Sakura woke in the early hours, when only the servants and security detail were expected to be stirring. Kakashi was sprawled in an undignified position in his armchair, and didn't seem to wake when she snuck past.

She caught up with Turtle, who nodded toward her bare face.

"Unfortunate," was all he said, before handing her a scroll containing her contingency orders. She read them impassively, then activated the seal to incinerate it. Now that she'd been made, the others agreed that there was no point in her continuing to act as ANBU agent Tanuki. She would remain in her bodyguard role, naturally; but as herself. Her undamaged scrolls and bags had been left for her to retrieve and move to the auxiliary supply space under the driver's seat of the Hokage's caravan. The driver's bags had already been removed.

She hadn't bothered packing any personal clothes, so she stripped off Kakashi's oversized clothes and threw on a pair of clean ANBU fatigues (minus her broken mask and the hood, seeing as it was no longer necessary to hide her hair). When the convoy reached Suna, she would call in a few favours to get refitted.

She was almost back to Kakashi's caravan with a couple of ration bars she'd swiped from the mess tent when a figure blocked her path.

"So Tanuki is a nurse." Even though she had recovered her usual height, Hiro stood so uncomfortably close that he still managed to look down at her. "A nurse with pink hair." He reached out to touch it and it was through sheer discipline that she didn't attack him. Nobles were idiots with no self-preservation skills, but she still marvelled at the stupidity of someone trying to grab a ninja in their blind spot.

His smile made it clear that she thought her flinch was cute and coy, rather than an aborted reflex to snap his neck. "No need to be shy; we're friends, remember? Though I must say, you look a lot different without your mask." His eyes roamed her new figure with open interest.

Gag…

"That is you, right? You were practically decapitated during all that business yesterday. I was convinced you'd died, and the Hokage just pulled a spare kunoichi out of storage."

Double-gag.

"But then my personal physician recognised your hair, and told me you were some sort of brilliant nurse. 'Abilities on par with the fifth Hokage,' he said." He grinned. "I knew you were something special, Tanuki. Or rather, Miss Haruno Sakura."

She gave him an apologetic smile, gesturing to her throat in a classic 'can't talk' gesture.

"Hardly surprising, I suppose," he sniffed, "but hopefully not permanent. I know some men would claim a woman losing her voice is nothing but an improvement," he took a second to laugh at his own joke, "but I like my women vocal."

Triple-freaking-GAG.

"Tanuki!" A voice cracked through the air like a whip, and they both turned toward the newcomer. Kakashi was striding toward them with all the imperious arrogance that his station offered. "I believed I ordered you to return immediately, not waste time. Ah, Hiro-dono." He glanced at the other man as if only just recognising him. "I hope my subordinate wasn't bothering you."

Hiro opened his mouth, presumably to say something odious, but Kakashi's gaze had already snapped back to Sakura. "Well? Off with you!"

She bobbed into a quick bow that hopefully hid her smile, and practically sprinted back to the safety of the caravan.

Kakashi returned a few seconds after she had dumped her pack and sat down on the floor of the interior 'living room' area. "Sorry," he practically cringed, "I went looking for you and when I saw that nitwit had you bailed up, I couldn't think of any other way to get you out of there without bloodshed."

She just smiled and threw him a ration bar.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Sakura noticed that her jaw clicked slightly when she chewed; it must have gotten slightly misaligned during the blast, or possibly when she was regrowing her neck cartilage. She could fix it easily, but Kakashi probably wouldn't appreciate the sight mid-meal. Instead, she cleared her throat.

"Didn't you say you'd want to talk about last night?"

"You can talk?" Kakashi exclaimed through a mouthful of ration bar.

"Yes…? I told you it wouldn't take long to heal it."

"I saw you signing to Hiro like you couldn't speak."

She grinned. "Well, he didn't need to know that."

Kakashi smiled back, before his expression became contemplative. "He's going to be a problem at some point, I can tell."

"You mean he isn't already?"

"Oh, I doubt we've even scratched the surface of problems a man like him can cause." After a moment, he shook his head. "Anyway; shall we talk about why you're here?"

She swallowed her final bite, crumpling the wrapper and tossing it in his wastepaper basket. "Falcon ordered me to protection detail during your trip to Suna." It was a fraction of the answer, but perhaps by some miracle Kakashi wouldn't press.

"But why make a big show of leaving the village after Shikamaru's wedding?" he pressed. "And why are my ANBU agents scheming behind the back of their beloved Hokage in the first place? If you're about to go rogue, at least do me the courtesy of betraying me to my face."

Sakura grimaced. "Drama Queen. If I wanted you dead I would have just let those bombers do it last night."

"I want to talk about that, too," he muttered darkly. "Not that I'm not grateful, but what the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that you were about to die." Sakura raised an eyebrow. "What's the issue? I thought I handled it pretty well, all things considered."

"The issue is that you almost saved me at the cost of your own life."

She scoffed. "Hardly. My seal-"

"-Isn't infallible! If that piece of shrapnel had gone through your brain instead of your neck it would have killed you instantly, and I would be having a very different morning. You've used that technique three times in as many years, and I know it permanently reduces your lifespan every time. Don't medics have a code against putting yourselves in unnecessary peril?"

"Technically," she said weakly, "when you master the Strength of a Hundred Technique, you're allowed to ignore the code."

"And what about this new jutsu," he continued, ignoring her, "that allows you to change your entire body? I can't imagine it's much more forgiving."

"It's called Cellular Transmutation, and it's my own personal creation," she explained proudly. "It's adapted from Tsunade's rejuvenation jutsu, but a lot more versatile. And, admittedly, taxing; though nowhere near as much as using my seal, so don't worry about me dropping dead any time soon. The basic idea is that instead of just changing the physical state of existing cells - turning wrinkled skin back to smooth, and so on - I can change the cell types entirely. That means I can shorten my leg bones by half an inch and then turn the leftover cells into subcutaneous fat, that kind of thing." She flipped the grey lock of her hair with a sheepish smile. "The only thing I can't do is change my hair colour. I tried, and ended up frying a whole patch of pigmentation cells."

"And that's the only risk?" Kakashi's tone was even, but with his mask down she could see the tension in his jaw. "You're describing something that probably would have become a forbidden jutsu if it had been developed a few years ago."

She bit back a hasty retort. Cellular Transmutation was the pinnacle of her career, and she was more than a little defensive of it. "If I thought any else had the skills to replicate it, I'd be a lot more careful about showing it off."

But what about the danger to yourself?" he argued. "You say it doesn't shorten your lifespan, but you wanted to change your hair colour and ended up destroying an entire group of your cells. What other experiments have you done to your body in the last year?"

"It's not like that." She tried to think of a more eloquent explanation than 'it works because I'm a medical genius, and you don't understand how cool it actually is because you're not one.' "Do you remember when I made prawn tempura and almost burned my apartment down?"

Kakashi nodded. "I broke your door."

Good times... "I did so much cooking in The Other Place, but a lot of it didn't work right in reality. Well, I was also using that time to develop new jutsu. A lot of them didn't work properly in this world, and yes, some required a bit of tweaking before they did. But just to be clear, the things I can do now are the product of several years' work; not just one."

"I could have been born with jet black hair," Kakashi lamented, running a hand through the hair in question, "and it would still be grey by now. You, Sasuke and Naruto are the most hubristic ninjas I've ever met, and every day that I was responsible for you took years off my life."

She laughed. "In my defence, those two are about a hundred times worse than me."

"Don't be so sure," he warned. "I've lost plenty of sleep over you, Haruno Sakura."

She knew what he meant: he meant the nights she'd kept him up talking about stars, or woken him up babbling about lost time. He meant watching her lose her grip on reality and cause everyone around her to worry. It was an innocent statement. But her fool heart still stuttered at the words.

I've lost plenty of sleep over you, too, you know…

The silence spooled out for a few moments, and though it wasn't uncomfortable, it did feel…charged. It was Kakashi who finally broke it, and he looked almost as nervous as Sakura felt. "Why are you here? Really."

"As in, why did I become an ANBU agent, pretend to leave the village, and become your personal bodyguard without intending to ever let you know my true identity? Why not Sai, or Naruto, or literally anyone else who was already in ANBU, or already in the village? Why me?"

"Exactly."

"The official reason is that the enemy who is targeting you is one that I've gotten to know pretty well in the past year, to the point that it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that I'm partially responsible for his actions. This made me the most obvious choice for the mission to take him down; though I'll have to revise my strategy now that he knows I'm here."

Kakashi nodded, seeming to take this revelation in his stride. "And the unofficial reason?"

She gave him a wry smile. "Because it's you."

It didn't matter that he never had, and never would, think of her as anything other than his dear, misguided friend; a friend who had misinterpreted his platonic concern and caused an embarrassing moment for them about a year ago. She'd had enough time to dwell on her own feelings since then, and ask herself honestly if she had just latched onto the idea of him due to her trauma, and because he had accidentally become the anchor of her reality.

The unfortunate conclusion was this: she was deeply, irrevocably, in love with Hatake Kakashi.

Her candour was rewarded with the ghost of a blush on Kakashi's bare cheeks; a sight she was still thrilled to be considered privy to. She didn't want to push him away with any unwanted advances, but surely there was no harm in teasing him just a little? Reminding him that even if he wouldn't or couldn't acknowledge it openly, she was still a woman, and he was still a man?

Sakura 1, Kakashi 0!

"Sakura…" His tone warned of yet another gentle rejection, so she ploughed over him.

"Back to the official reason: I can give you the full report, but first I need to check something with you. Is that okay?"

He nodded warily.

"Great. First of all, what was the name of the gardener from Shiroito?"

"His name was Ikeda Hikari. What has that got to do with-"

"Second: how do I like my coffee?"

"Black with five sugars, because you're a heathen."

She grinned. "Correct. What shampoo do I use?"

"Floral Green, usually. What the hell kind of questions are these?"

"Just one more. What's my daughter's name?"

"Sarada. Her name is Uchiha Sarada."

She nodded, feeling another rush of love for the man who used the present tense to talk about her technically-imagined daughter. "Okay, I'm satisfied he hasn't gotten to you yet."

"Who? Seriously, don't make me order you to tell me."

"A very troubled man, named Sato Yoshio. He's deep dreamer like me. And like me, the experience broke him. But unlike me, he didn't have someone to help pull him back together. Apparently, before the Infinite Tsukuyomi he was just an average shinobi from a forgettable village, with some minor talents in puppetry and genjutsu. But when he went under, he suddenly had years to spend on developing those abilities. Like me, it wasn't always possible to perfect a new technique, but every time the dream presented him with those limitations, he'd get reset and have to start over again. Eventually he figured out it was happening and retained memories of his progress; possibly because having enough time to develop jutsu was in itself his idea of paradise, and it didn't really matter to him if it was a dream or not.

"Unfortunately, it meant he spent decades in dream time. I haven't heard of any genjutsu that lasted longer than his, and as expected it drove him quite mad." It still chilled her to think how close she herself had come to madness, after thirteen years of dreaming. Ikeda Hikari, the gardener, had snapped in only five. And it was still unclear how many years it had taken to reach the point where Yoshio finally succumbed to his delusions.

"When he did eventually wake up and learned that his experiences were unusual, arguably unique even among other deep-dreamers, he became convinced that his dream was something akin to divine guidance. He believed his powers could succeed where the Infinite Tsukuyomi failed, and unify all people without the need to abandon reality. He calls his jutsu 'Shadow Puppetry' and it has a range and versatility heretofore unseen."

"Shadow Puppetry," Kakashi mused. "And you say he specialises in puppetry and genjutsu?"

"I'm sure you've guessed where this is going, and why he's targeting you and other high-profile individuals. Once he gets his hooks into someone, they're his to control indefinitely. He can control several people at once, and over long distances too; though he needs to physically touch them when first casting the jutsu. I assume yesterday's plan was to have his puppets capture you and bring you to his location, hook you, and then lose the fight with the search party on purpose in order to return you to the convoy without raising suspicion."

"So those people yesterday were being controlled." Kakashi bit his lower lip. "No wonder they didn't seem to care if they lived or died."

Sakura nodded. "He's a monster, basically. His victims are pawns, but he thinks that if he gets enough political power under his control, he can unify the world under his own ideals."

"And you weren't sure if he'd gotten to me or not? That's what your questions were about?"

"To be fair, I was ninety-nine percent sure you were clear. But I couldn't tell you everything until I knew for sure it wasn't being reported back to Yoshio. It's bad enough that he knows I'm here, now."

"Yes, you mentioned something about being responsible for this man's actions." Kakashi's eyes grew shrewd. "Care to elaborate on that?"

She thought back to the first time she'd met Yoshio. His face had been so young, but his eyes were just like hers: mature beyond their years, and more than a little haunted. He had been a kindred spirit, in the early days of her mission to find and rehabilitate other deep-dreamers. Little did she realise that he was manipulating her, using her intel to find vulnerable people and stoke their disordered thoughts into outright madness.

"He was a subject in my research, one that I had high hopes for. At first I thought we were the same kind of deep-dreamer; someone who had stared into the abyss but managed to keep themselves from falling in. Too late, I realised he had long since jumped of his own free will, and was trying to take as many people as possible down with him. He destroyed my work and, more importantly, the lives of most of the people I'd been trying to help. Most of them are part of his inner circle now, and not all of them are puppets."

"That's…" Kakashi seemed at a loss for words. "That…wasn't in your report."

She smiled mirthlessly. "Like I said, I didn't know if he'd infiltrated Konoha in my absence. I assume you heard about Kumo's feudal lord, who was ambushed on the way to his summer estate?"

He nodded.

"Not long after that, the lord returned to the capital and tried to convene a meeting with the Raikage and his most trusted officials. Tsunade managed to convince them it was a trap, but if she hadn't? We'd all be back at war."

"All the more reason to tell me sooner, don't you think? You could have tested me the moment you returned home, and told me everything. We could have cancelled the chuunin exam."

"I'm sorry for the secrets, I really am. I had all the same thoughts as you, initially; that we need to spread the word, stop needless travel, and shore up our defences at home. But that would have caused a panic. Nobody would be able to trust anyone else, even people who weren't under his influence. It would have made us more vulnerable, not less. And," she lowered her voice despite knowing there couldn't possibly be eavesdroppers, "the chuunin exam is vital to our plans. It'll be irresistible to Yoshio, all those important people congregating in one place. If I'd told you before now, I know you would have refused to come regardless of the plans and contingencies in place. But you're the Hokage; the most important person from the biggest village. You're his prize, the target he's most obsessed with taking. Other than me, that is."

"You?" Kakashi frowned. "You're a formidable ninja, but if he's targeting political power…?"

"With me, it's personal. Let's just say I've made it clear that I will never join him, and he's made it clear that if he can't have me on his side, then he will remove me from the board." She recalled their sessions playing shogi, how obsessed the man was with the game. She had tried to use it as an in-road to his mental state, but all it did was cement the idea in his mind that Sakura was his opponent. If Yoshio's delusions caused him to believe that he was beloved by God, commanded to perfect His paradise on Earth after Obito and Madara's failure, then Sakura, breaker of the Infinite Tsukiyomi, was the Devil.

Kakashi seemed to chew on this revelation for a moment, leaning forward in his chair and staring at her so intently that she couldn't help but feel a little flustered despite the seriousness of the subject (Sakura 1, Kakashi 1…). Finally he reached out, taking hold of her arm and gently pulling her into a hug.

"You've been through so much in the last year," he murmured into her hair. "Longer, even. And it keeps changing you. And you've stopped asking me for help." His arms tightened. "You terrify me, Haruno Sakura."

She didn't know what to say to that. Her heart was racing from the contact. She could smell his sweat, and wondered suddenly what she smelled like to him. His sensitive nose was probably still under siege from the ghost of yesterday's battle, but under all that, could he smell her? She'd spent the last few weeks using a different brand of shampoo, just to trick that nose of his. Trying to make sure Tanuki was different enough to Sakura that she could stay close without giving herself away. All for nothing, as it turned out; but in that moment, kneeling together on the floor, she couldn't really bring herself to regret the turn of events.

"You terrify me too, you know," she replied, pulling back before his arms felt too much like home. "I just explained that a powerful madman wants to turn you into his puppet so that he can topple the world's government, and you're worrying about me."

"Someone has to," he smiled brightly, and she felt a swooping sensation in her stomach at the years it took off his face. Even when he was masked and smiling at 'Tanuki' just to tease her, it had always caused several incredibly inconvenient emotions to bubble up.

Is my presence a liability?

There was a call from outside: they were preparing to roll out.

"I should go hitch the horses. I'm replacing your driver." It would be a sobering reminder of what they had lost yesterday, seeing the drivers all replaced with ANBU agents. They were expected to leave the forest and enter the desert later that day, and nobody would be taking chances out in the open. "But can you do me a favour today?"

"Anything."

"Stay in the caravan."