A/N: Pushing myself to write so that I can finish this and move on to my other three ongoing stories, whoop whoop. And no, HiroSaku is not a thing.
Chapter 11
- The Shelter -
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They communicate the message to the other five medics—about what exactly they had to do, right after her conversation with the head doctor ends—and these quickly approach every person who's sitting on the cold, unforgiving ground of the South of Ame. The destruction around them, hours after the short but relentless bombing, reminds Sakura of the aftermath of the Fourth Shinobi War, in which she played a main role. Of course, this tiny area doesn't remotely compare to the size of the grand battlefield back then, but there are still a few similarities. The ground seems painted with a mixture of dry blood, ash, and the remnants of the debris; the atmosphere seems lifeless, filled with the leftovers of a catastrophe; the air around them is thick with pain and loss, and she can get to hear quiet, tired, defeated sobs if she really makes the effort to listen; she's sure that if the sky was a bright blue instead of a bottomless black, she could get to see the risen ash from the fallen buildings and the harm to anything cemented.
Sakura looks around the place and spots several of the better-off civilians and Shinobi trying to help whoever needs it in getting up.
The people who suffered the worst of injuries, the ones who barely made it out of there alive, need a very long recovery and adequate medical supplies to be checked regularly. But with the hospital destroyed, Sakura could only guess the only way to tend to them would be directly by using chakra in order to scan through their bodies. She'd brought medical supplies with her to the mission, in her bag, but they weren't the necessary ones. She didn't bring with her a stethoscope, a tongue depressor, or even urine flasks to test them. It hadn't crossed her mind days before that the hospital could be bombed, in part because she would have known specifically on her report or she would have heard the declaration of war from town gossip. Such thing left her with only her healing chakra to help. And although that was more than enough, she didn't want to tire herself every single day like that.
Their injuries will remain tender for months, healing very slowly because of deep gashes, stab wounds and/or cut-off limbs. Of course, since not everyone is recuperating from their bruises or internal damage, the rest of people whose houses were destroyed in the wave of attacks are also approached. And soon, there's a line of Shinobi and civilians both walking calmly to the Shelter that's ten minutes away—she estimates, looking at the pace they're going.
Hiro is at the front of the long group, there are other two medics at the sides, and other two further down the line, closer to the end. Sakura, in turn, is going around the place to make sure no one is left behind, alongside another medic whose name she doesn't recall. She makes sure no one is hiding under fallen buildings or asleep against walls. After finding no one, and making sure to expand their chakras in the zone and spotting no other living person in the place, they catch up with the group and start walking at the end, tired but alert.
She takes her eyes away from the road, looks at the man walking three feet to her right, and tries to make out his profile under the moonlight. She remembers him from the meeting they had thirty minutes ago, but she can't come up with a name. He's her height, lean, and of dark complexity.
She sighs.
"Is it usually this hot in Ame?" She casually asks, hoping to start a conversation with the man, hoping she didn't come as too forward or blunt. If she's going to be walking for ten minutes in this weather, she might as well be entertained.
The man looks at her and strikes a smile like he's been waiting for a conversation to actually happen, eyes wrinkling with the motion of his lips and sparkling in a colour sky blue. Eyes so blue, even in the dark of the night, and smile so reassuring and warm that she's immediately thrown back to the meeting. Naruto's warm, friendly smile flashes in her head and eyes look at her for a second, making her smile back for no reason at all. This man's physique is completely different from her best friend's, nevertheless, she doesn't feel as alone in this unfamiliar village anymore.
He's the doctor from Zetusen village. The name still escapes her.
"Actually, yeah. It's because it's often raining, so the levels of humidity are high here," he explains, shoving his hands into his deep ninja pants pockets. She glances at the motion and succinctly gets an image of someone else, with his vest and shoving his only hand into the same coloured pants as this man. It's only for a moment, but it leaves her breathless as if he was standing right there with her.
First she thinks of Naruto, and now her brain plays tricks on her and decides to plant Sasuke's habits in her already disordered line of thought. Must be the tiredness of the events from the day, she concludes.
She coughs to hide her embarrassment for staring for too long at the man's trousers, probably looking like some perverted thirteen-year-old fangirl. She quickly looks at the people walking leisurely a few feet in front of them, thankful that at least it's nighttime and he might not have noticed.
"I see. I just hope the shelter has air conditioning."
He laughs a little and she tries to pinpoint a time when Sasuke laughed as freely as this man, and as loudly, but she finds no answer. The silence is presented to them in the most convenient of ways and she holds on to it as much as her fingers can grasp the air. Before she can interrupt said silence, though, she's left staring once again at the nothingness of the streets, mind moving time back to when warm, dark eyes looked at her under the roof of her apartment, or the cold of the night after a long shift at the hospital, or on hotter days walking next to each other.
It's like time stops and there is no humidity making her sweaty, no steps sounding around her, and no mission. She lets herself think of him, of his warm eyes—warm eyes that are not even his at all, but rather his late brother's, implanted there with pain and resolve and Sakura sometimes has trouble thinking that she's not really looking at his, but at Itachi's gaze. She shudders. She shifts her focus to his straight nose and thin lips. It's like she forgets about everything else, and there is only him.
His hand touching her forearm when she's ready to leave for her mission, and moving it away fast as if it burnt, anyway leaving goosebumps all over her body. Her face against his warm, broad chest after he catches her in the cold of one night when she's close to fainting from chakra depletion; the way he carries her over his shoulder to her apartment, leaves her on the bed and wraps her in the blanket carefully. His breath hitching after she puts her hands on his chest, stands on her tiptoes, and innocently kisses his cheek after having dinner with him and Naruto. The feel of his calloused palm encircling around her hand to take the knife away, in her kitchen, and cut the tomatoes himself. His hand taking off her hair clip, moving past her cheeks to let her hair flow, his calm voice telling her she has let it grow. Her eyes wetting with unspilled tears which flow down like a waterfall as soon as the door closes with a click.
She glances down at her bracelet, touching it subconsciously and smiling to herself.
With a sense of dread, she recalls the exact moment when she started telling herself to stop thinking about him and his enigmatic actions. She recalls exactly why she started telling herself so.
Part of it is because there's the familiar itch, she remembers, crawling at her skin at the anxiety of Sasuke leaving again for a long period of time and the fact that she has to wait, and wait, and wait. Apart from the itch, the waiting and the unreciprocated love hit her again like a punch to the gut. She holds her breath, suddenly remembering all the reasons why she told herself to focus on her work and not think of Sasuke to start with, months ago—weeks, days, even.
She shakes her head, not very clear on what to do at this point.
To start with, the man hasn't been exactly close to her lately. Not that he's ever... Close, but he's been more distant lately, for some reason she can't arrive at.
On top of that, she gets fearful from time to time whenever her stupid brain decides to think he's going to leave and never come back. And even though she knows he wouldn't do that to Team Seven, it bugs her. At least, she likes to think he wouldn't do that to them anymore. But she knows him, and he can't be in Konoha for too long.
She also can't help but hurt inside every time she sees him so... So there, so beautiful and captivating and perfect. She hurts when she can't be a part of his life, in a more personal way, or when she wants to reach out and hug him until his demons take a few steps away—because she knows that they'll never truly leave, no matter how much time passes or how much effort is put into making him cope, and she can't help but ponder on how the unconscious mind is an interesting thing. She knows she can't just burst into his personal life, proclaim herself his, and hug him until he feels the soothing effect of forgiveness.
But that doesn't mean she doesn't want to. Most of the time, all she wants is to be there for him and help in any way possible.
She loves him so much. And even if she tells herself that she wants to focus on her work and stop hurting and stop waiting and stop giving her everything when he's present, she knows she can't. It's impossible; it's in her nature. She would so much as give her life for that man, and then a little more.
She recalls all the months she's been crying over him, spilling tears because she was so tired of waiting and expecting and receiving one needle a myriad of hay. In its essence, because he wouldn't love her back like she does him. In its highest pure colour, because she's been waiting for something never to arrive.
She shakes her head. How much more stupid can she be?
Sasuke had tapped her forehead years ago, with a promise and words of gratitude she still holds dear to her heart. A promise to come back to her. And when he finally did, months ago, she set her expectations so high that she didn't realise the reality of it all. Sasuke can't love her like she loves him. He can't, it's not physically and emotionally possible for such a damaged, used, manipulated, defensive, hurt, and scarred man. The events in his life don't let him love freely and expressively like she does. The events in his life don't let him express his emotions correctly and voice his deepest concerns out loud like she does.
If anything, he has just started to heal.
She mentally berates herself for thinking otherwise.
"Doctor Haruno?"
She whips her head to the right. The doctor with blue eyes stares at her with a frown marrying his delicate features. She stares back as if she had missed two years of her life and had to get filled in with all the details.
"Are you alright? Excuse me for being so intrusive, but I've noticed you've tripped over yourself twice already," he says, murmuring the words as if he doesn't want anyone else to hear.
She, in turn, gasps audibly. She hadn't noticed how much time she'd spent staring at no spot in particular, much less that she had tripped twice. She was so entrapped in her thoughts that she hadn't been paying attention to the environment.
"Oh, I..." She looks away for a moment, snapping out of her thoughts before looking back at him with an apologetic smile. "No, I'm fine, just deep in thought. Today has been pretty busy." Not the complete truth, but truth nonetheless.
He nods and they both stop walking when the line unanticipatedly stops moving, no warnings given.
"What's wrong?" He inquires, concern lacing his voice as he stands on his tip toes to see what's happening beyond them.
"We're probably at the shelter already. I guess Hiro-san is opening it." She sighs and hunches her shoulders she speaks, a protection barrier to the world.
The doctor looks her with his thick eyebrows up, disbelief written over his eyes at the familiar addressing she uses for her superior. Even if the disbelief is clear as glass on his face, and even if she gets to look at such expression before it morphs into a stoic normality, he doesn't comment on it.
"Look, it's moving again," she points to the line up ahead, starting to advance to what seems to be inside the shelter.
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By the time the doors of the shelter lock behind Sakura and the other doctor, it's ten at night.
The lights are on, and she's slightly surprised they still work after all this time. Although, then again, they weren't used during the war for that much time.
The shelter inside is bright and spacious, with more than enough space for an army of Shinobi from the village. The ceiling is tall, so much so that she has to crane her neck in order to look at it properly. The walls are white, the floors are a grey kind of wood, and the stairs leading up to a small hallway on the second floor are of a navy blue.
"Sakura-san, glad to see you made it here," Hiro exclaims, muscled arms folded over his chest and a smile on his face. Sakura looks away from the decorations all around her to look at him.
"You shouldn't expect any less from me," she says with a smile of her own. "And just Sakura is fine, by the way."
"Alright, just Sakura, wanna go upstairs? The storage room is there if I remember correctly. We can see what the shelter has that everyone needs."
She rolls her eyes at him and nods, a smile still implanted on her face.
"Hey, do you know if the air conditioning still works here?" She questions while they go up the stairs, not caring to hold onto the railings that most likely would leave splinters in her hands anyway.
Hiro doesn't look back when he answers. "There's actually someone looking over that right now. It should work, though."
They reach the second floor. As if on cue, and before Sakura can open her mouth to leave a comment, a rush of cold air comes from the wall on Sakura's right, and they share a look before laughing knowingly.
"Come on, I think this is the room," he walks toward a large wooden door at the end of the hallway, rummaging through his pockets in order to find the key. "As the head doctor, I have a copy of the shelter, as well as any door inside it. I didn't think I would ever have to use it, though."
When they enter the storage room, Sakura stills.
Rows and rows and rows of supplies face them. The air around them seems constricting as if contained in this room for too long. The dust particles shine below the only lightbulb in the room, its light illuminated most, but not all, of the rectangular space.
She finds that the more she looks around, the less light there is.
"Well, here we are. The storage room." Hiro exclaims, throwing his arms up in one swift motion and stretching them over his head. The muscles constrict and protest at the sudden motion, the only activity the arms had had being the lifting motion in order to heal.
"This is pretty amazing. Back in Konoha's shelter, we don't really have these many supplies. This room is twice the size of Konoha's," she discloses, taking a few steps to the nearest metal rack.
She touches a box in front of her line of vision and opens it with minimal strength, peering inside of it with curiousness. A blanket and a folded sleeping mat face her. When she turns to the right and sees the same kind of boxes, she tilts her head up to observe the same boxes were high up on the taller shelves she can't reach.
It seems as if she takes too much time gazing at the boxes around her, for Hiro clicks his tongue and stands next to her in a heartbeat, nonchalant and crossing his arms over his chest.
"What's wrong?" He asks, concern lacing his deep voice.
Sakura shakes her head a little, still looking up, going over a hundred different questions in her analyzing brain. As soon as she processes his question in her mind, she stops all the questions she has in the air. She tilts her head down again, enough to look at him. The movement is simple and small, and she wonders for a moment why this is.
How tall are you?
"How tall are you?"
"What?"
She doesn't immediately redden, it takes a while. It also takes her a while to realise she had spoken her thoughts aloud. But as soon as she realises, her face reddens instinctively.
"Just..." She slaps a hand to her warm face, groaning internally and outwardly as she drags it down. "Just forget it. Do all the boxes in this room contain blankets and sleeping mats?"
She's not looking at him anymore, but she notices he shifts from one leg to the other uncomfortably. "Um, yeah I think so."
She nods and walks along the sides of the racks, passing by them and looking for something else. Other than those boxes, she finds cans at the back. Cans with no expiration date, she thinks as she grabs one and looks it over, turning it in her hand. She leaves the can aside and looks around the back of the place, finding boxes at the bottom of the rack, on the bottom shelf. These are different than all the other ones, so she opens one of them and widens her eyes at the sight of vials and expensive medical equipment inside, fit for one medic to use on more than ten people. Sakura swallows her excitement, turns around with the intent of looking for Hiro, and instead jumps slightly when said man is already in front of her.
He laughs wholeheartedly at her expression of distress and next at her pout for being laughed at. There are still remnants of laughter when she speaks, voice biting back snide remarks, he can guess.
"As I was about to say, look," she voices, inching the delicate box in his direction. "There are three more boxes like this. It should suffice for the small tests we need to run and to heal remaining small injuries."
"I'm certain we can work with this, we should bring them downstairs to the other doctors and then..." He trails off, looking at the vials with interest. "Then we can all start bringing down those mats and blankets, no? We'll give one to each person and hope we can all get some sleep before morning comes." His brown eyes gaze up at her from long eyelashes, and another question pops in her head.
"Can we? How many people are here compared to boxes?"
After five long seconds of pondering, he utters his answer.
"Actually, you're right. It would be best if we line up everyone and make a count. Then, we can estimate if relatives need to share commodities from a shortage of boxes.
"Sounds good, let's go." She grabs another of the delicate boxes like she was holding a feather and he grabs hold of the remaining two with just as much ease.
As they walk to the both entrance and exit of the dust-covered room, he says something that, yet again, curves the sides of her lips up.
"I'm six feet and two inches tall, by the way."
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There are one hundred and eighty people both civilian and Shinobi in total at the shelter. This number is not counting the medics, who have tents set up right outside the village. Sakura and Hiro go upstairs again and count the boxes, finding that, in fact, there were an astonishing and relieving two hundred.
In thirty minutes, everyone downstairs is accommodating their beds and draping over themselves the thin but comforting beige blanket, and there's a peace reigning over them that they probably haven't felt in the past forty-eight hours. They finally can go to sleep.
Sakura and the other medic nins are still in the storage room, chattering amongst each other before they start leaving as a group. Sakura can only guess they're leaving to their tents outside of Amegakure, and she falters.
The fact that she doesn't have a tent makes itself very clear in her mind and she lingers in the room a little more. Grabbing hold of one of the few leftover boxes, she takes out the dark sleeping mat and the light blanket, tucking them under her blood-stained arms and leaving the opened box on the shelf.
"Sakura, you coming?" Hiro's blonde head pops in from outside the room, the chattering of the doctors moving farther and farther away.
She looks at him and walks toward the door, thinking that he stays behind to wait for her, for he has to lock the door.
"I think I'm gonna sleep here too. I left my tent back at home and, even if I had a tent set up outside the gates, this is a good idea." She steps outside, brushing her arm against his. "If any injuries start acting up or we get another attack, I can be here to help."
There's a flash of recognition and pride in Hiro's eyes before he enters the room with determination and comes out the same way she did, same-looking blanket and bed as hers.
"I'll stay with you, in case."
Sakura doesn't really question him. After all, one doctor for more than one hundred people could turn out to be chaos on the long run.
They set up their stuff on the far left of the shelter, downstairs. Away from everyone but close enough to wake up if anyone needs help, and close enough to the door in case of an emergency.
The sleeping mat on Sakura's back should feel like she's lying directly on the cold, hard ground, but to her, it feels like heaven.