Chapter Text
The team had been walking for three hours since leaving the hot springs, and nobody was talking.
With the sun shining overhead and birds chirping away in the trees, someone passing by might mistake the atmosphere for peaceful.
It was anything but.
Still, Sakura found the silence to be a relief. Every time someone opened their mouth, Sai inevitably said something that made Naruto’s chakra flicker visibly around his fists, and then Sakura had to decide whether she was going to let Naruto get hit
Or hit Naruto herself, first.
Neither option was good. She'd already punched Sai once today, and regretted it every time her knuckles brushed against her bag's straps. She should save her fire power for the actual mission.
She kept her eyes on the road, and let her mind wander.
The bridge. The spy. Information about Sasuke.
That was the shape of it. That was the only thing that mattered.
Yamato walked ahead of them, Hiruko's puppet body strapped across his back, the wooden shell he'd shaped into a perfect replica of Sasori's battle form, bells and all, hollow and waiting. He hadn't said much since the training simulation that morning. But she trusted he knew what he was doing.
“I'm not the type of captain who saves his team while flashing a cool smile.” He'd told them that the first day. She'd believed him immediately, It was the kind of no-nonsense attitude they needed to bring Sasuke back.
Naruto was walking behind her, close enough that she could feel the occasional frustrated pulse of his chakra, hot and orange and restless, like something pacing inside him.
“Sakura,” he grumbled, even more raspy than usual.
“Don't.” She scolded through gritted teeth.
“I wasn't going to say anything!”
"You were going to say something about Sai, weren’t you?”
A pause. “...Okay, maybe. But—”
She didn't turn around. “We need him. That's the only thing that matters right now. We need all four of us to do this correctly."
She heard Naruto exhale hard through his nose. Then silence again, which meant a lot for Naruto.
It was the one thing she could get him to calm down. The mission. Anything that revolved around Sasuke. Bringing him back to the village. Saving him from Orochimaru.
Whatever sped up the role to that goal. It was what she and him could always agree on.
She took a deep breath, steading herself.
This mission would bring them closer.
That night Yamato built them a two-story house from nothing, and before bed had them all sit on the ground, going through the plan one more time.
Her position, Naruto's position, Sai's position, what to do if the spy was compromised, what to do if it was a trap, what to do if—
“What if Sasuke's there?” Naruto asked abruptly.
The room went very still.
Yamato looked at him for a long moment. “That is not our mission.”
“I know it's not our—”
“Our mission,” Yamato said, quiet and final, “is the spy. Information. That's all.”
Naruto looked like he was going to argue. Poorly concealing his frustration with the clenching of his fists, whipping his head towards Sakura. Wanting her to back him up, to press further.
But she kept her face neutral. The undercut of Yamato’s words were clear
Keep emotions out.
It was hard because she agreed with Naruto, she herself had been mentally asking the question.
What if Sasuke's there.
But neither she nor Yamato had the answer. The silence between them said all of that without either of them having to.
She lay awake for a long time after staring at the wooden ceiling Yamato had grown from the earth.
***
The bridge sat in low morning mist.
It was dawn, she hadn't slept much, but there wasn’t an ounce of drowsiness in her system. The moisture from the mist made everything crisp, her senses were activated, she was more than ready.
Sakura crouched behind a rock on the far ridge with Naruto and Sai, watching Yamato—or Sasori—walk out over the water alone. The puppet's bells rang faintly in the wind. She had to admit, even now, that the transformation was almost perfect. The posture. The hollow shell of the body. If she hadn't known, she would've thought it was the real one.
A figure emerged from the far end of the bridge.
Naruto shifted ever so slightly.
She recognized him immediately.
Kabuto.
Her jaw tightened. She kept her breathing even, slow. The way Tsunade had drilled into her, in and out, even when your hands wanted to move. Steady. Observe. Wait.
Kabuto spoke. Even through the distance and the wind she caught fragments. The hideout, not far, Orochimaru…
“Ugh—The wind is so loud I can’t hear a thing!” Naruto grumbled, hands cupped around his ears.
“You idiot… the wind is the reason we are even able to get this close in the first place.” She turned and whispered harshly to him, before turning back to the sight at the bridge. “The wind blows away our scent, and hides our sound... Why do you think he hasn't noticed us yet?”
The next few minutes were hard. Things began to drag on, and it was hard to know what was happening. The anticipation in Sakura was beginning to feel unbearable.
Naruto didn’t hide his as well. “Why can't he just go and grab the guy? He's right there!”
Sakura faced him. “Have you forgotten that's Kabuto? Playing it safe is the right way to handle it. Besides—if Kabuto manages to escape, this will all be for nothing.... “
"But... If he takes too much time," Sai cut in. "Then the spy might get suspicious. And then our whole plan will be put into Jeopardy."
“Maybe…” Sakura mused, “but we have no choice but to trust the captain's judgment.”
They cut the conversation and began to watch intently. Over the next few moments, something began to change. Yamato himself must have felt the approaching precipice. The odds balanced and juggling, changing by the moment.
Thus, in a moment’s notice, like a flash, the form recognizable as Sasori jutted out its arm, kunai in hand. But just as quickly as Yamato made his move, something began to materialize around Kabuto.
A large form, serpentine and dangerous.
It was like a collective force, the feeling of the stakes rising enormously in a few moments, like a shock wave.
Orochimaru was there.
He was there.
What did this mean for their plan? Had he been there the whole time? What was going on? What was going to happen?
Sakura stiffened, her mind racing through the many possibilities. She could be quick—but what was quickness when such an unexpected variable was thrown into the mix with no notice?
Yamato leaped back, still in Sasori’s form.
Was there still hope? If all was lost wouldn’t he just change back? Almost as if the universe heard her, Kabuto suddenly jumped back as well, exchanging some words with Yamato. Maybe all wasn’t lost.
They stood there, stanced against Orochimaru, while she, Naruto, and Sai remained as quiet as could be, stiff as boards, waiting for anything. A sign, a message, a clear role to play in this ever-developing situation.
They spoke for even longer, the wind infuriatingly covering anything that could be heard.
Things began to change when Kabuto raised his arm, blue chakra encompassing his fist, stretched out like a blade.
This was it, she thought. They were going to fight Orochimaru. At least they had Kabuto—
Kabuto’s chakra infused hand- blade came slicing down. but he didn't move forward.
Like a whirlwind, he moved to his side, cutting through Sasori's puppet form like it was nothing, wood splaying across the bridge, some of it falling over the edge into the misty, windy crevasse below.
Immediately, Yamato released his jutsu, revealing his true form and leaping back as fast as he could, gripping his arm, splattering blood into the air.
Sakura had to withhold a gasp. She wanted to help, but it was a ninja's way to remain silent until called upon. This was Yamato's fight for now.
But just as she thought that, Orochimaru stretched his hand, dozens of snakes spilling out from nothing into the air, wrapping around Yamato's limbs. Thankfully, at the last moment, he was able to perform a wood-style substitution jutsu, his body replaced with a wooden puppet.
Yamato landed back on the bridge. Orochimaru seemed to contemplate this.
Orochimaru was already a slippery individual. His snakes were more than an accessory. They were an extension of his behavior. It was nearly impossible to read him. His motives, his actions, anything at all. And this moment was no different.
With the distance separating them, and the wind covering anything audible, it was nearly impossible to have any idea what was going on. Sakura's anxiety rose with every second.
She felt the way Naruto shifted his weight, and even Sai's eyes keened ever so slightly.
There was a beat. A wait. A standstill between the three on the bridge.
Then Yamato's hand rose.
And the moment they had all been waiting for arrived.
Sai, Naruto, and Sakura descended, leaping onto the bridge like a reflex, movements full of built-up anticipation and adrenaline.
Orochimaru looked at Naruto the way a snake looks at a warm bodied field mouse. His eyes slid to Sakura briefly, dismissively, and then back to Naruto.
“My, my,” he said, soft and pleasant and terrible. “The Nine-Tails' jinchuriki, joining us in person. I was just wondering... which of you is stronger now? You—” a small gesture toward Naruto— “or dear Sasuke?"
She felt it before she saw it. The air temperature changed. The hair on her arms stood up. Naruto's chakra, which had been simmering since the hot springs, since the road, since months before that if she was being honest…
It surged. One tail of red flickering chakra bled into the air around him, and then two, and Sakura took an involuntary step to the side.
Don't, she thought, looking at his back. Don't do this. Not here. Not now.
“Give Sasuke back!” Naruto said. His voice had already changed, lower, rougher at the edges, not quite his own. “You took him. You stole him—”
“Stole him?” Orochimaru's smile widened. Kabuto made a small amused sound. “He came to us. Quite willingly, I'm afraid. Walked right up to our door.”
“That’s a lie!”
"Is it?" Orochimaru tilted his head. His eyes were bright and delighted. "Sasuke is exactly where Sasuke wants to be. If you'd like to know more, you're welcome to take it from me by force."
Three tails now. The chakra was burning the air. Sakura could feel the heat of it from six feet away, the way it scraped at the inside of her lungs when she inhaled.
“Naruto—”she started.
Kabuto moved. He was fast, she'd forgotten how fast, and his hand drove into Naruto's side with what should have been a disabling strike. Instead Naruto's arm came around and threw him, one-handed, across the width of the bridge like he weighed nothing.
Kabuto hit the railing. The railing broke.
Sakura moved without thinking, closing the distance, catching Kabuto's trajectory, but he was already gone, already moving, and what hit her was the edge of the shockwave from Naruto behind her. She staggered, caught herself.
She turned around.
Four tails.
The world quickly became noise and heat and light.
She'd been briefed. She knew what four tails meant. Yamato had walked them through it, factually and precisely.
At four tails, Naruto loses himself entirely. The Nine-Tails chakra burns through his skin. He won't recognize you. He won't stop. She'd nodded and filed it away and told herself she understood.
She hadn't understood.
The chakra wasn't energy anymore. It was a presence and a void all at the same time. A vast, furious, ancient pressure that pushed against the inside of the air itself. The bridge shuddered. She felt the stone beneath her feet crack, felt the vibrations travel up through her ankles and knees, and she scrambled back because the alternative was being directly in the blast radius of whatever Naruto and Orochimaru were building between them.
She made it to the far railing just as the bridge broke.
Not in pieces, but all at once, a single catastrophic split down the center, stone and wood and railing dropping away into the gorge below, and the cliff face on the near side fractured with it, a whole section of earth and rock punching outward and down.
She jumped.
She got maybe eight feet of air before the rock face behind her broke entirely, and the shockwave—not from the bridge but from the battle, from Naruto's chakra reaching critical mass… hit her broadside and threw her. Not into the gorge. Not sideways. Into the tree line, or into the cliff.
But into an opening darkness below.
***
She came back to consciousness slowly.
There was dust in her mouth, and something heavy across her right leg. A fallen branch, thick as her torso, pressing down but not crushing. Her left arm had caught something on the way down. She could feel it, warm and throbbing, not broken but close.
As she lay, her eyes closed, she could feel vibrations.
She went still and listened.
Distantly, there was a battle. She could still feel the pulses of it in the cold stony ground beneath her and in the matter in the air around her. Massive concussive waves that shook the ground every few seconds, but it was far enough away that she didn’t feel the need to immediately get up and run.
She opened her eyes nonetheless.
She saw rock. Above her, around her, a low ceiling of fractured jagged stone surrounded her on all sides. The space she was in was maybe eight feet across, twice that long.
To put it more plainly, she was in a rough cave, not natural. One carved in the last sixty seconds by catastrophic impact.
She was alive. She was breathing. The branch across her leg shifted when she pushed at it. She pushed herself up onto her good arm. Activated medical chakra to run a quick pass over her shoulder—bruised, not broken, tendons strained on one side. She could work with that.
She looked around the cave. At the end she saw an opening, leading out to what seemed to be another section of this cave structure.
After checking herself fully, rolling her wrists and brushing off the dust from her skirt. She carefully made her way through the opening.
Well at least I’m not fully trapped.
***
The next part of the cave was larger than where she had woken up. And it led her down a path of sorts, even if it did make her crawl under a low arch here and there. She didn’t know where she was headed, she just hoped she saw light, an opening she could punch through without worrying about getting buried alive.
Only instead she seemed to only go lower. The temperature dropping more every few minutes. She was on the brink of turning around, arms wrapped around herself as she shivered. When she heard something.
The sound of quick, yet light foot steps.
Sai, was her first thought. It made sense he would have gotten trapped down her with her. And without a second thought she took off, taking herself further down into the cave.
As her footsteps got louder though, the others seemed to stop.
Had Sai heard her? Why wasn’t he running in her direction?
She whipped around the jagged walls, heading in the only direction it led her until she saw them.
Her eyes lit up, hand coming up to wave. “Sai!” She shouted, voice echoing. But as she slowed her steps, and the figure came into focus her brain short-circuited.
Sai didn’t wear white.
Sai didn’t carry a sword.
She stopped, her blood dropping into icy temperatures, just as everything else in her began to run hot.
He was on the far side of the space, half-sitting against the wall with one knee up, head bowed slightly. His dark hair fell across his face. His clothes were torn at the shoulder, blood dark against the white fabric, and there was a long gash across the back of his left hand.
He was more injured than her. She could see that clearly. The way he was holding himself, the careful stillness of someone managing pain, she recognized it from the inside.
He raised his head slowly.
In the darkness his eyes found hers.
Sakura didn't move.
“Sasuke?”