Sasuke had to remind himself that Lee was new to the Institute and, like all the others before him, simply wouldn't be able to see that the impossible was more than possible but daily here. There a moment's darkness that passed over Sasuke's face at the notion of fakes -- he had met a fake here too real, had believed in it himself too fully to know anything other than that what he knew was what he knew. It had been more than two years since he had last seen Sakura, Naruto, or Kakashi, but there were ways to know them that were impossible to quantify to someone else.

He was Sharingan-born: there were always ways to know.

"You were here," he said, voice cold enough to cut across Lee's excessive confidence. Even as he spoke, he could hear the spread of the faintly hollow cheer of the nurses spreading across the field, ushering patients back inside. "You were only here for a day and a night. Others have been here more than once, for longer periods of time, and with each return nobody remembers the last time they were here.

"But I know them."