move on, now?" he said. He had his arms folded, his foot tapping.

"You seem oddly impatient," Sakura said, an awkward laugh slipping into her voice. "What were your theories, anyways?"

"I don't see how that's important, now that we know what's going on."

"Know what's - but what is going on?" Sakura asked. "You just told me that he's your brother's clone, how is that even possible?"

"Karin suspects that Orochimaru has something to do with it," Sasuke said, detaching his voice as he looked at the ceiling. "Reviving him, I mean."

"Wait, what?"

"That's just her theory," Sasuke said, still keeping his tone detached. "But it's the only lead we have. Since, well, Kabuto's been taken care of, we know that for sure. But the last we heard about what became of, well, Orochimaru himself has been…"

Sealed into a spirit sword. Even in his mind, even though he had seen it happen with his own eyes, it still sounded stupid to Sasuke.

"…inconclusive."

"Well, it's… a theory," Sakura said. She shivered, slightly, he noticed. "But why would she think that?"

He had promised not to tell anyone about Ooda.

"She found some diary entries that suggested… things. Reports and things. She said she'd be sending you more information as she found it," he said.

"I… see," Sakura said. "Well… Regardless of whether… Orochimaru is involved or not - completely disregarding how in the world he's even involved in the first place-"

"That's not the important thing, here," Sasuke said.

Sakura tightened her expression. "Yes, I know. The important thing is… how in the world did… Yakata get here?"

"I brought him with me to Konoha, naturally, what sort of a question is that."

Sakura sighed. "No, I didn't mean that. I mean… how was he made? I mean, wow, he…"

"Some sort of… regeneration. Technique. I don't know, I'm not a scientist," Sasuke said. "Grown in a tube or something. Why are you even asking me, anyways?" he continued, finally looking at her with a sour expression. "It's not like I know."

Sakura shrugged. "No, I guess you don't…" She took a heavy breath. "So you just found him?"

"Yes. Strange twist of fate, isn't it? Marvelous coincidence, yes?"

She sighed a little. "I suppose so."

"So, I want you to do some blood tests," Sasuke said, without any change in tone.

"Huh? Why…?"

Sasuke sighed. "Isn't it obvious? I want to make sure."

"Make sure of what?" Sakura said.

"Must I explain everything?" Sasuke said. He shook his head, slowly. "I want to make sure that he's truly Itachi. Just one final test. And… well, Karin had another theory, that maybe he might be connected with Taki Kiine. So maybe there's a way you could test that too, see if that's viable either."

The shock finally seemed to wear off. "Oh, that's - you're right!" Sakura said. She clasped her hands together. "I don't know what could test for - well, I do have an idea but… oh, I should really do that."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "I thought that'd be the first thing you'd think to do."

"Well, it's not every day that things like this happen, you know," Sakura said, putting one hand on her hip, the other on her chin, as she thought. "Goodness, Sasuke, if this isn't an enormous stroke of luck."

"Stroke of luck, is it?"

"Dunno what else to call it. You finding… Yakata, and all that. Say," Sakura continued, finally stepping away from her desk, "does he know?"

"Know what." He paused. "Oh. No, he doesn't."

She thought for a moment. "…how in the world did you get him here, anyways? You had to have told his parents something."

Did all women have to ask the same questions? Sasuke sighed again. "He's adopted. So I told his parents that I believed him to be…" A pause. "…a member of the clan. And that I wanted to have tests done to make sure."

Because Ino had reacted so well to the truth, and given Sakura's reactions thus far…

"Hm. I suppose that works," Sakura said. "Well, we should probably have that blood drawn. I'm already short on time as it is. Did you want me to test it against Itachi's DNA profile or…?"

"Yes, whatever you need to do."

"Right, right."

(Truthfully, she was probably keeping some poor soul in the waiting room for far too long, but Yakata's appearance had startled her far too much to presently care. She'd apologize later.)

"You know," she said, right before leaving, "I really was wondering about what Ino was talking about."

Sasuke's vaguely good mood lessened. "When did you talk to Ino? What did she say?"

"…why so defensive, Sasuke?" Sakura said, darkly. She looked at him with narrowed eyes. "She just called me in a panic, yesterday. Something about you coming home with some strange child and you wouldn't tell her why. I'm guessing she was talking about Yakata-kun?"

He should have guessed. "Yes. What else did she say?"

"Not much else. She just mostly had to vent her frustration, but I couldn't stay long," Sakura said.

(She made a mental note to give Ino another call, soon. At least. She had to.)

(She couldn't even begin to imagine how Ino was handling all this. Inou and Karai in the chuunin exams, and now this?)

"Hm."

She opened the door. Yakata was still there, standing thoughtfully against the wall with his hands behind his back. Sakura almost instinctively avoided looking at his eyes, as he turned to face them, when the door opened.

"We're going to go have some blood drawn, Yakata," Sasuke said.

"Oh, okay."

"I hope we didn't keep you waiting long," he continued.

"No, I, I, I didn't… I didn't really notice."

"Okay." Sasuke cleared his throat. "Well, Sakura?"

(Goodness, did Yakata ever look like Itachi.)

"Right this way, come on," she said, nodding, leading them to the labs. She walked ahead of them, resisting the urges to look back at Yakata.

She drew his blood quickly, after getting the supplies from the lab and filling out the necessary paperwork, to Sasuke's annoyance.

"Do we really," he said.

"Yes, we really," she replied. "This is my hospital, and I refuse to see it out of order. Now, how tall are you, Yakata-kun?"

"Hmph," Sasuke said, and Yakata answered.

He hardly flinched when she drew his blood. "Keep that on for at least ten minutes, now," she told Yakata, wrapping his arm in gauze; a moment later, she pulled Sasuke aside, a good few paces away. "Sasuke, I'll get back to you later today on the initial results," she whispered, "though we won't be able to get the full DNA analysis done for a couple of days. But we have your brother's…" Her eyes drifted to Yakata's face; he was looking at her with dark - jarringly, not red - expectant eyes. She looked away. "…records on hand, so we'll be able to do the comparison pretty quickly."

"That's fine," Sasuke replied.

"And, um, Sasuke?"

"What."

"Are you going to tell Naruto about this?"

"About what, Yakata?"

"Well, and the whole…" Sakura looked over her shoulder, to see if Yakata was listening - why was she even checking? - and saw the boy just standing there, looking off at something, but not them. "…theory Karin has about Orochimaru being behind this."

"…it's just a theory. Rather baseless, really, but we don't have anything else. I don't think it's worth saying anything about," Sasuke said. "I don't think unnecessary panic will do anyone any good. Even in Naruto's hands."

"Right, right… Though, Sasuke?"

"What." His voice was a quiet growl.

"If… that hypothesis is proven correct, about Yakata-kun and Taki Kiine being connected, should I tell Naruto? Just on that alone."

"…whatever you want to do. Just try not to stir up trouble," Sasuke said. There was an edge of impatience to his voice.

"…I'll write to Karin about it, at any rate," Sakura said. Yakata was now looking at them, curiously, blinking with heavily-lashed eyes. Sakura couldn't stare at them for more than a moment at a time without feeling intensely uncomfortable.

"Anyways." Sasuke cleared his throat, his voice returning to its normal volume. "We have a lot to do. If you can't contact me in the evening just send me a note or something."

"Sure," said Sakura. She watched as he returned to Yakata's side, saying something about a tour and training. Yakata looked over his shoulder at her as they left, before Sasuke got his attention again, pulling his eyes away from Sakura. And she noticed, for the briefest of moments, the unusual amount of birthmarks he seemed to have on the back of his neck.

She forced herself to keep her concentration, to keep the shock from coming back.

Well, it was a little hard to believe. But she had a job to do. She swallowed and went back to the little vials of Yakata's blood that she'd left on one of the counters in the lab, and had two of them put into storage, along with his records. The third she took to a microscope.

Standard procedure: Droplet of blood, dyed, sandwiched between two slides.

She saw Uchiha cells.

Her breath caught in her throat.

And Karin's.

Sakura had figured out her angle on how to present this information to Naruto by the end of the day, only after separating her brain into seemingly two different layers of thought. She did have a surgery to do that day - two, in fact, though one was just a glorified bone-setting, nothing she couldn't handle. She had to be able to concentrate, so she did. It came easily to her, for some reason. But she supposed it came with the territory.

(Because, seriously, she was just that awesome.)

The first idea that she threw out was using this information as blackmail against the Taki syndicate. First off, why the heck would she even do that? Second off, how could any of it be used as blackmail in the first place? That was why she threw the idea out first. Got the ball rolling.

The ideas that followed weren't much better. Threaten to expose their connection to Orochimaru? No, that was still blackmail, and it'd just get them mad. Bring up the fact that their daughter was more than likely not theirs, biologically? Eh. And the Uzumaki connection? A start, but not terribly helpful.

Besides, she remembered Karin's warning. Keep that fact away from the Taki family. They wouldn't take kindly to it, most likely. Neither she nor Sakura understood the connection much, anyways.

Sakura found herself growing frustrated, the more she thought. Why the hell was everything some sort of variation on blackmail? She didn't understand her own brain sometimes.

But the fact remained, it had been at least two weeks since the incident with Taki Kiine, and with the first round of the chuunin exams over and the majority of the foreign guests gone for their month of training, people were starting to buzz and fuss again, Sakura was sure. She didn't hang about the Hokage Manor very much, but she had a good ear for gossip and a good feel for what sorts of things were going on in Konoha.

Something had to be done; doubtless Naruto was already thinking about it, himself.

(And she could imagine, very, very well how much he probably missed Kiine.)

And she really wanted to help, besides.

So she thought harder.

The best solution, she found, didn't even involve this new knowledge at all. Which was absolute bullshit, but there you go.

She went to the Hokage Manor, after clocking out and making sure that the folks who worked the night shift were all set up, ready to go, shuffling about and doing their rounds as needed. Andou said hello to her and said that Naruto was alone in his office, so she could just go right up and see him.

The door was halfway open already, so she pushed it open completely, gently, upon entering. "Knock-knock," she said.

Naruto was at his desk, an open binder full of papers in front of him, his forehead in his hand. He'd been obviously concentrating, and he looked tired. "Oh, hey there," he said, looking up.

"You doing all right? You look a little ragged," Sakura said.

"Nah, I'm fine. What's up?" He put down his reading and smiled at her, slightly.

"Not much. I was just thinking, Naruto."

"Uh-huh?" he said. "What about?"

"Well." She exhaled. "I know I'm not an advisor of yours, so if this is unwarranted, then…"

"Oh come on, Sakura, you are totally one of my advisors, y'know," Naruto replied, grinning. "What do you wanna advise me on?"

She inhaled. "Well, now that the first part of the chuunin exams are over, I'm thinking that maybe it's about time you got back to the, er, Taki syndicate about settling all of those debts they owe us. I mean," she added, quickly, "people are starting to talk again."

"Oh yeah! I've been thinkin' about that, actually," Naruto said.

Her eyes widened, slightly. "Have you?"

"Yeah! Though all this thinking is kinda making my head hurt, y'know, haha," he said. He closed the binder and held it up. "Andou-kun put this together for me, it's all the reports to do with the Taki guys. Debts and complaints and stuff, y'know."

"Wow, you two are really on the ball, then," Sakura said. She was quiet, for a moment. "So… what's your plan?"

Naruto blinked. "My plan?"

"Yeah, I mean, if you started thinking about this already on your own."

"Well…" Naruto's smile lessened, and he laughed, once, awkwardly. "I only started on this this afternoon, and that's only 'cos Andou-kun left this on my desk for me after we finished filing all the missions for the day."

"Oh. Well." Ah, she should have known.

"What did you wanna do?" Naruto said, suddenly. His eyes brightened, and he straightened his back. "I wanna hear your idea!"

"Oh, um. My idea?"

"Yeah, you had one, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah, I did."

"So what was it?"

The best idea didn't even have to do with what they'd just learned about Yakata. It wasn't even a new idea, it was just a reminder, more than anything. Total bullshit, the little voice in her head said, but. "Well, it's the same as what I suggested a few weeks ago," she said. "Writing a letter, planning a meeting. Negotiations. You know, now that you have the time."

"Oh yeah! You said that after, um." He thought.

"After I came to you about Kiine," she said, almost reluctantly, after a while.

His expression softened. "Oh, yeah… I remember now. You told me to hold on 'cos of the chuunin exams. That was a good idea, y'know."

"Yep, I guess it was," she said.

"Well, okay! Negotiations. I could come up with something for that." Naruto tapped his chin, looking up. "Maybe I should invite them back over…?"

"What, why would you do that?"

"Well… hm. Buncha reasons, I guess," he replied. "I mean, it'd be convenient, y'know?"

"For you, maybe, but for them…?"

"You never know! Maybe they'd like being invited over for something." His grin was wide and very bright.

Sakura sighed, finding herself laughing, for some reason. "Well, whatever you want to do. Though maybe it might be better to suggest a middle ground?"

"Like… meeting in one place?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Maybe…" He had his eyes closed, thinking intently already.

Well, at least he was going to get a start on things. "I guess I'll be heading out, then," Sakura said. "Just… one thing, before I go?"

He opened his eyes, then blinked. "Yeah, what is it?"

"I'd leave out… the Uzumaki blood thing, for now, in whatever you decide to say to them." Her smile shriveled into a corner of her mouth. "I mean, we don't know the full story yet. We don't want to step on any toes. Misunderstandings or… whatever."

"Oh." And his eyes dulled. His face suddenly wrinkled. "Wait… what Uzumaki thing?"

Sakura blinked. "…the things I found out about Kiine?" she hazarded. "Her being an Uzumaki, I mean?"

The change in his eyes, from dull to glazed-over, was astonishingly noticeable. The sudden smile that accompanied the change was similarly shiny, in a vinyl sort of sense . "Ohh, that. Hadn't even thought of that. Yeah, I think I'll be able to… not mention it, I mean, if I forgot already…" He laughed, quickly, and for a much longer time than Sakura had been expecting.

She could have sworn that a fact like that would be remembered, even by him. "Yeah, uh, sure…?" she said. "Naruto, are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he replied. He smiled with his mouth closed. "Just fine."

"…no, seriously, are you okay?"

He shrugged, still smiling. "I'm fine. And I ought to get to work on this, hm? You said you were going somewhere, y'know? Right?"

And Sakura just stood there, knowing, in some small, familiar part of her mind, that that was the most she was going to get out of him. His smile was a seal, one that she wasn't going to crack any time soon. "…well, just take care of yourself, okay?"

"'course I will, y'know," he said. He waved at her. "Seeya."

She waved back, loosely. "Bye."

"Wait, hey, Sakura!"

She turned around, halfway out the door. "What is it?"

"Has Sasuke talked to you today about anything?" There was a bit more energy in his eyes, for some reason. It felt forced.

Sakura didn't notice terribly much, however, because she felt like a stone had suddenly fallen into her stomach. "…yes, he did. Why do you ask?" she said.

"Well, 'cos he just showed up in my office earlier today and he had this weird kid with him," Naruto continued. His face creased, eyes narrowing. "What was his name… Yaka-taka?"

"Yakata, I think…"

"Oh. Oh! So he introduced you, too?"

All Sakura could do was shrug. "Yeah, sorta…"

"So, what'd he tell you?" He went on before Sakura could really reply. "'Cos he was just like, 'Oh, Naruto, I want you to meet this kid!' and I was all 'Oh, okay, cool, hi!' And then he left and now I'm just confused." His face narrowed, almost into a pout.

"Well… he didn't tell me much of anything..." Sakura said.

(Knowing Sasuke, and knowing Naruto, Sasuke probably didn't say a thing about the Itachi-link to Naruto - and she didn't want to risk Sasuke's wrath by saying something now.)

"Weird," Naruto said. He shrugged. "Ah well. Just wanted to see if he'd told you anything."

"What would he tell me and not you?" Sakura asked. A necessary smile inched its way, uncomfortably, onto her face.

Naruto shrugged again. "Hey, also? Is it just me? Or… did that kid really look a lot like..." And he looked up and he looked down, and he shook his head. "Nah, never mind. Man." He sighed. "Sasuke's been acting weird lately. I wonder what's wrong?"

"I have no idea," Sakura said, shaking her head slightly. She turned around. "Either way, I'm heading out."

"Okay. Bye," Naruto replied.

And once she was gone, she went home and she tried not to worry, like she always did. Even though there was just so much to worry about.

Naruto was the Hokage, and he knew what he was doing, when it came to the city; and Ino was a stronger woman than her.

Oh, Ino.

Sakura had a phone call to make.

(And once she was gone, Naruto's face fell again, and he ran his fingers through his bangs and grimaced. He flipped through the binder that Andou had given him. He knew what he had to do. It wouldn't be difficult. He was the Hokage, after all.)

(But he wasn't sure if it was right for him to see Kiine again.)