"Are you serious? I can take missions, but I can't even walk home on my own?"

The man behind the hospital's front desk winced. "Sorry, Haruno-chan, but you know we have rules for a reason."

I sighed. "Sorry, Sato-san. I didn't mean to go all cranky-ninja on you. I know; it's not your fault. It's just annoying." I'd been to the hospital so often that I knew the receptionist well.

I hadn't been surprised when I didn't see my family in the front office. I remembered being told that next of kin were only contacted in medical emergencies when I'd be unable to make my own decisions. I hadn't been surprised not to see Naruto or Sasuke either; it was still early evening, and they were likely still on their mission.

I had been surprised to learn that it mattered. For some unfathomable reason, you needed an escort home if you almost died several hours previously.

"Do you know if my sensei is still around? He could probably walk with me. If not, maybe I can try to track down Tsunade-"

Sato's eyes widened. "Don't you dare, Sakura-chan. Just give me a minute to page around, and if your sensei isn't here, I'll send out a hawk. If I can't get hold ofhim I'll walk you home do not put me in Tsunade-sama's line of fire."

I snorted and rolled my eyes, but paused when I felt a familiar presence approach. I turned my head to see Ten-Ten sidle up.

"Sorry, Sakura! Kakashi-sensei sent me here to walk you home. I was just checking on Lee..." She turned to the receptionist and gave him her ninja registration number.

"Alright, Haruno-chan. Hopefully, I won't see you later," Sato called cheerfully.

I made a point of sticking my tongue out at him before following Ten-Ten. She paused before we reached the doors, turning toward me and taking one of my hands. "Neji told me what happened… thank you."

My cheeks flushed; I quickly looked away. "Don't thank me unless he gets better, please." I scrubbed my free hand over my face. "Your mission is over then?" I asked lightly, trying to fight a frown.

She understood what I hadn't asked. "Yes, Kakashi-sensei told us as soon as we got back to Konoha. Gai-sensei is up with Lee now, and Kakashi said Naruto-san and Sasuke-san needed to attend an emergency meeting with him. I'm sorry, I don't know more."

I had to smile a little at her adding -san to both Naruto and Sasuke's names; Team Gai was always so polite. But my concern increased as she went on. It had to be something serious to keep the three most overbearing people on the planet from me when I was in the hospital.

Ten-Ten squeezed my hand. "Before we leave, would you like to borrow some clothes? I keep backups in my sealing scrolls..."

I glanced down at the remains of my outfit. One of the Nurse's Aids had been kind enough to wash out the worst of the blood for me, but my tights were long gone. "Eh, the blood is barely noticeable. It's not bad enough to freak out the civilians, and honestly, I'm outgrowing these anyway." Even after only a few months of training, I was gaining weight and muscle quickly and would need to replace my wardrobe soon. I had been starting to get the sinking feeling that the previous Sakura might have been trying to diet.

Ten-Ten gave my hand a gentle tug, and we walked out of the hospital together. "I know we haven't been friends long, Sakura, but-" She paused. "Can I call you by your name?"

"Yes." I smiled. So polite.

"Sakura," she said more firmly. "But I can tell… that is to say, you look like you're thinking of a thousand things at once. Are you okay?"

I blinked. "You can tell that easily?" I thought I had been acting as normally as could be expected.

She smiled a little, starting to swing our hands together as we walked. The gesture of affection was nice, after spending so much time with awkward teenage boys. "You are a person who shows their emotions pretty loudly, Sakura. Besides, after a day like this, and everything that has happened..." Her smile grew fixed. "It can be nice to talk to someone a little. Me too, you know."

I flushed again. Right. Ten-Ten wouldn't be feeling much better than I was, right now. She'd essentially had two team members almost die when she was nowhere near to do anything about it.

Pursing my lips a moment, I began: "It's… there's just so much, you know? I feel like I have five different trains of thought at once. Like, the part that's worrying about you, the part that's worrying about Lee, the part that's busy worrying about Sasuke and Naruto and Sensei, and worrying about me and like… the rest of me is just trying to be normal, and getting distracted, and just-"

Ten-Ten laughed. "Everything is just so messed up!"

I couldn't help the giggling that burst out of me. "Like, what are we even supposed to be doing?"

We stopped to catch our breath, and Ten-Ten burst out between snorts of laughter: "Like, Lee almost chops his leg in half during training and nearly bleeds to death, and we were supposed to be going to the Chunin exams next month? And then you almost destabilised your medical seal, almost died, but then they found out you'll probably be safe for missions so I won't even get to train with you anymore-"

"Oh, shut up!" I laughed, shoving her in the shoulder. "While Lee's out-of-it we'll keep training and doing missions together. You can't help being surrounded by dumbasses like us."

"Did you really tell Kakashi, 'Don't worry, I got this'?" she asked breathlessly.

My face was flaming red as I flailed and said, "Listen, it seemed like a good idea at the time!"

She reached over and squished my cheeks.

"Ten-Ten!"

"And now, as soon as I finished babysitting your teammates, they're off doing who-knows-what! I just can't keep up!"

I flailed my arms again until she released me, and I took the opportunity to hook my arm through hers and resume the march toward my house. "You're not wrong, though. It does feel like we're all constantly babysitting each other, doesn't it?"

"I guess that's what being a team is all about," she said, rubbing the tears from her eyes.

The rest of the conversation as we made our way was more sedated, and our steps grew slower as we approached my front door.

"What will you tell them?" Ten-Ten asked quietly.

"Partial truth. I'll have to be honest about a lot of it," I admitted. "I just won't go into detail."

She nodded, pulling a scroll from her pack. "Here, it's a sealing scroll. I was going to give this to you in case we couldn't train together again, but… Either way, I want you to have it. I know you don't like doing sealwork yourself."

I flushed again, this time for an entirely different reason. "Thank you. Um. I probably will end up asking you to explain seals to me sometime. I need to stop avoiding working on things I'm bad at."

Her smile was gentle. "Okay." No questions asked, no prying, no teasing.

After a brief exchange of murmured promises to meet back up at training, we said our goodbyes. She walked away, and I was alone again.

Time to face the music.

I told my parents the truth. About Lee, at least.

"That poor boy," Mebuki said as we finished washing up the dinner dishes. "But is it necessary for you to go to a hearing? If it's not against the law, you shouldn't be in trouble."

I shrugged, drying my hands. "Konoha uses a lot of precedent-based law, instead of just using precedent to base punishment. I won't get into any real trouble, and it'll end with me getting one-on-one lessons with Tsunade-sama. Really, you couldn't ask for a better outcome."

Mebuki hummed her agreement and I turned awkwardly, tugging at my shirt again. I found myself wishing through dinner that I'd taken Ten-Ten up on her offer of a change of clothes- I'd had to carefully angle myself to mask the faint ghost of bloodstains on my shorts. Once the dishes were away and Mebuki was distracted, I snatched up my bag to make my escape. I spun around to leave, accidentally snagging my satchel against a chair. The scrolls that I'd shoved in top fell onto the floor.

"Huh, what are those?" Kizashi asked, peering down from his seat.

"Ah, those," I mumbled, caught in my mistruth. "Ah, well one is a sealing scroll from Ten-Ten, and the other was actually from my therapist. My appointment was today, that's the other reason I took so long getting home." I crouched down to clean up, holding my satchel carefully over the darkest stain.

"What's a sealing scroll?" Kizashi asked, picking one of the scrolls up from where it rolled under his chair. Mebuki reached over to take it and hand it back to me.

"Oh, I think that's the one from the therapist. That one has exercises for me to-"

As Mebuki gripped onto the scroll Kizashi held and pulled it toward her, it unravelled. There was a light like a flashbang, a surge of chakra, and then I couldn't feel my parents' chakra anymore.

They had disappeared in a flash.

I froze, still crouched on the floor, hand paused in mid-air.

"Kizashi? Mebuki?"

The house was eerily silent. I stared in disbelief at where they'd been sitting a moment before. I jumped to my feet, feeling the silent press of their lack of presence shove at me.

My head twisted around crazily as I looked around the kitchen, still unable to process. "Okaasan? Otousan?" (Mother? Father?)

Silence.

"Dad? Mom?"

Nothing.

Even the scroll was gone.

Nothing, except the faintest trace of chakra. Kabuto-san's chakra.

"No, no, no," I started mumbling to myself. Without thought, I was feeling carefully through the air around me, desperately trying to find any trace of my parents' chakra. Nothing except the faint imprint left behind from being in the house only a moment sooner, like the lingering scent of perfume. "This can't be real, this can't… Dad? Mom?"

But of course, nobody was here.

There was a sudden flutter of chakra directly outside the front door, starting small and expanding in strength, followed by loud animistic scratching at the wood. I paused for a fraction of a second as I tasted the feel of the chakra, before ripping the door open.

A dog sat on my front doorstep.

"I know you," I blurted out. And somehow, I did. The dog was wearing a Konoha headband, and while it held its own chakra signature- and even this was oddly familiar- there was also an undercurrent of static.

"You- you have some of Sensei's chakra. Are you his dog? Can you get him? Can you understand me?"

The dog pushed past me through the door. "Yeah, I can hear you, calm down. I'll handle this."

I froze in shock as the pug walked into my kitchen, sniffing around the floor. "It's faint," he rumbled in a low voice. "But definitely some kind of seal. Whoever put it in place will be long gone. What set it off?" He turned to face me.

"It- it was a scroll I got from my therapist, Kabuto-san. He said it was mental health exercises. My parents accidentally opened it and-"

The dog let out a low grumble. "Got it." He trotted forward and pushed against my legs.

"Huh? What are you- my parents-" I felt dizzy.

"Grab some gear, we're getting you out of here. Got any mission packs ready?"

I blinked, reeling for a moment, before stumbling up to the hall closet and digging out the third pack hanging from the door-hooks. "A few, this one is for long-term?"

"Very good. Smart kid." He nudged against my legs again and shoved me out the door, where several more dogs were waiting. "Go with them; they'll take you somewhere safe. I'll find Kakashi. Just get out of here, we don't know if the scroll will have had a signal on it. Move!"

Almost in a trance, I followed the two dogs onto the rooftops and joined them in a sprint. One dog led, the other fell back to run behind me. Somehow, I could tell they were holding back to match my speed.

They took me to Uchiha Compound.

Sasuke and Naruto were as surprised to see me as I'd been to see them.

"You're here?" I asked them dazedly, putting a palm against the larger dog's shoulder for support. The boys were in front of Sasuke's house, clearly in the middle of transporting a small pile of boxes inside.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto exclaimed. "Wasn't somebody taking you home? We were going to go see you when we finished here and- aren't those Sensei's dogs?"

"What happened to you?" Sasuke asked, eyes flashing red.

I looked down at the dog, but it just grinned back at me, tongue lolling out. The other dog sat silently, looking out as though on watch.

"Uh, I guess you don't all talk?" I asked the dogs, feeling a bit silly. The second dog let out a soft bark.

I clutched my mission pack to my chest. "Can we go inside, Sasuke?"

That evening found me sitting in front of Sasuke's fireplace, leaning against him, satchel thrown carelessly on the floor as Naruto quietly pulled blankets and bedding out from the boxes. I pet the dog half-sprawled across my lap absently, watching the flames dance in front of me.

I told them about my parents first, before going back and telling them everything. Absolutely everything. My conversation with Sensei, with my therapist, and every conversation with Tsunade. Including the parts about my memories, about Orochimaru. Including everything she told me to keep to myself, and that they might have been the original targets, instead of me.

Everything.

I couldn't help but feel that this had all come far too late.

"I don't understand why this is all happening," I mumbled, head now resting completely on Sasuke's shoulder. He was tolerating it the way a cat might when lifted by a toddler. More reconciled than anything. "And Naruto is moving in with you, then? For real? What was your meeting about? You said you were coming to see me?" I took in a deep breath. "I guess given everything, it would be safer for you two to stick together..."

I felt Sasuke nod. "Yeah, that's why."

"We were going to ask you to come with us," Naruto said, uncharacteristically quiet.

"What happened?" I repeated. "And why does Tsunade think you guys would be targets? Do you know?"

Sasuke slumped forward, and with the sudden lack of support, I had to straighten up. Naruto stopped what he was doing and moved over to sprawl across my legs beside Kakashi's dog. It was oddly comforting.

"Ne, Sakura-chan," Naruto said, voice distant. "Do you remember the Daimyo's wife?"

I blinked. "The Fire Lady? Of course. How could I forget?"

He nodded. "Did you know she was the one who sent us on that mission to get Tsunade?"

I gaped.

Naruto smiled slightly. "You were right, you know. Being nice to clients made them like us more." His eyes moved to stare at the ceiling. "After our mission, Sensei came and told us what happened to you and Lee. And he said we had to go to a meeting with the Daimyo's Wife. Jiraiya was there too. They wanted to talk to us separately, but…"

"But talking separately obviously hasn't been helping us," Sasuke cut in.

I furrowed my brows. "I don't understand. Did something else happen?"

"Kinda..." Naruto trailed off. "Ne, do you know what the Kyuubi is?"

I cocked my head to the side. "Never heard of- wait no, it was a kinda… folklore thing? They went over it briefly in one of my history books, it was like a metaphor for a natural disaster, right?"

"Not a metaphor," he said. He reached down and tugged his shirt up to reveal his stomach. It held a large spiral seal I'd never seen before. "Do you know what a jinchuuriki is?"

"… Not a metaphor?"

He continued as if I hadn't spoken. "A long time ago, there were biju, giant chakra monsters we called 'tailed beasts'. Some ninja villages learned how to seal them away into people, called jinchuuriki. That way, they'd be able to control their power. Konoha's biju, Kyuubi, broke out and nearly destroyed the village almost twelve years ago." His eyes moved over to meet mine. "Instead of sealing it back into the old jinchuuriki, they sealed it into me." He swallowed. "The old jinchuuriki was my mother, and she was dying. She was gonna let it die with her, but the Fourth Hokage said that since the Kyuubi would just come back anyway, and Konoha wouldn't be able to protect itself. So they decided to seal it into me, so I could- could protect everyone." He swallowed. "And the Fourth Hokage was my father. I just found out. They never told me." His voice was rough. "He was the Hokage, and they wanted me to use it to protect Konoha. And everyone knew I had it, and they hated me, and I didn't find out I had the Kyuubi until I got my headband. And I didn't find out why they did it or who my parents were until now."

My breath had turned into a strange clawing thing in my chest. I swallowed back the nausea. "You were the Hokage's son. Why would they hate you? Why didn't they take care of you?" I remembered his apartment; the warm, homey decorations. The single chair at his table, because he never expected anyone else to sit beside him. The plants and figurines and drawings, all scattered around to show a companion in every corner. The cute names he put on every possession, trying to form a barricade around the aching loneliness that seemed to linger in the very walls.

Why?

Naruto shook his head. "They didn't know that, just that I was the jinchuuriki. And they kept it a secret from all the kids too, everyone too young to remember. I guess they thought it would keep the other villages from finding out. But the kids knew their parents hated me, even if they didn't know why, so they hated me too." Next to him, Kakashi's dog gave a low groan. Naruto pat its head absently. "They blamed me for killing so many people, but nobody told them the Hokage was my father. The old man- the current Hokage- he wanted to keep that a secret, too. He thought I'd get assassinated." He smiled hollowly.

"Naruto..." I began quietly, but couldn't find what to say.

His smile changed a little, some of his usual warmth entering it. His voice drifted away from the frightening monotone. "That's why the Daimyo's Wife called us. She said all these secrets were stupid and were going to get us all killed. So I guess she talked Sensei and Jiraiya into it-"

"Sensei wanted to talk to us too," Sasuke cut in.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, you're right. He and the pervy sage were still kinda scared of breaking the Hokage's rules though, but I think they were more scared of her." He gave a real grin this time, but it faltered as his eyes moved over to Sasuke.

I tore my eyes away from him to follow his gaze. "And you had to go with him, right? What did they have to say to you?" I wasn't sure I even wanted to know, but then again, that might have been what had gotten us into this whole mess.

Sasuke ran a hand through his hair. "They had the same idea you and Tsunade did. About Naruto or myself being a target, and how my brother was probably involved. I didn't think he would, but of course, why wouldn't he?" He slammed a fist against the floor. "Genjutsu. I should have known, it was right there... Those with strong Sharingan were always known to create incredible genjutsu."

I gaped. "Wait, the other guy Tsunade was talking about was your brother?"

He snorted humourlessly. "So if this Orochimaru guy is trying to get at the Kyuubi to hurt Konoha, and he started working with my brother to get rid of me, the last Uchiha left…" His eyes finally met mine. "Konoha always relied on us before. If I died, my brother would be the last one left with the skill, other than Kakashi."

The pieces slid further into place as he spoke. "So they probably weren't too worried about who they got. You, Naruto, Kakashi; all would have been perfect targets. I just happened to be in the middle."

"Not for long," Sasuke said, shaking his head. "Word is already spreading that Tsunade is interested in you. The Chunin at the gate were asking us about it when we were on our mission." He smiled mirthlessly. "So you're already a good target on your own."

"And then Kabuto-san- maybe it wasn't him, maybe somebody switched the scrolls," I said helplessly. "But someone was hoping to… I don't know, kill me? Seal me away? Teleport me? I don't know what it did." I wanted to curl into a ball, but couldn't with the dog and Naruto still sprawled over my legs.

I settled for snagging one of the blankets and draping it over my shoulders. "This is so messed up. I want Sensei," I murmured, not caring that I sounded childish.

"He'll be here," Naruto said. Even Sasuke grunted in agreement.

Because no matter what happened, how silly and flighty he could get, Kakashi was always there for us when we needed him.

And if there were ever a time we needed a sensei's help, it was now.

A/N: I hope nobody is too angry that this meeting happened without Sakura being there for it, but that's sorta the point. Unfortunately, the world keeps moving, even when you aren't there to see it. (Not to mention all the other things happening in the background, whee~)

(PS. I've been re-writing and editing this for weeks. The title of the file on my computer is, literally- so long that FFnet thinks it's a website link, apparently. I'm posting it now, because if I keep working on it, it'll be living on my computer for another month and I want to move on.)