Sakura was not entirely sure what she wanted anymore.

She stood in front of her anatomy class, the one she shared with Lee and the one taught by Professor Yamato and Kakashi. She could no longer think of him as Professor Kakashi; now he was simply Kakashi, because now he was just someone who was there to protect her, and Sakura supposed that put her on a first name basis with him.

It was early. Early enough that there was almost no one else in class yet. The room was empty, and for the first time since starting college, Sakura was honestly debating skipping class altogether.

Going to class today wouldn't be the first time Sakura saw Kakashi since the attack in the parking lot. It had been more than a week since then, but it would be first time seeing Kakashi since Sakura found out the truth about why Kakashi payed so much attention to her, why he was following her that day in the parking lot. And Sakura didn't know if she could really sit through a whole hour of Kakashi looking at her over the top of his porn book, checking to see if she was fidgeting, to notice if she had tears in her eyes, if she was afraid of something, if she was about to have a panic attack or if she was going to finally break down. Now Sakura knew the truth about why he cared, and it made her gut twist violently at the realization.

She didn't even need to go to class, really. She had a solid "A" in the class, and hearing the lecture really never helped her all that much. She just had to study the slideshows and read the textbook, and she'd be set. The only thing she'd be missing out on would be the participation credit, and it wasn't like missing one day would drop her grade. She was almost sure Professor Yamato would let her miss a day if she told him. He was very understanding and knew about her attack, so he'd understand and let it slide.

But that wasn't the point, she knew. The point was that she wanted to avoid Kakashi now that she knew who he was. That he was the long lost tragic friend of Tobi's, who shared the death of another friend between them. A friend, Sakura knew, that Tobi saw in Sakura.

And after seeing what her attack had done to Tobi, Sakura was scared to see what it did to Kakashi.

If Sakura had lost Naruto or Sasuke like Tobi and Kakashi lost their friend, Sakura didn't know how she'd ever fully recover from it. She might move on, but actually recover from it? Never. And from hearing Tobi on the rare occasions he would mention his dead friend, Sakura believed he had never gotten over it, either. Kakashi, Tobi, and their friend had been as close as Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura were, and so Sakura sincerely doubted Kakashi was any better off than Tobi.

Sakura didn't want to be that reminder for Kakashi like she was for Tobi. She didn't want Kakashi to ever look at her like Tobi sometimes looked at her and have the realization grip her heart that he wasn't really seeing her, but their dead friend, Rin.

Sakura also knew that she didn't want to see Kakashi because she felt betrayed. Yes, she understood why Tobi had done what he had, but that didn't take away the sting of knowing that ever since Sakura had been in Kakashi's class, he had known exactly who she was. That she had not met him on equal grounds, because he already knew so much about her, and Sakura was so naïve.

Maybe it was running-skipping this class. Maybe it was being weak and foolish and ignoring the problem of her own fear and the bee-sting of betrayal, but sometimes running wasn't giving up or being weak, but was used for a time to re-gather herself. A time for Sakura to give herself a break from it all and make the next choice.

There was nothing wrong with that, and so Sakura left that building and walked along campus, praying that she didn't run into Professor Yamato or Kakashi or Lee or even Professor Gai. She didn't want to talk with anyone right then.

She could go home, but Sakura guessed that Naruto and Sasuke would show up outside her classroom and wonder where she went. She could text or call them, but didn't know if they'd see it in time. Plus, Lee would undoubtedly think she was kidnapped or something . . .

Sakura took her phone out and texted Lee quickly, telling him she may be absent from class, and to take notes for her. He texted back immediately with many, many exclamation points and in all caps. So that was taken care of.

Sakura didn't text Naruto or Sasuke immediately, though. She knew that if she told them she wasn't going to class they would want to know why, and while Sakura had already filled them both in on what she had found out at the club the night before from Pein and Tobi, Sakura knew they'd want to see her and not want her to be alone. And she loved that about them, she did, but right then that was not what she wanted.

And so Sakura found herself walking towards a building she never thought she would freely go to: the art deco building.

While a part of Sakura wanted so desperately to be alone, there was another part of her that told her to keep going, to find someone she could be around and not let herself sit with her own thoughts.

This might not even matter, she told herself. Sasori and Deidara might not even be there or might be teaching a class. But she knew they would stop whatever they were doing if they knew she was there, though.

Sakura skipped right up the steps leading into the building she'd run into not so long ago, but while at that time the hallways had been filled with smoke and the smell of burning, now nothing was amiss-normal hallways with normal classrooms with the normal baritones of professors giving lectures from both sides of the hallway.

Sakura walked down the same stairway she had not so long ago and found herself in front of the same large classroom Sakura had found both Sasori and Deidara in before. This time, however, Sakura could see more of the room than before, and recognized the clay plates and painting stands. It smelled so much more welcoming-like oil paints and wet clay-than before when Deidara had shown Sasori his "art" along with the tell-tale scent of burning metal and plastic.

There were students in the room, though the doors were wide open. If Sakura looked closely, she could see the black spot on the cement floor from Deidara's "art." She idly wondered how it was explained to the school.

There was some kind of classical music playing from the speakers overhead, but besides that and the soft noise of brushes on murals, it was quiet.

Sakura saw them before they saw her. Deidara, sitting on the floor and working on something involving clay and wire. Sasori, sitting in a chair with his back to Deidara, hunched over a table with a knife in one long, white hand and another holding some kind of wooden figure. Both boys were still in the early stages of their art projects, so Sakura couldn't tell what it was they were making.

She shifted from foot to foot, not really knowing how to proceed. Why had she come here? For Sasori and Deidara, obviously. But what was she supposed to do now? She knew that neither would ignore her nor be upset that she was there, interrupting their class. In fact, she knew it would be quite the opposite. But what then? She hadn't come here to talk to them, not really. She didn't have anything to talk about with them. She just . . . just. She just wanted to go somewhere else but her own class, and now she was just there. Just.

This was a bad idea. She should leave before they noticed her awkwardly standing in the doorway looking like a lost lamb. Kami, what if they made a scene . . . ?

"Sakura," Deidara called, surprising soft. Sakura's head whipped over to where he and Sasori sat, both having looked up and noticed her. Oddly enough, the lack of the -chan was more off-putting than anything else.

Her heart skipped a beat when Deidara stood from the floor. It nearly fully stopped when he took quick steps towards her while Sasori stayed sitting, his body half turned in her direction, frozen with her eyes locked on his.

"Deidara," Sakura greeted when he stopped not even a foot in front of her. She almost took a step back at his closeness, but the hand on her cheek stopped her. His hand was shaking, trembling.

She started to reach up to push his hand away when she heard him speak, softly, so low Sakura wasn't sure if it was meant for her own ears or for Kami above. "Don't."

She froze once more. She lowered her hand.

The tips of Deidara's fingers ghosted over her cheek, where she was still a little sore, and over to her lips where he must have felt her vanilla mint Chap Stick before he snatched his hands away, like his own actions surprised him.

"Hi," Sakura said, and swallowed. She licked her lips, which was a mistake, because Deidara was still staring there and watching her movement. Kami above.

"Sakura-chan. Why are you here?"

Oh.

Something must have shown on her face-her face that showed far too much these days. She hated it-because Deidara's blue eyes that reminded her so much of Naruto's widened and he was moving his hands-his hands that he loved so much, that he created so much with-in frantic motions while he stuttered out, "I-I mean, I love that you're-it's awesome of you to visit and everything, b-but I'm just, un, wondering . . . why? Not that Sasori-danna and I aren't super happy that you're here, un! 'Cause we are, aren't we?" He looked over his shoulder, frantic, at Sasori, who had not so much as blinked since Sakura approached. He was no help, sitting there, still make eye-contact with Sakura and making no reply.

Deidara looked back over to Sakura, who at this point was trying not to laugh.

"I'm skipping class," she said.

"O-Oh!" Deidara looked back over at Sasori for guidance, but got none. "Um, do you want to, like, talk, un?"

Sakura just looked at him blankly.

"N-No? Okay, that's totally fine, yeah! How about . . ." He looked down at his hands like they were going to give him life's greatest answers. Though why Sakura was there, around them, of her own free will would have done as well.

Sakura wondered if Deidara and Sasori were more flustered-well . . . Deidara was. Sakura didn't exactly know what Sasori was-in having Sakura standing there with no real other purpose than to see them or because this was the first time they'd seen her since the attack and now they got a front row view of her injuries.

Sakura shifted her weight. She looked down, then to the side. Saw the clay sculpture of a dragon one student was working on.

"Do you have any extra clay?"

Deidara blinked at her while Sasori just continued to stare, before breaking out in a huge smile. "Of course, yeah!"

Deidara ushered Sakura over to where he and Sasori were sitting, and Sasori took that moment to sneer. "Clay? The doll would much prefer some paints and-"

"Forget it, danna! Sakura-chan wants clay, yeah." He smirked at him, and Sakura sighed.

And so Sakura sat on the floor next to Deidara, hands wet and caked with clay, which she hadn't played with since high school and was never particularly good with it even then. It was fun, though. It was loads better than sitting in her anatomy class, feeling Kakashi's eyes on her.

Sasori and Deidara were watching her, she knew. Sasori's long peaks over his shoulder; Deidara's fidgety glances that he tried to play off as checking out her clay project. She tried to ignore them both.

Luckily, neither asked any questions as to why she was skipping class. Her, who never missed a class except for in the event of being forced to by Naruto and Sasuke because she was too sick to go, though Sakura didn't think that counted.

It was . . . nice. Relaxing.

For the first few minutes, Sakura simply sat there, messing with the clay, working it with her hands, softening it, without any purpose in mind. She was like a little kid again who went with her parents to the Italian restaurant a few towns over that would give kids a ball of dough and some flour to play with while waiting for dinner. It was messy, but it kept the kids quiet and content.

But then she actually tried to do something with it. At first, she thought about just making a pot or jar, but that didn't work. Deidara offered her various tools to cut and slice the clay with, and even gave her a few pointers.

He told her how to keep it wet enough with water that it wouldn't stick to her hands, but not wet enough to be useless. He pointed out to her how to mold it with her hands and how to layer it. He showed her a way to incorporate wire to it, so she could have a wire skeleton to go off of to create whatever design or animal she wanted.

Mostly, Sakura just watched Deidara work. He was always so gifted with his hands-she knew this even without watching him work. They were soft; not too calloused. Like any artist, he could make something so difficult look so easy.

There were times Sasori or Deidara would get up to walk around the classroom, helping students, giving comments out about what should be added, what should be taken away, what was too much, what wasn't enough, what was just right . . .

It wasn't what she had been expecting. Sakura had thought Sasori and Deidara would be territorial about their art styles with everyone like they were with each other, but they weren't. Instead, they were helpful, talking students through an idea, an original design that became so much more, even if it wasn't like their own original art style.

But mostly it was just the three of them in the corner of the room, fooling around with their own mediums.

After a while, Sakura checked her phone, taking care not to smear the screen with clay. She was surprised to see it had almost been an hour-her anatomy class would be almost done by now. She texted both Naruto and Sasuke not to worry about her and that she didn't need either of them to pick her up that day, that she'd be home later and to please take Blue for a walk before it got dark out.

Deidara read her text over her shoulder, and she let him. "We have another class right after this one," Sasori said, surprising Sakura. She turned her head to look at him, only to see he was still looking at his own wooden creation, smoothing down a corner of it with some sand paper. "You can stay here with us."

Sakura looked down at the clay in her hands and nodded. "That sounds good, actually."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Deidara.

Sakura didn't stop moving her hands. "I don't know what to say."

"That wasn't a no."

Her lips quirked up. "No, it wasn't."

A pause.

"It could have been worse, you know," she finally said, not looking up. It was nice to have something productive to do with her hands. Soothing. It was like when she brushed Blue, and she would feel the static from his blonde fur stick to her hands while he snuggled up to her legs.

Neither Sasori nor Deidara made a noise, but both stopped their movements.

"I wanted to hurt him," she continued, still thinking about Blue, even though she wasn't talking about the dog. "I still do, you know. I could have really killed him at that moment-I wanted to. I still want to, and I don't feel bad about that at all."

"You shouldn't, un," Deidara whispered.

Sakura ignored him. "You both know about Kakashi, I take it."

"I don't know what you want us to say about that," Sasori said.

Sakura smirked. "That wasn't a no."

Deidara chuckled and scooted closer to her.

Sakura didn't flinch. "I'm okay, you know. Like, really. It sucks, and my body still kind of hurts, and I might flinch at some things, but I'm still okay. I'm just healing, but that doesn't mean I'm not okay."

There was a long pause, and Sakura didn't think they were going to say anything after that.

But then Sasori said, "You know, doll, that night, when you came into Red Dawn, we were there."

Sakura's hands stilled. She hadn't seen them.

"And after you flinched back from Pein, so violently, right there in front of everyone, and went into the back with your friend, we had to stop Pein from leaving the nightclub right then to go and kill your attacker himself."

Sakura stopped breathing.

Sasori was speaking in such a lazy drawl, too. Like he had all the time in the world to tell Sakura this story, like it was nothing more than him telling her about the weather or a detailed description of his art techniques.
Sakure squished out the clay in her hands, so it smooshed out between her fingers as her hands tightened into fists. "I didn't know that."

"We didn't expect you to. But we just thought you should know, yeah," Deidara answered.

Sakura nodded and went back to her clay. She stayed there until it was dark out and both Naruto and Sasuke were blowing her phone up with calls and texts. Both Sasori and Deidara stayed with her until they were done with their classes and until Sakura wanted to go home.

Both of them walked her back to her car.

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

(ROUGHLY) ONE MONTH LATER

Sakura walked into a well-known café near her college campus. It was a hot spot for college students, and now that it was finals time, almost every seat was taken by starved students with notes crammed together and old and nearly broken laptops on every available table surface.

Sakura pulled her scarf tighter around her neck and covered her mouth with it against the cold wind. It was ridiculously cold lately, and so Sakura found herself living in scarfs and knee-high boots and too-large sweaters. Not that she was complaining, of course.

Once inside the café, Sakura looked around and quickly deduced that who she had agreed to meet here hadn't arrived yet, and so Sakura quickly ordered a coffee from the counter and found a booth in the back corner of the café. She hadn't brought any notes with her to study, so she pulled out her phone to look through recent text messages and-when that proved uneventful-got on her Pinterest app for no other reason than to have something to do with her hands and to preoccupy her mind.

Luckily, she didn't have to wait long before he arrived. Sakura looked up to see Kisame twist himself into the booth, which now looked so small and cramped next to him. Kisame had to literally fold his legs in just to slide into the booth. It didn't look comfortable in the slightest.

"Heya, Squirt," he greeted easily, his shark-like grin spread across his face. "You're a sight for sore eyes."

It was true. Sakura had put considerable distance between herself and the Akatsuki and Uchiha members. She hadn't spoken or seen any of them since her last interaction with Sasori and Deidara. It wasn't that she was necessarily going out of her way to ignore them; it was just that she hadn't been in the mood to go back to Red Dawn and hadn't sought out any of the members, either.

And maybe it wasn't just one-sided. Sakura knew very well all of the members and Uchihas were perfectly capable of inserting themselves in her life . . . whether she liked it or not.

But there hadn't been any surprise visits from Shisui at the hospital or Madara when she got home or even Sasori or Deidara when she was at school.

And, honestly, it hadn't been so bad. Sure, there were times when Sakura sort of missed or thought about some of the members, but they were few and far between, and Sakura had spent that last month healing with Naruto and Sasuke.

She had stayed in with them both on Friday and Saturday nights. Sakura had tried half-heartedly to get them to go out without her, but they always refused or made some other excuse as to why they needed to be home all the time.

Sakura had even spent some time with Kushina and Minato. True to her word, Sakura had made sure she and Naruto and Sasuke had dinner with them . . . She just hadn't quite expected that one dinner to turn into them all spending several nights there.

It wasn't that big of a deal, really. They basically all had their own bedrooms from when they slept over at Naruto's house when they were in high school. But Sakura bet that there had been some negotiation between Kushina and Mikoto about that.

Neither Kushina nor Minato really brought up Sakura's attack. However, there were some idle placed reassurances and somewhat threats spoken at dinner one night about how the man who did this would be held to the highest possible punishment the law would allow-this is said by Minato with a dark voice and Kushina with a vaguely demonic gleam in her eyes, so much so that even Naruto gulped audibly.

Sakura allowed them both to pet her hair and hug her and reassure her and let them rule her life during that time. It was nice, in a way. She didn't have to think about feeding herself or doing her laundry or anything like that because without ever having been asked, both Minato and Kushina did this for her. Sakura would come back to find her laundry hamper empty and a pile of freshly washed and folded clothes sitting on the edge of her bed. Every night Kushina would-attempt-to cook dinner, which would result in either Minato picking up To-Go orders or cooking dinner himself. The times Sakura tried to do these things herself, she was shot down without mercy.

The only thing Sakura put her foot down for was working at the hospital. Not only did she not want to miss more time, but she just missed the distraction. It wasn't schoolwork, and it kept her active. She needed that.

Eventually, though, Sakura put her foot down and moved back into her apartment with Naruto and Sasuke. Though, really, not much changed even after this. Both Naruto and Sasuke did all these things for her as well, along with staying with her almost every night to watch a movie or to hear her rant about her exams or classes.

Sakura needed this time to be with Naruto and Sasuke. They were the ones who could see her at her very worst and she would never mind. They were the ones to appear in her bedroom at two in the morning because she had been whimpering in her sleep from a nightmare. They were the ones to continue to spar with her and let her get stronger on her own and learn that nothing had really changed between them.

But now Sakura was tired of this ignoring thing she and the Akatsuki and Uchihas had going on. So she made the first move.

She wasn't completely sure why she chose to text Kisame first. Maybe it was because she felt so relaxed with him and because she wouldn't have to play word games with him.

"How are finals going?" Kisame asked conversationally. "Kicking their butts as usual, huh?"

Sakura smiled and Kisame grinned. "They're going fine. I'm almost done now."

"But that's not why you asked me to come here."

And there it was: Kisame's bluntness. She liked that about him.

She shook her head. "No, it's not. I wanted to know how the others are dealing."

"You mean if they've tried to kill that man before he can be put on trial?" Kisame grunted. Then he sighed. "No, they haven't. But there have been a few close calls and a few too many complicated plans made between some of the members. There was also some weird Russian hitman who showed up and-" Kisame shook his head and sighed, his eyes skyward. "Anyways, they're mostly fine and have calmed down a bit. I think they needed this time to do that. I did, anyways."

Sakura nodded him to continue.

Kisame shrugged. "There's not much to say besides telling you that the guys are restless without you around. They miss you-we all do."

"That was the other thing," Sakura said carefully. "Who will be there tonight at Red Dawn?"

Kisame blinked at her before his face broke out in a smug grin. "After this meeting with you I highly suspect everyone will be there tonight."

Sakura snorted into her coffee. "I might come tonight . . . with a friend, actually."

Kisame's eyes narrowed. "A . . . friend?"

"Yes. Just a friend."

"If he dies or loses a limb, it ain't our fault."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Yes, it would be. And how do you know it's a 'he'?"

Kisame narrowed his eyes at her. "Is it?"

Sakura just took another sip of her coffee.

Kisame just growled, but a small smile was on his blue lips.

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

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