Title: Seeking Rin
Chapter: 14 - Refrain
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 4111
Summary: When Sakura, newly in a relationship with Kakashi, finds out about Rin, she makes a choice that's hard on them both. Even worse, there's a mysterious illness cropping up in Konoha that even Tsunade can't heal. And what does Ino have to do with it? Kakashi x Rin, KakaSaku.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 14 of ? Unbeta'd.
The very worst part is that Tsunade-shishou is a far better actor than Sakura has ever been-even though she's improved over the years, due to careful coaching and training. As they traverse the halls of the administration buildings, Tsunade-shishou smiles as much as she usually does and stops and handles the issues that her shinobi bring to her with a normalcy that's terribly unsettling.
Sakura walks behind her feeling like a forgotten shadow. She knows that's ridiculous. There's no way that Tsunade-shishou has forgotten her and people in the building address her just as often as they do her Hokage, going from how often she has to paste on a smile and concentrate on acting normal.
She doesn't succeed as well as her sensei does but, then, no one would expect her to—not after spilling secrets to the general public.
Perhaps Tsunade-shishou's presence is the reason that no one asks her about that.
Perhaps they think it's all planned because she's standing with Tsunade-shishou and smiling now.
Sakura wonders what the gossip mills will make of that possibility. What conclusions will they draw? She wishes she could talk to Ino, who always had been better at predicting the way the wind would fall. She wishes she could hug Kakashi. Sakura wishes that she wasn't so desperately certain that this is a trap and she's walking into it with her eyes wide open.
What does she have an aptitude in that would be applicable to this situation?
As Tsunade-shishou chats with an elderly kunoichi-who must be deadly indeed to have reached such an age-Sakura bites her lip and resists the urge to fidget more than that.
It's hard, though. She's never been a calm and quiet sort of girl.
It's harder to look at Tsunade-shishou and wonder where her mentor has gone. She looks and acts the same but Sakura has the weirdest feeling that she doesn't know this Tsunade-shishou at all.
Tsunade-shishou is a strong advocate of medical ethics.
Testing her without her awareness is a violation of said ethics. Sakura keeps her face smooth even though she grimaces internally. Testing her without her awareness is not, however, a violation of shinobi ethics.
That means, she hopes, that this is something to do with being a shinobi. Not a medical issue. Though with everything she knows about Kakashi (she needs to apologize to him so much but if he's infected, will he even understand her apology?) and Ino (whose body cannot hold out much longer if all her symptoms are true), Sakura can't see how this is anything other than a medical issue.
There's the unsettling idea that it's both. Sakura's pretty sure that's the right answer but it's the one she doesn't like at all. In times of emergency, medical ethics are superseded by shinobi ethics.
She knows that.
Tsunade-shishou knows that.
Sakura hopes it's not a time of emergency and is certain it is. She just doesn't know why.
As Tsunade-shishou says her goodbyes to the other kunoichi, Sakura smiles and follows her. They don't speak to one another, which is the only thing out of the ordinary in their walking the halls.
If she wanted to, she could break the silence. Sakura knows that, with the depth of Tsunade-shishou's acting, her mentor would respond to bland pleasantries with more of the same. They could carry on a conversation.
Sakura holds her silence.
They wind up in a hallway that Sakura doesn't often have reason to go down. It's the billing and accounting department and the Chuunin who spend their days up to their ears in money and the managing thereof pay no attention to her or Tsunade-shishou.
Frowning slightly at that-they should at least notice the both of them-Sakura follows as Tsunade-shishou-leads them through a maze of cubicles and filing cabinets. She opens one of the cabinets as they pass and pulls out a file, handing it to Sakura.
Sakura takes it silently, peering down at it even as she keeps on following Tsunade-shishou, whose steps never faltered. The only thing in the file is a blank sheet of paper with the name Miyagi Ran in the right-bottom corner.
Feeling confused all over again-which is becoming a familiar feeling, if not a welcome one-Sakura closes the file and hurries to catch up as Tsunade-shishou opens a door to a stairwell going down.
She doesn't want to go down those steps. But she does, following her mentor down and down and down.
The door behind them closes and Sakura closes her eyes briefly as she hears the lock engage.
"Where are we?" she asks, her voice hushed in the darkness.
"In the administrative building," Tsunade-shishou replies. "Though we won't be there for much longer."
That's the opposite of comforting and Sakura makes a face at the back of Tsunade-shishou's head because she would be willing to eat a kunai before believing that Tsunade-shishou wasn't precisely aware of how little her words were a comfort.
"Where are we going?"
"You'll see."
And despite other questions that Sakura dredges up to ask, Tsunade-shishou says nothing else and just continues down the stairs.
Trepidatiously, clutching the nearly empty file to her chest, Sakura follows. She takes small comfort in the fact that Shikamaru and Temari will know whose presence she was last in, if she goes missing.
Sakura doesn't know what they'd do with the information, but they'd know. The Hokage's orders are absolute and her very disappearance will tell them of the dangers in prying.
It might not stop them, she thinks, but it could.
Especially if Ino shows up on the surface again.
Ino's always been the better liar than she. Sakura swallows and steels her determination-she doesn't have any choice but to go forward and that's what she's going to do.
Anything else is going to fall out as it falls out.
"How much further?" she asks as they hit a hallway and continue down it. "Where are we going?"
It would amuse her, how much she sounds like an impatient child, if she wasn't so scared and worried about everything.
"Not far," Tsunade-shishou says.
It's not much of an answer, but it pleases Sakura that she's received one at all.
'Not far' is an accurate assessment as, a few minutes later, Tsunade-shishou ushers her into a plain office. The desk is burnished steel and cold to the touch. The chairs are steel as well. Sakura sits in the one in front of the desk as Tsunade-shishou takes the one behind it.
If she pretends really hard, it could almost be like the start of a normal lesson.
She can't pretend that hard.
Sakura sets the file down on the desk. "What's going on?" she asks, taking the effort to make her voice level and demanding instead of the whine that wants to colour it.
This is her sensei! She's supposed to look after her! Not betray her and then lead her in circles!
Sakura tells the childish part of herself to shut up and die.
"Miyagi Ran does not exist," Tsunade-shishou says, leaning back in the chair and looking far too comfortable. Sakura is perched on the edge of her chair, uneasy. "Or rather, that is to say, she was never meant to exist."
"What?"
"You are Miyagi Ran," her mentor continues. "And that's dangerous. We tried to contain you but we're going to have to use you instead."
Sakura inches her chair backwards. "I'm Sakura," she says flatly. "Not this Ran person. You know me, Tsunade-shishou."
But if her teacher has lost her mind, Sakura is in far more danger than she'd ever thought.
"I know that," comes the answer.
Sakura's breathing hitches in something like relief.
"The role you play in this scenario is that of Ran, however," Tsunade-shishou says. "That's the problem."
"I didn't even know I was playing a role," Sakura says, frowning harder. "I'm not. I'm just me."
It sounds ridiculous even as she says it but it's the truth.
Tsunade-shishou sighs. "I'm not saying you aren't."
It's only long familiarity with her mentor that allows Sakura say, "You just did, Tsunade-shishou. I'm not Ran. I don't even know who Ran is."
"Ran is an artificial construct," Tsunade-shishou says, her gaze distant. "More accurately, she's a mistake."
"So you're saying that I'm a mistake?" That... hurts. It hurts in ways that Sakura hadn't even expected to be hurt. She's past the stage where the idea of failing someone's expectations will crumple her spirits but it still cuts deep.
"No." Tsunade-shishou's voice is flat. "You're not. I'm very proud of you and I'm making a mess of this. I wish... I wish you hadn't passed."
"What did I pass?" she asks. "And why were you doing experiments on me without my permission? That's not supposed to happen. You're against that sort of thing."
"I am," her mentor says. "But not at the expense of the entire village. I've made the decisions I thought best for the entire village rather than for the individual people. I'm the Hokage, Sakura. No Kage has ever been a nice person. We can't afford to me. Hard decisions are made every day. And that means... in this case, some of the decisions I've made have had very bad consequences for a few people. Even if those people are ones I love."
"But?" Sakura prompts when Tsunade-shishou pauses and looks to be hesitating.
Tsunade-shishou's smile doesn't touch her eyes. "Despite ongoing complications, I've spared the village as a whole from the worst of it. I think that's the best that any Kage can have said about them."
It leaves her cold to hear something like that out of her mentor's mouth but then, Sakura understands, this isn't her mentor who is speaking to her at the moment: it's the Hokage.
Sakura knows her history. What Tsunade-shishou says about the Hokage, or any Kage not being good people is fundamentally true. Some of them are very good leaders.
But a good leader is not the same as a good person. It can't be when the needs of many have to be weighed against the needs of few. It can't be when every day the Kages need to send their shinobi out to die and can only hope they'll be good enough to survive and come back so they can be sent out again and again.
(She knows that some people murmur that she could be Hokage, after Tsunade-shishou, but Sakura doesn't want it. The endless cycle of death would destroy her, Sakura thinks.)
"And how will I come out of this?" she asks, her voice hesitant, looking at the folder and knowing all that's in it is a page with Miyagi Ran's name on it. Someone who never existed.
Is she to become that? Someone who never existed?
"That's up to you," Tsunade-shishou says. "We're not done with the tests but, Sakura, being Ran means that the outcome relies on your shoulders. If you can manage it... almost everything will be all right."
Sakura meets her Hokage's eyes. "And if I don't manage it?"
"Then you'll be repeating Ran's mistakes," Tsunade-shishou tells her quietly. "And that's not something we need repeated. Not at all."
"What were her mistakes?"
Tsunade-shishou smiles. It's bitter. "Telling you that would colour the results."
Her stomach swoops uncomfortably. "So I'm flying blind?"
"Yes."
Sakura clenches her hands, resisting the urge to pull out the journal that she and Ino had been writing it, resisting the urge to see if Ino has revealed any more text.
What should Ino do, if Ino were the one in this situation?
"Kakashi and Ino?" she says. "Will they be all right, if I make the right choices?"
"Hatake Kakashi is likely to recover," Tsunade-shishou says, after a beat of silence. "What will you do?"
It chills her to the bone that Tsunade-shishou doesn't answer her about Ino. Sakura swallows around a lump in her throat, telling herself that fear and worry is useless. Ino will be all right because Ino is always all right.
Even as she tells herself that, Sakura doesn't believe it.
"If I turn away now," Sakura says, "what will happen?"
Tsunade-shishou's face is expressionless, which is so rare that it takes Sakura a moment to realize what she's seeing. "The experiments will progress."
Sakura understands: with or without her consent, this will go on.
"Does my choice here make a difference?"
"It makes all the difference in the world. There's no substitute for willing participation."
The worst part is that Sakura knows that. She's just not sure she wants to participate.
"If that's the case, why didn't you get my permission before?" she asks, keeping her voice bland with an effort. It would be so, so satisfying to shout and get indignant but here and now she desperately feels the need to appear in control of herself- even if that's a lie.
"The first tests need to be done in a vacuum," Tsunade-shishou says. "Too much knowledge colours them and throws off the whole situation. And..." she hesitates a moment and then carries on, "and at the beginning we weren't sure we'd need you. There was another candidate for Ran who had a good chance at being exactly what was needed."
A chill creeps down her spine. "What happened to the other Ran?" Sakura asks. "Who was it?"
Tsunade-shishou ignores the second question. "Ran could have done it," she says. "But an unexpected immunodeficiency made an appearance. She's alive but she can't carry out the rest of the role. Not all the way to the end. She's already transitioned from Ran."
"You missed something?" Sakura asks incredulously. "And what does that mean-transitioned from? What did she transition to?"
"I missed something," Tsunade-shishou agrees, her shoulders slumping. "And someone else is paying the cost of that."
"Who?"
"The rest of it," Tsunade-shishou says, "you can't know. Not and be Ran. Will you become her willingly?"
Sakura bites her lip again. "Can I have a few minutes to think about it?"
She wants to ask for days and weeks to think about it. She doesn't want to think about it because she's not stupid and she can put together Tsunade-shishou's evasions.
But she asks for minutes because she thinks she's likely to get them.
"Of course," Tsunade-shishou says, getting up. "Ten minutes. I'll be in the hall. Just open the door when you've come to a decision."
Then she's gone and Sakura is left alone.
She knows who Ran is-no, she corrects, was. It's there in what Tsunade-shishou deliberately hadn't said.
Sakura pulls her legs up onto the chair with her, so she can rest her chin on them and closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath and then another, and fights the urge to cry.
It would be so easy to give into the urge. It would use up her ten minutes.
Even with that in mind, she stays balled up on the chair as the minutes tick past, her mind working furiously. Somewhere past the five minute mark-she's keeping count-Sakura pulls out the journal and flips it open.
Ino has left another note.
It's important to believe, Ino has written. Even when it's gone badly or there's no way out, it's important to believe that what you're doing matters. I don't have time for regret, Sakura. Do you?
Sakura chews on the cap of her pen, reading Ino's words again and getting more out of them each time. Things like 'don't pity me' and 'I'm not sorry' are in the text, she thinks, for all that Ino didn't write them down.
And since Ino has done this, how can she do any less? But she's a different person than Ino.
I regret things constantly, Sakura writes. That doesn't stop me from moving forward. I want to believe.
She puts the journal away and slips off the chair. Tsunade-shishou is in the hallway, just like she'd said she would be.
"What do I have to do?" she asks. "What's the next test?"
Tsunade-shishou's smile, of mingled pride and grief, makes her heart ache fiercely. She's so scared.
"Let's go to it," Tsunade-shishou says.
The next test turns out to be a blood test. Not one of the ones that she knows how to give, which is impressive because Sakura had thought she'd known all the ways of testing blood. Back in the little room, the very plain office, the sheet of paper with Miyagi Ran written on it is taken from the folder and set down on top of it.
Then Sakura, using a kunai, at Tsunade-shishou's direction, scores shallow wounds in thin lines over her hand. One line for each finger and the thumb and then three length-wise down the palm. Her hand stings fiercely but Sakura knows that it barely counts as an injury.
On the field, she'd still be able to do jutsu just fine and this will take all of a second to heal. She watches as blood wells up.
"Press your hand flat to the paper," Tsunade-shishou says. "Then hold it there for thirty seconds before moving your hand."
Sakura does so. It sends a chill through her.
It's not painful, though the chill treads the fine line between uncomfortable and hurtful as Sakura counts down the seconds before lifting her hand.
"Can I heal myself?" she asks. "Or do you need more blood?"
"Heal yourself," Tsunade-shishou says.
Sakura does so and then looks at the paper. It's blank. It's eerie, Sakura thinks, when it should have her blood all over it.
"Absorption paper?"
Tsunade-shishou nods and Sakura bites her lip. Absorption paper is usually used for storing things. She supposes it would make sense to use to store her blood, though it won't keep it fresh, since none of the seals have been applied.
But the way that Tsunade-shishou stares at it, like she's waiting for something, makes Sakura believe that just because she can't see anything different about the paper doesn't mean there isn't.
Which, come to think of it, is a summation of how shinobi are meant to live.
"What's going to happen now?" she asks, when the waiting gets to her. Normally she's able to fake being patient a bit more.
Not right now. Not when everything is so off-kilter.
"It's calibrating your blood," Tsunade-shishou said, not lifting her eyes from the paper.
"Calibrating?" Sakura echoes.
The paper turns a deep blue as the word 'CONFIRMED' oozes out of it in blood red letters.
"It makes sure you're a compatible Ran before anything else happens," Tsunade-shishou says. Then, before Sakura can question that, she says, "Brace yourself."
She does, automatically, because it's Tsunade-shishou and despite all she's learned in the last few hours, it doesn't make a difference to the fact that she's spent more time obeying Tsunade-shishou than anyone else, except for her parents.
But even with the warning the pain that strikes her nearly overwhelms her. Sakura doubles over, gasping, as she digs her blunt nails into the palms of her hand, trying to give herself something to focus on that's not the pain that rampages through her head like a squadron of enemy nin. Her knees buckle and she hits the floor.
The floor is cold and the shock of it displaces the pain for a second.
That second is precious and Sakura seizes it, turning her chakra in on herself, starting a scan that, even as the pain sends her ability to think and focus down the drain once more, will find out what's going on. What's being changed in her body.
She'll have to check the scan later-but later is her only choice as she writhes on the floor, her jaw clenched so hard to keep from screaming that the thought, discombulated from the rest of her thoughts, drifts past and wonders if she's going to break her jaw.
It doesn't matter: she can fix that.
When Sakura blacks out, she's not grateful for it.
Sakura wakes up, stiff and cold and on the floor. Carefully, she cracks one eye open, feeling the fire in her throat-she must have given in and started screaming, though she doesn't remember when-and catalogues her pains. Nothing's broken, not even her jaw, though she aches like someone has been pounding her with mallets. Sitting up slowly, Sakura realizes that she's alone.
Tsunade-shishou has left.
Glaring at the door, Sakura begins the process of stretching. She does so carefully, forcing herself not to hurry, as she works out the stiffness and pulses healing chakra through her body to take care of the soreness.
Normally she wouldn't do that. Normally she would just stretch and let the soreness work itself out-being sore is a good thing, when it comes to training. But this isn't training and even though she's agreed to this, she barely understands what's going on.
It's better to be prepared, as much as she's able with.
Getting to her feet is more of an effort than it should be and her body is wobbly and off-balance, like she's been sick for a long time. Staggering over to the door she tries to open it.
It's locked.
Sakura stares at it, willing it to open, for a long moment before spinning and making her way over to the desk. Because she's angry, she takes Tsunade-shishou's seat instead of her own. It's a petty sort of revenge, one that Tsunade-shishou isn't likely to even know about, but it makes her feel a little bit better and that's good enough for her right here and now.
Turning a narrow-eyed gaze on the door, Sakura takes a deep breath and reaches inside for her chakra. Then she spools it out around her, looking to see if anyone is around. For fifteen minutes she searches, getting a better idea of the layout and finding a number of chakra-blocked rooms. No one is around. It's possible that there's people in the blocked rooms but, after a moment's contemplation, she decides to take that risk.
If nothing else, she'll hear the door to her prison being unlocked.
That decided, Sakura settles herself more comfortably in the chair-which isn't very comfortable for all that spite makes her think it's better than her chair-and closes her eyes, calling up the scan that's been running under her skin.
She wonders what Tsunade-shishou would say about that. Did she know what Sakura had running? Or had she not noticed it? Sakura thinks back and knows that Tsunade-shishou had started out on the other side of the desk but what happened after she'd lost consciousness... Sakura has no idea.
Her scan unfolds behind her eyes, letting her read it, though Sakura gets her first unpleasant shock at the very beginning.
Duration of scan: 17 hours.
Sakura swallows, wondering why her throat isn't sore from thirst, why she's not hungry, why she doesn't have to go to the bathroom. All of those things should be in effect after seventeen hours.
But they're not.
She trusts her scans results though and, despite giving the duration time another side-eye, continues to inspect the results.
What she finds leaves her cold.
Sakura knows her body and knows the range of numbers this sort of scan returns when asked about her. All of the numbers are wrong. If someone had shown her the results, she would have believed they belonged to another person.
To comfort herself, Sakura pulls a strand of pink hair out in front of her face just so she can confirm that hasn't changed. (It hasn't.) Her hands look the same and her clothing fits the way it always did.
And her scan keeps giving her the readouts for another person.
Forcing herself to keep breathing calmly-panic will help no one and won't even make her feel better-Sakura searches her bag, which was left with her, and she wonders why.
There's no new writing from Ino. Sakura feels abandoned for a few seconds, then carefully boxes that feeling away. Even if it's true, there's nothing to be had by dwelling.
Dwelling on things is for times when it's safe to do so.
There's nothing explicitly dangerous in here with her. Just herself, the desk, the chairs, and the locked door that doesn't even have a window. Careful inspection of the walls tells her that there's no spy-holes and not even sprinklers installed in the ceiling.
You're Miyagi Ran, Tsunade-shishou had said.
Sakura had insisted she wasn't.
Looking at the results of her self-tests, she begins to believe that while she hadn't been then, that she is now.
