Konoha: After
by Kaj-Nrig
Note:
This is a standalone excerpt from a larger fic, posted to get some feedback while I get back into the swing of things. (Haven't written, or at least published, anything in years.) I've picked and chosen from the canon, because the canon got real dumb real quick, especially with regards to certain main characters. Please let me know what your impressions are. Thanks.
Konoha changes as often as the seasons. After the Third Great War, change came to Konoha in the form of a new Hokage, a new economy, new borders, and new elite ninja, many of them children. After Minato Namikaze trapped the Nine-tails inside his son, change to Konoha meant a sudden upswing in political and military strength. No one wished to incur the wrath of a nation with a jinchuuriki at its disposal.
The Fourth Great War came and went, and Konoha changed again. The village was rebuilt, brick by brick and plank by plank. The Hokage stretched her cadre of elite ninja almost to the breaking point; just a month after the final blade swing of the war, a sole chuunin undertook what would have been an S-rank mission meant for a two-jounin team. (Sakura, for her part, more than met the challenge.) For a period of three weeks and two days, the walls and entrances of Konoha were guarded entirely by genin, and in that time they managed to fend off two incursions by Akatsuki remnants.
Not that rank mattered much in the early days of recovery. That was another change: many genin had become chuunin, and chuunin jounin, and many jounin were dead. The training of new shinobi slowly but surely resumed. In the seven years since the war, Konoha has become stronger and more resilient than before.
Some things, some people, were slower to change. Naruto, whom everybody expected to replace Tsunade as Hokage, instead took an extended leave as soon as the war ended. Officially, he is training to become a sage, following in his late sensei's footsteps, but those who know him know better: Sasuke continues to haunt him, even in death.
Kakashi reflects unwillingly on this fact as he stares at the words of Icha Icha. He feels a familiar anger rising up through his gut, prompting him to reach for the Team Seven photograph on his windowsill. Half of the four faces no longer belong, but which half that is, he can't say. What he can say, though, is that very soon now, he will want more and more to smash his fist through the picture. He will fight this temptation until eventually putting the picture back on the windowsill and leaving for the Four Gods Bar instead. He and Sakura will arrive there at the same time, and they will buy a bottle of sake to share at Sai's apartment. This is nothing new. His team has gone on forty-six missions since Naruto disappeared, and the last thirty-nine of them have concluded in this manner, accidentally at first but with more conviction as time went on.
Events transpire as predicted, and as he walks down the darkened Konoha roads with Sakura by his side, Kakashi comes to a realization. "We need to take a picture," he says, his voice cutting through the quiet Konoha night.
"Hm?" Sakura asks.
"We need to take a picture," he repeats. "You, me, and Sai. We need a picture."
Sakura smiles, reaches for his hand, and leans her shoulder into his arm. He doesn't remember when she started doing that or when he started letting her, but it has become part of their routine as well.
"I'll buy a camera," she tells him quietly.
Sai opens the front gate for the two of them, though they both have keys, and leads them upstairs without a word, though they both know the way. Kakashi tells about Tenten and Pakkun over the bottle of warm sake; Sakura admonishes him for his lack of foresight; and Sai appreciates their company mostly in silence. When Kakashi brings up the team photo, Sakura has to very calmly explain to Sai the importance of such things. Sai asks some blunt questions, as is his nature. They finish off the bottle, and then he and Sakura leave.
When they reach the intersection where they would normally part ways, he doesn't let go of her hand, and neither does she let go of his. Instead, their collective gaze travels down the long stretch of road leading to his apartment before turning to each other. "Do you want to stay the night?" she asks, to which he replies, "Okay." This part is also nothing new.
It began... he can't remember exactly when they started sharing her bed (because his isn't big enough), only the awkwardness of that first night; how they stacked pillows and blankets in the middle of the bed to approximate a sense of propriety, and how neither of them slept that night but still rose the next morning feeling giddy, like they had gotten away with something scandalous. And perhaps it will be a scandal, if and when it gets out that a sensei-student pair are sleeping together, however platonically. But Kakashi has never cared overmuch what the world thinks of him, and apparently neither does Sakura.
They sleep back to back, but when Kakashi stirs awake in the middle of the night he finds she has rolled over and snuck her hand around his waist. He doesn't sleep well sometimes, she told him once, and she found it the simplest way to calm him down without waking him. "I don't know about that," he said in reply. "I think maybe you're just using my PTSD as an excuse to fondle me," to which she promptly threw him through a tree.
He laces his hand with hers and listens to the sound of her breathing. Sooner or later, they will consummate their relationship. He knows this as surely as he knows the sun will rise tomorrow. But for now, he is content just to have her at his side, and to be at hers. Today was a good day, he surmises. A very good day for him and his team. Konoha is stronger and more resilient than ever, and so are they.
That part is also nothing new.