"I don't want to hear it," Izumo snapped. He set his mug on the countertop with a sharp clack, the coffee inside sloshing close to the rim. "First I go to the hospital to find that you've checked yourself out while you clearly still need to recover—"
"I—"
"And then right when I get back home you're telling me that what? That Sakura wasn't the one that did this to you?" He rubbed his forehead and sighed. "I know you don't want to believe it, but what other explanation is there? You said it yourself; she was the last one that saw you, she was scared she was going to do something, and she ran off. Next thing you know, someone's in your apartment and you turn around and see her just before you lost consciousness." His mouth curled up into a snarl, incensed. "She almost killed you. If Makaro hadn't come to check why you hadn't shown up for your shift, you would've..."
Kotetsu pressed his lips together and looked away, one of his hands coming up to brush against the bandages wrapped around his head. They said they'd found him on the floor of his apartment, everything around him untouched but his skull fractured and a pool of blood around his head from the thick gash on his scalp.
When he'd woken up to find himself in the hospital, a shinobi from investigations had come in shortly after to take his account.
Did you know of any intention to inflict harm on your person?
Who was the last person you saw before your attack?
Would Sakura have any reason to attack you?
Who? No, we wouldn't know.
Why?
Yuuhi Kurenai's Team Eight consisting of: Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, Ninken Akamaru, and Sakura, have fled Konohagakure. They have been charged with two counts of assault against you and Umino Iruka; one count of theft from the Hokage's Library; two counts of first degree murder for the deaths of Aburame Torune and Operative Tenzo, where the latter's body had been taken for the assumed purpose of kekkei genkai acquisition. They have committed treason against this village by failing to uphold both their loyalties and the title of honorable shinobi. They are wanted dead or alive.
Thank you for your time, Hagane-san. Please get well soon.
The thought of Sakura being involved with anything like that left a horrible taste on his tongue. No matter how many times he ran it all through his head, all the suspicion and accusations against Sakura felt... felt justified. She was indeed the last person he'd seen and she'd been fidgety and lost before her hasty departure and then—then fleeing right after she knocked him out and helped kill an Aburame and that Tenzo guy?
None of that made any sense. What the hell did Team Eight have to prove if they did something like that? What the hell could they have possibly achieved by becoming wanteds in the Bingo Books?
"None of this sounds weird to you?" Kotetsu asked. "She was my student! A kid!"
"She is—was—a Konoha chuunin who helped take down Akasuna no Sasori. She's not a kid, 'tetsu, she's a goddamn shinobi." Izumo took his hand and squeezed. "I don't know why she wanted you dead, but—"
"She didn't want me dead. Doesn't. I just... I just don't know what the hell was going through her head, okay?" Because her getting the drop on him like that didn't explain why she'd come over to the apartment in the first place. If she was trying to trick him into some false sense of security—which he severely doubted—she wouldn't have huddled in that seat and talked about her father.
"Is it really that strange... if I look more like everyone else than my own father who raised me?"
"Whatever scared her must've been pretty bad," Kotetsu murmured, pulling his hand back and tucking it under his other arm. Izumo sighed from across the counter and looped his fingers around the handle of his mug. "Don't—Just listen to me! She came here because she was scared of whatever got to her!"
"Did you ever think that she, I don't know, might have been scared because she knew what she was going to do to you?"
"No. Because she wouldn't."
"Everyone has a choice." Big, green, fearing eyes. "And I'm afraid the next choice I'm going to make is going to be the wrong one."
Kotetsu shook his head at the memory and glared at his partner. "Sakura's not like that."
"Neither was Inuzuka Kiba. Neither was Aburame Shino," Izumo countered. "And look what happened—" he gestured in some nonsense way— "one of them stole a Forbidden Book and another one murdered his own cousin in the middle of the street!" He spread out his arms, some of his lukewarm coffee spilling onto his hand. "Shit. Whatever—'tetsu, look." He sighed again, and if Kotetsu heard that sound one more time, he'd lock his partner out of their bedroom. "I know you two were close, but... have you considered that maybe something happened to Team Eight when they were out on their own for that year and a half?"
Kotetsu snorted derisively. "Oh, you mean the whole prisoners-of-war thing they had with Kumo? Yeah, sure, maybe it was only a little traumatizing. The hell are you tryna get at? That they got brainwashed or something when they were out there?" Izumo didn't say a thing, his shoulders stuttering in a weak imitation of a shrug. Kotetsu slowly sat up. "What the fuck. You think they're brainwashed? That—That doesn't make any sense—"
"Not brainwashing. What am I, six? I'm just saying that when they came back from Kumo, they were... different."
"Different," Kotetsu repeated dryly.
"Don't tell me you didn't see it, come on. You know better than that." Izumo jerked his head in the general direction of the village's southern gates. "Aburame sweeps himself up in hospital work until he gets suspended for insubordination, Inuzuka practically gets disowned from his clan when just last month word was getting around that Tsume's son had stopped showing up at their compound, and your kid's practically a ghost with how much people don't see her around. They changed, and you can't tell me that maybe along the way that change was for the worse and we didn't see it."
"Shut up."
"You haven't noticed? They've got a spotless mission record, they barely interact with other shinobi, they aren't really seen with anyone except each other, and they aren't even getting along with their families—"
"I said shut up!" Kotetsu barked. He winced at the sudden pounding in his head and slumped against the counter, his hand over his eyes.
How could Izumo treat him like he was willfully blind? Kotetsu knew Team Eight was cautious and withdrawn and quiet, but he knew that they'd always been that way. After answering those chuunin exam questions the way they did, after completing soul-crushing mission after soul-crushing mission the Hokage assigned them to, after going through the Konoha Crush, after living through Koinobori Island, after Kumo.
Team Eight deserved the right to be cautious and withdrawn and quiet.
And now even that was being used against them.
"I'm gonna take a nap." Kotetsu's shoulders drooped as he stood up from his stool and shuffled into the hallway. He waved off the hands that reached out to steady him. "You can go back to work. I'll be fine."
Izumo's brow creased. "'tetsu—"
"I said I'll be fine. I'm just... tired."
He slipped into their bedroom and leaned back against the door when he closed it shut behind him.
:: ::
The nurse jotted a few things down on her clipboard before she readjusted it under the metal clip and hung it on the foot of the hospital bed. "I'll be back in a few hours with something for lunch, but if you need anything, please press the call button to alert one of our nurses, alright, Umino-san?"
Iruka sat propped up in his bed with a weak smile and a sickly pallor to his skin. He was shirtless, but strips of bandages covered his torso and all the wounds from the tens of poison-tipped senbon the medics had to extract.
The flowers on the nightstand were from his coworkers and the small get-well-soon cards surrounding it were from his students, an adorable gesture.
He sighed and tucked back loose strands of his hair behind his ear. As he set his arm back at his side, IV side up, a fleeting thought cruised past his temple. He wanted to rip out the needle and sneak out the window like so many of his other shinobi friends were infamous for, wanted to barge past the gates and dive into the country to pick apart just what happened, why it happened, how it could've happened.
What Kiba had done.
"Knocking down a shadow is better because it gets rid of this useless thing."
Iruka's fingers twitched.
No, not Kiba.
Because whoever had been in that room with him was not the same boy that could go on for hours on seal theory while stuffing his cheeks with chips and beef jerky until Akamaru came to snatch the snacks right out from his hands. He remembered laughing as he watched the two chase each other around like the world hadn't wronged them and like they hadn't disappeared, but he also remembered the weight on their shoulders and the darkness under their eyes as they pulled themselves further and further away until it was easier to find them hunched over texts in the library instead of being out with others that weren't his team.
He shifted, a dull jolt of pain wriggling up his torso, as he settled deeper into the pillow a nurse tucked behind him just a couple hours before. Apparently he was supposed to be dead with the amount of poison in his system and the corrosive effect it had when it slowly began to eat away at his veins. Lucky, they told him, that his coworker Suzume-san had come back to the Academy after forgetting a stack of papers. She'd found him slumped and strangled at his classroom desk with over three dozen senbon digging in past his flak jacket and puncturing skin.
A sweltering hot anger steadily built in his chest. Someone had approached him wearing Kiba's face with the full intent of murdering him and putting the blame on the one person who would never dare.
And the worst part was that Iruka knew no one would believe him.
(Did he truly believe himself?)
A headache started in the middle of his forehead and gradually spread to the rest of his skull as he laid his head back. The EKG at his side flickered with the measures of his constant heart beat.
"Is... um, is this a bad time?"
Iruka raised his head back up and looked at the door with a startled blink. "No, it's alright," he said. He leaned forward a tad, pushing down his wince at the ache that thrummed up his abdomen. "I just... wasn't expecting any visitors today."
Inuzuka Hana's lips quirked up before she took a seat by his bed, all three of the Haimaru Brothers taking spots around her feet.
For a moment, there was quiet. Her and Iruka had never quite been friends with him being a few years older and their specialties taking wildly different directions, and they'd only ever seen each other if they happened to pass one another on the streets or if she ever came to pick up her little brother from the Academy.
"Was it really Kiba?" Her face screwed up and her eyes were fixed on the wall opposite her. She didn't look at him. "That he..."
"Yes." No. It wasn't. Could it? It couldn't. Not Kiba. Not Kiba. "What... Could you tell me what's been happening? The nurses aren't forthcoming and everyone at the Academy has only heard the rumors."
Hana's face crumpled. "I guess rumors spread quick about something like this," she murmured. "It's a mess. Investigations' got most of what they needed, but the fallout from two clan members defecting—" Her teeth clicked with the force of her shutting mouth and her jaw strained as she took a few moments to collect herself. Iruka waited patiently as one of his fingers fiddled with the IV. "It's a mess," she repeated blandly. "They're saying Sakura attacked Hagane Kotetsu, Kiba stole from the Hokage's Library before going after you, and that Shino killed another Aburame. The attacks were confirmed by you and Hagane-san, a few notes taken from the missing text in question were found at Sakura's apartment with Kiba's scent all over them, and the murder had been confirmed by an eyewitness."
Iruka pressed his palm onto the bottom half of his face and exhaled through his nose.
Another silence shrouded them, thick like syrup stuck to the walls of their throats.
One of the Haimaru whined.
"I don't know why they did it, Kiba and Akamaru. They were so, so different after Kumo, you know," she said. A crease in her brow and her fingers so tightly interlocked that the pressured skin grew white, it was like she was trying to find her own explanation in the wreckage. That if she talked more, picked out all the possibilities, she could try to rationalize Eight; with what they'd been accused of, with the turmoil they left behind. "You heard the other rumors about Kiba, right? The ones before... before this."
Iruka nodded hesitantly. If Kiba ever had any problems, he never talked much about them. They met a couple times a week to go over seals and theories and every now and again, he managed to rope the teen into helping him grade tests and assignments. But all those times there was never any talk of problems even if Iruka could glean some red flags in their past conversations.
Once, Kiba had mentioned he hadn't seen his mother in months.
Another time, he heard some whispers that Kiba should be lucky that he wasn't the heir.
A month back, he realized he didn't remember the last time Kiba wore red paint on his cheeks.
Iruka would have pressed, but he knew the only answer he would have gotten was a clever deflection.
"Well," Hana sighed. "A while back Mom and Kiba got into a pretty nasty fight. I was out and didn't see it myself, but apparently Kiba made it clear that the clan's no longer his priority. Mom thought he'd get over himself and he'd come back to the compound with his tail between his legs on his own time, but the days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months and..." She wrung her hands and sighed again. "He's my baby brother. I should've done something when he started acting different."
"I don't think there was anything you could've done, Inuzuka-san," he answered gently. Morning rays poured through the thin curtains drawn across the windows, but the light was anything but warm. "Kiba and his team... There's a wall between them and the rest of the world. What they've been going through is something only they can understand."
"But even with what they've been through, you're saying that's enough of a reason for them to betray their own village?"
Pang.
Iruka stopped himself just short of rubbing his chest where the phantom pain sparked. For all the times he replayed the sight of senbon sinking into skin, he never once considered the consequences Kiba would suffer from it.
Attacking another Konoha shinobi ensured prison time. Theft of information and records could mean suspension and demerits on the lower end of the spectrum, but theft from the Hokage's Library meant being stripped of rank and being barred from ever returning to shinobi services. All of that including defecting the village?
If Kiba and his team were ever caught, it meant either life imprisonment or death.
His eyes shut for a brief moment and he drew in a long, slow breath. "I don't know why Kiba did the things he did." Because it wasn't Kiba, it couldn't be Kiba, because Kiba would never look at him the way the stranger in the classroom did. "But for his sake, I hope he got what he wanted."
But stranger or not, he couldn't deny her words about the real Kiba. The Kiba who never told him what happened to his hearing, who never told him why he'd gotten that tattoo on his arm, who never told him why there were heavy scars lashed in the skin of his back.
Hana bowed her head, pressing her forehead against her clasped hands as her ninken whimpered softly.
Iruka glanced back at the EKG and its steady measurements, his being much heavier than he remembered.
Another bout of pain slithered over his stomach, his ribs, his chest, the phantom prick of senbon lodged against his muscle as the cool metal did nothing to soothe the burn. He remembered Kiba's face, that blank and shadowed expression, and thought how much that face didn't fit.
But his wounds tingled again and his eyes slid shut.
Maybe more rest would clear his head.
:: ::
The thing that didn't make sense to him was the fact that Shino ran.
Aoba's elbows were on his desk as he took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes with both hands. It had been hours since the start of his shift and he had yet to get a sliver of work done, but every time he opened a folder and tried to delve himself into his work, all he could think about was Aburame Torune's dead body and Shino standing over it.
The rainfall had been heavy that day when a new chuunin came into the Intelligence building for their first day of work, shaking water out of their hair and hanging up their raincoat near the door. They passed their would-be coworkers with polite greetings on their way to the superior's office, and in Aoba's own greeting to the young shinobi did he learn about a 'disturbance' near the Aburame Compound.
"Yeah, I think I saw the Aburame medic there," was the offhanded comment. "He looked pretty upset."
That had been enough for Aoba to clock in an early break and drop in to see if his student was in any trouble.
Yeah, what an understatement.
A few coworkers passed his desk. The 'IN' box had about ten times the amount of folders than the 'OUT' box and no one had said a word about it. He appreciated their consideration; upon Eight's 'death' declaration a while back they'd been kind enough to give him space for a week before he had no choice but to catch up on his work.
Though compared to their previous 'death' status, this was far worse. Deaths received sympathies; the realities of the shinobi life was something that needed to be swallowed down and understood early on in the career. There was never an easy way to say that one way or another, a shinobi would lose a friend on the battlefield. Never an if, always a when. The lucky ones lost as many comrades as they could count on their fingers.
But now? With treason, murder, assault, and defection of the village they'd pledged their loyalty to?
They were traitors, and no one ever dared to spare a kind word about traitors.
Torune's body slid off Shino's shoulder and met the muddy ground with a squelch, blood weeping from the long line across his neck. Shino stood, shaking, fingers clenched around a dripping senbon.
"Shino?" Aoba croaked. No way this was happening. Shinobi didn't just get their throats cut in the middle of the street—
His student looked up with that blank face that Aoba had fondly come to know, but there was not an ounce of calm in this rainstorm and he watched the teen's carefully constructed visage crack. Shock spilled through first, then fear, revulsion, anguish, distress.
"I..." Shino inhaled unsteadily. "I—"
Aoba knew then that whatever this was, Shino didn't mean to do it.
But if Shino didn't mean to do it, why would he run?
There were certain processes to things like this, especially if Shino had been prompted into some sort of self-defense or if Torune had been aiming to provoke. Now with one party dead and the other who knows where, the only conclusion that could be drawn was that a high-ranking shinobi had been murdered and his killer had escaped before facing the consequences.
He remembered that when Sakura arrived on the scene, she was frenzied.
(He learned later that she was implicated in the assault and attempted murder of Hagane Kotetsu.)
Kiba hadn't shown up, but he had gone too.
(Inuzuka Kiba was charged with the theft of a forbidden text from the Hokage's Library and implicated in the assault and attempted murder of Umino Iruka.)
Before he could turn to see if anyone else was on the street, hands wrapped around his neck and he met Kurenai's frantic, furious eyes before he succumbed to darkness.
(Just yesterday, the report on Yuuhi Kurenai had been released alongside her students'. An ANBU operative's blood had been found flooding her apartment bathroom. The body was never recovered, but there was enough blood to deem the operative dead.)
Aoba slid his glasses back on and tried to re-focus on his work files.
(All he could think about was how scared Shino looked.)
:: ::
Ino's chatter filled his ears as he ladled pork broth into his bowl.
Team Ten had gone to this hot pot place on a majority vote, and luck would have it that it was the same hot pot place Chouji went to with Shino the day his friend killed his cousin.
Chouji repressed a shiver as a bland remark from Shikamaru sent Ino on another tirade, Asuma-sensei's easy laughter blending in with the rest of the restaurant's atmosphere. It was a sunny day today—which was kind of insulting, really—with the clearest of clear skies and not a single streak of white clouds to break the blue.
Outside, Konoha's citizens walked around without a care.
But how could they be so at ease when the village's missing-nin count racked up four more names? That was an astronomical jump considering that the last missing-nin who'd sent tremors through the ranks upon their defection had been none other than the Uchiha Itachi himself. And Uchiha Itachi was one man! One man who slaughtered his clan in cold blood, yeah, but one man.
Team Eight was gone. A third of his graduating year.
And Chouji felt like he was the only one who felt bad about it.
Not that everyone else in their year was supposed to feel bad—Team Eight was a pretty secluded bunch. Even if Yuuhi sensei got along with Asuma-sensei and Hatake-sensei and even if Gai-sensei had come along with his year-older team, Shino and Kiba and Sakura didn't hang out with them much.
Sure, he had lunches with Shino on a regular basis and sometimes he crossed paths with Hinata while working at the hospital, but other than that? Him and his team always seemed to have plans during group dinners and group training sessions that everyone else sort of gradually... stopped trying to invite Eight to things.
Shikamaru thought it was too troublesome to seek them out when they didn't want to be found, and Ino had stopped trying to get Sakura to come along to girls' night the third time Sakura told her she had to make dinner that day. Even back in their Academy days when Sakura and Kiba spent more time out of the classroom than in it, none of her attempts at small talk had ever gotten them on a single shared wavelength. Hinata was too polite to not say hello to any of Eight if she saw them, but she was also too shy to do anything more than that, and Chouji's not even sure any of them had properly met Team Gai!
Chouji munched on his rice, his head down as conversation swam around him.
And truthfully, if he hadn't reached out to Shino after hearing him say see you later instead of goodbye, maybe he'd be acting the same as everyone else: shocked, disappointed, and not as hurt as they would have been if they'd been... well, friends.
He chewed on the ends of his chopsticks. When Sasuke left the village, Naruto had gone on a rampage, rallied most of his friends, and went after him. After they failed he never stopped trying, fighting tooth and nail just trying to get his teammate back even after learning Sasuke had ended up in Orochimaru's clutches.
Nobody knew Team Eight well enough to know where they'd gone or why they did it.
But Chouji wanted to understand—god he wanted to understand—why perfectly capable shinobi and good enough people like them had up and done something like that.
He felt even worse when he thought about him being one of the only ones who cared enough to think it.
He stuffed a few slices of meat into his mouth and ordered another plate, wondering if he should pay a visit to Shibi-sama.
(Much later on he would realize that three years after Sasuke's defection he had yet to be labeled a missing-nin while Konoha had not hesitated in calling Team Eight criminals less than twelve hours after they'd fled. It's unfair, all of it, that everyone would work so hard for one man when they turned a blind eye to an entire team.)
:: ::
Tsunade slammed a sake bottle on her desk, spindly cracks twining up the dark glass as her desk shuddered at the force. A couple slips of paper shifted off the stacks by her elbow and drifted onto the floor as Tonton oinked pitifully from her spot wrapped in Shizune's arms.
"None of this makes any goddamn sense!" the Godaime growled. Almost ten files lay open on her desk, each in a different state of scrutiny and disarray. The official identification photos of Yuuhi Kurenai, ANBU Operative Tenzo, Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, Akamaru, and Sakura stared up at her—the last four had been re-taken after their passing of the reintegration process for shinobi who spent extended amounts of time in enemy territory—straight-faced and blank-eyed for the camera.
There weren't enough words to express how much she hated this case.
"Yuuhi's Team Eight has never handed me a single failed mission since I took office," she said. Chic red nails rapped against the wood in sync with the tap tap of her pounding headache. "Had they been a normal team, I would have recommended all the chuunin for the Jounin Exams after hearing of their success on the missions surrounding the Kazekage's retrieval; they've passed every psychological examination, proven their skill in their endeavors, and would've become one of the prime teams for either Infiltration/Reconnaissance or Rescue/Capture."
"Maybe it's not something they wanted?" Shizune posed. "You mentioned once that they've never had a complaint for any mission assigned to them, but that doesn't say anything about whether or not they liked the missions assigned to them."
"That's not a strong enough reason for them to turn traitor."
"No," she relented, "but it opens up the avenue of trying to search for a motive. I think it would be safe to cross off 'career-oriented', though. If Shino-san had become upset with the hospital or Kiba-san finally had enough with being rejected by the Seals Division, then the staff in those environments would have been attacked, not their own teachers."
That was another thing that made no sense. Tsunade had no real gauge of their full capabilities except what was shown on C and B-ranking missions, but if she was told they were strong enough to overpower most or all of the other chuunin, she'd believe it. But why go after Hagane and Umino in particular? If following the pattern of teachers, Yamashiro Aoba would have also been a victim, not a witness.
And if going after Hagane and Umino was just their personal choice, leaving them to die by either bleeding out or by poison for others to find was a stupid move. When Eight went on their missions they were quick and efficient, killing when they needed and making the bodies disappear. Hagane and Umino being left alive meant even more eyewitness accounts with solid stories from the victims themselves that proved that yes, Inuzuka Kiba and Sakura committed their accused crimes.
They were the closest to the team, after all. Being put in a position where they couldn't lie made the charges airtight. Between the witness, the surviving victims, the notes found on the forbidden seals text upon its disappearance, and the pool of blood found at Yuuhi's apartment, it was all clear-cut.
Team Eight had done this and fled the village. It was all so... so...
Convenient.
Tsunade narrowed her eyes. Yes... How lucky for her that this was such a convenient case.
"I want a motive," she demanded. "I want the investigation to extend to all of Eight's haunts—question the people wherever they hung out, dig out what you can, find out why the hell we don't know more about them."
"Yes, Tsunade-sama."
As Shizune headed out the office to update Investigations, the Hokage leaned back with a sigh and spun her chair around to face the window.
This better just be a coincidental convenience or this headache was going to turn into one hell of a bitch.
:: ::
Konoha nights were humid. The hotter the day was, the stickier the nights would be, and after that huge storm a couple days ago and the achingly sunny days that followed after, the village at all times was warm and wet and gross.
Yet Naruto sat on the roof of his apartment building, hidden far behind the lights that dotted the street.
His orange pants were rolled all the way up to his knees and both his jacket and hitai-ate were haphazardly thrown down onto his balcony, leaving him in a black tank and Tsunade-baa-chan's necklace. His black sandals were tossed somewhere inside his apartment—where exactly he didn't remember, next to the fridge maybe—and his kunai pouch laid open right beside him, open and a few of his weapons gleaming in the moonlight.
He tried not to think about the plastic baggie of White Letters he cradled close to his stomach. He tried not to think about the apartment next to his that was marked for Investigations and barred from entry. He tried not to think about pink hair and green eyes and his best friend in the whole world looking at him like she's tired and resigned and shaken and he wants to tell her how much he loves her and that everything would be alright and he'd help her of course he'd help her he'd do anything for—
He tried not to think. It didn't work.
Naruto's face fell into the hand that wasn't anchoring the letters close to his body as tears burned his eyes. He tried to wipe the tear tracks, tried to will himself to lighten up, tried to sniffle himself back to better thoughts.
Tried, tried, tried.
Trying was so much harder when he didn't know if Sakura-chan was okay.
Through his mess of tears he cracked open the bag, took the envelope at the very top of the bundle, and pulled it out of its twine confines. The name Uzumaki Naruto glared up at him plain as day in Sakura-chan's neat handwriting, and he held it away from his face to make sure tears didn't smudge the ink.
(It was one of the only things he had left of her after she—)
He turned the envelope over and pried the gluey flap from the paper, careful not to tear, and pulled out the crisply folded paper as he set the envelope on his knee.
I'm sorry.
Whether I'm dead or otherwise, you reading this means that something's happened to me. I probably told you everything was alright or told you not to worry, and maybe I gave you a little too much hope that I would come back after this.
I'm sorry.
A fresh wave of sadness crashed through his chest as he reared back and ducked his head into the collar of his tank, furiously soaking up the hot tears that streamed relentlessly from his eyes. A few hiccups caught in his throat and he sat for a minute or two, breathing in and out, in and out, until he could look at the letter in his shaking hands.
I know you have questions, but I can't give you any of the answers. If I'm dead, most of my secrets died with me. If I'm alive somewhere and I can't come back, we won't stop working until we'll be able to speak clearly again.
I'll admit I'm not very good at this letter thing. I'm not sure about the words I can say that would make this better, but you already know how bad I am at this kind of stuff.
Naruto smiled a watery smile. Yeah, Sakura-chan could get pretty bad at that.
Just be careful and take care of yourself, okay? Try to eat three times a day and make sure there are vegetables somewhere in there.
'Vegetables' was underlined three times. He could see her standing in front of him, holding out an entire uncooked carrot and telling him to eat it or she'd make him, and his bottom lip started to wobble.
Remember, you never did anything I'd hate you for.
I'll miss you.
Sakura
P.S. It's a good luck charm.
What?
His knee moved and the envelope tilted, something sliding out of the opening and landing on the roof tiling with a quiet plink.
Naruto blinked and picked it up. It was a... keychain?
He stared at the little cherry blossom in his palm with its big pink petals and deep yellow center, and he held the back of his hand to his mouth to try and hold back the next onslaught of tears.
(Just like the frog keychain he'd given her when they were twelve. He didn't know she remembered.)
"You promised me we were gonna get Ichiraku's when you got back," he whispered. He brought the Sakura blossom close, holding it right over his heart. "You promised me you were gonna come back."
No one answered him in the middle of the humid Konoha night.
:: ::
"There's been a significant update to the International Bingo Book that I thought you'd like to know about," Zangei told one of his most frequent clients. As one of the Bounty Exchange Officers that ran one of the Bounty Stations that dotted all around Fire Country, the news had been huge. Few missing-nin dared to defect from Konoha so boldly, but the few that did were always formidable. "Four whole entries in one day. An entire team. Albeit, three of them are chuunin, but two are from renowned clans."
Kakuzu grunted as he counted the wads of cash tucked neatly into the suitcase placed on the metal table. "Which clans?"
"Aburame and Inuzuka."
Quick fingers paused briefly before continuing to flick through each individual bill. "Aburame is a noble clan, isn't it?"
"Which makes the news all the more interesting," smiled Zangei. The scar across his right cheek stretched. "Konoha isn't too panicked; they were rather low ranking in terms of what they had access to and what missions they went on. Their full dossiers have yet to be released, but I have their pictures and general information. Would you like to add them to your Book?"
Kakuzu grunted again. The officer crossed to the other side of the room and picked up the newest folder.
"Young, too," Zangei mentioned as he slid it across the table. "No one has tried to collect yet so there's no measure of their skill, but tentative bounties have been assigned based on rank and name. Ten million for the jounin, five million for the Aburame, four million for the Inuzuka, two million for the girl."
After counting through the last three wads of ryo and confirming that every last bit of his owed bounty had been handed over, Kakuzu took out his personal Bingo Book from inside his cloak and opened it from the back to slot in the next four bounties he could run into. They certainly weren't worth enough to go out of his way for, but if he ever came across any of them they would make good for some quick change.
The first picture was the jounin. Yuuhi Kurenai: 30 years old, 5'5", black hair, red eyes, specialized in genjutsu.
Next, the Aburame. Aburame Shino: 15 years old, 5'9", black hair, tended to wear glasses, right eye was a prosthesis, has the clan kekkai genkai.
Then, the Inuzuka. Inuzuka Kiba: 15 years old, 5'6", brown hair, black eyes, wore seals on his ears as auditory stabilizers. Ninken companion was large with white fur.
Last, the girl. Sakura—
Kakuzu stared down at the picture.
Chilling green eyes stared back.
"You recognize one of them, Kakuzu-san?" Zangei questioned curiously. The Akatsuki member said nothing for a moment, but did end up adding the last picture to his Book before tucking back into the recesses of his cloak.
"The girl, Sakura," he said. "She won't only be worth two million for long."
He shut the briefcase, pulled it off the table, and took his leave without another word.
:: ::
And we end with fantastic covers by TotallySemantics!
And fanart by icejade03 on instagram!