Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 27 – Her Story
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,119
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 27 of ? Unbeta'd.
Time, Kakashi is finding, is a very flexible thing if he looks at it the right way.
Three days done and four of the original week to go. I think this mission is going to take us more than was originally planned, Kakashi muses as the sun climbs over the horizon. Training is going to take priority for the next few days before we can return to our search. I could easily get four days of training out of them before we even started the search. Both girls need the practice with their chakra blades. Ino's still working on her shell. Sakura's decided to change the focus of her training…
Which isn't a bad thing. Not at all. It just means that she's going to be starting from scratch again in a lot of ways and he thinks that she might appreciate getting the start of a foundation laid down before they start training where they can be interrupted.
If this determination of hers lasts then good. Protecting your comrades isn't the worst hook I've heard for making a life choice. If it doesn't, that's also fine. Like I told her, Genin is the time you should experiment.
He glances up at the sky and decides that it's almost time to wake them. The night had passed quietly, both girls sleeping heavily through it, and nothing untoward having occurred. It had been quiet in the guest house but not so quiet that he'd been suspicious. He'd decided they were safe enough that even he'd gotten a few hours of sleep.
Well, no worries, except for supplies. We didn't bring enough for much longer than ten days. On the other hand, slipping back into Konoha long enough to buy groceries shouldn't be a problem even if we wind up doing it more than once. None of their peers live in this area of town and I'm pretty sure the grocers should still be there. It was there when I still lived here, and it was there before I was swapped into this time. We can't live off the land here; it's not like it would be out between villages. I'll see what the girls think. I could even spin that into lessons on disguise for them; I don't believe they have much training in that, beyond what the Academy teaches.
He thinks they might enjoy the 'field trip' so long as it's just that and not the end of the mission—that much they've made clear to him that they don't want.
And I think it's good for the whole team to extend this a bit longer. If we do so, I think they'll leave with a good sense of accomplishment—which is not a bad thing, not when this started off as a make-shift mission.
And, too, the actual possibility of a threat had oddly enough settled him so that he isn't feeling so lost in his own head about being back here and digging up old memories.
Instead we're just digging up new threats.
It probably says something about him that he's more comfortable with that.
Too much training. That's what it is.
He doesn't go into the room to wake them, just uses a quick jutsu to make an appallingly loud noise right outside the door. Then he listens to them shriek and flail while smiling.
"Ten minutes then meet me at the training ground," he says cheerfully.
Kakashi doesn't wait around, just heads straight to the training ground. The cool, early morning air wraps around him comfortingly.
Today is going to be an exercise in juggling two very different points of view and hoping neither snap at me.
He hasn't gotten much sleep—that's not unusual—and he thinks, he hopes, he's figured out a way to get through this mess. Hopefully. He's tired, not due to lack of sleep, but due to the drama.
Put it aside for now.
He does.
He's a heartless jerk—he hears Ino say this and Sakura agree—because those ten minutes also involve them having to run a circuit around the perimeter.
They arrive at the training ground thoroughly disheveled and looking deeply put out by their early morning run, sans a proper chance to wake up or eat a breakfast. (They ate ration bars on the run; he'd checked in on them without them knowing.)
Kakashi studies them. Sakura is looking determined and, when she glances at Ino, a little confused. Ino is turned inwards, though he hears her blame it on thoughts of her shell when Sakura asks in a low voice.
The flinty look in Ino's eyes when she looks at him, though, tells him that she's still expecting him to fix it.
Or, the look says, she'll do it herself.
He believes her.
Kakashi claps his hands together. "Alright," he says briskly, "stretches first and then we're going to practice your chakra blades. Get to it."
And after the chakra blades, we'll do physical training but nothing that pits them against each other. Not today. Another round of follow the leader, I think, then a quiz and that should take us up to lunch and we'll do individual training after that…
Somewhat to his own bemusement (and relief) the morning goes well: both girls are gaining proficiency with their chakra blades. Sakura is still better at forming hers but Ino's greater chakra stores mean she can practice longer and, should she need to use it, she has the leeway that Sakura doesn't, to take a little more time to cut through something.
It evens out.
Once he's judged that the chakra drain is enough for Sakura, he has them dissipate their blades. Then, after eyeing the both of them for a long moment, he takes them on another run of follow the leader. It's not just to wear them out, though there is the added bonus of doing so.
It's also to build their stamina and strength and get them used to reacting on a moment's notice to what's going on around them.
Sakura knows something is going on.
Ino is in a mood and Hatake-sensei is being careful, so very careful, with every word he says, even as he walks them through training.
I guess their talk didn't go so well? she guesses, rather glumly, even as some part of her notices that they're doing better at answering his questions than they had yesterday. (Of course, it would have been hard to get worse at answering his questions, so… yeah, she's glad they hadn't managed that feat of failure.)
She doesn't think it has anything to do with her. Ino had been okay when they'd woken up and while she'd been moody, she hadn't taken it out on Sakura. (Her poor ration bar, on the other hand, well…)
And Hatake-sensei picking his words means that maybe he thinks he misspoke last night…
Lunch is a quiet affair punctuated mostly by the radio.
Once they're back at the training ground, Ino takes a seat under the same tree she'd used yesterday and in short order is gone, back in the depths of her mind.
Hatake-sensei sighs a little.
"Is everything okay?" Sakura asks, looking up at him.
"It will be," he says, which is somehow both reassuring and also really not. He stares at Ino's still form for a long moment.
"Did you and Ino have a…," she trails off, not sure how to finish that sentence. Fight? Argument? Difference of opinion? Do sensei have those with their Genin teams? Real ones, not the way Naruto had used to throw a fit and Kakashi-sensei would just be so over it from the beginning.
"Ino and I had an interesting talk last night," Hatake-sensei says. He heads for the training dummies. "Come with me, Sakura."
She does, though she casts a glance behind her at Ino before she hurries after him.
"Is it about… me?" she asks.
Hatake-sensei considers that question thoughtfully. "Mostly," he says, "it's about political perception and personal ability."
Sakura frowns at him as they come to a stop. "What?"
"Ino pointed out a few things that I should have thought of," Hatake-sensei admits.
He looks tired, Sakura thinks, studying him. Was he up all night because of what they talked about?
"About my being her guardian?" Sakura asks. "Does… does she not like the idea? She hasn't said she doesn't but…"
Other than that weird comment about Sakura being her knight in shining armour, Ino hasn't said anything about Sakura's ideas for her new training focus. In its own way, that's a dead giveaway that something is up. She'd known that—she just had been trying not to think about it.
Oh, but I guess I can't do that, Sakura realizes. If I'm protecting her, I need to pay attention to what she says and doesn't say so that if she does something I'm not taken by surprise.
"Ino doesn't want a guardian," Hatake-sensei says.
Sakura stares up at him, feeling a bit like all of her plans and good intentions have been unceremoniously cast into a void. "But—I—"
Feeling a little cold, Sakura glances back at where Ino is, wishing she could talk to her and feeling absolutely, completely rejected. "But why?" she asks. "Does she think I couldn't—that I'm not good enough? That I wouldn't take good enough care of her? Is it because of my attacking you and… and the fact that I could have wound up hurting her?"
Her thoughts spiral from that idea, right into:
"Ino doesn't trust me," Sakura says, feeling and sounding crushed. She feels about two inches tall and near tears. "She doesn't want me to protect her because she doesn't—she doesn't trust me, not the way she'd trusted Shikamaru and Chouji. She'd almost sing it out, 'look after my body', and then—"
"Sakura."
Sakura falls silent, staring up at Hatake-sensei.
Hatake-sensei gentles his voice, just slightly, "Ino wants a team," he says. "She doesn't want a bodyguard or a guardian or a protector. She wants a team. If you're always protecting her, then who gets to protect you? Ino wants a team where you watch each other's backs while fighting your own dragons."
He pauses.
"And winning."
The swirling anxious thoughts of hers come to an abrupt halt. Almost like someone has thrown ice cold water in her face. Sakura shudders, not sure if she aches more from the whiplash or from the shock.
"Ino is fine with you taking a more physical training path," he says, which helps steady her. "But she refuses to, ah, play the damsel to your knight."
And now she understands the comment Ino had made last night and why she'd laughed. Put that way… put that way…
No wonder Ino had laughed.
When has Ino ever been the damsel in distress? Sakura hates that she hadn't thought of that beforehand.
She also hates, with a ferocity that surprises even her, that Ino won't let her do this. Won't let her look after her, won't let her—
"But Hatake-sensei," Sakura says, feeling a little desperate and a lot upset, "I have to, don't you see? What if something happens to Ino? It'll be all my fault! And she's… she's…"
Sakura falters there, not sure how to explain the fact that Ino is her chance to show Naruto, to show Sasuke, to show Kakashi-sensei, her back. She thinks if she says it aloud that it won't make sense. That it's a thought that needs to be protected. It's like…
"I've failed so many times before," Sakura says. "I was never strong enough. I want to be strong enough for this, I want to be able to do this. I want to be the one that protects instead of the one that has to be protected."
Maybe it's irrational that she feels this way, she doesn't know, she just knows that the thought of not being able to makes her feel like she's going to shake apart from the inside out.
"Yesterday was terrible but it was just another terrible in a long line of it," Sakura continues. "I want to end the terrible and make it something better."
Hatake-sensei considers her for a long, long moment. "Sakura," he asks finally, "do you think that those who protected you did so because they thought you were worthless?"
Oh, Sakura hates that question.
"I mean, I was, wasn't I?" she says, looking down. "And now, now I finally get a chance to not be, and you're saying—"
Hatake-sensei interrupts her with: "Do you think that Ino is worthless?"
Sakura recoils. "What?! No! Ino would never, could never be! She's amazing, Hatake-sensei! She knows so much and she's so talented and she's… she's my best friend." Under Hatake-sensei's eyes, she hesitates for a long moment and then also admits, in a small voice, "I don't want anything to happen to her. I don't… I don't want her to ever leave like everyone else did."
"Take a seat," Hatake-sensei says, following his own words and sitting cross-legged in the dirt and grass. She does. "Sakura, if you don't want her to leave, don't you see that treating her like she's made of glass won't help?"
"I don't think she's made of glass," Sakura protests. "Weren't you listening? I just told you that I think she's amazing and…"
"If she's amazing and wonderful," Hatake-sensei says, "then she's not made of glass. Don't you think that it would be better to have her as a teammate than as a burden?"
She swallows. Her feelings taste like ashes. "She's not a burden."
I am.
"She's not," Hatake-sensei agrees. "And you're not either. You're both young and the young make mistakes. Believe me, I know."
Sakura doesn't ask what mistakes he's made. She doesn't know a lot about his team, about his past, but she knows enough to know it's a minefield of pain and she doesn't want to hurt him either.
"So… so I can't do what I wanted to do," she says, feeling very tired all of a sudden. All her brilliant clarity from last night has faded into something muted and confused. "What do I do then?"
"Protecting Ino wasn't the only resolution you'd come to last night," he says. "You said you want to be the first line of defense, not the last. Was that only for Ino, Sakura?"
Try as she might, Sakura can't read his voice. It's not mocking or dismissive but otherwise it might be the most neutral-sounding question he's ever asked her.
Sakura glances back at Ino and just looks, for a long time, then she bows her head. "No," Sakura says, but admits, "but she's the one I want to protect the most."
Ino has been saving her since they were both in the Academy. Sakura just wishes, needs, to be able to return the favour. Especially when, in spite of every mistake Sakura has made, every disaster that has torn her life apart in the last year, it's Ino who has stuck around.
It's Ino who has never really left in the first place.
"She's my best friend," Sakura says helplessly. "If I can't even protect my best friend then what use am I ever going to be?"
Hatake-sensei is quiet for a moment. Then, he says, "Tell me about you and Ino, Sakura."
It's a strange question, coming from their sensei, the one that's been spending more time with them than anyone else these days, but something about Hatake-sensei's question doesn't feel like he's prying just for the sake of it. He really wants to know.
So Sakura fills his quiet, listening silence with her story. She tells him about how her dad had walked out on her and her mom when Sakura had decided to join the Academy. She tells him about how her mom has never really been the same since then and, even though she's remarried now, to another civilian man who Sakura calls 'Dad', her home is… well, no one there really likes that Sakura's a ninja. It's a cold war, carefully hidden away so no one sees it thought everyone in her neighborhood knows. She tells him about the Academy and how incredibly, horrifically awful it had been as an ugly, crybaby civilian girl. She talks about how she'd hidden in books and how that had helped but even then, every day had been washed away in tears before she'd gone home because—
Because even at five. At six. At seven…
Sakura had known that if she went home and told the truth about her day that her mother would have been only too happy to withdraw her from training. Even though she'd been terrible at it, at everything except the books and theory, Sakura hadn't wanted to quit. She'd wanted to be a ninja.
But everything had hurt, and it had kept on hurting, day in and day out, all thanks to her worthless, useless self (that was what her bullies had said outright and what her mom and then her stepdad had said between the lines of concern) not being able to overcome what was going on.
Then Ino had found her, crying on the playground, crying herself out before she headed home to pretend school had gone just fine, Mom, I'm doing great.
Ino and her ribbon and her inexorable dragging of Sakura out of the shadows and into the light. Sakura tells Hatake-sensei about how, after the ribbon, Ino hadn't let anyone bully her and had, instead, first defended her and then taught her to defend herself.
You've got a pretty face! Display it confidently, confidently!
And she'd learned.
Oh, Ino had always been more popular, always had the better grade average (try though she might, Sakura just couldn't catch up when it came to taijutsu forms and physical strength and stamina), but she'd made it so that Sakura had the room to turn a light on herself too, to figure out what she was good at, to make it so even when Ino wasn't around that no one bullied her any longer.
Sakura hesitates, then, because looking back on it, oh, it's kind of awful what she did, isn't it?
But Hatake-sensei is waiting for her to go on and so, after a moment, she does.
Ashamed, she tells him about Sasuke and how she'd gotten a crush on him and how she'd heard a rumour that Ino liked him too. She tells him about how she'd confronted Ino and then given back the ribbon, declaring them rivals instead of best friends.
She tells him about the bitter, sharp words they'd flung at each other after that. It's embarrassing how catty they'd been, in retrospect, but back then it had seemed so clear to Sakura and Ino had reflected that right back at her.
The snide remarks, the desperate need to be acknowledged, the way that Sasuke never had, except to glare at them, but without fail, every single day, she'd flung herself against the wall that Ino had presented.
Sakura toys with a piece of grass as she details how she'd lorded it over Ino, when Sakura, not Ino, had been placed on a team with Sasuke. She hadn't realized, at that point, that there had never been any chance that Ino would be on a team with Sasuke.
"Actually," she confesses, "I think I didn't understand a lot of things back then. I think… I don't… looking back on it, I don't know that Ino actually ever really liked him at all. She never admitted to it before I gave the ribbon back and…
"And afterwards, I think… I think that Ino was still helping me, the best way she knew how, by being the greatest obstacle she could be because she knew that I was comfortable enough to fling myself at her, to struggle to reach her level, to try and take her down, in a way that I just… I didn't have the confidence or the drive to do it just for me, not at that time. Not before graduation. So, when I broke up our friendship, I think… she didn't. She just changed the rules of it and dared me to follow her, to chase her, to get on her level."
Sakura rips the piece of grass into three nearly equal pieces and then discards them. She can't quite bring herself to look up at Hatake-sensei. Not after all of this.
"And I didn't notice what she was doing. It wasn't until the Chuunin Exams, in the Forest of Death, when Ino dragged her team out to defend my team that I started thinking that maybe, maybe we weren't actually enemies. She fixed my hair for me. Then we fought in the semi-finals and when I brought her to a tie," a tie that Sakura knows only happened because of something in her brain being too weird for Ino, "she wasn't mad at all. She told me I'd made myself bloom."
Sakura sighs.
"But then, after that, it was just failure after failure. I was no use to Naruto when we went after Gaara. I couldn't stop Sasuke from leaving. Kakashi-sensei left me to my own devices. I don't have any particular talents. That's what Shikamaru said of me, that I was a no-talent kunoichi. Ino was… was the only one that really noticed me as me. Even when Tsunade-sama took over my training, I wondered, was it only because the other two Sannin had taken Naruto and Sasuke? Or was it actually for me? I…
"I want to protect her, Hatake-sensei," Sakura says. "Because she's the only one who has always cared, even if I didn't realize it. I probably hurt her awfully when I turned on her, rejecting her gift, but she's never said anything about that. She just… she just kept on caring, and I don't know how else to return the favour other than by looking after her."
Sakura closes her eyes and swallows hard. Her throat is dry. "But now you're saying that I can't even do that, Hatake-sensei. So what am I supposed to do? How am I ever going to become someone who can pay back everything I owe her?"
Because Sakura looks back and the debts she owes Ino are huge and it's incredible to think there could ever be a way that she could pay it back. What if there really isn't? This has been the best idea to do so that she's had yet and Ino has—
Ino has said no.
Why?
The silence then is weirdly weighty, like she's waiting for something to fall on her, and, Sakura realizes, she is. She's told her long, pathetic story and doing so had felt both good and awful and now she has to wait to see what her sensei makes of it and that's…
That's hard.
"Sakura," Hatake-sensei says very gently, in a way that makes her brace herself for the worst, but what he says is… is just confusing: "Have you ever considered that, to Ino, love isn't transactional?"
"What?" She blinks at him.
He looks a little uncomfortable. "I think," he says carefully, "I think that, somewhere along the line, you picked up the idea that love is something that… if you do good, you'll be loved. If you get all the answers right, you'll earn affection."
Sakura flushes. It sounds so stupid, when he puts it that way. It hadn't been like that at all, not really, even though… she opens her mouth, then closes it, frowning. When her marks had been good, her teachers had liked her better, paid more attention to her. Her parents had rewarded her, when she'd done well in school and outside of it—a week of chores done well earning her a bigger allowance. Things like that.
"I think," Hatake-sensei says, "from what you've told me, that the only thing Ino wants from you is that you do your very, very best. I don't think she wants anything else from you. Not your protection or your lack thereof. She wants you to do what's best for you, not for her sake, but for your own."
She... she doesn't really know what to say to that. It feels overwhelming to even think too hard about it but at the same time, almost, she thinks it's sounds stupid that she doesn't just get it. Sakura doesn't know how to explain how she feels.
"But... but what if I want to pay her back?" Sakura asks, rather forlornly. "How am I supposed to do that?"
"Well," Hatake-sensei says, "you can start with being the best you that you can be. You don't need to be, and shouldn't be, devoted solely to looking after her for that. So, how about instead of being Ino's guardian, we work at making you someone who is strong enough to stand back-to-back with her instead of in front of her?"
Sakura considers that carefully. She supposes that it doesn't sound like a bad plan—in fact, it's probably a better one, since both Ino and Hatake-sensei seem to endorse this path instead of the one she'd thought of. But… "Ino will still need someone to look after her when she's not in her body."
"Yes, sometimes she will," Hatake-sensei agrees. "But she's not going to be willing to do that with a teammate that doesn't trust her enough to look after herself either. Do you see what I'm saying, Sakura? No one person can or should be always the one to protect someone else. If a person never protects themselves, they only get weaker. Do you want Ino to be weak?"
"No!" she blurts, appalled at the very thought. "I just wanted to... to be of use to her. That's all."
She thinks Hatake-sensei is smiling now. Sakura takes a little comfort in that.
"And what's the best way to do that?" he asks.
Sakura frowns at him. "Be the best me that I can be. I am listening, Hatake-sensei."
But, oh, some part of her still wishes she could protect Ino the way Ino had protected her back in the Academy. It's so frustrating to not be able to repay her.
Except, isn't that what Hatake-sensei is saying? By doing this that she'll be able to repay Ino better than otherwise?
"So," he says, "in that case, do you still want to pursue a combat-specialist path? You'd still be learning how to be the first line of defense and offense, but it will not be focused solely on protecting Ino."
Sakura hesitates.
"But you think I can protect—anyone?" she says, and it comes out like a question, though she's not sure quite that it is. Or if it's just a statement. "Anyone at all?"
"Yes," he says, simply. "But before you can do that, you need to learn to protect yourself. The sacrifice play won't make anyone happy with you. Just as you want what's best for your comrades, they want what is best for you."
Do they, though? Had they, though?
Sakura understands that Hatake-sensei is speaking in the here and now and that, as strange as it is to her, both he and Ino seem to consistently want what's best for her and she treasures that. She really does. It's just hard to imagine that…
Well, maybe that's something that will come as she improves too. Maybe Shikamaru calling her a kunoichi with no particular talents had been true (but it had also been harsh) but maybe it had also been his way of saying he'd have to build a strategy around that, in order to protect her and to protect them.
It hadn't really worked, in any case, since both she and Shikamaru hadn't been of much use against Gaara. That had all been Naruto. Power against power.
Maybe, going forward, she can change what the best-case scenario is and her role in it.
"I want to stay on the path I chose," Sakura says. "I want to be a front-line kind of ninja, Hatake-sensei, not someone who works from the back. They're important too, I know that, but I want to become someone who is strong enough to stand at the front. I don't want to be left behind."
She pauses, a thought occurring to her. That's… that's really just what Hatake-sensei was trying to explain to her about Ino, wasn't it? Ino is also doing her best to become someone who can stand in front and protect the people she cares about.
Ino also doesn't want to be left behind.
And that's… that's what my original idea would have done to her, had she allowed it to happen. I hadn't even realized that. I wasn't thinking about anyone's feelings but my own! And Ino…
Ino hadn't even gotten mad at her. She'd heard her out and then, Sakura realizes now, gone to their sensei and probably told him about her reservations with Sakura's plan and then—
She left it to him to fix. That's why she was a little moody this morning but otherwise fine with me. She'd already fixed it, so she didn't see the point in… hurting me.
Because it would have hurt her to have Ino just out-right reject her idea. Instead, Hatake-sensei has talked her around and explained why it would be a bad idea as it was and…
And the new idea isn't that different, it's really not, but it won't hold any of us back while also pushing us all further.
In Sakura's mind, Ino is already one of the brightest stars, but this unexpected kindness (she must have been so mad last night; no wonder she'd just left after looking at me) just makes her feel both small and more determined.
I want to shine as bright as Ino does.
And it's a strange thing to realize that both Hatake-sensei and Ino want her to shine that way too. It's less strange now than it had been—three months ago, thinking this would have been inconceivable—but it's still something she's not used to. The idea that people want her to succeed.
Not because she'd be filling a spot or recreating a team from before (which, she realizes, is what would have happened if she'd stuck with Tsunade-sama: she'd always have been part of the Sannin's story, not her own) but because…
But because she's valued. As herself.
I want to be able to think things through the way she does. I want to be able to be able to control my feelings so that, when I'm hurt, I can find the best way to fix it, without causing more problems.
"Alright," Hatake-sensei says. "Then let's begin your training."