Despite having spent a week brainstorming potential solutions for bringing their missing comrade home, neither Kakashi nor Shikamaru had come up with anything of merit. Even after returning to the site of Sakura's disappearance, the demolished Samurai Bridge, they had come up with no clues as to her whereabouts.
Naruto, who had assigned himself to their group, had even taken it upon himself to enter sage mode multiple times in an attempt to scour the countries in search for his lost teammate. Every time the blond had entered the mode, however, his face always betrayed the same thing: he found no traces of her.
After having lost yet another precious person in his life, Naruto's usually bright demeanor had been diminished. Despite his smile lacking the luster they had all come to know, he refused to allow any of them to give up hope. They continued to persevere, desperately searching for a solution no matter how impossible the problem seemed.
They continued onward, scrounging for ideas, until Naruto of all people had had an epiphany that had the group sprinting to the Hokage's temporary office.
"Granny!" Naruto yelled as he swung open the door to the makeshift Hokage's office, immediately earning a harsh glare from the Fifth Hokage.
"I told you not to call me that, brat! Have some respect!" Tsunade berated immediately from her place behind a desk overwhelmed by scrolls and papers. Her tone was vicious but her words lacked the fire they normally did.
Even with her cherished apprentice having disappeared without a trace, the elder woman maintained a strong front. The dark circles under her eyes, however, betrayed more than just the strain she had been under following her coma and the beginning of a war.
Shikamaru and Kakashi entered behind Naruto with much less bluster, quietly closing the door behind them as Naruto excitedly detailed his theory.
"Sakura signed a contract with the slugs, right? Well, the toads summoned me to their world for my sage mode training! It was sorta like how we summon them or whatever, right? So that could work, y'know?!" the blond enthusiastically detailed, his words running together in his rush to speak. He emphasized certain aspects of his nonsensical plan with wild hand gestures, accomplishing nothing but making him all the more difficult to understand.
A fact only substantiated by Tsunade's furrowed brows and baffled grimace.
Shikamaru, his hands tucked into his pockets, strode forward to elaborate on Naruto's garbled yelling. "We think that because Sakura had signed a contract with the slugs that Lady Katsuyu should be able to summon Sakura to her world, no matter where she may be. This way, Lady Katsuyu can perform a kind of reverse summon to bring Sakura back to our world and back home."
Tsunade's eyes widened and her lips parted in surprise. After a moment, an amused smile spread across her lips, hope finally making it's appearance on the woman's face for the first time in the past week.
"Sometimes you're so stupid that you're brilliant, brat," Tsunade chuckled as she stood, already forming the hand seals necessary to summon a portion of the slug summon.
The Hokage nipped the tip of her thumb to draw a droplet of blood and pressed her palm against her desk. Concentric circles of kanji erupting from around her hand and across the papers and scrolls scatter across her desk. A puff of smoke appeared, blowing away some stray papers, and, when it cleared, a palm sized slug was revealed.
"My lady," the slug greeted in her soft, polite voice, bowing her eyestalks.
"Lady Katsuyu. Sakura has been missing for a few days now following a battle between Danzo and Sasuke. I need you to return to the Shikkotsu Forest and reverse summon Sakura. Then I'll summon you here and you can bring Sakura home," Tsunade explained briskly.
"Of course," Katsuyu replied in understanding before immediately dispelling herself, leaving behind a small puff of smoke.
The group waited a minute, Naruto nearly jumping out of his skin in excitement and needing to be hushed by Kakashi multiple times. The anticipation in the room was palpable, even without Naruto's frantic energy.
When Tsunade summoned Katsuyu once again, everyone waited for the smoke to clear with bated breath. When the whisps finally cleared, they revealed Katsuyu. The slug, despite lacking the ability to form facial expressions, appeared downtrodden. Her eyestalks hung low and an aura of despair hung around her.
"It… It didn't work," the slug summon explained in a remorseful tone, drawing a startled glance from Tsunade.
"It… didn't work?" the slug princess mimicked, her expression immediately morphing into one of horror.
Before anyone else in the room could ask why, Tsunade was on her feet, tearing through an overpacked bookshelf perched near her desk. Scrolls and books fell to the floor in her haste to locate her prize, the blonde paying no heed to the texts she threw aside. She quickly removed an unremarkable looking scroll from behind a stack of tomes and returned to her desk.
Unrolling the scroll across her desk, she revealed a dense manual on Konoha's municipal water treatment infrastructure. A text that would have been a struggle to read before but was now useless with Konoha having been destroyed by Pain.
The other shinobi in the room watched, concerned and then surprised, as Tsunade used a burst of chakra to remove a substantially larger scroll from the unassuming scroll she had hidden it in. When she unrolled the new scroll across her desk, adding to the madness of papers, numerous names and signatures were revealed.
The summoning contract with the slugs.
Tsunade unrolled the scroll hastily, spilling more papers onto the floor in her careless hurry, until three names nearing the end of the text became visible.
The first signature, a name written in blood years ago, had dulled to a dusty brown color. The second name, Tsunade's own name, was still colored a crimson red as if it had been signed just moments ago. The third signature, however, was as black as ink.
All four ninja stared at Sakura's name and handprint, bewildered. Tsunade, Kakashi, and Naruto were all familiar with how the summoning scrolls worked. When a summoner still lived, their signature remained bright red. When a summoner died, their name would dull to a dusty brown.
None of them had ever seen a signature turn as black as pitch.
"Why is her signature black, grannie?" Naruto muttered, his wide eyes not leaving the name of his missing friend neatly printed on the scroll before him.
"I… I don't know…" Tsunade whispered in response, her gaze also transfixed on her student's darkened handprint.
"Sakura."
"Hnn…"
"Sakura, wake up."
"Dun wanna yet..."
"Wake. Up."
"Unnn…."
The entirety of Kuro's weight pouncing down on Sakura's stomach rocketed her into a sitting position with a harsh exhale of air. She clutched her middle and glared at the summoned cat sitting across the room, the panther grooming his paw as if nothing had happened.
A quick, bleary glance at the ranma lining the ceiling, and the dim dawn light which entered through them, told her that it was very early morning. She rubbed her face, trying to wake herself up.
"What time is it?" she muttered into her hands, dragging her palms down her face as she yawned widely.
"Shortly after dawn. You have guests waiting for you."
Sakura sleep muddled gaze fell upon Kuro as he ran his dampened paws across his face, straightening his whiskers.
"Guests?" she parroted, her face pinched in confusion.
"See for yourself," he replied, striding into the kitchen to curl up next to the dying hearth.
Sakura sighed wearily, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she stood to get dressed. She slipped on a thick cotton juban and a blue, floral print komon kimono. After securing the excess fabric around her waist beneath a white obi, she ran her fingers through her hair to brush out the tangles. She blearily shuffled to her front door, yawning again as she went, and slid it open.
On the other side of the door stood a line of a dozen Uchiha who all turned to face her at once.
"H-hi…" Sakura stuttered in surprise, her eyes widening as she took in the crowd of people slowly growing outside of her door.
"Sakura?" started a young man wearing a butcher's apron, "You're our doctor now, right? Are you available today?"
"Uh…" she muttered lamely, her eyes flicking between the various people lined up, some shivering in the early morning air.
"Of course. Er... Come on over to the side of the house. You can all wait on the engawa while I see you all individually."
When Madara had told her to expect some of his clan to come to her for healing the next day, Sakura certainly hadn't expected a dozen people to show up before the sun even fully rose.
Sakura had directed her surplus of new patients towards her engawa, giving the Uchihas a place to wait while getting out of the frigid early morning breeze. She realized that she would need to craft proper examination and waiting rooms, especially when some of her patients had more… private concerns that they didn't want the people waiting to hear.
There was only so many times someone could whisper to her that they itched in a rather personal area before she would lose her mind.
Sakura spent hours, nearly until early evening, tending to her new patients. She had been surprised by the sudden appearance of so many Uchiha, considering their distrust of strangers, until one woman mentioned that they were willing to give Sakura a chance since she had healed Hitomi without prompting.
After spending her morning treating a wide variety of illnesses, from a chronic cough to an allergic reaction, the medic had made a mental list of all the supplies she would need in order to run a proper clinic.
She desperately needed a stock of medicinal herbs in order to make poultices, tinctures, and pills. She couldn't continue to waste chakra tending to minor concerns which could easily be solved with a properly mixed medicine.
Not just that, but having to constantly wash her hands after tending to each patient with chakra was hell on her skin.
While Sakura wanted to see the library today, having only skipped out yesterday so she could prepare her clinic, she had been distracted by the sudden onslaught of a couple dozen new patients.
Just as she had finished with her last patient and began putting together a list of all the supplies she would need, she heard a knock on the closed shoji door leading to her engawa.
"Come in," she called out as she finished writing the next item she would need on her list.
The shoji door slid open and closed and, when Sakura looked up to regard her guests, she was surprised to see both Madara and Izuna waiting.
"Oh, good-" she glanced at the ranma to try to gauge the time by the sunlight that filtered in. "Afternoon."
"Good afternoon," the elder Uchiha greeted politely.
Izuna, however, greeted her with a simple and all too familiar, "Hn."
Sakura's eyes narrowed as memories of Izuna's doppleganger, Sasuke, surfaced and in the face of his rude behavior. As she glared, however, she noticed that the younger Uchiha's long sleeve was rolled up to the elbow, revealing a blistering burn on his forearm, and the growing patch of blood on the torn shoulder of Madara's coat.
"Did you two get into a fight with someone?" she asked with a now confused expression, gesturing for them to sit on the cushions near her as she set down the scroll she had been writing in on her low table.
As the two brothers, their shoes already removed, entered the room and lowered themselves onto the cushions, Madara explained, "Just a training session."
Sakura raised an eyebrow. "Do you always stab and burn each other during training sessions?"
"We may have…" He glanced at Izuna. "Gotten a bit heated."
Deciding that Madara's freely bleeding shoulder was the more pressing injury, she addressed his wounds first.
"May I see?" she asked, holding out her hands, the Uchiha nodding once.
Madara gathered his long hair to one shoulder so she could see the wound more clearly. As he pulled his hair to the side, his distinctive scent washed over her. It reminded her of smoke from a bonfire. A warm, woodsy scent, with a hint of ash and fire. It was as if the smoke from the fires he spawned had permeated his very being.
His scent brought her back to the numerous nights she had spent in her time, curled up next to the campfire with her teammates and watching as the embers from the flames blended into the stars in the sky.
Grabbing ahold of her wandering thoughts and forcing her attention back onto the actively bleeding wound, Sakura scooted forward and knelt next to the elder Uchiha. Her hands settled onto his shoulder as she channeled her healing chakra and began mending the torn flesh.
"Just a bit heated, hmm?" the healer questioned rhetorically, decidedly ignoring the built muscles loosely coiled beneath her palms. She refused to abandon her professional demeanor, no matter how warm and solid he felt under her hands or how good he smelled.
As Sakura watched the wound knit together to focus her attention, she wondered if being attractive was a trait inherent to all Uchiha.
She knew that Sasuke was attractive. She had spent the better part of her life fostering a crush on the man after all. Since Izuna was nearly Sasuke's clone (or vice versa?), then the standoffish clan head certainly was handsome as well. Objectively, she could admit that Itachi had also been attractive, although she wouldn't touch the clan killer with a ten foot pole unless it was to beat him with it. Even the vast majority of the Uchiha she had treated that day, untoward itching aside, had been incredibly good looking as well.
Once the wound had closed completely, she ran a quick diagnostic to see if she had missed any of the capillaries or torn muscles beneath his skin. Halfway through her examination, Izuna broke her inner contemplation and huffed, "If you can stop molesting my brother, these burns sting a bit."
Sakura shot the younger Uchiha a warning glare before her gaze returned to her glowing hands. Her eyes met Madara's briefly and, when she noticed him watching her, her eyes snapped back to the now completely healed wound on his shoulder. As she pulled back her hands, she hoped that the heat she could feel building in her cheeks wasn't visible and that he couldn't have somehow sensed her thoughts.
"All done," Sakura stated, glad that her voice remained steady.
She stood from the cushion next to Madara, not noticing his curious stare, and entered her kitchen to wash her hands for the hundredth time that day.
When she returned, she sat next to Izuna, noting his increasing agitation.
"Now, what were you saying? These burns sting a bit?" she asked in a saccharine tone, an obviously fake smile plastered on her face.
"Have you never gotten burned before? Are you even capable of handling such wounds?" he mocked in response, a frown tugging at his features.
"It's okay, I know they hurt. But if you're a good boy and hold still, I can make the stinging go away," she cooed in a tone reserved only for the most obstinate of children, patting his uninjured hand twice.
The younger Uchiha stared at her in disbelieve, speechless, as she carefully lifted his injured arm to inspect his burns. Even the elder Uchiha gawked at Sakura for a moment, startled by her treatment of his brother. A man who, by his age, had already killed a hundred men and who bore part of the responsibility for leading a clan of some of the most powerful shinobi in the country.
Her hands glowed green with chakra as she rested her hand against Izuna's untarnished wrist, pressing chakra into the skin to numb the aggravated pain receptors. She began healing the wound itself from the bottom up, tending to the cauterized capillaries as she regrew the charred flesh.
"How dare you treat me like some obstinate child!" Izuna finally hissed, finding his words as well as his anger.
Sakura's answering glare was fierce as she responded in a heated yet measured tone, "And how dare you belittle me at every turn! I may be an outsider and you may not trust me yet, but I'm one of the best at what I do. If you're going to come to me for treatment, then I expect you to treat me with respect."
Izuna seemed surprised by her sudden vehemence, giving her an odd look as she continued to mend his burns. He remained silent as she continued.
"One day, you could find yourself at death's door and I'm the only one who can stand between you and it. You don't have to like me but don't talk down to me. And certainly don't doubt my skills," she asserted calmly, her eyes still betraying her fire and her refusal to be disrespected.
Sakura pulled her hands back, folding them in her lap as she stubbornly maintained eye contact, refusing to back down. The younger Uchiha glanced down at his arm, as if expecting her work to only be half done in her anger, but found nothing but fresh flesh.
Izuna's gaze returned to hers and he met her glare for a few long, tense moments, neither one of them backing down. Even when his sharingan spun to life in challenge, her anger and her glare only intensified.
It was the younger who broke the staring match with a smirk, folding his now healed arms across his chest.
"I've never met anyone brave enough to stare into the sharingan," the Uchiha praised, inspecting her from a new viewpoint, "I suppose I can give you a chance… Sakura."
"Tch. Like I'm scared of your pretty eyes," Sakura snorted in response, a small smile of her own growing, as she stood to wash her hands once more.
Izuna's expression immediately morphed into one of offense at her comment, his sharingan fading to black in his surprise, as he sputtered, "Pretty?"
Sakura could feel his gaze burning a hole in the back on her head as she scrubbed her hands. As she dried them off, she noted that her stock of soap was dwindling down to nothing and decided she needed to address the issue of supplies.
Sakura returned to her seat next to the clan heads, noticing how Madara was hiding his amusement behind his hand and Izuna didn't even bother trying to conceal his peeved expression.
Before the younger Uchiha could go on the tangent Sakura knew was welling in his chest, she spoke. "Now, normally, I would give you both a tincture to help fight off infections but I don't have the necessary herbs or instruments to make it. If I'm going to be running a proper clinic here, I'm going to need to make a trip to one of the merchant cities for supplies."
"What kind of supplies do you need?" the elder clan head questioned, his amused gaze drifting between his still visibly vexed brother and the once more professional kunoichi.
"Well… For starters," Sakura began, pressing her fingertip to her lip in thought as her gaze drifted to the ceiling, "Futons for my patients, privacy screens, cabinets for storing medicine, soap, glass containers, beakers, flasks, stoppers, graduated cylinders, condensers, distilling columns, evaporating dishes, separatory funnels, mortars, pestles, a wide variety of herbs and seeds, gauze, dressings, tape, syringes, a press for pills…"
As the medic rattled off the list of supplies she failed to notice how the brother's expressions slowly morphed from curiosity to confusion and then to dismay.
"And I need to pick up some things for myself as well. Clothes, some toiletries, a chest for my things… It's a bit annoying having to fish things out of my scroll every ten minutes…" she continued, finally noticing the disbelieving stares the brothers were giving her.
"What?" Sakura asked, an embarrassed blush spreading across her cheeks at their intense scrutiny.
Madara and Izuna shared a look before the elder questioned, "Is all that… really necessary?"
Sakura's answer was immediate and firm. "If I'm going to be running a clinic to my full capacity, then yes. The list I just gave is a fraction of what I had at my disposal at the hospital in my old village."
The brothers shared a meaningful stare, communicating silently as they often did, before Madara spoke. "Two years."
"Pardon?"
"If we're going to be outfitting a miniature hospital, then you must stay for a minimum of two years," the elder Uchiha clarified, his tone brokering no argument.
Sakura pursed her lips in thought at the prospect of being contracted for two years. She knew that it would take some time to browse their library in search of information related to space time jutsu and even longer to develop a jutsu to bring herself home. But two years?
In the end, it didn't matter how long she was contracted to them. If she found a way to get home, then fulfilling her end of a deal wouldn't hold her back from returning to the future.
"That sounds... reasonable. Should we sort out the finer details and finalize the contract while we're all here?"
When Sakura had finally been escorted to the Uchiha clan's library during the first few days of her stay, she could have wept in joy. It was contained within one of the larger buildings in the village and was packed to the brim with scrolls. Not only was it substantial, but it had been organized into easy to browse sections by a elderly woman quadruple her age but dozens of times her fury.
When Sakura had tried to leave the library, over the moon about her armful of scrolls, she had received the worst goose egg of her life from the crotchety old woman beaming her with her finely carved cane. Sakura had left the library with a quarter of what she had wanted to take home, convinced that the woman was a dragon guarding her den and that the scrolls Sakura had tried to leave with were part of her horde.
Over the first month that Sakura served as the official Uchiha clan's healer, her delving into the scrolls had turned up nothing of merit in regards to her returning home. Partly to maintain her cover and partly because the idea had been brilliant in the first place, Sakura had used the information tucked away in that library to begin to develop the stasis jutsu she had come up with only a short month ago.
The medic hoped to one day be able to place her patients into a kind of suspended animation in order to heal them without concern of them dying. She had made great strides in the development of her technique but, as it was now, the jutsu was such an incredibly drain on her chakra that she would need a fully charged seal if she wanted to use it for any meaningful period of time.
Despite spending every free moment researching a solution to her predicament, she was not unaware of the changes surrounding her.
At the beginning of her contract, she was treated with wariness by the shinobi and nearly immediate adoration by the non-ninja workers. After her healing Hitomi, a woman who Sakura later learned was one of the many cooks of the clan, and tending to the dozens of people who had come to her during her first week as the Uchiha clan's healer, the working class members of the clan treated her with the utmost respect.
So much so, in fact, that when they came to visit her for healing or otherwise, they often brought with them gifts. Her icebox was overflowing with meats of various kinds, the minor damage to her home had been repaired before she had even noticed it, and she had a secret section of her pantry dedicated to concealing her new stash of sweets.
Her home itself had changed considerably after her supply run to one of the nearby merchant cities. She still sometimes quietly chuckled to herself at her Uchiha "bodyguards" and their befuddled reaction to her hefting a crate as large as she was, loaded down with goods, into the back of the cart she had already stuffed to the brim with supplies. Their mounting confusion had only been all the more amusing when Sakura kept being approached by past patients and friends, some of who still insisted on calling her The Angel of Kiso.
Sakura had been drawn into so many conversations, and even recruited for a minor healing session, during their supply run to the merchant town that their small group hadn't been able to return to the Uchiha's holdings until after nightfall.
Now that she had the supplies she needed to run a proper clinic, her home had also experienced a dramatic change.
Her living room was now partitioned off by privacy screens, more than half dedicated to her clinic and the other a now cramp living space containing her table, a slowly growing bookshelf, and the painting of two tigers which still hung on her wall. Her clinic consisted of a few futons, concealed from one another by more privacy screens, and a handful of cushions for discussions with her patients.
She kept her kitchen partitioned off with the fusuma although she always left a section open as both a passageway and to let the heat from the hearth into her clinic. Her kitchen was now crowded with her ice box, her pantry, her constantly burning hearth, a set up that any alchemist worth their salt would drool over, and glass cupboards brimming with numerous and freshly concocted medications of all kinds
While her engawa remained the waiting space for patients and now became the most treaded path into her home, she found that she didn't mind. At least her patients were polite enough to mop up any blood they left behind and didn't get any fluids on the cushions laid out for waiting patients.
Sakura had even set aside the time to start a garden, a hobby that soon became a soothing release from her work and her studies. Clearing out the overgrown weeds had been little trouble. Digging up the rock hard dirt, however, had been an arduous task made easier with a bit of chakra and a well placed kick, even if the tremor she caused had resulted in concerned Uchiha bolting over to investigate.
She had filled her small garden to the brim with seeds of the more rare medicinal herbs that only grew during the cold season. By the end of the winter, she hoped to have a stock that would last her until she went home.
One of the more surprising changes, however, had been the change of demeanor of the guards who had consistently tried and failed to shadow her stealthily. Instead of their disgruntled sighing and refusals to partake in her dinners, on the second week she was there, they had actually come down from their perches on her roof to join her.
The two Uchiha had tried to convince her it was so they could keep a closer eye on her, but with temperatures having recently plummeted, Sakura was certain it was so they could eat a warm meal in a warm room. While the dinners remained mostly devoid of conversation, minus their thanks for her feeding them, their company was a pleasant change to her meals with just Kuro.
While the panther had been present for these dinners, he remained as silent as her new guests, watching closely from his place sprawled out next to the hearth.
Kuro himself had waited two weeks before finally deciding that Sakura was safe to sleep alone. Shortly thereafter, the guards whom she had shared a dozen dinners with were assigned elsewhere, leaving her alone for the majority of the day. While she was satisfied that Madara and Izuna now trusted her, having no company at night made the sensation of loneliness rear its ugly head once again.
At least until Sakura had taken to summoning the tiny, dark furred cat Kurumi to keep her company. The feline had been overjoyed to see her again after months of separation before her wandering attention lead her to investigate the house and even more thoroughly investigate her patients.
Most of the Uchiha who had come to visit her during the days Kurumi hung around had asked her where she had gotten a pet cat from. This had been met with obstinate declarations from the feline summon, nearly always resulting in yells of alarm when the ordinary looking house cat started berating them.
Kurumi had taken a particular liking to the Uchiha clan heads. Both Madara and Izuna had recognized Kurumi for what she was and had treated her as such from the moment they met her, something that the feline summon was undoubtedly grateful for after being underestimated by so many.
Now, whenever the brothers came to her for assistance and Kurumi was around, they had to contend with the young, overly affectionate summon. She had a particular fondness for playing with Izuna's ponytail, a game which, after Kurumi had gotten her claws stuck in his locks, resulted in him tucking his hair into the high collar of his shirt nearly the second he walked through the door. The feline had far more luck with Madara and her fondness for curling up on his shoulders, beneath his long mane of hair, a habit which was met with no opposition considering the winter chill.
The two Uchihas had become nearly constant figures in her life as both of them appeared to make it their personal mission to break some bone or burn themselves badly enough to merit her medical attention almost daily. Sometimes, however, she was pleasantly surprised when one or both of them would show up just to partake in conversation, something that greatly helped abate the feeling of loneliness.
She found that she enjoyed their company immensely, especially once Izuna had made the decision to forgo treating her like an outsider and actually started addressing her by her name and not simply as 'Kunoichi'.
Once she had breached the brothers' distrustful, standoffish exteriors, she was surprised to discover that Madara had an insatiable inquisitiveness, nearly constantly bombarding her with questions about her craft, and that Izuna was a merciless tease, getting endless joy from provoking her to the point of rage.
The younger Uchiha may be fast but he wasn't always fast enough to evade her punches (especially when they were preemptive), something that resulted in numerous healing sessions and a couple trips to the carpenter to fix damage to her own house.
Despite Sakura's constant search for a way to return home, she found herself becoming comfortable in the Uchiha clan's village, serving as their healer. She enjoyed the time she spent with the Uchiha, especially the clan heads, she had learned more dipping her toes into their library than in the past year of training, and she felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction being a respected person in the village, even if she didn't share their bloodline.
Even with her comfort, she still refused to give up her search for a way home. Her family, the people she loved, and the village she called home waited for her. She was simply happy to have a comfortable place in the past to do her research, as opposed to the inn-hopping and day-to-day living she found herself enduring when she first arrived.
Sakura had spent the better part of the morning tending to her garden, watering her budding medicinal plants and planting sprouted seedlings with care. Her hands and the skirt of her plain forest green komon kimono were covered in dirt but it did nothing to damper her serenity. Whenever she spent time in her garden, she always felt a sense of peace tending to the growing plants.
As she carefully watered the garden and snipped the dead buds from her few flowering plants, she noticed a very familiar chakra coming around the bend of her house next to the grove of plum trees that concealed her home from the surrounding wilderness. She stood to her full height and preemptively glared at the individual coming around the corner, startling the man as he passed the side of her house.
"I haven't even done anything yet!" Izuna asserted, returning her glare even as he came to a stop a safe distance away.
"The key word being yet," she replied, eyeing him.
"I promise not to torment you… too much today if you fix this," he offered, holding up a hand with an obviously broken wrist.
"Oh, wow. Hands certainly shouldn't bend that way. Another spar?" Sakura asked, setting down her watering can and approaching him as she wiped off her hands on her already stained skirts.
"Ah, yes. I admit it's quite interesting though. I've never been able to touch my forearm with this hand before," Izuna stated, tilting his arm up. His hand limply fell back against his forearm, his fingers twitching against the skin.
The medic winced sympathetically before snorting out a laugh and waving her hand, beckoning him to follow her into her house.
"How did you two even survive before I came along? And where's your brother? Usually you two come together," she questioned as they removed their shoes in the entryway and walked into her living room.
While all the other Uchiha were delegated to the section of her livingroom that had become the clinic, Madara and Izuna had the honor of being able to sit next to the warm hearth or at her table while she healed them. As he sat down next to the crackling fire in her kitchen, she washed her hands at the sink.
"We got by," the Uchiha quickly dismissed, "And there was something urgent that required his attention. Don't worry, I'm sure he will shuffle his way over here eventually. I think I broke his arm."
Sakura shot him a disbelieving look as she dried her hands, her eyebrows shooting up. "Broke his arm? Good gods, you are both insane."
Izuna shrugged noncommittally as she sat down next to him on one of the cushions lining the warm hearth. Sakura wasted no time in taking his broken wrist into her hand, her hands already glowing with green chakra.
"He better show up here soon before I hunt him down," she threatened, preparing to set his wrist manually.
"Heh, hunting down Madara. That's hilarious..." Izuna chuckled before he was silenced by a glower from Sakura who held his broken wrist in her hands, "...and terrifying, coming from you. Please be gentle."
She tugged on his wrist in one smooth motion, aligning the bones properly. The only sign that Izuna felt the pain was a tightening around the corners of his eyes. As she used her healing chakra to soothe the pain and mend the damaged ligaments and bones, Izuna spoke.
"So, Sakura…" Izuna started seriously after a long pause.
"Yes…?" she replied with a quirked brow as her eyes flicked up to his, concerned by his sudden change of tone.
If he had been planning on teasing her, he was smart enough to at least wait until she was done healing him...
"Well, I've been pondering this for a while but I thought I'd ask you directly so I could have my answer…"
"You're not going to ask to court me, are you?" Sakura teased, drawing a laugh from Izuna.
"Oh, no. You're far too frightening for my tastes," he admitted, the kunoichi mock pouting in response.
"You really know how to make a woman feel good about herself..."
"I know you take it as a compliment," he laughed, drawing a grin from Sakura which she hid.
Finished with her healing, the glow around her hand ceased and she pulled back. "Alright, so what are you thinking about then?"
"Well, when we first met on that battlefield outside of the Nakano family's holdings, you turned to face us in combat but you gave me the strangest look. Your guard even fell slightly. What was the look for? Have we met before?" Izuna queried as he rolled his wrist experimentally.
"Ah, well, er… To be honest… You look incredibly similar, nearly identical actually, to an old, uh… friend of mine," she tried to explain, wincing as she said 'friend'.
"Oh, an old friend, hmm?" the Uchiha teased.
"Not like that, believe me. I struggle for the word friend because he betrayed my village. He took off with our enemies in the pursuit of power. We tried to stop him, but it almost resulted in the deaths of some of my close friends," she answered honestly, her face falling as she explained one of the more troubling parts of her past. She made sure to not mention any names. More specifically, she was careful not mention that the friend she spoke of was in fact an Uchiha.
"Why call him a friend then if he's a traitor?" he questioned, his once teasing expression now betraying his confusion.
"He was my teammate for a long time. And he didn't pursue power for his own gain…" she paused, reconsidering her words. "Necessarily. He wanted vengeance against the man who killed his family. He went mad with the need and turned to the darkness. We had hoped that we could bring him back."
"And what came of it?" Izuna prompted curiously.
"We... lost him," Sakura whispered, staring into the gently crackling fire, "And I lost everybody…"
His expression fell. "I apologize. I shouldn't have asked."
"It's alright. Don't worry about it... Does that answer your question though?" She forced a smile as she looked back to him.
"Yes... However, I am a bit concerned that I look so similar to a man who, by all intents and purposes, was a terrible person."
"Heh. Don't worry about it. Surprisingly, you're much kinder than he was."
"Surprisingly?" Izuna parroted in an offended tone.
"My name is Izuna Uchiha. I lead the clan with my brother. I've heard quite a lot about you recently, kunoichi," Sakura imitated in a low voice, mimicking Izuna, "If you can stop molesting my brother, these burns sting a bit. Have you never gotten burned before? Are you capable of handling such wounds?"
The dark haired man huffed, crossing his arms across his chest as he glared at her. "Yes, yes. Well, I'm much nicer now though, now that I know I can trust you."
"Just yesterday you said that you were surprised I could hit anything with my baby hands," she returned, eyebrow twitching as she seriously considering hitting him once again. At least he hadn't insulted her forehead.
"Well, I suppose I'll just have to endeavor to be even nicer then. I can't have you associating me with a traitor," he replied with a huff, affronted.
"Even though you do have baby hands," he added in a whisper, earning a punch to the shoulder.
A/N: What Izuna meant by "We got by" was that their spars had gotten faaaar more vicious with her there to heal them. Like he'd ever admit that.