A/N: Thanks to fanofthisfiction for the review!

Chapter 8:

"Anbu." Naruto and Sasuke pulled up in unison, waiting. They were Leaf and posed no threat, yet Sasuke got the sense that they were headed for them and were detectable because they were meant to deliver a message.

"If it's only a message, why Anbu?" Sasuke said.

Naruto glanced to the side and realized he was expecting an answer. The blonde's mouth was suddenly set grim as he considered the question. "It would have to be village security, wouldn't it? I mean…"

He trailed off, but it was no matter, since two black-ops nin landed before them. "Uzamaki-san, Uchiha-san, please return to the village as quickly as possible. Lord Sixth asked us to escort you back."

"What happened?" Sasuke said curtly, unmoved. "Tell us."

They exchanged hesitating glances and paused unforgivably for Anbu operatives. Finally, one of them offered up: "we do not have any details. Only that Lord Sixth asked that we go directly to the hospital."

The hospital. Something in Sasuke froze and Naruto was shoving at his shoulder, pushing him into a run that left their escort in the dust. "Anyone could be at the hospital," Naruto muttered loudly against the rush, reading Sasuke's mind. "Anyone."

Sasuke didn't trust himself to respond. Something had already coiled in his gut, a hot, shriveled coal that should have been long-cold.

If it were Sakura…

If it were Tsuneo or Natsuo.

Sasuke shook himself out of that immediately. They were children, the village was different now. Better. It didn't have to be any Uchiha either. If it was a matter of village security, then it could have been any number of nin who needed to be interviewed. Kakashi may have just needed Naruto, and Sasuke happened to be off with him.

Yet, when they arrived at the hospital a mere hour-and-a-half later, it was Natsuo's white face that greeted him before the doors, ripping himself away from Kakashi and racing toward him. "Tousan! TOUSAN!"

Sasuke sank to his knees and grabbed Natsuo so hard at his scruff that he winced, but it didn't deter the boy from telling him what was wrong in a frantic rush of a child who had just seen the cavalry rush in. "

Something's wrong with Tsuneo! He can't see, and Baachan said that Mama took the bad stuff out of him and now Tsuneo thinks she's dead." Natsuo's eyes widened in remembered terror as he leaned in to whisper it. "He told me that Mama is dead and he won't believe anyone because Kaachan can't get up right now and show him, but Baachan—"

Sasuke was back on his feet, his heart pounding in his ears with fury when he looked up at Kakashi. "What the hell happened?" he hissed at him with enough poison to make Natsuo suck in air, stunned at the sound.

Kakashi only had time to crinkle his mask when Sasuke decided that he had no interest in the man's explanations. He dimly heard Naruto call him back, but he yanked Natsuo away from them both, towards the entryway of the hospital. The boy tripped after him, still pale as a ghost.

He was a ghost

"Senju Tsunade? Where is she?" he demanded of the first nurse he laid eyes on. The woman swallowed, seeming to know immediately who he was and lifted a hand to point when Sasuke heard the telltale clicking of heels and Natsuo cried, "Baachan!"

"Uchiha, come with me. We'll talk as we walk—not you, Naruto. Not now!"

Naruto had recovered himself and was flanking Sasuke resolutely. "Sakura-chan is—"

"—just shut up," Sasuke cut across him. He barely knew what had happened and he was angrier than he had been since before he had returned to the village as a seventeen-year old boy. This village. "Sakura and Tsuneo. Tell me how they are, what happened. I don't care if he hears."

Tsunade didn't argue, and started down the hall at a clipped pace with Sasuke just behind her, gripping Natsuo to pull him along at their speed. The boy silently endured it, stricken enough by these events. Naruto followed, and Sasuke could sense Kakashi as well, keeping a fair enough distance from him, wisely so.

"I was with them when it happened—well, I don't know what happened and frankly, I don't know that Sakura does either. It started with Tsuneo. We were leaving my office and he …he entered what seemed to be a hallucinogenic state."

"Caused by what?" Sasuke hissed.

Tsunade slowed down and her arms twitched like they wanted to act. But she reluctantly admitted, "I don't know. Sakura seemed at a loss as well, before—"

"Before what?" Naruto cut in.

"I was getting to that!" Tsunade snapped. "Neither Sakura nor I detected any genjutsu, and with Sakura's level of genjutsu awareness, if she didn't sense it, I would feel confident saying it wasn't there. But whatever it was …Tsuneo reacted violently, physically to what he saw and Sakura reacted to his distress in an …inadvisable way."

Sasuke felt sick. He knew without Tsunade saying it that Sakura had done something dangerous, something that she likely wouldn't have dared if it had been anyone but their child. "Natsuo said she won't wake," he prompted.

"She won't," Tsunade sighed. "But that's been her decision. When your son started developing ocular inflammation and bled from his eyes, Sakura plunged into his chakra systems, likely hoping to identify it and flush it out of his body. I couldn't stop her."

They came to a halt outside a door and Tsunade turned to him. "Before you go in, I need you to understand why I am not treating Sakura in any way beyond making sure she is stabilized. And what I am about to say is all speculation on my part, since Sakura did not have time to inform me of what she was doing."

"Go on," Sasuke said, impatient to see them both and understand what happened.

"What I think my stubborn little student has done is something that any less of a medic than Sakura's caliber would never be able to accomplish. Would kill them, in fact. But I believe that Sakura drew the invading quantity out of Tsuneo by giving it another host. Herself."

Naruto made a wincing sound and Sasuke clamped his hand harder on Natsuo's trembling shoulder. "What does that accomplish?" His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears.

Tsunade almost smirked. "It gives her the ability to understand it better, and ideally, it allows her to flush it out of herself …I'm guessing by metabolizing it." She glanced down at Natsuo for a moment and then spoke again. "I'm not going to mince words. I've never known anyone to survive what she's currently doing. Not with so little information about the invading organism."

"What was she thinking?" Kakashi murmured from further behind and Sasuke blinked, feeling surprised at his presence.

Tsunade raised her chin. "She was thinking that she's the best damn medic currently alive today and she was thinking on her feet, with her son's life on the line. I understand completely why she did it, given the stakes. She can handle herself. We don't know what this thing would have done to Tsuneo…"

"And what has happened to Tsuneo?" Sasuke had gathered enough presence of mind to realize that it was not Sakura's door they were standing outside of, but Tsuneo's. Tsunade's expression darkened.

"That is the mystery I'm currently working to solve. I don't know what precipitated Tsuneo's condition, but …it has created a development that I would say is …early-onset for you Uchiha."

"Huh?" Naruto said, but Sasuke (and probably Kakashi) immediately understood the hint—what she was avoiding saying in front of Natsuo. The Sharingan.

"How advanced?" Sasuke said sharply. From the look on Tsunade's face, this was more than atypical. "And how?"

Tsunade shook her head. "Too advanced. But we'll deal with the hows and the whys later. What you need to address right now, as the boy's father, is the fact that, whatever the reason, he is convinced that his mother is dead. No one has been able to relieve him of this belief, not even his brother…"

"He thinks Sakura is…" Sasuke could hardly say it.

Natsuo whimpered, the first noise he uttered since they stood before this door and Sasuke bent down and truly looked at the boy for the first time since he'd arrived back in the village. He knew that face. How often had he seen that face in the mirror when he was eight and alone?

The only difference was Sakura's eyes shining in their son's face and those eyes steeled Sasuke to do what he needed: to make this okay for both of his sons. He clasped the thin shoulders and squeezed gently.

"Your mother …is going to be fine," he told him. "And I will—I will make Tsuneo see that too."

"But he can't see," Natsuo protested and Sasuke stopped, having forgotten that piece of it.

"His …ocular jutsu is far too draining at its current …progression, and we have been unable to deactivate it," Tsunade intoned from above them. "I sealed off the nerves to relax them, but it's a temporary measure."

"Temporary," Sasuke reassured his other son. "And whether he can see or not right now, I will make sure he believes me. But I need you to go home with your uncle until I can deal with this."

"No!" Natsuo cried instantaneously. "You can't send me away, Tousan! What if …what if Kaachan does die and I'm not here? What if the people that did this to them come back and we need to protect them?! You can't send me away!"

Sasuke crept back a step, disturbed at all the things he hadn't considered, things clearly running through Natsuo's young mind, that he would even feel the need to protect his mother and brother. His mouth suddenly ran dry and Tsunade intervened smoothly, watching Sasuke flounder. "You don't need to leave, Natsuo-kun. You can shadow me, as long as you're quiet, so you can keep a close eye on things. But while I'm doing my research, you must stay as silent as possible," she said sternly to Natsuo's nodding head. "That's going to be your job until we find a solution."

"I will be so quiet until you fix Niisan!" He promised.

"I won't be gone long," Sasuke finally managed. "I just need to speak with your brother and everything will be fine."

The look of disbelief that Natsuo sent him shuttered his heart and he wished he had never said something so careless. Rather than confront that expression, Sasuke stood and looked back at Tsunade, trying to take stock. "Has he see—has Tsuneo …been in her room?"

"I'll have you make a judgement on whether that would be wise," she answered. "If you believe it will help him."

Of course. Because Tsunade wasn't authorized to do something like that without consent of a parent. Sasuke turned to Naruto and Kakashi, who appeared to have been waiting for him to speak to them. He stared at them, unsure what they even expected or where to begin, but when he looked at Kakashi—the Hokage and their teacher—he only had one thing on his mind.

"I'm in on this."

"Sasuke—"

"No. I don't care. You will tell me what you find out."

"This happened to your son, Sasuke. Sakura is your wife—"

"I'll tell you everything," Naruto vowed with a seriousness that Sasuke rarely saw and stopped Kakashi mid-sentence. "We'll figure this out together."

Sasuke didn't wait for any further assurances. He went to face his boy, not even pausing to brace himself for the sight.

Tsuneo was slumped upright in the bed, his eyes wrapped and his face turned down toward the bedspread. He didn't even react to the sound of someone entering.

"Tsuneo."

His son didn't respond, but his head inclined toward Sasuke's voice. He moved further into the room and sat next to the boy, swiping the hair out from his face, business-like. Tsuneo flinched away at that and Sasuke saw a spot of blood on his cheek that must have been missed by the nurses. His stomach plunged further into this disarray of concern.

"What happened to you, son?"

"Kaachan died."

"No," Sasuke shook his head adamantly, though Tsuneo couldn't see it. "She's not dead. And she would be devastated that you believed that."

"'Would be' because she can't be," Tsuneo responded, his voice a void of anything. "Because they killed her."

"Who?"

"The people from the shadows."

"Does that make sense to you?"

He shrugged. "It's what I saw. They asked me questions and I couldn't tell them." His lower lip started shaking, the only sign he gave of just how upset he was. "And they stabbed her because I couldn't tell them. And her blood was all over."

Unyielding rage flooded his blood at that, but he had to ignore the disturbing words and press on. "Tsuneo," he said patiently, through gritted teeth. "If something like that had happened, your mother has a seal that would prevent her from being harmed. You know about that."

"That's what you've told me," he answered, as if he had said this all before. "But she didn't do it when they stabbed her."

This was getting absolutely nowhere. This …hallucination had to have been so real for his otherwise-logical and steadfast son to be so belligerent in his belief. All because of what occurred in his mind.

"Niisan, why are you doing this?! Why?!"

"Come here," Sasuke said shortly, and without waiting to explain, he lifted Tsuneo out of the hospital bed and into his arms, striding towards the door. He didn't know what state Tsuneo's mother was in, but she wasn't dead, and anything was better than this...

Sakura happened to understand this child of theirs so much better than he did, and yet she wasn't around to make the judgement call. He had to end this, because there was so much else to deal with now: Tsuneo's eyes and Sakura's self-induced coma and whatever caused all of this.

Sasuke would make them pay. But later…

He strode past several medics who made a show of looking away. Sasuke was under no delusion that they had no idea who he was. He approached one of them. "Uchiha Sakura's room."

"Yes," the nervous man pointed quickly, as if Sasuke would attack him if he took too long in answering. "Three doors and on your left."

"Thank you."

"There was too much blood, Tousan," Tsuneo said from his shoulder, but the boy's voice had risen in something like panic. "It flew out. It went everywhere."

The same image flashed across Sasuke's eyes and he warded it off as he pushed open the door to what was presumably his wife's room. "I know what you saw, but it wasn't real. And I'm going to show you that now."

Tsuneo's grip around his neck tightened as they entered the sterile air of the room. Sakura looked …fine. Asleep. Beautiful. Sasuke's knees almost gave out in relief at the confirmation of it. His wife was far from weak, and she knew what she was doing.

Tsuneo couldn't see her, but he had enough of a grasp on chakra sensing to have the barest amount of hope in the tile of his mouth when Sasuke surveyed him. He placed the boy on his feet and guided him toward the bed.

"Kaachan's body."

Sasuke had to stop himself from jerking the boy's hand too hard towards Sakura, who was giving no sign that she knew they were there. He had to control his breathing as he guided Tsuneo's hand over Sakura's chest, breathing slightly but detectably. "No, it's her. Feel."

The small palm rested over her and lifted under her next draw of air and the boy's lip was trembling again. "They killed her," he whispered.

"No," Sasuke said impatiently. "Someone …or something, made you think that."

"Why?" His six-year old son demanded, voice still just a rasp of heartbreak. "Who would…" He couldn't finish, he let out a low, wounded wail and bent over his mother, stretching his arms as far around her as they could go, and Sasuke knew …intimately, the wild and willful hope and relief that would have overtaken him. Something he had wished for so desperately when he was just a boy.

"Niisan, why are you doing this?! Why?!"

"Your mother would never leave you," Sasuke spoke around the lump in his throat. "She needed to protect you."

"I c-couldn't …protect h-her!" Tsuneo sobbed, burying his head against Sakura's pale neck like a burrow. "I didn't know the answer, I d-didn't know about them!"

What 'them'? Sasuke wondered if this was just a useless part of the hallucination that put him in this state, or if it had some significance in helping them discover who did this… He put his hand on top of Tsuneo's shuddering head. Someone had pulled his hair back into a half-ponytail, which was unraveling along with him.

Sasuke stared at them, at his unmoved wife who was fighting a battle in her own body, and the son who was forever changed when he had left this village for only a day.

And he prayed for patience...

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Sakura knew nothing but the inside of her own pathways, wandering them and examining from afar in a strange, feverish drift. She went about the work of purging most of this …this not from her system immediately. The draining effect of it was apparent as soon as it transferred itself to her. The chakra she had stored had been too enticing a prize for it, which was a lucky chance that it could be rerouted from her child.

It siphoned away at her strength and she cordoned it off into one localized area as far away from her seal as possible. If it wanted the byakugou, it would need to work for it. She needed to stay alive until she could complete her purge, and hopefully, she would leave this ordeal with answers.

Someone had tried to harm her child. Someone had. And she had a sneaking suspicion that it was related to the case Kakashi had given them.

This not-chakra wasn't absorbent, unlike all the other chakra-draining elements she had encountered. It felt wrong to her exacting sense of chakra and how it worked, both in the positive and in the negative. This thing took and it took until it destroyed whatever it latched onto, and whatever its aim, it manifested a sharingan in an Uchiha child far too young to handle the strain. Sasuke had collapsed after first developing his while older. This had to be a deliberate attack, perhaps designed for such a thing. Sakura certainly couldn't figure out how all of this could be coincidental. And his eyes bleeding from the stress…

But she couldn't become distracted from the task at-hand, or she wouldn't be around to help her son through whatever trauma had been created by all of this, or to make sure these tormentors never got another shot at either of her boys…

Then there was the observation of just how aggressive the quantity was. She hadn't seen anything in the room with her and Tsunade and Tsuneo, and yet she couldn't imagine that there was a delayed onset of his symptoms, so something must have been there that she missed.

Focus.

She had forced the invader downward successfully, but that didn't mean that it wasn't doing its best to eat away at her. It was only some momentary brilliance, coming from some corner of her brain, that had allowed her to stop its attempt as thoroughly as she had. Creating a barrier that stemmed her own chakra from the parasitic-like energy gave it nothing to feed on. It was a precise construction: holding a barrier of nothing so that none of her chakra bled into it, especially something that would encroach at the slightest hint of energy directed towards it.

Instead of controlling her chakra, she understood that it was controlling a lack of it; the empty space in between. But the not-chakra was diminishing itself at a snail's pace, and it was testing her patience like nothing had since she had learned to store chakra.

There had to be a better way to kill it off than choking it slowly…

It was an ironic thing, she briefly thought, to appear just asleep when you were engaged in the most urgent and desperate race against time. She could only hope that Sasuke had already returned and was caring for their boys. She had to believe that he would do his part while she raced around in her own body for a better solution.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"Niisan. Niisan! Are you awake?" He already knew that Tsuneo was awake, if eerily still. He pushed at his arm for emphasis, and one of the nurses hushed him warningly. "What happened? What happened to you and to Kaachan?!"

Natsuo had run with all his might to the hospital and into a strange sort of chaos that wasn't the ordinary, hospital emergency. No. Medics were racing around, catching words here and there and the young Uchiha could hear Tsunade's indistinct yelling from down the hall. He dodged around them as fast as he could, his head turning all over for any familiar face, following the only voice he recognized.

He rummaged past four hallways and a stairwell before he discovered his brother in a room with two harried-looking medics. Kaachan was nowhere to be found, and Tsuneo had a wrapping around his eyes and a strange energy surrounding him. His quiet felt different than before. Natsuo's hand slightly trembled as he pushed at his brother again.

This time, a medic murmured a warning. "Be gentle, Uchiha-kun, please."

"Who let that boy in here?!" Tsunade thundered by the door, hands on her hips. "What on earth are you people doing? Natsuo-kun! Come here. Why aren't you at the Academy? Go back!"

Tsuneo had turned toward the sound of the sannin's voice, his mouth still twisted despondently, and Natsuo didn't do as he was told. He couldn't look away from his niisan, lifting one knee onto the bed to get closer. "You got hurt, and so did Kaachan, didn't she?" he predicted unhappily. "That's what I felt. Where is she, niisan?"

When Tsuneo finally acknowledged him, Natsuo thought in horror that his eyes must have been like the wrapping that covered them: nothing.

"Dead," he said with more nothing, as if he wasn't daring to say something like that to Kaachan's son! Like he wasn't her son either. But Tsuneo didn't seem to care about his feelings, and that scared Natsuo almost as bad as the words themselves. "They killed her."

Natsuo's chest felt as if it would cave-in and he grabbed his brother to shake him furiously. "LIAR! You liar!" he screeched.

"Uchiha-kun! Don't—"

But Natsuo hardly heard. He could have furthered injured Tsuneo for his words, and his motionless body. "KAACHAN ISN'T—"

"Out of my way!" Tsunade barked, pulling Natsuo up like a cub and separating the two. "ENOUGH! Come here, brat. Come here…"

Natsuo shut his eyes tightly, flailing his arms as Tsunade took him away, lifting him easily by his collar. He refused to look or to stop fighting, until the woman suddenly came to a halt somewhere else.

"Here, look."

His eyes opened. His mother lay there on a bed, wired up like a patient. When the machines beeped like that, she had once told him that meant that the patient was doing okay. He had to tell Tsuneo that he was wrong and he shouldn't—

"Natsuo-kun."

The boy's eyes darted up to stare at his mother's mentor. "What, me? I'm being quiet!"

Tsunade sighed. "Yes…" She surveyed the wide, frightened green eyes and frowned. "But you know …that both your mother and Tsuneo are going to be fine?"

"Uh-huh." He said, suddenly concentrating on his hands. "But why does …he think that Kaachan isn't alive anymore?"

She rubbed her eyes and decided to be honest with the unusually somber child. "Because whatever Tsuneo believes he saw was very pote—strong. It must have felt very real to him at the time. But if your father has a brain in his head, he's going to show your brother that it was just a very real hallucination."

Natsuo nodded. "And then you're going to fix his eyes, Baachan. And Kaachan will wake up and Tousan will yell at Tsuneo for skipping Academy, and he'll teach us more jutsu. Everything will be fine!"

Tsunade eyed the boy, feeling out of her depth with all the potential implications of his words. His hope, not yet lost to the way of life which had immersed him since his birth and would continue to do so. His belief that the adults around him could fix anything. His utter lack of grief, ignorant to the fact that most of his clan had been slaughtered before he was born.

She opened her mouth to enlighten him, unthinkingly. Your brother's eyes will never be the same, Natsuo-kun. Have your parents ever told you about the Uchiha's eyes?

She closed her mouth before the words ever left them and smiled wanly. "Of course I'll fix his eyes. And your mother will help …once she fixes her own problem."

"Yes!" he chirped, pumping his fist. "I can help you do research, can't I? I can read some books!"

Wordlessly, Tsunade passed him one of the scrolls she had already perused. "Go ahead, then."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Naruto's frustration was brought out in near-anger by the time they arrived at Hokage Tower, his face an angry set of lines. "What are we doing here, Kakashi-sensei? Sakura-chan is—"

"Still unconscious," Kakashi interrupted. "And forgive me, but when she wakes up, I want to have some headway on who did this to her."

"Ino is working on it," Shikamaru spoke and Naruto's head swiveled toward it. He hadn't even noticed him. "But it already looks as if whatever attacked the kid didn't cross the border of Konoha."

"That's not possible!" Naruto argued furiously. "Tsunade said that it happened in her office!"

"Naruto," Kakashi said, "think outside the box… If no one passed the border, and that's still not for certain, then one of two things must have happened. It was something that wouldn't have been detected across the Yamanaka perimeter, or whoever it was didn't cross the perimeter at all."

Wasn't that obvious? Naruto stared at Kakashi uncomprehendingly until the Hokage sighed. And Naruto shook his head.

"Let's worry about this later! Can we just wait until—"

Kakashi's hands came down on the desk, actually irritated now. "No. We can't wait, Naruto. This is a breach, and do you really think that Sasuke is going to want to wait for answers about this?"

Naruto crossed his arms. "You didn't even want to keep him involved!"

"Because he shouldn't be involved!" Shikamaru snapped. "But Team Seven never knew how to follow the rules, so he'll be involved."

"Now, Shikamaru," Kakashi said mildly. "You've been known to seek retribution for personal reasons, so we shouldn't throw stones…"

Shikamaru shrugged. "Back to the basics: someone got past Ino's detection or the person who did it didn't go past the border."

"Which still leaves every option open!" Naruto griped, throwing up his hands. "Why are we even doing this? Sakura will probably know plenty when she wakes up!"

Shikamaru hummed thoughtfully. "We can't interview Uchiha Tsuneo either, I'm guessing…"

"He's in no state," Kakashi said flatly. "Let Sasuke get answers from his son."

"Assuming he doesn't take those answers and go off on his own?" the genius pointed out. Silence reigned. Naruto shook his head.

"He won't do that…" he said unconvincingly. "But I'll …I'll go get an update on Sakura-chan anyway, since we're not doing anything here."

Shikamaru tsk'd as Naruto jumped from the nearest window. "So emotional …and troublesome."

"I understand your point, but bottom line: we need to figure this out as quickly as possible and we need to have our best on this case."

"And we have to entertain the possibility that this wasn't an attack on the village," Shikamaru said. "Because the way things look, it could have easily been an attack on the Uchiha."

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Sakura's hand was limp in his. Tsuneo was back in his room, as calm as he could have been in the circumstances. Sasuke lifted her hand and bowed over it, his mouth pressing against the ridges of her knuckles.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," he murmured to her. "Please just …finish whatever you have to do and come back. I don't know what to do…"

Natsuo was still with Tsunade, but he couldn't stay with her all night. Tsuneo had to remain in the hospital until Tsunade could deal with his son's manifested sharingan.

His sharingan. Sasuke closed his eyes against a new wave of fury. He didn't want to believe it was targeted at him, but how couldn't it have been? And it was fine to target him.

But his child? His wife, by extension?

That wasn't acceptable.

A crow tapped on the glass of Sakura's hospital window and Sasuke, recognizing it as his, came to his feet to lift the glass. He began to read the missive, his heart picking up as he started. Orochimaru… just further confirmation of what he already suspected.

"Tsuneo?"

Sasuke's eyes shot back to his wife, who was suddenly very much awake, her eyes bright with ferocity.