you return along with the sun
where have you been, darling, what have you done?
you were out finding trouble again
there's fire in your eyes and blood on your hands
Rest awhile, they're coming for you
There's a price to be paid for the things that we do
- lullaby, lord huron
5 years earlier
It was a late night in the Konoha hospital - Sasuke's window was open, allowing a cool breeze into the tiny room. He was lying in bed, surrounded by stiff hospital sheets and stiff hospital air, and Sakura was standing next to him, bent over his arm, squinting at it as if it might start talking. It remained silent, of course, and so did she.
But tonight - for once - Sasuke didn't want her to be silent.
Maybe it was because she had been promoted to jonin earlier that day and the only reason Sasuke knew was because a nurse had mentioned it in passing, an off-handed remark to the other staff, and Sasuke had only overheard it. He wondered if there had been a ceremony, if her friends had been there, if there was a reason that she had kept it from him. At the end of the war she'd said she loved him - screamed it. Now she hardly spoke to him, flitting in and out of his room every night like a butterfly, never lighting on any surface for too long for fear of what might happen if she was still.
Maybe - and neither he nor she had any reason to know this yet - it was because he could sense that she was leaving.
Or maybe there was no reason at all, and it was because the sun rose in the east and set in the west, but tonight he didn't want her silence.
"Sakura," he said stiffly, the word sticking in his throat - not how he meant it. When they were children that's all it had taken to send her tumbling into small talk. A single word from him and the chatter would become never-ending.
"Hm?" she hummed, distracted. She traced her thumb over the space in Sasuke's new elbow as she squinted at the blue veins visible under the skin. "I think I'm missing some minor vasculature. Does your hand feel cold? Tingly?"
Sasuke shrugged. "Sometimes."
She sighed and sat in the chair next to his bed, her fingers grazing over her own forehead briefly, pushing her hair behind her ears - stress, fatigue, frustration - or that was what the gesture meant when they were children. He didn't know if it meant the same thing now.
"Can you fix it?" he asked, another trifling attempt at conversation.
She glanced up at him, her tired eyes telling him it was a stupid question - of course she could fix it.
Maybe the silence they'd shared in the past weeks had not been coming from Sasuke - maybe it had been from her as well, perpetuating the quiet that had settled between them.
She began her work, a small crease forming between her eyebrows, and Sasuke knew his time was limited.
Soon she would send that overpowering peacefulness crawling through the chakra connection she had formed, and Sasuke would drift to sleep. He'd been wondering where she learned how to do that - to send feelings through chakra.
"Is it too late?" Sasuke asked, and his voice was more steady than he felt. Too late - too late for him, too late for her, too late for trust or friendship or - or for anything at all.
"It's never too late," Sakura murmured, but her voice was flat, reflexive, and the words were a meaningless platitude. She wasn't really listening. She was concentrating, and that was something that had initially surprised Sasuke. He'd never much thought of her as being a serious sort of person, but in the past few weeks, he'd found in her a singular focus and peace that was hard to reconcile with the little girl he had known.
And slowly, that gentle, somnolent fog began to roll over him, like it did every night, warm and gray and soft… and compulsory. He glanced at her - she did not look at him, but her gaze was too controlled, too purposeful - she was avoiding eye contact, she knew what she was doing. She'd heard him after all, and this was her response.
He could have resisted.
He didn't.
..
..
..
3 months later
It was well past midnight when the door to Kakashi's office burst open rather unceremoniously - at least, it had better be without ceremony, as Kakashi was tired and not feeling up for a party. He did not look up from his book.
"Where is she?"
Kakashi sighed and put his book down slowly, unwillingly, and looked up at his student standing in the doorway - slightly out of breath, clothes and hair damp from the late night rain that had settled over the village. Kakashi glanced out of the window behind his desk - more than a light rain, now, it was positively pouring. "You're dripping on my floor. Have a seat."
Sasuke rolled his eyes, didn't move. "Like you give a damn about the floor."
"But I could give a damn about the floor. Plus, it's not my floor, it's the Hokage's floor. So let's have some decency. Sit."
"I don't want to sit," Sasuke snapped.
"Then at least close the door behind you."
Sasuke slammed the door shut. "Anything else? Do you want me to close the blinds and put on some tea? Or are you going to answer me?"
Kakashi sighed and leaned forward at his desk, pushing his fingertips together. "It's very late, Sasuke. And quite spontaneous, especially for you. You seem upset."
"Answer the question. Where is she?"
"How are you, Sasuke? Strange of you to visit so suddenly, when I had started to think you'd forgotten me."
"I saw you three days ago at lunch. Why are you being so dramatic?"
"It suits me," Kakashi shrugged. "And you, as well - clearly, standing here at midnight soaked from the rain like a madman. Great form. I taught you well, obviously."
Sasuke sighed, ran his fingers through his soaking wet hair, visibly doing his best to regain composure as he seemed to realize what he must look like in that moment. He glanced around at the wide, circular office - his earliest memory of the place was unpleasant, to say the least, and did nothing to soothe him. He remembered the old man - the third hokage - telling him that all of the Anbu teams in Konoha couldn't find Itachi, that they were giving up the hunt. In fact, Sasuke did not have a single happy memory in this room. It was a Pandora's box, except that hope had fled first and everything else had stayed behind.
"Where is she?" he asked again, his voice more steady.
"Where is who?" Kakashi asked, but the tone of his voice was wrong, the look in his eyes was too innocent, too unconcerned. He knew who.
"Don't be stupid. Sakura. Where did she go?"
"Sit," Kakashi suggested again, this time softer. "It couldn't wait til the morning, huh? She's been gone for three months, you know. Three months, and this is the first time you're asking me."
Sasuke did as he was told this time, dropping into the chair in front of Kakashi's desk.
"Coffee? Tea? Warm milk in a bottle?"
"Just answer the question," Sasuke said, exasperated and frustrated and wet and tired and angry.
"She's working for the village," Kakashi said simply. "She's working for me. She's fine."
"Working for the village," Sasuke repeated.
"Yes. I thought she'd be home by now, to be fair, but it's been a valuable arrangement. She's doing good work."
"Should someone go get her?" Sasuke asked helplessly, and Kakashi almost felt sorry for the boy. There was something there after all.
"If she wanted to come home, then she would come home," Kakashi said gently. "She's staying where she is because she wants to, not because I told her to."
"Then where is she?"
"I can't tell you."
"Can't or won't?"
"Both. She's doing what everyone else is doing - keeping the village safe. There's bigger things out there than even you can guess. That's really all I can share, Sasuke. It's classified. But she's fine, she's still out there. Now let me ask you something. Quid pro quo."
Sasuke crossed his arms over his chest. "What?"
"Why now? Why three months after she left? Did it take you that long to notice she was gone?"
"Of course not," Sasuke grumbled. "I just wanted to know."
"At midnight? Such a strong interest that it couldn't wait until the morning? Nothing more than curiosity? You're a shit liar. Always have been."
Sasuke stood abruptly, the chair screeching unpleasantly across the stone floor.
"You can say it, you know. It's not a weakness," Kakashi said casually.
"There's nothing to say," Sasuke snapped, and stormed out of Kakashi's office and back toward his restless, sleepless, lonely bed. He didn't notice the storm.
..
..
..
The morning had not been easy for Sakura. She'd stumbled onto the base in the deathly quiet early morning hours - when the night was at its coldest and dawn was still somewhere far beyond the horizon and the only sound was the distressed howl of the wind. The mission was still a fresh wound, crusted around the edges with the blood of those who would do her harm; friends or enemies, heroes or villains, it had all become very gray to Sakura, who had been outnumbered by her nightmares long ago.
She was surprised to see that Ibiki was waiting for her outside of her cabin, taking meager shelter from the icy wind on her cement porch. But she didn't ask questions. She'd collapsed into his open arms, tears freezing on her cheeks before they could land on the thick wool of his black cloak. He'd smoothed her hair, murmured words of home and gratitude for her safe return, and then gruffly advised her to get her shit more or less together because they had work to do. Inside of her cabin, she lit the wood stove and told him what she'd seen and done, and he told her the updates that Kakashi had sent in her absence.
In the end, they both sat together in stunned silence at the rickety little table in her cabin, with nothing but the crackle of burning logs to punctuate the air while they each became lost in their thoughts. The very first rays of dawn began to turn the sky a gentle periwinkle before either of them moved.
"It's going to be okay, kid. It's not your fault," Ibiki said, and reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
He didn't take his gloves off when he touched her hand, and Sakura hated this. She knew why - she knew why no one could touch her, but she craved the sort of contact that didn't end in her killing someone, the kind that came from a friend.
"I was too late," she whispered. "They were all dead by the time I got there. And I… I couldn't save the ones that did it. I had to kill them. They weren't going back."
"All we can do is move forward. Kakashi's got a plan."
"Which way is forward?" Sakura said, pulling her hand away. "We're absolutely fucked, Morino. After what you just told me we might as well just lie down and wait for them to come for us."
Suddenly, Ibiki pushed away from the table, standing. "Well, it's time for your rookie's evaluation. So why don't we start there."
"Are you serious? After everything I just told you and what you just told me? You want me to go see him?"
"The world spins on, Haruno. You're not going anywhere until that's done. He scares the locals, you know? His hair is very pointy."
"There are no locals," Sakura snapped.
"Just me, then, and that's good enough for you because I'm your commander."
"Kakashi is my commander," she replied petulantly.
"Kakashi is your hokage and he's even more invested in this happening than I am. Keeps asking if you've gotten it over with yet. And he's got something he wants you to know, so get your ass dressed for a fight and I'll go get your rookie. I'll meet you at the north snowfield in twenty minutes. And Kou is going to be looking for you."
"He's back?" Sakura asked, perking up.
"Unfortunately."
..
..
..
After Ibiki had knocked on his door and told him Sakura was back, Sasuke had dressed within minutes, and opened his door once again to find that Ibiki was still waiting for him.
They crossed most of the base in silence; Sasuke because he had nothing to say, and Ibiki because he was rather cross with the cold. The dawn had been a magnificent one, setting the snowfield aglitter, enrobing the camp in velvety pinks and gentle blues; they had passed several operatives tiredly making their ways to the mess hall for breakfast.
"I sent her to the far edge of the camp for the evaluation. Away from the buildings," Ibiki grumbled as their walk began to extend past the outposts. "She's a death sentence for concrete structures."
"I remember," Sasuke said simply, because he did.
"Worth mentioning, the point of the evaluation is not for you to defeat your mentor or vice versa. The point of the evaluation is for her to have you showcase your skills in a high-pressure situation. Neither of you should be going for the throat."
"But-"
"If I feel that you are going for the throat, I will have you drawn and quartered and sent home as jerky. "
"And if she's the one going for the throat?" Sasuke grumbled - he wouldn't put it past her, the way she had acted in their brief interaction the night of the tattooing ceremony.
"Then pay close attention. It's an interesting experience."
Sasuke did not have the chance to ask Ibiki how he knew that - if maybe he'd been on the receiving end - because at that moment a small crowd became visible in the distance: Sakura, obvious by her head of pink hair, and another person, tall and brown-haired and gesticulating wildly for no apparent reason, and a small audience standing several feet away from her.
"There she is." Ibiki pointed to the group.
"Who's she with?" Sasuke asked, squinting; evaluations were supposed to be one-on-one.
"You draw a crowd, Uchiha. You and her both. Lot of operatives put good money on the outcome of this evaluation."
"Who's that she's talking to?" Sasuke asked casually - but he didn't feel casual. There was a familiarity to the distance between the pair, the way she so easily turned toward him and the carelessness of his smile.
"Kodama Kou. He was in her rookie class and they were partnered up for a while before she was solo detail only. He's about as much a pain in my ass as the two of you are, which is quite an achievement, but he's kept her from going off the deep end and he puts up a mean fight when you need him to so I keep him here. He was going to be your mentor, actually, if she really put up a fight about keeping you around."
Sasuke scoffed. "That wasn't putting up a fight?"
"Hardly. If it was really non-negotiable she would have put this whole place in the ground and me with it, and I would have sent you packing before it came to that because I want to go home someday. But the hokage thinks that having you here is somehow in her best interest, and he's just about the only person she'll listen to, so here you are."
"That's… reassuring," Sasuke grumbled. He would certainly not consider himself to be in anyone's best interest, and did not appreciate the insinuation that he was only here on Sakura's good graces and for her benefit.
"I assure you that it is not," Ibiki said. "For reasons that I assume I will need to share with you in short order, but I don't have to yet, so I won't. At any rate, let's get a move on."
Sasuke turned his attention to the horizon, where Sakura and the man were still too far away for their voices to be heard. It was strange to see her interact with someone else so easily after seeing how stiff she had been with him only a week ago. She carelessly shoved her hands into her pockets, looked up at the sky and squinted at the clouds - she said something, and the man shook his head, pointing at the mountains in the distance. She laughed, and Sasuke could very nearly hear it, although he was too far away for the sound to reach his ears.
Kept her from going off the deep end. Sasuke had some experience with the deep end himself, but he'd pushed away everyone who might have dragged him out of it.
Sasuke decided that he didn't like Kodama Kou.
"He's got his own rookie who should be around here somewhere. Kou keeps burying him in the snow. Come on, you moron, let's go get this godforsaken evaluation over with."
Sasuke followed as Ibiki trudged across the snowfield; even his walk was rather grumpy.
It was the man with Sakura who noticed the pair first - he pointed at them, murmured something to her; the sound was deadened by the snow, although the distance had been mostly closed. She stiffened as they drew closer, and the smile slid off of her face, like she had just remembered how cold it really was outside.
"Where is your rookie, Kodama?" Ibiki barked, as soon as they were within hearing distance.
"It's a mystery," the man said, grinning. "Slippery things, rookies. Always gettin' away from ya."
Ibiki stopped a few feet away from him, hands on his hips and a frown on his face. "Haruno, shed some light on the mystery for me."
"Kou sent his rookie to get muffins from the mess hall, commander. Five minutes ago," Sakura said; her voice was brisk, business-like, but her eyes betrayed soft mischief.
"Rookies are not for retrieving your breakfast, operative!" Ibiki snapped at Kou.
"He's a bad mentor," Sakura said sagely. "Send him away."
She wore a sense of humor as if it was something she had always had, Sasuke noted, and maybe it was; maybe it was something she'd just never shared it with him. Ibiki grunted something that sounded like agreement before jutting a thumb in Sasuke's direction. "Look, I brought your rookie. Say good morning."
"Kodama Kou," the man said with a wolfish grin on his face, sticking his hand out to Sasuke. "No need for you to introduce yourself, Uchiha, I've heard all about you."
"You shut up," Ibiki barked. "Nobody was talking to you. Go find your damned rookie and make sure he's got muffins for all of us if he's got any at all. Haruno, say good morning to your rookie, and do it nicely."
"Good morning, Sasuke," Sakura said obediently, her voice soft, but her eyes guarded and cautious.
"Good morning," Sasuke returned stiffly - the last week had been spent dwelling on the way she'd tried to have him sent back to Konoha on his first night here, and he'd decided he wasn't going to be taking it well.
Ibiki sighed. "Oh, for christ's sake. The two of you are peas in a goddamn pod, and I want you to understand that I mean that in the worst possible way. Let's get this over with. And Kodama, go get your rookie."
"Yep yep," Kou said cheerfully, and clapped a hand on Sakura's shoulder. His fingers lingered overlong before he pulled away. "Be right back, ladies."
Sasuke was decidedly not sad to see him go.
Ibiki watched as Kou walked away, frowning after him. "Well, now that there is one less idiot in my presence, let's not waste any more time. I don't want this to last more than ten minutes, and I want a civil display of skills that you think are most useful to you as an Anbu operative. Not your most deadly, not your most technical, but your most useful. Haruno, do what you need to do, but do not destroy my base. Not again."
Sakura nodded. "Yes, commander."
"Uchiha, the same goes for you. Infrastructure damage comes out of your paycheck, as she will confirm for you from her own experience. Am I understood?"
"Yes, commander."
"Then you take fifty steps back," Ibiki directed Sasuke. "And you wait for my signal to start."
Ibiki watched the Uchiha boy walk away - the boy was his father incarnate when he moved, and Ibiki had known Fugaku well enough for the similarities to send a shiver down his spine. It would be a cold day in hell before he could trust an Uchiha again.
When the boy stopped at exactly fifty paces back, Ibiki turned to Sakura as she was taking her gloves off.
"Show him what you're made of, kid," Ibiki murmured, clapping a hand on Sakura's shoulder.
"He's not the enemy, Morino," Sakura replied softly as she set her gloves down in the snow, her fingers stinging in the cold air.
Ibiki shrugged, unconvinced. "Depends on what the fight is."
Sakura sighed. "You're impossible. Don't let it go too long."
"Ten minutes," Ibiki vowed.
Sakura was silent. A lifetime could happen in ten minutes. Multiple lifetimes. Mistakes could be made in ten minutes that would take years to undo; no, Sasuke was not the enemy. The anger she felt was just an old trick of a tired and injured heart that was recoiling at the prodding of old wounds. Wasn't it?
Across the clearing, Sasuke was equally silent, watching Sakura and Ibiki talk quietly; he could only guess what they were saying, but he didn't imagine it was anything particularly nice. It didn't matter. He was used to people muttering contempt in his direction.
She was watching him with a look on her face that was almost sad, and for some reason, that irritated him. He didn't know what to expect, but Sakura was Sakura - power had an intrinsic limit, and hers could not have been that much further beyond the rock-smashing she'd been up to five years ago.
Ibiki stepped away from her and raised his voice so that Sasuke could hear him. "Once I'm out of your way, you can start whenever you're ready."
He moved away from the center of the clearing and towards the outer edges; out of the corner of his eye Sasuke saw that Kou, had returned with a rookie in tow - the rookie struggling to balance at least eight muffins in his arms while Kou, hands in his pockets, did nothing to help - but that detail was hardly worth noticing now.
Sakura studied him carefully, as still and watchful as a doe in an open field, her viridian eyes tracking his slightest movements. The slight rise and fall of his chest, the involuntary twitch of a finger, the rustling of hair by the wind - each cataloged silently but noticeably with rapid flicks of her irises, deceptively cervine.
Sasuke noted there was nothing like fear in her eyes, none of that prey-like disquiet that he'd come to expect in his opponents. The last time he'd seen her a week ago, those eyes had been aflame with anger, and the time before that, five years earlier, they had been drowning in a listless post-war fatigue. Today they were clear and sharp and unnerving. For a long moment, neither moved, each waiting for the other.
And then Sakura felt it: the battle calm. The crystalline quiet, the serenity of impending violence and a future of nothing but the fight.
And then the tension snapped like a twig, and he was gone, and in a nanosecond, he was by her side.
She had forgotten how graceful he was, how deliberate and effortless he made everything seem - once upon a time it had been irresistible; now it was just a reminder of the danger that he had always presented, a snake in the grass.
He attacked with every movement, and she had no choice but to remain on the defensive. She was fast enough, but just barely, and only for as long as he was being conservative in his offense - he could tell by the way that she was only just able to block each of his blows, each of her reactions just a hair too slow for comfort.
But she had prepared for this. She'd known he would rely on the Rinnegan's dimensional travel; it was predictable, but predictable didn't mean weak, predictable didn't mean that she could counter it. He wasn't aiming to kill, not this time, and he wasn't a killer anyway, not really, and Sakura knew that. She also knew that she had to keep her cards close to the chest - between the Rinnegan and the Sharingan, she would only have a few milliseconds for her plan to work.
Ibiki watched the fight from the very edges of the clearing, surrounded by the operatives who had gathered to watch the fight. He had to be careful here - he could not showcase his obvious favoritism, but he felt very fiercely at the moment that he'd rather like to thwack the Uchiha with a good, weighty stick. And then he'd like to set that stick on Kakashi, just for good measure.
Sakura had met the Uchiha in the middle of the field, but not by choice; the boy flickered from one place to another, folding in and out of the planes of this dimension only to appear again milliseconds later right in front of her, or behind her, or right in her blind spot. A sudden and delicate flurry of knives, as graceful and deadly as a blizzard, erupted before Ibiki's eyes. Just regular kunai, short black iron blades, in each of their hands, quick and biting. The boy was fast and cunning as a devil, and she was sorely outmatched at the outset - the speed of the Uchiha was unnatural and unmatched, she knew that.
What are you doing, kid? Ibiki squinted. Why let him put her at a disadvantage right at the start? She should have made the first move. Ibiki could think of five ways that she could beat the boy within minutes. And another ten ways that the boy could demolish her within seconds. I taught you better than that.
But it's personal, isn't it?
A thin line of blood blossomed on her cheek as the tip of his knife glided across her skin - a momentary touch and minimal physical damage, but the first contact nearly always belonged to the victor in things like this. The cut healed immediately, skin knitting together unconsciously, but Ibiki bit the inside of his lip, frowning. She should have started the fight at a distance and directed it from there. Instead, she let him corner her.
As the seconds dragged on, the operatives watching the fight began to fidget and whisper - nobody had come to watch a civilian knife fight. They'd wanted black flames and shattered earth, the ancient Uchiha power and the uniquely brutal pinpoint techniques that Kakashi had developed especially for Sakura (specifically tailored to be effective against Uchiha, Ibiki had long suspected).
They had not gathered to watch a quiet struggle for dominance between two wounded animals. What was unfolding before them felt undeniably primal, vicious in a way that should have remained private.
The Uchiha was cruel and forceful, methodical - he would never slip up, never do anything other than exactly as he intended to do it. Sakura was unafraid and lithe, and the whole thing was burning with frantic anger. They were furious with each other - likely for the same reasons, Ibiki thought - and each wanted to hurt the other with their own hands, even when more effective methods were available. Some evaluation. This is useless.
A gentle nudge against his shoulder broke his concentration. Kou was standing by his side, arms crossed and eyes watching the fight.
"She's about to do it," he murmured.
"You shut up unless I ask you to speak," Ibiki muttered in return. He didn't need another idiot telling him what he already knew. Of course she was; he could read her like she was his own mind.
She had Kakashi written all over her now. The way she fought, the way she analyzed her opponent's movements, even the look in her eyes; she was his man through and through, as they said in the force, and it was obvious. Tsunade was gone from the girl; gone in her temper, gone in her crushing strength, gone in her voice.
Tsunade's training had been completely cleansed, except for one thing: the small lavender diamond on the girl's forehead, a permanent, delicate marking of the energy hidden in spades behind it. Although that was different too, now, in that it wasn't alone. Sakura had two more of those seals hidden away - in her cubital fossa, she always called them, but Ibiki just said inner elbows because he wasn't a precocious brat who didn't know how many books were too many books.
Only twice was she left in a position from which she was able to counterattack and deliver a blow. Twice, she struck. One to the temple - the right temple - and one under the left arm. Each blow should have been fatal, but neither was, for she left nothing behind but the softest of touches on the Uchiha's skin. The mumbling from the crowd grew into mutters - she was nothing but a myth, after all, then, the operatives whispered to each other.
Ibiki smiled as the fight wore on.
She made the third and last contact against the Uchiha's left cheek as his knife slid across her hip, opening the skin and slicing through the muscle – red blood dripped onto the snow, the heat tunneling into the ice and sending gossamer filaments of steam into the air.
The wound did not linger – it began to knit itself together immediately as she jumped back to replace the lost distance between their bodies.
Why aren't you fighting back? Sasuke thought - she was on the defensive, but just barely, only just evading his attacks. Every time she looked like she might make a move, she pulled back at the last second.
And then he saw it.
Three angry, swirling, colossal oceans of chakra - fuck. She had more than one now, more than the single store controlled by the seal on her forehead. Now there were three, and much, much more vast than he'd remembered. He didn't stop to think why he hadn't seen them sooner, why his sharingan had only just now revealed them to him.
Because they were pointed at him like cannons.
The ringing in his ears started at the same moment that he unleashed a terrifying amount of blue lightning from his fingertips and blasted her away from him, sending her flying across the snow, where she landed, to his surprise, on her feet. It had been a haphazard move but his instincts told him that he needed to get her far away from him. Faint tendrils of smoke floated up from her clothes, and she was breathing hard, each breath sending opaque clouds into the air, but she was standing.
And smiling.
The ringing got louder.
And then he went blind.
end chapter 6
A/N: hey friends. long time no talk - i missed you all dearly and loved hearing from you while I was writing instead of posting. I hope you enjoy this chapter that was several months in the making (I really did work on it most weekends) and are able to suspend disbelief long enough to get to the next chapter, where all of Sakura's new powers/mechanisms as well as the villain will be revealed. As always, I love your comments and they are the currency that I exchange for further motivation continue writing :) I also love your private messages about your lives, yourselves, whatever. It's just nice to talk to you guys. If you have any ideas on the plot, or things you think should happen or would like to see, drop me a line - there's no bad ideas in fan fiction.
I hope you guys are staying safe out there, washing your hands, and exercising your civic duties - whatever they are, wherever you are.