Author's Note: So yeah, it's been a while. Apologies? This chapter!
The plot is moving along now. I know the next chapter in particular is where the official mission begins. I focused a lot on feelings here, so feel them, and think about why they're there.
I didn't know I'd get this far with this story. Thank you so much, readers and reviewers!
Chapter Four
…:::Righteous:::…
They were in a motel, now.
The ninja of the Grass Village that they had encountered had been thankful, picking up their healed partner in their arms and extending gratitude by offering to lead them to the nearest village via shortcut. They were all headed there anyway; Kari needed the hospital, and the team needed to restock.
Sakura woke quickly from her fainting spell. Kakashi, nonetheless, did not trust any of his students to be in the air and moving quickly through the trees in their conditions. They walked on foot to the nearest town which, through the shortcut, was much quicker than Kakashi had expected them to arrive.
The Grass ninja thanked them yet again, asking if there was anything they could do before they left. The ever-humble Kakashi shook his head and told them to hurry to the hospital. He led his tired team to a nearby motel instead and promised them an extra hour of rest than he had intended since they shaved off two hours from their arrival time.
They ate. Kakashi ordered each of his students into their separated rooms (Sakura alone, Sasuke and Naruto sharing, and Kakashi on his own) to wait until he checked up on them.
"This is an A-ranked mission," he said before they could leave. "I may no longer be your official sensei, but I am the leader of this team on this particular mission. It is my job to ensure that we put our full efforts into this mission. I don't want you to be tired or sick or whatever when we leave this town. You need to be on full alert; we are approaching the danger zone of where we may encounter actual enemies. I will also continue your one-on-one sessions when I come by to check up. Understood?"
He checked in on Sakura first, making sure to (pointlessly) knock out of programmed politeness. She lay tiredly on her futon. Her clothes had been changed (her previous attire washed) and her hands cleansed from any blood as they pillowed her head.
Kakashi told her to stay lying down; as the medic-nin, he thought, she needed to be the most rested of his students. He said he would simply do a few mouth-reading exercises with her. This, of course, was all written down on a card. She tried, nonetheless.
By the end of the lesson, Sakura could distinguish extremely short sentences.
Kakashi told her to "sleep, Sakura," and she understood, rolling over and pulling the blanket over her tired body. He had not even left the room before she was already asleep.
Sasuke and Naruto were on the verge of sleeping when Kakashi entered their room (without knocking). He moved to the Uchiha in the corner first since he seemed the most likely to sleep out of the two, and since he had big plans for Naruto.
"Your temperature is up," the silver-haired sensei told him when he rested a hand against Sasuke's forehead. "I've got medicine for that. But first, I want to get your one-on-one over with." He sat down, cross-legged, and spoke in hushed tones. "And it's not just about overcoming your disability. You're the one with the least trouble with that; you've easily figured out two ways of communication. I want to talk about your teamwork in this team."
Sasuke grimaced and laid his head on the pillow of the futon, suddenly dizzy.
"You get along just fine with Naruto," continued Kakashi. "You're even communicating with him. It's the relationship between you and Sakura right now that we need to fix. That, and your health."
He caught the pointed look the Uchiha gave him and quickly looked to his lips as they began to move.
She's bent on making me miserable, he said, his lips twisting into a frown. I am officially nothing more than a traitor in her eyes. Don't bother. The old Sakura is gone, and so is the old Sasuke.
"If your relationship doesn't improve, I will be forced to intervene. And I will have my way, Sasuke."
Silence.
"I know she's being a bit stubborn, but try and imagine what it's like to be in her position. Think of the circumstances."
Think of the way she felt about you. Think of what you did to her, he added mentally.
"I know you're tired. I'm going to give you medicine right now and I'll continue this when I feel the need to. And if you don't take care of yourself on this mission, I will be forced to baby you. I will feed you myself if I have to. If you don't want me to do that, take care of yourself. You're not a little boy anymore."
Sasuke mentally snorted.
He knew he wasn't a little boy. He was all grown up now. Bye-bye, childhood. Bye-bye, innocence and gullibility and carefree lifestyle. Hello, Hell.
Kakashi came back a moment later with a bitter-tasting liquid that Sasuke took with difficulty. His vomiting reflexes kicked in, but they thankfully died down when sleep was a greater priority than feeling good. He welcomed it, but it did not come. It never came. And so, he was forced to entertain himself by secretly listening to the conversation going on behind him.
"Hey, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said brightly without the slightest trace of weariness in his voice besides looking like he could collapse any second.
Kakashi frowned at the greeting. "I'm not your sensei anymore, Naruto. Stop adding that suffix."
The blond mimicked his frown, cocking his head to the side as his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "You never minded before." And then, immediately sensing an air of discomfort, he said, "What's wrong?"
A sigh. "The first thing I want to tell you is that I am very, very sorry for what happened."
Naruto's frown deepened. "Kakashi-sensei, that wasn't your fault –"
"As your team leader, I should not have let you get hurt. Especially since you're blind." Kakashi stood against the wall in front of Naruto, eyes filled with the utmost seriousness, expression beneath his mask obviously discontent. "You were not ready to go into battle and I was not there to defend you. I did not teach you how to fight with your disability. I did not take the time to help you. And in that aspect, at that time, I was a failure of a sensei."
"Kakashi-sensei, stop saying that!" Naruto grew angry at the guilt Kakashi harbored. "We were all tired. Even you're tired – and don't pretend you're not! I might not be able to see you, but I can hear you – yet you're using every ounce of energy your energy to take care of us until the last second. What happened back there was an accident. We didn't know we'd be attacked." He fingered the newly-wrapped bandages around his shoulder and suddenly smiled. "You should get some sleep, too. Your students aren't the only ones that need rest."
He could tell Kakashi was smiling, too.
"You're really something, Naruto," he said. "You can connect with anyone."
So connect with Sasuke.
Naruto seemed to understand. He quietly thanked his sensei – still his sensei – and sat with his back against the wall. "I'll be the one checking up on you in a few minutes. If you're not asleep, I'll make you pay for my ramen dinner."
"Yes, sir," Kakashi said mockingly. "But first, are you feeling any pain?"
"It's pretty much numbed."
"Good. Because the first thing I'm doing when we head off again is training you to battle with your disability. So you get some good rest, too."
"You first!"
Sasuke, facing the wall, heard Kakashi leave the room. He closed his eyes to try and enter sleep, but something quickly caught his attention. He could hear Naruto moving towards him. He felt the blond's breath on his neck, the hot words tickling his skin as he spoke.
"You know, she really loved you," he said.
Sasuke did not turn to look back.
"I know."
Two hours later, they were up and out.
Kakashi woke his students with much difficulty. Sakura was still sluggish, the drained feeling still tingling her body; Sasuke's temperature and shivering had completely died down to leave him with aching muscles (he had never gone to sleep and did not pretend to have done so); Naruto had gotten little sleep from the throbbing pain in his shoulder that he spoke not of. Kakashi stopped to talk them seconds before they had been about to jump into the trees.
"Our next town is six hours away. We'll make it just before nightfall and spend the night there." He turned his attention to the blond wincing a few feet from him. "Naruto, I'll be working with you while Sakura and Sasuke lead the way."
Sasuke raised a slender eyebrow when Kakashi suddenly turned to him with a strip of black cloth in his gloved hands.
"I want you to put this around your mouth," the silver-haired man said. "You're going to train Sakura."
No. Absolutely not! the Uchiha's mind screamed at his sensei. Are you crazy? He glared, shaking his head ever-so-slightly. Sakura, watching from afar, had no idea what Sasuke was so adamantly against.
"Do it, Sasuke," Kakashi urged with seriousness lacing his voice. "Do not have me report you to Tsunade-sama."
Sasuke knew Kakashi would never report him. Even if Sasuke walked away then and there, Kakashi would never report him. So what was it that guided his hand to grab the strip of degrading cloth and tie it around his lower face? What was it that made him wait so patiently as Kakashi tried to explain to Sakura what was going on without a prewritten index card?
He caught the look Naruto was sending him and turned away quickly.
"Now then," Kakashi said cheerfully. "Let's head out!"
Naruto could not help the lurching feeling in his stomach as he took to the trees after Sasuke's chakra, finding the Uchiha's chakra dangerously close to Sakura's. He had heard Kakashi's instructions, and he trusted his sensei and his teammate to make rational decisions.
But what if Sasuke got carried away?
The blond could sense some sort of strong hatred between his teammates. What if Sasuke took advantage of the fact that he could hit Sakura without her blocking his moves?
"Relax."
Kakashi's whisper came from his left. Naruto turned in his general direction, confused; he had always been suspicious that Kakashi could read minds, but this was ridiculous.
"Sakura's not going to let Sasuke hit her. When she was training with me, she didn't care if I managed to get a punch in. But now she's training with Sasuke. She'll be more determined to try and read his lips so that she can prove herself to him."
Naruto let out a melodic tinkle of laughter. "That's smart. I didn't expect that from you," he teased.
"That hurt. Now I'm going to go twice as hard on you as I intended."
"Hey! No fair!"
But Naruto knew Kakashi was smiling.
It was the tone of this voice – something Naruto had managed to pick up in his unnerving darkness. There was a higher pitch to Kakashi's voice when he was smiling in good nature. Naruto smiled, too, just to forget the fear that would not go away.
"I want you to think of a good tactic for fighting while you're blind," he heard Kakashi say from his right. "Think carefully, and use what you have."
Naruto thought.
He had shadow clones, but what good were a hundred unseeing eyes?
Use what you have.
He had Rasengan, but what good was a direct technique when he couldn't see his target?
Use what you have.
So Naruto thought. And thought. He had ears, he deduced. Ears and clones. And poor chakra sensing. He did not think anything of the tools at hand for a while, his eyebrows furrowed as he thought deeply. He managed to miss a branch on accident in his intense concentration. Kakashi's hand closed around his wrist and yanked him back up.
"You've got to think quickly, Naruto."
"I've got to concentrate on chakra senses," was his automated reply. "I can't do two things at once . . ."
And then, it clicked.
If he had a hundred unseeing eyes, that meant he had a hundred heightened ears. That meant fifty minds working on chakra sensing. That meant he had a solution.
He smiled suddenly, and Kakashi immediately knew he had found an answer. The question was: could it work?
Naruto put his hands together to summon a dozen of his clones, each one of them maneuvering through the trees, their minds all focused on chakra sensing. He isolated five of his clones and gathered them in a close circle around where he and Kakashi were jumping.
"If we each concentrate on a single part of the enemy's body, we can get his entire body mapped out in chakra."
"Yeah," Kakashi said idly, reaching one hand out to skim the leaves of the trees as he passed them. "But what can you possibly do with that information? What if there's more than one enemy? They'll be sure to detect you with all those sparks of chakras from the clones."
Naruto smiled.
"I've got a team with me," he said confidently. "They'll never let me down."
Kakashi replied without missing a beat. "Do you really have a team yet, Naruto?"
The blond's saddened eyes wandered over to where Sasuke and Sakura, mere specks in the distance, had yet to begin communicating. "Yeah, we're a team," he whispered, his confidence shied away. "We just don't remember it yet."
Sakura was furious. And guilty. But she let her frustration overpower her guilt so that she could clear her mind to focus on a single target: proving herself to Sasuke.
No, scratch that.
She didn't have to prove herself to him, she thought. Why would the opinion of a traitor matter?
Her eyes narrowed when she saw him turn his head in her direction. She saw the wrinkling of the cloth around his mouth as he spoke; she barely had time to register what he was going to say before his hand shot out and tapped her lightly on the shoulder.
A tap?
She caught his next sentence: Your right arm. His hand moved at a surprisingly slow speed, fingers pointed to tap her on her arm. She effortlessly twisted her arm around his and pushed him away to land on a nearby branch.
What's with these stupid taps?
"That's weak," she taunted, a foreign smirk slithering onto her face. "Kakashi hit me like he meant it. You've got to come at me like you're trying to kill me. That shouldn't be too hard, should it?"
Shut up, shut up, shut up, Sakura! She screamed at her stupidity in her head. She hadn't meant to say that. Or maybe she did. Maybe she wanted to anger the Uchiha.
Or maybe she didn't.
Sasuke seemed unaffected, his eyes staring strangely at her as his foot met the next branch and he thrust off into the air. Sakura watched his actions warily, waiting for the slightest movement of his mouth.
Can you understand me? he asked her.
No insults. No bites of sarcasm.
She was surprised.
When had their personalities switched roles? Sakura mentally reviewed her words; she rarely used sarcasm. Why had she used it now?
Sasuke suddenly disappeared from in front of her. In surprise, she stared at the empty spot where his body had been moments before, her mouth slightly open in confusion. It wasn't until she felt a tap to the back of her neck did she realize that Sasuke had moved behind her.
He was testing her reflexes without speech. Because really, what kind of enemy told his opponent where he would attack?
And what kind of stupid enemy hit so lightly?
She kept herself on her toes, moving from foot to foot in anticipation for his next attack. She told herself she was obviously at a disadvantage; she could not hear the faintest rustle of the leaves or change in wind currents. All she could do was look out for the slightest movements that would indicate where Sasuke was.
But she didn't know Sasuke had come to be inhumanly capable at disguising his movements.
He came from her left and tapped her on the shoulder and she was honestly surprised, having not seen even the slightest rustle of tree leaves. How had he done that? He disappeared again, reappearing behind her with a hand outstretched to poke her in the side. What was going on?
Kakashi watched the ongoing in the distance with a frown.
"What's wrong?" Naruto asked, sensing the sudden change in mood. He glanced curiously at Kakashi, his unseeing eyes moving rapidly back and forth in an unconscious attempt to focus on something.
"Sasuke's being too stealthy when attacking Sakura." Before Naruto could burst into an angry rant at the Uchiha's advantages, Kakashi quickly continued. "He's not doing it on purpose. It's not like he wants to hurt her or anything; he's been tapping her very lightly and has been going at speeds he normally wouldn't attack at, and I think that's frustrating Sakura."
Kakashi leapt in front of Naruto so the blond could focus on his chakra traces as he continued to explain the situation.
"Sasuke's trying to test Sakura's sensing ability without having to speak to her, so he's appearing randomly and lightly tapping her. But he doesn't know he isn't giving off any clues as to where he might be."
"What do you mean?"
Naruto scrunched his face pointlessly into the distance as if he could magically make his vision appear again.
"If the average person maneuvers through the trees, he leaves hints of his position, like the sound of movement through the leaves, or – in Sakura's case – the movement of shadows or branches. But Sasuke's not giving off any of those signals."
"So he's trying to trick Sakura?"
Kakashi shook his head. "It's more like he's been programmed to do it."
Naruto frowned at this. How could Sasuke possibly be programmed to do something? He crossed his arms over his chest, eyes traveling to the burst of chakra on a nearby branch from where Kakashi had just rocketed from.
"You're not helping!" Sakura chided the Uchiha after he managed to hit her for the ninth time. "You're not supposed to try and knock me off course by hiding every movement you do; you're supposed to help me find a way to harness my senses."
Sasuke turned to stare at her in midair, a puzzled look crossing his features. He seemed to be deep in thought for a few minutes as his brows furrowed and his eyes averted to the blur of green beneath him. Sakura watched his eyes glow in realization.
The Uchiha shook his head suddenly, but he offered no explanation. He simply disappeared again. This time, Sakura saw the exaggeration of rustled tree leaves. She grew frustrated.
First, he had hidden his movements, and now, he exaggerated them as if she had been blind not to notice them. What did he take her for?
But she quickly thought this over before she blurted anything out; she did not want a repeat of what had happened that morning. Her face burned at the memory and she shook the thoughts away to focus on her original problem.
Had Sasuke been so used to hiding his movements that he had to intentionally show them?
Now was not the time to contemplate and let feelings take over. Sasuke managed a light hit beneath her chin; she should have seen that coming, she chided herself. She grew agitated. Determined. When Sasuke came to hit her, she retaliated with enthusiasm, thrusting him backwards into a nearby tree despite the weariness that laced her body.
Surprised at the force, Sasuke did not move for a few moments, before he smirked. So she wanted to play that game, huh? He disappeared in a puff of smoke, reappearing seconds later above Sakura, poised in a kicking position. Sakura saw his movement from the corner of her eyes and reached above her to grab onto his foot and swing his body around, chucking him into the distance.
Oh, it was on.
Kakashi focused on Naruto, the action in the distance going unseen. He continued with the whiskered boy's training.
"You're going to work on focusing on my body's chakra, are you?" When Naruto nodded, he reached out to smack the blond upside the head.
"Oi!" Naruto yelled in annoyance, rubbing the side of his head. "I wasn't ready!"
"I'm the enemy, Naruto. You've got to keep on your toes at all times. I don't believe an enemy ninja will tell you where he will hit you."
And just to get his point across, he moved to hit Naruto on his good shoulder.
But Naruto was quicker.
He narrowly avoided the hit with a rough duck of his body, accidentally slipping from the branch to the one below. But he had dodged the blow, and that was all he needed to dance in glee when he felt he had safely balanced on a branch. Kakashi watched with a proud glimmer in his eye before disappearing in a puff of smoke and reappearing under Naruto's feet to grab his ankles with one hand.
One of Naruto's clones had sensed this, disappearing as well to alert the original. Naruto quickly jumped from the branch and moved forwards to another one in an attempt to elude his now-reading sensei with little success. Kakashi managed to latch onto the hem of his pants and pin him to the branch.
"Focus harder, Naruto. You not only need to locate me, but you need to think about where you're going to move to next. Use what you can to try and locate my hand and I want you to focus on the tree you'll move to at the same time."
He reached out to strike Naruto's good shoulder. Naruto, however, had squirmed out of the way in prediction of the attack.
And had lost his footing.
And down, down Naruto went, too close to the ground for Kakashi to stop him, and too far for the fall not to hurt. His eyes widened as the full extent of the pain flared up in his bandaged shoulder. His fingers instinctively jumped to grasp the wound; warm blood flowed through his fingers, running down the back of his hand in crimson rivulets to pool at his wrist before the droplets raced down his arm to his elbow.
All he felt was pain. He thought he might have blacked out. Was he still on the ground? He wasn't sure if he had passed out, or if he had simply remained in the frightening oblivion he had been forced into. What were those annoying drones buzzing around him? Voices? Why wasn't the Kyuubi inside of him helping him heal?
He realized he had, in fact, momentarily blacked out because he had realized, seconds later, that he was propped up against the base of a tree, and someone was lightly slapping his cheeks. The voice in front of him was dimmed as if gibberish, before finally becoming coherent.
"Nshhraturato . . . can you hear me? Hold on."
The same voice – Kakashi's, he realized – silenced and there was suddenly an unbearable pain coming from his shoulder. Naruto suppressed his scream in his throat, transforming it into a gurgle as he felt fingers dig into his shoulder in an attempt to stop the blood flow.
"I'm all right, Kakashi," he tried to say. He knew it would heal soon with the chakra bubbling inside of him. He bent his knees in an attempt to rise from the floor, but a hand on his good shoulder prevented him from moving any further.
"We have to stop," Kakashi's voice came from the right. "You can't go on like this. I'll get Sakura to heal you fully this time, and we'll slow our pace for an hour or so."
"No!"
Naruto turned fruitlessly in Kakashi's direction, his face contorted in a frown and a grimace of pain. Once again, he tried to bring himself to his feet, bracing himself against the gnarled trunk of the tree.
"I can still carry on. Just bandage it and I'll be fine until we reach the next village. It's no big deal, really."
"If you could see it, you'd realize that it's a bigger deal than you think," he heard Kakashi continue. "The wound will get infected in this kind of weather, and your entire arm is covered in blood. It looks pretty bad, Naruto."
Naruto was getting impatient. "Don't stop their training for me, Kakashi-sensei. Please."
Understanding was suspended in the air of the silence that ensued. Kakashi's alert expression softened and he eased Naruto back against the tree without much protesting from the blond. "You don't want to be the burden," he said as a statement rather than a question. He vaguely remembered the first mission they had gone on together, to the Land of the Waves, where Naruto had been exposed to poison and had stabbed his hand in an attempt to draw the poison from his blood.
"Come on, Naruto," he continued, fixing the bandages around his student's – no, teammate's? – shoulder.
"I would take advantage of the fact that we have a medic-nin on our team. She's trained herself in that area for a reason. Don't always think about the present; think of the future, too. We might have to slow ourselves down now, but if you continued with a wounded shoulder, you'd be worse for wear if we ever encounter an enemy. Or it'd get infected, and then think about how much time it would take to heal an infected wound."
Naruto stayed silent, his unseeing eyes averted to his hands. Kakashi knew he had understood. He knelt in front of Naruto to pat his knee reassuringly.
"I'm going to bring Sakura and Sasuke back here, and then we'll reevaluate things, okay?"
Naruto nodded in silent agreement. He waited until Kakashi left before he released what had been bothering him.
He sent his fist hurtling into the tree behind him. The trunk splintered with the intensity of the force. Naruto slumped back into a sitting position, tears prickling at his sightless eyes, his teeth gritted, and rivulets of blood sliding down his bruising hand.
"Damn it!" he ground out.
He hated being blind.
Sakura narrowed her eyes at Sasuke, a playful smirk quirking her lips as she prepared herself for the next blow. Sasuke, his face emotionless, disappeared.
And Kakashi reappeared.
Surprised, Sakura opened her mouth in a silent gasp and took a step backwards – still in the air. She landed with wobbling feet onto a branch below and stared as Kakashi descended in front of her.
"Naruto," she read off of his lips, "is hurt."
He gestured to his shoulder, and Sakura understood. She nodded her head, her mind vaguely wondering where Sasuke had disappeared to. As if to answer her question, Sasuke appeared at Kakashi's side, pocketing the kunai he had taken out and removing the strip of cloth from his face, eyes slightly widened in alert.
Sakura followed Kakashi without another word to a miniature clearing several meters behind. Her hurried shish-shish-pop-pop of footsteps signaled her arrival to Naruto. His head of blond perked in her direction, sightless eyes wide.
"It's me, Naruto," she tried to clarify when she was near. She saw his shoulders relax and saw the regret etched into his face when the pain in his shoulder flared once more.
He smiled suddenly. "Sorry," he managed to grit out, feeling her fingers ghost over his wound. "I didn't want to stop your training."
It wasn't that important, she had been about to comment offhandedly, but she bit her bottom lip to stop herself, turning around to steal a glance at Sasuke. He was staring at her, too. Neither turned away.
Sakura finally averted her eyes back to Naruto. What had their training session been? She had learned significantly from a traitor, she thought to herself. He had trained her as if she had been his teammate, not his enemy. Like his equal.
The opposite way Sakura had been treating him.
Like he was below her.
Like he should've been below her.
She tried to steady her hands as she worked on unwrapping the gruesome wound that was Naruto's shoulder.
They made it to the next town just before nightfall, as Kakashi had suspected. Training had only continued an hour before they had made it to the town; Sakura's chakra, drained, did not allow her to hold up well in an intense training session with Sasuke, and Naruto could not focus on training and chakra traces at the same time with his blood loss.
Kakashi informed them that their next town, three hours away, would be their last spot before they would travel to the enemy's base for infiltration (another four hours away). And so they sat in their rooms after a silent meal at a ramen stand and showers, preparing to sleep.
Naruto scooted close to Sasuke, his blanket wrapped around his shoulders. There was no moon out to pour its light through the windows and so they sat in the dark, side-by-side, the cold biting at their bare toes. Naruto could smell the strong earthy scent from the proximity; Sasuke, despite taking a shower, smelled strongly like the leaves of the forest, like the damp earth, like the morning dew. Natural. Naruto vaguely wondered what his own body smelled like.
"I really wish you'd get along with Sakura," he whispered, and then waited. Sasuke made no move to grab his hand. "She's really hurt. You've got to talk it out."
She shouldn't be so damn selfish, Sasuke said to himself, trying to turn away from the persistent blond.
"I know you're tired, and I'm tired, so I'll drop it for today, but one day, you'll regret this."
Naruto did not scoot away from him, and a part of Sasuke was grateful. He could feel the warmth radiating from Naruto's body, soothing his own cold flesh. The other part of Sasuke felt uncomfortable at the guilty proximity. He shut that part off and closed his eyes, hoping that he'd sleep.
He couldn't.
And this time, the reason wasn't because of the torture he'd experienced.
Sakura was suddenly up in alert at the sight of shattered glass.
She had been turned on her side, facing the open doorway in her inability to fall asleep. Thoughts after thoughts had plagued her mind and so her eyes stared blankly ahead of her, until their attention was caught by the sight of little tinkering, shining shards of something. Glass, she deduced. Reflective glass. Her eyes widened in curiosity and alarm, holding her breath for more clues as to where the glass came from.
It had come from the end of the hallway, she decided – where the bathroom was; the motel they were in had a separate bathroom for each floor. Someone was in there, shattering what she presumed was the mirror. Without hesitation, she tore the blankets from her body, slipped into her slippers and a robe, and stealthily ran to peak her head into the hallway.
Had no one else seen the glass? Had no one heard the shattering of the mirror? Perhaps only she could potentially hear it. Her room was the closest to the bathroom. Kakashi's was on the other end of the hall, and Naruto and Sasuke's was next to his.
So what . . .?
Sakura tucked in a strand of hair behind her ear as she tiptoed to the bathroom and peeked through the door that stood ajar, a sliver of scenery showing through.
Sasuke was in there.
His hair was drenched, falling in thick strings over his eyes to meet his chin; from the back, it reached past his shoulders. Sakura could see his wild, wild eyes from behind the curtain of obsidian. She could see the fatal grip his bleeding hands had on the edge of the sink as he stared into what had once been a mirror. And she could see the heave of his chest as he breathed harshly through his nose.
She was frozen in uncertainty.
She couldn't ask him what was wrong. Their relationship at that point did not allow for normal converses; the normal Sasuke would have simply brushed her off as well. So speaking to him was futile.
But what if he did something irrational?
What if he left? Why was he angry? Surely Kakashi had heard – he heard everything. But what could they do? She moved so that she was no longer staring into the bathroom, her lithe body pressed against the wall as she thought. No decision was ever made, however. Sasuke left the bathroom seconds later, closing the door behind him, giving no indication that he had ever noticed Sakura's presence.
She watched with wide eyes as he reentered his room and quietly closed the door.
It was not the first time in her life that she felt useless. Sakura pushed herself off of the wall and reentered her own room, a heavy, unidentifiable emotion resting on her shoulders and never leaving, even as she slept.
Naruto woke up to the sun and immediately knew something was wrong. He called it a sixth sense. He could always tell something was wrong, except when his milk was expired; there were some things that eluded even him. He reached out in front of him to feel for where Sasuke had once been.
No one.
Rising to his feet, he padded across the wooden floor. There was something peculiar littering the ground that he could not see, but his bare feet certainly felt. It was an unfamiliar sensation, something he had never walked over before.
He bent to the floor, feeling what he thought were pieces of coarse silk running through his fingers. In an act of boldness, he lifted the thin strands to his nose and inhaled deeply. A familiar scent wafted through his nostrils; he felt a pang of nostalgia. Where had he smelled such an earthy aroma before? Such a powerful scent of the natural forest?
Sasuke.
He sniffed again at what he now knew were strands of hair. The same earthy aroma met his nostrils and he anxiously ran the strands through his fingers. They were long and chopped at odd angles, he could feel. Something was wrong.
Had the enemy gotten to him?!
"Sasuke!" he called desperately, dropping the hair from his fingers in favor of running his hands over the walls. He flailed his arms in the room, his bare feet stepping on what he could feel to be more strands of the coarse silk. His heart pounded wildly in his chest. Why wasn't Sasuke responding?!
"Sasuke!"
He felt a cold hand grab his wrist suddenly and he instinctively swung his other arm. Another cold hand caught his oncoming fist.
"Sasuke?"
A flick to the ear.
Yeah, it was Sasuke.
Naruto tentatively reached his hands out when Sasuke released them. His fingers grazed familiar coarse silk and suddenly tightened around the shortened strands.
"What did you do?" he asked, his fingers still running through Sasuke's hair.
Uncomfortable and annoyed, Sasuke shifted his head away and began to write in Naruto's palm. G-E-T-T-I-N-G T-O-O L-O-N-G.
"Why didn't you just wait until one of us woke up? We could've done it for you. Okay, maybe not me, because I'd probably cut your eyes out, but at least Kakashi would've helped you! And you guys call me the hasty one."
He did not see Sasuke's obvious shift in expression, did not see the way his shoulders shook in anger, the way his eyebrows furrowed.
But when Naruto left for the bathroom, he did feel the shards of broken glass scattered all over the bathroom sink.
He had been about to get angry. He had been about to turn right out of that bathroom, glass shards in hand, to scream at Sasuke and throw the fragments in his face. But he thought about it for a moment. He was tired of being reckless.
Long hair. Anger. Uchiha.
Itachi.
Sasuke thought he looked like Itachi.
Long hair and lines across the face were, perhaps, the only things that separated the Uchiha siblings from looking exactly alike from a distance. Or at least to Sasuke, they did. He had been afraid to have his hair continue growing. Naruto didn't know how long it had gotten, but he could remember it had reached past his chin when he had last been able to see. Had Sasuke really been angry at such a simple thing?
He thought back for a few moments, to all the times he had ever seen Sasuke become as impulsive and reckless as Naruto was. And most of the moments, if not all, had to do with his brother. Itachi was the only one who could pull the boiling anger from within Sasuke's stomach and unleash it upon the world.
Naruto returned to the room where he heard Sasuke folding his futon in the corner. He sat on his own and cradled his legs to his chest, staring blankly in the Uchiha's direction.
"You know, you don't look anything like Itachi," he said casually. Perhaps he had said it too casually. He could almost hear the gritting of Sasuke's teeth, the sharp turn of his head as if asking Naruto what the hell he thought he was doing.
Naruto, ever the ignorant, brave fool, continued anyway. He conjured a mental image of the elder Uchiha, drawing his mind's eyes to the slightest features.
"I mean, come on. Your eyebrows are thicker than his freakishly girlish ones. Speaking of girlish, have you seen his eyelashes? Does he put mascara on them? They're really long. It's weird."
He could hear Sasuke storming over to him.
"And his eyes." Naruto's voice softened. He felt Sasuke directly in front of him, his body radiating no warmth. He felt himself get picked up viciously by the front of his shirt, felt Sasuke's heaving breath on his face. "They're dead."
Felt Sasuke's intake of breath, the choke in his throat, the loosening of his shirt.
"They're not like your eyes. And his attitude – it's not like yours. He doesn't care about anyone. Anything. You . . . you care about us, right? About me? And Kakashi? And Sakura?"
Sasuke stared at the blond in front of him, his mouth open in disbelief. What was Naruto talking about? Why did he decide to speak of his brother of all people?! What was he doing?! He watched Naruto look right at him as if he wasn't blind then and there.
"You're nothing like your brother, Sasuke," the blond told him. "Even if you grow your hair to your ankles, you're never going to be like him."
How had he known?!
Sasuke's mind could not keep up with the whir of thoughts going on. He felt constricted. He felt suffocated. He needed to get out of the room.
How had Naruto known?!
He took another step back, shaking his head, all the anger he had taken out on the mirror returning and he was afraid he would use it the wrong way. He was afraid he would hit Naruto, the epitome of the sun that tanned his skin, that spun his hair. The epitome of all things good.
And here was Uchiha Sasuke, backed into a corner, the epitome of all things bad.
He ran his hands through his choppy strands of obsidian hair and bent over, eyes closed, unsure of which emotion to let out. He wanted to scream, to punch, to kick, to cry. Everything was going wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong . . .
"Sasuke!"
What . . .?
That had been Kakashi's voice. He opened his eyes. When had Kakashi come? And why was he on the floor? Naruto was bent over him with a worried expression on his face. Sasuke thought he must have looked confused, because Kakashi took pity on him and explained.
"You passed out a few minutes ago."
Oh.
He steadily got to his feet, staring around with masked confusion. Sakura stood a little off to the side, her face unreadable as she looked away when Sasuke caught her staring. Kakashi clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder and left it there.
"Mission time," was all he said. That was it. No "your health is deteriorating" or "we need to talk." Just a simple implication that they needed to get moving and that Sasuke was the only thing preventing them from doing so.
Sasuke wondered what Kakashi had up his sleeve.
He fell back with the silver-haired man when they were out and about the trees again, the early morning atmosphere bringing rushes of fresh air into his lungs every time he took off from another branch. Kakashi had his nose buried in his infamous book as he maneuvered through the forest. Sasuke had to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention.
"Are you not questioning me because you're not my sensei anymore?" he mouthed to the older man.
Kakashi looked at him for a few moments before his eyebrows furrowed. "I like to consider myself a teammate, Sasuke," he said evenly. "Just because I'm not your sensei doesn't mean I don't care about your health. As a teammate, you have to care about your fellow teammates."
Sasuke tried to look annoyed. "But you didn't ask about my health."
"Because I knew you wouldn't answer in front of Sakura and Naruto." He gave Sasuke a mockingly arrogant smirk. "As a teammate, Sasuke, you must know your fellow teammates and their quirks." Before Sasuke had the chance to glare at him, Kakashi cocked his head to the side, smiled, and said in an intentionally sing-song voice, "So . . . why did Naruto run into my room in panic telling me that you'd passed out?"
Is that what happened? Sasuke grumbled mentally, turning to face the path, watching Sakura lead the way with Naruto behind her. He did not reply, keeping his eyes staring ahead.
"Mm . . . you're not going to answer, are you?"
Silence.
"That's okay. I think I have a pretty good guess."
Silence.
"Your hair is uneven, by the way."
Sasuke twitched, picking up his pace to increase the distance between him and his former sensei. Kakashi thought otherwise.
"Hey, hey. You can't stray too far. It's your turn for a one-on-one."
"I don't need a one-on-one. Not being able to speak does not hinder my fighting skills."
"I didn't say anything about your fighting skills," Kakashi continued to chirrup. "You shouldn't assume, Sasuke, because you know what that makes out of you~!"
"Cut the act!"
Sasuke suddenly wished his voice had not disappeared. He wanted to scream his frustrations at Kakashi, to tell him to stop joking around, to be serious for once in his life because these were not joking matters, to –
"Hit me."
Sasuke lost his footing for a millisecond in surprise. He raised a slender eyebrow at his former teacher, still seething inwardly. "What?"
"You heard me, Uchiha."
Kakashi pushed Sasuke roughly with one hand.
"Hit. Me."
Naruto turned around suddenly, eyes wide in fear as he suddenly heard a large explosion behind him where Sasuke and Kakashi should have been. Sakura turned with him out of curiosity and was surprised to find a cloud of dust where a tree had just fallen.
"What's going on?" she whispered in shock, managing to turn to Naruto as he said, "I was going to ask you that!"
"Is there an enemy attacking?" the blond continued, straining his chakra to get a better visualization of the area.
"No, Kakashi's training with Sasuke – but what are they doing?!"
Another explosion was heard, followed by a guttural grunt from close by. Sakura saw shadows through the trees flit by; Kakashi's figure became distinct first before he jumped from her view, followed by a very angry Sasuke with chidori sparking at his pale fingers. Sakura, in alarm, instinctively moved forward with full intention of stopping the fight, but Naruto blocked her.
She was surprised. Naruto had sensed her movement and had known when to stop her. A small smile betrayed her facial expressions and she turned to see him speaking to her, his warm hand still closed around her arm.
". . . said not to stop him," he said. "They're having their one-on-one. He wants us to continue forward."
They called that a one-on-one?! Sakura closed her eyes briefly, conjuring up Sasuke's recent image, the chidori lighting up his face of pure anger in a terrifying shock of electricity. She hesitantly turned away, using every ounce of effort not to turn back at the shaking ground from what she assumed was another hit.
When they reached the town, one hour less than they had expected, Naruto and Sakura stood at its entrance path, waiting for Sasuke and Kakashi to appear. The duo did, one with ruffled clothing and a nick on the side of his neck, and the other panting lightly with a thin sheen of sweat on his porcelain body.
Kakashi wiped the blood from his neck with his gloved hand and stepped forward, smiling.
"Shall we?"
Naruto stared uneasily at Sasuke. The Uchiha met his eyes with an unwavering expression of indifference. Taken aback at the feeling of tension, Naruto nodded his head quickly and turned around; he didn't know why he was so uneasy. Perhaps it had been because Sasuke had been angry enough to kill, perhaps it had been because Kakashi had actually gotten hurt, or perhaps it had been because of the way Sasuke seemed absolutely unfazed at what he had done. Either way, Naruto did not listen entirely to what Kakashi was saying as they walked through the quiet village; he did not take in the green, green scenery, the close clutter of identical homes, the butterflies that flew in waves of color.
They stopped at a restaurant and took a private booth in its corner, where Kakashi told Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto to order whatever they wanted.
Ever modest, Sakura ordered a smallish, inexpensive meal; Kakashi ordered another plate for her with a knowing twinkle in his visible eye.
Sasuke ordered water.
Kakashi told him that he wasn't going to get fat and that a glass of water actually had twenty calories in it, to which Sasuke shot him the dirtiest look he could muster and ordered a plate of the most expensive beef to smite his former sensei.
To which Kakashi told him he was paying.
Sasuke took back his order and asked for whatever Sakura was having, too apathetic to pick up the menu that had been laid out in front of him.
Naruto shook off his spell of uneasiness and ordered almost everything on the menu with a sneaky grin. Little did he know, when the blond turned around, Kakashi had told the waiter to take back almost everything except a few dishes. Normality was restored.
"Right," he began as they waited for their orders. "After this meal, we're going to stock up on a few things from the town's market place, and then we're going to head off to another house Yamato set up for us." He leaned forward on his elbows, fingers intertwined. "From here on, it gets dangerous."
His eye swept over his students, scrutinizing their conditions. Naruto, alert, without the slightest hint of weariness except the creases beneath his eyes that had appeared with the terror of blindness and the strain of searching for chakra traces. He sat with one leg bouncing up and down, his hands running over the pepper and salt shakers on the table to feel them before he began playing with them as if they were action figures. Sakura, only slightly weary, sitting quietly on the booth's bench with a serene smile on her face. She was folding a paper napkin into a creature of origami that Kakashi had yet to recognize. Sasuke, looking the most tired of the three, his shortened, choppy hair drooping and his too-thin figure hunched over a knee that he had drawn to his chest as he sat on the bench. He rested his head against the wall and stared at nothing in particular.
"We'll make it to the house, drop our things off, and then immediately set out to the hideout for observation. I've got it mapped out, but we'll need to watch the hideout for an hour to see the shift of the guards around it, or if they've even got guards at all," Kakashi continued, keeping his voice low. "Then we'll wait at the cabin for as long as we've got until darkness falls, and then we'll complete our infiltration with the cover of the night."
"We should do A-ranked missions more often," Naruto said with a smile. He pointed to his unseeing eyes. "Except without your twisted idea of training."
"Hey, it's worked so far, hasn't it? You've learned a lot in three days."
Naruto did not have a rebuttal for his sensei. Because he was right.
They struck up random conversation with a story Naruto had decided to tell about a day when he had encountered a talking fish. This conversation led to the topic of a magic talking dog, then to a talking parrot, then to the end of the world for one reason or another. Sakura had laughed so loudly at one point that Kakashi had reached over to clap his hands over her mouth, ignoring the nasty glances shot from people occupying the central bar. Sasuke had contributed absolutely nothing to the animated conversation between Kakashi, Sakura, and Naruto. He hadn't even moved his head; his lackluster eyes simply watched them with a strange feeling growing in his gut, and he excused himself for the bathroom before the food came.
Kakashi was watching Naruto. The blond had piqued his interest the moment he had started the conversation on – what had it begun with again? An elephant? Their wild conversation had reached such crazy heights that Kakashi could not remember the root of it all. He watched Naruto excitedly exclaim, "The food's ready!" before the waiter had even come into view for those who could see.
"Your sense of smell has certainly heightened," Sakura commented with amusement as she watched the assorted plates placed in front of her.
Naruto nodded sagely. "That's why I can tell that I'm missing some of the things I ordered." He turned in what he thought was Kakashi's general direction and narrowed his eyes. "Kakashi-sensei."
"I'm over here," Kakashi deadpanned from the opposite direction.
"D'oh!"
Naruto was unaware of the gray eye that followed him as he reached across the table with his palm facing the ceiling.
"You're not eating, are you?" he asked Sasuke.
The atmosphere in the corner of the restaurant tensed.
Sasuke did not even bother to lift his head from the wall. He simply moved his eyes to stare at the whiskered boy (Naruto's eyes were staring at his neck), and then at the palm suspended in front of him. Very lazily, he wrote in simple strokes, I A-M.
"No, you're not. I didn't hear you pick up your chopsticks."
S-O-U-P.
"You didn't order soup."
Kakashi laughed inwardly at Naruto's stroke of genius, and at the furrowing of Sasuke's eyebrows when the Uchiha knew he had been caught.
"You can't keep anything from Naruto, Sasuke," he commented simply to watch the twitch of Sasuke's eyebrow at his frustration. He pretended not to see the look that clearly told him to crawl under a rock and die as he stirred his soy sauce into his rice.
"We're at the most important part of the mission, Sasuke. And you were sick. You need to eat, or else you're going to collapse during infiltration and then you'll ruin the whole mission for us."
Naruto jumped at the sudden hand that clapped onto his shoulder, but relaxed when it withdrew and the warm voice of his sensei drifted to his ears.
"I think you should've been mission leader instead of me," Kakashi said with admiration and pride in his student.
"You don't mean that," Naruto said, despite the swell of joy in his chest.
"Yes, I do."
The team split up after their meal to explore the town for supplies. Sakura walked briskly, smiling at passersby. They returned the smile warmly, even exchanging a few words of I haven't seen you before and Do you need any help for directions to which she would whisper her replies and wait in her eternal silence as they answered.
She was in charge of the medical supplies and was kindly pointed in the right direction by a boy with wide eyes and a teddy bear tucked beneath his arm. He had followed her to the store with a thousand and one questions.
"So you're a ninja?"
"Yes, I am."
"But you're a girl."
"Yes, I am."
"But ninja are only boys."
Twitch.
"No, they're not."
"Yes, they are."
"No, they're not."
"Yuh-huh!"
Sakura's chest swelled with the sudden nagging feeling of female independence and superiority, her tongue swelled with speeches of women's rights and sexism and discrimination. She rounded on the boy with a malicious glint in her eye.
"Listen, brat –!"
"Excuse me?"
There stood the boy's father – or was it his brother? – in all of his six-foot-six glory, towering over the petite rosette with his muscled arms crossed over his toned chest. His booted toes tapped impatiently.
Sakura smiled nervously. "Nothing, sir!" she managed to squeak before bowing deeply and breaking off into a run.
Naruto had better luck when it came to the villagers despite his worse disability. It hadn't turned out so well at first. When the villagers smiled at him, he would not smile back. When they waved in greeting, he would walk right on, and this aroused angry whispers of the rude new arrival. It wasn't until three brave little tykes came up to challenge him did word spread that he was blind.
A blind ninja! Ha!
Naruto frowned at the whispers he heard as he walked to the market. The village was not one to have ninja of their own, rather experiencing a wide variety of ninja as they passed through since they were in a central location on the map. They knew not of the power they held, Naruto thought.
He heard a rustle to his left and smiled. There were kids in the bushes to his left; he guessed they were going to try and ambush him, and so he walked on with a cockier step to his saunter.
"Huwaaaaaaah!" came the battle cry from a short boy as he leapt into the air with a stick in his hands. But the stick met nothing. It sailed through the air and the little boy tumbled to the ground, coming up into a sitting position. He blinked his owlish eyes in confusion. Friends of his gathered around to see what had happened.
"Missed me?"
In another blink of the boy's eyes, Naruto had seized the stick from his hands and appeared behind him, digging the stick into the small of the boy's back. Terrified, he shrieked and threw his hands into the air as Naruto fell to the floor in laughter.
"You really are a ninja!"
"Do that again!"
"How'd you do that?"
"Are you really blind?"
Naruto, a stranger to so much admiring attention, let the boys circle around him as he told tales of being a ninja. He smiled until his cheeks hurt, his mouth going on and on with words of fascinating journeys and perilous adventures.
"I want to be a ninja!" they chanted when he had excused himself to carry on stocking up on food.
But when he heard that single sentence, when he imagined their eyes lit with excitement, his smile disappeared. He turned around and bent his knees so that he could stare in their direction at once, and with the utmost of seriousness, he told them the truth:
"No, you don't."
Sasuke suddenly sneezed. [1]
The sun had yet to set when they met up again, this time at the gate of the village. Kakashi was rather surprised to see Naruto wave goodbye to a group of kids who had apparently been following him around the village. Rather than commenting, however, he chose to get right down to business. He had had his fun at the village's bookstore (with a new copy of Icha Icha Paradise stored secretly in the pocket of his vest . . .).
"I showed you the map of the route at dinner. Does everyone remember it?" He received three nods of approval and took it as his cue to continue. "This is the route where they are sure to find us. They're not unintelligent enemies from B-ranked missions; you have to remember that this is an A-rank mission."
"We've never forgotten that, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said confidently, his face set into seriousness.
"We're not going to split up to meet at the cabin just yet. But if we're attacked – and only if we're attacked – then we will split up to divert the enemy from our backup route. Make sure the enemy is no longer trailing you and then secretly move onto the backup route; we should meet together in a matter of minutes should that happen." He paused, looking for any uncertainties in his students' faces. There were none. He knew he had trained them well.
"Be on your toes at all times."
They were hidden behind the leaves of the trees minutes later, choosing silence as they moved on. Kakashi did not schedule any one-on-ones. This was a crucial part of the mission; he would resume his one-on-ones when they had taken the Feudal Lord and were a safe distance away from the hideout.
Not long after they had left the gate of the village, they were already in the dangerous rescue game of the Feudal Lord.
"Naruto!"
The blond perked his head at the harsh whisper to his left and suddenly felt a hand push against him. Another hand ran itself through his hair – it was Sakura, indicating that she wasn't the enemy.
"What?" he asked. He no longer saw bursts of chakra on the trunks of trees and knew Kakashi and Sasuke had stopped as well.
Sakura pointed to where Naruto's foot had been about to step down so Kakashi and Sasuke could see what she spoke of. "A tripwire."
It was there, barely visible unless it caught the glint of the light at a certain angle. Sakura's eyes had seen what Naruto's could not.
Sasuke's head suddenly perked as well, his eyes spinning with the Sharingan. His ears had heard what Sakura's could not.
It was Kakashi who said what Sasuke's mouth could not:
"Can you hear that?"
There was a rustling of leaves. A swish of air. Sakura brought her hand up to block a kunai.
It had begun.
[1] Sasuke suddenly sneezed - some of you may already know this, but it's a South-east Asian myth that when a person sneezes, it means that someone is talking about him/her. You'll have to think very lightly to see why this sentence fits.