A/N: Written to the accompaniment of Bon Jovi's We Weren't Born To Follow.
Kill Your Heroes
-Chapter Seventeen-
Testophobia (Part I)
They'd retrieved Naruto in a tense, awkward kind of silence and Sakura had busied her hands with scavenging all the sebon and kunai that littered the field before the two of them had relocated to another location that Sasuke had deemed 'good enough.' Exhausted and hurting, her fear of the nightmares tamped down by sheer physical misery, Sakura had been grateful when Sasuke had broken that silence by gruffly offering to keep watch while she slept.
She woke very stiff and disoriented, to find herself guarded by two of Naruto's shadow clones.
By the time Naruto and Sasuke returned, there was only one survivor, the other proving that it was quite possible to dispel a clone through blunt force trauma to the head.
She was furious, because she still couldn't hear out of one ear, her body had already begun liberally purpling with bruising before she'd curled up miserably, the wound in her side felt hot and swollen, and she'd fought through pain and fear for them and they'd gone and done something like this. The knowledge that her deafness was likely only a perforated eardrum, a common enough injury in the Academy and nothing that medic-nins couldn't treat, same as her other injuries, didn't make them any less real or frightening in the present.
While she'd slept, the pair of them had slunk off to acquire another scroll. And, judging by their expressions, they had been successful and thought that somehow made it better.
One of the most infamous nin that ever worn a Konoha hitai-ate was targeting Sasuke and they were still taking the exam.
Naruto might have strutted up like a little bantam game cock ready to crow, but he quailed at Sakura's expression, shrinking behind Sasuke. Who looked wary, but stood his ground. "Sakura," he said. He tossed a scroll to her, bearing the Earth designation. "Here. Keep it safe. We're pressing on to the tower."
Sakura choked on all the things she wanted to shout at him, because this was the first real gesture of trust he'd ever extended to her. It didn't make her anger vanish, but he'd ruined her momentum and it suddenly became awkward to snarl and rage at him.
But awkward or not, compared to facing the Oto-nin, facing Orochimaru, upsetting Sasuke suddenly seemed so much less dire than it had back in the Academy. Once, she'd have done almost anything if she'd thought it would please Sasuke. She'd have never anticipated as she saw his many faces, learned his moods, worked at his side, what she felt for him would evolve into something that was both less and more. Seeing his pain and vulnerability made her feel strangely possessive and privileged, but when he'd stopped trying to run and turned to fight an enemy despite an overwhelming difference in experience and power over something that didn't really matter, not like the lives of civilians or teammates—that had been the first time she'd ever thought Uchiha Sasuke could also be a fool.
"If we make it through to the tower," she asked, "what do you intend to do?"
"Huh?" Naruto asked, shuffling from behind Sasuke now that it seemed she wasn't going to be yelling at them. "What do you mean, Sakura-chan? Of course we're going to make to the third round and give 'em what for!" he said, thumping one fisted hand into the palm of the other.
"Oh?" Sakura said snidely. "Maybe I should stop hitting you so hard, because you seem to be overlooking the Sannin targeting Sasuke."
"Sannin?" he repeated blankly. "Where?"
Part of her had been afraid that his response would be along the lines of "San-what?," but it looked like the Legendary Three had merited more attention than chakra. If he wasn't so resilient, there were times when Sakura would have filed Naruto in the 'too dumb to live' box.
"O-ro-chi-ma-ru.," Sakura replied, sounding out each of the syllables distinctly with the special kind of disdain only teenagers were capable of. "Or did you forget the giant snakes?"
"It doesn't matter," Sasuke said, interrupting Naruto's response. "Once we reach the tower, this phase of the exam will and we'll be surrounded by jounin and proctors. He won't try anything there."
"What if he won't have to? And there's still the third phase," she said, trying to temper her tone and not quite managing it. "We don't know what that seal does, Sasuke. I think it would be better if we forfeited and you went into protective custody—."
Her teeth clicked together as his eyes narrowed, for a moment a perfect reflection of the moment before he'd stepped forward and smirked as he broke Zaku's arm and then gave it a twist just to hear him scream. There was a...something there that hadn't been before. She didn't know if it was danger, or cruelty, or anger, but it spoke to her lizard-brain, made her want to go quiet and still and bristle in preparedness to bite back when he struck.
Some of this must have shown on her face, because it was Sasuke who flinched and looked away. "You're telling me to run. I won't. It's fine," he said stiffly. "You shouldn't say anything about it. It's not like the jounin are blind. If it's really that dangerous, Kakashi will do something to interfere."
If she'd been the one marked, that wouldn't have been said with either resentment or certainty. Because she didn't mind being saved and because she'd learned that Kakashi-sensei could be counted on to appear only when you least wanted to see him or didn't particularly need him.
And he was really big on consequences being their own lessons.
Unless he thought Orochimaru himself was about to erupt through that seal, Kakashi-sensei would leave them to learn from their own mistakes.
Sometimes, she wished that their jounin-sensei expected less of them.
Sakura maintained a disapproving silence for most of their journey to the tower, which wasn't nearly as harrowing after surviving the giant snakes and Oto-nin. With Naruto and Sasuke competing with each other like they were in a points match at the Academy and eager to make up for the fact that both of them had hardly played a part in the last two battles, she lapsed into something like her old position, but instead of screaming for help when an Ame-nin tried to grab her, she almost severed his fingers.
They did make the tower, one of the last teams to do so, and by that time her suspicion about the unsanitary conditions of a snake's mouth and sub-standard follow-up had developed into a certainty of infection. But if Sasuke was pretending to not be living on the edge of exhaustion, she could pretend as well.
She'd done well enough, having found being partially deaf useful as Naruto nattered on about acquiring the Earth scroll, which apparently involved reckless bravery and the assistance of Kabuto, the silver-haired nin she'd suspected of being a hidden proctor from the moment she'd seen his ninja data cards. Personnel files weren't that classified, at least at the genin level, but foreign villages didn't like anyone accruing and analyzing data on their ninja, let alone dispensing it freely. And where had he gotten his information, if he was just a genin? Some of their fellow examinees, like Gaara, hadn't competed in the exams before, so even Kabuto's previous attempts at the test shouldn't have given him that kind of knowledge.
But, if he was a hidden proctor, why would he help Sasuke and Naruto?
Unless, of course, he had the same sense of humor as Kakashi-sensei and would blithely announce that they'd failed just when they'd thought they'd won for accepting assistance.
Their late arrival meant there was little time for recovery, just the call to form up. Anko, their head proctor, seemed to be just as enthusiastic in heaping abuse on their heads as they formed ranks according to their time of arrival rather than village affiliation as she had when she'd sent them into the forest.
After they'd done a roll call, she scowled down at them. "What's this?" she sneered. "I didn't expect this many of you maggots to be starin' up at me when we made it here. Some of you probably already know, but there's been a joint decision by village leaders to make this last phase an exhibition match. Show our clients a little of what they're paying for. We wanted to showcase our best and brightest, but it looks like they'll just have to settle for not falling asleep. We don't have enough open slots for all of you, so we're going to have to do some major culling before any of you get any bright ideas about making chunin. So hang tight ladies, while we decide who we're going to feed to the Inuzuka dogs. And, maggots? I hear you taking this opportunity to share a little gossip, you're gonna be waiting with your face on the floor and my foot making you eat it. Got that?"
There was a ragged chorus of affirmative answers.
"I said, you got that?" she roared.
This time, they managed something more like what she apparently considered a proper response, because she turned on her heel, trench coat flaring dramatically.
For a long moment, there was only utter silence, but then it was punctuated by the rustle of clothing as someone shifted restlessly, someone else coughed. Sakura didn't know how long or if someone would work up enough courage to defy Anko's orders, but she took the opportunity to sneak looks at the jounin instructors ranged along the balcony. Most of them had clustered in group according to village, murmuring to each other in low voices and looking over the assembled genin.
Though Kakashi-sensei had no sense of either camaraderie or urgency, leaning against the wall and giving his book his full attention, the green-clad jounin next to him was apparently undeterred and holding a one-way conversation. She felt her eyebrow twitch. There was no way that particularly appalling fashion statement was a coincidence—she was almost certain this man was Rock Lee's jounin-sensei.
Her eyes swept over other groups, until she came to another figure who apparently didn't care for the company. And she felt a chill sweep over her, prickling her scalp and catching at her breathing. The sound note symbol was her first clue, but she might have guessed regardless.
There was that same sense of gender ambiguity—handsome woman? pretty man?—coupled with those too intense eyes. The lips might smile, but it was those eyes that promised to eat you alive. Flak jackets, though his was a slightly more flattering design and color than the Konoha standard, always minimized the differences usually so obvious in their casual uniforms. But in this case it was mostly the jawline that leant him a certain femininity—most men didn't have that perfectly tapered 'v'. Otherwise, he might have been the kind of refined ikemen that fell within her strike zone.
He looked nothing at all like he had in the forest, but his eyes caught hers and his lips quirked up. Sakura was nowhere near as skilled at reading lips as Ino, who'd turned a hobby for gathering gossip into a useful skill, but she was almost certain he'd said, Am I pretty now?
Sakura shuddered hard enough that she drew looks, but she fisted her hands and reminded herself to breathe. It would have been better, she thought, if he looked even slightly worried about being caught here. Instead, he still had space to taunt a genin who was surprised to have been left alive from their first encounter. He was playing games.
Given the stories, he had more than enough battle experience to judge the situation; that he wasn't worried about the Hokage and over two dozen jounin was so deeply unnerving to it was the same kind of crushing pressure that his killing intent had carried. And, somehow, she didn't think it was just a facade.
This paralyzed as the fear in the forest hadn't, because the consequences of her actions in this room would be magnified by all the people in it. It wasn't just her life at stake. It wasn't even her squad's life at stake. If she revealed him, tried to interfere in whatever game he was playing, she had no doubt his reprisal would be instant and bloody. How many of the genin, standing here with no idea of the snake in their midst, would die? How many of the jounin-sensei would die in defense of their students? It looked like a large room, but if Orochimaru summoned one of his snakes, how many would be crushed even in its death throes?
The choice was like a razor-sharp kunai held to her neck. Keep silent, be complicit, and save lives, or open her mouth and condemn everyone. What seemed like the right thing, the proud thing, might not be the 'good' thing for all these people, who might not be involved in his plot.
Whatever he wanted, it had to do with Sasuke. Maybe, she thought with a sudden flash of insight, he's testing Sasuke—and that seal—again. After all, the first time... The first time should have left the Oto-nin team out of the running, but if they were here, they were all either as resilient as Naruto or operating on the kind of loyalty that made zealots into martyrs.
She came to a decision then. Even to protect her teammate, she wasn't prepared for the kind of collateral damage that trying to draw attention to his real identity might cause. She wasn't even assured of success.
She wanted to believe that the Hokage and the jounin already knew about him, that for some reason—maybe the same reason she wasn't—they weren't interfering, but her faith in the omnipotence of adults had died in Wave, even if she'd survived.
He was watching her. And he was enjoying her agony.
Sakura bit her tongue and tore her eyes away from Orochimaru's, focusing her eyes in the middle distance just above Sasuke's left shoulder, trying to swallow down her nausea. She'd never had to make a decision like this before. She shouldn't have to make a decision like this. She was a genin. Her choices should have to do with what to have for breakfast, and hairstyles, and what pair of shoes she wanted to save up to buy. Choices that, if she screwed them up, only affected her.
She knew that was only wishful thinking, because she'd just come from a hard lesson on how the actions of one member of the team had repercussions for the whole squad, but she'd come to a limited acceptance of the choices she'd made concerning her path in life.
If only life would stop making it so damn hard.
Anko returned. "Now," she drawled, "if it was up to me, we'd halve the time and make you run it again, and see who's standing then. But Hokage-sama has decided it's faster to give you a little taste of what you're going to get. Preliminary elimination matches. Half of you are going to be out on your asses by the time this is over," she said, jerking her thumb across her throat in unmistakable threat.
"Alright maggots, last chance. Surrender now or count yourself willing to be left on the floor in pieces. This one's on your own heads, so don't be looking at your teammates."
Sakura was tired, and afraid, and her ambition to become chunin in her first year out of the Academy had been crushed beneath the weight of reality. And Sasuke and Naruto would be free to do whatever it was they wanted.
Her hand trembled a little with the very small weight of regret and shame, but she began to raise it and declare herself out of the exam. Except Sasuke, like he had eyes in the back of his head, snatched her hand without turning and clutched it tight enough her imagination supplied the sound of bones creaking.
"Don't run away now," he said in a low voice. "We've come this far. We've got to finish it."
A/N: ...I have no idea what happened with Anko.
