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Sasuke doesn’t even mean to hit Naruto, really.
He’s just hurting, literally and otherwise. The Tea mission sucked. Naruto is so stupid strong with endless energy and while Sasuke knows even Naruto couldn’t kill Itachi right now, it feels like the fucking dead last is leagues ahead of him in a race Naruto doesn’t even care about. Sasuke imagines a world in which he cannot beat Itachi but Naruto can and it isn’t vengeance anymore, it’s justice because Naruto would still kill Itachi for what he did but it doesn’t mean the same thing to Naruto.
Sasuke doesn’t want justice. Justice gets handed down from on-high by people that haven’t haunted their own homes, waking up at the faintest noises in terror that his big brother came back to finish the goddamn job.
Sasuke wants vengeance.
Still.
That hospital rooftop is so sprawling, so unfathomably wide that even in the back of his mind, he knows he means to change direction at the last second and hit quite literally anything but his teammate. He realizes later that he expected the same thing from Naruto. It should have been a fascinating epiphany which would have tickled his childhood therapist pink to know: he, Uchiha Sasuke, had trusted Naruto not to hurt him. It’s like swallowing a pill meant for a man much larger than him, having spent so many years trapped in the nightmare of the man he loved most, he trusted most, taking everything from him in one fell swoop.
He trusts Naruto. And he knows Naruto trusts him. At that moment, they would have never hurt each other.
(Not then, at least. There will come a time when Sasuke will try to kill Naruto. But that is not now. That is the not-so-distant future which is coming at them, a siege engine on an endless track.)
And so, he never considers that anyone else would see anything else. That a poor, sweet pink-haired girl might watch the two people she loves most in all the world about to tear each other apart and act.
She’s between them before they can stop.
She’s between them before Kakashi can arrive.
She’s between them when Chidori meets Rasengan for the first time.
.
Naruto doesn’t even mean to hit Sasuke, really.
He’s just being such a fucking prick. The Tea mission sucked but Aoi got defeated and Idate saved his clan so Sasuke should be ass over goddamn teakettle. Instead, his friend (kami save him, sasuke is his friend) has been scowling and throwing apples that Sakura-chan was so fucking sweet to get him even though Naruto knows he doesn’t deserve them. Kakashi-sensei had spouted some shit about how Sasuke was probably going to be upset that he was defeated by Aoi on the way back; Sakura-chan was nodding along like she understood perfectly, Naruto had no fucking clue what any of it meant. Why would Sasuke be upset? There are plenty of bad guys Sasuke has beaten that kicked Naruto’s goddamn ass from here to Suna.
(Oh sure, he’d been upset; but he hadn’t been upset at Sasuke. He’d been upset at himself. For being such a weak, waste-of-space, loser. Just like all those kids said he would be.)
The sun is brutalizing the back of his neck as they fight, the sting of a future burn setting in just as Sasuke pulls out his trump card. The chirping of birds is an appropriate description because it suddenly sounds like Naruto is trapped in an aviary of repressed emotion and impending pain. Well, fine, he thinks. If Sasuke wants to pull out his stupid blinding lightning hand that Kakashi-sensei taught him, Naruto will pull out the big move of the goddamn Yondaime, taught to him by a Sannin.
‘So, take that, you arrogant, overgrown peacock,’ Naruto thinks viciously.
(He desperately doesn’t think about how he would trade what Jiraiya taught him just for Kakashi-sensei to look at him the way he looked at Sasuke: like he had endless potential, like he was the pride of his sensei and his village. Anything to stop sensei from looking at him like the ghost of his greatest mistake coming back to haunt him, like a permanent reminder of some great and terrible act.
Okay, maybe he wouldn’t trade it. But it would be nice all the same.)
The Rasengan twists ugly in his hand. It’s a silent whirlwind, certainly less attention drawing than Sasuke’s; though the devastation Naruto has seen it wreak almost makes up for its silence. He just hopes Sasuke can’t use those eyes to copy it.
They fly through the air towards each other, on a singular collision course. Naruto likes to think at the last second Sasuke will jerk his arm away; he’s already eyeing the spot next to Sasuke’s shoulder to aim for. Kakashi-sensei will probably be pissed if Naruto kills his favorite student. Never mind what Sakura-chan would do to him.
Something breaks over the chirping. A scream. Sakura-chan’s scream, to be exact. Naruto’s eyes lurch instinctively towards her, desperately hoping she’s screaming loudly from a distance instead of how close she sounds.
He has a split second to think, ‘NO’ before she’s in front of him. Her pink hair swishes in the breeze and Naruto so wishes the circle of her family crest didn’t remind him so much of a target when the Rasengan hits dead center.
‘Sakura,’ he thinks helplessly as her blood sprays across his cheeks.
.
Kakashi means to show up earlier.
He’s heard the fighting, the obvious scuffling from a few buildings away. It isn’t as if he doesn’t know, immediately, that it’s his stupid brats causing all the ruckus; he just really doesn’t want to deal with them at the moment so he makes a point to stop at the nearest dango stand. Then, just before paying, he makes another conscious decision to buy an extra batch for Sakura who is undoubtedly trying to keep some semblance of peace.
(Rin standing between him and Obito, grinning apologetically at their client as they survey the damaged lawn they were supposed to be cleaning.)
Then he hears the crackling of birds and drops the dango. The hospital is far, not so far that Kakashi is doubting his speed, but far enough to make him worry. If Sasuke pulls out Chidori, Naruto will pull out Rasengan, and then the hospital might go bye-bye in a plume of smoke and teen-angst.
When he makes it over the lip of the roof, he’s expecting to grab them by the wrists and hurl them both in opposite directions with extreme prejudice. He’s expecting pouting and screaming, poor Sakura stuck on the sidelines with the most grateful smile and a breathless ‘sensei’.
(Rin looking up at him from over a cliff-edge, her wrist in his tight grip. That soft voice, ‘thanks, kakashi-kun’
Fuck, Sakura looks so much like her aunt.)
Instead, he’s frozen in his tracks. His chest pulses, his vision tunnels along with his breath, and there’s a panic attack in his immediate future, in fact, there’s a panic attack right now, there’s a full-fucking fledged panic, panic, panic, no, no, no, not again not again please not her—
Sakura stands between them, a Chidori and Rasengan buried in her chest.
(Rin stands in front of him, a Chidori buried in her chest.)
Both the boys go to remove their hands in panic (the sound oh fuck that sound it haunts his nightmares, the squelch of her body around his fist) and something snaps. Their wrists may well break under his grip but Kakashi doesn’t care with Sakura slumping between the two of them, eyes glassy, and so much blood on the wrong side of her skin.
“Don’t.” He commands.
“S-S-Sens—” Naruto’s voice is feeble. Sasuke’s face is frozen, ashen.
“If you pull your hands out, she’ll bleed out in seconds.” Kakashi says, too much knowledge in his head. Pakkun is good boy, he’s fast, he’s rude, he’ll interrupt anything. Especially when he sees what Kakashi is dealing with.
Tsunade is faster than Kakashi was. Barely ten seconds since Pakkun disappeared, she is ripping through the door, which becomes dust under her.
“Sakura,” She chokes out, shaking with Shizune behind her. Those brown eyes condemn him the second they land. He knows, he knows, he wants to say. He knows he fucked up. He knows he didn’t train Naruto and Sakura better; he didn’t train Sasuke better because he knows Sasuke started this. Out of wounded pride and a more wounded heart, Sasuke is so much like him that it makes him sick with it. And now, now Rin – Sakura, he reminds himself – is paying the price for his foolishness.
(Mebuki Nohara cum Haruno marching into the Third Hokage’s office: I don’t want that man teaching my daughter.
Haruno-san, I understand your concern but Kakashi is a most admirable teacher who cares greatly for his charges. Sakura will be safe with him.
He will get her killed. That icy tone. The surety in her voice. If not that, he’ll end up killing her, himself. He can’t help it.
Rin’s death was a tragic accident, Haruno-san. You cannot hold a man to his boyhood mistakes.
Respectfully, Hokage-sama, when she dies, I will remind you of those words.)
Tsunade’s hands on either side of Sakura’s chest. Glassy, horrible green eyes sliding wildly over to him.
“Sensei,” She slurs, smiling happily. Blood leaks between her lips. “You’re here.”
“I’m here, Sakura-chan,” Kakashi says softly. His voice is so tight with grief it feels as if it will snap. He cannot help the suffix, cannot stop himself from trying to impart to this dying girl that she is important to him, that she matters to him. Even if he was shit at showing it.
“Sensei,” She says again. “Shishou…”
“Stop talking, Sakura-chan.” Tsunade commands. “You have to save your strength. Naruto, Sasuke, when I say ‘go’ pull your hands out slowly.”
A moment passes with only the hum of healing chakra between them. Then, “Go!”
Neither boy will forget the horrible sound, nor the feeling of pulling their hands out of their comrade’s body. Shizune grabs Sakura just as Naruto and Sasuke are freed, laying her on her knees so Tsunade can work on her chest while Shizune works to stem the wound on her back.
“It’s not enough,” Shizune says, eyes pathetically wide. “It’s too much blood.”
“Damn it,” Tsunade curses. “Hatake, call me four doctors from the Trauma Unit.”
“Tell them to hurry, sensei!” Naruto bleats. Panic paints the lines of his face.
Kakashi disappears while Tsunade grumbles, “If someone has to tell them to hurry, they’re not fit to be in my hospital.”
More doctors arrive, carting Sakura away. When the boys move to follow, Kakashi grips their shoulders so hard he feels their bones giving way.
He makes his voice what it was in Root and says, "There are questions, first."
When the ANBU arrive, neither boy puts up a fight.
From the rooftop, finally alone, Kakashi stares up at the face of his mentor carved into the golden bluff. He imagines what Minato-sensei would say to him. What he would say to Naruto. The shame on his face just before Kakashi visited Mebuki to bury his face in their carpet, an apology so fierce on his lips that perhaps even Rin's sister might forgive him.
Kakashi refuses to think about a small coffin buried next to Rin's in the Nohara family plot. He refuses the haunting image of Obito, whose disgust would be palpable if he knew Kakashi had killed one girl they loved and perhaps cost her niece a life too.
Refuses to think about how Sakura might die, having done something that was his responsibility in the first place.
Obito was right, he thinks.
He really was worse than trash.