"They're weird," Tsunade commented bluntly as she spun her chair around and stared out the glass window of the Hokage office. Down below, Team Eight walked the path back to the rest of the village after a flawlessly completed B-rank within a few kilometers of Konoha. Kiba was waving his hands dramatically as he explained something while Sakura replied in even words that never forced a shift in her posture. Shino watched on, exasperated, and Akamaru trotted alongside them with a wagging tail and closed snout.

"Tsunade-sama?"

"I heard Kamizuki and Hagane talking the other day," the Godaime continued. "Called that team 'Unlucky Eight.'" She set an elbow on one of the arm rests and dropped her chin in her hand. "They came back from the dead. Sounds pretty damn lucky to me."

"Maybe the name was for the irony?" Shizune suggested as she thumbed through a stack of papers that needed a Seal of Approval. "They're an interesting batch of chuunin—maybe they had some notoriety before you came into office?"

Notorious. She supposed that was one word to describe them, but Tsunade wasn't so sure it was the one she'd use. Notoriety required some sort of fame in the shinobi community and as far as she was concerned, the only time there had been a buzz about them was when the news about them going MIA on their very first mission as chuunin was whispered in hallways and across mission desks. And like all tragedies that befell shinobi, talks about things like that died out after no more than a week. Team Eight had been no different.

Now, if their story had been something along the likes of Uchiha Sasuke defecting to Orochimaru, it would have taken Konoha by storm and every single person from genin to chuunin to jounin would've heard about it.

But Eight wasn't that. Eight was just another pile of paperwork and another few names added to memorial stones and the Death Commemoration, as coarse as it was to admit.

Tsunade's eyes flickered back to the team before they could drift out of sight. Shino with his heavy green jacket, Kiba with his paint-less cheeks, Sakura with her left arm bandaged from the middle of her bicep all the way down to the tips of her fingers.

The prosthesis was new. So new, in fact, that just a few minutes ago was the first she'd ever seen it. Though completely covered without a centimeter poking out from under the tight wrappings, Tsunade's critical eye noted how its size mirrored the right arm and its movements were as fluid and precise as flesh-and-bone.

Konoha General Hospital hadn't provided any experimental prostheses recently, but what she did hear was that the girl had been spending an unusual amount of her time with Suna's Ambassador.

She spun her seat back towards her desk and frowned at the new stack of papers Shizune set in her line of vision. And speaking of hospitals, Shibi's boy had been an enigma. Not only was his entrance exam one of the highest scoring for newly instated medics, but he was proving very quickly that he was one of the most efficient, competent employees Tsunade had seen in a very long time. No-nonsense, keen, and despite his frankly unfortunate bedside manner, he worked with an experienced hand and worked the floor like it was his second nature.

'Experience he shouldn't have if he'd been in prison for a year and a half.'

But then again, he had all those little scars that startled the other medics when they'd completed his physical as part of that T&I screening. Criss-crossing each other in a plethora of lengths and depths, they were everywhere as far as his medical report was concerned. Perhaps he'd gotten practice taking care of those whether they'd been acquired from his time rotating cells or self-inflicted.

Besides his genius, though, came this unexpected penchant for disregarding authority. The first few times it amused her to hear some things he'd done that earned a warning rather than a demerit, like blatantly ignoring the attending head medic's orders or taking up his own duties when none were assigned. He never spoke out of turn or insulted another coworker, but damn was he racking up warning slips in his file. This sort of insubordination, especially for some green-nosed chuunin, would have called for several demerits and a potential firing had he not been so damn good at his job.

But maybe he was too good.

Because Aburame Shino was currently serving a month suspension from his duties.

"He's dangerous!"

"He broke almost every rule in the book!"

"He willingly put everyone else at risk for that stunt he pulled!"

Hinata had been the only one to defend him.

"If he hadn't done what he did, those children would have died!"

But majority won, and Tsunade would rather have him suspended than dismissed from his service.

'No one in the Aburame Clan was ever as bold as that one,' she noted with a downturn of her lips. 'So what makes this one so different?'

Tsunade plucked a pen off her desk and clicked it a few times too many as a pulsing pain began to claw at her temples.

And then came Tsume's youngest. Loud, like his mother. Expressive, like his sister. Wild, like everyone else in the clan. But oddly, he was also unnervingly adept at seals as demonstrated from the tests Morino made him take, if not proof enough from the auditory stabilizers on his ears or the storage seal on his arm. From what she'd been hearing, he'd been having seals lessons with his old Academy sensei before he disappeared, and though she'd never seen any of his work, Iruka had been adamant in keeping up his studies and enlisting him in every seals-related opportunity.

And that just didn't make any goddamn sense. His grades had been mediocre at best and appalling at worst, and his best subject had been any physical education courses except the ones that required weapons to aim. So where the hell was this coming from? And why was there no note of it?

Three times he submitted an application for a position in the Seals Division and once did he apply to the Cryptanalysis Team. All four times, he was denied due to restrictions in status and experience.

Come to think of it, that Sakura girl didn't have any defining skills or traits either, yet she was clearly the one her teammates deferred to. Cold, apathetic, with nothing but 'average' marked in every aspect of her file...

(She had never seen green eyes so unsettling.)

Tsunade sighed and rubbed her forehead. "Not notorious. Just weird." She pulled open the drawer by her desk and rummaged around. "You hear anything about them, you let me know ASAP. Keep an eye out for their habits, their routines, but don't breathe a word of it to anyone. Got it, Shizune?"

"Yes, Tsunade-sama."

"Good. HA!" The Hokage yanked out an unopened bottle of sake, much to her assistant's and Tonton's dismay, and popped the cap off with her teeth.

Team Eight was an enigma, and one way or another she was going to find out just what was unlucky about them.

:: ::

Sakura stared down at her open palm. She curled her fingers inward one at a time before she splayed them out again, each of her digits disquietingly flexible. She unbound the bandages.

"Does it hurt?"

Shino's hands slid over hers as a small batch of kikai crawled along the metal of her left wrist. The prosthesis had taken three months of planning and sketching and construction and while Kankuro had done most of the building and designing back in Suna, the nights of his stays in Konoha were spent looming over blueprints in her cramped kitchen with Akamaru under the table and the rest of her pack snoozing away just one room over.

It was a late, late night when she'd gotten a parcel from one of Kankuro's summons—a gila monster the size of a large goat—with a tag that said 'For Tourist Guides Only.'

And inside was an ash black arm made from a mixture of wood and steel and lightweight alloys. Smooth and sleek, the inside was mostly hollow save for the single metal bar run through the middle to serve as a conduit for chakra. Intricate curves and spirals adorned the surface with all the hard ridges sanded down and polished just enough that when the sun caught it there was no gleam.

Kankuro emphasized that wood alone was versatile for their puppeteers because of their maneuverability, weight, and easy control from a distance, but Sakura was neither a puppeteer nor a long-range fighter so some adjustments needed to be made. Something heavier but not too much to keep her balance, something that could latch tightly onto her weapons but not lock on accident, something that could both benefit her when she utilized it but not harm her permanently when she didn't.

"There are some puppet masters that have limbs replaced with wooden parts," he said to her one night. "They see it as weaponizing weak bodies, but I guess there's some of us who take it too far." His brows furrowed. "You ever heard of Akasuna no Sasori? The nuke-nin that turned himself into a living puppet?"

A gravelly voice. A poison-tipped tail. A hunch that almost touched the ground.

"Once or twice," she replied.

"Genius work. Crazy dude. But I digress." He waved a hand. "In order to work a puppet limb attached to your own body as a replacement for something lost, you need to channel your chakra through the wood and trick your body into thinking that it's the real deal. You follow?"

Sakura nodded.

"Okay, so basically you've got your nervous system running throughout your whole body, taking messages from the brain telling your muscles to move. Your nerve endings got severed where your arm got cut, but you can extend those nerve endings through your chakra network. If you can force the chakra flow from the amputation site into the arm and back like how it cycled before you lost your arm, you've got it in full working order!" Kankuro leaned forward, a single finger up in the air. "But the drawback is that it requires extremely high levels of chakra control to replicate networks that no longer exist while maintaining the connection loops for as long as you use the arm, which is why you really don't see the technique used outside Suna."

He stared at her arm for a few moments before meeting her blank gaze.

"What are your strengths?"

She could lie to him. Tell him her strengths lay with flashy jutsu she never showed to keep her cards hidden or that she was the absolute worst at taijutsu and couldn't get through a kata without a fumble. She could say anything and he would have nothing to base it off and keep it all close to her chest so he could never have the chance to use it against her.

Or get the chance to thrust a tanto through her hand if she ever left her side wide open.

"... I'm a genjutsu type and a swordsman," she said. He cocked an eyebrow. "And my chakra control is good."

"Good enough for what we need?"

"Better."

Kankuro whistled. "Then that's one less thing we've gotta worry about." He craned his neck towards the blueprints, and Sakura silently marveled at how he took her truth without question. "But teaching you how to connect your chakra's the easy part."

"Reassuring."

"Heh, thought we were done?" he grinned. The plastic chair creaked under him as he crossed his arms and slumped back. "But yeah, the real problem's gonna be getting used to the arm itself. I'm only going off what I've heard, but what's going to suck the most is dealing with the nerve endings where you make the first connection. And it's gonna suck every time you put the arm on and take it off."

A slight grimace graced her lips, but it was mostly hidden under her concession.

"Not to mention you've got to be careful about things like weather, humidity, strain. Human bodies do all that on their own to a certain extent, but you'll need to watch that arm at all times. Which means I've also got to teach you about maintenance, repair, upkeep..."

Screws were drilled into the bottom of her left arm under Shino's supervision for the initial joint mechanism, and her first attempt at extending her chakra network and maintaining a loop had been a complete success.

(The pain brought her to her knees and she bit the inside of her cheek so hard her mouth swamped with blood.)

But it was an advantage, wasn't it? No matter how much it hurt and no matter how long it would take her to learn to use a second arm again, if it helped her in the long run then all the downsides were temporary.

(What's one more burden? What's one more scar?)

"Not currently," she said. "We're not doing anything else today, are we?"

"Not that I can think of."

"Then I won't need the arm."

She held in the shaky breath that wants its freedom as her right hand wrapped around the junction where skin turned to metal. The locking mechanism slot drove a simple path of twist-right crest-down-left-up-release for the physical removal and she smoothly removed the prosthesis, chakra channels still connected.

Kiba draped an arm around her waist to keep her steady and Shino kept a glowing hand close by in case she needed to numb the pain.

Three, two—

Her vision sparked at the edges as the pain grated against her brain like nails on a chalkboard. She stumbled once to the side but Kiba's grip stayed firm, and she took a few seconds to catch her breath before she pat his hand and he let her go with a disgruntled frown.

"There really isn't a way ta' make it hurt less?" he grouched. Shino's fingertips faded back to its normal color as he wound around the table to pull the makings of their dinner out of the fridge and spread them out on the counter.

"There are some ways to lessen the pain." He leveled a glare over his shoulder. "But someone refuses to use medications or anesthesia."

Sakura lowered herself into one of her hard plastic chairs, laying her prosthesis out in front of her. "If in any event there's an attack, I'll lose efficiency. We can't afford that, and if that means getting used to this pain, fine."

"Literally, you're the worst."

"Literally, bite me."

Shino gnashed his teeth towards her once before he threw his jacket over the back of a chair and rolled up his sleeves to start preparing their food. It was a thenthuk recipe Yugito taught him during one of her recovery days between missions, and though yak was as scarce as they came in Konoha, they settled for some Suna-imported camel for the dish. He set the melktert they'd made yesterday out on the other end of the table, half-finished and made in the painstaking way Enmu once described to them. She'd talked about it for an entire two hours and drew pictures of each ingredient on little sticky notes until the pad ran out.

"Aside from Sakura's apparent lack of self-preservation," Shino began as he began kneading a flour and water dough between his hands, "How are things with Tsume-sama, Kiba?"

Kiba stretched his arms over his head. "Eh, I haven't gone back since me an' Akamaru walked out. I mean, Mom and Kuro haven't gone lookin' for us, so..." He shrugged. "I dunno." He saw Hana every now and again, though. Sometimes he would pass the vet clinic she worked at on his way to the library or to meet Iruka or pay Kurenai and Tenzo a visit, but he never stayed too long. Hana was busy with work and he was busy with... well—

He sighed. "I love Mom. Really." He dragged out a pot from one of the cupboards and placed it on the stove. "But I know I can't tell her anythin'. And maybe I'm bein' even more selfish by not heading back but every time I see her... I can see how guilty she feels." His brow knit. "She's not good at hidin' it."

But then he smiled half-heartedly before turning to Shino to ask about what to do next for the recipe.

Akamaru wandered to where Sakura sat where she propped her chin up on her right knuckles. The ninken dropped his own chin in her lap and whined until she was scratching his ears and rubbing the soft fur on his head.

In the center of her prosthetic palm was the engraving of a lizard in a thinly lined box. Kankuro's signature.

Sasori's had always been a red scorpion trapped in a red diamond.

Did you understand that, girl? You're Akatsuki's homegrown advantage. How does it feel to be used?

"We've been back in Konoha for half a year now," she said. Her thumb caressed Akamaru's snout and he tucked his head closer to her stomach. "It's been long enough for us to settle and re-establish ourselves in the village, but I can see you two haven't been too content with what we've returned to."

"The health care centers here have improved since Tsunade-sama has taken over. Why? She is intelligent and adept and patched the systems and protocols to her best ability, so I have no quarrel on that matter. But," Shino's knife whacked against the cutting board, the wood splitting slightly, "You have already heard of my suspension. There was a boy I had assessed for general diagnosis and I noticed he had an arrhythmia his file had down as a chronic heart condition. I prepared to send my kikai into his body to confirm the source, but the head medic demanded I keep my 'pests' away from the patients." The knife hit the board again. Louder. "When he left, I sent in a team of kikai and discovered both him and his sister required heart surgery that involved removing an irregularity in their system. Another two weeks without treatment would have resulted in their deaths."

Kiba bared his fangs. "And they fucking suspended you for that?!"

"I suppose performing the surgeries of my own accord was a cause for suspension," he admitted with a shrug. "Hyuuga-san and Tsunade-sama were the only ones standing between me and termination. I am thankful for that." Shino's mouth curled into a slight sneer. "Though I do not appreciate the lack of competence of my coworkers when they did not take my concerns seriously."

When he saved Yugito's life from the parasites squirming in her brain, he wasn't met with punishment. C had thanked him, and so had the nurses, and it granted him ever more freedom from the cells.

Shino exhaled quietly. It was much simpler being a prisoner.

"Piece of shit system," Kiba hissed. "I can't believe you got suspended for savin' lives."

Sakura frowned. "Hyuuga-san defended you?"

"She is the Hokage's apprentice; she's bound to obtain similarities in their thinking, I suppose." Shino shook his head slightly and focused back on the cutting board. "What has caused your aggravation, Kiba?"

He scoffed. "What hasn't?" His fangs were sharp as they flashed in the low light, but his shoulders hunched close to his ears as he thought back to all the time they spent back in Konoha." Things with Iruka-sensei are cool an' all, but ta' be in the Seals Division I need ta' maintain an active chuunin rank for at least a year and half. The time we spent in Kumo doesn't count since we were in enemy territory and were technically considered dead, so."

Akamaru's low growl reverberated through his entire body.

"And, like, it's stupid hard to get any good seals books outta the libraries and archives 'round here. The real good texts are from Uzushio and anythin' that survived's locked away somewhere in the Hokage Library. Breaking into it once was already bad enough, and I don't think I could do it again. 'specially since we're still not trusted all that well."

They weren't being trailed, per se, nor were they barred from traffic in and out of the village, but they saw the way the mission desks hesitated in handing them the higher classified missions and caught the calculating gleam in the Hokage's eyes when they reported to her.

They weren't in the clear. They weren't going to give Konoha another reason to shove a blade through their ribs.

Kiba shook his head. "But whatever. I'll find somethin' even if it means diggin' through the black market. Whatta' 'bout you, Sakura?"

She straightened the prosthesis on the table. What about her? She didn't seek a higher position of power in the village, instead sticking to alley corners and hidden alcoves and watching everything from afar. She listened to whispers near market stalls and tracked rumors from the shadows, and if not there she secluded herself in the Forest of Death where she let kubikiribocho breathe and all her destruction was passed off as by the monsters that lurked in the trees.

It was there she broke down the complexity of the blade. For hours she spent studying its structure and its abilities, and it was after days and days and weeks and weeks that she was able to carry it around with her all the time with no one else knowing any better. Kubikiribocho had the unique power of regenerating from the blood of its victims. Its high durability already made it resistant to many attacks and the more victims it cut through, the more the sword was sustained.

It was an accident the day she shattered the blade. She'd been practicing Doton: Domu and landed a direct hit on the sword; the hilt and the blade separated, and upon the ripped connection the metal had melted into old coppery blood, leaving the hilt all on its own.

She regenerated it with creature blood to train and broke it down to keep it hidden.

The hilt she would keep strapped in a brown sheath attached to her pauldrons. It looked to be a baton-like thing; thin, completely bandaged, probably two feet in length, and as of this day had never been drawn in a fight.

She wished she'd been able to show Bee.

"Konoha is too close to the ground," she said. "And the air is too heavy."

There was quiet for a moment.

"Ah, fuck," Kiba sighed. "We got attached. That sucks."

Sakura stood from her chair and strode over to throw her arm around Kiba's shoulders and leaned her head on top of Shino's who continued to butcher camel meat. Akamaru snatched the bone thrown his way.

"We'll be okay," she murmured.

And they would. Because they wouldn't know what to do if they didn't.

:: ::

Uzumaki Naruto took in the view of a village he hadn't seen in over two years.

"Everything's still the same, huh," he sighed as he relished the warm air. His heart lit up as he stood in the midst of the village that made him, that raised him.

(He ignored the small part of his mind that always whispered, that never forgot the life he lived all alone in that apartment. Here was where shop fronts sneered when he passed them and where there was never a moment he missed a glance over his shoulder to make sure no bottles rained down on him or hands reached out to choke his neck. This was a village that spat in his face when it talked and shoved him into walls when he was too slow to dodge.

This was the village that made him, that hated him.

Why was he happy to be back home?)

Blue eyes wandered over the faces of Hokage Mountain, and he grinned. "They added Baa-chan's face!"

"Na-Naruto-kun!" a voice called up to him. "When did you get ba-back?!"

Naruto looked down, and there was Hinata. Her long black hair sat in a braid down her back. A light lavender, short-sleeved kimono shirt hugged her loosely as a wine purple sash wrapped around her waist, and her dark navy pants cut off at the ankles as she bore her hitai-ate proudly around her neck.

"Just now!" He leapt onto the street from his perch on a lamp post, landing squarely beside a patiently-waiting Jiraiya. "Hinata-chan! How've you been?"

Her cheeks dusted pink. "I've been doing well. B-But!" She smiled widely. "How has your training gone? Did you manage to learn a lot from Jiraiya-sama?"

"Hell yeah! I got a ton of super cool jutsu to show off, 'ttebayo!"

"Really?" Her inquiry was so genuine that he wasn't used to it. "I'm sure you've gotten stronger n-now."

She was always so... nice. He didn't get it sometimes..

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "Heh heh. Hinata-chan, you haven't changed a bit."

And if Hinata hadn't changed, then maybe...

His hand fell back to his side and brushed against the chest of his jacket, and he was reminded of the weight in the inside pocket. It pressed firmly against his chest and it was familiar—so familiar that he could feel the plastic bag on his fingers when he held it at night and could recall the exact color of the twine that knotted around a stack of pristine white envelopes.

"We should pay Tsunade-hime a visit," Jiraiya hummed, snapping Naruto out of his thoughts. "Let her know about us being in the village and have you reinstated as an official shinobi of the village, brat."

"Tsunade-shishou should be available for a meeting right now," Hinata offered. "I can walk you ov-over."

The path to Hokage Tower was one that filled Naruto with an ages old nostalgia. When he was in the kid this was the road he took the most when he was chased by shinobi after a prank or when he ran from the older kids who wanted to beat him up for looking too much like a fox. But every now and again this was the same road old man Hiruzen walked with him when they had lunch at Ichiraku's.

And once they stepped through the doors of Tsunade's office, the woman in question met their arrival with a soft smile and eyes as bright as the Konoha sun.

"It's been a long time, you two," she greeted. "I hope that all that time you've spent out there wasn't for nothing."

Her face was as young as the last Naruto had seen her, face flawless and hair immaculate. The same purple seal sat in the middle of her forehead and her lips were glossed with the same peach lipstick. She was the same—exactly the same—and it stemmed a hope in his chest that everything else was the same. That nothing changed.

Jiraiya crossed his arms, offense across the shallow wrinkles in his face. "You thought I was going to train him all over the world and teach him nothing? What do you take me for, Tsunade-hime?"

"An idiot."

"Well."

"Show me how much you've improved, then," the Hokage continued, ignoring her old teammate as he stuck his bottom lip out in a pout—after all these years he was still the same old blockhead, wasn't he—and focused on both her student and Jiraiya's disciple. "I want you—the both of you—to showcase your skills against a shinobi of my choosing. I've even put him on mission standby for a few days just for this very occasion."

"Aw, Baa-chan, you got us a welcome home gift?"

"Stuff your cheek, brat."

There was a knock at the door.

Tsunade leaned back in her chair. "Come in!"

Naruto turned as the door swung open, and into the office walked a Konoha shinobi in a standard issue flak vest and some other visitor from Suna. The former's pierced ears and spiked ponytail was almost immediately recognizable, and Hinata takes a small, excited step forward.

"Shikamaru-san! Look who ca-came back!"

Shikamaru blinked twice as he took in the newcomers in the room. A garishly orange outfit, blond hair, blue eyes. "Naruto?" Two more blinks, a few more seconds of staring. "What the—it's really you, isn't it?"

Beside him, Suna-guy's lips twitched up in incredulity. 'No way that's that little shrimp from the Exams who went all gung-ho on that Hyuuga in the finals,' he grumbled to himself. 'Still, if Sakura could turn into a mountain I guess he could stack up a few inches.'

"You look like you've found a few more brain cells," Shikamaru mused, sticking his hands in his pockets.

"Uh... thanks? I think?" Naruto paused. "Wait, so does that mean you're the one we're fighting?!"

"Fighting?" the Nara repeated. "I just came to deliver some documents."

"Then..." Naruto turned towards the other who'd come into the office and took in his pitch black outfit and the three thick scrolls stacked against his back. Purple face paint brushed from ear to ear and down his cheeks to curl around his jawline and peak at his chin, and his hair and forehead were obscured by his black hood and gleaming foreign hitai-aite.

The nin cocked a brow. Naruto returned it with a sheepish grin. "Who're you again?"

Suna-guy snorted. "Yeah, kinda expected that from a dumbass like you."

"Hey! Who the hell are you callin' a dum—"

"Naruto!" Tsunade barked, though there was an undeniable fondness underlying her tone. "Your opponent's waiting for you outside."

She jabbed a thumb towards one of the windows. Naruto rushed over to the window and pulled it open before half his body leaned over the sill. Left and right he looked until he spotted a silhouette in the shadows beneath some of the building's overhangs. The figure sat leisurely on the ledge, an orange book in their hands and their legs crossed.

Hatake Kakashi greeted him with crinkled eyes and what was surely a smile beneath his mask. "Yo."

Before Naruto knew it he was back on that same path towards the old Team Seven training grounds, only this time with Shikamaru and Suna-guy lagging a few steps behind him and Hinata. He could hear Hinata talking strategy once they faced off against their old sensei, but her voice was faint against the thoughts that bounced around in his head. There were so many people he wanted to see and both Hinata and Shikamaru had grown up so much—

"Wait." Naruto spun on his heel, and Shikamaru and Suna-guy stopped before they crashed into him. "Why the hell are you guys hanging out?! You're friends?!"

Shikamaru heaved a long sigh. "Is that really your first impression of us? Troublesome."

Suna-guy gestured around him vaguely. "It's almost time for the Chuunin Exams, and I've been going back and forth between Suna and Konoha for meetings concerning the event."

"It sucks, but I'm in charge of them this year," Shikamaru added with a bored shrug. "That, and I'd been assigned as the official guide for Suna's Ambassador ever since Kankuro took up the position."

Oh. So his name was Kankuro.

"The Chuunin Exams, huh..."

Memories that dredged Naruto down like quicksand. He thought of Sasuke and all the things he did wrong for him to leave to some bastard like Orochimaru, and of that fight between Neji and Hinata that still left a bitter taste in his mouth whenever it managed to remind him of how useless he'd been watching it from the sidelines.

"Are you going to do something about the Exams?"

Naruto jerked back to himself. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"You're the only one in our year who hasn't become chuunin," Shikamaru said.

A bird cawed as it flew overhead.

"What?!" Naruto's voice ricocheted up and down the street as he whipped towards his teammate. Eyes blown wide and frantic at the edges. "Hinata-chan?! You're a chuunin?!"

She blushed. "Y-Yes!"

"Not to mention that this guy here," Shikamaru jabbed his thumb to the side, "his sister Temari, and Hyuuga Neji are already jounin."

Naruto blanched. How was everyone already so far ahead? No, it made sense he was gone for so long but—but everyone?

"G-Gaara!" He blurted, grasping at the straws. There had to be some things that stayed the same, right? Anything! If everything stayed the same and no one changed then maybe Sakura-chan wasn't— "What about Gaara?!"

"Gaara," Kankuro deadpanned, a single brow cocked. "You're seriously asking about my little brother, Gaara, The Godaime Kazekage?"

Another bird cawed.

"WHAT?!"

:: ::

A sandstorm brewed in a vast desert where two figures traversed all alone. Their black cloaks were adorned with clouds stained blood red and the streams from their conical hats billowed in the gale.

Deidara, the taller of the two, hummed. "So we'll deal with this one before going after the guy we sent to Orochimaru?" He clicked his tongue. "Looks like he turned traitor and leaked some info about us, un."

"It can't be helped," Sasori replied. Wood eyes cut to the bag hanging from his partner's fingers. "You're carrying a measly amount of clay. Has your ego gotten too big or will that really be enough to take on a jinchuuriki?"

"Ah, Danna, you worry too much, hm," he waved off. "I even brought my specialty."

"Specialty or not, if i have to clean up one of your messes again—"

"It'll be fine."

"Tch. Annoying brat."

Sasori watched the desert of his old home, all nothing and stillness in the midst of a ravaging blizzard. He'd never understand why their leader decided now was the time to up the ante and let the world catch more and more glimpses of the "mysterious Akatsuki", especially when before there had been such an emphasis on silence and subtlety.

Just yesterday, they were only a rumor. But today he was sure they would set forward a domino effect he wasn't sure anyone could stop.

And would it be something he would even want to stop? Well, that certainly was a good question to ask, wasn't it?

"Just do what you came here to do," Sasori sneered. A particularly strong gust cut around them, erasing the footsteps they barely left behind. "And don't keep me waiting."

:: ::

Filth and grime clung onto every centimeter of his body as he trudged through the darkened streets of the village that raised him.

His orange pants were torn and a shallow slash ran down from his shoulder to his elbow, skimming the skin but by now it would've healed completely. The only part left untouched, though, had been the right side of his torso where he kept hold of those neat white envelopes. He probably should've given them to Ero-sennin before fighting Kakashi but—but then he would've had to look into those damn pitying eyes that told him hundreds of times that 'you can't keep holding onto them like you do, Naruto, 'cause chances are that your friend might be dea—'

"No," Naruto muttered. He stopped at the foot of the metal staircase that marched up to his apartment floor. "No, she's not."

Was she?

His chest burned. He didn't know if he wanted to find out.

"Excuse me," someone spoke up from behind him. "You're blocking the stairs."

He rubbed his watering eyes on his sleeve and shuffled to the side. "Sorry! Sorry, didn't mean to..." His head turned and he was eye level to a neck and clashed a navy tank top, the color striking him with dizzying familiarity. Craning back his neck, his eyes widened with each millisecond he took in a pair of lips, pale cheeks, blue ink, green eyes that never looked at him like a monster and pink hair that framed a face that never left him cold.

"Sakura-chan," he whispered.

Sakura's mouth quirked. "Naruto."

Hinata-chan and Shikamaru hadn't really changed when he saw them. Sure Hinata-chan's hair was longer and Shikamaru started wearing those vests like a lot of the older shinobi in the village, but they still looked like themselves. Not that Sakura-chan looked like a whole other person, but... her hair was so short. She was so tall. She had a face tattoo like gangster, but like a cool gangster.

"Kotetsu and Izumo-san mentioned you'd come back this morning when I stopped by," she said. Tears pricked at his eyes and his face went numb as he shuffled forward an inch. "I thought you would be gone longer, but it's been over two years, hasn't it? You left for training a few days after my team and I—oof."

She was cut short when Naruto flung himself onto her, locking his arms around her torso like a vice and burying his head into her collarbone. She got real tall and if it was bad before it was definitely worse now, but the tears wouldn't stop coming and all he could think about was how happy he was that Jiraiya was wrong.

Sakura was still for a moment before one arm wrapped around his shoulder and the other one patted the top of his head. It was awkward, but hugs were always awkward with her and he choked on a sob. He wouldn't have to give out late White Letters. He wouldn't have to hold onto them anymore.

"Have you had dinner yet?" she questioned softly. He sniffed and shook his head. "Alright. Get changed and wait for me at your apartment, I'll bring over something you can eat."

He squeezed her tighter before he pulled away. One of his hands knocked into the bandages of her left forearm, and he startled when it made a dull thud against his knuckles. There was a question on the tip of her tongue that he didn't know how to ask, but quickly thought better of it and shut his mouth.

"Okay," he said. He sniffed again and rubbed his eyes with his palms. "Okay, Sakura-chan."

His hold was still on her when they climbed up the stairs and he only let go when she slipped into her apartment and he fiddled with his keys to push into his. The first thing he noticed was that dust didn't invade his nose—he didn't know anyone who'd come in willingly to clean up all his stuff—and beelined straight into the bathroom for a quick shower.

When he'd scrubbed off all the dirt and sweat that clotted his hair and cemented onto his skin, he stepped over his pile of clothes and nearly tripped over his own feet to step into his room. Most of the clothes he left behind were too small to fit, but a quick dig through his drawers granted him a baggy shirt from Ichiraku Ramen and over-sized gym shorts stretched thin with age.

Naruto doubled back into the bathroom to swipe the plastic baggie from the inside of his jacket and tread down the short hall towards the kitchen.

Sakura was already at the stove heating up something he didn't recognize.

"You were fast," she commented, her back to him as she stirred. "You didn't have to rush. The food's not ready yet."

And Naruto... still didn't really know what to say.

He'd been gone for over two whole years, and that was over two whole years of things he'd have to learn about what he missed. He never got to ask Hinata-chan about the latest news and Kakashi-sensei just about disappeared right after they'd gotten the bells from him in Bell Test The Sequel. Baa-chan had paperwork and Ero-sennin had more than likely gone off to the Red Light District for the night, and all he wanted to do after that back-breaking training session was get back to his apartment and sleep—well, no, that wasn't true.

He'd wanted to see Sakura-chan ever since he learned that she'd given him White Letters.

"You know... you're kinda terrible, Sakura-chan."

She glanced over her shoulder with a cocked brow before her eyes landed on the envelopes cradled in his hands. Clean and tucked in a plastic bag, she lifted her gaze up to the sad smile on a face that normally shone as bright as the moon.

"Ah, those. I'd almost forgotten."

(She hadn't.)

"You told me to hand them out if anything 'bad' happened and you, you gave them to me knowing that I didn't really know what that meant." His brows furrowed and he clutched tighter onto the letters. "I had to find out 'bout them from Ero-sennin, but that was when we'd been out of the village for a long time already. Why... Why didn't you say anything about what they really were? Why couldn't you just tell me?"

Sakura lowered the fire to a low simmer and turned around. Sometimes he thought that blank face of hers was a curse. "It would have made you upset."

"I was upset anyway when I found out about them!"

"You would've tried to give the envelopes back, but I wanted you to be my keeper for the letters." She sighed. "It was selfish of me."

"Sakura-chan, I don't understand..."

(The words that came from her lips were the first that bubbled to the surface of her mind, thick and heavy with everything she never forgot.)

"It's because I'm not a good person," she said.

Her father smiles a bitter smile when he bends down to kiss the top of her head and tells her he's not a good man.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that to you."

But the thing was, Naruto wasn't angry anymore. Hadn't been since about a week after he found out about the letters. And... she was right, wasn't she? If she told him her letters were White Letters in the beginning he would've shoved them away because he refused to believe that she'd be dying anytime soon.

"No, it's..." He shook his head and walked over to her. "I get it."

His shoulder brushed against hers as he peered into the pot. A thin brown broth bubbled slowly and he spied some chunks of meat, strings of rice noodles, and a healthy handful of all sorts of vegetables. His fingers tugged at his sleeves.

"Hey, Sakura-chan?"

She tipped her head to show she was listening.

"Can you tell me everything I missed?" he questioned shyly. He flashed her a grin to hide his embarrassment. "I never really got the chance to find out much, heh..."

The smile she gave him is her usual one. Small and odd and not something she did often enough.

He missed that. He missed her.

She turned up the fire. "Sure."

Naruto watched her stir for a few moments, eyes tracing the circles she made in the pot. It was her left hand that did it, and his eyes glue to the bandages almost immediately.

"And uh... Sakura-chan?"

"Mm?"

"I don't know why you don't think you're a good person," he murmured. He dragged his eyes away and nudged her side. "You've always been good to me, 'ttebayo."

She hummed, but said nothing else.

(He was back in the village that hated him, but he knew that as long as he had Sakura-chan, he'd be okay.)

:: ::

And here we have an awesome graphic by kage_ino!

and fantastic fanart by annllhanh on instagram!