The Moguragakure no Jutsu was a technique that she'd ingrained into her ninjutsu style since the beginning; the Earth around her turning to fine sand and giving way to her chakra to let her move as she pleased. It's kept her alive in brutal training sessions with Kabuto over the years when he did not train her as a surgeon. It's kept her in control and aware of her surroundings. It became the basis of her style; deceptive movement and evasiveness until she could strike. Sakura could feel the surface above her with intense clarity, feel the trees, feel the animals, feel the feet standing six and a half meters above her head. She could pinpoint everything and everyone with just that alternate sense of knowledge, something more acute than chakra in the electromagnetic pull of the earth.

They'd stopped easily at her presence, landing almost directly above her. Sakura wished she was able to hear them, but their positions gave her just enough information - but not enough to calm the uneasiness of her mind.

Questions bloomed in rapid fire sequence. Had they been able to smell her? Or maybe just sensed her chakra nearby? Were they forming a plan right now to split up and find her. She didn't know. As long as they could stay still for just a few moments, it would be to her benefit.

Sakura breathed deeply, letting her chakra flex and shift the rocks around her, turn it into finely grained sand around her. It made room for her body, giving her space to stand and shift her position. She pushed her arms up to slam her palms up against the dirt above her.

She surged chakra into her hands, pressing them up above to the dirt as it shifted into a thick, sticky, mud. Sakura's hands pulled away, brushing away the muck before her hands were forming into seals once more, apprehension swallowing in her skin.

This would not kill them - of course it wouldn't. She wouldn't make it powerful enough. It might not even work, but now, Taka needed as much of a head start they could get.

But Sakura could only blink, breathing and turning around to leave, before the ground gave way and steel was pressed into her throat.

The urge to groan aloud seized up her throat in acute irritation.

"You're still just as fast, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura said aloud.

"Not as fast as you, apparently," the Copy Ninja returned. His tone was casual, easy, like he wasn't pressing a kunai up against his former student's throat. "You've grown a lot. I never thought you'd become this skilled at Earth Release ninjutsu."

"Shocking, huh?" she said, a strain in her voice. Rage shook and rattled her bones, but she held still, breathing in the scent of wet Earth. "Who else happens to be with you? I might come up and say hello if they ask nicely."

"I don't remember you being this polite."

Sakura barked out a laugh, feeling every muscle in her body shake and twitch in anger at Hatake Kakashi being Hatake Kakashi. "Really? Well, I don't remember you being so eager to hold a kunai to my throat," she replied.

"And I don't remember you being quite so stupid over an ego-inflated boy," Kakashi added, the ruffle of clothes and the tilt of the kunai almost sounding like a shrug. Sakura fumed. "But things change."

"Stop trying to make this trivial, Kakashi-sensei. He's had this goal since he was a child - since his entire life was ruined by the monster that was his brother" she hissed, jerking away from him in anger. He held the knife tighter against her throat. She could taste the lie thick at the tip of her tongue, but she said it anyway. "Now he's ready to fulfill it with Orochimaru out of the way."

"That does justify his decision to leave the village"

"It justifies a lot."

He sighed loudly. "I'm sure it does. But what about you? You know you have no excuse. Do you know how many reports there are about you in Sound? Reports on a pink haired girl setting slaves free from Orochimaru's bases by the dozens? Villages being visited by a young kunoichi medic to cure town illnesses? Actively avoiding lethal contact with Konoha shinobi? I know, Sakura," Kakashi said in a hard voice. "You didn't kill Bull. You didn't give damaging injuries to Hinata and Naruto. You are still you, and you still understand what you're doing. In the end, you won't be able to balance out your own karma."

Sakura wanted to scream. An unknown rage set lit her up. "It's- it's not just balancing out my damn karma!" she roared, shaking dangerously. The darkness around her swallowed her senses whole. All she knew was the smell of the earth and the cold steel at her neck. "It's about doing the right thing!"

"Was forsaking your village the right thing? Was abandoning your friends and family the right thing? And for what?" Kakashi countered. "Achieving someone else's goal while you suffering along the line?"

"It's not just-!"

"Sasuke isn't worth this, Sakura. He's not worth any of this."

Sakura bit down on her lip hard, waiting until she could feel the wetness of blood. She waited til her body went still. The chakra signatures above her were moving once again, circling just overhead. "If I was old enough to kill, then I was old enough to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And I've long since decided. There's no going back. Not now, Kakashi-sensei. Not with the promises I've made," she muttered.

"You need to come home, Sakura."

"You're worse than Naruto. You can't have some kind of heart-to-heart with me while you're ready to slit my throat at any second," she hissed, tears burning at her eyes. "You're not distracting me."

Kakashi was silent for a moment before he gave a low chuckle. "You always were my best student."

She breathed, heavy and harsh against the compacted earth that trembled around them. Their bodies were shot upward, with the blinding rays of the forest sun shining down on them. Kakashi flitted back as wires wrapped around Sakura's frame, painfully digging into her skin. Sakura shrieked and fell onto her knees as the force of the restrains held her down. She choked aloud as a final one wrapped itself around her throat, ready to slice out her jugular.

Her sight was warped and blinded by the motion, but when she opened her eyes once again, she could only see Naruto and Kakashi staring down at her fallen form.

The blonde's expression of horror and pain twisted his features, while Kakashi's exposed eyes were pinched in bitterness.

"Are the restraints secure?"

"Yeah, Yamato-taicho!"

There were more, with more shouting and tighter wires digging into the flesh of her skin, and she felt ready to burst, but she held her former team's gaze resiliently.

"I'm not Sasuke - I don't want to hurt you. I couldn't forgive myself if I hurt you," she ground out, breathing shakily. There was a fire burning around her and she was left wilting from the heat of it. "But I won't hold back if you don't stay out of my way. Consider this my only warning. Please don't interfere."

And when the clone jerked violently against the wires - thin metal slitting into its' throat - it crumbled into dirt and white smoke.

.

.

.

Sakura blinked, almost lost her footing on the tree she landed on, before righting herself and launching forward again.

"What?" Sasuke asked, jumping beside her and giving her a sharp look. She could feel her own cheeks burn at his sharp scrutiny, but shoved aside her embarrassment. At least she hadn't actually fallen. That would have been mortifying and intensely painful to her pride.

And Sasuke would probably never forget it.

"My clone dispersed," she said dismissively, waving away him away. "I've held them off for a little while, at the least."

Her eyes returned to the trees ahead of her as she bit down on her lip, trying not to focus on the bandages still wrapped around his head. The harsh, hot intensity in his eyes while they searched made her more than slightly weary. She fell onto the next branch and launched herself a little farther, reaching into her coat and pulling out the map that Juugo had left to her when they made it back to the inn. She gave it a quick glance, eyes following Sasuke for a moment, before rolling it shut once more.

"We can't be too far off now," Sakura said.

He nodded. "Up ahead."

Sakura blinked, squinting ahead until she saw the trees thin out into a clearing. They spurred forward and bounded down on top of a large rock, in front of a shrine statue.

It was aged, old and covered in moss, but still a beautiful jade color. She watched it in rapt attention as it lead off into a small cave blacker than night. She bit her lip, watching as Sasuke fell beside her and walked forward. The bandages strapped tight around his head and the unusual paleness to his skin made her worry her lip, but she stayed quiet.

The quiet, suppressed chakra, thick with malevolence, permeated the small clearing. Sasuke's jaw tightened almost immediately.

"You four stay here and wait for my orders," Sasuke said, his arm brushing past her. He gave her a cool, intimate look of assurance. "I'll check it myself."

Sakura nodded briskly. They all stayed silent as they watched him enter the dark.

It seemed like hours to her. He walked away and blended into the darkness so thoroughly she was only left with the sudden shift of his shoulders into tenseness, the rigidity of a shinobi bathed in bloodstains. Sakura could only manage to sigh through her nose and breath, and wait, and pray silently.

'He isn't ready,' Sakura told herself quietly - and she knew the lie she told Kakashi was meant only to herself. She swallowed thickly, thinking about the damage the Akatsuki had done to his body and the strain Orochimaru's chakra put on him. He was not ready and she knew it more thoroughly than her own anatomy. He was not ready for this fight. Not when he still struggled against a lower level Akatsuki. Not when he was still hurt. Not when he was still too fragilein mind and body.

When is someone ever ready to end the life of the last remaining member of their family? What was the aftermath protocol to it? How was Sasuke supposed to deal with it? There were still too many questions she needed answer to before she sent him off with any sort of peace of mind.

The very thought of him walking into a battle still rattled her nerves, but the battle she could only deliver him to? It shook her to the core. Uchiha Itachi had become a long away, foreign idea to her for years. Since the very first day she stepped before Orochimaru in his proverbial snake's den, she had been focused on making herself smarter, faster, stronger than before. She had been focused on becoming the instrument Sasuke needed to survive. There was a goal she promised to help him accomplish - a goal she offered her soul for. She could not afford to be his weak link. She could not afford to fall behind.

And because of it, together they were vicious and infinitely more effective. Together they could destroy landscapes and breathe destruction into life. Together they could hunt, find, kill, evade, destroy, and unearth horrors as a gridlock. Together they could turn the entire world over. They were the team she so desperately wanted them to be.

Did she believe in Sasuke enough to accomplish this on his own?

The sound of electricity crackling like birds jolted her into alertness.

Sakura swiftly pulled out a fist full of senbon in her right had as Suigetsu brandished his sword with a resounding whistle of metal and Juugo began to transform his arm. Karin gasped, taking a step forward anxiously, but Sakura clamped her free hand down on her shoulder.

"Wait," she ordered, breathing harshly. The feeling of their chakra dancing and clashing together made her stomach turn violently, but she held still. "Give it a minute."

"Are you fucking crazy?" Karin snapped, jerking her body away from the pink haired girl's grasp. "He wouldn't be throwing around a chidori for nothing! There's something in there!"

"If they're fighting, then we can't interrupt."

"What the hell do you mean?" Suigetsu hissed. He stepped forward, ready to shove Sakura aside, but she slipped a kunai out into her other hand and brandished it threateningly.

"This isn't our fight!" she hissed. The three of them stared at her wide eyed. "This is Sasuke's. We are supposed to guard him and make sure no one interrupts. What if Itachi's partner is lurking around somewhere? We need to be focused on that and not what Sasuke's doing."

Suigetsu scoffed, shifting his entire body with the swing of his sword into the ground and leaning onto the edge, fists curled tightly around the hilt. Sakura saw the easy smile and the white-knuckled grip that kept twitching in agitation. "So, what? You're gonna let your own boyfriend fend for his goddamn self? What the fuck kind of bullshit it that?" he barked in a laugh.

Sakura sneered. "This isn't my fight, or your's. It's his," she hissed, twitching and spitting and burning in rage. Her voice took on a dangerous edge. "This is Sasuke getting the revenge he needs for his clan. If we jump in, we are going to deny him that. I'm not going to let an opportunity he's been waiting years for slip away just because of your ego."

And she meant it, every single word, watching the shift of Suigetsu's face from angry to cool bitterness, listening to Karin careful footsteps towards her, and feeling Juugo's sharp gaze analyzing her entire frame.

"Calm down, Sakura," Karin said.

"I can't. Not for this, Karin," she hissed, whirling around and slipping her kunai back into place.

"You're fucking losing it. We can't afford for you to- he disappeared!"

"What?"

"The hell are you saying?"

"Itachi's gone! His chakra disappeared!" Karin barked, sprinting towards the cave with her black cloak billowing behind her. She shouted back at them angrily. "It was a shadow clone! He probably lured Sasuke there alone!"

Sakura's eyes doubled as she, Juugo, and Suigetsu followed the redhead into the darkness. Her heart's sharp staccato doubled in speed, jutting painfully into her chest and laboring her breathing. She sped through the dark path until the small tunnel lead into another wide, open space, with Sasuke looking up into a ceiling that let black feathers and grey light fall on him.

She gasped out his name, bright eyed and fearful. He did not deign to look at her.

Sasuke turned to look over his shoulder towards them, eyes focusing elsewhere. "I thought I told you to stay back until I said otherwise," he grunted.

"Karin said she felt the foreign chakra disappear, so we got...curious," Suigetsu said, eyes falling around the cave.

"Feathers...?" Karin supplied, confused.

Sakura stepped forward and gave him a wild look. "Are you okay?" she asked, holding up a glowing hand.

He scoffed aloud, still angry, still vicious as he fulled faced them. The pink haired girl breathed, shook slightly at the anger and madness swirling in his eyes.

"We're moving," he ordered. "Follow me."

A/N: You can't be mad at me for taking like twenty six years to update ok. Y'know why? Because Naruto is ENDING and Sasuke went on some VIVA LA REVOLUTION bullshit and put Sakura under a HORRIBLE GENJUTSU and chapter 697 almost GAVE ME A PANIC ATTACK and I'm still so mad that Naruto and Sasuke are even having this fucking useless-ass-fanboy-service-optimus-prime-extra-terrestrial-looking-BULLSHIT fight because Kaguya was supposed to be the END and they were supposed to be brofisting by now.

Like there's so much else to be mad at tbh.

But really, I am sorry for the lateness. Senior year got me caught up. I have four AP classes ((two which I didn't sign up for)) ((which they wouldn't let me switch out of)) ((what the fuck is a future broadcast Journalism major doing in an AP Biology class)) that are destroying the fuck out of me. The next update is most likely going to be a long ways off, but hopefully around the time the last naruto chapter comes so I can commiserate with this fic.

Remember to review! Literally, there's so much I wanna talk about with you guys. I'm still so mad. And this chapter has me extra emotional.