Sometimes there was a comfort in knowing that nothing changed.

Because when nothing changed, there was no need for adjustment or learning or trying to figure out what to do, and there was that awareness that there wasn't anything to do. That there wasn't anything to expect.

So a couple weeks after his return when Shino still tended to the colonies in the rafters and tended to keep to himself and studied up on medical texts in his free time, Shibi was relieved to see that at least that much had stayed the same. But once when he'd come home after a clan head meeting and spotted his son dissecting a few insects on the kitchen counter by the sink, the boy's sleeves had been pushed up to his elbows and his glasses were set somewhere off to the side.

"I'll only be another hour or so," Shino started, not turning away from whatever project he was working on this time. The tweezers in his left hand were polished and silver and the scalpel blade was flecked with exoskeleton. "A handful of kikai had reached the end of their lifespans and there's something I need to confirm about their anatomy."

When Shibi didn't reply, Shino glanced up at his father.

It took him a few moments to realize what he was staring at.

"... Ah." Shino set down his tools and tugged his sleeves back over his arms, covering up dark bands and the criss-cross of white scars that left no centimeter of his forearms untouched. "They're nothing."

"What are they from? The... scars?" Shibi's brow crinkled. He didn't have to ask about the tattoos, not when they were so glaringly made to be a symbol of captivity. "How—Who gave them to you?"

There was no way to tell him that the scars were products of his own two hands. That sitting in a cement block with nothing to do got to you, eventually, and it was a dangerous partner to the constant thrumming in the back of your head to get betterbetterbetter before you end up dead, so when he forced his fingers to burn with cutting chakra and sliced all the skin he could so that he could better learn to heal them, all he could think of was how one day he'd make himself into a medic that could rival the Senju Tsunade.

He couldn't tell Shibi that he saw nothing wrong with the way he practiced.

He couldn't tell his father that scars taught him more than Konoha could.

"It was my own fault," Shino settled with as he turned back to his dissection. "I'd gotten careless."

Shibi turned and opened one of the junk drawers nearby, hiding the small frown on his face. He knew that was the best answer he'd ever get and even the most subtle of prodding would only get him a muted reception in turn, so he stared down at the notepads and dulled pencils and cap pens, and thinks.

There were also a few other things that hadn't changed about Shino ever since his return. He still stayed in the company of his team whenever he was out in the village, still trained to exhaustion whenever he spent a day on the fields. He still walked in shadows and sat in corners, always said nothing was wrong when obviously something was.

He still never comes home.

Shibi closed the drawer and pressed a few fingers against his forehead.

He should have expected that, at the very least. Shino had only stayed two nights at the clan complex before he'd taken a pack and a duffel to what he'd assumed was Sakura's apartment and had been staying over since. Every now and again he'd come by to pick up a book and tend to the colonies or stay for the odd dinner, but at the end of the day it was only a visit and his son would always be gone by the time the lamp lights flickered over the streets.

"I've begun to take up shifts at the hospital," Shino brought up once he started to clean the kitchen counter of his work. Shibi drifted out of his thoughts and eyed him curiously. "I took the entrance exam to become a part-time medic last week and they've deemed me suitable. Five hours a day, five days a week."

"Shifts? You were only taking lessons and shadowing before, were you not?"

Shino wiped down his tools with isopropanol before he fastened them back into his case. Kikai parts were separated into labeled vials and stored in their own sealed containers. "I've learned much in my time away from the village," he said, and Shibi's eyes flickered back to his sleeved arms. "The hospital believes so as well. I begin on Tuesday"

"Is there room for that in your schedule?" Shibi questioned hesitantly.

"Certainly. I train in the mornings until early afternoon, study until my shift at seven, and end my days at midnight."

"Your clan duties—"

"Will fit whenever I'm needed."

"Breaks—"

"Taken when necessary."

"Missions, then—"

"Will be taken into account as I'll move my days around accordingly." Shino stored his things in the brown pack sitting in one of the chairs. He slung the strap over one of his shoulders and headed towards the door, glasses back on his face, but stopped when a hand shot out to hold his upper arm.

"You don't have to overwork yourself," Shibi said, not quite looking at his son. He'd never been good at this sort of thing. "You've been gone for a while and I'm even more at a loss at what goes through your mind these days, but everything you're doing—it can't be healthy, can it?"

Shino glanced at the hand as it dropped from his arm, but he didn't turn around.

In Kumo he worked when C worked and that was nearly every single day. He would spend nine hour shifts that lasted well into the night, but there were days he spent sixteen hours on the floor or in the greenhouses experimenting on parasites and bacteria and anything else his kikai picked up but the other medics couldn't. Thirty-six hours was the longest he'd spent awake, and that was when he and C had been stuck in a string of surgeries for the members of a platoon nearly blasted away from a hidden explosive tag.

"I apologize for worrying you," he said. "But this is something I need to do."To feel just a little bit normal again.

Shibi didn't understand.

"... Alright."

But he didn't stop Shino from slipping on his sandals, and Shibi's heart sank.

Night shifts meant an even lesser chance he'd come to dinner. A lesser chance of him being home at all.

'Not that he'd ever been home much to begin with.'

"Shino."

The door swung open and the teen looked over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"I love you," Shibi said. Shino raised one of the corners of his mouth into a soft, barely there smile half obscured by the jacket hood bunched up at the back of his neck. But his head turned back around too quickly, too soon, and he took a step out of the house.

"I love you, too."

The door closed behind him, and Shibi was left playing the same game of counting the days until his son was back home.

:: ::

Kotetsu braced his hands on his knees and tried to simultaneously cough and gasp for air.

Was he out of shape? Or was this a whole thing about getting old? Either way, neither of those options were appealing and he'd actually rather die than think any of those things were true. And he was twenty-five years old dammit, if his joints were giving out now he might as well cut his losses and retire. Make his new bed the couch in the living room. Have a bag of chips as his new best friend.

Peering up through the shadow of his sopping hair, he saw Sakura standing right where she initially stopped. Sweat dripped down her neck and her katana was firm in her grip, but otherwise it was like she wasn't remotely out of breath at all.

He didn't know whether to be impressed or to chuck a pebble at her head.

But he'd be the first to admit that he was the one to walk headfirst into this situation to begin with. After she'd finished getting her apartment together and fixed her weapons up into working order, he made it routine to check in every few days to make sure she was settling back in comfortably. Can't blame a guy, right? Your student was dead and the next day suddenly she wasn't and she came back a few inches taller to make up for the limb she lost.

Kotetsu winced as he straightened to a stand. Too soon.

"Let's take a break," he puffed, "before I die of dehydration."

Sakura flicked the blade back into its sheath at the back of her waist. On one hip was her polished kusari-fundo and on the other sat a brand new wakizashi with its hilt bound in red. "Sure."

He was glad she came back alright. No surface trauma as far as he could see, heavily improved on her skills, functioning.

And not to mention that all of those things together only made him even more worried about her.

As she picked up some sports drink and took a long swig, Kotetsu grabbed his own water bottle and flipped open the cap.

Sakura hadn't changed all that much. She lurked around shadows and could be found tucked away in corners of libraries or training half to death in the fields no one went to anymore. Once he found her ambling towards the Forest of Death and another time he found her striding out, unscathed. Every now and again he'd spot her from the corners of his eyes and when he turned there would be nothing, and more than a few times he'd see pink in a crowd.

Then he would blink. Then it would be gone.

Sometimes it made him think she was a ghost.

For over a year she'd become another name off the roster with a bright red KIA on the front of her file. Everyone thought Sakura, Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, and Akamaru were dead and Team Eight became another tragedy that was so commonplace in their world that most shinobi took the news with a stride and a solemn nod.

Dead shinobi happened all the time. Dead kids happened almost half as much.

"You've gotten way too good," Kotetsu huffed as he plonked down onto the grass. Sakura raised an eyebrow over her bottle.

"Thanks."

"Who taught you to fight like that?" he questioned. The technique she used was almost... impractical, in a way. Before she'd been taijutsu-focused and the earlier spar proved no different, but her punches and kicks had no rhyme or rhythm he could follow or pattern he could track. It was almost like there was no plan in that head of hers, but he knew there was never a moment an idea wasn't brewing behind her eyes. "I mean, it's definitely not Konoha-style."

"It's not," she admitted with a shrug. The blue ink under her left eye glimmered bright under the burning sun and she was paler than he remembered, but he supposed that a prison cell wasn't one of the best places to get a tan. The tattoo, though? Didn't take her for the type. "I picked up a few things. Tried out a few techniques." Green eyes slid to him, and he wondered just how she turned out this way—how she never managed to gain that same warmth as the village that surrounded her. "I had time."

"Yeah," he murmured, and his exhaustion spread further than just the sore muscles from their training session. "You did, didn't you?"

Sakura sat quietly for a few moments before she moved to sit closer to his side. "Don't think about it too much."

"Kinda hard not to."

"I'm alive."

"But I thought you were dead," he said. She frowned and he sighed, running a hand through his sweaty hair. "I didn't believe it at first, you know? We hear someone died out on the field, we get bitter, we think about it for a bit, we cope in our own way, we move on." He rubbed one of his eyes as his tone dropped. "... Shinobi go out one way or another, but..." He met her gaze and smiled a small, sad smile. "Team Eight's been part of the bi-annual Death Commemoration for a while now." Brows furrowing, eyes shining; if Sakura noticed, she said nothing about it. "We couldn't hold a funeral without your bodies."

As with all shinobi villages, the biggest plots of land belonged to the cemeteries. If there were no bodies for head markers, then names filled up countless mausoleums and memorial stones.

(Sometimes he didn't know what any of them were fighting for.)

A hand came to clasp Kotetsu's upper arm. From this angle, he could see the healed over scars and dotting calluses over the expanse of her fingers.

"I'm sorry we put you through that," she told him. Simply. Softly. Even if there was nothing for her to apologize for and the mere thought of her believing she felt the need to say it settled uneasily in the pit of his stomach. "But I'll let you know now that I can't be killed that easily."

He breathed out a long sigh. "Come on, you know we can't make promises like that."

"I wasn't making a promise," she said. Sakura stood and drew the katana back out, twirling it once. "Still got it in you for a few more rounds?"

She was hiding something, he bet. Several somethings, really, and he didn't know how much she could pile up before everything toppled and spilled like blood on dirt.

There had always been this thing about her he couldn't quite put his finger on. She was so closed and so off-putting that it was almost as if all she wanted to be was on her own, which couldn't be all that true with the way her and her team were so stuck at the hip.

He glanced at the weapon slung across her back. Attached to her pauldrons was a brown sheath with some baton-like thing strapped inside; thin, completely bandaged, probably two feet in length, and had never been drawn in a fight.

"Psh, a few rounds? Don't insult me."

Kotetsu pushed himself onto his feet and watched as she walked over to the other side of the training field.

But maybe.

He slipped a kunai from his thigh pouch and geared himself up for their next spar.

But maybe he would act just like her too if he had no one waiting for him to come back home.

:: ::

Kiba washed the dishes with an open book propped against the window in front of him. It was always one of those nameless texts, either blue or brown or green and frayed at the corners where threads of old stitching threatened to pull apart. His eyes never drifted from the pages but he worked the dishes like he had six pairs of eyes on them at all times, never chipping a bowl and arranging the drying rack like a professional. Not a single drop of water ever made it past the sink, and by the time the basin was cleared of suds and foodstuff, he spent the next twenty minutes sitting at the dining table writing notes from everything he'd read.

Tsume had seen him at it all three times it was his turn to clean up. Then again, three whole times was all she ever saw of him since he'd come back from that mission gone wrong, and she'd clung to that feeble hope that making him stay later with chores would somehow keep him home longer.

But no. It was still a wasted effort if she ever saw one.

Tsume crossed her arms over her chest as she sat in one of the kitchen chairs. Hana was running late at the veterinary clinic and couldn't make it to dinner which was all well and good, but that meant she wouldn't see her brother for what, another week because of all the time he was spending at Sakura's? She loved Sakura, but that didn't mean Kiba had to spend every waking minute away from his family.

She shook her head and watched as he dried his hands on a dish towel.

"There's a clan meeting in an hour," she said. "I want you to be there."

Kiba turned, tossing the towel over his shoulder and back next to the sink. "Huh?"

"Meeting. At Old Kei's house." Tsume jerked her head towards the door. "I know you haven't gone before, but it'll be good for you. Politics and stuff like that's a real pain in the ass, but the quicker you get it down the better it'll be for you in the future." Kiba's face screwed up, but he didn't nod his head or shrug his shoulders. Her eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Well you shoulda told me, like, yesterday or somethin' 'cause I already made plans—"

"With Sakura and Shino."

"—yeah, and I'm not 'bout to bail for some meeting that's got nothin' to do with me. Hana's the heir." He started unrolling the sleeves of his jacket that covered the brown bands on his arms, and that only welled a bubble of anger in Tsume's chest. He was going to brush her off? Just like that? Who the hell did this punk think he was?!

"It doesn't matter if Hana's the heir, you're going."

"I can't skip out on this. I promised," he said. "So no. I'm not."

"Inuzuka Kiba," she snapped. Her chair screeched as she shoved it back. Kuromaru warily got up on all fours and Akamaru merely turned his head towards the commotion from his spot splayed out in one of the entryways. "I. Wasn't. Asking."

At this point, he would've bared his teeth and snarled and yelled like a brat on a tantrum. Then they would've gone on a whole argument about his duty and his responsibilities as a member of this clan and she would've told him to grow up and step up. And ultimately he'd be forced to attend the meeting and would simmer in his seat the whole time.

He would've done all of that in that exact order. He should've.

But Kiba stared at her for a few moments, his eyes clouded and wild yet strangely calm like an ocean on the brink or a cliff with a crack. He didn't bare his fangs, he didn't ball his hands into fists. Instead, he never broke eye contact with his own mother as he finished unrolling his sleeves.

Tsume couldn't fathom his gall to stand like that—like a wolf facing off with no intent to back down.

When had she become the enemy?

"Akamaru, get our stuff upstairs."

The white canine shifted onto his paws and headed out.

"Akamaru," Kuromaru barked, his eye sliding to the pup's retreating form. Not so much a pup anymore, but... "Come back here this instant!"

Akamaru paused just long enough to meet the elder nin-dog's gaze. Then met Kiba's. Then continued his way up the stairs without another look back.

Kuromaru's fur bristled even as his skin crawled at the exchange.

"What the hell's goin' on with you two?" Tsume muttered. Her hand clawed through her thick hair. "I ask you to go to this one meeting. One! And now you've got this—this attitude!" She gestured to him and heard the faint, offended growl in his throat. Oh, so now she struck a nerve? "You're with your friends every single day and you can't spare one of those with your own family?! I'm not asking for a lot here, kid, work with me!"

"I already made a promise. They're my family, and I'm gonna keep it," he ground out.

"And we're not?"

"I didn't say that! You can't just put words inta' my mouth—"

"And you can spend a few hours away from them for the sake of your clan and your future," she bit. A sigh that weighed a million tons fell out her lungs as she pressed her fingers to her forehead. "God," she murmured, "what's happening to you?"

(s n a p.)

"What's happening to me? What's happening to me?" An incredulous laugh burst from Kiba's lips. "I get it. You're mad 'bout me not bein' 'round anymore. But where were you with this lecture when I was a genin? I've been doing this for years and suddenly you're askin' what's happening to me?" His arm swept over his kitchen—towards his mother, towards Kuro, towards the no one else that gave a shit before. "You didn't care what I was doin', you didn't care that I'd been at Sakura's for days, you didn't care about any of that and all of a sudden you're making me go to meetings even though I made a promise to my pack? I've been walkin' out that door for WEEKS, so why's it now you're puttin' me on lockdown? Sorry, mom, we're not doin' this tonight."

"Don't make it sound like I don't care!"

"I'm not sayin' you don't care about me," he said. "I'm sayin' you don't care 'bout the rest of me."

Tsume flinched.

"Kiba," Kuromaru hissed. The teen scowled as his gaze flashed to his mother's partner. "We're only concerned for your well-being."

"Yeah, you could do with a lil' less."

The black dog drew himself up to his full height, shoulder blades to Tsume's hips as he stared down one of the youngest pups in this family. God, this family. Where was all of this coming from? When had Kiba become so, so— "I want you to take a step back and think about the things you've said. You might be experienced, but you're a boy. You might have been doing whatever you had to out there, but you're home. You might call this team your pack," he said the word like he couldn't believe it and a fire surged through Kiba's every vein, "but you need to consider your clan. This is your obligation—your burden—and you will take it up like all the Inuzuka with you and before you."

(Kiba thinks of sour air and dust. Screams still echo in his ears when he sleeps in a haze of fatigue and drugs and exhaustion and sometimes he forgets he's not there anymore, but when he presses his head against Sakura's chest and hears her heartbeat it drowns out the noise that doesn't stop. He smells blood, he smells metal, he doesn't remember the day he stopped being able to tell them apart. He worries, too. He worries more than he thinks he needs to. He worried when he thought Mabui had been too caring and when Darui had been too kind. He'd been worried about when the other shoe would drop. But now he worries when Shino's hands shake and he hunches in because of his anger and his guilt and his—and worries when Akamaru eats more than three times a day because he's afraid he'll go hungry because when he goes hungry he says bones pile up in corners and red stains his jaws and he's scared—)

His burden was to kill ninety-eight people in an arena for the world to enjoy like a play on a stage. His burden was to watch Shino's eye get ripped out because he couldn't do anything about it. His burden was to stop Sakura's bleeding when they'd cut off her arm. His burden was to make those seals on his ears when he'd lost most of his hearing to an explosion that could've killed Kiyoi-san if he hadn't stepped in.

"Pack's always been there for me an' Akamaru. Always," he told them quietly. "Don't make me choose between them and the clan, 'cause it's gonna be the same answer every time."

Akamaru silently slipped down the stairs like a wraith with a duffel bag hanging from his mouth and a harness of scrolls secured around his middle. He wove past Kuromaru's frozen bulk and Tsume's shivering legs until he was at his partner's side. He was quiet, he always was, especially as he watched the color drain from the two that raised both him and Kiba.

"I know my burdens," said Kiba. He took the duffel and slung it over his shoulder. "And yeah I'm probably bein' real selfish right now, but for once in my life I'd like to pick some burdens of my own."

They weren't stopped as they strode from the kitchen and out the front door, and they didn't look back as the porch lights of the main Inuzuka household grew smaller in the distance.

(Kiba thinks of burdens.

He thinks he'll take on as many as he can carry for his home in a girl with pink hair and in a boy who named every single one of his insects.)

:: ::

Kurenai's apartment wasn't as warm as it used to be. The curtains were always drawn and the oven hadn't been used in over a year, but the cluster of bodies at the table knocked shoulders together and bumped arms when they reached for honey and sugar and little lemon slices to put in their tea.

'They used to be so small', Kurenai thought as she subtly brushed away a stray tear as she tucked some hair behind her ear. And so, so much more whole.

"At that point, Koinobori had all gone ta' shit. They were still puttin' out the fires, but we were already on a boat ta' Lightning Country," Kiba continued with a light sneer. "We shoulda' killed that bastard when we had the chance."

Sakura sipped her tea. "We didn't know."

"It was our fault for letting our guard down, but it wasn't our fault for everything that happened after," Shino cut in. His fingers curled around his cup and the tea was still warm, but he didn't drink out of it much. Some of his kikai crawled around the rim and some perched along the sleeves of his black shirt. "It ended up being for the best."

Four silencing seals were tacked up along the walls, as Tenzo quietly listened to their story from his seat beside Sakura, he can't help but glance up at them every now and again. Before, they'd only glowed a muted blue upon their activation and would flash yellows for warnings and reds for danger. But these new ones... shimmered. Sky blue waves of light rippled like the sea with chakra he could see but not sense; it was different from before. Stronger.

He wondered how Kiba learned it. He wondered about the seals that dangled from his ears.

(Guilt swelled just like it did in the early mornings he could never sleep through.)

"We were caught by Kumogakure Border Patrol," Shino continued, "after our leader had left us to die in that forest." He tilted his head. "I remember what happened. Clearly. I had been bound, Sakura had a tanto through her ribs first before it was driven through her palm to pin her to the ground, Kiba had been pierced through the legs and one shoulder, and Akamaru had broken the tree he'd been thrown through."

"We didn't stand a chance," Sakura added with an untroubled nod.

"Keh. At least Patrol was nice enough to drag us back unconscious 'nstead of kickin' and screamin'."

Kurenai, who'd been silent since they'd started recounting their story, balled her hands in her lap. She'd cried the day they came back and stained their shirts with the tears she couldn't stop. Through the clogged throat she tried so hard to speak through she begged for their forgiveness, holding them close and spilling apologies into their hair. Hope and defiance and favorite foods and dark glasses and the color pink—too much of it had swirled in her head as she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, their arms wrapped around her when she wasn't worth it, the way they called her sensei when she'd never been more than undeserving.

"How can you call me that after everything I didn't do for you?"

"How? We had our... disagreements, but you have no reason to be remorseful."

"I drove you away."

"C'mon, sensei, don't say that. We... shouldn't have given you a choice like that. It wasn't fair."

"You should hate me."

"You never did anything we'd hate you for."

(She clung onto them for the rest of the night.)

"It was about two months into the imprisonment that things started to change and Shino got out first," Sakura said. Her head jerked to her friend who sat across from her. "They always put you on the graveyard shift, didn't they?"

"In the beginning. They acclimatized me to the hospital and its staff before my rotations began to include afternoons and evenings."

Tenzo's brows shot up. "They had you work in public? As prisoners from an enemy country?"

"The three of us operated under an alias approved by the Raikage. Why? It was more efficient to align us with Kumo's needs rather than leaving us in those cells, I suppose. I practiced at Cirrus Central, Kiba was taken to the Seals Division, and Sakura—"

"Got ta' be a training dummy!" Kiba laughed. Sakura blinked.

"How tall are you again?"

"I'm literally gonna kill you."

Akamaru snuffled a laugh beneath the table as he curled around one of the wooden legs. His paws stretched over Sakura's feet, the length of his back pushed against Shino and Kiba's shins and his tail flopped near Kurenai's heels.

(Kurenai almost lost herself in another onslaught of tears. They still knew how to laugh.)

Tenzo shifted slightly in his seat, their words a little more than incredulous to his ears. He battled enough Kumo-nin in his life to know just what type of shinobi they were and understood just the type of regard they held themselves at. They were brutish, almost—enough that the comparison between them and the typical Konoha-nin was like a comparison between stormy mountains and sunny meadows.

But still, to the extent that they'd come out of that village almost the same as when they'd gone in...

"They treated you well," he said.

"You sound confused," Shino mused as he tilted his head a bit to the side.

"I just don't quite understand... how." The ANBU splayed his fingers over the edge of the table. "You shouldn't have made it out of there alive. If alive, then not sane at the very least. Sakura-san, with what happened with your arm, didn't Kumo...?"

Three glances exchanged across the cups on the table for the briefest of moments before two of them landed on Sakura and she turned hers to the side to address the two adults to her right. She was as blank and unreadable as ever, and perhaps she'd gotten better at her outward indifference.

"Kuhlonishwana kabili. Or, 'it is respected twice,'" she explained. It was so odd to see her hair short enough to barely scrape against the nape of her neck. "Konoha and Kumo never managed to get along since the Kingin Kyodai assaulted the Nidaime Raikage and almost killed Senju Tobirama during the ceremony to formally agree to peace. Until this day, the Kumor think Konohans are spineless dogs and Konohans think Kumor are unprincipled beasts." She shrugged. "Things sort of fell together when we were there. The longer we spent there the less time we spent in our cells and the more they stopped re-shackling us when we were brought back to the Penitentiary for the day." The corner of her lips pulled up into a small, wistful smile. "Did you know the reason why most of them don't have surnames is because they all see each other as part of the same family?"

Tenzo didn't. Neither did Kurenai.

"I lost my arm to the Coliseum. Kumo taught me that I didn't need it to be a good shinobi," Sakura said. The clawed marks on her shoulder peeked out of her shirt, still bright and pink as the day the Kyuubi's chakra ripped through her. "What's one more scar to carry?"

Tenzo looked away.

Kiba pushed his hand through his hair, some of his fingers catching on a knot in the back. The twin slips that hung on his ears swung near his still-bare cheeks as he tugged to comb through it. Kurenai couldn't drag her eyes away from the meticulously painted seals.

"... We didn't want to leave," he admitted quietly. "It was the first time in a long time where we didn't hafta' worry 'bout anythin'. Where we didn't have to worry 'bout anyone killin' us." He chuckled lightly. "It's funny. All I ever heard about Kumo was that they hated Konohans the most."

Kiba's sleeveless arms exposed the dark red tattoo on his bicep and the blue ink crested along Sakura's cheekbone was near impossible to miss. Shino had to have a tattoo on him as well through it was something they couldn't see, but his and his teammates' marked forearms matched each other in perfect unity: one earthy band near the elbow, two earthy bands near the wrist.

To anyone else, it would have been proof of shame hidden away beneath layers of bandages and shirts and guilt.

"So why didn't you stay?"

They all turned to Kurenai whose face was still puffy after all her tears earlier in the morning when she saw their return still wasn't a dream. Some strands of her hair frizzed and the bags under her eyes weren't as dark as they were just a few weeks ago. But there was love in her gaze and a perpetual sadness in her eyes as she looked at her team. Her kids.

"You wouldn't have been hurt anymore," she continued softly. "If you stayed," her brows furrowed and her red eyes shone, "then you could've been happy."

(Pink and dogs and glasses and favorite foods.)

It was odd to see a small smile worm onto Shino's face. Before, it was always serious or angry or that trademark Aburame indifference. It might have been a smile that sent a pang through her chest because it shouldn't have looked so resigned.

"We could have." Shino's thumb traced over the bumps and grooves of one of the infinite scars on his skin. "But we didn't. Why? Because we have one goal, and we aren't striving for it to be happy."

Kurenai's bottom lip wobbled. "I wish you did."

"Yeah." Kiba grinned, but everything about it fell flat. "We wish we did too."

:: ::

"Well, looks like Shikamaru lied to me almost two years ago."

Kankuro, sixteen and sharper, slipped the bandaged puppet off his back and propped it against the bar as he slid onto the stool on Sakura's left. He'd been to this particular bar a few times since the beginning of his visits to Konoha every other month—one of those ones where the only required identification for shinobi were a hitai-ate and a haunted look around the eyes.

His head bobbed as he gave her a once over. "You don't look dead. "

She turned her head towards him. "Color me surprised."

"Hey, save your bullshit until after I'm buzzed." He waved the bartender down, eyes still on her. "You drink?"

"No." She brought her glass of what was probably a mocktail up to her lips. "How long have you?"

He ordered some warm sake and propped an elbow up on the bar. "Eh, sometime after the first couple weeks of being a genin? Probably had something to do with being scared shitless having Gaara on my team and dealing with all the fucked Suna politics. But hey, what can you do?"

"I remember seeing Gaara-san kill those Amegakure shinobi during the Exams." She lifted her glass in a half-hearted toast. "Congrats on your position, by the way. Did they give you a shiny gold pin to flash around?"

"Shut the fuck up. And yeah, I remember you and your team skulkin' around the treeline." Kankuro waved a hand. "But whatever, it was a million years ago." He pointed to her left arm and the half that remained. "That looks like a story, though." His gaze drifted to her other arm. The brown that wrapped her skin read like a code in his eyes. Upon his ascension to Ambassador, he had to pore over every book about every country's customs and traditions and practices. "Kumo?"

"Good deduction skills," she hummed. The bartender set a sake bottle and a pair of ceramic cups between them before drifting off to another part of the bar. "Yeah. Kumo."

"Huh." He tipped some sake into his cup and wasted no time in throwing it back in one quick flick. "But seeing that you're here and not six feet under, there must have been one hell of a miracle for you to crawl all the way back here." He poured himself some more alcohol. "Or you're stupid lucky."

His gaze stayed to her arms, and he was careful to keep himself from noting the blue on her cheek with anything other than a cursory glance. As with nearly all the texts on the world's nations, nothing he'd read about Kumo came from an actual Kumor themselves. His background was fully Sunese like many of the Ambassadors before him, and every annotation and warning from his predecessors came from their own travels.

"This was before Kumo. A misjudgment on my part." Sakura set her arm on the table and leaned. "I adapt. I move on. And now I'm here."

The old books could only say so much. But in one journal he'd read from an Ambassador working around the same time as the Nidaime Kazekage—the only one of their line who managed to stay for a few days high up on the Kumogakure plateaus—emphasized one key point she learned from watching the streets from a heavily guarded hotel room window.

Most of the time you can tell from which country a shinobi belongs,

she'd written with a heavy hand.

If he is Sunese, he is a thousand desert sands of browns and blacks and tans and whites with a speckle of red in the wind. If he is Konohan, he is a field of spring blooming flowers in brights in bolds, in sunshine and grass. If he is Kirian, he is the oceans and algae and prickling purple sea urchins, the low grays of their mists and ashes of volcanic rock. If he is Iwavian, he is fire and stone and clay sculpture and baths of red dye their merchants use to color cloths on street sides.

But the Kumor? You cannot tell if one is Kumor. There is not a single hair color I have not seen and the shades of their skin are an unending ombre. If you ask me to describe the typical Kumor, I cannot say. They are simply so different from one another, but so cohesive.

Though as beautiful as the Kumor are, there is something I think we as outsiders fail to understand.

Once they take hold of you, they do not let you go.

Kankuro didn't quite know what that old Ambassador was getting at, and he was pretty sure a lot of her writing reeked of a 'If-you're-not-Sunese-you're-weird' mentality, so he took a lot of her interpretations with a grain of salt.

But what he did know was that Sakura, even with all the luck she had, shouldn't have gotten out of there with air in her lungs and blood in her body. They'd marked her for death with those bands on her forearm, and Kumo wasn't known for their mercy.

'Head of a jackal, body of a man; the protector of cemeteries, the dead; a judge before the afterlife,' he thought dryly.

Whatever happened to her out there wasn't his business. She could tell him if she wanted, but he wasn't gonna poke and prod and squeeze her out of a story that he had no right in asking for.

And that tattoo on her face...

Wait. What happened to her arm was before Kumo?

"I can do you one better," he said. Sakura set down her glass, and eyebrow raised. He held out a hand. "May I?"

Her eyes flashed briefly—suspiciondistrustwariness—but she nodded slowly and lifted her left arm. Kankuro gently grasped the end and unwrapped the bandages with a deft hand. Cleanly cut, minimal scarring but paled and wrinkled at the worst of it; a transhumeral amputation that had undergone optimal adjustment to the loss of limbs and a balance of muscle distribution between both upper arms...

He re-wrapped her arm and sat back. "So I've got a proposition."

Sakura tapped her fingers against the bar. Puzzle pieces clicked together behind her gaze and he knew she was the farthest thing from an idiot. He caught her glances at the bound puppet near their stools and could feel the gears churning in her head, probably cycling through everything she knew about Suna and their specialties. "What's in it for you?

He didn't tell her that when Shikamaru mentioned her and her team suddenly turned up well and alive, he finished up his duties quicker than usual to see for himself just how well and alive she was. He didn't tell her that the moment his eyes laid on her arm his mind immediately went through all he knew to try and help her just because he knew he could.

He didn't tell her that even if they'd only known each other for a few months at most, she was one of the better friends he'd ever had.

Instead, he said, "I stay on your side, you stay on mine. Remember?"

Kankuro poured more sake into his cup. It dribbled out until it filled a little more than three fourths of the way up. But before he could even reach out for it, it was gone and off the table.

"I remember," Sakura replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world. White porcelain was a stark contrast against her fingers, and he glowered as she downed the rest of his drink. "So, what did you have in mind?"

:: ::

Hey, everyone! In case you haven't heard, I've been working on another story! Non-Naruto related (shocking), MCU, Peter Parker-centric. Here's the cover and summary if you're interested!

Frostbite

Peter wasn't going to let May pay the rent all on her own. Not when there was the two of them, not when being Spider-Man made everything that much harder.

And if that meant washing scratched up dishes and scrubbing old blood from the tile grout at Sister Margaret's School for Wayward Girls, then so be it.

(If only his problems didn't multiply from there.)

::

[MCU-verse]

BETA: OfCloves

Cover Art Commission by: frostmarris on tumblr

:: ::

And here we end with some fantastic fanart by:

potatointhedraws on instagram!

Shirako121!

dark-rebel-weeb-21 on tumblr!

_jcmarie__ on instagram!

_sheriff_button_ on instagram!

and prikachuu on instagram!

And we have an awesome netflix banner by kage_ino!