6.

I started to get more and more tired as the week went on. I got up early in the mornings to go with Tazuna, taught my gardening class right after I came back to Tazuna's house, had dinner, and then spent late evenings out training with Naruto and Sasuke. It was exhausting work, but after a while one pushed past the point of exhaustion and into a kind of high where things seemed more manageable and nothing appeared to really bother one anymore. What usually happened was that Sasuke and I passed out while training trying to keep up with Naruto, who apparently had the stamina of a god. Then Naruto would pass out, and we'd all wake up the next morning on the forest floor feeling extremely sore. We'd get up, stumble our way back to the house, scarf down breakfast, and then take showers before going back out for the next day.

It was glamorous. Really, it was. I felt super clean, my hair was great, and my eyes totally weren't bloodshot all the time.

Yeah. Right.

My first gardening class was nerve wracking. I had never really taught anything before. I went out at the appointed time with Tsunami, to a place in the woods with an orange sunset in the sky above us fading into twilight, and I felt a jump of nervousness in the pit of my stomach at the sight of all those older women, standing there underneath the shadows of the trees, waiting for me. Most of them were vast and well worn, with hard faces and stern manners.

I got a sudden, vicious flashback to the last time I'd been put in a class of all women. It was during the female etiquette classes I took with Ino, back when we were little girls. Our parents had signed us up and, having become friends after she'd saved me from those bullies, we always sat together, though at that time it was thought we would go down separate paths: she as a kunoichi ninja and me as a civilian wife. The lessons were held during the summer and they taught girls the basics of flower arrangement, cooking, sewing and embroidery, tea ceremony, comportment, calligraphy... those sorts of things. (We did not learn how to sweep graves and offer incense to the dead. That came later, at the Ninja Academy. Death, we had been taught, was a natural part of ninja life.) I'd always been horrible at female lessons. I was not nearly girly or elegant enough. I don't think my teacher liked me.

So, all in all, not such a great association.

I stood there before those tall women and clapped my hands, attempting a smile. "Alright!" I said, in a voice that seemed to me very high and shrill. "Let's get started!"

A woman near the front raised an eyebrow skeptically. "A little girl's teaching us this?" she asked. There was some muttering.

The nervousness increased. "I promise," I said, "I know what I'm talking about. Someone in my home village taught the basics of vegetable gardening to me."

"I thought you were a ninja," someone else said in confusion.

"I am," I said. "Ninja do lower level missions sometimes, taking care of tasks for other people for a small fee."

"So you learned all of this during one mission? For all we know, you could be teaching it all wrong!" The muttering increased.

"I promise, I have a very good memory!" I said, almost desperately, trying to talk over people.

"Prove it," someone called out, and then there was an almost eager silence.

My mind drew a blank for a moment... and then my mouth started moving for me. I just did what came naturally: I started reciting the Ninja Rules. There were fifty. There had been a whole test on them in Iruka-sensei's class. I recited all of them, by heart, without hesitation. Most of them were obvious: put the mission first, kill your emotions, see the hidden meaning, always prepare, listen to your commander, never show any weakness. They sounded really intimidating at first, but if you recited them enough the message behind them began to dull, until you were thrown out into the field and had to actually start using any of it.

My memorization skills weren't exactly something I was proud of or thought was very useful in the context of being a ninja. But nevertheless, the women were impressed. After I finished, there was an almost frightened pause. So I made an effort to smile. "But that's just one of the parts of my life," I said. "I also use my memory to do things like read books and solve puzzles. I hate spicy food and I have a really fat orange cat." The tension broke, and there were even a couple of chuckles.

But after that, there were no more protests. The women listened to me as I showed them how to draw plots and plant seeds for things like carrots and potatoes.

At the end of the lesson, though, someone asked me, almost eagerly: "Show us something you do can do as a ninja. Something physical. Something cool."

I paused and thought about it, dusting the soil off my hands and standing. Then, suddenly, I darted away into the trees. There was a gasp at my speed. I moved fast enough through the leaves, up a tree and away, that they were left standing there staring stupidly at the spot where I had disappeared - and where I was no longer there. Silent, carefully, silent, I snuck around... and around... balancing carefully on a tree branch above them...

By now, there was talking. "Where'd she go?"

"She disappeared!"

"Maybe she just left. Didn't think we were all that interesting." Nervous laughter.

And then I shot chakra into the bottoms of my feet, swung down so I was hanging from the bottom of the tree branch, and covered the mouth of the woman who had asked for a demonstration with my hand - all in one movement.

The woman gasped and jumped, looking upward, and there were a couple of screams. A pause. Then laughter, applause.

I smiled in relief, feeling good about myself. (I'd probably been right not to take out the kunai knife, though.)

And after that, the women in that class became my friends.

I was shaken awake one morning, lying on the forest floor. I blinked, my eyes hazy against the morning sunlight filtering through the trees. My hair had come undone and it felt grimy in the back where the earth had been touching it. I raised my head.

Kneeling there beside us was a woman in a traditional pink kimono. She was very pretty, with long dark hair and doe-like brown eyes. "Be careful, sleeping out here. You could catch a cold, or someone might come along and fetch you away." She smiled.

I sat up as she went to go wake up Sasuke and Naruto. Naruto woke easily, as dazed and confused as I was. But as soon as someone touched Sasuke, his eyes flew open and his hand went for a kunai. The woman flinched backward with surprising swiftness. Sasuke paused, tensed, for a split second. Then he relaxed, seeing nothing dangerous in his environment, and frowned.

"Who are you?" he asked rudely.

"Sasuke's a little grumpy in the mornings," I said apologetically. Then, trying to swallow down the weird taste in my mouth and think past the fuzziness in my head, I asked Sasuke, "How did you train yourself to do that? React in your sleep as soon as you're touched."

"I rigged a feather on a string up to a tactile alarm so that every time the feather brushed against me, a painful shot of electricity would go through my arm and it would flinch instinctively for my kunai." He still sounded irritated and casual as he got to his feet.

I filed that information away in the back of my mind for future reference. For a ninja, awakening upon touch would be useful.

"Wow," said the woman, still smiling, falsely I thought. "Such dedication to your craft. Are you ninja?"

"Yeah, we're great ninja!" said Naruto, too loudly and enthusiastically for this early in the morning.

"Naruto," I muttered, "quieter."

"Sorry."

"We were out here training for a battle," I informed the woman. "What are you doing out here?" I looked her over. I didn't recognize her from town.

"I was picking medicinal herbs," said the woman, indicating a basket on her arm.

I immediately perked up. "That's very interesting," I said. "I don't recognize you from the village."

"Oh, I live a ways back in the forest here."

"We could help you pick the herbs," Naruto offered.

"Yes, we could," I said eagerly, on a thought. "I teach a class on vegetable gardening, so people here don't have to use money to buy food. Do you think you could show me something about picking medicinal herbs? That way, people could find the right herbs to make stews and salves without having to pay for medicine."

Hinata often made herbal salves - she was very like that; she loved baking, too - but I had never really gotten all that into it before. We did flower pressing together instead, and I often went shopping with Ino. Now, in the context of a mission, herbal medicine suddenly seemed interesting.

The woman eyed me thoughtfully. "That's very considerate of you," she said. "That doesn't sound like something a ninja would do."

I looked down, shrugging in embarrassment. "My parents were civilians."

"There is no shame in that," said the woman, and for some reason her smile widened. "Yes, I will help you."

And so, though Sasuke seemed skeptical, he followed me and Naruto around the clearing with the woman. She showed us the correct herbs to pick, talking about what each one did and how to recognize them. I listened closely, filing it all away, and even my teammates seemed interested.

As we picked, the woman asked us questions. "So you were training out here?"

"That's right."

"Why?"

We blinked, pausing. Looked around at one another. It seemed like such a stupid question with an obvious answer.

"To get stronger," said Sasuke, raising an eyebrow.

"And what motivates you to become stronger?"

"I want to become Hokage, the leader of my village!" said Naruto eagerly, first.

"And why do you want to become Hokage?" the woman asked. She seemed rather nosy. Her interest appeared genuine. It was as if she were searching for something.

"... To prove people wrong about me," said Naruto, and I realized I had never heard him say why he wanted to be the Hokage before.

The woman looked around at us. "And what about you two?"

"... I am motivated by anger," said Sasuke next, reservedly. "And by ambition. I have a goal to kill someone and I can't afford to remain weak."

The woman's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. At last, she turned to me. "And you?" she said. "What motivates you?"

I cast around in my mind. Ridiculously, perhaps, no one had ever openly questioned my motivation to become a ninja before. "I want to be an important person," I said at last. "I want to be an important person who protects other people."

This seemed to be what the woman was looking for. She smiled. "That is very wise," she said. "I believe a person can only truly become strong when they are protecting something or someone they care about."

Naruto seemed thoughtful. "Protecting, huh?" he asked at last.

"Yes," said the woman, looking at the boys. "Surely you two also have people you want to protect. Like your teammate does."

The boys looked stumped, so I offered, "I want to protect my village, my family, and my friends Ino and Hinata. And also other people, people who can't help themselves. And now I want to protect my team as well." Here, I smiled at them.

"Yeah," said Naruto in realization, brightening as if liking the idea. "Yeah, I want to protect you guys too! And I want to protect Iruka-sensei... and the little ninja kids I tutor... And I want to prove that heroes exist to Inari. I have... I have people." His eyes widened in realization then, almost frightened. "I've never had anything like that before," he said in hushed tones. (So even his friendship with Iruka was recent?)

Sasuke looked from one teammate to the other. "You are right," he said after a moment. "I do not want either of you to die." And with this declaration, in his own way, he seemed satisfied. Maybe that was the closest Sasuke could get to admitting he cared about another. He wasn't good with emotions, on top of everything else.

The woman stood and smiled. "The three of you will become strong," she said serenely, and turned gracefully to leave.

"You have to go?" I asked in surprise.

"Yes. Unfortunately, I must be getting back." She gathered up her basket of herbs and left us kneeling there in the grass.

"It was nice meeting you, miss!" Naruto called to her retreating back.

The woman looked back over her shoulder in amusement. "I'm a man," she said. Then he continued on his way.

Naruto and I gaped.

"But... but his voice is so high... and he looks so girly..." I muttered in disbelief, staring after him.

"The world is full of mysteries," Naruto agreed in amused bafflement.

But Sasuke was frowning. "Actually, his voice sounds familiar... Hey, are you sure we haven't met some time before?!" he called after the man, but the man appeared not to hear him. He continued a few more paces, and then paused.

"I wouldn't know about us meeting before," he said, in an indefinable tone, "but I am almost certain we will meet again. It's just a feeling. You know?"

The man left. It was a strange meeting.

Either way, the man was right. Sasuke and Naruto finally made it to the tops of their respective trees that evening before dinner. They came in, dragging each other in, grinning amicably - even Sasuke for once - pleasantly exhausted. There would be no more late evening training tonight. Kakashi was also well enough to move around without crutches again. My three teammates would therefore be joining me at the bridge with Tazuna tomorrow, our training and recovery complete. The atmosphere that night at dinner, all of us collected around Tazuna and Tsunami's table, was very warm. Even Inari was not as brooding and teenagerish as usual, instead seeming rather quiet ever since his blowup about Kaiza. It felt like a wonderful evening. At the same time, there was a silent warning inherent within it: Zabuza and his strange assistant were coming.

We sat back after dinner and there was a lazy sort of daze swirling around the room. "The bridge is almost finished," said Tazuna. Then, curiously, "I always meant to ask you... why did you stick around after I lied to you?" Maybe he felt it would be safer to ask now, when it appeared we really would be staying for the whole affair.

"You mean, why are we still here?" Kakashi asked in mild surprise.

"Because to abandon you would have been a shitty thing to do," I responded heatedly. (And then, after a pause, I remembered and pinched myself underneath the table. I was noticing less and less when I swore. I blamed the influence of battles and masculine teammates.)

Kakashi nodded. "To put it more elegantly, in the words of the previous Hokage: 'Not to do right when you know it is right is the coward's way. This is especially important to remember for a commander.'"

"The Fourth Hokage said that?" I asked.

"He was my Sensei," Kakashi revealed.

"That's so cool!" Naruto said immediately, and even Sasuke sat up straight in interest. Kakashi chuckled.

And it was cool. All of a sudden, I had one of those brief moments when I realized just how important a man Hatake Kakashi probably was.

The Hokage went in chronological order: there was the First, then the Second. They both died in the line of duty. The Third took power, and that was the Professor. He appointed a successor, the Fourth, and retired. The Fourth was a brilliant young prodigy who had distinguished himself on the battlefield of the Third Ninja War. They called him the Golden Flash because he had somehow created a ninjutsu spell that achieved teleportation: he could disappear in a flash of blond hair and reappear, already armed, behind enemy lines. Konoha's side won the war; the Fourth Hokage had been one of the reasons why, and it was because of this that he was chosen as successor.

The Fourth Hokage was not in office for very long. An ancient fox demon, an evil being made entirely out of malignant chakra, appeared out of its dormant forest rest and attacked the village - in fact, it attacked in the same year I'd been born; I was several months old at the time, hiding with my parents in one of the underground shelters created for civilians in times of war. The Fourth defeated the demon, saving his village, but both he and his kunoichi wife died in the process. The Third had to come back out of retirement and take over the village again, and he'd been in the post ever since.

That Kakashi had not only met such a man, but been taught by him, inspired in me a kind of fascination.

"He always said that the Academy taught the logistics of team management, but not the things that really mattered," Kakashi was saying.

"What was he like?" I asked.

Kakashi sat back thoughtfully. "He was very easygoing," he said, surprising me. "But when it came to his job, he was full of what might be called 'idealistic passion.' Plenty of people could have called him naive, but somehow no one ever did; he had a way of swaying people to his side. And he was brilliant, of course. Often, he had more important things to do than care for us. We learned to be pretty independent. He made up for it when he was around by being a great teacher, calm and matter of fact."

"And he's dead." Kakashi looked around warningly, instinctively, growing cold. But he paused in surprise when he processed who had spoken. Little Inari was crying, sitting there at the table, but it was an angry kind of crying. "Why?!" he shouted, standing suddenly. "I've been watching you train all week! You all train really hard and say all these nice words and you're all just going to end up dead!

"You!" He looked at Naruto in particular, wildly, losing it. "You're just like him!"

So Naruto reminded Inari of Kaiza. (He had to mean Kaiza. The idea of Inari saying Naruto was like the Fourth Hokage was absurd.)

"You storm in here and pretend you know everything, but you know nothing! You know nothing about pain or suffering, all you do is laugh and smile all the time!"

The words hung sharply in the air for a moment, as Inari gasped for air, as though he had suddenly run out of them.

Naruto sat up straight for the first time that night. He was tight lipped, and his blue eyes were blazing. I'll never forget the look of absolute contempt he gave Inari. "Thank God I'm laughing," he said. "At least I'm not as useless as you. You just keep crying. See where it gets you. Maybe they'll pick you up off the streets, give you your own soap opera or something. But as for me, I'm different. I'm still brave. I have hope." He leaned forward viciously.

"Naruto," I murmured painfully, "he's just a little boy."

Naruto ignored me, standing and storming out of the room. Naruto was normally so sunny, it put an effective damper on the mood of the entire house. What was it about what Inari had said that had set him off so much?

I looked over, lost, at Kakashi. He watched Naruto leave with a very certain expression on his face. Then he saw me. He turned to Inari and said softly, matter of factly, "Just because you have gone through pain, you shouldn't assume no one else has. I think Naruto doesn't like you because he himself tired of crying long ago."

Inari's eyes widened in surprise, and for once he seemed to be out of words.

But he wasn't the only one who Kakashi's words had surprised.

I realized, in that time after dinner, that I really knew nothing about Naruto.

I knew he was an orphan; he had grown up and raised himself. I knew he wanted to be Hokage to prove people wrong about him. I knew he'd been a troublemaker at school. I knew he loved big stories and movies and he believed in heroes and in the idea that he could become one. I had a vague idea of a strange connection to Konoha's upper echelon, and he'd said once that he loved eating, especially cooked ramen, and that he tutored some little kids in the ninja arts.

But all things considered, with all the time we'd been together as a team, that was pathetically little; most of it was just basic facts sorts of stuff. Unimportant, common knowledge, things anyone in our old class could have found out about. I knew more about Sasuke than I knew about Naruto, and Sasuke hardly ever told me anything: I knew that his parents had died when he was a kid, that it had left him depressed and angry, that he'd watched someone be murdered, and that there was someone he wanted to kill.

Sasuke closeted himself in his room after dinner and spoke to no one. I couldn't tell if it was just that the high level of emotion in the house made him uncomfortable, or if it was that, like with the way Naruto brought up bad memories for Inari, Inari brought up bad memories for Sasuke. So I couldn't turn to Sasuke with any of this.

After a while, I left my room and padded out into the hallway. I could hear Tsunami and Tazuna cleaning up in the kitchen. Kakashi moved past me down the darkened hallway and toward Inari's room.

"I'll take the kid," he said, jerking his head in that direction. "But I think someone needs to talk to Naruto, and I think that someone should be you." He looked at me meaningfully.

I felt a thrill of nervousness, but at the same time it was what I had wanted to do myself. I nodded.

I found Naruto out in the training clearing, way high up in a tree. He was sitting on a branch, watching the moon. I gazed at the slope of his shoulders for a moment. He seemed very small and alone.

"Naruto," I called out softly, "what are you doing out here?"

He looked around in surprise. "... I like high places," he said.

I mentally counted that up as one more thing I knew about Naruto. "Can I join you up there?" I asked. There was a pause, but then Naruto nodded. I put chakra in my feet and walked up the tree trunk, balancing on the branch and then sitting beside him. The branch bent a little under our combined weight.

Naruto gazed out ahead of him miserably. His fists kept clenching and unclenching sporadically. It was rather alarming to see. "Naruto, Kakashi-sensei told Inari that you had been through pain too, but you just got tired of crying," I said. Naruto tensed up, still not looking at me. "But he didn't explain what he meant," I added, and the tension relaxed minutely. "Naruto, I just realized... I don't know anything about you. If you want to talk about what Kakashi meant, as a friend I'd be willing to listen."

The offer came out almost hesitantly.

Naruto paused for a moment, and then he looked at me with a terribly forced smile. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm fine."

I didn't believe him. "I never asked whether you were fine," I said quietly. "I asked whether or not you want to talk about it."

The smile dropped. Naruto looked at me piercingly for a moment, so much so I almost blushed.

"There are certain things I can't tell you," he admitted after a while. "But there's a secret about me, a secret that some of the adults who have been in Konoha a long time know about. Have you ever noticed that some of the adults don't like me?"

I thought of my mother's suspicion, of Iruka's anger. "They call you a troublemaker," I said.

"Yeah, but they always called me that," said Naruto. "Even before I'd done anything. I was..." He swallowed. "I was pretty lonely for a while. No one would allow their kids to be friends with me. No one wanted me as a part of their family."

He looked down, his voice hoarse. "Sorry," he said. "I just feel like I'm complaining."

"No, go ahead!" I continued quickly.

Naruto nodded, and there was a pause. He still looked down. "Well, on the night after my Academy graduation test, one of the adults finally decided to betray the village by tricking me. He tried to kill me." My eyes widened. "And he told me the secret, the horrible secret to why all the adults don't like me. Iruka realized what was going on and saved me from that man, getting injured in the process. Then Iruka was about to be killed by the man, and I saved him. So we saved each other. That was the night I learned the Kage Bunshin, actually.

"Iruka apologized afterward, and said he'd just yelled at me and shut me out all those years because he couldn't handle... what he knew about me. And that's how we became friends. And after that... after I didn't get angry and leave the village... I guess the Hokage began to trust me a little more too, because he let me be friends with and tutor his grandson and his friends. And then I got placed on Team Seven, and you guys have helped me, and I'm finally starting to feel like a competent ninja. I feel like I actually could make it to Hokage under someone like Kakashi.

"But for a long time... for a long time..."

"You just wanted someone to notice you," I finished softly in realization. Holy shit. Hinata had been right.

Naruto looked up, and his eyes were full of surprise and raw emotion. "Yeah," he said. "You get it... I always thought you were like me," he revealed, then, quietly. "That you just wanted to be acknowledged..."

And before I could reveal that my words were actually Hinata's, he leaned forward and, with surprising softness, he kissed me.

The first thing I did, of course, was freak the fuck out, because I'm full of class.

I stood up straight on the branch and gasped and then nearly fell off. Naruto leaned forward in alarm and grabbed me by the leg to keep me from falling off the tree, and then he was grabbing my leg, and holy shit did that mean something, and -

"Sakura?" Naruto asked slowly, worriedly. "Are you okay?"

"Naruto, I..." I like Sasuke. Don't I? Half of my mind told me I shouldn't have enjoyed Naruto's kiss. The other half told me that I had. Then both halves of my mind reminded me that Sasuke and Naruto belonged to Hinata and Ino anyway. "I... I... I don't even know whether or not I like you like that... I..." And then, because Naruto looked hurt and self conscious, I added, "But that doesn't necessarily mean I don't like you like that! I just... UGH!" I screamed, very coherently, at the skies.

"You're not making any sense," said Naruto, a frown beginning to take over his face.

"I just." I turned away, realizing I needed to breathe, somewhere quiet, somewhere calm. "I need some time to figure some stuff out, okay?" I started to leave.

"But, wait, Sakura!" Naruto's call was almost desperate, and I instinctively turned toward it. "I don't want to make things weird between us," he said, and he looked horribly sad. "Can't we just... go back to the way things were? I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I..." He looked down, his voice small, like a contrite little kid. "I'm sorry."

I went back over what he'd just told me and I realized why he might be so upset. "Don't worry, Naruto." I smiled with effort. "We're still going to be friends, whatever happens."

His head shot up in relief. "Really?" His eyes were big again. "Then... you're not afraid of my secret?"

I thought hard for a moment. "... Is it something you have any control over?" I asked after a while, because I realized I might have just stumbled across a high class piece of information.

He laughed bitterly. "Oh, no," he said. "It's not."

"Then it doesn't matter to me," I decided firmly. He just looked at me like he'd never seen anything like me before.

My work here done, I started to get down from the tree.

"Sakura-chan," he called after me quietly, and there was that chan again.

Disconcerted, harried, I looked up. "Yes?"

His eyes were gentle. "Thanks."

As I lay there in bed that night, staring up at the ceiling, my mind was spinning: with Naruto's kiss and our little brushes of electricity, with Sasuke's piercing looks and the way he helped me to my feet and the hand he put on my shoulder after our fight with the Onikyoudai, with Kakashi and his impenetrable humor.

Kakashi's ghosts, Sasuke's murder, Naruto's secret. At some point or another, I'd asked for information (perhaps too much information) on all of them, and I'd gotten my answers. Just how complicated were the pasts of the three men who had been placed on my team?

And after a night of intense brooding on pasts, there was the future: our first day as a full team guarding Tazuna at his bridge site.