Between a Rock and a Hard Place
...
A rustle.
A flash of red as she carelessly sliced her finger open with one of her tools. A scarlet droplet of blood beaded on the surface within seconds and she carelessly sucked it off, ignoring the slightly coppery taste in her mouth followed by the distinctive bitter musk of clay. Grimacing slightly, she continued to knead the soft crumbling ore with both hands, waiting for the fire to heat to the temperature she needed it to be.
Kakashi sat propped at the other side of the cave engrossed in that horrible orange book she remembered all too well from last time - every so often she felt the heated flicker of his eyes passing across her. It was obvious there was little trust between them - the fragile truce liable to be shattered at any moment. Sakura deemed the fire to be hot enough, the temperature in her little, crudely and quickly made kiln sufficient.
She combined the ore and the charcoal and spent much of the rest of the afternoon extracting the metal. It was a kind not commonly found outside of Iwa and Kusa, and appeared more like a ceramic at first glance - lightweight with a matte appearance, but it was as strong and hard as any other metal and conducted electricity. Sakura fervently wished she hadn't dumped her armour in the marsh in a sign of defiance, she truly did.
Now, with nothing else to do but wait for Kakashi's team to arrive, she had decided to make a replacement. Pouring the molten liquid into one of her casts, she sat back on her heels and waited. Most Iwa Nin had basic metal forging skills and she was no exception. After two near full days of working, she had amassed enough metal scales to make a full, sleeved tunic and binding them together was a small matter.
Now there was just the matter of colour - the dull beige of the untreated metal was completely unappealing.
"I was thinking dark green this time," she said to no one in particular.
Kakashi shrugged in a way that was almost sarcastic, although she couldn't quite tell why, "I thought the red suited you."
That made a warm feeling swell in her chest like a balloon that really should not have been there. She resisted the urge to smile like an idiot and when it became too hard to fight Sakura ducked her head and drowned out her feelings with a few solid strikes of a hammer against the links of the tunic. She painstakingly ground herbs and roots gathered for colour and added a sprinkling of the red clay in the area to bring out a brighter, cherry red colour - less sombre than the last shade she had worn.
The final touch was to paint two bone white circles - one on each shoulder.
Kakashi had watched each stage with something approaching mild interest. She had tried to hide what she was doing; given that he was an outsider, a Leaf, and she really shouldn't let him see these age old processes in action. But, hours crawled passed and she found that she didn't mind the odd glance, the occasional passing, not at all probing question. Half of the time over the three days he was gone; out training, out hunting, or just out.
And she didn't like it.
Distrust smouldered like banked coals in the back of her mind. Fear slithered through her thoughts at all times. She should not have been so quick to attach herself to him, and as he approached her with two rabbits slung over his shoulder she felt her entire body tense as usual, her hand tighten around the paint brush.
"Why these?" he brushed his fingers across the now dry markings lightly, a feather's touch, leaning over her shoulder.
For some unknown reason she wanted to lean back - meet his body with hers and sink against him. Had he been Kazu, or Tatsuo - on a good day - or almost anyone else other than a Leaf she might have. Instead she concentrated on filing the edges of the scales into deadly sharpness.
Apparently Leaf shinobi were far more forward with their questions that any Iwa she knew would have been. Sakura paused, considering whether to ignore him or not, before batting his hand away lightly. "That's the sign of my family, and it's considered rude to touch someone else's marking without asking, you know."
By family she meant team, but she let him think whatever he liked.
"No, I didn't know," he straightened, looming over her, but now at a more comfortable distance.
"You do now."
Silence stretched between them, but he seemed to be considering something intently.
"My team will be here soon."
The prickly, hot feeling of an imminent ambush crawled down her spine before she could stifle it. The urge to bolt stormed through her limbs like a wildfire - heated and burning. Her legs twitched where they were spread on the cave floor. She had known all along they were coming and surely couldn't have expected this strange, almost domestic, peace between them to hold for long.
Letting out a shuddering breath, Sakura straightened from where she was curled over her armour and casually stood. She felt his eyes on her as she stretched luxuriously - spine popping satisfyingly - and a spike of confidence shot through her.
"Then we had better get more food ready for them, yeah?"
...
Kakashi didn't notice her small slip - a testimony to her nerves. "Yeah". An inflection only added by those native to her area of birth - a speech quirk that she had worked hard to stamp out. Except in times of stress, she had managed quite well to rid herself of it. She felt the buzz - the slight pull - of chakra signals entering the area and tried to stop the hand working to skin one of the rabbits from shaking.
When she saw his single dark eye zero in on her, she knew that she had failed. Kakashi did the unexpected; he reached across and awkwardly patted her on the head like she was a child of twelve, rather than a young woman of eighteen but instead of feeling indignant his clumsy action and endearing half-smile made her fell almost safe.
"It'll be fine."
She nodded and found herself saying, "I know," and almost believing it.
There were four of them - all men - and internally her mind criticised both the size of the team and the lack of balance before they had even crossed the threshold of the cave. They were all clearly strong attack types with maybe a little espionage mixed in. No healer, no support - just pure testosterone - her nostrils flared in annoyance. She continued turning the spits with the glistening chunks of rabbit on them with a disinterested expression, despite the fact that she watched them closely from her peripheral vision.
Two dark haired, eyed and pale as alabaster - they could be related. One brown haired, eyed and with a slightly healthier tan and a strange headgear that set off a hair-trigger alarm in the back of her mind that she tried to quash. The last with hair the shade of sunshine, eyes blue as the sky and ridiculous whisker tattoos and an orange uniform - orange! He must be borrowed from another division - a frontline battle one judging from the colour he wore.
She half considered standing to greet them, but then decided against it.
The men exchanged greetings - not at all like she might have expected; all smiles and claps on the back and shoulder rather than the bared teeth and wrestling she had expected. Feeling out of place in the deluge of Leaf-accented voices, she continued prodding at the food with a mildly ill-tempered expression until Kakashi's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"And this is Sakura - she has volunteered to guide us."
Out of habit, she stood and gave a bow - body bending perpendicular at the waist. Her gesture was not reciprocated and she drew to her full height with a ferocious scowl. Apparently good manners were wasted on Leaf. Sakura was just about to return to cooking, when the blonde one stormed over with all the force of an oncoming storm - large, tanned hand extended.
"I'm Uzumaki Naruto! Soon to be Hokage! Neh, pleased to meet you, Sakura... chan!"
Sakura was not sure what to do at this point, but hitting him seemed like a good option. Especially for using an insulting diminutive like 'chan' - as though she was a familiar! Kami he was loud, and - all of her thoughts froze stock still - he was hugging her. She barely recognised the earthy scent and strong sure arms and bellow of 'welcome to the team' before she bodily threw him off of her in a panic. Brandishing the cooked rabbit on a stick like a weapon, she tensed.
Instead of a fight, she received a smile.
He - this Naruto - looked a little petulant at the sudden movement, but the rest simply laughed or looked bored. Naruto eyed the food in her hands with barely concealed lust - blue eyes brimming with the delight rarely seen on anyone older than twelve. It was strangely disarming - she wondered vaguely if he was simple, touched in the head. But, then again, this exuberance might just be a Leaf thing.
Relaxing slightly, she moved towards the rest.
The stony expressions and haughty voice of the taller, spikier haired one was a welcome relief. Now this was more familiar behaviour.
"Sai." and "Uchiha Sasuke."
"Yamato," said the brown haired one with a small, but still strangely warm smile and heavily lidded eyes - he was the only one to actually shake her hand; his grip was firm and steady. There was a bracelet around his wrist that looked like a twisted vine with small brown beads woven through it.
A memory hit her like a full-body slam, but she still managed to smile.
"I think I've seen you before, "she murmured. You almost strangled my teammate.
He blinked, surprised, and Sakura had to force herself to drop his hand and not try to crush it to pathetic shards. All those years ago - the first time she met Kakashi - this was the one that had almost strangled Kazu with tree branches and vines.
"Really?" Yamato asked, incredulous.
Kakashi clapped a hand on his shoulder, having watched the interaction between them carefully. She knew - instinctively - that he had known about that battle and had been watching to see if she had remembered. His memory was probably near photographic.
"You remember, Yamato: Tatara Bridge - years ago. A sentry unit."
He pursed his lips and look thoughtful, but shook his head.
"That was the day I met Sakura - we had a little scuffle, but she was just too adorable to kill."
Sakura felt herself blush with mingled mortification and an emotion she didn't even want to acknowledge.
"You let her go, senpai?" Yamato sounded horrified - he was staring at Kakashi, aghast.
The silver haired man merely shrugged - looking supremely unbothered as usual.
"It's worked out fine. Now, let's eat before Naruto demolishes it all."
The blond haired man in question looked up with a sheepish grin, but was otherwise thoroughly unrepentant.
...
She was awake earlier than everyone else - just as the sun began to peek over the horizon. Sitting outside the light early morning mist, Sakura felt profoundly calm away from Naruto's rattling snores and the inevitable sweaty muskiness of six human bodies in a confined space. She sat with her legs crossed, carefully applying the final glossy coat to her new armour - the layer that would hopefully stop scratches and chips.
Kakashi followed her out shortly afterwards - hair even more wild and tousled and stupidly attractive than usual.
"I'm going to ask you something," he said, tone far more worryingly grave than she ever remembered hearing.
It made her stiffen and toss a suspicious look. He took a seat on the ground next to her - probably unaware that the way they were sitting (legs crossed, on the ground directly facing each other) was the one used specifically and only when discussing marriage. The irony and his ignorance made her want to smile.
"Don't make a hasty rejection until you hear the offer."
She was silent. He continued anyway, hands still deep in his pockets.
"Come back to Konoha with us."
Sakura threw the gloss at his head - just catching the tip of his silver locks as he dodged the projectiles. He would never get that out, she thought with some measure of savage satisfaction.
"I'd rather die!"
He shrugged, lifting both palms face up in a gesture so placid and natural she wants to grab him by his tousled hair and slam his head off the rocks around him. Instead, she sits and simmers in her irritation.
"Well, we have a few weeks to convince you that it's the best thing for you."
We? So more than one of them had decided this on their own.
"Who says I'm even going with you!" She spat back.
Even when she stands up, fists clenched furiously Kakashi is unmoved.
"You were quite insistent that we needed a guide."
Sakura walks away in a series of infuriated stomps and he makes no move to stop her even when she tosses a single statement laced with malice over her shoulder.
"You can drown in the marshes for all I care, Leaf, yeah!"
Just under an hour later she is back - sitting cross legged on a rock just smooth and flat enough to be a bearable seat with Kakashi seated in front of her. The rest are just beginning to stir as she runs her hands through his silver wire hair and carefully cuts out each of the pieces clumped together with gloss. He sits patiently beneath her, hair warmed by the sun and still relatively pleasing to touch despite his obvious neglect of it.
Even when she finishes cutting it looks the same - wild, unkempt and almost Byronic. If it weren't for the hair - and the attitude - she probably wouldn't have remembered him at all
...
It takes roughly three days to reach the first village in the marshes. Sakura cannot remember its name, but is not entirely sure it has one.
Naruto complained from the moment they left until they saw the first building.
The houses were tall and thin - balanced precariously atop bamboo poles with thin reed walkways joining the houses in a haphazard spider web balanced above the sludgy land beneath it. In the breeze it almost seemed like some of the dwellings were swaying drunkenly - probably because they were, the foundations beneath so unstable and ever shifting. The villagers spoke an easy mixture of the main language in the area peppered with a near dead language that had originated in Iwa, their own dialect and some odd words that had sprang seemingly from the marshy soil without explanation.
For Sakura it was vaguely comforting and familiar. For the others it was bewildering and deeply confusing. Smiling, she clasped her hands together and bowed deeply to the elderly man who was probably the Elder and his retainers who had approached to greet them - shooting a poisonous look over her shoulder that warned the others to do the same.
"Gashi! Welcome!" he boomed in a voice so deep it was almost subterranean," We shinrai that your journey was yoroshii, pleasant."
Straightening, Sakura quickly returned the customary greeting - eager to move forward to the actual conversation, "Gashi! We are gaibun to be in your yoroshii and lovely village. We are planning to stay the night and stock up on supplies, if you nanitozo, Elder-san."
He bowed from the waist, despite the fact that it seemed to take an eternity to carry through the movement, and she returned the gesture. Straightening, he reached for her with both wizened hands and lightly kissed both of her cheeks as though she was a treasured grandchild rather than a traveller. Sakura had almost forgotten how friendly the people here had been.
"We welcome you with honoured open arms, kodomo."
"Gashi!" Kakashi said, clearly having been listening closely despite the way he stumbled over the word (trailing the ga rather than the shi and making the retainers titter with laughter at the sound of his foreignness),"It is we who are honoured, Elder-san."
Then he bowed properly, fluidly, as she had showed him and Sakura felt a measure of pride swell in her chest.
...
Pride which lasted until about sundown.
"What?" she demanded, "What's the matter?"
"You're in my bed, "he stated flatly, standing board stiff in the doorway.
"Yes," she looked at him as though he was talking nonsense, "and it's late. I'd like to sleep."
Sakura lifted the covers and looked pointedly at the space.
"Get in."
"Sakura-chan, although I find you appealing - in a purely platonic... platonic way - I think this is a step in our relationship that we should perhaps leave to a later date," he rubbed the back of his head nervously, dark eye avoiding her incredulous stare.
She threw a pillow at his head with enough force to bruise. "What? All I did was tell you to go to sleep. Not proposition you. Don't Leaf teammates share sleeping places?"
He blinked. Obviously not.
"Iwa do?"
Sakura wrinkled her nose in irritation - her arms beginning to get cold from having the covers folded back, "It builds trust and a sense of family in a unit. We sleep, we eat, we clean, we train and we fight together."
"You didn't sleep beside me the last time," he began cautiously, still standing paces away," in the cave. After you healed me. Any time before this."
Sakura rolled over pointedly - not particularly wanting to answer that query.
Finally she grudgingly answered when the silence stretched to an uncomfortable point, "You weren't on my side then."
She heard the slight rustle that indicated he was shedding the layers and layers of bandages he seemed to swathe himself in around his calves and forearms, then the faint dip of the mattress giving way to the weight of another body. Sakura felt some of the tension seep from her body - it felt better to sleep with another person beside her, safer.
That was one thing she hadn't quite got used to since leaving Iwa behind - sleeping alone. More than once she had woken in the night feeling exposed, agitated, unable to sleep because there were no presences around her. Her mind would not rest without knowing her teammates were beside her and intact - which was ridiculous given that they were without exception dead.
Still, she could feel his stiffness - the corpse-like way Kakashi held himself. "Relax." she mumbled.
He let out a soft chuckle, "Sorry, this is unusual for me."
"Pft," Sakura snorted, turning and getting a face full of sentient silver locks, "next thing you'll be telling me that it's weird for teammates to bathe together and boys and girls are given different types of training."
Kakashi made a semi-incredulous noise, "It is and they do."
Sakura frowned fiercely, wondering in the back of her mind why he didn't even take his mask off when he slept, "Then... who washes your back for you?" And... that's just plain sexist."
He laughed out loud this time - a full deep, husky laugh that was so infectious she found herself smiling although she tried to keep her frown in place.
"Communal sleeping area, communal eating areas, communal showering areas, training areas..." She ticked them off on her fingers, propped up on the pillows," Don't you have any of these?"
Shaking his head, Kakashi relaxed against the pillow - and began untying his headband. She had not given the fact that he kept one eye covered any notice until now. Injuries and lost limbs, eyes, were not uncommon amongst shinobi. She was not surprised by the scar that ran horizontally down the lid, but she was surprised by the fact that the eye concealed was the colour of a bloody full moon.
Sakura tried not to stare and quickly searched her mind for a topic of conversation.
"These men are all your usual team? - you seem familiar despite the fact that Naruto wears a uniform that suggests he belongs elsewhere."
Kakashi seemed profoundly unsettled by the fact that she was quite content to lie very close to him - almost touching - and Sakura had to repress the feline grin of amusement that threatened to erupt.
"He was one of my students, and is part of my team on a regular basis. Leaf teams are prone to change depending on the situation." He said, closing his eyes in a bid to ignore her proximity.
"In Iwa a team is never separated."
"Never?"
"Mostly whole teams die together - that's the way it should be. It's rare for just one to be left."
"You must miss them," he opened both eyes to look at her directly. Sakura found the mismatched gaze difficult to keep eye contact with - the red eye too searching and intense.
She shrugged.
"This war has taken from everyone, why should I be any different?"
He nodded solemnly, understanding.
That was the first night Sakura slept soundly in what felt like years.
...
I wanted to get across the sort of foreign-ness of the area they're in - it's pretty damn alien to Kakashi and his team - so I was shockingly lazy and just shoved in some random non-English words in places. Since the canon this stuff comes from was originally Japanese, I figured that made more sense than... say, Urdu. If anyone here can actually read Japanese, oh god I'm so sorry; please don't come for my organs. I used an online dictionary, so half of this is probably maimed beyond recognition. Oh well.
Thanks for reading,
Silver ~ x