Standard disclaimer applies.

Sasori had asked her who she was going to sacrifice in this war, but it only occurred to her later on how odd it was he hadn't asked her who she was willing to sacrifice in this war.

More and more she was beginning to see why the red threads of fate had tied her to him.

Sakura had pulled Kakashi aside one day and told him about Tobi.

She watched the parts of his face unobscured by his mask: his eyes for a spark of emotion, his forehead and corners of his eyes for wrinkles or stress lines. But he didn't even lower his little orange book for her. His eyes moved over the page, unseeing, and he only hummed in reply when she finished.

Sakura waiting for a moment afterwards to see if he was going to say anything to her, but then she realized that his lack of surprise wasn't because he was that good at hiding his emotions—it was because he wasn't surprised.

"Oh," she said, softly. Her eyebrows rose.

"Oh, indeed," Kakashi sang cheerfully, and only then did he lower his book long enough to flash her an eye crinkle. "Thank you for telling me, Sakura-chan. I won't forget it."

And then he did pause, and it was the kind of pause that spoke of something heavy about to be said.

"I miss them," he said. "Rin, I mean. And Obito."

Sakura didn't tell him it wasn't his fault. She didn't tell him everything would work out in the end, because she didn't know, and she respected him enough to not be one more of the countless others in his life who lied to him about good things that would never happen.

"She was your soulmate, wasn't she?"

Kakashi hummed in reply, fiddling with his mask. Sakura's eyes were drawn to it, and she thought again about the bright red mark on her chest.

War came without any real warning. Pein's attack on Konoha might have been the catalyst for the war treaty amongst all the nations, but the actual war didn't happen until months later.

Maybe it was a fear tactic. Make the people scamper about, making plans and holding war meetings that wouldn't actually make a difference in the end. Or maybe it was just a hubris thing.

Sakura and Tsunade knew about Madara Uchiha. You couldn't be a Senju without growing up and hearing the stories, and because Tsunade was the last living Senju and had no children, she'd passed on the stories to Sakura, the closest thing she'd ever had to a daughter.

Another thing Sakura had found during her dive into the forbidden and secret archives of the Leaf village were the journals Hashirama Senju had kept about Madara Uchiha. There were tons and tons of them, solely dedicated to the man. If Sakura hadn't known Hashirama's soulmate had been his wife, she would have thought Madara and Hashirama were soulmates.

The journals contained detailed notes and theories about the Uchihas' gifts and bloodline, their chakra styles, their genjutsus, their power. They also contained Hashirama's recordings about their final battle at the Valley of the End.

Hashirama, oddly enough, did not for one minute believe Madara was dead. He raved about it, obsessed over it. He passed down his fears and theories to his children and clan. They passed it down to their children, if not because they believed in Hashirama's fears, then as a bedtime story to warn future generations about the inherited evil of the Uchiha clan.

It was a recipe for disaster from the very beginning, Sakura thought. Growing up hearing nothing but spewed hate and bias for another clan was almost guaranteeing war sooner or later. Or, in this case, a member of the Uchiha clan betraying his own family once he saw past the inherited hatred between the clans. And how sad, Sakura thought, that a member of one of the clans could only see past such things once the Senju clan was all but extinct.

Bias and hatred on both sides were what destined the world for wars. And war was here now.

Sakura and Tsunade planned. Tsunade and Naruto, as the unsaid future Hokage, sat in on war meetings with other nations. Sakura always stood in the back, invisible, and listened in. And learned. Mei always ignored her during the meetings, but sometimes, very rarely, Sakura would catch a glimpse of amusement in the woman's eyes when her gaze passed over Sakura.

The day Madara rose up and cast his genjutsu, the members of the Akatsuki left—which were made up of Deidara, Itachi, Kisame, and Sasori; Hidan, Kakuzu, Pein, and Konan having all been killed—were there, right behind him.

Sakura hadn't expected for them to change sides at the last minute; the war council would never have trusted them and would've had them all killed on sight. Kisame was a weapon that had been sharpened with the sole intent to kill. That didn't just go away. Ultimately, the bloodthirsty side of him won out. Deidara was a boy on the verge of becoming a man who had been burned and tossed aside one too many times. Sasori was loyal, and once loyal, always loyal. Just like Sakura.

Itachi, however, wasn't present. Neither was Sasuke.

Naruto did what he did best. He talked. To Madara, to Tobi-turned-Obito. The ten-tailed failed to be summoned for lack of jinchuuriki gathered. But the genjustu . . .

Naruto, for all he goofed off, was a remarkable speaker. He could sway even the most lost of souls back to goodness and love. It was something to behold, and Sakura would never get used to it, she knew.

He was going to make a Hokage worth remembering. People were going to tell tales of glory and fame about him for a long time. He would be what inspired other young, outcast boys and girls to rise up and take the mantle, as they say.

The Akatsuki members, Sakura noticed, had enough respect for her to stay away from her, Tsunade, and Naruto. Kisame was fighting against Might Guy and Rock Lee. Deidara was laughing hysterically and going against Neji and Kiba. And Sasori was playing around with Hinata and Tenten.

And Sakura could tell he was simply playing around; he wasn't using any of his puppets or more deadly poisons. He was just dodging and every once in a while throwing an attack their way. Frankly, he looked like he was bored, casting hidden glances her way every few minutes.

Sakura, for her part, was busy with Kakashi and going against Obito. They were stuck a little ways from the main fight going on with Naruto and Madara, but Kami knew they were in their own little bubble of dramatic talks and retellings of old grudges and the importance of revenge. And, apparently, the end of the world. Great. Just fantastic.

"You killed her," Obito was saying, sneering, having lost his mask a while ago.

"I did," Kakashi said, panting.

"It's your fault she's gone—you killed your own soulmate!"

Sakura swallowed thickly, her mouth incredibly dry. She'd lost her green jounin vest a while ago, now only in her black shirt and pants, her pouch still strapped to her hip.

"You don't think I know that?" Kakashi said lowly. He fisted his hands, and Sakura could hear the beginnings of birds chirping. "You don't think I look in the mirror every single day and see the evidence of that?"

And then he did something unexpected: Kakashi lifted two fingers and tugged down his black, torn mask, revealing a bright red—bright as blood, bright as sin—mark spreading up from his chest to his neck and finally resting just a little below his mouth. However he'd killed Rin had been brutal and had stained her with her own blood, all the way to her face. And Kakashi wore the evidence of that.

Obito took it all in with red, unforgiving eyes. "She could have been my soulmate," he said. "You were supposed to protect her when I couldn't!" Tears streamed down his face.

Kakashi stood there, so still, and then birds were chirping and he had a hand through Obito's chest. Both their faces were splatted with blood.

Obito's eyes were wide, and Sakura was frozen in her spot. Her legs shook and her heart hammered in her chest, and for a moment she thought Kakashi had cracked, that the loss of his soulmate by his own hand had finally broken him.

There were tears in Kakashi's eyes. "I can't be forgiven for what I've done," he said, and despite the tears streaming down his face, his voice was steady. Sane, for the moment. "But I can't let you destroy all she held dear, either. Rin wouldn't want this for you."

Obito coughed out blood. "You're a traitor," he whispered.

"I'm worse than that," Kakashi said. "I'm a soulmate killer."

Obito was dead and Kakashi didn't look like he was far behind.

The moment Kakashi had pulled his arm from Obito's body, Sakura had been there, needle in hand and pushing it into the side of his throat. Kakashi hadn't fought her, just looked at her with blank eyes—dead eyes, a voice inside her said—with tears streaming down his face as they mixed with Obito's blood and ran down the red mark that stained his lower face.

"I think . . . Obito could have been my soulmate too," he grumbled out quietly right before he fell to the ground. "I think we were all destined for each other, the three of us, and all that's left is for me to join them."

"Not yet," Sakura whispered, not feeling the tears on her face. "Not just yet."

"Rin—" he whimpered, breathless.

"Can wait a little longer. She has Obito now, doesn't she? And you said it yourself: She wouldn't want all she held dear destroyed. Honor her and honor her requests." But Kakashi was already being lowered to the ground by her arms, unconscious.

Sakura looked down at him, lying next to Obito, both stained with blood, and wondered if she'd done the right thing.

Sometimes there was no such thing as a happy ending. Sometimes people just died and there was nothing to be done.

Tsunade was dead and Sakura didn't even see it happened.

One minute she was there, tearing through enemies and cracking the earth in two like the iron woman she was, the next she had her heart torn out of her chest by Madara Uchiha, the last Senju clan member finally dead.

Sakura was looking at Tsunade's body, holding back her sobs, when Mei appeared next to her, pulling her up from her mentor's body and telling her something. Something. Sakura couldn't hear what Mei was saying; there had been an explosion too close to her ears and now there was only ringing in her eardrums.

Mei slapping her hands on Sakura's cheeks and held her there, forcing her to look her in the eyes and copy her breathing. In and out. In and out. In . . . and out.

Finally, Sakura lifted her hands and pushed Mei off of her, nodding and channeling her chakra to her ears and the crack on her skull. It was bleeding heavily, and Sakura suspected she had a concussion.

Mei nodded back and was off to fight her own fight with her Mist shinobi. Sakura considered them even.

Deidara was dead and this time Sakura saw it happen.

Sasuke and Itachi finally showed up, because how could they not? Itachi was still coughing blood and Sasuke looked worn and tired, but they were both still alive and fighting back-to-back, and Sakura found some comfort in that.

Deidara was crazed—Sakura had always known that. His description in her Bingo Book that listed his crimes told her enough to deduce that. But it was the moment Deidara went after Itachi—for revenge? just because he could?—that Sasuke pushed a chidori through his chest.

Deidara, who had helped a woman find her way home, who had listened to her talk about her darling children just because he could. Deidara, who was loyal to Sasori, even though there was animosity between them. Deidara, who had snuck into her apartment and made her laugh time and again.

Deidara, who was deranged. Deidara, who bombed villages and buildings all in the name of his "art." Deidara, who was now dead.

Itachi turned back, saw his little brother's hand through Deidara's chest and nodded in thanks. Sakura swallowed thickly when she saw him cough blood into his hand and let it dribble down his chin and drip onto the ground.

Then she was in front of Itachi and handing him a vial. He looked at her, jaw tense, and Sasuke walked up to stand next to her, watching her with shrewd eyes as Itachi chugged the contents of her vial.

Itachi had to cough to get the rather disgusting contents of the vial down, even pounded on his chest a few times, but when he was done his lungs sounded clean and empty of any fluid. Sakura couldn't even smile.

Sasuke sucked in a breath through his teeth next to her as Itachi's face gained color. But when he went to place a hand on Sakura in thanks, she was already gone.

Naruto was unconscious. Things were very, very bad.

She wasn't sure when it happened, but Sakura had just finished destroying the weird creatures Madara had summoned from the earth, fighting alongside Temari and Kankuro, when she noticed the lack of noise. She was so in tune with the sounds Naruto made when fighting—the screaming, the words of love and acceptance—that when it stopped, something deep inside her panicked.

She turned to look and found Naruto on his back, though his chest was still rising and falling, albeit slowly. There was blood dribbling down his mouth and from his head.

And she got so very, very angry.

Madara was busy with Itachi and Sasuke, and she could see the fury on Madara's face that the last two living Uchiha members were fighting against him like this, not with him.

"Traitors," Madara growled, one arm having been ripped off. "You bring shame to the Uchiha name!"

Sasuke scoffed and Itachi just blinked, uninterested.

Sakura watched, unmoving for a moment. Temari and Kankuro were at her sides, Gaara having fallen unconscious some time ago and hidden away. And then Sakura turned her head just enough to catch Kankuro's eye and nodded, ever so slightly. She handed him a vial, smaller than the one she'd handed Itachi. This one, however, was violet and smelled of the sweetest flower.

She saw his mouth open just before she ran.

The thing about secrets and promises was that they killed. They were necessary, of course, but ultimately they killed. If not physically, then mentally and emotionally.

Sakura knew many, many secrets.

The secrets of the village archives were imprinted into her memory. After she'd found Sasori, she started to plan. Those secrets came in handy then.

The thing about powerful shinobi was that they always had a small handful of ultimate jutsus. And almost always, they died using those ultimate jutsus. And those jutsus were recorded in the deepest village archives.

Sakura had a very good memory.

There was no big moment of power or feeling of success. There was no great moment that could really be told in awesome tales of heroics and glory. There was only relief.

Wars weren't won with big gestures. Sometimes big gestures were necessary as a distraction or to thin out the numbers of enemies, but ultimately it was one simple mistake or miscalculation on the failing side's part that was their undoing. One moment. One warrior's minute that slowed down—or maybe it sped up for the person—but in the end it was the one discombobulated minute that decided if you lived or died.

Madara's undoing was hubris. You couldn't get to be as old as he was without gaining quite some pride. His was seeing the two Uchihas in front of him as the only threat worth his time, even when surrounded against hundreds of shinobi from all great villages.

But Sakura knew many secrets, and Hashirama's journals were full of secrets about Madara Uchiha. His weaknesses, for one.

Sakura was behind Madara in six seconds. Her hand was on his naked back in the seventh. The seals slithered around her hand during the tenth.

Sakura felt her body tremble and fought to keep herself standing. This time she was the one to cough up blood.

Itachi and Sasuke were frozen, staring at her with wide eyes as Madara Uchiha—one of the most powerful and successful shinobi since the beginning of time—starting to scream during the sixteenth second.

Sakura smiled through bloody lips. She saw a flash of red out of the corner of her eye, but refused to tear her eyes away from the long black hair in front of her.

"What—You stupid girl—" Madara growled, and then another seal appeared on his back. He froze, his voice gone, a glazed look in his eyes as his muscles relaxed under her hand. Twenty seconds.

"Sakura—" A familiar voice in her ear, an undercurrent of panic in it, something Sakura knew only she could hear. Twenty-two seconds.

She closed her eyes and prayed. "Close your eyes, Sasori."

"No." A hand on her shoulder, one moving to the arm attached to Madara's back before falling back to his side with a slight tremble. Hot breath on her neck. Her lips parted.

"I trust you," he whispered into her ear, directly behind her so that her back was flush with his chest. She could feel every grove, every dip of his body. Her hand was beginning to go numb. Cold. She was cold. Forty-seven seconds.

"But if you die, doll-face," Sasori said, lips brushing against her earlobe, tracing down the back of her neck as he swiped her hair to the side, kissed the skin there. "I will chain you to my side for the next century, your feelings be damned." Fifty-five seconds.

Sakura swallowed thickly, a tear leaking out of her eye as more blood dripped down her chin. Sixty seconds.

Then she released her diamond shaped seal.

This was her greatest secret.

The Senju and Uchiha clans warred with each other for decades before Hashirama and Madara were even born. Each clan came up with impossibly cruel methods to get the upper hand on the other. No one was innocent during those fights. No one was right or good. It was just war. Just war, nothing more.

Stay or go, Tsunade had told Sakura once she had perfected the technique. Don't hesitate. You're most definitely going to die and you cannot hesitate. There's nothing worse than a meaningless death.

Wake up.

Wake up, the voice deep inside her whispered, the part of her that had woken up deep inside a cave so long ago.

The Senju clan had found a loophole to the Uchiha bloodline. A blood jutsu so horrid that it had been outlawed by the clan that created it. The secret, forbidden jutsu was to be locked away in the village archives, never to be seen again.

The thing about clan bloodlines was that they tended to carry gifts, but to keep those gifts in future children the clan married inside the clan. And after a while there was no one to marry who wasn't somehow related to you. Inbreeding could lead to insanity, miscarriages, and mental or physical disorders. It would also lead to the loss of those bloodline gifts.

The jutsu the Senju clan outlawed was the ability to take all the parts inside a Uchiha that were made up of—however small it might be—inbreeding and multiply them by thousands and thousands. All the gene mutations, however subtle or unnoticeable they might be, were maximized. It was an impossibly difficult medical jutsu to learn.

The end result was the loss of all mental and physical capabilities, the loss of all use of chakra and bloodline gifts, and the loss of self. The problem, however, was that the jutsu caster also experienced all these same symptoms.

In other words, it was a suicide jutsu.

The jutsu itself didn't actually kill the castor or the person it was being casted upon, but once it was cast, the two people were linked. Both would be unable to be more than an empty shell of themselves, and so something else would have to be the actual killing blow.

Sakura wasn't a Senju, though, and so she didn't have the natural chakra reserves those of that bloodline already had. But Tsunade was a Senju and she was her mentor, and so she taught her how to conceal her chakra over time in her diamond seal. And maybe, maybe it would work.

Kami, she hoped it worked.

Someone blonde was lying beside her, eyes closed and unconscious. She reached deep inside herself and found the name Ino attached to that hair, lovely as it was. The blonde one's hands were on her chest and it felt like she was breathing into her.

Forehead.

She tried to focus, but all she wanted was to fall back into the darkness. She knew she should be scared of . . . something. She should be worried, at the very least. But there was nothing. Nothingnothingnothingnothing. She was a blank slate, and she found it wasn't the worst thing in the world.

Stop that, forehead. You made me promise, you bitch. I've upheld my part of our bargain; now it's your turn.

Something red floated in and out of her sight, but it was so bleary. She just wanted to close her eyes and forget.

I swear to Kami— You so owe me for dealing with this asshole who calls himself your soulmate. We're talking about that later, by the way. You're supposed to tell your best friend about these things—like finding out your soulmate is a little shit.

Something brown covered her line of sight, or what was left of it. A face was attached to it with smears of purple paint on it.

Her mouth was being opened and something sweet was being poured down it. She swallowed on reflex. Then there was a burning in her chest, and Sakura had enough left of herself to scream.

Forehead—

Sakura—oh, Kami—

And she screamed and she screamed and she screamed. The blonde one wouldn't let her go, had her hands dug deep inside her mind, pulling and tugging at her. She wouldn't let her fall into the darkness and she hated her for it, for this unrelenting pain and—

I'm so sorry—

Just a bit more, just hold on for a little longer—

The redheaded one was opened and closing his mouth rapidly, but she couldn't hear him over her own screams. He tore open his shirt and there was red liquid leaking out of the hole in his chest in a steady stream—

Panic: that was the look on his face.

She was so confused, and so in pain. She tugged harder on the blonde one's grasp but she just wouldn't let her fucking go—

Something was being shoved inside her. Something wrong was inside her and the brown haired one looked horrified but kept on pushing it into her chest and the redheaded one was holding her head between his hands and saying something over and over and over—

Sakura—

—I love you—

—so sorry—

She didn't know whose voice she was hearing anymore, but the pain was so great she found she simply didn't care all that much as she fell into the everlasting, peaceful darkness.

I'll find you, the redheaded one growled, face twisted with rage and panic. Wherever you go, my soul will find yours, in this life or the next.

When Sakura woke up, she was alone.

She was lying on her back in a room that was not her own. She didn't have a moment where she remembered the war, the deaths, because she woke up remembering. Sakura was sure that even in her death she would remember the war.

When she sat up, nothing hurt. That was her first clue her plan had worked.

The second was when her soulmate came barreling into the room, eyes wide as they immediately locked onto her.

Sakura blinked. "Hi."

Sasori stared.

She cleared her throat. "I think we've done this before, but if you need help, now is when you make a sassy and sarcastic remark about—"

And then he was on her, pinning her to the bed. His hair fell over his face and she could tell he hadn't brushed it in a while.

Sakura swallowed. "Tell me what happened."

Sasori sucked in a breath. "You're immortal."

"Yeah, I got that."

He closed his eyes tightly and breathed long and slow. "You almost died and you're being sassy—"

"You love me."

His eyes flew open. She cleared her throat.

"I love you too, by the way. Just thought you should know."

He didn't move, didn't blink. Sakura rolled her eyes and moved her one free hand to her chest. She felt skin and muscle and ribs. But when she sent a surge of chakra through her body—something she'd done a thousand times before to check for any injuries—she found a different heartbeat.

Sakura smiled, slow and long. She and Kankuro were even now.

"You—" Sasori seemed to struggle for words, his mouth opening and closing.

She blinked innocently at him. "I think this is where you wax poetry about how much you love me. Haikus are perfectly okay."

His mouth morphed into a sneer. "You insufferable little—"

"Your insufferable little ball of sunshine," she cooed at him. "Yes, I know."

"Maybe you're the one who should wax poetry about me," he grumped.

"I'm crap at poetry, puppet-boy."

He kissed her then. She wrapped her arms around him and spun them around so she was on top. He grunted in surprise and she grinned down at him, rolling her hips. A surprised groan reverberated low in his throat at that and his hands clenched hard on her hips instinctively. His eyes were hooded and gleaming with renewed interest of her body in ways that had nothing to do with the new heart in her chest.

The aftermath of the war could wait.

"You did it," Sasori said sometime later. "Your little scheme worked. Ino did her mind thing and held onto you while Kankuro pushed my heart into you."

Sakura smiled, softly. She lifted the spoon to her mouth when Sasori narrowed his eyes at her. He'd been stuffing her full of as much food as possible ever since she woke up. She'd been asleep for nearly a week, it seemed, and her soulmate had been having more than a few conniptions about her health.

"I can't believe you managed to make yourself immortal and didn't even let me make you into a puppet," he grumped. She had a feeling he'd be pouting for some time about that. It was a good thing they had nothing but time.

Ino's bloodline gift was what she'd used in the chunin exam during their fight. Her promise to Sakura had been about using her gift on Sakura should she be close to death, though Sakura had never given her specifics on when/if this would happen. So she'd entered Sakura's mind before she could die after Sakura had cast her jutsu on Madara and held onto what was left of her conscious, her sense of self.

Sakura had first spoken to Kankuro about the possibility of swapping a failing heart with a beating one back when Sasori told her he'd managed to hide his heart and still live while it was outside his body. He'd told her about his experiments for his puppet body and keeping his heart attached to his body without the actual physical attachment. And if it had worked for her soulmate, maybe she could just . . . alter his methods a bit to fit her needs.

She had no reason to think it would work. Her heart was doomed to fail the second she'd cast her suicide jutsu. But Sasori was her soulmate, and by fate his heart belonged to her. The fact that it was literally in her chest now was moot.

The problem, of course, was that in order to actually kill Madara and not just make him an unresponsive vegetable would be if Sakura was killed while the jutsu was still linking them.

"You poisoned yourself," Sasori had said angrily, once he realized what she'd done. His nails cast groves into the wood of the table. "I cannot believe you—"

"It was the flower," Sakura had said calmly, still more than slightly amazed her plan had actually worked. The plan she'd been working on for so long now. "The violet one from my mission you tagged along for. I just made it into liquid form and gave it to Kankuro to kill me with, so that the heart he took out of my body would have the poison in it, still killing Madara, but when he put in your heart, it would be healthy. My seal took care of any residual poison in my body after that."

So long as the heart she'd cast the jutsu with—her heart—died, Madara would die. The loophole—and there was always a loophole—in the jutsu was that Sakura didn't actually have to die, only her heart did.

Now, Sasori said, "Your blonde jinchuuriki is alive." He was still watching her to make sure she was eating. This was her third bowl. "He's Hokage now."

Sakura flinched at the reminder of Tsunade's death. That was a wound that would take some time to heal. "And the others?"

"The sand siblings are all fine. Ino's fine. Kisame's fine, though pretty banged up—those two green spandex men were surprisingly good." Sasori shuddered at the memory of those 'two green spandex men.'

"The Uchiha brothers are fine, though if you want to keep Itachi alive you're going to have to keep giving him whatever disgusting concoction you gave him before."

She eyed him. "Who's dead?"

"Madara, obviously." Sasori shifted in his seat. "Deidara's dead, though you saw that."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He shrugged, but Sakura didn't think for a second he didn't care just the tiniest bit.

"I don't know about the rest of your friends." Sasori sighed quietly. "Kakashi Hatake, though, I know is alive."

"But?"

He looked at her. "He's not doing very well."

Sakura nodded, knowing there wasn't much anyone could do for him.

"Your blonde jinchuuriki is putting him to work," he said. "Having him repair the village and giving him a position to help deal with the transition to Hokage. He's good at meetings, or so I've been told."

Sakura was quiet for a minute. She pushed away her half-eaten third bowl of soup of the day and ignored how Sasori pouted.

She looked towards a window and saw nothing but green land outside. She'd have to get the details out of him as to where they were; Sakura didn't recognize it. "And the war council? The leaders of the other lands?"

Sasori hummed thoughtfully. "The war treaty that was enacted had a hidden clause," he said lowly. "Apparently no one bothered to read the fine print about how all the village leaders are responsible to pay a certain amount of reconstruction funds to any village damaged during the war."

He paused long enough that Sakura turned just enough to look at him out of the corner of her eye. His amber eyes gleamed with amusement and maybe a little appreciation.

"And as it turns out, none of the other villages obtained any real damages from the war. Except Konoha."

"Oh?" Sakura asked nonchalantly. "But the damage was obtained before the war treaty was signed."

It was then Sasori laughed. "Apparently the war treaty also stated in a very subtle way that the declaration of war from Madara was initiated with Pein's attack, since Pein was working under him."

"Ah. How nice."

He smirked at her. "You scare me sometimes, doll-face."

She let her lips curl up and turned to look back out the window. She caught sight of a golden bird with blue eyes. It chirped bossily at her. "Now what?"

Sasori got up and walked around to her side of the table, kneeled in front of her. The sunlight streaming through the window caught in his red hair, bringing out the lighter strands and reflecting off his amber eyes, a ring of spun gold around the irises. Sakura's breath hitched, just slightly, at how beautiful he was.

"I believe I told you I would chain you to me for the next century, doll-face."

Sakura laughed. "That was only if I died. I didn't technically die."

"We had a bargain."

"That is now moot."

"I could always make you."

She smiled and her green eyes flashed. Sakura felt Sasori's heart in her chest beat out a steady, warm rhythm. She'd seen the scar, one long vertical line between her breasts in the middle of the red stain from where she'd crushed the other half of her soulmate's heart. Kankuro had done a good job in pushing it in her and sowing her back up.

"Or," she purred. "You could always just try to convince me."

"Oh, doll-face," Sasori purred right back, leaning in to place his chin atop her knee, looking up at her through hooded eyes. Fire and promises danced there. "It would be my pleasure."

Author's Note: Annddddd that's all folks! The End, as they say.

If it wasn't clear enough on how everything adds up, the main things are that Sakura found a forbidden jutsu from the Senju clan that could basically make a Uchiha into a living vegetable. The bad thing, however, was that it would do the same thing to the caster. So Sakura casts this jutsu, but to keep her sense of self and awareness, she had Ino promise her that she'd do her special jutsu thing where she invades an enemy's mind, only in this case it was so she could keep Sakura from loosing her mind. While this is happening, Kankuro is giving Sakura the poison she'd handed him before, which if you remember from so many chapters ago, was the liquid form of the very poisonous flower Sakura had been researching. That's why the vial was violet and sweet smelling, as was the flower. Obviously, this liquid form of the flower will kill Sakura and in turn kill Madara, but since Sakura had given Kankuro Sasori's heart before, he was able to cut out her poisoned heart and replace it with Sasori's heart. This only works because technically Sasori and Sakura are tied together because of the soulmate bond, which is why I kept on talking about how they were tied together. Sakura had no idea if her plan would work, and that's why she only made Kankuro and Ino promise her to do these things for her without spelling out the exact details for them.

Obviously, Sakura was a little scheming schemer who schemes.

(If you guys have read any of my stories, you may have noticed that I don't really do nice, happy endings. This is because I don't believe in them. I grew up in a military family with a history buff of a father who owns one too many war books and who greatly enjoys talking about WWII. And every other war, to be honest, but especially WWII.

Some of you have said that Sakura seemed a little heartless in this story, but that's, quite frankly, what you have to be like in a war. During WWII the English had—essentially—created the first ever computer that could break Enigma, which was how the Germans communicated to each other in code. The code, however, changed every night at midnight, so even when you have a room full of the brightest minds working on breaking this very complicated code, all that work goes out the window at midnight. But once the code was broken, the English suddenly know all the plans the Germans are making, such as where they're going to be bombing next, what sea vessels they know the locations of, etc, etc, . . .

The problem with this, of course, is that if suddenly all those plans the Germans are giving through their "unbreakable code" all suddenly fail, they're going to realize their enemies have cracked the code and change their methods. If this happened, all that progress in breaking their code will be pointless.

What basically happened was that Churchill looked at all the orders the Germans are giving, all their attacks, and picks and chooses which to let happen. There are whole cities that were carpet bombed to smithereens that Churchill knew about long before they happened. There were ships that contained hundreds of their own soldiers that they knew were going to be attacked and no warning was given, because Churchill was basically playing a game of chess with his own men on what players in the game needed to be saved and which could be sacrificed. And he was right to do that, because it was smart, and the Allies won the war in the end. So, no, Sakura isn't heartless; she'd just pragmatic. You don't win wars with a bleeding heart.)

Please REVIEW! I have mixed feelings about this story. I might—might—do a sort of epilogue to this story, but I was maybe thinking about doing it for the whole KakashixRinxObito thing I ever so slightly eluded to here? This is a very big maybe, guys. Or maybe something with Sakura and Sasori. IDK.

The other thing is that y'all might see a new story soon. I've been seriously thinking about a SakuraxItachi story lately, and I'm going back and forth between a complete sociopath!Itachi who maybe sorta kills people and Sakura is the not-gonna-happen victim who really just couldn't give two shits about what he wants. Or, the other idea is something relating to a faerie!Sakura and Itachi. Or maybe a combination, which is entirely possible. I don't even know, so y'all tell me what ya want to see. ;P

Thank you all for the amazing support for this story and all the others I've written. I wouldn't be so quick to update or even post new stories if it wasn't for all the kind words and responses I've gotten.