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"Why are we doing this." Sakura shuddered, glancing around at the several ghosts that only she could see. "Ghosts aren't even real, Naruto." She sniffed, staring directly at Shisui, and he gasped.
"Sakura-chan! You can't just say that! Someone's gonna hear you, and then they'll haunt you forever!" Naruto claimed, throwing paranoid glances around and not even getting close to look at any of them. She took the chance to harden her stare into a glare at in a way she was sure conveyed her message: they already do.
"Pft. Like I'm scared of ghosts. Grow up Naruto." She scoffed, pissed beyond all measures that she was here in the first place. Speaking of people that didn't want to be here- "How'd you get Sasuke-kun to go along with this, anyway?"
"I- I have. Unfinished business." Sasuke spoke for himself, and Sakura was stuck between laughing at the phrasing and wailing at the context, as she glanced at several of his relatives that were summoned just by him being in a seance circle. "It's worth a shot. What's the worst that could happen?"
"We could get killed!" Naruto informs, all too cheerfully. "If we give a ghost power AND make it angry, it can totally kill us!" He claimed, and Sakura snorted.
"please. Like I'd ever let a ghost kill either of you- not a chance. Both because Ghosts aren't real and because, if they were, they'd be rightfully scared of me." She hissed, smirking at her boys and catching Shisui hide behind another Uchiha dramatically in the corner of her eye.
It was ridiculous, and could, in fact, end horribly if they messed up- which was why she was here, even if it put her in danger of being outed as- whatever she was, exactly. Naruto and Sasuke would, undoubtedly between the two of them, offend someone and get killed by a Specter. She came to make sure that didn't happen.
Really, she was just counting her blessings that she talked Naruto out of inviting Kakashi-nii. That would be a nightmare-and-a-half.
"So, how does this work?" Sasuke asked, carefully, and Naruto lit up.
"Oh! Well it's easy! First, you prepare questions to ask dead people! Then you pick a medium- it's gonna be me, since I'm the only one who knows what to do- and they talk to the ghosts for you, and then tell you what they said! Oh, and you have to hold hands or something? And there's candles?" He explained, and Sakura almost screamed. Dear sage, they was hopeless.
"Ok, no. Fuck that- fuck it! I'm medium, because Naruto will die." She demanded, and Naruto frowned.
"Oi, what do you know, Sakura-chan? You don't even believe in ghosts!"
"Maybe not, but that doesn't mean I didn't do my research. I'm the medium. Or do you want to read the 300 page tome I dug up for this?" She bluffed, and Naruto blanched.
"Ah- nah, I'm good, Dattebayo. Thanks." He passed, squeezing both of their hands, and she couldn't help but squeeze back.
"That's what I thought." She sniffed, letting go of his hand and pulling up her bag. She pulled out several candles- 7 of them, to be exact. 4 white, 1 violet, 1 blue, and 1 silver. Then she placed an incense stand in the middle of the circle of candles, lighting the cinnamon stick.
"What's-" Naruto started to question, but she was already talking.
"The candles attract spirits- different colors give off different energies. The incense is also to lure spirits in- it's the only thing they can smell, ya know. They're like hound dogs, with it." She claimed, turning to Sasuke. "Now, is there anyone specific you're trying to summon?" She inquired, almost reluctantly- but he nodded.
"Either Shisui Uchiha or Izumi Uchiha." He almost croaked, and Sakura glared at Shisui. She just knew that this wasn't going to end well.
Shisui loved Sasuke, he did, but he would always love Itachi more. Even if it hurt Sasuke, he'd do anything to try and steer the boy away from killing his older brother.
"Ok. I'll see what I can do, I guess." She nodded. "Relax. Hold hands. Close your eyes. Try to get in touch with the spirit world, or whatever." She sighed, not bothering to close her own eyes. She could See just fine, after all. "We are gathered here tonight to contact the spirit of Izumi Uchiha." She stated, begged, hoped against hope that she'd show up- but a minute passed and she was no where to be seen, and Sasuke was getting anxious, so she continued- even if she wanted to lunge across the table when Shisui gave a little wave at her. "Or, in her absence, Shisui Uchiha, or in his absence any other Uchiha." She added, a silent plea for one of the other Uchiha to speak up. Shisui flashed his teeth at them, and they faded away. "We seek closure on the Uchiha massacre." She finished the introduction, and Shisui sat on top of the table. Because he was an ass, and had a tendency to act out when he was nervous- he was talking to Sasuke for the first time in years, after all.
"Yo." He grinned, and she took a deep breath.
"I..hear an annoyingly cheerful greeting." She relayed tensely, and Sasuke stiffened.
"Is it him?" He demanded, and Shisui grinned.
"In the flesh, Sasuke-kun! Or- well- not literally. You get what I mean." The ghost scowled.
"He says so? But he seems way too cheerful to be an Uchiha. I say we call it now and leave." Sakura prompted desperately, almost begged, but Sasuke shook his head stubbornly. Naruto squeezed her hand tightly, probably reeling from apparently being in the same room as a ghost.
God, she wished she could be that adorably in fearful awe of the spiritual, instead of always ready to throw hands with a ghost for one reason or another. Specifically this ghost, 78% of the time.
"No. That sounds like him." He took a deep breath, thinking, and then asked- "Did Itachi really kill him?"
"No. No, not at all, fuck that, I'm going to-" Shisui denied and ranted immediately, and Sakura cut him off promptly with a hiss.
A medium cannot lie during a seance, Inner rang in her head- a warning she was hesitant to heed. Fuck, why was she doing this?
"No. He seems angry that you would think so." She relayed tersely, and Sasuke was as tense as a rubber band beside her. His hand wouldn't even twitch. Naruto looked tempted to open his eyes and check on the still ravenette.
"Then how did he die? How did Itachi get his Mangekyo?" He demanded.
"He killed himself to stop another pursuer from getting his Mangekyo- what is that?- and ran into Itachi. He gave Itachi his remaining eye- the other one was plucked out by said pursuer- and killed himself in front of Itachi so that he would be adequately traumatized." she relayed, familiar with the story. He first told it when she was 9 and applying to graduate early- he didn't really approve, and insisted that the Shinobi world would chew her up and spit her out, trying to scare her away from it with the most gruesome stories she had ever heard to this day- and she was haunted by specters.
God, for as nice as he seemed, he was the absolute worst sometimes. Most times. Why were they friends?
"Then- He lied? About the only way to get it being by killing your most precious person?" Sasuke asked, and he sounded like the world had been turned on it's axis. Like he wasn't sure of the color of the sky anymore, much less the specifics of- whatever this was.
Shisui was still very tight lipped about the Mangyekyo, whatever it was, even after all this time. Despite the circumstances, she couldn't deny she was excited to finally learn more about it.
"...Kinda? You have to watch them die." He relayed hesitantly, and Sakura grimaced and repeated him before clearing her throat pointedly.
"Hey Sasuke-kun, all due respect- what the fuck are you talking about?" She prodded, but he was still. Almost catatonic. "Ok, cool. That's enough of this. Thanks, asshole, for traumatizing my teammate." She spat, adding a mutter of "And me, but what's new there, right?". He almost looked apologetic, but still opened his mouth to protest her cutting the conversation short, but she finished first with a deceptively cheerful "Go away now! Ta-ta!"
Sakura hated him sometimes. She was convinced that letting Naruto get them killed was almost preferable to this.
She stood briskly, hands yanked from her teammates, and turned on the lights in Naruto's blacked out kitchen- the darkest room in his house. The room was cleaned by her without ceremony, while Naruto carefully tried to help Sasuke. She bit her lip.
For the first time in a while, there weren't any ghosts in her vicinity. Shisui must have been repentant enough to give them some privacy and scare everyone else away, even the specters that were starting to creep in, attracted by Sasuke's terrible mental state. She sniffed- he' have to do more then that to get forgiveness and he knew it, but it was a decent start.
"Wow, Sakura-chan, you were really good at that!" Naruto spoke up hesitantly, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work, it really just made her glare harder at the candles she packed up, but he didn't seem to notice. "We should do this again sometime, that was really cool!"
"No!" Sakura hissed at the same time Sasuke's raspy voice spoke up with a quiet-but-solid "Yes.", and Naruto let out a nervous sound as he tried to figure what he was supposed to do with the opposing answers.
"You got through to Shisui! We have to do this again!" Sasuke growled, almost a threat, and Sakura couldn't stop herself from throwing her arms up.
"Sasuke, we didn't get five minutes into the sermon before you started to mentally collapse. I can't just let that happen." She tried to reason.
"It's not up to you!" He argued, glaring in a way that would be scary if she wasn't haunted by the eyes of specters. "It's my clan, Sakura. My family. You don't get any say in whether I try to talk to them. It's none of your business." He retracts, storming out of the apartment. Naruto gulps.
"Should we-"
"No. Leave him to it." She scoffs. "You can't do a Sermon with less then three people, and he doesn't have any other friends. He can't do much of anything by himself." She sighed, dragging a hand down her face and resigning herself to helping Sasuke when he came begging for her to try again in- say, a week? Maybe 2?
She's the only one that can communicate with the dead that she knows of, and she knows a lot more then she should. He'll get desperate and ask her, and she'll do it because whether she liked it or not he was right and it wasn't her place to determine if he could talk to his dead relatives. She just hoped that she could either A. exorcise Shisui so she never has to speak with him again (unfortunately unlikely, both because he's grown on her like a fungus and he's impossible to get rid of) or B. convince Sasuke to talk to someone, anyone else (also unlikely, given how close Shisui and Itachi were.)
"Okay." Naruto agrees uncertainly, and the silence between them is awkward in it's rarity. Neither of them were very good at being quiet.
"Don't you...owe me Anmitsu?" She hedged, pulling at her hair absently to alleviate whatever left over tension she still felt. Naruto started bouncing as he drew himself out of his thoughts, as he always did, and she almost couldn't tell the difference between his bouncing and his nodding to her prompt.
"...yeah. Yeah yeah, that's true dattebayo! Let's go!" He rushed, running out of the unsettlingly-still apartment, and she followed him, silently counting the money she worked with Sasuke to steal from Kakashi-nii. It wasn't like Naruto could afford to treat her to anmitsu, afterall, though the notion was sweet.
And, with practiced ease, she went about her night, refusing to give any more thought to the horrors of the evening. For now she was in the moment, all ghosts absent (except for Rin-nee, who found her while she was eating her third helping of Anmitsu and alternated between scolding and praising her theft from Kakashi-nii), enjoying a treat. Everything else could wait.
Shisui, in particular, could wait. She had to find a way to kill him again first, after all. Asshole.