Disclaimer: You should know the drill by now.
Hatake Kakashi felt bad. He felt really guilty. It was because of him that one of his cute little genin was laying in the hospital bed after dying from chakra exhaustion.
Sure, at this moment the genin was alive and disappointed that Kakashi had not let them jump back into training, but she had still died. For three agonising minutes his world had crumbled. He'd lost another person, another team mate, no, it was worse than losing a teammate, he lost a student. Someone who he was supposed to nurture and train, someone he was meant to guide and protect.
Kakashi's world had stopped the minute Haruno Sakura's heart had. It still had not restarted even though she was alive. He felt as if he should crawl into a hole and die.
It was a feeling that he was used to, he thought that he'd gotten better, his genin's had helped him slightly. But now he realized just how easy it was for that, too, to be taken away.
It was his fault too. He'd given her that book, told her to come back only when she was able to read it. He thought she was smart enough to realize that he'd given her an impossible task, to look underneath the underneath. But instead she'd took his word and exhausted herself doing the impossible.
Not that he was blaming her at all. It was all his fault.
To the outside person he looked as if he felt nothing. He was the perfect shinobi, cold and unfeeling, unfazed. But that was furthest from the truth as possible. He was, in fact, very effected by what occurred.
Lately, since she started training more, he'd thought of Sakura like she was one of the boys. Not just treating her as if she was like the boys, but as if she was one of them. Like a powerful young genin that was arrogant and knew nothing of the world, simply ready to charge into any situation.
So he set up obstacles for her, made it so that he could control her cockiness and guide her. Something that he thought was a lost cause for the boys as Sasuke didn't care about anyone's opinion and Naruto had spent so long ignoring the negative comments spat at him that he now thought himself unstoppable.
Kakashi had assumed that Sakura's willingness to exclude raw and channelled chakra as a sign of the arrogant he'd seen many times in her teammates. He'd thought that she was just so cocky about her ability to control chakra that she disregarded her own safety, something that Naruto and Sasuke often did.
But now he realized that Sakura was the furthest from the boys. While they had a goal and dream driving them to train, Sakura did not have that, or if she did she had not shared it. She was only training so hard because she was lost and confused. So many things had changed for her in the short amount of time since their mission at wave. At first her training was to help release her larger chakra reserve, though Kakashi was sure that it had become more than that.
And Kakashi felt that there were big things in store for her and she would need to be strong. Kakashi didn't apologise, he didn't really know how to, but he could make up for his mistakes in his own way. So Kakashi would make sure that Sakura, and the rest of team seven, were ready for those big things.
Do you feel depressed right now? Inner asked, laying down in the dark place in my mind.
I looked up at the bright ceiling. A contradiction to how I was feeling at the moment. Yes Inner, I am feeling depressed.
I can't believe how much of a jerk Deihara was. Inner sighed.
I was more referring to how we died.
Yeah that sucks too. Inner nodded. But I was totally shipping Yawarakai and Deihara. I even came up with their ship name.
Ship name?
Yea, Like how you and Sasuke would be SasuSaku, or how me and Sasuke would be Inner Sasuke, or InnSasu, or Sasuner, or-
I get it Inner. I cut her off.
So do you want to hear the name I made? She said rolling onto her stomach.
No.
Well too bad, I'm going to tell you anyway. Yawahara. I toyed with some other ones but I found that was the best. Deirakai was in the running for a little but eventually I realized that it was a horrible shipping name. Sure it's not as bad as NaruSasu but then again I just might be disturbed by that pairing and not the name. She shivered in disgust.
Inner, I don't care about Yawarakai and Deihara. They are dead and have been for years, maybe decades or centuries and I am more stuck on the fact that we died and that we could have left Otou-san and Okaa-san. Did you not see how upset Kakashi-sensei was? I closed my eyes as I felt my chest tighten, my eyes stinging behind the lids.
I hated when I disappointed that people I looked up to and respected. Like Kakashi-sensei, he had put so much faith and trust in me and I had lost my temper and now he was angry at me.
I'm sorry Outer. Inners words were almost whispered and I immediately felt remorse.
No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gotten upset with you, I just frustrated and I don't really want to hear about boys. There are more important things.
I felt as Inner stopped words from coming out her mouth and it made me very grateful, instead she nodded and we fell into a thick silence. Right now I couldn't take noise but still the silence in my mind unnerved me, I didn't like Inners silence. Inner was never really quiet, even when she did not speak to me she hummed in my head, my mind was never so silent and empty and it bothered me some.
Will you sing for me? I asked softly aware that Inner, like myself, had a horrible voice and could not carry a tune but still. I could not handle silence.
Of course Outer.
And then the silence was broken by a pitchy and slightly out of tune song that her Kaa-san always sung.
Soon I fell back to sleep.
I glared at the book. The text nothing but scribbles to me. There was nothing resembling any kind of Kanji's I knew of. And for some strange reason, Kakashi seem to have been writing sideways because that was the only way the strange Kanji line up.
I was so utterly frustrating, all I did was stare at the pages, none of the books on breaking codes down worked, and I even checked books and scrolls in the Hokage library. Little good that did when I didn't even know where to start.
The last two weeks after getting out of the hospital were busy, instead of easing up on my training like it had feared Kakashi-sensei would do he gave me more. Though he was still late and still lazy he made sure that we worked. We trained until we could not move and then he made us train more, if we couldn't move our bodies we read scroll upon scroll. About Genjutsu, ninja jobs, different types of kenjutsu, taijutsu forms and more. And when our brains hurt just as much as our bodies we did chakra exercises. Dispelling Genjutsu's, casting them, water and tree walking, over and over again. At the end of the day we were all drained of energy, chakra and had massive headaches, even Naruto who always seemed to have an abundance of the first two.
But worse than that was when Kakashi asked everyday if I had worked out his book and it rubbed me raw every time I had to bite out a no. I had stopped my search for answers about my kekei genkai in favour of trying to work it out. I did not help at all.
My brain throbbed every time I looked at the pages. Still I took to walking around with that stupid book in my hands, hoping that suddenly, if I looked hard enough, it would suddenly make sense.
Right now I was sitting at the table in my dining room at home glaring at the book. I would be at the library searching books, and in a way I was, I had sent a shadow clone. But today was Otou-san's birthday and I was helping Oka-san cook dinner for when he got home from work. I didn't know why she insisted I be there to help cook, I was a horrible cook, more likely to create an incurable then I was to create an actual edible meal.
I sat at the table now, banished from the kitchen because I had managed to burn the rice at the bottom yet it still was raw on the top. Completely amazing my mother who had left for only five minutes to get some herbs out of the garden, how was I was able to do that in our rice cooker was a mystery to even me.
Yeah, we don't have memories of cooking rice from Haku. Probably because the whole traveling with a missing-nin thing. Inner said shrugging.
"Sakura, I need you to go to the market for me. It seemed your father got into all the strawberries when I wasn't looking. I swear that man is really a shinobi." Mebuki, my kaa-san, said.
"Hai." I said getting up, maybe a walk would clear my head and make sense of Kakashi's book.
"I need a few other things too while you're there, here, I made a list." She handed me a list and money. "Maybe while you're there you can get your tou-chan a present."
I smiled and shook my head, I had already gotten my dad a present and kaa-san knew it. Though most of the year I regretted it, I was the reason for all of my otou-san's horribly corny jokes. Each year, on his birthday, I would get him a new joke book and throughout the year suffer as he tried his best to tell as many of them as he could to anyone and everyone that would listen. Much to mine and my kaa-sans embarrassment. Still, I found myself at the bookstore every year picking out their newest and largest joke book.
I didn't answer, instead walking out with a goodbye, money and list in omen hand a book in the other. Carefully I store the money and list away in a little purse I took from the closet hall. I was wearing civilian clothing, a simple yellow summer dress that had no pockets so the purse was very much needed. It was a lovely, hot day, the sun beat down making even light coats and jackets portable furnaces. I wasn't wearing my Hitai-ate either, instead, I wore a matching yellow ribbon to hold my hair out of my face.
I walk leisurely down the road, enjoying the light wind, the birds chirping, the children laughing. Konoha was such an amazing place.
I took out Kakashi's book again. Flipping through all the pages again, like I had done countless times, trying to find something new, something that just popped out and made everything else clear.
I did this all the way to the market and while getting all the things on the list. Totally engrossed with the pages in front of me, it was enviable that I would end up walking into someone.
I looked up, apologising and caught the face of the person who I had walked into. If I hadn't recognised his face, his next words, or rather word, confirmed who it was.
"Troublesome." He mumbled as he shrugged away my apologises.
"Shikamaru. How are you?" I didn't know much about Shikamaru, only the things everyone knew. He was lazy and he was smart, smarter than smart, he was a genius and no amount of sleeping in class or troublesome could change that. Though we weren't friends or even slightly close, he was still nice, he once helped me pick up my books, sure he complained about it being troublesome but he still helped.
"Fine, I guess. My Kaa-san has my picking up some stuff for her. It's a drag, the day is perfect for cloud watching." He said, hold up his own bag of stuff.
"Mine too, it's my Tou-sans birthday and he ate all the strawberries this morning before work." I said as we started to walk together. Shikamaru lived in the Nara compound, which was close to the civilian compound where I lived.
We walked in silence, me running my eyes over the book's page again and again, trying to make sense in the kanji written there.
"What language is that?" Shikamaru asked.
I turned my head to look at him to find his eyes on the book.
"Language?" I asked in confusion.
"Yeah, it's definitely not Japanese. It looks foreign." He said.
I stopped walking, he too stopped and I stared at him.
"How can you tell it's not just coded?" I asked.
"Well, the brush marks are heaviest here." He said pointing to the top left hand corner. "Which means that they start writing from left. The paint drags a bit here too." He said pointing to another part. "Which means that the person who wrote it did so with a left hand and was writing left to right. Plus, none of these marking follow any kind of code I've seen."
I stared at the book in a new light. Another language. Not a code. Of course Kakashi sensei would have coded it in another language, some far off foreign language that no one heard of. While anyone who happened to get their hands on the book and got past the genjutsu, there was still the code, the code that was not a code but a language. Who knew, maybe after I had translated it I'd find out that it was coded too?
But right now none of that matter, because I was a step closer to finally cracking this book. I was looking up code breaking when I should have been looking up foreign languages.
I looked up, suddenly remembering that I did not step in the right direction, I was shoved by the laziest, smartest and most surprising ninja I knew.
Okay, I wouldn't got that far. I know Kakashi is lazier, Sasuke is smarter and Naruto is more surprising.
I ignored inner and stared up at Shikamaru grinning. I bounced, laughing and smiling like a loon at Shikamaru, his eyes were surprised, eyes slightly wide and he had taken a step backward. I took no notice though, I was happy, so happy and it was all because of this lazy genius.
"Shikamaru you are the most amazing person ever." I grinned, letting a joyous laugh out and without thought, I jumped at the unsuspecting boy. Both my hands captured his face in my hands and pulled him towards me. I kissed his thoughtlessly. And it took just a second to realize what I had done, what I was doing and for panic to set in, but it was already too late and an overwhelming feeling shot through me. I could not pull away, I just could not do it.
My stomach pooled with an utterly pleasurable warmth, the lips that I pressed mine against were cool and slightly chapped but I felt the heat spreading out of me and into them. I could not stop myself from deepening the kiss and pulling the boy closer. I could feel something drawing out of him, I felt myself pulling something out as I inserted warmth into his seemingly cold being. I could not help it, and I knew I was not the only one who felt this amazing feeling because Shikamaru, the lazy boy that he was, was clinging to me, forcing me against him in movements that were far from lazy.
I felt incredible, I was feeling everything so intensely that it was slightly frightening. And that, the fear, is what brought me down from the clouds I had floated to, I ripped my ls away from his my shocked gaze met his. His eyes were wide, his lips bruised and bright red, his hair, while still in his custom hair style was slightly mussed. His eyes, truly open for the first time since I'd known him, they were glazed though, my heart stopped for a moment. What would happen if he slipped into a coma like Deihara when Yawarakai kissed him? What had I don't to him? My fears though, were completely unfounded because he was simply in shock from being very thoroughly kissed very suddenly.
After a few seconds when he did not fall to the ground and into a comma, I found the strength to do the only logical thing to do in such a situation. I ran.
I ripped myself out of the embrace that we had fallen into and I ran all the way home, not once looking back and I did. Not stop until I was safely in my house with the door closed, and locked, behind me.
My heart pounded in my ear, my breath was heavy though the run was not long or hard for me at all. I was tingling all over and the warmth that had spread though my body had not yet vanished. My mind was blank for a long time until one question shattered the silence of my mind that not even Inner broke.
What had just happened?
Okay, how was that? Kind of surprising, I know, I didn't even mean for it to happen just one minute I had Shikamaru to come help out and the next he reaped his own payment and stole a kiss. Kind of, received, whatever, the thing is that Shikamaru and Sakura kissed. What's your thoughts on it? Did I totally ruin the story?
Also, sorry I haven't been updating, I've been really busy, we found out that my mum had cancer last year and I haven't had time to update. Plus I lost all my pre written chapters. Which was like four chapters for this story. I'll be trying to update more but it might be harder for me. Sorry.
Oh and I totally updated some of my other stories too as a birthday present to me I'll get to read all your amazing reviews.
