Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Zabuza understands the practicality of putting genin in teams—the village doesn’t have enough resources to give each student their own jounin teacher, and even if they did, there’s no guarantee every student would be worth the effort given that some of them will cap out at chuunin rank if they even make it that far, and there’s that whole teamwork shit to think of—but the reality is that it’s not an ideal system.

There’s a reason Zabuza only has one apprentice, and there’s a reason Haku is skilled enough to pass for a Hunter Nin at only 16.

Three students to one jounin doesn’t allow for the kind of specialized training that churns out powerhouse shinobi, and though Zabuza knows Kakashi’s only had his brats for two months, it’s clear they’re already suffering for it. It was obvious in Wave during the loops where he got to watch them fight—scattered, uncoordinated, and with alarmingly little skill—and it’s obvious now, on the training grounds of the Hatake lands where Zabuza is being forced to watch over the genin while Kakashi fills out yet another round of tedious paperwork to solidify their bond and their right to be in Konoha.

He doesn’t mean to get involved with the kids’ training, but it’s fucking painful watching Naruto fling kunai at a log and never hit it dead-center. It’s frustrating to see Sasuke run through the same dozen kata over and over again even though he’s obviously long-since perfected it and the repetition isn’t doing him any good at this point. It’s pathetic how Sakura just stands there, looking unsure and out of place. They’re not his students or his responsibility but—

Zabuza sighs heavily, mouth pinching beneath the bandages on his face. At his side, Haku looks even more strained, grimacing at Sakura and Sasuke and wincing whenever Naruto’s kunai go sailing past the log and into the surrounding woods. It would be easier to leave them to sort themselves out, and before Wave, Zabuza probably would have let them crash and burn on their own. But even though he didn’t sign up for a genin team, he did, apparently, sign up for this family bullshit.

(Thinking of himself as a Hatake is fucking bizarre. Realizing he’s vaguely responsible for four children and the legal guardian for three of them is even more mind-blowing.)

If the brats die because they’re untrained and unprepared for the violence of the real world, Haku will be upset and Kakashi will probably lose his tenuous grip on sanity and burn down the whole world.

(And Zabuza remembers all too clearly the one loop he’d succeeded in killing Team 7, the hollow emptiness that had followed in the wake of their deaths, the instant regret.

No. It’s best to avoid that if at all possible.)

“Fuck,” Zabuza mutters to himself before getting up off the stairs he’d been sitting on and marching across the field, Haku a half step behind him as always. “Alright brats. You obviously don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. We’re going to fix—” he waves a hand to gesture at them “—all of this.”

Naruto squawks in offense, Sasuke’s trying to kill Zabuza with his glare alone, and Sakura’s head drops further. It’s about what he expected. At least one of them has the self-awareness to be ashamed. Sakura has a good head on her shoulders when she’s not throwing herself at the Uchiha boy—practical, responsible, smart, and a bit mean when she’s pushed.

Like Haku, Zabuza thinks, then grins.

“Sakura, you’re with Haku for now.” He turns to catch his apprentice’s attention, then flicks his eyes meaningfully at Sakura’s long hair and impractical cheongsam. If anyone can show her how to balance prettiness with strength, it’ll be Haku. “Get her sorted before you start teaching her to kill people.”

Haku smiles. “Of course, Zabuza-shishou.” He turns to Sakura and offers a hand. “Come, Sakura-chan. I have some poisons for your hair.”

“For my…hair?” She looks nervous. Smart girl. Most people don’t think they have to be wary around Haku, and that’s what always gets them killed.

“In case someone tries to grab you that way.” Haku holds up his own long hair, and the afternoon light catches ever so slightly on some thin, silvery strands that have been braided throughout. At first glance, it looks like strings of tinsel, but Zabuza knows it’s razor-thin ninja wire. And he’s seen just how deep it can cut into an enemy shinobi’s hand—and how quickly that hand had turned purple-black under the effects of poison.

“Oh,” Sakura says, eyes wide with something like wonder. “You’d…teach me how to do that?”

“Of course.”

The grin that splits her face is about as scary as a newborn kitten baring its teeth, but it’s a damn sight better than her simpering, fangirl smile. Progress.

“Oi! What about us?” Naruto asks, hands on his hips, scowling.

“Weapons training.”

“Tch.” Sasuke doesn’t roll his eyes, but it looks like he definitely thought about it. “I already know how to use a kunai. I’m not as useless as Naruto-dobe.”

Naruto flushes, caught between both embarrassment and anger. “At least I’m not a stuck-up dickhead!”

Sasuke’s fists clench like he’s about to forego training for a good old fashion brawl, and Zabuza would let them have at it if he thought it would do any good. As it is, both of the boys need to learn to control their tempers, and it’s not like there’s going to be a satisfying end to this fight. Sasuke might be more skilled currently, but Naruto’s stamina is better. If it ends in a draw, they’ll both be pissy, and both of them are arrogant enough that even if there is a conclusive winner, it’ll just feed their ego unnecessarily.

(He doesn’t regret getting out of the time loop when he did—he’s fucking grateful to be out of Wave—but he sometimes thinks the genin brats would have been better off if they’d gotten to see Kakashi fight him, if they’d had a close-call at the bridge, if they’d been forced to see how outclassed they are, how much there is to learn.

He wonders if they’d be closer as a team if they’d stayed in the timeline where everyone thought Sasuke died and Naruto lost himself to the kyuubi’s rampage. But then, Haku and Zabuza would both be dead.

No. This timeline is the best one. If Zabuza wants the genin to get close like that, he’ll have to figure out how to orchestrate it himself.)

“I didn’t fucking say kunai, I said weapons training,” Zabuza says, cutting through their bullshit in a few words. It works, catches both their attention.

“Like what?” Naruto asks.

“I’m a swordsman,” Zabuza deadpans. “What do you think?”

Naruto’s eyes go wide and excited. “REALLY?”

“Really.”

Sasuke isn’t nearly as enthusiastic. At least, not verbally. But there’s a glint in his eyes that Zabuza recognizes: a hunger for power, for strength. The will to grasp at everything you can to haul yourself up out of the pit. Good. Progress.

(And when Kakashi gets back, Zabuza’s going to drag him willing or not into a conversation about what the fuck he’s been doing the past two months for his kids to be this shit at everything.)

Sakura looks in the mirror in front of her and can’t quite recognize herself. Her hair is braided through with the same silvery strands of ninja-wire as Haku’s, though the poison on them is only a mild paralytic rather than something more dangerous. It looks pretty, like Sakura’s cherry-blossom hair has been touched by starlight. The fact that it will cut through anyone who tries to grab it makes her feel powerful in a way that she hasn’t since she left the academy.

Ninja life is…not what she imagined. It’s not bad, per se. But in the academy, surrounded by structured lessons and tests that required more brains than brawn to ace, Sakura had convinced herself that she was top kunoichi because she was the best. Now that she’s been out in the field, she’s less sure. D-ranks are one thing, but on their trip to Wave, she just felt weak.

She’d done nothing useful when the Demon Brothers had shown up. She’d been scared, frozen in her fear, but worse than that, she knows that even if she’d had the strength to move, it wouldn’t have done any good. She can’t win a spar against Naruto, let alone Sasuke, let alone chuunin-level enemy nin. She can throw a kunai with some accuracy against a still target, but she’s never practiced with a moving one. She’s slower than her teammates, physically weaker than them, and—she’s starting to think—mentally weaker as well. At least in some ways.

Sure, she can memorize mission details after one read-through, and she can identify every plant Haku mentioned on the walk back from Wave, and she can strategize with enough time and information. But what good is that if she can’t protect herself? Can’t protect her teammates?

They were lucky Zabuza wanted an alliance with Kakashi-sensei. Sakura’s honestly not sure who would win that fight if it came to it. And she knows Zabuza and Haku won’t hurt them now, not when they’re family, but if they were enemies, would they have spared Sakura and her team? She doesn’t think so.

(It’s strange to be a Hatake rather than a Haruno. Strange, but not bad. She wonders how long it will take her parents to realize she’s stopped coming home. Wonders if they’ll be upset, or just relieved that they no longer have to pretend to be okay with Sakura being a shinobi.)

“As you build up an immunity to stronger poisons and learn to craft your own, you’ll be able to have more variety,” Haku says. “But a paralytic is a safe choice for now, though it will still offer some protection.”

Sakura considers him for a long moment. Haku is ridiculously, enviably beautiful, and he’s gentle with her, with her team. Kind. But also undeniably dangerous. Sakura hasn’t seen him fight yet, but Zabuza and Kakashi-sensei took him along when they went to raid Gato’s stronghold, and that’s as good a sign as any that he’s powerful in his own right. Plus, he’s got that way of walking, of holding himself that screams of assurance in his abilities. Every higher ranked shinobi that Sakura has ever seen has that easy, effortless confidence. She wants that.

“Do you think I can?” she asks. “Build up an immunity to poisons, I mean. And make my own.”

Haku nods. “Of course. It’s just a matter of the right training.” He hums, head tilting in thought. “And you’ll need a weapon. Senbon are the obvious choice, but something unexpected would be good as well. Kunai? Or—hm. We’ll have to improve your close-range taijutsu anyway, so perhaps some sort of spiked glove. You don’t have large chakra reserves or the kind of stamina right now for a long, drawn-out fight—if you could incapacitate someone just by grazing them, that would help you conserve your energy.”

Sakura tries to picture herself the way Haku is describing: poisons laced through her hair, senbon tucked in her pouch, spikes on her fists. Someone who ends a fight with vicious efficiency. Someone strong enough to protect her team, strong enough protect herself. The Sakura that Haku is describing doesn’t need to be scared, doesn’t need to be saved.

“When do we start?” she says, determination filling her.

“As soon as you put these on.” He hands her a pile of dark clothing: a pair of calf-length leggings made out of some material that feels sturdy and a long-sleeved fish-net mesh-armored shirt. “The dress is fine, Sakura, and you can keep wearing it, but it’s not going to offer much in the way of protection. If I’m going to be throwing projectiles at you, you need some armor.”

Sakura gulps. “You’re going to throw projectiles at me?”

Haku smiles, and it’s the one that looks nice but holds a threat behind his teeth. “You’re not very fast, Sakura. But you will be.”

Naruto does not take well to the sword.

“It’s so clunky,” he says, wrinkling his nose as he tries to swing it around with little success. It’s not Zabuza’s big sword, obviously, but a smaller one that had been intended for Haku before he’d decided to specialize in senbon and ice jutsus. “And it’s weird not having my hands free.”

Sasuke does not share those complaints. He has another small sword identical to Naruto’s—part of a paired set—and while he wouldn’t say it feels perfectly natural yet, there’s a certain rightness to the way it feels in his hand. It’s light, extends his reach by a whole arm-length, and requires the sort of precision that Sasuke excels at. It’s an ideal weapon for him and will only be more perfect whenever he finally develops his sharingan.

Zabuza runs them through the basic exercises and then walks around correcting their form as they repeat them. It’s no more exciting than the taijutsu forms Sasuke was practicing earlier, but this is new, and after a few rounds, the weight of the sword starts to become more noticeable. There’s a challenge to this that there wasn’t with his earlier training, and the burn in his arms feels good. It feels like progress, which is something Sasuke has been missing lately.

Between the D-ranks and Kakashi’s lackluster training program, he’s felt like he’s stalling out for a while now. There’s only so much he can teach himself through the old clan records and the shinobi library. And he can’t correct his own form, can’t push himself beyond his own capabilities. He needs a teacher if he’s going to surpass that man.

It’s not like Kakashi’s totally useless. Sasuke isn’t inclined to give him a lot of credit, but the sparring has been worthwhile and even the shitty D-ranks have helped improve his stamina and strength. Kakashi’s talked them through various survival scenarios before, ensured they know basic things like how to make a fire and hide it, how to hunt for food, how to hide their tracks—though the work had been mostly theoretical. During the mission in Wave, after Gato had been taken care of, he even taught them tree-walking and water-walking, and on the walk back to Konoha, he had them practice surveillance techniques and perimeter rotations.

(Sasuke had wondered if Kakashi would neglect them further after marrying Zabuza, but if anything, he seems more interested in teaching Team 7 now than before. Which is good, even if Sasuke doesn’t understand it.)

But Sasuke needs to learn more and to learn faster. The village might be a safe-zone for most people, but he knows all too well that danger can come from any direction, and there’s no guarantee that the next attack won’t come from an ally.

(It already has once, and Sasuke can’t afford for it to happen again. He can’t afford to be unprepared when it happens again.)

“Higher,” Zabuza says, poking at Sasuke’s arms to make him lift the sword up to shoulder level. It aches and he’s tired, but Sasuke isn’t going to complain when he’s finally got someone willing to actually teach him. He follows the instruction even when it makes his arms tremble, and Zabuza grins wide enough that the outline of it is visible even through his face bandages. “Good, kid. We can work with this.”

Sasuke tries not to drop the sword, tries to hold it steady even when he feels like he’s the exact opposite. People have praised him for mediocrity and half-assed effort throughout his entire time at the academy. They praised him for being the best when he was really just the best of the average. They laid it on thick, and a part of Sasuke had fallen for it until he got to Team 7 and Kakashi—because for all his faults, Kakashi never gives out a compliment he doesn’t mean, which means he rarely gives them at all.

This is the first time someone other than his team is telling him he did well where he feels like he’s earned it. There’s a tiny flicker of warmth in his chest, and for once it doesn’t feel like weakness.

“Now, go again and make sure it isn’t a fluke.”

Naruto tries with the sword. He really does, because it looks cool as hell, and because Sasuke is so immediately and obviously better at it. But no matter what he does, it just feels awkward. The sword never goes where he wants it to, and his body doesn’t want to stay still long enough to practice the correct movements, and this is just another one of those things that a good ninja should be able to do that Naruto just can’t—

“Stop fucking moping in your head,” Zabuza says out of nowhere, and ruffles Naruto’s hair with more force than necessary. “So a sword isn’t for you. What the fuck ever.”

“But Sasuke—”

Zabuza sighs loud enough to cut him off, and then he takes Naruto by the shoulders and hunches to eye-level. “Listen. You’re not Sasuke.”

The words hit as hard as any physical blow, and Naruto tries not to flinch from them, but it’s just that he knows, okay? He knows he’s not as good as Sasuke, and that everyone is always telling him to stop trying to catch up because it’s not going to happen. He knows that everything is easy for Sasuke, but it isn’t for him, and he knows that makes everyone think he’s an idiot. He doesn’t need Zabuza to remind him.

(He doesn’t want to hear it from someone whose opinion matters. When it was the shitty academy teachers or Sasuke’s fangirls or people on the street, it didn’t matter. But Zabuza is family now, technically, and for all that he’s grumpy and brusque, Naruto likes him. Respects him.)

The flinch doesn’t go unnoticed, though.

“Fuck’s sake,” Zabuza hisses out, slapping a palm to his face before dragging it away. “What I mean is that you cannot be Sasuke better than he can be himself. So stop fucking trying. Be you instead. Be the best you, and who cares if that looks different than the best Sasuke. Got it?”

Naruto frowns a bit as he tries to make heads and tails of whatever the hell Zabuza just said. It takes him a minute, but then—

“Like a katon-jutsu and a suiton-jutsu, right? ‘Cause they’re different, but they’re both useful in the right situations. Fire’s better if you’re cold, but Water’s better if you’re thirsty.”

Zabuza blinks, then blinks again. “Yeah, kid. Exactly like that.”

Naruto beams at him, happy to have gotten something right for once. “Do you know any cool jutsus?”

“Sure, but they’re mostly suiton-jutsus, and I doubt that’s your elemental affinity.”

“Can I only learn jutsus in my elemental whatever?”

“Your elemental affinity,” Zabuza repeats. “And no, but it’s easier if they are.”

Naruto give Zabuza his biggest, roundest eyes. If he’s going to be the most powerful ninja in the village and become Hokage, he can’t limit himself to just what’s easy. And besides, Kakashi-sensei keeps saying Naruto has massive chakra reserves—doesn’t that mean he’s basically made for doing as many cool and awesome jutsus as possible?

“Fuck it, fine,” Zabuza says, standing up. “But first, we should find out your affinity so I can know how much of a headache I just signed up for. Sasuke, keep practicing until we get back, then I’ll take you through some new forms.”

Sasuke nods, focused on his work, and Naruto for once doesn’t feel jealous of the fact that he’s moving forward so quickly, because for once, Naruto isn’t measuring himself side-by-side with him. Naruto’s going to learn something new, something just for him. That’s more than enough.

“Why haven’t you been fucking teaching them?” Zabuza says the moment Kakashi gets home. Which is not quite the warm welcome he was hoping for after a full day of tedious paperwork and dealing with the Council.

(He was, perhaps idealistically, hoping to be pressed against the wall and kissed breathless, but this actually makes more sense. He did leave his three little menaces to Zabuza for the better part of the day.)

“Maa. Hello to you, too, husband.”

“Fuck off and answer my question. Those kids were all over the place this morning. You’ve had two months, and I don’t believe for a second you couldn’t have whipped them into shape. What the fuck?”

Ah. So it’s a serious conversation, then. Kakashi does a quick visual check to make sure the kids are occupied—he definitely does not need them around for this conversation—and he has to pause and take a moment to just…process what’s happening in the backyard.

Sakura’s signature red dress has stayed, but now it’s layered with proper ninja gear. Her face is grim and red from exertion, and she’s running in spurts between the trees. Not by choice, as becomes apparent when Haku and Naruto fling round after round of both senbon and kunai respectively at her. And Naruto, who hasn’t reliably been able to hit a stationary target with a kunai even one in ten times, is now grazing Sakura every three out of five times. While she’s actively trying to avoid him. Haku is having more luck, which is to be expected given the skill gap between them, but the fact that Sakura doesn’t look like a pin-cushion yet is frankly astounding.

Kakashi very nearly does a double-take when a clang of metal rings through the air. “Did you give Sasuke a sword?”

The answer is obvious enough. Because Sakura isn’t the only one dodging. Sasuke, too, has become a target for Haku and Naruto, only he’s alternating between taking cover and deflecting with a sword that’s as long as his arm. It’s sloppy technique, and he’s only managing to knock away about a third of the projectiles aimed at him, but given that he only got his hands on a blade today, that’s…it’s…

Kakashi shakes his head. Zabuza must be some sort of miracle-worker.

(That’s an easier explanation to stomach than the idea that Kakashi’s kids would have been far better equipped to protect themselves by now if he hadn’t been so fucking stupid and selfish and—

Kami help him, but can’t help but think someone should have smacked him over the head sooner.)

(But then, without Zabuza around to help him feel more…grounded, more settled than he has in months, years, maybe ever, Kakashi’s not sure it would have mattered.)

“Yes, I did. And he’s going to be fucking decent at it once he gets his ass handed to him a couple hundred times. Haku’s teaching Sakura poisons, so don’t touch her hair right now—”

An alarming statement if Kakashi’s ever heard one. He’s not sure he wants to know.

“—and did you know that if you let Naruto sit with a jutsu scroll for about two hours, he can work out a B-rank elemental manipulation that isn’t even in his affinity?”

Kakashi wants to call bullshit, because what he knows of Naruto leads him to think A) that sitting still that long is physically impossible for him, and B) he’s the least likely person on Team 7 to be able to learn something just from reading it. Naruto’s a hands-on learner; he does best with someone to talk him through an exercise while showing him how it’s supposed to look.

But, Kakashi remembers, he learned the shadow clones from a scroll, and that’s an A-rank jutsu.

Not to mention, there’s his infamous “sexy jutsu” which Kakashi is 98% sure Naruto developed on his own, from scratch, before he was even officially a genin.

I’ve been underestimating him, Kakashi thinks. I’ve been underestimating all of them.

“They’re not entirely without potential,” Zabuza says gruffly, and from him that’s a glowing compliment. “So you’re going to explain to me why the fuck you’ve been holding them back.”

“Alright, alright,” Kakashi says, gently ushering them both into the library. It’s not the most private place, but with the kids occupied, it’ll do. “But you’re not going to like my answer.”

Zabuza levels him with an unimpressed look. “I already know that.”

Fair enough, Kakashi thinks. With the benefit of hind-sight, he can see that he made the wrong choice even if it didn’t feel like it at the time.

“When I was first assigned my team,” Kakashi starts, “I didn’t want them. Not because I didn’t want to be saddled with a bunch of kids, but—” He has to pause here, take a breath. It’s weird to talk about this with someone, even if Zabuza deserves to know. “—but because, at the time, I was convinced they would be better off without me.”

(Kakashi’s still not sure he isn’t a curse upon every person he loves, but he does know that he can’t hurt his kids more than he can help them at this point.)

Zabuza raises a judgmental eyebrow. He doesn’t have to say anything; Kakashi already knows how dumb that is.

“I have since come to think differently.” He wouldn’t have adopted Naruto and Sakura officially into his clan if he didn’t, wouldn’t keep herding Sasuke into the house at dinner time and keeping them all busy until it’s so late it just makes sense for Sasuke to stay on the spare futon instead of trekking back across the village to the Uchiha district.

“It’s not just that, though,” Zabuza points out, cutting to the heart of the matter. “Or you’d have sorted this shit out before Wave.”

Kakashi is tempted to point out that he had started to. After their first month as a team, when Kakashi was realizing that Konoha was a shithole that was slowly dragging his kids under, he’d upped their training. Nothing too extreme, just more sparring, more labor-intensive D-ranks, more quizzing them on useful information about how they could survive outside of the village.

But he hadn’t done enough. Not by Zabuza’s standards, or anyone else’s, really.

“Two reasons,” he admits after a long silence. He could sit here all day and measure out what he should say to Zabuza, what he can trust him with, but the truth is that Kakashi already trusts him more than most people in Konoha. He trusts him with the things that are the most precious—Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, and with Kakashi himself—and while it’s too complex an issue to explain every detail, Zabuza will get the truth here and now. Even when the truth is dangerous. “There are eyes on my team. And expectations. The last Uchiha and the kyuubi’s jinchuuriki draw a lot of attention. Some of it is that I wanted to try to hide their potential for power—if they seem mediocre, it takes some of the heat off.”

“Yeah, if they seem mediocre,” Zabuza stresses. “Keeping them untrained is asking for disaster.”

“For Sakura, that might have worked, but Naruto doesn’t have a subtle bone in his body, and Sasuke’s too proud not to show off the second he gets a chance.” Kakashi heaves a sigh, shakes his head. “You’re right. It was still stupid. Part of it is also that I knew if I trained them well, they’d be rushed through the chuunin exams—”

“And if they passed, they wouldn’t be your students anymore, and you’d have less leverage to protect them,” Zabuza finishes.

“It’s irrelevant now, because I’ve brought them into the clan. I didn’t have that option before.”

And irrelevant because the Sandaime was always going to push me to sign them up for the chuunin exams regardless, and possibly pass them through before they’re ready just to appease the Council, Kakashi thinks. But telling Zabuza that Kakashi’s being strong-armed into putting the kids through the exam is a conversation for another time, when it won’t side-track things.

Zabuza reluctantly nods in agreement, conceding the point even if he’s not happy about it. “You said two reasons.”

“The other is that if I went from not training them at all, to suddenly training them like I was preparing them for a life as nuke-nin, someone would have probably caught on, and I would have never been able to get the assignment to Wave.”

It feels good to say out loud to someone, even if that plan was abandoned the moment Zabuza stood across from him and asked for an alliance. It feels even better to see Zabuza freeze in place, eyes wide and mouth visibly dropped open behind the bandages.

“You were going to make a run for it,” he whispers. “You were abandoning the village when I found you."

Kakashi nods.

“You were going to take three untrained genin on the run from Konoha, and you expected to succeed?”

“I would have kept them safe,” Kakashi defends.

“You would have gotten killed.” Zabuza reaches out, grabs him by the shoulders, and for a moment, Kakashi’s sure he’s about to get headbutted. Instead, Zabuza just rests his forehead against Kakashi’s and breathes. “You have no fucking clue what it’s like out there, how difficult it was to take care of even one kid—you absolute dumbass.”

“At the time, I didn’t think I had another choice,” he says, only barely keeping from snarling. Kakashi knew it was a desperate decision even then, but he’d been prepared to make it nonetheless. The only reason he doesn’t get angry now at Zabuza’s uninformed criticism is because he sounds almost…shaken by the idea. “Until you gave me one.”

Zabuza snorts, then shoves off. “Alright, enough sappy shit. Your reasons for being a shit teacher are no longer relevant, yeah? Right. So you’re going to teach them—”

“Maa, but you’re doing so well—”

“You’re going to teach them,” Zabuza reiterates, “and Haku and I will help fill in the gaps. Because they’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Especially since the chuunin exams are in a month,” Kakashi muses, deciding that since the rest of the conversation has gone relatively well, he might as well get this over with, too. “And the Sandaime thinks it would be good experience for Team 7.”

Zabuza stares at him blankly for a long moment. “Your Hokage is a fucking bastard.”

Kakashi can only offer an eye-smile. “Yes. But we can’t depose him until I find a replacement I don’t hate.”

“That could take too long. Everyone in this village is shit.”

“Maa, Zabuza. Have a little faith. I’m sure there’s someone.”

Chapter Text

They’re supposed to be training. Well, Haku calls it ninja-tag, but Sakura has gotten too many senbon in her butt-cheek from playing ninja-tag to think of it as a proper game. It is kind of fun, though, especially now that Sakura’s gotten fast enough to not lose in the first two minutes. On a good day, she can last a solid fifteen minutes before whoever’s “it” catches her, and she never goes down without a fight.

(Not even when it’s Sasuke. It’s not that she likes him any less, but he can be a real bastard sometimes, and it’s therapeutic to hit him with a paralytic every now and again and watch him drop like a stone.)

They’re supposed to be training, but Naruto’s distracted. It doesn’t happen often anymore; give him something he’s actually interested in, and Naruto will focus for hours on end, sometimes not even remembering to stop to eat. Learning new jutsus will do the trick, but so will trapping and tracking, and—oddly enough—gardening. Sakura’s good at turning plants into poisons and antidotes, but she doesn’t have a green thumb the way Naruto does.

(If anyone had told Sakura back in the academy that she’d know this much about Naruto and be glad for it, she’d have laughed in their face, mimed gagging, and then loudly proclaimed that it had to be some kind of prank.

Now, he’s her brother in all but blood.)

“If Haku-nii catches you slacking off, he’ll have Zabuza put you through kenjutsu forms again all afternoon no matter how much you complain,” she tells him for what must be the third time at least. Sword-training is punishment for everyone but Sasuke—who enjoys it for some kami-forsaken reason—but Sakura will be the first to admit that despite the grueling effort it takes, she’s glad to know how to use one. She’ll probably never surpass base proficiency, but as Kakashi-sensei says, the only bad weapon is one you can’t wield at all.

“Relax, Sakura,” Naruto says, eyes rolling. He’s walking side-by-side with his devoted minion—pardon, Konohamaru, the Hokage’s grandson—and doesn’t seem to be concerned at all by the possibility that their slightly sadistic senpai/elder brother could be lurking around any corner, waiting to ambush them. “It’s just a little break.”

For Naruto, a little break could last anywhere from two minutes to five hours. Sakura sighs deeply. She could leave; ninja-tag isn’t a game that demands teamwork, though they tend to do better when they fight together. Right now, staying with Naruto when he’s not taking this seriously is more likely to get her tagged than not, but—

Sakura wants to train, and she wants to train as a team.

(They’re not supposed to know that the Chuunin Exams are coming up, or that they’ll be entered in them despite the fact that Kakashi-sensei, Zabuza, and Haku all agree none of them are ready for a promotion. But Kakashi-sensei’s been a lot more involved since they returned from the Wave mission—not just in adopting them, training them, but in telling them important things about the way the village works, too—and Sakura’s sure it’s at least half Zabuza’s influence.

“You’re shinobi. You don’t need to be fucking coddled,” Zabuza says all the time, usually in defense of how much he pushes them. “What you need is to be prepared. No matter what it takes.”

Being prepared in this instance means that Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza sat them all down at the beginning of the month to inform them that, for political reasons, Team 7 is expected to make a showing at the chuunin exams. There had been a lot of information in that particular conversation, but most of it had boiled down to: train hard because the foreign nin won’t hesitate to maim or kill you, but try to stay under the radar as much as possible.)

When, after a few more minutes, Naruto still hasn’t finished talking to Konohamaru, Sakura weighs her options. Abandon Naruto and try to finish out the game on her own—an unappealing plan, considering she can’t beat Haku without backup, and she can only take out Sasuke if she can get the drop on him, and she doesn’t know who’s currently “it.” She could paralyze his legs and carry him off, but Naruto’s a lot heavier than he looks, and besides, an immobile ally won’t do her much good.

She could paralyze Konohamaru instead and drop him off with his own sensei, who he seems to have ditched yet again. It’d be the most efficient solution, but Naruto would probably be angry at her for it.

She’s still considering whether it would be worth it when a miniscule flash of light catches in her periphery. For the Sakura of a month ago, that wouldn’t mean anything, just something to brush off and ignore. For Sakura today, it immediately sets her on edge because there’s an 80% chance that Haku has caught up with them.

You wasted too much time deciding on what to do, she reprimands herself as she looks around for a good escape route. They’re in the middle of town, and running through the streets at break-neck speeds is generally frowned upon. So is fighting in the streets, though that won’t stop Haku from trying to corner them here. If there’s one thing she’s learned about him over the course of the past month, it’s that he never allows anything to get in the way of his mission, even during training.

Sakura allows herself a brief moment to wish she was a Nara capable of hiding herself in the shadows, and then she dashes forward, grabbing Naruto by the arm and forcibly tugging him down a side alley. Konohamaru follows—no sense of self-preservation, Sakura thinks wryly.

“Sakura!” Naruto yelps loudly.

Konohamaru is equally loud. “What’s the big idea?”

“Shh!” Sakura glares at them both. “Haku is closing in. We have to move. Break time is over, Naruto.”

Suddenly serious, Naruto nods. “Right. What’s the plan?”

She can’t afford to overthink it, can’t afford to waste time. She’ll have to go with her gut. “You and I will henge to look like Konohamaru, and we’ll all scatter. Our best bet is to try to find Sasuke and team up with him, but if that doesn’t work, meet up at Training Ground 3, okay?”

“Got it!”

 Less than a minute later, three Konohamarus emerge from the alleyway, each sprinting off in a different direction. Sakura plans to head North, deeper into the market where it will theoretically be easier to lose a tail by dodging in and out of shops, weaving between carts. She doesn’t make it that far, however, because less than a dozen steps out of the alley, the Konohamaru that she thinks is the real one runs headfirst into a strange-looking teen dressed in black with streaks of purple painted across his face.

A foreign shinobi, Sakura thinks, because no merchant in the world would dress like that, and because there’s an air of danger around him and the blonde girl behind him. For a moment, Sakura thinks about ignoring the obvious confrontation unfolding—it’s not her responsibility, and she still has Haku to avoid—but Konohamaru is just a kid, and Naruto will get involved even if Sakura doesn’t.

The face-paint teen has Konohamaru in a tight grip, lifting him up by the long blue scarf the boy wears around his neck. That thing is a hazard, Sakura thinks as she lets her henge drop, slinking closer.

(It’s not a thought she would have had when she’d just graduated from the academy, not the sort of thing she would have really put much thought into at all. Fashion used to be something she kept in an entirely separate sphere from her shinobi training, but in working with Haku, she’s learned how interconnected they are.

Dress how you want, he teaches her, but don’t ever let it be a liability.)

“Hey! Let go of him, you idiot!”

Sakura doesn’t even have to turn to see that Naruto has similarly dropped his henge and is now yelling at the foreign shinobi, all sense of discretion and subtlety forgotten. Naruto can be sneaky when he wants, of course, but in high stress situations, he occasionally lets his emotions get the better of him.

(Sakura does too, sometimes, though for her, it's fear that’s hardest to let go of. It’s getting easier, being trained out of her between Haku’s relentless target practice, Zabuza’s unforgiving sparring, and Kakashi-sensei’s very realistic and often horrible genjutsus. But she hasn’t been in a real combat situation since Wave, and she’s worried she’ll freeze up again.

Worried she won’t be able to protect her team.)

Sakura slips around behind Naruto and claps a firm hand on his shoulder, holding him back from running straight into the situation. “Don’t provoke him,” she hisses, and Naruto sags a little in her grip.

The face-paint teen rolls his eyes. “You’re pissing me off. I don’t like little runts like you. Makes me want to break something.”

His grip on Konohamaru tightens further, and the little boy makes a garbling sound that Sakura doesn’t like at all. Naruto is tense under her hand, and Sakura’s mind races as she tries to figure a way out of this that doesn’t escalate the violence. Getting into an all-out fight with foreign nin in the middle of the village right before the chuunin exams isn’t a good look.

The blonde girl mostly looks resigned—not approving, but not like she’s interested in stopping her companion either. Naruto is about three seconds away from launching himself at the boy and beating him into the dirt. The first plan that comes to Sakura’s mind is that she should use a senbon to hit the nerve in the boy’s wrist to make him drop Konohamaru, but there are several problems with that. Firstly, it’s an attack which could open them up to retaliation—the exact opposite of what she wants to do here. And secondly, there’s only a sliver of skin visible, the rest of the boy’s arm well covered by long, possibly armored, sleeves. Sakura’s aim has gotten better, but it’s not that good.

Before she can start properly panicking that every plan she can think of will only make the situation worse, there’s a blur of movement, and then a delicate but strong hand casually plucks Konohamaru by the back collar of his shirt and wrenches him away from the face-paint teen as if it’s effortless. Haku stands in front of them, face placid except for a single, arched brow.

“I do not believe you came to Konoha to pick fights with academy students,” Haku says, voice deceptively polite. He lets Konohamaru down, then folds his arms, tucking a hand up each long, dark-blue sleeve of the haori he’s wearing. From an outside perspective, it looks like he’s relaxed, unwilling to view the teens as a threat, but Sakura knows from experience that Haku keeps senbon hidden on nearly every part of his body. He’s ready for a fight if it comes to it. “Though if that is the level you feel most comfortable with, I wonder why your sensei thinks you will pass the chuunin exams.”

Sakura bites her cheek to keep from showing her amusement. Haku doesn’t look like he’d be mean—too pretty, too soft, too sweet—but he has a way of delivering the most cutting insults while looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

The face-paint teen sneers. “You piss me off, too.”

He reaches towards the large, wrapped lump of an object that rests on his back, and it occurs to Sakura then that it might be some sort of weapon. Haku remains unfazed—not that it’s a surprise; he’s been ranked at a high chuunin level, and Sakura suspects that the only reason he’s not a jounin is because the proctor for his private evaluation was prejudiced against shinobi from outside the village. Nobody who’s trained with Zabuza for the better part of a decade could be anything less.

“Kankuro,” a new voice says, slow and threatening. “Stop that.”

Haku doesn’t flinch, but Sakura and Naruto both do, whipping around to look at a new shinobi hanging upside down from the branch of a nearby tree. He’s dressed in a similar fashion to the other two foreign nin, which means he’s likely the third member of their team, and immediately, Sakura can tell he’s their heavy hitter.

He’s smaller and slighter than the face-paint boy and the blonde girl, but he’s every bit as relaxed as Haku, arms folded in disapproval, scowl etched on his face. There’s a large gourd strapped to his back—his main weapon, most likely, though Sakura can’t even begin to guess what it’s purpose might be—and between his messy red hair and pale, sea-glass eyes, he’s nearly as pretty as Sasuke, if in an entirely different way. But there’s something sinister about him, something that puts Sakura on edge.

(Something that makes Naruto go completely and unnaturally still. She doesn’t like anything that makes Naruto nervous, because that’s just not who he is. He doesn’t get intimidated, except occasionally by Zabuza during sword-training, and if he thinks this newcomer is worth the same level of caution as an S-rank former missing-nin, Sakura is rightfully concerned.)

“You’re an embarrassment to our village,” the red-haired boy continues, and this time, both the blonde girl and the face-paint boy recoil.

They’re apprehensive about their own teammate, Sakura notes, paying attention to how they look at him with poorly disguised fear.

Not every village buys into the idea of teamwork—hell, not even every team in Konoha believes in teamwork the way that Kakashi-sensei does, the way that he’s taught Team 7 to—but for these foreign nin to be so disconnected that they’re afraid? It doesn’t bode well.

“Gaara…”

“We have the exams to prepare for,” the red-haired boy says, eyes narrowing. “We will fight then.”

Haku tips his head and offers a polite, if insincere smile. “Well said. We have our own training to return to as well.” He turns to Sakura and Naruto. “I’ve caught Sasuke already. If you rush to Training Ground 12, you might get there in time to help dig him out.”

Sakura nods slowly and puts pressure on Naruto’s shoulder when he’s hesitant to respond. The confrontation is over for now, though Sakura isn’t entirely unaware of the glares being aimed at their backs. It’s possible they’ve just made some powerful enemies, and the exams haven’t even started yet.

I shouldn’t even be here, Sasuke thinks as he sits at the breakfast table in the Hatake home, a steaming bowl of miso in front of him. To his left, Naruto is already wolfing down his second bowl of rice. To his right, Sakura is nervously picking at her eggs. Zabuza is half asleep on the other side of the table after having been run around the village all week preparing “extra security” for the exams, and Haku is setting a plate of salted salmon down in the center where everyone can reach.

Kakashi slouches into the room a moment later and drops a sickeningly domestic kiss on the top of Zabuza’s head before claiming his own seat. Sasuke’s chest feels weirdly tight the way it always does whenever he spends too long in the Hatake household. And he has been here too long. He hasn’t been back at the Uchiha main house since three days ago, having been lured into extra sword-training, then conned into a sleepover under the guise of practicing making camp, and somehow time had gone faster than he could keep track of, and—

(No. That’s an excuse. The real problem with staying too long in the Hatake household is that, after the first twenty-four hours or so, he sort of…stops wanting to leave. He shouldn’t—he won’t…no, he can’t allow himself to get that comfortable. He can’t.)

And now it’s the morning of the exams, and he’s here, surrounded by his team. There’s an ache in his chest that he’s not going to think about, and there’s an itch under his skin that could be nerves but is more likely anticipation. It’s safer to focus on the latter, so he does.

He feels ready. Not that he thinks he’ll necessarily be promoted this time around—Kakashi and Zabuza have hammered into their heads these past few weeks that they’re still too green to make good chuunin, and even if that hadn’t convinced him, training with Haku did.

(Sasuke didn’t want to, at first. Why would he train with the apprentice when he could have the master instead?)

(How could he bear it? Sometimes, especially in the early mornings when he’s still waking up, the sight of Haku’s long, dark hair looks familiar enough from the back that it turns Sasuke’s stomach. Sometimes, when Haku reaches out to touch him, Sasuke feels his entire body freeze up as he waits for a pain that isn’t coming.

As he waits for a two-finger poke to the center of his forehead that isn’t coming.)

Despite Sasuke’s initial reluctance, Haku has proven, repeatedly, that he’s just as willing as Zabuza to beat Sasuke into the ground and then build him back up again. When Haku fights him seriously, Sasuke doesn’t win, doesn’t even come close, and it’s this more than anything else that persuades him he’s not yet at chuunin level. And it’s this that makes Haku earn his respect.

(And…maybe Haku knows something, too, about loss. His mother was killed at the hands of his father. His whole clan was wiped out. It’s not the same, but it’s enough. They understand each other, and Sasuke…doesn’t hate it.

Even that time Sasuke woke up screaming from a nightmare of the massacre—the only time it ever happened while he was staying over at the Hatake house—and Haku saw him cry. If it had been anyone else, Sasuke would have loathed them seeing him so weak, so fragile and piteous and pathetic. But Haku had just looked knowing, and he’d sat, quiet and solemn and solid as Sasuke wrenched the memory out of his chest and laid it before him.

It's the only time he’s ever talked about it since T&I interrogated him in the immediate aftermath. It’s the only time he’s ever wanted to.)

Whatever. His rank matters less than the fact that he’s making progress, learning and growing and getting stronger. Back in the academy, he worried that his teammates would hold him back, worried that his sensei wouldn’t train them in anything useful, worried that he’d fall behind and never be able to make up the skill gap between himself and that man.

That’s not the case now, with Kakashi finally stepping up and Zabuza keeping them all on task. Even his teammates aren’t totally hopeless: it turns out Naruto is almost incomprehensibly quick at picking up jutsus if they’re taught to him in the right way, and these days, Sasuke is more worried about Sakura poisoning him than asking him on a date. It’s…good.

(He’s still surprised that he means it.)

“Maa, my precious little students, pay attention,” Kakashi says. Everyone’s pretty much done eating by now, and so they all focus easily enough. Kakashi’s more serious than usual, more alert and upright than his typical slouchy laziness, and Sasuke knows that when sensei gets like this, he means what he says. “I know you’re all excited about the exams, and I know you will all do well even if you don’t pass. I don’t expect perfection. I expect you to survive.”

I need you to survive, is what Sasuke thinks he means. He doesn’t know the full story, but he does know that Kakashi didn’t have many precious people left before he took on Team 7, before he Battle Bonded Zabuza. Sasuke is, frankly, in the same boat.

“Do not draw unnecessary attention,” Kakashi continues. “There’s no need to be flashy. If anything, you want to undersell your abilities for as long as possible. Let them underestimate you.”

“You start throwing around your biggest jutsus, or your strongest poisons, or your sword—” Zabuza points to each of them in turn “—you’re going to paint a big ass target on your back. I’m not saying run away from every fight. I’m saying, pick your fights.”

Kakashi nods. “I doubt most of the other genin teams will push you to your limits. But if it comes down to it and your back is against the wal, defend yourselves with every tool available to you. And don’t be afraid to fight dirty, to be sneaky. You’re shinobi, not samurai. We don’t believe in honor in this household. If an underhanded tactic gets you an easy win for what would otherwise be a drawn-out fight, you do it.”

“Remember, these fuckers are allowed to kill you,” Zabuza says. “It might be frowned upon, but it’s not against the rules, and I guarantee you, at least half the people going into this exam won’t care.”

Sasuke nods and runs through the list in his head again, solidifying the rules that are being set in place. Don’t show off. Save the strongest techniques as a last resort. Be underhanded. Don’t expect mercy from your opponents. He can work with this. He doesn’t love the idea of holding back on purpose, but he understands why it’s necessary.

(“There are people in the village who expect things from you,” Kakashi had said during another uncharacteristically solemn conversation. “People who want to use you, to shape you, to make you into just another piece on the board they can move around at will. You don’t have to be what they expect. You don’t have to let them control you. And the first step is making sure no one knows all the cards you’re holding.”

Even now, two weeks after that conversation, Sasuke still can’t quite believe the fact that his sensei essentially gave him permission to ignore the wishes of the Hokage and the Council and the other Clan Heads.)

With one last check to make sure they have everything they need, Kakashi ushers Sasuke and his two teammates to the door, patting them each on the head while he smiles down at them.

“Be safe. Look after each other. Try not to blow up the village.”

The three of them are conspicuously quiet. Their team has quite the penchant for destruction, though that’s mostly Naruto’s doing, and none of them are going to make any promises. Sasuke won’t be surprised if they burn down at least one building over the course of the exams, and he doesn’t think Kakashi would be either.

“Fuck ‘em up,” Zabuza says, grinning.

Haku offers his own, softer smile. “Good luck.”

They can’t linger any longer without risking being late, so they hurry off towards the building where they’ve been told to go to first. Naruto chatters along the way, though it’s mindless enough that Sasuke doesn’t need to pay attention or respond. He can focus on his own breathing, steadying himself. He’s not nervous, exactly, but going into an unknown situation does put him slightly on edge. He’s not sure if there will be a written test, or if they’ll jump straight into a practical test. He’s not sure if the practical will be sparring, or if it will be like running a mock mission, or something else entirely.

This test will challenge them. Sasuke’s not so arrogant as to think it won’t, not with Kakashi warning them the way he did. But as he walks through the building, past the shitty genjutsu on the door that’s stopped a fair crowd of people, side by side with teammates that he, surprisingly, can actually rely on, he feels certain that they can take whatever the Chuunin Exams will throw at them.

(It’s who they are, he thinks. People who adapt, who overcome whatever’s in their way to get where they need to go. Naruto with his stubborn persistence, Sasuke with his single-minded drive, even Sakura with her furious determination.

Sometimes Sasuke still has his doubts, of course.

But sometimes…

Sometimes he looks at his team and thinks, We can do anything.)

Naruto bursts through the door into the waiting room for the first part of the test and loudly announces, “We’re totally gonna win, believe it!”

Then he bounces on the balls of his feet as he watches the chaos unfold.

(A lifetime of being shunned and hated for something he can’t control taught him how to build a persona to protect himself, but Kakashi-sensei is the one who’s teaching him how to hone that skill, how to sharpen it from a defense into a weapon in its own right.

“Be loud, say ridiculous things, make people think you’re bold and direct and always bluntly honest,” Kakashi-sensei said, “and let them think you are foolish for it. They won’t think to guard themselves from you.”

“Is that what you do, sensei?”

His eye had curled into a little crescent smile. “Maa, Naruto-kun. How long did you believe I was just a lazy pervert?”

“But you are a lazy pervert.”

“See? It’s still working. Even when you should know better.”)

There are three types of reactions his declaration gets.

One: immediate indignation and refusal. Like Kiba, who runs up to him and just as loudly says, “You really think a loser flunky like you can win, Naruto-baka? Team 8 is going to crush you.”

There are a few other vocal protests from various groups around the room, people who can’t stand the thought of having their own greatness questioned or doubted. Those people are probably some mix of overconfident-but-subpar shinobi who won’t prove too difficult to handle, or else competent-but-hotheaded-and-proud who are supremely likely to make mistakes in the heat of the moment.

Two: a blend of open disdain and perhaps a little pity. Like this shady Kabuto guy, who is straight up offering to share his intel on the other shinobi. He definitely has an ulterior motive, because pitying or not, no one offers help to their competition without having a secret agenda.

The rest of those around the room who are looking at Naruto with their sneering and their blatant disgust will probably be the most difficult to handle, and he catalogues them mentally, memorizing their faces and village affiliations. These are the sort of people who truly believe they’re better than him, and they’re secure in it—unlike the loud protestors—but they’re superior enough that they’ll want to put him in his place.

They’ll see Naruto and his team as easy pickings, and they’ll try to take advantage.

And three: the people who are ignoring him entirely. Like Gaara, the shinobi from Sand that they met earlier, and who now barely gives Team 7 a dismissive glance before returning to survey the room as a whole.

Which is good, because that means Naruto isn’t on his radar as a threat. The people who dismiss Team 7, Naruto can also dismiss in turn—at least for now. They won’t come after him because he’s not enough of a challenge, not worth their time, and yeah, that’s fucking annoying, but Kakashi-sensei said to hold back, and that’s what Naruto is doing: making sure his team only has to deal with low-level threats at the beginning.

And it seems to be working.

“—can’t believe you’re stuck on a team with him,” Ino is saying to Sasuke as Naruto tunes back into the conversation happening around him. “I mean, it must be so taxing to have to deal with Sakura and Naruto both being useless. I don’t know how you do it, Sasuke-kun.”

“Hey!” Naruto shouts, partly because he is a little offended, and partly because he’s supposed to be.

Sasuke, for his part, just says, “Hn.”

Ino clearly isn’t fluent in Sasuke, because that wasn’t a Hn of agreement the way she seems to think, but a Hn of “who the fuck do you think you are to talk to me?” She beams at him, and Sasuke grimaces, but she seems to think that’s a smile, too.

And people think Naruto is stupid.

Shikamaru, at least, seems to have read the situation a little more accurately, because he’s looking between Ino and Sasuke warily like he’s trying to gauge the probability of the Uchiha smiting his teammate.

“You’re too damn loud, woman,” Shikamaru grumbles. “Stop making a scene.”

A successful diversion, because she turns to rant at him instead, and Sasuke inches back until he’s settled between Naruto and Sakura.

So we can buffer him from people, Naruto thinks, wanting to shake his head. Sasuke’s currently better at fighting than either Naruto or Sakura, but he doesn’t understand people at all. It’s okay, though, because that’s what teammates are for.

Naruto can manipulate them, and Sakura can pick apart their weaknesses with her crazy-smart analytical brain, and then Sasuke can stab them.

(It’s a winning combination, and part of the reason they can now manage to beat Haku-nii in ninja tag four out of ten times when they work together, as opposed to never winning like they did when they first started training.

They’re getting better together. Getting stronger.

The other shinobi here won’t know what hit them.)

Chapter Text

The written exam is nothing; Sakura could have answered most of those questions in her sleep, and she knows her teammates well enough by now not to worry over them either. Sasuke is both smart enough to know most of the answers and clever enough to find out what he doesn’t, and Naruto is far too stubborn to give up on anything once he’s decided on it—even when the proctor threatens to ban them from ever taking the chuunin exams again should they fail to answer the final question correctly, Naruto never so much as wavers.

A few months ago, Sakura would have written it off as stupidity, or disdained his inability to know when he’s outclassed, but now she thinks there’s something admirable in planting your feet, powering through regardless of the odds. And at least for Naruto, his sheer willpower always seems enough to pull him through.

(She’d almost think he has to be the luckiest person in the world if she didn’t know better. But she still remembers all too clearly how the village treated Naruto before he became a Hatake, still sees the—much quieter, more subtle—sneers and whispers he draws in the street. A little luck, she thinks, is the least Naruto is owed.)

We’re going to need all that luck now, she thinks as she stands before the gates to the Forest of Death, the place they’re meant to enter and complete the next portion of the chuunin exams.

A woman who’s flinging around senbon with the same brutal accuracy that Haku does is rattling off the instructions—pick up a scroll, get assigned to a gate, enter the forest, and retrieve a second, different scroll from another team, then head to the central tower. On the surface, it’s simple enough. Sakura has learned not to trust simple, though. The Wave mission was supposed to be simple, and she knows from Zabuza how that could have turned out.

(“Kakashi and I are fairly evenly matched,” he admits one day during training when Naruto is fidgeting and distracted and wonders aloud what would have happened if Zabuza hadn’t wanted an alliance back in Wave. “I might have killed him, or he might have killed me. Either way, not so good for you brats. Even if you’d have won against us, you’d have had to take care of Gato yourself, and he was a tricky bastard.”

What he doesn’t say, but what Sakura hears, is that if Zabuza had succeeded in killing Kakashi, he could have killed them too. What he doesn’t say is that the best case scenario leaves three genin stranded in Wave with no convenient way home, and the worst one ends with them all dead. What he doesn’t say is that they were lucky, all of them, that things worked out as well as they did.)

So despite the exam’s simple appearance, Sakura is wary. Any place called the Forest of Death is deserving of caution, and Zabuza’s warning that the other teams may try to kill them is front-and-center in Sakura’s mind.

“Grass, four o’clock,” Naruto murmurs out the side of his mouth, quieter and more discreet than anyone outside of Team 7 would ever imagine him capable of being.

Sakura’s eyes flicker to the side just for a moment, but a moment is all she needs. The threat that Naruto has pinged is a tall shinobi wearing a straw hat, their barely visible headband signaling their village association with Grass Country. They are unremarkable: face too drawn and pinched to be pretty, hair limp, posture slouched. They’re on the older side for a genin, which could mean they have enough experience to be dangerous or it could mean that they’re too incompetent to be promoted—that’s about a fifty-fifty toss up as far as Sakura can tell.

The part that’s notable—that’s unnerving—is that the Grass shinobi is staring right at them with an almost laser focus.

Sakura breathes deeply through her nose and tries to imitate Haku’s unaffected calm. “Did either of you idiots pick a fight with Grass while I wasn’t looking?” she asks from the corner of her mouth.

“No,” Naruto hisses, just a shade too loud, drawing a few curious and annoyed looks from the ninja in front of them. He lowers his voice. “And I didn’t notice them earlier, so whatever caught their attention happened sometime during or just after the written exam.”

Sasuke only tsks, but the little furrow in his brow means he’s just as confused as she is. Because nothing happened since the written exam, nothing of note, anyway. They took the test, they passed on to the next round, and that’s it. Sure, there were probably lots of people who took one look at their team and didn’t expect them to make it even this far, but still…

“We just keep doing what Kakashi-sensei said,” Sakura says after a long moment. “Keep a low profile, let them underestimate us. When we get into the forest, let’s put some distance between us and the other teams for a bit. We can get whatever scroll we need closer to the tower.”

Both the boys nod their agreement, but Sakura can’t help but wonder if her plan is enough. They’ll have to confront another team at some point. It’s not like a second scroll is going to fall out of the sky and land in their laps. It’s just…there’s a sick, coiling feeling in her gut at the sight of the Grass nin, at the way they stare at her team, the way it feels like they’re trying to peel back Team 7’s skin to see underneath.

We’ll get a scroll from someone else, Sakura vows. And if we’re lucky, someone else will take out the Grass shinobi.

The forest is green all over: dim sunlight filtering down through the leaves, moss coating the bark, big fronds and bushes and tall grasses obscuring the ground. It’s dark, too, the trees so tall they only let the thinnest slivers of light through, and there’s obviously wildlife around, noises Naruto’s never heard before. But there’s something peaceful about it rather than menacing, he thinks.

Or maybe that’s just him. People have always been more dangerous for him than anything in nature. No squirrel or snake (or fox) has ever hurt him in the way the people of Konoha have.

That’s not to say his guard isn’t up. This might just be a test, but it’s also a mission, and there are threats everywhere.

The first few hours, they run, doing little more than keeping an eye out for opposing teams as they try to put as much distance between themselves and the others as possible. It’s Sakura’s strategy, and even if it feels more intuitive to Naruto to fight outright, he trusts her to make the plan, trusts her to keep them safe.

Besides, getting as far away from that creepy Grass shinobi as possible just makes sense.

(It grates that he didn’t notice them earlier, didn’t catalogue them amongst those that might be a threat when he made his obnoxious entrance right before the exam. Honestly, he can’t even remember seeing the Grass shinobi in that waiting room, and that more than anything makes him the most nervous.

People don’t slip under Naruto’s radar. Not since he moved out of the orphanage and had to learn to fend for himself in a village that hates him. Not since it became dangerous not to pay attention.)

About three hours in, they stop at the base of a large tree, do a quick perimeter check to make sure they’re alone, and settle in for a quick bite and drink.

“So,” Sakura says, once they’ve all had a minute to catch their breath and cool down. “What teams should we aim for?”

Naruto thinks back to what he’s noticed so far and grimaces. “Honestly, I think Kiba, Hinata, and Shino would be the easiest for us since we’re familiar with them and they’re not really working together as a team, but I don’t know—it kind of feels like a dick move to go after Konoha nin right now when there’s other options. We definitely want to avoid that Grass shinobi from earlier, and that kid Gaara’s team. Most of the genin from Sound looked like they were itching to start a fight, but I can’t tell if that’s because they’re confident or because they’re overconfident, ya know?”  

“What about the other team from Grass?” Sasuke asks.

Naruto closes his eyes, tries to recall them. “Girl with red hair? Two boys who were bickering the whole time?”

“Hn.”

“The girl is quiet,” Naruto remembers. “Keeps her head down, which makes her a bit of a wildcard—could be timid, or she could be clever. But the two boys could probably be played off each other. It seemed less like they were an actual team and more like they just put three genin together to qualify.”

Thinking about it now, that might be a good weakness to look for. After all, teamwork is what Team 7 does best.

“There was another team from Rock Country that looked the same,” Naruto adds. “Internal power struggle stuff. They can be our backup if the other one doesn’t have the right scroll.”

“Great,” Sasuke drawls, “except we don’t know where either of those teams are right now.”

Sakura’s mouth purses, but she shrugs after a moment. “We have five days. We’ll be able to find them eventually.”

“You want to leave it up to chance? Tch.”

“No, I want to get closer to the base of the central tower and then start doing a periodic grid search. The smaller the radius we have to work with, the quicker we’ll be, and for that, we have to be near the center.”

Sasuke’s frown deepens, and Naruto bites back a groan. The stupid bastard had been better about cooperating lately, but if he gets it into his head that he’s right and Sakura is wrong, then this could spiral out into a time-wasting argument quickly. And once Sasuke is set on something, it’s very hard to change his mind.

Short of knocking him out and dragging him along, Naruto thinks, considering, then shakes his head. No. They can’t afford to make any one of their team dead weight.

Sasuke opens his mouth to argue—probably something about teams being able to slip through the gaps in their rotation, or whatever tactical issue he’s found in Sakura’s plan—but Naruto beats him to it, desperate to stave off an argument for as long as possible.

“I need to piss.”

Both Sasuke and Sakura turn to look at him, expressions nearly identical: an unimpressed raised brow, mouths curled in disgust.

“Congratulations?” Sasuke says. “Just go.”

“I’m not gonna pee in front of Sakura!” Naruto whisper-shouts, face reddening. He really had meant that to be just a distraction, but now that he’s thinking about it, he does actually have to go. And despite what his usual brash attitude might imply, he does like his privacy, thank you very much.

Her nose wrinkles. “Go in the bushes, then. It’s not like I’m going to watch you.”

It’s not exactly ideal, but it’ll have to do. Besides, it’s not like he wants to fully leave his team’s line of sight while they’re on a mission like this. After playing dozens, if not hundreds, of rounds of ninja tag with Haku-nii, Naruto’s learned that the easiest way to get picked off is to get separated. Even just stepping around a corner is enough time to give an experienced nin a chance to take you out of the equation with your team none the wiser.

The bushes don’t provide a lot of cover, but again, beggars can’t be choosers. His hand doesn’t even make it to the fastenings of his pants—black, like proper shinobi gear, since Zabuza shredded Naruto’s orange jumpsuit within the first week of training and told him he’d buy him any clothes he wanted as long as they weren’t so goddamn bright—before he hears the faintest rustle of leaves behind him.

It could be nothing: the breeze, a squirrel, a bird.

It would be stupid to assume it’s nothing.

Instead, Naruto’s hand drops to the kunai pouch on his hip, slides his grip around a handle easily, but otherwise doesn’t move, makes it look like he’s still just trying to go to the bathroom. There’s the faint rustle again, then a soft thud.

Sloppy, Naruto thinks, grinning. If Naruto or Sasuke or Sakura ever jumped out of a tree while making that much noise, Kakashi-sensei would carry them up to the tallest one he could find and throw them out of it until they could land from any height, at any angle, without so much as a whisper.

(He’d threatened it once. Just once.

Naruto had taken Haku’s stealth lessons a lot more seriously afterwards.)

Naruto hums idly to himself, as though distracted, while he waits for the genin behind him to make their move.

It doesn’t take long. There’s another faint rustle and the soft woosh of displaced air—so noisy, so careless—and then Naruto’s turning to the side just as the enemy’s fist flies through the spot where he’d stood only a split second ago. It almost feels like it’s happening in slow motion, but maybe that’s just because Naruto has gotten used to training with Haku. Haku, whose half-speed is still about ten times faster than this kid who’s attacking him now.

Naruto strikes at the weak point of his enemy’s elbow with his palm, hard and fast, and he hears the snap of bone, sees the way the enemy shinobi grits his teeth, skin paling under the stress of pain. The enemy falters a little, slows, and Naruto sweeps the shinobi’s legs out from under him, sending him to the ground just as Sakura and Sasuke appear, kunai at the ready.

“Tch. Can’t leave you alone for a second, dobe.”

The familiar itch of irritation that comes every time Sasuke looks down his nose at him sparks, but not as bad as it would have in the academy. Not bad enough to make him lose his head. By now, Naruto knows that Sasuke is just a prickly bastard. To everyone. Equally.

(Not equally, really. Sasuke is twice as much of a bastard to anyone not on Team 7. He’s still an annoying, standoffish asshole who thinks he’s better than nearly everyone else, and he still picks fights and digs his heels in when he’s convinced he’s right, but with Team 7, it’s almost like he’s a little more flexible, has a little more bend to him. Grumpy and irritable rather than mean and vicious.

That small distinction makes a whole world of difference.)

“Where’s the rest of your team?” Sakura demands of the enemy genin. The boy just glares up at her, his broken arm cradled against his chest. There’s a flicker in his eyes, though, one that looks a little like panic. Most likely alone, then, but Naruto can’t be sure—

“I’ll scout the perimeter,” he offers, and his teammates nod. Sasuke raises the blunt end of his kunai, undoubtedly intending to knock the enemy out and tie him up, but before he can, the genin rushes forward with a grunt, springing to his feet and aiming a kick at Sasuke’s ribs.

It’s a weak hit, not enough to do more than push Sasuke back more than a foot or two, but it creates just enough of an opening for the boy to maneuver through, sprinting away into the forest.

“Shit,” Naruto curses, preparing to pursue. But he doesn’t make it more than a step before Sakura’s hand lands firm on his shoulder.

“Let him go. If he was making a solo attack, there’s no way he’s got a scroll on him—they wouldn’t risk it. And we don’t want to follow him back to his team in case they’re setting up an ambush for us.”

There’s a part of Naruto that wants to chase, regardless of Sakura’s logic. A part that whispers, We don’t let prey get away. He stamps it down, certain that’s a side-effect of the damned fox, and focuses back on his team.

Sasuke looks no happier about letting the enemy go than Naruto is, but he doesn’t complain either. “Injuries?”

Naruto shakes his head. “He was too loud to get the drop on me. Idiot. You?”

“Tch. As if.”

“Then we continue as planned,” Sakura says. “Sasuke, you keep the scroll—”

“No,” Sasuke says, and Naruto and Sakura both turn to stare at him. “You should have it, Sakura. Naruto and I are both close-combat fighters. Even if I have a better overall defense, your long-range fighting style is better suited to keeping the scroll safe. Remember the bell test. Someone could lift it off of us if they got lucky, but they shouldn’t be able to get close to you.”

Naruto blinks, then notices his own surprise mirrored on Sakura’s face. There was a time not that long ago where Sasuke wouldn’t have trusted either of them to carry something as important as the scroll. A time when he wouldn’t have considered either of them capable enough, or admitted that such a critical job was better suited to someone that wasn’t him.

Back when they’d first been assigned on a team together, Naruto had never imagined he would be able to work with someone like Sasuke—had never imagined that Sasuke could work with anyone. He’s glad to be proven wrong.

“O-okay,” Sakura agrees. “Then let’s go.”

“Wait!” When both his teammates turn to look at him, Naruto’s face heats. “I, uh, still have to pee.”

Sasuke slaps his hand to his forehead. “Ugh. Fine. Hurry up.”

Unlike the last time, there’s no one waiting in a tree to ambush him, so he finishes quickly and makes his way back to the group.

“Alright! Let’s do this—” Something sharp flicks against his cheek, so fast that whatever the object was is already long gone by the time Naruto reaches up to touch where a small cut is forming. “What was that?”

There’s a rumble in the distance, and Naruto has a split second to wonder what could make such a sound—a large animal? A herd of large animals?—before a gust of wind tunnels through the forest right at them, strong as a hurricane. Strong enough to tear into the ground.

The force of it shoves against him like a tangible weight, and no matter how much Naruto plants his feet, the wind is relentless. It pushes and pushes and pushes. His foot slides a hair, and that’s all it takes. The stance he’d been hanging onto by a thread is disrupted just enough, his balance compromised.

The wind tunnels through the forest, and Naruto is dragged with it.

Sasuke crawls out from under the bush he’d shielded himself with, kunai in hand and ready to be used at a moment’s notice. Wind like that isn’t natural, except perhaps in Suna where dust-devils are apparently a common occurrence.

It had to be a jutsu, Sasuke thinks. But what sort of genin could pull off a jutsu that strong?

Sasuke himself can make a great fireball the size of a house, but his ability to maintain that size and shape is still limited. He’d assumed that most of the other genin in the exams would be of a similar level: if they were capable of strong elemental jutsu at all, it would be at a limited range or duration. That’s evidently not the case.

Unease stirs in Sasuke’s gut.

It’s not that he doesn’t believe Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza when they say Team 7 isn’t ready to move to the next level. He knows there is a gap in ability between himself and, for example, Haku. But Sasuke thought he’d been closing the gap little by little. Thought that, going into the exams, many of the other entrants would be in a similar position.

The other genin teams from their year at the academy certainly aren’t any stronger than Team 7 is. Their brief meeting with Team Gai also left a lackluster impression, and maybe Sasuke had gotten a little too…comfortable.

Sakura appears at his right, a little dusty and scratched but otherwise unharmed. Her expression is serious, but there’s fear there, too, though she’s obviously trying to bury it. Good. There isn’t time to gather their bearings. If Sasuke’s gut is right, whoever sent that wind jutsu will be making a proper move soon.

“Where’s Naruto?” Sakura asks, eyes already moving to scan the surrounding area.

“I’m right here,” Naruto calls, stumbling out of the bushes with a grin. He’s no more scratched up than he was a few minutes ago, which means he got out of the way just fine. It’s just…

Something definitely isn’t right. Sasuke narrows his eyes and looks over Naruto again. Nothing is obviously out of place, nothing visibly wrong. It’s a gut feeling, nothing more, but Sasuke has learned to trust those. At his side, Sakura’s shoulders tense for a moment and then drop, like she’s making herself relax.

“Naruto-kun, that wind jutsu really tangled up my hair. Can you please help me? I can’t reach the back all that well.”

“Sure Sakura-chan!”

Sasuke carefully keeps himself from frowning. Naruto has a better tolerance for poisons than some people, but even still, he knows better than to touch Sakura’s hair when she’s got the ninja wire laced in. She moved beyond mild paralytics two weeks ago, and who knows what sort of hellish poison blend Haku gave her for the chuunin exams.

No matter what Sasuke says, Naruto isn’t actually stupid. Naruto would know Sakura’s hair is booby trapped.

Therefore, the figure stepping towards Sakura and reaching his hand, blindly, into her hair, isn’t Naruto.

The Fake Naruto gets one hand in Sakura’s hair, bare skin scraping against the ninja wire threaded in there, and retracts it with a hiss, palm bleeding. Sasuke moves in the same instant, kunai flashing, skimming the edge of Fake Naruto’s side. But the Fake is fast, jumping back and out of the way before Sasuke can do too much damage.

“Ah? Sasuke? What are you doing?” the Fake complains, an expression of hurt and confusion plastered across Naruto’s face. Sasuke scoffs. As if Naruto wouldn’t start yelling the moment he thought his own teammates were attacking him.

“You can drop the act,” Sasuke says. “It’s not a very good one.”

For a moment, the Fake Naruto continues pouting. And then a long—too long—tongue slides out of his mouth and licks into a grin. “Too bad. In that case, I won’t waste the energy.”

There’s a puff of smoke as the henge is dismissed, and then, standing where the Fake Naruto was, is the Grass Shinobi from earlier. Because of course it is. That’s just Team 7’s luck.

“Where’s the real Naruto, then?” Sakura wonders aloud.

“He’ll catch up with us when he can,” Sasuke says. They can’t divert their attention to thinking about Naruto when there’s an obvious threat right in front of them now. This Grass shinobi is the one that worried Naruto most back at the entrance to the forest, and Sasuke trusts him enough to take that seriously.

“You want the earth scroll that I have, don’t you?” the Grass nin says, holding up the very scroll they need in order to pass. “And I want your heaven scroll. Let’s fight for it, shall we?”

The part of Sasuke that doesn’t want to back down from any challenge is chomping at the bit. The more rational side is screaming at him to run. And the screaming only gets louder when the Grass nin opens up their mouth and slides the earth scroll down their throat in one spitty swallow.

“What the hell,” Sakura whispers under her breath, eyes wide, torn between fear and disgust. Sasuke can admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that he’s not faring much better. The Grass shinobi is unnerving.

From a practical viewpoint, there are only two options. One: if they want the scroll, they’ll have to cut it out of their enemy’s body. Sasuke isn’t a fan of this plan, partially because it means they have to fight this monster of genin—who can’t possibly, truly be a genin, there’s no way—and ultimately kill them. The odds of winning this fight aren’t zero, but it’s slim. Not to mention, Kakashi-sensei said to lay low and not draw too much attention. This fight is going to draw attention. It already has, what with the wind blast that must have knocked out a solid portion of the training ground and sent up a dust cloud that will be visible to anyone looking in their general direction.

The other option is to run.

“We have to go. Now,” Sasuke mutters, just loud enough that Sakura can hear him. She nods minutely, and he’s already calculating their best escape plan—flee southwest, aim for the river and hope to shake their tail there, ideally rendezvous with Naruto and continue to the central tower, and get the hell out of the forest as fast as possible.

The Grass shinobi flings their straw hat off to the side, and killing intent spikes, potent like Sasuke hasn’t felt in years.

(Five years, to be exact. When he was staring up at swirling crimson eyes and his parents were dead on the ground, the whole compound flooded in blood and there was no escape, just pain—)

Sasuke staggers to his knees, Sakura falling beside him, and he gasps for breath. The air is so thick with the threat of impending death that it feels like even his lungs are shriveling under the weight of it. He can’t even blink. His whole body is paralyzed by it, and he can see in an instant how it will play out. The Grass nin will throw the kunai, and they will not miss. He and Sakura will be dead in seconds, and if he could just move, he could get them out of here, but he can’t.

Beside him, Sakura is crying silently, tears streaming down her face, whole body trembling. It’s the most vulnerable he’s seen her since they faced down the Demon Brothers in Wave. Broken. Not so much as a glimmer of the girl who isn’t afraid to turn him into a pin-cushion with her senbon. Not so much as a hint of the girl who braids poisons into her hair and dares people to touch. He wonders if she sees her own death waiting for her when she looks in the Grass shinobi’s eyes, wonders if this is the first time she’s known the feeling of someone really trying to kill her.

If so, he can forgive her for freezing up. He cannot, however, give himself the same leniency. He’s supposed to be stronger than this. Better than this. He’s supposed to be different from the seven year old child who worshipped the ground his brother walked on, overtaken by surprise and hurt and confusion, overtaken by fear and pain and weakness. He swore to himself he would never be so weak again, and yet here he is, cowering.

“A shame,” the Grass nin says. “I had hoped this would last longer. That you would prove more interesting.” They sigh. “Oh well. I suppose everyone can be wrong now and again.”

The Grass nin pulls two kunai out from the pouch at their waist. They grin, tongue swiping out to lick at their lips, and Sasuke has a passing, horrifying thought that the shinobi may eat them after. Swallow them whole just as they did the earth scroll.

The Grass nin flings the kunai with grace and deadly accuracy, and yet—

They’re so…slow.

The kunai inch through the air at the pace of earthworms. Everything sharpens into focus with a clarity that Sasuke has never known. He can see the dust particles float through the air and catch on the faint sunlight that filters through the branches. He can see the ticks that crawl up to the top of the blades of grass at his feet, and the mites that chew through the wood of a tree behind the Grass nin, and the bird nesting in the tallest branch of the tree above him. He can see every vein on every leaf of every tree in the clearing.

He can see every chip and scratch in the kunai in the air, and more than that, he can see exactly where they will go, and he can guess how long it will take them to get there.

Sasuke has plenty of time. Right now, he feels as though the whole world has stilled, slowed, just for him. It turns at his leisure, at his command. There is nothing to be afraid of. Not when he can see.

He moves.

He knows everything used to blur when he ran at top speed. It doesn’t now. The clarity doesn’t fade, doesn’t falter. He scoops Sakura up, one hand under her knees, the other wrapped around her back, and he jumps. High. There are seven different branches he could land on with ease, twelve others he could reach if he pushes for it. Four clear escape paths all but outline themselves before his eyes, and he picks one at random. Hops quickly between the branches and hopes that he’s picked a pattern that’s confusing enough to throw off the Grass nin.

Sasuke isn’t stupid. In a direct race, he can’t outrun the enemy. Can’t beat them in a fight one-on-one—and maybe not even as a team. He’s outclassed, newly improved vision or not, and the only way they’re getting out of this alive is cleverness, trickery.

Which is not his strong suit. He’s a fighter, someone who prefers a weapon in his hand and a target to focus on. Sakura is the clever one, the one who’s always looking at things from different angles, picking apart ideas in seconds and reorganizing them again just as fast. And Naruto is unpredictable, so chaotic and absurd in his battle schemes that it would take someone just as insane to actually counter him step for step.

The way Sasuke fights isn’t going to work here. He needs his team.

(He never thought he’d say that. But things change, sometimes in unexpected ways. He knows that better than anyone.)

He lands on a branch high up in the trees, a good mile away from the original battle site. He’s not under any illusion that he’s lost the Grass nin, but he’ll just have to deal with that when it comes. He’d followed the direction the wind jutsu had gouged into the earth, with the idea that if Naruto was blown away, moving closer to that direction means he might rejoin them faster. In the meantime, he has Sakura. Shaken and terrified and tear-streaked, yes, but not useless. Not anymore. Not since Wave.

“Sakura,” he snaps, watching as she jerks to attention now that the pressure of the killing intent is gone.

“What—Sasuke, your eyes.” She stares at him, her own eyes wide and still wet from her crying, but there’s a flicker in them now, her sharp mind putting the pieces together. “The sharingan.”

Sasuke nods. He’d figured as much. What other explanation was there for his sudden increased vision? In other circumstances, he’d almost be excited. Right now, he’s too focused on survival to feel anything other than urgency.

“We need a plan. I can’t take on the Grass nin outright and we can’t outrun them. Naruto’s still missing. Options?”

Sakura’s brow furrows, eyes flickering back and forth as she mentally creates and discards plans. Despite his own impatience, Sasuke lets her think. Nothing good will come from rushing. Instead, he focuses on scanning the area, keeping watch. It won’t be long until the Grass nin finds them, he’s sure.

When he finishes a third sweep of the area and looks back at Sakura though, she doesn’t seem any closer to a solution.

“Options?” he asks again, some of his frustration seeping through. “Now, Sakura. We don’t have time—”

“I’m thinking!”

“Think faster.”

Her hands are still shaking, but she glares at him. “Distract and Hide. Trap and Run. Or Negotiate.”

Sasuke grimaces. Of the three strategies, only the last would be easy to do without Naruto, seeing as he’s excellent both at making distractions and designing functional traps. Sasuke or Sakura could do it, but not nearly as well.

But negotiation isn’t really an option, and they both know it. Even if they hand over their heaven scroll, who’s to say the Grass nin won’t kill them anyway? They’re obviously getting a thrill out of the fight, and their bloodlust is nothing to disregard. They aren’t dispassionate enough to leave without a little bloodshed. They’re enjoying the hunt too much. Simply being handed the necessary scroll won’t satisfy the Grass nin.

It won’t satisfy Sasuke either, but that’s secondary to survival right now.

“Trap and Run,” Sasuke decides. “Hiding is too risky. If they’re determined enough, they’ll just wait us out and we’ll have trapped ourselves. Better to get out as fast as we can.”

Sakura nods her agreement. “I have ninja wire. A few exploding tags. Poison. I could set a poison net, you could lure them in, and then we’ll back them into it with the explosives.”

“Paralytic?”

“And a hallucinogen.”

Sasuke’s eyebrows go up—he didn’t realize Sakura had something like that on her. “Good. Genjutsu, too, to hide the trap. I’ll layer it.”

Sakura turns, scans the immediate area, and then takes a shaky breath. “I’ll go lay the trap. If they show up before I’m done…”

Sasuke hopes that won’t happen, but he’s not counting on it. “I’ll keep them busy.”

Sakura takes off, and though Sasuke knows she’s moving fast, he can still track her movements like it’s nothing.

So this is the power of the sharingan, he thinks.

He’s not complaining, exactly, but it’s bad luck for it to develop now, in the middle of a fight where he can’t really test out its full applications. He’s working off of clan records and what little he remembers of witnessing as a child, but he’s counting on genjutsu cast by the sharingan being stronger. Strong enough, at least, to fool the Grass nin.

Sasuke focuses on the shaded corner where Sakura is weaving ninja wire between the branches like a mesh basket of death and imagines that she is not there at all. Imagines that there is no wire to catch on the light. Imagines there is no scent of poison to waft through the air. Imagines that the forest is untouched, that even he is not there.

There’s a rustle. The slithering glide of scales over rough bark. A snake as big as the Hokage tower curls its way around the tree beside Sasuke, and he moves on instinct, sending a volley of kunai into the thing’s mouth as soon as it opens. The snake sways backwards, it’s body thudding against another tree branch. The skin behind it’s head cracks, folds outward, and there, covered in slimey snake innards, is the Grass nin.

“Impressive, Sasuke-kun,” the Grass shinobi croons. “You’re certainly making me work for it.”

Sasuke braces himself for the killing intent and meets the enemy’s eyes. Hand signs done behind his back, he casts the illusion genjutsu, picturing the forest as if it were empty. He feels it catch, feels the flow of the enemy shinobi’s chakra, guides it—

The Grass shinobi laughs and dispels the illusion without hand signs. “That was a very poor attempt, Sasuke-kun. Is this your first time with the sharingan?”

He grits his teeth. Now that the enemy is on to him, the likelihood of a second attempt succeeding is even lower.

“Genjutsu doesn’t appear to be your specialty,” the Grass nin muses. “A pity. This would be much more amusing if you had your brother’s talent—”

White noise fills Sasuke’s ears, his whole body going cold.

“—but I suppose that’s what you’re trying so hard to make up for. I can help.”

The Grass nin winds their body around the tree limb as though they are also a snake, and maybe Sasuke should be disturbed by this, but at this point what the shinobi can or can’t do doesn’t matter. They’re talking about Itachi, and that’s all Sasuke can think about.

The Grass nin slithers closer, closer, closer, and Sasuke should move. He knows he should, but he’s frozen. His mind is stuck in a loop of Itachi’s eyes, Itachi’s genjutsu, Itachi covered in blood. Stuck on, “If you had your brother’s talent.” Stuck.

The Grass nin leans forward, tongue flickering sickeningly.

An array of kunai curves through the air, slicing neatly through the Grass nin’s tongue and forcing them back. Sasuke blinks.

On a branch above and just to Sasuke’s right, Naruto sits in a crouch, covered in the same sort of slime that the Grass nin was as they came out of the snake. Naruto’s teeth are bared, somewhere between a snarl and a grin, and his eyes are sharp.

“Sorry I’m late, Sasuke.”

Sakura ignores the sound of the fight behind her as she threads the ninja wire through the branches, careful but quick. There’s a part of her that is begging her to look, to turn around. A part of her that wants nothing more than to rush to Sasuke’s side, help him.

The logical part of her brain reminds her that setting the trap is helping. The trap may be the only thing that can get them out of this. Without it, they’re fucked, as Zabuza would say.

Sasuke will call if he needs me, she tells herself, winding the wire tighter, faster. It’s a fragile reassurance, and it does nothing to ease the sick feeling in her stomach.

Naruto’s voice does, however.

“Sorry I’m late, Sasuke,” he says, somehow both cheery and frigid, and Sakura doesn’t even have to turn to look to know that he’s furious. Which means Sasuke must be hurt, or he almost was.

Stop it, she snaps at herself. If she panics again, she’ll freeze. If she freezes, she’ll be useless. She was useless back in the clearing. One look into the Grass shinobi’s eyes and the killing intent brought her to her knees. She hadn’t snapped out of it. Sasuke had.

She can’t let him down again.

In the background, Naruto shouts at Sasuke not to be a coward. Then, there’s the sound of a metal blade being unsheathed, and Sakura hopes to the gods that it’s Sasuke pulling out his sword. It will take him years to get on Zabuza’s level, but he’s good with it. The best out of the three of them. Better, probably, than most genin are with a weapon.

But that Grass nin is no ordinary genin, she thinks, then shakes her head. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It has to be enough. It will be enough.

She finishes weaving the wire trap. Every strand is drenched in poison—half paralytics, half hallucinogens. Both fast-acting. The kind that will begin to take effect fifteen to thirty seconds after entering the blood stream. They’re not strong, and they probably won’t stop the Grass nin entirely, but it should be enough to slow them down. Disorient them.

She readies the explosive tags and moves away from the trap and into a better position. If she can just drive the enemy into the wire—

It’s not going to work, the weakest, cruelest part of her thinks. She tries to shove the thought aside, but the doubt lingers. She made the plan on the fly, panicked and stressed and scattered. If she’d only had five more minutes, or ten, she could’ve come up with something better, or been more decisive, or something. Instead, she’s got the most basic trap in existence and a half-baked plan to get her target there.

It’s all I have, she reminds herself. So it has to work. Or I’m dead.

She’s halfway to her optimal position to begin sending explosive tags at the enemy when things turn to shit.

In between one blink and the next, the Grass nin has Naruto wrapped up in their tongue like it’s a harness, and they’re pulling Naruto closer despite the struggle the blond boy is putting up. Sasuke’s blade is at the ready, but he’s not moving, obviously concerned that any sudden movement might make the Grass nin attack Naruto more viciously. But Sakura can see from her angle that while the enemy shinobi is currently moving slowly, there’s a certain gleeful malice in their expression that makes her think they’ll attack Naruto no matter what Sasuke does or doesn’t do.

That assessment is confirmed a moment later when the Grass nin’s fingers start glowing a dark purple-ish blue. It’s unfamiliar, something she hasn’t seen before, but Sakura isn’t going to wait around and find out what that particular jutsu does.

She throws a kunai through the enemy’s tongue, severing its hold on Naruto, and follows up instantly with a paralytic senbon. Naruto drops, wriggling free of the spare end of the tongue now that the shinobi can’t control it, and rolls to the side. The senbon lands in the tip of the enemy’s tongue, but that’s about the only good thing that comes of her interference.

Cold, empty, terrifying eyes land on her instantly.

Oh no, Sakura thinks. Oh shit.

The Grass nin blurs into motion. Sakura can’t track the movement, but she knows what she would do if their places were switched. She’s not surprised at the displaced air directly behind her indicating someone’s landed behind her, not surprised about the palm strike to her back, right between the shoulder blades. She knew it was coming, she just can’t move her body fast enough to keep up with her own brain.

She falls.

The trees in the Forest of Death are huge, tall, monstrous things.

She keeps falling.

Someone shouts. She doesn’t think it’s her own voice. The air was punched from her lungs when the Grass nin shoved her.

She’s still falling. The ground is getting closer now.

There’s a blur—black clothes and gold hair and red eyes and—

Someone—Naruto—catches her, but not fast enough to avoid the inevitable. They’re going to crash.

“I’ve got you,” he says.

And then they both slam into the ground.

.

.

.

When Sakura wakes, Naruto is still crumpled beneath her. Alive. Breathing. But unconscious and possibly injured in ways she can’t even see right now.

He took the brunt of the fall for her.

Idiot, she thinks, though she can’t help but be grateful. Without him slowing her down at the last minute, that fall could have killed her. The Grass shinobi could have killed her.

Could have killed Sasuke, too, while neither of you were there to help him, the cruel part of her remarks again, and Sakura shoves that voice down and away.

But she picks up Naruto as best as she can, tucks him into the hollow of a tree trunk and pulls shrubbery around until it’s moderately well hidden. It won’t do for a long-term hideout, but she needs to find Sasuke, and she can’t count on Naruto waking up any time soon, nor how mobile he’ll be once he does.

Once he’s hidden as well as she can manage in so short a time, she turns back to the trees. She fell straight down. She needs to go straight up.

Every bone in her body aches. Her chakra isn’t all that diminished, but with how tired her body is, her control over it feels…flimsy. How she’s going to climb all the way back up to where she needs to go…

Sakura clenches her fists.

Naruto is injured. Sasuke’s status is unknown. She doesn’t know how long she was out of it, but given that Sasuke hasn’t come to find them himself likely means that either the battle is still ongoing, or else he’s incapacitated in some way.

(She refuses to believe he’s dead. She refuses.)

Either way, Sasuke needs her help. Her team needs her.

She cannot run away. She cannot hide from things just because they are difficult. She will not be the weak link in her team, in her family.

She is Hatake Sakura. She has the best chakra control of any student in her generation. She mastered tree walking in the span of an hour. She can do it now, even weakened and hurting.

She puts her foot against the tree trunk, channels the chakra into the sole of her feet with razor-fine control, and walks.

And walks.

And walks.

She knows she’s at the right place when the trees become scorched and charred, evidence of a fire jutsu. There’s a lot of damage, but luckily no forest fire; that would have been problematic.

Sasuke put up one hell of a fight. She’s not an expert on elemental jutsu by any means—she doesn’t have the chakra reserves to specialize in that field—but she can tell by the sheer number of scorch marks on the trees that Sasuke must have used quite a few of his techniques. He probably exhausted his chakra.

Sakura eyes the trap she set before her fall and is disappointed that the Grass shinobi isn’t laying tangled in her wires. It doesn’t look untouched, however. There’s some blood on the wires and a little mud as well. She turns away from it, scanning the forest—she’ll come back to recollect the salvageable materials later if she can.

Sasuke first.

A dark lump on a tree just a few branches over catches her eye and she leaps, darting through the trees with renewed energy. As she thought, it’s Sasuke. Alone, and with the enemy nin nowhere to be seen. It could be a trap, and she knows she should be more cautious, but that’s her teammate lying face down and clearly injured.

She does a cursory look around the area and, seeing nothing obvious, rushes to his side.

He’s breathing.

Tears blur her vision, the relief so strong it feels like a wave has crashed inside her, knocking loose every emotion she’s been holding in from the moment the Grass shinobi appeared before them in the woods. She cries—quietly, partly because there is danger still in these woods and partly because the tears are so strong they steal her voice—and gathers him close.

Sasuke is heavy, lean and narrow but all muscle. A month ago, Sakura would have been too weak to carry him. She picks him up with some effort, using her fine-tuned chakra control to support her muscles as she lifts him and descends back down to the ground as fast as she safely can. Then, she tucks him into the same tree hollow as Naruto for the time being and sets back off up the trees again to retrieve the trapping supplies she left behind.

It's a tiring journey—she’s more worn down than she thought, and her adrenaline is fading by the second—but if she wants to keep them all safe, she’s going to need to set up a proper stronghold. Taking down the trap is less work than setting it up was, even if she has to be a little more cautious with the poisons. She’s semi-immune, but even so, she doesn’t need to be feeling a tingling numbness in her fingertips right now.

(Or hallucinating dancing mangos. Again. She doesn’t think the poison would affect her too much, but with a high enough dose, anything is possible.)

By the time she returns to the tree hollow, she’s panting, sweating, and on the verge of collapse.

Five minutes, she tells herself as she leans back, not closing her eyes but letting herself relax and recharge as much as possible. She’ll need her strength. Five minutes, and then the real work begins.

Chapter Text

The chuunin exams at this stage are not particularly interesting from an outside viewpoint, Kakashi notes as he reclines in the room he’s been instructed to wait in with the other jounin senseis. He understands that the point is to keep the jounin under surveillance so there’s no chance of cheating, but Kami above, it feels like a waste of time, energy, and resources to have top shinobi wait around for hours and hours, multiple days in a row, while the genin teams run through the forest.

He’s not particularly worried about his kids—at least, not about the exams themselves, and the concerns he has about eyes in the village and the schemes of the elders, he’s already warned them about.

Sure, he doubts they’ll be promoted. They’re not ready. Sasuke is learning to rely on his team, and he’s picked up swordsmanship almost prodigiously, but he’s arrogant and hot-headed and thinks violence is the answer to nearly every problem. Naruto’s started to actually think before he acts—at least half the time—and he’s working his way through both Kakashi’s and Zabuza’s ninjutsu repertoire piece by piece, but he’s an unpolished gem at best, and he’ll have to learn to be more subtle and more responsible before he can be a chuunin. Of his kids, Sakura probably has the best chance of passing the exam, if only because she’s the most level-headed and she has a mind for strategy. But she lacks confidence in herself, and more than that, she’s only just starting to bridge the skill gap between herself and the boys.

So no, he doesn’t think his kids will be promoted. But neither is he quietly panicking in the corner like Kurenai, who’s worried Team 8 will get in over their heads and have to pull out of the test early. And he’s not waiting in grim anticipation like Asuma, who only signed Team 10 up so they can see how outclassed they are and inevitably implode under the pressure.

(Of the Konoha jounin here, only Gai seems to genuinely think his team has a chance. Kakashi would be more likely to agree if he hadn’t met Gai’s team. The little green mini-me is one Yamanaka mindfuck away from an identity crisis, the Hyuuga is in the midst of an identity crisis, and the weapons girl might have potential, but she’s so mild-mannered that she’s being run roughshod by her more rambunctious teammates.

No, Kakashi doubts they’ll be promoted either.)

Kakashi’s kids will get through the forest with two scrolls, or maybe they won’t, but they’ve been trained to understand their own limits both as individuals and together. As a team, they can take down Haku about 50-60% of the time, and Kakashi is fairly certain there aren’t many shinobi of Haku’s caliber in this exam. The only team that truly concerns him is the one from Suna made up of the Kazekage’s children—one of them a fucking jinchuuriki, since apparently Sarutobi’s lost his damn mind and doesn’t see that as a security issue. But Naruto and Sakura already had a run in with them and know to keep their distance unless absolutely necessary.

It will be fine, Kakashi thinks. His kids are borderline feral most days, especially when it comes to each other. They know the meaning, the value, of pack. He can trust them to watch each other’s backs, keep each other safe.

He’s halfway into Icha Icha Paradise—his favorite, and one he’s reread enough that he can both enjoy the story and keep half an eye on the foreign shinobi in the room—when a flicker at the door catches his attention. A moment later, an ANBU that Kakashi would recognize by chakra alone even without the familiar facemask steps through. Tenzo.

“Hatake, the Hokage wishes to see you.”

Not good, Kakashi thinks even as he unfurls lazily from his seat and makes a show of yawning behind his mask. For the Hokage to ask for him in the middle of the exams means something must have happened. For him to have sent Tenzo—one of the few ANBU who has the balls to drag Kakashi where he needs to be on time—means that this is urgent.

Urgent isn’t good.

“Maa, but things are so exciting here,” Kakashi drawls. He can just imagine Tenzo’s long-suffering dead-eyed stare. Still, he heads out into the hallway, waiting until they’re out of sight of the other jounin-sensei to drop his laid-back attitude.

They don’t say another word until Kakashi’s standing in the middle of the Hokage’s office.

“Three bodies belonging to Grass genin were discovered during a security check late this afternoon,” Sarutobi says, for once not mincing words or bothering with small talk. He looks worn, exhausted in a way he rarely lets people see, and Kakashi would have more sympathy for him if he wasn’t already 100% certain that Sarutobi’s problems are a direct result of the man’s actions. Or inactions, more likely. “They had not been reported missing by their jounin sensei, and we have confirmation of people verifying seeing the shinobi long after the presumed time of death.”

“Someone’s impersonating them,” Kakashi says, already putting the pieces together.

Sarutobi nods. “Anko investigated and, based on the evidence, believes Orochimaru to be the culprit.”

For a long moment, Kakashi stares blankly at the Hokage. What is he supposed to say to that?

None of this would have happened if you’d just handled of Orochimaru when the man first started being a problem, is honest, but probably would be considered out of line.

Stop the damn exams, then, if there’s an S-rank missing nin out there in the forests right now, seems appropriate.

Pull my kids out, now, is what he really, really wants to say, because he did not go through the trouble of nearly taking 3 kids out of Konoha on the run, only to instead Battle Bond a fucking missing nin for the sake of rebuilding the Hatake clan so he could protect them, only for his kids to go against Orochimaru now. Alone.

“His target?” Kakashi asks instead, breathing deeply to try to soothe the howling thing in the back of his mind that’s insisting he gather up his pack and put them all where he can see them. Even Haku and Zabuza, neither of whom could stand against the likes of Orochimaru despite being strong in their own right.

Sarutobi grimaces. “That is…unclear.”

Kakashi’s eyes narrow. Sarutobi is a shit liar. Either that, or he’s losing his edge. Orochimaru was his student for years—his favorite student, even, which has earned him leeway where it shouldn’t—and if Sarutobi can’t even guess…

Kakashi can. It’s always possible, of course, that Orochimaru is just using the chuunin exams as cover to get into the village, but if that were the case, he wouldn’t have needed to kill the Grass nin, not while in the village. Beforehand, yes, but that’s not where ANBU found the bodies. Which means the target is the exams themselves.

The goal could be as simple as causing general mayhem, shaking the elemental nations’ trust in Konoha’s ability. Especially if multiple genin teams from various countries are killed in some grand attack. But Kakashi doubts it. If that were the case, then Orochimaru wouldn’t have been so sloppy as to leave bodies lying around to be found before his grand reveal, and realistically, the theatrics would have already started.

No, it has to be more targeted, more focused. Which makes things worse, because there are only three targets in the chuunin exams that Kakashi thinks would be enough to draw Orochimaru’s interest.

Suna’s jinchuuriki, who is notoriously bloodthirsty and also seems barely in control of the bijuu sealed inside him.

Naruto, being Konoha’s jinchuuriki, who is less volatile but also untrained enough to make for an easy target.

Or Uchiha Sasuke, who, of the two living people with the sharingan—or potential for it, at least—is much less likely to kill Orochimaru than Uchiha Itachi.

Either way, two out of the three potential targets are Kakashi’s.

The very thought of Orochimaru getting anywhere near his students is enough to make him snarl. Fuck the chuunin exams—his kids can take them later, in another six months when they’ll be held again. He’s got chakra swirling under his feet to shunshin towards the Forest of Death, because he’ll be damned if he leaves his kids vulnerable now, but before he can move, Tenzo’s hand rests on his shoulder.

(There’s a moment—just a split second—where the howling, vicious thing in the back of his mind urges him to rip through anyone who tries to keep him from his pack. Even Tenzo, who Kakashi has, on some level, always considered one of his.

Except for if he stands between Kakashi and his kids, apparently.

It’s only the years of trust and camaraderie and friendship they’ve built that keeps Tenzo in one piece now.)

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this is classified and needs to be handled discreetly,” Sarutobi says. He’s aiming for authoritative and bland, but Kakashi can all but smell the nervousness on him. “You can return to the jounin waiting room.”

Kakashi bristles at the order, but he’s careful not to show it. One day, when he’s certain he has the right replacement lined up to take over, he’s going to depose Sarutobi. Whether that happens peaceably or by force hasn’t mattered to him up until this point, but with every second that he’s kept here, kept from doing what his instincts are telling him he needs to do to secure his family, Kakashi leans further towards Zabuza’s method. Which is bloody, cold, premeditated murder.

“And Orochimaru?” Kakashi asks, tries not to let his rage bite through.

“ANBU is on the lookout. And Anko will track him.”

Kakashi wants to snort at that. He has a lot of respect for Anko, and he won’t pretend she isn’t dangerous and skilled and capable in her own right. But when it comes to Orochimaru, not only is she so far behind him in skill that the idea of a confrontation between them is laughable, she’s also emotionally compromised.

Orochimaru will eat her alive. Maybe literally.

“Hm. If that’s all Hokage-sama?”

Sarutobi waves his hand, dismissive. That, too, prickles unpleasantly at Kakashi’s nape, makes the thing within him that’s been getting louder and louder since the moment he stood across from Zabuza in that clearing grind its teeth in offense.

But he’s had an iron grip on his emotions since he was 14 and losing everything he loved all at once—and so he just bows. It might be a touch shallower than propriety demands, but then again, no one expects Kakashi to be particularly respectful these days.

In the quiet of the hallway outside of the Hokage’s office, Tenzo speaks again. “Senpai—”

Kakashi cuts him a sharp look, enough to make him back off. He doesn’t fault Tenzo for following orders or for doing his best to keep Kakashi from actively, openly defying the Hokage and committing treason in a way that would be near impossible to cover up. But that doesn’t mean he’s feeling forgiving either.

(The wild thing in his head is loud, snarling and mean, and Kakashi has a feeling it won’t be quieted until he can lay eyes on Sakura’s pink hair, feel Naruto tackle into his legs, hear Sasuke’s quiet drawl.)

There’s a part of him that itches to run straight for his kids, but that’s the same instinct that urged him to take three genin out of the village with the intent of turning missing nin. Something that Zabuza has repeatedly assured him would have ended disastrously.

Just because his fear is reasonable doesn’t mean his gut reaction is, and he knows that, but he’s struggling.

He needs…

He needs Zabuza to ground him. To remind him their kids are strong, and that they know to call for help if they need it. Needs Zabuza to help him figure out the best way to hunt down Orochimaru and kill him before he can lay a fucking finger on any one of Kakashi’s pack.

Instead of heading back towards the jounin-sensei waiting room—which, really, Sarutobi is an idiot if he truly thinks Kakashi would go back there at a time like this—he turns in the direction of home.

The forest is dense, and the trees are huge, and there’s enough foliage on the ground that it only takes Sakura about fifteen minutes to find a decent place to hunker down. It takes three times as long to move the boys to the small copse of trees she’s decided to make camp in for now, if only because both Naruto and Sasuke are densely built and she’s exhausted. But she doesn’t let herself rest. Can’t, because they’re not safe until this place is trapped to hell and back.

They won’t be safe then, either, but it’s something.

(Sakura carefully does not think about what will happen if the Grass shinobi comes back. If she does, she’ll panic. If she panics, she’s already lost the fight.

And the Grass shinobi isn’t the only threat that’s out there. She can’t afford to be caught off guard.)

Sakura lays her traps with two thoughts in mind:

One: what would Haku do?

She goes for subtle. She strings up trip wires and hides them among the branches and leaves, sets them so even the faintest brush against them will send poisoned senbon at the target. Her work here is delicate, careful, everything hidden from sight and designed to be as unobtrusive as possible. But it also covers every angle, every possible access point to the hiding place she’s chosen for her team. She puts the thinnest and sharpest of the razor wire—which she has the least of—among the most shaded spots so that they are less likely to catch the sunlight, and she lays out rocks and tree trunks and more wire underneath, in the hope that the most careless of shinobi might trip into her traps.

The second thought she has: what would Naruto do?

If Haku is about subtlety and making sure the enemy never suspects a trap even exists, then Naruto is about layers and tricks—making an enemy think they’ve found the trap, so they don’t see the other, more dangerous trap lying in wait.

Sakura digs dozens of holes in the ground. In half, she puts exploding tags, which she is then sure to cover up as naturally as possible, using leaves and sticks and sand to disguise the ground has ever been disturbed. In the other half, she refills with dirt, and she does it sloppily, obviously. Let her enemies think they know what places to avoid. She lays ninja wire visibly, hopes that such a blatant trap will herd her enemies into the less obvious ones.

She uses the resources around her: vines and logs to create swinging projectiles that she can trigger with a swipe of her kunai, a pile of heavy rocks that will tumble if anyone steps too close to the place the boys are resting, a pit trap with sharpened sticks that serves as a trench barrier.

It’s elaborate and exhausting, and it takes hours. By the time she’s finished, every part of her body aches, her chakra is weak, and she feels like she could sleep for a year straight. She won’t, of course, not with both her teammates still out of commission. She won’t do anything to put them at risk.

Naruto continues to breathe shallow but steady, and his pulse remains even. Sakura is gentle as she examines him for more serious injuries, but nothing appears broken, just bruised. The scratches he sustained in his fall through the trees are already healed up by some miracle, and the only thing that’s really concerning is the fact that he’s still unconscious. It was a hard fall, one that Naruto bore the brunt of. If there’s head trauma or internal bleeding, Sakura’s not sure she’d be able to tell.

Sasuke is in worse condition. There’s some strange, spiraling seal at the crux of his neck and shoulder that must have been placed there by the Grass nin sometime after Sakura and Naruto fell. She’s never seen anything like it, but whatever it does can’t be good because Sasuke is burning up and sweating, and his sleep is restless. His face is pinched, twitching, and occasionally he makes a small sound that’s almost a whimper.

She doesn’t know what to do for him—for either of them—other than placing a cool rag on Sasuke’s forehead to help with the fever, and it’s now that she wishes she had a better grasp of medicine. She knows some herbs thanks to her reading and training with Haku, and she’s gotten good at making and countering minor poisons. But if either of them had a broken limb? Or, Kami forbid, if they were bleeding?

Hell, right now, she’d give anything just to be able to diagnose either of them, to know what the problem is, because the not knowing is worrying her almost as much as the idea that she has no idea when either of her teammates will wake. She doesn’t know if it’s bad enough that they need to pull out of the exam—she still has the scroll. She could open it now, summon one of the proctors.

They’d be disqualified, yes, but they could go home, back to the safety of the Hatake compound, with Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza and Haku to watch over them. There would be no shame in quitting, Sakura thinks. Not after the encounter with the Grass nin. Not with both of her teammates unconscious and possibly seriously hurt.

There’s a part of her that wants nothing more than to unroll the scroll right now, even if she knows Naruto and Sasuke won’t forgive her for making that call without them, no matter the circumstances. Another part of her refuses to give up just yet. She’s come so far—they all have—and, well, as long as no one’s condition gets worse…

There’s a chance Naruto could wake up any minute, Sakura reasons. Things will get easier once I’m not alone.

Besides, if this was a real mission, Sakura wouldn’t have the option to just…back out. If this was a real mission and both her teammates were down, she’d be responsible for finishing it herself. Even if she could call for backup, there’s no guarantee she would get it.

She steels her nerves. She can do this. She just has to hold out until one—or preferably both—of her teammates are conscious again.

Sakura drifts in and out of consciousness. She tries to stay awake as much as possible, relying on a meditative state that she learned from Haku in order to preserve her energy, but even knowing how much is on the line, her body isn’t accustomed to working so hard with so little rest. She flits between awareness and a half-lucid dream-state, jerking awake every so often when she realizes she’s not meant to be sleeping.

It would be convenient to have a summons that could help keep watch, Sakura thinks sometime around three in the morning. Kakashi-sensei has nin-dogs, and she can all too easily imagine having Pakkun sit and guard for an hour or two just so she could get some rest. It would require chakra, which Sakura knows she doesn’t have a lot of compared to her teammates, but she could probably manage, especially if it was something small. Maybe by the next chuunin exams.

By dawn, she’s aware that she’s scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes her ability to keep going without a proper rest. If Naruto or Sasuke don’t wake soon, they’re going to be in serious trouble and she really will have to choose between quitting the exams or putting them all at risk due to her exhaustion. She’s not sure how she’d fare right now against any of the other genin teams. It would be a difficult task to pull off solo even if she was at the top of her game, but like this?

All she can do is hope no one attacks.

In the meantime, she busies herself with looking after the boys. Sasuke’s fever hasn’t broken, but it’s not worse at least. And Naruto…well. He hasn’t woken yet, but there’s movement behind his eyelids that suggests he’s probably not that far off. Sakura has half a mind to shake him awake, but—

But there’s a faint rustle in the trees despite there being no wind.

Sakura stills. It’s a gut feeling more than anything, but she knows there’s someone out there. There’s no killing intent, thankfully, no oppressive pressure like the Grass nin from before. Still, she feels, a little, like what she imagines a rabbit feels like when it senses a predator closing in: stuck, scared, helpless.

(Her teammates are still down. She’s burned out, drained, fatigued. If it’s one shinobi, maybe she can take them. But if it’s a team…)

You are not a rabbit, she snarls at herself. Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza and Haku did not spend hours, weeks, months training her for her to be so weak now. To have so little faith. You are Hatake Sakura. You are a wolf.

Her traps will work. She has to believe that.

And her traps are not all she has. She reaches down, brushes her fingers across the senbon still strapped to her leg, counts them. Twelve. The rest had gone into her traps. She has a few kunai left, a few shuriken. She glances behind her—Sasuke’s sword. She’s not as proficient as he is, but she knows the basic forms. As long as none of her opponents are adequate swordsmen, she may have an advantage. The only useless weapon is one you can’t use.

She knows a few doton jutsus, but realistically, she doesn’t have the chakra right now to pull off more than, at best, one, and even that would probably be a waste. Genjutsu could work, so long as it’s nothing too drastic. Taijutsu…well, she hopes it won’t come to that. She’s far better at long-range to mid-range than close up hand-to-hand.

Simple is better. Efficiency is key, Sakura chants to herself. She’s not suited to drawn out fights. Finishing quickly, and preferably with as little energy expended as possible, is her goal.

There’s another rustle of leaves, then a loud, “Oof!” as a person stumbles over one of the trip-wires Sakura set up. In less than a second, a half dozen poison-senbon whiz through the air, almost silent except for the sound of needles hitting flesh and metal.

“Shit, fuck!” someone says, and Sakura peers out from behind her hiding place to take in the lay of the land.

There’s a boy crumpled on the ground dressed in gray and wearing a headband from the Hidden Sound Village. Half of Sakura’s senbon missed him entirely or were deflected, and one looks caught in his clothing in a way Sakura isn’t sure hit skin. But that doesn’t matter, because there’s two senbon sticking out of the boy’s neck. She’s not sure if it’s the paralytic or the hallucinogen that got him—maybe both, if she’s lucky—but either will work.  

“Zaku!” another, feminine voice calls.

“Careful, Kin,” the boy, Zaku answers. “Watch your step—”

Sakura grimaces—more than one, then. Carefully, she inches back, takes Sasuke’s sword and straps the belt to her waist so that it’s within easy reach should she need it. Another glance at Naruto shows that he’s still out, and she’s hesitant to try to forcibly wake him up now, when any loud noise might give away their exact location to the enemy. Naruto is not a quiet riser, something Sakura is now realizing may need to be trained out of him.

“—these fuckin’ traps’re somethin’ else.” Zaku’s voice starts to slur towards the end, a sure sign of the paralytic kicking in.

Good, Sakura thinks, already detachedly cataloguing how the location where he was hit will likely affect his body. If the tongue is losing mobility, it might also impact vision and neck range. Possibly expanding further if it managed to get into the bloodstream. Would it be too much to hope for full body paralysis?

The girl, presumably Kin, lands beside the boy softly, dark hair flowing out behind her. She’s beautiful, but there’s a meanness to her face that Sakura recognizes from all her childhood bullies. This is a girl who doesn’t shy away from cruelty, which isn’t good, but—

“Honestly, Zaku,” she says, head tilting until her nose is in the air, imperious and haughty. “I don’t know how you got caught by some ninja wire of all things. It’s not even well hidden. And look at the ground. It’s obvious we’re dealing with amateurs.”

Sakura grins.

(“Arrogance and pride are two of the most easily exploited faults in young shinobi,” Haku had told her as he demonstrated a more complex braid pattern—the more strands to the braid, the more ninja wire could be woven into it, and this particular pattern had eight strands. “True skill needs no introduction. It speaks for itself.”)

She isn’t so foolish as to think this will be an easy fight. The girl’s confidence might be all talk, or it might be well earned, and since Sakura doesn’t know which is true, she should—like any good shinobi—assume the worst. But if they underestimate Sakura, that will make some things easier.

“Let’s not waste any more time,” a third voice says, and another boy—man?—drops down from the trees. This one has most of his face bandaged, only a single eye visible, and for a moment it makes Sakura think of both Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza. “They’re somewhere around here. We’ll kill the Uchiha brat and finish up quick.”

Something cold slides down her spine at that statement, and any hesitation she might have felt about fighting these three evaporates in an instant. There’s fear at the thought of anyone hurting her teammates, but it’s buried under her anger at their sheer audacity. Sasuke and Naruto are hers.

(Sakura has always gotten attached too easily, or so her parents used to say. Stray kittens and random kind strangers who came into her parents’ shop. At the first sign of friendship, she latched onto Ino and it took a few years, a vicious rivalry, and more than a handful of cruel words exchanged between them to shake it. Even now, a part of Sakura still treasures her—misses her—despite the fact that they’re no longer close.

It took longer with her teammates—partly because she had convinced herself she was infatuated with Sasuke without bothering to truly know him, and partly because Naruto had always annoyed her right up until she realized just how much of that was a front. But Wave…Wave brought them together.

Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza and Haku-nii brought them together, made a family out of them. And, for the first time in a long, long time—possibly ever, though that hurts a little to think about—there are people who return the commitment, the devotion, she’s so eager to bestow.)

There are some people who look at her and think she’s ill-suited to be a shinobi. That’s fine. Sakura has thought it herself more than once. Not right now, though. This team from Sound says they will kill Sasuke, and maybe it should shock Sakura—horrify her—how ready she is to kill them instead if that’s what it takes.

It doesn’t, though. That feeling of protective fury slots into place as if it was always meant to be there. Or maybe, as if it was already there, just waiting for something to be worthy of it.

There’s a lightness to her chest like her own heart has been removed from the equation, unnecessary sentiment cut away and stored for later. There’s an ache in her gums, a taste for blood that sits steady behind her teeth. There’s something sharp and cold and angry swirling in the back of her head, practically singing with the need to attack, defend, protect. It burns away her fear and leaves behind purpose.

Sakura strikes, slices through the vine tied tight to a rock next to her. With the release of tension, a swinging log drops down from above, rushing through the clearing directly towards the three enemy shinobi. If the hit lands, brilliant. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too. Its main purpose is to be a distraction.

The girl, Kin, gives a startled yelp when she catches sight of the log coming towards them, but before she can do anything, the third shinobi whose name Sakura doesn’t know yet raises his arm and—with a small hand-sign she doesn’t recognize—blasts the log into a hundred pieces.

Wind? Sakura wonders for a moment. Or was it a sound-based attack, like the name of their village implies?

She’s never seen a jutsu like that before, can’t even begin to imagine the sort of damage it could do if the sound waves are strong enough to act as either a barrier or battering ram. Just one unspoken jutsu was enough for the man to completely shatter the log—Sakura can only imagine what would happen if it were directed at a human body instead.

At best? Temporary hearing loss and mild disorientation. At worst? Ruptured organs, shattered bones, internal bleeding.

Don’t get hit, she tells herself. It’s just like ninja tag with Haku.

Except with Haku, the worst Sakura has to deal with is mild paralysis or frostbite. These shinobi will kill her without hesitation.

Which means she can’t afford to hesitate either.

Sakura uses her enemies’ distraction with the log to move herself to a more advantageous position, springing up to the tree branch above the hiding spot where the boys are currently resting. Her hands tremble faintly, part nerves, part exhaustion. She ignores them and focuses instead on the task at hand—releasing more traps. She set the senbon and kunai traps to spring when the trip wire was activated, but there’s a secondary trigger here, created just so she could access it quickly herself.

She doubts most will hit their target, but that’s okay. Zaku is already suffering the effects of the paralytic, and even if the resulting array of weaponry being shot at all three of them only serves to cause confusion and panic, it will still be worth it.

(“Battle is a mental fight as much as a physical one,” Kakashi-sensei had told them. “Weakening your enemy isn’t just about taking away their weapon, or getting a good hit in. Shake their confidence. Make them doubt themselves. Emotionally compromise them if you can.”

The Sakura of the academy would have thought that was playing dirty.

The Sakura of now thinks, Yeah, and?)

Using her kunai, she slashes half the wires. It takes less than a second for senbon and kunai and shuriken to rain down into the part of the clearing where the Sound shinobi stand. The attack is sudden, perhaps even unexpected so soon after the falling log trap, and the Sound shinobi scramble to get out of the way.

The unnamed shinobi—who is wearing what looks like a large, bulky animal pelt on his back—is fast, blurring in his movements as he jumps up and out of range in a way that makes Sakura grit her teeth in frustration. The others, however, are neither as quick as him, nor have the presence of mind to calculate an effective escape. Zaku, half paralyzed and likely beginning to feel it, barely dodges a flurry of senbon only to get pinned an instant later by the four kunai he stepped into the path of. One, at least, cuts deep into his leg—and if Sakura is right about the location, it may have even severed a tendon.

The girl, Kin, ducks between the projectiles gracelessly, clumsy in her panic to get away. Sakura watches dispassionately as she steps backwards out of the way of one of the wire traps she noticed earlier…

Exactly as planned, Sakura thinks. In her hurry to avoid the obvious trap, Kin entirely fails to notice the less obvious one, and her misstep sends her into another wire net set in the shadows.

She screams, reeling away from it, her clothing shredded where the wires touched it, skin sliced in places and bleeding. The wire isn’t sharp enough to cut through bone, and there’s little chance it will actually kill the Sound nin. It’s not even enough of an injury to truly debilitate the girl, but it’s a chink in the armor. Something Sakura can exploit.

Kin stumbles back into the clearing, blood dripping from her wounds in splotches. She’s not injured enough to fall, not like Zaku, who can’t even stand, and whose breathing is growing labored either from the pain or—possibly—if the paralytic has somehow gotten into his lungs. Sakura hopes for the latter; it may kill him, and at this point, that means less work for her.

Her body is still tired, and on top of that, she’s no taijutsu expert. On her best days, she’s still physically weaker than either of her teammates. If it comes to a head-on fight, she’s at a distinct disadvantage. She may have made a lot of progress in these past weeks, but she lacks the stamina and the chakra for any sort of drawn out fight—and that’s when she’s fresh.

She’s not fresh now, not by a long shot, and she’s rapidly approaching her absolute limits. She needs to finish this fast.

Sakura flips the kunai in her hand, reminding herself of its weight, calming her breathing and centering her mind. One good, quick hit is all I need, she tells herself. Kin first, then Zaku. Then the other, who is the least injured and will require the most effort.

Plan decided on, she moves, dropping down from the tree every bit as silently as Kakashi-sensei trained them to, surging forward without giving her enemy a chance to react. She lands in front of Kin just as the girl is startling at the realization that Sakura is making an attack. A kick to the knees sends the Sound girl to the ground, and Sakura flings her kunai with all the deadly accuracy she learned from Haku at the girl’s throat.

It doesn’t land. At the last moment, a burst of air knocks the kunai away, and Sakura jumps back on instinct, readying another weapon. The half-paralyzed boy, Zaku, is gasping for breath and doesn’t seem like he can lift his arm, but his palm is turned out towards his teammate, and a small hole in his hand looks to be the origin of the attack.

Sakura’s eyes narrow. That’s…annoying. And potentially problematic, though there’s a good chance even that much motion won’t be available to Zaku for much longer. Still, Sakura’s success relies on quick, decisive action, and with her first plan already thwarted—and so easily, it burns her pride—she’s not sure what to do next. Risk another attack on Kin and hope Zaku can’t stop her again? Or go for Zaku and risk turning her back to Kin, who is already struggling to her feet again?

The indecision only stalls Sakura for a handful of seconds, but even that is too long. The third shinobi drops down behind her, too loud and careless to go unnoticed but a threat all the same.

The greatest threat, Sakura catalogues grimly. His jutsu that destroyed the log is the one she’s most wary of, though she admittedly doesn’t know the full capabilities of the others. Still, there’s something about this third shinobi that sets her instincts on edge.

“Dosu,” Kin says, sheer relief in her voice. “I thought—”

“I doubt you were thinking at all,” the man, Dosu says dismissively. “Or else you wouldn’t have been caught by such simple techniques.”

Sakura bristles. Her techniques may not be as refined as those of older, more experienced shinobi, but she would hardly call her traps simple. She doesn’t appreciate the open condescension, and neither does the snarling, angry thing within her.

“Zaku, get up,” Dosu orders.

Zaku, for his part, tries to choke out a word, but it gets stuck in his throat. He well and truly can’t move, now. That much is obvious.

At least one thing is going right, Sakura thinks. And while they’re distracted…

Because foolishly, neither Kin nor Dosu are looking at her, both too focused on Zaku. She’s not going to waste another opportunity. Sakura lunges forward again, drawing Sasuke’s sword at her waist and aiming for Kin. The girl turns, lifts her arm to block. It’s too familiar a move to Sakura, who is used to sparring with her much rougher, wilder, more inventive teammates, and she ducks under the Sound girl’s guard, blade slicing up and glancing across Kin’s cheek as she turns her head away.

Sakura doesn’t get a chance to attack again, however, because in the next second, a burst of sound rams into her like a brick wall, shoving her away. She tumbles off of Kin, body pushed with enough momentum to send her slamming into a tree—though, luckily, not through it.

Black spots dance in her vision. Her entire body feels like a bruise. She tries to push herself upright, but her arms are shaking now, and when she coughs out a breath, specks of blood spatter onto the leaves beneath her.

Fuck, Sakura thinks. Academy Sakura would be scandalized by Sakura’s crudeness, of course, but Academy Sakura is another lifetime ago, and if anything deserves an expletive, this situation surely warrants it. Coughing out blood could indicate broken ribs and a punctured lung, or it could be something as simple as a bitten tongue. She hopes it’s the latter. She can still fight if it’s just the latter.

“Pathetic,” Dosu is saying, though Sakura can only barely hear him past the ringing in her ears. “Kin, drag her up. We need to question her about her teammates.”

Good, Sakura thinks. That means they haven’t found my hiding spot for Naruto and Sasuke yet. Her relief is a small thing, though. It’s only a matter of time.

“Your hair is shinier than mine,” Kin comments. Sakura can’t quite see her from this angle, but despite her derisive tone, the girl sounds shakier than before. Dosu’s sound blast probably hit her, too, even if it was chakra directed primarily at Sakura. “With the time you wasted on your looks, you should have been training.”

A second later, there’s a sharp pull on Sakura’s braid, and despite the pain and the exhaustion, Sakura grins. Stupid. I’ve already poisoned one of you. Don’t you know to be wary?

Kin cries out again and drops Sakura’s hair, yanking back as the wire strands in the pink braid cut deep.

“What the hell?” Kin says, clutching her hand to her chest.

Sakura rolls back onto her haunches, pushes herself upright using the tree she’d slammed into as a brace. She feels like shit, and she’s not sure what will happen if she tries to rush any of the nin again. She’s not very stable right now, vision swimming and nausea building with every move she makes.

(There’s a part of her that thinks she should have unrolled the scroll and gotten her team out of the exams when she had the chance.

There’s another part of her that knows she isn’t done yet. Until she’s unconscious or dead, she has fight left to give.)

Unlike with Zaku, it takes only a few seconds for the paralytic to set in. Kin’s arm drops limply to her side, panic overtaking her face as she realizes she’s quickly losing control of her body.

She’s a slighter build, Sakura thinks, absently cataloguing the difference in speed. This will be useful to know for later. Which means less mass. She also was in a state of aerobic activity when she was infected with poison—possible higher rate of circulation in her blood flow. Hmm.

She’ll have to consider the implications of that later. For now, she watches as the paralytic takes hold, sending Kin down to her knees. She’s gasping for air, too. Not as bad as Zaku was, who—from a quick glance—may not even be breathing anymore. If he is, it’s shallow.

Dosu’s eyes dart from Kin to Zaku, and then land on Sakura, narrowed and accusing. “Poison.”

Sakura raises a brow, incredulous. Did it really take him that long to figure out? Sakura thought it had been obvious from the beginning, but apparently not.

“Poison?” Kin repeats frantically. She jerks towards Zaku, eyes widening as she takes in his unconscious and possibly dying form. “There’s got to be an antidote. We need the antidote!”

Dosu takes a step forward, but Sakura just lets out a rasping laugh. “Why would I carry an antidote?”

“You’re lying,” Dosu says, though he sounds uncertain. “You must have at least one dose, in case you were affected—”

“Tch. They’re my poisons,” Sakura says. “What makes you think I would be affected by them?”

It’s Haku’s first rule of poisons: never use anything you haven’t built up at least a mild immunity to. There’s nothing more shameful than dying by your own incompetence.

Kin pales. Sakura would have more sympathy for her if she hadn’t been so eager to kill Sakura and her teammates only a few moments ago. As it is…well. This is a golden opportunity.

“If you retreat now and seek medical attention,” Sakura says, voice purposefully bland. “You may live. You may even regain use of your limbs.”

It’s only a partial lie. Kin will in all likelihood be fine in two or three hours. With Zaku, it’s harder to say. Sakura doesn’t think the paralytic she’s using is supposed to be strong enough to kill someone, but if it is somehow impacting his organs, then all bets are off.

Either way, if she can convince the Sound team to retreat, that would be the best case scenario. Sakura isn’t in the right condition to keep fighting, and despite her determination to keep her team safe—and her willingness to kill for them—she hasn’t actually killed anyone before.

(Now seems like a less than ideal time to try it, a part of her says.

Today is as good a day as any, another part says.)

Dosu is quiet for a long moment, seeming to think it over. Then he shrugs. “Casualties are to be expected. The preservation of this team is less important than our goal. Uchiha Sasuke is to die. Those are our orders.”

Fuck, Sakura thinks again. She knows that Konoha prioritizes teamwork more than the other hidden villages, and she knows Kakashi-sensei, specifically, values teamwork more than most. But she never realized just how…callous some shinobi could be.

Kin seems to be realizing this for the first time, too.

“Dosu,” she says, begging this time. “Dosu, please. We can try again for the Uchiha boy later. I’m…I can’t feel my arms. Or my legs. And Zaku—is he even breathing? We need—”

“Shut up.”

Yes, Sakura thinks. I was right in pegging him as the biggest threat. His abilities are one thing, but that mindset…that’s a whole other concern in itself.

Her hands are shaking properly now, and her vision is no steadier than it was three minutes ago. Speaking of medical attention, she undoubtedly needs some herself. Not that she’ll get it. Not until they get to the central tower or forfeit.

There isn’t any other choice, though. Sakura raises Sasuke’s sword again. She doesn’t know how she’ll win this fight. Her best asset is her brain, and that was given a good rattle when she slammed into that tree. She can’t think clearly, which means she’ll be falling back on muscle memory and training.

Maybe if she was facing someone else, that would be enough. Right now…

“Naruto!” she calls out, because being quiet was only useful when she was still hiding from the Sound nin. Now that she’s out in the open, with two opponents incapacitated and one looking to kill her, it doesn’t do her any good. She just needs him to wake up, be her backup, come to rescue her—

(It grates that even after how far she’s come, she still needs to be rescued.

She wonders: if it were Naruto or Sasuke left alone to take care of the rest of their unconscious team, would they have struggled half so bad?)

Like an answer to her prayers, there’s a blur of motion, and then someone is dropping down in front of her, standing between her and Dosu.

It’s not Naruto, though. The figure is dark-haired and wearing a green jumpsuit.

Rock Lee. The boy who’d tried—and failed—to challenge Sasuke just before the exams. The boy who’d asked Sakura out on a date and proclaimed he’d protect her with his life.

She hadn’t given him much consideration at the time. Team 7 had brushed past and continued on their way to the waiting room. Naruto had commented that the boy looked strong, and Team 7 had agreed to avoid Lee’s team—which also consists of a Hyuuga boy and a pretty girl who carries a large, mysterious scroll.

Now, for some reason, Lee is here. And he’s not attacking Sakura, though they are, technically, enemies for the duration of this exam.

Relief blooms in her chest. Lee is not her team, and therefore she’s not sure how much she can trust him, but…there’s something terribly earnest about him. Some part of her subconscious must decide that he’s safe, because everything starts to blur after that.

Lee moves fast, faster than Sakura can visibly track, and faster than Dosu can counter, given how he’s taken off guard. There’s some quick exchange of taijutsu that sends Dosu flying, and then Lee is behind him, wrapping him in bindings, and—

Slamming him headfirst into the ground, apparently. Dosu crashes into the earth, directly into the field where Sakura had planted all her explosives. There’s a huge blast, though Sakura is far enough back she feels only the wave of heat. Lee lands beside her, breathing heavy and looking scuffed up, but otherwise fine.

The same can’t be said for Dosu. His body lies motionless and crispy in a crater in the ground. Neither of his teammates are capable of doing anything to help, paralyzed as they are, though they’ve escaped the same fate by virtue of being outside the blast radius.

“Is…is he alive?” Lee asks, looking a little pale.

Sakura chokes back a laugh. It isn’t funny, but she’s having a hard time feeling much of anything right now, and distantly, she thinks she might be approaching hysteria or shock or something. Still, she’s incredulous that Lee could think he could essentially fling someone headfirst into the ground from that sort of height, only for the man to blow up in Sakura’s trap, and somehow still be alive.

Shinobi can survive extraordinary things, Zabuza’s voice echoes in her head. So despite her near certainty, she drags herself over to the crater and looks more closely.

Dosu is most definitely dead. His neck is bent at an odd angle, a piece of bone literally protruding from his spine. If that weren’t enough, the explosion blasted through multiple layers of tissue and muscle. There’s blood everywhere, and Sakura is pretty sure one of the man’s legs is completely gone up to the hip.

Distantly, she’s aware she should probably be vomiting. It’s gruesome, and she’s not used to seeing these things for all that she knows the shinobi lifestyle is not for the weak of stomach. Instead, she still feels the empty, determined calm that she’s been feeling all battle.

That’s probably not…healthy, Sakura thinks. Something to examine later, though. Kakashi-sensei will be able to help her. Or if not, then Zabuza, or Haku.

“Sakura-chan,” Lee says, coming up beside her. “Are you—oh.”

Lee takes one look at the dead Sound shinobi and promptly turns, hurling. Sakura feels bad for him—wonders if this is his first kill, too, wonders if they share it, between Lee’s taijutsu and Sakura’s explosives.

Then, because the battle isn’t over—Kin and Zaku may not be as dangerous but that doesn’t mean they’re not threats—Sakura turns to the remaining Sound shinobi. Zaku is still not moving, and when Sakura reaches down to feel for a pulse, she finds nothing but too cool skin.

Dead, then. Which only leaves…

Kin is sheet white as she stares at Sakura.

“Don’t,” she whispers, pleads, from where she’s lying on the ground. Her fingers are twitching, trying to reach for a weapon though it’s futile.

Sakura hates this girl. Hates how casually she came here to kill Sakura’s teammate. Hates how haughty she was in facing Sakura, how superior. Hates how, if Sakura hadn’t poisoned her, she’d probably have continued being a nuisance throughout the fight, and yet Kin somehow thinks she has a right to beg for her life.

Leaving her alive is out of the question. She has orders to kill Sasuke, for one, and now the other issue is that Sakura and Lee have killed the rest of her team, which means vengeance is a distinct possibility if Sakura lets her go.

(Sakura does not want to let her go. That’s a much harder truth to face, so she doesn’t, hiding it behind pragmatism and logic.)

Sakura doesn’t know if she has what it takes to slit Kin’s throat while the girl is defenseless, though. It felt different during the fight, when they were both on equal footing. In the heat of a fight, going for the kill had felt natural. Now, as the girl quietly pleads for her life, unable to move so much as an inch, killing her like that feels…brutal.

Dead is dead, Zabuza likes to say. Usually, he means that the specific choices they make in battle won’t matter if the end result is dying either way—whether your fight honorably or like a cheat, if you end up dead, what was any of it worth?

And maybe he’s right. Sakura is going to kill Kin, and whether she does it by dragging Sasuke’s blade through her throat or with her poisons shouldn’t matter. It’s cold-blooded either way.

(Doing it with poisons feels, a bit, like she’s lying to herself. Like she can say, later, that she didn’t mean it. That it was an accident.

Maybe that’s why it’s easier.)

Sakura kneels at Kin’s side. She takes her senbon—more paralytics—and jams three as close to Kin’s heart as possible. The girl jolts, nothing more than a reaction of nerve endings, and then she gasps, eyes going wide. Within thirty seconds, she’s dead.

Sakura removes her senbon and repockets them. She’ll have to search the rest of the battlefield later to see if any of her other supplies are salvageable.

Lee comes up beside her, finished upheaving the contents of his stomach. “Sakura-chan, are you alright?”

Sakura looks up at him, lets herself acknowledge him as an ally and that the battle is done now.

“Yes, Lee-kun,” Sakura says. And then she passes out.

When Sakura next wakes up, she’s on Naruto’s back, the forest blurring around her.

“Naruto?” she asks. Her voice sounds like sandpaper. Her body feels like she took the full brunt of the fall from those trees, and her head is aching like it might be concussed. It takes her a minute to remember the fight, and that Naruto is somehow up and moving about and she missed it.

He slows immediately. “Sakura, you’re awake!”

“Hn.”

She turns her head—too fast, ow, dammit—and there, right beside them, is Sasuke.

“You’re both…alright?” she asks. The last time she saw them, they were both unconscious and Sasuke was still fevered.

“We’re fine!” Naruto insists. “Sasuke’s feeling pretty shitty still, but I’m totally okay. Sorry I was out so long. I—” he lowers his voice “—I talked to the fox.”

Sakura has so many questions, but that’ll have to wait for later.

“Sasuke?”

“You should worry more about yourself,” he says, and if this had been a few months ago, Sakura would have taken that as an insult, a dig at her inability to maintain consciousness after her fight. Now, she can hear the obvious concern in his voice.

“I’m okay. Just tired.”

It’s an understatement, but it’ll have to do.

“We heard about your fight. Or part of it, from Lee,” Naruto says, still quiet. “Three Sound nin. All dead.”

There’s a moment where Sakura wonders if her teammates will condemn her. Now that she’s not in the middle of it, part of her recoils from the things she did. From the choices she made.

(Not that she would change those choices. She was only responding to the threat level presented to her. If the Sound nin hadn’t said they would kill Sasuke, Sakura wouldn’t have needed to go so far.)

“You did good,” Sasuke says, brusque and stilted, but honest.

“Yeah! All that training with Haku must be paying off!” Then, quieter again, Naruto says, “Lee said…right before he came to help, you were calling for me. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me.”

“S’okay,” Sakura mumbles as she sags onto Naruto’s back. It’s not like it was his fault, and everything is fine, now. It all worked out. “’Sides, wanted to save you guys for once.”

“Tch,” Sasuke huffs, but his face is pink.

“Ah…well.” Naruto goes to rub the back of his neck—his usual sheepish tic kicking in—but with Sakura on his back he accidentally bops her on the head instead. “Let’s all get stronger, so we can all protect each other!”

Sakura smiles, and lets unconsciousness take her again. Her team will be just fine.

Chapter Text

They make it to the central tower with a full day to spare. Naruto’s pick of the teams that will be easiest for them to target proves fruitful, and even with Sakura injured and exhausted and mostly unconscious for the rest of their time in the forest, they acquire the necessary scroll quickly enough.

Sasuke is…relieved, though he makes a point not to show it as his team is ushered through the tower towards the single dorm they’ll share until the next phase of the exams starts. They aren’t allowed medical attention, and they won’t be allowed to see their sensei until this second phase of the exam is technically over. It’s not what he’d prefer—Sakura is injured enough that leaving her unattended makes him nervous, and there’s nothing he wants more than for Kakashi to look at the seal on his neck, remove it if he can. Orochimaru, that bastard, didn’t explain what it would do, just that it would give him power.

Sasuke doesn’t trust it. If there’s anything he’s learned from the training Kakashi and Zabuza and Haku have put them through in the past two months, it’s that there is no fast-track to true skill. Even Sasuke’s sword-work, which Zabuza gruffly says he’s a natural at, requires constant practice and repetition. In training with Zabuza, he can feel himself getting stronger. In training with Haku, he can feel himself getting faster. In training with Kakashi, he knows he’s learning to fight smarter.

But it requires work. Effort. Practice.

And he knows, now, to be wary. Any path to power that sounds too easy, too immediate, too promising—well. There’s a trap to it, a trick or a lie or a cost that Sasuke won’t fall for.

Still, there’s nothing he can do about the seal—or the sickly, stifling way it curls around him, makes him feel tainted—until Kakashi can look at it. In the meantime, he can tend to his team and try to prepare for what’s next. The moment they’re alone, some of the tension drops from his shoulders, and that in itself helps to diminish the sharp edge of fear and inadequacy that’s been plaguing him from the moment he saw Naruto and Sakura drop from the trees, since the moment he had to face Orochimaru alone.

They’re safe for now. They made it.

Naruto is hovering over Sakura, who is still asleep and breathing steadily. He looks about as worried as Sasuke feels and is likely frustrated over his inability to do anything to help. Neither of them know anything about field medicine beyond what is taught in the academy, and that’s not much.

How to bandage a minor cut, or treat mild burns, or prevent hypothermia. Useful skills, but not comprehensive by any means. Sakura’s ribs are possibly fractured or broken, and Sasuke knows that you’re supposed to wrap damaged ribs, but he doesn’t know how. It’s only luck that she has no broken arms or legs—he doesn’t know how to set those either.

It's a gap in his knowledge that he’s never given much thought to. His focus has always been on training in ways that improve his combat ability. He never found fault in that before, because until recently, his perception of power has been narrowed into a singular focus.

He never imagined he’d be standing over an injured teammate and feel powerless because he can’t heal them.

(“Weakness is only a fault if you make no effort to correct it,” Kakashi had told him once, when Sasuke was frustrated at his inability to land so much as a single tap on Kakashi during a spar. “When you find yourself lacking, it merely shows you how to be better in the future.”)

Kakashi’s lesson hadn’t really sunk in until here and now, looking at Sakura with the knowledge that Sasuke not only can do better, but that he must. It’s not enough to be a capable fighter. It’s not enough to be physically strong, or fast, or clever.

Sasuke cannot afford to lose anyone again. He used to think that meant never letting anyone close, but then Naruto and Sakura and Kakashi wormed their way into his life regardless. Then Haku and Zabuza clawed out a space for themselves, too, in whatever is left of Sasuke’s heart.

If—like he did in the forest—he fails in fighting away the enemy, in keeping his family team from getting hurt in the first place, then he needs to be able to heal them. One day, he will be strong enough, but for now, he needs a backup plan. A contingency. A safeguard.

He will not be useless like this again.

The rest time in the tower does little for Naruto except make him antsy. He’s neither exhausted nor injured like Sakura, and he doesn’t have some fucked up seal making his chakra act funky like Sasuke, and while he appreciates the chance to shower and sleep without having his guard up, for the most part, he just wants this part to be over already.

He’s not one to quit—and especially not halfway through—but the part of him that knows there’s practically no chance of them becoming chuunin this time around keeps thinking it might be better to just…forfeit now. His pride hates that, and despite the care and validation and love that he has from his family, there’s still an urge to prove himself.

But with Sasuke’s unknown seal—put on him by Orochimaru, one of the Sannin, and boy does that explain a lot and also nothing at all—and Sakura’s injuries—though she’s conscious and moving around now, if stiffly—it feels selfish to want to continue.

It’s only Sakura’s glare and snarled, “I didn’t go through all that shit just for you to back out now,” that makes him backtrack on the offer.

When the chime rings for the end of the Forest of Death challenge, Naruto and his team line up in wait for their sensei along with the other teams who’ve made it. He quickly scans the competition. Unsurprisingly the Sand team, Gaara’s team, is among the lineup. The rest appear to all be teams from Konoha—which Naruto assumes is due to the terrain challenges of the forest, something Konoha nin are familiar with that the other teams may not be.

Naruto eyes his former classmates. Shikamaru mostly looks tired and frazzled, and Naruto can’t blame him. Ino is alternating between reprimanding him for something or other and shooting glares at Sakura. Choji seems to have run out of chips, and that’s bound to make him cranky. Kiba’s team—and Naruto is admittedly surprised to see them here—looks unharmed and well-rested.

They were lucky, Naruto thinks. It’s not that he’s disparaging their skills. Shino’s bugs are wicked cool, and Hinata has the byakugan, and Kiba’s partnership with Akamaru is rock solid. But if Naruto had been asked to pick a team from their academy class that wouldn’t make it through the forest, Naruto would have picked them. The clashing personalities alone are enough to derail even a simple conversation, let alone a mission.

There’s also Lee’s team, with the stuck-up Hyuuga and the girl with the buns, and another Leaf team, with the shady guy, Kabuto, who tried to give them intel back before the exam even started.

Impressive for a guy who claims to have failed the chuunin exams 5 times, Naruto thinks. That he’s here, relatively unscathed, only makes the guy look more suspicious, and Naruto resolves to keep an eye on him.

Not that he’ll get a chance until the next stage, however. Kakashi-sensei appears before them with his usual masked face and eye-smile, barely pausing to nod at the proctors before he’s pushing them out of the tower with faux cheer. Just his presence alone is a relief, and for the first time since they encountered Orochimaru, Naruto feels certain everything will be okay.

“Come on, my cute little students,” Kakashi-sensei says, his hand a firm grip on Naruto’s shoulder, his body a shield at their backs. “Let’s get you home.”

Zabuza frowns in concentration as he finishes wrapping bandages around Sakura’s ribcage. The ribs are only bruised, as best as he can tell, and as long as she doesn’t take another hit to them, they should be fine until the next rounds of the exam are over and they can get her to a proper medic. The little Uchiha brat sits in a chair across from them, sharingan activated while he watches Zabuza take care of his teammate even as Kakashi frantically tries to counter the seal left on the boy’s neck.

What a fucking mess.

The fact that they have a chance to look over the kids at all is only thanks to Kakashi staring down the Hokage and demanding a recess before the preliminaries, since apparently the Hokage had wanted to just roll right into the one-on-one fights. Kakashi had threatened to pull his whole team from the exam, and with all the background politics bullshit of people wanting to see how Sasuke will perform, the Hokage had relented.

None of the kids are allowed to see a medic, though, before the fights. And their time is limited. Naruto, luckily, is basically right as rain and in nearly as good a condition as he went into the exams. Sasuke is mostly fine aside from the seal. It’s Sakura who would benefit the most from a little chakra healing, but apparently, that “wouldn’t be fair.”

Bureaucratic bullshit, Zabuza thinks. It’s one thing he certainly doesn’t miss from Kiri, and he’s only tolerating it in Konoha because Kakashi promises they’ll remove the Hokage and his corrupt advisors as soon as they reasonably can.

Zabuza half thinks that Kakashi should damn well just do the job himself, except Kakashi would hate being Hokage, and more than that, he’s not the sort to ever, really, be able to put the well-being of the village above his need to protect what’s his. The family will always come first, and while that makes for a bad politician, it’s also a huge reason why Zabuza even bothered to follow Kakashi here to begin with.

“We have less than an hour before we have to be back,” Kakashi explains as he finishes with the temporary seal he’s placed on Sasuke. He ruffles the Uchiha’s hair, and for once, the boy doesn’t bristle under the attention. “More people passed the second round than they expected, so they’ll be doing preliminary one-on-one fights. It should be randomized, and there’s no way to know who you’ll be facing.”

Kakashi’s eye flicks over to meet Zabuza’s for a moment, and Zabuza can read that look easily: just because it should be randomized doesn’t mean it will be, and there’s a good chance the match ups will be fixed. Considering all the clan kids in the running, there’s bound to be some bias. It will work out in favor for Sasuke, but it theoretically puts Naruto and Sakura at a disadvantage.

The very thought makes Zabuza grin behind the bandages on his face. Good fucking luck to whatever privileged little shit thinks any of his kids will be an easy target. Sakura’s already debriefed them on her battle against the Sound nin—three kills in her first real fight, and she didn’t even puke. And she was clever about it, took as few risks as possible, played to her strengths. Kami, he’s fucking proud of her.

And Naruto may have been dead last in the academy, but Zabuza’s seen the kid at work. There’s a difference between book smarts and street smarts, and Naruto has the latter in spades. Besides, Zabuza doesn’t train weaklings. If he didn’t genuinely think these kids had some damned potential, he wouldn’t have bothered, family or not.

“I’m going to withdraw,” Sakura says, and everyone turns to look at her. Both Naruto and Sasuke immediately start protesting, but Sakura just raises a hand and they quiet. “I’m not suited to direct combat on a good day. I’m still exhausted, I probably have a concussion, and there’s no point in fighting further if I’m not being considered for promotion anyway. If I continued on, it would only be out of stubbornness and pride, and honestly, I’m not all that interested in fighting if there’s nothing to gain.”

Zabuza huffs a laugh. He knew she’d be the sensible one once she stopped her fangirling and self-pity. Haku really is rubbing off on her, it seems. He’s not one for meaningless fights either, doesn’t have the bloodlust for it like Zabuza does.

Kakashi nods. “Well-reasoned, Sakura.” Then he turns to the boys. “I have no issue with you continuing with the preliminaries. Just remember to be cautious.”

(Zabuza almost snorts. Kakashi’s so full of shit. If he could, he’d pull all the kids out and hunker down in the Hatake compound until Orochimaru is either definitively out of the country or else dead.

The only reason he didn’t is because Zabuza smacked him over the head and asked, “What good would that do?” when Kakashi came running to him in a panic over the snakey bastard possibly going after their kids.

What had followed was a much more thorough planning session to determine some countermeasures that can be taken if and when Orochimaru does show up.)

(“Snakes do not self-regulate their body temperatures,” Haku had offered up blandly. “They are particularly susceptible to the cold.”

Zabuza had just laughed.)

“No overkill,” Naruto says with an eyeroll. “We know.”

“Sasuke, you should limit your chakra use as much as possible.” Kakashi lightly taps the seal he placed over Orochimaru’s. “I’ve sealed off what I can for now, but if you start throwing out ninjutsu left and right, you could overwhelm the block I’ve placed on it.”

Sasuke nods. “I’ll be careful.”

“Anything else to add?” Kakashi asks, looking over the kids again. Zabuza’s pretty sure they’ve covered all the most important stuff, but then Naruto raises his hand.

“Um. The kyuubi said the bijuu in the sand kid is, like, really unstable. So, uh, if either of us get paired to go against Gaara, we should probably forfeit or else there’s a good chance we’ll be—and this is a direct quote—crushed to a bloody pulp.”

Silence. Zabuza isn’t sure what part of that to address first: that Naruto talked to the kyuubi, that the kyuubi gave helpful advice, or that the jinchuuriki from Sand is even more dangerous than they had previously assumed.

Kakashi isn’t faring much better, though the shock quickly melts into an expression that Zabuza recognizes from the time loop. An expression that he associates with Kakashi at his most serious. And his most lethal.

“What.”

Sakura sits in the stands of the arena as the remaining genin are paired up by an automated computer program. She doesn’t regret her choice to bow out, especially seeing how the arena is an empty space with no cover to work with. There are a few genin here she thinks she could have taken in a spar, but also her head is throbbing and her ribs ache and really, she’s just glad she gets to rest.

Kakashi-sensei didn’t say it in so many words, but she can tell he’s proud of her for knowing her own limits and not carrying on recklessly. She can tell he’s proud of her for what she did in the forest, too—he and Zabuza, and Haku-nii all are—and it eases the smidgen of guilt and worry that had burrowed into her chest.

(Not regret. Every time she thinks of how vulnerable Sasuke was then, how easy it would have been for the Sound nin to kill him if Sakura hadn’t been there to stop them, it just reaffirms that she made the right choice.

But there was a part of her that worried her team, her family, would think she’d been too cruel. Had gone too far. If they would be concerned by her apathy—she knows she is. Instead, she’d been met with not just acceptance, but approval.

Kakashi-sensei’s warm hug and a low rumble of, “We protect what’s ours.”

Zabuza’s rasping laugh as he said, “That’s our girl.”

Haku’s gentle fingers in her hair. “There is no greater honor than guarding those we love.”)

The matchups slot into place, and Sakura scans them eagerly. She may not be fighting, but that doesn’t mean she’s completely slacking off. Her seat allows her a good vantage point to watch every fight and pick at every weakness. If Naruto and Sasuke make it into the finals, the intel she picks up here could prove useful to them.

Kakashi-sensei eyes the board, then her, and says, “If you can predict the outcome of every match accurately, you won’t have chores for the rest of the month.”

Her eyes narrow. He doesn’t say who, exactly, will be taking on her chores, and she very much doubts it will be him. Oh well. That’s not her problem, as long as she isn’t responsible.

“Deal.”

Some of them will be harder to determine than others. She’s familiar with the genin that she graduated with, but Lee’s team is nearly as unknown to her as the other, older team from Konoha. And as for the Sand Siblings, all Sakura knows for certain is that Gaara is not to be trifled with.

Still. Her chores are on the line, and Sakura can at least guess. And she can make an educated guess based on what she observes.

“First match: Choji vs. Yoroi!” the proctor down in the arena calls, and Sakura leans forward as if getting a better look will be enough to help her divine the right answer.

It’s tricky. Choji is from the Akimichi clan, and their clan techniques lean towards tremendous strength. But from what Sakura remembers in the academy, he takes his cues from Shikamaru, slacking off and uninterested in training.

Not that that means much, Sakura thinks. She used to be the same—not slacking off, exactly, but not pushing herself either. If anyone assessed her by her abilities in the academy, they would have a thoroughly inaccurate impression of her current skill.

Except, unlike herself, she doesn’t think Choji has changed. As he ambles down to the arena, he’s complaining about being out of chips, more focused on the food than the upcoming fight. Even accounting for the fact that caloric intake is essential for his clan techniques, Sakura’s not sure his head is in the right place.

In contrast, his opponent, Yoroi, cuts an intimidating figure. He’s an adult for starters, a good foot taller than Choji and broad like a farmer. He wears a veil over the lower half of his face and dark eyeglasses, both of which lend him a serious look, and his gait is confident. Sakura doesn’t know what his specialty is—she can’t see any obvious weapons on him, though his level of fitness makes her think taijutsu over ninjutsu.

There’s also the fact, however, that if Yoroi is taking the chuunin exams as an adult, he’s probably not very strong. Generally, Sakura has noticed that those with the potential to reach higher ranks tend to do so in their teens. Yoroi may have more experience, but if he can’t utilize it well…

And there is one thing that can get Choji properly motivated.

“Your assessment, Sakura?” Kakashi prompts. Both her teammates lean closer, curious.

“It’ll be close, I think, but Yoroi has the advantage. However, if Choji gets serious, it may end in a draw.”

From her left, where the rest of Choji’s team is sitting, Ino snaps, “What would you know, forehead? You’re too weak to even fight.”

Shikamaru is frowning, but at least he doesn’t complain about her lack of faith in Choji.

Not that Sakura particularly cares. She’s only answering her sensei’s question, and she’s only working with the information she has.

“I guess we’ll just have to see,” Sakura says.

Choji and Yoroi knock each other out. Like Sakura guessed, it’s a close one. Yoroi has some ability to drain chakra which is an incredible skill, but he does make the mistake of calling Choji fat, and that means Yoroi gets body slammed into a wall just as Choji’s chakra runs out. When the dust clears, they’re both unconscious and the proctor calls a drawl. Double elimination right out of the gate.

Sasuke can’t decide what’s more impressive: that Sakura’s prediction is scarily accurate, or the absolutely incredulous look the Nara kid gives her when she’s proven right. It makes Sasuke feel rather smug despite the fact it’s not his own skill that’s being admired.

The thing that he’s never been able to stand about Shikamaru is the wasted potential. Shikamaru is incredibly smart, comes from a clan with a powerful and versatile jutsu, and has all the makings of a truly impressive shinobi. He could be a prodigy if he ever bothered. But instead, throughout the entire academy, he drifted, laying around and doing the bare minimum whenever possible.

It’s a luxury of the ignorant to be so careless with your own potential. Since Sasuke was 7—his family dead, his brother a murderous traitor—he has known that the only way to ensure survival is to be the strongest. The only way to protect yourself and the people you care about is to be stronger, better than any enemy you might face.

(There are layers to that, he’s learning. Different meanings of strength that he hadn’t considered until recently. But still, at the end of the day, Sasuke knows a fundamental truth about the world that Shikamaru seems utterly blind to.)

Shikamaru could have given Sasuke a proper challenge in the academy, but he’d spent his days cloud watching instead. And now, faced with a Sakura who is sharp and clever and quick, Shikamaru has the nerve to be astounded that someone might actually be a few steps ahead of him for once.

That it’s Sakura, who everyone—including Sasuke—underestimated? Sakura, who, despite being top kunoichi, had a long way to go before she was a threat to anyone. Sakura, who has bridged that gap while Shikamaru, for all his genius, has stayed stuck.

It really couldn’t be more perfect.

“Second match: Shino vs. Kankuro!”

“Sakura?” Kakashi says, and he looks smug, too.

Sakura leans forward to peer over the railing. Sasuke—and Naruto and Shikamaru—lean in to better hear her.

“Shino’s bugs are versatile between the various sizes and types, and of course, how he chooses to utilize them,” she muses quietly, almost to herself. “Some may be poisonous. Ah, but Suna is famous for poisons and—oh! Hm.” Then she nods. “Shino will win.”

Shikamaru stares at Sakura. Then he looks at the two shinobi getting ready to face off and tries to figure out what it is she’s seen that makes her so certain Shino will win.

(How had she looked at Choji and his opponent and guessed, in less than a minute, how it would all play out?

More importantly, how the fuck was she right?)

He knows he has a mind for strategy. He plays shogi with his father, and he doesn’t lose every match. Most of them, maybe, but not all. He finds most thought exercises overly simplistic, and he finds most people stupid, and he hasn’t had anything to challenge him in so long that he just…stopped trying after a while.

People call him lazy, but it’s more that he figures most things out way too quickly and spends the rest of the time bored, and then his mind just…drifts. Because there’s no way he can be bothered to pay attention to an hour-long lecture that he understood perfectly three minutes in. And he’s not going to practice the same set of kata for weeks and weeks and weeks when he can do it perfectly after a day.

 (The analytical part of him knows that what he needs is a teacher who will raise the bar constantly—who will set Shikamaru a challenge just outside of his capabilities so that there’s something interesting for him to chase after.

Shikamaru also knows that he’d resent being made to work so hard.)

Now, though, he focuses in on the fight below with as much concentration as if it were a shogi board. He wants to understand. Wants to know.

How can Sakura have so much faith in Shino?

He’s calm and levelheaded under pressure, sure. But Shikamaru wouldn’t say his insects are particularly combative. They’re best suited to recon, tracking and intel. Shino himself is a rather apathetic person, and his taijutsu from the academy mechanical and stilted. He’s not particularly adept with weaponry, and Shikamaru doesn’t think he specializes in ninjutsu either.

He's just…average.

The Suna nin, Kankuro, is a total unknown. Shikamaru isn’t a total idiot, and he’s wary of that team in particular, if only for the way the red-headed one looks three seconds away from committing murder at any time, but Kankuro himself is unassuming.

Five minutes into the fight, with Shino’s bugs flying around as he dodges attacks from Kankuro and with no apparent end in sight, Shikamaru turns back to Sakura.

“Still think Shino will win?” he asks, brow raised. Shino has to be getting tired from all the constant moving around, and the most he’s done to counterattack is have his bugs swarm the Suna nin, which doesn’t seem to be stopping him in the slightest.

“Yes.” Sakura blinks at him, then her eyes catch on something happening in the fight below, and her lips lift ever so slightly into a smile. “Ah, there it is.”

Shikamaru turns back to the field just in time to see both of Kankuro’s arms fall off. Only, no, they’re not his arms. Or not his real arms. They look like…wood?

A puppet, Shikamaru realizes abruptly. A very realistic puppet, but still. And somehow, Sakura had known. Or guessed.

(“Ah, but Suna is famous for poisons and—oh!”

That’s what she’d said. And given the giant, wrapped lump on Kankuro’s back—or rather, the puppet’s back—it seems obvious in hindsight. Knowledge of a shinobi village’s specialties combined with context clues, and there’s the answer.)

(How much do I see and ignore? Shikamaru wonders. How much more can I do if I pay attention?)

He turns back to the arena, watches as it takes only another minute for Shino to completely disable the puppet, wood-boring bugs eating away at the thing, watches as Kankuro panics and forfeits in an attempt to salvage the remains.

Alright, Shikamaru tells himself. This is simple enough. Just observation and a little logic.

He prepares to make his own guess at the next outcome, certain that now that he knows what to look for, it won’t be so difficult, although—

“Third match: Shikamaru vs. Tsurugi!”

Ah, shit.

“And this one?” Kakashi asks his cute little—perfectly terrifying—student. He can feel Asuma watching intently from the side, no doubt curious what she’ll have to say about Shikamaru now that she’s proven she knows what she’s talking about.

Being able to use basic deduction to gather intel and formulate probabilities isn’t groundbreaking or anything, especially not with one-on-one fights which are simple by nature, but it’s not a particularly common skill among genin, or even chuunin. Certainly not with the speed and accuracy with which Sakura is managing.

“Shikamaru,” Sakura says definitively, and then she pauses, shrugs. “Well, if he wants to win. He might decide proceeding to the finals is too much work.”

Sasuke snorts. Naruto laughs. Asuma sighs deeply.

Kakashi’s just glad the Nara kid isn’t his problem.

His kids have their own peculiarities, yes, but even Sakura in peak-fangirl mode was still a hard worker. Still had drive, however misdirected. There’s never been a time when his kids half-assed anything he set them to.

Out of all of them, Kakashi was the one not pulling his weight. Until Zabuza came and kicked him into gear, at least.

(It seems like Shikamaru needs to be kicked into gear, too.

Hm, Kakashi thinks. Maybe when the exams are over, a joint training session could be just the thing.)

Naruto tries not to fidget in his seat as he waits for his turn. It’s not that the fights are boring or anything, it’s just that he’s eager to get to his own.

He’s eager to test himself against his former classmates, to measure how far he’s come in a fight that’s a little more fair than going up against Orochimaru.

Still, he pays attention to the battles as much as he can. He’s good at reading people, but he doesn’t have Sakura’s gift for tactics, so he can’t really know who’s going to win which fight. It’s fun to listen to her pick things apart. Fun to see her theories come true.

Shikamaru only gets serious after Ino yells at him to stop messing around, screaming some threat about telling his mom about his cloud-watching hill. After that, it takes less than a minute for him to trap his opponent and force him into forfeiting. Naruto’s always known Shikamaru is scary smart and probably a lot more dangerous than he ever lets on, lazy exterior or not. It’s good to see him put his skills to use for once.

The next fight, Tenten vs. Temari, is almost disappointingly quick, and like Sakura guesses from the get-go, it comes down to a bad match up more than any significant difference in skill. Tenten’s specialty seems like projectile weapons, and Temari’s specialty is a giant fan that she can channel wind jutsus through.

It's the coolest thing Naruto’s seen in a while, and he’s already wondering what it would take to get some fans of his own. A big one like that would be too bulky for him and his fighting style—it would get in the way of him moving freely, limit his flexibility. But Zabuza says that Naruto’s chakra affinity is wind, and maybe if he had a pair of fans, small enough to tuck into his pockets or up his sleeves…

Ah, that would so cool!

Besides, fans are typically women’s tools, so no one would expect Naruto to use them, and if there’s one thing he prides himself on, it’s being the most unpredictable ninja. And Kakashi-sensei is always going on about diversifying your skillset, how it’s foolish to rely too heavily on one discipline. It’s why Naruto still sometimes goes through sword forms even though he sucks at them.

But if he had fans…

Before he can lose himself to that line of thought, though, the proctor calls for the next match.

“Naruto vs. Ino!”

He springs to his feet, practically vaults over the handrail and down into the field. He’s excited, okay? In the forest, he got to explode himself out of a giant snake, land one hit on Orochimaru, and then steal a scroll from an unsuspecting team. Sasuke and Sakura both got to properly fight—and even if it was more a struggle for survival than for fun, Naruto is a little jealous.

“Kick her ass, Naruto,” Sakura calls, smiling viciously.

“Oh, please,” Ino says as she makes her way down the stairs. “I’m not going to lose to Naruto.”

It’s not like he was going to go easy on her before or anything, but the way she says his name—sneering and derisive, like she doesn’t expect him to be capable of anything—cements Naruto’s resolve. This fight isn’t about showing off, he knows, and Kakashi-sensei wants them to hold back. That’s fine. Naruto still plans to win.

He doesn’t have anything against Ino in particular, and he knows she’s not alone in thinking of him as the dead last of the academy. People have been looking down on Naruto his whole life, and he’s pretty sure Ino picked it up from the adults around them rather than having any particular feelings about Naruto on her own.

It’s not personal, is what he means.

It still hurts.

(In the months since Wave, Naruto has come to know what it’s like to be loved for the first time in his life. His family isn’t up front about it—they don’t say it aloud in so many words—but he can read it in their actions.

Zabuza is gruff but he fusses over them in his own way, like some kind of homicidal mother hen. Kakashi-sensei doesn’t ever fully relax unless all six of them are in the house. Haku is gentle in ways that were completely foreign to Naruto before Wave, and it still sometimes makes him want to cry when he thinks about how lucky he is.

Sasuke is steady at his side, at his back. Sakura…Sakura has killed to keep them safe.

Somewhere, amid all that love, Naruto almost forgot what it was like to be hated.)

(Almost.)

Ino stands across from him. Naruto watches her, thinks.

He hadn’t asked Sakura who she thought would win. He already knows.

Ino is arrogant. She has her clan jutsu, but other than that, she’s not very strong. If what he picked up from Asuma-sensei is right, then Ino hasn’t been training. None of Team 10 has.

He’s not sure if she prefers weapons to taijutsu, or if she knows ninjutsu beyond the academy three and whatever she learned from her clan. None of that really matters, though. Naruto has always been more action oriented anyway. He’ll adapt, no matter what.

“Begin!”

Ino leaps back, pulls kunai out and flings them at Naruto, but he’s already moving. Her aim isn’t half as good as Haku’s in any case. Naruto has nothing to worry about.

He closes the distance between them quickly, drops into a crouch when Ino swings for a punch, and then sweeps out her legs. She falls, and Naruto knows he could finish this here, with a kunai held to her throat, but he’s supposed to be playing it safe, not showing his hand. It burns a little to know he can’t show how good he is—but he also knows that some people will get nervous if the kyuubi’s jinchuuriki is too advanced, or they might get greedy. Kakashi-sensei always looks close to panicking whenever he talks about it.

So Naruto swallows his pride and lets Ino get her feet under her, lets her scramble back. She throws kunai again, and Naruto doesn’t let any of them hit him, but he does make a show of dodging as if it’s hard and not something he could do in his sleep.

Ino immediately starts taking Naruto much more seriously, though, because in the next instant, she flashes through hand signs he doesn’t recognize off the top of his head. Which means he’s probably going to get Yamanaka mind-whammied, and that isn’t good.

He didn’t think she’d resort to that so quickly. She really must not have much else up her sleeves.

He just has to be faster, so he leaps forward, ready to end this. If he hits her on the side of the neck, at the nerve Haku showed him, she should faint immediately and with little harm done. He races across the ground. Just a little further—

Ino finishes her hand signs when Naruto is a mere step from her, and Naruto feels his consciousness fall away, feels Ino step into his mind.

Oh shit, Naruto thinks. Not just because this gives Ino an immense advantage. Not just because he might lose in a minute if he doesn’t boot her out of his head.

No.

The real problem is that Naruto’s head is already occupied.

Naruto stands in the sewer. Ino stands in front of him, but she’s not looking at Naruto, she’s looking past him. She’s gone pale, wide eyed and stiff with terror.

The kyuubi looms, teeth bared and snarling loud enough the rumble feels like it’s shaking the walls in Naruto’s mind. His eyes are narrowed, slit pupils thin with rage.

“Get. Out,” the kyuubi growls, teeth snapping.

And Ino…

Ino faints.

“Fucking rude,” the kyuubi says once the girl fades from Naruto’s mind. He huffs. “Now get back to your fight, brat.”

“Ah, shit,” Kakashi-sensei mutters when Ino finishes her hand-signs and Naruto stills in place.

Sakura grimaces. She’s not sure, exactly, how the Yamanaka mind-swap jutsu works, but Naruto is a bit of a rare case regardless. There’s no telling whether or not Ino will be able to sense the kyuubi while she’s in Naruto. And if she does...that would be less than ideal.

Technically, Team 7 isn’t supposed to know about it either, but Zabuza had taken one look at them and said, “Fuck it. I’m not under a gag order,” and spilled the beans.

Sakura’s not bothered by it. The kyuubi is sealed, and Naruto hasn’t shown any signs of being possessed or anything. It’s a little weird to think there’s a centuries old chakra construct inside her teammate, but honestly, she forgets about it most of the time. Naruto is Naruto and that’s all that matters.

She knows not everyone would be that reasonable if they knew.

She wonders if Ino will hold it against Naruto should she find out. She hopes not.

It only takes a second for Naruto to shake off the jutsu, but Ino doesn’t wake up. She stays slumped on the ground, and Naruto turns to the proctor.

“Uh. So do I win?”

Sakura doesn’t think she’s imagining how disappointed Naruto sounds. He likes a good fight as much as Sasuke, and so far, he hasn’t really had a chance to let loose. Even his first attack at Ino was more him feeling out his opponent than a finishing move. Naruto’s probably wishing he’d been paired up with someone else—like the Hyuuga boy on Lee’s team, or even Lee himself—who would have given him a good challenge.

Ino’s clan techniques are nothing to sneeze at, but it’s not the kind of battle that Naruto would find interesting.

The proctor waits a minute to make sure Ino really isn’t going to get up, then shrugs. “Winner: Naruto!”

Naruto makes his way back up the stairs. Meanwhile, everyone in the crowd is murmuring amongst themselves. Sasuke scowls and sinks lower into his seat.

“They’re just going to think her jutsu failed,” Sasuke complains, and Sakura huffs at his expression.

“How do you know it didn’t?” Sakura asks. She’s pretty sure Ino’s jutsu worked because while Ino might not be on the same level as Sakura or her team right now, she’s not an idiot. She wouldn’t use a clan technique in a preliminary battle if she couldn’t do it properly.

But Sasuke’s opinion of just about everyone who isn’t their family is…incredibly low. Sakura will be surprised if he gives her that much credit.

Sasuke rolls his eyes. “It’s Naruto. He probably did something ridiculous and accidentally discovered some secret technique to countering the Yamanaka jutsus. But everyone will think he just got lucky.”

And that bothers him, Sakura notes, pleased. Before Wave, she’s not sure Sasuke would have cared if people thought Naruto was a fool. In the time since, he’s become just as proprietary of their team as she has.

And apparently, the idea of people not seeing Naruto’s worth bothers him.

(It bothers Sakura, too, but less so. She just thinks these people are idiots, and like Kakashi-sensei says, if people want to underestimate them, let them. That can only benefit her in the long run.)

Naruto slumps into his seat, wriggling between his teammates. Sasuke grumbles that Naruto could have picked literally any other seat instead of smooshing himself between them, but he doesn’t shove him away.

“She saw,” Naruto whispers, low enough for only Sakura and Sasuke’s ears—and probably Kakashi-sensei, with his crazy good hearing. “Scared the shit out of her, but honestly, he was right. Barging into someone’s mind is rude.”

Sasuke snorts, and Sakura smothers her giggles into her sleeve. Behind them, Kakashi-sensei sighs and pats Naruto’s head.

“Good work, Naruto,” he says. “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.”

“Thanks, sensei.” Naruto beams up at him.

“Sixth match: Neji vs. Hinata!”

Shikamaru leans forward, eyes trained on the two Hyuuga moving to the floor. This, he thinks, isn’t going to be pretty.  

Hinata is a sweet, timid girl. She faints whenever Naruto so much as looks in her direction, and she seems frightened of her own shadow the rest of the time. Her byakugan is an asset, and she’s been trained in her clan’s complex fighting style, which focuses on closing tenketsu points. As a main family member, she’s probably had technically perfect form beaten into her as soon as she could stand.

She doesn’t have the temperament of a fighter, but if she were facing a weaker opponent, she might get by on skill and muscle memory alone.

The problem is that she’s facing her older cousin, who not only has the same byakugan, equivalent training in the clan taijutsu, and on top of that is regarded as something of a prodigy. Neji is also more experienced, having been a genin for a year longer. And worse, he’s a mean fucking bastard.

Shikamaru would go through a lot of trouble to avoid crossing him, personally.

“Neji,” Sakura says, quietly to her sensei. “No question.”

And then, unexpectedly, Naruto adds, “You need to be prepared to step in. Just in case he takes things too far.”

His team doesn’t look surprised, just curious. Shikamaru finds himself curious, too.

“He’s got an attitude problem,” Naruto explains, quietly, and Shikamaru can only hear him because he’s sitting so close. “Look at the way he’s looking at her. That’s not just dislike. That’s…he wants to hurt her. And you can see—look, even subtly, Hinata’s reaching out, trying to connect, and he’s totally walled off. This fight is going to get personal.”

“It’s probably a clan thing,” Sasuke says, and this more than anything surprises Shikamaru, because he didn’t know Sasuke could deign to look down upon the inferior masses long enough to have any sort of opinion about them. He’s always been stuck up his own ass as long as Shikamaru’s known him. “Hinata is the heir, but Neji is objectively the better shinobi. That’s undoubtedly causing tension between the main family and the branch family. This sort of thing makes people question the line of succession, and that…isn’t good. Not to mention the pressure they each must be under.”

Kakashi doesn’t say anything, just hums, but he does pocket the book he was reading and puts his full attention on the fight.

That’s a lot of trust in his students, Shikamaru thinks. He doesn’t have that kind of bond with Asuma-sensei, and part of that, he knows, is his own fault. But part of it is sensei’s fault, too. Asuma doesn’t really know them, and he hasn’t really tried to. He’s treating them like InoShikaCho, not Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji. He sees them as their clan, not as individuals.

It's almost funny, because as the Hokage’s fucking son, he should probably know better.

Something to work on, Shikamaru decides. He’s been thinking of his team as a drag since long before they were ever officially assigned together, because he knew at age 5 that he was going to be on the next generation’s InoShikaCho team.

He thinks back to the academy, and how annoyed Sasuke was to be put on a team with Sakura and Naruto, how Sakura didn’t want to be on a team with Naruto either, and Naruto didn’t want to be on a team with Sasuke—and now look at them. They’re basically living out of each other’s pockets. There’s trust there. Collaboration. Safety.

It reaches their sensei, too. Hatake Kakashi is, according to Shikamaru’s dad, a notoriously aloof figure in the village. Shikamaru won’t deny he’s mysterious, but the way he revolves around his students, always angled towards them and conscious of their position in the room hints at a care that runs deep. And the way he listens to them, trusts them, yet still guides them—

Shikamaru wants that.

(It occurs to him now, that he has to give trust to get it back. It’s fucking annoying that that’s going to fall to him—he’s the student, after all, and this should be someone else’s job, but what else is new.)

Naruto does not want to watch this, but he makes himself anyway. Hinata is trying, giving it her all with her byakugan activated and her hands moving quickly enough that it’s hard to track each individual movement.

It’s not enough.

Neji is faster, stronger, and ten times as brutal.

There’s also the fact that Hinata very obviously cares for her cousin and doesn’t want to hurt him. Naruto couldn’t miss that even if he was blind. He also can’t miss that Neji very much does not feel the same way.

The loathing he shows her? It’s far, far too similar to the way the drunken villagers used to glare at Naruto, back when he was still alone and walking home late at night. It’s the kind of look that Naruto associates with broken bottles being hurled at his head and attempted stabbings. It’s the kind of look that Naruto has nightmares about.

(It’s the kind of look Mizuki had that night in the forest, when he’d told him about the kyuubi and why everyone hated him. When he’d tried to kill Naruto for the crime of existing.)

Hinata bleeds. She takes hits to her tenketsu points and hits to her face. She falls to her knees.

Still she gets up. Again and again and again.

She’s brave, Naruto thinks. And strong.

Not strong in the physical sense, but strong mentally. Willpower. Determination. Conviction.

If he’s honest, Naruto didn’t think she had it in her. Hinata is kind and sweet, but she’s painfully shy. Timid. Quiet.

Afraid, though of what, he couldn’t say.

Except apparently there is something within her that is an unyielding force of nature. There is, underneath all the blushing and the fainting and the trembling exterior, a spine of pure steel.

She’s not going to win. Naruto knows that. Naruto knows that she knows that.

Neji sends her to the ground with a jab that practically disables her leg.

Hinata gets up anyway. Shaking and bloody and unsteady, but still.

In the face of that kind of determination, how can you feel anything but awe?

(In the wake of this sort of cruelty, how can you feel anything but rage?)

Sasuke doesn’t think much of Hyuuga Hinata until she is standing in front of her cousin, half of her limbs totally disabled, coughing up blood from internal bleeding, and weak, so fucking weak—

And defiant in the face of Neji’s anger, his callous violence. She won’t stay down. No matter what he does, no matter what he says or how he hurts her, she just claws her way back up again, takes another hit or ten, keeps reaching out—

Keeps trying to get through to him.

Sasuke doesn’t understand.

Neji is striking in a way that shows intent to maim, and Hinata forgives him in the same breath.

Foolishness, or kindness, he cannot decide. Both, maybe.

He can’t quite bring himself to think of it as a flaw, though. Not when she is still standing long, long, long after any sane person would have forfeited.

Resilience is something to be admired.

(There’s a part of him that has been thinking, recently:

What does it mean to be strong?)

They intervene in the fight once Hinata finally falls and stays there, and still Neji doesn’t seem like he’ll stop.

Gai looks disappointed.

Kakashi is, admittedly, mostly just glad that this child is also not his problem.

“Sasuke vs. Kiba!”

Sasuke heaves a sigh. After Hinata’s fight, he’s not in the mood to humor anyone, let alone this idiot. He wants today to be over. He wants to go home to the Hatake Compound with his family team. He wants to sit at the dinner table and tell Zabuza and Haku about the fights, see what sort of insight they might have.

He wants to be done with the chuunin exams. The longer he sits here, the more he wishes he’d withdrawn like Sakura. The only reason he didn’t is because fighting a wider range of opponents gives him a better sense of his actual skill level. He can test himself against his peers, figure out what he needs to improve.

Not that fighting Kiba is going to help him do that. Oh well.

He drops down into the arena without a word. He knows Sakura is betting on him. Hell, everyone here is betting on him, except maybe Kiba, but Kiba is a moron.

“You wanna drop out now while you still can?” Kiba jeers, proving Sasuke’s point. He doesn’t bother answering, which should be answer enough.

It also serves to rile Kiba up, and he starts whining about not being taken seriously and how much Sasuke is going to regret this. At his side, Akamaru barks his agreement. As it stands, the dog is the only thing in this arena that Sasuke is actually wary of. Animals are often unpredictable, and nin-dogs are not to be taken lightly.

Akamaru is still a puppy though. Much like Kiba.

“Begin!” the proctor shouts, and Sasuke moves.

Unlike Naruto, he doesn’t have any reservations about ending the fight too soon. People will actually expect it of him, and the more he can hide before the finals, the better. He doesn’t bother drawing his sword—that would be overkill, here—and instead opts for taijutsu, lunging at Kiba and forcing him to engage before he can decide on his own course of action.

It's not 100% the Uchiha style. That will probably piss some people off, or at least scandalize them. The truth is that you can’t practice for months with the same five people—all from different clans and backgrounds and some from different countries—and not pick up at least a few of their habits, movements, and styles.

He’s got the Uchiha speed and precision, but he’s also picked up Haku’s fluid dodging and Zabuza’s bold attack patterns, Naruto’s twisting spins and Kakashi’s feints, Sakura’s tendency to jab for the throat first and the balls second.

Sometimes he thinks his parents would be sad or furious in turn for the bastardization he’s made of the clan’s culture.

(Sometimes, when he’s ensconced in the Hatake Compound, curled up on the futon that’s technically for guests, except it’s really his and Kakashi isn’t fooling anyone, he thinks he doesn’t give a damn about the clan or what his parents would think.)

Regardless, Sasuke was top of his class in the academy while Kiba was in the bottom half. And in the months since, Sasuke has evolved past that. If Kiba’s changed, it isn’t significant.

He flounders, blocks a jab only to take an elbow to the face, stumbles back and catches a spinning kick in his side. There isn’t a moment to breathe, to counter. Sasuke pushes and pushes and pushes, and even when Akamaru tries to jump in, Sasuke just knocks him away, too.

The fight lasts more than a minute, but only just. One last kick sends Kiba and Akamaru both into the wall—not hard enough to crack the concrete, but hard enough to knock them both out.

The arena is quiet.

“Winner: Sasuke!”

And I didn’t even bring out my sharingan, he thinks, smug. From the corner of his eye, he sees the Hokage watching him, frowning. With a faint tch, he turns away, focuses instead on his team:

Naruto, excitedly jumping at the railing like he’s two seconds away from throwing himself over it.

Sakura, beaming but not surprised in the slightest.

Kakashi, eye curled in a smile.

(Yeah. Sometimes Sasuke doesn’t give a damn about his clan at all.)

Sakura catches Lee by the arm before he goes down into the arena. He smiles at her, a little tight around the corners, a little less enthusiastic than she’s used to seeing him, but he seems pleased enough to see her.

It’s a relief. She’d worried after the fight against the Sound nin that Lee wouldn’t want to be near her after she killed three enemy shinobi in what was supposed to be a friendly exam. But Lee isn’t wary, just…strained. Tired.

(She wonders if his part in the killing bothers him. He seems the type.

Or maybe he’s reeling from Neji’s treatment of Hinata in their fight. Sakura can’t imagine what it must be like to see a teammate act that way.)

“You should forfeit,” Sakura whispers.

Lee frowns. “Sakura-chan, I am a capable shinobi—”

“I know,” she says, and believes it. She’s seen him in action. She knows he’s strong. “It has nothing to do with that. If it were either of my teammates in your position, I’d be telling them the same thing. Do not fight him. You won’t just lose, you could die.”

Lee looks at her for a long moment, probably trying to decide how serious she is.

But in the end it doesn’t matter.

Lee doesn’t listen.

Sakura’s stomach sinks.

As a shinobi with a chakra disability, Lee has a lot to prove. Not just to all the people who tried to hold him back. Not just to his teammates—to Neji—whose respect he earned in sweat and tears and blood.

Not just to his mentor, so that Gai-sensei knows he didn’t waste his time with Lee.

Not just to Sakura-chan, who is well-meaning—somehow kind and terrifying all at once—but who doesn’t understand.

Not just to his opponent, Gaara, who looks at Lee as though he is a gnat to be crushed.

No.

Lee has to prove this to himself. Every second of every day. It’s not enough to be good, he must be great, must be excellent, must be above reproach.

He can’t give himself a reason to quit.

He can’t give anyone else a reason to remove him from the shinobi ranks.

Even if he loses here, he will be happy as long as he puts everything that he has out on the field.

“You tried,” Kakashi-sensei says, grim faced and solid as he tucks Sakura into his side. Like he can protect her there, though she’s not currently the one in danger. “You did what you could. Lee can make his own choices.”

“I know,” Sakura says. That doesn’t stop the screeching in the back of her head that warns of danger.

Lee drops the weights.

It isn’t enough.

The walk back to the Hatake compound is quiet, contemplative. Kakashi doesn’t push his kids to talk; that will happen in its own time, or if it doesn’t, Haku will get it out of them eventually.

Lee is lucky to be alive. He’s less lucky that his legs are crushed, possibly beyond repair.

(Kakashi hopes Sakura doesn’t take on the blame for that. She warned Lee, which is more than most people would have done.)

Hinata is also lucky to be alive, though she will likely be in the hospital for a month.

Naruto is already planning revenge, and Kakashi isn’t inclined to stop him. He’s facing Neji in the finals in a month’s time, which makes just about everything fair game. If Naruto had an hour to plan, he could win comfortably. With a whole month to scheme?

Neji won’t know what hit him. Kakashi thinks it’ll be good for the kid.

Less good is the fact that Sasuke’s opponent is Gaara. What the hell is he supposed to do against a bloodthirsty, unhinged jinchuuriki who has no control over his bijuu and no interest in mercy?

The obvious answer is to train Sasuke as much as possible. Kakashi might try to speed-run him through an ANBU training regimen—slightly modified, of course—but even that might not be enough. In pure strength, it’s not really possible for anyone to match a jinchuuriki except for another jinchuuriki.

If only Naruto was going up against Gaara and Sasuke against Neji, Kakashi thinks wistfully. He doesn’t linger on the thought, though, because there’s no point.

What they need is a strategy.

“Can he control the sand if it’s not sand anymore?” Sakura asks, seemingly out of the blue. In all likelihood, she—much like Kakashi—is looking ahead to the threats her team will face and trying to find a way through where the boys don’t end up horrifically maimed in the process.

None of them ask who she’s talking about; that’s obvious.

What she’s talking about is a little less clear.

Sakura notices their confusion and explains. “The Uchiha clan specialized in fire jutsu, right? So you probably have a bunch of really strong clan techniques somewhere that you could learn. And what happens to sand when you add fire?”

“Glass,” Kakashi says, then grins. Sakura really is a little genius in the making. Of course, there’s no way of knowing if Gaara can manipulate his sand in glass form, which could prove even deadlier, but it’s a start. A damn good start. He’d ruffle her hair for that if he wasn’t worried about getting poisoned.

Maybe he should start immunizing himself, just in case.

“How hot would it have to be?” Sasuke wonders aloud.

“3,090 degrees.” Sakura blushes a little when the boys stare at her. “I read it in a book.”

“Maa,” Kakashi says, stopping them before they can go on a research and experimental tangent at—he looks down at his watch—8 o’clock at night. “Save your scheming for tomorrow, you little goblins. Tonight, we celebrate your success.”

The door to the house opens just as they’re walking up the path. Backlit in warm, golden light, Zabuza stands in the doorway like some adoring househusband waiting for his family to get back from a long day at work.

Kakashi snorts at the very idea. He’ll have to tell Zabuza later, if only to get the man riled up enough that he fucks Kakashi into the mattress and in the shower and against a wall and wherever else while Zabuza reminds him exactly who it is he married.

There are going to be plenty of challenges to come, Kakashi knows. The finals won’t be easy and Orochimaru is still out there. He doesn’t know how he’s going to keep his kids safe for certain, and he does know they’ll have a rather unwanted guest on their doorstep sooner or later, considering Sasuke’s seal problem.

But for tonight that can wait. His kids are home and in one piece. His husband is waiting.

(He has a family, a pack again.)

(When he passes through the door, Zabuza reaches out for him, snags his hand and drags him into a quick kiss. The howling thing in the back of his mind settles as it always does in moments like this.)

(Mine, Kakashi thinks. Mine. Mine. Mine.)

Omake:

“You managed not to blow up the village, I see,” Haku says the moment they sit down for dinner. Kakashi wants to bury his head in his hands, because with that sort of statement, they’re definitely cursed now.

“Exam’s not over yet,” Naruto says around the noodle dangling from his mouth. Celebratory ramen is a tradition in their household, though technically they also have celebratory dumplings and celebratory tomatoes, but neither of those things can make up a dinner. No matter how Sasuke might try. “Still got time.”

“Sakura wants me to learn a fire jutsu over 3,000 degrees.” Sasuke tilts his head to the side like a cat. “That might do it.”

“Could go higher, just in case,” Sakura adds, grinning.

Zabuza laughs, loud and free in a way he never would have on the run. Maybe not in Kiri either, the way he talks about it on the rare occasion. “Fucking hell, I love these kids.”

The room freezes.

Literally. Haku’s ice is sprawling across the table in a thin layer of frost, his eyes wide. The rest of the kids are staring, too, and Naruto’s noodle drops unceremoniously from his mouth back into his bowl with a tiny splash.

“Holy shit,” Naruto whispers, very, very softly.

Zabuza has gone pink in the face—at least the part of it that’s visible. “Do. Not. Make this. Into a. Thing.”

“Of course, Zabuza-shishou,” Haku says immediately, because he is the only good kid they have. His ice hasn’t retracted and doesn’t seem to be melting either, but that’s neither here nor there.

Sakura, being the secret shit-stirrer among them, nods seriously. “It’s not a big deal that you love us.”

Zabuza jabs a finger at her. It’s not very threatening. “Stop it.”

“We already knew,” Naruto says sagely, returning to his ramen.

“No.”

“Hn,” Sasuke says. Sasuke’s grunts can mean any number of things depending on context, but Kakashi is familiar enough with them now that he recognizes a resounding agreement when he hears it.

(They may be playing it cool, but Kakashi knows his kids. All four of them are shocked. Zabuza is a man of action, not words. His care is obvious to those who pay attention, but he isn’t one to go around saying his feelings.

Kakashi…isn’t either. The words are hard, and they feel too much like a jinx on the last good thing Kakashi has managed to scrounge for himself.

And yet—)

Kakashi lets himself chuckle at Zabuza’s embarrassment, and at the way the kids are trying desperately to seem unaffected by Zabuza’s unintentional announcement.

(And yet it seems wrong, somehow, to stay silent.

They know. Kakashi knows they know. He would do anything for them.

But even if Zabuza never says the words again, Kakashi knows this moment will stick with them. Will remind them.

It matters. It’s important.)

(And besides, he and Zabuza are partners now.

What kind of partner would he be if he let his husband suffer this alone?)

“I’m glad you said it first,” Kakashi says as lightly as he can manage with the stone of guilt and grief lodged in his throat. It’s not enough, but it’ll have to do. “That would have been very embarrassing for me.”

Naruto’s chopsticks clatter against his bowl. Sasuke goes utterly still. Sakura flashes a quick hand-sign and murmurs, “Kai,” as if to dispel a genjutsu.

The frost spirals out halfway across the dining room floor. Kakashi hopes they can dry everything out after it thaws, or else they’ll have mold to deal with.

Instead of addressing any of the flabbergasted faces around him, Kakashi picks up his bowl and drinks the broth. It’s cold. Haku’s ice really is something else.