Chapter Text
Once, when Sasuke was twelve, a boy masquerading as a hunter-nin asked her, “Are you willing to die for your team?”
In less than a month, Sasuke will be sixteen. At nearly sixteen, she can die for her team in whatever form they take. She can die for her village. But loyalty to her team and to Konoha doesn’t force her into feeling inherent remorse when she and Kai shove through the ANBU headquarters’ back doors into the battle in the courtyard to kill their leader. Behind them, the corridor is dark, lights shattered by a fight and floor broken by twisted wood steadily burning, walls coated in needles and scorched with lightning strikes. Past the doors, summertime sunlight lights the outer training field brighter than a spotlight, so that Shimura-san’s stolen eye is on open display for his semi-circle of opponents.
Destabilizing the ANBU might ruin the war effort, but one of Sasuke’s lightning needles tore the bandage from his face, and she can’t pretend he deserves anything less than this.
For the first five minutes of the fight, Sasuke and Kai went against their leader like gnats, attacking sparingly, until they forced him out in the backlot. Outside is a seven man crowd constructed from Konoha’s elite, Riku at the front it, swinging a kunai around his finger with his black hair still soap slick from an aborted shower. “I thought you didn’t want a leadership change, Captain,” he says as she can Kai stand, recovering from their slid beneath Sai’s ink bird.
Though Sasuke never had a defensive plan in place, it certainly seems like the rest of them did.
“Oh, you know me,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. She has her left eye closed, attempting to avoid the Rinnegan expending her energy too early. “I improvise—excuse me?”
Yamato, who she’s never spoken to beyond “hello, how are you,” counteracts Shimura’s wood attack with one of his own, only to have the spire pass through him, harmless. “Did that just—” Yamato starts, too shocked to move, cut off abruptly when Ichiro, one of Itachi’s old teammates, slams him in the side and out of the way of their leader’s next strike.
“I hadn’t thought so many of you would betray me,” Shimura says, sighing. The sunlight turns him ageless, even as his wrinkles catch the sunlight’s shadows, creating the illusion of someone indestructible. “I think we should all sit and talk this over before you do something you—”
Before he can finish, Riku, Ichiro, and Keiko move into a simultaneously attack of wind and fire. Already, the dark green grass is torn from the earth or drowned out or burned to ash in long streaks.
This fight is ten against one, but Sasuke and her two teammates are all weak from sleeplessness and accelerated travel. Worse yet, she burned into her memory years ago all possible Mangekyo Sharingan techniques, and even before that, watched Shisui practice with his own for most of her childhood after his mother died; she knows Izanagi wasn’t something he could do. Even more than that, it’s taboo. Inevitably, Shimura has a second Sharingan hidden away, in working condition, and perverted it.
She glances at Kai, whose arms are littered with splinters, and then to Sai scribbling furiously, his shoulders slumped from exhaustion but arms shaking from adrenaline, and says, “We’re defense. The rest of you are offense. He’ll wear out fast.”
In the short few seconds it takes for her to give orders, Mami, a member of the Nara clan, hits against the fence hard enough that she audibly breaks a bone. Sayaka, the only medic present, is there in an instant, checking her over, a glowing hand over her knee.
Then his sling slips, courtesy of one of Yamato’s wooden spires growing from behind, revealing a twisted arm off-colored, covered in eyes. Sasuke reacts, unthinking, releasing Amaterasu to grow right there on his hand. It spreads his skin in the aftermath of another Izanagi, until a tree forms, beginning with his elbow and rooting into the ground, forcing the other ANBU away. Amaterasu sticks to its bark, persistent. Its part of him, she realizes, growing larger, pushing towards him, flames becoming hotter and spreading closer.
She snuffs them out as he severs the arm at the shoulder, and the tree’s growth halts with only two branches fully formed, lilting listlessly towards the earth.
Blood flows freely from his shoulder and eye. The others move in for a joint strike, a mix of family jutsu, specialty techniques, and nature transformations in defense of ANBU integrity. Quicker than any of them, quick as Shisui, he creates the seals one handed for a Shunshin. Sasuke, seeing this in a way the others can’t, prepares for a counterattack, assuming he’ll go for her. Instead, he appears in front of Sai, leaving everyone to fall into a mess of friendly fire.
Before Shimura can push his wind-formed blade too deeply into his newest recruit’s chest, Sasuke comes between them, both eyes open and hands on his shirt front. Sai gasps—and she drags their leader into another dimension, only to push him out, alone, moment later, estimating direction and distance, in what should be the epicenter of the joint assault. If she’s right, then those attacks will only connect with him.
For a moment, she lies stationary on her back, breathing in burning evergreen wood smoke from a nearby fire, the rock-littered grass leaving her clothes and skin damp. It’s night. The constellations are unfamiliar. Above her, a hot breeze moves through white branches laden with green leaves. A strange animal chatters. With her eyes activated on their lowest form, she can see an owl swoop past. Somewhere not far away, humans talk and laugh with civilian carelessness, loud from drunkenness. The pain in her shoulder is acute. A wind blade isn’t solid like a real one, so she absorbed some of the hit. She needs about two days’ sleep, and very long shower.
She sits up, shifts her eyes back to their highest power, and reenters her world to find she put Shimura just shy of the target.
Most of the attacks connected, and he likely wouldn’t have survived the strain of a dimensional shift anyway, but Yamato’s wood spire sliced into the side of Riku’s leg, and several of the shuriken he threw in a volley caught Keiko in the back. Sayaka is working on Sai, who’s the worst, away from the rest of them by the fence. Kai sits curled against the headquarters’ back wall, legs to her chest and head dropped between her knees, breathing deeply to keep from fainting. Everyone else is hurt one way or another, but Shimura Danzo is the only one dead. Shisui’s Sharingan is destroyed, burned away from a fire attack.
“He was here,” Naoko says, pointing to Shimura, when she notices Sasuke sinking to the ground beside Kai. There’s a burn on her arm. Her tight brown curls are a tangled mess, resembling a bird’s nest carelessly built. “And then he was there, and then he wasn’t anywhere, and then he was here again. Sasuke, what just happened?”
Slowly, Sasuke’s vision blurs, so Naoko’s sharp features and Shimura’s broken, bloody body lose their clarity. “The Rinnegan’s weird,” she answers, pressing her hand over it in an attempt to lessen the pain. “Sayaka, how’re you doing?”
“Well, Sai’ll live,” she says from Sasuke’s left, moving from her blind spot into view, though she’s just as featureless as everyone else. “Mami’s healed enough that she’ll be fine in a couple weeks, but she out cold unfortunately. Is it just your shoulder?” When Sasuke nods, Sayaka continues, “Great. Keiko, stop moving for five minutes. I’ll get you next. Then Sasuke, then Kai. I can’t completely get anyone.”
Though Sasuke’s depleted her energy dangerously, she’s high on anxiety and post-battle adrenaline, and forces the Sharingan back in its mild form. “Show me the basics,” she says, drawing their attention away from Sayaka. “I’ll help.”
After Sayaka argues halfheartedly that even the basics are deadly in this state, she agrees. “You’re fucking suicidal,” she says, but Sasuke ignores her, and heals her wounds until they’re superficial.
For a while, they’re all quiet, until Keiko says, “So Shimura-san and the majority of the senior Captains are all dead. Now what?”
However unofficially, Shimura’s successor was meant to be Nori . “Vote’s going to have to go the Godaime, I thought,” she says as Sayaka drops next to Kai, moving her short hair away from the injury to inspect the damage. “Naoko, get over here.”
Dutifully, Naoko settles cross-legged beside Sasuke and takes her hand, hissing when it touches the burn. Though it’s a struggle, Sasuke focuses, moves away to go through the hand seals, and heals the best she can. It’ll scar, but it’s good enough that it won’t be infected.
“It is,” Yamato says as she does. Silently, Sayaka heals Kai’s concussion, and then tears off fabric from her shirt to bandage what remains before falling onto her back, eyes half closed and breathing heavily. “The vote, I mean. Um. Okay. Until we can bring it to her, we’ll just make the decisions together. Complete transparency. Which means, did anyone other than us know the three of you were here, and why are you here?”
Sasuke’s wound throbs. There’s a difference between liars and people who lie, and all ANBU are solidly the former. “He was supposed to be the only one who knew,” she says as Kai, with one last, deep breath, shifts and sits straight. Finally, her eyes are focused as she looks around, which is last observation Sasuke has before she allows her Sharingan again to fade. “How long can we get away without telling anyone he’s dead?”
“Honestly?” Ichiro says from a few feet away, still winded. “I’ve been heading Konoha’s defense. He’s disappeared for days a few times to check out the eastern front without telling more than us. Mami and Keiko are usually there—Team Eagle.”
Bluntly, Kai explains about Hitomi and her integration in Kiri. “We’ve got the plans to the city in Sai’s bag downstairs,” she finishes. “Sayaka, you dealt with the concussion. I’m good with the rest. We have to clear away this mess and blame someone.”
Sai, nearer than before, says, “You’re suggesting we lie about self defense?”
“We’re going to do a lot more than lie, kid,” Riku says as Sasuke’s vision fizzles out completely. “I think we can get away with blaming ambiguous ‘enemies.’ Keiko, when’re you set to return to the front?”
“Three days from now,” she says from somewhere to Sasuke right, voice moving as she walks away. “But, you know, if me and Mami happen to find his body on the way there, two days in, then we’ll have to carry him back manually, and that’ll take what? Another three days? About eight days in total. If we plant the body so someone else discovers it, then that’ll buy more time, but it’s more of a risk. There’s always the chance of a Kiri or Iwa-nin finding him.”
“If we get caught,” Sasuke says, heart rate jumping as she realizes the implication of this, panic edging into her voice nearly as bad as Sai’s, “we’re all going to T&I for treason. I could just hide his body.”
“They’ll assume kidnapping,” Yamato says. “It’s safer to tie up loose ends. He’s dead. We don’t know who did it, but he’s dead. How do you keep in contact with Hitomi?”
“We have the same Summon,” Kai says. “It’s pretty easy to communicate through racoons. Anything else I’m telling her besides, you know, this?”
There’s a long pause before Ichiro says, “Tell her to get into Kiri and finds the village plans, though I guess those might be in Mitsutoshi. If we do a dual strike on Mitsutoshi and Kiri, just ANBU—”
“We can damage Kiri irreparably,” Riku says.
“As long as no one,” Yamato says, “even within Konoha, realizes we did it. So the three of you are leaving. Go find Team Kakashi. Get Sasuke’s eyes healed. The rest of us will clean this up, then meet back with you guys at the Land of Water’s west coast. Bring Itachi.”
Itachi’s going to kill me, Sasuke thinks, and forces herself onto her feet, using the wall as support. “They aren’t ANBU,” she says, failing in her attempt to activate her Rinnegan at a low level as she did earlier in the day just in effort to see, “but I can get Team Kakashi on board. We need real bandages before we leave.”
When she takes a step forward, she slips, shaking on her legs, but Sai catches her, wrapping her uninjured arm around his shoulders. Kai breathes out, pained. Only a few feet away, Shimura lies dead, and past him lies Mami, unconscious but breathing. As Sayaka says to follow her inside, and mind where they step now, Yamato orders Naoko to sink that tree into the ground, and for Keiko to burn the rest of the evidence. By the time he says what to do with the body, the back door shuts with a bang, and Sai leads Sasuke blindly down the broken stairs.
Team Kakashi is at the border of the Land of Fire and the old Land of Sound, not far into Oto-nin territory. In a single day of stumbling, rushed travel quickened by Shunshin that bleed Team Fox dry, Sasuke and her teammates make it as far as Hisamura, the final village before the Valley of the End.
When they arrive at the lone hostel, the owner, a man with a young sounding voice, hands them the keys without expecting a deposit or payment. “I don’t know which way you three are going,” he says when he folds the key into Sasuke’s hand, “but I’m taking a guess on what you are. The room’s a six person. It’s empty. I’ll keep it that way. You’ve got until tomorrow night.” Then he adds that the shower’s the second door downstairs on the right, and the ditsy girl with the green hair in Room 5 left her shampoo there, should they be wondering.
Later, when they’re all clean and bandaged freshly and wrapped in scratchy wool blankets with only their undergarments on underneath, they lay together on the floor, staring at the mural of the sky someone drew in chalk over the ceiling. By now, Sasuke has just enough energy to activate the Sharingan, and records every imperfect, uneven line and brightly colored sunset cloud to memory. Though Sai isn’t sleeping, he breathes as though he is, deep and even. Kai’s hair, barely toweled, leaves a damp spot on the carpet. The shock of what they’ve done has finally settled.
Kai says it first, a laugh erupting from the silence, growing louder until quieting to giggles. “Well, damn,” she says to the chalk sky. “He was a murdering thief. How often did he fuck with us that I feel bad about this?”
The thought hadn’t occurred to Sasuke yet—if Shimura-san had used Shisui’s genjutsu earlier. On the others, most likely. It’d doubtful he would risk doing so on her any earlier than this, once she was exhausted. Are you susceptible to genjutsu? the Renewal of Service Form asked. No, she’s not. That can’t be said for the rest of them, not against an illusion as powerful as her cousin’s, or any other that one of those many Sharingan might also have been to create. Having so many shouldn’t be possible, especially for someone not related by blood, and she wonders only vaguely who created the body modifications to create workable implants.
As Sai says, “Frequently, I imagine,” Sasuke sits, suddenly finding it too hard to breathe on her lying down, because she realizes the only one with the knowledge to do that was Orochimaru . The blanket at her back slips her waist. When Kai touches her back, she feels the heel of her friend’s palm tilt, unable to sit flat when Sasuke’s shoulder blades protrude the way they do.
“We all need to get some sleep,” Kai says after a beat, not acknowledging that Sasuke’s a liar who clearly weighs less than the required minimum. “I’ll get inside the Room Five girl’s head tomorrow so she can buy us all clothes. We should’ve grabbed a change before we left.”
Sasuke takes a deep breath, and calms enough to think. “We look more pathetic like this,” she says, but doesn’t disagree, as Sai stands to turn off the light.
At sunset the following day, Team Farmland joins Team Kakashi inside the cave hidden in the mouth of Senju Hashirama’s statue. Sakura forces Sasuke onto the stone floor without delay, and slots her hand across her eyes. “This is the worst ever,” she says as the warmth spreads from Sasuke’s eyes through the rest of her body until she’s burning. The touch now reminds her uncomfortably of the day in Suna that Sakura suppressed Orochimaru’s genjutsu. “What did you do this time? Why are you all hurt?”
“Because there were ten people and one medic,” Kai says, disgruntled, from a few feet away. Though Sakura and her cousin are friends, Kai’s never seemed to like her. “Sasuke healed her own shoulder, but that only helped a little.”
“You heal now?” Sakura says as Kakashi asks, for the second time, and Naruto for a third, and Itachi for the first, what happened. The cave smells damp, and the ground is as wet as the grass in the dimension she should have left Shimura to die in. Past the mouth of it, the waterfall rushes down in a roar, the sound deafening.
Sai says, “She copied our medic,” and Kai explains that they undertook an infiltration mission into Mitsutoshi, established Hitomi—or Lion, because Team Kakashi knows the general squad by name, but can’t put those names to their masks—as a trusted Kiri-nin, and plan to launch a dual assault on Kirigakure and the capital. As the team agreed before leaving Konoha, none of them mention Shimura-san, or that they’re all traitors.
“It was at our own initiative, yeah,” Sasuke says once Sakura finishes, sitting, head reeling from dizziness, “but he made it official. Technically Itachi should be the only one allowed on, but we want to even out the numbers when we’re ready. I don’t think the Godaime knows.”
Expectedly, Sakura says, “Isn’t keeping secrets what almost got you guys in trouble in the first place?”
Before Kai can snap back with a comment about rank superiority, Sai lashes out, hand tight around her wrist to quiet her. Instead, it’s Itachi who frowns and says, “Not all of ANBU can be held accountable. Shimura-san accepted this?” His voice is light, but eyes narrowed, focused on Sasuke. “Who thought of this?”
She pulls her legs loosely to her chest, resting her elbows on her knees. “Lion and I, mainly,” she answers. “He wasn’t happy about it, but it’s not like he had a choice by the time we got there. It was either he go against us, or he agree so he could take the credit.”
“It’s a solid plan,” Kakashi says, and pokes at their fire with a stick so the flames spark, drifting towards the gap in the statue’s mouth. “How long until we have the information?”
Shrugging, Kai says, “Soon. Maybe. She’ll get in contact with me. Sasuke reaches out to the rest of them. Itachi will have to help. Crows are indigenous to, like, everywhere.”
“So only ANBU knows?” Naruto says, looking to Sasuke. “There are a ton of really awesome jounin. Why can’t the Godaime know? Or Jiraiya? He’s the best.”
Sasuke schools her expression. “Because Shimura-san’s likes keeping secrets, I guess,” she says, and Sai adds, under his breath, that it must make him feel special. Of all of them, their leader’s betrayal and subsequent death affected him the most. “Yeah. That. It’s also a good idea to keep the attack forces small. So we’re not telling anyone past you. Yet.”
With his frown still firmly in place, Itachi says, “I assume Lion is as good at accent imitation as she was when we last worked together?” Sasuke nods. “Which other team is involved?”
“All of ours, so including Sparrow and Rooster,” Kai says, tucking her hair behind her ears, away from her face. “Deer—he heads the base of operates on the home front. He had to know. Marten. Again, he’s pretty important. He’s unofficially next in line now that Monkey’s dead. Salamander and Orca. They’re both part of Team Eagle, so the best scouts we have. The rest of Team Eagle is still on the eastern front. Crane’s the last one. We needed a medic.”
“That’s only seven people,” Kakashi says, tugging at his mask, pulling it further up his face. “Are you conscripting us to have seven and seven?”
“We require an outside party for both villages,” Sai says. “It will be five and five.”
For a moment, Team Kakashi says nothing, so Team Fox stays silent. Then Naruto says, “We’re so all going to die,” like it’s a certainty.
Entirely too seriously, Sai says, “At least some, yes.”
As Kai sighs, Sasuke’s eyes contact with Kakashi’s, and she thinks that regardless of what it takes, she won’t let this team die.
A week and a day later, Tachibana Setsu, Koizuma Kita, and a crew of other Kiri-nin traitors assassinate the Mizukage and her guards at half past two in the morning. The secondary defense force breaks through their Kage’s bedroom door just in time to see the five assailants disappear into thin air.
Sasuke, in her pain and distraction and the strain of carrying four other people through a dimension rift, missteps, and walks them into the bottom of a sea. In the moment it happens, they’re all breathing, and the water fills her lungs too fast for her to hold her breath. The pressure is so strong she thinks she might crumble into herself, into nothing. Through the panic, she scrambles to keep a hold of Sakura and Kakashi as they all begin to drift apart, and pictures where she brought Shimura-san. Her right eye bleeds, the largest whale she’s ever seen drifts overhead, and they fade.
When they reappear, Sasuke falls, rolling across hot desert sand. She sputters, heaving, and coughs until her lungs are free of water. Its early morning, and the stretch of desert is empty, but past a low hill she sees the telltale glow of electric lights from a populated area. “We need to go,” she says, forcing herself to her feet, though her legs are shaking and Sakura hasn’t had the time to heal any of the injuries she sustained in the fights. All of them are roughly in the same state. No one warned them that the Mizukage had corrosive breath.
A hot gust sweeps across the desert, blowing sand into the acid burns on Sasuke’s legs. Several feet away, Kai hisses, then presses her hand to her mouth, and throws up ocean water. There’s blood trickling from her right ear.
“Which direction are they?” Sakura asks, her voice hoarse. Her shirt’s half burned away, the new, frayed hemline caught in her wound.
Outside the Kiri barrier, Naruto and Itachi act as watchmen and damage control. Naruto is the worst liar, and doesn’t have the credentials to participate on an assassination mission regardless of how unofficial this is, and Itachi and Sasuke can communicate with one another easily through Yaya. When the Kiri-nin branch outside their barrier to search for the fleeing traitors, Naruto and Itachi can handle them, but it’s safer if they’re all together.
Sasuke takes a deep breath, coughs, and nods. “We’re not that far from the barrier,” she says. She doesn’t sound any better than her friend. “Come on.”
Together, stumbling, the five of them walk away from the lights into the pale desert sunrise that turns the sand gold and silver, as though she brought them into the Land of the Wind. The air smells funny—almost poisonous. In the distance, something rattles and thumps against hard packed ground at odd intervals. Desert plants cast shadows across the sand. A rabbit with abnormally large ears hops past, so shocking in appearance that they all stop to watch it until it disappears around a rocky crag speckled with dead juniper trees.
“Where the fuck did you take us?” Kakashi says, shaking his head, so Sasuke shrugs.
“I’ve been here before,” she says. “Just, you know. Closer to Konoha. It didn’t look like this.”
Half an hour later, they reach a safe enough distance outside the barrier, and the only other wildlife they’ve seen is an oversized vulture circling overhead. She reactivates her Rinnegan and Mangkeyo Sharingan, motions for them to huddle together, and takes them back into a summer thunderstorm, less than a mile from a village on high alert.
The old house still reeks of cigarette smoke and barley alcohol, though whoever lived here is long gone. But the owner and his wife left their sake and their whiskey, Teams Fox and Kakashi find quickly, so Kai pours them all generous helpings in dusty glasses and distributes accordingly.
“So what now?” Sakura says after she finishes half her glass in one drink, grimacing at the taste. They’re clustered in a master’s bedroom decorated with pictures of an unhappy wife and smiling husband, with their large bed in the center of the room unmade but the sheets and blankets neatly folded beside it. “The Mizukage’s dead. What does that mean for the war? Do you think Shimura-san will tell Tsunade-sama?”
“I think he’ll need to,” Itachi says, whiskey untouched on bench at the foot of the bed as Sasuke pours herself a second glass.
By now, her number of kills is nearing the hundreds, and her mission success rate is one hundred percent, but assassinating the Mizukage affected her in a way she hadn’t expected. Maybe it’s the deception involved, or that she assisted in assassinating Shimura-san just a week and a half earlier, or that she almost killed her team more effectively than anyone in Kiri—but her adrenaline isn’t fading the way it’s meant to after a day like this.
Kakashi says, “I doubt the war will end,” and explains about Iwa having its own agenda and the Prime Minister and next Mizukage likely using Kiri’s aggressors as a rallying cry to keep the country from falling back into civil war. “Even so,” he says, glancing at Sasuke, who sits cross-legged across from him and taps her fingers against her knee, “a dual assassination is damaging to morale, and to Kiri’s stability.”
For a while, they sit and discuss the the northern and eastern fronts, and whether or not Konoha and Kumo can launch a direct assault while Kiri’s weak. Sasuke finishes her second drink, and doesn’t stop Kai from pouring her a third from a new bottle, a clay jug with a cork wound in twine pushed in. It’s as clear as sake, and harsher than anything found in Suna.
She takes one sip, stops, and makes the bed instead.
Though they need to draw up a watch schedule, no one offers, and it isn’t long before Naruto and Sakura collapse into the newly made bed, and Itachi falls asleep against the bench, his forehead resting against his folded arms like a student in the Academy. Kai and Sai eventually drift off on the floor, midway through a conversation about how desperately he needs to meet her cousin. Kakashi disappears, in that way of his. After a while of trying to sleep, Sasuke leaves her place at Sakura’s side, and creeps downstairs, across the living room, and out on the back porch.
It’s screened in with tight bug netting meant to keep away the mosquitoes threatening disease, and furnished in worn, white wicker chairs suspended from the ceiling. Outside, the rainstorm continues, battering against the netting and thudding like an army’s steady march across the porch’s wooden roof. In the wall beside the doorway to the main house, someone carved a prayer for a loving home. The engraving is even older than the furniture.
There’s a stack of books under the coffee table, which has a bottom shelf, she sees when she turns around again. After a moment of deliberation, she selects the thickest one, curls up on the arm chair’s thin, moth-eaten cushions, and activates her Sharingan at its lowest stage to spend her night reading children’s fairy tales in the dark.
On the second day, Team Lion is reunited in the unhappily married couple’s liquor stacked house with the news that the Konoha-nin on the eastern front have already overwhelmed the Kiri-nin and entered the Land of Water. Hitomi explains this all calmly, and when she finishes, says, “We need to get back immediately. This whole area is about to be the new eastern front.” She’s still dressed in a Kiri guard uniform, the somber greys and blacks impractical for any terrain other than this. Despite Naruto and Sai’s prediction, the Mitsutoshi team is also intact.
Returning home involves another week of travel, where they find that two unsuspecting chuunin discovered Shimura Danzo dead, and his memorial service and funeral were yesterday. No one pretends to be upset. Even Sai is too genuinely exhausted by the time the Godaime summons them all to her office.
The sake bottle on her desk is empty without a glass nearby. “Did Shimura Danzo give his explicit permission for this mission to take place?” she asks once the thirteen of them are settled in a line. At the end, Sakura shifts and looks down at her feet. When Sasuke and Hitomi confirm that he did, the Godaime says, “All right. How did Team Kakashi get involved?”
“I needed a medic, Godaime-sama,” Sasuke says, and shrugs. “Getting in and out of the Mizukage’s tower required the Rinnegan, and the Rinnegan requires a support system. It made the most sense.”
Though the Godaime still seems skeptical, with one eyebrow raised and looking to each of them individually for a lingering moment, she ends her questioning there. “Well,” she says instead, pressing her fingers together. “Kiri doesn’t know what to do with itself, but Iwa’s strengthening its borders. Sasuke, the Kazekage wants you. Sakura, Shizune’s heading the southern front’s hospital, so I need you here. Naruto, Kakashi—I can’t have you near Kiri for a while, so you’re going down there to defend the Land of Waves. The rest of you are staying in Konoha to elect the ANBU a new leader. Sasuke, I need a minute alone before you leave to get your vote.”
Regardless of what they vote, the Godaime can overrule it, but collecting them is a formality, Yamato explained. He’s been there approximately the longest now, and once Sasuke is alone with the Godaime, she casts her vote for him. “The numbers didn’t work,” she adds before the Godaime can begin the inevitable reprimand and possible accusation. “We really wanted to pull the rest of Team Eagle, but it wasn’t safe withdrawing them, and Team Kakashi is the most competent party of non-ANBU jounin at the moment. Every other ANBU team was occupied.”
“Team Kakashi knowing breaks about every protocol there is,” the Godaime says, sighing. She’s dressed in her ceremonial robes, though Shimura-san’s memorial service was last night. Like Sasuke, she doesn’t seem to have slept in a while. “But that doesn’t matter as much as it should. We’re having this talk because I don’t think you’ll be back in Konoha’s walls until this war ends, so we need to see how that’s going to work. Take a seat.”
Sasuke takes a seat in the chair across from her, which is better padded than the unhappily married couple’s patio furniture. “I don’t understand,” she says, wary. “Can’t it just stay the way that it has been? Both sides requesting me for missions?”
“To a point,” the Godaime says. “Even so, the focus of the war’s changed. You practically destroyed it on the east, so it’s going to be concentrated closer to Suna. You’re right about needing a medic, so you will periodically need to see Sakura. Other than that, I’m limiting your involvement with Team Kakashi. Your Konoha missions will be as strictly ANBU as I can manage. If we’re only getting you part-time, then you’re getting top priority. S-and A-ranked missions only.”
“My team won’t be happy about that,” she says, but understands, because the Rinnegan is too valuable to use on any mission less important than killing a Kage.
Shrugging, the Godaime says, “They’ll live with it.” Then, after a short pause, she continues, “I know Sakura told you how I handled the genjutsu. That’s why I didn’t want you going to Suna. You need to let them know you have panic attacks.”
Though Sasuke knows the Godaime is right, the thought of telling Gaara she might kill his brother and sister because she has flashbacks is unappealing. “That’s it?” Sasuke says, leaning back into the chair, arms across her chest. “No comment about needing a guarantee I’ll return here or something?”
“This village is your family’s legacy,” the Godaime says, not reacting to Sasuke’s rudeness. She hasn’t bothered to be polite in a while. “It took me a long time to really understand what that meant. I ran away before I did. What I did was never meant to hurt you, Sasuke, but I didn’t have all the facts. I didn’t know reversing the genjutsu would confuse you. I’m sorry—for all of it. Some distance might do you some good.”
For a moment, Sasuke’s quiet, processing it. Eventually, she says, “I accept your apology for the genjutsu. You can’t be held responsible for the rest when you weren’t even here.”
“Maybe not,” the Godaime says, “but I’m the Hokage, you’re a few days away from sixteen, and it’s not like anyone else is going to say it.” The mid-afternoon sunlight catches her chair and the desk and all the objects on top of it, throwing long shadows across the floors and walls. Sighing, she caps the empty sake bottle and slips it into her desk, and says, “Now, as your medic instead of your Hokage, I’m going to give you some advice you won’t like. Bring your psych eval from Kaoru. Fuck anyone who thinks getting help is shameful—you need it.”
“Yeah,” Sasuke says blandly. “I think I get that.”
Sometimes she can sleep for days, and sometimes she goes days without sleeping at all. If she’s honest with herself, she would have panicked against the Oto-nin regardless of whether or the Godaime reversed the genjutsu. Her behavior’s been erratic since long before September. With the war continuing and no end in sight, she finally acknowledges that she can’t ignore the effects of this anymore.
The Godaime pulls a file with Sasuke’s name neatly written on the flap from her desk, clearly prepared. “Maybe read it over yourself,” she says as she slides it over. “You might understand what’s happening to you a little better.” Then she adds that she removed the third page, because Suna doesn’t need to know Kaoru requested Sasuke be removed from active duty altogether.
Leaving Konoha doesn’t feel the way Sasuke imagined, when she bothered to think of it all during the earliest hours of her sleepless nights. The Godaime moves the subject back to the logistics of her involvement with the ANBU while she’s living in Suna, and Sasuke fidgets, running her nail beneath the folder’s corner. Though she doesn’t know if she wants to understand herself better, she thinks she might have to if she going to live to seventeen.
“Apparently I have post-traumatic stress,” Sasuke says several hours later when Sakura returns from inspecting the hospital to find her reading her medical file on the living room futon. “I’m also ‘depressed,’ with a ‘mood disorder’ caused by purposeful repression of traumatic childhood events. Supposedly it might also be hereditary, but it’s not like anyone can prove that.”
Sakura takes a seat at the end of the futon, at Sasuke’s feet, and undoes her ponytail holder. “I could’ve told you that,” she says, fluffing her hair with her fingers. It’s late, and the string lights turn the pink almost red. “The mood disorder’s what fucks with your sleeping habits. Well, depression can do that too, but you’re like clockwork. Anything not obvious?”
In the beginning of the file, replacing the missing page three, is a copy of the psychological report on Sasuke’s Renewal of Service form. She skips past that, and says, “Well, she suspects I actually developed my Sharingan when I was seven and forgot about it. I’ll have to ask Itachi. I guess it makes sense. She also says I shouldn’t been allowed on undercover missions because I’m ‘incapable of coping with potential spontaneity,’ and that my ‘inability to acknowledge my trauma, both from my childhood and from my recent time as an enemy prisoner, is the effect of the socially accepted belief that a stunted emotional growth is a better alternative than suicide prevention.’ She was really pissed off when she wrote this.”
At the end is the test Sasuke filled out during her first meeting with Kaoru in late September. For the first time, she sees the results—she scored high for potential suicide. That’s why Sakura and the Godaime were allowed to know the basic outcomes, as her medics. Patient confidentiality fails when the patient is considered a safety risk.
Sakura pats her right ankle where it rests over her left before adjusting herself, sitting longways across the couch in mirrored position so her feet rest near Sasuke’s waist. “Three years back the psychologists in the hospital wrote up a petition,” Sakura says, curling her hands in her lap. “You know, for permission to reform the whole system. They wanted mandatory counseling in the Academy and civilian schools. The Council shot it down. The Godaime told me. She wants to reopen the inquiry.”
“Good for her,” Sasuke says, only slightly sarcastic, as she shuts the file. “Just don’t let her call it another Uchiha Act. The Uchiha Act of 93 already deserves a name change.” When the Council passed the Uchiha Act of 93, Sasuke didn’t have much awareness of it, and didn’t read up on what it entailed until the few hours she had left in Konoha her last official time her. It strengthened Academy graduation requirements, placed age restrictions in the ANBU, and put in place the mental health assessment on shinobi service forms. “Whatever,” she says, and knocks her knee against Sakura’s. “Can you help me cut my hair? I’m not going to the desert with it this long.”
With a small smile, Sakura says, “Don’t worry. I promised I’d never let you leave the apartment with it uneven, didn’t I?”
Last time Sasuke cut her hair, she did it in a rush with a kunai over the bathroom sink, and hadn’t noticed one side was shorter than the other until Sakura asked if it was intentional. “Great,” Sasuke says, turning around to place the folder on the end table. Finally, their apartment is just theirs again, both Kakashi and Naruto’s recently rebuilt with only a six percent raise in rent each. “Temari has nothing on you when it comes to hair. I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”
“Well, obviously you just have to come back,” Sakura says, but her bottom lip quivers. Sasuke hadn’t realized how that would sound until after she said it. “Look, I know things haven’t been great, but—you’re my best friend, right? And, I mean, really. Ino says all the time that I’m like her sister and this really isn’t fair, but you’re the one I consider like family. I love you.”
“Hey, we’re still going to see each other,” she says, and feels her cheeks flush. “I—you’re my best friend, too. Yeah, like a sister. I’m not going to just abandon you.” She loves Sakura in a similar way that she loves Itachi, which is the only form of love she thinks she can manage, but she doesn’t know how to articulate what that means. Even when she didn’t feel safe in Konoha, she’s always felt safe with her team. That might be why they fight so often.
After a moment, Sakura inches forward, folding her knees, and when Sasuke sits straight, wraps her in a hug. “Take better care of yourself,” Sakura says when Sasuke returns the hug, and tells her again to come back home.