Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Seven-

Cacophobia

When Sakura woke—a sharp, painful moment where she gained awareness suddenly, heart pounding, but every limb too heavy to move—she found herself in the clinic. Someone had changed her out of her clothes into a loose-fitting shirt and shorts she didn't remember owning, and given how much better she smelled, had probably helped her to clean up as well. She was propped comfortably semi-upright, someone having taken a great deal of care with the arrangement of her pillows. Her fingers tentatively traveled up toward her collarbone, a sense of morbid curiosity driving them, but a noise distracted her.

She glanced to the left to find Kakashi-sensei slouching comfortably in a chair, his ever-present novel open. Sakura had a moment's curiosity, likely attributable the languid and distant feeling that probably indicated strong pain medication, whether it was the same book he was always reading or a series. But the thought drifted away as he spoke.

"I wouldn't go prodding that, Sakura-chan. The doctor promised to skin me if you pulled these stitches. We'll have the medic-nin look at it when we get back to the village. They'll likely say the wound on your face is cosmetic and the village won't pay for or arrange treatment in that case, but scarring that might compromise your performance is something they take very seriously. So just bear with it for now, ne?"

Sakura let her hands fall back into her lap, although the desire to investigate it was still strong. Although, she thought, given that the last time I looked at it and touched it, I threw up, it might be for the best to leave it alone.

She silently contemplated her hands for a long moment, her sprained wrist freshly re-wrapped, the other palm bandaged where she'd torn it on the cable. Sakura had gotten blisters and bruises before, skinned her knuckles during training, but these were her first major injuries.

And they were so ugly. That seemed like it shouldn't matter, but it did. All of the teachers in her kunoichi classes—well, they hadn't all been glamorous and sensual, but none of them had scarring. Even though her hair was as long as Ino's, it was so much rougher no matter what sort of products she used. She'd already been at a disadvantage due to her wide forehead and utter lack of specialization. Now she might as well just concede defeat. Sasuke-kun would never—

"Was Sasuke-kun...was Sasuke-kun alright?" she asked, suddenly reminded of how battered he'd looked. That was also a first, to have that untouchable image so badly disabused.

Kakashi-sensei tilted his head toward the screen to his light. "Sasuke's sleeping off his fight. Nothing nearly as bad as you. Chakra exhaustion, mostly, and some muscle soreness and minor bruising from the senbon, so give him two or three days and he should be right as rain."

Sakura relaxed fractionally at that news, but Kakashi-sensei set her on edge again just as quickly. Without looking over at her, he said, "Ne, Sakura-cha, you know that you're required to speak to someone after making your first kill. Whether it's me or one of the counselors."

Sakura's hands clenched over the thin cover, turning it into a mass of wrinkles in her lap. Wrinkles she set out to meticulously smooth as she relaxed her grip. "...yes," she said very softly.

"I was going to let you decide," Kakashi-sensei said, "when you were ready. But after the last battle on the bridge...well, with that kind of reckless courage, I couldn't guarantee that given time you wouldn't simply smile your way through your interview. You almost gave sensei a heart attack for a moment there."

Sakura flinched like she'd been slapped, because while she didn't know if she could bear to tell a stranger about those desperate battles, courage really hadn't played any part in it. "...I was afraid, Kakashi-sensei."

"I know. But whatever you might think, that's not something to be ashamed of. It takes a certain amount of wisdom to recognize that there are some fights that you simply can't win. And it's bravery to take action regardless. You didn't freeze or wait for me to save you. And if you a coward, you wouldn't have taken Tazuna with you," he pointed out. "Wouldn't it have been much easier to escape on your own?"

Sakura still refused to look at him. "I didn't trust you to save me," she admitted, not without guilt.

She was startled when Kakashi-sensei chuckled. "Recognizing that your jounin-sensei is human too is a normal step in growing up. You just sort of stumbled upon it a little bit earlier than most. And, to be fair, I might have been a little heavy-handed in our last discussion. I all but told you not to depend on me in the same conversation that I said I'd come rushing in to save you. Full marks on your execution of the genjutsu, though."

That admission made Sakura glance over at him, but he only flipped a page. That was both irritating and comforting, in the sense that now she knew what a fully intent Kakashi-sensei was like, she wasn't certain she ever wanted to draw his full attention ever again. So she turned her own attention back to her hands, which had worried her covers back into a mess. This time, instead of smoothing them out, she just stared blankly at them.

Kakashi-sensei seemed to take that as an invitation.

"I'm sure you got plenty of lectures in the Academy about the difference between personal initiative and acting under orders. One reflects on you, the other on the village. You're accountable for one and the Hokage for the other. Provided that your behavior falls within the guidelines of the shinobi code of conduct and the action you've taken falls under the parameters of your mission, there isn't a law court in Hi no Kuni that would uphold any charge against you. But," and there was a slight pause and a soft rustle as he finally shut his book, "that doesn't change the fact that there's no law powerful enough to let you escape the judgment of your own conscience. Or one that will spare you the judgment of others." There was an old, heavy bitterness there. "Some people solve it by marrying their conscience to their orders. Others learn not to care. And others will always care too much. But let me say this, Sakura-chan. On this mission, you have done nothing to be ashamed of."

That calm, direct pronouncement seemed to break some sort resolve in her. She was all but shouting as she said, "I set a man on fire. Covered him in tar and then set him on fire. And his screams—I can still hear them in my dreams. But even that didn't stop him. He just kept coming. Like he was some sort of monster, his flesh all bubbling and peeling and he's just coming, and the fire won't go out, and he was going to kill me, and kami-sama, I can still see his eyes. And I...I killed him. And his partner. And the man on the yacht."

She turned angrily toward Kakashi-sensei, ignoring the way that twisting made the wound across her collarbone ache. Made everything ache and burn.

But he was only regarding her thoughtfully. "You killed them because they were trying to kill you. And Tazuna, who hadn't done anything worse than stand in the way of one man's greed. And maybe there was some relief when they were dead, but you didn't set out to do it because you found joy or pleasure in it. None of that makes you a bad person, Sakura."

"But, the fire—." Even now she thought she could smell it, tar and grease and cooking meat, and a brief wave of imaginary heat beat against her skin.

"Even a lot of jounin dislike using fire as anything but a distraction," Kakashi interrupted her. "It's not a very clean way to kill, or honestly a very effective one without a very strong jutsu or special preparation, but you worked with what you had. Again, there is no shame in that. I don't think any less of you for having done it.

"But if you'd let them kill everyone on that bridge, that would have made you trash. Sometimes, we have to make choices we don't like, but I think that you made the right choice. And now, hopefully, we've earned enough of a reprieve for you to make another choice. While a part of me applauds your willingness to fling yourself from high places with a less than optimal understanding of chakra manipulation, I think we can do something about that," he said, eye crinkling up in that familiar, faintly condescending amusement of his.

"It might help," he offered in a much softer voice, "with the dreams."

Very, very slowly, Sakura nodded. She hadn't until that moment realized she was crying again, but when she went to wipe her tears away, she flinched.

"Broken nose," Kakashi-sensei reminded her. "Some of the swelling has gone down, but it'll still be very tender. Looks like you're also going to get to sleep in for the next few days."

Then he cocked his head, visible pupil sliding toward the screen he'd indicated earlier. "It's not very nice to eavesdrop, Sasuke. Especially when you should be sleeping." His voice had undergone a complete toneshift, much harder and sharper than when he'd been addressing Sakura.

Sakura froze and an expectant silence filled the room, broken when Sasuke-kun—still looking very battered, but nowhere near as exhausted—shuffled around the screen. His eyes slid accusingly from Kakashi-sensei over to Sakura, who ducked her head and wished for her shemagh. Unfortunately, it had probably gone the way of the rest of her clothing, which she suspected meant that it had been trashed.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded roughly. "What happened?"

When both Sakura and Kakashi-sensei were silent, his eyes narrowed. "I woke up when I heard Sakura yelling about setting someone on fire," he accused. "You can't pretend that that's nothing."

Kakashi-sensei eyed him for a long moment, then his gaze slid over to Sakura in an expression she couldn't read, before flipping his book back open in a clear indication that he intended to ignore him. But he didn't leave.

Sasuke-kun's stare proved ineffective against the formidable barrier of Kakashi-sensei's ability to overlook things he found irritating, so he was left only with one target. Despite Sasuke-kun's strength and having been matched with him in sparring practice a time or two, Sakura had never felt threatened in his presence. But the world was a different place today, because now she found Sasuke-kun's gaze invasive and unwelcome.

"Sakura," he said in a tone that was an unspoken demand.

And, for the first time, Sakura considered denying him something he wanted.

Somehow, though, what Kakashi-sensei had said came to the forefront of her mind. That if she waited, she'd lie with a smile. She still didn't believe that was true, but she might believe that with every day that passed, it would get harder to talk about. And she knew she didn't want to go through her entire life without ever speaking about it.

"The other day, when I was guarding Tazuna," she began awkwardly, finding it strange that so little time had passed, "Gatō had two of his men try to blow up the bridge and everyone on it." Sasuke-kun's eyes widened, but she was in no mood to enjoy having his attention. "I...I stopped them."

Her gaze dropped back to her lap. "The first one...he...there were barrels of tar waiting to be taken down to the harbor and I just...I was only thinking of running, of keeping him away, until Kakashi-sensei could come, but then he was there and I threw one of them at him. The tar got all over." Little red, shiny specks where she'd been burned littered her arms and had eaten holes in her clothing. "And then I used the flare. I didn't think, really, just...I wanted him to stop and the flare..."

She swallowed heavily. "The burning magnesium ignited the tar. But he kept coming. So when he tried to stab me, I turned one of his knives against him. I kept the other one. That's what I used to...to kill his partner. I kept thinking today that I wanted it. That it would have been useful. Slashing edge, instead of stabbing.

"Today, when I saw the mercenaries, I knew that we couldn't stay on the bridge. So I took Tazuna. I meant to escape to the barge, but the smugglers must have...the only thing there was Gatō's yacht. I don't even know why he thought he had to leave men to guard it, except maybe he meant to watch the battle and then leave the rest of his goons behind to do the clean-up while he did...something else. I don't know. There were three of them. One of them, he had a sword—," her hand ghosted up toward her collarbone, but she grasped her upper arm instead, "And I...I stopped them from killing Tazuna. After—after, Tazuna started the motor and he piloted us over to the harbor. You know the rest after that."

It was very rough. If it had been a mock mission report she'd turned in at the Academy, she would have been scored down for the lack of clarity and detail. But it was all that she could bear and she was very careful not to look at Sasuke-kun.

But after the silence dragged on, something in her managed to pluck up her courage and glance at him from under the cover her eyelashes. She found him glaring at Kakashi-sensei. "You knew," he ground out accusingly, "and you still made her go out on guard duty with you. Without bothering to mention it."

Kakashi-sensei's answering look was very cool, bordering on unfriendly. "Yes. And Sakura did just fine. If it had been you, would you have expected me to pull you from duty? Sensei doubts that you would have. Neither you nor Naruto had finished your training, so there wasn't any pressing need to worry either of you. Sakura did better with time to sort things out on her own, without having to worry about her teammates."

Sasuke's dark eyes turned to her, something telling her that he expected her to refute Kakashi-sensei. But as bad as going back out to the bridge had been, when she imagined staying behind, it was worse. Because Naruto was incapable of just leaving things be and because it would have been like talking about the battle. Every day she stayed inside the house, sheltered and protected, it would only get harder when she would finally have to step outside again. And though she had a few cherished dreams left, part of her would forever be anchored in the reality that a time would have come when she would have had to leave.

There was no part of her that had enjoyed these last few days. None of that rush of victory that had accompanied sparring at the Academy, just a profound sense of relief that she had been the one to survive. She did not want to do it again. But she would.

The reasons were a tangled morass that even she didn't fully understand. The disappointment of her parents if she quit now. The loss of face she'd suffer when Ino heard. The simple fact that if she wasn't a shinobi, she'd never see Sasuke-kun again. And, most of all, the feeling that it was far too late to escape. The nightmares were already a part of her. Even if she left now, walked away into the fog and never looked back, they would only chase her for the rest of her life.

But if she stayed, there would be people who might make it easier, just a little. Civilians like Masa and Tazuna. Her teammates. And, just occasionally, Kakashi-sensei.

"I...," she swallowed again, easing some of the pressure in her throat. "Did I do well, Sasuke-kun?"

Surprise was briefly writ large on his face, before his habitual expression swallowed it. "Aa," he conceded after a long pause.

Her smile was weak, but present. Kakashi-sensei's was more apparent as he stood and stretched. "Well, I suppose I'll go check and make certain Naruto hasn't gotten into any trouble. He was throwing a fit when Sasuke caught you and then pretty much collapsed on top of you. The doc had to run off an entire squad of Naruto clones before she could treat either of you."

Sakura glanced over at Sasuke-kun to find a blush dusted the high ridge of his cheekbones, the tips of his ears flushed pink.

"Because of the way things turned out, the doc's doing everything pro bono, so as soon as the two of you can make it back to Tazuna's without collapsing along the way, we'll be waiting. Naruto and I will handle things until then." And then he was gone in a whirl of smoke and leaves, leaving her alone with Sasuke-kun.

She was used to a feeling of excitement whenever circumstances conspired to leave them by themselves, but now she almost wished for the familiar sight of his back while he walked away. She felt bad and probably looked much worse. But instead he drew a little closer, fixing her with an unnerving stare. "Why didn't you say something at breakfast this morning?"

Sakura turned her face away, staring at Kakashi-sensei's vacated chair. "I didn't want to talk about it," she admitted softly.

That drew a noise of frustration, but he thankfully subsided. "...it must hurt," he offered awkwardly after another long pause.

Sakura made a low sound of agreement.

"...I wish he wouldn't have told you about me catching you and then collapsing," he muttered. "All that idiot has going for him is stamina."

That made her giggle, which she immediately regretted, but she managed to once again control the urge to investigate her stitches. But it drew Sasuke's attention to it. "How bad is it?" he demanded.

She made to shrug with her good shoulder, but had to turn it into a gesture made with her hands. Everything seemed to pull at it. "Kakashi-sensei took off before telling me how many stitches it took. But I think the doctor gave me a lot of pain medication, because it doesn't hurt nearly as much as it did."

There was another grunt of acknowledgement. "If you want to go back to sleep for a while," Sasuke-kun offered, "I'll wake you up before it gets so dark that it'll be hard walking back to Tazuna's."

Sakura's tremulous smile firmed a little at that. "...I think," she said after a long pause to consider, "that I'd rather go now, while I feel relatively alert but the pain medication hasn't started to wear off."

It wouldn't occur to her until much later, but that slow journey back was the first time she'd ever managed to convince Sasuke-kun to walk her home.

A/N: This chapter was difficult, in many ways. Perhaps if faithful housewife Hachikō—sorry, Sakura—didn't irritate me so badly.