A day after Sakura was sent home again. She'd slept, in fits and starts in the days between, but—

The guilt was something else.

"I feel it too." Jiraiya said. His eyes looked dead, as he gazed at the translated notes of his teammate's descent into insanity. "But you need to remember it's not your fault. You tried."

The implication, of course, being that he hadn't.

Sakura tried to argue the point more out of kindness than anything else—she and Jiraiya had never been close, and she had no idea what his and Orochimaru's relationship had been like over the years—but he just pressed sleeping pills into her hands and made her leave.

She didn't even bother to go to bed—she was exhausted.

She slept on the couch downstairs instead; the pills would ensure she'd sleep through any noise her family made.

She awoke to Shin and Juro talking.

"Welcome home, Shin." Sakura said, sitting up.

"Hey." Shin watched her with narrowed eyes. Then his eyes flit to Juro. "If you end up with sleeping issues, then they're going to change our nickname."

Juro rolled his eyes. "Sakura's fine most of the time; it's you that never sleeps. Come here, Sakura; Shin says we need to talk about Ibiki."

"Nothing bad!" Shin rushed out. Sakura, her heart about to skip a beat, breathed out instead. She stood, examined her clothing—she really needed a shower—then sat with them anyway; they'd been nearer to her when she smelled worse, that was just a part of being teammates.

"The Land of Tea is finally setting up a peace accord, and Konoha's overseeing it." Shin said. He took a breath. "I'm overseeing it."

Sakura blinked in surprise. "Not Sensei?"

"No. Sensei's over in Wind, negotiating because Wind wants the railroad to come into their land. Me."

"Congratulations!" Both teammates said.

Shin allowed himself a smile. "Anyway, we need to bring children, to show we're really trying to be peaceful. Minato's going to be there too, to 'keep things straight' and, well, really just to prove that Konoha is fine despite Orochimaru still not being found. He's bringing his team, and Kakashi's age and Obito's blindness will count for something, but they're both ninja. We're also going to grab some kid with Tea ancestry from the orphanage, prove that we treated even the children of refugees who died well. I want to bring Ibiki too, and I think it'd be a good experience for him."

Juro and Sakura, by rights the primary parents of Ibiki, exchanged glances, then nodded in agreement.

"He'll probably enjoy it, and you're right about it being a good experience." Juro said.

"He's chafing at the Academy anyway, and I had to stop all our additional lessons because…" She trailed off. She'd never actually asked how secret her job was supposed to be. Oh well, the boys got the point.

"Alright." Shin said. "We live in three days. I'll tell Ibiki when he gets home."

Sakura glanced at the clock; it was two in the afternoon.

"What day is it?" She asked. She'd been asleep, as it turned out, for just under thirty-six hours.

"It's not healthy." Juro said. Both of them knew she'd heard it dozens of times before, that she knew it, but—

Sakura rubbed her eyes. "I think I can do a few more hours. I'll eat some rice or something first—"

Broth appeared before her, the good kind clearly made by her chef brother, and she began eating.

Shin and Juro ate too.

"I only just got in," Shin explained between mouthfuls. "Everything's—well, a mess. I've got to go back soon, obviously, but… it's all…"

The three of them sat in silence a moment, eating.

Orochimaru's betrayal had hit not just Sakura, but Konoha at large.

Juro cleared his throat, moved to say something, then went silent.

Sakura finished her bowl. "I've got to get back to work." She said, already dreading the windowless room.

Her teammates stared at her.

"Will you be alright?" Shin asked. "Really?"

"Yes." Sakura said. Or lied. It was hard to tell, really.

.

The first week of November found Sakura standing in a long line, holding back a yawn.

They'd done all they could, parsed out what information they could glean from every one of Orochimaru's abandoned journals.

It wasn't perfect, far from it. Orochimaru worked by a system of using each journal as a cypher for the next, and they were missing several of those cypher journals to translate from, as well as just about every journal from the past year.

It—

It sucked, to know how much they must be missing.

But they'd given Konoha a lot to work with, and now it was time for people with far different abilities than she to take the lead.

Sakura, meanwhile… back to her nebulous position in Research, she supposed.

But first: vaccines.

Some sort of chest infection was coming over from the east, and the false clones had worked perfectly to find a suitable vaccine—

But people still had to take it for the effort to be worthwhile.

Sakura gave up, covering her mouth as she yawned as quietly as she could.

It was one in the afternoon.

If she'd been on a normal sleep pattern, she'd be awake, probably reinvigorated from lunch.

As it was, she barely remembered the last time she ate, and she only slept when Jiraiya glared at her and shoved pills in her hands.

She really should schedule an appointment with her therapist.

After the vaccines, she supposed.

She was already in the area.

Someone—the person behind her in line—tapped her shoulder, and Sakura did not jolt. (It was a near thing.)

She did turn, after a moment, to see who it was.

Uchiha Mikoto, wife of the Uchiha Head, looked incredibly regal, incredibly composed, incredibly—

Well, she looked like she always did, Sakura supposed. She hadn't had reason to see the woman often—was only vaguely aware of her thanks to the identities of her spouse and her best friend Kushina—but even compared to the Hyuuga or the Mitokado Mikoto had managed to stand out for her poise.

Sakura, despite Sensei's best efforts, would never be anywhere near the woman's equal.

Mikoto cleared her throat, and Sakura realized she hadn't verbally acknowledged the tap.

"Hello," Sakura's mind raced, trying in vain to remember if she knew the woman's rank. She was wearing civilian clothes, but Sakura knew enough to know she was ninja, so that was no help. "Kunoichi Uchiha."

"Hello, Special Jounin Sakura." Mikoto said. "Please, call me Mikoto."

Sakura's lips worked not to quirk up—despite the Uchiha's general reputation for formality and the like, the sheer number of them meant each and every one tended to go by their first name regardless of whether the relationship would ordinarily allow such liberties.

Sakura was fine with that, though. She had, after all, grown up with several different societal norms warring in her head.

"Do you have a moment to chat, this afternoon?" Mikoto asked.

Sakura did not, at the moment, have a schedule. "Yes." She said.

"Then after our time here I would be pleased to walk you back to the Uchiha Compound. My husband and I would like to invite you to tea."

That—

Huh.

If Sakura had had a few more hours sleep, she could analyze that. She nodded instead. "That would be fine, Mikoto." The line shuffled forward. "Excuse me." Sakura turned to the side, yawning again.

"Are you alright?" Mikoto said. "If necessary, my husband and I would be more than willing to postpone tea in favor of your health."

Well, that had implications that even sleep deprivation couldn't blur past.

"No, I'll be fine." Sakura said. "Just—a couple hard weeks, you know?"

They still hadn't found Orochimaru.

Shisui was still constantly under watch.

"Yes." Mikoto said, and for just a second Sakura could see what the threat was doing to her.

And then the moment was gone.

The line shuffled forward again.

.

Sakura had been to the Uchiha compound before. They had a yearly art festival, when there wasn't a war, and she'd loved the fireworks, the absurdist art, the incredible artistry that Uchiha used to make their fire chakra do as they wished.

But she'd never had reason to go to the Uchiha compound when it wasn't opened for visitors.

In terms of size, of population, even of impact—the Uchiha compound was the largest in Konoha.

It was unsurprising; the Uchiha and the Senju had been the two founders of the village, and the Uchiha had always been rather a larger clan (which had made their continued rivalry all the more awe-inspiring; that the Senju were able to hold them off despite their limited numbers—that the Uchiha were able to hold the Senju off, despite their sheer strength…)

The Uchiha compound, in peacetime, had an incredibly bright and airy atmosphere.

Dozens of children ran every which way, ricocheting from building to tree to pond and so on as they played, and dozens of teenagers practiced fire jutsu and taijutsu and weapons drills together in perfect synchronization on a half dozen visible training fields.

The Uchiha were the largest of Konoha's clans, and it showed.

In a short time they'd made it to the main house. Uchiha Fugaku wasted no time in appearing—she'd barely been there for a second when he came out of a back room and welcomed her.

And then they were all drinking tea.

The small talk took the requisite amount of time, and then Sakura watched with interest as Clan Head Uchiha hesitated on how to begin.

She'd already put together their most likely request, and—contrary to the Hyuuga—it wasn't one she minded accommodating.

"Some days ago," Head Uchiha began, "You met with the Hyuuga clan about the possibility of integrating your tracking seal into their existing clan seal."

Sakura hummed in agreement, putting down her tea.

"The Uchiha are currently looking into the creation of a clan seal, one that would destroy the body, beginning with the eyes, should an Uchiha die."

"You will not try to preserve the body for funeral purposes?"

Clan Head Uchiha managed to give off the energy of a shrug.

"We burn bodies in our funerals, and when we don't we burn wood. Mourning does not require a body."

Sakura nodded in agreement, then went silent. If they wanted something, they would have to ask.

"Uchiha Hotaru, the Future Research Head, suggested you would be amenable to allowing us to use your person tracking seal as part of our design."

Sakura nodded. "I believe there is room to come to an agreement."

"And what would such an agreement entail?"

To Sakura's left, the Clan Head's right, his wife poured them all more tea.

"First," Sakura said, because she still had nightmares about the Hyuuga clan's seal, "an oath that the seal the tracking fuinjutsu is integrated with will not be capable of causing pain to its wearer, or forcing them to do something they do not wish to do."

A pause in the room, heavy as everyone considered what everyone knew, but no one said, of a seal that did just that.

"We are amenable to such an oath." Clan Head Uchiha said. "Our aims are not, at the moment, increased intraclan control."

Sakura nodded slightly, then continued. "Beyond that, I believe the support of the Uchiha for my Head's educational reform plans would be appreciated."

Clan Head Uchiha pursed his lips.

Fair enough, Sakura thought. "This does not mean you cannot disagree, simply that when you agree—or simply don't care—you actively support. If you disagree with any specific measure of the plan, then it would be beneficial to argue against it; no one can foresee every problem, and that is why the councils of Konoha are numerous, and include diverse membership."

Clan Head Uchiha considered.

Five hours later Sakura left for home.

They hadn't finished negotiations—Sakura would have to go back with her nephew sometime soon, for round two—but they were going noticeably better than her last attempt.

The reason the negotiations had ended when they did, however, was evident in every face she passed.

Ibiki was almost vibrating at the dinner table when she entered. It wasn't yet time to eat—not for another hour, and they were eating at her brother Kamui's house today anyway—so it was his textbooks that were spread out in front of them, each and every one flipped to whatever that text might say about infiltration.

His bags were still in the kitchen, too. He'd only arrived back last night, still had remnants of the cleansing paste Tea put on important visitors visible on his face.

"Did you hear? They caught four Iwa spies!"

"I did hear." Sakura said, remembering the way Clan Head Uchiha's eyes had flashed when one of his kinsmen had brought the news, the way everyone in the room had hesitated, suddenly even more worried than they had been a minute ago.

Perhaps another night of sleeping pills wouldn't be so bad.

"Sensei taught us that spies are like cockroaches: for every one you see, there are one hundred more behind the walls."

Sakura hummed. She'd been taught the same thing.

"How do we rat out the rest?" Ibiki said, and that was the question.

"I'm sure T&I is deciding the best method right now." Sakura said.

"Did they steal all the Research information? Is Iwa going to be able to copy all of our ideas?"

"Research notes are written in personal cyphers, usually, and fuinjutsu is inscribed in a way that makes it intentionally difficult to copy without seeing the process by which it was made, as you know."

"So were they going after Research?"

"I assume they were going after whatever they could get their hands on. Did you finish your math problems?"

"Mostly. I mean, I did them, but I haven't corrected them."

"And do they need correcting?"

"…not most of them."

"Let's finish it up, then. Remember, we're eating at Aunt Yumi and Uncle Kamui's tonight."

"But—" Ibiki said, glancing down at a section he was reading on the year Suna caught an average of one spy a week.

"Come on, Ibiki, then it'll be done."

Ibiki groaned, pulling out his math text from below the table. "Math's boring, you know." Ibiki said. His eyes flit, almost longingly, to the bags.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "I know."

.

Sakura had only just gotten settled at her own desk for the first time in weeks when Hotaru knocked. Sakura's brows raised in surprise, with only two months until his promotion she thought he'd be too busy to just drop in to say hi.

Right, he had been the one to suggest the Uchiha contact her—it made sense that he'd want to hear if that was progressing well.

She opened the door.

Hotaru—as the knock pattern had indicated—was standing before her, but behind him stood the Research Head.

Sakura blinked, then opened the door wider.

After the two men had settled, Hotaru cleared his throat. "Was your time decoding Orochimaru's work successful?" He asked.

"Somewhat." Not as much as she wanted, not nearly as much as that, but—well, at least they'd figured out some things. "The spies—do we know yet if they gathered anything essential?"

"Two were caught attempting to break in to Orochimaru's lab, the other two were caught trying to escape. T&I thinks that the tracking seals and stated intent to create a new seal to monitor doors spooked them—likely they were trying to get what they could and leave."

"How is the door seal coming along?"

"Well," Head Aburame said. "We have begun prototype testing."

Sakura and the men paused, the three of them waiting to see what the other would say next.

Hotaru cleared his throat again. "As you know, in fifty-nine days I will be appointed Research Head."

Sakura nodded.

"I have requested that you are appointed Head alongside me."

Sakura blinked.

Head Aburame took over.

"You have the requisite training, you and Uchiha Hotaru have been working well together over the past months, and splitting the administrative work between two heads ensures that both of you can continue Researching yourselves, which is a boon to Konoha."

Sakura—

"We have discussed this with future Hokage Minato, and he has agreed that such a system will be beneficial, especially with the technological boom Konoha is currently experiencing."

Sakura—

"What do you say?"

"Yes."