#76: Magic
-Sunpies-

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto et al.

Sakura learned the few magic tricks she knows from Kakashi, whose only real hobby (excluding reading porn and standing in front of the memorial stone) is magic.

(Strangely, it was one of the few things that Kakashi ever offered to outright teach any of them. But Sasuke wasn't interested and Naruto never got the hang of waiting to reveal the trick, so Sakura was the only one of them who ever managed any kind of success with it.)

Slight of hand, like everything else Kakashi had pushed at them, has its uses: like every so often when she's working on a person that she can see is afraid. Some times the patient is so caught up trying to work out the trick that they barely notice a thing as she pokes, prods, or sticks them.

"Just sew me up if you don't have the chakra." Neji bit out between clenched teeth. The trail of an enemy kunai dropped from his mid-thigh to just above the knee, furiously soaking the left leg of his pants vibrant red.

They'd both been too slow and now they were paying for it.

Concealed beneath the thick boughs of a tree, Sakura nodded grimly and set about stitching him up. Though his face remained nearly impassive, his eyes stubbornly closed as he tried to set the pain aside, the clenching of his jaw every time the needle passed through his skin gave him away.

When she was finished and the bleeding had stopped, they both decided to stay there for the night rather than risk traveling. It was a good decision and she hardly regretted it. But if she did, it was because she'd been sent all that way to find/rescue the missing ANBU member and he was being a dick.

"You want to see a magic trick? It might get your mind off of the pain."

"I'm not in pain and there's no such thing as magic."

"…dick."

But that's not always the case.

#76: Magic
-Sunpies-

For Lady Silvamord