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QOTC

Yes, and you are my student. More importantly the disciple of the Fifth Hokage. Three years in the shadow of my office and yet I have never given you my blessing. May I?

Tsunade

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I've been locked up for 149 days.

I count the fingers in my hands. Ten.

Dozens of lines are sketched in my skin.

It's a little knowledge of what I know about time. All I know is that when the sun sets up in the horizon it's another day, and when it's dark sometimes I stand at my chair to look up at the stars from my window.

I have just come to think that some things aren't meant to be real. Blood Prison taught me a lot of things. I lie whenever it's lights off. When it's nighttide and everyone in prison are asleep, I touch the walls and outgrow cherry blossoms in them. It's one part of me that yearns for that validity--that as I wake up the next morning I would still see the vine that grows, which represents life--I realize it would only whither by the end of the week. 

I watch a battalion of deadliest criminals go in and out of their cell, while I remain in my household bittersweet and alone. They all sport tattoos in their arms, and I wonder maybe I should get one. If that's what it takes for my friends to save me from this threshold. I hug my knees and a tear escapes from my eye--I look into the walls I've painted, of the garden that came from my own creation, and another leaf falls. 

I use magic to let it come to me. I hold the orange dry leaf in my hand and grip on it, hard. 

It was a cold night in Konoha when I was imprisoned. I was sick and screaming, my nightmares were running out of control that Naruto called for an ambulance. I've rarely retailed all the details because the last thing I've remembered was being dragged away from my best friend's arms. His teary eyes. A metal vehicle. People facilitated in Grass. Cell. 

The door creaks loudly, and Ibiki enters. "You have a visitor."

Ibiki guides me out from the grey castle as he leads me into the cafeteria. Different kinds of lights beamed through me and I squeak my eyes. The person who sits to my table is someone I can't recognize that quick; he has Sasuke's raven hair, pale skin...  

"How are you, ugly?"

I make an effort to streak the hair out of my face. "What are you doing here?"

He raises the brown pack. "I've brought you lunch."

Sai escorts me back into my cell after I finish my meal. Paints the walls with pastel colors and helps me make my bed. I do not say a word after he sleeps, then I lay down pretending to be asleep.

I begin to sing. At the shower, in my window, in my sleep. Hour and hour of ballads, love songs, hymn to the seas. Of the melodies I could still recall in and out of the village. All the songs Kakashi has taught me before I grew, for certainly there has been very little music inside me since. What's amazing is how clearly I remember them. The tunes, the lyrics. My voice, first soft snd edging up on the high notes, warms up on something splendid. A voice that could make all ravencrows fall silent and tumble themselves to join in. Days pass, weeks. I watch Cherry Blossoms fall on the ledge outside my window. And in all that time, mine is the only voice I hear.

I roll in my sheets wishing I could just wander off in the Ocean, where in waves of the shore would stretch out like an eternity out in the cold water. 

After two days of lyijg in my mattress with no attempt to eat, drink, or even take a morphling tablet, the door in the cell opens. Someone crosses the room into my field of vision. Kakashi. "You're getting transferred to a hospital. Just a little longer, then we're going home."

Home? What's he talkihg about? Everyone I've actually known in my home will eventually be gone. And even if it would be possible to go to this imaginary place, I am too weak to move. Strangers appear. Rehydrate and feed me. One lifts me like a rag doll and carries me outside, onto a train, and fastens my seatbelt. Kakashi and Yamato sit across me. In a few moments, the train swoops in.

Yamato tries to scare me off with his face. It always seem to bother him when no one else appreciates his joke. He sweatdrops, looks at Kakashi, and decides not to speak.

We briefly land into Iwagakure and the train stops. Probably to collect Shinobi passengers. Then I realize we're in a private station, and Yamato unfastens his seatbelt. "Well, it's nice sharing a transportation with you Sakura. I'll probably back before you know it."

When we're back among the trip, I look at Kakashi. "So why are you taking me back to Konoha?"

"Your trial is over. Shikamaru and the rest spoke for you." he says.

* P L A Y S O N G * (Song from Harry Potter) :((

At first, I don't question this. But doubt begins to creep in. Kakashi is an honoured Jonin. He could be sent in perilious missions and retrieve scrolls. If he's coming back to the Leaf, it's because he's been ordered to. "You have to look for me, don't you? As my sensei?" He shrugs. Then I realize what this means. "My friends are all gone."

"No," he says. He pulls out an envelope. I examine it, with perfectly formal handwritihg. "Sakura..." He stated, "Naruto's become a little.. contumacious and difficult nowadays. Goes out every night drinking, knocks at Tsunade-sama's door asking her to get you back."

My fingers trace the graceful swoop of letters. "These are the papers your friends have filed to get you out of Prison." he says. "You know why they can't come." Yes, I know why. Because between the unaccessible permission to visit a prisoner and the wild distance, the thought of them seeing me would have been painful for them to bear. Sai must be determined. "Sakura, do you know how many days you have been in the cell?"

"A hundred and fifty." I'm not sure if I'm incorrect.

"Sakura," he waits for me to say it, "it's been two weeks."

                                  ❣Եհҽ Եհíɾժ մϲհíհɑ ❣

                                         SAVE ME

Like a good sensei, Kakashi makes me Ramen and pretends I'm asleep for the rest of the trip. He busies himself by going by compartments, traveling with a book, most of the time reading it silently while he lets me lay in his lap. It's night when we arrive in the village. Half of the lights are still open, including the hospital and the Hokage Stone Henge. Kakashi carries me into my hospital bed and suddenly it's all the swivelling and other drugs.

"Well, see you tomorrow." says Kakashi.

As the echo in his footsteps slowly fades away, I whisper, "I doubt it."

I am unable to move from the bed. The rest of the hospital looms dark and cold. I pull the soft shawls over my body and watch the Cherry Blossoms. I guess I fall asleep, because the next thing I know is it's morning and a few medics went in and out to inject me with sticks of syringes.

My head snaps when I hear its squeak, but I take a while to believe it's real. How could it have gotten in here? I take in his sharp beak, the shadiness in its black feathers, the Sharingan in its eyes. He's come alone then, all the way from Otogakure. Maybe they kicked him out or he just couldn't stand the thought of him not being there, so it came looking.

"It was a waste of trip. He's not here." I tell him. Itachi's crow hisses again. "You can hiss all you want. You won't find your master in here." Hearing the word, he perks up. Crans his neck. Begins to squeak hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you in here!" I start to shake, furious in him. "He's not coming back! He's never ever coming back here again!" This time, I find a Kunai to improve my aim and shoot it towards him the way I would have shot it to your heart days ago. I know you're there. I know you're watching. And out of nowhere, tears began to spill from my eyes. "He's dead." I clutch myself to dull the pain. Sink down on my knees, crying. "He's dead, you stupid crow." A new sound, part crying, part singing, out from my body, giving voice to my despair. Hours later I lay back in bed discarding all the wires connected alongside my body. Itachi's crow begins to wail as well. Nomatter what I do, he just won't go. He circles me, as waves of nausea comes back from my reach. After wave of sobs and another, I fall unconscious. But he must know why I have gone throughout this mess. He must know that the unthinkable just happened and to survive will require previously unthinkable acts. Because hours later, when I lay all day and night in bed, he's there in the moonlight. Crouched beside me, Crimson eyes alert, guarding me from the night.

In the morning, he brings me a small Shuriken using the stubborness of his beak and I cut my nails. We end up crying together, only this time we comfort each other. On the strength of this, I open the letter Kakashi gave me, dialed Naruto's number, and wept with him as well. My very best friend, bearing a pack of Ramen, shows up with the rest of the boys. They make breakfast and I feed some of my leftovers to Itachi's crow.

Slowly, with many lost days, I started coming back to life again. I followed Tsunade's advice to go with the motions, amazed with how one finally made meaning. I tell her my idea of the journal, and a hard-bound notebook arrives into my room with a pen from her office.

I got the idea from Jiraiya-sensei. The place where I record things I cannot entrust to memory. The page begins with a person's picture. A photo if we can find it. If not, a sketch or painting from Sai. Then, in my careful handwriting, come all details I would most likely forge. Team Seven's Teamwork. Kakashi's laugh. The color of Naruto's eyes. What Shikamaru could do within a given Shadow. The story of how I met Wakana. Hinata and Kiba, Neji and TenTen, Temari craddling a baby, Gaara falling in love with a pixie yet restless... Of the Mizukage who searched a lifetime for her daughter who later rebelled against her. On and on. I wrote the pages well hoping every story counts. Additions become smaller. An old memory surfaces. A late Cherry Blossoms reserved around the pages. Strange bits of happiness, like the light pounding in my belly.

It's where all my secrets have contained.

I learn to get busy. I drink all the medicines Tsunade has prescribed and so I'd be ready for my freedom days... I've just met the Raikage which was actually larger and built in person, who was checking to see if the child is doing well and so must be the carrier. A few of the nations have also arrived in the village with promising appearances, probably getting ready for my wedding. But it all seems a bit early, for my birthday to set forth by next week. And so when I ask Tsunade-sama what's with all the clamor and numerous crowd, she's taught me the Transformation Technique I could benefit in concealing the child. It draws energy from the Strength of a Hundred, the ultimate Medical Jutsu only she and I could ever perform.

"Three years I have taken you under my wing, three years and yet I've let them do this to you. Naruto--you love him?"

"He saved my life." I say.

"Yes, and you are my student. More importantly the disciple of the Fifth Hokage. Three years in the shadow of my office and yet I have never given you my blessing." She wields green Chakra in her palm. "May I?"

A touch of soft hand places ontop of my forehead. When she finishes, a diamond appears from my head as my belly shrinks from three and a half weeks pregnant to nothingness. At first I panic, but then Tsunade quickly gives me a recap of what she's done.

"The curse-mark holds no greatest extent. As long there are people who know, word could get out; probably more would be after it. The less who know, the better." I thank her. It's the Seal she'd used to make herself look young and flawless, meaning it actually works. I could conceal this child whenever I want.

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The crow was squeaking on its way back its master. He's done a remarkably good job today.

Itachi's crow leapt into Sasuke's arm. He'd updated him of the recent activities done by the pinkette, and how she was doing. When he heard this, the Uchiha smashed the bottle of his sake into the ground, broken shards attacking him as they pricked into his skin.

The bird flew away.

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8.23.14, Sat

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TEMARI!! Stay strong with Daddy Shika! xx

VOMMENT? Soooooo have you guys watched the latest Naruto Shippuden I mean seriously Sasuke is back in Team Seven, and the three of them have just summoned their own like Katsuyu, that giant toad and the serpent.

Still can't believe Sakura is preggers like wuut

You'll probably hate me for KibaHina but everything happens for a reason right?:3