Chapter Text
The sun stood high and watchful when they returned.
There were no horns. No triumphant banners flapping in the wind. Only a shift in the air—like the world had drawn in a breath and was waiting to exhale. Chakra rumbled at the horizon’s edge, quiet but certain, and people began to gather in the streets, pulled by instinct more than sound. As if they could feel the change unraveling in the wind—hope, or maybe something gentler. Like the promise of something lost finding its way home.
Sakura stood just beyond the hospital doors, arms crossed tightly over her chest like armor. The first thing she heard wasn’t footsteps or fanfare. It was Naruto’s laugh—bright and unmissable, even from a distance. And then she saw them.
Jiraiya, walking tall despite the layer of road dust on his cloak. Tsunade beside him, every step brimming with a quiet power that demanded no introduction. And Naruto… gods, Naruto was glowing. His grin was so wide it threatened to crack his face in half, arms waving wildly like they hadn’t just crossed mountains and warzones to get here.
“Sakura-chan! Sakura-chan!”
He sprinted toward her—no hesitation, no pause.
And she moved. She didn’t think. Didn’t breathe. She ran, colliding with him so fast and hard it knocked the breath from her lungs and nearly toppled them both. Her arms wrapped around his waist, anchoring herself as her fingers curled into the back of his jacket—dusty and warm and utterly, unmistakably Naruto. He smelled like sweat and summer sun and something so achingly familiar it made her chest cave inward.
It wasn’t a hug. Not really.
It was a reclamation. A tether snapping back into place.
“You idiot,” she whispered, voice cracking under the weight of everything she hadn’t said. “You absolute, ramen-bribing idiot.”
Naruto froze. Then—quietly, fiercely—he held her tighter.
“I missed you too.”
The reunion was brief—too brief. Because reality waited for them inside the hospital, uncaring of joyful returns.
Inside the hospital, the storm that was Tsunade came to life.
She didn’t need to speak loud to command the room—her chakra simmered beneath her skin, electric and coiled like the breath before a lightning strike. Sakura stood nearby, silent and still, as the newly-named Fifth Hokage assessed Kakashi and Sasuke with the precision of a blade.
“Stable,” Tsunade muttered under her breath, though her tone offered no comfort. “Hatake’s chakra is depleted—classic Sharingan fatigue compounded by trauma backlash. He needs full recalibration: chakra therapy, restorative sleep, deep cell repair.”
Her gaze shifted to Sasuke, and her scowl deepened. “The Uchiha’s system is a mess. Chakra nodes misaligned, overdrawn reserves, external contamination from that cursed seal—” She clicked her tongue, brushing a thumb just above the mark at the base of his neck. “It’s eating him alive.”
Naruto’s head popped around the doorway. “So... not just a healing jutsu and a snack, then?”
Tsunade didn’t even blink. “Unless you’ve got snacks imbued with fuinjutsu and cellular detox, no.”
“I mean… I have ramen.”
“That explains everything. Out.”
Sakura’s throat constricted.
Something sharp lodged beneath her ribs, pressing upward like a scream trapped too long. Her fingers found each other behind her back, lacing tight, the pain grounding her. She focused on the bite of pressure in her grip, the way it reminded her she was still here —because if she didn’t, she might unravel.
Tsunade unrolled a scroll across the floor, the ink glowing with chakra-sensitive script. An eightfold seal bloomed from the center, pulsing as her hands settled into position. Her breath was even, slow—like the whole world bent around it.
And then the chakra began to pour.
It spilled from her palms in waves, weaving into the scrollwork, setting off an intricate dance of seals designed to purge trauma, stabilize chakra flow, and seal away corruption. The room hummed with energy, and soft light began to spark beneath Kakashi’s skin, illuminating him from the inside like a star learning how to glow again.
Tsunade’s brow furrowed. Her hands stayed rooted.
“Secondary points syncing... good. One more pass.”
Silence wrapped the room like gauze, broken only by the faint pulse of monitors and the whisper of chakra still settling.
Then, a shift.
A twitch. A breath. And finally, Kakashi opened one eye—bleary and slow, but present.
“Yo,” he rasped, voice cracked and impossibly familiar.
Sakura exhaled. Long and quiet, like she’d been holding it since the day he’d fallen.
She moved before she could think—one heartbeat, two—and then she was beside him, arms flung around his shoulders in a rush of unspoken relief. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t careful.
It was everything.
Kakashi blinked again, a hand settling against the small of her back with quiet steadiness.
“Still standing, huh?”
Sakura’s laugh trembled into his shoulder. “Barely.”
Hours bled together under the sterile hum of chakra monitors.
Naruto had long since dozed off in the chair, mouth open and soft snores filling the quiet, but Sakura stayed. She couldn’t leave—not yet.
When she finally looked up, Sasuke was already awake.
Watching her.
Not with warmth or softness, but something colder—like a blade studying its next edge.
She stood. Not timid. Not hesitant. Just steady.
“Hey,” she said gently, settling at the edge of his bed.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze flicked to Naruto—sleep-mussed and loud even in rest.
Then: “He’s stronger.”
It wasn’t praise. It was a wound, spoken aloud.
Sakura drew a breath. “We all are.”
“Not like him.”
She looked away, voice quieter. “It’s not a race.”
But he was already turning from her, facing the wall like it might shield him from the truth.
And in the space that followed, heavy with everything neither of them could name, Sakura felt the fracture begin.
Team 7 hadn’t broken. Not yet.
But it would never quite be whole again.
Still, she stayed.
Because walking away felt like defeat.
Evening bled gold across the hospital rooftop.
The sky burned with the last embers of light as shadows stretched long across the tiles. The village below carried on, unaware of the storm brewing just overhead.
Sakura reached the rooftop just as Naruto and Sasuke faced off—chakra high and wild between them, the air thick enough to choke on.
“You think you're the only one who’s lost something?” Naruto’s voice was raw, fists clenched. “You think you’re the only one who hurts? You’re not alone!”
Sasuke’s Sharingan ignited, cold as frostbite. “You don’t know what it means to have something worth avenging.”
And then—
Motion. Chaos. Fire.
Naruto lunged. Sasuke met him halfway.
Fists collided. Chakra burst. Wind howled across the rooftop as Rasengan spun into being and Chidori flared in answer—both brilliant, both deadly.
“STOP!” Sakura’s scream split the sky as she ran.
And the world tilted.
She was too late.
The air thrummed with lethal chakra, vibrating through her bones, tearing the breath from her lungs. Rasengan and Chidori almost collided in a blinding flash of blue-white light that split the rooftop like the sky itself had cracked open. The world narrowed to the sound of it—screaming wind, stone shattering, the unmistakable roar of raw power clashing.
And then—
A blur of silver.
Kakashi-sensei was simply there. One heartbeat he wasn’t, the next he’d materialized between them with the kind of speed that left the eye reeling. His hands moved faster than thought, seizing each boy by the back of their shirts as if they weighed nothing. With one violent, perfect motion, he tore them apart, Naruto yanked to one side, Sasuke flung to the other.
The jutsu didn’t die cleanly.
The separation triggered an uncontrolled backlash; Rasengan unraveled mid-spin, flinging out tendrils of wild chakra that sliced into the rooftop tiles. Chidori detonated as its power collapsed inward, spearing jagged holes through the stone before discharging upward in a flash of lightning.
The resulting explosion was indescribable.
Tiles ripped free like shrapnel, smoke and dust billowing in suffocating waves. The air reeked of ozone, sharp and metallic, and for a terrifying instant, Sakura couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in her ears and the pounding of her own heart.
When the dust began to settle, Naruto was sprawled on one side of the roof, panting, eyes wide with stunned disbelief. Sasuke knelt across from him, Sharingan still spinning, a snarl curling his lips, but his hands trembled.
And between them stood Kakashi.
One hand still outstretched where he’d thrown Sasuke back, the other raised slightly in warning, his chakra flaring like a wall of steel between them. His visible eye was hard—colder than Sakura had ever seen it, the weight of his fury barely leashed.
“That’s enough,” he said softly.
And gods, it was that softness that made the words terrifying.
The remnants of the water tower crashed down around them in heavy, splintering sheets. Water cascaded across the tiles, pooling at their feet, running in rivulets over broken stone—a grim reminder of just how close they’d come to losing everything.
Sakura’s heart still hammered in her chest, breath uneven as she took in the scene. Naruto’s shoulders were hunched, guilt and stubbornness warring in his eyes. Sasuke’s Sharingan had faded, leaving only a sharp, shuttered look that gave nothing away.
Kakashi’s presence filled the rooftop like a storm barely contained. He spoke low, even—but the edge beneath his words was unmistakable. Quiet fury wrapped in calm.
He scolded them both, his disappointment cutting far deeper than any shout could have. Naruto winced under it, lips pressing tight. Sasuke didn’t flinch, but his jaw worked once, as if something in the lecture had landed, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
When Kakashi finally stepped back, the tension broke like a dam giving way. He walked to her last, his boots splashing softly through the shallow water pooling around the shattered tiles.
Sakura didn’t realize she was trembling until he rested a steady, gloved hand on her head.
“Ne, Sakura-chan,” he murmured, his voice warm now, gentler than it had been all day. “It’ll be okay. Yeah?”
Her throat tightened.
“You were really brave,” he said, and there was so much quiet pride threaded through the words that it nearly undid her. His thumb brushed lightly against her temple—a fleeting gesture, grounding her in the moment.
“But never do that again.”
The weight of his hand lingered like a promise, and for the first time since it had all begun, Sakura let herself believe him.
Later, long after the dust had settled and the village fell back into uneasy quiet, Kakashi went looking for Sasuke.
He couldn’t rest. Not when that look in Sasuke’s eyes still burned like the curse of hatred.
It hadn’t been hard to find him—he knew Sasuke’s silences too well by now, could read the sharp edges of his anger like lines on a map. There was a tension in the air, electric and heavy, the same way it had felt on that rooftop. The fight at the hospital hadn’t been just a clash of tempers. It had been an omen. A promise of something breaking.
Sasuke didn’t come quietly.
The moment Kakashi stepped into the clearing, the boy was already on edge, Sharingan flickering to life in a blaze of defiance. Words weren’t enough to stop him. They collided fast and hard, a brutal blur of motion and chakra. Kakashi didn’t hold back—couldn’t afford to.
When Sasuke lunged again, Kakashi’s fingers were already flying through seals. Lightning-fast, decisive. Wire snapped taut, coiling around Sasuke’s limbs and torso before the boy could react.
“Stop,” Kakashi said. The word was quiet, firm.
Sasuke strained against the bindings anyway, chakra surging in jagged bursts that burned the air between them.
Kakashi’s eye narrowed, his voice a rasp edged in desperation. “Listen to me.”
But Sasuke’s gaze—dark, furious, hurting—met his, and Kakashi knew.
He tried anyway.
He told him every truth he had, every word he thought might reach him. How much stronger they were together. How the bonds they’d built mattered more than vengeance, more than power. How the people in the village—the family Sasuke had found without even meaning to—needed him as much as he needed them.
He said it all.
And it wasn’t enough.
“I’ve buried too many people I cared about, Sasuke. Too many I couldn’t save. Don’t make me stand at another grave knowing I failed you too.”
For a heartbeat, Sasuke froze. But then his gaze slid away, walls slamming back into place. And Kakashi knew—just knew—that it still wasn’t enough.
Kakashi could see it in Sasuke’s eyes, in the way his jaw locked, in the silence that stretched too long and too thin. The rope might have held Sasuke’s body, but it hadn’t touched the jagged thing eating him alive inside.
The failure settled in Kakashi’s chest like lead.
He was losing him.
All his strength, all his words, all the promises he wanted to make—they weren’t enough to stop Sasuke from slipping away.
And gods, that knowledge was worse than any wound.
Because no matter how much Kakashi fought for this boy—for all of them—he could feel it.
The family he’d built in Team 7 wasn’t enough to keep Sasuke home.
And knowing that broke him in a way he couldn’t show.
It was the most honest thing he’d said in years. And gods, it terrified him to know it wouldn’t be enough.
Sakura hadn’t been able to stay home.
Sleep felt impossible, each minute stretching longer and sharper. Something inside her whispered exactly where he’d be.
So she waited.
The night was still, heavy with the kind of quiet that pressed against the skin like a warning. She stood by the village gate, her fingers twisting in the hem of her skirt as if that small, anxious motion could keep her anchored.
And then—he was there.
The faint crunch of footsteps on packed earth was all the warning she got before Sasuke emerged from the darkness, his face set, his movements purposeful.
“Don’t go,” she whispered, the words breaking apart in the night air.
He didn’t answer.
Her throat burned. She stepped closer, her heart hammering against her ribs. “Then take me with you,” she said, voice trembling.
It wasn’t what she wanted. Not really. Her love for this village ran deeper than she could ever put into words. But the thought of him walking away, alone—of letting that cold, endless isolation devour him—was unbearable.
She could give up everything, if it meant saving him from himself.
Still, silence.
Sasuke didn’t even look at her.
Something inside her twisted, fragile and raw, splintering as she realized she was reaching for someone who was already too far gone.
And then—
He was behind her.
So close she could feel the ghost of his breath against her hair.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
The words were quiet, final.
And before she could respond, before she could beg again or scream or grab hold of him and refuse to let go—her vision blurred.
A wave of crushing exhaustion swept over her, heavy and inescapable. Her knees buckled as sleep dragged her under, dark and absolute.
The last thing she felt was the warmth of his presence fading, like a hand slipping from hers.
And then he was gone.
She didn’t know how long she slept after he left. Long enough for the night to grow cold, for her tears to dry up.
And then- footsteps.
Soft. Familiar.
Shikamaru found her around two in the morning.
The village was quiet at that hour—too quiet, the kind of silence that only made the thoughts in his head louder. Shadows whispered at the edges of his mind, restless and heavy, and no amount of staring at the ceiling had chased them away. So he’d gone walking.
It never really worked.
Except, sometimes, when he ran into her .
She was there, curled on the bench just outside the main street, her body still, hair spilling like a dark river across the wooden slats. Moonlight softened every edge of her face, gentling her into something otherworldly. For a moment—just a fleeting, fragile moment—she looked like she’d stepped out of some heavenly painting.
Shikamaru’s chest tightened.
Troublesome, he thought, exhaling slowly. He was so sure he was in love with her—and gods, what a drag that was.
He stepped closer, intent on waking her before the night chill bit too deeply into her.
But the moment her eyes fluttered open, everything changed.
Her words tumbled out in a frantic rush, half-formed and cracked at the edges: Tsunade-sama. Sasuke. Gone.
The meaning hit him like a kunai to the gut.
Sasuke had left.
Left her there—alone, on a cold bench in the middle of the night, like she hadn’t begged him to stay, like she hadn’t been enough to make him stay.
Something inside Shikamaru clenched, hard.
Her face was pale, stricken, every word spilling out in a raw, broken tumble. The sight of her like that—it stripped him of every lazy quip, every half-hearted deflection.
His jaw locked, teeth grinding as anger and helplessness roared to life in his chest.
“Come on,” he said quietly, steadying his voice for her sake as she bolted to her feet.
And then he was running beside her, toward the Hokage Tower, chasing after her because there was nothing else to do—because she was moving like the ground would disappear if she stopped.
And gods help him, Shikamaru would follow her anywhere.