And suddenly, just like that, after her whole life of being surrounded by friends; Sakura is alone. Kakashi-sensei isn’t really around; there isn’t much point is there? It isn’t like anyone wants to hire a one-man cell team.
To make it worse, no one seems to understand. Even her parents, whom she had taken for granted until she realized how lonely Sasuke-kun and Naruto had been, couldn’t seem to understand. They sympathize with her, of course, but they do not understand why she no longer smiles and does not spend hours getting ready in front of the mirror anymore.
It takes her a whole month to get over Sasuke, and when she does it is the most liberating feeling in the world. And it also breaks her heart. Later, she will not remember much of this time in her life, she will only consider the sadness that accompanied it. She does not know how many days went by and how many menial missions she missed, but she does not care. She sits in her room and reads her old books from the academy over, and over, and over again. When her hair grows long again she cuts it brutally off with a kunai; anything to remember that time when she and Sasuke were like a team, even if she does not have romantic feelings for him any longer.
Her parents plead with her to leave her room, to get herself assigned to a different team and start all over again. Her mother gives her several talks about getting over unrequited love, and her father tells jokes to try and make her smile. Sakura never felt as lonely as she did then.
Eventually, Ino seems to swallow up her pride and she comes on cloudy afternoon and drags her out of her room. She tells Sakura to get over herself and that she’s being selfish and stupid. When Sakura doesn’t say anything, Ino bursts into tears and hugs her. And still Sakura does nothing.
After a while, Sakura starts to do missions again, as an extra and a substitute. She is hardly home then, which worries her parents. She spends most of her time in the library and on the training grounds, becoming a total workaholic because it’s the only thing she can do.
In the long run, Ino gives up trying to cheer her up and integrate her back into society. In the long run, her parents stop asking her how she feels every five seconds and instead tiptoe around her like she is dying. In the long run, Sakura doesn’t give a damn.
Sakura is in bed when she first discovers it. It is morning and the night before she had fallen asleep with a book in her hands. When she shifts around and opens her eyes, the book falls from her lap and onto the floor. She automatically leans down and reaches for it and suddenly it is in her hand and she doesn’t know how it got there. She looks down at the book and to her utmost surprise there a strange, light green sort of tendril coming from her right hand that has wrapped itself around the book’s spine.
“Chakra?” is her first thought.
It is indeed chakra and Sakura is so surprised that she drops the book loudly on the floor and doesn’t care. With experimentation she finds that she can manipulate it very easily; elongating, compressing, and widening it to her heart’s desire, though she cannot change its color. She can pick things up and after smashing her bedroom mirror she learns that it can indeed be useful in combat. It reminds her of climbing trees with Naruto and Sasuke in the Wave Country and how proud she was when Kakashi-sensei told her that chakra manipulation was her specialty. Sakura is completely drained after testing her capabilities, but she feels better than she had in months. She does not tell anyone about it, not even her sensei, but instead uses it more and more. She discovers that she cannot manipulate it from any other part of her body but her right hand at first, but after three months of training Sakura is able to use it tolerably with her left. It gives her a purpose, this training, and only years later does she realize that this is the beginning of the end.
About a month later, Team Seven, or its remains, is called to do an odd D-Rank mission that has been deemed suitable for two people, though really, it’s not like Kakashi-sensei will do anything. It ends up being the most useless waste of time ever; can’t civilians do anything by themselves? Kakashi-sensei apparently feels the same way and disappears in a cloud of smoke the second they finish, but not before telling her to turn in the mission report to the new Hokage.
To tell the truth, Sakura has only seen the Hokage once. Whenever she would go on missions, she would always be an add on, someone who was required by the Hokage while she gave the team the mission details, meaning that she had not spoken or seen her since she examined Sasuke’s curse seal all those months ago. She had heard, however, quite a lot about the woman and nothing was very flattering. The few rumors that Sakura had heard stated that the woman had not the slightest inclination to be Hokage but was pushed into it by the Council. They said she was rude, brash, and bossy, and that she drank into excess and gambled all her money away. So with slight trepidation, Sakura makes her way to the Hokage’s office and knocked meekly on the door.
“Goddammit, just open the fucking door!” a woman’s voice yells angrily.
Sakura does, and slips inside of the room, just in time to hear the woman’s next sentence.
“Why the hell does everyone fucking knock?! Hell, I’m sick of knocking!”
The Godaime Hokage is slightly tipsy and is waving a sake bottle around manically. She has large dark circles under her eyes and her hair is greasy and unkempt. Great.
“What are you here for?” she barks at Sakura.
“Mission report,” Sakura says dully, wishing she could go home and sleep.
“Well, give it here!” the Hokage snaps angrily.
Sakura hands her the papers and the blonde haired woman grabs them; leafs through them and jots a few things done on a large scroll spanning her desk. She puts the bottle down on an uneven surface, and it wavers and tips off the desk.
“Fuck!”
Sakura acts before thinking, and before it hits the ground a thin strand of light green chakra has wrapped itself around the bottle’s neck, holding it in midair.
The Fifth Hokage stares at the bottle, her chakra, and then her. Sakura reddens slightly.
“Well,” Tsunade-sama says, swallowing, “What was your name again?”
The beginning of the end indeed.
Chapter Four-
“Sasuke!” Sakura yells, jumping through the window of their hotel room, “Get me my bag!”
She hits the floor with a loud bang and hoists Naruto’s limp form off her shoulder and onto the bed.
Sasuke, who had been sleeping in his usual seated position against the wall (apparently the bed wasn’t good enough), wakes with a start.
“Wha-?”
“Don’t just sit there!” Sakura says, trying to staunch the flow of blood on Naruto’s bare chest, “Get it!”
Sasuke grabs her kit that’s hanging off a chair and tosses it to her. She empties it’s contents onto the floor and rummages through the packets of dried herbs and bottles. She grabs a cloth and presses it to Naruto’s chest. His eyes snap open, they’re as blue as she remembers them, and he convulses, gasping for breathe.
“Sakura, what the hell is going on?” Sasuke asks, coming stand next to her as she mixes an antidote, “Who is th…” he trails off and pales considerably, a remarkable feat considering his usual complexion.
Sakura drenches the bloody cloth into the concoction in her mortar and then presses the antidote into the wounds on Naruto’s chest. The blond gives a strangled cry; it’s so strange how low his voice is now, how tall he’s grown, and gives such a lurch that Sasuke has to grab his arm to stop him from falling off the bed. He gives another smaller lurch and then goes limp again. Sakura rips off her gloves and presses her bare hands to his wounds, using her chakra to forcibly rip the poison out of his body.
Sasuke does not speak until the poison is gone and she has bandaged Naruto’s torso and given him something for the high fever he has.
“What’s going on?” he asks in a closed, suspicious tone, “Sakura is that…Naruto?”
She stares at him. Maybe she’s wrong…but could it be possible that he doesn’t…know?
“Yes,” she says, wiping her bloody hands on her pants, “I felt a strange chakra pulse while I was scouting,” she explains, “I followed the source and found…Naruto,” it’s so strange to say his name, “…and a dead Akatsuki member.”
Sasuke starts, “Who?”
“I believe his name was Zetsu,” she says repacking the contents of her bag, “ A S-Class nin from unknown regions.”
“Did…Naruto…kill him?”
She looks at him through the eyeholes of her mask, “Yes.”
There is a silence and Sasuke looks impassively down at Naruto’s still form and she cannot tell what he’s thinking.
“Did you see anything?” he asks suddenly, “Anything that might…hint to what he’s been doing all this time?” he is not talking about Zetsu and maybe it’s just her imagination, but he sounds slightly bitter.
Sasuke has not looked closely at the shirt that now hangs around Naruto’s neck and Sakura’s not even sure if he would recognize the nine on the shirt for what it was.
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“You don’t know,” she says.
He frowns at her, “Know what?”
“I though Orochimaru would have at least told you that.”
Sasuke inwardly flinches at the name, but outwardly shows no expression.
“Speak plainly,” he demands.
He is getting very sick of her know-it-all attitude.
She doesn’t say anything at first and Sasuke forces himself to wait patiently.
“It is not my place,” she says finally.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he sneers.
She shrugs, “Wait ‘till he wakes up,” and will not say anymore.
Sasuke leaves and does not care that he is acting juvenilely when he slams the door. He goes down into the bar and orders some cheap sake.
This changes everything. He had never expected to ever see Naruto again. He had wondered, of course, all those years ago, what had happened to his loud, blond haired teammate, but he had learned to put such things out of his mind. He and Sakura had never mentioned him in their two months traveling together and to tell the truth, Sasuke had barely recognized him. He was taller, Sasuke muses, much taller than he remembered him, maybe even taller than him now. Though maybe that was just the sake talking. He immediately puts down his glass, pays, and makes his way back up to the room. Maybe the idiot would be awake and Sasuke could get some answers. When he reenters, he finds Sakura going through the contents of a black bag that Sasuke did not notice before.
“I found these,” she says, holding up a row of shuriken, kunai, and a pack of explosive tags.
“And these.”
She holds up some soldier pills, a few thousand Ryo, two scrolls, and a strange sort of holographic card with strange symbols on it that neither of them can identify.
It gets late and they end up ordering room service and take shifts staying up in case Naruto wakes up.
Sasuke has really no idea what to say to him when, if, he does. He’s not sure if Naruto could potentially dangerous to them, he did kill a member of the Akatsuki after all. With all the weapons he had on him, it’s obvious he’s still a ninja and by the lack of headband anywhere he’s not with Konoha or any other village. Unless he’s undercover, of course, which is incredibly unlikely considering he’s still wearing orange after seven years. Sasuke wonders how much he’s changed. He would’ve had to, wouldn’t he? As much as he hates to admit it, there was a period in his life that Sasuke cared very much about the man lying prone in the bed across the room. He cared enough to die for him and would have if things had played out a little differently. Once Sasuke had come to terms with the fact that he found men attractive, two years after Orochimaru’s death, he had wondered back in a rare moment to his Genin days. He had even once entertained the idea that he might have had an infatuation with his stupid, annoying, blond teammate. Sasuke ponders if that would change anything now. He decides against it.
A groan disturbs him from his thoughts. Sasuke’s eyes widen and next to him, Sakura jolts into a seated position. In a singular moment, she removes the mask, exposing the odd scars on her face to the moonlight, giving them an eerie sort of glow. They both look at each other and then at Naruto when he rolls to face them and pushes himself up.
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Naruto is really warm; which is disturbing and comforting at the same time. Disturbing, because the only times he is warm is when he is sick, and comforting, because maybe he’s finally found a relatively cheap place to stay with heat. He rolls over and intends to go back to sleep, when he realizes something vital: he doesn’t remember checking into an inn last night. In fact, the only thing he remembers is…is…
Naruto pushes himself up and hisses slightly at the pain in his chest. He gingerly pokes at it and comes into contact with bandages.
“Leave it,” a cold, unfamiliar female voice says.
Naruto gives a jolt and looks up. But before he can find the source of the voice, he comes face to face with Uchiha Itachi.
Naruto gives a startled yelp and makes a grab for his shuriken pouch, but it’s gone. He looks up, prepared do whatever it takes to get out of this, but then stops.
…Wait a second…
He starts to notice things, like the lack of Akatsuki cloak and ring. But there’s no denying that there’s something familiar about that face, which can only mean one thing…
Buying for time, Naruto glances to his left and sees the woman who spoke earlier. Long, thin, scars run down her face, matching the one through the Konohan symbol on her forehead protector. Naruto probably wouldn’t have recognized her if it wasn’t for her bright pink hair and green eyes. They stare at each other for a few seconds and Naruto begins to wonder if he’s incredibly drunk.
“It’s been a while, Naruto,” the woman says, smiling, and for a second it looks like she’s about to cry.
The man next to her doesn’t say anything, but continues to look suspiciously at him.
“The fuck?” is the only thing Naruto can say, “Sakura-chan? Sasuke?”
“Well, at least he remembers our names,” she says, still smiling.
Sasuke says nothing.
“Well,” Naruto says, trying to rationalize this, something he was never very good at, “I’m either dreaming or unbelievably hammered.”
“Unfortunately,” Sasuke drawls, his voice much lower than Naruto remembers, “It’s neither.”
“It seems you haven’t changed,” Naruto blurts out before he can stop himself.
Sasuke raises his eyebrows slightly and a tiny frown appears on his face.
“Well, this is exceedingly typical,” Sakura-chan says, talking to the wall, “How about we forgo the pleasantries and get right down to business?”
“Huh?” Naruto is so confused.
“It appears that your intelligence level hasn’t improved,” Sasuke says smugly.
“Fuck you!” Naruto snarls and he doesn’t know why but for some reason the Kyuubi’s chakra flares and Naruto feels the odd sensation of his eyes changing color and his finger and toenails morphing into claws. It’s only when Sasuke’s eyes narrow and his hand goes for his shuriken pouch that Naruto realizes what is happening and forces back the demon’s chakra. Surprisingly, Sakura-chan does nothing.
“What the hell was that?” Sasuke snaps and Naruto is slightly annoyed that he’s looking at Sakura-chan instead of him.
“I am really surprised you don’t know,” she says and Naruto catches on.
“Yeah,” he says, frowning slightly, “Didn’t you team up with creepy-snake guy a while back?”
Surely Orochimaru would have told him about the jinchuuriki.
“’Creepy-snake guy?’ Sakura-chan quotes.
“That’s what I call him,” Naruto says shrugging, “I don’t think ‘Orochimaru’ really gives you the feel for his personality.”
Sasuke looks vaguely disturbed and Sakura-chan looks like she trying hard not to laugh.
“Ahem, right,” she says, “Anyway, they told the entire village four years ago,” she says, flicking her scarred forehead protector.
Suddenly, Naruto realizes what he should have from the beginning, that Sakura-chan knows and he feels vulnerable and exposed and nothing seems to make sense. She’s an enemy, isn’t she? But according to the slash in her forehead protector she’s traitor…and Sasuke is obviously one too. But what does that mean?
“I’m a jinchuuriki,” his mouth vomits out, “Holder of the Kyuubi. That’s why I got thrown out seven years ago.”
Naruto has never heard a silence so loud.
He watches Sasuke carefully and is perturbed by his reaction. He first sees something resembling surprise, then slight confusion, and finally understanding.
“Oh,” he says and then proceeds to look amazingly disinterested.
For some reason, Naruto feels very annoyed and is about to say something, but Sakura-chan cuts him off.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” she says in an irritatingly casual way, “What do you know about Akatsuki?”
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Naruto blinks at her; a look so reminiscent of their Genin days that it makes her want to cry. Out of all of them, it looks like he’s changed the most in appearance and the least in other ways. He’s much taller than her now, of course, his shoulders are wider, his hair is a bit longer, and his face has lost a lot of it’s previous baby fat. But he still has the same way of talking and the same casual manner. She knows that Sasuke is wary of him does not trust him in the least and that she should feel the same, but it’s hard when he reminds her so much of her old goofball teammate.
“Hee?” he says, “What’s not to know about Akatsuki?”
Though, maybe Sasuke had a point about Naruto’s intelligence.
Beside her Sasuke scoffs and Naruto narrows his eyes and opens his mouth to retort and Sakura is tempted to just let them fight it out for old time’s sake.
“From the beginning,” she says, distracting Naruto, “Please.”
“Umm…okay,” he says looking slightly embarrassed, “Well, yeah, they’re this evil organization who wants to take over the world, by stealing the bijyuu and stuff…umm…yeah, so far their members are this Deidara guy, er…puppet something or othe-ah, Sasori, then your asshole brother,” he says gesturing to Sasuke, “Weird guy with all these piercing whose name I dunno, creepy girl who can turn into paper, Kakuza, and Tobi, and then what’s-his-face…Kisame, shark freak. Oh, yeah, then there was Hidan, but we think he’s dead ‘cause he disapeered a few years back and we haven’t seen him since. Crap, I’m missing one…oh yeah, there was that one planty guy, but, I sorta killed him…”
Naruto gets a strange, foreboding, sort of closed look and his face when he mentions this.
“Zetsu,” Sakura says, biting back a smile at the look of pure annoyance on Sasuke’s face.
It seems that, even after all this time, Naruto still rubs Sasuke the wrong way.
“You’ve seen Itachi?” Sasuke asks seriously, looking interested.
“What? Oh yeah, he’s an uptight fucker, isn’t he? His stupid genjutsu sucks ass!” Naruto says crossing his arms and nodding vigorously, “Tried to kill me, how many times?” he starts to count on his fingers, “…er, four, I think. No, wait, five. Yeah, five!”
“You said they…wanted to take over the world?” Sakura asks, before Sasuke can say anything else.
“Well, duh!” Naruto says, looking confused, “I mean, c’mon! They’re an evil organization! That’s what they do!”
“Oh, please,” Sasuke mutters, “Kill me.”
“With pleasure, you asshole!” Naruto retorts.
“My gods,” Sakura says, unable to contain herself any longer, “You’d think seven years hadn’t passed and that we were all still Genin!”
They both look at her strangely as if unsure as to what she’s talking about.
Sakura throws up her hands in exasperation, “I mean to say, it’s been years and you two still argue like an old married couple.”
This gets a reaction out of them. Naruto looks embarrassed and Sasuke looks vaguely offended.
“What are you doing here anyway?” Sasuke asks gruffly, still looked irritated.
“Ehh, looking for a good fight actually,” Naruto says yawning and scratching the back of his head, “You know, potential war zone, high tensions and all that.”
…Sakura muses that Naruto was probably dropped on the head as a child.
“What? Don’t look at me like that!”
“You,” Sasuke informs him, “are an idiot.”
Sakura zones out as the bickering starts again.
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Sasuke has come to the conclusion that Naruto has not matured mentally in any way, shape, or form in the time they’d been apart.
“Have you grown up at all?” Sasuke asks him spitefully.
“Hah! Look who’s talking! I bet I’m taller than you!”
“That’s not what I meant, idiot.”
“You’re just jealous!”
“…”
“C’mon, you know it’s true!”
“…what is there to be jealous of?”
“Fuck you, you asshole! If I wasn’t injured, I’d-”
Sasuke scoffs and shakes his head in a pitying manner, just to be obnoxious.
“Settle down,” Sakura says from behind a new book that she had purchased yesterday, “There are people trying to sleep, you know.”
Naruto scowls and pouts making him look ten years younger. Sasuke finds this incredibly amusing and turns his head away to hide his smile. He even forgets to be annoyed with Sakura, which confirms his suspicions. He is most definitely drunk. Well, maybe not drunk, but definitely tipsy or some other symptom of alcohol consumption that results in bad judgment. He needs to go to bed know before he does anything stupid. It is three in the morning, after all, and now that he knows that Naruto won’t attempt to kill him (probably) he can sleep easier.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing, you asshole? Are you giving up?”
Sasuke gives him a disdainful look, “Go back to bed,” he says imperiously.
“The hell? I just got up!”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“Pft! Going to bed early is for suckers!”
“…just shut up.”
Sasuke pulls his hood over his head and leans back against the wall. He tunes out Naruto’s expletives and muses that it could have probably gone at lot worse than it did.
He wouldn’t be lying if he said that he didn’t care much that Naruto was a jinchuuriki. Actually, he was glad to have that clarified, because he had always been morbidly curious as to why Naruto had disappeared. The only thing that bothers him is that he knows the remaining jinchuuriki move about in groups and that one of these groups had attacked Sakura two months previously.
“Fucking asshole,” Naruto mutters.
“You haven’t changed much, have you, Naruto?” Sakura asks, sounding amused.
Naruto mutters something under his breathe that Sasuke can’t hear and Sakura gives a low laugh.
“You have,” Naruto says more seriously, sounding a bit confused as well.
“True,” Sakura says casually, but Sasuke can sense and underlying wariness in her voice.
“How did you get those scars?” and “How come you’re a traitor?” are his next two questions and Sasuke can’t help but tense.
It seems Naruto hasn’t really gained any subtly either. Even Sasuke, who has been traveling around with Sakura for two months hasn’t asked those questions.
…Then again, the fact that he doesn’t really care about the answers plays a big role in his lack of inquiry.
“My shishou,” she says softly, “was the Fifth Hokage. I trust you heard about the scandal two and a half years ago.”
“Yeah,” Naruto replies softly, “Wasn’t she accused of treason…and executed?”
“Yes,” Sakura says coldly, “After that, I couldn’t stay in Konoha any longer.”
There is a long silence and the next thing Sakura says is ‘good night.’
Sasuke stays awake a long while after that, aware that she did not answer Naruto’s first question.
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When Naruto wakes up the next morning, his wounds are healed and he feels inordinately cheerful, though that mostly has to do with the satisfaction of waking ‘the bastard’ up with a pillow to the face. Sasuke is furious, still not a morning person Naruto notices, and Sakura-chan has to break them up.
If Naruto had time to reflect, he probably would’ve thought it was strange how comfortable they all were with each other after being apart for so long. But, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it) Naruto’s not really the reflecting type.
He succeeds in disgusting Sasuke and Sakura-chan (though mostly Sasuke) with his eating habits at breakfast in an attempt to distract himself from asking about the creepy mask Sakura-chan wears. Therefore, he is incredibly surprised when Sakura confronts him about their next plans as he repacks his pack.
“You’re coming with us,” she tells him as she hands him some of his explosive tags.
“I am?” Naruto says, dumbstruck.
“He is?” Sasuke says, looking horrified.
“Yes,” Sakura says firmly.
And that was that.
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