A/N: For those of you that wanted a bit more closure and a little more of an explanation of how things came to be.

Epilogue I: How We Got Here

Sasuke trudged along the dirt path, just barely resisting the urge to drag his feet. Not because he was tired or moping or anything childish like that, of course, but because escort missions tended to be either very dull or very tedious, and this one had managed to accomplish both at once. So when his team finally walked through Konoha's gates after an excruciating ten days, he couldn't help but feel relieved at the sight of the village. Once upon a time, Sasuke never thought he'd view returning to Konoha as something to inspire that sort of emotion, but it was happening with more and more frequency as of late.

"Man," Shikamaru sighed. "I really hate nobles."

To his left, he saw Neji stiffen. Whether or not this was because he found the statement offensive or secretly agreed with it was anyone's guess.

"I'm sure we've arrived just in time to be assigned another escorting job, too," Shikamaru added.

Both of Shikamaru's teammates remained silent, which elicited another weary sigh from the shadow-nin. Sasuke had long come to suspect that as much as Shikamaru complained, the teen clearly preferred the company of noisier companions—whether or not this consisted of nagging or general chatter didn't seem to matter much.

"Perhaps," Neji said, obviously uninterested but more willing than Sasuke to fill the silence. After finally being promoted to chunin—although really, every concession the village made for him seemed to be on a very conditional basis—Sasuke found that he preferred the Hyuga's company over the rest of the Konoha Twelve. He thanked his lucky stars that the Sandaime seemed to pick up on this, too: a large portion of his missions nowadays had him paired with Neji. Of course, that was probably because Neji was the only jonin of the group... and the only one who could give him a run for his money.

"Hey, Shikamaru!" Izumo waved as he stood up from his chair at the guard booth. Next to him, Kotetsu appeared to be dozing off. "Hey, Neji! Welcome back!"

Neji gave quick nod in affirmation, and Shikamaru waved back. Izumo made no move to acknowledge Sasuke's presence, and he in turn made no move to acknowledge Izumo's.

In many ways, Sasuke was lucky. Much of what had transpired two years ago had gone unnoticed by the majority of the population. This wasn't much of a surprise. After all, what was Konoha's government good for outside of cover-up jobs?

Those who did know some details of what had happened fluctuated between resentment and cold acceptance, but for the most part, the shinobi involved respected the Hokage's decision on the matter. At least, they "respected" Sasuke's status in the same way Danzo "respected" Sarutobi's continued existence. Because, you know, of course Konoha wouldn't let someone make repeated attempts on the Hokage's life without a single sanction or investigation outside of "Was that you? No? Oh well, I guess we don't really have any proof. Please, continue on with your obviously shady business and classified ROOT operations!"

The resentment was understandable, at least. To the naked eye, Sasuke could see how it might come across as if he had gotten off with a quick smack and a stern warning, but in all likelihood, Sasuke would never experience the level of freedom and trust his associates were granted. And Danzo was always going to be there, waiting for the right opportunity.

It didn't really matter, though. There were more important things to worry about.

Sasuke's reverie was broken when he noticed Neji suddenly stiffen up and freeze in place; they had already made it some distance into the village, it seemed. Following the Hyuga's line of sight, Sasuke looked up to see a flash of red hair.

Sasuke couldn't hold in his laughter as Neji visibly relaxed: it had taken him a few seconds to realize the hair did not belong to a certain someone.

"You don't have to worry about Karin anymore," Sasuke said, partly because he was in a good mood and partly to distract his teammates from the fact that he had expressed an emotion other than apathy. (That really wouldn't do.)

Neji gave him a questioning look. Sasuke gave him a questioning look back.

One, two, three, four, five...

Neji turned to Shikamaru.

"Karin left a few weeks ago," Shikamaru answered, giving Sasuke a very put-out look. "It took some time, but she finally managed to wear Shizune down. It's a blessing, really... Karin's been insufferable since Sakura left."

"Ah," Neji seemed much more at ease with this news. Karin must have really done a number on him... "That's... good. Shizune, you said? I didn't realize she was in the market for an apprentice."

"Oh, she wasn't," Shikamaru said. "Karin is nothing if not persistent, though. And she does have a talent for healing. She soaked up everything Anko knew about poisons like a sponge, too, so the match makes sense. Tsunade's not looking to pick up another apprentice, after all."

No, she certainly wasn't, Sasuke noted bitterly. Damn it—why hadn't he thought of Shizune? Sasuke shook off the thought: there was no use in worrying about it now. It didn't matter anymore, and all things considered, everything had worked out for the best.

As they reached fork in the road that led down to the Uchiha district, Neji handed him a scroll. "Reports are due in the morning."

"Later, Sasuke."

Sasuke smelled something cooking the moment the opened the door to his house.

"Welcome home, Sasuke."

Itachi didn't look up as he entered; he was standing at the stove, fully concentrated on the task at hand. Sasuke eyed his brother warily—was that a new apron?

"Are you hungry?"

"Hn."

Dinner conversation was stilted, as usual. Itachi questioned him about his mission, while Sasuke made a game of seeing how many monosyllabic responses he could get away with and resisted asking why the apron Itachi was wearing happened to be bright pink.

"How was your week?"

"Fine," Itachi said. After a brief pause, he added, "I've recently started knitting."

Of course.

"I see," Sasuke nodded.

After Higurashi's sudden appearance and equally sudden disappearance, things had been... different.

For one, Itachi was now a permanent fixture at the Uchiha residence. There was no use in trying to get a straight answer from his brother, as he either changed the subject or completely ignored any questions regarding the matter, but Sasuke knew it had something to do with Danzo.

All that mattered now was that, evidently, the ruse was up and Itachi's new plans seemed to consist of preparing all of Sasuke's meals, general menial labor and, if the amount of birdhouses they now owned was any indication, perfecting the art of woodcrafting.

And knitting, apparently.

He sometimes wondered how easy it had been to drop his Akatsuki activities: hadn't Itachi been some sort of spy, at least at one point? Apparently, Itachi must have come to the conclusion that it was more important for Sasuke to have a permanent babysitter and Danzo-oriented scarecrow than to help out Konoha.

As Sasuke watched Itachi collect the dishes, he wondered if his brother was really happy. He couldn't possibly be, could he? The perfect example of a shinobi, confined like this... it couldn't be long before he went completely stir-crazy. And Itachi never did things in halves...

No, he couldn't be happy. Not the way he was, not after everything he had gone through...
Not while he was still dying.

Sasuke rattled the handle—once, twice, three times—and pushed his weight into the door. When it finally opened, he quickly covered his mouth as a cloud of dust washed over him.

How there was still so much dust everywhere was beyond him. After all, they met here at least once a week—when they weren't on missions, that was—and had been doing so for longer than Sasuke could remember.

The stairs creaked, too, as Sasuke made his way down into the basement. The noise gave his presence away immediately, and he heard Naruto before he saw him.

"Sasuke, Sasuke! You're back—Just in time, too!"

Naruto standing at the center of the room in front of a large table, bent over and staring intently at a very impressive array of scrolls. Sasuke never thought he'd see the day when Naruto of all people would be interested in reading of any sort, but evidently all it took were the words "secret" and "forbidden."

And a little patience, of course.

"Did you get them?" Sasuke asked.

"Yeah, I got them!" Naruto grinned. "What do you take me for, some kind of amateur?"

"Hn," Sasuke dismissed, attention focused solely on the scrolls on the table.

They were old, unfamiliar, most definitely forbidden, and at one point, had belonged to Orochimaru. Sasuke doubted he'd be able to do much with them personally, but that was okay, for now.

At first, Sasuke hadn't been sure if this was the right avenue to take. It was safe to say that anything involving Orochimaru should probably be avoided, and this was especially true if Naruto was going to be along for the ride. Sasuke had been deadly serious in his vow to keep Naruto, well, sane.

And he would, but first, there was something much more pressing to attend to: Itachi.

Itachi, who was alive and slowly dying from a disease that even the best medic-nins claimed could not be cured. It was only after Sasuke had realized the gravity of the situation that fear had gripped him, and he couldn't help but rage at the injustice of it all. Was watching his brother slowly succumb to illness, completely helpless to do anything about it, really better than what had occurred in his own world?

Sasuke had, in a bout of desperation and impulsiveness, attempted to convince Tsunade—the very best of all available medic-nins—to take him under her tutelage.

And Sakura had seen to it that this plan failed spectacularly.

She had always been eager to prove herself, and even now, he would likely never reach the same level of precise chakra control as Sakura. Sasuke hated to admit it, but she really was much more suited for the role.

Sasuke had no idea what the Sakura of his world was like at this age: he hadn't known her at all, but he suspected that this Sakura was less trusting and far colder than the one in his time. Frankly, he wasn't sure what pushed her towards Tsunade more: her desire to prove that she was as good as the rest of her teammates, or her desire to get away from Team Seven.

It really wasn't a surprise that as soon as Tsunade had entered the picture, Sakura had jumped at the chance to go off and train with someone else. Now that he thought about it, Sakura hadn't expressed an interest in anything medical until after Sasuke had. Maybe swiping the apprenticeship opportunity out from under him was Sakura's way of getting back at him, in the end, with the added benefit of proving her worth.

All in all, Sakura apprenticing with the wandering sannin had ended up being a good thing. Nowadays, she was away more often than not, and every time she returned, Sakura seemed to remember more of the good and less of the bad.

Maybe now they were finally even.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Sasuke resumed eyeing the scrolls on the table. The more they searched, the more they seemed to be gravitating away from the idea of actually curing the disease and more towards the idea of simply… stopping it from progressing any further.

"..So that's why he recommended we stick with these, you know, they're kinda related to that stasis jutsu he showed us earlier..."

..Huh? Had Naruto been talking this whole time?

"Y'know... that thing he uses to keep people in comatose states. Except it's not a coma, just a stasis of sorts."

Oh, right…

"So I was thinking! What if we could find some way to do the same thing, but on a smaller scale?"

Sasuke gave him a blank look. Sometimes he wondered if maybe it was a bad thing Naruto hadn't gone off with Jiraiya for the last two years… What had happened with the Akatsuki, anyway?

"The disease. Putting the disease in stasis. I mean, why doesn't a jutsu like that exist?"

"I don't know…" Sasuke said. "I guess you could, in theory, try to apply the same type of stasis jutsu on a virus or bacterial infection, if that's what was making someone ill. But Itachi…" Sasuke sighed, "The phrase 'disease' covers an awful lot, Naruto. It's not as simple as it sounds."

"Well, whatever," Naruto rolled his eyes. "But everything starts in theory supposedly, right? So what if we could freeze what's killing Itachi, but without freezing the rest of him too? Hey!" Naruto said excitedly, "Wouldn't that make him immortal?"

Sasuke shrugged.

"So… in theory," Naruto accompanied this statement with exaggerated air-quotes, "Couldn't you do the same thing to normal cells... you know, put them in stasis... so that they're frozen in time, too..?"

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Why wouldn't you?" Naruto said. "I mean, okay, I know you're always sayin' it's way more complicated and I take things too literally but if we could find a jutsu that stops a disease from gettin' worse by freezing it, couldn't we stop other things from getting worse, too?"

"Like what?"

"I dunno. Your hair turning grey... getting wrinkles... or maybe aging at all!"

This made Sasuke slightly uncomfortable, all things considered…

"Hey!" Naruto snapped his fingers. "Maybe that Tsunade lady has already discovered it and that's why she's still so young!"

"Yep," Sasuke agreed, immediately feeling better, "That must be it." After a moment, he added, "It's not like this even matters, since we haven't found anything like that at all anyway. If it were that easy, it would already have been done."

"You're quite right, Sasuke-kun."

Startled, they both turned towards the entrance before relaxing at the sight of the man entering.

"Oh, hey, Kabuto-sensei," Naruto said. After a few seconds, his face lit up. "Oh, actually! I've been waiting for you to get here—there's something really awesome I wanted to show you!"

"Oh?"

Something he wanted to share with Kabuto-sensei, huh?

"You didn't mention anything like that to me, Naruto." For some reason, that really annoyed him.

"Yeah, yeah, well, it's not exactly related to Itachi, I mean, probably… So I figured you wouldn't interested…"

"Whatever…"

"Don't be so sore, Sasuke." Kabuto smiled. "We'll be back in a bit."

Sasuke grunted in response, refusing to look up from the stack of scrolls until they both left the room.

This was far from the first time Naruto had referred to Kabuto as sensei, of course, but it managed to irritate him every time nevertheless. Of course, Kabuto wasn't really their sensei—Kakashi still held that title. After all, the three of them got along well enough nowadays, after Sasuke had finally worked up the courage to apologize.

Well, sort of.

It had gone something like this:

"…"

Sasuke and Kakashi both stood in the clearing, painfully aware of the absence of the rest of the team.

"So…" Sasuke coughed lightly. This was… harder than he thought it would be…

And Kakashi looked about ready to leave…

"..I can show you how to use Chidori stream."

Kakashi stopped moving, a mixture of surprise and confusion evident on what little Sasuke could see of his face.

"If you were interested, that is." With that, Sasuke looked away, thoroughly out of his comfort zone.

The silence stretched on long enough that Sasuke was sure the older man was just going to teleport away without a word, but finally, Kakashi gave him a tight (and probably fake) smile.

"Sure."

They never talked about it after that—although come to think of it, they didn't speak much at all outside of mission details—but Sasuke preferred it that way. Team Seven, sans Sakura, was at least able to function and even train together. Sure, there was still a whole lot of silence, but it wasn't the unbearable kind and that was more than Sasuke could have hoped for.

The point was, Kabuto was certainly not their sensei, however invaluable he might be.

In the end, Sasuke was simply not willing to believe that Itachi's disease was incurable. Everyone else may have thought so—even Tsunade—and maybe a cure didn't currently exist. And hell, maybe a cure would never be obtained through purely ethical means, but Sasuke refused to accept that an early death was inevitable.

So that was that. Sasuke would never trust Kabuto, and he was positive that the man had an ulterior reason for sticking around, but the fact remained that Sasuke had never needed to trust someone in order to use them. Orochimaru was gone—gone, but brilliant, and Kabuto knew many of his secrets. Even better, he was familiar and easily accessible.

Oddly enough, it was Karin of all people that had reintroduced them. The redhead would simply not stop bitching about his presence in the village. Apparently, her decision to go turncoat and spill everything she knew about Orochimaru's activities had not resulted in Kabuto receiving any form of sanction.

He could understand her frustration to an extent: it was a little strange that Orochimaru's right-hand man was still acting as a Konoha shinobi. Sasuke figured this was simply yet another situation in which he was missing some key information; all he really knew was that Orochimaru was gone, and with his master permanently out of the picture, Kabuto seemed more than willing to start sharing information.

...Come to think of it, Kabuto seemed to have details about the specifics of Orochimaru's disappearance, too. Was it possible that Kabuto had been there, that night...?

A crash from the other room startled Sasuke out of his thoughts.

Great… Naruto better not have broken anything.

Irritated, Sasuke stalked towards the entrance to the other room, and instantly froze when he saw Naruto. The blonde was kneeling, both hands placed on the floor over a large set of seals. They didn't seem to be on a scroll, though—had he drawn them straight onto the ground?

The seals weren't what bothered Sasuke, though. He was much more concerned with the cursed seal being activated.

"Naruto," Sasuke spat, slamming the door wide open as he stalked in, "We talked about this, you shouldn't be doing that—"

"Ugh, come on," Naruto groaned, immediately removing his hands from the seal. "Look, I know you said that but Sasuke, you're being a killjoy. Don't you want to cure Itachi?"

"That has nothing to do with—"

"Look," Naruto interrupted, "Just watch!"

Without another word, Naruto placed his hands back on the seal, his chakra instantly flaring wildly.

"This is what it does when the cursed seal is activated..." There was a bright flash as the lights in the room flickered.

"And this is what it does with regular chakra—", Out of the corner of his eye, Sasuke watched as Kabuto discreetly exited the room, a soft smirk on his face as he closed the door behind him, "—and this is what it does with Ninetails chakra—"

The room was beginning to spin. "Wait, since when—"

"And—this—can—do—"

Sasuke couldn't hear him over the roaring in his ears.

"—with—"

Without thinking, Sasuke leaned forward, grabbing Naruto's arm, intent on dragging him away from the seal.

"—chakra—"

His world went black.

"Wake up! Wake up, Sasuke, you gotta see this!"

"What..?"

Bleary-eyed and groggy—God, this really was his life nowadays—Sasuke begrudgingly opened his eyes, hissing when he stared straight into the sun.

Wait. Why were they outside?

"Look!" Naruto said, roughly tugging him to his feet. Sasuke stumbled as he righted himself, watching in confusion as Naruto pointed excitedly off into the distance.

"Tell me! What do you see?"

Frowning, Sasuke squinted. They were, well, outside. The area looked familiar: by the looks of it, they were still in Konoha, judging by the trees and the mountains in the distance…

Wait... the mountains...

"Is that... is that the Hokage monument?"

"Heck yeah it is!" Naruto was grinning wildly. "Holy cow, Sasuke! This is so awesome. Did I do that, seriously?"

Yeah. Yeah, that was the Hokage monument.

Except there was no Hokage monument to speak of.

That mountain range, though? Sasuke definitely recognized it.

"YOU CAN SHOVE YOUR SHARINGAN UP YOUR ASS, SASUKE, BECAUSE THIS IS WAY COOLER!"

What the fuck was going on? What—No, this was ridiculous. Naruto was barely fifteen-years-old for God's sake, they couldn't possibly have—it was literally impossible. Sasuke still had plenty of time to make sure that—
to make sure—

He just needed more —

"N-Naruto..." Why was his voice shaking? "Whatever you did... it's very important that you never do it again."

Naruto only raised both eyebrows in response. "Uh-huh, sure, whatever," He rolled his eyes. "I'm not even really sure what I did anyway... I was messing around earlier but it never did that before."

"Well... good." That was... that was good. "Just... let's just leave it at that, and just... just don't."

Naruto kicked a rock, and Sasuke could tell he was pouting.

"Hey, Sasuke… If we are.. you know… How are we gonna get back if I "don't do it?"

Sasuke froze.

"Well, fuck."

Fin.

A/N: Here is the more conclusion-y conclusion, for better or for worse. The last chapter was more iffy/open-ended/vague... so hopefully this was a bit more satisfying in terms of closure. Some reviewers expressed interest in whether or not Team Seven's bonds would remain broken. I see bonds as more malleable in nature; no, they will never be the same, but that does not mean that these bonds no longer exist in some fashion.

Hopefully, readers were able to recognize that something Higurashi said in a past chapter was a blatant lie in terms of what actually happens in the future. Sorry I took so long to post the epilogue, and I'm still sitting on whether or not to have an additional switch over to little Sasuke over in canon-land. Thanks for all constructive criticism. I'd apologize for the dark humor/not-quite-fairy-tale ending... but hey, it's only two years later, yeah? I am still considering doing a sequel, but probably not until after I finish Slider (SI/OC)... which, uh, may or may not ending up pissing off people too in terms of twists, but that's life.

Ciao!