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Chapter Text

“Waves are not measured in feet or inches, they are measured in increments of fear.”

-Buzzy Trent

At first, Sakura thinks that the star brightness of Sensei’s fist wreathed in crackling lightning has damaged her vision. She is watching Kakashi-sensei’s fight with the missing-nin closely in order to protect Tazuna the best she can, so she sees the exact moment that Sensei’s lightning fist goes through Haku. There’s a bright flash like the sun reflecting off freshly fallen snow before it fades into an afterimage of the tragically beautiful boy that Sakura chalks up to the effects of intense light on the retina. The image still stands out against the backdrop of the mist, a glow rather than the initial blaze of light. She later learns that Sensei’s lightning fist is actually called Chidori, named for the sound it makes rather than for its visual stimulus. Apparently, no one else is dumb enough to stare directly at it, or at least not anyone still alive.

It's the first time she’s watched someone die so she isn’t initially concerned that the gleaming spot in her vision takes the shape of the now dead boy. The academy lessons stressed that there are lots of different reactions to the shock and trauma of watching death for the first time and that the only wrong reactions are injuring your teammates or abandoning the mission. While her grip on the kunai in her hand is a little shaky from the gruesome sight and her stomach turns with nausea from the smell of ozone, heated metal, and charcoal, Sakura is not trash and her mind still feels clear enough to protect the bridge builder.

The mob dies, Gato dies- she feels only grim satisfaction rather than regret at his death, and finally, Zabuza dies. The number of flashes and glowing spots in her vision grows but her eyes are teary with worry over Sasuke, so she ignores the likely damage to her sight. There isn’t anything that can be done about vision damage so far away from the Konoha’s hospital and it is the least of her team’s problems considering that Sasuke looks like a pin cushion, Kakashi-sensei looks as droopy as he had right before he passed out last time he battled Zabuza, and even Naruto looks more subdued than usual.

Sakura only begins to become concerned about the spots when she sees afterimages of people she’s never met while they stumble through town on the way back to Tazuna’s house, but she brushes her increasing concern off. It’s only her imagination after watching so many people slaughtered in front of her today. If she walks a little closer to Sensei on the way back, he is either too out of it or too polite to tell her that if she walked any closer, she’d be a burr in his side.

As scary as watching her first death had been there’s nothing that unusual about her reaction. She convinces herself that if she works through the compartmentalizing techniques the academy taught before bed and talks with one of the counselors back in Konoha, if she’s still having trouble later, then she will be fine afterward.

Her cool bedroll causes her to shiver, but she slips into it without complaint, thankful that the earlier threat has been eliminated, and that her teammates are more or less okay. The compartmentalizing techniques come effortlessly, and she easily falls into a dead sleep. The hazy fog of her dreams coalesces into the figure of a woman in bed with long dark hair and eyes glassy with pain that dull shortly after being handed a tiny bundle. Then she drifts through the haze only to be drawn into being beaten black and blue before being jerked into a somber town square; knees scraping the hard-packed dirt, then white-hot pain in one arm and then both, blood pooling on the ground, a muffled shriek from the crowd.

She wakes up choking on a scream that’s lodged in her throat. For an impossibly long moment, she feels like she will never be able breathe again. Then the breaths come as frantic, gasping, unhelpful pants. There are hot tears streaking down her cheeks. She wipes those off before shakily standing and dragging her blanket closer to Kakashi-sensei on the other side of Naruto.

Sakura shuffles closer on her knees towards the jounin. The shock of his unruly silver hair is the only thing sticking out of his covers. He doesn’t move at all when she nears him, likely due to him sleeping off his near chakra exhaustion but even still his mere presence is comforting.

Movement out of the corner of her eye steals her attention. The man from her dream is standing in the doorway heavily bruised and dripping blood where his arms are supposed to be. He catches her eye before nodding and staggering down the hall on pain slowed footsteps only to disappear into Tsunami’s bedroom.

However, he isn’t the only figure in the room. There’s also the dark-haired woman. The lower half of her white nagajuban is drenched in blood like something out of a horror movie. The woman walks between Naruto and Sasuke, stops, and then kneels among them, her hair falling like dark silk over her shoulder as she brushes a tanned hand over Sasuke’s forehead and then through Naruto’s sunshine hair in clear fascination. Not a single hair on either boys’ head shifts as she touches them. The woman’s mouth moves, but Sakura can’t hear what she says.

“Not real. Not real. Not real,” Sakura chants to herself, her body frozen but her heart racing. Trembling, she brings her hands up, folds them into a ram seal, and violently interrupts her chakra.

Nothing changes, except now the woman is looking at her. She smiles at Sakura and maybe if the woman wasn’t vaguely see-through and you know, perhaps not covered in blood, it would be comforting. As it is, Sakura does not feel reassured.

Sakura wants to shut her eyes and pretend this isn’t happening, but there is a soul-chilling dread sinking into her veins that insists that if she closes her eyes, even to blink, the woman will take the opportunity to strike. It’s like being afraid of the monster in the closet, except there’s no closet to contain it and the terror of it has paralyzed even her blood.

The only thing anchoring her in the endless ocean of fear buffeting her is the warmth her Sensei is radiating next to her. She isn’t able to swallow the unrestrained terror, but the academy trained her to never look away from a threat, so she stays awake, staring wide-eyed at the woman until her eyes are gritty and too heavy to keep open, until she sinks under a wave of exhaustion so overpowering there’s no way to kick to the surface.

Chapter Text

“Nothing like being in a dream, then waking up to a nightmare.” — Anthony Liccione

Kakashi wakes to a warm weight draped across his legs. His first thought is that one or more of his ninken snuck into bed with him and sprawled out over him sometime during the night. When he opens his eyes, the ceiling isn’t the plaster of his apartment, but salt-weathered grey wood. That’s when he remembers he’s in the Land of Waves and his dogs aren’t summoned right now. With no idea what’s going on his heartbeat picks up and adrenaline sharpens his senses. He doesn’t hear or smell anything in the room that isn’t supposed to be there.

Cautiously he lifts his upper body partially up to see a blob of pink and red half covering his thighs. When he blinks the sleep out of his eyes, he’s bemused to see the blob of colors turn into the distinct shape of his female student. He instantly relaxes after all there’s nothing threatening about Sakura. All of his students are like clumsy puppies with only milk teeth to defend themselves.

He runs a hand through his hair to get it out of his face. When he looks at her more closely, he finds himself growing concerned. There are dried tear tracks on her face, a kunai clutched in a hand that is far too close to his groin for comfort, and she smells of sweat soured by fear.

He sits all the way up, his tired muscles protesting the movement. His movement is slow and careful so that he doesn’t jar her awake while he observes her. He’d been a little out of it last night, but Sakura had seemed okay, quieter than normal, but all his students had been more subdued after yesterday’s events. Confusion wrinkles his forehead. She’d had a nightmare on the way to Wave only a little over a week ago and she hadn’t sought comfort from him or the boys either. If anything, she had seemed embarrassed last time when she’d jerked awake, midway through the night in a panic.

So, he was at a loss to explain why she was curled up on him like one of his ninken when he had been fully prepared for her to be frightened of him after seeing a boy nearly her same age impaled on his hand or perhaps scooted up close to Sasuke who had looked dead yesterday. He’s under no delusions that he’s a good teacher so he isn’t sure where her trust comes from. Obito and Rin had both been wary of Minato-sensei after the first time they had seen him rip apart an enemy with the Rasengan and Minato had been a much warmer and personable teacher than him.

There’s a small wave of fondness lapping at his cold heart for her obvious faith in him. Truthfully, for the sheer fact that she listened to his instructions and generally didn’t cause problems on missions, she was his favorite student, and he didn’t want her to be afraid of him like so many of the other shinobi in the ranks were. Friend-Killer was still whispered behind his back and many of his fellow ninjas shied away from being within arm's length of him.

He clenches his teeth at the ominous thought that creeps into his mind. There was an additional plausible reason his female student with her delicate coloring might seek his protection even after seeing what he was capable of. If one of the men from the bridge had said or worse touched her inappropriately- well, he’d make certain they understood their mistake before ending their miserable existence.

He tamps down on his worry and smooths his features into placidness. There’s no need to invent troubles prematurely.  He clasps the wrist with the kunai that could end the council’s last hope for the continuance of the Hatake line completely and with his other hand gently shakes her shoulder to wake her.

“Sakura,” he murmurs lowly.

Her fingers tighten around the weapon in her hand at the first touch and she violently starts awake at the sound of her name. She rips her wrist out of his grip with surprising strength and jerks into a rigid defensive position within the length of a heartbeat. Her wild green gaze meets his and when he sees recognition flare in her eyes, he guides her hand with the blade back to her.

He offers her a cheeky smile and comments, “Good reaction, but I don’t recommend killing your team captain otherwise you will be left filling out all the mission paperwork instead of them and it is an unfortunate amount of paperwork.”

She doesn’t answer or even sigh in exasperation at him. Despite the dark shadows under her eyes, he watches her unnaturally alert eyes survey the room before stopping abruptly on a patch of the cracked wall, staring with an intensity he doesn’t think he’s ever seen from her.

“Sakura, what’s wrong?” he asks his tone low and serious, regardless of the fact that none of his sharp senses can perceive any cause for alarm.

Body tense in a defensive position, the kunai is back up, and never taking her eyes off the spot, her voice comes out strained as she haltingly discloses, “I think there’s something wrong with me, Sensei. Could you check me for genjutsu? I tried to break it already, but I don’t think it worked.”

Paranoia or genjutsu either way Kakashi is amenable enough to slide his forehead protector up and open his left eye to look at his student. Her chakra flow is fast with anxiety but there is nothing to indicate that she is trapped in a genjutsu. However, just in case, he sends a trickle of chakra into her system, enough to break her out of a genjutsu. She shudders at the sensation, foreign chakra in your chakra channels is at best uncomfortable, but her gaze darts right back to that same space.

“You’re clear, Sakura-chan.”

“There’s no genjutsu and no one is in the room that isn’t supposed to be?” she asks, panic beginning to edge into the question.

He raises a brow but even with the Sharingan there’s nothing unusual in the room that isn’t supposed to be there. “Nope just us and two sleeping teenage boys,” he assures her.

She finally drags her eyes away from where she had been staring and she meets his eyes, both of them and he wishes he had shut Obito’s eye because instead of relief, the razor-sharp fear written on her too pale face is not a sight he wants engraved in his memory.

“Something is wrong with me,” she repeats stiffly.

Now normally, Kakashi considers himself a very hands-off person and wouldn’t pry a second time, but Sakura looks one unexpected twitch away from losing it. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he says quietly.

“Not here,” she answers, glancing over at the still sleeping forms of Naruto and Sasuke.

He nods. The change in scenery might help. Besides, waking her teammates would be a poor idea, Sasuke’s dismissive attitude might cause her to shut down and Naruto’s enthusiasm might do the same.  “Alright, put your kunai away and we’ll talk in the kitchen. No one else is there right now.”

She does exactly what he suggests and only glances back at the empty spot once before hurrying to the kitchen. She sticks close to the wall until they get to the kitchen. They sit at the worn table; it’s clean but judging by the stains and chips in the wood its best days were likely a few decades ago. It matches the rest of the house and even the rest of the Land of Waves. Everything here is grey and dingy.

Sakura pours herself a glass of water, but fiddles with it instead of drinking it. She opens and closes her mouth twice leaving her lips pressed tightly together. She looks at him helplessly.

“Let start with whatever you saw this morning that made you think you were under a genjutsu. What was in the room?” he asks cajolingly.

She licks her dry lips. “Who, Sensei. It was who was in the room. I saw Zabuza and Haku.”

“That’s not possible. They’re dead,” he states firmly but kindly.

She shrugs helplessly. “I know. I saw them both die and they both still had their wounds on them, but they were standing there not far from where Naruto was resting.”

He slouches into his seat. Okay this was manageable. It was probably a reaction to the trauma of seeing them die yesterday. He was shit at grief counseling, but he would try for his student and once they got back home he would use his name to book her a counseling session with someone.

At least he thought that until she continued speaking, “Last night I woke from dreams of death to a man and woman watching me. The man looked sort of like the photo of Kaiza, but he was too beat up to positively identify and I didn’t recognize the woman at all, but I think she must have died in childbirth. And walking through town yesterday I thought that maybe my vision had been impaired from the brightness of your lightning technique because I thought there were a lot more wounded people on the streets, except that everyone else kept walking through them.”

His heart sinks in his chest. That sounds less like a response to trauma or if it is, it is a more severe one than he knows how to help with. “When did this start?”

She crosses her arms and folds into herself. “When Haku died. I could see both his body and what I thought was some sort of afterimage from the light at the same time.”

Tsunami’s voice came from the doorway, “Sakura-chan, would you look at a photograph for me?”

Both of them look over at her and the woman blushes. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I could hear you talking from my room and came to start on breakfast.”

At Sakura’s nod, Tsunami crosses the room and pulls a photo album from a worn bookcase. She flips through several pages before handing the album over to his student. The picture is an old black and white photograph of three women, sisters if he had to guess.

Tsunami looks eagerly at his student and when Sakura points to the woman on the end her expression turns to awe. “This is the woman from last night. Her hair was as dark as yours but, I think her eyes were lighter.”

“That was my mother. She died giving birth to me in the room that you are staying in.” Tsunami says as she caresses the photo softly.

“So, I’m seeing what? Ghosts? Ghosts are not real,” Sakura responds emphatically, pushing the album away from her with hysteria edging back into her voice.

Ghosts. He cocks his head in consideration. That would be weird, but not necessarily stranger than being able to manipulate your bones outside your body or being able to cast your consciousness into another body. Chakra does very strange things to the human body, so he considers it a feasible hypothesis. “Does it perhaps run in your family, Sakura-chan? Your parents were ninjas too, right?”

She frowns so deeply at him that he’s surprised her mouth doesn’t get stuck like that. “My parents are both retired chunin, but other than them there are no other ninjas in our line that I am aware of. The Haruno are chiefly tea and spice merchants while my mother’s family are silk merchants. I think they would have mentioned something much sooner if we had that kind of skill.”

He hums. “No eccentric priests or mysterious priestesses in your family either?”

Sakura barks out a laugh like the notion is absurd. “I don’t think anyone, in either side of my merchant family, believes in gods or ghosts or the like. If they believe in anything it is only in luck and ruthless bargaining. If any of them had a skill like this, they wouldn’t have gone into religion they would have found a way to exploit it to get ahead of their competitors instead.”

He supposes that she would know better than him about her family. Kakashi taps his fingers on the table and drawls, “Well either you’re crazy or you’ve developed a new skill, potentially a Kekkai Genkai, where you’re able to see the dead. I’m inclined to believe that you aren’t crazy and this doesn’t seem like a response to the trauma of yesterday although the timing is suspicious. However, some Kekkai Genkai require conditions to awaken them. I suspect, if that was the first time you watched someone die then that might have been the trigger.”

The look on her face tells him she would rather be crazy.

Her gaze shifts, her heart rate spikes, and she glowers at something to the left of him, his blind side of course. He has a sneaking suspicion it’s one of the ghosts, so he fights not to turn his head for something he won’t be able to see.  Sakura drops her head on the table, her long pink hair tangling around her in further disarray. “I don’t want to see ghosts. How do I turn it off?”

It’s his turn to grimace. “The Sharingan isn’t the Byakugan so it’s not as good at seeing chakra, but I didn’t see anything that indicated that you were actively using chakra like a doujutsu would. It seems like it might be a passive ability not unlike the ability to sense chakra over distance.”

“So I can’t stop? What am I going to do?” she whines and even muffled by the table he can hear the despair in her voice.

He freezes as his evidently sluggish brain begins to make dire connections. Sensor ninjas are valuable and highly sought after. Sakura’s skill isn’t sensing chakra, but it could potentially be just as useful and for a second all he can hear in his head is exploit it to get ahead of their competitors in Sakura’s voice. If that’s how a merchant clan would treat such an ability how would a ninja clan or an unscrupulous leader? Dead men might tell no tales, but if they could…

He leans across the table. “Can they talk?” he asks urgently.

Sakura lifts her head from the table startled at the vehemence in his tone. “The woman tried to talk last night but I couldn’t hear her. I think they might know or suspect I can see them. Even before I started staring at them they were watching me.”

“Good, it’s better that way. Don’t tell anyone else. This needs to be a secret until you are strong enough to protect yourself,” he states firmly. Her answer relieves only a hint of his worry.

“What about Naruto and Sasuke-kun?” She rests her chin on her hand. There’s exhaustion lining her face and something like despondency weighing down her shoulders.

He leans back and shakes his head. “For now, not them either. If they find out, then we’ll deal with it.”

She blinks, clearly not expecting that answer. Which is fair considering the speech he gave about teamwork during the bell test. “Okay. Can I ask why?”

He smiles charmingly at their host who has been listening in quiet fascination. “Tsunami-san, may I finish this conversation in private with my student?”

She stands to leave flustered and offers, “Of course! And don’t worry Sakura-chan I would never say anything either.”

Kakashi scratches underneath his forehead protector, lifting it slightly, and catches the woman’s kind eyes with both of his. The tomoe in his eye spins and he blurs the conversation from her mind. He discretely adjusts his forehead protector so that it’s covering his eye once again. He’s sure he’ll feel guilty about it later when he has time to dwell on it. Tsunami might be kind, and she might even feel indebted to them, but Kakashi was not willing to take the chance with his student’s safety.

When he is sure that they are alone he speaks loud enough for only Sakura to hear. “Even in the Konoha there would be people who would take advantage of that kind of skill. One of the more benign things that could happen is a career in T&I. The subjects wouldn’t even have to be alive for you to get information from them.”

She grimaces. “Oh, gross Sensei.”

He’s glad she feels the same way that he feels about it. Some ninjas like that or learn to like that career path. Personally, he only brought ninjas to T&I when it was necessary otherwise, he ended them. Even in the supposedly “nice” village, he considers his actions a mercy; death is better than torture.  “It’s not a particularly pleasant career choice and while I think you would be capable of that I don’t think that it’s a career you would choose for yourself.”

She wrinkles her nose and screws her face up in disgust. “Probably not.”

He hesitates briefly to share the next bit of information. Though their skills aren’t the same and they look nothing alike, he can’t help but compare Tenzo’s situation to Sakura’s predicament. He doesn’t know the reason, maybe it’s because Tenzo was about at Sakura’s current age when he rescued him from Root or maybe it’s because their skills are both one of a kind, but something wild in him snarls and stalks and snaps its teeth at the thought of one of his genin in that man’s hands.

“Never repeat this. This information is dangerous.” He waits until she agrees. “There is a former council member that collects young talent. He runs them through a desensitization program to turn them into perfect emotionless tools. It is called Root, and the missions are soul-staining and not authorized by the Hokage. It was supposed to be disbanded years ago, but I don’t believe it has been and Sakura, he would absolutely do horrible things to get a talent like yours on his side,” he says, no hint of playful teacher in his voice.

That wasn’t even considering what the village might do to test the limits of that type of ability. Kakashi might be a loyal soldier to his village, but he doesn’t want that for his student. They wouldn’t care for her mental state, only the limits of her gift, and seeing the dead seems like a macabre and traumatizing ability to begin with. Honestly, he would consider himself lucky if Sakura’s mental state wasn’t screwed up within the year from the ability.

Her eyes are screwed tightly shut, bracing for an answer she doesn’t want and that she’s too smart not to already know, she whispers, “But it isn’t useful if they can’t talk to me, right?”

He knows that he sounds exhausted as he answers, which he hopes really sells the ‘bad news vibe’ for her, “He would have you learn to read lips, codes, and probably every dialect of sign language in existence.”

Her voice comes out wobbly as she says, “That sounds really bad.”

“It would be. That’s not even mentioning what other countries would do. Does the academy still give a lecture on what happens to female ninjas with bloodline limits?” He hopes he doesn’t have to be the one that introduces that topic.

“They do,” she confirms and then in a small voice asks, “What do I do?” Her eyes are starting to tear, and he finds he can’t blame her. Hidden Villages do vile things to foreign kunoichi to build their own ranks.  

He sighs. “I’m not trying to scare you, Sakura-chan. While you are my student you don’t have to worry about it.” The vicious snarling thing in his chest is back. “No one with any sense would try to steal you from me. However, we’re going to have to step up training from now on. I was trying to get some easy missions in to promote teamwork and help Naruto and Sasuke since the village stopped providing a stipend after they graduated from the academy.”

His other two students’ skills and abilities are protected from all but the most serious threats by their own names and status, but Sakura with her civilian roots, wouldn’t be. The counsel would have no qualms abusing her trust and using her for their own aims whether it left her broken or not and he couldn’t bring himself to trust that the Hokage would protect her against them either, not after what had happened with Tenzo or how Naruto had been left on his own. It was all too easy to see how a civilian-born genin girl would weigh up in the eyes of old men, but Kakashi couldn’t bring himself to let them ruin Sakura in the name of the good of the village. What good was the village, if the people in it were carelessly broken by those that were supposed to be protecting them?

He would have to figure out how to leave the Memorial Stone earlier in the day even though that was one of the few things tethering him to his own sanity.

Sakura shakes her head with a frown. “That’s why we’ve been taking so many missions! I didn’t know that. They need those missions. It’s important for them and I doubt either of them would take charity, particularly not mine. What about if we did one D-rank a day in the morning before you show up?”

He raises his only visible brow. “Don’t you need a sensei to grab a mission and how would you keep the boys from arguing?”

She hums thoughtfully and drums her fingers on her leg. “It’s a little unorthodox but you could designate one of us as an ancillary team leader. It’s a couple of extra forms but it’s for teams with sensei that have other demands on their time like clan duties or hospital shifts. As for the boys that’s easy just tell them that if they finish the mission before noon then you will train us, but if it’s not complete then we have to complete another mission or shorten training.”

His cold dead heart warms a little more. Even though she was scared one of his students understood what he was trying to teach about teamwork. She was giving up valuable training time that might keep her safe or at least feeling safe for her teammates’ wellbeing. He wasn’t sure that either of his other students would turn down extra training for their teammates. Oh, they’d save each other’s lives on a mission, but they were both too ambitious to turn down training even if it might harm their other teammates.

“Congratulations, consider yourself the ancillary team leader of team seven. We’ll sign the paperwork when we get back to the village.” He would still make an effort to pull himself away from the Memorial Stone, but he didn’t want to promise anything he wouldn’t be able to commit to. He knew that the Sandaime thought a genin team would be good for him and maybe they were, but he wasn’t so sure that he was good for them or really in a mental state that was fair to his students after spending the last ten years in ANBU. He was the adult so he would try for his team. He just got lost in his head too much. It was so hard to pull himself away from everyone he’d lost and so easy to lose track of time.

“What? Why me? Shouldn’t it be Sasuke-kun or even Naruto?”

She looks so astonished that he cackles. “Nope! There are a few reasons. The first is that neither boy would listen to the other. I don’t think that they would divide the tasks fairly and their resulting arguments would cause you to go grey just like they caused me to. The next reason is that you’re better at strategy and willing to put the needs of the team over everything else even your own goals which is a sign of a good team leader. Lastly, you’re more personable with clients and provide better written mission reports than either of the boys.”

“Sensei, you had grey hair when we met.”

“How do you know that just the thought of captaining your team didn’t cause me to go grey?” he retorts.

She levels the most unimpressed flat look he thinks he’s ever seen.

He grins. “I’ll try to get some fellow jounin to drop by training too so that my attention isn’t so split between the three of you.”

That was a partial truth. The truth was that both Naruto and Sasuke were so intense and demanding when they had his attention and he didn’t want Sakura, who actually had manners, to be neglected because he was overwhelmed. Other ninjas would help serve as a distraction and he would be able to both breathe and ensure that all of his students were getting the training they needed.

“Will that be safe?”

“We won’t be telling anyone about you and I’m only going to bring people that I’ve worked with before and trust around my cute little genin,” he assures her.

She sighs. “They’re going to be as weird as you, aren’t they?”

“So mean, Sakura-chan!” He smiles viciously under his mask and hopes she can tell the difference. “I don’t think I know any normal jounin so they might all be even weirder than me.”

“That’s possible?”

“Absolutely!” he chirps.

She scowls. “Is that a requirement to become jounin? If so, you aren’t selling this whole get more powerful thing.”

He laughs so hard there are tears in his eyes. “Sakura-chan, you can see dead people, I think you have the weird part down already.”

There’s probably more truth to her statement than she realizes. There are hardly any normal jounin. You didn’t get that strong without a reason, either you had a skill like Sakura’s where it was better to be strong to protect yourself or you were a little crazy to begin with.

A horrified look overtakes her fey features, and he takes great pleasure in telling her, “Yup, it’s already too late for you! We just have to catch your strength up to your level of eccentricity now.”

Viciously, she mutters under her breath, “You must be the strongest person in the village then.” And then louder she declares, “I’m doomed. Ino can never find out! She’ll never let me live it down. I’ll be the weird kid forever and I’ll have to go live in the woods like a hermit from the shame.”

He hasn’t seen this level of dramatics and angst since Gai had moped when a civilian kid on the street called him unyouthful. “Is that your rival or love interest?”

“Ino’s a girl,” she says matter-of-factly like that’s supposed to explain everything.

He shrugs. “You can like boys or girls or both or neither.”

She purses her lips and he can see her mentally file away the information. “Huh, I didn’t know that. Ino was my best friend, but now we’re rivals,” she explains.

He searches his memory. He’s fairly certain that’s a Yamanaka style name. He’s not as familiar with the members of that clan, because he tries to stay far away from anyone that can futz around in his head. “She’s the Yamanaka Clan Head’s daughter,” he hazards a guess and Sakura confirms it for him.

Then, because Kakashi knows the importance of friendly competition and rivalry, and also because he can’t have one of his students behind in their own rivalry or he is sure Gai would find out, he gets an idea, “She probably knows all the best gossip then.”

Gai finding out would obviously be a disaster because if he found out then Kakashi would be behind in their rivalry and Kakashi can’t allow that.

Sakura nods ruefully. “She always does.”

He leans forward in his chair and waves her closer and she follows his lead without hesitation, as if they are conspiring over some crucial plan together. “Well as long as it is harmless gossip, and you have another plausible reason for knowing the information, you could impress her or one-up her with your new ability. Be cautious of course, but collecting information is a good ninja skill and it might help you figure out some of your limits.” In a non-traumatizing way.

A smile creeps up on her lips, brightening her whole countenance. “You seem amused, Sensei. Do you perhaps also have a rival?”

“I do and not to brag, but I’m winning 49 to 47. He’ll be one of the jounins I try to get to drop by at least once if he isn’t too busy with his own team,” he says.

She covers her mouth with her hands to hide her giggles. “Then I look forward to meeting your rival, Kakashi-sensei.”

He isn’t sure that she will still feel that way after she meets Gai in all his youthfulness. However, he is glad to see Sakura looking livelier and in better spirits than she was when she woke up. He is going to lose all his hip and cool points if he keeps making such bad puns. “Go wake the boys and we’ll do some more training while the bridge is being built. It should be relatively safe now.”

Kakashi’s amusement drops as soon as Sakura is out of sight. What a nightmare. Have a team they said. It will be good for you. This team is going to give him an ulcer. The angsty one wants to pitch himself against an S-class missing-nin that he has absolutely no chance against, the dense ball of sunshine one is eager to fight anyone and anything on his way into a twice-cursed position, and the smart one is in danger of either causing or becoming a political clusterfuck.

Like Sakura, he wasn’t sure that he even believed in ghosts before today and he is not even close to being ready to consider the implications of ghosts being real. He puts his head in his hands and groans. How does this stuff keep happening to him? On top of all that, he probably needs to have a conversation with his other student to ensure that he’s not about to run off just because he finally obtained his own case of murderous conjunctivitis.

True to his word, Kakashi-sensei sets them to the task of learning how to water walk. Sakura spends the morning ignoring the dozens of extra eyes on her. Most are just staring curiously but that jerk Zabuza has taken to smiling at her with his sharp teeth on display in increasingly disconcerting ways. She scans over to his partner and wrenches her gaze away from where Haku is poking and putting his own hand entirely through the gaping hole in his chest and wiggling his fingers through his back. She doesn’t think Haku is trying to scare her but the sight of it freaks her out and turns her stomach. Zabuza floats over to her, filed teeth on display again, laughing at her squeamishness like the creepiest silent movie vampire.

Naruto and Sasuke both race ahead to the shore and attempt to step on top of the surf. Sakura hurries after them not eager to be left with the specters. She doesn’t know if they can touch her but she is super eager to never find out.

She frowns at the choppy water and her teammates who are both sopping wet already. Her gaze moves to the leading end of the bridge that she can barely make out through the shrouding early morning fog and the dark water underneath. She hops from one support to the next until she is far out, past the breaking waves, but still far enough out of the way from where they are currently working on the bridge so that nothing falls off and hits her in the head. She does not want to drown. That would be a stupid death for a ninja.

She eyes the dark water like it bites or rather like it contains something that might leap up and swallow her whole. The obscured sun casts strange shadows beneath the gently rolling waves and while there aren’t any ghosts down here that she can see the hair raised on the back of her neck lets her know that they are still watching from above. She slides down the support in a controlled fall and still holding onto the bridge places her feet down on the surface of the water.

First, she tries the steady stream of chakra that works on the trees they had learned on, but her feet quickly begin to sink. There must be a trick to it. She stares at the water thoughtfully. The water isn’t anything like the trees. There is nothing for her to stick to. In fact, sticking to particular molecules would probably cause her to sink from the weight of her and the instability of the supporting water column she guesses. Stabilizing the whole water column beneath her sounds like an enormous and impossible waste of chakra for anything deeper than a puddle.

So, the answer must not lie with buoyancy, or at least not completely. What if she could increase the surface tension and then stand on top of that? Sakura focuses on only affecting the top layer and her weight seems to hold as long as she also adjusts for the rolling waves as well. When she is sure that she understands what’s necessary to stay afloat she lets go of the pillar.

She easily stands in place even as the waves roll underneath her. She takes a breath to steady herself and then tries walking. She watches her feet and the waves as she slowly strolls. To her relief, it comes just as easily as learning to walk up trees even with the added complexity. This takes less chakra than tree walking but more focus since she was shaping the uppermost layer of chakra rather than just shoving a certain amount of chakra out. She only nearly falls through the water once when a large menacing shadow beneath the surface moves unexpectedly.

She stands stock still afraid to make a sound and then she sprints over the top of the water, heart pounding, and learning to adjust her chakra instinctively. When she nears the shore, she looks up to see her teammates. Naruto is watching her with an expression of shock and amazement, but Sasuke is glaring at her. She starts to slip at his look, but quickly catches herself before more than her toes become wet.

Sakura glances behind her and decides to stay closer to shore from now on. Between her crush’s displeasure and being eaten alive by a sea monster she’ll take Sasuke’s frosty irritation any day.

“I could help,” she offers.

Sasuke doesn’t give her the courtesy of an answer. He just turns and walks further down the shoreline to try more alone. Her shoulders droop and she can feel her lower lip tremble before she presses her lips so tightly together that they can’t betray her distress. Today has been one awful thing after another and Sasuke’s attitude is only the latest disappointment.

Sasuke doesn’t like her when she is weak, but he also doesn’t like when she does better than him in practical work. Is she supposed to shrink herself down for him? She’s never done worse at something on purpose. It seems like sabotaging yourself and Sakura cannot afford to do that. Not when she could die or worse if someone finds out about her. She carefully doesn’t look at the ghosts on the bridge nor at the dynamic duo hanging out around Naruto. She’s very aware of how easy death comes now and the very thought of being stolen or turned into an emotionless ninja that takes the kind of missions even her jounin sensei is wary of scares her.

Naruto interrupts her gloomy thoughts. “Don’t mind the teme, Sakura-chan. He’s just jealous that you’re more amazing than him.”

She gives him a wry smile. “Thanks, Naruto.”

He smiles brightly at her then he crosses his arms and leans in. “Say, you’re really good at this stuff. Do you have any hints? I want to get it before Sasuke too,” he practically shouts.

She winces at the volume. “Naruto! That’s-” she stops herself. A team was only as strong as its weakest member. She didn’t necessarily think that Naruto was weak but helping him get stronger would only help the team and the stronger they were individually the safer they would all be.

She breathes out her anger and the way he is already braced for her ire made guilt flicker through her. In softer tones, she answers, “Yeah, Naruto I do. Let’s start where there aren’t so many waves though.”

He brightens and follows her out past the breaking waves but still close enough to the shore to be far away from whatever that was in the water. She still watches the unnerving water under her feet with unease. By the time Naruto is able to stand on the water for a few seconds before falling in, the sun has burned through the mists and Sakura is running, jumping, and adding back handsprings to her practice.

“Lunch time you two,” calls Sensei from where he is peaking over the side of the bridge above them.

The two of them scurry up the supports and onto the bridge with less grace and more sheer determination. As Sakura passes by her teacher he tugs on a lock of her hair. “How come only the ends of your hair are wet while Naruto looks like he’s brought half the sea up with him?”

Naruto is the one who answers, “That’s because Sakura-chan's been doing flips!”

He puts his book away and peers down at her with his one eye. “Oh? How long did it take you to walk on top of the water?”

“I wasn’t paying attention, but maybe fifteen minutes,” she says with a shrug.

He raises his brow and asks, “How many times did you fall in first?”

“I got my sandals wet a few times, but I didn’t fall in,” she answers.

Faster than she could see she was picked up and sent hurtling through the air. She tucks her knees to her chest and somersaults mid-air to land on her feet on top of the water in a crouch with her hand out to help stabilize her. She stands up furious. “What the hell, sensei?”

Even from the water, she could see his visible eye crease upwards. “Just testing your mastery Sakura-chan. You can come back up now.”

She thinks she sees the shadow again out of the corner of her eye and books it across the water and starts up the bridge again. She makes it nearly the whole way up when she sways and then her chakra gives out. She yelps as her feet slip. She has only enough time to close her eyes, note that hitting the water from this height is going to hurt, and hope that the sea monster doesn’t eat her.

She hits something solid and warm that stops her momentum instead of the cold ocean water. She opens her eyes slowly and blinks the dark spots out of her vision to see Kakashi-sensei looking down at her sheepishly. “Sorry, Sakura-chan. I didn’t realize how low on chakra you were, but if you’ve been water walking for the last four hours then I should have known.”

“It’s alright,” she murmurs. Her head hurts and she feels faintly nauseous, but at least her sensei caught her before the sea creature could get her.

“Hmm, let’s get you something to eat and then it will be meditation for you while your teammates catch up. Naruto, go get Sasuke,” he orders while carrying her up to the bridge.

She eats mindlessly, starving, and for once doesn’t care one bit about her diet or bulking up. Sasuke comes up dripping. His scowl when he looks at her is nearly tangibly vicious. She holds her flinch, smooths down her dry clothes, and uncharitably thinks that he looks less charming today and more like a drowned rat. Even Naruto looks less wet.

Sensei’s hand comes down on Sasuke’s head. “None of that. You can’t be mad at your teammate for not looking like a wet cat. It’s not her fault you went off alone and ignored her help.”

“Hn,” he answers as he plops down to eat his own meal. He ignores the rest of the team and Kakashi-sensei slouches in a particularly long-suffering manner.

She finishes her food quickly and sulks at the empty tray.

“Eat this too,” Kakashi-sensei says, handing her a ration bar from the same pouch his orange book rests in. It's one of the flavored ones that actually taste decent. This one is apple cinnamon. They are super hard to get from the quartermaster. Perhaps that was a jounin perk? If so, that might be worth becoming eccentric for.

Sakura is adequate at meditation but with all the staring she’s receiving she finds it difficult to think about nothing. She counts herself lucky that Zabuza has seemingly grown bored of terrorizing her for now. She takes a deep breath, works on ignoring the ghosts and the doubt that Sasuke’s glare invokes, and focuses on the flow of her chakra. Luckily the ghosts were making it fairly easy on her by keeping their distance. The vast majority on the bridge seems hesitant to approach her or maybe just shinobi in general since Wave doesn’t have a shinobi force.

There’s only a little bit of chakra that’s been regenerated in her system from the lunch break, but her chakra seems different than the last time she had meditated on her chakra system. She furrows her brow. Maybe she is only imagining it or maybe it is because there is so little chakra regenerated but she could swear that there is something off. She spends the time reviewing and working on her chakra system until Sensei’s voice and the gentle pressure of his hand on her head draw her out of the exercise.

She opens her eyes to see Naruto bickering at Sasuke, but Sasuke’s eyes are on hers and they are cold and bitter like the winter winds in Iron. She does not like this new change in the dynamic between her and Sasuke. She had always wanted him to notice her, but not like this. She can’t wait to go back home and for things to go back to normal.

She’s had more than enough of this mission. She hates everything about this place from the ominous waters and depressing poverty to the unending scrutiny of the ghosts here. She swallows around the tightness in her throat. She just wants to go home.

Chapter Text

“I’m scared to close my eyes, I’m scared to open them. We’re gonna die out here.” — Heather Donahue, “The Blair Witch Project”

Sakura takes it all back. Home is terrible. There are so many ghosts in her neighborhood and even though she can’t hear them she shrinks from the sight. She can tell that many of them are wailing and screaming. Some of the dead are ninjas but her stomach turns when she realizes that far more of them are young children and civilians. A significant portion of the civilians are in gruesome states, mutilated beyond recognition when they had died. She avoids staring at any of the ghosts directly, particularly the distraught or disfigured ones. She is too tired and overwhelmed from everything that happened during team seven’s misclassified mission to deal with all of this. She hopes, admittedly futilely, that if she doesn’t look then maybe these ghosts won’t discover that she can see them, and they won’t bother her.

Despite her exhaustion, it takes her forever to fall asleep the first night back in her house. Her parents don’t come home from work until late and she’s alone with at least a half dozen ghosts in the large two-story house. One of them is crouched in her closet, the only visible feature a bone white mask with bright red markings while the rest of it dissipates into shadow. Another is on the wall, limbs bent like a spider watching her as if he can tell that she can see him although she is careful not to gawk at him for too long.

His head is cocked and his stare is intent but there is just something that rubs her the wrong way. It takes her several long minutes to realize that he stares at her like she is a lab specimen that has made itself interesting by doing something particularly unusual... for a rat. There is something blanker about his uncovered face than whatever is wearing an ANBU mask in her closet. She is not sure which one she is more scared of. She keeps a kunai in hand and two more under her pillow; she has to add a dozen throwing stars to that before she is comfortable enough to try to close her eyes.

When she finally falls asleep her dreams are things that wake her constantly. Dreams of poisoned knives driven through vital organs, swords piercing guts, a massive swirling paw of burning orange chakra, illnesses that steal breath, ninjutsu that burns, crushes, and drowns. On and on she dreams of dozens of deaths, so many that she doesn’t think there are any tears left in her body. She feels debilitated from the fatigue and scrapped raw from horror and grief. She’s pathetically grateful that she has the day off from training and she can only hope that tonight is better.

Her parents don’t comment on her appearance the next morning but the worried looks they throw at each other and her assures her that she must look as terrible as she feels.

Her mother often invites other merchants and potential clients over to discuss business, so the interior of the Haruno’s house is picture perfect. The decorations are tasteful, the appliances sparkle, and they own a Western-style table with matching chairs complete with a ghost child that slithers around under the table elongating himself and twisting around the legs of the table and chairs simultaneously. Sakura sits rudely with her feet up while she eats breakfast. She only manages to eat half of the meal before she gives up. The food keeps missing her mouth because she’s too busy ensuring that the creepy slithering thing doesn’t try to bite her to focus on eating.

The next night is much worse. She is so very, very tired that her limbs are difficult to keep track of and her heart alternates between beating too fast and beating so sluggishly she’s concerned that it will just give out. She hastily closes the closet door before she lays down so that she can’t see whether the white and red ANBU mask spirit is watching. The spider on the wall is still there, he’s moved two feet closer to the corner since yesterday but is otherwise motionless and silent and staring.

She shivers. Had all these ghosts watched her every night before and she just hadn’t known?

There is a new ghost that is just a pair of legs sitting at her desk. They are crossed and the top foot is tapping to a beat she can’t hear. She doesn’t know where its upper body is and is too terrified to check if it's also lurking in her room. With the way things are going, she’s concerned she will find it crawling out from under the bed if she checks.

Every time her eyes close for longer than two minutes there’s another painful death played out behind her eyelids.  She morbidly wonders if after a while she will have a preference for which deaths she likes better, maybe she could sleep through some of the less awful ones after an adjustment period.

In the morning she discovers that the ANBU mask is definitely still in her closet because it is blocking her way to her spare training outfit. She grabs her unwashed one from the floor instead. There are more ghosts than the first day that watch her as she grabs breakfast and rushes out the door in her dirty training clothes.

She arrives several minutes early. Sasuke-kun is already there, staring off into the distance probably plotting the murder of his ‘certain person’. Sakura sits against the bridge, studiously trying not to stare at the beautiful woman whose glossy black hair with long face-framing bangs and coal eyes look exactly like Sasuke’s. The woman does her the courtesy of not staring or nearing her, but she does seem politely curious.

Naruto shows up right on time and she finds herself relieved that the ghost around him is more like the suggestion of a ghost. She thinks it’s a woman with red hair and blue-violet eyes, but she’s so indistinct and washed out that it could be blue eyes and a vicious head wound. Naruto also brings other ghosts with him, but they stay far enough away that Sakura can’t tell anything about them.

Sakura relaxes into a meditation pose, determined to see if she can determine what is different about her chakra now that it’s full and she’s relatively safe within Konoha. She figures that she has a few hours before Kakashi-sensei arrives to puzzle the difference out.

Instead, she falls asleep seconds after she closes her eyes. The sun has barely changed positions when Kakashi-sensei pads silently into the training field and Naruto’s boisterous voice startles her awake when he shouts, “You’re late!”

“A stack of paperwork nearly crushed me to death. I had to take the long way so it didn’t follow me here and kill us all,” he answers, reading his book with one hand while his other is tucked into his pants pocket.

“Bullsh-” Kakashi claps a hand over Naruto’s mouth so fast none of them had caught the movement, judging by Sasuke’s flinch.

“There’s a lady present, Naruto,” he says with mock seriousness and an eye crinkle.

Naruto glares up at their sensei and then his blue eyes upturn with mischievous glee.

Sensei yanks his hand back and wipes it on his pants. “Gross Naruto, I think you slobber worse than my ninken.”

Naruto’s face screws up in deep offense and he yells, “There’s no lady here and I do not drool more than a dog!”

“Worse than all my dogs put together when you see Ramen,” Kakashi-sensei says sagely.

Sakura stands up next to her team and in a saccharine sweet voice asks, “What do you mean there isn’t a lady here, Naruto?”

Naruto backpedals and laughs nervously. She cracks her knuckles. “I forgot you were a girl Sakura-chan.”

“How can you forget?” she asks, red-faced with a cross of anger and embarrassment. She brings her fist down on the top of his head. She turns her back and crosses her arms as he plummets to the ground.

“Maybe because you hit harder than a man,” he mumbles from his position on the ground as he rubs his head.

She whips back around and glares down at her teammate about to tear into him again but the sight of a young girl with shoulder-length brown hair peeking out from behind Kakashi-sensei and hiding laughter behind her hands stops her.

“Alright, my cute little genin time for training. First day back from a long mission means that today is a conditioning day,” Kakashi interrupts cheerfully to hers and Naruto’s twin groans, even Sasuke-kun's perpetually cool demeanor appears displeased. Sensei’s tone is amused as he sets them to laps and a truly terrible number of pushups and sit-ups.

The Uchiha woman and the brown-haired girl sit together near the memorial stone. She thinks they chat softly to each other while they watch but Sakura only spares them a few short glances as she passes by them during her laps. She stops looking altogether when she recognizes the pattern of the dark void in the young girl's chest. She’s not sure she’s comfortable or wants to consider the implications of a young Konoha ninja that has the markings of having died by Sensei’s signature jutsu. She knows there must be more to the story because the ghost seems inordinately fond of Sensei and while she knows Kakashi-sensei is very strong, he’s never shown any indication of excessive violence or a lack of control over his strength. Nothing she can think of fits with what little she does know of her sensei.

Once she and her teammates are panting with exhaustion after a full morning of conditioning, Sensei dismisses the boys but pulls her aside. She collapses cross-legged in front of him and gives him a questioning look.

He pulls a few folded-up sheets of paper out of the cover of his book. “I brought the ancillary team leader paperwork.”

Sakura blinks at the papers that he is holding in front of her face. She reaches for them slowly, notes that there is at least one papercut on his calloused fingers, and considers that his excuse wasn’t completely fabricated. He was possibly late due to paperwork even if the size of the stack and their likely deaths from it were exaggerated.

She reads over it, and sees that Kakashi has already signed and marked it with his blood before signing it and pulling out a kunai to do the same. She hands it back to him with a yawn. She staggers to her feet and rubs her eyes.

“Ah, Sakura-chan, I couldn’t help but notice that you seemed off during practice. Is something wrong?” he asks clumsily, dragging a hand through his silver hair. She doesn’t think he’s good at showing concern or genuine emotions unless it’s an emergency and it is sort of endearing that he’s trying.

She quirks her lips in a tired half-smile. “Not anything you don’t already know about, Sensei.”

He levels her with an unimpressed stare. She’s too drowsy to argue so she puts one foot in front of the other. If she stumbles as she walks that’s just a hazard of training. Home seems so far away but the sooner she starts that way the sooner she can collapse into her bed. Maybe she will be too tired to dream tonight and maybe she can go from three kunai and twelve shuriken down to three kunai and eleven shuriken tonight. She’s not sure she can sleep without a kunai in hand but reducing the number of sharp things under her pillow would help keep the integrity of her sheets intact.

Sakura does not make it even to the bridge before she is scooped up. She grunts in surprise and finds herself looking up at her sensei. “You’ll have to tell me where you live Sakura-chan, because I think I skipped that part of your file.”

She rattles off her address to him and she wants to roll her eyes, but she is just too glad that she doesn’t have to walk all the way to her house. The scenery blurs from the speed at which sensei can move at, but his gait is smooth and lulling. When they reach her house only minutes later, she is all but asleep. He stops on her neighbor’s roof, and she sees him glance around.

There’s something flat in his voice as he says, “Did you know that nearly this whole block was rebuilt after the Kyuubi attack?”

“I do now,” she murmurs tiredly. That explains the swirling paw of orange chakra she sees in dozens of her dreams and the enormous number of panicking civilians.

“Ah I’m guessing you aren’t sleeping well then?” he asks softly as he puts her down. She tries not to cling to him or hide her face in his flak jacket, so she doesn’t have to see the horrible scene, like a toddler.

“No, and I think my parents are beginning to suspect that something is wrong. I’m not sure what to do about that and I’m too tired to think about it,” she answers, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palm.

He hums thoughtfully. “I may have a solution, but it might take a few days to confirm if it’s viable. Can you stay here another night or two?”

At her forlorn look at her house, he sighs. “Alternatively, you can sleep on my couch until we figure out something better. I can’t promise that there will be fewer ghosts, but I know it wasn’t destroyed and rebuilt in any major attacks. You wouldn’t have to try to hide what’s happening either.”

She can feel the hope and relief rising in her chest. “Would that be okay? I wouldn’t disturb you too much?”

He shakes his head in fond amusement. “Go pack for a few days. I wouldn’t have offered if I minded.”

She hops through her window, picks up her mission bag, shoves enough clothes and her toiletries in there to last a week, braves the thing in her closet for her training clothes, and writes a short note to her parents telling them she has ninja stuff to take care of and that she’ll update them in a few days. She figures that will be long enough to think up an excuse her parents will swallow.

She scampers back out through the window and back toward Kakashi-sensei who is slouched in front of her house now with his hands in his pocket. He glances at her to make sure she has everything and then begins walking. She follows him gratefully down a dozen blocks and a few side streets before they reach an older apartment building. It’s not quite shabby, but it definitely can’t be any newer than thirty years old.

Fortunately, there are fewer ghosts running around panicking in the area and while she can see former shinobi watching her, they are discrete about it. Sensei unlocks a third-floor apartment and is greeted by a handful of dogs at the door. He holds up a hand and the dogs all sit waiting, though some appear less patient than others. He gestures her in and shuts the door behind her. The ninken all look at Kakashi-sensei expectantly.

“Sakura-chan, these are my ninken. They stay here when I don’t need them on a mission. Boys this is Sakura-chan one of my genin students she’ll be staying here for a couple of days. Make sure you behave.”

A pug trots up to her. “Hello, Sakura-san. I’m Pakkun. Kakashi has never brought a student home before.”

She crouches and he sniffs the hand she holds out to him. “Hello, Pakkun. It’s very nice to meet you. I’ve never met a ninken that can talk before. Kakashi-sensei brought me here because I’m having a bit of an issue that he is helping me with.”

“All of Kakashi’s dogs can talk but we don’t all like to. You don’t smell hurt, you smell like floral green soap and exhaustion,” he says bluntly.

“The mission in Wave was bad and Sakura is having nightmares,” Sensei answers to her relief. She hadn’t been sure how much he wanted her to tell them.

“I think I’ve dreamt of death at least a hundred times in the last few days. Every time I close my eyes it’s different but the same,” she whispers vacantly. It is Sensei’s terrified expression, clear even through his mask, that yanks her out of her blissfully empty drifting thoughts.

“Sakura,” he breathes her name out, there’s something fragile in his voice and lone dark eye, like he thinks she’s a ghost.  

She furrows her brow, trying to understand his reaction. “Oh god. Not mine, Kakashi-sensei. Not mine. I was dreaming about the dead on the other side of town.”

He hesitates for several long moments and croaks out, “Promise?”

“I promise,” she says, holding her hand out with the pinky extended, because he looks like he needs reassurance, but also like he would shunshin all the way to Suna if she tried to hug him.

He locks his pinky around hers and shutters out a deep breath before releasing her finger. He slumps back into his normal careless posture and Sakura takes her eyes off of him as the ninken all inch closer, most of them with warm sympathetic puppy eyes. She smiles gently at them and pets the nearest one. The repetitive motion and soft, comforting feel of his fur against her hand along with her exhaustion nearly puts her in a mindless state of trance.

“You’re tired. Go sleep on the couch and I’ll wake you when I bring dinner back,” Kakashi-sensei orders gently. She goes without complaint and tucks herself underneath a throw blanket and feels something warm settle next to her before sleep drags her under.

The next morning Sakura finds herself squished between seven warm furry bodies on the tiny couch with Pakkun curled up on her stomach. There had been a few nightmares, but they hadn’t been traumatic, so they were easy to brush off. It was the best she had slept since watching Haku die.

It is still early, the sky only beginning to lighten in the predawn, and she was starving. She extricates herself, careful not to wake any of the dogs. She lifts Pakkun off her stomach and settles him back in the warmth of where she had laid. She tucks the worn blanket around him, pets him, and kisses the top of his soft head with a glowing smile. He grumbles a little but goes back to sleep with a loud sigh. She’d always wanted a dog and Kakashi’s dogs had been more helpful last night than anything else so far, like the best security blanket ever. She’s so grateful for their help and the restful sleep that she could burst into relieved tears.

Sakura changes her clothes and gets ready for the day. On the counter is a note that says her dinner from last night is in the fridge and it’s signed with a henohenomoheji. Apparently, she had been sleeping so deeply that he decided not to wake her. She eats quickly and rushes out the door toward the mission request desk with a copy of the ancillary team leader paperwork. Kakashi-sensei should have filed a copy yesterday, but she has no idea if he did or not and she’s not going to get turned down over something as silly as missing paperwork.

Luckily when she shows up no one glances twice at her. The mission desk has only just opened, and she is the first one there. The sleepy chunin hands over the scroll marks down that it’s been designated to team seven, and sends her on her way without checking her copy of the paperwork.

She crosses town and notes that the ghosts seem quieter this early. There are still some out and about in the streets but most of the scary-looking ones, the ones that have contorted themselves into grinning inhuman monsters with sinister auras worn like a shroud, aren’t prowling the streets. She wonders if ghosts have to rest or if the ghosts just aren’t out because neither are many living people. Not all ghosts seem to follow people around but so far, her experience has been that they seem more active around living people than in remote areas, whether that’s because more people live and therefore die in the village than the countryside or because ghosts like people more, she isn’t sure.

She arrives at the bridge first and opens the mission scroll to read and familiarize herself with the contents. She glances at the angle of the sun and guesses that she has almost a half hour before both of her teammates show up. She sits and folds herself crossed-legged, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath before focusing on her chakra system. Now that she isn’t chakra depleted or exhausted, she can see what’s wrong with her chakra.

Her pool of chakra is nearly a third bigger than when she had done this the last year of the academy, but that’s not unusual for chakra pools to grow with practice or experience. However what is strange, is for there to be a change in composition of chakra. As a ninja from a mostly civilian background her chakra had been fairly evenly balanced between yin and yang chakra. The academy only went into the basics of yin and yang, elemental affinities were supposed to be learned as a genin once their reserves were deep enough to support performing elemental jutsus. However, looking at her chakra now, it was significantly more heavily weighted toward Yin chakra than it had been before.

Mentally, she follows her chakra as it flows past each tenketsu. When it gets to the tenketsu in her head she nearly startles out of her meditation. There is chakra flowing to tiny new channels that lead to the back of her brain. She watches for a moment sure that those weren’t there before and resolves to check the library for more information and maybe a diagram on the brain while she’s at it.

She goes back to her pool of chakra and works on expanding her reserves. Most ninja prefer training rather than meditation to build reserves, but that’s because many ninja clans or families tend toward yang chakra which is better to build with physical activity. The clans that tended toward Yin chakra like the Nara and Yamanaka built their reserves up better either through meditation or mental exercises. Before, when her chakra had been evenly split, she had the option of either method, but now with her chakra dominated by Yin she envisioned a lot more boring mornings. It was still possible to build it up with physical exertion, but growth would come quicker with meditation for her now.

When she opens her eyes, Sasuke is coming up the path with the same ghost in tow as yesterday. She slides her eyes over the both of them to see Naruto’s bright orange tracksuit in the distance. There’s no ghost with him this morning or at least not right next to him although there are watchers in the distance again.

As soon as Naruto makes it to the bridge and before he can shout, Sakura pulls the mission scroll out of her pouch. “Good morning boys. We’ve got a weeding mission over in one of the civilian areas this morning.”

“Where’s sensei?” Naruto asks, looking around suspiciously like he thinks Kakashi-sensei might jump out and perform the One Thousand Years of Death jutsu on him again.

“Not here. I worked something out with Sensei where if we complete a mission by lunch he’ll spend the rest of the afternoon training,” she responds with a casual shrug and a grin, knowing that at least Naruto would be excited by the idea of training. She’s right because Naruto offers her a gleaming smile back.

“How did you even pick up the mission without Kakashi?” Sasuke asks skeptically, leaning against the bridge with his arms crossed. A little part of Sakura notes that if he weren’t questioning her, Sasuke-kun would look so confident and appealing right now.

She had thought about the answer to this since she and Sensei had come up with this plan and had decided that there was no use being coy. “Sensei made me ancillary team leader in his absence.”

“Antsy- what’s that?” Naruto asks, head cocked like one of Kakashi-sensei's ninken from yesterday evening. If she thinks of Naruto as an over eager puppy his behavior is kind of adorable rather than annoying. She wonders if Sensei has to think of all three of them that way.  

“Ancillary team leader. It means on missions where Sensei isn’t here, I’m in charge,” she answers firmly.

Sasuke scowls at her. “Why would Kakashi put you of all people in charge?”

“Because I’m more polite to clients and less likely to start a fight with my teammate over the division of labor,” she answers dryly like it’s obvious, like she hadn’t asked Kakashi-sensei that same thing herself.

Naruto looks thoughtful and says, “That’s fair Sakura-chan. Most of the villagers don’t like me and you’re really smart so I’d rather listen to you than teme.”

She smiles. “Thanks Naruto.”

Sasuke is still eying her with a mixture of contempt and dubiousness.

Sakura clenches her fists behind her back, so she doesn’t throw her hands up in exasperation. “It’s not a commentary on your battle skills, Sasuke. Do you really want to talk with the clients and deal with their concerns?”

He pauses, appears to really think about it and then shakes his head vigorously in the negative.

It's kind of cute and the woman next to him must agree because she is staring down at him with an amused grin and dark eyes crinkled with laughter. Sakura has to suppress her giggle at the notion that even Sasuke-kun's ghosts think he’s cute. “Good. Then let’s go.”

Upon arrival, it is clear that this is really a two-part mission. The large garden is severely overgrown, and the reason is because there are a large number of dangerous pests lurking in the vegetation. She eyes the landscape and her teammates and works out a strategy for the three of them in her head.

There’s a couple of ladies so old that their eyes aren’t visible through their wrinkles sitting on the engawa and cooing at them. Luckily, they’re already dead because that is exactly the type of thing her stupid teammates would cause a fight with a client over.

She turns to her teammates and declares, “Alright, Naruto you’re with me. We’re going to do the actual weeding. Sasuke, while we are weeding, you’re going to kill the dangerous pests like snakes with kunai or shuriken if you prefer and trap or chase out whichever ones aren’t dangerous. Leave the dangerous ones that you’ve killed in place for now. I’m trusting you not to hit either of us, okay?”

He grunts in response and she turns to her blonde teammate. “Can you make two shadow clones, please Naruto?”

He performs the linked hand sign and three clones pop out. “Whoops sorry. I’ll get rid of one.”

She stops him with a hand on his wrist. “That’s alright. I have a task for the third one too.”

She points to the first clone. “Your job is to pick up any animal Sasuke kills and put it over there. Pile the recovered weapons somewhere that neither the client nor we will step on.”

The second one she directs to walk through the vegetation ahead of them to rouse the pests. “Okay and now you two will stay with me and weed. As we go along, I’m going to teach you which plants are useful and which plants are weeds. If you have a question or aren’t sure, then I’ll be right here to ask.”

She shows him how to make sure to get the whole root the first time you pull and points out the plants in the immediate vicinity that aren’t weeds. Naruto is strangely subdued as they work. He and his clone both ask several times about the plants around them and if they are safe to pull. She calmly answers him. The clone she has walking the unweeded sections of the garden is the only one that is antsy. When that clone seems too bored she directs him to pile up all the weeds outside of the garden too.

They finish weeding in a few hours. Sakura and Naruto are sweaty and covered with streaks of dirt while Sasuke looks unbothered. She directs Naruto to dismiss his clones and then asks Sasuke to dispose of the dangerous pests and vegetation with a fire ninjutsu. While Sasuke does that, Sakura fills out the mission report while narrating to Naruto how to fill them out for when he has to do his own in the future.

The client comes out, signs off on the mission’s completion, and thanks them for a job well done. It’s the smoothest mission team seven has completed.

“Come. We have enough time to drop the mission report off and get lunch before we meet with Sensei,” Sakura says, stretching her arms in the air and leaning back to crack her spine.

They get lunch first and Sakura waves them off to the training ground while she heads to the mission desk. The mission desk is much busier now than it was in the morning. She turns in the report and when the desk chunin sees that the scroll is from team seven he glances up.

“You are Haruno-san from team seven?” he questions.

“Yes,” she confirms.

“And the team leader when Hatake-san is unavailable?” he verifies.

She nods hesitantly, not sure she likes where this is going. The kunoichi next to him looks amused which she considers a bad sign.

He hops up. “Excellent! Wait here for a second.”

Sakura bites her lip and hopes she and Kakashi-sensei aren’t in trouble for using the ancillary team leader position in a way that it wasn’t intended to be used. It’s not technically against the rules, but it’s also not designed for the way they are using it either.

The chunin comes back with a towering stack of paperwork that Sakura thinks might actually be able to crush her if it falls, although it’s definitely too short to crush sensei. She gulps.

The chunin’s arms are wavering under the weight as he tries to hand the stack to her. “This is for you.”

She backs away hastily. No way is she accepting a stack of paperwork that size without an explanation. “What is all this and why are you giving it to me?”

He sets it on the floor between them and steadies the pile before he explains, “These are all the forms that were supposed to be filled out since team seven was formed. There are team acceptance forms, the biweekly student progress report forms, medical and psychological forms, personnel forms that need to be updated, as well as a dozen other forms that need to be completed for each of you. As to why you have them, that’s because no one can catch Hatake-san if he doesn’t want to be caught.”

“I see…”

The Hokage walks out from his office with his pipe in hand and waves her into his office. She follows him back and waits nervously in front of his desk while he sits back down. The Hokage has never singled her out or talked to her personally.

He folds his weathered hands in front of him. “Ah, Haruno-kun. Both Iruka and Kakashi inform me that you are a responsible and fair person.”

The numerous ghosts in the office make her more nervous. There’s several of the monstrous ones along with a handful of ordinary spirits around the Hokage. She doesn’t recognize any of them except the Hokage’s deceased wife who is scowling in disapproval at him.

Sakura masks her confusion with a polite nod.

“There’s information in there about your teammates that is confidential. I’m allowing you to see it based on your teachers’ recommendations. Keep it safe and don’t make me regret it,” he orders.

She bows and solemnly answers, “I understand, Hokage-sama.”

He stares harshly at her for another moment before his face changes into more relaxed lines. “Good. On a more personal note. Thank you for stepping up to help your teacher. He had concerns about being an instructor and to my chagrin I didn’t take his concerns seriously enough. I didn’t realize how much he would struggle when I assigned him as a jounin instructor, but I think you three are good for him.”

She thinks that there is more to that statement than she knows, but she doesn’t have enough context to interpret it.

She judges the Hokage’s demeanor carefully and decides that he’s actually in a good mood before she scowls in the direction of the stack of paperwork and grumbles playfully, “If I had known that Sensei was so behind on his paperwork, I might not have.”

He laughs joyfully and Sakura smiles shyly.

“Understandable, Sakura-kun.”

She gestures with her hand, helplessly. “Would it be possible to have someone seal it before I go?”

“Of course,” he agrees.

“Thank you, Hokage-sama. If I may? I have training to get to and potential mutiny to commit against Kakashi-sensei.”

He waves her off with a chuckle. She goes into the other room and promises the desk chunin that if he seals up the paperwork for her, she will start filling it out tonight and turning in a little every day. He pulls two scrolls from a drawer, seals up half the paperwork in one and half in the other, and tells her, “If I don’t start receiving paperwork, I’ll hunt you down. You’re memorable and likely much slower than Hatake-san.”

“Ah chunin-san-”

“It’s Natori, kid,” he interrupts.

“Thank you, Natori-san and I promise, but I’ve got to go now,” she says holding her hand out for the scrolls.

He hands them to her and Sakura swiftly leaves the building. She swears when she sees the height of the sun and runs to the training ground.

She reaches the bridge to find them all waiting for her. “You’re late,” Kakashi-sensei sings along with Naruto.

Sakura can feel the vein in her forehead pounding. She smiles with too many teeth. “Sorry Sensei, I found the paperwork that nearly killed you yesterday and decided to fix the safety hazard before I came here. I wouldn’t want my beloved sensei to die on accident. I will need your assistance clearing such a deadly hazard later.”

Kakashi’s visible eye widens. “An acceptable excuse for today,” he declares with a nervous laugh. The ghost behind him has a hand over her face. She appears almost as exasperated with her sensei as Sakura feels.

“Okay kiddos, today we’re going to work on Taijutsu!”

“Tch. We need ninjutsu more,” Sasuke says.

Kakashi shakes his head. “We’ll start ninjutsu next week, but good Taijutsu skills will save your life more often than knowing another ninjutsu. Unfortunately, right now your Taijutsu is a poor mix of academy style and half remembered Uchiha style. Naruto is street brawling rather than using Taijutsu and while Sakura’s is textbook perfect academy style it is an extremely poor fit for her.”

Sakura uncharitably thinks that it’s a little hypocritical of the Copy Ninja, a man reported to know over a thousand jutsus, to say that, but she’s too glad he’s actually teaching to interrupt.

Kakashi-sensei pulls out a scroll and hands it to Sakura. “I have two styles I think might work for you. We’ll try both. These are the first ten kata for the first style called Twisting Root. It focuses on pivoting for evasion and striking critical points on the body. Practice these for accuracy first before speed and I’ll check your progress in a little bit.”

She unrolls the scroll and finds detailed diagrams of the forms along with handwritten notes on posture and other hints in Sensei’s barely legible handwriting. Most of her irritation with him from the paperwork fiasco washes away.

Over the top of her scroll, she notes that Sensei created a shadow clone and directed it to review the Uchiha forms with Sasuke while the real Kakashi took Naruto aside to start with the basics.

She works her way through the first three forms slowly, holding the poses to ingrain each position into her memory and then chains them together to form a fluid sequence. She is beginning to sweat and pulls out her water bottle. She takes a sip and wipes her mouth as she glances at her teammates. Sasuke’s ghost is standing close to him and frowning heavily at her teammate and sensei.

The dark-haired woman catches her eye and says something. Sakura frowns and shakes her head while discreetly pointing to her ear. The woman cocks her head and nods. She holds up eight fingers, then adds a finger to make nine and then points to the two running through forms. She slowly performs a form that ends in a crouch and then the next one that begins with a high kick. She makes sure Sakura is still watching and then points to herself and runs the same sequence but with a deeper crouch and higher, significantly more forceful kick. She repeats it again and eyes Sakura beseechingly.

It takes only a second to realize that whoever this ghost is wants her to correct the Uchiha forms. Immediately, she knows that directly addressing the issue will go over poorly especially because she can’t reveal to Sasuke how she knows his dead family’s forms. That would be like knowingly walking on a pack of explosive seals. She marches over to Kakashi-sensei who is still with Naruto. When he cocks his head her way while keeping watch of Naruto, she says, “The movement between forms eight and nine for the Uchiha style requires a deeper crouch.”

He breaks his watch on Naruto, and she shows him the necessary depth to the movement and subsequent kick. It’s not perfect, but he trusts her enough to tell Naruto to hold for a minute while he signs something to his clone too fast for her eyes to keep up with.

He pats her on the head. “It’s taken care of, Sakura-chan.”

She watches for a moment, sees the difference the correction makes for Sasuke, and when the ghost smiles happily at her she goes back to her own practice. By the time she gets through all ten forms Kakashi-sensei has come to watch her. She runs through them slowly first and then speeds them up so he can see both her speed and accuracy.

“Good, we’ll keep practicing those this week. For now, I want you to spar with me. The goal isn’t to win. It is to work the forms you just learned into the spar,” he says as he takes a stance in front of her. He motions her forward and then meets her in the middle. She redirects his force with kata number six which is a quarter rotation back on her left leg while simultaneously shoving forward to the right. She thinks this style should be called Twisted Trunk instead because the movement twists her torso enough to look like a tree with a spiraling trunk.

After several minutes, he jumps away and motions an end to the spar. “Good you were able to incorporate all ten of them. I’ll bring you more forms next week.” He steers her over to the others with his hand on her shoulder and guides her down to sit with her teammates. “I have one more training activity for our cool down. Sit still with your hands behind your back while I tie you up. When I say to, I want you to try to escape. I’m going to time you and we’ll work on improving your time and skills on different types of knots.”

Sensei is much gentler than she expects when he ties them up. She tests the rope’s strength and give but doesn’t start working her way out until Sensei says go.

She brings the knot in front of her by drawing her knees to her chest, compressing her torso, shifting her arms underneath her backside, and then brings her hands over the top of her legs. Now that she can see the knot she wiggles her hands and uses her teeth to loosen the knot. She’s out in less than a minute and goes to untie her teammates.

Kakashi-sensei glances down at the stopwatch in his hand. “Not bad. Fifty-three seconds. Leave your teammates this time,” he says stopping her.

She nods and rubs circulation back into her wrists and hands.

Naruto and Sasuke finish within seconds of each other but it still takes them more than seven minutes to release themselves. Sakura frowns when she realizes that they haven’t been taught how to escape quickly. While their methods technically work, they are both more time and energy consuming.

“Hmm. We’ll work on your times boys, but that was about what I expected for a first attempt.” He exchanges his stopwatch for his orange book.

“Sakura-chan how did you get out so quickly?” Naruto asks loudly, leaning so far towards her that he is invading her space. She leans back hastily, startled at both the question and his proximity. She notes that both Sensei and Sasuke have turned their attention to her as well.

She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose with a noisy exhale. “Kunoichi classes aren’t just flower arranging. It is more common for Kunoichi to be kidnapped so we practiced getting out of all sorts of restraints and untying anyone who was trapped with us to have a better chance of escape.”

Naruto scratches his head. “Why would girls get kidnapped more?”

“They are easier targets,” Sasuke replies. The ghost beside him crosses her arms and visibly sighs in disappointment.

Sakura recoils, feeling his words like a slap across the face. Kakashi shakes his head and corrects, “That’s not true. The reason is that kunoichi are generally more valuable alive then their male counterparts.”

“Why’s that, sensei?” Naruto asks.

Kakashi appears pained as he answers, “Ah, mostly for bloodline theft and other terrible things of that nature.”

The young girl behind Sensei rests her hand on his arm and gazes sadly at him. Sakura wonders if that’s what happened to the girl. She thinks lightning through the chest would be a mercy at that point, although there are certainly less painful ways to go.

Sasuke seems thoughtful. Naruto still looks puzzled and Sakura answers before he can ask, “It’s because people will buy kunoichi for their bodies. It isn’t that hard to seal someone’s chakra or drug them. If they are pretty than it’s generally to sell them to a man for their vices, if the kunoichi has a bloodline than it is likely a hidden village that’s paying and they’ll forcibly make sure she has as many children as they can get from her.”

Naruto steps back, mouth open in horrified shock. “But that’s wrong!” he says when he gathers himself enough to speak.

She shrugs. “It is, but not everyone cares about that.”

He looks her over like he’s seeing her for the first time. “Sakura-chan, you’re beautiful and I’ve never seen another girl that looks like you. You’re in danger like that. Why would you become a kunoichi if that could happen to you?” The last part comes out urgently.

Despite the topic, her cheeks heat at the sincere compliment. “It happens to women who aren’t kunoichi too and as a kunoichi at least I have a chance to fight back or escape. If I’m lucky my teammates might come for me before anything terrible happens.”

It is Kakashi-sensei that flinches this time. It would have been imperceptible except that the ghost’s hand slides through him and disappears into his body when he does. She blinks and the hand is back to resting on Sensei’s arm. He isn’t able to shake off whatever has unsettled him.

“We would Sakura-chan, believe it!”

She smiles softly, “Thanks, Naruto. Anyway, if we finish up our mission early again tomorrow. I’ll show you the best way to get out of that kind of tie, so next time all our times improve.”

Kakashi isn’t sure how much more of this conversation he can stomach, not with the constant reminders of how he failed both of his teammates. He pastes on a cheerful grin and says, “With that, you’re all dismissed.”

The boys took off immediately, Naruto chanting about ramen and Sasuke fleeing from too much social interaction, but his female student waits until the others are out of earshot to ask, “Are you headed home Sensei?”

“In a while,” he says noncommittally. He has a few places to stop before he goes home, the first being the memorial stone.

She inclined her head toward him. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“Wait. How did you know about the kata corrections?” he calls out to her. It had been bothering him, but when he and Sasuke worked the correction into the kata it had improved the power in the next blow and allowed the follow through into the tenth form to flow more smoothly. There wasn’t a way for her to know that unless she had seen the set performed before.

She twists to face him and grimaces a little as she replies, “Oh that. Sasuke has a ghost. She looks kind but she has opinions on training.”

The wry recitation startles a chuckle out of him. “I see. Did she tell you who she was?”

She curls a hand around her stomach and shakes her head. “I still can’t hear them but, he has the same eyes and face as her. I think she’s his mother,” she answers, the last part coming out so quietly that it is only his exceptional hearing that allows him to catch her words.

He stiffens. She hadn’t mentioned this ghost before and he doesn’t think that she would hide it from him while they were in the Land of Waves, so he presumes this is a recent development. He has not asked about the ghosts in Konoha or around the team, because he had assumed that ghosts haunted people or places continuously, and that since she hadn’t mentioned any of them being haunted after Wave their team was clear. This was obviously a mistake on his part.

He doesn’t want to ask. It hurts him to even contemplate it, but he feels it’s necessary. “Are there any others?”

She stares at him for a long moment before answering, “Ghosts? Not following Sasuke. Naruto has weird ghosts. There’s some who watch him from a distance and sometimes there is someone near him, but the details are too indistinct for me to give a description. There is one that watches you too.”

He doesn’t know what to say. Which one of his ghosts is it? Most everyone important in his life is dead. He can’t swallow past the knot in his throat. He wants to know but doesn’t think he can bring himself to ask, and Sakura must realize his inability because she continues softly, “It’s a girl a little older than me I think, with short brown hair and rectangles on her cheeks. She only watches you on the training grounds and she looks at you fondly Sensei. She even smiles at your lame excuses.”

“Rin then. My genin teammate,” he barely manages to choke out. Whether she’s smiling because he gives lame excuses or because his lame excuses are reminiscent of Obito remains to be seen.  

Sakura flickers her gaze to his side for a moment. The action makes her seem a little unfocused or perhaps absentminded since it occurs during mid conversation but, she’s so quick and discreet about it that if he didn’t know about her ability, he wouldn’t suspect anything other than a normal preteen girl. “She signed yes.”

He bows his head and puts his hand over his face. His breath hitches and he tries to stop his shoulders from heaving.

“I’m sorry, Sensei I shouldn’t have said anything,” she apologizes, mouth trembling and features blanched.

He huffs, “I’m the one that asked Sakura. There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”

Her hand reaches slowly for his. She intertwines her cool fingers with his and squeezes before reluctantly letting go of his hand. “Alright. I’m going to head back to your apartment. I’ll see you later, Sensei.”

He attempts a smile but knows that it’s a poor mangled effort. “I’ll bring takeout back again.”

“I might even be awake to eat it this time,” she says, pouting with self-deprecation.

He manages a faint chuckle this time. She gives him a hopeful little half-smile and leaves him without looking back, although he thinks that she’s doing it out of respect for him not because she doesn’t care enough to check on him.

He wanders to the memorial stone and collapses down with his back resting against the sun warmed stone. He unzips his flak jacket that is suddenly too constraining and wets his lips under his mask. “So, you are really here Rin.”

There’s no answer that he can hear, but there never has been before. He doesn’t know how he feels about her presence yet. He had hoped that she was with Obito and happy somewhere, but it’s comforting to know that she had been listening and watching over him all these years. He sits there and talks until the sun casts long shadows of the trees across the grounds and his voice becomes hoarse.

Kakashi stops for takeout and comes home to his table covered in paperwork so high that he can’t see his student at all. He can only hear her mumbling something that sounds like nonsense or maybe death threats. He hopes she isn’t serious about the threats because he isn’t sure he has the energy or will to stop her this evening. His chest aches like Gai has bruised his ribs in a serious spar and there is a pounding building behind his eyes.

All eight of his dogs greet him with terribly judgmental faces and appear as if they might disown him. He scratches the back of his head. “I’m back now, Sakura-chan.”

Her jade eyes are narrowed as she peeks around a stack of paperwork. They are definitely annoyed, but thankfully not murderous yet. “Welcome back, Sensei. It’s good that you’re home. Now you can help me fill out your paperwork.”

He winces. He supposes he should have known that the paperwork would catch up to him eventually. At least she hasn’t asked him if he’s alright, because he doesn’t know the answer and isn’t sure he can lie as shamelessly as normal. More emotions have been elicited from him in the last month than in the entire time since Minato-sensei died twelve years ago and he doesn’t know how to process them. Paperwork is preferable to talking about feelings any day.

She hands him a small handful. It looks surprisingly manageable. “Fill this out. It’s our initial skills assessment from when we became a team as well as my current skill assessment. I don’t want to be accused of bias and I need an example to complete Sasuke’s and Naruto’s. I’m throwing out the other biweekly assessments because they would be inaccurate and useless at this point. Tell me if I should leave out anything in either of the boys’ latest assessments.”

He snaps his gaze to her and grins. She really was a brilliant student. “Leave out how proficient Sasuke is with his fire release, anything to do with how Naruto fought Haku on the bridge and avoid mentioning how many shadow clones he can summon at once.”

Sakura’s face morphs into anger and for a second, he thinks he’s said or done something wrong. She growls, “That decree is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard Naruto’s ranking of the different types of ramen seven times. No one our age knew why we were warned against playing with him and all the adults acted like there was something wrong or contagious about him. If he was going to be shunned, he should have at least known the reason and I think a lot more of his peers would have treated him better if there had been an explanation. Shinobi are suspicious by nature, but friendship and love cannot begin to grow where doubt darkens the mind and fear chokes the roots from reaching the heart.”

Kakashi bites down on a smile. “Sakura-chan, are you quoting The Shinobi’s Secret Love to me?”

She gasps, “Oh my god! You read more than porn?”

She brings up a palm to cover her wide-open mouth. She looks bewildered, like being told the sky is green, like she thinks her entire life has been a lie. He laughs so hard he has tears in his good eye. He stops laughing only enough to tell her, “That book is way more explicit than both Paradise and Violence.”

“No way! I refuse to believe you,” she sputters out.

“No, I’m serious,” he says, his laughter dying to a hidden bright grin complete with an eye crease.

She covers her face with her hands and groans out, “I think I’m too traumatized to discuss this with you anymore, Sensei.”

He snickers. “I’m not the one that quoted that book.”

She crosses her arms. “Regardless, the point still stands.”

He exhales. “Yeah, I think Shikaku-san argued the same, but without the romance novel quote. Ultimately, the Hokage and the council had the final say.”

“No wonder his wife looks so aggravated with him,” she grumbles under her breath and immediately goes back to the paperwork in front of her.

He holds in his laughter again. When his student isn’t fawning over her other teammate, she’s quite amusing. Maybe he shouldn’t think the Hokage’s wife being aggravated at him from beyond the grave is so funny but the absurdity of the whole thing and the image in his head doesn’t help.

“I’ve scheduled everyone’s physicals and psychological evaluations for next week,” Sakura informs him, switching topics so quickly he thinks he can feel whiplash stiffening his spine.

His pulse races and he stammers out, “What?”

She puts her pen down, gazing up at him with a frown. “We were all supposed to be scheduled for those before taking our first mission.”

“You were?” He doesn’t remember that from when he was a genin and he doesn’t know if it’s because it was so long ago that he forgot or if the wartime policies hadn’t allowed for that.

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, Sensei. You were supposed to schedule them and accompany us. I don’t need you to come with me and Sasuke would probably be offended if he knew that was an option. However, I do think you should go with Naruto to make sure he gets fair treatment. I can deal with the doctor if you deal with the psychiatrist.”

He lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Yeah, I can manage the psychiatrist.” Thank god it wasn’t the hospital.

Sakura grins wolfishly. “The hospital informed me how overdue you are on your own physical when I booked ours. If you’re late and something happens to Naruto. I will drag you to the hospital myself for your own appointment and make sure your psych file is flagged so many times that you’re stuck doing in-village D-ranks alongside us indefinitely.”

He blanches. “You wouldn’t be that cruel to your favorite sensei, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t be that cruel to Iruka-sensei.”

“So mean. Why aren’t I your favorite?” he whines.

She looks around at the stacks of paperwork pointedly. “Iruka-sensei is everyone’s favorite sensei. You have a lot of work to do if you want to catch up to him.”

That was fair. Iruka was practically a saint and had been patiently dealing with academy students for years. Plus, she had inadvertently got stuck with mounds of his paperwork.

He folds his arms in front of him and proposes, “And if I told you that I have a feasible long term solution to your sleeping problem?”

“Then you might become my second favorite sensei,” she answers him dryly, her pen already back to darting across the paperwork in front of her.

Chapter Text

"All houses in which men have lived and suffered and died are haunted houses." 

-Mary Roberts Rinehart  

After training the next day, Kakashi-sensei motions for her to follow him. Sakura falls into step with him without a word. He doesn’t lead her back through town but stays skirting the training grounds until they reach the Nara Forest. Rin follows them curiously all the way until they reach a property that Sakura knows isn’t where the Nara clan lives. Rin smiles at her sensei, waves to her, and then ambles back toward the training grounds.  

Sakura shifts back on her heels as she stares up at the house. The estate looks as if it’s been empty for at least a decade, several boards that were put up to protect the rice paper screens are falling down and the underlying rice paper is dirty and torn, what was once a landscaped yard is being overtaken by the forest, she spies old birds’ nests in the eaves and gutters. Nothing about the house is structurally unsound per se, it’s just run down.   

Maybe it’s an illusion or her imagination playing tricks on her, but everything vaguely appears to be sagging downward like the house is so miserable and unhappy that it’s frowning. She presses her lips together tightly and fights not to frown back at the gloomy house.   

There’s a forced casualness to her teacher’s posture that Sakura doesn’t understand. Kakashi-sensei speaks so lowly it is hard to catch all his words, “You can stay here. There shouldn’t be any ghosts on the property. There are old wards against spirits here and besides that, most of the past residents died in the second war far away from Konoha.”  

“Thanks, sensei,” she murmurs, attempting to restrain the note of hesitation that wants to escape. She is not impressed with his solution so far. This is where she’s supposed to be able to rest? It looks exactly like a haunted house.  

“Sure. Maybe don’t mention it to anyone though,” he says, scratching the back of his head underneath the tie to his forehead protector.   

She squints up at him. “I’m not squatting, am I?”  

He breaks into soft chuckles. “No Sakura-chan, you have the owner’s permission to be here.”  

“Am I allowed to clean it up?” she asks, eyeing up the damaged screens and the multitude of dirt-caked surfaces.  

He shrugs. “I don’t see an issue with making it livable.”  

Before she can thank him again, he disappears in a fluttering of leaves. “Should have expected that,” she mutters to herself with a soft sigh. She tilts her head back to take in one more glance of the entire festering structure. Gathering her courage, she wades carefully through the long grass, wincing at the crunch of every footstep, and creeps past the impenetrable layer of ferns that are encroaching on the house from the looming forest.    

The stairs to the front door groan as she puts her weight on them. The door sticks, but she uses her shoulder, and it opens reluctantly with a long shriek from the stiff and long unused wood. She struggles not to cough. The disturbed dust floats through the darkened interior, glinting as it catches the only beam of light coming in from the door behind her. The shadows in the house are so dark that they are nearly indistinguishable from the objects casting them. The house is spooky, as all unused buildings are, and melancholy, but it is not unwelcoming. Thankfully, there are no ghosts looming in the darkness or waiting to greet her with too many teeth on display as she walks through the house letting light in but as the light shines in the house feels a little less abjectly miserable.   

Despite the creaking of the house and the wind whistling through the screens, Sakura sleeps well and doesn’t see a single ghost that night nor the next morning before training. Hope and relief blossom in her chest like the first flowers of spring breaking up the bleak winter landscape. 

Over the next few days, after missions and training, she cleans the bottom floor of the house, dusts the study, beats rugs, wipes dirt off walls and tables, repairs rice paper panels, scrubs the wooden floors, and spends her entire rest day scrubbing the kitchenware and old appliances. Sakura changes her initial assessment of the house not being touched for a decade. Based on the thickness of the layers of dirt, she thinks that the house must not have been lived in for at least two decades.   

She considers the lack of inhabitants to be a shame because she can see the promise in the house once it’s clean and sunlight is allowed to stream back in and highlight the warm woods of the interior. It still needs some work, but she thinks that the house must have once been beautiful. Most nights she falls onto a futon she’s set up in the first room she cleaned, too tired to dream.   

When she starts on the second floor, the initial signs of trouble begin. The hair on the back of her neck rises and she gets the sense that someone is watching her. She scrubs harder at the floor and doesn’t look up.  

The night after she begins cleaning the second-floor bedrooms she dreams of a blizzard of despair, shame, and guilt so gut-wrenching that she tries to cut it out herself in the study though her hands are too big and the grip of the weapon unfamiliar to her. She wakes empty-handed with tears on her face and an apology on her lips while the moonlight casts long shadows on the newly cleaned wooden floors.   

She had been careful to leave the contents of the old house alone and she nearly regrets that now because there’s no visual difference when she opens her eyes. It makes it difficult to believe that it was only a dream. She’s straddling both worlds, her body is rooted in the present, but her mind is hazy and bound to the past. It’s harder to dismiss the lingering suffering and staggering sorrow as not hers when it drowns her every heaving breath.   

There’s no one else here to see but she hesitantly touches a hand to the floor. She clenches the fabric of her night clothes in her other fist. It’s strange, almost discordant, that there is no stain or other visible indicator of the death here. The memory of the heartache is so strong that she expects to see evidence of its lifeblood spilled around her. That there isn’t, leaves her with the impression of a grave without a marker.  

It takes her several minutes to gather herself enough to stand on unsteady legs and go back to bed. She falls into an uneasy sleep, profound melancholy and the weight of the sword in her hand are the only sensations she can remember plaguing her in the morning.   

It's difficult to shake the despair off the next day. Kakashi-sensei eyes her during training but doesn’t ask about the bags under her eyes or the way she conserves her speech to only essential words. It’s the only night it happens though so her situation is still far better than at her parents’ house or even when she tried to walk into town for groceries.  

Sakura is reasonably sure that there’s only that one ghost on the whole property. She only ever catches glimpses of him, the green of a flak jacket disappearing around a corner and the height that assures her that the ghost is male. He doesn’t make an effort to appear to her and Sakura makes a concerted effort to always be busy and staring at her current self-assigned task as if she has tunnel vision and absolutely no situational awareness. Sakura is comfortable with ignoring him especially if he continues to pretend that she doesn’t exist.  

Making herself busy is even easier when she steps foot into the backyard. There’s a large plot that must have been a vegetable garden at one point judging by the wild growth of tomato plants, squashes, and the occasional snap pea plant tangled together. She brings in all the ripe produce but otherwise leaves the overgrown garden for a free weekend and resolves to buy seeds so she can have fresh produce. She’s never tried to grow a garden before but if she’s going to be living on her own then growing her own food is an easy cost-saving measure particularly while she is still a lowly genin.  

That following weekend she goes home to get some more of her things and to talk with her parents. Normally she doesn’t bother with lying because she is acutely aware that she’s always been a terrible liar. She’s decent at stretching the truth but she’s never been good at outright deceit. Suzumi-sensei had told their kunoichi skills class that lying was a specialist skill that could be learned when you were promoted to chunin or at the age of sixteen if you wanted to take the additional class at the Torture and Interrogation building. The kunoichi skills sensei had looked disapproving as she mentioned voluntarily taking the class as if it wasn’t something she wanted to disclose but was forced to state.  

Sakura darts into her childhood room through the window instead of coming into the house through the front door to give herself a few more minutes to determine how she wants to approach the encounter with her parents. Her gaze skips over the unwelcome guests in her room, too busy searching for her things so she can escape them altogether. As she packs the rest of her clothes and toiletries and seals the rest of her weapons and books into a scroll, she settles for telling her parents a half-truth like Kakashi-sensei had for his pack.   

She silently sets her bag by the front door and then walks to the dining room where her parents are quietly talking. The slithering thing is still under the table twisting around the table legs and peeking just his eyes over the edge of the table to stare at the food.  

“Sakura! Are you back from your ninja business?” her father asks as he greets her with a warm smile. She yanks her eyes away from the unnatural child and smiles wanly back at him.  

“I’m only here for a few minutes actually,” she answers, her arms crossed behind her back with her hands gripping her forearms tightly.  

When both of her parents adopt crestfallen and dismayed expressions, she hurries to explain, “Our c-rank mission to the Land of Waves went badly and we encountered one of the former Seven Swordsmen from Mist. I’ve been having trouble sleeping in town with all the noise, so until I figure out how to sleep through the night I am staying in an old house on the outskirts of town and helping to fix it up.”  

Her mother raises her brows and gestures at her father. Her father leans toward her and says tentatively, “You know Sakura-chan, you don’t have to continue being a shinobi. We would support you if you quit and you could always come help with the family business instead.”  

She rears back and her father continues, heedless of his daughter’s distress, “We’re proud of you and what you achieved, of course, but we’ve never wanted this for you. We thought you would graduate the academy and become a desk shinobi like we were, but with the team you have that’s not what it looks like Konoha wants from you.”  

“My team?” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “Wait- A desk ninja?”   

She knows that both of her parents had careers as desk chunin or paper ninjas during the last war. It was how they had met, and they’d told her the story at least a few dozen times, but she had never aspired to that kind of position. She wants to work in the field although she still doesn’t have a specialty in mind yet, not like Ino or Kiba.  

“You’re very smart Sakura and there’s no shame in being a paper ninja,” her mother says. Sakura nearly scoffs. Of course there isn’t. It just isn’t how she wants to serve her village.  

Sakura opens her mouth to say so, but her mother presses on, “Team seven doesn’t produce ninjas who stay safe in the village. Traditionally, it is a frontline combat team and the members either die horrifically, defect, or become infamous. And with the sensei and team you have now- “  

“There’s nothing wrong with my team!” Sakura exclaims, anger starting to curl in her stomach as she thinks about Sasuke-kun who is the top rookie of the year and the first to offer Naruto part of his lunch during the bell test, Naruto who throws himself wholeheartedly into training and who believes so strongly in heroes that he was willing to fight for the people in the Land of Waves even when any other rational team would have gone back to the village, and lastly about Kakashi-sensei who protects them all with his life and has gone out of his way to help keep her safe, healthy, and sane.  

Her father holds his large hands up in a placating gesture and his blue eyes are unequivocally earnest as he rips her heart out with his next question. “Of course not, Sa-chan, but don’t you think you might not fit in with them?”  

Once she gets over the initial agony of her father’s words, Sakura gets it because, with the information she has about her team now, she’s no one in comparison. She doesn’t know why she was originally put on team seven. It’s easy to see why the rest of them were put on a frontline combat team. Her teammates are all the last of great shinobi clans with great things expected from them and on paper she is civilian-born without much going for her except book smarts and chakra control. Definitely not the kind of ninja that gets teamed up with the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, the last loyal Uchiha, and the Copy Ninja.  

Except now she has a secret. A dangerous skill where she can’t afford to only be a paper ninja. She has to be as strong as her teammates and while she’s always wanted to be a good ninja, now she can’t afford not to be an exemplary one. Her head is tilted downward, blush-toned hair hiding the bitter smile playing on her lips. She might hate everything about her ability so far, but she certainly fits in better with her team now.  

“We just don’t want anything bad to happen to you and if you’re already having trouble then maybe it’s time to quit or at least switch teams,” her mother says softly, staring down at her own hands that are folded tightly in front of her.   

Sakura lifts her head. Her spine is steel, and her fists are clenched so tightly that her fingernails are digging into the palms of her hands. “Maybe I am different from my squad, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t a team, that we can’t fit together. It’s true that I don’t have chakra reserves like an ocean or the Sharingan, but it wasn’t Naruto and Sasuke who learned to tree walk and water walk on the first try. I’ll find my own way to stand as their equal.”

Their skills might be an odd match for each other but even before Sakura started seeing ghosts, they were a team of misfits. She can’t imagine being on a different team and she doesn’t want to.  

Her father’s desperate countenance beseeches her to understand. “We only want what’s best for you.”  

“I know and I’m sorry that I can’t explain why the last mission was different. It’s classified, but team seven is what’s best for me. The team and mission types have nothing to do with why I need space,” she answers solemnly.  

His shoulders slump. “Alright Sakura,” he says with a gusty exhale.  

“I’ll still come around. I just can’t stay in town, especially overnight.”  

Her father snaps his head toward her, a renewed look of suspicion on his face and her mother’s matching jade eyes go blank, like she’s walling herself off and already bracing for grief.  

“No one is hurting or forcing you into something you don’t want?” her father presses.  

Her eyes widen and she shakes her head vigorously at the misunderstanding. “No! Nothing like that. I promise and I already asked Sensei for help.”  

His features soften and he nods. “Then I expect you for dinner once a week when you aren’t on a mission.”  

She lets out a relieved smile. “I will! Thank you.”  

“How many more missions do you think it will take for your teammates to start leaving you behind at best? Or at worst, for you to end up as collateral when one of them snaps?” her mother bites out.   

“That’s not going to happen,” Sakura states firmly.  

“I want you to come home alive, not in a scroll, and certainly not left to rot outside of the village. All your teammates are pariahs in one way or another and none of them have reputations for caring for others,” her mother hisses out venomously.  

Her teammates are broken and hurt but they are not cold, not even Sasuke. They are still learning how to be an effective unit, but Sakura adores her team. It’s the closest she’s ever felt to belonging. And to say her team doesn’t care is so distinctly unfair because Naruto arguably cares too much, Sasuke is learning how to let them past his nearly impenetrable walls, and Sensei is the one who taught them that caring is what matters at all.  

Her father’s voice is crisp as he warns, “Mebuki, let it go for now.”  

“I can’t do this today. I’ll come by next week for dinner if I’m not on a mission,” Sakura grates out from between gritted teeth.   

She stomps back to her slightly less haunted house. Fury simmering in her blood as she replays the ‘for now’ in her head. They can have that conversation as many times as her mother forces the issue, but she’s never giving her team up.  

It’s the second week since his team has implemented their new mission and training schedule. Yesterday, Kakashi accompanied Naruto to his psych evaluation. He had exchanged the blond with Sakura, careful to be right on time after Naruto’s doctor's appointment. They traded their teammate like they were co-parenting him, which might have been a more amusing observation if Sakura hadn’t been shaking in rage even as she nodded tolerantly at Naruto’s ever enthusiastic spiel.   

It doesn’t take Kakashi long to realize the reason for Sakura’s temper after he has to threaten coerce the assigned counselor into treating Naruto fairly.  

He has been awake, tossing and turning since three am, guilty and grieving over his student’s treatment regardless of the fact that he had been too young to do anything when Minato-sensei had died. Truthfully, he suspects that he’s still too damaged and messed up to be capable of helping.  

The sun is starting to rise when he rolls out of bed with a sigh. Since he’s awake and spent most of yesterday evening in front of the memorial stone he decides that he should check up on his students. He arrives at the mission desk only to be informed by the staff that Sakura has already come and gone.  

“Are you perhaps looking for the rest of your team, Hatake-san?” the serious-looking kunoichi manning the desk this morning asks.  

“I am,” he answers sedately as he turns a page in his book. His chakra is already molded for a shunshin in case anything remotely looking like paperwork nears his person. He and Sakura-chan are still working through the mountain that was given to her before, although admittedly his student is much better and faster at it than him.  

She runs her finger down the list in front of her. “They are delivering groceries to Okurano Himeko on Maple St.”  

“Thanks,” he says and turns to leave.  

“Hatake-san.”  

He twists his head to look over his shoulder at the chunin. “Hmm?”  

She crosses her arms and states, “The report quality and efficiency of your team’s missions have increased since Sakura-san has been picking them up. I don’t know if you intended this change to be temporary or not, but you should consider keeping it.”   

He cocks his head to the side. “Ah, as long as it continues to show results, I don’t intend to change it.”  

Not when Sakura’s assistance is such a reprieve for him. There’s a little kernel of shame in the pit of his stomach that Sakura even had to offer to take up his slack, but the shame is far outweighed by his relief. Before her help, he was drowning in an endless cycle of grief and guilt.   

The grief and guilt would drive him to the Memorial Stone then he would be hours late for training which would cause him more guilt that he was failing his students, which he would inevitably need to confess at the stone and then he would get lost in his grief all over again. With his little student’s help, he doesn’t feel like he’s failing his new team as much, which allows him more time away from the Memorial Stone and to concentrate on their training, which is what his students really need from him. The knowledge that Rin still watches over him has helped a bit too.  

“Good,” the kunoichi utters with a nod.  

He shunshins away in a shower of leaves and roof hops until he is by the client’s house. Sakura is discussing something with the client, and he is about to jump down and participate today when he decides to watch instead. He is very curious about what the chunin in the mission office had said about the improvements to the team’s missions.   

Sakura guides them over to a bench in front of the grocers and has Naruto sit beside her. Sasuke is standing next to them with his arms crossed. She pulls out a pen, a notepad, and what he believes is the client’s grocery list. He raises his headband and gets in a position where he can read her lips.  

As she writes down something on her notepad she says, “I’m splitting the list into smaller more manageable ones. All of the dried goods are on this list. The produce and meat are together and the frozen or refrigerated items are on this one.”   

Standing, she hands Sasuke the dried goods list, Naruto the cold items, and keeps the produce and meat list. “After you’re done gathering the items on your list meet me in front of the store before the checkout counter. Also, Naruto I want you to send a clone with me.”  

Naruto makes three clones. Sakura taps her foot impatiently until Sasuke dismisses the extra ones with a kunai to the kidneys. Sakura nods satisfied.  

“Hey!” Both Naruto and the remaining clone shout.  

Sakura puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “You know the rule Naruto. Every time you make more clones than necessary, Sasuke gets to get rid of them however he wants.”  

“Fine,” he sulks and then suddenly brightens, “Sasuke was rude to the client earlier.”  

Sasuke rolls his eyes. “He was, wasn’t he? I’ll mark down that he’s paying for one ramen bowl,” Sakura says.  

Kakashi covers his mouth to smother the laugh that bubbles up. He supposes that is one way to keep the fighting down between her teammates. He briefly wonders if Sakura has her own penalty and what it is.  

He henges himself into a nondescript civilian and follows them into the store. He picks up a basket and decides to do his own shopping while he watches them. Sasuke and Naruto are both picking up their items without issue. Kakashi notes that both of the boys’ lists are compiled by the aisle number and the order they would encounter the item.   

He raises his brows. The academy instructors had mentioned that Sakura had a decent recall. However, they have really undersold her ability considering this isn’t the grocers anywhere near her parents’ house or where she’s currently staying.  

Next, he goes to the produce aisle expecting to see the Naruto clone holding the basket for his female teammate. That’s not what’s happening though. Sakura is holding the basket and patiently instructing Naruto how to pick the best produce. She even shows him how to pick some of the more common items even though they aren’t on the client’s list. He blinks, adjusts his measure of Sakura’s intelligence again, and wonders why he hasn’t considered training Naruto that way. His mouth twitches as he considers that Naruto might not be aware that Sakura is teaching him how to shop for healthier food.  

Discreetly, Kakashi follows them to the front of the store where Sakura checks everyone’s items against the client’s list, verifying the quality, quantity, and brand in addition to ensuring that no one missed anything.  

When they go to check out the cashier sneers at Naruto and blocks him from putting his items on the counter. Before Naruto notices or the worker can say anything Sakura smiles brightly at her teammate and cheerily asks, “Naruto, will you give me your items and go grab a tin of tea for me? I meant to pick up some while we were here, but I almost forgot.”  

Naruto blushes and hands off the groceries too flustered to ask what blend of tea she drinks. Sakura waits until Naruto is out of earshot before rounding on the clerk. “Excuse you,” she says placing the groceries deliberately on the counter, her heated glare an unspoken dare.  

“I don’t serve demon brats,” the man spits out.   

Kakashi nearly intervenes before the sight of Sakura suddenly relaxing catches his eye. “Is that what this is about? I think that you will find that you do serve my teammate,” she says pleasantly.  

The man narrows his eyes. “I won’t. I have a right to refuse customers.”  

Sakura bares her teeth in a parody of a smile. “Do you know what my name is?”  

The clerk gives her a dismissive look. “I don’t care if you’re a famous ninja, girl.”  

Her smile widens. “I’m not a famous ninja, but good guess Daigo-san.”  

The clerk looks startled at the use of his name and Kakashi wonders how his student figured it out because he’s not wearing a name tag nor is his name posted anywhere else that he’s seen.  

Before the clerk can reply Naruto comes running up. “I brought you your tea. I didn’t know what kind you wanted so I brought a few blends. Did you know that all the boxes have your family name stamped on them, Sakura-chan?”  

“Oh, is that the only kind they sell here?” she asks nonchalantly.  

“Yeah! It’s pretty neat that your name is on it!” Naruto half-shouts, beaming at her.

“It is, isn’t it?”  

Sasuke’s eyes gleam as he asks innocently, “Are you perhaps related to the seller?”  

“My parents and I are the only Harunos in Konoha, but my father’s family is from the land of Tea, so I’d say so,” she says agreeably.  

The clerk stares at her distinctive pink hair and drags it down to the symbol on her clothes. He blanches.  

“If that’s the only kind they have Naruto, just put them down. I can get that brand without the markup,” Sakura says, waving her hand dismissively.  

After the store owner rings Sakura up with excessive deference and even cool politeness toward Naruto, Kakashi picks up the tin of Sencha tea that his students left behind and adds it to his basket with a shark-like grin at the clerk. The clerk scowls and rings his purchases up quickly. Kakashi ambles out of the store and then sends a clone off to his apartment with his groceries while he watches his team interact with the client and Sakura fills out the mission report.   

She hands the report to Sasuke and Naruto. “Do you think I missed anything?” 

“Hn.”  

Naruto looks somewhat disappointed as he answers, “Not this time Sakura-chan.”  

“You don’t have to sound so upset that I don’t have to run extra laps,” she says dryly.  

Kakashi shunshins over, plucks the report from Naruto’s hand, and reads over the report. “You missed the part where your teacher shadowed you to ensure the timely completion of your mission.”  

Sakura’s shoulders fall with a groan as she takes the report back to add that detail.  

“An extra lap for you,” Naruto says through laughter and there is the tiniest smirk on Sasuke's mouth, which might as well be full laughter from the reticent boy.  

“Third favorite sensei,” Sakura mutters just loud enough for him to hear as she rolls up the scroll.  

Kakashi hurries his team through lunch and has them start their warmup laps and conditioning. He takes two steps to the right as he senses the arrival of today’s guest.  

“Dynamic Entry!” shouts Gai. His outstretched leg misses Kakashi as he flies by to land in a crouch. Kakashi turns a page in his book. All three of his cute students have paused their pushups.  

“Greetings Eternal Rival! It is a beautiful day for me to meet your youthful team,” Gai cheerfully announces. 

“Hello, Gai. Thanks for dropping by. My team is over there,” he says evenly, looking back down at his reading. He lets out a small giggle. This part is one of his favorites!

Gai whips toward his students with the subtlety of a typhoon. “Oh, what marvelous plank poses! If I cannot hold a plank for ten minutes, then I will complete three hundred lunges followed by fifty laps on my hands.” 

Sakura hurries to stand. So, this is Kakashi-sensei’s rival. He’s… even weirder than she’d imagined. The green spandex, orange leggings, bowl-cut hair, and exceptionally brilliant teeth make Sensei look relatively normal in comparison. She interrupts her chakra discreetly, but the only thing that changes is that sensei is now looking at her with delighted glee. She has the grace to cast her gaze down bashfully for a moment.

Gai-sensei seems nice, just intense. He brings ghosts but they smile fondly at him, greet Rin cheerfully, and are only passingly interested in her. From the polite smiles they give her she is positive that they know she can see them, but they make no effort to stare or engage her. 

He challenges Naruto to a spar first. Naruto charges the older and much taller man head-on. The fight is more loud than fast or impressive. Naruto doesn’t manage to hit the jounin but it’s apparent to Sakura that his taijutsu is already improving with the work that he and sensei are putting into it.

Gai-sensei traps Naruto in a headlock. “Excellent tenacity! Keep working on predicting what your opponent will do instead of only reacting,” he shouts, before shoving the blond away from him and squaring up to her other male teammate. 

Sasuke lines up to spar next with understated eagerness and while the fight is faster paced than the last one Gai-sensei completely wipes the floor with him. Sasuke is pinned down under one of the jounin’s feet after being tripped of all things. He grins and praises him, “Your style is advanced for a genin, but be mindful of your footwork and transitions.”  

Sasuke leaves the field, wiping the dirt from his clothes, and lost in thought while Sakura makes her way toward her doom. She’s never been the best at taijutsu and she doesn’t think that the measly twenty or so forms she’s practiced will be enough to not embarrass herself. Feet firmly planted, she takes the opening stance of Twisting Root. 

Being under Gai-sensei’s intense gaze is like being stared down by a predator three times her size. Every muscle in her body wants to seize up but this isn’t the first time she’s felt fear like this, so she takes a deep breath and focuses on watching her opponent carefully. He starts the fight rather than her, which is different from the previous two fights. She pivots out of the way of his kick and throws a punch toward his kidney as he passes by. He’s very fast though and has already turned around to block her fist with an arm.  

She evades another half dozen blows and tries to hit any of the dozen or so points the Twisting Root Style focuses on, but Gai-sensei is both too fast and she’s not tall enough to reach some of the points with enough leverage. She is frustrated and getting out of breath, but Gai-sensei hasn’t called an end to the fight, so she continues.  

He kicks and she knows she doesn’t have time to evade so she crosses her arms in an X and braces her legs and core to take the kick. She grunts but manages to hold the position and sends a knee upwards, followed by a rapid punch. He catches both her knee and fist before throwing her. She lands in a crouch, panting, but determined not to quit yet.  

He holds up a hand before she can rise from her crouch and smiles broadly at her. “Very good. We’ll make a taijutsu expert out of you yet.”  

At her confusion-knit brow and Kakashi-sensei’s tilted head, he explains further. “I think the Twisting Root Style needs to be tweaked to be more effective for you, but your forms are clean and well utilized. Your blows are powerful when they land and despite the fact that I am faster than you, you predicted my moves well enough to evade or block them.”  

“Told you that you hit like a man, Sakura-chan,” Naruto shouts gleefully from the sidelines. Sakura’s hand twitches with the need to show him just how hard she can hit.  

“Her chakra control is good too, right?” the dark-haired man asks Sensei.  

“It is,” Sensei confirms leadingly.  

Gai-sensei nods like he expects Kakashi-sensei’s answer. “That last block was reinforced with chakra in both her arms and her feet.”  

Kakashi-sensei faces her and offers her an appraising look, “Was that on purpose?”  

Sakura fights not to take an instinctive step backward at both adults’ attention. “No? I mean I meant to brace extra, but I wasn’t trying to do so with chakra,” she says meekly. 

Gai-sensei laughs boisterously, the sound ringing through the training field. “An instinctive response! If you practice maybe one day you will learn to hit like Senju Tsunade, who uses her strength in conjunction with her excellent chakra control to punch her opponents through trees and break the ground!”  

Gai-sensei might be eccentric, but Sakura thinks she loves him just a bit for believing in her strength. No one has ever seen Sakura’s taijutsu and thought she could be a master of it before. Sakura clenches and unclenches her fingers and fists. Thoughts and calculations on how that kind of force could be produced are interrupted by Sensei’s gloved hand coming down unexpectedly on her head.  

With fond exasperation, Sensei says, “Adorable little monster, do not try that unsupervised. You’ll break your bones in multiple places if you don’t do it right. Tsunade is a legend for a reason and Gai don’t give my student ideas. She’s not as foolish as her teammates but the ability to punt them into the Hokage monument when they aggravate her might be too tempting to resist.”  

Sakura slumps under his resting hand and pouts. “Fourth favorite sensei.”  

He plasters on a wounded expression and holds a hand to his chest. “Hurtful, Sakura-chan. Just for that, you get to work on your ninjutsu with me first while Gai instructs the boys.”  

She gazes forlornly at the boys' training but dutifully follows Sensei under a tree far enough out of the way to avoid being collateral damage. She wants to have a ninja art or talent that she isn’t overshadowed in by her peers. Despite sweating and bleeding to be the top kunoichi in her graduating class no one has ever looked at her like she could be a good ninja. She doesn’t know if it’s her delicate appearance or the fact that she’s civilian born, but even when she beat out her classmates on tests, in spars, or with perfect repetitions of the academy three no one had ever encouraged her personally. 

Kakashi–sensei settles himself against the tree and waits for her to sit in from of him. “Alright, we’re going to start elemental ninjutsu, but to do that we need to check to see if you have any affinities. There are five elemental possibilities. Do you know them?”  

“Fire, Wind, Lightning, Earth, and Water.”  

He takes a square of paper from his pocket. “Very good. This is chakra paper. All you have to do is channel a bit of chakra into it. It’s alright if you don’t have an affinity, a lot of civilian-born ninja don’t have chakra that’s developed enough to have an elemental affinity or it’s possible that yours might tend only towards Yin chakra which is useful for genjutsu but chakra paper doesn’t show it. It doesn’t mean you can’t learn, only that it will be more difficult,” he explains before handing her the square of paper.  

Rin mimes smacking her sensei in the head even if Sakura isn’t quite sure why the other girl would want to do that. Sakura hides her grin by ducking her head. She takes a deep breath and channels a small amount of chakra through her hand, down her fingers, and into the paper. The paper crumbles and then runs down her hand in a wet slurry. 

Sakura shakes the mixture off her hand as best she can and looks up at her teacher. “That’s earth and water, right?”  

He is still staring at the remnants of mud on her hand. “Well, I stand corrected. I honestly thought with your newly discovered ability, mostly civilian heritage, and the academy assessment of you being a genjutsu type that you wouldn’t have an affinity, but you apparently have two.” 

Rin sticks her tongue out behind his head. 

She digs her fingers into the soil beneath her and bites her bottom lip. “Does that mean you can’t teach me?” 

He startles and meets her gaze firmly. “Absolutely not. I know lots of water and earth jutsus we can start on. It’s just surprising is all. I’ve been concerned about how much I was going to be able to teach you as your sensei. I know a few genjutsu and I’m proficient in taijutsu, but I’m primarily a ninjutsu specialist which I knew suited the boys ahead of time, but I thought I wouldn’t be a good fit as your teacher. Gai’s comments about your taijutsu only confirmed that for me since I hadn’t noticed.”  

“Are you upset about it?” she asks hesitantly.  

He ran a hand through his unruly silver hair. “If you mean that I missed your taijutsu skill, then yes, but if you mean that I can teach you my specialty too, then no. I’m thrilled to be able to share it with all of you.”  

She relaxes her shoulders. “Okay.”  

He grins gently at her. “Now the first step is meditating on your element. Since the water is significantly further away, we’ll start with earth,” he says.  

She crosses her legs, but before she closes her eyes she whispers, “Hey Kakashi-sensei.” She waits until he meets her eyes. “Third favorite sensei.” Then shuts hers before she can see his reaction. 

She makes a little progress on connecting with her element and he shows her the hand seals for an earth dome before sending her off to Gai-sensei.  

Gai-sensei works her to the bone running through several additional forms and then having her incorporate them into a spar where he kicks the shit out of her all while having the gall to still have the lung capacity to shout strange things about whatever the hell the springtime of youth is and something about meeting his most youthful student. The boys have long since left and only Kakashi-sensei is still on the training ground with them though his nose is firmly stuck in one of his dirty books.

When Sakura feels like she might fall down and asphyxiate on her own vomit she jumps back several feet to create space and with her chest heaving, calls weakly across the distance, “Gai-sensei, did I hear correctly that you are Kakashi-sensei’s rival?”  

He goes unnaturally still for a moment. “That is incorrect. I am his eternal rival! Why do you ask?”  

“Right sorry. His eternal rival,” she wheezes out. She takes a much-needed gulp of air before continuing, “Well, a couple of weeks back he told me that he competes with his eternal rival. I also have a rival, but I am woefully uneducated on how to compete with her.”  

“He told you about our competitions, did he?” he asks, looking entirely too elated about the topic.  

Kakashi-sensei eyes her warily over the top of his orange book and she offers him her sweetest smile in reply. To Gai-sensei she says, “He told me he was winning 49 to 47.”  

The jounin gasps and strikes an impressive pose of determination. “A demonstration and a defense of my honor is due! Kakashi, I challenge you to an armless taijutsu match! If I do not win, I will cartwheel around the village for three days!” Sakura is positive that would be bad for his health and highly disruptive if he had to do any shopping. 

Kakashi-sensei puts away his book with the most long-suffering sigh Sakura has ever heard before strolling onto the field. He gives her a gentle push on the shoulders toward the tree stump he had been resting on and Sakura is so relieved that she has permission to sit that she flops down gracelessly. 

When Gai-sensei shouts, “Begin!” her teacher goes from her awkward, laidback sensei to the startlingly intense jounin that had fought against the Demon of the Mist. Sakura leans forward eagerly and watches the blurs with awe and covetousness. The match is both the most intense thing she’s ever seen and simultaneously the most completely ridiculous. They are both taking the challenge seriously, but taijutsu without the arm movements is just a bunch of kicking, ducking, and shouting on Gai-sensei's part. It must help him because Gai-sensei wins and brings the score up to 49 to 48. Both jounin are out of breath, but neither appear hurt.  

“Thank you for your tutelage and the demonstration today,” she says to Gai-sensei as she stands to leave.  

Gai dusts himself off and gives her a blindingly radiant smile that is so bright that it hurts her eyes. She rubs her eyes with balled-up fists to dispel the brightness. “You’re welcome, youthful student! In order to improve your taijutsu you should complete at least 700 pushups, 50 laps around the village, 500 lunges, and 300 kicks and punches per limb daily,” he says before disappearing in a haze of green and orange.  

Sakura is sure that her mouth is hanging open and she can’t muster the energy to close it.  

“We’ll work up to that kind of thing, Sakura-chan,” Kakashi-sensei says, patting her head like a dog. 

“Oh, thank the Hokages. Second favorite sensei,” she breathes out over her shoulder as she hightails it out of there before she can be made to do any more training today.  

Over the next two to three months, one or two supplementary teachers stop by at least once a week to help Kakashi with training. Gekko Hayate and Uzaki Yugao, both Tokubetsu jounin stop by to show them beginner swordsmanship with Katanas. Hayate, Yugao, and Kakashi-sensei participate in a three-way spar and although sensei ultimately loses the sword fight, he reminds Hayate-san to be mindful of his surroundings after he almost manages to slice him from behind. Sasuke is entranced by the display and Sensei sends him off occasionally to learn from them. 

A few times a jounin named Tenzo stops by to help with ninjutsu training and to provide some type of solid clones for Naruto to spar against. Sakura is afraid that she doesn’t pay very good attention the first time he comes because she is too distracted by the ghost of the first Hokage that follows him around. 

Sakura’s favorite instructor though is a Tokubetsu jounin named Shiranui Gemna. He introduces them to senbon throwing and beginner poisons. She doesn’t adore him because of his skills, even though she is very impressed by his speed and aim, but because he brings absolutely no ghosts with him and seems relatively relaxed and well-adjusted for a ninja. She isn’t sure why he never has any ghosts around him, but she’s thankful for the break. 

Kakashi-sensei also brings along his ninken to run them through a couple of days of tracking and traps. Everyone, including Sensei, ends up rinsing off in the river to wash the mud off them on those days. With his long hair dripping down he looks rather like one of his wet dogs. When Sakura mentions it to him, he smirks and shakes himself off like a dog right next to her. 

Their missions continue to go smoothly and Kakashi manages to make it in time to supervise more and more. Their skills increase, her garden is beginning to thrive, and she’s finally getting used to seeing ghosts everywhere she goes or at least she is rarely scared by their presence anymore. 

Sakura pulls Kakashi-sensei aside after practice one afternoon. “I think you should request another C-rank mission for our team. We’ve all improved a lot and I think an uncomplicated C-rank would be a good experience for all of us.”  

He cocks his head and smiles gently down at her. "Actually, I was planning on recommending you three for the chunin exams instead. They start next week and I was going to inform the team and pass out the registration forms tomorrow.”  

Sakura frowns severely and taps the fingers of one hand on her other arm. “I’m not sure we’re ready for that. We haven’t even been genin for six months.” 

She thought the only one of them who might have a chance at making chunin was Sasuke-kun, but even if he was the top rookie of the year, none of them had very much field experience outside of several dozen D-ranks. She thought that she and Naruto could probably hold their own against regular genin even if they wouldn’t win, but if there was anyone else like Sasuke, which was likely, then she and Naruto wouldn’t be able to compete against that, especially without risking their secrets.  

He shrugs casually. “I’m not expecting any of you to pass, but the exams are in Konoha this year so they will be good practice for the next round, which I do think you all will be capable of passing easily.” 

Her breath comes out in a long whoosh. She hadn’t realized that she had been holding her breath or that much tension. If he wanted to use this as a practice run as opposed to a genuine test that he expected them to pass, then that was a logical and practical reason to take the exams. Kakashi-sensei was the only one she was worried about disappointing with a lackluster exam performance, but since he didn’t have high expectations, she gave him a decisive nod. She would take the exams with her team. 

Chapter Text

"There's evil in the wood." - William, “The Witch”

Sakura strangles the cry that rises in her throat as Naruto slams the door behind them. As she takes her assigned seat she notes that there are a lot of candidates in the first part of the exams, Ino's and Hinata's teams among them. Unfortunately, this also means that there’s an abundance of foreign ghosts and she has a hard time analyzing her living competitors with the sheer number of dead crowding the room.

Sakura thought she was done being frightened at the mere sight of ghosts, but there were dozens of them that were unnatural and grotesquely deformed in the large classroom.  A surprising number of spirits are trapped orbiting around the gourd on the Suna ninja's back. All the spirits near the red-headed Suna ninja with the dead stare are crushed either pancake flat or their limbs are compressed and twisted with the skin stripped off to show bloody, torn muscles underneath.

There are also a lot of ghosts around a silver-haired Konoha ninja who introduced himself as Kabuto, but they are even stranger than the other ghosts, with their missing or extra limbs, some with strange markings, and others that she doesn’t know the words to describe how deformed and demented their corpses’ look. The ghosts around Kabuto are more translucent than the others and they flicker oddly, like glitches in an old film reel. Aside from their deformities, they look exactly how ghosts are portrayed in horror films. Compared to the spirits she normally sees around town these spirits seem to be missing some essential piece of their being.

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches some of the ghosts stealing curious glances at her while she peeks at them. Not staring at the frankly horrifying mess is harder for her than at any other time since she obtained her new skill due to the sheer number of eerie ghosts in the room that put her on edge, which is only made worse when the examiner with flinty eyes and two large scars bisecting his face walks into the room. At this point, there are more ghosts from the three of them than there are alive people in the room. Despite knowing it won’t do her any good she longs to draw something sharp and pointy.

Sakura quickly begins filling out her test after the instructions are given under the harsh gaze of the examiner and the proctors lining the walls. Someone walks between the aisles quietly and Sakura looks up thinking it’s one of the proctors. The ninja is wearing blue armor with a white ruff of fur over plain black pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Her eyes widen when she takes in the shock of shaggy white hair and carmine eyes and she struggles not to drop her jaw in shock when she realizes it’s the Nidaime. She observes him only long enough to note that he seems interested in the test and then rapidly drops her gaze back down to her exam.

Thirty seconds later he stops directly in front of her desk and waits but she ignores him while she calculates the optimal throwing angle of an average weighted senbon coated in a sedative to counteract a wind speed of thirty kilometers per hour coming from the North-Northeast at a 23 degree angle while the target runs due Northwest 80 meters away at a speed of 44 kph to put the target to sleep within ten seconds of dosing.

The Nidaime puts his hand on her paper right where she was about to draw the next vector and she scowls furiously at the large, albeit see-through, intrusion. It feels rude to write through him which is stupid because it’s not like it would hurt him. She holds her pencil still as she wars between what her civilian upbringing tells her would be unfathomably disrespectful and the urgent need to finish this test. She has to compensate for Naruto’s score or they won’t make it to the next stage of the exam and while she personally wouldn’t be upset by that she knows that both Naruto and Sasuke would be very disappointed with a failure so early in the exam.

She glances up at him through her lashes, her mouth pursed in displeasure. His red eyes are gleaming and he is faintly smirking as he signs in academy-level mission standard sign language. “You can see.”

She has a feeling that what he is most amused by is her annoyance. She scribbles a simple ‘yes’ on the corner of her paper before quickly erasing it. She does not need to be accused of cheating because a ghost, no matter how important he may or may not be, wants to gossip.

His hands fly through the signs for, “Will find after test,” and then swiftly moves on without waiting for her agreement. She blinks after his retreating figure. The Lord Second is awfully presumptuous.

She lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and releases her surly feelings, before racing through the rest of her test with a determined focus. She flips over her paper and shifts every time Ino tries to use her Mind Transfer Jutsu on her. No way is she letting Ino into her head now. No one can know about her ability and Ino finding out by accident would be devastating. Especially if Sakura can’t keep her quiet about it and Ino has always been loud. She takes a half second to be thankful that her rival is at least a few decibels quieter than Kakashi-sensei's eternal rival.

If she has to stifle laughter at Ino-pig’s obnoxious huffs of vexation, well Sakura’s just happy to know that someone else in this room isn’t getting their way too.

The second part of the chunin exam is an unmitigated disaster. A terrifying ninja with a Grass forehead protector and snake summons comes out of nowhere and wipes the floor with Sakura’s entire team. No matter what her team had tried, both she and Naruto were easily swept aside while the Grass ninja isolated and toyed with Sasuke. Frankly, Sakura is surprised that they are currently alive even if they are all worse for the wear after the encounter.

Since the foreign ninja hadn’t cared at all about Sakura and only batted her aside like an aggravating bug, the heaven scroll remained in her pouch where she had placed it the first morning of the second exam. However, the same can’t be said for her teammates. After their confrontation, both her teammates are unconscious and down for the count. Whatever seal that the foreign ninja had bitten into Sasuke’s neck has him sweating and whimpering even while unconscious and Sakura has no idea what he/she/they? had done to Naruto. She’s hidden them the best she can by deepening the earth under the natural hollow of a tree and dragging them there, like fox kits asleep in a den waiting for a storm to pass.

Her hand comes up to brush hair stiff from dirt and dried sweat out of her eyes. She’s been awake for more than an entire day already. Adrenaline has kept her awake through the night, but the rush has long since run out. She’s set out a few traps but that’s never been one of her strengths. She wishes at least one of her teammates were awake or even that one of their ghosts was around, but she hasn’t encountered a single ghost since she entered the forest. Her current theory is that there’s something about the Hashirama trees that repel them. She has no evidence of this but for a place nicknamed the Forest of Death, it contains a surprising lack of ghosts.

A week ago she would have been thrilled by the lack of spirits. Now, she is exhausted and truly alone for the first time in months and she hates it.

The kunai is beginning to slip from her clumsy fingers as she loses the struggle to keep her eyes open. The ambient noise of the forest has gone silent, but it is the faint rustling of dead leaves that jerks Sakura into wakefulness.

She vacates the hollow where the boys are, covers them with a thin earth dome, and kicks some dead leaves over it to mask their hiding place. It’s a poor job but it is better than nothing. It certainly wouldn’t fool sensei or his ninken but unless another S-class ninja is hiding in this test she doesn’t need it to, she just needs it to fool genin. She darts up another tree and hides herself in the thick foliage. She coats two blades with a paralytic. If they are going to poorly sneak up on her then she will use the time to prepare.

“How come we haven’t found the brat yet?” came a high female voice from just outside of the clearing, nearly in range of where her traps are laid.

“He’s around here somewhere, Kin,” says a deeper male voice, whose face is three-quarters covered in bandages. Sakura hopes that is a fashion statement rather than an indication of some freaky ability or worse, hiding something like Sensei’s eye. She’s had enough of people pulling off their faces or uncovering secret abilities for at least the next year thank you very much. For once, she wants to encounter only normal opponents rather than missing-nin that far outclass her abilities.

The third member of their team pipes in, “I want to be the one that kills him.”

Sakura freezes in her branch. Are they talking about Naruto or Sasuke? She shakes her head. It doesn’t matter which one of her teammates it is, she’s going to do her best to protect both of them. Her heart pounds in her chest as she realizes that she’s the only one who can and that the odds at three to one are decidedly not in her favor.

The third member of the team is the one who activates the trip wire that sets off the enormous deadfall she has rigged up. The three sound ninjas glance upward and then scatter apart like pool balls on a billiard table. Sakura throws her kunai as hard as she can, one at the girl and one at the boy covered in bandages, and then scurries further up the tree. Then she quickly jumps through the branches to a spot a few trees over. She crouches to hide in the Y of a branch, one thick with leaf cover, and steadies her breathing. Glaring from her perch, Sakura swears to herself that if she makes it out of here alive, she is going to change her outfit into something that camouflages her better than bright red. She doesn’t care if red is her clan's color. She’s no good to her team dead.

Kin sees the glint of metal in enough time to twist her torso so that the kunai only grazes her arm, but the bandaged boy isn’t so lucky. The knife buries itself up to the hilt in his right shoulder. His left hand immediately comes up and he rips the knife out with heaving breaths. The third boy with dark spiky hair shoots pressurized air from his hands in the direction the knives came from, but Sakura had already moved as soon as the blades had left her hands.

She frowns, her brows coming together in a deep vee. Intellectually, she knows that other countries have worse healthcare than here, but even academy students in Konoha know that you aren’t supposed to pull a blade out of a deep wound like that.

“Where is he?” the boy growls out, his hand applying pressure to his shoulder. Red is spreading at an alarming rate on his light-colored garments and seeping through his fingers.

With agonizing slowness, so as not to alert the other ninja, she draws another kunai and coats it in poison too. She draws two more and wraps explosive tags around the hilts. At the moment, she’s closest to the only member who hasn’t been hit.

“Come out, Uchiha. It’ll only be worse for you the longer you hide,” the unharmed boy with the dark spiky hair calls out, still somehow cocky even though two of his teammates have been injured, one much worse than the other.

Sakura purses her lips together. So that’s who they want. She watches all three of them for their next move. They are braced in a triangle formation and she needs them to break it. They are already looking in the trees and it’s only a matter of time before they find her as poorly camouflaged as she is.

She throws one of the tagged kunai in the middle of the group and the ninja with the airwaves reaches up to repel it but she forms a snake seal before he can raise his arm fully. It explodes only a few feet above his head and the blast knocks him off his feet. The bandaged ninja only manages to jump a few feet away before he stumbles and sinks to his knees, the paralytic finally kicking in. He’d had a strong dose and by now it’s had enough time to fully circulate in his blood. He cries out weakly in shock she thinks, rather than pain.

Beneath her earth dome something, one of the boys most likely, shifts. Hopefully, one of them wakes soon, so that they can even the odds and help her. She grips her hands tightly around her knives as she fights hard not to cast her gaze that way. So far the other genin haven’t made any indication that they know where her teammates are hidden and she desperately wants to keep it that way.

She throws another one of the other kunai in her hand toward the girl and plummets to the ground to sink a knife into the explosion-dazed boy. The knife sinks into his stomach and she darts away to give herself some time to draw more weapons. She sees the kunai she threw at the girl at the kunoichi’s feet and without thought she forms the snake seal again and pulses chakra into the tag.

Only something has gone very wrong because it’s not the kunai at the dark-haired girl’s feet that has gone off but the one much closer- the one she’d stabbed into the cocky boy. Dirt and something warm splatters on her face and exposed skin. A high-pitched buzz wails in her ears as she stumbles and chokes on a sob and the sickening putrid scent of burnt flesh.

“You fucking bitch!” the girl- Kin, her mind supplies, screeches and leaps toward her in a blind rage. Distantly, as if she’s wholly disconnected from her own body, Sakura notes that she should move, but she can only stare at the mangled corpse and singed crater with dawning horror. The boy’s ghost has formed next to the corpse and he’s staring down at the scattered pieces of himself with such a lost look on his face. Sakura can’t feel anything and she wonders if she too is a ghost.

Abruptly, Sakura is brought back to her body when a blast of something bludgeons her in the head, and her right ear drum ruptures. She thinks that she yelps or maybe she shrieks. She sinks to her knees and Kin grabs her hair with a tight fist. The foreign girl is fumbling for a blade with her other hand, but she can’t grip it tight enough. Her arm had been scratched in the beginning.

The paralytic.

Kin screams impotently and it is that sound that snaps Sakura out of her shell-shocked stillness. With a shaking hand, Sakura pulls another kunai and deftly slices through her hair.

She jumps back several feet to assess the situation and her pink hair sways into her face. The bandaged ninja is mostly paralyzed but not completely out of the fight judging by the pain and hearing loss in one of her ears, but he’s a sitting duck. Kin has one arm that is hanging limply, but she has a vicious snarl on her mouth that tells Sakura that if she doesn’t take care of the other girl she’ll have to watch her back indefinitely.

She rushes Kin and the other girl meets her with clanging metal. She punches with her free hand, but Kin brings her uninjured arm across her body and deflects. Sakura follows with a block and kicks high. The other girl meets her blow for blow despite being down an arm.

Sakura snaps another kick and when the other girl meets it with her own kick Sakura twists and stabs her thigh with the kunai still in hand. She takes a solid punch to her shoulder but the bruise she’ll have tomorrow is worth the blow she landed.

Stringing together a few hand signs, Sakura molds her chakra and holds it in her system with well-practiced ease as Kin smothers a pained scream. She can’t hear well with her ear busted and she’s more distracted by the sight of the boy’s ghost who is standing next to his teammate trying to talk or help her than she is by any sound coming from her enemy.  Kin runs toward her with her own kunai brandished but her injury significantly slows her down. Sakura raises an arm but lets the blow connect before releasing her hold on the replacement jutsu. Smoke surrounds her as she poufs into a log and displaces herself behind the female Sound ninja. Kin turns to meet her, her long black hair whipping at the speed she turns, but she’s too slow on her injured leg and Sakura buries a knife right under the top layer of her short shirt and into her kidney as far as she can force it in.

The girl falls onto her hands and knees, limbs visibly shaking and barely holding up her weight as she pants and gags. Sakura yanks the kunai out of her back forcefully and only hesitates for a moment before slicing it across her neck. The girl’s ghost slides out of her body as her limp form drops lifelessly onto the ground. Tears are dripping down Sakura’s face. Maybe someone strong like Sasuke could have spared them or someone like Naruto could have talked them down, but Sakura isn’t either of her teammates, and without her there to watch them while they were both unconscious anyone could have come along and killed them before they even knew there was a threat.

She stumbles over to the bandaged ninja. His visible eye is closed and there’s a pool of blood around him, but she doesn’t see his ghost. The paralytic should still be working but she watches his arms and legs warily as she reaches to slice his throat with the same bloody kunai that had ended his teammate's life. It is easier the second time, but as soon as she sees his ghost form she backs up and drops her knife. She staggers over to the nearest tree, falls against it, and vomits into the shrubs.

She’s still gagging up stomach bile when she hears rustling in the bushes. She grabs a handful of shuriken and whirls around only to see Ino and her team stepping into the clearing with their hands visible in a clearly peaceful gesture. Sakura slides her shuriken back into her weapons pouch and drops her stance.

“Are you alright?” Ino asks and Sakura bursts into gasping, overwrought tears.

Ino scurries right up to her and grasps ahold of Sakura’s shoulders with firm, grounding pressure. Her concerned sky-blue gaze meets her eyes and murmurs, “Hey, hey now. You’re going to be okay. What happened and where are your teammates, Sakura?”

She runs through a string of three hand seals and the dome covering Naruto and Sasuke melts back into the ground. A few leaves land on them and she can see even from here, the steady rise and fall of their chests. A balloon of anxious relief bursts in her chest. She tries to answer Ino, but when she opens her mouth all that comes out is a particularly loud keening cry.

“I’m going to clean you up a bit while Shikamaru checks on Naruto and Sasuke-kun, okay?” Ino asks. Through watery eyes, she meets the worried gaze of both of Ino’s male teammates over the blonde’s shoulder.

Their display of concern is reassuring and Sakura nods her assent. Slowly, Ino takes a cloth out of her weapons pouch and pours a little bit of water from her canteen onto the cloth before gently wiping first her face and then down the uncovered parts of her arms. The cloth comes away with more blood than dirt and Sakura tries to swallow down her hiccupping sob.

A volatile chakra spikes from the tree with her teammates and Sakura twists abruptly to see Sasuke standing up with strange black marks spreading from the seal on his neck up his face and down his arm. He’s staring at the clearing with something manic lighting his Sharingan-bright stare.

“Sasuke,” she whimpers out and he turns to her. She recognizes those marks as similar to the ones on some of the flickering ghosts in the first part of the exam, but she doesn't have the time or brain capacity to analyze what that means at the moment.

“What happened?” he asks, but it’s barked more like an order.

Her arms come up to wrap around her stomach. She presses and hunches inward. She doesn’t know where to start and she’s frightened by his sudden intensity. “I- You should check the Sound ninjas for their scroll,” is all she manages.

She’s not sure she can relive the experience nor tell him about the explosive tag she’d mistakenly buried and set off inside the boy, at least not in front of the other team. Maybe they already know from the carnage of the field, but she prefers the illusion that they don’t know- that no one knows, at least for now.

There’s a very large part of her that wants Kakashi-sensei or if she can’t have the jounin and his soothing ninken, then she wants her parents even if she knows they won’t understand because they had never been combat heavy ninjas.

It’s apparently a surprising enough answer that the marks begin to recede from his extremities. He pants a little when all but the original seal on his neck disappears.

“Hn,” he grunts and starts with the body closest to him.

She turns sharply so she doesn’t have to watch. Shikamaru is watching her with knowing eyes that leave her cold when they rake over her. She doesn’t think he’s ever looked at her like that before like he just discovered that her cotton candy tresses might mask something dangerous or potentially interesting.

Chouji is still checking on Naruto and whatever he’s done has the blonde boy stirring finally. Ino is watching her with a similar look as her dark-haired teammate, except her eyes are significantly kinder.

Sakura trails her hands down to Ino’s and squeezes them lightly. “Thank you for coming,” she says with a barely-there smile.

Ino shoots her one last look of concern, before she replies, “Of course, Forehead.”

“We’re all Konoha ninja,” Shikamaru says and his demeanor has gone back to normal. Her shoulders sink now that she’s not under such heavy scrutiny.

Sakura licks her chapped lips and nearly retches at the residual metallic taste. “You should leave now that my team is awake if you haven’t found your second scroll,” she offers quietly.

Ino releases her hands slowly. “Are you sure?”

Sakura pastes on a grin even if it feels wrong right now. “I expect to see my rival at the tower within the time limit. It won’t be much of a competition without you, Pig.”

Ino scoffs, “As if I’ll lose to you. Come on lazy ass and Chouji we have an exam to finish.”

“Troublesome,” Shikamaru mutters.

As soon as team ten is gone, Sasuke hands her an earth scroll and her fallen kunai. He’s done her the favor of wiping them off. Only one knife comes back missing its wrapping and discolored from heat rather than the two knives it should be. She thinks leaving that second kunai wherever it is, is the nicest thing Sasuke has ever done for her.

Without meeting her eyes, Sasuke rests a hand on her shoulder and squeezes with uncharacteristic gentleness. It’s such an incongruent action from her stoic teammate that Sakura only narrowly avoids bursting back into tears. “We should hurry to the tower. There’s no telling how much the dobe will slow us down.”

“Hey! You take that back teme! You’re the one that’s going to be fallin’ behind,” Naruto, true to form, shouts after him.

Quietly, Sakura runs between her teammates and lets their typical bickering wash over as she tries to stay present rather than letting her thoughts drift and be ensnared by that ruined clearing in the woods.

Chapter Text

“It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

When Iruka asks to take his place to meet team seven at the tower in the Forest of Death, Kakashi doesn’t think twice about it. He hands the academy teacher the seal that will allow his team to summon the man to them and tells Iruka not to be late with a cheery grin. Team seven had made it in on the evening of the third day which is far enough in advance of the deadline that Kakashi is sure that his team can’t have met anything too challenging. In fact, it’s much sooner than Kakashi had estimated that they would arrive, which in hindsight, perhaps should have been an omen.

He immediately regrets his decision not to meet them himself when Iruka guides his three genin into their assigned room where he’s waiting. Granted, the few minutes wouldn’t make a physical difference, but it might have assuaged some of his guilt and the sinking feeling of dismal failure in his gut. Kakashi snaps to attention, his ever-present orange book disappearing into one of his pouches.

Aside from torn clothing, Naruto physically appears fine. He looks like he might not know where he is or what’s happened, which isn’t all that unusual, except that he hasn’t said a word yet. He’s not arguing with Sasuke nor is he bragging about how totally awesome he is to have completed the exam with time to spare. As far as Kakashi is concerned, that might be the first sign of the apocalypse.

Sasuke is two shades too pale and there’s something in his stiff posture that suggests pain. The real indicator of Sasuke’s unease though, is that he’s so close to Naruto that his arms is brushing against the orange monstrosity that Naruto calls clothing. Unless he’s fighting, Sasuke always tries to stand at least two feet apart from everyone else, even his teammates.

However, it is Sakura’s state that worries him the most. She reeks of iron and it’s lucky her top layer was already bright red, because otherwise she is covered in enough blood splatter to qualify as an abstract painting. Her previously long pretty hair has been shortened to her chin in a choppy, uneven bob. Her skin is ghostly white, her bare arms flecked with various splattered fluids, and even from her half turned away position he can tell that there are dark circles that look more like bruising under her dull eyes. She followed her team into the room like a shadow, but her eyes hadn’t focused on him or a single thing in the room. She appears haunted or at least like a little girl from a bad horror movie. Her natural innocent looks paired with the smeared blood and gore make for a disturbing dichotomy.

It strikes him in that instant to realize that she might literally be haunted right now. Iruka is skulking by the door, but Kakashi subtly motions for him to leave. He isn’t sure he’s capable of comforting his genin, but he isn’t about to let whatever his students report to him be heard by anyone else before he can ensure that it won’t endanger them.  When the other man is out of hearing range he turns his full attention to his scruffy students. None of them appear inclined to speak so he targets his loudest and least guarded student. “Naruto?”

His blue eyes focus on him and some of the haziness leaves his student’s demeanor. “Naruto, do you want to tell me what happened?” he asks cheerily, like nothing is wrong, like the state of his team doesn’t make him want to take all of them somewhere far away from this stupid exam.

Naruto tells the story alternating between his normal loud boisterousness and a concerning muted puzzlement. The explanation that Kakashi gets is disjointed and clears nothing up about the roughed-up state of his genin. Something about being eaten by a giant snake, a creepy woman, waking up to a clearing of dead ninja, and then running to the tower with both scrolls.

Most of that makes no sense to him so he slides his eyes over to Sakura. She is still half turned away from him, staring at her feet, and avoiding his gaze, but she must feel it because eventually she sighs, lifts her head slightly, and corrects, “It wasn’t a woman that summoned the giant snake. It was a man wearing a woman’s skin. They pealed their skin off after Naruto was unconscious. He bit Sasuke on the neck. The bite somehow knocked Sasuke out and left him with some sort of seal that bleeds out awfulness.”

A shiver racks her body, and she rubs her small dirty hands over her arms. Bits of mud, blood, and whatever else was dried on her skin, flake off where her hands touch. 

Well, damn. There was only one ninja that fit that description. Why was such a dangerous ninja after his student? They were only genin at this point and none of them should have been interesting to anyone as high level as the Snake sannin yet. He barely manages to suppress the urge to snarl at the peril they were in without his supervision in that stupid forest.

Why are all his students danger magnets? If he manages to survive teaching this team, he’ll consider it his greatest accomplishment. He might have to redesign his training program for the three of them if they are going to be regularly attracting the attention of S-rank missing-nin. 

Fuck, he’s going to have a disgustingly over-powered team of traumatized weirdos, and everyone is going to blame him for it. But maybe this team will live.

He slowly reaches toward Sasuke, to telegraph his movements to the unsettled genin, and tilts his head, first to one side and then to the other when he spots the cursed seal. He presses his lips together in a tight line. Looks like he’ll be making an urgent report to the Hokage and performing a complex sealing before morning.

“And the clearing full of dead ninja?” he asks, scrutinizing Sasuke, but the dark-haired boy shakes his head and tilts it subtly toward Sakura.

She sighs again and it is painfully weary. “My fault,” she answers flatly, “and it was only three ninjas, not a clearing full.”

Oh- His heart sinks in his chest. That’s why she is turned half away from her team and won’t look at him. Whatever she did was clearly messy and traumatizing. He weighs the likelihood of Orochimaru popping up and slaughtering the entire village against the benefit of delaying his report long enough to comfort his student. He lands on Orochimaru probably not attacking before he knows the full result of his curse mark on Sasuke, so he sends Naruto and Sasuke toward the already set up cots and with a hand on her shoulder tows Sakura out of their earshot.

He crouches down to her eye level, but her dull green eyes skitter away from him. “Are you alright?” he murmurs.

She cocks her head and frowns. One of her arms is wrapped around her stomach but she shrugs the opposite shoulder. “The ninja with the snakes did something to the seal on Naruto’s stomach that knocked him out too, but nothing happened to me,” she responds in a voice so low that if he wasn’t listening so intently, he might have missed it. 

Kakashi’s mind blanks for a second. He isn’t sure he knows a swear word strong enough for the potential disaster of that. He takes a deep breath and Sakura turns to him expectantly. One thing at a time and right now, since Naruto hasn’t exploded into a giant orange chakra monster, it’s Sakura whose need is most immediate.

He runs his good eye over her form. Even though she’s now fully facing him, her eyes still aren’t meeting his, they are staring slightly lower, at his mouth perhaps. There’s something about it that tugs on his memory. “Are you injured?”

She mouths what he thinks is his question back silently, her brow scrunched, before answering. “My shoulder is bruised and I think at least one of my ear drums is ruptured from the blast, because my hearing is… not good, but none of this is mine,” she says holding out one of the edges of her stained qipao.

“That’s good,” he says, and he feels genuinely relieved that none of the blood is from her or any of the rest of his team. 

The minor hearing loss isn’t great, but Konoha’s mednin have an inordinate amount of practice treating that. That hearing loss also explains some of Sakura’s more worrying nonverbal behavior, helps settle the vengeful, but highly inadvisable, urge he has to hunt down the dangerous sannin. He lets the silence rest for a moment, trying to determine how to get her to share what’s disturbed her so thoroughly.

Before he can do anything else, her words trickle out quiet and haltingly, “I made a mistake. Three Sound ninjas attacked while Sasuke and Naruto were unconscious, and I was already so tired before the fight even began. I had three knives in hand… One poisoned and the other two with explosive tags…”

He can already tell where this story is going, and he suppresses his wince.

She wets her lips and swallows before continuing, “The tags were only supposed to be for distraction, but I got distracted instead when I thought either Naruto or Sasuke might be waking up. I set one of the tags off and the explosion came from the wrong direction. I had mixed them up and stabbed the tagged kunai into one of the Sound ninja’s stomach.”

He closes his eyes for a long moment. As terrible as it is, he’s thankful she had accidentally blown up the enemy rather than herself. When he opens them, Sakura is watching him with baleful jade eyes. “One of his teammates was already down from the paralytic coating on one of my kunai and blood loss but his other teammate was furious.”

She shrugs, but there’s nothing nonchalant about it, if anything the motion is miserable. “I made sure they couldn’t hold that grudge. I knew they were dead when I could see their ghosts.”

He withholds a long-suffering sigh. He knew that stupid ability was going to be traumatizing. “Are they here now?”

She shakes her head vigorously. Wincing, she quickly brings a hand up to put pressure on her damaged ear. “There aren’t any lingering in the forest here for some reason.”

He takes one of her hands in his and hesitantly applies soft pressure. Measured and with clear enunciation, so she can hopefully read his lips through his mask, he states, “The explosive tag was unfortunate, but your teammates are alive because you kept watch and protected them Sakura-chan. If you need to speak to someone after this part of the exam, I’ll even schedule the appointment for you.”

She gives him an incredulous look that he elects to ignore. He vows to ask her again whether she wants to speak to someone after they are cleared to leave the forest of death. Actually, on second thought, he’s going to make her an appointment anyway and then make sure that she doesn’t take after his bad habits in any way by escorting her there. 

He stands to his full height. “I know you are tired, but I have to make a report to the Hokage and since you were the only one awake the whole time, I’d like to bring you too, in case he has questions about the incident in the forest.” 

She nods carefully and her face smooths into something approaching serious and professional, something perfect for giving the Hokage bad news.

“When we get back you can shower and I’ll summon the pack for the night,” he offers as he leads her up to the top of the tower where the Hokage has been watching the second stage of the exams.

By the time Sakura finishes going over their encounter with the missing nin to the Hokage in greater detail than her earlier recitation she looks as if she is about to pass out from exhaustion. He steps up near enough that the next time she sways, she’s able to subtly rest her weight against his frame. Kakashi confirms to the Sandaime that the mark on left on Sasuke is one of Orochimaru’s design. 

The wrinkles on the old Hokage’s face appear to have deepened since the start of Sakura’s tale and his mouth is a resigned slash across his face. Grimly, he thanks them for their report and dismisses them. 

After the meeting with the Hokage he isn’t surprised when Sakura clumsily steals one of Sasuke’s extra shirts to pair with her spare undershorts and passes out in her bedroll on the floor with the dogs piled around her. Nor is he surprised when two days later she wins her preliminary match against an exhausted Rain ninja with a solid bout of Taijutsu.

What does surprise him is when after the preliminary matches conclude she pulls him aside to whisper, “Sensei, I can hear them now.”

He thinks that perhaps someone has managed to reverse-engineer his Chidori and stabbed him through the chest with it, because he feels paralyzed, like he’s been struck by lightning and he isn’t sure he can breathe.

It had not been a pleasant surprise during her preliminary match to realize that there was a dead kunoichi watching her match and that she could hear her obnoxious commentary about how both Sakura and her opponent were lame. The kunoichi with her brown hair, wild eyes, and red paint looked like an Inuzuka. Her rough and tumble speech patterns were even similar to her former classmate’s. However, the girl, not more than fifteen or sixteen, couldn’t have been from that clan as there was no ninken at her side and in even in death Sakura hadn’t seen a Inuzuka without their beloved companions.

Though the ghost’s remarks annoyed her, Sakura wasn’t about to show off any extra skills in a preliminary match if she didn’t have to. Naruto could do that kind of thing and get away with it since he had an ocean of chakra, but Sakura had to be strategic with her fights and giving away information for free to her future competitors was stupid no matter if you were a merchant or a ninja. 

Her abilities had allowed her to easily see through the genjutsu that was cast since the Rain ninja understandably, hadn’t accounted for the fact that Sakura could see and now, hear ghosts. She could still hear the kunoichi in the background and since the foreign ninja hadn’t included any ghosts in his illusion it was easy to recognize and shatter the illusion. Truthfully, even without her extra abilities, Sakura thought that she would have been able to recognize and dispel the weak genjutsu. It hadn’t been nearly as well set as the genjutsu Kakashi-sensei had put her under during the bell test and she had always had an aptitude for recognizing genjutsu in the academy.

She throws herself at him and he blocks her punch with his forarms and a pained grunt. He tries to kick at her, but the rain shinobi was not particularly skilled in Taijutsu and his clear exhaustion made the moves he did know sloppy. She slides behind him and even though she has a clear shot to at least two kill points, Sakura swipes his feet out from under him instead. It doesn’t take long after that for her to knock him to the ground and pin him, a kunai at his neck that she was careful not to press into his skin.

She ambles up the stadium stairs toward sensei. Even though her team made it to the tower days in advance, she’s not slept more than a couple of hours a night and certainly not multiple consecutively. She sidles as close to her teacher as she believes she can get away with before he either peels her away or the other ninjas begin to give her strange looks. Since she doesn’t want to attract any more attention, she watches the rest of the matches quietly and without being plastered to any of her teammates’ sides.

Her teammates’ and Ino’s match are the only ones that Sakura is truly capable of paying even the tiniest amount of attention to. Sasuke wins against his opponent with Sharingan enhanced taijutsu and Ino manages to catch a foreign ninja off guard with the Yamanaka’s Shintenshin jutsu. When Ino gazes up at her with a haughty challenge in her expression after she wins her match, Sakura manages to muster up a small competitive grin. Ino is the first to look away and Sakura considers that a win for her.

Her other teammate's match is something else entirely. Sakura feels her cheeks burn in mortification during Naruto’s match against Kiba. Trust Naruto to win with some combination of luck and embarrassing tactics. Even still, when he makes his way back to her side, she lightly bumps his shoulder and congratulates him. However, she is definitely going to make him write the next two mission reports in retaliation for this ordeal.

After the matches conclude, Sakura tugs on her teacher’s vest before he can escape. When he turns and cocks his head with a tired but patient half smile, she presses her lips together tightly before wetting her bottom lip and murmuring, “Sensei, I can hear them now.”

Thankfully, he immediately understands what she’s insinuating. Unfortunately, Kakashi-sensei flips when she pulls him aside to inform him of the latest development. His one visible eye looks slightly manic, like a man that is dealing with too many disasters at once and might need to go have at least one break down, if not seven. He sends the boys home to rest with instructions to meet two mornings from now. Then, in the blink of an eye, he scoops her up in a fireman’s carry and either shunshins or moves faster than she had thought even a jounin was capable of out of the Forest of Death and across town to the fourth story window of an apartment building that had seen better days.

It isn’t his rundown apartment, but he ducks through the window and avoids a dozen shuriken with practiced ease before plopping Sakura down on her feet. She sways at the sudden change, but Sensei holds her upright by her elbow until her stomach settles back where it belongs and her legs steady underneath her. The nausea makes one last attempt, before Sakura forcefully swallows it back. 

The apartment is depressingly devoid of personalization even worse than Kakashi-sensei’s apartment had been. At least Sensei’s apartment had photos. The only decorations here are a few thriving, suspiciously verdant houseplants. There is even a healthy citrus plant, which she recognizes from her foray into gardening is a plant that needs full sun and therefore doesn’t make a very good houseplant for small indoor apartments.

Tenzo treks into the room, happuri missing, his hair sticking up, stifling a yawn, and looking like he’d fallen asleep in the black underlayer of his uniform. “What are you doing here, Senpai?” he asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“I have a favor to ask of you if Sakura consents,” Sensei says, and his voice is intense, completely devoid of his normal fake cheery façade, like the time on the way to Wave when he told them to run from Zabuza. She peeks out from behind his tall form and Tenzo gives her a sleepy, puzzled smile as if just noticing her for the first time.

Kakashi-sensei bends his knees so that he is closer to her height. “Sakura-chan, I was planning on taking Sasuke out of the village for training for his match against Gaara and providing you with a different teacher more in line with your skill set. However, I’m hesitant to leave you in the village with your ability and no way to find you if other interested parties learn of your skill and get a hold of you. If Sasuke’s opponent was anyone else, I’d take you with us, but he’s going to need my undivided attention if he’s going to survive his first match.”

At Sensei’s mention of her abilities her wide eyes dart fearfully to Tenzo, who is looking at her with the most emotion she’s seen in him so far, luckily it looks like surprise and perhaps pity. 

The first Hokage bounces into the room with a childlike bounce and is humming merrily at the plants. She carefully avoids staring at the spectacle and focuses back on Kakashi-sensei as he speaks. “I know we weren’t going to tell anyone, but I’ll be out of reach for a month and I don’t want to leave you without assistance if something else unexpected happens. Tenzo won’t tell anyone and he has a tracking ability I’d like to utilize. If something happens while I’m gone, I trust him to be able to either assist you or retrieve you,” he cajoles, his panic only moderately more hidden.

“How do you know he can be trusted with this?” she asks in a small voice.

Tenzo rests his hand on her shoulder. “Sakura-san, if Senpai is talking about the interested parties that I think he is, I would never tell. Kakashi-senpai is the one who rescued me from that situation.”

She tilts her head in consideration. She’s never noticed a particular special skill from him, but if it was special enough, he probably wouldn’t want to advertise it, especially not to a bunch of preteen genins in broad daylight in a public training ground.

Her eyes alight on the only decorative aspects of his apartment again. “Oh, that’s why your plants are so nice,” she breathes out. And probably why the first Hokage can often be found around the jounin.

Kakashi-sensei laughs at the gobsmacked look on Tenzo’s face. “That’s quite a leap,” the man mutters.

She debates telling him her secret. Sensei clearly trusts him if his- “It’s up to you, Sakura-chan.” is any indication. He’d been so adamant that she not tell anyone, but he seems to trust this one jounin enough to hint at her ability when he hasn’t so much as informed the Hokage or anyone else in the village. 

The Shodaime catches her gaze on him and grins with twinkling eyes. She supposes the dark haired jounin isn’t likely to get a better endorsement than that. 

“Ah, not as big of a leap as you think. Lord First was checking out your citrus plant a few minutes ago,” she states with a carefully nonchalant shrug.

“The First is dead,” he responds back with swift bewilderment, furrowed brows, and a deep frown on his lips.

She nods in agreement, brushing back the tendrils of hair that fall back into her face. “Very dead, but he apparently still likes plants quite a bit,” she deadpans. Sensei is snickering again, and Sakura whips her head toward the First Hokage when she hears him laugh too. It is a rich warm sound that makes her want to join in. 

“You can hear me now,” the First says when he notices her attention and Sakura confirms this with a decisive nod. She crosses her arms, fingernails digging into her skin as she very deliberately does not freak out about talking to one of the founders of the village. A man so impressive that he was titled the God of Shinobi.

He continues, “I’ve never grown a citrus tree or many fruits. I’m impressed. When I was alive, I liked to grow ornamental bonsais.”

“He says he preferred to grow bonsai’s and has never grown a citrus tree before, so he’s impressed by it,” she offers with a shrug, a large, incredulous part of her mind wondering why the First has chosen to discuss plants rather than literally anything else.  

Tenzo plops himself down all the way to the ground. “Ghosts?”

Sensei rocks back on his heels and confirms the other jounin’s guess. “Got it in one.”

“What a terrible skill to have,” he says with a grimace.

Sakura wrinkles her nose. “It is. A lot of the dead are creepy and nightmarish. Personally, I think I’d rather be able to grow out of season fruit.”

Tenzo rolls his eyes and Kakashi stifles his laughter behind his orange book that he’s finally retrieved from his pouch. The familiar gesture relaxes the tension in her shoulders.
Haltingly, Tenzo asks, “He’s not mad?”

Sakura frowns confused and unsure of what the jounin means or who he’s talking about. No one in the room is mad. She considers that she misheard the question since her hearing is still spotty, but it was a very short sentence so she doesn’t think she did. The First Hokage clears his throat, his dark eyes sad. “Will you relay a message for me?”

She listens to the ghost intently and gently imparts his message, “Lord First says that he’s upset for you. That the circumstances in which you received his abilities are awful, but that he’s very glad that someone is carrying on his gift.”

Kakashi-sensei puts his free hand on Sakura’s shoulder and squeezes supportively.

Tenzo puts a hand over his face, breathes out, and the subtle tension in his wrinkled forehead eases.   “Thank you, Sakura-san. I can see why Senpai is concerned for your safety. Would you allow me to track you while he’s gone?”

“I suppose that depends on how it works,” she replies as she lightly taps her fingers against her forearm. She is not at all thrilled about the potential invasion of privacy that certain methods of tracking can include.  

He pushes himself off the floor with his hands to stand. “That’s fair. All you have to do is keep this seed that’s made with my chakra on you and I’ll be able to track you that way. I won’t know what you’re doing or who you’re with but if you get into trouble I’ll know where to find you,” he says handing her a small seed to observe. 

It doesn’t look like much of anything, just a small, dark brown speck. There’s no discernable chakra signature emitting from it. She turns it over in her hand and pokes it experimentally with a thin thread of her chakra.

The jounin in front of her winces with a grunt. “Maybe don’t do that unless you're in trouble.”

“Whoops. Sorry, Tenzo-san,” she says with a wry grin.

She consents to the tracking and tucks the seed into her weapons pouch until she can find a better place for it. Sensei reminds her of their team meet up in two days and cheerfully tells her not to be late before bursting into a pile of leaves. 

She glares at the pile of leaves, mutters her farewell to the only other person alive that knows her secret, and leaves from the door this time, instead of the window they originally came through. The last rays of the sun are sinking below the horizon as Sakura trudges back home from the center of town, careful to keep her eyes downcast, half so she doesn’t have to see any of the ghosts that she can now hear and half because she is so worn out that she thinks she might trip over her own feet if she doesn’t watch them. Even with sensei calling his dogs to help her sleep at night she hadn’t managed more than a couple of hours per night and the multiple nights of sleep deprivation are quickly catching up to her.

She makes it all the way out to her home in the Nara Forest, opens the newly repainted front door and comes face to face with the ghost she hasn’t caught more than insubstantial glimpses of for the past two months. He looks as surprised as she feels.

“Nope, I’m not doing this right now. I absolutely cannot deal with one more thing today. I’m taking a shower and then sleeping for at least ten hours,” she vows as she slams the door behind her and stalks to the bathroom.

“Unbelievable,” she mutters.

Chapter Text

I had turned my mind from my survival just as a man suffering from a deadly sickness manages by a thousand tricks never to look at death squarely; or rather, as a woman alone in a large house refrains from looking into mirrors, and instead busies herself with trivial errands, so that she may catch no glimpse of the thing whose feet she hears at times on the stairs.

-  Gene Wolfe

Sakura sleeps the whole ten hours she had planned and wakes at her usual time the next morning. If she dreams of ghosts or children that will never get older, dead at her hands during her rest, then she doesn’t remember it when she wakes to the dawning grey sunlight. While she eats her breakfast, she stares consideringly at her presumably shy housemate who is sitting across from her and rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

Apparently, Kakashi-sensei had flipped out months ago about her ability rather than only yesterday evening and she just hadn’t noticed or known enough about her sensei to realize it. She doesn’t know whether to be exasperated or not about his actions.

Even though she’s never seen half of his face, it’s immediately apparent that this ghost is somehow closely related to Kakashi-sensei. They stand the same way, and their features and coloring are remarkably similar from what she knows of sensei’s. They wear their hair differently and sensei has his mask of course, but the only major difference between them is that Kakashi-sensei is much lankier than this man.

Her mouth sets into a grim line as she considers the reasons why sensei might be so lean. She doesn’t like her thoughts because now that her attention has been drawn to it, she can tell that Sensei is on the unhealthy side of lean. Getting him to eat better is unlikely to be as easy as tricking Naruto into healthier grocery shopping.

“No wonder Sensei said I had the owner’s permission,” Sakura says finally, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen between her and the spirit curiously watching her eat her breakfast.

He drops his hand down into his lap. “Oh, who is your sensei?” the ghost asks with a raised brow.

“Hatake Kakashi,” she answers. Regret passes over his face, and she continues, “I’m Haruno Sakura. I can see that you must be related to Sensei, but I don’t know who you are.”

He sighs, but introduces himself all the same, “I’m Hatake Sakumo and Kakashi is my son.”

The last of her breakfast is stuck in her throat so she swallows it down with a sip of warm tea. “I’m surprised you aren’t following him around. From what I gather lots of the other ghosts seem to check up on their relatives and close friends.”

He shrugs and the motion is so distinctly like Kakashi-sensei's that it’s uncanny. Her brain takes a moment to catch up and to realize that he’s speaking to her again. “I can’t leave. The Hatake are descended from particularly superstitious samurai. They bound the property so that neither good nor bad spirits could enter. Unfortunately, since I died on the property, those same wards prevent me from leaving.”

She makes a low sympathetic sound from the back of her throat as her fingers tighten around her teacup. “That sounds terrible. Do you want me to look for a way to release you?” Sakura asks softly.

He gives her a wan smile that is tinged with gratefulness and what she thinks might be concern for her. “I don’t know of a way without taking all of the wards down and that would allow other, potentially less friendly, ghosts in to bother you. I assume that the wards were the reason that Kakashi stashed you here in the first place even though he’s hardly stepped foot on the property in years.”

“Yes, he mentioned something about the wards and that he thought that since most of the past residents had died far from Konoha there wouldn’t be as many spirits on the property as there were in town,” she agrees. Sakura is willing to bet that he hadn’t thought or known that his father dying here had trapped his spirit otherwise, she doubts that her reticent and intensely private sensei would have considered allowing her to stay on his family’s land.

“He was always very smart,” Hatake-san says, cupping his face in one large hand and leaning forward onto the table.

“That’s one word for it,” she mutters, standing up and grabbing her dishes to wash at the sink. “I have a few errands to run today. This is sort of a strange situation so please think about it and let me know if there is anything I can do to make this easier: topics that are off-limit, rooms or items you’d prefer left alone, or anything else of that nature.”

She notes absentmindedly that despite the pain and the sound of sloshing water in her ear, there’s been no impediment to her hearing during this conversation. It’s been remarkably clear at that.

He raises a silver brow. “You’re awfully polite. It seems my son has been fortunate with his team,” he says and starts for the stairs to the second floor, giving her a haphazard wave as she leaves. Sakura only barely manages to hold her laughter until she gets outside. She rather thinks any politeness she manages to bring to her team is easily outweighed by both her male teammates’ behavior.

Hurrying through town with dogged determination so as not to be distracted, Sakura makes her way to Konoha General. She doesn’t think there is much that the hospital can do for her ruptured ear drum, but she does want it checked out to ensure that it will heal correctly. Plus, she hates how uncomfortable it is, every time she starts to forget about the injury it will either start to ache dully or it will start to sound like she’s underwater in that one ear when she needs to be able to clearly hear.

Sakura pales as she walks through the hospital door. There were only a few living people in the waiting room, but if she had thought the market district was crowded with ghosts, the hospital is a writhing, flailing pit of them. They are everywhere.

The clinic, where something minor like her ear would be looked at is near the back of the building, in an addition they added during the third shinobi war. It’s where she had taken Naruto directly to for his checkup a few months ago. Using Naruto’s surprising stealth, they’d snuck in through a backdoor to avoid dragging Naruto through the glaring mass of people and now Sakura wishes she’d done the same and not gone the proper way to the clinic through the main entrance.

So many ghosts clog the halls that there is no room for Sakura to walk, so she glues herself to the ceiling to avoid plowing through them and crawls along it. She’s aware that she probably looks ridiculous and that this is, at the very least, a slightly illogical response to her problem, but there is no other way through the mess than this. There are dozens upon dozens of ghosts wandering the halls, many in gruesome states, some that are eternally waiting for their turn in the waiting rooms. There’s so much blood on the floor that Sakura isn’t sure what the original color or material is. There are even doctors that she sees still running through the halls and others still making rounds long after their final shifts.

On top of that the noise near both the entrance and the emergency room is deafening. Here, the sounds have all melded together and it rings clearly even through her damaged ear.  Between the wailing, screaming, and sobs, there’s no way to distinguish any one person’s voice or words. It is a symphony of agony.

She does not like it. In fact, she likes this new facet of her ability distinctly less than being able to see ghosts at all. At least with seeing she had been able to just look away or pretend she couldn’t see them, but there’s no way to drown out the sounds of misery here and it’s harder to pretend that all the suffering around her isn’t happening.

By the time a nurse calls her back into the clinic rooms, Sakura is twitchy and fighting to control the shaking in her hands. There’s a lump in her throat and she doesn’t know if it’s from fear or anguish. She swallows it back carefully, worried that she’ll burst into tears if she makes any sudden movements. Sitting in an exam room is a relief because it’s quieter in this part of the hospital and there aren’t as many confused ghosts stumbling around and futilely trying to catch someone’s attention.

By the time the doctor joins her in the room, she thinks that she’s managed to relax enough not to look three seconds from a hysterical breakdown. The doctor only asks a few questions before glancing in her ear. She brings a glowing green hand up and within a minute or two her hearing clears up and the mild pain disappears. She writes her a prescription for antibiotics and sends her on her way.

She bends over with her hands resting on her knees after she makes it back out of the hospital. She’s struggling not to pant, not from exhaustion, but from attempting to stave off the panic that’s creeping through her chest. “I hope that some of the jutsus that sensei has copied are medical ninjutsu or that one of the boys wants to learn it, because I am never going in there again, at least while I’m still conscious,” she vows.

The whole experience makes her feel fragile and brittle as if the slightest touch from a living person would send her into a sobbing mess. Sakura squints as she rubs at her eyes and temples though it offers very little relief. She doesn’t know how her new abilities work yet, but too much stimulus is apparently capable of giving her a splitting headache.

She restocks her weapons and finds a shinobi clothing merchant. This particular shop is run by a distant cousin on her mother’s side. A merchant who had woven in her mother’s family silks into shinobi clothing for additional silence, stealth, and temperature regulation. It’s a popular store though she’s avoided it so far in her career, because while Hideo oji-san may cater to shinobi clientele, he like her parents, does not approve of her being a shinobi.

She pulls navy blue pants that are similar to the standard issue Konoha uniform in her size off a shelf, a forest green shirt with three-quarter sleeves, gloves, and enough athletic wrap for at least the next month or two.

Seriously, who let all the prospective ninjas out of the academy in such eye-catching colors and the kunoichi with so much bare skin? It was a hazard in the field and during battle. Naruto wore orange, she had thought bright red was an acceptable color, Ino’s mid-drift was practically an invitation to gut her, Sasuke wore white shorts, and she wasn’t quite sure how Hinata hadn’t died of heat exhaustion yet in her oversized sweater in Fire country.

Perhaps the Hyuuga heiress had an untreated iron deficiency? It would help explain her fainting fits too. No one could get that flustered over a crush, especially not one on her oblivious teammate.

Pausing to look at a black outfit with subtle orange details and the Land of Whirlpool swirls, Sakura considered that she would have to remember to bring Naruto here for his birthday. It wasn’t the type of gift that Sasuke would appreciate so she would have to think up something else for his birthday, but she thought Naruto would both like and appreciate the usefulness of it. Plus, he desperately needed clothes that blended better and were better quality. That tracksuit he wore was made of material that didn’t breathe well and it was much too hot for training during the majority of the year.

For her last self-appointed errand, she strolls toward the outskirts of town to Sasuke’s house to check on him and his health after the disaster in the forest. She makes it all the way to the entrance of the Uchiha compound before she abruptly turns right back around. There are dozens of ghosts with almost entirely clean, efficient deaths, but they are furious. From the few words that she can pick out of the dozens of conversations that she can hear they are strangely not angry with Itachi, who is their reported murderer, but with a masked ninja and the council. Their anger makes her queasy, similar to how strong killing intent, like Zabuza’s or Orochimaru’s, feels.

Fortunately, the Uchiha ghosts don’t pay much attention to her, and she darts down several streets blindly. She’s already been overwhelmed by the dead once today and she isn’t keen to experience it again for a second time with such angry ghosts.

Either by luck or subconsciously she ends up right in front of the library. She hadn’t meant to come here but now that she has, she swipes her identification card and makes her way into the shinobi section. She pulls out a book called Declassified! Famous Ninja of Fire Country and another titled Chakra Control Exercises: From the Leaf Exercise to Chakra Shaping.

She finds a table in the back, sets her bags down next to her, and begins to flip through the first book. If she’s going to be able to see and talk to dead shinobi she might as well know who some of them are by sight. The Legendary Three and the first through the third Hokages are listed as well as a large number of Uchiha, several Hyuuga, and a few others from the other clans in Konoha. There aren’t any famous civilian-born ninjas listed, but in the back, listed as the White Fang rather than his given name is her housemate. She reads the short blurb on him but doesn’t go looking for additional information.

When she is done skimming through those two books, she grabs a significant number of diagrams of the human body and the brain in the beginning medical ninjutsu section. These books can’t be checked out, so she takes meticulous notes as she plows relentlessly through the material.

“Are you considering becoming a medic-nin?” the librarian asks when she comes around to reshelve some old historical scrolls. Sakura shakes the stiffness out of her hand.

“It’s an option I’m looking into,” she lies demurely as she casts her eyes back down at the diagrams. All these diagrams on the brain and chakra systems are so that knows what a normal system is supposed to look like for her own health. However, she can’t safely tell the older kunoichi that and the medic-nin excuse is as good as any other she would be able to come up with on the fly.

The librarian gives her a hard, assessing look then plucks a scroll off a nearby shelf and places it in front of her. “The chakra control book is a good start, but if you want to know if your control is good enough to be a medic then you need Tsunade-sama's scroll on beginning medical ninjutsu. It is here in the history section rather than the medical section because there isn’t much actual medical ninjutsu listed in there. However, what they do contain are old, but better methods of testing and improving control rather than the new standardized methods used currently.”

Sakura glances at the large, tightly rolled scroll the librarian had offered and murmurs, “Thank you, Ai-san.” 

When the librarian stalks off to another aisle, Sakura shivers and reaffirms to herself that she is never going to the hospital if she can help it. She’ll just have to get so fast that no one can touch her. However, Sensei did say that she had good chakra control, and it never hurts to improve your skills, so she unrolls the scroll and begins taking notes on this topic too. When she has time and supervision, she amends after seeing some of the exercises, she’ll test these out and perfect them if she’s capable of it.

The next morning Sakura makes her way to team seven’s training ground. Both her teammates are already there, but Kakashi-sensei is nowhere in sight, so she settles into a relaxed meditation pose and dives into her chakra system. She takes the time to smooth out some abnormal flow in her system that is probably from her poor diet and sleep over the last week or so.

The foreign signature from the healing chakra used on her ear yesterday is still lingering and aggravating to her senses, like a beacon constantly broadcasting that it doesn’t belong. The nurse wasn’t efficient, and the extra chakra is from bad control on the nurse’s part she thinks. She grimaces as she works to incorporate the extra into her own system similar to the body reabsorbing blood from a healing bruise. It’s unpleasant, almost slimy, and vaguely uncomfortable, though thankfully not painful to work someone else’s chakra into her own system.

When that is done, she takes a deep steady breath, much more relaxed now that her chakra flow is smooth and even, and leisurely follows a pathway that leads to her brain. Her whole brain is lit up with chakra, some spots and regions are brighter than others, and sure enough, there are extra clearly defined tenketsu near the back of the brain in the occipital lobe and another set in the temporal lobe which according to those scrolls from yesterday are the visual and auditory centers of the brain, respectively. The fact that there are active extra tenketsu suggests that unless they are forcibly closed or removed, which sounds prohibitively dangerous when considering where those tenketsu are located, she would always see and hear ghosts.

Depressingly, that was the default state for her now. She really would have preferred chakra sensing, out of season fruit, ice release, or basically anything except for ghosts or Sasuke’s stupid trauma pinwheels of power and madness.

Sakura takes several minutes to dwell on her unfortunate gift, hoping to come to terms with it, and only starts to come out of her meditation when Naruto screeches, “You’re late!”

“He’s only an hour late. Sensei must have overslept instead of getting lost or whichever other unreasonable bad luck bullshit excuse he was going to choose to give this morning,” she says, opening her eyes and stretching her arms above her head to release the tension in her shoulders. Her meditation unfortunately hasn’t reconciled her to her abilities at all, only revealed how it functionally works in her body.

“Uncool, Sakura-chan,” he pouts while Naruto snickers and Sasuke turns his head to hide his smirk. Sensei sighs and then changes the topic to the purpose of the team meeting today. “Since all three of you passed the preliminary exam, I have separate instructors for all of you for the next month. I’m taking Sasuke out of the village. Naruto, your instructor can be found around one of the women’s bathhouses.”

Naruto jolts, before a frown settles on his face. “What? Why would they be there?”

“Research. Consequently, Sakura don’t use the public bathhouses for the next month at least,” Kakashi-sensei intones wryly.

Her face twists in revulsion. “Understood,” she states emphatically.

“What kind of research-” Naruto stops before understanding, followed swiftly by fury, overtakes his expression.  His fists are clenched by his sides and the whiskers on his cheeks are more pronounced. “Gross! Girls of all ages go to the bathhouses. What is wrong with my instructor? Why hasn’t anyone stopped them?”

Kakashi turns a page in his book. “He’s very strong and important.”

Naruto snarls, “That’s worse! It means other strong people know about it and aren’t protecting those girls. They’re just letting him get away with it. I won’t let that happen when I’m the Hokage.”

Sakura smiles at him softly. “Thanks, Naruto.”

He startles and the rage in his expression falters. “What for, Sakura-chan? I haven’t done anything.”

“You recognized there was a problem with that behavior. A lot of men ignore that kind of thing. They excuse other men by saying that looking is only natural and since it doesn’t do any physical harm that it’s harmless and therefore permissible,” she says, her nose wrinkling as she explains.

He crosses his arms and sputters out, “It’s wrong. It’s an invasion of your privacy and a vio- vio-”

“Violation,” Sasuke mutters. Her eyes flash over to him to find that Sasuke also looks distinctly displeased by the issue. In a mirror image of their other teammate, Sasuke’s arms are crossed and there’s a deep scowl etched on his face.

Naruto waves a hand wildly through the air. “What teme said. A violation. How can you or anyone feel safe in Konoha if people can just do that without your permission and then get away with it just because of their strength or who they are?”

Kakashi-sensei pats her teammate on the head with a gloved hand. “Well said, Naruto. The police force used to handle incidents like that.”

Naruto’s eyes dart to his other male teammate and then away before he asks, “The Uchiha police force?”

Seeing Sensei hesitate at the question, Sakura picks up the topic, because for all of Sensei’s talent, he wasn’t always very tactful. “Yes, the Uchiha police force could be relied on for taking care of intravillage issues, like voyeurs, break-ins, and finding lost children. When I was younger, one of the female Uchiha police officers helped me get home after I got lost.” One side of her mouth quirks up in a melancholy grin as she continues her explanation. “That’s why I originally joined the academy. I hadn’t known that women could participate in active duty rather than just desk duty before that. I wanted to help people, except the police force was Uchiha only so, I decided to be the next best thing- a ninja,” she reveals, her voice soft, near reverent by the end.

That encounter with the Uchiha officer had been a large part of the reason she’d had such a terrible crush on her teammate from such a young age. It was true that Sasuke had always been good-looking, but mostly she had been determined to be an Uchiha one way or another. Childishly, and without much regard for Sasuke’s actual feelings on the matter, she had thought the easiest way to do that was to get Sasuke to like her. It had not been her most strategically sound plan.

Naruto cocks his head toward his other teammate, a curious and uncharacteristically pensive expression painting his face. “Hey teme, during the team introduction, is that what you meant by restoring your clan?”

Sasuke nods sharply, clearly not angry, but overwhelmed by the topic of discussion. She notices almost immediately that he is carefully not making eye contact with her. She presses her lips together and fights to keep any hint of sympathy off her face. She keeps her gaze pointedly on her teacher and their other teammate.

In a stunning display of emotional empathy from her dense teammate, Naruto drops the subject entirely and switches back to the previous issue. “Sakura-chan don’t worry. I’m going to train so hard this month that my instructor doesn’t have a chance to harass any women and I’ll beat him up if I catch him trying!”

Sasuke’s expression drops back into a glower, which is a look Sakura far prefers over the emotionally strained tension he’d been sporting only a minute or two ago. “Even the dead last shouldn’t have a teacher that’s not fit to be around children.”

Sakura hums her agreement and decides to give her sunny teammate some last-minute advice. “If you’re determined to train so hard use a couple of shadow clones to help you learn, but no more than a couple at a time. I’ve noticed that if they all pop at the same time then the feedback from more than two or three clones gives you a headache and makes you pause for at least three quarters of a second during battle from the sensory overload.”

Sensei smiles at her in approval, but it quickly turns mischievous. “Excellent advice. Now Sakura-chan, I almost forgot, your instructor was supposed to meet you on training ground seventeen about thirty minutes ago.”

“Sensei!” she shouts, and she can feel her face turning red in her rage. “If whoever my instructor is, isn’t still waiting for me at the training ground then you’re back down to my third favorite sensei.”

She takes off at a run and barely manages to hear Sasuke say, “Dobe, if your instructor’s behavior is still a problem after the exams, I’ll help you deal with him.”

And Sensei’s long-suffering response comes immediately afterward. “I’ll help you track him down if necessary.” Something soft and warm blooms in her chest for her team. They’re never ever getting rid of her now.

She sprints the entire way to training ground seventeen. Damn, Sensei might have to settle for being tied for second favorite sensei for forever, because the instructor Kakashi-sensei roped into helping her for the next month is still waiting for her, and to her delight, it is Shiranui Genma. She doesn’t know how Sensei knows that Genma is her favorite of the jounin he brought for supplementary lessons, but she’s ecstatic and grateful to have ghost-free lessons with a jounin who has such a useful skillset.

“Are you picking up your sensei’s bad habits, kid?” Genma asks from his position seated against one of the tall oak trees on the training ground.

She puts her hands on her knees and pants out her answer, “Sorry, Kakashi-sensei was late for our team meeting this morning and he only just told me I was supposed to meet you here.”

He smirks and stands up with slow, nonchalant movements. “Relax. I know what Kakashi is like. He probably took great enjoyment in making such a strait-laced kid like you late.”

“He did,” she grumbles.

His gaze runs over her form and Sakura knows right away that he’s had years of experience sizing up opponents based on the coldly professional manner in which he assesses her. “Alright, kid. We’re definitely working on your speed and stamina during this month. Is there anything else you specifically want to learn?” he inquires.

She considers his question carefully before answering, “More weapons handling and poisons, I’d like to at least maintain my taijutsu skills, and if you are able to, I’d like to learn how to make an elemental clone of either water or earth.”

He nods and moves the senbon in his mouth to the other side. “Speed, stamina, and taijutsu can all be worked on more or less simultaneously. I have an earth affinity and know how to make a clone, so that’s doable as well. We can work with more poisons than the basics I showed your team last month if your throwing accuracy increases.”

The warm spray of arterial blood, the ringing in her ears, and the gruesome visual of ghosts forming over bodies the same size as hers assault her senses. She fights back the memory of the forest where she’d used the very skills he had already taught her to protect her team at the cost of all three of the Sound ninjas' lives. She gives him a grin that is wobblier than she would like and a courteous little half-bow. “Thank you. I am in your care.”

He waves off her politeness. “None of that kid. Let’s get to work.”

For the next three days, she’s so exhausted from training that she barely makes it home before crashing into bed. It’s nice that Genma-san believes so strongly in her ability to keep up, but did he have to assign so many conditioning reps and laps around the village? On the fourth day, they rest her muscles and work on the hand signs and chakra requirements for earth clones and when she gets home in the early afternoon, she is finally able to have a conversation with her housemate.

While tending to her garden, she tells her reclusive roommate, “I only have one request. Unless it’s an emergency, please don’t come into my room while I sleep.”

He frowns as he watches her rip out weeds from around the sweet potatoes while he sits on the engawa. “I have no objection to that, but may I ask why?”

The weeds drop from her grip and her arms wrap around her waist as she looks down at the ground blankly. “If you get near enough to me while I sleep, I’ll dream of your death as if I am you. It’s upsetting for me and there’s a degree of emotional bleedover too and sometimes it’s hard to shake the feelings from the memory or separate it from reality even in the daylight”

She meets his dark eyes as he blanches as much as a ghost can and then he hurries to assure her, “Oh, yes. I will stay away while you are resting then.”

“Thank you,” she breathes out a sigh of relief and then offers, “Is there anything I can do to make this easier on you?”

He shifts in his spot and doesn’t meet her earnest gaze as he quietly requests, “Will you set up a small shrine for my wife and upkeep it for me?”

Tears gather in her eyes, and she sniffles lightly before she manages to stuff her feelings down. Crying about the White Fang’s inability to leave the property to reconnect with his dead wife would not be helpful at the moment. If Hatake-san is anything like her sensei, then her tears will just spook him. She can cry about the man’s tragic life and afterlife when she’s alone. “Sure, that’s no problem. As long as you have a photo then I’ll pick up anything else we need for that tomorrow after training.”

“You’ve been training a lot more the last few days,” he observes, face tilting up toward the sun and long silver hair falling down his back.

Sakura is thankful for the reprieve and wipes at eyes with the back of her wrist. With any luck, she hasn’t smeared dirt or bug guts all over her face. “I have. It’s the chunin exams. I have about a month before the exhibition matches.”

“You must be in the finals then. What are you good at?” he inquires absently.

She grunts as she pulls up a particularly stubborn weed and shakes the excess dirt from the roots. A worm falls back into the soil, and she gently covers it back up with loosely packed dirt. “Seeing ghosts mostly. My taijutsu is okay and so is my ninjutsu, but my speed and stamina are poor,” she says glumly and adjusts her hat to better block the sun from her eyes.

He hums thoughtfully. “Information gathering then. That’s a tough one to display, but you could easily find out everything about your opponent’s fighting style ahead of time.”

Sakura chuckles wryly. “I don’t really want to display that skill because I don’t want anyone to question how I did it. Only two other living people know I can see ghosts. One of them is sensei and he said it could be dangerous if the wrong people knew. Besides, I already know a lot about my first opponent and her fighting style. It’s Yamanaka Ino and we were friends and then rivals for years in the academy. If I win that then I either have to fight a Nara or the Kazekage’s daughter that uses a giant fan in conjunction with her wind release capabilities.”

Carefully, she unwraps the beans from where their vines are creeping up both her eggplants and up the stakes of her tomato plants. The tendrils are beginning to curl around the other plants in tight spirals and without her intervention the beans will surely strangle the others and leave her with neither eggplants nor tomatoes. She likes beans, but not enough to only eat those instead of a variety of vegetables for the next couple of months.

“Hmm, a Yamanaka, then you probably need a sword to help create distance and compensate for your lack of speed. Getting too close to a Yamanaka is dangerous but letting them keep their hands free is worse.” He’s lounging with his long legs outstretched, although she notes that one of his feet is resting through the floor of the engawa. She’s seen Hatake-san lean against a table, but now he’s partway through the floor. She very much does not understand the physics of what or how ghosts can touch things.

She wrinkles her nose. “Kakashi-sensei brought in someone to show us how to wield a Katana, but I didn’t care for it.”

He snorts inelegantly. “That’s because a katana would be entirely too long for you. A tanto or kodachi would fit you better instead. I don’t think any of the Hatake swords are still in the house but if you bring back something that fits you, I will show you how to wield it.”

Hatake Sakumo had been famous for his swordsmanship with his white light chakra saber. She would be an idiot to turn down his tutelage. “You wouldn’t mind teaching me?”

One side of his mouth quirks upward and he shrugs. “I wouldn’t have offered otherwise. Besides, it’s not like there’s a whole lot to do on this property. It gets boring here without interaction.”

She frowns. It’s a miracle the man hasn’t gone mad from boredom yet. “I could leave the radio on while I’m gone sometimes if you would like?”

He startles at the suggestion. “That would be excellent. Thank you, Sakura-san.”

Chapter Text

“Dead people are just like you and me, they still want things. They look at us all the time, and they miss being alive.” ― Peter Straub, “The Throat”

Sakura leaves the house early the next morning, just past opening time in the merchants' quarter, so that she can make it to the weapons shop before her morning training with Genma-san. There’s hardly anyone, alive or dead, in the streets this early so it is immediately apparent when Senju Tobirama's tall, imposing form falls into step beside her.

“Good morning,” she says politely, looking up at the taller man through her lashes. Standing next to her in his fur and armor he appears formal while she feels disheveled and as if she had been dragged out of bed only moments ago, wearing plain training clothes that she isn’t entirely certain are clean.

“Haruno-san,” he greets without inflection.

“Can I help you?” she asks as she speeds up, an inevitably doomed venture to escape this conversation.

The second Hokage was said to be the most reserved of the former hokages, so she has to wonder what exactly this taciturn man wants with her. She’s just a genin and certainly no one that a previous hokage should be interested in.

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye while leisurely keeping pace next to her. She wrinkles her nose. It feels vaguely like she’s a bug under a magnifying glass. “I didn’t know there was a clan that could see spirits before,” he finally says after a long moment of silence.

Sakura silently damns her short legs and grimaces. “I’m not sure there is. I’m not from a ninja clan and I don’t think any of my other relatives can do so. They are civilians, so I think it’s just me,” she offers the last bit with a nonchalance she doesn’t feel.

“Perhaps a spontaneous chakra mutation then,” he reasons with a hum while raking his carmine eyes over the entirety of her like he’s attempting to determine where the specific mutation is. His lack of overt expression is intimidating and somewhat disquieting to the teenage girl.

Sakura reminds herself that she doesn’t owe anyone any answers. However, based on his intensity, Sakura doubts the second Hokage is someone that just lets things go, so she shrugs and replies, “That’s what Sensei thinks.”

“How interesting,” he says dispassionately as he reaches a gloved hand toward her.

She flinches and abruptly yanks herself backwards. “What are you doing? Do not touch me.”

He blinks, hiding his unsettling gaze for a brief moment. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to,” she hisses at him ferally, angry with his presumption. Who goes around just touching strangers? Never mind that one of them is a ghost.

He frowns and tips his head to the side in confusion like one of Kakashi-sensei’s ninken. “You can see and hear ghosts. Don’t you think you should also learn whether you can touch them or not? Or what happens when you do so in a safe environment instead of in an uncontrolled situation, like on a mission?”

“No,” she denies swiftly and vehemently.

His mouth is pinched in dissatisfaction as he states, “You’re afraid. It’s unnecessary as I have no intentions of hurting or frightening you, Haruno-san.”

His statement is meant to comfort her, but it does no such thing. She slashes her arm downward and admits, “It’s true. I am afraid. I hate this ability, nothing good has come of me being able to perceive spirits. I never thought you intended to harm me, but I don’t want to-” She has to swallow down her bitterness at all the things this ability has cost her already before she can continue, “I am not ready to discover if I can feel the dead and I’m not a science experiment, Hokage-sama.”

The lines around his mouth relax and his unflinching stare lessens. He sighs. “I apologize Haruno-san. You didn’t seem like the type to mind touch, but that was rude of me to try without asking or further acquaintanceship. It’s been a long time since I’ve interacted with someone both new and living.”

She stops outside the specialty store and shakes her head. “It’s fine and you’re right. Normally I’m not adverse to touch. Just please remember that this isn’t something I wanted or expected. Every step has been terrifying, and it has cost me both sleep and peace of mind among other things.”

He grunts in acknowledgment of her words. She suspects that like the majority of her team, the Nidaime has very few social skills. The comparison to her team softens her to the former hokage.

“Please excuse me. I’ve got to go, or I will look crazy if I’m caught talking to you in front of the store clerk,” she says gesturing inside the store as she tries to dismiss herself from his presence.

He glances up at the building. “What are you doing here?” he inquires, seemingly heedless of her attempt to politely dismiss herself.

She scratches the back of her neck. “It was suggested to me that a sword could help add distance and compensate for a lack of speed, so I’m looking for something that will fit me.”

He nods and asks, “Are you slow?”

She snorts. “I expect nearly everyone is slow compared to you, but yeah, I’m not very fast.”

He doesn’t grin but there is something decidedly amused in his red eyes. “Would you like assistance finding something suitable?”

“Yes, please,” she says. She thinks this might be his idea of making up for his insensitive mistake and she admits that she appreciates this almost more than his verbal apology. Besides, Sakura is happy to take any help she can get on this topic. It requires experience and it isn’t something that she can just lookup in the library.

Which is how she finds herself being guided swiftly through the store by the second Hokage. He dryly recounts the merits and drawbacks of every sword she picks up. According to the second Hokage’s exacting standards some swords are too long for her build, some are poor quality metals, and others he cites as having poor forging methods. It isn’t until she spots a paired set of dark grey chokuto that she really believes a sword could be advantageous for her.

Tobirama-sama leans toward the display and hums as if pleasantly surprised as he assesses them. “They are short for chokuto, but they will fit your frame, and they are made out of good quality chakra conducting steel.”

She reaches for the one-sided blades and tests their grip and balance before glancing at the price tag. Despite the comfortable grips, she nearly fumbles the swords. It’s far more than she wants to spend but it’s the only set that her companion has approved of so far and well… she just knows these are supposed to be hers.

She hesitates a moment more.

“What’s stopping you?” Her companion asks, glancing down at her curiously.

She clicks her tongue. “These are awfully expensive if my instructor doesn’t know how to teach dual wielding,” she says after verifying that no one is around to see her talk to the air.

He hums lowly and asks, “Who is teaching you?”

“Hatake Sakumo,” she answers.

He nods at them. “Hatake-san is proficient. Get them.”

With that endorsement, she makes her way to the front counter and pays for the swords without further delay.

Later that evening Hatake-san starts the lessons as soon as she arrives home from training. She shows him the swords the Nidaime had helped her pick out and he looks pleased by her choice. He directs her to a bookcase in the study where he points out two scrolls. “These are the first two beginner scrolls. While you eat take a look at these and we’ll go over the motions after your food settles a bit.”

Sakura carefully unrolls the old scrolls and pauses when she sees the headings. “Are you sure it’s okay for you to teach me these?”

He gives her a weak smile. “Someone should know the family forms, and I haven’t heard that I have any grandchildren yet. Besides the Hatake kata are ideal for short swords rather than katanas and as we’ve already determined, you’re much too small for a sword that long.”

She pauses, scroll unrolled in her hand, and informs her new kenjutsu instructor, “Ah, you don’t. Have grandchildren that is. I’ve been to Sensei’s apartment and there’s definitely never been a woman there for any length of time. There’s dogs and fur everywhere, there’s only two pans and all his dishes are unmatching. Besides, Sensei reads adult literature in public.”

The White Fang whips his head toward her. “I’m sorry, Kakashi does what?”

She clears her throat. “Anyway, about these forms. They are Hatake specific are you sure no one will be upset if they recognize me using them?”

He shakes his head. “The only person with a right to be upset would be Kakashi. However, since you’re his student and he let you stay here I doubt he’ll be upset, maybe surprised, since he’s probably forgotten they are here, but not upset. Now, go back to what you said before,” he orders, his arms crossing over his chest and his expression turning stern.

She groans lowly. Kakashi-sensei might not be mad about the kata, but she can’t imagine he’ll be too impressed by the fact that she tattled on him to his father. “Do you know about Jiraiya of the Sannin?”

“I do,” he clips out.

Sakura hopes Sensei forgives her for disappointing his ancestor. She’s probably going to drop down to his third favorite student if he ever finds out about this, if she wasn’t already for how much trouble she’s caused him. It’s going to have to be a future Sakura problem though, because Sensei has never offered to teach her his family’s kenjutsu style and she’s not losing the opportunity to learn it from the White Fang.  “He writes these uh… graphic adult novels and Sensei is almost never without his nose in one of them.”

He drops his head into his hands and moans. “No wonder I don’t have any grandchildren.”

She winces. “You have lots of grandpups, if that helps?” Astonishingly, all the ninkens’ food and water dishes were color-coordinated. She didn’t know if she wanted to know what that said about her sensei that he took better care of his dogs than himself, but it probably meant that she needed to trick him into therapy or something.

“It doesn’t,” he mutters, his voice slightly muffled from his hands.

“Sorry?” she offers.

Hatake-san heaves a large, exasperated sigh. “Don’t worry about it. Hurry and study those before it gets too late and there’s no sunlight left.”

After dinner, he takes her outside to the small private training ground. She’s not used the small clearing much, since up until now she’s spent most of her days with her team and any extra time, she’s spent gardening or making the house habitable. “We’re going to do the kata together without swords until I’m sure you have the footwork down enough not to trip over your own feet and impale yourself.”

She blanches. She’s very far from the hospital if she hurts herself that badly and no one really knows that she’s out here except for Sensei and he’s not in town or even in Fire Country. She’s never been clumsy, but she resolves to be extra cautious and meticulous about learning.

Hatake-san thoroughly walks her through each of the forms by her side until she can do them all individually. Then he shows her how to string them together form by form, building them up in a sequence, making corrections when necessary. He runs her through the whole sequence several times before he is satisfied. They get all the way through the first scroll before the last of the sunlight sinks below the horizon. She’s not anywhere near approaching fast at the forms, but she is accurate and precise with her movements. There’s sweat dripping off her, her muscles feel entirely like limp noodles from the full day of training, but she’s pleased even though they haven’t touched her new swords at all.

As a ghost, her instructor doesn’t look the slightest bit winded, nor has he broken a sweat despite the hours spent in the heat. He smiles approvingly at her worn out figure and informs her, “We got further than I thought we would tonight. You’re a very precise and quick learner. Tomorrow, if you can show me that you’ve retained the forms, we’ll add your sheathed swords into those forms and in a few days, we’ll start on the second scroll.”

She straightens to her full height, leaning backwards slightly to crack her lower back. “Thank you for the lesson, Hatake-san,” she says, her words still a bit breathless from the work out.

“You’re welcome and Sakumo is fine. Might be a little confusing if you use the family name since my son is also your teacher,” he offers, while scratching the back of his neck.

She nods and with a grin she repeats, “Then thank you, Sakumo-san.”

For the next few days Sakura spends her mornings and early afternoons working on her weapons accuracy with multiple moving targets followed by a spar with Genma where he systematically beats out any opening or weakness in her guard. Unlike Kakashi-sensei, Genma takes the time to explain what she’s doing wrong and how to correct it. The verbal explanations improve her performance by leaps and bounds. She never wins their spars of course, but she holds out for longer and longer without getting hit by either his limbs or his weapons.

Which is good, because getting hit with any of Genma’s weapons during training is a terrible game of roulette. He has multiple poisons smeared on his blades, though he keeps them nonlethal for training, which doesn’t rule out poisons that sharpen pain, dull her senses, interfere with muscle coordination, or induce genjutsu-like hallucinations.

After whatever hellish poison she’s been drugged with that day works its way out of her system, Sakura collapses under the shade of one of the trees on training ground seventeen and works on her earth jutsu while Genma supervises.

Sakura frowns at the clone she has called up. It looks like her- well it looks like her if she’d just got out of a dust storm. She pokes at the clone. The layer of earth that makes it up is paper thin and the miniscule bit of force from her hand nearly dispels the clone entirely. It glares back at her with its arms crossed petulantly. Apparently, her clones, like Naruto’s, have an attitude problem.

She groans loudly. Of all the things to have in common with her blond teammate it had to be that. Sasuke is going to be so annoyed.

She looks over to her temporary sensei to find him snickering. She stomps her foot and lets out an aggrieved huff. Out of the corner of her eye she sees her clone roll its eyes. “What’s wrong with it? I didn’t have any problems with any of the other earth jutsu that Kakashi-sensei taught me.”

He shrugs indolently. “Not sure exactly. I’ve never seen an elemental clone with quite so much personality before. A shadow clone, sure, but not from an earth clone. Normally elemental clones are emotionless and much sturdier than what you’ve formed, particularly the earth clones. It’s like you’ve traded their physical strength for mental strength.”

She glares at her scowling clone. “How do I fix it? I can’t have an earth clone that’s little more than a dust cloud!” she throws her hands up and whines.

“For only practicing for a few days you aren’t doing so badly. It takes the average genin ninja a month to master a new technique. Give yourself some slack. You’ve already learned a few minor techniques and it’s only been a couple of days. You must have been dreadfully bored in the academy.” He swaps the senbon in his mouth from the left side to the right then continues, “Perhaps your yin chakra is interfering? Try focusing on isolating and purifying your earth chakra right before you perform the hand signs.”

Sakura blinks as she considers his advice. Her ratio of yin to yang chakra had shifted since she had unlocked her ability to sense ghosts and she hadn’t tried to make any sort of clone since before the mission to Wave, since she now had other skills to rely on rather than only the academy three. She drops herself into the grass with her legs crossed, closes her eyes, and meditates on her chakra.

Currently, she only has enough chakra to make a half dozen elemental clones per practice, so she has to make each one count. While she focuses on her chakra, she runs through the hand signs of the jutsu, paying attention to how the chakra is being molded. She holds the last hand sign without releasing her grip on her chakra, keeping the technique from executing. She keeps her yin chakra far away from the earth chakra and then molds and releases it to create an earth clone. The technique fails entirely. When she finishes, a huge cloud of dust bursts in her face, but there is neither a stoic nor a sassy body double when the cloud clears.

She spends the rest of practice working to find the minimum amount of her yin chakra she can use while still producing a functional clone. She has mixed feelings when she finishes practice for the day. She eventually managed to produce another clone with less yin chakra, but while it was a little sturdier and thankfully less filthy than her original attempts, its attitude hadn’t improved at all. It would have to be a problem for another day or perhaps when Sensei came back to supervise, he would check with his stupid over-powered eye. Well, that is if she hasn’t dropped down to his least favorite student by the time he comes back.

Sakura only gets a little over a week, ten days in total with Genma before he gets called away by the Hokage mid-morning. Only a short time later, while she is still practicing her aim on the training grounds, he regretfully tells her that the Hokage has ordered him to be the proctor for the final examination.

She throws one last senbon into one of the targets in the trees. It hits lands directly in the bullseye right next to the last three she had thrown at it. She turns to face her temporary sensei with a frown on her lips and asks, “So, you can’t teach me anymore?”

“Unfortunately, not.” Genma sighs. “It’s mostly politics, but I might be called biased and that would tank your chances for promotion no matter how well you did. However, I can see if I can get a hold of Kakashi for you.”

She crosses her arms and knows very well that the expression on her face has morphed into a pout. His answer isn’t a surprise, but she doesn’t want it to be true. Genma is a good sensei for her, not only is he attentive and strong in the skills that she is currently working on improving, but he doesn’t come with a host of haunting distractions like most of the other higher-level ninja she has encountered. She shakes her head slowly and says, “Not Kakashi, he told us that he would be taking Sasuke out of town. He’s probably too far away right now. I don’t know his last name, but do you know Tenzo-san?”

“I do,” the special jounin answers with a considering nod.

At his confirmation she asks, “Could you see if he’s in the village and if he would be able to meet me for a few lessons when he has time?”

Genma grins around the senbon in his mouth. “I can do that. I think Tenzo is mostly village bound right now, and he reveres your sensei for some reason, so there’s a pretty good chance that he will agree.”

Sakura was more than aware of their friendship. It was the main reason why she requested him. Even if Tenzo-san couldn’t make it very often that would be okay, she had another backup plan. And if that didn’t work out then she could always just improve what she’s able to by herself while working on her speed and stamina. If she could improve those areas along with continuing her swordsmanship lessons with Sakumo-san that would at least allow her to give a decent showing at the exams. Even if she wouldn’t knock them out of the park, she wouldn’t be embarrassed by her performance as a fresh out of the academy genin.

“Thank you!” she says dipping into a shallow bow.

He waves off her thanks and tucks a dark amber vial into her hands. “None of that, kid. It’s not a problem. You’re a good student. After the exam, whether you make chunin or not, if you still want to learn poisons come find me.”

She smiles warmly at him as she slips his gift into one of her many pockets. “Thank you, I will.”

Chapter Text

Fear is the touch of death, death reminding us of its existence – Ivan Klima, “Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light”

After a cool shower Sakura dons one of her better red Haruno qipaos along with a few carefully hidden weapons and strolls into town toward the civilian section. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the reds, oranges, and pinks of Konoha’s skyline at sunset are, she vehemently hates the walk into her parents' neighborhood.  It’s so loud in her parents’ neighborhood and the screaming and crying from the spirits caught up in their deaths from the Kyuubi attack far outweighs the happy sounds of the living children giggling and playing on the sidewalks. She does her best not to startle every time a spirit’s joy and mirth turns into panicked and pain-filled shrieking.

By the time she toes her sandals off at the door and steps into her house shoes she can feel the adrenaline spiking in her system and her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Her father is humming as he sets the table and when he looks up to see her, he smiles warmly at her. She offers him a wan smile in return. This is her second time back since their previous argument about her participation on team seven and last time there had been an unspoken agreement to only discuss non-controversial topics. There hadn’t even been a hint of shinobi talk or questions about her team.

“We weren’t expecting you tonight! Let me get another plate for you,” Kizashi Haruno says as her mother glides into the room, her hands full of a hot serving dish.

“Only if it’s not any trouble. I had an early dismissal from training today and thought I would stop by,” she says still standing in the entranceway, attempting to slow her breathing without her parents noticing her rattled state.

Her mother scoffs. “Of course, it isn’t any trouble. I always make plenty of extra and your father and I always want you here.”

Sakura ducks her head gratefully as her father sets down a plate and utensils in her spot at the table. Surreptitiously, Sakura checks under the table for the ghost boy who likes to slink around the table legs to spook her. She neither sees nor hears any sign of the child. She nearly collapses into her seat with gratitude for the reprieve after the chaos of the street wreaked havoc on her composure.

“How has business been the last couple of weeks? Sakura asks, cautiously bringing up a safe topic to give her some more time to relax and slow her heart rate.

Her mother hums as she dishes herself a serving of rice before answering, “It’s been very busy with all the extra people in town. The silk trade is doing exceptionally well even though the people from Suna have hardly bought any. Normally they are our best buyers, but this year the representatives from the fire daimyo’s court and the guests from Iron have bought the largest orders.”

Her father shrugs his shoulders and offers, “Perhaps one of the competing families has managed to get a contract or permission to directly sell in Sunagakure from the Kazekage.”

“I will have to ask Chichiue when he comes later this week if he knows anything,” her mother says, her brows furrowed over her green eyes.

Sakura starts. “Sofu-sama is coming?”

Mebuki nods. “He and your cousin will be here by the end of the week. They are bringing extra silk for us to distribute to the clan merchants here.”

Sakura falls silent in a careful bid to avoid any associated topics. Sofu-sama, her maternal grandfather, has not been subtle about wanting her to live in the Land of Silk, where all the main family, except her mother reside, but Silk is the last place that Sakura wants to live. She makes a mental note to greet her grandfather, but to be otherwise busy for the duration of their stay.

Her hand spasms around the serving spoon as she’s dishing herself a portion of the meal. She sits straight up and barely manages to turn a terrified squeal into a gasp as something cold and serpentine wraps around her ankle. Her parents give her identical worried stares and she coughs out, “Sorry, my foot suddenly fell asleep!”

The ghost child giggles meanly from down by her feet as he taps his cold fingers up her ankle toward her knee and Sakura holds herself stiffly to stop her reflexive shiver. She’s particularly intolerant of anything snakelike at the moment.

When her parents stop staring and turn to each other to have a soft conversation, Sakura lashes out and kicks harshly at the ghost attached to her leg.  Out of the corner of her eye, she sees it momentarily dissolve into mist before reforming nearly a foot away. The boy has the temerity to pout at her with his long sinuous arms crossed when it reforms. She shoots him a quelling look and then sticks her tongue out at it while her parents are still preoccupied with their whispering. He slinks off to pout in the next room.

Sakura clenches her jaw, holding in the frustrated scream building up pressure in her lungs. She supposes she ought to be glad to know that nothing terrible happens to her, nor does she gain another facet to her ability if she touches a ghost, but mostly she’s just angry and annoyed. She’s spent an enormous amount of energy over the last few months avoiding the touch of all the ghosts she can see and all of it was for nothing thanks to the stupid creepy ghost child in her parents’ house.

“It’s probably from training too much without proper nutrition,” her mother grumbles as she eyes her daughter’s barely touched plate.

Sakura waves her chopsticks around as she argues back, “It’s the chunin exams and I have to train hard for that, but I’ve been eating well. I promise!”

Her mother gasps louder than she had when the ghost had frightened her a few minutes ago. “Your teacher entered you into the exams already? You’re just barely out of the academy!”

Sakura clenches a fist in her lap and tries to remember that she had been just as surprised when Sensei entered them too. “He did,” she confirms. “My whole team made it to the final part.”

Her father’s normally amiable face is set like a stone as he says, “I’d like a word with Hatake-san.”

“You can’t,” Sakura states, taking a bite of her meal. She swallows the food down, but couldn’t have told anyone what it tasted like due to the dread rising in her stomach. She didn’t want to rehash her placement on team seven again. She understood their concerns, but she wanted to be a shinobi and the best way to do that was to stay on her team.

He clucks his tongue and then retorts, “You’ll find that I can. Even though you are a genin it doesn’t mean your teacher isn’t answerable to anyone and just because your sensei was a chunin as soon as he could walk that doesn’t mean he should push his students to follow the same path regardless of the additional and unnecessary risk.”

Sakura shakes her head hard enough to loosen the ribbon she tied in her hair to hide the rough haircut she had given herself during the second part of the exam. “I didn’t mean it like that. You can’t talk to him because he took Sasuke out of town for training.”

Immediately, Sakura knows she’s misspoken because her mother clenches her fist around her chopsticks so hard her knuckles are a stark white and she looks apoplectic. “Your sensei is already leaving you in the dust? I knew he wouldn’t give a non-clan child the same consideration,” she hisses out.

“What does-,” she starts to ask, but her father interrupts with a loud sigh.

“Sakura, what your mother is trying to say is that while we’re very proud of you, we looked up your graduating class and we have some concerns. Not only are we concerned that they placed you on a combat squad with a man with Hatake’s reputation, but your entire graduating class consists of clan heirs with secret clan techniques.”

She tightens the ribbon in her hair so it doesn’t fall out and then crosses her arms in front of her. “I graduated as the top kunoichi even above those clan heirs. I earned a spot with a jounin sensei rather than in the corps,” Sakura insists.

“We’re not saying that you didn’t, but Sa-chan you’re already starting behind your peers in techniques, advantages, and connections. And now you’re telling us that your teacher has taken off and chosen one of your teammates over you to provide specialized training to,” he placates, looking at her with a soft worried gaze.

“It’s not like that! He left me and Naruto with our own separate jounin trainers to tutor us,” Sakura counters, unwilling to let her parents think that sensei is a bad team leader on top of whatever gossip they already believe. Kakashi-sensei might be kind of a clueless teacher, but he was trying to improve, and despite his questionable teaching methods he was an excellent team leader.

Kizashi leans forward on his elbows. “And who is yours?”

“Shiranui Genma,” she responds promptly, hopeful that this will put the argument to rest.

Her father’s eyes narrow further. “And what exactly is Shiranui-san teaching you?”

Sakura bites at the inside of her cheek. There was clearly some underlying hostility there that she didn’t understand the reason for, considering the unlikelihood that her father had ever worked with the special jounin. Even her mother glances at her father with puzzlement lining her features.

He presses his lips together before answering her unasked question. “I’m aware of the types of missions that man takes, and I’d like to be sure he isn’t teaching you his specialty while you’re still so young.”

Pieces connect rapidly in her mind based on what she knows of Genma’s skillset. His preternatural aim, passion for esoteric poisons, speed, and exceptional patience coupled with her civilian father’s instant dislike could only mean that he was primarily an assassin. The type that didn’t have ghosts because his targets were dead before they knew there was danger. “He’s been mainly helping me with general things like my speed, weapons accuracy, and a little bit with my chakra affinity. But he won’t be able to anymore!” she says hurriedly when her father’s blue eyes fail to clear, obviously less than impressed by her recitation.

“And why not?” her mother asks with a furrowed brow.

Sakura turns her head to face her mother at the interruption and wrings her hands under the table. “Ah, the Hokage tapped him to proctor the final part of the exam after the original proctor was injured.”

Sakura hadn’t known it was possible, but her parents’ faces became more foreboding and tighter with anger. “The Third and his council have always favored clan children,” Mebuki grounds out, her voice more seething than Sakura had ever heard it.

Sakura purses her lips in confusion. Though the rules hadn’t changed about civilian enlistment, under the Third Hokage’s rule, civilian ninjas had become less stigmatized than under the previous hokages.

“Your temporary teacher would have been registered so that his missions wouldn’t interfere with your training and for the Hokage to disregard that and use him for something else at this time…” her father trailed off. “Did he at least provide a replacement?”

Sakura bites the inside of her cheek and wonders if Sensei had even remembered to fill out that form before he left or if the Hokage had really ignored it. “Ah, no? But I know another jounin that doesn’t have a team that Kakashi-sensei introduced me to. I’ve asked if he’ll give me some lessons and I should hear back from him soon.”

“And his name?” her father questions sharply.

“His name is Tenzo. I don’t know his last name, but I know he shares my affinities. Sensei has had him join lessons before to help me,” she answers, praying that her parents don’t have any objections to this particular jounin.

“Affinities?” her parents chorus in unison.

“Oh yeah, I didn’t tell you!” she smiles excitedly, “I have both an earth and water affinity.”

“Oh, Sakura,” her father breathes out, the anger from a moment ago seemingly washed away to be replaced with sorrow.

Her countenance falls abruptly, and she swallows thickly. “What’s wrong with that?”

This time, her mother answers with grim resignation, “That’s very rare for a shinobi so young, though it does help explain why the copy ninja is your genin sensei.”

Mebuki wets her suddenly pale lips and continues, “But Sakura, the system just isn’t set up for exceptional civilian-born ninjas. You’ll struggle your whole career for training and promotions that your yearmates have given to them. And, if you do progress quickly through the ranks, it will be a double-edged sword because you’ll get stuck with all the impossible, morally awful missions so that the clan heirs don’t have to get their hands too dirty. After all, the Hokage can’t have any of the clan heirs have any doubt about the moral superiority of Konoha. Exceptional ninjas are ground down the fastest. You’ll be used up without anywhere near the support you will need.”

Sakura doesn’t bother to correct their presumption that her affinities had influenced her team placement. Despite his grandfatherly demeanor, Sakura easily remembers the sheer number of angry ghosts, including his own wife, surrounding the Third Hokage. It’s the first time she truly considers why that might be, after all, there had been leaf headbands sprinkled liberally around the foreign ninja too. “Do you not like Konoha?” she asks, her voice hardly above a whisper.

Her mother shakes her head vehemently. “We love living here, especially compared to some of the other places our clans live, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t aware of the faults in the system.”

“You can love the place you live, but still want them to do better,” her father clarifies with a wan smile.

She nods slowly. The concept wasn’t difficult, but it wasn’t one she had ever heard expressed before. The academy had always focused on how great Konoha was with its cooperation between so many varied clans, powerful and heroic hokages, and the safety the village offered civilians. It had never alluded to any of the village’s faults nor had it mentioned a method to petition for redress or reform due to injustice or harm caused.

“I wish you would quit. Already half your team has thought nothing of leaving you behind nor has the Hokage hesitated to deprive you of a teacher that every other genin student received,” her mother pleads with her.

Sakura sets her jaw stubbornly. “I want to be a shinobi. I’m not going to quit no matter how hard it gets. And my teammates haven’t abandoned me. It isn’t sensei’s fault that the Hokage pulled my instructor,” she says.

Her mother wipes at her eyes. “I only want you safe. There are plenty of options within either clan if you don’t want to work directly for us. You could travel more or take up a role either in the Land of Tea or the Land of Silk. Either your uncle or grandfather would be thrilled to involve you in the head family business. I know your grandfather would be particularly grateful for your accounting skills.”

She frowns deeply at the mention of the Land of Silk. The country was almost as well known for its misogyny as it was for its fine cloth. The laws had improved after the Third Shinobi War, but it hadn’t changed the culture.

“Besides you have cousins your age there,” her mother coaxes with a hopeful look.

Sakura wrinkles her nose. “I’m not marrying Cousin Ren no matter how much Sofu-sama would prefer it. I want to be a shinobi, not a merchant.”

Ren was three years older than her and had the distinction of being her least favorite cousin from either side of her family due entirely to him being an entitled prick. His mother was the youngest daughter of a minor daimyo and no one had ever heard the end of it. Personally, she thinks her grandfather just wants to leave his business to someone with sense.

“We would never make you,” her mother starts, but her father places his hand over one of hers and she settles back into her seat. Thankfully, her father also despises her cousin Ren.

He sighs. “Alright, Sakura. But, if you’re going to continue with this path then after the exam we’ll be talking to your teacher, and the Hokage if necessary, about treating you fairly. We might not have the same type of influence as the shinobi clans, but we aren’t toothless either.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary to call the attention of the Hokage to the situation,” she says, struggling to keep the panic out of her tone. If they weren’t careful her parents could inadvertently draw the attention of the former councilman that Kakashi-sensei had warned her about and get her fast-tracked into Root. Sensei might lack teaching skills, but he was an excellent teammate and a powerful shinobi who had promised to keep her safe from the shady organization.

“It’s absolutely necessary, Sakura. My brother will be furious when he learns of your treatment and the disrespect offered to you. Your classmates are insulated by their very names no matter how exceptional or mediocre they may be. We don’t have that, but we can certainly remind them that their bad decisions aren’t without consequences,” her father declares, his mouth set in a stern line.

She sighs. She knows that her parents mean well. “Please promise me that you’ll talk to sensei first before going to the Hokage,” she begs.

“Very well, Sakura,” her father says, his face softening with her capitulation. Sakura can only be thankful that this conversation didn’t end in an argument.

The rest of the meal is quiet, only broken with polite entreaties to pass this dish or that one. By the time she finishes her meal and slips out the front door she feels as exhausted as if she had run laps for the entire day. She’s beyond relieved that she wasn’t thoughtless enough to mention her team’s encounter with Orochimaru.

Amid the shrieking on the streets, Sakura groans into her hands. Sensei was going to be so annoyed with her when he came back. She would either have to ambush her sensei or give him an earlier time for the meeting as her parents would not be impressed with tardiness.

She drops her hands to her sides and cocks her head as she considers whether she could steal his stupid perverted book for an hour or so, too. Her chin falls to her chest as she swiftly realizes that that act is probably tantamount to war for Kakashi-sensei and is a surefire way to get stabbed. Hopefully, Kakashi-sensei is either capable of placating anxious civilian parents or is a more accomplished bullshitter than he pretends to be during training. Cheerful and shameless lying would not fool her parents and would only infuriate them.

After her dinner with her parents, Sakura wakes up tangled in her bedding numerous times that night, crying from dreams mired with visions where her teammates leave her without looking back and sensei is pulled back into shadowy ANBU corps. Her mind conjures nightmare scenarios where the only place she can get lessons on chakra is at the hospital, surrounded by the terrible wailing and pain that floods every room and corridor of the building. Where every failure means she adds to the despair of the place.

The final time she startles awake, it is still at least an hour before dawn. She wipes the saltwater off her cheeks and decides that if her mind won’t let her rest then she will start her day early. She rushes through her morning routine, determined to tire herself out by throwing herself into training this morning. She shoves the little part of her that whispers that her mother is right; that no matter how much training Sakura does, inevitably, one by one, her team will leave her behind.

As Sakura begins to cook her breakfast for the day, she startles and freezes as a peculiar sensation, like a tiny shock of static runs down her spine. “What the hell?” she murmurs to herself. She flips the fish that is grilling on the stove before it can charr.

Sakumo, sitting indolently on the counter, looks down at her from his perch bemused. “I think Kakashi added some additional seals to the property and made you the holder.”

She glances at him in askance. “It’s so you’ll know when someone comes here,” he adds, one side of his mouth twitching upward.

“Wouldn’t he need-“ she cuts herself off, her nose scrunched in distaste. The easiest way to tie a sealing matrix to a person was with blood and she’s not sure she wants Kakashi-sensei’s methods confirmed. She’s had any number of minor cuts and injuries during training so it’s distinctly possible. She attempts to brush it off as just another sign of Sensei’s paranoia or more charitably, his care for her safety. She firmly applies pressure to her temples with her fingertips and rubs at the tension building there. At least no one could sneak up on her all the way out here.

She looks out the window to see Tenzo on the edge of the Hatake property. She adds an extra serving of rice into her boiling water and unwraps an additional fish filet from the fridge. When he gets within a dozen meters of the property another tingle traces her spine.

She glances out the window and notes that it’s still dark outside. She hadn’t expected the jounin to come so soon. The sun hasn’t even begun to peek above the horizon yet.

After a few more minutes, a tentative knock sounds at the door and Sakura calls out loudly for Tenzo to enter. She pulls another plate from the cabinet. He proceeds into the room uncertainly and scrutinizes the property with wide-eyed astonishment. When his attention falls back on her, he hesitantly says, “You asked for me?”

“Ah, yes. Have you eaten, Tenzo-san?” she asks politely. She might not always use them, but she was taught proper manners.

He blinks his dark eyes at her. “No?” he questions with a bewildered lilt.

“Sit then,” she says, gesturing toward the table as she dishes up some of the food. She had made plenty so that she would have leftovers, and she didn’t mind sharing. When she turns back around, she is pleased to see that he has listened to her. She brings the food to him and sets her own down. “Please enjoy.”

Sakumo observes the other man from his place on the counter with a raised brow. “Kind of a stiff one, isn’t he?”

Sakura’s eyes widen in surprise. She is very glad Tenzo can’t hear the other man. She coughs and turns her surprise into a question for her guest. “Did Genma-san speak to you?”

Tenzo nods and finishes chewing a bite of the fish before speaking. “He did.”

After spending months eating lunch with her barely house-trained team Sakura appreciates his show of manners. “I know you have missions, so I don’t expect that you can train me often, but I would appreciate it if you could meet with me at least a few times before the third part of the exam.”

He frowns down at his plate and Sakura worries that he will refuse. “I could do that, but are you sure that you don’t want someone else? I don’t think it’s fair to you if the rest of the competitors get their teacher’s full attention and you only get a few lessons,” he says unhappily.

Sakura nods in agreement. “A dedicated teacher would be better, but I don’t know any other jounin ninjas that don’t have teams and that Sensei trusts. Well, except for Yugao-san, but I don’t share any of her specialties.”

A grimace crosses his visage, turning it undeniably dour. “Kakashi-senpai will be upset and he’s likely going to harass the Hokage, which will somehow end up being my problem.” Grimly, Tenzo sighs and mutters, “Hatake Kakashi – master of the art of antagonizing your superiors just enough not to be murdered, but no less.”

“Who taught Kakashi to do that?” Sakumo groans out incredulously, dropping his face into his hands. “No one in our family has ever purposely antagonized their superiors,” he whines, the sounds only partially muffled by his hands.

Sakura smothers a laugh at the ghost’s distress over Sensei’s bad habits. She grins mischievously as she addresses the living man in the room. “Do you think that’s what Sensei is teaching Sasuke?”

Tenzo gives her a deadpan look, clearly less than pleased with her laughing at his predicament. “No, Uchihas are notoriously bad at that their emotions are too intense to accurately strike that balance, and Uzumakis are too dense to even try, but it’s Kakashi-senpai’s best skill, so out of the three of his genin, you’re the one most likely to pick it up.”

“It’s not a bad skill to have,” she says slowly, giving the skill some real consideration. Knowing the limit of how much nonsense you can get away with in a military dictatorship could be valuable.

Tenzo closes his eyes, pinches sharply at the bridge of his nose, and gives a longsuffering sigh. “Not another one. Judging by your amusement you’re well on your way to learning it. Kakashi-senpai will be delighted, I’m sure,” he laments with a groan.

Sakumo chuckles, his dark eyes full of mirth, seemingly recovered from his own disappointment. “I suppose it’s a better habit to adopt than his apparent penchant for reading adult literature in public.”

She scowls surreptitiously at the man. When Tenzo meets her eyes again Sakura waves her hand dismissively and changes the subject. “Don’t worry about me having a full-time teacher. I have someone in mind, but I would need cover for how I knew some things and perhaps someone to spar against when you drop by.”

He looks like he doesn’t want to ask his next question. “Your help wouldn’t happen to be dead, would they?”

“As long as I can find him, and he agrees. Speaking of, don’t mind me for a second,” she says brightly before standing and leaving the house. She goes to the edge of the property where Hashirama is poking at the parts of her herb plants that have escaped to the other side of the fence gate. Most of them look fine but he’s frowning at her drooping lavender plant.

“Hashirama-sama,” she calls out and he glances over at her and smiles, though it is clear by the startled look on his face that he isn’t used to being addressed anymore. “I need a teacher for the third portion of the exam. Would you mind telling me where I could find your brother?”

He grins more widely at her and rocks on his feet. “You want Tobi to help you?”

Her brows knit together as she asks, “Yes, do you not think he will?”

The First Hokage shakes his head vigorously. “I don’t think that at all! He enjoyed teaching when he was alive. I just wonder what made you think of him. He frequently ah... intimidated kunoichi and young ninjas without effort. Despite my advice to lighten up, he didn’t seem to mind the effect he had. He was very bad at taking my advice,” he divulges with a pout.

Sakura brought a hand up to cover her mouth and stifle her laughter. She can just picture how well the serious Nidaime took his brother’s advice. “Actually, I’m not surprised that he liked teaching. He helped me pick out swords a few days ago. He was very thorough in his explanations. Besides, he is renowned for the things I lack, like speed and water ninjutsu.”

He gives her a fond look. "I see, then he sounds like a good choice for you! In the mornings he can normally be found by the section of the river closest to the old Senju compound.”

“Thank you for your help, Hashirama-sama. I’m sorry you can’t come in because of the property wards, but I know there are some beautiful flowers between here and the Nara compound if you would like to look at them,” she says, offering him a small, polite bow for his help.

He beams down at her with delight. “I think I will.”

She strolls back into the house and sits back down across from Tenzo. “Sorry for my rudeness, Tenzo-san.”

“It’s not a problem, but I couldn’t help but hear. May I ask who you are learning swordsmanship from?” he asks, cocking his happuri-covered head.

She scratches the back of her neck. “From Sakumo-san.”

“From- Are you learning from the White Fang?” his voice comes out in an incredulous whisper, accompanied by a persistent twitch in one eye.

From her peripheral vision, she can see Sakumo leaning back on the counter with a satisfied grin on his face. She nods in answer to Tenzo’s question. “Yes, he lives here and has been teaching me in the evenings for the last several days.

“Please tell me you aren’t using live steel?” he pleads, looking pained.

She shrugs noncommittally. “Well, not during the first couple of days, no.”

He rests his head on the table and groans. “Senpai is going to murder me and Genma too if he comes back, and you’ve so much as cut yourself.” He heaves a sigh. “Alright, I’ll bring a sword when I come, so that you can get practice sparring with that too. I’m not an expert, but I should be a good enough challenge for a genin. I cannot meet you every day, but I can meet you two or three times a week in the afternoon.”

She gives him a genuine smile of relief. “Thank you, that’s more than I expected.”

After Tenzo takes his leave, Sakura notes that he fixed her lavender plant for her. She brushes her hand over the fragrant plant, releasing the relaxing scent. She would have to remember to thank him, perhaps with tea made from the plant. He and Kakashi-sensei both looked like they needed to drink more calming tea. She could grab the other supplies she needed to dry and blend the herbs with from home the next time she went to have dinner with her parents.

As she turns to go back into the house, Sakumo is there, waiting for her on the pathway with a slight frown on his lips. “Is my son really that disrespectful? He wasn’t like that as a child,” he asks with soft confusion laced through his tone.

Sakura cocks her head, bewildered about the change in topic for a moment before she realizes that Sakumo must be referring to what Tenzo had mentioned. She’s quiet as she considers the question and then answers with a comforting quirk of her lips. “For a man that raises dogs, Kakashi-sensei can be awfully catlike; obnoxious for the fun of it, not particularly respectful of authority, and impossible to herd.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” he mutters and his expression creases with old regret and grief.

Sakura isn’t quite sure what Sensei’s father is upset about, but she thinks about how Sensei had fought Zabuza to exhaustion twice, how he’d let her live in his old clan compound when it was clear that he was more than content to let it rot away, and the absolute devastation on his face when he found out about Rin’s ghost.

Sakura clenches her fist and releases it, before bringing a trembling hand up to hesitantly lay it on his arm. It’s cold and not entirely pleasant, but the sensation isn’t painful or terrible. She squeezes the icy limb soothingly. “For all Sensei can be difficult, he cares deeply about his teammates and is loyal to a fault. He’s as good of a man as a ninja can be.”

That morning after cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, meditating in the private training grounds, and grabbing her weapons, Sakura makes her way toward the bend in the river near the abandoned Senju compound. The morning air is chillier today than the last few mornings due to the thick cloud cover overhead. The weather report on the radio station Sakura had turned on for Sakumo to listen to while she was gone stated that there was a high probability of thunderstorms this afternoon.

She passes a couple dozen curious Senju ghosts. The old compound is truly a ghost town as there are no living Senju left on the land. Technically, she thinks she’s trespassing, but in true ninja fashion, as long as no one living finds out, it never happened.

The Nidaime is exactly where his brother said he would be. He appears to be meditating or at least in deep contemplation on a large rock when she happens to come across him. He glances up when she stumbles through the dense underbrush into his deserted clearing on the old Senju lands.

“Tobirama-sama,” she greets him.

He tilts his head though the expression on his face never changes. “Haruno-san, what are you doing out here?”

Sakura gulps in a deep breath to regulate her rapid breathing and answers, “I was looking for you. Do you know about the third part of the chunin exam?”

He nods decisively.

Swallowing down her nerves, she continues, “Well there was an incident, and my previous instructor was called away to proctor the third part of the exam. I was wondering if you would agree to help me instead. I would particularly like to work on my speed and some water ninjutsu.”

“Have you ever worked with water ninjutsu?” he asks, drumming his fingers on the rock he is sitting on.

She shakes her head. “No, I know a few earth ninjutsu, but I have an equal affinity for water and earth. If I manage to win my first match against Yamanaka Ino, then I will either be matched with the Nara clan heir or the Kazekage’s daughter who is a wind user. I’ll need speed to combat either of them and while I don’t expect to win that match, displaying skills in two different elemental affinities would at least allow me to give a good showing in the exam. My two teammates are both powerhouses and I don’t want to be compared unfavorably to them.”

He hums lowly and there is a spark of interest in his unusual red eyes. “The Uzumaki boy and the last Uchiha, right?”

She shuffles on her feet, one foot scuffling the dirt in front of her, and adds, “Yes. I want them to respect my skills. I don’t want to fall behind.”

He uncrosses his legs and hops down from the rock he had been meditating on. “Very well. Tell me do you already know how to water walk?”

She stands up tall and fights the beaming smile that wants to break out on her face. “I do,” she confirms.

“Then we’re going to meditate on top of the water until you connect with the element,” he says, gesturing toward a calm portion of the river.

Shyly, she replies, “Oh, I’ve done that already. I spend a lot of time meditating to increase my reserves anyway, so when Sensei showed me how to do it for earth chakra, I worked on the same thing for water. It was something I figured was safe to do on my own.”

A faint shadow of a smile appears on his mouth. “Very good then. You are further along than I expected. Let’s start with something easy like the water prison jutsu. Come nearer to the water. It’s easier to pull the water you need from a source like a river or lake to start than to create it with your chakra.”

He shows her the hand signs and tells her, “As with all elemental manipulations, if you want to shape the water, then you have to keep the image in your mind as you are running through your hand signs. However, unlike earth, water won’t maintain the jutsu shape without a connection to your chakra.”

He further adds, “It isn’t necessary to continually pump chakra into it, but if you lose contact with the jutsu then it’ll revert to a puddle. Try the jutsu and tell me if you can figure out why.”

Sakura runs through the seven seals at moderate speed to get a feel for how to chakra moves as she switches through them. Snake, Ram, Horse, Rabbit, Ram, Horse, Rabbit.

A slightly wobbly ball of dense water coalesces under her hand. She memorizes how it feels and then lets her chakra disconnect from the ball. Immediately, it falls to the ground at her feet and she knows exactly why it has done so. She grins up at him. “It’s not stable because it’s a liquid and liquids only hold the shape they are contained in.”

He nods, gesturing toward the meandering river. “That’s correct. Water always wants to be flowing. It isn’t like earth where as long as you shape it into a sturdy enough shape it will stay on its own. Earth is stubborn. It wants to be stagnant, but water doesn’t just flow, it adapts to whatever is shaping it.”

All those technical science books she devoured in the library during the academy are finally paying off. Ino, back when their teasing was more friendly than it is now, used to tease her that she read so much because she needed to fill her billboard brow with something. She taps her fingers against her thigh as she thinks. “Is that the same for all elements except for earth? None of them have stable forms.”

His intense red eyes regard her with surprise. Perhaps he wasn’t used to students or audiences that wanted all the technical details. “That’s very interesting and the answer is yes and no. The same is true for lightning, as like water it prefers to flow. However, both wind and fire are resistant to shaping. There are only a few shapes that either element can be formed into without a secondary medium like a blade, such as spheres or spirals and the elements will maintain those shapes, but only those shapes, for a certain amount of distance before dissipating.”

She cocks her head and asks, “I once saw an Uchiha perform the Great Dragon Fire Technique. How was it shaped like a dragon head if fire only likes spheres and spirals?”

Tobirama wrinkled his nose in faint distaste. “That’s merely an illusion. It’s still just a ball of fire, but with a few extra seals added to the end, you can also cast a genjutsu over the technique. It was popular among the Uchiha because they are dramatic and many of them could cast the genjutsu with their only their Sharingan.”

Sakura is fascinated and she opens her mouth to ask another question when the Second Hokage continues, “It is a more involved topic and if you would like to discuss it further, we can on another day. Preferably, after your exam, when you have the time to devote to it.”

She nods and makes a mental note to follow up with the Second if, or when, she is able to learn other elements outside of her main affinities. She runs her hands through a second iteration of the jutsu and the sphere holds without wobbling this time. She frowns down at it. The technique still doesn’t feel perfect though. It’s hardly a drain on her chakra so she drops it and runs through it faster, concentrating on the chakra expenditure of each hand sign. When the water forms into a ball this time, the water is so dense it is nearly opaque.

“Very good. I would think you had more practice shaping chakra if I didn’t know you were a fresh genin. You should work on this in your spare time to ensure that it always comes out this dense otherwise your enemy might escape,” he says.

She’s still observing her creation, trying to engrave the feel of it into her memory. “Thanks. I’ll keep practicing,” she says, absently.

“Good. Now let me show you the signs for a wave. Do not put a lot of chakra into the jutsu on the first attempt,” Tobirama says and waits for her to drop the water prison jutsu.

Sakura watches the seals carefully and follows along a second behind him. There are only four seals so she follows him easily. She modulates her chakra output, only adding the approximate equivalent amount of chakra as she used for the earth dome during the second exam, and she has to jump back when a wave twice her height crashes through the clearing. It washes through the Second Hokage and he raises a single white brow with a thoroughly unimpressed look.

She grins sheepishly. “Oops?”

He presses his lips together. “Waves of any kind take less chakra because it is a natural state for water and none of your chakra goes into shaping or maintaining the form. The size of the wave is a function of chakra input, and the speed is due to the force with which you expel the chakra.”

Sakura found herself very glad that she hadn’t used as much chakra as she would for an earth clone as that was about ten times as much chakra as she had input into the wave she had just formed.

Every day she wakes early to meditate, trains with the Second Hokage in water ninjutsu and speed, works either by herself or with Tenzo in the afternoon, and then trains for the rest of the evening with Sakumo in swordsmanship, before falling into bed until the next day. Her hands, already calloused, stay wrapped so they don’t blister and impede her ability to train, and all her meals are as carb-heavy and as nutrient-dense as she can make them.

A few days into her new routine she is running laps while Tobirama calls out corrections to her form and to the rhythm she breathes to. He’s very exacting about her timing, which would be aggravating except every day she can feel herself get a little faster and the distance easier to bear.

Her mind wanders from the repetitive motions. “I saw some foreign Shinobi ghosts during the first part of the exam. I thought ghosts were stuck in a certain place. Do you ever travel or are you stuck in Konoha?” She shuts her mouth quickly, realizing quickly that her question might have been impertinent.

The Nidaime raises a brow at her but thankfully doesn’t seem offended. “Sometimes ghosts are bound to one place, like Hatake-san but mostly ghosts are bound by how much chakra they had in life. The more chakra they had in life the more they can affect their appearance and the further they can travel. You might have noticed that civilians and lower-level ninjas appear stuck in a loop or only have a short distance they can travel either from where they lived or died or from people important to them.”

She nods. That fits with her experiences so far. “I see,” she murmurs.

“But to answer your question. I’m not stuck and I have traveled to other countries before, but I prefer to be here with my brother and the other Senju,” he states.

Sakura thinks that’s pretty nice that he still wants to spend time with his family. She laps the field again. “What about the Forest of Death? What’s wrong with it? Is there something there that keeps ghosts out?”

The former hokage grimaces and answers, “It’s unpleasant and far out of the way.”

She is starting to pant from her exertion. “Like it hurts to be there? Or feels weird?” she queries.

He shrugs. “No, it’s just creepy.”

Sakura slides to a halt. “That’s why there weren’t any ghosts in the forest?”

“We’re dead, Sakura. There’s no reason to do or go anywhere we don’t want to,” he states dispassionately, his expression unchanging.

She frowns as she crosses her arms tight over her chest and considers that she also wouldn’t go into the forest without being forced.

He claps his hands together loudly to jar her thoughts. “Form is function. Uncross your arms and continue running.”

Three days before the end of her training month she knows four water ninjutsu, added to her five-ish earth jutsu, and she’s become significantly faster under the Second’s intensive training. As she is running through some cool-down stretches after her run the First Hokage shows up to their clearing. He settles down on the rock near where his brother is standing, and she tunes out their bickering while she finishes.

When she’s done she slowly makes her way over, hesitant to interrupt them. The Second is pinching the bridge of his nose, but when he notices her sluggish approach, he waves her over and Sakura picks up her pace.

“Good morning, Sakura-chan!” the First Hokage greets her with enthusiasm. “I was just asking Tobi how your training was going. Has he taught you how to form a water dragon yet?”

“Uh… I think that’s a B-rank jutsu, Hashirama-sama,” she mutters, backing up a few steps from his energetic movements.

“It is,” Tobirama grinds out. “That’s too advanced for a genin. She’s still perfecting her aim with the Heavenly Weeping Technique.”

Hashirama pouts. “That is way less fun.”

Sakura takes this moment to interrupt, worried the two will break out into an argument like her genin teammates before too much longer. “Speaking of other water jutsu, I know we were supposed to work more on the Heavenly Weeping Technique, but I was wondering if you would show me how to make a water clone, Tobirama-sama?”

Hastily, leaving his brother to his own devices, Tobirama agrees and starts explaining, “Water clones are the easiest of the elemental clones to perform because humans are made up of approximately seventy percent water and it therefore only requires the tiger hand seal to adequately produce a clone.”

Sakura gathers up her water chakra and forms the tiger sign. Excitement rises in her chest as a copy of herself surges up from the surface of the river. Her excitement suffers a quick, but not painless, demise. She presses her lips together in frustration because her clone is semitransparent, continually dripping water like a water bottle sweating in the heat, and tapping its foot impatiently.

Tobirama raises a brow. “That’s not supposed to happen.”

Sakura groans and dismisses her clone. “I was hoping that a water clone would be better, but it’s the same problem as my earth clone.”

“Show me,” he orders, waving a hand at her.

She runs through the seals and her earth clone climbs out of the ground, looking flimsy, covered in dust, its arms crossed, and with an obstinate scowl on its lips.

Sakura slumps and sighs, disheartened by her inability to produce a proper elemental clone. Tobirama eyes the clone up and down with interest as he circles it. The clone turns with him, never letting him out of her sight and looking like it wants to fight, however useless that would be.

“How interesting,” Hashirama says as he walks over to examine the clone. He goes to poke it and the clone twists out of the way with a glare, but Hashirama is faster the second time. The clone has just enough time to bare its teeth angrily before the Shodaime jabs it right in the stomach.

The clone flinches violently and with a soft pop the First vanishes. The clone flails its arms wildly and wails something indistinct, not because it can’t make noise, but because it’s so loud and panicked Sakura can’t make out the words.

“Now that is interesting,” Tobirama murmurs at the sight.

She looks between Tobirama, her screeching clone that suddenly appears much more substantial and less dusty and the place where the First Hokage had been previously standing.

“I’m stuck!” the clone screeches.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Sakura whimpers out. She hurriedly tries to dismiss the clone, but nothing happens.

Then it shrieks and begs, “Tobirama, get me out of here!”

Senju Hashirama is trapped in her clone jutsu.

“Oh fuck,” she breathes out as she watches with mounting dread.

The First Hokage is occupying and controlling her earth clone. She doesn’t need anyone to tell her how horribly this facet of her ability would be exploited or how ruthlessly she might be hunted down for such a skill if it were known by the wrong parties.

Alarm courses through her at this awful turn of events. The terror builds in her gut until Sakura panics and then reflexively punches her flailing clone as hard as she is physically capable of when it comes too close to her.

The clone puffs out of existence, leaving only the Shodaime in its place rubbing his head. “Sakura-chan, that hurt. Did you have to hit me so hard?”

Sakura collapses onto the ground, her arms barely holding her up, and her legs outstretched haphazardly. She just stares wide-eyed at the place her clone had been. She sucks in a deep breath, but it’s not enough so she takes another. And then another and another until she’s breathing so quickly that she’s wheezing. There’s a pinching in her chest and even though she’s inhaling there’s somehow not enough air.

The First Hokage crouches down in front of her with his palms raised. “Hey, hey, Sakura-chan. It’s alright! You didn’t hit me that hard. I’m okay and I’m not mad.”

“Air,” she manages to whimper out.

Tobirama’s voice comes from somewhere far away. “Hashirama, you’re not helping. Move,” he demands.

Then the white-haired man is kneeling directly in front of her. “Sakura,” he says firmly. When her eyes dazedly connect with his, he continues, “You’re hyperventilating. I’m going to touch you to stimulate your Vagus nerve. Don’t move away.”

He reaches out his hand slowly and places it on the back of her neck. Cold spreads from where he’s touching and within seconds, she can feel her heartbeat starting to slow and the tightness easing from her chest. He presses his hand more intently and her breathing begins to slow.

She shivers and blinks up at him lethargically. He pulls his hand back. Hashirama is pacing behind his brother. “Drink some water and then let me know if you feel like you can continue today.”

Hashirama stops pacing to stand behind him. He puts his palms up, in an attempt at appeasement, “But it’s okay if you can’t! Right, Tobirama?”

Her instructor nods decisively and though his mouth remains a grim slash there is something kind in his gaze.

Sakura wobbles to her feet and treks to the tree her pack is under. She sips her water mechanically. Her brain is strangely blank. The two former hokages give her space. She finishes the bottle of water, refills it from the stream, and drops an iodine tablet in it before tucking it back into her pack. She takes one single deep breath and walks back over to Tobirama.

“Thank you. I think I can continue now,” she says curtly. There’s a part of her that hisses that she should be ashamed for breaking down in front of anyone else, particularly such storied figures, but her thoughts and feelings are still too distant for it to be more than a whisper in the back of her mind.

As gently as he can Tobirama asks, “Are you capable of making another clone or do you want to practice your aim with the previous water jutsu?” Unfortunately, Tobirama’s ability to speak gently is severely undeveloped and the question still comes out quite sternly.

Without answering verbally, Sakura makes another earth clone. The Nidaime assesses her for a long minute before stepping forward to touch the clone. Nothing happens.

He frowns and asks, “Can you make a water clone?”

Sakura’s hands form the sign for tiger and a worried-looking water clone drags itself out of the river. The clone holds out a hand to her instructor. Tobirama touches the clone and disappears.

The water clone lifts its hands and stares at the palms. It cocks its head so that her choppy pink tresses spill over its shoulder while it runs a finger down its opposite arm.

“It appears to work off the ghost’s primary elemental affinity. Hashirama, touch the other clone,” comes Tobirama’s words, but said in her girlish voice.

Hashirama blinks dumbly and looks at Sakura as if asking permission. When she gives a single affirmative nod, he puts a hand on her earth clone and then, he too, vanishes into a clone.

Tobirama wacks the clone that houses his brother on the back of the head hard. Sakura winces in sympathy.

“Hey! What was that for?” Hashirama shouts.

“I wanted to see if I could dispel you,” Tobirama says and the clone’s shoulders that Hashirama is occupying begin to relax. “And also, I’ve wanted to do that for nearly forty years.”

Unexpectedly, Hashirama tackles Tobirama to the ground, who bucks and rolls on top of his brother. However, Hashirama manages to slip away before he can be properly pinned. Except, the two former hokages are in her clones, so it just looks like her clones are brawling like Naruto’s shadow clones.

She stares at their impromptu Taijutsu match incredulously. There’s something weird, almost clumsy, about the way they are moving. “You can’t move like that in a girl’s body,” she calls out suddenly. One of them, she’s lost track of which Sakura is who, is in a chokehold, but he quits struggling at her words. The other one releases him and wipes their hands on her training shorts.

“What do you mean, Sakura-chan?” the one that was being choked asks. She notes that this clone is Hashirama.

She screws up her face, but crisply states, “I’m not sure if you’re unused to walking in a body anymore or if you’ve never noticed how women walk, but there is more hip movement when I walk. Females have wider but shorter pelvises than males. In addition, their hip joints are angled differently which creates a more pronounced rotation in the joint. Which is why their hips sway when they walk. I’m not full grown so it’s not obvious, only awkward looking.”

She takes several steps around the training ground to demonstrate.

“That’s a lot of anatomy knowledge for six months out of the academy,” the other one, Tobirama, she thinks, says.

She still feels disturbingly blank, but she blinks and rubs the back of her neck with one of her delicate hands. “Ah, I read a lot of medical books trying to figure out how I developed this ability and what it did to me physiologically. Plus, the librarian gave me a book written but Tsunade on chakra control, but it has copious amounts of medical knowledge interspersed throughout.”

Tobirama cocks his head and asks, “Do you have good chakra control, Sakura?”

She shrugs. “I think so. I got tree and water walking on my first attempts, and I’ve been working through Tsunade’s exercises. The explanations have been thorough, and I haven’t had any problems yet.”

“Come release us from these clones,” he bids.

Sakura steps closer to them and punches both clones, leaving only the ghosts in their place. She staggers forward. They both reach for her, but while she feels their cold hands she slips through their grasp. She manages to catch herself and bends over with her hands on her knees. “I’m okay. I just didn’t realize how much chakra I used,” she pants out shakily.

Hashirama squawks and flutters around her like an agitated bird.

“Go home and rest. Tomorrow, I will show you how to drop hand signs and a few other small tricks you should be able to use if your chakra control is really that good,” Tobirama says, his gaze looking at her with what she thinks is worry.

“No more of this?” she asks quietly.

He shakes his head. “No, I think you should eventually test it out, but it’s not useful for the exam and I think your sensei should be supervising for safety. I don’t like that you were drained of more chakra than you should have been.”

Sakura doesn’t know how she makes it home. She remembers nothing of leaving the Senju lands, nothing of her walk through town, and not even opening the door to her home.

The first thing she remembers is Sakumo’s wide-eyed, alarmed expression as he scrambles to his feet from his seated position. “Sakura, what happened?”

He looks so like Kakashi-sensei that she bursts into tears. Not soft, delicate, feminine weeping like in the romance novels she likes to sneak, but noisy, messy bawling. She attempts to stifle her cries, but when she opens her mouth to explain, another sob escapes. Her tears are hot on her face.

He pulls her into a hug, and she leans her head on his flak jacket. It’s strange because he’s cold rather than warm and he doesn’t feel quite solid, but he’s obviously touching her. She can feel the creases in the fabric of his flak jacket, the metal zipper, and his gloved hands running through her short hair. The cold feels good against her red face. “Take your time.”

She cries for several more minutes before she pushes back and wipes her eyes. She stares down at the ground and doesn’t attempt to look up at all.

“Sit down at the table, Sakura. You look pale enough to faint,” Sakumo directs her kindly.

“I need food,” she states a gentle refusal, before pulling some fruit off the counter and sliding down the wall to sit on the kitchen floor. She bites into the apple and haltingly explains her training session. Her memory of it is fragmented, like snapshots taken with a still-frame camera instead of recorded like a video.

By the time she is done explaining what she remembers, Sakumo looks furious. “He let you continue after that?”

The recitation has left her completely spent. She waves a negligent hand and frowns. “He did ask.”

Sakumo scowls fiercely. “Sakura, you were in no state to make that kind of decision. He was the adult, and he should have known better. You were distraught and it could have been dangerous.”

Sakura shrugs tiredly. “I don’t think he was trying to hurt me.”

Sakumo’s shoulders slump as he heaves a loud sigh. “No, he probably wasn’t. Tobirama-sama never was the best at understanding other people and he’s always been too curious for his, and often other’s, own good.”

She picks at a hangnail on her thumb with more focus than is called for.

“Promise me that you won’t try that again unless Kakashi or that other jounin, the stiff one that visited before, is watching,” he urges her.

She’s too tired to correct him on Tenzo’s name. “I won’t and Tobirama-sama himself suggested supervision next time too.”

“Good. Now grab a ration bar and go to bed. You need more calories and rest. No more training for today,” he orders gently, relief crossing his expression at her agreement.

Sakura trudges up the stairs to her room worn, exhausted, and scared again. The numbness from before had blocked out the fear, but now it festers in her mind and body like a virus.

She lays down on her futon too tired to cry anymore, while desperately yearning for this not to be her reality. She needs help. Real help, from someone alive. She wishes that she had let Genma contact Kakashi-sensei and that he, Sasuke, and sensei’s ninken had come back to Konoha to train with her.

Sakura rolls onto her side and curls into a ball, her hands wrapping around herself in a parody of a hug. She wants someone alive and who knows what’s happening to her to hold and comfort her. She would even settle for cuddling Pakkun and the other ninken.

But she doesn’t have any of that right now. All she has is herself and the dead to comfort her.

Chapter Text

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

- Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est", lines 25-28.

Kakashi desperately fights his urge to be late for the chunin exams as he moves swiftly through the forest outside Konoha’s gates. He’s been better about being on time over the last few months, particularly when his students are involved but, the urge to screw with an entire stadium full of people and multiple kages at once is nearly overwhelming. Kakashi doesn’t have many joys in his life but screwing with people and reading his books are his two favorites. Only his worry about his vulnerable little genin has him zipping through the last bit of forest into the gates of Konoha with Sasuke at his side, with five minutes to spare. He lets Sasuke catch his breath and then shunshins the two of them to the stadium entrance.

He pats Sasuke on the shoulder and then shoos Sasuke toward his teammates and the competitor's box before he tucks his hands into his pockets and leisurely makes his way to the dais where the Hokage is overseeing the matches from, to check in and see if he’s needed for anything. He climbs his way up the stairs slowly and sees that, despite the tension he can feel all the way to his bones, the Hokage is talking to his former student Jiraiya, the Kazekage, and to his surprise, Genma.

Kakashi hides his reactions as he observes and listens in on their conversation, in an attempt to determine what’s going on and whether or not it affects him or any of his students. Which is a serious concern of his considering that two of the ninjas that he left in charge of his other two students are seemingly conferring with the kages. The Sandaime’s voice is quieter and weaker with age than he can ever remember it being, and Kakashi strains to hear the Hokage’s words from so far away as he begins to speak.

“There are many merchants and civilian leaders here today from Fire Country and other lands. If the matches are decisively over, then as the proctor, I want you to stop them before there is excessive bloodshed,” the Third orders Genma.

Kakashi glances over to the competitor’s box for pink hair and immediately finds it. For a second, he thought his memory had failed, but no, his female student is in the exams. With a glance, he can see that she has the slightly too thin look of a growing teen who is not eating quite enough calories for her training schedule. However, he raises a brow at what else he sees, because everything from the grim slash of her mouth to the stiff set of her shoulders indicates that something is wrong, something beyond pre-fight jitters. Even from here, he can tell that her terror is poorly concealed. Kakashi’s fist tightens in his pocket and his eyes narrow back on the group containing the apparent new exam proctor.

Kakashi takes another quick glance over at the competitor’s box to check on Naruto, just to be sure of his well-being, and sees nothing out of the ordinary with his third student. Naruto is looking more serious than normal, but based on the glare he is leveling at Hyuuga Neji, it is a result of Naruto’s disdain for his opponent and the callous way in which the Hyuuga boy had treated his cousin rather than anything worse.

“Are your civilians really so squeamish?” the Kazekage gravels out, contempt lining his words, and Kakashi would bet his pre-ordered, signed copy of Jiraiya’s next novel that there was a sneer on his lips underneath his shemagh.

The Third Hokage gives him a placid, unconcerned smile that hides his words' dagger-point sharpness with soft tones, “Konoha’s citizens don’t regularly starve in the streets or die of preventable diseases, so they’re a little less callous about human life.”

Genma takes a subtle step back, clearly not eager to be stuck between two fighting kages, even if they appear to be sticking to verbal attacks at the moment. The Kazekage’s eyes glint with malice, and he jerks his chin up into the air, turning sharply on his heel away from the other kage, simmering with pride and anger, before ultimately, stalking off to take his seat.

Kakashi absently notes that Jiraiya stares at the Kazekage’s back intently with a furrow in his brow as the other man marches to his seat.

Genma glances around in an unconscious scan of the arena and then does a double take at the sight of Kakashi. “You’re on time,” he says, and then hurries to catch the senbon falling out of his mouth and strangely pinches himself on the inside of his arm.

What strange behavior for a ninja. Kakashi has no idea what that’s about obviously. His mood lifts infinitesimally. Perhaps he will still get to troll some people today after all.

His brows furrow into a deep, exaggerated shape so that there’s no confusion about his expression even with his mask covering a majority of his face, “I’m sure that I’m late. The Hokage told me ten, and it’s now almost noon.”

The Hokage gives him a bemused smirk, knowing that he’d told Kakashi no such thing. “Ah, Kakashi, welcome back. The important thing is that you and your student made it in time for the exam.”

Kakashi hums in agreement. “True, although I could have sworn that Hayate was the proctor for this exam and that I had actually taken the time to fill out, in triplicate, form 1519c to cede temporarily teaching duties to Genma here for the duration of the third part of the exam,” Kakashi says in a politely confused tone.

The Hokage sighs and rubs at his wrinkled forehead. “Hayate-kun has been in a coma for the past three weeks, so Genma has taken over his proctoring duties in the meantime.”

“I see.” Then Kakashi gives a dangerously insincere grin as he asks, “Are you telling me that you left one of my treasured students, the civilian one at that, without tutelage in an exam where there are two Jinchuuriki, the Kazekage’s esteemed children, and where everyone else is the child of a prestigious clan? And that’s not to mention your potential pest problem from the second stage of the exam that might crop back up, which she gave you the critical information for. You left that genin to fend for herself?”

He might only be her second or possibly third favorite teacher, but despite his prior connection to the boys, Sakura is his favorite student, and he doesn’t like how this situation is looking. He likes all his students of course, but Sakura is the easiest to teach, the most helpful, the one that actively strives to be a better teammate, and the student that doesn’t bring him instant guilt by just her appearance alone.

The Hokage winces, but Kakashi notes that it is more theatrical than genuinely remorseful. “Ah, an oversight clearly. I hadn’t considered that she was the only non-clan shinobi nor that she might be a target.”

Respectfully, Kakashi thinks that is bullshit. The Hokage has been through three wars and is the Leaf’s longest surviving Hokage. He’s very experienced in politics, and Sakura was the exam contender with the least political leverage or oversight over her career. The one he could get away with shorting with the least amount of pushback, especially since Kakashi himself had been out of town.

“She could have sought out another teacher or Jiraiya, since he was already teaching Naruto,” the Hokage offers. Kakashi bites back a scoff and has to fight to keep the incredulity off his face. It was a jounin instructor’s job to find a trainer for their students, not a student’s job, particularly not a fresh genin who wouldn’t likely have many, if any, other jounin connections. This was sabotaging to her career, and as a ninja, that could be deadly.

With a bored drawl, Kakashi asks, “My civilian student was supposed to ask which of the other few available jounins for a favor of that size? How many jounin do you suppose she knows?”

Jiraiya frowns but nods toward the Hokage, as if agreeing with his old teacher. “She could have come to me I would have taught her. If both of them won their first matches, then she and Naruto wouldn’t have fought until at least the semi-finals, so it should have been alright. Maybe not the best solution, but it probably would have been fine.”

Kakashi’s voice comes out razor sharp as he cuts in, “No, she couldn’t have. I didn’t tell her your name, and while I have no doubt that she likely figured it out, she would have known that you didn’t share any of her skills and you have an even worse reputation than I do. I specifically warned her away from the bathhouses while you were in town. Sakura is brilliant, and with her looks she would never have risked going to you even if Naruto was there the whole time.”

Jiraiya scratches the back of his head. “I’m hurt you warned your student away from me, Kakashi. She’s a child, I wouldn’t have done anything. Which one is your student anyway?”

Kakashi bares his teeth under his mask, not sure that he wanted to point out his female student to the infamous pervert. No one underage had ever shown up in the Toad Sage’s books, but he couldn’t be certain that Jiraiya wasn’t less discriminating when he was a voyeur. “Haruno Sakura, she’s the one with pink hair,” he says cocking his head toward the competitor’s box.

Jiraiya peers over the ledge and sighs. “The cute little miss in the practical clothing?”

“I know that I only have one good eye, but are there any other pink-haired chunin candidates?” he asks, moving the silver strands that had fallen back out of his face and creasing his eye to hide the aggression he could feel bubbling up inside him. This was a nonsense conversation. Sakura was supposed to have had her own teacher whose skills matched hers not have to beg another contender’s teacher for help.

Jiraiya leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. “Yeah, all right, I see your point. She’s going to be a looker when she’s older. A smart civilian girl with unique looks like that wouldn’t come anywhere near me for training. Her parents have probably warned her a dozen times about strange older men.”

Genma coughs into his fist to draw their attention. “If I may, she requested Cat’s assistance. I believe they intended to help.”

“Cat was on rotation,” Kakashi pauses and tries to control the growling in his voice, “Or I would have asked them to take over her training in the first place, considering they share the same affinities. So, at most, she got a handful of short lessons where she should have had a dedicated instructor. Do you know if she got a hold of them?”

Genma switches the senbon to the other side of his mouth and nods. “I believe so.” There is a touch of resignation in Genma’s voice and Kakashi hides his satisfaction. Genma, at least, knows that there will be retribution for the negligence toward his student.

Kakashi turns his attention back to the original cause of this issue. “I don’t appreciate being forced to abandon my teammates even by proxy, Hokage-sama,” Kakashi states low and serious. This is the one principle Kakashi holds above even the ninja rule book. Your teammates come first. And the Hokage had neglected his student, took the provisions Kakashi had made for her, and discarded them without repairing the damage he’d caused. He'd left her behind for political convenience.

“I’ll take her circumstances into account during the exam,” the Hokage said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

The Hokage thought he gave a damn about her promotional chances? He cares about his team’s lives and the callous way the Hokage is treating Sakura is inexcusable. Kakashi will not be forgetting this anytime soon. It is one thing to die on a mission, but a completely other thing to die from neglect from your leaders. No wonder Sakura said everyone, including his wife, is frustrated with him even in death.

“As you say, Hokage-sama,” Kakashi says, slipping into carefully even tones, sensing that the Hokage is done listening to his complaints and done attempting to placate him. He shouldn’t be surprised. It is far from the first time that the Sandaime has thrown away a good shinobi for politics or seemingly didn’t care about the collateral damage done to his soldiers.

He cocks his head to his fellow jounin and asks, “Genma, could you delay starting the exams for another five minutes so that I can have a few minutes to check in with my student before her match?”

Genma gives a careless, half-shrug. “People are still trickling in, so go ahead and tell her I said good luck, too,” he says as he lazily waves Kakashi away. Immediately, Kakashi heads toward the competitors’ box.

Sakura is standing with her teammates. Naruto is in the center with her and Sasuke at his sides. Up close, it is even more apparent that something is wrong with Sakura. She doesn’t just look tense, she looks terrified, like the way she had looked in wave after her kekkai genkai manifested. There are dark purple bags under her eyes that she hasn’t bothered to cover, her muscles are coiled tight as if she is barely managing to stay still, her pouches are stocked even fuller than his with meticulously shined weapons, and her eyes are constantly flickering toward the other side of the room near the area that contains the sand shinobi with her mouth set in a permanent grimace of disgust.

Perhaps her issue is with one of the other competitors’ ghosts? If his past behavior is anything to go off of, Kakashi would be willing to bet that the Kazekage’s son, Gaara, has at least a half dozen angry ghosts surrounding him. He wonders if it would be ethical to bet on the number of ghosts that are around other people with Tenzo and whether it would be too traumatizing to get Sakura to confirm the number. He eyes his tense, stressed student and decides that he will bet with Tenzo, but won’t get her to confirm the number until later, when she looks less likely to crack.

“Hello, adorable pup-” he coughs and corrects himself, “students.”

Sasuke gives him a miniscule nod and shoots him a look that says that Kakashi is ruining his brooding image in front of their competition. Naruto starts at his entrance, crosses his arms defiantly, and shouts, “I’m a ninja, not a puppy! You’re embarrassing us, Sensei!” It somehow manages to come out as a whine even at the volume Naruto had managed to use.

He crinkles his eyes and grins maliciously. “Are you implying that dogs can’t be ninja, Naruto? Because if so, I think you should say that in front of Bull and then start running.”

“What… no! Sensei! That’s not what I meant,” Naruto howls. “Don’t sick Bull on me!”

But Sakura... Sakura doesn’t get angry, embarrassed, roll her eyes at him, or even smile at his nonsense antics, which would all be normal responses from her. She breathes out, “Sensei,” with so much relief that it terrifies him.

Kakashi addresses Naruto again, “I’ll wait until at least after the exam to bring out Bull if you let me speak to Sakura real quick.”

Naruto nods, eyeing his teammate worriedly, apparently not as oblivious to Sakura’s concerning behavior as he’d originally seemed. “Alright, but make sure you watch my match closely! I learned lots from the Pervy Sage!” Naruto says as he moves closer to Sasuke to give them the illusion of privacy.

Pervy Sage? What the fuck had happened during his and Jiraiya’s month of training? He shook his head. He would have to check what exactly Naruto had picked up from Jiraiya later. One thing at a time, and right now it was Sakura who needed him.

“You’re not late,” she murmurs, looking up at him with bewilderment, that sense of relief still glaringly apparent in her eyes and the slight easing of her worried countenance.

It’s disconcerting to realize just how much his students rely on him for support, and also a little nostalgically bittersweet if he thinks about it for too long. Kakashi crouches down slightly so he can meet her eyes. “I was worried about my cute little genin students too much to be late today. I just found out that the Hokage pulled Genma from teaching you. I want you to know that I won’t be upset if you need or want to forfeit. You can always try again at the next exam. There’s no rush to make chunin only six months after graduation. I will be proud you made it this far either way.”

Sakura’s shoulders slump from their position around her ears, and she wets her lips. “I think I will be okay. I had other help. Tenzo-san came and helped me a few times a week, and I trained a lot ah… on my own.”

“If I had any idea that the Hokage was going to disregard the rules and paperwork that I actually bothered to fill out this time like that, I would have just taken you with Sasuke and me,” he grumbles.

A small, fond grin curls up on one side of her mouth as she reassures him, “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

He drops his tone low so that only she should be able to hear him, “It still shouldn’t have happened. No one approached you while I was gone that shouldn’t have, did they?”

Sakura shakes her head vigorously, “No, but Sensei, I need to talk to you after the exam. It’s important.” She eyes the other competitors warily and promptly shuts her mouth.

He nods, understanding that it was confidential and that this space wasn’t private enough for that conversation. At least he can be sure that her extra training hadn’t come from Danzo or Root. Then before he can say anything else, Genma’s voice echoes through the stadium for people to take their seats.

Kakashi stands back up and addresses his whole team. “I’ve got to go, but good luck, you three.” Then he poofs out in a shower of leaves and goes to find Tenzo, who he is certain is here working in the shadows somewhere.

Tenzo, dressed in his ANBU uniform and cat mask, drops down beside him a few seconds after he leaves the competitor’s box. “The Hokage sent me to find you.”

“Hmm, of course he did. He wants you to placate me about my student being left teacher-less on his say so,” Kakashi says tightly, breaking the silence. He lets out a soft sigh. “I do want to thank you for helping my student while I was gone.”

Then Kakashi begins to discreetly signal to Tenzo about the number of ghosts surrounding Gaara. He bets five thousand ryo that there are eight or more ghosts hovering around the moody boy.

Tenzo waves his thanks away and, with his voice slightly muffled by his mask, answers, “She’s a diligent student. It was my pleasure. I wish I’d had the time to be a better replacement.”

When Kakashi gets through his signed message, Tenzo stops suddenly in his tracks, startled by Kakashi's use of top secret ANBU hand signs to bet about such a macabre subject. Kakashi can feel the judgment rolling off his kouhai. Kakashi lets it roll off his back and repeats his signs, “How many?” Truly, he's unsure why his kouhai is surprised.

Glancing around them cautiously, Tenzo grudgingly signs back, “Six or less.” Kakashi was certain he had this bet in the bag. Clearly, Tenzo hadn’t seen the kid up close, or he would have seen how the kid thirsted for violence.

“Do you know what’s wrong with my student?” he murmurs so that, despite the number of people around them, only Tenzo catches his words.

Tenzo sighs and runs a hand through his dark hair. “No, she seemed fine until about three days ago and then she began to look terrified and closed herself off. I did try to ask two days ago, but she either wasn’t ready to talk about it or she doesn’t know me well enough to confide in me so completely yet.”

Kakashi presses his lips together tightly under his mask. “I see. Thank you for trying. I better head back up to where the other instructors are watching the match.”

He makes his way back up to where the rest of the instructors are waiting to watch their students’ matches in the section adjacent to where the Kages are viewing and judging from. Naruto and the Hyuuga’s match is first, so he makes his way over to where Jiraiya is standing and… trash talking… with Gai? Oh no, was he going to have to be the adult? Because he did not want to be responsible for either of them

Thankfully, the stadium quiets as the competitors are called to the arena and Kakashi doesn’t have to intervene between the other two shinobi. There is a long moment where the two genin sized each other up before Naruto predictably starts with a few weapons and an aggressive frontal assault. Kakashi wants to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration; that is not an effective way of fighting a Hyuuga. Within seconds, the Hyuuga hits Naruto with a juken strike, although judging by the four shadow clones Naruto pops out immediately afterward, it misses the tenketsu and his chakra network.

The two of them, even Gai’s student, who is a year older, look so small and young in the arena. Too young, if he’s being honest with himself. Though he knows that he, Itachi, Shisui, and a handful of other shinobi had been even younger when they had been promoted.

Neji easily pops the first set of clones, and Naruto pumps out a dozen more. Kakashi finds himself jealous of how much chakra Naruto can just waste pumping out chakra-intensive shadow clones left and right. There doesn’t seem to be much strategy on Naruto’s part for this portion of the fight, and the little bit of trickery that he manages is quickly negated by the Hyuuga’s mastery of the Eight Trigrams Revolving Heaven technique.

His heart pains him to see the miniature likeness of his sensei brashly fighting and getting injured for the chance of a promotion, to be sent out on riskier missions with higher rates of fatalities. It is only now that he can see how tiny and young his own students look that he understands just how the Konoha of the past had failed him, his peers, and its youth. What business does a twelve-year-old have bleeding for his country?

At the same time, Kakashi recognizes that this is the system they were born into and all three of his students need the safety of thorough training. Whether through birth or circumstance, he is acutely aware that not a single one of his students will have an easy path. It seems to be part of the curse of team seven.

“What did you even teach him over the last month?” Kakashi asks Jiraiya with exasperation as Naruto pumps out yet another set of shadow clones.

Jiraiya squints at Kakashi and states, like it should be immediately apparent to him, “I taught him summoning and attempted to teach him how to use the fox’s chakra. Not sure he learned that last part,” he trails off.

He deadpans, “You taught him to summon toads for the chunin exam…” No strategy, no useful techniques against the Byakugan, no improvements to his taijutsu, so he didn’t get hit with the gentle fist technique? Kakashi was never leaving his students in another teacher’s care again. Between Sakura’s instructor being pulled and Naruto’s instructor teaching him fuck all, he couldn’t trust others to properly take care of his team. If Naruto managed to pull off a win against Gai’s student, it wouldn’t be from Jiraiya’s teaching, it would be because of Naruto’s own stubborn determination.

After another excruciating ten minutes of Naruto getting knocked around by Hyuuga Neji and wasting more chakra than most jounin are capable of producing in a month, Naruto does manage to win with the fox’s chakra and a bit of trickery. Jiraiya leans back on his heels with his arms crossed in front of him and a smug grin on his face. Even with Naruto’s win, Kakashi is wholly unimpressed with the Toad Sage. He would be finding out from Naruto exactly what happened in those lessons later and correcting any oversights that had occurred. Gai leaves to check on his student and Naruto wipes the blood on his hands on his jumpsuit and goes back up to the competitor’s box to stand next to his teammates.

His eyes trail his female student as Sakura and her opponent, Yamanaka Ino, make their way down the stairs to stand across from each other on the field. Sakura's stance is focused and ready in a manner that is adaptable, while Ino’s stance is more aggressive, and she appears solely focused on Sakura. Even from up here in the stands, Kakashi can tell that the blonde’s jaw is clenched. Kakashi frowns at the display. He thought the two of them were friends, but based on the other girl’s body language, Ino is angry with his student, which doesn’t bode well for his student, who has not had the same access to training resources over the last month as the rest of the competitors have.

The two girls exchange some words, but unlike in the previous match, the two girls are too quiet for anyone but perhaps Genma to hear, which, judging by the brow he raises, must be something interesting.

Genma drops his hand to start the match and Sakura makes two hand signs that he doesn’t recognize as a jutsu, especially without his Sharingan open and active. Judging by the slightly puzzled look on Genma’s face, he doesn’t recognize it either, which means it isn’t something he taught her either. The Yamanaka girl pulls a kunai at the first movement of Sakura’s hands. A look of confusion crosses her face when nothing visible happens and there are no indications of a genjutsu. Out of the corner of his eye, Kakashi catches the brief moment that the Hokage’s face flashes with surprise. If it is something that the Hokage recognizes then perhaps it is just something obscure. He would ask Sakura what the jutsu is later, if only to provide cover for how she knew the jutsu.

Then Sakura unsheathes two blades from her side. They had been mounted on one side, samurai style, with the blades facing upwards, and Kakashi tilts his head, trying to remember if he had noticed them when he went to talk to her a few minutes ago, but he doesn’t remember seeing them.

Who had taught his student swordsmanship? While both Genma and Tenzo know how to use swords, neither one specializes in them, certainly not enough to teach someone else how to use one, or in this case, how to dual wield.

Ino darts toward his student when it becomes apparent that she isn’t in immediate danger from whatever jutsu Sakura had cast, but Sakura is faster and by the time the Yamanaka girl raises her kunai and moves a quarter of the distance between them, Sakura is already there, meeting the small blade with one of the swords. They cross blades, but Sakura has a longer reach and a more stable stance, and when she puts her weight into the sword she breaks Ino's sloppier footwork and sends the other girl stumbling back a few feet.

Both of Kakashi’s brows rise high on his forehead. How had she gotten so fast so quickly? Her speed is easily on par with Sasuke’s now, although there is a certain elegance about it that Sasuke’s lacks. Sasuke moves more like lightning, sharp and suddenly there. He moves like Kakashi himself does. Who had taught her that speed? It doesn’t look like the way Genma or Tenzo move. Neither of them is slow, but there isn’t a sense of grace or easy flow about their movements. Just who had Sakura found to teach her while she was unsupervised for the last few weeks?

He has a sinking suspicion that he isn’t going to like the answer. That somehow it’s going to cause a number of complications that Kakashi isn’t nearly equipped to deal with. He knows he’s technically an adult, but give him an assassination any day of the week over navigating and fixing whatever current messes his students get themselves entangled in regularly.

There’s a series of thrusts and parries from the two ninjas in the arena and Kakashi focuses on Sakura’s form to evaluate her performance. That’s when the footwork begins to appear startlingly familiar. A stone sinks in Kakashi's stomach as Sakura thrusts up, catching the kunai on one of the sword's guard and then, in a slight variation from his family scrolls, Sakura twists her wrist quickly and sends the kunai flying behind her into the dirt several feet away.

While she could have learned some of that from his family scrolls since they were still in his abandoned clan’s house that he’d let Sakura stay in, that specific movement was one of his father's favorite adaptations. It isn’t in the scrolls. She couldn't have learned it without either him or his father teaching her, and he knew he hadn't taught her.

The Hokage makes his way from the dais to where the teachers are watching. It’s only a few dozen feet, but Kakashi dreads every step closer that the Hokage takes, knowing that he’s coming to talk about his clan’s all but extinct style. “You weren’t kidding about the girl being one of your treasured students. I haven’t seen any of the Hatake style in ages and hadn’t thought I would again before I died, considering it all but died out in the last war. You didn’t put any of this in her file.” There’s some amount of censure in his voice, which means he can definitely look forward to getting a long lecture about the proper way to fill out reports in the future.

From his side, Jiraiya chuckles, and Kakashi lets out a choked little hum, trying not to appear just as shocked that Sakura had unearthed his clan’s sword techniques as everyone else who recognizes the style. He keeps his gaze down toward the arena as he watches his student tire out the Yamanaka girl and keep her from using her clan’s jutsu with nothing more than good beginner swordsmanship.

“Sakura values learning,” Kakashi prevaricates, unsure how to answer the censure about leaving the skill out of her file when he hadn’t known it was a skill she possessed at all.

The Hokage nods down at Sakura in the arena. “Her forms and footwork are excellent. It’s clear that you’ve spent a significant amount of time and effort training her, Kakashi,” the Hokage praises him.

He recognizes that sequence of movements. It’s part of one of the last sets of kata that his father had managed to teach him before his death. Kakashi swallows and then glances over at where Cat is guarding the Hokage, a few feet away as he responds, "Sakura is a very quick learner who values precision and accuracy. Her taijutsu forms have always been precise too."

Do the wards surrounding his clan’s property not only keep the spirits out but also keep his father bound to the property too? He has never considered that the wards might be a two-way barrier. He puts the thought out of his mind. He can’t think about how his father may be trapped in the same place he’d taken his life right now, not if he wants to be able to watch the rest of the matches.

Cat shakes his head nearly imperceptibly, confirming that her sword work hadn't come from him. He had not really expected it to have come from Tenzo. He knows who taught her this.

Kakashi stares wide-eyed down at his student as she throws the Yamanaka backwards so hard that she lands flat on her back. During the split second that Ino is down on the ground and blinks at the impact, Sakura plunges one of her swords into the earth and slips into the ground, leaving a standard bunshin behind, the image of one sword in hand.

Ino gets up so spitting mad that she never notices the bunshin’s lack of a shadow. Granted, the sun was at its zenith, so it was an easy mistake to make. He wonders if that was strategic on Sakura’s part; she was certainly intelligent enough to use the field conditions and surroundings to her advantage. If it was on purpose, then it was smart, considering that Ino was likely used to checking for shadows subconsciously, considering her teammate is a Nara.

Asuma groans from across the room. “I’m never going to hear the end of it if your student beats mine. I won’t have a single quiet day ever again.” He rubs at his temples as if he can already feel the headache coming on.

Ino attacks Sakura’s clone viciously and taunts it with something. The clone maintains its serious, focused mien and doesn’t react to the taunt, just keeps dodging Ino’s physical assaults by a hair every time. It’s clear that it’s intentional, since Sakura has already shown how fast she could move just moments before. Yes, the clone needs to avoid the attacks so that the illusion doesn’t fail, but she’s much faster than Ino and she’s only dodging the exact amount she has to for Ino’s attacks to fail. It’s clearly designed to piss the Yamanaka girl off.

Kakashi commends his student for being brave enough to taunt a Yamanaka; he’s certainly not. Actually, maybe he should get her checked? Playing mind games with a Yamanaka sounds suicidal to him. He does have an appointment set up for her in a month or so to deal with any lingering trauma from the situation in the Forest of Death and her first kills, but perhaps he needs to move the appointment up sooner.

He leans against the railing as he watches the fight intently. He has to wonder what Asuma and Inoichi were teaching Ino because her aim is terrible. Then Sakura’s clone appears to trip into one of the holes left from the first match. The illusionary sword goes flying out of its hand as the clone catches itself with its hands and lands on one knee. It puts a hand to its ankle with a grimace and a look of resignation.

Ino grins, chest heaving as she catches her breath and sets her fingers into her clan’s signature jutsu. She aims and yells, “Shintenshin no jutsu!”

As soon as Ino finishes shouting out her clan's signature jutsu name, the real Sakura, in a move straight from his playbook, yanks the Yamanaka’s body into the ground with the headhunter jutsu, then rises up behind her vacant body, grabs the sword she’d stabbed into the ground earlier that was conveniently next to her and places it at the other genin’s neck. The Yamanaka girl’s consciousness comes back as Genma declares Sakura the winner of the match.

Sakura leans down and whispers something into the other girl’s ear that has Ino nodding thoughtfully as Sakura loosens the dirt, grasps her hand, and helps pull her out of the soil, even though she should be conserving her energy for her next fight. He sees Asuma’s other competing student watching her with interest and calculation. Kakashi does not care for the look of interest on the Nara’s face. He will be keeping an eye on that and possibly enlisting Naruto’s help with it. If he frames it as a training exercise, he might even be able to rope in Sasuke.

The Nara boy and sand kunoichi are up next. The Nara boy is agonizingly slow about making his way down to the field. Kakashi has only a few seconds to decide that he’s proud of his student. She had displayed a decent beginner’s grasp of swordsmanship, increased speed, knowledge of earth jutsu, and a bit of conniving during her first match. While waiting on the Nara teen to descend to the arena, the Hokage addresses him, “Have you taught her the white light chakra sabre technique?”

Kakashi turns to the Hokage. “Sakura doesn’t have a lightning affinity,” he demurs. He doesn’t think a month was long enough to learn that technique, especially without the correct affinity, but his father had been a legendary ninja, and Sakura has an instinctual mastery over her own chakra that he has never seen the likes of before. And after Wave, she had determination in spades.

In truth, he hasn’t the slightest idea what Sakura could have reasonably learned in a month with a teacher solely focused on her. He knows what she was supposed to learn under Genma, but she hadn’t trained under him for more than a handful of days. The more he thinks about that fiasco, though, the more inclined he is to start an embarrassing incident for the Hokage in front of all the foreign visitors.

The Hokage sighs, “Well, that’s too bad. Perhaps if she ever manages to develop more elemental affinities, you’ll consider reviving the technique.”

Kakashi shrugs. “It’s certainly a consideration.” There is a large part of him that doesn’t like the Hokage underestimating his student. Kakashi knows that the underestimation of her potential is a large part of the reason that the Hokage felt fine, even justified, writing off his neglect of her training. He is half tempted to teach her how to connect with elements that she doesn't have an affinity for just to shove her accomplishments in the Hokage’s face.

He’d have to check with Sakura to see how she felt about garnering that kind of attention so early in her career. Although considering she had pulled out a nearly extinct clan style of swordsmanship, she is already well on her way to notoriety.

He suppresses a half-hysterical snort. If he waits too long to teach her, it is very possible that his father will teach her instead. What a mind fuck. Kakashi wants to go back to bed already.

The Hokage breaks his contemplation by commenting serenely, “It looks like she didn’t need a teacher after all.”

Kakashi goes preternaturally still, before forcing himself to relax and pulling out his trusty Icha Icha book. An embarrassing international incident is looking mighty tempting at the moment. He gives a noncommittal hum, worried that if he opens his mouth even a smidge, something inadvisable will spill out. He still doesn’t think that it is fair that Sakura had been left to fend for herself. Yes, she had found her own teacher, but that wouldn’t have been an option had she not had access to the dead, and the Hokage doesn’t know about that.

If he lets himself think too hard about it, he’ll be furious all over again. Besides, he needs a few days to himself to process the fact that Sakura has likely been speaking with his dead father as well as living with –

Kakashi breaks out into a cold sweat and nearly vomits when he realizes that Sakura might have seen or experienced his father’s death. Had that been the reason why she wanted to talk to him?

A puddle of deep red creeping over the wooden floor.

He needs a distraction. A way to switch topics in his mind. He can’t go and dissociate at the memorial stone because Sasuke’s match would be up soon. If he went to the stone, he might be lost in his head there for hours or possibly days and today is too important to his students, not to mention how dangerous Sasuke’s opponent is. Kakashi has to be here and be relatively present for Sasuke's safety.

He needs to hold it together for just one day, which means he needs a distraction rather than dissociation, and regrettably, even his orange novel wasn’t cutting it at the moment. Unfortunately, the match between the sand kunoichi and the Nara was starting. The Hokage has thankfully wandered back to his seat to watch it.

Perhaps Asuma would give him a cigarette? He glances over at the other jounin who has a beleaguered look on his face and promptly discounts that as an option. His no-name civilian student has just handed Asuma’s clan heiress student an embarrassing loss using primarily his and his clan’s techniques.

Frozen in shock, frozen in fear, unable to stop looking as his father’s corpse turned first pale and then gray.

Where is Gai? Gai is always good for a distraction. He looks over the top of his book discreetly and notes the distinct lack of eye-blinding green nearby. He presses his lips together and remembers that Gai is likely still in the clinic checking on his Hyuuga student’s health. He looks down at the field to see that the Nara boy is still toying with the girl. If he hurries, then he should have time to make it to the clinic and back before Sasuke’s match. Besides, the Hokage is the one who keeps bringing up sensitive topics, so it would be better for him to watch the rest of the matches far away from the other man.

His father’s death wasn’t the most gruesome, but it had been the first death Kakashi had been old enough to remember seeing. The first death that had traumatized him.

Blood first warm and then cool on his house slippers. He was so cold and still even as night began to fall.

“Your youth is admirable! While you wait for your discharge, we should begin planning your new training regimen.” Gai’s booming voice echoes down the hall and knocks Kakashi back into the present. He’d made it to the on-site clinic without knowing how he’d gotten there. He tucks his book into his pouch and pads softly into the room where Gai is bouncing around his slightly battered student, who appears three seconds from snapping, either from Gai’s antics or from being stuck under the medics’ care.

Kakashi could absolutely relate to that last sentiment. He sneaks a glance at the boy’s chart. There isn’t anything pressing on his chart; his chakra levels are fine, no indications of head or neck trauma, and they have already healed the minor physical damage he had taken from the brawl with Naruto. Frankly, he is surprised they are still keeping the boy at all, until he sees the small note that explains that the staff wants to watch him due to exposure to the Nine Tails Fox’s chakra.

Kakashi rolls his eyes. The boy is fine. The nurses are just prejudiced against Naruto. He will do his good deed for the day and help the stuffy kid out. “Gai, the match with my student and the Sand ninja that injured your other student should be starting soon. It might be good training and good teamwork to have your students analyze the match.”

“Neji isn’t supposed to be discharged until this evening,” Gai replies with uncharacteristic hesitance.

“He doesn’t have a concussion or another dangerous injury. He won’t be far from the clinic in the stands. If something happens, then he’ll be next to the fastest jounin in Konoha. Unless you don’t think you’re the fastest anymore?” Kakashi prods the other man.

Gai’s thick brows come down into a V-shape, and he huffs. “I know what you’re doing,” he says.

Kakashi grins. Does he know? That would be a surprising level of awareness for the other jounin.

Gai extends his arm and points toward him with a flourish. “And I accept your challenge to a race after the exams, Eternal Rival!”

Kakashi coughs into his hand to hide a laugh. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Gai’s Hyuuga student with his head dropped into his hands. It’s an impressive level of emotion out of the normally stoic Hyuuga clan.

There’s a loud collective groan from the stands. Kakashi tilts his head back to look up to where the stands are located above them. The match must be finished. “After the exams, we can race, but we should get out there. There’s only one more match before Sasuke and Gaara of Sunagakure’s match and I’m sure your student is much more interested in watching it than staying in this hospital bed.”

Gai’s hands go to his hip as he eyes up his Eternal Rival with excessive consideration. “Hmm, perhaps our next challenge should also include our students. Speed is an important ninja skill after all.”

Kakashi shrugs as Gai helps his disgruntled student up. Neji does not look thankful for his teacher's help. “Naruto and Sakura can probably be easily persuaded. Sasuke might take some convincing.”

They make their way up to the stands, avoiding the medical personnel, and Kakashi keeps them far away from the Hokage so that he can watch the matches in peace. Besides, this way Kakashi can interfere in the match if Sasuke is in danger of being seriously injured, whether the Sandaime likes it or not. If he sits within hearing distance of the Hokage, then it would be possible for the Hokage to countermand his intentions to keep his student safe for political reasons, and after the fiasco with Sakura, Kakashi isn’t willing to risk that possibility.

Later, he isn’t sure whether he regrets not being there to protect the Hokage when all hell breaks loose during Sasuke’s match.