..Chapter Thirty-Four..
..
.
..
1st year
Day 1
Time, 0700 hours
Cherry,
It's been about six months, five days, two hours, thirty-five minutes and twenty-six... twenty-seven... twenty-eight seconds since you left. I suppose I should stop counting, huh? If you were here you'd call it pitiful. No.. you were never that harsh. I suppose at most you'd laugh, crack a good natured joke and set my mind at ease; back to where it should be.
Obito and Rin finally tied the knot. You would have loved the wedding. Rin insisted on Minato-sensei speaking the vows. At first he seemed slightly apprehensive. I can tell you, I'd never seen the man at such a loss for words or so unsure of himself. But Rin can get the best of men to agree with her notions. Sometimes I think those eyes of her's are her real secret weapon. Pakkun says so anyway.
You don't know who he is. Rin's mother had a runt in her litter of pugs. Rin was at her whit's end at the time, too busy with much else to take him on. So, as you can imagine, the little imp ended up at my place for a few weeks since I was off duty. After that? Well, he grew on me and the rest is history. Unfortunately, now, it seems like I've become the go-to-guy to take on runts. I've ended up with a whole pack of them. Thankfully... They can take care of themselves now. They pretty much do what they want until I use a summoning jutsu. Rin thinks I'm nuts for not keeping them on hand all the time. Ha! Most shinobi have one animal nin. One! I have a whole pack of them. No, even with their trained movements it would be too much work to keep an eye on them all the time and underfoot.
...I miss you, you know. It's just not the same here without you. Minato assigned me to a new team of ANBU grads and named me a captain. Somehow that doesn't seem right. I always figured if we ever got a team of our own, besides ourselves, of course, you'd end up in my place.
It should be you here, not me. It should be you plotting out the battle plans, choosing the directions, giving the pep talks I was never much good at. I'm trying though... I'm trying to fill the gap you left. It's not easy. It might not ever be... but I'll do my best to fill your shoes until you return...
~Crow
..
.
Her eyes shut in heavenly bliss and she sucked up the cool stuff. Icy bits mixed with a delicate mocha flavor slid down her throat. She wanted to leap for joy. She wanted to sing to the heavens. She wanted to call Kami himself and tell him just how wonderful he was. It had been four years. Four damned years since she'd been allowed to partake of this particular perfection Konoha offered.
An Icy Mocha Frappachino.
It was all hers and no one was going to take it from her. It had taken everything in her not to act like an absolute moron when she spied the coffee shop and dove at it like a woman starved to kiss it's walls. She had run though. And she'd nearly knocked five people down in her desperation to have her 'drug'. At least with that she could face the day and finally greet her shishou.
Everything was nearly the same in Konoha. When she'd went shopping yesterday she'd hardly had a chance to really look, her mind too preoccupied with a certain Jounin/former sensei. Then she'd been far too hung up with other things to do anything, much less sightseeing. But now she did get a chance to look. There were a few new shops, she realized; some new coats of paint here and there, a school for civilians she'd never even seen before and whoot! an ice cream shop!
She was happy to be home. She was unbelievably glad to see familiar faces. It was good to relax, doing something as simple as going to work. It was grand to know her biggest worry of the day included something as simple as asking her teacher about an ANBU recommendation. Of course the general idea around it was complicated considering her 'past'. However, the stress of doing so was... normal stress. It wasn't the heartbreaking-have-to-succeed-or-all-is-lost kind of stress she was use to. She welcomed the monotony to come.
The only un-monotonous thing in her schedule would be... Kakashi. Her Crow. The man had been more than a few shades to wind last night. The entire conversation in the gazebo seemed all off balance... maybe she'd been too forward? Was it too soon to reveal her feelings; especially when that's all she had to grasp for at the moment?
When she had sat down at the bar that night she'd known soon after he hadn't made the connection. Why she couldn't fathom. And when he'd run off she'd been more than a little heartbroken. He wasn't being callous. But he had been trying so hard to hide from her emotionally. Sadly, alcohol made that impossible for just about anyone. Even her Crow. She knew it from experience. He'd always been able to hold his drink, but get him talking about the right thing... at the right time... well... anything was possible then; at least verbally. He became an instant fountain of information for the right listener. Not about missions of course, but about his feelings. Missions he never kept bottled up like his feelings. So when he did finally relax, binging on saki and let loose his sense of caution, there was no telling what the right voice might be able to pull from his heart.
After she made sure he got home ok last night she'd went home herself... and admitted just what had really been stopping her from doing what she'd wanted to...
...
The door to her small, one bedroom apartment slammed shut. Her bag was tossed against the wall, nearly shattering a vase in the process. If she'd been paying attention at all she probably would have been more careful. After all, it had belonged to her mother; a gift when she'd moved out of the house on her fifteenth birthday.
"Eon!" she screamed to the room, eyes narrowed and lips twisted into an angry frown. "Damnit! I know you can hear me! You can hear everything, you old coot! Eon!" A short pause...
"Eon!"
Silence greeted her.
She called and called. She called until she was hoarse. She called until she was out of air, until her lungs nearly halted in protest. She called to him until her chest heaved. Until she fell to the floor and broke down. Not once.. not once since they'd fixed everything had Sakura actually broke down.
She'd cried in Cloud when he'd nearly died from using the Chidori too much. She'd cried when he got poisoning from an arrowhead dipped in tainted blood from Mist, and at the agony of his screams which were too much to bear as she pulled it from his body, his pours. She'd cried when he'd proposed. She'd cried in joy when they both got the news they had been two of twenty selected to graduate ANBU.
She'd held in her tears when she left him alone in the bed that night. She'd held in her tears each and everytime they said goodbye with their bodies and their mouths for a week strait as she'd tried to be strong for him; like she always did. She'd held it all in as best as she possibly could over half an hour ago in the rain.
It wasn't because he didn't remember her. He did. It's because she didn't know how to tell him. It's because she lacked the courage to do so. It's because she was now the one frightened; not him. When she'd heard him say she'd left him a broken mess... HER... she'd wanted to tell him. It was on the tip of her tongue to show him the necklace and blurt out the whole story.
But then he'd said that word...
Broken.
No... she'd been half wrong. It wasn't just fear of him not believing her despite all the evidence saying otherwise. That was just a small part of it. Almost insignificant in her mind.
What was really keeping her from saying it all, speaking her heart... was her own guilt. She didn't deserve him. Not one inch of that beautiful man who loved her; who waited for her. She'd left him because she had no choice. She'd not been able to tell him the truth because she hadn't been allowed to. And in the process she'd ruined him. She'd waited moments for him while he'd waited years. Over fifteen long, heartbreaking, years.
She cried.
It poured.
It soaked her face.
Her nose ran until she couldn't breathe. Her insides shook even when she didn't think they could anymore. Her hands gripped onto her ruined dress, almost ripping with her own strength, surprised she had any left. Her eyes rained liquid pain until it stung, until dehydration kicked in. But even when she thought it was all over she continued to cry. She died with each drop. She hit the floor until her knuckles burned, until they bled in all her desperation. She coughed, she took deep, pathetic breaths inward and she screamed until she couldn't once again.
Broken..
The word rattled in her mind over and over again. His voice saying it haunted her. She blamed herself. She hated herself. Eon had told her to have faith. How? How could she after what she'd seen tonight? After what she'd done to him? Her determination hadn't wavered in her mind; but her heart was another story.
Faith written in the dictionary will read something mechanical about loyalty to one's god or country. But to actually define it you have to look beyond the word itself. Faith... faith is knowing, believing despite all things saying otherwise... that what isn't going to happen will. And right now, in that moment, it was the hardest thing for her to do.
She had called Eon, cried for him, not to blame him or yell. Though Kami knew she wanted to. She needed advice. She needed someone to talk to. She needed some kind of confirmation that whatever she was trying to do now was the right thing.
It was, wasn't it? Could not telling him really be justified by the stupid excuse that he wouldn't believe her? Or was it both? On one had if she told him and he didn't believe her he'd hate her for thinking she was playing a sick joke on him. And if he did... would he still hate her?
He was once more that hard man to read. The one who kept his guard so firmly in place. And that was her doing. But she could see he was on the verge of breaking entirely. Because of her. Maybe it wasn't just fear. Maybe it wasn't just her being selfish. Maybe she was also afraid that if she'd told him over and hour ago, too soon, he wouldn't be able to handle it.
She had seen he was on the brink already. All those years of waiting for her had done something to his mind. He was damaged and she did that to him. Telling him... explaining to him... it might run him over the edge entirely... He would snap, she was sure of it.
And these years of being on his team, the new memories she couldn't remember, had to torture him more. She was a living, breathing, walking after image of the love of his life. At least in his mind. Even her name was the same. That couldn't be easy on a man. Add that added in with the fact that he'd gone roughly ten years before meeting her younger self, before she joined his team... it was like barely crossing the wires of a bomb waiting to go off to ultimately blow up in your face.
She sighed on the floor, wiping her eyes.
She needed someone to talk to. She needed Eon as she had in the past to help her sort this out. To tell her what was the right way to go in all of this. But he wasn't here. He wasn't coming. And she simply didn't want to burden her two boys with this. Not when they were finally happy.
Right now she was just as big a mess as her Crow. Just as damaged and just as broken because of what she'd done to him. And right now she'd give anything to have someone to help her sort this shit out. Anything to have someone to confide in...
...anything.
...
Sakura shook her head like she was trying to let it all go; at least for a few hours. It wouldn't be easy; however if she was planning on laying this bombshell on her shishou, well, she needed to. And the more she thought about Hatake Kakashi, her own fears as well as problems, the worse it all got. The more Sakura tended to think about anything too emotional the more stressful it got and more she seemed to screw it up later on.
No, she needed her head straight today, if even for only a little while.
So, with a deep breath and another euphoric sip of her coffee she headed past the doors of the hospital. Unfortunately it was then she realized, as she looked at the clock, she was a good twenty minutes late because of all the idle thinking she'd done.
She did the only thing she knew she could do in order to have any hope of placating her teacher for such an offense.
She ran.
She ran down the halls, nearly crashing with a few nurses taking a coffee break. Thankfully as the last second she'd managed to leap over them, skidding to a slide at the end of another hall before she ran off in another direction. She completely avoided the elevator and raced up the emergency stairs. She had ten flights to go before reaching her office. They must have done a remodel on the place at some point, because the last time she checked it had only been three stories in her former reality.
Were there ever this many medical nin before? Christ, twenty of them just passed an open door. She'd only glanced a moment. That's all it took for a shinobi of her level.
Three more flights to go. The signs were telling her she was getting closer. Two more flights. One more flight... There!
She dashed through the last door and frantically looked around for some sign of where the director's office was. But just as she started to walk off in one direction someone snagged her in another. She cried out in surprise and whirled around since she had other choice but to do so.
"What the hell took you so long?" A woman groused. "Do you know Tsunade-sama has been waiting over an hour for you?"
Sakura blinked. "Rin?"
Her purple-brown eyes looked at her briefly. "Yes, 'Rin'. Who else would it be since Shizune has been studying abroad with Genma?" She grumbled. "I should knock you on your ass, girl, after what she's put me through. I swear, I don't know how you and Shizune do it. Where do you hide the liquor? How does she always find it when I hide it?"
Sakura laughed. Not just because Rin looked so out of her whits end it was humorous, but also because it all seemed funny in general. "You're the replacement co-director next to me now?"
"Yes," she muttered, still dragging her. "Not that I wanted it. I was just fine being the one who took house calls. Now they've given my perfect job to Ino. And that... woman knows I hate so much responsibility. She's doing it on purpose. She loves seeing me suffer under paperwork."
Sakura's lips twitched. "So... Ino told me me to be here by eleven... Not ten."
"That sill makes you a whole twenty minutes late. What were you doing? Daydreaming?"
"Sort of... anyway," she said back, "why would Ino tell me eleven if it was ten instead?"
Rin rolled her eyes as they turned down another hall. She finally released her arm, convinced she wasn't going to run off for fear of Tsunade's wrath. She would have. She had. "That's because Yamanaka has got her head in the clouds over that Akimichi boy."
"Choji?!"
"Shhh!" Rin hissed as the stopped in the hall and she faced her. "Tone it down. This place is a gossip mill if there ever was one. Worse than the civilians in the market. You should know that." She shook her head and gripped a clipboard tight to her chest. "Anyway, she doesn't know I know. I doubt she knows herself." She frowned.
"But... Choji?" Sakura blinked, surprised. She always figured Ino would end up with... well... someone else. She really needed to get her new memories soon. There had to be something in there somewhere about this. Ino would confide in her.
Rin shrugged and continued walking. "Don't ask me. I just know everytime I see her she looks lost in the eyes. And everytime he comes to see her about Asuma or a mission she acts like a besotted, defensive fool."
Sakura wrinkled her nose. "That sounds a little like Ino. But... she didn't act like that around Sasuke."
Rin laughed. "That's because she thought she was in love with Sasuke, Kohai. She's actually in love with Choji."
She blinked again. She decided immediately it would be weird getting use to Rin as her... well, she didn't know what to call it. She was use to being her teacher, mentor, not the other way around. Maybe this was more of a twilight zone than the past.
"Alright, sempai," Sakura drawled with a hidden smile, an untold secret. "Then what about Choji?"
She snorted. "He's just as bad as her. Accept, due to how she behaves, he's generally on the defensive with no real idea as to what he's done wrong. But you can tell there's something more there going on. And he knows it." She sighed. "I can tell you this much, if something doesn't get done about it soon, the whole thing is going to blow up."
"Maybe I'll talk to her," Sakura murmured.
"I was hoping you'd say that when you came back from the last mission." She looked relieved. "I'm too busy with paperwork until Shizune returns."
Sakura just smiled as they stopped in front of the double doors to her left. She looked as Rin rested her hand on the knob and glanced over at her.
"Ready to face the dragon?"
Sakura chuckled. "I'm sure I'll be fine."
Rin nodded. "Good luck." She opened the door for her and stepped back as Sakura went in. With an empathetic smile she shut it behind her.
Sakura exhaled and turned to face her teacher. She placed her hands behind her back and stepped forward. She was sitting behind her desk, the back of her tall leather chair facing Sakura so she still couldn't see her. The windows beyond were large and showed the village in almost it's entirety. She could see why Tsunade had chosen the tenth floor instead of the first like before.
She glanced around at her surroundings as she waited. Everything was a little cushier. She must have been right in her assumption that Konoha was doing better than she'd known it to be before. She half wondered if all the medical shinobi meant Tsunade had finally realized her dream of equipping every three man team leaving the village with at least one medic.
She smiled softly as the chair finally started to turn around. Her teacher's face a mixture of irritation and impatience. No real surprise there. Her hair was the same shade of blond split into two ties at the base of her neck. She still bore the small jewel in the center of her forehead, and her clothes hadn't changed at all. The only thing Sakura could note as different, and honestly she wouldn't have noticed if her look over wasn't so sharp, was the silver band on her ring finger.
That made her arch a brow, but nothing more.
"You're late," she snapped.
"Yes, shishou."
"By more than a whole hour, Haruno," she snapped again.
"Yes, shishou."
She waved her hand idly, her face showing disgust. "And look at you. You're not even dressed in a lab coat yet." She kept on looking and pointed to a brown wrap on her arm, tied there to hide her tattoo. "And why are you wearing that? Are you injured?"
She blinked. "No, shishou... I.." she tied to come up with an excuse. She hadn't expected anyone to question why whether or not she'd placed it there. Many shinobi wore odd things like that.
"I'm using it to--."
"Take it off. There's no reason to hide the tattoo, girl. People will find out soon enough. And anyway the mask will keep anyone from knowing who you are when you choose to take on those missions."
Her mouth moved to form words and her mind drew a blank. Her jaw dropped and shut several times. What?
Tsunade sighed. "I said, take it off. Surely you're not still trying to hide it everyone? From Kakashi?" Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward, arms bracing on the desk. "Listen, I agreed to keep this a secret between me, you and Minato-sama when you asked because I knew you wanted to make Kakashi your sponsor for the first year. I understood when you said you didn't want to worry him, your entire team, and I willing made the excuse that your six month absence was spent with Shizune and Genma, working on your herbal expertise abroad."
She grumbled and sat back. She waved her hand idly. "Nevermind, I guess. If you want to keep it from them until the ceremony and after you pass the verbal exam with Minato I understand. You have to know it's only a custom, though. You've passed already. It's why we made you get the tattoo before this last mission." She shrugged. "I still say it's better he know before he hands you the mask..."
"What?" She was whispering, half in disbelief.
Tsunade sighed long and hard. "Has your memory run away this morning? Are you daft, girl?" She grunted. "You've known about this for months. You're the one who asked me. You're the one who begged me to find a way to get Kakashi to be your sponsor, you're only team mate for next year when you're not with Sasuke and Naruto. You're just lucky he's been wanting to get some ANBU level missions for a while. S-class." Her lips pursed in thought as she reached for her mug of coffee. Or at least what Sakura could assume was coffee... "Too bad he's been wanting to go solo... Minato was having none of that." She exhaled, sighing again. "I hope you know you've got your work cut out for you."
It all hadn't sunk in yet. Not hardly. But she was asking again, her mouth moving on it's own because of what she'd said about Kakashi. She needed to play along until she got her thoughts sorted out and maybe asked someone else about this. Did Itachi know? she hoped so. He was ANBU. "What do you mean?"
Tsunade blinked this time, as if surprised she'd asked or maybe because she hadn't realized she'd said that out loud. "Well... not that you really have to know..." she shrugged and look off to her right. "But, the last time Kakashi was on a two man ANBU team was... well, it was roughly ten years before he became you're Jounin teacher."
"Why did he quit?"
"He didn't quit. Not willingly. Minato-sama had to rip him out of the rank forcefully."
"What..?" She wanted to know. She had to know.
"I really don't like explaining all this. So I'll get it out in one shot, ok? After that I expect you to never speak of it again. It's not even my business to tell. Understood?"
"Yes, shishou," she whispered quickly as she stood before her desk.
"Kakashi had a team mate long ago. A young woman who taught Rin everything she knows aside from me. Her medical prowess was almost unheard of at her age and many people still say she was my second coming; that it was such a shame to see her go." She sat back in her chair and relaxed into it's softness. "I only met her once." She frowned, her mind drifting back. She stopped speaking for a long while and Sakura almost prompted her to go on. But she shook her head and continued, dusting off foggy memories. "They were close, or so Minato tells me. And no two man ANBU unit ever worked so well together. This was, of course, before we had enough of them to make it a team of one sponsor and one new graduate. They worked so well together after the initial year Minato kept them on the same team as Kakashi requested."
"What happened?" She asked, waiting. All this she knew already. She need to know what happened after.
"Well... a few years passed after she left the village on a mission with her original team. One turned into three and so on and so on... "
"And?"
She sighed. "I don't know the details Sakura. I do know whatever that girl's leaving did, it left Hatake Kakashi so messed up he became utterly dysfunctional. He took too many risks in the field. He died half a dozen times and his medical reports from back then fill a whole three level filing cabinet."
Sakura swallowed, feeling... pain assailing her senses. She couldn't speak.
"This is why I'm trying to ward you off of him, girl. He won't accept a two man squad. He might do it because Minato is telling him it's the only way he'll agree to letting him back on part time. But, he won't accept you as the other half of that duo. Only she'll do. And she's not coming back," she explained, "No, Hatake Kakashi might have been your Jounin team leader until all three of you made that rank yourselves. But that was different. That uniform? That place? It's private. And as far as he's concerned no one will ever be able to take her place. Take my word for it, girl," she finished sternly as she pulled out a few pieces of paper and a pen to work, "Pick someone else to be your sponsor, you're team mate for a year, while you still can."
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
AN: Whooooo... so, the reviews are raking up and I've had quite a few questions, comments, worries and outright raging fits from reviewers. Ok, maybe not raging fits, but some upset people at any rate. So, as best as I can remember, I'm going to try an answer them all. There's just getting to be too many reviews to answer them all here. So, from now on, if you have a question you want to have answered publicly make sure you write that in your review and I'll do so here.
Q: Itachi remembers and made the connection, why didn't Kakashi?
A: I'll be answering that question in the story soon with a key conversation. Until then, you'll be left hanging. Sorry guys.
Q: Why didn't she show him the ring, tell him word for word conversations that they had? Why didn't she tell him?!
A: I kinda hope this question was answered in this chapter. It'll be covered more fully in the next one. Basically Kakashi has gone the last... oh... technically eighteen years waiting on HER. He was crushed at first. Obviously tormented. That can't be easy for any person. We're not talking about him waiting a few weeks or months. Were talking about years, holding his heart out on the line with nothing but a promise to keep him together; to keep him sane. He doesn't even know if she's alive or dead. But he refuses to think dead. He spent years looking for her and almost died. And then, THEN, to top it all off he got landed on a team with someone who looked exactly like her. She sounded like her, she had the same hair... the same face, the same laugh. But it wasn't HER. Sakura, the one who went back into the past, while she was a thirteen year old girl she acted like an eighteen year old girl. Like a woman who'd been primed for the field like all the other shinobi who'd been through the war then. So, that just sorta adds to it. Logic and reason tell him the twelve year old girl he met is NOT his Cherry. But it still torments him. and it's been tormenting him for the last six years. I meant it when I said he was broken. Utterly so. It's not just a word I'm using lightly. He's damaged. And quite possibly on the edge of really losing his mind.
So where does that leave Sakura? With some very, very careful ground to tread on. What will it all mean in the future chapters? Read and find out, folks. This is my first 'epic' story. And I intend for it to be every bit that one word.
Q: (No one asked this, I just wanted people to see it since no one noticed!) What's with the Akatsuki ring Itachi was wearing in the chapter he was watching young Sasuke fight Gaara with Naruto and Sakura?
A: Yes, it's his ring when he'd become an Akatsuki member in the other time line. Or it would be. Whatever, anyway, Sasuke will ask him about this later too.
Q: WHY are you torturing us like this?! (General consensus it seems..)
A: I'm a writer! It's my job to do that! Anyway, I love this story. I'm not just trying to drag it out to be filler or whatever. I'm doing it because this is how I dreamed this story would be when I first envisioned it. I promise, whatever comes afterward, and believe me I know what does, it'll be worth it and you'll be thankful to me for dragging it out. It'll be heartbreaking. It might make you cry. And it might even make you want to scream at me. But you know what? If at the end o the day I caused that kind of reaction, any of those, from my readers? Well, I know I've done my job
Thanks to you all,
Blade