Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sakura has never felt very confident in her soulmark.

Not very confident at all.

Her parents thought it was cute, the sign of a troubled but solid romance. Sakura thought they didn’t know what they were talking about, but then puberty kicked in and she thinks it’s actually kind of okay.

Unfortunately, though, Uchiha Sasuke—her first but very brief crush—was not the one to say her words to her. The sentiment had been similar, but not a match.

His words had been, “Leave me alone.”

Those were not the words written on her left hip. Sasuke’s clear and utter repulsion of her made it obvious that this was not the troubled but solid romance that her parents thought awaited her, much to Sakura’s initial disappointment.

She hadn’t really expected it though, since the first time her classmate, Uzumaki Naruto, shouted something at Sasuke when their classes were combined in year two of the academy, the Uchiha had had a frozen look come over his features, and then promptly excused himself to the restroom. The vomiting had been short but made it perfectly clear how he felt on the matter.

They had been seen hanging out together more than once a few months after that, and then the Uchiha massacre had happened.

Naruto had been absent for weeks, and when he returned he was never the same. Sasuke had survived, they said, but when someone’s soul was as damaged as his, he might as well have not even had a soulmate in the first place.

Sakura wonders about her soulmate sometimes. He—she knows it’s a boy, just knows it in her bones—has had his words fade a bit here and there. From the moment she’d been born they had already been very faded, but as she grew older they occasionally solidified. It told her that her soulmate was hurting, and when the mark went almost clear for a few years, she had searched for him relentlessly, because she had to help him he couldn’t lose his soul she was going to keep her soulmate no matter what it took.

But now, after her graduation and waiting for her team to be called out, the soulmark is as strong as it’s ever been. It makes Sakura feel good and bad at the same time—good because he was getting better, and hopefully happier; bad because she hadn’t been the one to help him.

When she’s paired with Naruto and Sasuke on Team Seven, she’s immediately distraught. She doesn’t need a broken soul and a lost soulmate as her teammates. How are we even supposed to function? she wonders helplessly.

Also, their sensei is late. Very late. It gives Sasuke and Naruto much too much time in close quarters, and eventually Naruto starts yelling obnoxiously at his ex-soulmate, only to be ignored and that much further incensed. Sakura sits through it with her hands covering her ears and a grimace on her face, but she doesn’t think she’d do anything differently in Naruto’s shoes.

It gets to be too much, though. Sasuke has started replying, and his words are so cruel that Naruto is on the verge of tears.

This isn’t how soulmates are supposed to act, she thinks angrily. This is wrong.

So she gets up silently, approaches Sasuke—who’s too busy snarling at Naruto to notice—and whaps! him upside the head.

“Shut up,” she hisses. He glowers at her, but doesn’t retaliate yet. She isn’t cowed in the slightest. “Shut. Up. Or else.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growls, and it’s the most she’s heard Sasuke say to her in about three years.

“I don’t have to,” she replies evenly. “It doesn’t mean you’re not being an asshole.”

Then she blushes profusely, because that’s a bad word and good girls don’t swear.

He deserves it, she tells herself to justify it. A part of her that she usually ignores vehemently agrees.

There is utter silence after that, and then Sakura realizes an older man with impossibly spikey silver hair that leans to the side and a jounin flak vest on is standing at the door. She hadn’t even heard him come in.

“Maa, that’s not a very nice thing to say, now is it?” he says, sounding like he should be angry but doesn’t have care enough to inflect it.

Sakura doesn’t think about that though. Her jaw drops, her eyes widen, and her hand goes to her left hip.

So help me god, she thinks, and immediately feels sick to her stomach. But she knows she can’t go vomit like Sasuke did—although she acutely understands his reaction now in a very personal way—so she just stares. And stares. Without blinking.

She is horrified.

Their jounin sensei doesn’t seem too worried about her reaction. Silence reigns for a little while, and then Naruto puffs himself up valiantly and says, “Well, he did deserve it, ‘ttebayo.”

Sensei shrugs, and it really seems like he couldn’t care less. “Meet me on the roof. Five minutes.” Then he poofs away.

Nobody moves for about four minutes and thirty seconds, then everyone bolts.

Sakura has decided that she is so not okay with this soulmate match that she’s just never going to speak, and then nobody will ever know. Or, failing that, choose her words so carefully that she says something no one would ever—wait, no, that’s the point. So she’ll say something so mundane, like “Hello,” which she always says, so there’s no way to determine that it’s really her saying it.

They’re sitting on the rooftop now, and the jounin is introducing himself as Hatake Kakashi. Naruto introduces himself with hobbies, likes, dislikes, dreams, and so on, and so does Sasuke. Sakura realizes that it’s not really feasible to get out of this, but doesn’t know what else to say, so she blurts out unthinkingly, “I’m not important, just skip me.”

Kakashi-sensei’s single eye narrows in a dangerous, displeased expression.

Oops, she thinks, among other swear words that she will never, ever say out loud.

Then he’s back to looking like he couldn’t care about anything ever. “Well, Haruno-chan,” and wow, that’s really kind of insulting if we’re soulmates, Sakura thinks, “that’s very interesting. Unfortunately, the sun is setting in three hours and I’m terribly afraid of the dark, so everyone’s dismissed.” And then he poofs away without even giving them a time and place to meet up again.

Sasuke turns an angry look on her, as if to say, ‘Look what you’ve done now’ and Naruto just stares at where Kakashi was sitting, completely baffled.

“Well, goodbye then,” Sakura says nervously. She runs all the way home and cries into her pillow until her mother comes up to get her for dinner.

“Oh, Sakura-chan,” she says when she sees her distraught daughter, understanding immediately. She sits on the side of her bed and strokes her hair gently. “Are they not who you hoped?”

Sakura sobs out, “He’s my jounin sensei.”

Mebuki has nothing to say to this, and in the end brings up dinner for Sakura to eat in her room. She keeps her company until Sakura’s ready to go to bed, and when she’s leaving, Sakura gives her and long, hard hug.

Her mother pats her back. “It’ll all work out, sweetie.”

Sakura seriously doubts that.

Chapter Text

When Sakura awakes the next morning, she finds a note tacked to her window. It says “Training ground 3, 0700 hours.”

She has no idea who it could be from other than her sensei-slash-soulmate. For some reason, relief fills her. She doesn’t know why, and she wants to care but can’t, but her thoughts are shaken by the fact that it’s already 9am and she’s overslept by a whole lot.

Not a great impression after her very poor one yesterday.

But she’s still so tired. She sighs and struggles into her typical outfit, ties on her hitai-ate, then almost trudges out the door. Despite the relief, she’s not very hungry, and even if it’s not a great idea to go without food—actually, it’s a very bad one—she doesn’t care.

She feels herself filled with a kind of apathy as she makes her way to the assigned training ground. The relief is gone now, and she should probably feel dread, but she can’t actually muster it up.

Her jounin-sensei is her soulmate, he’s an adult and she’s a child, and more likely than not, he hates her.

“This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be,” she mutters to herself.

Who would have known that having a soulmate would be so painful?

Hatake Kakashi has had a lot of misfortune in his life. He’s lost a teammate due to his own mistakes, he killed the other one himself, and his sensei is dead—although thankfully, he had little part in that. His father committed suicide when he was young, leaving him alone to the scorn and jeers of a village that hated him simply for being related to the man. Then ANBU. He knows he’s had it rough, and he also knows that that’s just the breaks and there’s nothing he can do about it.

But a child is his soulmate.

A twelve-year-old girl-child playing at being a ninja is his soulmate. (Because yes, he’s read her file, and she’s not really anything to look twice at.)

Also she’s his student.

Now his only student, because Hokage-sama thinks that it’ll be good for him. Kakashi had argued—who else will teach the last Uchiha to master his sharingan? The Sandaime had said it would be taken care of, and that was the end of that. Who else can help his sensei’s son control the Kyuubi? A subordinate of his, the Sandaime had said. Another escape route promptly blocked.

“You are one of our best weapons,” he’d said. “We need you alive.”

Kakashi’s certainly not going to commit suicide because of having a genin team—otherwise, the Hokage wouldn’t have assigned him one. He might commit suicide if he’s going to be forced to spend all his time with a child who is his soulmate.

(What Kakashi doesn’t realize is that Sarutobi Hiruzen has seen the hard life of his best ninja and, given the opportunity to heal him, has taken it. Because being alive doesn’t just mean breathing.)

As Kakashi sits at home and wonders about his singular student’s reaction to him being late—his stomach gives an angry twist at just the thought of her—not even Icha Icha Paradise can distract him. And that’s when it’s clear that this is a very, very bad situation.

He decides around 9am that he’s probably left her to her own devices long enough by now, and also he just really wants to get this over with. If he can’t even properly enjoy Icha Icha, he might as well show up. If she has any of the temper she’d shown the Uchiha yesterday, she’ll be livid. At least then he’ll have the upper hand.

But when he gets there at 9:15, the field is empty without any sign or scent of anybody being in the vicinity since late last night.

An uncharacteristic anger flares in him. Perhaps it’s for the disrespect, perhaps it’s because it’s his soulmate, perhaps it’s because he just doesn’t want any part of this, but he’s angry.

Thirty seconds later, a pink-haired girl with the air of someone going to their execution arrives. Kakashi feels a little vindicated that she’s just as unhappy that she’s his soulmate, but it doesn’t actually make anything better.

When she sees him, she freezes, as though she hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings—but of course she hasn’t. She really has no business being a ninja.

He wants to tell her this, but the Hokage has all but ordered him to teach her. There’s no failing this girl, even if she’s the worst ninja to ever live.

But she’ll get killed in an instant if she is the worst ninja ever to live, and he’s not willing to let his soulmate walk to her death because of him. He’ll give her an education, he’ll get her a promotion, and once she’s chuunin, he can declare his job finished and be done with her.

“S-sensei,” she stammers, hastily bowing. “I’m sorry for being late, I—”

His anger speaks for him. She’s good for exactly nothing right now, and the sooner he changes that, the sooner he can be rid of her. First off: physical conditioning. It’s her weakest area.

“Thirty laps around the village,” he orders, not even glancing at her. Icha Icha is back in his hand. “Then two hundred push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and crunches. After that, target practice for shuriken and kunai for one hour each. Dismissed.”

As her face slackens in disbelief, he shunshins away.

He’ll be watching, even if he doesn’t want to be here at all. He needs to see just how much a failure she really is.

Her sensei’s gone in a poof of smoke five seconds after listing off the most ridiculous training regimen she’s ever heard. Sakura can only stare at his empty spot for a long minute, but then... she decides it’s better than having to do anything like spar with him.

So she gets to it.

After the tenth lap, she’s ready to collapse. For a moment, she considers cutting corners, because really—she doesn’t think any genin could realistically do this. (She’s never heard of either Maito Gai or Rock Lee.)

But she’s not stupid. If her sensei has decided to monitor in any way, she doesn’t want to make a bad impression. She forces herself to go on.

Fifty push-ups in, her body is about to give out. But no, she can’t give up—even though she wants to so bad. Around push-up seventy-three, she considers just quitting being a ninja. If this is how training is going to be for the rest of her time with Kakashi-sensei, is it worth it?

He’s my soulmate, she tells herself angrily. Even if he’s not… who I want… or would ever want… ever… he’s my soulmate. I have to keep going.

By the time she’s finished her pull-ups, she’s been crying for a while. Everything hurts. She’s pretty sure that she won’t be able to make it home, or even be able to stand up again.

She starts on the crunches, but before even an eighth of the way through, her willpower can no longer sustain her body’s needs, and it just refuses to move. Tears are still streaming down her face and she can’t feel much, but what she does feel hurts.

She tries to get up and physically cannot. She thinks about calling out for help, but she has her pride. Only little after how spectacularly she’s failed, but it’s enough to stop her.

Sakura closes her eyes and resigns herself to a night on the ground. Sobbing quietly, she wishes that her soulmate’s soul had been so damaged their bond had been broken.

And then she hates herself for it.

Kakashi blinks a lazy eye and realizes that his student has stopped moving. She’s done… a lot better than he had expected. Although she’s probably not moving for the rest of the night.

He stands up from his perch in the tree above where the girl has fallen and rolls his shoulders. They have a long way to go before he’s free of her.

With a dismal sigh, he shunshins back to his apartment.

Chapter Text

Training with Hatake-sensei is hell.

After a night on the cold hard ground in training ground 3, Sakura finally was able to pick herself up to head home. Her parents had been terrified and almost sent out a search party for her after she didn’t return the night before, but she lies and said that she and her sensei had done some survival training. The dirt and sweat covering her body attest to this well enough, and though Kizashi especially is dubious, they let it slide.

There’s no note on her window that morning or the next, and Sakura had decided that he’d given her some time to recover.

On day three, though, even though she still hadn’t recovered, another note was there, and she had reluctantly but determinedly returned to the training ground.

It went on like this for three weeks, each time her recovery period growing shorter until it was every day.

Now, Sakura thinks as she wakes up and starts getting ready for another day with Hatake-sensei, a full five days in a row of completing the training exercise with ease, he might have been right about a few things.

She’s in better shape than she’s ever been in her life. The intense training had left her hankering for a big meal whenever she could get it, so her misguided dieting habits had been thrown out the window promptly and without regret. She brought nutritious and calorific meals with her to training, as well as eating a large meal in the morning and at night. Her mother doesn’t think she’s noticed, but Mebuki definitely seems happier now that Sakura isn’t forcing near starvation on herself. While Sakura doesn’t think the muscles that have started defining her arms and legs and stomach are particularly feminine or attractive, the ease in which she does her exercises now is starting to make her feel a little more like a real ninja.

And, she thinks darkly to herself sometimes, when it’s just her and the mirror, it’s not like I have anyone to impress, anyways.

By the time the month is up, she’s looking a little more like a front-line fighter. She’s just too muscular for any other kind of specialty, though still lithe and petite. Her body has taken to the toning as though it’s been waiting for this opportunity all her life.

Very few words are exchanged by her and her sensei during training—she doesn’t really think of him as her soulmate anymore, even though it’s always in the back of her mind. He’s made it clear that he hates her and wants nothing to do with her outside of the formal sensei-student capacity, and honestly? She feels the same way.

Because Hatake-sensei—that’s what she calls him now, after all, she’s not even allowed a first-name basis with the man who will form her into an adult, one way or another, and of course being soulmates doesn’t matter—is cruel. He pushes her to the brink with the threat of being just as useless as he thinks if she fails instead of encouragement, and because Sakura doesn’t want to be useless, ever, it works as a threat, if not an unhealthy one. He ignores her questions unless he thinks they’re important to answer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s asking meaningless questions. Sometimes she really doesn’t understand something and he’ll just ignore her. There’s more, but it really comes down to that first day of training. It hadn’t occurred to her that night she was forced to sleep in the dirt and then lie to her parents about her whereabouts, but what he did was dangerous. Yes, Konoha is considered the nice country, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ninja here with dubious morals who wouldn’t take advantage of her given the chance. Sakura highly doubts Hatake-sensei had been there to monitor her throughout the night.

She doesn’t tell her parents this, of course, doesn’t renege on her lie. It all worked out in the end, and since she’s seeing results from his training, she’s decided she’s just going to take the all the good she can from him and then leave him behind the moment she qualifies for chuunin.

Not only does he not want her as his soulmate, but he doesn’t even want her in his life. She’ll gladly take him up on that if he’s going to treat her like this.

Now, as she heads to Training Ground 3 on the first day of her second month with Hatake-sensei, she feels a little twinge of trepidation in her step. It just feels like something is going to change today, but she has no idea what.

Hatake-sensei is early for once, and that’s what confirms for Sakura that yes, something new is happening. She swallows hard and approaches him before bowing and chirping, “Good morning, Hatake-sensei!”

Because Sakura isn’t going to show that she hates him as much as he hates her. Of course not, she’s a by-the-book good little student, oh yes she is.

(Also she thinks he hates it when she ignores his contemptuous attitude towards her.)

But today, he doesn’t give that little tell with his very minute but oft-occurring eye twitch. He just regards her steadily and without any expression. Instead of thinly-veiled disdain for her, he’s unreadable, and Sakura really, really does not like that.

But she waits in silence, stone-faced and all business after her customary annoyingly cheerful greeting. Sakura doesn’t mess around with Hatake-sensei when it comes to her training—it’s the only thing he’s good for. Finally, he speaks.

“You’ve been doing well, Haruno,” he says, and he doesn’t hide that he’s impressed in his tone, if only very mildly.

Sakura barely stops her jaw from dropping, but her lips still part tellingly. But she quickly gathers herself, bowing again and saying, “Thank you, Hatake-sensei.”

“We’re going to start working on the rest of the areas to lack in,” he says, and the way he says it makes it brutally and awfully clear that he thinks she still lacks in everything. “I leave for a mission tonight, so let’s get started.”

He hands her a small little square paper and Sakura immediately recognizes it. Ino had told her about them a while ago, but Sakura doesn’t know how long. She doesn’t think she’s seen Ino at all this last month and immediately regrets that.

“Funnel chakra into it,” Hatake-sensei says, sounding bored, and Sakura’s glad that Ino had made sure she’s not going in blind right now.

She does as ordered and the paper crumbles and dribbles all at once, and she knows without being told that she has Water and Earth chakra natures. She feels a little lucky to have two, honestly, because whichever suits her better will be the one she works on.

Hatake-sensei takes in the sight expressionlessly, then says blandly, “Interesting.”

And then nothing else. Sakura doesn’t know what to say that, so she doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t seem inclined to go on.

But eventually he does, although after a pause that lasts way too long. He pulls out a scroll that she hadn’t noticed earlier and hands it to her. “These are your training exercises for the next month. Your current regime is to go up fifty percent for the next two weeks, and then double for the second half of the month, along with the rest of these. I want all of them mastered by the time I get back.”

Suddenly, Sakura registers that Hatake-sensei is telling her his mission will last a month without bothering to inform her of it properly. She supposes she doesn’t care; he barely stays for her training on the days he shows up at all.

She really, really hates him.

She takes the scroll from him and he tells her he wants her to learn tree-walking and water-walking, as well as the two jutsu in the scroll: one earth, one water. Sakura nods dutifully.

Hatake-sensei disappears with a puff of smoke. He’s leaving for a month and he doesn’t even give her so much as a parting farewell. Sure, they don’t have a good working relationship by any stretch of the imagination, but he could at least say goodbye.

That tells Sakura that he thinks so little of her, despite his mild words of praise, that she doesn’t even deserve for two little words from him when he’s leaving for a substantial amount of time.

Fuming, she tell herself, He’s going to regret that. I’m going to make him regret thinking I’m not worth anything.

And she knows just how she’s going to do it, too.

Chapter Text

And she does.

She proves it, not only to him, but to herself.

Haruno Sakura is not useless. She is worth something.

It goes a little like this:

Sakura works harder than even that first day where she had been forced to sleep, vulnerable, in the training grounds, although that doesn’t happen again because her body is too strong now to break like that anymore. Although she keeps up with her exercises, she now focuses on speed more than ever, not because anybody is waiting up at home for her—three days after Hatake-sensei left, her parents had declared a two-week trip to Suna to sell their wares—but because time is at the highest premium it’s ever been and she’s not going to waste it.

She doesn’t sleep through the night anymore—instead, she falls into a restful state in which she is constantly, constantly holding ten leaves to different parts of her body throughout the entire night. It runs her ragged, but now after mastering tree-walking and water-walking in the same day with little to not effort, all she knows is that she needs more chakra. More, more, more.

And she knows her reserves will never be exceptionally large, but she wants more than the bare average that she’s got. For her plan to prove herself to work, she has to increase them as much as she can in the month she’s been given. Consistently draining them is important; that’s the only way they’ll grow. And she needs that growth.

The only times she sleeps are when she’s practicing her jutsu, sweat only half-dried from her physical training, chakra lowered by the expense during the night. After her reserves go past a quarter full, she drags herself home, regardless of the time, and sleeps until the next morning. Then, at 0500 hours sharp, she pops out of bed to do it all over again.

The jutsu Hatake-sensei gave her are basic: one for a small stream of water, versatile with different uses dependent on the chakra output, and the Hiding-Like-A-Mole technique.

It takes a few days to learn the mechanics, and another week to get both working. She’s heard jutsu take a long time to perfect, and she doesn’t consider these perfected, but she likes to think that with her brain and her chakra control, she can manage a few C-rank techniques. As soon as she feels confident with what she’s learned, she takes a rare hour to herself to go to the library and see what other jutsu she can track down to learn. She has a few vague ideas in mind—not of the jutsu specifically but rather of the intent and purpose she needs them for. She describes a few to the chuunin librarian and he directs her in the direction of genjutsu.

She finds some. Even the C-ranks, which are all that she has access to as a genin, sound pretty scary. She’s a genjutsu type, though.

She’s going to make them terrifying.

And Sakura tells herself that though they’re genjutsu and Hatake-sensei has a sharingan—of course she’d looked him up, she’s not going to go into anything blind—he probably won’t take her seriously enough to break it, which gives her an advantage. She finds a specific genjutsu that works for her plan perfectly and then searches for the last one.

Doton: Kage Bunshin, if she can manage it, will be the cherry on top of her revenge sundae.

The end of the month comes rapidly. Sakura’s worn herself to the bone, and two days before she guesses Hatake-sensei will come home, she goes to sleep and only gets up to eat and use the bathroom.

She needs to be prepared, and anyways, she and her chakra reserves could use a good near-48 hours of sleep interspersed with food.

(She doesn’t see the looks of worry on her parents’ faces, and even if she had, she would have ignored them.)

The day Hatake-sensei returns, Sakura is waiting for him at the village gates. He’s perfectly on time, perhaps even early, though she doesn’t know his exact mission parameters. He greets the chuunin at the gate and walks right past her like she’s not even there. He doesn’t spare her the barest glance, so Sakura puts it upon herself to initiate the interaction.

“Hatake-sensei,” she says firmly. “Fight me.”

Hatake-sensei is so surprised at her tone that his visible brow rises as her turns to her. “Come again?”

“I said, fight me.”

He gives her a once-over, finds her clearly lacking, and says simply, “No.” And then, “We’ll resume your training in two days.”

Sakura tries really, really hard not to let him get a rise out of her. The month of no exposure has left her raw to the way he can so effortlessly piss her off. “Fine. In two days, you’ll fight me.”

Hatake-sensei just looks at her. Then, deciding that doesn’t deserve a response, he shunshins away like he hadn’t even been talking to her in the first place, the conversation clearly over.

There’s a laugh from beside her. “Tough luck,” the nameless chuunin says ruefully. “Hatake’s always been a bit of an ass.”

“That’s an understatement,” Sakura mutters bitterly, and the chuunin laughs more loudly. She walks away, not sharing in his amusement, and decides that if her sensei won’t take the fight to her, then she’ll take it to him. Obviously, she’s going to have to make him see her. He won’t do it on his own.

But she had already known that, hadn’t she? And it’s so sad that in just one short month she had forgotten it.

So two days later, at training ground 3 as usual, Sakura walks up to meet Hatake-sensei where he’s already waiting. She greets him with the same cheery tone as always, grating to the ears, and asks what they’re doing today.

(Sakura watches herself and thinks, No wonder he finds it annoying. She doesn’t feel bad, though.)

Hatake-sensei gives orders as usual—he’s not even going to test her to see if she’d followed his instructions, and boy, doesn’t that light a fire under Sakura’s ass—and just as he’s about to say—something—her hands weave in an intricate pattern.

(Minute altered depth perception and balance. So small, in fact, that she doesn’t even think her sensei will notice. She doesn’t give him a chance to, either.)

Sakura immediately sweeps her feet under his legs, knowing that it won’t connect. That’s not the point. Hatake-sensei, with a look of only minor surprise, like he was more or less expecting this, jumps over her leg.

That’s where the genjutsu comes in, because he lands just slightly off to the right, and Sakura’s already on the assault. In the meanwhile, the other Sakura is in a tree to the left covered in scent-suppressors, weaving another genjutsu. She knows he’s probably figured out her first genjutsu, so she has to follow up with one just as he dispels this one.

And he does. “Kai!” is called across the clearing, and one Sakura uses that opening to jab a kunai in his direction. He blocks, and—

—the distraction worked—

—the second Sakura weaves her second genjutsu. Ten Sakuras surround Hatake-sensei, very clearly clones. The first Sakura leaps back into line and they blur until Kakashi probably—probably—can’t tell which one is the real her.

(None of them are.)

But the earth clone is actually wearing Sakura’s clothing, not just the fake stuff they appear with. She has Sakura’s true scent, and without Hatake-sensei’s sharingan and with the real Sakura’s scent suppressed, there’s no reason to believe that Hatake-sensei isn’t taking this at face value.

(She knows that one of the big reasons this will work is because her sensei has set the bar so very, very low for her in his mind.)

All at once, her clones charge. Sakura sits back, waits for Kakashi-sensei to release the genjutsu, and predictably, not wanting to play games with her, he does.

Her earth clone goes for a full-frontal assault as, in the last moments of the jig, Sakura weaves one last genjutsu, overpowered now. She lets it sink in just as her earth clone is jabbed with a kunai and melts into the ground.

The look on Hatake-sensei’s face when he realizes she’s been in hiding this whole time, the narrow-eyed look of irritation, makes Sakura’s month. Even if she doesn’t get her singular hit in, the one that will at least show herself that she’s worth something, that face will keep her happy for weeks.

It doesn’t matter. She sends an obvious, Academy-level bunshin from behind him. He turns, as if expecting it to be her, and Sakura lunges from her tree, chakra powering her entire body in preparation for this singular hit.

Of course Kakashi sees it coming; he’s been waiting for her to reveal herself for a while. But she’s sure he hadn’t expected a frontal assault, and she’s absolutely positive he didn’t think she would use the same genjutsu twice with different efficacy.

(Low standards.)

So as his head turns back to her, she can imagine the abrupt dizziness and tilting sensation he’s feeling. It makes the way her knuckles make contact with his face all the better.

Of course, he doesn’t actually get a face full of her fist. He dodges at the very last second, but she’d made contact. She had touched him with—well, not quite intent to harm, but—and even though he’d been defending against it, she’d actually done it.

Sakura flips over him, dispelling her last clone, and then stands in front of him.

“I hit you,” she declares. Not smug, not gloating, just a matter of fact.

Hatake-sensei stares at her with dangerously narrowed eyes. He’s not happy.

She doesn’t let him speak though. “I’m done with training for today, Hatake-sensei. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says, and walks away.

The next day, she shows up and although she’s feeling better about herself—she is not useless—Hatake-sensei doesn’t seem any different.

Until she greets him.

“Good morning, Hatake-sensei,” she says, no chirpiness, no cheer. Just a flat, reporting-for-duty monotone.

“Call me Kakashi-sensei,” he orders, like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t mean a world of difference.

He’s acknowledging her.

Sakura does not smile at that moment. She doesn’t smile when she goes home and tells her parents about her day. She doesn’t smile in the shower or as she’s settling in for bed.

But when she wakes up the next morning, the early pinks and blues of the day just dawning, Sakura is smiling.

Chapter Text

It’s been two months, Kakashi acknowledges as he lays in bed after a particularly interesting day of training with his student, the sub-par Haruno Sakura.

Except, he thinks, she’s not exactly sub-par anymore.

He doesn’t know what he had expected to happen during the month he’d been gone—he supposes he’d thought she’d do exactly what had been ordered, or maybe even slacked off without his watchful eyes.

No, the girl overachieved like no student he figured ever had. She’d taught herself how to make solid earth kage bunshin, and had even tricked him with her ingenuity by knowing how he detected scents. Kakashi will never express this to anyone, especially not Sakura herself, but he had shamefully not been angry when she went against orders and attacked him. He had not been displeased that she had managed to hit him, even leaving a slight bruise in the wake of her fist.

No, Kakashi had, at that moment, realized that maybe, just maybe (he’s knows it’s more than just a maybe but kami he will not admit it ever) there’s a reason why she’s his soulmate, even at twelve. Even though it disgusts him at this moment to think that she’s twelve and he’s twenty-six… he can see, from her determination and drive, that someday she will be a formidable opponent. If she keeps this up, if she maintains her current growth, Kakashi knows that she will be one of the strongest kunoichi of her generation, if not the strongest.

And he can’t help but feel some pride in that, even if he knows that up to the point where she’d landed a totally legal hit on her jounin sensei, he’s had little to no real inclusion in her growth.

He’s changing that now, and after today, their first day of real student-teacher training, he has to admit that he is even more impressed than when she had hit him. She’s smart, and not just academically like her Academy sensei had reported. She gets the theory of what he’s teaching her, she understands the details and minutia of tactical uses of his training and techniques, but she also is creative; she finds new uses outside the ordinary. She’s not quite Konoha’s #1 Unpredictable Ninja—no, Kakashi would go so far as to say she comes up with more efficient, if not better, ideas for how to utilize even the slightest advantages.

She had been all business today. There had been no mooning or fangirling. There’s something hard in her eyes when she’s with him, something that speaks of a drive to be great he hasn’t seen since Obito. It brings a belated fondness and a deep sense of regret; the former he’s surprised at, but the latter only tells him that he’s just made one more mistake.

He had dismissed her as useless, yes, and had he hated her? To a point, though never really maliciously. If she hadn’t been his soulmate, he probably wouldn’t have cared for her either way.

But her friend Yamanaka Ino had come by to visit for lunch, and Kakashi had seen that hard glint melt away. He saw Sakura smile, laugh, be carefree in a way she’s never been around him. And maybe she shouldn’t be that way around him; he doesn’t know, he’s never been a teacher before her.

He does know that those smiles and that laughter are what spur his regret, though.

Kakashi knows he makes a lot of mistakes, beyond what the imperfection of humanity justifies. He has made a lot of mistakes, and the ones that haunt him the most bitterly are irreparable. He’s already started down the wrong road with Sakura: he dismissed her, neglected her, and in the end, endangered her growth as not only a shinobi but a person.

He can’t bring Obito back to life. He can’t reverse time and stop Rin from impaling herself on his chidori. He can’t, no matter how much he might want to, save his sensei, or plead with the Sandaime to make sure his sensei’s son isn’t left to an uncaring, overpopulated orphanage.

However, Sakura’s not dead, not yet, and he still has time to fix this mistake.

The next morning, he heads to the Hokage’s office bright and early. He’s going to find something easy enough to be safe but difficult enough to test her. He knows the Hokage will expect him to start out with D-rank missions, even if they’re a two-man team—really, it’s more of an apprenticeship than anything else—but Kakashi has the leverage here. He’s one of Konoha’s top jounin; obviously, he can’t take his student on his usual-ranked missions, but he’s definitely wasted on glorified babysitting and other menial duties. And, furthermore, so is Sakura.

So Kakashi begins the path to making his amends by getting Sakura her first C-rank mission.

“But why, dattebayo?”

Naruto is tired of hitting the same log over and over again. Naruto is tired of throwing kunai and shuriken and other various projectiles in mind-numbing repetition. Naruto is tired of doing the same kata over and over and over again. And now his sensei wants him to do more of it for longer.

Yamato-sensei briefly closes his eyes. “Because it’s important to cement your foundation before going on to other techniques. You wouldn’t build a house on sand, would you?”

Naruto thinks on that. It sounds like it would be a real pain, with everything so slippery and slide-y, but he supposes that where there’s a will, there’s a way. Still, he thinks the fact that it’s slippery and slide-y is the point. “Well, I guess not.”

“Right. If you build the house on sand, it’ll eventually collapse because of the lack of stability. But on, say, solid ground…”

Solid ground is hard and very stable. He’s aware, as sparring one-on-one with Yamato-sensei has allowed his face to get intimately acquainted with it. “It’ll stay up!”

“Exactly. Right now, if I were to teach you the advanced techniques you want to learn, we’d be building a house on sand. But if you keep practicing like I’ve been telling you to…”

Naruto slumps in defeat. “I’ll be building a house on the ground.”

Yamato-sensei nods victoriously. “So get back to it.”

Giving it one last shot, Naruto tries, “But maybe if—”

Yamato looks down at him, storm clouds seeming to cluster above his head, shadows wreathing his face, his eyes eerie and dark and terrifying. Naruto shuts his mouth closed and immediately starts his kata over.

The shadows clear and Yamato nods to himself as his student hurriedly gets to work.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Again.”

The voice comes from the darkness, echoing in the stone training chamber in such a way that it’s nearly impossible to tell which direction it’s coming from.

Nearly.

With the training Danzo-shishou has given him—training in ruthlessness and skill and technique that Sasuke wouldn’t have been able to even dream about in the Academy—Sasuke can tell exactly how many feet his shishou is away and in which direction. He can’t quite pinpoint his exact location, only enough to throw a kunai with an educated guess, but with his shishou’s training, eventually he’ll only need to hear someone breathing and even in the dark he’ll be able to make a killing strike.

Heeding Danzo’s command, Sasuke runs through the hand seals again with perfect precision and increasing speed, the Katon jutsu roaring to life as he pours chakra into it. The room lights up, and Sasuke is given a nanosecond to dodge the traps that his senses alert him to.

Barely breaking out of stance, he twists to dodge one kunai and uses his free hand to block four shuriken coming in from different directions. Letting the jutsu dissipate, he catches one of the kunai flying for him three seconds later and redirects it to block another.

There’s another, though, one he hadn’t accounted for. The barrage of shuriken spin toward him and in order to avoid a potentially nasty injury, he’s forced to pivot.

His heel exits the two-foot circle within he’s allowed to move.

The training exercise abruptly stops and Danzo-shishou speaks. “You know what you did wrong. Don’t make the mistake again.”

Realizing the feedback for what it is, Sasuke repositions himself within the circle, getting back into a ready stance.

“Again.”

Chapter Text

“Was it supposed to be that easy?” Sakura asks as she and Kakashi-sensei walk down the road back to Konoha. “I thought it was a C-rank mission.”

Kakashi, nose buried in his X-rated book but still somehow managing to stay in the lead and the right direction at the same time, says, “I am a jounin, you know.”

Sakura huffs. Of course she knows that. “Yeah, of course,” she replies. “But even I didn’t struggle with them.”

The C-rank mission Kakashi had gotten them was a simple mission to take back stolen goods from some bandits and return them to their rightful owner in Takigakure. A few had been able to use chakra, and even then, only rudimentarily, so Kakashi had dealt with them and a few of the other bandits, given their sheer numbers. But the other thirteen or so had been easily handled by Sakura, and she had barely broken a sweat except for the initial adrenaline burst of her first real, life-or-death fight.

But it hadn’t been life or death at all. They just… went down. Like nothing.

Sakura tries not to let it go to her head, but it’s hard. She’s twelve and she’d taken down over a dozen fully-grown men with deadly weapons and had only gotten a couple of minor scratches for her efforts.

“What’s next?” she asks, easily keeping pace with her sensei. Everything about this is a breeze. She’s kind of excited for their next mission, if only because she actually wants a challenge.

“We’ll do a few more C-ranks,” Kakashi-sensei replies idly. “Enough to get you qualified for the chuunin exams.”

Sakura hesitates and almost loses her footing on the next jump. Blood rushes to her pale cheeks in a flush, but that’s fair because it’s a rookie mistake and she’s beyond that now. “I’m not ready for the chuunin exams,” she tells him. “I only know the basics.”

“Yes, but you’ve mastered them,” he says nonchalantly.

“I’d still prefer to have a few tricks up my sleeve,” she insists. “Without that, I don’t think I’m chuunin material, just a very efficient genin.”

Kakashi-sensei is silent for a while after that and Sakura doesn’t know whether he’s contemplating her words or has just reached a particularly juicy part of Icha Icha. She decides to let him be. Worse comes to worst, she’ll just look up some tricks in the library. She’s not good enough for B-ranks yet—in fact, she’s still in dire need of increasing her chakra reserves.

She absently snatches a handful of leaves from the tree above her as she passes by and adds them to the other thirty or so speckles in various locations on her body. This consumes more attention and chakra than fighting those bandits.

She’s jolted out of her reverie when Kakashi finally says, “I have a few ideas. Rest up tonight and we’ll start tomorrow. You get these down, you have to promise me you’ll accept my recommendation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ne, ne, Yamato-sensei!” Naruto calls excitedly. “I can water-walk now!”

At that very moment, Naruto loses control and splashes down into the four feet of river near the shore.

“Good, job, Naruto-kun,” Yamato calls back. He stands up, brushes the detritus off his pants, and says, “Now, I want you to practice talking to me and stay above the water.”

Naruto swims back to shore. “Aww, when can I learn something actually cool, dattebayo?”

Yamato can’t help but smile good-naturedly. Naruto, while overly excitable, has a heart of gold. “I’ll start teaching you jutsu when you can talk to me and stay on the water at the same time for thirty minutes.” Keeping Naruto talking isn’t hard—it’s keeping him focused on the surface tension between his chakra and the water that’s difficult. No surprise with his naturally enormous chakra stores as well as the Kyuubi.

“Sweet!” Naruto whoops. He goes back onto the water.

Yamato keeps his conversation light for the next twenty-nine minutes. Then he says, “By the way, I’m signing you up for the chuunin exams. If you can handle those, you can become a chuunin and take the next step to become Hokage.”

Naturally, Naruto loses all control in his enthusiasm and crashes into the water. Soaked after yet another dunk, he paddles to the surface and cries, “Not fair, Yamato-sensei! I was so close!”

“You need to be able to take surprises doing anything. If something like a few words throws you off like that, then an enemy’s attack could be lethal,” Yamato-sensei tells him remorselessly. “Now, again.”

Naruto whines but climbs back onto the water and sets his mind to getting past this hurdle as quickly as possible.

“You’ve trained him well,” Sarutobi says when Danzou presents Uchiha Sasuke’s progress report. Of course the old coot wouldn’t let Sasuke just disappear, and Danzou’s not so stupid as to draw attention to erasing the last Uchiha from existence. No matter the gain, it would be too obvious. He’s not the kind to invite attention to his shadows.

Instead of commenting, Danzou tilts his head in the mockery of a bow. Sarutobi doesn’t catch the defiant undertone.

“It is time for Sasuke to officially return to Konoha’s ranks,” Sarutobi says now. Danzou stiffens imperceptibly, but he feels his muscles tighten of their own accord. “He’s been gone long enough.”

“Of course, Hokage-sama,” Danzou says reverentially, the only response he can give. “But if I may—”

“He will be mentored under someone else for the foreseeable future,” Sarutobi says, not mentioning who. It doesn’t matter; Danzou will be able to figure that out on his own. It’s not like it’s going to be a secret. “Let him in.”

An ANBU opens the door and Sasuke enters the office. “Sasuke-kun,” Sarutobi greets. “How have you found your training so far?”

Sasuke glances at Danzou, but not the way that is preferred. The Uchiha has a rebellious streak that Danzou has never been able to rid of him. When Sasuke disappears for good this time, it will be easy enough to condition him out of that.

He hesitates for a microsecond. Itachi will be furious if he does that. He might even tear down all of Konoha as revenge for the reneging on their word.

Danzou is willing to take the risk.

“It has been satisfactory,” Sasuke answers after a moment.

“Good, good,” Sarutobi says. “It’s time for you to be assigned another mentor in preparation for the chuunin exams.” What he does not say but Danzou understands is that Sasuke needs to learn how to be social again, how to work on a team if they’re going to make it anywhere.

Sasuke doesn’t spare his previous mentor another glances as he nods. Danzou is dismissed.

He keeps his calm façade, but Sasuke’s lack of gratitude for all the time Danzou has put into him, all the special training without benefit for himself, is infuriating.

He’ll get the Uchiha boy back easily enough. It’s not a threat, but a vow.

Chapter Text

Meeting her erstwhile teammates after three months of solitary training with separate sensei does not… well, it doesn’t go well. Not as badly as it could have, but—no, not well at all.

Naruto starts of cheerily enough. He shows up first, a bright smile on his face and a certain kind of confidence that he hasn’t displayed since the Uchiha Massacre. Whatever he’s been doing on his own—Kakashi-sensei had given her vague information what had happened to her original team before they were split up—Naruto seems to have healed. Maybe it’s his distance from his lost soulmate, maybe it’s from what he’s learned, but he’s no longer the depressed dead-last of the academy.

They even manage to have a civil conversation. Naruto has matured, and not in the way of singular tragedy. Whatever’s going on with him, Sakura likes it. She thinks she can work with him effectively, even if only for the chuunin exams. She plans to pass, and then she won’t have anything to do with either of them. Maybe they’ll team up occasionally on future missions, but she won’t be stuck doing C-ranks under a jounin sensei with them.

Sasuke, however, is a different story.

When Sakura sees him approaching—she’s honed her senses to be able to detect even Kakashi-sensei when he’s not putting his all into hiding—a cold shudder ripples through her. There’s something wrong with Sasuke, though she doesn’t know what. When he finally joins them, he barely spares her a scathing glance; he doesn’t acknowledge Naruto at all.

And Naruto seems to deflate in the presence of his lost love.

Even though Sakura’s only spoken to Naruto for about fifteen minutes since they were separated, she already feels unreasonably protective of him. She doesn’t want to see him bright smile dim, and it had the moment Sasuke had made his presence known. When Sasuke doesn’t greet them, doesn’t so much as acknowledge them beyond leaning against a tree trunk in their nearby vicinity, Naruto practically deflates. The dejection on his face is clear and that smile is completely gone, replaced by a stiff upper lip.

Sakura realizes in that moment that she will do anything to protect Naruto’s smile.

“Hey,” Sakura says saccharinely. “How’s training been?”

Sasuke grunts noncommittally.

“Did you learn anything cool? Any high-ranking jutsu?”

Sasuke doesn’t even bother to grunt this time.

Sakura has dealt with the silent treatment. She’s been ignored, belittled, dismissed—all at the hands of her so-called soulmate. And, having dealt with this, and having proved herself to that person, she’s learned what to do in this situation.

Her voice is bright, chipper, when she says: “Wow! Are they so cool you can’t share them? I promise I won’t tell anyone!”

What has she learned to do in this situation, with this kind of personality?

Be annoying. There’s no better revenge.

“Shut up,” Sasuke says, irritation clear.

“Oh, Sasuke-kun! You’re just so cool! Did they teach you…”

Sakura continues like this for a few minutes, voice sweet as syrup, and she notices Naruto biting back a smile in her periphery. That’s all she wanted.

“Would you stop? You’re so annoying.”

Instead of being offended, Sakura laughs. “You haven’t seen anything yet, Sasuke-kun! I just—”

“Maa, Sakura-chan, I think that’s enough.”

Sakura turns and stands at attention upon hearing Kakashi-sensei’s voice, and she moves so quickly—she’s been properly trained to respect her superiors—she catches the glimmer of amusement in his lone eye before it flickers away. Not just amusement—schadenfreude. He remembers how much she used to annoy him with her overly cheerful demeanor and is clearly pleased to see it directed at another ice block of a human being.

Sakura doesn’t think she can melt Sasuke, though. She’s not sure she cares enough to try.

(Then again, it might make Naruto smile again, that mega-watt smile before everything fell apart, and Sakura thinks, maybe.)

“Alright, kids,” Kakashi-sensei says. “My name is Hatake Kakashi, but you can call me Kakashi-sensei.” And no, Sakura definitely does not bristle at her sensei’s blatant acknowledgement of them when it had taken her so long to earn his respect, but only because she’s pretty sure that she’s the reason he’s willing to open up to his two new students.)

“Now, I know we’ve all met before, and Naruto and Sasuke, you were taught separately by teachers more suited to your strengths. However, with the chuunin exams coming up in a month, I’ve been assigned to make sure you all can function as a team and prepare you for promotion. Konoha expects great things from the three of you, so it falls on me to make sure you don’t die.”

“Hai!” Sakura says.

“Believe it!” Naruto cries.

Sasuke shrugs carelessly, like this isn’t worth his time.

Kakashi-sensei turns to him, suddenly stone-faced. Sakura knows that look, but doesn’t feel any pity for what’s coming next.

“A direct superior has spoken to you, Sasuke. I don’t know what you were taught or by who, but insubordination in any case will lead you to places you don’t want to go. That being said…”

Kakashi-sensei waits. Something in Sasuke seems to snap to attention at the frigidity in his voice.

“Hai, sensei!” Sasuke says formally. It’s like a switch has been flipped and he’s suddenly an attentive student ready to learn.

But Kakashi-sensei doesn’t let up. “I won’t remind you again,” he says ominously.

There’s no hesitation this time.“Hai!”

“Now, let’s start with some team building exercises…”

The next month passes like lightning in a storm and suddenly, it’s time for the chuunin exams.