Chapter Two

by Ember

Warning: This chapter contains a lemon... but only on AFF. That's why I'm gettin' it up on Fanfiction now and AFF later.

A/N: I love Sakura... it's a shame she's gonna have a pretty shitty role in the first part of the fic... x/ Okay, that was a spoiler, but not a very big one. Still, I don't know why everyone hates her that much.

Oh, and a correction: reference to the Third Hokage's seal in the last chapter should prolly be changed to the Fourth's seal. Damn the Third for being after the Fourth and confusing me... But, no. It's just the seal to keep in the kyuubi. No Narutos were attacked by Hokages in the time preceding this fanfic.

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And all I can say is that

My life is pretty plain

I like watching the puddles

Gather rain

And all I can do is just

Pour some tea for two

And state my point of view

But its not sane

It's not sane

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"Well," Sakura said, cheerfully tying off her teammate's braid, "once again, you're dismissed with a clean bill of health, Sasuke." She extended a hand to help him up but shrugged it off easily when he ignored it and stood up himself.

She'd grown a lot in the past couple of years, taller, thinner; she had finally developed breasts and a butt and, as Kiba'd said, a couple of times, she'd finally stumbled upon a body to balance her forehead. For a little while, she'd grown out her hair again, but as she noticed Sasuke still wasn't paying any attention to it, she bemoaned it getting in the way and cut it short again, an inch or two above her shoulders but with longer bangs over her eyes. She'd dyed bright red streaks in it, a final attempt to catch her crush's eye, and now had Lee following every step she took, trying desperately not to drool. Two weeks after the fact, Sasuke had made a short, half-hearted comment in the change, but hadn't appeared particularly captivated by her rebellion.

Sasuke's expression didn't change but his voice revealed his disgust when he replied, "For the second time this month." His stays were short- in this case, only one night- but increasingly more frequent and it ticked him off to have to drag himself to the hospital and lie around, even for only an hour, while other people were buzzing around him, talking about power and seals and dormant chakra.

Sakura smiled, a little sadly, and absent-mindedly swatted Sasuke's hand from where it had drifted to pick at the chakra-nullifying bandage over his left shoulder. It was the closest they could come to treatment and it never worked for more than a week; if Sasuke would let them, they could keep it on him indefinitely and the fits would eventually stop, but it weakened him, kept him from using chakra on his whole left side, and so he vehemently refused. "If I could let you out twenty times a month, I would, Sasuke," she said. "It's almost therapy, having someone come in every once in a while that I know is going to be alright." It was a mixture between flattery, calling him stronger than the others, and honesty- taking care of dying friends was never easy. Sasuke ignored the first and felt vague sympathy and a twinge of respect for the latter, but neither showed up on his face.

There was a brief pause while he changed out of his hospital gown and into regular clothes, before Sakura, looking discreetly away, broke the silence again. "Hey, you want to go get something to eat later?" she asked, hesitantly, without her old shyness- if he hadn't figured out she liked him yet, he was a little too simple for her- but with a new sort of uncomfortable feeling. In a lot of ways, she was closer to Sasuke than she'd ever been, despite the fact that now, her presence on his and Naruto's missions depended on whether or not there was any need for her in Konoha, which was constantly changing. She didn't see much of the world anymore, and in some ways she was insanely jealous of Naruto, who got to travel from Wave to Sand and back again beside her crush.

And at the same time, she was always waiting for them when they came back. With a smile and an unashamed hug for Sasuke and a mostly-joking insult for Naruto, she made sure they were okay, told them what they had missed, and healed any injuries they'd gotten, in Naruto's case, those that the kyuubi had been unable or unwilling to heal. She'd been put in charge of Team 7's health, and as a result had seen Sasuke at his very worst, torn apart and naked on a hospital bed, in compromising positions she was pretty sure he'd never shown anyone. As a result of that, they had a more complicated relationship than she'd imagined possible. He trusted her, she knew that; she was the first person he came to when he needed help, and yet, whenever he came to her, it was distanced, polite, as if he was willing to get help but never get close. It was like she knew Sasuke on two levels- as a friend, and as a shinobi that she respected and helped but never really knew. She tried to bridge that gap, treated him like a friend whenever he came in to get treatment, but he would never respond.

He turned and glared briefly at her at the invitation, looking annoyed. She swiftly moved to repair the damage done, amending her words. "Naruto can come too, if he wants, just us three. A chance for the team to catch up!"

Sasuke hesitated, then shrugged. "All right," he said, plainly, then walked without another word out of the room, leaving Sakura alone.

She watched him leave, watched the door swing almost closed then hover four inches from the wall, watched the stripe of light from the hall flicker out onto the floor. Watched the shuffle of nurses walking past the white-walled room. "Sasuke," she whispered to no one, the word oddly rhythmical, each syllable like a separate word. She tried to call him back, but he didn't come back. He never had.

An hour later she met Naruto by the lake, tapping his left shoulder from his right side. He had to know she was there- after so many years as a shinobi, he had to have instincts about these things, Hell knew Sasuke had them- but he still, like always, turned to the left and grinned when she chastely hugged him from behind.

"Hey, Sakura," he said, spinning when she released him, brushing the locks of blonde hair from his eyes.

"I haven't talked to you since you came back from the mission, Naruto! You could have at least stuck around after visiting Sasuke and waited to talk to me!"

Naruto grinned and stuck out his tongue, the same way he'd done when they were young. "I didn't want to get in the way," he chided, sarcastically; everyone knew Naruto still got in the way, whenever possible, by whatever means possible.

"Of course not," his teammate replied in the same tone, but she wasn't upset; Naruto hated the hospital, and she knew it. He never went there unless Sasuke was sick, and begged Sakura to come to his apartment when he needed her rather than coming to the melancholy building she worked in.

The blonde smiled and changed the subject to the topic that had been bothering him the whole time. "And speaking of visiting Sasuke, how is he? Did he finally go ahead and die so we don't have to put up with his prickishness anymore?"

"Naruto!"

"Kidding!"

Sakura frowned. "Still..."

"Fine. I'm sorry." Naruto made a face, the same one he always made when everyone's love for Sasuke got the blonde kitsune into trouble, and crossed his arms defensively over his chest. Sakura pouted but forgave him; she had known he was kidding, but it was hard to hear him talking about how much better off they'd be with Sasuke dead when she nearly had a heart attack every time the nurses told her Sasuke was back in.

And when every time this happened, she remembered, years ago, seeing Sasuke shrug her hand off his shoulder and walk away, to join Orochimaru and leave Konoha to rot, and wondered if maybe she was doing Konoha no favors by saving him every time...

That's no way to think, Sakura!

"Sasuke's fine," she said, rolling her eyes in mock exasperation to let the blonde know his crude remarks were forgiven. "He was released from the hospital this afternoon. We're going out to dinner tonight; you're invited." Her tone made it obvious that he wasn't completely welcome, but Naruto, being Naruto, missed it and immediately brightened at the prospect of a night on the town with his old best friends.

"Awesome!" he yelled, loud enough that a few screaming blackbirds rose from the reeds. The two shinobi paused to watch them, and when she turned back, Naruto was grinning enthusiastically. "Hey, Sakura! Kiba said there's going to be an Anbu exam soon!"

"I've heard that," the other replied, silently cursing Kiba's stupid, loud mouth to hell. Of course, Kiba hadn't known better than to comment, he didn't know anything because Tsunade hadn't wanted Sakura to tell anyone, but that didn't make it better.

Naruto didn't notice the odd expression on her face and in her voice. He was too excited. "Me and Sasuke had to go on a mission the last Anbu exam, but this time, I just got back from a mission and Sasuke can get out of getting a new one by just using Sharingan enough and working up the curse! We'll finally graduate from Chuunin!"

Sakura smiled wanly. "Good luck." She wouldn't be taking the exam; she'd been a Jounin for a year, now, like almost everyone else in their grade level.

"Luck? Sakura, we've been Chuunin forever!" Naruto was wearing his most confident smile, shoving blonde hair of his eyes as he tumbled down in his excitement. "We're better than most of the Jounin- not you, of course- and we're more than ready to finally move up!"

The medic-nin smiled. "I know," she said, thankful that her teammate was either too thick to hear the sadness in her voice or unwilling to show it if he did.

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Tsunade shrugged and nervously shuffled a pile of papers on her desk. "Frankly, Sakura," she said quietly, speaking, to all appearances, directly to her desk, "I have no idea what we're going to do about this exam. Too many missions and it'll become suspicious."

"You're going to let them compete?" Sakura looked up from the raven lying stretched out on the steel table in front of her, broad wings bandaged and a stripe of red slowly scarring over. She had gotten good enough to heal almost every human patient, but a lot of the harder animals she also worked on, even though she was really less of an apprentice now than a full-fledged medic-nin- the raven belonged to an Anbu shinobi who used them to scout ahead and spy on enemies and usually had about four or five on her person. The huge bird cawed hoarsely at being ignored and the rose-haired ninja turned back to it with a small smile for its obnoxious behavior.

Tsunade shrugged, watching her pupil carefully, taking inventory of even the smallest mistakes to correct the moment it occurred. "I don't know. We might have to."

"I think you should."

"That goes to show- don't cut there, Sakura, it's too close to the artery."

"It's a good half-inch from the artery, Tsunade, and I know what I'm doing." The bird seemed uncomfortable but its entire body was numbed so it didn't feel the scalpel running down the side of its neck, deep enough that Sakura could see a little bit of metal that had broken off the kunai on impact. She grabbed a pair of sterilized pliers to lift it from the skin and feathers. "Do you trust them?"

"Pardon?"

"You know what I'm talking about, Tsunade." Even as she dropped the bloody bit of steel on the table, the cut she'd made and the cut the kunai had left was sticking together and scarring over; healing such tiny cuts barely caused a ripple in her chakra if she did it just right. "People are still talking about Sasuke, he's the infamous traitor of Konoha. And Naruto..."

"What would Konoha do if a demon joined the top ranks of shinobi?" Tsunade sighed and passed her hand over her face, smoothing out the locks of hair draping in her face. "I don't understand. Gaara could become Hokage, but Naruto becomes Chuunin and I have shinobi telling me if he makes it any higher they'll lead a rebellion and have me overthrown."

Sakura frowned and checked the bone growth in the corvid's broken wings. The left one was almost completely healed; the right one was knitting at the highest calcium deposits but it would take another couple minutes, even with her attention. "The Sand country," she said at last, thoughtfully, "is barely a country. They're just developing, they don't have the customs and regulations that the Fire Country has and Gaara doesn't break standard because there is no standard." She began removing the bandage from the left wing, which was now completely healed, and continued, "And I don't think the shukaku tried to destroy their city."

"I thought you wanted me to let them compete, Sakura."

The pink-haired shinobi shrugged. "I do. But... I understand how the people of Konoha think, too." She sighed and ran her finger down the soft feathers of her patient's wing, watching with a strange inner sense the healing bone fluctuate with her touch. "A few years ago, they loved Sasuke, like no one else."

"They still love him. Just not the idea of him with power of any kind within the barriers of this city." The sarcastic comment was emphasized with a dry shrug, and Tsunade, delaying some of the dreaded paperwork that came with being a Hokage, picked up a blue pen and poked at a torpid fly on the edge of her desk, trying to coax it off the surface.

Her doors rattled with a loud knock, startling Sakura although long practice kept her shock from interfering with her healing. "The hell is it?" she barked, forgetting for a second that this wasn't her office and snapping at guests was Tsunade's job.

The door swung open enough to admit a shaggy brunette head. "You wanted to see me, Tsunade?"

"Yeah. Come in, Kiba. You can stay, Sakura."

"I should hope so. I'm in the middle of this." Sakura was glad to see Kiba; Iruka and Hinata, along with a couple other of her peers, couldn't handle the sight of animals in pain or blood and didn't like watching her work, though Kiba seemed just fine with it. She supposed after a lifetime of paper-training baby siblings the Inuzuba clan as a whole was difficult to disgust.

"You have a mission for us, Hokage-sama?" Despite the title, the question was majorly informal, as was Kiba's pose as he flopped down in the chair opposing Tsunade's desk. Kiba's 'team' had been broken when Hinata had left it to become a teacher, joining Lee, Shikamaru and Chouji in training to be the next generation of team leaders. He and Shino had joined with Neji and Ino, while TenTen became an ambassador to the Wave Country, on her own.

Kiba had grown taller and a little broader, his hair hanging down in curled knots to his earlobes, a shaggy, half-shaved beard defining his jaw. Akamaru was a little bigger but, aside from being a little older, was more-or-less unchanged, but he did have a rival, a little reddish shiba inu, named, cleverly, Kyuubi, who was technically Shino's dog- a gift from Kiba- but followed the canine-nin as much as the Aburame.

"I do," Tsunade said with a wry smile. Sakura wasn't listening as her mentor detailed Kiba's mission; she wrapped up her healing and slowly lowered the concentration of the sedatives in the raven's bloodstream, using a faint stream of chakra to stimulate the white blood cells into attacking the drugs. The bird bobbed its head groggily, sensation returning to its limbs, and, with the pink-haired shinobi's help, slowly got to its feet.

"I should take the bird home," she told Tsunade, who broke off her tirade to Kiba about keeping Akamaru from marking his territory and giving away their position to any other shinobi who might be able to enhance their smell to nod once in her direction.

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With a massive, jaw-stretching yawn, Naruto collapsed backwards onto his couch, his head in the corner between the arm and the back, his eyes half-closed. It had been another lazy day between-missions, during which he perhaps should have been training but he didn't want to. Relatively stress-free, when one forgot about his second visit to the hospital. Which was hard to do when he was visiting Sasuke in the hospital and Sasuke was never far enough from his thoughts to be considered 'forgotten.'

And right on cue, his front door swung open and the Uchiha walked in, brushing his bangs out of his eyes with two pale fingers. He looked over at the couch, the blonde hair and orange clothing catching his gaze, smiled and waved lazily. Even after inviting Naruto to come live with him- discreetly as possible, given, but they hadn't been found out yet- he was still sometimes surprised by his lover's presence in his home.

"Hey, Sasuke," the blonde said. He didn't ask if the Uchiha was alright, because Sasuke hated being asked if he was alright, he hated being reminded that there was a reason why he wouldn't be alright. He was out of the hospital, so he was fine; outside of the sterilized white walls, there was nothing wrong with him, no such thing as a curse seal and a man named Orochimaru had never come within a hundred feet of him.

But Naruto knew otherwise and, when the taller man crossed the distance between them and leaned down to kiss him, he could taste his lover's need, just short of desperate, for normalcy, for comfort in the disguise of anything but comfort, and gave what he could. Their tongues rubbed against each other, delved into each other's mouths, pulled back only slowly and hesitantly, so both boys could breathe. Sasuke's dark eyes were half-closed, and Naruto stopped everything for one second just to love the way his long lashes almost obscured the heat beneath them. He loved Sasuke's eyes.

The black-haired shinobi clambered on top of him slowly, his legs balanced on either side of his lover's waist. Naruto wriggled to prop his shoulders on the arm of the couch, grinning slightly at the way Sasuke's breath hitched when his kitsune moved under him.

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Sasuke's chest was warm and his breathing had synchronized to his lover's; the blonde splayed over him, hands buried under his shirt. Naruto's eyelids felt heavy and he let them fall.

Only to be suddenly very aware of red-gold eyes staring over his shoulder, boring into the back of his head, glued to his back. Slit-pupil red eyes in the back of his mind.

His own eyes flew open again, and caught sight of the clock. That, more than the sensation of being watched, which still lingered even though the eyes were gone, was what made him panic and flail, falling off Sasuke's chest and landing on a heap on the floor.

"Something wrong?" Sasuke asked, tiredly and a little sarcastically.

"The time." Naruto scrambled upright, grabbed his pants, regarded them, then threw them aside; they couldn't be called 'clean' even in a twenty-one-year-old bachelor's mind. "We were supposed to meet Sakura over an hour ago!"

Sasuke sat bolt upright, glanced over at the clock, and winced. He hadn't exactly been looking forward to meeting Sakura but he would really, really prefer not to piss her off, not when Team 7 had only been in the city for two days now. "Well, shit," he said simply.

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E/N: A lemon in the second chapter? Well, what can I say. I have no self-control. Which is good, 'cause I write about boys with no self-control, and you're supposed to write about what you know. If'n you want to read the less edited version of the chapter, a link to my AFF account is on my profile. If it doesn't work, tell me; those links screw up twice a week. x/ All reviews are appreciated, of course.