A/N: Good news, everyone! I've updated my profile to include some beautiful fanart from very talented artists. :D Go check it out because there's some great pictures for HoC as well from Leona101. She really made my year (and this fic!)
House of Crows
Chapter Thirty-Four: Ashes to Ashes
Do you know how I feel?
You are my Achilles heel.
Pain exploded through Kakashi's face. His teeth rattled, his eyeball throbbed, and he was almost certain some delicate bones important to his beauty cracked like glass beneath the impact of the punch. He'd had worse. He'd dealt worse. On the other hand, he'd never seen Karasu in the rage he saw him now.
"This is your fault."
Kakashi remained mutely staring at the ground, fixing on the searing agony of his right cheekbone. It was broken. Almost certainly broken. But it was nothing compared to what had happened to Reika.
"This never would have happened if you hadn't left," Karasu ground out, jabbing his finger behind up at the bed where the dead girl had been laid out. She looked serenely peaceful now that she was washed and cleansed and dressed in the white kimono she would be cremated in.
His aunts and female cousins that were gathered nearby looked at the two men, aggrieved. "Please don't fight in here," his favourite aunt asked them softly.
Karasu ignored her. "What the hell were you thinking?" he hissed at Kakashi.
"You told me to leave," Kakashi reminded him, his voice coming thick through a numbed jaw.
"I told you to go back to Konoha and do your fucking day job!" Karasu snapped. "I didn't tell you to grab the fat maid and elope! Of course Reika was going to follow you! Do you have any idea what misery you put her through?"
"I had no idea she was there," Kakashi sighed. "Not until…"
Karasu's eye twitched. "And you say Uchiha Sasuke did this?" he prompted. "We've already got a hit out on that rat for selling us bad info. Reika never should have taken him on alone, but when I get my hands on that little shit, we'll see how much Konoha wants for his corpse."
Kakashi didn't want to think about that boy. "Has… has her mother been informed?"
"By crow. Yes. And next time we see her you will get down on your knees and beg her forgiveness!"
"I'm sorry," Kakashi said, and immediately regretted it when another fist slammed into his battered cheek.
"Please!" His aunt cried, standing up. "Take it outside!"
Karasu grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him out into the corridor. He conscientiously closed the doors behind him before turning back to Kakashi, who braced himself for another deserved punch. "Where's the girl?"
Kakashi went still. "What girl?"
"Don't play stupid with me – though you do it so well!" Karasu was worryingly close to shaking him by the throat. "The maid! Where is she?"
"Right now? I have no idea," Kakashi said honestly. "And I have no idea why that's important."
A flicker of unfathomable rage danced through Karasu's eyes. Kakashi's brow furrowed in response. "What is it with you and that maid, huh?" he demanded of Karasu. "First you're warning Reika to stay away from her, and now you're interrogating me about where she is? What's really going on? Why the hell is she so important to you?"
"Do you really want to know?" Karasu asked quietly.
"Of course, I do."
"Then follow me."
Karasu scrutinised him for a moment before flicking a beckoning finger at him. Kakashi followed him up through the house to the Nightingale wing where the Zuru family slept. The master bedroom lay open ahead of them, and without pausing to knock or call out for permission, Karasu strode in and marched right up to a sort of shrine set into the opposite wall. Kakashi looked about curiously. Lord and Lady Zuru must have been elsewhere at this late hour.
"What are we doing in here?" asked Kakashi.
"You said you wanted to know why the girl is so important," Karasu replied, picking up the pot that appeared to be the centre of the shrine's display. "Well, this is it."
He turned back to Kakashi as he unscrewed the lid of the pot and reached inside. Without word or warning, he threw a handful of dark, chalky dust in Kakashi's face. The copy nin inhaled by mistake and began to cough. There was dust in his eyes, in his throat, up his nose and in his hair. "What was that?" Kakashi gasped.
"Don't you mean who?"
Karasu's sense of humour was as amoral as ever.
Frozen with disbelief, Kakashi stared at him. "You didn't just…"
Unimpressed, Karasu flicked another handful of ash at him.
"Alright – enough!" Kakashi snapped. "What's going on? What – who is that?!"
Karasu tossed him the urn, and not in a way that suggested he cared if it was caught or not. "Say hello to Zuru Toshio. Who said only the good died young?"
Toshio…? Kakashi stared down at the inscription on the urn, and there was no denying that was name it bore. He thought of the unpleasant young man who had terrorised this estate not so long ago. Were the ashes in this pot – and in his hair and coating his nasal passages – all that was left of him? Some of him was spilled on the floor like excess talcum powder.
If there was a hell, he and Karasu were going there, but at least Toshio would be waiting for them.
"Well?" Karasu stared at him expectantly.
"I couldn't think of a more deserving person," Kakashi replied honestly, bitter only about the fact that he'd been cheated of further opportunities to traumatise him. "How did this happen?"
"As seems to be the usual case on this estate. Murder."
Kakashi narrowed his eyes. "Who?"
"Don't know, don't care. It happened the night you and the maid left, actually, so there is plenty of whispers that she did it, or perhaps even conspired with you to bump him off."
Karasu was watching him closely, but Kakashi didn't care to act out his usual award-winning performance of innocence. In this case, he was innocent. "Put your imagination away. I could only wish I was responsible for this."
But what about Sakura? She had opportunity and motive and means…
She was not, however, the kind of person who could murder indulgently. In self-defence and necessity, yes, she could end lives efficiently and with little fuss. If she'd killed Toshio for any reason before they'd left the estate, she would have mentioned it.
"Do you understand how inconvenient this is?" Karasu asked him. "Toshio was the heir – the only heir. Zuru could pop his clogs any minute now with that dickey heart of his, and if that happens the whole estate and the whole Zuru fortune that we are depending on will be dispersed among distant relatives, never to be seen by us again. It'll only be saved if Zuru had another son, which he doesn't, or else he has a grandson."
"Oh." Kakashi could see where this was going.
"Irritatingly enough, it was your student who tipped me off to the problem," Karasu went on. "When Uchiha Sasuke was here with his bat ears, he mentioned Zuru's arrhythmia. I went to see the doctor before I left for Iwa – I met your little maid on my way, you know. I wonder if she was contemplating murder right then? Anyway, he confirmed. Zuru has maybe a year or two at most. But once he's gone, that's it. His money will be gone too. If we're going to remain funded, we're going to have to produce a male heir out of our asses."
Kakashi shook his head. "But the Zuru's don't want this one. Not one belonging to a common maid-"
"This has been discussed. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The Zuru family are willing to overlook the poor quality of the mother's blood and raise the child as one of their own, as long as she has no further contact with it. It's a good deal, don't you think? The girl has no prospects, she should be glad her son will be raised as nobility."
"The child might not even be male," Kakashi pointed out.
"The doctor seems to think it is."
Shit. Kakashi looked away, trying to temper his own volatile reaction. "What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?"
"It's quite weak against a sword," said Karasu, taking him by the shoulders. "You're a bleeding heart, Kakashi. I sympathise. You got fond of the girl and took her away to protect her from the Zuru family, and I understand that. But things have changed now – she'll be an honoured guest! There's no more danger."
"There's a murderer running around this estate!" Kakashi pointed out. "How many attempts have there been? The head of staff was poisoned, then Toshio – how did he-?"
"Poison," Karasu deadpanned. "Ah, there was another one too about a week ago actually. The other pink-haired maid, Yu or Yui, I think her name was. Poisoned as well. She's still recovering at the doctor's cottage."
Holy mother of Jashin...
"And you think Sakura will be safe here?" Kakashi demanded.
"Sakura," Karasu said slowly "will be under the protection of the entire Hatake clan. She'll be the safest girl in all the five nations. All you have to do is find her and bring her back."
"No," Kakashi said simply. It was out of the question. He could not drag Sakura back here.
Karasu's expression hardened. "It's not your choice," he snapped. "I can command any crow within a five hundred mile radius of this place. If that girl steps into the sight of a single one of my feathered contacts, I'll know about it, and I'll be onto her like a tonne of bricks. You can help me, or you can sit in your room and sulk. Either way, I'm bringing her back."
Kakashi's fist clenched and unclenched powerlessly against his side. He itched to drop the urn and kick it across the room. It was as if Toshio was determined to make everyone's life a hell even after he'd expired, and this had to be some kind of posthumous revenge for tying him to a bed, naked. Karasu watched him unflinchingly, probably noting every tiny tick of anger and defiance that he could no longer control
"So what are you going to do?" Karasu asked him.
Kakashi touched his rapidly swelling face. "I'm going to go see the doctor," he said, and he shoved the urn of ashes back into Karasu's hands to sweep out the room again.
"Don't be such a baby! I didn't hit you that hard…"
Sakura had always liked the smell of burning wood, almost as much as she liked the smell of cooking duck. Rarely did she ever have the opportunity to sit beside a campfire, even on missions through various uninhabited terrain. Normally it was standard procedure to bring along a portable gas stove to cook with, and thermal blankets to keep warm. Both she and Sasuke, however, had been caught unprepared.
Most of Sasuke's supplies were now sitting abandoned next to a soba stand on a lonely lightning country mountain, since Sakura had summoned him in the middle of purchasing a bowl of noodles. Sakura's supplies that she'd carefully packed had been drenched with unspeakable filth, and though she'd managed to salvage her books and a few of her clothes, all the food she'd brought had been thrown into the lake with the rest of her belongings that were ruined beyond all usability.
Fortunately she and Sasuke were ninja, despite being pregnant and blind respectively, so they could rough it. Even if it meant having to catch their own food.
"Do you often catch your own food?" she asked him curiously as she nibbled on a tasty duck drumstick. "You're very good at it."
"It's easy enough," he said with a shrug. "Just shoot anything that moves with a kunai."
God help any unfortunate ramblers who happened to be passing by when Uchiha Sasuke was hungry.
"Junglefowl are pretty easy to catch anyway," he went on.
"But…" she said, looking down at the bird on the spit. "This is a duck."
"No, it's not. It tastes like a junglefowl to me."
"No, it tastes like a duck." She gave him a worried look. "You've been killing ducks all this time, haven't you?"
"Among other things."
"You're lucky you haven't caught anything poisonous yet," she murmured, looking about. They were trudging through thick rainforest here, and from the tiniest ant to the biggest herbivore, there was plenty in this forest that could kill you if you so much as licked it. Duck, however, was probably safe enough.
She looked at the carcass over the fire. It was pretty bare now on her side, and Sasuke had barely touched his half. "Are you going to have that thigh?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Do you always eat this much?"
"Think of it as a compliment to your cooking skills," she told him. "This is just as fine as anything served up in an Ame restaurant."
"Is that what you did then?" he mused. "With Kakashi? You wined and dined? Funny way to treat a hostage."
"He wasn't going to let me starve," Sakura said, scowling at him. The thought of Kakashi was enough to staunch her appetite very rapidly, and she caught herself picking at her meat till it frayed.
"Why did he even bring you to Ame?" Sasuke asked. "Surely he knew you'd have a better chance of escaping from there, along with a multitude of ways of contacting Konoha."
She sighed. "Yeah, he knew… and he thought I was beginning to trust him, so he trusted me too. But the only reason we came was because I wanted to put the baby up for adoption, and to do that we had to get away from the Zuru estate. He was only trying to help me."
"Then why ditch him?"
"Something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions, I don't know." She dropped the bones into the fire and sucked her fingers. "For a while I was actually prepared to go back to Konoha with him and keep his damn secrets as long as his family didn't cause any more trouble. But then…"
"Then Iwa restarted its armed campaign again," Sasuke guessed. "And he changed his mind?"
"Maybe. I just drugged him and got out of there before he could even think about figuring a new way to keep me quiet."
"No more plans to adopt?"
"Maybe," she sighed again, rubbing her hands over belly. Things were certainly feeling a lot tighter these days. "Maybe not."
"Is the father waiting back in Konoha? Is that why you were trying to get rid of it abroad?"
Insightful… but far off the mark. "I seem to remember telling you it was none of your business," Sakura informed him tartly. Sasuke offered her a shrug and said nothing more, and in silence they finished the rest of their meal, refilled their canteens at a nearby stream, and stubbed out the campfire with dirt. It was time to get moving again.
They were still half a day away from the village where she would rendezvous with the team from Konoha, but at the speed they were travelling that could be an optimistic projection. Sasuke was not quite as patient as Kakashi had been during the trip to Ame. When Sakura said that she needed to rest her back and take the weight off her feet, Sasuke sighed and sometimes even tutted at her as if she was holding him back, which was rich considering there was no reason why he would be in a rush to get to the village. If she heard him, Sakura would loudly and sarcastically apologise for being so damn pregnant as to inconvenience him and point out that things would go much quicker if he carried her.
To which he went oddly quiet like a man contemplating what it would be like to be sat on by an elephant.
The border village lay directly east from Ame. And so did the Zuru estate. Even though they would pass that place by several miles, Sakura couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling that they were walking in the wrong direction if the distance between her and the Hatake clan was ever at any point growing shorter.
They stopped to take another breather beside an ancient tree at the roadside that was almost entirely black with disease. Sakura recognised it from her first trip through the rain country around five months ago. "We're about three hours away from the Zuru estate," she recalled uncomfortably.
"And about two from your target village," he pointed out, then noticed her lagging behind him. "Don't tell me you need another break."
"Oh, don't let me hold you back," Sakura grumbled. "You're welcome to go on ahead of me."
"How far along are you, anyway? You have to be due any day now by the sound of it."
"I'm eight months," she ground out.
"You're awfully heavy for eight. Is it twins?"
"Thank you for feeling you needed to point that out to me."
"Or perhaps it's just going to be a fat baby?"
"Would you-"
"Maybe it takes after its father, Chouji?"
He was deliberately trying to wind her up, banking on her temper to make her spill the identity of the father. But he could antagonise her all he liked – there was no interrogation technique that existed that could make her admit she lay down with Hatake Kakashi, and definitely not to her first love of all people.
"You're just wishing it was you," she remarked cattily, hoping to end his interest by putting him on the defensive.
But instead he just shrugged and said, "Yeah. Maybe I am."
Sakura stopped dead on the road. "Don't even joke about that."
He carried on walking. "I never joke," he said simply. "I've always wanted to resurrect my clan, and I'd be lying if I said I'd never considered you as a possible candidate."
How typically unromantic! Sasuke didn't consider lovers as 'partners' but as breeding machines for his glorious genes. Then again Sakura would also be lying if she said she'd never wanted to be that woman he picked to start a large new family with. That didn't mean she had to tell the truth though. "Why would I ever have wanted to help you do that?" she asked haughtily, speeding up to catch him. "I have some self-respect, you know."
"That's ok. I've come across several other women who would do the job just as well," he said indifferently. "But it's such a waste…"
"What is?" she asked, dreading the answer.
"That a kunoichi of your talents and drive is going to get stuck changing diapers at twenty-one because of a worthless man," he said. "You might as well have dropped dead as far as Konoha is concerned. You'll be no use to them now."
"Having a baby is not the end of the world," Sakura told him tritely, though she often felt that way herself sometimes.
"Is the father going to help you?" Sasuke asked.
She thought about Kakashi's apparently earnest offer to give her support if she chose to keep it, but still the fear that he was just trying to buy her silence haunted her. Kakashi could be coldly logical sometimes, and at others perfectly sentimental. It was possible he wanted to arrange it so that turning on him would mean compromising the upbringing of his own child, and it was also possible that he would hand over all his bank details just to keep her happy and assuage his guilt. "He said he would," she said truthfully. "However much that entails."
Now it was Sasuke's turn to stop short on the road. Sakura had to conclude he was not capable of smiling these days, because otherwise his lips should have been curved up into a victorious smirk. "Then it's no one in Konoha," he said.
Sakura stopped with an uncertain frown. "Pardon?"
"You didn't tell anyone you were pregnant before you went on such an extended mission because they would have stopped you, or told someone else who could have stopped you, and you haven't been in contact with Konoha since because you told me as much that Kakashi has been keeping you isolated," he said. "So that means if you've been in contact with the father, he must have been at the estate."
"Good luck narrowing that down. There are over three hundred men living and working there," she informed.
"And you may have dropped your panties for each and every one of them for all I know, yes, but you're eight months pregnant, and eight months ago you were trading blows with me in a north-western province of the fire country and certainly not anywhere near the Zuru estate. So I wonder what man you were with then that was also with you at the estate later…?"
A prickly pang of annoyance and humiliation shot through her veins. "Alright, Detective!" she snapped icily. All he was missing was a sidekick and a drawing room full of enraptured suspects.
"I never knew you had a teacher complex, Sakura," he returned.
"It's not – I've never – not with Kakashi!" she lied furiously. "That you'd even suggest it is sick and perverse!"
"I don't think I'm the sick and perverse one here," he said a little smugly. "Remember. I can tell when you're lying – your voice goes up."
"I hate that!" she said with vehemence that surprised even herself. "I hate that you think you know me after all these years! You think you have me all figured out, but-"
"I do have you all figured out," he protested simply. "Don't worry. It's not like I think any less of you for screwing our mad teacher. In fact I'm impressed."
Sakura's face flamed, unbeknownst to Sasuke. "He didn't take much convincing," she said through her teeth. He hadn't even bothered to pretend to resist like a more professional superior might have the first time she'd kissed him. That in itself should have been a warning sign.
"No, I mean what you're doing now. I'm impressed," he clarified. "You're willing to stab your lover in the back for the sake of your village. Not many people would choose loyalty over love, but you're more ruthless than you look, aren't you? You really are a high level kunoichi. I wonder what happened to the girl who said she'd do anything for me and begged to come with me when I left Konoha?"
"She got pregnant," Sakura said shortly, "and realised men exist to bring women down."
"And that birth control is for losers, huh?"
"At least I'm not still a virgin!" she retorted.
"I'm not a virgin. Who told you I was a virgin?"
"You're lying. I can tell when you're lying – your voice goes deeper when your masculinity is threatened."
If he had a comeback it was forgotten when the bushes a few dozen feet away rustled. Sakura and Sasuke both turned to look sharply at the source of the noise, and Sakura relaxed upon seeing a little rabbit hopping between the weeds to nibble on some leaves. Knowing her luck, she'd expected to be set upon by the Hatake clan.
"What is it?" Sasuke asked, scowling in the direction of the small herbivore.
Sakura looked at him sideways. "It's just one of those giant tigers the rain country is famous for. Looks kinda hungry."
Sasuke put his hand to his sword.
"I'm not eating tiger for dinner," she cautioned him. "So don't bother."
"We'd best keep moving if we don't want to be the tiger's dinner," he said quietly.
The blind could be rather a lot of fun, Sakura discovered. It was a shame he wouldn't come back to Konoha – someone like Naruto could have endless fun at the expense of a blind friend. Although perhaps he knew that and was just another reason why he steered clear of the place. Come to think of it –
"It's alright if you want to part ways here," she told him. "It's only a couple of hours walk, if you don't want there to be any chance of bumping into anyone from Konoha."
He thought about it for a few seconds. "And leave you to be eaten by tigers? Let's just keep going for now. I'll decide when I'm at risk."
When they had to stop every hour or so out of consideration for all Sakura's aches and cramps, the last three hours to the village became five. By the time the first houses began to appear, it was getting close to midnight and without much of a nightlife in such a small place it was awfully quiet. Knocking at the door of the inn produced a small, irritable little man in his pyjamas who was not at all pleased to have been roused so late. He was not, however, too annoyed that he couldn't accept Sakura's money and request for boarding, and when he noticed her condition he also lowered his price.
Being pregnant at least had some advantages.
"Room six, end of the hall," he said, and with a yawn disappeared back to bed.
Sakura looked at Sasuke, amazed he was still with her this far, but he didn't seem interested in leaving just yet so she shrugged and led him to the room they'd rented. It was pleasant and clean with a wide double bed and a set of glass doors leading onto a dark balcony. Sakura set her bag down on the floor and sat on the bed with a blissful sigh. "That's better," she whispered, and tried not to think that the journey to Konoha would be five times as long and arduous.
Across the room, Sasuke was scoping the joint, touching a hand to the glass doors and discovering the closet. "When will Konoha arrive?" he asked her.
"Two days, at the earliest," she said. Already she was reaching for the pillows to stack them around her in a pleasing nest.
"Then I can stay here with you for a while," he decided.
Sakura said nothing. She didn't feel any need to chase him off, not while there was still a possibility that Kakashi could catch up before anyone from Konoha arrived. He wasn't great company, but he certainly wasn't the worst she'd had and if he wanted to stay out of some odd concern for her well-being, who was she to discourage that? But… "You're not sleeping in the bed," she told him what she'd told Kakashi countless times now.
"I doubt there'd be room for me."
On second thoughts. "If you're only going to linger to insult me, you can push off."
"I don't want to sleep anyway. Someone has to keep watch," he said, finding the armchair beside the bed. "Or whatever."
Sakura settled down on the bed with a shrug. She knew it wasn't just about keeping watch. She'd already betrayed him once on a whim and he wasn't about to close his eyes and fall asleep in her presence in case she decided to do it again. Having used the last of her sedatives on Kakashi, Sasuke was in no danger from her. But even if she did have the capacity to neutralise him now, Sakura didn't think she would.
All the things he said about Konoha… he really hated it. Not just this particular village but what it represented, and all villages like it. He hated the institutionalisation of their trade, and the presumed authority to chase down any nin who remained free. And if freedom was all Sasuke wanted, she no longer thought she could even try to capture him again. Perhaps, as Kakashi had said, everyone would be happier if he was allowed to live as he wished.
And this really was no different from what the Hatake clan thought of the villages. And if she couldn't find the will to turn Sasuke in, was it fair to expect Kakashi to turn his family in?
Missing a night's sleep and walking all day had finally taken its toll on Sakura by the next morning. She woke up feeling sore and abused and with a clock on the wall that told her she'd hugely overslept. Lunchtime had come and gone, and her stomach gave sharp pangs of distress at having been neglected for so long.
She rose shakily to her feet and looked around. "Sasuke?" she called, as she tried to blink the blur from her eyes.
But there was no sign of him anywhere. Had he left already? Without even a word? Or had he just gone to the toilet in the night and got lost? Well, no. This was a guy who could navigate from the rain country through the fire country to the lightning country on his own. He could find a damn bathroom if he pleased. Most likely he'd just left and wasn't one for awkward goodbyes.
Giving a stiff yawn and a stretch, she rose to her feet and shed her clothes for something a little fresher. Still paranoid about the smell of sewage, she sniffed everything before she put it on, and wasn't exactly convinced she didn't smell like manure. The lake water and soap had only done so much.
She jumped when the door behind her opened.
"There's a bathhouse down the street," Sasuke said. His hair was wet and his cloud-nin uniform had been traded for something more low-key for rain country territory. "Past the man who's shouting he's selling fried chicken that smells like fried rat."
"You can't tell duck from chicken, but you can tell chicken from rat?" Something wrong was going on here. She looked him up and down warily, wondering where he'd pilfered this set of peasant clothes from. There was probably some poor naked farmhand lying unconscious in one of this town's back alleys. "I thought you'd gone."
"For a bath? Yes." He offered her a shrug and a pointed sniff. "So should you."
"Alright, alright," she sighed. "I get the hint." She counted her lucky stars that he could not see her poorly suppressed smile to see that he'd stuck around after all. If Konoha didn't arrive till tomorrow, it meant he would perhaps at least stay until tonight. He may not have been the easiest person to get along with, but like an errant brother or cousin that didn't matter – family was family, and for all his faults she was glad to have him around.
"I'll be back in a bit," she told him as she picked up some of the money she'd pinched from Kakashi's pockets and went in search of the bathhouse, following Sasuke's directions.
It was small, but clean, and most of the other bathers were in their late middle years, which was precisely the point in life that women seemed to look at other people's young children with rose-tinted glasses now that theirs had grown into unlovable adults. From the moment Sakura sank into the communal waters, she had to endure a litany of questions and comments.
"Is it your first?"
"You must be due any day now."
"You must be so excited!"
"Will you breastfeed or use formula?"
"What are you going to call it?"
"A boy? Your husband must be so proud!"
And because Sakura didn't want to expound upon the wearisome complexities fudging up her life right now, she just smiled and nodded and said, yes, her husband was proud, he was waiting back at the inn for her, they were on their way home, and they would live happily ever after in utter simplicity and joy.
Maybe it was all the uncomfortable personal questions from people who good-naturedly assumed she must be happy and open about her baby, but Sakura was beginning to feel hassled and vulnerable, like there was someone behind her just out of sight on the periphery. It was a little like the feeling she'd had in Ame, shortly before Reika had cornered her. However many times Sakura glanced around the small bathing area, all she saw were other women and she couldn't sense any peeping toms hiding on the other sides of the partitions.
A flap of wings and a loud squawk made Sakura gasp and almost dive into the water up to the top of her head. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a large black crow sitting on the tall wooden fence behind her, a snail trapped in its beak.
It was just a bird… and she was probably being silly, but she couldn't help think back to the mews back at the estate where there had been row upon row of such birds to serve the Hatake clan. Sakura hunkered down in the water a little more and made sure the towel was wrapped tightly around her head. The crow paid no more particular attention to her as it smashed its prize against the top of the fence and gleefully gobbled the snail from its shell. When it finally took off with a great flap of wings, Sakura decided she'd had enough and climbed out of the pool to dry off and get dressed. She did at least feel a little more human for finally having a piping hot bath to ease her sore muscles, though she still couldn't shake the hunted feeling tapping at the back of her senses.
As soon as she stepped out of the changing room she saw Sasuke waiting for her by the entrance.
"Is that your husband?" one curious woman asked.
"Yes," Sakura lied, because it was easier than explaining he was an estranged team-mate who had nearly killed her a few months ago.
Sasuke must have recognised her footsteps, because he glanced towards her as she approached. "You didn't have to come meet me, I could have found my way back to the inn by myself," she said.
"I'm a little concerned about this town," he said by way of explanation.
Sakura looked around the ordinary street with its ordinary people. Sometimes such a front of ordinariness in itself could be disconcerting for people like them who were trained to suspect the ordinary for the extraordinary. The unease was there, but Sakura forced herself to shrug it off. There was no way Sasuke was going to play on her insecurities and make her leave this place – not when she was due to finally make contact with Konoha tomorrow. "You're just paranoid," she said dismissively. "Would you like some fried chicken?"
"Fried rat," he corrected.
"If you were as hungry as me, you wouldn't be so picky either," she retorted.
Part of the group of women Sakura had been bathing with floated past and recognised her. "Congratulations," they said to the man they presumed to be her husband. "You must be a proud father."
Sasuke scowled. "But it's not mine."
The women looked dimly confused, and just as disapproving comprehension began to appear, Sakura grabbed Sasuke by the sleeve and began hauling him back towards the inn. "It's ok, I'll eat later," she blurted. "If you're so concerned about this town, let's hole up in the inn until tomorrow."
"I'm leaving tonight," he reminded.
"Yes, yes, I know…" she sighed.
Perhaps it was the glimpse of the crow, or Sasuke's comments of concern about the town, but Sakura felt compelled to lock the windows and draw the chain on the door the moment they were back inside their room. Sasuke followed her movements about the room with mild interest. "Konoha might not be here tomorrow," he told her.
She looked at him, affronted. "Of course they will. I arranged it all in the telegram."
"Yes, but the rain country border has been guarded for a while now. It was difficult for me to get across undetected, so I doubt it'll be all that easy for a larger group of Konoha nin to pass into the rain country. They're at war, you know."
"Everyone keeps saying that," Sakura sighed, exasperated. "Since when has the fire country been at war with the rain-?"
"Since twenty-five years ago," Sasuke said stolidly. "Ame never signed the peace treaty. They hate Konoha to this day for defeating them in the last war."
"Ame must be your spiritual home then," she remarked in a monotone, moving to sit on the bed.
"I don't think you'll have an easy time of getting across the border either," he mused. "You might as well stay in this country after all."
Sakura huffed an annoyed sigh. "Like hell."
"I'm serious. All you're going back to is judgement and oppressive motherhood. Why would you want that?" he asked.
"Shut up, Sasuke…" she mumbled, her face growing hot with a fierce mix of emotions she couldn't identify.
He shrugged and went to stand by the window, looking out as if he could feel the light on his face. "You realise if you go home pregnant, you'll probably be shamed by your friends and colleagues into raising it yourself? Give it away out here and no one will be any the wiser back in Konoha. No one can force you into something against your own interests."
Sakura sat quietly, arm hugging her belly and stroking it unconsciously. "No one's going to force me," she said dully. "I've already decided."
He looked back towards her, silently questioning.
"I'm keeping the baby. It's mine. My baby. My son."
Sasuke always looked indifferent, but now he just looked incredulous. "It's also Kakashi's baby. Kakashi's son. Don't you think that will create complications down the line?"
"Giving him away to strangers won't change that, and I don't think I could live with myself if I did," she said, her voice growing stronger as she spoke like her own thoughts on the matter were only just beginning to gain conviction. "Even if I struggle and I have to sponge off my friends and give up work and count my pennies – this is my responsibility. I'll manage. This will be a person, and I can't just throw him on someone else's mercy because I'm a little scared now."
Sasuke sighed and looked away again. "It's your life, and yours to ruin as you see fit."
"I don't think it can be ruined anymore than it has been," she mourned. "Ever since I had the bright idea to kiss a drunk pervert, my life was-"
"Shh," Sasuke interrupted sharply.
Half offended at being cut off just as she was really getting going, and half worried for the tense expression on Sasuke's face, Sakura stilled on the bed and listened intently. She could hear nothing, but then everyone had always said the blind possessed better hearing since it was their primary sense without vision.
After a few beats of silence, Sakura opened her mouth to ask what he'd heard – but he only held up his finger to quiet her before she'd even spoke. Wearing the same tense mask, he moved towards the door and turned his head as if to listen carefully for something on the other side. Just when it looked like he was about to relax, Sasuke suddenly stepped back sharply –
Just in time to avoid the electrifying fist that exploded through the panel. Splinters flew – Sakura clamped down on a flinch of shock and stood quickly to put the bed between her and the door. Trained instinct told her she needed a weapon – any weapon – but the sharpest object she had to hand were the knitting needles poking out of her bag.
Better than nothing.
Sasuke drew his sword and Sakura brandished her needles, and the gloved hand protruding through the door calmly reached for the lock to undo the chain. The arm disappeared, and a second later the broken door swung open.
"Who is it?" Sasuke asked her.
Sakura's stomach plummeted, but she never lowered her needles. "Kakashi," she said thickly.
The first to move was Sasuke. Faster than the eye could follow, he darted in as he drew his sword and only a swift step back kept Kakashi from having his stomach split open. A standing lamp on the table by the door fell in two halves.
"Don't!" Sakura shouted, not sure who she was even speaking to.
Something in Sasuke's footing faltered – a minor hesitation to follow his swing with a thrust – and through that tiny opening Kakashi pressed his advantage without any indecision. He flitted forward and grabbed Sasuke's wrist as he simultaneously jammed his fingers against his throat, forcing the younger man back against the bed with a constricted cough. An electrical charge pulsed. Unprepared, Kakashi flinched back and was immediately caught by the front of his vest and thrown, one-armed, in a move Sakura recognised. Sasuke had, after all, used it on her seven months ago when she'd nearly cracked her head open on a stone bridge.
Kakashi's body crashed this time into the sliding glass doors, and he crumbled there as shattered triangles of glass rained down on him.
"Don't do anything stupid!" she hissed at both of them. "I can't heal anyone here!"
But the fight wasn't over, and Kakashi stood stiffly, shrugging his shoulders to brush off the crumbs of glass dusting his clothes. Wordlessly he grabbed a handful of shards from the ground and flung them at Sasuke –
Another snap of electrical bursts. The glass turned to dust before it struck Sasuke – but the noise had drowned out the sound of Kakashi's footsteps moving in. He caught the younger man by surprise, driving him back against the wall hard enough to make the sword drop. Sakura watched as Sasuke immediately resorted to his best close-combat defence – Chidori nagashi. Yet as the electrical charge built around his body that could drive groups of people away from him more effectively than any punch, an equal charge built around Kakashi.
Sasuke suddenly convulsed and shrunk in pain against the wall. Kakashi had him by the wrists, pushing back against his chakra with his own, forcing it into Sasuke in what could only be agony.
"Don't use my own tricks against me, Sasuke," he grunted, as Sasuke's eyes rolled up. "Even you can't win against the sharingan."
Unable to hold himself up anymore, Sasuke's head sagged forward. When Kakashi stepped back, he slid to the floor like a dead man.
Maybe he was a dead man…
Kakashi turned and looked at her, and for the first time since he'd entered she finally got a good look at him. And it wasn't pretty. Beneath his right eye lay a huge black smudge, as thick as oil, and from the way the eye itself looked drooped – as if the whole right side of his face had sagged or melted – Sakura immediately recognised he'd broken his cheekbone. Since when had he…?
"Thank you," he said, reaching out to her. Sakura didn't realise she was still brandishing her knitting needles at him until he'd taken them off her hands and moved back to Sasuke. He stabbed them into the unconscious boy's sleeves, pinning him to the ground completely.
Perhaps he wasn't all that dead then?
Kakashi sat on the bed with a sigh. The palm he'd sliced up on the glass shards lay upturned in his lap, and he paused a moment to pick it clean of the remaining glass slivers. "I don't know," he said tiredly, "if I've rescued the princess from the rogue, or defeated her knight in shining armour."
His first mistake was assuming she was any kind of princess. "You're too ugly to be the hero, Kakashi."
He pointed to his mangled face. "This is probably your fault anyway."
"I did no such thing," she cried indignantly. "I only drugged you…"
"I really wish you hadn't," he said with another light sigh, and Sakura wondered how quickly he'd figured out what she'd done after he'd woken up alone in that Ame hotel room.
"Did you follow us?" she demanded. "All the way from Ame?"
He shook his head. "I gave up. I was too tired to find your trail and too sick of chasing you."
"And yet here you are," she pointed out coldly, as a breeze from the broken window blew around the room. "Konoha will be here tomorrow… and when they come, you should be as far away as possible if you know what's good for you."
He just looked at her.
"I'm sorry," she said, stumbling awkwardly. "I sent them a message. I… I told them all about you and your family. If they find you here, I don't know what they'll do to you."
Kakashi returned his gaze to the ground.
"So… so you should just leave," she finished thickly. "Before they catch you."
She watched as he reached inside his vest and withdrew a crumpled piece of pink card. He threw it down on the ground at her feet, streaking it with blood in the process. Nonplussed, but curious, she managed to crouch to pick it up.
Her heart nearly stopped.
"Konoha won't be coming," he said flatly. "When I woke up in Ame, I followed your trail. I found this at the telegraphy office."
It was her telegram. The message she'd tried to send.
"Do not contact Kakashi or his summons," he recited, as if he'd learnt the words off by heart. "Compromised. Mercenaries are Hatake. Leader is Hatake Karasu. Please instruct team to meet me at 9 48 0, 105 49 59. Do not contact Kakashi."
He'd intercepted it. It was her own fault. If she'd given him a stronger dose, he would have slept longer, and if he'd slept longer he never would have got to the telegraphy office before they sent her message, and then he never would have known where to find her, and Konoha would be just around the corner… and... and…
Sakura dropped the useless card and pressed her hands over her face. "Why do you keep doing this to me?" she pleaded. "Just let me go! I never did anything to you!"
"Don't talk to me like that!" he ground out. "I don't enjoy this any more than you do, Sakura. If it was up to me, Sasuke could escort you all the way back to Konoha for all I care."
"And don't you pretend that you don't have a choice! You could let me go right now, but you're too busy licking Karasu's boots to use your own will!" she accused.
"I could let you go right now," he admitted, "but there are fifteen men downstairs who would disagree. I tried to convince them you weren't worth retrieving, but Karasu has his mind set. Not even I can talk him out of it now."
Sakura stared at him hard. "What are you talking about?" she whispered. "Why the hell would Karasu want me back?"
"Because Toshio is dead," Kakashi told her bluntly. "The Zuru family are now completely without heirs, and Karasu wants to make sure your son inherits the estate so that all the money ends up within the clan. I'm sorry, Sakura, but he must have been planning this for a while."
'Your' son? What happened to our son? Her head was shaking from side to side, unable to stop. "No. No," she said. "That's not happening. This baby is mine, not Toshio's. I'm not giving him to that family. Not in that place."
Kakashi rose to his full height which was ordinarily imposing enough when his face wasn't disfigured. "Is that what you've decided?" he asked her sharply. "You know any child raised as the Zuru heir would be well provided for. He'd be protected by the Hatake clan."
"That's not going to happen! If there's even the slimmest possibility he'd turn out like Toshio – absolutely not!" she ground out, and dear god she hoped that guy had fallen into a meat grinder. "And the protection of your clan means nothing to me. I'd rather send him to be raised by a pack of rabid wolves than allow him to fall into the clutches of that family. I told you, this is my baby. I'm the only one who'll be raising him!"
"The clutches of my family, huh? Does that include me?" he wondered.
Sakura squared her shoulders. "It's not… feasible," she said lamely.
"Oh, I know. Once you get back to Konoha, there's no hope for me, I know that. At least try to remember me fondly."
"What?" She frowned at him. His words didn't seem to follow the conversation.
Kakashi sighed and folded his arms. "Go back to Konoha, Sakura. Do what you have to. Sorry if you think I'm cowardly, but I can't come with you. I'd rather stay a free man out here where I may be of more use to everyone."
Her mouth dropped in surprise, unable to form any thought beyond 'oh' for a long time. "You're… siding with your family at last then, huh?"
"Not siding," he said simply. "Someone needs to keep a rein on them and I can't do that from within a cell in Konoha. You understand, don't you?"
Sakura wasn't sure she could trust her own ears. "You're really letting me go?"
"I came here with the others to give you a chance to escape," he explained. "Use it wisely. There's a back entrance out of this place, and if you head north I'll lead them south after a certain distraction."
"Distraction?"
Kakashi turned to the prone boy on the floor. "You can stop pretending to be unconscious. You're not going to hear anything more interesting."
Sasuke levered himself up with a sigh, plucking out the needles pinning his sleeves down. "I'm kinda disappointed. All this time she's led me to believe you've been keeping her locked in a cage, but in truth she has you totally whipped."
"She has you under her thumb too by the look of it," Kakashi remarked. "Are you willing to do her one last favour?"
"Perhaps," Sasuke grunted, dusting off his clothes, and Sakura wondered if he'd feigned defeat just to eavesdrop. "As long as it's not too far out of my way."
"Fifteen men downstairs are waiting for some action. Create a diversion and lead them south."
Sasuke's chin lifted.
Kakashi seemed to realise he wasn't team leader anymore and closed his eye briefly as if begging for patience. "Please," he said. "For Sakura."
"I don't know," Sasuke mused. "Sounds like a lot of effort and risk when she could just go peacefully back to the estate."
"Oh, you'd like that wouldn't you-" Sakura's rant was cut off when Kakashi's hand sealed over her mouth.
"You don't think you can handle fifteen men?" he asked the younger man incredulously.
The corner of Sasuke's mouth lifted in a smirk. "Goading works only on the insecure, sensei. You're lucky I already decided to help."
Sakura felt her breath coming a little more easily. She looked at up at Kakashi beside her, at his battered face and strong shoulders, and was suddenly struck by his unwavering compassion that had always been there, even when she'd thought the worst of him.
She didn't want to believe this could be the last time she ever saw his face.
The thought choked her. "Kakashi," she began uncertainly, reaching out for his sleeve, not sure what she wanted to convey or how to convey it.
Kakashi always understood her, usually better than she did. "We'll see each other again. I promise," he said as he touched a hand to the top of her head and followed it up with a brush of fingers against her cheek.
It was just words. So many promises had been made and broken to Sakura over the years that she no longer trusted them. It would be in his best interests if they never crossed paths again, so any desire to have him all to herself was just selfish nonsense. She really had picked the wrong man to fall for…
Sakura stepped in close to wrap her arms around him as best she could and nearly sobbed to feel the warmth of his embrace close around her. "I have to tell them the truth and warn them, but I'll make them understand," she promised him. "You're not a traitor."
"Just hearing you say that is enough for me," he whispered.
Across the room, Sasuke shifted awkwardly.
It was painfully hard to ease away from him, and she only managed it an inch at a time. When he was looking down at her and she was looking up at him, and her hands were gripping his waist while his were rested on her shoulders… the urge to kiss him was curbed only from the knowledge that it would aggravate his injury.
Yet she didn't want to part with him thinking he meant only as much to her as a hug. "How much do you remember from when I drugged you?" she asked quietly.
"I remember the dragon fruit and… not much else."
So he didn't remember their feverish little kisses or her wish to stay with him, always. However, it was one thing to confess to a man on sedatives who wouldn't remember her words later, and another to say the same to a fully conscious man while another stood nearby 'ahem'ing impolitely to get them to hurry up.
Instead she lifted his hand in both hers and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. In the circumstances, with one extremely wanted man breathing down their necks and another fifteen downstairs whose patience might not hold for much longer, it would have to do.
"Take what you can and head north," he told her heavily. "Kill any crows you see and head towards Konoha when you can. I'll keep everyone looking in the wrong place for you. Sasuke and I will create the diversion first, so you should wait a few minutes before leaving after us."
She nodded. There was nothing else to say.
With a slumped look he moved back around the bed to Sasuke. "Let's go then," he said to him.
"If you can keep up," Sasuke retorted.
"Just go easy on them. Most of them are only kids."
Sasuke shrugged and moved to the broken door. He wasn't one for goodbyes, so he did little more than flick a brief "Take care," in Sakura's direction before walking out, which was perhaps more consideration than anyone could have hoped to expect. Kakashi paused in the doorway after him and gave Sakura one last look, as if committing her to memory. She hoped that wasn't the case. She didn't want to be remembered as the fat, bloated thing she was now.
"See you," he said softly, and then closed the door behind him.
Dutifully, Sakura waited five minutes. In that time she heard commotion outside through the shattered window, and shouting that faded into the distance. Only when she was certain the streets were calm again did she pull on her back pack and leave the room. She followed her nose to the back door of the inn and came out into an alley between two rows of houses, and she was confident enough in her orientation to turn north and start walking. According to the maps she'd memorised there would be another town about four miles to the north. There she could re-supply with food and water and try to contact Konoha again.
There was no need to worry for Sasuke. If there was one thing he was good at, it was running away, and no doubt he could keep even a gang of Hatake boys distracted for hours. She was more worried about what might happen to Kakashi if anyone discovered his deception.
Houses fell away to allotments, allotments merged with fields, and fields turned into forest. Sakura shot frequent looks over her shoulder to check for followers, and listened intently to the bird calls of the jungle. There were many, but the sound of a crow was distinctive, and if she heard a single cackle or croak, she'd pick up a stone and do just as Kakashi had suggested. Her gut instinct was rarely wrong. She hadn't been all that paranoid about the crow that had flown into the open bathhouse.
Her first break was taken in the shade of crumbling precipice of rock and moss where the air was cool and damp. She only intended to close her eyes for a moment, but the fatigue and the tranquil forest seduced her into a near stupor, and her worries trapped her in her thoughts long enough for her to forget to keep moving.
She kept seeing Kakashi's pleasant little smile in her head. The one she'd never seen him give anyone else but herself. The first time she'd seen it was at the hospital, when she'd woken up from a poison induced fever after a mission to find her team leader sitting beside her. He'd said he hadn't been at all worried and he'd smiled that diffident smile at her, even though the state of his clothes, and the growth of his beard, and the redness around his eyes betrayed his breezy comments.
Was she ever going to see that smile again?
A thin smell of tobacco tickled her nose. Sakura screwed up her face. It wasn't fair. Kakashi used to smell alright until he'd started smoking - although lately she'd noticed he hadn't really smelled of smoke at all. Always conscientious of lighting up around her, he hadn't got much of a chance the more time they spent together. She supposed now he could light up all he liked…
The smell of tobacco grew stronger, and rapidly it dawned on Sakura that it wasn't just her memory supplying her with phantom odours… she really was smelling tobacco.
She sat up abruptly, eyes popping open to fix on the figure who'd appeared upwind of her. He was sitting atop one of the giant fungi that grew on the giant trees in these parts, but instead of a cigarette he was holding a long, thin pipe.
"It's very dangerous to travel alone in places like this," Karasu said, staring up at the canopy listlessly. "Didn't Kakashi ever tell you that?"
Sakura closed her eyes again, never having felt as weary in her life as she did right then.
Next Chapter: The Offer She Could Not Refuse