Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 3 – Twice Shy
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 3021
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 3 of ? Unbeta'd.
Kakashi isn't sure why he's been moved to the hospital, though he knows they've taken blood and have run a couple of scans on his brain in the ANBU compound already. He supposes he should be grateful they left him his clothing and didn't insist he get into a hospital gown or anything like that.
Tsunade-sama is studying a clipboard with medical jargon on it and making notes. Kakashi stares out the tiny window and ponders the various ways he could make his escape.
Of course, there's the problem that even if he gets out of the hospital without Tsunade-sama noticing, he has no idea where he can go. If everyone in this strange world believes he's the one out of sync, things are naturally going to be different.
He's not even sure where he lives in this world. Back home, he lives on the ANBU compound, like all the other full-time ANBU without families who might complain about their lack of presence. Kakashi squashes the hurt that comes at the thought of families with ease. He's been doing it for years, after all.
It would be nice, however, if he could go to the stone. Tell his family about the predicament he's found himself in. See if they have any advice, even though he cannot hear them even if they do. He finds the ritual of it comforting.
A glance at Tsunade-sama tells him that he's going to have to wait. Haruno should be here any minute now—she's not late yet, but time is getting close, and while he's the last person to criticize anyone for being late for anything but a life or death situation, he doubts that the Hokage's protégé would do something that careless.
Kakashi tries to decide how he feels about having a Genin of his own.
He's pretty sure it's a dreadful idea. He can't even keep a plant alive in his cramped room in the ANBU compound, though Gai keeps trying to help him. How is he supposed to look after a Genin?
Especially, he thinks, with a pang for Rin, a medically inclined Genin who has a teacher of her own already for her field. She doesn't need him.
It's unfortunate, he thinks, that Tsunade-sama is determined to try and trigger his memory. Haruno could go her way and he would be quite happy to rejoin the ranks of ANBU and if his memory came back… well, good for it, but he wasn't aware that he was missing anything now and so it didn't really matter as far as he was concerned.
A knock on the door and the feel of an unfamiliar chakra presence outside it, got his attention. "Come in, Sakura," Tsunade-sama says without looking up from her clipboard. "You're on time, good."
The door opens and the pink-haired girl from the photos steps in. Kakashi studies her covertly as she shuts the door and thinks that the photos didn't do her justice. Her hair was not nearly as bright in them as it was in real life and her eyes are greener. They flicker over him with a myriad of emotions before settling into carefully closed off neutrality.
"Tsunade-shishou," the girl says respectfully.
Kakashi wonders how bad a teacher he must be that she does not look his way even once with a smidgen of gladness. Somehow, he feels that he's been vindicated. Hasn't he been failing teams relentlessly, harshly with the deliberate attempt to get out of teaching?
It's weird to feel uncertain about how to react when he can tell that he clearly has lived up to his estimation of his own abilities as a teacher.
"Sakura," Tsunade-sama says, "while I've assigned you to Hatake Kakashi, you're to report to me for training every day—the exact times will be worked out once you and your sensei have figured out a routine."
He can't see Haruno's face and her back is straight and unreadable. Kakashi is left to imagine her expression as she bows her head and agrees.
"Right," Tsunade-sama says as she hands Sakura a set of keys, "Hatake, you're free to leave the hospital. Sakura knows where your apartment is, she'll show it to you. You both know the parameters of the mission."
"Tsunade-shishou," Sakura says, "will we be sent on other missions while-?"
"Give it a few days in village and I'll review the idea," Tsunade-sama says briskly but with a bit of a smile for the girl. She clearly likes her protégé, Kakashi thinks, and wonders if he'd done the same. "Any further questions?"
He shakes his head as Haruno murmurs a negative. Tsunade-sama rests one hand on Haruno's shoulder for a moment before pulling away. "I've got other duties. I'll expect to see you tomorrow, Sakura. Don't be late."
"I'm never late," Haruno says indignantly, which makes Tsunade-sama laugh as she leaves the room.
Awkward silence falls almost immediately. He doesn't know about Haruno but Kakashi is back to calculating ways of escape, no matter how nonsensical it might be to dream of. He stares out the window, figuring it's his best bet, and wonders if Tsunade-sama has placed teleportation and transportation jutsu wards around the hospital.
Probably a safe thing to believe, he decides, a bit wary of trying when everything is so out of sync.
Haruno sighs.
He turns to look at her as she visibly steels herself. What has she been told about his situation? He curses himself for not having thought to ask previous to this.
"Kakashi-sensei," she says, "come on, I'll show you where you live."
Then she turns and heads for the door of the room. That's it. As far as omens go, it hardly seems like a good one.
Kakashi stares after her for a moment and then, slowly, gets up to follow.
Sakura resists the urge to run. Barely.
It was all very well for her to talk with Ino about how she'll treat Kakashi-sensei. It's turning out to be an entirely different thing for her to figure out how she wants to be treated by him and how she wants to treat him now that she's actually forced to deal with him.
It's really, really unfair, she thinks, that he doesn't remember anything.
"What year is it, according to your memories?" she asks without looking at him as she makes her way down the halls of the hospital.
He tells her and she's glad she's in front of him because Sakura's a pretty poor liar as it is and she can't stop the grimace from passing her face.
God, he hasn't even lived through the Uchiha Massacre yet.
What is she supposed to tell him?
Is this a test? she wonders. Does Tsunade-shishou want to find out how she can deal with a situation like this? Sakura has no intention of failing any test set by her new sensei but it would be nice to know for sure.
Sakura doesn't know what to say to him so she's silent as they walk, taking to the rooftops as soon as they get out of the hospital, she leads him to his apartment. She's only been here twice and both times were because he had been more than four hours late to training and she was sick of waiting.
This time, it's weird to be coming here with Kakashi-sensei.
"This is your building," she says and Kakashi-sensei looks up, evaluating it.
It looks like a pretty normal building to her. Not a super nice apartment, like Hinata says that Kurenai-sensei has, but it's not in a bad area and it's not in a horrible state of disrepair.
"Strong wards," Kakashi-sensei says approvingly, with a nod.
She looks at him and then frowns at the building. She doesn't sense anything from it. Is this another thing she should have been taught and wasn't? Sakura makes note to ask Ino, whose sensei might laze about with her team more often than Ino likes, but who nonetheless makes an effort to train all three of them. Ino also has a Jounin for a father.
Sakura mourns the fact that she can't say the same. It's hard to always be finding things she should know but doesn't because of her background.
"Come on," she says.
They enter the building together. There's no elevator, which Kakashi-sensei notices with another approving nod, and she scowls at as they head for the stairs and head up.
"This one is yours," Sakura says, stopping outside a door that looks much like every other one they've passed.
He studies the door intently, frowning slightly-she can just barely tell through his mask-as he obviously judges his own security. Sakura waits, not sure she should try and rush him when he's busy and this is all new to him.
She does hope he doesn't make them stand out here for a while though.
Eventually he nods and looks at her, clearly waiting for her to open the door, as if he hasn't been the one making her wait all this time.
His keys rattle in her hand. There's several there and she's not sure what they're all for but at least the wait time has given her the chance to figure out which one is meant for his apartment. So she thinks, anyway. When the key slides smoothly into the lock and turns just as easily, a soft click telling her the door is unlocked, Sakura smiles slightly at her triumph.
It's a tiny thing, but it makes her feel better.
She pushes the door open and then, feeling awkward, steps back and gestures for him to go first. It is his home, she tells herself, it makes sense that he'd enter first.
He does.
Kakashi moves slowly and cautiously, like he's entering enemy territory, and Sakura is careful to hang back out of reach, just in case something spooks him. Of course, with a ninja of his ability, being truly out of reach would require her being at least on the other side of the village, but Tsunade-shishou would not accept that as an excuse so she stays put, just inside the door, which she shuts behind her.
Watching him explore his own place, Sakura wonders what he thinks. It's the plainest apartment she's ever been in. All the furniture is practical and utilitarian and, well, boring. She trails behind him as he enters the kitchen and starts looking through drawers.
He stares down into a drawer, then looks at her. "I cook?"
Sakura shrugs, a bit surprised. Kakashi never struck her as the sort. Clearly, he'd never struck himself as the sort. "That's news to me."
He frowns and shuts the drawer and moves on. Watching him explore the bathroom is more interesting than she would ever have guessed. He studies every bottle, every item intensely, and seems to get more information from them than she does. When she looks at the same things, she sees shampoo and conditioner (Kakashi-sensei conditions! She'll have to tell Ino) and things like deodorant that everyone has.
When he treats these things like they might go off in his face, she wonders just how many things he's got trapped in his apartment and makes note not to touch anything. Just in case.
His bedroom, she lets him explore on his own. It's beyond awkward to think of going in there with him and he says nothing when she hangs behind and wanders back to the living room and sits, gingerly, on the couch after checking it for traps. She doesn't find any traps but does find a few kunai stuck under the cushions and a garrote wire tucked inside the cushion, just where the zipper is.
Sakura leaves them where she finds them and wonders if she'll ever be as paranoid as he, clearly, is.
Who puts a garrote wire in their couch cushions? Just in case? Who?
And if that's in the couch, just the cushion she's sitting on, how much more is hidden around the room? Sakura eyes the room and tries to guess as she waits for Kakashi-sensei to finish exploring his apartment.
When he comes out, he looks mildly impressed with himself and satisfied. Sakura decides not to ask him about it-if she had to guess, she'd say he was pleased with his own paranoia.
"Haruno," he says, when he sees her sitting on the couch, precisely on one cushion, and not leaning back against it, just in case. "Where is the rest of… the team?"
"Your team," Sakura corrects before she can stop herself. "Team Seven."
He watches her.
"They're gone," she says flatly. "Training."
"And you?"
"Training," she tells him, "without the gone part."
His face twitches, for a moment like he's almost going to laugh, before it clears up again. "Look," he says, "you're supposed to be helping me."
But I don't want to. She glowers at her hands and when she can control the urge to glower at him, she looks back up. "I am helping you," she says. "I brought you here, didn't I? Like Tsunade-shishou said."
"That's called 'following orders'," he points out dryly.
Sakura shrugs a little. "I don't know what you want from me," she says honestly. "I'd rather be training with Tsunade-shishou right now."
He grimaces at her.
She resists the urge to grimace back.
Well, Ino, she thinks, he's never going to believe I was his favourite student now.
It's almost too bad, but her acting skills just wouldn't have been up to it. She never was that great at it in the kunoichi-only classes. Too much of her real feelings always shone through.
Kakashi leans back in his chair and fixes her with an unreadable look. "So I'm that bad of a teacher, huh?"
Sakura hesitates.
Kakashi watches her hesitate and weighs the odds of her telling the truth. He already knows and he suspects that she knows he does, which makes things simpler and a lot more likely that—
"Yeah," Haruno says, her voice flat, her eyes clearly saying she wants to be anywhere but here, "yeah you were."
Vindication would be sweeter if it wasn't for the knowledge that whatever fuck ups future him had done were his to clean up now. Kakashi resents that, more than a little, since from Tsunade-sama's assigning Haruno to him, it's clear he's meant to fix this.
He's never wanted to be a teacher. Ever.
He nods slowly and leans forward to rest his elbows on his legs. "Tell me what I did." It's not a question.
Her eyes narrow at him; she picked up on that.
"What I don't understand," Kakashi says, "is why they gave me—" it's his turn to hesitate, realizing that he's not sure how much Haruno knows about the Kyuubi and about Naruto's peculiar relationship with the village, "—an Uchiha."
Her eyes remain narrowed. Her mouth a thin line. He isn't sure if she can tell he changed his mind at the last moment, about which Genin to ask about, or not. It doesn't really matter.
"Given my history," he says, and her eyes flicker to his covered eye, "the Clan is unlikely to have agreed to that."
"Hokage-sama did what he wanted," she says, her voice tight. Kakashi isn't certain of what has made her tense up—perhaps she's had a bad encounter with the police force? Well, she wouldn't be the first Genin to have that happen to… She continues with, "I was unaware clans had any say in what teams their children were placed on."
"No, you wouldn't. You're a first generation ninja, aren't you?"
"Yes," she says defiantly.
He nods slowly. "All parents are informed of their children's teammates at graduation. Shinobi Clans have their legal loopholes to force a team change if they do not agree. Balancing each team of Genin is a tricky act."
Haruno looks like she's swallowed a lemon. "Civilian parents do not have the same loopholes, do they?"
"They've one," he tells her.
"Pull their kid from the school, right?"
"Yes."
She nods like that makes sense to her. He wonders if she'd fought with her parents over her team assignment or if her parents hadn't known. If they'd come to Konoha after… after the attack, which was possible, even with a baby, then no one would have been likely to enlighten them.
"So why did I get placed with an Uchiha?" Kakashi can make his own guesses about why he was given Uzumaki. His sensei's child. And Haruno as a civilian would have been placed on his team as the third because it would cause no fuss amongst the Clans.
Indeed, when they were assigning the teams he expects that they were relieved to have such an easy solution. First generation shinobi rarely, if ever, raised a fuss about their team assignments. They were too busy working their asses off to make sure they could make the cut, since it was an uphill climb against their contemporaries with Clan backing.
Haruno's face tightens and she stands. "I want to show you something," she says, "and I think you'll understand why when you see it."
It's not really an invitation. He could demand that she tell him here. Looking at her face, though, Kakashi knows she's already disinclined to like him. That she doesn't trust him. That somewhere along the line the other him, the one that should be here, fucked up monumentally.
Pushing the matter here wouldn't solve anything and might make it harder for him and Haruno to work together for as long as Tsunade-sama feels they should. Kakashi has worked with teammates who don't like him before.
The key is compromise. It costs him nothing to go with her—and it'll allow him to see more of the village and figure out what has changed and what has stayed the same.
He's not opposed to that and stands, slowly, so that she doesn't get jittery around him.
"Lead the way," he tells her.
Surprise flashes across her face—had she expected him to refuse?—and she nods. "Come on."