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Control Rayemars One day, when they were fifteen, Naruto and Sakura came back from a mission carrying a young black cat. The cat made continual efforts to claw Naruto's eyes out, so it was decided that it would live with Sakura, as her it just bit. That also didn't work so well, since the cat took an immediate hatred to her family and shredded half the furniture within a month. Her father once threw it out when Sakura was working at the hospital; she and he had a spectacular screaming match when she returned and she then spent two hours trying to coax the cat out from under the porch, where it had been hiding. The day after Sakura celebrated her sixteenth birthday, she completed the arrangements she'd made and moved into her new two-room apartment, halfway across the village from her old home and closer to Naruto and the hospital. Naruto helped her move in; the cat tore up his jacket when he was foolish enough to leave it on the window sill as they hauled the kitchen supplies up. Sakura had to forcibly stop him from carrying out his threat of throwing it out the window to see if they really did land on their feet. Later, as they were sitting on the floor eating bowls of rice and chicken and the cat was hiding, Naruto said hesitantly: "Hey, Sakura-chan . . . do you think . . . we did the right thing?" She pushed some of the rice closer to a piece of chicken. "Tsunade-shishou made it clear what will happen when he's brought back." "Yeah, but . . . this isn't right." Naruto looked over at the door to the bedroom. "We're not doing any different from what they will." "We're making sure he's alive." Naruto waved a hand absently at his eyes, still looking at the door. "They won't kill him, we're just giving him a worse--" "Don't assume that," Sakura interrupted quietly. "The sharingan's a defunct bloodline trait now." When he looked back at her, Sakura pushed her rice around a little more and added, "You can't breed a gene from one source. Even if they let him live long enough to have a child, it wouldn't be the same thing as the sharingan." "They won't kill him," Naruto said lowly. "We didn't go through all this to let anyone kill him." Sakura looked at him over the tops of her chopsticks. "It would be a decision voted on by all the clan heads," she said. "We don't even belong to clans." Naruto glared down at his bowl. "He's going to hate us forever," he said, later. "It's wrong, caging him up like that." "You can undo your half, Naruto," she replied, taking up her last bite of rice. "But I'm not undoing mine." ". . . Do you think Kakashi-sensei knows?" he asked. Sakura set her bowl on her knee and gave it a wry look that almost hid the nervousness in her voice. "Doesn't he always?" Naruto chuckled once, too quietly to sound like he meant it. Like most lives, there isn't much of a story to tell in-between extraordinary events: Sakura cooked meals, worked at the hospital, went on missions, and spent time with her teammate and friends and teachers. She and the cat also finally adjusted to living together, though she lost a few cushions and a coverlet and learned to lock her closet door obsessively. She healed all the scratch marks before going out, because they weren't worth letting Naruto get worked up over. A few years passed. Ino came over once after helping Sakura carry groceries. "I don't know why you're going to bother making him a birthday dinner," she said, dropping her bag on the counter. "Why not just take him out to Ichiraku and be done with it?" Sakura rolled her eyes. "Like he really needs me encouraging his bad eating habits." "This place is so bare," Ino proclaimed, looking around the front room. "Don't you have any personal stuff? Do they pay you medicnins less or something?" "There's photos on the shelves," Sakura retorted, setting her own sack down. "And I get paid fine. I just don't spend that much time here, so there's no reason to over-decorate." Ino crouched and motioned to the cat lying under the table. "Heeeeere, kitty!" "He doesn't like strangers," Sakura warned, looking down at the sack as she pulled the packet of fishcakes out. "Or being petted." "I wouldn't be a stranger if you invited me over more. . . ." "I thought I didn't have anything here? How would I entertain you, Ino-chan?" Ino muttered something under her breath and reached out to the cat. It hissed. "He really doesn't like being petted, Ino-chan," Sakura warned, looking over her shoulder. "Fine, fine. . . ." Ino abandoned the cat and wandered over to the shelves. "Sakura, you know these pictures are only of your team or your parents, right?" she asked a few moments later, examining the old one from their genin ascension. "I am the one who put them there," Sakura replied into the fridge, where she was setting the last of the groceries. Ino folded one of her arms across her stomach and glanced away from the picture, giving Sakura a long look. "I'm serious. You haven't dated anyone the whole time I've known you." Sakura frowned as she closed the fridge door. "How do you know that?" "You can't keep a secret from me," Ino said confidently. "You really need to start seeing people, Sakura; you're almost twenty. You ought to be making marriage plans by now." Sakura rolled her eyes and folded her arms, tilting her chin down as she looked at Ino. "At least I'm not dating my teammate, Ino-chan. That's so incestuous." Ino snorted, looking down at the photo again. "We're not dating," she replied. "Dating would mean we did stuff." Sakura snickered, and Ino shrugged a shoulder. "Besides, it's not like it means anything," she added, not looking up. "We can't marry, because that would make this huge mess with what jutsus to teach the kids. Our grandparents' contract forbid intermarriage between the three clans for that reason." Sakura let her arms drop, folding her hands one over the other and leaning forward slightly to let them rest on her knees. "What are you going to do, then?" Ino shrugged again and set the photo back on the shelves. "Daddy said I can choose whoever I want out of the list. I guess I'll start the whole courting thing next year." She rested an elbow on the highest shelf and propped her chin on it, looking at Sakura. "See which one's the best-looking and least annoying, and bring him into the family." ". . . Well," Sakura murmured. "I hope he's hot. And accedes to your every whim." Ino rolled her eyes. "Duh. That's what I just said I'll be looking for, didn't I?" When Sakura laughed, she went on. "You need to start dating, though. Stop this carrying the torch thing, it looks stupid." Sakura gave her a look. "Give me some credit for brains, Ino-chan. It's not like that." "Eleven years," Ino retorted, "and you haven't been on a date yet." "I work too much," Sakura replied. She began folding up the bags on the table. "And there's no one I've met worth the time, yet." "Uh-huh," Ino drawled, and turned the genin photo against the wall. The cat was sleeping in the morning sunshine from the balcony when Sakura dragged herself into the apartment, still bloodied and wounded from a mission that had almost been compromised and that had resulted in a much higher body count than it was supposed to. She drew the bath while cleaning off the worst of the wounds in front of the sink. The water was too hot, but Sakura told herself that pain meant it was healing and sunk down until the water slopped over her shoulders. After a few minutes passed, the cat nudged the door open. Sakura let one of her arms drop over the edge of the tub; the cat sat down where it was. She snorted, but didn't move. "You know why there's always a shortage of medicnins?" she told the cat. "It's not just because it's harder to learn. Around their thirties, medicnins all start applying to work in hospitals or clinics full-time, without taking missions. Shizune-san told me that." Sakura lifted her hand up, staring at it. "Something about killing and saving people with the same hands . . . makes us crazy, I guess. Tsunade-shishou's the oldest continuing practicing medicnin out there, and she doesn't really take missions." Sakura let her arm drop back outside the tub and shifted deeper into the water, so it was up to her chin. "I told her I won't let it happen to me, and she just gave me this look. Like she said the same thing once, too. Shizune-san's almost into her mid-thirties," Sakura mused to herself. A little while after she fell silent, the cat padded over and began licking one of her swollen knuckles. Sakura laughed to herself and added more water to the tub when it started to cool. Naruto and Sakura killed the young Soundnins who had infiltrated Konoha with the orders to watch them, but not before they had sent back reports that there was no sign of Sasuke in the village. They avoided Itachi for as long as possible, until the man wrote his brother off as dead and came for Kakashi's eye. They talked about the first fight in front of the cat, but not the second. The cat hid under the shelves when Shizune came over to speak with Sakura. "I really disapprove of this, Sakura-kun," she said, sitting at the table. "You're the best medicnin that this generation has turned out. That kind of talent brings responsibilities." Sakura was looking down at the table, the same as she'd been doing since Shizune first spoke. "I understand. I'm not dropping my medical duties, Shizune-san, I just want to be moved to emergency contact only." "But--" Sakura made a small motion with her thumb, and Shizune cut herself off with a small irritated noise. "I need more time available than I have," Sakura said. "I need a higher mission level count before I can be considered for elite jounin status." "That will come in time," Shizune said. Sakura shook her head. "No, I'm not stopping there," she replied. "I want the status so I can put in an application for the ANBU. I'd like to be able to do it within a few years." Shizune was studying her with a surprised expression. "Why?" "The clan heads are never going to agree to let Naruto be an ANBU, are they?" she said calmly, looking up. Shizune pursed her lips. "You aren't your teammate, Sakura-kun. Your personal status won't help him." "I know," she replied. "This is mostly for myself. I want to know how far I can go." Shizune was silent for a while; she finally shook her head. "I still disapprove of this." "I'm grateful for everything you and Tsunade-shishou have done for me," Sakura said honestly. A month after Sakura reached the elite jounin status, Kakashi came over. He caught the cat before it could dart into the bedroom, and held it up by the scruff of its neck. It hissed and spit, and swiped at his mask. Kakashi held it a little further back. Sakura watched everything with a careful look of mild amusement. "I think you're holding it wrong." "Hm," Kakashi said, and set the cat back on the floor. It ran off. "I'm not really a cat person. What's his name?" he added, with absolutely no change in tone. Sakura shrugged a shoulder. "'The Cat,'" she said. "It's not like it comes if called." "I guess so," Kakashi replied, and leaned against the wall by the entryway. "Can you help me train for my ANBU practical?" Sakura asked, folding her hands in front of her. Kakashi stared at the door to the bedroom that the cat had run through for a long time. Sakura didn't let herself fidget. "If you die, it's by your own choice," he replied, looking over at her. Sakura smiled. "I know." He leaned away from the wall, straightening. "Meet me at seven tomorrow morning, out by the training field." Sakura's smile curled up on one side. "So I should be there at noon?" "Hey," Kakashi said mildly. "You're right," she replied thoughtfully. "Two p.m. You're getting worse in your old age." Kakashi gave her a look as he left. When Sakura came home a year later with the bandages over her fresh ANBU tattoo, the cat hid from her for a week. If she weren't certain that it wouldn't risk running loose in the village proper, she would have panicked. As it was, she brought Naruto over to help her find it. Several pairs of socks were sacrificed to the cause. The cat never lost the tendency to knock her mask onto the floor when it saw the chance. By the time Sakura was twenty, Ino was married and Naruto was coming over more often. Sakura taught him how to cook basic dishes; he was starting to express more interest in rice. "I'm going out with Ino-chan and Hinata's team tomorrow evening," she told him as they waited for the rice to boil. "You ought to come with me--I can't tell if you've won Shino over yet." "How am I supposed to 'win over' that creepy bug bastard, anyway?" "Maybe by not calling him that, for starters. . . . Who knows?" Sakura added with a shrug. "Maybe he already likes you. It's hard to tell." Naruto folded his arms and leaned back against the counter. "That's what I meant," he replied. "He's not creepy because of the bugs, he's creepy because I can't figure out anything he's thinking." "Why not ask Kiba--actually, let me do it. I'll talk to Hinata." Naruto scratched his cheek. "Are you sure it's necessary? I mean, you said Hinata and Kiba will be with us, yeah?" Sakura rolled her eyes. "Yes, it's necessary. Kiba's loyalty is certain, but he's not going to be the head of his clan; and Shino is. It's the future clan heads you need to be the most worried about." "Okay, okay . . ." Naruto replied, looking over at the cat lying on the shelves with its back to them. Sakura gave him a look. "You ought to consider yourself lucky, you know. Most of the people who were in our rookie group are either members of important clans or heir apparents to them. And once Hiashi-san dies, you'll have the backing of the strongest one in the village; and Neji already controls the branch family votes until Hanabi takes over. And you've already got the support of the kage of one of our allies." She smirked. "I swear, if I didn't know you're stupid, I'd think you did all this on purpose." "Hey!" Naruto protested. Sakura hummed and checked the rice. "At least say 'were,'" Naruto muttered. "I can't use the past tense until you stop being stupid," she replied cheerily. "Mean, Sakura-chan, meeeean." She just continued humming, a strain of an old song from a country had once kept soldiers instead of ninjas. "Is he getting gray hairs?" Naruto asked suddenly. Sakura looked over her shoulder at Naruto, and then further back to the cat he was staring at intensely. "Yeah," she said, turning back to the stove. "He's getting old, for a cat." The cat twitched the tip of its tail. Naruto narrowed his eyes. "What time do I need to meet you guys tomorrow," he asked flatly. "Be here at six-forty," Sakura replied, and cut off the heat to the stove. "We'll walk over together." Sakura walked home with Ino and Hinata the next evening; they had snuck out while Kiba and Naruto were being chastised by the restaurant owner for letting an argument get too loud and aggravating the other customers. Shino had waited behind. "Honestly, Sakura, if loud and irritating is your type, you would have been better off with Lee," Ino said, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the restaurant. "I bet he'd at least make dinner and stuff for when you came back from work." Sakura glanced upward and then tilted her head to the side to give Ino an exasperated look, aware that Hinata was walking on her other side. "Lee-san is not my type. And we're not dating, Ino-chan." "Oh, please," Ino replied. "Everyone knows you're doing everything to set him into position to become Hokage. Who would do that for just a teammate?" "There's no such thing as 'just' a teammate," Sakura said, her voice dropping several degrees. Ino sighed and raised a hand, knowing what subjects she couldn't win on. "Fine, fine. Why would you go to all this hassle if you're not going to get anything out of it?" "Sublimation," Sakura replied. Ino didn't know the word, and spent the rest of the walk pestering Sakura for an answer that she wouldn't give. After Sakura separated from them to head down the street to her own apartment, Hinata told Ino quietly what it meant. Two months after that, Sakura came back late from a joint, non-ANBU mission with Naruto and Kakashi. She had no bandages and only a few fading scars, and as soon as the cat saw the way she walked into the room it forgot about being irritated that Ino had had to break in and feed it and followed her as she shed weapons and vest and clothing. She shut the bathroom door behind her. The cat sat in front of it until she came out. Sakura stepped over it and went into the bedroom with that same slow, empty step. It followed and shoved its way in before she could shut the door, so Sakura ignored it and lay down on the bed. The cat jumped up and sat on the end. "No one in their right mind would let that thing be Hokage," Sakura said quietly, staring up at the ceiling. "No one." The cat lashed its tail and then curled it around its legs. "We had to stop in Suna because we couldn't make it back without more medical attention," Sakura went on. "I talked to Gaara. He said they don't die with the containers. That's why Suna has some jar thing to store his in, for whenever its container dies." She shuddered violently, and wrapped her hands around her upper arms. "Maybe I should just say yes," she murmured. "I thought I could keep ignoring . . . he wouldn't but that thing. . . . If. . . ." She rolled onto her side suddenly, away from the cat, and curled in slightly. "Never mind," Sakura said, her tone finally changing. "It's just boring." The cat swished its tail sharply back and forth several times; but when Sakura didn't move and didn't say anything further, it finally came over and lay next to her calves. Sakura stayed still for a while longer, but she finally reached a hand behind her and absently petted the cat's neck. "I hope I die before he does," she whispered. ". . . I hope you die before he does, too. I hope everyone dies before then. . . ." The cat pressed its head against her calf, and she fell silent again. About half an hour later, someone knocked at the door. In the time it took Sakura to drag on a dress and a pair of leggings, the knocking turned frantic. "I'm here, I'm here!" Sakura snapped, pulling the door open. "Geez, Naruto, don't break my door down!" "Uh. Sorry," he said, scratching the back of his head. He held out a small bag. "I brought you some anko dumplings?" They didn't really speak as they set up the table--Naruto knew where all the plates and utensils were kept, so he didn't have the ability to maintain a stilted conversation by asking questions. "I went by the hospital," he finally said, when he was sitting across from Sakura and slicing a small cherry tomato that he'd bought. "The doctor said your work was great like always--they want Kakashi-sensei to rest another day and then they'll let him go." "Ah, that's good," Sakura murmured, and wiped the syrup from the dumplings on a piece of paper towel rather than licking it off her fingers like usual. "I wasn't happy that he made us leave Suna with only that temporary splint." "Yeah . . ." Naruto replied, and dropped the last tomato slices on another paper towel before pushing it to the edge of the table. "Hey, come eat this!" The cat, lying in front of the cabinets, ignored him until Naruto made a 'fine then' noise in the back of his throat and turned his attention back to awkwardly staring at Sakura's hand on the table. Then it waited for a few minutes to make its point clear before hopping onto the table and lying down again next to the paper. Naruto gave it a look. "What, you want me to feed you?" The cat swished its tail and didn't move. Naruto rolled his eyes and held out a piece of tomato. The cat just looked at him. When he finally sighed and rested his elbow on the table, turning his attention back to Sakura, the cat moved forward enough to take the slice from his grip. "Spoiled bastard," he muttered, and the cat twitched the tip of its tail. Naruto looked back to Sakura, who was giggling a little sharply behind her hand. When she calmed down and wiped her lips with the paper towel, he said: "I was really worried about you." She paused, keeping the towel in front of her mouth. She didn't look up from the table. ". . . I'm okay." "I'm sorry, Sakura-chan." She shook her head once. "Don't apologize, Naruto. You didn't . . . ask to be like this." "That's not--" "It's okay," Sakura interrupted. She pressed the napkin against the table and started folding it, creasing the edges sharply. "We're all okay. We might not have been, otherwise." "I shouldn't have . . . that pervert teacher always told me not to use that jutsu, in case something like this. . . ." "We're all alive," Sakura said, finally looking up. She caught Naruto's gaze. "It's not a bad thing that we're alive." ". . . right," Naruto replied. He glanced down at the table again, and then picked up another tomato slice and held it out to the cat. ". . . I was really scared for you, Sakura-chan. That's. . . ." "I know," she answered. Sakura finished off the last of the sweet dumplings as Naruto fed the cat a second and then third tomato slice, and licked the syrup from her fingers before wiping them on the folded napkin. When Naruto began poking through the slices looking for a fourth one, Sakura leaned across the table, rested a hand against his neck, and kissed him. A few hours later, Naruto came into the bathroom and found the cat hiding behind the toilet with its ears flattened back. "I'm gonna be Hokage," he told it, crouching down so that he could see it better. "We'll think of something to let you come back. Sakura-chan's smart about all this diplomatic stuff. We'll find a way." He petted the cat on the back and got bitten for it. Sakura had to come in to tell him to shut up and stop yelling at something that couldn't yell back, except she said 'didn't.' Sakura pushed Naruto out a little while later, after they ate dinner, telling him that it would look odd to the neighbors if he stayed the night. She spent the remainder of the evening re-sanding her ANBU mask and touching up its paint. The cat watched from its seat on the chair. Ino came over three weeks later, early in the morning; she was four months pregnant and carrying it well, but hated the morning sickness. She made Shikamaru escort her instead of her husband. "Sakura," she called into the apartment as she pushed open the door, "for someone so smart, you have got to stop hiding your key in the same general--what are you doing here?" Naruto was sitting across the table from Sakura, chopsticks half-frozen over his bowl of rice. "Uh." "We were training this morning and came here for breakfast," Sakura replied. "What are you doing here? You can't have run out of those pills that fast!" "You tell me that when you're pregnant," Ino retorted, dropping into the chair with an oomf. "Why can't you make them stronger?" "Because the fe--baby will die," Sakura replied flatly. She set the bowl down and laid her chopsticks across it before standing. "Geez, Ino-chan, I should start charging you for all the supplies you're draining me of. . . ." "So how long have you been sleeping with Sakura?" Ino asked Naruto. "What?" "If you guys had been training, I would've gotten sick because this place would have smelled like sweat from when you came in." Ino's grin was frightfully wide. "You took her on dates first, right? And you stayed the night? You're an asshole if you didn't." "I--" "Ino-pig-chan!" "I'm just making sure he treated you right," Ino replied cheerily. Sakura glared. Naruto looked like he was trying to figure out what she wanted him to say. Shikamaru looked like he wanted to leave. Sakura solved things the easy way by scrawling out a short list of herbs and shoving it at Naruto with the instructions to go buy them. Shikamaru took the opportunity to go with him, bringing a few choice comments from Ino. "Thank you for embarrassing the hell out of me!" Sakura snapped, cutting her off. Ino rolled her eyes. "What's to be embarrassed about? It's just sex." She let her arms dangle over the sides of the chair. "I still say you would have been better off with Lee, if that's your type." "Do you really think it's wise to insult the woman you're getting pain medication from, Ino-chan?" "Oh, please, Sakura. You're a doctor; you're not going to hurt me." "Hmph." Sakura began fishing out several packets and a mortar and pestle from her shelves. "I'm going to have to get some of the ingredients fresh from the hospital gardens, and I'll need to buy capsules . . . I'll have it to you in two days." She looked up. "And I mean it, Ino-chan, don't take more than the dosage I told you. You'll put the baby at risk." "All right, all right. . . ." Ino leaned back against the chair. "Ugh. This is only going to get worse, isn't it?" "The morning sickness will stop eventually . . . don't worry," Sakura replied. "You've got wide hips and a bitchy personality--your delivery'll go fine." "Hey!" Sakura hummed and busied herself with opening one of the packets. Ino made a rude noise at her. A few moments later, though, she spoke again. "My mom told me that--about my hips, too. I still say it's gonna suck." She blew her bangs out of her face. "I swear, it's like I have a sign saying 'Tell me your horrible labor story!' on my back now. I'm afraid to go shopping anymore!" Sakura laughed, but shook her head at the same time. "It probably will." "Thanks." Sakura shrugged a shoulder. "I don't like the way the hospital does births--laying on your back makes the whole process a lot more difficult. It ought to be done kneeling, so that gravity can help." "'Kneeling,'" Ino repeated, making a face. "How stupid would that look?" Sakura raised an eyebrow. "I don't think there's any really dignified way to give birth, Ino-chan." Ino ran through the possibilities for a moment, and then gave up and stretched her arms. "Whatever. Do you really think it's better?" "Well, I haven't tested it myself," Sakura replied sardonically, before letting her tone drop back to normal, "but I know some midwives still do it that way." "Hmf. Well, maybe I'll try it," Ino said. "But you better be there if I do. If anything goes weird, I want to be able to hit you." Sakura glanced upward with a grin. "I think I'll be scheduled for a mission whenever it happens." "You will not!" Tsunade came over a few days later, since their relationship was common news the moment Ino left the apartment. The cat curled up in the furthest corner of the closet. "I've already been preparing for that problem," Sakura replied, indicating the shelf containing a variety of herbs and medical scrolls. Tsunade looked over it. "What type have you been using?" "Ah . . ." Sakura checked the scrolls for a few seconds, and then pulled a small one out and handed it over. "This one. Five hundred milligrams daily." Tsunade skimmed the list of ingredients and then pursed her lips. "Sakura," she said, without looking up, "I taught you better than this." She frowned. "Tsunade-shishou?" "Do you know what will happen if you continue taking this formula in that dosage?" Tsunade asked flatly. "In another three to four months, I'll be barren," Sakura replied, clasping her hands in front of her. "I've tampered with it enough to reduce the bleeding and nausea until that time, so as long as I keep to lower-level missions, it shouldn't impede my work." Tsunade was staring at her. Soon she looked down, and began rolling the scroll back up. "Do you love him?" "Of course," Sakura said. "It's Naruto." Tsunade nodded once. "I understand," she replied. "Well, if that's your intention, come with me. I have the recipe for a drug that's designed for that purpose, so you won't have to deal with these side-effects for as long." Sakura bent her head slightly. "Thank you, Tsunade-shishou." "Don't," Tsunade replied. "I came over to tell you to either break up with him or start taking it." She set the scroll back onto the shelf. "None of the bijuu have been permitted to breed before; Naruto is no exception. There are risks I can't permit." "Right," Sakura murmured, straightening. A week before her twenty-first birthday, Sakura came back from the meeting that had followed a bad mission and told the cat: "Hyuuga Hiashi is dead." She unstrapped her medical and weapon packs and set them on the shelves before continuing. "He got hit by a poisoned dart--somehow they figured out a blind spot in his vision, or something, the clan wouldn't talk about it. And when I was about to administer an antidote, the attack shifted to my area, so I had to relocate quickly. And I had forgotten that I hadn't removed any air bubbles before injecting the needle." She shrugged out of her vest. "It's not an uncommon mistake," Sakura said, folding it over the chair. "It can happen a lot in the middle of battles." She straightened and moved toward the bathroom, running her hand over the cat's back as she passed it. "Hanabi won't be able to become head of the branch house until she marries, and now that Hinata's clan head, she can prevent that for another year or so, until Neji's consolidated more families." She paused at the door and pushed her bangs back. "She's a diplomat more than anything--I'm sure she'll come up with proper reasons." Sakura stepped into the bathroom, and started tonelessly humming a fragment of the old song as she washed her face. The cat curled up by the outside door, on her sandals. Sakura knew that time was running out when the cat stopped knocking her ANBU mask to the floor whenever she put on her uniform. She avoided telling Naruto for as long as possible. "I've done everything I can," Sakura told him, "but I'm not a vet. And he's not a normal cat." "There has to be something," Naruto snapped, hands tightening around the back of the chair. "He's not dying!" "He is dying," she responded. "We tried, Naruto. There just wasn't enough time." "No." Naruto shoved the chair aside. "Look, Sakura, there has to be something, something you didn't think of, to, to--" "I've done everything," Sakura replied quietly. "He's old and overweight from being locked up and he's sick, okay? I can't fix it. Even if we took the seal off and I tried on him as a human . . . I can't fix old age." Naruto sank to the floor, swearing violently. Sakura looked down at the cat breathing labouredly on her lap and petted it carefully. While Naruto was at his apartment, throwing enough necessities into a bag that he could temporarily live over at Sakura's, she laid the cat back down in the soft bed she'd made for it earlier and stroked it gently under the chin. One of its front paws twitched, but otherwise it lay still. "I really can't save you, even if we take the seals off," she told it. "We would have to steal equipment and supplies from the hospital, and there's nowhere we can keep you long enough for me to work and you to recover. And if they find out we've been hiding you here for the last eight years, everything I've--we've--done will be meaningless. "I'm sorry," Sakura whispered, before pulling her hand away and clenching it in her lap. She had stopped crying by the time Naruto came back several minutes later. Sakura had never been able to fall sleep with Naruto at her back, so she'd long ago told him that his breathing on her neck kept her up, and he could either sleep facing away from her or not sleep in the bed. So when he jerked up and out from under her arm, she woke. She was still groggy until Naruto said, "He's gone." "Huh?" "He's not in his bed." Sakura shook her head and sat up. "Maybe he . . . no, the food and stuff's there. . . ." "Animals don't like to be around people when they're about to die," Naruto said, throwing off the covers. "We have to find him. Now." "He's not a . . . okay, okay, yeah. . . ." Sakura mumbled, climbing out of the bed as well. They found the cat in the closet; it didn't take a veterinarian to know that Naruto was right. He extracted the cat from under the coat and shin guards while Sakura dressed and put together her sharpest knives; by the time Naruto had jerked on pants and a t-shirt, she'd wrapped the cat in one of the blankets from its bed and strapped the pack on. The cat yowled painfully when they used chakra to transport out past the village's walls, so they had to go the rest of the way running while trying not to jostle it too much. They were a very long distance from Konoha by the time they stopped, and the sunrise was only a few hours coming. Sakura set the cat on the softest part of the ground and prepared to wait. "We have to undo it," Naruto said, and Sakura looked up at him. He was staring down at the cat. "We have to, Sakura. He doesn't deserve to die like this." "Okay," she replied. "Did you bring any scrolls and pens?" "Yeah." The jutsu was an exceptionally complicated one--it took two minutes for Sakura and Naruto to undo their halves, and that was after everything had been set up. When it was finished, Naruto hastily shoved the scrolls over out of the way, while Sakura shifted the man's head onto her knees so that he could breathe easier and brushed his gray-streaked hair out of his face. Naruto crouched down next to her. "Sasuke?" Sasuke continued coughing weakly for another minute. When he managed to get enough air to speak, his voice was rough from years of disuse. "Bastards." Sasuke had been extremely angry at what Sakura and Naruto had done (without warning or consulting him), and the resentment was still there. But he was close enough to dying, and in enough pain, that he had a hard time focusing it. And it helped that Sakura injected a small amount of painkiller into him now that he was human and she could calculate the dosages properly. Conversations between friends are always riddled with in-jokes and references to shared experiences and associates that make no sense to other people, even if they're recorded. Sakura and Naruto talked until the dawn was breaking, sharing stories that each of them only knew parts of or that Sasuke didn't know, and occasionally cajoling a comment out of him. He almost smiled, once, when Naruto was describing with great detail a conversation between Jiraiya and Kakashi which had ended with Jiraiya calling Kakashi a brat and Kakashi saying that the proportions Jiraiya drew for his men indicated a need to compensate for something, at which point Gai interfered and told Kakashi to respect his elders and Tsunade later almost broke her desk pounding it with laughter when she heard about the whole thing. She had also told Jiraiya he wasn't allowed to threaten to hold off writing the next volume of Icha Icha Tactics until Kakashi made a public apology, because he was under a contract. Sasuke died a little while after the sun rose and the birds began their daily racket. Sakura sent Naruto to gather the firewood and told him to get double a bonfire's worth, since neither of them were as good at fire jutsus. Then she stripped off to her dress. She had almost completely finished slitting the body along its chakra lines when he returned with two clones, all of them carrying armfuls of branches. She took extra care in destroying the eyes and optical nerves, and the left arm. Sakura washed off in a small stream nearby that eventually fed into the Nakano river as Naruto heaped the wood and the scrolls they'd used around the body, and then she pulled on her leggings and fishnet and went back to help him start the fire. She tucked the blood- and gore-stained dress under Sasuke's head and smoothed his hair around it before the wood caught, and had to rinse her hands again. Sakura covered her mouth and retreated several steps when the smell became too much. Naruto stayed by the fire, hands at his sides except when he had to feed more wood into the pyre. When the body was as burned as was possible, Sakura broke up the ground and she and Naruto dug a hole with one of the knives and their hands. Naruto noticed Sakura slip a bone fragment into her knife pack as they were scooping handfuls of wood and human ash into the hole, and picked up one himself; Sakura noticed Naruto slide his necklace off and fold it under the ashes as she was sweeping together the dirt to throw in. They tamped the ground down with their hands rather than their feet, even though it took longer, and then laid a cover of moss and twigs and a large collapsed branch over the area. They tacitly decided to walk back to Konoha, Naruto with his hands in his pockets and Sakura clasping her forearms. "Do you think we should tell Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked, from where he was looking down at the ground. "Will he have to report it?" "He knew," Sakura replied quietly, letting her arms drop. She slid a hand into her pack, touching the small finger bone. "Or he suspected. And he stayed quiet all this time. He ought to know." Naruto nodded. ". . . You never told me anything about that necklace," Sakura said, pulling her hand out of the pack. "What was it?" "Bad luck," Naruto replied, and took her hand. "I'm not letting it get you too." Sakura glanced down at the ground, then looked back up, and didn't reply. Eventually she twined her fingers with Naruto's. The cords that Sakura tied the bones with were very similar to Naruto's old one; it took a long time for people to realize he was wearing a different necklace. I'll bring you back no matter how I have to do it. |