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"Come on!" he protested, "we can totally get farther than this if we just keep going! We don't really need to stop yet, right?"
Sakura swatted him. "We're not back in Fire Country yet and we can't see two feet in front of ourselves in this snowstorm. We wouldn't see enemies until they were right on top of us, Naruto. And I haven't been able to heal Sai or Kakashi-sensei all the way yet. Do you want them to die of hypothermia?" She ignored his response, dropped her armful of brush on top of him, and went back toward the mouth of the little cave to get more. Even Naruto couldn't seriously want to keep going through a blizzard this size. Or maybe she should say, only Naruto would want to.
Sakura wrapped her cloak more closely around herself and stepped out into the snow, following the quickly filling tracks back to a felled tree. As she picked up pieces of wood, she saw several of Kakashi-sensei's nin dogs grabbing brush (or, in Bull's case, part of what looked like the tree's trunk) and dragging it back to the cave as well, their constant motion back and forth keeping the tracks clear in the falling snow. Naruto's voice carried with the wind from time to time, thanking the dogs - by name, she thought - as they dropped their loads by his feet and he pulled them into the cave to sort.
"Sai, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura called, not certain exactly where they were, but wanting to get out of the wind, "Do you think this is enough?"
"Almost," Kakashi said, right behind her. She refused to squeak in surprise, though she was absolutely certain he'd seen her startle. He had a tall stack of wood in his left arm, carefully balanced against his chest, and far too heavy. Sakura sighed, turned around, and grabbed about half of it away from him, partly in retribution for having surprised her.
"Kakashi-sensei!" she exclaimed, "you can't carry all those. You still have broken ribs!"
Behind him, Sai held a similar pile. Since it looked like he hadn't been using his right hand, and seemed not to be putting weight on his recently-broken arm, Sakura let him keep it.
"All right," she said, on firmer ground when dealing with injuries, "this should be enough. If it isn't, we can send Naruto or the dogs to get more. You two've lost too much blood to be out here." She turned to head back and after a few steps paused and said clearly, not looking behind her, "Kakashi-sensei, just because I turned around doesn't mean I can't tell you're trying to pick something up..."
It might have been her imagination, or she might have heard him sigh. She definitely didn't hear him put anything down, but she hadn't really expected him to. Training with Tsunade for more than three years had taught her many of the little tricks and side-steps shinobi tried to take when they thought their medi-nin wasn't looking; it had also taught her when to overlook those little mutinies. And she'd known for a long time that Kakashi was a terrible patient: he was almost legendary among the medi-nin. It was only recently that she'd begun to feel less awkward about telling him what to do, and she was still faintly surprised each time her former teacher listened to her, even if he usually did something else, just as bad as what she'd forbidden, a few minutes later.
When they got back to the cave-mouth, Kakashi dismissed the nin dogs. Naruto had the skeleton of a fire set up in a sort of dip in the cave floor, ready to be kindled, and piles of wood on each side of the entrance. He jumped up to take Sakura's firewood, and she handed it over without protest: sometimes he seemed to forget that she wasn't twelve anymore, and that she could pick him up with one hand if she really wanted to. Kakashi and Sai piled wood on the makeshift wind-break piles, and Sakura sat down against the cave wall while she checked her chakra reserves to see if she could work on any of their injuries before they slept. The missing nin they'd encountered that afternoon hadn't been anything near Akatsuki level, but he'd had some really nasty earth jutsus up his sleeve, and his companion had been far too fond of poisons for Sakura's comfort: next time she packed her med-kit, she was putting in a few more antidotes and anti-venoms, just to be safe.
Team Kakashi had defeated the two of them, but not before their opponent managed to break Sai's arm and crush Kakashi-sensei into a rock-face hard enough to break several ribs. Sakura breathed deep, and pushed the memories of the fight aside. She slipped into a slight trance, turning her eyes inward. Naruto's running chatter drifted over her: he seemed to want Kakashi-sensei to light the fire with a Katon, so that Naruto could try to learn the fire jutsu; Kakashi lit the fire with matches instead, letting Naruto blow on it with a tiny wind jutsu to get the flames started. She shook her head, and opened her eyes. Naruto was as full of energy as ever.
Kakashi and Naruto sat next to the fire, packs opened and ration bars and blankets pulled out. Sai sat crosslegged on the cave's slanting floor near the entrance, snowflakes settling in his hair, scroll stretched across his knees. He seemed to hesitate, flexing his fingers; then his brush swept forward, lions springing onto the page under his hands. He drew only four, less elaborate than usual, and sent them off into the snow, their black outlines quickly disappearing in the storm. He rolled the scroll up, carefully replaced the brush and ink in his pack, and stood watching the storm for a moment, before turning back towards the fire.
"They will keep watch for several hours, but it would be wise to have someone awake as well." He picked up a ration bar from the small pile, and bit into it without hesitation, settling onto the floor.
"Ehhhh! Sai, how can you eat that! It's so gross!" Naruto cried. Sai gazed back, chewing and swallowing carefully before answering.
"It's food," Sai replied, "its taste is largely irrelevant."
Sure, you say that now, Sakura thought - but I didn't see you eating any of those soldier pills I made up for Naruto. The bars weren't that bad, anyway, pressed dried fruit and nuts, or dried strips of meat. They took a toll on the jaw, tough as anything - some people said they were still eating the ones made under the Second Hokage - but they were food. Sakura had had worse: in Suna, they ate dried snake, which was just disgusting. She reached over and took one for herself.
"I can finish healing one of you tonight, but the other will have to wait until morning," she said, looking between Sai and Kakashi-sensei. "Since you're both mid-range ninjutsu users, you can decide for yourselves. Naruto," she turned to him, "you should heal up fine on your own, but I'll take a look in the morning just in case."
"Okay!" he agreed happily, flashing her a thumbs-up before grabbing a bar. Sai and Kakashi-sensei talked softly, Sai making protesting gestures and flexing his fingers at Kakashi-sensei. She assumed Sai was refusing to be healed first: this was confirmed when Kakashi-sensei walked over to her and fell into a crouch by her side.
"I'll take first watch tonight," he said, "Naruto second, and you third. Sai will wake up every few hours to maintain the lions, but not take a watch." She nodded.
"I'll heal you first, then," she agreed.
Kakashi-sensei's ribs healed a little less easily than she'd hoped: one that hadn't looked as bad earlier turned out to have almost crumbled, not just cracked. It must have been excruciating. When she finished healing him, pulling tiny tendrils of chakra out from between the tiny bone-slivers as they re-knit, she was breathing heavily, and she hadn't managed to take care of any of his surface injuries. She pushed her bangs back, and stretched her hands out to heal the scrapes and bruises that covered his back. He caught her hand.
"That's enough, Sakura," he said, "the rest will keep." She wanted to protest - he was her patient, not the other way around, but he was right. She nodded.
"The ribs should be fine," she said, "but I'm going to want to check in the morning - that one on the right was in much worse shape than I thought."
"Hm," he replied, sitting up and pulling his vest and heavy cloak back on, before wandering over to the cave mouth and sitting down, facing outwards.
He's probably going to use the Sharingan once in a while to check for chakra signatures out there, she thought, and it's a good idea. I wish we had Hinata or Neji: the Byakugan better for scouting.
When she turned back to the inside of the cave, she saw Naruto and Sai laying out two blankets - some of their gear had been destroyed in the fight, and apparently the other two blankets had been among their losses.
"It's okay, Sakura-chan! You can share with me!" Naruto said brightly. "I'll keep you really warm!"
"No, that's all right," she said, improvising hastily, "Since Sai is injured, he'll get cold more easily. I'd be a poor medic if I let him get chilled." Sai looked at her.
"My arm being broken seems highly unlikely to influence my core body temp-mmph!" he said, before she clapped a hand over his mouth.
"Of course it does," she said brightly, fingers tight on his cheekbones, "I couldn't live with myself if let you catch a chill." She glared at him, and let him go. He looked at her for a moment, then slid towards the edge of the blanket, making space for her. She took off her hip packs, leaving her shoes on - even with the fire it was cold - and lay down on her side, back to him. He pulled the blanket up around her, and over onto himself. She supposed that if she were really concerned about his health, she'd offer to take the side where the blanket gapped open, but this would be fine.
"Do you not want to tell Naruto that you prefer sleeping with me?" Sai mused as he lay down, setting Naruto screeching about nobody sleeping with Sakura-chan! Sakura counted backwards from twenty, reminding herself that medi-nins did not deck their patients, even when they were being very, very trying. When that didn't work, she slammed a fist out and created a small crater in the cave floor.
"Shut up, both of you," she growled, and then pointedly ignored them both, finally slipping into sleep.
* * *
Kakashi listened with half an ear to the argument behind him, pulling his cloak tighter around himself as the wind shifted. The snow was falling as fast as ever, and he hoped the wind didn't veer too much farther to the south - it might well fill their little hollow, if that happened, and he had no real desire to move somewhere else, or to work a jutsu and put up the kind of barrier that would hold it off. That kind of chakra use would be as good as painting a target on their backs, if there were any other shinobi nearby.
He wondered idly if Sakura would say anything tomorrow about him using the Sharingan to scan the blizzard. She had turned into a frighteningly competent medi-nin under Tsunade's guidance, and lately she'd started treating him like a patient when he was injured, rather than her awe-inspiring genin-team-sensei. When he'd voiced that thought, Iruka had laughed at him. "Her perpetually late, exasperating, Icha Icha-reading genin-team-sensei, you mean?" But he'd agreed that it was a good sign - she seemed to be growing into herself, gaining confidence.
A slamming sound behind him, and Sakura's exasperated yell, reminded him eerily of Jiraya's stories of a younger Tsunade, and he laughed to himself as Naruto quieted down petulantly. The fire cracked and popped, and he scanned the field of ever-moving white before him, hearing nothing but the wind whistling through trees. A half-hour into his watch, he pulled his hitae-ate up, and looked into the shimmering web of nature chakra, pin-pointing Sai's four creations, and no other shaped or summoned creatures. He closed the eye, and went back to scanning the storm with only his own sight.
He wondered what Iruka was doing right now: grading, most likely, or curling up in bed with a book. Kakashi had finally gotten him to agree to reading Tales of a Gutsy Ninja after Naruto had vouched for it not being "really good, not all boring like the other stuff the Pervy Sage wrote," sticking his tongue out at Kakashi.
Kakashi had never much minded extended missions - for a long time, he had preferred them. If he wasn't in Konoha, he couldn't see the memorial stone, or trace its growing list of names. (Not that it mattered, much: he had them memorized. But seeing them in front of him was harder, somehow.) He wondered if it would become a liability, that he now wanted to return to Konoha quickly, instead of staying out in the field an extra day or two for an easier traveling pace, to take the shorter missions rather than the longer, when the choice came up. It didn't seem to be, but he kept an eye on it, anyway, counting pros and cons with the practice of years.
Each half-hour, he built the fire up, keeping the coals live and hot, and the flames low, and scanned the snowstorm with the Sharingan, watching as Sai's summons softened slightly around the edges. Two hours in, he woke Sai, who recalled the lions and sent out two birds and two bears, the lines a little clumsier than usual: Sakura had set his bones, but they weren't all the way healed yet, and he held the paintbrush with a look of fierce concentration that probably masked severe pain. Sai slipped back under the blanket next to Sakura, and Kakashi wondered if she knew how much it implied that he was willing to have her so close. Probably not yet, he thought: none of her close friends had been in ANBU long enough, and none of her immediate family was, so far as he knew.
Four hours in, he woke Sai, who rose quietly, and Naruto, who grumbled good-naturedly and grabbed a ration bar before going to stand by the windbreak. Naruto leaned on the pile of wood and peered out into the snow as if he could see through it if he just looked hard enough. Knowing that the idea might well occur to Naruto, Kakashi turned and said "Don't send out shadow clones: they'll be too visible." Naruto nodded, and went back to staring out into the snow.
"Wow. It's like there's nothing out there but the storm." he said softly, then "I'll wake Sai in two hours, and Sakura-chan in four." Kakashi nodded, then folded the blanket in half and lay down on top of it, pulling the cloak around him. He stirred when Sai rose to send new creatures into the snow, and overheard a whispered conversation between Naruto and Sakura when he woke her: Sakura refused to sleep longer, and Naruto sighed, and flopped onto the ground, muttering about not wanting to share with Sai... When Sai next rose, he walked back to Kakashi instead of Naruto. Kakashi blinked and looked up at him, and Sai whispered "Naruto kicks." Kakashi moved over so Sai wasn't sleeping directly on the cold rock, drifted back to sleep, and woke when Sakura bent over him.
"It stopped snowing about an hour ago," she said. "Sai's checking his creatures, but it looks like no one's on our trail." She walked back to the fire, tossing another few pieces of wood on to get the flames going again, and knelt to check Sai's arm and hand. Naruto was still sprawled out in a tangle of blanket, apparently asleep. Kakashi moved to wake him up.
If they hurried, they should be able to make it back to Konoha that evening.