Second Time Around
By Frozzy
Chapter Seven
The sun was still hours away from rising beyond the treetops of Fire Country when Fukuda and his team of misfits caught up with the smaller three-man group. That is, the bastard decided to finally announce his presence, as if the three Konoha shinobi hadn't already been aware of him lurking around in their shadows ever since they had taken off from camp over two hours ago. Why Fukuda had waited so long to attack was a mystery.
Sakura was in mid-jump from one branch to another when she felt the change in the air from below.
"Regroup!"
She changed direction and hit the ground with a resounding smack, stones and pebbles crunching beneath her feet as she crouched low in a halfway spin, and narrowly dodged the fist that was thrown her way by the burly man on her tail.
"Don't ya think yer gonna escape me, bitch!"
She scoffed inwardly. What was it about big, buff men and the derogatory 'bitch'? Clearly, they were overcompensating for something and it couldn't be their ego, because that was big enough.
"I'm not gonna," she said under her breath and sidestepped a badly aimed kick, punching the guy square in the jaw. He went down for only a second. Kind of impressive, really, considering that the hit had been partially chakra-infused. That second, however, was enough for Sakura to get an overview of the situation. Naruto was fighting two guys up above in the treetops and Kakashi was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Fukuda. She was suddenly very intent on kicking this guy's ass and go locate Fukuda. So intent, in fact, that she didn't sense the katana style sword that was thrown her way, before it nicked the soft flesh of her upper shoulder. A hiss escaped her and her eyes were back on her opponent.
She stood her ground, even with a bleeding shoulder. You didn't give up ground.
"Gotta pay attention, beautiful," her opponent said. She sent him a sneer and leapt backwards to grab the sword where it was embedded in the ground. She hurled it back at him. He had anticipated the move and grabbed the handle mid-air.
Sakura didn't do weapons. She did fists.
"Sorry," she answered. "You're not that good-looking that I can't look away."
As expected, the implication didn't go over well with the brute.
With his sword forgotten, he lunged at her. It served as the perfect opportunity for her to jump onto her hands in a backwards swing and plant her foot directly underneath his jaw. She heard the crunch when his jaw dislocated, and she gave herself a few seconds to search for Naruto. He was down to fighting only one man. No visible injuries on him. Good.
Sakura's own opponent was clutching his jaw, glaring at her from a distance and she fought not to smirk. One thing was good about the big, buff men who used the derogatory 'bitch', she thought. They generally underestimated women.
She took another brief moment to analyze her shoulder wound. 'Nick' might have been a little too nice for a wound that was bleeding this much. Her sleeve was soaked, dripping with the redness that she no longer really associated with pain. Tsunade would tell her this was the moment where she healed herself, because 'if the medic dies, who else is there to keep the rest of the team from dying'.
Well, Sakura thought and averted her attention back to her opponent. Tsunade wasn't there. Sometimes you had to make your own rules.
"Losing it, big guy?" she called out to Sakamoto's minion, the taunt thick in her voice. Oh yeah, she was baiting the oaf. She worked best on defense. She wanted him to charge at her.
"Bt'chn," he attempted to curse at her, but his broken jaw made it difficult.
When they collided the third time, he got her directly on her wounded shoulder. Understandably, she lost the upper hand. The bastard's grip was tight and squishy soft where his fingers dug into the cleaved flesh, and Sakura felt a vague need to vomit. The brute hurled her onto the ground, deliberately putting pressure on her wound. The pain made Sakura see black for a couple of seconds. Then she was face-up on the ground and he was above her. Wounded shoulder or not, she had enough sense to deliver a blow to his chin that knocked him off her.
She got back up on her feet. Her shoulder throbbed when the buffoon lunged for the fourth time.
She made the decision to attempt a final blow to his head. He got her in the gut upon impact, and she went for Plan B. She swept him off his feet with a ground level kick.
And then she knocked his fucking teeth in.
He went down hard and she could feel his teeth break beneath her hand.
"He's down?"
She turned around to look at Naruto and nodded, doing a quick survey of his body. Still no injuries.
"Your shoulder," he said, but now was not the time.
"Kakashi?" she asked instead. The breathlessness of her voice surprised her.
"Fukuda," Naruto confirmed. He was struggling with his breath as well, though in a different manner that didn't indicate simple exhaustion. The medic in her was immediately on alert.
"Sucker got me in the neck," he grumbled upon noticing the look she was sending him. "But it's okay. Kyuubi's working his magic. Blasted fox is good for something."
"Kakashi's direction?" Sakura asked. She decided that unless Naruto was lying on the ground with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, he could live through whatever pains he might be having. The same counting for her, of course. Speed was essential now. They had to locate their third member, their Captain and sensei.
"Ea-" Naruto started to say, but was cut off by the sound of splintering wood to their right. The two Konoha jonin had just enough time to move out of the way, before they collided head on with the one-on-one fight of Kakashi and Fukuda. Naturally, Naruto took one look at the situation and then plunged straight into the fight, disrupting the balance and putting the odds in their favor. Sakura stayed back, examining Kakashi's movements and immediately concluding that they were off. It became even more apparent when he moved to the back of the fight, and let Naruto take the front and thus the brunt of Fukuda's attacks.
She spared Fukuda a brief look. Against Kakashi, he had been down to his last minute. Against Naruto, he was now down to his last seconds. Sakamoto was gonna be disappointed in her favorite henchman.
Up there, from her observation post on a branch of a random maple tree with Naruto handling matters below and Kakashi playing his wounded backup, Sakura allowed herself space to think outside of the fight.
The whole thing was absurd to her. A fight over something as stupid as jewelry. She touched her breast pocket where the heirloom was safely resting. This was the kind of thing she and Hinata would have a laugh about whenever Ino spent an entire mission salary on shoes, because the sequins were so 'sequiny'. Needless to say, Sakura wasn't big on possessions. Heirloom or not, she could make stone into diamond with a punch of her fist. If people wanted wealth, they could just go tear out a rib and claim it to be of ivory. Bam. Instant wealth. Sakura was naïve. She would buy it. Besides, lies paved a prettier road than the guts of killed men. A business strategy that had flown right past Sakamoto's nose, it would seem.
She was brought back to the fight below, when Fukuda's body was flung up against the trunk of the tree she was sitting in. It made a sickening thud and she raised an eyebrow.
"Man down," Naruto called up to her with a grimace of a grin. She jumped down onto the ground. Kakashi's posture was much more slouched than what she liked it to be. It wasn't anything big, and she most likely only noticed it because she had been trained to look for it. Naruto seemed oblivious to it.
"Where?" she asked the older jonin.
"Ribs," Kakashi answered. "Both sides. And my left knee, I think."
Kakashi had gone for close combat. Funny, how all three of them had opted for the same style. She felt like pointing out the stupidity of him going for the combat style where he was weakest. Then she reminded herself that Fukuda probably hadn't given him much choice in the matter. Kakashi would never willingly go for close combat. He worked best with distance. She was mildly curious as to how Fukuda had gotten both sides of his ribs though. Kakashi only ever left one flank open, if any at all. Maybe she would ask later.
"Sit down," she ordered and let Naruto take care of the lifeless body of Fukuda. She didn't know if the man was unconscious or dead, and she quite frankly didn't give a shit. She had just gotten Kakashi down onto the ground when Naruto's voice stopped her.
"You can't heal him until you've healed yourself," he reminded her from where he was crouched down next to Fukuda. He was studying the slow swelling process of the man's beaten up face.
"Valid point," Kakashi agreed, his eye going to her shoulder. She hadn't even noticed that her injured arm had gone halfway numb until Naruto had pointed it out.
"It's my left arm. I work with my right," she said and knelt down next to Kakashi. He watched her. Naruto did the same. She knew that they both had seen straight through that one. And, granted, that had been an incredibly lousy argument.
"Sakura," Kakashi said. He spoke in that somber and soft tone that he used whenever he thought she was being stupid.
"What?" she said and continued to tug at his vest. It didn't budge an inch. He didn't stop her, but he didn't encourage her either. It went on for a good minute. She eventually admitted to herself that she wasn't getting anywhere with trying to slip the vest off Kakashi's non-cooperating body. Especially not with only one functioning arm available for the task. She was glad that Naruto had busied himself with piling together the bodies of Sakamoto's employees. She felt like crying and she didn't know why.
"Sakura," Kakashi said again. She expected to see a reproachful look on his face. The one that told her how badly she had failed. But when she looked up into the man's face and got a contemplative look instead, the pain in her shoulder subsided as her mind focused on the man in front of her.
"What?" she asked. This time, however, the question was loaded with something else that she didn't dare question. Not before she was back home in her apartment, cocooned in the freshly cleaned sheets with pink and off-white blossoms that her mother had given her for her last birthday.
"You need to heal yourself," Kakashi said.
She stared at him.
"Sakura."
He always used her name in these situations. He knew it worked on her like a charm.
"You really should heal yourself," he said.
"Okay," she said. "Okay."
She went to work on herself, albeit somewhat jerkily, and she discovered the actual amount of damage that had been done to her shoulder. It was severed almost in half. Two chunks of flesh were separated by a gap that was as wide as her hand. The lack of severe pain was a result of the numbness that the injury had invoked. Tsunade would be so disappointed. Instinctively, Sakura had stopped the blood flow with her chakra the minute that the weapon had severed her shoulder. She hadn't taken the time to heal herself, but at least she had taken the time, albeit instinctively, to stop the blood flow, so she wouldn't have to worry about blood loss.
As she healed her wound, she could feel Kakashi's eyes on her face.
Ten minutes later, her shoulder was about eighty percent healed. She decided that this was enough. It was all about equal distribution. She lowered her left hand from her shoulder and looked at Kakashi. He was her next patient in line.
He had closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree trunk that they both sat up against. When he felt her eyes on him, he opened his own eyes to look at her.
"You have them still?" he asked her, his voice bordering on an emotion she couldn't decipher.
"Yes," she answered, her own voice matching that of his. She didn't need to touch her pocket to know that the necklace and earrings were still there.
"Good. We wouldn't want all this effort to be in vain, would we?"
She shook her head.
"Good," he said again, sounding contemplative more than anything else. Right then and there, something passed between them that Sakura wasn't entirely sure how to define.
"Your shoulder's healed?" Naruto's voice perked up from behind. Sakura almost flinched. She hadn't heard him come up behind her. Though, to be perfectly honest, you couldn't heal effectively and pay attention to your surroundings at the same time. She had opted for healing effectively, and thus counting on Naruto to take out any possible threats that may loom above them.
"It's enough for now," she told her blond friend and moved to slip off Kakashi's vest. This time, he helped the best he could. She had to give him credit for that, as she would later discover that he had broken a good portion of his ribs. If Fukuda had aimed just a little lower, there would have been a risk of one of those ribs puncturing a lung. She kept that tidbit of information to herself, of course. At least nobody had been poisoned on this trip, as it had been Tsunade's biggest fear. Guess the rumor mill came in handy when you had 'medical prodigy' listed beneath your name.
However, sitting there on the mossy ground with a man whose torso had very nearly been slapped flatter than Tenten after a diet, Sakura felt nothing like Tsunade's haloed prodigy.
"He's out?" Kakashi asked Naruto.
Sakura listened with half an ear only. Instead, she found herself wondering if Kakashi really had been honest that night up on the tree branch.
Two hours later, with the sun peeking above the horizon, the three jonin stepped past the Konoha gates, looking like they had rolled around in mud and skated down a hill of bodily waste. Sakura's entire left side was soaked in blood that she hadn't bothered to stop and wash out. Naruto was walking with a limp to his right leg, and Kakashi's ribs were bandaged in one of Sakura's pink spare shirts. Needless to say, the sweet smell of grilled fish and deep-fried vegetables that greeted the trio upon their entrance through the gates was a welcome feeling of home.
And Sakura very nearly flopped down onto the ground and began bawling her eyes out.
"Makes you appreciate returning home, does it not?" Kakashi commented conversationally. Now that they had returned home, safe and sound, the mood of the group had lightened considerably. Yet Sakura took great effort in placing Naruto in between her and Kakashi, as the three of them headed towards the Hokage Tower.
"Hell yeah," Naruto agreed, his attention going up and down the street, quite possibly in search for Sasuke. Sakura felt a little guilty then. She had barely spared Sasuke a single thought in the past days.
"He's practicing," Sakura reminded Naruto. Sasuke took great pride in his ambitious daily schedule. He got up at five in the morning to train his ass to shreds. Sakura didn't sleep until three o'clock like certain blond others, but five in the morning was just painful. She could do it if was a hospital shift, but actual training was just too hard to do that early.
"Right," Naruto remembered. He was obviously put down by the fact that they wouldn't accidentally stumble upon their friend on their trip to the Hokage's office. Separating Naruto and Sasuke was a little like separating toddlers.
"Hey! You three!"
Sakura and Naruto turned their heads. Kakashi's turn of his head was more a jerk than an actual 180 degree turn.
"Kiba!" Naruto greeted the other man. Akamaru was nowhere in sight. Sakura tried not to frown. It was odd to see Kiba without the company of his furry friend. Besides, she liked Akamaru. The dog had always been on her side when she and Kiba had fought. Blessed little thing, it had been. Nowadays, 'little' didn't do the gigantic dog justice.
"Man, it's good you're back. Sasuke's been a right pain in the ass since you left," Kiba broke the ice quite inelegantly. He reached the group in a jog.
"Oh, yeah?" Naruto asked with a smirk already forming on his face.
"He hasn't been assigned a solo mission while we were gone?" Sakura cut in and ignored how Kiba eyed her bloodied clothes. Months of housebreaking, and he knew better than to the address the matter. She wondered if Kakashi could become like that. Then she quickly banished the thought.
"Well, he was assigned one. Pretty awesome one, actually," Kiba said and shrugged. "He refused to take it, though. Lee got it instead. Guess Wonder Boy wanted to mope around some more."
Well, that was a given.
"So, you're on your way to the Tower?" Kiba asked.
Naruto and Sakura nodded affirmatively.
"Can you drop this off for me? It's some mandatory formula, I don't know."
Sakura took the halfway crumbled paper that Kiba dug forth from his back pocket. The logo at the bottom immediately claimed her attention.
"Your checkup was months ago, and you haven't handed this in yet?" she pointed out surly. This was her area and thus her responsibility, after all.
"I've been out of town," he defended himself with a sheepish shrug. She figured it was pointless to tell him that without having handed in his medical checkup, there was no way in hell he could have been assigned any sort of mission, much less one out of town. Standing there in front of her old lover, Sakura was reminded of the many other discussions that she and Kiba had had in the past. She had always come out as the bitch in those discussions. As she thought of this, she suppressed the urge to shoot a look in Kakashi's direction. Did she come off as a bitch to all men?
Naruto, Sakura and Kakashi all stood in front of Tsunade's desk.
It was pure luck that Tsunade hadn't gone to sleep the previous night. Otherwise, they would have had to come back later today, since she wouldn't have been in this early.
"Congratulations on a job well done," Tsunade congratulated the three jonin with a satisfied nod. Sakura felt a funny sort of need to ask just what her mentor was congratulating them for. She herself had returned with more trouble than what she had taken off with.
"The money has been transferred to your accounts and everything should be in order. As it's protocol, you'll have the next two weeks off. Although, Sakura, you'll report to the hospital Tuesday next week," her mentor told her apologetically. "We're on a shortage of medics right now, and some of the new ones are horribly lacking in the effort department. I hate it when they pass slackers. Anyhow, I count on you to rectify that, starting next week."
Sakura just nodded. After a week of lazing around, she would be fed up with Ino, anyway. Most of her friends were good in small doses. Make it one big, great dose and you would lie comatose for a year. Kakashi himself thought that he was good in small doses, but with him it was really the other way around. He was better in large doses.
"And I expect your individual reports on my desk first thing tomorrow. First thing," the blonde woman stressed with a very pointed look in Kakashi's direction. He, of course, seemed oblivious to it.
"Naruto, Sakura, you're free to leave," Tsunade said. "Kakashi stays. I have matters to discuss with him in private. And Sakura, do go home and clean yourself up. All that blood is just the way to attract diseases. You know better."
"Sorry, shishou," Sakura apologized, playing the card of remorse, but not necessarily feeling it.
There was an awkward pause.
"Well, off with you two. Don't just stand there and grow roots, I need that floor for other purposes."
Home sweet home, Sakura thought bitterly when she and Naruto exited the office with their tails firmly locked between their legs.
It was much later, when Sakura was scrubbing away all the caked blood to prod at her freshly healed wound and was listening to Ino's mouth running loose outside the shower curtain, that the tension and hurt from the past days got to her.
And it got to her bad.
"Sakura, are you alright?" Ino's voice wafted through the flimsy blue material of the curtain, and Sakura would have loved to deny it, but some lies were just too obvious to bother with. And yet some lies you just had to stick with in order to save face.
Like this one.
"Yes. I'm fine," she said, hating that her voice caught on the words, and how the lie made her eyes burn. Angrily, she put her palms flat against the wall and splayed out her fingers, watching the contrast of her pinkish skin and the grey tiles through the water that ran over her face.
Of course their mutual attraction had been there from the start.
They hadn't brought it home with them from the mission, because it had already been home.
"Is this something we should talk about?" Ino asked. The concerned tone made Sakura clench her fists against the grey tiles. In these situations, Ino was a better mother than Sakura's mother herself.
"No," she answered. Despite her inner turmoil, Sakura still picked up on the sound it made when Ino stood up from her seat on the toilet and crossed the frilly black carpet on the floor.
"I think I like him, Ino," she said.
The sound of Ino's steps died out, mere centimeters from the curtain that separated the two women.
"Like who?" Ino's voice was careful and measured when she spoke, and Sakura knew that she had just signed her own death certificate. Not because she had spilled the beans to Ino, but more so because she had just realized the extent of those beans. The weight of the realization was so heavy that her hands slid off the wall.
"Kakashi," she said. "I like him."
There was a moment of silence and the curtain was ripped aside. Sakura was too used to the invasion of her privacy to put up much of a fuss about it. Besides, with Ino staring at her like she had committed a mortal sin, there wasn't much room for her to be embarrassed about her nakedness.
"Handing your heart to him is like handing a wolf a bloody steak, Sakura."
"No one talked about hearts," Sakura argued, blinking excess water off her eyelashes.
"Then we might as well do it now," Ino said. "Because from the look of this, you're seconds away from a broken one."
"It's not," Sakura paused, struggling to find the words. "It's not-"
"It's not him, but the mission," Ino finished for her, doing a bad imitation of Sakura that made Sakura wince inwardly. Because it was so very true.
"You want me to sugarcoat it, Sakura," Ino continued matter-of-factly. "You know I don't do that. That's why you haven't told me before now. Really, no prince is gonna sweep you off your neat little size six feet, much less the retarded bastard you've set your sight on. And you know I'm being realistic. I mean the guy is as frigid as an ice cone and as messed up as Sasuke. But if you absolutely want to pursue this, I have one question for you. When did we ever get something without working our asses off for it?"
"Never," Sakura said.
"Exactly," Ino said. "So why should this be any different?"
"It's Kakashi," Sakura said.
"And I say it again, why should it be any different?" Ino repeated in a dull tone. "I absolutely can't follow you on the emotional level of this one, God knows I can't, but you already know I would do the man in a heartbeat. He's attractive, I'll give you that. Also, you're both adults on the paper, so you can do whatever you wanna do – including sex, yes, so don't give me that look – and people can do shit about it. But you still have to work for it. And people will probably have issues with it."
Sakura knew there was a reason that she liked the hypocritical food-hogging bitch. Ino was surprisingly broadminded when it mattered. You always had the odd couple of people from whom you shaped and defined yourself. Ino was one of Sakura's people.
"So," Ino said and let go of the curtain, giving Sakura back her privacy. "Wanna hear the juiciest news about Megumi and Sasuke?"
"They've gone public now?" Sakura asked and surprised herself by soaping up her hair as though they had been talking about Sasuke and his girlfriend for the whole time that she had been in the shower.
"Ah, well, to everyone else but themselves, they have," Ino answered and Sakura could hear her open the cabinet above the sink and start rummaging around in search for something.
"How does that even work?" she asked from within the shower.
"You'd be surprised," Ino said and slammed the cabinet shut.
The liquor was brought out half an hour later.
"So, ah, he said what?" Ino asked from where she lay sprawled out across the living room floor. She handed Sakura the half-empty bottle of alcohol, and Sakura took a swig of it before she answered. Her hair was still damp from the shower. She hadn't bothered to blow-dry it. She liked to feel washed and clean after a mission. She was dressed in her pajamas that consisted of one of Sasuke's old t-shirts. The entire left drawer in Sakura's dresser was stockpiled with the boys' clothes, and Ino often took the liberty to venture in there as well. Sakura didn't quite know how she felt about that, but she didn't want to act possessive.
"Ya can't bring something home that's already there," Sakura said, quoting Kakashi. Despite her slur, Ino still seemed to get the gist of it. If sober people spoke the same language, it made sense that drunken people did so as well.
"Bastard."
"Jerkoff," Sakura agreed and lifted the bottle up into the air to estimate how much of the sweet oblivion that was left in there. She gave up when her eyes wouldn't focus and instead downed another mouthful.
"Oh, yeah," Ino said and perked up. "Why don't ya go do that?"
"Do wha'?" Sakura asked and waved the bottle at her blonde friend.
"Go jerk him off," Ino elaborated with a dismissive gesture and finally took notice of the bottle in front of her face. It was really fortunate too, because Sakura's grip went slack half a second later. Ino grasped the slippery neck of the bottle before it hit the floor and shattered into pieces.
"What?"
"Jerk 'im off. Ya know, his dick. Cock. Penis."
"I know what jerk off means, Pig," Sakura said and for a moment she forgot what they were discussing. "Anyway, ya should be much more down after Sasuke got a girlfriend. Not be all cheery about it."
"Did'ya forget?" Ino said with a raised brow. "I already did Sasuke a year 'go."
Truth to be told, Sakura had forgotten.
"I guess I did forget," she answered and motioned for the bottle.
"I should go visit mom tomorrow," Sakura said.
"She's fine," Ino said and flipped over onto her back. She then grabbed Sakura's right foot for no other purpose than simply grabbing it. Sakura shook it free, not putting much heart into the action, and Ino flipped back onto her stomach with a vacant expression on her face.
"Watcha thinking 'bout?" Sakura asked when the vacant expression didn't leave her friend's face.
"Maybe ya should take a talk with her?"
"Who? Mom?" Sakura's incredulous tone spoke volumes. "I do that all the time!"
"No," Ino corrected her, "'bout…'bout enrolling in some home or something."
Sakura, sobering up, looked at the other woman like was she stupid.
"My mom just turned forty-three," she pointed out rather dumbly.
"No, Sakura," Ino said again, this time a bit more exasperated. "A mental home, whatever. An institution. Or some therapy sessions."
It took some seconds for Sakura to react, and even then she didn't know how she wanted to react. She settled for indifferent.
"I haven't thought about that," she said.
"Just keep it in mind," Ino said. She grabbed Sakura's foot a second time and yanked the other woman off the couch and onto the floor. Sakura retaliated by wrenching her foot free and shoving it in up Ino's face. Their rivalry had never quite died out.