inbox;

[craters]

❝Hi, you've reached Haruno Sakura. If this is a medical emergency, please leave your name, location, and a brief description of the injuries.❞

𝗧𝗘𝗫𝗧 🌸 𝗔𝗨𝗗𝗜𝗢 🌸 𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡

（ ooc; if you'd like to handwave her healing/helping your character, feel free to reply and just put HANDWAVED in the subject line. helps me keep track! ）

Comments

[craters]

（ she was dreading this conversation from the moment she felt the absence of naruto's chakra, how bleak and cold and broken the world seemed in the aftermath. she has looked, in her own way, and even visited his door in the shadowlands.

maybe cowardice is the reason she didn't reach out first. she has no idea how volatile sasuke will be in the wake of naruto's absence, and she feels like she's only ever been good at making him worse. ）

Me neither.

Where are you?

[chokuto]

The Barrens.

[He is standing not far from the church where he'd first gone with Naruto. Alone now, the landscape seems more bleak than before, shrouded in shadow and ruinous buildings.

It feels desperate to contact Sakura at all. A part of him rebels at the idea of rejoining in person, but it doesn't successfully take up much presence in his mind.]

Close to the cliffs on the southwestern shore.

[craters]

（ it's not exactly an invitation, but it's not refusal, either. almost, she says she's on her way, that she'll come meet him... but she worries if she says as much there's that little kernel of niggling wariness that he'll leave before she gets there. she'll be just in time to feel his chakra retreat beyond her senses, and by then it will be too late.

so, she goes.

her steps echo strangely in the ruins, and she doesn't even try to move quietly as she approaches him, stopping a reasonable distance away. now that she's here, she doesn't even know what to say, cycling through and dismissing a half-dozen platitudes in her head with the knowledge he'd probably hate them.

finally: ）

It'll go faster with a grid search. I have a map, we can block off areas, split up and communicate over the Netherwork.

[chokuto]

[He waits for her. The view from the cliffs is a stunning vista of desolate land and a moody sky, but it allows him vantage, and he can see her approach — a speck of pale color moving swiftly toward him, chakra signature blooming brighter as their proximity heightens. Then she's in front of him. Not much seemingly changed since their last encounter in the Shadowlands, though he wonders. What has happened in her life here since then?

Sasuke looks away when he answers.]

I've already searched this area. [He's spent a few days tirelessly hunting the wilderness, wearing down the reserve of his own chakra. But it's as much as he can do.] I don't think I've missed anywhere. There's just one place I haven't gone.

The Labyrinth.

[And the real reason he's reached out at last.]

[craters]

（ her jaw is set, a muscle ticks there with the clench of it. ）

All right. But if we're going to go, I need your word you won't leave my side. We'll need to stay together if we hope to come out of it. Given everything else I've heard about that place...

（ the marshalling of fear is an old habit, one she's gotten better at as time marches onward. but why would naruto have gone there in the first place? what might have driven him there? or, the other possibility... ）

We should also discuss what it might mean if we can't find him at all.

（ her mouth is dry as she says it. her stomach a tight clench of nausea. but she's too pragmatic not to have considered it — she doesn't have naruto's boundless hope and faith in others. he's strong, but that hasn't proven itself an effective shield here. what would have happened if he learned the truth of soulforging, for instance? she can see him trying to storm that terrible place all by himself. ）

[chokuto]

[Sasuke turns partially, still looking away, in that usual manner of body language that communicates cold aloofness. As if he must place that distance between them and look ahead — at the next destination, somewhere in the Labyrinth — to remain calm. The next goal.]

We don't have any reason to discuss it now when we don't know for sure.

[The resistance is sharp, even though the tone that delivers it is low and even.]

I'll stay with you. That's why I called you out here. Only you and I can do this together.

[craters]

（ when she was younger, she had always put more emphasis on his words. the things he said, kind or cruel. looking at him now, peeling back layers of knowledge and awareness and familiarity, that second language is louder now. no longer the esoteric, unknowable tongue that a young girl couldn't have hoped to parse.

maybe her understanding isn't perfect. maybe it will never be perfect, but after a moment she looks away from the figure he cuts at the cliffside. ）

I didn't mean now.

（ she doesn't want to mean ever. sasuke knows loss and pain better than she does, this is a re-tread of old ground for him. but he also has a tendency to carry those things alone, or at the very least, to share them only, grudgingly, with the one person who...

she exhales sharply, and then starts forwards. towards the labyrinth. naruto had better be in there somewhere. it's better than the alternative. ）

Let's go.

[chokuto]

[Naruto isn't in the Labyrinth. Nowhere they look, which considering the depth and immensity of that twisted and duplicitous underground maze, is not a conclusion that brings peace or satisfaction. Their search is a grueling effort of survival — perhaps the most difficult he's encountered since waking in the Netherworld — where their instincts as shinobi are exercised to the fullest, in the case of both navigation and defending against Spectres. Neither of them come to any serious physical harm, but there are a few close calls. With Rinnegan and Sharingan in effect, he can feel his chakra draining swiftly — and not all jutsu work as they should. His former teammate will find that Sasuke is single-minded but practical; none of her suggestions are ignored while they search, but neither is he completely cooperative. A few times he disregards Sakura altogether to go another way, forcing her to follow.

It doesn't matter when every direction they choose is useless, and no real ground is grained. After a few hours, low on stamina, they're forced back to the surface through a fissure in the Shadowlands.

Sasuke is quiet. He puts his back to her, stumbling over to one of the thin, malnourished tributaries that weaves through the barren landscape, and kneels down to wash the grime off his face one-handed. He's bleeding from a shallow injury on his left bicep, but even that stinging pain is mild to the sensation he feels upon realization that they're never going to find Naruto. Not like this.

He's gone somewhere they can't reach.

Unless she stops him, Sasuke stands and begins to walk away, toward the scattered field of doors.]