Chapter 62

"Well, it's up to you really," she said passively, closing a cupboard door, "I was thinking we could go out for our afternoon stroll, or we could skip that and go directly to object recognition, or we could go out into the jungle that's your backyard and begin preparing you to get back on training—but I wouldn't recommend that…I want the grass to be mowed first, and the weeds cleared out. I was going to hire a group of genin for that."

He smirked slightly; "Naruto would disapprove of you giving a lame mission to a group of capable ninja."

Sakura gave a musical laugh, "I suppose he would be, but if he has any complaints, he can do it himself—without pay. Anyways, here's my question for you: what do you want to do while I'm unpacking?"

"I'll keep you company," he replied after a moment; he didn't need to see in order to know that Sakura was giving him a surprised look. He gave a light shrug—it wasn't like he had anything better to do anyways.

Sakura spent the better part of the afternoon unpacking her things, putting her packed clothes in the other end of Sasuke's closet, and setting up her toiletries in the bathroom out of the way. She took the small lamp that was sitting on Sasuke's desk and set it up in a convenient gap between her futon and the closet door. She also managed to find a place to put a number of her medical textbooks where Sasuke wouldn't accidentally stumble over them; she wanted to keep on top of her studies, despite the time she would have off from the hospital.

Sasuke had sat around on his bed, his back against the wall, silent for the most part. She tried to make chitchat, but his responses were direct, abrupt and impossible to build on. It was hard to tell what Sasuke was feeling most of the time, and she was wondering what he was thinking about that caused him to be distant today—more distant than usual, she added mentally. There wasn't much for him to do around here—if he had liked to read, it was impossible for him to do so now, and it was to early for him to be training; he still was having difficulties standing on his own for extended periods of time.

The garden was not ideal for training at the moment either, as she had said earlier to him, and this set back plans yet another day. She knew that Sasuke didn't like to sit around and do nothing; he would always find some sort of training to do, to refine his skills. But wait—there was perhaps something they could do as far as training went.

"Sasuke?" Sakura inquired straightening up and stretching out as she finished organizing the last of her things, "I think I thought of something we could do for training."

"Hn?"

She smiled slightly at the inquisitive sound, "We could practice your fire ninjutsus. You haven't been at practice with those in days—I'm sure you don't want to get rusty."

"There's a small lake in a park near here," he told her, reaching for her arm as she came to help him stand up, "I used to practice there in order to keep from burning anything down."

"We'll go there then," she smiled, leading him carefully from the room.

The journey through the house was fine, as Sasuke knew the area, and apart from a little miscalculation in relativity—being a lot larger than he was when he was thirteen—he did just fine. The trek through the garden was a little more treacherous as she was afraid a branch would poke his newly healed eyes. It was when they were maneuvering around a particularly invasive caragana bush that Sakura found herself rather frustrated.

"You know, this really is impractical," she remarked with a frown, hating the introduced species—caragana thrived in Konoha and if it was left alone could cause a ton of trouble when someone tried to get rid of them.

After making it through the yard again, Sasuke told her that there was no spare key to the front gate, which meant they'd have to jump over it again. Considering that Kanaye was unavailable to assist Sasuke, and they had no idea if there were any people on the other side of the gate, Sakura was a little uncertain about the jump.

Sakura had jokingly suggested that Sasuke use the Chidori to blast the gate away, but she received a blunt and serious answer of 'no.' It was only after Sakura had checked that there were no people on the other side that the decided it was probably best if they just jump, whether Kanaye was there or not. As they sailed through the air, Sakura prayed that they would land all right, because she really did not think she was up to healing any snapped bones at the moment. Apart from Sasuke stumbling so terribly that it was embarrassing, he managed to get over unscathed, and Sakura wondered dimly in her mind how on earth she could help him regain his jumping skills.

There were numerous, unmerciful stares at the two of them as they walked down the road, Sasuke giving her directions, and Sakura glowered at anyone who had their gaze lingering too long on the both of them, knowing that the gossip around this part of town was notorious, due mostly to the fact of its history. Numerous local myths and legends had sprung up everywhere, mostly involving the ghosts of the Uchiha clans, vengeful spirits, etc. Sakura was determined to make sure that Sasuke would never hear any of these rumors, knowing that they would probably make him angry and feel that the memory of the Uchihas was being disgraced.

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