Chapter 6: Aegis of Konoha

'mono no aware'
a sensitivity toward things;
the impermanence-
the transience
that is at the root of life

Hana is outside the doors, pacing, before the sun rises.

"It was the right decision," Hai assures her, as Ma and Ru rub against her legs comfortingly. "Sakura will be great in ANBU."

"If she survives it," Hana snaps. "I didn't know there was a war about to break out when I put her name in for nomination." There is no response from the Haimaru triplets. They, she thinks with a sinking heart, also know that she may have called her best friend not just to opportunity and growth, but to danger.

But when she sees Sakura walking towards her, she can't help the smile that blooms across her face. Her best friend seems taller than just weeks ago, carrying herself with a trace of something that wasn't there before. Not confidence—though Hana knows Sakura is not entirely constructed of steel backbone, her friend has always exuded a certain self-possession—it is more like assuredness, more like a kind of security. Though Hana knows in her bones and blood that she and Sakura are pack, she feels a pang of something resembling jealousy that Sakura, who has long been a solitary sail on the horizon, has finally found her safe harbor.

"Hana!" Sakura sounds shocked, her voice containing the trace of a laugh. "What are you doing here? Are you back from your mission already?"

"All of us were called back starting about a week ago," Hana says, wrapping her arms around Sakura, who leans in easily to the hug. "Hokage-sama has been preparing for this war."

She thinks of Namikaze Minato standing on the dais yesterday, voice calm and confident and carrying through a crowd the likes of which she'd never seen before. The wall cold under her hand, bound to her by gravity-defying chakra. Their Hokage, their flee-on-sight Yellow Flash, the Sun of Konoha, telling his people, our fire will not burn out, and the crowd's assent coming steady low and roaring like the beats of a war drum.

She shivers, and smacks Sakura when she feels the telltale warmth of green chakra flowing along her nerves. "Prat! I'm the one who's supposed to be comforting you." It is only then that she remembers and pulls away from her friend. Sakura had looked so normal—better than usual, even—walking in that she'd forgotten.

But Sakura is unreadable, and so she has no choice but to pry carefully, "And how are you feeling? It's pretty nasty, what they like to load the door of entry with." She leaves out that she knows Chameleon had done some digging in the archives to prepare something particularly nasty for Sakura. Skilled though she may be, the illusionist harbors grudges over even imaginary slights, such as Sigma Captain giving a girl training tips. Hana knows that part of her extreme disapproval for Chameleon's efforts arises from the sliver of guilt she feels for her hand in it. Though anybody with half a brain can tell that Uchiha Itachi was only borrowing a shield to shelter his brother, Chameleon is not the only girl too far gone in her teenage romance fantasies to see the obvious.

"Yeah," Sakura says, "What was that supposed to be?"

"It's a fear illusion technique," Hana says, "This one interacts with a seal the Hokage himself sunk into the entryway. Instead of inserting images into your head, it supposedly draws on natural chakra to make realistic chakra constructs, which are harder to recognize and disperse. The downside is that the illusionist has to know enough about the person to direct the illusion initially, though afterward it draws on your own expectations. I believe," she adds, determinedly not thinking of when she went through the door herself, "that they usually go for realization of inner demons or something like that."

"Inner demons," Sakura repeats thoughtfully. "Well, I'm sorry to say they guessed mine wrong."

Hana is startled into a bark of laughter. "Oh Sage, don't let Chameleon hear you say that. She was terribly proud of this one."

Sakura's mouth lifts into a sly smile that Hana knows better to question, and she shifts the topic away. "What are you doing here then? Carrot and stick? Or are you giving me this mysterious next mission?"

"Carrot, I think," Hana admits. "That and I'm one of your sponsors for operative." Slightly startled green eyes turn up to her before narrowing in a smile, and Hana turns away with a grimace. "Shit, you're not supposed to know that yet. Keep it hush. I didn't say anything. Let's move on, why don't we?"

"I think I should take it from here," a voice says from the doorway, "Before you give away what few surprises are supposed to remain."

Hana turns to face the door to see Sakura's secondary sponsor and finds herself not entirely surprised to find an ANBU legend standing there: Hatake Kakashi of the Sharingan, the Yondaime's surviving student, and recently reinstated Theta Captain.

"Ah, it's been so long since I've done this that I don't know what I need to tell you anymore," Kakashi says.

Sakura rolls her eyes in his general direction. "Then why'd you butt in?"

"Insubordination," he says cheerfully. "Cursing at your superior! That'll get you a demerit, I think."

They walk into a brightly lit hallway lined with long seal-reinforced windows overlooking vast training rooms. Despite being indoors, they are as bright as daylight, and from what Sakura can determine with her rudimentary seal knowledge and a brief glance, the lighting seals etched into the ceilings are lightning-based and not the common fire-based seals. The terrains of the larger rooms seem to vary, and pairs or groups of shinobi spar viciously in them; some smaller rooms are simpler concrete blocks and contain only one shinobi each.

"About eight years ago, ANBU absorbed a division of special forces once known as Root," Kakashi says quietly, drawing her attention away from a fast-paced spar to their right. "This building used to be one of their facilities."

"Root," Sakura repeats, her brows furrowing in question.

"You won't have heard of them," he says, turning away from her. "But you'll get to know some of them soon, I'm sure. They're very… distinctive, even though they've all gone through reintegration training."

They pass by a trio of people gathered around one window, observing the session below. Sakura sees one spot Kakashi, and the strange expression that crosses the man's face. It's excitement, perhaps, or maybe close to hunger, and he starts toward them. At her side, Kakashi holds up a hand. The man doesn't approach them. They keep walking through the door at the other end of the hallway, up the stairs, and into a large cafeteria with vaulted ceilings and full wall windows overlooking Blaze road.

There are not many people around in the lull of the morning hours. They sit near the view, in surprisingly comfortable hard metal chairs.

"ANBU, for the most part," Kakashi says, "is kind of like a special club of the shinobi forces that acts very similar to the normal corps but work only for the village or the daimyo. Most ANBU operatives don't have set teams, but many people prefer to take work with known comrades. You look after yourself, and you find groups to work with, and you update your information with the registry to help other people find you when they need you. You're paid by mission, and there is a lower limit number of missions you have to take. There's a terribly long and detailed rulebook, and," his eye crinkles, "you'll probably read all of it."

"But don't make the mistake of thinking ANBU is the same as the regular corps. There are no secrets in ANBU. You are expected to be able to do what you do well against any kind of opponent, which you do by training against every type of opponent. You are expected to learn what you can from any other ANBU. To be an ANBU operative is to stow away the self. That's why mission groups are fluid, and training partners even more so."

Sakura nods slowly. "That's interesting," she says. "I was always under the impression that there were ANBU teams."

"There are," Kakashi says. "But they are not typical. The exact numbers are only known to the Hokage and the Commander, Beta Captain, but I'd ballpark ANBU at nearly 700 members, with about 300 operatives. There are only twelve defined ANBU teams. Now," he draws out a white mask and gestures to a small theta symbol on the inside cheek, "about to become 13."

"You're the captain," Sakura infers. "It seems like an honor. Congratulations."

"ANBU teams are different. It is considered an honor and those on teams are valued as elites. What most people don't understand," he leans forward, emphasis in the line of his body, "is that the value of a team is not in each individual, but in the team as a whole. The teams are strong because they are teams. They are permanent because they are, in the truest sense, teams."

He is fingering the mask on the table, his eye sliding across her face, observing. Sakura swallows. She thinks she knows where this is going. Kakashi is building a new ANBU team, and she thinks—

He leans back with a nearly silent sigh. "To be honest, Sakura," he says, "you're not ready to be on an ANBU team."

—there's a hole in her throat, some kind of heavy disappointment sinking like an illness in her stomach. She'd thought, she'd thought that Kakashi had finally approved of her—

"Yet," he adds, into that space. "And I like you, Sakura. I want you on Theta Team. I'll give you six months, Sakura. Fight your way into Theta."

A part of her feels lost, unwilling, rebellious. She's been fighting all her life, and why aren't things ever just easy? But another part of her is gearing up for the challenge, driven, hungry, and that's the part that looks up out of her eyes into Kakashi's expression.

"I know you can," he adds quietly, and the snarling, angry, tired Sakura subsides. Six months, she thinks, and her lips smile.

She will.

There is something about approaching a group of shinobi already training together that is intimidating, like trying to belatedly integrate into an established friend group. It has been a long time since Sakura has considered herself shy, but that is beyond her comfort.

Each training room has a maximum number of people, but Sakura tries not to slide into any groups with slots still open. Instead, she arrives in the slow pre-dawn hours after her morning routine (the ever-increasing mountain sprints and stretches, a quick breakfast, and half an hour of chakra meditation) to one of the three centers she has access to and enters one of the two-person rooms.

Sometimes she trains alone. Usually somebody joins her, because an open slot in a two-person room is like an open invitation Sometimes they break for lunch together, or meet again, or even decide and schedule to meet again.

Friday nights are still sacred, and Hana, when she is back in town from her ever-increasing reconnaissance missions, is always a priority. But Sakura slowly finds the names she knows increasing and the meals she has alone decreasing. She collects the names and the faces and the lunchtime conversations. The shadows under her bed no longer reach for her, calling her name, or if they do, she is too tired to notice when she returns home and collapses for the night.

They say that time is the great healer, but on those rare occasions that her mind wanders back to those dark places, Sakura thinks that it is not. Distance numbs the pain, and distance sutures the wounds. And no matter how much time passes, you won't get away from the burdens that you won't let go of.

Time has passed, and she could yet have remained in the same shadowed place, but she has not. She has walked forward.

And maybe, in the process of reaching out with both hands and all that she is for these new goals and new people and new warmth, Sakura has finally learned to loosen her grip on the shackles she was holding on to.

Most days, she hardly ever thinks of them, collapsing like puppets with strings cut, her chakra the knife. Most days, she hardly ever remembers how much it hurt, how much she loved them for even pretending to look at her. They may be there in the foundations of her history, there in the recesses of her mind, there in the thrum of her life blood, but most days, her head is full of other people, other conversations, with getting faster and stronger and better. Her muscles are imprinted with a hundred new and different ways to cut, ways that were not borne of the blood of her blood.

Some things seem very far away from her now.

She thinks that she could get used to that.

Healing makes for an abundance of paperwork.

Documentation is the fuel of a well-working system—documentation of the history, of the physical, of the differential diagnoses, of the treatment options and plan. Traumatic injuries tend to be uncomplicated, but documentation is a protection against negligence and misunderstanding. Look, it says, I have done my best with what I have. On a team, it would perhaps matter less, but it is necessary for the scattered work Sakura does for the training grounds and for the incoming missions teams.

And, well, documentation is the root of billing. Sakura has to pay her rent, regardless of how little time she spends in her rooms.

Of the many spaces in the ANBU complex where paperwork may be done, Sakura prefers the meditative spaces most: the rock garden, the inner courtyard with the bubbling pond, the floor pillow room—and the tea lounge. The tea lounge is her favorite. It paints a picture of a different life, of different possibilities.

There is also usually company; quiet, well-mannered company that brews tea with far more finesse and skill than Sakura has been taught in the past. In the time since she has started to consider herself and her identity as that which is wrapped up in teams, Sakura has come to appreciate the value of good company.

And Sigma Captain, in the tea lounge at least, is very good company.

(Outside of the tea lounge, he is more leadership and pressure than company, perhaps. But against wood walls, in air filled with the fragrance of Pu'erh and the rustle of paper, he is just comrade.)

They don't talk. Sakura may spend an inadvisable amount of time watching Sigma Captain brew and taste tea, learning so she can make her own perfect Longjing brew and have her own little paperwork tea ceremony, and Sigma Captain might angle in a way that allows her to see the motions, but they don't speak. And Sakura may entirely inadvisably wonder why Sigma Captain is here and not in the compound with his family, until one day she finds out.

He rolls up his scrolls, walks over to the wall chute and deposits them, sending them off to the archives, where they would be harvested by Yamanaka filers for disseminated storage in the Smokecloud servers. The paper information, along with supporting memory imprints and other documentation, would be passed into the complex organizing system and uploaded to the Akimichi-powered, Nara-connected network, where relevant parties could access it from all across the Konoha system.

He closes the chute and seals it. He gathers the ceramics and washes them. They make eye contact; she nods, and he nods in return.

Then, maybe deliberately, he disperses.

Sakura's first thought is: can shadow clones even drink? And her second thought is: oh, that's terribly clever and obvious.

And the next it is not she but a two percent chakra shadow clone that spends a few afternoon hours writing paperwork. But sometimes it is a seventy percent chakra clone that goes out to practice, and it is still Sakura who goes to sit in the wooden tea lounge, to bask in the aroma and the calm and the sometimes company.

The shinobi nations rose alongside the shogunates from the Warring States era, and naturally followed the map of the civilian territories. After all, no government wanted to use secret forces from a different and potentially hostile land. However, in the relatively peaceful times that followed, shinobi and civilian regimes followed different trajectories. When Iwa swallowed two satellite territories, Amegakure remained and Iwagakure took no action. After Wave broke off from Fire, the Land never managed to develop its own shinobi nation or Hidden Village.

Despite the shockwaves following Konoha's announcement, the bureaucracy and diplomacy that follows is slow. The hostages are all kept safe, sheltered, fed. The politicians stream across the lands followed by bristling guards to sit around full tables of lavish food and play devastating word games. It's easy; they all want the same thing. The lands all sign agreements to have no part in the Shinobi Nations' affairs. The daimyos wash their hands and dust their feet.

Iwagakure and Sunagakure, two long enemies, shake hands over a common enemy. Kumogakure, hoping to be a vulture picking on the spoils, signs a strained peace treaty with Konoha and retrieves its genin. Nobody expects the treaty to last; it is just kindling for the spark that will start a blaze.

Mist, of all places, bloody Kirigakure, bares its pointed teeth and declares its intention to ally with Konoha in this fight.

In his office, under the warm and cheerful afternoon sun, overlooking a nation ready and even eager for war, the Yondaime Hokage traces an old photo of Team 7. His Team 7.

And he thinks about the enemy, and he thinks about Kushina. And maybe, basking in that sun and gazing out at the cloudless blue sky and at the dream once sought after, maybe he sheds tears. But nobody is around to see his moment of weakness, of humanity, and indeed if there was anybody around to see, the moment may have never come.

Some things, though wished for, can no longer be.

Sakura is not the only one to ambush the dinner that night, but Ino has come for her and not Team 7. As she approaches the hole-in-wall noodle shop, the weight of Ino's gaze diverts her to the bench where the blonde lounges.

"Sakura," Ino says in greeting, as if they'd chanced upon each other here. "It's been too long!"

"Hi, Ino," Sakura says. Feeling the need to add to the lackluster greeting, she says, "I'm just here for our weekly team dinner."

Ino laughs. "They still haven't figured out how you find them every time."

Sakura hesitates, a bit, on the many excuses she could use. But the dusk is softly settling, Ino's regard is warm, and something terribly beautiful has been rooting, unfurling in her. Kabuto had always kept his secrets close. They were to be caged, and confined and casketed, lowered into the ground and kept from the light, so that they would not be stolen and cast against him. The ANBU buried their secrets too, but to water and grow and support and share. They were kept from light only in infancy, in protection, and they fed on light as they came into their own.

And Sakura, like a secret, was buried but is now, maybe, finally blooming.

"If you know what you're looking for," she says, "Naruto's chakra is like a beacon. He just about never suppresses it, especially while eating, and it's quite substantial."

Ino looks at her, a bit sharp, and smiles brilliantly. Every shinobi worth her salt knows a bit about chakra sensing, but developing sensitivity and specificity in targeted sensing is a labor of talent. Sifting through signal and noise is difficult at best, and becomes more of a headache with large areas. And finding one person's chakra in a place like Konoha—is very valuable indeed.

"I guess there are only so many restaurant districts to look through anyway," Ino says, neatly blocking her from any further elaboration on her sensing range. "All these boys know to do is eat. If you've got some time off training, I know some great supplies shops we could browse. And you still owe me a chakra wavelength syncing lesson."

It is, Sakura, thinks, maybe an offer of friendship. Friendship outside the forest with the gongs. Friendship with a girl who gardens secrets. She has relaxed more around these kinds of overtures after months of casual sparring and lunches in the training compounds.

So she offers Ino an easy smile, cutting loose the suspicion and the hesitation and the questioning. Ablating the fear, the unknowing, the certainty that each step teetered at the edge of a precipice of misplaced trust. Because though she spent only a few months on Team 7, they have somehow become team. Despite any cerebral protests, Sakura knows with her gut they are pack like she and Hana, that their mutual trust is true.

And isn't it strange? She sat next to the same two students in the medical training program for months before Hana decided they would be friends, and she doesn't remember their names. She bunked with the same girl for a week in the orphanage and they were friendly, but they never talked again after she moved out. She'd worked in the same lab as Kabuto for years, alongside him, under his hand, but now he is a shadow under her nightmare bed.

Some people were passing visitors in life, some people were lessons, and some people are somehow here to stay.

They decide on next Friday afternoon, and Ino stalks off with the air of a woman who knows what she wants and has gotten what she wanted. Sakura orders at the table and slides into the empty booth space by Sasuke.

(It feels a bit like sliding home.)

The question comes out of left field midway through dinner. "Sakura, where do you live?" Sakura tilts the bowl a little further, fills her mouth with a bit more soup than typical, and the pause doesn't last. Pauses don't typically last with Naruto. "It's obvious where Sasuke and I live, and we've been trying to figure out where Kakashi lives for years."

It is probably not a good time to tell Naruto that she had been to Kakashi's apartment, and that it is just two floors below the Hokage's own residence.

"I'm about a block from the East River district farmer's market," she says.

Two uncomprehending expressions face her. "Farmer's market," Sasuke echoes, as if he's chewing on a new vocabulary word. Of course, the boys don't grocery shop. And if they did, Sasuke probably bought his tomatoes in air-conditioned stores and not shabby street side stalls.

"Oh, honestly," she sighs. "By the East Trade Academy?" This, too, doesn't seem to ring a bell. "It's somewhere between Mama's BBQ and the Cake Bake Shop."

Comprehension dawns. "We haven't been to Mama's in a while!" Naruto says. "Next week. And then you can invite us to your place Sakura!"

And so that next Friday, after an cloudless afternoon spent trawling the extensive bargain supplies market stalls with laughter and Ino, Sakura arrives at Mama's BBQ with a new array of innovative tags stuffed in her pouch where her money used to be. And she goes from Mama's BBQ to her house with a full belly and two visitors.

Sakura sees the apartment through eyes that don't feel like her own. She had mopped the floors yesterday, and made up the bed and drawn open the blinds for once. It is a little studio, with a two sets of windows illuminating the rack of clothing partitioning her bed from the well-used kitchen. In the living room area: a low wooden table laden with library books, a stack of three dusty unused dark grey floor cushions, and the cushion she sat in this morning while reading The Nature of Fuuinjutsu 4: Wind Chakra Elements. She notices for the first time that she never changed the wall color, and that it is a light blue-grey.

It is, she realizes, a bit sparse. And all of the furniture is grey.

It is just a room where she sleeps.

Naruto looks around and bites his lip. His brows furrow and his eyes squint. "I am going to assume that you're biting back an offer to paint my walls orange, Naruto," she says, voice not wavering, "and I thank you for that."

He doesn't respond or meet her gaze, but that pinched expression slides away.

"Sakura," Sasuke declares when they are seated with tea around the table, "I am going to get you a houseplant. A pothos, maybe. Those are somewhat indestructible."

"You mean you're going to gift her a baby plant because your brother has turned your house into a plant nursery," Naruto says. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sakura buries the fact that Uchiha Itachi propagates pothos. It seems the kind of secret thing one ought to know to humanize one's heroes.

"I," Sasuke says with great dignity, "believe that Sakura's room needs more life and color." And Naruto has nothing to say to that, because even Sakura knows that is true.

"Well, I'm going to get her a better gift to come home to," Naruto says, and Sakura smiles because everything, even sweetness, is a competition with these two boys.

And it is a nice thought. To have something to come home to—to have a home to return to. Though in some ways, Sakura thinks, looking at the boys bickering in her grey walls, thinking of Hana wreaking havoc in the kitchen the day after a mission, of Ino's maneuvers toward a coming sleepover, that is a gift already received in full.

The Hokage tends to stay late at the office Friday nights. So when Namikaze Minato opens his front door, Naruto is already curled on the couch with a book.

"I'm home," he says.

"Welcome home."

Naruto sets down his book as his father sheds the robe and shoes. There is a bit of hesitation in him, and it is not a feeling he is used to. But for all his paucity of skill in acting, none of that hesitation shows as he walks toward his father.

He thinks of a still grey room colored only by a cut of old pink and a new thread of green. He thinks of what it would be like, to live in the quiet, with nothing but him and his demon and his dream. He wraps his arms around that familiar distant figure, and it is like coming out of a fog and seeing home for the first time in a long time; the arms that rise around him come without hesitation, and this is to him belonging embodied.

"Welcome home," he says again, "Dad."

Namikaze Minato breathes in deep, but whatever words might've come sink instead to the bottoms of his lungs. He rubs slow circles into his son's back and closes too-bright eyes.

For his light, for Naruto, Konoha would never fall. He would make sure of it.

Sakura rests the pothos on the windowsill by her bed, where it may watch over her and the shadows. And she plants the Team 7 photo next to it, gently, because even unbreakable things must be handled with care.

"So I guess I'll be calling you captain again from now on, eh."

Kakashi doesn't look up as Genma half-falls gracelessly into the seat cushion beside him. The older man slides his mask off and hangs it on his hip holster, sliding a senbon between his lips. They look out through the glass at the training enclosures.

"Would have been easier if you hadn't joined Epsilon," Kakashi sighs eventually into the comfortable silence of old camaraderie. "Old Boar wanted to go five rounds before she agreed to sign the paperwork."

"She just doesn't like paperwork," Genma says.

They sit for a moment, watching flashes of steel and chakra. Genma clicks his tongue at a good block and grimaces as blades catch on bone.

"So," he says, tone casual as though this is not the motive of this conversation, but Kakashi looks over sharply at him anyway. "This month I found myself a new sparring buddy. You might have heard of her."

"Have you really," Kakashi says dryly.

"Someone very capable has helped her become very fast," Genma says. "You don't get that fast without a bit of guidance." And a lot of resolve, he doesn't say, because both of them are all too familiar with the kind of heart that holds that much resolve. If you persist long enough, something will surely give—your resolve, or your limits. But it is a particular kind of life that nurtures and holds so much resolve and so many shattered limits.

"How interesting," Kakashi offers when it becomes clear Genma would like a response.

"Her angles of attack and use of medical jutsu would make me as wary of the hospital as you are if I weren't convinced most medics can't do what she does," Genma says. Somewhere in there is probably a bit of accusation regarding Kakashi's general attitude towards his own health.

"Don't be convinced."

"There's a look about her," Genma says. "A hunger." A bit of a desire to prove oneself, a bit of a chip on the shoulder, a bit of a soft sharpness in steel spine bending to the weight of the world. Genma has seen eyes like those before. (Maybe, even, in the mirror.) Sparring had felt like playing with a wild but cold-blooded creature, but lunch break had been a well-mannered, soft-spoken, curious girl. He had sought her out again a few days later for reasons that did not bear Kakashi's name, reasons all his own.

"I gave her six months," Kakashi finally responds to the unspoken question. "There are, oh, two left."

"You and your tests." Genma shakes his head and and looks somewhere other than at Kakashi. "You don't have to test everyone, Kakashi. Some people will drive themselves to the limits of an early grave even without any pushing."

"The best weapon we have is preparation," Kakashi says, and they sit on that for another moment.

Genma doesn't tell Kakashi that he has spent some time wondering about Kakashi's motivations—is the intended audience the girl herself, or Kakashi, or Theta, or ANBU? Genma doesn't tell Kakashi that he has long since proved himself, that many trust his judgment, that he has long passed the need for atonement and proof and living so cautiously. Genma doesn't tell Kakashi that everybody knows Kakashi has taken wrong steps and made irrevocable mistakes, but everybody has also watched him walk many good steps, even many very difficult right steps that would cause many others to stumble.

"For what it's worth," Genma says instead, "I welcome Sakura to the team. Full seal of approval." He stands, slides the senbon back into his holster. "Have a bit more faith in yourself and your people, Hatake." He watches Kakashi look at somewhere other than him and adds, "I trust you."

Chakra-infused ink smells of promise and life. In that windowless room, the masked woman presses chakra into her shoulder. "Congratulations, operative," she says. There is no superiority, no smirk in her voice to be found now. "Would it be that your fire never burns out."

In the door beyond, a room Sakura has not entered before, the masked woman walks to a wall of chakra seal-laden porcelain and draws out a mask.

"Magpie," the woman says. Sakura takes the mask and fits it over her eyes, feeling the seals slide into place, watching some of them activate across her vision. Her fingers linger on the paint markings, on the meaning. It feels right, and Magpie smiles invisibly out.

And in her room, that night, Sakura examines the reflection in the new large mirror propped against her wall. It shows her the plant in moonlight unfurling a new leaf; the three new picture frames, strange and familiar and unforgettably loud on the sill; the symbol added to her shoulder, an oval with a line.

Theta.

The first skirmishes break out on the Iwa border, and that night Sakura visits Kakashi's apartment as directed. She registers Naruto's little sun-flare of chakra above them where he is probably dreaming of ramen, and the familiarity lends her calmness.

She thinks she knows she is going to meet her new team, Kakashi's Theta team.

After mildly coddling Kakashi's wrist sprain from his training of the day, she sets about making tea and examining his sparse decorations. He has more photos in his apartment than she does, she notes, and decides this must be rectified. His eye follows her balefully as she pokes at his frames and at the pothos on his nightstand, which is trailing down to his floor.

"I'm not very good at keeping things alive," he says, "but Sensei gave it to me and so I have tried my best."

"It's growing well." She smiles out his window, then. "You know, in some ways, Hokage-sama also entrusted me to you, Kakashi-sensei."

They both turn then, at the incoming chakra signals.

"Mm," he agrees, and there are worlds in that sound. And he opens the door.

Author's Notes:

Thank you for coming here today. Thank you for stumbling upon this, for waiting, for reviewing and caring. I've been blessed to have readers like you.

I'm almost sorry to post this. It has been so long, and I'm busier now in med school than ever before, so I can promise even less than before. Much has changed in these years. But the story is alive in my mind, and (unlike some of my other stories) the many faults of my past writing have not yet managed to offend me to the point of not returning to this. I will not make promises I can't keep, but I can tell you that I will try.

Portions of this chapter were written three years ago, and portions were written yesterday. I find the differences profoundly revealing, but I am not sure it's noticeable to you after a bit of editing. In general, the chapter is only roughly proofread and I apologize for that. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

-L