Sakura went to the Yamanaka General Store before work. Usually someone else in the family did—mostly Himari—but her sister had come back from the store almost singing the night before, and Sakura had to see for herself.

Himari had been right.

The store was built like most General Stores—the shopkeeper behind the counter and a wall behind him listing the items available and the various prices a Yamanaka could buy them for.

Most of the wall was still filled with chalk lists of non-food items; soil, refurbished clothing, nails…

(The war was hitting everyone hard, even without the drought.)

On the right, however, newly added: leeks, radish, cabbage—even red meat, a full bull apparently divided up into individual options.

There'd been bits and pieces of vegetables, of meat, throughout the past months—but never in such quantities.

Most were scratched out—already snatched up by one family or another—but none of it was erased.

Yamanaka Kito wanted everybody to know that food was back on the menu, that relying on Konoha-given rations was no longer mandatory.

Sakura bought a radish, and began making her way to work, twirling it in her coat pocket as she walked.

The feel of the living thing left her almost floating, revitalized by the revitalization of Fire's lands, when she got the news.

Five hours later she was bent over her notebook as Orochimaru sketched out new anatomy and physiology models based on the muscle work they'd done before lunch.

Orochimaru simply had not been away long enough to have deposited Obito.

Sakura knew that, knew that he'd been found on the Southern coast anyway—the exact opposite direction.

Sakura was still convinced that he'd been involved.

There was no doubt in her mind.

She had no proof.

He could have used a shadow clone—except, of course, that such a large expenditure of chakra (shadow clones really were ludicrously expensive in terms of chakra output) would probably have been noticed, particularly given that the Hokage had assured her that the ANBU had, in the end, never fallen more than ten minutes behind Orochimaru's location.

It was more likely he had helpers.

She had no proof.

He was still—still acting…

He finished his massive drawing of a leg—it was to be hung in one of the classrooms in the Hospital—and rolled it up for Taro to take along to the Hospital's Head.

"Done for the day?" Sakura asked, watching as Taro leapt out of the lab.

Orochimaru rubbed his eyes, then nodded. "I'm going to offer my aid to the Uchiha; my research may help them in dealing with Obito's new disability."

"Obito's?" Sakura asked, knowing full well there were a great many people, Uchiha or not, who were blind.

Orochimaru's eyes slid toward her. "You know I've always been fascinated by bloodlines; I believe the Uchiha's eyesight takes up more of their brainpower than other families, and it is therefore more difficult for them to supplement with other senses. I have some hearing research which may allow their hearing to act as a better substitute."

Sakura nodded.

"Well, I'm sure you'll find more work to fill your time. I'll take tomorrow off—figure I should tell you and him—" his eyes flicked to the wall "—beforehand. I am going to be diving into my own research."

Sakura nodded.

After finishing her notes (they had learned some very interesting things about how ligaments, tendons, and muscles work in cohesion) she left for the Hospital.

Tsunade was staring at a sake bottle.

It was empty, completely clear on the inside—not even drunk, but having been drunk and cleaned some time ago.

She barely twitched as Sakura opened the door, barely twitched as Sakura made herself comfortable on one of the seats in the office.

"So… what's with the bottle?"

"I have been sober for fourteen months. I relapsed, once, was sober for half a year before that."

"Congratulations."

"I hate being sober."

"Does Shizune like you sober?"

Tsunade snorted. "You sound like my therapist. 'Think of the people you're affecting. You're not just hurting yourself.' I hate her."

"No you don't."

"No I don't." Tsunade sighed, put the empty sake bottle back into her desk. "What are you doing here?"

"Orochimaru let me off early. I wanted to ask about the low birth rates."

Tsunade snorted. "You and everyone else. Look, I'm going to be honest with you—it has been an awful year. A really awful year. If we have a good year and birth rates are still very low… then we'll talk. What are you actually here for?"

Sakura hesitated. Someone sitting in a room alone and staring at an empty sake bottle wasn't exactly a picture of good health.

"Just say it." Tsunade snapped.

"Orochimaru—" Sakura started. Then she stopped, lost on how to continue.

Tsunade grunted. "He acting weird?"

"Yes."

"I'll talk to him."

Sakura considered, decided that was good enough, at least until she had more to go on. "Thank you."

"Anything else?"

"How goes Kushina's—"

"Terrible. Thus the sake bottle. Bye."

"…bye."

.

By the end of the day everyone knew that Orochimaru had offered to aid Obito, and everyone knew that the Uchiha had refused that aid.

Given that the Uchiha had also refused aid when Obito had initially been injured, had even refused to let the boy's teammates and Sensei visit him—

They came off looking callous, insular, and arrogant.

Sakura doubted they'd get away with it this time, though—Minato was much more blatantly powerful, now, was more or less seen as single-handedly holding Konoha's war together, and he was already pissed.

Sakura strongly suspected Obito would be all-but impossible to disappear again.

(She wondered who had gotten him in the first place.)

(She wondered how her clanmates were doing finding it out.)

Over dinner, then, the topic of conversation was how the upcoming battle between the clanless Namikaze and the massive Uchiha would go.

Ibiki was in clan training, Himari had volunteered to participate in one of the Akimichi's mass-planting ventures, so it was Sakura, Juro, Kohana, and her long-gone brother Fujio who sat around the dinner table—the latter had finally gotten his three days off to grieve; he'd apparently been 'too important to spare' when he was actually in mourning.

"Inoichi was gone before I got up this morning." Kohana said. "I bet he's up there, talking to Obito already."

Sakura hummed. "He is one of the best mind-walkers of the clan, but I'm not sure how that will help now."

Kohana made a face, then shrugged, poking at the bottom of her plate as she watched two squirrels fighting outside their window. "If he can't help I wish they'd just let him stay. I miss him when he's gone."

Fujio shrugged. "I guess that's one of the benefits of dating the Head; he's usually not."

Kohana flushed. She'd been doing that a lot, recently; was increasingly aware of the likelihood that she would probably marry him—and that she would therefore be the Clan Head's Wife.

She tried to keep the conversation on track instead. "I know Obito was found on the front with Kumo, but I find it really hard to believe that Kumo was actually who took him."

"Probably not Iwa either," Juro agreed, "they are really busy in the West, according to Shin."

"Kiri, do you think?" Fujio said. "They're pissed at us because we managed to get the ceasefire, and they're pissed at Kumo for cutting off their food supply."

"That's true, but we're already at war with Kumo." Sakura said. "If it were Kiri, what would their goal be—we go to war more?"

"Maybe," Fujio said. "If we tire ourselves out too much, then we'll have more difficulty fighting them when the ceasefire ends."

"Then why didn't they just kill Obito?"

"I don't know—maybe a new bloodline? Lets them take over Obito's mind?"

"Really?"

"It's possible! Not… likely, exactly, but possible!"

"Who do you think it was then, if not Kiri? Suna, maybe? One of the minor nations?"

"I don't—" Her mind flashed to Orochimaru. "—I don't know. I just—something feels very wrong, you know?" Why was Obito left alive? Who would kidnap him, tie him up, then leave him alive, return him?

Fujio shrugged. "Well, Kohana's boyfriend will figure it out."

Kohana flushed.

And then there was a knock at the door.

Fujio got it—was close enough in his chair to just lean over, not even bother to stand—and then they all stood.

The Yamanaka messenger was gasping, out of breath—

Holding out an official envelope.

Kohana was the one to tear it open.

And then they were all crying.

Akina—

After not reporting for so long that they'd been told she was dead—

Had reported in.

Sakura had just gained back a sibling.

"Guess this means I have to go back to work, huh?" Fujio joked, his voice distorted by tears and snot.

"I can't believe—" Kohana started. Then she stopped, looked down at the envelope again.

She wanted to believe.

"I can." Sakura said. She remembered all too well when her Sensei, Shin were reported dead—that was the problem with diplomacy, infiltration; it was so hard to verify if an when someone actually died when they weren't actually in Fire-controlled territory.

She could believe it, she easily believed it, but that didn't make her any less thrilled.

"I'm baking a cake."

"Do you know how to bake a cake?"

"I think I helped once, when I was five. It can't be that hard."

Kohana huffed a laugh, then followed after—apparently wanting something sweet badly enough to oversee Sakura's attempt.

.

Ibiki was still in clan training.

Didn't even know Akina was alive.

Ren had volunteered, again—she knew how he'd taught her, he hoped that would give her more comfort—and gave her regular updates: he didn't like being poisoned, had just started torture training, was already making good use of the tools he'd already learned to maintain mental fortitude.

Sakura didn't actually feel all that much better.

She reminded herself that he'd agreed, she reminded herself that it was better for family to do it instead of enemies –

But why at seven?

But why for such a long period of time, without any break or true respite?

Juro was much more composed about it all, but then for him this sort of child training was normal—it should have been for Sakura, too, but Arden's memories messed that up.

Shin had merely written that he was glad Ibiki got reassurance that he belonged to Ino-Shika-Cho.

Sakura wished she could be just as blasé.

She kept busy instead.

Orochimaru was seemingly beginning to abandon the lab as more and more time went without results; he took more time off, would wander around with his watchers or spend days locked in his bedroom, scribbling out dozens of new notebooks.

Most days, then, Sakura spent with the Research Head and Future Head Uchiha.

The three of them made a good team, steadily pushing through the pile of projects, both successful and not, and implementing whatever they could.

Over two-thirds of Konoha now had regular access to clean water, and the percentage was calculated to be around 100 by the time summer began.

New seals on fireplaces and in every smith or mason or similar ensured that the air was much clearer, and there were now even rudimentary measuring tools to keep track of air quality.

The Naka River looked like a river.

The railroad system was now functioning without issue, was even slightly cheaper in fuel than it had been at the beginning.

A plumbing system was being planned out to be installed in Uzu in the summer, a true example of forward planning.

A seal had been created, limiting its carrier to a certain area—a room, an apartment, really anywhere with walls to put the complementary seals on—which was handed off to the Police Department, T&I, and the Judicial System—it was already being put to great use.

Things were, by and large, going well.

And that was even true outside Research:

Uzu was being flooded with people, but so was the rest of Fire as tens of thousands moved back to their farms, their mines, their ranches.

But life was still far from perfect.

The war had dissolved to a tug-of-war over a few dozen meters of land, every successful push forward inevitably followed by a necessary retreat back.

It was still considered a near miracle that Konoha wasn't losing any more land, was at least holding most of Frost's ground, but—

That wasn't progress.

And the war wouldn't end without progress.

There was also Sakura's personal struggles, her failure to successfully suss out Orochimaru's secrets a constant needling problem.

And then there was the orphanage.

Inoichi wanted children to be raised by volunteer families who thought they could afford to raise another, unrelated child.

Danzo seemed to find a new flaw in that plan every minute they argued.

Children were still going missing, though at least the work of Police and Tracking meant the kidnappings were happening more or less entirely outside Konoha.

And that wasn't the only problem Fire was facing—the government's response to the drought had disappointed more than a few civilians, frustrated more than a few others, and enraged enough to be worrisome.

And they were still coping with the food shortage, for all that it was much less worse than the previous months.

None of the problems had easy solutions, none had fast solutions—Sakura would be shocked if many solutions came without downsides (the increased focus on pollution did substantially hamper productivity, and the seals had to be switched out frequently requiring a constant and unending influx of resources—a reasonable trade, but a trade nonetheless.)

Sakura really wished she'd been born without any additional knowledge, had no reason to consider more than the immediate future.

But then, it wasn't as if anyone else wasn't working just as hard in trying to keep Fire alive, thriving.

She was working on the orphanage issue—or, more specifically, the child abuse issue (Sakura strongly suspected she'd end up recommending an entirely new department be created, but she had to do the legwork first) when Rento snuck in through the window.

Sakura stared at him—why he was sneaking into what was now his own home was—

Oh.

He wanted to talk to her.

She threw out her senses; the only people around were family, snakes, birds that were busy with the fresh growths of Spring.

(Orochimaru controlled snakes, but they were also common enough garden creatures and these didn't seem to have an unusual amount of chakra. She decided to keep an eye on them just in case.)

She rolled up the latest scroll—a report by the Fire Samurai on the effects of different "teaching techniques" and turned to give her very-much-not-stealthy nephew her full attention.

"I… I came up with a new project."

"That's good."

"It's… I didn't expect it to be…"

"What is it?"

"You know Samurai bombs? Like, with the niter?"

"Yes?"

"I wanted to replicate that. With seals."

The limited power and ranger of explosive seals were often considered their major downside. While physically larger seals could create larger explosions, and more chakra more violent ones, in both cases it was a case of substantial diminishing return: it was more chakra-effective to throw a half-dozen explosive seals than one with six times the amount of chakra.

Also, carrying around giant explosive seals wasn't exactly the easiest solution, especially with how much seals didn't enjoy being sealed.

"You solved the chakra problem?"

"I haven't exactly tested it out, but when Minato was bouncing around Research he gave me some tips, and…"

"So what's the problem?"

"It's stronger than I thought it'd be. Like, much stronger. Like, could easily destroy a house stronger. In theory, of course."

"In theory."

"Yeah. And I think—I think it'll help. A lot. But… it's going to kill a lot of people, Sakura, if it works."

Sakura knew, for a fact, that she had more of a problem with the idea of killing than Rento.

She kind of resented him for bringing it to her.

But then, that was why he had brought it to her.

"Show me."

Four hours later—seals really were nonintuitive for Sakura—she and her nephew sat back, stared at the sketches in front of them.

"I don't like killing." Sakura said.

"I know."

"We—the war isn't going well."

"No."

Sakura's stomach turned. She hated it when her values clashed. "Submit it; more people might die if we don't."

Rento eyed her and then, believing she was being honest, nodded. "I'll do it tomorrow morning."

Sakura nodded, her eyes drifting to her many notebooks of unsolved problems.

"Good night."

"Good night." She repeated.

He disappeared.

She wondered how many of her decisions she'd end up regretting.