This fic is now M-rated, for future violence and possible other scenes. Better to be safe than sorry, with our good friend ffnet.

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Chapter twelve
Reaction I

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Sakura dreamed.

Wind buffeted her. The clouds were tufts of cotton spread across a seascape sky. Blue and white surrounded her and she felt a sense of peace. She beat her wings once, twice, and then soared, coasting on the air, gliding through the sky. Nothing could touch her in this place, nothing could hurt here all the way up here. This was her escape. This was her sanity.

But it wasn't her home. As much as she craved the rush of flying, as much as she wanted to escape whatever it was that waited for her on the ground, she knew she was dreaming. How could she not be? She wasn't free like a bird. She was land bound and weighted down with self-loathing and grief. It was a dream, but she wanted to cherish this feeling, the weightless wonder of freedom, because she knew upon waking it would once again be out of reach.

She dipped and swooped, finding a current in the spiral of air and dropping down onto it, allowing the breeze to carry her where it wished. Wind ruffled her feathers and she would have smiled blissfully had her beak allowed it. Instead she settling on letting the breeze caress her softly, arching her neck as if into a lover's touch.

The current changed course and she was surprised, but not alarmed. She continued to let it guide her as she had no specific direction in mind. The day was beautiful and she was determined to let this dream last as long as possible, because there was no way the waking world could be as perfect as this one.

She was going lower now, descending through the sky slowly, but surely. Trees were coming to meet her, the leafy canopies almost close enough to scrape her belly. She spun sideways, barrelling to the left, and then tucking her wings close, she pointed down and dived.

Branches reached out for her as she passed but she evaded their clutches. She was too fast, too small, too good for their snatching limbs. The ground was getting closer now, she could see grass between the leaves, sunlight dappling through in a flick-flick-flick as she rushed by. Nearly there, almost at the ground - and then she broke through, out of the forest.

She was overlooking a garden, and while she retained her bird body, she wasn't flying any more. Now she seemed frozen in place in neither ground nor sky, suspended a few metres above a scene that unfolded before her.

Fear filled her. She knew the people in the garden.

It would be hard not to recognise Kakashi, even though the mini-cyclone still raged around him, hiding his features somewhat. He was so familiar to her she could pick him out anywhere. Now his lean frame was tense while one hand pressed down over Akio's on that hated, dreadful scroll. His face was obscured by his fall of dark hair and from her position she couldn't make out his expression, but she remembered it, regardless. The horror, the acceptance. He'd known what was going to occur even as it happened, turning, moving, her name on his lips.

Akio was there too, of course, he and Kakashi both gripping the scroll. The wind was dying down and she knew what was coming next, the scene having repeated itself nonstop in her mind, over and over every minute since that day. It haunted her while she was awake and now it had invaded her dreams as well. Knowing this, she wanted to look away to spare herself the agony, but she was locked in place, forced to endure it as both Kakashi and Akio blazed from existence, disappearing from the garden one more time.

The green light faded from the clearing and for the first time she saw herself standing there. The Sakura in her sights blinked, then looked around, walking over and gathering up the scroll before flinging it far away. She recalled with irony that at the time she'd wished it was a dream, that what was happening couldn't possibly be real.

It was real then and it was real now, the memory playing out in her subconscious exactly as it had transpired on that terrible day. She watched herself crumble, sobbing into the grass, cries racking her body in her denial and her grief.

And suddenly she could move again, could fly again, and she pumped her wings as hard as she could.

The garden dwindled to a speck beneath her as she returned to the sky, the current keeping her aloft and steering her gently away. The wind brushed her feathers but she barely noticed, concentrating only on the almost primal need to flee, to fly, to escape her demons and put distance between her body and the place where memories roamed.

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She woke slowly and it was just as disorientating as if she'd started awake. Sleep leeched energy from her tired body and she felt weak and drained, which led her to wonder idly how long it had been since she'd eaten. One day? Two?

Not that it really mattered, any more.

She rolled over and winced as her muscles took that as their cue to start aching. She'd been running hard this last week or so, trying to distract herself from her situation by travelling till exhaustion set in and she was forced to stop and let sleep take over. It was a good system. Once she'd started running she found it was easier to just keep going as long and as hard as her body could manage, pushing herself forward until she collapsed.

Orochimaru...Sasuke...her mission...her feelings. All was forgotten in the trance-like state she'd settled into after Kakashi was torn from her. She slept only when her body demanded it and ate only when she thought she'd be too weak to continue without doing so. These trivial things like food and rest seemed so irrelevant, so unimportant now.

In fact, nothing seemed to matter any more. She was alone again - not again, truthfully, but for the very first time. She'd never felt what it really meant to be alone until now, in these dreamlike moments, surrounded as she was by memories and trees.

She'd come to hate the forest. Trees would forever be linked to earthy smells and Kakashi's face, to soft hands on a heavy scalp and hard training under a waning sun.

She hated the forest, and she loved it, too.

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She made fires only when she had the energy or inclination and tonight she half-craved the warmth a small one would bring. It wasn't that she was cold, since they were only halfway through autumn now, but a campfire brought instead a comforting warmth, a misleading sense of companionship even if one was alone. She needed that more than anything else.

Because she'd set up a fire anyway she emptied her second to last waterskin into a pot and threw in some noodle mix, refusing to remember other nights when she'd done the same. Back then the evenings had been filled with happiness and a kind of security because back then she'd shared them with someone else.

Her eyes tickled and she sniffed, not wanting to cry again. She'd done enough of that back at the homestead. She stared fixedly at the fire and tried to ignore the memories but images played out over the flames, lulling her back to sleep, and as she drifted off into dreamtime oblivion she couldn't help but return to that horrible day.

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Sakura cried.

She was kneeling, the dirt soaking up her tears as they slid down her face and dropped from her chin. She'd always been quick to cry at slights when she was a child and for her friends when she was older and had seen the rough justice they could expect from their lives as shinobi. She'd cried in the past because of physical pain; because her dreams came to nothing; because love had forsaken her and she had been left without.

But this was different. She couldn't seem to stop the tears slipping down her cheeks and they were a defiant comfort, the only part of her that was warm now. Kakashi's departure had assured that her body and heart were frozen, chilled by the loss of his presence, his steady persona no longer there to protect and care for her. She knew she'd been relying on him ever since they'd left Konoha - perhaps even before that, since they'd formed the team - but she'd underestimated the extent of the support he'd provided. He was her teacher, her comrade, her brother, her friend, and only now that he was gone could she admit to herself that she may have wanted him to become something more.

He calmed her, encouraged her, cared for her, looked after her. Without him she felt broken. Without him she felt empty.

In a way, he completed her.

She was too numb to even chide herself for the direction her thoughts were taking, that it wasn't proper or right to think about her teacher that way. The scales had fallen all those weeks ago when he'd collapsed in her arms and the idea remained inside of her, kept within like a secret, precious pearl. And it would have stayed that way, hidden and nurtured, never to see the light of day were it not for the extreme and tragic events jolting her, bringing the feelings to light. If these feelings were real, if she truly felt this way, then she had managed to learn a little too late that she loved Kakashi.

She loved him. But how? She loved her parents. She loved Naruto. She loved Ino. Tsunade had once told her she had a great capacity for love, that that was what made a true medic-nin. Regardless of talent, of learning, if you couldn't love, wholly and unconditionally, you would never really succeed as a medic. When explaining this to her, the Godaime had paused mid-sentence, and when she spoke again her voice was low and raw. "I gave up healing because the ones I loved were torn from me, and I thought my reasons for being a medic-nin were gone. It wasn't until much later that I realised love isn't only focussed to a fine point and reserved for our most precious people. While they do get a greater portion and a special kind of love, the rest of our heart can operate separately, with affection and appreciation for people we don't know and may never meet. The true strength of a medic-nin lies not in your memorisation of jutsus or manipulation of chakra, but in your kindness towards and love for everyone caught up in the cycle of life."

Then maybe she had loved him all along. Oh, not from the very beginning, when she was twelve, and innocent, and carefree. Then her heart had belonged to her handsome, brooding teammate, the challenge she'd set herself, the crush that had ruined a friendship he'd never known existed. She'd offered him her love - her life - and he'd refused her, choosing to leave his two best friends behind in that insane and suicidal quest for revenge. She had meant nothing to him compared to the hatred that consumed him, defined him, sent him to the fate that had awaited him off in the Sound.

So, he left. Naruto left. But she remained and so did he. She knew he had his demons - they all did, to a degree - but he kept them in his heart and worked to appease them, forget them, by immersing himself in missions and sometimes helping her train. Occasionally she caught him with a faraway look in his eye, but the one time she'd asked about it he'd just smiled and told her he was thinking.

"About what, Kakashi-sensei?"

"About things I cannot change, but would do differently if I could."

She remembered being confused, as his words had seemed to contradict themselves. "If you can't change them, why are you thinking about doing them differently at all?"

He'd blinked at her and she'd experienced an awkward moment, wondering if she'd said the wrong thing. Then he smiled and reached out, ruffling her hair. "You're right, Sakura. That was selfish of me, doing that."

She still didn't know what he was talking about but didn't question him further, instead rolling her eyes at the patronising gesture. "Geez, sensei, I'm not a kid any more, you know. I'm fourteen already!"

He kept smiling but removed his hand and raised the other one also, holding her off in a placating gesture. "Right, right. A woman grown, are you?"

"You better believe it!" She grinned. He laughed. She thought she'd solved everything but he was just humouring her, as always. She had always been too young, too silly, too caught up, and most recently she'd just been plain too late. To save him. To tell him. To hold him close.

The seeds of his destruction had been sowed that day they had faced the enemy-nin in the forest, when a woman she hadn't met had held him as Sakura never had. The pain she'd felt when Yumi told her how she'd disarmed Kakashi was nothing compared to the realisation she would never get the opportunity to rectify her neglect. Of course he wouldn't feel the same way - he couldn't, Sakura had to be a child to him, she was his student, he'd never see her as anything more - but there would never be a moment of connection for them now. There would never be an instant of physical closure. All she had were half-formed hopes and pointless dreams.

She'd failed him even as he'd saved her once more, and his sacrifice not only hurt, it was a bitter pill as well. Whereas Sasuke had left her to her fate, Kakashi had stepped in to help her shape it, to make her destiny her own. In return she had repaid him by not reaching him fast enough and had allowed him to shoulder the responsibility of saving her yet again. Now he was gone and she was still here, still doing the only thing she'd ever been good at, the only thing she'd been able to do better than everyone else in her life.

Sakura cried.

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She woke a second time and returned to the present; she would have been surprised to find her eyes dry, had she the energy to bring herself to care. She didn't, so instead she continued to stare dully at the fire. Maybe she didn't have any feelings left at all; it was possible she'd been sucked dry and would never feel anything again. If Orochimaru wandered over and sat down right now, she doubted she'd be able to muster up anything but indifference. She was alone now; if he killed her, who would mourn her passing anyway?

Faded red hair and a warm smile; kind green eyes and a tall, strong back. She blinked back the unbidden image of her parents and wondered if the block in her chest had shifted, a bit. She hadn't thought about them in a long time. Hopefully Tsunade had talked to them, explained why she was a risk, told them why she had left them without a word. They lived in a ninja village, they understood about missions. Things might have been easier for them if she hadn't become a shinobi, or at the very least, if she'd been allocated to a different genin group. She'd be an average kunoichi in an average team - not that any of the other genin from her year were in any way sub par, but next to the Uchiha genius and the vessel of the Kyuubi they kind of paled in comparison. She'd done well - or badly, depending on how she wanted to look at it - with her team, being grouped with such amazing talent, and her jounin tutor was easily one of the best shinobi Konoha had ever seen. They were all fantastic, in their own way. All of them, except her.

Years ago she'd had a conversation with Ino, back when the blonde girl was boasting about her teammate being the only one promoted to chuunin.

"Shikamaru's great," she'd said, smug in her superiority. "Sure, your team has Sasuke, but apart from that it's just you and Naruto."

Sakura could have mentioned that the other members of Team Ten were just Ino and Chouji, but she kept silent on that subject and retaliated with, "Don't forget Kakashi-sensei. He's one of the best ninjas in the village - in the whole country, even. Every enemy we've ever faced has known his name and feared it."

Ino considered this. "Okay. I'll give you Kakashi. He's pretty cool, but Asuma's awesome too. You should have seen this thing he did -"

Sakura had tuned out for the remainder of Ino's enthusiastic listing of Asuma's good qualities, thinking not for the first time that she was a burden to the rest of Team Seven. Naruto was annoying, sure, but she had to admit he had a good heart, unbelievable power, and would never hesitate to rescue a friend in need. Sasuke was Sasuke, and Kakashi-sensei was lazy, never on time, always reading that damn book...but by the same token he always knew how to help them out. Whether it be training Sasuke, looking out for Naruto or knowing just how to reassure her when the boys made her worried, his good points managed to outweigh his bad ones, and happy in that knowledge she tuned back in just as Ino wrapped up her monologue.

"So that's why Asuma-sensei is cool."

Sakura had just nodded. Most of the time it was simply easier to agree with Ino. The girl got feisty about some things and Sakura usually had to hear about them.

Which brought her to another conversation she'd had with Ino, months ago, now. It hadn't seemed important at the time - just another one of her silly crushes - but now that Sakura had had an epiphany regarding her own feelings she felt mean and dirty for betraying her friend.

And then she remembered it didn't matter any more.

She lay down in the dirt and the tears she'd been almost proud of keeping at bay welled up and overflowed, trickling down her face and starting the cycle all over again.

She cried for the glorious dreams of a boy who would be Hokage. She cried for the vengeful heart of a boy who saw his family only in blood-soaked nightmares. She cried for a gentlewoman she'd never met and a polite policeman that she had. She cried for an odd-eyed man who'd taught her many things, and most of all she cried for herself, because she'd never see that man again.

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She found herself thinking about the past. It wasn't because she wanted to, but because her thoughts returned automatically to that day, and how she'd failed once more. Her subconscious took her there, over and over, because it was as powerless as she herself had been.

It began where it all ended, with her kneeling in the garden, completely alone. The two packs had toppled over on the grass and she found herself staring at Kakashi's, the flap lying innocently askew. What other dangerous items had he concealed in there?

No. She wasn't tempted. She didn't care. She didn't want to know what else he'd brought along, or why he'd had that terrible jutsu in the first place. When had he expected her to use it? On who?

And why had he bothered to come with her at all if he was just planning on dying at some point, anyway?

She didn't want to consider what he'd been thinking, so she got up, rising slowly to her feet like a withered old crone. She felt like one, aged and weary, drained to the bone, and she wondered if she'd ever have energy again.

Something tugged at her awareness, called at her to move. She stood dumbly and let the summons wash over her, ignoring it. It couldn't be that important, whatever it was. Not compared to her pain.

Stubbornly, it pulled again. She resisted but the feeling wouldn't go away. It was a ripple of urgency, a breath of anxiety, and while she couldn't explain it, suddenly she knew she needed to move, to leave the garden in search of something. Of what, she wasn't sure, but her feet moved of their own volition and she was off, racing along the lush pathways, exquisite gardens hemming her in. She barely noticed. She could have been running through the desert for all that the surrounding beauty affected her.

Not that much could be appreciated through a film of tears, anyway.

It was the smell that jolted her, took her feet off their automatic path. She stumbled into another small clearing and came to a standstill, halted by the horrific sight that met her aching eyes.

"Did you kill her?" Akio had screamed, and though she'd known the Izanami they had met was an imposter, a fraud, the situation had been too tense to figure out how he had.

But if he'd seen what she was looking at now, there was no way he could have doubted it. There were no excuses that could be made for the real Izanami's current state. She was gone, completely. At least Sakura had been spared Kakashi's mangled corpse. Akio had been given no such concession.

She stared down at the body, not from morbid fascination but from a numb exhaustion, finding herself unable to look anywhere else. It was strange; she understood this, but couldn't bring herself to believe. This was the cycle of life. People lived and died, and when they moved on from this world those left behind had to mourn, and then move on in their own way.

Sakura had never been very good at moving on.

She realised that death came to everyone, but sometimes it was unfair. Sometimes people were taken in the prime of their lives; sometimes they were caught up in events beyond their knowledge, becoming part of machinations they should never have been involved with in the first place.

Izanami and Akio had been innocent victims, hares trapped in the vegetable patch when all they were doing was minding their own business. Kakashi was a victim too, albeit a knowing one, and she wasn't quite sure if that made it better or worse. Either way, she couldn't bring him back. Either way, she was alone.

And while she couldn't do anything about that, the least she could do was give Izanami a decent burial. She'd never met the girl, but she had a feeling they would have been friends.

Falling to her knees, she pulled a kunai from her thigh pack, pressing the tip into the grass. She was going to ruin the weapon, catching it on small rocks and such, dragging it through the dirt, but she didn't care. One kunai was nothing compared to what had already been lost in this battle, these circumstances.

She started digging.

It took a long time. Even with chakra-strength, one little kunai wasn't really the greatest choice for making a big hole. No doubt she could have gone looking for a trowel, or even a shovel, but once she'd found Izanami's body she felt an eerie reluctance to leave it until she'd seen it safely into the ground. It was strange, but she felt like it was her duty to put the girl into a grave, to give her that respect, at least, since from the look of it she'd been here for weeks. She could have done a quick scan to find out just how long, but she found she didn't want to know. She owed to the girl, since all of this had been indirectly her fault. Or had she been directly the cause? Had her choice influenced Yumi or would things have turned out like this anyway?

The thoughts and accusations did laps around her brain until she dropped the kunai and brought her hands to her head, pressing against her skull with a stifled gasp. It hurt, but she deserved it, she was alone, she deserved it -

And then she looked down and found she'd finished the hole. She was kneeling at the bottom, the edges rising around her. She'd finished a four-foot deep grave and she hadn't even noticed.

Oh, the irony. Here she was, alive and in a grave, while Kakashi was gone and she didn't even have a body to bury alongside her heart. She was stuck with these feelings, lost without closure, doing penance by digging the night away in a garden she never should have entered in the first place.

She got up and hefted herself out of the hole. Walking over to Izanami's body, she gazed down at the girl. Strange, how beauty lingered even in death. The curve of a greying cheek, the tilt of a peeling mouth - dying had not changed these constants. It had just eroded them, somewhat.

So as not to disturb anything too much, she constructed a chakra web that sparked into existence below the body, lines appearing and crisscrossing and constructing a makeshift stretcher that lifted up by itself. She guided it to the hole and positioned the girl gently within, calling back the chakra only when the corpse was resting on the bottom. She walked to the edge and stared down into the darkened reaches of the grave, marvelling absently at how moonlight gave the girl some lustre and almost fooled her into thinking she was alive after all.

Almost. And foolish it was, having second thoughts at this point. Izanami was dead and that was that.

She looked away and didn't look again as she returned the dirt to the hole, keeping her eyes averted while shovelling the soil back over the corpse. It was silly, how long it took to dig a grave when it took only minutes to close it back up. She was pressing the dirt back down in no time, and if she squinted, in the moonlight it was almost as if she'd never been here.

But she had been, of course. And as she struck the kunai point down to mark the spot, she thought bitterly that everything she touched turned to ashes, was broken or ruined by her hands.

A medic-nin, was she? A bit pointless, if she was also poison, and tainted everything around her. She could save lives, certainly, but she'd take them in the end.

She stood up, brushing the dirt from her knees. The moon was high overhead now, bathing the clearing in light. She'd wasted so much time sorting a burial out that she'd lost travel hours, and now that she'd completed the task her skin prickled, tingled. She wanted to run, to get away from here, to put distance between herself and this garden of regret. She moved, about to go back to the packs when a voice interrupted her.

"Sakura."

She started. Had this happened? She didn't recall someone else being there. It didn't correlate with her other memories of that night.

"Sakura, wake up."

Wake up? She only wished this was a dream.

"Sakura!"

She blinked. The scene evaporated. She was back in the forest and the faint inkling of dawn touched the trees around her. Something moved at the edge of her vision and she turned her head quickly, but it was only an escaping wisp from her burnt out campfire. Her forgotten pot of noodles lay to the side, coagulated and gross.

She closed her eyes again. She'd been remembering the events of that night and somehow she'd crossed the border into sleep. It had been a bad idea, losing herself in memories like that. She hadn't eaten again and it felt like a great weight had settled onto her chest.

The weight moved.

She lay perfectly still. Something was wrong. Her depression had become a physical thing and now it was partly on her stomach, partly resting uncomfortably against her ribs. She tried to take a deep breath but she could only manage a shallow one and emotion returned at last, trickling back into her body like a prodigal warmth. It was fear, one she'd never liked but was all too familiar with and -

"Sakura, are you awake?"

Yes, but she didn't want to be because reality had become twisted and she was frightened of something that was on her chest and she wasn't sure whether she should look up or not because then her fear would have a basis. And then a faint shadow of something she used to know as courage reappeared and she angled her head upwards before opening her eyes.

A familiar face. A beloved symbol. Two tired looking eyes with an impatient tilt. She gasped. He smiled, canine features widening.

"Hello, Sakura," said Pakkun. "I thought you'd never wake up."

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YAY! An update! I managed to get ahead again in my break, so thank you to everyone who wished me luck in that regard, and I hope you enjoy this latest installment. A couple of readers were confused with the Kakashi/Akio/scroll part from chapter 11, but hopefully this clears things up, somewhat. If you're still unsure, you're welcome to email me, I think I've said before I'm more than happy to explain any part of the fic that is hard to follow.

Thanks as usual to the Unholy Trinity - DS, Molly and Candice, I'd never get this done without your help. And sureasdawn - reading your Kakasaku makes me want to work on my own.

Please let me know what you think:)