The following morning I awoke early; my alarm clock showed it to be just after five.

I really was exhausted, I thought to myself, stumbling into the wash-room. I don't think I've ever fallen asleep that early. I could feel the comforting chakra that filled my system, putting a spring in my step. I'd been feeling so dreadful before, I hadn't noticed its lack. No wonder I felt like hot garbage, I mused.

I got dressed and filled my satchel with books, traipsed down the stairs and began making breakfast. I was a little more familiar with the cooking styles now, and it also didn't seem western-style food was unheard of here. Plus, I could tell I'd want the extra energy more than ever.

It was also, privately, a small gesture of thanks to Mebuki and Kizashi.

When Mebuki came down the stairs for tea, she blinked in surprise at the spread of food. "Huh. Hit your head a few times and you become a master chef," she muttered, pouring her tea and taking her place across from me at the table. I had to smile; her wit was always a little sharper in the morning.

She started tucking into the food quietly as I continued reading, having already eaten. After several minutes, she looked up and frowned. "That's a new book, isn't it? What's it about?"

I blinked, glancing between her and the text. "I thought it was from you. Sasuke said-" I stopped. Thought back. Actually, he had never said all the books were from Mebuki. "Uh, never mind. This one's about taijutsu, different kinds of fighting styles. I've been paging through to find something that might suit me better than what I'm using now."

She nodded, too sleepy yet to notice my change in expression. "That sounds nice, darling."

I turned back to my book, eyes unfocused. Did Sasuke give me books? Did the most emotionally unavailable dweeb on the planet give me presents? And good ones at that? Surely not. The boys hadn't even known for sure I'd be awake. Sasuke had probably brought his own books to read while they visited and accidentally left them on my bedside table with the ones Mebuki gave him.

... Which was absolutely something Naruto would do (if he was making an effort to read, to begin with) but not the sort of mistake I'd expect from Sasuke.

I snapped my book shut and threw it into the satchel. "I'm going to go down to the training field; my doctor said some light physical therapy would do me good." It hadn't been precisely what she'd said, but I didn't want to draw out the conversation with needless worries.

"Have a good day, darling," Mebuki mumbled, still half-asleep.

I walked through town in a daze, peering through shop windows helplessly. I need to get the boys something. Anything. After everything they had done for me, I wanted to do something nice for them. Unfortunately, I didn't have a strong idea of what they liked other than food.

Kunai? No, they have kunai, that's ridiculous. Books? I don't know which books Sasuke already owns and Naruto hates reading. Fashionable jewellery? A pet cat? My brain's automatic suggestions were growing more ridiculous the more desperate I became.

I had been standing in the middle of the street swivelling my head around desperately when I heard a voice call out. "Hey, Sakura?"

I whirled around and came face to face with a boy around my age. He had a tired expression that I automatically pegged as resting bitch face, and the most incredible gravity-defying hair pulled back in a high ponytail.

"Um, who's asking?" I queried nervously.

He sighed. "Shikamaru. Ino's teammate. I saw you walking around; your steps were uneven and you looked confused. It'd be troublesome... but Ino said you were having memory problems, and she'd kill me if I didn't help. Do you need someone to take you back to the hospital?" He looked very much like he was hoping for a negative.

My face burned in humiliation. "Oh, um, I'm not lost. I was just looking for something..." I frowned. "How did you recognise me?"

He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Ino talks about you a lot. A girl my age walking around the streets in confusion, with the clear outlines of several textbooks in her backpack..."

I winced. Wow. Called out.

"Short, pink hair," he continued.

I slapped a palm to my face. Right. There probably weren't a lot of people roaming around with pink hair, were there?

"A giant seal on her forehead..."

Okay, I get it, I'm instantly recognisable.

"Not to mention, I went to school with you for six years," he finished. He gave a slow blink. "I'd have to be pretty clueless to not recognise you. I'm not the one with amnesia."

"Oh my God, just forget I asked."

Shikamaru frowned, crossing his arms. "So what were you looking for?"

I removed my hands from my face, slightly more composed. I studied him thoughtfully. "Hey, you're a teenage boy. What do teenage boys like?"

He regarded me warily. "In what context?"

I gestured vaguely. "Like, presents. My teammates did a nice thing for me, so I wanted to get them something as a thank you. But I can't think of what they like other than food, so..."

He shrugged. "Food is great. Everybody has different tastes in the things they like. If you're trying to find something that both Naruto and Sasuke would like, lunch is your best bet."He raised an eyebrow. "You shouldn't need to ask me to figure something like that out. Aren't you supposed to be smart?"

"But I get them food all the time!" I repeated, my voice a whine.

He snorted. His next words came out in such a low grumble, I wasn't sure I was supposed to hear it. "Then you're the perfect woman. They should be grateful." He stared into the distance as though recalling something painful, before shaking his head. "Speaking of which, I'm going to training. Ino will kill me if I'm late. See ya." He waved a hand lazily and slouched off.

I stared after him as he left, brows furrowed. Perfect woman? That's a new one. I shook it off. Boys are weird. Especially coming from Shikamaru, who had Ino on his team. Ino's the greatest girl on the planet. What a weirdo, I thought she said he was smart?

I shook my head in disgust, but took his advice and walked into a shop to pick up lunches. He's right about one thing, though. Everybody likes to eat.

When I arrived at our training ground, I was relieved to find that only Sasuke had shown up so far. This was going to be awkward enough without Naruto as a witness. It was a little surprising to see Sasuke hadn't started training yet, though. He was sitting against one of the wooden poles, staring off into the forest, as he had been on the first day I'd met him.

As I approached him I unzipped my backpack, digging around for the books. When he turned around to face me, I was already holding the small stack in front of me. "Thank you for letting me borrow these. They let me out pretty early, though, so I didn't get much reading done." I smiled awkwardly. "I'll probably ask to borrow them again eventually. They're pretty good."

Sasuke stared at me flatly, not moving from his position. He turned away to face the forest again. "I've already read them. Keep them." Without looking back at me, he stood up and began walking toward the clearing. "Come on. I've been stuck with the idiot for two weeks; I need someone different to spar with."

I stood frozen in place with my hands outstretched holding the books. After a moment, I slowly clutched them to my chest protectively. I stuffed them back in my backpack with the distinct feeling of getting away with something.

Books sorted, I ran after him in a light jog. After so long sitting around, it felt wonderful to finally move around. "Hey! Don't be so mean about Naruto. He's really good! I bet you guys have been getting far ahead of me in training."

Sasuke scoffed, finally looking at me only to roll his eyes. "You'd complain too if you were stuck with him for two weeks." He crossed his arms. "Plus we need you to go over that Air Pocket move with us... Sensei was useless."

I raised my eyebrows. "Wait, Sensei was around for training?"

He uncrossed his arms and slid his feet into a fighting stance. "Like I said. Sensei was useless."

Oh. So that's a no. Right.

I also moved into stance, subtly shifting my weight, a small smirk tugging at my lips. I was excited to put the moves in that taijutsu book into practice.

As usual, Sasuke was the first to act, rushing forward in a sweeping kick. I rammed a knee to the underside of his, and in a twist of motion, jammed an elbow into his armpit. He hissed in a breath, and I took advantage of his momentary hesitation to whirl around in a kick to slam my shin into his back.

Right before the blow could land, he reached around and grabbed my ankle, and with a deft twist of his arm, my weight was unbalanced. I toppled onto the ground.

"Ow, okay, point to you," I said, raising my hands in front of me. I had been doing fine moving around and directing my bones into the hits. But when I fell to the ground, the force impacted my muscles far worse than usual. I rubbed tenderly at the arm that had taken the weight of my fall.

"What was that supposed to be?" Sasuke muttered, glowering as he rotated his shoulder experimentally.

I huffed out a laugh. "It was in that book you gave me. The Taijutsu one. They call it Ninja Art of the Eight Limbs."

He shook his head. "Of course you read a book in less than twelve hours." I could almost feel the annoyance radiating off of him. "And of course just reading something instantly made your taijutsu better, even after being in the hospital..."

I grinned sheepishly. "Well, I don't think I'm going to take you by surprise again anytime soon, and I think it might be a bit before my muscles are ready for another round…"

He finally noticed the delicate way I was holding myself, still on the ground. He huffed out a sigh and sat across from me. "… So how are we supposed to be directing chakra for Air Pocket?"

Relieved at the opportunity to be useful when I could barely move, I was more than happy to go over chakra technique with him until Naruto arrived.

"Sakura-chan!" I heard him call out.

I rolled my head back lazily and gave him a grin as he approached. "Hey, Stranger. It's good to be back in action."

He squatted down and frowned. "Why're you on the ground like that? Are you okay?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm okay. Sasuke just beat me up," I said placidly. "He's rude like that."

"What?!" He exclaimed, jumping up and pointing an accusing finger at Sasuke. "How could you do something like that, Bastard? She only just got better!"

Sasuke glared at me, unimpressed. "Idiot. We spar all the time. That's why we're here."

I smirked at him, knowing full well he would never admit to being more beat up than I was. It would never happen again, so I wanted to savour the moment.

"Yeah, Naruto, I'm just teasing." I smiled at him brilliantly. "Sit with us, we're going over Air Pocket."

After we went over the basics of the technique, I followed the boys over to the stream and half-watched and directed them until they didn't need my help. I spent the rest of my time reading. After my talk with Tsunade, I was hesitant to use my chakra again.

I knew, on an intellectual level, that using chakra was generally fine. Even living and existing used chakra. But… this morning also reminded me all too clearly that I had a blind spot when it came to my chakra levels. For someone with supposed talent in sensing chakra in other things, I mused, It's pretty incredible that I manage to miss when I'm almost out of it. I could tell when my chakra levels were full; I could tell when I was feeling great. But somehow, I had trouble noticing when I felt awful.

It made sense, in a way. In my previous life, I always felt dreadful; I was always in some measure of pain. Only having it removed made me realise what a huge difference it made.

Perhaps that's why, other than missing my siblings, I didn't miss my old life too much. I hadn't had much else going for me.

Thinking of my sister made me frown. I remembered waking up early some mornings, and aching so much I didn't want to go to school. At first, she thought I was just trying to avoid it (and bless her heart, wasn't angry). But eventually, her Nursing instincts kicked in, and one morning she pressed her fingertips against certain muscles on my body, fingerspelling with one hand to ask me when I hurt.

It hurt everywhere, every day, just not always a lot.

I had spent the last month of my old life trying to wriggle out of doctors appointments. I knew what she thought; I'd read every single one of her schoolbooks and every other textbook I could get my hands on. And fibromyalgia wasn't curable, so I didn't really want to know.

… That was pretty close to the way my muscles felt now. I winced, paging through my new book on medical jutsu. Yeah, going to take the doctor's advice on this one. Don't want to go through that again.

I was positive overworking my muscles now wouldn't lead to a new fibro diagnosis, but I didn't want to be reminded of it either. That was one thing I was more than happy to leave in my past life.

Half lost in thought, half leafing through my book, my fingers froze on a page. Something had caught my eye. I read over the page carefully, frowning.

It was in one of the first sections of the book, on countering Genjutsu- illusionary- techniques. I'd read about them before; after all, my doctors all thought I'd been the victim of a Genjutsu attack. I'd even tried the counter, one night alone in my bedroom. The textbook way to counter was the Genjutsu Kai- literally Genjutsu Dissipation. It involved disrupting your chakra flow to shock your system into cancelling the technique. Another way involved subjecting the body to pain. It made sense; Genjutsu typically overwhelmed the mind to bend reality. And as my therapists often told me, if I found myself dissociating from reality, the best thing I could do was pay close attention to the real environment around me. (Though they would never suggest pain as an option. But then, they hadn't been ninja.)

It was the third method of countering that bothered me: helping an ally under a genjutsu by pushing chakra into their system, thus disrupting the attack.

Something that I was told never to do, or else I'd hurt someone.

Frowning, I brought up one of my hands and trickled chakra into it until it began to glow. Blue-green.

I glanced over at the boys, eyes tracing over to Naruto. He always tended to overuse his chakra when learning a new technique. Sure enough, his feet were glowing where he had submerged them in the water, attempting to create a chakra shell to keep them dry.

The glow of his chakra was blue.

Tsunade, using Mystical Palm, had chakra that glowed green.

Shikamaru's words from earlier played in my mind: Aren't you supposed to be smart?

I let the chakra fade from my fingers. I opened my mouth, then closed it. Thought deeply. Unfortunately, Japanese didn't have a good selection of curse words.

"Well, fuck," I mumbled in English.

Note: The fighting style Sakura was trying to emulate was Muay Thai, also known as Art of Eight Limbs. (Elbows, fists, knees, and shins.)