676Bit random, but is anyone else just dying to know what Silver Queen intended for the "Daughter of the Forest" title? Some sort of ability to become a Sage or, like, Yggdrasil or something to do with reincarnated souls or her semi-godhood status…even a prophecy? I really don't know, but I want to.
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Chapter Fourteen
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There was no reprieve, not really, not when my brain kept pounding with whys and why-nots and what-ifs, not when Sasuke stared onwards, blank-faced. The terrain we traversed was familiar, yet we moved like foreign interlopers, sneaking and canny. We ran through the night. We didn't sleep. I didn't think we could if we tried. Sasuke was going through the motions, stopping when I stopped, drinking when I drank. We charted a haphazard course circling Konoha at a great distance. Sooner than seemed possible, the sun rose.
I wondered if Tsunade had lived through the night.
The coming of dawn seemed to rouse Sasuke from insensate state. He stopped. When I realized, I backtracked. He looked at me with bloodshot eyes. "What are we doing?" he asked.
"Maintaining proximity to the village for information-gathering purposes while simultaneously avoiding patrols, traps, and other undesirable encounters."
"For how long?"
"Until Tsunade wakes up."
"And if she doesn't?"
"We make a decision then." Delay, delay, delay.
"We have to go back."
I blinked. "What?"
He turned to look at me more fully. "We have to go back," he said again. No, I hadn't misheard. "We have a responsibility to the village. As we speak, manpower is being diverted from the war effort to hunting us."
"True," I said slowly, mind turning.
"They'll have to reroute patrols, change call signs and passwords, move resupply bases."
"They'd have to do that anyway. Enemy ninja successfully infiltrated the village."
"They'll have to appoint an Acting Hokage. Kakashi-sensei was the natural choice, but now? Your dad's out for the same reason. They'll summon Danzo—I'll kill him if he surfaces. Who's left? Some half-dead Elder? There's Jiraiya, who's meant to be training Naruto."
"Asuma Sarutobi," I added. Paused. "Gai?"
"They'll be reshuffling command, and Cloud will take advantage. By staying hidden and silent, we aid our enemies. Konoha will never stop searching for us, not unless we turn ourselves in."
I hadn't anticipated this. Not at all. Where was this coming from? It felt like an impending disaster. If Sasuke decided that he had to return, there was little I could do to stop him. Or—a spark of hope—had he seen something I hadn't, some plan of action that had escaped me?
"We'd have to give ourselves up without an assurance of getting a chance to explain what happened," I said. "Not at the outset. We'll be separated instantly, and then…we won't know what's happening to the other of us."
"We can choose who to give ourselves up to."
Dad. Kakashi-sensei. Inoichi. Jiraiya. Ibiki. Even Anko. There were options.
"And when it's out of their hands?" I asked. "We wouldn't be left in the custody of people who'd believe us without question." They would, wouldn't they? Dad and Kakashi-sensei, they'd know without being told that Sasuke would never…right? What could they be thinking now? Did they even know yet? Possibly not. Shikamaru, Mum, Ino, Sakura, Kiba, they were being detained, questioned, practically ransacked for answers and explanations they couldn't begin to provide. I'd given them nothing to go from. Their safety lay in their ignorance; that's what I'd always believed. Shikamaru would have an inkling, though, if he found the Yamanaka I'd left in the woods. He or whoever he alerted would find the Root seal on the Yamanaka's tongue. As long as that information made it to the eyes and ears of someone with knowledge of Root…as long as someone could link the Yamanaka to Danzo, it would introduce a whole new level of intrigue. It would be enough to cast doubt on what was so apparent. I'd never be trusted again, not in an official capacity. No way. But there was a chance I might be exonerated by the next Hokage.
Sasuke, though. There was no getting around the fact that Sasuke attacked Tsunade. The burden of proof was on us. The faint flicker of hope spluttered and died.
"So we go back," I said woodenly. "You willingly provide them scraps of information just as easily shared by letter. Then what?"
His jaw tightened. "I'd be imprisoned, but leadership—your dad, Kakashi-sensei—they'd have clarity. They could act in Konoha's best interest without the unknowns hanging over their heads."
"And then?" I asked.
"The war has to end eventually."
"And then? Assuming Tsunade never wakes up. Assuming you aren't snatched up by Orochimaru." When Sasuke was silent, I continued. "You stay in prison for the rest of your life. That is, if you aren't executed."
He must see that. Was he actually willing to accept that it might come to that? I couldn't wrap my mind around the thought of Sasuke Uchiha submitting to lifelong imprisonment and total subjugation. Then again, this was not the Sasuke who'd betrayed Konoha and run off to be Orochimaru's disciple. This was a ninja, a jounin, who'd faithfully carried out the Hokage's will in service to the village, risking life and limb time and time again.
Or maybe he felt he deserved to be punished.
"I would be allowed to mount a defense, required even. The longer I stay on the run, the guiltier I look." His jaw clenched, almost spasming. "If I did this—"
"If?" Oh. A cold sensation crept through my chest. I felt—sorrow. Just…sadness. For him. Pity, too.
"Sasuke." I swallowed. "Sasuke, I'm sorry, but you have to believe—"
"I don't know what to believe!"
His sudden shout startled me. He was shaking. I was shaking.
"The Sharingan can't be fooled like that," he said desperately. "I can see chakra, and it was Orochimaru's. As for the body, I could pick out a picture of your elbow from a thousand others. I could do that with Tsunade. I could do that with anyone so long as I saw them one time through the Sharingan. So to suggest there would be a jutsu that could utterly confound the Sharingan without the slightest warning—"
"Sasuke."
"Impossible. There was nothing. Not the faintest waver of a jutsu being cast, and when I—" he choked. "When I rammed the saber through his chest, he said something. And the voice was not Tsunade's."
I was near to tears. "Sasuke."
"When every one of my senses is telling me one thing, and you are telling me another, what am I supposed to believe? How can I blindly accept that there's some hitherto unknown power so…insidious?"
I grasped his hand. He held it in a death grip. Face pale, pupils dilated. Mine mirrored his, I was sure.
"Sasuke, there is such a power."
"You can't know that."
"I can." Too far gone to pull back. He needed to know. I needed to tell him. I needed to have told him years ago. "Sasuke, there is more happening here than you realize."
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He let me lead us off again. Staying in one place too long made me twitchy, as did Sasuke himself, who watched me like one of the hawks he summoned. When we stopped again, we were, somewhat ironically, beyond the outskirts of Otofuku-Gai, where I'd once fallen under Tsukuyomi's thrall. There was a lake nearby that fed a river, which flowed into Land of Waves. I took the opportunity to fill a hastily sketched water scroll for Sasuke. Who knew where we would head next? Would we deliberately lose ourselves in the deserts of Wind or the rugged terrain of Earth? I was well-provisioned, but Sasuke would need stores of his own. I tucked the water scroll into a pocket.
It was at that point the last of Sasuke's patience frayed.
"Tell me. Whatever it is you aren't saying, I need to know. We have to plan. Classified missions or whatever be damned."
He had the wrong idea. There were no vows of silence being broken. There was only me, my past, and scrabbled-together bits of information pieced together haphazardly. Despite the fact that I had envisioned this scenario a hundred times, I was still lost. Some things I'd buried so deeply I couldn't and wouldn't dredge up. Other things, though…how much was too much? Too little?
I wet my lips and chewed on them. "I guess…it starts with Itachi actually."
He recoiled. Whatever he'd expected to hear, that wasn't it.
"When he went after Naruto, I questioned him. You remember, he and Kisame were there. We were nothing to them, but Itachi answered me. He gave up information on a secretive group of S-ranked ninja like it was nothing. I passed on the information to Jiraiya." I couldn't look at Sasuke. I could barely believe the words coming out of my mouth. "You know what happened next. I never told you what he showed me in Tsukuyomi, but you knew anyway."
He replied tersely, "My family."
I nodded, eyes closed. "The night of the massacre. Except…he got them wrong, some of them, more than half. They didn't die like he showed me—why was that? What was the point?"
"Wait, say that again," said Sasuke.
I breathed, let my spinning thoughts settle, and forged on. "I checked the autopsy reports of the Uchiha clan, all of them who died that night. More than half didn't match the manner of deaths he showed us in Tsukuyomi. And so, I wondered why. Why show us inaccurate depictions when the truth was no less gruesome? Why show us the severing of a carotid artery when the autopsy says it was the aorta? Why show us a senbon through the eye when it was his neck that was broken?"
"Does it matter?" Sasuke's voice was leaden. He would know, too, which person it was who supposedly died from a senbon driven through an eye into the brain. It was just the one person. Maybe Sasuke even knew his name. I did. I'd memorized it along with dozens of others.
"Maybe not," I replied. "I never said anything. Why would I? What would it prove? He could simply have misremembered, except that his Sharingan would grant perfect recall. Maybe he didn't care about the details."
Maybe he hadn't known the details.
Sasuke was composed, still as stone. Nothing I'd said was a revelation in and of itself.
"Nothing happened for a while," I said. "Then Naruto made a friend. He could make friends with a skunk. So there's this weirdo on our team asking a few too many questions about an S-rank mission and about Naruto himself, the jinchuriki. Sai was the first to hint at Danzo's plotting. He's limited in what he can say and the ways he can help. The seal, you know. He got me out of the hospital last time. He might have given himself away today."
It depended on how aware Danzo was or would be, if he recovered.
"That was the first time Danzo showed himself, when he came to Tsunade's house to announce my kidnapping. Prior to that, the shadowy mastermind could have been any Elder or a clan head or some other well-connected ninja. Someone connected with Anbu. I couldn't do anything. That's what I thought. Tsunade was handling it."
Therein lay the guilt. How could Tsunade make an informed decision when I hadn't given her sufficient information?
"Then came the KMP safe. The Uchiha had records of Root agents."
"My family was onto him." There was grim satisfaction in Sasuke's voice. Some pride even.
"Right." I closed my eyes. Opened them again. "So consider this. The Uchiha uncovered an Elder's treasonous activities. They built evidence against him. Then, they conveniently died."
His expression, which had been stoic, spasmed. Blood steadily drained from his face.
"That…makes no sense," he said hoarsely.
It made so much sense.
"Itachi killed my family. Right in front of me—Mum and Dad—you saw—he showed you." His pupils were blown wide, his breathing ragged. "Whatever he did or didn't show you in Tsukuyomi—you know that. The autopsy reports matching Tsukuyomi—it proves, as if I needed more proof, that he did it."
"If the matching reports prove that Itachi murdered about half of your clan, then the reports that don't match support the idea that someone else was helping him."
"Someone helping him?"
He stared at me like he didn't know me. I'd always known this could be a fracturing point in our friendship. To harbor such doubt against a core component of his own understanding. How could two such different realities coexist?
Slowly, I nodded. "It…beggars belief that a rogue thirteen year old could wipe out an entire clan, a ninja clan as powerful as the Uchiha."
"If he—had help," Sasuke nearly spat, "it would undermine his reason for doing it in the first place. He did it to test his capacity."
"A capacity that was limited by the constraints of an adolescent body. Power, speed, immature chakra. Yet from what I understand of that night, no alarm was raised until he was long gone."
"He drove the truth into my brain. Again and again I watched—he forced me to watch."
"If he hadn't, you would have searched to the ends of the earth for another explanation. What if Danzo was waiting there at the end?"
"So he was protecting me?" he said, incredulous. "He murdered our parents yet protected me from Danzo, his—his co-conspirator, his underworld master, his partner in crime? Bullshit."
He stalked off. I was grateful. I wasn't sure I'd seen clearly until then the picture I'd been painting for Sasuke. Where I'd seen the whole, for him key pieces were still missing: the coup orchestrated by the Uchiha; Itachi, a ninja loyal to Konoha. Instead, a different narrative was emerging, one with Danzo and Itachi as collaborators. It was closer to the truth. Did I leave things there? Did I dare to suggest there might have been a different reason to slaughter his clan? I couldn't, not unless I was prepared to shatter what trust and respect Sasuke had left for me. He'd think I was delusional. Occam's Razor, but this time it was backwards. The truth was more complex than the simpler explanation.
He stalked back.
"Shikako, he tortured you."
"He was trying to torture you, like he'd done before. You believed he'd always return to torment you, before finally killing you. However…before Kakashi-sensei read the final inscription on that stone tablet, you were still prepared to believe that he let you live because he loved you."
"I was a fool," he dismissed coldly. "If there was ever the slightest doubt in my mind, that did away with it. How can you not—? You were there. The eyes of thy brother are eternal."
Why hadn't I told him back then, when I was most tempted? I'd known then how dangerous it was to keep this from him. Damn evidence. I knew the truth. Despite that, despite everything that had happened, I was still holding back. I was hurting him. I'd made a promise to myself, yet here I was, leading him into another untruth, one in which Itachi was no longer a psychotic murderer but was instead a traitor in league with Danzo.
"You were there," he muttered. "You were there, and you said it was hard to live a whole life as a lie, that maybe I didn't see everything. This is what you meant?"
My eyes watered. How could I tell him the truth? How could I not?
"Shikako, you hate him. You want him dead as much as I do. How can you begin to think he might…?"
Sasuke's voice quaked. I answered, though. "Because I'm alive. Naruto is free. His actions back then didn't match his stated purpose." After a moment, I added, "He told you…again and again…'If you wish to kill me, despise me. Foster your hatred.'" Sasuke shuddered. "Taken in a different light, he was telling you to grow strong. Strong enough to defeat even him. So. What if you were right? If Itachi loved you—" I nearly stopped there because of the stricken look on Sasuke's face— "If he had to choose between you or your clan—"
"Enough," Sasuke said. He had turned away.
Not enough, probably; too much, perhaps. Was it enough to make him doubt? Enough to hold him back when, inevitably, he confronted Itachi? Did inflicting pain now justify the possibility of lessening his pain in the future?
Somberly, I studied the tense line of his shoulders and wondered what was going through his mind. Was he considering what I'd said in earnest or was he contemplating how to, nicely, call me a lunatic? I wanted to make excuses and mend this breach before it widened. No, I should give him time. When an impulse to reach out to him came over me, I stifled it. He needed space. There was nothing I could do.
"I'm sorry." I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
"You've kept quiet until now," he said, softly accusing. "You wouldn't be telling me this now if you didn't believe it. So—why now? At best, you've got leaps in logic and an unhealthy dose of paranoia. You know that. So why are you telling me now? What's the point? It's Danzo we should be focused on. Danzo and Orochimaru."
We'd come full circle. One more truth left to reveal.
"The point is to link Danzo to the Uchiha," I said. "If Danzo had a role in the massacre, it would help to explain why he has a Mangekyo Sharingan."
What little color was left in Sasuke's face vanished. "What?"
"Families tend to have similar qualities to their chakra," I explained quietly. "The Hyuuga have this bright sort of clarity, a bit crystalline. The Inuzuka are rough, a little like sandpaper, but playful. And the Uchiha…"
The smoldering embers of Sasuke's chakra, the heated oil slick of Itachi's, and then most recently, evidence of a technique so potent that even minutes later I could still feel the afterglow.
"Burning," I said.
As Sasuke stared, I motioned to my right eye. "The bandages he wears, they conceal a Sharingan. Whether he was able to steal an Uchiha's eye and then awaken Mangekyo or if he managed to outright steal the Mangekyo—it's all conjecture, but if the Uchiha clan were at full strength, it's hard to imagine they'd have missed the loss of a Sharingan. Easier to imagine it was stolen around the time of the massacre."
"Shisui," Sasuke concluded softly.
"Without evidence, it's just speculation. That's what I've always…that's the rule I lived by."
We were quiet, ill at ease. I felt almost nauseous knowing he'd come away with an incomplete understanding, but he had totally without question rejected the notion of Itachi's loving him. I didn't know how to reverse course and re-speak my piece. He was already stretching the bounds of belief, making links where saner minds would see none.
"It fits," said Sasuke. "If Danzo was grooming him…"
Sasuke looked as worn as I felt. Worse, really. How many hits could he take and still stand? We'd have to move again soon and come up with a plan. I hoped, couldn't help but hope, that Tsunade's healing abilities would save her. Only she could help Sasuke, and I had no doubt she would, once she knew of Danzo's treachery. To that end, the best course might be to steal back into Konoha, but I hadn't the foggiest notion where to start in tracking him down. I couldn't even use foreknowledge to cheat.
When Sasuke next spoke, I was so certain I was hearing things. His voice was dull and just, overall, lacking.
"What?"
"Nothing has changed. We have to go back," he said again.
"Nothing has—?" I couldn't believe it. "Sasuke, everything you have ever known about the massacre is called into question."
"Really?" he said. "Whether he did it on his own or at Danzo's bidding, Itachi is every bit as depraved as I thought him. It fits," he repeated. "So. Nothing has changed. Danzo's a threat to the village. I have to go back so they know to be on guard. Better yet, end him myself."
"They can handle that on their own. Once they realize he's gone missing—"
"What if Wood Release helps him recover?"
"That's the worst case scenario, which I strongly doubt is possible."
"Tsunade is fighting for her life. Konoha is at war without its leader. I'm… You know what everyone must be thinking? That I've gone the way of Itachi. That I snapped, only I didn't have a clan handy to slaughter, so I went straight for the next available authority. The Naras will feel sick realizing how close they came—it could have been them—"
"Stop it."
"I won't."
I tried to reason with him. "We can't be useful to Tsunade from a prison cell. When everything comes to light and we find proof, you'll be vindicated."
"Vindicated? I am—Shikako, I am not innocent!"
The words echoed in the silence.
"You were tricked," I said. "A Mangekyo Sharingan, Sasuke. How can you hold yourself accountable—?"
"I attempted to assassinate the Hokage! What aren't you understanding? I failed in my duty. I injured my teammates. You can't save me from this. We can't run forever. I am not innocent."
"None of this is your fault."
"Maybe they'll release me long enough to kill Itachi," he continued ruthlessly. "We'll have to go after Danzo first. If we've got his body and clear evidence of bloodline theft, maybe they'll listen long enough to be convinced to let me kill Itachi."
It wasn't the worst plan, the thought of going after Danzo. If I had managed to fight my way past three guards and Danzo's out of control Wood Release to finish the job and bag his body and somehow still escaped with Sasuke, we would be in a stronger position. Now wasn't the time for self-doubt. Now was the time for laying out clever and persuasive reasoning to talk Sasuke out of this reckless scheme.
"Not happening," I said flatly.
His eyes narrowed.
"It's not up for discussion," I added. "You haven't got a chance of finding Danzo without me, and I'm not helping you."
"It would be better," he began slowly, "to kill Danzo first, but it's not necessary."
I'd unknowingly begun to shift into a ready stance before I realized what I was doing, but my instinct hadn't led me astray. If he tried to sacrifice himself like this, I'd fight him. Then just. Sit on him. Until he saw sense.
"Like you said," Sasuke continued, vigilant, "his absence will draw notice regardless. Our accusations will sway the people who know us. Once they find him, you'll be cleared."
"That's not good enough. I won't let you risk throwing your life away."
He watched me. I watched him. We were at an impasse. We were exhausted and stressed half out of our minds.
"Back at you," Sasuke finally said.
"What?"
"Missing nin don't survive long on the run."
I shook my head. "That's true for lone ninja. We're different. We have each other."
He looked away. "You have a family."
"You are family. I won't lose you, Sasuke. I made my choice back in Konoha."
"Then what?" he said, suddenly hoarse. "What do we do?"
There was fear in the question. The future was a gaping abyss. Where to go, who to turn to. One of us had to be certain.
"Best case scenario, Tsunade wakes up. We never stop hoping for that, but we don't rely on it."
Sasuke waited as I took stock.
"Option one," I finally said, "we nab Danzo first."
"That was my idea," he muttered.
"However, while not assured of a confession of guilt from him, we do not turn ourselves over to T&I. We pin a note to him and drop him off. Drawbacks of option one: he's sure to be in a facility that presumably has operated under the strictest need-to-know basis from its inception. The only starting point to finding it is the building I blew up, which will remain under scrutiny for weeks to come." No doubt a significant number of ninja were crawling all over the place as we spoke, trying to ferret out what went down there. "In addition, we risk ourselves in a venture for which we are highly unsuited in our current situation, bypassing layers of Konoha security, followed by Root security, and the like. We are not the best ninja for the job."
Kakashi-sensei and Tenzou were, however. So should we manufacture some clue for them to follow?
"Assuming we are successful," I said, "we do whatever the hell we want. Go after Itachi, sabotage Cloud, and so on, which is basically option two. We skip the Danzo bit because, let's face it, we'll get caught."
"Vigilantes, really?" Sasuke grunted. "What's option three?"
My mind churned with thoughts that had followed me through the night. Put simply, my goals were to see Sasuke vindicated and ensure the safety of my family and friends. That most assuredly included Naruto, and peril would come for him as surely as the sun would rise. The magnitude of Tsunade's loss couldn't be understated. There was no picking up the slack caused by her absence. There was no one to fill her shoes. There were precious few others who even knew enough to give a damn.
But there was my foreknowledge and Sasuke's ever-growing strength. There was Itachi lurking at the edges, his role unclear and frankly terrifying…but not without potential. There was an entire host of reasons to abandon this wild idea and even more reasons to see it through. Then there was simple truth of me and Sasuke, two ninja who would never be content to sit on the sidelines while the world went to hell.
"Option three, we do what no one else can."
For from being impressed, he raised a brow. "Could you be more dramatic?"
I nearly smiled at him. His tone almost sounded normal.
"I need to tell you about Akatsuki."
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We gave it two days. While we brainstormed and prepared and sometimes merely sat near to one another in stillness, we waited for news from Konoha—news of Tsunade's health, of her replacement, Danzo's status, anything. We waited with bated breath while fragile hope was replaced by growing conviction. We would go. We would seek out Akatsuki. Pick them off one by one or two by two. We may well expend our lives in the pursuit, but by god, we would not go gentle into the night.
Two days passed. Then it was time.
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A/N: I'm working on an omake from various perspectives in Konoha that will include some details about Tsunade's status. That will probably be the next thing I post. Until then!
Edit 1: Based on several reviews, I feel the need to be a spoilsport. No, they won't join Akatsuki. They're going after Akatsuki. I tweaked the language in this chapter, so hopefully that's more clear now.
Edit 2: Below, I've added my thoughts about having Shikako and Sasuke seek out Jiraiya. Let me first take a moment to add that it is completely fine for people to disagree and argue with me on this point. I genuinely had fun responding to reviews and writing my reasoning below without having to work so hard to write them in narrative form for the story itself. This is pretty much what goes on in my brain when I'm plotting.
So. Going to Jiraiya in the aftermath of their escape from Konoha—
First off, Shikako and Sasuke would have to find him or get in touch with him. So, issue #1 - Where is Jiraiya? No idea, but I could make something up and have Shikako reason it out in a way that, hopefully, would not come across as too convenient and therefore unrealistic. I suppose I could have built up some reasonable scenario in past chapters for this, but frankly, few ideas are coming to mind and none of them particularly good, certainly nothing that would have integrated well with the rest of the story. Issue #2 - communication. How does Jiraiya communicate with Tsunade and whoever else in Konoha when he's out and about? Some ideas, though only communication via toads presumably would be fast and reliable. Next, how would Shikako know about these methods of communication? Maybe through her time working in the Intelligence Division, like that one mission she did with Aoba in which moving a potted plant was a signal? Okay, so let's say Shikako (somehow) has a way to get him a message that (somehow) wouldn't be intercepted by any other Intelligence ninja. It takes….days? more likely weeks for Jiraiya to respond. Shikako and Sasuke do…something in the meantime. Dunno what.
Another idea is that Shikako would hope/assume/keep her fingers crossed that Jiraiya would be summoned to Konoha in the aftermath of her escape. Then, if he's not selected as the next Hokage, he hopefully/presumably leaves Konoha in such a manner that Shikako can track. At some point, she reaches out to him. Fine. To be realistic, this whole scenario would be bulky and time-consuming, but communicating with Jiraiya is not totally off the table.
Now let's skip over the how and imagine for a second that Shikako and Sasuke are able to track down Jiraiya.
Shikako would go to Jiraiya without Sasuke present. I'm pretty confident on that point. Reasons being, 1) Tsunade is Jiraiya's teammate and his lifelong love. Sasuke is her would-be murderer. Not a good combination. 2) Shikako could more easily show that she is operating under her own power and by choice, eliminating any concern that she's being coerced by Sasuke or Orochimaru or whoever. Jiraiya just doesn't know Sasuke all that well and does know Orochimaru well enough to be concerned on this point, in my opinion. 3) Shikako, as she has stated, is convinced that Sasuke would be arrested by Konoha. She's not willing to take the chance with Jiraiya capturing him and returning him to Konoha. 4) If need be, Shikako can more easily escape.
However it comes about, Shikako speaks with Jiraiya. From there, I can envision multiple scenarios. The best and most plausible outcome would have him believing Shikako and agreeing that she and Sasuke should not return to Konoha, not until they have a way to clear Sasuke's name definitively.
Which is already Shikako's plan…
So how exactly could Jiraiya contribute to their situation for the better?
He could employ them in his spy network. Set them up with identities and get them to work in a way that contributes to the war effort. This, to me, makes the most sense from Jiraiya's perspective. Sure, he's technically flirting with treason, but he's an independent enough individual for this to still be plausible.
That's a turn the plot could have taken. However, I see a few problems with it. Most significantly, by working with Jiraiya, Shikako limits her own freedom to move against Akatsuki. She becomes accountable to Jiraiya, who would know full well that her information didn't come from any source she could access. He would rightly be suspicious. The way I see it, Shikako views Madara and Akatsuki as the Ultimate Evil while Hidden Cloud is a political enemy and simultaneously a potential future ally. It's hard for me to imagine her choosing this option.
Here's a different track Shikako could take when facing Jiraiya: she could come clean to him. Her motivation for this was established in Chapter 14. She's guilty that she didn't come clean to Tsunade about Danzo and doesn't want to make that mistake again. BUT. Like, wow. Shikako explaining to Jiraiya that she's got all this knowledge because she was originally born in a world where there's this manga that tells the story of Naruto…
In order for him to believe her, he'd have to do something like infiltrate Rain and determine that Akatuski's leader is Pain who is actually Nagato who is acting via the corpse of Yahiko. Maybe Jiraiya wouldn't die this time around because Shikako would give him advance warning, but that's the sort of information Shikako would have to cough up and Jiraiya would have to verify for him to stand a chance of believing her.
Maybe it wouldn't be Shikako's last resort, but it would feel like a cop out for me to write Jiraiya believing her without significant effort.
Anyway, there's one option with some variation. She tries to find Jiraiya and, to a large degree, simply has to hope for the best. Here's the other option:
She pretty much spills all the details about Akatsuki to Sasuke with the underlying assumption that she's learned all of this through Jiraiya, Tsunade, Gaara, and any additional work in the Intelligence Division. Sasuke wouldn't have much reason to question where all this information comes from, even ignoring the fact that he trusts Shikako more than anyone else in the world. Remember that Sasuke knows about the mission that involved the Jashin cult. Once Shikako tells Sasuke about the link between Akatsuki and that mission, which was obviously sanctioned by Tsunade, there's not much reason for him to doubt that Shikako has been deeply involved in the hunt for the Akatsuki.
She's got a couple of solid ideas for how to continue this hunt with Sasuke. Alone, Sasuke is strong enough to tick off some of these S-rank ninja. With her foreknowledge, she sees a genuine opportunity to kill off at least some of Akatsuki. Meanwhile she is building a case for a possible pardon for Sasuke—something like "services rendered" to Konoha and the rest of the world—not unlike the rationale for his pardon in canon.
Keep in mind that, in canon, there's no real evidence that anyone gives a damn about Akatsuki until their jinchuriki are targeted. In DoS, Gaara has at least shared some information, but with the loss of Tsunade and the distraction of the war with Cloud, Shikako has become the best-positioned ninja to stand against Akatsuki. While she is utterly horrified by what happened in Konoha at Danzo's behest, she is also beginning to view this an opportunity.
There are times I've wavered between what-would-Shikako-do and what-could-Shikako-do-for-the-sake-of-furthering-the-plot, but this wasn't one of them.
A final thought - maybe I should have worked some of this reasoning into the chapter itself. In fact, I wrote it in at different times in several places, but ultimately it seemed wordy and unnecessary. I just don't see a strong argument for why they would seek out Jiraiya. Feel free to convince me otherwise :)