Title: Dreaming of Sunshine

Summary: Life as a ninja. It starts with confusion and terror and doesn't get any better from there. OC Self-insert.

AN:

.

.

Chapter 125

.

.

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. ~ Charles R. Swindoll



.

.

Sasuke bolted.

I pressed a hand hurriedly to Sakura's shoulder. "You can take care of sensei, right?" I asked, barely waiting for her affirmative before I was after him.

As they said, one crisis at a time. Kakashi-sensei's was over, so now it was time for Sasuke's.

That might not have been the spirit of the proverb but it sure felt like the letter of it.

I locked onto Sasuke's chakra, forgoing trying to catch up with him to just follow. He wasn't trying to hide, burning up like a streak of lightning homing in on a target.

The target was a clearing far on the other side of the Uchiha compound. It had clearly been used for training at some point in the past, with target boards set up on the trees around it, enough of them at varying angles that it would have been a challenge to get them all.

There had also been a very large rock in the middle of the clearing.

I said had, because Sasuke pulverised it with a chidori, slamming into it with a fist full of screaming lightning and sending shards of stone exploding into the air. The rock had been a clear fixture, twice our height and nearly square, but it couldn't contend with Sasuke's sheer fury.

I hung back and watched as he stopped, shoulders shaking. The line of his back was so tense, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. Everything about him screamed 'don't touch'.

The air started to settle, dust swirling and chunks of battered rock raining back to the earth.

He spun into action again, eyes so red and violent and a chidori blossoming in his hands. He slammed it into what was left of the rock, into the ground where it had been, and dragged it through the clearing, gorging a massive wound in the earth.

I waited.

Sasuke stopped again. He was still shaking, but this time I could hear his breathing, huge and heavy gasps, like he couldn't get enough of it.

Then… nothing.

"Feel better?" I asked, voice as level and neutral as I could make it. No judgement.

Information like that and I would have probably wanted to wreck stuff too.

He turned to me and the red faded out of his eyes. He didn't seem surprised that I was there, but I had been deliberately not-stealthy. He'd probably anticipated it, at any rate.

"No," he said and ran a still shaking hand though his hair. "Do you think this would make me feel better?"

I shrugged. "Seemed like it might have been why you were doing it," I said and kicked over a chunk of rock to sit on, deliberate casual ease in very action. I was in no hurry.

He stalked over to one of the target boards, one that still had a single kunai in it, and yanked the kunai out, tossing it into the forest with a careless underhand throw. Then he deliberately took the target down and broke it over his knee, discarding the pieces to the side.

I waited.

"We trained here," he said, suddenly, voice like a whip crack, startling in its volume. He pressed his palm flat against the tree, where the target had been.

I guessed that explained the methodical destruction, after all. Not wild rage, then. Not lashing out as a coping mechanism. A thing, a representation that needed to be decimated.

"We trained here," he repeated. "I used to ask-"

His voice cut off. And he seemed to find a last reserve of energy, pulling his hand back and slamming a fist into the tree instead. It wasn't enhanced, did nothing to the tree except split his knuckles open on the bark.

Right. I stood and moved closer, taking his hand and using a healing jutsu to stop the bleeding.

"That's a hell of a thing to learn," I said, evenly.

He snorted. "I wondered- you know, I wondered-" he cut himself off, clearing his throat. "How can it be worse than anything I imagined?" He gave a sound that might have qualified as a laugh, if it wasn't so helpless.

"You thought he left you alive because he loved you," I said, because the truth carved it out of me. It was a line of attack I was already committed to, too far in to pull back, to turn aside.

(He did, he did Sasuke. He loved you more than anyone, more than his family, more than his village. And that's why you're alive.)

Sasuke flinched and pulled away. "So stupid," he hissed, eyes falling shut. "I thought. That maybe he just… couldn't." It seemed torn out of him, as though he was being gutted by this conversation.

And this was it, wasn't it? This was the time. I knew the truth. Sasuke needed to know it. Danzo was still lurking around the edges and while knowing the truth might put him in danger, not knowing it might also.

Your brother loves you, I pictured saying. You aren't wrong. He couldn't. There are things rotten in Konoha and you need to know-

But I remembered those eyes. The shape of them so similar to Sasuke. The eyelashes that were long and delicate. The red, red inhumanness of them, spiralling and spinning. The feel of the cold, dry hand around my neck and the press of stone against my back.

The feeling of oil sliding slickly past my eyes, burning into my brain-

"But he came back," Sasuke said. "He came back, like once wasn't enough and he-" he cut himself off, spinning on his heel and facing me, expression slamming closed. "I shouldn't be talking about this with you."

(Your brother loved you, Sasuke.)

"Who else are you going to talk about it with?" I asked, logically, perfectly calm. "You know I'm always willing to listen."

I didn't have evidence, that was the thing. The Uchiha records proved nothing, even if I could show them to him without arousing suspicion. The closest I had was Sai and he couldn't say anything about Danzo – and that only proved that Danzo was acting at all. Sai knew nothing about the Uchiha situation. Knew nothing about Itachi.

Even if I said, even if I tried to console him right now, tried to soften the blow of this information, tried to spare his feelings… would I only stir it up further? Would I only introduce more pain and confusion?

"Yeah, I know," Sasuke said. "You want him dead too."

My eyes slid away, my own words – of a sort – parroted back to me. I couldn't say they were wrong.

"I-" I stammered, that cold logic deserting me for a second and I felt-

it was on the tip of my tongue, it was -

"-I want you to be okay," I said, weighing the words like they were something as precious as gold. "And I know that it's not really okay, and it won't be okay. Not now, maybe not ever. And this is only a little part of it. And… there's probably nothing I can really say about it that will make it better. Except…" I swallowed, mouth dry and tacky. "It's hard to live a whole life as a lie. Maybe you didn't see everything that was going on, but that doesn't mean what you did see was wrong."

Weak. Not enough.

I knew. Sasuke's focus was like a blade, one he'd been honing for years already. This was another spark for the forging, another stone to grind it against, another step down the path that led him to kill his brother.

I should say something to drag him back, to turn his focus aside, to cast doubt on it, so that if – when – it happened… there was a chance for him not to break his own heart.

"It doesn't matter," he said heavily, mouth twisting. "It's not okay but it doesn't change anything. At least now I know."

My heart was hammering like I was in the middle of a fight.

"Sure," I said, the word emerging like a bubble through molasses.

"We should go back," he said, reaching out and fingertips barely brushing my elbow, like he was escorting me.

I gave him a weak smile. "You know, this probably makes me a bad friend, but I'm absolutely okay with leaving Sakura to explain everything to the Hokage."

He snorted. "Ah yes, I see what your friendship is worth." He tugged me onwards, clearly meaning to leave the destruction behind us.

You don't know the half of it, I thought, eyeing him sideways.

"I guess there's a lot of damage control to do," I agreed.

.

.

Tsunade wasn't actually at the hospital when we got there. I mean, she was probably busy doing important Hokage type stuff, and this wasn't actually an immediately life threatening situation.

A ninja struck with chakra exhaustion after a 'training accident' wasn't even unusual. The fact that it was Kakashi-sensei only enhanced the amount of 'what, again?' attitude.

"What are we going to say?" Sakura asked, biting her lip. "We're going to have to report this."

I shrugged. "The truth? Just leave out the shrine and what the tablet actually said and it should be close enough."

Those absolutely fell under 'clan secrets' and even if Sasuke had been willing to share them with his team it probably wasn't a good idea for that information to get out. Scratch that, it definitely wasn't a good idea to let it get out.

"On the bright side," Sasuke said dryly, crossing his arms. "The hospital can confirm whether or not it fixed the problem."

They'd taken a chakra measure when he came in and it would only take another one to confirm whether his chakra recovery rate was back into normal levels or not. If it was; success.

"Think we can sell Tsunade on that?" I asked, idly kicking my feet. "It's just for a follow up?"

No one answered. Yeah, I didn't think so either.

Eventually we got bored of just waiting and I was dispatched to sensei's place to retrieve all our notes. We organised them, putting together a report on what we'd found, mostly in the hopes of being able to present it to Tsunade and escaping.

That was obviously not how it worked.

When she did show up – and of course she did, personally – she took the report and tucked it under her arm before glaring at us, unimpressed.

"I distinctly remember," she drawled. "Saying 'no one try anything without me'."

"Well," Kakashi-sensei said. "Technically there was no medical jutsu involved."

The unimpressed look only got worse. "Don't give me technicalities, brat. What happened?"

"Well," I said. "You know that miracle you ordered?" I used both palms to gesture to Kakashi-sensei and smiled winningly at her.

Something unreadable passed through her eyes. She set the file down and moved towards Kakashi, performing a diagnostic jutsu. "Explain."

"Uh." I glanced at Sasuke. "So. It turns out that three tomoe isn't the highest level of sharingan development. I guess it was like a secret technique? It must have been pretty rare… uh. Sensei obviously didn't know about it, so he couldn't use it, but it must have kept getting triggered to activate and would draw in a huge amount of chakra. Micro-activations, maybe?" I pursed my lips thoughtfully.

"So, you tried to activate it," Tsunade said flatly, not even a question.

"Not quite," I hedged, even though she was more right than wrong. "The Uchiha had an… artefact that required the advanced sharingan to read. We thought it might have instructions on it, so we showed it to sensei to see if he could decipher it. But I guess it… gave him something to focus on?"

I looked to sensei and shrugged.

He nodded. "I could read it," he acknowledged. "And I could feel the difference." He paused for a long moment. I was about to take up with story again when he smiled, eye crinkling, and said, "then I tried to activate it."

I coughed, and covered my mouth, trying desperately not to laugh. Or smile.

Tsunade huffed in pure exasperation. Sakura looked mortified.

"It worked," Sasuke chimed in, face held so still that I could tell he was trying not to laugh too. "But he also managed to activate some other technique at the same time. Which is where the chakra exhaustion came from."

She nodded. "And do you think that's a risk in the future?"

Kakashi-sensei shrugged. "I have no idea," he said, honestly. "But that's what training is for."

I was sure he'd learn how. And if not, well, we knew the problem now. We could devise a solution for it.

"Alright," Tsunade said, finally. "I'm going to monitor this and see if it really is resolved. I'm also going to go over this," she held up our report, "in detail."

Sakura looked incredibly worried, folding her hands tightly in her lap.

"But firstly," Tsunade added, and her disapproving façade broke enough to smile. "Good job, kids."

We all relaxed.

She wasn't kidding about going through our report thoroughly, though.

And she picked up on exactly the thing that would get me most into trouble.

"And where, exactly," she asked, tapping the page with her fingernail. "Did these readings come from?"

"Well," I said, slowly. "I have a combat seal that I, in my capacity as a field shinobi, gifted to Kakashi-sensei for the purpose of field work that he's been kindly demonstrating for me."

I hadn't actually come up with a field work reason for said seal yet. Maybe a trigger threshold to set off traps?

"And what does this seal do?" Tsunade asked dryly.

"Measures chakra capacity," I answered shamelessly.

"Get it approved," Tsunade ordered, flicking me in the forehead. It stung, but only in the way being hit in the forehead with a fingernail stung – there was no chakra behind it, only friendly admonition.

"Yes, Tsunade-sama," I said, because asking for forgiveness instead of permission worked best when you accepted the clauses of forgiveness. I wasn't an idiot.

But it was a pain. I didn't even have Tenten to foist it all off onto-

"Hey Sakura," I said, innocently. "Do you want to collaborate on this? It'll be a learning experience for you."

.

.

It was probably an even better idea to enlist Sakura's help than I'd initially thought, because the problem with diving into full research mode on Kakashi-sensei's behalf was that it meant I hadn't had a chance to catch up on any of the stuff that had been lingering while I was away at the Fire Temple.

I started with the Intel Division, which was mostly just procrastination on my part. The most exciting thing there was a note from Aoba with a case file number and the words 'negotiations restarted'.

That had to mean they'd rescued the kids, surely. I didn't expect that I would ever be told, given that it had been handed over to Anbu, but if the negotiations were back on track then that had to mean that the kids had been returned home.

I destroyed the message, carefully, and made a mental note to drop by the Inuzuka compound at some point and let Kiba know, in case no one else had.

After that I had to face the music.

It… wasn't as bad as I had been preparing myself for.

Oh, there were plenty of questions about the Shadow Hand. But by this point they'd been working on it for nearly as long as I had taken to design it and I had to point that out to them. Most of the focus now was on making it usable for other people – changing the size and shape from a thirteen-year-old to an adult, for example, or from an arm to a leg.

Their initial attempts at modifying the seal had not gone particularly well and I promised to look over them and see why not. I had thought that change would be relatively easy, because I had described the properties and dimensions as clearly as I could but… seals.

"Shikaku-sama also said you were going to be teaching fuuinjutsu to a student," Kofuku-oba said, reminding me of yet another thing I owed the clan.

"Yes," I said, cautiously, shifting the massive pile of notes to rest on my hip. "I'm drafting a syllabus at the moment. And I'm probably going to need some worksheets printed once I finalise the material."

I had wanted Tenten's assistance – and not just to foist the storage scroll portion of it off onto her – because I wanted it to be as clear and easy to follow as possible and sometimes what I thought was simple didn't seem that way to other people. But she was out on a mission and Shikamaru didn't know when she would be returning.

"That's easy enough to organise," she said, which was very agreeable for an interaction between us. "Have you chosen a student? There are several volunteers within the department."

"I'll get back to you on that," I hedged, physically edging towards the door. Dad had given me the register and told me to pick, but how was I supposed to know who would be good at it?

I wasn't entirely sure my solution was how I was supposed to solve that dilemma, but it was also the lowest effort solution on my part. So, obviously, it was what I was going for.

Kofuku-oba seemed disappointed, but didn't call after me as I left, so that was a victory.

Along with the Shadow Hand project to review I also had my papers from the Fire Temple to submit, and the other seals to chase and finalise for testing. Shikamaru had done a lot of it already, and Tenten had clearly still been working with the clan because she'd left a bullet-pointed checklist on my desk for follow-up.

"Hey, kid," Takatori said, before I'd even managed to sit down. "Nice to have you back. Had a vacation after your vacation, huh?"

I snorted. "Got called to consult on a medical thing," I said vaguely, trying to find the papers that would get Sakura the contract to work on the seal with me. "Got another medical seal to submit."

"Well I guess you can be forgiven then," he said seriously. "Though I'm not sure QA will agree with me."

"There's no rush on this one," I offered. "And Tsunade kind of approves of it?"

"I'm not sure if I want to know that story or really don't," he said.

I settled in, motivated to knock as much of it out of the way as I could. I didn't get nearly enough of it done, but there was also no rush, so I made sure to be home well in time for dinner.

Afterwards, I settled in on the living room floor to work on my Fuuinjutsu 101 preparation.

"Mom," I asked, thoughtfully. "You don't know anything about sealing, right?"

"Sorry, dear," she answered. "I would have helped you already if I did."

"No, no," I reassured. "That's perfect. I need to know if you understand this without having any kind of background."

What that led to was a lot of revision, expanding and adding more and more depth and clarifications. My opening statement turned from effectively 'sealing, let's go' to a whole page of 'what is sealing, even'.

I definitely made sure to include the revelation Jiraiya had given me, though. No point in passing on my own mistakes and misunderstandings. I'd make that clear, early on.

There were definitely points where her eyes started to glaze over and while I was trying to keep it as straightforward as possible, depth and simplicity weren't synonyms.

The next day I kicked off with going and doing some actual training, meeting Sasuke at our team training fields and doing our best to kick the shit out of each other in true Team 7 style.

"You've been slacking," he teased, fending me off with what was starting to become an insulting amount of ease.

"I've been studying," I corrected. "There's a difference."

"Not on the battlefield."

Just for that, I let him commit to an attack before slapping a barrier seal tag up on the air and letting him crash face first into it and bounce off.

He corrected with grace, springing across the grass and eyeing the glowing transparent wall of chakra with consideration.

"Single tag barrier seal," I supplied. "Still has some problems to work out, but-" I wiggled my fingers at him. "-studying."

"Hmm," he said, before throwing a brace of shuriken that curved in an arc around the edges of the wall.

I batted them away with a kunai and it was back on.