Naruto had had enough.

It was bad enough that Sasuke and Sakura had been unable to repair their relationship. It was bad enough that Sakura had fled back to Suna, promising to return for the wedding but refusing to stay in the meantime. It was bad enough that the planning of his bachelor party, a task typically assigned to the best man, had fallen on the shoulders of Shikamaru, who didn't care, and Neji, who aggressively didn't care.

But in the week it had been since Sakura's departure, Sasuke had holed himself up in his family's law firm. He ignored calls, he ignored texts, he had been a complete ghost, and Naruto was fed up with it.

And it was high time to feed the bastard a piece of his mind, a fact he told Hinata over dinner one evening.

"You shouldn't do this, Naruto," she said, uncharacteristically frustrated. "Didn't you learn your lesson the f-first time?"

Naruto was slightly taken aback by her reaction, but chalked it up to pre-wedding anxieties; they were only a week away from their nuptials, and between an absentee maid of honor and a reclusive best man, everything was really starting to bother his frazzled fiancee. It was why he'd offered to treat them both to dinner at a nice restaurant, hoping that the romantic ambiance might help her mood.

It hadn't.

"He's my best man," Naruto said stubbornly, fully ignoring his pasta for the first time in recorded memory. "And he's been a ghost all week! He's got a responsibility to me, Hinata! And to you! And he's so caught up in his own asshole that he's not doing what he's gotta do as my best man!"

"What do you expect him to do?" She sounded fully exasperated, and Naruto vaguely wondered if he'd ever heard her really lose her temper before. "March straight down to Suna, grab Sakura and drag her back here by her hair?"

"If that's what'll get the job done, then…"

"Naruto you interfered enough already."

There was a terrible silence after that, and Naruto stared at his wife-to-be as though he'd never seen her before. He was angry at her blunt assessment of this delicate situation, but more than that, he was hurt.

Hinata, he'd always assumed, had understood his bond with Sasuke, and their bond with Sakura. It was what made her such an excellent partner. She respected that his friendship with Sasuke was complicated, oftentimes stressful, but that Sasuke was his best friend. The closest thing he had to a brother.

Hinata had always been supportive of their bond, more tolerant of Sasuke's idiosyncrasies and always willing to defend him to Naruto whenever they had a falling out. When Sakura had transferred out of Konoha a few years prior, Hinata had been nothing if not sympathetic to her then-boyfriend, who found himself missing both Sakura in body and Sasuke, who'd checked out emotionally in his own heartbreak, in spirit. She'd been understandably nervous about trying to force them to reconcile with this wedding planning, but ultimately had come through on Naruto's side, as always.

But now?

"You tried," Hinata went on, her voice bordering on cold. "No one can s-say you didn't try, Naruto. But you can't force things to fix themselves. You can't will two people to fall back in love with each other."

"You don't understand." As he said the words, he felt sick to his stomach, because for the first time in their entire relationship, Naruto was indescribably upset with Hinata. "You really don't get it, Hinata. Do you?"

"What don't I get, Naruto." She was definitely annoyed. Her gaze at him was icy from across the table, her arms folded, her soup entirely neglected.

He wondered if the entire restaurant had picked up on the sudden chill that had descended inside, or if it was just him who had noticed. He wracked his brains for a memory of an argument with Hinata, and came up short.

"Sasuke didn't need help falling back in love with Sakura," he said softly. "Don't you understand that?"

She opened her mouth to argue, but he plowed on, too angry to let her get a word in edgewise.

"He loved her every minute she was away. And she loved him, too. Something's keeping them apart from each other, Hinata. Something weird's going on here, and Sasuke won't tell me. It's my goddamn wedding week and I haven't seen him once. Something's seriously wrong and for you to sit there and tell me I shouldn't try and fix it…they're my best friends. They're your friends. How could you be so selfish?"

"Selfish?"

Hinata was on her feet, abruptly, her light eyes wide, her pretty red lips curled in an ugly sneer of fury. People were staring now, jarred into attention by the scrape of her chair legs on the hardwood floor. She didn't seem to notice.

"I'm selfish? Me? Naruto it's my goddamn wedding week too! In case you haven't realized it. And my maid of honor, the girl I'm leaning on, the one who can talk me off a ledge and help me out with this incredibly stressful wedding, took off without so much as saying goodbye. And my fiancee is too busy trying to yell at his best man to realize that I'm overwhelmed over here! This is supposed to be the happiest time of my life, but once again, I've got to take a backseat to the Naruto-Sasuke-Sakura show!"

Naruto's jaw dropped, not least of all because Hinata's occasional stammer seemed to have evaporated in the face of her towering anger. Is that how she felt?

That she came second?

"It's not like that," he argued, but she chose that moment to burst into tears and seize her purse from the table, knocking over one of the crystal candlesticks in the process. "Hinata, wait, just listen to me…"

But she didn't bother to hear whatever explanations he could conjure. Without another backwards glance, she stormed right out of the restaurant and disappeared down the street.

Sasuke's eyes were sore, the tips of his fingers torn nearly to shreds from countless paper cuts, but he plowed on. He was getting closer, or at least he hoped he was.

It hadn't been easy to steal an entire box of legal documents from the Uchiha Group, especially not now that he knew his uncle was going to keep an extra close watch on him, but he'd managed it with some difficulty. It had required pinpointing the relative time frame he would need to investigate, and bribing the night janitor with a ridiculous sum of money.

Violence isn't going to solve this, he thought for the millionth time, as he entertained yet another graphic fantasy of ripping Madara's head off his shoulders. As much as I'd like to fucking destroy him for what he's done, there's a right way to go about this. All I need is one shred of evidence. One scrap of evidence that'll lock everything together.

The doors were locked at his apartment, the lights out, except for his desk lamp. He hadn't eaten all day, and he hadn't slept more than a few hours since returning home from Suna. Whenever he felt like taking a break, he pictured Sakura, alone and defenseless hours away from his protection, and Madara closing in on her like a vampire. And he pushed himself that much harder.

He was reasonably certain that if Madara was going to make a move against Sakura, he would wait until after the wedding. Any injury or accident that could befall her would raise immediate suspicion if she didn't make an appearance the wedding, and Madara knew Sasuke suspected him by now.

That didn't make leaving her alone any easier.

What a fucking mess, he thought, shaking his head. And she carried this on her shoulders for years without telling anyone.

He'd easily obtained and memorized his own family's death records. It was excruciatingly painful, having to relive that horrible time in his life – he'd never forgotten the glazed, yellow stare in his mother's dead eyes that night when he'd identified her body at the morgue – but he persevered all the same. Sakura needed him. There was still something he could do for her, a way to help her, even if it was too late for his own family.

Her life depended upon his success.

But finding her family's death records proved more complicated, and that in and of itself was telling. There was nothing in the city archives concerning Kizashi and Mebuki Haruno besides the date of their accident, and the coroner's ruling as to the manner of their deaths. No newspaper articles, no pictures, not even an obituary.

Which means someone's trying to cover it up, he thought gravely. The Harunos were Uchiha Group employees. There should be something, anything else in the Uchiha Group database about them – even their employment histories before they died – but there's nothing. Someone's tampered with their files.

He hated knowing the common denominator. He hated knowing exactly who was behind everything, and why, but being unable to prove it at the same time. It was infuriating.

The bastard is guilty, he thought angrily. He killed my family. He killed HER family, and he wants to kill her as well. And I know all that, but unless I have some physical, concrete evidence…unless I can figure out how they're all connected…I can't do anything about it.

He let out a growl and shoved the papers away from him, rubbing his palms over his eyes.

Maybe I'm not cut out to be a lawyer, he thought furiously.

At that moment, there came a pounding on his front door. He stiffened, instantly assuming it was Madara behind the door, fully caught onto Sasuke's scheme and ready to kill him for it, but his tension lessened when he heard Naruto's loud, slurring voice from behind the door.

"LET ME IN, ASSHOLE!"

Sasuke hesitated – he didn't really have time for this – but knew he couldn't just leave his best friend outside shouting into the dark. This couldn't come at a worse time, he thought, standing to let Naruto in.

"Shut up, idiot," he scolded, when Naruto stumbled inside, wild-eyed and erratic. "Jesus, dude, are you drunk?"

It was a stupid question; Naruto was trashed. He reeked of hard liquor, he could barely stand up straight, his clothes were rumpled and his eyes were scarlet, puffy, as if he'd been crying. And Naruto had always been a weepy drunk.

"You're the worst fucking friend," Naruto snapped, tripping on both his own words and Sasuke's carpet. He came crashing onto the sofa, upending the coffee table on his way down.

"Damn it!" Sasuke hissed. "What the fuck happened to you?"

Naruto struggled to upright himself among the couch pillows, cursing colorfully as he did so. Sasuke was stunned. He'd never seen Naruto this drunk before, nor had he ever seen him so angry.

"Naruto!"

"You wanna know wha th'fuck happened?" Naruto sat up after some difficulty, and took a moment to collect himself.

Then, without warning, he was on his feet and tackling Sasuke at the waist.

They both slammed into the wall behind the TV with enough force to hollow it; Sasuke's back took the brunt of the impact. He let out a grunt of pain before seeing red. Whatever this was, he didn't have time for it. He took advantage of Naruto's erratic balance and knocked him to the floor with his elbow.

"You're the worst friend ever!" Naruto wailed.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Sasuke bellowed.

"You're supposed to be my best man!"

Sasuke hesitated. Not in living memory had he seen Naruto look more pathetic than he did right now, curled up on the floor with tears leaking from his eyes. It felt almost indecent to look at a man so low, and he forced himself, for the sake of their friendship, to speak calmly.

"I am your best man."

"BULLSHIT! You fucked up, like you always do. You're a fuck-up. You suck. It's your fault Sakura left. It's your fault Hinata hates me."

Sasuke nearly hit him, but restrained himself.

"She thinks she's second!" Naruto yelled. "She thinks she comes second!"

"Who does?"

"HINATA. She said you both are ruining our wedding week because you can't fix yourselves and then she hates me because I tried to fix you both and I couldn't! She thinks she comes second and I'm not there for her because I'm too busy trying to make things right for you!

"And you know what? She's right!"

Sasuke tried to process everything that Naruto was telling him, which was admittedly difficult, given that he could only understand about every fifth word or so. Guilt weighed heavy on his shoulders as he realized his own complicity in Naruto's misery.

"Look, man," he said, almost nervously, "it's complicated. There's a lot more going on here than you think, and…"

"And you can't tell me? I'm your best fucking friend, you asshole!" Naruto aimed a kick at Sasuke's legs that Sasuke deftly avoided, then let out a howl of frustration. "Or maybe I'm not, maybe I'm just too fucking stupid to understand and…"

"Shut up, Naruto! Look, it's…dude I don't even know where to start. And I didn't want you to know about this the week of your fucking wedding."

Sasuke knew he hadn't been supportive enough of Naruto lately. He knew that since everything hit the fan with Sakura, he'd been absent, that his role as best man had been filled by the other groomsmen and that Naruto had to have been deeply hurt by his negligence. He knew all that, and he regretted it. In so many ways, Naruto was a better man than him.

"YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!"

"…I know."

At his quiet admission, Naruto's tantrum died down almost immediately. He sat up, still out of his mind drunk but oddly pensive, as though taken by surprise. Sasuke knew he so rarely offered any type of apology or acknowledgement that he'd made a mistake, and that even stone cold drunk, Naruto would take notice of either one.

"I haven't been around like I should," Sasuke said stiffly. "I know that. But there's something going on here, something bigger than me. Something bigger than you. And I'm sorry it all came to a head right before your wedding.

"But Sakura needs me."

Naruto blinked, registering her name and the abrupt change in tone. He shook his head as if trying to clear himself of his own inebriation, and Sasuke sat down on the couch, suddenly exhausted.

"She…she needs you?"

"You were right," Sasuke said flatly. "About us. All along, you were right."

"I…was?"

"The reason she left…she was threatened. Almost fuckin' forced to go. And it's happening again, but I'm not going to let him take her away from me again."

Sasuke would probably come to regret spilling his guts to Naruto, especially when his friend was so drunk, but he figured that if anyone deserved to know the truth about what was going on, it was his stupid, well-meaning, invasive best friend. He told him everything – about Madara, the circumstances of his break-up, even the fact that he'd slept with Sakura before she'd fled back to Suna. He told him his suspicions concerning Madara in regards to the deaths of the Uchiha and Haruno families. He told him what he was up to, holed up in his house or at the office for hours on end when he was supposed to be partying with Naruto and the others.

When it was over, Naruto looked marginally more sober and infinitely more confused. Sasuke couldn't say he understood it any better himself, but he felt just slightly less guilty knowing that he'd finally come clean. Yes, he was a shit best man. Yes, he was a shit best friend. But there was a reason: Sakura needed him, and she came first.

"She always has come first," Sasuke admitted uncomfortably, looking away from Naruto. He didn't like discussing his feelings for Sakura, but he figured there was no sense in lying. Maybe his best friend could benefit from his advice, for once. "And I'm sorry it's affecting your wedding, but if she needs me…"

"…you'll drop everything to help her," Naruto finished, as though coming to his own, separate epiphany. "That's what Hinata needs from me, then. To know that she's first."

He stood up, a little shaky but mercifully upright, and seized his jacket.

"Tomorrow," he said flatly, "I'll be here first thing to tell you what an asshole you are for hiding this from me, and with everyone else so we can help you."

"What? No, you're…"

"Shut up, Sasuke. She's our friend, too. She's my sister. If what you're saying is true, then she needs more than just you. She needs all of us."

"You have enough to…"

"SHUT UP, SASUKE! God you suck. Let me fix my shit with Hinata. Once she knows what's going on, I know she won't feel bad anymore. And you're dumb for not letting us get involved before. Fuck you, dude. I'll see you in the morning."

Sakura was jerked out of a deep sleep by the buzzing of her phone. She was instantly annoyed – since coming back to Suna, she hadn't slept very well at all, and had just been roused from the first decent shuteye in weeks – and sat up to answer; recognizing Sasuke's burner number cooled her temper.

"Hey, Sasuke, are you okay?"

"'M fine. Are you?"

Hearing his voice, tired but deep and reassuring, had her sighing in relief. "Yes. Yeah, sorry, I was sleeping. I'm so glad to hear from you."

"Anything suspicious happen? Anyone follow you, call you, talk to you…?"

"No, nothing. I went to work this morning, had dinner with my old neighbor, paid my rent…nothing out of the ordinary."

"Good."

"You sound tired, Sasuke."

"I'm fine. Look, I thought you should know…I told the others."

"The others?"

"Aa. Naruto, Ino. Everyone. They know what's going on now."

"…I thought you wanted to keep it a secret?"

"Didn't want to ruin the idiot's wedding," Sasuke muttered. He sounded annoyed, but resigned, and she could picture his expression, could picture the way he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Not that it helped. He cornered me last night, drunk as shit. I haven't been a good best man."

"That's ridiculous," Sakura murmured. "You're the best man I've ever met."

There was silence on the other end of the line, and she blushed right up to her hairline. Apparently, exhaustion and relief had her loosening her tongue more than she'd intended.

"I'll do whatever I have to," Sasuke said after awhile, "to bring you home. Even if it means letting our asshole friends know what's going on."

Her stomach flipped at his vow, and she wished desperately, more than anything, that he was here with her. Or that she was home with him. Anywhere, as long as they were together.

"How're you getting back to Konoha on Friday?" he asked, jerking her out of her reverie.

"I'm taking a flight. Early. Ino's gonna pick me up from the airport, I'll be there in time for the rehearsal dinner."

"Good. I'm gonna have her take the bus to meet you there, then. I don't want you in a car. Public transport is safer. I'll be at the rehearsal hall."

"Okay."

He hesitated, then said, "I hate that I can't pick you up myself. It would look too suspicious if Madara noticed, and…"

"I know. I know what you're doing, Sasuke. It's okay. I'll be fine."

"…what I'm doing right now…it's coming along. But…"

"But what?"

"Sakura what if…what if I find out something that…you don't want to hear?"

Rarely did Sasuke ever sound so anxious, and Sakura couldn't help but wonder, in his days and days of research, what he'd come across to warrant such tension. What unhappy secrets had he uncovered, in his quest to protect her?

"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.

"I mean that…I don't know. I have a gut feeling about all this shit, and…are you gonna be all right, if…"

"Sasuke."

He fell silent, awaiting her response, and she took a deep, calming breath before continuing.

"You're looking for evidence to implicate Madara in the deaths of your family. Right?"

"…yeah."

"Doing so will get him locked up, and will make it safe for me to come home. To you."

"Yes."

"Then do whatever you have to do."

"…"

"I'm serious, Sasuke. He's taken so much from us – from you – already. He's an animal. He needs to be thrown in prison and never heard from again, and I need to be back in Konoha. With you. Where you can keep me safe and I can keep you safe."

There was a pause, and then a deep, dark chuckle that made her throat clench in longing.

"You're a real piece of work," Sasuke murmured. "But you're mine. And you're right. Just hold tight, Sakura. By the time you get here…I'll have everything in place."

Sakura smiled into the receiver, and whispered, "I can't wait to see you, Sasuke. I wish it was under better circumstances, but…"

"I know. Keep yourself safe, Sakura. Until I can do it for you."

"I will. You too. Bye, Sasuke."

When she ended the call, she was wide awake. Sasuke was doing everything in his power to take care of Madara, to ensure that she could safely return to Konoha, and for good. Her heart nearly burst with love for him, with affection for his single-minded devotion…

But at the same time, his question frightened her. What if I find out something you don't want to hear?

Thinking of Madara, of his evil smile and the fact that he'd been twenty steps ahead of everyone this whole time, Sakura couldn't help but wonder what Sasuke knew – and how awful a thing it must be, if he hadn't yet told her.

Sasuke knows something. Or he's got a hunch, and for him, that's as good as solid, concrete evidence. There's a way that everything fits together, and it sounds like Sasuke might know what it is.

I just hope I'm ready to find out, too.

note.. hey guys. i've had a little extra time lately so i tried to get some old stories updated. it's been years for this one. if you could all do me a favor though, and refrain from leaving reviews on my stories that are just requests for updates on other stories? like i'm doing my best here lolz

thanks for sticking with me all this time. this one'll be finished soon. have a good weekend

xoxo daisy