REVISED
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.
Summary: He had promised never to fail his teammates. And he wouldn't now. So if this was what it took to make her feel…he would do it. KakaSaku
To Feel
Sakura tilted her head and fixed her gaze on her sensei's face, the shadows of the mask playing between black and gray, just as his hair did with silver and white and ash. She shifted her eyes away from him and lifted her hands into the air, staring at the sky through the spaces between her fingers.
She was supposed to be doing push-ups right now. Supposed to be working on her stamina and training to at least try and catch up with the former nin of Team 7. It was no use, though. She'd never be in the same league as them. Naruto and Sasuke were sparring; use of the chidori, rasengan, sharingan, or the Kyuubi's power were prohibited in an attempt to save the training grounds from destruction.
Kakashi was reading the latest volume of Icha Icha Paradise, perched in a tree branch some meters away. Sakura sighed and turned her eyes back to the sky, lowering her hands. Surprisingly, Kakashi's masked face looked down at her from above and his dirty reading material was nowhere in sight. Sakura sluggishly moved her head to look at the Kawarimi that poofed into a log, and then her eyes wandered back to the real Kakashi standing before her.
"Nng?"
"You should be training right now."
Sakura shrugged, wincing as a rock dug into her shoulder at the movement, "It won't help. I won't catch up no matter how much I train. I'm too far behind." 'Too weak.'
Kakashi glared at her and frowned, his irritation at her words obvious through the mask, "Get to work. You still have 172 pushups left. After that is today's training exercise. You need to be able to fight sufficiently even if you can't see."
Sakura didn't move from her position on the floor, but stuck her hands back into the air. There was something strangely relaxing about studying the patches of blue between one's fingers. Kakashi felt anger welling up within his chest and he wrapped his long, tapered fingers around her wrist, yanking her up with a surprised gasp from her.
The anger wasn't exactly directed at Sakura. More at himself, actually. If he hadn't neglected her before…if he had seen the hurt she felt each time she was protected by her teammates. Maybe she would still have that fire that had been in her five years ago, when their team was first formed. 'The weak need the most help.' If he had realized that when she asked him to train her... He should've thought like a teacher, not a jounin fumbling to hold on to a last reminder of Obito, in blood or spirit.
Sakura looked tiredly at Kakashi as his eyes seemed to be intently focused on her, and she wrenched her arm away from him. Slowly, she got back to her knees and into push-up position and counted, "129…" she pushed herself back up, "130…131…132…133…"
'Maybe if I sing a song or something in my head.'
Sakura tried to dredge up old songs that perhaps her mother had sung to her when she was a kid. A lullaby, maybe? Her mother hadn't sung lullabies to her. She had always been away on missions. It had been her sister who had sung to her and fed her and bathed her. Her sister had taught her her first jutsu and how to read and add and subtract. But her sister was dead.
Sakura shook her head, wobbling slightly as the movement shook her balance on her toes and hands, and refused to think of such things. As if she didn't feel empty enough, she just needed to go searching for the hole in her heart that seemed to grow every time she thought of it. Nothing good would ever come of it.
"164…165…166….167…"
Sakura's breath had hitched somewhere in the 150s and her counting had been little more than a whisper from then until just now. He hadn't missed the sharp breaths that could have indicated either tears or tiredness from the push-ups. 'She must just be…tired. Tired. Just tired.'
Sakura continued on her grueling task and barely acknowledged Sasuke's cry of surprise and Kakashi's yell of "AND NO SUMMONS!" as she went up and down, up and down and up, and down and up and down and up, down and up, and down and up and up...
She felt herself become slightly dizzy as her mind distorted the tempo of the pushups and she paused as her arms straightened, 'Just up and down.'
When Kakashi dismissed Naruto and Sasuke from training, Sakura stopped her push-ups—she still hadn't yet finished them—and dusted the dirt from her palms. Kakashi's voice cut into the silence. "No, Sakura. Training's not over for you yet. Not until you're done with your push-ups and you finish today's exercises.
If looks could kill…Sakura would have so little faith in her skills that she wouldn't even attempt glaring daggers at Kakashi. As it was, and as looks couldn't kill, she was still too dead to do anything but sigh resignedly. She winced as her knee hit a thorned twig and raised them from the ground when she straightened her knees. Up and down again.
The sun had just begun to set when Sakura had finally finished her push-ups and she paused to stare at the firey colors streaked across the sky. Kakashi walked up to her and removed her hitai-ate only to tie it around her eyes. "Try and find me. I'll be using the bells," and with that, there was only a soft breeze as he leapt away, presumably into a tree. Sakura heard the bells to her left and she moved towards it, falling down and scraping her palms when her foot hooked onto the log that was by her feet.
Tears pooled at her eyes and the absorbent cloth of her hitai-ate soaked it in. 'Disgusting. This thing soaks up my sweat and now it's over my eyes.'
Sakura picked herself up again and listened for the light tinkling of the bells, which soon came from behind her. She swung her arm out and felt her fingertips brush the soft cloth of Kakashi's sleeve. She felt like screaming. This wasn't teaching her anything! There had to be some sort of skill to this!
"Open your other senses, Sakura!"
Another ring. She shuffled over to the sound, careful to keep her balance when she nearly tripped over another log. Another wave of tears. 'Ok. Alright there has to be a trick to this! Something…some way of detecting what's in my way. It's not just listening. I can use that to locate him, but what about everything else here?'
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Chakra is the mystical energy that all living creatures contain. In the human world, chakra is collected in the greatest amount in humans. Ninjas perform hand seals to mold their chakra into the designs needed to perform a specific jutsu. Some objects are good for conduction chakra, such as…
-0-
There! If she could sense the chakra of the living things around her…but what about the rocks? And dirt? Sakura was stumped for a full minute before it dawned on her, 'Bacteria!'
She closed her eyes, despite not being able to see, anyways, and concentrated her energy on sensing the chakra of others. She felt the soft pulse of chakra and stumbled forward, her arms stretched out in front of her to prevent her from slamming into any trees just in case, and she sent a kick at the jingling sound that Kakashi gave off.
The kick didn't connect, obviously, and she continued sensing the chakra of her surroundings. This game of blinded cat and sly mouse continued until the sun had fully set and the stars and moon were easily distinguishable from the velvet of the night sky.
Kakashi, before she could even sense him behind her, had removed her hitai-ate from her eyes and replaced it on her head. He was feet away when she realized what happened. Figuring that training was done, Sakura crossed her arms and turned away to the direction of her house and began walking.
"When did I say that training was done?"
Sakura froze where she was and felt more tears prick at her eyes. Why her! Why was he picking on her now! Why was he training her now…now when she was hopeless. "What do you want, sensei?"
Kakashi was slightly taken aback by the cold tone of her voice and the formality of her addressing him as 'sensei', but he remained calm. "You're training's not done, Sakura. Naruto and Sasuke finished so they could leave. You have not finished, so you may not leave."
Sakura turned her uninterested eyes to her sensei and shrugged, "Whadda you want me to do now?"
The voice was almost mocking. The venom behind her words was obvious, though. She was asking, 'Why do you want me to do this now.' Kakashi wanted to flinch. And here he had failed another of his teammates. Instead of flinching, though, as he wanted to, he crouched and put his fists up, "Just a simple spar. Between teacher and student." He felt her eyes light with scornful laughter as she stood slouched, her arms now hanging limply at her sides.
"Whatever will be best for my training, sensei."
Kakashi's visible eye narrowed and before she even knew he had moved, a fist was coming at her face. She half heartedly tried to avoid it and fell to the ground in a heap when it connected with her cheek. Kakashi was almost panicking. She was supposed to dodge it!
Sakura didn't get up for two full minutes. When she finally did, she swayed on her feet and licked the blood that dripped from her mouth where she had bit herself from the force of the blow. Kakashi waited for her to attack him, and when she didn't, he flung four shuriken at her to dodge. This time she did, but one of the flying metal stars grazed her arm.
It went on for some time. Kakashi attacking with such easy moves that a genin should be able to counter, and Sakura barely being able to avoid the brunt of each hit. It was well past dinner time when he finally decided to stop this…masochistical game.
"Is training over, sensei?"
Kakashi didn't answer. He just removed the shuriken and kunai from the target that Naruto had used to improve his aim earlier that day.
"Is training over?"
Kakashi spun to stare at his student—if he even had the right to call her that—directly in the eye and he was surprised, to say the least, to see a blank look staring out at him. A dead look. Where had all that fire and passion gone? It couldn't have extinguished just because she gave up Sasuke as a romantic interest…could it?
No. She had been happy for some months after that.
Maybe…maybe a mind game, for this girl in front of him. This girl that he could never have claimed to know. This stranger that he was seeing for the first time. Kakashi's eye met hers for a split second before he pushed Sakura against a tree trunk and his palms slammed into the wood next to her head, splintering it. His body was flush against hers. Her eyes had widened and he felt her heart rate speed up.
There! A spark of excitement. Of life. So his Sakura was somewhere there inside of this shell that had been masquerading as his pupil for the past seven months.
Kakashi pushed against her body harder and lowered his face to her ear, which he breathed on heavily despite the mask, "What's wrong, Sakura? I thought you liked training. I thought you wanted to get stronger."
This should've hit a nerve. It didn't. The light that had been in Sakura's eyes slowly faded and he saw the hole of despair she had dug herself into. Kakashi moved his hands to her shoulders, then let them slide down to her waist and her hips. The spark was back. If this was what it took to bring her back…it was worth it.
Time didn't slow. No sounds were muted and no shooting star flew above head. No romance in the air at all.
His lips crashed down on hers—she didn't even know how he got that damned mask off—and molded with them. Sakura felt heat coursing through her body and she gasped at the sensations she felt, allowing Kakashi to take advantage of her parted lips.
Throughout this, Kakashi had kept his eyes open and the emotions that were displayed across Sakura's face were enough to satisfy him, so he closed his eyes and let himself fall into the pleasure that inevitably encompassed both of them.
'If this is what it takes to make her feel…'
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Revised: 4.4.06