CHAPTER 12 - TREASON

"Sakura… Thank you."

Not again.

Of all the memories he could have experienced, Sasuke didn't want to see this one. He didn't want to relive that moment, when all the words he had found - and they still weren't enough - were a simple, loaded 'thank you'.

He had known at that very moment that he was hurting her, and he was still aware of it. But witnessing it firsthand was something else entirely. Watching himself abandon Konoha, abandon Team 7, abandon Sakura, to seek an unfulfilling revenge was a punishment Sasuke didn't suspect to be so violent. He had dreamed about it, nightmares plaguing his nights for years, never really ending. But this was different. He felt put on the spot, pointed at, torn open. Yet he endured it, while his younger self was putting his teammate to sleep (seriously, he could have done without hitting her) and laying the tear-streaked girl on the bench, before disappearing in the darkness.

He knew he had hurt her.

It didn't stop the flinching.

The Uchiha immediately sensed he would not like where this was going when he regained consciousness alongside Tsunade in Sakura's mind. No, he had guessed even before that, when the Hokage had hurriedly stretched her psyche towards her student's, yelling a word in the void space.

Treason.

Consequently, Sasuke wasn't really surprised when the first scene that popped up was his fleeing Konoha to join Orochimaru.

It was exactly as he remembered it; a crying Sakura begging him to stay, offering her love, then asking to accompany him. He had felt it then, but the proximity to Sakura's intimacy amplified what had eaten at him long after that day; her sincerity.

There she was, laying her soul bare for him, hoping to catch a glimpse of his. A glimpse he had ended up providing. But that didn't make him less of a traitor. Even still, he had believed that somewhere, buried deep in Sakura's heart, there would be remnants of the feelings she had felt that day. He had thought that she, of all people, would never have considered him a traitor. He had no right to, but he had kept on hoping.

Of course he was wrong.

"Sakura… Thank you."

He wondered if she would accept those words again.

He wondered if she had ever accepted them.

Staring hard at his younger self, Sasuke refused to meet Tsunade's eyes when she spoke. "Why would Sakura show us this when she's aware of our presence?"

He could feel her wary glance on him, but he didn't budge. She continued. "There's no doubt that she understands our goal here. This memory must have some kind of importance."

Before Sasuke could let out his infamous noncommittal grunt, the scene shifted. The sky cleared, birds began to chirp in the distance, Sakura's tears were gone and a loud blond popped up out of nowhere.

The two were sitting on the same bench, looking grim. Only when the pink-haired girl began to yell did Sasuke realise how much the word 'grim' was an understatement.

"Naruto! How could these obnoxious, stuck-up, (Sakura's fists flew wildly in the air, barely missing her companion's frightened face) old, wrinkly bastards say that?! You know he's innocent!"

She punctuated her words with a light punch at the stone bench. A part broke off.

It took Tsunade's exasperated sigh and obscure muttering about respecting your elders for Sasuke to fully grasp the situation.

Sakura, carefully respectful, always polite Sakura, had just called the Council members 'bastards', with a sprinkle of charming adjectives. And broken a bench over it.

He had no clue why, but it was fun to watch nonetheless.

"Are we seriously going to let them walk all over him like this? All over us?"

She was standing now, avidly searching Naruto's face as if he would have a belated epiphany and decided to overthrow the Council with her.

Instead, he shrunk, avoiding her eyes and looking… sad. Just plain sad. It felt strange to Sasuke, to whom Naruto was always a boisterous and optimistic rival, not a defeated guy miserably sitting on a bench.

"Sakura… "

Her head whipped up. "No."

She balled her fists, eyes wide in disbelief. Had Naruto stabbed her, she would have looked no different. "No, no, no. Not you. You can't abandon him too!"

Tears were gathering, threatening to spill. Her voice cracked as she quietly pleaded. "Naruto… "

What was the link with the Council? And treason? Was Naruto the traitor here? Why was she crying again?

Sasuke's confusion must've shown on his face, because Tsunade answered all his questions. And more.

"This is right after the Council decided to update your shinobi status and have you figure in the Bingo Book."

Sasuke stalled.

Oh.

Of course.

He was the traitor again.

Kizashi's fingers weakly groped around in search of his wife, whose form he could hardly discern given his blurry vision. He had suffered a pretty damaging blow to the head, but his wife's silence was stretching on, worry mercilessly carving a hole in his stomach.

He tried calling out her name, but the dryness of his throat only permitted a low gurgle, which sent him into a painful coughing fit.

"Take it easy, Kizashi-san."

The cold words emerged from the depths of the room. His eyes still impaired, the pink-haired man could not make out the figure who had spoken, neither could he pinpoint the voice. He knew it, though.

When the voice did not reiterate, Kizashi tried sitting up. He had been lying on his side on an uncomfortably hard surface, most likely stone, judging from the coolness of the cell.

A cell, because as soon has he laboriously began lifting his upper body, Kizashi felt an unfamiliar weight on his wrists, and the unmistakable rasping sound of metal dragging against stone when he shifted his feet confirmed his suspicions: he was chained to the floor.

As the fog in his mind gradually cleared, the prisoner managed to get a better glimpse at the slumped body next to him. He immediately recognised her. Indignation and dread filled his senses and halted all of his rational capacities when he registered the same restraints holding her in place. As soon as the adrenaline kicked in, he plunged towards his wife before brutally crashing on the floor, picking himself up and changing his course in a single movement, punctuated by deafening clangs. Pulling at his chains, he ferociously crawled in the direction of the voice that had addressed him earlier.

Still unable to speak, Kizashi could only glare at the bleak figure he perceived in the shadows. When it resounded again, dangerous and drawling, the voice got a name.

"Quite feral, aren't you."

Kizashi collected himself, sat on his knees and adopted the most guarded yet defiant posture he could muster. Then he spat.

He had never disrespected anybody. But roughing his wife up and chaining her to a dirty cell floor was an entirely different story.

Once the wetness found his throat again, Kizashi managed to speak. "What is this, Kakashi?" His hoarse trachea made for a menacing tone.

The voice merely chuckled in response. A dry, humourless laugh.

"This is what I want to ask you."

The detainee's vision chose this very moment to return, and as his eyes got accustomed to the dark, Kizashi saw his cell guard stand from his chair and take measured steps towards the other prisoner, still unconscious.

"What are-" Kizashi quickly crawled back to his wife's side. "You doing? What do you want with us?!" Meant as an imperious roar, the question came out as a desperate squeak.

The Haruno tried shielding the woman from the approaching shinobi with his wide bulk, cursing the drowsiness that had yet to leave his veins and rendered all his movements so devastatingly slow.

The difference between Kizashi's jittering and his captor's evenness was ridiculous. "I want to know." Kakashi stopped and slowly crouched in front of the couple.

His eyes travelled up and down their bruised frame, dirty faces and ripped clothes. In the darkness, only his pupils shone, giving him an eery and deranged look. Kizashi was, against his own will, trembling in fear.

"I want to know why you are after Sakura."

Let's say it's his form of punishment.

Tsunade was perfectly aware of what she was doing to Sasuke. She had to admit that, no matter how many times she had taken his side and defended him to the peril of her position, Tsunade had never really liked Sasuke. That man was selfish, unpredictable, moody and an absolute child. On top of it, he was the center of all of Sakura's problems.

Why her student had always loved him, the Hogake could not understand, and she did not want to. And even though she was trying to be fair when it came to the Uchiha, Tsunade could not help but wish for him to be a little more punished. He had suffered, yes, but it did not atone for all his wrongdoings.

That is why she did not tell him.

While a young Sakura cried for the same reason she had often shed tears, Tsunade let that reason be consumed by guilt and regret.

She wanted him to feel how her protégée had felt every time he had betrayed her.

"Sakura, don't cry. It's… it's for the best."

A young Naruto was glaring at a crack in the ground, probably holding in tears of his own. He shut his eyes tight when the girl next to him choked on more sobs. "The best? How can this be for the best?"

For once, Tsunade thought sadly, Naruto appeared as the more mature one. "Kakashi-sensei said to respect the Elders' decision."

Sakura promptly stood up and faced the blond, her body language sharp with disapproval. "Naruto! How could he do this to us? This is treason!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Tsunade noticed the tension in Sasuke's jaw. She remained silent.

When the ramen-lover did not answer, Sakura snapped. "You're all bastards, each and every one of you!" She put her hand on her heart. "I have done so much to try and keep us together, and that's how he repays my work? What, am I disposable, the goody-two-shoes teammate who's just there to smile and encourage others? Why would you give up now? Why would you betray Team 7 too?!"

This time, Tsunade fully turned towards Sasuke in order to gauge his reaction. As she predicted, a stab of pain deformed his usually taciturn features, and remained there for a while. At the same time, Naruto's expression hardened into a mirroring one.

Just as the Hokage started thinking about relieving Sasuke of a part of his burden, Sakura spoke up again.

"Sasuke did not betray us."

Said man's entire being froze in astonishment.

"The traitors here are the Council, who refuse to send people after him. The traitors are the village, who refuse to give him a chance. It's Kakashi, who agrees with both of them, and ultimately, it's you, Naruto, who gave up on him after only a couple of hours!"

Sasuke broke down. He did not show any external sign of distress, or indiscernable ones to the untrained eye, but Tsunade could tell that her pink-haired favourite's words had touched his heart and moved something in him that the Uchiha himself did not know existed. Or denied its existence.

The Hokage sighed and moved away from the agonising man in an attempt to give him some privacy. But Sakura was, by nature, invasive, so she didn't let Sasuke have it.

"Okay." She huffed. "Okay, I'll do this my way." And she stomped away.

Naruto was up in an instant, his brow creasing in anticipation. He called out to the kunoichi in vain, running after her. When finally he caught up, all tension left Naruto's brow. It was replaced by sheer fright. "Sakura, are you crazy-" But he didn't manage to grab her. She was already in.

In the Hokage Tower, climbing the stairs leading to the Council's chambers.

45 minutes earlier

"Tsunade! A scroll from Kakashi, Tsunade!"

Shizune barged in the Hogake's office, Tonton right behind, panting and squeezing a scroll to her chest. She composed herself briefly and ran to her shishou's desk, smiling brightly as she triumphantly held out the parchment in front of Tsunade's raised eyebrows. "Pakkun intercepted me on my way here. It seems Team Kakashi has found something!"

Tsunade only winced for a second at Shizune's last sentence before eagerly taking the scroll and unsealing it.

She scanned its contents quickly and opened her mouth to give out orders when suddenly another person barged in, except in an entirely different fashion. One unhinged door and a busted handle later, the deadly chakra's owner unceremoniously threw down two heaps of limbs on the office floor.

Although Shizune seemed ready to display her digested lunch on the carpet, Tsunade could see the self-restraint it had taken Sasuke to treat his captives gently.

He had brought them directly to her instead of making a stop at the interrogation district, and most important of all, they were still alive.

The unconscious Harunos husband and wife were certainly wounded but not severely. They would recover from the physical injuries. As for the psychological aftereffects of being chased by an Uchiha out for blood, well, she wasn't so sure. And honestly, she hoped there would be sequels.

However much control Sasuke had managed to keep over himself so far, Tsunade also knew it would soon reach its limits. Rereading the last of Kakashi's words, she came to a decision.

"Uchiha Sasuke, you are to leave the prisoners in the interrogation ward and follow me. Kakashi will take care of them when he arrives."

She felt relieved when he did not protest and gave him ten minutes to meet her in Sakura's hospital room. The Hokage then proceeded to pick up where she had been interrupted and gave out specific orders to Shizune. Nodding furiously, the jonin held Tonton close to her and began preparing for Kakashi and his team's arrival.

Rebels near the coast.

Arrival in 30.

Do not trust the manipulator.

There are traitors.

There is a traitor.

"Sakura, you can't go in there! It's madness! Even I know that it's stupid!"

Naruto was running behind the surprisingly fast-paced kunoichi, who in turn was crushing the stairs with each step and promptly ignoring her companion.

"Sa-ku-ra, stop being so stubborn-"

She had already reached the double doors and wasted no time in opening them- or rather, kicking them open. Full of air and conviction, the pink-haired teen squared her shoulders and began delivering her speech in a vigorous shout.

"SASUKE'S NOT A CRIMI…"

She gradually deflated when not only the Elders turned towards her, but also her parents.

"…nal."

Sakura stared, wide-eyed and mouth hanging, at the Haruno couple, two civilians having a formal - and tense - meeting with the village Elders. Ninjas.

During several eternal minutes, no one moved. The Council members remained impassive, while Naruto's self-preservation instinct screamed for him to leave the room. Kizashi silently observed as Sakura kept on staring. She couldn't seem to take her gaze off her mother, wanting to say something, something very specific, but she didn't know what. During these floating minutes, Mebuki did not glance her daughter's way.

At last, one of the Elders spoke. Sakura's eyes still fixated on her mother's repudiating back, she didn't pay much attention to the Council members' request of her stating her business or leaving at once - she had to say something. Mebuki needed to hear it, it was important. But what was it?

No, it was for the Council. Something about Sasuke. Yes, Sasuke, not her mother. But, she had a feeling… It was right there, on her tongue.

Then five fingers grabbed her elbow and hurriedly tugged her out of the room, the massive double doors closing on her mother and on the precious words that would still hang in the air years later. Unsaid, unfixed.

And that's how the memory ended. However, instead of switching to another or ejecting the intruders back to consciousness, the reminiscence gently faded away, leaving Sasuke and Tsunade in a warm, blue, empty space.

That they would be guided to Sakura's subconscious at the beginning of the process wasn't uncommon, but ending up there after visioning memories was new. Both shinobi exchanged glances, wondering if there had been a disruption in the chakra flow, or if, with a crazy amount of luck and the leniency of all the gods Sasuke could think of, Sakura was trying to contact them.

So they waited, for five, ten, twenty minutes, and when after what seemed like eternity nothing happened, Tsunade sighed and began slipping back to her own body. Sasuke, more disappointed than he had thought he would be, was preparing to do the same when a flicker of pink caught his eye.

Within the mere seconds it took him to debate whether he had imagined it or not, his consciousness had drifted too far away. Just as he was about to give up, Sasuke's feet suddenly felt like lead. He began falling, too fast to his liking, dragged down by a force he could not recognise. Before his shinobi instincts could kick in, the Uchiha brutally landed in the arms of a child.

Doing his best, in his nearly knocked out state, to glare at his assailant, Sasuke registered the vivid colours. The long, pink silk threads, the starking but daring red, and the haunting jade.

"Sakura?"

Maintaining his own weight on both palms, the young man stared down at the beaming child, his strangled murmur reverberating nefariously around the silent space.

The girl, having visibly pulled him back into her own consciousness for a reason, was not budging. The big smile plastered on her face didn't waver, her piercing eyes remained rooted in Sasuke's. No matter how much he searched her face, Sakura was not telling him anything.

When he finally noticed that they had been lying - floating? An invisible floor had seemed to form with the girl's apparition - in an awkward position for quite a period of time, Sasuke clumsily picked himself up, hesitating before offering the pink-haired child his hand. He couldn't help but feel slightly hurt when she refused it. Maybe the hesitation had been too much.

Another unsettling detail dawned on him as he surveyed the still girl. Her cheeks were white. Whenever she was around him, Sakura would always turn a shade pinker. Despite the fact that long ago the colour had subsided from a furious blushing, back when they were kids, to a calmer, pale rose nowadays, the discreet reddening had never fully disappeared. Except for now: Sakura's face was devoid of any extra colour. This, to Sasuke's great surprise unnerved him a lot.

He didn't have time to pursue this dangerous line of thoughts however, because the child had gently taken his hand. That's when Sasuke realised how wrong he had been.

She was telling him something.

Her eyes were gleaming, determined to get her point across, but her voice persisted in silence.

He just had to think. The Uchiha looked away briefly, trying to decipher Sakura's message.

She had retained him after the last memory. She was rather serious about it, not making contact with him for the sake of seeing him (not now, heart, not the right moment). She had something she desperately wanted to say, but refused to formulate it. And… Inner-Sakura was a child.

His eyes snapped up. In the distance, a faint light was starting to shine, timidly casting their shadows like a prism. Squinting at it, Sasuke thought he heard voices, too. When Sakura's tug on his hand pulled his attention back to her stare, he finally understood everything.

Well, not everything-everything, but certainly a big part of it. The light was not new. It had been there even before Sakura's appearance. It was a light that had yet to go out.

In the fraction of a second it took Sasuke to blink, Sakura vanished. The raven-haired shinobi inspected the hand she had held for a brief moment then dashed towards the memory that was not finished.

Sasuke's hand tightened on hers. Tsunade had to fight all the violent gestures and inappropriate insults that threatened to spill when the cheesy hand-holding didn't stop. After all, she was the Hokage, she was in public and she had company. Glancing at the man barely touching her other hand, she found him to be as uncomfortable as she was, but she figured it was highly due to his natural state. Hizoshi was always fidgeting and unsure about himself. Poor man.

Tsunade's gaze shifted to her pupil's grimacing face. She had completely forgotten Hizoshi's presence in there. The guy had a knack for being forgettable.

When the chokehold on the whitening fingers that Sasuke was holding increased again, slowly but steadily worry began to install itself in Tsunade's throat. It had been a solid ten minutes since she and Hizoshi woke up from their short journey back to consciousness. Considering that they required notably less time to recover, Sasuke had been in Sakura's mind for around twenty minutes, alone. His breathing was becoming erratic.

This couldn't be good.

Maybe they needed to go back? What if the impact of the memories had been much worse than Tsunade'd expected?

But to her relief (more that she thought she'd feel for a man like him), Sasuke's fingers cautiously released hers, his breath slowed to a calmer pace, and his eyelids gradually opened.

Without taking a break to adjust, the Uchiha heaved himself up with a grunt and cleared his throat.

The look in his eyes told Tsunade everything she had to know.

Sasuke had a person to save.