The Clone Gambit

by viridianeye

Sakura manages to stab Obito's Rinnegan when asked, sending the war into chaos anew that prevents Madara from casting the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Everyone's fate depends upon Sakura's game of cat-and-mouse with Madara. With the damaged eye her curse and key, Sakura's forced to push herself and her unexpected allies past their limits. Can she stop it all from ending in Madara's favor?

28. Chapter 28

Snow howled across the devastation. In the light of the two moons that shone through the winter clouds, it glittered in cold swirls, tracing silver shadows across the broken shapes of branches and bodies strewn for miles around. The last of the fires died away as a bitter, seeping freeze reclaimed the night and sunk through the earth.

It was nearly as cold as the feeling that crept between all who stood within the wake of the chaos, listening as it settled into an eerie, deathly silence. They watched as the new moon finished its rise into the stars.

The twin to the one that already held its vigil over the battlefield, the second moon shone just as brightly, illuminating the warscape in a ghostly gray and washing out the slashes of blood that marked it as a place of death.

The new moonlight caught on the tears of the many who still stood, the feeling bleeding through both sides of the finished war. The solemnity of this end had struck all just as bitterly as the winter cold. With heavy hearts and drawn, pale expressions, their attention shifted between the sky and the lone figure in the heart of the dead landscape; drenched in the light of the new moon, she was collapsed beneath it, surrounded by drying spatters of blood and frozen fallen tears.

Naruto tried again to approach her, his hands reaching and his expression wracked with torment. Sasuke stood back, his face frozen with stress he couldn't hide. No one else dared to step towards Sakura again, no matter the sympathy or guilt that they carried; not after having to dodge her deadly fist the first time. Frustrated, grim, and exhausted, every set of eyes watched where she was embedded alone in the cold devastation, torn apart by grief.

The remains of the Union army watched her too, drawing up tensely near the Allied survivors in huddling groups, suspended within their own shock at the terrible loss they had all just suffered.

Naruto stopped midway through the rubble with a sharp breath as Sakura began to slowly rise to her feet, silent, her head lifting. Pale hair fell back from her face as she looked to the skies, her stare settling upon the new moon.

Unmoving and cold, it was as if she had become ice. Snowflakes flecked across her bloodless features, catching along her side-profile and dusting through her hair that flowed in the billows of frigid winter wind. They shone in the tracks where her tears had gone, where once the life-giving ribbons of her chakra had flowed as she'd saved so many lives; dissolved away as she'd come here too late to stop her teammates, arriving in time just to watch as Madara had been sealed away at long last.

All of the bitterness of the seeping cold night etched Sakura's features. It aged her, harshening her face, and in this moment she looked so much older than she was; an old soul emerging in the grief-stricken lines of her expression.

She was still beautiful; powerful, even frightening. The aura of strength that flowed around her being was undiminished by her grief. It was sharpened by it, her silhouette cut in ice and sorrow, and the image Sakura cut through the heavy night where she stood alone in the light of the two moons was chiseled into the minds of all of those who looked on, an imprinting dark legend.

She turned her head slightly. Naruto and Sasuke looked to her with terse, almost nervous expressions, their bloodstained hands flexing with uncertainty.

As if her emotions had been sealed away, too, Sakura's eyes were as lifeless and sharp as a steel blade. She regarded them with no more expression but for the freezing cold that fell around her silhouette.

Naruto opened his mouth to say something. There was so much he was realising in the wake of the war. So many moments from the year emerged from his heart now; regrets, hopes, fears, and painful recognitions of things that stewed into a nauseous, terrible guilt. They burned him with a need to apologise.

It was also a powerful compulsion to fix what he'd broken; to make amends for the chasm cracked deep once more through Team Seven, now between her and them. Nothing would be right until he made this right; and not just with Sakura, but the other survivors of this war. Too much had gone wrong because he'd let himself follow a plan made from the old ways of hatred. There were a lot of efforts he needed to make up for damage done; damage that he hoped was fixable at all.

But for one of the first times in his life, nothing came to Naruto's mouth as he held the breath he'd drawn to speak. Even as Sakura turned enough that one shadowed green eye locked with his stare, the words ran dry from his tongue, turning to stone in his heart.

What could he even say?

Was there anything that could even be said?

Naruto had tasted grief in his life. He'd shared it with others; shed tears over lost friends, lost mentors, lost ways of life. He'd grown up in it, knowing a lonely upbringing, and he'd offered sympathy and compassion many times to others who had known deeper sorrows than he had throughout his life as a friend and as a shinobi to many.

But the look in Sakura's eye was something far beyond what he knew. The despair she'd expressed earlier had deepened into something bitter in the shadows of her stare; something like what he'd once seen in Sasuke, back when he was recovering from the traumas of losing his family and his clan in one night. In a way, her shattered, frozen manner wasn't a far cry from what was traced in Madara's dark and reserved presence; the echoes of deep sorrow, harsh enough to break any faith in the light, etching its hues across the both of their faces and permanently changing them. And for Sakura… it was fresh.

Naruto paled to the shade of the snowfall, the silence drawn between his teammates made heavier by it. This loss Sakura had suffered would change her as a person. Wounded deeply enough, she could shift into a different version of herself entirely. Where the sheer gravity of the love she'd carried had once strengthened her into the best version of her, it had now broken her in half, striking her with such grief that she might never recover at all.

Love was frightening. Naruto clenched his teeth, feeling fierce loyalty and love for his teammates constrict him as well. The deaths of either of them would absolutely affect him similarly.

But he hadn't realised that his and Sasuke's destiny to use their seals for the good of all would cause such a fallout. He hadn't thought enough about how it would affect Sakura. His faith in her and her words had conflicted against his faith in Sasuke, his comrades, his superiors. Naruto was caught between the stonehearted resolve of a year of planning to kill Madara with everyone he knew, versus the passionate conviction that Sakura had bravely expressed that he deserved a chance. She'd tried to show them all a different way — a way she'd even credited to Naruto for showing her through his past actions of forgiveness and love extended to his enemies. It was what brought Sasuke and Obito back, and so many others. But he couldn't support her passion without turning against everyone else. He couldn't support everyone else's plan without turning against her, either, and so Naruto still hadn't really decided in his heart what to do by the time the final battles had come, unwilling to turn against any of them at all. It was a shift from his usual confidence in his instincts that had felt pulled in every direction at once.

Persuaded in the last second by Sasuke's heartfelt, powerful declarations, Naruto's faith had shifted to their side enough in the moment that he went for finishing the war in the way they'd planned all year. He had ended up deciding impulsively for something he should have chosen carefully for. Now, they were here, standing within the terrible epiphany he had chosen wrong. He — was the villain.

Tears welled up in Naruto's eyes, prickling with the cold.

He should have worried about this more. He should have listened to Sakura before it was too late.

Holding her shadowed stare, Naruto knew she had loved Madara without a shadow of a doubt, to depths even he couldn't really understand. He was seeing too late that she would have been able to end the war in the way she'd declared at the trial; without bloodshed, without death, and a dizzying sense of shame made Naruto unsteady where he stood.

There was something shattered behind Sakura's cold, hardened expression as she wore a façade of apathy over her grief, and with the devastation behind her eyes Naruto felt like he'd killed her and Madara both, all her former passion and intensity struck dead in the wake of her grief.

She was as cold as Sasuke had once been; even colder. In silence, Sakura turned away. She looked toward the armies that had been watching the moment unfold, her hair falling around her winter-bitten face.

Naruto looked too, trying again to find the right words to save Sakura in this moment, sensing his chance to do so was about to die away. Sasuke beside him was just as wordless, his solemn eyes switching between Sakura and the hundreds nearby.

The Union had begun its slow retreat. Fractured into groups, they were carrying retrieved dead and supporting their remaining injured, shedding armour plates into the snow so they might heft their survivors' weights instead. A hoarse call over the snow was from one of their generals, his shadow-crossed face vaguely familiar to Naruto as one of Madara's former guards back at the panel meeting months before. He was holding up another man across an arm who had an injured leg and bandaged stomach wound while directing the remains of the cultist army, pointing west.

"They're retreating to their headquarters," someone in the Allied side was saying to another. "Should we stop them?"

"They're weakened. We could finish them off."

"You'll let them go." Naruto stepped forward, an absolute, deadly certainty in his manner causing everyone in the Allied side to pause and look at him in a unified turning of heads. He stood tall before them all, assertive and sure as his resolve to fix what had gone wrong sank deep into his heart. He felt Sakura's cold stare on his back as he spoke, gesturing to the Allied army. "Gather our own fallen, and let's get somewhere warm. And we will leave the Union alone."

Any resistance among those who had wanted to finish off their weakened enemy ceased from the sheer authority in Naruto's voice as he addressed the army. There was still shades of warmth within his stature that indicated hints of the big heart buried beneath, but the willpower and confidence in his tone forged him as the leader he'd always been to them. They listened without question as they looked to the one they'd already started to see as the next Hokage, shedding all thought of pursuing the ragged remains of Madara's army where they began to retreat from the war-torn landscape.

Sasuke was already directing more sects of the army to do specific tasks, gathering several groups and redirecting them towards new efforts in regrouping and cleaning up in the aftermath. As he and the bulk of the Allied hundreds began to make their own slow, gradually more organised retreat, Naruto stopped once, turning back in a hopeful way as he started to think of the right things to say to Sakura; starting with I'm so sorry, which wasn't enough, but was so much better than nothing.

Naruto paused, his heart breaking. He was the one left alone in the heart of the aftermath now, standing in the cold light of two frozen moons. Sakura was long gone.

---

She stared at her hand on the empty seat beside her, having saved it for him out of habit.

Everything was numb.

Her senses were dulled; shut down like she was unconscious, like her body had decided it was safer not to feel at all. To be numb was better than the alternative, allowing her to survive where she felt she'd been about to disappear from the crushing intensity of all she had felt.

Sakura blinked again at her hand where it trembled upon the vacant seat at her side, remembering to draw a new breath.

Somewhere within the frozen bounds of her mind Sakura knew she was in shock; she lacked the capacity to care. She'd lost the capacity to feel entirely, left in a dazed, ice-crusted void of apathy. Apathy; or she'd broken her ability to feel.

Her hand on the empty seat was bleached white from a year without sun. It felt like she had never emerged to the surface at all, the world above just as cold and dark as the ground below. Sakura stared down at the saved empty seat for another thin heartbeat, unable to truly process that he would not be joining her here at this last, final meeting.

He couldn't. He was gone. His absence was the reason this was the Union's last night of existence, preparing to disband; it was all over.

Sakura's chest tightened, a warning ringing through her ears making her mind spin further. She shut her eyes, the panic rising through the back of her throat in a creeping of bile. Her grief cycled back through another wave of denial: surely, none of it was real. He'd show up just as he had for countless meetings, just as she expected, probably with a mocking comment about her gaunt appearance and an unapologetic grin. She would laugh, and they'd proceed as they always did, sitting through Saito's speeches and cringeworthy sermons.

She had surely dreamed all of what had happened out there. Sakura's bloodless hand twitched upon the seat as she expected Madara to appear at any second, saving her with the relieving reminder that she was just having some kind of vivid walking nightmare and none of the final battles had actually taken place.

None of it was over. There had never been a Union gala and public disgrace. Her teammates were blissfully unaware of her relationship, her trust with her superiors thoroughly intact; and there was still every chance to fix what was to come, saving everything from ending in bloody battles with no disgraces and no life-shattering deaths. And he — was alive. Alive and well and here any second.

Sakura shut her eyes, savouring the idea, anticipation a film over her fragile self-reassurances that everything is okay. This time, she'd have the bravery to initiate making those definitions Madara had wanted in private, without the public eye upon her. She would also take less time in making sure he was persuaded to give true peace a chance now, rather than later; and she would make it very clear to him how she felt, as well. No more hiding from it. No more hesitations or assumptions that they had enough time.

She loved him. She knew in her heart that he loved her, too.

After making sure he understood this thoroughly she would approach both her teammates and Tsunade and tell them everything honestly, no matter the fallout. She was just that confident in her faith that Madara could, and would, be moved for her; away from his old plans, rejecting Black Zetsu and changing to accept as he once had that real peace was still attainable. He had almost been there already, visible to her for the first time that night on the clifftop. He had already begun to pull free of the darkness that had haunted and corrupted so much of his life; whether he knew it, or not.

That was when she'd fully committed to this path. That day had been her full turning point from plotting a long-con potential assassination to the much more difficult path of cleansing the dark from Madara's vision and showing him hope again.

Sakura's heart ached with this knowledge; they had both been so close to the right end to the war, to the elopement ending that Karin had teased her about, an almost storybook vision where everyone was happy, especially the two of them. She looked forward to telling Madara about it anyway; he'd surely laugh her off, and then he'd get to see just how serious she was that it was not just possible, but the future she was utterly determined to forge.

How many brats? He'd eye her teasingly, with a definite hint of heat. Dozens, she might joke, but she'd really be only half-kidding.

Sakura sank a little deeper into her seat, her heart warm with all she could not wait to do and say.

A soft voice had been speaking to her, cracked and gentle, and vaguely familiar. Like she was slowly awakening from a heavy sleep, Sakura became gradually more aware of the world around her, her senses loading one by one.

She glanced to the side; where was Madara? — the seat was still empty but for her awaiting hand.

As the ringing in her head faded she became aware of the sounds of many people in a hushed white noise of movement around her. Clothes were rustling, breaths and sniffling gradually audible to her; murmurs made wordless to her as she couldn't hear their sentences, their chairs creaking beneath many seated members. There was the soft sounds of crying, drawn between all of them, their murmurs made in comfort. Words passed between those who knew how to reassure to those who did not.

Sakura startled, her eyes fluttering open, as she felt a rough palm slide over her hand. Finally. She swerved in her seat with a beaming grin of joy.

Her head turned and her wide eyes flew upwards, pinned to the face of the one who moved her hand from the chair at her side so that they could sit down beside her.

The old woman kept Sakura's hand as she sat down, her shaded, aged eyes kindly upon her as her knobbled fingers curled around Sakura's shaking ones.

Sakura blinked.

Shutters over her mind retracted slowly with the unexpected vision of the old tailor's face. There were tracks of tears following the lines in her features. Sakura was suddenly so much more aware of the vast hall around her, the hundreds in every direction whispering and weeping, the scents of blood and tears and cold winter air tainting the heavy atmosphere humid with candle smoke.

No.

The old woman didn't need to ask that question again; the one she'd posed to her so long ago now, echoing faintly in Sakura's memory when she had met her nearly a year ago. Posed to her then with almost condescending intent, the aged tailor was nothing but understanding now as she kept Sakura company, knowing what the answer had become.

Have you ever experienced what that kind of love is like?

Tears welled up in Sakura's eyes as she searched the old woman's face, a terrible, deep understanding unfolding in the remains of her broken heart and clearing away the deep denial that had given her such sweet, fleeting hope.

"It was a blessing that you couldn't empathise with me before," the old woman said, her voice roughened and soft like worn wool. She shut her eyes, settling both hands around Sakura's trembling palm. "I am so sorry… that you've lost the one who became your reason to live."

Sakura's sharp inhale through her teeth had a few heads turning, the entire fragile composure she'd managed to piece back together threatening to break. She seized up as she had to hold back from squeezing the elderly tailor's hand in return in the imminent surge of her grief, knowing she would shatter her brittle fingers.

It was then that music rose around her.

It began as a melody murmuring up from all around the edges of the great hall, gentle with the notes shared between a ring of voices; then with the soft breath of a pause it unfolded into the lament of a thousand voices, joined in song. Deeper than a prayer, darker than a dirge, the elegy of the mourning many rose high through the great hall, lit in the flickering hues of lantern light and handheld candles, shaded in the dark of the shadowed rooms now empty beyond the heart of the headquarters.

Tears welled up in Sakura's eyes, her shoulders shaking as she watched where she sat in the back. She was glad she wasn't alone as she realised in the worst way that she was still able to feel, the fresh wounds of her agony deepening with every ethereal note.

Many had risen to their feet, forming a line down the single aisle splitting through the heart of the entire remainder of the Union multitudes where they had gathered here to grieve. Songs sung in beautiful, heartstrung laments continued to float through the air as they made their way one by one to the front.

It was now Sakura noticed what it was they knelt before like an altar, the heart of the great hall that had so long ago been where she'd danced with Madara in the extravagant party the Union had thrown in his honour. Even still, blooms of wisteria hung from high balconies and bannisters; branches wove across walls and along pillars, though they had begun to lose their luster, wilting slowly.

It was a vast stone, and they were carving the names of their dead upon it, with so many more to add. It glistened in the light of the firelit hall; it was damp with the tears shed from those who knelt before it.

Sakura registered that there were many eyes drawing to her.

She sat up a little taller: she had thought she'd managed to come in here unnoticed, a hood over her head and her pink hair hidden, sitting in the back row so she could be a part of the gathering without being seen or recognised. She hadn't known what had drawn her here to the cultist headquarters after what felt like an eternity wandering alone through the devastation, completely lost in grief; she had seen warm lights aglow through the great craggy towering complex, had seen the grieving hordes retreating into it, had recognised the old windows on its highest peak where Madara had lived for the last winter. She'd recalled coming here so many months before on a mission, the night he'd taken it over, and then found herself walking through those tall double-doors with the rest of them in the present, finding scraps of solace in their shared sympathy and grief.

Perhaps she had come to this because they felt a piece of what she did. Sakura swallowed tightly, sensing more and more of all these cultists' eyes falling upon her in easy recognition and frightening intensity.

Not even cultists, anymore… these were people, same as her, and they knew grief like they knew how to breathe. She came here because unlike the rest, they could feel too the pure grief that she was only just beginning to descend through; crumbling down into the bottomless dark of where it led.

Sakura could still feel the void of it, beyond the warmth of this hall and the community within it. It felt like death awaited her out there in the cold, where she would inevitably end up once more — but it was her own thoughts that threatened her now, not an enemy, anymore.

Her tension faded as she realised these people were looking upon her not with hostility, but a kind of knowing. What used to be a thousand-strong now gazed upon her from throughout the vast hall with compassion; with respect, reverence, and, strangely, expectation.

Sakura grew still as she understood what she was to do.

The old tailor moved back to give her space as Sakura swallowed hard, her heart slowing to a stop in her chest as she carefully rose to her feet. She drew a deep, tremulous breath.

Every head had turned. An entire congregation of fractured hundreds watched as Sakura stepped out into the central aisle, her hands pressed over her heart.

She took the first step towards the Loss Stone at the front of the hall. Everyone present was seated, watching, as the woman they knew their god had loved made her way forward, revered and admired.

Their tremulous laments floated in aching harmonies, ethereal and haunting: their final song in the death of their hope, and it was his requiem, flowing around her as she walked down the aisle: a lovely ghost swathed in her sorrow, veiled in his moonlight.

The light of twinned moons beset Sakura in silver as she knelt before the stone, bowing her head.

With tears streaming down her agonised features she lifted her hand, fingers aglow in a sharpened point of her chakra. Before the eyes of all she inscribed Madara's name upon the stone, carved in memoriam with the rest of the loved and the lost.

---

The night was stretching out its last breath before the dawn when Sakura appeared at the gates of Konoha.

The guards startled backwards, their faces fraught with fright and surprise at the sight of her; but hers was even paler. She was like a lost spirit drifting past them, her snowy skin as white as if she was lifeless. She moved through the shadows with hollow eyes, and neither guard dared to breathe a word as Sakura drifted past them into the dark street.

Instructions had already come down to leave Sakura alone once she was sighted. They found such instructions easy to follow as she walked like a ghost of the dead down the road in the twilight before the dawn, her figure traced with the unnatural moonlight, pulling at the dark. She was more than haunting; a vision of sorrow none dared intervene with in her silent path forward.

If Sakura was aware of the host of Anbu watching her from distant tree branches and rooftop peaks, whispering their reports to worried superiors and withheld onlookers, she made no acknowledgement of them; not but for how she swayed into an alley where fewer eyes might stare at her.

Sakura stared at the alley wall for a moment, her face so wrought with stress flattening into a blank look.

Old flyers with Rinnegan symbols fluttered where they hung across the sides of the alley, nestled in the arms of a leafless tree drawing. The faded posted pages proclaimed the Union's name, mantra, and upcoming meeting times, now having passed by weeks ago before the final battle that had taken place tonight.

The flyers weren't what had Sakura staring at the wall, her tight throat already aching from sobbing. It was memories; once cherished and worn like beloved mementos, they drowned her in torment with their unwanted rush to her grief-blurred mind's eye. She'd had so many different experiences in alleys in the last year that came to her in a crash of recollection now, as if dead clones had come in this moment to haunt her with their memories.

A year before; humid air, a spring festival night; strangers calling out questions from the mouth of the alley as she was caged in his grip, the red flush of embarrassment creeping across her cheeks as he laughed at her answers. Her "interest" — a lie that wasn't one, in the end.

Sakura shut her eyes, falling back against the wall and trying again to remember how to breathe.

Months later; dark fingers at her throat, not to constrict but to free her qipao collar; hot breath at her neck, his towering silhouette consuming her as he'd been bolder than ever before, the two of them twined like lovers already in the shadows of the alley. She had loved every second of it, no matter her inner turmoil.

"Stop," she whispered aloud, the fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. Her throat was in a vice-grip of her grief's making.

Madara's voice unfolded warmly through her mind, brought back to life in memory.

It is like a dreamless sleep. Deeper, and somewhat restful. He had regarded Sakura with both subtle amusement and patience at her discomfort from remembering his death, leaning over her in the cool shadow of the alley with a crinkle about his dark eyes. They understood each other well enough by this point that she hadn't needed to ask what it had been like, and he had been more inclined to impart what he thought of it, viewing her with a careful sense of warmth. I very much prefer to be awake.

"It's my fault," she barely recognised her own voice, sinking back against dogeared Union posters into the cold dark of the alleyway so haunted with reminders of her past.

It's your fault.

As if the stirred memories had formed into blades, they cut through Sakura's grieving mind, her denial and shock sinking into a terrible guilt; a blame that had shifted onto herself.

She was supposed to be a medic prodigy, one among the second generation of sannin, a genius; but she had become a failure again just as she'd always feared. Failure, the thing Sakura could never escape, perforating her heart with ragged, churning feelings of inadequacy and despair. She had failed Madara, causing him to get sealed and die, starving for air up in the atmosphere and left to suffer. She had failed her teammates by staying out of the fight she could not join, just as she'd failed Sasaki and her people by not stopping tonight's battle, unable to prevent the deaths that had shattered so many. She had failed.

She slipped her face into her hands, weeping. All of this was her fault.

Sakura's thoughts further spiralled, becoming increasingly hateful and dangerous, descending towards lethal, her fingers digging in over her face as she hunched into herself as if to hide from her own mind that roared at her in her anger and agony and desolation.

Just as the shadows of the alley began to thicken like they meant to swallow her, Sakura got abruptly to her feet. In a fit of cold, silent determination she strode out of the alley and away from her inner torment, pushing herself through darkness and past curious eyes down familiar roads until she stopped before the one place she had left to drown in her sorrow.

The door swung open when she pounded on it, to her utmost relief. She fell into her mother's arms with a sob, drawn into her parents' dismayed but welcoming sanctuary in a last attempt to escape her suffering.

---

The patient rapping on the front door went ignored until Mebuki happened to peer through the door's spyglass in her irritation, a frying pan in hand.

She yelped, stumbling backwards, the pan clattering to the floor. In a flash Kizashi was at her side, worriedly fussing over her. "What happened? Are you all right? What scared you?"

"Why is he here?!" she was exclaiming, a hand over her heart as she stared with wide eyes at the front door like it was already open to their newest visitor. She looked like she had seen a ghost.

Kizashi sighed, a knot between his brows making a deep furrow from the stress he and Mebuki had been under the last couple of days. "What, another journalist?"

The door had constantly been knocked on to the point that he wondered if it might just crumble if this kept up. Their humble little home had become such a hotspot for visitors that he and Mebuki started treating it like they were quarantined: all the curtains were drawn over the windows, preventing any more people from peering in; the front and back doors were always locked, bolted, and chained with the new locks Kizashi had installed, and the piles of mail just outside their door were going ignored, their volume becoming too much to deal with. The additional problem of having to open that front door to access the mail meant that the constant flow of visitors might have another chance to accost Mebuki and Kizashi alike in any attempt to retrieve it. They'd endured multiple attacks of this nature today already: a bombardment of picture-taking and intrusive questions, if it was journalists, and a flood of somber words and flowers, if it was friends and comrades of Sakura's.

It was a wide array of both with shades in between. Sakura had become rather famous before, discussed throughout the nations even before the night Uchiha Madara took over the cultist Union; but with all that had happened in the final battle that had ended the war and in the fallout of it, she was now possibly one of the most famous people alive.

It was in no way a good thing. The constant harassment of reporters, photographers, nosy neighbors using consolation as an excuse, well-meaning friends, and other visitors had been unstoppable and overwhelming in the last two days that had passed since then. The amount of flowers they'd been given had made their home feel like a florist's shop. Vases with blooms of every imaginable colour and type were scattered along every available surface, along the floor and upon every window sill. Like the stream of visitors at the door wanted to do, flowers crowded their home, flooding the kotatsu table, lining the walls, leaving few places to sit or to eat. There was a clinging sweet pollen scent that made the house smell like it was dunked in the essence of summer.

Kizashi briefly shut his eyes, letting out a soft sigh. All of this attention and change was overwhelming enough to get through without the stress of trying to help Sakura through her grief. If it weren't for Mebuki supporting him as he supported her through this, he didn't know how they'd be able to cope, watching Sakura go through such pain.

He drew himself up as Mebuki retrieved her frying pan with shaking hands, nudging a vase of lilies away from the door's path in preparation to open it. Kizashi steeled his tired features, ready to be stern. He typically tried to be as kind to others as possible, but if this journalist was insistent that he'd shaken even Mebuki, then he would be telling them off. He was tired of all of this attention. He just wanted his house to be quiet and peaceful so he and Mebuki might be able to help Sakura through this harrowing time in peace.

Kizashi's face drew tight in a grave, determined expression as he started undoing the locks on the door, thinking of Sakura. What he'd had to tell the strangers and her friends alike had become something of a memorised piece, like he'd taken it off a script, since he'd had to say it so many times: she didn't want to talk to any of them. There were no questions she would be answering. She would not be coming out to see any visitors, and none were welcome in no matter who they were, as were her wishes. She just wanted to be left alone.

She had not even left her room since the late hour she'd arrived at their front door. After breaking down in their arms, Sakura had shut herself into her bedroom, refusing to come out, refusing to eat, refusing to speak; only allowing the wellness checks he or Mebuki would do periodically, finding that Sakura had barely moved from where she laid in her bed, staring at the wall, unresponsive and seemingly barely alive. The only signs of life from her were the times that they could hear her sobbing through the thin walls.

At least she'd come to them. Kizashi allowed himself that single piece of relief as he finished unlocking the front door, bracing himself for another wave of loud journalists with their questions he'd gotten somewhat more used to handling. They were often shocking ones involving Sakura and her relationship with Madara, as well as questions about the war and all that had happened. At this point he felt like he'd heard every rumour that existed about her, good and bad — though all of the latest ones were definitely on the positive side. Months of denying the negative rumours about Sakura before the war's end had prepared Kizashi and Mebuki somewhat for whatever ones might come after, but not to such a staggering extent. It felt like the whole shinobi world was at their door, every hour, every minute.

Madara. Kizashi still struggled to believe any of what he'd seen and heard, even what he'd witnessed himself. It felt like some kind of nightmare, and so he chose to focus on supporting his wife and daughter in the moment instead. He could worry about the rest later.

He swung the door open, armed with a curt dismissal. "There's a sign on the door, can't you read? No more visitors. Please go away."

Kizashi paled just as Mebuki had, taking a faltering step back with fear struck in his expression as he faced his home's newest visitor.

"What the hell do you want?" came Mebuki's terrified shout behind Kizashi. She brandished her frying pan even with the fright in her eyes, accidentally knocking over a potted plant by her foot and sending a cascade of dirt across the entryway.

Their voices had been strung out with fear, and there was suddenly a distant shadow crossing Sakura's doorway, looking on to the commotion.

The guest at the door turned his head towards Sakura rather than her stressed parents where he could see her beyond in the dark. His luminescent, sunlit eyes caught hers, his calm voice carrying across the threshold. "I haven't come to trouble you as the rest have; only to inform you that you should be able to expect peace and quiet from now on."

Sakura said nothing, looking like a ghost within the shadows of the hall; but she held eye contact with him, making a single, slow nod.

Orochimaru returned his attention to Sakura's terrified parents, his slitted eyes switching between them. "We will be taking watch outside of your home until further notice, if it wasn't clear to you." He gestured to the sign on the front door, raising a single brow. "You won't need that."

"Why would you help us?" Kizashi stammered. To see Orochimaru of all people at his door—

"Sakura proved a friend to myself and my colleagues." He shrugged, turning from them with a casual wave, his silken black hair drifting over his slitted golden eyes. Pausing as he noticed something to the side of the door, Orochimaru picked it up, and with a hum he handed the gigantic stack of mail to Kizashi. Letters, packages, and other parcels teetered off of the towering stack that Kizashi struggled to catch, gawping openly now as Orochimaru strode away, white robes shining in the high winter's sun.

He could see it — a crowd of journalists that had come to harass him and Mebuki about Sakura, just around the corner. He watched as Orochimaru paused, turning his dangerous eyes over to them.

The yelps the journalists made caused the slightest smile to crack Kizashi's expression, the first in a while. As if Orochimaru was poised to swallow them all whole, the journalists sprinted in the opposite direction from where he stood with a subtle smile, sending loose pages and pens scattering across the snowy street in their panic.

While he understood their fear, Kizashi was grateful for it. How utterly bizarre that Orochimaru's widely-known and feared reputation might be what brought him and his family peace today.

He noticed, too, the unfamiliar and dangerous-looking men and red-haired woman who leaned casually against the outside of the house. They glanced at Kizashi with veiled interest, and understanding them as the colleagues Orochimaru mentioned, he nodded to them nervously before retreating back into his house and shutting the door. He locked and bolted it with sweaty fingers, glancing back to make sure Mebuki was okay; she was furiously sweeping up dirt, her hair frazzled and circles darkening her eyes.

So Orochimaru hadn't been lying: the scary-looking people he'd brought with him were going to act like guards, scaring off unwanted visitors just as the sign on the door had been supposed to do. It was certainly more effective to have one of the most famous criminals known to shinobi-kind around as a scare tactic, but how had Sakura secured such a powerful favour? The perpetual knot between Kizashi's brows was almost painful as he thought. How many of the wild rumours about her and her capabilities were true? Did he even know his daughter as well as he thought he did?

Dropping the mountain of mail on whatever nearby patch of floor that wasn't already covered in flowers, Kizashi was quick to double-check that the locks on the door were secure, his nervous fingers fumbling. "What in the world kind of friends have you made in the last year, Sakura?" he was asking, but her door was shut again, the hallway dark and empty once more.

He and Mebuki's eyes lingered upon that door for a long moment before they locked gazes, swapping uneasy looks of concern; then of cautious relief, as for the first time in what felt like a century, no one was knocking on their door. No rapping on the windows… no fiddling of the door handle. Peace. It made a thin relief, but relief nonetheless. It allowed them to focus more on the rest of their problems.

Mebuki and Kizashi looked to the mail at their feet, both snared by the same thing: a newspaper on the top of the pile, impossible not to notice. It was among the most recent editions; several more were stacked beneath it, all with loud headlines undoubtedly involving the subject of the one on top.

It featured a photo, followed by a loud headline in large block print. "VICTORY, BUT AT WHAT COST?" was followed by a sub-headline: The famed Faces of the War revealed as moon-crossed lovers before the shocking sealing of the deal that ended it all! Is there any way for our tragic widow and Konoha heroine Haruno Sakura to see her lost love again? See page four for more on how she managed to steal the heart of the most terrifying shinobi ever to live — just before he was sealed for eternity in our new second moon!

There was another note, graver than the previous: See page seven for more on the ongoing conflicts regarding the Allied shinobi forces' actions and the fallout of the war efforts. See page nine on the science society's evaluation on the environmental impacts of the abrupt arrival of a second moon.

The rest of the front page was dedicated to Sakura's trial, notating some of its major events, and — to Mebuki and Kizashi's mixed gratitude — a heavy highlight on her speech. While the excitable speculation about her relationship with Madara afterwards was less welcome in their minds, it was at least good press for Sakura rather than the vile things printed before the end of the war; a full turnaround, the tabloids and every other news source alike taking the revealed love between her and her great enemy and running with every detail they had.

Mebuki picked up the newspaper, Kizashi standing at her shoulder, the both of them staring at the image printed crisply beneath the headline. While it wasn't in colour, they could see it like it was, for they'd been there when the photo was taken. They'd seen it themselves through binoculars as the war raged on in all directions; had felt their hearts stop in their chest, struck with indecision and a kind of shocked awe.

The picture was of the moment Madara had slid a hand up along the side of Sakura's face in a visible moment of warmth and acceptance, so unlike the terrifying visage of death he'd been portrayed as in everything they'd seen, read, and believed before this moment. Standing together on that distant peak in a moment of peace among the chaos, they were never more clearly a bound pair, reaffirmed in his uncharacteristic softening for her.

Every rumour they'd heard, every legend they'd listened to detailed him as a god of death and of hatred, incapable of kindness, compassion or love. He was a mastermind, a genius shinobi, a demon aiming to end the world, not the man in the picture they were looking at now; an image frozen in time from a memory they'd experienced for themselves.

But in that single stretch of seconds, stolen atop that strange wooden peak far across the battlefield; before he'd returned to the fight, and before he'd been sealed — that moment had shown them and now everyone else his human side, captured forever in the picture on the page. It wasn't just a rumour or a fabrication that there was something between himself and Sakura anymore. It was printed in permanence on countless newspapers, undoubtedly spreading between the nations for all to see whether they liked it or not. It showed in defined detail their visible shared joy; that subtle smile along his mouth, the tears of relief running down Sakura's cheeks as she pulled him to her in what was undeniably her pure, unshackled love.

It affirmed the brave words of hers that followed where they were noted in the section about her trial. It humanised Madara, who had been seen by all as a demon, and in addition it made the Allied side look even worse for what they'd done in casting him to his death.

Kizashi glanced at Mebuki, noticing she was sniffing, reaching over and taking a tissue as she wiped her nose and eyes. He didn't need to ask, and he rubbed her shoulders, looking again at the achingly sweet picture.

"We can't let her see this," they said to each other at the same time. In a sudden hurry they shuffled the other mail atop the newspaper, stacking it all together and setting it in a more secluded part of the nearby counter. They didn't acknowledge aloud how they both knew that Sakura would have no interest in leaving her room, let alone going through the mail.

They paused, in the habit of having to answer the door; but all was quiet, and their minds tracked between the newspaper and Sakura where she sequestered herself in her room, lost within her grief.

It was best she never see that photo. Even glimpses of the twice-as-strong moonlight were enough to trigger her panic attacks and her episodes of uncontrollable sobbing, and so he and Mebuki would do everything they could to hide the reminders that they could hide; they'd keep offering her food and drink and whatever else she needed while their home was her sanctuary again, because there was no cure for that kind of heartbreak. They'd withhold their questions just like all their visitors had had to do, because what Sakura needed in this moment was to survive her grief before she could start to heal — no matter hers and the late Madara's snowballing fame, or her friends trying at all hours to see her, or the world outside that churned with curiosity and fascination.

They were on the same page with this plan; but seeing an official letter with the Konoha office's seal atop the haphazard pile, they gingerly picked it up, knowing this was one they shouldn't hide from Sakura no matter the state she was in.

---

Over the hours that passed afterwards the Haruno household was left in peace, for the most part. However, the throngs of journalists, photographers, and other gawking crowds alongside persistently worried comrades weren't warded off completely: especially those who were the closest to Sakura, happening to be among some of the strongest. While civilians didn't dare approach the intimidating three and their terrifying master where he occasionally showed his face, the remainder of Team Seven, a good number of Konoha shinobi, and a few bold Union adorees had enough bull-headed determination to try and see her anyway. Regardless of the unusual security detail where they lingered at each exterior wall of the house with watchful eyes, they still made their dogged attempts to visit Sakura regardless.

It made for a few interesting encounters.

The loudest was when Ino made her fifth approach for the day, a new set of flowers in hand as well as another card, only to find now that there were a few obstacles a bit more dangerous than the line of journalists she'd navigated before. With her markedly bright red hair making her stand out already, Karin stood before the front door with folded arms and a thunderous scowl. While her pass at being intimidating had worked on less stubborn strangers that had come by thus far, she had no such effect on Ino.

Karin's eyes narrowed upon Ino as she strode confidently up to the front steps, pausing before her with a frown. Her glasses flashed in the light as she pointed down the road where Ino had come from. "Leave."

"Who are you?" Ino wasn't cowed in the least by Karin's sharp tone, adjusting the vase she held carefully before aiming a cutting glance up at her irritating obstacle. "You leave. I'm here to try and see Sakura. She's going to let me in one of these times."

"Nope." Karin was unmoving, adjusting her already bold stance to one even more confident as she stood tall before the door.

"You don't understand." Ino set a foot on the first step up, her formerly somewhat polite demeanour quickly darkening. "I have to see her. Don't you get it? Sakura's not okay right now. I need to be there for her. So get the hell out of my way before I kick your ass and break your stupid-looking glasses too."

"Wait," Karin blinked at Ino in a sudden switch of mood as she realised something, also completely ignoring her threats. "Are you Ino? Like the Ino that she's told me about?"

"Huh?" Taken aback by such a strange question, Ino faltered in her anger somewhat, though she didn't back up. She tossed her long ice-blood ponytail back from her shoulder, visibly uncomfortable all of a sudden.

In a complete turnaround of mood Karin threw her hands in the air with sunny delight. "Oh! She's told me so much about you. In fact I couldn't get her shut up about you when she wasn't going on and on and on about Madara and stuff." She didn't notice Ino's flinch at the mention of him as Karin stepped down from her perch before the door, slinging an arm around Ino's shoulders in a boisterous but genuinely friendly manner. "When she's doing better we have to all get on the same page over drinks. I have the feeling you and I could be good friends, and," her teeth flashed in an almost predatory, delighted grin, "it will be so much more fun to tease her with help!"

"About what?" Ino managed softly, much more somber than Karin was. They caught eyes before Ino looked away, her fair features wrested with renewed, remembered sorrow. "Everything's been taken from her. I don't think that it'll be right to tease her. Not anymore."

"Oh, traumas heal, we all move on," Karin answered brusquely, causing Ino to gasp in sharp offense at her blunt and insensitive response. It was only when she met her stare once more that she recognised a shadow behind Karin's eyes; a hidden mark that she knew trauma and loss in her past quite well.

Ino hummed with tentative understanding. Karin wasn't dismissing Sakura's loss and grief, nor the situation's seriousness; she was just keeping conversation light, especially here, under the curious eyes of so many bystanders. "And who knows? He's probably still alive, anyway," Karin went on, causing a few interested faces to turn, ears perked as she made a dismissive wave. "Man's come back from the dead a hundred times. Some fancy seal won't keep a crazed overpowered shinobi like Madara away for long, especially when he's got reasons like her to come back."

"He's… in the moon," Ino said slowly, blinking with disbelief at her.

Karin shrugged. She was leaning back against the outer wall of the house beneath a curtained window beside a toothy man Ino had never seen, who slung a casual arm around her. Noticing Ino's uncertainty, Karin glanced between her and the front door. "Fun conversation aside, don't bother them. I mean it. Sakura will accept visitors when she's ready and no sooner, and all of you people harassing her parents aren't helping anything."

"Uh—" Ino paused, not having thought of it that way previously, guilt shading her expression. She ran a hand down the back of her head, adjusting her hair and clearing her throat. "Yeah. Maybe you're right, I guess." Her worried gaze returned to the front door, then to the curtained window, glittering with a medley of sorrow, concern, stress, and guilt. She set the vase beside the front step, releasing a defeated sigh. "I just really want to be there for her right now."

"I think she knows." Karin tilted her head back, shutting her eyes and exhaling through her nose. "I get it. You feel like you have to be doing something to help, even if she won't let you help her directly." She pointed to the empty spot at her other side, glancing at Ino; when she met her eyes she wore a deadly-serious look on her face, red eyes bright in the sun. "Come stand watch with us, then. That's a hell of a lot more helpful for Sakura right now."

Finding in this moment that she liked Karin a lot more than she thought she would, Ino nodded, shifting over and leaning at her side as she decided that she, too, would help stand guard. If it was the only way she could support Sakura right now, then she'd be here night and day until that changed.

---

"It is no business of yours," Orochimaru answered smoothly. He was reclined against the shadowy pillar of a nearby business, Sakura's home still in sight across the street. His interested gaze flicked between his team of misfits that had grown by one, if temporarily.

She appeared to be getting along with Karin by some miracle, for now. Reading a book and stroking the back of a canary on his shoulder, Jugo kept the front step guarded, pretending not to notice the fascinated stares of multiple nearby crowds that were keeping a safe distance, the sun catching in the fiery hues of his unruly orange hair. Suigetsu shadowed the back door with a bored look on his face, his watchful eyes roving over the surrounding area.

"Well, uhm, if you won't tell us about why you're doing a favour for Sakura or if it's related to your past aims to destroy Konoha, then can you tell us about your, uh, ahem—" The very nervous but courageous journalist checked her notes yet again. Beside her, a photographer was taking shot after shot of Orochimaru, who was unbothered by the attention. He watched their antics as well as those of his team's across the street with a satisfied kind of amusement while he awaited more of their nosy queries. "Your revealed Uchiha prodigy," the journalist finished her disjointed half-question, bringing her inquisitive stare back to his strange face.

Golden eyes slid back to her, dilated slightly with interest at the unexpected question. "Sasuke? It is hardly a recent reveal that he is my student, and formerly so. Your information is laughably outdated," Orochimaru chuckled, stroking the head of a snake that had appeared around his shoulders, its tongue flicking as it eyed the photographer where he was ducking and standing and crouching amidst his photoshoot.

"Oh, no, sorry," the journalist quickly clarified, laughing nervously, "the other one. The Uchiha woman that is your prodigy and, or, experiment or lover, according to the rumours," she finished, blinking in consternation at her notepad and scratching her head. "You know; the one all the news are talking about other than Sakura and her relationship with Uchiha Madara, and the second moon and the end of the war, and stuff. Are you saying you're not associated with miss Uchiha Sasaki even in the face of all the evidence that you are involved with her in some way?"

Orochimaru was silent. The journalist looked around, shifting on her feet, clearing her throat. "The rest of what we know about her… let's see. She's in the bingo books, most recent edition, now on the front page when she was just close to it before. She defeated the five Kages like her master Madara did at the start of the war and some say is close to his level of power. She proved to be even faster than the Raikage despite all expectations and odds, and the real kicker to that fight," she said with some excitement, "was how she never even used her Sharingan. But still beat them!"

Her accompanying photographer was nodding. He and the others nearby that could hear didn't look surprised, as they'd all heard these rumours by now.

Sensing that Orochimaru wasn't going to grant her answers without direct questions, the anxious journalist coughed nervously, scratching in a note here and there among the cluttered collection of facts in her hand while she went on. "Rumours say that other than the two 'Slug Princesses' she's the strongest kunoichi in the world. And everyone knows that miss Uchiha is a student of yours," she checked her notes again that she started reading aloud, "having shown off your personal snake jutsu, recognised by the Fifth Hokage herself amidst the battle that sowed hers and the other Kages' embarrassing defeat. Miss Uchiha was seen to possess the power of someone with a curse tag or more, though which one she must have is yet unconfirmed; and also everyone knows that she trained under you through how she didn't deny it, which is confirmation by default according to our sources. Etcetera, etcetera."

The journalist returned her attention to Orochimaru, still just as nervous as he watched her in curious silence, white fingers tapping along his folded arms. "Do you remember now? Uchiha Sasaki," she repeated the name like it would effectively jog his memory, "I mean, she's in all the headlines lately since the news came out about her identity we're all still finishing piecing together. Some even say she's a sibling to the great Sasuke or Obito, legends in themselves."

The winter sunlight glittered in Orochimaru's gaze as he gave the journalist a dismissive wave, turning from her. There was the slightest curl about the corner of his lips as he gave her his answer. "I have never met her."

---

He was angry that he felt guilty. They had won the war. They'd completed their carefully-planned goals no matter the wrenches thrown in to take the plan off-course. No one of importance had died, and peace was well underway, so why did Sasuke share the grim, guilty gloom that Naruto did?

Why did he feel obligated to come with him to each fruitless visit they made to Sakura's parents' home?

While Sasuke found it easy to hide what he felt for the most part — unlike Naruto, who wore his heart on his sleeve — the burden of it all weighed upon him just as heavily, no matter how unaffected he pretended to be. The two of them as well as the majority of their comrades were unable to share in any sense of victory, unable to see things with cheer and positivity as the villages rejoiced in their freedom to return to life as it was before war.

It all had to do with Sakura. She was the broken link in the chain of fellows, the missing piece of the puzzle even though she was right here, sequestered in her house. Sakura, and the second moon that hung in the cold night sky.

It was infuriating. Why should he feel any less than glad for causing Madara's sealing and expulsion into a deserved eternity alone? While he logically couldn't justify his and Naruto's guilt, Sasuke couldn't shake the intensely negative, dread-wrought shadow that followed them both as a result of their actions, and it was more than frustrating.

He tried to reason out the feeling as he and Naruto picked up the newest vase of flowers they'd bought from Ino's family shop, giving her mother a wave as they left with the lofty bouquet of roses and lilies in hand. So what that sealing Madara had upset Sakura to a level that "upset" couldn't even begin to describe it?

Sasuke grimaced, remembering the haunted, utterly traumatised look in her eyes as Sakura had realised what they'd done, the sheer horror in her face one he would never be able to forget. He had to retract the question he'd just asked himself, feeling too callous even to his own cutting thoughts.

That was the biggest problem; the way Madara's sealing had affected her would be the hardest thing that he and Naruto would have to contend with in the upcoming days now that the war was finally done with. Sakura grieved like a widow; worse, even. Her love for him had been to a level deep enough that Sasuke struggled to understand it still.

It was a strange thing to remember that she had once tried to love him in the same way, unsuccessfully. He wondered if things would had been different in that regard, if Madara had never reciprocated her.

Sasuke glanced down the crowded street, his straying gaze avoiding the newspaper stand as there was a line of people buying copies. Gods… the newfound fame was sickening. It was everywhere. Hearing the constant talk about Sakura as well as everything she had to do with Madara was annoying enough. Seeing it plastered in front pages at every turn with photo-ridden blocks of excitable, flouncy, romanticised conjecture was even worse.

In a sense, it was good that Sakura had hidden herself away from the world like this; no doubt it would be torment for her to be openly exposed to all of this attention, positive or not. She probably had no idea of her fame, increased to an absurd level after all the news and photos that had come out after the final battles.

Somehow even more irritating was all of the printed hearsay about the newest of the recovered "Lost Uchiha", something additionally grating to Sasuke on a personal level. While he would never admit that he was just as curious as the rest about this apparently legendary Sasaki kunoichi, the fact that there were popular rumours that she was his sibling or fellow student or even heavily-disguised clone was almost as infuriating as his own guilt over Sakura's devastated grief.

He stopped outside of a cafe, fingers digging into the back of a chair beside a two-person table. Naruto turned, blinking at him, recognising that he needed to talk and pausing immediately from what he'd been doing.

Sasuke ignored the tinge of gratefulness he felt for his best friend that understood him so thoroughly that he knew this without need for explanation. It took him a second longer to speak as he watched Naruto set the flowers down, who leaned into the chair across from him with an open, patient expression, listening. "Hit me with it, Sasuke."

"Why do we feel guilty?"

Sasuke left it at that, his words bit-out and cold, bitter at the edges. He knew Naruto didn't need him to add all the further reasons the guilt was frustrating, irritating, stressful, troubling. He wanted to know why it sunk so deep like they had committed a terrible murder in cold blood. He wanted to know why he could not let it go.

"It's because we love her, Sasuke." Naruto sighed softly. "We betrayed our friend, who would have given her life for us. We took someone she loved more than anything else away from her. Of course we feel bad about it, no matter how we thought it was the right thing to do, at the time."

"Not just at the time, Naruto. It was objectively right to seal Madara away. It doesn't matter how she feels about it."

Naruto shook his head, a sharp flash of surety steeling his gaze. His expression hardened to a point that Sasuke was taken aback by Naruto's fierce words. "It wasn't the right thing to do."

Sasuke's disbelief went ignored as Naruto pointed to the sky. "We didn't put our faith in Sakura when we should have. We chose to trust in hate and fear instead, and we broke her trust in us. We did the wrong thing."

"Madara was still actively trying to get the eye," Sasuke tried to argue, feeling chastised and defensive at once, "he was still going to cast the—"

"Didn't you see the look on his face before we closed in?"

Sasuke blinked as Naruto glowered down at him in a vehement, passionate anger directed at himself just as much as at this topic of discussion. After a hesitation, he did recall what Naruto was talking about. It had been noticeable upon Madara's face; a rare look Sasuke had never seen cross him even once in any encounter before.

"Because I did," Naruto was saying, fists gripping, "I saw it too late to stop but I saw it. I haven't been able to forget it."

"So he regretted it in the end." Sasuke looked away. "So what? Why does that matter?" He hid how his chest weighed a little heavier with that terrible, unshakeable guilt Naruto was managing to worsen.

"It meant Madara could change. He was looking to where she was in those last seconds…" Naruto shut his eyes, his expression twisted with remorse. "He was realising he should have chosen a different path. Sakura really had influenced him, a whole lot. Enough that he actually regretted going for the eye after he'd stolen her from the trap and gotten her back." Sorrow traced Naruto's shadowed blue eyes as he returned his attention to Sasuke, searching, sad. "If we had listened to her from the start at that trial, she could have swayed him sooner, and prevented all that death and destruction; or she could have held off the battle for longer, persuading him into a peaceful path without any of us having to fight at all. He would have believed in peace again instead of that plan he and Black Zetsu had. I just know it." Pain squeezed Naruto's expression; Sasuke paled several shades as he noticed the tears in Naruto's eyes. "I had told her I had her back. She put her faith in me so many times, and I failed her. I let her down. I… I took so much away from her. I'm a terrible friend."

Sasuke rose to his feet; in moments he was at Naruto's side, a hand descending upon his shoulder. "That's not true."

Naruto hung his head as Sasuke went on. "If you were, you wouldn't feel as bad as you do right now," he sighed. "As—" it was difficult to say, but important that he did, swallowing his pride in a concerted effort to support his friend, "—as bad as we both feel."

"We won, but… at what cost, Sasuke?" Naruto was staring at his hands like they were still covered in Madara's blood, his palms long bare of the symbol they once carried. "What can we even do now?"

Sasuke looked away, hiding his dubious expression. There was much to do in the aftermath of a finished war in terms of rebuilding and recovering. With Tsunade's announcement of her retirement there was talk of who was next in line; there were season, weather, and tide shifts from the second moon's creation that had rocked the land with changes all had to adjust to; there were still problems in all directions that needed addressing. But he knew Naruto wasn't talking about any of that. He knew what he was asking, knew how all of that rebuilding and problem-solving wouldn't feel right without Sakura at their sides in a completed team once more.

Sasuke lifted his head with his gaze rising to the sunlit blue sky, his mind drifting to the pair of moons that would rise with the death of the day. With the conversation they'd just had lingering in the air between them, his cold heartbeats had slowed, drawn out with a changed view of it all.

Sasuke had seen Madara with a lens of hatred and a resentful kind of understanding before, recognising that they were two sides of the same coin. When he thought of him now, he felt what Naruto did instead: guilt; sorrow; and a growing regret. He knew, deep beneath his judgements and doubts and the situation as a whole, that what Naruto and Sakura had passionately argued for Madara's sake was more than possible.

After all, they had both been right about Sasuke being able to change, in the end; even when he himself had not believed them.

However… the only way to fix the deep loss that had broken Sakura and shattered their bond with her would be to reverse their actions that had done so. It was the most obvious answer that Sasuke could give Naruto, and the one answer that was utterly impossible to give him.

The seal could not be uncast. Madara could not be retrieved by anything, or anyone.

"We just keep trying," Sasuke finally answered, finding it was the only plausible thing he had left to reassure Naruto with; something that someone as persistent and strong-willed as Naruto would understand and be able to do. Trying to talk to her. Trying to be a friend again. Trying to find a way forward.

---

As drained and lifeless as she was in her emptiness and grief, Sakura still felt appreciative of the space her parents were affording her. The way her mother chose to slide the letter under the door rather than come in with a cascade of queries was considerate; the way her father didn't press her with questions after Orochimaru had stopped by was selfless. Now that they knew about her and Madara, and with all that they must have heard, they were probably dying to ask a great many things; but they continued to leave her alone as per her wishes, giving her space and giving her time.

It had only been two days since that night but it had felt like a year. Sakura had barely slept; had barely eaten or drank, and she found that the smallest actions cost the kind of effort it might take someone to lift a house above their heads. She'd adjusted her curtains over her window a hundred times to block out the moonlight but it felt like it could still reach her… a permanent reminder of her guilt and her shame.

She stared down at the letter in her hands where she had accepted it from under the door, her face blank as she reread it once more. After a pause she tore it in half, tossing it aside.

You have been reinstated of your kunoichi status, as well as your doctor position at the hospital. While it is not technically within the rules to grant bereavement leave to someone who is unmarried, there is an exception being made for you at the repeated and insistent requests of both your teammates and many of your other comrades.

Sakura shut her eyes, unable to push away the image in her head as she could see Tsunade penning this letter, amber eyes somber but ever-sharp while she wrote. The default bereavement term is two weeks. You, however, may take as long as you need.

None of it mattered.

She turned from the shreds of paper on the floor, rising to her feet and then collapsing onto her bed, sinking into the crumpled sheets with a deflated exhale through her nose.

All of that effort from before; months of plotting, of researching and training and learning, of thinking through a thousand scenarios and planning for each one — creating connections with people she'd never have spoken to otherwise, forging ahead with ideas that challenged her morals and preconceptions… What had it all even amounted to?

Why had she made those efforts? Why, when in the end it still concluded with them sealing him away as they'd been trying to do at the start? It all felt so pointless, now.

Pointless; and in the end Sakura had only distracted him and created the weakness that had allowed him to die.

Even with opposite intentions to do so by the time the final battles started, her actions had resulted in Madara's death. No matter her resolve to uncorrupt him, to pull him into the light; no matter her first determinations to finish this war in a peaceful, bloodless way, she had ultimately sent him on the path that had killed him. It was all her fault.

She just couldn't see it any other way. Sakura cast no grace to herself, no consideration of her feat of saving a thousand from death while Madara and her teammates rained chaos down in their battling. She gave no thought to how she was now beloved by Union survivors, immortalised in their minds; nor to the many attempts of her friends to come see her and make amends. None of her feats throughout the last year — befriending multiple S-class criminals, successfully keeping Uchiha Madara on a fruitless chase for months, executing several secret plans with success, gaining new skills and expanding her abilities and chakra, learning how to mend powerful Rinnegan eyes — none of it mattered to Sakura anymore in the wake of the new moon's rise to the sky.

She hid her face in her hands, taking in a slow, unsteady breath.

Somewhere outside, she could hear the usual white noise of the Konoha streets. Crowds navigating the roads and alleys, shop owners calling from open doors and cluttered stands; kids running and shouting, birds chirping and boots crunching in the snow and ice. It haunted Sakura more than the quiet did; it offended her. How could life just go on like her world hadn't just been upended? Like there wasn't a second moon staring down from the stars with a lifeless face?

And she was expected to return to her old life like nothing had happened.

Just imagining making a return to her doctor duties, let alone her kunoichi duties, was as painful as reaching her hand into a smouldering forge. Sakura seized up into herself like she'd been burned with a hiss through her teeth. Everything, everywhere, would find a way to flood her with reminders; memories of him. It made her recognise just how integrated with her life Madara had become in the months before the two of them had been caught. He'd appear at every junction, haunt her in alleyways, materialise at her work; accompany her in the streets, the both of them enjoying how it was a mockery of citizens' lacking powers of observation as he walked among them in a thin but effective disguise. Meeting at every Union service, drinking at civilian bars; her original as well as her clones always aware of him, always thinking of him, looking forward to every encounter whether it was flirtation or fighting… and that glorious night after they danced when they had finally given in—

It was dating, for certain. Sakura understood this retrospectively. Without even being conscious of it or using such a label, they had courted like the fools that they were, riding the thrills of the risks, falling hard into the consequences without caution or regret. What she wouldn't give to return to those days before it had all gone to hell.

Sakura was shaking violently, tears streaming hot down her cheeks, her heart breaking for the thousandth time. No; she could not return to her old life and pretend she was okay. Everything had changed in this past year. She wasn't the same person, anymore.

She wasn't sure who she had even become, but her aching grief assured her that without a doubt, she hated herself. While there might be a day in which she forgave her friends for working to kill Uchiha Madara for good, she would never forgive herself.

With these despairing feelings came the dangerous question; the questions of what it was she still lived for, what she dreamed for; the foundation for her will to go on. It had all been broken in her shock and traumatic grief, and she was left with a void she stared into, one that was frightening and bottomless.

Silence drew across Sakura's room as it weighed upon her like collapsed tonnes of earth. Dreams she had cherished had changed along with her over the long past year, and now they were as dead as the moon that hung cold and unfeeling among the stars. Only her old hopes for peace had a chance at forming anymore, probably well underway in the happy chaos outside where everyone else was already moving on in the new era that was beginning in the absence of war. Peace at last; but without any of the other dreams Sakura had come to yearn for. Peace, without meaning.

Madara hadn't been her only joy, her only reason to persist and be her best self, as she had much to her life beyond him before and after his immersion into her daily routines; but the reasons that remained after he'd been torn from her life felt fragile and intangible, her grief painting her in nothing but hues of sorrow and a terrifying urge to simply cease existing if just to end her pain.

Drowning in depression, her grief was pinning her down with her head underwater; and she was running out of air.

She didn't know how long the rapping on her window had been happening when she finally noticed it, her eyes flying open and her darkening thoughts halting in their tracks. She also didn't know what it was that motivated her to answer it this time, rising listlessly to her feet and drawing the curtains aside.

Blinking a few times at the visitor on her sill, Sakura didn't have the opportunity to shut her curtains again before he was pulling the window open, ducking his head beneath the frame and sliding into the room with a casual cough behind a hand. "Sakura," Kakashi greeted her with a half of a wave.

Sakura stood back from him, indecisive if she should demand he leave just as how she had disallowed anyone else from visiting her. Kakashi leaned against the window with his arms folded, and while his manner was laid-back as usual, his dark eyes shone with seriousness, heavy with concern as his gaze swept over her.

She wanted him to leave, but her reaction to his visit wasn't as vehement as with the others. Kakashi had never said anything against her in the past, and he hadn't judged her, either; he hadn't ever pressed her for answers, and he hadn't been among those to directly act against Madara in his final moments. In Sakura's eyes, at least, Kakashi's hands were clean.

She was silent in her indecision, neither welcoming Kakashi or telling him to leave. He stood in a shaft of sunlight while Sakura kept to the shadows of her room, and she said nothing, holding his stare in an eerie, empty silence.

She expected him to be made uneasy by her emptiness, but he watched her with an expression of understanding, a kindly crinkle about the corners of his eyes above his mask. "You haven't thrown me out yet."

Sakura nodded, her eyes straying. Kakashi hummed. "I think both Naruto and Sasuke have come by several dozen times at this point, as well as more than half of the rest of the village." He adjusted the vase of flowers on the nightstand so he could lean by it, noticing the handwritten card next to it in flowery script. "I'm not sure the Yamanakas have ever sold so many flowers as they have these past couple of days."

"What do you want?" Sakura finally managed, her voice cracked from disuse. While her tone was not strictly unkind, it wasn't welcoming, either.

To her mild surprise Kakashi didn't appear offended at all by her cold demeanour. In fact, he seemed grateful for Sakura's lack of hostility that he must have expected, and he remained mostly relaxed as he spoke to her, keeping a polite distance. "They're organising a funeral ceremony in honour of all who died in the war."

Sakura looked away as Kakashi went on, his tone firm but gentle. "You should come."

While she said nothing, her manner seemed to harden with a defensive anger she was about to express when he interrupted her quickly. "They're honouring both sides; the dead from both the Allied, and the Union. And," Kakashi watched her cautiously, "it will be in his honour, as well."

The venomous rebuke she was going to say died on Sakura's tongue. She met Kakashi's permeating gaze, her heart heavy in her chest. She knew what else he was telling her without him having to voice it; Naruto and Sasuke both were making real efforts. They were trying what they could to make amends in the ways that they knew how.

But she was utterly broken; the smallest things took painful effort for her right now, and Sakura was shaking her head, a return of tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. Crossing the house to the kitchen felt like a voyage, let alone publicly attending a mass funeral that would honour Madara and all the rest of the dead. "I… I can't," she was saying, her heartbreak resurfacing in the cracks across her formerly cold expression. "I can't even get myself to eat or sleep. I don't know how to get through the next hour, let alone day, or week, or month. I don't know…" Sakura's breaths grew more shallow, the admittances painful but burdening her less as she let them free. "I'm so lost. I've never felt so much pain in my life. Everything feels so different and wrong. I feel so alone, but I don't want to see anyone. I can't handle their questions and judgements, and they all pretend like they understand and say how sorry they are but they just don't get it. They don't really understand, and all I—"

Sakura startled slightly as there was a hand atop her head, fingers gently ruffling her mussed pink tresses.

"I know how you feel."

She almost retorted that there was no way that he could, but then she remembered what she knew of Kakashi's past, and she fell silent, blinking down at her feet. Slowly, Sakura shut her eyes, realising that of all the people she knew, he might actually understand what she was going through.

"What you feel is valid," he told her then, withdrawing to give her space once more. Sakura ran a hand through her messed-up hair with wide eyes rising back to Kakashi's kindly gaze crinkled beneath his shock of silver hair. "Feeling lost and guilty, the feelings of inadequacy and frustration, of hopelessness; it's more than difficult. It will seem daunting; it'll seem impossible to get through, but no matter what you might feel right now, you will. As much as you've heard it before and might not believe it, it will just take time."

He had lost his father to suicide, Sakura remembered, staring down at her feet once more with a sense of guilt for having doubted Kakashi in his words. He had been a child when he'd discovered his father's body. His teammates were killed in front of him, one even directly by him in a traumatic accident. His sensei was brutally murdered, and many of his comrades were struck dead in the other wars… yet he still persisted, still lived day to day, surviving such heavy losses.

She looked at Kakashi with admiration, then. She had admired and respected him before, but there was a warm knot in her chest as she recognised the support Kakashi was offering her in this moment; an extended bridge of genuine empathy she didn't know she needed so badly.

"You never forget that kind of pain. People who tell you you'll fully move on and go back to normal are fools," he went on quietly, his dark eyes showing a glimmer of remembered sorrows as he spoke. "You learn to accept your grief, and it gets a little easier with time, but you never really get over it. You just learn how to cope with the pain, how to live day to day and function like your world hasn't been changed." Kakashi watched her with a returned sense of kindly warmth, once more. "And that — is okay."

Sakura held his gaze, memorising everything he said and feeling an unexpected mending within.

"I came here to tell you about the funeral, taking place in two days," Kakashi said then, eyeing Sakura with a returned casual manner and slouching against the window, "but also to make sure you know about the sheer amount of times each of those who love you have tried to come see you. Not to guilt you—" he lifted a stern finger before Sakura could crack into another guilty streaming of tears, "—but to make certain that you understand how valued and loved that you really are." His dark gaze flicked between her and the torn-up letter on the floor. "Not for your capabilities or fame, but for you yourself. Understand that there is much still to do out there; people who need you, experiences to have that are worth undertaking; years of life worth having no matter what you feel in this moment."

Her tears fell anyway as she realised Kakashi already knew of the terrible thoughts she'd been having in the depths of her grief. She was not alone: she wasn't the only one to ever feel this way, and to be so understood had her falling apart at her seams, but with someone to catch her this time. This was different than when Naruto had offered her kindness when he'd called her out, so long before; this kind of empathy that Kakashi showed her was even deeper, bound in experience and in a similar, inherent kindness.

That comforting hand returned to her hair, rustling through the locks of pink she'd just straightened out moments before; gentle, reassuring. "Live on to carry his memory, Sakura. You are strong enough to honour the love you had by keeping that memory alive through every day moving forward. Embrace your grief instead of running from it; it will allow you to heal. It means that you truly loved."

Sakura bowed her head, absorbing Kakashi's words. For the first time since Madara's loss, she felt a kind of stability sinking deep beneath her skin.

"Thank you," she said softly after a long pause, lifting her head to meet his eyes.

Kakashi nodded to her. He'd drawn back to the open window, and Sakura watched with the vaguest hint of amusement as he climbed back out through it. "Consider letting them see you," he concluded then, and before Sakura could answer he was gone, the sunny light of the day pouring in where he had been moments before. Turning her head as she looked out the window, she saw Orochimaru in the cool shadow of an eave by her house; when he met her eye, he gave her a single nod.

Sakura paused, feeling her tears begin to dry. She felt stronger, if just a little. Maybe — just maybe — she could get through this. She had just enough hope now to be able to try.

---

Every breath was ragged, agonised, making this emergence into consciousness a curse that phased in and out. It hurt to breathe… but was breathing even possible? Lungs struggling, burning as if there was no air, and everything was dark and cold, compressing in from all sides. If only this nightmare would cease.

Sakura thrashed where she slept in her bed, the memories ghosting across her mind that even in her fugue of dreaming she knew were not her own. Tears streamed silently down her cheeks as she shared such torment through phantom night terrors, knifing through her sensitive unconscious mind. She could not know that these nightmares were experiences, and happening in the moment, rather than in the past.

But it would be best if this was not a nightmare. With whatever's left of my body and soul I hope that this is reality, instead.

Sakura stilled, the strange calm that stretched across the torturous, crushing pain very much not her own: she fought it, desperate to be free, while the pained repose that came to her was deep, wise, and to Sakura's confusion glad, carrying a warped sense of lost contentment even through the agony.

She took a shaky breath, gasping for air like she was the one unable to breathe. Thoughts that weren't her own faded away in dying breaths as she emerged from the nightmare.

I will be content to die this way. This… is how it is meant to be.

"No!" Sakura lurched forward, throwing the sheets from herself and breathing hard, her fists pressed against her pounding heart and her lungs heaving. She turned, her wide, wild eyes rising to the twin moons high above her frost-paned window. "Madara… don't let go," she said, her voice tremulous as she stared up into the cold face of the second moon. "Don't give up yet. I'll find a way."

Even though she didn't believe herself, Sakura repeated it again, the tears down her cheeks hot and agonised with fresh grief. "I'll find a way."