Chapter Text
“Hey, ano, are there more trees?”
It was a harmless question, something that Sakura shouldn’t have had to fight the urge to flinch against. She should just tell him. Naruto was slow, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. Three years had been a long time, it would be easier for him to notice the difference. Soon, they’d be on a missions together, he’d see it eventually-
“We’re the Village Hidden in the Leaves, dumbass. Of course we always growing more trees.”
She shot a quick glance at her other teammate, and resisted smiling at Sasuke even as Naruto launched into a loud defense of his intelligence. They’d be brawling even before they made it to the training grounds like their genin days.
With a huff, Sakura shook her head, “Really you two. No fighting in the marketplace.”
Naruto growled, before turning his head up and away from the Uchiha, arms behind his head. At least Jiraiya-sama had managed to convince the blond that black was okay to have on his jumpsuit, even if some orange remained.
Her other teammate was unperturbed by the sullen silence and kept his hands in the black pants Kaka-sensei had won him over to. Textbook behaviour for Uchiha Sasuke. A part of her soul breathed a sigh of relief as her team came together once more.
Everything would be fine.
~*~*~*~
Everything was most definitely not fine.
Gaara was kidnapped by a nut job, probably dead. Then Naruto had a freak out of epic proportions and took off after said nut job, breaking almost every protocol Sakura knew of, with only a miracle of Kakashi’s iron grip on his shoulder preventing Sasuke from taking off after the blond. There were a bunch of these Akatsuki clowns running around and they wanted Naruto-
Later, when she’s sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree that may or may not have once been Sasori- he made himself out of wood, like Sakura was going to ignore that kind of advantage- and Gaara is healthy and whole, Naruto seems to remember that the cavern she had been fighting in most definitely did not have a small forest in it when he left.
The blond is staring at it, mouth agape. The moment of stillness passes, as he waves his arms at the trees, “Where did those come from?!”
Kakashi saves her this time with a well-placed ‘bonk’ of the spine of his book against Naruto’s head. “Mah, what are you talking about Naruto? It’s a forest.”
There’s sputtering, “But, but-”
Sakura made a big show of looking behind her, the trees groaning hellos, and bites back a smile, “Looks like a forest to me, Kaka-sensei.”
“Hm.” Came Sasuke’s agreement.
The matter was dropped as Gaara returned to the circle.
~*~*~*~
Sakura knew she should just tell Naruto and get it over with. She was a descendant of the Nidaime, and had inherited the Shoudai’s Mokuton. Konoha’s royalty, Tsunade explained over supper once when Sakura visited to pay honour to her clan head. A missing Senju, with a lineage as long and complicated as Sasuke’s and- as it turned out- Naruto’s.
It would be easy, a quick, ‘Naruto, I have the Mokuton. Also I’m a Senju.’ Easy.
But not. So very not.
She hadn’t actually had to tell someone before. They either saw it themselves, or someone else had told them. When face with those blue eyes, so full of hope and potential-
She chickened out.
“You should tell him.” Sasuke said, sipping his tea as they watched Naruto try and cut the waterfall with wind chakra.
The branch they were on hadn’t been there when Naruto started his training. Nor had the waterfall. But Kakashi had distracted him when Sakura got to work. If Naruto assumed it was Sasuke’s doing, that was his fault.
“Yeah. Probably. It’s just hard. What if-” She twirled the dango stick in her hand, “What if it changes things?”
“Change is inevitable, but this does not mean change is bad thing. It just is.”
Sakura blinked and turned to her teammate, “You’ve been hanging out with Neji again, haven’t you?”
“Hm.”
~*~*~*~
In the end, her hand was forced.
To be fair though, totally worth it to see a look of shock on Itachi’s face as the vines and wood encased him and started draining his chakra. The idiot had honestly expected Sasuke to show up alone and fight him honourably or something else stupidly un-shinobi like.
It was only when the missing-nin was fully encased, paralyzed and chakra draining, that she allowed herself to fall backwards onto her butt and catch her breath. “Your brother’s a jackass.”
Sasuke, looking a little worse for wear, humph-ed but still accepted her fist-bump.
Naruto though, was staring at the tree-strewn field with a mouth open wide enough to catch flies. The top of his jumpsuit had been ruined by a wayward Rasengan, and he was more mud than teen, “What the hell?”
She sighed, “I have the Mokuton, Naruto. Wood release.”
The blond turned to stare at her and, a little quieter, “What the hell?”
“I think you broke him.” Sasuke muttered, grunting when her elbow landed on his side.
Naruto wandered over, still mumbling, ‘what the hell?’ under his breath as he plopped down beside the rest of his team. He blinked slowly. “There’s trees everywhere.”
She twitched, “Yes, Naruto. I made them.”
“What the hell?”
“Broken.”
“Shut up, Uchiha.”
Naruto shot to his feet and pointed an accusatory finger at Sakura, “There really wasn’t any trees in the cavern before you fought that puppet guy! And all those trees on training ground 33! You guys lied to me!”
Sasuke didn’t even flinch. “Shinobi.”
With a shrug, Sakura smiled sweetly at her teammate. “Oops.”
The blond’s mouth moved several times before sound came out. With a withered look, Naruto said, “You guys are jerks.”