A/N: And to think, this entire time Naruto and Sasuke have been building their bromance in an extended training montage.

Also, how does the Body Flicker technique-which is by definition, at least according to the wiki, moving so fast as to be invisible to the human eye, giving it the appearance of teleportation, and seems to be used regularly by jounin who survive it and don't seem to accidently impale themselves on branches, etc.-exist in the same universe in which the speed of movement necessary for Chidori meant that it was an 'incomplete technique' until Kakashi got his Sharingan? I realize that Chidori requires straight-line movement, but still. (Quits grumbling and returns to plotting out new chapters. Because one day, I'll just give in and take Kishimoto-senei's example and things will be as they are because I say so.)

Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Five-

Thanatophobia (Part I)

Sakura was very stiff when she rose from her futon, but it was more inconvenient than actively painful. Between her stitches and scabs, the faint twinge of her wrist as she'd pushed herself upright was more minor than the indescribable sound of Naruto's snoring.

She'd woken sometime before dawn, not quite rested but fairly certain she was incapable of falling back asleep. Especially as someone seemed to have installed a sawmill in the room while she'd been sleeping. So she'd lain there, staring at the wall and watching as the quality of light slowly shifted. She was somewhat resentful of the fact that Naruto's body, splayed out in ungainly fashion, prevented her from rolling over to pass the time by staring at Sasuke-kun. She usually slept in the middle, but as she'd went to sleep alone except for Kakashi-sensei, she'd dragged her futon closer to the wall before collapsing into it. She hadn't even noticed when the others had come in, though when she'd woken in the night she was pretty certain that Naruto hadn't been there. So he'd come in very late, which was good for the sleep quality of everyone else.

Sakura had battled restlessness for what was probably the better part of an hour before her need to move overcame the desire to pretend that there wasn't another day at the bridge waiting for her. It was more the need to use the restroom that decided her than anything else. And since she was up, she ran through her morning routine, which made her feel reasonably human again, especially when she stepped outside on the veranda after she'd finished dressing and spent some time stretching.

By the time she came back inside, Tsunami was up and fixing breakfast and Kakashi-sensei was sprawled at the table. Openly reading porn so early in the morning at someone else's house made her want to smack him, but she was distracted by the other person at the table.

It had only been a few days, but now it seemed like it had been much longer since she'd last seen Sasuke-kun. She was so excited that she almost forgot such things as the rough patch of scabbing next to her eyebrow or the bandage covering her stitches, but when Sasuke-kun glanced over at her and his eyes widened, it all came rushing back.

She ducked her chin, hiding behind the barrier of the shemagh, which was proving itself to be a much more useful article of clothing than her red dress.

"Good morning, Sasuke-kun," she mumbled into the cloth as she took her seat. And immediately regretted it, because she could have went to help Tsunami, which wouldn't have left her open to Sasuke-kun's scrutiny.

His open surprise soon vanished as he mastered his expression, but it was still there in the tone of his voice as he asked, "Did something happen, Sakura?"

She blushed a little that he cared to ask and opened her mouth to tell him—

No words came. She was surprised and tried again, but even as she searched, there was absolutely nothing about that day she wanted to tell him. Because to tell him would be to relive it and she did that enough in dreams. Sakura did not want to bring that fear, that blood and death and pain, into this room. Not where they ate their meals. Not in a well-worn house with a family that loved each other deeply, one of whom was looking to her curiously and one that looked on knowingly.

"It's nothing," she said faintly. "I was just...clumsy."

Sasuke-kun didn't look like he believed her, but it wasn't in his character to have an argument over the breakfast table over someone else's wellbeing.

Though a not-too-deeply buried part of her wanted him to.

Instead she had to settle for glancing over at Kakashi-sensei, who gave her an encouraging, eye-creasing smile. "So," he began, redirecting the attention at the table toward himself, "I think we should let Naruto sleep in, but I think it's about time you joined us on guard duty, Sasuke."

[Kill Your Heroes]

Sasuke-kun was here, but so was the fog.

It was heavier than usual, but that seemed to please Tazuna. She discovered why when they reached the bridge and found the rest of the crew already assembled. They were all grinning and elbowing each other like boys with a secret, which made Sakura curious, despite the fog putting her on edge. One hand crept up to clutch at her upper arm and her breathing grew a little shallower, but she told herself that it was silly to panic while Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke-kun were here. She even almost believed it.

While Kakashi-sensei went to sweep the bridge, she and Sasuke-kun were left to wait with the others. Masa took the opportunity to approach them. She saw he'd replaced his scarf, his rough-cut brown hair now kept back by a more colorful shemagh in blue and black.

"G'morning, Sakura-chan," he said, grinning at her. "And Sakura-chan's friend."

Sakura automatically returned the greeting, while Sasuke-kun grunted a reply. "What's everyone so excited about?" she asked.

Masa's grin widened. "Today's delivery day and we've got a good, heavy fog, which means we don't have to rush as much."

"Delivery day?"

Just then, Kakashi-sensei gave the all clear.

"Come on," Masa said, "you'll see." He and the others moved forward, laughing softly and pulling on gloves. Rather than moving to their usual jobs, two of them immediately went to work getting the sometimes-contrary engine of the crane running smoothly, while the others clustered near one edge of the bridge. Masa waved them over and Sakura went, Sasuke-kun trailing silently behind.

When she reached the edge, she glanced down, expecting to see fog-shrouded sea, and was surprised to see instead a large barge sitting very low in the water. Its crew was moving with practiced industry in stripping tarps from materials for the bridge. She didn't recognize most of them, but Masa leaned over and explained that their bridge was a continuous multi-span beam bridge, which they were building one span at a time. As this last span had been finished successfully, they would have to construct new cofferdams to build the next set of piers.

They already had the sheet piling and other equipment for the cofferdams hidden in warehouses, but the barge was bringing in new rebar, cement and aggregate, as well as the prestressed concrete beams that needed to be cast offsite. All of it had to be smuggled in from the mainland, which not only put them at risk of discovery by Gatō, but slowed the building process considerably.

Sakura listened politely, if not particularly attentively, but it was a subject that Masa was obviously knowledgeable about. When she commented on it, he laughed, but he was soon hailed away by one of his crewmates and Sakura was left alone with Sasuke-kun.

She could think of many, many scenarios in which being left alone with Sasuke-kun was a lot more appealing. Ones that didn't involve a heavy fogbank that her imagination kept conjuring movement in. And where Sasuke-kun wasn't eyeing her suspiciously every time her hand flinched toward her kunai pouch. She ducked her chin beneath the barrier of her shemagh and laced her fingers together, though doing the latter made her heart race in ways that had nothing to do with Sasuke-kun's presence.

It wasn't this bad yesterday, she thought desperately to herself. But yesterday hadn't been so foggy and they hadn't been smuggling supplies in right under Gatō's nose.

"And this is why they couldn't afford to commission the village properly," Kakshi-sensei's low, mellow voice observed. "Smuggling tends to be expensive and building a bridge this size isn't cheap to begin with."

Sakura nodded and Sasuke-kun made that characteristic hn of acknowledgement. And that was the end of conversation for a time, because somehow she couldn't bring herself to try to inveigle Sasuke-kun into discussion. Every topic that she thought might interest him just sort of fell flat even while she was trying to frame it in her mind. It might have been because she kept getting distracted, because she wasn't quite capable enough to keep track of all the movement around her and sound half-way witty. Her kunoichi class teachers would have been very disappointed.

More rebar and cement than she'd ever seen in her life had already been unloaded onto the bridge and whisked away to be secured elsewhere, the barge rising up out of the water as several tons of material were removed. It was impressively efficient, even from the perspective of a ninja, and Sakura was beginning to think that it would all go smoothly when the fog began to thicken.

Unnaturally quickly.

Her hand dipped into her pouch for a kunai even before she heard Kakashi-sensei's controlled demand. "Everyone off the bridge," he ordered, loud enough to be heard but without even a hint of the panic she was feeling. "Except you, Tazuna. You should stay close."

The crane operator, who'd hoisted one of the huge prestressed concrete beams about halfway up, hovered uncertainly for a moment before Kakashi-sensei told him sharply to leave it. And he did, sprinting away toward the shore, the fog swallowing him as it continued to thicken.

Soon, it was thick enough that it gave a feeling of complete isolation, liked they'd been stranded on an island with an unfriendly barrier sea. She couldn't tell if the muffling quality of the fog was psychological or a component of the jutsu, but the sounds of the settlement had vanished. Her grip on her kunai tightened and she had a strange, irrelevant wish that it was the knife. It had already proven itself, which might have made her feel like she'd already proven herself.

Not that it would have offered much comfort. She might be unnerved by the cloaking properties of natural fog, might forever associate it with glancing down over the side of a bridge and making a decision that would change her life forever, but this kind of fog...

This kind of fog heralded a demon.

And when he came, it was from the direction of the shore, cutting off any easy retreat back to land. This bridge, which she had already learned was a brutal battleground, would be the stage on which this little human drama was decided.

Sakura shuddered, her palm clammy against the wrapped hilt of her kunai, but she shifted her center of gravity so she'd be better prepared to meet a strike.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Kakashi," Zabuza's voice said, piercing the watchful silence. "I see you've still got those brats with you. Still trembling, poor thing."

At first, Sakura thought he was talking about her, but it was her breathing that was too rapid, not her hand that was unsteady. It was only when Sasuke-kun shifted that she remembered Zabuza taunting him at their first meeting.

And then Zabuza was there, all around them, but on Kakashi-sensei's word, Sasuke cut them all down. Her heart fluttered a little in something other than fear at Sasuke-kun's display of raw skill, which was nothing at all like the crude, vicious battle she'd engaged in only days ago. It was like comparing the powerful flight of an eagle to the ungainly path of a bumblebee. Fresh pride at being on Sasuke-kun's team flooded her, but it was washed away with a fit of nervous worry when Zabuza marked him out as a target to the false hunter-nin that accompanied him.

But she did what she was supposed to and held her ground next to Tazuna as two distinct battles formed. Even when it was clear that that gap of skill Kakashi-sensei had talked about was in the ninja named Haku's favor.

"Is he gonna be alright?" Tazuna asked her in a low voice.

"He's my teammate," Sakura whispered, voice tight with suppressed emotion. "I have to trust him." And it was a hard thing to do, but all her training at the Academy clearly indicated her role in this scenario. It was Tazuna whom they'd been paid to protect. If he was hit by a stray kunai from either battle, if he died, the outcome of either of these battles would become irrelevant. Not just from a mission failure perspective, but she'd come to understand in these last few days that it was his knowledge and determination that were just as important in getting this bridge built as all the materials put together. If he died, it was Gatō's win.

So she kept herself watchful, because the Demon of the Mist and Kakashi-sensei were matched too evenly. If Zabuza managed to entrap him again, even if only briefly, he would cut through her to get to Tazuna. Sakura knew her duty, had no wish for Tazuna dead and these people left under Gatō's thumb, but it was equally the deep-rooted sense of self-preservation that made her hyper-aware of her surroundings.

And it was paranoia, that sense of being hunted that haunted her with quicksilver eyes, that made her suspect attack from everywhere. It was an almost unsustainable level of tension, broken only once at Naruto's arrival—welcome as it was, given Sasuke-kun's difficulties, he still somehow managed to make it obnoxious—but she was wound too tightly to trust the turn of battle.

When shadows began to resolve into an entire crowd of people at the end of the bridge, there was a moment self-satisfied recognition—she had expected the worst and it had happened and there was a strange kind of relief in that—before she was forced to confront the reality that Gatō hadn't trusted that this grudge match wouldn't end the same way the first encounter had.

And she was in a terrible position from which to admire his determination to have things sort themselves out his way. Haku and his bloodline limit had closed the escape to land, Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza's fierce battle would make maneuvering around them on the bridge almost impossible, and now there were more thugs and missing-nin than were easily counted gathered at the end of the bridge like a pack of predatory animals waiting to scent weakness.

She had only seconds to decide what she was going to do and her only certainty was that she didn't want to be trapped on the bridge. And she couldn't leave Tazuna. She could retreat beneath the bridge and make for the shore from there, but Tazuna was at least twice her weight and height, maybe more. If they died from a fall from the underside of the bridge because she had no practice at all carrying a load that heavy while upside-down and clinging tenaciously with her chakra, that would be better than being stabbed to death, but it wasn't the kind of better she was hoping for.

She needed to remove herself and Tazuna from the field. Sakura understood Kakashi-sensei's decision to keep him there, preventing Zabuza from sending his hunter after him while he stalled Team Seven, but that had changed with the arrival of Gatō's men. And if she couldn't go under, she would have to go down. If she could bear Tazuna's weight long enough to stop them from falling, she might be able to get them to the barge. If they hadn't boarded it. Even if they had, she could have Tazuna tread water near one of the piers. Surely not all of them would be able to water walk.

The only difficulty there lay in an entire crowd of hostiles between herself and her goal, because at the moment a ninja from the Bloody Mist was between them and the nearest pier in the other direction, but imprinted on her memory were Kakashi-sensei's words. They were only thugs and genin who'd left their villages.

Some part of her mind insisted that she was only a genin and there was only one of her and there was no way that this could work, but if there were other choices, she couldn't see them.

"Stay close to me," she told Tazuna in a voice made fierce by fear. Sheathing her kunai, she took one long breath, risked squeezing her eyes closed for just a moment, because she didn't want to be here, wanted to pretend she was somewhere else where she'd never even heard of Gatō. And then she opened her eyes. Because she was here.

Her fingers flexed easily through the sequence of seals that she'd painstaking committed to memory. Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu. On the last seal of the sequence, she felt a heavy, sick sense of doubt plague her—there were so many—but then she felt the enormous draw on her chakra. She watched as eyes lost focus and jaws went slack, the better part of the crowd caught within the grasp of her technique.

When the first man screamed, she grabbed Tazuna's wrist and bolted forward with the older man in tow. She hadn't caught everyone, but she'd caused chaos enough to give her a few precious seconds. Some of those aware were concerned about their comrades, some about a trap that they couldn't see, but Sakura didn't care. When she was close enough, she risked drawing close to the rail to look for the barge. But all that met her eyes was empty water where the barge had been and a gleaming yacht that couldn't belong to anyone but Gatō.

She stumbled and almost came to a full stop, but she was less than ten steps from the nearest enemy. Her eyes caught on the concrete beam, still suspended in midair.

If...

Sakura swept Tazuna up across her shoulders with a grunt of effort before he had time to protest. His weight limited her badly, but somehow she made it up on the rail and she threw herself forward into a sprint. If she wobbled, she would fall, but somehow her feet kept to the narrow path. One of the thugs lunged toward her and might have grabbed her if he hadn't had to shove several men still caught up her genjutsu to the side. But then, all too soon, she ran out of bridge.

Throwing herself off was every bit as bad as the first time she'd done it. But she'd judged the arc correctly and her feet came down on the concrete beam with a satisfying and somewhat painful smack. Momentum carried her forward and she had to throw out a hand and use the steel cable—something that tore at her palm again—to keep herself on track, even while the beam itself pivoted on the axis provided by the cable. Their weight was enough to cause the beam to shift, so that she was first running up a hill, then launching herself from the bottom edge of a steep slope.

She leapt like she had from the rocks just yesterday, shoving with her chakra at the same time she jumped. And it worked. She still didn't really understand what she was doing, was only operating on the memory of a single accident, but she was suddenly flying.

But that was only a split second's delusion, as it became very clear that she was falling and it was going to hurt, and there were two men leaning against the rail at the bow of the yacht and her path was going to take them soaring over their heads and oh god it was going to hurt. She stabbed a kunai into the sail as they swept past it, hoping desperately to shed some momentum, but her kunai was sharp enough and they were heavy enough that it wasn't until the double reinforced edges that it seemed to help at all. They still slammed into the deck with enough force that chakra gripping with her feet only spilled her forward and introduced her knees painfully to the deck and her nose impacted with only slightly less force and Tazuna's weight kept going even though she'd stopped. She lost her grip on Tazuna and he spilled forward with a wheezing grunt.

Sakura whimpered as she shoved herself up, but there was no time to count her bruises, just enough to blink away the disorientation of being slammed face-first against a hard surface. And as she raised her head, knowing that she had to get up, that there were two enemies behind her, she saw another man emerge from the pilothouse.

There was blood from her nose seeping into her mouth, tears spilling from her eyes from more than the pain, and her single, overwhelming thought was I don't want to die.

A/N: Prestressed concrete vs. steel. Desired load bearing capacity and water depth suitable for piles or cast-in-place concrete foundations. Cofferdam suitability, span length, pier height, funding and transport for materials.

...

Screw it, it's a bridge. Its major structural element is plot, which prevents collapse except in cases of suitable drama.

...sorry to end it there.