The day Sakura got the news of Shisui's disappearance was also the day Mikoto came to visit.

"Sakura, sweetheart," Mikoto murmured, wrapping her in one of her hugs. "I haven't seen you in so long."

Sakura hugged her back, mind reeling as to how Mikoto had gotten into her apartment when both Naruto and Sasuke were at work. Sasuke could have given her a spare key, but she thought he would have told her about that.

Sakura had woken up on Saturday morning to find Mikoto in her kitchen, cooking pancakes and looking like she belonged there. Sakura had covered her surprise well enough, but the question must have been in her eyes.

Mikoto waved her hand in the air like she was shooing away her question. "I had an extra key made." Though Sakura noticed that didn't exactly explain how she'd gotten an extra key made, and if she'd gotten it through Sasuke.

Sakura figured she would be better off not knowing. That seemed to be the overall feeling when it came to the Uchiha matriarch.

Mikoto turned back to the oven, but not before Sakura caught sight of her red-rimmed eyes.

"Mikoto," Sakura began cautiously, "What happened?"

Mikoto just flipped a pancake, not looking back at her. "Oh, just some family drama, I'm afraid. It seems one of the boys hasn't been seen in a day or so, and while that's not horribly uncommon-"

"Which boy?"

"Pardon?"

"Which boy is missing, Mikoto?" Sakura said, her voice coming out strained and harsh.

"It's just Shisui, dear. Nothing to worry yourself over." Mikoto opened the cabinets to root around for plates.

Sakura froze, her lungs and gut on twisting. "He's missing?"

"I'm sure he just lost track of time or got hung up on some case or other," Mikoto said, voice light. She reached inside a drawer to take out two forks and two knives. "It is Shisui, after all."

Shisui, who Mikoto loved like a son, but who wasn't actually a son. Who wasn't part of the main family branch. Who was only a cousin to Itachi and Sasuke. Whose disappearance was right after the flashdrive incident with Orochimaru and Kabuto.

Sakura wondered how much Mikoto knew. Probably all of it and more, Sakura hazard to guess. There was very little that happened in the Uchiha family that Mikoto was unaware of. There was a reason Mikoto was seen as one of the most powerful matriarchs in history.

Sakura blinked and looked down as her sleep T-shirt and pajama pants. "I'm going to go change."

"Breakfast is almost ready, sweetheart."

"I'll be quick," Sakura murmured. She had zero appetite, but she couldn't tell Mikoto that.

She called Pein.

"Where's Shisui?" Sakura demanded the moment Pein picked up. "Does it have to do with Orochimaru?"

A pause and almost silent sigh. "We're dealing with it."

"Do not push me, Pein. What the fuck is going on?"

There was some moving around on the other end of the phone, some background noise, some talking. "As you've probably guessed, Shisui is our runner. He makes deliveries and is one of the people to make sure transactions go according to plan. Two days ago he made contact with one of Orochimaru's men, made a deal to get information on where he might be located." A pause. "It didn't go according to plan."

Sakura closed her eyes. "Does Orochimaru have him?"

"Most likely, yes."

"Do you know how to find him?" She wouldn't think about the crates in the warehouse. Wouldn't think about Kabuto's file and the experimentation he was so fond of.

Two days. He'd been taken two days ago.

So much could happen in two days.

"We have ideas," Pein said cautiously. "We will find him, Sakura." His tone was of a leader; it did not leave room for doubt.

She hung up. Mikoto was in the kitchen, and her nephew was missing. God, if there was ever a time when Sakura loathed the complicated Uchiha politics of branch families more, she couldn't think of it.

Mikoto was in the kitchen, and she wasn't worried.

"It's just Shisui, dear."

Mikoto was in the kitchen, and no one seemed to care.

"We will find him, Sakura."

Mikoto was in the kitchen, and the pancakes were burning.

"Until next time, Sakura-chan!"

Sakura ran out of the house.

*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･'(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)'･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

It was so stupid. Really, really stupid.

It took her a while, but Sakura finally found Kakashi. She didn't know where he lived, as it was a weekend, but she knew some of his regular haunts. One, in particular, being an adult book store.

He was in one of the narrow aisles, giggling under his scarf, when Sakura grabbed him roughly by the arm and nearly threw him into the bookshelf.

He blinked down at her, for the first time she'd ever seen him, taken off guard. "Sakura-chan?"

She ground her teeth together. "I need to know about you and Tobi."

He froze, his muscles iron and unyielding. Sakura thought about the accident no one spoke of. How Kakashi had a Uchiha eye, even though he wasn't a Uchiha himself. About a young childhood friend who died. How somehow this was all linked together.

"I don't know what-"

"Shisui is missing, Kakashi," she whispered harshly. "And no one seems to care. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me yours and Tobi's secrets aren't related to Orochimaru. Go ahead, lie to me."

He blinked down at her looking . . . looking frightened. God, and didn't that just make her conscious bleed a little? But she needed information, true facts, and she didn't trust anyone else to give it to her.

"I know about Rin," she said. She ignored his ragged inhale. "I know about you and Tobi-or should I call him Obito, instead?-and I know about her death."

His scarf moved with the bounce of his swallow, and Kakashi's hands came up to lock around her forearms, not to move her away, but just to keep her there. He took a shuddering breath. "If we're going to talk about this, we're going to need alcohol."

"Not Red Dawn."

"No," Kakashi agreed. "Come on."

He led her around the block of the shady little adult book store and into an even shadier looking bar. And even though it was still early afternoon on a Saturday, there were about five other men in there and one low-cut shirt-wearing bartender.

Kakashi ordered a bottle of vodka, and drank it straight. Sakura ordered a coke.

"Growing up, Obito, Rin, and I were all best friends," he began, not looking at Sakura. "We spent most of our time at the Uchiha estate, but Rin also came from a prominent clan. She didn't like being home."

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. "But that's not important. What happened was we were all out on Uchiha property up north, near the mountains. Obito took us there for a weekend vacation. My father . . ." He swallowed thickly. "My father had just committed suicide. He was in debt up to his eyeballs, and the pressure and gambling just got to be too much for him, I guess."

Sakura felt her throat close up, and she gripped the edge of the table until her nails cut in. But she didn't interrupt.

"Orochimaru didn't use to be an enemy of the Uchihas. He was once a business partner. The Uchihas can be . . . ruthless, as I'm guessing you've figured out. The previous patriarch, before Fugaku, was not a moral man. He bought and sold to Orochimaru for different, medical advances. Things that made him a lot of money and gave the Uchiha clan a heavy hand in the medical community, and gave Orochimaru the money and equipment to carry out his own personal experiments and such." Kakashi paused to take another sip of his vodka, not even shuddering as it dripped down his throat. "You've seen the files on him and Kabuto. You can fill in the gaps. But at that time, Orochimaru was mostly interested in Uchiha genes."

Sakura narrowed her eyes.

"He wanted a test subject. Say what you will about the ruthlessness of the Uchiha clan, but they protect their own. Or at least, the patriarch did. He wouldn't even give up a branch family member, fearing what Orochimaru would do with whatever information he found."

Sakura wasn't sure that was the case with Shisui. She knew Mikoto cared about him, knew she was in her kitchen that morning to get her mind off things, take care of Sakura and maybe to keep an eye on her, but that didn't change the fact that had it been Sasuke or Itachi missing, Mikoto would have been breathing fire down everyone's neck until they were found.

Kakashi took a breath. "What we didn't know was that Orochimaru had set his sights on Obito. He was a branch family member, and both his parents were dead. As far as an Uchiha family member, he was expendable, and Orochimaru knew it.

"We didn't know it at the time, but Orochimaru followed us up to the Uchiha estate that weekend. No one else was around except for maids and the cooks; we were considered old enough to take care of ourselves at that point, and most everyone left us alone in wake of what my father had done." Bitterness leaked into his voice, long forgotten and having been burning on coals on these years.

"The whole cave story about Obito saving me but loosing Rin was made up by the Uchiha elders to keep away the scandal of Orochimaru's betrayal. No one outside the elders and patriarch even knew about the dealings with Orochimaru, you see, so no one could know afterwards, either." Kakashi's grip on the table tightened. "Rin's family was told the same story. And the Uchiha elders suddenly paid off all my father's debts and set up a nice little inheritance for me out of nowhere. And Obito . . . well, Obito just lost his mind."

"I don't understand," Sakura said slowly.

Kakashi chuckled lowly. "Orochimaru followed us up to the mountains that weekend and held us all for two days while Obito was experimented on while Rin and I watched. After a while, Orochimaru had the lovely idea to try to implant one of Obito's special Uchiha eyes in me." He reached up to touch his eye, almost without realizing it before suddenly pulling his fingers away, like it burned. "Rin watched the whole thing. There were no painkillers given to us, and whenever one of us would pass out, Orochimaru would just wait until we woke up again to start all over. He gave us just enough through IV's to keep us alive, knew how to stop the bleeding enough to not kill us."

He ran a hand down his face. "After a while-one day, maybe a day and a half at this point-Rin was clever enough to get out of the cage Orochimaru had put her in. She tried to get both Obito and me out, but both of us were so weak at that point-it was just useless.

"Orochimaru found us all, and ended up tying Rin down along with us while he took his frustration out on her. Whatever he wanted to happened when he implanted Obito's eye in me didn't work, and he-he just lost it," Kakashi croaked. "He had his whole hand in Rin's chest, rooting around. She screamed so much-until she didn't. She just . . . stopped at some point. Obito and I begged. We begged for him to stop, cut ourselves open on the tables we were strapped to trying to get out."

Kakashi took a shuddering breath. Sakura blinked back the water gathering in her eyes, found herself more pissed off than saddened, her hands fists in her lap, nails digging into flesh. "Finally, Orochimaru just left. Rin was dead, and we laid there with her body for some time after. I don't know how long. That's when I think Obito really lost his mind. You'd be surprised at what staring at your friend's corpse can do to a person."

Sakura didn't doubt it.

"At some point, one of the maids from the estate wandered into the cave. They'd been looking for us, and there were search parties. A poor maid found us, nearly fainted when she found us all, surrounded by blood. I think she thought Obito and I were dead too. Can't blame her." He looked down at his hands, reached one hand up to fiddle with his scarf.

"After that, the Uchiha clan just made it all go away. Those maids and cooks were just gone. Rin's family was given the tale about a rock slide in the caves, as were Obito and I."

For the first time since starting his tale, Kakashi looked up at Sakura, his expressed hard, his voice iron. "They sat us down and explained to us how we were mistaken, how it was just a rock slide. How we couldn't tell anyone of what happened, we were so distressed. My father's scandal was pushed away like dirty laundry, and all I was asked to do was to keep my mouth shut and stay away from the Uchihas."

He gave a humorless chortle. "I made things quite difficult for them all. I tried to stay with Obito, but he just kept calling himself Tobi. He pretended he didn't know what happened, even though I could see that he knew exactly what was going on around him. He understood the politics of his family, even then."

"Is that how you found the Akatsuki?" Sakura asked.

Kakashi nodded. "The Akatsuki was made up soon after that. Obito joined, and I didn't, but I kept in contact. That was the beginning."

Sakura paused, fiddled with a piece of wood coming apart from the table with her thumbnail. "Kakashi," he said, hesitant. "Was Madara the patriarch?"

He froze, gaze calculating. "I'm seeing more and more what the Akatsuki sees when they look at you, Sakura-chan." He sighed at her look. "Yes, Madara was the patriarch. He stepped down and let Fugaku take his place after Rin died and Obito and I were tortured. He blamed himself, I think, and didn't know a better way to handle things."

"So he started the Akatsuki."

"So he started the Akatsuki," Kakashi agreed. "And let Pein lead, because he no longer wanted to."

Sakura tried to grunge up some disappointment in Madara for working with Orochmaru, for Kakashi for staying silent for so long and letting the Uchiha elders silent him. But she found none. What she felt, instead, was rage. . . A large amount of rage.

Kakashi eyed her.

Two days. Orochimaru had Kakashi and Obito and Rin for two days before anyone even thought to look for them. Before they were found.

Shisui had already been missing for two days.

Orochimaru had had his hand in Rin's chest. Had cut out Obito's eye and molded him into Tobi, a fictional creature. Made Kakashi broken and alone and destroyed by a close friendship.

Sakura ordered a margarita.

After the bartender brought her drink and answered her nod with a grunt, Kakashi sighed. "Sakura-chan," he said, "what are you going to do?"

She looked at him, played with her tiny straws. He looked worn around the edges, like a dull razor. She thought about apologizing for all that he'd been through, as that seemed to be the socially acceptable thing, but if it had been her that would never be what she'd want to hear. And from looking at Kakashi, the thing he needed wasn't an apology from someone who had no idea what he'd gone through. No, he needed someone to help him put an end to his nightmares.

Just like Sakura needed to put an end to hers.

A slow smile played at the corners of her mouth. "I'm going to ruin them all." She licked her lips and looked at Kakashi-who sat slouched, yet was obviously a predator under that carefully nonchalant attitude-and looked at him through her lashes as she bent her head to take a sip of her fruity drink. "Wanna help?"

A tilt of the head and eye crinkle were her answer.

*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･'(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)'･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

2723 Words