August 2nd 996 — Konohagakure

Sakura has no idea what to do in this situation.

The handbooks don't cover a situation where a monster dressed as a shinobi attacks your teammate by biting them. She has no idea what this thing really is—and it is absolutely a thing, not a person, because no person alive can do the things they're doing right now—and she has no idea what they did to Naruto, but she does know that she has to do something, anything, to put a stop to it. She needs to do literally anything to protect her downed teammates, to put some kind of buffer between them and this monster. Do proctors come into the forest to observe them? It's possible—they'd had eyes on the genin all through the examination so far, so it makes sense that maybe they're somewhere in the forest with them. Maybe she can buy some time until a proctor decides to investigate the screaming.

They can't really miss it, after all—Naruto hasn't stopped screaming since he started, his grip still locked on a clearly confused Sasuke as they lie sprawled in the grass, and the sound is absolute agony to listen to. His screams barely stop long enough for him to pull in frantic, ragged breaths and the sound is like glass shards in her heart, a fist squeezing her chest and leaving her breathless. She's never seen Naruto or anyone in so much pain, never been exposed to such a raw sound. She doesn't know what to do.

Her eyes flicker to the monster wearing a human face and she's surprised to find that they don't seem to know what to do, either. She's not sure if that's reassuring or even more terrifying. They'd been aiming for Sasuke and Naruto had shielded him—whether by purposefully shoving his arm in the way or by simply having his arm in the wrong place at the wrong time, she hadn't been able to see—so perhaps whatever they'd been aiming to do had been specifically tailored to Sasuke? Maybe it wasn't compatible with Naruto? The moment Naruto had been bitten that amused mask they'd been wearing had melted away into pure shock, and now Sakura sees something new flickering in their eyes.

Fear.

Sakura's first thought isn't to wonder at what could make this freak feel fear. It isn't even to wonder if perhaps she should be afraid, either. No, Sakura's first thought is that fear means hesitation, and hesitation gives her time to put herself between her teammates and the threat. Her chakra has been relatively untouched by this encounter, her body taking more of a beating than her reserves, which means that it's child's play for her to weave her fingers into the proper seal and flash in front of Sasuke and Naruto. Her ribs are protesting, a sharp stabbing pain in her chest that makes her wonder if perhaps she'd broken more than just a rib, but Sakura still draws a kunai and stands defiantly before her teammates with a solid stance and trembling fists.

Their opponent looks at her, bright eyes a flicker of movement that has her tensing for them to lash out, but then their eyes flash back behind her and they freeze again. Confusion dies on the tip of her tongue as a new sensation washes over Sakura, not unlike the killing intent the Kusa-imposter had been leaking earlier. This is different, though, and somehow that much more terrifying—it's not fear of death or memories of Wave that this feeling brings to the surface of her mind, it's something far more primal. Something decidedly other.It's indescribable.

It's rage, white-hot and setting the entire clearing ablaze.

A panicked cry from Sasuke has Sakura whirling, forgetting entirely about the threat she'd been so focused on before, and she realises exactly why the monster in front of her had fallen so still in shock. Monster they may be, but they pale in comparison to the killing intent that Naruto is currently exuding—or, at least, she assumes it's Naruto exuding it. Black lines are creeping along his skin in nonsensical patterns, spiraling out from his arm and crawling up his skin. Sasuke's expression is tight, his hand trying to pry his other wrist from Naruto's grip, and Sakura realises that his skin is literally steaming in the open air. She almost reaches out to help when Naruto's skin literally catches flame, a shock of red-orange crawling along his body so fast it swallows the black symbols on his skin.

"That's impossible—" She feels inclined to agree with the Kusa-imposter, monster or not.

Sakura realises it isn't that Naruto's actually caught on fire… it's a thick shroud of chakra covering him from head to toe, bubbling like the boiling water used for preparing his beloved ramen. It flickers along his body like an open flame, wisps of colour licking the air around his prone form, and forms a sort of shape around him that Sakura's never seen. As far as she knows, chakra just doesn't do that. She thinks she's imagining things when she sees long horns in the shape—or are those ears?—but she knows she's not imagining the way Naruto's little "whiskers" (which she'd always thought were just a unique clan thing, like the Inuzuka) have become deep, jagged marks in his cheeks or the way his normally blunted fingernails are elongating into vicious looking claws. She can't help but glance to Sasuke in horrified curiosity, the question of did that Kusa-nin do this? dying on the tip of her tongue when Sasuke's crimson eyes flicker behind her.

"Sakura!"

Whirling on her heel, Sakura realises that even with his warning she won't be fast enough to dodge the Kusa-imposter's swipe. Though they're striking out at Sakura, she can clearly see the near-crazed expression they have pinned on her raven-haired teammate; they're obviously trying to get her out of their way to get to Sasuke one more time, maybe to do to him what they'd already done to poor Naruto. Their arm lashes out toward her just like they'd done to Naruto, limb stretched out like a grotesque whip of flesh headed straight for her, and Sakura steels herself by lifting her kunai in a reckless bid to take a swipe at the arm before it inevitably slams her into yet another tree. She won't let them get to Sasuke without a fight, after all.

Before the blow can connect, before it can even get close to her, a hail of kunai and shuriken has the Kusa-imposter spinning back and away from their initial position in a morbid fascination twist of limbs. (It's like they're made of elastic, stretching and bending as they whirl away, and part of Sakura can't help but compare them to the little ties she and Ino used to put in their hair.) Sakura's eyes jerk to where the onslaught of weaponry came from on instinct, the sigh of relief caught in her throat and choking her in her confusion at the sight of their saviour. It isn't a proctor that's come to their aid, or Anko, it's not even a chūnin or jōnin standing on the low-hanging branch with shuriken clenched between their fingers.

It's Karin.

"No one's beating Haruno Sakura but me!" The girl's shock of red hair is a welcome sight against the gloom of the forest, her brilliant eyes lit with a defiant fire that matches her even stance. Even Sakura's unenhanced eyesight can see the slight tremble in Karin's arms and legs, but the girl doesn't balk or shy away from this confrontation, even in the face of someone Sakura's sure is way out of her league. "So beat it, ugly!"

This Kusa-imposter is in no way a genin, and Sakura's sure if Karin had been able to suss out Sakura's identity as the one who took her paper, she's caught on to that fact, too.

Sakura can see through the bravado easily, and she's sure the Kusa-imposter can just as well. Flicking her gaze from Karin's stubborn expression to the clearly amused look on the monster's, Sakura almost calls out a warning. She can't let Karin get hurt for trying to help them. She can't have that on her conscience. If anyone else gets hurt here, Sakura's sure she won't be able to crawl out of that particular hole of guilt. The image of Karin—or anyone else, any other innocent person—getting bitten or thrown against a tree stirs something painful in Sakura's chest. The idea of someone else lying there limp and broken in Sakura's stead isn't something she can bear. Before she can cry out for Karin to run away, though, Karin turns a determined glare of her own on Team Seven.

"Run for it!" She bellows just before an explosion rocks the clearing, trees blasted apart and chunks of earth splintering beneath the Kusa-imposter's feet. Sakura's instincts are the only thing that keep her from being thrown back by the force of the blast, chakra-coated soles of her boots keeping her rooted to the ground even as she's nearly blown off her feet. The genius of Karin's plan has the corners of Sakura's lips twitching: Karin had thrown only kunai with explosive tags on them—she'd just used a henge to keep the Kusa-imposter, and Sakura as well, from realising her plan. She's clever, Sakura admits to herself with a grin, the first seeds of hope blossoming in her chest. We might just owe her our lives.

Sakura ducks and spins on her heel in the scant few heartbeats she has to react, dashing toward Sasuke and Naruto while her mind whirls at almost dizzying speeds. They need a plan. They need a course of action so that all three of them—four of them, now—can walk away from this with their lives. They have to make a run for it, but where do they go? Between that massive explosion and Naruto's continuous screams of agony, Sakura's sure someone has heard and will come to investigate. She's never hoped for adult supervision more than she is in this moment, a fervent prayer to let there be proctors in the forest and that they be nearby a constant mantra silently falling from her lips. She reaches out to grab a fistful of Sasuke's shirt, to pull the boys along with her, but before she can even touch him the world explodes all over again.

It's not the work of explosive tags this time, though, that catches Sakura across the chest and sends her flying across the clearing. All she can see in the haze of her own vision is Sasuke's expression—eyes wide, expression caught between horror and rage—and Naruto's arm held out toward her, a massive clawed arm of chakra extended from him. Naruto stares back at her with red eyes that don't even recognise her, eyes that seem like they're looking right through her, and Sakura forgets how to breathe as she sails through the air, hand extended towards his own and knowing he's not reaching out for her. He's not reaching out to take her hand, he's not even reaching out in denial.

He's what knocked her away from them, she realises distantly, her mind going silent as her body hits the ground and rolls. Everything is now a blur around her, a wet painting smeared and running together in her eyes, blood in the water and spiraling all around her no matter where she looks. Sakura's more than sure that her ribs are broken at this point, several of them in fact, and breathing is suddenly a lot harder than it had been earlier. She feels like she's trying to breathe underwater, like how she'd always dreamt it felt when Zabuza held her head under the waves, but this time it's real and it's not just the death of her nightmares that she's experiencing.

She's drowning in her own blood.

The thought doesn't incite panic in her like it does in her dreams. Everything slows down, her mind heavy with a sort of grogginess that makes her wish she could somehow lay further down than she already is, and Sakura wonders if she's dying. Is this what happens when you're close to dying? Once, she'd wanted to ask Kakashi-sensei if he'd ever almost died before… but, well, that'd be insensitive wouldn't it? Ah, well. Sakura blinks the world back into focus, the edges fuzzy like the old photographs of her mom's genin team that she'd always kept tucked away like a shameful secret. Everything is muted—the colours, the sounds, the pain, muffled like she's an outsider looking in. An observer. She hears Naruto's screams finally tapering off, sees the smear of red light flicker out of her view, and all she can think is please don't be dead, too. Kakashi-sensei would be so pissed if they both got themselves killed in here. Geez, how many bets would he lose if two of his students died in here?

"It seems my visit is being cut short." The monster's voice—monsters shouldn't have voices that sound like velvet, even if it incites the feeling of running her fingers the wrong way along velvet—drags Sakura's brain back to the present. She tries to turn her head, which only serves to make her vision swim all over again, and eventually she settles for blearily focusing on the Kusa-imposter out of the corner of her eyes instead. She thinks they're looking at Sasuke again, that oddly perverse fixation on their face all over again, and a protective instinct flares helplessly in her chest. "I'll have to visit you again, Sasuke-kun. Until next time."

Then, as if on some unspoken command, they vanish. No shunshin. No leap into the trees. No hand signs. Nothing. It's just that they're there one second and the next… they're not.

Everything is quiet for a long, long moment, and Sakura wonders if the monster is actually gone. It's like the entire world stopped to listen, to watch and see if they'd return from the inky-black shadows to lash out at Sasuke again, to see if this was simply too good to be true. Finally, Sakura closes her eyes and sighs in relief, pleased that at least Sasuke and Naruto made it out alive. The fear that she's always felt simmering beneath the surface since her close call in Wave is curiously absent now, leaving only a deafening sort of silence in her mind. Her heart stutters in her chest and she chokes on a wet cough, her insides feeling as if she's being carved open from the inside, and it's like that single sound erupts the world around her into chaos.

"Sakura!" She can hear Sasuke's voice, muddled and so very far away. He sounds stressed. That boy needs a nap. She hopes Kakashi-sensei can at least inspire him to mellow out a little. "Sakura!"

"H-hey—! Don't you dare die!" This voice is closer to her, the sound of it not nearly as muffled as Sasuke's. It takes Sakura a little longer than she'd like to admit to remember not only the sound of Karin's voice ringing in her ears, but also just Karin's mere presence in the forest with them. She's not sure why that creep had taken off as if hell were on their heels, but she's glad Karin is safe and that her show of bravado hadn't gotten her killed. "Haruno! Hey!"

Sakura becomes vaguely aware that someone's hands are in her hair, lifting her head up from the grass, and it's that one single shift that sparks a landslide of sensations throughout her body. Gone is the distant fogginess she'd been so blissfully lost in, replaced by the sudden roar of flames, a wildfire of pain branching out across her chest like spider webbing cracks in the teacup she'd dropped the day before the exams. Her chest positively aches, it's impossible to breathe—her shoulder and collarbone are on fire, burning at the forefront of her awareness and pushing everything else to the back of her mind the moment she notices it. She drags in a ragged breath, a gasp of pain, but she's choked off as her body's natural reaction shifts to coughing. The pain of her chest constricting leaves black spots dancing in her vision, and Sakura wonders when she opened her eyes in the first place. It's not like she can discern one blurred colour from the next right now.

Something warm is shoved against her bloodied lips, forcing her mouth open despite her whimpers at the motion, and then Karin's commanding voice cuts through the haze of pain like a knife.

"Bite."

Some part of Sakura's brain is confused at the notion, her brain not really fully comprehending just what she's being asked to do and what she's even doing it to, but she follows Karin's order without really thinking. A small part of her wonders what biting would help her accomplish, the paranoia that usually creeps along her spine suspiciously quiet as Sakura clamps her jaw down on whatever has been so forcefully placed in her mouth. She doesn't mean to put so much force behind it, especially because she's not entirely sure what she's biting in the first place, but one inhale has her chest alight with agony all over again and Sakura reflexively clamps her jaw down to stifle her cry of pain.

There's a moment of that burning agony before her pain feels like it's being pushed away by something akin to a cool sea breeze, the fire in her veins extinguished and the scars left behind soothed by invisible hands. Breathing becomes steadily easier, her lungs greedily sucking in all the air she'd been struggling to get just moments ago, and she revels in the fact that her chest no longer feels like a grotesque pincushion. The burning across her shoulder and collarbone fades and Sakura swears she can actually feel her skin stitching together, her entire body feeling inexplicably whole when she'd been feeling completely shattered just before, like her body was nothing more than shards of porcelain scattered across the forest floor.

This time, when Sakura opens her eyes again, she can see her surroundings clear as day. The trees overhead, the diluted sunlight flickering through the leaves, the splintered trees that surround their little clearing… and Karin, leaning over her with an anxiously expectant expression. Sakura frowns up at her, confused, for several seconds before the knowledge that she feels fine rears its head. She jerks up in Karin's arms, wide green eyes flicking all across the clearing for any sign of that Kusa-imposter looming in the shadows, and eventually her gaze lands on Naruto's prone form, still half-draped across an equally shocked Sasuke's lap.

"You… healed me?" She's mindful enough to question her sudden recovery, though she doesn't look at Karin as she speaks; instead, her eyes are still fixed on Sasuke's face, taking in the sheet-white pallor of his skin and the minute tremble she can see in his limbs as he seems to look over her with the same intensity. Her eyes drift to look at Naruto, eyebrows furrowing as Sakura realises that his breathing is laboured and his face is screwed up in pain.

"I—uh…" Karin seems unsure of how to respond, and Sakura pulls her gaze from her teammates to look at the redhead once more. This seems to only fluster the girl more, because her cheeks flush and she looks away, fingers nervously adjusting the frames of her glasses. It looks like her bravado and ferociousness has slipped out the window in the wake of all that's happened. It's a shame, too, because Sakura thinks such a loud personality suits her just fine. "It's… just a clan trait, that's all."

"Thank you." Sakura is wholly sincere in her gratitude, her voice soft with awe of such an amazing ability and of the fact that Karin had used it to save her. When Karin doesn't look back at her, Sakura can only hope her voice manages to convey her gratefulness, though an awkwardness settles in the pit of her stomach at the sudden loss of conversation. She doesn't waste any time waiting to see if the redhead will get over her abrupt onset of shyness, deciding to instead push up onto trembling legs and scramble to her teammates' sides. Sakura nearly trips twice in her haste to reach them, frantic to make sure they've all three made it out of this mess alive, and as she drops to her knees in front of Sasuke she feels like she's going to choke on her tears.

Sakura is careful as she gingerly reaches out to place a hand on Sasuke's shoulder, fully aware that he's still not as open to casual touch as Naruto is. She's shocked when his own hand cups her elbow—his fingers touching her so carefully that she wonders if he's afraid she might break—but she doesn't hesitate to offer him a wobbly smile, thoroughly pleased to see his expression relax if only a little. She immediately turns her teary eyes to Naruto, her other hand gingerly reaching out to touch his scraped cheek (a small part of her is terrified she'll be thrown away again, but she can't not check on him—) with shaking fingers. His skin is so hot that she actually jerks her fingers away in surprise, mind flipping seamlessly into medical-textbook mode. Naruto is burning up, cheeks flushed and skin covered in a thin sheen on sweat—he's so feverish that Sasuke actually looks uncomfortable with so much of the blonde's skin touching him, though he's made no effort to move him.

"He's got a fever…" Sakura exchanges a worried glance with Sasuke, biting her lip as she brushes Naruto's hair from his eyes and presses the back of her hand to his forehead. Her fingers are actually damp from just touching him. She tosses a wide-eyed glance over her shoulder at the redhead that's now looking over at the three of them with an equally concerned expression, voice pleading even as guilt prickles at her scalp for asking in the first place. "Karin-san, that healing ability of yours… can you fix whatever that freak did to Naruto?"

Karin's bright eyes widen at the request and she hurriedly pushes to stand, jogging to join the two of them and kneeling to peer at Naruto's unconscious face. The way her bright eyes flicker along the lines of his face before settling on the arm that had been bitten has Sakura following her line of sight, the pink-haired girl's lungs seizing up at the foreign mark that definitely hadn't been there before. It looks like someone had deliberately painted along his skin with ink, but Sakura can see that the edges of it move just slightly, writhing,like it's alive. Karin simply stares at him, deathly silent for so long that Sakura feels like she might explode. The redhead's face is a mixture of concern and confusion, and Sakura has to actually bite her lip to keep herself from snapping at her to speak up and answer the damn question.

"I can only do it once a day," Karin finally admits, though it's clear she feels unbearably guilty about it. Even as she says it, Sakura swears that Karin looks like she's still considering trying anyway. The look on her face has Sakura feeling horrible for asking all over again. "If I did it again so soon, I'd… I just can't. I'm sorry."

"H-hey!" The sight of the redhead looking near tears has Sakura quick to throw her hands up in surrender. "It's okay! I'm sorry for asking! I had no idea. You've helped us so much, Karin-san, and—"

"Yo, you kids alright?"

Sakura would have been willing to put money down that she would never in her life be this grateful to hear Mitarashi Anko's voice before today. The cadence of her voice in the trees, that husky tone of hers and the playful lilt to her words… Sakura swears that in this moment, in the aftermath of all the stress and terror that had saturated this little clearing, the sound of Anko's voice is on par with the Gods themselves singing their praises unto the world. Sakura perks up like a wilting flower being given fresh water and sunlight for the first time in days, eyes wide and head snapping to look at the older woman as she drops from the branch she'd been standing on. Her expression has a dangerous sort of edge to it—nothing like that chaos-loving grin she'd been wearing ever since they'd met her.

The way her dark eyes look them all over, narrowing as she glances from the smeared blood all across Sakura's face to the still burning slashes across her shoulder and chest—the skin is still tender and tight, even if the bleeding as been stopped—to Naruto's now prone form, makes Sakura's hair stand on end. She looks serious.

Something tells Sakura that a serious Anko is a deadly Anko.

Sakura hurries to explain the situation as best she can, trying to remember how to properly give a mission report while her limbs are trembling and her heart is hammering. She must be quite the sight since Karin and Sasuke keep looking at her with wide eyes as she speaks, their expressions wary, like she's some trapped animal writhing with feral energy. The adrenaline that has been pumping through her veins with every beat of her heart is wearing thin, diluting with every passing second, and Sakura wonders if she's about to pass out. She keeps talking anyway, pushing on even as she loses her voice several times in her hurried, nonsensical explanations, the story not quite fitting together due to her mind jumping through all that's happened out of order. She kind of feels like she's about to pass out, in all honesty. Would Sasuke be mad at her if she passed out?

"Well, Pinky, that 'freak' was none other than Orochimaru—yes, the Orochimaru." Anko grins at the looks of recognition flickering across their faces, eyes widening with a manic sort of edge that Sakura swears could be fear. Of him or for them, she's not really sure. "Congratulations, kiddies! You've officially fended off an S-Class criminal. Don't get too cocky, though. He probably wouldn't have taken off if it weren't for us."

Orochimaru of the Sannin? The name alone gives Sakura a new, sudden rush of energy, the ability to put a name to the threat pushing Sakura to sit a little straighter, breathe a little faster, to think a lot more clearly. The three legendary shinobi known as the Sannin were a big deal, sure, especially to Konoha. There was an entire day dedicated to the three of them and their accomplishments in the Academy. The Sannin are who young genin aspired to become one day—though, realistically, that can really only be said for Tsunade and Jiraiya. Weirdly enough, Sakura had noticed that Orochimaru was often glossed over in lectures, acknowledged but not really praised for any amazing feats comparable to his teammates. Perhaps Orochimaru was in the same position as Sakura when it came to his teammates, then? The dead weight of his team, only a Sannin because of who his teammates were, not because of his own strength? Did that make him go rogue?

The knowledge that Orochimaru was now an S-Class missing-nin wasn't exactly secret, but there was no real record of what had made him leave in the first place. There wasn't even really a cover story. Maybe he'd been unable to feel like he was a contributing member to his squad, the odd man out, and he'd chosen to leave them behind.

But if that were the case… why come after Sasuke?

"Whatever Orochimaru did messed with Naruto's chakra…" Sasuke's voice drags Sakura out of her musings and she glances up from her hands to look at his expression, his eyebrows furrowed and his face a mask of… anger? Fear? Concern? Sasuke's emotions are usually so restrained and subtle that seeing them plain as day on his face is jarring, leaving Sakura fumbling to try and understand what he's feeling. "It went crazy for a minute there—I had no idea he had that much…"

"Ah, that was probably because of Uzumaki's… unique chakra." Does Sakura imagine the way Anko hesitated for a moment, almost as if she'd caught herself before saying something she shouldn't have? Is she reading too much into the suddenly guarded expression on Anko's face? "Don't sweat it, kid, there's four ANBU squads on Orochimaru's tail as we speak—we'll figure out what the hell he did as soon as they catch him."

Sakura wonders at the way Karin's eyes focus on Naruto's face with renewed interest, something almost possessive curling unpleasantly in her stomach at the intensity of her stare. "Shouldn't we take him to the hospital?" Sakura pipes up to brush off the unpleasantness of that feeling, "And… are we disqualified? Orochimaru had our target's scroll, and there was no way we were getting that out of him."

Two ANBU drop to the ground just as Sakura's sentence trails off, their masks impassive but their body language speaking volumes; their muscles are tense, pulled taut into readied positions despite their faux cover of casual stances, every inch of their bodies a readied weapon and poised to execute whatever threat comes their way. These are the elite of the elite, Sakura realises. They're the best of the best. So they'll find Orochimaru, drag him back here, and make him fix whatever he did to Naruto.

Right?

"Out of—nope, nevermind. I don't wanna know." Anko's mouth clicks shut with a decisive snap of her jaw, waving her hand as if she can wave away Sakura's words and the implications of them. Turning without missing a single beat, Anko puts her hands on her hips and shifts into an air of superiority that momentarily stuns the three genin behind her. "I need you to report this to the Hokage, and tell him to hunt down Hatake. We need to call in the specialist for this case. Top priority. Got it?"

The two ANBU are gone as swiftly as they came, vanishing into the trees at a speed that Sakura longs to one day match, hopefully someday soon, and Anko remains silent for a long while. Sakura wonders at the suddenly somber silence, at the way Anko turns slightly to look over her shoulder, dark eyes focused on Naruto's sleeping face. She looks torn, conflicted on the deepest level, and Sakura can't help but wonder just what is making Anko look at her blonde teammate with such a bittersweet fondness. Though they'd only known her for the duration of this challenge, Sakura had truly never thought Anko capable of such a depth of obvious sadness. Anko is a whirlwind of manic energy, a crazed force of nature, but there's just something in her face as she looks at Naruto that makes Sakura wonder if that's just what Anko wants people to believe.

"Um… shouldn't they go, too?" Karin prods after a moment, her voice hesitant, as if she's afraid to break this wholly alien silence.

"I'll handle the old man," Anko replies easily, almost immediately, blinking rapidly back to reality before turning her head away from them. She crosses her arms over her chest, head held high, and clears her throat before loudly adding: "As official proctor for this round, I hereby grant Konohagakure's Team Seven passage to head to the tower without a second scroll—if you can make it to the tower in one piece, all three of you can proceed to the next round. Got it?"

Then, like the ANBU before her, Anko vanishes in a hail of leaves on the wind.

The four of them sit in the clearing for some time, completely silent, all of them staring into the high branches of the trees around them as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sakura can feel Sasuke practically radiating impatience, his face set into a scowl that cuts deep lines into his face, his hand hovering over his weapons holster. The boy's gonna die from stress before he's thirty at this rate.

"I should… get back to my team." Karin is the first to break the silence in Anko's wake, standing up and rubbing her arm almost sheepishly. Bright crimson eyes are looking anywhere but at Sakura, her cheeks still tinged pink, and Sakura wonders if maybe Karin doesn't see just how brave she'd been earlier. Is she always so shy? With the way she'd saved their lives earlier, the redhead would be totally entitled to be gloating about how much they owe her right now, not looking like she's somehow inconvenienced them. Nervously, Karin pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and turns on her heel, not even waving over her shoulder as she starts jogging back the way she'd come.

"Thank you!" Sakura calls after her, unable to let the girl who'd saved her life walk away without hearing her gratitude.

Karin's nearly through the underbrush before she turns, face nearly as red as her hair, and points at Team Seven with fire in her eyes and a proclamation blazing through the air: "If he still needs help… tomorrow! I'll heal him tomorrow!"

Sakura smiles and nods, another silent thank you in her eyes, and her heart feels warm when Karin smiles back.

It takes the two of them a few hours to find a reasonable alcove to drag Naruto into, each of them taking turns with the blonde on their backs while the other takes point with a kunai in hand. Eventually, they find a nice collection of trees whose roots are upended enough to allow them to lie down beneath the tree and be hidden from view, and it's where they decide to set up camp for the night.

Sakura takes first guard, laying down a quick Magen: Kokoni Arazu no Jutsu around the area to better hide them from sight. It's a basic genjutsu, something that any skilled shinobi will probably see through if they're really looking, but anything is better than nothing right now. Hopefully, between this and the traps Sasuke took to planting around the perimeter, they'll be safe for the night. Meanwhile, Sasuke spends the first three hours of Sakura's evening watch trying to cool Naruto down with a rag and water from one of their canteens, mumbling about how his teammates are reckless fools.

The hours pass by with no real problems in sight: no one comes snooping around looking for them, no wicked monster in a human's skin comes crawling from the darkness after Sasuke, and Naruto doesn't explode into a flaming mass of hate again, either. They trade shifts as in the black of night, wordlessly moving around one another so Sakura can sit at Naruto's side and Sasuke can take watch, and still nothing happens. It's smooth sailing. It's going so well, in fact, that Sakura has time to even let her mind wander as she finishes wiping down Naruto's brow and Sasuke remains silent, back taut with stress and brilliant red eyes scanning the darkness of the forest around them.

The night is going so well that Sakura can berate herself in silence.

She'd broken down again, when her team had needed her most. All that talk about getting better, all those times she'd sworn to Ginta—the Yamanaka specialist assigned to her personal mental health—that she'd genuinely felt like she was healing, all her bragging about the progress they'd made and how Wave hardly affected her lately… and yet at the first sign of killing intent in that clearing, Sakura had completely frozen at the worst possible moment. All that talking with her therapist, all her struggling, it all feels completely worthless now. She's right back where she'd started. Would Ginta be disappointed in her for such a pathetic relapse after all his hard work? Guilt twists her stomach and Sakura bites down on her bottom lip hard enough to bleed, trembling fingers reaching up to pull at her hair, silent sobs wracking her chest.

She'd made herself such an easy target with her pride; the kunai in her hair, a boastful move on her part, had given Orochimaru an easy way to hold and control her. He'd used it as a hand-hold, had dragged her around by her hair, and she'd foolishly given him that just to try and prove that she was "dangerous." What if he'd decided to simply pluck it from her hair and slit her throat? What if he'd just ended her life right then and there? What if he'd killed Naruto with the weapon she'd given him? Shaking hands all but rip the kunai from its place atop her head, twisted up in the wispy remains of her cute little bun she'd so been so vainly proud of, the roots of her hair protesting at the violent treatment.

Gritting her teeth, Sakura curls up tighter, pulling at her hair harder, almost defiantly, the memory of Orochimaru throwing her like a ragdoll playing on repeat in her mind. Her head feels heavy as she pulls at the first handful of hair, blindly slashing at it with the edge of the kunai in her hand. Uneven strands of pink litter her lap, falling to the dirt around her, but Sakura keeps pulling, tugging, stabbing, anything to get the memory off of her. She needs to forget. Why won't he stop pulling her hair?

A feather-light touch stops her quaking hands, a gentle but firm grip on her wrist halting her moments and pulling her back from the edge. Sakura looks up into Sasuke's eyes, dark and unreadable as ever, and all at once the dam breaks. Her chest heaves and she curls forward, inward, keening pitifully into the backs of his hands that are still firmly trapping her wrists even as she curls against them. Sasuke doesn't say anything to comfort her as she cries, doesn't even move, but he stays. He stays, and that means so much to Sakura that she can't even breathe in that moment.

She's not sure how long she cries like that—it's still dark out when she finally manages to sit up straight, eyelids heavy and her throat feeling particularly raw, but Sasuke is still there with her wrists in his hands and his eyes anywhere but on her. Swallowing thickly, Sakura looks down at his hands on her wrists and silently laments a time in which such a touch would have sent her heart racing; instead, right now all it does it make her feel guilty for clearly startling him, and she wonders if he would have reached out at all had she not been holding a blade. Did he think if he didn't stop her that she would have hurt herself?

(Would she have?)

"Did you have to make such a mess?" His voice is her ear startles her enough that her cheeks burn, heart skipping a beat, and he uses her moment of surprise to deftly slide the kunai from her grip. Sakura blinks at him with wide eyes, confusion clear on her face, and with a shake of his head Sasuke settles down behind her, kunai in hand, gently maneuvering her to sit up straight and tall in front of him. "Sit still. Let me fix it."

Months ago, if someone had told Sakura that Uchiha Sasuke would be fixing her hair, she would have never believed them. She would have been over the moon, waxing poetic about how his eyes would be oh so tender in the night and how this would surely guarantee that they'd be together forever after sharing such an intimate moment. As it is, though, Sakura can't really describe just how she's feeling in this moment—she's not sure what to make of Sasuke's uncharacteristically gentle fingers combing through her hair, nor of the slow and deliberate motions of the kunai as he threads through the mess of her hair, but she knows she doesn't hate it. It doesn't make her heart flutter, but it doesn't leave her unaffected, either.

Sakura passes the time wondering just how much of a number she'd done on her hair in the midst of… whatever that had been. Breakdown? Panic attack? Her therapist will probably have a lot to say about this at her next appointment… or maybe she'll go in before that, as soon as they get a break from this exam. Ginta would probably appreciate her seeking him out for once. She wonders at how she must look overall right now, between her hair and the dark scars across her collarbone and the dried blood flaking off of her face and arms. She can see the edges of a claw mark from the corner of her eyes, lines of jagged and darkly scarred flesh serving as a violently stark contrast to her own pale skin, and she wonders if they're going to always be that noticeable. She wonders if she should be allowed the vanity to worry that they are.

"I owe you an apology," Sasuke's voice startles her so badly that she'd compare it to receiving a rapid punch to the gut, surprise winding her as she stares wide-eyed into the darkness in front of them. An apology? Uchiha Sasuke doesn't do apologies. Sasuke isn't above small gestures to try and smooth over tense situations and hurt feelings, but Sakura doesn't think she's ever heard an apology from him. (The "inconsiderate bad boy" vibe was something girls found dreamy at their age! It's part of his charm!) It's deathly silent between the two of them for a long moment, nothing but the sound of hair grating against a sharp edge filling the air between them, and then finally Sasuke makes a sound that she can only describe as an aggravated sigh. "That day—on the bridge, you apologised to me like you were the worst person alive, like it was your fault that the Academy didn't better prepare you for what's out there. I let you. That wasn't… fair to you."

What…?

"I've been hard on you and Naruto. I've treated you both poorly. I wasn't… pleased about being placed on a team, at first. I felt like I was being held back." Her hair is feeling particularly short in the back, but honestly Sakura can barely focus on it with the way her head is spinning. Sasuke pauses, shifts his fingers through a particularly difficult knot in her hair with such delicacy that it honestly shocks her more than his words, and then continues on like he isn't casually giving her a mild heart attack in that same soft, whispered tone of his. "I called you a weak link and, instead of making sure you improved so you could protect yourself, I ignored you. I ignored you both. You or Naruto could have died today—you could have died and it would have been my fault."

Sasuke finally pulls back from her, dropping the kunai into the dirt midst a pile of shed pastel pink, and sits back to admire his work. Neither of them speak for several moments, and then she feels the length of Sasuke's spine press against her own, his eyes turned out toward the treeline as they sit back-to-back.

"We're a team," his voice is so quiet that Sakura almost believes she's imagining it, "and I'm sorry that I didn't act like it. I won't fail you again… either of you."

Slowly, as if she's terrified he'll run at the first sign of trouble, Sakura turns to look at his profile from the corner of wide, teary eyes. His face is turned away from her, staring resolutely ahead to continue the farce that has been his watch, and Sakura can't stifle a small smile from twisting her lips as she reaches up to slide her fingers through her newly cut hair.

Sasuke refuses to look at her as she explores the length of it, but his chin does shift minutely toward her as she moves—he's left it long in the front, untouched, but shorn it so close in the back that even his hair is probably longer now. It's shorter than she would have ever wanted to cut her own hair, but Sakura's heart feels warm with gratitude all the same.

"I love it," she tells him sincerely. "Thank you."

5/18/19: I'm alive! I swear I'm alive!

Thank you SO MUCH to the people who reached out to make sure I was okay after missing literal months worth of my update schedule. I'm okay! I just had a lot of health emergencies of both the medical and mental variety, and as such for a while I couldn't focus on writing much of anything. Honestly, I'm sad this took so long to get to you guys—the chapter was (mostly) done for a while, I just had to polish it off and give it to my beta, which she hurried back to me afterward, I just kind of struggled to get it over the finish line.

I don't know if I'll be able to stick to my bi-weekly schedule again for a while, mostly because I usually had a chapter buffer in place but because of everything that happened, I don't have that now. I'll try to stick to it as best as possible, but don't hate me if I miss a week or two, please!

Anyway, I've missed you all so much! I love all of my reviewers and a huge thank you to new readers and old alike going through and leaving detailed commentary on every single chapter to let me know your thoughts! You guys are the best!

See you next time!