Mint shaded eyes stare up at a white ceiling as the fluorescents overhead rush by in pairs. She tries to count them but numbers start to seem like the characters of a foreign language, morphing themselves into indistinguishable shapes with indistinguishable quantities.
Sometime after ten she forgets what she's even counting.
"Sakura?" someone calls. Their voice vaguely resembles the gurgle of an underwater conversation. "Sakura, are you with us?"
Exaggerated scents of lavender, antiseptic and the iron of blood keep her conscious. Sharp and metallic, flowery and pseudo-clean, the air around her is tinged with something more than this. It hangs and hovers with an urgency she can't quite understand as a flashlight bores into her dying-star pupils.
Sakura imagines herself falling into them, crashing into the nothingness of her own unseeing eyes. The thought nearly sends her under.
"Hey!"
She feels the sharp sting of a slap.
"Don't go to sleep, stay with me!"
Blinking. Blinking too quickly, too much light. Sakura hangs onto the voice's familiarity like a thread and pulls herself back into her body. Awareness brings the world into focus, sharp and unforgiving, and Sakura can see.
"She's turning critical." Shizune's face hovers over her, dark eyes desperate and attentive. "We have to move faster."
Old gurney wheels scrape mercilessly against cold linoleum tile, barrelling past those disgusting paintings in the halls of the ICU. A broken chorus of voices sings out commands and inquiries, their hands all over Sakura and her blood all over their hands.
She sees it now, the bright red stains of her flesh over the fronts of their gowns and smearing across their cheeks.
Her memory reels in fragments as she tries to piece together the last time anything made sense-before the blinding white of hospital walls and the thin, worried line of Shizune's mouth. In the choppy flashes of an old movie projector, they come hurtling back to her in flickering pieces:
Shikamaru's tan skin. The faint tickle of her own breath against his shoulder. But even that is blurry, smeared with hues of imminence and...fear?
Sakura tries to understand why he was so close to her, the sweat of his brow glistening like gold in the light of a too-red sunset. Her slow, molasses heart beats against the hard muscles of his back, hands hooked over the backs of her knees.
What were they running from?
Next comes silver. With the unannounced recollection of desperation, it hops around her vision like popping street lamps and Sakura becomes vaguely aware that she's starting lose consciousness again. Everything slows to an agonizing pace, turning her mind into muddied corners and un-turning cogs. A familiar gray orb stares down at her as cold stars wink behind his head.
Recognition electrifies her pulse. It kick-starts her body into motion and Sakura hastily pries herself from the sheets of the gurney, a name prickling on the curve of her bloodied lips.
"No!" Shizune shrieks. "Don't move, don't move!"
They wrestle her back onto the stretcher and Sakura remembers pain.
She names death and flinches from his rotten breath.
Her senses sharpen as reality snaps into place like the stretch and release of a rubber band. The medics begin to panic, recording the painful stutter of her heartbeat as her entire chest cavity begins to collapse.
Roaring, unforgiving agony sears its up her spine and into her throat.
Sakura screams and screams and screams.
"We're losing her!" someone shouts over her. They push through the double doors of the surgical wing while while medicinal green hands begin to glare all around her.
Sakura struggles to make words. Guttural, wailing sounds leap from her mouth instead of sentences but she can't force herself to utilize speech. The pain is too blinding, the stumble of her heart too demanding, but she has to tell them.
They have to know.
"Wait!" a man suddenly calls. His deep voice crackles against the static of endless noise as the white of the walls begins to swallow her up. Sakura unfurls her fingers and reaches out in his vague direction.
She has to touch him. One more time.
"Please!" he shouts again. Shinobi drag him away by his arms and even though he can barely stand, he resists. They tell him he can't follow her, not where she's going.
"She's pregnant!" he finally gasps, the words tumbling out of his mouth and into the open, metallic air. "She's four months pregnant!"
The world stills for only a moment. Sakura visibly loses consciousness, her outstretched hand now dangling over the cold railing of her gurney. Kakashi, in response, collapses against the hold of a faceless shinobi as the entire hospital seems to hold it's breath, Sakura's stretcher paused in the gap of the surgical chamber's doorway.
Shizune stares at him with her bloodied hands hovering over Sakura's collapsing chest and she is terrified.
"It's mine," he croaks. "It's mine."
His confession assembles itself as a plea and it sends them all spiraling back into motion. Shizune barks orders, sparing him only one more second of thought, and the hospital speaker blare overhead, calling for extra hands and the gynecologist. Kakashi can't remember his name.
They sprint Sakura into the eerily lit chamber and the doors swing closed behind them. Kakashi vaguely registers the pull and pat of hands on his shoulders, on his back. Familiar voices mumble and whisper into his ear, trying to get him up off the floor and into an examination room, a waiting room, a stretcher.
Anywhere. Anywhere but here.
"It's mine," he mutters to no one. "It's mine."
He realizes, a little late, that he's sitting in a puddle of his own blood. It leaks out from the wounds in his side, along his arms, and deep in his left thigh. The whispers of his friends were not whispers at all but shouts and clamors. Reality tilts beneath Kakashi like a rug pulled out beneath him and he tips over onto his side, the cold linoleum tile smacking against his already aching head.
The last thing Kakashi sees before losing consciousness is the snap of Tsunade's blonde pigtails as she slips behind the chamber doors and the hard, unforgiving stare of her honey eyes.
Eight months earlier
The door to Sakura's tiny office creaks open. A young and painfully shy nurse stops her stuttering to turn and see a familiar face poke itself into the crack, interrupting what appeared to be a heated conversation. She blushes an embarrassed shade of red and quickly turns back to the kunoichi.
"Is this a bad time?" Yamato asks. He grips the edge of the door with an unsure hand, the bits of sunlight streaming in through the venetian blinds behind Sakura's desk catching the metal plate on the back of his glove.
"No, taichou," Sakura says. Her tone lingers on an edge he can't quite name. "Ms. Sayuri was just leaving."
The slight grit of her teeth and the furrow of her pink brow nudges Yamato's curiosity awake. But the young nurse, Sayuri she had been called, bows her head in what could either be shame or anger and darts from the room. She jostles past Yamato with an intense urgency, the ends of her strawberry pink hair whipping against his cheek as she all but sprints down the hall and into an on-call room.
Sakura winces at the slam of the door and sinks into her chair.
"Rough day?" Yamato asks quietly. He steps fully into the room and stands just in front of the open door, hands clasped behind his back.
"That's an understatement."
She buries her face into the palms of her hands and hunches over mountains of paperwork. Her posture resembles that of a certain shishou and he takes note of how tired and thin Sakura looks within the deep folds of her white lab coat.
"I had to fire her," she says. Sakure pinches the bridge of her nose between two mint painted fingernails. "Her math skills are terrible and she can't read a medical chart to save her life."
For a few long moments, Yamato says nothing. He waits patiently until she's finished, eyes attentive and hands still.
"This is the third nurse I've had to fire this month!" she exclaims with an exasperated throw of her hands into the air. "How hard is it to get decent help in this village?" Sakura addresses this question to him but neither of them expect an answer. "If someone's chart says 'Allergic to Epinephrine', you sure as hell check to make sure you don't give them epinephrine! The poor genin came in with a broken arm and nearly died of anaphylaxis."
The young kunoichi nearly throws herself back into her chair, sinking farther into it. He reads the slump of her shoulders as easily as he reads his own name. Sakura absently touches her fingers to the diamond at the center of her forehead and traces its shape, staring into nothing just beyond his shoulder. They darken with something that looks like defeat.
"I'm not very good at this job." Her gaze slides over a few inches to meet his. "Am I?"
Yamato clears his throat quietly and tips his head towards the door behind him.
"May I?"
Sakura startles herself into a straighter posture and starts organizing the mess of medical charts, patient insurance forms, and scrolls into a somewhat neater mess.
"Yes, of course, taichou, forgive me." She looks up at him fleetingly. "I didn't realize you were here on business."
The captain shuts the door softly. Sakura gets up and rounds the corner of her desk, resting the small of her back against its edge. She nearly knocks her golden name plate to the floor with her hip.
"What can I do for you?"
As she was taught to do, Sakura tucks her exhaustion away from the corners of her eyes and the edges of her mouth. She settles a soft, attentive expression on her face and folds her hands in front of her, crossing one leg over the other.
Yamato wanders his stare over her small, polite smile.
When he says nothing, Sakura looks sheepishly down at her sandals.
"I'm sorry if I rambled on about myself, I shouldn't be spilling information about hospital personnel when we're not at-"
He crosses the distance between them in one long stride. Sakura's lips are already waiting for him when he gets there, tilted up and parted slightly, as if they have never known how to do anything else. His hands travel into her pink hair, grabbing at it with tan calloused fingers.
"This is most certainly not business," he mumbles against her mouth. Sakura smirks and rubs her thumbs over the sharp edges of his hipbones. Their foreheads touch and she steadies her gaze into his.
"You had me fooled, taichou." Her eyes come alive as she breathes his air, all the exhaustion and defeat she had tried to tuck away now vanishing beneath his hands. They rest on her cheeks and then slide down to her neck, tilting her face upward with the tips of his thumbs against her jaw. "I thought I was in trouble."
He chuckles, low and quiet from somewhere deep in his chest, and presses his lips to the bridge of her nose.
"We're equals now, Sakura. What kind of trouble would you be in with me?"
Her mouth slides into the slyest of smiles and it makes his heart jump into his throat where it beats wildly against his adam's apple. Yamato swallows hard and trails his thumb down the length of her throat, over her collarbone, and to the edge of the lapel of her lab coat.
He starts to nudge it off of her shoulders.
"I'm not sure what kind of trouble I would be in, taichou." The young kunoichi stands on her tip-toes and backs up onto the edge of the desk. He takes a step forward to stand between her legs and her hands have somehow wandered under his both his flak jacket and his navy blue fatigues. "But I know what kind of trouble I would like to be in."
Her eyelashes flutter over her bright, inviting stare and Yamato swallows hard, the beginnings of a grin twitching at the corners over his mouth.
"Should I lock the door?" he asks.
Sakura pushes aside the mountains of medical charts and personnel files. They stagger back into sloppy piles, some of them slapping to the floor in a chorus of things forgotten and she lays back onto her desk. Yamato's hands wander up the exposed expanses of her thighs, suddenly annoyed that she always wears black shorts beneath her tunic.
With a smooth pull, she unties the knot of her hitai-ate and sets it gently aside.
"You should."
Lady Tsunade taps her fingertips against her desk with an impatient rhythm. The clock above the door frame ticks on and on, making Shizune shuffle her feet uncomfortably in the corner as they wait. Out and below, Konohagakure bustles with the end of the work day. Parents tow their unruly children into the marketplace to buy dinner ingredients, civilians and shinobi alike punch out their time cards and head into the entertainment district while husbands hurry home to their wives.
The sun sets somewhere to the west of the Hokage and it shines an unwelcoming glare on one of her startling hazel eyes. It swivels between Shizune's downward cast gaze, the minute hand of the clock, and the stillness of the doorknob.
He's nearly thirty minutes late. Tsunade hears Kotetsu call out to his partner in crime from somewhere down the hall that it's time to head out for the day and her teeth grind with an insatiable jealousy.
She wants to go home. She wants to drink.
She wants to fucking retire.
At the sharp end of that thought, the door to her office bursts open. Yamato, rather unceremoniously for someone so proper, hurries himself inside and shuts the door. His chest expands and shrinks at a quickened rate, indicating he had sprinted here, but he tries his best to keep his expression still. The young captain bows, a little deeper than usual, with his hands frozen at his sides.
"Forgive me, Lady Hokage. I lost track of time."
Tsunade narrows her gaze at the twitch of his right index finger.
Liar.
He rises from his bow and she stares him down with the heaviness of an uncomfortable silence. This is the third time in two weeks that he has been late for a meeting with her and in all of his career as a shinobi, Tenzou is never late.
And the Hokage has grown tired of pretending not to know why. Sakura's scent still stains his clothes and his hair and his skin like a confession and it makes Lady Tsunade flare her nostrils.
She folds her hands together in front of her and touches her lips to the back of her thumb.
"You're getting sloppy," she announces. Shizune's pen stops it's scribbling against the clipboard and she takes an urgent peek at Tsunade's face.
What she sees scares her into pretending to write once more.
Yamato's brow furrows.
"Ma'am?" he asks. His voice tilts with confusion but his body languages straightens. He spreads his feet a little apart, clasps his hands behind his back, and forces his chin a little more upward.
"You heard me, Tenzou."
The use of his old name sends some chills up the backs of his calves. He looks to Shizune for help but she refuses to get involved, staring intently at what he's sure is the same word she's been trying to read for the past minute and a half.
"I-" he clears his throat. "I don't think I understand. My mission success rate is higher than 80% of the other jonin."
Tsunade makes a face that closely resembles disgust.
"I'm not talking about your career." The Hokage pushes herself away from her desk and stands. With her hands folded behind her, mirroring Yamato's posture, she goes to the window and looks out at Konoha. The sun sinks lower in the west and the neon lights of a village that's beginning to never sleep begin to wink back at her. Somewhere far below, Tsunade thinks she spots a familiar head of pink hair disappearing into a crowd. "Not yet, at least."
For a few long moments, no one speaks. Shizune has stopped pretending that she isn't listening and watches her shishou intensely. Yamato does his best not to move or even breathe but the silence continues to stretch on and he's got somewhere else to be.
Somewhere more important than on the losing end of a riddle.
"Lady Tsunade, I believe-"
She holds up her hand to silence him and his right hand twitches once more. He presses his lips back into a thin, passive line.
"Give him the file, Shizune."
The younger kunoichi jumps at the sound of her name and struggles with the combing through the stack of manila folders tucked in her arm. She finds the one with his shinobi identification number stamped on the front and holds it out for him to take.
Yamato grabs ahold of it but doesn't look away from the Hokage's back.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Tenzou."
She turns her head slightly to the left so that he catches the corner of her eye but says nothing more. He already knows what she means. It's apparent in the way she refuses to name it.
Yamato tucks the mission file under his arm and goes back to folding his hands behind him.
"She's not a child anymore." A vision of Sakura as such, when he had first met her, swims at the forefront of his mind. An all too familiar knot of guilt sinks low into his stomach but he pushes both it and the memory of the thought of a younger Sakura away.
"No," she says, almost too quietly. "She isn't." The Hokage returns to her chair and the two of them, Yamato and Lady Tsunade, become determined not to be the first to look away. "But there's more to Sakura than I think you understand."
The captain clears his throat. From the corner, he feels Shizune silently demand that he look at her. But Yamato refuses to give in.
"I think I understand her just fine. Both in the field and out of it." There's a tone there that makes Tsunade raise an eyebrow-an insinuation that has Yamato swallowing back some regret and reprimand. "I take care of her," he says finally.
Tsunade leans back in her chair, folding her hands in front of her mouth once again.
"I'm sure you do, Tenzou. That's what you do, you're a provider. And, rather dutifully, you provide for her." She raises her right index finger and points at his chest. "But can she provide for you?"
His hand twitches. But before the issue can be elaborated, Tsunade motions to the manila folder still tucked under his arm.
"Are we clear on your mission?" she asks. "Stop them from leaving the Land of Fire. Whatever it takes."
Yamato straightens his spine. The honorable, picture-perfect shinobi replaces the discreetly rattled man. So he nods.
"And my team?"
Shizune quietly cuts in,
"On standby for another hour."
The captain begins to bow but Lady Tsunade interrupts.
"So you'll still have time to say some goodbyes."
The air becomes thick with a tension that causes the room to grow hot.
"Is that all?" he asks politely. Tsunade waves her hand dismissively.
"You're free to go."
He turns to leave, letting his stoic face crack into something that vaguely resembles anger but the Hokage calls out to him,
"Captain?"
His hand stills over the doorknob but he doesn't turn to look.
"Good luck."
Almond eyes sharpening at nothing but the tremor of his hand, he picks up on the fact that she isn't just talking about the mission.
"Thank you, Lady Hokage."
With that, the taichou yanks open the door and disappears, leaving Tsunade to brood over what she can no longer control.
"When will you be back?"
Yamato watches a pair of shinobi pass the nurse's station. He follows their movements with cautious eyes but when they spot him, they smile and nod in greeting, and then go on their way.
He chides himself for being in such a foul mood.
"I don't know," he says resignedly. "A week. Maybe two."
Sakura chews absently on the end of her pen. He can't tell if she's nervous about how much paperwork she has left to do or the unspecified length of his pending mission. But she gives no hints, keeping her eyes trained on a medical chart slathered with urgent, red notes.
"It's an S rank, isn't it?"
She finishes the last stroke of a character and then looks up at him, her question hanging rather heavily in the air. Her stare is hard-as cautious as it should be. Yamato shifts on the edge of his desk, fighting the urge to lean closer and smooth away the worry lines crinkling her forehead.
"You know I can't tell you that." He gives her nose a light tap with his finger, trying to lift some weight off her shoulders.
Naturally, it doesn't work.
She huffs, rather annoyedly, and swats his hand away. Sakura gets ready to go back to her paperwork, worried and irritated, but Yamato refuses to leave on a mission of indiscernible time without knowing if she'll be alright.
He glances over both of his shoulders to see if anyone is watching and then reaches out to rest his hand against cheek. She stiffens at his touch, unsure green eyes darting this and way that to double check if anyone is being nosy today. But they flutter closed at the slow, soft trail of his thumb along her cheekbone, tracing the hint of blush on her pale skin.
Yamato leans in closer and mumbles against the seal on her forehead,
"Try not to miss me too much."
He starts to pull away from her, preparing to leave, but Sakura reaches up for his hand and holds it against her face. Just for a few more moments.
Yamato chuckles but there's something far more serious in the depths of his pupils.
"I'll do my best," she says with the beginnings of a smile, trying to ease the nerves gnawing at both of their stomachs.
That's the problem with dating shinobi. Their return is never guaranteed.
Yamato, grateful for this shift in their conversation, brings her wrist up to his mouth and kisses the underside it-right on the tip of a funny, little crescent shaped scar.
"I'll see you soon," he says firmly because ninja don't make promises.
Sakura nods and watches him gather himself up to leave. He lets go of her hand and his absence is already beginning to ache.
But as if he can read her mind, which she suspects he can, Yamato reaches down to ruffle her pink hair. She swats at him once more.
"Go already," she hisses. "Stop bothering me."
Yamato chuckles and finally takes those few crucial steps away, shouldering his backpack. They give each other one more lingering look before he turns and heads for the front doors of the hospital. He leaves without another word or wave, joining a group of shinobi just outside. They ask no questions and he gives no explanations, the four of them vanishing into a sprint.
A few minutes pass and Sakura finds herself unable to concentrate on the words in front of her. Already, she misses him terribly.
It's going to be a long two weeks, she decides.
Allowing herself only a few more seconds to think about him this consumingly, Sakura gets back to work. She buries herself underneath her paperwork and the work is endless. Eventually, she's able to get up and see a few patients although it's a slow day at the hospital. A genin with a sprained ankle, a jonin with a bad stomach virus, two small civilian children with chicken pox.
The clock ticks on and on and she's grateful for working overtime. For today, at least.
After a few hours, Sakura finds herself packing up for the night. She hangs up her white lab coat, stows away some take-home work into her bag, and then wonders what to do next.
She can't go home to her parents' house and sit in her room. It's late, her mom and dad will already be heading off to bed and they don't like Sakura to be making too much noise in the middle of the night. Thoughts of Yamato would drive her into a foul mood and Sakura can't afford to be the angry girlfriend of a shinobi right now.
She herself is a ninja and she has a job to do.
Sakura decides to stop by Ino's on the way home.
"I know you're heading out for the night," Shizune says softly from somewhere behind her. The kunoichi jumps, startled, before turning sharply on her heels.
"For Kami's sake, Shizune, what have I told you about sneaking up on me like that?"
Sakura clutches at her rapidly beating heart.
The older woman raises an eyebrow.
"Nothing. You don't scare easy, Sakura-chan."
She realizes her mistake and averts her eyes to her tunic where she brushes off non-existent lint.
"Just tired is all," Sakura replies. Shizune nods, a little too slowly and knowingly for her liking, but moves on from the subject.
"Lady Tsunade needs a favor."
"No," Sakura says, "No, absolutely not. If she wants dinner, she can go get it herself. I am
robbing this hospital blind in overtime pay already, ask Kotet-"
"It's not that kind of favor," Shizune interjects. She holds the files in her arms close to her body and now takes her turn avoiding Sakura's gaze.
The pinkette, picking up on the too serious expression, sets down her bag. She reaches out and touches Shizune's arm, as lightly as she can, trying to peer into her friend's face.
"You're scaring me, Shizune. What is it?"
Dark, troubled eyes meet Sakura's prying stare.
"It's Kakashi."
Hatake Kakashi's apartment complex is one commonly known for it's high population of ninja. Civilians don't like to live in areas that are heavily occupied by shinobi because they come and go at all hours of the day, sprint across their rooftops as normal means of commute, and exercise at the crack of dawn. Forever taking visitors, drinking too often, and keeping up anyone in close quarters with night terrors, their daily routines can be relentless, solitary, and violent.
Shinobi live near shinobi and civilians stay as far away as they can. This is how it's always been.
So now, at nearly midnight, nearly every ninja in the vicinity flickers on their porch light as Sakura continuously slams her fist against his front door.
"Sensei!" she hisses. "I know you're in there!"
Again and again, she knocks. A few windows from down the hall slide open to either listen to the commotion or bark at the kunoichi to stop her shrieking. She ignores them until the screen door of Kakashi's neighbor creaks open.
"Sakura-san," a young man calls. "Can you please keep it down? I haven't slept in days."
She glances over at he emerges from his apartment. His hands go deep into the pockets of his fatigues as the door swings shut behind him. And although he's familiar, his name escapes her.
"I'm sorry," she says truthfully. "But I have to get inside."
The nameless ninja, not much older than she, leans against the door frame. His dark hair sticks up in the back and his old, ratty t-shirt hangs off of one shoulder. He has violet eyes, an angry red scar across the lower half of his face, criss-crossing over his mouth, and a long torso.
Someone with such distinctive features would usually be easy to remember. By the honorific he addressed her with, Sakura guesses that he's a chunin. Probably someone she has treated.
Probably someone who simply knows the company his neighbor keeps.
"You don't remember me, do you?"
The pinkette grinds the backs of her teeth together before meeting his eye, hand frozen in mid-air. He smirks, almost in disbelief, and crosses his arms over his chest.
"Should I?" she asks, a little ruefully. The young man looks down at his bare feet, hiding what she knows to be an even wider smile.
"Maybe not." He gives a shrug. "But I remember you."
The implications of his words hang heavily between them. Bright, ugly flashes of blood stained sand and chaos cross the forefront of her mind.
Immediately, she dismisses them.
"You and everyone else."
He cocks his dark head to the side, the same lopsided smirk still painted on his mouth, and narrows his eyes at her. Sakura shifts uncomfortably beneath the intensity of his study.
"Is it hard? Being so famous?"
The question burns like the end of one of Shikamaru's cigarettes.
"Any fame I have acquired, I've earned," she snaps. "Now if you don't mind, I'm busy."
Without another glance in his direction, Sakura resumes her knocking. The shinobi who had been listening grumble and hiss at the nuisance before retreating back into their homes, praying to Kami that she'll give up eventually.
But the still nameless ninja lingers. He watches the worried curve of her brow and the annoyed chewing of her cheek with something that too closely resembles amusement.
"Try the back window," he says suddenly. His front door creaks open as he prepares to step inside. "He usually leaves it open for Gai."
Before she can look away from Kakashi's front door, he's gone. His porch light turns off and Sakura is left standing in the dark.
For a few more moments, she stares at the spot he had occupied and tries to remember his name. But Kakashi's chakra signature shifts from somewhere inside.
"Oh, no you don't," she whispers to the night.
Sakura climbs up onto the roof in the blink of an eye. Carefully, quietly, and nearly untraceable, she prowls over the dark red shingles with the ease of someone who had been trained by more than one master of inconspicuousness. Her footfalls are light, hardly making a sound, and as she crosses over to the back of the building, she has to wonder if he knows she's there.
Or if he's pretending not to.
With the tips of her sandals concentrating chakra, she sticks to the thin ledge of the back window, and opens it slowly. It slides back with barely a whisper and Sakura tries with a little more effort than usual to keep her heartbeat slow and quiet.
Although the matter at hand is pressing, and those days are long gone, she feels like a genin again. Her and two others had once tried what she was currently succeeding at, many years ago. They thought they could hide in the house of an esteemed ninja, unchecked and unnoticed, to get a glimpse of what lies beneath the mysterious mask of their sensei.
Sakura nearly smiles at the thought, the thrill of this small chase almost nostalgic.
But the absence of one loud voice and a pair of dark, loud eyes, makes her forfeit anything other than urgency. Now is not the time for memory lane.
Now is not the time to look back.
She lands on the floor of his living room with a feline grace. Without a second thought, she steps on the heels of her sandals to remove them, and continues her trek through the thick dark of Kakashi's house.
It's been a long time since she's been here but she remembers it quite clearly. Veering away from where she knows a coffee table to be, and careful not to step on where he likes to keep a bed for Pakkun, she pads through the living room and to the left where the double doors of his bedroom stay shut.
Sakura narrows her eyes in suspicion as Kakashi masks the faintest trace of his chakra.
"Sensei?" she calls. Her bare feet cross carefully over one another and hesitantly, she reaches for the handles of his bedroom doors.
A sense of indecency crosses over her as she realizes she's about to invade the privacy of the most private man she's ever known. Although not a stranger to his home, she's a stranger to this part of it. Over the years, her and the various components of Team Kakashi, have only ever congregated in the kitchen and here, in the living room. The bedroom had remained off limits, the only bathroom they could use being the half bath down the hall towards the front door.
But the seriousness of Shizune's face resurfaces to the forefront of Sakura's thoughts. And without another moment to think, she pushes into his bedroom.
"Sensei?" she calls again. Everything is dark and unfamiliar but the thin crack between the bathroom door and the floor beneath it is flooded with light. Sakura tries to adjust her eyes to a new kind of dark, in a bedroom that she doesn't know.
Her left foot kicks over a pile of scrolls and they roll noisily beneath the bed which takes up nearly the entire center of the room. She reaches out her left hand to feel the soft tangled sheets while the fingers of her right hand grip onto the back of a chair.
Everything smells of rain water, mint leaves, and fresh parchment. Familiar and safe, she finds herself lingering in the midst of his scent.
"In here."
Sakura jumps at the sudden sound of his voice. Muffled, it comes from behind the bathroom door, as well as the bright flare of his chakra as he quits hiding. Almost hurriedly, she crosses the distance to the bathroom and all but yanks open the door.
The light is blinding for a few seconds as it spills into every dark corner of his bedroom. Everything in there is white tile and white ceramic, black towels and deep red blood, silver mirrors and silver hair.
Sakura finally adjusts her eyes and finds him slumped against the bathtub, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and the front of his flak jacket so darkened it makes her heart leap into her throat.
"It's not mine," he says.
She tears her searching eyes away from his body and looks at him for the first time.
"What?"
Kakashi motions down to his vest.
"The blood, it's not mine."
Sakura releases a breath she didn't know she had been holding.
"Well," he rasps, "Not that blood, at least." His silver hair, matted to his bare forehead with what looks like sweat, falls into his eyes as he looks up at her.
For a second, she imagines the angry red glare of the sharingan.
"Why are you holding that?"
Sakura, for the second time, is confused.
"What?" she repeats.
Kakashi raises a single silver brow. .
"You're holding my shirt."
The kunoichi looks down at her hands and realizes, rather surprisedly, that she is in fact clutching one of his navy blue fatigues. Her fingers nearly wring the life out of it and she has it pressed against her chest, almost as if she had been longing for it.
Sakura's cheeks turn an embarrassed shade of pink.
"I think I-" she clears her throat. "I think I grabbed it off your desk chair."
He nods, as if this was as simple as the answer to two plus two.
"I haven't seen you in so long, I just-" Sakura tries to continue but ends up swallowing the end of that sentence. "Where does it hurt?"
For a few long moments, he says nothing. The two of them stare at each other for what feels like a lifetime but as usual, Sakura doesn't understand what she sees.
"I think I've got an infection," he finally mutters. "In my leg."
Sakura lays his shirt against the edge of the sink and goes to kneel down next to him. Gingerly, with her fingers walking up the length of his leg, she finds what he's talking about.
The material is soaked with fresh blood as well as dried with old blood. It has crusted and solidified at the edges where he tore open the hole in his pants in order to treat his wound as best he could in the field. But Sakura can see, even through the dirt and grime of a laceration trying to heal, that puss has begun to leak from it. It emits a foul odor from deep within his leg where she can start to see the white of his femur.
Although she's been a medical ninja for years now, her stomach churns unpleasantly. But it has nothing to do with the wound itself.
"Why didn't you get this treated immediately?" Sakura demands.
Kakashi says nothing because she already knows the answer. She presses the back of her hand against the pale, clammy expanse of his cheek.
"You're running a fever."
Immediately, Sakura gets to work. She ties up her pink locks into a loose ponytail and lets her backpack sag off her shoulders. It hits the tile with a loud thud and she begins to rummage through it.
Kakashi watches wearily as she pulls tool after tool from her bag.
"Can't you just use some medical ninjutsu, Sakura-chan?"
The kunoichi snaps on some vinyl gloves.
"Ninjutsu can sew up this wound without leaving a scar." She opens up a plastic case and checks the contents of two syringes. "But it can't cure blood poisoning."
Kakashi leans his head back against the cool ceramic edge of his bathtub. The shower curtain snags on strands of his silver hair but he doesn't bother to move it.
It's not until Sakura reaches her fingers into the hem of his pants that he looks up at her.
"Lift your hips."
Kakashi doesn't move a centimeter.
"If I don't treat you now, you'll be dead in 24 hours."
Her bright eyes are stern and unforgiving. Still, he doesn't move.
"If you want someone else to do this, we can just march right back over to the hospital. Your choice, sensei."
He ponders this for a few moments, with her fingers still hooked along the inside of his fatigues.
"I'm not going to the hospital," he says.
Sakura nods her pink head once.
"Then lift your damn hips."
Kakashi's jaw clenches beneath the tight lining of his mask as he reaches out both of his arms to use the edge of the tub to haul himself up. Quickly, as not to make him exert any more energy than he has to, Sakura tugs down his pants but they snag on the dried blood of the wound before she can even get them down over his knees.
She looks up at him.
"This is going to hurt."
Kakashi takes a deep breath.
"Just get it over-"
Without any warning, Sakura snaps the material away from the wound, taking charred skin, dried blood, and hair with it.
Without another word, Kakashi throws his head back and screams.