Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise.

Author's Note: Firstly, thank you to Rain Dove, Ser Serendipity and Rosebunse, who have been so steadfast and encouraging with their reviews. You made this worth writing, you made a tiring experience fun, and drove me to continue on. AlmostElectric, thank you for that fantastic 100th review - it truly was a landmark! Ser Serendipity and AlmostElectric, I wish you both the best of luck with your own stories.

Secondly, to all who have followed: I'm so happy that you came along for the ride. Thank you so much for your time and attention. To all who have favourited: I am flattered and humbled that you have done so. Thank you for your kindness.

Thirdly, to all who have simply been reading: I was constantly amazed and overjoyed to have people reading and reading from so many different places and that you have come to the end of this ride with me, I am honoured and I hope you have been entertained. Thank you for your patience and your generosity.

Also, I noticed just this morning that I seem to have, by some strange chance, made it onto TV tropes recs! I was so psyched, so whoever did that for me I thank you a thousand times over. That certainly makes a fantastic 'Completed a Long Story' gift. I am worried now that some will be disappointed by this ending, but it was always going to end this way, right from the start.

I don't know if anybody will be reading this in the future beyond the next few days, but review or PM me, I will always reply.

Without further ado, I am excited, sad and immensely happy to leave now my longest and last chapter. It has been fun, folks, and, dear readers, you really have been dear to me. God, I'm getting sentimental!

Best, Zen :D

On leaving the Land of Lightning, the man who called himself Uchiha Madara had been in very good humour. He had caught the Kages by surprise, cast them in his shadow as though they were no more than ants under his sandals, and their expressions had been so pathetic Madara would almost have thought them pitiable, had he not been so busy savouring the dismay, fury, and, sweeter still, the bitter gleam of self-hate, in their eyes.

The Kages had been made to feel, deep to their very bones, their own powerlessness, and it had hurt them deep.

He planted his feet in the branches of a cedar, sniffed the air and stiffened. He could smell smoke lingering about the cave, perhaps only a day or so old.

Now his triumph was but a sweet aftertaste at the back of his mouth.

A lesser man than Madara might have regretted taking a detour through Ame to check on his subordinates, but Madara had neither the time nor the patience to regret. The important issue here was that something had happened whilst he was away, and it was highly likely it interfered with his current plans.

Something had happened? Oh, yes, something had happened alright. He dropped down from the tree and approached the cave. The boy had happened, that's what. There was no doubt about it. With the smoke in the air, this wasn't Kabuto's style.

He needed to salvage what he could from this project and move on.

A thick blue mesh of chakra cloaked the lair from peak to base, but in one spot, surrounded by dapples where the chakra had been stretched, was a warp in the cloud of illusions, like a knot in a piece of wood.

So, you've decided to leave me, have you, Sasuke?

The walls were black with soot and the doors had been reduced to crumbling blocks of charcoal, brittle to the touch.

Madara smelled the body long before he saw it: The cloying pungency of burnt hair and the grease of bubbled human fat – it stuck in his throat and rested slick on his tongue. Once he might have gagged. Now he followed the smell like a hound and found the body in the laboratory.

Its skin had been charred red and black, but it was still undeniably recognisable as Kabuto. Its head rested in a thick black crust of blood. Madara turned the body over to examine the wound. A blow had been dealt to the back of the head, and a strong one, most likely dealt in anger, and judging by the open freezer door on the other side of the laboratory Madara could guess what the cause had been.

Madara chuckled and straightened. Something crunched beneath his feet - a pair of glasses, their thick round lenses shattered and their wire frames twisted. He kicked them aside and they came to a rest under a lab-bench.

No subject and no researcher, the research programme was over. Sasuke's most likely course of action would be to seek out the nearest ninja town and trade himself and what he knew for favours. In this case, that would be Konoha.

Let Konoha have him then. The Plague had been a distraction and the cure an opportunity, but the Moon's Eye Plan had been planned long before the Plague. Once the world was back to how it all had been, the Plan would continue just as before. In the time it would take for Madara to recapture the boy and seek out a new researcher, Konoha would no doubt have already developed a cure. It seemed much more efficient for Madara to sit back, let Konoha do the medical dirty work, and wait for the world to resume its normalcy.

And why waste time trying to recapture the boy when he would eventually come back to Madara anyway?

The thought amused him and put him back in good spirits.

He made his way to through the cave system, passing the operating theatres, the kitchen, the well shaft, Sasuke's room, until he came at last to a part of the complex that had escaped the fire.

Kabuto's door had been booby-trapped with an arsenal of seals and trips and concealed wires. The traps made little difference to Madara. He melted through the door, the grain of the wood prickling along his skin and organs like a fine-toothed comb.

One glance around the room told him all he needed to know. Cases and desk-drawers had been sealed three to five times over and set with chakra-sensitive explosives. Corners of the room shimmered with a dim blue glow. Men who went to such lengths to hide their things had things worth seeking.

He pulled out the top drawer of the desk. A curved blade slipped out from the back of the handle and sliced through his fingers, or it would have done, had it not passed clean through him. It was a wicked little thing, thin as a cat's tongue and tipped with poison. He nodded appreciatively in acknowledgement at the effort then snapped it off.

Six illusions, four poisoned needles, three electrocuting tags, two exploding, several poisoned loops of razor wire and one tag that launched a handful of venomous spiders into his face later, Madara found a long wooden box and set it on top of the desk.

He disarmed a vial that would have fired a cloud of chlorine gas at his eyes and gently lifted the lid.

Bound in coppery silk, inside was a scroll.

Somebody was weeping, or, more accurately, sobbing inconsolably somewhere close to Neji's head and he knew it was close to his head because his pillow was getting soggier the longer it went on.

He was about say something short, but no less eloquent, that would precisely convey his irritation, when he remembered that he was in hospital and the words evaporated from his mouth.

He had barely been able to breathe for agony. He had been dying. On the brink of despair he had dreamt of a voice and a prototype surgical procedure that might have been able to save him.

Now there was somebody crying at his ear, and not just one, but several others, crowding round and looking down at his sorry form, and it all suddenly made terrible tragic sense to him: It had failed, hadn't it?

It had failed, and now here they all were, gathered about his stiffening body. Fate really had it in for him. He wanted to laugh. He really did. No wonder his chest felt so free and easy when he breathed and his mind pleasantly detached from everything around it. He was already dead.

So he laughed because nobody could hear the dead laughing anyway, and, to his surprise, he heard his own bitter laughter ringing loudly in his ears. He stopped and, at the same, the weeping at his shoulder sniffled to a halt.

"He – he just laughed," someone spluttered. "He just…He's waking up! Neji! Neji! Come on, man, wake up!"

Sensation. Warmth. Cold. His throat was raw and his body ached all over, but that simple act of laughing had apparently set something in motion inside him, because little by little those great black walls that had loomed out of the dark were crumbling, and now he was growing increasingly hopeful…no, increasingly certain…that maybe, just maybe he was…

"Oi, Neji, quit keeping us in suspense and open your eyes!"

"Naruto, he might be dreaming. Some people laugh in their sleep – "

"He's not dreaming. Neji, you're not dreaming, are you? Come on!" Somebody drummed the mattress with their hands. Neji frowned. Who would be stupid enough to drum the bed of someone fresh out of surgery? "Follow the sound of my voice. Don't go to the light. If you see the light, don't follow it! Got it? Strange white light calling you to some place that sparkles is not to be followed! Sparkles is bad, Neji! Sparkles is bad!"

"Please can somebody shut Naruto up before I punch him myself and rip all my stitches," Neji muttered.

"It's not working," Naruto continued to say over his head. "Right, Bushybrows, try crying more into his pillow. Maybe with enough tears and boogers next to his face he'll – "

"Oh hell, no!" Neji shouted and opened his eyes.

"NEJI!" screamed several voices at once, and he froze in his bed.

He was in a clean white-walled room, not in an isolation ward or in intensive care, just a single-patient room filled with people. Late morning light was streaming in through a window, and all about him were the broadest, brightest smiles he had ever had the bewildering joy of having directed at him.

To his left was Lee, wiping his face and sniffling into a corner of Neji's sheets. To his right was Naruto, beaming and looking more excited than Neji had thought was publically acceptable. Sakura and Ino were high-fiving, before Ino took off for the door and sprinted out of the room. Shikamaru stood at the end of the bed with a look of intense relief.

"What happened?" Neji tested his voice. It still had a burr of a rasp to it, but it didn't tear at his throat. "How long have I been out?"

"Two days. You had the operation and we've been keeping track of your RAMK blood count ever since. Neji-kun - your count's going down. The bacteria aren't replicating anymore." Sakura's eyes shone. "It's official. Chakra system immune memory is actually working. The operation – everything – it was all a success."

"A success?" Neji turned to Lee and scowled. "If it was a success then why are you crying like I'm on my death-bed?"

"I'm crying because – " Lee sobbed, squared his shoulders and blinked tears out of his eyes. "I'm crying because I'm so happy, because you're alive, you're getting better, and I finally get to tell everybody some good news! For the first time ever since all this started, I get to say that somebody's survived. Oh, wait till everyone hears about this!"

He must have been to the Hyuuga house, Neji realised with a jolt. He must have been the one updating his uncle on his condition, and hadn't he once mentioned Tenten's father? How the old man still asked after Neji, even though his own daughter was dead and buried?

"Sakura said you'd wake up some time today, so we thought we'd all come and visit and give you a surprise," Naruto explained with a grin, blinking quickly. "And it's the first time we've all seen you since you went off into isolation, so look happier about it, will you?"

Neji stared, still feeling dazed and dazzled, as though he had woken up in a strange alien land where the sun was always shining and the stars came out during daytime. "So I don't need to be isolated anymore?"

Sakura handed him a piece of paper with a smile. "Take a look for yourself."

He took the sheet and squinted at the figures. The dates up to two days ago recorded a sharp, steep rise, peaking just after he entered intensive care, and then beginning a shallow sloping fall, as his body weakened and his chakra system flagged, but after the date of the operation...

He didn't dare to believe what he was seeing. "I'm…" Neji swallowed. His voice was not going to crack. No, it was most certainly not going to crack. Not with all these people around him, wishing him to be well and looking so happy. "I'm nearly clean…"

"You'll be clean of RAMK in another three days at the most." Sakura tapped the column of predicted figures. "It's brilliant. It really is. We've started working on the other intensive care patients already. Ino and I did five patients this morning, and we've got another forty or so to go." Sakura smiled wearily. "It's tiring, but it feels so good to finally be able to help people, I honestly don't mind."

"So, Sakura and Ino moving into the hospital being another story," cut in Shikamaru with a lazy, lopsided smirk, "welcome back from the land of the dead."

"Yeah, welcome back, Neji." Naruto held out his hand. "Konoha Tigers, right?"

Neji frowned and then groaned as he remembered the events at the Den on the night of the Second Parade. "I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

He clasped hands with Naruto as firmly as he could, and then looked round at the circle of faces, focusing on each and every one of them, and asking himself what he had ever done to deserve them: "Thank you."

For giving me things to live for, for not giving up on me, and for not letting me give up.

The door flew open and a jounin, with eyebrows that looked excited enough to crawl off and create baby hedges together, burst into the room with a wail of, "Neji-kun!"

Neji flinched, scowled and sighed. "Guy-sensei, I'm fine. Please. Calm down – "

He got no further as Guy-sensei launched himself across the room.

Ino, who had gone to fetch Guy-sensei from the waiting room, arrived panting in Neji's room moments later. Neji was protesting and flailing in Guy-sensei's grip. Shikamaru had buried his face in his hands. The room was filled with laughter, and outside the window in the glassy blue sky, a flock of sparrows went flying by.

"Naruto, can I borrow you for a moment?"

Naruto turned and, with a jolt, found Kakashi standing behind him. "Kakashi-sensei! Don't sneak up on me like that. What's up? What's happened?"

"Putting aside that I shouldn't have been able to sneak up on you anyway, Naruto, when did you last see Sasuke?"

"When Sakura took me down four days ago. Why?"

Four days ago they had gone to see him and found Sasuke oddly distracted, pacing his cell backwards and forwards, staring up at the ceiling as though he was waiting for something to tumble down from the hospital floors above, so he could catch it, kill it and burn it when it landed.

They had left almost as soon as they had arrived. Sasuke had made it very clear that he didn't want to speak to either of them. Sakura had been crushed and Naruto had been furious, but the cause of distraction made itself quickly clear. The following morning, Shimura Danzo's death was front page news.

By the time the sun had risen, Danzo's body had already been wrapped in the sheets he had died in and carried to a pit to the South East of Konoha. The newspapers must have been preparing well in advance for the occasion. They even had obituaries ready. Danzo was praised as a patriot, damned as an extremist, and said to enjoy 'woodwork and root vegetable farming' in his spare time. Naruto had laughed so hard he had almost snorted his ramen over Sakura.

If Sasuke had been given a predicted timeline for the course of Danzo's illness, it wasn't difficult to guess what had been preying on his mind when they had gone to see him in the cell.

"And you've seen nothing of him since?" Kakashi rubbed his hands together with anticipation. "Oh goodie. This might actually work."

Naruto cringed. "Kakashi-sensei, never say 'oh goodie' with that look ever again."

With Naruto following Kakashi, they made their way towards the basement asylum. Kakashi set a key-card to the door, tapped it again on the other side to lock it when they were through, and then they carried on down the bright white corridor.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei, when do I get one of those key-card things?"

"Naruto, it's the key to a lunatic asylum. Do you really want one?"

"Well, then I'd get to see Sasuke whenever I want, right?"

Kakashi sighed. "I think, Naruto, for the sake of everybody's mental well-being, especially mine, not quite yet."

When they came to a stop in front of the cell, Naruto stopped muttering angrily behind Kakashi's back about stingy jounins and went up to the window. Sasuke was lying flat on the pallet in the corner, apparently fast asleep with his face turned towards the wall.

It was the most unguarded and at ease that Naruto had ever seen him. Suddenly Naruto felt as though he was intruding, and even felt guilty about it, which was weird, because intruding was what Naruto's aura did and he had never felt guilty about it before.

Kakashi came to stand by his side. "He's been like that for the past three days."

Naruto blinked and stared at Kakashi. "What? Just sleeping?"

"Oh, he eats what we give him and takes care of himself, but aside from that, it seems so." Kakashi tapped the plastic panel with the key-card. The hatch for the communication grill slid open. "Try getting his attention, Naruto. You're good at that."

His jaw dropped. "You're actually telling me to piss him off?"

"Royally, if you please. I want him to wake up, so he hears what I've got to say." Kakashi gestured towards the hatch and Naruto knew the world had gone officially crazy.

Naruto bent his knees so that he was level with the grill. He cleared his throat. "Sasuke!" he yelled into the cell from the top of his lungs. "Sasuke-Sasuke-Sasuke-Sasuke-Sasuke-Sasuke-Sasuke-Bastard-Asshole-Jerkass-Lord-of-the-Ducks-Orochimaru's-Bitch-"

Neither of them saw Sasuke move. The cell's chair smashed against the window so hard it exploded in a spray of wood.

Naruto drew back as splinters shot out of the grill.

Sasuke straightened from his overarm throw, breathing heavily. He glowered and seemed ready to shout something back, before his eyes snapped to Kakashi and narrowed.

"Thank you, Naruto. That will do." Kakashi clapped his hands slowly as he approached the grill, both mildly impressed and terrified how effective bringing Naruto had been. "Sasuke-kun, good morning."

"If you have something to say, say it, then get out of my sight."

"Sasuke, this is all in your best interest. It isn't healthy for a young ninja to spend three days lying in his bed. It was high time you woke up." Kakashi continued in his light tone, even as Sasuke was grinding chunks of wood beneath his feet to dust. "I have a message from the Hokage. The vaccine's complete and she's finished with the sample. Tonight, everything's going to be sent to the crematorium. It's all going to be burned, as promised."

Naruto looked up at Kakashi in alarm. He didn't like the sound of anything being burned, and more to the point, if it was going to the crematorium, didn't that mean it was a human body?

The anger drained out of Sasuke, leaving just a whirl of something behind, and, for once, to Naruto's amazement, Sasuke was letting it show – surprise, relief, suspicion, confusion, then another cycle all over again. It was almost painful to watch.

Eventually, Sasuke closed his eyes and his face smoothed over. "I will be there," he stated firmly, daring Kakashi to challenge him.

Kakashi nodded and smiled. "We were never going to suggest otherwise. Anyway, time to rise and – " Sasuke closed the hatch over the grill before Kakashi had finished talking, apparently deciding that enough was enough. Kakashi paused but then cheerfully continued on regardless. "- Shine. We'll be on our way then. I'll talk to Tsunade about getting a new chair. Right, let's go, Naruto."

"What's happening tonight - ?"

"Let's go, Naruto."

They left Sasuke picking up the pieces of wood from the floor.

There had been nothing waiting in the dark, no feeling of incompleteness, no unfinished task still pawing and snatching at the back of his mind. No more ghosts to run from and no more ghosts to appease, just a warm all-enveloping darkness that didn't smell of blood.

Sometimes Sasuke had been sleeping. More often he had simply been lying awake on his side.

The feeling of Danzo's death lingered on Sasuke's hands - his papery old skin, the slippery thickness of blood, the sticky globules that had dropped on Sasuke's knuckles, and his sick breath on the back of his fists, but it didn't feel like a weight. It was more like the tingle of holding a bolt of lightning. It electrified him, scared him, and it was the source of the incredible weightlessness that had assaulted Sasuke when he had first woken up, and he had only just been able to shake off.

It had been as if in a dream. He had been lighter than air, flying with every breath he took, as though a huge rock had been rolled off his back at last, and he had been allowed to stand tall, look up and see the sky.

All he had wanted to do was lie on his pallet and stay weightless as a flicker of lightning forever, until, of course, Naruto happened, and reminded him that reality couldn't be ignored (unless Sasuke wanted to get a migraine) and needed to be dealt with, sometimes violently. Today, with a chair.

Because reality had a funny habit of shoving Naruto in Sasuke's face. It was life's idea of a private joke.

"Hokage-sama, it's all finished," the crematorium officer said, as she came into the waiting room.

"Thank you." Tsunade turned a page of her magazine and sipped on her tea. "Sasuke. Go with the officer."

The officer looked more than a little nonplussed. "Hokage-sama, bone collecting can be very difficult for a single person. Are you sure the three of you wouldn't like to - ?"

"I'll do it alone," Sasuke said shortly.

The officer flinched, but argued no more. Kakashi remained silent, leaning against the water coolant.

"Sasuke," Tsunade said, as he left the room, "if I hear anything funny, we'll seal your eyes completely and we'll put you on duty rebuilding sewage pipes from next week onwards."

Sasuke snorted and went with the officer. Whenever the officer thought he wasn't looking, she would cast him a nervous look and try to catch a glimpse of his face under the stuffy medic-nin visor.

She pushed open the door to the room with the oven. Sasuke knew there was probably another word for it, and strictly speaking it wasn't an oven, but as far as he was concerned, it looked like one. The room smelled. In front of the metal door, there was a tray of all that remained from the burning process - all that remained of his brother.

"Have you done this before, sir?" the officer asked him, handing him a pair of long heavy chopsticks.

The Uchiha compound had had its own small crematorium, guaranteed to keep Uchiha secrets safe. There had been an aunt who had passed away and he remembered a room much like this one, but he had been much too small to reach the tray.

"I know what I'm supposed to do," Sasuke answered brusquely, when she seemed to be waiting for an answer.

The officer nodded and indicated the pot at the head of the tray. "This is the pot you'll be using. If you need any help, sir, feel free to ask."

He didn't thank her. He didn't think he had to. All she had done so far was wheel a coffin into an oven and pull it out again, so he dismissed her without a word and the officer drew back to stand by the door.

In the tray were shards of bone and chunks of ash - grey, brown, black and sometimes startlingly white. Itachi had been very sick indeed. Sasuke could see it in how his bones had crumbled. He passed a hand over a tray and drew it back. There was still heat radiating off the bones.

Sasuke pushed through the warm shards. They clinked at the touch of the chopsticks. When he picked up a piece, it was so light he didn't realise he was holding it until he saw it between his chopstick tips.

He lifted it from the tray, dropped into the pot.

It clinked at the bottom.

The greatest and most loyal ninja Konoha had produced in recent years - now a pan of rattling bone flakes in the chopsticks of his little, lesser brother.

The lesser brother. Always the younger, smaller, foolish little brother.

Sasuke took a deep breath, continued on.

"Konoha," he whispered, as he sifted through the bones, piece by piece. "What did it mean to you?"

When Sasuke had set out from Konoha, he had decided never to look back or regret his choices.

Itachi, on the other hand, had never stopped looking back. His eyes had always been turned back to Konoha, checking to see if his younger brother was chasing after him and looking into the past.

Even at his moment of death, in his tap to Sasuke's forehead, he had looked back to Konoha and their past one last time. Perhaps he had regretted something, but if he had, nobody would ever know.

"Niisan." He flicked away something hard from the centre of the tray. It felt like bone, but he knew it wasn't. "The man who made you suffer- Danzo - he's dead now."

I watched him die, with my own two eyes, for you, for me - for the both of us. Were you watching from the Other Shore?

"I told him things had to change, and that I'd make them change."

Sift through the ashes, find all the bone, all the little pieces, pick them up, drop them into pot, and don't listen to the clinking as the bits fell together…

"Someone once said that I was setting out to destroy the very thing you wanted to protect," Sasuke continued to talk to himself. He knew his mutterings were making the crematorium officer uneasy. If he went on like this, mechanically moving bone from tray to pot, muttering under his breath like he was spelling out a curse, maybe she would leave. "But I wasn't, was I? I think I know that now."

Good, the door was creaking. The officer had had enough.

"You were never protecting Konoha." It was like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to get the pieces into the pot "You were protecting Konoha's potential for peace. In which case, I'm not at odds with you at all."

The thought made Sasuke more relieved than he would ever care to admit. He smiled to himself, but no more than a little twitch at the corners of his mouth. He was keeping as tight a hold on himself as he was on his chopsticks. His hands were shaking. He had dropped some pieces several times over.

"You had an ideal of Konoha, and it was an ideal that didn't exist yet, in which case, we're on the same side, aren't we?" Sasuke paused and raked through the ashes. There was nothing left now but the bones of the throat. "You'd agree with me that Konoha needs to change, wouldn't you? Niisan?"

Not that he was looking for the approval of a dead man. Not that he wondered if Itachi had been or would ever be proud of him.

He choked on his own breath and closed his eyes.

It was just the last piece of bone. Just the last piece, but the chopsticks felt too heavy. He set them down and gripped the edges of the tray. He heard footsteps approaching the door. Somebody was making sure that he heard them coming.

The door creaked and, without looking up, Sasuke said, "Get out."

"Sasuke, it's just me," Kakashi said, raising his hands as though warding off an attack. "The officer was looking a little concerned, so the Hokage sent me to check up on you. How are things going?"

Sasuke ignored the question and snatched up the chopsticks again, but they slipped out of his grasp.

"Oh, you don't want to do that." Kakashi caught the chopsticks before they landed on the floor. "It's disrespectful to the dead. Here."

He handed them back to Sasuke and went to stand on the other side of the tray. Sasuke was tempted to point out that Kakashi touching his porn and then touching the chopsticks with the same hands was probably even more disrespectful than dropping them, but said nothing.

With Kakashi watching, he picked up the bones for Itachi's neck and laid them, gently, lightly, weightlessly at the top of the heap in the pot.

Weightlessness. What a laugh. Humans were anything but weightless. To live as a human was to choose to bear weights. Perhaps Sasuke's feeling of lightning weightlessness that had accompanied Danzo's death had been a kind of death in itself.

"Alright," said Kakashi, breaking the silence. "I'll fetch the officer so that she can finish this off. Sasuke, you did a good job."

She must have been waiting at the door. The officer came quickly forward with a little brush and pan, and swept the remainder of the ash into a heap that she poured over the bone shards.

Sasuke's eyes began to smart. They stung, prickled as though the ash had been thrown into them instead of the pot. Before he could even stop to wonder what was wrong with him, something wet and cold slid down both sides of his face. He pulled off his visor, touched his cheeks and examined the tips of his fingers. It wasn't blood.

"Not a word," Sasuke said to Kakashi, as he covered his face with the visor again.

So Kakashi pointedly said nothing about trembling shoulders, about shaking hands, about the way Sasuke's eyes were closed as though in pain when he accepted the pot of bones from the officer.

He especially said nothing about the way in which the visor was fooling no one.

There were four medical breakthroughs that historians eventually agreed were crucial to defeating the Plague:

The chakra system immune memory operation, shortened almost immediately by the professionals to 'ChakSysIM' and by the more sensible members of the public to 'The Operation', which saved those already in the two latter stages of the Plague; Konsei-2, a chemotherapy drug made from components of the Sixth Repentance's konseigan poison, which was found to temporarily weaken chakra systems to levels that slowed, and in some cases stopped, the RAMK replication; the UI vaccine, developed from a sample of old MK strain, which was given to both the latently infected and the healthy and named in honour of the ninja from whom the sample was taken; and finally the US antiserum, a sample of antibodies from the first Plague immune ninja.

The historians would later add to this list the development of a highly influential bone marrow stem cell culture, which became known as the USas line (after the ninja it was taken from – medics really know how to give their discoveries snappy names) and was responsible for many more discoveries in the weeks that followed, but the first four breakthroughs were the ones that signaled, for many, the beginning of the end of the Plague.

Research papers were sent to every land as soon as they were available. Specialists from far and wide came to Konoha to train and learn all the necessary techniques for free. The old ANBU chemical factories where the konseigan was made were turned over for mass-producing Konsei-2, and it seemed as though, in no time at all, the hazard gear began to disappear from the streets, and ninjas were strolling around in flak jackets again.

When a week went by without any new cases of infection, the bars and bolts on the locked-in doors were drawn back, and the families that had vanished at the start of the spring stepped out into early summer.

The day the Hyuuga house was unlocked was bright, warm and dazzling with sunshine and it became something of a public occasion. By the time Naruto arrived at the main gates, a buzzing crowd of Marksmen Hyuugas, friends of the family and interested passers-by were standing in a semi-circle around the team of council workers, who were taking down the locks and chains on the outside.

Naruto shouldered through the crowd and found Neji and Lee near the centre.

Neji raised his eyebrows. "Late."

"Sorry, I thought I'd see if Sakura and Ino were free, but they're helping out a bunch of Iwa medics all day." Naruto looked around and whistled. "Look at all these people! It's like a street party or something."

There was even an ice cream stall taking advantage of the crowd on the street corner.

"Is Shikamaru coming?" Naruto asked, after taking in all the sights and sounds around him.

Lee shook his head. "Kurenai-sensei is unlocking her door today as well, so he has, most valiantly, gone to help her."

There was a yell like a battle-cry and a thud from the other side of the gates. The gate bulged outwards and the council workers cutting the locks sprang back from the wood. When the gates resettled and the workers quickly went back to their task, somebody shouted something from inside the gates. The Marksmen Hyuuga laughed.

"What just happened?" Naruto asked, as he noted Neji cracking a small, amused smile.

"There's a team of my clansmen breaking the bars and locks on the inside and they just got very close to bringing whole gate down, so I think that was my uncle swearing."

All of a sudden, the council workers were scrabbling back from the gates, dragging the chains and locks and bars with them. They were followed by the sound of splintering wood, tinkling metal, and then the gates sprang open to a great roar from the crowd.

Hyuuga Hiashi stood in the gateway with forehead protector gleaming, a bolt-cutter in one hand and a huge hammer in the other. He was flanked on either side by Hinata and Hanabi wielding axes, and the rest of his clan were standing behind his back.

He stepped out over the rubble of wood and chains in the gateway. The street fell silent.

With a small smile that looked just a touch embarrassed, Hiashi clenched his fist and shook it in front of his face in a gesture of triumph, as though to say, We made it through!

Which was all that anybody wanted to know, and with another loud cheer, the locked-in Hyuugas spilled out into the street and the crowd surged forward to embrace their friends and family.

Hinata had spotted Naruto from his thatch of blond hair and bright orange colours almost as soon as the gate had opened. She then noticed Lee beside him, and Neji.

Her mouth went a little dry. She made her way through the crowd towards them.

At the sight of Hinata with a huge axe in her hands, Naruto and Lee's jaws dropped to the floor, but they quickly recovered and started shouting and yelling and jumping, and making so much warm, bright, happy noise between the two of them that she couldn't help but feel buoyed up by the moment, and she had one thing she needed to do before the moment passed.

Hinata thrust her axe at Naruto, every inch of her face growing so warm she was probably glowing. Naruto spluttered in surprise and fumbled on the handle. He would have dropped it on his feet if Lee hadn't caught hold of it in time.

Hinata turned her attention to her cousin. "Neji-niisan."

Neji had been hanging back as Naruto and Lee made a fuss about her and looked a little flustered. "Hinata-sama," he answered formally, dipping his head. "It's good to see you looking so well."

Hinata fought down the urge to look down at her shoes. Chewing on her lip, she took one step towards him, and then another. She raised her fist, closed her eyes and then gently tapped him on the chest.

"Tha-that was for the ballot paper switch," Hinata stammered, opening her eyes. "Tha-that was for – that was for you getting sick - "

Neji stared as Hinata stood tearfully in front of him, holding up a quivering fist.

Happy reunions were happening all around them. Naruto and Lee were grinning at him from behind the axe in their arms. He looked at the chains and locks lying in the open Hyuuga gates, at Hinata's hands stained with dyes, at all the Marksmen and locked-in shouting and laughing as they came back together, and reached a decision.

"Naruto said you'd forgiven me." Neji was going to regret this, probably for years to come. "But given everything that's happened, if you want to hit me then it's probably no less than I deserve." He swallowed. Yes, he was definitely going to regret this. "And…I think you can hit me harder than that."

Konoha Hospital later saw Hyuuga Neji readmitted with a mild case of concussion and a number of fractured ribs, after a single punch had sent him flying down the length of the whole street to land in a, thankfully, very well-positioned ice cream stall.

As Naruto so put it: "Gentle fist, my ass."

A few days later a strange party appeared on the road to the South-East of Konoha.

"Who are you and what do you want?" shouted the guard down from the top of the wall, pulling the bowstring taut to his ear.

He aimed at the big man who stood in the middle of the road, wearing a curious kind of hazard gear none of them had seen before.

With a mane of white hair, billowing from the top of the visor like smoke, he looked less like a man, and more like a giant tepee on legs.

The tepee man squinted critically up to the top of the wall. "Don't you recognise a humble writer when you see one?"

The guard faltered. "Er…no?"

"Dear me, dear me, well, can't help folks who've been starved of literature! It's Jiraiya. The Jiraiya. The one and only great Jiraiya," shouted the tepee, its voice muffled by the visor.

The name rang a bell. "Weren't you supposed to have got back here two weeks ago?"

"True! That is very true! And I'm probably going to have my crown jewels plucked, pressed, stretched and made into a purse and a key-chain by the end of this evening, but, long story short, I got a bit side-tracked when I was coming through the forest and I found this clan…"

The tepee pointed at the group of people standing behind him. They were visored in black hoods with dark glass over their eyes and, if the guard listened very carefully, they buzzed with a kind of drone that you might hear around a beehive.

"So I stopped off and did my bit: Gave them a hand with their packing, boxing their hives, flushing out a nasty gang of bounty hunters that had been terrorising the clan lately…Just all the usual odd-jobs that a lowly writer can do. Isn't that right, Aburame-san?"

"You have been most helpful," replied one of the hooded men.

"Then I thought, well, it would be much more fun travelling in a group than all on my lonesome, so," the tepee spread its arms expansively, "here we all are - all finally coming home together at last. Now, why don't you just open up those gates and throw us a welcome party?"

The guard looked hard at the group on the road. Then he lowered his bow. "Just wait a second."

He disappeared from the parapet and when he reappeared, he was holding up a well-thumbed paperback volume over his head. "If you would agree to sign my mum's copy of Icha Icha Fruit Salad, I might just let you through..."

With the opening of the locked-in houses, the Runners and Grey Cross were disbanded. The Konoha Tiger children, once vaccinated and treated, found new homes and left the Den. The Keepers, however, it was decided would remain for longer to finish clearing up incidents from the night of the Second Parade. Some council members were worried about the power a police force might gain in Konoha if allowed to remain for too long, but Tsunade reassured them that it was all only temporary and the meeting swiftly moved on discuss other things.

High on the agenda was negotiating another Gokage Conference, this time to be held in the Land of Fire. They needed to decide quickly how they were going to deal with Madara.

Once he had obtained samples of the vaccine and antiserum, Madara had called back Zetsu from wherever the creature had been hiding, immunised him and himself and waited eagerly for what he knew would come, now that various solutions to the Plague had been found: The Kages refusal to hand over the Jinchuurikis.

Lightning and Fire released their official statements a month after the Hihoutou Conference, co-signed by the Kazekage, Mizukage and the Tsuchikage: The Raikage and Hokage were not going to hand over their Jinchuurikis and all five Kages were prepared to retaliate if Madara tried to seize the Jinchuurikis by force.

Madara was reluctantly impressed. It seemed as though the sharing of medical technology and research had brought, at least on the surface and for the time being, some aspect of union between the five nations.

He folded up the letters and tucked them up his sleeves. "Ah well, it was worth a try."

Zetsu's head and shoulders oozed out of the rock face. "They seem to be accusing you of some fun that happened in Konoha. The Sixth Repentance…Are you going to do anything about that?"

"It would only be a waste of time and makes no difference to our cause." Madara looked out from the mountain top, over the wide green expanse of forest and the great open sky. "And if they already have cause to fear me, fear me at the level of the man on the street, and come to believe that it was only a fraction of the true damage I could do to them, it is only to our advantage. No, Zetsu, they can accuse me of what they like. It will only make me stronger and their resolve weaker. How goes the mission?"

"I don't like it," Zetsu moaned, scrunching up his face. "I get stinky human ash up my nose all the time. Do I have to do this?" Madara's eye smouldered red from behind the mask. Zetsu swallowed and chattered nervously on. "Well, it's as you said, most of the bodies in the pits didn't completely burn. The DNA samples are all there for the taking. I've got samples from three Konoha pits at the moment and we're working on the Iwa and Kiri ones. "

Madara looked down at the scroll on his lap. The jutsu scroll he had discovered in Kabuto's room had been a remarkable find. It contained the conditions, instructions and the risks (or in this case, the lack of risks) of a very interesting kinjutsu. Yes, a very interesting kinjutsu indeed.

Edited and perfected by Kabuto, the Edo Tensei was now in Madara's hands, and he had seen its potential immediately.

The Plague had decimated the ninja populations, especially targeting their young adults, from their early twenties to their late thirties, and now all those young and powerful ninjas who had been struck down in their prime were lying heaped in layers, packed down into the Plague pits – some burnt away to ash, but many only 'half-cooked', so to speak, and if he could but obtain their DNA then Madara would have a most formidable army.

It would be an army of sons and daughters, of friends and family, all those who had been watched over and cared for as they wasted slowly away. Those left behind would have prayed for them to live, wept over things unsaid, and cried for them in the night.

If the Kages weren't going to give Madara the Jinchuurikis then he would simply have to take the Jinchuurikis from them, and, with his army of the Plague dead, that was exactly what he was going to do next.

"What about Uchiha Sasuke?" Zetsu's eyes followed Madara's movements as the man rose from the ledge and rolled up the scroll. "He could be trouble. He's got strong eyes, hasn't he? Very strong eyes. And now he's gone back to Konoha - "

"I will deal with Sasuke when he returns."

"Returns to you?" Zetsu frowned and it was like watching tofu crease. "Why would he do that?"

"Those eyes of his are going to fail and, when they do, he will come looking for me." The wicked smile, hidden by the mask, wove between his words like a worm. "He will remember that I have Uchiha Itachi's eyes and he will come crawling back to us like a snake on his belly for them. Mark my words. He'll come back, blind and crawling and begging for power, and then I will make him earn the eyes of an Uchiha again."

Zetsu shuddered, and Madara returned to surveying the land before him. Some early swallows were swooping low over the trees. From his distance the birds looked as small as flies. The forest breathed and the air it gave off was warm.

"The spring holiday is over." He tucked away the Edo Tensei scroll. "It's time to start a Fourth Shinobi War."

Shimura Danzo may have been the last ninja to die of the Plague in Konoha, but he wasn't the last ninja to die of the Plague. An unfortunate accident in Iwa led to a leak of the RAMK bacteria into a darkroom above a laboratory, where an unvaccinated medical photographer was working. She died twelve days later.

After that incident, vaccination efforts doubled, tripled, and quadrupled, until one day in early summer, RAMK was officially beaten, and an international night of celebrations was announced to commemorate the end of the Plague. With their refusal to hand over the Jinchuurikis, the Kages were all too aware that war against Madara was only round the corner, but the dead needed to be honoured and remembered whilst people still had the time to do so.

Some lit candles. Some lit fireworks. There was always some bright spark whose friends felt should have gone out with a bang. Some made paper lanterns and set them on the river that ran past the empty Uchiha compound. Apparently one of the Hyuuga matrons did something very un-Hyuuga like and made a massive bonfire out of hazard gear on the unlocked Hyuuga estate. Nobody stopped her and some even took their own gear to it. There were as many ways to remember as there were those who had died.

As the evening drew on, Naruto's feet took him along a very familiar path, up along a narrow track up a hill, through blue bamboo and bracken. Even in the dark, he could see the scuff marks in the dirt of tens of other feet that had gone the exact same way.

"Alright, she's ready to fly," said a voice, as he pushed through the leaves.

He came out at the top of the Hokage monument just as Kurenai-sensei, her baby strapped to her back, straightened up from lighting a candle, and Hinata and Shino let go of the paper balloon with a picture of a dog on it from their hands.

Hinata's shining eyes followed the little gold light up into the sky. Naruto reckoned that Shino, behind his sunglasses, was doing the same, tracing the balloon's upward course as it went to join the hundreds of other lanterns that were already floating and dipping above them, like fireflies in the wind.

There were others on the monument making lanterns too. Two boys near to where Naruto was standing were sniggering and crying at the same time, as they finished drawing a terrible picture of a girl's face on their lantern, added a moustache to it, and then tossed it into the air. She must have been some girl, Naruto thought wryly, as her lantern floated upwards.

Naruto was about to approach what remained of Team Eight when he felt somebody tap his shoulder from behind.

"Shikamaru said you'd be coming up here," said Sakura with a smile. She held up something flat made of paper, a candle and a box of matches. "Why don't we make one as well?"

He grinned and they went out onto the monument. Kurenai-sensei and Hinata waved when they saw them and Shino nodded, but then they went back to their own quiet reminiscing as they looked up to the sky.

Konoha beneath them was aglow with soft flickering lights.

"It's been such a strange time," Sakura said, setting glue to the paper. "So, so strange. Everything went completely off track. Now it's as though it's all trying to come back together again and get back to how things were supposed to be."

"We're missing too many people for anything to get back to how it was 'supposed to be'," noted Naruto sadly. He crouched down beside her and uncapped a felt tip pen. "Sai, Choji, Kiba,Yamato-taichou, Iruka-sensei…"

"Tenten. Half of my lab-mates," said Sakura quietly, "and some really nice nurses. The best ones all went first."

Kurenai-sensei, Hinata and Shino came across to greet them. They didn't say much. Hinata was crying and Shino was still staring upwards, as though he was worried something might spill from his eyes if he so much as tilted his head. They left down the hill trail when Kurenai's baby started wailing.

Naruto wrote 'Umino Iruka' onto the lantern. "How does that look?"

Sakura glanced over and sighed. "It looks like you wrote that with the pen in your mouth."

"It's not that bad!" Somebody snorted and Naruto reacted on instinct. "If you've got something to say about my writing, bastard, then could you say it with your mouth and not your – "

Naruto stopped, looked round and then up, to find Kakashi standing over him and, beyond Kakashi, looking about as disinterested on a festival night as only he possibly could, was Sasuke.

"What are you doing out of your fish tank?" Naruto gasped, pointing at Sasuke with his felt-tip pen.

"Well, you see, Naruto," Kakashi stepped in quickly, as Sasuke glowered, "funnily enough, nobody wants to be on guard duty of the so-called 'Demon Asylum' when there's a party happening outside, so since I've been left with keeping an eye on him, and I want to celebrate, I brought him out for the celebrations. Isn't that right, Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke snorted and turned up his nose in displeasure, but Naruto saw his eyes wander up to the night sky filled with lanterns and widen as though to drink it all in.

"Anyway, Shikamaru told us that we'd find the two of you here, so I thought we'd come and see what you two were getting up to." Kakashi raised his head to look up at the sky then peered down at the rice paper Naruto was writing on. "Making a lantern, are you?"

"Yep. And it's going to be for everybody," Naruto told him as he finished writing Kiba's name on the paper. "Everybody we're going to miss."

Kakashi hummed and squatted down beside him, squinting at the paper. "Mind if I add to that list?"

"Kakashi-sensei, why don't you get your own lantern?"

"Naruto, I am your teacher. I am supposed to encourage my students to achieve their highest potential with every task they do, and having assessed the task at hand – the task being this lantern - I think that my students will best achieve their potential if they let me hitchhike on their idea and save me having to shell out to buy one myself." Kakashi picked up a pen from the packet and uncapped it. "Besides, we all have people we need to remember. Sasuke, get over here."

Sasuke tore his eyes away from the sky and reluctantly went to stand by the lantern. A firework whistled and exploded near the town centre with a sound like clapping hands.

Kakashi held up the pen he had uncapped. "My hand's getting tired, so you can stop looking sour and make yourself useful. I'll dictate, and you'll write."

Sasuke glared at the pen as though Kakashi had offered him a cockroach on a stick and told him to eat it. Kakashi sighed. "Disobey me and I'll see to it that the Hokage has your eyes completely sealed for the next three years."

Shooting Kakashi a look of contempt, Sasuke took the pen and knelt down at the top of the lantern. Naruto and Sakura shuffled round to give him space. He didn't look at or even acknowledge them.

"Let's start off with some of my drinking buddies," Kakashi began.

"You have drinking buddies?" Naruto gaped. "As in, you actually have buddies?"

Kakashi chose to ignore him and listed several names of ninjas they didn't know, or only dimly recognised. Sasuke wrote their names in square black letters without once questioning who they were or why he was being made to do what he was doing.

"That name I just mentioned," said Kakashi suddenly. "Did you recognise it?"

"No," Sasuke muttered. "Should I have?"

"That was the name of a doctor from Ageha, who died of the Plague two weeks after you took him to examine your companions," Kakashi told Sasuke matter-of-factly, watching his reactions closely. "I didn't expect you to remember him. No matter. Let's see, any more names? Oh yes! The names of those three ninjas you were travelling with. Sasuke, I think you should write those down next."

Sasuke slapped the pen down on the ground with a growl and surged to his feet. "What kind of game are you playing at, Kakashi?"

"Sit down, Sasuke, and stop causing a scene. I've already threatened you once tonight. Alright, one last name for you to write." Kakashi waited for Sasuke to kneel down and finish adding three names to the lantern. "Uchiha Itachi. Go on. Write it."

Sasuke gripped the pen so hard Sakura thought he would snap it in two. The burn on his face seemed to ripple. His eyes went glassy, and his hand remained poised over the paper, the tip of the pen hovering over its surface.

Sakura looked up and met Naruto's eyes. She gave him a small nod. Naruto sucked in a deep breath and said, "Oh come on, Sasuke, if it's so hard, I'll write it for you, asshole."

Sasuke unfroze with a jolt, scrawled the name on the paper and the next instant was throwing the pen between Naruto's eyes like it was a kunai for the kill. "Shut. Up."

Naruto caught the pen between two fingers and grinned. "Never."

"There we go! Done at last!" cried Kakashi, raising his hands in mock celebration. Somebody rang the great iron bell of a nearby shrine. "Candle, Sakura? Thank you. Alright, you three, let's get this lantern flying. Hold it up."

They stood up together with the paper balloon in their hands and Kakashi looked critically over their handiwork. "Naruto, Sasuke, your writing…equally terrible."

"Hey!" cried Naruto indignantly. "At least my handwriting's artistic!"

Sasuke just rolled his eyes up to the sky and fixed them there. Kakashi busied with the candle, striking a match and setting the flame to the wick. As the hot air began to fill out the balloon, the paper warmed under Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura's hands and the lantern started to tug against their grip.

"Okay, gently does it."

The lantern rose, grew hot, shone vibrant yellow. Once it was above their heads and they could stretch their arms no higher to keep their hold upon it, they let go.

It began its slow winding drift up into the night.

They tracked its rise in silence, watching the wavering light, reading and rereading the names being carried away on the lantern's delicate surface until they could no longer be read with their eyes.

"Naruto, Sasuke," Kakashi hissed out of the corner of his mouth. "Neither of you say a word. You'll spoil a poignant and sentimental moment with your crass and cynical party-pooping mouths."

"Sensei," Sakura said icily from his side. "The moment. You just spoiled it."

We all have people we need to remember, Kakashi had noted, but there had been a second part to that statement he had left unsaid.

The moment Kakashi had thrust the pen at Sasuke and forced him to list his dead, Naruto and Sakura had understood. Kakashi, a man who could stand alone for hours and hours in front of a memorial, had been trying to tell them this: We all have people we need to remember, and it's a lonely, empty road trying to remember them on your own.

The four of them remained on the monument until they could no longer distinguish their lantern from the rest. There was only the thinnest sliver of a moon and not a cloud to be seen.

Some lanterns had climbed so high they looked, to Sasuke's eyes, as though they had already reached the stars.

A warm summer wind was blowing.

- The End -

Goodbye, and thank you.

Best, Zen :D