Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 12 – Cleaning House
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 3,3651
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 12 of ? Unbeta'd.

Sakura can't see the future usually but, right now, she's predicting the future and feels that she's got an one hundred percent chance of being correct:

Her future involves a whole lot of dust.

She sneezes. Again.

Ino lobs a tissue her way. "Good thing we're not on a stealth mission," she says playfully, then tosses another tissue.

Catching them only because over the course of the afternoon Sakura has grown used to Ino flinging them her way, Sakura sniffles and then blows her nose. "I've never had a reaction like this before," she complains.

"Have you ever been around this much dust before?" Ino asks, making a face at the pile she's gathered with a broom that must be older than they are. It works though, which is really all they can ask for. Hatake-sensei hadn't made them pack cleaning supplies in their gear after all. "I mean, I haven't been. Dad wouldn't stand for it."

Sakura snorts inelegantly into her tissue. "Nothing even close," she admits. "And when the Academy tested us for allergies nothing ever came up as being a problem."

"So you're probably not allergic to the dust," Ino says. "You're just overwhelmed by the sheer amount. Don't think I haven't been considering the way that Hatake-sensei's mask serves double duty here."

With a laugh, Sakura begins wiping off another table that has seen better days. Hatake-sensei didn't say that they had to clean everything to perfection but since they're staying here for at least a week Sakura feels like it's better to do the whole thing properly.

Even if that means doing so much cleaning.

Luckily, they haven't found any rats.

"How do you think he'd react?" she asks, amused. "If he came back and we were both wearing masks just like he does?"

"Like, looking like his mini-mes?" Ino laughs, wrapping herself around the broom handle as she giggles. "Sakura! We've got to do that now!"

"Even though we're in his-?"

Of course, now that Ino likes the idea, Sakura realizes all the ways that it could go wrong. It might be insensitive and she doesn't want to hurt his feelings.

"I wouldn't suggest we try it while we're in the main house," Ino admits. "I don't know him well enough to know if he'd find that funny or not and a prank is only really funny if even the victim laughs."

Sakura makes a face, thinking of all the things Naruto had done that he'd thought were funny but most of them hadn't ever been entertained by. Sometimes he'd been funny, but most of the time...

No.

(Though Naruto getting Kakashi-sensei with a blackboard eraser is still one of her fondest memories from the original Team 7.)

"Do we have access to black fabric?" Sakura wonders, mulling over it. Sewing isn't a problem-both she and Ino passed that module of Suzume-sensei's kunoichi-only courses with ease. "That's going to be the real difficulty. I can't imagine we're able to get out of here without him."

Ino shakes her head. "We definitely can't leave. Maybe we should just keep an eye out while we clean and, if nothing presents itself to make masks out of, we can do it later?"

"It would probably be funnier, anyway, if we went about town wearing them," Sakura offers, relieved that they won't be dragging up ghosts with a possible misstep in the heart of it all. "Can you imagine peoples' expressions? And a mask is way less weird than what Gai-sensei and Lee-kun wear."

With a shudder, Ino laughs. "I would never wear that!"

"What did you mean that we can't get out of here without Hatake-sensei?" Sakura asks, feeling that the fact that she would never wear that green… tight… thing… of Gai-sensei's ever went unspoken.

Ino pauses, then says, "Can't you feel the wards?"

"No," Sakura says, wondering if she ought to be able to. Wondering if that's just another thing she's lost out on knowing because she was born into a civilian family. "I don't feel anything. It's quiet here, but no quieter than it would be on any other large estate with few visitors?"

Ino blinks, stopping mid-reach from where she was reaching for the dustpan. "Really?" she asks, sounding intrigued.

"Yes, really," Sakura says, sounding a bit nettled.

"I wonder why," Ino muses, shrugging her shoulders as she gets back to work. "Do you think Hatake-sensei would be able to answer a question like that?"

"You don't know why I can't either?" she says, suddenly hopeful that this isn't something she's behind on.

With a shake of her head, Ino purses her lips for a moment. "No," she says finally. "I've never learned anything really about wards as powerful as these ones. Dad doesn't have much to do with physical wards, you know? We're all about the mental ones."

"Oh."

They're quiet for a bit, after that, while they work hard on turning the room they've claimed as their bedroom (despite it not holding any beds at all) for the week into a properly clean sort of room. Neither of them had wanted to see what might be living in mattresses that had been left untouched for years on end.

The floor and their sleeping bags would suit them just fine.

Outside, the rain had ended and they had all the windows open letting the house air out.

"When do you think Hatake-sensei will be back, anyway?" Ino asks abruptly, once the room is so clean the floors sparkle with a shine they haven't had in-well, probably longer than they've been alive.

Being here makes Sakura feel very young.

"I don't know," Sakura says, wiping her hands on her shirt. "I mean, he didn't give us much warning that he was going out, did he? Just that he'd be back."

"It's hard for us to get in trouble cleaning," Ino admits. "So that's probably why he felt comfortable enough to leave us here alone. I hope he's back soon though. It's weird to have a mission like this without our sensei just up and disappearing on us."

"Maybe he just wants some time alone," Sakura suggests. "Since this is where..."

Ino sighs. "Yeah, probably." She's quiet for a moment. "Do you want to clean another room or should we see what we can do for supper first?"

Sakura weighs those two options. They've already cleaned the living room and a bathroom and now they've finished their room and, honestly, she's tired of cleaning. And yet... "Let's clean a room for Hatake-sensei," she suggests, even though she's hungry, "that way he won't have to do it himself when he gets back."

The most difficult part about picking a room out for Hatake-sensei is the argument over which room to pick. Sakura favours the one with the double doors, while Ino favours the one with the wall of windows arguing that sure, they're covered in grim now but surely, surely once they're clean they'll look amazing and it's not like privacy's an issue given where they are.

Ino wins that argument.

Truthfully, Sakura doesn't argue too hard against it since Ino's back to herself (or lying so well that Sakura cannot tell the difference) and that's her favourite part of this mission so far. Ino is relaxed and happy for the first time in days.

Sakura treasures that even as they scrub a decade plus of grim off a wall of windows, letting the pale early evening sunlight stream into the room, which motivates them further as they peel dust up off the floor.

(It's disgusting.)

But it looks great when it's cleaned.

They don't dare unpack Hatake-sensei's pack or lay out his sleeping bag, but they drag both into the room and make sure to leave a lantern for him to read by, should he wish to.

(Though they both roll their eyes at what he might read.)

Hatake-sensei doesn't come back until they've migrated to the kitchen, where working over a field stove, they've managed to make a passable soup to go with their ration bars.

"Good work," he says approvingly as he takes in their progress on the house and Sakura flushes with pleasure to the roots of her hair.

As they sit down to eat, Ino breaks her ration bar into four exactly even pieces, before she asks, "Hatake-sensei," she says, "Sakura and I were wondering why I can feel the jutsu wards but Sakura can't. Do you know why that would be?"

Candlelight makes it hard to read Hatake-sensei's expression—and he's a master at keeping his feelings to himself too—but Sakura thinks that, maybe, just maybe, he's relieved that the question isn't anything more personal.

(Like where he'd been. She won't ask that, no matter how much she wants to know.)

"You can sense the wards?" he asks interestedly. "How so? Is it like when you tried to reach out with your bloodline?"

Ino looks startled. "No," she says. "It's different. That's me reaching but this is just… like… a humming? Almost like a song that I've only remembered the melody too but the words elude me?"

"That sounds kind of irritating," Sakura says, when Hatake-sensei doesn't answer right away. Put the way Ino has, Sakura doesn't really feel quite so left out. She hates it when she gets songs stuck in her head from the radio that she can't... quite... remember all the words to.

Ino giggles. "It's not that bad," she says. "It's not something that bothers me? It kind of fades into the background when I'm not thinking about it?"

"I guess that wouldn't be so bad," Sakura concedes. "What do you think it is, Hatake-sensei?"

Sakura gets the impression that Hatake-sensei is smiling. "Well," he says, "we'll have to do a few more tests to confirm it but evidence strongly suggests that you'll need to be trained as a sensor nin, Ino."

"What?!" Ino says. "But those aren't that common! And my bloodline-"

"Lends itself to just a skill set, given that you're already well primed on paying attention and noticing changes that other people won't. Most sensor types don't seriously start training until they reach Chuunin so," he says, interrupting her smoothly. "You can take this as something that's special about just you, not your family."

Ino falls silent then and Sakura wrestles with a terrible wave of jealousy that there's something else that's unique and special and different about Ino and she's still just... herself. Ordinary, boring Sakura.

"What exactly is a sensor nin?" Sakura asks, hating to ask when her feelings are so muddled up but also dreadfully curious. Besides, she reminds herself, if it impact's Ino's training then it will matter to her too.

Hatake-sensei smiles (she can tell by the way his eye curves) as he looks at her. "You're aware of the basic classifications of ninja, right?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "Not the ranks. What are they?"

Feeling a bit like she's been tossed into a pop quiz, Sakura takes her time to think. Classification doesn't refer to rank though, of course, that is just another way to classify ninja. "You mean like combat-types, tracker-types, and espionage-types, right? Tsunade-shishou wants to make medic-type another main class of ninja."

"Very good," he says approvingly. "Those are the three basic umbrellas that shinobi are usually classed under, though I daresay there'll be four types eventually. Once you get into those classes, there's sub-classes of each group. For instance, I'm a combat-type and my subclass would be ninjutsu-type."

"Oh." She thinks about that, noting that Ino doesn't look surprised though she listened intently. "What kind of types would that make us, Hatake-sensei?"

He leans back. "What do you think?"

And it's really in the way he says it, she realizes, that makes him so much easier to talk to and learn from than Kakashi-sensei had been. Hatake-sensei means it as a challenge, something she's meant to rise up to meet. He wants her to succeed and if she misses the mark he'll correct her without making her feel stupid.

Kakashi-sensei would've made the same question make her feel small and dumb for not knowing it right off the bat.

For a moment Sakura quietly lets this revelation re-write bits and pieces of her past where she'd felt like she'd done something wrong by not knowing everything Kakashi-sensei had talked about. This feels so much better.

(Not for the first time does she wish that Hatake-sensei could stay forever and that's terrible.)

"I don't think that Genin teams are usually classed into the sub-groups," Sakura says thoughtfully. "I think that the original Team 7 was meant to be a combat-type and, if training took us down the paths to being a genjutsu-type or ninjutsu-type or taijutsu-type," like Lee and Gai-sensei must be, no doubt about it, now that she thinks about the matter, "then that would be all well and good."

He nods. "And what would you class Ino's old team as?"

That's actually easier to figure out. Team 7 had always felt like a mess of unfocused skills, uneven drive, and uncertain footing. That they could fight was their strongest point-and it wasn't even that they had fought particularly well.

Ino's team, on the other hand...

"Espionage-type," she says. "With Chouji as their hard hitter while Ino and Shikamaru did the heavy lifting when it came to finding information out."

Ino grins at her and Sakura beams back, knowing she got it right.

"Correct on all parts," Hatake-sensei says. "Well done."

He allows them to chatter for a bit longer before shooing them off to get cleaned up (as well as they can when there's water but it's all cold) and does the dishes himself. It's a small chore, especially compared to all of the work his girls had done in cleaning up, so he's glad to do it.

Especially since it's a simple, monotonous task that helps shake off the unease he feels now that they're here, with no way to easily back out.

He's so tired. It's not the kind of tired that sleeping will help (and, indeed, he's braced for nightmares when he does go to catch a few hours rest) especially not after he'd gone and visited his mother's grave that afternoon.

His mother hadn't been a shinobi and so her body had been buried on the estate, in a garden seething with ivy and daffodils. The girls had spent an afternoon clearing accumulated gunk from a house. He'd spent it cleaning a grave marker. If the him that belonged in this time had visited-well... it hadn't been recently.

That doesn't surprise Kakashi. After all, he rarely visited in his own time. In this, the two of them seem to be of the same mind.

Hatake Yua was barely a memory. He can recall a warm smile, a soft voice, and lilacs have always left him a bit nostalgic, but he doesn't really remember his mother at all. Coming to her grave when it's in the heart of where everything in his world went wrong (for the first time) is too hard.

I'm probably a disappointing son, he thinks wryly. He'll never know for sure since he's the last Hatake and his mother's side of the family had all died during Kyuubi's attack on the village. Not that they wanted anything to do with the White Fang's son before that.

"Hatake-sensei?" It's Ino, standing in the doorway.

He realizes that he's been staring blankly down at the bowl he's been supposedly washing for the last little bit. Wonderful. Just what he hadn't wanted to do. "What is it, Ino?"

"Are you alright?" she asks, brash and direct and painfully kind.

Kakashi wishes that she wouldn't while appreciating it at the same time. He thinks that it's this side of Ino that first stole Sakura's heart away in friendship. Always one to directly address a problem and fix it, never one to let it linger unless it's beyond her ability to fix.

"I'm fine," he says gently, rinsing out the bowl and setting it to dry on the rack before turning to give her his full attention. "What is it?"

He's not fine (he's a liar; he's a shinobi) but he's made due in worse circumstances. He's fine.

(They haven't even gotten to the main house yet. That's tomorrow. He dreads it.)

"If you're sure," Ino says hesitantly.

"Just old memories," he says, unwilling to say much more but also not wanting to leave her feeling guilty about his moods. "I haven't been here in a good while."

She nods solemnly.

Kakashi is usually glad he's not stuck dealing with oblivious teens but sometimes he wishes they paid a little less attention.

"You should get some rest," he urges. "It'll be an early day tomorrow and you and Sakura worked hard today."

"Hatake-sensei," Ino says, "is there anything you can teach Sakura that you can't teach me?"

"… I'm sorry?"

Ino casts a look back behind her, presumably checking to see if Sakura has snuck up on her, before she looks back at him. "It's just… if you train me as a sensor, Sakura can't follow me there, can she?"

"It's unlikely," Kakashi allows. Sensors are rare. The Yamanaka Clan produces a lot of them, likely due to their bloodline's influence, but outside of that clan… they're one of the rarer sub-types.

"If she can also learn, that's great," Ino says earnestly. "But if she can't learn then… I think there should be something you teach her that I can't learn."

"Ino, why?" he asks, feeling a headache coming on. "No, never mind, I understand."

Sakura's self-esteem was still terrible and she'd be terrified that Ino would out-strip her and leave her behind.

"I'll think of something," he promises.

Ino flashes him a relieved smile. "Thank you, Hatake-sensei."

"Now go to bed," he says. "Go on. I'll see you in the morning."

She beams at him and then darts back down the hallway. He leans back against the counter, stripping the gloves that he'd used to wash the dishes in off his hands. And sighs.

He'll think of something but not tonight.

Kakashi finishes tidying up the kitchen and then douses the candles. On his way to the room the girls said they'd cleaned for him, he pauses outside their door, listening just long enough to make sure they were both in there and neither was particularly upset, before he keeps going.

He's not entirely sure what his room used to be. Most of this house was meant for servants and, he thinks, guests that were not welcome to stay at the main house, but Kakashi was far too young to really remember.

As he steps into the room, his throat tightens unexpectedly at the sight of the wide, clear wall of windows, the lit lantern on a low table, his things neatly waiting for him. At each end of the windowed wall, is a small table with a vase full of fresh-cut flowers.

One obviously has been done by someone who has studied ikebana while the other is sloppier but no less heartfelt.

He wonders where they found the vases. He wonders why they didn't say anything about it at supper.

"What am I going to do with the two of them?" Even to his own ears it sounds fond.

(He wonders what he did to deserve this.)

It's very dark in the room with no lights anywhere around them.

Sakura doesn't think she's ever been anywhere so dark before in her life—not when she was inside the village.

"Ino?" she says, since she can tell from the sound of Ino's breathing that she's not asleep yet.

"Yes?"

"Are you mad that we're on this mission because of your transferring teams?"

Somehow, with the darkness pressing down on her, it's easier to ask this question. Sakura isn't sure she wants the answer but it's nagged and nagged and nagged at her until the only thing she can do is ask. She holds her breath and waits.

"A little," Ino admits, with a rustle of blankets. "Though not at Hatake-sensei or you. He didn't have to tell us why we were here and you didn't do anything wrong. You let me decide. You gave me a choice, a trial, a chance."

Sakura blinks hard, more relieved than she can say at that.

"I'm mad," Ino says, "but I'm mad at all the people who don't think I know my own mind. Daddy approved of it and Daddy would never have approved it if I hadn't been absolutely, positively determined to do this."

Sakura hesitates, then asks, "Do you miss them?"

There's another rustle of blankets and then Sakura breathes out an oof as Ino rolls over in her sleeping bag right on top of her.

"Yes," Ino says. "I miss them. They've been my friends since we were all in diapers."

Sakura doesn't mention how they never really seemed like friends at school, except around the edges if you squinted, because she's learned that how things were in school wasn't how things really are.

"I want my friends back," Ino says fiercely. "I want to shout at them and nag at them and laugh with them when we go out to eat. I want to debate ethics with Chouji and try to out think Shikamaru and kick both their asses in training. I want my friends back.

"But, Sakura, I choose you. You're my team." Ino huffs and then rolls off of her. "So stop being stupid."

Sakura takes a few long, shuddery moments to just breathe, trying in vain the blink back the tears that her traitorous eyes insist on leaking.

"I love you too, Pig."

"Shut up, Forehead."

Sakura falls asleep smiling and, if her pillow is a little damp… well, it'll be dry by morning.