Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading and reviewing. Thank you for helping this to be the first fan-fiction that I have ever finished! Yay! Break out the bubbly! I want to especially thank Greenaceofspades, Dashel, Ashley, Zentau, and maxridelover for their wonderful reviews of chapter 12. Thank you also to Darkhellia666 and Stormingnight for their ongoing support. Thank you again, to everyone who has been reading, the reviews you write are what makes me jump on my computer after medical school every day to write instead of watching TV or other mindless activities. Keep your eyes on my profile for the sequel, Peace for Traitors! It is going to be intense and that is all I will say (winks). Now, without further adieu...our conclusion.

Tsunade was enjoying a quiet morning by herself. She had been awake early, stirring just after dawn, but the bone weary sadness that comes from endless tension had been mercifully absent. For once in a very long time, peace with Sound seemed to be on the horizon. Color seemed to have returned to life, the looming pain of war softened with the promise of was laughter in the market again as the tiny spark of hope spread through the desperate tinder of Konoha. The village of Sound was sending a delegation to discuss the terms of a mutual truce, now that their heir had been found, and fire country had already signed a pledge of peace. No new council members murdered in the night. No new battle dead were rotting in the morgue. Even Hiashi Hyuuga had quieted his endless bitching about the danger Naruto represented to the village. Tsunade smiled, apparently even the idiots were taking a break. The Hokage felt like she could finally breathe again. There was a crisp chill in the air and so she had lit a cheerful fire in her fireplace and was considering asking Kakashi over for tea.

Tsunade had only added a single cap of brandy to her tea when she heard the frantic pounding on her door. She sighed heavily, wondering what new 'concern' the council had cooked up to bother her with this time. She rose, reluctantly abandoning the half strength tea, and opened the door. Tsunade gasped at the sight waiting for her there.

Sasuke Uchiha, the perpetual bane of her ruling existence, stood in the portal as if he might collapse at any moment. The youth was coated in blood, his dark kimono torn and still smoking in some places. His face was bruised and he was trembling so violently that his teeth were chattering. He panted a bit before swallowing hard and falling to his knees.

"Help...Please...Naruto...Sakura." Sasuke managed to choke out between rasping breaths.

"Wait! What? What's happened to Naruto and Sakura?" Tsunade urged, icy fear coiling in her gut.

"Madara...Tried to take Kyuubi. Please, they are hurt." Sasuke managed, swallowing again.

"They sent you?" Tsunade asked, raising an eyebrow. Sasuke shook his head.

"They are too...too injured to come...please, hurry!" He hissed, a bit of anger leaking into his expression.

"Fine. I'm coming." The Hokage said, as she left the warmth of her home to follow one of her greatest enemies out into the snow.

OoOoOoO

Naruto's wounds were not healing. The blood still oozed from the gashes in his chest and his broken wrist hung limply in the leather strap she had used to bind it. She was crying, the tears blurring her vision as she tried to convince her bruised, broken fingers to properly tie the tourniquets. She felt within, seeking the link, but felt nothing. Nothing except the pain of her wounds and the darkness on the edges of her vision, as blood loss threatened to drag her into unconsciousness. Sasuke had managed to disrupt the ritual, kicking the candles out of alignment as he finished off Madara. Sakura prayed that he hadn't been too late.

The filthy corpse of Madara Uchiha lay slumped over in the snow where Sasuke had killed him. Even as a blackened mass of burned flesh, the man had been hard to take down. The lightening attack Sasuke used would have easily dispatched a lesser enemy, but even with his chakra channels scorched beyond recognition, the unholy terror had still been moving. Sakura gagged a bit at the memory and knew she would never be able to forget it. Sasuke had torn himself away from the older Uchiha's grip to spit fire at him, burning whatever flesh the lightening had spared, but the ancient monster had still managed to attack him. He had been hardly more than blackened bones in the end, clawed fingers still reaching for Sasuke's throat even without the muscle to move them. Worse than any nightmare and made even more gruesome in the bright light of morning. In the end, Sasuke had decapitated Madara with his own sword, messily, thrashing like a serpent in the snow. Now made black with the ash of charred flesh. She tried not to think about the way the single sharingan eye had burned in that ruined skull. How Madara had lived so long was a mystery to her, one the girl never wanted to solve. Sakura decided that she was going to pulverize the rest of the corpse to powder as soon as she recovered...just to be sure.

The ninja bent on raping her had been so startled by Sasuke's lightening that she had been able to kill two of them before the blue light even ceased. To kill them had been so easy, she was so angry, so close to completely losing control. Their touch, so rough, so dirty, made her feel like her very soul was writhing in disgust. If Sasuke hadn't saved them...she shuddered, feeling unclean. She might have killed more if she could have blocked the emotions away and analyzed their positions strategically. Instead, she had merely sprang upon them like a rabid animal and by the time she had finished tearing out the throat of her third kill, the others were gone. Her clothing was torn and there were bruises on her breasts, but they had not managed to violate her. The others, confused by Sasuke's evident betrayal, had made good their escape. She wanted to follow them, to kill them all, but Sakura was badly injured with wounds too sluggish to heal.

Sakura was too tired to chase them once the adrenaline seeped from her blood. She was too tired even to stand. Her wounds screamed, still leaking fresh blood into the snow as she crawled to Naruto. At least on the outside, the jinchuuriki was not severely injured but she could not hear his heart at all. Beneath the closed eyelids, Naruto's azure eyes were dull and unresponsive. He looked dead. Sasuke had checked for a pulse, and been unable to find one. The absolute horror in his eyes was not something Sakura thought she or anyone else would ever see. Naruto had used up everything to thwart the attack, but Madara's little trap had almost worked.

Kyuubi was not laying waste to everything around them and so the ritual had obviously failed, but whether or not Naruto had survived the attempt was not certain. The jinchuuriki's heart had been still in his chest when Sakura finally managed to crawl over to him. She had forced Sasuke to shock him with his lightening technique, but that kind of energy was very hard to control. The raven haired ninja was terrified that the electricity meant to save had been too great and ended up destroying Naruto's heart instead. Sakura had been terrified to use it, to use a lightning combat maneuver as a defibrillator was totally insane, beyond desperate. Sasuke told her so, told her that it was madness, raking his bloodied fingers through his hair as he shouted at her that it would never work. Despite the risk, Sakura knew that it was Naruto's only chance. A terrible chance they had to take or Naruto would never survive. The brain could barely survive minutes without blood and Naruto had been down and silent for at least 90 seconds. Too long, it was too long. Sasuke had delivered shock after shock to restart the stubborn organ and there were electrical burns on Naruto's chest. Sakura pressed her ear to the burned flesh, again desperately searching for his heartbeat. She could not bear it if he died. She had felt a pulse after the last volley of electricity, but it had been so faint...so faint.

Sasuke had gone to find help and once alone Sakura could not hold back the tears. She cried and breathed for Naruto and pumped his chest when she found the strength. He was dying, dying right here with her and she could do nothing to save him. Sakura could not tell if he was breathing on his own. Was that flutter a heartbeat or merely her own pulse pounding through her shattered fingers? What would she do without him? What would Sasuke do? The thought terrified her because Sasuke could easily leave without a single word or burn everything and everyone to the ground in his grief. Sasuke's emotions were still an alien force within his heart, something he viewed as foreign shameful. Something he had no idea how to control or embrace. Without Naruto to confront him, to accept him, to love him...

There were footsteps in the snow and suddenly Tsunade was standing above her, dragging a unsteady looking Sasuke by the scruff of his kimono. Sakura tried to rub the tears from her eyes, but only succeeded in smearing the blood across her face.

"Sensei, sensei please..." She sobbed.

"Come on now Haruno, pull it together." Tsunade barked.

Sakura took a deep breath and nodded, trying to still the trembling of her fingers. Tsunade grabbed Naruto's wrist, her eyes closed, feeling intently. Sasuke collapsed in a gasping heap to her right, looking too young and too desperate, nothing like the chilly warrior he was. Tsunade finally nodded.

"The pulse is there. His heart is beating, but too slow, too weak..." The Hokage muttered, hunting around in her bag.

"Will he live?" Sasuke whispered.

"Do you care?" Tsunade asked, raising a single perfect eyebrow.

"Yes. Please save him." Sasuke said, gritting his teeth, sharingan eyes whirling.

"Sensei, he has lost a lot of blood." Sakura whispered.

"I brought more, get a line in. We will give him a nutrient injection to, his chakra is too low. " Tsunade ordered, her teeth tight on the needle cap as she prepared a syringe.

Sakura nodded in relief and carefully threaded a long needle into Naruto's vein, searching expertly for patent flow. She was working. She could do this. Tsunade administered a dose of atropine and Naruto moaned softly, his heartbeat stronger with each passing moment. Sakura wiped the tears away again and applied bandages to his wounds. Sasuke knelt beside them and she didn't miss how he was holding Naruto's hand, how he never once let it go.

OoOoOoO

"So, our little oni will live?" Shizune asked softly.

"Hai, though not for lack of trying to die, that is damn sure." Tsunade said with a sigh.

"But he is stable?"

"Yes. I gave him enough blood to make three more men and enough soldier pills to sustain an entire army, but he is finally breathing rhythmically on his own. He is starting to heal the way a jinchuuriki should."

"Was the demon taken?" Shizune asked, concerned.

"No. Kyuubi is still secure, as is Sasuke, though I have no idea why the little bastard didn't just leave when he had the chance. In this state, Naruto has no power over him." Tsunade muttered crossly.

"I'm not so sure about that."

"Please, Shizune. The thrall is only as good as the alpha and Naruto has been on the brink of death for almost an entire day. Sasuke could have gone at any time. I was certainly too occupied to stop him."

"Oh, no. I believe you about the thrall. I just don't think that the jinchuuriki influence is the only thing holding Sasuke by Naruto's side." The medical nin said with a mysterious little smile.

"Your game is boring me. What the hell do you mean?" Tsunade asked crossly.

"Can't you tell?" Shizune teased.

The woman gestured to where Naruto rested in the hospital bed, Sakura asleep beside him. Tsunade has railed at her for refusing to sleep in her own bed, but Sakura had merely laid down beside Naruto and the Hokage did not have the heart to move her. The hospital bed was really too small for two, but they slept comfortably nonetheless. Sasuke was sitting by their bed, resting his arms against the mattress. Sometime in the night he had nodded off, draped over Naruto's sleeping body, his dark head rested against the jinchuuriki's belly. Even in slumber there was an energy about the three of them, a connectedness. It was there in the way Sakura's hand cupped Sasuke's skull, in the way she nuzzled Naruto's shoulder. A kind of need in the way Sasuke covered Naruto's body with his own, loving and protective. A strength present in how Naruto had turned towards them, even in deeply sedated sleep, curling around Sasuke's shoulders. A kind of wordless affection, deeper even than romance, tying each to the others. Tsunade chuckled.

"Yes, I suppose so." She sighed.

"He loves him and he loves Sakura. That is why he stays. I think that Sasuke Uchiha may finally have learned how to live." Shizune said, sounding a bit amazed.

"Yes, perhaps so. I hope so. I hope they are strong together, my best student deserves nothing less." Tsunade chuckled, her eyes lingering on the bandages wrapped around the girl's hands, "Haruno, how is she now?"

"The same as when you asked five minutes ago. Her wounds are healing quickly, though it is too early to say if she will ever be as dextrous as she was. Her career as a surgeon may be over, but I don't think so. She heals faster than anyone I have ever seen, her bond to Naruto perhaps. If anyone can overcome this, it will be her." Shizune said, smiling softly.

"Good. I need her hands. This damn war may be ending, but the violence is far from over. That silly girl has thrust herself into a world of chaos far more dangerous than she realizes. Hiashi is already plotting and Kami only knows who else. They will challenge Naruto in any way that they can, especially now that Sasuke shares his bond. Everyone fears his power, fears what might happen if the Uzumaki clan were to rise to the level of the great Uchiha. Not to mention the fact that Sasuke has made his own horde of enemies. Clan politics are never easy, even for those who understand how the game is played. She was not raised to be a matriarch. Sakura doesn't have the slightest idea what kind of turmoil is waiting just outside these doors." Tsunade whispered, grimly.

"Turmoil you say?" Shizune mused, gazing to where the three lovers slept and healed, "Looks very peaceful to me."

Fin