Chapter Text
Kakashi hummed under his breath. Yamato dogged his steps. The crowd was heavy, frothing with both tourists and locals. There were too many people and Yamato’s shoulders hitched. Cold anxiety licked up his spine. His superior seemed perfectly at ease and reluctantly, he attempted to mimic the man.
The sky was a brilliant blue. His sensitive nose picked up the scent of copper.
“We’re-”
"-being followed. Yes, I know." His superior said. His disguised master held up two swatches of paint, brow creasing. "Which one do you think would most suit Sakura-chan?"
“Sir-”
"Hmm, I think she'd more likely go with something light... maybe something sheer? What do you think, Yama-kun?"
His disguised master held up two shades of pink. Yamato chose a random one, lips thinning. "Sir-"
Kakashi again interrupted him. "A cliché choice, Yama-kun! Though not one without reason," the man eyed the nail polish. "Maa, maa, she'll love it!”
Yamato opened his mouth. The other man smiled at the present, exchanging money with a pleasant looking clerk. "Yes, Yama-kun?"
"She's close. I can sense her. Shouldn't we be focusing on that?"
“In due time,” he said. They stopped briefly at a paper vendor and his master fingered a magazine. “She’s but a child,” his master grinned, his canines terribly sharp. “I say leave her to it. Let our new friends feel all nice and safe, I say. If she’s bothering you that much, you could always take her out. If anything I was planning on meeting up with her later anyways. Do you want to expedite that?”
Yamato shook his head, lips pursing.
The city was packed. If he were a child, he could easily understand how he could get lost or separated from a trusted peer or adult. He tracked his master easily though because of the man's positively electric presence. He frowned inwardly, not liking the situation at hand but resisting none at all.
His disguised master opted for the sidewalk opposite them. He and Yamato followed a herd of people. His master jostled him with an elbow.
"This is a fine time for exploring, Yama-kun!"
Yamato squinted at his team leader.
"I joined you with the prospect of food, Sir. And recon."
"We're almost there anyhow. Just lighten up Yama-kun! The bistro is right up ahead! After that we’ll relax."
Yamato minus his favored head plate did not frown, though it was a near thing. "And that has to do with 'exploring' how?"
His master was ahead of him so he couldn't exactly read the man. He instead watched him roll his shoulders in what looked like a shrug.
They entered a dimly lit restaurant and Kakashi swung to peer at him, smile steady. He shucked off his coat absently, hanging it near the door where hooks were nailed place. At their arrival a woman grinned, tucked neatly behind a counter. Two large silver doors hung behind her, large and imposing and presumably, opening to a kitchen.
"And what can I do for you two?" she asked in broken English.
Kakashi smiled, as did Yamato.
Slipping into their native tongue with ease, his disguised master ordered two meals, having shied away from the menus the woman had pushed at them. At his word, she too fell into Japanese in fleeting relief.
Kakashi steered them to a booth at the end of the bistro. There were four other customers: a couple and two teens. Only one looked akin to them - of similar heritage.
"Have you been here before?" Yamato asked.
Kakashi's head bobbed in answer but otherwise remained quiet.
His master sat opposite him, allowing his apprentice the back-most seat in the booth, his back to the door. The kindness was appreciated but otherwise unnecessary.
A short while passed before they were served their food. Kakashi tapped a repetitive morse code, an S.O.S. one that seemed to calm his nerves. Yamato collected his serving - a bowl of of Udon with a faint red soup.
He tasted it and hummed approvingly. There was no red to his master's Udon and it disappeared quickly. He supposed the man was used to eating at a quick pace. Though he was disguised, it rather lost than gained the man's features.
Kakashi pat his lips. "So," the man said, "how about meeting our guest?"
The Black Widow prided herself on being a rather self-sufficient woman. Yes, she could play secondary roles in missions though she was used to being the primary caption of her own works.
The Red-Room had drilled the skills into her.
The men were of easy prey, ripe for the pickings so to say. They were distinguishable in the crowd of downtown New York City. They wore strange coats, carried odd masks, and bore curious identifying features. Strangely, they were easy t o track considering their acclaimed skills.
Unless they were simply not paying her any mind. She frowned as she palmed a baton. She studied their backs as they entered a small restaurant. One glanced over their shoulder and met her gaze with ease. They looked away upon entry.
Something cold, akin to dread, unspooled in her stomach.
On bated breath, she waited for them to exit the restaurant.
They didn’t.
“You know,” said a voice. She spun on her heel to meet the dark eyes of two terribly familiar men. “I haven’t seen Yama-kun so unnerved! And he’s been in the game for, what – how long?”
“Twenty-three years, sir.”
Sukea, the apparent leader, whistled, clapping. “Twenty-three years!”
The suffix was odd until she momentarily adjusted, slipping into the grammatical structures of the old language. They carried a strange dialect, almost western but not.
“Well,” said Sukea, smiling none the less. “Since you seem so interested in what we’re doing, would you like to join us?”
If anything, it was as if spraying disinfectant in a wound. Inwardly, she sighed, almost in defeat.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline,” she said politely, gnashing her teeth at the obvious insult. Biting her tongue, she smiled attractively. “You hail from Fire Country, yes? The Elemental Countries?”
The one with the large eyes reluctantly nodded in confirmation, not seeming to be taken aback by the familiar lisp. Sukea seemed entertained by their talk, keeping quiet and standing on the sidelines. His smile was smaller and if anything, from one thespian to another, seemed more genuine.
Sukea clapped again.
“So, is that a no? We could, like, totally go to the mall together though. It’d be super fun!”
The Black Widow smiled tightly and shook her head.
“That’s too bad,” Sukea pouted.
In a blink of an eye, they were gone, two small twisters of autumn dyed leaves circling at her feet. She stared at where they had been previously, eyeing the concrete distrustfully.
Well, that answered that then.
They had always been remarkably good at escaping any tracer they had on them.
As Natasha stalked the halls of the underground bunker of S.H.I.E.L.D., she laid eyes on a few familiar faces. While the cavern was only one of many, it contained within it the required agents she needed to report to. Already one of said agents was barking at her heel, arms thrown up behind his head and eyes nailed in place to the hind of her neck.
Clint was a difficult man to read, however the same could be said of her.
One by one, the man cracked his knuckles, drawing up to stride beside her. He was grinning.
“So? How’d it go?”
“Brilliantly,” Natasha bit out.
The man flagged his palms in surrender, hopping ahead of her and deigning her with a speculative, if masked, look.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa, no need to bite my head off. So?”
“They knew I was there the entire time, even invited me to join them.”
Clint frowned, letting out a noise that sounded suspiciously like an ‘oof’.
“So you didn’t?”
Natasha didn’t dignify that with an answer.
They arrived at the very back of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Clint held the door open for her. She didn't thank him and he didn't ask for one.
They were met with the sight of an irritated Agent Hill. Fury beckoned them forward. They stepped past the other woman and without ceremony, Natasha told the man of the various impressions of the pair she'd gotten. Then she had informed the man of their conversation.
Clint laughed and apologized just as quickly.
Fury massaged his temples, both hands propping his head up. Agent Hill rests her head against a cement wall. Clint did not laugh again, though it a was a near thing. Natasha very carefully did not move, a stern line tense on her shoulders. She wanted to mimic her boss but kept still as the tense silence trickled on.
“And do you know when they became aware of your presence?”
Natasha shook her head. "From the very begging maybe."
Fury mimed the words, cringe vague and very faint.
"Or from the time they entered the restaurant, I don't know."
Agent Hill cleared her throat, acquiring two intense stares and a piqued one. "Were they angry?"
It may be perceived as a rather childish inquiry but its importance was not lost on them. In answer, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. gave a deep breath, snorting. He turned his head at Natasha, arching a brow.
"They didn't seem to be," the agent admitted. "They were... calm."
Agent Hill breathed a subtle sigh of relief, as did the director.
Natasha eyed the director quizzically. "Is that all, sir?"
“For now.”
Yūgao hummed, tying up her hair in a tall, delicate, tail. She plucked up some of the leftover takeout carriers, circling one of the sofa’s which housed a slumbering Genma. The man was sprawled over the piece of furniture, eyebrows folding in distress. Across the room was the closed door leading to the girl’s room, where Sakura was napping.
Kakashi-taichō and Yamato-san were currently out. Taichō would be out tomorrow with Sakura and Genma. She wasn’t needed until the very next day, to display some of their combat ability with Genma. Taichō would not be participating of course, but would be supervising and alternatively performing any further negation.
Returning the silverware to their collective homes, Yūgao felt pleased at the sight of the tidy kitchen and living room. Her lips curled up in a smile. She spun on her heels only to meet the hunted look of a frazzled Yamato. Kakashi-taichō, at his side, was grinning widely.
Soul momentarily leaving the aforementioned nin, Yūgao's smile turned plastic.
"Kill me please."
"We went on a bit of adventure," said Kakshi-taichō, jostling a harried looking Yamato-san with an elbow. "We read some magazines and went on a shopping spree!" The Taichō shook Yamato-san who looked at her dully. "We got some food and met someone from S.H.I.E.L.D.! Then we went on an exploration, again! It was all very fun!”
The Taichō shook Yamato-san once more in childish elation before separating from the man. Genma was at her side, having been woken by the pair. Yūgao watched the man roll a senbon from one side of his mouth to the other side, all without touching the poison undoubtedly tipping it.
Yūgao braced her fists on her hips. “So-”
“Yup,” Kakashi-taichō winked. “Tomorrow is Sakura-chan’s time to shine! Then you!”
“We also came bearing gifts!”
Yūgao watched Yamato-san slink behind their Taichō, plastic wrinkling.
The door shut and clicked as it locked.
Yūgao easily caught the box, curiously prodding at it with her chakra. She frowned, opening it. Her lower jaw unhinged and she let out a soft ‘oh’. Padded by black silk, were a pair of crystal crescent moon earrings, dainty and fairly non-reflective. They reminded her of her ill, late fiancé and his infamous technique. Her eyes watered.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Genma did not voice his thanks and Yūgao looked at him.
Genma was flicking through a textbook, eyes tracing plains of black text. It was not in English.
He looked up, squinting. “Where did you get this?”
Kakashi-taichō shrugged, face splitting in a grin. “Borrowed it.”
None of them were bothered by the unspoken prospect that he had stolen the piece of literature.
Her forehead creased. “But we do not need-”
“It was a group effort! Besides, even Yama-kun and I got gifts for ourselves!”
"Liar." Yamato-san said.
"I treated you to dinner, be happy you got that much."
“I’m honored.”
The remaining of their team-
Speak of the Devil and she shall appear. Over his shoulder and to the right, Kakashi chucked the present at his former student. They all approached the soft light bleeding in from the cracked door. Sakura was settled against the door jam. In her right hand was what Kakashi had gotten her. She inspected the plastic package.
As she examined the gift, Genma slithered to the kitchen. Yūgao settled on a sofa. The remaining three adults watched the screen. Though rare, television was not extinct in the Elemental Country. It was the news about... a natural catastrophe, something to do with the clear waters of some island off the coast of Greenland.
Kakashi listened idly as he approached his student.
“I was very uncertain about the color but Yama-kun helped me out. Do you like it?”
“Bit ironic, dontcha think?”
It was pink nail polish and a packet of other stuff, some squishy others not so much. There were little metal or plastic tools. Her eyes roved over them confusedly.
"Ah it'll look good on you though," the woman ripped open the package with her teeth. "Well I thought it would look good on you Sakura-chan! If you don't like it, blame it on Yama-kun!"
“I resent that.”
The woman smiled faintly and shook the small container, blinking slowly at her temporary taichō and comrade. Then her expression abruptly shuttered. Her ‘thank-you’ was murmured and almost dismissing.
She flickered away and took her leave in a wash of autumn leaves. Kakashi stared evenly at the floor, mentally bisecting his former student in several creative ways. Of course he only contemplated the acts but he took delight in virtually disemboweling his child of a student. He resisted the urge to card his fingers through his hair. He did not sigh.
"Yama-kun!" Kakashi shed the steely look and clapped his hands. "Can you get the dustpan please!"
“Sakumo Hatake, Konoha’s White Fang, killed himself via seppuku forty years ago.”
Sakura looked at Genma’s hunched figure, brilliant eyes wide. In one hand was the packet her old teacher had gifted her, the nail polish balanced on the flat concrete roof of the hotel that were staying at.
“His son found him in their washitsu, slumped over his own entrails.”
Slowly, Sakura blinked.
“The entire village hated him, reviled everything he stood for after a mission gone wrong. Every morning for the next three years, the only son had to wash the graffiti off his home walls. No one respected his father save for very few and his heritage was snuffed at every opportunity. Because of this, he orphaned himself.”
Sakura opened her mouth, “Kakashi-sensei-”
“He cut himself off from the village. From his team. From his teacher and friends.” Genma smiled, looking almost rueful. “He graduated the Academy when he was five years old.”
“That’s not possible or even legal-”
“Now,” Genma said. “Back then, it was. Everybody wanted to be him; wanted to be friends with him. He didn’t care. He thought that if no one could come close, no one could do anything to hurt him, I think. When he turned six, he took the Chūnin exams. When he was twelve, he joined the jōnin. Do you know why he is called ‘Friend-Killer Kakashi’?”
Sakura sat through the pregnant pause, not liking where the conversation was leading to. She hesitantly shook her head.
“Because he wouldn’t be like the White Fang. The mission was more important than any friend or foe. The village was his priority – he wouldn’t become a disgrace like his father. In the Third Shinobi World War his team was tasked with the Kannabi Bridge mission. You know what I’m talking about, yeah?”
Sakura nodded, throat strangely parched.
Genma peered at her closely over the slant of one knee. His eyes were dark, promising. “I won’t say that it would have gone differently had he not acted that way, but it would have certainly been more healthy I presume. Yes, he was and is strong, but I think that only happened after he abandoned that way of thinking.”
“I – I didn’t know.”
“Not a lot of people who are in the know are alive.”
Sakura cleared her throat, awkwardly averting her eyes. She waved her hand.
“And you’re telling me this because…”
Genma laughed, facing the horizon.
“Like teacher like student,” he said, as if he were imparting some wise observation. His knees clicked as he pushed to his feet. “Think it over. I’ll leave you to it.”
He disappeared in a whirlwind of leaves.
“She’ll need some time but I think I got to her.”
His boss hummed, blinking once at him after dragging his eyes from his open Icha-Icha.
“And who will you have spectating?”
The Director adjusted his coat, eye remaining solely on the lone patient in question. It was a male-human-adult. Their skin was deathly pale and dark welts bruised the seams of their eyes. They didn’t seem overtly ill, looking only mildly sick and unconscious. There were only two other people in the room with them.
Agent Hill had cleaned up nicely, wearing a carefully manicured uniform that did not leave much to the imagination. Opposite of her was a man, clearly her elder. He had short grey hair, and was currently fussing over the unfamiliar medical equipment tethering the unconscious man to the white cot.
“Only the best,” he said after a few seconds of stiff silence.
A woman wearing a red qipao entered the room. Her hair was mysteriously pink and her eyes a brilliant, if unnerving, teal. At her shoulder was a man with mousy hair. He had his arms folded over his chest and a needle pinched between his lips. His eyes roved about the small clinic, mirth wrinkling his face as his teeth flashed in a wide grin.
“Hm,” said Sukea thoughtfully. His hand cut through the air, gesturing to said woman. “This here is our healer, our med-nin for short. She’ll be the one performing today. Is this our patient, Director Fury?”
“Um-” said the elderly man.
Agent Hill spoke to her tablet, lips thinning. “Actually this is our second patient. We first have a test-”
“That was not the deal we had discussed.”
Director Fury clasped his hands behind his back and said, “The deal has been, altered, of the sort.”
Sukea smiled sharply. “That makes my words no less true.”
The woman and the other man were looking at Sukea, obviously awaiting orders. They stayed quiet and remained relatively relaxed. The tense silence dithered under the flat stare Sukea was leveling him with. Finally, it was clipped short by a cheery clap as the man in question canted his head, lips quirked into a toothy grin.
“Well, in the spirit of cooperation, I’m sure we can knock this out in a jiffy!”
Agent Hill opened her mouth and then closed it in short order as Director Fury shook his head at her. He circled the clinic cot, fingers unlatching from one another and coming to press a pot of dirt into Sukea’s palms. After the act was accomplished, he retreated once more, hands braiding at the small of his back.
The otherwise invisible plant inhabiting the pot of soil curled feebly under the combined weight of almost everyone’s expectant gaze.
The man made a show of squinting at it.
It was a rather grey, unassuming color. It looked a bit pathetic, drooping under the charcoal-grey stare of Sukea who was still grinning. The man hummed loudly before allocating the potted plant to the steady hands of his female colleague, who now upon closer examination, smelled faintly of antiseptic. And something old yet oddly familiar.
There was a rhombus stamped onto her forehead. It was colored a curious purple, the same shade that tattooed Sukea’s cheeks.
Was she of another clan? The contract had not been clear as to the nature decorating its handlers’ symbols.
Under her breath, the pink-haired woman began to murmur. Her words were jumbled and indistinguishable even in the stiff quiet. A soft green hummed beneath her fingertips, a glow that slowly grew larger and larger as the seconds wore on. Under the disbelieving gazes of around two dozen men and women, two leaves and one flower bloomed.
“Here,” she said, handing the pot off to a beaming Sukea.
“Thank you, Sakura-chan!”
The woman pushed her lips, stepping back.
“Well, is this proof enough?”
Director Fury nodded in acquiescence.
“What injuries does he have?”
The woman had approached her evident patient, a no-nonsense attitude clinking in place. Her stern frown was directed at the elderly doctor inhabiting the room, standing beside her and currently where the head of the patient lay. Her fingers were smoothing over the pale skin of the bedridden man, lips pushing in thought.
“A weak right atrium. His lungs were pierced but he’d already clotted by the time we recovered those organs. We have him on blood thinners but they’re doing nothing against the clots even now. The scar tissue will require a heart and lung transplant at this point. Right now, we’re just hoping – personally um, I don’t-”
“Thank-you Dr. Wolfes,” smiled Agent Hill.
The doctor’s mouth clicked shut.
The woman continued prodding the unconscious man as the doctor retreated, attention unwavering. She hummed, timing his pulse idly.
“Can you he-”
“Yes,” she answered, short and clipped. Her eyes darted to Agent Hill’s creased lips.
No later, her palms went to hover over the breastbone of the patient. Her eyes closed, as if in concentration, and whisps of green energy again glowed just beneath her fingers dancing in an invisible breeze. Thin threads of simmering green wove about the space directly above the unconscious man’s sternum. One of her eyebrows ticked, irritation evident.
Brusquely, the woman clucked her tongue at Sukua and said something in an unfamiliar language.
The man with the needle huffed in mirth, saying something in reply.
It was in some dialect of Japanese. Familiar enough but too estranged to make much sense of it, unfortunately. It was sharp and almost savage in how it snapped from their tongues.
“Care to share with the class?”
Sukea laughed aloud. “How rude of us! Just a bit of banter is all. Do you happen to have that contract and those signatures?”
At the odd timing, Agent Hill quirked an eyebrow. It was almost startling how dependent he was of such things, subscribing to the strange tells of their apparent homeland: that in itself being nothing. Sukea was grinning no less widely, just as carefree as he was when they first met or when he first entered the cot. He opened his hands, expectant.
His second in command looked to him and he cleared his throat loudly.
The door swung open and a blank-faced man carried in said contract. Following him was another man who sternly handed off some official looking documents. The man teething on a needle barked out something in that foreign language which was sharply rebuked by the woman.
Before anyone else could make a move, Sukea let loose an iconic, “Maa, maa.” His grin seemed almost sharper in retrospect as he easily collected the several inch wide scroll. He said something and the woman’s eye magnetized back to her patient. The man with the needle seemed no less amused but did withdraw. Sukea shrugged, “Just a little spat, is all.”
The Black Widow stood among the few selected to watch the “miracle healing”. Hawkeye stood to the left of her, smiling but no less sober for it. His eyes were pinned to the sole foreign woman in the room, eyes locking on the dainty bones of her wrists. He watched as she closed her eyes once more in concentration, keeping a careful eye on the heart monitor connected to Coulson’s limp finger.
Idly, Kakashi unrolled the contract, eyes flitting over the boring text he had long ago familiarized himself with. What he sought, were those inked cursive letters binding the contract as statement of fact. Every line was scrawled over, penned in, and signed. He whistled to himself, sealing the contract back into its designated space.
“So?”
Kakashi hummed, if not to amuse himself, then to aggravate his old student. He balanced on his heels just to add insult to the injury and the woman looked at him in prickling rage, which felt a bit like being blasted with a tornado of gravel, her chakra politely focused on her patient and simultaneously seeking to scrape him raw from the planet.
“We good?”
At Genma’s “well-timed” intersection, the storm of chakra eased.
He sighed. Why was everyone in such a hurry, these days?
“You have the go-ahead,” he chirped to Sakura-chan. Genma offered no commentary. Kakashi blinked at several of the packets of black text being handed over to him. He changed languages with ease, accepting the documents. “And what is this?”
The Director didn’t look all too impressed. “Our own contract. You have seven days to look over it, same as us.”
Kakashi flicked through it, casually translating small bits and bobs here and there. He frowned, though, when his eye stalled on a single necessary agreement. He reread the statement, brow furrowing. He looked up and handed the paperwork to an interested Genma, knowing his old student was perplexed by their reaction but no less hindered by it. It was one of the reasons she was lauded as the second coming of the Slug Sannin.
The atmosphere was tense. Agent Hill, who had ushered the elderly doctor from the room a few minutes previous, had a taut jaw. Director Fury looked unconcerned.
“What does it say-”
“Is Mr. Coulson gonna be okay-”
“What if they-”
“Oh my God are-”
Children, the Black Widow thought in unison with Hawkeye, the lot of them.
Some of the more versed agents, like Natasha or Clint, stood near the back, keeping their thoughts to themselves. The stayed impassive, unlike their fellows who goggled and whispered amongst themselves like school children on a passing bus.
An abrupt laugh startled those present. The man with the single needle in his mouth was snickering into the black spandex of his cuff. He withdrew the needle from his shuddering maw as another laugh shook him. He said something, again, foreign to Sukea and in return Sukea replied with an enthusiasm that was blatantly false.
“Our leader will have to read this over, you understand?”
“And him?” Director Fury nodded at the currently comatose man in the cot.
Sukea smiled pleasantly. “Consider this our offer of peace! Though I would like you to keep this in mind,” Sukea looked at him with something akin to that of flat amusement. “Gifts can be just as soon confiscated as they are presented.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, Director Fury,” Sukea said. “It’s a promise.”