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Kakashi-sensei is a little bit of a trouble-magnet. Sakura figured that much out within a month of meeting the guy. He got beaten up twice during their first real mission, and he’s returned with injuries or chakra exhaustion from about half of the missions he’s taken on since. He’s a bit reckless and severely unlucky and his chakra system is fifteen kinds of messed up. Ino has taken to calling him “Accident-prone-sensei”. Sakura feels like Konoha’s medical-nin probably call him less kind things behind his back.
When he’s late one morning – again – and Team Seven’s students are approached by a messenger who tells them that Kakashi was hospitalized – again – after his latest solo mission, they’re not surprised in the slightest. They’re not surprised to hear that he has a crack in the side of his skull that’ll require surgery to fix, or that he’s going to be off his feet for the next week while his head properly heals. It’s pretty standard stuff with Kakashi-sensei.
Somewhat surprising, though, is the fact that Kakashi does not use this particular incident as an excuse to take some time off. Normally, he just kind of vanishes until he’s fully recovered. He’s probably thankful to get a break from his students, is Sakura’s theory. He barely seems like he wants to teach Team Seven on a good day, let alone on a bad day.
But this time, the messenger asks them to report to Kakashi tomorrow morning. For training. Huh.
It piques Sakura’s interest for sure. The next morning, she gets up a little earlier to buy Kakashi a get-well-soon gift. Because her parents raised her right and she refuses to visit someone who’s recovering without a gift. Even when it’s the third time in two months that she’s had to buy Kakashi a get-well-soon gift. Her curiosity about today’s training makes that it doesn’t bother her that much. Even the fact that it’s raining cats and dogs doesn’t bother her much.
Team Seven had been instructed to come to the apartment building where Kakashi lives. Sakura arrives first, because of course she does. She considers waiting for Sasuke and Naruto, but it’s actually raining pretty hard, so she decides pretty quickly to just go inside.
A helpful jounin she comes across in the corridor tells her she can find Kakashi in the common living room. When she gets there, the lights are off, and the living room appears empty apart from a huge pile of blankets on the couch.
Sakura clears her throat, hesitantly standing in the doorway. The light from the hallway shines into the living room a bit, but not enough to see clearly. “Uhm,” she calls, “sensei?”
“Morning, Sakura,” says the pile of blankets blearily. Sakura finally recognizes the pale spikes of Kakashi’s hair among the blankets. With the top of his head as a reference point, she can sort of make out that he’s sitting upright on the couch, with three or four blankets wrapped around his shoulders and one lying across his legs. He’s wearing a scarf instead of a mask; Sakura suspects he couldn’t put on his usual clothes over the thick layer of bandages around his head.
Sakura tries not to show that it catches her off guard, and she steps into the living room. She makes the conscious decision not to turn on the lights; they were probably off for a reason.
“Good morning, sensei,” she tells him with a polite nod. “I brought some fruit, if you’d like some. Hope you feel better soon.” She holds up the fruit basket she’d bought.
Kakashi blinks at her; he might be smiling, but it’s kind of hard to tell when only ten percent of his face is visible. “No need to be formal,” he says, freeing one hand from his blanket mountain to gesture at her to sit down. “I’m on sick leave, technically speaking.”
As Sakura sets her fruit basket on the coffee table and sits down on the couch, she hears chatter from the hallway; Naruto approaches, and Sakura guesses it’s Sasuke he’s talking to. The two of them enter the living room a few seconds later.
Naruto immediately flicks on the lights – Kakashi ducks away with a groan. Clicking his tongue, Sasuke pushes Naruto to the side and turns off the lights again.
“Hey, what was that for?” Naruto demands, pulling Sasuke’s arm in retaliation. “Don’t just push people!”
“Shh,” Sakura interrupts him, frowning. “Sensei’s got a headache.”
Naruto at least has the decency to look embarrassed. “Right. Sorry. Morning, sensei.”
“Morning,” Kakashi replies in a sigh, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Sit down, you two. Let’s begin.”
The boys join them on the couch. Naruto grabs a tangerine from the basket as he walks past it, not noticing Sakura’s glare.
“So what’re we doing today, sensei?” he asks, plopping down on the couch and passing his tangerine from one hand to the other. “What kind of training are we doing? I’m dying to burn off some energy.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sasuke replies with a critical look towards Kakashi. “I don’t think we’ll be moving around much any time soon.”
Kakashi cracks open his eye to send Sasuke a tired look. “I don’t think so, either,” he says. “For today, I only have an important lesson for you.”
He doesn’t elaborate; Sakura gives him a second, because he’s clearly exhausted and he’s had a really bad blow to the head quite recently, but the silence drags on for a long time.
Naruto is less patient than she is. “Well?” he asks. “What’s the lesson?”
Kakashi might actually be smiling, this time. “You’re going to figure that out for yourselves,” he replies. “I figure it’ll stick better that way. Put those brains of yours to use, so that my brain can find some rest.”
Seems like a simple enough exercise, apart from the fact that nothing about it makes sense. Just how hard did Kakashi hit his head? “Do we…” Sakura starts, carefully. “Do we get any hints, or something?”
“Yeah. These.” Kakashi pulls a dozen of plastic boxes out from underneath his blankets; upon closer inspection, Sakura realizes they’re VHS tapes. It’s difficult to read the titles in the half-darkness. Kakashi wraps his blankets tighter around himself, closing his eye. “I’ll be sitting here and hopefully getting some sleep. If you wake me up before you’ve figured out the correct answer, I’ll have you running laps around the village until your legs fall off. Good luck.”
Well. Sakura shares a look with Sasuke and Naruto. She’s a little disappointed by the fact that they have to figure out their own education by themselves – again – but she supposes she shouldn’t have expected anything else from Kakashi. Sasuke rolls his eyes at Kakashi; Naruto is preoccupied with ridding his tangerine of its peel.
At random – because they have to start somewhere – Sakura grabs a VHS tape and quietly crawls towards the TV that’s in front of them. The volume of the TV starts out pretty loud before she has the chance to turn it down, but thankfully it seems Kakashi is unbothered by the sound. The bandage around his head covers one ear, maybe that’s why.
The VHS is an instructional video about how to channel your chakra in order to punch with more power. It seems like it’s targeted to shinobi of chuunin level, or higher; Sakura is pretty sure genin aren’t allowed to try advances techniques like that yet, for their own safety. She doesn’t recognize some of the words that are used.
Naruto briefly looks up from peeling his tangerine to glance from the TV to Kakashi with wide eyes. “He’s expecting us to teach ourselves that?” he exclaims, not quietly. Kakashi shifts on the couch.
Sakura shushes him. “I don’t think it’s that straightforward,” she whispers. Otherwise, why would he be acting so mysterious?
“Look underneath the underneath,” Naruto mutters, and, well. At least he understands that. He returns his attention to his tangerine, scratching at the white pith.
Sasuke sighs at him and gets up to inspect the VHS tapes. Sakura leaves him to it; if there’s an answer somewhere on the plastic boxes, she trusts that Sasuke is smart enough to find it. Instead, she watches the TV closely, trying her best to keep up with what’s being said. After a while, Sasuke returns to his spot on the couch, apparently not having figured out anything.
The instructional video about strong punches is kind of boring and kind of hard to follow, even for Sakura. She considers putting on a different VHS, but she decides to sit through this one regardless. There’s no time limit to this exercise, anyway. The longer they take to figure it out, the longer Kakashi gets to sleep, and she highly doubts he’ll be annoyed about that.
Naruto has made his way through two tangerines and a pear when the instructional video transitions into a chapter about the practical applications of the jutsu. The chapter opens with a slow-motion shot of some guy getting punched in the side of the head really hard.
Unsurprisingly, Naruto laughs – again, not quietly – and Kakashi twitches in his sleep. Sakura cringes, already imagining having to run laps around the village until further notice, but Kakashi thankfully doesn’t wake up.
Sasuke bumps Naruto with his shoulder. “It wasn’t even that funny,” Sasuke hisses.
Naruto shrugs, not seeming bothered. “It was a little bit funny,” he replies. “At the very least, it’s funny that it’s relevant to the situation.”
He gestures from the TV screen to Kakashi. To the bandages around his head.
Sakura’s eyes widen. “Oh,” she whispers, and adds reluctantly: “That’s actually pretty smart, Naruto.”
“Uhm,” Naruto replies, cocking his head at her, “thanks? What’d I say, exactly?”
Sakura stays silent in favor of grabbing the other VHS tapes and looking through them, squinting in the darkness. It seems like a random assortment of titles at first glance. Some tapes are about obscure taijutsu styles from various different Hidden Villages, one is about learning how to predict your opponent’s movements, and then there’s some more about strength-enhanced attacks. Then there’s a tape on how to safely retreat when you can’t fight anymore, and one about hiding your presence in all sorts of difficult situations. One appears to be about collaborating with civilians, but it turns out that one of the chapters is titled “Where To Find Medical Aid Away From Your Hidden Village”.
It’s a random assortment, but it’s a random assortment that makes sense in context. These are teaching materials that would teach them exactly enough to be able to survive – or even avoid – the type of injury Kakashi got on his latest mission.
“I think I’ve got it,” Sakura whispers, looking up at the boys.
Naruto grins at her. “No need to thank me for the hint.”
Sakura sticks her tongue out at him and pokes Kakashi’s leg through the layers of blankets. He makes a groggy noise before cracking his eye open.
“Think carefully before you say anything,” he warns hoarsely. “One thousand laps around the village if you’re wrong.”
Sakura chews on her lower lip, suddenly uncertain, but Sasuke nods his chin at her, and that gives her the courage to speak.
“We think,” she says, “that you’re trying to teach us how to avoid getting hurt like you got hurt.”
There’s a silent, tense moment in which Kakashi doesn’t react, but then he smiles tiredly. “Exactly right.”
Sakura whoops, then regrets it when Kakashi winces.
“I’ve decided something about the stuff I want to teach you,” he continues after a moment, rubbing at his forehead. “I’ve decided that there’s a single most important thing I want to teach you: how to avoid making the same mistakes I’ve made.”
“We’ll be very careful not to get a crack in our skull, sensei,” Naruto says, nodding earnestly.
Sakura has a hunch that there’s more to this exercise; that Kakashi will tell them more later and that this is their first hint to pay close attention whenever he talks about stuff that happened to him. She looks forward to hearing it. If Kakashi thinks it’s so important to tell them, then it probably is.
Sasuke looks forward to learning more, too, apparently; he gives Kakashi a critical look. “Interesting,” he says flatly. “So when will we be covering the fundamentals of not losing an eye?”
Kakashi wrily stares back at him, then closes his eye. “You know, I’d arranged for you to spar with Team Gai this afternoon,” he replies casually. “But I think that comment made me change my mind. Enjoy watching instructional videos for the rest of the day.”
There’s some protesting, but the complaints quickly die down when Kakashi just pretends to be asleep. The genin have a very boring day of watching TV. Kakashi has a very restful day and doesn’t emerge from his hours-long nap until late in the afternoon, when he discovers that his students also had a very restful day; all three of them have fallen sound asleep, the VHS tape having finished a long time ago.
Kakashi shrugs, shares some of his blankets, and goes back to sleep.