Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 20 – Options
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,147
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 20 of ? Unbeta'd.
It's somewhere between Hatake-sensei's hand on her head and Ino's question about if he found anything in the Main House that Sakura has a horrified realization.
She's hugging Hatake-sensei.
Sakura yelps, embarrassed beyond words, as she pulls away from him quickly, babbling incoherent apologies, face flaming, wishing she could sink into a hole and die and—
Both Ino and Hatake-sensei are smiling at her. Oh, Ino looks like she's about a heartbeat away from a laugh, and Hatake-sensei's smile is more read in the curve of his eyebrow and line of his shoulders but it's both reassuring and bewildering all the same. She still feels horribly embarrassed but to her confusion and comfort Hatake-sensei ignores all of that like it never happened and instead answers Ino's question instead.
And yet, Sakura doesn't feel ignored. She feels… grateful, honestly, and more than a little loved because they're saying, without saying anything at all, that even if she did maybe over-step with the hug… it's okay. It's not a big deal. It's not even a mistake, really, since Hatake-sensei didn't push her away. It happened and that's… all.
She uses that coolness to smother the flames of embarrassment and listens to Hatake-sensei's answer.
"It really was something like a ghost?" she says, all thoughts of shame blown away once he describes what he'd found in the frigid Main House.
Ino shivers as if she, too, remembers the cold. The kitchen is lit by field lamps, but she looks like all the pigment has been washed out of her, like Ino, herself, is a ghost.
Except Ino would never die with regrets enough to haunt someone or some place so Sakura shoves the macabre thought out of her mind and goes to put a pot of tea on. Tea won't fix it, but it will help. Hatake-sensei doesn't stop her.
"We don't know that it was a ghost," Hatake-sensei says firmly. "Or a monster. Or even an invader."
"It… it is hostile to us though," Sakura offers. "We do know that."
"We do know that," he agrees, then looks at Ino. "Do you have any reason to believe that it went after you specifically?"
Ino thinks about that carefully as Sakura fetches cups from their packs and rinses them. The small, homey task settles Sakura's nerves more than the questioning does.
"I don't think so," Ino says slowly. "I think what happened with my Clan abilities was… collateral damage, if anything. It was trying to get at us physically. When I reached out mentally I think it was just…"
Ino trails off as Sakura sets the tea leaves to steeping. Camomile and lavender aren't her favourite kinds of tea but it's the one she makes, since it seems like it would be the most useful one right now.
"Sakura said earlier that maybe it was like radio interference," Ino says. "Hatake-sensei, I couldn't feel anything when it took me out, though I felt it when it tried to get into our room, so I think… I think I just hit a part of it that just is?"
He nods slowly, thoughtfully. "Like hitting a wall?"
Ino rubs one of her temples, then rubs the other. "Only if that wall is invisible?"
Sakura tries not to, she really does, but a giggle slips out of her.
"Shut up, Forehead!"
"Make me, Ino-pig!"
Hatake-sensei just looks at them. Tired, concerned, and amused all at once.
Sakura sticks her tongue out at Ino and goes to pour the tea, being careful to strain the leaves out, and hands each of them a cup. Ino takes her gratefully (after she sticks her tongue out in retaliation) while Hatake-sensei takes his, then stares at it blankly for a moment, as if he's not quite sure what to do with it.
She wraps her fingers around her own cup and inhales the steam. "What should we do tonight?" she asks.
Sakura hesitates, then, because she really doesn't want to ask the next question but it really does need to be asked: "Hatake-sensei are we going to abort the mission?"
After all, this really wasn't in the mission brief. It was like Wave Country all over again, except no one had told a lie to get them to come.
"That," he says, after a long moment of silence where Sakura stares into her tea and hopes he doesn't hate her for asking it, "is a good question. We'll be remaining here for the night."
Ino's expression is closed, giving no idea of what she's thinking away. Of all of them, she's the one who was the worst injured—though Hatake-sensei does sport a few bandages, he doesn't move like they're anything serious.
Hatake-sensei's sigh is a heavy thing. "And then we'll discuss whether we stay or go."
This time aborting the mission means that Hatake-sensei doesn't get his dogs back. Tazuna-san's dream had been grand and all but this small, important thing to her sensei means more to her. Sakura wonders if that makes her a bad person.
"Finish your tea," he says, "and get some rest. I'll stand guard."
"You're injured, Hatake-sensei," Ino says. "I can be guard. I got some sleep alrea—"
"Ino, you've yet to go three minutes without flinching from the light or rubbing your temples," Hatake-sensei says with a firm sort of gentleness. "You need to rest."
"What about me?" Sakura says, with a bravery she doesn't quite feel, but learning means taking risks and of the three of them, she's the only one not wounded in some way. "I could stand guard. Hatake-sensei, you need your rest too, because if that thing comes back, you're… the strongest. I'm not very good in a fight yet," and she's proud of herself for adding that yet, "but I can scream bloody murder with the best of them, if need be."
From the look Ino gives her, Sakura figures she's lucky Ino can't use her mind speech right now or she'd be in for a biiig lecture.
Sakura pretends she doesn't notice and just waits anxiously for Hatake-sensei's verdict.
"Alright," he says, after a long moment. "Four hours, then wake me. That's a standard watch shift when out in the field, even for ANBU."
Her protest at having to wake him dies unborn. If ANBU can accept four-hour shifts, then she can too.
"It's because ninja are people," he says, to her unasked question about why. "And no one can maintain vigilance all night without getting sloppy. Our brains aren't made to be at that level of alert for much longer than that."
"Yes, Hatake-sensei."
He smiles at her, setting his empty teacup down on the counter. Sakura has no idea when he'd drank it and from Ino's startled noise, neither does she. "Any further questions?"
She shakes her head. "No, Hatake-sensei." Sakura hesitates for a moment and then repeats, "No, I'm good."
"All right," he says, taking her at her word. "Ino, if you're done your tea, get to bed. We'll be in the bedroom you guys cleared. It's more easily defensible. Sakura, if you hear anything out of the ordinary, wake me immediately. Do not go off investigating on your own. Vary your patrol pattern."
Ino, looking tired and wan, just nods.
"Yes, Hatake-sensei," Sakura says obediently. She might have bristled under the restrictions had the situation been better but they're all tired and he's injured and so is Ino and so if he wants to fuss a little, well, she actually finds it rather comforting.
And sweet, but she'd never say that to him.
Sakura goes with them to the bedroom, where the rest of their stuff was. It was lucky they'd left some here because the bulk of their supplies are hidden in the gazebo still. When asked about it, Hatake-sensei just says to leave it all there for now.
Ino doesn't argue and just curls up in a blanket, asleep immediately. Sakura, fussing a little herself, adds her spare blanket over Ino, tucking her in, while Hatake-sensei lays out his things.
"She'll be okay, right?" Sakura asks.
"She says so," Hatake-sensei says. "And, if not, we're in the village. We can get help quickly if we absolutely must."
Sakura just nods. "Hatake-sensei, are you going to be okay?"
His voice gets a little warmer. "I've been injured much worse than this before, Sakura. I'll be fine." Then he nods at the door. "Go start your watch."
It's a dismissal but, somehow, it doesn't feel belittling or like she's in the way. Sakura nods firmly and leaves. Her last glance of them is him double-checking that Ino's condition has remained stable.
That and the way he'd answered her, leaves her feeling oddly protected.
But now I'm the one that has to protect them.
It's a sobering fact, especially as she volunteered and he'd taken her at her word that she could do this. Sakura wraps that fact around herself—Hatake-sensei is not the kind of sensei to easily trust—so that he thinks she can do this means that she can do this and that she will.
She takes a deep breath and goes back to the kitchen, glad that they'd spent enough time in the guest house, first base, to know her way around it like the back of her hands. Once in the kitchen, she splashes icy water on her face, to help her wake up and then quickly does the dishes.
She dims the lanterns' lights, not turning them off entirely, and then heads out to do her job.
After that, the hours slide into each other. The guest house may be smaller than the Main House but that doesn't mean it's small. She's on tenterhooks for every small creak and shift of the building, always wondering if it's something else or just the old building doing what old buildings do.
Her vigilance and how much work it is gives her new appreciation and understanding of Hatake-sensei's explanation. It's exhausting to keep everything in mind, while moving as silently as she knows how, while keeping her chakra muffled and carefully regulated, while listening as hard as she can, while looking as hard as she can, while trying not to freak out about things like an unexpected rustle of branches or the creaking of the eves.
The one good thing about it is that there's no room for her anxiety and fear of failure. Every ounce of her is taken up with doing her very best to protect them.
Because she has to.
Not because it's a job or anything, not like it had been with Tazuna-san, but because they're her team and she loves them. Nothing will get past her unnoticed.
And nothing does.
Four hours go by without anything going wrong aside from her stumbling over an upraised floorboard and nearly faceplanting. She managed to save herself, regaining her balance, and doesn't allow herself to dwell on that incredible embarrassment.
No one is around to notice and no one has heard her and she knows that as well as she can know anything at this stage in her training.
As the night bleeds onwards, Sakura feels like she's slowly erasing the past year of scribbled lines and blobs of paint, leaving her with a new, blank canvas, one that's just waiting for her to fill it in more confidently. She can do this. She's not just Sakura, from the broken Team 7, she's also Sakura, from the new Team 7, and she's stronger for it.
She is.
When she goes to wake Hatake-sensei, at the end of her shift, he wakes before she touches him. Sakura still isn't skilled enough to sneak up on a Jounin-level ninja, especially not one that had just been in ANBU.
But it fills her with a quiet, unshakeable sort of strength to be able to report to him in a low voice that all was clear.
He doesn't say much, neither of them wants to wake Ino up yet, but when he claps her on the shoulder and sends her to bed, she closes her eyes feeling like her newly drawn foundation has gotten a good start.
When she wakes, morning is well begun, with the sun a good bit over the horizon. Ino is still asleep, though when Sakura checks on her, her colour is much better: she looks like a real girl again instead of a ghostly one.
Their packs are over by the door—Hatake-sensei must have fetched them. Sakura doesn't unpack, though she does take the time to fish her hairbrush out of hers and to brush her hair. She'd like to change her clothes, too, but for now she doesn't, just stretches, takes a quick side trip to the bathroom to take care of a few necessities, and then heads for the kitchen.
Hatake-sensei isn't there, but Sakura isn't worried by the lack of his immediate presence. It's clear that he's been here and recently as there's a pot of tea that's still warm to the touch (she helps herself to a cup) and, once she's finished it, pours herself and Ino a cup, then takes them back to their room.
Ino grumbles when Sakura wakes her, but she takes the tea gratefully. They sit next to each other, their knees touching, as Sakura waits for Ino to feel like talking.
"How did watch go?" Ino asks.
"Good," Sakura says, with some pride. "Nothing untoward happened."
She doesn't mention nearly faceplanting. That's a story for later. Possibly much later, if ever. Ino is her biggest supporter but that would still be deeply embarrassing to share.
Ino nods.
"Do you want me to brush your hair?" Sakura asks.
"I'm not an invalid," Ino protests, but she doesn't complain when Sakura fetches the hairbrush and starts untangling Ino's hair anyway. "Ugh. You're so rude."
"Sure am," Sakura says, hugging Ino from behind and then going back to the tangles. "How are you feeling?"
Ino is quiet for a moment. "Better," she says. "Not sure I want to try reaching out with my mind yet though."
"Then don't." After a few strokes of the brush, Sakura asks, "Think you'd be up to food?"
"Is there food made?" Ino wonders, rolling her shoulders out to shake the sleep from them.
Sakura whacks her gently with her free hand. "Stop that!"
Ino rolls her eyes—Sakura can't actually see her do that, but she knows she is; she knows Ino—and gives a huff. "Fiiine."
Taking a moment to stick her tongue out at the back of Ino's head, Sakura laughs. Now that Ino is awake and acting like herself everything that happened last night doesn't seem quite as bad. "And food wasn't made but if Hatake-sensei's making tea then I don't see why we can't make something."
She pauses for a moment.
"Unless you want to subsist on ration bars."
Their shudder is in tandem.
"A fate worse than death," Ino declares. "I'll pass. Finish my hair and we'll go see what our options are."
In short order, they're back in the kitchen. Like her, Ino has foregone changing her clothes, and she grumbles half-heartedly about that as they look over their choices.
"Field oatmeal two days in a row is a bit bleh," Sakura observes, "but it is the quickest thing we've got, other than the ration bars or soup and soup for breakfast is... a no. Oatmeal it is."
She gets that started, with a bit of gloom. It's not that she doesn't like it, though she never eats it at home, it's that it's just so bland…
Ino looks up from where she's rummaging through their food supplies. "It doesn't have to be bleh. I've got raisins and almonds and cinnamon." Her face clouds. "Though maybe that last one might smell too strongly given everything. Thoughts?"
"It can't be worse than all the lemon-scented cleaner we've used here," Sakura says, after a moment of due consideration. Even if most of the cleaner had ostensibly been expired, it had both worked and smelled heavily of lemon. "Also: tasty. Also also: it survived Hatake-sensei's purge of our things so, like, that sounds like we're allowed to use it so long as we're not in an active combat or danger zone."
Holding up the little bag that holds the cinnamon, Ino frowns a little. "Nothing's happened to us here. Just when we went to the Main House. Nothing followed either of us when we fled the Main House either, as far as I'm aware."
"I'll agree with that," Hatake-sensei says, taking in the scene in a glance and if he looks a bit tired, well, at least Sakura is comforted that he got some rest. "And yes, you may use the cinnamon."
"Thanks, Hatake-sensei!" Ino chirps.
His one eye curves into a smile. "I see you're feeling better. How's your head?"
Ino gives pretty much the same answer she'd given to Sakura, then adds, "I was thinking, though, that with your permission I could try mind speaking either you or Sakura and see if that hurts."
"Let me consider that," he says. "Sakura, how are you?"
"I'm good," she said, a little startled to be asked. Sakura pauses, gives it a little more thought and realizes that, yeah, even just emotionally—she's doing really good today, actually. "Great, even."
There's no point in mentioning things like she's tired, wants a bath, or anything. That's just normal mission stuff. It's actually kind of nice to feel a little wrung out in the way that says she's working as a shinobi of Konoha should be.
"How are you, Hatake-sensei?" Ino asks, liberally adding all three of her extras into the pot Sakura is tending. It immediately starts to smell a lot better and Sakura takes a deep breath happily.
"We're making enough for all three of us," Sakura adds, in case he was wondering. She'd never make food for just part of the team.
Even Kakashi-sensei had been firm about that one. All of the team was fed or none of the team was fed. It had been his very first lesson.
Hatake-sensei nods his approval, taking a seat. "Thank you, Sakura."
"Sensei," Ino complains.
"I'm better than I was last night," he concedes. Sakura thinks he might be actually teasing Ino. "My injuries are superficial and the mind-pain that accompanied them is gone entirely. Furthermore, to circle back to your discussion when I interrupted, Ino, you're correct that nothing appears to have followed us out of the Main House."
He looks at the two of them. "Before we move on, I want say this: you both did very good work last night."
Sakura flushes, pleased, while Ino looks a bit doubtful.
"I got hurt and lost my biggest weapon," Ino says evenly.
"You alerted me to the danger, got both yourself and Sakura away from it, and made it back to our rendezvous point," Hatake-sensei corrects. "Yes, you lost access to your Clan abilities and were injured. That will happen. A good job is one that you accomplish the mission goals and get out alive. You did that. Good job."
Ino looks away, so that neither of them can read her expression. Hatake-sensei studies her back before he looks away, turning his gaze to Sakura.
"You facilitated the escape, kept watch over your teammate, and once back here did a watch shift to protect us. Good work, Sakura."
She's pretty sure she's flushed red as a tomato. "Thank you, Hatake-sensei."
They're quiet then, as he doesn't say anything further, and Ino is still thinking whatever she's thinking. Once they've eaten (also mostly silent, aside from a few thank yous) and Ino is doing the dishes, it's a little awkward though she wonders if that's just her.
She doesn't think so, though, since Ino isn't in the mood to chatter.
"Alright," Hatake-sensei says. "Now we have an important decision to make. Do we want to abort this mission or not?" He holds up one hand, when Sakura opens her mouth. "No, think about it first. Then speak."
Sakura shuts her mouth and does as her sensei tells her. She thinks.
She really does want to help Hatake-sensei find his dogs. The training is great and she likes the chance to have both her sensei and Ino all to herself, without anyone else around, but having fun isn't what the mission is about.
It's finding a scroll so that Hatake-sensei can hopefully get his dogs back. She doesn't know how summoning really works or how it's messed up right now, but it's clear that it is. And that it bothers Hatake-sensei deeply enough to be willing to come here, not just by himself, but with her and Ino.
That's huge.
But…
But it's really immaterial to whether they should continue or not. Sakura feels super guilty about that decision but it's true.
When it had come to Wave Country and Tazuna-san's deception, it had mostly been Sasuke-kun's confidence (Naruto's too, she supposes, though she'd still placed Sasuke-kun's opinion over his at the time; she doesn't know what she'd do now) that had convinced her to agree to go ahead with the job.
In retrospect everything about that mission had been way over her head. Kakashi-sensei should never have allowed them to go forward once they'd found out how mis-ranked the job was but then, that hadn't been the last time he'd thrown them into something to see if they could survive either.
Also in retrospect, Sakura wasn't sure they should have done the Chuunin Exams at all. She'd learned a lot by doing them, and maybe that had been his intention, but now that she has a better idea of how much she didn't know, Sakura knows good and well that she hadn't been and still wasn't ready to be a Chuunin. Yet.
But this wasn't Wave Country and this wasn't the Chuunin Exams and she was being asked if she thought she was ready.
Was she?
They didn't know enough about the enemy to be able to make an educated guess at the level of danger. It could be bad. A-rank levels of bad, even, and she pretended she didn't know there was a rank of bad above that.
On the other hand, Hatake-sensei had mentioned that if, at any time, they needed more serious medical attention than what the three of them knew… well. Konoha wasn't very far away.
Except…
She frowned.
That was a problem. In fact, that was a big enough problem that she kept frowning as she turned it over and over in her head.
"I think," Sakura says, "I think I want to stay, except, Hatake-sensei, if you're taken out of commission is there a way for us to get through the estate's wards if you're unconscious or… dead?"
She hates saying it. She hates thinking of it. Since they're dealing with a complete unknown, though, it needs to be asked. If first base hadn't been safe last night, then she and Ino wouldn't have been able to leave without him.
They'd have been trapped in a cage that whatever it was that lived here knew far better than they did.
"I want to test my abilities before deciding if we should stay," Ino says, into the silence that Sakura's question left. "But Sakura's right, her question is more important than my request. Can we get out if we're not with you, Hatake-sensei?"
Sakura looks at Ino, who just shrugs a little. It's not quite the same question Sakura had asked.
He is so very proud of them.
Kakashi doesn't beam at them, as it would be deeply unsettling for all involved, especially given the seriousness that he wants them to feel about this decision. Turning back from a job or carrying on with one when it's changed far beyond the scope of the original briefing is not something that should be taken lightly.
Ninja can't give up easily.
But, also, ninja shouldn't throw their lives away unless it is a requirement that the mission be done no matter what.
His Genin team shouldn't be facing missions like that for years. He still wants them to think about this and they are.
And they're asking the right questions.
"Good questions," he says. "Ino, can you sense the wards today?"
Ino frowns a little, her eyes going distant. "Yes, Hatake-sensei. Though I get the sense that they're… agitated about something?"
"That's probably because I'm not happy with the fact that this has happened," he admits. Both of the girls already know that, since they just nod, and he chooses not to elaborate on all this reasons for his displeasure.
"But what does that have to do with-" Sakura cuts herself off, looking a little frustrated as she tries to find the words to finish that sentence.
He spares her the trouble.
"The wards here are family wards," he says. "That means that there's only three ways to get through them."
All right. There's more than three ways. But they're Genin and just don't have the education, yet, to be able to use the more complicated options.
"The first of those is to be blood-related. This is the simplest option as that's what these wards were designed to accommodated. The good part of this is, if I'm alive but unconscious or too badly wounded to be coherent, it won't matter. If you can get me to one of the gates, we can all get out. I don't need to do anything except be alive to exit this place."
Entering it had taken a little more effort but only because the wards had sensed his hesitance to pass them.
"Now, if I'm dead," Sakura shudders but Ino just watches him with fathomless eyes, "or if you can't get me to the gate, it gets a little more complicated. Blood adoption does work but, needless to say, we will not be doing that."
"What's blo—" Sakura starts.
Ino interrupts, "It's a ritual that makes a person a member of the family as if they always had been. You wouldn't be Haruno Sakura, adopted into the Hatake Clan. You'd be Hatake Sakura, from your DNA up, completely re-written to be part of this Clan."
Sakura scowls. "So if you were Hatake Ino, then—"
"I wouldn't have my Clan abilities at all," Ino agrees. "For all intents and purposes, Yamanaka Ino would never have existed. We wouldn't look the same, we wouldn't be the same. Blood adoption is usually used on infants and even then it's… it's not really done often."
With a shudder, Sakura looks to him for confirmation.
He nods. "Ino's correct. As I said, we will not be doing that." Kakashi had only mentioned it at all because he suspected that Ino knew enough about family and what that meant to ninja to be able to intuit that a blood adoption might work. "I'm far too young to have children as old as you two are."
Sakura laughs, a little unevenly, but Ino doesn't. He hadn't expected her to. Blood adoption has been used to eradicate Clans in the past. It was one of the reasons Uchiha Sasuke hadn't been taken in by anyone. A few civilian families had offered. The ninja clans had known better.
The civilians had been turned down. No one wanted even the breath of possibility of a family deciding it would be better to literally erase the last of the (non-murderously insane) Uchiha.
For his own good, of course. Kakashi had checked the records out of morbid curiosity after Sakura had told him of the massacre.
Ino is her father's only child. His heir.
"Another option and one that I'm not sure you two have the chakra to pull it off, is sheer brute forcing your way out through the wards. This isn't an elegant solution. It's not pretty, it's not easy, it's very noticeable, both inside and outside of the wards. Sakura, this is mostly something you need to keep in mind as a last resort for you. If both Ino and I are dead or so incapacitated that we cannot be brought to the gate, then you will have to try. I'll show you how to best form your chakra to escape from wards like these."
"Even if we choose to put a stop to this mission?" she asks hesitantly, clearly a bit frightened.
"Even if," he says. "It's good for you to know."
"What's the option for me, then?" Ino says. "If you're dead or if you and Sakura are and I'm not?"
Sakura looks deeply uncomfortable—probably at how both he and Ino are casually talking about death, their deaths, but there's nothing casual about it. It must be discussed now so that they don't have to worry about it later.
"I'll be showing you Sakura's method too, as a fall back," he says, "but that method only works to get one of you out. To get both of you out, I'm going to teach you how to resonate with the wards as if you are a Hatake. Specifically, as if you were me."
Now both of the girls are frowning at him.
"As if I'm you?" Ino repeats.
"Why can't I learn that?" Sakura asks.
"Because, right now, you don't have the ability to sense the wards," Kakashi says, not mincing words even though he knows they'll hurt. "Ino's method to get both of you out will be taking advantage of her sensor abilities."
Sakura looks like she's swallowed a live fish and doesn't say anything.
Ino, on the other hand, radiates unease now. "Even though I don't have any training in being a sensor?"
He wishes he knew more about what she did know with her Clan abilities and her potential specifically with them. When they get out of here, he'll have to talk to Inoichi. For now, though, he can't show anything but confidence.
"You know how to recognize my mind from Sakura's, right?" he asks patiently.
"Yes," she says, like that's a stupid question. "I've been doing that for years."
"Then you'll be able to do this," he says firmly. "You'll basically be pretending to be me as far as the wards are concerned. If you can have my blood on you while you do so, even better."
Sakura looks horrified.
"I think I see where you're going with this," Ino says thoughtfully. "Can I have a scrap from one of your bandages last night? There's dried blood on them, right?"
He is so very proud of them.
"Yes, there is, good thinking. So those are the options for getting out of here in even the worst-case scenarios. Do you want time to think about them?" He keeps his voice very neutral. He wants them to think about this.
But he wants them to decide that on their own.
"Ino, in the meantime, do you want to try reaching out to Sakura or I with your mind?"