Winter in Oto was colder than in Konoha, but it wasn't terribly awful. There weren't any harsh blizzards or unforgiving temperatures, but there was a heavier snowfall. Though it wasn't a problem as it seemed to make most of the village residents happier. Many children played out on the streets and it was nearing the time when school, both civilian and shinobi, let out for holiday vacation.

Sakura leaned back in her seat clad in white pants and a light green sweater. Only recently had she been let out of the hospital and, after an unbelievingly long reprimanding from Kabuto, was allowed back to completing office work. There would be no training for her the following few months nor would she be allowed to leave the village during her recovery time. One reason was her health concern, and the other was the whole Jomae incident. A massacre—as it had been reported to the Great Shinobi Nations. She had to keep a low profile for as long as these investigations took place.

It made her sick to think of all the people that died by her hands. But they had tried to take the lives of the innocent—it had to be done.

"Sakura-sama, has she started to speak to you again?" Kabuto asked as he placed a plate of dango on her desk. She shook her head.

"No. She actually hasn't appeared since I woke up in the hospital, so I think that's a good thing," she replied. It was as if Inner had never existed. There was no mock or chime, not even an inkling at the back of her head to watch out for whatever she'd say. It was a relieved and welcomed feeling she hadn't experienced in years.

"Good," he said. "Now there's less distraction and you have no reason to slack off."

Heartless.

::

There were two knocks on her door.

"Enter."

Sasame poked her head through the doorway. "Sakura-sama, the leader of Amegakure is here to see you," she informed. Sakura straightened up in her seat and motioned for Sasame to bring them in. Both her's and Kabuto's minds went blank when a man they've never seen before, accompanied by Konan, slowly walked into the office. His hair was a dulled maroon that hid half of his incredibly pale face.

"How wonderful to meet you face to face, Sakura-san. My name is Nagato, the true leader of the Akatsuki as well as the head of Amegakure," he greeted. As Sakura shook his hand, she wondered how a frail, sickly man could have such power in his palms. Then again, she really couldn't say anything when she herself, with the situation she encounter, had such a high standing.

"Pleasure to meet you, Nagato-san. What is it I can help you with?"

One of his bony arms were linked with Konan's as she helped lower him into a seat.

"I came to talk about the reason I sent my members here in the first place. I have a plan in mind to... how do you say... expand Akatsuki's reaches. If our goals had struggled to be met before, there certainly isn't anything holding us back now with another capable village backing us up," he commented. Sakura laced her fingers together and leaned forward a bit.

"Goals?" she asked. "What kind of goals are you talking about?"

His face was blank when he answered her question. "World peace through the means of tailed-beat coercion."

...

"... Could you please explain that?"

::

"Sorry Kakuzu-san, Kisame-san. Sakura-sama is in a very important meeting right now and I'm afraid that I can't let you see her," Sasame said. Her and Kotohime stood on either side of the office door in their ANBU gear. Kisame glanced down the hallway and noticed that it was more crowded than it would normally be. Someone from the big leagues must be in there.

"I see," Kakuzu replied. "And who might be the one visiting her?"

"I think you know him. You were previously Akatsuki, right? He's your leader."

"Pein-sama?"

"No. Nagato-sama."

Kakuzu and Kisame exchanged glances. Nagato was a foreign name to their ears and they couldn't recall ever hearing in the Akatsuki. They bid the two guards goodbye before slipping out of the building and appearing just above Sakura's office window, chakra masked. Maybe it was the new lifestyle that edged in nosiness they never really cared to have before, but they now were more than curious to who this so-called leader was. Kisame peered over the side and saw the window cracked open large enough to hear the conversation trickling out.

"World peace through the means of tailed beast coercion."

...

"... Could you please explain further?"

::

"We're mercenaries. A very peculiar kind. The first goal is to obtain enormous amounts of money. I used to offer the Akatsuki's services under the competitive rate to draw in more customers and profit. Thus the customers, who were individuals, will soon turn to us and become dependent. Once we gain that dependence and all the tailed beasts, we will be the supreme power in the world. If we have the ability to start and quell wars within minutes, we will usher in a new era of peace. With your help and with the growing reputation of the village, this could be the main center of the cause. This won't be a world of suffering any longer. And with my members here, this course of action is assured, isn't it, Sakura-san?"

Kabuto looked at Sakura. Her fingers were still laced and her expression was kept perfectly placid. He was surprised. Her reaction was much different than what he was expecting. Konan cast her eyes down to the side, something that didn't go unnoticed by Kabuto.

"So what I've gathered from that is your main endgame is peace," Sakura concluded. "I can't see anything wrong with that point." She folded her hands in her lap. "I'm more concerned about your steps to get there. To put it simply, you want to scare the world into the way you see fit. I can't say that I'm fully in agreement to that," she said. Nagato was unfazed at the expected reaction and gave a cursory stare to the window they both knew was open.

"As a child, I became an orphan in the Third Shinobi World War. My parents were murdered by Konoha shinobi, making my rinnegan awaken."

::

They were uninformed of this part of their cause. Peace is what they were told they would come to achieve, not this hybrid, twisted sense of totalitarian rule. Kisame sat up and looked at Kakuzu with hard eyes.

"The all deserve to know this," he mouthed. Kakuzu nodded as they both disappeared to gather the others.

::

"It was Konan, a boy named Yahiko, and myself in that war-torn country of Rain. We were orphans with nowhere to go and no future ahead of us. We then saw Jiraiya and the other two sannin fighting against Hanzo. They were strong and seemingly unbeatable—like gods of the battlefield. We begged for them to train us, and eventually we became Jiraiya's students," Nagato explained. Sakura's eyes narrowed a fraction as she listened to him speak. There was an uncomfortable resemblance between him and Naruto.

"He trained us to the best of his ability before returning to Konoha. The three of us got stronger as time went on, and eventually we came to create the Akatsuki. We strove for peace and sought to rid the country of the tyrant, Hanzo. We were led by Yahiko on the battlefield and won. At the cost of nearly all of our original members and Yahiko himself... All he wanted was a world of peace, but all he got in return was a vision he couldn't see through the end."

Konan's hand twitched.

"His dream will be realized," Nagato assured, "It will not matter how many steps I, as a leader, will have to take. Their deaths will not be in vain."

::

Itachi's lips thinned at the statement. He, along with the other previous members of the Akatsuki, were leaned over the ledge above the Otokage's office after Kisame and Kakuzu rounded them up and dragged them to the roof. After calming down enough to mask their chakra and heighten their auditory sense, they heard the true intent behind the Akatsuki.

Most of them, if not all, had some rage underlying their calm after finding out that they were being used for a cause they knew nothing about.

"I know your heart is in the right place, and I accept that," Sakura replied, "but I won't go along with your line of thinking because I don't believe you can change the world like that."

Oh. They weren't expecting to hear that from her.

"You're using fear tactics. If you think that scaring people into peace with the tailed beasts is going to magically change human nature, then you're not going to succeed. People are going to fight and die for what they believe is right—and that right thing might as well be the opposite of what your view is. Who are you to say what is and what isn't true peace? Because you sure as hell aren't God."

Stunned silence.

Sasori gaped and leaned forward even more to the try and catch the conversation louder. Something at the back of his head made him think that they were children eavesdropping on an argument they shouldn't be listening to.

"Will you be at peace with yourself once you realize what you've done?"

No reply. They heard a slight rustling.

"Let's go up on the roof, Nagato-san. There's something I want to show you."

::

Sakura linked her arm with Nagato's and led him out of her office. Kabuto and Konan stayed behind, lingering around as they watched the two disappear towards the staircase. The sun was down to its lowest point, casting a citrus colored sky. The roof was clear of any presence and a bench sat on the edge, giving way to an amazing view of Otogakure. As she lowered him into a seat, Nagato gave her a blank look.

"You've made it quite clear that our stances conflict with each other and you want nothing to do with our cause," he said. "What have you brought me up here for? To convince me otherwise?"

She walked up to the railing and grabbed onto the metal bars. "I'll try. But first, I'd like to tell a story of my own. It's only fair since you've shared such a person experience with me, right?"

He peered at her back through thick locks of hair.

"There was a genin team way back then. Their sensei was lazy and cryptic, never giving a straight answer and being infuriating in his own right. But it wasn't like the genin could complain about it. Once was a hopeless idiot with a voice obnoxiously loud, another was too wrapped up in a dream poisonous and consuming that he cared for nothing else, and the last focused on boys and book smarts, proving to be a useless teammate. Together they were Team Seven—brave enough to claim that they knew everything about the world, but stupid enough to not realize that they didn't."

Sakura's shoulders dropped.

"They all had dreams once. The sensei wanted to look towards the future, but he wouldn't stop clinging to the past. The idiot wanted to be Hokage, but the world looked down on him. The one poisoned by his thinking desired to rebuild his clan, but his hatred took over his heart. And that useless teammate... well, she didn't know what she wanted. She stood there and watched. Why was everyone so happy while the ones she cared about couldn't escape their own misery? She didn't know. But all she wanted was the pain to go away and keep carefree smiles on their faces."

Nagato carefully surveyed her form. "Did she succeed?" he asked. Sakura sighed.

"No. Not even close. They were too dysfunctional of a team for something like that to work. But do you know what made them Team Seven, even with every single thing wrong with them?"

She spun around on her heel, gazing at him with a gleam in her eyes. Nagato shook his head.

"Balance," she grinned, holding both her hands out. "The quiet and the loud. The love and the hate. The happiness and the pain. The dream and the reality. The peace and the discord. You can't have one without the other. Too much or too little will throw off the balance, like the workings of a simple scale."

Sakura looked up at the stars that started to come out overhead. She remembered looking up at the night sky back in Konoha, but she didn't think it looked as beautiful as it did at this moment.

"To me, it seems like you think the world is this endless chain of hatred with it having no hope of redeeming itself. You see the village down there?" she questioned, pointing down to the crowds of people and the brightly colored streets decorated for the coming of the new year. "It looks pretty peaceful to me. Sure you've got the fights every now and then and there'll be those days when it's just been shitty, but everything's calm right now. It's quiet and I think it's safe to say that a lot of those people are happy enough to give a real smile. It isn't true peace, but it's enough. It has to be."

Nagato gazed out over the village for a few moments before pushing himself up onto shaky legs and walked up to the railing. Sakura made a move to stand.

"Naga—"

"How is it enough? How could this temporary peace be enough? We all deserve to be happy and I vowed that I'd do whatever it takes to get it there. What reason could there possibly be to protect this unjust world?"

She paused before sitting back down in her seat. Staring down at her feet, she let a small smile crawl onto her face. "Because we're only human. And to be honest, that's the best we'll ever be."

::

The Otokage's office was filled with bodies, all of them crowding by the windows and listening to the two leaders overhead. No one moved nor said a word, Sakura's story coursing through them steadily and opening their eyes to the person she really was. Konan was standing the farthest from the window, eyes shining with hope that the others couldn't see. She remembered the time she introduced herself to Sakura and asked for a favor far too large for a first meeting.

"Goddammit," he groaned. "Someone's going to die. Or an entire economy's gonna collapse. Better yet, the whole world's gonna fucking explode!"

Last time she consecutively lost a card game or another sort of gambling game, five teams of Otogakure chuunin were attacked and sent to the ICU. Another time, a virus spread and affected a third of the village. If Sakura had gotten just plain terrible cards every single round, something very bad was going to happen very soon.

All in Kisame's constant moaning about an inevitable disaster, she noticed a sheet of origami paper flutter outside her window.

Sakura stood and quietly slipped out of the room while Kabuto tried to get Kisame to quit whining and return to their duties. She walked up the spiral staircase to the roof of the building. At her arrival, she saw a beautiful, blue haired woman standing off to the side clad in an Akatsuki cloak. Sakura smiled and went towards her.

"You must be Konan-san. It's nice to finally meet you," she greeted with an extended hand and a slight bow. "I'm Haruno Sakura."

Konan returned the smile with a nod and firm handshake. Her eyes gave the young woman a once over before fully meeting a bright green gaze. She opened her mouth to comment about the village, maybe even something about her leadership style. But something completely different spilled out.

"Help him."

Sakura looked up, startled, hand still in Konan's strong grip. "I'm sorry?"

"You have to help him. Pein—help him. Please."

It was a long shot, but she was the best bet Konan had. Though with everything she heard and how moved she was by Sakura's words, she desperately hoped that she would be able to change Nagato's mind.

She succeeded with everyone standing in the room. If only he could become one of them.

::

Nagato stood there for a long time, not saying a single word and supporting himself up on the railing. Time passed by rather quickly, the residents of the village already beginning to set up fireworks to light when the clock finally struck twelve. It was going to be a new year, preferably a prosperous one. He could hear the people's laughter and the cheerful murmurs of all of them gathering around the shrines to pay respects and waiting to watch the skies light up.

Before they knew it, there came the people's collecting chanting.

"Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!"

Nagato straightened himself.

"Six! Five! Four!"

He turned to face Sakura.

"Three! Two! One!"

Fireworks shot up into the air, purples, reds, and golds exploding in the night.

"Happy New Year!"

But the people's shouts fell to deaf ears with what he did next. The world stood still when Nagato—the man who called himself God—bowed his head for another. Sakura froze.

"Nagato-san...?"

"I'm trusting you, Sakura-san. I'm trusting that what you've said was right, I'm trusting that you prove to me that the world can continue down this path," he said. He raised his ringed eye. "And I'm trusting you to be the Kage that my members believe you to be. You've already become better than I... perhaps so much that Yahiko would approve."

She jumped to her feet. "So that would mean...?"

"Yes."

She rushed forward to grab his upper body to keep him from falling.

"We will cease to seek out the tailed beasts and return the ones we've taken."

::

Back down in the office, it didn't matter who it was, their eyes widened and they couldn't believe a single thing they heard. How insane that was for someone to stand up to their leader and actually be able to change his mind. Kabuto pushed up his glasses and looked over his shoulder, surprised to see the relief on Konan's face as she clasped her hands together and closed her eyes.

Huh.

Perhaps he should lighten Sakura's workload tomorrow.

::

EDITED 2.19.18