The reinforcement team arrived, armed with energy and weapons and many, many body storage seals.

The team, now only the two of them, was sent back alone.

They were sent back with the seals too.

Twelve of them, total—their team members, three comrades picked up by the reinforcement team along the way and six specifically selected enemies.

The first day was spent in silence.

It wasn't as if either of them had anything to say.

Taro was… miserable. His eyes flickered constantly, trying to get used to the change as a distraction from what had to be a truly unfathomable amount of pain and grief.

And Sakura…

Sakura wanted to stop.

Sakura wanted to curl into a ball, and throw herself into Arden's memories, and forget about this terrible world where she and all those around her had to fight for their life as a matter of course and, only infrequently enough to keep humanity alive to the next generation, lose.

And lose.

And lose.

Sakura carried all but one of the seals herself.

They arrived at the gates at dusk.

They were meant to report to the administrative building.

Taro turned away, turned toward the Uchiha compound.

Sakura didn't stop him.

She went to the mission desk, though. Turned in the bodies, gave her report, gave her report again to some more senior shinobi, went to the hospital, got checked out, went to the mental health center, got checked out, and was admitted.

Her room had a view of the Uchiha compound.

Of the pyre that had been burning since the war had begun, which burned for a week every time there was a death.

(They set it the second the Hokage declared war, always had it burning during war. Because of the frequency of death. Of the constancy. Of the nature of war at all.)

Her sisters were in and out, her brother brought her snacks, her niece and nephew visited her once each, Taiki came to promise more lessons, and Aiko visited too and distracted her with sordid tales of people Sakura had never even met.

Uchiha Taro came after two weeks, when she only had two days until she'd be released.

"You're not injured."

Sakura stared at him. His frame took up almost the entirety of the doorway, blocking the light from the hallway fixtures almost completely.

"No."

"Why are you here?"

"Battle fatigue."

Taro snorted. "Weakness."

"Yes."

Taro blinked in surprise. "You admit it?"

"It is not something I am ashamed of; it is simply a fact. I am not capable of keeping up with battle; the stress wears on me too easily and I find myself fleeing from it mentally if not physically. I lose the ability to sleep as my body is caught between the need to stay alive, to fight and sense and continue on, and the need to get away from the damage that does to my mind. It is… weakness. It is not something I enjoy."

"You shouldn't have been let out of Konoha, then. They should've sent someone who could fight. That way my brother might still be alive."

"Maybe."

"So you admit it is you who is to blame, not I?"

It was Sakura's turn to react in surprise. "I was blaming Iwa, personally, not you."

Taro snorted. "The enemy failed in their mission to kill all of us, so they were weak, too; unable to complete their duty. But so were we—we didn't keep everyone on our side alive. The blame must be correctly distributed."

Sakura disagreed. It just—wasn't the way she looked at it. She knew that the concept, the idea of blame and the need to 'be better', was as much a part of the Uchiha clan as the sharingan, though. "Believe what you must."

"It is not a matter of belief."

"To me it is."

Taro snorted. "More weakness."

"Perhaps. Why are you here?"

"I heard you were in the hospital; it was my duty to ensure that I knew any injuries of the team. I came to see if I had failed to note that you had been severely hurt. I only didn't note your weakness, though, and that is more your fault than mine."

"As you say."

"You don't… believe… me."

"I do not see the world as you do."

"You should."

"Should, would, could…."

Taro left.

Sakura, once more able to fall asleep by herself, left several days later.

Konoha was still abuzz.

The shinobi who had broken through the frontline had ravaged their way across the Land of Fire, sure, but they also hadn't…

Changed anything.

Done much.

The radio and telegram systems were still running, no information seemed to have been stolen, the frontline had been easily reestablished…

It felt like a waste, like Iwa hadn't taken enough advantage of Konoha on the backstep.

Which meant, of course, that they must have been less imbalanced than it seemed.

So was it the communications systems, then? Iwa not accounting for how quickly Konoha would get the message of the break? Or something else.

Sakura got a letter from Inoichi the next day.

.

Inoichi felt like hacking up a lung, but it wasn't really as if they could go around the smoke.

And coughing would really negate all the effort they'd put into keeping quiet in the first place.

So he only felt like coughing.

A lot.

He tried not to breathe much.

This was the hardest job his team had been given yet, brought forward only due to the breach, but they—he—couldn't fail.

It's just—

There was quite a lot of smoke, really.

He could feel Shika somewhere to his left, kind of, but he wasn't sure if that was really his senses or just him using what he knew of the other teen.

It was Shika who this next section would hinge on.

Inoichi trusted the other boy, really, he did, really, but given how important this was…

Given everything…

He'd just have preferred to be in the lead.

But he knew Shika was the right person.

Was smart.

Had shadows.

So he followed.

Loyally.

And tried not to cough.

(Oh, by all the kami, did he want to cough.)

It was just that this was important, and it was hard—the smoke was overwhelming, almost—and Shika was—

He trusted Shika.

Really.

And then there a was a sudden snap, and the sound of a lot of breath being let out at once, and suddenly Shika was shouting that he'd gotten him.

(It sucked that Inoichi hadn't found him, but at least the search was over. The sooner the better—this was to be their last mission before reporting in, and they were starved for news, having been more or less cut off since Konoha had been quarantined against the pandemic ravaging the world.)

They made camp in less than ten, and then, as was his duty, he turned to Shika.

"Let's interrogate him."

"Yes, Team Leader."

Shika grimaced but said nothing. Inoichi knew how ashamed the other teen was, how much he hated the stark professionalism Inoichi addressed him with during missions, but he couldn't get himself to stop.

Instead, Inoichi turned to the prisoner.

Iwa infiltrator.

Chuunin level, probably, or maybe higher—he'd gone down easy, but fighting against a Nara in deep smoke was never an easy enemy.

Inoichi smirked. Going against a Yamanaka—a Yamanaka as powerful as he, with his bloodline—while tied up was, if anything, several dozen times more difficult.

He threw himself into the man's head without hesitation.

Several hours later, Inoichi found himself back in his body. He grabbed around blindly until Choza thrust a water skin into his hands and then emptied the sack in a matter of seconds.

"Good?" Shika asked.

Inoichi wanted to glare at the Nara, say something insulting about how the captain couldn't even give him time to reset his brain, but—professionalism.

He nodded instead.

"Take a minute." Shika said in reply.

Inoichi's thoughts… didn't get any more polite.

Some minutes later, when Inoichi no longer felt as if he was still in the midst of running a marathon, Inoichi sat up in his official 'report' position.

"It's good news."

"Really?" Choza said, turning from his position over the prisoner in honest surprise.

Inoichi, to be fair, had been surprised too.

And yet, there really wasn't any other way to interpret it.

"Yes. The Samurai will not join Iwa at all: there was an attempted coup, and now a civil war within the borders of Earth. Iwa will not be getting any help at all internally."

Shika blinked. "How did we not know about this before?"

Inoichi grimaced. "Why would we? Our infiltration attempts have always failed, the newest ones haven't yet been given enough time to succeed, and trade is down so much because of the war that… and that's not even covering the near complete stop of anything non-essential during the plague."

"Well, shit."

Inoichi nodded, then forced himself to smile. Comradery was important, after all. "At least we'll be able to get letters from home again."

Choza and Shika nodded. "It's been so long! I hate not knowing what's happening at home!"

"It's been a while since I've talked to my family, even in writing. It'll be good to hear from them, find out how my sister's birthday went. But first…"

Right. Professionalism.

Then letters.

Then, if they were lucky, a break. Maybe even a holiday at home.

.

In a tent strategically placed just back from the actual main front of the war Shimura Danzo sat deep in thought.

The recent information they'd gotten, confirmed several times over from various sources, was a boon but one that had been dipped in poison.

Leaving aside how they hadn't known sooner—and Danzo had ideas about how to keep that from happening again—there was also the reason they were suddenly learning about it at all.

The civil war of the elite, which had run in the background for nearly the entire length of the war already, seemed to be nearing a bloody end, and as it did, Iwa's generals found it more and more difficult to hide the reality from their own soldiers, thereby telling Konoha's too through the proxy of the Yamanaka.

This was, in some ways, good news. The civil war allowed Konoha to stop falling back after last year's brutal winter almost broke them, kept Earth's government stymied as they (in all likelihood) had significant trouble collecting tax revenue as usual, and—well, really there were dozens of reasons it was good news.

The problem was that it was also bad news.

Iwa had until now been acting at reduced capacity, spending part of their time and effort on hiding their glaring weakness. They'd held their own, mostly through their powerful kekkei genkei—their zombie-making bloodline was of particular interest—but the war had been primarily a war of attrition for a reason.

That weakness was about to disappear.

The coup, each and every mind reader agreed, seemed to be coming to an end.

And its winner—its winner would want to portray strength.

Might.

Unity.

And what better way to do that than to have their battle-hardened troops join Iwa to force a quick and brutal end to the war?

Konoha's Hokage, Fire's Daimyo— they both liked the idea of the long game. A drawn-out war, minimal losses, 'proof of strength and ability' for the next one.

Everything, from the first couple weeks of the war to the time Danzo was finally allowed to take over, had been about maintaining the line. Not pushing—oh no, nothing so aggressive. Just maintaining.

The samurai were very much the reason they were still able to fight, but that didn't stop them from being seemingly similarly interested in a forever war.

And for a time, apparently because of a civil war, Iwa had seemed interested too.

That interest was about to dry up. Quickly.

And Danzo—finally General, instead of that useless Uchiha—

He would be able to keep them from ruin.

Hiruzen wouldn't like it, but he'd get over it; had done so many times before.

The Konoha that left this war (and this war would end, Danzo would make sure of it) would be tougher, stronger, leaner, and far, far more aggressive.

More than anything, though, the future Konoha—his Konoha—would be victorious.