Disclaimer: I do not own anything Kishimoto created. That's all.

There was something about being scolded by an authority figure that made the world slow to a crawl. During the time it took to be reprimanded, Sakura agonized over the wayward strand tickling her eyelid. Discipline allowed her to remain still, though she internally fussed over the strand's movement between her lashes when she blinked. As Tsunade yelled – and she listened with half an ear – she thought of how she and Ino would joke that in these moments, anything was interesting if you paid enough attention. This time, it was her sweaty hands and her strong desire to wash them that drove her near insanity.

Tsunade paused in her tirade to address the girl's guardian, who stood staring out of the window nearest to him and behind the blonde.

"Don't you have anything to say, Hatake?"

Kakashi sighed, pushing away from the wall and giving Tsunade a wide berth in his pursuit of Sakura. He slapped his left hand on his ward's right shoulder, Tsunade snorted and placed her hands on her hips.

"I have a lot to say." He lifted his hand away from her to scratch through the dark hair at the nape of his neck. "Sakura…"

She tilted her head to meet his eye. Hatake's usually crinkled eyes were smooth, and his eyes stern with disappointment. She raised an eyebrow at him. With their reactions, anyone else would think that she'd beat the young boy in the marketplace herself that afternoon, rather than simply humiliating the guards who sought to harm him.

"Yes, Uncle?" she inquired, warily.

Kakashi removed his hand from the back of his head – and in a movement that was slow enough for her to catch, but that she knew was testing her audacity to think of ducking – and smacked her on the back of the head.

Sakura hardly flinched at the attack and Kakashi's eyes crinkled with barely contained mirth.

"You'll be more careful in the future, won't you?"

Sakura's eyebrow twitched. She dragged out a moment of silence and recalled her days at the castle, where she was the revered princess that no one would have dared to strike. Her mouth curled into a forced and fearsome smile and she swore to herself that she would be certain to return the favor.

"Of course, Uncle."

Tsunade stormed forward in her heeled shoes and slammed her hands onto her desk. Sakura wished they would wrap this conversation up, next time she was certain she would beat the person in peril herself – surely that would end in a far shorter tongue lashing than she'd received thus far.

"Is that all you have to say!? Now is not the time to be a man of action instead of words, Hatake," Tsunade growled and grabbed Sakura's hand, pulling her forward. "Sakura, it is one of my priorities to keep you safe and I can't do that if you willingly make yourself a target of the king's guard. This is not the Ethereal Court, the king has jurisdiction over the entirety of the western reaches. You know this."

"I do," Sakura admitted with a sigh.

Her chief's hand curled firmly around her wrist. "Then why do you continue?"

"With all due respect, Lady Tsunade, it's been eight years – there is no longer an active search! Even if there was still a soul seeking the bounty, whomever it might be wouldn't know where to begin."

"You don't know that, Sakura!" Tsunade snarled.

The brunette scratched her shoulder. "I have a significant advantage."

Her superior turned to her, a menacing smile snaking its way across her face. Sakura's eyes widened, and she leaned away from her chief in a sheer moment of panic. She was smart, she could have thought of a more convincing argument. Now, she'd talked herself into a circle. There was nothing worse than moments in which she would have to admit a failure, and Tsunade was exactly the type of person who would syphon it out of her prey – student or no.

"An advantage that would be compromised if you continue to bring attention to yourself and my villagers," Tsunade replied, gleefully. "You do know, Sakura, that your actions will ultimately fall on more creatures than just yourself."

The girl turned her head to the ceiling. Had she stayed in bed this morning and feigned illness until she was summoned for her rites, this could all have been avoided. Her conscience knew, however, that had she done that, the boy on whose behalf she intervened would have been publicly beaten. Sakura dropped her head into a nod, choosing to concede rather than allow the argument to persist. She understood the point the older fae was making, but she also felt that she had a responsibility to her people – even if they weren't her people anymore.

The chief frowned at her but did not say whatever was on her mind in that moment and dismissed the young woman and her guardian with a wave. Sakura thought she saw the two share a look but ignored it in favor of taking the lead out of their superior's chambers. Kakashi, she knew, was collecting his thoughts to form a coherent conversation about her actions and she chose to fill the silent moment with soaking up every bit of sun she could. It was her own misfortune that she didn't tan the way Ino did – something she wholeheartedly envied her for and expressed to the blonde every moment she could – but it never took away from her love of the sun.

She wondered about the humans tricked into their realm, how unforgiving their sun god could be to those more delicate beings who were accustomed to a star that did not radiate such intense magic. Sakura was glad of many things, but she was gladdest that she was not born human. A cursed birth, to have so little time to experience the world. Even an elderly human died in what was a faerie's infancy. Kakashi's indifferent gait met her own unhurried steps, as Sakura's mind filled with more thoughts of humans' mortality.

"Uncle."

"Hanako."

They both looked at each other, startled that they'd spoken at the same time, and Kakashi lifted a hand to scratch at the back of his head.

"You can go first." His exposed eye crinkled.

She thought to argue with him, but she was sure she'd enjoy her own conversation to whatever he was going to say about their earlier meeting.

"Do you envy the mortality of humans?"

His eye widened in surprise, hand clenching at the back of his head. The house loomed nearer as he considered her question. Sakura was sure she took him by surprise, but Kakashi was ever the educator and she knew that he would answer a question before admonishing her or Ino any day.

"There have been times that I have."

"What circumstance would push someone to want to give up their immortality? Humans are so… fragile. Anything could be their undoing, why would one want to subject themselves to such a painful existence?"

They reached the door of their two-story cottage and Kakashi opened it for her, she nodded her thanks and walked to the table in their small kitchen. They each took a seat, happy to be inside and away from the noise overtaking their village.

Kakashi cleared his throat to respond, "Those who have experienced unimaginable horrors, envy a human's mortality. Humans may suffer trauma, and like any other being will either move beyond it or be trapped in their own grief, but their lives are short. There is a promise in that brief lifespan that either time or death will heal their wounded souls."

"Isn't that the same for both?" Her brows scrunched together.

"Well, yes. In a way. We have nothing but time, and we are fortunate enough to be born with unyielding strength, and to have companions to make memories with who are not susceptible to death and decay in the way that humans are. But, there are some wounds that even time and company cannot heal. So, those afflicted by that mentality envy the mortality of humans because it ends for them. Humans only have to live with their hurts for a short time, but we suffer with ours eternally. If we allow them to consume us, of course."

"Humans could consider their lifetime a millennium," Sakura replied.

"Sure."

"I suppose if I were the last of faekind living among humans, it would indeed be a sorrowful existence."

Kakashi leaned back in his seat in lieu of answering. She thought about what he said and met his haunted eye. All the solutions that came to her were sound, but not without consequence.

"Why not just make themselves forget? There are spells and Threaders who could do such a thing."

Sakura watched as some unforgotten hurt flashed through his eyes before he looked away from her and to the sitting room window.

"Would you willingly erase all memories of your parents, niece?"

Her heart skipped a beat and she removed her hands from their place on the table. Her parents. Would she forget them? She had the tools to do so. It was dangerous how readily available things like that were, anyone could make someone forget, willingly or otherwise. Yes, her immortal soul was wounded, but how far would she be willing to go to heal? To forget her parents and their rule over what was once a peaceful kingdom. To forget her title. To forget the murderer who sat on her father's throne. Her father. Her lips thinned. She couldn't do it. It was horrible enough that they were dead, but to not recognize their names on the lips of others – to not remember the people they were behind throne room doors, that would be a death of a different kind.

She rose and stalked toward the steps without thanking him for his insight. They were both lost in their thoughts. Later, when she held her pillow close and drifted into her dreamworld, she would wonder – not for the first time – about Kakashi's life and what kind of things he must have endured to bring that dusky shade of sorrow to his eye.

Her eyes twitched as she realized she'd distracted him with a heavy enough topic that he'd forgotten to give her a punishment for her heroics.

"Hanako, you look amazing!" Ino sang.

Sakura was happy for the validation. She'd worked herself to the bone to stitch together her receiving outfit, and she was ecstatic to sashay around the field in it. She felt like tonight was for her, although she was sure everyone else thought the same of themselves, and it made her desire to overshadow everyone else's efforts palpable.

Or at least, she thought so.

She brushed her hands against the purple-white replica of the hydrangea lining the off-shoulder neckline of her dress and smoothed them down to where they scattered in a waterfall pattern onto sky blue tulle. The candlelight flickered against the shimmer of inactive faerie dust sprinkled throughout the material.

She looked like spring night, and Ino the night sky in deep violet. The blonde's dress a daring strapless with sheer triangular panels across her ribs. While some decided to work their fingers into a bloody mess for their attire, Ino found the seamstress responsible for courtesan's outfitting's and commissioned a dress that it would near impossible for wings to damage. Sakura knew the elders would grumble throughout the night about Ino's choice, but she also knew the walking corpses were too terrified of the blonde to address her directly.

"Thanks, Kagami, you too. Maybe I should've gotten one to match."

Ino grinned at her. "Don't let the crones hear you say that, they'll think I'm corrupting their little flower."

"Are you insinuating that I'm short?" Sakura raised a brow.

"Even if I was, your forehead more than makes up for it," Ino crooned. "So, you know, nothing to worry about there."

Sakura kept her expression carefully devoid of emotion. "I'll remember that the next time I have the opportunity to be corrupted. I'll have some poor boy lick my forehead, that'll really get things started."

Ino's eyes widened and watered as she snorted out a laugh. Sakura grabbed a leather corset lying on the bed nearest to her and threw it at her friend's face.

"What's this I hear about licking, ladies?"

Ino paused in the middle of rolling up the corset. Sakura, mid-duck quickly glanced to their guardian in the doorway and Ino took the distraction as an opportunity to hit the black-haired teen directly in the face.

Sakura sputtered in indignation and yelled, "Bitch!"

"Ha!"

"It seems we'll have to train more rigorously, Hanako. Such a pathetic display from my star pupil."

Sakura's expression smoothed into a smirk.

"What the hell, Kakashi!?"

The crinkles by Kakashi's eye deepened. "You're my second favorite, Kagami."

"There's only two of us!" She yelled, in mock rage. "Get out, you old pervert."

Sakura snorted and straightened with a grin, picking up a feather pillow and tossing it at Kakashi on her way to retrieve her moonstone from inside her ottoman.

"Time to go?"

Kakashi nodded once at Sakura's question and the girls followed him out of their bedroom doorway, still mocking one another. Sakura's eyes roved over her blonde counterpart, the ends of her loose pale hair dancing in a magic-filled breeze, and her heart leapt.

They stepped out, and overjoyed neighbors ambled toward them. A few of them wasting no time in giving Ino a side-eye and whispering behind obvious hands. Sakura was sure Ino either noticed them or was being selectively oblivious as she zeroed in on her favorite ladies. The neighbors approached and placed flower veils on the heads of both, fussing and ushering the girls off with prayers to the moon goddess.

Sakura secured her headpiece around her up-do, in response to Ino's mischievous grin. The blonde grabbed her hand and ran in the direction of the village center.

Twinkle lights and lanterns bathed their path in a kaleidoscopic of colors. The receivers weren't the only ones taking advantage of the occasion to dress for the festivities. Sakura spotted entire families clothed in finery, with embroidered sigils of houses long disbanded. A few of the sigils mimicked their moon-mark's, the stones glistening in the candlelight.

That was their village's pride during the war, accepting refugees from the destruction of the Tsuki's usurper, and in doing so doubling their population and generating a successful revenue for themselves. There were still a few that treated the refugees as outsiders. Though, many of those were village elders who were thousands of years old and Sakura was aware that a number of them simply did so out of crabbiness.

Music and laughter permeated the air. Sakura and Ino joined hands, gliding over to the circle of other teens where they all clasped onto each other in a moment of frightened ecstasy. They spun in time with the music, dizzying themselves in the purest joy. Mothers and fathers arranged sporadically around their children, throwing glittery confetti at the dancing circle.

Sakura did her best to keep up as laughter bubbled from her throat. The hands that held hers were sticky with perspiration, the circle spinning round and round with her between Ino and a distant relative of Maemi's – Hideo, she believed his name was. It was rare, even in times of peace to have so many participate in the ascension ceremony. The birth of fae children were few and far in between. Their birth's coincided with her parents' reign, something the villagers whispered their old thanks and oaths about – not knowing that their old princess was living in the heart of their home. As she glanced at the faces around her, wholeness expanded within her chest. At that moment, and all those before, the group of people that danced around the circle with her were little more than humans with a fae lifespan, relying on spells and charms to perform their magic. Now, they would be fae in the truest sense.

Spikes of fear and anxiety crept into her heart, of the possibility that with her ascension she would be chosen as a member of her mother's people, those of the Ethereal Court. There was a desire to be the strongest among them, especially where the boys were concerned, but with that power came responsibility that she wasn't sure she wanted. She pushed those fears from her mind, choosing merriment over unease.

They continued their celebrating until a large yellow wisp found itself in the center of the circle, blinding them with its transformation before Tsunade landed on her heels. The music slowed to a crawl and she scowled at their finery, until all were silent, and a grin slid across her pale features.

"Excitement is brewing. We've worked hard these past weeks to prepare you all for your vows, are you all ready?" Sakura gave a determined nod, in sync with her peers. "Good. As far as speeches go, I'm not going to get flowery on you, I never have. The road ahead will be a rough one – coming into power has never been easy for any generation. You have all been fortunate enough to come into your magic gradually and comfortably, in this time of relative peace. Not everyone is afforded that luxury.

I cannot tell you what to do with your power. I can only hope that you take what I have taught you, and what I have yet to teach you, into the world to be used wisely."

The chief met Sakura's eye and said, "May Kiyo bless you."

Tsunade's eyes flicked to the girl's peers and she clapped for them to hit the gravel while the goddess was still young. Sakura engaged in small talk with Maemi who caught up to them, dressed in what could only be the outfit of a virginal sacrifice – or sleep attire, depending on where one's mind was. Their path glowed with the essence of wisp-fae, their whispers caressing the shells of her ears. She shivered in response. Sakura knew the transformed fae meant well, even if they had always been a bit creepy. She wondered if her opinion would change once she was able to do the same thing.

The procession picked up a great many stragglers on their way to the eastern sector of the village, all of them excited to witness another ascension. There were no children, of course, because of the age-old fear that the abundance of magic during their holiday would somehow negatively affect the younglings own budding power. The flowers along the edges of the path leading to the Niji Field were open and facing upward straining for the moonbeams to shine on them in true pick-me fashion.

A circle of bowls lined the area they would be seated, accompanied by small, sturdy wooden buckets. The cups filled with sugar water to help ease the taste of magic after the ceremony. For some, it would taste as sweet as honey, but for others it would be akin to ash on their tongues. Sometimes, even more rancid than that. If the magic was powerful, the taste was putrid. Sakura didn't know which to hope for.

They all took their places, Sakura turned behind her to catch Ino's attention before she sat, her companion gave her a reassuring smile and settled down with the rest.

Tsunade erected a barrier to contain any flares that might escape the fledgling fae. While she waited for her chief to conclude the preparations, Sakura felt anxiety creep into her chest once again. An almost foreboding feeling began to consume her, and she did not allow herself to investigate the gathering crowd. Her hands were sweating again.

The ground beneath Tsunade's feet crunched, making Sakura's ears twitch with anticipation. She cleared from their small circle with a steady, "Begin," and their chant twisted like smoke into the air.

With each sway to the beat, Sakura's shoulders met with pressure – different than what they'd practiced, but something Tsunade warned them of. They summoned their magic in unison, shuffled backward with flame covered hands and submitted to the goddess' whispers. A familiar glow encompassed her skin and she shimmered like starlight with the help of the aged fairy dust she powdered herself. When her flame reached new heights, Sakura felt a pressure in her chest. Her chant was steady and as the pressure continued to grow, it traveled upward. Her body was like a burning star on the verge of collapse. Anticipation consumed her and as the light traveled her vision improved. It reminded her of every time she tried to poke her head out of a closed window that was so clean she didn't notice it was there… and she realized her eyes were glowing with the same light that protruded from her chest.

Each of them removed their hand from the tower of shared flame they created and joined one hand with the other. Sakura pushed her left hand through the fire that already consumed her right and brought the flame closer to her chest. She could see herself clearly in the reflection of the moonstone and it called to her so frantically that she began to weep. She had never felt so wanted — no, needed. The stone hovered over her palms, she watched as it traveled nearer to her face. A weight was being pushed onto her body. She fought against it with borrowed strength and she could hear the cries of struggle all around her. Her body froze, and the stone came to her, and like a babe just learning how to return the affection of its mother, gave her a light peck high on her cheekbone at the corner of her eye and fused with her skin. It was like being skinned.

The flame consumed her body then, and she howled at the blaze. The bones at her back cracked and she was almost sure that the pain would have thrown her forward, if not for the magic holding her in place. Similar howls and shouts leapt from the others. She wondered if the bystanders could hear them, if they would intervene. How could any of them have experienced this pain and not have thought to warn their children? Perhaps Tsunade omitted the detail from their practice with the assumption that someone would back out. She didn't know, all Sakura knew was that her cheek and back were likely melting from her body and she felt every second of agony with an acuteness that outshone the cramps from her quarterly bleeding a thousand times over. She was clawing at the ground, trying to escape the snap of her shoulder blades, until she realized she wasn't clawing with her hands.

Flames lapped at her skin, both burning and soothing. The moonstone was gone. She heard the recovering sighs around her, although her own flame refused to die down. Instead, her cuspids elongated, poking at her bottom lip that she had previously been gnawing on, and drew blood. A burning rash formed along the only part of her shoulder she could see.

Suddenly, as she narrowed her eyes to get a better look at what seemed to be a strange side effect, the magic released her with an almost euphoric brush against her lips and she slouched over and fell on her side. Her mouth tasted like death and decay. She couldn't even reach the bucket to vomit and tried to hold it in her mouth for as long as possible, until she could move her arms again. Whenever that would be. This reminded her of something… something she'd seen recently.

In a dream, perhaps? She thought.

Mercifully, someone came to her rescue and lifted her head to assist her in releasing the bile she'd been hoarding.

There were some gasps around her that she ignored in favor of drinking the sugar water being pushed to her lips.

"Hanako, open your eyes," Kakashi's voice urged her.

She did as he asked and the full moon both beckoned and blinded her. She squinted and turned her head away from it, something that was frowned upon, catching sight of her friends' wings around her and some of their moon-marks that were visible. Their parents were helping them clean off the blood. She tentatively brought a wing closer to her line of vision, with great effort at the cost of the pain that still grappled her, expecting a similar beautiful translucent wing, the kind she hoped for. The kind that her mother had had.

Her excitement died when she beheld a skeletal one in its place. Iridescent, with scales dotting varying sections of her blood smeared leather-like wings. She drew back in disgust.

"Kakashi, what is this?" she croaked.

Heads turned toward her, but she couldn't address a single person or comment. Different, the word strangled her, but why? Kakashi held her close, turning her head to his chest. But she could already hear their judgement.

She was an abomination.

Hey, hope everyone enjoyed reading this. I sure didn't enjoy writing and rewriting it ten thousand times. Please leave a review letting me know what you liked, or what you would like to see, or what you think this might me leading to! Please just review in general, I need some motivation. I'm not even afraid to ask for it.

Don't worry, we will see our beloved Itachi in the next chapter.