Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Naruto.
She was smiling, dancing, and she slid through the water like a knife, a hand's breadth away from reaching hands and grasping young fingers. She walked under the surface of the water, a reflection of his own, sunshine to darkness and bright and warm and innocent; impossibly far away, impossibly beyond reach when she was right there, waiting and laughing at him.
Come get me, Sasuke-kun.
He took a step for the water before he made himself hold off; watching, breathing. Nine strange red pairs of eyes looked down, watched and breathed and their bodies ran, dodged away, dodged toward. Hands closed on their ankles, dragged them under. One by one by one, and she climbed up again, out of the water. Walked up as if on a crystal stair, rose onto the water, moved to the ground. Water rose off her body in a steam.
Green eyes looked at him; watching, waiting.
The ghosts grabbed at his heart, dragged and tore, and those nine children rose to the surface; breathing, coughing, choking. Every one of them innocent, every one of them only half there, every last one of them connected to her by the same ties that bound her to that demon. He almost reached for her, almost dug his fingers inside, almost reached and cried and tried to protect her from the very thing that kept her alive.
He did none of these things. The youngest Hyuuga girl clapped her hands, laughed. "That's my sensei," she said proudly. "They couldn't even get close."
Her real sensei smiled patiently, and the two boys looked annoyed, and Sakura reached out and stroked her hair. But she looked back at the children, finally out of the water, and her eyes were serious again. Assessing.
"Ten laps," she said finally, as soon as the youngest got out without being shoved back in again by his annoyed older brother. "And then we do it again."
They made a long sound, almost a whine, almost a sigh. He watched flickers of intelligence behind those eyes, watched then turn, stumble off. Run. Just so enough that the smallest could keep pace.
No one got left behind. A unit moved only as quickly as its slowest member.
Shortly after they out of sight, the Hyuuga's shorter fellow genin made a sound of disgust. "They can't even do ninjutsu yet. What's the point in being ninjas if you can't even do a simple swapping jutsu?"
"Is that all you do?" She asked curiously, green eyes impossibly deep. "Swapping jutsu?"
He turned an offended tomato red. "Of course not," he protested. "But shouldn't they be learning something besides taijutsu by now?"
"No."
Sasuke smiled a little, watched. Hyuuga swung a little between agreeing with the question and outright faith in her mentor. Her loyalty, sometimes, was as disturbing as Lee's.
"But," the boy started to protest.
Sakura smiled. "How good is your taijutsu?"
He puffed up. Apparently, good enough.
"And your swapping jutsu?"
Equally excellent.
Her smile widened. "One swapping jutsu," she said firmly, and turned toward the pond. "Step into my office."
Apparently, water-walking was not his strong suit. He lasted an entire eighth of a second, long before he even lifted his fingers to start the first seal.
A new record.
"Ten laps," she said firmly, and sent him scurrying after the children.
Nine so-called babies who had more than tripled that time, whether it was nine-to-one, three-to-one or merely doubled that time with one-on-one training. She smiled at the sensei as she moved to sit down next to him, and Sasuke brushed her hair behind one ear. As always, the contact burned.
"You should increase his taijutsu training, Takabe-sensei," she said politely. "He could get hurt out there."
He smiled back. "I'll be sure to work on it."
The other genin sighed, still grumpy even without the loudmouth around. "Wish you could do something for her," he muttered, straight little back turned away from the her in question, who was cheering over how cool Sakura-sensei was.
Sakura shrugged, stood again and moved back toward the pond. "Are you coming?" She asked politely. "Takabe-sensei."
Note: I love this fic...mainly because I started it as a dream where I had Pein and Sakura and Sasuke and nine kiddies! And no, I'm not telling you much more than that...dunno if I'm going to write this one out into a fic, but I can tell you this: the youngest Hyuuga, as expected, is Hanabi. I did a quick runaround where Hanabi did too much training and not enough being a lady so Sakura was hired to teach her...only Hanabi wasn't interested in "girly" stuff, so Sakura had to bribe her with old war stories, such as that one mission where she fought an army of a hundred men single-handed and came out without a single scratch.
In any case, Hanabi came to idolize her, and was convinced to become a genin rather than just follow the Hyuuga path. "What is more important to you? To protect the pride of Konoha, or the pride of the Hyuuga?" -- Hanabi, of course, chose to be a ninja, if Sakura could just please maybe be her sensei. But Hanabi can't be a ninja without going to the academy, and Sakura can't be a jounin sensei without being a jounin, so they both trained really, really hard...
...but then Sakura went out on a mission and supposedly died. So Hanabi got put on a different team, and she hasn't been very happy about it. She tries to save everybody, up to and including her sensei, and everybody kind of hates her.