Chapter Text
Sasuke woke first, sharingan flaring, and compartmentalization kicking in reflexively. Night had fully set in and the stars shone brightly. The area immediately around them appeared clear.
The memories—no. Teammate first.
Kako was beside him. Breathing shallow, but even. Slight shivers wracked her frame despite her unconsciousness. Her bat mask was mildly askew—proof that the memory transfer had had an effect on her chakra system.
(She’d theorized that it might; the seal to send them—their memories—home to just before they’d left was loosely based upon the shadow clone technique. Shikako had learned how to account for the chakra return… but her technique largely depended upon knowing of the clone’s dispersion ahead of time (and preferably becoming a shadow beforehand); this situation wasn’t one she could have prepared for.)
From their current location, Sasuke could see the cave that sent them to that other time. It held enough space to take shelter in for the night, which was of course the reason they’d gone in, and an experimental seal—one they hadn’t noticed at the time, or they wouldn’t have been so careless.
Not that they’d been that careless. Shikako had started to open a storage seal to bring out supplies, and then they were gone. Sasuke looked at his teammate. He wouldn’t risk leaving her alone to investigate, but also had no idea how long she would be out for.
Sasuke nicked his thumb with a barb on his belt pack before flying through the hand signs: boar, dog, bird, monkey, ram. Kokishin appeared, settling upon Hawk’s proffered forearm.
He was one of the smaller summons, barely bigger than a pigeon and inexplicably proud of that fact. Despite his youth and lack of interest in conversation, he was a good scout. Curious to a fault, he demanded little from his summoner beyond being able to explore an area. A whispered request later, and Kokishin took off to ensure that the woods around them were as empty as Sasuke believed them to be.
Sasuke took another sharingan glance around the clearing, wishing already that Kako’s notice-me-not privacy seals were a thing of the now, and not just a probable-past-future that would now never happen. As assured as he could be of their privacy, he channeled the slightest stream of chakra into Bat’s mask. (Strictly speaking, only the operative and the Hokage were supposed to be keyed into a mask’s removal, but it was foolish to expect a seal master (no-matter how she denied the title) not to pick apart the seals attached to her person. Both Hawk and Wolf could remove Bat’s mask.)
He lifted the mask slightly, fingers ghosting across Kako’s forehead to check for temperature. She was warmer than she should be and the shivers were still present. Resettling her mask, he gathered her into his arms and leapt into the canopy. They were both exhausted, but the branches above would be sufficient for the night.
After setting an appropriate number of traps and receiving Kokishin’s confirmation of their security, he brought his fingers together into their third teammate’s jutsu. His shadow clone gave him barely a nod before leaping out of the trees and towards the seal’s location. Half an hour later memories of the cave’s layout, and the seal-work carved into its walls, flooded into his mind.
There was no paper in his pack, but Bat always carried paper and ink (and any traps she had in her pack were ones he was well practiced avoiding.) An hour later and he tucked the transcribed seal-work into Bat’s pack before once again checking on his teammate; she was no longer shivering and her temperature felt normal, but she still hadn’t woken. She’s probably better off sleeping the shock off for now.
He settled in to meditate through the rest of the night’s watch.
Bat twitched awake as birds first greeted the morning. As attuned to her as he was, Sasuke didn’t miss the barely-there twitch of her fingers against the bark of the branch she laid upon. He pulsed his chakra lightly in an all-clear signal—there was no reason to force conversation on her before she had a moment of consciousness to regain her bearings. (He was a reasonable teammate, after all, and they weren’t particularly pressed for time).
She stilled for a moment before lifting her right hand. “Area clear. Mission status? Konoha-Home?” she signed, her wrist tilted slightly in indication of each question. He was glad to have her sensing abilities back online, but the motion which caught his attention was the extra tap her thumb gave between her upraised middle and pointer finger (the sign for Konoha). Had he not traveled back in time with her, he’d have written it off as an emphasis or leftover shakiness from her passing out inexplicably. But no. That was the designation they’d given to mean Konoha-of-the-past; she wasn’t asking if they were heading home—she was asking if they were in the Konoha-of-the-past, or if they’d made it home?
He breathed in a sigh, “We’re back, Kako. You did it.”
She shifted at that, rolling into a sitting position, and making eye contact through their masks. He could practically see her compartmentalizing.
He nodded toward her pouch, “I put a copy of the cave’s seal-work into your pouch.”
She’d looked towards her pouch at his action, but glanced at him sharply at his words. “You went into the cave!?!”
He shrugged at the accusation. “Shadow clone with a physical torch. There was no active external chakra used.”
The tension in her shoulders eased in acknowledgment and she unrolled the scroll of seal-work. She traced the lines as she deciphered the work. He caught mutters of “bloody Uzumaki… at least Tobirama’s was logical… an open-ended continuous loop… tied to a… dragon vein!?!” before she leapt from their tree and headed towards the cave. He disarmed and repacked his traps before following her.
He found her twenty meters from the cave’s entrance, crouched with a hand upon the earth. She looked at him as he neared and he tilted his head in question.
“We can’t leave the entrance open, but we also can’t risk chakra techniques to collapse it. Non-seal-based explosives would work, but I, ah, might have used my store of them in our last mission to Stone.” (Hawk thought Bat looked entirely too sheepish for an agent who had gleefully advocated making a swamp out of the extensive farmland of the Stone-country noble they’d been ordered to sabotage. That plan might have worked a bit too well; the underwater reservoir they’d blown open turned out to be near boiling point at surface level, and rich in minerals toxic to humans. He knew for a fact that Bat hadn’t intended for the swamp to be toxic, though Towa and Komachi both seemed convinced otherwise.)
“We could raise mud walls to extend the hill past the entrance,” he offered.
Bat hummed in acknowledgment. “I’ll embed a notice-me-not seal keyed to us into the walls. Tsunade-sama will have to send one of us back to destroy it, but that’s better than risking anyone else accidentally activating the cave in the meantime.”
They put word to action before continuing to the village.
Hawk and Bat knelt in front of the Hokage’s desk, very carefully not looking at each other.
They could feel Tsunade-sama’s eyes on them.
Bat’s left shoulder twitched.
Tsunade-sama’s eyes narrowed.
Hawk shifted both thumbs more firmly under his palms as he held his position.
Tsunade-sama slowly let out a breath.
She stilled for barely a moment before ordering her ANBU guards from the room with a concise hand-sign and hitting the privacy seals etched into both her wall and her desk.
“There is no way your confidential message retrieval escalated to an S-rank mission,” she said, her voice flat with just a hint of incredulousness.
"As you say, Hokage-sama," Bat murmured. (After all, technically speaking, the S-rank occurred after completing their B-rank mission.)
Tsunade gave her a raised eyebrow, as if to ask if she was really sassing her now .
It was all a bit of play-acting anyway—it wasn't like Tsunade didn't know full well that there was plenty of opportunity for things to go south when intercepting someone else's confidential mail, even discounting Team 7’s special brand of luck.
Hawk shifted slightly, clearly preparing to give her the news.
“Stand. Report.” They stood.
“The message retrieval itself went without incident; the Land of Rivers will receive an unreadable and waterlogged document from the Land of Fang. The nin delivering the message found their campsite flooded, and did not notice upon leaving that their water-proof letter cylinder had worn through.” On cue, Bat produced the message-scroll from her hammerspace and placed it upon the Hokage’s desk.
“We returned to the Land of Fire through the Land of Rivers. Shortly into our borders we attempted to set up camp in an undisturbed cave.” Hawk looked at Bat to take over the report; seals were her expertise. Tsunade, quite familiar with what it meant when Bat was called on to talk, gave them a “this-better-not-be-what-I-think-it-is” look.
It was worse than she thought.
“The entire cave was covered in a seal powered by a dragon line. Our first use of external chakra when setting up camp sent us into the past. It is unclear if we were originally transported to our past, but even if we *were*, our actions almost immediately resulted in an alternate dimension branching from our established timeline. We spent just under a year in that dimension under the names Uchihas Sasuke and Nakano, the legitimized-bastard younger siblings of Uchihas Madara and Izuna.” She paused for a blink to let those two bombshells register before continuing. “We assisted in the establishment of their Konoha and trained, while I worked on a seal that sent our then-current memories into our bodies of this dimension minutes before we were about to trigger the seal.”
Tsunade stared for a moment, then sighed in exasperation. “Masks off,” she ordered. “I want to see your faces while you try to explain this nonsense.”
Bat and Hawk removed their masks. Both their faces were carefully neutral, the precocious brats—they were years too young to fool her.
Hawk wasn’t entirely sure what of their trip she wanted elaboration on. It was such a chaotic mess—which is what you get when you end up tumbling headfirst into an infiltration mission without any preparation ahead of time, with two ninja who had not been trained significantly in infiltration.
Hawk felt that theirs had to have been the most wildly successful infiltration mission so ill-prepared for in—what had Bat called it?—the multiplicity of timelines. He couldn’t conceive of something managing to go better with so little preparation.
(It still boggled his mind, that such a thing as a “multiplicity of timelines” was a thing to consider now. Crazy seal masters and their ridiculous experiments.)
However, Bat clearly took the order to mean explaining logistics, because she responded, “I based the seal to send us back off the concept of shadow-clones; Tobirama had completed his creation of the Shadow Clone Jutsu shortly before my breakthrough, and his notes proved to be rather helpful.”
She paused for a moment, clearly ordering her thought process as concisely as possible before continuing, “As you know, the Shadow Clone Jutsu splits the chakra of the one creating them to form a physical chakra construct. The stated reason for the jutsu to be in the forbidden scroll is due to its high chakra cost and the potential use of it for spying should it become too commonly known. This is… correct, but not completely accurate.” She closed her eyes for a brief moment, visibly steeling herself.
She continued, “The formation of each clone takes the slightest bit of life energy from the person creating it. It’s the combination of life energy and chakra which allows life and autonomy to the clone for so long as the chakra fueling it lasts. Likewise, it’s not just the chakra returning to the caster which provides memories of the clone’s experiences, but the life energy returning to the original body as well. Life energy is tied to a person’s soul, and through that we had a tether to our past’s bodies in this dimension.
“The problem, though, is that as soon as we went into the past, our bodies were no longer in this dimension’s future to act as an anchor, so returning to just after we left was impossible. Likewise, I couldn’t be sure that returning physically to this timeline before we left wouldn’t kill both our past and returning selves via a timeline destroying paradox or a complication of life energy distribution between two sources.
“However, the memories associated with shadow clones would cause neither complication, so tethering a non-physical shadow clone to return to our past selves of our original dimension was the least likely option to result in multi-dimensional (and/or individual) dissolution.”
(Hawk, who’d been watching Tsunade-sama this whole time, wondered if he imagined the slight twitch of the fingers at the word “dissolution.” He didn’t have much time to consider it, though, because then Tsunade-sama was talking.)
Tsunade, well accustomed to Team 7’s nonsense, ignored the implied and stated shenaniganry, (and ignored, for now, just how close they’d all come to ceasing to exist, or at least losing these two forever), and focused on the most immediately relevant part. “Right. And is there risk of the seal in the cave activating again?” Her eyes darted between the two, indicating that either could answer.
Sasuke nodded with a signed affirmative while Shikako confirmed, “Absolutely.”
“What have you done to mitigate the possibility?” Hopefully, they’d been able to do something . (It didn’t even occur to Tsunade that they could have left it as-is, if there was anything they could have done.)
Sasuke glanced toward Shikako—he might have created most of the earth walls, but seals were her thing.
Catching his look, she continued, “Any amount of chakra within the cave will trigger another incident because the seal is directly powered by a dragon vein. I am almost certain that the person would be transported to the last contact of the alternative dimension— though with the return of a portion of our life energy to this time, I’m unsure if that means the person would be sent to the same time Sasuke and I started in (in the past), or if they would appear in the time our chakra and life energy left from. The me that remained there could *probably* get them back in the same way we returned.
“To avoid that, it would be best to use physical explosives to destroy the sealing matrix. Sasuke and I extended the hill the cave was set into using mud walls to block the entrance. I set a notice-me-not tag into the wall, so that nature will have a chance to make the extended earth look more natural before the tag wears off in about a month. I was able to key myself, Sasuke, and Kakashi-sensei to see through the notice-me-not tag, but in the meantime, no one else is getting into the cave easily.”
“I see,” Tsunade said, eyeing them like she knew what mischief they were planning, which was impressive, because Sasuke sure didn't know yet. “Well. Perhaps it might be best to have Wolf handle this quickly while you recover, hm?”
And Sasuke suddenly knew what mischief Tsunade-sama had in mind, the devious woman.
(Shikako's favorite may be Tobirama, but Sasuke was pretty sure Tsunade would always be his favorite Hokage.)
Shikako blinked rapidly a few times, clearly having been thrown for a loop at Tsunade’s easy acceptance of the idea.
(Sending Kakashi back *wasn’t* an option she’d consciously considered, but clearly Tsunade was picking up bread-crumbs that Shikako wasn’t aware she’d been dropping. As treasonous as it might be, it was times like this that she was glad the Sandaime had passed and Tsunade was in charge . )
“Ah,” Sasuke said, “the return of our non-future’s-past-selves memories caused both of us to lose consciousness. I don’t believe I was out for more than half an hour while re-processing the significant number of memories. Shikako was out for most of the night. Sensei should probably have someone with him if you send him to handle the situation.”
Shikako nodded. “I don’t know if he’ll appear when we first did, or when we sent our memories back, but he could have anywhere between two months to a year of memories he’ll need to process when he returns. I suspect that he’ll respond more like Sasuke though?”
Tsunade gave her a narrow-eyed look. “You were out for nearly eight hours?” she said ominously.
“It was probably more like six?”
Tsunade-in-medic-mode gave her the look that statement deserved. “Were you abusing the jutsu during your mission beforehand?”
Shikako sighed, resigning herself to having to explain, and deliberately kept her shoulders relaxed. “No. I rarely use it if I don’t absolutely need to do so. When I do, I take measures to handle the backlash. Since I didn’t know a clone dispelling was coming, I was unable to take those measures.”
Tsunade’s hands lit a medical green as she stepped forward. “Describe this ‘backlash,’ along with the measures you take.”
Shikako looked away from Tsunade for a moment before finding the shoulder of her yukata very interesting. “I was diagnosed as chakra hypersensitive as a kid. That diagnosis wasn’t quite right; I can use chakra and I’m not allergic to my own chakra, but I am also very aware of chakra. It wasn’t until a year or so into the academy that I realized that my classmates were unconsciously running chakra through their muscles to bolster movement… I actually had to teach myself how to do so.” She shifted in slight embarrassment—like she actually thought she’d failed, when she’d actually overcome a hurdle that others would label insurmountable. Tsunade paused her approach and tilted her head, expectant.
“Because I’m so aware of it, when I split my chakra for the jutsu, I’m aware both of how much is lost, and how much my coils regenerate while my clone is active. I’m also completely aware of the feeling of chakra returning to my coils when the clone dispels; my coils expand more quickly than is comfortable. Normally, I have the clone utilize as much chakra as possible before dispelling and brace myself when I know it’s coming. If I’m alone and my clone returns to me before dispelling, we both go into shadow state—” Tsunade visibly restrained herself from pursuing that topic for further information—Shikako hoped she’d be able to continue to not talk about it “—and physically merge before the clone dispels.”
Tsunade hummed in fascination for a moment—then reminded herself to start scanning.
Well. She could do Sasuke, first. “How do you respond to medical chakra and genjutsu?”
Shikako winced. Tsunade raised an eyebrow, and Shikako sighed. “Medical chakra is uncomfortable, but it doesn’t hurt, I’m just really aware of it.” At Tsunade-sama’s patient look she continued, “It’s like a needle, or a large pill to swallow; it doesn’t belong where it’s at, and you have to account for it while it’s there … but it’s not something that needs to be avoided.”
Shikako resolutely kept her eyes away from Sasuke when answering the second question. “The stronger the genjutsu, the more painful it is initially… though it starts at the level of itching. It actually makes it quite easy to know when someone is attempting to affect me, so I’ve rarely had difficulty in dispelling them.”
Tsunade disengaged from Sasuke with a nod, satisfied that he’d suffered no lasting damage from the experimental sealwork. “Why do you believe you were unconscious for so long?”
Shikako, who had, of course, thought about this earlier, only paused a moment before answering. “The seal that sent our memories back wasn’t exactly like the shadow clone jutsu. It didn’t have the same limitations for chakra pumped into it and it didn’t have the same destination; not only was I receiving nearly a year of memories that this body had not previously processed, but the chakra I provided the seal to ensure that the memories crossed dimensions was greater than what I would provide a normal clone and it was coming from a me who had had one more year of chakra growth. Additionally, I was unable to take any of my usual precautions in using the jutsu as I didn’t know that it was coming.”
Tsunade accepted the answer, placing one hand against her head and one against her arm in a diagnostic technique. Now that she was aware to look for it, she was able to observe the slightly odd flow of Shikako’s chakra as hers traced the teen’s system. A close examination of her coils showed the tension that Shikako had described; it was barely noticeable, but there was indication of stress due to bloating of the coils; it looked similar to soldier-pill abuse, when a shinobi fails to expend the excess chakra created by the pills quickly enough.
She disengaged her chakra. “You’re not to do any chakra exercise higher than a B-rank chakra control exercise for at least a week. You’ve not done permanent damage, but I would like to have either myself or Shizune with you to see how much your precautions actually help before you use the shadow clone jutsu again.”
She took in this current situation and the fact that Kakashi shouldn’t go alone before deciding, “Your notice-me-not tag will last a month, correct?”
“Hai.”
“Very well then. Next week Shizune or I will contact you regarding medical tests related to the shadow clone jutsu. Two weeks from now I’ll send Hawk and Wolf to destroy the cave. If that jutsu is causing you permanent damage, Wolf will be able to tell the alternative you when he gets there. In the meantime (and with the exception of the cave-mission for Sasuke), I want both of you on light duty for a month. Find another project. Train with Hatake, but no missions higher than a D-rank or paper-nin.”
Sasuke’s expression flickered with disgruntlement, but the Hokage responded before he could decide to respond verbally. “You’ve just gotten back from what was essentially a year-long undercover mission in potentially hostile territory without backup.” Both of the young ANBU went still.
Tsunade tapped her fingers against her arm. “Standard procedure requires six weeks of light duty, a mind-walk, and weekly checkups with a Yamanaka,” she reminded them pointedly. At their obvious discomfort, she rolled her eyes. “Oh, calm down, you’re not getting mind-walked; you’re both ANBU. This is an S-rank secret. Your sensei will soon be in the same boat. And you allied with the alternative Konoha.
“Ignoring the fact that you’ve also not been physically absent long enough that I can justify a full six weeks of Yamanaka check-ins, I’m not subjecting an innocent Yamanaka to your reality-bending bullshit via mind-walk when I know for a proven fact that you’re loyal enough to Konoha to troubleshoot even for an alternate Konoha.”
Sasuke flushed slightly. He tried to convince himself it was some illness the Hokage had missed somehow, rather than any sort of reaction to praise.
She gave them a look of amused fondness and a hint of pride. “As Hawk and Bat, you’ll each have three semi-informal sessions with Inoichi regarding an impromptu month-long undercover mission that went FUBAR. Wolf will be subject to this as well once he returns. Talk to each other and, should you need it, Inoichi will ask no questions if you appear another time or three.”
She didn’t miss the doubtful glances they cast each other, but she didn’t bring it up either. Kakashi might be the furthest thing from a therapist, but it’s not like he hasn’t gone through a similar mission duration before– He’d at least know to look out for his team.
Tsunade nodded to close that topic. “Is there anything you learned in the alternate-Konoha that has immediate impact upon anything current? No? Then write up a report and secure it in your slight-of-hand-seal-space. I’ll read it when I next call you both.”
She flashed the sign for ‘masks on’ as she reached to disable the privacy seals.
Bat and Hawk made their way towards the window as the Hokage’s guard returned to the room.
However, before they could make their escape, the Hokage spoke up one last time. “Captain Hawk. Bat. Welcome home.” And then she waved them off, freeing them to go home. Finally.
Bat ghosted beside Hawk as they approached the Uchiha compound. She could practically feel his reluctance to face the ghosts of his now-deceased clan once again. In the time they’d been away, Sasuke truly had been the younger brother of Madara and Izuna, and presumed twin of Nakano.
She lightly bumped his shoulder to draw his attention away from the dead and the unattainable, and proceeded to walk close enough that their sleeves often touched as they wove through the abandoned district.
It was a relief to remove their masks as they stumbled into his living room. With the amount of moonlight streaming in from the back doors, they’d not bothered to turn on the light, but Sasuke still looked away when he asked, “You’ll stay for the night?” he said, trying for nonchalant. His voice didn’t crack, but there was a subtle quaver that slipped out, nonetheless. It was a vulnerability only visible to the sister he’d adopted, the partner with whom he’d shared his clan, and the teammate whose presence brought him strength.
Shikako smiled. “Anytime,” she said, firm.
His shoulders hunched as they neared his bedroom, and his steps became strained as he fought not to cry. He wouldn’t give up his team—his self-made family for anything, but he felt like he’d lost his clan all over again by their choice to return. (And unlike with Itachi with him , that choice of loss was his own; there was no one to fight, no vengeance to pursue, nothing to make right … because their choice to return had been right .)
Masks, travel packs, weapons, and shoes hit the ground promptly, and once both were down to undershirts and exercise pants, they wasted no time in finding their covers.
Sasuke turned away from her, shoulders still trembling but tears stubbornly withheld. He felt Kako at his back, her forehead rested on his shoulder blade as an arm crossed his torso in an undemanding embrace. She squeezed tightly and her words came halting and careful.
“We’re Team 7. You claimed me as your sister. I claimed you as my brother.” She took a stuttering breath. “I’m willing to make that as real in this time as it was in our past.”
He turned his head sharply to look at her, though from their positions he could only make out the top of her head. “You mean that?” he breathed. It wasn’t something that he thought she could offer, what with being only a spare clan heir.
She nodded into his shoulder. “It’s happened before. An honorary-sibling adoption. As long as you sign it as acknowledging clan head, and I do so as the adopting sibling, it will be official without affecting the Nara’s line of inheritance. I’ll have to tell dad afterwards, and we’ll have to get Kakashi to sign as witness… and it might be best to have Tsunade hold the paperwork so that the council doesn’t realize, but yes. We can do so.”
She shuffled slightly closer. “You shared with me Uchiha clan secrets in such a way as to constitute adoption into your clan. Madara taught me the great fireball and the Uchiha style taijutsu as tradition demanded. I didn’t forget that knowledge upon our return; I will forever be a sister to you.”
He tucked his chin and took a shuddering breath, tears fully suppressed as he grasped her arm more firmly against his chest. The quaver remained in his voice, but he agreed resolutely—“We’ll do the paperwork in the morning.”
“Yes,” she affirmed. “We will.”