Degausser

by lucipherous

Summary:

On what was intended as a low-key solo mission in Grass Country, Sakura discovers that Sasuke has abandoned his search for atonement and decided to settle down as a nobody. He fights to keep his fragile new peace; she fights to keep her sanity. Locked in a battle of wills, they must work together to make it home alive—wherever "home" truly is—without getting tangled into a knot. As if they can help it.

Blank period, (mostly) canon-compliant, mild OC presence.

Chapter 1

Notes:

It’s very funny that it took me going to college and grad school to 1) finish this story 2) figure out how plots work.

If you’re returning to this story as a previous reader, pretty please start from the beginning. I have completely rewritten the 6 chapters that were already published, as well as cut gigantic chunks + reimagined critical plot points—only about a third of the original material exists in this version. Chapter 3 onwards is almost entirely brand new.

If you’re somehow still searching for Sasuke/Sakura fanfiction in this year of man’s demise, hi! I’m thankful you’re here and hope you have fun with this story. “Degausser” is fully outlined and should span 16 chapters, including an epilogue.

I’m one of those FF readers who still checks on unfinished stories that I started reading nearly a decade ago, hoping the author will someday come back and finish. If you’re the same way, then this is for you.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

 

It was morning when she saw him.

Sakura plaited her hair and watched the forest stir, white mist reflecting the pale glow of sunrise. The dawn brought the smell of a new world washed by rain. The birds shook the debris of yesterday from their feathers. Droplets fell from tree leaves as if they, too, shivered beneath the sun’s reluctant rising. 

Tracing her fingertips along the ground to catch the dew, she rubbed her eyes with the wet earth. She planned to make quick work of her interview in the village. Then, she would finally find more long term lodging and kick up her feet. Breathe. 

Trailing out of her makeshift campsite and toward the little village, she focused on the crunch of her sandals. She focused on her breath. She tried to cling to the temporary peace. The pressure of her kunai belt against her hipbone was the only thing keeping her head out of the clouds. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so perfectly human. 

Ahead, a puff of chimney smoke split the canopy, and it was enough to make her sour. She'd forgotten, if just for a moment, that peace could only ever be temporary. The bitter truth grounded her like an anchor, and she tucked an escaped strand of chin-length hair behind the shell of her ear—she had a mission to complete. 

We’re far beyond capacity, so I can’t let you completely off the hook, Kakashi had told her a week before, but I’ll do my best to give you a lighter load.

It was an apt metaphor, she thought. Sakura certainly felt like a worm baited on a hook, dangling above the murky surface of this world, waiting for something big to swallow her whole. 

Since the war ended two years prior, missions rarely brought her anything but headaches. And here it was: another headache, disguised under the pretense of a much needed vacation. The esteem she once held for her work seemed to have vacated her body along the route to victory. 

Then again, the war was never really "won." Not when so many were lost in the forests and the tunnels and the fires. Sakura thought of Neji, his kind white eyes roaming appreciatively over the taijutsu poses in which he tutored her, the silk of his unbound hair when she'd find him sprawled, flat-backed on the wooden floor of his home, “meditating.” She recalled his gentle laugh, which he often hid. The warmth beyond his strength, the honesty within his testaments, the honor of his friendship.

Others trailed the Hyuuga. Kiba, who protected Akamaru to the bitter end, an axe buried in his back as he shielded his best friend. Ino and Shikamaru, fatherless.. Hinata, fraught with nerves that a brand new engagement couldn’t soothe. 

And Naruto. Poor Naruto. He shined so brightly for them all, even now. 

She pushed on, not because her will propelled her, but because what other choice would she have? Die, and leave Naruto with another wasted life to haunt his remaining days? She couldn't. For him, she proceeded with every meager second that ticked by. Naruto alone lent her the power to crawl on, and she would not—could not—undermine that privilege.

Still—Spring in Konoha never grew back as sweet as she remembered. 

At least her begrudging persistence had been rewarded by Kakashi, who'd leveraged his position as Hokage to patch together a B-rank mission undeserving of its ranking. 

She was burnt out; they all were. If a mission with an inflated ranking and open deadline was the closest she’d get to a vacation, she’d take it. 

The mission in question: to gather information on a travelling faction of unmarked shinobi in possession of contraband stolen from Iwagakure. There was little information about the contraband itself; the thieves lifted it from a cave bunker. 

While normally Konoha wouldn’t bat an eye at trouble stirring in Iwa, their new Tsuchikage, Kurotsuchi, had struggled to keep hold on her people and military. The grudge between Suna and Iwa still ran too deep for Gaara's shinobi to be of much help. The Tsuchikage practically begged Kakashi for assistance. 

Her first stop was this small village, straddling the border of Fire and Rock. Kusagakure lay a day’s travel east, and thus far Sakura had not crossed paths with a single other shinobi. 

An elderly woman lived in the village. Initial intel suggested her grandson could be a potential leader of the thieves. His name was Koto, Sakura knew. Along with the mission scroll came a photo of him: gangly, pale, with muddy red hair. 

Yuri. That was his grandmother’s name, a widow of twenty years. She was also mother to a pair of fraternal twins, a daughter and son, who would be in their late thirties now. The daughter, Akami, lived and worked with her. No mention of the son. Absently, she wondered if they were close. 

It was just before 8AM when she arrived outside of Yuri’s bakery. It was the stoutest building in the row, its thatched roof dull blue. The yellow door had a single, semi-circle shaped window, as if winking at her. Across from the way, behind her, the same river she bathed in earlier that morning split the village’s main square in half. A trio of arched wooden bridges connected the two sides, their railings braided with colorful flags and lockets. 

It was a Sunday. The bakery didn’t open until noon, but she knocked anyway. She rapped on the glass door once, then twice, louder, waiting. By her fifth, most insistent knock, an elderly woman in a dusty frock emerged from a door within the store, face set in a stern line.

Sakura stepped back politely to allow Yuri to crack open the door. Impatience deepened her every feature, including her voice.

"Miss, I don't suppose you're illiterate?" said Yuri, pointing mockingly at the CLOSED sign. "I'm afraid we won't be open for another five hours.”

At least she nourished a fiery attitude in her old age. Sakura respected that.

Flashing her identification badge and hitai-ate, which she wore on the loop of her black shorts, Sakura bowed slightly. “Pardon me, Yuri-sama, for the inconvenience. My name is Haruno Sakura. I’m a kunoichi of the Leaf. I was hoping to have a few words with you before your day got too busy."

Yuri stood stubbornly in the doorway. “Well, this ain’t Konoha, lady. You can’t just barge in whenever you want.”

“I sent a letter several days ago mentioning that I’d be paying a visit.”

“I don’t read mail. Bunch of junk.”

Yuri moved to shut the door, but Sakura stopped it with the very tip of her pinky finger. She didn’t mean to threaten Yuri. Just demonstrate her persistence.

“It’ll only take a few moments,” she promised. 

Yuri eyed her warily, then fumbled for a second to grasp a pair of glasses dangling at the apex of her covered breasts, face melting into a reserved surprise.. 

"Pink hair . . ." she mumbled. She shifted her weight off the door frame and wandered inside. 

Sakura took that as permission to follow.

"You'll forgive an old woman for her grumpiness, I hope," Yuri deadpanned, not sounding like she cared either way. She rounded the counter to finish sorting coins into the register. 

"It's quite alright, Yuri-sama. I'm used to such reactions," Sakura replied. "I’m sure you’re busy preparing for the day. Please don’t let me be an imposition."

Yuri turned to regard her fully, hand outstretched to balance her body against the gleaming display case. Only a single item stood inside, a rounded cake with rings of fresh berries on top. She admired its color, the icing a similar shade to a peeled, ripe banana. A spot of perspiration gathered on the glass. It was still warm.

Strange. Her mother taught her that cakes had to be cooled before decorated.

"First one for the day?" the kunoichi asked, gesturing towards it as she moved to return her ID to her hip pocket. "It's very beautiful."

"Yep," responded Yuri. “I got bread rising. You can talk while I work.” Without invitation, Yuri waddled through an open doorway that Sakura assumed was the kitchen. 

The kitchen practically oozed with the smell of warm butter. The air was dusty, clouds and particles of flour dancing all over the room, sailing with every step on the wooden floor and bouncing off of the peeling mint walls. A back door stood open to carry the debris into an adjacent alley. The milky sunlight sparkled against spindrifts of sugar in the air. 

There was another woman in the room, working. She hunched over a wad of dough, an apron knotted at the base of her neck, back muscles flexing with the force of her kneading. An enormous bun of rich, crimson hair bobbed at the top of her head. 

She turned, not halting in her work, to observe her mother and the unexpected guest tailing her. The woman's smoky green eyes widened in something a little more than surprise. Sakura could see the family resemblance. 

Yuri turned to face Sakura briefly upon entering. "My daughter, Akami. She helps me in the shop. She can’t talk, though, so I doubt she’ll do much good for whatever brings you here." Sakura fixed the younger woman with a tight smile. Akami had a tidy chakra signature, which surprised her. 

"Pleased to meet you, Akami-san. Don’t mind me.” The woman nodded in response, returning to her bench. 

Yuri resumed work on a batch of square pastries lying unfinished on a large, wooden table. "What brings you to my shop, Haruno-san?"

"Well, I'm hoping you could point me in the right direction. Recently the neighboring shinobi villages have filed complaints against a travelling band of mercenaries. They've stolen some artifacts from these villages, and many people are hoping to have them returned." Yuri grunted to acknowledge that she was listening.

"I've been sent on a mission to question some locals about potential suspects and members of the group. For now, they’re nameless, but they do wear masks. Usually alternating animals. However, the leader of the gang—" Sakura brushed the edge of a photo in the pocket of her shorts, removing it to pose delicately in front of the old woman's face, "—always dons this mask."

Yuri squinted, setting down a bowl of raspberry filling to lean closer to the outstretched object. Pictured was the profile of a wolf-masked man clad in grey and black guard pads, a black flak jacket, and sporting a crown of ruddy copper hair.

Face unmoving, Yuri leaned back and resumed piping filling into the pastries. "Never seen him."

Sakura flipped the picture around, the masked man now facing her. "Our preliminary intel suggests he resembles the coloring and build of this young man. Does he seem more familiar?"

That time, Yuri wrenched into stillness. In her periphery, Sakura saw Akami steal a look in their direction. She stiffened. 

"That's . . ." Yuri began, but after a moment the air seemed to fizzle senselessly from her mouth, unable to complete the sentence.

"Your grandson, Koto," Sakura finished.

Suddenly a slam echoed from the back of the room, causing Yuri to jump and Sakura to snap her head in the direction of the source. Akami had abandoned her wooden roller, which clanked twice more against the ground before stilling and fled from the kitchen through the open back door. 

Quelling the kunoichi with a hand raised in protest, Yuri hardened into a defensive stance, but her face grew gentle.

"Listen. This ain’t a good time, okay? Could you come back later? Or—actually—you can come to me. Talk without Akami around. She and Koto were very close. Ever since he left, it breaks her heart just to hear her name." Gruff as she was, Sakura could recognize the desperation in her stare. 

"Really, please, I insist. I live on the beaten path behind the bank, a few miles out. Past the flower field on the left, but if you hit the forest you've gone too far. It's a shack, but I keep it as tidy as I can," her volume rose as Sakura gradually shifted her gaze away from the door. "I promise I'll answer any questions you have then." She gave her best attempt at a smile; it looked physically painful. 

"You wouldn't hide something from me, Yuri-sama?" Sakura said patiently. "That would be a mistake."

"Wouldn’t dream of it. Truly. It's just been hard on her, on all of us," she said as she gestured towards the doorway.

Sakura nodded slowly. "Alright. I'll be over this evening, once the shop closes."

Yuri clasped her hands in gratitude and bowed. "I'll be there, I will." After a moment, she added: "On my honor."

 A handful of logistics were further explained, and Sakura showed herself out after Yuri's insistence that she could recover her daughter on her own. She left the photograph of Koto on the counter. “Keep it. I’ve got a few other copies,” she insisted, wondering by the teary look in Yuri’s eye if they didn’t have many photos of their own. 

Outside, dawdling on the bakery’s stoop, Sakura basked in the day’s new sun, which sat barely higher in the sky. The street began to smell of people stirring, kicking up dirt as they walked, vendors setting up their carts and unlocking the front doors of their shops. 

She wandered toward the narrow creek. It danced as green as a streak of lily pads rustled under the wind’s attention. The skin of Sakura's face prickled in the sudden wash of natural warmth, relishing in the comfort and tightness of June sunshine.

Akami was . . . peculiar. Not because of her muteness, necessarily. It was her chakra signature, almost—lidded? As if she had lost practice at keeping it quietly suppressed. There was a sense of pressure beneath. Something longing to get out. 

Sakura had met a mute young man once. A sixteen year old with peculiar green hair (she supposed she shouldn't judge considering she'd been victim to the same thoughts by others) and dark freckles dotting the planes of his cheekbones. He was part of the chūnin exams, though she didn’t remember which village he hailed from. He'd been a weapon specialist like TenTen, and his tranquil, involuntary silence made him appear rather intimidating. Lee had attempted to tell him an off-handed joke during a passing match that the other contenders observed, huddled together along the balcony of a viewing deck. The shinobi simply glanced back at Lee, nodded, and returned his gaze to the duel.

Ghosting her fingers along the skin of her throat, she wondered if he survived the war. If so, she wondered if he, too, missed the joys of being a ninja. Given, of course, that he'd ever lost reverence for their profession in the first place.

She stooped to fill her canteen from the river. Purification jutsu left a bitter aftertaste, but Sakura shrugged at its familiar bite. She'd had worse.

Roaming the shops, she decided “little” was an unfair description for this place. The main square was comparable to certain parts of Konoha's marketplace, though it sported not even a quarter of the mass. Buildings of professional standing stooped low on block corners, winged by eateries and a town grocer. 

She crossed the river to pay for a cup of hot tea from a street vendor. She meandered while she drank, toying with the ribbons of a sunhat mounted on a nearby display, peering through into some of the unopened shops. How alien, to now be in possession of enough free time to go window shopping. 

A bell tower chimed with the hour. She startled slightly at the echoing chords, loud in their proximity. She'd missed the structure at first glance, somehow, positioned at a diagonal from the bakery. The bell itself was almost invisible, disguised behind a thick melange of vines.  

It was small, for a church. Dark brick blurred almost comically into the sagging treeline. An external staircase wound around its base. The stairs were made of the same cracked grey stone as the building they surrounded, sans the patches of plush moss that clung to the walls. Her eyes followed the curve, admiring the shadows and angles—the way the village appeared to embrace its aged appearance. Its cracks gave it character, she decided. The meager bell that swung there, tarnished under many summers’ stares, twirled proudly in its deterioration.

And even that single gargoyle perched alone on its inner frame—how quaint. 

Wondering as its expression, attempting to scrounge up some architectural history about this region, Sakura raised a hand to block the glaring sun, which rendered the statue into a flat, black silhouette. 

Once her eyes adjusted, the serenity that had settled about her shoulders turned to stone and dread. Suddenly it became very difficult for Sakura to breathe.

It wasn’t a gargoyle. It was a man. A man she would recognize anywhere, no matter how many years had gone by. 

 

---

 

It was morning when he sensed her.

The earliest hours were of little fanfare. He'd finished some basic taijutsu training, chopped down a dead tree or two a few yards behind his small, isolated home in the midst of the woods, tidied some hedges on the south side of his property. Only with his chores done did he reluctantly slink into the kitchen, where the ingredients waited for him. 

The day before, he’d strolled lazily into downtown, two miles east, favoring the dark silt that crumbled into a haphazard, narrow road over the blushing sunset. For the sake of something to do, he whispered his grocery list to himself over and over, until it was ingrained, although it never really changed from visit to visit.

Tomatoes, rice, tuna, nori, dashi, fish paste.

Tomatoes, rice, tuna, nori, dashi, fish paste.

He hummed as he approached the edge of the marketplace, lights gradually flickering to life to wade off the oncoming night. He added a few things to his mental list.

Flour, eggs, sugar, cream, berries.

Retrieving the items was easy enough. Store owners recognized and respected Sasuke's preference for silent exchanges, polite nods, terse greetings. A loyal customer was a loyal customer, and they were willing to do things his way if it meant consistent patronage. Fewer women gawked at him than before, when his face told less stories. He kept his hair long and tied back, signature spikes tamed, a swath parted over his left eye to cover the lilac of his Rinnegan. 

When he was in town, he camouflaged his missing arm with a gummy prosthetic, the fingers always propped into his pant pockets. It helped suggest to passing strangers that he had nothing to be worried about, nothing to lose. 

The reality was the opposite. Every day, his livelihood was at stake. 

After so many years of hiding, the possibility of being discovered seemed slim. Search parties on his behalf had ceased long ago. Garuda’s tracking had suggested as much. It had taken months of no  activity for Sasuke to find the courage to put down roots. He was withered from years of running, constantly moving at neck-break speed to avoid capture and return. 

With Itachi and Obito dead and the war done, all Sasuke really needed was some time to think. He was lonesome by nature. Kakashi knew this. He wondered, perhaps hoped, that this was why the manhunts had finally slowed down—it was the Sixth Hokage’s way of showing mercy. 

When he first arrived in this village, he never intended it as more than a pitstop. Slowly, it grew on him, as steady as kudzu. The townspeople looked through his eyes when he spoke, focused on other things and musings; young women smiled politely in his direction if they caught his eye in the street but never anything more. Children continued to play and kick and laugh and scream even as the dark shadow of his silhouette glided by. 

Sasuke had never felt so relieved to be no one.

Now, vanilla-scented air wafted through air, lingering in the corners of the kitchen and hovering about the tip of his nose. Twelve years later and the loss still stung. He found something as innocuous as baking helped—it gave him something concrete to focus on. 

The cake was delicately browned and cooling on the countertop. He retrieved the offset spatula and warmed the dull metal blade with a quick, contained fireball-jutsu before dipping the tool into the waiting bowl of icing. His fingers twitched on the hilt, a reflex from years of handling the prickly kusanagi. He sighed to soothe himself. He wasn't fighting. Just decorating a cake.

The warmth of the spatula allowed for a smoother application. The final product was smooth and a fresh, gentle yellow, like a field of bloomed primrose. 

His mother had taught him that icing trick. He couldn’t decide if it was ironic or poetic. 

He made quick work of the berries, slicing away their leafy heads. He layered them into concentric circles. Sliced strawberries formed the outer two bands, then raspberries, then a single circle of blackberries. A bare thumbprint was left in the very center. 

He placed the waxy, corded structure of a candle. He watched the flame dance on the thin wink, trying hard to pray, to think thoughtfully, but could only manage to suppress a frown. 

For a minute he simply stared as the wax slid along the side of the candle, only blowing it out  when the wax threatened to drip onto the sea of fruit below. He removed the candle and covered the hole with a final, perfect raspberry. 

Sasuke glanced at the rosy horizon of the year's first June morning through the kitchen window, then dropped his gaze back to the glistening face of his creation. 

"Happy birthday, Kaasan."

Yuri would be arriving at the bakery any minute now. It was time to get on the road before too much of the village stirred.

If he didn’t know any better, he would think the old woman had begun suspecting him as the mystery baker who sporadically left cakes on her doorstep throughout the year. He would repeat this ritual again, next week, for his lost older brother; in August, for his father; in September, for his old sensei; in October, for the dobe. Month after month he baked cakes and wished quietly for the peace and health of people who were lost to him forever, in body or heart.

The only month he skipped was July. He wouldn’t dare provoke the universe by wishing for anything more than had already been granted. Two years of solace. 

He knew how stupid the tradition was. If he were forced to explain it to anyone—however unlikely—he would’ve been humiliated into beet-faced silence. Uchihas did not entertain such frippery as sentimentality and grief. It was a shock to Sasuke himself to see how, with no one around to watch, the emotions he kept buried for so long had finally found a way of making themselves known.

He felt no more or less dread on the walk to the town’s center than he had the day before. He felt safe, or as close to safe as a nukenin could. He felt normal . 

Which made the sight of her, the sensation of her bright, bubbly chakra flickering like a light in the darkness, all the more terrifying. 

He watched her now, milling around the main street, clutching her cup of tea. She had just left Yuri’s bakery. She was tracking him then. His ears burned with humiliation at how close she’d been to catching him with something as saccharine as a birthday cake for his dead mother. 

Pink hair brushed the nape of her neck, rustling like cotton against a gentle breeze. His Sharingan honed in on the summertime freckles splashed across her cheekbones, the violet diamond hovering at the apex of her forehead, her relaxed gait. 

He knew she would see him. Her observation had always been keen. And yet he was frozen, seconds turning into millennia. He could feel the fury rising in him at the knowledge that not only had his seclusion had come to an end but that Sakura, of all people, had been sent to take it from him. 

It wasn’t mercy, then, that the Leaf intended to show him—it was cruelty. A calculated, malicious revenge. 

His anger stewed, spiking when his eyes finally collided with the only shade of green he could never truly forget.

Sasuke didn’t move a muscle.Neither did she. How could they? How could either do anything but stand interlocked in a situation so improbable, so completely impossible? The air stilled in his lungs. He saw Sakura’s breath hitch too, arms frozen above her head as she blocked the sun. Around them, oblivious townspeople mulled about, parting around Sakura like an ant colony avoiding a rock. 

To flee and never look back, to speak, to attack, to wait. A chill pooled at the base of his spine. As if he ever had a choice. 

A wind chime sung in the breeze and the two shinobi continued to stare, occasionally obstructed by the bodies of passing civilians. He knew he should pounce. He should kill her where she stood in the street with the kunai hidden under his shirt, strapped to his chest. A single movement from the kunoichi and he would leap. He would kill her to save himself.

Then, Sakura broke. She pivoted, distracted by something—a vendor calling out to her, a child splashing their feet in the nearby stream. A beat passed before she turned back to regard him again: fearlessly, wholeheartedly, purposefully.

Just as his calves tensed up to dart, the muscles in his forearms flexed to grab the pale skin of her throat, Sakura did something Sasuke never expected: she turned and walked away.

Notes:

Thanks so much for reading! It definitely starts out on a ~serious~ note, but I promise it the humor gets infused in a big way as it moves along.

In case anyone is curious, the title "Degausser" has double meaning: the VIBE of the whole story definitely evokes the song by Brand new of the same name, but an actual degausser/degaussing hints at the plot.

Comments are always appreciated :)

Chapter 2

Notes:

A/N: If you’re returning to this story as a previous reader, pretty please start from the beginning. It’s been completely rewritten. Thank you in advance!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Sakura tore herself from the sight of the bell tower and began walking. She had no idea where to go. She hadn’t got a proper look at Sasuke’s face, but the rigidity of his shadow told her everything she needed to know. Every atom in her body told her to run. 

Instead she forced herself to stand her ground, to imbue meaning into her stare: I’m not here to hurt you .

It hadn’t worked. 

Now, he wouldn't stop following her.

His chakra trailed her every step like a thundercloud. He was stalking her like a jaguar stalks its prey, trailing her some forty yards behind. The only thing keeping her alive was the increasing torrent of villagers emerging from their houses, opening their shops, buying their breakfasts. Although she struggled to fathom why a crowd, of all things, would deter him—since when had he been bashful about violence?

On this side of the little creek, the main drag was all trodden dirt and planters, coquette troughs of flowers that bent along the sun’s parabola. She passed a vendor hawking handthrown dinnerware, and the old man was miffed when she ignore his wishes of “good morning.” She slowed just enough to offer a passing apology, then noticed the approaching shadow—Sasuke was gaining on her.

She pumped chakra into the balls of her feet, willing herself to move faster without drawing any undue attention. An opportunity presented itself when a supplier emerged from an alleyway on her right, taking a wide left toward her and tugging a loaded wheelbarrow in his wake, it was enough to obscure her momentarily from view. She ducked into the alleyway and ran. 

It was a narrow, dark vein that branched out into a maze of backstreets. It was jarring, the transition from full daylight to the dusky grid of the shops’ underbellies, clumps of moss replacing the carefully manicured window displays of the main street. Blood pulsed in her ears as she sprinted through, rounding random corners and the spare shopkeeper out dawdling with their recycling bins, all the while berating herself for thinking Sasuke might let her pass through unscathed.

For a single, foolish moment she’d hoped he might’ve matured beyond the murderous machine he was trained to be, that the war had freed him of more than Orochimaru’s curse. If he had learned to forgive. 

But no, of course not. Wasn’t that the very lesson she and Naruto learned the hard way, after years of hopeless waiting? Sasuke’s ambition had been supplanted by bloodlust long ago.

Otherwise he would’ve come home.  

Rounding a corner, she hit a dead end of rotting brick built directly into the sloped mountainside. She glanced up, cursing. The edge of the forest was visible at the top of the brick wall, some sixty feet above her. The gnarled roots of an ancient tree curled over the ledge. 

The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel taunted her. She could scale the walls if she moved quickly enough, but escaping Sasuke seemed unlikely. At least the forest would give her more cover. It was her only shot. 

Pumping her legs with chakra, Sakura leapt a quarter way up the wall, landing in a crouch. Refusing to look back, she launched into a full sprint. She avoided the most damaged-looking bricks, afraid of slipping on loose gravel, which led to a game of improvisational hopscotch. She could feel Sasuke’s approaching chakra like hot tar, lapping at her heels.

He was coming. He was not holding back.

This man was going to kill her.

A tiny, petulant voice in the back of her head whimpered for Naruto. 

She heard him before she felt him. Feet light as a feather, she missed the precise moment when he joined her pursuit up the side of the building. But she caught the low poison of his voice just shy of her ear. 

"Sakura."

Time itself couldn't have moved quickly enough to dodge Sasuke's attack. His rough hands gripped around the back of her neck, hurling her entire body into the rubble below. The earth cracked minimally beneath her weight as she deflected as much of the impact as possible, but the crunch of her left knee meeting the ground sent a cascade of lightning behind her eyes.

Green chakra hummed around the injury before Sakura finished flipping back onto her feet, fighting the urge to groan at the immediate pain that radiated from her knee.

Sasuke seemed unimpressed. In fact he was visibly seething. Heat and hatred radiated from his every pore.

"Sakura," he said again, the name dripping with animosity.

He didn't expect her immediate charge, a flurry of kicks, repelled by the guard slapped across his forearm, fury increasing at the recognition of her strength. His gummy prosthetic hung uselessly by his side. She wielded more power than he remembered, which only further incited him.

A shuriken aimed half-heartedly at her ribcage was easily batted away. Was he testing her? Sakura released a bout of senbon from a case on her hip, which Sasuke's shin guard absorbed. He responded with a decisive, but blunted, blow to the nape of her neck. She caught his wrist, halfway to snapping the bone before receiving a knee to the gut—foolishly she'd left her torso exposed—and he retrieved his outstretched arm before retreating a few yards back.

Clutching her abdomen a speck of blood spluttered from her twisted mouth as she coughed. The air completely vacated her lungs upon contact and her annoyance. 

He permitted no time for recuperation, tossing a cluster of kunai at her main chakra points. Dodging, she seethed as pain bubbled in her stomach. The nukenin activated his bloodline within a shadowed corner, face hardening.

"You shouldn't be here," he said simply. She cast her eyes to the side to avoid any oncoming illusions and leapt back to recuperate. 

A collection of clones fell from above, surrounding Sasuke on all sides. He parried with each before letting loose another round of kunai, smoke puffing in a halo as the blunt knives arched in a semi-circle. His sore wrist protested, and he couldn’t decide if he was better or worse off for having left his kusanagi at home.

 The real Sakura emerged from the smoke of her dissipated clones. Sasuke spotted her oncoming punch, although he hadn't expected it, and caught her glowing fist with his injured hand. The defense cost him its mobility. The resounding crunch signalled its full, clean break. Sakura smirked at the sound.

The victory was short-lived as he pinned her roughly to the ground, further cracking the earth. The ache of her newly-healed knee flared, warranting a grunt from the kunoichi. Sasuke gloated—almost imperceptibly, a sadistic shadow tinting his features. "Still so weak."

Spite coursed through her veins. Hooking an ankle around his thigh and twisting the momentum to reverse their positions, Sakura sank a heavy knee into the bone of Sasuke's hip, simultaneously wrenching his broken wrist into a particularly agonizing angle.

"Fuck. You," she spat. The shinobi headbutted her, dazing her momentarily, then threw her from his person. Sakura landed with both feet braced against the brick wall at her back, then rebounded to send another round of taijutsu at Sasuke. The light of the forest above glowed green, specks of light reflected off the leaves passing over the alley, gliding across Sasuke’s stoic, aristocratic features as they sparred. They punched and kicked and drew blood where they could. Sakura ground her teeth with every received blow. Glancing at the seals tattooed on his wrist she pondered why he bothered with hand-to-hand combat. They both knew no matter her adeptness these days, a chidori to the stomach would silence her for good. It was unlike Sasuke to hold back.

Past their grappling she could hear the townspeople stirring in the streets. Fishermen pulled shore-side and called out the day's catch. 

Sasuke was quick to regain her attention, suddenly halting their exchange of blows to bat away her swinging leg and push his prosthetic arm directly across her chest, bracing. Expecting to meet the dusty ground once more, she stumbled ungracefully when she was instead pushed parallel to the ground. Her skin met the bitter bite of old brick, the back of her head clanging against the wall. Sakura was admittedly thrown by the change of pace. Sasuke's Sharingan twirled in front of her, and she instinctively shut her eyes. 

"Get off of me," she hissed, pushing against his grasp. Her resistance was fruitless; he easily had half a foot of height and sixty pounds on her. He gathered her arms in his hand and pinned them flat against the wall. She could tell, from the tension in his jaw, he was pushing through immense pain. 

Leaning down, he seethed in response. "Stay still."

Grunting and wiggling again to free herself, this time he twisted her like a top, wedging them both into the darkest corner of the alley. He dropped her arms and slapped his hand across her mouth, pulling her toward his front. She would’ve cringed at the proximity were she not distracted by the chill of a massive shuriken pressed against her belly. Two of the star’s nearest points cut into the adjacent brick. She was trapped precariously between them, the sharp curve bowing mere inches from her abdomen. 

“Move again and I will cut you in half,” he whispered gravely. “I will not repeat myself.”

Before Sakura could retort and sink her teeth into his hand, a rustling tumbled down the alleyway. A small, golden ball bounced harmlessly against the pavement, then bobbed clumsily along the openings in the earth. She could feel his breath gliding over top of her head as they both tracked the ball's movement. It rolled across their wreckage with a bit of teetering, then plopped decisively against the opposing wall, mere feet away from where they hid.

At his impatient instruction to cease her healing chakra, as its mint glow would draw attention, she complied reluctantly. 

For a fleeting moment she considered fleeing. He seemed distracted enough, body tensed to leap into action. But there was hardly space to breathe, let alone move.

Fear and curiosity kept her still.

More scuffing echoed down the alleyway, along with random shouts and incoherent warnings. A child's nervous laugh sang through the corridor. A tottering little shadow split the beam of light from the main road. Eventually more shadows joined it and the noises slowed. Sasuke and Sakura remained perfectly still as a group of five children emerged into the alley. 

Confusion mulled their faces, one of the shorter boys in the group cupping his hands around his eyes.

"I can't even see!" he said, whining behind his hand-goggles. Sakura had forgotten how difficult vision-training had been as a genin. These civilian children reminded her of the weeks she'd spent training at midnight with Naruto and Kakashi, wandering blindly through the forest. A taller girl on his right flank hushed him as she encroached further into the alley, wandering closer to the crevices and shards of rock that lay in the shadows.

"The ball is back here somewhere, it's a dead end," said the same girl, her feet slowing as the group travelled deeper. Sakura could sense their anxious trembles. They couldn't be older than ten or so, she guessed, and she worried for their parents.

"If you're so sure then you can go in and look, Tomi," teased another girl near the back of the group. The taller girl halted, gazing senselessly into the black air. 

"What's the matter? Afraid of the dark?" the same girl taunted.

"Stop it, Mihari," whimpered a small, quivering voice. Sasuke glanced at the toddler clinging to the dress of the mouthier female. Tears welled in his eyes. "I think somebody is in there."

Sakura could feel Sasuke tense. "Don't be such a baby. No one is back here. Just find the ball already," said an exasperated Mihari.

"Would all of you just shut up?" Tomi, the tall girl, barked. "I can't even think."

Mihari scoffed and shoved the little boy from her clothes. She clamored bodily to the front, making a point to push the other children as she travelled forward. "You big babies, I'll get it. It's just a ball."

Although Mihari started off in the right direction, she didn't expect the patches of cracked earth that cluttered the area around the ball. Her small shoe caught the edge of a sharp rock and she fell to the jagged ground with a complimentary thud. Sakura nearly jumped at the girl's piercing shriek.

The children fell into absolute disarray, half of them tucking their tails and retreating, screaming for help, while others simply stood, blind and petrified, and joined the injured girl in her wailing.

Sasuke must’ve known Sakura's first instinct would be to heal the child; he tightened his grip across her mouth. Rather than trash, she bucked her chin against his hand to peer upward, gesturing toward the gap between the roofs that she'd attempted to escape through earlier. 

Blanketed by the chorus of sniveling children, they escaped unheard into the forest as passing adults began to flood the alleyway. 

They landed apart, facing one another. In the daylight Sakura could see how two years had deepened the angles of his jaw, how he had grown. He wore his hair long, gathered in a bun at his nape, a heap parted over his left eye to hide the lilac spiral of the Rinnegan. A bruise bloomed over his wrist. He looked unnervingly like Itachi.

“Someone should probably heal that,” she said, gentler than intended. 

His eyes narrowed. “Feeling nostalgic, Sakura- chan ?”

The mocking honorific stung. Sasuke could tell. 

She tried to shake it off, fake-pouting. “What, no more Karin? How sad. I know she was your favorite chew toy.” 

“Sarcasm does not become you, Sakura.”

She crossed her arms. “What do you want?” she said, trying and failing to level her tone. 

"I could ask you the same."

"I ignored you when I saw you. You tracked me down.”

"Don't lie. You followed me this morning," Sasuke said.

"As I recall you were leering at me , following me . I walked away.” 

Sasuke waited, silent. 

The kunoichi tried not to splutter out of exasperation. "I wasn't tracking you. You really underestimate the power of two years of absence. That’s not even counting—”

"I am not going back to Konoha, Sakura."

The succeeding scoff caught him off guard. "I'm not here to bring you home," she spat. "Although why I’m here is none of your business."

"You will tell me.”

“Believe me,” she said, gritting her teeth, “it has nothing in the world to do with you.” 

“You will tell me,” he said again.

“Like hell I will.” She decided she’d heard enough and pivoted to march back to the forest, grumbling under her breath. “The nerve you have, attacking me and then—”

She only made it a few steps before she saw a smear of black, then red, then black again. 

 

---

 

The panic set in once she collapsed against his chest. 

This morning he woke up in deserved solitude, albeit indulgent. Now he was miles from home with a badly broken wrist and a pink-haired, irritable, knocked out kunoichi limply draped over his shoulder, her hitai-ate bumping against his shoulder blade as he leapt from tree branch to tree branch. 

He forced himself to relax. So Sakura had found him. That didn’t inherently mean Kakashi went back on their agreement. When Sasuke had left the village, the Sixth Hokage had been clear on the terms. His quest for atonement would be permitted, so long as it didn’t interfere with Konoha business, and any actions taken by Sasuke couldn’t be traced back to them directly. In return, no hunter-nin or ANBU would be sent after him—not by Konoha, at least. The other hidden villages made no such promises. 

If Sasuke came home, it would have to be on his own terms. Kakashi promised to vouch for him in whatever way he could, but he was at the mercy of the Council. Sasuke knew all too well what “mercy” might mean in his case.

He gave himself a year. It was a solid run. He kept his ear to the ground, following any leads suggesting ninja who might be hostile to Konoha. He would track them to the ends of the world, even calling on Taka now and then to assist. When he found them, he crushed them, mercilessly, felt skulls splinter and lungs collapse as they begged for their lives to be spared.

It was never enough to fill the shadowed cleft inside him, the canyon that the torrent of lies and blood and hate had carved. A million bodies couldn’t fill it. Night after night, alone, fidgeting sleeplessly in mysterious lands, he began to wonder if there was anything that could.

In the quest for atonement he’d been reduced to Konoha’s lapdog. Not by Kakashi or the Council, but by his own hand. And surely that made him worse than Itachi ever was. At least his big brother was bound by his sense of duty. What did Sasuke have? A hall pass from Kakashi to wander this world in search of himself, whoever he was?

A sort of existentialist curiosity took over him. He stopped tracking errant threats. He stopped fighting. He stopped running. He landed in this backwoods, nondescript village. He built a home in the middle of nowhere and waited for some indication that Kakashi knew, that somebody out there sensed the flame of his will—his curse—had flickered out.

No such indication came. At least, not until now. 

He grimaced at the weight of Sakura’s unconscious body. It made him almost ill to feel the ghost of her hands, which flexed to strike him mere minutes ago, flopped uselessly near the small of his back. 

She was adamant: her mission had nothing to do with them. To her credit, she had never been an adept liar. When she confronted him in the Land of Iron with claims of playing turncoat, he’d almost been amused watching her visibly struggle with the prospect of killing Karin as a pithy demonstration of allegiance. What a simple, sickly sweet, utterly benign kunoichi she was. 

Still, she surprised him with the conviction of her denial. She certainly hadn’t pulled any punches earlier. 

There was no way to know for certain beyond seeing her mission scroll for himself. Once he saw Kakashi’s signature, he would know whether he was meant to be playing offense or defense. 

Though I’d prefer not to play at all .

The cottage was easy to miss. He designed it that way. From the dirt path snaking out of the village, if one were to glance to the side, they’d see only a curtain of kudzu cascading over a small grove of trees; behind it, a forest blazed by wildflowers and thick-trunked zelkovas, their arms spread protectively across the verdure. 

The cottage itself was almost entirely cedar, save for the roof. Sasuke had rigged it into a miniature pasture of his own. An underlying slab of cement prevented the roof from draining directly into his house. It had the dual purpose of camouflage and serving as a de facto garden.

Nukenin-turned-homesteader. If Sakura were conscious, he was sure she’d find all of this immensely funny. 

That, or—

No. He didn’t want to think about that. He never wanted to think about that day. When had he turned his back on those imploring green eyes for the second time in order to scour the horizon for his absolution. He had thanked her then, the same as before, and promised to see her upon his return home. Except he never did—return, that is. What qualified as “home” to him was a different question altogether.

Inside, he let her body slump against a tatami mat in the center of the house, stepping aside to look at her. A rush of sour, unexpected shame rocked him. 

He’d never been very good at keeping his word.

Against the stark neatness of the house, Sakura was a bright, spectacular mess. Every room was clinical, clean; he’d taken pleasure in the linearity, every plank of pale wood oiled and smooth, the walls colored a milk-washed amber. What he’d intended as a private haven—his single bedroom, a storage room for weapons and tools, a simple washroom, a kitchen that looked over a small lounging area—was reduced to a puny, fragile box. 

He loomed over Sakura’s listless body, traced the shape of sprawled her across his floor, inches from where he normally ate his meals. The sight made him shiver. Even if he could rid himself of her, he would find remnants of her existence for weeks, embedded in crevices all over the house. Her scent, her skin, threads of her rose-colored hair. 

Their scrap in the alley was child’s play. She had invaded his home now, he reminded himself, trying to stir his fading anger. She was violating him. 

Even if her mission did, truthfully, have nothing to do with him, their business here was hardly finished. He couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut once she and the dobe were reunited. She was bound to the same cloying allegiance to the Leaf. Even if she didn’t want to—which he doubted—her duty required her to disclose any information that could threaten the village. If the Bingo Book were to be believed, he was one of the biggest threats left around. 

How annoying. 

When Sakura stirred, Sasuke was in the middle of splinting his wrist, seated against the opposing wall so he could keep an eye on her. He whittled a scrap of firewood into a smooth plank wide enough to act as a brace, and was busy securing it with gauze when she roused. 

“Getting rusty.” She blinked at him blearily. 

“Medical ninjutsu was never my area of expertise.”

“I meant your genjutsu. You’ve never changed it,” she said. “You always stick me back in the flower field from when we were genin.” In truth, she was disappointed in herself; from the state of things, she must’ve been out for a while. If she hadn’t burned so much chakra fending him off when he rounded on her in the alley like a rabid dog, she could’ve broken it faster. Still, his frustration was obvious. It was a cheap shot that hadn’t paid off. Her defenses were too honed. The only answers he’d get would have to come from her—awake.

"It’s your weakness," he said flatly. "Not mine." 

"Right. Yours is assuming everything somehow involves you.” She squinted at his wrap job, frowning. “Can I sit up, or are you going to hit me again?”

When he said nothing, she propped herself up on her right elbow, inching into a seated position. While unconscious, he had bound her wrists together, as well as her ankles. It forced her to lounge on her side like a seal.

“Are the restraints really necessary?”

He grunted and lifted his wrist. 

Fair enough .

“You shouldn’t wrap the gauze straight across like that. There’s not enough reinforcement,” she said. “Alternate the directions. Over and under, then across the palm to cut between your thumb and forefinger, over the knuckles, then back—”

“I was planning to do a second layer,” he interrupted. 

She treated herself to a small smile. “Oh no. Is it a bad break?”

“Not as badly broken as you will be if you neglect to share the details of your mission.” He began the second layer, leveling a pointed glare her way. “Feel free to begin at any time.”

“Fat chance.” She rolled back onto the floor with a sigh. “I guess we’ll both just have to wait it out.”

Wrapping completed, he rose and walked toward her, kneeling too close for her liking. 

"Get away from me," she hissed. He ignored her and reached to dig through her weapon belt.

"What are you doing?" she nearly growled.

“Being ‘weak,’” he shot back, Sharingan flashing.

She squirmed and looked away. 

Unhooking the belt and pulling back, he rummaged through the largest pocket until he found what he required––the mission scroll. Also as expected, the interior was entirely blank, the ink made invisible by encryption. With a swipe of the kusanagi—he learned his lesson from earlier—Sasuke nicked Sakura's exposed shoulder, tracing a tight, precise line into her skin to draw blood.

Sakura thrashed and cursed him. Sasuke ignored her, swiping his thumb over the thin stream of blood and watching the ink on the scroll bloom.

There was no information relating to criminals or goals. There was no crudely painted portrait of a younger version of himself beside a bounty. Only a single word, scrawled in a rough kanji that he recognized as Kakashi's, occupied the center. 

"Rest," it read.

"What is this?" Sasuke asked.

"A scroll," she deadpanned.

He turned the script around, questioning.

"Shinobi blood is too common," she said.

Sasuke tossed the scroll aside. "Not if you're good."

Sakura arched an eyebrow but pressed her mouth into a line.

"'Rest,'" Sasuke said. Even with his flat tone Sakura knew he meant to mock her.

"My mission has nothing to do with you," she repeated. Her face clenched in frustration. "Neither does my . . . adjournment."

Sasuke snorted. Sakura sank back, a little surprised. He almost seemed relaxed.

"A kunoichi on vacation. Alone." He leaned toward her. His Sharingan glinted in the midday sun, streaming in from the windows overlooking the field behind his house. 

"I'll find the true scroll," he said as if an afterthought. "The longer you withhold it from me, the worse it will be."

"Why care?" she asked. "Why not let me go?"

"Because even if your mission was not to find me, your duty is to report any and all extraordinary events to the Hokage," he said.

She simply stared, either dejected or challenging him—he couldn’t decide which.

“It would take nothing to cast Tsukuyomi, to watch you writhe over a piece of paper.”

“You can’t cast Tsukuyomi. You’re not capable.”

“And what do you know of my current capabilities?” Feeling satisfied, he lazily rested the kusanagi’s edge above her throat.

“The scroll,” he said.

Sakura raised herself to meet the blade. A small bead of blood sprung up from where it dented her pale skin.

Sasuke could feel the tomoes of his Sharingan spin. He flash stepped away from her, out of sight Sakura shifted to watch him disappear down a narrow hallway. Farther into the house, she heard a room door slide violently over its track.

"Die then," he called out. The door slammed close, the sound reverberating throughout the house.

Notes:

Comments are always very much appreciated! They are deeply motivating. Thanks to everyone who's left kudos so far <3

Chapter 3

Notes:

A/N: If you’re returning to this story as a previous reader, pretty please start from the beginning. It’s been completely rewritten.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

She expected his roughhandling when she appeared at his bedroom door not long after, knocking politely on the silky wood of the doorframe. He would livid, she knew, even more so than before, but didn’t want to chance him running away in the heat of it. She learned firsthand how his anger made him vulnerable. If her choices were either to be bold—recklessly, stupidly bold—or be seen as weak, then the choice was already made. 

"I have a proposition for you," she said when he opened the door, glowering.

He shoved her across the hallway and pinned her before her head could rebound. His blade returned to her throat in an instant. He seemed to be avoiding the sight of the little pearls of dried blood embellishing her throat.

"You can see the real scroll," she said, maintaining a straight spine despite the screaming of her muscles. "See for yourself that my mission has nothing to do with you."

He grunted. "And then?"

"Then let me do my duty. I complete my mission and I go home."

His chin lowered, dissatisfied.

She held steady. "No one needs to know."

"But you will always know." Sasuke flipped the katana from her throat to her lips in an instant, pressing the flat edge of the blade against her mouth. Sakura could taste the metal, the clean iron of polish or blood or both. Despite her front, her stomach churned. He's so fast.

"We cannot trust one another," Sasuke said.

Sakura moved to speak, but his pressure on the katana increased, burning her mouth.

"You have leverage. I do not."

She stared, uncomprehending. He, too, looked as if he was decrypting something hidden in the center of her being, somewhere far beneath the surface. They were frozen, locked in a stalemate.

"Where are you staying?" he asked, almost softly, breaking the silence. He slid the katana to the side at an obscure angle, resting it between her jaw and left ear, his splinted wrist angled toward the wall.

"Along the river bank on the west side of town, in a tree," she said. As if anticipating his next question, she added, "It's a nice tree. Very large."

"The only inn is too close to my primary persons of interest," she confessed. Maybe if I give him something… 

"The bakery," he said. 

"Yes. Do you know them?”

"I did not say that." He hesitated. "The town is small, as you noticed. I’m aware of the woman who owns it. She’s unfriendly."

"Two peas in a pod," she mumbled. Sasuke upped his pressure on the blade again.

"I kid," she said, grimacing.

"What business do you have with her?"

"It’s bureaucratic. Some regional government official was caught skimming the profits of a few businesses in the area. The bakery was one of them, but she was too busy to speak this morning. She asked me to return this afternoon to resume our conversation,” she lied smoothly. “She’s the last on my list of businesses to interview about their financial correspondence with the government. I’ll verify the amount of money stolen, then track down the truant politician.”

“Yuri-san will be expecting me before nightfall,” she added.

“Rank?”

“B.”

Sasuke scoffed. “Over an embezzlement case?”

Sakura shrugged. “She was one of many. He stole from some powerful people. He’s suspected to be hiding on the outskirts of Iwagakure, so crossing into another shinobi village inflates the rank even more. Kakashi-sensei didn’t want to take the Tsuchikage by surprise.”  

“Why not commune with the Tscuchikage directly? Surely he could handle the politician. ”

“I suppose Kakashi-sensei could have spoken with her if he chose, but instead he sent me.” He didn’t so much as blink at her correction. “Shinobi are mercenaries. The village needs money to recuperate. We were at war, remember?”

When it became clear he was choosing to ignore that particular jab, she continued. "Once I find the target, I will intercept, turn him in to local authorities, and report home." Sakura made an effort not to swallow, the blade already skating so close to her throat.

With a puff, the scroll appeared in her hands. She held it out to Sasuke, as if daring him to check her statement for accuracy. Instead, he tightened his grip on his sword.

She sighed and unfurled it herself. She bit her lip, hard, and spat diluted blood onto the waiting paper.

“See for yourself.”

He read the words she knew would absolve her, written in perfect mimicry of Kakashi’s hand. 

He glanced back toward her with a veiled look. Something like a sneer glimmered underneath. "You lack negotiation skills. Perhaps that’s why you never surpassed chūnin."

"A good jōnin knows when to keep her cards close and when to fold," Sakura retorted. If it wasn’t sure to get her killed, she would’ve reached out to smack the smug look off his face. The less Sasuke thought she was capable of, the better.

It borderline offended her that he believed she was gullible enough to hand over the real mission scroll to a wanted nukenin. She forged a copy of every scroll she received since the war ended and villages scrapped for any piece of information good enough for political blackmail. Reports of daimyos’ shortchanging infrastructure projects left and right dominated the present gossip among ninja. Debts needed to be paid and no one had the funds. Leverage, as Sasuke said, was everything.

Which was why she refused to give him any.

The phony scroll made no mention of Koto, nor did it explicitly name Yuri. It was framed as all but a wild goose chase for a pitiful politician gambling away the hard-earned wages of his constituents. 

Sasuke was unconvinced. 

"You’re lying," he said. "If there was turmoil here, I’d be aware.”

"Interrogate me if it makes you feel better," she said.

"I have. You’re lying." 

In a moment, the katana was pulled back and thrust into the meat of her front left deltoid. She let out a gasp of pain, trying to reign in her shock. He pinned her uninjured arm to the wall with his knee.

He was testing her.

Setting her blazing emerald eyes forward, she inclined her head despite the pain.

"If I was lying you would have killed me already. No hesitation," she said, beginning to pant. A faint charge sizzled in the air. The wisps of a building chidori ghosted the kusanagi’s hilt. She felt a trickle of lightning crawl into her wound. Mental resolve was slipping from her like thawing ice.

"If I die here, then you'll have to start all over," she said, practically bursting. Sasuke's face twitched to the faintest degree. She pressed on. "I won't tell them, but if you kill me, someone will find me. Someone will figure it out.”

"No one can trace your chakra if you are scattered ashes."

Sakura exhaled shakily.

"I can guarantee you that I will forget," she said. “I won’t remember ever stepping foot here.”

Sasuke's frustration only grew. "Enough of this—"

"I can forget," Sakura repeated. A sheen of sweat glinted against the violet diamond on her forehead. 

"If I can guarantee you that I won’t remember ever seeing you, will you let me go? I complete my mission, I never come back. No one will know." She could feel her red qipao darkening with hot blood. With her arm pinned, she couldn’t make the signs to unleash the byakugō seal. Things were becoming hazier, heavier, and quickly. "Just let me go home, Sasuke."

The chidori dissipated but he didn't remove the sword from her shoulder.

His concentration flickered to the flow of blood gushing from her shoulder and back. “How?”

“Shishou—” she stuttered against a building instinct to groan in pain. “Shishou taught me. Forbidden jutsu.”

“Genjutsu?”

She shook her head and winced. “Medical ninjutsu.” 

“Explain.”

“Soldiers at the hospital. Night terrors. We—” her vision was beginning to blur at the edges. “I’m losing a lot of blood, Sasuke,” she rasped. 

The mention of night terrors gave him pause. For that condition he had undeniable sympathy. The majority of nights, sleep never found him, but replays of Itachi’s Tsukuyomi did. They hadn’t begun to let up until he built this house. 

"The moment you falter, I will kill you,” he said. “And Naruto will be next."

She nodded once, a harsh jolt of her head. He removed the blade from her shoulder in one swift pull. 

Collapsing in a heap against the wall, Sakura clamored to apply pressure. The relief of her chakra flooding the torn tissues was so acute it almost stung. A ghastly green flooded the dark hallway. He'd intercepted the axillary artery; she’d let the blood loss accumulate for far too long. 

Sasuke was a precise fighter. The thought made her blanch white. She hadn’t expected mercy, but it still shocked her to think that he had really intended to kill her. Again.

Maybe she took Tsunade-shishou's gambling lessons a little too close to heart.

She counted the heartbeats pulsing under her fingertips as they strengthened from thready to solid throbs. The sinews of her deltoid muscle reconnecting felt like restringing a cello, coaxing strands back together. 

Across from her, the kusanagi sheathed once more, Sasuke watched her impassively. Behind him she could see a sliver of his bedroom, the door still slightly ajar. The white sheets were tidy and pulled flat. Blankets lay folded at the edge of the mattress. There was a sleek dresser built with the same pale wood as the rest of the house. Thick navy curtains were secured at the edge of the window's frame in sturdy pleats. Through her mental fog the realization sank like a heavy stone. 

He wasn’t hiding. 

The memory of his fingers poking her forehead, two years ago, as he left the village to prove something to himself, was almost palpable. Thanks , he had said. Maybe next time. Stupidly, she had believed him. 

And what was worse? That continued to sprint right past him despite the years of searching, or that he had forgotten to be afraid of being found? Perhaps he never was afraid. Perhaps he never intended to return.

She would sometimes daydream of finding him again slinking about, living beneath rocks like some sickly beetle, too hurt to come home and too proud to ask for reinforcements after all he’d put them through. Her headlong admiration for him had eroded, after much forceful withering on her part, but a kernel still thrived deep inside, pining for him. 

Had he been hiding here all this time, so close to home? Everything in the house shimmered, new and clean. And her, soaking the floorboards in dirty mana, staining his new life.

More than an hour passed in silence while she healed herself. He waited until her chakra flickered and dissipated before he deemed to speak. 

“I’ll be back for you in three hours. Don’t do anything stupid.” he said. He gestured toward a smear of blood along the baseboards. “Clean up after yourself, would you?”

She feebly nodded, but once he turned the corner, she slid to the floor. She was too furious and drained to do anything but sleep.

 

---

 

When he returned from his errand, he found her folded into the worn bistro chair he kept in the corner of the kitchen, studying the pasture behind his property. She remained there as he stored away the supplies he’d left to retrieve. She had done very little, apparently, besides rinsing the blood from her soiled qipao and scanning the field of wildflowers from the comfort of the window, passively noting the species she recognized from genin training. 

Sasuke idled beside her, hand steady against the kusanagi strapped to his hip. This was the only acknowledgment he offered.

She glanced at him before turning back to the window. “A doe passed through while you were gone. She had two fawns. I think they live along the tree line,” she reported plainly. 

She would’ve been content to continue sulking all afternoon, he was sure, but had no plans to let up the pressure. Too many outstanding variables. 

“We’re leaving.” He ambled toward the front, grumbling, not waiting for her to follow but trusting that she would. “You can elaborate on the jutsu while we walk.”

The path to town was deserted. Trees bowed over the sparsely trodden dirt, clamoring over one to devour the wide pour of sunlight from above. Beneath, the air was cool, musked by turpene and clover. The breeze carried a new scent toward him, tea tree or mint—the smell of Sakura’s shampoo trailing in her wake.

“It is kinjutsu, you know. As in forbidden ,” she called back. 

He smirked, minorly amused. “Meaning?”

“Telling you would be traitorous.”

“But you will,” he said. “You always manage to tell me, despite yourself.” It was neither a threat nor a promise. 

She hated that she was going to prove him right, but she had to. Otherwise this’ll never work . 

Her explanation of the jutsu was begrudged and robotic. She had already explained the diagnosis it was designed to address: cases of night terrors induced by the proliferation of post-traumatic stress disorder among Konoha shinobi had left their ranks reeling and depleted.

At night the hospital became so flooded with trembling, fretful shinobi that they spilled into the hallways while waiting for treatment. Several times Sakura had seen ninja leap toward staff carting critical-care patients down the hall, attempting to board gurneys, begging for relief. At first they relied on sedation, but had to scale back once concerns surrounding addiction arose. They couldn’t send ninja out on missions while clinging to bottles of pills. 

Tsunade and Shizune conceptualized the jutsu after the hospital had teetered on the brink of collapse for several weeks. They named it shōkyo no jutsu, since it was, at its core, about deletion.

It was a precarious procedure. Part surgery, part chakra-assisted psychotherapy, in which the patient recited the memory plaguing them in excruciating detail. As they described the memory, the healer erased the event bit by bit, prompting a spontaneous, acute, isolated retrograde amnesia. 

With Sasuke trailing behind her, it was easy to get trapped in the flow of explaining a passion; her  awareness of her audience faded into the background. It wasn’t so unlike when they were genin. Sakura filling the empty air with words, Sasuke with the scrape of his sandals across the ground.  

“Think of memory storage like a library. If I take a book off the shelf, a space gets left behind. If nothing fills that space, the other books, the surrounding memories, will collapse into it.” She flexed her palms toward one another, demonstrating a triangle shape. “Do that with more than one memory, or a memory that spans a significant period of time, and the degree of collapse increases. The whole system could fall apart.”

In the jutsu’s earliest evolution, they left the “slots” of memory entirely blank. The patients described it like the skip of a video tape: one moment they were here, another there. The difference could be a matter of seconds or days. It was noticeable, which also meant it was de-stabilizing.. More than one patient went utterly mad after the fact, obsessive over the time they’d lost, ripping themselves apart psychically in pursuit of the missing memory. 

Shizune suggested they adjust the technique by “filling” the space as best they could with chakra, infusing the blank space with pure feeling. This was the caster’s most crucial role: to replace the traumatic memory with a sense of calm and normalcy. 

Needless to say, it was a difficult headspace to access, day in and day out, when waiting patients were practically crawling up the walls in search of relief. She listened to these shinobi describe, through sobs, the worst minutes of their lives, and she was expected to reciprocate by projecting pure happiness into their amygdala. She had yet to manage performing the procedure more than twice a day. When the cumulative exhaustion became too much, sometimes she refused outright, fearful the jutsu could backfire. 

While explaining to Sasuke, she left out the finer details. Particularly the fact that the jutsu had the potential for immense, debilitating cruelty, despite the caster’s best efforts.

The expertise of the caster was surprisingly low priority, save for the emotion that they channeled into the blank memory slot. Rather, the erasure process was almost entirely dominated by the patient themself—they and they alone dictated what aspects of the memory would be made to disappear. 

Before casting, Sakura always emphasized to the patient how critical it was that they didn’t articulate more than the most poignant part of the memory: the exact moment when they watched a shuriken bisect their fellow man, or whatever else ailed them. 

But human memory is inherently kaleidoscopic. Early on, in trial phases, Shizune noted that afflicted patients demonstrated an almost primal instinct to share. They wanted to contextualize their pain. The memory of their teammate dying haunted them because of the times of joy they’d shared beforehand. They wanted Sakura to know both sides of the coin. 

Time and time again, they resisted the instruction to reduce the instance of their trauma to just that—an instant. It violated their every instinct to properly grieve. 

Since whatever the patient recounted in the session became erased, that meant any fragments of joy that interrupted the flow of memory got caught up in the tide. They were washed away just the same, with no known method of retrieval. Discarded as nothing more than collateral.

The most devastating instance Sakura had witnessed firsthand was when a shinobi recalled how he watched his own wife die on the battlefield. She had been crushed by a wayward boulder sent ricocheting by an Earth release; he could only squeeze her hand as life slowly drained from her eyes. 

In the session, caught in the flurry of emotion, he accidentally mentioned their young daughter waiting at home. “I kept thinking, ‘How am I going to tell her? How am I going to tell her that her own mother died, because her father couldn’t save her?’”

Sakura could not stop mid-cast; the damage was already done. When the shinobi returned home, free from the shackles of his traumatic memory, he also no longer recognized his daughter. She had been rendered into nothing more than a stranger.

The trees lining the path began to thin. In the distance, Sakura could see the edges of the first buildings on the village’s outskirts emerging on the horizon. They weren’t far now. 

A sign on the edge of the building caught her eye. It was the village bank. If she had to guess, they’d traveled a little less than three miles from Sasuke’s cottage to the village. Which meant—

Yuri-san . You’re up to no good after all.

She paused and heard Sasuke’s immediate halt. She turned to regard him from over her shoulder, watching him seriously.

“You’ll have to copy shōkyo no jutsu from me and cast it yourself,” she confessed. She nearly shuttered at the thought of him, fingers trained on her temples, pumping dark, twisted chakra into her head, replacing whatever future still lay ahead of them. 

“I can’t cast it myself. I—” she frowned, “—we’ve tried. The brain just metabolizes its own chakra. It can’t act as a sufficient replacement.” She formed the triangle with her hands again to demonstrate. Collapse .

Sasuke appeared to be studying her. He’d been quiet for the entirety of her explanation, listening intently. 

“Hn,” he muttered. If he had any questions, he didn’t say so. Instead he strode past her, leaping onto the sprawling arm of an overhead tree branch and landing in a crouch.  

“We’ll rendezvous at the same spot from earlier.” The quip rose up in her immediately— you mean where you attacked me? —but she shoved it down. A glint of red winked at her from the canopy as his Sharingan spun. “Try not to dally. I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

 

---

 

The bakery was not empty this time. It was bustling. A pre-dinner rush to grab the last few loaves and flaking pastries was in full operation. The windows glowed orange like the inside of an oven, silhouetting the line of customers shuffling slowly forward in the queue. 

A man hopped from the stoop of the shop as Sakura approached. He tore the edge of the bread he held with his teeth and chewed loudly as he waddled past, the parchment wrapper crinkling in his hand. Noticing her—flamboyant pink hair, hitai-ate dangling at her hip—he gave a lewd eyebrow waggle. She ducked around back to avoid any more unwanted attention.

Entering the kitchen, she could hear Yuri’s gruff voice echoing from the front of the shop: “How many? This one? Three of them? Just two? I’m giving you three, you’ll want them.” There was a cacophony of other voices, which she assumed were the customers’ polite, terse attempts to place their orders with Akami. One man in particular sounded like he was berating her, asking her repeatedly if he understood her. 

Throwing up a subtle henge, just enough to tweak her features into more unremarkable territory, she saddled up behind the counter, plucking an apron from the doorway for good measure. She avoided Yuri and Akami’s startled expressions at her appearance and focused on the lagoon of waiting customers. They didn’t question her sudden presence; they pointed happily to bread and cookies, shoved yen into her waiting hands while fielding phone calls from their spouses at home, chiding them about approaching dinnertime. 

When the crowd cleared, she fetched a broom from the back and busied herself with sweeping. Yuri counted money behind the counter and scowled.

“What’s all this, then?” the old woman asked.

“Ninjas can be helpful, too. Not just pains.” She kept her eyes glued to the accumulating pile of breadcrumbs and dirt by her feet. She dropped the henge, and chose not to wink at Yuri’s unmistakable, though contained, pang of fear. 

Yuri huffed and turned back to her counting. “Help is a pain, too. Means you’re going to want something for giving it.”

The cash register chirped as she pushed the neat stacks of bills inside, jotting numbers down on a clipboard. Once she finished, she leaned on the glass display case, sizing the kunoichi up.

“I don’t like you,” the old woman said. “I’ve got no patience for people who beat around the bush.”

Sakura stood up straight, the worn end of the broom pressing into her palm. “Is that why you set me up?”

Yuri didn’t quite flush, but she stayed quiet.

“Why cooperate and incriminate yourself when you could send me off to get killed? That’s what you thought.”

“He’s never killed anybody,” Yuri shot back, but then seemed unsure. 

Sakura responded with a condescending grin.

“Whatever. If he has, it’s none of my business. You’re trouble and he’s trouble. That’s all I know. I sent you off to pester someone of your own kind,” she stormed off toward the kitchen, shoving bodily past Sakura and knocking shoulders. “You wanted to know about Koto, anyways.”

Sakura wasn’t as fast as Sasuke, but she was fast enough to block the doorway before Yuri could stroll through. 

“What did you say?” Sakura asked.

The old woman fumed. “Stupid, stupid ninja girl. You think you can come up in my shop and push me around?” Yuri raised her hand as if to strike Sakura, but the kunoichi easily rebuffed her.

“Why would the man in that cabin know anything about Koto?” Sakura asked. Yuri was plainly frightened now, taking several steps back.

“I don’t know him. Okay! I don’t know that lurking, weird idiot. Never met him. All I know is when Koto started acting up, shutting down around us, he would leave before we opened and come home covered in bruises. We paid a neighbor to keep an eye on him one day—a pretty penny for an old wretch like me, mind you, so don’t say I never did nothing—and that black-haired fellow came jumping out of the trees like a damned monkey.”

Sakura stared, knowing there was more. 

“I almost confronted him . Once . Koto came home one night beat to hell. His face was all bruised up. Akami and I, we were frightened. I saw that ninja in the market the next morning, buying groceries like he didn’t have a care in the world.” Her face blistered with agitation. “I wanted to know what the hell my own grandson was getting up to. Koto refused to talk about him. He pretended like he didn’t even exist. Like we were making him up. When I saw him in the market, I almost clobbered him over the head with my rolling pin. But I—” her voice cracked with emotion. “I couldn’t. The air coming off of him … he felt like pure evil. Who wouldn’t be with eyes that black? I could tell he was a ninja, too. Something about the way he walked. Menacing.” 

Yuri crossed her arms, finding her conviction again and puffing up to Sakura. “You said it yourself, this morning. This is a civilian village. We don’t need ninja kinds around here, stirring up trouble. So, yeah. You came poking around where you weren’t wanted, and I thought maybe I’d get lucky and you and that fellow would rip one another to shreds.” 

The old woman depleted, seeming worn and surprised and relieved, simultaneously, at the deft of her confessions. 

It was Sakura’s turn to fight back her growing fear. She could tell Yuri was omitting some part of the story from the way her eyes roamed uneasily, though she wasn’t sure which. Sakura didn’t think it was the part about Koto and Sasuke, which was the part she most wished to be untrue.

“Koto never said anything about him. Not a word?” Sakura asked. 

“I told you what I know.” Yuri sucked on her teeth and glared.

“If you’re withholding information—”

“What are you gonna do? Blow up my store?” Yuri poked at a fading bruise on her left deltoid, the remnants of her earlier clash with the kusanagi. “Looks like he didn’t take too kindly to you. Maybe I should sick him on you myself. Ninja are just hired murderers, anyway. If I can’t get rid of both of you, I could at least get rid of one. And he doesn’t talk damn near as much.”

The threat was empty, she knew, but real in ways Yuri would never understand. Sakura glanced out the window before turning back to the old woman. She had more to ask, but it was getting dark out. Sasuke would be growing more impatient by the second.  

“Regardless of your feelings toward shinobi, my goal is still to return your grandson to you, safe and sound,” Sakura said. “Do you have any idea where Koto might have gone?”

Yuri hesitated. The creased skin around her comma-shaped eyes sagged. She looked like she’d aged another five years over the course of their conversation. 

“No, I don’t,” Yuri said sadly. “The neighbor who followed him only said he went northwest. He left everything behind, even his shovel.”

“Shovel?” Sakura asked.

Yuri shrugged. “He liked to dig stuff up. Fossils. Shiny rocks. Junk like that. “ She peered around her shoulder to where Akami had begun prepping for tomorrow in the kitchen, completely unaware of the tense exchange outside. 

“I got nothing else for you, Haruno-san. And frankly, if Koto got mixed up in ninja business, he might be better off lost than found.” This time, when Yuri bumped her shoulders, Sakura let her pass without retaliation. 

Sakura strolled out of the bakery, the bell of the front door jingling behind her. Somewhat defeated, she dragged her feet toward the rendezvous point. 

So she had been wrong. Her run-in with Sasuke wasn’t strictly coincidental. He was part of the mission, whether or not she wanted him to be. 

She had essentially bet on the fact that he was irrelevant, nothing more than a stroke of bad luck, to the extent that she’d willingly exposed herself to mortal danger. All for the sake of offering him a reassurance that was unfounded in the end. 

She cursed to herself. The most complicated person she had ever known was now her primary informant. How the hell was she supposed to get intel out of him? Let alone walk away from the conversation with all her limbs intact.

Within the cascade of realizations of how Sasuke’s involvement would change what was required of her, one intrusive thought sprang to the front. Had he really gone on to raise a protégé of his own? Become a mentor? It was so inconceivable that she allowed her a low, ironic chuckle. 

If Koto had been trained by Sasuke directly, he was far more dangerous than her current intel suggested. She’d be going in totally blind. She needed to get word back to Kakashi-sensei about this development, but it would be impossible to do so without incriminating Sasuke, or getting caught by the nukenin himself, redhanded.

Speak of the devil . 

He hadn’t bothered waiting for her to make her way into the forest. He intersected her before she could cross the bridge to the other side of town, motioning for her to follow as they returned the way they came. They leapt through the trees, wasting no time. 

“And?” he asked, stepping in tandem with her.

“She confirmed that the politician fled to Iwagakure,” she said, deliberately focusing on a speck of dirt wedged between her toes. “Apparently he’s quite the bragger.”

She steeled herself for further interrogation when they returned to the cottage, but none came. He retrieved onigiri from the refrigerator for himself and did not acknowledge her bewildered look. 

As he made to move past her, she spluttered: “So what? Suddenly you’re all aggro’d out?”

He continued into the hallway, apparently retiring for the evening, with the same curt, passing comment as earlier: “Don’t do anything stupid.” 

Sakura had no idea what to make of his behavior. Animosity sans violence. It was like a switch flipped. Not that she was complaining; she was beyond exhausted, brain and body. But still. What gives?

She stood dumbfounded for several minutes before succumbing to the madness and spreading her bedroll onto the tatami floor. 

As far as the mission was concerned, it was obvious she would have to keep Sasuke in the dark. To get close to the hunter without standing in the path of the arrow. Something that sounded much easier than it would be in actuality.

Outlandish strategies floated through her tired mind. She could attempt to capture him, torture him for information, give him a taste of his own medicine. No, too gory.

She could call for reinforcements and risk an all-out battle. He’d intercept me right away.

She could hightail it toward Konoha and hope to intercept a squadron of Leaf shinobi before Sasuke caught up with her. He’d outrun me in an instant.

She could hightail it to the Hidden Grass and hope they had more to gain from capturing him than her. See above .

She could find a magical time reversal jutsu that made it to where none of this ever happened? 

Each plan crumbled helplessly under its own futile weight the moment it was thought up.

Surrendering slowly to the exhaustion humming through her body, the wildest, most unhinged idea crept quietly through her thoughts.

She could let him in. 

The idea was so ridiculous she almost rolled her eyes beneath her shut lids. 

But she had befriended him once before, hadn’t she? Regardless of how resentfully he’d assimilated to her company as a teammate. They had been children together. They became ninja together. That meant something . It had to. Despite his cruelty on the battlefield, she kneeled before his and Naruto’s broken bodies and healed them with her very own hands. He had apologized. 

Thanks. Maybe next time .

She could learn his secrets.

Espionage was espionage. Kunoichi, especially, were taught that sometimes the path to victory was not carved by fists. She had learned to use her body and mind in more than one way. Though she doubted it would come to that. 

Although. He was a man. A lonely, awful man that the girl in her would always love, but a man nonetheless. 

Slipping into sleep, she hoped, pithily, that she was spared enough time to dream up a better solution.

Whatever strategy she landed on, she would do it. She would seize the opportunity for what it was. Let the mission run its course. And then—she would forget. 

Sasuke would make sure of it.

Notes:

This chapter would not end. I hope y’all enjoyed it! Reviews are always appreciated.

Chapter 4

Notes:

A/N: If you’re returning to this story as a previous reader, pretty please start from the beginning. It’s been completely rewritten. Thank you in advance :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

The night left Sasuke with nothing but time to think. The hours crept by while the moon shone insistently through the thin fabric of shut curtains. All the while Sasuke lay uncovered, molding his scattered thoughts until they became something whole. By dawn he had a plan fully formed. A pill smooth enough to swallow, even if it went down bitter.

He suspected that, for Sakura, it would go down by force.

He hadn’t slept a single minute. From his bedroom to the washroom he stepped lightly, procuring supplies from the cabinet beneath the sink. When he’d gone out the afternoon before to purchase them, it had been barely more than an impulse, formed on the edge of a claustrophobic insanity, an idea for how to get as far away from the present reality as possible. 

Overnight, amongst the rolodex of awful options, it became the most viable choice. It was the best option, he knew, regardless of how bizarre the method might seem.

He swept the washroom floor and moved toward the kitchen, paying no mind to the kunoichi still sleeping in the center of the living room. He neither amplified nor quieted his steps. His moves were deliberate, confident. She made no motion when he emptied the dustpan into the trash, but at the smell of warming breakfast, Sakura stirred.

In his periphery he could tell she was feigning composure. Unhurried, she sat upright with her back to him, working her way through a series of stretches, re-rolling her sleeping mat into a tight cylinder and tucking it into the corner of the room. 

The façade shattered when she faced him. He was spooning fresh rice into a bowl when he heard a small, pained whine fall from her. 

“Um, Sasuke,” she said, balking. “What the—did you … lose a bet? In the middle of the night?”

He paused, briefly, struggling to separate egg white from yolk; he’d woken to rigid swelling throughout his wrist. His fingers were so numb they hardly retained any dexterity. It’d made his earlier task unexpectedly challenging. 

The yolk split before it hit the rice. He covered the golden ooze with too much soy sauce and sighed. “If you’re referring to my hair, yes. I cut it.”

“With what? Your teeth?”

“Kunai.” His attempt to carry his breakfast to the bistro table was futile; his wrist screamed at the weight. He hugged the bowl between his forearm and stomach instead. 

She followed him as if hypnotized—no. As if possessed.

“It looks …” she continued to gape, falling into a fit of half-laughs. “I mean it’s so uneven . Did you do it with the lights off? I’m not sure it’s ethical to let you be seen in public like this, Sasuke. You look—”

“All that matters is that I’m unrecognizable.” He chewed his breakfast and glared. "You're talking. Too much." 

“Are you wearing contacts?” she indulged in a true laugh this time. Disbelieving, she ambled back toward the kitchen, rapping her fist against the wood counter. “You really have become a new level of paranoid. Hazel is definitely not your color, by the way.”

Her change in demeanor was jarring. Compared to the night before, Sakura was almost—relaxed. Clattering came from the cabinets as Sakura retrieved her own bowl, muttering under her breath. She noticed him watching her as she fixed herself a serving of tamago kake gohan and hoisted herself onto the counter to eat. 

“What?” She began shoveling the food unceremoniously into her mouth. “Prisons are required to feed their inmates.”

This argument was not worth having. He ignored her and turned back to his breakfast.

“Seriously,” she said after a few minutes, “what is this about?”

Sasuke took his time. He savored each morsel of remaining rice, plucking the last grains individually into his mouth, biding his time until their temporary calm ended. How annoying that it fell on him to become the catalyst.

He pushed his empty bowl across the table and folded his hands beneath his chain. 

“Because,” he said, shutting his eyes in preparation for the incoming explosion. “I’m accompanying you for the remainder of the mission.”

 

---

 

Since she was little, Sakura had daydreamed of Sasuke many times, in many situations. However, among these scenarios in which Sakura crossed paths with Sasuke—where they were forced into such close proximity that she could feel the heat radiating off his skin—fixing his botched haircut with a pair of miniature bandage scissors did not make the list.

“Stay still.” He sat facing her in the grass. The sky was overcast, smeared by gossamer gray clouds, which made the towering kudzu surrounding Sasuke’s cottage tint the backyard with an emerald veneer. She repositioned his head using only her fingertips so he was dead center in her view. She tried to rationalize that it wasn’t awkward. She had touched him before, healed him—hugged him, even!—but this dynamic felt entirely foreign.

“Can you not look at me like that?” she said, avoiding the sight of his fake golden irises. “It’s creeping me out.”

“Just get it over with it.” Unspoken but implied was that she was the one who insisted on saving the general sanctity of his hair, anyway. If I travel with you while you look like that , we will do the opposite of avoiding attention .

She started by snipping off the rogue, six-inch strand dangling from the back of his head like a pull string. Around his ears he had cut just shy of the scalp. She did her best to blend it with the shaggier top. There was a section on his crown that looked about half as bad as the rest, so she used that as a guide, trying very hard not to allow his stoic face to distract her. She had trimmed Sai’s hair before. If she focused only on the color and texture, she could pretend it was him seated beneath her, and that her bubbling anxiety was because she’d gone a little overzealous with the scissors. 

Finished, she stepped back and cocked her neck. She managed to keep some semblance of Sasuke’s regular bangs, though now they barely brushed his cheekbones. If anything his hair was spikier  without the additional gravity, like someone had affectionately ruffled it with the palm of their hand. He was still beautiful, obviously, which peeved her. The sort of good looks she and the other nurses at the hospital would whisper about in the breakroom, if he’d been a normal patient. But he was not recognizably so—not Uchiha beautiful. 

“You look less insane,” she said.

He regarded her stonily when she rearranged herself to sit across from him, making a come-hither gesture. “If it’s left as is you’ll be useless to me. I can tell you’re in pain.”

“Hn.” Sizing her up, he proffered his purpling wrist. “Even with these things in, my eyes work perfectly.” It was an indirect threat. 

“Good,” she said, snipping away the layers of gauze. Prodding with chakra-cloaked fingertips, she noted the bones’ embryonic healing stages were well under way, though he’d splinted it imprecisely. It was healing at the wrong angle. 

“I’ll need to reset it,” she said, a little too much joy in her tone.“This will hurt.”

Of course, when Sasuke had unveiled his plan at breakfast earlier that morning, she fought back. She had been tempted to bang her forehead into the wall repeatedly until she woke up in hopes it was all an elaborate, terrible dream. But he was perfectly serious.

“I can’t trust you. You can’t trust me,” he had said. His eyes were still closed at this point, having endured her rant about how twisted and asinine he was. “As you pointed out yesterday, continuing to fight will lead to our mutually assured destruction, and, more than likely, at least one of our deaths.” She silently dared him to clarify who exactly would be the singular death in that case, but he did not. 

“You are obligated to report all that you’ve seen to the Hokage. Even with the jutsu you’ve mentioned—which I’ve yet to verify is real—I’m not so naive as to think that once your mission is complete you’ll return here for the sheer purpose of permitting me to wipe your memory. That you would willingly surrender your mind to me without an imminent threat to your mortality would be beyond foolish—it would be martyrdom.” He peeled his eyes open to monitor her fluctuating expression. “Letting you leave now, with no incentive to keep your word save for threats to the dobe, which go without saying, would be equivalent to cutting off my remaining limbs. If I accompany you, these worries go away. You complete your mission and fulfill your duty. I see firsthand your mission is irrelevant to me. We move on.”

He fully faced her now, leaning his half-amputated arm against the table. “It’s the best way,” he said, setting his face into the blankest possible slate. 

“The best way?” she repeated, almost snarling. “So your plan is to babysit me. Have you lost your mind? And if we’re attacked, then what? What’s your contingency plan if you get caught in the crossfire? If I’m seen near your Susanoo, none of this matters.”

“I’m not interested in helping you complete your mission, but I won’t allow myself to become a liability. I’ll refrain from using recognizable jutsus. If you die by another’s hand along the way, that can’t be helped.”

“You are such a sanctimonious asshole.” She spoke as if she were infusing every word with acid. 

Sasuke noticed the egg yolk from her breakfast had hardened into a gelatinous goo along the length of her chopsticks, sticking out from the bowl like two javelins. As the minutes crawled on he watched its golden chrysalis solidify. Meanwhile Sakura grew quiet, focused on a point far beyond him.

Her normally animated face settled into an expression Sasuke recognized. It was the exact look that had been reflected in the mirror while he crudely shore fistfuls of hair and listened to them slush against the linoleum. Disbelief. Numbness. Resignation. 

When she finally spoke, she was soft. “How are we going to get away with this?”

He blinked. “The mission is pure reconnaissance. A henge would be too easily detectable, so I altered—”

“I don’t mean the fucking haircut, Sasuke,” she said. She gestured to their general surroundings. “I mean this. All of this . I spent half of yesterday with your sword on my neck. We’ll be increasing the danger exponentially just by traveling together. Besides the point that your plan requires that we actually work with one another, and you—I can’t even—” she bit her lip and shook her head, falling quiet once more. 

If he thought it would get them any closer to a solution, he would’ve unleashed his rage at that moment. Berated her for clinging to the concept of a silver lining when their future currently looked akin to a tug of war for survival. He wished he could pry his clenched jaws apart and scream, ask her if she considered how this might qualify as his own brand of hell. As if he, too, wasn’t paralyzed at the thought of risking his new peace just to end up with more blood on his hands. 

She continued to say nothing. As far as he was concerned, that was concession enough. 

She didn’t look up when he gathered their bowls, hers only half eaten, turning the sink on full blast. “Start packing.”

 

---

 

If he were confronted, the Rokudaime would’ve denied the implication that he was hiding. It wasn’t Kakashi’s fault that the paperwork in his office piled so high as to form a labyrinth., or that he was more productive when lying down amongst the piles. Nor was it relevant that he was double fisting his Hokage paperwork with a well-worn volume of Icha Icha . Time and time again he insisted to Shizune: a productive Hokage was one with balanced priorities. 

He considered himself lucky if more than half an hour passed without interruptions on any given day. Normally, by now, Naruto would’ve barged in demanding Kakashi stop slacking off on their Hokage-to-be training, but this week he was away at Mount Myōboku in the custody of the sage toads. Shizune and Shikamaru were also frequent drop-ins, followed by mounds of paperwork (former) or new intelligence (latter).

Today’s interruption was more unusual, and arrived with a small pop .

“Hokage-sama? Am I intruding?”

Perched on a pile of mission reports just beyond his right shoulder, leaving behind a damp welt, was a small white slug with a streak of teal blazed down her back. Her upper tentacles bobbed gently, as if she were waving at him, though Kakashi knew she was scenting the air.

“Of course not, Lady Katsuyu.” He rested the open copy of Icha Icha on his chest. “Are you here on Sakura’s behalf?”

“Yes sir. Sakura-san asked me to relay updates on her position. She is moving out of Grass country and into the Land of Earth. She’s asked if you could send advance notice to the Tsuchikage of her arrival in two days. ”

“She certainly wastes no time . . .” Kakashi hummed, thinking. “Kurotsuchi is expecting the visit, but I’ll send a note. Has Sakura made contact with the thieves?”

“Not yet,” Katsuyu squeaked. “Her sources indicated that they were last seen closer to Iwagakure.”

“Odd. The Tsuchikage seemed to think the group was on the run, though she didn’t say where to. Sounds like they decided to stick around instead. Hopefully Sakura will cross their path soon.” He sat up, scratching beneath his headband. “Anything else of note, Lady Katsuyu?”

Katsuyu rose up off the paper, bowing gently. “No sir. Sakura-san seems to be in good health.”

He was weaving in and out of the paper towers, making his way toward his desk. He couldn’t remember—was it the Tsuchikage or the Mizukage who was allergic to dogs? He wanted to send Pakkun as a liaison, but it wouldn’t look good if he sent the pug and sent a world leader sneezing fits.

“Although . . .” Katsuyu chimed in, and Kakashi ducked his head back around a paper tower.

“What was that, Lady Katsuyu?”

“I did notice a small anomaly,” Katusyu said, her body gently squelching as she crawled toward him to climb onto his outstretched palm. “I smelled another strong chakra in her presence.”

Kakashi straightened and held Katsuyu at eye level. “What was the proximity?”

“Close. They would’ve crossed paths, but the person was not with her when she summoned me. It was similar to a fingerprint, like it left a smudge on her.”

“A smudge?”

“Sakura-san did not appear concerned, but I thought it might be of note, as you said. It did not smell malicious.” How something could smell malicious, Kakashi was uncertain, but he took the reassurance for what it was. 

“Thank you, Lady Katsuyu.” His navy mask shifted as he smiled. “Please keep an eye on her for me, and let me know if anything else seems off.”

“Yes, sir.” With that, Katsuyu disappeared, leaving behind her own—well, smudge. Kakashi wiped it on the seat of his pants and reached for Icha Icha once again, only for the door to slam open, making way for Shizune and another armful of paperwork. 

 

---

 

Sakura knew she was burning good daylight by procrastinating their departure, and she relished in it. A not-insignificant part of her protested the fact that her lowkey mission had quickly evolved into the reunion of her nightmares. She took her sweet time repacking her travel pack, ignoring the sensation of Sasuke boring impatient holes into her skin. She insisted they stop in the market for supplies—she was out of food and bandages—and perused the aisles while Sasuke brooded on a nearby rooftop. 

By the time they crossed the border into the Land of Earth, dusk was approaching. The lush greenery of Grass country dwindled into craggy outcroppings of rocks, occasionally interrupted by thickets of red-bloomed andromeda and curling warabi. Sakura’s neck burned from the mix of heat and aridity. Although Sasuke didn’t complain, she was certain he wasn’t any more immune; when they passed a rare patch of hinoki cypress tall enough to offer shade, he signaled for them to halt.

“We’ll stop here for the night,” he said, discarding his pack against the trunk of the largest tree. “Pitch the tents.”

“And you’ll make the fire?” she asked.

He glanced at her impassively.

She pointed to her lips and blew a raspberry, imitating his gōkakyū no jutsu. His eyes narrowed in response.

“What? Did that not look accurate? It felt accurate.” she chided. 

He was beside her in an instant, though he drew no weapon. She could faintly smell how the heat played against his skin. As he leered down at her she noticed the tips of his new, shorter hair clung lightly to his forehead, adhered by sweat. A tiny, shallow, primal voice in the back of her mind unhelpfully pointed out that it suited him. 

“You seem too comfortable,” he said. “Do I need to remind you that your life is at stake?” 

“We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. Surely not all of it has to be spent silent or moping.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t. There’s also training.” He was close enough that she could see his right eye darken slightly, the golden contact tinting crimson as his Sharingan spun underneath. “You can start by showing me the jutsu.”

She bristled, sporting a sour frown. “I’d prefer to eat first.”

“I didn’t ask your preferences.” He folded his legs under himself and sat. When she made no motion to join him on the ground, he lazily unsheathed the kusanagi, laying it in the fine dirt beside him. “Sit.”

Grumbling, she folded herself and sat in a heap. “You could ask , you know. Didn’t your parents teach you manners?” Regret pinged through her as soon as the words left her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“Show me the seals,” he said, pitching forward over his crossed legs. 

“It doesn’t quite work like that.” At his pinched look of impatience, she rubbed the grit from her eyes and sighed. “First of all, the hand seals are made jointly. Rather than unilateral, the flow of chakra in this jutsu is reciprocal—you’ll need my body to be receptive. Consent matters, or else your chakra will read as parasitic, and—bad things happen. The seals are a small part of that.”

Instantly, he held out his hand, hellbent on obstinance. She scowled. 

“Horse,” she muttered, and he matched his hand to hers, their knuckles interlocking and forefingers meeting at the apex. “Then dragon, boar—” their hands inverted, wrists twisting until the edges of their palms touched. She noticed the corner of his mouth twinge. “Is it still sore today?”

“Next,” he said, eyes trained on their conjoined hands.

She slid her fist beneath his forearm, and he responded by resting a flat, rigid palm on top before she could call out “dog.” They finished with ram, his middle and ring fingers draped over her knuckles. She withdrew almost immediately, as if the contact burned. “For the remainder, you’ll maintain contact by keeping your fingers on my temples as you cast.” 

Sasuke moved toward her and she flinched, inching back simultaneously. “I’ll have to demonstrate first. It’s not just about the seals.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said, grabbing hold of her shoulder. She gripped his wrist and gave a warning squeeze. His muscles beneath seized in response. Definitely sore. I’ll need to take another look.

“You absolutely will not,” she said. “This is medical ninjutsu. Lack of precision means death.” 

“My chakra control is more than adequate.”

“Yes, oh star student, but if you’ll recall I was top of our class in this regard. Application is important here.” Reluctantly, when she was at least half certain he wouldn’t pin her, she released her suffocating hold on his wrist and gestured toward his temples. “It’s tactile. I can’t show you unless—”

“Erasing my memories was not part of the deal, Sakura.”

“It’s not my fault if you can’t read between the lines.” He didn’t budge. Although she knew it was somewhat childish, she began clawing at the fingers latched onto her shoulder. “Really, Sasuke? You’ll have to maintain eye contact the entire time to copy it, anyway. If you start feeling suspicious you can just knock me out.”

“Start?” he mocked.

She pinched at the skin of his knuckles hard enough to draw blood. “Would you quit with the manhandling?” He complied, rubbing a thumb over the dent left by her nails. She was approaching her boiling point. “Sasuke, if you can’t learn to trust me, even a little bit, we might as well just kill each other now. How on earth have you made it this far in life without learning that sometimes the best thing to do is shut up and listen? ” 

He was good at the shutting up part, she mused bitterly, as he took several minutes to place that expertise on display. She was so sick of this routine. At this point she’d starve to death while locked in a staring contest with him. 

When her thoughts began to drift and the growling in her stomach increased to the point of audibility, Sasuke finally relented. “How do you want me?”

She almost blushed at the phrasing but shook it off. “Whatever is most comfortable. You can stay seated upright, or rest your head on my—”

“I’m fine.” He relaxed his posture to lean slightly over his crossed legs, toward her. “Tell me what to do.”

“Right,” she sighed. Scooting closer, she hesitated before pushing his bangs out of the way, resting her fingertips on each of his temples. “You’ll feel me working my way through. Try not to resist.”

 

---

 

Sasuke so badly wished there was a way he could copy the jutsu without watching. He was wary of where Sakura’s skin brushed his—her fingers, yes, but also her knees, which were pressing against his covered shins. Her touch was sickeningly warm, and he was exhausted. He wanted to shut his eyes and surrender headfirst into the feeling. 

Sakura had a habit of crinkling the bridge of her nose while focusing, he noticed. She made a similar face when she healed him and Naruto at the Valley of the End. At the time he assumed the sight of them disgusted her, that she had finally found it within herself to hate him, despite the panicked confession she’d made to stall their inevitable battle. 

It was just as well, he thought, pain grinding out of his remaining arm as he remembered—he’d maimed Naruto, the only person who’d been a true friend to both of them, and again it fell to Sakura to sop up the mess. Surely she understood as much as he did that all of this would be easier if she cast him out as a criminal, as unforgivable, the way the rest of the world had done.

“Alright, we’ll begin,” she said, staring at him but also through him, burrowed somewhere deep in his brain. “The more emotional the memory, the more its signature in your mind grows, and the easier it becomes to erase. Pick something intense but not overtly precious. Remember that anything you state from this point on will disappear from memory, so speak carefully.”

Although he made no physical indication, he wanted to laugh—he’d decided from the moment she described the procedure in full that he would test its parameters. Itachi counseled him repeatedly at Ryūchi Cave: every jutsu had a weakness. 

In rehearsed, wooden language, he described an unremarkable day from years before, when he was still under Orochimaru’s tutelage. “I was in the eastern hideout. I was summoned to the lab. An experiment had failed. He ordered me to incinerate the body.” He suspected this memory would shock Sakura, which helped provide cover on his behalf, but this was a single day among dozens where he was commanded to do Orochimaru’s dirty work. “The corpse had been a young boy from Kirigrakure. He was eleven. He was . . . light. In my arms. When the job was done, I swept his ashes into a pile at the corner of the compound." 

While he spoke, he could indeed feel the jutsu muscling its way through his senses. It had a strange physicality, not inherently destructive in the way he was taught to wield power. It was more akin to a massage, or no, no, it was changing again—like a glazing. As he spoke the memory became increasingly fuzzy, varnished by apple green light, charged by an inkling of forgiveness that didn’t originate from him. This must’ve been Sakura’s chakra. Like a paintbrush, she was blocking out the memory’s edges—trying to, at least, though it had never been so sharp to begin with—to coax it into a gentler picture. 

The flow of chakra trickled out and she withdrew her arms. She was awful at disguising her emotions; he could tell she suspected him of interference.

“Try to access the memory again. Can you recite it?” she asked, lightly panting. So in addition to control, the jutsu required significant exertion of one’s reserves—noted.

The memory was, in fact, much more difficult to piece together. Rather than his actions, his mind was preoccupied by superficial, implanted feelings of grace and, on a more granular level, mercy. He could no longer remember who he’d cremated, though he knew, logically, that’s what had occurred. It would’ve been the same as all the others. 

“I can’t picture it in the same way, but some of it is intact. I mostly feel what you’ve inserted there,” he said. 

She cocked an eyebrow, leaning away to grab her canteen. “You made that much harder than necessary.”

He ogled her as she drank deeply from her canteen. She wiped her damp mouth with the back of her hand, laughing darkly. “I told you to pick something intense. Instead you chose something that was barely a blip on your radar.”

Interesting . His Sharingan was still spinning, cataloguing her every word. “How can you tell?”

She rolled her eyes, taking another swig. “It’s like playing Whac-a-Mole, but the mole is an earthworm,” she said. “Except I’m playing with a scalpel, not a hammer, which means in addition to making it more difficult, you also made it more dangerous for yourself.”

“So, when I’m in your head, I’ll be searching for a mole?”

“No,” she said gruffly. “I’ll have to give you a target so big that you can’t miss. You’ll be looking for an elephant.”

He smirked. “Fair enough.” 

She looked at him askance, as if she were finding the courage to speak what was on her mind. “Did you really . . .” her swallow was heavy and dry despite the fact that she’d drained the whole of her water supply. “How often did you have to do that for it to become a chore?”

“Often,” he said flatly. He ignored her full-body shudder and held out his hand, positioned in half of the horse seal. “Your turn.”

She recoiled like the number of bodies he’d burned was written on his palm. Gently, she closed his hand into a slack fist. “That’s still a ways off. First, you’ll have to learn how to heal simple things. You have Yin release, yes?” He nodded. “Healing is mainly done through Yang release.”

“The Rinnegan allows me to pick up a new nature transformation easily.”

Scanning her exposed limbs, he spotted a patch of road rash where her pastel kneepads had rubbed raw against her quadricep. His hand flared with a bubble of chakra, an intensely saturated dark green. He cupped the wound, muttering: “Kabuto showed me once before—”

“ Sasuke—” she yelped, pulling back her knee and flipping onto all fours, swinging her untouched leg into a roundhouse kick that sent Sasuke straight onto his back. 

Temper flaring, he used the momentum to roll over himself backwards and land in a crouch, the kusanagi already pointed behind him, ready to strike. Sakura mirrored his stance, the fist not supporting her weight reared back and charged for a chakra-laced punch. Then, above her right knee, he saw it: his handprint, branded into her charred skin, flesh boiling, the color of black cherries. The sight of it made him lightly nauseous.

She set her teeth on edge. “You are not ready . The Rinnegan will speed up the process, not make it instantaneous.” She was huffing, clearly pained, but her leather gloves creaked as her fist tightened. “Put down your weapon.” 

To both of their mild surprise, he complied, sheathing the kusanagi and rising to his full height. Slowly, Sakura stood as well, quietly hissing when she extended her burnt leg. Delicately, she prodded the perimeter of the injury, assessing it. 

‘Third degree. It didn’t penetrate the muscle,” she sighed, limping toward the large tree trunk where their belongings rested. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be pitching my tent for the night. You take first watch. I’ll settle for a protein bar dinner, so don’t wait up.”

Shouldering her pack, she glowered at him. “And, I quote, try not to do anything else stupid in the meantime. We’ll head out at sunrise.”

She disappeared around the base of the hinoki cypress, leaving Sasuke to listen to the sounds of metal tent poles scraping together. He built the fire and heated his rations, eating with a slow disinterest, but did not see Sakura again until she came to relieve him several hours later. Even then, she sat across from the fire without a word. For once, neither of them had anything left to say.

Notes:

I feel like this is the chapter where stuff starts to really pick up plot-wise. Hopefully y'all are interested in the jutsu drama. To quote my beta reader, "the vibe is currently 'what could possibly go wrong.'"

Comments are lovely and much appreciated! Thanks so much to everyone whose left kudos so far <3

Chapter 5

Notes:

A/N: Reminder that if you’re an old reader returning to this story, please start from the beginning. This fic has been entirely rewritten, so if you try to pick up where you left off, you’ll be lost!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Sakura learned to keep her distance. It took her two hour-long sessions for a full heal to set in, one that wouldn’t leave her with any noticeable hyperpigmentation from the burn. Shōkyo no jutsu was all well and good until she became permanently scarred. She needed to take care to ensure that any marks Sasuke left behind were exclusively mental in nature—otherwise, there was no guarantee she could make them disappear.

At this rate, she wasn’t entirely confident she’d be able to make the mental scars entirely disappear, either—not if he insisted on challenging her at every turn.

She surmised that Sasuke had learned his lesson, too. Specifically, he accepted that when it came to medical ninjutsu, hubris got him nowhere quickly. 

For their remaining 36 hours of travel to Iwagakure, he didn’t speak unless spoken to, or unless he had a logistical suggestion—where they should pitch camp, how frequently to time their breaks, who should locate the nearest water source (this last task fell almost always on him, since he could send Garuda scouting). She did notice him practicing medical ninjutsu in his tent at night, the green light casting his body in silhouette. 

Sakura had yet to visit the newly constructed Iwagakure. Encased by a continuous, circular wall of rock many stories high, the city rose like a burial mound from the canyon plains. The only indication that humans lived inside was a network of large red and silver pipes that snaked over the village walls. She assumed these funneled water in and sewage out, though she couldn’t see any storage towers from their vantage point on the ground.

Approaching the southernmost gate, there weren’t many options available for tactical cover. Beyond the entry point she could see a kind of moat, though water had been substituted for rows of chestnut trees, their bushy tops waving in the wind. 

Their position was more exposed than she anticipated; watch towers were carved into the surface of the rock wall. Even this far off, she assumed they had been spotted, their number and distance documented by whoever was on guard. They were far enough away that their features would’ve been rendered hazy by the heat shimmer, but they would need to regroup before getting any closer.

Sasuke deduced as much without her having to say so. They were walking beside one another, each too cagey to trust the other to lead. When he drifted toward a patch of sagebrush, she followed.

Grunting once, he stopped and slipped off his pack behind the relative protection of the bushes. He dug around until he procured the scroll he’d been searching for. Sealed inside were a gray flak vest, forearm guards, and a white ceramic mask. The mask was painted with broad, purple strokes that mimicked the markings of a bat. 

Sakura grimaced, her lip curling in distaste. “Seriously? Impersonating ANBU? Where does it end with you?”

He shrugged. “I travel prepared.”

Unshy, he removed the black cloak and black long-sleeve he normally wore and stripped down to a mesh cut-off undershirt that clung to his shoulders. Muscles hardly made Sakura bashful—she was constantly around half-naked shinobi at the hospital—but her cheeks burned seeing the remnants of his left arm, blunted at the crook of his elbow. Aside from the initial healing, when it was a mass of bloody pulp, she hadn’t seen the arm unwrapped in years. The skin was relatively smooth, though warped by scars where the amputation occurred. There was still a visible, faded pink seam where she had fused him back together. 

He zipped himself into the vest and secured his prosthetic. There was an obvious line where his bicep and the polymer arm connected, which he covered with wrapped bandages. Black gloves and metal forearm protectors helped mask the texture. One brief, single-handed seal later and the signature red spiral tattoo appeared on his lateral deltoid. 

“Why not just henge the whole arm?” she asked. 

“It would be a waste of chakra. Any sensory type worth their salt would notice.” He sealed away his personal items and repacked the scroll. 

“Only if they know to look,” she said.   

“Hn.” Putting on his pack again, she watched the movement of the left arm as it was fed through the strap, how obviously nonfunctional it was below the bicep if she paid close enough attention. Sasuke probably didn’t require reminding of that fact. She had to admit that in the full get up he was wholly unrecognizable, a Konoha black ops like any other. 

At the entrance, the shinobi on guard skimmed Sakura’s identification. He was a short, burly man with a weak chin covered in weaker facial hair. He spared them a cursory glance before handing them off to another guard, who escorted them to the Tsuchikage’s building. It was a vertical, concentric tower of gold and glass in the center of the village. Parallel solar panels arched along the tower’s backside like a pair of angel wings. It was an odd juxtaposition to the village buildings they passed, which were colorful and domed, mushroom-like. 

They followed the escort up several series of spiral staircases, squinting under the harsh fluorescent lighting. Once they reached the top floor, Sakura paused outside of the office door, arresting Sasuke with a smile. 

“Bat-san, you can wait here. No need to intimidate Tsuchikage-sama.” She laid a gentle hand on his good arm. “I’ll be quick.”

Since they had an audience, Sakura knew Sasuke would have no choice but to play along—not unless he wanted to make a scene. Luckily, with the mask, she was blessed to imagine the intensity of his glare rather than witness it. He inclined his head curtly then took his post along the wall.

I’ll be getting an earful for that later. 

Inside the office, Kurotsuchi appeared much the same as she had when Sakura saw her on the battlefield two years ago: her dark hair was cropped close to her square jaw, a determined frown tugging at her thin lips.

“Sakura-san,” she said, rising behind her desk. “You made good time. Kakashi warned me about your punctuality.” 

She bowed before righting herself. “Warned, Tsuchikage-sama?”

“Well. It was written like a warning. He’s usually late to the Kage Summits. I guess he didn’t want me to embarrass myself by being untimely." She circled around to the front of the desk before propping herself against the edge. She was just barely shorter than Sakura, which amused her—she had never met a Kage who was shorter than her before. It made her smile.

Thankfully Kurotsuchi interpreted this as plain friendliness and smiled back. “I’m grateful you came. I’m curious what you’ve been able to find out about the thieves.”

“Not much, I’m afraid. My sources indicated that they may still be lingering nearby. I was able to get some information about the suspected leader, Koto, but I’m not sure how helpful it’ll turn out to be.”

Kurotsuchi sighed. “I was afraid you might say that. Since I pinged Konoha for assistance my shinobi have discovered more information about the technology they’ve taken.”

“They raided an old cave bunker, correct?” Sakura asked, joining her hands at the small of her back.

“Correct. Truthfully, I didn’t even know it was there—I had to ask my grandfather about it.” Sakura remembered the pickle-nosed Ōnoki, how shocked she’d been that a man at his age played such a pivotal role in fighting off Madara, let alone surviving a war. “You’re aware that Iwa . . . struggles with our relationships with other shinobi villages. Lately, tensions with Suna have skyrocketed; the Earth and Wind daimyos appear to have it out for one another. While things have improved with Gaara and I at the helm, they’re still not where I’d like them to be.” Kurotsuchi pinched the bridge of her nose. “In that vein, the thieves stole an artifact from our temperamental past that was meant to stay buried. I suspect they plan to wield it against Suna.”

“What does it do?”

“Well, it’s never been used. To my grandfather’s understanding it was a failed experiment for a wartime that came too quickly before it was finished. The good news is that despite it being in their possession, it’ll take time for the thieves to get the technology up and running, if they can make it work at all,” she said, reclining farther against the edge of her desk. “It was designed as a weapon against the Third Kazekage.”

“He originated the Iron Sand technique?”

Kurotsuchi nodded. “This— machine , you could say—was meant to counteract his Iron Sand with iridium. Iridium deposits used to run under the Old City, but they’ve long since dried up. Since it’s heavier than iron, and substantially less magnetic, the idea was that it could be wielded against Iron Sand without the risk of the Third Kazekage overtaking control with his Magnet Release.”

“Do you think they intend to use it against Gaara?” Sakura asked, furrowing her brows. She couldn’t imagine anyone in their right mind attempting to take down the current Kazekage on his home territory, but they were foolhardy idiots in every era, she guessed.

“I’m not sure what else they would have in mind.” Kurotsuchi cracked a smile. “If you’re thinking that their plan is stupid, I’m inclined to agree with you.”

“Yes, but—Tsuchikage-sama, why not just tell Gaara yourself?”

Here, the Tsuchikage’s expression fell. “As I said, the Earth and Wind daimyos don’t see eye to eye. I’ve been under directives to cease communication with Suna for weeks now, pending an ongoing border dispute in the southwest. I’ve got an encampment of hundreds of shinobi there as we speak. They’re sitting ducks until the daimyos call it quits or the situation comes to blows. I don’t harbor any ill will toward the Kazekage, but my hands are tied.” She motioned casually to Sakura’s hitai-ate. “Konoha and Suna are strong allies. If the message comes from you . . .”

Sakura nodded. “I understand.” Unspoken but implied was that if Sakura bore the message, Gaara was less likely to suspect that Iwagakure was behind the prospective attack. 

Kurotsuchi perked up, reaching around to grab a thin folder off her desk. “There is one more complicated element, I’m afraid.”

The folder held write-ups on four young shinobi. Scanning through, Sakura saw the same photo of Koto that she had received, printed on a paperclipped packet of documents. Her stomach turned as she scanned the biographical information: he was only fourteen, much younger than initially suspected, confirmed to be from the same border town she’d visited. The subsequent pages outlined a list of his prospective abilities.

“He’s a ninja?” Sakura asked, careful to subdue her outright surprise. “My intel had him pinned as a civilian.”

“It appears he’s received training, though it’s unclear from whom,” Kurotuschi said. She squeezed her eyes and shut. “It does get worse, I’m afraid. If you’ll look at the ‘Directives’ section . . .”

As she read, Sakura couldn’t believe her eyes. 

Her mission just became much more complicated.

---

The second Sakura emerged from the Tsuchikage’s office, Sasuke knew something was off. 

First, she was avoiding him. And not in the usual way that she avoided him. As their Iwa escort returned to show them around the village, she was chatty and deferential— Yes, the summertime is so beautiful here, no, I’ve never heard of the annual gem festival, would you tell me more about it? —while rigidly avoiding any interaction with Sasuke. Experimentally, as they weaved through the busy streets, he’d cut a turn too closely to see how she’d react to their brushing shoulders, but she sidestepped him just in time.

Second, her chakra was roiling with anxiety. If she were in private, he imagined she would be curled into a ball, nervously picking at her fingernails.

Third, she paid little heed to his concerns about being exposed, which he’d vocalized ad nauseum. When the escort suggested they stop for lunch at a famous okonomiyaki stall, Sakura agreed; again, she did not turn to ask his opinion. As the shinobi and Sakura chatted, mixing and grilling the batter, dousing the pancake in ribbons of sauce, Sasuke begrudgingly removed his ceramic mask and quietly ate his portion. He didn’t even like okonomiyaki, though he couldn’t be sure whether or not she remembered.

To aggravate matters further, the escorting shinobi—who Sasuke observed was a bit of a peacock—swirled his chopsticks dangerously close to Sasuke’s exposed face. “Aha. Quite the pretty boy, aren’t you, Bat-san? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man with such feminine eyelashes.” Sakura had the audacity to snicker. 

Lastly, when their escort dropped them off at the inn, Sakura seemed to be actually considering the receptionist’s offer of separate rooms. Clearly, the showboating around the Rock village had inflated her sense of self-importance to the point that she forgot who, precisely, was in charge here. Sasuke interrupted the receptionist’s prattling about weekday pricing to remind her.

“Sakura-san,” he said evenly, encircling her elbow with a vice grip for good measure, “it will be easier to stand guard over a single room.”

“Oh,” the receptionist squeaked, blushing. The simpleton had misinterpreted his meaning. Not that it mattered.

Sakura smiled softly despite the hold he kept on her. “Of course, Bat-san. How judicious of you.”

The receptionist, a middle-aged civilian with a mousy brown ponytail, showed them to their room. It was nothing special: two parallel twin beds, a braided jute rug, a low-lying table and cushions for eating. “Feel free to rearrange the furniture however suits your taste. Housekeeping will put everything back where it belongs,” the woman added, winking at Sasuke, whose visible perturbation was obscured by the mask. Sakura managed to bite her tongue, though he could see her straining to hold back laughter.

Once the receptionist was shown out, Sakura slowly shed her pack and sandals, creeping quietly to sit in one of the floor cushions on the left side of the bedroom. 

“It’s cute,” she said, still not meeting his gaze despite the fact that he’d slipped off the ANBU mask and was looming over her.

“What did the Tsuchikage say?” It would be so much easier to genjutsu the answer out of her, but then they would be back to square one. He unraveled his prosthetic just to give his hands something to do.

She rubbed the back of her neck and groaned. “It’s a shame you don’t have a handle on healing yet, because my neck is killing me.”

“Sakura,” he warned.

She dropped her apathetic charade to scowl at him—she’d been doing this so frequently that he noticed a fine line between her eyebrows was beginning to form. “If I recall correctly, you said you did not intend to help me with my mission. Now you want to be included. Which is it?”

Instead of answering, he tossed the detached prosthesis on the bed and stalked to the restroom. He needed to get a handle on his nerves before he throttled her; the contacts were beginning to itch, anyway, dried out by the mountain air. When he returned Sakura was in the same spot on the ground, though now she was leaning against the wall, eyes shut, her shoulders rolled forward in tiredness.

She cracked one green eye open when he sat down across from her, elbows propped against the low table. He fought back the desire to activate his Sharingan and merely waited.

"You won’t like it,” she said.

He hummed, prompting her to continue.

“The politician is on the move, and he’s not alone. Sounds like he’s hired a ragtag team of ninja kids to escort him.” Sakura reached toward her pack, extracting a small envelope. She handed it over without additional pressing, and, suspiciously, he scanned through the contents: four headshots of four different kids. 

When he shuffled to the last picture, he stalled. She was gauging his reaction, he was sure. He slid the photos back into the envelope and returned it. 

“What do you know about them?” he asked.

“Their names, some minor biographical information. The oldest two are brothers from Kusagakure, seventeen and eighteen. The youngest is only eleven,” she said. She paused, ogling him for a reaction he refused to give. 

Carefully, hesitantly, she continued: “The other one, Koto, is the grandson of that woman. From the bakery.”

Sasuke held her gaze steady. “If you have something to ask, then ask it.”

“Alright,” she said, swallowing loudly. “Do you recognize him?” 

“Yes.” 

She reeled, as if she hadn’t expected him to admit it. “Do you know him?” 

To this he remained mute. A tug in his gut told him that he was wandering directly into a game Sakura had constructed, playing by rules that weren’t yet clear. The further the silence stretched, the more visibly undone Sakura’s composure became.

“I said, ‘Do you know him?’”

Again, he said nothing, instead watching as her eyes tinted a darker, more dangerous shade of green.

“Sasuke,” she rasped, “why does my intel say that kid knows fireball technique?” The hand that had been resting on her knee tightened into a fist. “If there’s another person in that border town who could teach it to him, by all means, point me in their direction.” 

What could Sakura reasonably expect him to say in response? Obviously Sasuke knew the kid, but he wasn’t foolish enough to perjure himself. Compared to the rest of his ailing relationships, one could even argue he knew the kid well, an association he hadn’t regretted until now. 

Koto skipped town almost six months ago; Sasuke hadn’t seen or heard from him since. He forbade himself from keeping tabs. He hadn’t gone through the trouble of severing all his bonds just to nurture some fledgling—though he was aware, deep down, long before Koto’s disappearance, he had allowed it to go too far. 

None of that mattered now, he told himself. Their last conversation had not ended well. Whatever the kid was up to had nothing to do with him. Shinobi were no less culpable than anybody else. He’d taught Koto that much—to lie in the beds he made.

“Answer me,” Sakura said, stealing his focus. 

She didn’t flinch when he appeared in front of her, a kunai point denting the fabric above her heart. If anything she looked disappointed, like she was berating herself for not expecting less. Had he become so predictable?

“I think it’s time I tested your jutsu,” he said. 

Sakura set her jaw. “Just because you’ve been staying up to practice medical ninjutsu at night doesn’t mean you’re ready.”

“Let’s hope I am, for your sake.” His eyes whirled unencumbered. He spotted their full red and lilac glory reflecting against the metal kunai, bouncing fraternal auras of light on the underside of Sakura’s pale chin.

She sighed. The exhale was choppy, made turbulent by fear. “You’ve seen yourself that the jutsu works, Sasuke. Don’t be rash. Just answer—”

“That was before I became implicated.” He held up half of the horse sign. “Call it insurance.”

If his other hand was intact he would’ve forced her hand into the seals himself, but he was cursed to wait as she shakily mimicked his motions, her fingers draped limply across his knuckles. He felt ridiculous pressing his palm to the center of her forehead, and somewhat morbid when he could feel her lightly shivering beneath him. Predictable he might be, but he also hadn’t lost his propensity for terror. It was just as well. 

Her every breath fell heavily across his face, and he could feel sweat pilling against his palm. Sakura was visibly relieved when the chakra emitting from his palm sparked and steadied into a lime green glow.

“Shall we?” he said, increasing the pressure of his hold.

“ Gently ,” she said through clenched teeth, “you’ll use your chakra to scan my brain. Very, very gently.”

Nosing his chakra past his skull, he sensed the bulk of the organ in his mind’s eye. It glowed almost white, gleaming with energy. In his periphery, Sakura continued her instruction. 

“You’re searching for a sort of flicker—something colorful, elastic. The amygdala is like a living pool of emotional memory, so it’ll feel more volatile than the surrounding structures. ” 

Experimentally, the night before, Sasuke had slashed his own ankle and explored the flesh with his chakra before mending the skin back together. He imagined a similar approach here, but finer, like slicing through a steak with only the strokes of a feather. 

As if she could predict his train of thought, Sakura spoke again. “Try not to think of the yourself as excising anything. You’ll be trying to tease the memory out, little by little, rather than cut anything away.” He grunted an acknowledgement.

“I’ll begin now,” she said, looking horrified by her own compliance, like she was reduced to nothing more than a puppet. “The memory will sort of bubble up. It’ll get . . . bigger than what’s around it. Inflated.”

“I understand what bubbles look like Sakura.”

“My brain is in your fucking hands. Spare me the sarcasm,” she spat, fully trembling. Several deep breaths rushed out of her mouth and directly onto his face, the smell of mint and stale okonomiyaki sauce. Whispering, she added in a rush, “I’m sorry, I can’t think of anything else big enough right now.”

And so she began to tell a story he knew well—that night in Konoha, nearly eight years ago, when he left her knocked out on a bench.

Notes:

A/N: This chapter is shorter than normal, but I just couldn’t think of anything more worthy to end on. Hopefully the next one makes up for it.

Also, in case anyone reading is a Boruto purist, I realize it becomes canon during the Time Travel arc that Sasuke suddenly has the ability to wipe people’s memories with Sharingan, but 1) the power scaling in the Naruto universe writ large is so out of control 2) this is Blank Period Sasuke, and in my brain, Blank Period Sasuke does not have that ability! Sakura is genjutsu-resistant anyway, so . . . my house, my rules.

Chapter 6 is already written and will be uploaded by next Wednesday. Reviews are always appreciated.

Chapter 6

Notes:

We're approaching ~intimacy~ territory this chapter, though nothing too crazy yet. I tend to be preoccupied with accurate characterization, hence the slow burn tag. But soon!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Well, Sasuke hadn’t severed her brain stem or blown a hole through her temporal lobe. That was a start.

He withdrew his hands but observed as she completed her own internal assessment, scanning for any notable damage. Though she found none, his execution of the jutsu was far from flawless. She was still able to faithfully recite large chunks of that night aloud without losing the rationale of the memory. His efforts resulted in more of a staccato effect, splicing away every other second instead of wiping her memory in one fluid sweep. It was like a camera snapping a burst of photographs in quick succession, missing milliseconds of action in between every frame. Nor had he managed to erase the worst of it: her pathetic love confession. The paltry ‘thanks’ he mumbled into her hair.

Some aspects were altered or altogether lost, the frequency increasing the closer she drew to the end of the memory, when he must’ve gotten his footing. For example, she couldn’t recall how he knocked her unconscious—had he been able to cast genjutsu without touch even then, when they were so young?—or what side of the street the bench was on, or the exact words he’d responded with after she threatened to defect alongside him.

His expression as he listened to her recitation was typical: flat and unrevealing. Their dynamic fluctuated between deadly and tolerant with such volatility that she was starting to wonder if they’d give each other whiplash. With any luck they could manage some kind of symbiotic coexistence, neither friends nor enemies. Walk away from this mission to live as perfect, oblivious strangers. She told herself she meant it.

“Your chakra flow isn’t consistent enough,” she said once she finished reciting the memory for the second time. “You’ll need to work on streamlining your exertion, otherwise the result is so choppy that I’ll be able to piece it back together.” The emotional memory was also very much present, the desperation from that night lingering in her chest.

“What emotion were you trying to insert into the vacant memory space?” Too much critique would make him bristle, so she phrased it as a question instead. It was a trick she learned after managing her first batch of interns at the hospital.

She expected him to admit that he’d neglected that aspect, but he blinked at her like he was bored by her questions: “I imitated the emotions you described.”

She wasn’t sure if she believed that, but assuming he was telling the truth, that meant her residual heartache was partially imagined. Is that good or bad? Good if it meant her actual emotions had been artificially magnified—progress was progress, she supposed. Bad if it meant Sasuke still thought of her as a lovestruck idiot.

“That’s smart,” she said, swallowing the sarcastic jab on the tip of her tongue. Not so many minutes had passed since he leveled a weapon at her chest. He’d admitted to knowing Koto, which transformed him into a treasure trove of information. Strategically, she would have to play nice. If there was any chance of finishing this mission, she’d need Sasuke’s cooperation. Whatever got her out of this mess as fast as possible.

“But?” he said when she stopped speaking. She really needed to work on masking her emotions.

She pursed her lips. “It’s smart, but not wise. The jutsu is inherently collaborative. You don’t need to stick to the script, per se. It’s designed to leave the patient with a sense of calm. If you become overly preoccupied with preserving the emotion behind the memory, you may end up disorienting them. They’ll still feel the pain of it without knowing why.” She made the triangle with her hands again: collapse.

“The patient being you,” he deadpanned.

“Yes.”

“Hn.” He scratched absently at his amputated arm, the skin irritated from where he’d bound it to the prosthetic with gauze. It was an oddly domestic sight. “What are the rates of complications?”

“Most of the complications were addressed during the trials, but we’ve mainly used it to treat shinobi who’ve become immobilized by their PTSD, so it’s hard to say. I think they’re mostly grateful to be anywhere but where they were.”

It had occurred to her before, but she was reminded as she watched Sasuke fiddle with his missing arm, gaze distant as he digested her answers, how substantially a jutsu like this could have changed his life if it had existed earlier. If, willingly, he cast off his memories of the massacre and retained only the knowledge of Itachi’s love. Who would Sasuke be then? She resisted imagining. When they were young he had sacrificed his spirit for a library of generational pain, shutting out the light to better study its pages. Sometimes Sakura felt the whole of who Sasuke was could be synthesized this way: a man burdened by the knowledge of others’ hurt.

“You promised you could forget everything.” He pointed between the two of them, as if it wasn’t obvious to her what he meant. “If I’m responsible for replacing the memories, how do I know you won’t trace it back to me?”

“I won’t.”

“Beyond your word, Sakura, which means nothing in this instance.”

Under control, she repeated internally, I’ve got this under control. She wouldn’t call for backup. She wouldn’t endanger anyone else, couldn’t bear to trudge back to Naruto again, a white flag dangling around her neck like a noose.

“I can show you better than I can tell you,” she said.

“I prefer hands-on learning.”

Her eyes narrowed. “In that case, maybe you could act like a normal person when you infuse the chakra. Be kind. Empathetic. I doubt I’d suspect you then.”

He scoffed, and the air around him soured into something sadistic. “And if those emotions aren’t at my disposable?”

“I’m sure you’ll manage. You’ve always been so clever.”

“But will you,” he said, cherry and lilac irises glinting, “manage?”

Seeing as his kunai was no longer denting holes into her chest, she took the reemergence of his terrible sense of humor as her cue to leave. She pulled herself up and crossed the room, not dignifying his question with a response.

Outside, early evening was approaching. Sakura hadn’t managed to eke out a single piece of information about Koto, even after letting Sasuke try his hand at the jutsu. They would need to source dinner, configure the least awkward sleeping arrangement, and scrap together an itinerary for tomorrow that didn’t involve beating each other bloody—ideally.

All that, and she was starting to smell. She hadn’t properly washed in days.

She retrieved her change of clothes and toiletries before storming toward the en-suite bathroom, stepping over where he sat on the floor. “I’m showering. I’ll bring back food afterwards.”

“I’ll accompany you,” he said, smirking at the dirty look she shot him. “Wouldn’t want you to make a run for it when I’m beginning to get the hang of things.” God, she hated when he looked at her that way—sprawled supine, propped up on his elbow, conceited and self-satisfied, the arch of his thin, dark brows raised in a dare.

“Careful, Sasuke-kun,” she cooed. She tapped her fingernails against the doorframe. “Your threats are starting to sound an awful lot like flirting.”

That wiped the smug expression right off his face. The slam of the bathroom door punctuated her short laugh.

 

---

 

Sasuke latched the window as she was emerging from the shower, squeezing water out of her hair with a towel. The bird was already out of sight.

He had summoned Buta this time, a chunky sparrowhawk who flew surprisingly fast, having learned that when it came to Sasuke, the quicker he flew, the more grubworms he received upon return. The message Sasuke tied to his ankle was curt, perfunctory; he expected a hasty response. They’d need to get a move on.

His washing was brisker than necessary. In the shower he could indulge in frustration without having to withstand Sakura’s comebacks. Flirting. Flirting. It was an infantile, baffling accusation, spoken for the sheer purpose of pissing him off. Worse, it worked.

The situation had officially grown past what he could handle on his own. Reconnaissance and fighting were within his means; emotions were not, regardless of ninjutsu being involved. He didn’t want to poke around in her brain anymore than he wanted Sakura poking around in his, and yet he knew he must if there was any chance of mastering shōkyo no jutsu, banishing the kunoichi and Konoha from his life once and for all.

Tomorrow would mark a week since she stumbled into the village. Barring complications, a minimum three days’ travel lay between them and Sunagakure, and the Land of Wind’s reputation for challenging terrain far preceded it. He pledged—to her, but also himself—to stay out of her business, let the mission take its course, but he couldn’t wait any longer. The pace was excruciating. He’d find Koto himself if that’s what it took. He needed Sakura away.

With each passing day his hold was slipping a little more. Toweling off, scowling at his reflection, he felt utterly petulant. He hated the proof of how the past week had changed him: his shorn hair, the garish gold contacts obscuring the eyes he’d killed to keep (cleaned and reinserted), the ANBU get-up and its falsely pledged allegiance. Most of all, he hated that it was no one’s fault but his. He’d been too weak to cut down Sakura where she stood—instead he’d made himself into this monstrosity, a scarecrow of his real self.

Sakura was propped on the windowsill when he emerged, her qipao swapped for black utility pants and a high-collared tank top, the upper and lower halves split white and red. Her damp hair was tied back with her hitai-ate, her medical pouch and kunai belt strapped to her thigh. She was already packed for leaving, a whole night away.

She held out a note without looking at him, gazing instead at the mulling of passersby below. “I’ll send this with Lady Katsuyu. It’s better if I reach Kakashi-sensei before the Tsuchikage.”

He plucked it from her, scanning. It was as concise as his own: Parties of interest mobilizing toward Suna. Will brief the Kazekage upon arrival. No backup required at this time. ETA 3 days pending weather.

“It’s fine,” he said, tossing it beside her.

“Sasuke.” Her abrupt tone made him pause. “Why is there bird shit on the window?”

“How should I know?” Inside, he groaned silently. Fucking Buta. He didn’t bother waiting for her reply, turning away to tend to his own pack.

Sakura was frigid with him for the rest of the evening. He was fortunate that Iwa and Konoha ninja didn’t see much of one another: no one appeared to recognize Sakura, or if they did, they weren’t comfortable approaching. They restocked what few supplies they’d burned through and took a detour into a geode shop, Sakura insisting that it was “normal” for she and Ino to procure gifts for each other during their travels. “You want me to keep up appearances, don’t you?” Dinner was taken at an ochazuke counter, eaten silently in their neighboring, individual stalls.

It was a relief when night fell and he could busy himself with setting traps around their room, ignoring Sakura as she crept into her bed. Admittedly, he went overboard, stopping just short of weaving an entire spider web of trip wires. He showered again, too, trying to cling onto some semblance of jurisdiction. The water was scalding but he endured it, pretended he was being incinerated so that, come morning, he might emerge from this ruined skin as another person.

The moon was crescent and bright. He drew the curtains and settled atop the bed, not bothering to pull back the covers. It was bound to be another night of restless dozing, stuck in limbo as he stared blearily at the ceiling.

It took time for him to notice that Sakura was awake, too, breathing meditatively in the other bed, like if she lay still enough unconsciousness would find her. He recognized that tactic. He never found success with it, personally.

She must’ve been monitoring his breath, too. He heard rustling as she flipped onto her side, toward him. The curtains shielding the window were thick, absorbing the moonlight. Sasuke was grateful that he couldn’t make out her face in the dark.

“I have sleeping pills,” she offered.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“They don’t work that well anyway,” she murmured. “Clearly.”

He hoped that was the end of the discussion. A half-hour later she piped up again, lurching him back from the edge of semi-consciousness.

“Will you tell me about him?”

“It’s late, Sakura.”

He pictured her inevitable eye-roll, lost to the darkness. “We’ll have to talk about Koto, eventually. Might as well do it while comfortable.”

He hoped his lack of response was indication enough of what he thought of that idea, but she kept going.

“It’s hard to imagine a kid catching your interest. How did he do it?”

Sasuke exhaled heavily through his nose and rubbed at his dry eyes. She was like a teething puppy. He needed to give her a bone to gnaw on, shut her up.

“He was persistent,” he said finally.

“Persistent how?”

“The old woman—his grandmother—sent him with sweets when word got around that someone new moved to the area. I was training taijutsu out back. I sensed a civilian at the front door, but didn’t think he would walk to the yard when I didn’t answer his knock.” Sasuke had thought the boy looked a bit like a bumpkin, scrawny and clumsy, a pea-sized gap between his front teeth.

“What did he say?” Sakura asked.

“Nothing,” Sasuke said. “I told him I didn’t like sweets, and he ran off. But he came back the next day.”

“With different food, I hope.”

Sasuke smiled, just barely, tiredness withering his defenses. It was easier to speak when he couldn’t see her. “He wanted to watch me train.”

“I’ve seen you train,” she said. “It’s not exactly stimulating.”

The sheets crinkled beneath his shrugging shoulders.

“And you let him?” she asked.

“It seemed harmless.” Not that he would admit it to Sakura, but Koto had reminded him a bit of himself as a child, jumping at the chance to shadow Itachi, even if it was only to watch endless rounds of kunai practice. There was joy in watching someone strive to become great. That was all Koto wanted: to watch. At first.

Somewhere along the way Sasuke nursed a soft spot for the kid. He stared, entertained, when Koto declared one day that he had been practicing at home, then demonstrated a jerky reproduction of Sasuke’s warm-up block. He corrected the kid’s form in a few sentences then went inside, not bothering to say goodbye or praise him. Koto returned the next day and did the warm-up alongside Sasuke, the corrections already integrated.

From there things snowballed. The kid had a knack for Wind Release, it turned out, and within a few weeks was able to conjure a small, condensed tornado that could divert thrown weapons or dismantle set traps. He also learned to manipulate the silty sand lining the road in front of Sasuke’s cottage, molding it into tentacles for striking and defense. Sasuke originally showed Koto the fireball technique as a means of demonstrating how nature releases could be strong or weak depending on what they countered, but Koto posited that he could use talent for Wind Release to inflate a fireball—oxygen fed flames, after all. He was right, of course; Sasuke and Naruto had combined forces once. It was a far cry from Uchiha-worthy, but Koto managed to produce a meager flame, the stream akin to a flamethrower.

It was stupid, maybe, but also rewarding. Sasuke couldn’t remember the last time he stood beside someone who had more respect for him than fear.

The kid turned out to be a lot more like Sasuke than he thought. Perhaps too much. Once Koto came up with a goal, he pursued it doggedly, practicality notwithstanding. Sasuke had mentored him through the fall and winter, but when the new year came, things changed. Koto came to Sasuke asking for help. He declared that wanted to become an avenger in his own right. That was the last time Sasuke had seen him; he had more or less banished the kid from his sight for being so preposterous.

As soon as Sakura mentioned Sunagakure, Sasuke had a sneaking suspicion the politician was a front—Koto was her real target. The message Buta carried, once returned, would confirm it. He’d hoped Koto would realize his plan was idiotic, but apparently the kid was intent on pursuing vengeance with or without him.

Sasuke admitted to the training but left out the rest. “Six months ago we had a disagreement. He stopped showing up. I caught word that he left the village.”

“And you didn’t go after him,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“He wasn’t my responsibility.”

“What about his family?”

Sasuke shrugged again. “I don’t know. I never asked.” Though he’d been told. It was simpler not to mention it now. She’d keep them up all night with her questions.

Sakura was quiet after that, though he could hear her gnawing at one of her fingernails. Eventually she rolled onto her back, sighing at the ceiling.

“Tomorrow, I need you to let me demonstrate shōkyo no jutsu again. You haven’t properly grasped the replacement portion. The effect is . . . disconcerting.” She was matter of fact about it. Sasuke wondered if that was the undisclosed cause of her insomnia. “Please don’t fight me on this.”

At least she changed topics.

Pondering, he sat up and ran a hand through his choppy hair, like he could brush off the drowsiness. “Come on then.”

“What, now?”

“‘Might as well do it comfortably,’” he said, careful not to make it sound like he was mocking her. He scooted down the bed, flipping so his feet were wedged beneath the pillow and his head lay at the edge, enough room leftover for Sakura to sit.

Tentatively, she peeled back her covers and ambled toward the foot of the bed. “I’ll keep the lights down, so we don’t attract attention.”

He nodded. He only needed to see her chakra flow, which the Sharingan would illuminate. It would be a relief for the rest to be lost to the dim room. Easier to hone his focus.

Sakura settled onto the bed. She didn’t draw him into her lap, but her shins touched the crown of his head. She stuck out her hand—horse, dragon, boar, dog, ram went their fingers, the movements so natural at this point they felt routine. Pushing his bangs aside, she touched his temples more firmly than before. He wasn’t the only one more relaxed in the dark.

Her chakra was in him almost immediately, hovering on the edge of his senses, as bright and bottle green as ever.

“The more resonant the memory, the easier it’ll be,” she reminded him. “Not that I’m asking you to cut me a break, but . . .”

It wouldn’t hurt.

He hadn’t decided on a memory quite yet. Everything related to his days as Orochimaru’s disciple had dulled over time. Same with the chūnin exams. Everything related to Itachi was too precious. If he shared something related to Team 7, Sakura might accuse him of provoking her on purpose by rubbing salt in the wound, reminding her how disposable she and Naruto were. The war put him through plenty—fights and arguments and reunions with zombified shinobi of the collective past—but he tried his best to avoid thinking of it, which was ironic, considering the jutsu’s origins.

Above him, Sakura whispered. “Take your time.”

With the Sharingan he could see her silhouette glowing with chakra. He avoided imagining how she looked, peering down at him in the lightless room. “I’ll start.”

“I was four or five. It was a normal day, I think—there was a clan meeting in the morning. Itachi was meant to look after me while my parents attended, but he snuck out to eavesdrop. I thought he was hiding.” Sasuke described how he searched for him. Nosing around the house, turning closets upside down. He walked the entire perimeter of the house while staring at the ceiling, stumbling over the toys he’d left littered on the floor. Itachi had gotten him that way once, hiding on the ceiling. He funneled chakra to his feet so he sat in an inverted crouch, dropping tiny balls of paper on Sasuke’s head every time he walked by.

“Try not to add extra information. You’ll lose it,” she said gently.

Which meant it was too late already—he tried to quell the minor spike of panic that reared up. As soon as Sakura lifted her fingers, he would forget about Itachi’s prank. He frowned and resumed. No point in mourning it.

“I couldn’t find him, so I went outside to the lake. He would—” he caught himself. She had been right when she explained it the other day. It felt so reasonable to add context when explaining something that actually mattered. “I thought I might find him there. There was a dock that went out to the midway point. I got the idea that he might be hiding on the underside, so I kneeled over to look. I lost my balance and fell in. I wasn’t a very good swimmer. I hadn’t learned how to tread water yet.” He was surprised at how intensely the memory resurfaced. Maybe this was proof the jutsu was working as intended. Bubble: that had been the word she used. He felt the old emotions ballooning up in him, the fright he’d felt as his mouth filled up with water.

“Before I went under, my mother jumped in and pulled me out. I was conscious, but she had to do CPR. I puked water all over her.” He’d pissed himself, too, but hoped that detail might get lost with the rest. “When we returned to the house, Itachi was waiting. I had never seen her so angry before. She walked up and slapped him hard, across the face. She hugged him right after and apologized. She was like that for hours, switching between crying and screaming. She didn’t let go of me for the rest of the night.”

Itachi spent the next week teaching him how to swim. He didn’t tell Sakura that part. This one, measly thing he wanted to keep for himself.

When Sakura confirmed that his recitation was finished, she withdrew her hands, her chakra disappearing along with them. He felt substantially colder in its absence, the dark room dominating his vision. Her legs were still pressed against his head, and he could sense her leaning over him.

“Your amnesia will be more pronounced this time.” She covered her mouth with the collar of her shirt and coughed dryly. He wondered if the story had upset her; she had weepy tendencies when it came to the past. “Try to repeat what you told me.”

Chronologically, his brain immediately flitted to the right place. He had been telling her a memory from his childhood.

“I was young,” he began, then skidded to a stop. The memory was about . . . his family, probably. Surely? He wasn't sure what else it would’ve been about. He was too young for the academy. It had been day—or afternoon—he didn’t know. Itachi was there. Or wasn’t . . . was it a schoolday? He couldn’t recall if it was hot or cold out, which would’ve been a helpful clue. He guessed it should depend more on what happened, but then . . .

“Don’t focus on the absence, if you can help it. Otherwise it can prompt an anxious response,” she touched her right hand to his temple again to anchor him. There was no flair of chakra, only her skin on his skin. “When you run into the gap, try to relax into it. Pay attention to the feeling itself. That’s the part you’ll need to replicate later.”

He did as instructed, reorienting himself at the start. He surrendered to the current, letting his brain drift as it pleased. The vacancy was drastic, but less jarring. The linear trajectory of the memory was replaced by layers of pure, imageless sensation. Rather than emptiness he felt, initially, a mollified acceptance. He felt peaceful. The memory had been more resonant, and so, he supposed, the emotions replacing it were as well.. Embedded within, like a seed from which the other emotions sprouted, was another: a stark, vivid love, deeply rooted and flickering.

Whatever Sakura erased, he was certain she substituted his original feelings for these. He wouldn’t fathom sacrificing a memory tied to—this, this—intense sort of comfort. He had specifically avoided sharing memories that felt similar. It was alarming to know that of all the things she could’ve imparted, she gave him this.

“I don’t remember,” he said, trying to iron out his agitation.
“You did well. Thank you,” she said, “for the trust.” She patted his temple gingerly, then she pulled away. “You can try on me again once we make it to Suna. In the meantime, keep practicing your chakra control.”

All he could do was nod, dumbfounded, as she retreated back to her own bed. He didn’t know how long he spent like that, stupored at the foot of the bed, gaping at the ceiling. Nor could he pinpoint when sleep found him. But it did—eventually. A cool, dreamless sleep.

 

---

 

Normally, Suigetsu wouldn’t be caught dead outside at this time of day, at this time of year, in Otogakure. It was hot as shit, and it was a pain to replenish all the water he lost while working on the roof of the old laboratory, sweating like a pig.

Karin had insisted she needed him to harvest from the herb garden this instant, since he’d procrastinated the task for—oh, he didn’t know, or care. Days probably. He had all intentions to keep it up, because Karin was never more entertaining than when she was trying to deck him. It was his favorite pastime: he’d wait until she swung her fist and then, just before she made contact, go liquid. If he really wanted to tick her off, he’d reappear a few feet away and shoot her in the back of the head with a tamped-down water gun technique.

Today, though, she’d sicked Jūgo on him. The orange-haired nutjob interrupted Suigetsu’s other favorite pastime: bubble baths. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t in ballistic mode—Jūgo actually asked quite nicely, considering—the dude gave Suigetsu the heebiejeebies. He practically leapt out of the bath to get moving. He hadn’t even fully washed the shampoo out of his hair. He was sticky.

Karin hadn’t clarified which herb she wanted, either. She’d transformed the rooftop of the lab into an open-air greenhouse a while back, claiming she needed the plants for “medical purposes.” Sounded like bologna to him (although he did, on occasion, dissipate into the sprinkler system. That was pretty fun.) His running hypothesis was that she was concocting some kind of mind-control poison to dose some unsuspecting, numb-skulled shinobi into getting hitched.

She hadn’t bothered to label the dozen-plus rows lining the roof, which meant Suigetsu couldn’t distinguish this green leafy junk over here from that green leafy junk over there. Too bad, so sad, Karin. He’d just hack it all up and tell her to take her pick.

He was busy shoving bundles of torn herbs into a wicker basket, licking the salt off his upper lip—god, this was humiliating as hell—when a hawk screeched overhead. Circling briefly, it descended and landed beside a patch of spiky, purple, coral-looking stuff that Suigetsu had discovered left a pretty nasty rash on bare skin. There was a note tied to its leg.

He carried it with him into the lab while the metric ton of herbs was lugged behind him by a shadow clone. The load made a pretty nasty scratching noise against the stone floor, and yet nobody poked their head out to question him. That kinda hurt. He was the only person who bothered to keep things interesting around here.

Strolling into the main laboratory, he breathed a pert, high whistle. “Oh Ka-a-a-rin, look what I got,” he said, sing-songy.

The ruby-haired kunoichi was hunched over a long assembly line of test tubes, squinting as she pipetted an oily substance into each one. “Not now, Suigetsu.”

“Oh, well, if you’re sure,” he said. “I guess I’ll just keep Sasuke-kun’s message all to myself.”

She bristled but continued with her droplets. “Don’t tug me around, pool boy, or I’ll throttle you.”

Theatrically, he cleared his throat and unraveled the note. “My dearest, most brilliant, wonderful—” Karin slammed down her pipette and turned on him, then skidded to a stop when she realized Suigetsu held an actual note. He wiggled it in the air, grinning. “Just kidding. You wish.”

“Is this actually from Sasuke, or is this one of your little swordsmen penpals again?”

“They’re not penpals, they’re envoys. I can’t track down all seven swords on my own,” he hissed. He held out the note. “It’s Sasuke, alright. Read it and weep.”

She snatched it from him with a huff, double-taking at the pile of herbs heaped on the ground. The shadow clone winked at her, and she scoffed. “Did you harvest the entire roof at once?”

He shrugged. “Be more specific next time.”

While she read, Jūgo entered from an adjourning hallway. Figures the berserker had his ear pinned to the ground for any mention of his master. “Sasuke wrote? From where?”

“Don’t know,” Karin muttered, “but he wants to rendezvous at the abandoned hideout in the Land of Wind. Soon.”

“That place gives me the creeps,” Suigetsu said.

“Everything gives you the creeps, you wimp,” Karin said, flicking his skinny shoulder. Predictably, her finger went right through him.

Jūgo took hold of the note, skimming. “Should we all go? He wants us to track somebody.”

“No way. I’m not going to fetch just because Sasuke says so. I’m done being at his beck and call.”

“Literally no one—no one—believes that Karin,” Suigetsu said, snorting.

Her fists clenched at her sides. “I’m in the middle of a very important, very tedious experiment, actually—”

“The two of us can go, Sui.” Jūgo tried his best to smile brightly. “It’s been a while. I’d like to see for myself that Sasuke is alright.”

“Peachy,” Suigetsu grumbled. He plucked the note out of Jūgo’s gargantuan hands. “I’ll let him know. You sure you want to miss out on all the action, Karin?”

“Yes,” she seethed, “I’m sure.”

“Suit yourself.” Suigetsu ambled toward the dim, underground corridor from which he’d entered, whistling, before thinking twice and doubling back. Seeping into a puddle, he slithered toward the back of the laboratory to grab an albino, pink-eyed rat from a nearby cage. The glass was marked by a giant, stick-on sign scribbled by Karin: DON’T TOUCH.

He waved the squirming animal like a flag. “Can’t forget Buka’s treat.”

Notes:

Taka enters stage left! To me it was always so fun when they showed up in the manga and in other fics, so I wanted an excuse to write them in myself.

Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoyed, it'd mean a lot if you could leave a comment and let me know what you think :)

Chapter 7 is written and currently with my beta reader. Will be up by next Wednesday. Expect fight scenes & more insufferable flirting. XOXO gossip girl lol

Chapter 7

Notes:

To all those who left kind words: thank you!! It means a lot. I hope you enjoy the latest ~installation~

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Kakashi traced the creases of the paper, folding it back into its original form. Sakura’s message was plain, straightforward. Normally she left little quips in the margins or asked him to pass along well wishes to Naruto. This marked the second consecutive correspondence without them. He wasn’t sure if Sakura was trying to tell him something intentionally, but she was telling him something nonetheless. 

It had been late in the evening when Katsuyu appeared on his desk; he imagined Sakura would be asleep, under the constellations in Iwagakure. 

Before Lady Katsuyu disappeared, he’d asked if the anomaly persisted. 

“I smelled the same chakra signature, sir. It was stronger this time.” The slug sage sounded unbothered. 

“Do you think she’s being trailed?”

Katsuyu’s tentacles slowly puckered—a snail’s version of shaking its head. “No sir, Hokage-sama. The presence is stronger than that. I believe they’re traveling together, but I do not recognize the chakra. I have not healed them before.” 

“And Sakura herself?”

“She is in excellent health,” Katusyu said. “I inquired explicitly about her current status. She confirmed she was well.”

Interesting. It could be anyone, theoretically, though one particular ninja came to mind—he dismissed the thought as soon as it appeared. Sakura was too smart for that. Kakashi assigned the mission with a tacit understanding that, while she was working, she needed to find time to relax . Perhaps, on the road, she’d enlisted an anonymous someone to help with the task. 

He could be discreet, he supposed, glancing at the bookmarked Icha Icha on his desk. Of all his students, Sakura was the most loyal, considerate, and, frankly, deserving. Kakashi held faith that she wouldn’t consciously insert herself in too sticky of a situation without calling for reinforcements.

Whatever she was up to, he trusted her—for now. 

 

---

 

Their first day on the road was uneventful. From Iwagakure to the edge of Earth Country they were able to retrace the way they’d come. Along with prolific stretches of jungle forests, Sakura’s relaxation returned—she didn’t much like rocks, she decided. Running beneath the canopy, catching glimpses of fluffy creatures skittering between tree branches, felt much more homely.

Sasuke, on the other hand, was on edge. On their first night, while pitching camp, Sakura made a passing comment about the landscape in an effort to gauge if it was having an opposite effect on him. He seemed utterly baffled by her question. “Why would trees bother me?” he’d responded in a way that intimated she was being moronic. He scowled into the campfire for the remainder of the evening, his teasing mood from the prior days now missing in action.

Crossing the border, they headed southwest, opting to travel through the Land of Birds instead of cumbersome Rain Country. The former still had no organized ninja population to speak of, and Amegakure was prone to letting their livewire shinobis run amok. Besides—Sakura dreaded the rain. The prospect of traveling in the mud for an hour straight, much less sleeping in it, would put her in a rancid mood . Sasuke already had dibs on that particular honor. No good would come from two ninja of their caliber traveling in close proximity with fried nerves. The new, healed scar on her front deltoid was proof enough. Neither said so, but back-to-back country hopping had a grating effect. She sensed Sasuke was as tired as she was, physically and existentially.

It didn’t hurt that the Land of Birds was gorgeous. Naruto had traveled here before, she recalled, with TenTen and Neji. His stories of the place revolved around their skirmishes, but Neji had taken time to make a pretty picture for her: lush, rolling mountains as far as the eye could see, the farther peaks glowing cornflower blue. The ground was strewn with wide, heart-leafed elephant ears and sprawling ferns so green they looked almost black, particularly when covered by the sheen of fresh mist. The ample boulders littering the jungle floor were almost squishy underfoot, covered in several layers of moss so noxiously green it almost hurt her eyes. Jumping through the canopy she caught glimpses of the eponymous bird population, dozens of species whose names she didn’t know, their wings blazing magenta, orange, chartreuse—the full spectrum of the rainbow rendered in feathers.

“They’re beautiful, huh?” she asked, mostly to no one, since Sasuke could hardly be relied upon to respond. 

Beside her, Sasuke followed the direction of her gaze—there was a large nest in one of the treetops nearby, two adult-sized birds of prey with crimson down huddled over a clutch of oblong eggs, so yellow that they could’ve been mistaken for a bowl of lemons. One of the birds startled as they ran past, flapping its wings and croaking. 

“They’re loud,” he said, looking forward again.

“How astute,” she said with a dry laugh. “There’s worse noises.”

“I guess.”

“I would’ve thought you liked birds. Y’know,” she wiggled her eyebrows, “hawks.”

“They’re useful, which is the only metric by which I judge a summons.”

“You mean you didn’t pick birds and snakes because they like to cuddle?” 

Expectedly, he cut his eyes at her, no trace of humor in his features. “You’re very interested in my summons, suddenly. Are you implying something?”

“No,” she said, frowning. He’s being so damn cagey. “I was just making conversation.” 

He remained forward facing, clicking his tongue against his teeth as they bounded off another thick tree branch. A flurry of white birds napping in the tree screeched in response. 

If it was possible, since leaving Iwa, Sasuke had ambled even farther off the cliff, as far as patience was concerned. It wasn’t necessarily a matter of terseness—she would sooner trust Tsunade-shishou with her life savings than hold her breath for Sasuke to deliver some trivial monologue—but that he seemed distracted. Last night he grasped the still-hot handle of the pot they’d left out to boil water, burning himself. Several times already this morning he had misplaced a foot, almost stumbling off a tree branch as he leapt. They were childish mistakes. As if he were reverting. 

“You’re awfully crabby today,” Sakura said, her puzzled glance lost to his back. 

“Am I?” The question was rhetorical but she took the bait anyway. 

“And here I thought after our high-quality bonding—”

“Is that what you’d call the other night?” he asked, voice turning fierce. 

She stammered. “Point proven. What crawled up your ass and died?”

“How like you to tamper with somebody’s head so you can call them a friend.”

“ What? ” Sasuke was traveling slightly ahead of her; she flared her chakra to speed up and match his pace. She inclined her head, trying to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look at her. “Are you being serious? I was only teasing—”

“It’s not funny, Sakura,” he said. Enshrouded by his stoicism, she detected an inkling of genuine hurt.  

“Can we break for a second?” she asked. Sasuke didn’t reply, increasing his pace, but she matched him again. “Something is bothering you. We need to keep the air clear. Otherwise, the preventable comes inevitable.” Kakashi-sensei had taught them that. She leaned closer, spoke low. “Traveling in unknown territory while distracted counts as ‘doing something stupid,’ in most books.”

His immediate reaction was to sneer at her, but he capitulated anyway. “Fine. Make it quick.” He veered to the right and leapt to the ground, Sakura following close behind. 

This patch of jungle was so thick with tropical vegetation that it became noticeably gloomier in the understory, the air tinged with damp. Sasuke settled against the roots of a tree with striped, sticky bark. Sakura settled on a smaller bunch of roots—they barely elevated her above the moss-covered ground—and watched Sasuke extract his rations. He didn’t even bother to add water, just started shoveling the powdered food into his mouth. She watched him down several dry, miserable spoonfuls, her budding appetite dying on the vine. 

“You agreed to talk. So talk,” she said. 

He glowered while he chewed. His swallow was thick. “The side effects are more intense than I expected.”

“Oh.” So it was a medical problem. She was almost thankful. “The days following treatment are different for everyone. Are you experiencing prolonged periods of confusion?”

“Disoriented but not confused.” With a huff, he put aside his rations packet and pinched the bridge of his nose. She wondered if he was aware of how much he was evoking his younger, obstinate self. That wasn’t an unusual symptom: temporarily reverting to behavior from the timeframe of the affected memory. So, really, he was acting worse than a genin. He was harkening back to his behavior as a child. A literal five-year-old. 

“Do you have any physical symptoms? Vertigo, nausea, headaches?”

“No,” he said, face knotted in a mixture of disgust and indignation. “I feel ridiculous.”

“What do you mean?”

Exasperated, he tightened his grip on his spoon. Sakura saw his knuckles flush white. “I feel it, and it’s ridiculous. That is what I mean.”

“Feel what?” 

“What you left. In my head.” Even at a distance, she could see his kekkei genkai churning beneath the contacts.  

“It’s normal to experience some . . . turbulence. The further into the past you reach, the more dust it can kick up, mood-wise.” 

“Is that supposed to reassure me?”

She hugged her knees closer. “I mean, I could do a rudimentary check up to ensure there’s nothing wrong structurally—”

“No.”

“Sasuke, come on. It’s normal—”

“The only thing wrong with me is you.”

She didn’t think even he believed those words, or at least wouldn’t if he were in his regular headspace. It was terribly obvious that there were many, many things wrong with this man—she barely cracked the top 25, if that—though she felt a bit like a hypocrite thinking it. They both knew he scored much higher on her list, and one could argue hers was just as long. Still, it stung.

“Sasuke,” she sighed again, “I really can’t help unless you let me. I swear I didn’t try to leave anything disturbing behind on purpose.”

“Why do you insist on meddling?” He clawed at his face again. Maybe it was less of a tantrum and more that the contacts appeared to genuinely bother his vision. She’d noticed him scratching at them on water breaks. “You should have left the memory the way it was.”

“You mean emotionally?” she asked. Reluctantly, face smothered in his hand, he gave a stiff, jerky nod.

She hadn’t encountered this situation in previous treatments. This was the first time a patient walked away from shōkyo no jutsu feeling—worse. Much worse. She wished Sasuke had been part of the trial stages. It would’ve been informative. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. She ducked to try to catch his attention from beneath where his hand shielded his gaze. 

He said nothing.

“I should’ve asked first.”

“Yes,” he seethed, “you should’ve.”

“I honestly thought it would help,” she murmured.

“Yes, well, it didn’t. I keep thinking—” but he screwed his mouth shut before he could finish, dimples crinkling at the corners. 

It was a bizarre, tender sight to see him so upset. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen an unguarded emotion from Sasuke that wasn’t composed at least partially of anger. Sure, slumped against the tree, he was trying to seem angry, but she was no fool. He was wounded. She wounded him. 

She had felt sort of victorious stalking back to her bed afterward, self-assured she left things better than she found them. Sakura wasn’t particularly close to her own parents, but they were there for her when she needed them. To hear that one of his last remaining memories was of almost drowning in that lake, his mother slapping Itachi . . . not for the first time, she was sobered by the knowledge of how much he’d suffered. Listening, she’d thought only good could come from reminding him of how much his family loved him. 

Now, watching Sasuke cringe into a ball, guilt curdled her triumph into spoiled milk. She’d been myopic in her approach. He retained so few memories of his family. He probably stopped categorizing them into “good” or “bad” long ago—beggars couldn’t be choosers. She mistook his willingness to surrender the memory as his desire to do so. Really, he was stuck, just like her. Trying to logic his way out of an illogical situation.

Cautiously, she slipped off her perch on the tree root and moved toward him in a crouch. When he didn’t protest or move away, she settled onto the ground by his feet, crossing her legs against the mossy floor. She laid a careful hand against his ankle, hoping a gentle touch might ground him. It helped patients sometimes when they were at the mercy of intense flashbacks, kept them from drifting too far into the past. 

“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” she said. 

“I don’t want your pity.” The words were stoneground between clenched teeth. 

“No pity here,” she promised with a soft shake of her head. “I tried to do a kind thing, but it was misguided. I’m sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Stop apologizing,” he grumbled. His fingers cracked open. He didn’t look at her, but at where her fingers curled against the exposed skin at his ankle.

When he spoke next, he sounded under control, tone flat as a board.  “How did you do it?” he asked, still staring at where she touched him. 

She worried he'd flipped the switch on her again, that he might lash out. She gave a tiny squeeze before pulling back.

“I know your memories with your parents are more precious than the rest. I wanted to leave you with something nice to remember them by. It was foolish.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.” He dropped his hand to his lap. “The emotion itself. How did you channel it?”

She wasn’t sure what he was suggesting. The expression she wore must’ve told him as much.

“The emotion can’t be imagined. It has to come from somewhere, from the caster themselves. You said this.” He regained his resolve, it seemed, the dynamic shifting and the atmosphere along with it. She was no longer in a position to comfort him. Rather he loomed over her like a thundercloud, portending doom. It always came back to power with him: who wielded it, and who endured. 

“I mean, yes, but I’m not sure I get your point.”

“You do. You understand perfectly. Where did it come from?”

She sank back against the soggy ground, balancing on her palms and sighing. “What do you want me to say, Sasuke?”

“I want you to explain the source.”

“You’re not the only one who has loved and lost, you know.” How did he always manage to poison a sweet moment, invert any half-decent exchange onto its head until it became an argument?

“Don’t get shy with me now. Who did you think of?” 

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh Sakura. You will never, ever change.” Hunching over his knees, he squinted at her, a mocking, devilish smile warping his face. “Your past love confessions didn’t work, so you decided to implant one in my brain so it would finally stick. Is that it?” 

Her open-handed slap caught him off guard; he’d been too busy gloating, and she hadn’t bothered to use extra chakra. She felt its full connection and all that came after: the shudder, the recoil. He followed the momentum and froze, neck turned away from her, his pale cheek flaring red. Immediately she regretted it—since when did she stoop to casual violence to make a point?—but her anger dominated her nascent guilt. He’d finally pushed her over the edge.

“Get a hold of yourself.” She rose and braced for his retaliation, but he sat paralyzed, seething at some invisible spot on the ground. “I messed up. I overstepped. I’ll admit that. But you are delusional if you think for a second that’s what this is about. I get it, alright—we all get it—you lived through a tragedy.” Here, she forcibly bit her tongue, unwilling to purge every bad thought that sprung to mind. She needed to be better than this. Than him.

He didn’t have to look at her; she was sure he could feel the intensity of her glare on his turned neck. “I don’t love you, Sasuke. Not like that. Not anymore. At some point, you’ll have to get it through that thick skull of yours that you’re not the only one who’s moved on.” She stooped to snatch her pack where she left it, sending a handful of dead leaves skittering across the ground. “Or don’t. Die telling yourself that you’re the only one left suffering. I don’t care. Just leave me out of it.”

With that, she stalked back into the jungle. She was caught between congratulating herself for the pert takedown and dreading the fallout that was bound to follow. The preventable became inevitable: she’d just regurgitated an underdeveloped mishmash of every one-sided argument that had played out in her imagination for the past week. For the past two years, if she was honest.  

Flexing her stinging hand, she wished she hadn’t hit him. When Sasuke attacked her in the village square, in his house—there was a rationale. She posed a legitimate threat. And, well, she supposed he could never not pose a legitimate threat to her. The fact that he felt less dangerous probably said more about her than him. Regardless, she shouldn’t have slapped him. He would cling to it as proof that he’d successfully gotten under skin. 

It hardly mattered in the end. She only made it a few steps before three things happened in quick succession:

Sasuke tackled her from behind, sending them both sprawling into the loam. 

A kunai whizzed past her ear, landing like a javelin in the ground, the shine of poison trickling from its edges. 

A thin, reedy voice interjected from the trees.

“My, my,” the voice drawled, syrupy and sloping. “This is quite the lover’s quarrel.”

Glowing from within the jungle foliage, Sakura spotted two aquamarine-colored eyes levitating a dozen feet in the air. “I hope you don’t mind if I join in.”

 

---

 

Fingers clenched around her collar, Sasuke tugged Sakura and himself up from the ground, shuffling until their backs were safely guarded by a pair of neighboring trees. 

After Sakura slapped him—which he currently could not afford to fume over—he noted a chakra signature unfurling in the opposite trees. He stalled while she peeled into him (again, not now), mesmerized by how the signature expanded, like a plant bud slowly blooming. 

When the source emerged from the curtain of vines and branches, there was not one figure, but two: a man riding atop a giant stork. 

It was the stork’s blue eyes that glowed, pupiless but dappled, the way gems caught and scattered light. Bright red rings encircled them. Its banded legs cleared his head easily, its white down as expansive as a storm cloud, its wings tipped in inky black. Settled at the base of its curved neck was a toned, pale-skinned man with mousy brown hair that hung loose and dull, so long it disappeared somewhere into the stork’s feathers. His complexion was oddly grey, his own eyes a solid, muted blue, the pupil the color of stone. Two red, wiry plumes—he couldn’t make out if they were feathers or chakra threads—grew from the stork’s temples. The mounted man clung to them like reigns. 

“Do you recognize this dōjutsu?” Sakura asked. 

Sasuke grunted in the negative. “Their chakra is connected.”

“Not a summons, then?” He heard the metallic zing of a kunai slip out of her thigh holster. She had picked up Kakashi’s habit of twirling the ring at the end of the hilt between her fingers. “They could be merged, like the Inuzuka clan’s ninken.”

“Whisper, whisper, whisper. It’s no fun if we can’t all hear!” The man’s mouth had a strange way of moving, like his thin lips were catching up to the words. The effect on his speech was slurred. Could he be drunk?

“We’re passing through. We’re not interested in trouble,” Sakura said, raising her voice. 

The stork lowered and cocked its head to the side, swooping closer to Sakura.  

“Ah, that’s funny. A Konoha ninja not interested in trouble.” It trilled: a horrible, sticky sound, like rows of flesh tearing. “That war of yours was very, very nasty. Disrupted migration patterns for an entire season. Hatchlings absolutely ruined, the eggshells were so thin.” 

“Sorry to trouble you and . . . the eggs,” was Sakura’s surly reply. 

The stork tittered and swung its long neck toward Sasuke. “And you,” the man drawled. “The power is simply frothing out of you.” Suddenly its black, pointed beak darted toward him. He rebuffed with a swivel of his sword, carving a gash into the hard keratin as he flipped forward, landing on the other side untouched.

The stork screeched, the ripple of sound so strong he almost buckled. The man growled, lolling limply on the stork’s back, though his grip on the longer red plumes stayed tight. “Only a coward strikes an animal first.”

“Dismount then.” A chidori crackled along the length of his kusanagi. He was taunting the man to buy time. If he got near enough, he could activate Amenotejikara, swap places and take control of the stork for himself. On the ground, Sakura would finish the man off easily.   

The man jeered, revealing rows of black-rooted teeth. “So you can hit me with your little lightning blade? That won’t do,” he tsked. Just as quickly, man and bird reared on Sakura, who was mid-charge, her fists alight with green. 

With a snap, the stork plucked her body straight out of the air, bones crunching loudly. The real Sakura was close behind, scaling her clone and darting up the length of its beak and zipping across its skull. She landed a kick against the side of the man’s skull. He absorbed the blow bonelessly, almost veering off the bird’s back but not quite falling. His arms were locked onto the plumes. 

“It’s the bird,” she hollered at Sasuke, tumbling off the animal as the head swiveled to peck at her again. “The man isn’t holding on. He’s fused to the feathers.”

Sasuke suspected the man’s hair wasn’t aesthetic, in that case—it was probably an additional connective organ. That explained why he couldn’t see the end. There was only one way to find out.

Leaping, he coiled his arm to slash at one of the plumes. As he did, the man-puppet doubled over, a torrent of putrid sludge surging from his mouth.

He redirected his momentum, but not soon enough—acid splashed over his bad shoulder, dribbling down his stumped bicep, singing holes into his skin. “Shit,” he spat, rebounding painfully against the ground before scrambling to a parallel stance, feet braced against a tree trunk.

Sakura was crouched nearby, a scroll open at her feet. She bit the edge of her thumb, smearing blood, extracting a web of linked kunai with pink, scalloped tips. “Heal yourself,” she said, focused on the target above, “you know how.” 

Jumping toward the stork, she used the chakra threads to swing herself around its neck, throwing kunai after kunai at its down. Upon impact, the pink ends burst into hundreds of paper tags that whirled through the air like snow. From the safety of the opposite side, she threw a single, lit kunai—only for the man-puppet to extinguish the flame with his acid before it could ignite.

Ignoring his blistering shoulder, Sasuke sheathed the kusanagi and threw the tiger handseal. Sakura’s flurry of tags erupted like a tumble of dominoes, ignited by his katon no jutsu. 

The stork screeched again, more ear-splitting than before, and this time he did fall to his knees. The sound reverberated through him. He felt like he was turning into a puddle. He glanced down, then, and saw that he actually was. Genjutsu .

He broke out of it in less than a second; on the opposite side of the trail, Sakura appeared to have done the same. One of the red plumes was poised and towering above them—the man-puppet had been butchered by the explosion, and his torn arm dangled from the end of the plume. 

“You’ve spoiled my pet.” His voice was garbled and barely intelligible, marred by blood. The stork careened toward Sasuke, squawking. “I’ll need a replacement.” The glint in the bird’s many eyes reminded him unceremoniously of Orochimaru, fangs bared to brand him with the Cursed Seal of Heaven.

Fuck this. Sasuke had had enough. 

He didn’t dodge the bird’s attack. He didn’t have to. When its beak made contact, it wasn’t with his body, but with Susanoo’s violet armor. 

“No,” Sakura hollered, volleying toward him, but the stork swiped her away with its taloned foot.

“An Uchiha ,” purred the puppet. “Why didn’t you say so sooner? I would have made the game more exciting.”

Drawing back, the stork extended its full wingspan. Burrowed within the layers of feathers were six of those bejeweled eyes. Their vision zeroed in on him, the gleam intensifying as the stork focused its jutsu. 

“You’ll make a much more interesting pet.” These were the last man-puppet’s last words before the stork relinquished its hold, his body lurching overboard. He fell sluggishly, the little life left in him dissipating. Sprinting, Sakura caught the limp man before he slammed into the ground. 

There was no ceremony: Sasuke was done entertaining the skirmish, so he finished it. Once Sakura retreated back, the man’s grey, lumpy body strung between her arms like a bride, Susanoo delivered a single, deft downward slash. The decapitated head of the stork fell a few beats later, though Sasuke had taken care to cut in the opposite direction. 

The man piloted by the stork, whoever he was, was dead. Sakura confirmed as much when Sasuke disbanded the avatar and sidled up to where she crouched over the body. He carried no identification, no hitai-ate. The acid-jutsu was his own, she suspected. 

“Using Susanoo was risky. You could’ve been seen,” she muttered under her breath. Before he could retort, she added: “Thank you.” 

Standing, he could see she hadn’t gotten by unscathed. A shallow but wide scrape on her knee wept pinpricks of blood. “It can wait,” she said. She jutted her chin toward him. “How’s your arm?”

His shoulder was leopard-spotted by burns and blisters. A thin, watery liquid oozed from a few open sores. She traced the edges of the wounds, watched them gently weep under pressure. 

“Serous drainage. That’s good. It means your skin is starting to repair itself.” When she moved to heal the rest, he stopped her. There was something he wanted to check first.

Sakura quietly yelped when the ground in front of them rumbled, not having expected him to call a summons so quickly. Within the tufts of smoke he saw indigo scales shifting as Aoda emerged, coiled to strike. He was twice as large as the stork, and the pits along his ridged skull flared at the smell of the forest. 

“Your desire, Sasume-sama?” His forked tongue flicked the air. The snake made no comment on Sakura's presence. Manda could’ve taken pointers, he thought, not for the first time.

“You may stand down. I’d like you to identify that animal,” Sasuke said, pointing toward the slain stork. Aoda coiled tighter to look behind him, slithering closer. 

“Ah,” Aoda remarked, tasting the air again. “The kill is fresh.”

“Do you recognize it?”

Aoda slithered toward the bulk of the corpse. Congealing blood slopped out of the cleanly cut throat. “A tengu, Sasuke-sama. They are shapeshifters native to the Land of Birds. I have never encountered one myself. It smells the same as a chicken.”

Beside him, Sakura crossed her arms and winced as Aoda curled around the stork’s stiffening torso.

“It had a human rider,” Sasuke said. 

“They siphon chakra from human hosts, Sasuke-sama. It is how they eat.” Aoda rattled the end of his tail. “I do not enjoy the taste much myself, as you know.”

Sasuke smirked while Sakura balked. “Did your snake just . . . make a joke?”

“May I, sir?” Aoda asked, the corpse now fully encased by his body. 

“You may.”

He and Sakura both had the sense to avert their eyes before Aoda unhinged his jaw, slowly swallowing the tengu whole.

 

---

 

It took significant convincing, but Sakura eventually relented to Aoda’s offer to escort them to the edge of the Land of Birds, lest they be attacked by another tengu—or worse, an entire flock. While Sasuke rode standing, Sakura shrunk into a ball, squinting at every slush of Aoda’s belly against the jungle floor. She hovered on the verge of seasickness for the better part of the afternoon.

Aoda left them at the border, dismissing himself with a deep bow. After he disappeared, Sakura whirred on Sasuke, steadying herself against a tall boulder as a wave of nausea hit her. “No more snakes,” she groaned.

Sasuke didn’t bother to hide his blatant amusement.

They found a hollow cave with a triangle-shaped layout—the farther they went in, the more it narrowed into a point—within the hour where they opted to take shelter. Night fell not long after. 

This far out of Sungakure, Wind Country was a wasteland plagued by constant, volatile windstorms. As the sun set and the air cooled rapidly, the desert air swirled menacingly. Sleeping out in the open was out of the question. They could hear the beginnings of a squall forming as they set tripwires along the cave’s entrance.

The campfire was puny but serviceable. There was little oxygen in the cave to feed it, which annoyed Sasuke, since what air did surround them was moist and chilly. Sakura healed herself by the meager light, smoothing away the scrape he’d seen on her knee, along with several others on the back of her upper thighs that were obscured from his view. 

He mostly expected it when she settled beside him in front of the fire, positioning around his chewed-up shoulder. It was the Team 7 specialty: yell at one another until it came to blows, then pretend like nothing ever happened. He ate indifferently while she healed the burns.

“I meant what I said earlier, about being sorry. I really was trying to help,” she said, squinting as his skin smoothed under her chakra. 

He nodded. “I know.” He did not ask whether she meant the rest. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer, anyway.

“I shouldn’t have hit you,” she said, shifting her hand along his collarbone. When he swallowed, his throat brushed against her fingertips. 

“I deserved it,” he conceded. The fight exacerbated the clearing of his head. He no longer cycled through the lapse in his memory, waterboarding himself with feeling. Earlier he’d felt like he was drowning it: the love, inextricable from his family, the reciprocal compassion. Even as he’d accused her he knew it wasn’t true; the tampered memory had not muddied the way he thought about Sakura, not directly. She had done what she said she would. She kept her word. Once again he was the victim of his own weakness, lashing out at any hint of humanity. 

“You weren’t yourself,” she offered.

“Wasn’t I,” he said. It was less a question than a deprecation. There was a tug at the corner of her mouth, like she was resisting the urge to smile.

“I’ll accept your apology if you can accept mine.” He nodded curtly and she withdrew, pausing with her lips parted, like she wanted to say more. 

Instead, she cleared her throat into the back of her hand, green eyes hardening. “The burns are fixed. Were you hit anywhere else?”

“My back,” he said around a new mouthful. He was being slightly disingenuous. It was true that he’d hit his back badly when the stork sent him pummeling toward the jungle floor, but his regenerative cells jumpstarted the healing. It no longer hurt to breathe, but minor pain remained. 

Any other night he would choose to bear it. But it was cold, and her touch was warm, and his mind felt pear-bruised. Going by what Sakura said earlier, the proximity shouldn’t bother her, anyhow. He allowed himself this small, selfish comfort, reasoning that it was her job as medic nin.

Sakura was nonplussed. He shrugged off his vest—he opted to travel in ANBU disguise until they made safe passage to and from Suna—and shivered when Sakura slid his undershirt aside, prodding his lower ribs. 

“Here?” she asked, tracing a sore spot. His muscle twitched under her touch, which served as confirmation. “There’s three oblique fractures pretty close together, but they’re not displaced. Easy fix.” Her fingers glided across his lower back, checking the other half. He knew he was unharmed before she said so, continuing to pick at his food. “Clear on this side. I’ll fix these other ones and get out of your hair.”

She wasn’t bothering him, a realization that did sort of bother him, but he decided that was not information she needed to be privy to. He grunted permission, trying to relax as her palms splayed over his side. Discarding his rations beside him, he allowed his head to droop slightly, balancing his forehead against a bent knee.

“Your eyes have gotten stronger,” Sakura said, shifting along his ribs. Her tone was detached. “The Mangekyō Sharingan normally bleeds, doesn’t it?”

“When I use Amaterasu. Not as much with Susanoo.”

“Ah,” she said, falling quiet again. So much for idle chatter.

He concentrated on the sensation of his bones and muscles being mended. Though he never voiced as much, Sasuke nurtured a vague interest in healing chakra, how it differed among practitioners. In the days when Kabuto served as his primary medic, their appointments rarely evolved past the pretense of experimentation—Sasuke was prodded, provoked, and tested before he was ever patched back up. He was very young then, with limited exposure to medical ninja, and assumed all of them worked with Kabuto’s precision, the chakra itself metallic, reeking of antiseptic. 

Karin’s was . . . tart, he guessed, the memory of its taste most prominent. It was like biting into the pith of a lemon. Her actual chakra was more aerated and buoyant, a quality he associated with Uzumakis in general, since Naruto’s Nine-Tails chakra was not dissimilar. When she healed him the feeling wasn’t unpleasant, but he never quite got past the quirks of her methodology, much less the sounds she made when his teeth bared down. As the years passed, the bolder she’d become. A handful of times the moaning had been enough to make him blush. He was heartless, not lustless—there was only so much he could do to ignore her, even though it had never gone further. 

Unsurprisingly, Sakura’s chakra lay on the opposite end of the spectrum. It seeped : plugged every fissure and hole, smoothing as it poured warmth into him. It felt like his bones were being submerged in nectar, velvety and dense, as lightly floral as bottled honey. When he was this beaten down by stress and travel, the sensation was dizzying—dangerous.

In retrospect, their fight with the tengu wasn’t so special. The animal had the element of surprise over anything else. Still, Sakura held her own, better than he anticipated. They fought against Kaguya together, yes, but he wouldn’t overinflate her abilities: they’d been up against a demi-god. Sakura was outpaced then; an observation, not a judgment. That didn’t undercut the fact that, among the realm of regular shinobi, her battle prowess was exceptional, her strength unmatched. 

“You fought well,” he said, feeling compelled to return her comment with one of his own. She sort of deserved it anyway, he thought, recalling how cruelly he’d spoken of her and Kakashi’s abilities during the war. The comment was overkill, probably. 

Sakura’s surprised laugh confirmed it. “A compliment? Are you sure you didn’t land on your head?”

He shrugged, then winced when the movement yanked painfully on the rib she was mending. She stilled him with her other hand, the honey-feeling returning. “I must be delirious,” he breathed.

“Must be.” She slid farther up his rib toward the final spot. “Thanks anyway,” she said, sounding suspicious. 

“Sure,” he mumbled. “Is there much more?” He was getting too comfortable. 

She shook her head. “Just finishing up.” As promised, a minute later, she scooted away, taking the warmth with her. She smiled softly at him. “All better.” 

Outside the cave, the wind kicked up, whistling. Sakura bristled at the intensity of the howls. “We’re in for a big one, sounds like. Did you want those sleeping pills?” 

“I’m alright,” he said, though he was tempted. She moved to the other side of the tiny fire, stretching out her bedroll. 

“I’m going to turn in, then.” She stifled a yawn as she laid down. “Wake me when it’s my watch.”

Sasuke intended to, but, in the end, didn’t. He spent far too long staring into the fire, his unfocused gaze monitoring Sakura’s breathing in his periphery, absently thumbing the parts of him she’d left unbroken.

Notes:

My beta reader described their experience reading the final scene as: "We're on a road trip and I'm soooo hungry, but it's only noon and our next stop isn't until 3pm, and you're forcing us to stick to the schedule, so instead of pulling me over and letting me get a big giant cheeseburger you make me eat the grapes you packed in the cooler. And I do. But I still really want the cheeseburger."

So what I'm saying is: I hope you liked the grapes. But I promise the cheeseburger is imminent!!!

Thanks so much for the kudos & comments so far :) Comments, especially, are super encouraging. Would love to hear your thoughts!

I'm slightly behind where I want to be for next week's update, but it should be up by the regular time. Expect lots of Confrontation and Tension.

Chapter 8

Notes:

Be warned: The talk no jutsu is REAL in this chapter, but we’re wayyy overdue in these two finding the common ground.

More so than romance, I’ve tried to depict what I consider to be an accurate account of how hard it is to regain trust once it’s lost. We’ve reached the halfway point of the story, and, subsequently, a turning point in their relationship—but my version of SasuSaku still has plenty of growing to do. All that to say, this is a heavy heavy feels chapter, but it’s necessary to pave the way for the physical stuff to come. I hope y’all enjoy!

Wind whistled across the plains, so loud it drowned out the sounds of her and Sasuke’s sandals slushing against the sand. Since they broke camp that morning, he’d taken the lead; although he hadn’t said so—Sakura wouldn’t be able to hear him over the howling, anyway—there was a mutual awareness that the visibility was too low for her to see much of anything. Sasuke would need to serve as their eyes for the time being.

That was fine by her: she needed the time to think. 

At breakfast, she’d pressed the issue with Sasuke once more. To what extent did he know Koto, and, more importantly, to what extent did he understand the kid’s motivations?

“You first,” he frowned. 

“You already know everything I know.” Although she didn’t mention how the old woman attempted to orchestrate a confrontation between her and Sasuke. She did, however, mention the curious chakra signature of Yuri’s mute daughter, Akami, and how it gave her pause.

This piqued Sasuke’s interest. “What do you mean?”

She described what little she had sensed from the woman during the brief interaction. How the suppressed chakra signature reminded her of jinchūrikis she'd met in the past: as if Akami’s prowess—assuming she had any—had been sealed away by someone else.

The biographical data with her mission scroll, as well as the folder she’d received from the Tsuchikage, identified Yuri as his grandmother, but didn’t clarify which one of her children was Koto’s parent. Sakura hadn’t thought too hard about it at first—it was the sort of information that was normally revealed in conversation—but then Sasuke became involved, and the entire mission had gone helter-skelter. 

When Akami fled the bakery, Yuri had only said she and the boy were “close.” It was a description more fitting of a heartbroken aunt than a mother. What mother, at the sound of her missing son’s name, would turn away instead of toward? As a result, Sakura assumed the absent son, Akami’s twin brother, was Koto’s father: she didn’t need to look far for proof that boys who grew up without fathers often became troublemakers. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that Akami might be Koto’s parent instead, that her suppressed chakra, combined with Koto’s apparent talent for the ninja arts, might point to a larger piece of the puzzle.

Absently, she chewed her lips, uncertain how to proceed. She settled on: “Did Koto ever talk about his mother?”

Sasuke halted when she asked that, pausing his task of kicking sand over their footprints to look at her. He knew something, but refused to say what. 

When she pushed, he turned surly again, refusing to cooperate. He reminded her this was her mission, her mess, and promptly began a brooding, unbroken silence. Within the hour they were on the move.  

Without a word, Sasuke told her all she needed to know about why Koto was on the run. She mused while staring at Sasuke’s tense back: if boys without fathers became troublemakers, boys without mothers became monsters. 

She was being unfair, she knew, but the irony that Sasuke had accused her of constantly meddling grew by the day.

Beyond the details of the mission itself, Sakura was still struggling to wrap her head around Sasuke’s involvement. If she proceeded with her newest speculation—Koto was seeking answers, or revenge, because of Akami—perhaps against whomever sealed her chakra away—then his training of Koto simultaneously made more and less sense. Sasuke was an avenger, then an atoner, and now, supposedly, a deserter: of Konoha, but by consequence, of anything related to the restoration of the Uchiha. When had rebuilding his family stopped being the plan? It didn’t take a genius to deduce that Sasuke had contented himself to live as Sakura had found him, to shirk off life as a clan-bred and bound ninja to become no one. It didn’t take a genius, but it did take a clear head; once Sakura set aside her stubbornness, truly let go of the promise he’d make her— maybe next time— it was obvious.

Serving as Koto’s temporary mentor was further proof. Even if it had barely sprouted, Sasuke allowed a relationship to take root. He chose to become something new to someone who wasn’t her, or Naruto, or Kakashi, or any of the people who fought and bled and suffered for him. He decided somewhere along the way that he had achieved penance, that this was his reward to reap. To live on—without them. 

Sasuke had no intention of returning home. Not now, not ever. 

The realization made her feel impossibly small. 

She was grateful, suddenly, for the bucketfuls of sand whipped up by the wind, hurtling against the hood of her cloak. It made it impossible for Sasuke to hear or see her tears.

By the time the storm passed, she had long since dried her face, though she was uncertain if her eyes remained a bit puffy. She grew accustomed to the sounds of the desert during the hours they’d spent traveling, subsumed in its violence; the aftermath was unnervingly quiet. 

They were approaching a fork in the dunes—the path straight south cut toward Suna, but Sasuke paused at the intersection. Before she could inquire, he turned around, face set in a frown. Whatever he was about to say, he looked like he expected a fight.

“I have to handle something,” he said over the wind. “It’ll take an hour at most, then we’ll resume toward Suna.”

She balked. “What on earth do you need to ‘handle’ in the middle of the desert?” 

“It doesn’t concern you,” he said, not without venom. It could’ve been her ego talking, but something told her not to believe him.

“You’ll be slowing me down.”

“Hardly.”

“Can’t I just wait here?” she asked, crossing her arms in a huff, ignoring the wind nipping at their clothes.

“You know the answer.” He turned toward the path that forked west, assuming she would follow. Knowing. 

She hated that she did.

When they stopped again, they had only traveled further into nowhere. To make matters worse, the sun was sweltering, throwing a generous heat mirage over the glittering sand dunes, rippling around in all directions like a drought-strangled ocean. The heat touched and blurred everything, save for one spot on the horizon, which made Sakura quirk an eyebrow.

The mystery didn’t last long. Sasuke poked a hole in the genjutsu with a quick hand seal. The sand before them disappeared to reveal a massive, circular door embedded into the ground. Before Sakura glimpsed the seal on the door, she already knew what would be there: a carving of a snake eating its own tail. 

They were on top of one of Orochimaru’s hideouts.

“You’re not serious,” she half-laughed, watching as he shoved aside the metal grate. A gale surged, tossing a needle-spray of sand against them. Some slipped through the entrance, hissing as it pooled somewhere beneath them.

“Keep up,” he said, poised on the edge of what appeared to be an underground tunnel. 

“I cannot believe you. You brought me to one of your master’s secret hideouts while I’m supposed to be—” she cut herself off when Sasuke leapt out of sight, landing several feet below with a soft thump , not bothering to hear the rest.

She could kill him; she should kill him; she wouldn’t. Instead, after a few minutes of hardheadedness, in which she was pummeled by a nasty bout of wind, she followed suit. She tried not to tremble at the midnight black, ice-cold environment she dropped into, like leaping into a sensory deprivation chamber. 

After a few beats, a sudden light blazed beside her. Sasuke had an old torch in his hand, the new flame beating away the darkness. He’d already shed his ANBU uniform, mask, and contacts and swapped into his old gear while she was stalling outside. With his high-collared black cloak and the kusanagi visible, he looked very much like himself again. Apparently he had no intention of mixing business and pleasure—or whatever he was here to ‘handle.’ That was promising.

“Wait here,” he said, mounting the torch on the wall. The walls were mostly packed dirt, but imprinted with a faint diamond pattern akin to snakeskin. Scattered along the edges were tiny, fragile bunches of mouse bones picked clean. 

“Are you nuts? Look at this place.” The underground tunnel continued as far as her eyes could see, behind and in front of them. It was one continuous, unlit path. She couldn’t knock the feeling that they were stuck inside the snake sannin’s intestinal tract. “I’m not waiting around until something decides to make me into lunch,” she griped. 

“Orochimaru’s not around, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He lit another torch, this time for himself. “He abandoned this place a long time ago. Too far from the main laboratory."

“No kidding,” she sneered, toeing the husk of what was once a healthy desert skink, its rosy scales scratching like broom bristles across the floor. “And here I was thinking how cozy it is.”

“I’ll be back. Don’t move,” he warned, already walking ahead, moving through the unlit portion of the tunnel. 

He didn’t make it more than five steps before a squelching sound echoed from the ceiling.

“You didn’t mention you were bringing company,” came a lilting, unimpressed voice, “‘else I woulda dressed nicer.” Sakura looked up to see a man’s head emerging from the ceiling,  white-and-blue hair dangling upside down, a snaggled sharp tooth poking from his top lip. It turned out the feature was not unique; he bared two rows of shark-like teeth to Sakura in a rectangular grin, their points casting jagged shadows. “Gotta say, not your usual type.”

“Suigetsu. I told you to wait,” Sasuke said, tone bland. 

“I did wait, boss. You were taking forever. And what’s with the new ‘do?” The shinobi dissipated into a puddle, splashing onto the floor, before solidifying again. Boss . Why was it that Sasuke’s skeletons were crawling out of closets everywhere they went? 

Sakura was decidedly unimpressed. He was a skinny thing, though slightly taller than Sasuke, in a black, sleeveless mock-neck shirt and gray hakamas, a purple obi chock-full of water belts slung around his narrow waist. She recognized the broadsword strapped to his back by its signature eyelet: Kubikiribōchō. She hadn’t seen it since they fought Zabuza as children. She was too annoyed to be intimidated. 

“Cute trick,” she said, fingers hovering her kunai belt, “do you blow bubbles, too?”

Suigetsu snickered, slinking closer. “No, but I do bite.” He ran his tongue over the points of his teeth. 

“Don’t bother.” Sasuke had flash-stepped beside her to bat away the chakra-laced fist she was clenching. “He’s immune to physical attacks.” He turned his attention to Suigetsu, who was still peering at Sakura hungrily. “Where’s Jūgo?”

“Inside, waiting like a good dog. Say, dollface, you wouldn’t happen to—”

“Suigetsu,” Sasuke warned.

“Maybe Suigetsu-chan can explain why we’re here,” Sakura said, sickly sweet and taking a daring step forward, away from her teammate and toward the nukenin.

“Suigetsu- chan ,” he laughed, mirroring her movement. 

“So,” she murmured, glancing up at him from under her eyelashes, “do you?”

“I like a woman with manners.” The noise he made was caught between a purr and a growl. 

“I’m relieved to say mine stop there.” She rolled her eyes when he cackled again. “Who is this clown?”

“What? You mean Sasuke doesn’t talk about his favorite teammate?” He pouted. “That stings, boss.”

Sakura tsked. “Ah, so you’re one of them.” 

“One of them ? And who are you ,” Suigetsu drawled, jutting his chin at the hitai-ate holding back her hair. “You’re a long way from home, kunoichi.”

“I’m Haruno Sakura. Ex-teammate. One of them, anyway.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sasuke tense.

“I wish I could say I’ve heard of you.”

“I’d be shocked if you had,” Sakura said.

“Well, allow me to make your official acquaintance, from one teammate to another.” He offered his hand with another salacious grin. Before she could raise her own, Sasuke caught her wrist.

“Suigetsu likes to play with his food,” he muttered darkly. He squeezed once, in warning, before releasing her. “Show me to Jūgo so we can get this over with.”

“Sure, sure, boss, he’s right inside, like I said,” Suigetsu breezed, stretching and yawning like a cat. “And is Sa-ku-ra-chan joining us?”

“No.” When she stammered in protest, Sasuke reared on her, eyes flashing. His voice was low:  “Remember our agreement.” She fumed but didn’t contradict him. 

He backed away and spoke again at normal level. “Wait here until I come back for you.”

Suigetsu was already disappearing down the corridor, stalking backwards as he stared Sakura down. Soon, she could only make out the vague halo of the torchlight in the far-off darkness. 

“Don’t mind the rat snakes, dollface. They’re harmless, mostly,” Suigetsu hollered from the shadows, clearly pleased with himself as another bout of laughter echoed down the hall. 

Sakura was peeved, obviously, crossing her arms and huffing while moving closer to her sole source of light. Though she did experience a very brief moment of satisfaction when she heard Suigetsu’s voice again—this time, he yelped like he’d been hit. “Hey! What the hell was that for?”

Whatever Sasuke said in response was lost to the tunnels. Despite her anger, Sakura cracked a smile. The stoic bastard must’ve defended her honor after all. Not that that was going to stop her from giving him a piece of her mind when he returned. 

 

---

 

As unruly as he could be, Suigetsu was clever. As unpredictable as Jūgo could be, he was powerful. If Sasuke hoped to exacerbate the end of Sakura’s god-forsaken mission and his karmic punishment—as he’d begun to think of it—he needed to leverage those resources. 

The tunnel opened into a cavernous room, the ceiling soaring too far above their heads to see. Dozens of spiny, stalagmite pillars sprung from above and below, like claw-tipped fingers prying open a shut mouth. Sasuke had only visited this hideout a handful of times, in the remote past. He hardly recognized it. The cylindrical tanks lining the room, once full of test subjects suspended in preservative fluids, tubes pumping oxygen down their throats, lay empty now. The glass containers were shattered, the beasts they held either free or dead. Not that there was always a difference. 

Somehow, Jūgo had grown again: although he towered over both Sasuke and Suigetsu, his greeting was formal, his reverence blatant. They huddled in the center of room, away from the two opposing tunnels from which they’d entered and, subsequently, avoided the denser patches of cobwebs. Skittering echoed down from the ceiling, a network of long-jawed cave spiders ogling from their woven nests.

Suigetsu ribbed the taller shinobi with his elbow, jolting him from his reverie. “Oi, Jūgo. You ever seen a woman with pink hair before?” He took a long, noisy draw from his water bottle. “And a bad attitude, to boot.”

Jūgo was openly pondering the question, twisting his pouty lower lip between thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think so. It wasn’t someone I . . .?”

“I told you to leave it, Suigetsu,” Sasuke said. 

“Touchy,” he replied, then started a trick he knew Sasuke detested: spewing an ouroboros of water out of his mouth, a stream formed by simultaneously spitting and swallowing. 

“You’re determined to irritate me today,” Sasuke said. 

Jūgo’s eyes widened in surprise, an epiphany dawning on him. “Pink hair—it’s not your teammate, is it? The one who healed Karin on the Samurai Bridge?”

“How am I the only one who hasn’t heard of this chick?” Suigetsu complained, gargling through the mouthful of water. At their leader’s flare of disgust, he finally reabsorbed it, sticking out his flat tongue in surrender. 

“It is,” Sasuke managed, looking at Jūgo now, “though I’d prefer to leave her out of this.” Jūgo acquiesced immediately, and whatever Suigetsu grumbled was promptly ignored. “As I wrote, I need you to track someone down. I don’t have anything that links back to a chakra signature or scent, so it’ll be tricky.”

“Whereabout?” The promise of a manhunt lent Suigetsu focus.

He gave what details he’d gathered from Sakura: a band of four young male shinobi and their physical descriptions. They would be traveling through the Land of Wind toward Sunagakure, probably with a hulking piece of equipment they were lugging through the sand dunes. Whether or not it was operative was unknown, nor did he have any real sense of what degree of manpower they were packing. It went without saying that any conflict should be manageable. He did not disclose his familiarity with Koto. 

Suigetsu shrugged. “Easy. What should we do with the bodies?”

“They’re children,” Sasuke said, more harshly than intended. His sensitivity from the shōkyo no jutsu hadn't entirely faded; he was beginning to wonder if it ever would. He reigned in his temper before continuing, lest he upset Jūgo—the last thing he needed was the cave turned to rubble. 

“Locate them. Monitor, but don’t approach.”

Jūgo’s nod was grave. “Of course. We will be careful.”

“Since when do you care what happens to a bunch of kids, or Suna?” Suigetsu said, less impressed, lip curled in disdain. “And why aren’t you coming with us?”

“Is the pink-haired woman making you?” Jūgo asked shyly.

Sasuke scoffed, but neither of them faltered. “I’m handling it,” he said.

“Seems to me like you’re being handled,” Suigetsu quipped.

“And if I am?” Sasuke seethed, rounding on him. “Tell me when I’ve failed to ensure a situation gets resolved in my favor.”

“You seem troubled, Sasuke. I don’t like it when you’re troubled. It makes me worry,” Jūgo muttered, kneading the pocket of his shorts into a ball. By contrast, Suigetsu let out a signature whistle, a high reverberating pitch that sent the spiders above scattering over the ceiling. 

“She’s got you good, boss,” he cackled, crossing his arms as Sasuke continued to glower. “Man oh man. I wish Karin could get a load of this.”

Instead of going in one ear and out the other, as the mist-nin’s jabs tended to, this one sank like a stone. He’d become keenly aware of late: pieces of Sakura were in his head, his arm, his blood. With every passing day she left him scoured raw. Even Taka noticed, and here he was stuck playing catch-up to himself again. Unable or unwilling to name what was lathering up, threatening to boil over. He was not in control. 

Suigetsu’s barb hit the pit of Sasuke’s stomach and rocked him, because he knew it was true: Sakura had gotten to him. Badly—and first. 

Day by day, proof was mounting of how she’d chipped away at his defenses. For all his barking he lacked follow-through, had been unable to fend her off. She got under his skin, gnawed holes in his armor from the inside out, not by killing him with kindness—not only, he corrected—but with plenty bite of her own. She gave just as much shit as she took. She’d changed, drastically, fault lines parting and crashing together while he was stuck on the surface, grappling as the ground shifted beneath his feet. Sakura had him transfixed, spellbound; she had him scared . 

“Once the situation with the rogue group is neutralized, she will be dealt with,” he spat, eager to end the conversation. “Can I count on you or not?”

There was no question that Jūgo would do anything Sasuke requested, so headlong was his respect, á la Kimimaro’s legacy. Suigetsu, however, took great pleasure in exacting a derisive type of silence, subjecting Sasuke to a taste of his own medicine. He took a slow, brief circle around the center of the room—the portions flickering in the torchlight, at least—and hummed in faux thoughtfulness.

“And what do we get out of it?” At the beginning of Jūgo’s defense, Suigetsu held up a flattened palm and shushed him.

“Your head,” Sasuke offered blithely.

“I said get , not keep .” He stopped his strolling and sidled up to Sasuke, pitching close to his ear. “I’m so bored these days. You know, if Sakura-chan is so disposable to you, then some of us—”

It was futile, and he knew better, but Sasuke swung anyway. His forearm ripped right through Suigetsu’s liquid throat. He expected the raucous laughter before it could clamber off the cave walls. Suitgetsu clapped a conciliatory hand on the Uchiha’s back, patting him like a wise man who was soothing the woes of a toddler. 

“No sweat, boss. We’ll track ‘em down for you,” he said, flashing a wicked smile. “Besides, we know you’ve got your plate full—right, Jūgo?”

The other shinobi murmured in reluctant agreement, but Sasuke wasn’t listening. He stalked back the way he came, ready to retreat back to his ignorance.

 

---

 

Sasuke kept his promise. It was less than an hour, start to finish, before he and Sakura were en route to Suna again, sprinting full tilt through the hot sand. She deduced that whatever occurred in the cave, it hadn't been good; noxious, tar-black chakra was rippling off of him, to the point that she wasn’t sure if he was even aware. At the rate they were moving, they would arrive before nightfall. They would need to, if she had any hope of catching the Kazekage at a reasonable hour.

This venture would not be the cakewalk that Iwa was. Sakura was a well-known figure in Suna’s streets, having hosted several workshops at their main hospital since the war ended, along with the rare “girl’s trip”—missions, albeit bureaucratic—she and Ino took to visit Temari. Sasuke’s reputation, too, preceded him. They couldn’t give anyone a reason to suspect him, ANBU disguise be damned.

The plan was thus: upon entering the village, Sasuke would split off from Sakura before she made contact with the Kazekage. He would find them accommodations, but his main task was to make himself completely unremarkable, to pass through without drawing anyone’s attention. 

As the distance between them and Suna shrank, her preoccupations about their arrival accumulated. Last night, they’d reached a shaky stalemate (at best). He allowed her to heal him without complaint, which was new, had even managed some semblance of an apology, or as close to one as she expected to hear. But they were still worlds away from understanding. 

On any normal mission, the relentless pace of their travel would’ve already worn her down. Add Sasuke’s obstinance to the formula, and Sakura was sufficiently exhausted. If their situation was exposed, in front of Gaara no less, there was no ending to this story that didn’t resemble disaster. The last thing they could afford to be was on opposite frequencies. 

Of all the fractals within their dynamic, the responsibility of spearheading every hard conversation was what drained Sakura most. A crime for which Sasuke was not the sole perpetrator—when had Kakashi ever made it easy on her, or Naruto? The majority of the time, it felt like her main responsibility on Team 7 was to drag these men, kicking and screaming, in front of a mirror and force them to take a good, hard look at their reflection. She was beginning to wonder if the opposite was true, if all this time she had actually been trying to get them to consider anybody as thoroughly as they did themselves.

They were coming up on a group of large boulders that looked like they might offer some meager shade. As Sasuke made to move past, she noticed, at an angle, that the tallest boulder was cracked in half, bottoming out into a crevasse wide enough to sit inside. This was where she stopped. He could be the one to follow her this time.

She hadn’t sat down under the short overhang of rock before he was at her back, a fist looped over the strap of her pack. She let it slip from her shoulders, sighing as she settled against the ground, the sand beneath cool and untouched by the sun.

“We should talk,” she said, gesturing to the space beside her. Here, their backs would be protected, and they could survey the open desert while they rested, though they’d yet to encounter much life of any kind above ground. 

“We have,” Sasuke said, “incessantly.”

“About the mission. That’s the least of it.” She slumped against the wall of rock, letting the breadth of her weariness bleed through. “I don’t want to fight, Sasuke. I’m so tired. Aren’t you?”

She’d startled him; that was evident. His nod was miniscule—if she blinked she would’ve missed it.

“We can’t walk into Suna without being on the same page.” She sighed; his retort was written all over his face. “About everything. It’ll be a bloodbath.”

After setting aside her bag, he joined her on the ground, combing a hand through his sweaty hair. The overhang was barely tall enough to clear his head, barely wide enough to hold them both; their shoulders pressed together despite mutual attempts to create distance. The friction was made rougher by salt and sand. Ahead, the desert seared, white and sprawling. Within the crevasse, though, she could spot blue thumbprints under his tear ducts. 

As usual, he waited for her to speak. The cycle whirred to a start again. Sakura couldn’t think of another way to stop it besides sticking out her neck. 

“Let’s cut the shit,” she sighed, “I haven’t been completely honest, and neither have you.” 

He shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, his shoulder jostling hers. 

“So let’s stop,” she said.

It was his turn to sigh. He pushed back his hair again, then swung around to wipe the grit from his face. Every time he moved, he moved against her. “I don’t know what you expect of me.” 

“I’m just asking you to be willing.”

“I’m listening, aren’t I,” he said coolly, but it lacked his signature bite. He stopped fidgeting and stared hard at the horizon. For now, she’d count that as compliance.

“Say whatever it is you haven’t been saying. Ask what you’ve refused to ask up until now. Brutal honesty,” she said, threading her fingers over the crest of her knees. “If you don’t start, I will.”

“That’s hardly a threat.”

Her laugh was humorless. “A promise.” He seemed to be listening intently as her breaths drew longer, deeper, working up the nerve. “Why didn’t you come home?”

“Pass,” he said.

“Fine.” He was so—so — the word screeched over her mind like nails down a chalkboard— annoying .  “You start then.”

“You said in the beginning that I wasn’t your target. Did you lie?” The question was so immediate, she wondered how long he’d been meditating on it.

“Not intentionally,” she said, then grimaced. “That’s not entirely true, either.”

He nodded, like it was precisely what he expected her to say. 

“I lied about the nature of the mission, but I didn’t lie when I said you weren’t my target,” she went on. “Yuri, from the bakery. When she sent me away that morning, she gave me your address instead of her own. Even if you hadn’t confronted me in the street, our conflict would’ve been inevitable. It wasn’t until the second time I met her, when you were watching, that she indicated you somehow knew Koto.” She dug her heels into the sand, carving little crescent moons. “I didn’t want you to be involved, Sasuke. I didn’t want to believe what she was saying. But the information from the Tsuchikage confirmed it. I had no choice.”

He grunted. 

“Why the kid?” she asked, tempted to say more. Why not us?

“It was easier,” he said. “He didn’t know me.”

“He wasn’t afraid of you, you mean,” she said. 

His reply was vague, restrained: “Children are more accepting.”  

“In a weird way, I’m looking forward to meeting him,” she admitted. “I didn’t think you’d notice anyone but Naruto.”

“I’ve noticed plenty of people besides Naruto,” he said, looking squarely at her. Half of him was cast in shadow, the other bleached white by the glare of the desert. His hair was still pushed away from his forehead, the spikes softened into waves by sweat, curling inward. It was a weird observation, but she’d never seen his face this way before, totally unobscured. 

“‘Plenty,’” she repeated absently, but he didn’t turn away.

“You didn’t answer my question before, in the Land of Birds.” He watched her mentally flip the statement inside out, inspecting it for double, triple meaning—even when he was being straight with her, he managed to speak in riddles.  

“That will cost you,” she chided, knocking her shoulder against his gently. “Remind me what it was.”

If he was going to force her to answer, then she would force him to articulate himself in full. He seemed to catch on, a hint of a scowl tugging at his mouth. “What was the source of the emotion you used to replace the memory?”

“You can say it, you know. ‘Love.’”

“Alright,” he begrudged, “what was the source of the love?”

“Why do you want to know?” 

This time, his smirk was full and ironic. He shocked her by returning her earlier gesture, knocking shoulders with her. 

“It’s not your turn.” 

She almost choked on her spit, staring at his half-smile. He was teasing her. He was officially the most confounding man in the world.

Fighting off a blush, she broke eye contact to trace her pointer finger through the sand, filling the vacant space between them with nonsense shapes. 

“It came from a lot of places. A lot of people ,” she said, knowing she sounded too wistful. “I thought about Naruto. A lot. How he’s always been there, like a brother. I thought about my family, but Kakashi-sensei, too, and Yamato-sensei, to a lesser degree. About Tsunade-shishou and Shizune and Ino-pig. I thought about—” her breath caught a little.  She had promised brutal honesty, hadn’t she? Demanded it, from both of them.

She drew a five-pointed star into the sand as she spoke. “I thought about Neji. We were—lovers, I guess, for a bit. That feels like a silly way to describe something that happened when you were fifteen. It was before . . .” but she didn’t have to finish; Sasuke had seen the aftermath, the wood splinters soaked in the Hyuuga’s blood, extracted from his limp body and cast aside in the dirt. “And you. I thought about you. But not the way I did then. It made me angry that you’d accuse me of that.”

“If not from the past, then when?” he asked, the earlier humor gone. Beside her, his sole hand was curled like a hedgehog against the sand, as if it might prick her. She poked a knuckle with her finger.

“My turn,” she said, withdrawing and crossing her legs over one another. “Why didn’t you come home?”

He recovered quickly. “Pass. Again,” he muttered. 

“I told you it would cost you,” she said. On the horizon, there was a jerk of movement—a hare, poised on its hind legs, oversized ears shifting against the wind.

She tried a last time, her delivery softer but the rephrasing sharper: “If you didn’t plan to come home, then why would you say that to me?” It echoed through her memory, an infinite ripple: Thank you. Maybe next time .

“Because I’m a coward,” he said. He hadn’t hesitated. The way he spoke, so bitter, left her with goosebumps. When she turned to gaze at him, though, he was staring westward, watching the hare amble across the sand. It was for the better; he hadn’t seen her shock.

“I lied about another thing,” she volunteered, the words leaving her in a rush, fixating on a crease on the back of his neck. “I wasn’t looking for you. But I was waiting—for you to come home.” Her throat felt suddenly dry. “I would’ve waited forever, I think.” 

He regarded her only part of the way, glancing over his shoulder. “I didn’t ask that.”

“I know.” She felt foolhardy, rash, added the joke before she could really think it through: “Call it insurance.”

Rather than laugh, he flinched, like it disturbed him to hear his own words. This close, she could see he was gently gnawing the inside of his lower lip.

“It all happened . . . ” he started, then paused. “The plan was to come home. Then the plan changed.”

“Plans tend to, don’t they,” she murmured. 

“I meant it,” he added, sounding out of breath. “At the time.”

She couldn’t decide which part he was referring to. He meant to come home? That he was grateful to her? That, the next time he turned away from the village that bore them, she could tag along? The questions were too big, somehow. 

She sank a little further into the wall and, subsequently, his shoulder, but kept her head up. It was almost cold now, in the shadows. The hare was gone, and so was the wind. The desert was motionless save for the heat shimmer. 

Besides—if she used up all his patience waxing poetic about the past, she wouldn’t get the answer she really needed.

“Last one,” she sighed, not sure it was actually her turn, but hoping he wouldn’t correct her. 

“Hn.”

“Why were Suigetsu and Jūgo waiting for you at the hideout?”

His blink was heavy, the final drop in the bucket, like he’d decided it had been a mistake to agree to this game after all. He was quiet for so long that she was tempted to rouse him, poke his hand again, but this silence didn’t feel reflective, or playful—it was severe. 

When he spoke, he sounded almost shameful: “I told them to.” 

She stiffened against him, bristling. “That’s not a full answer.”

“You won’t like it,” he said. She couldn’t decide if it was just another bad habit or an emerging inside joke, the way they inverted what the other said for the sake of superscripting their own points. At the moment it certainly felt more like the former. “I asked them to locate Koto and his group.”

“You interfered,” she said. 

“You would’ve made contact eventually. My method was faster.”

“You interfered, and jeopardized both of us in the process,” she said, jaw tight. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to fly off the rails. 

“I was helping,” he said, clearly miffed. 

“What was the point of keeping up this charade—of committing a laundry list of treason—if you were just going to blow it all up?”

“You already asked your question,” he said. The precedent of staying honest did not preclude him from being petty, apparently. 

“It was rhetorical. A full answer, Sasuke. You refused to help from day one, and now you’re pulling more people into it independently. Explain.” 

“They’re under strict instructions not to engage. They will wait for my signal, and I will wait for yours.”

“Now I’m expected to trust not just one traitor, but three?” She pitched forward over herself, rubbing a sore spot on her shoulderblade, all of it too much. “This is such a mess, Sasuke. Why would you do this?” 

“Because it’s taking too fucking long,” he snapped, a vein in his neck jumping. 

“Again, rhetorical,” she grumbled into her lap.  

“My turn,” he said, brooding, his every word clipped, “if not from the past, then when? Where did the love come from?”

“From now ,” she said, too loudly, jerking upright, “obviously it’s from now.” She almost seized him, she was so infuriated by his line of questioning. He’d just confessed to soliciting his team of nukenins to assist with a Konoha-issued mission, and he wanted to know whether or not she loved him. “I cannot believe you’re asking me this right now.”

He could hardly look her in the eye. “Another lie, then.”

“Of course I lied!” she shouted. She took a deep, harsh breath, which helped her do scarcely more than keep her voice down. “How am I meant to be honest? Anytime I’ve tried to talk about this entire trip, you clam up. You act like you would rather die than speak, Sasuke. You think I can’t tell how much you hate it, being stuck on a team with me again? And you expect me to talk about feelings. You get so mean —”

“You’re just as bad,” he interjected, sneering. 

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re like me. You lash out.” He stared at the line where the shadow of the cave and the sunlight met, cleaving light from dark. 

“I am nothing like you.”

He didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t have to. His silence made his opinion plain.

The urge to slap him again flared, followed by an actual throb of pain in Sakura’s chest, like her heart was being pinched. She hadn’t imagined the gap between them could get any wider, and yet. She was bone-tired, at the bottom of the tank, nothing left to give beyond whatever leftovers of herself she could scrape off the desert floor.

This time, taking breaths helped a little, prevented her from exploding. She was shaking from the effort, teeth lightly chattering no matter how hard she clenched them together. 

“I’m convinced there’s no doing right by you, Sasuke,” she whispered. “I discover you, I try to leave you alone, you follow me anyway. I promise you I’ll leave and say nothing, you force me to stay. I try to play nice, and you— we drag each other back down into the mud. You loathe me, but you want me to love you.” Familiar, twin spots of heat surfaced behind her eyes. “I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. I don’t know if I ever did.”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” he rasped, as quietly as she had, “I don’t know how to talk to anyone .” On the last word, his voice cracked, a quiver so small she almost hadn’t heard it. 

Immediately, she laid a palm on his shoulder. She was powerless not to. He shuddered at the contact but kept going, said what she never thought she’d live to hear again:

“I’m sorry.” He angled toward her but kept his eyes downturned.

“For?” she pushed, not inclined to let him off the hook so easily.

“I shouldn’t have gone behind your back,” he said, placing a tentative hand over her knee. “I was wrong.” He stared at the hand, like he couldn’t believe it was his own. 

It was something. It was enough , she thought, for now, her fury surging from her like air from a slashed balloon. Between the two of them, the apologies could go on endlessly, but that wasn’t the point. It never had been. 

“No,” she breathed, “you shouldn’t have.” 

Then, before she could think twice about it, she hugged him.

The angle was not ideal, cramped as they were between shelves of rough rock. Her left arm wedged between him and the cave wall, her other gliding over his chest, knees dug into his side. There was nowhere for her cheek to go but smushed up against his shoulder, her watery stare turned forward to consider the blistering desert. 

When a single tear escaped from her, sinking into his skin, he didn’t wipe it off. Instead he wrapped his fingers around the forearm circling his chest.

“Like you said. I’ve been no angel,” she murmured, the words muffled. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “It’s a lot of change.”

“I know.” She felt almost entranced, watching the horizon blur and ripple. “I forgive you.”

There was a disturbance in the sand in almost the same spot as before—the hare, turning back the way it came, satellite-ears twitching.

“I’ll be better,” Sasuke said softly, and gave her arm a squeeze.

She nodded against his shoulder. “Me too.” 

Sakura swore, sitting there, watching the hare pick its way through the sand, she felt a drop of something hot tumble onto the side of her head. At first she blamed it on her active imagination. Then another fell, and another, a steady trickle of his tears. 

She pretended to be none the wiser. Just tightened her hold and watched the desert shift, churning itself into something brand new by the minute.

Notes:

I am a SMIDGE nervous posting this update cuz I know y'all want ~the romance~, so pls let me know what you think! :) The kudos & comments thus far are very much appreciated ❤️ Also, in case y'all are wondering where this is headed, I did update the tags now that I've drafted a few of the smuttier scenes to better reflect content.

I normally say that the next chapter will be up by next Tues/Wed, but I may or may not be considering a double update this week (if sex is the cheeseburger, then ch. 9 is like .... a really large side of fries). And my beta (the ideal reader) encouraged it, soooo.....

Chapter 9

Notes:

Double-posting as appreciation for the sweet comments & kudos ❤️ This chapter does not pass the Bechdel test, for which I’m sorry, but like, it’s cishet fanfiction, and I’m not tryna write an epic…

I don’t want to spoil but there is GROWN FOLK BUSINESS in this chapter, so read at your discretion. Have fun!!

It was uncharacteristic, but Sasuke let time get away. Huddled in that nook in the middle of the desert, with Sakura melted over his shoulder, he felt like a junk drawer had been emptied onto his lap, and he’d been left to sort, name, and organize all items by touch. Except he only had the one hand, calloused and cold, and it was currently clinging onto Sakura’s forearm for dear life.  

He didn’t know how long they sat there, staring out at the desert, too wrecked for speaking. He’d dozed off; they both had, he discovered, eventually waking to find Sakura slumped over in his lap, his arm curled along her spine. Salt tracks stitched tight, dry lines down his cheeks. It was the itchiness that woke him—if he hadn’t been so dazed, the sight of sunset would’ve mortified him. They’d napped an entire afternoon away.   

Sakura was quick to follow. She seemed just as surprised to find herself cradled in his lap, the back of her hair mussed from rubbing against the sturdy pockets of his flak vest. Sitting up, she untangled the strands with her fingers. She squinted at the blood-orange clouds smearing the horizon, the desert sun pulsing maraschino red. 

“Guess we should find shelter,” she said, glancing sideways at him. Absently, she dragged a thumb over his cheekbone, pulling back to show him a loose, dark eyelash. With a puff of breath, she blew it into the sand. 

There were few opportunities for open shelter left between them and Suna. Sakura told him this from experience: on more than one occasion, when she’d led teams of civilian nurses to Suna for medical conferences, they’d had to push on through bad weather or illness simply because there was nowhere big enough to accommodate a group of their size. Out here, the open air was dangerous—it was in Suna’s favor if prospective enemies burnt to a crisp or keeled over from dehydration before they made it far enough into the desert to discover the hidden village.

Luckily, the way was familiar to Sakura, and her guess that they would pass at least one more shelter before hitting the village outskirts turned out to be correct. They found it as the last bit of sunlight faded, the mouth of the cave was shallow and narrow, too short for them to stand inside. There was no space for a fire, nor did they have the energy to maintain one. The best they could do was unfurl their bedrolls side by side and crawl inside, which was what they did. They were so near that whenever Sakura flip-flopped against her mat, trying to get comfortable, she would accidentally brush his ankles. At some point, she left them there, or he’d unconsciously pushed his own legs toward her. That was how they woke up: facing one another, tangled at the knees. 

Neither acknowledged the intimacy of it, nor that it was technically a repeat offense. Instead, they nursed a weighty silence through breakfast that remained until they arrived at the battered cliffs surrounding Sunagakure. 

The guards greeted Sakura like a friend, as did several shinobi they passed in the streets. Beyond a polite inclination of their heads, no one paid him much mind, far too preoccupied with exchanging pleasantries. Sakura mentioned she was comfortable in Suna, but Sasuke hadn’t understood how comfortable until he witnessed people diverting their paths just to greet her.

“You’re popular,” he said after an elderly man in a flower stall pressed a long-stalked lily into her hand, its white petals scallop-edged, covered in yellow stripes and irregular maroon dots, its curled stamen the color of persimmon. She twirled the long stem between her fingers as they continued toward the tower.

“I guess they think I’m trustworthy,” she shrugged.

“You are,” he said, then grimaced under his mask when he realized he’d complimented her without meaning to. Sakura let it slide.

When the bulbous shape of the Kazekage office came into view, they split up as planned: Sakura to the tower, Sasuke to find a vacant inn. Gaara was far too caustic an observer—as good as Sasuke’s chakra masking was, putting him in front of the Kazekage would be imprudent. They’d agreed to no more secrets. He’d meant it: Sakura was trustworthy. His struggle was reciprocating.

“Try to stay out of trouble,” she said with a small smile. “I’ll come find you before too long.”

Sasuke watched her stroll away, occasionally returning waves to people on the street, then disappearing around a bend in the road. 

Locating an inn kept him busy, though not long enough. After three tries—there were surprisingly several places without vacancies—he booked a double with a pair of twin beds, the cheapest (and cleanest , the receptionist emphasized gruffly, for reasons unclear to him) room they had left. It was a bit antiquated, with wood-panelled walls and a kitschy autumn scene screenprinted on the shoji leading to the bathroom. It would suffice.

Bored and left alone, he fluffed the pillows, wanting to feel useful. Without Sakura he suddenly had no idea what to do with himself. Suigetsu had yet to send word about the group, though Sasuke didn’t doubt they would soon. Taka was a good team, capable. He couldn’t quite call them friends, but then again, he didn’t apply the term to anyone anymore, save for Naruto. Even then, the dobe was the instigator in their friendship. If Naruto ever stopped caring for him, Sasuke wouldn’t fight back. He told himself it was what he wanted—isolation. It was what he deserved. 

Typically this was meant to be the easy part, laying low, but Sasuke felt restless, like his skin was threatening to crawl right off of him. He needed something to do , oddly discontented over the idea of Sakura returning to the inn to find him empty-handed, literally and figuratively. 

He deposited his bag and decided to take to the sunbaked streets. After a quick stop outside the Kazekage tower, where he left a room key and an address for Sakura with the guard posted at the entrance, he walked to the farthest possible corner of the village. He would walk through every district, down every street, if that’s what it took—anything to distract him from thinking about what she was up to.

 

---

 

The Kazekage’s office must’ve undergone a makeover since the last time Sakura was in town. She didn’t recall seeing jasmine vines weaving over and under the circular windows that overlooked Suna. Other additions of note: a shaggy, oblong rug positioned under Gaara’s desk and the chairs that faced it (unexpectedly cushy—normally kages were easy to purge their offices of people, not encourage them to stay); a floor lamp in the corner throwing warm, hansa-yellow light about the room, and, perched on a high bookshelf, an incense holder shaped like a tanuki, the burning stick balanced between its canines.

Her friendship with Gaara was tender, prone to tangling. Naruto had always been better at reading people, particularly those who’d been unspeakably traumatized, orphaned. By contrast, Sakura was still clumsy around the Kazekage. Although they’d formed some kind of rapport, she tended to misunderstand his attempts at jokes, and vice versa. His pupilless, jade egg stare was ruthless. Sometimes the intensity got to her and she’d drift to the red tattoo on his forehead instead. Even that felt like a provocation at times: 愛. As if it hadn’t brought her enough trouble already. 

This time, it was the incense holder that she fixated on, pushing aside the teapot of hōjicha he’d prepared for them both. Kankurō was between meetings; she and Gaara made small talk while they waited. Updates on the children’s mental health clinic (it was running smoothly, and he’d printed out the latest patient survey data for her to review), minor village politics, coordinating a time to coordinate a time to coordinate another seminar to convene med-nin within the Shinobi Union. The usual.

“Was that a gift?” she asked, pointing. Gaara swiveled in his chair to look. Despite being one of the most prolific shinobi currently living, his moves off the battlefield were sort of boyish. In the new era of peace, he’d let his hair grow, developed a habit of twirling the ends between his fingertips that left it swept in multiple directions. Naruto had rubbed off on him in more than one way.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “How did you guess?”

“I’ve never heard you speak fondly of Shukaku,” she mused, feeling her nose crinkle. Her respect for the tailed beasts was begrudging at best. Her sympathy lay solely with the people who’d been conscripted to control them. In the immediate aftermath of the war, she had nightmares about running into the released tailed beasts in the wild—had dreamed of Shukaku, on occasion, tendrils of sand leaping out at her from the dark.

Gaara’s nod was placid. “I don’t miss him.”

“It’d be ironic to buy it for yourself. So,” she shrugged, “gift.” She gestured to the changes around the office. “Things look different around here. Somebody new in your life?”

“Something like that,” he said, a barely-there lift tugging at the one side of his mouth. She’d learned this was the widest he tended to smile. “How is Naruto? I haven’t heard from him.”

She poured them both a fresh cup of tea and snorted. “Naruto’s Naruto. He’s been busy with Hokage training. Kakashi-sensei is eager to retire. He was training up on Mount Myōboku when I left.”

Gaara accepted the cup with a shallow bow. The formality was boyish to her, too, cumbersome and endearing. “He mentioned the engagement in his last letter.” He sipped with his elbows propped on the desk.

“I told him it was too fast, but patience is not one of his virtues,” she said.

“As long as they’re happy.”

“They are very, very happy. Almost too happy,” she laughed. “Will you be coming for the wedding next spring?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said with another imperceptible smile. It was a flicker, fading as quickly as it appeared. “I’ve been rude. I neglected to ask if you’ll be staying with us at the residence. Temari had the room made up.”

“Normally I’d love to, but I can’t.” She almost crossed her arms, but stopped—she shouldn’t act defensive. “I have a travel companion this time. We’ll be staying at an inn in town.”

“Oh,” Gaara said, offering no other reaction. He leaned over to rifle through a drawer in his desk. “I don’t remember the Hokage mentioning an escort.”

“It’s, uh . . .” she pursed her lips, watching him sift through a stack of correspondence, “it’s a personal escort. Off the books, as a favor. Kakashi-sensei owed me one.”

“Favors are dangerous things for a kage to owe,” Gaara said, tone unrevealing. She decided to interpret it as a joke. 

“We’re both ninja. It’s hard to get time away. Surely you—” she said, then cut off with a bittersweet smirk. They were friendly, but not so friendly that she would openly speculate about his love life. “I’m having a tough go of it lately, to be honest. I think the Hokage was desperate to cheer me up.” 

“Yet he sent you on a mission.” Gaara was less mysterious now; his pity rang clear and bright as a bell.

“He did what he could,” she said.

“I hope my shinobi would say the same of me,” he said, sipping coolly from his teacup, then glancing expectedly toward the door. “Kankurō’s here.”

The puppet master knocked a few moments later—an eerie trick. Lately he favored simpler face paint: two broad, horizontal bands coated his eyelids and lips in purple, with one vertical stroke dashed from his lower lip to the underside of his chin. 

“Sorry. Busy day,” he said, scuttling to Gaara’s side. He tended to blush whenever he saw Sakura. He’d never quite gotten over the fact that she’d saved his life. It made him bashful. She was used to it; she would need more than one hand to count how many “secret admirers” sent bouquets to the hospital, thanking her for her treatment. Though she secretly wondered if it was a scheme Naruto drummed up to make her feel appreciated. 

“The Tsuchikage may have mentioned a border dispute,” Gaara said, as if they were picking up on a lost thread. She almost snorted, the transition was so smooth. He’s kind of . . . sneaky.

Sakura supposed she qualified as sneaky, too, as she summarized what she’d learned about Koto, his group, and his intentions while in Iwagakure without mentioning Sasuke. At some point, it became second nature, protecting his new life from intruders. Not that she was any better. What was she doing if not intruding, sticking her nose where it didn’t belong? She had to fight for the mission not to become an afterthought, what with the other daily developments at play.  

Gaara and Kankurō didn’t seem so surprised when she relayed the Tsuchikage’s revelation about the iridium technology. “Rock fuckers,” Kankurō grumbled. Gaara silenced him with a pensive frown. 

“While they’re still struggling with the technology, they seem harmless, but I’m tracking them down as we speak. They’re still a ways outside of the village,” she said. She shrugged. “They’re kids.”

“That doesn’t prevent them from being dangerous,” Gaara added gently.

“No, it doesn’t,” she admitted.

“We’re limited, as you know, but I can work with Kankurō to see who’s available in our reserves.”

“That won’t be necessary. My teammate for the mission is ANBU. We’re more than capable,” she said, politely waving the offer away. A beat passed, the air heavy, and it occurred to her she might sound suspicious turning down an offer of assistance. “ If you have shinobi to spare, having extra hands on the research side would be more helpful. I assume Suna maintains an archive, which I wouldn’t ask to see, for obvious reasons. If someone could learn more about the technology, then—”

“Consider it done,” Gaara said, gesturing to Kankurō with the slightest lift of his forefinger. The puppet master excused himself promptly.

She inclined her head. “Thank you, Kazekage-sama.”

“Anything for a friend,” he said, rising from his chair. 

He walked her out, lingered with his fingers curled around the doorframe while listening to her nervously prattle, promising to remind Naruto to write more often. 

“I hope peace finds you soon.” She forced herself not to look away from his melancholy expression. “You, out of everyone, deserve it.”

It was a lovely thing to say, so lovely it made her want to disappear. She clung to formality instead, bowing so she could ogle the floorboards instead. When the door shut, she was tempted to collapse against it, releasing all the air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. 

Wherever her “peace” was, it certainly felt very far away.

She began trudging down the hall when a scuffle came from the stairwell. 

“And just where do you think you’re going?” came a voice from up ahead. 

Sakura looked up in time to spot Temari barreling toward her. She almost leapt in the air with pent up excitement, not able to hold back the squeal that rose out of her as she caught Temari in a soaring hug. 

Temari dragged Sakura to a moodily lit bar down the street. It was a squat building huddled in the corner of the row, the sandstone walls weathered and smooth as river pebbles. The bar hugged the retainer wall that separated this district from civilian residences on the opposite side. A crowd of chainsmokers, posted up in the alley, glanced with passing intrigue as they walked in.

Dim spotlights cast individual tables—a mix of booths and high-tops—in beams of smoky amber. A lazy rock song that Sakura didn’t recognize was playing on the overhead speakers, muffled enough to pass off as atmospheric. It was moderately full; some twenty or so people milled about, a mix of civilians and sand shinobi. In the back, lively jeering drew her attention to a contentious round of billiards. 

They settled into a free booth with cracked vinyl cushions. Before Sakura could catch her breath, the bartender slid a pint of beer, two chilled glasses, and a plate of steak-and-shishito yakitori skewers, shedding steam in rivulets. Temari slid a piece off with her teeth, wiggling her eyebrows. “It pays to be the sister of a war hero.”

To that, Sakura cheersed, draining her full glass in one pull. A very ungraceful belch followed shortly after, and Temari snickered. “Atta girl.” She guzzled her own drink. 

“You have no idea how badly I need this,” Sakura said, pouring them both a second glass.

“The mission’s that good, huh?” 

“Please,” she groaned, “talk about the weather. Movies. What you had for breakfast. Anything but the mission.”

“Are boys on the table?” Temari said, taking another swig.

“Boys are always on the table.” Down the hatch went her second drink. She should probably slow down, but it felt so nice to unwind that she might actually cry out of relief. She couldn’t remember the last time she was in such need of quality girlfriend time.

Temari rolled her eyes. “Guess who finally made a move last week.”

Sakura gaped. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“ Yes .” Temari grinned over the rim of her glass while Sakura snagged a yakitori stick. 

“Spare no details. I’m begging. I’m a dusty old maid.”

“Oh please, little Miss Head of Konoha Hospital.” Sakura raised her drink high in the air, which the bartender misinterpreted as a request for another round. Not that they were complaining.

“You’re sure it’s fine? He’s not your teammate, but he’s still your colleague.”

“Right now, to me, Shikamaru is nobody. A mystery man who is pining after you,” Sakura said, waving her cleaned stick like a conductor, “which he totally is, by the way.”

“I dunno if I’d call it pining, but he did invite me to come visit Konoha. And he rented some kind of cottage in the mountains outside of town. I leave Friday.” Temari swatted away Sakura’s chain of oooohs .

“So basically you’re his concubine,” she said. 

“I wish,” Temari laughed, then turned crestfallen. “No, really. I wish.”

“Not taking the bait?” Sakura asked. 

“Last time he came here on business, I tried to get him alone, what, like, a dozen times? No dice. The furthest we got was holding hands while I walked him home. I thought the thing about men was they’re supposed to be easy to get into bed.”

“That’s outdated. They figured out we were playing hard to get and thought, ‘If I can’t beat them, I’ll join them.’” Sakura signaled the bartender while she rambled. “Maybe he’s just a slow burn type.”

“What are you doing?” Temari asked, snorting.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she said. Soon after the bartender slid a flight of sake shots between them. They each took two, giggling, then chased the burn with the last batch of yakitori. 

A half hour later, they repeated the cycle with a fresh round of sake and chicken skewers. All the while they prattled on about Temari’s almost-moments with Shikamaru: the time he gave her a tour of the Nara district; the many meals they shared alone that, somehow, were not dates; the time they went swimming and instead of gawking at her, he kept his back turned whenever she wasn’t in the water. “Like a gentleman,” Temari grumbled. 

“Have you tried being more blatant about it? It works for you in every other area of life,” Sakura said around a mouthful.

“I’m cashing in PTO to travel to Konoha for him. How much more direct does it get?”

Sakura made a noncommittal sound. “Shika’s smart, but he’s a man, which means he’s just as dense as the next. Plus, the smarter they are—the smarter they think they are—the more they believe they’re hot shit.” Temari smiled at that. “When you saw him last did you make an actual move, or were you just hoping a move would be made?”

“The latter,” Temari groaned. 

“Therein lies your problem,” Sakura said. She noticed her third drink was finished. She pushed the empty glass to the edge of the table in an effort to slow down, but the dutiful bartender reappeared immediately to fill it back up. “You can’t afford to be subtle. You have to go for it. Lay it on him.”

“Like you said, I ‘go for it’ in every other area of life. Can’t I be the princess, this one time?” she whined.

Sakura tsked and wagged her finger. “You could, but where’s the fun in that? Much more fun to be the hunter than the hunted.”

“Mhm. And you .” Temari hunched over the tabletop. “What’s this I hear about a personal, off-the-record escort?” Sakura visibly startled, which made Temari laugh conspiratorally. She revealed a key dangling from a small brass ring, sliding it across the table for Sakura to catch. “The guard left the key with Kankurō before he got his marching orders. You know he’s a loud mouth.”

“He wasn’t even in the room when I mentioned it.” At least Sasuke found a room. I was beginning to wonder. 

Temari traced a line through the condensation on her glass. “Gaara’s known to slip up now and then.”

“God,” Sakura sighed, “you three are the engines of the shinobi rumor mill, I swear. I bet you guys were how everybody found out about Choji’s bellybutton . . . thing.” Sakura suppressed a shiver. 

“I can’t claim to know about that choice piece of news one way or another, except to say it was very entertaining,” Temari said. She edged Sakura’s glass back toward her. “Drink, then spill.”

She complied, relishing in the immediate, pleasant buzz that hit. “It’s not like that.”

“How so?”

“We aren’t . . .” A full-bodied squint took hold. She needed a cover that Temari wouldn’t question, but she didn’t want to be wholly dishonest. Temari was dear to her, after all, a friend she trusted. “He’s more of a coworker.”

“A coworker,” Temari said. The description wasn’t so ill-fitting. In the last 24 hours, the air between them had shifted. Something greater than tolerance emerged. Sakura hadn’t quite put a name to it yet, but she liked to think it wasn’t so far off from respect, sympathy. 

“I ran into him on my way here, and he had some time off. So he just, you know, tagged along?”

“But is he a hot coworker?” Temari taunted, her space buns bouncing as she wriggled her head. 

Tipsy as she was, Sakura actually considered the question, rolling around the image of new Sasuke in her mind: the unkempt hair and half-hearted chiding, the quiet arrogance in his walk, how weird it was that, despite the ample scars, his skin was—anyway. 

“Sure,” she allowed, then capitulated to Temari’s obvious amusement. “Okay fine, he’s good looking.”

“How good looking?”

“Very,” she said too fast, then frowned. “But that doesn’t mean—”

“So your hot coworker, who you’re totally not attracted to, volunteered to be your personal escort to Suna when he could be spending his free time doing, I dunno, literally anything else?” Her eyes narrowed. “What were you saying earlier? The hunted versus the hunter?”

“He’s ANBU,” Sakura shrugged, “he’s probably doing it to score brownie points with the Hokage. Make captain.”

Temari smiled into the bottom of her beer glass. “I heard ANBU are real freaks. On and off the pitch.”

Sakura smothered her laughter in her hands, blushing at the ridiculousness. If only she knew who she was speculating over. “I don’t even want to know if you’re speaking from experience.”

“Oh,” she drawled, “I am.”

Sakura lightly kicked her leg under the table. In the back, a group of men cheered as one of their buddies scored a trick shot. 

“Ow. I’m just saying,” she said, absently rubbing at her shin, before rapping her knuckles against the tabletop. “Listen. We’ll make it a deal. You make a move, I’ll make a move.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea.”

“Oh, so you’ve become such an old maid that a little make out session scares you? A fling never hurt anybody.” 

“ Temari .”

“ Sakura ,” she imitated. “You have to do it. Otherwise me and Shikamaru will never get hitched and have lots and lots of little ninja babies.”

“Do not put that curse on me.”

“You’re the deciding factor of my happiness now. This is your burden to bear.” 

“Please, god, no. Ino still holds a grudge over me for taking so long to suggest Sai ask her out. Like, the man is a robot! What was I supposed to do!” She sank dramatically into her booth seat. “You would think she’d take her orgasms and run.”

Temari’s grin shifted into something shadier.  “Don’t worry. Something tells me you’re gonna make good on your promise soon.”

The beer had definitely hit Sakura by now. She was sluggish to respond, pouting as she puzzled over what Temari meant. “What are you talking about?”

Still smiling, Temari shifted back to lounge against the wall, turning her attention to the space outside their booth. She winked. “Batter up.”

Sakura followed her attention, turning around in time to watch Sasuke take the final few strides up to their table. She almost fell out of her seat, sloshing a little beer out of her glass and onto the ground. She hadn’t even noticed his chakra approaching. Either because he suppressed it well or because the alcohol thoroughly trampled her senses. 

She wondered how long he’d been watching them; had he waited until they were several drinks deep before coming inside? If so, it wasn’t a bad idea. Temari was not a sensory type, but she wasn’t unobservant. Sasuke had taken full precaution, as planned, mask and all, his arms clasped behind his back. He watched Sakura steady herself.

“Bat-san, what a surprise,” she said, failing to stifle her mild panic. “I thought you’d be at the inn.” 

“It’s late. I wanted to make sure you were alright before I went to sleep.” His tone was unflinchingly polite, the pitch modulated higher than normal. He bowed toward the other side of the booth. “Temari-san, a pleasure. I apologize for the interruption.”

“By all means, interrupt away. I was just hearing about what excellent care you’re taking of my friend,” Temari said, snickering when Sakura kicked her under the table again.

“If I may, there is information I’d like to relay to Sakura-san before I go, regarding our mission,” he said, waiting for Temari’s approval. She gave it freely, though Sakura was more reluctant to rise. By now the bar had filled out slightly; passersby shot Sasuke odd looks as they were forced to step around him on their way to the back.

“Don’t think this means you’re off the hook,” Temari said as Sakura scooted toward the end of the booth. She cupped a hand to obscure her mouth, her next words silent and overenunciated: I’m watching you .

Shove it , Sakura mouthed back. When she pushed up from the seat, though, she almost slipped in the puddle of beer she’d made. She tried to steady herself and grip back onto the table; instead, she found purchase on Sasuke’s outstretched hand, solid as an anchor. 

“Thanks,” she cringed. She couldn’t bear to look at him or at Temari, who was howling in the booth. She hoped her face wasn’t as red as it felt.

They filtered through the thickening crowd at the front of the bar, and the cold night air felt like a tonic when it hit her. People were still milling around the front stoop, but the chainsmokers had vacated their spot in the alley on the right edge of the property. Sasuke followed as she led them there, exerting an embarrassing amount of effort to walk steadily. 

There was minimal light; a streetlamp on the other side of the retainer wall threw a meek beam halfway down the alley. She stopped just shy of its spotlight, so their shadows would be intensified by any onlookers moving in and out of the bar.

“I was waiting,” Sasuke said, not unkindly. He leaned against the wall, shoving his hands—fake and real—into his pockets. She couldn’t decide whether or not he was partially relaxed, or so on edge that he was willing to act even when it was just the two of them.

“Yeah, well, Temari got a hold of me first.”

“I can see that.” He gestured toward the bar behind him. “What were you speaking about?”

“Her boy problems, mostly,” Sakura said.

“Boy problems?” 

“Shikamaru’s giving her the runaround,” she said, “nothing relevant.”

“Hn.” He paused, then cocked his head slightly. “Is it relevant that her shadow clone is on the roof?”

Sakura facepalmed and groaned. She was trying to stave off a rising tide of dizziness. “She’s wasted. Ignore it.”

“Sakura, if you mentioned—”

“If I had, you’d know by now,” Sakura said, rolling her eyes. “It’s harmless, I promise. Just lower your voice and we’ll be fine. She’s a lousy eavesdropper. Her hair—” she mimed the kunoichi’s space buns like they were over-ear headphones.

Through the slits in his mask, Sasuke’s contacts shone brightly among the shadows of the alley, glinting like a cat’s. “We agreed to be discreet.”

“I was discreet,” she huffed. “Do you have something to report? Otherwise I should get back.”

Before he could reply, a tiny, propulsive gust of wind shot against Sakura’s back, shoving her forward. Her hands flew up on instinct, but it didn’t help: she smacked directly into Sasuke’s front, her fingers knotting against the fabric of his vest so she didn’t topple backwards from the impact. 

“ Don’t. Engage,” she hissed, feeling him shift to grab a weapon. The air was a simple wind release, and very obviously the handiwork of Temari’s clone. 

“What the fuck is going on?” He was fuming, caught between recoiling from Sakura’s body and the brick wall. 

“It’s my fault,” she admitted, “Kakashi didn’t mention an escort. I had to come up with an excuse for why I was accompanied by ANBU.”

“And?” he seethed.

“And I—well I had to come up with a pretty compelling reason on the spot , and it had to be something Gaara wouldn’t pry into . . . But I didn’t think Temari would find out, too—siblings talk but, like, not about diplomatic affairs? Though she is an advisor . . . and she’s my friend, so prying is sort of her job—”

“Spit it out,” he said, gripping her elbow, about to wrench her off.

“I know , okay, I know. I—basically, I implied that you’re with me because we’re, uh, seeing each other.” Mercifully, it was dark, and the top of her head was nudged against his ceramic mask, so he couldn’t see her stark red blush. “It’s really, really stupid. But Gaara didn’t ask any questions, so . . .”

He gave no obvious reaction to her admission. “Then why is Temari interfering?”

“I told you. We were talking about her boy problems. Once that ran its course, she wanted to talk about mine, and I guess she caught word about me having company—”

“It’s just gossip,” he said, sounding a little disgusted, but the tense muscles under her palms eased. 

She nodded. “Just gossip.” It also occurred to her that she had technically admitted Sasuke was her boy problem. 

His hold on her elbow slackened but didn’t fully release. “The clone is still there,” he said.

She wished her swallow wasn’t so loud. “It’s fine, seriously, I’ll just—” but as soon as she pulled back, another stream of wind hit her back. He coughed a little as she banged against him.

“This is the most asinine waste of chakra I’ve ever seen,” he growled. 

“Worse than Naruto’s oiroke no jutsu?” If she wasn't drunk, she would’ve never invoked their friend’s name so flippantly.

Sasuke grunted in agreement anyway, unperturbed. “What is this supposed to accomplish?”

“She sort of dared me to make a move. But it was also a joint dare? So she didn’t want to risk me not following through, because then she couldn’t lay it on Shikamaru later . . .” She cursed and flexed her hands against his chest, as if in surrender. “Girl stuff. Complicated. Just play along and she’ll go away.”

Above her, he sniffed. “Define ‘play along.’”

“Um, good point,” she said. If the clone was watching from the roof—drunkenly—they’d only need to keep up appearances. It was like a seduction mission, she rationalized, despite the fact that she’d completed a seduction mission exactly one time and swore to never do it again. Fighting in lingerie was not her preferred style.

“Stay still,” she muttered. Sasuke didn’t respond, but he didn’t push her away, either. Slowly, she shifted off his chest to loop her arms around his neck, resting her face just shy of his throat. It wasn’t so different from the hug they’d shared in the cave. Like then, he barely moved a muscle. She hung off of him like wet laundry on a line. 

“It would look more convincing if you leaned down,” she said, inebriated enough to be lightly offended. Surely she wasn’t so unappealing. 

“You told me to stay still.”

“Well not now . Now it looks weird.”

She imagined she could hear the cogs turning in his brain. Eventually, he adjusted his mask so it rested on top of his head. He was obscuring his face while also indicating to the clone the mask would be an obstruction to . . . whatever came next. Smart . 

Dropping her elbow, he slipped his arm around her waist, supporting her weight without pulling her any closer. As he dipped down, his hair tickled her temples, the tip of his nose brushing against her ear. The feeling of his breath on her neck made her skin prickle all over. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” he mumbled. 

“Mhm,” she squeaked, knowing that he was kidding. Probably. “We can talk until she calls the clone back. What were you able to find out?”

He turned more fully toward her, and now instead of his nose, his lips brushed against her earlobes as he spoke in a low whisper. If they hadn’t been talking about the mission, she might’ve swooned. Her stomach fluttered anyway. 

“Suigetsu and Jūgo located the group but haven’t made themselves known. They’re waiting on my signal. I assume you would prefer to finish matters in the village first.” 

She blinked back a feeling of vertigo while trying to process. The group was located—great, but also so annoying that it took Sasuke’s goons to settle an issue she was meant to be chasing on her own. She was confident she could handle Koto and his group in battle, but she’d prefer to fully understand his purpose for targeting the Kazekage before it came to that. Assuming they didn’t already have the iridium technology up and running. “It could be a couple of days. It’ll depend on what information Gaara can scrounge up. What if they attack before then?” 

“It’s your mission.” 

“Yeah, thanks for that,” she grumbled. 

His voice was flat. “So handle it.” Always back to the derision with him. 

“I hate when you do that,” she whined, dropping her forehead onto his shoulder. He flinched, and she bolted back up. “Sorry. I’m a little drunk.”

“I would have never guessed,” he said dryly. “When I do what?”

“That—that thing you do. Like sarcasm, but worse.” The butterflies were beginning to feel more like illness; inadvertently, she wound her arms a little tighter around Sasuke’s neck in hopes the world would stop spinning. She was pressed flush against him now, which would normally embarrass her, but she was too lost in the fog. Much better to focus on how nice it felt to be pressed up against a solid, warm body, regardless of whose it was. 

“Are you going to be sick?” he asked, tightening his hold in turn. 

“I don’t think so.” She paused. “I hope so. I mean, I hope not , so.”

She hadn’t expected him to go along with it. Temari’s sneaky, impetuous voice rang through her head: a fling never hurt anybody. Not that this was anything close to a fling—she was just riding out the waves of her nausea, and, save for the wall, Sasuke was the steadiest, tallest thing around. 

But, well, truthfully, what was the worst that could happen? Short of actually getting sick, an image that made her stomach roil. 

“I maybe went overboard,” she cringed, burying her face into his neck. The nausea was strong, but not so strong that it blocked the little thrill that went down her spine when he grabbed her hip.  

“Hn.” 

He bent his knees, shifting before hoisting her clean into the air. Her yelp bounced down the alley. She had to wrap her legs around him to stop from lolling over like a sack of fruit. Another wave of vertigo hit as he pushed away from the wall. 

“Uh—what—?”

“The clone is still there. Seems your friend expects a show,” he said, flicking the mask back down with a jolt of his head. “I’m taking us back. Try not to puke all over me.”

She giggled—when had he become funny? —and relaxed into his hold as he strolled out of the alley and into the street. She felt surprisingly stable. More stable than she had on her own feet. Despite, you know, the whole one-arm thing. 

In the open, the air was much colder, nighttime wind whipping through the narrow streets. Another gaggle of chainsmokers were gathered on the porch, but Sakura’s attention was drawn by a glint from above. 

It was Temari’s shadow clone, an elbow propped on her fan, waving down at her from the roof. The clone’s hitai-ate winked in the moonlight before disappearing in a puff of smoke. 

Sakura probably should’ve mentioned that the clone was gone, insisting she walk herself the rest of the way to the inn, but she was sleepy. And comfortable . 

She resolved to wait until Sasuke said something, but he continued to carry her without another word. 

She wondered if she was drunk enough—or if he believed she was drunk enough—to get away with prolonging the contact, or if she was just pressing her luck and about to find herself thrown halfway across the Land of Wind. She clenched her legs and arms a little tighter, nuzzling against his shoulder, grumbling about her stomach; he hummed but didn’t protest. She would think about that in the morning; for the time being it was kind of wonderful, being cared for. 

Sakura was content to watch the dusty, starlit streets of Suna pass by from her perch for the rest of the way, a farther walk than she recalled. She brushed it off.

Maybe Temari had been onto something—it was nice, for once, being the princess. 

 

---

 

Sleep evaded him the entire night, except it wasn’t for the usual reasons. There were no nightmares, no Tsukunoyomi’s greatest hits. Sasuke’s problem was much worse than that. 

Sakura clung and wriggled against him the entire walk home. Then, when he finally released her in the safety of their room, she’d been so drunk that, stumbling toward the bathroom to change into her pajamas, she left the door ajar. For a split second he’d caught her reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall as she bent to peel off her socks, putting her pair of cheeky, lavender boy shorts on full display.

Not long after, Sakura fell into a drunken slumber. Meanwhile, Sasuke remained rigidly awake as his libido tortured him with a thousand replays. 

Their room was almost as tiny as the cave they’d shared the night before. Sound asleep as she was, he wouldn’t be able to handle it if she woke up to him making noise in the night, rousing to question him. So he waited.

The second dawn broke, he bolted upright and locked himself in the bathroom. He hunched over the sink and waited until the steaming shower clouded over the vanity mirror. He wouldn’t dare look at himself like this, on the edge of madness. He would handle the situation quickly and quietly and never think about it again. 

The proverbial angel on his shoulder reassured that it wasn’t his fault. He was a healthy, normal, albeit unusually observant man with healthy, normal needs. In the privacy of his home, he thought of masturbation like training: it was a matter of mind-muscle connection. You used it, or you lost it.

Occasionally—as in twice, since the war—he was starved enough that he sought out a real woman’s touch, but those times had been casual, quick, meaningless, and specifically done with women who identified themselves as merely "traveling through.” It had been many months since then, a point which his body now reminded him of.

Normally, when he touched himself, it wasn’t unlike this: in the shower, thinking of nothing but the feeling of his dick in his hand, nimbly stroking. It was efficient, detached from pleasure. It was a practice he’d honed since defecting from Konoha; he couldn’t boast about severing all ties if he secretly came to them in the dead of night. 

Except now, he was undeniably thinking of something . Specifically the fact that, hours ago, Sakura had her legs wrapped wholly around him, and his immediate reaction had been to hope that she was too inebriated to notice that he’d improvised a scenic route back, stretching out the minutes from bar to inn. 

Unfortunately, the thoughts didn’t cease there. With every upward tug there appeared another thing he’d refused to linger on during their forced proximity: the particular curve of her waist as she slept on her side, silhouetted against a cracking campfire, how the uneven draping of her knees accentuated the swell of her hips. The low bellyache he’d felt when she snaked her arms around him in the cave, then in the alley, but sharper, more urgent. How it’d felt equally right and wrong to watch her in the mirror, if only for a moment, let his eyes slide up her long legs to her round, tight ass. 

He stopped touching himself long enough to swivel the temperature to the coldest it would go. With any luck he’d knock himself out of it or at least stop shaking so damn much. His cock was so hard it bordered on discomfort, a too-taut pressure roping along his shaft as he strained against his hand, wishing for a different grip altogether—wetter, warmer, noisier, softer. Pinker.

Every time he began building toward climax, Sakura flashed through his mind. Not just the brush bys or the smell of her, which had somehow made its way into all his clothes, but also the uncharged moments when she’d made her affections plain. Despite how intense things had gotten on the road, her empathy managed to break through the worst of it—of him—a pillar of light cracking apart every last storm cloud. 

He braced against the wall, panting through the icy spray. He was no closer to relief. 

He switched tactics; the shame he could deal with later. For now, he retraced where her hands had touched him, occasions he could recite off the cuff. At this point it felt like her touch had wandered everywhere but the place he wanted most: she’d mended his ribs, his shoulder, had cut his fucking hair and held him like he was made of glass, a thing too sacred or dangerous to break. He felt shattered anyway, a heap of shrapnel he could no longer tell up from down, not unless she was nearby, the north star toward which he could orient. 

It was the jutsu, he complained to no one but himself, happy to have something else to blame. The fucking good-for-nothing jutsu was the catalyst. Sasuke had been perfectly satisfied in his padded room of willful ignorance, wondering but never knowing what he was missing, better for it. He certainly knew now, had made sure to wedge that can of worms right open the first chance he got.  All this time and she still loved him, hurt for him, despite his cowardice. All this time and he still wanted her, worse than ever. 

He thought it’d been bad then, depositing her on that damned bench, or when he’d blunted her with genjutsu so she wouldn’t come chasing after him and Naruto and Kaguya and get killed in the chaos. Those times were child’s play. This , he thought—stroking himself raggedly, the scene of her bent over on loop, a show he pretended was just for him—was agony. 

It was no use: he’d hit a plateau and the pressure was awful. So much blood pooled at the tip of his cock that it was starting to go a deep scarlet. He surrendered, propped both arms on the cold tiles. The frigid water cascaded down his bare back and he leaned into it, letting the spray solidify new knots along his shoulderblades. 

At the door, a meek knock sounded.

“Sasuke?” Sakura’s voice was thick with sleep. 

“Yeah?” he called, letting his forehead meet the tiles, trying to control his breathing. 

“Will you—” He heard her speak through a yawn. “Will you be out soon? I need to use the bathroom.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning off the flow, “I’m done.”

The lack of hot water meant there was no steam left to cloud his reflection. He toweled off, frowning; he looked borderline feral, the whites of his mismatched eyes bloodshot to hell, bleary with arousal. He dried himself partway and gave up, wedging his dirty clothes into his armpit. He gripped the towel around his hips, hoping the combination of knotted material and his fist would obscure his hard-on, or that Sakura would be too tired to notice. He slid the door open with his foot. 

She was standing on the threshold, ruffling her hair and blinking slowly at the window on the other side of the room. When she turned back, she hadn’t been expecting him to be standing there half-naked, clearly, her eyes going saucer-wide. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he muttered, sidestepping past. She hustled out of the way, almost tripping on the shoes they’d left by the entryway.

“Oh, okay,” she said, watching him move into the room with a peculiar expression on her face. “I’ll just,” she started, but seemed to think better of it. She opted to shut herself inside the bathroom instead. 

He indulged in a tiny, frivolous smile as he dressed for the day. 

He hadn’t missed the once-over she gave him. In fact, it softened the blow, if only a little.

Notes:

Since I double-posted this week, ch. 10 will probably get posted sometime around Labor Day weekend (August 30-Sept 1, for non-US readers).

Next time: 🍔

Chapter 10

Notes:

Woof. Longest chapter yet (almost double the length of some of the earlier chapters). I’ve updated the rating to Explicit because, well, you’ll see. <3

Considering the lengths he’d gone to—assembling a small team of archival specialists, historians, and scientists, who piloted a full cart of materials to Kazekage tower—Gaara was, admittedly, disappointed by the results. He returned from a morning of administrative and budgetary meetings to find Sakura slumped over a haphazardly covered desk, her typical cheer replaced by a lackluster slouch. On the far wall of the room, there stood a chalkboard covered in theories. From what he could surmise, each one had been discarded over the course of the discussion—broad X’s slashed through the words.   

Upon entering, the man speaking—a middle-aged ninjutsu theoretical physicist whose lecture on iridium particles was delivered with manic body language—halted to bow. Gaara indicated he should continue: by the end, he, in addition to every other person in the room, if their expressions were to be believed, had understood very little of what was said.

“And so, if you had to put it in layman’s terms . . .” Sakura said, cheek smushed against her fist.

The scientist shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “If the technology is operable, it’s not great. I’m not sure through what means it functions, or is intended to function. I imagine some combination of Lightning and Earth natures, since iridium is a good conductor. Maybe Fire, if the user wields it in molten form.”

“Lightning, huh?” Sakura murmured, sounding dejected, eyes sliding to the corner of the floorboards. “So I’m going in blind.”

“Precisely,” the man replied, offering two thumbs up and a toothy grin.

Gaara thanked the gaggle of experts before politely dismissing them. He instructed the materials they’d provided to be left behind. Sakura plucked through a short stack, seemingly scanning for keywords. He settled into the chair beside her.

“Tell me,” he breathed, “are we screwed?”

Her thin, pink eyebrows shot up in a surprise laugh before she slumped balefully into her seat. She tossed the errant paper aside. “Intel-wise, pretty screwed. Combat-wise, I’m optimistic.”

“I can spare Kankurō to assist you,” he offered.

He wasn’t sure whether his own surprise was warranted, watching the soft shake of her head. “I hope you’re not declining out of pride,” he said, doing his best to sound rueful instead of disapproving.

“Given the stakes, I wouldn’t dare,” she said, pushing away from the useless trove of papers. Before speaking again, she straightened. “Maybe it’s foolish, but I’m holding out hope that I can convince them to surrender. Convince the Hokage to admit the group to the mental health clinic in Konoha. They’re just boys.”

Gaara sighed, tapping the tailend of a pen against the tabletop. “Boys with a penchant for blood. I know what that’s like.”

Her smile was soft, pained. 

“I trust you, but if the village is threatened, I will take action,” he said.

“Understood.”

He searched the room for an excuse to bide time before he had to speak the question floating to the surface, like scum. Studies the tendrils of sand whipping past the line of circular windows on the far wall, entertains the idea of counting the granules. All the while tapping the pen in a steady, soft rhythm.

Finding courage, he abandoned it, settling into a more austere tone, fingers steepled in front of his chin. “I hate to ask this, Sakura.”

“Sir?” she asked, tilting her head. 

“Not ‘sir,’ please,” he cringed. “As a friend. Tell me, truthfully—are you alright?”

“As a friend: do I not seem alright?” 

Gaara was well aware no one would accuse him of being a people-person. If the Five Kage were ranked from least to most perceptive—socially—he wouldn’t have to wait to receive instruction before inserting himself at the bottom of the line up. The scope of his friendships were as shallow as they were wide. Of late, though, the few remaining in his inner circle he tried to tend to. Observe. Study the maps of their open hearts to learn how to relinquish the hold on his own. He would never claim to know Sakura as well as Naruto, but he knew enough to sense there was something awry. Even her chakra signature was morphed, tainted, as if it’d passed through a brush patch and emerged from the other side littered with burrs. And yet, as he thought it, he didn’t know how to describe what he felt to Sakura, not without miffing her. In that way she reminded him of Temari: the calcified shell, the tender underbelly.

“You seem distracted. If something is on your mind,” he gestured vaguely, feeling less than adequate. 

“It’s a fair assessment.” She glanced away, training on the dusty lamp in the corner. “No, I suppose I’m not entirely here.”

“I understand the urge to shoulder things alone,” he said softly, “but there’s no shame in asking for help.”

“I’m not alone, though,” she said. Her smile was distant, wanton, but the look she gave him after was fierce. “If you don’t let me see this through, I’ll only feel worse,” she said, inclining in her seat. “Please. Let me do my job, Kazekage-sama.”

What else was there to do but watch her go?

A kinder man would trust her word at face value. A bolder man would press for details until she burst. Gaara was neither kind, nor bold; he hardly came by virtues in spades. Ascending so young, he’d been forced to forge himself into a specific type of man very quickly. Things like kindness and audacity and even strength were too fickle. It was wisdom that grounded him, and wisdom that made him summon Tobimaru. Fasten a message to the bird’s ankle, bound for the Hokage.

Reinforcements requested. Haruno Sakura has been compromised. 

 

---

 

Twitchy. There was no other word more fitting to describe Sasuke’s current state. 

He’d meditated, to middling success; he’d tried to catch up on sleep, an abject failure, startling awake from a bizarre, semi-lucid nightmare. He risked a solo walk around the block, once or thrice, but shut himself back inside when a street vendor gave him too long of a look. Reluctantly, ears burning hot with embarrassment, he’d tried masturbating again, but no dice. He collapsed on the bed, surrendering to his new, apparent life of chronic blue balls.

Two weeks ago, he’d thought peace and quiet was the answer to all his problems. His bucolic hermitage in the woods. And yet it occurred to him, sprawled on the bed, absently pinching the hem of his worn t-shirt, that he’d missed an important anniversary on the road: yesterday was Itachi’s birthday. 

It came and went without his notice. Along with it, the compulsion that normally plagued him, the impulse to do something. A pitiful thought echoed in the back of his mind: he’d planned to make something ridiculous, a one-stop sugar bender, and attempt a sugar floss trick he’d spotted in a cookbook. He had copied the recipe with his Sharingan some weeks ago when the librarian wasn’t looking. 

If he had to assign a culprit to the crime—of his relaxation — well. It wasn’t like there were many other people around to blame. Hardly more than a handful of days in close proximity and Sasuke was getting sloppy, moping like a lonely puppy in their shared room. For as whip-smart as Sakur was, he struggled to fathom how she couldn’t see, plain as day, why he’d chosen to shut her out at every turn. She melted his defenses like wax held to flame, a thing he hated, a thing he wanted to relish in, let his body soften into a puddle that she could drag her finger through.

But no. No, that wasn’t it, he told himself. Better not to conflate correlation and causation. Nevermind the candied hurt in his chest, akin to that sweet, too-tender feeling he got when prodding a new bruise.

In an effort to not think about Sakura—futile, of late, the way she’d seemed to wriggle her way into his every last molecule—he thought about the mission. What might await them in the desert. He itched for a purpose, for a fight.

Idling around, he’d wracked his mind for clues about what Koto might be up to. 

That day; the last day he’d see the kid, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Koto saddled up at his usual time, a breath past dawn. Side by side they completed their taijutsu drills, a round of kunai practice, the majority of the targets hit dead-on. When they broke for water, Sasuke had been musing quietly about the kid’s progress, how he’d noticed the kid was getting taller. His wiry, mud-red hair reached Sasuke’s elbow. How odd it was to notice such a thing—he thought, fleetingly, of his masked ex-sensei, watching Team 7 evolve from behind the tattered edges of a paperback.

Koto wiped water from his chin with the back of his hand, his voice shy and bright. “Could I ask ya something?” 

Sasuke refused to be addressed by honorifics. He was no teacher. He wasn’t in the habit of shelling out his name, either. When Koto had to address him, the kid did so with great deference, but anonymously. 

He nodded, guzzling unhurriedly from his canteen. 

“Awhile back, you said you were an avenger. Used to be,” the kid muttered, gapped teeth gnawing off the edge of a frayed fingernail. “That mean you killed somebody?”

Sasuke saw no point in lying. “Yes. I’ve killed a few people.”

“Who was yer big one?” Koto asked, staring meaningfully into the dirt. 

“My elder brother. He killed our entire clan.” 

“I never had a brother, or much of a family,” Koto said, “but it’d be hard, killing him, I ‘magine.”

Sasuke sighed, sinking back against a fallen log, mopping sweat from his neck. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” 

Koto nodded silently to that, crossing his arms. Sasuke could sense something bubbling up in the kid, an anger. 

“There’s somebody I need to kill,” Koto said, kicking at a harmless bundle of rocks. 

“That so,” Sasuke said. Koto focused on the treesline, pouting grimly. It was a perfect, cloudless day, a breeze in the air; the most ironic juxtaposition for a conversation like this.

“My family never really talks about him, y’know. My dad. But I could always sorta assume he was still out there, from the way they do talk about him. He did something bad to my ma—” and here he sneered. “She doesn’t even know I know she’s my ma. At least—I dunno—your parents loved you, I guess? Must’ve. That’s what parents do. They love their kids. Meanwhile, nobody wants me. Not my ma. Spends all her time pretending. Not my dad, either, wherever he is, whatever he did. To her. Maybe she thinks if she acts like she’s not my ma, and that monster’s not my pa, then I can act like I’m not who I am, with this—this—” he stared, wriggling his fingers, “—power.”

Koto looked askance at him, seeming wiser than his years just then, in the wash of day. “Ya ever think about that? Inheriting power? What it makes you?”

“I’ve come to terms with who I am,” he said, trying his best to sound sage instead of sad.

“Yeah, yeah. Right. I get that. But still,” Koto frowned, “ya say it like it's a curse, to be you.

It is, he thought then. Still thinks, recollecting in the downy hotel bed, his memories all taking on rose-tinted edges.

He hadn’t let Koto blabber on for much longer. A sharp nausea had welled up in Sasuke back then, almost reeling with the realization that in his quest to do a passive good, he’d created some kind of mini-me: another kid, cursed into feeling unloved, exsanguinating blood in droves until it overflowed the chasms in his chest. At least Sasuke had Team 7, when it counted, despite how insistently he pushed them away; had Taka, had Itachi, or what was left of him in the end. And Koto had . . . him. Sasuke, who was less than nothing, which meant Koto had no one at all.

But he couldn’t be someone. Not for the kid. He couldn’t transform into a sudden, valiant mentor. So he told Koto, resolutely—in hopes it might dissuade him from tracking down his father and slashing him to pieces and mourning it for the rest of his life, watching the fountain of his answers dry up—to fuck off. 

Instead, he’d perpetuated the cycle. Sent another heartsick, vengeful kid out into the world; he’d even supplied the proverbial sword in his hand. 

Slipping under the sheets, pulling a pillow over his eyes, Sasuke tried to meditate, smothering the bad thoughts before their roots could grow and split. He repeated the refrain he’d heard so many times, from so many mouths: it was never too late for redemption. And wasn’t that what the universe had given him? A chance to course correct not one, but two squandered bonds?

Maybe. The thought was desperate, more a plea than anything else. Maybe. Maybe. If only.

 

---

 

When Sakura returned, Sasuke was, of all things, napping. Rather than startled, he blinked heavily from his spot on the bed as she toed off her sandals and deposited her pack. She jiggled a small bag of takeout. 

“I brought a late lunch. Bored?”

“Hn,” he said, sitting up and making his way toward her. They arranged themselves around the low table and doled out servings. Her summary of the research they’d uncovered was brief, considering the information itself was next to nonexistent. Afterwards, they ate quietly. Almost peacefully, Sakura thought, a suspicion brewing. Old habits die hard, I guess.

“After eating,” she started, transferring wedges of pickled tomato from her portion to Sasuke’s, amused by the bushbaby eyes as the slices piled up, “it might be a good idea to practice shokyō no jutsu while we’ve got downtime.”

He made a curious sound, lighter than his usual affirmative grunts. “I’m surprised you’re initiating.”

“It’s my end of the bargain,” she said around a mouthful. “And it’s in my interest that it’s done correctly.”

He made a little hum again, fixing her with a stare more intense than normal before returning to his meal.

Packing away the takeout, they cleared the table and floor of their minor messes, took turns in the bathroom to rinse their hands. Sasuke returned with the edges of his bangs lightly dampened; he must’ve splashed water over his face to wash away the remnants of his nap, or so Sakura assumed. He drew the curtains, blocking out the harsh light of mid-afternoon.  

They made the seals, but Sasuke’s dexterity dragged, lingering on each transition a beat too long. When they finished on ram, he didn’t withdraw from her. Just stared at where her fingers draped over his knuckles.

“Everything alright?” she asked, closing her hand over his and giving a light shake. 

He blinked. “Yeah.” They were huddled together on the floor, in the same spots where they’d taken lunch. Leaning back against the wall, he crossed his legs, considering her. 

“Did you want to . . . ?” His only indication of what he meant was a brief flicker of his gaze downward. 

“Oh. If you’re sure,” she said. When he didn’t protest, she swiveled around and lowered her head onto his lap. Her anxiety was typical, not at all related to being nestled between his legs. Sasuke was going to be slashing up her memories again ; she had every right to be nervous.

He was gentler this time, cupping a hand against the right side of her head instead of palming it like a chidori. Not for the first time that day, she mused that they’d broken some kind of dam after their conversation outside Suna. He’d cried, albeit invisibly; they both had. Ended up sleeping with their legs in a knot. Since then every brush of his skin on hers made her want to molt, not for discomfort but for breathing room, as if her body was no longer compatible with this new era in their friendship. If they could call it that.

Sakura sensed hesitation in him, how he stalled.

“It’ll be fine,” she said, offering a tight smile. Evidently she hadn’t done a good job of hiding her own reluctance, because Sasuke responded with a frown.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked. 

“No. Why?”

“I’d prefer to . . . warm up. Lower stakes.” He was caressing her head, a feather-light touch trailing up and down her cheekbone. He’s nervous, too. Weird.

“Sure, here, I’ll just—” both arms rose and stopped in front of him, and he watched her break one of her pinky fingers at the hilt. Anyone else would’ve been startled, but Sasuke grabbed the bent digit immediately. A pale green glow shrouded their embrace. 

He had a curious healing chakra: formidable, obscure, blueberry-inked. It was like dangling her feet over a bottomless well. Sakura knew there was an end, but she couldn’t sense where. Only the vastness of it. The energy mingling with her senses was the tip of the iceberg. Beneath, power loomed. But as he mended her fractured bones, the chakra churned hot, levelling off at a bare simmer, warming her from the outside in. 

When he was done, she assessed his work.

“Good,” she confirmed, and returned his touch to her temple before patting the back of his hand. “We can try the same memory. Steady does it.”

She let her eyes slip shut during the recitation; there was nothing to gain from watching him watch her divulge a tween infatuation—for the second time, no less. Just because she meant it didn’t make the confession any less cringeworthy. Truthfully, she was happy to be freed from that particular past. When it came to him, Sakura had endured enough embarrassment to last a lifetime.

As expected, she could feel his chakra present. Rather than dispersing, the solid block of energy was idle, hovering around her memory center. As if he was holding the curve of the memory without siphoning it out. The green light disbanded when she finished speaking, but the way he was looking at her—as if he expected the confused twist on her face. The memory was unaltered, the feelings the same.

“I couldn’t focus,” he said, frowning once more. “It wasn’t big enough.”

“I find that hard to believe,” she said. He simply shrugged. “Maybe the efficacy decreases with repeat attempts,” he said. 

She hadn’t realized he was still holding her cheek until his hand twitched. She sat up, pinning him with an incredulous look. They’d tested for that particular anomaly in the trials, obviously. He knew she was smarter than that, didn’t he? There were no known indications that attempting to erase a memory more than once increased the difficulty, for either the caster or the patient. If anything, the repetition made the results more thorough. What is he hiding?

“Maybe if you pick something . . . grander,” he offered.

She stared at him, dumbfounded. 

“Of equal impact," he said, glancing away, “or more.”

“There’s not—” she halted, rolling her eyes. “I don’t want to pick another. It’s bad enough to part with a memory that . . . you know.” 

“Significant?” His look was perfectly blank. Sakura gave no answer. 

“What about newer memories? Does the proxy make them more significant?”

She’d been regarding him from half over her shoulder. At this she righted around toward him, mirroring his position on the floor. To her knowledge, that was one variable they’d yet to test. Since the memories they treated were traumatic—and almost all related to the war—she didn’t recall giving consideration to timeliness. 

“I’m not sure. It’s a compelling theory,” she said, gnawing her lower lip. “Still, even if there is recency bias, the memory would need to be substantial enough for you to aim. I find it hard to believe anything relevant to now would compare to—” but she shut her mouth. She didn’t want it to sound like she was gushing over him all over again, rehashing the one-sided romance of their childhood.

He shifted off the wall to lean over his crossed legs and, subsequently, toward her. “We could test it.” He hadn’t even bothered with a retort.

“It has to be something big, Sasuke. You’re looking for an elephant, remember? Hard to do without attracting the wrong kind of attention,” she chided. 

She swore she saw his gaze flicker to her mouth before meeting her eyes again. 

“Something big,” he mumbled.

Confused, she nodded. “Yeah, I said that. A big reaction. Preferably one done without maiming me.” He nodded, but didn’t unfold himself. Just kept looking at her. Meanwhile Sakura floated and shot down possibilities as they came, narrating the relentless stream of her consciousness under her breath. 

A dozen or so bad ideas came and went, and she could feel herself grimacing at a point past Sasuke’s head. Then, wordlessly, he offered her his hand. Not in the horse seal formation—their chakra was already linked—but open, palm up.

“Take it.”

“What?” she asked. 

“Take it,” he repeated.

“There’s nothing in your hand.” She ogled the limb like it was from another planet. “This is a horrible riddle.”

“No, Sakura,” he said, and had he just laughed when he said her name? “Take my hand.”

Against her better judgment, she did, her jaw going slack when he interlocked their fingers. Before she could question him, he leveraged the embrace to tug her forward. She fell clumsily into his lap, but when she tried to backpedal and create space there was nowhere to go—he’d relocated his arm around her waist to keep her near. Now he was pulling her closer.

“Relax,” he said, a soft command that sent a shiver down her spine. He bucked gently until she slid fully against him, her legs splitting to encircle his waist.

“Sasuke, what are you—”

“I’m not going to hurt you.” To his point, his right eye remained a warm, smooth black—more than warm, actually. The look he gave her was smoldering. 

“Is this your version of a joke?” she said, a little breathless, arching far enough back to stop their chests from completely colliding. Or revenge . She had, admittedly, pinned him to a wall last night, hadn’t declined when he carried her home. 

Her hands were planted on his shoulders, keeping her upright. Unfortunately her lower half was a lost cause; she could feel her body reacting to the heat of his broad thighs hitching up the hem of her dress. His arm, at least, stayed put. 

“No.” He was staring at her mouth. “Just an idea I had.”

“An idea?” She was grateful the words came out more incredulous than shrill. 

“Technically, you started it.”

Her head was swimming. Revenge, then. “Kai,” she muttered half-heartedly, but nothing happened. 

This was real. Sasuke was underneath her. He was this close. 

He laughed again. It sounded almost sincere, the closest thing to a joyful noise Sakura had heard him make in years. She tried to gauge whatever motive lay hidden here, buried beneath his cryptic words, but his focus had returned squarely to her mouth. This time his attention was unwavering.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked. 

She tried to adjust in his lap, to give herself room to think about what was happening, what the hell he was asking. It was all so sudden and she was having a hard time wrapping her brain around the fact that she was straddling Uchiha Sasuke of all people, much less that he was the one who’d placed her there. When she’d caged him in the alley, sure, it thrilled her a little, but they were talking about the mission. Temari had been snooping. If she were forced to, maybe she’d cop to taking advantage of the situation a smidge, but no such circumstances dictated here. 

Wriggling sideways, trying to shimmy herself onto the floor, the back of her leg brushed against something solid and warm and decidedly not his thigh. A catch in his breath confirmed her suspicions and her stomach dropped, though not unpleasantly. He swiveled to shift her weight fully onto his left leg and angled his knee off the ground so she sat at a slant. It was her turn to shiver: he slid his thigh through hers, pressing hard. 

“This,” she said, her exhales ragged, “is very, very mean.”

“It’s your choice.” His hand was on the move now, parting the side slit of her dress to thumb the stretch of exposed skin above her shorts. “Say the word and I’ll stop.” 

His look was lazy and carnal but his tone was crystal clear. She could see that he meant it. If she told him to, he would withdraw in an instant. Then it would be Sakura’s turn to come up with an “idea.” But, at the moment, there were very few things left on her mind.

A not-small voice in the back of her mind warned her that this might be nothing more than a power play. She ground her hips down anyway, the top of her knee slowly brushing against his erection, but this time on purpose. His moan hit her in a tidal wave, and then she was drawing back just to slide down again, gasping at the pressure. Thank god there were two layers of clothes left between them—she didn’t need to deepen this man’s ego by showing how wet she was already.

He did not sit idly. Once she reciprocated his hand began wandering, alternating between kneading the flesh on her hips as she rode his thigh and raking scratches along her back. When its presence disappeared she expected him to stop her, but felt a light squeeze appear on her chin instead, his thumb and forefinger tugging her face down to meet his. 

If teenage Sakura could see her now, she would die. It was almost too much. He was soft against her mouth, his initial kiss so gentle it made her ache. She felt simultaneously like a simpering idiot and a glutton whose appetite was growing by the second, unzipping his gray flak vest and gliding her hands up his chest, taking greedy detours over his abs and shoulders, searching for any spot that would make him moan like that again. She cupped an experimental palm against his Adam's apple and that did it; the vibration buzzed through her brain all the way down to the tips of her toes. In response—retaliation, maybe, or was she imagining their foreplay had turned competitive?—he gripped the hair at her nape, deepening the angle. 

When his tongue brushed hers, she shivered again—he’s definitely done this before—and gently nipped his bottom lip. He seemed to like that, humming and hitching up her dress, fondling her ass. She checked him again with her knee, trying to hide her smile at how hard he was. Sasuke might have her beat with ninjutsu, but this was one area where she refused to be outclassed.

She broke the kiss to nudge his chin up with her nose, interspersing soft, wet kisses and gentle bites along his jaw. With one hand she tightened her hold on his throat; the other blazed wide, sweeping circles across his chest. Her nails snagged on his nipples and he actually gasped, open-mouthed, when she circled back to do it again, pinching firmly before her hand continued descending. She wedged it in front of her knee, palming him where his cock strained against his pants. He jerked up to meet her instantly, his strangled sigh loud in her ear.

“Don’t tease,” he panted, sounding like he meant the opposite. 

For some reason, when he spoke, it was official: too much. Way too much. She lost her nerve; in fact she was half way to losing her mind. She was on a mission hundreds of miles from home, grinding against—groping—a man who’d attempted to kill her several times. Forget Sasuke. What the hell was she doing?

“I need a second,” she mumbled against his cheek, and immediately he froze. He panted as their foreheads bent together, his eyes seeking hers, though she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She stared at the mess she’d made of him instead: his vest splayed open, shirt tugged to his throat, his infuriatingly perfect body flaring red where she’d scratched long, languid lines. She couldn't bear to see the smug look surely painted all over his face. It hurt her knowing she couldn’t trust him even when they were piled on the floor, limbs tangled and lips swollen. 

“Are you alright?” His voice was thick, strained. He shifted to squeeze her shoulder encouragingly. Pinpricks lit up her tear ducts at the gesture. They had stopped and yet it felt like they hadn’t missed a beat, like he had dug a tunnel straight to her core. The grip on her shoulder only increased the intensity, building up the ache in her stomach until bile singed the back of her throat. He was so—he was being so . . . sweet. 

It felt so real. The want. The tenderness. Briefly she had fallen for the idea that Sasuke might’ve reciprocated what she’d tried for years to smother. 

The instant she fell into his lap she had a sinking sensation that it was over, that he won. He swung low and, god, had the punch landed. Like a bullseye. He gave her her deepest desire so he could be the one to take it away. To make her admit out loud that even if she didn’t love him the same way, she wanted him in another—just so he could wipe the memory from her like old food off a plate. 

She rocked back onto her heels and braced herself against the coffee table as she stood. He stayed on the floor, staring up at her, all mussed and bewildered and beautiful. It was like she could see regret cloud his face in real time, the walls lowered by desire slowly being pulled back up. 

Ghosting her fingers over her mouth, unsure if she was going to scream or cry, she stumbled away from him and toward the bathroom. “Air” was all the explanation she could muster before she slammed the door behind her and buried her crumpling face into a towel, trying to muffle the cries that she couldn’t stop from spewing out.

 

---

 

If their situation wasn’t fucked before, Sasuke had certainly done it now.

He’d clearly allowed the insanity of the past couple weeks to leak its wastewater into his brain. Because why, as Sakura looked at him, rambling about creating a “big enough target” for him to properly practice on, mouth in a contemplative pout, had his first thought been what her lips tasted like? If they were as utterly pink as the rest of her, sugar sweet and plush, or sharp like every other word that fell out of her lately? 

Why was he lounging here letting his mind wander, weighing the chances of her letting him find out for himself how her mouth felt against his or if she would bite before he got close enough—an image that made his dick twitch dangerously. 

When she bumbled into his home, he hadn’t expected . . . whatever this was. Reluctantly, while traveling together, he’d let himself grow accustomed to her company. She was stubborn and frustrating, but she had never lost her knack for amusing him. At night, parting ways to their separate tents or beds, knowing she was there began to bring him some small comfort. The bond he’d beaten and bloodied and severed had grown back again, right underneath his nose. 

Sasuke begrudged it was the man in him, simple and impulsive, but knew that was too shallow an explanation. The truth was that things changed after the last time she’d cast the jutsu on him. She replaced what was, at worst, a mildly painful memory of his family and replaced it with a sense of love so pure and unsullied that it stunned him. She had given him a gift. He’d forgotten that humans were capable of feeling that much compassion—that he was, too, once. 

It was a time of his life that no longer felt so far away. Actually, it felt curiously close, as if by sloughing away his memories Sakura had lured other, more precious ones to the surface. Like how she used to say his name when they were genin, before he betrayed the Leaf too many times. Like how, during the war, the forest rippled beneath her fist and he watched the earth unfurl for her, blinking away his awe. Like how her chakra felt as it kinked through him, made him whole again. 

He told himself it was a morbid curiosity that made him extend his hand. He wanted to see how she would respond. One second she was in front of him and the next she was all over, her scent clouding his good sense. He hadn’t expected his own body to react so strongly—he’d restrained himself in the alley and the shower, hadn't he? Though maybe not as much as he thought. The weight of her on his lap flipped the curiosity into a craving. 

“Do you want me to stop?” he’d asked, because if she didn’t put up a boundary he knew he would run wild. He’d take anything she gave him, knock it back like liquor and savor the burn. 

A not-small voice in the back of his mind warned that she might use this for leverage later on, but he couldn’t find the energy or wisdom to care—the back of her thigh brushed his swelling cock and it felt so nice he forgot to breathe. He centered her and returned the favor, resisting the urge to unmuzzle his Sharingan so he could memorize the look on her face. 

Her hair fell in a choppy curtain as she gawked down at him, the points dangling against his cheekbones. She certainly smelled sweet, hot and sweet, the same melting honey that stewed in her healing technique. “This,” she rasped, green eyes gleaming, “is very, very mean.”

He wasn’t sure if she was teasing him or scolding him. He didn’t want to mistake her. “Say the word and I’ll stop.”

She’d let her body talk instead, ran her pussy down the length of his thigh and bucked against him, the anticipation so severe that she knocked the wind right out of him. If he wasn’t so turned on he would’ve been horrified by the moan that left him. He couldn’t even think straight—his kiss was tentative at first, worried she might change her mind, but she just liquefied against him—and did he still have that condom kicking around in his pack? With the way she was moving, he wouldn’t get the chance to find out.

She was breaking him into pieces, roving across every inch of skin she could expose, her hips swirling in terrible, wonderful circles. She laid a hand across his throat and he almost threw her onto the bed right then; not in two years had he ever so badly missed his second set of fingers.

He was completely lost in the heat of things, wondering if she’d find it degrading if he pinned her to the floor, which made her request to stop as sobering as a bucket of ice water. He jerked to a stop beneath her, trying to catch his breath and also gauge her reaction, but she wouldn’t look at him. Why wouldn’t she look at him?

“Are you alright?” He needed her to be alright, to tell him he hadn’t turned everything awful again, that his want was her want. 

It seemed like she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. He caught the sound of emotion clogging her throat when she rushed to the bathroom and shut herself inside, leaving him on the floor feeling lower than the lowest creature, the paper-thin skin a snake left behind after shedding. 

After ten minutes passed like that, with him deflating on the carpet, he picked himself up. Trudged to the bed and sat on the edge, wondering where the hell he’d gone wrong—rather, why on earth he’d ever thought that was a good idea. 

Somewhere along the way he must’ve missed a cue. He initiated, of course, but he explicitly asked before pushing them past the point of no return. Sakura was the one who ground against him, who’d started choking him, something no other partner had dared attempt in the past. He was positive, for once, that she wasn’t afraid of him. If anything, she’d held him completely under her sway, which turned him on so much he felt like he was malfunctioning. 

He would’ve done anything she told him to. The realization was enough to make his neck burn red in the aftermath. 

He kept backtracking but still couldn’t identify what led to the breakdown in miscommunication. Surely if she wasn’t attracted to him, if the idea itself was so preposterous, she wouldn’t have improvised such a vapid cover story for his company? In front of the Kazekage, no less. The thought had to come from somewhere . He wasn’t stupid and neither was she; they’d been stewing in tension all day. Had he imagined it, misinterpreted? 

When she finally emerged from the bathroom he was slumped at the corner of his twin bed, head in his hand. She leaned against the doorframe and waited as he sat up, steeling himself for her to say whatever she needed to say, to explain where he had gone so wrong. Her eyes were bright and ringed in red; he made her cry, then. A lot.

“Let’s get on with it,” she said bitterly. He could only stare. 

“What? No gloating?” she taunted. If she didn’t sound so hoarse he might’ve believed she truly hated him, that she had finally deemed him unforgivable at the last possible moment. 

“I don’t understand,” he said.

Her scoff was crude. “Spare me, Sasuke. I already feel like a fool. You don’t need to drag out the punchline.” She stalked up to him but kept her arms laced over her chest. “I don’t know why you went through all that trouble to humiliate me when I won’t remember anyway.”

Oh.

He was floored by the breadth of her misunderstanding. She thought he’d kissed her, moved against her, let her touch him like that , for the sake of testing out a jutsu.

“You have so little faith in me?” It was the wrong thing to say, but he couldn’t stop himself. 

She snorted, closing the last few feet between them. She let their knees brush, like she was mocking that twenty minutes ago he’d been sprawled beneath her, begging like a dog. “Why, exactly, would I place something as precious as my faith in somebody as undeserving as you?”

Well. He’d certainly heard enough. He let his practiced veneer settle back into place. 

Sakura wasn’t done with him. She reached down to fix his palm against her forehead. He let her.

“Go on then,” she seethed. “What are you waiting for?”

He didn’t trust that whatever words he might try to offer in comfort wouldn’t backfire instead. There was nothing he could say to undig this hole. He was sure of it. All he could do was return her resolute gaze, give her the space to cool off. He’d promised to do better. They both had.

“Do it,” she said, tightening her hold on his wrist. 

Still, he didn’t speak or move.

“This is what you wanted, right? This is your revenge. To make me look like a moron.”

“No,” he said, his fingers slack in her hair. 

“Then why?” she croaked, but he was out of mana—she knew, surely, he could only say so much. 

Gradually, cracks formed in her anger. Her mouth wobbled in its determined frown, the dimples in her cheeks catching the room’s shadows. She swallowed back what he suspected was a sniffle, but tears found their way out anyway, trickling down her cheeks. The grip on his wrist went limp. 

Their roles reversed: his outstretched arm became the only thing left holding her up.

“Please,” she whispered, “you win, alright? You win.” She let her full weight sink against his hand. “Now let me forget, Sasuke.”

Slowly, he shifted off the mattress to stand. Sakura scooted back enough to let him. He wished, childishly, that they could rewind, start the evening over again. He didn’t know if he could stop himself from making the same choices, but it was relieving to imagine a version of this night where he hadn’t totally stuck his foot in his mouth. Seeing the anguish on her face, knowing he put it there—he couldn't linger on it, what it meant. 

When he nudged against her hold, she released his wrist, and he tried to smooth away her wayward tears. 

“Would you prefer to keep it?” he asked. Her hurt visibly deepened and he cursed; she thought he was teasing her. He’d cut off his own tongue if it got them any closer to understanding. “I meant will it hurt you. To remember it.”

“How couldn’t it hurt?” she asked, eyebrows knitting together. 

He sighed, clenching his fist where it dangled by his hip. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“Then what was?” she rasped. “Your intention.”

Nothing he could think of was good enough. To hold her; to feel her; to fuck her. To keep her in place long enough for him to sort the mess of his insides, separate what he wanted from what was sacrosanct. No words could measure up to the enormity. The line he’d scorched almost a decade ago, finally crossed. And he had been the one to breach the barrier. 

“I could give you something different,” he suggested, wincing at his own voice.

At least her hurt faded into a more palatable expression now, confusion tinged with interest. “As in?” 

He should be direct, regardless of the risk of rejection. If he ran her off now it’d be for the better. 

“I’d like to try again,” he clarified. 

He forced himself to behave. He didn’t grab her chin or waist but raised his hand to carefully caress her neck. He ducked down, paused with his forehead pressed against hers. He wouldn’t go further without her permission. It was truly her choice now, to lean in or step back, to dive headfirst into the unknown or drag them back to the mess they knew.  

Shyly, like she’d barely made up her mind, she closed the gap. This kiss was opposite of the first—or, at least, tangential. He ceded all control, let her set the pace, never moving his hand until she forcibly placed it on her lower back. He kept it there even as she found the courage to roam, slipping her fingers beneath the hem of his vest just to rip it off. His mesh shirt followed. 

She pushed him flat on his back, straddling where he lay on the mattress, pausing to gaze at him quietly, as if she were puzzling over some question. Evidently she found the answer on her own, or decided it could wait: she went back to kissing him senseless, pinned his arm to his side. For now she seemed content to trace the seams of his abs with a curled fingernail, drawing spirals up and down his chest.

She got as far as thumbing the waistband of his pants before he broke the kiss, panting and pathetic, so hard he was having trouble not squirming to press into her from below. 

“Too much?” she asked, pulling back her hand.

“No,” he said, shaking his head for good measure. “You?” 

“No.” Her lips were flushed fuschia and gleaming with spit. She pitched over the side to extract a spare pillow from where it rested against the wall. She forced it under his hips, not bothering to hide how she stared at his outline. Her look was carnivorous, roving up and down, as physical as any touch. 

He moved to unlatch his pants, but she swatted him away. 

“Why’d you stop?” she asked, catching his gaze, settling a hand near his zipper.

“I wanted to be sure, before,” he said, letting the gaps fill in themselves. 

“Confident you’re getting lucky?” she asked. She punctuated the question with a slow roll of her hips.  

“Within reason,” he said, knocking loose a ragged laugh. He was sure his pupils were blown to hell. That, plus the fact that his tents were obviously, torturously tented, wasn’t making the task of sounding serious any easier. He braced against the mattress, half upright, doing his best to muster up a meaningful, lustless look. “There’s still a world to tend to outside of this room.”

“I know,” she said, expression shuttering slightly.  

“I’m not . . . trying to be hurtful. Only—” His breath caught when Sakura chose that moment to peel off her dress and bindings in one foul swoop, her breasts releasing with a soft, pert bounce. 

He was stunned into silence. He could feel his Sharingan unspooling to take her in, areolas as petal pink as her hair, a flat, ovular birth mark on the underside of her left breast, pressed there like an angel’s kiss. 

“I haven’t forgotten my mission, or our agreement. But right now, we’re here.” Her hands fluttered over his waistband again, the barest levitation. When her green eyes found him they were heavy and hooded and hazy with desire. 

After his astonished nod, she made quick work of what remained of his clothes. She was almost clinical in the way she appraised his cock when it sprung loose, humming in a way he assumed meant she approved. He wasn’t the biggest, maybe, but long enough to sport a rightward curve, thick enough to earn comments from past partners. Flattery, he thought then; he had no proof it wasn’t the same case here, save for that Sakura started breathing a little heavier. 

“Can I touch you?” she asked. 

“I’d rather touch you,” he said, swallowing dryly, reaching. She laughed and restrained his arm behind him, smothered it beneath the pillow.

“You’ll have to earn that,” she said, seizing his cock with her other hand and giving a deft tug, the jolt of pleasure so intense that he nearly choked on air. She drew back long enough to lick her palm, then grasped him again, settling into an easy rhythm, fist tightening as it twisted upward.

“Fuck,” he groaned. He stole a look down, trying to soak in the image of her pressed against him; that she was still wearing shorts felt criminal. He snaked out his arm to grab at her again, but she plucked his hand out of the air like a leaf, circled a punishing, tantalizing thumb over his head until he started to tremble. 

“Sakura, god, come on —”

“Not yet,” she said, intermingling their fingers just to bring their conjoined hands to his throat, “payback.” It sounded filthy , the way she said it, sent his mind on a tilt-a-whirl.

He couldn’t help but thrust along to the rhythm of her warm, slick hand. “If you keep doing that, I’ll—”

“Good,” she grinned, finally leaning down to kiss him, though not for as long as he’d like. She was bluffing, in any case; she slowed to a glacial pace, pulling him back from the climax he’d been barreling toward. His moans were warping into something guttural as he toed the line of overstimulation, balking as her fingers wound around his length. 

Suddenly, Sakura released her grip entirely, sitting upright. His hard-on dropped against his belly with a wet smack. 

“Beg,” she said flatly. Cool, collected, but her stomach betrayed her façade, heaving with her breath.

“What?” he whined. The grip on his pinned wrist tightened. 

“Beg,” she repeated, ghosting a hand over him without actually touching. 

The back of his neck flared red, burning. “Please,” he seethed.

She quirked an eyebrow, drew back her hovering hand. “You can do better than that, Sasuke-kun.”

The casual use of the honorific was loaded, sent his cock to flexing into the empty air. “Please, Sakura,” he rasped, “just fuck me already.”

“Maybe,” she said. He’d never seen her smile like that before—wicked, indulgent, teeth glinting despite the drawn curtains. “Or maybe I’ll just,” the words fading as she started stroking him again, agonizingly slow. This time, when he reached for her, she let him cup one breast, hissing as he thumbed her nipple into a point. 

She leaned down to kiss him, the pace of her pumps building toward a steady crescendo. His nails curled into her breast, and he was gasping for breath between every plush, languid kiss. Sasuke was past the point of return—he could just see over the horizon, his gut clenching in anticipation.

“God, don’t stop,” he murmured, tilting his forehead against hers.

“Watch,” she said, her other hand fluttering over his cheekbone until he opened his eyes again. “Watch what I’m going to make you do.” 

“Fuck,” he groaned, flitting between her tits rocking in time and her hand and himself, feeling and sight crashing back together again, melding until his gut was bottoming out, clenching, clenching, and—

He’d never come so hard in his life, which he suspected might be obvious considering the noises that burst forth, entirely animal, caught somewhere between a growl and a shout. Her grin so self-satisfactory it almost gave him a toothache; her pace slowed but didn’t peter to a stop until his thighs were quivering and he was half-soft in her hand. From nowhere, she proffered a towel, wiping the mess from his stomach. 

“Good?” she asked, peering down at him from beneath feather-down lashes.

His snort didn’t sound as derisive as he’d prefer. 

She swept the pad of her thumb over his lower lip again, the edge gone from her. “You look like you’ve been ravished, Sasuke.”

“Eviscerated, more like,” he muttered, mind scrambling in the afterglow. Sakura swayed as he pushed upright against the bed. He leveraged onto his bad arm to sneak out a finger, snapping her waistband. Her responding yelp was horrendously —he could hardly believe the treason of his own mind—cute.

He planted a kiss at the hollow of her throat. “I’m not done with you.” His reward was a fist in the back of his hair, a harsh tug, like a leash pulling taut.

“I say who's done, and when,” she scolded, “remember?” It was only once he nodded that Sakura let him return his attention to the skin along her collarbones, gasping perfect little breaths as he made his way down.

He got as far as tonguing the notch above her hipbones when a tap sounded against the window. 

There was a bright blue newt sitting on the pane. It was spotted with yellow dots and a blaze orange belly. It knocked again with a tiny pink tongue, jabbing it against the glass. A note dangled from its neck.

“What is it?” Sakura asked, kneeling into the mattress, slick-spots painted over her limbs, watching the reptile amble onto his outstretched palm.

Scrawled on the scrap of paper were coordinates and a single, poorly penned sentence. 

You’re gonna want to see this shit for yourself, boss.

“It’s Suigetsu,” he said, showing her the note. “He found the group. They’re closing in.”

She grumbled at the contents. “Bit of a mood killer.” And just like that she was rebinding her chest, tossing him his underwear from where it sagged at the foot of the bed. All business. The Sakura of minutes ago, who’d contorted him like her personal puppet, vanquished. “We should go.”

The newt scrambled back into the waning daylight; Sasuke incinerated the note, the buzz of what they’d done fizzling out, leaving him feeling—he didn’t know. Unbalanced. Greasy, like he was covered in a film no amount of soap could rinse off. It worsened as she pretended not to watch him dress out of the cover of her eye, struggling back into his pants, fumbling with the buttons. He couldn’t decide if there was more or less dignity in her leaving him to his own devices, but then she helped him thread his arms through the vest anyway, lingered where the closed zipper ended on his sternum.

“We’ll have to talk about all that, won’t we,” she whispered, too shy to look away from the zipper. When he sat silently, she added: “Not rhetorical.”

He should say something comforting, maybe. But he’d disappointed her enough, left so many broken promises underfoot. And her. He couldn’t even begin to put to words what she’d done to him.

“Eventually,” he managed to say. Briefly, he enveloped her hand with his, squeezing once. There was the vulnerability he knew, tangled in the algae bloom. “I won’t regret it.” 

“Okay,” she breathed, the relief sugar-sweet.

“Okay,” he replied. 

The wind couldn’t knock the smell of her off him if it tried.

Notes:

OKAY! I know it’s technically one day past when I thought it would get up, but it’s also still on my regular upload schedule (again, technically).

We have finally reached the smutty section of the fic, while also reading the plot-heavy part of the fic. I am probably (?!) going to slow down to an every-other-week schedule as I knock out these last six or so chapters—they’re getting so long that I’m not sure if I should keep trucking or maybe split them up into several smaller chapters. I’m still debating! Would love to know if y’all have preferences? (long v. short)

Also, cheeseburger thoughts?!?!!? I swear, if y’all make me drop the smut to crickets… 🤨

Thanks so much to everyone who has commented + left kudos so far. It’s really made the journey to finish this fic so much fun.