They were heading back to the village and somehow Tsunade had agreed to come with them. She had agreed to a month-long trial period where she could at any point decide she didn't want to do it anymore. Sakura had a sneaking feeling that the older woman would agree to stay long past that date but it was just a bluff to keep up her no-bullshit appearance.

"And then he was like HWING and just swinging his hands all over the place and they were glowing with chakra and man I dunno how I avoided them so long but man let me tell ya it hurt whenever he tagged me," Naruto rambled. He was swinging his hands all over the place to convey the absolute coolness of what he'd done. "Hang on, let me do it like this."

Naruto created a clone so that the clone could add sound-effects in the background as he filled Sakura and Sasuke in on his battle with Kabuto.

Eventually the pair finished telling the story and Naruto scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "But really I guess it isn't a huge deal because we didn't even win since they ran away!"

Naruto dispersed the clone by stabbing him in the shoulder. Sakura and Sasuke both cringed in distaste.

"Tussling with Orochimaru once and getting away from him alive is quite a feat, Naruto, let alone twice." Jiraiya said in a grave tone. "You're lucky he was so incapacitated by the Third's last attacks on him."

"Man, that old fart kicks ass even after he's dead!" Naruto looked a little teary eyed despite the silliness of his tone.

Tsunade made a ticking sound with her mouth and the kids looked over at her. She looked a little lost. "I still can't believe he's gone."

Despite everything, Shizune's expression was absolutely serene.

"You mean you faced Orochimaru and didn't even die?! That's crazy, Sakura!" Ino gushed, grabbing Sakura's hand.

Sakura wanted to withdraw her hand but made the conscious choice to allow the contact. "Yeah, well Jiraiya is making me get therapy with one of your family members, so there is that..."

Ino nodded, rubbing her thumb against Sakura's hand in what she assumed was meant to be a comforting gesture. She wasn't sure if it was working or not because she still felt remarkably uncomfortable.

Sakura sighed and pulled her hand back to herself, picking underneath the nails for dirt.

"Well, I can see if they can put it aside for my dad?"

Would that be better or worse? It would be a lot harder to lie to someone who had known her her whole life. She didn't want to go to therapy and talk. She just wanted to get stronger and hide her feelings in her muscles.

So she shrugged, knowing that she herself had very little control over the situation herself. Probably about as much control as Ino did.

"I'll talk to my dad."

"Okay."

They were sitting at the edge of a training field meant for general use. Ino had found Sakura there by herself earlier that morning and practically ambushed the pink-haired girl so they could finally catch up. Ino had enough tact that she'd kept it to everything related to Sakura's time out of the village but that grace period was coming to an end.

"So... Are you meeting with a therapist because of what happened on the mission or what happened during the invasion?" Ino sat calmly, her hands folded in her lap. It was the picture of "demure." It was also a very tactical maneuver, because it allowed her to have her hands in front of her in case the other girl threw a fist or weapon in her direction.

Sakura picked at the edge of her red dress, noticing for the first time how frayed and battered it was. She'd need to get a new one. "Ino... I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I hope you're not mad."

Sakura paused when she heard Ino's sharp breath. She smoothed out her dress, brushing over the failing fabric with her thumb.

"Why would I be mad, Sakura?"

She pulled at a thread, wondering how much damage the piece of clothing could take before she'd need to get a new one. Maybe she could go after this conversation was over. "I know you like to keep up to date on gossip and what's going on-"

"Sakura!" She finally looked up to see that Ino's eyes were full of tears and they were about to spill over. "Your parents dying isn't gossip. I loved them. They were practically family to me. You think I am here to just get an ear full of gossip?"

Regret gripped her immediately. "Ino, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I didn't even know you knew yet-"

"How would I not know? I was there at the memorial service when they called their names and you were the only one who came forward. I'm not like, stupid!" Ino was crying freely now, little rivers running down her cheeks. "Did you not think I would care?"

Sakura felt guilty. "I'm sorry. I kind of shut down for a while and then we left for that mission and... I don't know what I've even supposed to feel or do, Ino. I know I hurt your feelings but... my parents are..."

The word hovered between them like a cuss word, unspoken. Ino scraped the palms of her hands up her face, like she was trying to shove the tears back into her eyes. "I know, Sakura, I'm sorry. I'm actually being so selfish right now. I came to check on you, not make you feel like crap. Life has been doing that enough lately, I think."

Sakura nodded. A thought prickled at the back of her mind. It felt similar to the pressure she felt that one time she'd had a late assignment after her parents and aunt had gone on a vacation when she was younger. "I haven't taken them their flowers yet."

"I'm probably about the only person who can really help you with that."

"Do you want to?"

Ino laughed and mimed flipping her ponytail over her shoulder. It was practically non-existent after their match in the exams. "Duh."

Tsunade and Shizune joined them for training the next morning, which surprised all of the Genin. Surely Tsunade ought to have been busy enough to warrant no personal meetings, but when Sakura pointed that out she simply shrugged and flicked a kunai in the girl's direction. How Sakura dodged it on time she'd never be able to tell.

"You show promise, brat." Sakura wondered what Tsunade would have said if she hadn't dodged it on time.

"I'd show more promise if my actual teacher weren't so busy he had to bring in strangers to teach me... Even if they are Sannin," she said in a faux-haughty tone.

Tsunade smirked, and the sparkle in her eyes was absolutely, dreadfully terrible. A chill ran down Sakura's spine and she grit her teeth to keep from trembling.

"A lot of confidence for someone whose rank is low enough that I could easily send out on long-term missions to prolong this ... deficit in your training."

Sakura gulped, unsure of what the appropriate response was. Her desire to NOT DIE was very much present, like a pounding drum in her chest.

"Uh, uh— well, you'd have to actually be Hokage for longer than a month to keep a Genin like me too wrapped up, uh, Hokage-Sama," Sakura said lamely. Pink was creeping across her face at an alarming rate and she mimicked Naruto's usual cop-out of scratching the back of her head. Internally, the squirming was even worse. 'Please don't send me out of the village; I'll never get stronger!'

Tsunade surprised her by laughing. "Don't tempt me, kid."

Naruto burst out laughing at the exchange and Sasuke's lips seemed to quirk ever so slightly upward, even if it was just for the tiniest amount of time.

The training exercises were pretty common-core stuff at first. The three of them ran through calisthenics and normal shinobi tool drills and katas until their muscles were warm.

Then they paired off. Shizune was with Naruto, Jiraiya with Sasuke, and Sakura with Tsunade.

Much to Naruto's horror, Shizune was working him over with Genjutsu. The poor kid had absolutely no idea how to detect the technique, which meant he spent the majority of the morning trapped in different variations of a simple technique that took his most embarrassing memories and replayed them. When he wasn't able to break it after ten minutes, Shizune would release him. More often than not, he was left grabbing his bum in reminiscent horror of what Kakashi-sensei had done to him during the bell test.

Sasuke and Jiraiya worked on tandem attacks against some toads. Jiraiya was trying to instill in the boy a sense of teamwork.

"I don't understand why I can't just charge in and nuke the toad," Sasuke huffed.

"What if you come across a target you are unable to neutralize yourself, eh? You still gonna charge in? Why don't you try that on Orochimaru next time and see how well that goes?" Jiraiya gave him a hard look and Sasuke glared back. Eventually he rolled his eyes and stared at the clouds.

"Alright, already! What the hell do you want me to do instead?" Sasuke folded his arms and tried to look unimpressed. Jiraiya knew he had the kid, hook line and sinker.

"You've seen the Inuzukas fight before, yeah?" Jiraiya beckoned Sasuke over. He used a branch to draw an 'x' in the ground. "Suppose I'm standing here and you're over there… We can form a pincer movement. You've got the better eyes here and I've got the power. I can keep things busy and you get into blind spots and start brutalizing ol' Gamaken."

Sasuke was thoughtful for a moment. "Jiraiya-sensei… If I kill your summon, will he really die?"

Jiraiya laughed heartily, the way that he was known for laughing, and put a hand on Sasuke's shoulder. "Ah, my boy, they don't die. They just un-summon back to the realm they live in. Think of it this way: Too many holes in their body causes them to slip back out of this reality and into their own. Like water out of a bucket with too many holes! But they don't die, they just relocate."

Jiraiya felt Sasuke's shoulders sag ever-so-slightly in relief. "Good," he whispered.

"Anyway, I'm gonna summon him and then you and I will figure out some forms that feel good, okay? You're all going to learn to fight together in pairs and then some formations as a team. However, you and I will begin the work first since I have a sneaking suspicion you're the most stubborn!"

Sasuke glared at Jiraiya who responded with a belly laugh. "Come on, kid! It's only a bad thing if you let it be!"

The kid in question responded by frowning at the old man and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Someday, kid, you're gonna make that face one time too many and it's gonna stick."

Sasuke scowled instead and Jiraiya beamed.

"Ah, yes, variety! There we are. Now you might have more than just frown lines when you're older."

"Can we just… get this over with?"

"As you wish, grasshopper!" Jiraiya bit his thumb and flew through some seals. "Kuchiyose!"

Sakura, who had been dodging Tsunade's fists at a rather impressive speed, was caught off guard by the sudden appearance of the toad.

She screeched in disgust and froze to study the toads that she'd neglected to study during their previous fight with Orochimaru. She'd been much too concerned with murder and her own survival.

Her own survival was, ironically, forgotten in this moment of surprise and she didn't evade Tsunade's chakra-powered fist in time. Pain flowered across her cheek and then she was airborne.

There was a blur of earth tones and then a loud crack as she touched back down to the earth by slamming bodily into one of the old-growth trees. The leaves at the top of the tree weren't even disturbed by her assault.

She however, looked much worse for wear. Her shoulder was most definitely out of joint from the angle that she'd struck the tree and her ring finger was bent backwards at an interesting angle. Pain screeched through her like a hideous melody.

She didn't cry, though. She knew she should have been aware of her surroundings. Shame coloured her face and she choked back her tears and complaints.

"Geez, kid! You need to work on your situational awareness," griped Tsunade. She pulled Sakura out of the crumpled heap she was in and laid her flat on the ground. She pulled the girl's arm up at a 90 degree angle, ignoring her shriek of pain as the joint was set. "What did you learn?"

Tsunade sat Sakura up and then popped the girl's finger back in the right direction and Sakura gagged. "That you're a sadist! You're a medic; aren't you supposed to be able to numb that stuff?!"

Tsunade reached out with glowing hands and proceeded to heal the tissues surrounding her shoulder joint so she wouldn't have shoulder weakness. "You won't learn that way, Sakura. You will be soft if I go easy on you. If I go easy on you, one of my most promising ninja is going to die or go missing because you will assume that an enemy ninja will go easy on you."

Sakura shoved the tears back that tried to crawl out of her tear ducts.

"Orochimaru was not taking it easy on you. He was not threatened by you. He thought you were a waste of time and didn't have the talent required to kill him. So he ignored you."

Sakura's heartbeat pounded behind her eyes. She wanted to yell at Tsunade and tell her that she was wrong but she knew the older woman had to be right. Shame was heavy in her gut. The clearing had gone quiet and Sakura knew the others had to be watching this revelation of insufficiency.

"I, however, was not ignoring you." Tsunade gently hooked her finger under Sakura's chin and caught her gaze. "That technique you pulled off? Hiding your chakra like that is a high level technique that Jiraiya told me you pulled off by accident because you remembered reading something about chakra as a kid. I am not going easy on you because I see your potential. I see your passion. I see your willingness to learn. Some day, I am going to commission you to kill that bastard because I don't think he's going to change."

Sakura stared at her, eyes wide. She blinked and tears spilled over and then kept flowing.

"Now what did you learn, brat?"

"I— I got distracted because I felt the toad show up. I shouldn't have stared and stayed still so long. I don't know if I expected you to pull the punch or not." Sakura looked down.

"Ah, ah. Look me in the eyes. Better men have taken a hit like that with less class. There is no shame in this for you." Tsunade smiled. "What else did you learn?"

"That you … you won't pull punches, because I need to understand what it is to actually fight with real intention of protecting myself."

"Yes. While incredibly gutsy, your blatant path of attack with Orochimaru was wildly unacceptable because you lacked the skill to back it up. There are very real consequences to making a mistake as a ninja."

Sakura nodded and closed her eyes.

"Alright, kid. Go walk it off. Meditate or whatever. Then grab a snack and we'll get back to it in fifteen or twenty minutes." Sakura nodded again and then trotted over to the tree line, rolling her shoulder around and testing it out as she ran. "And you lot—" Tsunade gestured swiftly to Sasuke and Naruto who were standing there watching her. "You get back to work! Unless you want a swift kick in the pants yourself, you'd better get moving."

Naruto scurried back over to Shizune, laughing and rubbing at his cheeks in a nervous way. "Man, you're scary baa-Chan!"

"I'll be even scarier if you keep calling me that, twerp!"

Naruto squawked and hid behind Shizune. "How did you survive?!"

Shizune just laughed and ruffled his hair. "Keep acting out and you'll have your own testimony of survival."

Sasuke walked back over to Jiraiya with a very serious expression on his face.

Jiraiya patted him on the shoulder. "It's alright kid, I'm scared of her, too."

Sasuke pulled his arm away. "I'm not scared!"

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow.

"I'm… I'm impressed."

Jiraiya howled with laughter and Sasuke wondered if he should have just said he was intimidated.

"Hey, Sakura-chan, what are you doing?" Naruto looked up from the doodle he was making. The way he was squinting, it scrunched his eyes up into judgmental little slivers.

Said girl rolled her eyes and continued pacing back and forth, tapping on the wall. "I'm looking for a stud."

"But I'm right here!" He protested playfully, laughing at his own joke.

"Eww, Naruto! A stud to screw this into!" Sakura held up a corkscrew. He set down his raggedy sketchbook and scampered over to her. When he held out his hand in curiosity, she plopped the corkscrew into it and went back to knocking on the wall.

He fit the screw between his index and middle finger. "YAR!" He scowled, brandishing it between his fingers. He shook his fist at her. "Why I oughta make ye walk the plunk!"

"It's plank, idiot," she responded, though she smiled.

"What?"

"Plank. You walk down a plank, Naruto."

"Huh. Always thought it was plunk. Thanks, Sakura-chan. So… what is a stud then, if you're not talking about how effortlessly handsome I am?" He leered at the wall as though it might have an intruder inside.

Sakura sighed and turned to look at him. He didn't understand why she looked sad but he hoped it wasn't anything he had said. "A stud is the beam inside the wall. It's what you're supposed to screw things into when you want to hang stuff. I can see now why you have holes in your ceiling from where your old hanging plants fell off. No one taught you this?"

Naruto opened his mouth to reply, then looked down suddenly feeling shy. He scuffed his bare foot against the floor, then curled his toes in discomfort. "I, uh, never had nobody to teach me that stuff." He scratched the back of his head like he always did and laughed like he didn't care. "I think I've been doing just fine, though! Who needs that stuff. I just keep trying until I figure it out."

Sakura stared at him with a look he had never seen directed at him before. It felt similar to a time he'd been fighting with Sasuke and the bastard had thrown him down on the ground and stepped directly on his chest to show him how much better he thought he was than Naruto.

"Naruto, I am so sorry that you had to go through that."

He laughed again and held his hands up in a sign of surrender like he usually did when she was ready to hit him. "Don't worry about it! You didn't — what are you doing?"

"I'm hugging you!" She was trying to wrap her arms around him and everything in him was desperate to get away. She did that weird thing where she pumped her chakra into her limbs and when she grabbed onto his clothing and pulled, he was yanked along like a rag doll before being held like one.

He still felt vaguely panicked because this wasn't the kind of treatment he was used to. But he also felt kind of nice. A tear rolled down his cheek and he bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from crying harder.

She pulled back and looked at him for a moment before sighing. "You deserve to be loved. You deserve someone to show you all the different things that a family would have."

"Dang, a family huh?" Naruto tried to be as manly as he could when he wiped the tears off his face. "Guess that means a date is out of the question?"

"Don't be an idiot, Naruto!" Sakura brandished her fist at him again, though there wasn't a lot of strength in the action. "Besides, I'm offering you something better than romance! Crushes can be really selfish…"

Naruto waved her off, unwilling to stay in the serious emotions. They made him uncomfortable. "Alright," he wiped his forearm over his face, and any evidence of his previous tears vanished. "So where is this handsome devil in the wall, then?"

Sakura rapped a few more times with her knuckle. She knocked up and down in the same space a few more times. "I think right here!"

It was easy enough to twist the corkscrew into the beam. Then he realized he had no idea what they were doing. When he asked his pink-haired friend, he found out they were putting up a clothesline.

"What is that? Are we sewing shirts together to make a curtain or something?"

Sakura had to pinch her nose to refrain from hitting him like she usually would. "It's a line that you hang clothing on so it can dry! Haven't you seen these when you've been running around on the rooftops?"

"I honestly just thought that people were showing off their underwear."

"You are helpless, I swear." She paused and then tilted her head to the side. "Is this why half of your clothing smells gross all the time."

Naruto blushed and decided very consciously to not look at her. "Maybe."

They were quiet for a second and she started collecting her clothing from the pile that had developed into the corner and put it in the empty laundry basket.

"I actually thought there was just something wrong with the way I was washing them. Or that all the stink was settling in the bottom of the laundry basket. So I tend to rewear my clothes a lot before I wash them because sometimes they smell worse after washing."

"That explains a lot. Come on, I'm gonna teach you."

Sakura taught Naruto a lot that day. She had him make a few sets of clones and they deep-cleaned the apartment together. She taught him (and each of his various clones) how to properly wash the dishes, filling the side of the sink with crusty dishes full of water and soap and bleach. She taught him how to sweet and vacuum, then how to mop. They opened the windows so that the place was able to air out.

They tackled the bathroom and even took the rug outside to give it a good whacking so all the dust from years of not being well-stewarded out of it.

Because of how many clones he'd made, it only took them the span of two hours. Which meant Sakura had enough time to drag him off to the store to buy some candles and pillow for his home. When he protested that he didn't have the money, she "bup-bup-bupped!" And covered his mouth and said she'd pay for it.

And she did.

Sasuke was working with kunai in the training field when Naruto jogged up to him, breathing a little heavy. Sasuke was breathing pretty heavily himself, having just thrown about thirty kunai in rapid succession with a lot of whirling and artful dancing in between each throw.

"What do you want?" He'd drawled, pretending to be annoyed but secretly so happy to take a break from training.

"Your presence is requested at the Uzumaki-Haruno residence," Naruto recited in a mock robot voice. "Bee-boop, please show up at 7:00 for food and a movie."

"Can't you just talk normally, you idiot?" Sasuke threw a stone at the boy, smirking when the blonde threw himself out of the way of the rock.

"Self-destruct sequence activating now!" Naruto pretended to press a bunch of buttons on his torso. Sasuke tilted his head in confusion then reeled back in horror when his friend did indeed self-destruct in a hazy cloud of what used to be a clone .

"NARUTO!"

Naruto cackled madly when there was a knock at the door. "I can't wait to see the look on his face!"

"What did you do this time!?" Sakura wanted to chastise him, but her hand was already covering her mouth to hide the smile that she knew was about to result from his antics.

"I sent him an exploding messenger," Naruto said. He started laughing and doubled over as he tried to keep the snickers and guffaws to himself. "But I sent two clones! One to send the message and the other to watch what happened afterwards!"

Sakura pressed her hand to her mouth as she giggled. "You didn't! What did he do?"

Naruto giggled madly as they crept toward the door. Sasuke knocked again, louder this time and a bit more forcefully. "Hehehehe, Sakura-Chan, he threw a fit! A full blown tantrum. He flopped back and forth on the ground and was just shouting "Why, why, why" and "Stupid, stupid, stupid!""

Sakura couldn't help it: she laughed. Loudly. Then clamped her hand over her mouth, feeling horrified. He had to have heard.

Naruto swung the door open. "Sasuke! Buddy ol' chum! Good to see ya!"

He clapped Sasuke on the shoulder, whining when Sasuke grabbed his arm by the wrist and squeezed. "Don't pull that kind of crap again, idiot."

Naruto looked him dead in the eye and then swallowed like he was afraid. "Why? Do you think it's …. Stupid?"

Sasuke blanched, realizing his little tantrum had been caught and shoved Naruto away from him.

"Wait, Sasuke! Don't leave. We cleaned and everything! And Sakura cooked so you know it's gonna be okay!" Naruto pleaded. "Come on, I was trying to have a little fun."

Sasuke glared at him as he deliberated.

Sakura cleared her throat awkwardly. "It, uh, was pretty funny, Sasuke."

The dark-haired kid puffed out his lower lip in annoyance. "Hn. Give me a plate. What are we watching?"

Sakura served them up food while Naruto explained that the movie was called "The Iron Fist."

They gathered around the couch, with Sakura perching up and into the right arm of the couch and Sasuke in the middle. Naruto took the other arm, slinging his legs up over it while he spooned food into his mouth.

"What is this, Sakura-Chan?"

"Rice and apples fried with mushrooms, " she whispered. "Shut up, the movie is starting."

Sasuke paused in his eating to look at her for a moment before focusing very carefully on the tv screen.

"Eh, Sakura-Chan I don't know a lot about cooking but I don't think those go together?"

"I'm sorry, what did you say, Naruto-kun?" She whispered scarily, tilting her head to the side to give him a manic look.

"N-nothing! Just that I'd never heard of these going together before!" Naruto whimpered and shoveled a few more chopstick loads of the meal into his mouth. "Look! It's the Iron Fist guy! What the heck is that!"

The man in the movie did indeed provide the perfect distraction. It was an incredibly low-budget film (which probably explained how Naruto had been able to afford it!) about a man who wasn't a ninja but used kung-fu and had some raw ability to form chakra. He must have also had a Kekkai Genkai (Sasuke and Sakura discovered that Naruto had thought these were called Hickey Plum-Pies until he learned about Sasuke's Sharingan and Sakura had gone on a robotic spiel about what a Kekkai Genkai was in one of their first practices) which caused his left hand to turn into an actual metal gauntlet.

Wonder of wonders was that instead of punching people with it, the man found every possible way except the proper way of using a fist to obliterate his opponents.

"What kind of idiot actually does stuff like this? This is lame!" Sasuke squawked with indignation. The man in the movie had picked up his metal gauntlet of a hand and was currently using it to bludgeon someone to death. "That's so stupid!"

Sakura laughed. Naruto was too enraptured in the action to notice, his own fists clenched in front of him with excitement as he watched.

"Naruto, don't tell me this is giving you ideas…"

"Just you wait. I have so many ideas." Naruto whispered. He never took his eyes off the TV screen.

Later that night, after the movie was over and they had washed and put away the dishes, Sasuke left and Sakura went back to sleep in Naruto's bed. Naruto dragged one of the new pillows in and took his usual spot on the floor.

"Good night, Naruto," she whispered, turning off the lamp next to the bed.

"Night, Sakura-Chan," he mumbled, staring at the ceiling. He couldn't deny the guilt eating through his stomach at how happy he felt to have her here when he knew that the only reason they were this close was because of the deep suffering she'd gone through. It took him a while to fall asleep, but eventually he pushed the bothersome thoughts away and slipped off to sleep .

A/N: This may be the fastest update y'all have gotten from me in years. Five days? Wow. Posting from the beaches of Zanzibar. 3