"This is such a waste of time," she heard someone mutter behind her. "Cover for me. I'm going to slip out the back—"
"This is a mandatory training all shinobi must go through to remain a part of the hokage's forces. No need to whisper, you are entirely free to leave. Just make sure you take your hitai-ate off first."
Despite the coolly delivered threat, the room's inhabitants still darted skeptical looks at each other. Sakura commiserated. Really—had no other shinobi-owned space been free other than a classroom in the Academy for this particular 'training'?
Perhaps, Tsunade truly was that sadistic.
Her gaze passed over her fellow members in Team Seven, then Team Eight, Team Ten, and Team Guy. All that was missing from the scenery was Iruka. And, in point of fact, every few seconds Kiba would peek over his shoulder—like he was concerned the teacher might just pop out of the wall work, catch him unawares, and smack him with a folder like he used to on a daily basis.
"Why is Team Guy here?" Naruto pondered moodily. "Didn't they have to do this last year?"
Sai's mouth twitched. "They must have missed the date last year due to a mission, like I did."
Naruto gave an annoyed groan beside them. Unfortunately, the noise was loud enough to catch the attention of their 'instructor.'
"You," the man said, his silky voice grating against Sakura's ears much like a too-sweet dessert. "Since you have so much to say, I'll leave it to you to introduce the topic of today's training."
Kiba was abruptly assailed by a loud coughing fit. Shino patted his back stoically.
Naruto's face scrunched into a look of intense concentration. "…when two people like each other very much after, hm, maybe five chapters? But sometimes less. But on average, definitely, five—"
The instructor didn't bother letting him finish.
"You?"
Sai's head lifted, his face unreadable. "The topic of today's conversation is sex, an issue I have found inexplicably makes many of my peers bashful, though I am sure they regularly engage in said activity. I have also found, in my experience, that definitions are often subjective determinations," He added after a short pause. "I once read that everything in the world is about sex except sex, and that sex itself is ultimately about power. If this is in fact the case, then I suppose today's discussion will translate into a discussion on the nature of power."
"Is that so? Yes, I suppose many wise scholars have indeed found sex and power to be…inextricable," the instructor commented softly, eyes glinting.
It was a dangerous line of thought, Sakura realized too late. Her lips throbbed in hateful remembrance.
Fuck. And she had thought she had managed to wipe it from her mind entirely.
It had been two nights since she had returned home with a drenched uniform cold as ice, the door still swinging shut behind her as she made the hand signs to remove her disguise (sloppy, she knew, but at the moment, she could not bring herself to care).
Two nights, since she had pulled off her uniform and tossed it into the corner of the room. Undid the binding around her chest. Filled the tub in her cramped bathroom to near the top.
Leaned back, letting her head partially submerge in the water, just until her ears.
Forgotten shortly after. Now, her mind suddenly wouldn't let her ignore it any longer—mysteriously prompted again—and turned the puzzle over with almost manic energy.
The Kakashi she had thought she had known and the one in front of her now—both frustrating enigmas. She wanted to dissect. Lay open. Until she had all the pieces in her hands, and she made those pieces make sense.
The theory wasn't implausible, was it? It had long seemed to Sakura that the copy-nin was a force, almost above all else, of arrogance and egotism. Perhaps, his….actions had in fact been driven by some impulse to overpower her, to resort to other means when fists had failed. She would be remiss, after all, to forget the oiran, and how he had taken her: obligatorily, meaninglessly. Why did the copy-nin touch an oiran in the first place, if not to exert his power over a being obligated to comply—
"Move."
Her lips tightened. A soft imperative, which from any other would have been a man begging a boy to save his own life—but not Kakashi, because that simply did not make sense, did it? And what place exactly, Sakura reflected coldly, did that admitted oddity have in this?
"For civilians, we may settle this as a matter of opinion," the instructor said nonchalantly—she blinked, having managed to forget where she was—"As shinobi, however, what is true is that you will face sex as your opponent; it will be weaponized against you."
"As you all know," he continued smoothly, "there are shinobi branches that utilize and practice seduction for the purposes of information gathering and assassination. Konoha, as it happens, is one of them—it is the branch I belong to and, perhaps, one that some of you may join in the future."
Based on the discomfited expressions of the particular people in the room, this appeared generally unlikely.
"Sex may also, however, be weaponized against you far more literally—and I use the term 'sex' loosely here," he continued, still remarkably calm. "That is, as a form of violence and a means of denigrating your person—without any pretense or appeal to your consent. I am here to warn you. At worst, to prepare you."
Her gaze shot up as the instructor pivoted and walked slowly through the aisle in the middle of the room. "A common misconception," he continued quietly, "is that women alone are victims of sexual assault. If you believe this, I will have to disillusion you: the kind that engages in such behavior often does not care to discriminate."
Finally, the instructor had every member of the room watching him with rapt, grim fascination.
"Whatever gender you ascribe to, you are not impervious."
He gave a humorless smile. "Now that I finally have your full attention, let us begin."
Two hours later, Sakura and Naruto sat on either side of Sai at the counter of Ichiraku Ramen. Unlike usual, their group was entirely silent.
His words had been enough, hadn't they? To bludgeon reality over them all—and there had been so much blindness in that room, her own too, conveniently pretending what had almost happened hadn't. Caught unawares, without weapons, thirteen and ill-prepared—civilians, not shinobi, but that mattered little. She hadn't been able to handle the reality of it then, so she'd buried it within her, housed it inside like a hidden shard that only grew sharper with time.
It pierced her again, now, as keenly as kunai blade deep within where she could not soothe the pain.
Lighthearted conversation and laughter drifted around them, but Sakura felt largely distanced from it. Lifting her gaze from her bowl of ramen felt like lifting a tree with the effort it suddenly required, when she finished her meal. She made brief eye contact with Teuchi, who shot her a look of concern before directing his gaze meaningfully to Naruto.
Sakura surveyed her fellow teammate and understood. Naruto had barely even stirred the spoon in his still-full bowl. They sat in silence for some time more, until Naruto himself broke the silence.
"That was…" he began, quietly.
Sakura nodded, unsure what to say in response. The training had been eye-opening for everyone, if in different ways—all sobering.
Her gaze flitted over the restaurant, before following the trail of condensation her glass had made as it was placed in front of her. A minute movement to the left suddenly caught her attention. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at.
Then, her focus zeroed in on the way Sai's too-pale hands gripped the bowl in front of him. And the way they trembled, just ever so slightly.
She looked now slowly upwards from beneath her lashes. Had they been like that the entire time?
The horrible, unspeakable tightness only continued to gather in her chest.
She heard a shattering sound. Oh—that had been her. Her hand, which had been clutching the bowl, had clenched too tightly.
"Who?" Her voice was deathly quiet.
He jerked like he had been electrocuted, eyes widening.
For a long moment, it looked as though he would deny it altogether, plastering yet another plastic smile on his face. But then, consideringly, his glance flickered between her and Naruto.
"A woman," Sai said finally, blankly. He blinked again, looking down at his hands as though he were seeing them for the first time. "It was not like that. I agreed to it. I didn't find it enjoyable, certainly, but then—until fairly recently, I had thought it impossible for my body to even derive pleasure from sex with another person."
Naruto's eyes were slitted, his fingers curled into tight fists. It had been part of a mission, Sakura read between the lines.
"But you're not part of the seduction branch."
It didn't take a genius to figure out that Sai lacked the necessary social skills to have been that type of black ops member.
Sai's coal black eyes drilled into her.
No words had to pass between them.
Whatever line of work Sai had belonged to, it had been dark underbelly of Konoha's operations, under the radar and unregulated. There had been no training, no vetting, nothing. And that way saying something, given what Sakura had already found to be the case in ANBU.
As children, they had all been told that the mysterious, masked ANBUs—while enigmatic and frightening to the common citizen of Konoha—were the trusted confidantes of the hokages: eyes, ears, and, indeed, extension of heart. The hokage alone was supposed to know the faces behind the masks, the ANBU as the humans they were: their histories and their personal sacrifices for their village, when no public monument could recognize them.
Sakura knew now, of course, that this wasn't the exact case. She had no clue what went on with the captains—but she knew none of her peers met with the hokage on a personal basis. Pointedly, the organization was simply too big for Tsunade, or any hokage, to micromanage and track every ANBU to that mythologized extent. What Tsunade knew in detail was no doubt determined by a need-to-know basis, given how spread thin she was.
And look what had managed to slip through the cracks. Her teeth bit into her lip, drawing the iron taste of blood to her tongue.
"I know you can't tell us about your…background," Sakura said lowly, turning to face Sai fully.
"We'll figure it out ourselves." Naruto's back was ramrod straight, as stiff as though a string had been drawn up from his tailbone through to the top of his head.
Sai's mouth parted slightly, a small sound escaping. His eyes widened, as though shocked by the involuntary noise.
"And what if…" He paused, face smoothing. "What if what you learn changes what you may think of me."
Sai seemed to be under the misapprehension that whatever his teammates had thought of him so far had been generally positive. She didn't bother correcting him.
His face tensed as Naruto gripped his shoulder with bruising strength.
"I don't care," Naruto said slowly, vehemently. His blue eyes blazed. "What happened in the past doesn't matter. Only what all of us do now."
Sakura blinked. Naruto's gaze slid to her and he stared at her fiercely, daring her to—she didn't know.
She removed her hand from the counter and, after a moment of hesitation, slipped it down to near her side. Curling, she slid her fingers into the cool, smooth ones next to hers. She didn't look away from the bowl in front of her as she did it, face stoic. But she felt the pulse of breath beside her stutter. After a moment, the fingers entwined in hers tightened their hold.
They finished the meal with no more conversation, parting ways silently just as it became twilight.
The next day, Sakura received summons via the crow.
But of all the things she had expected, the last perhaps was the sea of individuals crowded in the locker rooms when she arrived. Sakura had been prepared to charge directly to her assigned locker to pull on her armor for another unsavory mission. Shortly after entering, she realized that would be patently impossible.
The room was packed beyond the point of maximum capacity, the conversation between its numerous inmates culminating into something deafening. The movement of bodies eventually moved her in an entirely different direction than she had originally intended. Fortunately, it was there that she found Hyena and Snail.
"What's going on?" she demanded, shooting a glare as she was knocked forward once more.
"Rounds," Hyena answered shortly, tying her hair up with a leather band with sharp, economic twists of her wrist.
"Rounds. What are…rounds?"
"Black ops members have to periodically defend their positions in ANBU," Snail explained delicately. "So we have rounds of spars in the training stadium without warning few times a year."
"To determine fitness," Hyena summarized shortly, rolling her shoulders as though already priming her body. "Weed out the weak; reshuffle, if appropriate, those who stay."
"And every ANBU member has to go through this?" Sakura demanded.
"Not every person," Snail allowed. "I suppose the captains have their own system among themselves."
"But for the rest of us, yes," finished Hyena. "So you better get armor on." She handed Sakura what seemed like a spare set from her locker.
Sakura strapped them on blindly. A thought suddenly occurred to her, and her eyes widened. "Wait. So that means I could be moved off of this team?"
Hyena looked at her strangely for her tone. "If you don't perform to standards."
"And what will happen then?"
"You don't need to be concerned, Crow-chan, you'll do fine!" Snail said with a cheerful punch to her shoulder. After a moment, she let her hand swing down. "You definitely won't be kicked out—that only happens to ANBU who are no longer physically capable of the role, and you still have all your body parts."
"My bet? You'll be booted off to a lower team," a new voice added—Bear, Sakura's identified sourly—"Don't know how you got here, Crow, but you're certainly going to face the due trial by fire now."
Sakura shrugged dismissively, eyes narrowed from behind her mask. Get booted off to a lower team? Excellent.
A loud bell rang through the room, cutting through the noise easily.
Snail nudged her. "People are heading out now. Finish strapping up and follow."
Nodding, Sakura finished tying her arm guards and fell into line behind her other teammates. They crossed through the lobby she had entered just ten minutes ago into the other section of the headquarters, which housed a giant stadium (that she had until now wondered at its purpose entirely).
When they entered, Sakura's mouth fell open.
Had she thought the locker rooms had contained all the ANBU? Clearly, most had already entered the stadium. Not all the seats were filled, but there were certainly more ANBU gathered in one place than she had ever seen in her life.
"So how does this work," Sakura muttered, still gaping. "Is there one bout at a time? Who chooses who you fight?"
"It's randomized," Hyena muttered back, leading them to where Raccoon sat. "And there are usually four to five spars at one time."
"Or we'd never fucking get out of here," Bear grunted.
"We each do three bouts in a row, short breaks in between of course," Snail explained cheerily. She pointed downwards where a long line of ANBU sat separate from the normal stadium seat, looking directly onto the fighting grounds. "After, the captains vote on whether or not we stay. If yes, then they decide where we go until the next rounds."
Hyena settled down into her seat with a short sigh of relief, rubbing her recently sprained ankle. She saw Sakura watching and added briefly, "Any of the captains can make a bid on you if they think you're more suitable for their team. Your current team captain can argue to keep you or let you go. They argue their cases before the group, but ultimately, all the captains vote, and majority decides."
"Ah," Sakura said, leaning back.
One of the figures among the captains stood up, and the stadium fell into silence.
"Some of you have been here for years; for others, this is your first time going through rounds. No matter the outcome, know that in carrying the will of fire, your past year of service has been—"
"Always wondered why he's commander," Bear said, bumping shoulders with Raccoon for all the world like he was at the movie theaters, talking just quietly enough so as not to get shushed. "You know?"
"Everyone knows you don't put your best soldier anywhere other than at the center of the battlefield," Raccoon offered without pause, as though he'd answered this question many times. After a short pause, he added. "Plus, the taichou is…young. He might have more experience than most of us, but—"
"He hasn't been alive long enough to match the commander's years," Hyena finished, nodding in agreement.
Sakura's scowled, so grateful for yet another reminder of how 'prodigious' their precious taichou was. She tapped her fingers lightly against her knees. "So…how many rounds have you been through?"
All four turned to look at her in one, eerily synchronized motion.
"Five under the copy-nin," Hyena answered first. "Fifteen or so before that."
"Five as well, twenty before that," said Snail.
Bear soundlessly held both hands with all fingers stretched. He didn't offer anything else.
Raccoon leaned toward her so that she could hear his muffled words. "Two with this team," she heard. "Twelve before."
In case it had been uncertain before, it was abundantly clear now how much her teammates' experience outclassed hers.
"Why am I on this team again?" she asked aloud.
No one was able to answer her.
"It's not that you're not an excellent shinobi, Crow-chan," Snail explained hurriedly. "It's just that, well, on the past few missions most of us have each been doing our own thing. None of us have really had the chance to observe the full extent of your skills."
"As I said," Bear said, the pleasure in his voice gratingly apparent, "there's no time like the present."
Sakura cracked her neck and shifted to look back to the fighting grounds. The commander had apparently just finished his speech and was in the process of sitting back down. Just as five pairs of names flashed on the screen, the large brass doors to the stadium cracked open again to admit one more figure.
Mismatched eyes scanned the crowds of ANBU—who abruptly went silent, even more quickly than they had for the commander—before he shunshined to an empty seat on the judging panel and reclined into his seat. His temperament was one of a predator long impatient with complacency, feet on the long table but vibrating with pent up energy.
It would take an idiot to miss that this was the last place the copy-nin wanted to be right now.
Sakura's mouth went tight at the first sight of Kakashi in days. He hadn't even bothered to wear the ANBU mask—not that it mattered much, she realized after a moment. It wasn't like he ever bothered to disguise his hair.
They all watched as the commander shifted in his chair to say something to Kakashi. But the copy-nin barely even tilted his head to acknowledge the words, attention seemingly focused somewhere else. After a moment, the commander appeared to give up and shifted to the center of his seat again.
"Are the combatants ready?" the older man boomed.
Ten figures walked onto the fighting grounds in response.
Shinobi on either side of the stadium erected tall barriers, protecting the audience from the combatants and the respective fights from interfering with each other.
Coins were handed out to each pair, and then flipped. Genjutsu, taijustsu, ninjutsu, or kenjutsu, Sakura noted, were spar options given to the combatants.
And then the rounds began.
Randomization, she learned soon, was both a good thing and a bad thing. Some of the pairs on the grounds proved themselves to be so unevenly matched that the spar ended in less than a minute. Others, however, suffered from the lack of disparity and dragged on for almost half an hour.
By noon Sakura was stir-crazy, ready to create a small explosion so that she could escape and grab something to fill her stomach. She regretted immensely now skipping breakfast that morning.
Snail's stomach grumbled loudly beside hers as well. She rubbed it apologetically.
Protein bars were passed around.
By mid-afternoon, only Raccoon had been called to the fighting grounds. He had won the first coin toss and finished a taijutsu bout with fair ease. The second, though, had been rougher—kenjutsu and not his choice; his opponent, a heavy-set man wielding a blade the width of Raccoon himself, had emerged the winner. But at the third bout, she had learned that ninjutsu was, in fact, Raccoon's real forte.
"Will he be alright?" she heard Bear ask Hyena.
She had nodded without hesitation. "His ninjutsu is good enough to compensate for his kenjutsu. No one's going to take him if taichou makes it clear he wants him to stay."
Whether Kakashi had, in fact, 'made it clear' was a bit suspect to Sakura. In truth, the commander had seemingly directed another question to the copy-nin again, Kakashi had not responded, and no one else at the table had consequently bothered to speak up.
So, on Kakashi's team Raccoon apparently stayed.
By early evening, the sky outside had deepened into the purple-pink-orange of twilight. With the dimmed lighting where they were sitting, it was easy, somehow despite the noise, for Sakura to imagine herself comfortably in her own room, just about to sleep. (She was…tired.) The sounds were loud but also fairly repetitive—white noise, really.
The spars in front of her all started to become the same.
She didn't exactly remember when she fell asleep. In truth, she wasn't really surprised that she had; she hadn't been getting much sleep the past few nights, for some reason or the other.
Next thing she knew, she was being roughly jabbed awake, from both sides of her.
"Huh?" she grunted, snapping up in her seat. "What?"
Bear looked at her like she'd been running around with her head cut off.
"The board," Hyena hissed, looking both mildly concerned and generally disapproving.
Her gaze snapped downwards and landed on the list of the next ten names.
Hers was listed there.
"Oh," she sighed tiredly. "Right, then."
Swinging herself onto the staircase, she didn't bother to shunshin and merely walked the rest of the way down. In the distance, she could see another figure already where she was supposed to be.
Sighing again, she hastened her pace.
As she stepped onto the fighting grounds, the full force of the stadium lights beat down on her. Sakura grimaced with discomfort; the sheer heat radiating from the strength of the light was a force to reckon with.
There was also—uncomfortably—a sort of nervous energy in the air, which she hadn't been able to feel from where she had been sitting, distant from the action. She felt it now. The hairs on her arms pricked and blood started pumping heavily through her body.
The Voice growled in her head, emerging from total silence without warning. She hissed warningly under breath back at it—no need to get excited, she wasn't letting it out now.
Tightening her arm guards, she didn't quite look at her opponent yet, looking instead to the two names blazoned above the part of the grounds sectioned off to them.
Crow vs. Robin
Two birds. She scoffed under breath as her eyes moved downwards to the ANBU in question.
Well, she knew why he was called Robin now. He had shoulder length red hair that gleamed in the light like flashing silk. It looked…oddly familiar, actually—
"No," Sakura whispered aloud. She took a stumbling step back.
But she couldn't unsee it now. She blinked rapidly.
It was the same exact color.
"Hey there, Crow," Robin greeted, shrugging his shoulders. "You look around my age. But…"
He was seemed a few years older than her. Just like Noriko had been. Sakura's hands trembled at her sides.
"As your senior, I think I'll pick first," he said with a wink. He gestured to the shinobi handling the coin toss. "Heads."
The shinobi threw the coin and snatched it from the air in a blink of an eyes. The head of the hokage gleamed brightly.
"Taijutsu," Robin decided affably.
Sakura couldn't move her eyes off him, completely oblivious to all the other coin tosses going on around them. Eventually, a dull gong rang through the stadium, signifying the start of the spars.
"Ready?" the young man asked, a smirk in his voice. He didn't wait for an answer. In an instant, his entire form was a blur. A blur that was rushing toward her.
And all Sakura could see was the ghostly mirage of Noriko's face manifesting above his mask, just because he had similar fucking hair.
Move, you worthless carcass, the Voice snarled.
Sakura blinked dazedly, but it was too late. A fist landed in her stomach and sent her careening into the opposite of the stadium. Metal railing crumpled beneath her back. The air rushed out of her as pain seeped in.
She was shaken. Sakura had a spare moment to curse beneath her breath, before Robin was on her again.
He was quick—but not that quick, not really. Certainly not near the quickest she had ever faced. But each time he twisted, the air catching strands of his hair to send them fanning out, Sakura felt like a boulder had been dropped on her all over again, and she was dazed, and precious seconds went by, and—
Wow. She hadn't gotten her ass kicked like this in a long time.
And it was the truth—she was getting her ass kicked.
You worthless piece of shit, what is the point of you if you can't even handle shit like this yourself? LET ME OUT! LET ME—
Sakura, out of the sheer rage the Voice managed to incite in her, found some clarity and landed a few well-placed blows at key points in Robin's midsection.
But they lacked her usual strength, because still, some part of her couldn't let go. And when she looked up again—a terrible, fatal mistake—it was Noriko's dying face that look back at her, a beaming smile drowning in tears.
Sakura groaned.
A fist landed soundly, truly solidly, planting into the side of her head. The force of it vibrated through her entire body, but Sakura was oblivious to it—only knew that her vision was going black.
When light returned, she was blinking up at the towering dome of the stadium.
"Robin, Crow, 1-0!" she heard a woman cry out.
A hand manifested above her. She gazed blankly at it. After a moment, it reached down and heaved her up.
Sakura managed to land on her feet. Everything around her, however, was a deluge of sensory and auditory information she had trouble processing.
"Stadium locker rooms," she heard someone say. "Until you're called for the next bout."
Robotically, she followed the figure ahead of her to a set of doors tucked into one of the walls. She kept her eyes on her feet and very carefully did not look at his hair. The brass doors opened and closed with a small creak of protest. And then she was in silence, in a cool, dark room, where there was a table filled with bandages.
"So," the ANBU next to her began with a slow smile. "No hard feelings?"
Sakura focused hard on his voice. A little higher than that of a fully grown man—but definitely lower than Noriko's. This was just another shinobi with dark red hair. It was just dark red hair; she'd seen other people with red hair after Noriko and hadn't reacted like this. Why the fuck now?
Inhaling, Sakura steeled herself and then looked up. Her vision swam.
"No hard feelings," she returned, looking down again.
He gave a short laugh. "Great. Have to say though, I wiped the floor with you—"
He broke off, his gaze widening at something behind her. Sakura twisted to follow his glance and then froze.
Tremulous awe glowed in Robin's eyes. "Sir, it is an honor to finally meet you—"
"Scram." The word emerged in a dark rasp. Sakura grew even stiffer.
As for Robin—she wasn't sure what the ANBU thought. Whatever it was, he blinked for a few seconds in confusion. Then, the request processed. With a swift bow and a suspicious glance her way, Robin exited the room.
Sakura looked back at Kakashi with ire, waiting. "What?" she demanded finally, tone flat.
Another she hadn't really expected today was—this. Kakashi shoving her roughly into the lockers.
"What the fuck was that out there?" A guttural demand, harsh on her ears.
"Excuse me?" she gasped, mostly from incredulity.
She lifted her hands and shoved him back—he skidded a few inches. "You," she growled. "Who the hell do you think you are?"
"I'm your captain," he said coldly back. "And you answer to me."
Sakura let out a harsh bark of laughter. "You think I give a fuck what you think? Try me—please, give me the chance. You have no idea how long I've been waiting."
The Voice seared through her veins, and for one terrible moment, Sakura couldn't quite draw the line between it and herself.
Fingers clenched her chin beneath the surface of her mask, pulling her forward. And then the heat of him—the heat of his rage—scalded her there first, spreading after until her whole face felt like it was burning.
"Is that so?" he mocked, his voice low and dark. "And where was this when that waste of space was tossing you around like a mannequin?"
Sakura stared up at him, speechless, and then pulled back, shoving his hand away from her. "Why do you even care?" she snapped. "I can count the number of times you've spoken to me—"
The fingers on her chin tightened their hold warningly.
"Drop it," Sakura gritted out.
"Maybe I was unclear before," Kakashi told her, baring his teeth from beneath his black mask. "You answer to me, shinobi."
Sakura was breathless with fury.
"You want to know the truth so badly?" she said, eyes spitting venom. "It's as simple as this: I saw a ghost."
Her throat closed getting the words out.
Kakashi's expression did not shift, didn't reveal even the minutest twitch of the eye.
Her eyes stung fiercely and she shoved against the copy-nin, driving him into the opposite row of lockers, hands knotted in his flak jacket. "Did you hear me?" she grunted out, "I said I saw a ghost."
His hands snapped to her wrists, hot—almost molten—fingers burning into the skin there. Not pulling, not yet. But enough to make her feel his strength; and she could.
Her mouth was coated with blood—probably her teeth too—and she knew the same dark brown-red dripped from her nose, but she couldn't feel any of those things just now. Not really. She only felt hate. And, perhaps, a terrible, agonizing emptiness where happiness and peace once could have been.
"Don't pretend now, taichou," Sakura whispered, mouth trembling. "Don't."
Kakashi's dark grey and red eyes traced the pattern on her mask.
"Pretend?" he said tonelessly.
"That you don't know," she hissed, and her diaphragm was twitching now—struggling—couldn't find its proper rhythm. "That I wasn't there."
Who would have guessed—that 'Haruno Sakura' would know something about the copy-nin that 'Saori Mori' didn't? Because Saori alone would not have known Kaido had been a ghost of Haku. But Sakura did.
She didn't get to gloat over his response—didn't even get to look at his face to see if there was any. Something was crumbling inside her, an inestimable force wreaking havoc on her insides suddenly. Sakura doubled over, not knowing how to fight it when it was herself, trying her best to hold herself together. Her forehead scraped against the rough material of flak jacket.
He'd felt this too. She knew he had. This feeling, like there was no more air left. Or maybe that there never had been, and she'd just been pretending the whole time.
But all the while, he felt like a wall of stone, his hands still circled like chains around her wrists.
Sakura closed her eyes, fighting for breath fiercely, fighting the pain. "You're going to deny it…taichou?"
With difficulty, she craned her head upward—unable yet to straighten her back—to survey him.
"Stop rambling," he said tightly, controlled.
"Rambling," she smiled humorlessly. Then, her mouth flattened, and her eyes were stony. Because she knew he was lying. She knew it.
His voice may have been controlled. But his gaze revealed everything.
"Fine," she said softly. "You want me to win? I'll win the next two in less than a minute: kenjutsu, genjutsu, taijutsu, ninjutsu, it doesn't matter. I'll do it."
Sakura used the hold he still had on her to yank him closer, until his eyes were level with hers and nothing so arbitrary as height could distance them any longer.
"And when I'm firmly back on the team, I'll have all the time in the world to make you tell the truth."
Author's Note:
Sorry for the wait! Please let me know what you think! Your comments mean the world to me-seriously, I reread each and every one for motivation to keep writing these stories :)
