Hi everyone, thank you for continuing to support this story! Comments and constructive criticism are warmly welcomed.

Chapter 22

The funeral robes are stiff and heavy, its rough fibers abrading the skin on his shoulders and arms. Shikamaru grits his teeth and bears it as the procession slowly winds through the main streets of Konoha, head lowered to block out the mass of mourners and the distant sound of wailing. He keeps his eyes on the hem of his father's robe in front of him and shuffles forward.

As the heir of one of the biggest shinobi clans in the village, it is his duty to lead his people through crises alongside his parents. But Shikamaru doesn't feel strong today, hasn't felt strong since the day he had been frantically shaken awake by his usually unflappable mother, her lips quivering with the news that the Uchiha were gone. Just like that. Destroyed in one night, by one man.

That had been two days ago. The morning following the massacre had been cold and misty, as if Night had conspired to maintain the secret, had yearned to ensnare those severed souls in an eternal shroud. Now, the secret is out, the bodies interred, and the sun beats down relentlessly on Konoha's shoulders, its heat baking into the houses, and if Shikamaru squints he can almost see the phantom steam rising from the shingled roofs, carrying with it the smell of remnant blood, the cloying ooze of decay.

Shikamaru suddenly feels nauseous. Sweat slides down his back, dripping from his robes as if the clothing were crying, too, and he trips on his next step, stumbling into his father.

"Shikamaru!" Yoshino chastises, though her face is tense with worry and grief. Wrapping a hand around his arm, she subtly pulls him to her side. "We're almost there. Just hang on for a little longer."

The crowd is getting thicker now, the center square packed with shinobi and civilians alike. Slipping away from his own clan, he picks through the crowd to find Ino.

"Over here, Shika!" Shikamaru barely has time to react before his wrist is snatched in an ironclad grip.

"Hey, Shikamaru," Choji mutters. His wrist is also being held hostage by Ino, who quickly drags them to the edge of the crowd.

"Can you believe it?" Ino looks shaken, her eyes wide and lost as she looks at her childhood friends. "How could it have happened?" Her grip tightens.

"He's sick, that's why," says Choji with uncharacteristic fire. "My parents are really upset. We live right by them and didn't hear a thing." His bottom lip quivers slightly. "We were right there."

Shikamaru wraps an arm around the other boy. "Come on. The ceremony will probably start soon." A huge stage had been erected for the occasion, and it is lined with pictures—one for each of the departed. There are hundreds, each sketched in a hurried (though masterful) hand, and Shikamaru feels a stab of admiration for the speed with which this whole thing had been organized.

They weave their way back through the milling throng, arms linked together. People are beginning to line up now, and they quicken their steps as the general noise level lowers to a hushed murmur, dropping Choji off with the easily-located on Akimichi before casting their eyes over the crowd in search of the Yamanaka.

"Did you know that Sasuke-kun is still alive?," Ino whispers suddenly as they hurry along the perimeter of the crowd. She tightens her hand around his arm. "I was so relieved! But he's in the hospital, and with all the craziness going on right now I haven't yet had the chance to visit him."

Shikamaru hadn't known of this. "How did he survive? Are you saying Itachi left him alone?" As baffling as the possibility is, there simply is no other way Sasuke could still be breathing.

"Of course he didn't 'leave him alone,' Shika, the bastard's deranged. I heard Sasuke-kun was t-tortured." Ino shudders. "But he didn't kill him."

Finally spotting Mai Yamanaka in the distance, Shikamaru points her out to Ino and allows himself to be dragged towards their destination. "How did you even find out about this? I don't think my parents know yet, even."

"It's super under wraps especially since everyone's so busy right now, but Kiba told me." She leans in conspiratorially. "He was out walking Akamaru when everything happened—can you imagine! Apparently Itachi attacked some civilian kid before escaping the village and Kiba saw the house catch fire from a few streets away. Obviously he did some snooping and overheard some shinobi talking about Sasuke-kun."

But Shikamaru's mind has stopped following, stuck on repeat at what she said earlier. "A civilian kid?," he echoes. It comes out thin and frail.

"Yeah, Kiba was out by the civilian district on the other side of the village. Shika, are you okay?" Ino starts to look a bit concerned. "You're looking a bit green."

Shikamaru has temporarily lost the ability to form words, so it's just as well that Mai catches sight of them at that moment. "Where have you been?" the woman whispers loudly, enveloping Ino in a tight hug. "The ceremony is about to start. I'd give it another five minutes. Shikamaru-kun, your father is right up there with my husband. Go on and give him my greetings, dear." She turns to wrap him in a quick hug, too, but frowns when she sees his expression. "What's wrong? Why are you making that face?"

Her words travel slowly to his ears, as if he were underwater, as if she were far away. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out but air.

"Shikamaru?" Mai starts to look alarmed.

"I—I," he manages weakly as the world slowly sharpens back into focus, "I have to go."

And then he is barreling through the crowd and down the nearest street, feet spurred on by echoing shouts of his name.

The question he cannot answer is why. Kakashi crosses his arms and leans against the trunk of the tree he's standing on, his feet balanced on a branch two stories above the ground. Below him, the village is wrapped in a blanket of cold mist and terrible silence, loud and suffocating, marred only by the occasional sobbing from behind shuttered windows. He tilts his chin up and closes his eye.

What sort of business would induce the Uchiha to visit a civilian child in the precious minutes he had to escape?

Perhaps he hadn't expected to get caught, Kakashi considers. After all, he had met Kakashi there only through sheer luck and a gut feeling. But why?

The back of Kakashi's head meets the tree with a dull thunk. If only the blasted kid would just wake up. He slants his gaze at a window ten meters away from the tree. The younger Uchiha is thrashing in his mangekyou-induced sleep, his pallid skin covered with a sheen of sweat as he cries out into the quiet room. The brat lies in the only other bed, her pink hair carefully braided by a kindhearted nurse, her body as still and peaceful as a statue in repose. As if she were simply in a normal sleep.

Something about the sight leaves him uneasy, the familiar weight of guilt forming in his stomach. He knows he had done nothing wrong—in fact, he had done everything right. He had gotten there on time. He had been prepared. He had made no mistakes.

And yet that's exactly the problem. Because he had been there, and yet the outcome had still been the same. He'd been there, and he'd changed nothing.

Wake up, he silently wills.

"Hiding from the nurses again?" The words are teasing but the tone is not. Kurenai just sounds tired.

Kakashi graces her with a small eye crinkle. "You know what they say. The best place to hide is the place no one would think to look."

"Right under their noses?" She smiles wryly. "Or should I say above them? What are you doing up here?"

Kakashi takes a deep breath. "The air is cleaner here."

They are quiet for a moment as they look down at the invisible smog strangling the streets below.

"You should go back," Kurenai murmurs. "Let them monitor that sprain."

"And get myself chained to the hospital bed? It would be such a hassle to sneak out again." Kakashi adjusts the newly-healed wrist. "Besides, they've already fixed it. I'm not reckless."

Kurenai just looks at him with her quiet crimson eyes. "Well," she says after a moment, "I've been asked to take a look at a patient, so I'd better get going."

"You've been asked?"

"To check for genjutsu damage."

That draws a sharp look from Kakashi. "The traitor?"

She purses her lips. "One of his victims, apparently. I didn't even know he had left anyone alive."

"Ah," says Kakashi. He flicks a sideways glance at her and figures from the set of her jaw that he'd better offer up something as well if he wants more information. "Two victims, from what I've heard. Both kids."

Her face hardens, eyes flashing into a glare. "Filthy bastard."

"Aa." He tilts his head with casual curiosity. "It sounds like they're not recovering well, then?"

Kurenai's frown is answer enough. "I don't know about the other kid, but something is definitely wrong with the one I'm seeing. The hospital practically dragged me in." Her frown deepens, and Kakashi's ribs twinge with something cold and raw, with what could be the beginnings of alarm. He crosses his arms and shrugs.

"So what'll you do?"

"Probably just some scavenging, to be honest. It's not like there'll be much I can do, since he likely employed a dynamic genjutsu." She heaves a frustrated sigh.

"Dynamic?"

Surprise flashes across her face. "You mean you don't—?"

"My control over that eye is still spotty at best."

"Oh, well, I just meant shared genjutsu." She clears her throat. "All casters have their own signature, you know, and a fixed genjutsu contains enough structure and programming that remnants of the illusion can sometimes be traced with careful forensics. But with shared genjutsu—you've got the target adding things, too, and there's so much going on—it's basically impossible to recover anything meaningful from the debris because there's just too much ambiguity and flexibility to start with."

Kakashi inhales another deep lungful of thick, wet air. "You'll do what you can," he murmurs. And hopefully it'd be enough.

She gives him a small smile. "Thanks," she says. She crouches, preparing to leave, then flicks her eyes back up at him. "Catch you for a drink this evening?" Something dark flits through her gaze, a promise of temporary reprieve from the sorrow of day.

Kakashi crinkles his eye at her and shakes his head. "Can't," he says casually. "Mission tonight."

"Oh. Fine," she replies offhandedly. "See you when you get back, then. Stay safe." She nods at him, then leaps to the ground without looking back.

Kakashi watches as she walks down the path and disappears inside the hospital, and then he slides his gaze back to the window. The boy's breathing has temporarily evened out, his body curled into a ball as he shivers in his sleep. She has not moved a hair.

Wake up, Kakashi wills again, guilt creeping up his throat like sewage backing up a clogged drain. He swallows down the nasty lump and tries not to choke on it. Please. Wake up.

By the time Kurenai reaches the hospital room, the tree outside the window is long abandoned, its branches empty and bobbing in the breeze.

His legs are burning, there is a huge stitch in his side, and Shikamaru knows that he has never run so fast before in his life. Just as he knows it isn't fast enough, and that she needs him to be there now.

He needs to be there now.

The hospital doors are slammed aside as he barges through without showing down, startling the secretary behind the counter into dropping her papers.

"Haruno Sakura," he pants, clutching his ribs through the heavy funeral robes. "Which room?"

The secretary stares for a moment, then hurries to check her list when he glares at her with more energy than he can remember ever using before. She drags her finger down the list, hesitates, then drags it back up. Pauses.

"I'm afraid we don't have anyone here that name—"

"You do," Shikamaru cuts in impatiently. "One of the Uchiha's victims?"

The woman visibly starts at the name, then quickly checks her list again. "Haruno . . . Sakiya?"

"Yeah," Shikamaru sighs. "Room number?"

"Yes, that would be room 4—wait." She looks up from the page with an expression approaching apology. "I'm sorry, but no visitors are allowed in that room. Maybe check back tomorrow?"

And Shikamaru snaps. He's sweaty, in pain, out of his mind with worry, and part of him decides he's had enough.

"No, I'm going to go up there right now," he hisses ferociously at the woman. "And before you start puffing out excuses, know that I'm the heir of the Nara clan and I will report you—," he checks her name tag, "—Kaneko-san, if you don't tell me that room number. Now."

In shock and with a bit of fascination, he watches as the woman immediately pales to a sickly paper white. She glances at his shoulders and chest, reminding Shikamaru of the blatant clan symbols emblazoned upon his funeral robes, and then quickly peers down at the list again. "Uhm, yes, the room number s-should be right here," her finger trembles as it skims across the page, "4-0-8."

"Thanks," Shikamaru mumbles, suddenly feeling a bit ashamed. He takes several steps towards the stairs, then hesitates, lingering. "Um," he says, turning back. But the woman blanches again, and he loses his nerve. "I—the first name is actually Sakura, not Sakiya," he says in a rush, and then he hurries away as quickly as he can.

By time he reaches room 408, his legs are trembling from the strain of running up four flights of stairs and his ponytail is starting to sag as increasingly more hairs slip out of the hair tie. Grabbing the door handle with a feeling of finality, he sags forward and pushes the door open with his weight.

"Are you alright?" asks a smooth, quiet voice.

Shikamaru jumps at the sound, and the woman waits patiently for him to recover. She's pretty, with red eyes and wavy hair, but he senses a different aura about her from those of the nurses outside.

"Who are you?" he asks suspiciously, noting her lack of hospital garb.

He can tell his question irritates her from the slight twitch of her brow, but she remains polite. "Kurenai Yuuhi, jounin. And you must be Shikaku's son. You look just like him."

"Yeah." He frowns. "I'm Shikamaru. Why are you here? Do you know what's wrong with Sakura?" Closing the door, he makes a beeline for the beds sitting on the far side of the room. The younger Uchiha is sleeping fitfully in one, as Ino had mentioned, but Sakura . . . Sakura lies still and quiet as a stone.

All of Shikamaru's rationality and intelligence seems to escape him for a moment. "Is—is she dead?" he asks, the words sounding very far away, a distant horror.

"No, she's not dead," Kurenai answers, suddenly standing behind him. "Her file is on the desk if you want to take a look."

Snatching the aforementioned folder from the table, he flips through it carefully with sharp eyes. He's no doctor, but he knows enough to get the gist and fill in the rest. It's not good.

"So—so what?" he sputters, tossing the file onto a nearby chair. "So she's in a coma?"

"It seems so. I could not detect any lingering traces of genjutsu on her." She crosses her arms with a pensive frown. "The boy, though, is covered with remnants so the problem isn't one of detection. I don't know what the traitor did." She sighs. "Maybe he didn't use a genjutsu at all."

"Could it be a different kind of genjutsu?" Shikamaru asks, his voice starting to rise. Things must be bad if the hospital had brought in an expert for this. "He must have done something—people don't just fall into comas out of the blue!"

She only purses her lips in response, tilting her head down. Sunlight streaming through the window catches on the smooth metal of her forehead protector, sending a beam into his eyes.

Something about it enrages him. "You're a genjutsu specialist!" he snarls at her. "How can you not know what's wrong? Isn't this your job? If not you, then who? The Uchiha are all dead!" he shouts, breathing heavily into the ensuing silence. He stares into her widened eyes and feels all the confused anger drain out of him. "Aren't you supposed to be the best?" he asks imploringly.

Her expression hardens. "Not good enough for everyone," she responds coolly, heading for the door. "We'll just have to wait. Unless you can think of a better idea, of course." She steps outside, then pauses. "Good luck. I wish her a speedy recovery."

Shikamaru watches as she closes the door with a soft click, thoughts churning furiously. Because he does have an idea, an incredibly obvious one, and with any luck it'll produce better results than what's been tried so far. Pulling his hair back into its spiky ponytail, he turns away from the bed with a silent promise and marches out of the room to find his father.

Miles away, on the other side of the village, Shimura Danzo stares at a carpenter ant as it meanders across the worn wood of his desk. If decades of experience has taught him anything, it is that every action has a reason, every decision a motive. But what is the motive here? Danzo absentmindedly scratches at the bandages covering his right eye as he follows the creature's path.

What had Itachi wanted with Haruno Sakura?

For the first time in recent memory, he hasn't the faintest idea what the answer is. Her file is nothing special. Itachi couldn't possibly have wanted to take her with him - not that Danzo would have let him. Perhaps he had wanted to leave a message?

Danzo grits his teeth. Not knowing is so terribly . . . irritating.

With a quick flick of his wrist, he crushes the ant right as it reaches the corner of his desk. Yes, he decides. ROOT will just have to grace Haruno Sakura with a quick visit. And then things would become clear, and Danzo would know. And he would finally be able to act accordingly.

It's dark by the time they get to the hospital, the streets empty and quiet save for the chirping of hidden crickets. Climbing the stairs with aching legs, Shikamaru quickly locates room 408 and slips inside, leaving the door open for the others.

The lights are off, the room's two bedridden occupants silhouetted against the star-studded window. The Uchiha has curled up on his side and seems to be sleeping calmly, his breaths long and even; the genjutsu's effects are likely wearing off nicely. Sakura hasn't moved at all.

"Was she already in a coma when she came in?" asks Shikaku. He quickly checks her pulse and frowns at what he finds.

"That's what the file said," Shikamaru replies.

"That suggests the coma was caused directly by something at the scene, rather than a downstream consequence," Inoichi says thoughtfully as he closes the door and approaches the bed. He presses a glowing palm to Sakura's forehead.

"Chakra flow is much too slow, as it always is in coma patients." He frowns in the same way Shikaku had. "But I'm more worried about how sluggish it is."

"Very unfocused," Shikaku agrees.

"Sakura has the tightest chakra flow of anyone I've encountered," Inoichi mutters. "The coma isn't causing this." He runs several diagnostic jutsus over her prone form, then pulls out a nearby chair and sits back with furrowed brows.

"Alright, so here's the plan," he says after a moment. "I'm going to first do a quick dive into Sasuke as a control, share any findings of note, then take a look at Sakura. Simple, straightforward."

Shikaku nods. "I'll seal the room," he says, and then for Shikamaru's benefit, "strong chakra usage from another floor can interfere with delicate techniques like this one."

Feeling slightly out of place, Shikamaru finds himself a quiet spot in the corner and watches as Inoichi sweeps over to Sasuke's bedside and repeats his diagnostics. "Ready?" He asks Shikaku.

"Ready."

Inoichi flickers through a lightning-fast set of hand seals, then stills.

Nothing happens for several minutes.

"Tou-san?" asks Shikamaru.

Shikaku gently shushes him. "He'll be back soon."

As if on cue, Inoichi suddenly slumps, then blinks back to life. "Horrible," he says.

"Was he tortured?" Shikaku asks sharply.

"He showed his little brother a play-by-playoff how he killed their parents. The clan." He shakes his head. "How someone could be so horrible, so miserable…"

"Is Sasuke alright?"

"Traumatized. He'll clearly need serious therapy for the psychological scarring. It's looping through his brain, sinking deeper by the moment. But his energy systems seem mostly recovered from the strain of that Mangekyo, so I'd wager he wakes by the end of the week."

Shikaku nods. "I'll leave the nurses a note," he says. "You want to rest a moment?"

"Only a minute, I'd better finish this now while everything's fresh," Inoichi responds, turning towards Sakura's bed. "How long did Sasuke take?"

"About eleven minutes."

"Alright. I'm estimating Sakura to take twice as long, so twenty-odd, maybe." Dragging his chair over to her bedside, he drops into it again and runs a hand through his hair. "Assuming she went through something similar. Sasuke's mind was complete chaos."

"Anything you could help with?"

"Not really," Inoichi sighs. "Just some cleanup and rudimentary redirection of the mental flow."

"Wait a minute," Shikamaru interjects, wide-eyed. "Are you saying you were . . . rearranging his mind!?"

"Nothing that invasive," Inoichi corrects kindly. "Imagine a mind as, hmm . . . a whirlpool, swirling in a cave." He chuckles. "Bear with me for a moment. You know you're approaching the whirlpool when the air changes—it gets thick with moisture. That's only the outer edges of consciousness, though. Go closer, and the whirlpool will pull you into its gravity, and that's when you truly enter the mind. Now that's a normal functioning psyche. When an individual has sustained mental injury, their flow often gets disrupted in various ways. The whirlpool might break up into multiple eddies. They may swirl in opposing directions, a classic cause of confusion or disorientation. Mental debris which is normally ejected by the mind in a systematic way may now be flung into places it shouldn't be and further clog the mind. Things that shouldn't be debris—long-term memories, names and faces of loved ones—get thrown away." Inoichi trails off.

"And you help by putting things back where they should be," Shikamaru surmises quietly.

"I do what I can," Inoichi says with a wry smile. He stares down at Sakura, face sad. "She looks like Ino."

Sakura, in fact, looks nothing like Ino. But Shikaku gets it. "Kids heal fast," he says, and leaves it at that.

They are quiet for a moment.

"Alright," Inoichi sighs eventually. "Let's do it." Forming the appropriate handseals, he closes his eyes and concentrates. The jutsu always starts slow, a gentle tug on his forehead. He follows the source of the call, faster and faster, lets it pull him away like an unspooling ball of yarn. He hears Shikamaru ask a question, but the sound echoes distantly as if through a long tunnel, and then that, too, fades, and there is only blackness.

Pulling his thoughts together, Inoichi squares himself for impact. Sasuke's mind had been littered with mental shrapnel from his ordeal, and Inoichi doesn't fancy slicing his spirit in half on any stray junk that may be floating around Sakura's mindscape.

Strangely, however, the impact never comes. Inoichi looks sightlessly around at the never-ending darkness, confused. When he had entered Sasuke's mind, the darkness had quickly brightened up to deposit him in the Uchiha compound—the boy's mindscape. Inoichi hadn't entered Sakura's mind with any expectations as to what it would look like, but he had expected something. Had he missed?

Straining, Inoichi tries again to make out anything in his surroundings, in vain. The only sensation is one of extreme speed: around him, the void seems to rush past his body on an invisible current, as if he's flying through an infinite cloud. The air feels heavy, a sign that he's in the right place. But where is the gravity from the 'whirlpool'? Had it shrunk from the torture, thus creating the illusion of it being farther away? That would certainly explain the coma, and worry trickles through him at the thought. He angles his body to move even faster, zooming towards what he hopes to be the center of the void.

After an indeterminable period, an anemic light finally begins to seep through the gloom. Blinking his eyes, Inoichi squints to make out his surroundings. But what he sees freezes his blood.

Because the sight before him is that of the hospital room. He can make out the windowsill, Shikamaru asleep in the corner, his own, hunched form. Somehow, he'd gone straight through her mind and seen . . . nothing?

Without another thought, he spins around and dives back into the darkness, senses pushed to their limit in an effort to find something, anything.

It is the wrong move. As if triggered by his actions, the darkness seems to freeze around him. Inoichi suddenly feels that he is being noticed, even though there is nothing there. And that he is an intruder. He barely has time to throw up his arms before he is flung through the void like a rubber band snapping back on recoil, so fast he feels the wind get knocked out of him when his back finally hits something solid.

Awkwardly rolling to the side, Inoichi finds himself sprawled across the hospital tiles, his upturned chair still wobbling by his head.

"Inoichi! What happened?" Shikaku quickly rights the chair and helps him back onto it while Shikamaru offers him a glass of water.

"I don't know," Inoichi manages, taking a sip. "I didn't see anything." Unable to explain more, he rests his elbows on his knees and tries to catch his breath.

"You were gone for 3 hours and 55 minutes," says Shikaku.

Inoichi's head snaps up. "What?"

"It's almost 3 A.M."

Jumping to his feet, Inoichi tosses a slew of jutsus at Sakura's body. Unbelievably, she looks just as calm and peaceful as she did before. "Something pushed me out, but . . . there was nothing in there. I almost thought I'd missed. What in the world?"

"Inoichi, you never miss."

"I know." He swipes a hand down his face. "Okay." He drains the rest of his glass. "Okay. I need to go back in."

"No, you will not."

"Shikaku—"

"You're dead on your feet. And I trust the results you found the first time."

"You don't understand. There was nothing there. No memories, no solid ground, no light."

"What does that mean? Is she not okay?" Shikamaru sounds as panicked as the adults have ever heard him.

"There was no current in her mind at all. It was completely still water." Inoichi feels his voice tremble slightly despite himself. "It's as if the force holding her mind together has completely vanished."

Shikamaru makes a sound of utter horror. "So she's—she's gone mad?"

"No, not gone mad." Inoichi takes a deep breath. "Just . . . gone."

.

.

.

Next chapter will hopefully be done by next week. I just need to find some time to edit it! It was actually supposed to be part of this chapter but too much ended up happening here and the two parts wouldn't fit together. I suppose it's just the story developing a life of its own.

See you next time!