V. Teammates

Sasuke opened an eye on the couch the next morning and immediately knew it was going to be bad. It wasn't until he got to his feet, however, that he could appreciate the true extent of the what he had wrought. He managed to maintain an upright position for two seconds until all of last night's bad decisions cracked his skull in half and brought him to his knees; even the mighty Uchiha were no match for terrible hangovers. He lolled his head against the couch and closed his eyes, pressing himself back into sleep's open arms.

In a perfect world, he would have remained dead for another twelve hours, wake up after the sun had set, and stagger out for some Chinese takeout. Unfortunately, it was a universal law that the world tended towards chaos, so the sun was still high in the sky when a voice he never wanted to hear again dragged his consciousness back to the world of the living.

"Hey! Hey Sasuke! You in there, buddy?" The Spawn of Satan pounded at the door. "Open up! It's me! Naruto!"

More brainless door-banging. "Hey! You're not dead, are you?"

At this point, Sasuke wished he were.

The banging stopped and a few moments of silence slipped by. Just as Sasuke began to nurture hope that the idiot had grown bored and moved on, he heard a key in the lock of his front door. Why did he have—

The door flung open. "Oi! Sasuke! Where are—Damn. Wow, you look like hell."

"How'd you get in?" Sasuke croaked.

"Sakura-chan and I made spares. You know, you really shouldn't keep your house keys in your mailbox like that."

"Leave."

"Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa—hold up, what's with the Sharingan?"

Before Sasuke could reduce Naruto to a pile of ash and improve the quality of both their lives, another wave of nausea rocked through him, leaving him clutching his living room sofa for dear life.

"Hey man, you okay? You don't look so hot— I'm sorry, what was that?" Naruto asked, leaning in closer in an effort to make sense of Sasuke's muffled groans.

"I said, go away."

"And leave my friend to suffer alone?" Naruto asked, aghast by the mere thought.

"Yes."

"No, c'mon. I got the perfect hangover cure for you."

"The perfect cure would be for you to leave. Forever."

But of course, Naruto wouldn't have any of it, and under the horrifying threat of Naruto piggy-backing him across town, Sasuke was forced to slap some water onto his face in the bathroom and stagger out the apartment after Naruto.

Much to his despair, it was a beautiful day and the sunlight beat punishingly against his hungover brain, not unlike a certain idiot's chatter. To Sasuke's credit, he only threw a punch twice in Naruto's direction.

"Oi!" Naruto called out when Sasuke began to hang a right at the main road towards Ichiraku. "C'mon, this way," he said, beckoning Sasuke to follow with a wave of his hand before slipping into a narrow alley way.

"Where we going?"

"It's a surprise," Naruto replied cheerfully, deftly turning sudden corners as he lead them sure-footedly down Konoha's maze of backstreets.

"I swear, if we end up at a strip club..." Sasuke threatened.

"I'm surprised you even know what those are, Sasuke-kun," Naruto lightly threw back.

"Shut up."

As they pushed deeper in the village's older quarters, the cobblestones underfoot gave way to the dirt roads Sasuke remembered from childhood. The route took them up stone stairs sagging in the middle from years of use, past convivence stores that still kept its ice cream in freezers out by the front, and through an old park with a jungle gym whose slide had been rubbed down to the metal.

Finally, Naruto stopped before a wooden gate that reached just past their waists. Beyond it, a massive camphor tree ruled over the otherwise small front garden. Judging by the girth of its trunk and the spread of its branches, the ancient behemoth easily dated at back to Konoha's founding. Sasuke looked around, taking stock of his surroundings; it seemed this entire neighborhood was from a similar era. Under the deep shade of the camphor tree sat a single-floored home, comically small in relation to its leafed sentinel. Its cedar paneling had seen better days, but Sasuke did not miss the shine in the windows and the immaculately swept entry way— it was old, but fastidiously cared for.

Naruto unlatched the gate and held it open, motioning with his head for his friend to step through. "C'mon."

He closed the gate behind them and they followed the short gravel path to the front door. Naruto slid it open without knocking and Sauske lingered back with a mounting suspicion of where they were.

"Hey Hinata! I'm home!" The blonde announced at the entryway, kicking off his sandals before shoving them into the small cubby by the door.

"Naruto-kun?" A familiar voice rang out.

"Hi!" Naruto greeted happily as he followed the voice down the hallway. "Sasuke's here too," he said while disappearing around the corner.

"Oh, good," Sasuke heard Hinata reply. He paused at the entrance, noticing the framed photo of Hinata and Naruto nailed to the wall in front of him and thought about how the shoes tucked into the cubby box beneath it looked right at home. A breeze nudged past him and he heard the tinkle of a windchime drifted out from an unknown place.

"You were right." Naruto's voice and laughter carried down the hallway. "The jerk was super hungover. You should've seen him! Poor guy was hugging his furniture like he was drowning!"

Sasuke managed to take one step back out the door when Naruto appeared beside him and yoked an arm around his neck.

"And where the hell d'you think you're going?" he asked as he forced the Uchiha through the doorway.

"Far away from here. "

"Oh c'mon, you've made it this far. Why bail now?"

"Because, you said you'd take me get something for my hangover, not take me to your goddamn love nest—"

"Good afternoon, Sasuke-kun," Hinata greeted as the two young men entered the kitchen. She was hovering over a pot on stove, her long hair tied back and out of the way. She offered them both a warm smile; there was no trace of the stuttering twelve-year-old girl from Sasuke's memory.

"Ah...Hinata." Sasuke dipped his head in greeting after a moment of hesitation. Things changed, he reminded himself. That was starting to sound like a mantra these days.

She politely returned the bow. "Naruto-kun said you probably weren't feeling too well, so I offered to cook for you both."

"I'm telling you, asshole, Hinata's soup is like magic! I had one bowlful this morning and look at me now!" Naruto said, holding out his arms so Sasuke could appreciate the vitality that was clearly a product of his girlfriend's excellent cooking rather than the demon fox in his stomach.

"If you're not feeling up to it, I can always pack you some soup to go," Hinata offered.

"What! Why would we send him home after—"

"Naruto-kun," Hinata gently cut in.

The blonde immediately shut up. Sasuke noted he'd have to ask Hinata to teach him the trick to that.

"No, that's...fine," Sasuke found himself saying. "I can stay." Because the table was already set and this was the most the Hyuuga had ever spoken to him, his politeness overrode his natural programing and forced him to take a seat.

Sasuke attempted a valiant go at the whole "chit-chat" thing. ""Naruto said you had left for a mission last night, he said you'd be gone for a month."

Naruto threw himself into the chair beside him. "She did, she was supposed to be. They got all the way to the Ame border and had to turn back."

"There was a small scuffle, no serious injuries," she quickly assured Sasuke.

Sasuke frowned as he considered her words. Maybe a few years ago he wouldn't have thought twice about it, but this was a new era. Even verbal threats were rare in this day and age, and scuffles even rarer. "Was this a covert operation?"

"No, we were all wearing our headbands," Hinanta said, following his line of thought.

"Who attacked you then?" Who would outright challenge Konoha, hometown of the Hero of the Hidden Leaf, a.k.a. guy who saved the entire ninja world—twice?

Hinata dropped her gaze and bit her lower lip. "We're not sure. It was an ambush, and it happened too quickly for anyone to get a good look at their faces— they weren't wearing any village headbands either. "

Sasuke sat up a bit straighter. "What do you mean? What about the Byakugan?"

"Well that's the thing," Naruto said. "Hinata had it activated while she was scouting, and they somehow got around it."

"You don't just 'go around' a dojutsu," Sasuke impatiently pointed out. He could feel the blood rushing to his head. Suddenly, he didn't feel so hungover anymore. "What technique did they use? How many of them were there?"

"Hang on—why're you getting so worked up about this? It's not like it was Hinata's fault her Byakugan glitched," Naruto bristled.

"You idiot, the Sharingan is derived from the Byakugan."

"Well, I hate to break it to you Sasuke, but the whole fucking world doesn't revolve around you and your freaky eye."

Sasuke made a frustrated noise—did he really have to explain everything? Where was Sakura when he needed her? Dealing with Naruto was never a one-man job. "A few weeks ago, I sprung a trap that was specifically made to counter an Uchiha. And now, a team gets ambushed by a mysterious group that had a counter to a dojutsu directly related to the Uchiha clan?"

Naruto paused, as he considered Sasuke's words. "Well...I guess it's been a rough couple of weeks for your clan, huh?"

Before Sasuke could lunge across the table and beat Naruto's braincells back to life with the tablespoon, Hinata cut in.

"I couldn't see their chakra signatures," she explained. "I could see my teammates', but the attackers just looked like shadows."

"Did you see the techniques they used? How many of them were there?"

Hinata shook her head. "No, they just used taijutsu. I think they were keeping their techniques hidden on purpose. I counted about 15, but there may have been more hidden...it was difficult to tell."

"What did they want?"

"I'm not sure, they swarmed us and attacked without warning."

Sasuke bit his cheek in frustration. "How did you manage to fend them off?"

"They just retreated after a while—"

"Where?"

"Back over the border to Ame."

That trap in the temple had been over in that area as well.

"You didn't follow them?" he pressed.

Hinata paused. "We...had some injuries."

"I thought you said none of them were serious."

"Lay off, asshole," Naruto cut in hotly. " No one lost a limb or died, but there were plenty of broken ribs and fractures. One of the guys even ruptured an organ. Do you know how fucked up Hinata's arms look like under her sweater? Fucking hell, you're such an insensitive prick sometimes—"

"Naruto-kun," Hinata said softly.

"What?" Naruto barked. "Am I supposed to just sit here while he's being a jerk to you? Goddamn, and all you wanted was to make the idiot some soup. I told you this was going to happen." The chair shrieked as he abruptly stood and stormed out of the kitchen.

Hinata sighed, and gave Sasuke what he now understood to be a tired smile. "Sorry, Sasuke-kun. I just thought it would be nice to give you something for your hangover and for Naruto-kun to see you. He was a little...surprised when he saw me this morning. I think he's still a bit upset about the situation, that's all."

Hinata moved back towards the stove and eventually returned to his side, placing a themos on the table before him. He looked at her, waiting for an explanation, and she replied with an encouraging smile. "I'm sure you'll want to head over to your clan archives as quickly as possible."

Sasuke was unable to meet her eyes, but he reached out to take the thermos. "Thanks," he said while rising from his seat, "And sorry."

Hinata didn't reply, but nodded in understanding, her gentle smile never once wavering. Sasuke had never paid much attention to Hinata when they were kids, though to be fair, he hadn't paid much to attention anything beyond his little of hobby of trying to avenge his massacred clan. When he had learned she and Naruto were dating, he had a hard time seeing the village's quietest girl together with the nation's biggest idiot, but now that he had seen everything up close, he realized he had misread the Hyuuga girl entirely—she and Naruto were two peas in friggin' a pod.

He paused in the hallway, wondering if he should go find Naruto, but he quickly dismissed the idea as more trouble than it was worth. As he made his way through the front garden, a flash caught the corner of his eyes. His hand shot up reflexively to intercept the object before it could collide with his head: it was a small scroll. Looking to the direction where it came from, Sasuke caught sight of Naruto sitting in the camphor tree, glaring him down like a watchdog.

"Use that to get into your clan's archives. Kakashi-sensei locked up the whole place while you were gone so people wouldn't snoop," Naruto explained brusquely.

Sasuke slipped it inside the front pocket of his sweatshirt before heading out.

"What, you'll apologize to my girlfriend for being a dick, but not me? Fuck you! You'd better drink all of her soup!" Naruto shouted after him.

.

.

.

As The Last Uchiha, the entirety of the Uchiha Compound had fallen unto Sasuke, meaning the responsibility for the entirety of its maintenance had also fallen unto him. Naturally, the neighborhood quickly slid into abject disrepair. At Kakashi's infuriatingly constant suggestion, he had hired a groundskeeper a few months back to keep the very worst at bay, but there was only so much an old man and a broom could do. Massive cracks hewed many of the foundations, the windows were boarded up against the elements, and islands of weeds erupted in the middle of the dirt roads; a few were beginning to get even taller than him.

If Sasuke could have his way, he would have just let the whole damn place fall to ruin and disappear from everyone's memory. However, to his chagrin, Kakashi had pointed out the compound housed troves of information, both historical and militaristic, and even he couldn't deny their value, and so the bones of his childhood sat unburied on the outskirts of Konoha.

Sasuke navigated briskly through the neighborhood, trying to avoid the old ghosts that always nipped at his heels. The clan archives were located deep in the belly of the compound in the basement of a building that had served as the community center. Today, the building had met the same fate as the rest of the compound. Its shoji windows had been boarded up and the tatami mats in the huge hall sat molding in the gloom for years, furred in dust and neglect.

After breaking the massive lock on the wooden door, he slid it open and stepped in—it was dark and musty and nothing like the place from his memories. Counting seven tatami to the right from the threshold, he lifted the straw mat to expose a large trapdoor beneath, locked by a complicated interlace of seals. He examined Kakashi's handiwork with a raised brow. It definitely got the job done, but he thought the part about "Great Fire Explosion Upon Forced Entry" was a little overboard. Even if someone managed to get past Kakashi's exploding seal of death, any non-Uchiha would likely be driven mad by the genjutsu traps carved into the archive's walls.

Unrolling the scroll Naruto had chucked at his head earlier during the day, Sasuke laid the parchment atop the door, activating the "Key" symbol with his chakra. The black letters on the seal shifted, and the hidden latch clicked open beneath him. The trap door swung upwards on its own with a belabored groan. The black pit beneath it led down into a chamber filled with rows of scrolls and books—generations of knowledge, though not all of it benign.

During one trip into the archives, he had come across some work written by a clansman by the name of Uchiha Eishun, who claimed the Uchiha's natural superiority set them at the pinnacle of Shinobi society. He had called for the subjugation of all other clans and a purge of the "Inferiors"—those who had come from civilian families. As "proof," Eishun carried out a series of dissections he had performed on various "specimens." Eventually, the maniac had been arrested, charged, and found guilty of 47 counts of kidnappings and depraved-heart murders.

When Sasuke had first come across Eishun's work, his Amateratsu had practically ignited across the pages on its own. The black flames had made quick work of it, and as he watched the fire move on to hungrily lick at the shelves and other volumes, he had considered allowing it consume everything else. Only after the flames had eaten through a fifth of the collection did he force himself to extinguish them. As bloated as the shelves were with the Uchiha's hubris, it was just as full of detailed maps of the world, charts of the heavens, anthologies of cultures long forgotten, and more. .

Sasuke paused for a moment at the very edge of the hole, his heart skipping beats. He wasn't afraid of the dark, but for someone who relied heavily on his sight, the blackness underground had an impenetrable quality that made even him...uncomfortable. But there were torches he could light downstairs and the archives were nothing more than a collection of books, he reminded himself, nothing more. He took a deep breath, forcing his thoughts to still before slipping into the gloom below.

.

.

.

After collecting an armload of scrolls and books from the archives, Sasuke took his findings back up to the surface, deciding to settle out on the community center's porch with Hinata's thermos to do his research. He hadn't shaken his hangover entirely and figured the fresh air might keep the fogginess in his thoughts at bay.

However, half-an-hour in, he felt the headache slowly creeping back. It didn't help that he was also trying to decipher text written in a font so small the author could have only done it to be an utter asshole. After squinting at the same two lines for the past ten minutes, he didn't have much to show for his efforts except a brain that felt like it had been thrown against a wall over and over again. Setting the scroll down, he leaned back against the building's exterior. While closing his eyes to let them rest, he inadvertently slipped down into a dreamless sleep, so that when he awoke, he was dazed as his thoughts spun mercilessly in circles. The setting sun had turned the skies an angry red and threw long strange shadows across the garden towards him. He shivered. God, he felt like shit.

He heard a page turn and his eyes slid towards the noise. A few feet away, the scrolls and books he had found lay scattered about the porch and, at their chaotic center, Sakura sat focusing intently on a green book, the thermos Hinata had given him standing vigil by her side with its cap unscrewed.

Sasuke brought a hand to his face, trying to hold back his splitting migraine. "Have you unlocked the secrets of the universe yet?" He asked, his voice still rough from sleep.

"No, but did you know that at the bottom of Lake Fuen, there's supposedly a shrine? Apparently if you offer it a shell, a river spirit will come and tell you who the missing person in your life is."

"I think I heard that one, a long time ago," Sasuke said, using the wall for support as he began to rise to his feet.

"I went to check in on Naruto earlier today. Pretty sure he was dead last night, that metabolism of his amazing. He and Hinata told me you would be here—Sasuke-kun!" Sakura threw down the book she had been examining and scrambled to Sasuke's side.

His knees had buckled beneath him, and he stood collapsed against the wall, breathing hard. Sakura helped him lower himself back into a sitting position.

"Goddamn...this...hangover..." he muttered.

"I don't think this is a hangover," she said skeptically. "Open your eyes."

He complied. "Everything's blurry," he observed. That probably wasn't a good sign. "Really blurry," he added, trying to be helpful.

Also, his tongue felt really heavy. Should he tell her that too? He felt Sakura's tiny hand press against his forehead. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately—must be a doctor thing.

"Sasuke-kun," He heard Sakura say. Her voice seemed far away, as if it were traveling up from the bottom of a deep, deep well. "Have you been taking that medication I gave you?"

"What medication?" He mumbled, honestly trying to remember, and he thought he heard Sakura curse. Maybe. Hard to tell. He could have been making it up since Sakura had never called him a fucking idiot before.

In case she had called him one, he sloppily threw out, "I'm not an idiot," before falling onto his side and knocking out cold.

.

.

.

Sasuke woke up six hours later, once again in a hospital bed and leashed to an accursed IV. The lights were off, but the moon was big tonight, and silver light flooded through the window, casting a square spotlight onto his bed cover. In it, Sakura lay asleep, folded over a chair with an arm pillowed under her head while the other hand gripped his blankets. Naruto's jacket hung draped across her shoulders and, to Sasuke's great displeasure, its owner was still in the room.

"Heard you didn't do as the doctor ordered," Naruto said, getting up from his seat in the corner. He carried the chair over to Sasuke's bedside and sat down. His hushed tone didn't hide the glitter of amusement in his voice.

"Shut up," Sasuke hissed back, though he was currently more preoccupied with trying to maneuver himself upright without waking Sakura—hard to do when he had just one arm again.

"She's probably going to give you hell when she wakes up."

Sasuke tiredly rubbed his eyes. "What happened?"

"Sakura-chan explained a bit, but I couldn't really follow—"

"Not a big surprise."

"But," Naruto ground out, deciding to take the high road tonight in this one instance because Sasuke was in a hospital bed. "It sounds like your chakra circuits were still fried from the poison and your body freaked out over the arm. Your body rejected it or something? Also, not taking the meds and then drinking more than your lightweight ass could handle didn't help."

"I'm not a lightweight," Sasuke snapped back as quietly as he could. They sounded like a pair of dueling snakes.

"I'm sorry, who was the one hugging his couch this morning?"

"Shut up, idiot, you're going to wake her up."

Naruto shot to his feet and shook an indignant fist in Sasuke's direction. "What! This is your fault to begin with," he hissed back, though he kept his voice low. "Do you know how long she was up trying to fix you? She even had a morning shift today," he said reproachfully while walking around the bed to where Sakura slept. "Listen, I don't know how long you're gonna hang around this time, but at least treat her to lunch or something before you leave," he suggested while pulling his jacket higher over her shoulders. The both froze when she shifted, holding their breaths in silence as they waited for the danger to pass. Sasuke thought about Naruto's suggestion in the interim and decided he hated it.

"She's dating Inuzuka," he said flatly. A little voice told him he was probably being immature, but he stubbornly drowned it out with a bigger voice. Why should he buy her lunch when she was the one with the boyfriend?

"You're being immature," Naruto accused. "I said buy her a meal, not confess your emotionally-stunted love to her. You're both teammates for crying out loud, but you've been stiff-arming her since we were twelve and it's hard to keep watching. If you can't let her in, at least fucking let her go—ow! What the hell was that for?" Naruto whispered harshly as he pulled the pillow away from his face.

"Get out."

"Fine, but know this, Sasuke, I might've been drunk last night, but you know what I said at the bar was true—ow! Fuck, why'd they give you so many goddamn pillows. All I'm saying is figure your shit out before you leave. Night, jerk."

Naruto shut the door behind him, and Sasuke sat in the dark gripping his blanket, rankled by everything but nothing he could name. He eyed Naruto's jacket and his irises flashed red—if it hadn't been on Sakura's shoulder he would have probably set it afire in that moment.

Freeing himself from his IV, he carefully extricated himself from beneath the covers, bringing his legs around to so that he sat beside Sakura with his bare feet pressing against the hospital floor. Naruto's words echoed in his ears and he furiously ran a hand through his hair, trying to shake it off. Damn it, that blockhead had a way of really getting under his skin.

He reached over and shook Sakura's shoulders. "Sakura."

Instead of waking, her body readjusted itself and her breathing continued to steadily rise and fall.

"Sakura," he tried again, shaking her a bit harder, and this time it was enough to dislodge her from unconsciousness. She let out a long, tired groan as she tried to burrow into the mattress face-first.

"Sakura, you can't sleep here, it's bad for your back."

"Fuck. My back is fine," she grumbled into the blankets.

"Sakura," Sasuke repeated, sensing she was slipping away. He shook her again and her head flew up like it had just hit a spring board.

"Yes," she barked with one eye screwed shut and the other not entirely open. "My shift is over, tell Nakamura to take care of it." Exhaustion was scrawled all over her face. Her one eye considered Sasuke for a few beats, the signals clearly not hitting her brain yet. "Huh? Sasuke-kun?"

"You can't sleep here," he patiently repeated for her.

Saskura slowly turned her head, taking stock of the situation before rising arduously to her feet. "Sasuke-kun, you're awake." She yawned hugely, and began to explain, "Your arm—"

"Naruto filled me in."

"Did he?" She blinked a few times, trying to refocus her thoughts on the waking world. "I told you take the medication," she said, almost plaintively. All of this could have probably been avoided if he had just taken one pill in the morning and one pill in the evening.

"Sleep on the bed—I'm leaving," Sasuke told her, moving out of the way.

Sakura waved off his offer before using the hand to block off a mighty yawn. "It's fine, it's fine." She laid Naruto's jacket on the bed and reached for her own coat hanging on the rack. "I'm going home— Shishou is going to give me another earful if she hears I spent the night at the hospital again."

"I'll walk you back then."

"Thanks, but I live just a few blocks—hey wait, what are you—oh my god!"

Sasuke leaned out over the opened window. There was something deeply satisfying about watching Naruto's dumb orange hoodie tumble three stories down and land in some bushes that, if Sasuke was lucky, was infested with ants. If he was really lucky, it'd have ticks, though honestly highly unlikely in March.

Sakura appeared beside him to contemplate his handiwork. "You know, he's going to kill you for that."

"He asked for it."

"You're both idiots," she sighed tiredly. "Just meet me outside," she said before slipping out the window to fetch the jacket.

.

.

.

Sakura was waiting for Sasuke outside by the hospital's front entrance with Naruto's jacket, and he hung back for a moment to watch her through the closed glass doors. She stood looking upwards, standing so still he would have thought her to be a painting if not for the white curls of breath trailing from her mouth into the cold night air. He pushed past the doors and set upon her.

"Here," he said, thrusting his hand out towards the jacket. Sakura eyed him apprehensively and hugged the jacket closer to her body.

"I'll take it back to, Naruto—I won't burn it," he solemnly promised when she cocked an eyebrow in suspicion.

"Will you wash it, too?"

"Don't push it," he advised as he took it from her and swung it over a shoulder. "You should've waited inside. It's cold out."

"It's not too bad, besides I kind of like the view," she said, returning her gaze up. "Sometimes after a long shift I like to just stand here and stargaze for a bit while I clear my head. Doing nothing can be a godsend sometimes, you know?"

Sasuke followed her stare upwards. He'd seen better.

Sakura suddenly chuckled. "I bet you've seen better during your travels, huh?" She had said it so quietly it could have been an accidently slip of her tongue.

His dark eyes darted to her. She was still smiling, but even he could hear the twinge of sadness in underlying her words. The "yes" was trapped in his chest, weighing uncomfortably upon him—he wondered why he couldn't get it out.

"Wow, you're right though. It's really cold tonight," she said buoying her voice to make it lighter as she crossed her arms against her chest. "Don't worry about walking me home. Like I said, it's only a few blocks away. And don't forget to take your medication this time, Sasuke-kun." If Sakura noticed the consternation pass across his face, she didn't mention it and instead turned to go.

Behind her, Sasuke rubbed a hand down his face in a rare display of distress. Without knowing why, his legs hastened into a jog as he caught up to her. "No, it's fine—I uh, said I'd walk you back." His face felt hot. Why did his face feel so damn hot?

Sakura's arms tightened across her chest, but she didn't protest, so he followed alongside her, though Sasuke wasn't sure if her reticence was really a green light either. As they continued to wordlessly stroll towards the hospital gates, the silence slowly pulled his insides apart and every step began to grow more and more harrowing. Just when he was beginning to contemplate putting a chidori through his head to put himself out of this stressful misery, Sakura unfolded her arms and shoved them into her coat pockets.

"So, did you find out anything from your clan's archive today?" She asked casually, maybe a little too casually.

Still, Sasuke lunged at the bone. "Not really. I couldn't get very far in my research today because I..."

"Passed out from not taking your medication like I had asked? Over and over again."

Fuck. A Chidori to the head was suddenly looking like a great idea again.

"Did you find anything?" He tried.

"I was only there for an hour."

"It looked like you had gone through most of it."

"I was just skimming..."

"But you found something?" He prodded carefully.

"Maybe...I'm not quite sure yet...there was a lot of stuff written in languages I didn't recognize. Old scripts, but that's probably where most of the information is going to be."

"Mmm," he agreed with a nod.

"I recognized some of it since a few of the medical textbooks Shishou made me read were written in the old script too, but it's really difficult to translate. You have to first figure out which root they're using and it's just...ugh. Terrible. Especially the syntax."

"So you've translated it before?"

"Yeah, it was a pain, though."

With some trepidation, he ventured in asking, "Do you want to help?" before quickly rephrasing it. "Can you help?"

Sasuke caught the way her green eyes went wide with surprise before she hid behind a more stoic façade. He chuckled inwardly to himself—she always had been an open book.

"Well..." she began, biting her lower lip as she struggled to hold back the answer that deep down she knew she wanted to say.

"I'll buy you lunch."

"Lunch, and you'll help me work on my taijutsu on the weekends. And you'll take your medication." Sakura held out a hand.

"You drive a hard bargain," he observed, but took her hand in his anyways. "Deal."

Sakura irradiated him with a smile so bright that Sasuke could only helplessly grin a little back in return.

"My schedule is packed tomorrow, but I can start Wednesday evening. This is it," Sakura said, stopping at the entrance of a small apartment complex. It really was just a few blocks away from the hospital. The girl needed to get a better handle on her work-life-balance, Sasuke thought, though he was probably the last person who could really say anything.

Sasuke nodded. "You can come over to my place after work then."

"Sounds good, I'll be there around 6:30, if that's okay with you."

"6:30 works."

"Great! Night, Sasuke-kun," She waved before stepping into the doorway. "And don't forget your medicine," she added. "Or you can translate those books on your own."

"I won't forget, now get inside," he said shooing her off and turning to go, still feeling the aftermath of Sakura's beaming smile glowing against him.

On his walk home alone, a thousand thoughts wheeled through Sasuke's head like the stars overhead, none of them really all that coherent. His big fancy Uchiha-brain could formulate the exact angle and degree a shuriken should be thrown to find a mark that others would think impossible. He understood battle tactics, theories of chakra molding, and even meteorology because it was practical during his travels, but he could never quite understand why sometimes his chest would feel like it was brimming with an unnamable thing—there was no logic or reason behind it, and he disliked that.

It filled him when he thought of Sakura asleep in the pool of moonlight, that infectiously huge grin of hers, the sudden sadness that crept into her voice from time to time, her green eyes always vibrating with feelings—he didn't even know why he was thinking of those things, they just...happened. Why had he offered lunch as part of the bargain again?

Teammates. It's because they were teammates, and Sakura had one of the sharpest minds of their generation, which would prove to be invaluable during his research. Suddenly it all clicked into place as the only rational answer to this complicated mess fell into his lap like a golden key.

Teammates.

Sakura and he were teammates, therefore, it was only natural he cared about her well-being. His concern about Kiba was obviously just a natural extension of that. Of course. He thought back to how Itachi would care for him and that was the perfect analogy—she was like a sister to him.

Suddenly it felt like a weight had fallen from his chest. A sister. Of course. That's what all of this was. Sakura was his teammate—basically his sister, just like how Naruto was basically like a turd of a brother. It all made absolute perfect fucking sense now. God, why had he been such an idiot about this before?

He was in higher spirits the rest of his walk home, paying mind to other things like whether he should eat anything as a new clarity settled upon his thoughts. And if he had accidently dropped Naruto's jacket a few times in the dirt along his way, his teammates would never be the wiser for it.

A/N.

1. We'll get you there, Sasuke, I promise, buddy.