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no savior anymore, welcome all the horrors at the door
-o-
Sakura was at the edge of the Fire Country border and about to leave everything dangerous behind her. The terrain was an open, dead, and shallow marsh. Maybe it was a bog, she didn't know the difference. She did know the next thousand meters were a buffer zone between Sound and her country. To both the east and the west would be outposts, occupied by a four man squad of three genin and a chuunin. At different times, there would be patrol squads going between the outposts.
She had waited six hours to make the crossing from Sound into the buffer zone. At nautical dawn, when the wildlife came back to full activity, she had made her move, covered in a makeshift suit of leaves and forest debris. Her face and hair were painted with muck, her hands and any visible skin too. She had removed the tattoos for Sai's ninjutsu and it had made her skin almost bright in their absence. The moonlight and early rays of sun had singled her out as if she had glowed.
Approaching Konoha's side, she finally felt comfortable to shed her camouflage and took bolder steps forward.
The land, her body, her mind, everything was dreamlike and intangible. She was home, she was home... Less than a week since her escape, travelling on her own without supplies, having to dodge and scrape and fight to survive, but she was home.
The closer to the border, the more the trees grew in, the less the water weighed down her feet. She smelled the forest more than the swamp and she couldn't breathe deeply enough to appreciate the sweetness of her country's air. Old growth pines with trunks as large as her apartment. The forest of the First.
Sakura hugged the scroll tight to her front and noticed a second too late the presence of a trip wire underfoot. The noose round her ankle snapped her up into the air, upside down, and she had to use a chakra scalpel to cut the wire before she went very high.
Her body was heavy and slow and she didn't land quite as she would have liked. It was more a softened crash than anything a proper kunoichi would have managed. She groaned and took a moment too long to recover. Perhaps that was why the boys who descended on her position didn't take her seriously when she tried to identify herself.
More likely, it was her garbled speech and spasming muscles.
The two hit the ground and talked around her as she strained to tell them her name and shinobi identification number – neither of which came out as intended.
"She's mad."
"Coming from that place, who wouldn't be?" One of the boy shinobi directed her as he waved a knife and mimicked the action. "Put your hands up."
Sakura gave up on talking and did as he asked, she put one hand up and used the other to tap out her numbers with her fingers. She was ignored. Her shaking limbs disguised her intentions, she thought. She shook her head, mumbling, and tried to motion with her chin to her hands.
"Haruno – Sakura. My name is Haruno Sakura," she tried, felt her eyes water when the sounds were dull and unintelligible. Her mouth was dry and thick like cotton swabs and it didn't help her sound any more sane or worthwhile to them.
One of the boys talked over her to the other, "your wire snapped. Told you not to buy from Makuto anymore. That guy's shit is from the Second War, I swear. Selling you the crap his granddad threw out."
The other boy shrugged in response. He was staring at her, but not really seeing her. His eyes settled on her middle. "Listen to her, she's an idiot, isn't she? And filthy. Fuck, you could smell her coming from that damn bog. Do we take her in?"
Sakura sighed. Let them take her to the outpost, she thought, at least there she could write something if they refused to acknowledge her signalling.
"We just emptied the cells day before last. There won't be another transport caravan for two weeks."
They thought she was fleeing Sound – that she was a crazed civilian. For some reason, after the torture and the death and the running, it was her inability to communicate with her own people – those subordinate to her in rank – that bowed her shoulders and made her chest tighten. She swore and only her tone and the frustrated texture of her voice were clear.
Neither of her company noticed.
One was saying, "so what? Let her run and we play chase? Target practice?"
"...Knock her out. A warm body is a warm body." The boy came closer as he spoke, eyes going from her chest to her waist. They seemed to go to her face, but never to her eyes. "Dunk her in the stream first, maybe."
The outpost wouldn't be far, Sakura could make it there on her own.
She knocked out the two boys before the second syllable of 'maybe' dropped. Wrapping the collars of their shirts in her hands, she made to drag them with her as she walked.
But two men stopped her before she got very far, and this time, they knew her.
"Coyote," one greeted, and the fact he knew Sakura by her ANBU mask filled her with a warmth of reassurance. He was in a standard jounin uniform, had blond hair, and sounded vaguely familiar to her even though she didn't recognise him. He said, "we're glad to have you home."
-o-
Tsunade was at the window with him. Her expression was more open than usual from her, as was her tiredness. Somehow he felt that she was glad for his company, and they were both bittersweet together.
"Have you visited yet?" Tsunade asked, speaking of Sakura. There were very few people who knew Sakura was in hospital and he was one of them.
Kakashi shifted an arm.
"I couldn't see her," he admitted. And in one respect, it read to Tsunade that he wasn't permitted to see Sakura, as per their arrangement concerning her undercover mission. But it also just as easily read that his particular personality quirks kept him from seeing her.
"She's been reticent," Tsunade said. "She's ashamed. She won't even look at me when I'm in the room with her. She's all there, and she understands me, but she won't look at me."
"It'll take time for her to process what happened."
"...What happened..." Tsunade repeated, and her voice was suddenly rougher. He thought her mind must have been supplying all the things, 'what happened' could have and did mean. She raised a hand to her mouth, breathed three times, and then regained her composure. "I'm pulling her."
Kakashi almost startled. "What?"
"From all of her active duties. All of them. I don't want her out of the village. She'll keep up her lessons as my apprentice, but otherwise – "
"She's going to want to get back into things. You know she won't want to idle. Pulling her from everything isn't going to make the transition easier." Kakashi knew what Tsunade was really referring to in terms of 'duties.' She was ending Sakura's position as a spy. He understood the reaction, he sort of agreed with it, but at the same time, he wondered how the knee-jerk response would play for Sakura. "She's going to feel like you're benching her and demoting her by doing that. This will kill her esteem."
If there were one thing Sakura loathed, it was feeling worthless.
Tsunade's brow creased. She was sad and upset, but it was hidden behind one bothered line. Her sharp eyes found his. "Do you think I'm considering her esteem right now? Her esteem can heal, Kakashi, but I need the rest of her back in order. And for that, this is the best response. She needs to get sorted properly. I'll keep her close and I'll be able to help her."
"You will ease her back into things? Eventually?" He said, leading her. "She's been gone long enough, the village can't afford her sitting out now that she's back. How many other medics have her skill set?"
"That decision will come when I'm ready to make the call. For now, she's grounded."
Kakashi didn't have the right to argue. He was only too happy not to be the one to give the news to Sakura.
-o-
Sakura figured out somewhere north of the Sound border that Kabuto had messed with the signals in her brain that controlled her speech. With what she remembered of his questioning while she was in the lab, she supposed he had been attempting to recreate one of Tsunade's jutsu. His goal had been to disrupt communication for moving her limbs and he had never suspected he had affected another part of her entirely.
The damage was repairable, however, and she set about fixing it while she waited in hospital for clearance to leave. Being mute was attributed to overcoming the stress of her time in capture, which was a fine cover for her. She indicated non-verbally what she could and stared at the wall as if looking through it whenever she had nothing to contribute. She wasn't keen on anyone hearing what she was unable to say, especially not after experiencing how those border shinobi had reduced her to human waste the second they couldn't understand her.
So accordingly, Sakura was mute from trauma, and she could accept that presentation.
The room was empty when she tried to speak and for the first time in weeks, everything she said came out as intended.
"My name is Haruno Sakura," she said. She recited her identification number, rank, and said the whole thing over just because she could. And for a third time again to enjoy the sound of her voice under her control.
The sound of her speaking to the room was somewhat lonely when no one was there to reply and so she was quiet after.
She was still sullen when she got her first visitor. The sound of nails clacking across the floor woke her from a light, thoughtless sort of slumber. Sakura leaned over the edge of her cot to see a pug sat on the floor below her.
"He said you'd rather see my cute mug than his ugly one," Pakkun said to her. "If you want."
Her lips pulled back and she smiled like she hadn't in ages. She scooted over and patted at a spot for the dog to join her. Pakkun scratched at her sheets, sniffed a circle at her side, and then curled himself tight up against her. Three years ago she would have sneered at an animal asleep on her bed, but now she found she couldn't say it was disagreeable at all. He nosed her hand and it didn't take much for her to relent into a petting routine that lasted an hour or more.
"I wouldn't have minded seeing him, too." She said after awhile, the words a sleepy confession she didn't mean to say aloud.
-o-
Sakura didn't stay in hospital for more than a few days. Having her there was high profile, as it wasn't public knowledge she had gone missing in the first place, and ultimately unnecessary medically; she was fine to do what little physical rehabilitation she had on her own.
Her walk home was slow and she didn't take any route she knew. For some reason, she wanted to see all the streets she had never walked before. She counted windows and stoops and window boxes of young flowers and vegetation. She wanted to buy groceries in a new store, see people she didn't usually see. It had never really been a possibility to think about while she had been in capture, but she could have died in Sound. Hindsight made her acknowledge this, and in so many different and colorful ways, and she was both happier for her survival and incredulous at her lack of awareness for her own mortality.
She had done her job, though, and for this she treated herself to three peaches.
It was as she finished her transaction with the fruit vendor that someone tapped her arm as they passed. She heard, "follow me. Four paces."
Life came back into focus. Sakura hid the skip that lightened her steps and coolly did as she was told. They walked in a maze pattern, up and down side streets, main streets, through crowded squares and gardens, until finally, they stopped in a courtyard below a residential complex. There was a tree with long, low hanging branches that were beaded with spring's new growth, and beneath its enveloping canopy was a bench.
Ken was standing there, waiting for her. He said her name and lifted his arms. "Nice work, apprentice."
She didn't run to him, but embracing him was like landing a jump. Coming up for air. He pulled off his gloves to touch her face, run his hands over her hair, to feel that she were really there. It was what she had been looking for ever since leaving the base in Sound and waking up in the clearing with her blood-heavy sword and hollow chest. She breathed in everything about him, his composure and assuredness, and buried her head against his chest.
So warm, she thought, and present and there for her.
He was consoling her with hushed noises and gentle strokes over her hair and face and she didn't know why, really, until she realised she was crying. But she was happy, genuinely and it wasn't at all an act.
When she was composed and ready to step away, he told her the scroll and its contents were in place. He asked her, "and as for Lady Tsunade?"
Sakura nodded her head. "You were right. She's taken me off active duty. She wants me in office full time."
He smiled. "Then everything is moving forward as we planned."
Her happiness tempered a little as she remembered herself. She returned his sentiment. "Everything is in place."
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-o-