Genre: Action ; Drama
Ship: Kakashi & Sakura
Triggers(s): Angst, Implied child abuse, Mental health issues, depression
Rating: M
Additional Tags: Sasuke doesn't appear much in this, fuck Sasuke, BAMF!Sakura, Kakashi as a good teacher
Sakura stands at the entrance of the hospital, staring out at Konoha. A war of emotions churns in her as she repeats the words the nurse had told her only moments ago.
I'm sorry, your parents are dead. They were crushed by the falling building.
The Chuunin Exams leaves Sakura an orphan and part of her wants to sob, the other part feels so light. She is free.
She touches her trembling lips, unaware of the tears trailing down her dirty face. She'll need to settle their funeral, settle any inheritance she received from them.
What inheritance? Inner snarks. Me?
She doesn't answer Inner because Inner doesn't exist. She's only a fragmented part of herself that Sakura had untethered in order to survive, a method she had gotten the inspiration from Ino's family jutsu, albeit unhealthy method.
She makes her way back to the house she lived in for the last twelve years and stares at it. Sakura could feel a clawed hand scraping up her spine, the bitter aftertaste settling at the back of her throat.
They are dead, she reminds herself. They have no more power over her.
Her limbs shudder when she forces herself to take a step towards the dark house.
"Oh, that does look bad," a male voice remarks beside her. She forces herself not to twitch, instead turning her head like she had known he was there. Sakura knows that she had not fooled her teacher, but he doesn't call her out.
"It does, doesn't it?" Sakura is surprised that she managed to keep her voice light.
Her house is smashed on one side, the beams had collapsed inwards - the beams that killed her parents.
Sage praise the beams. Inner sings.
Sakura hushes Inner. Her parents just died, how could she be happy? More importantly how could she not?
"I came to tell you that all genin teams are being ordered to do D ranks until further notice," Sensei paused and heaved a sigh.
Sakura didn't entertain thoughts that sensei actually liked her. She knew it all too well with his nonchalant attitude towards her. It was difficult to impress her teacher when her parents starved her. Rations bar only went so far. They weren't meant for yearlong use or at least yearlong usage without any supplements. They provided the required nutrients a body merely required to maintain itself. Most shinobi supplemented their diet with fruits and animals from the wild.
"But where are you and your parents going to stay while they rebuild the village?" Sensei continued, oblivious of her dark thoughts.
In the morgue, Inner sneers. Should have stabbed them, before we left.
"Ahhh… Somewhere." Sakura shrugs. She could hardly ask Ino to take her in, not after how their Chuunin Exam fight had gone and she had no other friends. "I'll probably ask Ino-chan, " she lies with an exaggerated mournful sigh.
Sensei eyes her long enough that Sakura wonders if he would call her out on her lie. He doesn't.
"Well then, six am tomorrow at the mission building," he only says and dismisses himself with a hand seal.
Right. A kage bunshin. Sensei wouldn't have spent so much time talking to her if he had been here in person. She stuffs the thoughts into the team seven box at the back of her mind and stares at the house, willing herself to do something, decide something.
Pathetic. Inner sneers again. I'm sure there's shelters for the homeless somewhere. Or maybe Sa-Sasuke-kuuunnn can take us in.
She can hear the condescension dripping from Sasuke-kun's name. Mama would take- Sakura stops the thought.
Mama is dead. She doesn't have to pretend to kiss Sasuke's ass anymore.
Finally, Sakura lets the grin dance across her face. "I am free," she finally whispers. Laughter bubbling out of her chest. She crouches, her shoulders shaking with suppressed joy. The freedom that she finally gained all these years doesn't taste as good as she thought it would be. Shouldn't she be sad that they're dead? Or is she sad but don't know how to express it?
Mama said that girls should only cry when it is to take advantage of a situation. There's no situation here to take advantage of. She sobers herself up and stands. By now the sun has almost already set. Her limbs ache from helping with low ranked messenger runs and the administration building is a good thirty-minute walk from here.
There's training ground thirty-two around the bend. Bet with everything going on, no one is gonna be training now. Inner suggests.
Sakura unseals a ration bar, making her way to training ground thirty-two. It's empty like Inner said it would be. Sleeping on the trees wouldn't be comfortable, but she's slept in worse places.
✥.✥.✥
Sakura has always been Kakashi's easiest student. Or rather, not student. Unlike his other fellow jounin who are sensei as well, he didn't believe in trying to motivate his students. Initiative and eagerness is rewarded and with Sakura's the lack of any interest to improve he had written her off quickly. Even with the aftermath of the terrible clusterfuck of a mission, Sakura had happily continued her ridiculous diet, always hurrying home when he dismissed them.
Kakashi had guessed then, that she would never amount anything beyond genin corps. That was fine, he supposed. Konoha would always need the corps to keep the wheels running smoothly. There isn't any shame in being one. All he needs is to make sure that either Sasuke or Naruto would be promoted and Team Seven would effectively be disbanded. He would take on which that hadn't been promoted and apprentice him then send Sakura to the genin corps.
And as much as he didn't have interest in his female student, he wasn't going to be that bad of a sensei and not follow up on why his student smells of tears and fear or why the house she lived in stunk of blood.
He swallows a sigh at his clone's memories and ambles to the hospital. Perhaps her parents had been injured? He waves at the receptionist before picking up the list of injured civilians. Flipping through the twelve page list, he goes through it once then twice. His stomach sinks at the varying possibilities.
"Saa…" Kakashi leans over to the blonde receptionist, noting the uncanny shade of blonde closely resembled those from the Yamanaka. She tilted her head in response, who paused in her writing and arched a well-groomed eyebrow at him. "Do you know where I can find… Haruno Mebuki and Haruno Kizashi, Receptionist-san?"
"Oh, poor Kizashi passed away."
He frowned. Kizashi's loss would be quite heavily felt with the considerably high toll of casualties. Kakashi knew of Kizashi even though he had never been personally treated by him. He had been a decent medic, a kind and gentle one too if he remembers correctly.
"What is your relation to them?"
His fingers twitches for the orange book hidden in his pouch. No. Running from hospital right now wouldn't be the definition of a good teacher. His student, no matter how useless he thought she was, needed him now. Kakashi mentally squares his shoulders for responsibility.
"I'm Haruno Sakura's jounin-sensei."
"Oh! Good." The blonde receptionist stands and Kakashi can see the nametag on the rather generous chest. Minori Akemi, it reads. Perhaps a parent is a Yamanaka? He absentmindedly takes the proffered forms from Akemi's hand, casting a lazy eye across it.
What.
One registration form for cremation, an orphan assistance form and... He stiffens. Two death certificates.
"Poor kid, she ran out before I could get her to sign these." Akemi slides the clipboard to him with an attached pen. "If you'd sign here to acknowledge that you've received this."
Kakashi barely remembers his father's funeral. Minato-sensei had taken care most of it then. Money. "Does she have money for their funerals?" he asks and cringes at the awkwardness of his question.
Akemi shakes her head. "I don't think her parents left her anything. Perhaps you should check with the Shinobi Law Office?"
Sakura's mother was a merchant right?
Kakashi signs a henonomoji on acknowledgement slip and flickers to the Shinobi Law Office feeling like a money-grubbing civilian. He's here to check if his student has inheritance from parents that aren't even buried yet. Scratch the feeling, he is a money-grubbing civilian considering that almost fifty percent of the people in the queue are civilians. He is almost tempted to use his jounin rank to skip the queue except Aoba is manning the counters today.
Oh shodaime's balls. Aoba would never let him hear the end of it.
He stands in the queue for thirty minutes longer and looks upward at the pale yellow ceiling, thinking which idiot would paint a wall pale yellow. The queue shifts forward just a little. It's like they're taunting him. Maybe he should stop making people wait for him so long. Kakashi waits another five then snaps, flickering to the front of the queue.
"You owe me lunch," Aoba grins to Kotetsu beside him. "Told you he wouldn't wait for the entire distance."
"Sage's balls, couldn't you wait like ten minutes more?" Kotetsu stamps on a form hard, sliding it back to an old man.
In another time, Kakashi might have snarked back. He thinks of all the things he would need to arrange for Sakura and imagines the kind of talk he would need to give her. She already cried so she wouldn't cry again, right?
"Aoba, I need to check if Haruno Kizashi and his civilian wife, Haruno Mebuki left anything for Haruno Sakura," he says briskly.
"Haruno Kizashi-" Aoba sends his thought to the six other shadow clones in the archives. A short minute later, his shadow clone appears with a single paper. Shouldn't inheritances and wills should be thicker?
Aoba readjusts his glasses, lips thinning into a single line."Odd. Looks like they only left her a house."
Kakashi rips the sheet from Aoba's hands. Sakura only got the house because the other people in her clan didn't qualify for it. What kind of parents would leave their relatives things and forget their own daughter? He barely reads the paper that Aoba makes him sign before flickering over to the funeral services and by the time he's settled everything, it's dark.
His shadow clone reports that Shikamaru had dragged Naruto to the Nara house so he doesn't need to worry about Naruto for now. Sasuke is still out training though by now Kakashi knows that unless he forces Sasuke to stop with threats, nothing would stop him Sasuke will be as fine as he always have been. Or at least for one day.
He hops over to the Yamanaka's house and peers into Ino's room feeling like he's doing a Jiraiya except it's a thirteen year old girl's room. He definitely needs a shower after this.
Ugh, he's never doing this again.
The hair on back of his neck stand. "Hatake-san, may I know what you're doing?" Inoichi calls out from the shade of the tree.
"Yamanaka-san, Nara-san," he crinkles his eye at the two clan heads. "May I know which room Sakura-chan is in?"
"Sakura-chan?" Inoichi furrows his eyebrows. "Why would she be here?"
Huh, his little pink hair student managed to lie quite convincingly to him. He feels slightly proud of her and deflates.
"Maa… I guess I heard incorrectly." Now he has to find where she went to.
✥.✥.✥
Sakura wakes in a manner that is slow yet paradoxically sudden, disoriented by the odd position she had fallen asleep in and the the presence on the branch next to her.
"Twenty minutes, Sakura-chan," Sensei says and flips a page. "We need to work on your awareness."
She blinks blearily, wondering why her teacher was there on the tree with her and how did he read in the dark?
"Uss timmme uuss?" she mumbles, shifting. There's a shuriken print blanket on her that she knows she didn't have when she fell asleep and ewww- it smells like dog.
"Five-fifty am," he replies.
"Oh. Stillll arly-" she yawns then freezes. "It's five-fifty! We were supposed to meet Naruto and Sasuke-kun at six!" She leaps up, running a hand through her hair, deftly folding the blanket up.
"Maa maa, there's no hurry." Sensei lazily yawns. "How about we first go and get cleaned up then get breakfast?" Without waiting for her to reply, he grabs her by the shoulder and flickers them into an apartment.
"Did you just break into someone's apartment?" Sakura tightens her arms around the blanket, staring wide-eyed at the somewhat bare apartment. The couch in the middle of the living room looked like it could fall apart if she just sets the blanket on it and the dining table has one single ratty chair. "If you were going to break into someone's apartment, couldn't it be a nicer one? Instead of a hobo's one…"
"How mean, Sakura-chan saying my apartment is a hobo apartment." Sensei wipes a fake tear from his eye and sets his hand on his chest.
"Sensei, I-"
He waves off her apologies and points to a door. "The bathroom's over there, do you have a towel?"
It wasn't like she had her fanny pack when she went to the stadium. Her parents had been home that day, it had been difficult enough sneaking out of the house. And all the showers she had since then had been a quick rinse in the genin corps. They had needed so many couriers that it hadn't mattered if she was part of the corps or not. It wasn't as if her team cared for her.
Sensei drops a towel on her head. "There's soap and shampoo inside already. You can use Pakkun's strawberry one." He crinkles an eye and shoves her into the bathroom. "After all you use the same shampoo."
"I don't use that one anymore," she whines but doesn't really argue. She's so tired of pretending. Mama always said that good girls hide their true emotions. She strips her dirty clothes off, throwing them into the sink to wash later and steps under the shower, bracing herself for the icy cold water. The water is warm unlike the showers she took at the home. Are showers supposed to be this warm? Holding a hand out, she stares at it in amazement.
Hurry, or else Kakashi will get mad for wasting water, Inner says.
She hurries through her shower, wiping herself dry with the soft, thick towel and dons her clothes again.
Well this is as good as it gets, she says to herself.
There is the aroma of grilled fish and rice when she steps out. Sensei wearing an apron, setting food out like a housewife. Sakura barely holds the grin back. She wouldn't want to offend sensei any further, she's heard of stories how jounin-senseis would make life difficult for their students and eventually doom them to genin corps, or worse, get them killed. Sensei said that he would protect them, but all adults lie. The only person that can protect herself is herself.
And me, Inner adds.
Oh no, she forgot to clean the towel. "Uh-uhm..." Sakura flushes and holds the towel out, bowing her head. "Sorry, I forgot to clean your towel."
He hums and reaches over- Sakura clamps her reflexes down, allowing him to take the towel without any reaction. She breathes a sigh of relief when he only pulls it open and sets it on the single chair.
"Well, eat up. I'll be back in a moment."
"Is that all…" Sakura starts and trails off when sensei disappears, the apron fluttering onto the counter, before she could finish her sentence. "...for me?" She eyes the large bowl of rice and whole grilled fish with trepidation. She hadn't had so much to eat in like… forever.
Her stomach clenches unhappily and she gulps.
Better get to it.
Author's Notes: I was persuaded to put this on FFn... Please don't make me regret it.