Sad Sky
When Sakura and Naruto described their mission to Sound—their voices soft, strangled like the cry of Sasuke's Chidori and the sound of words flooding through water—they stood stiffly, distanced by the weight of broken promises.
Tsunade drummed her fingers on the oak desk and stared intently at Sai, whose hands were folded patiently on the back of the chair that Sakura sat in. The blonde woman watched his face for signs that her student was breaking under the pressure, but even as he noticed the girl fingering the hem of her shirt unconsciously, willing it to turn into a weapon so she could go and kill that damn Uchiha, he plastered a fake smile onto his face and said nothing to his elder.
Naruto shifted from foot to foot, standing next to Sai, hands dug deeply into his pockets and wrenched from them repeatedly as his eyes scanned the room nervously.
Sakura felt the pressure in the room wash over her like a wave of heat, and suddenly wished Sai was somewhere far, far away. She breathed in all at once and inhaled the scent of ink, fresh parchment, and bleach.
"So anyway," Naruto cut in awkwardly, "Sasuke-teme got away again."
Sakura's fingers twitched, and in the window, Kakashi watched them all and wondered why the absence of one brooding little boy was affecting them so deeply. Tsunade's sake had been hastily hidden, kicked under the desk before everyone arrived, but he could still see it.
Naruto looked fit to kill and was doing a poor job of distracting himself.
Sai looked indifferent, possibly bored.
But Sakura…for a while she had looked poised and strong and confident, and he'd taken pride in the fact that he'd trained her once, but then the image of such a perfect kunoichi was sent crumbling away as he remembered that she was Sakura Haruno, vulnerable and loud and frail…and…and so not twelve years old anymore, but still chasing after Sasuke blindly enough that it didn't seem to matter.
He imagined her creeping through the halls of Orochimaru's stronghold, thin and clumsy and armed with little more than a few basic weapons and book knowledge, and the thought terrified him.
But then, Orochimaru had wrapped himself around her mind when she was at a very…impressionable age, and at the time, he'd been some sort of magnificent beast capable of slipping through walls and slithering into the deepest of depths, prone to hiding inside the eyes of a giant snake.
Kakashi listens as tiny droplets of rain begin to pelt the tin roof, and he leans out the open window to catch some of the sky's tears on his forehead.
He likes to think that the sky is crying because Sakura refuses to. –She's better than that now.
(After all, she can 'slip' through a few walls herself.)
Fin.