Home, Sweet Home

Sakura was so immersed in her dreary thoughts that the knowledge that she'd just snapped at Kakashi barely even registered as something to worry about. If she had thought the shocks of the day were done and over with, she had been very, very wrong. Shortly after Kakashi's sudden appearance, Naruto and team Gai joined them and they'd journeyed back to Suna. This wouldn't have been an issue if It hadn't been for what had happened after they arrived there. This time, half of the population was waiting for them by the gates. They all greatly mourned the loss of their kage once they saw Gaara was dead. Even Naruto acted like it was the end of the world. Personally, Sakura couldn't sympathize. Yes, she had heard Gaara had had a change of heart and quit his previous psychotic ways but Sakura just couldn't get over the fact that he had very nearly murdered her. And that he had tried to do the same to Naruto and Sasuke. If there was anything to be upset about, it was that Naruto himself was upset about Gaara's death or that the akatsuki had gotten away with stealing the one tails. As a medic, Sakura never liked death, but she could admit, if only to herself, that she would have been much more affected when someone else had died.

It was then that Chiyo did the last thing Sakura would have expected and kneeled to the ground next to Gaara. From where Sakura was standing, the sight was almost triggering. Gaara, with his pale complexion and red hair looked almost like a carbon copy of Sasori. Sakura found herself frozen for a split second, logic fighting against her instincts. She knew that right then, her amygdala was flooding her blood with adrenaline, that that was the reason why her heart pounded and her stomach fluttered with dread, but it was hard to stay logical when all her body wanted to do was get Chiyo away from that monster-!

The next few seconds passed in a haze. By the time she had staved off her fear and snapped out of it, Chiyo had already uttered the five words that would haunt her till the rest of her days.

"I can bring him back."

Sakura understood immediately what she really meant. She remembered the technique Chiyo had used to heal her back in the cave, a technique that was strange and unsettling and seemed to have taken a great toll on the old lady. She remembered the heaving gasps which had escaped Chiyo's mouth after healing her, her trembling hands and sunken eyes. And Sakura had still been very much alive at that point. (Even out of it as she had been, she'd instinctively understood that something wasn't quite right, quite normal, about that jutsu.)

But Gaara was dead.

If Chiyo tried to heal him, to bring him back… would she…? Sakura gasped.

"No, stop!"

But it was too late. Some of those in the crowd turned to level disgusted looks upon her. They only cared about their kazekage. They didn't care that Chiyo had offered to trade her life for that of Gaara's. Sakura nearly lost it right then. She wanted to scream, to thrash, to drag Chiyo away if that's what it took, but it was too late. She could do nothing in the face of the universal agreement of everyone in the crowd. Not a single person except for her attempted to dissuade Chiyo of giving her life. Not even Naruto.

A minute later, Chiyo was dead, a forgotten heap on the grass as the shinobi of Suna cheered over the revival of the kazekage. Sakura kneeled next to the old woman and cried. The woman who had given her the last vial of antidote instead of using it on herself. The old woman who had taught her about poisons, had bravely fought by her side against Sasori... that woman was dead. She noticed that Kakashi was the only person who wasn't cheering. In fact, he was standing a little behind her with a forlorn tint to his eye. Somehow this angered Sakura. He had been extremely rude to Chiyo for the entirety of their acquaintance and now he acted like he was sad? Fuck him! Perhaps she was being unfair, but it didn't occur to Sakura in that moment that Chiyo had been the one to antagonize Kakashi in the first place or that Kakashi acted indifferent toward everyone, in that moment all she could feel was an intense surge of anger welling up within her, an anger that more intense than anything she had felt in a long while. But she didn't let it out. A part of her knew it'd be wrong to blow up on him in front of everyone and out of nowhere, so she bit her lip and stayed put, but judging by the bewildered look Kakashi shot her, she could tell he'd noticed.

Instead of staying the night at Suna, team seven once again took off, this time alongside team Gai back to Konoha. They didn't seem to be aware of the fact that Sakura was now awake for over forty-eight hours, but she was too proud to say anything herself. She volunteered to take watch at night just like anyone else and laid down with the knowledge that she'd only get a few hours of sleep.

It was fine though. She could handle it. She'd much rather have this than be treated like some princess.

In her dreams, she saw her own corpse as played on the grass and Naruto and Kakashi walking away from it. She'd woken up when vultures had descended upon it to eat her own remains, only then the vultures had been unable to because she was a puppet. She had woken up with a start, the terrible realization rocketing through her mind. Only after a few seconds of breathing deeply, sitting up on her bedroll had she realized that she was not, in fact, a puppet. Nor dead. Chiyo was.

The second thing she'd realized was that it was already morning. Someone had thought her incapable of keeping watch. Someone had taken her watch for her without telling anyone. She had asked around about that night's guts shift as she chewed on a stale desert lizard for breakfast. Naruto had mentioned offhandedly that Kakashi had woken him up, even if it should have been Sakura, but of course Naruto hadn't remembered that.
In other words: she should have known. It was Kakashi who had let her sleep through her watch. Instead of grateful she found herself outraged. How dare he belittle her like this? How dare he presume she wouldn't be able to keep watch just like the others? Her anger toward the man kept slowly mounting and mounting as she stewed over it quietly. For all that she could talk big sometimes, Sakura was a non-confrontational person and knew that she would regret it if she allowed herself to blow up on Kakashi, so again she didn't complain about his perceived slight and gritted her teeth. She knew that she normally wouldn't have reacted like this, but she couldn't help it. Every little thing grated.

The last straw came when Lee of all people pointed out that she was getting a sunburn due to a cut in her shirt. Sakura realized then that she'd completely forgotten about her injury. After her fight was over, she had used a seal to partially numb the pain radiating from the nerve endings in the area and forgotten to undo it. The swollen, angry red skin Lee had seen wasn't a sunburn at all but rather the injury left by Sasori's katana as it had pierced all the way through her stomach and out of her back, though Lee only seemed to have noticed the little stretch of exposed skin on her stomach.

She wished he hadn't noticed, if only because then she wouldn't have remembered either. Now that she was aware of the injury, Sakura knew that though she may hate to make the entire group stop for her, it would need to be bandaged, especially with the sweltering heat and the sun beating down on some of the exposed parts of the injury. So she called for a break (goddammit) and explained that she needed to bandage something, praying all the while that the others wouldn't look. Fortunately, she was wearing her breast bindings and a crop-top mesh shirt beneath her outfit, which was actually more of a short-sleeved jacket than a shirt, seeing as it had a zipper. This zipper turned out to be her saving grace, as it made the entire procedure much less embarrassing as it could have been.

Even so, there were no cacti or flora to hide behind, and shinobi were curious folk by nature. Sakura found herself being stared at by everyone as she clumsily unzipped her shirt. It was due to this that she saw the horrified expressions everybody's faces morphed to the moment they saw her upper stomach. Naruto gasped loudly and made a dying whale noise whilst Lee began to pepper her with questions and Gai exclaimed over the powerful youth and beautiful maidens ignoring their pain. Even the stoic Neji's mouth had fallen slack. Sakura hadn't even seen the state of the injury herself yet, but still her eyes were glued to Kakashi's, for it was him who had had the harshest reaction. The way he was staring at her wound, one may think that all of the horrors in existence may be painted upon it. His face was still covered by the mask, but was she seeing things or had he just gone pale as a sheet? She couldn't be, for his eye in that moment was so expressive, so wide and viscerally affected that Sakura knew something was seriously wrong. No one else seemed to have noticed this reaction, all of them too busy staring at her, but somehow it shook Sakura much more than the presence of the injury itself and instinctively turned to cover it.

Just what was it that Kakashi had seen that was so horrible?

She had looked away from him as fast as she could, but the damage was already done. Was her injury truly that much of a deformity? Was it disgusting? Why had he reacted like that?

Suddenly she wanted to hide, but they were in a desert and there was nowhere to go. She turned her back to the group, which had gone dead silent and stared down at her stomach miserably. The expanse of her once pristine skin was now a canvas of lacerations and punctures, back from when Sasori had attempted to free himself of her grip, she remembered. What little didn't look like a termite infestation had gone a blotchy purple – remnants of the poison from his blade, she supposed – though it looked terrible. Gory and blackened at places, like she'd been hit by lightning. Sasori's poison was definitely the deadliest she'd ever encountered, and to make matters worse, Sakura had had very little antidote to begin with and had then extracted a good half of it to give to Chiyo-baasama… of course some poison would have been left. She sighed and pulled out her canteen. She knew the entire group was watching her as she extracted more and more of the fluid, all without making a single sound, but most of her concentration was on the extraction technique. Once the wound was acceptably clean and she'd made sure her bloodstream was relatively fine as well, she took off her shirt fully in order to properly tie the bandage around her torso.

Again she heard a loud gasp from Naruto and a whispered "she got stabbed all the way through?!" and worked hard to ignore it.

"Jeez, I'm fine!" she found herself screaming, even as she tied the damn bandage painfully over her various lacerations. "The fight is over and I won! I won so stop acting like I'm a weakling!"

"That's not what I was–" Naruto began, but a look from her silenced him.

With zero warning, all of her pent up feelings surged forth at once and before she knew what was happening she found herself screaming at the one person in this godforsaken desert she cared most about. "Don't you know it's rude to stare at a woman when she's changing!? Are you never going to learn any decorum?! I told you to look away!"

"B-but Sakura-chan, that injury looks bad–"

"I'm fine, Naruto!" she shrieked, making even herself wince at the tone. "Leave me alone!"

"I wasn't perving, I swear!"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Naruto stepped back, staring at her with huge eyes, and suddenly Sakura felt ashamed. She knew she would have to apologize for that. Without daring to meet anyone's eyes, she awkwardly shrugged her shirt back on, more thankful than ever for the zipper (otherwise she would have had to ask for help) and shot Kakashi's back a foul look. She was aware she'd made a freaking pariah out of herself. She was ashamed. But Chiyo's death, on top of her own near brush with the afterlife had shaken her. Would people have cared as little as they had if she'd been the one who kicked it? How could they just forget about the old woman's sacrifice so easily? It wasn't fair .

A large part of her couldn't help but strongly identify with Chiyo. She almost felt like the slight had been one at her… so of course she just had to go and blow up at poor Naruto, who had been one of the most understanding nin in regard to the old woman.

Clenching her teeth, Sakura caught Gai's eye and muttered: "I'm ready to proceed."

"Alright…" the usually cheerful man said uncertainly. Technically, Kakashi was the lead on the mission but like hell was Sakura talking to him after the way he'd stared at her injury, like it was an aberration, like she was. Never. She would never forget that look in his eye. She should have known he would avoid her after that, but it still surprised her when he did. If she had expected an apology, she was going to have to wait for all eternity.

Sakura tried to make sure that her guard shift during the second night wouldn't be either after or before his, though again her teammates let her sleep through it citing her injuries as the reason. She couldn't bring herself to get angry anymore; she was just sad and tired. Chiyo's face plagued her thoughts. She'd apologized to Naruto the moment they'd made camp for the night, but the blonde was still walking on eggshells around her.

Him and Lee kept shooting her glances as though expecting she'd blow up on them again, interloped with worried looks when they thought she couldn't see them. Sakura ignored the two to the best of her ability and stuck to running in silence at the back of the group. Kakashi, of course, immediately relocated to the very front, still religiously avoiding so much as glancing at her shadow – she'd checked.

When they finally made it to Konoha, Sakura was nothing if not eager to get away. She declined Naruto's hesitant invitation to get ramen with him and for once the blonde didn't insist. Instead, she found herself turning on her heel and brushing past Kakashi. She was not ashamed to say that she intentionally knocked her chakra-loaded shoulder hard against his as she passed him, with enough strength to send him stumbling a little, after which the man jumped a mile, as though a ghost had just phased through him instead. Sakura was well aware that her small act of revenge was extremely juvenile and pointless (she was pretty sure she'd may have (finally) managed to give him a bruise, but she'd in turn jostled her own injuries, which was much worse), but even so she still didn't regret it even a little.

The first place she went to was Tsunade's office. She'd been there for the oral report Naruto had given earlier, but Sakura hadn't gotten to talk to her shishou at all then. With every step she took toward the office, she felt a bone-deep exhaustion and relief growing within her. When she opened the door, she was initially horrified when someone blew a wad of confetti at her face. Shizune was holding a small festive trumpet, which she blew into with relish as Tsunade handed her a celebratory sake cup. They boxed her towards a comfy chair and began to talk over each other without letting her get a word in edgewise.

"Tell us everything!"

"Aha! I knew you had it in you, brat!"

"She did amazing, didn't she Tsunade-sama!"

"Of course she did. She's my student – the first nin to ever take down an Akatsuki member! And at age fifteen, to bat."

"Take that, Jiraiya!"

Sakura's lips pulled into a tired smile as she listened to their chatter. Shizune seemed more excited about Sasori's poisons whereas Tsunade was dying to know whether she'd gotten to rub her victory into Kakashi's face.

"I can't believe you found an antidote for one of Akasuna no Sasori's poisons, Sakura!" Shizune gushed excitedly. "I have always admired his amazing hand for neurotoxins – he's a bastard of course but – please tell me you brought a sample!"

"No, no, first tell us what face the Hatake brat made when he saw that you had defeated a member of the Akatsuki and he hadn't!"

As both women hugged and trapped Sakura in a headlock to wildly ruffle her hair respectively, talking over each other, Sakura finally began to relax. She was still shaken over Chiyo's death, a mere foot note in Naruto's rushed report, but the happiness in the room dulled her grief well.

She decided to avoid the topic of Kakashi altogether and turned to answer Shizune's inquiry instead. "Actually… I have a sample of the toxin right here," she informed them, lifting her shirt.

Pandemonium broke out.