Chapter 31: Nindō
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Sakura woke up with her face buried into the side of a neck. The skin against her cheek burned. The rest of her body, covered only by a thin blanket in the icy room, was numb from cold.
She rearranged herself beneath the blanket, shifting unthinkingly towards the source of heat beside her. The surge of warmth against her front, particularly through the thin layer of her chest binding, had her back muscles twisting in wordless pleasure. This close, she could smell rain; her abdomen tightened at the bitterness of metal and pine beneath that.
Her eyes opened drowsily.
His face was right above hers, as magnetically, frustratingly flawless as it had been the last time she had seen it. He looked, however, like someone else. Angular features soft with sleep, unguarded, possibly even…
Sustained consciousness compelled reason to return. And reason pierced through her prior thoughts, sharp and unforgiving.
Sakura leaned her body away, watching him closely for any signs of waking. There were dark, obvious shadows beneath his eyes, all the more prominent because of his pale skin—which probably explained why he had yet to wake up.
An incredulous breath of air left her.
Never mind the utter absurdity that Kakashi had allowed this. What about her? This time, both of them had known. It hadn't been a mistake.
She was composed of more than limbs and raw instinct—but last night did nothing to indicate this was true. The words from the palace still pulsated in her mind, insistent, unintended, as subconscious as a heartbeat.
They had driven her here. Her hands loosened from the sheets.
A soft, scratching sound reached her ears from behind drawn curtains, grabbing her attention. Sakura turned toward it. A small shadow was imposed onto the cloth, shifting slightly.
In a blur of speed—perturbing as little around her as possible—she withdrew from the bed, pausing only to pull on her shirt. Moving silently, she cracked open the window from the side and curled her body around the edge, shutting it soundlessly after.
An annoyed hawk waited for her on the ledge. It ruffled its feathers punishingly at her, before turning to present its cargo. It had tracked her chakra here, she realized.
Realizing she was out in the open, Sakura withdrew the scroll and launched herself over roofs to create as much space as she could between herself and the damning location. Once she was closer to the center of the village, she opened the scroll to examine its contents.
It was a summons from Tsunade.
She scoured lower and determined, as had probably been signaled by the hawk's displeasure, that she had been expected some time ago. At the center of the village now, she was a stone's throw from the Hokage's tower. Her head raised to look glumly at the red building. Shinobi were already bustling in and out of the main doors.
As she expected, she found the ground floor already crowded when she walked in, though populated mostly by genin teams. At this time of year, Sakura knew, they were clamoring for escort missions to balmier, warmer climates. She had been exactly that kind of genin, once. The thought put a sour look on her face as she entered Tsunade's office.
Shizune opened the door without any particular expression. The hokage was ostensibly waiting for her behind her desk, not a bottle in sight. She looked about as welcoming as a prodded lion.
Sakura bowed after a second of consideration.
"Obsequiousness doesn't work on me, as you know."
Sakura straightened and considered that, possibly, entering with sake could have worked. Definitely next time. She lowered herself into the chair opposite Tsunade.
A few seconds of silence passed. Sakura shifted experimentally.
The hokage watched her with glinting eyes the entire while. "You used to be so compliant-constantly seeking my approval, flawlessly law-abiding. Timely," the older woman observed. "And then you began neglecting my tutelage."
At the look on her face, Sakura felt compelled to remind, "My neglect wasn't exactly a conscious choice…Tsunade-sama."
"Of course it wasn't. No willing student would leave the likes of me."
"Our hokage did wonder, though," Shizune announced in a monotone. "She was simply too proud to chase after you or ask."
Tsunade's eyebrow twitched.
"Of course, hokage-sama," her diligent assistant said, blank-faced. She bowed with a small smile that only Sakura saw before leaving them alone in the office.
The hokage turned her glare onto Sakura.
"You have that infuriating look on your face," she declared, "God, I hate it. Cocksure and brazen, because you're so sure you've faced far worse than your hokage."
She jolted slightly as hands slammed down on the desk with a thunderous clap.
"But that's the least of my problems," Tsunade growled. "Can you tell me why Hatake submitted your name for psychological review?"
Ah. Fuck.
She felt momentarily cast at sea. In her bewildered state, her mouth shifted instinctively into a sneer. It wasn't entirely hollow. She was resentful, still, of course.
Sakura didn't know what, precisely, to say. Better to stay on the offense, she decided. "Didn't you ask him?"
"I'd be a fool to treat anything that comes out of his mouth as anything less than ninety percent bullshit," Tsunade scoffed, not quite answering her.
"And mine?" She kept the sneer on her face with dedicated effort.
The hokage didn't appear to hear her. She pointed a finger instead to say, "You know you won't pass review. He knows you won't pass review. Am I living under a rock here? Can someone tell me what the hell I'm missing?"
They stared at each other.
It occurred to her that she could divert this conversation.
"Why didn't you mention the second part of our mission before we left?" Sakura charged.
"What mission?" the hokage retorted facetiously.
Her mouth curled. "Our last one. Even normal civilians wouldn't react well to having a marriage meeting forced on them. Why would you agree to it?"
Tsunade gave a loud, fake laugh. "You'll have to forgive me, I've blocked the entire thing from my memory because it sent me into a massive five-day migraine."
Sakura scoffed. "You can't honestly tell me that the daimyo strong-armed you."
"That spineless toad? Of course not."
"Then?"
Her voice grew sharp. "Because that brat is next-in-line for this seat, and he needs to start acting like it!"
Sakura's left foot slid off her lap.
What?
What?
"Pardon me?" were the inexplicably courteous words out of her mouth.
"Diplomacy," the hokage scowled. "He's more than capable of it. The aim of that mission was to force him to exercise some after all those years in ANBU. But what did I get for my efforts? A public scandal, ten hours of badgering from the council, and—"
"Hokage?" Sakura hissed. "You want him to be hokage?"
"Ironically," the hokage said sharply, "he's the successor that both the council and I happen to agree on."
"If you're already talking about it with the council…You want this to happen soon?"
Tsunade's lips thinned in warning. "Careful, Sakura. We're getting into territory that truly isn't your business, if any of this even was before."
Sakura exhaled sharply, the taste of iron in her mouth.
The hokage went on to oblige, vaguely, "I hardly want to take one of the strongest players off the board preemptively—it could serve none of us to have him immobilized as kage at the wrong time. The situation is being carefully monitored."
Sakura couldn't help but stand now, body stiff with incredulity. "Why not just stay on for—for the rest of your life?"
For a long few seconds, the hokage didn't answer. Her gaze drifted somewhere beyond Sakura, and her expression hardened.
"No one can stand to sit in this seat for very long," the older woman said, voice soft. She cleared her throat immediately after, tone becoming more brisk. "I have no idea how the sandaime did it, but I doubt—between you and me—that he was remotely at peace when he passed."
Perhaps it was the phantom at her back, the ghostly touch of a body that had curled against hers the previous night. Something within Sakura felt scraped raw at these words.
"But you said it yourself. Kakashi has spent more years than not in ANBU. He's—"
"Kakashi has always done what was needed for this village. Unlike me, he has never run away. He will withstand it, precisely because it is required of him." Tsunade's gaze was hard to read.
Disturbed, Sakura stepped back.
"Appeased?" Tsunade asked wearily. "Good. Now, let's get back to what I actually called you here to talk about."
She felt like her neck had been twisted violently the other way around. Sakura gritted her teeth. "Will I have to go for the review?"
"I'll waive it," the hokage said briefly, "on the condition that you talk."
Sakura's mind was somewhere else entirely, so her mouth operated without much finesse. "My experiences in ANBU have, obviously, affected me in ways that are...less than positive. It came up during one of the missions. Kakashi informed me that he was operating by the rule-book as a chunin taichou in submitting my name for review."
"That's it?" Tsunade asked suspiciously.
"That's what he told me," she evaded.
The hokage squinted at her, resembling Naruto rather unnervingly in the moment. Finally, she settled back in her chair. "Fine."
"Is that all?" She eyed the door.
"No. Now, about ANBU."
Sakura's gaze snapped to Tsunade's face. "Yes?"
"I've had a chance to review your track record. It is…admittedly impressive." The hokage's eyebrows were raised high on her unnaturally smooth forehead.
"Thanks."
Tsunade's lips curved. "Between you and me, I think I might like you better now. In other ways, though, just looking at you is quite annoying."
Sakura's expression didn't change.
Her features became harsher once again. "It has occurred to me that your potential could be better utilized. The psych review recommendation gave me some pause, but from what you have said and other investigation I've done into the matter, it's my opinion that you're hardly a looser cannon than the copy-nin."
Sakura's heart was beating rather loudly in her ears now. "And?"
"And I thought to myself—what did the sandaime do when he wanted Hatake to keep himself in check?" Tsunade stated coolly. "Oh yes, as undisciplined Kakashi is now as ANBU captain, he's still a far cry from what he used to be. Having a squad to look after did make him, comparatively, something like responsible."
Her brain felt like it was operating staggeringly slowly. "I don't…"
"You were on the most combative team in ANBU, under its most exacting captain, and you managed to handle yourself unprecedentedly well," Tsunade snapped, waving her hand. "For obvious security reasons, I cannot send you back to your old team. You are, however, very, very far from being a green newbie. So, I have two options. Either I place you on another top-level combative team and embrace that you will only grow as a pain in my ass without someone of Hatake's caliber to curtail you as needed—or I follow well-established precedent."
Sakura's brain had reached a conclusion that was too absurd for her to entertain seriously.
Tsunade looked inordinately pleased with herself. "I pride myself on occasion, within the variety of management styles, as being a people-grower—meaning, Sakura, that I do try now and then to invest in leadership pipelines. Granted, the team hierarchies at the mid-level of ANBU are relatively flat, so the title will be more of a suggestion, per se, than a strict designation." The hokage's gaze bore into her. "But, the point is, you have the skill to captain a mid-level team."
Sakura's fingers broke through the wood. A long crack split down the center of the hokage's desk.
"Scared?" Tsunade murmured. "Good."
"Impossible," she said, tone flat. "Me? Look after—? You just called me a loose cannon. And I haven't even become a jounin yet."
"Field promotion. The paperwork will be done tomorrow." Tsunade dismissed.
"Put me back in ANBU," Sakura snarled, "on a team."
The other woman was unyielding. "You'll be on a team, Sakura, as a captain. It will do you good, and that's the end of this discussion."
Her body shook with impotent rage.
"You're early," Sai greeted as he swung open his door.
Sakura brushed by his shoulder. The smell emanating from inside her teammate's apartment had her nostrils flaring. She found Naruto in the kitchen, a pink apron tied over his black and orange jumpsuit, muttering to himself as he leaned over a pot.
"It should be ready in a minute," Sai murmured by her as she heard the door creak shut. "Take a seat. I have to go make sure Naruto doesn't ruin anything."
She was familiar with Sai's relatively new apartment, so she didn't need help guiding herself to the living area. As she turned the corner, she was shocked to see Sasuke seemingly dozing on the couches, apparently early as well.
His eyes opened instantly. Sakura recognized vaguely that the gaze resting on her was baleful.
She dumped herself in the opposite couch just as a loud cheer sounded from the hallway behind them. Naruto rushed into the room while Sai walked slowly behind him, pot in his hands.
With a flick of his foot, Sasuke sent the coffee table sliding in their direction. Sai stopped the table with his foot and placed the pot down in one fluid motion.
Bowls were passed around hurriedly. At the first spoon in her mouth, she groaned in pained pleasure.
"Careful," Naruto said cheerily. "It's spicy."
They lowered their heads to their bowls with single-minded determination; it became, somehow, a bizarre exercise in masochism. They refilled their glasses desperately, even Sasuke, more times than any of them had care to count. But once their bowls were all emptied, Sakura couldn't deny feeling a certain sense of triumph.
"Five years ago," Sasuke observed out loud, sprawled along the length of one of the couches, "I would have thought that the only thing that could motivate me to eat Naruto's cooking was a sudden, fervent desire for the stupidest kind of death possible."
"The first few times, I believe the fumes emerging from his experiments had measurable toxicity," Sai commented. He allowed, after, "But he has improved."
"Whatever," Naruto said, rolling his eyes. He grinned a beat later. "I'm thinking whenever I retire from hokage, though, I'll set up shop next to Ichiraku's. What do you think? You in, Sai?"
"We'll see," Sai said with a fake smile. "On the topic of hokage, actually, I've heard a curious rumor recently."
"Hey, I just asked you to be my restaurant partner," Naruto whined. He let out a sigh after. "Yeah?"
"They're saying Kakashi-san will be kage next," Sai announced. Sakura's shoulders tightened.
"Really?" Naruto exclaimed, sounding both excited and put-out.
"It's true," she admitted curtly. "I talked to Tsunade today."
"Did she say anything else?" Naruto asked.
Sakura watched the ceiling. She didn't really have any reason to lie, she thought. "Yeah. I've been field promoted to jounin. She also wants me to join ANBU."
The easy atmosphere of the room suddenly disappeared. Sakura wasn't surprised. She could feel the weight of their gazes on her, like prodding fingers.
"Didn't you say ANBU was the worst kind of place a shinobi could go?" Naruto asked sharply.
"I said ANBU was the worst kind of place you could go, actually," she corrected.
"But you already know what ANBU is like, don't you?" Sasuke said coolly.
Her silence, she understood, was as good as admission. She heard Naruto make a harsh noise.
"Does this mean you'll be moved officially off Team Seven?" Sai asked.
Sakura's mouth parted. This hadn't occurred to her. She examined the ceiling fan with concerted effort. "I don't know," she said through gritted teeth.
Sai, Naruto, even possibly-better-dead-than-living Sasuke—she had gotten used to them. She didn't try dissecting her reluctance any more than that.
"You've also been in ANBU," Sasuke drawled toward Sai, shifting the conversation. "haven't you."
"Interesting proposition. What would be our giveaways, then, Sakura and mine?" Sai returned curiously. "Are there similarities you find between us and your formerly ANBU brother?"
Sasuke's gaze narrowed.
"How is your brother doing, by the way?" Sakura said swiftly, eager to divert the subject.
"Are you still ignoring him?" Sai asked with interest.
"If I were," Sasuke returned, equally coldly, "as I've said before, it would be none of your business."
Her eyes narrowed.
Naruto attempted to intervene. "He has, uh, said that before—"
"Are you stupid?" Sakura hissed.
Sasuke's dark eyes darkened further.
Her mouth thinned as she tried to find the right words. "I might not like you, but I did go through a lot of effort to save his life. I only had to talk to him for five minutes to know—"
Naruto's gaze darted between them.
"You're the only thing keeping him here," Sakura told him bluntly.
Sasuke's face paled, eyes dark like beetles against the pallor of his skin.
"Sasuke—" Naruto muttered, reaching a hand toward the other's shoulder.
"You think I don't know?"
The blonde's arm froze.
"I know Itachi better than anyone else in the world. Why do you think he stayed away when I was growing up, even when attacking me would have been a better cover story?" The black-haired boy's voice was bitter.
Naruto twisted toward her, expression forbidding. Careful, his face told her.
Sakura's eyes narrowed more. "Do you want him dead?"
Sasuke's face contorted.
She had never been accused of having patience.
"You can't have it both ways, Sasuke," she said curtly.
"Fuck off," Sasuke snarled. He seemed, abruptly, to lose all semblance of cool. He launched to his feet, cheeks flushed with ire. "Do you think this is easy? He killed our parents. He killed our whole clan—everyone. He made me relive my clan's murder for days."
"But he was coerced into doing that," Sai reasoned.
"So?" Sasuke raged, turning toward him. "So none of it was his idea? He was forced to do it? Does that erase everything I went through? Does that erase the years I spent in that compound, going insane because of the memories, of all of them, surrounding me, when I couldn't look anywhere without remembering?"
Sakura's features shifted.
"You're right. We don't know what it's like. We cannot pretend to know how you feel," Sai acknowledged.
"I'll concede that," Sakura said sharply. She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Still, it might be more efficient to direct your anger for all those things at a much more deserving source."
"Who?" Sasuke spat at her.
Sakura's voice became as sharp as a blade. "Danzo."
Sai stiffened instantly. She caught the motion, watched as his fingers curled into the cushion just slightly.
A door in the back of the room cracked open. Sakura, who had sensed a presence there earlier, did not react. Sasuke and Naruto, however, spun with weapons drawn out.
Shikamaru stood in the frame of the door, head sticking straight up as he rubbed at his eyes.
His eyes, when they opened—swift and catlike—shifted solely to Sai, sharpening at what he saw there. A few seconds later, he had closed the distance between them.
"Your voices were too loud," Shikamaru said bluntly.
Sai's mouth curved down in subtle apology.
Shikamaru's eyes narrowed slightly. "Troublesome," he murmured again. The way Sai's head tilted up was not entirely dissimilar to how a sunflower craned instinctively toward the sun. Shikamaru's voice, in turn, was uncharacteristically gentle as he spoke to Sai. His gaze when it shifted to them, however, was not.
"Whatever you were talking about, it's going to wait until tomorrow," Shikamaru informed them.
"I can't see why you have any say in this conversation," Sasuke returned, demeanor icy.
"I do. Get out," Shikamaru said pleasantly.
Despite her annoyance at the interruption as well, though, Sakura had seen the strain on Sai's face as well. The sight of it, with startling efficacy, diminished any fight she might have put up.
"Another time," she agreed softly. Shikamaru's head turned briefly from Sai to nod in her direction.
Naruto glared at Sasuke until he moved. They gathered their things and stepped out of the apartment into a hallway.
Naruto began contorting himself to pull his jacket back on.
"I need a drink," Sasuke muttered.
"Can't this time. Hinata's coming over tonight, and I promised her I would be back around now," Naruto shrugged apologetically, zipping up his jacket.
"I have plans too," Sakura said blandly. She explained briefly, "A bath. Sleep."
"Whatever," Sasuke stated with disgust at both of them.
They left Sai's building.
As the moon reached its highest point in the sky, Sakura's head tipped back over the edge of the tub. Water lapped at her collar bones. Here, there were no eyes to observe her. Her face accordingly hid none of what she felt—pale and bleak, as she caught sight of it in her reflection,
Didn't you say ANBU was the worst kind of place a shinobi could go?
With the crow no longer holding the metaphorical blade to her throat— It was an apt question, she considered darkly.
ANBU was not the origin of her trauma (trauma, trauma, trauma—it seemed more meaningless the more she fumbled over the word in her mouth, more terrible each time she thought it). But ANBU had contributed to it, exacerbated it. She couldn't deny that she enjoyed doing what she was…good at. Perhaps, that was human nature.
Don't lie, the Voice whispered, tender.
She sat up abruptly, upsetting the water so that it splashed onto the tile, and reached for her shampoo. She poured the scentless liquid liberally onto her palm and then attacked her hair, hands punishing.
Her movements eventually slowed, short hair piled in a knotted mess at the top of her head.
Sakura exhaled sharply.
The ugly truth was that she enjoyed the violence too. She did.
Her hands fell from her hair.
Was it an addiction then, she thought wildly. Insidious, cheap thrills and adrenaline rushes to cater to her…worst nature? ANBU made her miserable, to be certain, as an addiction would—miserable with it and miserable without it.
Pointedly, Sakura had been forced to quit, and it was still in her options to stay away.
Her fingers gripped the edges of the tub; with a small push, she submerged herself lower. Water curled against the tips of her ears. She stared, unseeing, across the surface of the water.
(Kakashi had always done what was needed for this village, Tsunade had said.)
ANBU had existed long before Sakura. It would undeniably exist—in some shape or form—after her too. People like Naruto—they never would be able to stand ANBU. Itachi was proof. But…she could stand it. She was built that way, torn between unconscionable exhilaration and relentless misery, because she could. She didn't have grand notions of the village and duty like Naruto and Itachi did. But, perhaps, she understood her place in ANBU juxtaposed against theirs.
Sakura could be—needed to be—ANBU, so that shinobi like them never would have to be.
Trying for heroism now, are we? the Voice mocked, shrieking with laughter.
She shoved her head into the water, rinsing off the shampoo. Her expression grew dour underwater.
When she emerged, she stood and wrapped a towel around herself.
Perhaps, she contemplated, everyone operated within the confines of their own moral logic and hoped for the best. Perhaps, the gods above watched the measly humans below and saw them as humans saw mice scrambling in the dark, with the same sort of derisive pity.
She dried herself and pulled on a large shirt and shorts, before heading straight toward the bed. Her hair dripped water onto her pillow as she lay down. She pushed it all to the top, so she wouldn't be able to feel the wetness.
She shut her eyes firmly. A small shiver wracked through her body from the cold. She cursed and curled against herself.
Unsurprisingly, sleep did not come. Instead, her mind began to wander dangerously, emboldened, perhaps, by her earlier introspection.
She hadn't given it a thought, then. There had not seemed to be another option, not one that could be seriously entertained. She had promised that it would be as though it had not happened.
Still, she found herself wondering perilously now: what if she had stayed?
Stayed there, face pressed into the glorious warmth of his neck until he had woken and seen the lazy pleasure on her face, the arrogance of the ownership she had assumed, the exploitative comfort she had reaped from his body.
The greed on her face because she had wanted—wanted—so much more?
She shoved her face under the pillow, muffling the strangled, lustful noise that emerged.
The next day, a bleary-eyed Sakura received a curt missive telling her to report to the ANBU commander's office immediately. The note came with a mask, porcelain white with orange and black markings around the eyes and mouth.
She tied the mask to her face and walked toward the headquarters.
As she entered the building, she felt cool eyes pause on her hair. She hadn't bothered to disguise it—what was the point? She stared straight ahead and continued to her destination. When she knocked on the commander's door—an elaborate brass monstrosity—the door swung open instantly.
She found two figures in the room: the commander, who stood in front of his desk, planted there with a wide stance, and an ANBU kneeling in front of him, mid-report.
"Dismissed," the commander told the woman, cutting her off. She rose to bow before exiting through the door behind Sakura.
The commander's attention shifted to her, weighty and cutting. "You're late."
Sakura, privately, felt this was unfair, considering the missive hadn't detailed a time. She didn't believe that the man opposite from her would appreciate her voicing so, however.
The commander snapped at the ANBU stationed by the door. He bowed as well and left. Only the two of them remained in the office.
"Haruno, isn't it," he said, low voice reverberating.
He didn't wait for her to respond.
"I'm sure I don't need to stress that no one in the black ops can know that you were Crow. You will make sure that any news of potentially identifying techniques or jutsu do not reach your previous teammates. In fact, you will stay away from your previous teammates. Entirely."
His head tipped down, so that his gaze bore into hers, oppressive. He didn't appear to like her very much, she observed without much surprise. Not unexpected, given the stunt she had pulled with Itachi.
"It might be within the hokage's power to promote you to ANBU captain," he continued, voice smooth. "However, even she can't interfere with our internal practices for maintaining…quality assurance."
He cast his hand behind him toward something out of her sight. A loud, high-pitched bell rang throughout the entire headquarters. She watched without reacting—frankly, because she wasn't exactly sure what was happening in front of her.
He crossed his arms. "That," he said, "is the bell I ring when it's time for evaluations."
Sakura shifted her weight, fingers thrumming impatiently against her sides. "Rounds?"
"No," he said with pleasure. "That's for the rest of ANBU. This is for the captains."
She recalled vaguely that Snail had mentioned the captains having their own system for rooting out unfit members. Sakura's gaze narrowed behind her mask.
"Any questions?"
"Yes," Sakura said blandly. She pointed at her mask. "What is this?"
He stared at her, his dislike for her seeming to grow right before her eyes. "Salamander," he growled.
"Thanks," she said pleasantly. "Just wanted to make sure I'll know when it's my turn."
She twisted her heel into the door, blasting it open. She heard the brass dent behind her with vague pleasure as she stalked toward the stadium adjoining the headquarters.
ANBU with insignias marking their status as captains swarmed around her as she crossed the lobby, exiting locker rooms and meeting rooms with disgruntled muttering.
"We just had the last one two weeks ago," a man grunted beside her. "Why?"
"Right?" another agreed, voice disgruntled. "I'm still recovering from a fractured rib. Fuck this."
Sakura didn't feel moved, per se, to inform them that she apparently was the cause. She smoothed her hair back and continued at a sedate pace.
They flooded more or less swiftly into the stadium. Where the rounds had felt like a hectic, overwhelming experience with so many bouts going on at once and the audience's attention split, there were far, far fewer people here. Even as she sat, she felt like she was instantly subject to scrutiny.
"New?" the woman seated beside her asked.
Her hair, no doubt, had given her away. She nodded shortly.
"Each person does two bouts. Matches are drawn randomly. One fight at a time, so there's a ten minute time limit. Longer than that, it's a draw," was the helpful, if curt, overview.
So, in summation, really not that different from rounds, Sakura confirmed.
As the commander entered the stadium, the force of his domineering presence made any ongoing discussion subside instantly. The captains beside Sakura straightened in their seats. Sakura didn't move other than to cross her legs.
"Is everyone here?" the commander barked at his assistant.
The man shook nervously, scanning them. "Ah…no. I believe…uh…"
"Spit it out."
"I believe the copy-nin is missing, sir," the assistant said in a rush.
The commander stiffened, rising to his full height.
"Are the bouts restricted by kenjutsu, genjutsu, etcetera?" Sakura whispered as the thought occurred to her.
The woman who had answered previously glared through her mask, pressuring her to be silent. The man on the other side of her shook his head infinitesimally.
Sakura leaned back, appeased.
"GO!" the commander bellowed. "Send someone to hunt him down. Send all the available ANBU if you have to, just get him here—"
The large brass doors to the stadium shifted open. The man in question slipped nonchalantly in.
It was a good thing, she considered distantly, that the mask hid her face from the others; otherwise, she would have no acceptable explanation for the expression that crossed it.
She yanked her gaze to the other side of the stadium.
"You're late," the commander accused, voice thunderous.
She didn't hear Kakashi respond.
The commander's body trembled, as though he were about to explode. Through some silent exercise of considerable will, he appeared to restrain himself, gesturing toward his assistant.
"The names," the older man growled.
The assistant hoisted the metal urn he was carrying up. The commander reached into the opening to pull out two pieces of paper.
"Panther and Jackal," the commander roared.
Two individuals, one of whom was the woman beside her, jumped onto the stadium. The timer hanging above them gave a shrill beep, signaling the start of a countdown.
It lasted about five minutes, all in all. It wasn't a terribly interesting fight; they both appeared to be purist kenjutsu users, which Sakura could admire in abstraction, but found hard to appreciate in practice.
By the third match, she was blinking away sleep. What was it about these situations that made her body think it was suitable to relax? She pinched her inner thigh to keep herself awake.
The commander thrust his hand into the urn again to pull out two more names.
"Salamander and Boar." There was an edge of vicious satisfaction in his voice.
Sakura straightened slowly in her seat. The commander's eyes crinkled, like he was smiling. She scoffed below her breath, then jumped the railing. Her feet settled onto the stadium floor.
She raised her head to evaluate her opponent.
'Boar' was a petite woman with minimal musculature and pin straight black hair. She landed on the stadium lightly—as weightless as a bird. She had two sheathes strapped across her back, and a long, thin scar that bisected her throat.
As Sakura tied her hair back, she was aware of the other woman looking her fill in return, perusing her musculature and ganglier build.
She stepped forward, knees slightly bent just as the buzzer went off.
The ground surged beneath her, forcing Sakura to vault upwards. She didn't linger as a sitting duck, instead running along the railing, parallel to the ground. She wrapped around the stadium, until she was behind Boar.
Boar pivoted instantly, drawing the twin blades from her back, as Sakura propelled herself off the railing, katana drawn as well.
They collided with a loud clang that echoed through the stadium. Sakura's chakra-imbued hand moved unthinkingly, weaving through the blades. She stopped herself at the last moment, a millimeter from the other woman's ribs, eyes widening as she remembered that this was a bout not a real battle. She neither wanted to maim nor kill her opponent.
Her fist dropped and she ducked, the rush of air from a swiping blade blowing her hair back. The ground beneath her began to crumble again, and this time, Sakura let herself go with it. Boar, unfortunately, did not know that Earth was one of her elemental affinities—had no reason to expect it, as Sakura hadn't used any earth jutsu in response to her prior attacks.
Sakura utilized that advantage now, traveling beneath the ground and forcing a hand to the surface where Boar was. Her hand wrapped around the woman's ankle, causing Boar to stumble forward. Sakura shunshined above ground with hands forming quick signs. She made eye contact with Boar just as the last sign formed.
Boar stopped dead in her tracks, eyes dazed.
Sakura stretched her katana out, so that the blade hovered above her throat. She swung her head to the commander in the same motion.
"Victory to Salamander," the commander hissed. He looked comfortingly outraged.
Sakura bowed formally.
"Sit down," he hissed.
She released the genjutsu. Boar stumbled back, shaking her head. Sakura returned to her seat.
"Does the commander decide alone who stays on as captain and who gets kicked out?" she muttered.
"Not officially," Jackal muttered back to her, regard apparently warmed somewhat by her recent performance. "There's a discussion at the end with all the captains. Majority decides."
The majority, she sensed, was almost always informed by the commander's opinion.
Sakura leaned back and shut her eyes. She didn't sleep, though. She was perfectly aware of when Boar was called up again and, this time, emerged victorious. The following bouts passed admittedly in a blur. At one point, she felt the man beside her get up as 'Baboon' was called. Remarkably—or perhaps not that remarkably, there weren't that many of them—his name was called again right after.
When he returned to his seat, he pulled something from his flak jacket and began munching on it.
"How new are you?" he asked conversationally, apparently relaxed now that his turn was done.
Sakura opened her eyes to gaze longingly at the sandwich in his hands. "Promoted this morning."
"Serious?"
"Deadly," she returned. "Don't even know my team yet."
"…you have terrible luck."
"Probably," she agreed.
At that moment, the commander pulled out two names with vicious flourish. Sakura scratched behind her ear.
"Salamander," he shouted, "and Dog."
She gave a long sigh as she stood. It had been an hour, and still, not nearly long enough—
The sandwich fell from Baboon's hands. She was belatedly aware that a hush had fallen over all the captains as she frowned at the fallen food.
"Damn," Jackal whispered to her. Sakura blinked back.
"That's some real shitty luck," Baboon muttered to her, gaze apologetic.
Sakura's face screwed up in confusion.
Dog.
As in dog mask.
Her head jerked toward the other side of the stadium. Kakashi's head rose with deadly slowness, eyes snapping open.
An incredulous huff of air left Sakura's mouth.
In her defense, no one ever called him that.
Notes:
I know it's been a HOT second, but here we are! Sorry for the long-ish gap 3 I mean, it definitely wasn't the longest for this fic, but it's been the longest one since quarantine started...
Sooooooooo yeah ANBU Sakura is BAACK bitches! But definitely not at all in the way she (or hopefully most of you!) expected :o Is Tsunade insane? Or is she just waaay smarter than any of us can imagine? We'll see :D
In light of that...
Please comment, kudos, subscribe, make art, and shower me with looOOOoooove 3
Chapter 32: Taichou
Notes:
a slight warning for this chapter: I feel like implicit consent is such an ambiguous beast, so I'm going to go ahead to be safe and provide a mild dub-con warning. Happy reading!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There was a rushing noise in her ears—gentle and repetitive, like the waves on a beach. She realized it as the sound of her breathing. The rushing noise grew louder with each step she took, coalescing into a voiceless roar.
Her mouth parted.
The counter went off.
Hands, feet, eyes, the Voice growled, watch them—
The shrill screech of chidori filled her ears. Her body moved instinctively, twisting to the side.
Time seemed to slow as his body brushed by hers. A hand, lit by lightning, tore through the air exactly where she had been. Even as his momentum carried him forward, his eyes instantly located her in his peripheral, his head already beginning to turn.
Adrenaline surged belatedly through her veins, but with fervor, as though to make up for the delay. She grabbed the outstretched wrist and leaned back, muscles tensing to whip him around her into one of the stadium's walls. Mismatched eyes burned into hers before he went soaring through the air. Just as it seemed as though he might barrel into the stadium's wall, he executed a mid-air flip and landed feet first on the side of the stadium.
I won't abide a repeat of that time, the Voice seethed. LET ME OUT!
Sakura snarled, muscles rippling as she crouched in preparation for Kakashi's counterattack.
He landed with a thunderous boom, the earth beneath her groaning before mutating into a wall that rushed toward her. Sakura dug her heels into the ground and sprinted toward the wall. She barreled through it, then ducked just in time as a blast of water hurtled where her head had been.
When the blast sputtered out, she lifted the bottom of her mask and roared. Fire burst from her mouth. A combating flame battered against her a second later, just as strong as her own. He had copied and returned the same jutsu.
Her feet skidded back. The skin on her forearms began to blister underneath the combined heat of their respective fire jutsu. In some silent recognition of their stalemate, they both released the jutsu.
Finding him as uninjured as she was (and not quite surprised by it), Sakura's brows furrowed.
She shifted left. He mirrored the motion. She was vaguely aware that at some point, she had begun grinning like a lunatic beneath her mask, high on adrenaline.
She snapped her head to either side, cracking her neck, as she brought her fists up, tight and close. Kakashi stared, eyes hot on her.
She could feel the Voice humming in the back of her mind.
Her right foot slid forward in the dirt and then sharply to the right, stabilizing herself as her fist flew to block his first strike. She was already pivoting as his wrist flicked to send the heel of his palm into her larynx. She evaded this, but caught the second fist just barely on her shoulder.
Sakura recoiled and sprung forward in the same breath, forearm locking with forearm, breath harsh against each other's faces. She shifted an elbow to deflect a fist, only for that fist to twist and fly dangerously close to her side.
Her eyes narrowed as she realized the advantage of his sharingan. It wasn't that he moved faster than her, but that he could see everything. He could predict from the minutest twitches in her muscles her next movement.
The sharingan isn't the byakugan, the Voice reminded her in a hiss.
This was…true.
She let him sink a blow deep into her core and used his proximity to wrap steely hands on his upper arms. Their eyes met as she twisted, hair flying in wild disarray in the air. She settled with a solid thud on the ground behind him. He tensed instantly, with animalistic responsiveness. She couldn't see his face, but she could guess the look on it now.
Before he could pivot, she pressed a hand firmly on the center of his back. This way, she would be able to sense any motions he telegraphed.
Though, Sakura predicted sourly, he would probably be able do the same with her.
He was.
When he counterattacked—with absolutely no visible warning to the normal human eye—Sakura adjusted herself seamlessly. But as she loaded her fist with chakra, he was able to detect the motion of her strike by virtue of the same means, from just one measly hand on his back, and shifted by a hair to avoid the contact. Her fingers sunk into open air.
Sakura scowled.
There were few better words to describe what transpired next: they proceeded, ostensibly, to do their utmost to beat the shit out of each other.
She fought with rounded shoulders, quick and brutish, while he weaved with more elegance, with, perhaps, a greater aestheticism in the eyes of the audience, through his attacks. He had an edge on her in terms of experience—but being the underdog for most of the past decade had hardened her against intimidation, had made her belligerent, scrappy, and mean.
Her attention was consumed entirely by the task of trying to tear him apart, so much so that Time seemed to become an abstract concept until the counter returned to Sakura's line of sight. Her eyes widened as she read the time there.
Kakashi took advantage of this moment of distraction. An elbow snapped brutally into her cheekbone. Her head recoiled back as she hissed.
In a last ditch effort to get even, Sakura launched forward with a burst of speed. She wasn't surprised to find the path in front of her fist instantly cleared. She hadn't really expected it to work—but…she also hadn't thought beyond that.
More specifically, she forgot about the chakra continuing to build in her fist, growing exponentially stronger each passing second, until it was too late. It was too late to stop herself. Her momentum carried her forward; to dampen the effect of the blow, she buried her hand deep into the ground. Her fist made contact with the ground with a thunderous clap.
The stadium began to rumble. Just as the counter went off at the ten minute mark, a large crack appeared where her fist had struck.
Oops. Her mouth twisted apologetically.
It, sadly, didn't stop there.
As she gaped, the crack rapidly grew, stretching along the stadium and through the seating. Shinobi shunshined away from the area as the entire side of the stadium split, infrastructure crumbling. When the debris settled on the ground and the structure seemed to stabilize, the ANBU captains were utterly silent.
The commander seemed similarly speechless. He had turned to face the destroyed side of the stadium. His assistant quivered at his side.
"It does not appear as though we will be able to finish the evaluations today, sir," the assistant said nervously.
This was...decidedly not the 'above reproof' behavior she had been aiming for. Sakura frowned.
The commander did not respond. The assistant leaned forward, tentative. "As for, um, Salamander. She won her first spar and just tied her second. With the, uh, copy-nin. Shall I arrange for her to meet her team today…as the hokage instructed?"
The commander straightened all at once and then turned viciously in her direction. "Fine," he said with vehemence.
Sakura blinked. Fine?
"Tidy yourself up, Salamander, before you enter my office." He shifted to face the rest of the captains, voice low, seething growl. "Evaluations will be continued once reparations have been made. Get out."
Her mouth turned down. Disciplinary action, then.
The other captains moved immediately. He snapped his fingers at her when she failed to comply instantly as well. Sakura's mouth twisted.
She made an about-face and exited through the back of the stadium. Adrenaline still buzzed through her, her skin still prickled, like she was having an allergic reaction. Her pace quickened.
There were locker rooms at the back of the stadium that hadn't been updated in recent years and were thus less frequently used. She headed straight toward them.
The steel door squeaked unforgivingly as she forced it open. She went to the sink and twisted the tap, thrusting her hands—which seemed to burn with heat—beneath the cool water. She inhaled and exhaled as slowly as she could, trying to force the heart rate thundering in her ears down.
Contrarily, her heartbeat seemed to grow even louder and quicker in her ears.
A metallic squeal rang behind her. Her body reacted immediately, without conscious thought. She turned and surged forward.
They met like an avalanche—with senseless, destructive force, to which to ascribe notions of agency or willpower would have been meaningless. His fingers curved around the muscle of her thighs, driving her back. She slammed against the counter and then onto it.
His mouth sank down on hers, hard. And then—then—Sakura felt like she was being burned alive. Hunger devoured every inch of her, until she couldn't tell if she was the thing being devoured or the thing doing the devouring. She pulled him impossibly tighter, pressing every part of her savagely into him, as though through sheer determination she might be able to meld him to her—because then, possibly, she might stop wanting him, like he was something she was somehow, perversely, missing.
Her fingers knotted in his hair and yanked his head back. His eyes angled down at her, mouth contorted in a snarl.
She had been backed all the way into the mirror. She straightened now, pushing forward. His body—he had been bent over her, almost bearing down on her before—flexed with hers, straightening as well. Their ragged breaths filled the communal bathroom.
Sakura's gaze flicked back up to catch his. He tensed against her, testing the strength of her hold. Her eyes narrowed.
She pressed her lips into his throat. His sharingan spun dizzyingly in response.
Desire boiling in her veins, she slid upward, to the place where his jaw met his neck, then brushed softly against his lips, careful, controlled. Because there was something delicious, she was finding, about the torture of holding back, something blissful and painful that made it all the better.
Her breath rattled in her chest, and—
And a soft, percussive noise sounded behind the door, like the contact of a palm against the metal surface. She yanked herself away just in time, pulling her mask down over her face.
The figure entered just as Sakura walked swiftly past her to the door, head bowed.
Fuck. Fuck.
Her face burned as she walked blindly down the hall. The doors passed by her in a blur. She stopped only when she heard a squeak emerge from a few feet ahead of her. Sakura stiffened as her gaze landed on the commander's assistant.
His eyes were round with relief. "I was looking all over for you! He's not pleased that you've made him wait."
He grabbed the sleeve of her uniform, as though she were a toddler who needed guiding. (Possibly, in her state of mind, she did). As he tugged her to the commander's office, Sakura strove valiantly to regain control of her features. The assistant might have been too frazzled to notice anything amiss, but the commander would not be.
She managed to unclench her jaw by the time the assistant eased the door open into the office. The man in question looked less than delighted to see her.
Right. She had just decimated one half of the stadium. Fuck.
"I told you to tidy yourself up," the commander growled. He eyed the dust scattered over her uniform from the evaluations distastefully.
She soldiered past this remark. "About the stadium. Sorry."
The broad-shouldered man grabbed a file from his desk and threw it to Sakura. She caught it before it hit her face.
"Read," he ordered.
Slowly, she flicked open the file and bent her head to read. These were stats, she recognized belatedly. The image pasted on the upper left of the first page was…regrettably familiar.
"What's this?" she demanded.
"Your team." The commander's eyes glinted. "Problem?"
"He's fought beside me." That was saying the least of it.
"For one mission," the commander finished smoothly. "Hardly enough for him to recognize you. His tenure on Hatake's team was regrettably short, and there aren't any spots available on the other high ranking teams at the moment."
She lowered her head unenthusedly to the profile.
There wasn't anything particularly shocking on it, other than that it was Robin, whom she had never thought she would have to see again, let alone be responsible for. She reviewed his kill rate (rather in spite of the cockiness she had witnessed the last time, she guessed) and his specializations cursorily, before stiffly turning to the next page.
A fox mask stared back at her on this page, nut brown skin peeking through its small openings. He was a slim man. Unassuming. She gave a brief pass over the background provided: a kenjutsu expert in his early thirties. His stats remained stable throughout his described tenure—no unexpected dips or mess-ups.
"Why isn't he a captain?" Sakura said unthinkingly.
The commander's eyes narrowed. He didn't seem displeased, however. "Never wanted it," he responded curtly. "And he performs well where he is."
She stared at him blankly, before lowering her head to peruse the last profile contained in the file. Here, she found a young woman, just around Sakura's age, with a deer mask, pale blonde hair, and wide-set green eyes.
"Deer has a unique skill set," the commander intoned. "She's looking to diversify."
Sakura shortly found the history the older man had been alluding to. Until the previous month, Deer had cultivated a prolific career in the seduction and information gathering division.
"Consider yourself briefed," the commander grunted, tearing the file away from her. "Now get down to meeting room 17B."
Sakura's eyes tracked the file, displeased. "Are they waiting there?"
"Yes." He threw another file her way. She caught it, unblinking. "And that's your first mission."
Her nails dug into the manila paper. "Already?"
The man gave a loud, unkind laugh. "As much as I hate to admit it, if you can go toe-to-toe with that menace Hatake, I have no compunctions throwing you in head-first as I would any other new captain. You'll either sink or you'll swim."
He snapped his hand and the door swung open, the assistant peering in with a darting gaze, as though he expected to find damage somewhere.
She brushed past him, returning to the hallway once more to head in the opposite direction now. The meeting room she came upon was adorned by a neon yellow 'IN USE' sign. She entered without knocking.
She found three figures seated around a round table. One slouched into the table; the other two sat with stiff backs
"You're younger than me." Robin was the first to speak, displeasure clear in his voice.
"Right," Sakura said under breath. The eerie familiarity of his hair color summoned a discomfort that she was able to brush aside mostly, for the moment. She did her utmost to avoid looking directly at it. "I assume you've introduced yourselves to each other."
"In a manner of speaking," Fox, the oldest, said. His regard was utterly impersonal, and still, somehow the most welcoming of them all.
"I think the only ambiguous mask is yours," Deer stated evenly.
"It's a salamander."
"Whatever," Robin grunted, fingers rapping against the table top with pent-up energy. "You have a mission for us or what?"
Annoyance easily nudged her trepidation aside, her temper poor as it was. Sakura straightened to her full height, mouth curling.
"Patience, Robin," Fox remarked. "Our taichou still needs to lay the ground rules."
It would have been a stretch to say Robin settled at the older man's words, but his mouth remained shut. Sakura observed this with raised eyebrows.
"Quite," she said curtly. "I'll address the obvious first. We all know I'm not the youngest captain this organization has ever had. But I am younger than usual. If you're thinking I'm new to the position, you would be right."
Robin stiffened in his seat.
"I've heard, however," Sakura said coolly, "that midlevel teams are less hierarchical than others in ANBU"—she crossed her arms, leaning back into the wall—"So I don't see any reason we can't all have input in decisions this team makes."
Robin's eyes lit with interest. He wasn't the only one. Deer also, she noted, looked particularly attentive.
"As captain, though, I will assign mission roles," Sakura finished dispassionately, "and I will reserve the right to make the final call on any decision-making. I guess you'll just have to trust that I'm not an idiot, and that I will listen to you as the situation calls for it."
Robin scoffed under his breath. Sakura pretended not to notice. The sad reality of being captain instead of team member was that she probably didn't have the liberty any longer to lash out as she desired. Or, well, she had the impression that that's what being captain should mean.
"Fox will be my second," she added, returning her attention to them. The dark-skinned man nodded briefly. "He has the most experience out of all of us. If anything happens to me or I'm not present, he assumes command."
"You've reviewed our files?" Deer asked with sudden sharpness in her tone.
"Yes," Sakura acknowledged openly. "In the commander's office just now. I'll place more weight on the abilities I see you demonstrate during missions, obviously. Speaking of which—"
She tossed the file onto the table. Deer opened it, and all three of them leaned in to review its contents.
Sakura sighed. "Our first mission. Fox will take point. Robin will assist him. Deer and I will be back up."
Sakura leaned back boredly into the tree trunk behind her, eyes fixed on the small camp Fox and Robin were currently infiltrating. A mosquito buzzed near her ear. Her eyes grew slitted in irritation, and she caught it and crushed it before it could bite her.
Deer shifted her weight on the branch below her.
"Problem?" Sakura grunted.
There was, evidently. That had been clear for the last two hours.
"No, taichou," Deer said stoically.
Well. This captaining thing was going superbly well.
She found herself, bizarrely, missing the bluntness of Sasuke's disgust for her. Even Sai's unfiltered straightforwardness seemed suddenly exceptionally desirable.
She dropped silently from her branch to Deer's, settling in a crouch. Deer stiffened instantly, spinning a beat too late. Her eyes were narrowed in resentment.
"Not very convincing. Speak your piece, then," Sakura said, eyebrows lifting. "I did say I would listen."
"Can I trust you aren't an idiot, though?" Deer charged boldly.
Sakura was mildly impressed.
"I suppose you'll have to risk it," she reponded silkily. "What's the worst that could happen?"
"You could send me on a suicide mission."
"Hm. I guess that's true."
Deer glared at her, green eyes—darker than Sakura's—almost black under the sparse moonlight peeking through the leaves.
A few seconds of silence passed. Some of Sakura's humor began to fade.
"To be honest," she said straightforwardly, "if I were the sort to want you dead for saying something I didn't want to hear, it would be far more efficient for me to just do the job myself."
She held the other woman's stare for a second longer before cracking her neck. "If I were the sort, of course."
Deer seemed to come to a decision in the next few seconds. Her voice, when she spoke, was tightly restrained with resentment. "You're pigeon-holing me."
Sakura wasn't sure what she had been expecting to hear, but it hadn't been this. "…pigeon-holing?"
"Back-up this time, back-up next," Deer sneered, restraint apparently gone. "You're going to make me back-up every single time, until there's a cock that needs to be sucked—because, then, my presence is convenient—aren't you?"
Sakura blinked.
"I've already been through three captains like you just this month. I'm beginning to think you're all the same."
"I assigned you as back-up because I want Robin to be overwhelmed," Sakura explained slowly.
Deer stopped. "What?"
"With the combatants split between just the two of them, he's going to see rather quickly that he can't take on as much as Fox. He's going to respect Fox because of it. That's going to keep him line, until he's willing to listen to me."
Deer stood on the branch. Her gaze was still hostile, still unconvinced. She processed this for a few moments, stating finally, "If you're concerned about Robin's obedience, why not send yourself in instead of Fox, then?"
"Who do you think he would find it easier to respect—an older, experienced ANBU?" Sakura returned evenly. "Or me? I'd have to ground him into the dirt outside the headquarters and probably send him to the hospital for a week to get the same amount of respect as Fox is about to win now. I'm not altogether opposed, but I doubt our mission schedule is forgiving enough to allow for a week's bed rest."
Deer drew back, shoulder suddenly drawn in. "So this assignment had nothing to do with my prior role in ANBU?" she checked.
"It had very little to do with you at all," Sakura assured.
Deer exhaled carefully.
Sakura's lips pursed. She turned her head from the other woman back to the small camp, fingers tapping absentmindedly against the bark beneath her hands. She cleared her throat. "To be clear, though—from what I saw in your file, you've excelled at whatever you were doing in the seduction and information gathering division. Are you no longer…comfortable exercising those skills?"
Deer paused. They watched as alarmed figures began running out of their tents. "I'm interested in broadening my skillset is all," she finally said.
"Understood," Sakura said, eyes glinting as combat broke out in the camp.
They both watched as Robin's triumphant crowing diminished as more bodies piled on top of him. Fox seemed to be exasperated, flicking his gaze over every few seconds and shaking his head.
"That looks like it hurt," Deer observed conversationally as a kunai sank particularly deeply into Robin's thigh.
"Good," Sakura muttered back.
As she had predicted, Fox managed to save the day—and Robin along with it—without either Deer's or her interference. Mission completed, they made quick time under the cover of night and returned to the headquarters a little past midnight. Most covert operations were undertaken around this time, so none of them were surprised to find the locker rooms crowded.
"That blade needs replacing," Fox said as Robin wiped his katana with a spare cloth.
Robin's face looked rather miserable at the moment, with an assortment of bruises in various stages of development blossoming across his face. But, perhaps knowing he owed those bruises—or, the fact that they were only bruises—to the man in front of him, he nodded grudgingly, his arrogance much quieter now.
Sakura, on the whole, was satisfied.
"Did the commander mention anything about what our mission schedule will look like?" Deer asked.
"Typically, the cadence is two or three missions per week," Fox offered, scrubbing blood from his arms.
"I haven't been given reason to think our cadence would be any different," Sakura shrugged, shutting the locker.
"Send a bird with a message. I'm out of here," Robin grunted, rubbing gingerly at his swollen eye. Deer followed behind him, tossing a wave as they exited.
Sakura waved lazily back, before leaning into the lockers behind her. She watched Fox with interest.
His head tipped up, gaze calm. "Taichou."
"Salamander," Sakura insisted blandly.
"You look like you have a question."
"I have many."
Fox stared at her politely.
"But I think now is rather not the time to ask all of them," Sakura said wryly.
He seemed amused, now. "Most new captains I've worked under have considered it a weakness to consult me."
Sakura considered that. Her lips quirked. "I think my, uh, education has taught me that I'd prefer to be the one asking questions to having to learn the necessary lessons the hard way."
"I will strive to make myself, then, an ample resource to you," Fox said smoothly.
"You're very easy-going, aren't you?" Sakura noted.
"Is that unusual?"
"Not particularly, I guess." Raccoon had been similarly even-keeled, similarly affable if not affectionate. She had missed that. Sakura averted her gaze. "Just wondering why you've never elected to be captain yourself. The commander suggested you've been offered the position in the past."
Fox was silent for a long, telling moment. His voice was just as calm, however, when he spoke again. "Never been interested."
"Hm," Sakura hummed, before shrugging. "Alright." Perhaps, his qualms were very much like her own—she had been coerced into this position herself, after all.
"See you later, Fox," she nodded, swinging her katana over her shoulder.
"Goodbye, Salamander."
She pushed her way through the mass of bodies between her and the door. The air outside was a welcome change to the humid mix of sweat and other bodily fluids that filled the locker rooms. She swept her hair back from her face and made her way to the front of the headquarters.
Other teams, returning from their own missions, passed her by as she walked. She more or less ignored them, until one group entered the same corridor, one that the others gave an instinctive wide berth.
They were drenched in blood, such that very little of even their masks remained white. But it wasn't the blood that deterred the ANBU around them from nearing. It was Kakashi's mismatched gaze, livid, stared militantly ahead as he stalked down the hall, the others flanking him.
He stared right through her.
Sakura's gaze flicked to the front of her as well.
Just as he crossed her, her hand snapped out and latched onto his upper arm. She shunshined them in the same breath.
Plink. Plink.
Droplets of water hit the base of the sink from the tap she hadn't fully shut that morning. A hand wrapped around her wrist punishingly, brutal in its unrestrained strength, as they corporealized. He shuddered against her, his claim to control so tenuous that it set her own teeth on edge.
Pain registered distantly in the back of her mind.
She ignored it—didn't bother with the light, instead shifting toward the tap to fill the tub with water. He flinched at the noise, teeth flashing, like a rabid animal. She moved swiftly, pulling off bloody clothing, uncaring if she tore the material.
In a quick flash of movement, she yanked off his mask. His hand snapped to her neck in the same motion. Sakura's eyes flicked coolly down to the fingers spanning her throat. She stepped forward, and he maneuvered back, eyes feral. Shoulders tight, she pressed forward, walking him into the tub.
He tipped inside with a muffled splash, water spilling over the sides because she had filled it too high. The water in the tub began to turn pink.
As heat sank into his skin, his head tilted back. But the caged look didn't leave his face. His muscles flexed in the water, like he was readying himself to surge upward at any given moment.
"Stay," she barked.
Sakura grabbed the bottoms of her shirt and flak jacket and pulled them off over her head together, allowing her mask to go with them. The porcelain clattered to the floor with a small clink, like glass.
His hands, which had curled around the sides of the tub to lift himself up, stilled. He watched her, gaze sharp as a blade.
Swiftly, stoically, she pulled the rest off.
"Fuck," she choked out as she stepped into the water, knee-deep.
It was hot. She dug her nails into the palms of her hand as she lowered herself. Folding herself in half to fit, she pushed back to the opposite edge of the tub. She rested her elbows on the rim as she stretched her legs.
She stared at him through watering eyes, wincing against the heat. The pattering of the leaking sink echoed in the small bathroom. She was too tired to do anything other than tip her head back, resting against the edge of the tub.
Minutes passed. The water dripping from the sink tap became white noise. His every muscle was cold, immobile against her.
"Calmer?" she asked, though with little confidence that this was the case. He had only resumed an appearance of something like his usual callous control.
"You listed the ways I wronged you, once. Have you forgotten them?"
She hoisted herself up by her elbows.
"Or," he continued coldly, "do you think that I am someone who is secretly kind and compassionate—that I've simply been hiding it all this time?"
Sakura's eyes shifted from the ceiling to him. "No," she said shortly.
His lip curled. "You think a good person would have followed you after today's fight?"
"I haven't forgotten," she hissed lowly.
"So you have no self-respect," he mocked with empty cruelty.
"I have entirely too much. You owe me a debt, Kakashi."
Sakura stood in the tub. Rivulets of water streamed down her body. She leaned forward, hands settling on either side of him, so that her face hovered above his.
"I told you that you were mine, didn't I?" she said scathingly. She spoke, then, without thought, without plan—rhetoric flowed from her mouth, canny and cunning, born purely in the moment. "I'll accept payment in worship."
He caught her arm. "Don't," he warned, the word barely human.
Don't what? Demean him? Tempt him?
(What was he so terrified of?)
They stared at each other, neither one blinking, until she exhaled, pulling back. She wrapped a towel around herself and exited the bathroom. She angled her head downward, staring at the droplets on the floor behind her. He had followed, like a ghost at her back.
She pushed back her sheets and slid into her bed, skin still damp. He stood in the same place, preternaturally still.
Her face, she knew, was pale with rage. Her voice revealed the full extent of her bitterness. "As you once told me, why postpone the inevitable?"
Her eyes traced the hostility in his body as he settled onto the bed.
Good, she thought. He recognized it too.
(They already knew how this ended.)
A foot—as wide as a chasm, for all intents and purposes—separated them. Sakura didn't care. Her muscles relaxed incrementally from the their usual state of cold-numb, warmed by the sheer heat his body radiated beside her. She shut her eyes and fell asleep.
Hands branded her skin, in her dreams—calloused and demanding, gripping her tightly. They ripped her from unconsciousness, and suddenly, she was opening her eyes and gasping in the darkness of her apartment bedroom.
She woke up to Kakashi hovering over her, eyes shut like he was straining against immense pain.
"What—"
Sluggish warmth surged through as she realized what had woken him. She exhaled sharply below him, eyes narrowing. But she didn't burn with mortification. Instead, she stared at him solemnly. Then, with defiance, her hand shifted downwards to where she had become wet.
He seemed to make a decision, then—and whatever remnants of resistance that had stared back out her from his eyes until now disappeared with violent efficiency.
He moved instantly. She shoved him back with her foot on his shoulder.
His gaze flew to hers, seething. Sakura stared at him, somber. Then she thrust her fingers lazily into herself, head falling to the side.
"Apologies for the inconvenience—" she drawled.
She didn't get to finish the hoarse, smugly-intended remark. He shoved her leg to the side—she let him—and forced her own fingers out from her. They glistened with evidence of how wet she was.
He stared at it without expression. But as she watched, he lifted her fingers to his mouth with torturous slowness. He licked, first, the long, indecent length of her middle finger, then her pointer and ring fingers. He stared at her the entire while, gaze dark, watching her watch him.
An involuntary, strangled noise left her mouth.
He leaned forward on his hands, bearing down with the full force of his weight, forcing her legs apart. He bent his head, eyes flicking up to her again, as his mouth hovered over her. Then, he gave a long, slow drag of his tongue.
Her hands tightened in his hair, pushing him greedily into her. In outrageous response, he kissed her there—messily, shamelessly. She gasped helplessly, feeling like she had been punched in the gut.
Before she could recover her breath, his hands tightened around her hips. She was so shamelessly wet that he simply slid in, even as it burned where she stretched to accommodate him. Her body bowed, receiving him.
She cursed loudly and with feeling. His hand curled roughly around her face, forcing her gaze onto his.
He moved slowly, but with unassuming power, backing her straight into the headboard. He paused there, hip bones pressed against her. Just when she thought he was fully inside her, he moved sharply, savagely, forward, thrusting the rest of his cock into her.
"Fuck," Sakura hissed, head snapping back into the headboard.
She expected, then, for it to be furious and mindless—to tear at each other until the whole room was destroyed. Hadn't it been that way the last time? But he didn't move, now, as she expected. Instead, eyes focused on her face, he pressed tighter still against her, until she was pinned into the bed.
Her head lifted sharply. His gaze roved over her relentlessly, like she was a stranger that he was determined to commit to memory. For impossibly long, neither of them seemed willing to breathe.
When he did move, it was slowly. So slowly, that even in the dim lighting, she could see the way each muscle contorted in his back with precise control. She exhaled loudly, teeth flashing, as her hips curved with his, equally leisurely.
For all that it was slow, however, it was not gentle. It felt, rather, like they were testing each other—as though they had never done this before.
Seeking something like control, she pressed a palm into his chest and shoved him back. He complied wordlessly, pulling her on top of him. (This, too, was unexpected.) She hovered above him, as she had in the tub earlier. With furrowed eyebrows, searching him in turn, she sank back down on him.
His mouth parted beneath her. Sakura stared at it, feeling almost dazed. She pressed forward. His mouth tasted like steel and blood. He kissed her lazily, without rush, as though his cock wasn't inside her and there was nothing else they might do, except this.
"Kakashi," she muttered, voice rough.
"Look," he returned, hands tight around her hips, lifting them up for her perusal.
She was otherwise occupied.
He brushed her lips again, grazing, before his voice sharpened with command. "Look."
Snarling, she looked to where they were joined. His cock, thick and soaked in her wetness, pulled back torturously slowly.
He thrust into her shallowly—not quite all the way.
She tightened breathlessly around him. He flexed before he caught himself. Eyes flashing, he pressed the base of his calloused palm ruthlessly into the locus of nerves above where they were joined. Sakura's hips bucked violently against him. His face glowed with savage satisfaction.
"If you do not move," she seethed, "I will walk out of here, naked as I am, and find the first willing person to take your place—"
And then, he was driving her back into the wrecked headboard.
"Fuck, fuck," she gasped nonsensically.
She could hear the backboard crumbling behind her. She braced herself against the wall, muscles tensing to return his thrusts as viciously as he dealt them. She fucked him with all the insatiable hunger within her, until she felt like she could strangle someone, because all it did was feed her hunger more—
Her eyes flew wide open.
Had he—?
He growled it again, pressing the utterance possessively into the skin of her throat.
Sakura's jaw clenched.
She felt her body start to tip over the edge, entirely without her permission. A hoarse cry left her mouth as she trembled through orgasm, nails digging into his back.
He stiffened against her, snarling almost hatefully as she closed around him. But the consequences of her orgasm proved too much to resist. He pressed his cock unabashedly into her, fucking his cum viciously into her body, mouth firmly entrenched in her neck. He hissed her name again as he did, and she covered her face with her arm, unwilling to let him see the expression that crossed her face.
She had the delirious, pathetic thought that she could kill him if he left.
She fell asleep.
Sakura slept like the dead. She couldn't account for anything that happened in the aftermath—not reliably, at least. If Kakashi had been determined to leave, she would have been no obstacle to him, delirious feelings or otherwise.
As it was, she had a vague, bizarre recollection of eggs and a sibilant hiss like frying at some point. She must have pulled her comforter over her head and fallen back asleep at the disruption, because when she woke up, it was staring at the inside of the blanket. She was certain, however, that those observations had been part of some bizarre dream.
Sitting up—and hissing slightly at the soreness in particular parts of her body—Sakura shoved the comforter off of her. As she pulled on clothes, her eyes passed over the apartment. There was absolutely no evidence that another human had been there…except for the very obvious yolk-splattered pan and spatula strewn across her stove top.
Her jaw slackened. Not her imagination, then.
Another realization occurred to her—if this was, indeed, reality. She went straight to her fridge. Flinging the door open, she found the carton of eggs inside (the only item food that was as of yet unexpired), opened and empty.
Her last fucking eggs. That bastard—
"I confess: this, I did not expect."
She spun around, hair whipping around her face.
Lo and behold—it wasn't dead, as part of her had optimistically expected. The crow sat perched on her window sill, not a feather out of place. A myriad of emotions crossed her face. She settled on stoicism.
At her continue ed silence, the Shisui's wings fanned out. It hopped down from the window onto her bed.
"Now, I can't say I know the copy-nin terribly well," the crow said indifferently. "But it strikes me that he isn't someone who typically stays overnight. Pity, he didn't leave any of those eggs for you."
"You were watching," Sakura noted, voice dangerous. Not long enough to see it all, she sensed by its words, but enough to have seen him in her apartment-to know, nevertheless. Her teeth clenched in acute restraint.
"If I had known," Shisui continued blandly, paying no attention to her words, "the possibilities would have been...diverse. Possibly, I need not have gone through my recent bout of healing."
"If it had been me," she said softly, eyes narrowing as she stepped forward from the kitchen, "I would have made sure there was none of you left."
"Alas, I can't say I've missed your prolific, unimaginative threats. I might add, however, that you're playing with fire, entangling with the copy-nin," the crow informed her calmly. "If not for my benefit, evidently, to what end?"
Her expression went blank.
"What is your endgame, human?" it asked, with some impatience now, as though it were indeed the instructor it pretended to be.
When she didn't respond once again, its gaze grew frigid, understanding immediately. "More the fool you, then."
"Indeed. Why are you back, Shisui?" she asked, cold.
The crow's sharingan spun dizzyingly. "We have unfinished business, naturally."
She leaned back just slightly, so that the katana strapped behind her mirror was in her peripheral.
"Uchiha Shisui had two dying wishes that this sharingan has driven me to fulfill. First, that Itachi be safe."
Her fingers curved around the mirror's edge.
"Second, that Danzo pay for what he has done."
Her mouth pursed, fingers stilling.
"Caught your attention, I see," the crow said with satisfaction.
God damn it. Her fingers dropped from the mirror.
"Very well," she snapped. "I'm listening."
