Obito-Sensei Chapter 24
Breakfast
It took about a week for the whispering to go away, and when it did, Sakura felt like she'd woken up from a long and surreal dream. She could walk through the streets again without people staring at her. She still received glances, but she was sure that some of them were just for her crutches. The rest, she could ignore.
Once more, she was just Sakura Haruno, another ninja of Konoha.
That day, eleven days after the finals, Naruto had invited her to his house, and Sakura was making her way there with the same dogged determination she had to use to walk everywhere lately. It had never crossed her mind to ask for help. It was a different kind of training, she occasionally found herself thinking, to work around the pain.
The casts had come off several days ago, but the breaks had been especially nasty, and she was still in pain. The crutch wasn't strictly necessary: it just helped keep the ache in her leg bearable.
There was only so much that medical ninjutsu could do, Obito had told her. Especially with the kind of hit you took, the body needs time to fix itself fully. Sakura thought that sounded like a bunch of crap. Kabuto hadn't looked like he was in pain when he'd walked out of the arena after having his chest and arms torn open. But then, Kabuto could have been in agony too, and just better at hiding it.
When Sakura reached Naruto's home, her leg was pulsing with pain, and she buried it with a growl. She wasn't sure what to do when no one was there to greet her, so she did what the Sakura of a month ago never would have dreamed of and let herself in.
"Hello?" she called, closing the gate behind her. "Naruto?"
"Sakura!" The Yondaime popped into existence right in front of her, and Sakura screeched in surprise. The Hokage was wearing a loose white t-shirt and blue pants, and a short white apron was wrapped around his waist; it was by far the most casual Sakura had ever seen him. "Good morning! How are you feeling?"
"Lord Hokage!" Sakura blurted out, barely keeping from stumbling backwards. "My apologies!" She looked down at the apron; there was a kanji emblazoned in red on the front. Yon: fourth.
'No way.'
"Minato," the Hokage said. "And what're you apologizing for? You're the one who was invited over, right?" He stuck out a hand. "C'mon. Naruto's in the back."
Sakura reached out and took his hand, expecting to be invited into the house, and instead was instantly in the backyard. There was no sense of motion, no delay like with Obito's Kamui; she was just in one place and then another before her eyes could even register the change. Her brain flipped, and she blinked.
"Sakura!" Naruto sounded exactly like his father: he was there, along with his mother. It looked like she'd interrupted a spar. Her teammate was on the ground, covered in grass stains, and Kushina was looking down on him from the other end of the wide field that dominated their backyard with an amused expression. "You're early!"
Sakura arched an eyebrow. "How long did you think it would take me to get here?" she asked, and Naruto coughed. He pushed himself up off the ground and dusted the grass off his pants; there were still marks covering his face and jacket. Sakura giggled.
"Be right back," the Hokage said, and he disappeared without a sound once more. Sakura glanced back over her shoulder, unsettled by the sudden absence.
"Does he always… do that?" she asked, and both Naruto and Kushina nodded.
"Oh yeah," Naruto said, wandering around the backyard and picking up a couple knives.
"All the time," Kushina confirmed. "You get used to it."
Right on cue the Yondaime appeared again, and a table covered in food alongside him. Fruit, eggs, rice, and more; it was a veritable feast. Sakura's stomach growled. Naruto's father lifted his hand up off the varnished wood, and the entire thing shifted for a second, settling into its new environment.
'Seriously?'
Sakura had never seen anyone use ninjutsu so frivolously, not even her sensei. The Hokage treated instant teleportation like anyone else did their hands; there was no thought for him, it was just reflex.
She couldn't decide if it was amazing or terrifying. Probably both, if she were being honest with herself.
"I overcooked the eggs…" the Hokage muttered to himself, and for the life of her Sakura couldn't tell. The eggs were scrambled, sprinkled with cheese and scallions, and they looked incredible.
"Honey, some chairs would be nice," Kushina said, and the Hokage snapped in and out of existence; four chairs fell in place around the table.
"Sorry," he said bashfully, and Kushina laughed and planted a kiss on his mouth. Naruto gagged extravagantly, and Sakura wondered what she'd wandered into.
"C'mon, let's eat," the Uzumaki said, and they all settled around the table. Sakura looked around, not sure what to do. Her parents always said what they were grateful for before they ate together; Naruto's family didn't have any sort of ritual that she could observe. They just dug in.
Sakura took small portions, not wanting to look greedy, but Naruto didn't have any compunctions; his plate was quickly completely obscured under his food. They ate in silence, Sakura trying to suppress her feeling of awkwardness. She had been trying to ignore that inner voice and growing more successful over time, but here she felt distinctly out of place.
"How are you healing, Sakura?" Kushina eventually asked, and Naruto looked over at her, his mouth full of food. Sakura swallowed, overthinking her answer.
"I'll be fine," she said, and winced at how weak her response had been. Kushina rolled her eyes.
"Duh," she said. "I meant how are you doing?"
"It hurts," Sakura decided, trying to be frank, and Kushina nodded sympathetically.
"No shock there," she said. "It's surprising you're recovering as fast as you are." Sakura blinked at that. It had been nearly two weeks; an eternity for most shinobi. Kushina saw her surprised reaction.
"You got punched by a Tailed Beast," she said with a laugh. "You might not know this, but their chakra is incredibly toxic. It inhibits the body's natural healing process, and can stop medical ninjutsu too." She grew a little less amused. "Honestly, you could have died from chakra shock just from that hit. You were lucky, you know."
"I know," Sakura muttered, half expecting another lecture, but Kushina didn't press forward. She was far too grateful for that; it seemed every other conversation she had nowadays was people trying to tell her that picking fights with Tailed Beasts was a bad idea. Like that wasn't self evident.
"Still, you performed incredibly," Kushina said, glancing at her husband. "More than earned a promotion, I'd say."
The Hokage coughed, and Naruto sat up. "That's what I said!" he said, his mouth still full. "She kicked ass!"
"It wasn't that simple," Sakura said quietly, and Naruto gave her a funny look. "Like Obito said. I made an enemy, right?" She didn't look at the Hokage; she still didn't know how to square him being the village's leader and also being the man who'd made her this delicious meal, and Naruto's father, and the kind of person who'd wear an apron emblazoned with Yon. Too many conflicting views of Minato Namikaze were clashing in her head right now.
"You did," Minato confirmed, and Sakura forced himself to face him. He wasn't talking to her as the Hokage right now. At least, she didn't think so. He was speaking as Naruto's father. "You won your fight, Sakura. At least where it counted. But that was precisely why you could never have made chunin."
"Because Gaara was the Kazekage's son?" she asked, and Minato nodded.
"That's one of many, including your impulsiveness," he said, leaning back and giving her a thoughtful frown. "I'm sure Obito told you this as well, but you made Sand look like fools in front of the world. Promoting you after that would have been, well, rude, since the Hidden Sand is ostensibly our ally." He grinned. "Though the Amekage still voted in your favor. She enjoyed rubbing that in Rasa's face."
"I thought…" Sakura frowned and shook her head. "No, I knew something like that would probably happen. I guess I just didn't care."
"That's mature of you," Minato said with another nod. "I hope you won't hold it against me." That was the Hokage speaking, not Naruto's father, and Sakura gave him a shy smile.
"How could I?" she said. "I was expecting it, after all."
She felt another little wall break down, and for once tried not to overthink that as well.
"S'not fair," Naruto muttered, and his father shrugged.
"Nope," he said. "But you know what I say, Naruto-"
"Yeah yeah." Naruto waved him off. "'Being a shinobi is about sacrifice,' that kinda stuff. So what, Sakura sacrificed being a chunin? She didn't get to make that choice."
"Sometimes you don't get to," Kushina said. "Sometimes, you get called upon to sacrifice yourself, and that's that."
Sakura looked over at her, and Kushina must have noticed her expression, because she gave her a coy look as she stuffed half a melon in her mouth. "Something wrong, Sakura?"
"I…" Sakura didn't even know what to say, or if it was her place to. It couldn't be, right? But she pressed ahead regardless, her mouth ignoring her brain's desperate demands to shut up. "You said, right after I got matched up with him, that Gaara was a victim of circumstances." Kushina nodded, pursing her lips. "You meant that he was the same as you?"
"Well, I never murdered anyone for the fun of it," Kushina said with a thoughtful look, and Minato snorted. "What?"
"You and I must remember the academy differently," he said, and Kushina went red in the face.
"They didn't die!" she insisted. "They just had to learn a lesson!" She huffed and regained her composure. "But yes; we're both jinchuriki. Naruto told you, right?"
Naruto looked down, clearly embarrassed, and Sakura found herself mirroring him. Kushina just laughed. "Oh, don't look so sad! It's not a big deal, y'know!" She laughed again, a little quieter. "Though if the only other one you know is Gaara… yeah."
She shifted. "Did you want to ask me about it?"
"I don't know what I'd ask," Sakura said honestly, and Kushina grinned.
"Listen, I'm just like you," she said, leaning forward with both elbows on the table. "The only difference is that I've got a big grumpy bastard right in here," she said, patting her stomach. "The Nine-Tailed Fox, if you're curious."
That didn't mean much to Sakura: there were nine Bijuu, and that was the extent of her knowledge. Did having nine tails mean it was the biggest? Or the smallest? Or neither? She didn't want to ask, sure that the question would be stupid.
"Can you use it? Like Gaara could?" she asked instead, and Kushina shook her head.
"Well, sorta," she corrected herself, and Minato nodded. "Just a little. Its chakra is so huge and poisonous that I'd die if I let too much out, but I have a seal designed to release little bursts." She opened her mouth, pointing at her extended incisors: they were quite long and sharp for a human's, even more so than Kiba's. "That's how I ended up with these. They only popped up in the last couple years."
"Is that why Naruto has his scars?" Sakura finally burst out, unable to contain herself any more, and Kushina laughed, seizing her son by the cheek as he protested loudly.
"It is!" she said, sounding proud, like she'd carved them in herself. "Aren't they adorable?! Best mutation ever!"
"Cut it out!" Naruto laughed, swatting at his mom's hands and falling sideways off his chair. He tried to stick himself to it by his butt, but his control wasn't precise enough: he ended up just sliding down the side of the thick wooden furniture, his butt glued to it by his chakra.
"Well done," his mother said, as dry as a bone, and Naruto grumbled from his sideways position in the grass.
"I get self conscious," he muttered, and his mom laughed.
"No you don't."
Naruto stuck out his tongue. "Well, what would make you stop poking 'em?"
"She's been poking at them since the day you were born," Minato said with a soft grin. "Face it; you can't stop her."
"I could henge them off," Naruto declared, pulling himself back into his chair and grabbing another bite of omurice, and Minato gave a mock gasp.
"And break her heart?" On cue, Kushina's lips wobbled. "You wouldn't dare."
Sakura giggled and Naruto surrendered, slumping into the table."Alright," he said in a tragic voice. "You-"
Minato suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Sakura flinched away from the sudden sound. She saw Naruto do the same thing. Kushina was the only one who didn't react.
"Wh-?" she started to say, but she didn't even have time to finish the word. Minato reappeared without a sound and caught his chopsticks before they could land on the table. Kushina laughed.
"You'd think they'd learn," she said, and Minato chuckled.
"They're going to catch me one day," he said, and then as Sakura watched with wide eyes he nipped at the side of his thumb, drawing a couple drops of blood and making a series of hand signs too quickly for her to follow. "But not today."
He placed his palm down on the table next to the plate, and there was another explosion of smoke. When it cleared, there was…
Well, Sakura didn't know what it was. Her first thought was a little green man in a brown cloak, barely a foot tall, with a goatee, thick bushy eyebrows, and a tuft of white hair, but more than a glancing look made it obvious that whatever Minato had summoned wasn't human. It didn't have ears or lips, and its skin was smooth and hairless. It turned, looking indignant, and she saw that its eyes were dull yellow, with horizontal pupils.
'Like a toad,' she thought, and Minato grinned at the new arrival.
"Revered elder," he said, as respectful as someone should have addressed him, and the creature snorted.
"You little brat," the toad said in a gravelly voice. "I was in the middle of breakfast, ya know!"
MInato cocked an eyebrow and looked around, and the toad followed his gaze, glancing at the diminished buffet. "Bah," it scoffed. "Not a wriggle amongst it. You're getting squishy, lad."
"Glad to hear you don't approve," Minato said, and the creature laughed. It turned, actually looking at the others at the table.
"Kushina, won't you control this ungrateful husband of yours?" it asked, and the Uzumaki crossed her arms.
"I doubt I could," she said with a grin. "If you're going to try summoning him, do it around noon. He likes a power-nap around then."
"Kushina," the Hokage whined. "They don't need any help!"
"Mmm," the toad grumbled. "Naruto," it nodded, and Naruto waved back with an ebullient "geezer!" Its horizontal eyes settled on Sakura last. "Who's this?"
"Sakura Haruno," she said after a moment, not sure if she should extend a hand or just nod. She settled for a slight bow, and the toad snorted.
"Polite," he said. "Ya love to see it."
"Sakura," Minato said. "This is Fukasaku, Revered Elder and Sage of the Toads of Mount Myoboku." He gave that slight smile of his. "One of my teachers."
"Don't act like that's my most important title," Fukasaku grumbled. "Why can't ya just obey the summons like a good disciple?"
"Maybe you could ask politely next time?" Minato suggested, and the toad gagged.
"Each generation of ya humans is pickier than the last," it complained. "What happened to the ones who'd fall down at the sight o' us? Used to be people were honored by a summon to Myoboku."
"They all died," Minato said dryly. "Hundreds of years ago."
"Bah!" Fukasaku waved him off, and the Hokage laughed.
"Why did you summon me, elder?" he asked, and the toad sobered up a little; Sakura realized she was watching a very old ritual conclude.
"It's little Jiraiya," he said, and the Hokage leaned forward. Sakura knew the name; that was one of the Sannin. Though she didn't think there would be anyone else in the world who would call him 'little.'
"What's he done this time?" Minato asked, and Fukasaku frowned.
"It's what he hasn't done," the elderly toad said. "He's been resisting the summons too. We sent Gamatoro to bring him and he came back with no memory of his mission."
"Gamatoro did?" Minato asked, and Fukasaku nodded. The Hokage narrowed his eyes and leaned back. "Jiraiya wouldn't have done something like that."
"Of course not!" Fukasaku declared. "That boy is too good at getting in trouble! That's why we summoned you; to send one brat to check on another!"
"I'll send someone right away, revered elder," Minato said, and the toad harrumphed.
"Good!" he said. "I'm going back to my meal." He didn't spare another word for goodbyes: a puff of smoke was all, and then he was gone.
"A mission from the toads, huh?" Kushina said, and Minato crossed his arms with a frown. "That's unusual."
"Sensei has just been getting more stubborn," the Hokage said. "But if Myoboku thinks he needs looking in on...they're almost certainly right." He stood up, pulling away from the table. "I'm going to check some things. Finish without me?"
"On it!" Naruto declared, and his father laughed and disappeared.
"That was a summon?" Sakura asked, and Naruto nodded as he polished off his plate. "I didn't know the Yondaime could summon… Toads?"
"Yeah, toads," Naruto confirmed. "They come around every once in a while. Some of them are weirdos, but a bunch are cool." He got a thoughtful look. "They have some really cool water jutsu… maybe they could help you with your Ryusuiken!"
Sakura had never considered seeking out the help of talking animals to become a better swordswoman, but she'd also never considered that a foot tall toad so old it called a grown man a brat would be able to make the Hokage leap into action with just a few words, so her horizons were rapidly expanding. She sat back, cradling her right arm as it ached and pondering the thought.
But as she did, another one crept in.
'You should tell him.'
Her left hand unconsciously patted one of her pockets; the paper was still there. Sakura had been carrying it her with her everywhere she went, irrationally scared that if she left it in her room one of her parents would ask her about it. That was ridiculous; it was a blank strip of paper. Even the most paranoid shinobi wouldn't see it as more than that. And yet, she was compelled to keep it close.
She'd never sign it, she thought. But if that was the case, why hadn't she just thrown it away?
"Sakura?" Naruto was looking at her, and Sakura realized she'd been staring at him, her finger tapping against the paper inside her pocket. She blushed, looking away. "What is it?"
She didn't want to tell him. What would he think? Haku wasn't an idiot: if he'd thought she really could betray the village and defect to one of its rivals, couldn't there be some truth to that that Sakura couldn't see in herself? And if Naruto found out, his father was the Hokage, and that-
"Hey, you're overthinking something," Naruto said, scooting forward. "What's up?"
"What?" Sakura asked, feigning innocence. "I'm not, promise."
"Yeah you are," Naruto insisted. "Your nose is all scrunched up, that's your overthinking face. Is it your arm? It's gonna heal up."
Did she make that face often? Sakura felt a bit of shame at being so easy to read.
"Naruto…" she said, glancing at Kushina.
"Want me to leave?" Kushina asked, and for the first time in her life Sakura cursed the fact that most of the people she knew were ninja. It was unreasonably hard to hide even little things from them.
"Would that be okay?" she asked, and Kushina nodded.
"Sure. Plenty to clean up, ya know," she said, standing up from the table and clearing their plates. "I'll be back in a bit." She planted a kiss on Naruto's forehead before he could squirm away and laughed.
And then she was gone, and it was just the two of them.
"Ummm…" Naruto didn't seem to know what to say. "Sakura? You okay?"
"Naruto," Sakura started, sure she was making a terrible mistake. "Did anyone come to see you, after the final?"
"Well sure," Naruto said. "Shikamaru and Choji and Ino, and Hinata and Kiba and-"
"Anyone else?" Sakura asked, and Naruto titled his head. She painfully pulled herself out of her chair and Naruto followed her as they wandered deeper into the yard. "Anyone… not from the village?"
"What? Like from Sand or something?" Naruto asked, and Sakura nodded.
"No, no one like that," Naruto said. "Did someone come to see you? Was it one of those creeps from Sand?" Naruto's face started twisting up in anger, but Sakura held up her good hand before he could work himself up.
"It wasn't Sand," she said. "It was Haku."
"Haku?" Naruto instantly went from anger to confusion.
"The day I got out of the hospital. He showed up at my house that night, and-"
"What?!"
"Let me finish!" Sakura said, and Naruto raised his hands with a confused expression.
"He gave me this!" Sakura said, feeling like she was tearing off a bandaid as she yanked the paper out of her pocket. Naruto stared at it without comprehension, looking back and forth between it and her.
"It's some paper," he pointed out, and Sakura grimaced.
"It's just some paper, yeah," she said. "But Haku…" She choked on the words, and her teammate took a concerned step forward. "He told me that if I ever wanted to leave the village, I just needed to write on it."
"Huh?" Naruto didn't look alarmed, just baffled. "But you'd never leave the village."
Sakura felt herself start to tear up at the honesty and simplicity of what he'd said, and Naruto quickly grew panicked. "What'd I say?!" he asked, and Sakura started hyperventilating, the paper trembling in her hand.
"She's relieved, dummy." Kushina appeared out of nowhere, plucking the paper out of Sakura's hands, and she felt something heavy leave her with it. It was literally out of her hands now; the paralyzing possibility, no matter how impossible, was gone.
"Hey!" Naruto shouted. "You said you'd leave!"
"I totally did," Kushina said with a grin. "But I never said anything about not eavesdropping, right?"
She'd heard her. The Hokage's wife had heard her. Sakura started trembling even more violently, and Kushina grabbed her by the shoulder.
"Hey," she said. "Sit down." Sakura did, and Kushina sat alongside her. "Calm down too, while you're at it." That one, Sakura couldn't do.
She sat there wondering what was going to happen to her, and Kushina snorted. "Don't look so damn nervous," she said, and Naruto sat down too, the three of them forming a triangle. "So you got an offer from Rain? That's pretty impressive, ya know."
"What?" Sakura asked, trying to center herself. Kushina wasn't mad. Naruto wasn't mad. She was going to be fine. Why would they be mad at her? She hadn't done anything. Control your breathing, dumbass.
"Rain is always trying to recruit strong shinobi," Kushina said, and Sakura remembered something she'd dismissed as propaganda a couple weeks before. "It's a nation built by exceptional individuals, and they always want more." She gave Sakura a grin full of teeth. "So if they were approaching you, Sakura, they must have really seen something special."
"I don't know-" Sakura said, and Kushina scoffed.
"You stabbed a Jinchuriki, remember?" she said, and Sakura wondered if she felt anything on Gaara's behalf. She was certain no one else did. "That's always gonna make an impression."
"I don't think it was just that," Sakura said, the words pouring out without regard. "I talked a lot with Haku, that night we were in the forest. He told me about the Akatsuki, and I-"
"Agreed with him?" Kushina said, and Sakura nodded, not sure if she could or should elaborate. What would she say? That she helped articulate his own beliefs? That would just be even worse. "That's fair. Really, anyone who listens to someone from the Akatsuki explain their values should agree with them."
"Really?" Sakura asked, and Kushina nodded.
"They've got admirable ideals," she said. "Building peace, right?" She sat back. "But it was obvious from the beginning what was happening," Kushina continued. "Rain's team linked up with you guys immediately, as soon as the second exam began. And I'd bet they were watching you before that, right?"
They had been, Sakura thought. Haku had made eye contact with her the very moment they'd been in the same room. Wasn't that strange, in hindsight? In a room with over a hundred other ninja…
'We were keeping an eye out for people like you.'
"They were probably looking out for you, Naruto," Kushina said, and Naruto cocked his head.
"Cause of dad?" he said, and Kushina clucked her tongue.
"Yup. You'd make a great hostage, and an even better defector," she said, and Naruto frowned. "So if they could figure out your deal early on…"
"But they didn't seem like that," Naruto said. "Kabuto fixed up Sasuke… we talked for a lot. I mean, I'm not a mind reader or anything, but he didn't give me that feeling."
"And Haku didn't Sakura," Kushina said. "Most likely, they were all being sincere with you. The Amekage sent true believers; those are always the best to convince others." She pointed at her son. "But they didn't approach you, Naruto, cause you didn't resonate with them as much. You liked Kabuto, but as a person, not his ideals." Her finger shifted. "But Sakura… you sympathized with both Haku and his beliefs. That's why they approached you."
She grinned. "Believe it or not, one person can drag their friends along with them when they abandon something. Naruto, if Sakura felt like she had to leave the village to do something important, would you go with her?"
Naruto shifted, looking doubtful. "I mean, I'd ask you guys first."
"And if we said no?" Kushina asked, her tone a little less playful. "If we forced you to choose between us and Sakura? What would you do?"
"I…" Naruto frowned, dropping his head. "I don't know."
Sakura could feel her heart beating at that admission. Kushina gave them both a sad smile.
"That's how organizations like the Akatsuki function," she said. "They make you make impossible choices; no matter which one you make, you feel like you've failed somehow. That's how they get you. But Sakura…" She shifted, lifting one hand palm up. "You beat them with your honesty alone. That's the trick of it."
"I don't want to beat them," Sakura said quietly. "I want… what Haku told me made sense. About shinobi. About the minor villages." She looked up, making eye contact with Kushina. "About Uzushiogakure."
"Whirlpool?" Kushina asked, and for the first time since they'd sat down she looked uncertain.
"You're an Uzumaki, right?" Sakura said, and Kushina nodded. "Haku told me that Uzushiogakure was crushed between Cloud and Mist, during the Second War. I looked it up, and it seemed true."
"It was," Kushina said. Her attitude had shifted. She was cautious now, wondering what Sakura was poking at when Sakura hardly knew herself. "Cloud and Mist were both threatened by Whirlpool's sealing experts; it was a small village, but it had several powerful masters of fuinjutsu, including the First Hokage's wife."
"Really?" Naruto asked. "I never knew that. How come you never told me?"
"I came to Konoha when I was very young, Naruto," Kushina said, shifting towards him. "Mito was my great aunt twice removed or something like that; she was also the last jinchuriki of the Kyuubi. She chose me to be her inheritor because of my chakra." Some of the life left her face. "Soon after I left, less than a year, the village was destroyed. Konoha became my only home."
"And we couldn't help?" Sakura asked, and Kushina tilted her head, looking so similar to her son for a moment that Sakura blinked. "Konoha couldn't help?"
"The Leaf did everything it could, but it was at war with both the Hidden Sand and Stone, and couldn't afford to make more enemies," Kushina said, inadvertently confirming something else Haku had told Sakura. "That's why the attack happened at all. There were considerations made towards rebuilding the village, but it would just have been knocked down again. Cloud and Mist are both incredibly dependent on jinchuriki for maintaining their power; my clan's proficiencies were always going to be a threat to them." Kushina gave them a sour smile. "So the Uzumaki scattered; we're all over the world now, and I doubt that will change anytime soon."
"Didn't that make you mad?" Naruto asked, and for just a second Sakura saw a very different Kushina in front of her, a young girl boiling with rage. But the phantom image was gone as quickly as it appeared, and Sakura blinked, wondering what on earth she'd just imagined.
"Furious," Kushina said. "It made me want to burn the whole world down. I took out that anger on anyone who got in my way." She made a fist and laughed. "I still have plenty, I guess. It's something you learn when you grow up. Anger is good; it's how you use it that matters."
Sakura wondered if Obito and Kushina had been swapping notes, or if they'd arrived at the same conclusion separately.
"In the end, no matter how angry I got, I realized it was meaningless," Kushina said. "What happened to my clan couldn't have been prevented. It was a circumstance created by the system of villages. A smaller one became vulnerable, and its rivals took the advantage." She shrugged, and discarded decades of suffering in a single motion. "That's just how it is."
There was a moment of silence; Naruto didn't seem to know what to say, but Sakura did. "How it is," she said eventually, and Kushina gave her a lopsided grin. "But maybe not how they could be."
"Man, they got you good," Kushina laughed, stretching out.
"I don't mean it like-"
"Don't worry," the older woman said, waving her off. "You just about cried when Naruto told you you wouldn't leave earlier, Sakura. There's not any question about your loyalties." She stood up, taking the paper with her. "Keep that anger, and keep those ideals. See where they take you guys, alright?"
"You guys?" Naruto asked, and Kushina waggled her eyebrows.
"You're a team. Where one of you goes, all of you will," she said. "That's the way it's always going to be. Just keep that in mind, ya know?"
She left them sitting there in the grass, and Sakura looked around, wondering what had just happened.
"Well, that was weird," Naruto said, lying back and staring up at the blue sky. After a moment, Sakura joined him, the both of them lying side by side and looking up at the drifting winter clouds. It was nice, Sakura thought. Quiet and peaceful, and not too cold.
"Hey, Sakura," Naruto said, rolling over and looking at her, and Sakura looked over at him, wondering what he was going to say.
You're not going to leave, right? We're a team, right? I can trust you, right?
But she realized in a heartbeat that Naruto took that all on faith when he didn't say anything like that.
"Wanna learn the Rasengan?"
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Wow, more than 25 chapters already. This seems like an appropriate place to thank everyone who's been reading this. Yes, that means you! I'm having the time of my life writing Obito-Sensei, and I hope you're having a good time reading it. The next arc is going to be a fun one; can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.
Stay healthy!