A/N: Merry Christmas!
This one made me a little(lot) nervous, because I knew if I did it badly, it would be received badly, and rightly so. However, characters have to learn and grow and change, else they aren't character arcs.
Translations of the seals, by request. Kakashi's is inugami, which is traditionally a kind of bound spirit—a familiar—created when you starve a dog to death and cut off its head. They are loyal, fierce guardians and in a world that includes ninja animals, naturally occuring. Sai's is komainu, which are the lion-dogs that you see guarding shrines. Anko's is uwabami, which are giant snakes whose greed is as legendary as their size. Neji's is konjichō, which is a less-used name for the karura (i.e. Hindu garuda), which are usually depicted as eagle-headed, be-winged humanoids, but for the purposes of KYH should be regarded as an enormous bird of prey with golden plumage capable of breathing fire and whose diet consists of snakes and dragons.
Kill Your Heroes
-Chapter Sixty-Five-
Torschlusspanik (Part II)
Despite his teasing, it was Kakashi who went out to eat that night, relying on one of the several mutual understandings he'd formed during his Anbu days to dispel the restless discomfort that he suspected was a byproduct of channeling natural chakra. Sakura hadn't mentioned it as a possible consequence, but she'd been cultivating that seal for some time and, for all the teasing, there were some things that they just didn't talk about.
Until Itachi, dating had been one of them, at least in any serious way. Back when she'd been obsessed with Sasuke, he hadn't been invested enough to even bother lecturing her on how it would affect her development; with Tatsuo and Zen she'd done her own thing and his only contribution were author-and-actor-signed copies of her favorite smut series. It was one of the reasons that she'd been able to keep her true activities with Itachi so flawlessly concealed, even from him.
She hadn't seemed to want his advice, just to talk, which was just as well—these long-standing connections with a handful of Anbu-rank kunoichi were as close as he'd ever come to dating.
He hadn't had an interest in anything but training in his youth and by the time he'd gotten around to discovering a man's appetites, he'd already been Anbu. While that already would have made dating difficult, what had made it impossible was his own unwillingness to emotionally attach himself to anyone outside his ninken. He was hardly alone in that in Anbu, however—there were lots of reasons that people couldn't or wouldn't date normally.
This was truer for the female members than the male shinobi; their male partners tended to be less accommodating of someone often not physically present in the relationship or who could be called out on a moment's notice. There was also, he was told, a certain undercurrent of resentment that sometimes cropped up in relationships where the women were higher-ranked and higher-paid than their partners. Some dealt with it by simply being extremely selective about who they dated and that usually within the organization; others who were looking outside or who'd given up looking entirely but were not willing to sleep alone in the meantime often formed loose understandings.
Kakashi had been considered handsome, capable, and totally emotionally unavailable, so he'd been a popular choice—was still a popular choice. He only went hungry when outside the village and that only because he didn't feel that the risk was worth the reward.
Even if he'd softened toward the idea that people could and should be something that you wanted in your life, he hadn't had any thoughts of dating. His current arrangement was comfortable. The ninken and Sakura provided the warmth and comfort of family and if he wanted sex, he could have it from kunoichi at the top of their profession.
Aside from a desire for a larger apartment—there were two humans, eight dogs, and one malicious cat in an apartment where there the only putative privacy was in the bathroom—there was no incentive to change his current lifestyle.
In other words, he was a terrible source to look to for dating advice.
Usually, when something came up that he wasn't feeling up to addressing—if it couldn't be killed, captured, or otherwise physically subdued—he would foist whatever problem it was on the person who happened to nearest that he judged reasonably trustworthy. Somewhere along the way, though, he'd picked up a feeling of obligation about raising Sakura well, which meant he couldn't just present her to one of his acquaintances. Last time he'd done that, they'd given her to Gozen.
Kakashi's circle, such as it was, was a little short on people in happy, stable relationships. And those that were in them might be less than well-prepared to address Sakura's specific concerns.
Though it was early days yet. Perhaps he should simply hope that the relationship collapsed. He had no overprotective-guardian impulses concerning Sakura dating, but, well, if he'd been the one choosing for Sakura he wouldn't have even looked at Uchiha Itachi.
He might be polite and good-looking and from a well-off clan, but he had an entire caravan's worth of baggage. Better that she'd never broken things off with her last boyfriend or decided to pursue someone from the village. The Hyūga clan turned out boys that fell under her type with some regularity or, better yet without the nasty business of clan politics, there were surely other long-haired bishounen to be found in a village this size.
Not that he'd intentionally sabotage the relationship.
He'd been a presence in his precocious, reckless, anxious kouhai's life since she'd been assigned to him, but his record of raising of all his students had been largely one of non-interference. He was especially attached to Sakura, but hadn't tried to cut off her relationship with Gozen-san, tried to stop her experimental body-manipulation, or attempted to circumvent her study of fūinjutsu.
He wouldn't interfere in her choices concerning Itachi, either.
Though he was a little annoyed that his kouhai's relationship concerns were muddying what should have been the last peaceful interlude before he intentionally overslept tomorrow's breakfast appointment. He'd noticed that Sakura had managed to inherit the habit of avoiding confrontation in her personal life by avoiding the people in it, but what sort of fun would that be? After she'd stopped being mortified by every innuendo—which by this time were simply habit—he had the moral responsibility to continue building his kouhai's character.
It had nothing at all to do with repaying all the anxiety he'd experienced due to the things Sakura got up to every time he left her unsupervised.
He met a familiar face on the rooftop, which was his usual route for showing himself out after. Uzuki Yūgao glanced over at him briefly, then returned to staring up at the sky, arms crossed tightly across her chest. She was still in Anbu kit, suggesting she'd just gotten off shift, but though the white vest largely obscured her shape, not even moonlight could help disguise the shadows under her eyes or the gauntness of her cheeks.
He hadn't much liked her too-red lipstick when she'd started wearing it, as he'd thought it clashed with the natural paleness of her skin and the deep violet of her hair, but now it looked like a grim scarlet slash on her haggard face. Kakashi might not have been in Anbu any longer, and he might not make any effort to keep in contact with his former comrades except the kunoichi he kept company with, but he saw them in public on occasion and read their stories like he read his books.
He hadn't seen Uzuki look so wretched since she'd added a second blade to her belt during those ill-fated chūnin exams.
Kakashi considered simply waving and going on his way; it was how he'd always dealt with emotionally-charged situations in the past. Or the recent past, at least; the Hatake Kakashi who'd had command of Uzuki's Anbu unit hadn't had all his sharp edges worn smooth yet. He tapped his unopened novel against his chin as he wondered what that man would have done. It was probably fair to say that man had been all edges.
After…everything, he'd come to regard the sticky kind of emotions as voluntarily walking into a tar pit. If you didn't particularly care for anyone, no one could hurt you. He'd been vicious, like an abused dog, until he'd been sick of it and the Third had decided that rather than hoping he'd form bonds among his equals, as Minato-sensei had thought best, it would be better for him to take care of more fragile things. Helping to raise small humans into deadlier large humans was apparently a healing experience.
Kakashi had some deep reservations about the validity of this, but…well, actionable concern was a new sort of thing for him. He'd saved people out of calculation and bartered for favors and been useful to others on the strong suggestion of his Kage and regularly held doors for little old ladies because he wasn't that miserable of a human being, but something as simple as asking how someone was, simply because he could?
That wasn't something any version of Hatake Kakashi had much practiced.
"Yo! Yūgao-chan!" he greeted her, which startled the kunoichi enough that her arms dropped from their defensive position as she turned toward him.
He didn't know whether the long pause was simple surprise or if she had to decide what to call him. She settled on saying coolly, "Hatake-senpai. I didn't even know you knew what my given name was."
"Don't be like that, Yūgao-chan. I had access to your personnel files for years."
There was a flat, unamused look to her eyes. "Did you need something, senpai?"
"Can't I say hello to an old teammate without being suspicious?"
"You can pretend to be harmless all you like, but don't forget that I knew you before."
Kakashi allowed himself to wince dramatically, though the harsh lines of Uzuki's expression didn't soften.
That was unlike the her that he'd known, though admittedly it would be overstepping to think he'd known her well. Hatake Kakashi had met her respectful work-self when she had first been assigned to him; time had somewhat tempered her eager correctness, but she'd always been like the art she practiced. Straightforward, passionate, committed.
Her kenjutsu and her sensory skills had been sufficient to see her actively recruited into Anbu, where the ratio of men to women was skewed to something like seventeen to one. She had been born with talent that had been carefully tempered during her childhood and honed to a rare sharpness during her time in his team; he imagined that she'd only improved in the years since then.
"Mah, mah, don't be like that," he said, sidling closer until he was looking up at the same patch of sky that had drawn her focus.
He wasn't certain what other people saw there when they looked up that captured their attention—whatever lies he told, he did not watch the moon or clouds or flowers blooming. For him, they were just useful. He could navigate with the night sky, read the weather in the clouds, track an enemy through crushed foliage; none of these were sufficient distraction in their mere existence to keep him safe from the dead.
For that, he needed the other-worlds in books, where he could discard himself and be carried along by someone else's existence, flowing smoothly over obstacles to a sticky-sweet ending.
Whatever Uzuki normally sought when she stared up at the moon, she clearly wasn't finding it now.
He could make a reasonable guess at what had disturbed her peace of mind.
"So, what did Hayate have to say?"
Uzuki jolted like he'd backhanded her.
"Something to the effect that the dead shouldn't be chains on the living?"
"How dare—," she began, but he continued on undaunted.
"Because that's what Rin wanted to say to me. Or, at least, that was what she said she'd wanted to tell me for years, although she also told me that she'd been proud of me. Apparently, she'd had confidence all along that an old dog can learn new tricks."
"Is it…is it alright to tell me that?" Uzuki—no, he might as well think of her as Yūgao-chan, he wasn't her captain any longer—asked cautiously. "You never—you never talk about your first team. Talked about your first team," she corrected herself.
He glanced over at her, reading in her body language the suspicion she wasn't bothering to hide. Yūgao-chan did not trust that this wasn't a calculated vulnerability, that he wasn't maneuvering her into some favor she would not want to do.
It was true enough, in its own way.
Kakashi was silent, patiently waiting with hands harmlessly in pockets as Yūgao-chan decided what to do with what he'd told her. She jerked her gaze away from him, staring stonily at the moon. Kakashi hummed thoughtfully, surprised by how relatively painless the admission had been. Part of that was probably healing, like scar tissue formed over a wound finally beginning to heal over; part of it was probably that Yūgao-chan stood at the perfect emotional distance.
He had worked with her for years and as such trusted her. She was an adult with a well-developed sense of self, grounded and confident in her own power, competent and powerful in her workplace. The balance of power between them was comfortable and whatever heavy things they spoke about in the moonlight weren't things they'd be confronted during their workplace hours.
Yūgao-chan must have thought so as well.
"You're right," she conceded. Grudgingly. "Hayate told me that he was proud of me. For how far I'd come in the two-sword styles I took up after—after he died and for my dedication to my original style. And that he was moved by how much he'd meant to me. But he also said that I was too young to grieve for the rest of my life. That instead of just chasing perfection with the sword, I should also make an effort at pursuing happiness."
"He said," her breath caught, "—he said that he had chosen to be reborn. Hayate doesn't have any living family to watch over. Just—just me. And—and he said that I don't need him. Damn him," she muttered forcefully, "because he knows that I can't begrudge him that. He was already dying when they killed him. That was why he was proctoring that exam in the first place. They wouldn't give him leave for fieldwork anymore."
Kakashi was not surprised by that admission—Gekkō Hayate could have been tracked through the village with that awful cough and hadn't looked well for years, which meant it was something that the medic-nin couldn't treat.
"So I've been dumped by a dead man, Hatake-senpai," Yūgao-chan said bitterly. "Does that answer your curiosity?"
If Yūgao-chan had been Sakura, this would have been the moment for a reassuring headpat; he wasn't certain Yūgao-chan wouldn't attempt to remove his hand from his wrist.
Instead, he offered her a secret of his own, though proffering it was selfishly motivated. Of all the files he had read, there was one he'd never worked up the courage to open and now it was likely too late. "Back when I wasn't talking about my first team and you weren't asking questions, did you ever access the files on the attempted retrieval of Uchiha Obito's body?"
[Kill Your Heroes]
Sakura suffered through the nightmare with the resignation of someone who had them often. In this one, the Hokage had not stopped with a genjutsu; had instead, once she had discovered the seal, given Sakura enough seal-bearers for a ninjutsu and this Sakura—this Sakura had chosen fire.
She had never seen the like of the fire that dream-self brought down—so much heat that it warped the very air, turning it into a vortex that roared with a sound that drowned out thought. The proud towers that she knew from surveillance photos warped and collapsed as the fire that had become a thing unto itself that snatched away the dying sounds of an entire population and spun them up into the sky, where it was boiling away the clouds.
Sakura's long, sinuous body was buffeted by the winds she'd created, the pink mane that crested her length snapping like a banner. Translucent inner eyelids meant that she didn't have to look away, even for a moment, and she thought she began to see a shape forming in the haze of heat.
She never discovered what it was; her alarm chirped and she jolted into wakefulness, instantly uncomfortable as her body was tacky with cold sweat and she had too many furry companions piled atop her for the heat to dissipate. Sakura rose and shed animals as she did so, most of which simply shifted into the warm spot left by her body.
Soudai simply oozed out across the section of pillow he'd been allowing her to occupy, smugly-lidded eyes gleaming faintly in the dim room.
Sakura padded her way to the bathroom, glancing briefly over at Kakashi-senpai, who'd come in unusually late the night before. She'd guessed he'd "oversleep" their meeting, but that had been an unnecessarily touch. Though it had worked—she wasn't going to disturb him.
She didn't bother showering yet, simply made use of the facilities, brushed her teeth, scraped her hair out of her face, and slipped into her running gear.
"Ready to go out?" she whispered as she emerged, which immediately had the room seething quietly around her shins. She paused only to collect her kit from where it was waiting next to her futon; Soudai made a condescending sort of motion with his tail that might have been waving goodbye.
The group grew more boisterous almost the instant the door shut behind them, though they obediently used their indoor voices until they made it outside. Necessity had limited their "walks" for the past weeks, so the ninken were rambunctious and apparently immune to performance anxiety, bounding through the streets. Rubble became obstacle courses and they tried to outdo each other, playfully attempting to trip each other—and Sakura—as they made their way past several checkpoints to the Kage monument.
It was probably a vague abuse of the gate-pass she'd been issued with her mission, but Sakura wanted to say goodbye to her village properly. To watch the first light of dawn spill over the horizon and wait for the determined spirit of her people to rouse them for another day of make-the-best-of-what-they-had. It reminded her strongly of Wave, only she had grown well beyond that little girl's disgust—saw instead the warmth of the open-handed kindness both groups had adopted in the face of adversity.
She wouldn't pretend that there weren't little pockets of darkness hidden from her sight; it was impossible for this many people to all be good people at their core, but there were sufficient people engaged in being actively good that it more than counter-balanced those industriously involved in securing their own self-interest.
Sakura admired them, those people who chose, day after day, without orders of any kind, to practice what she'd come to think of as practical kindness.
As she settled herself comfortably in the Second Hokage's hair, warm bodies pressing tightly against her, Sakura spitefully summoned Soudai, who yowled, "Unhand me, you—!"
"Hush," she told him, hugging him to her chest. "We're having a moment."
After some disgruntled wriggling, he said in a put-upon voice. "Very well. If you must."
"When this war is over," she said softly as the overcast sky began to light with streaks of color, "let's go back to Wave."
"Any particular reason?" Pakkun asked.
"Sometimes you want to be reminded that you help build things—communities—and not just break them." Wave was also a beginning for her, a place of many firsts, and going back would be a little like coming full circle.
"Then we'll do that," the little pug said agreeably, and that was that.
[Kill Your Heroes]
Sakura had finished her gear check the night before, so there was no need to do anything further that morning than shower and dress. Time constraints meant that they would leave directly after the breakfast, so she wasn't wearing civvies. Shinobi in full uniform had become utterly unremarkable after the Crush, though Konohagakure uniforms did not usually look quite like this. Even with the hood down and the mask sealed in a scroll, her new uniform made the reflection staring back at her from the mirror look somber. Stark. Deadly.
She'd braided her hair before pinning it up, then did her best to set it in stone with product. Sakura hated when tendrils worked themselves loose and clung to her face beneath a mask. Even chakra had its limitations when it came to sweat; with the hood up, she half-expected her hair to look like she'd been swimming when it came time to take it down.
Fingers ghosting over her kit in one final check that everything was present and secured, Sakura eyed the still-sleeping Kakashi-senpai and decided that she'd let sleeping dogs lie.
Although some restaurants had managed to re-open in the form of open-air foodstalls, Sasuke was under house-arrest, which limited their options to the apartment he and his brother were currently sharing. There was a certain soulless sameness to the quickly-constructed apartment buildings that were currently housing Kohoha's shinobi—the hall that led to this apartment might well have been the same one she'd just left.
Sakura rapped briskly on the door with her knuckles. It was Sasuke who opened the door, pausing in the frame long enough she thought that they were about to begin their breakfast with another argument. But there was something different in his expression as he studied her; something softer around his eyes and mouth.
"Well, you might as well come in," he said. "The idiot's already here."
And he was, taller again than she'd last seen him, she thought, though it was hard to say with the way he was sprawled next to the table. "Sakura-chan!" Naruto said, bounding up to greet her. "What are you wearing?" he asked even as he unceremoniously gathered her in a hug.
Too bewildered at his sudden proximity to return the gesture—she had not remembered them being on hugging terms last she saw him—Sakura only patted his elbows gingerly before stepping back out of his embrace. "A uniform," she replied. "What about you? Someone finally talk you into burning that track suit?"
Naruto laughed, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. "One of my teammates pointed out that it looked maybe less than professional and if I wanted to be taken seriously, maybe I should stop dressing like I was twelve."
Despite the exuberance of his greeting, there was a different feel to Naruto as he settled back down by the table. As if there was a balance to him that hadn't been there before—like someone had finally filed down the edges of his manic energy. She wondered if these were the fruits of Sage training or if it was simply the fact that for this one brief hour all the members of Team Seven would be under one roof without express plans to kill one another.
"Why are we hugging?" she asked, then, "Did you hug Sasuke? Because you don't look injured."
"Itachi was watching," Sasuke grumbled as he took his own seat at the table.
Naruto grinned at them both. "I've missed this," he said. "Even though it's been so long it almost feels like a different lifetime and maybe we're almost different people, I'm still just…," he shook his head then, giving up on finding the right words to express himself, but what he intended to say was obvious.
He was glad that his team was home.
"Now we're just missing Kakashi-sensei, but to be honest, it feels more like a reunion if he's late for it," Naruto said.
"He was asleep when I left the apartment," Sakura volunteered as she eyed the table like a potential battlefield and decided to take one of the narrow ends since Naruto and Sasuke had each claimed a long side and were taking up more space than was strictly polite in a small space like this one, though she would see if Itachi needed anything in the kitchen before she sat. "Where's your team? I though they were supposed to be here for this."
"Change of plans," was Sasuke's gruff explanation.
Sakura hummed thoughtfully, then made a very brief foray to the kitchen, where Itachi turned her out to wait at the table again. She settled herself neatly on one of the zabuton and took in the two boys—almost men now, she supposed—that shared the space with her.
Sasuke was no longer wearing his attire from his time with Orochimaru, though he hadn't adopted the Konohagakure uniform either. As for Naruto, his hair was longer than she'd ever seen him wear it—cutting it likely hadn't been a priority during his Sage training—and as puberty had begun to cut angles into a face that previously had a child's roundness, she saw the ghost of his father.
Seeing her looking, Naruto smiled at her. "So," he drawled leadingly, "I hear you're dating Sasuke's brother."
"…you discover Uchiha Itachi is alive, has been a double-agent all along, and what you focus on is that we're dating? How did you even hear about that?"
"Pervy-sage has priorities and he was the one they had debrief me," was Naruto's glib reply.
Sakura muttered, "I'm surprised that he didn't just tell you that we were having a team breakfast and let you walk in without telling you anything."
"He did say that Granny was the one who told him that there were surprises and then there were surprises and that maybe they ought to tell me about this one before this asshole and I create more property damage than Konohagakure really needs right now."
Sasuke sneered briefly at Naruto. "Since you didn't manage to drag me back, does that mean you can't be Hokage now? I vaguely remember a speech to that effect."
Once, Naruto would have lashed back—first with words, shortly thereafter with fists. But this new, grown-up Naruto just shakes his head at Sasuke.
"Guess not," he says with a rueful grin. "But maybe it's for the best. Have you seen the sort of paperwork that the Hokage has to do? And the budgeting? In the Academy, they tell you that the Hokage is the strongest shinobi, the leader that everyone looks up to, but all the things they didn't tell are all very good reasons—and not failing to bring your sorry ass back—that it's not something I want to chase any longer. I don't need a title to have everyone acknowledge my strength. If it comes down to it, I think—I think I'd really like to be a teacher, after a few more years in the field," Naruto said thoughtfully. "Do for others what Iruka-sensei did for me. After all, what I'm really good at is believing in people."
"That's actually—that's actually a really good analysis of your skills and ambitions," Sakura said.
"Well, Sage training might sound glamorous, but it's not just technical skills. It's mostly thinking. A way of seeing the world. And you can't understand the world and all the forces in it if you don't understand yourself."
She told herself that she was going to have to stop being surprised by Naruto, one of these days. He was no longer that loud-mouthed little boy from the Academy, any more than she's that girl whose whole world revolved around Sasuke.
As for Sasuke, well, they'd see.
[Kill Your Heroes]
No one died during their breakfast, and while there were significant tensions between them still, Sakura sensed that small, tentative steps had been made toward…something.
She still wouldn't trust Sasuke to so much as watch her cat, but they weren't angry children any longer. Sakura could and would cooperate with him, regardless of her own feelings, so long as her village required it of her—those were the burdens of adulthood, whose much-dreamed of freedoms were largely illusions.
It had made her slightly thoughtful and introspective and also a little bold, though that last might have been the result of the war that loomed so large she couldn't see a future beyond it.
"I'm going to kiss you, because it would be a shame not to have kissed you at least once," she said as she slid her hands down Itachi's forearms to tangle his fingers with hers and used that point of contact to gently back him against the wall of his apartment building, where they were largely out of sight. "But, Itachi?"
"Yes?" he asked as he waited for her with an expression of infinite patience and a flush riding high on the ridge of his ears.
"I think—I think I want someone to choose me first," she confessed softly. "Wholeheartedly. Unreservedly. I think I deserve that. And I think that you deserve the same. I'm not making this an ultimatum, because that would be an ugly thing to do before going somewhere I might never come back from, but I want to say it. If we can't be that to each other, then…"
"Then we need look elsewhere," he finished for her.
"Mm. Sorry, for choosing now to say this. But—I think it would be easy, for me to settle. And I don't want to. And just now I wasn't afraid to say it. So it had to be said."
"I understand," he replied softly, his head tilting down so that their foreheads were pressed together. "I want you to be able to tell me what you need without fear," he said. "This isn't something that I'm much practiced in, but I do know enough about relationships to know that it's the things that people don't say that usually sours them. And," and here humor crept back into his voice, "despite popular opinion, the Sharingan does not actually allow me to read minds."
"I—" here he hesitated, "don't know that is a promise I can freely make at this moment. Sasuke still—I will think on it," he promised. "And if it's something I cannot give you, when we are finished with what must be done, I will let you free. Even when I want to lie and keep you close. So, for now, won't you kiss me?"
She did.
A/N: I know in both the anime and the manga, Uzuki Yūgao's sword is sheathed on her back, but while aesthetics sometimes overrides other considerations in KYH, that's a hard no from me. It looks cool, yes, and if you didn't intend to draw it in any hurry—say if you were just transporting it—it would be fine, but otherwise, just no. Imagine yourself as this sword-strapped-on-back-person and imagine yourself drawing the blade. Japanese blades, katana or otherwise, are going to be in a wooden sheath, probably fixed at two points to keep it from flopping around. Notice how awkward drawing it is? Notice how it draws that hand way, way up into something that isn't a high guard and leaves that side totally exposed? Yeah. Not a thing.
