Work Text:
“Did you know, Kaka-sensei?”
He is never one to be caught off guard or startled, but her sharp inquiry cuts a swath through the murmurs of the bar. Slightly seedy, but she does not want to be found. The background noise fades as she tilts the dregs of her glass toward her, then away, watching the thin layer of liquid coat the bottom. Fleeting expressions dart across her face, each more readable then the last; she may have been able to lie to Naruto, but he’s a thickheaded outlier, rotating in an orbit far outside the circles she shares with her sensei and her lover.
Or something like that; like the greats before her, the lines are awfully blurry.
She’s in an odd place now, unsure of what’s next. Loving a man who has to learn to do so again, being loved by a boy who is loved by another. After the war, after all that, she thinks it should be simple, so simple. They have dinner and laugh as easily as they can pass one another like shadows, like strangers. Some days, it’s as predictable as the wind.
He is sitting with his pupil, drunker than he should be. Fortunately, her rigidness betrays sobriety, preventing any repeated mistakes.
“Did you know we would be chasing one another in circles trying to fix one another? Forever?”
“I see you trying to fix two grown, broken men.”
“That’s not it.” It is not a protest, it is not a reprimand. It is simply weary and weak, a wisp of a statement. “Other teams fight about the last piece of barbeque, maybe a less-than-stellar formation or two. I can tell we’re different; in fact, I think we’re heading down the same path the Sannin did.”
If she were a girl again, he would pat her shoulder or head and tell her how it would be all right; he would lie to her, blissfully, with all the finesse of an experienced and guilt-ridden man, and all the good intentions of a father wanting to dry his daughter’s tears.
“Powerful people have responsibility to carry the burden, sensei.”
He wonders how she manages to sound like a wise sage and a little girl simultaneously, though that could be his bias showing. For once, he does not console her with a fake smile crinkling underneath his worn mask. For reasons beginning with an aged handle of liquor and ending with a paid-off bartender, Sakura has seen her sensei’s face in a particular way, a story that will never surface. Anyway, it is scarred with guilt and regret; she handles it as carefully as she does her lover’s, because it’s incredibly clear how much she craves broken pieces. Keeps them in her pocket to weigh her heart down so it doesn’t break free. She is some sort of anomaly.
“The price of power,” she inhales.
The price of love, he responds in silence.
Without warning, she hops down from the bar stool, a little girl again. Tossing bills on the waxy counter, she slings her bag over a tense shoulder, turning away without so much as a parting word.
A couple steps; her tiniest movements cut through any intoxicated humdrum in which he could hope to lose himself. Drowning the voices of a daughter and a woman which slur together in strained, sloppy whispers. To the grave, he promises. I won’t ruin you, too.
“You don’t have to protect me.”
Space billows and balloons where she omits his pet name – painful pressure.
“I’m not her.”
They beckon her home, hungry ghosts and phantoms, tugging at her pristine white medic coat. They are hungry and lonely and waiting, but finally together.
A sharp inhale breaks him – acquiescing, he swivels on the stool only to staring at her shaking back.
“Still. We’ll go down in history . . . for all the wrong reasons.”