Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She remembers.

She remembers another world, another life, another family, another face staring out of the mirror. Books that will never be written, songs that will never be sung, languages that will never be spoken. There are too many things she shouldn’t remember, that she should just forget, if only for her own peace of mind.

(She remembers what the girl whose skin she’s now living in is supposed to be like—how she’s supposed to speak, to act, to live.

Except…she’s not that girl. She doesn’t even know if that girl ever existed.

That’s the whole fucking problem, isn’t it?)

Then…then there are things she doesn’t remember. Or, more accurately, things that aren’t as she remembers them to be.

She grows up with an absentee father and the smiling photo of a mother who drew her last breath as her newborn daughter drew her first. Haruno Kizashi isn’t the man of her vague recollections. Haruno Mebuki might’ve been, but she’s never cared to ask, and Kizashi’s never forced himself to tell the few times he’s home. They aren’t a real family, just two people sharing the same surname and living space, and that’s honestly less complicated than the alternative.

(Perhaps, if things had been exactly the same, she could’ve been that girl: Haruno Sakura.)

Becoming a shinobi isn’t the career she’d normally choose in an ideal world, but it’s what will provide her with the most autonomy. Sakura’s come to that conclusion early on in her new life.

Kizashi’s been hiring ninjas to macro-manage practically every facet of their life, from escorting him on his merchant trips to babysitting his daughter to managing his household affairs. Utterly ridiculous, she knows, but true nonetheless. It’s not even something out of the ordinary either.

She’s had minimal contact with his chūnin guards, but plenty of interaction with the various genin teams responsible for her care. Children aren’t expected to have large attention spans or be interested in the current sociopolitical climate, but that doesn’t mean she can’t listen to what they say or don’t say.

In the end, when you have to live in a quasi-feudal society, you choose the devil you know.

(Sakura’s tired—she’s tired of being cooped up in an empty house, pretending everything’s fine as she lives vicariously through the tales and books and trinkets Kizashi brings home to imitate some sort of familial affection, idly wondering if today’ll be the day when a ninja will knock on her door with a body scroll and a few scripted words before being shipped off to her last living relative, a great-aunt she’s never met, somewhere in the Land of Water.)

Within two months at the Academy, she’s labeled as that quiet, polite, studious, civilian girl with the shockingly pink hair who’s made nothing more than passing acquaintances with her classmates. Part of the blame lies with Sakura—she’s kind of forgotten how to reach out to others—but an even bigger part of it has to do with her circumstances.

It starts (and ends) with her decision to sit beside Hyūga Hinata on the first day of class. Sakura doesn’t put much thought into it, honestly; she just plops down onto the bench and smiles at Hinata when the girl stammers out a timid greeting. When the bell rings, two thirds of the class split into their own groups and rush off into the courtyard, their laughing shouts ringing in her ears. It’s obvious they’ve known each other for years; they don’t need to add to their circle of friends. Sakura scans the classroom, reluctant to approach the established groups—she’s never been a fan of large crowds or loud noises—and takes stock of who’s left behind: Hinata, Aburame Shino, Uchiha Sasuke, and the latter’s…fanclub. Lovely.  

Taking out her bento, she gentles her voice as she turns to address Hinata, an open smile on her lips. “Do you want to have lunch together, Hinata?”

Hinata startles, choking back a squeak, wringing her hands on her lap; nervous, surprised, clearly out of her element. Still keeping her head down, but staring at Sakura out of the corner of her eye, she nods hastily, as if afraid Sakura’ll retract her offer in the next second. “I—I would l-like that, yes.”

Sakura’s smile widens, and Hinata’s mouth curves ever so slightly in response, though there’s a hint of some indecipherable emotion to that almost-smile.

(Regret, she recognizes later; by then, it’s too late to take it back.)

They end up spending fifteen minutes in semi-awkward silence as they enjoy their bento. Not the most auspicious beginning, true, but Sakura’s left with the impression that Hinata’d be willing to give her a chance.

The problem, she discovers at the end of the day, isn’t Hinata’s skittish nature. Simply put, it’s the fact that Sakura’s never had to interact with clan children outside the context of a shinobi-client relationship, and thus is ignorant of the unwritten rules most civilian children are aware of. It becomes painfully evident when Hinata’s caretaker comes to pick her up, and Sakura, rather naively, waves at her with a smile and a promise to eat lunch with her tomorrow.

Before Hinata can even reply, the Hyūga gives Sakura a critical once-over, as if he’s searching for something that should be there but unfortunately isn’t, then shakes his head. There’s something infuriatingly dismissive in his blank, white eyes, not quite condescending, an inborn superiority softened by the barest traces of pity. Hinata’s face falls, chin tucked low and lips half-bitten, and Sakura realizes she’s probably made things even more difficult for that sweet girl in her stupid ignorance.

Heart sinking, she inhales sharply and curls her mouth into a mockery of civility, careful not to show her teeth.

“Goodbye, Hyūga-san.” She waves at Hinata, her arm suddenly, unbearably heavy, never mentioning Hinata’s telling lack of reply, then bows in her caretaker’s direction with as much grace as she can muster and none of the contempt boiling under her skin. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on is what she doesn’t spit out as that asshole leads the poor girl away without a backwards glance.

In truth, it isn’t even directed towards him specifically. Sakura’s noticed his covered forehead, knows he must be a branch member. This…this casual act of unnecessary cruelty has been bred into him. Any anger she feels over the situation becomes hollow. Sakura takes the lesson she’s been taught today to heart, readjusts her expectations, and greets Hinata with a close-lipped smile the next day. Nothing more, nothing less.

For the remainder of her time at the Academy, she keeps to herself, keeps her words measured, her thoughts hidden, her smiles without teeth. It’s not as extreme as manifesting an inner personality with its own voice and mannerisms, but she can understand how that girl whose face she’s wearing must have felt much better now.

(Some days, particularly on those Hinata does well in spars or scores high on tests, she’ll grow just that little bit bolder, sit just that little bit closer, her left palm laid flat on the bench, small, callused fingers outstretched, but always misjudging the distance. Sakura’s homemade cinnamon rolls will mysteriously be missing from her bento by the time the bell rings for lunch break on those days.

Deception is the name of the game, and Sakura learns to play it well; so well, in fact, she even succeeds in fooling herself.)

Umino Iruka pays attention to all of his students, indiscriminately; in part, because he’s a genuinely nice person who cares for his charges, and in part, because he takes his duties seriously, including filing an accurate assessment of their skills, latent potential, and psychological profile.

Sakura graduates from the Academy at the top of her year for the simple reason that it’s expected of her.

(She knows what to expect of Team Seven, and that’s enough of a reason for her.)

“My name is Haruno Sakura. I like animals, sweets, and history. I don’t like abusers, crowded places, and nattō. My hobbies include reading, cooking, and calligraphy. I don’t have any long-term dreams or grand ambitions in life, but I want to travel and see the world for myself.”

Uzumaki Naruto’s unabashedly gaping, blue eyes full of shock and jaw dropping, then points a finger at her and declares she’s ‘way too boring, ‘ttebayo!’ in his usual overdramatic manner. Uchiha Sasuke appears a mixture of disinterested, scornful, and relieved. Hatake Kakashi smiles at her, lone eye crinkled at the corner, the kind of smile Sugiwara-sensei used to give her after she cottoned on to the fact that the majority of Sakura’s flower arrangements spelled out a variation of ‘I deeply regret not being born with a dick’. “On the contrary,” he tells her in a slow, lazy drawl edged with amusement, “I think that’s very ambitious of you, Sakura-chan.”

“Thank you, Hatake-sama,” is all she says, smiling back at him, serenely watching his masked face as he processes the title she’s attached to him.

Nothing shows on the surface, of course—she doubts he ever projects anything with true depth—but she’s certain he’s received her message.

(Whatever else he may be, Kakashi will always be the Hatake Clan Head first. Sakura can’t afford to ever forget that in a public setting.)

At quarter to six, Sakura enters the training grounds, each step laden with purpose, wide awake and well-provisioned. When a still-groggy Sasuke and a barely-awake Naruto arrive, she unpacks a picnic blanket, a portable tea set, a small stack of books, and sets about making herself comfortable for the long wait ahead. Mid-yawning, Naruto calls her weird again, tactless as ever, then flops down onto the blanket and promptly falls asleep. Sasuke, surprisingly, sits down across from her, cross-legged, accepting a steaming cup of green tea and picking out a beginner’s book on chakra theory. Two hours later, Naruto wakes up to find them snacking on her homemade rice balls, each with a book in hand, shrugs off her weirdness in record time and proceeds to stuff his face while bemoaning the notable lack of ramen.

Kakashi won’t make an appearance until noon at the earliest—openly, at least. For all Sakura knows, he’s already here, hiding his presence, prowling the woods, laying traps, fucking with their minds—

It won’t work.

(Until it does.)

“Maa, don’t you three look cozy? I hate to break up your little tea party slash book club gathering, but you do realize this is a life-or-death kind of thing, right? It’s called survival training for a reason.”

“You’re late, ‘ttebayo! Latelatelate!”

“Good afternoon, Hatake-sama. I’m sorry, but I must have misheard your instructions… I could’ve sworn we were supposed to meet six hours ago. How odd.”

“Hn.”

A voice rises over the birdsong, sudden and deep and creeping through the canopy; like a wolf circling prey he won’t catch, half-sated and doing it for the sheer pleasure of the act. “Shinobi Tactics Number Two: Genjutsu.”

“Kai,” she hisses out before the genjutsu can even latch on to her. In another life, she’d be seeing the cold, dead bodies of her family.

(In this life, Haruno Sakura’s the one deaddeaddead—)

In a swirl of leaves, Kakashi disappears into the foliage. Sakura sucks in a shaky breath, fingers digging into her throat where her heart still beats, and trudges onward. A dead girl walking.

“Do you even know what this test was about?” Kakashi sounds wistful rather than angry. His gaze encompasses all three of them, and while he seems resigned to the boys’ mulish scowls, he stares at her with utter disappointment.

“Teamwork.” It rolls off her tongue crisply enunciated and all business. There’s no point in holding anything back; she’ll only be sabotaging herself, and that’s the fastest way to arouse suspicions. Kakashi’s not testing her intelligence, but the reasoning behind her judgement call. If you knew, why didn’t you do anything? Why are you making the same mistakes I did? Sakura’s mouth quirks up wryly. “Knowing the correct answer and solving the actual problem are two completely different things.” She then pulls out a kunai, the edges of her lips twitching at Naruto’s comically alarmed expression, and cuts off the rope tying him to the pole. “There’s also the matter of timing, Hatake-sama,” she says, sweetly, tongue dripping with venom, “but I’m sure you know all about that.”

Sasuke scoffs, though a thoughtful gleam enters his gaze as the tension in his shoulders fades, while Naruto scratches the back of his head sheepishly. “I don’t get it,” he admits, all but beaming at her, “but thanks, Sakura-chan! We’ll be the best team ever, believe it!”

Face impassive, Kakashi scrutinizes them intently, one by one. “Team Seven,” he finally announces, tone bordering on a self-pitying sort of exaggerated cheer. “You pass.”

Chapter Text

On paper, Sakura’s a model student—punctual, diligent, efficient. She always shows up on time, trains like her life depends on it, and adopts a no-nonsense approach to D-rank missions that literally moves Iruka to tears.

Team Seven may not work like a well-oiled machine, but they can work together, largely thanks to Sakura’s efforts. Sasuke’s satisfied when she stays out of his business, Naruto’s happy because she treats him like a human being, and neither has the time for dick measuring when Sakura spends every damn second training her ass off during practice. No twelve-year-old boy enjoys being one-upped by a girl, apparently.

Kakashi, the fucking bastard who isn’t willing to put in any kind of effort, still wants more.

(That’s a lie. Kakashi tries. Sakura can see it in his eyes, in the way they ruefully track the emotions running free across Naruto’s face, the red-and-white of the uchiwa fan emblazoned on Sasuke’s back, the deft motions of her hands as she treats their injuries after practice. It’s just… He’s trying all the wrong things for half the right reasons.

The truth is, you can’t help others when you don’t even know how to help yourself.)

“You’ve been very patient with your teammates so far, Sakura-chan.”

It’s more of a question and less of a statement, one that’s been a long way coming, spoken in smooth, conversational tones. Kakashi’s perched high on a thick branch, head buried in an orange book of admittedly questionable content. At the base of the tree, Sakura hums in acknowledgement, never lifting her head from her book either, even though she’s not really reading the words at this point.

That’s the pattern these days: Kakashi’ll pick up a D-rank mission, implicitly foist the task of wrangling her teammates on Sakura, and proceed to pass the time lazying about while pretending to ‘supervise’. More often than not, Sakura’ll finish first—since she’s not prone to throwing temper tantrums in the middle of work—and quietly join him with reading material of her own. 

“I wouldn’t exactly call it patience, Hatake-sensei. I think the word you’re searching for is closer to professionalism.”

A short, dry laugh, accompanied by the sound of rustling paper. “That’s a big word,” he drawls, a thin veneer of humor coating his voice, and something else underneath that, far more biting, an unspoken, sarcastic quip of do you even know what it means?

Today, she’s checked out one of the Nidaime’s handwritten journals that’s part of a public collection dating back to the Warring Clans’ Era. Her gaze trails over each individual kanji, analyzes the austere, meticulous way in which every symbol is flawlessly arrayed on the page. It’s spine-chillingly beautiful—the rigid order, the sheer, cold functionality of his style, that sharp flick of wrist through the downstroke. No inkblots, no unnecessary embellishment. Senju Tobirama wielded an ink brush as if it were an instrument of death, all steady hands and ruthless precision.

“We’re a genin cell,” she goes on to explain, blandly factual and not rising to the bait, still half-admiring the Nidaime’s penmanship and what it reveals about his character. “As far as I understand it, the purpose of genin teams is to ease us into the shinobi life in a controlled environment. Konoha, especially, places great value on teamwork. Having said that, I highly doubt we’ll remain a team once we get promoted. It’s quite obvious that our core personalities don’t mesh well together.”

Nothing of what she says rings false. There’s a great divide between clan shinobi and shinobi coming from a civilian background, and that’s not even touching shinobi with familial ties to immigrants. It’s an open secret, something Konoha doesn’t much like to advertise, yet at the same time doesn’t care enough to suppress.

Someone like her… Sakura wasn’t put on Team Seven to forge unbreakable bonds that will eventually propel her career into seldom-before-seen heights for a civilian-born shinobi. No, when all is said and done, the Sandaime Hokage simply made an executive decision, handpicking her due to the sole reason that, out of all the available kunoichi in her graduating class, she was the most capable in conjunction with being completely expendable. No matter how much Kakashi might like to pretend otherwise, facts will be facts.

“So cold. And here I thought we were fast becoming reading buddies. Maa, you wound me, Sakura-chan.”

And oh, there he goes again, defaulting to his basic teaching style, all doublespeak and shameless guilt-tripping and ridiculously roundabout ways to impart the cornerstone of his philosophy to his students.

It’s not his fault, not really, not fully. He is…disconnected. Kakashi can’t quite comprehend the extent of what she’s hinting at, his capacity to perceive social subtleties horribly crippled in the wake of his traumatic life experiences. A child grown too fast even by shinobi standards. A last survivor from a team full of heroes. A Clan Head without a clan to lead. A shinobi steeped in death and blood and violence. A man with too many jagged edges in his soul, too much scar tissue on his body, too many ghosts in his head.

If one wants proof, they don’t have to look underneath the underneath; it’s oh-so-plain to see.

Sakura can’t recall the exact number of teams Kakashi failed before Team Seven, but she bets none of them were clan kids. The Sandaime Hokage, no doubt, has a soft spot for Kakashi, going so far as to blatantly indulge his eccentricities—of which Kakashi possesses copious amounts—but he would’ve never in a million years chosen to stir the hornet’s nest by needlessly antagonizing Konoha’s precious clans; not even for Kakashi’s sake. From a political standpoint, crushing the dreams of two dozen non-clan kids is just collateral damage. Being seen as favoring one single Clan Head over all others, on the other hand? That would’ve been a clusterfuck of truly epic proportions.

In Kakashi’s mind, those idiot kids were in dire need of an attitude adjustment for their own fucking good. By failing them, he imagined he was doing them a favor, not consigning them to a life of mediocrity as career genin at best. It’s so hilariously sad, how bad is his inattentional blindness to things even the most sheltered housewife can see, that Sakura can’t even find it in herself to laugh at him.

“You can’t expect me to form strong, emotional attachments or have deep, meaningful conversations with every person I’m assigned to work with, Hatake-sensei,” she retorts, flatly at first—and then, thinking better of it, follows it up with a huff, inserting an air of long-suffering faux-exasperation into her mien to take the sting out of her words. “In our case, knowing each other on a superficial level is probably for the best.”  

Kakashi stays quiet for several long seconds. She’s starting to think maybe she’s been too honest, pushed the constraints on teacher-student interaction too far, when he opens his mouth again.

“You’re not wrong,” he says, and it’s the first honest thing he’s ever given her in return.

There’s a low rasp in his inflection, grief-stricken and twisted into self-loathing, so goddamn heartbreaking it hurts. All of a sudden, they’re obviously not having the same conversation anymore. Somehow, all Sakura accomplished is to remind him everyone he dares to love tends to die on him. As if he doesn’t do that enough on his own every morning at the memorial stone. As if he just needs another reminder to round the evening out.

Gods help me, she thinks, nearly driven to hysterical laughter, what a fucking mess.

Sakura never meant to rattle his ghosts, merely try to open his eyes a margin, to logically point out why her days on this team are numbered—not like this, ye gods, never like this—and Kakashi, incredibly, impossibly frustrating man that he is, still doesn’t get it. He’s been fathered by Hatake Sakumo, the man who broke the rules, taught by Namikaze Minato, the civilian who broke the mold, and saved by Uchiha Obito, the teammate who broke through his barriers. Kakashi doesn’t get that these people were the exception that proves the rule, that Konoha’s Will of Fire is more of an ideal than a present-day reality, an excuse shinobi and civilians alike need to justify their loyalty without sacrificing the last vestiges of their conscience.

Eyes falling shut, Sakura sighs, foolish sentimentality clouding her judgment and spilling from her throat unbidden, as if she, too, has fallen victim to that same irrational, visceral need for a fleeting moment. “If it’s any consolation,” she confesses, almost to herself, feeling compelled to say this even if it ends up being a terrible mistake that’ll come back to haunt her someday, “I trust you with my life.”

For the first time, as they wait for the boys to finish, there’s nothing but silence in the space between them, absent the sound of turning pages. Mind numb, Sakura keeps staring at the last passage she read—an arguably biased account of Konoha’s early-Founding days, heavily saturated in distrust for anyone with a Sharingan—her last coherent thought being that Senju Tobirama’s actually pulled off the herculean feat of mocking her from beyond the grave.

(Sakura can fathom why he’ll never get it, why he’ll never stop trying, but… Here’s the catch: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Kakashi has too much baggage to even think about trying to take on hers, or Sasuke’s, or Naruto’s—never mind combined—not when he’s barely having his shit together as it is.

Truth be told, he doesn’t deserve this. None of them do. Then again, people rarely ever get what they deserve, in this life or the next.)

Then…then comes the hellish ‘C-rank’ mission to Wave.

Sakura says nothing—she holds her tongue when Tazuna stumbles his way into the Hokage’s office in a drunken stupor (reeking of desperation so potent, so acutely pervasive, that she can taste the fear, the guilt, the sorrow, the unshakable hope in it). When Naruto stands frozen in terror with an ugly slash across the back of his hand (bleeding out as raw conviction fills his bright-blue eyes and carves the baby fat out of his cheeks). When Sasuke almost stabs himself with his own kunai (disgust chasing away the shadows in his eyes, pushing them down, down, down, until they’ve sunk deep enough to stain his bone marrow an angry pitch-black). When Kakashi orders them to run away from the killer in the mist (trapped alone with his ghosts, tearing his throat apart as they’re floating all around him, drowning him faster than the river-water ever will).

Nothing seems to change.

(Everything does.)

“How long was I—you—what the fuck?” A pause, then tension rising, cresting, culminating in an unfocused blast of killing intent. “Breaking the Rules: The Tale of a Rogue and a Princess?” Kakashi’s all kinds of messed-up, and worse…he sounds like it. Disoriented as hell, twice as paranoid. “Who the hell are you? Sakura wouldn’t be caught dead reading trash like that.”

From where she’s sitting on the windowsill, Sakura flares her chakra, dispelling the illusion cast on the book cover, and lowers her arms just enough so her face becomes visible over the real cover, but refrains from any-and-all unnecessary movement.

“You should take it easy, Hatake-sensei. I checked you for injuries, but I didn’t find anything beyond a mild case of chakra exhaustion and a few shallow cuts. Luckily, you ran out of stamina and passed out before it could develop into chakra depletion.” Kakashi mutters something that sounds suspiciously like yeah, totally lucky, that’s me, which Sakura has the grace to pretend not to have heard. “There are also external signs of eye inflammation, but I wouldn’t know where to even begin treating that, and I figured asking for Uchiha-san’s opinion would be…unwise.” A snort that quickly transforms into a groan of pain and misery. “And it’s been ten hours since we’ve arrived at Tazuna-san’s residence. As for my reading preferences…you’d be entirely correct. If you hadn’t guessed already, I’m practicing genjutsu. Thank you for confirming it works, Hatake-sensei.”

Having concluded her verbal report, Sakura dives back into her book, wholly immersed in the differences between casting genjutsu that affect multiple targets and— 

“Who’s keeping watch?”

“Uchiha-san,” she replies, rather absentmindedly, and leaves it at that.

“You don’t trust him?”

“I do.” No delay in replying, no change in her body language, no lie on her tongue. Sakura trusts Sasuke to keep watch, that much is true. Kakashi’s digging for something; he’s just not asking the right questions. Before he can, Sakura opts for misdirection. “That so-called Kiri hunter-nin, on the other hand…” she trails off with a casual roll of her shoulders.

“So you did notice.”

Once more, Sakura holds her tongue; only this time, Kakashi’s watching her closely, keenly, seeking to grasp all that she voices out and all that goes unspoken. There’s something strikingly inhuman about the way he does it, another kind of awareness; it calls to the part of her brain that is all animal instinct, that sets her nerves on fire and chills the blood in her veins and screams at her: there’s a wolf at the door, run-hide-don’t-let-him-in!—and then it’s all over. Kakashi closes his eyes, and when he speaks again, he’s just a man; devoid of strength and so, so tired. “You think I made a mistake,” he rasps, barely a whisper.

Yes, she thinks, just another in a long list of mistakes dumped on you. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” she says instead. “What matters is, what will you do now?”

“Why, what else?” Kakashi chirps in a voice so packed with brazen optimism, it’s like he’s taunting fate itself, daring the universe to make it self-fulfilling. “Train my cute little students, of course.”

(Sakura never forgets the wolf peering at her through his eyes, coiled to pounce, to sink his teeth into her soul and rip the real her out.)

Kakashi tells her to protect Tazuna, and so that is exactly what Sakura does.

The mist is too thick, cold and damp, soaking through her clothes. The clang of steel is too loud, screeching and distracting, drilling into her ears. She’s fighting half-blind and half-deaf, her grip too slippery to parry with her kunai, her reaction time too slow to dodge an A-rank shinobi. If Zabuza slips past Kakashi and comes straight for Tazuna, stalling is the only thing she can do, realistically speaking.

Pursing her lips, Sakura steels herself and molds her chakra, putting theory into practice. The purpose of this particular genjutsu is to induce a dizzying sensation akin to vertigo. It’s subtle, more like a mean trick, the kind that almost nobody uses in a high-speed battle because there’s no point when you’re always in motion, but perfect for a stationary situation like hers. Technically, Sakura’s using an experimental, modified version of her own making that mimics its effects, spreading it around in a diameter of about two meters, instead of directly attacking the nervous system of a single target as it’s supposed to be used.

(In an ironic twist of fate, Zabuza’s not even the one who falls for it. Or, perhaps, Kakashi’s just got the monopoly on testing out her crazy genjutsu. It’s probably the closest he’ll ever come to teaching.)

With a foul curse, Zabuza vanishes into the mist, leaving behind an aftertaste of murder. Sakura stands stock still, breath hitching in her throat, pinpricks of bloodlust ghosting over every inch of exposed skin—Kakashi’s suddenly right there. Wild-eyed, drenched in blood, a pack of hounds rushing at his heels. She stares at the expanse of his back, at the rippling of sinewy muscle as he lunges forward—Kakashi misses a step, a split-second loss of balance Sakura wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been waiting for it, and swivels his head around. His eyes bore into hers and his mouth stretches wide beneath his mask and—  

(“Clever girl,” he says with a wolf’s grin, all fangs and savage pride, blood dripping down the points of his teeth.)

—and he’s gone.

In the aftermath of this goddamn tragedy, Naruto’s chock-full of guilt, torn between mourning for the Kiri pair and fussing over Sasuke, crying his heart out and picking a fight from one moment to the next. Sasuke’s in a near catatonic state, not even registering his on-and-off Sharingan, until Naruto snaps him out of it by pointing this out in his usual, patently-rude-but-never-mean, in-your-face kind of way.

On the other end of the bridge, there’s a crowd of villagers cheering madly, high on the tang of freedom, hailing them as heroes. Sakura tunes in on the lingering malice in Naruto’s chakra, the red-spinning grief in Sasuke’s eyes, the bone-deep exhaustion in Kakashi’s body, and wonders how this story will be passed down from parent to child over the following years.

(History is written by the victors; it never mentions how steep its price is.)

“—don’t think you’re better than me now—”

“I’m always better than you.”

“—just ‘cause you’ve got Kakashi-sensei’s super weird Sanningan eyeball powers—”

“It’s called the Sharingan.”

“—whatever, still totally lame, temē!”

“Shut up, dobe.”

“I mean, look at him—he’s like, in a freakin’ coma or something! Again!”

“… Hn.”

Tuning them out, Sakura gazes down at the large gash across Kakashi’s chest, spanning from left collar bone to right hip and still sluggishly bleeding, and huffs out a laugh, a humorless, self-deprecating thing.

“Gods, you’re a fucking mess. When will you stop doing this to yourself?”

Which of them she means…

(The boys are too far away, too lost in their own world, and Kakashi never stirs even as the needle pierces his skin. Not that it matters, she thinks, carefully stitching the wound closed.)

…is not a question she wants answered.

Kakashi signs them up for the Chūnin Exams, and along with that little slip of paper, slips her something she never asked of him, something she never expected him to give.

(An answer that is too late, too convoluted, too much like him.)

As Naruto’s jumping all over the place in manic joy and Sasuke’s lost in a daydream of proving his mettle in glorious battle, Kakashi smiles at her. A smile that speaks of triumph, underhanded and disgustingly smug, one she distinctly recalls him wearing as he stabbed Zabuza(’s water clone) in the back. Sakura smothers the urge to claw it off his face with her bare hands; instead, she returns his smile, placid as can be.

“Oh, and Sakura-chan?” His tone is light, frighteningly so; a contrast to the heavy pressure it masks. There’s gravity underneath, a vortex of dangerous things, a black hole that pulls her in deep. “It matters—what you think matters.”

Fucking bastard.

Chapter Text

The journal is old, bound in worn leather, imbued with a musty, metallic smell that irritates her sinuses and scratches at the back of her throat. Sakura drags the pads of her fingers across the rust-red characters scrawled messily at the end of the last entry: Hatake Ume.

A brew of volatile emotions simmers in a mass low in her stomach as she closes the journal; although, at this point, the name is a bit of a misnomer. A melange is more accurate—all the curiosities that were Hatake Ume, from expert tracking tips to brilliant insights into genjutsu theory to radical feminist views, interspersed with short diary entries.

If she knows one thing about Ume through the prism of her memoirs, it is this: Hatake Ume was a hunter. She hunted down her meals, her enemies, her lovers; she hunted for survival, for respect, for pleasure. Her whole life was a wild hunt; a ferocious, relentless chase after things she was denied on the premise of being a woman in a world of men.

Hatake Ume hungered for change, and Sakura can’t help but be in awe of her. She thinks she may have fallen a little bit in love. Well played, Kakashi, she laughs, an airy, breathless peal of self-mockery, well fucking done, you bastard.

Slipping her the journal of his relative—sharing his clan’s heritage—to steer her in the ‘right’ direction is nothing short of genius. Insidious in a paradoxically guileless sort of way, however well-meaning, however honest his intentions may be. An audacious show of trust meant to ensnare her, to draw her in and draw out an act of reciprocation. Sasuke and Naruto are entitled to a wealth of clan privileges, regardless if only one of them is aware of this for the time being, but her? Sakura comes from nothing and can claim nothing—nothing but what he now so generously offers. I’m trusting you, so place your trust in me, is what it all boils down to. I see you, and I see what you can become, so let me help you.

It’s ironically laughable, his impeccable timing. Of course, Kakashi would choose this exact moment to defy expectations.

(Team Seven isn’t ready for the Chūnin Exams.

Naruto’s too impulsive, too stubborn, too selflessly, idiotically loyal. Sasuke’s too eager, too reckless, too obsessively, vengefully driven. Sakura… Well, contrary to what Kakashi believes, she’s not too much of anything that can stir up tornadoes with the flap of a butterfly’s wings. Not yet… Perhaps not ever.)

As she walks down the main avenue towards the Academy, generations of Hatake pride ripple through her mind like a live wire—what you think matters, Kakashi rumbles—loud as the crack of thunder and the howl of wolves—we do not bare our throat, Ume purrs—but louder still is a quote from one of those books that will remain unwritten: There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.

(Danger lies ahead, lies in wait, like a snake hidden in the grass. Sakura walks into the second task with eyes wide open and the taste of bitter venom on her tongue.)

Sixteen hours after entering the Forest of Death, Team Seven emerges victorious via judicious use of traps, illusions, and chakra strings. By then, Sakura’s on the brink of chakra exhaustion, half-delirious and holding on through sheer willpower, barely, and only long enough to string together a few slurred-yet-oddly-eloquent sentences that paint an alarming, if highly disturbing, picture.

Due to their insensible state, Sasuke and Naruto, for better or for worse, have nothing to contribute beyond visual corroboration of their brief stint as test-subjects-slash-human-puppets.

(Later, with her body purged of stress hormones and her brain fully operational, Sakura’ll recall the absolute SNAFU that was summarized in her verbal report and laugh herself to tears. It won’t be quite what she needs—not quite cathartic, not quite wholesome, not quite enough—but she’s learned to live with the forever-less.)

“Ah! Sakura-chan! I see you made it—what on earth happened to you?”

“We were attacked by a Kusa kunoichi who later identified herself as Orochimaru of the Sannin.”

“Wait, what? O-Orochimaru?!”

“Her usage of Snake Summons led me to believe her claim, yes. After battling us for approximately twenty minutes, she easily incapacitated my teammates with fūinjutsu and chose to retreat. Fortunately, she appeared to be entirely uninterested in me, and thus dealt me no serious injury.”

“Oh, kami-sama, that’s—uh, just wait a sec, why do you keep saying she—”

“Uchiha-san bears an unknown seal of malicious nature on his neck, delivered by way of oral means, and Uzumaki-san has some kind of chakra disruption seal on his stomach.”

“They have what?!”

“Most notably, Orochimaru was singularly focused on testing Uchiha-san’s skills, and her parting comment hinted at the probability of his future defection to her side. I would also like to point out she gave off the impression that Uchiha-san’s consent or willingness to desert were mostly non-factors. Of lesser importance is her allusion to a past association with Uchiha Itachi.”

“I-Itachi?!”

“Oh, and her apparent sex change. If you would kindly relay my report to Hatake-sensei, I’d be very grateful for your assistance, Umino-sensei. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do believe I’m about to pass out.”

“Oh, no, Saku—”

Poor, poor Iruka.

“Maa, Sakura-chan, you nearly gave your poor sensei a heart atta—”

Sakura wakes up to the familiar sound of crinkling paper and Kakashi’s voice, the obnoxiously wounded tone he only takes with her whenever they’re dancing around a subject neither wants to touch—and she just…can’t.

“Hatake-sensei,” she snaps, raw-throated, balanced on a razor edge, “please, don’t.”

Kakashi’s jaw clicks shut. His gaze roams over her face, catalogs every bruise, every scrape, every micro expression that betrays how she’s feeling towards him: unamused, unimpressed, too tired to put up with his unique brand of bullshit.

Seconds, maybe even minutes, pass. Kakashi averts his eyes, and Sakura quietly seethes. Gods, but she’s just so violently, helplessly angry.

She’s so used to internalizing her anger that it’s taken a near-death experience to accept she’s been stewing in silence for years on end. And the funny part is…right now, she’s not even angry for her own sake. Sasuke’s not her teammate in the true sense of the word—hell, she doesn’t even like him—but the thing is… You don’t have to like someone to be angry on their behalf.

Deep down, she knows—knows that anger isn’t what stokes the fire, or the only thing that burns. Sakura closes her eyes and exhales slowly, buries her fingers in the hot coals and unearths what’s hidden beneath the anger. Her throat is too dry, but she speaks past the dryness—past that gnawing feeling she comes to know as guilt.

“Thank you for lending me Ume-san’s journal. With the condition the boys were in… I would’ve probably been next to useless without it.”

There’s no shame in admitting this truth, so she gives it up freely; it’s the least of what she owes him, and the most she can offer without crossing a line.

Kakashi barks out a startled laugh. “You…” he swallows another laugh, guttural and mirthless and coming from deep inside his chest where the wolf slumbers, then tries again. “You’re the furthest thing from useless,” he tells her as his gaze sears a brand into the violet bruise stretching over her cheekbone, and it feels like a death sentence.

Sakura keeps her eyes fixed on the ceiling, staring at the peeling paint around the light fixture, and imagines that’s what her skin looks like stripped bare.

Arms folded across her chest, Ino cocks a hip and juts her chin out, staring Sakura(’s water clone, thank you, Zabuza, may you rest in peace) down.

“You got lucky and ended up on Sasuke-kun’s team, but luck won’t help you now. I’ll show you what a real kunoichi can do and win Sasuke-kun’s heart!” she declares with a toss of her hair and all the fervor of the blindly devoted, despite the fact that Sakura’s never expressed any kind of love for the aforementioned boy.

Oh, Sakura thinks as she crouches upside down on the ceiling, equal parts amused and pitying, this won’t be pretty. The Proctor seems to share this thought when he realizes Ino’s not even aware she’s already caught in Sakura’s genjutsu and is forced to say around a hacking cough, “Please knock her out,” before the clearly redundant, “Winner: Haruno Sakura.”

(As Sakura breezes past Team Eight, she catches Hinata’s gaze and her warm, joyous stutter of, “Co-congratulations, Sa-Haruno-san,” and mouths back: Good luck, Hinata, I believe in you.

Faith doesn’t have to be rewarded with staged victories; faith is cinnamon-sweet smiles, compassion found in stolen moments, fingers sticky with sugar glaze and slotting together like pieces of the same puzzle.)

“—Sakura-chan’s kinda weird, yeah, but she’s also kinda pretty and—and don’tcha know this guy’s a…a total creep?! ‘Cause he totally is—” 

Sakura’s spent the last eleven hours at the hospital, sleepless, running on coffee and energy bars, waiting for the merest scrap of news on Hinata’s condition, so she can be excused if at first she disbelieves the reality seen through her bloodshot eyes.

Naruto’s loitering in the lobby in all his orange glory, ostensibly laying into Kakashi for reasons beyond her ken, all the while gesticulating madly…to the poor, innocent potted plant near the entrance. Frozen in front of the vending machine, Sakura blinks once, twice, and again. Something niggles at the back of her mind—blond, blue-eyed, loud, talking nonsense, where have I seen this scene befo—oh. Kakashi, it appears, is living up to his moniker, the shameless bastard, even if it means copying from his own students. She shouldn’t laugh, but, well…sleep deprivation does weird things to people’s sense of humor.

Spotting the real Kakashi—all stretched out across a grand total of five chairs and nose stuck in soft-core porn and just chilling in the waiting area, while people are gawking and Naruto rages in the background—doesn’t help matters. Still shaking with laughter, Sakura approaches with wobbly steps, earning a few lingering glances in the process, ranging from scandalized to horrified to disapproving, and collapses in an exhausted heap onto the closest chair available.

“Maa, if it isn’t my favorite student.”

“That’s…” Sakura cracks one eye open, looking askance at his stark gall, and says in a voice that oozes a worldly kind of sass, “…at best conditional and at worst patronizing.” A deeply wounded look scrunches Kakashi’s features, the very image of an overgrown, victimized puppy, which only serves to make the impact of what follows next all the sweeter. “I might’ve been more inclined to believe you, if I didn’t have clear-cut evidence you are playing favorites. Funny how Uchiha-san seems to be conveniently absent today when he should be right here pestering you about training. Imagine that.”

“Caught that, huh?”

“Kind of hard not to.”

“Look, Sakura-chan, there are reasons—”

“Obviously. Don’t worry, Hatake-sensei. I understand completely. Uzumaki-san, on the other hand… I’m afraid he might need an…incentive…to see things from your perspective. After all, how could he understand politics when he doesn’t even recognize the emblem of his own clan?”

There’s a beat of stunned, thickly charged silence, made more oppressive by all the hubbub in the lobby, the sharply defined beeping of medical machinery and the explosive volume of Naruto’s ranting and raving and—

Kakashi laughs.

It’s a pure sound, electrifying, hair-raising, running wild on her skin like a hound spawned from a lightning strike. Her brain grows numb, transmitting all the wrong signals. (Or, perhaps, that’s the sleep deprivation hitting her hard, and she’s finally crashing.)

“Conditional, ne?” he breathes out, near purring, gleefully biting into the word and taste-testing each syllable until he’s satisfied with its meaning; he sounds so fucking pleased, as if getting blackmailed into educating Naruto on his clan’s history is the greatest thing to ever happen to him and she might’ve actually just become his favorite student for making it happen. “So devious. You, Sakura-chan, are a vicious little thing. Sensei approves.”

A smirk threatens to break out; she chews on the inside of her cheeks to hold it back, but lets her tongue loose. “I was taught by the best.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” Still pleased, still purring, an open invitation Sakura’d be a fool to turn down.

“Including your clan’s private library?” she presses, boldly, not a single moment’s hesitation.

“Especially there.” Kakashi laughs again, then rolls his shoulders, joints popping, a lithe, languorous motion. He cocks his head to the side, muscles bulging in his neck and molded to the fabric of his mask, drawn thin and taut with tension. There’s a touch of wildness to his profile, a wolf’s anticipation as he pads along the forest floor and shadow-stalks, searching for the best prey, for the perfect hunt. “Just…some things are priceless, so make sure Naruto doesn’t get his paws on anything fragile. Or get into too much trouble. Keep an eye on him for me, ‘kay?”

It’s an order, a pale, bloodless warning; it hangs between them like fog, chilling and nebulous and shimmery like specters of a past not properly buried or mourned. Priceless things, fragile… Sakura spins the words in her mind; round and round and round. Photographs, mementos, names… she thinks, but doesn’t say.

“Of course,” she says. Promises. Softly, earnestly.

Kakashi’s never taken his eyes off of her, his scrutiny an aloof, languid, intense thing, observing her in that contradictory manner of most veteran shinobi—always alert, always ready to spring into action—but there’s no predatory edge, no sign of the wolf in his aura.

“Oh, and Hatake-sensei?” Despite being just about dead with fatigue, Sakura forces herself to squeeze out the necessary energy for one last act of mercy—or vengeance, depending on your point of view. A smile blooms on her lips, pretty as a picture, if a tad too innocent. Kakashi raises an eyebrow at her, and Sakura directs his attention to the issue at hand with a pointed tilt of her chin. “Please fix this.”

“—not even kidding! I swear to the ramen gods, he’s like, the king of closet perverts, ‘ttebayo! You’ve gotta believe me, Kakashi-sensei! How can you leave us with Konohamaru’s ero-sensei for a whole freakin’ month—”

Kakashi, being the mature and responsible adult that he is, gives her a look which can only be translated as do I have to, mom?, complete with puppy-dog eyes and a low-pitched whine.

“Are you alright, Ebisu-san?” Sakura calls out to her substitute teacher who’s, quite frankly, so far from alright it’s a miracle he hasn’t yet shriveled up and died of shame. In fact, nothing about the situation in which she’s landed herself is alright, but wrong is too tame a word to describe whatever-the-hell she’s just witnessed. And by that, she means Jiraiya and his ridiculous research and his even more ridiculous response to interrupting said ridiculous research which he then used as an excuse to kidnap—

“Oh, yes, I’m perfectly fine, Sakura-kun. Nothing to worry about. Jiraiya-sama’s presence simply caught me off-guard. It won’t happen again, I assure you,” Ebisu laughs it all off without an iota of embarrassment or even awkwardness, dismissing the memory of being OHKO’d—by a toad’s tongue, of all things—from his mind with enviable unflappability. If not for the recurrent spasm near the corner of his left eye, partially covered by his sunglasses, Sakura might’ve even bought it and taken him at face value. “Now, I see you have perfected the water-walking technique. Since Naruto-kun is…regrettably, no longer my charge, is there something else I can assist you with?”

You could go and rescue Naruto from Jiraiya’s clutches instead of silently praying for his virtue, she mentally snarls once the shock’s worn off, skipping reasonably angry altogether and edging towards pissed the fuck off. Gods, just…what the hell is wrong with these people?

“Yes, actually. What can you teach me about fūinjutsu?” is what eventually slips past her lips, based on a vague strategic thought along the lines of know thy enemy, but shelving any ideas on how to go about stage-managing a small-scale rescue operation for later inspection. Kakashi’ll never forgive her if she doesn’t at least try after her promise to look out for the serial trouble magnet that is Naruto, and she’d much rather deal with Jiraiya’s ridiculous antics than Kakashi’s petty retaliation if it came to that.

A flash of delighted surprise brightens Ebisu’s face. “Ah, you are interested in the noble art of fūinjutsu? Splendid!”

In total contrast, Sakura nods as her mouth contorts into a slow smile, wryly crooked and dyed with grim determination. “Mhm. You can say that Jiraiya-sama’s…performance…inspired me.”

More than that, Sakura’s first match is against Kinuta Dosu. In the unlikely event of Gaara veering off the script, and thus the Oto pawn surviving the month and showing up for the grand finale, she could definitely do with a sound dampening seal for starters.  

“His…performance…yes.” Ebisu’s mouth appears to be moving against his will, clear diction turning thick and halting, some of his brightness replaced by an infinitesimal grimace due to the reemergence of his eye-twitch. “Well, I suppose summoning is quite an impressive example that highlights the varied applications of the sealing arts in—”

He then proceeds to give her an abbreviated summoning-centred lesson in between praising Jiraiya for his creative use of summons and disparaging him for the exact same thing, his voice gradually dying away to the point where Sakura has to reinforce her ears with chakra to catch—oh. Now there’s an idea. Pity she can’t even glimpse at the elementary scrolls for chakra-based medical procedures without written approval from an accredited medic-nin, once again courtesy of her indelible civilian background.

“—no matter how misused it was in this occasion. That poor toad…” Ebisu clears his throat, coming back to the present and dragging Sakura along with him, and judging by his red-dusted cheeks she wasn’t supposed to hear this part. “A summoning contract, though…” he pauses there, atypically reserved, an abrupt change from the didactic behavior he’s so far displayed.

It’s kind of expected, really, how the whole of his expression screams conflicted; how he reflexively puts civilian before potential on his short personal list of Haruno Sakura’s attributes until this specific order doesn’t fit anymore; how he only seems to remember her status when he’s forced to choose between his preconceived notions of social hierarchy and his duty as an educator.

Silent, Ebisu stares at her through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, almost opaque, impenetrable, denying her access until she finds the right key, waiting for her to prove something; a point, a statement, a goddamned revelation. Sakura stares back and resolutely refuses to apologize for putting him in this position, for daring him to challenge his perspective.

As their wills elongate into honed claws and rasp across the silence, they stand under the scorching sun, pitting themselves against each other, against the rules that bind them, against an all-seeing, primitive force that sets them free; and, for one quiet, brilliant moment, the world only exists in shades of green.

“Well, no matter,” Ebisu says, tone brisk and emphatic, and it’s what goes unsaid that implies he must’ve seen something worthwhile in her, something that deserves to be cultivated, to be carefully nurtured. “You certainly have the chakra control for it, but I’m not so sure about your chakra supply. Hm, let’s test it, shall we?”

(Sakura takes the knowledge she’s gained this day, tucks it away and locks it up, but never forgets the first teacher who stared at her, eyes a rich olive green, and acknowledged there’s something fundamentally wrong with the system.)

There’s sand between her toes, hot and gritty and glittering gold; she’s burning fast and she’s sinking deep and she’s lying on a bed of—

She laughs.

Sakura lets herself go—and laughs. She laughs because she’s in the desert and no other human can hear her; she laughs as she’s being submerged in sand and legions of nature’s deadliest things; she laughs until she’s swept up in the centre of the nest and the calm washes over her. It feels utterly, incomparably freeing.

“Greetings, Scorpion Clan. My name is Sakura.” She bows to the thousands of scorpions all around her, and when she raises her head a true smile slips over her face; bright, vicious, fearless, all teeth and slick-red venom that’s been simmering for thirteen long years. “The Toad Sage has taken something important to me. How do you feel about revenge?”

A chorus of hissing sounds meets her question; some high, some low, all of them laughter. The massive red scorpion that stands tallest and proudest among their kind snaps its tail in a whip-like motion, and all others fall silent.

“Greetings, Friend Sakura. We are the Scorpion Clan of Mōdoku Desert. I, Queen Benirui, welcome you to our nest.” She has the kind of voice that builds kingdoms and ruins men, and the kind of bearing that says she does it just for her own amusement. “If it is revenge that you seek, then you have come to the right place. We do not like the Toad Clan.” She laughs that hissing laugh again, and all others laugh with her. “Indeed, we do not.”

(Sakura signs her name in blood under their last summoner’s, and doesn’t ask why his name’s been crossed off when he’s still alive.)

Funnily enough, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Gaara doesn’t veer off the script. For a psychopathic killer leashed to the childlike whims of a sentient mass of chakra and his own mad impulses, he remains unerringly consistent.

Sakura blames Benirui’s influence for thinking it’s absolutely hilarious.

Sakura’s just finished pulling Naruto out of the sleep-inducing genjutsu when an Oto-nin corners them and—Kakashi’s suddenly right there.

“Go after Sasuke.” His voice is hard metal and cuts as deep as the blade he slides between the man’s ribs; his gaze darts from the Oto-nin’s face to Naruto’s, from a dying rictus to a living maelstrom, then settles on her face with an expression akin to heartbreak. When he speaks again, his voice still bears the sharp bite of steel, but it sounds as if he’s turned that blade around and plunged it straight into his own throat. “Don’t be a hero.”

It’s an order and a plea and a broken man’s last hope all rolled into one; a roaring hemorrhage, a sound she never wants to hear again.

“If I were the hero type,” Sakura sighs as she curses herself once more, as she makes another promise to him, another link to the chain which keeps her tethered to this fucking mess, “you wouldn’t send me after him in the first place.”

I’ll keep Naruto from following in Minato’s footsteps. Relief floods his face, smooths out the stress lines around his eyes; the smile Kakashi flashes at her is so smugly knowing, so glutted with trust, that it brings forth an imperative urge to stab him with something rusty and wickedly saw-toothed.

“Let’s go, Nara-san,” she all but sing-songs, a gentle croon with the slightest hint of a snarl, nudging the boy—who’s doing an awful job of pretending to be under the effects of the genjutsu—with her foot as if he’s roadkill.

Eyelids flying open, Shikamaru jolts upright and shoots a suitably terrified look her way, the face of someone intimately acquainted with female fury and long since conditioned to avoid it at all costs. “What a drag. Why do I have to go? I’m definitely not the hero type.”

“True,” she replies, calmly and with a smile that has him blanching on the spot, “but you’re definitely the grumpy sidekick type.”

Shikamaru groans. Naruto cracks up. Kakashi eye-smiles and stabs another Oto-nin. Pakkun growls something uncomplimentary about getting saddled with unruly pups and takes off. Strangely motivated by spite and pure frustration, Sakura whirls about and marches off to do battle with an insane jinchūriki, her only allies another jinchūriki of questionable sanity, a talking dog with no combat abilities, a hardcore slacker of genius intellect, a bug fanatic with communication issues, and a wannabe kid avenger way in over his head.

They hit a snag—of course, they do—when Pakkun informs them there’s a group of nine Oto-nin on their tail, consisting of chūnin rank shinobi, and Shikamaru tries to be the hero he insists he’s definitely not. Sakura wonders if it is contagious.

“Please go ahead, Uzumaki-san,” she waves Naruto off when he, naturally, also tries to be the hero. “You, too, Nara-san. I’ll be more useful here.”

Among this motley crew of genin, she’s the best equipped to mount an ambush and succeed. Shikamaru’s got the smarts to trap them, but doesn’t have the firepower to finish them off. Naruto’s their only real chance against Gaara and can’t be stalled here. Pakkun’s not even a battle summon.

(As it turns out, this doesn’t make a lick of difference when faced with the bullshit that is boy logic.)

While Naruto is busy riding Shikamaru’s ass—you gotta protect Sakura-chan, or I’ll kick your ass, ‘ttebayo!—a little off to the side, Sakura discreetly summons Karaka and slips him into the boy’s collar. With his special ability to shift his size at will, affinity for tactile genjutsu, penchant for sadistic hallucinations, and highly potent venom, Karaka makes for the perfect assassin nanny; more to the point, after spending three weeks watching over Naruto while simultaneously making Jiraiya’s life an absolute hell, he’s an old hand at this by now and maybe even the tiniest bit emotionally invested in Naruto’s well-being, the boy’s affiliation with the Toad Clan notwithstanding.

Only Pakkun notices this, if his sly wink is anything to go by, but he seems far too amused to rat her out. Good boy.

“You have a plan to immobilize them, yes?” Sakura asks, rather rhetorically, since she doesn’t even pause to let Shikamaru get a word in edgewise before pressing forward with her own plan. Letting the boys take charge was clearly a mistake on her part, one she’s not about to repeat. “Excellent. Leave the rest to me then. I can neutralize them once you have them trapped.”

Rendered speechless, Shikamaru stares at her for a couple of seconds, then blurts out, “How?”

An unsettling smile dances around the corners of her mouth. “You know that saying? Poison is a woman’s weapon?” Sakura bites her thumb and flies through the hand signs for summoning. There’s a plume of white smoke, then low, furious hissing. Lips peeling back, more of a baring of teeth than a smile, she, too, hisses. “One hundred percent true.”

“Woman,” Shikamaru says, very, very slowly, “you are dangerous.” An undercurrent of something jarringly self-satisfied running through his voice, pupils blown and glued to the horde of deathstalkers crawling all over her with an almost-involuntary sort of morbid fascination. He looks as if all of the subconscious fears he’s been harboring ever since their first meeting at the Academy have just been confirmed. “Tch. Troublesome.”

Nara Shikaku is staring at her.

Nara Shikaku is staring at her, and Sakura’s too damn tired to give a fuck. Rushing through a forested area at breakneck speed, two back-to-back summonings, taking out a strike force of nine Oto-nin, and constantly low-key worrying over two idiot boys with the self-preservation instincts of a lemming on crack will do that to you.

“Well, damn. Color me impressed,” Shikaku drawls as his gaze sweeps over the grisly sight presented by the corpses of those unfortunate enough to pay the price for Sakura’s frustrations. His tone is bored, his gaze clinical; hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders carelessly slumping. Honestly, he looks and sounds like he can’t be bothered to give a fuck either.

“So,” he moves his focus over to his son, and now there’s a gleam of interest shining through, something teasing and vindictively entertained, that causes Shikamaru’s jaw to clench and his spine to stiffen in abject horror, “got yourself a woman to bail you out, huh? Smart.” Stealing another glance at Sakura, whose mood keeps fluctuating between thoroughly fed up and an abstract feeling of foreboding, he smirks. “Looks like a keeper to me.”

The moment those words are out, Shikamaru goes from mortified to murderous, working his jaw as he struggles to translate his thoughts into actual sentences and not choking sounds or filthy glares. “Yeah, no. We’re not doing this. Ever.” When Shikaku’s mouth parts for doubtlessly another jab at his son’s expense, Shikamaru narrows his eyes and says with unheard-of levels of malice for the laidback boy, “I know where you hide your porn stash, old man.”

Pin-drop silence. Sakura takes care not to react in any way, shape, or form. Shikamaru sets his jaw with all the defiance of a boy on the cusp of teenage rebellion, and Shikaku lifts his gaze skyward.

“Shikamaru, I swear…” he groans, scrubbing a hand down his face and just…so done. “Thanks for saving my son from his own stupidity, Haruno-chan. He’s got a bad habit of missing the forest for the trees when he’s all out of backup.” Shikaku pauses, eyes half-lidded and flicking down to the dead bodies strewn about, bloated and pumped full of scorpion venom, then back up to her face. There’s an unnervingly curious light in his eyes when he murmurs, “I owe you one.”

Nara Shikaku is staring at her, and Sakura still can’t find it within herself to give a fuck. A head shake and a perfunctory, “Just doing my duty, Nara-sama,” is the best she can manage.

A peculiar sound falls off Shikaku’s lips, something between a snort and a laugh. Sakura glances up at him, but all that remains is its echo and dark—dark—pulling eyes.

(There’s a small cruel part of her that revels in this moment, in its self-destructive beauty, and laughs as it whispers: you’ll come to regret this someday.

She’s the mother of all scorpions.)

Chapter Text

Scents of jasmine tea and steamed manjū mingle together and waft gently into her personal bubble of air. It’s soothing, peaceful, almost enough to make her forget the lamentable presence of—

“Sakura.” Flat, borderline rude, a metaphorical slap in the face. Hers. Decorum. The whole damn world’s.

There’s only a handful of people in Konoha who call Sakura by her given name, and even less who do it not followed by a suffix and without caring for how that comes across, for what kind of message it sends. Only one of them speaks it in a voice that’s been bled dry and left for dead on the traditional tatami flooring of his family home.

For all his faults, Sasuke’s never been one to put stock in maintaining the status quo, be it social, political, or even martial; if anything, he holds a refreshingly blunt and casual disregard for proper forms of address and the like.

Most people’d consider this an appalling lack of respect, then they’d remember all the reasons behind such dearth of manners and suddenly find their mouths empty of criticism, but their eyes full of pity. Sakura’s not most people. For her, it’s one of Sasuke’s few redeeming qualities, one of those rare things that remind her of another life where she wasn’t judged by the family name written on her birth certificate, wasn’t discriminated for the common red blood coursing through her veins.

For that small consideration on Sasuke’s part, whether done wittingly or not, Sakura bores her gaze into the black-and-red cloaked back of the person who killed that voice and smiles.

From her position—sitting alone at a table for two near the counter, in clear view of the road where an oblivious Sasuke stands waiting, disgruntled, brows furrowed into a habitual scowl—she can only see the back of Itachi’s upper body and half of Kisame’s face, the lower part that’s not obscured under the brim of his sakkat. It’s not close enough to put her in a direct line of danger, especially since they’re in a busy tea shop in the middle of Konoha’s main market, but it’s apparently not too far for the poison-green of her eyes to go unnoticed.

A jagged grin splits the seam of Kisame’s mouth, twin rows of shark-like teeth and the sadistic side of mirth, as he leans over the table to have a better look at her face on some unspecified signal— 

Out of instinct and a belated sense of self-preservation, Sakura’s chakra pulses and disrupts whatever post-apocalyptic hell Itachi’s stealthily attempting to inflict on her for daring to take one look at his back, instantly recognize him and understandably take offense at his mere presence within Konoha’s walls on Sasuke’s behalf.

Reality blurs out of focus, shatters into hundreds of fogged pieces, each shard reshaping itself into a new, distorted mirror, a slew of vivid, broken reflections that conjure something grotesque and rotting and viciously gnawing on the fleshy bits of her calves as it gorges its way up her body, again, and again, and—

“Have you seen Kakashi?” Sasuke asks, brusque and straight to the point, when she ignores him for longer than he can tolerate; and given that Kakashi’s probably already ignored him for a solid couple of hours at least, it’s no wonder he only lasts five seconds before the remnants of his patience evaporate into the ether. With an ever-present undertone of barely controlled impatience that ultimately fails to mimic apathy, he grits out, “I was supposed to meet him here. Three hours ago.”

“I’m afraid not, Uchiha-san,” Sakura demurs, unfailingly polite, smile sweet as molasses and etched on her lips. Nothing betrays that she’s playing the genjutsu version of Resident Evil with Sasuke’s hot mess of a brother, or that she’s willing Itachi to spontaneously self-combust through the sheer force of her gaze while throwing off horrific genjutsu two and three at a time, much to the growing amusement of his Akatsuki partner. Still cycling her chakra through her tenketsu points in a continuous loop, she brings her cup to her mouth and takes a slow, fortifying sip, irony so thick she can taste it beneath the jasmine flavor blended into the tea leaves. “Feel free to sit and wait for him, if you want.”

“No, thanks. I don’t like sweets.”

“Blasphemy. Off with you, heathen.”

(Sakura walks out of the tea shop to the sound of Kisame’s uproarious laughter and the blood-heat of Itachi’s eyes on her back, nibbling on a piece of dango she boldly swipes off Itachi’s plate when she just so happens to stumble as she drifts by their table on her way out.

Revenge tastes oh-so-sweet.)

Kakashi’s gone, gone, gone away, living inside nightmares, inside a matrix of monochromes and eyes the color of cursed blood. His body lies there, pallid and cold to the touch, sweat beading in dips and hollows, atrophy spreading through muscles and tissues.

As she reaffirms what is laid before her eyes with the backs of her fingers, skin on cold skin and anger colder, the sweet taste of revenge turns syrupy, thickly cloying. Something unnamed blocks her airways, newborn and terrifyingly all-consuming in its genesis; it clings to the walls of her throat and fills up her lungs and slowly, agonizingly drowns her.

She should’ve gouged Itachi’s eyes out.

Ume would’ve, she thinks as she commits the shape of Kakashi’s bone structure into her memory, as she cuts herself on its sharp, angular lines. Remember Uchiha Sōjirō? Uchiha Tetsuya? Uchiha Gin— 

Her mind latches on to the wolf-spirit of the Hatake woman with teeth and claws, lives through the violent deaths of Uchiha men at her hands, grasping so tightly she loses sight of where Sakura begins and Ume ends.

(Perhaps, if she had, this…this thing for which she has no name yet…would’ve never been born.)

On her third visit to the hospital, she crosses paths with Hyūga Hiashi.

It’s inevitable, really, since the people they both visit are entitled to an army of clan privileges, including an entire hospital wing reserved for prominent clan members.

(By then, Sakura’s a cluster of urges and old-festering anger, stretched too thin and too far.

It’s inevitable, really, that something’s gotta give.)

She’s walking down the hallway that leads to Sasuke’s room and Hiashi’s exiting Hinata’s room, and normally she’d just smile a vapid smile and deliver something prosaic that can pass for deference and move the fuck on. Except—

“Excuse me, Hyūga-sama? I understand you are a busy individual and I know I haven’t made an appointment to request a private audience, but may I please have a moment of your time?” Sakura hears herself sort-of-maybe demand of him without her conscious approval. Caught aback by her own moxie and left bereft of choice, she comes to an abrupt, somewhat jerky stop.

Hiashi, too, stops, although far more gracefully, then pins her with an inscrutable stare. There’s an effortless poise in every inch of him, from his clean-shaven jaw to his pin-straight hair to his ramrod-stiff spine down to his well-groomed feet. He cuts an imposing figure, a scion from a marriage of nobility and discipline, as proud of his birthright as his daughter is loath of the pain it perpetuates. Everything about his manner subtly hints he’s humoring her for the sake of appearances.

Sakura’s well aware, and she’s pretty certain Hiashi suspects, that if she had tried to reach out to him through official channels, if she had followed etiquette to the letter, it would’ve never been approved in the first place. Whoever screens his personal mail would’ve taken one glance at her limited credentials—her name, her age, her rank—and dismissed her out of hand with nary a second thought.

For a moment that seems to extend into infinity, Sakura can only stare back, similarly blank and unsure of what she even wants from this man who stares at her and stares through her. She thinks of Hinata, confined to a cold, sterile room, her sole visitors cold, sterile people, all white walls and white eyes and carrying a long history of pain on her thin white shoulders. She then thinks of the pride in Ebisu’s smile when she’d asked him if it’s possible to create linked journals and he’d spoken at length of the Nidaime’s explorations in theoretical space-time seals, introducing her to a realm of impossibilities and unattainable dreams.

(Perhaps, one day, Sakura’ll make her home on the shores of that realm and curl up on its white-gold sands with Hinata by her side, sun-warmth seeping into their bones and salt-water lapping at their legs as they watch the ebb and flow of the ocean tides.

This is not that day.)

Pride, she remembers and inwardly smiles with a bitter twist to her mouth, is the deadliest of all sins. Hyūga Hiashi has pride enough for both of them. Sakura can let go of hers just this once. For Hinata’s sake.

“My name is Haruno Sakura, and I used to be classmates with Hyūga-san. Please,” Sakura folds herself into a bow, long and deep and hating every second of it, “may I visit her?”

“You may,” Hiashi grants at once, without wasting time to mull this over, as if he also finds her minute lapse deeply offensive and disgraceful, and this is the point where she’d just smile a vapid smile and deliver something prosaic that can pass for gratitude and move the fuck on. Except—

Sakura doesn’t think she can go through this again. This is it—her only chance, her only opportunity to demand things from Hyūga Hiashi she has no business demanding. Her spine refuses to unbend—she stays bowed, stubbornly waiting, gaze locked onto the pristine white tiles, low enough that the tips of her hair brush against the floor.

A sigh then, more breath than sound, fanning over the strip of delicate flesh on her nape.

“Hinata will be discharged tomorrow morning,” Hiashi comments, unprompted, seemingly to the air above her head, reproof palpable in his voice and falling heavy on her skin. “If my daughter wishes for your company, you are welcome to visit her at home. I will inform the guards to allow you passage…” A small pause now, as though for added emphasis, or simply because he’s trying to remember her full name. “… Haruno Sakura.”

“Thank you, Hyūga-sama.” Coming out of her bow, Sakura banishes all traces of bitterness from the curve of her mouth and smiles up at Hiashi. This smile is one of quiet dignity, of slow-acting poison. “I appreciate your kindness.”

Hiashi’s expression, the bare minimum of human emotion he allows to trespass on his face, the modicum of courtesy he’s afforded Sakura for the duration of this conversation—all vanishes in the blink of an eye.

Nobody has ever-so-brazenly accused him of being kind.

Sakura saunters past his frozen form and enters Hinata’s room with the satisfaction of having walked away from him; with her head held high, with her pride riding on the petal-pink of her hair as it billows, soaring behind her as one flies a banner on the battlefield. A little tattered, yes, but still whole, still unbroken.

(That small cruel part of her rears its head again, with all the fatal menace of a scorpion’s stinger, and chuckles darkly as it whispers: pride goes before a fall.)

“Hello, Hinata,” Sakura greets, voice tender, excruciatingly fond, wrapping around the girl’s name like an old friend.

It’s a choice, calling it out in the open, deliberate and spurred on by her earlier victory. Taking a seat as close to Hinata’s bed as is physically possible, she slides her hand beneath the hospital sheets and twines their fingers together. Hinata’s smile is slow to come, but when it does, it’s akin to a small miracle; rare and all at once, pure, powerful, an overwhelming deluge that can make the desert bloom in dry season.

It devastates.

There’s a word for this, an elusive concept that lurks in the far recesses of her mind, that Sakura chose to forget because it used to hurt too much to remember.

“H-hello, Sakura.” Hinata’s voice is a warm welcome, soaking through layers of skin, burrowing deep, all the way into her heart.

It feels like coming home.

Oh. Oh. Hiraeth, she recalls at long last, heart swelling in her chest, painfully straining against her ribcage as it expands to make room for Hinata, yes, that’s what Taid called it.

It takes Tsunade less than ten minutes to do what five seasoned medic-nin and three Yamanaka specialists—including Inoichi—couldn’t in two whole weeks. She makes it look so easy, and yet…

Peering into Kakashi’s eyes as he regains consciousness, Sakura can’t help but feel uneasy, mind racked with apprehension and doubts. There’s a glassy sheen that reminds her of a one-way mirror, an impenetrable barrier that keeps parts of him trapped, separate, disconnected from the waking world.

Kakashi’s come back in pieces. His presence is all physical, all tangible things; flesh and blood and warm red organs. Sakura wants to cut him open, to dig her fingers in and dig out all those missing pieces, all those little quirks of his that test her patience and chip away at her public persona and shackle her to this fucking mess with promises she’s not heartless enough to deny.  

Once Tsunade’s stormed off with a parting threat of so help me, brat, if you leave this bed, brain damage will be the least of your problems, Sakura retrieves two books from her pouch, one for her and one of Jiraiya’s badly written insults to erotica, and melts into her chair with an ease borne of familiarity.

Silence engulfs them, heavy with words hooked on the tip of her tongue and only interrupted by the steady thrum of the monitors Kakashi’s hooked on. Then, against all logic, she clicks her tongue and unseals her mouth and out slithers the snarkiest line she could’ve led with.

“Don’t be a hero, he says.”

“Maa, Sakura-chan…” Kakashi lets out an aggrieved sigh, so damn fake it has her itching to strangle him with the cable from his cardiac monitor even as it leaves her boneless with relief. “Your poor sensei is lying broken on his hospital bed after valiantly fending off an S-rank mass-murdering psychopath hellbent on harming his precious students, and that’s the first thing you have to say to me?”

“Don’t fool yourself, Hatake-sensei. Fending off implies you won that battle—which, as a friendly reminder, you did not. The S-rank mass-murdering psychopath in question chose to retreat. I know your brain must still be scrambled, but you should try to get your facts straight at the very least.”

“So cruel. No sympathy whatsoever. Maa, where have I gone wrong with my teachin—”

“If you want sympathy,” she cuts him off, deadpan, “I’ll be more than happy to call for Maito-san.”

In the blink of an eye, Kakashi dives under the sheets with a piteous noise, a cross between a low-pitched canine whine and a gasp of horrified betrayal.

(Kakashi’s not easy. He never makes things easy. Nothing is ever easy between them, and she can’t even pretend it doesn’t matter anymore.)

Stepping out of Kakashi’s room, Sakura almost gets bowled over by Naruto in his mad rush to barge in and probably yell Kakashi’s ears off as the boy’s wont to do whenever he’s too overwrought to slow down. Before he can bombard her with his usual hyperactive flailing, she stops him dead in his tracks with a textbook formal bow and a voice hoarse, quivery, brimming with gratitude.

“Thank you for bringing Senju-sama back, Uzumaki-san.”

Bewildered to the nth degree, Naruto ends up flailing, anyway. “Eh? Why’re ya thanking me, Sakura-chan?” he sputters, red color smearing on the apples of his cheeks, embarrassed and halfway into a panic attack under this sudden onslaught of genuine, positive feelings. “‘Course I’d do that. We’re teammates, ‘ttebayo! You’d do the same for me, right? I mean, I know you’re always so cool and kinda weird and stuff, but—but you’ve never looked at me wrong or called me names or, y’know, put me down. So, so that’s gotta mean something, yeah?”

Naruto’s face is a gut-wrenching portrait of hope and crushing loneliness and old wounds that never healed. Confronted with this utterly unfair expression of vulnerability, Sakura’s knee-jerk response of shooting back some sort of platitude changes to a treacherously warbled, “Yeah.”

(When Naruto later finds her in the hospital’s cafeteria and asks her out for ramen, assuring her it’ll be the best ramen she’s ever had and he’ll pay for her share, happy-go-lucky grin spread across his cheeks, but eyes screwed shut, shoulders hunched back, clearly bracing himself for a rejection, Sakura takes him up on his offer without a second thought.

Uzumaki Naruto, she acknowledges in bittersweet defeat, is someone you can never win against.)

“So, let me get this straight.” Tsunade speaks in a tone of voice so calm, so quintessentially reasonable, it can’t be anything other than fucking terrifying. It’s the kind of calm that forewarns all and sundry their highly-esteemed, newly-appointed Hokage is one step away from punching a hole through the wall of her paperwork-infested office and fucking off to the closest casino to resume drunkenly gambling her way through an early retirement. “Your teammate doesn’t show up for practice, and instead of thinking he’s just skiving off this once—I mean, your Jōnin-sensei’s gone off on a solo mission, it ain’t like anybody’s gonna care if he practices or not—you get it into your head that he must’ve been kidnapped or some shit. Am I right so far?”

“Partially, Godaime-sama.” Far from being cowed, Sakura’s manner is an amalgam of matter-of-fact and respectful without coming off as sycophantic. It’s a delicate balance to achieve, much less maintain with nigh-perfect consistency for years, but Sakura’s nothing if not stubborn to a fault. “I went to check up on Uchiha-san and couldn’t find him, but I did find clear signs of a battle on his property, which is what clued me in on his predicament.”

“Predicament,” Tsunade parrots, both eyebrows shot up in half-disbelief, half-amusement. “You like ‘em fancy words, huh?” Shaking her head, but still amused despite herself, she gets back on topic. “Anyway, following that up, you walked up to the gate guards and sold them your sob story and sorta charmed them into letting you peek at the recent records, and that’s when you discovered someone’s fucked with their heads since the barrier seal shows four non-Konoha chakra signatures entering and then making off with the Uchiha’s chakra signature, which the guards had apparently never witnessed. Good so far?”

A nod. “Yes, Godaime-sama.”

“Great! Moving on. While they’re freaking out over being mindfucked and all, you decide to cut the middlemen out and go straight to the barrier guys for some damn answers.” That tiny spark of mirth in Tsunade’s aura flares up into a bonfire with her next words. “So you barge into their headquarters like nobody’s business and casually name-drop Hatake and passive-aggressive bully them into checking out if they already have those four signatures on record based on a hunch you had, which—surprise, surprise—proved to be right.” 

Another nod. “Exactly, Godaime-sama.”

“Now, if I got this last part right—and correct me if I’m wrong here—‘cause the barrier guys are the kind of spineless pushovers who’ll let a precocious brat take the heat for ‘em, you get sent to my office to report they do actually have an entry in the log from the day of Orochimaru’s fuckin’ invasion, though no documentation to go along with it, which basically means they didn’t cross the gates like all legal visitors. Taking all that into account, you—again, correct me if I’m wrong—assumed your teammate’s kidnappers to be Oto-nin as the most logical conclusion. Also, Orochimaru might’ve mentioned his unhealthy interest in the Uchiha once or twice during your Chūnin Exams, and so here we fucking are.” Here, incidentally, Tsunade’s calm facade reaches its breaking point and cracks into something sardonic. “Did I get everything? Or is there something else you wanna add? Any more of my shinobi you strong-armed into doing your bidding that I should know about?”

One final nod. “Please bear in mind that I could also be wrong, Godaime-sama, but no, I don’t believe so.”

A half-smirk twitches at the left corner of Tsunade’s mouth. “Heh. Cheeky brat,” she huffs, seeming begrudgingly impressed, and exchanges a loaded glance with the silent shinobi lounging against one of the overstuffed filing cabinets. “Well, I’m kinda short on jōnin right now, so I guess your son’ll have to do, Shikaku. You think he can handle leading a bunch of genin for an impromptu rescue mission?”

“Should be.” Shikaku shrugs, looking remarkably unconcerned for a father who’s about to send his only son off on a wild goose chase. Even worse, there’s an unholy gleam in his eyes when he runs his tongue over his teeth and glibly suggests, “Since you’re already privy to all the mission details, why don’t you go drag my lazy son outta bed and fill him in while you’re at it, Haruno-chan?”

At that spectacular stroke of brilliance, Tsunade’s mouth twitches up into a full-blown smirk. “Good enough for me. Off you go, Haruno!”

(Sakura can see through their act, can understand why they’re putting up a united front and making light of the situation and being so goddamn cavalier, but there’s nil she can do about it, so she doesn’t even try.

Shikamaru, on the other hand… Well, his fault for being such an easy target.

Sasuke’s not going to save himself, the idiot, self-absorbed boy, and Sakura’s worked too hard to keep this team together to let him go without as much as a token effort. Fate be damned.)

Shikamaru takes one look at what crawls and hisses and sizzles beneath her smile, and tries to slam the door in her face. Key word being: tries.

Poor boy isn’t built for conflict, especially with the opposite gender.

“—so they’ll obviously fuck up along the road, but I can maybe ask for the Suna-nin to assist since they desperately want to make amends and—wait a sec, aren’t you a novice tracker, Haruno? No, wait, why am I even asking you? Shizune, where’s the genin files I asked for, like, yesterday?” Tsunade hollers in between skimming through random pieces of paper and then tossing half of them out the window with extreme prejudice, to which Shizune dryly replies from somewhere down the hallway, without missing a beat, “On your desk, Tsunade-sama.”

“Right, right, I knew that!” Tsunade hollers back as the aforementioned folder mysteriously materializes before her in a matter of seconds. All the while Sakura just stands there, quietly, waiting, lips drawn into a straight line of forbearance. One quick glance at its contents is all it takes before Tsunade’s nodding to herself in self-satisfaction and maybe even a smidgen of dawning curiosity. “Your file says so, yep. Well, better than nothing, so stand by for now and guide them, won’t you? Also, huh, your file says your chakra control is top-notch. Know any medical jutsu?”

Copying Shizune’s example, Sakura simply and concisely answers in the negative since she didn’t have access to that section, and Tsunade once again disregards her presence in favor of descending into another rant that consists of colorful language aplenty and various iterations of phrases such as: knew I kept forgetting something and gotta fix this shit and fuck, why did I take this stupid hat again?

“Just…gimme a sec.” Biting her thumb, she summons a part of Katsuyu, seals it after a short, hushed discussion, and unceremoniously throws the scroll at Sakura. “Katsuyu’ll do her best to stabilize them, but won’t actually do much beyond that since she’ll probably be out of range, so you better hurry back if anyone’s critical. Got all that, Haruno?”

Pocketing the scroll, Sakura dips her head once. “Understood, Godaime-sama.”

There’s a leaden pause during which Sakura waits to be verbally dismissed and Tsunade studies her with gleaming gold eyes, slanted and jaded and penetrating, but then Shikaku coughs from his forgotten, isolated corner and finally sends her off with an indecipherable expression on his scarred face.

(Sakura centers herself as the combined weight of their stares settles on her shoulders, and strides off to the gates burdened with the phantom pressure from eyes too seeing, too rife with expectations.)

Shikamaru’s set off by the time she reaches the gates, but Izumo’s kind enough to welcome conversation and Kotetsu’s bored enough to join in after some minimal prodding. According to them, there’s been no change to the original members of Shikamaru’s makeshift team, but Sakura’s still strung tight, still feeling the pressure, and relief refuses to come due to the swirling chaos of her thoughts.

It still doesn’t excuse her awful reception of the Sand Siblings; although, to her credit, Sakura can honestly admit she tried.

That’s more than can be said for Kankurō.

“Gaara-sama,” Sakura chooses to address him first despite him being the youngest, fluidly bending her body at the waist, then straightens up and pivots on the balls of her feet in the direction of his siblings and executes another bow, “Temari-sama,” sustaining it for as long as proper etiquette demands and not a second longer, “Kankurō-sama.”

“Heh, Kankurō-sama. Hear that, Temari? Konoha-chan’s treating us like we’re hotshot diplomats or some shit.” Kankurō’s shit-eating grin, as he nudges a scowling Temari with his shoulder, is the lovely image that greets her when Sakura unfurls to her full height. “You know what? On second thought, I’m so digging this. Cute girls smilin’ at me all sweet-like and calling me -sama? Heeell yeah.”

It’s nothing she hasn’t heard or been subjected to before, nothing to guarantee the sheer levels of destructive wrath it ignites in her. Sakura doesn’t know why, doesn’t really care to know, but for a moment that seems to last an eternity her self-control snaps and a violent haze clouds her vision and all she sees is redredred—

“Perhaps, because I was under the impression that you were sent to Konoha as Suna’s emissaries, Kankurō-sama. Suna’s internal politics must be different than Konoha’s if they decided to send unqualified genin for the mere reason they happen to be the late Kazekage’s children, which I’m sure must be an honor that grants you much adoration from the opposite gender. I’m sorry to say you’ll find Konoha’s female population significantly less swayed by such illustrious ancestry. Yet another cultural difference, I’m afraid.

“Unless, of course, you are simply vacationing in Konoha with your family, and Hokage-sama requested your assistance as a gesture of goodwill. In which case, I regret to inform you that you chose an awful time to visit, seeing as we are still rebuilding after the recent invasion. Although, how you didn’t account for that fact, considering your minor part in said invasion, is beyond me. Your part must have been very minor, indeed, if you managed to miss all the action. Aburame-san did make a perfect recovery in less than two hours, from what I can recall, so it makes a certain amount of sense.

“In any case, please forgive me for the terrible misunderstanding, Kankurō-sama. I will endeavor to be more mindful of your feelings and not comment on your unfortunate lack of political clout in the future.”

Kankurō’s frozen in an unattractive state of witless gaping, whereas Sakura’s never stopped ‘smilin’ at him all sweet-like’, as he so eloquently put it.

“Oi, did she just—?” he flounders, mouth opening and closing and once again shoulder-nudging Temari. “I think she might’ve managed to insult my village, my intelligence, my parentage, my masculinity, my skills, and my looks all in one breath. Like, to my face. Hell, I didn’t even know it was possible to pull that off using keigo.”

Sometime during Sakura’s verbal abuse of her brother, Temari’s scowl has given way to a gleeful, mean-spirited smirk, and now she’s full-force smacking him with it in tandem with a thwack on the back of his head. “Indeed, brother mine, I do believe she just did.”

“Shall we be off then?” Sakura all but chirps amid Kankurō’s pained squawks and loud complaints of domestic violence. From the natural way both siblings fall into a comical back-and-forth, she gets that it must be a regular thing. “We’re on a time-sensitive mission, after all, and I’m sure you’d hate to give off the wrong impression.”

At that, Kankurō’s head whips back to her in outrage, the what-the-absolute-fuck plainly written all over his features. “You’re not even going to deny it? No, scratch that, the insults just keep on piling up! Like, first that lil’ brat runs into me, then that Naruto kid keeps talkin’ outta his ass, then that creepy kid with the bug fetish, and now this…this…? Ugh! I have no words for you. The hell’s wrong with Konoha—”

Temari’s short temper makes itself known as she smacks him upside the head again, and they pick up their ridiculous sibling spat as if they’ve got all the time in the world. Hoping to speed things along, Sakura sidles up to Gaara until she’s close enough to sense the erratic fluctuations in his chakra—one moment calm, and the next frenzied; no middle ground, no in-between; all extremes, all or nothing—squares her jaw and gives him a look. It’s the same look that would’ve sent Shikamaru running for the hills. Gaara, she learns, is a very different breed of beast.

“You…” he says, head tilting curiously, “…are not afraid of me.”

There isn’t the merest wrinkle of skin, the merest blink of eyes, but something manifests on his face, betrays his surprise, his skepticism.

Heavy-lidded, Sakura peers at him from underneath thick lashes. “Should I have reason to be?”

It is soft-spoken, hits him where it hurts most, petty revenge for playing a minuscule part in the deterioration of Sasuke’s judgement. A threat. A Cadmean victory.

His chakra adopts an inhuman quality and his eyes shift from aquamarine to a sinister hue of gold; like ichor, raw, molten, ancient blood. He stares at her in the descent of silence and something tameless, animal-sensation, something that is monstrously ravenous.

Two seconds pass, four, six… Gaara closes his eyes, breathes in, breathes out. In. Out. In—

“No.” His voice pours out of his throat rusty, gravelly, and how he says no is antithetical to its nature, more of a snarl than pronunciation of no and more of a mindless no than answer.

She’s not entirely certain whom he’s speaking to, whom he’s trying to convince—her? Himself? Shukaku?—but either way, it’s hard to think when his chakra is burning through the pathways of her nerves and sizzling down their endings, birthing them anew from their ashes into something sharper, stranger, infinitely alien. She can hear the rush of ichor as it rages beneath his eyelids and smell the crimson of his hair as the wind tousles it up into a mess of wild spikes and taste the desert as the tips of her fingers are tracing nonsensical patterns in the sand he carries on his skin, from the dip of his temple to the line of his jaw down to the hollow of his throat— 

“Holy shit. I think I’m in love. Temari, pinch me.”

“Nah. You’re just hopeless. But if you insist.”

Startled by the jarring voices, far more grating than they should normally be, Sakura flinches and comes back to herself, only to discover she’s curled her fingers into the collar of Gaara’s shirt and he’s—letting her touch him. Maybe to prove something. To her. To himself. To Shukaku.

Kankurō’s back to witless gaping, but Temari’s watching them carefully, her expression a living embodiment of dichotomy, as if she can’t decide between wrenching them away from each other and handcuffing them together for the rest of their lives.

Chōji’s lying face-down in the dirt upon which he made his final stand. His body is skirting the edges of emaciated, slimmed down to the point where there’s not even essential fat stored in his cells, so much so he’s practically swimming in his own clothes.

(Sakura thinks of Shikamaru, of his choice to believe in sweet, kind Chōji, and can’t help but imagine sweet, kind Hinata in Chōji’s place. Only…Hinata’s lying face-up with her limbs akimbo, her eyes staring sightless at the open skies, her body brutally pierced by eldritch black rods.

It’ll stay with her for a long, long time, this nightmarish, haunting imagery of what her choice might one day bring.)

Teeth bite into the soft flesh of her bottom lip until it bleeds in slow rivulets running down her chin. Sakura swipes her thumb along the wet curve of her mouth and rushes through the almost-instinctual sequence for summoning.

A nimbus of pale smoke precedes the arrival of the sole scorpion rivaling Benirui in stature, if not in attitude.

“Ah, Friend Sakura.” Daiten’s tail slices through the air in mild displeasure, but how he speaks her name is a black hiss of fondness, as if she’s too precious to incite true anger in his old chitin. “It brings me joy to see you again. Are you in dire need of assistance, perchance?”

Standing in the shade Daiten casts down as he towers overhead, Sakura smiles up at him, though her smile is paper-thin, ripping as it forms, torn at the edges, nothing like the smiles he’s used to seeing on her face. Daiten’s pincers droop low to the ground, the equivalent of a worried frown for him.

“Likewise, Daiten-san,” she says, voice fraught with a rattled sort of urgency she makes no attempt to conceal. Daiten’s a grumpy old man in a scorpion’s carapace who likes his routine just so and hates surprises, but his love for Sakura burns bright and fierce and deadly as the venom in his stinger. Just like her Taid. “I sincerely apologize for calling you without prior notice—I know you dislike that—but I require urgent transportation for my injured allies. They’re in critical condition, you see, and time is of the essence.”

“Ah, I see,” Daiten allows once he registers Katsuyu’s presence and, more importantly, Chōji’s condition, mollified for the time being, mellowing enough to exchange polite greetings with the Slug Summon. Sakura’s not fooled; she strongly suspects they’ll be having words the next time she visits their nest. “In that case, all is forgiven—”

“What the fuck?” Damn, she muses wryly, spoke too soon. Words will be had sooner than expected, apparently, if Kankurō’s rude exclamation is any indication. Or his blatant gawking. Or his mental gears switching from the completely floored look he’d previously sported to one that is still dumbstruck, but now also mixed with hysterical indignation and the foundations of something that resembles wilful ignorance. “The Scorpion Contract traditionally belongs to Suna. How the hell did you even get it? Their last summoner took the scroll with him when he defected, and there’s just no way you could’ve stolen it from Sasori—”

Killing intent falls from above and presses down on the raving boy and steals the very air from Kankurō’s lungs, deprives him of oxygen with which to speak, to breathe, to live. Sakura watches it happen almost in slow motion, and it’s like watching an asteroid hitting the earth from ground zero and knowing deep in your gut there’s nothing you can do to escape the fiery annihilation closing in with each rapid inhalation and heartbeat.

“How dare you…” It begins as a hiss of quietly brewing anger and by the end, it has risen to a crescendo of black rage. Daiten looms over Kankurō’s breathless figure, a great shadow of too-many limbs, too-many sharp points, an abyssal creature masquerading as a desert-dweller. “How dare you utter that traitor’s name in my presence? Mōdoku Desert suffers neither fools nor kinslayers, I’ll have you know! Have a care how you speak, son of Suna! Unlike that bloodless fool we no longer call kin, Friend Sakura is a True Summoner and a cherished daughter of the Scorpion Clan. Insult her, and you insult us all. You should think twice before you speak or learn to hold your tongue lest you be parted from it.”

With his warning delivered and Kankurō’s spirit snuffed out, Daiten’s rage simmers down from a quenchless blaze to a flickering candle flame. Sakura capitalizes on the ensuing calm and enlists Gaara’s help in lifting Chōji’s body off the ground and onto Daiten’s back under Katsuyu’s gentle instruction, while Temari hovers nearby in case she’s needed in any capacity. In the middle of this delicate procedure, the middle of the Sand Siblings, in true Kankurō fashion as she’s come to learn in their short time together, sucks in an audible, revitalizing breath and casts away his fear as one does yesterday’s garbage.

“A True—woah, hold up, lemme see if I got this straight.” He chortles an incredulous laugh, the kind only those who’ve just narrowly escaped death can produce, then pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs at his eyelids, smudging the purple grape dye he must’ve spent at least half an hour carefully applying. “Not only were you crazy enough to try reverse summoning, but you also somehow ended up contracted with the Scorpion Clan?”

“Precisely,” is all Sakura says, more concerned about Chōji’s ashen pallor than Kankurō’s low opinion of her sanity at this point. Besides, growing up with Gaara should’ve set the bar pretty damn low—

“Holy shit. I repeat, I’m in love.”

“Nah, you’re still hopeless.” Sighing, Temari gives her brother the side-eye, twisting Kankurō’s arm behind his back as an excuse to lean in close and whisper-yell in his ear. “Now shut your stupid face before the giant bloody scorpion decides he’s grown tired of your shit and makes good on his threat.”

Neji’s slumped against the gnarled trunk of an old white oak, hitai-ate half-slipping out from his nerveless fingers, only a curtain of silky dark hair blotting out the acid-green of the Caged Bird Seal. His complexion is a bloodless snow-white and his mouth is smiling—

Hyūga Neji stands at the door of Hinata’s private hospital room, though he makes no move to enter yet. Instead, he’s watching them with the blank white eyes their clan is famous for. Seamlessly, Sakura positions herself in a way that obstructs their linked hands from his line of sight, even if it’s probably too late for that, but doesn’t let go.

“I was under the impression that Hiashi-sama had prohibited visitors outside of close relatives,” he says in lieu of a standard greeting, his speech cultured, barren of sentiments, giving nothing away. A simple observation, but far from harmless. Hinata’s grip grows tight, short, blunt nails digging into the fleshy parts of Sakura’s palm, and Sakura has to fight to suppress a wince, to keep her expression smooth, unblemished.

“N-Neji-nī-san,” Hinata half-gasps, half-stutters, raising her head to acknowledge him, but seemingly unable to aim her gaze higher than the general area of his sternum. Force of habit, Sakura guesses as Hinata struggles through her own less-than-informative greeting. “G-good evening.”

“Good evening, Hinata-sama,” Neji dutifully returns, still blank, still giving nothing away, then transfers his attention over to Sakura. “You are…Haruno Sakura of Team Seven, correct?”

There’s nothing particularly demeaning about the way he gazes at them, the way he speaks their names—coolly appraising, perhaps a bit nonplussed, not an ounce of the deep-seated animosity that was the catalyst for Hinata’s hospitalization. If anything, he appears to be rather…hesitant. Of what, though, isn’t immediately forthcoming.

For Hinata’s sake, Sakura repeats to that feral, bloodthirsty, possessive part of herself, the part that Ume’s infected with the medulla of wolf-instinct, that wants to howl her bloodlust and claw Neji’s eyes out. Hence, she just smiles a vapid smile and delivers something prosaic that can pass for common courtesy and gets ready to move the fuck on.

“I was visiting Hyūga-san on behalf of Team Seven, actually. We all wished to express our hopes for her swift recovery, but as you are probably aware, my team can be…rather abrasive at times, so I was chosen to relay our wishes in order to avoid offending Hyūga-sama by accident. If you’ll please excuse me, I’ll be taking my leave now. Once again, I hope you feel well soon, Hyūga-san.”

Hinata’s grip grows ever tighter, tight enough to bruise Sakura’s wrist bone and mark her palm with crescent nail imprints, and this time…she’s the one who doesn’t let go.

“Neji-nī-san,” she murmurs, tremulous and intimate, but there’s no stutter, no caution webbing the name, nothing meekly compliant about her. Hinata lifts her gaze and looks him dead in the eye. “This is my…my dearest friend.” Firmly stated, a bold, shameless admission, a selfish wish indulged. She doesn’t turn to face Sakura, only stares at her cousin in quiet defiance, but Sakura suddenly knows with absolute clarity how this will play out when Hinata speaks her name. “Sakura, this is my first cousin, Hyūga Neji.”

(Hinata loves deeply, unconditionally; sometimes, unapologetically.)

One last time—for Hinata’s sake—Sakura repeats the mantra that lets the human part be in control of her body, of the aching muscles in her face, and offers Neji one of her true smiles as a compromise for the part she has to restrain. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Neji-san.”

Unfazed, Neji analyzes the drastic change in her smile, gaze tracing the points of her incisors, back and forth, until something clicks into place and he—smiles. A quirk of lips, rigid, barely an upturn, as if his mouth has forgotten how to do it right.

“The pleasure is all mine, Sakura-san,” he reciprocates, and Sakura can tell it’s more for Hinata’s sake than hers, but all the same…he means it.

If Hyūga Hiashi is a man personifying the unforgiving chill of winter, Sakura muses as she shivers from the raw remorse bleeding off of Neji’s smile, his nephew is just a boy clad in a translucent sheet of hoarfrost.

It’s unspeakably sad that Neji, of all people, is the one who can appreciate the best just how good of an actress Sakura is. She doesn’t even want to think of what that says about their clan.

Neji’s condition is even worse than Chōji’s. Sakura has full faith in her summons, knows full well Daiten’s capable of transporting the boys on his own with Katsuyu’s help. Tsunade won’t accuse her of abandoning her teammates if she turns back now. Kakashi—probably will. And yet…

Sakura gives up.

Enough is enough, she decides, and asks Daiten to carry them back to Konoha, leaving the rest to the Suna-nin.

(Ultimately, Sasuke is Naruto’s problem. Or at least that’s what she tells herself to keep the guilt at bay.)

She’s coming down to the lobby for a coffee refill when Kakashi blurs past her on his way to the ER, Naruto’s limp body slung over his shoulder and Sasuke’s absence a gaping hole in his chest.

Sakura pays for two cans and retraces her steps to the visitors’ lounge. Wordlessly, she hands one can over to Shikamaru, who’s filthy and wretched and hasn’t moved from his spot in two hours, and settles into her previous seat.

Ten minutes later, Kakashi leans his back against the opposite wall and slides down until he hits the floor with a dull thud. Shikamaru blinks, as if coming awake from a doze, surveys the blood-soaked patch on Kakashi’s shoulder, connects the dots and advances to the next stage: flying into a temper while cursing a blue streak.

Elbows resting on his bent knees, Kakashi slants his neck far back and stares up into her eyes, heedless of Shikamaru’s meltdown. “Are you hurt?” he rasps.

“Just…” Sakura pauses, thinks back on the moment she chose to give up on Sasuke. “Tired,” she says, and that small cruel part of her laughs as it taunts: you were born tired.

Comprehension passes through his gaze. “You knew.”

There’s pain in his voice, and the way he’s staring at her cuts through flesh and bone, but it is not a predator she sees. His gaze is light and dark, primal color, wolf-bright. Kakashi’s burnt out, she realizes. He’s like a wounded beast lashing out after being hunted into a corner, and she feels the fangs, the claws, the hints of despair underneath the monstrous rage as it goes berserk in its death throes. Skin shredded, streams of hot blood, protrusions gleaming bone-white.

Just… Pain. She can’t tell who hurts the most. Sakura licks her wounds and savors the taste of her blood. Still says nothing.

“Did you talk with Sasuke before he…?” Kakashi can’t even finish the sentence. It’s a moot point. All the verbs in the world won’t change the simple truth of it: Sasuke walked out.

Don’t speak. Don’t say it. Every molecule in her body screams at her to leave it be. And yet…

Sakura gives in.

“Kakashi.” Breathy, heavy, something forbidden. It ruins her, his name on her lips. Sakura stares at him, knows as she says the words where they will lead. Still speaks them. “I’ve never actually talked with Sasuke. I don’t think anyone has. Not for a long time. Except, maybe, Naruto.”

Perhaps it is because she’s given him everything that he, too, gives something back. “I tried. Just once, but—”

Sakura doesn’t let him finish this sentence. “Don’t give me that. You’ve been trying ever since the bell test. Maybe not with words, but it wouldn’t have made a difference, anyway. You were probably five years too late.” A smile tugs at her mouth, wry, thinly amused. “Must be a new record, even for you.”

Self-mockery rumbles in his throat, laughter meshed into sighing and something masculine that gives it an edge—Kakashi’s gaze flashes like quicksilver and the man becomes the wolf and rips her heart out.

“Sakura.” He’s smiling and her name is a sin on his tongue. “Thank you.”

And Sakura…she can’t breathe—chest cracked open and lungs exposed to jagged bone, swelling as blood clots with each vein inflation. Her hands feel clammy and her fingers slick with blood, marbling her skin as it dries, palms full of weight that throbs with living matter. She holds it delicately and wonders how will she live with her heart cut out and writhing in the nest of her hands.

Gods, she thinks, don’t do this to me, please.

She runs.

Runs away from this fucking mess.

Runs smack into Nara Shikaku’s bricklike pectorals.

She half-asses an apology and tells him where to find his son and keeps running.

A brilliant splash of crimson fills her peripheral vision, and Sakura stops running.

Gaara stands before the gates that allow passage into the village, though he seems to be departing instead, waiting for his siblings to finish filling in the necessary forms. Quiet and calm, all the things that he isn’t, despite what is reflected on his face. Sakura doesn’t care for what is and what isn’t, only for the call of his chakra, the heady sensations it evokes in her, that irresistible, magnetic pull.

The urge to touch him is visceral, coiling hotly around her nerves. Perhaps it is his chakra, the echoes of the desert and its dangerously addictive freedom. Or, perhaps, that he’s destined to know death as she’s known it. Sakura only knows that he burns like blood-fire on the sensitive layer of skin over her fingertips. Gaara’s eyes fall shut, and he exhales slowly as her palm slides up his neck to cup his cheek—

“Okay, now this is just unfair—”

“Shut up, you stupid fool! If you ruin this for Gaara, I fucking swear to kami, Kankurō, you can kiss your precious collection of creepy dolls goodbye—”

“Hey, leave my precious puppets out of this, Temari! They’re innocent! And for the last fucking time, they ain’t creepy dolls and I ain’t collectin’ them—”

(Gaara is a desert song of madness, and Sakura is the maenad dancing to the beat of it.

Resonance, she muses as she sways and spins and twists herself around him, for what else can it be?

A mockery of soulmates, her and him.)

Pale and haggard and fighting off a spell of drowsiness, Sakura drags herself home for a quick shower before running back to the hospital. Hinata’s now joined the morose wreck that is Shikamaru in the visitors’ lounge, and Sakura can’t leave those two alone for a second without them inevitably feeding off of each other’s anxiety and dissolving into even greater wrecks—

Nara Shikaku is waiting on her doorstep.

“Yo, Haruno-chan,” he drawls out, frowning as he squints down at her face, then flares his chakra and lays bare all the glaring imperfections Sakura’s so cleverly, so painstakingly, genjutsu’d away—her chapped lips, her hollow cheeks, the resignation in her eyes, the green matted, sapped, like a day in late spring, like dying things. “Rough day, hm?”

Based on what’s transpired and the kind of personality he’s shown so far, one could mistake this for a social visit. Maybe he just wants to lighten his nagging conscience by lightening the jar of favors he doesn’t really owe her. Or maybe going around Konoha and giving pep talks to traumatized ninja kids is part of his job description. It could even be all of those things, but… Shinobi don’t believe in coincidence.

“More like, rough month, Nara-sama.” Sakura smothers a sigh, unlocks her door and ushers him to the living room.

The grandfather clock in the leftmost corner chimes an eerie chorus of bells and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee permeates the atmosphere. Shikaku’s relaxed into a luxurious sort of sprawl on the leather monstrosity of an armchair Kizashi’s brought home from Kumo, a cigarette wisping smoke at the corner of his mouth. He’s only had to speak two sentences to make her world stop turning on its axis for an instant: Let’s skip the pleasantries and cut to the chase, yeah? I want you in Tactical, Haruno-chan. Sakura sits primly on the matching piece of furniture she shudders to call a couch, sips at her coffee and contemplates his offer, sparing an idle thought for what kind of face he’d pull if she were to ask him for a drag of his cigarette.

A sigh disrupts the quiet, laced with weariness. “With all due respect, Nara-sama,” she says, tone detached, too drained for politics and word games. “Why?”

In response, Shikaku reaches into the breast pocket of his fur-lined vest and pulls out a thin folder, which he then sends sailing over to her. Out of reflex, Sakura snatches it from the air, though a prickle of wariness has her hesitating for a couple of seconds before she opens it gingerly. Inside she finds her picture and personal info, mission records and several pages filled with detailed reports from the day she joined the Academy up until now, and on the pages after those…a shockingly high number of Chūnin recommendations. Including Shikaku’s.

(Ebisu’s is the first; a lengthy account of the month he spent teaching her, all glowing praise and taking up as many pages as all others combined. Sakura feels a sliver of exasperated affection for this snobbish man, who goes off on a tangent whenever Jiraiya’s name comes up in his report, imploring the late Sandaime to school his wayward student in how to respect women and show some goddamn decency.)

There’s a footnote scribbled in an angry, looping, brain-hurting way that reads like a doctor’s chicken scratch, that immediately catches her attention due to its sheer, brash informality and the helpful insights it provides:

For fuck’s sake, Shikaku. If you want her so damn bad, then have her do a probational six months in Tactical to see if she has what it takes and stop bothering me. I already promoted your lazy-ass son and you see where that got him. I’m done promoting baby genin on your say-so without real proof they can handle it.

P.S. I’m expecting the best goddamn sake you have for the headache your son caused me.

It’s enough to explain his curiosity, his interest, but nothing prepares her for the answer he gives.

“You need a break,” Shikaku says, casual as can be, as if this is a fact so ridiculously obvious only a blind fool would miss it, and Sakura’s got an inkling he doesn’t mean just her. “Team Seven had a good run, I’ll grant you, and you played a big part in making that happen. Nobody can deny you carried your team, least of all me. It’s just…” He exhales a smoke-licked breath as he eyes her sharply. “It was never really you, right?”

Sakura stares at him, expressionless. “And what do you need?”

“A competent secretary,” he jokes, but there’s a grain of truth to his humor, and something else, a slyness not present before. “Tsunade-sama has her eye on you, you know? But we have a saying in the Nara Clan: you don’t go hunting for stags when you can feast on pigs.”

Shikaku is baiting her for something, that much she can tell, but she can’t see further than the bait. The hook isn’t the same with how he half-laughs between the words, but it is there—the curiosity, the sharpness, the provocation.

“Besides, no offense, Haruno-chan, but you don’t strike me as a person well suited to the front-line medic career—not with what you’ve shown so far. Not your style, yeah?” He hums, brings the ashtray closer and stubs out his cigarette, his words slow and measured. “Actually, you’re more in line with the way we do things. See, the Nara Clan…well, we’re not healers, not really, but traditional medicine? Deer velvet can pull off miracles if you know how to work with it. And you’ve got something similar, right?” A smirk stretches his lips, then Shikaku’s rising to his feet with the languorous self-assurance hard-wired in him by birth. “If you ever want to explore the medicinal properties of scorpion venom, we’ve got people who can help you get started on that, is all I’m saying. Food for thought, Haruno-chan.”

And with that wicked tease, Nara Shikaku lets himself out.

Sakura feels more alive after her shower; more human, more plagued with choices that might become regrets. She walks into the kitchen with steps heavy, thoughts heavier, her mind replaying the end of Shikaku’s visit.

It annoys her, that last smirk, that last line, his self-assertive exit, as if she’s swallowed the bait without even knowing she has. He’s like that tabby Sakura wants to adopt every time she passes by the animal center, but never does because of that wily glint in its eyes. The comparison takes the edge off a little, and Sakura chuckles.

A loud beep startles her into motion. It’s familiar, this routine, the way she bends over the coffee machine for a lungful of coffee-cream-bitterness, holding that same cup she’s had for years. Sakura studies it with a small smile. White ceramic with thick walls, faded inscription of I can’t adult today on the side, right beneath an image of a tabby rolled over on its back. Can’t adult, huh?

Shaking her head, she fills the cup with toasted almond coffee, adds sugar and milk, and takes one slow sip. Same cup, same taste. Just the way she likes it. If she pretends that nothing’s changed, then she might believe it, and that’s more dangerous than any regret. It makes her call out to change herself because she’d rather have a simulacrum of control than foolish delusion.

Kakashi’s standing in front of her new desk and his gaze is wolf-bright.

She says nothing, all there’s left to say sealed in the mission scroll she hands him, in the extra details she added after three sleepless nights of hard research and sweet-talking Nanase-san from Intel, in the little footnote she slipped in once Shikaku told her Kakashi’s only taking solo missions.

Don’t be a hero.