Chapter 2: Things We Learn

It was humid and warm and there were two boys sprinting top speed across the green forest: a dark-haired boy wearing orange goggles over his forehead protector and a silver-haired masked boy she intuitively knew to be Kakashi.

Some of the images were distorted and didn't make sense —however, the face of the man that attacked them upon reaching a cave was vivid and detailed, and so was everything else afterwards. It was almost a little disorienting how focused, and sharp the images were.

One swift strike of the man's sword slashed through Kakashi's eye, and he cried out in pain and stumbled back, palming his bleeding injury.

"Kakashi!" The dark haired boy with the Uchiha crest on his back gasped and dashed to his friend's side. In a rush of emotions, the boy unlocked his sharingan and killed their attacker.

It nearly fooled her into believing it was a happy ending when the two boys found their female teammate in the cave and narrowly managed to escape. That was, until a large rock was suddenly pummeling towards the silver-haired boy, right in his blind spot, and suddenly the Uchiha was shoving him out of the way.

"Kakashi… Rin... are you okay?" Obito muttered weakly.

A rush of fear raced through Kakashi and through her for reasons she failed to explain as the younger version of her sensei turned around to find his friend's side crushed beneath the boulder.

"Obito!" The girl cried, eyes filling up with tears and Kakashi froze in shock, his body going rigid.

Snapping into action, Kakashi rushed to the Uchiha's side and started desperately shoving at the rock that just wouldn't budge. "Ugh dammit, DAMMIT!"

"Stop Kakashi," the Uchiha boy coughed, blood trickling down the side of his chin. "I can't feel my left side anymore."

Kakashi looked away, his fists balling at his sides and his chest trembling slightly.

"I'm...the only one...who didn't give you… a present..." Obito coughed again, splattering blood on the ground next to his head. "At your Jounin celebration… right... Kakashi?"

Sakura's eyes stung with tears that didn't belong to her as she watched her former sensei look to his dying teammate with incomprehensible sorrow and anger.

"...What would be good… I was thinking… and now…. I've come up with it..."

Kakashi's eyes widened in surprise.

"What…? don't worry… it's not useless baggage…" Obito struggled to talk, coughing up more blood the more he tried to speak.

"It's… this sharingan of mine," Obito croaked, smiling shakily, his eyes rapidly fading in and out of focus.

Kakashi stared at him, stupefied, and Sakura's heart was suddenly, rapidly slamming against her rib cage.

"Please accept it," Obito murmured.

On the Uchiha's request, Rin started the lengthy transplant.

Obito kept talking, softly and hoarsely, his life escaping his body with each ragged breath. "I'm already… going to die."

Kakashi shut his eye tightly for a moment, swallowing back the tears that threatened to fall. "But... I can become your eye… and from now on I will see the future… take care of… Rin..."

Those were the Uchiha's last words, and as Rin finished transplanting his eye, Kakashi's Sharingan was crying tears and blood.

"Right," the masked boy whispered.


Sakura's chest felt tight as she lay in her bed, wondering what the heck was happening to her and what all those dreams meant. This was her third one, and it was of events she lacked the knowledge of about people she barely knew. It made her wonder if she'd finally lost her mind.

When she dreamt about Sakumo's death (and it kept her up for nights thinking about it) she thought that maybe the history book she read a few nights ago was messing with her brain. They had an entire section dedicated to Sakumo Hatake, after all. Not that any of it praised him —quite the opposite in fact.

If the author hadn't been dead for well over a decade, she might've hunted him down and slowly and painfully castrated him. She knew the exact story of Sakumo from Tsunade, and it angered her more so because she knew she would've done the same as him. Hell, she knew Naruto would've done what Sakumo did.

Sakura sighed. Thinking about it wasn't solving it or erasing it. What she needed to think about was their masked attacker and his anonymous group of ninja.

Very few people currently alive and on this earth could hold their own against Kakashi: Team 7, Might Gai and the Hokage being the only ones who could walk away alive. To think that someone… something (because that sure as hell wasn't human) could nearly do to him what only Pein managed… it was unthinkable and utterly frightening.

"FOREHEAD!"

Sakura's sleep-deprived, exhausted and overworked mind registered an imminent attack, and she barely had enough time to roll out of the way before Ino Yamanaka came crashing through her open window with a flying kick aimed straight at her face.

"PIG!" Sakura shrieked as she landed on the hard floor with a loud thud, clad only in her floral print panties. "What the hell?!" The pink-haired woman sat up, arms covering her chest. "Ever heard of knocking?!"

"I have knocked!" Ino glared fiercely, her blue irises doing a quick scan of her half naked best friend… and then her features morphed from irritated to amused in less than a second. "Oh my, Sakura, I see your underwear drawer has barely undergone any changes since puberty."

Sakura huffed and stood up, refusing to allow Ino to torment her over her choice of panties. "At least I own underwear."

The blond stuck her tongue out childishly as if she were two instead of twenty and stomped to Sakura's closet.

"What are you doing?" Sakura asked as Ino began to rummage through her clothes, sending piles of folded skirts onto the ground. "Ino!"

Before she could ask in what universe did the blond believe it was okay to mess up her neat closet, two items of clothing were flying her way, suspiciously close to her face. Sakura caught them in time, much to her friend's annoyance. "Get dressed forehead, we're going out for lunch."

Sakura had a snarky reply at the tip of her tongue, but Ino chose not to give her the chance to retort, cutting her off before she could speak. "You promised we'd meet on your day off. Now get dressed before I drag you down the streets and flash your tits to everyone in Konoha."

The rosette belatedly realised that by catching the clothes Ino had flung her way, she left her modest chest exposed. Groaning she marched towards her private bathroom, face flushed red, knowing Ino never handed out empty threats and fearing for her modesty.


"And then he just left!" Ino groused, her eyebrows furrowed in displeasure. "I get that he has this thing going on with her —he won't fuckin' admit it, but I know."

Sakura laughed nervously at the healthy dose of murderous intent her lunch companion currently emitted. "I think you're being too hard on him, Ino. You know Shikamaru; he finds everything troublesome. He's probably trying to figure things out for himself."

"But," Ino short of growled, "How come he must meet and approve of all my dates before they become serious and I don't get the same privilege? What a prick!"

The ginger waitress standing by the nearby table, just at the corner of Sakura's line of sight had begun to tremble slightly, and she noticed how pale the next table customers seemed to have gone. "Ino," Sakura said softly, without breaking eye contact with the elderly woman behind the blonde's shoulder. "You might wanna cut down on the killing intent before you give poor madam Kora a heart attack."

Crossing her arms, Ino huffed and turned to survey her surroundings with blazing eyes. After several moments of heavy silence, filled only with the sound of Sakura sipping her strawberry milkshake, Ino spoke. "Whatever happened to you with that mission?"

The rosette paused in her drinking and regarded Ino with wary emerald eyes. "You know it's classified right?"

Her best friend rolled her eyes in an overly exaggerated motion. "Sa-ku-ra," the blond scolded, raising a black and white badge in the air, an evil gleam in her eyes. "I'm authorised to know of this as head of the interrogation department."

Sakura's mouth fell open, all thoughts about her troublesome mission momentarily forgotten in favour of snatching the badge out of her friend's hand, and she nearly trampled over their lunch to get to Ino's side. "THEY PROMOTED YOU?!"

Ino gave the rosette one of her bright innocent smiles, the one reserved especially for when she was feeling particularly vicious in seducing her date and rested her cheek against her upturned palm. "That's right; your girl finally snatched the title from beneath Ibiki-ojisan's ass."

The head medic sat back in her chair in shock. "I… wow. Ino, that's incredible! I initially thought you weren't serious about this and only did it to fill out your father's spot. But I guess not."

Ino's smile turned a little sorrowful, and her voice quietened to a mere murmur. "Yeah… well, it's his legacy. He died fighting for Konoha and so will I."

Sakura reached for Ino's outstretched hand on the table and gave it a comforting squeeze, feeling a little guilty for bringing this particular topic up. "I'm sure he's proud of you."

The dull mood lasted another five seconds before Ino reverted back to her bright self and leant forward. "Enough of that. Now tell me about your mission!"

Sighing, the rosette braced herself for a long talk.


"Yo."

"Oh, hi," Sakura breathed, surprised to find Kakashi casually leaning against the door of her office the next evening, a bag of Chinese food in hand.

"A little birdie told me you finish your shift now," the silver-haired man greeted with a familiar eye crinkle.

"It is a generally known fact, I believe," the rosette teased as she went back to tidying up her desk, shuffling papers into stacks and returning pens to their holder.

"And that you're running on an empty stomach."

"Which in actuality is not a generally known fact. That's one nosy birdie." Sakura crossed her arms and leant against the edge of her desk, finally turning to face her teammate and eyeing him warily. "You might want to tell me who it is so I can pay it a special visit."

She could see the edge of his mouth quirk up beneath the mask and knew he was amused. "I don't condone animal cruelty, Sakura-chan."

Sticking her tongue out at him despite knowing how ridiculous it'd look, she straightened her posture and approached him. "I'm assuming you want me to join you for dinner?"

"You assumed correctly." His eyes danced with concealed mirth. "Shall we go? I have a few things to discuss."

Sakura hummed as she grabbed her coat off the hanger by the door and paused by his side, extending her hand towards the door. "After you."

He rolled his eyes but complied, exiting ahead of her.

"You think they're on some form of drugs?" Sakura's eyebrows quirked up in surprise, her chopsticks pausing in their mindless noodle stirring. She had been trying to find the appetite to finish her dinner for a while now but she felt too full and now the noodles were too cold to taste remotely appealing. "Why do you say so?"

Her dinner companion paused in his own mindless noodle stirring and rested his chin on his upturned palm. "When I fought the masked guy… He kept trembling. His hands were shaking and… he had this wild look in his eyes, they were glassy and he kept muttering to himself and occasionally he'd lose his balance. It's hard to explain. It was too dark anyway, but I'm positive he was close to convulsing."

The rosette leant back against the foot of her couch, her pink hair fanned out across the teal cushions. They decided to have dinner in her apartment, Kakashi claiming that his own was not fit for visitors at the moment, and sometime during the middle of their meal, Kakashi brought up their most recent mission. She suspected it was the reason she lost her appetite; nothing like being reminded of nearly losing a teammate to destroy her hunger. She wondered what she could do with that piece of discovery…

"They might be." Sakura allowed, turning her head to face Kakashi. "We have no proof but it's a good starting point. I'll do some research, maybe ask Tsunade if there have been any rumours of new drugs being circulated amongst mercenaries."

Kakashi nodded and copied her posture by leaning back against the couch behind him. He seemed lost in thought —he had that faraway look in his eyes that told her he was recalling every detail of the fight. "They're really strong."

That earned him a sigh from the rosette. She'd been worrying endlessly about their enemy's supposedly godly strength. "Or perhaps I've gotten…" he trailed off, unhappily.

"Oh, get over yourself," she scolded in a sudden burst of irritation. "You can't start doubting or blaming yourself every time, Kakashi-sensei."

She belatedly realised how rude she sounded, snapping at him like that, even if Sakura fully believed she had every right to, he was technically-kinda-sorta still her captain. "I'm… sorry."

Kakashi didn't say anything for a while, instead staring at her ceiling with a blank expression until she began to believe she'd actually offended him. "Sensei…?"

Her voice seemed to snap him out of whatever thought-track he was on, and he turned carefully blank charcoal eyes to study her.

"Kakashi-san," he replied softly.

"Huh?"

"Call me Kakashi-san. We're equals," he elucidated. Suddenly, he straightened and stood up in one fluid motion, nearly startling her. "I should go home; it's getting late."

Sakura stole a fleeting glance at the clock hanging over her kitchen's entrance to find that indeed it was late; it read midnight. "Oh."

His eyes creased in a practised gesture. "Get some rest."

And then he was gone before she could offer to see him out, leaving her with more questions than answers.

"Ugh!" The rosette cried in annoyance, falling back on her sofa. There were at least a hundred and one thoughts dancing around in her over-worked brain, and his mental health was slowly but surely becoming one of them.

Admittedly, no ninja was ever truly sane and healthy, and most of them, especially ANBU, survived on sleeping pills. Kakashi was not only an ex-ANBU but probably a traumatised child. If he truly was the one to discover his father's corpse and cut off the rope that killed him at the age six, he was likely as far away from sane as one could probably get.

Thanks to her reoccurring dreams, and to his aloof persona, she was starting to worry about what sort of things he thought about at night, when he had nothing to do. Knowing from personal experience that brains seemed to fancy doing a play-by-play of past memories and failures when she tried to sleep, his brain probably did the same.

Well, it wasn't like there was much she could do about that, she reasoned. Taking his advice of resting, she got up and hastily cleaned the dinner table before heading to her bedroom, shedding her clothes on the way there. However, she thought, even if she couldn't do anything about it, she'd be damned if she were to let him go through it alone.


It's a short chapter, but the next one will be longer. I decided to save shirtless Kakashi for the next chapter, sorry!

By the way, I still haven't found a beta if you're interested.

Update: this chapter has been beta'd by Denilmo !

Let me know your thoughts, I greatly value feedback -Rams