Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

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I sat heavily on a piece of rubble and waited for my team to return. Hopefully Sai's bird could convince them to come back.

Now, I just … had to wait.

The last remaining ink clone gave up the ghost, suffering either damage or time or lack of chakra, and faded into a goopy pile of white and black. Now I was alone.

Well. Not 'alone'. There were plenty of people here – just not my people. Enemies, if not all by their own choices.

I sighed.

I should probably do something about them before my team returned. Round up the guards. Announce Michiru's succession. Something.

Should.

But the future stretched out ahead of me like an impassable mountain. I didn't want to get up and take the first step towards climbing it; it was filled with things I didn't want to face. There was no path and there was no plan to get past it. It was just there.

But the future had a way of coming for you, even if you didn't want it.

There was a clatter of metal, boots against stone, and guards edged up the outer staircase and onto the balcony. They had weapons out, shields up, looking ready for danger.

I propped a foot up against a handy chunk of rock and relaxed my shoulders to look as casual as possible. But I twisted a kunai into my hand as well, because casual wasn't the same as unthreatening.

"Stop," I said.

They stopped.

The air hung, wary and tense, between us.

"You are under arrest," the leader said, voice level though not quite enough to hide the unease. "For attacking Shabadaba-sama."

I wondered if they actually thought that would work, or if it was just something they felt like they should be doing. If they'd known what the minister was up to, or if they'd thought the King and Prince were dead? Though that one wouldn't have held up with the return of Michiru.

"No," I said. "I'm not. You have committed treason, conspiring against the ruler of the Land of the Moon, and causing the death of King-" damn, what had his name even been? "Tsuki. Prince Michiru is now returning to take his rightful place and the minister will be tried for his crimes."

The guards in the doorway hovered, indecisively. I heard someone swallow, the sound echoing thickly.

They outnumbered me and they knew that. Logically, they should have had the upper hand. But they didn't, and they seemed to know that too.

"If you wait until the prince returns," I suggested, "then you become Captain Korega's problem." I twirled my kunai around my fingers, making it dance. "If you take another step forward… then you become mine. Take a look around," I invited. "See how I solve my problems."

Not the best speech I could have given. I just didn't have the energy to be convincing. But the point got across. The collapsed walls and bodies on the floor were hard to argue with.

I didn't want to fight them. But that didn't mean I couldn't. That I wouldn't.

I dug up a fraction more energy, enough to form intent and spread it into the air. Not killing intent – not quite as sharp or pointed – just enough to let them know I was serious.

"Go tend to your men," I suggested. The air shivered.

There was a long, long moment.

Then they backed down the stairs and left me alone.

Honestly, I hadn't expected that to work. At all. I hadn't wanted to have to fight a whole bunch of guards, but I'd almost expected I would have to.

Eventually, Sai's ink bird fluttered back and landed on my shoulder. I stroked it, curiously. It was… dry and almost soft. Paper-like. The feeling was unexpected. I didn't know what I had expected but… not that.

I took that to mean the others were nearly here.

Which meant the time for moping around doing nothing was over. If I didn't go to the mountain, then the mountain apparently came to me. Which was the problem of making the future into a metaphor, really.

I groaned and pulled myself to my feet, shaking off the dust that had clung to me. I scribbled up a body scroll for Ishidate and hauled Shabadaba over my shoulder. Whatever Sai had done to knock him out had worked because he was still out.

I dragged him down to the gates and told the guards to open them. There was a giant hole in the wall that people could have come through, but what kind of entrance was that? Michiru was going to be King – he would come in through the gates.

There was a minimum of hesitation before they did what I said, which probably had something to do with their leader being unconscious over my shoulder.

The sun was just peaking over the horizon as the Prince's group arrived. Korega and his guards formed a thin cordon around the group, and Kiba was grimly marching in the lead, Akamaru's head peeking out the front of his jacket.

Behind him, Shikamaru was stumbling along. For a second, my eyes played tricks on me. For a second, he looked okay – like everything had been undone and he had two arms. But no. His arm had been bandaged around the stump, a bulky white nub of bandages, and the arm that fluttered from it was a black and white ink creation.

Sai. Well. It was creative problem solving. What good it would have done, I didn't know. Luckily, there was nothing left to fight.

I let out a very long breath and threw Shabadaba on the ground. "Prince Michiru!" I called. "The usurper has been apprehended. He awaits your judgement. Captain Korega! I turn the castle over to you."

Korega stepped forward, giving me a faintly disbelieving look that was quickly hidden by professionalism. He didn't have many guards on his side, and certainly wouldn't have been able to capture the place so outnumbered, but there was a difference between that and keeping control now that it was his. Hopefully.

Frankly, it wasn't my problem anymore and I didn't really care.

Shabadaba started to groan, awoken by his rough treatment, but I turned away. To my team. Korega could deal with him.

"The gauntlet was able to reverse the change," I said, the words nearly tripping over themselves to get out of my mouth. It wasn't much, not enough to be reassuring, but it came together to form something like a plan. "And I was able to retrieve it. If we return to Konoha, Tsunade-sama should be able to-"

"Shut up," Shikamaru croaked, stumbling forward. I was there before I registered moving, a low grade body flicker tucking myself up against his chest. He was heavy, leaning most of his weight against me. "Don't you ever- don't you ever do that again."

I stroked my hand over his back, checked his temperature and pulse. Too hot and too fast. "It's okay," I said. "Shh, everything is okay."

Over his shoulder I caught Kiba's eye. Mission complete, I signed one handed. Return ASAP.

Kiba nodded, slowly.

Yeah, we were going to have problems there. But I could only deal with one at a time and Kiba was not my priority.

In the background, I could hear the minster speaking, a virulent storm of self-righteous justification. Michiru's responses cut through it, sounding more and more shaken, why did you, how could you, it was all about money?

"Once we get back to Konoha it'll be okay," I repeated, shutting them out. "We'll get a ship back right away."

If only it could be so simple.

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The rocking of the ship was making me queasy.

I was flat on my back on the deck, which wasn't really helping, but Shikamaru was using my stomach as a pillow and I didn't want to move. The painkillers made him sleepy and tired but they were about all I could do for him, except obsessively checking the injury. The place where flesh turned to stone was heavily bruised and inflamed and I was using medical jutsu trying to keep the tissue from dying, but if I tried to revert it then I'd have to deal with the bleeding and possibly infection and all kinds of other complications. And if Tsunade could fix it, it was better to leave it untouched, surely?

I didn't know if I was making the right decision.

It was easier to focus on the motion of the waves. Easier to blame it for the nausea.

I squinted at the sun, high overhead. "Icarus is flying too close to the sun," I sung lowly, memories of the song stirred by the searing sunlight and the performance I'd given not too long ago. "Icarus's life, it has only just begun."

A shadow blocked the glare from my eyes. Sai edged closer, sat down beside my head.

"Icarus is flying towards an early grave…"

"An interesting story," Sai said blandly. "Highlighting the wisdom of following orders."

I squinted up at him, tilting my head back to look at him. "I think it's really about the price of pride and recklessness," I said. "And the tragedy when it's the young and the bright that die. But I guess you're not wrong."

All of which seemed really ironic right about now. Maybe he was thinking the same thing.

"I stayed with the ship," Sai said. Not quite defiantly. Not quite. "Like you ordered."

"I know you did," I said and smiled at him. "It was good. You did good. Thank you." He had, he really had. His ink clones had been directed – instructed? – well enough to keep the mission in mind. His ink bird had made it so much easier to wrap everything up at the end. He'd looked out for Shikamaru.

Something about him relaxed.

We sat in silence. I started to pet Shikamaru's hair.

"What was the stone?"

I froze. Dammit.

"How much," I asked carefully, "do you have to report?"

Sai blinked down at me. He didn't try to pretend he didn't know what I was talking about. "Everything I saw with my own eyes," he said, contemplatively.

Which meant that what happened at the castle was safe. Sai could, most certainly, guess what had happened there. But he'd only seen the aftermath.

It wasn't much and he wasn't promising much but… it was a very careful line he was drawing.

I groped around on the deck until I found his hand and squeezed it. "I don't deserve you," I said, almost tiredly.

What had Sai done for us? Risked everything to tell us the truth, risked going against Danzo. Was going to lie. And what had we done for him in turn? Nothing. Could promise nothing, even, except vague hope that in future we could circumvent ROOT.

And even with that knowledge, I opened my mouth and lied. "I'm working on a chakra storage project for my clan," I said. "It's supposed to store chakra – or jutsu – in an object, and crystal matrices are the most stable. But it doesn't really work. As you saw."

None of it was a lie. Exactly.

Sai nodded, eyes bright and sharp. "A research project would have records," he said, cautiously.

I nodded. "It does." I squeezed his hand again. "It's not a secret."

If Danzo investigated, it could be verified. I would just look like a fool, pinning my hopes on something that could never work.

Clearly not a lie either.

"I see," Sai said. He disentangled his hand from mine. I heard the shuffling of paper, just out of my line of sight. Then the scratch of pencil on paper.

"What are you working on?" I asked, letting my eyes slip mostly closed.

Paper shuffled. "I want to draw a manga," Sai said.

"That's cool," I said with a hum. Maybe Kiba had been onto something introducing him to Samurai Genji after all. "What's it about?"

Sai paused. There were a lot of pauses in this conversation. "I don't know," he said. "Do you have a story for it?"

"A manga story, huh?" I had several. But which one to tell him? I had no doubt Danzo would go through everything Sai did, so something like Bleach – invading Soul Society to rescue one person – or One Piece with its freedom from government would just be adding fuel to the fire. Maybe Inuyasha – the time travelling well wouldn't even be so unusual.

Or.

The idea of forcing Danzo to read a story where the main characters were literally soldiers of love and justice was just too good to pass up.

I opened my eyes and smiled. "Okay. So. A long time ago, there was a kingdom on the moon called the Silver Millennium –"

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The ship was the slowest part of our journey – once we hit the shore I called Heijomaru back to help us run.

"I am pleased to see you well, summoner," he rumbled, flicking an ear back and forth. "There was some concern over your state of affairs."

"Thank you," I said, a little nervously. Fleeing from battle was one thing – being used as transport was quite another. "And thank you for your help. I'm afraid I have another favour to ask of you, though."

It wasn't that Shikamaru couldn't run, it wasn't his legs that were damaged, after all, but that kind of sustained exertion was also really strenuous and wouldn't be good for him

Luckily, Heijomaru didn't refuse. We were able to make it back to the gates of Konoha in just over a day, which was fair timing.

Not good enough, I thought. But the best we could do. Those two things had never seemed so different.

"We're heading to the hospital first," I told the gate guard. "Please send a runner to the Hokage to let her know she will be needed."

He looked like he was going to protest, so I gave him a perfectly level stare that belied how very not level I was.

He raised his hands. "It's on your head," he said.

"Yes," I agreed. "It is."

I dragged Shikamaru inside. Kiba paced alongside us, two steps off, like he had the whole trip.

"I'm heading to the clinic," he said, without looking at me. "I'll hand my report in later." He didn't wait for a reply before taking off. Not that I would have said anything.

"You can be dismissed as well, Sai," I said, absently. I felt, more than saw, him leave.

And then it was just me and Shikamaru and the flurry of the hospital. I was struck with the sheer wrongness of it, as I helped Shikamaru inside – it was usually the other way around. Shikamaru got through his missions without injury. It was me that-

The first nurse handled Shikamaru with a professional, brisk sympathy, for triage and assessment. They took blood and ran tests and gave him painkillers, which was good because no matter how well stocked my medkit was it hadn't exactly had enough.

And then they unwound the bandages over his arm, and the situation was upgraded pretty quickly. Tsunade didn't come immediately, but since I'd already sent for her it was probably faster than it should have been.

"Tell me what happened," Tsunade said, hands glowing a gentle green as she ran her own diagnostics.

Shikamaru was silent.

I took a deep breath and spun the gauntlet out of my hammerspace. The smell of charred flesh filled the air because it still happened to be on Ishidate's arm. It was still warm, perfectly preserved in storage space like I'd only cut it off minutes ago.

"One of our enemies during this mission possessed the ability to petrify flesh to stone," I started. "Using this gauntlet. I believe it manipulates and injects natural energy…"

And once I'd started it was near impossible to stop talking, describing what little I'd seen of the gauntlet in use – how Ishidate had managed to reverse the change – what it had done to the King and how he'd died, what had happened to Shikamaru and what we'd done after that to help him.

"But Ishidate was able to reverse it!" I repeated. "And I collected all… all of… I have a storage scroll. It should be possible."

Tsunade was looking at me with something that looked faintly like pity in her eyes.

It was asking a miracle of her, and she hadn't even seen how many pieces it was in. I knew that. But we'd had miracles before. It wasn't impossible. Just very, very difficult.

"Leave it here," she instructed. "Then wait outside."

I looked at Shikamaru. He didn't protest it. Didn't ask me to stay.

I rocked back on my heels and reluctantly moved from my guard position beside the bed, for the first time since we'd entered this room. I didn't want to, but you didn't argue with Tsunade.

I sank into a chair in the waiting room.

So. That was that.

In some strange way, I felt relieved. I shouldn't have; nothing was fixed, nothing was better. But I'd got us home. I'd handed Shikamaru off to someone who was more equipped to help, to the person who was best equipped to help. If there was anything to be done for him now, it wasn't up to me to do it.

My knee jiggled as my foot tapped against the floor. I stared down the quiet hallway. The door remained shut.

I got up.

Someone had to go let mum and dad know we were back.

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Shikamaru was kept in the hospital overnight, with no word to us what was going on. No word to me, anyway. I suspected Dad knew more but he didn't come home either.

"Well," Mum said bracingly. "Let's get you taken care of. You're alright, aren't you, dear?"

"Fine," I said, tiredly. "My armour did its job." Between the underarmour and the vest, even the hits I'd taken hadn't been bad. And they'd healed, anyway, when I'd transformed.

"Good, good," she said. "That's what it's for."

But even after coming home, cleaning up and repacking, I didn't want to sleep. I was tired enough, but I didn't want to.

Instead, I pulled out a pen and paper and started writing my mission report. There was a lot to say.

I didn't… I didn't skim over what I'd done. Hedged on the how maybe, but I'd made mistakes and I knew them. By the time I was finished, it was full of scathing indictment and dangerous phrases.

…[failed to anticipate]… [abandoned the mission objective]… [separated from the team]… [emotional reactions]… [failed to listen to recommendations]… [unsuitable for leadership role]…

Any one of those was probably enough to get me in trouble. All of it? Well. They would know how things went down.

I handed it in the next morning, when there had still been no word on what was happening to Shikamaru. He wasn't even allowed visitors, which either meant things were more serious than I'd thought, or that he was being constantly pulled between appointments. Which at least meant they were doing something, didn't it?

Ino and Chouji were both out of the village on a mission, and I was honestly so relieved about that. I couldn't imagine telling them.

But Tenten wasn't, and I dawdled as long as I could, feeling guiltier by the minute and dragged myself over to Team Gai's training field because she needed to know, too.

"Hey," I said quietly. "You have a minute?"

"Sure," she replied, ducking away from the boys. Lee gave an enthusiastic wave. "Welcome back. How was your mission?"

I nodded and cleared my throat. "About that. Tenten-" I'd had the words planned out, and they deserted me right when I needed them. "Shikamaru was injured. He's in the hospital. He's going to be fine! Tsunade-sama is looking after him. But… he was injured. That's all. I thought you should know."

Her face went through a series of very complicated expressions, settling on hesitance. It was one thing to know it was a possibility, intellectually, that people got hurt on missions. It was another to see it happen. It was something else to just hear about it in the aftermath. "What happened?"

"He-" the explanation stuck in my throat. I forced it out. "His arm was damaged. Tsunade-sama should be able to save it. But, um, he's not allowed visitors at the moment. So they're probably still working on it."

"Right," Tenten said, like she wasn't sure what to do next.

I sympathized. "Yeah. That was. That was all. I'll, um, let you get back to training. Or whatever."

What did you do after someone dropped information like that on you? I didn't know either.

I beat a hasty retreat.

But it wasn't to be. As I walked back past the Hokage Tower, a familiar voice called my name, and Inoichi's hand dropped down onto my shoulder.

"There you are," he said. "I've been looking for you."

Shit, I thought, as he steered me into the building and up to one of the briefing rooms. What now?

"I just had a few questions about your mission report," he said easily, pressing me into a chair and sitting across the table. He dropped a familiar scroll on the table between us.

I squinted at him. "Why do you have it?"

"There were a few concerns raised," Inoichi said smoothly. "And someone had to evaluate it. Tsunade-sama is very busy right now and obviously your father has conflicts of interest, so can't be the one to do it."

"But the next best thing is okay?" I asked, a little skeptically. But I slouched in my chair a little, because this was something I'd expected. Just not so fast, or from Inoichi.

He flashed me a bright smile. "I had to call in a few favours," he said, like it was a joke. "But I think we can get this sorted out easily enough. There's just a couple of lines to clarify." He slipped another paper onto the desk, filled with his own neat handwriting. "I have suggestions, if you need them."

I glanced at it and sank further down into my chair. "With respect," I said, "my report is a true and factual account of what happened."

"Two of your team have handed in their reports already," Inoichi said. "Neither of them contain any negative assessment of your capabilities. And I'm willing to wager your last team member won't either."

"That doesn't change the facts," I said quietly. "Even if they didn't report it, they didn't agree at the time." Kiba had basically mutinied on me. Or whatever the justified word for mutiny was. Calling no confidence and taking over the role himself. I'd praised him for it, in my report, for keeping a cool head and managing when I hadn't. He'd been right. Objectively, Kiba had done everything he'd been trained to do, perfectly.

"We all make decisions on missions," Inoichi said gently. He reached across the table and touched my hand. "We all react. The decision you made wasn't a disaster. Shikako, listen to me. Maybe no one would have agreed to let you go off on your own, but you succeeded. In hindsight… it looks very much like the right call. Because it worked."

I huffed in frustration. "Hindsight doesn't matter. It was an emotional decision. It was reckless. I shouldn't- I shouldn't be allowed to make those calls."

"Hindsight does matter," Inoichi said firmly. "Because results matter. If you told me, right now, that the entire thing was planned from the start then I would believe you. It looks like a plan that worked. Yes, maybe it was reckless. Yes, it could have gone very wrong. But it didn't and those are things you can improve on. Having this on your record isn't going to help you in any way."

He squeezed my hand. I stared at it, feeling cracked open.

"I know you feel like you should be punished for it," he said gently. "But what happened to Shikamaru isn't your fault."

I couldn't breathe.

This, I thought irritably, is exactly why you don't talk to Inoichi.

"I wouldn't improve it because I'm not sorry," I said, defiantly. But I didn't look up at him. I couldn't risk catching his eyes. "That I left the team. That I went to the castle alone. That I killed them. I would make the same choice again. That's why it needs to be in the report."

Inoichi sat back. I let go of his hand and pressed mine flat against the table. There was a moment of silence. I didn't think, not for a second, that he had given up.

But I was feeling stubborn, too. Like I wanted to dig my heels in. I'd written that report for a reason, and yeah, maybe that reason was spite. I was the type of person to cut off my nose to spite my face, as the saying went.

"You know-" Inoichi started to say.

Then the door to the room slid open and Kakashi-sensei ambled inside. He didn't have his Icha-Icha out, but he still managed to make the entire thing look coincidental and casual. "Oh, Shikako. Fancy seeing you here."

Inoichi stared at him. "We're in the middle of something here, Hatake," he said.

Kakashi-sensei gave him a cheerful eye curving smile. And totally ignored the suggestion to leave. "I heard something about you having an interesting mission report," he said, and plucked it off the table. "Tsk, tsk. Those desk ninja really do gossip a lot."

Inoichi made an aborted grab for it that really didn't stand a chance of succeeding. "Must you really?" he asked.

"Don't worry, I'll hand it back in," Kakashi-sensei said dismissively. "Eventually."

So, never. Really.

I sighed.