it has taken me another two years to realize that this is never going to happen, and for that I am sorry. I really, truly did want to finish this fic. I did. it was, when I wrote it, going to be my Big Thing. it was going to be the story that would define how I dealt with fanfiction.

but I changed and life happened and I grew and this story grew cold and the manga finished. and here we are now. I will never finish this story. it's just not in the cards for me. and I don't want to be that person that keeps people hanging and hoping for the "maybe one day..." that will never come. so instead, I'm going to tell you how I wanted the rest of this story to go.

the rest of the fan club

as a recap: the last chapter I wrote was about how she had to come up with her own submission for the selection committee. she winds up thinking it over when she gets assigned a mission to collect karin from rain. karin has been there since the end of the war working as a spy for konoha-that was how she was earning the village's trust. she got very sick, though, and she had to be brought back because she needed medical attention. sasuke, sakura, and said get assigned the mission. sakura because karin was very gravely ill and sakura's a medic nin, sasuke because karin knows him, and sai because it's easier for them to travel quickly on the back of his birds.

naruto had to stay in town because mei was arriving, and he needed to meet her to learn how to deal with diplomatic relations and be a good kage. anyway, so they go on the mission. on the way there, sai gets injured when they're ambushed by some ninja. he gets a poisoned blade stuck in his calf and their journey gets delayed while he recovers. there are some sasusaku moments while sai's unconscious and recovering.

then they got get karin and go back to konoha. karin had a parasite in her system because of contaminated water, and so she'd been experiencing weird hallucinations and stuff. but she heals! and all is well. miho helps out with sakura's third task at the same time, because it's the last thing that she herself worked on. she has no idea what happens after that, and that'll be the last time that miho and sakura work closely because she had nothing more to contribute based on experience. a house has been set up for her across the village where some genin will look after her and make she she's unharmed.

mei and tsunade are fostering better relationships with each other's countries at this time as well, and mei takes the time to explore konoha and all it has to offer. anyway, sakura turns her submission in-I had never figured out what I wanted it to be, but I was playing around with fake memorabilia or a family photo or something like that. miho moves out.

karin moves into her own place at this time. she has a housewarming party and everyone's invited. they all go, and while she's there, sakura spies a textbook that looks familiar, but kind of disregards it. lots of chatting and drinking and eating. small sasusaku moments. later on, karin remarks that she's been studying medical stuff to get better at it. to hone her skills. sakura offers to help her if she ever needs help.

sakura goes home, goes to sleep, and checks the mail the next day to discover she's gotten into the club. sakura has no idea what to do from here on out because there are no further instructions. sakura consults with miho who says she knows nothing more. they chit chat about other small things too-moving, sasuke, etc. miho suggests that she just lay low for now and wait for further instructions. sakura decides to start working at the hospital again.

things return mostly to normal. sasuke and sakura start hanging out more in public again, and there's a lot of sweet moments in here. times that they brush hands, times that they talk about the past and the future, silly things like her kicking him under tables when he says something inappropriate or her teaching him the basics of healing. they kiss for the first time while carrying groceries to her home. she's talking about something, and her face is flushed because the air is warm, and she turns to face him when he stops all of a sudden, and he kisses her. they're on the opposite side of town, no one is around, and she blushes.

later that day, she's detailing it to ino as they walk to her apartment when she sees a note on her doorstep talking about initiation. she goes through some training with a bunch of other people, and all of a sudden she gets moved up the latter extremely quickly because of who she is. she learns a lot of information all at the same time-that this fan club isn't just some puny organization with ten lusty women. it's an international organization with people from all walks of life, from a kage to a nobody. there are ninja in the club, there are civilians in the club. it's a web. it's international because of how far sasuke has traveled. and it's very sinister and large.

sakura finally understands how big of a deal this is, and mildly terrified that she'd stepped into a den of bears, leaves that afternoon, intent on telling sasuke everything. on the way there, she runs into karin, and they talk about, and after they part ways, sakura is abducted.

at this point, a lot of evidence points to karin: the fact that she returned at the same time when the important person was supposed to come into town, her past love of sasuke, her textbook, her conversation. everyone who's reading it is supposed to think karin is some kind of higher up in the organization.

but then sakura wakes up in some place just outside of fire country, and in front of her, pacing the length of a porch, is miho. innocent miho, who was hurt, who sought help, who kept herself small and assisting. miho, who was there from the beginning. miho, who is the leader of the fan club.

miho's goal was to induct sakura so that they could gain more access to sasuke, but nothing of the sort happened. and karin was just a convenient scapegoat that people like to blame. in reality, mei was the important person that was coming into town-the kage in the club. karin was just in the wrong place at the wrong time before sakura was kidnapped, and the textbook was a medical book-because karin was studying.

all the evidence was set so that the reader would think it was karin. at the time that I planned this all out, in 2010, that was how the fandom worked. if there was a villain, it was karin. 100% of the time. and I set it up in the way that everyone expects-for karin to be the villain. but she's not, and that's the huge plot twist.

miho talks about how sakura hasn't helped anything and has only continued to keep sasuke for herself, even going so far as to kiss him. even when they tried to eliminate her during the rescue karin mission, it didn't work. it was clear, from the start, that sakura as going to hog sasuke to herself. she hasn't offered any new information, and miho says that if sakura can't get sasuke closer to all of them while she's alive and part of the club, maybe they'd get his attention if she were dead. so sakura tries to escape but some shinobi hold sakura down and she keeps fighting.

at this point, t7 is dispatched to find sakura who has been missing for a few days now. her teams follows her trail, and around the same time, sakura is fighting off guards and getting herself out of there. it's a group effort. in the end, they coming from the outside, sakura works her way out from the inside, and they capture miho in the middle and dismantle the organization.

when sakura returns to konoha with her team, karin and ino, who are both on guard duty, heal her up some in the interim. sasuke is grateful that sakura is safe and sound and that the club is no more, and sakura learns how dangerous obsession can be.

the moral of the story was to make a point. in 2010, I was sixteen and I was so mad about how universally people liked to blame karin in fic. she was automatically the problem no matter what, and when I planned this, I wanted to prove a point-that you can be wrong, things aren't always what they seem, and people are more complex and don't deserve to be pigeonholed no matter what.

and that, my friends, is the fan club. thank you for being so patient with me and my incompetence. I hope, at least, this summarized ending brings you some closure. and maybe, if you're up for it, you can check out my newer stuff like born to blush unseen and constellations. those are both, I promise, vastly better written than this is. it's amazing how time and practice will improve all things.

all my love,
rhea/seleneswan/windsilk