Your Whole Family

She knew she had made a terrible mistake the second they stepped outside of Konoha’s gates, but by then it was too late to turn back. 

It was for Sasuke-kun. She had to be brave for Sasuke-kun, and this was the best way she had to prove her love to him. 

She kept reminding herself of this as each step took her further from the towering gates of the village.

It was all for Sasuke-kun, who didn’t have anyone else. 

The pit in her stomach became a gaping crevasse when four unfamiliar ninja dropped silently from the canopy. Before they arrived Sakura still had some hope that Sasuke-kun would turn his dark eyes on her and say something about how her unwavering devotion had convinced him to turn back. 

The way the four ninja carried themselves reminded Sakura of Orochimaru – graceful, almost lackadaisical, but ready to commit breathtaking violence at a moment’s notice. They were standing casually but had managed to efficiently arrange themselves in a loose diamond formation. It wasn’t quite textbook.  The red-headed girl and the boy with four arms were standing a bit too far apart. There was an opening that Sakura could conceptually bolt through. If this was an Academy exercise, Iruka-sensei would have docked points from the Sound nin for sloppiness.

Sakura knew it was a trap designed to ensnare her. They wanted her gone. 

“What’s this weakling bitch doing here?” The red haired girl asked, jerking her head in Sakura’s direction. 

“She’s with me,” Sasuke answered. “I’m not leaving without her.”  

Sakura felt her heart grow two sizes. He did want her here! She firmed her resolve to do everything she could to help Sasuke. 

The red-haired girl scrutinized Sasuke for a few seconds, and then shrugged. “There’s enough room in the box for both of you. Let’s head out.” With that confusing proclamation, the four Sound nin silently scaled the tree they had leapt from as a seamless unit. Sasuke followed a second after, and Sakura scrambled to catch up with them all. 

 By the time Sakura made it to the lower branches of the tree, Sasuke and the Sound ninja were already well ahead. They ran at a punishing pace that soon had Sakura desperately gasping for air, too busy struggling to breathe to feel embarrassed at the harsh noises she was making. 

When they abruptly stopped after what seemed like an eternity but was likely no more than an hour, Sakura bent double to catch her breath, leaning heavily against the trunk. The branch dipped down slightly, which was the only warning before the red haired ninja shoved her forearm against Sakura’s throat and pinned her to the tree. 

“If you scream, if you cry, if you try anything at all that endangers this mission, I’ll cut your throat myself,” she whispered, so close Sakura could feel her breath against her face. 

“Well?” the girl asked, and punctuated her question by pressing her arm down. Sakura nodded, desperate to breathe again.  

The girl took one step back, laughed at whatever expression she saw on Sakura’s face, and dropped through the canopy to join the others on the forest floor. 

Sakura took a few moments to follow. She reminded herself of shinobi rule #28 while she willed the prickling burn in her eyes to subside. A shinobi must never show any weakness. It was all for Sasuke. She had to be strong for Sasuke. 

She also couldn’t be weak for her own continued survival, the voice in her head reminded her. The redhead with the fugly hat wouldn’t think twice before killing her. 

That was when the big one put her in a headlock and held her there while the redhead stuffed a pill in her mouth. The film coating burst against the inside of her molar, releasing a flood of bitter powder that triggered her gag reflex. She couldn’t double over to throw up because there was a hand on her chin forcing her head up and then clamped over her mouth and suddenly she was swallowing. 

The hand disappeared and she fell to her knees, gasping for breath. There were two hands in front of her, bracketing a set of knees that she logically knew were her own. 

Her stomach hurt. 

There was a voice that irritated her speaking somewhere to her left. “Don’t worry, Sasuke,” she said. “Your little girlfriend will only be dead for a little while.” 

It was nearly a relief when black started to eat at the corners of Sakura’s vision. 

“Sakura, wake up!” 

Someone was shaking her. Sakura’s limbs felt stiff, and there was a terrific cramp building in her neck. It was bitterly cold in the box, and Sakura shifted, seeking more warmth. 

“She slept through the whole thing?” an unfamiliar voice said. “The dosage must have been too high for her.” 

The dosage of the pill they’d forced into her before shoving her into the circular coffin with Sasuke. She didn’t want to open her eyes, but the hands gripping her shoulders gave her another mighty shake. 

It was Sasuke, framed by the dim light of torches. He looked awful - half of his face was a giant bruise, and there were scorched hanks of hair framing his face. 

“Sasuke-kun? What happened?” she gasped, unable to help herself. He didn’t answer, choosing instead to roughly haul her out of the coffin. As she climbed out the muscles in her left leg cramped badly, which sent her sprawling. Sasuke fisted his hand in the back of her dress to keep her upright. 

This was not the impression she had been hoping to make. Her stomach was still cramping from the drug, and everything felt slightly distant. She kept her head down and studied her filthy sandals, trying not to sway on her feet. Sakura knew that if she looked up, she would see Orochimaru. It was one thing to stand near the gates of the village waiting for Sasuke and promise him there, not a kilometer away from Ino’s house, that she would go with him to the Snake Sannin. She’d blurted the offer out entirely in desperation, not expecting Sasuke would accept. 

And then - he’d looked at her, really looked at her in a way he never had before, and Sakura knew that he had agreed to take her along before he even said it. By the time it hit her that he’d said yes, they were already nearly at the gate. Sasuke had grabbed her wrist and was towing her along, like he had in the Forest of Death. 

The voice in her head was screaming at her, demanding that she rip her hand away and run back to the Yamanaka flower shop where Ino and her dad could protect her until ANBU took her away to give the Hokage a debrief about Sasuke turning traitor to the village. 

He wasn’t supposed to say yes. 

Sakura was practiced at ignoring the voice. She’d done it for years, and she wasn’t about to stop now. Sasuke needed her, wanted her, and she would be grateful and go with him. 

If it felt like a pit had opened up in her stomach, well – that was love. Wasn’t that what the romantic movies Ino showed her implied? Women had to persevere and suffer for their man. 

She couldn’t exactly retract the offer. Sakura wasn’t the type of girl to break her promises. If she dangled the promise of real love and companionship in front of Sasuke and then snatched it away, she would be worse than trash. What would Kakashi-sensei think? She had committed to going with her teammate the minute she opened her big shrill mouth. 

The stress of the journey had kept her from dwelling on her choice, but now she was here. The knowledge that she’d made a terrible mistake, the worst mistake of her life, rose in the corner of her mind like an incoming meteor. It was still distant, but she knew that the minute it really hit her, her composure would be obliterated. So she kept her head down, and looked at the dust bunny by her foot. Fire hazard, she noted to herself, before the killing intent smothered her. 

It was an intimately familiar sensation, and in an instant Sakura was back in the Forest of Death, struggling to breath as the fear pushed the air out of her lungs. 

She looked up. Orochimaru’s expression of genteel bemusement was perfectly at odds with the wave of threatening intent choking her. 

“That’s better,” he purred. “It’s considered polite to look at your host.” 

Orochimaru was arranged artfully on a metal folding chair. He looked slightly different – taller and a bit stockier. Yakushi Kabuto was standing next to him. Suddenly, his access to information about ninja from the elemental nations made much more sense. It would have been very helpful if someone had bothered to inform her that Kabuto was a Sound spy. 

They were standing in a small room with a low ceiling and stone walls. It was more prosaic than Sakura expected - no snake murals, no grotesque thrones. It was nothing like the horror movies she’d watched with Ino. 

Orochimaru looked between them and sighed. “Kabuto,” he said, without looking at the other man, “was my invitation not clear about there being no plus ones?” 

Sasuke glared mutinously back at Orochimaru. Sakura noted that his eyes were starting to water from the strain of not blinking. 

Kabuto interceded. “Ah, Orochimaru-sama, I’m sure Sakura-chan could prove useful. She was the top kunoichi in her year. And Sasuke-kun did carry her all this way” 

Orochimaru hummed dismissively. “We’re running a tight ship, Kabuto. We don’t have room for dead weight.” 

It was like the man had precision-targeted all of her insecurities with a senbon. 

Orochimaru sighed and recrossed his legs. “Well, Sasuke? Would you care to enlighten us as to why you brought your friend along?” 

Sakura could feel the tears threatening to spill over. In the past, when humiliation threatened to overwhelm her, she had always either cried or gotten angry. She weighed her options in a split second and came to the conclusion that anger would likely serve her better in this scenario. 

She looked Orochimaru right in the eyes. “I was the top of the class in academics. I have a photographic memory, very good chakra control. My Jounin-sensei said I was a genjutsu type, and I was recommended for the front-line medic program.” 

The last part wasn’t exactly true, but she had been toying with the idea of asking the Godaime Hokage for a medical apprenticeship. 

It was a pitiful list of talents, all things considered. 

Orochimary was still looking expectantly at Sasuke. “It’s all true,” Sasuke muttered, eyes still boring a hole into Orochimaru. “She promised to be useful to me.” 

That was also true. Sakura had promised the moon and more in her desperate attempts to get Sasuke to stay. She’d babbled on about learning medical jutsu, becoming strong, aiding him in killing his brother. Anything and everything she could think of, and look where that had gotten her. 

Orochimaru and Kabuto exchanged a loaded glance. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Kabuto murmured. Orochimaru shrugged. “I suppose that’s settled, then. Sakura-chan, Kabuto will oversee your training. I’m sure you will prove very… useful, after all.” 

Sakura dropped into a low bow. “Thank you, Orochimaru-sama. I won’t disappoint you.” 

“So Konoha is capable of producing polite genin,” Orochimaru murmured. “What a pleasant surprise.” 

“Well, I suppose that’s our cue,” Kabuto said. “Sakura, why don’t you come with me?” he asked, beckoning her towards the door. 

Sasuke was in front of her in a flash, the curse mark licking up the sides of his face. “Where are you taking her?” He grabbed her wrist, so hard her bones were grinding together. 

Sasuke was protecting her! Never mind how much her wrist hurt, or how badly she wanted him to stop calling on the curse mark’s power. 

Kabuto turned on his heel to face them, wearing an expression of pure exasperation that reminded Sakura of the nurses at Konoha Hospital. 

“I need to do the intake forms for her, Sasuke-kun. We are running a village here, and records make the world go round.” 

Sasuke tensed at that, the fingers around Sakura's wrist tightening painfully.

She looked at Kabuto, not sure what to think. She hadn't expected there to be bureaucracy.

She stared back at Sasuke, who looked ready to do something Naruto would approve of in her defense. He would lose if he tried. 

“It’s alright, Sasuke-kun. It’s just paperwork.” Sakura smiled as wide as she could and patted his arm, hoping it would calm Sasuke down. It worked. Sasuke released her arm. The rush of blood back into her hand prickled unpleasantly, but Sakura kept smiling. “I’ll see you soon, Sasuke-kun!” 

True to his word, Kabuto led her through a freezing hallway until they arrived at a metal door. Kabuto pushed it in to reveal a brightly lit sterile room that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Konoha’s research labs. There was a white vinyl examination chair with straps and a small desk, along with a few filing cabinets. 

“You have electricity?” Sakura asked. 

“We have a generator, yes, but it would be a waste of energy to light the whole base, and Orochimaru prefers a bit of ambiance,” Kabuto replied. 

Ambiance was one way to describe the flickering torchlight that barely illuminated the huddled masses of people tucked away in barred cells lining the halls. Sakura could only tell they were there from the smell. 

The intake procedure felt startlingly routine. Kabuto weighed her and took her height, noting the measurements on a clipboard. 

“Would you mind hopping on that chair for me?” 

Sakura froze, eyeing the wicked leather straps on the chair. 

Kabuto smiled gently at her. “I’m not going to torture you,” he said, as if the very idea was absurd. 

Never mind the drain in the center of the room, or Orochimaru’s reputation for human experimentation. 

Sakura hesitated, but pushed herself forward. She couldn’t be weak or they would kill her, and Sasuke would have no one. When she settled in the chair, Kabuto pulled up a desk chair to sit next to her. 

“Your blood type?” 

Sakura was so surprised she jumped. 

“Sakura-chan, I assure you we don’t torture little girls here,” Kabuto said in the same gentle nursery-teacher voice. Even though she was nearly certain he was lying, something about the way he said it put her at ease. 

It went on like that for a while. He asked about her blood type, height, and family history of illness in such a rote manner that he was almost indistinguishable from the civilian pediatrician her family used to take her to. The rhythmic questioning was soothing, and she felt sleepy and warm. 

“Any kekkei genkai?” he asked. 

“None.” When Kabuto subtly deflated, Sakura was seized with the urge to apologize. “It’s ok, I don’t either,” he whispered conspiratorially, and winked. In a dim corner of her mind, a voice was screaming at her that Kabuto was a liar and a spy. He looked so friendly and harmless. 

“What about your classmates? I know you were close to Yamanaka Ino, can you tell me anything about her?” he asked. Sakura frowned, and another wave of soothing warmth washed over her. In the corner of her eye, she saw the goosebumps on her arm. That’s right - it was freezing in the base. 

She closed her eyes and focused on her chakra network. There were barely perceptible tendrils of foreign chakra creeping through her system. 

Sakura concentrated on the chakra running between the tenketsu in her sternum and crown, and very carefully disrupted the flow. All of a sudden she was bitterly cold and sore, and Kabuto was sitting at the desk across the room, back facing her while he scribbled away at something. 

He slowly swiveled on his chair to face her. “Very good, Sakura-chan. To be honest, I didn’t think you’d notice that one. It was one of my best. What clued you in?” 

“It was too warm. It’s very cold here.” 

“I’ll take note of that next time.” 

“When did you cast the genjutsu on me?” Sakura asked. 

Kabuto shook his head. “That’s something you’ll have to figure out yourself. Now, where were we,” he said, reaching over for the clipboard. “I know from your academy scores that you have excellent chakra control - shall we test that?” 

He had her first stick a piece of paper to her forehead, then to either hand, then to her elbows, knees, and ankles. Then he had her move the paper - first along her arm, then in anticlockwise figure-8 patterns around her torso. 

He had her make a chakra scalpel and drew increasingly complicated patterns on paper, demanding that she follow them with cutting chakra alone. 

By the time he was finished, Sakura was panting as though she had run around the walls of the village with Lee. White spots were dotting her vision. 

“You don’t have much chakra, but you weren’t lying when you said your control was good.” Kabuto began picking up the pieces of paper that littered the floor. “Frankly, I haven’t seen such prodigious control since, well, myself.” 

He laughed. Sakura had heard Kabuto laugh plenty of times before – usually a self-deprecating, sensible chuckle. It was the kind of laugh designed to make onlookers feel vaguely embarrassed for him, and encouraged them to turn away to give the loser a moment to himself. 

This laugh was different. There was a slightly manic edge, and it was just a little too loud and a little too long. 

Kabuto trailed off, giggling a little. “Not to be immodest, of course. When you said you wanted to learn medical jutsu I was planning to just humor you until - well, until you could be put to more efficient use.”

Sakura’s eyes darted unbidden to the drain in the floor. They wouldn’t - Sasuke said he wouldn’t cooperate without her presence. The threat held more weight before they’d entered this damp subterranean nightmare factory. As much as she adored him, even Sakura could see that Sasuke was hopelessly outclassed by nearly everyone else here. 

Kabuto crouched down until he was eye-level with her. Without his genjutsu, it just felt threatening to have him so close. 

“Sakura-chan, I believe that in you we have the makings of a true prodigy,” he said. 

No one had ever said that to Sakura before. 

Sakura couldn’t help the immediate, visceral pleasure that accompanied the pronouncement. She had always been a praise-motivated student. Kabuto echoed her involuntary smile with one of his own. 

“Aw, you’ve gone bright red,” Kabuto cooed. “So cute. Anyway, if Orochimaru gets a child genius to mold into his image, why shouldn't I get one of my own” 

Sakura’s face was burning. She wanted to preen under the compliments that Kabuto was bombarding her with, even though she knew that this was a common interrogation tactic. 

Anyway, what was there to say? Agreeing would just make her seem stuck up, so she played it safe and stood as still as possible. 

Kabuto spent the next few minutes rummaging around in the filing cabinets while Sakura tried not to look too hard at the brown stains caked around the edge of the drain. Suddenly, the events of the day hit her like 20 of Naruto’s bunshin. She’d never had the best stamina. The mad dash to Sound followed by Kabuto’s interrogation had very nearly drained her dry. Was this what Kakashi felt like after the fight with Zabuza? Sakura certainly felt like she could sleep for a few days straight. 

“Ah, here we go,” Kabuto said, lifting out a sealing scroll from the messy cabinet and waggling it in the air. Sakura hobbled to him when he beckoned her over to the desk. 

Within, a thick stack of gently smoking books was towering in front of her. Sakura tried to make out their titles, but her vision was swimming too badly. 

“I think these will be enough to start. Get them back to me in oh, eight days. And Sakura-chan?” 

“Yes, Kabuto-san?” 

His answering grin was razor sharp. “I don’t like to be kept waiting.” 

A silent Sound nin escorted her from Kabuto’s office to a store room while she followed, struggling to balance all of the books while walking over the uneven stone floor. 

He gave her a disdainful once-over before dropping a threadbare jinbei and worn futon on top of the pile. Sakura had to stick everything to her arms with what little chakra she had left to prevent it from falling to the dirty floor. 

The ninja silently turned and led her through the maze-like warren of tunnels to a little square room. 

Sasuke was already there, perched on his bedding. He was still wearing the singed, filthy clothes they’d left Konoha in. 

Suddenly, Sakura was embarrassed of her torn dress and sweat-stained face. There was a bathroom attached to the little room. She showered on autopilot and washed her hair with soap from a dispenser. It was cheap and gritty, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. 

She’d abandoned her home for Sasuke. Would he really care if her hair wasn’t shiny? Thoughts of home reminded her of her parents, who would doubtlessly by now know that she had abandoned the village. Sakura hadn’t left a note when she impulsively snuck out of the house to intercept Sasuke. 

What would they think? How could she possibly communicate to them that she was fine, that Sasuke would doubtlessly protect her? What would Ino think? 

The clothes she had arrived in were piled on the floor outside of the shower, covered in dust and grime. She didn’t even have a pair of underwear to change into. What would she wear tomorrow morning? She couldn’t just wander around the base in her pajamas. If she’d had time to pack, she could have brought a full mission pack. 

The traitorous voice in her head whispered that if she’d known this was the outcome of intercepting Sasuke, she wouldn’t have packed. She would have gone straight to the new Hokage. 

If things had gone to plan, she, Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi-sensei would be at Ichiraku right now, celebrating their expulsion of the terrifying Sound ninja from the village. Maybe it was still possible for them to go back to the village, if they could gather enough supplies – 

The water abruptly turned icy, cutting off all thoughts of escape. 

Sasuke didn’t say anything when Sakura exited the bathroom, clean and more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life. She halfheartedly spread out the futon and ungracefully collapsed on to it. Every muscle was screaming. 

She rolled over to face Sasuke, who was still staring straight ahead. She didn’t even consider encouraging him to wash up and put pajamas on. They would both sleep, and in the morning they would talk. 

Sleep didn’t come. Sakura normally fell asleep early and easily and woke up in the same way, a trait that annoyed Naruto to no end on missions. Tonight, though, she couldn’t manage it. 

Some nights, when it took her a little longer to sleep, she would fantasize about her future life with Sasuke - their wedding, the color scheme of their shared apartment (mint green and navy), or sometimes detailed scenarios that would end with Sasuke passionately declaring his love for her. 

She couldn’t manage it. They’d defected from the village together and they were unsupervised, alone, in a room at night. Sasuke had fought to keep her with him. In any other situation Sakura knew that would have overwhelmed her with happiness. Now, though, there was nothing. 

That was ok. She would be in love with Sasuke again in the morning – she knew it. 

Eventually, Sasuke got up and extinguished the torch. Sakura could hear him sit back on his futon, and she imagined him staring straight ahead at nothing. They lay in silence for a long time, Sakura marinating in her discomfort. 

“What happened after we left Konoha?” Sakura whispered. 

Sasuke lay silent for a long time. With the torch extinguished, it was too dark to see him. 

“The Sound Four took us to the border, and from there I carried you here,” he finally responded. “Tayuya won’t bother you any more. None of the Sound Four will. Orochimaru told me they were all killed. 

“Killed by who?” Sakura asked. 

“Konoha sent out a retrieval team.” 

After the Sound-Sand invasion, Konoha’s ranks were gutted. Almost every single chunin and jounin was actively on missions to rebuild Konoha’s coffers.  A mission to retrieve  Sasuke would have been classified as urgent, and therefore would have accepted whatever shinobi were mission-ready at the time – likely genin. 

“Sasuke-kun… who was on the retrieval team?” she asked, dreading the answer. 

Sasuke took a while to answer. “It doesn’t matter now. No one important.” He sounded tired, and Sakura was reminded that he was a 13 year old genin. So was she, for that matter, and they were the only people the other had. 

She felt a fierce burst of protectiveness towards him. 

“I’m glad you took me with you, Sasuke-kun. I promise I’ll help you however I can,” she whispered, willing the words to change the shape of the future. She had chosen a role for herself and she would perform it to the best of her ability, better than anyone else possibly could. She would learn what Kabuto had to teach her and help Sasuke kill his evil brother. 

That was how she would one day walk back into Konoha with her head held high and Sasuke, healthy and whole, by her side. Look, she’d say to all of her friends and family, I loved him and kept him safe and he’s better now. Naruto would say something stupid but charmming, and Kakshi-sensei would get his head out of his porn and give them a real smile that crinkled up. 

Sasuke would finally see how much she would give for him and they could rejoin Team 7 and be happy together. They just needed to survive long enough in Sound for Sasuke to get strong.

Sakura drifted off to the sound of Sasuke’s breathing. 

She finished the books in six and a half days. Kabuto looked viciously pleased for a moment, before he told her that she now knew enough to start learning from experience. 

Kabuto had explained to her the possibility of using human subjects. “It’s unpleasant at first,” he’d said, “but some breakthroughs are impossible just using the mouse model, or even primates.” 

After all, most animals couldn’t mold chakra. Human subjects were valuable and expensive, but there came a time when a scientist simply had to use them. 

Anyway, as Kabuto reminded her, they were shinobi. Human life was their bread and butter. Was it not more of a waste to kill someone outright and leave their corpse to rot than to use them for genuine scientific inquiry? 

Conceptually, this made sense to Sakura. Seeing it in person was entirely different. During his little lecture on experimental ethics, Kabuto had made human subject seem abstract; little more than marionettes with chakra networks that could be taken apart and put back together. 

He didn’t mention the smells, or the screams, or the fact that they would make desperate eye contact while silently begging for their lives. 

Sakura threw up bile the first time she witnessed a vivisection, and kept throwing up until the tears streaming down her face transitioned into actual sobbing. 

“Why don’t you funnel all of that tender-hearted energy into getting better at the mystical palm, Sakura-chan?” Kabuto snapped. “Then you can help this poor fellow out.” 

She did. She took a battery-operated flashlight to bed and studied under blankets to keep from disturbing Sasuke. She took squealing lab rats from their cages and cut them open again and again until she could fix them back up. 

Orochimaru often took Sasuke away for training trips, but Sakura stayed underground. In the utter absence of natural light, it was difficult to say how much time passed. Her life was measured by lab shifts, training drills with other low-ranking Sound ninja, and desperate attempts to improve her medical jutsu to do something, anything for the test subjects. 

By the time she could confidently heal broken bones, she was mushroom pale and her hair reached nearly to her collarbones. 

When she showed Kabuto her improvements, he gave her an awkward pat on the back. “Excellent work, Sakura-chan. With you on board we’ll be able to get much more mileage out of experiments.” 

The whey-faced woman strapped to the gurney let out another muffled moan around her gag. 

When Sakura cried this time, Kabuto merely shot her an irritated look. “It’s fine to cry as long as you get the work done, Sakura-chan, but make sure it doesn’t obscure your vision. This is a delicate experimental surgery and you can’t afford to make any mistakes. Maybe consider investing in some goggles?” 

She got back to work. 

Sometimes the crying continued into the night. She tried to keep it quiet to make sure not to interrupt Sasuke’s rest, but this night was difficult. The compound Kabuto was testing that afternoon had passed animal trials, but it was only just being tested on humans. It vastly increased the depth of chakra reserves in a short span of time, but tended to cause violent, sometimes fatal seizures. 

Kabuto was of the opinion that human subjects were valuable, and tried to keep them usable for as long as possible. During this trial, Sakura’s job was to heal the subjects over and over as incremental amounts of the compound were fed into their bloodstream via IV. 

That day was no different. She dispersed blood clots in the brain and healed lacerations on the tongue over and over again until, unexpectedly, the subject went completely rigid before going limp. His head lolled towards her. 

Her hands fell and dangled uselessly at her side. 

Another one gone 

“Diagnostic scan, Sakura-chan,” Kabuto ordered absentmindedly as he noted down the total amount of the compound used. Sakura guided her chakra into the man’s abdominal cavity. 

“It’s an aortic rupture, Kabuto-san,” she whispered. 

“Is it?” He sighed. “It’s not really worth the effort to bring the subject back. You’re running on empty and I have an appointment to make later. Note the cause of death down, would you? Along with – one moment.” Kabuto checked the experimental log book before glancing at the IV and reciting a calculation under his breath. “Lethal dose works out to 50 milligrams per kilo. I’ll expect a full autopsy by the time I get back.” 

“Yes, Kabuto-san,” she said. 

“Toodleoo, Sakura-chan.” 

She couldn’t save the subject, and if even she had saved the subject she would have been the one to kill them eventually. This was still the earliest stage of human experimentation, after all, and a certain level of loss was expected. 

Kabuto had taken her aside a while ago and explained the human part of Oto’s supply chain with the same tone of voice he had used to explain the village tax system. Human subjects were delicate, expensive, and very valuable – particularly those with developed chakra systems. They would be used and reused until their bodies gave out, and then those would be partitioned and used for tissue cultures. 

This particular subject was never going to live a long life. 

Sakura cried through the autopsy and during the report. She stopped long enough to eat her meal of rice and preserved pork in the base’s senior mess hall, aware from painful experience that the Sound nin there would eat her alive at the barest hint of weakness. 

It started again when she got back to her and Sasuke’s room. She took regular sips from her water bottle to stay hydrated while she flipped through the pages of a stolen scroll marked IWAGAKURE JOUNIN JUTSU REPOSITORY 2C - CLASSIFIED - DO NOT REMOVE in bright red letters on the front. It really was an interesting review of controlled chakra detonation. 

She was still crying when Sasuke got back well after lights out. He smelled like a chemical fire. She focused single mindedly on her breathing, willing it to even out. She didn’t want Sasuke to hear her. On the days after she spent the night crying, Sasuke would be more tired and reticent than usual. 

It made her feel terrible. She had promised to assist him in whatever way possible, and instead she was burdening him with her useless tears. 

“Sakura –” Sasuke whispered. 

She suppressed a sob, which morphed into a painful hiccup. “Yes, Sasuke-kun?” 

She was too focused on what he was about to say to remember not to inhale through her nose. The sound of air rushing past snot was a dead giveaway that she was still a weak, good for nothing crybaby who couldn’t heal, couldn’t help Sasuke, couldn’t do anything at all. 

“Thank you.” 

Coming from Sasuke, this was akin to a declaration of love, but Sakura was too tired and overwhelmed to appreciate it. 

“It’s ok, Sasuke-kun. I’m just happy to be here with you.” 

At some point during the gloomy months spent taking nameless people apart, the statement had become mostly a lie. 

Sasuke was silent in the dark room, but Sakura had spent enough time obsessively categorizing every millimeter of his face to imagine what he looked like now. His face had changed a bit since they’d arrived. High cheekbones were emerging as Orochimaru’s harsh training regime stripped away what remained of his baby fat. and he was probably looking off into the middle distance. 

She could picture perfectly the minute downward tug on the left side of his mouth and the tightening of his eyebrows that made him look so guilty. He’d never looked at Naruto like that. 

A wave of bitterness rose into her throat and she sputtered quietly. For a moment, she didn’t care that Sasuke could hear her cry. Let him feel guilty. He shouldn’t have taken her with him. He should have knocked her out and left her in Konoha somewhere. He shouldn’t have left the village in the first place and forced her to come along. 

But she knew that he didn’t force her. She’d gone willingly and left her parents, Ino, Naruto, Lee, and everyone else behind because she loved him. 

She fixed his image in her mind again, remembering the way his hand felt on hers in the Forest of Death. She did love him. She had to love him, or it was all for nothing. She had chosen her future when she walked out of the gates with him, and now she needed to stick to it. What kind of protector would she be if she made Sasuke feel guilty? 

“Go to sleep, Sasuke-kun. You need it to heal properly and get strong.” 

——- 

Time passed in an endless cycle of lab work, missions, and training. Sakura grew – not indifferent to the subjects' suffering, but stronger. 

She never asked Sasuke for details about what Orochimaru made him do, and he never asked her about her work under Kabuto’s supervision.

Sakura gathered information and bided her time. Two and a half years passed her by like this.

When she’d asked Kabuto for the original logs on Juugo he’d been distracted, rushing to put together supplies for a rendezvous with one of the assets he’d hinted at passing along to her. 

“The logs would be somewhere in the Eastern base, probably in the J-block,” he’d said in response to her question, carelessly tossing aside sealing scrolls in search of something specific. 

That was one major surprise that Sakura had encountered during her stay in Sound - both Orochimaru and Kabuto were messy . Orochimaru was the worst. He had an unfortunate tendency to leave bodies of all species lying around coated in viscera, albeit with elegant preservation seals slapped on them to prevent decomposition. 

Sakura did not understand how he had the time to design exquisitely keyed seals that held organic matter in total stasis, but couldn’t manage to put his various projects in one of the many temperature-controlled store rooms that were designed for the specific purpose of keeping corpses out of shared living areas. 

Kabuto was just as bad in his own way - he was fastidious about having everything he needed on hand, but tended to keep his supplies in a disorganized jumble. Her mentor insisted that he could recall where everything was at any given time, but Sakura ended up located misplaced files more often than not. 

Both Kabuto and Orochimaru were undeniably brilliant; likely the brightest scientific minds in the elemental nations, but they had no sense of organization. Sakura, on the other hand, lived to alphabetize and color code. 

After her first year in Sound, she’d been given the security clearance to reorganize the labs. It was, somehow, one of the happiest moments of her life. 

“What are you looking for?” she asked. “Can I help, Kabuto-sensei?” 

Despite his mood swings and his mile-wide sadistic streak, Kabuto had a genuine soft spot for her. In the right mood, he was easy to butter up.  

“Backup body scroll, the one for girls aged 16-19,” he said, now surveying his messy desk. His glasses somehow flashed in the fluorescent light, and Sakura’s heart rate sped up. It wasn’t a genjutsu - Sakura had surreptitiously checked many times over the last three years. Kabuto just somehow managed to angle himself just so whenever he felt particularly irritated. If Sakura was any less valuable, it would have been her sign to cut and run - a particularly gleaming flash over his round spectacles tended to herald creative usage of chakra scalpels. 

He used them less on her these days, now that he knew any wound inflicted on her would be healed before it had the chance to bleed. Still, Sakura was cautious - she never knew when Kabuto was going to give her an applied pop quiz on cellular auto regeneration. 

Sakura edged around Kabuto to peer at the desk. The scroll in question was buried under the lab expenses report from two years ago that Sakura had written. She gently eased it out from under the heaping pile of paperwork with a chakra string. “Here you go, Kabuto-sensei.” 

He took it from her with a brief smile. “I assume you remembered to moderate the frequency of your chakra so as to not banish those very valuable and expensive bodies to a different dimension, especially since you would make a perfectly suitable replacement.” 

Sakura remained silent as he checked over the scroll. 

“Perfect as always, Sakura-chan. I don’t know why I even bother checking.” 

Despite herself, the praise filled her with a warm glow. Despite the harsh conditions, praise was never in short supply in Sound. Whenever Kabuto loaned her over to Orochimaru for lab work, the Snake sannin would take pains to acknowledge her contributions. There was, of course, the implication that anything less than exceptional success would result in her becoming a test subject. She had learned as a matter of survival to focus on the bright side, and let Inner Sakura deal with the less savory aspects of becoming a mad scientist in Grass. 

Sakura focused on tidying up the mess Kabuto had made while he finished packing. She returned the scrolls to their seemingly random initial placement. The resulting arrangement was no less visually cluttered, but it was the one that Kabuto preferred. 

Right before he left, Kabuto rewarded her hard work. “The particular seal you’re looking for is keyed to Orochimaru’s chakra frequency. You’ll need to duplicate it to access the information” 

“Tendons or tenketsu?” Sakura asked, curious about what deterrent had been encoded into the seal. One of the research projects she had initially been assigned by Orochimaru was the advancement of seal booby traps. 

“Sodium channels, actually - the research is rather delicate.” 

“Aa,” Sakura said, feeling very glad she’d put the extra effort into studying the chakra string method as Kabuto had suggested. Even she wouldn’t be able to reverse that. If she was killed by a trapped seal, who would look after Sasuke? 

“If you’re going to the Eastern base, refill these along the way,” he said, and tossed her the one of the now empty sealing scrolls. It was for girls, 16-19. “See if you can get ones with dark hair.” 

“Yes, Kabuto-sensei.” 

She was due for drills that day with Sound’s shinobi reserve in the evening block, so she finished her cleaning quickly and stopped by the store room to pick up a nutrition bar. That was another research project she had been assigned once Orochimaru and Kabuto realized that she had an aptitude for budgeting and logistics. 

It was easy enough to design a nutritionally complete food bar that could be cheaply mass-produced. The hard part was making it taste good. 

Orochimaru didn’t particularly care about the taste, however, and instituted it as mass rations for the shinobi of Sound. It was possibly one of his most hated policies. Sakura had begged in the lowest, most formal bow she had ever done that Orochimaru not reveal her part in designing the nutrition bars. He’d laughed at her, harder than she’d ever seen him laugh and agreed. 

So far the news hadn’t gotten out. If it had, Sakura would have been killed in her sleep, and even Sasuke couldn’t have protected her. She’d healed most of the shinobi and civilians of Sound, but she’d also participated in experiments on them. There was goodwill towards her, as well as a fair bit of groveling. She was a high-status resident due to her close ties to Kabuto and Sasuke. 

The thought of Sasuke prompted her to check her chakra reserves — still over half full. They’d increased vastly since the beginning of her stay in Sound due to a combination of scheduled meditation and experimental drug therapy. They were nothing compared to Sasuke’s, but with her precise control she was able to eke more out of a small supply than others could with twice as much. 

After scarfing down her nutrition bar, she descended further into the base towards the jounin training ground. The jounin of Sound were expected to show up for communal training in order to keep their reflexes sharp. 

The room was bare concrete lit by harsh fluorescent lights. Several ninja were already there, sparring in pairs or running through kata. She jogged over to Yomogi to check in. “Haruno Sakura, 3777, reporting for training.” 

“ID,” he grunted, not looking up from his clipboard. 

She fished out the dog tag and presented it to him. He looked over it peremptorily before returning his attention to his clipboard. 

“No chakra today” 

“Of course Yomogi-san,” she murmured politely. He was trying to fuck her over, but she could hold her own well enough in hand-to-hand. She wasn’t the fastest or the strongest, but training with overly aggressive Sound shinobi day in and day out hadn’t left her a slouch in taijutsu. 

That, and she needed at least 30% of her reserves left for the evening. Her flashier movies would drain her of chakra until she was no better than a soggy ramen noodle. 

She waited patiently for Yomogi to dismiss her. He was an asshole and a sticker for proper protocol, even though everyone knew she outranked him. Still, there was no use making enemies. 

Yomogi fixed her with a hard stare. “20 laps to start out with. Remember, Haruno, no chakra. If you break anything I’ll notify Pirikara.” 

To anyone else, getting reported to Pirikara was something that featured in their regular nightmares. The Western Base’s head of logistics was a notorious sadist and control freak, well known for partially disembowelling shinobi who made more trouble than they were worth and delivering them to the labs. Sakura normally re-embowelled them and sent them back to active duty, but she’dd had the occasional displeasure of processing them for further experimentation.

Yomogi was perfectly aware that those living corpses ended up under Sakura’s tender loving care next – if they were lucky. It was an entirely idle threat, but it was the only one he had. 

Her inner voice reminded her that Yomogi’s chakra prohibition wasn’t exactly unwarranted. Sakura had partially demolished the training base a year ago when she impulsively decided to experiment with chakra enhanced strikes. Her roundhouse kick had missed her opponent’s head and hit a load-bearing pillar instead, causing a cave-in that buried 6 good fighters under the rubble. 

Yomogi was a doton specialist, and Sakura was the second-best medical ninja in Sound. Between the two of them, all 6 were recovered and healed within half a day.  

Still, Yomogi never let her forget it, even though he couldn’t turn her in to Pirikara, who hadn’t even attempted her usual campaign of violence and mutilation. Sakura was well-protected and everyone knew it. 

Not that that kept her from getting the shit kicked out of her in group training. Sakura was strong, and faster than she naturally would have been due to a few thoughtful alterations to her own anatomy. Still, she was a small teenager who had spent most of the last few years in a lab. She was at a disadvantage, especially when Yomogi decided she was due for a 7 one 1 match. The bitch. 

Her didn’t go easy on her, but they also didn’t reduce her to paste on the floor. Most sensible shinobi knew not to antagonize her. They never knew when she would be the one thing standing between them and the wet lab. 

Yomogi was the exception to that rule apparently. When Nakamura’s sandal impacted on her face, she resolved to go through Yomogi’s entire genome until she found something interesting and then file the paperwork recommending him as a candidate for experimentation. 

Nakamura helped her to her feet just as the buzzer signaled the end of training. “Hey, sorry about that,” he whispered. Nakamura was a cute 18 year old with shaggy black hair and downturned eyes that made him look perpetually melancholy. “I thought you’d dodge that one.” 

“It’s fine,” Sakura whispered. “Long day in the lab, you know.” 

Nakamura gulped audibly and nodded. To most Sound shinobi, the labs were a mysterious place where comrades disappeared to and typically did not return from. 

Sakura was the one who made sure that they sometimes came back, and Nakamura knew it. 

“I really am sorry, Sakura-san. Is there any way I can make it up to you?” he asked. Cosying up to her was a common strategy employed by Sound ninja, and it often worked. No matter what Kabuto tried, Sakura was still a soft touch at heart. 

“It’s fine, Nakamura,” she sighed. “I wouldn’t want to get complacent.” 

Nakamura bowed deeply. “Thank you so much, Sakura-san.” His hair flopped back into place as he rose and started speed-walking away. He really was cute, in a sad-puppy kind of way. “Uhm, Tajimamori said that someone who works in the canteen told her that there was a new shipment of red bean paste coming in.” 

Appealing to her sweet tooth was an excellent way of getting on her good side. She smiled at him and he went bright red before flopping into another bow and shuffling away. 

“Nakamura,” Sakura called gently after him. He stopped in his tracks. “Try to eat more liver and citrus.” A diagnostic scan of his body carried out when his foot hit her face revealed that his pernicious anemia was getting worse. 

She really was soft. 

By the time she got back to their shared quarters covered in sweat and sandal prints, Sasuke was already back from his training with Orochimaru. He was sitting on his futon, casually flipping through an ancient guidebook to Rain country. He’d already laid her futon out with the blankets folded up on top. 

Over the years, Sakura learned that Sasuke had deeply buried domestic tendencies – something he’d once, in a rare moment of vulnerability, attributed to his mother’s teaching. That was the first time he’d talked about his family, but it wasn’t the last. 

“I’ll be out in a minute, Sasuke-kun,” she called out, making a beeline for the bathroom. One of the perks of being Kabuto’s favorite teen genius was the en-suite. Everyone else, even Pirikara, had to make do with the shared bathrooms. While she showered, Sakura imagined Pirikara and Yomogi queuing for the disgusting group showers, clutching threadbare towels and dodging flecks of back mold. 

It made her feel a lot better about the beatdown she’d received at training. She pictured Pirikara stepping on a silverfish and smiled. It would serve her right. 

Sakura reviewed the evening’s treatment plan while she briskly toweled herself down and dressed in her sleeping clothes. Sasuke was seated in the same position with the book when she left the bathroom. 

“I still have enough chakra for a session,” Sakura said as she dragged her futon next to his. “You know the drill.” 

In response, Sasuke stood up and took off his top and rolled up the legs of his sleeping pants. 

Sakura kept a close eye on his figure as he arranged himself on his futon, lying face up with his knees raised. The dim blue light of their cast sharp shadows his abdominal muscles. The sight of his muscular torso would have sent her into paroxysms of romantic longing a few years ago. Now she was just worried about what those sharp lines meant for his health. 

The sight of Sasuke shirtless didn’t ignite that belly-deep sense of longing anymore. There were times when Sasuke started looking like a test subject to her – just a collection of organs and biochemical systems ripe for experimentation. She tried very hard to suppress those thoughts.

 Living in sound had made her harder, sharper, but she tried to maintain that soft place within her for Sasuke.  

“Sasuke-kun, you’re not drinking enough water,” she chided, poking him in the stomach for good measure. 

“Endurance training today,” Sasuke said. 

That would explain it. Sakura took her usual position next to him, sitting cross-legged. 

“I think enough time has passed that we can do your legs again today,” Sakura said. Green chakra coated her hands and she gently took Sasuke’s lower leg into her lap. 

“How do your legs feel?”  

“Fine. No different. Same range of motion.” 

“That’s good,” she murmured, sending a pulse of diagnostic chakra through his right shin. “The fractures have healed completely, and your bone density is up. Are you eating the supplements I’ve given you?” 

“Aa.” 

That was Sasuke for “yes, with pleasure!” 

Sakura had slowly but surely been enhancing Sasuke - making tendons stronger, encouraging red blood cells to form and reform, subtly guiding bones to grow just a little more, become just a bit denser. It had started out as healing, but little by little Sakura had moved on to controlled body modification. 

He would need every possible advantage to kill his brother, after all. 

Sasuke’s voice startled her out of her careful concentration. “You’re dripping on me.” 

Her wet hair was indeed leaving droplets of water on his lower thighs. 

“Just a moment, Sasuke-kun, unless you’d like to develop bone cancer,” Sakura said between clenched teeth, trying to keep her chakra from blooming out of the micrometer-wide threads currently creeping through Sasuke’s tibia. 

He sighed and lifted himself on his arms. “Annoying. Hold still.” 

A gust of hot air rushed past her face, rapidly drying her hair. A modified futon jutsu, by the feel of it. 

“Damn it, Sasuke,” she snapped, “do you want a mutant osteoclast to eat your bones from the inside?” 

“Your chakra hasn’t faltered at all,” Sasuke said, and Sakura knew without looking up he’d activated his Sharingan. 

“Turn those off, you don’t need the headache. Anyway, you’re going to make my hair frizzy,” she grumbled. “Cool air is better for the follicle, you know that.” Sasuke said nothing in return, and patiently waited for her to finish. 

After another half hour Sakura sat back, pleased with the progress she’d made. 

“We’re all done for the day, Sasuke-kun. Keep me updated on any side effects, ok?” 

Sasuke nodded in acquiescence. 

“Was there anything else you wanted me to look at?” she asked. 

“No, nothing,” he said. 

When? He tapped onto her knee in Morse code.  

4 months, she tapped back. Will retrieve further information and report back. 

4 months left in Sound before Orochimaru tried to take over Sasuke’s body. 4 months until Orochimaru was weak enough for them to overpower and kill - almost exactly 3 years after they arrived in Sound. 

The thought of killing Orochimaru didn’t bother Sakura much. She didn’t see him often, but he liked her because she ran several of his labs with brutal efficiency. He not only knew what she was doing with Sasuke, but quietly provided several classified journals to help her efforts.  

Sakura would have suspected altruism and a certain fondness if she didn’t know that Orochimaru had a vested interest in Sasuke’s health. 

Orochimaru and Kabuto had gone to great lengths to keep the body transfer a secret, but Sakura had found out when she stumbled on the files in the eastern base three months ago. They barely spoke about it, too paranoid about losing their edge over the snake sannin to do much more than tap out short messages in the dark. 

She didn’t tell him about the official reason for the trip until they’d turned off the lights and taken their customary spots an arms length apart - close enough to tap out a message, but far enough to avoid any embarrassing teenage-hormone-fueled spooning incidents. 

“I need to go to the Eastern base to retrieve some documentation on Juugo. I think I have a lead on stabilizing the curse seal.” 

She reached over and found his arm. Documentation on body transfer in east base

“How long?” Sasuke asked. 

“I’ll be gone for one week, maybe two tops - I also need to pick up some bodies for Kabuto.” 

“What’s he looking for?” 

“Girls, 16-19.” 

“Tch.” Sasuke reached for her hand. Risk? 

“I know, it is weird! And he threatened to use me as a replacement if I wasn’t quick enough, even though we both know he wouldn’t know where anything was unless I organized his files.”

While she talked, Sakura’s index finger tapped into Sasuke’s callused palm. No risk to me. Suspect bodies for Sasori red sand. Akatsuki on the move. 

Sasuke’s fingers clenched briefly around hers. Every scap of intel they managed to gather on the mysterious terrorist group brought Sasuke one step closer to avenging his family and returning to Konoha. 

“He’s such a creep. Anyway, we both know Chiriku gives me discounts because he’s also a creep, so he can shove his threatening attitude up his ass.” 

Sasuke huffed softly in amusement and took his hand away. Sakura smiled to herself. It was rare that Sasuke came even close to laughing, so every time he did was precious. 

Sakura listened to the familiar sound of Sasuke’s breathing for a while. It didn’t show any signs of becoming slower and more rhythmic. Hers wasn’t either. 

Any discussions of the body transfer process set her teeth on edge and tended to trigger nightmares. She wasn’t eager to dream about Orochimaru’s yellow eyes looking out of Sasuke’s infinitely familiar face in addition to the usual collection of night terrors. 

Thankfully, she was a scientist. 

The sleeping pills were in her knapsack, which was always positioned fully packed near the top of her futon. She had developed the pills herself based on research one of their assets had stolen from Konoha hospital. A mood stabilizer that was used to treat neuropathy in injured shinobi had an unexpected side effect of dreamless sleep. Sakura, who had lost countless hours of sleep to the accusing specters of text subjects she had used, jumped on the compound. 

She downed one of the pills with a swig of water from her canteen, and after some thought cracked another in half with her teeth and took that too. The run to the eastern base was a good 6 hours, and she had depleted more of her chakra than planned on Sasuke. Sleep was one of the most important factors when it came to replenishing reserves. 

“You want half, Sasuke?” she asked. 

“Sure.” 

Sakura handed him half of the pill and, after a moment of thought, her canteen. Sasuke never refilled his before bed and had a bad habit of dry-swallowing. 

She listened to the soft muscular sound of Sasuke swallowing and tried not to think of choking patients. He gently nudged her arm with the canteen when he was done. 

Sakura rolled to her side, facing away from Sasuke. She heard him do the same. “Good night, Sasuke-kun. Sleep well.” 

“Good night, Sakura.” 

Sakura went over a mental map of the Eastern base before sleep gently overtook her. She didn’t dream. 

The research log on Juugo was right where Kabuto said they would be, and it didn’t take more than a cursory search to find them. They were neatly filed away in a battered cabinet in a storage room connected to one of the auxiliary labs in the Eastern base. 

Flakes of rust fell off the cabinet’s hinges when she eased the door shut. Sakura frowned, and experimentally opened the door again. More rust. That meant the humidity control seals in the J-block were failing. 

Sakura sighed and made a note to inspect them before she left. They were her own creations, but they were very early work. Her early efforts at sealing tended to favor functionality over form. Or longevity. 

To be fair, the humidity control seals had solved a nasty black mold problem that had plagued the Eastern base before she was sent there to reorganize the lab. 

She just knew that seeing 13 year old Sakura’s sealing work would be embarrassing. Everything about 13 year old Sakura was embarrassing, really, down to her pathetic reliance on Sasuke to keep her safe from the big, bad Sound ninja. 

The seals needed to be fixed, and Sakura resigned herself to confronting her own cringeworthy attempts at sealing. At least she had an alibi now. Fixing the seals would take her no more than 20 minutes, but she could probably get a good few hours of accounted-for time from it. 

That left Sakura with plenty of time to snoop around. Kabuto had taught her more than just medical jutsu and experimental design. After two and a half years apprenticed under a spy, Sakura never passed up the opportunity to gather information. 

She’d discovered secrets that could crush Sound in a heartbeat. When she and Sasuke were done with Itachi, they would need a bargaining chip to get back into Konoha. 

Sakura was on the edge of reverse engineering the Cursed Seal. Kabuto knew what she was up to, but he didn’t realize how far along she was. She already knew all of the information in Juugo’s logs. Her request would throw Kabuto off her tracks. 

There were a few key findings missing from the logs - nothing massive that would tip off a trained observer, but enough was gone to put a roadblock in her plans. That was, if she was stupid enough to give Kabuto a play-by-play of her research process. 

No, what she was really here for was more information on the body transfer jutsu. There was no way in hell that she was letting Orochimaru displace Sasuke in his own body. After everything she had gone through for her teammate, there was no way that anyone was harming a single black hair on his head. 

The plan was solid. They would wait until Kabuto was on a long term assignment with a high-priority contact. Sasuke would neutralize Orochimaru, who was growing weaker every day. They would pick up Suigetsu for muscle and Karin for her tracking ability, and then find Itachi. 

Confronting Itachi would be another thing entirely. Sakura knew she had blinders on when it came to Sasuke, but even she was worried about the fight. Kabuto had let out drips of information to her over the years as rewards. 

It was all mostly the same - Uchiha Itachi was never seen in public without his partner Hoshigaki Kisame. Together, they were an unstoppable force of nature, but people tended to focus on the delicately featured, ruthlessly competent Itachi. Kabuto passed on rumors of black fire that never stopped burning, people lost for months in their own minds, and silent killings that went unnoticed in crowded rooms. 

He wasn’t a person to Sakura. Neither was he a larger-than-life shinobi. No, to her he was nothing less than a demon sent to destroy everything she had dear. 

She had only one piece of information that kept her from giving in to despair – Uchiha Itachi was nearly blind. 

Kabuto whispered it to her after she pointedly left a Suna bingo book dogeared to the page with Sasori of the Red Sands on his desk. 

It was a gamble, but it paid off. 

Four months was enough time to strategize a fight against a blind opponent, even if he was a living myth. 

If she wanted Sasuke to be able to fight Itachi in the first place, however, she needed more information on the body transfer. 

Kabuto was clever at hiding things, but Sakura was familiar with his tricks. Sure enough, when she eased one of the filing cabinets away from the wall, there was a containment seal on the back. 

“Gotcha,” she murmured. It was easy to disable the seal – the deterrent technology it used was something she’d come up with nearly two years ago. She carefully modified her chakra to mimic Kabuto’s, and was rewarded with a slender manila envelope with a few stapled sheets of paper inside. 

Sakura flipped through the pages. It was written in cipher. She stared at the front page, mentally arranging the numbers. It wasn’t his usual code, but Kabuto wasn’t a particularly dedicated cryptographer. Sakura, on the other hand, loved puzzles. 

It didn’t take long to crack. It was a series of memos with funding applications attached. The project had started nearly as soon as she arrived in Sound.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: SHARINGAN PROPAGATION PROJECT

Genetic material was harvested from Sound shinobi 3777 and Sound Shinobi 3776: in the case of Subject 1, ova were taken directly. 

Kabuto’s stab at subject anonymity might have worked on someone else, but Sakura knew her shinobi registration number by heart, and knew Sasuke’s even better. 

Researcher attempted several methods to create gametes from pluripotent stem cells harvested from Subject 2 but were stymied until a novel method was developed. 

Sakura developed that method. 

Fertilization was attempted, but out of 237 successful blastocysts, only 3 survived long enough to be implanted in a surrogate. Gestation was successful in one case, resulting in the birth of a healthy female infant, 3.25 kg at birth, born May 12, 127 AVS. 03:50.  Blood type A, green eyes. 

Subject 2 has fully matured Sharingan. At this time it is unknown if expression of Subject 1’s phenotype will inhibit development of Sharingan. 

Further experimentation to awaken a full Sharingan is ongoing at the Southern base. 

Request for funding:

Sakura flipped frantically through the rest of the pages, looking for the final entry. It was dated back six weeks ago. Six weeks was a long time for an infant that would be just over 13 months old. 

What were the developmental milestones of a 13 month old? Was it eating solid food, could it even raise its head? Sakura had outright refused to be involved in child experimentation, a privilege she was granted thanks to her valuable work on the curse seal. 

Now she was kicking herself because there was a real human baby related to Sasuke somewhere on the Sound base. 

Oh gods above and below, what would she tell Sasuke? 

He’d lost his entire family in the worst way possible. There was no possible way she could dangle the promise of a new.... family member in front of him only to find that the baby hadn’t survived whatever hell they put it through. 

The infant was valuable, but if Kabuto knew he could make more and more then its value would drop precipitously once more arrived. Then it would be fair game. 

Sakura groped around blindly for an empy storage seal in her pack, opened it, and vomited out the contents of her stomach into its pocket dimension. She could make another storage seal. Better to ruin one than to leave evidence that she’d stumbled upon a Sharingan breeding program. 

Her stomach was still twisting in knots and her mouth felt utterly disgusting. 

Her mean inner voice piped up to remind her that Kabuto had displaced her in more ways than one. It was an awful thought, but Sakura had always assumed that Sasuke would restore his clan with her. Who else would he trust enough with the task? 

And Sakura had given her life to him so of course she would say yes when he asked, but now – 

No. He still needed her. He wouldn’t just abandon her.  

Sakura read and re-read the file, committing it to memory. She gingerly placed it back in its envelope, and re-sealed it. There was a baby at the at the Southern base that was, technically, her daughter with Sasuke. 

If she ran top speed without sleeping, she could make it to the southern base with enough time to confirm the infant was still alive, and decide what to do from there. She could craft an alibi for Kabuto on the way there. 

If it had succumbed to disease, or Kabuto had… There was no sense worrying Sasuke until she knew it was alive. 

Karin owed her a favor, anyway.