Rissinia was splendid and worthless. Sakura recognized shapes from it that passed her and her mentor by, things like wide windows, carriages and skirts, but she had no reaction to any of them, or the sunlight winking in and out of her eyes as buildings with decorative moulding passed in front of the sun. Behind her was a monster. Ahead was any number of distractions that did nothing.

They'd entered through a residential gate—men who wanted to live close to the foxhunting woods, she thought, and for half an hour or so it was her only thought—which was made up of dusty pink apartments with fake, pastel flowers bursting out of the windowsills. Women sat upon the sills, smoking and looking down at passersby. They looked at Sakura and her hair, but Sakura didn't see them. After a wide intersection, the area became a commercial one immediately.

Smiling tourists were there for the fall plays and some had leaked into the street where the production purchased its wares. Most shopfronts were slim and cramped, broken up by a rare spacious one, and all of them desperately artistic with lights and wide windows and examples of their craft pressed up against the glass. Men and women walked by faster than Sakura's deer was walking. The city carriage horses wore decorative silks on their bridles.

A couple and their child posed before a fountain in the street while a gentleman stood before a camera and tripod to take their picture. Sakura started and blinked at the flashbulb's aggressive burst.

She leaned away from Tsunade's steadying hand and grabbed at one of the tines of her stag's antlers. No one else leaned away from her, or paid attention to her. Their attention was outward on the advertisements and stage pieces and posters. Every entity around them was spending money on the practice of attracting eyes and envy. It was a strange place to be afraid of death.

"Good boy," Sakura said in a quaking voice to her stag, who was sniffing the air and ignoring her. He kept in a straight line regardless; walkers in the street moved uncaring around him like fish going downstream.

"Do you want to get a hotel?" Tsunade asked.

Sakura said certainly, because it was a word that came to mind and not because she heard or understood. They made a left turn onto a new street where there was more hoofed and wheeled traffic but fewer walkers. In this street Tsunade maneuvered Rex in front and made Sakura walk behind her.

The stag followed Rex and Sakura's mind stood still. Tsunade directed them to the end of a street and into three acres of fenced-in pasture squeezed within the urban sprawl. There was a tall house with many windows and a stable, and horses and deer spread around in the acreage, and she was on the ground dismounting, and she was in the lobby standing, and she was in the hallway walking and seeing the head of a badger mounted on the wall. Then her body sat and weighted the bed in their room like a dead animal.

Tsunade stood in front of her. Sakura saw her belt and knees and the desk behind her. The knobs on its drawers were glass. She looked at their pretty glimmer. Tsunade touched a hand to each of her shoulders, leaning down closer.

"Tell me what you're thinking right now."

She did as told: "They'll eat me," she breathed. One hand tried to grip the opposite wrist but it was too weak. "They'll kill me. They could do whatever they want. He, he's going to rip me in half, worse than Suigetsu—"

"Stop. Stop that." She said, and so Sakura did. "They cannot enter this city. There are armed guards at each gate. There are walls. There are gunmen and professional hunters and thousands of people here. We're safe. As long as we're here."

"Am I going to stay here for the rest of my life," Sakura intoned. It came out like a statement instead of a question, without her meaning so. And it went unanswered. Tsunade wasn't responding. She looked up at the older woman and saw pursed lips upon a stony face.

"I believe the gunmen here will have heard about Haretta."

Sakura stared, uncomprehending.

"I know some of the men here. I know what stock they carry. There's a metalworks factory uptown and ore nearby. Bullets. If they stopped shipping today, the city wouldn't run out for weeks."

The comprehension was a slow filter. She eventually leaned slowly back from Tsunade's hands till they fell, and the woman pulled them back to cross her arms.

"You…want to shoot them?"

"I want your opinion," Tsunade said instead. "On whether you believe Madara is following you or not. Whether it wants you to be a messenger or not, or anything else, or if you want to trust what it says at all. Do you want to go in the woods to talk with that thing? When we can stand on walltops and fire on them when they come looking for you?"

Sakura leaned back on the bed on her hands, mouth still open. Her mouth began to shut like a fruit's flesh pinching together with rot.

"You'd kill me," she said through those tight lips. Tsunade's browns furrowed as now the lack of comprehension passed to her. "There's eight of them, you said. Eight man-eating monsters. That expect this, this service out of me. They'll think I 'sent' hunters after them again. They will kill me. I will never leave this city unless I want to be skewered and pulled apart like hyenas eating a fucking antelope, you can't do that to me!"

"I'm not letting you walk outside to have a friendly chat with that demon! That is what could kill you!"

She jerked forward. "We've been walking outside for four months and it could have come up to our camp literally anytime. anywhere! What the hell was your plan then? I always knew they'd come back! I did! I knew I'd never be done with this!"

"I thought they'd behave like animals and move on, or forget, and it was foolish of me," Tsunade ground out. "I prayed I could take you out of their sight and mind, and they wouldn't travel north when cold weather is coming, and I could take you away from them…and if one had ever come to us in the wild, I would shoot it in the eye. I was ready to do that."

"You seriously think you could have done that?! I watched Madara be shot in Konoha, those two gunmen who did it were gutted and killed because they were just as stupid as you are!" Sakura was off the bed by now. Her face was in Tsunade's and bits of her wild pink hair were touching Tsunade's head. "'Shoot it in the eye,' are you joking? You wouldn't be talking so bold if it was your life being played with. If you were the one being stalked. It must be so nice, huh? It must be nice to be famous and important and have gunmen friends who will shoot down all your problems for you."

Two hard hands clapped onto Sakura's shoulders and gripped them. She was lifted slightly off the floor. "I need you to end this stupid outburst right now before I throw you into the wall. Calm. Down."

Sakura kicked out at her knee with a wildcat's growl. They both went down.

Her own head smacked against the edge of the bed and her arm against the nightstand next to it. Something fell from there. Something like a roar sounded from not a meter away. Sakura tried to bolt, but only crashed into the bed a second time. This time when Tsunade's hands caged her, she didn't resist. She lay helpless while tremors ate what little strength her body had, like there was a weak, infant wildcat in limp death throes inside her. She hadn't the strength to pull away when Tsunade shouted into her ear.

"Are you scared for your life?! I am, too!"

Sakura cowered in her hands. Her tremors melted to whimpers in a second.

"I'm afraid I'm powerless and I'll die powerless! I don't know that important gunmen friends will make a difference at all! I want to save you and I don't know if I can do shit, I'm so terrified!"

"I'm sorry, I'm very sorry," Sakura said in her jagged exhales. "I know. I, um…" She didn't continue.

Tsunade kept her hands on the girl's shoulders. "I don't know what to do, so I'm doing what I know, and I know men who will lend me their arms. Because, because Sakura, you can't be here in this city waiting forever, with them outside you would—"

Sakura didn't want to hear about what she would do with them outside so she just said it, to expel it: "I have to go out and see if they really want to talk, because I'm going to snap in half if I don't."

Tsunade could not say anything just then. She felt Sakura shaking under her, a few of the spasms so strong that they moved Tsunade's body atop her.

"I—I have to stop feeling like this," Sakura murmured. Her voice was raspy and weak. "If they mean it, and they won't kill a messenger…I can be…"

"…"

"It can't be worse than the first time. It can't." She could always soil her pants in front of them, and feel the sting of humiliation along with the pain of pulling flesh as she died. Zabuza could be there to laugh as she died. It could always be worse.

Tsunade backed away and her arms fell away from Sakura for a second time. She half-fell against the wall, her legs resting limply against Sakura's on the carpet.

"I don't know if that's true."

Sakura's hands curled up near her chest, where the pain and now embarrassment were growing so strongly. If Tsunade was right and nature had its way, she would die like a prey animal for those beasts. Her last moments would be pain unlike she'd ever felt before, and then anonymous silence for all time after that. Dead like the motherfuckers in Burelia wanted her to be.

"I don't care what you say," Sakura whimpered, wiping her own tears. "If I do it, I can, can…not feel this bad." I can feel like I threw up, she spoke to herself only, thinking of the cornfield in Burelia.

"I could drain some more of the…poison," she added.

Tsunade did not say anything for a long time. For a long time, the only sounds were Sakura's little gasp-sobs that went on, even when her small death throes finally passed. Their pants and shoes made tiny, soft scrapes along the carpet. Sakura's fingers held the edge of the bedsheet.

The sun was going down.

"I'm going to speak to some of the gunmen I know, and I want you to come, too," Tsunade said. She, too, could only rasp now, with so dry a throat as she had. "I want them to know we're here. I want them ready in case, in case they have to be."

Sakura had a pulled-out section of bedsheet curled up near her chest, resting on her knees. "I want to practice with my bat. At a park." She said quietly. "This is a big city. They must have a park with an exercise section. Tidusa did. I need to do my exercises. Maybe a gym."

Gently, Tsunade told her, "We can do that. But guns are a better defense than a bat. A bat will not do anything to Madara."

"I know!" the girl spat back; Tsunade visibly flinched in surprise. "I want to do it for me. I want to move." She dropped the bedsheet and moved. Her body was slow and creaking. Sakura rose like an old woman, taking too much time for what she needed. "Let's find someplace right now. Please."

Tsunade got up relatively smoother, but for holding her side where Sakura's shoe had punched into her. Tsunade gathered purse and coin. They went into the bathroom separately to gather their hair and clothes a bit, and to breathe on their own. They left the room together without speaking.

'Those mouthy fucking sluts!' spoke Sakura's true anger as she slammed her bat into a cloth-wrapped beam. CLANNNG, it spoke back, in suffering.

The cloth and the beam itself were torn and bruised from the bat's metal itself, and from the spikes on the end, which she adored. Her arm muscles remembered this motion well. It was burned strongly into her from a few good months of practice with Tsunade upon trees and practice beams in parks, and from her childhood, where youth in Konoha were encouraged to own and practice handling a weapon. Why? she thought once about that idea, and then stopped.

The bat was her strength, which she'd ignored for so long. It was all that was threatening about her. Boys in the town used to marvel at her strength, at her sweet face and pretty painted fingernails and incredible rosy hair that bounced. And they dismissed and hated her strong body that carried weights made for men. With these arms she carried the bat that was given to her by her mother. Her mother would have loved to see this, this beating of the practice beam till it was nearly broken.

The beam was the girls in Calstoa who called her a tavern slut for no reason. It was Zabuza who was always cruel and dismissive. It was Hidan. Hidan.

'I'll fucking gut you. I'll kill you. Stay away from me, I'll kill you!'

The beam spoke CLANG CLANGG CRRK CRKKKK and it cracked. Her arm and shoulders ached.

"Slow it down before I have to pay for it," Tsunade admonished from nearby. She, too, lifted weights for men. She lifted weights that Sakura could not. She was behind Sakura and out of her field of vision, but the hard clank of the irons that were as big around as her huge bosom was not easily ignored.

Sakura did slow it down. She turned around and set the bat on the ground, or rather on the rubber mat upon the gym's floor. She leaned on it and smiled. "I can pay for it myself if I break it. I want to do another ten minutes with this and then the running course."

"It's four-thirty. The meeting with the gunmen is at five o' clock."

"Gunmen?"

"Yes."

"The same ones we met yesterday?"

"Slightly bigger men than those," Tsunade replied, keeping her gaze down as she lifted. Sakura remembered speaking to some men a little but, and Tsunade speaking to them a lot, and several of them covertly staring at her. These were slim flashes with little substance. Her mind had turned away from most of it.

"The ones we spoke to about Haretta yesterday apparently didn't make the message to their superiors clear. Or they don't believe what they said. They asked for 'clarification.' So I'll be clarifying." At this, she set the weighted bar down. CLANG. "So finish up in five minutes so we can shower beforehand. You won't have to speak. I can do the talking—"

"If I won't be speaking, do I need to come?"

Tsunade placed her hands on her hips. "And why wouldn't you come? Do you have somewhere else to be?"

"Just here. I want to stay here at the gym. There's people here and things to do, and if they don't need to see me in person this time, then why not? Is that okay?"

Neither truly knew the answer to this. Tsunade was slow to articulate an answer resembling yes. She didn't hide her disbelief, either.

"I don't want you to be alone right now," Tsunade decided. "We've only been here a couple of days. We're not settled on exactly what to do yet. And—"

Sakura shut her down with a smile and a flip of her hair that she had practiced on many people. "And I'm telling you different now, because I'm here in basically a stress-relief center! I feel better here than I do trying to go to sleep. I feel good moving and sweating. And I damn sure would feel better here than standing in front of gunmen again. I'd rather be here."

Behind them, a man chortled at his friend's poor push-up form. Sakura kept on smiling, standing airily while Tsunade's eyes skewered her.

"The gunmen sergeant will want to see you anyway. Even if you don't say a word. So you're coming," she stated.

"I'm not going to run away," Sakura said with a huff. "You think I'm going to throw myself off the walltop into the woods? I want to be here. To enjoy myself a little. If that's acceptable. If that sergeant guy wants to see me, then…then just come get me."

Tsunade's honey-brown eyes did not skewer her any longer. She lifted up her weighted bar to set onto its proper spot along the wall. "I imagine you'll be done before I am."

"Then after I shower, I'll sit in the front and read the paper or something. I won't leave. I promise. Tsunade, there's no reason to think me a liar."

"Not yet," the doctor conceded, and walked past her. "I'm showering. I'll be back in two hours or less. Think of what you want for dinner."

Sakura told her okay, and thought, 'I am an invincible deer goddess! I mean, bear goddess! Lion, yes, lion! My fists will set you on fire, you little bitch!' and got back to batting. When it wasn't enough, she took her bat with her to a different spot where a punching bag painted all black was hung from the wall. It bore scratches and bruises from beatings past.

'I've always wanted to have 'beatings past,' she thought with a grin. She gave it a punch to remember—or not. Not as strong as she wanted. She kept going.

Wham, wham, WHAM.

'Walk by on the city street with my formal best. My dress is black and gold—no, no, it's white and gold. Good colors for a lion, you know. Or wait, white and red? Anyway, it's gorgeous. My hair is fresh. Floral perfume and white sandals. Men part on the sidewalk in front of me because they know me. From beatings past. And from their dreams where they wish they could touch me. Well, you fools, try and catch me, I'll beat your ass concave! Try me! Fight me! Fight me!'

Sakura's fantasies went on this way. She was sweating and glistening and smelled like two sweating workmen by the end of her run around the dirt track outside. Her hair was barely long enough to be worn in a tail by now; some of it had fallen out of the tail and hung as free as her bangs. She didn't even tie it up again.

The men who had been doing pushups and arm exercises nearby glanced up, and something made them guffaw at the sight of her when she walked past. She did not lift her head or say anything to them, because in her mind, they parted in front of her and made way for her glorious presence. In the changing room, she stepped into a shower stall and rinsed her glorious presence away. She had floral-scented soap and shampoo and that became her presence instead.

After walking into the front room, an employee nearly bumped into her. "Oh, I'm very, very sorry," Sakura said, skittering mouse-like out of his way.

She skittered back to the fantasy too, thinking of Calstoa women who would apologize to her similarly. She walked towards an empty table by the wide front windows. Rissinia newspapers and a pile of city magazines lay strewn about on it and obviously well-perused. She took a seat, crossed her legs, and started sorting the material.

The first paper was from over a week ago, the second from yesterday. They had weather reports, trade exchanges, and upcoming books which Sakura all absorbed with interest. Next was a magazine about coming theater productions. It had interviews from directors she knew, a narrative piece about narrative, and another on animals used in productions. It was common for Queen of the Harpies productions to make use of trained eagles that flew around the stage and seating area during the show, but what about larger animals? Rissinia was one of the few cities that hadn't banned the use of tigers on the stage after an incident at the capital years ago where a tiger leaped into the orchestra pit.

Giggling, Sakura quickly inducted this fact into her fantasy from earlier and imagined herself walking on the street, crowds parting around her and her beautiful dress and her tiger companion who walked with her. What would his name be? She kept reading.

The piece also mentioned wolves in plays. Knowing human touch from birth, human imprinting, human care and trust and training. A silver-haired animal trainer wearing a mouth-covering mask was pictured on a single-page spread with his animals: his left hand rested on the back of a grey wolf and his right on a half-grown, lanky tiger. They were in some fenced-off area of a park, with passersby and fans staring into the scene from the corners. They all wore sunny summer colors: bright yellow and white and green. Green and black. Sakura stopped breathing.

Green and black, there in the corner.

Green and black, in profile, walking away.

Rock Lee.

Is it? Is…it?

…Yes.

She breathed his name, inhaled him, exhaled poison.

Sweet Sakura, she thought when she saw it. He would say that to her. She could hear him saying it right now.

Is that real? Is that a mistake? She thought next. It could be anyone, any young man with a bowl cut and a strong jaw. But there was a strong profile and stern face, because he was always more disciplined than any youth around him. His hair was a little longer than she remembered, but unmistakable. He wore a workman's basic sleeveless shirt like he was walking to a construction site located on the opposite page. He was there on this page, alive and well. His shirt and hair fit him so well. So well. Alive and well. Truly.

Truly, she heard inside her head. Lee's voice, as she heard it when she cried over the sink in Tidusa Hospital.

'Are you here?' she spoke into the void, into herself.

She listened.

…

'…'

Rock Lee was her tears, flowing so mightily she had to blink and they overflowed, and kept overflowing. She held the magazine away to keep it from getting wet, letting her tears hit the table instead. A couple walking by stared at her and then ignored her. Lee in the magazine did not disappear or run away when she blinked. He remained, even when she tried to squint and see someone else in his face, just in case. But that face only belonged to him and it was still here for her.

She had seen hundreds of strangers, but today she saw Lee.

"I found you," she said into her hand, muffled, adoring. "I found you. Lee."

The magazine was called Light and Star. Beautiful and bright star, Rock Lee. Beautiful Lee. She tore the page out and dropped the magazine next to the others.

Sakura promptly left the gym and her little bag of sweaty clothes and toiletries behind. She made plans and executed them. Like shopping for her barely used spiked gloves and sewing tools in Tidusa, but ecstatic this time. So happy the shopkeeper gawked at her this time. She bought another copy of the magazine somewhere and had it delivered to the inn where her stag was and then she ran away.

The plan proceeded. The need had collared her and she submitted wholly to it. It made her smile as she rushed down the street. Down Galahad, across Ophelia's Way, down two more streets she would never remember. She remembered what she wanted and needed only: Rock Lee's warm hand in hers, where it must be. Right now, only the torn-out page showing his profile was in her hand.

A gate was in sight.

Sakura's pace slowed and she caught her breath. She thought to comb her fingers through her hair a bit, but the effort was token and her mind not fully present. Her mind was wrapped around Rock Lee, Rock Lee who was alive, and the last place he had appeared. The last person—the last living creature she could find who had seen him.

In the interest of looking good for him, she cleared her voice, gave another purposeful combing effort to her hair and straightened up her posture. The shirt she'd changed into after her washing was a charming cream color with a rounded little collar, the pants dusty pink. She'd picked nice colors and shoes in anticipation of going out on the town for dinner tonight, with Tsunade. What would a wall guard think of them? What would he think anything of her, a young woman alone, with no luggage?

Sakura had only one wagon ahead of her in line and then none. "Sir, good evening! Afternoon! Ugh, goodness! I'm so sorry, I was supposed to be on a wagon out of here twenty minutes ago, and they left me behind and now I have to chase them! Some friends, seriously."

"No baggage on your way out, ma'am?"

"My baggage already left without me," Sakura explained with a groan. "I'm not taking anything out of town now but the clothes on my back. Oh, this, this paper here, yeah, but that's it."

The guard reached for it.

'STAY BACK, LEE!'

Sakura whipped it backward and all but slapped herself in the chest with it to keep it out of the man's hands. Both stood still for a moment.

At the same time as Sakura began trying to cover herself with a laugh, the guard leaned back, announcing with his posture that he no longer cared. He said, "Get running if you wanna catch them already, next!" Sakura did run, but she didn't remember for how long. A minute or so, she decided. She hadn't even started to sweat.

The gate she'd entered through a few days ago was a long way to her left. And the foxhunting woods not far beyond. She crossed from path to grass, aiming for the woods.

"It'll be fine," she said to herself cheerily. At that moment one of her legs gave way and she fell onto the grass. She tried to laugh at this random accident instead of getting upset. She'd laugh if that happened to one of her friends. If she didn't push past it, it would happen again.

The foxhunting woods was a long, dark stripe of green running left and right, wearing more stripes of shadow and brush inside. It looked massive, faced straight-on. The sight made her uneasy. The sight made her want to sit down with her weak leg and…not go.

She didn't want to go. Then she did go. She got to the same pathway she and Tsunade had walked with their mounts. A man leading a trio of beef cows to the city to be slaughtered passed her by, not meeting her eyes. He didn't see her approach the treeline and start to walk along it, away from the city.

"Where are you. Where are you. Come on. Show up, you devil, or else. Or else I swear." She swore nothing because truly she could do nothing and she was useless as a steel bat in an inn, out of her grasp.

The foxhunting woods dipped away from the path, and then closer to it, and evened out again. Rissinia was getting smaller and smaller behind her. Lord, but the minutes felt like hours and every breath stung with discomfort. Every inhale was a breath of air from the territory of monsters. She exhaled into their breath and their territory. No safe air. Nothing safe. Come on, nothing anywhere was ever safe, not really. This wasn't safe and they might kill her for food. Or for nothing.

I'm out here for nothing.

I'm out here for nothing.

I'm out here to die.

Sometimes I wish I could just die. I don't want to keep waking up to this, I can't do it.

Nobody wants me. Nobody is looking for me. I want my mom.

A short, ugly whine sounded in Sakura's closed mouth and died there. She didn't want to speak anymore.

There was a thing moving almost in tandem with her in the trees. It wasn't the glare of sun on a bead of sap or a shaft of light in the trees. It was not golden like hardened sap or Tsunade's stern eyes, but red like holly berries. They were eyes that were high up near the branches. They reached higher than a man's head. The silhouette around them was a bird's head.

I don't want to die because I have to see Lee and I have to wear my beautiful dress with my tiger, yes, that is the reason.

Sakura was not in her right mind. She had no presence of mind left for thought, for words. Words would be nothing in a predator's mouth. Only the voiceless needs she felt all the time, which she knew how to pursue.

The bird's head had two tufts of fur on the top that grew slightly up and then pointed back. The front feet were bird's feet, talons that were naked and hard-skinned below the knee. The rear feet were heavy lion's paws with a long cat's tail behind. But the tail didn't move. None of it moved, but it did grow larger. It grew because she was walking closer to it.

Sakura's steps were slow and controlled. She planned and manually executed each one to prevent her legs giving out again, from surrendering to their total fear. To fear, her thoughts were nothing, her personhood was nothing. She was but an animal scared for its life. She was panting with the claustrophobic weight of the thing's presence. The nonexistent weight of her meaningless life. In her meaningless life, though, was Rock Lee.

The final step took her underneath the branches of the first tree.

"Are you looking for me?"

It did not speak back. In Sakura's mind were wordless, formless thoughts of death, and if she could inflict it upon herself.

Then:

"Yes."

She exhaled.

She remembered Madara, miles before Haretta, and how he appeared on the other side of a river and he was all-destroying. The moment he had her gaze, she was captured in the red eyes. All stimulus and environment around her was as nothing. There was no river in that memory, not really, no sounds of water or the sandy shore or the trees all around or what the weather was like. Only Madara the beast, standing there, was all. She had fled.

She didn't flee this time. She had Rock Lee in her hand—in just one hand, the right, which held the folded page from a magazine, carefully avoiding creating a crease on him. All her temporary bravado in one hand. It was quickly sizzling.

"I came out to see you," she told it politely, the way her mother taught her. "But I don't recognize you. Have we…met?" Even as the words left her mouth it became clear that this one wasn't the one who had stood by Madara in Haretta. This one was…slimmer. And very still. Like it lay in wait, for a certain response. "Or you wanted to trick me into coming out. Maybe you just like playing with your food."

"There's no trickery," it said, still without moving. The voice was clear and elegant, instead of the deep rumble of Madara's voice, or the rasp of the…other one. "No threat. No harm or death. Only myself, with an offer for you, who has spoken to Madara."

"And why are you offering something to me when you could be stepping on me?" she replied, continuing her proper tone. "I wouldn't believe that that comes naturally to you."

"It is an offer because Madara requests you to come."

They both heard the careful arrangement of the words. They both were still. "What would you do if I turn around and walk away, right now?"

"I would wait for you to return. For a short while. I would bring more kin to watch the walls. We would see you leave." Sakura stopped breathing, but the beast's fine voice kept on. "But I hope that isn't necessary. I hope you want to use this opportunity to speak with me, and tell me why you came to me, too." Twice, the beak opened and shut, seemingly unconnected to the spoken words. Slowly that facet of their speaking was becoming familiar. But the most familiar thing of all was in her hand just now.

"I'll speak to you if Madara speaks to me," she said on behalf of Rock Lee. "I want to…to show him something, and ask him a question. If he's willing to do that, then I'll do what you say."

The catbird blinked for the first time. An emotion floated there in the lovely eyes, something measured and soft, but it wouldn't do to assign human expressions to a beast.

"Then hear me," it said. The hindquarters and tail folded close till the beast was sitting down, catlike, with the tip of its tail carefully arranged next to the talons of the front feet. All the motion barely stirred her, or the grass, or made any sound at all. "I am Itachi. I am not known to you, and you think nothing of a vow from me, but you won't be harmed when you're with me. I've never spoken to a human before, not in this way. I am glad to meet you."

'You spoke to Suigetsu when you hunted him down, you cunt.'

The monster that had hunted Suigetsu paused its speech to allow room for a response, but none came. Sakura did not reciprocate the polite words or answer the implied request to give her own name in return.

He continued without comment or complaint: "One of my family is ill. I don't know with what. But you might. I'm told you are trained in these medical sciences, which is the knowledge for healing the sick. Please see him and help him. If you do this, you will have Madara's attention for you own request."

Sakura could not measure the breadth of wild happiness this strange possibility was blooming in her. To give and take and trade with beasts, from Konoha, might help her return to Konoha—in the only way possible. She might yet again hold Lee's hand and laugh with him in a street, in a town. To share a conversation with him and to protect him, to think of someone she actually knew facing her, would justify it all. Itachi saw her smile.

Sakura realized she was grasping the folded page too tight and placed it into her pants pocket. She tempered her smile as she did, as well as her breathing, posture, the fantasies she lovingly held, all were put gently away. Itachi noticed it all play upon her face.

"I'll see the sick one," she said at last. "I won't promise I can cure him or identify what's wrong, because I don't know everything. But I'll try to help."

"Thank you," he intoned, leaning his head slightly down, like a small bow. But he did not break gaze. In his red eyes were rings of thread-thin black. They circled the pupil, like Madara's, but they did not spin in a circle.

"Can you take me to him right now?"

"I can. Let us walk."

Sakura knew the exact answer, number and danger that he spoke of, because of Suigetsu, but pretended she didn't. "Who is 'they?' Who's waiting?"

"My family. They're waiting for you right now, while my ill kin rests with them. Shisui is his name," he answered. His body rose up to a standing position, again without noise.

"I'll do what I can for him," Sakura answered quickly, to stem any other conversation about individual names.

"I will walk slowly for you."

He was slow enough that she could follow, close enough to jump forward and grab the monster's tail if she wished to die. Itachi's movement over the grass pulled her forward; she dared not let him go now. He was an opportunity now, a vehicle to Madara.

From here it was suddenly clear that Itachi was a different creature than Madara. The pelt was smoother. There was barely a mane on the neck and the body looked more furred than feathered. Yes, he was thinner, but perhaps because of a smaller body and not just a smaller pelt. Perhaps he was sent for this errand because he was the pack runt.

Sakura thought all these things while being pulled in Itachi's wake, further into the woods till there was no space between trees to see the city through. Rissinia, the town where Lee had been, got further and further behind them.

When Itachi walked, his bird talons and lion feet made only a tiny ruffling sound on the grass. Even Sakura's breath was louder.

The march to Madara and his clan was long. Sakura did not remember it.

In later days, she would remember coming to awareness at a point when the sky had begun to change into evening colors. The greens of the woods were turning orange and gold. Around half an hour had gone by, but her body existed in its own time. Every second spent moving through grass or around trees with a catbird was like the one before and after. Every second, her fear was strong and asking her to stop and to cry.

The catbird only looked back at her once. The rustling of its fur and feathered, feet hitting the grass and sediment, were so quiet she could look down at her feet or her folded-up page and pretend she was alone. That he wasn't alive at all and she was only alone in the woods like she had been many times before. Alone in the woods or in her room at the Minazuki, with the wide white window.

The wide window was a clearing, opening the way through the trees to show a small field of wild grass growing on a slight incline in the setting sun. There was a wild azalea not far from the edge of the trees and a stem of nightshade. Death. DEATH.

In the clearing lay a black body, the size of a moose. It breathed.

Sakura breathed.

Wind gently bent the grass and its pelt, stirring its silhouette. The curved spine faced her, while the legs were pointing away. The head was just barely hidden by this angle. Was it avian like Itachi's, or a strange black dragon's head as Madara's was? Or something new? It could be the rounded, brainless head of a worm. What if she'd been led here to another worm?

Sakura breathed, for Lee, and for her stag, too. He would have liked this place, if there were no beasts in it. But there were. There were many: Itachi, the sick one in the center, and more on the other side just beyond the trees. Multiple beasts lay in the shadows, six of them if Suigetsu was right. Each one had unblinking red eyes. One moved its head to the side as though to get a different angle of her.

All was quiet. The sound of Itachi's body moving was barely audible; Sakura knew he had sat down. Now there was a silent black sphinx behind her, and seven ahead.

"He is there," Itachi said, perhaps thinking she'd gone blind. "He's fatigued. Often coughing. He can't run for how difficult his breath comes. There are sores in his mouth."

"Your family is there," she murmured. "In the trees."

"They are," Itachi conceded casually.

"Why are they back there? Hiding?" The setting sun was behind them, touching the tops of the trees, warming her face. "Are they afraid of me?"

Itachi did not concede anything else, or make any sound. If Sakura turned around, perhaps he would not be there at all. She loathed to make any sound of her own, lest it break this dreamlike balance where her life hung. If she gave any word about sparing her life or not consuming her as prey, her focus may break. Her legs may beg her to collapse and give in, again. Sakura walked forward without saying anything else.

The catbirds across the way were staring at her. Sakura ignored them and cut them out of existence.

She walked forward into the empty grass for Rock Lee. At each step, her will and scant strength abandoned her and fled into the ground. So the walk was slow and controlled. It ended at the sick catbird lying on the ground. It had a bird's head and ear-tufts, not a worm head. That question answered, she began circling the beast, moving around the head.

The cat's tail twitched once; her breath and steps didn't hitch. The front feet—bird feet, slim talons—made a limp scratch at the grass but she didn't dodge away. Her gaze on it was as steady as Itachi's had been on her.

Steady as Itachi, she spoke aloud: "Itachi brought me to see you. I'm here to help with your sickness. Can you hear me?"

The eyelid slid open. It was a half-second eclipse of red.

Sakura did not fall, but was frozen. If it stood up, if it opened its mouth and bit into her and drew her into its throat as fresh meat, she would not be able to move.

"Do not. Hurt me," she commanded, but it was only a whisper. "I can find out what's wrong with you. If you let me look. Do you understand me?"

It coughed messily. The motion of the mouth gave a brief view of the tongue, where reddish sores grew on the flesh.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes."

The second time in an hour she'd heard a catbird say yes to her, like she was to be obeyed, which she must believe if she did not want to collapse. Sakura raised her right hand up as though the beast were a dog that would listen to her commands. "Attack me, make any untoward movements at all, and you'll die with this affliction."

The head leaned back, scraping against the orange-lit grass. "I have never done anything untoward—in my life," it rasped with difficulty.

It not only spoke, but possibly told jokes. 'I should tell you it's cancer. I hope it's cancer.'

She got to her knees to examine the patient. "Open your mouth so I can see the sores."

The patient did this, splitting the beak in halves divided by a pink tongue with tumor-like growths on it. Leaning a little forward, she saw the sores were throughout the mouth and not just on the tongue. They pressed out stiffly from the flesh around them like red pimples. Nor did the movement of the tongue jostle them. They would feel dense and tight if she touched them, which she was not going to do.

"You've felt fatigue lately," she said as though it were written on a chart before her. She sat back on her legs, hands in her lap. "These sores, and your difficulty breathing, how long have these been happening? A few days or many?"

"Many…days. Ten. Eleven."

Too long for most viruses, she reasoned, and kept reasoning. But as she considered her choices, there was movement by the tree line where the lying-down catbirds were. Perhaps they were impatient and thought medical science was medical magic and she ought to be done by now.

Sakura looked up to briefly scowl in their horrid direction but hadn't the strength to do so. The sight of Madara coming out of the trees robbed her of her strength.

'Skullface,' came a reflexive, parroting voice in her head. It was his name, imprinted in her brain next to his real one, even though his face wasn't a skull anymore. He walked out into the light of the setting sun while the others stayed in their shadowy repose by the trees.

Madara's eyes were brighter than his fellows'. Scarlet, electrified red. Moons of their own, yes, he carried moons in his head. Sakura remembered this creature carrying Suigetsu's torn-up body in its mouth. It had set him on the ground so she could look into its open mouth and see those teeth inside and feel the heated breath from within.

She looked up at two moons.

"Tiny beast from the south," he said. He cast a shadow on Shisui and on her. "You came when summoned."

When she could not say anything to him, he went on without her: "It's clear now that you are a migratory little creature. Always moving far. Making me look for you."

Sakura was very still.

"I go where I will," she stated. "The same as you or any other creature. I said I would deliver another message for you if you asked. I didn't promise to stand by for incoming requests. And—and I brought my own request for you, too. As payment for thi—"

"Did you bring hunters behind you?" sounded Madara's great voice, smothering hers. "Men and guns to hunt my clan? Look at me. I will see lies in you."

She did as he said and became a subject of the red moons. He spoke over her thoughts: "Know that you won't be harmed here, if there are no hunters in your wake. But if you led them to us, I will meet them. I will rip them to long and slim pieces and spread them in the trees. I will strain their blood between my teeth."

Sakura was—very still.

The mouth had opened only once while he spoke, a motion long and slow. Inside were the long teeth and tongue, which were as alive as she was, and could end every thought and meaningful thing that ever existed in her. They closed upon her—in her dreams, they did.

"Answer me."

"I didn't bring any hunters or tell anyone where I was going," she answered as bid, but slowly. "But gunmen don't answer to me in the first place. I'm not responsible for you or any man with a gun who comes after you."

"After you leave here, you will carry my warning to them. They will know what they risk."

So he planned to let her leave. "All right."

"Attend my kin's ills," he said abruptly. The mouth opened two times. "Show me what skill you have in seeing sickness and health. I'll see if you have any worth."

"I have attended him. I believe it's aspergillosis," she replied primly. Madara's mouth stayed frozen, barely parted. "It's an infection from fungus. The spores grow where it's old and damp, in food, usually, and once you eat them they keep growing. They're the cause of that difficult breathing and the sores. It can affect my people, and birds, too." One glance down at Shisui's avian head showed his mouth and eyes were now closed. His front claw was too close to touching her shoe. "If his body doesn't start fighting back against it soon, it could turn fatal."

The beast stayed still and eyed her. Behind him, the sun was half-buried in the treetops. Madara's hide and head blurred with the darkened trees behind him. Sakura could not remain still much longer.

"I can go get a medicine for this if you answer my request, too. As I mentioned."

There was no response this time. For too long a time.

Madara's long tail curled up into the air like a shriveling claw, then thumped down upon the grass.

Sakura's legs were a doe's legs, thin and tight and roiling in the instinct to run.

Twitching in her lower regions now, she prompted softly, "D-do you accept—"

"I do not accept terms from your kind," he interrupted with a hard hiss. "Tell me where to find the medicine. I will remember this sickness for the next time we meet."

"Wh—what do you mean 'next time we meet'?" she blurted, legs twitching." "How many times did you expect to meet after this? I'm here because—to help Shisui! And because I needed to ask something of you, and after we were done, we'd go our separate ways, that's what I thought this was!"

"Never see me again?" he rumbled. "I said no such thing."

Sakura nearly fell from consciousness completely.

"Do tell me your request, though, little red beast," Madara hissed. And he smiled, as he did in her dreams where she saw his mouth and tongue and wide, wide throat. "Tell me what you want to bargain. What do you carry in your little limbs and bones? What knowledge for me? You've walked so far since I first saw you."

"I came here for you," she said, breathless. His body grew larger with a brief inhale, watching her.

Sakura spoke to the moons. "I—I thought—that I could use you for something. But maybe that's…just foolish. You've got no knowledge for me, do you? You just want a human slave. Or you want to eat me after all. I wish I did bring a gun. I'd shoot you between your pretty eyes. I'd give you a sickness to remember me."

But midsentence, she gave herself a sickness too, a regret that soiled her anger and all the rest of her. Unlike in Haretta, there was no heat here and no rage, and she wasn't far away. This meeting here was—quiet.

Like a doe caught, Sakura didn't breathe.

The only motion in the glen was the beast's jaw parting. Back in the lee of his throat there was a flickering red glow, like a fire were burning in his chest cavity.

"You threaten me. Again," he said underneath a heavy growl.

Her very heart was quiet—begging to stop, stop this dreadful trial, and her fears, stop everything.

"Tiny. Little. Beast," the monster growled. Sakura fought tears. "Did you come here to hurt me after all? Do you have a sickness packed into your flesh? Is that why you ignore me and try to entice me to anger?"

"Any human not submitting to your demands is whining," Sakura spat back, so she wouldn't sob. "But that's what you seem to expect, and it's not happening. I'm not going to be your slave."

"You aren't a slave, you dramatic little stain."

"I'm not your friend, either," she replied coolly. The beast's head pulled back slightly, carefully. "This is the last time I'm helping you, unless you plan to just threaten my life like the monster you are—"

There was a long, reptilian hiss from him as there would be from a crocodile half-submerged in dark water. Sakura talked over the threat: "I have my own life and I won't let you keep me from it, even if you say you'll hurt me or kill me, I don't care. Good luck finding a second human after you eat me, may you be riddled with bullets trying to replace me."

The hiss morphed in his throat to a vibrating roar that sent birds flying from the treetops. Madara pushed forward so quickly that Sakura was forced backward onto her elbows. He trapped her in a space between his forelegs.

Her startled shriek was nothing to his roar. The sound bathed her in heat and godly terror.

From the fiery throat came: "Your life—is mine."

This was true—paralyzing—the stuff of her tiny human nightmares and now her life.

The echoing boom continued: "Your body and your safety—intact, because I allow it. These words between us and your access to my clan, a gift from me. You step on my gift again and again, tiny beast, for what? For what do you dare—threaten me?"

Her eyes were open now, the corners painted with tears. Directly above there was a clear view into the beast's throat where real fire was burning.

"I have seen you stand tall before me and before guns, but now you cower," Madara growled down at the dirt and at the trapped human. "I tolerated you little cries because I thought there may be something different to be had with you. Different than armed hunters or your spineless herd. Since you were capable of it once."

Were she standing up, her spine would not have been able to hold her upright. Right now she was capable of nothing but trembling in the grass. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

"You spoke to me," Madara said, as if it were an answer alone.

"That—that doesn't mean anything!" she shouted back.

"You gave me a way to speak to your kind, and I want to keep it. No matter how you squirm. No matter how much you fear. I do not demand that you stand in front of me, like you are my slave, because you do it on your own, little one," The jaws closed and opened once; his hot breath turned and swept locks of her hair. "I want men to know of me. Know I'm on the mountain and in the trees even when wraiths are not. The world isn't yours, for I am in it."

"It isn't yours, either," she muttered back pettily.

"No. It's the wraiths'. But I'll undo that one day."

"I bring monsters wherever I go," Sakura breathed. "And I do. But I can't—can't let them finish me. I've got to keep going somewhere else, even after this. After you."

She breathed in Madara's smoking breath. "You are not one of your spineless herd," he said like an admittance. His impassioned growling was cooling. "I don't answer requests from armed men that harm my family or me. But I see no lies in you. Even now. Now, I will answer what you want to ask. For you only."

With his legs trapping her and head hanging above, blending to the starless dark beyond it, Madara asked, "What is your request?"

Sakura didn't answer. Her trembling had changed to an instinctive stillness. "Wait. A dark time's coming."

"That doesn't matter. Say your request."

"They'll be coming out in—in minutes," Sakura said. The light of the setting sun was winking out faster than it ever could naturally. That portion of nightly blue and what remained of warm sunset were both becoming wholly blanketed black. "Please—I need to be—up in a tree, before it's totally dark. They're too stupid to climb."

"You will stay here and be safe if any wraiths appear. If it's stupid enough to approach, I will cut it down."

The fist in the grass turned loose and limp. "See them? You can see when the natural light's gone?"

"I can," he replied. "I hear your kind have very poor eyes."

All beings had poor eyes in a dark time, except for gunmen, who wore goggles to see when it was perfect dark out. When sun, moon and star were all covered, only they weren't blinded. Sakura lay in the grass a few nonsensical moments thinking, like a medical professional perhaps, of what physiology could allow any creature similar sight. It may be the same physiology that gave animals red irises and moving rings round the pupil. It may have been something unnatural.

"What are you?" she asked. "You aren't…wraiths," she tested his word for them and disliked it. "How can you speak like a person and look like some animal? You look like nothing I've ever seen."

The clearing had shrunk to the size and darkness of a windowless room; Sakura was outside in a dark time for the third time her life. The last visible thing before total darkness was Madara's silhouette moving, posturing above her. After total darkness, his eyes were a small source of light.

"I am Uchiha," he said from above her. "My clan is Uchiha."

Sakura mouthed the name. It meant nothing to her.

They kept each other's gaze, breathing quietly and not moving. The outline of Madara and the sky and the trees around them were all nothing now. He was red eyes and limitless ink.

"What are you?" asked his bodiless voice in return.

She remained cool and careful. "A migratory creature," she answered, as though he were a gate guard, blocking her way with his talons and his red fire. "After I leave, I'll migrate again. I'll…speak for you again. If you find me."

For the second time that night, the circles in his eyes spun. Instinctively she held her breath.

"I want your name," he demanded. "Every spineless human in your herds that you cross on your migration has it from you. So I want it from you."

"Isn't my name 'tiny beast'?" she said, smiling in the dark a little.

There was no answering chuckle as there would be from a man, no distaste or annoyance as from a stranger on the street. Madara was painted stone, unmoved by her. To offset the loss, she pretended it was no matter to her at all, and stayed prim and collected even in the dark.

"I am Sakura," she told him, and nothing more.

In the lack of natural light, nothing more stirred. He absorbed the sight of her lying underneath him in the grass and Sakura made herself unbothered by it. No gunman had ever lain like this so long without being torn and unmade by the birdlike claws. No one had ever had a tense and alien conversation with a catbird. No one had ever killed one of the It-Men with their hands. It was all surreal and fake-seeming, like a dream or like a play. Like the best plays, like the episodic ones, like a story written in a magazine.

Parts of the sky were coming back to their normal color. More and more deep blue began to bleed through. While she looked at the natural color, she heard Madara's voice. "What is your request, Sakura?"

"I…brought it with me," she replied softly.

He didn't step backward to allow her up, so she had to move backward a bit herself and then slowly stand. Her legs were functional as though hypnotized to be so; she didn't question this. Madara didn't question her pulling something out of her pocket and unfolding a piece of paper. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the many eyes of the other catbirds some distance away in the trees. One of them had its talons on a rock and its neck stretched high up, like some ardent theater fan watching his favorite scene through hobby binoculars. Sakura felt something like embarrassed confusion and turned away.

Madara was lowering himself slightly to sit down, crushing grass with his talons and feet. His tail curled around the tops of the talons like a perched cat. To this sitting cat, Sakura held up her piece of paper that she had run away with.

"You said before that if you saw anyone from my home again, you wouldn't recognize them. I don't believe you. Not with an Uchiha's impeccable eyes," she said airily. Madara did not react. "I think you saw this one. You said he wore 'green skins'. Do you recognize him?"

The red eyes narrowed just slightly, but they lay on Sakura's face, not Lee's small, pictured profile.

"This is your request?"

"Yes. Do you recognize him?"

The red eyes watched her suspiciously for a moment longer, but Sakura's expression was clear and solid.

"I do."

I do, sang Sakura's soul.

It hurt. It stung like a physical pain from within. It stung like an intense, too-flavorful sweetness in the mouth, which she loved. Sweet Sakura.

"It was before I saw you. Pressing that worm's flesh open." He paused, but Sakura didn't react, either, only waited with tense expectation. "He ran down a hill, away from the dwellings. He had another with him. One I don't remember. He went down the hill. I saw nothing more."

She would reach into Madara's mouth and pull out his tongue if she could hear Sweet Sakura outside of her own mind.

"That's all I needed," she replied sweetly, and folded it neatly again. "Now, about Shisui. I can find a way to get the antibiotics to you, he should hold stable for a few—"

"That is not necessary," Madara cut her off.

"What—what do you mean not necessary? The infection's stayed with him for over a week, it's not going away on its own. He needs care, he—" Sakura turned halfway around to the spot in the grass she remembered Shisui lying in. The grass bore a dent roughly his size and the body was absent. "He's gone," she added stupidly.

A head peered out from between a thick pair of trees, a long stone's throw away. It was an avian head with ear-tufts now pointing backward and a jovial expression. It had clever, narrowed eyes and one foot poised just atop the ground like an athlete prepared to step into an immediate sprint. It smiled. It disappeared as though into an invisible hideaway behind the tree.

"He moves quickly," Madara said. "And he will not die. Do not concern yourself with his health."

"I'm willing to volunteer myself for her medicine," came Shisui's voice, from a tree a short jump away. He curled around his spine the tree like a cat around a post. His voice did not rasp quite so much as it had when he'd lain on the ground. "If it comes to that. I'll find out if it has any adverse effects. Or if it's no cure and the beast lies after all. Perhaps she's lying right now, and she told her hunters to delay their approach. Otherwise, I'll shed the disease."

"I'll find her again if that ever happens," Madara spoke above her, about her. Find her dragged at the nerves along Sakura's spine and made her deaf to the further exchanges taking place over her head.

It was strange and then uncomfortable and then impossible to ignore the burgeoning confusion that threat brought. Other discomforts trailed after it: Shisui's quiet disappearance when she wasn't looking, the shedding of a disease, that her care and attention had been for nothing, the realization that she was now surrounded by catbirds—one or several—at all four cardinal points.

At the center of the points was Madara and herself, and he was saying—"Father, we'll leave"—and Sakura felt imminent collapse, like a house about to fall down.

Sweet Sakura, she said to herself in Lee's wonderful voice. Wherever he was, he was miles from this dream-like stage—stage, she parroted again—I'm on a stage.

Madara had placed her on a stage. For his family. For examination. She had really come here, and done this, and it tied her to man-eating beasts, and it was unremovable now. Why—had she done this? Why had she made this decision again?

Sakura felt, for the first time in a very long evening, poisoned.

Sweet Sakura. My god. Get out of there.

'Lee, you have to come with me.'

Of course! Let's go!

She had to go, even though her legs were threatening to abandon her and give out again, as they had on the road to Rissinia earlier. She had to go. Go away from here, from these things and whatever had really transpired here.

"I'd like to be on my way," she proclaimed. She forced an unnatural pause to avoid tripping over the words and then added, "And yes, I'll deliver your message."

Those feathered, tufted ears on Shisui's head perked up. All of him had perked up by now, despite that he did truly have sores and a sickness. He had lain still and faked the intensity of his difficulties in front of her. This one had all but tricked her.

He deserved a slap and a shove off some stairs, but mice could not punish cats. The only revenge was the pathetic effort of keeping neutral so that he couldn't relish a reaction that he wanted.

"Then go," Madara replied lowly, jerking his head harshly sideways. There were no horns on it, but weren't there when she first saw him? "Roam where you will. I'll find you again when I must. You'll know not to run."

'Why do you have a face,' thought Sakura nonsensically as she ignored him and objectified him. 'You were 'Skullface'. You were. How did you grow a face like a wolf instead of your other one, did you 'shed' it?'

"Did you have another request?" he asked. The cat tail behind him swept near the ground. "Do you want to ask something of me?"

The tone bore no desire to entertain questions, only a distaste for Sakura's silent but blatant appraisal of him just now. If only she were in her right mind, she might request or ask more things, but it might put her more in debt with the Uchiha. They may demand a surgical procedure next, or a miracle, because they were animals who didn't know the difference. Except perhaps they weren't animals, or wraiths, but some other new thing that people had no knowledge of whatsoever. Sakura knew within minutes they would see her sweating.

Sakura knew she was partway in her right mind, at least, because she had a fear of the red eyes again. They were sources of light in a dark time no longer. They were moons again. This almost spilled out her mouth. Madara was waiting on her to speak. She told him goodbye instead as practiced many times at home with her mother's guests. If she were still not in her right mind at all, she would have offered to serve him tea.

"Do you want to be carried out in my teeth?" Madara rumbled at her. His hot breath was nothing to the chill that rattled her whole spine and body. "Begone."

Sakura left without any proper goodbye. Not one to Madara, not Shisui on her right or the handful of spectating catbirds behind them.

At the edge of the open space, the trees turned immediately thick and dark, as the sun had fully set now and the natural moonlight barely breached the canopy. The shadows of trees was thick—and then painted. The sleek pelt of another catbird finally showed through the dark and then the red eyes, of course—Sakura had forgotten about Shisui first, and then Itachi entirely. He was poised like a black sphinx still. Not even the tail had uncurled from over the forelegs.

"I'll walk you back if you want me to," he offered when she was near. His soft voice was startling compared to Madara's deep one and Shisui's casual, horrible jollity.

"Hopefully you won't get shot," she replied, also softly.

"Don't worry," Itachi replied in kind, but didn't explain further. At that point, Sakura passed him and began to walk fully in the dark woods. She could see only a handful of trees ahead of her. Faintly behind was that silk-soft sound of Itachi moving after her.

To hear his presence was better than to not, and he didn't blatantly antagonize her like the other ones did. Itachi was the cordial one of the bunch and perhaps her favorite. There was no one on the earth to whom she could say this aloud, and not be crucified for insanity.

With Itachi walking quietly at her side again, Sakura kept on, thinking next to nothing, holding her few thoughts very, very close lest they fall into true insanity and never be rescued.

When finally the trees were thinning, Itachi stopped walking and said goodbye. She did not remember it.

The color of the night sky attracted her eye when it ceased to be uniform. The cloudless night-dark blue was gently lighting up through the trees with white and gold from electric streetlights in Rissinia. She walked through the trees, then a few more trees, and then was out. She walked towards the light and the walls.

Sakura was alone in the wide, wide field adjacent to the foxhunting woods. She could have been kidnapped or killed there. Or anywhere since she left home, really. A stranger had approached her in the first month after Konoha and asked for either her money or her skirt to be pulled down and he'd called her a very pretty maiden but she had argued with him and he'd called her a prudish bitch and she had run and did not remember the rest of it. Funny how that happened. That man was just a stranger, one of many.

Sometimes she felt uncomfortable around Tsunade because she wasn't a stranger now. She was compassionate and loyal like a real friend, like her friends who had been mauled to death at home and great God even know why—why had she done it—why did she talk to Madara like that? Was she better now? Free of the poison, or victorious somehow? It might be that Madara lied all along, and did view her as a slave. It might be that he only wanted to antagonize her for his own amusement. He could do anything he wanted to her. He had fire in his organs and he would strain her blood between his teeth.

Sakura walked steadily on the grass, feeling the sweat on her back and thighs. Was she really steady? 'I'm far away,' she thought, like she had in Haretta, but it didn't echo. This time she was able to remember her name.

That was an improvement. It had to mean she'd done well. She would get a good grade.

"I'm…I'm right for coming out here," she tried aloud. It came out like a question. "I said I would do it and I did it," she tried again. "I. Did it. I'm…the best." That time she laughed a little. It turned into a steady giggle.

She was a little mad already. She thought about those women in Calstoa who made fun of her. She made her voice chime like a lady to be feared: "Yes, Ihave pet monsters, ladies. Don't worry, they won't hurt you, unless I tell them to! Now, now, mind my tiger, too—"

The fantasies picked up spare animals from her daydreams at the gym, which had only been earlier that day, till the giggling was so pervasive she almost fell over. In her dreams, the Calstoa sluts and the Burelia men who told her to kill herself were stomped into the dirt. The fantasies bled and bled.

The fantasy that her confrontation with Madara was successful and correct and he saw special value in her glowed more than all the others did. Was it fantasy? Was she a servant now or not? Did he say once that his clan had killed the Konoha invaders or had she dreamed that?

"I've got you, Lee," she murmured aloud. In her mind he whispered back, she knew it for truth. It steadied her gait and made her smile. Lee had told her many times that she was confident, which she knew for truth.

The only road to town still open was the larger gate which she had never used before, a short walk along the city wall from the familiar one. It had electric lights on the wall above and even two on the ground nearby. The gate guard asked her if she needed help and she said no, no, no, no way, no thank you, sir, thank you!

He took her by the arm and led her through the gate with no inspection. She was deposited at a little table where guards took their breaks, while her chaperone went inside a little brick shed. Another guard nearby had his back to his post and his front facing Sakura, blatantly staring at her, utterly confused by her calm posture and smile. She may have been in a foggy cloud of something, some drug, perhaps—

"If you drugged her, I will cut your fucking fingers off! Move! Move! Where'd you put her?!"

Tsunade approached from the street and caught sight of Sakura lounging at the table. She wore a thin, silky nightrobe like what was worn by the beautiful women who sat and smoked in windowsills the day they'd arrived in the city. She had seamless peach lipstick and no shoes.

The staring gate guard leaped over in front of Sakura's table. "Ma'am, she's is custody, she's not leaving the premises until—"

The man's feet hopped off the ground and all of him collapsed messily down back to it. By the time he'd fallen, Tsunade's flying fist had completed its upward swing past the man's chin.

"I am custody," she spat down in his direction. She stomped around him.

"Tsunade, hi!" Sakura smiled. Her legs were crossed and hands in her lap. "I just got back, I need to tell you some things." Tsunade's hands slammed onto the table and rattled it. Sakura was still somewhat in shock, but she did flinch at the movement.

"You little bitch," she ground out.

Sakura's hands grasped at each other for support under the table. "I'm, I'm sorry?"

"I should rip your fucking teeth out! You little bitch!" Her hands whipped forward and lifted Sakura up the front of her shirt; she dangled like a little animal. "You left town without word for hours! With nothing! After all I've given you, you disrespect my word, for nothing! How fucking dare you!" Her hands made a different sound when they cracked across Sakura's face, once, twice, the third time Sakura finally came to her senses and started shrieking.

Another guard was running up from the street. "Madame Tsunade, please bring her to the south office," he said. His voice sounded like he'd not exerted himself at all. "There's no need to do this outdoors."

"Where did you go," Tsunade demanded. "Go ahead and tell me, you've lost any privilege to privacy. You snuck off to get laid? Or maybe you tried to run away. And chickened out."

"Noo," Sakura whined against these accusations. Her hand covered her stinging, bruised cheek while the other grasped feebly at Tsunade's wrist, all while her nice shoes scraped at the dirt.

"What did you do?" the woman hissed, quieter.

"Talked to him," Sakura whispered back. She opened her tear-laden eyes. "Tsunade. I feel better."

Tsunade felt only worse; her glare intensified till her pupils were furious pinpricks. She slowly allowed Sakura to return to the ground. The girl gave a brief, hollow thanks and then began to smooth out her hair and outfit, making herself more presentable despite the mark of punishment on her cheek. Tsunade's watchful eye observed no shaking hands or erratic movement, but she only had to wait. She saw that Sakura's pupils were not pinpricks or even normally sized, but dilated unnaturally wide.

"That's how you feel?" Tsunade said, lowly, like a threat, like Madara often did.

"He doesn't want to hurt me or eat me. He just wants a, a liaison. Sort of. Whenever we happen to cross paths, which won't be often."

"And you believe that."

"Yes," Sakura replied, too quick and too loud.

"Why the fuck do you trust that thing's word? Why did you go?"

"I needed to ask him a question," she said sternly back, the absurdity of which made Tsunade's eyes blaze. When she asked what question Sakura spoke of Lee, and meant to take out her magazine page from her pocket, but her mentor's own questioning kept going. Why, why, why, had you done something so stupid, you could be dead right now—

The stoic guard following Tsunade watched them from a slight distance, observing the movements of their bodies, which were minimal. Their hands and faces were mostly still, even though one of them had choked the other just now. Sakura acted as though she had not been choked or wildly hurt or frightened, lest she lose face or lose the argument. It was a mimicked behavior; both of them knew it.

Sakura spoke the truth that had moved her to leave the city: "I wanted to know somebody else in the world saw him and he was okay—"

"That councilman in Yuraka saw him and spoke to him months after Madara saw him in Konoha," Tsunade barked, interrupting her most heartfelt thing. "So what the hell does it matter what Madara saw him before that? You walked into a demon's territory for that? For information that is of fucking negative value?"

The tears began to cool and harden like granite upon Sakura's face. "That's not…that's not the point."

"The point is that you left without telling me! For this insignificant bit of satisfaction from hearing someone talk about someone you know."

"The point is that it's not pointless! I'm not pointless! Stop hurting me!"

Now both Tsunade's hands grasped Sakura's shoulders, fingers pinching into the flesh. "You lied to my face, do you not give a shit? Do you not care that I've been trying to help you and you could have killed yourself for nothing and Lee would never even know?!"

"I don't care what you have to say about it," she said, and it was true. Tsunade's face twisted into molds of discomfort, as though she were being choked yet again.

The guard observed Tsunade's hands sliding from the girl's shoulders, then her taking a half step back. He observed a divide, a half step wide.

Sakura had started to shed helpless tears. Her pupils started to dilate in a limp bout of shock, too long delayed. What had been confidence or bravado before was melting away with adrenaline. This time Tsunade didn't hold her in her arms and give her shoulder for support.

She could have apologized, but she didn't.

Tsunade left her eventually, pivoting to be near the quiet guard. He murmured reports into her ear while she stood with crossed arms looking at nothing.

No one and nothing looked at Sakura, either. With nothing clearly left to do, she returned to the table and arranged her legs and laid one hand on top of the other so she might appear dignified, or prepared, or ladylike, and maybe she would soon start to be or feel one of those things again. She had walked in the gate assured of herself, satisfied in this outcome, but no longer. Her mentor got in the way.

Her mentor didn't come back for a long while and there was nothing to do and no one to talk to. So Sakura talked to Lee.

She talked to him about home and school and her new job.

She reintroduced him to Ino and they all had a delightful lunch together at the Konoha bakery, where Sakura paid for croissants and chocolate for all of them.

She talked to them both about her favorite books or late and what plays she would make them attend with her if they were here.

She tugged playfully at Ino's ponytail and her fingers mimicked the motions to braid it.

All this had value to her. All this was worth her flagrant running off and reckless abandon before a man-eating animal. She must believe her actions were right and their result was successful, even if Tsunade didn't. If she were not in control and orchestrating this madness on purpose, then she was losing her awareness of reality and safety. Then she was wrong about Madara's intentions and what the catbirds wanted, and great God knew what else.

But the sound of Sweet Sakura was greater than God. It was the sound of goodness and bliss, which had never existed in Tidusa, never truly anywhere since home. It was only in her mind now.

Madara and his clan were an obstacle she would overcome to hear it again, to feel right again. It mattered not whether it was right, only that it felt so.

Two more city guards came eventually to escort them back to the inn. Rex and the stag had both been stabled for the night, and Tsunade handcuffed Sakura to her bed for the night.

Uchiha Meeting 1 done. It was an awkward, messy first real conversation (not at gunpoint) but now things can smooth out.

This chapter sucked the life out of me, though. Everything from Sakura leaving the Rissinia gym to Madara saying "What is your request" was re-written almost completely, and many other bits were re-written on the final editing pass. I worry that the Uchiha meeting felt too similar to the one in Chapter 2 in Haretta (the one at gunpoint). The intention was that both Sakura and Madara intended for the conversation to go a certain way and each of them kept derailing it for the other. Madara was testing her trustworthiness (he didn't expect her to diagnose Shisui's sickness straightaway lol) and Sakura was calmer in this meeting compared to the last one because she was halfway in shock from seeing Lee's face.

In that convo and in the final scene, I tried to capture the messiness of conflicting emotions and poor decision-making but I think I just made messy writing. This is also meant to show that Sakura is falling apart overall less when confronted with her fears, but she also rebuffs Tsunade's concerns and thinks that her ends justify her means. She is too black and white and too dismissive/judgmental of people who don't say what she wants to hear.

Anyway. This chapter took too long and I WANT TO TRY WRITING SHORTER CHAPTERS. Maybe 6-7k? Much as I love how ultra-long chapters feel, I want to write more and wallow in lengthy narrative/editing less. These last several months have been good for my writing. I'm balancing this fic and some fantasy/darkish scifi/drama Haikyuu fics on AO3, where I use the name Umbreon_ly). And I know these long chapters drag me down. Not to mention they make readers wait disgusting amounts of time for more content. And I don't like doing that to you. What do you say to some shorter, somewhat faster chapters? Some traveling adventures? Some more Uchihas and dangerous dark time snafus and plot events? Fun with catbirds? Does anyone here like The Last Guardian?

Thanks for reading my extremely tardy and fancy garbage, everyone.