A/N: ...I might be on record as having said this arc would finish in five parts. I might have lied. We'll see.
Kill Your Heroes
-Chapter Thirty-Five-
Toward Better Days (Part IV)
[social anxiety]
Fū's upper half was sprawled across the table, both his arms fully outstretched, his chin resting on the tabletop. "That's mean, nee-san," he whined. "Having all that fun without me."
He'd just plopped himself down at the table she'd been sharing with Ino, trying to work up the courage to bring up the kiss.
It was...odd. The kiss. Not just A Kiss. The Kiss. Her first one. The one that was supposed to belong to The One. The kiss that was supposed to presage her Happily-Ever-After, like in all the books and movies and everything else.
...alright, maybe not all the books, namely the ones in the Box of Shame, but they didn't count.
...or the old stories, where hardly anyone lived happily for any length of time, but they didn't count either.
She'd decided that kiss belonged to Sasuke back when she'd decided she belonged with Sasuke, before he'd gone and betrayed everything they'd been taught to serve and protect. After that it just hadn't occurred to her to spend her time in imagining The Kiss with anyone else, as if that part of her had left with him. It helped that she hardly left herself any time for that sort of thing anymore, too busy studying and sparring and learning to live in a world where "sleeping in" was sometimes something unwelcome.
She'd certainly never imagined The Kiss would happen when her heart had been galloping from the fright and anxiety of battle rather than the intensity of her feelings.
Zen was probably the most beautiful boy she was ever going to meet, and he was nice enough, but he was basically a stranger. She wasn't angry, because she didn't have any sense of anything being stolen, and it had been special, sort of, but she still wanted to know what it meant, that he'd kissed her like that, but she didn't want to bring it up in front of Fū.
Who was now sulking at her.
"Because we had so much time to go looking for you while you were out playing around," Zen said as he cautiously lowered himself into another chair—they'd healed his leg enough that he was in a walking cast—making Ino gape, though she recovered quickly. "Next time we're trailing someone, I'll stop and think, Wait, maybe Fū would like to help out."
"Exactly like that, but without sarcasm," Fū agreed.
Zen just stared at Fū for a long moment. "It must be a strange, strange thing to live in your head," he remarked at last. "Anyway, before I forget, you and I have a dinner to attend this evening," he said to Sakura.
"What?" Sakura said. Well, squeaked, but she'd save what dignity she could, especially as Ino was now staring.
A brief, knowing smile flashed across Zen's face. "Your squad, me, and Suna no Gaara—we're going to be having dinner with the elders. Congratulations for us, an apology for him."
Having delivered that news, she might have expected him to leave, but he and Fū stayed and made conversation for awhile until something else nabbed Fū's attention and Zen had to leave for an appointment. Almost the instant Zen was out of sight, Ino's fingers were latched on to her arm, likely as a measure against Sakura bolting. "Alright, confess," she demanded. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Sakura asked grumpily, hating to be put on the spot even if this exact conversation had been her earlier goal.
"You, flustered. Pretty, pretty boy, smirking. I don't know, what could I be curious about?" Ino replied snarkily.
"Alright, alright," Sakura said, eyes flittering over the others enjoying the sunlight in the park. Which was stupid, some part of her brain told her, because no one else likely cared, but it was habit. When she told Ino about her lightning-lit kiss, the other girl made strangled noises of what sounded mostly like giddiness and envy.
When she posed her question, about what the kiss meant, Ino mulled it over thoughtfully. "Not speaking as a voice of experience or anything," Ino said, "but it's probably one of those victory kisses. Y'know, he's thinks you're cute and he's grateful and caught up in the moment, but he doesn't necessarily want to date you. Which is probably a good thing. Taki's far enough away that he'd be less boyfriend and more penpal. But I have to say, Sakura, for a first kiss? Nice," she drawled appreciatively, which set them both to giggling.
[philia]
Sakura almost toppled over backwards when a hand suddenly covered the text she'd been reading, a strangled noise only about half as embarrassing as an actual shriek escaping her throat.
After she'd snatched at the heavy table and managed to right her chair, Sakura looked up sheepishly to find Tatsuo wearing an expression of exasperated indulgence. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"...reading?" Sakura tried after a brief silence, because she was too ashamed to admit that there were aspects of her medical studies that she found mind-numbingly boring. Not that she expected or needed novels, but many of the books and even case studies tended to be dense and almost purposefully inaccessible. They were academically standoffish in a way that was as unlike the highly simplified Academy texts as it was possible to be without being another language entirely, full of new and difficult terms that required a dictionary on one hand and a notebook on the other.
"Strange, how much that resembled almost falling asleep on the book," he remarked wryly. "How long have you been at this, Sakura?"
"Not long," she demurred.
"Really? Because, strangely enough, I saw someone who looked remarkably like you sitting in this seat this morning. As it is now dinnertime, I think you've earned a break." He happened to glance down and grimaced. "If you don't leave now, I'm going to be obliged to tell Hokage-sama that you came this close to drooling on her work."
"I don't drool," Sakura bit out defensively as she gathered her things, cheeks flushed pink.
"You don't," Tatsuo confirmed. "But the Hokage won't know that." As they left the library, where Sakura had spent the better part of her day making good use of its collection, he glanced down at her. His expression softened as he said, "If you keep this up, I might start to think you don't like working with me."
"What? Why?" Sakura demanded, perplexed.
"This much study and practice—you'll be jounin before you're old enough to drink," Tatsuo replied. "Especially if our missions keep going so smoothly."
Sakura hugged her notebook tighter to her chest, made uncomfortable by the reminder that if she made jounin, she would no longer be part of her current squad. While parting from Aihara-taichou and the others would give her a feeling no worse than she'd felt when saying goodbye to the greater part of her graduating class, she'd really regret not working with Tatsuo anymore. But Tatsuo was unlikely to make jounin again—no matter how remarkable his salvaging of his career, too much of his early training had focused on the use of his doujutsu. Without his memory, even his Jūken would be just another thing stolen from him in the course of that one terrible mission.
"Quit that," he said softly. "You're supposed to reassure me that I'm your favorite partner, not look guilty."
"Sorry," Sakura mumbled. "And you are my favorite partner. Given that I've had just the one, that's not so bad, I guess."
Tatsuo laughed and laughed all the harder when Sakura's stomach growled audibly. "Here," he said when she would have stomped toward home, "let me save you from yourself. If you've spent the entire day drowning in big words, I doubt you have any plans that I'll interrupt. And if you come with me, you won't have to cook," he pointed out.
It was not a difficult decision, but Sakura grew progressively more hesitant as he led the way not to any of their favorite restaurants, but somewhere she'd never been before.
The Hyūga compound.
"Tatsuo...," Sakura said with trepidation, not comfortable with the glances she was getting from white-eyed passerby.
"If you stop looking like you're trespassing and aware of it, no one will look twice," Tatsuo said, then suddenly he was behind her, hands on her shoulders, propelling her through a gate. Unlike the Uchiha district, where houses directly fronted the streets, many of the houses they'd passed seemed to have small walled yards or gardens attached to them; perhaps in a place where so many people had a doujutsu no normal wall was proof against, the illusion was privacy was doubly important. And there was the fact that for all that Uchiha name was more infamous, the Hyūga line had been wealthy and well-established long before their wild offshoot. They'd been given considerable space when the village had been established and unlike the faded Senju and massacred Uchiha, they'd flourished. The Hyūga were now the most powerful clan in Konohagakure. But quietly.
"Haha," he called, which made her want to bolt, but there was nothing to be done about it before a woman emerged from the house. She was older than Sakura had thought she'd be, fine lines bracketing her eyes, but less alarming than she'd expected. There was elegance there, but it had been worn by time to something comfortable and inviting.
"Tadaima. I'm delivering your dinner guest," Tatsuo told the woman, laughter in his voice and she smiled back at him.
"I see that," she replied. "Tou-san's setting the table, so you're just in time. Okaeri, children."
[canophilia]
There'd been a long-ago conversation in which Kakashi-senpai had explained the difference between his ninken and summons. Summoned animals weren't really animals in any sense but form; they were spirits who would outlive their contractors, who lived in places that weren't casually accessible to humans. Their contracts were rare, while companion animals—personal summons or contracted animals were acceptable terms too—were far more common. They had human-level intelligence and commiserate lifespans, often living and dying with their shinobi.
She'd tucked the information away, because that was what she did, but she'd never expected this.
"It's like a pet store where the pets choose you," Pakkun explained as he trotted at her ankles. "Crossed with a matchmaker's—pup's parents can make decisions for them, if a shinobi prefers to partner with someone they can raise and train up as they like. You don't see adult animals there very often, mostly genin-equivalents, so there's still plenty of raising to do even for the ones old enough to make their own choices. And you can start contributing to this conversation at any point," he said to Kakashi, who was trailing behind them.
"You're doing fine without me," he replied carelessly without looking up from his book, waving them forward. Sakura envied him his spatial awareness; she'd tried to duplicate the ability, an experiment that had left her only with bruised pride.
Pakkun huffed, his little tail twitching indignantly, but he was distracted when Sakura asked, "So, the ninken—did you all choose senpai, or did he take you in as pups?"
"Both. He didn't take us all in at once, you understand," Pakkun said. Then he snorted. "You should have seen him the first time he tried to raise a puppy. Let's just say that it's a mercy that no one was ever fool enough to let him near human babies."
"You know, I am right here," Kakashi-senpai remarked flatly.
"You were the one who didn't want to join the conversation," Sakura pointed out with mock-innocence.
"Don't be mean to your senpai, kouhai," Kakashi-senpai chided as he clapped his book shut and strode briskly forward to catch up to them, slowing to match Pakkun's pace when he'd drawn even with them. "Especially when he's taking you out to get a puppy."
Pakkun took this as permission to continue regaling Sakura with stories from when the ninken were young and Kaskashi-senspai was as well—"younger" Kakashi-senpai insisted, not young, because that would make him old—until they reached the expansive building that was their destination.
Despite Pakkun's comparison, it wasn't a pet shop; there were no large windows so you could gawk at the companion animals. There was a large, easily readable sign atop the entrance, but it was closer to the ones that labeled civic buildings rather than an advertisement. It had the feel of one as well, because they were immediately greeted by a desk manned by a sober member of the Inuzuka clan.
They were instructed to sign in and were issued visitor badges, which they were required to wear at all times within the premises. They waited by the desk as the woman called someone to escort them, but it wasn't a long wait. It was a younger woman who emerged through the doors, her long hair pulled neatly up into a ponytail and unfamiliar clan markings on her face. A thick blue line bisected her chin and another ran from cheek to cheek across the bridge of her nose. "Hi," she said brightly. "I'm Nekoda Kayo. Do you have your paperwork ready?"
Sakura glanced worriedly over at Kakashi-senpai, because she hadn't been aware of any paperwork, had been entirely surprised this morning when he'd shown up at her door and announced where they were going. She wasn't even sure she could cover the fees—and surely there would be fees. But she kept her mouth shut as Kakashi-senpai produced a packet of paperwork and handed it over.
"Good, good," Nekoda-san said, "Now, if you want to come to my office while I process this, it shouldn't take long." Again, it wasn't a long wait though the girl occasionally asked Sakura to clarify points, making thoughtful noises. "Well," she said when she was satisfied, "It looks like you're an excellent candidate, Sakura-san. Now, would you like to meet our animals?"
Sakura nodded hesitantly and was rewarded by being led into a vast room which was populated by animals in all shapes, sizes, and species. Some could speak with human voices, others yapped, yowled, and chirruped to produce an exuberant cacophony. There were other workers wearing clothes identical to Nekoda's, all of them sporting clan markings on their faces. Other shinobi with visitors' passes accompanied them, the animals reacting like Academy children to a guest speaker. Excited, but too aware of the possibility of scolding by their sensei to mob them.
Nekoda-san gave them both a moment to absorb the room, Sakura's eyes skimming over dozens of adorable dogs of all ages. Ferocious looking ones too, like the ones the Inuzuka clan partnered with, though not many of those. She was overwhelmed by sheer choice and the repercussions if she made the wrong one, but in the midst of all that confusion, something niggled at her mind. Some not quite right in the world.
She turned, seeking the source, until her gaze landed on a tall cabinet well away from the excitement. What's a genjutsu doing there? she thought to herself as she crept towards it.
"Sakura-san?" Nekoda-san asked.
"There's something here," Sakura replied distractedly, her will already sealing chakra channels in a well-honed reflex.
She found herself staring into eyes that weren't green and weren't blue, but some strange, immensely intense shade in between. The cat stood slowly from where it had been crouched, tail flicking. He had a regal, triangular head and large ears, his medium-length fur laying close to his body except for the tail, where it formed a sort of fan. He was very dark, but not a true black, more seal brown, and beginning midway down his tail, the dark hairs gained silvery tips. His ears too, had that grey sheen, and just the faintest hint of it around his nose.
"What do you mean? There's nothing—?" Nekoda-san cut herself off as the cat terminated the illusion. "Oh," she said, a wealth of meaning in that single sound.
The cat glanced briefly over at her. "I want this one," he said plainly.
"Sakura-san is here to look at dogs," Nekoda-san protested weakly, which was a strange reaction, and coupled with the 'oh' of moments before conspired to give Sakura a kind of ominous feeling.
"Nonsense," the cat insisted. "She'd be wasted on the imbecilic creatures."
"Hey," Pakkun protested.
"You can't help it," the cat said condescendingly. "A dog is at best a scent tracker. Cats, however, are natural chakra sensors and innately talented in the art of illusion. I don't know why anyone would prefer a dog to a cat. Especially one like myself," he went on without a shred of humility.
"Could be something like personality, maybe," Kakashi-senpai muttered, which earned a rumble of agreement from Pakkun.
Nekoda-san winced. "This is Soudai," she said.
"Named himself, did he?" Pakkun remarked snidely.
"Don't be ridiculous," the cat sniffed. "Kayo, see to the paperwork, will you? That's a good girl."
The woman seemed to firm her resolve. "Soudai," she said patiently, "it doesn't work like that and you know it. You haven't even asked if this poor girl is willing to put up with you."
"Put up with me?" he asked archly. "I think she's quite clever enough to see that she'd be well recompensed for 'putting up' with my personality quirks, as you phrased it."
"Soudai, you spend all your time lurking under genjutsu and turning up your nose at shinobi just because they can't find you. No one would think to look for a genjutsu here."
"Precisely," the cat said with another sharp tail twitch. "Therefore, they're unworthy of my time and attention."
Nekoda-san pinched the bridge of her nose, then turned to them with a sheepish grin. "Sorry. Soudai's a handful. And he's been here for a while, so he's sort of one of our resident characters. We haven't quite figured out why he hadn't given up yet. Shall we look at some dogs?"
Almost pouring himself to the floor from the top of the cabinet, the cat surprised her when he said, "Oh, very well. Lead the way."
"You're coming?" Sakura asked.
"Of course," the cat said, blinking up at her lazily.
And given what followed, it wasn't difficult to discern why. Every dog and puppy had issues with parentage, prowess, and personality laid bare before her until they were all regarding her nervously. Some of the puppies had even taken to running. Judging by the thrumming purr of satisfaction radiating up from the cat at her foot, that was exactly what Soudai had intended.
Sakura had never had a natural aptitude for handling strong personalities. Naruto's loudness made her want to smack him upside the head, Sasuke's aggression made her handle him like he was an unstable chemical, and the first few years of her friendship with Ino had been spent in the shadow of a much more self-assertive personality. She was better now than she had been in those early years in the Academy, but there was a limit that she hadn't managed to overcome yet. It wasn't a problem in enemy shinobi; she didn't have to make conversation with them.
As far as she could tell, Soudai was everything bad that had ever been said about cats. He was clever, conniving, and almost appalling self-centered. And yet...
It wasn't just that he'd chosen her. When it came to written work, she'd been unequivocally the best in her class at the Academy. When it came to group work, she'd always had people choose her, even when they didn't like her, depending on her skill and work ethic to get them through the assignment. Until the real world, until Wave, she'd had a lot of confidence in that. Only now, months and months later, was she starting to regain that sense of self-worth, but it had never been low enough for that alone to have decided her. Even if he had been waiting all this time for someone to see him, hiding behind that genjutsu. There was something in that, something that tugged at her, just a little. And that something, combined with clear skill and that cleverness and conniving that also stood to be so irritating, made up her mind.
He didn't struggle as Sakura picked him up, hind legs dangling as she met his eyes. He just blinked at her, docile enough now that he'd gotten his way.
"Sakura, please don't tell me you'd choose an arrogant, self-centered cat over a loving, loyal dog, no matter how sleek his fur is," Kakashi-senpai said, then paused. "No, wait," he sighed. "That question just answered itself. Sorry to have wasted your time, Nekoda-chan. It looks like that one will be going home with us after all."
It wasn't just a matter of paperwork (or fees, which Kakashi-senpai handed over, giving Sakura a card from her parents, who'd wished her the best with her new friend), but also a very complex sealing that took place in a purpose-made room. Shallow lines etched into the floor were filled with ink in which their blood—hers and Soudai's—mingled and it took the assistance of four of the workers to see it completed. Sakura didn't feel much different afterward, but Kakashi-senpai reassured her that it wasn't that kind of a seal.
Much like actual pets required a collar, personal summons required some signal of their affiliation so as not to be mistaken for a pet by a civilian. Nekoda-san helped her find something like a small version of a shemagh—though young and rather slender, Soudai was fully grown and larger than Pakkun—which rather than being knotted was held closed by a metal clip with the Leaf engraved on it, which set at an angle, slightly to one side.
Judging by the purring that reached her ear from where the cat had draped himself across her shoulders, he found it more than "sufficient," but judging by the way Pakkun was eying him, there would be a definite adjustment period.
So long as they didn't live up to the "fighting like cats and dogs" saying, Sakura thought she could live with that.
[vulpophilia]
"I feel like it's staring at me," Tatsuo remarked as he eyed the mask, which had found a temporary home on the coffee table.
"I know what you mean," Sakura replied, glancing down at it. "I had to take it out of my room. I kept feeling like it might come alive and attack me if I turned my back on it. And forget sleeping with it in a forty-foot radius."
"I'd almost be afraid to move it," Tatsuo muttered.
The mask was Gozen's. Sakura had seen several different animal designs on ANBU masks in the brief moments she spotted them around the city, but she'd never seen one quite like Gozen's. For one, its base color wasn't white but a deep, terrible red, which made its wide, toothy smile all the more gruesome. The old woman had called it a gift, but Sakura only saw it as further confirmation of a terrible sense of humor.
"Fascinating," had been Soudai's pronouncement, which had prefaced the cat laying belly-down, staring at the mask for hours on end. Then had come conclusions on color and subtle asymmetry and the aesthetics of fear and the grotesque, which had been interesting but hadn't really made the fear better.
"Oh, really, the two of you," the cat said impatiently, rising from his seat and vaulting across the divide to the coffee table. Nudging it to one side with his head, he cleared the space enough for Sakura to set down her tray of drinks and snacks.
"Thanks, Sou-chan," Sakura said, which made Soudai's tail and whiskers twitch, though with amusement or irritation it was hard to say.
Living with Soudai was an experience. One that told her that she'd grown up a little when she wasn't looking, because it wasn't in her any more to simply comply. But, to her surprise, that hadn't thrown Soudai at all. He compromised, most of the time, and simply ignored her when he wasn't willing to. But he never looked like he resented her asserting her own rules. Like the no-cats-while-showering-rule. He didn't follow it very well, but he'd only complained when she'd tried shoving him under the spray rather than throwing him out.
And for someone who'd lived basically alone for years, it was very strange to have a warm, furry form curled into her side when she woke up. (Or to be woken up by a cat who knew no regular hours prowling the house, or to wake up to sharp little claws kneading at her back.) To have someone to talk to over breakfast. (To have someone insist that a real breakfast included fish. Without fail.) To have someone to talk to at home at all. She understood, in those moments, exactly why Kakashi-senpai needed the ninken. It had nothing to do with tracking or combat prowess and everything to do with simple company. With Soudai there, there was a lot less time for disastrous introspection and he never failed to wake her from her nightmares.
"What are we watching?" Soudai demanded as ninken suddenly poured into the room, heralding Kakashi-senpai's arrival.
"That would depend on what senpai brought from the video rental," Sakura told him.
"We're being subject to his questionable taste again?" Soudai complained, even though he'd already stretched himself across the back of the couch.
"It is his turn," Tatsuo pointed out.
"And it's strange, how often my turn seems to coincide with me being away on missions. I start to feel unloved," Kakashi-senpai said from where he surveyed the scene from the doorframe, his ninken all claiming their favorite spots. Line of sight to the television was irrelevant—the frame rate was too slow for them to perceive it as anything but a slideshow with a soundtrack. The same was even more true of Soudai, but he wasn't content just to keep them company like the ninken, who were more than happy with an occasional head scratch. No, Soudai required attention. But he wasn't alone in his criticism of Kakashi-senpai's choices.
"It's not you, senpai," Sakura reassured him. "Just your unique taste in movies." Sometimes, because it was Kakashi-senpai, she thought he was doing it on purpose, but also because it was Kaskashi-senpai, she couldn't be certain.
"Can we get one where both the main characters survive? Or at least one that doesn't involve a kiss in the rain?" Tatsuo asked wryly.
"You are both heartless savages," Kakashi-senpai said drolly. Then his gaze caught on the mask, which had ended up facing the door when Soudai had finished nosing it out of the way. "And where, exactly, did that come from?"
"It was a gift," Sakura admitted.
"From who?"
"From...someone I know," Sakura settled on at last.
"That I never would have guessed," Kakashi-senpai retorted. "Because that design looks almost like a decommissioned ANBU mask."
Sometimes, Sakura forgot that Kakashi-senpai had once been ANBU and that though Gozen-san was now an old woman who passed the time scaring children, she'd once been infamous. "Does it?" she asked.
