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]

（ 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.]