Disclaimer: Obviously, if I owned Naruto, it would look a great deal more like one of these stories and not canon.

A/N: Wow, it's been a long, long time since I've worked with Fallen Night. Off-the-wall crack is actually harder to write than all that heavy drama that drags down all the other stories. But, here it is, at last. Writing this actually made me wish that the characters in FKftD were as OOC, so I actually might be able to write that "ANBU Orgy." Anyhow, welcome back to the madness and enjoy.

Also, this chapter, though short, is dedicated to Sakura Taichou, who did the really excellent fanart that is now the image for this story.

Fallen Night

-Chapter Twelve-

Covet and Conceal

Sasuke eyed the slightly vicious liquid in front of him with a mixture of wariness and disdain. "Am I supposed to drink it or use it to take the finish off the bar?"

Naruto shrugged, downing his entire glass with a wince. "Works either way." As Sasuke picked it up, sloshing the overfull glass, he warned, "Ah, don't spill it. It really does remove the finish. Mama will be pissed."

Sasuke sat the drink back on the counter without tasting it, glancing around the darkened and boisterous room as best he could. It seemed like almost every shinobi he had ever met was drinking tonight to celebrate Madara's demise, but he couldn't understand what about this particular bar had made it attractive. It was large, two stories, and crammed past fire code capacity, but the alcohol all had a slightly dangerous look to it. He looked askance at a drink being carried to Ino that he would swear was not only the most noxious shade of neon pink he'd ever seen, but appeared to be glowing. "Where's your Hyuuga stalker?" he asked Naruto, spotting his eerie doppelganger sitting in a far corner of the bar-was he sketching?-but there was no navy-haired heiress to be seen. "She not drink?"

"Nah, she just doesn't drink cheap booze. If it isn't at least as old as her grandfather, she won't touch it."

Sasuke snorted, then cautiously glanced over his left shoulder. Hyuuga Neji sat next to him, back slumped, gazing into his awamori like it contained the answers to life, death, and the universe. Next to him, Sakura was well on her way to constructing a pyramid of sake dishes that Tsunade herself would be envious of.

"We've been here twenty minutes. She's going to fall over dead of alcohol poisoning," Sasuke muttered.

Naruto tipped forward to look down the bar. "Shimmata. She's going to be unbearable after this."

"I don't see your third wheel. Where's Shikamaru?" he addressed this question to Neji, but he was ignored. Well, he'd half expected him to be a sullen drunk anyway.

But Naruto had his answer. "Shikamaru is too laid back to keep up with Neji and Sakura when they're drinking."

"I don't think Neji has moved for the last ten minutes."

Naruto waved off his objection. "Just you wait," he said ominously. "Lee is bad. Neji is worse."

"So I should expect a fight?" Sasuke asked dryly.

"No, but let's just say it's safer for everyone if Neji keeps his inhibitions nice and intact."

Sasuke scoffed, then almost choked as a slightly tipsy Karen flung her arms around his neck. "Sa-su-ke-kun!" she trilled. He was grateful when Suigetsu took her by the collar like a bitch might her pup and drug her off into the confusion with a lopsided salute.

Naruto snickered. "Good to have friendly team members. So, Sa-su-ke-kun," he mocked and Sasuke scowled, "what are you going to do after this. Institute the new and improved Uchiha breeding program?"

"Danzou is still in power."

"Yeah, well, Danzou's shaking in his boots. We offed Madara, which means plenty of goodwill from the elders, which translated to-."

"Leniency." Neji's firm answer was unexpected and almost made Sasuke flinch from surprise. He did flinch as Neji's white eyes, narrowed and intense, turned towards him. "No matter the lunacy. You're no longer needed, Uchiha. Retire safely and become a househusband. Have many, many children. And stay out of the way of better shinobi than you."

"Geez, Neji, you're going to have him a doddering grandpa at the rate you're shoving him," Naruto chided him. "Besides, it's not like he can have those children himself. Karen-creeper or not, he has to have a girl willing to sign on for the whole parenthood thing to work."

Sakura chuckled from her seat next to Neji. Sasuke noticed, even over the cacophony of sound, because Orochimaru had a laugh just like it. Sakura wore a look of melancholy contemplation as she stared at her hand, but then, one by one, her fingers began to glow with green chakra. "All things are possible through science!" she declared, abruptly standing and thrusting her hand toward the ceiling, still staring up at it like she held something very important in her hand.

"Hey," Naruto grumbled, "Neji, take care of her god complex before she hurts someone with that thing."

Neji glanced over at his companion and for a moment Sasuke thought he would only offer some pithy comment, but then he reached out and captured her other arm, pulling her off balance. When she stumbled, he half-rose to meet her, capturing her mouth with his in a chaste kiss that startled the hell out of Sasuke but didn't seem to surprise Sakura.

Instead, her melancholy turned into a kind of seductive cunning that Sasuke was uncomfortable to see on her face. Hooking her heel around the leg of Neji's barstool, she sent it tumbling to the ground, letting it take her with it. Sasuke winced at the solid sound of Neji's back hitting the floor, but Sakura's hand cradled his head, pulling him up to her as she straddled him and deepened the kiss.

Naruto made a sound of frustration, but it was like watching a train wreck. Sasuke found it difficult to turn away. "This is why Shikamaru doesn't drink with them."

"Why?" Sasuke croaked. "I thought they jumped each other's bones in private, anyway."

"Because Neji turns into an angry, ultra-selective masochist and Sakura is a sadist with a god-complex. Oi, there are laws against that!" he yelled at them. "Shikamaru, on the other hand, is just what you'd might expect-he's in a coma after about four drinks. Not that that has stopped Sakura in the past, but still-hey, Sakura, you know Neji is always surly about this whole exposure thing when he sobers up."

Sasuke was just about dumbstruck. "He didn't even finish that first drink."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Extreme lightweight. He's picky about food, too. Can't imagine what Sakura sees in him."

Sakura sat up and turned to Naruto with a maniacal grin. "Shall I tell you?"

"Nope," Naruto replied promptly, "that would be chronic over sharing. You can do it with Ino, but I find it weird as crap. It's like the ghost of Pervy-sage come to haunt me."

Sakura glanced over at Sasuke, still not moving from her inappropriate perch on her teammate. "I have something I want to say to you Sasuke."

Sasuke leaned back against the bar, affecting ease, though this was the most surreal he'd felt since meeting Fallen Night for the first time. "What?"

Sakura leaned forward, like she was about to impart a secret, speaking in a stage whisper, "I have two swords and both of them are bigger than yours!" And with a laugh, she collected Neji like he was made of paper and swept him out the door.

"They're strange sober, but that's always creepy, no matter how many times I see it," Naruto observed, motioning for the bartender to serve him another drink.

Sasuke, shaken, actually took a sip of his. It was just as bad as it looked.

-X-X-X-

Atop the Hokage Monument

Almost drowned out by thunder and the downpour, Sakura was weeping inconsolably against Neji's chest. Like her heart was breaking. His arms tightened unconsciously around her as he continued his silent passivity, even when she began to struggle to get enough distance between him so that she could hit fisted hands against his chest. Perhaps others might be foolish enough, but Sakura's teary fits had been known to end in broken bones.

"Shikamaru's not leaving you," he explained patiently."He's going to Temari." If Sakura had a god complex, it was a god with abandonment issues and petulant mood swings when drunk that could put a cursed-seal bearer to shame. Which, really, might have been what made it a god complex and not a simple superiority complex.

"Which means leaving me!" Sakura wailed.

"If it makes you feel any better, he does owe you his first born son."

Sakura made a face against his clothing, where she'd half-heartedly tried to headbutt him in the sternum. "Who'd want Shikamaru's son? I've seen his father. Nara men are carbon copies of each other." She went very still then and Neji braced himself. Sakura did not disappoint. She threw her head back and howled, "Shikamaru Nara, you owe me your firstborn son's virginity!"

"Yes, I'm sure that will inspire steady relations with the Kazekage. At least make certain to wait until his nephew is legal."

Sakura frowned up at him. "Grump. You make me sound like some sort of child molester."

"You are the one proposing to sleep with a boy at least nineteen years younger than you. At best, you can hope for him to be half your age."

"Picky, picky. You know I'll always come back to you in the end."

"Because I feed you."

Sakura smiled, the rain washing away snot and tears, leaving her only red-eyed and stuffy-sounding. "Body and soul. Now," and thunder rumbled across the sky above them, "want to make the earth move?"

Neji smiled back, even as Sakura broke his hold and splaying him out against the porous stone, continuing where she'd left off in the bar. "You make it sound like you're giving me the option."

Sakura clicked her tongue at him. "And you know all my best rape fantasies are with Gaara."

"And if you keep talking about other men while taking advantage of me, I'm going to get angry."

"You're the one who keeps talking."

In the end, Sakura had the last word. But only because she cheated.

-X-X-X-

Uchiha Estate, the next day

Sasuke had always been under the impression that 'feeling the earth move' was some romantic tripe put together by giggling, starry-eyed virgins. Perhaps it had been the alcohol, but he had a strange memory of the earth actually moving last night-as in an earthquake.

He had no definitive proof that the geological event was even faintly related to his former teammate, but he'd learned well the lesson that any and all inexplicable events had Fallen Night at their root. So he was suitably wary of the two members of Fallen Night who'd appeared promptly at dawn, looking far less hungover than he felt.

They were thus far being harmless-there were no summoned baked goods, they'd assaulted no one, and they were even sitting properly on the cushions, though they seemed to by arguing about something.

The battle with Madara still loomed large on his mind. For him, it had been as drastic and life-changing as their battle with Zabuza. But the two of them seemed to have discarded it like yesterday's newspaper. And it had been impressive, even if for once he'd been the one sidelined, all his focus on quashing Madara's dimension-spanning abilities.

The worst point had come when Sakura had activated a sealed paper that she'd afterwards told him she'd conned from a man whose code-name was Yamato. "It's a theory," she'd exclaimed, "that the enmity between Uchiha Madara and the First Hokage sprang, not from a disagreement about who ruled the village, but from young Madara's extreme to the point of fatality allergies to poison ivy, oak, and sumac." She'd announced it with all the drama of a voice-over reading out an origin story and had then proceeded to use the seal, which had, briefly, bound Madara in tendrils of foliage. Madara had seemed more confused than injured by the attack, but Sakura, Neji, and Shikamaru had shrugged and moved on, leaving one with the feeling, "Wasn't it a pity it hadn't worked?"

The high point of overdone, overdramatic lines had belonged to Neji. Madara had been taunting them, batting away Naruto and telling them that with his Sharingan eyes, he really could predict the future and that they had no chance of defeating him, etc. While this speech had been going on, Sakura had worn a disappointed sulk on her face. She'd later told him it was because that this had been Madara and he really should have been better than villain monologues.

Neji, having heard this monologue as well, had assumed his own best look of overdone superiority. "Your powers allow you to look into the future, but you can only see so far ahead. I am not so limited." A smirk had tugged at his lips. "You are within the range of my divination. Want to hear your fortune for the rest of the year?"

"Bad luck!" Sakura had cackled, slamming her hand into the ground and raising what must have been a twenty foot barrier of shining crystal around them all. Even Sasuke could feel the increase in temperature as the sun had poured unforgiving through the crystal matrix. Her hands had blurred in a complex series of seals until she halted on the tiger. "Houshi-sama," she'd trilled, "may we begin the purification?"

"Troublesome," Shikamaru had muttered as he'd used his shadow to lock Madara in place.

And while Sasuke had watched Neji use the Gentle Fist style before, there seemed something suspiciously flashy about the way he executed his attack, followed close enough to singe by a Sakura who'd somehow managed to find a jutsu that set her fists aflame. After that, they'd waved Naruto on and let him do the final honors in the battle.

"It's a drag to think of lifechanging motivational speeches after a fight," Shikamaru had muttered. Neji had been offering Sakura what looked to be a congratulatory cup of tea, which she heated by virtue of her still flaming hands. After performing the same service for Neji's cup, she gratefully accepted what looked like some sort of iced tart before turning to watch Naruto's battle like they were watching the filming of a movie. They hadn't even moved, even when debris, Naruto, and acidic demon chakra whipped by.

Even just the memory made him angry. "What are you going to do about Danzou?" he demanded.

Sakura blinked up at him. "Sasuke, we just helped eliminate the single greatest external threat to Konoha. Not even Tsunade expects anything from us for at least a week and a half. Anyhow, we could just wait him out. He can't live for more than another ten years or so."

Tearing out hanks of his hair in frustration would not only be unmanly, but it would be uncool. So Sasuke refrained. "You expect me to wait ten years for the man who engineered the slaughter of my clan to die of natural causes."

"When you put it that way, yes," Neji answered, never looking up from the game board they'd been arguing over. It was a go board and they were playing with go stones, but whatever they were playing, it didn't resemble go in the slightest. "They say the best revenge is to have a good life. Just think, within ten years you could have five or six children, a stable home life, and maybe even get a promotion. I'd bet that would really steam Danzou."

Sakura nodded vigorously. "Yep. Sounds like a plan. Doesn't it, Shikamaru?"

Sasuke stared at her. Was she now talking to people that weren't even here? "Shikamaru?"

"Underneath the table."

Watching her warily, as if she might attack, Sasuke crouched, to find Shikamaru was laying beneath the table, full-length corpse style. He didn't even seem to be blinking as he stared up at the underbelly of the table. "When did you even get here?" he demanded.

"I've always been here," Shikamaru answered lackadaisically. "Where have you been?"

It sounded dangerously philosophical. "That is it," Sasuke growled.

Two members of Fallen Night looked to him, while Shikamaru continued to ignore him. "I don't want the three of you in this house any more. I'll take that damn freak Sai over the three of you. So, please, just go!" It was only after the words escaped that he realized it sounded like he was begging. But if that was what it took to maintain his sanity, then to hell with pride.

"I feel unloved. Do you feel unloved?" Sakura asked Neji.

Neji scoffed. "Who would want to be loved by that?"

"I feel unloved," Shikamaru-beneath-the-table said, prompting Sakura to kick him lightly. "Hey, I was agreeing."

"You don't get to have an opinion, you philanderer."

Sasuke thought he heard a very soft, "Hedonistic bitch," but it was soon swallowed by a grunt of pain. "Why is that I am punished for committing myself to one woman? Isn't that what you women want?"

"Please do not reduce the opinions of 3.25 billion people to 'what you women want.'"

"Why not?" Shikamaru challenged. "None of you are ever satisfied anyway."

Sakura looked like she was about to argue, tilted her head consideringly to one side, then answered, "That's human nature, isn't it? There isn't some sort of happiness gauge that you fill up and that's it. Everyone always wants something more than they have. Without that desire, people might just stop moving and die, neh?"

Sasuke could see he'd been quickly forgotten. "Did you not hear me? I told you to leave!"

"Sasuke, when you've had enough of being an avenger and decided to become a human being, you can have opinions. Until then, you're wasting your breath," Sakura told him airily without looking at him.

Sasuke's hand involuntarily caressed Kusanagi. He was confident in his ability to take out at least two of them, but he wasn't certain he could kill all three at once. No one, except maybe Orochimaru, had made him consider killing them so often. Except Itachi, but as he'd been the focal point of two-thirds of his life, he didn't think he counted.

He became aware that all three were staring at him. "Subtlety would be a good addition to all that killing intent," Neji told him archly.

Sasuke screamed in frustration.

-X-X-X-

Naruto had been painfully oblivious to Hinata's feelings for the entire time they'd been in the academy and remained so for years afterward. It had actually been Tenten, frustrated after Hiashi had been unnecessarily harsh with Neji after finding Hinata quietly crying about her inability to actually tell him of these feelings, who'd unkindly widened his tunnel vision when it came to women.

Although, thinking back, she might have shouted something like that when the village had been in shambles around them and no one knew if they would live to see another day. He'd forgotten about that until now.

Well, it wasn't like he had to tell her that he'd forgotten her first confession. Guys did that all the time, right? Okay, so maybe that was after twenty years of marriage, but still, he didn't think she'd hold it against him. He wouldn't hold it against her if she forgot his first confession. Of course, he was a special case, his first crush having been on Sakura, who usually answered him with violence. Actually, thinking back, she'd responded to just about everything but Sasuke with violence, except when it came to actual fights, where you'd think she would have been able to safely eke out her frustration.

Being a special case, he didn't find Hinata's stalker-ish tendencies of the past all that strange either. After all, he'd been impersonating certain people to get Sakura's attention. If that wasn't desperate, what was? And, really, how likely was it he'd find another girl who wouldn't even ask about his time with Jiriaya?

So, all in all, he considered himself pretty lucky, even if he would have the misfortune of being related by law to a man who had absolutely no compunctions about more or less binding his bloodkin to servitude.

And Hinata looked adorably bemused when he presented her with flowers as an apology for not remembering her confession until this moment.