I had never seen any chakra colour except blue in other people, until I met Tsunade. Chakra was visible so rarely, it hadn't even occurred to me that my chakra might be the colour it was for a reason. I did not know what it meant, but I did know precisely one person who could see and understand other chakra colours.

"Sasuke!" I called out, my voice cracking slightly.

He was by my side in a blur of motion, one hand gripping my shoulder roughly, his eyes flashing around the clearing.

Red eyes.

All other thought stuttered to a halt, drifting away to where I couldn't reach them anymore. Red eyes. I'd known, in a previous life, that he had some kind of eye power that made his eyes red.

(Red.)

But I had only seen it once, and the memory flooded back into me. Red eyes. Red blood.

(Red.)

The smell of the blood, and other terrible smells. You see gore on television, but you can never imagine the smell.

(Red. The sound of something large falling wetly to the ground.)

The smell…

"What is it?" Sasuke asked, focusing on me now. Naruto trotted up behind him, his face a mask of concern.

I blinked several times as the conflicting images warred. (Red eyes and blood.) Red eyes and my friend Sasuke, crouching in front of me now (rough hands on my shoulders, shaking me) with a tense expression on his face.

"Ne, Sakura-chan? Are you sick again? If training is too much right now, we can take you home!" Naruto said, kneeling on my other side. (Naruto crying out in pain, arrow in his shoulder, red blood.)

I tried to respond but words were failing me, as though I'd forgotten how to speak.

Sasuke shook his head. "She isn't sick the way she was before." The red eyes studied me carefully (red blood, bodily tissue tearing under my kunai). "And I don't think it's… I don't think it's a genjutsu."

"Sorry," I finally mumbled, my lips numb. I didn't know what I was apologising for. For the blood? For making them worried? For killing someone? For overreacting?

Three Narutos bursting into smoke. Naruto crying out. Sensei rushing forward-

"Sensei?" I muttered.

A vibrating current in the air I could recognise immediately, like the hum of electronics coming alive after a power-outage. Something that meant safety.

A hand plopped onto my head and tousled my hair. I could feel the chakra seeping through slowly, like a warm blanket on a cold day, chakra that was saying Home over now Safety it's done Protected safe safe safe.

I blinked and saw the two boys in front of me clearly. I felt the damp grass under my knees. The sky was a vibrant blue above us. The sun was well-risen now, and I could feel the heat of it touching my skin.

I craned my neck around under the hair-ruffle. "Hi, Sensei."

Kakashi's eye crinkled up into a smile. "Maa, it's good to see all of my cute students together again." He lifted his hand from my head, and I could feel my hair lift and crackle like it had been rubbed against a balloon. I frowned and smoothed it absently.

My hands were not shaking.

"Ne, Sensei," Naruto said. "I think Sakura-chan might be sick again!"

"I'm not sick," I said. "Sorry for- for that. I just-" Just what? "I had a... moment. I'm fine now." I kept my gaze firmly on Sensei. I didn't want to look at the boys just yet.

I heard Sasuke from beside me. "What is a moment supposed to be?"

"Ah..." Sensei nodded sagely. "We call it the Shinobi's Self-Induced Genjutsu."

For a moment my lips started to twitch downward, before I caught his meaning. Then they half-curved upward, in a strange approximation of a smile.

Right. And both kinds are cancelled in much the same way. I guess I'm not the first person who thought about it like that. Had it really only been minutes ago, when I'd been comparing genjutsu to dissociation?

"Huh? Why would Sakura put a genjutsu on herself? How does that even work?"

Finally, I looked at him. I couldn't help but smile at his puzzled expression. "He just means… I was remembering something and spaced out for a minute." More to give my hands something to do than anything else, I gathered up my books and stuffed them back into my satchel. "Sensei, if you're here, that means we're having a meeting, right?" I gave him an imploring look; I did not want to keep talking about this.

Maybe this is it, just like my last life. Maybe I hit puberty, and suddenly I can't even think anymore. So much for becoming a ninja. Becoming someone reliable.

I clamped down on that thought. Hard.

"Yes," Sensei said. "We have a good bit to talk about. No need to move, we can have our meeting her. Gather round, Team 7." He hardly needed to tell us; we were already all sitting next to each other.

He folded himself on the ground in front of us, crossing his arms. We waited for him to speak, but he said nothing.

I hesitated a moment, before, "Um. Tsunade says I'm on medical leave. For at least two weeks. So I won't be allowed on missions."

The boys bristled beside me, but Sensei nodded encouragingly. "I'm going to keep training. She said I'm allowed," I said. The words sounded strangely childish in my ears.

Kakashi nodded. "I know how important training is to the three of you. That's why, while Sakura will be unable to join missions with us, I've come up with an alternative..."

We stared at him.

He clapped his hands together. "You all know the value of hard work," he said, a strange, terrifying joy radiating through his voice. "So we're going to be training with another team, and rotating members throughout. My friend's genin are a year older than you… So he wanted to give them each a taste of leadership while running missions with you two," he nodded his head at Naruto and Sasuke, "while joining our training so everyone has a chance to learn to acclimate to new team members. At least until Sakura is discharged from medical leave."

Sasuke crossed his arms. "… This is just a way for you to get out of training and missions, isn't it?"

Kakashi's eye widened. "I assure you, I would not miss out on this training for the world."

I rubbed at my arms absentmindedly. "Training with another team would be interesting… seeing how their style works. And it means you guys won't be taking missions with total strangers; you'll have a chance to get to know each other."

Naruto huffed. "I don't care about other ninja! We can wait and just train hard! By the time we're done, we'll be able to do twenty missions in a single day! You can believe it!"

Sensei raised an eyebrow. "And if her medical leave lasts a month?"

Sasuke shrugged. "Then we'll have a month of training." He frowned thoughtfully. "It wouldn't hurt to train with them anyway, even if we wait on missions..."

Kakashi hummed. "I know your last mission paid well, but I'm not sure I want Naruto on my doorstep when you boys can't pay your rent..."

My head snapped over to the boys. Wait. Rent? What? They're just kids!

Sasuke snorted. "I don't have rent. If something that extreme happened, he could stay in one of the houses," he said reluctantly. And then after a pause, "On the other side of the compound."

"Wait, what?" I broke in.

Both of the boys looked at me. Their confusion reflected mine.

"Wait, hang on..." I squinted at them. "You boys don't… live alone, do you?"

Naruto scratched his head and said "Yeah" at the same time Sasuke grunted "Hn" (Which I translated to "Yes, but it's none of your damned business").

"Oh my God." My mind just couldn't wrap around it. "Kakashi! They can't live on their own! They're just kids!"

Sensei blinked slowly. "Remember that conversation we had several weeks ago? About graduating from the academy? You're all emancipated adults."

"Holy shit," I muttered in English. "What am I supposed to do? My parents said I can't move out until I'm sixteen, so how am I supposed to make sure you guys are eating?" Did Naruto even keep food in his house? Did he live entirely off of cup noodle? Does he know how to check expiration dates?

Sensei smiled. "It's nice to see you feeling so energetic again."

Sasuke buried his head in his hands. "… If we agree to take missions, will you stop that?"

"Absolutely not!" I yelled. Oh my God, did they lose their parents too? Do they not have any family? Do they just not get along? Didn't Sasuke say he had a brother he hated..?

"Heh-heh, Sakura-chan, please don't worry so much..." Naruto chuckled with a smile that seemed frozen in place. "I know how to do laundry and stuff, and Iruka-sensei visits and takes me out for ramen, and even the old man does sometimes..."

"I deliver vegetables once a week so he doesn't die of malnutrition!" Kakashi added cheerfully.

"That is not making me feel better!" I rose myself up onto my knees. "Okay! Look." I glowered at the boys. "You are each giving me your address, and every other morning I'll switch off meeting you at your houses, making sure you have food, and then we're walking to training together."

As Naruto brightened in delight and Sasuke's eyes widened in horror, I raised my hand before they could interrupt me. "And we are going to train with Sensei's friend's team, I am going to finish this physical therapy as soon as possible, and I'm going to buy us a house so you don't die from being helpless boys."

Naruto gave a toothy grin. "Hey! You can stay at the house Sasuke gives me!"

Sasuke shot him an icy glare. "… If that ever happens," he grumbled, "she can stay near one of the old training fields. You get a dog kennel on the outskirts."

"This," Kakashi interjected. "Is not how I envisioned this conversation would go." He scratched his head thoughtfully. "But this works for me. My friend's team will be meeting us here at six in the morning tomorrow. Don't be late."

We all turned to stare.

"Six in the morning?" I asked. "As in, zero-six-hundred? As in, before sunrise? At the training field?" I did some quick mental calculations in my head. Assuming the boys lived equidistant from the training fields as me, plus half that distance at an optimistic minimum to meet them… "Man, and I thought I was getting up early before. You guys better have coffee waiting for me when I get to your places. Naruto, you're first." So much for early morning tea.

Kakashi nodded. "Excellent! Enjoy the rest of your training. Ah, and Sakura," he rummaged around in a vest pocket for a scroll. "Just some care instructions from Tsunade. They can wait until you get home."

He dropped the scroll wordlessly in my lap before vanishing in a puff of smoke.

There was a pause; the quiet sound of three people adjusting from an extended period of emotional whiplash.

Naruto beamed. "So you're walking with me first because you like me best, right?"

I casually elbowed Sasuke in the side as he opened his mouth to say something sharp, and reached to take out a blank notebook. "Here, write your addresses down. Don't lie, I'll ask Sensei if I end up at the wrong house."

The boys (cheerfully, grudgingly) scrawled their addresses into the notebook.

When Sasuke handed me my pen back, he frowned. "So what was that earlier, anyway? Before… all that happened, you were yelling out. Was that just… you remembering something?" His look was wary.

"Oh!" I had completely forgotten, with everything that had happened. "It was… it was just this dumb question about chakra. You just appeared so suddenly, I guess I thought we were being attacked, or something," I admitted.

He thankfully let this pass without comment, cracking his neck. "Since when do you need to ask me about chakra?"

"It's just this weird thing. When I form chakra in my hands, it's this blue-green colour." I demonstrated for him. "But when I see other people form chakra, it's blue, or green. But you said you see completely different colours."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh." His frown returned. "When did you see green chakra? When people form enough chakra to be visible, it's almost always blue..."

"When Tsunade-sama was using Mystical Healing Palm, it was green. I wasn't sure if it was just her chakra, or-"

He shook his head. "No, her chakra… her other chakra is a kind of gold colour." He shrugged. "It's not exactly something I see, it's just.. a sharingan thing. But it's different from how chakra looks when people form it."

Auras, I thought to myself. Might as well be, since we're in a world with magic…

Naruto scrunched up his face. "So if Obaachan's chakra is green, and regular chakra is blue, and Sakura-chan's chakra is blue-green..." He jumped up to his feet. "Maybe Sakura's related to Obaachan!" he exclaimed.

"No," Sasuke said flatly. "It means Sakura keeps trying to form healing chakra when she wants regular chakra."

Oh. Well when he put it that way, it seemed obvious. Here I thought my chakra was just broken, and that's why I couldn't use it to interact with things… I suppose, in a way, it was.

(Aren't you supposed to be smart?) Shikamaru's voice taunted in my head.

Sasuke sighed. "At first I thought it was Wood Release. And Tsunade is a Senju, but..."

Wood release. That was… a special bloodline limit ability the first Hokage had. He's the one who made all the trees around Konoha, supposedly. "I didn't even consider that," I admitted.

"Huh? Wood release?" Naruto asked. "Why'd you think that? Oh! Is it because she was doing weird stuff to trees? Oh, man! Sakura, you're so cool!"

I shook my head. "No. When my chakra is interacting with trees, it doesn't feel much different from anything else, really. Pretty much the same as any living thing."

(Red blood, on my hands.) I shook my head more forcefully. "So Sasuke's probably right… I'm going to need to learn how to separate it."

Naruto's stomach chose that moment to grumble. Loudly. "Heh, sorry… Hey, why don't we all take a break and go to Ichiraku?"

Wordlessly, I dug around in my satchel and unearthed the boxed lunches, slightly crushed from the books. "Uh, I already got us food. As thanks. For everything you two did, I mean." I bowed awkwardly. "Sorry, I didn't know what you guys liked other than food."

"… You really don't think we can feed ourselves, do you?" Sasuke asked.

I elected to ignore this.

The rest of the training day was much more relaxed. The boys switched off from chakra control to sparring with each other, while some Naruto clones kept me company while I practised kunai. Or rather, were very enthusiastic kunai targets. I still refused to use live kunai on either of the boys when we sparred, despite their protests that they went all out in their sparring with one-another while I was in hospital. (Which was yet another thing that I was carefully not thinking about.)

By early evening, we called it a day. I walked with Naruto on his way home to give me an idea for where to go in the morning. Fortunately he lived in a district I was familiar with. I was happy to let his cheerful chatter wash over me, never needing a complex answer from me, nor even demanding that I partake in the conversation much at all.

"… And Sensei is always nagging me about vegetables, and so does Ayame-neesan from the ramen shop, so you really don't have to worry so much! Yanno, ramen really does have everything in it already, ne? It has noodles, meat, vegetables..."

"Fruit?" I queried.

"Ugh, Sakura-chan! C'mon! Fruit would be super gross in ramen!" He laughed.

"Naruto," I said warningly.

He waved a hand. "Yeah, yeah, okay. I'll get some fruit juice or something..."

I smiled. Sometimes, having a hyperactive talking partner could be nice.

"Okay, this is my apartment!" He gestured grandly. "But now that you know where it is, I'm gonna walk you home now! It's dangerous for girls to walk alone!"

My mouth twitched. "… Naruto, I just spent three hours impaling your clones with kunai. You remember your clones being hit with kunai. I think I'll be fine."

He huffed and crossed his arms. "And what are you gonna do if there are pirate-ninja?"

I cracked and finally laughed. "Naruto, what are you going to do if there are pirate-ninja?"

In the end, I conceded and he walked home with me. It was a cool evening with a lovely sunset, a light breeze in the air. It was hardly night or dangerous, but considering I'd just been in hospital and kicked up a huge fuss over the boys, I wasn't of a mind to argue. It wasn't like I actually minded.

We made it back to my house (no pirate-ninjas in sight, thankfully), he ducked in his head quickly to say hello and goodbye to my parents, and before long I was showered and in bed. Ino hadn't shown up that evening, but I hadn't really been expecting her to. After just coming off a mission that long, I would want to just curl up in my own bed too.

I reached in my pack to take out the boys' addresses and my books, and paused when I saw the scroll from Tsunade. I'd entirely forgotten about it.

I unrolled it lazily and let my eyes scan over the page, expecting it to just be the dates I'd be visiting Tsunade at hospital over the next two weeks. And they were. What I was not expecting, however, was the hospital's recommendation to see a psychologist. Upgraded from once-monthly to once-weekly. With a helpful address of a doctor who specialised in rehabilitating field ninja. And the precise dates and times I was expected to be there.

I groaned.

No wonder Sensei brushed off me having a breakdown at training. I should have known better. No matter what Naruto and Sasuke seemed to think, the man was nosy. He would never let something like that drop.

I let the scroll flutter onto the floor, set my alarm for four in the morning, shut off the light, and cursed myself to sleep.

Note: This is my attempt to work within the chakra colours described in both manga and anime. (I've only read the manga and a lot of Narutopedia, but I get the impression that in the anime all chakra is blue except healing, which is green, and other Special Moments, like the Kyuubi.)

And to those that mentioned... Thank you! The reason the mental illness depiction is so realistic is because I have the same ones as Sakarin. (Plus a bit more, but she doesn't need that..) Part of this story is the exploration of how, even if magically given a chemically balanced brain, the neural patterns still react in a certain way. Please note that not everyone with mental illness will react the same way though! People are all different. And illness is not character-defining, it's character-affecting. For anyone.