Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 36 – Ill Omens
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 4,914
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 36 of ? Unbeta'd.
A scream half rage and half terror bubbles up inside of her.
If the Ino holding her up notices, she gives no sign. Instead, Sakura is roughly and violently twice more, violently, and then dropped unceremoniously to the ground.
"One, Two, Three," Center Ino says in a cool, remote tone. "In… three… two… one… now."
Dazed, Sakura watches as the nearest Ino draws a kunai, giving it a casual twirl and then pricks each of her fingers on her left hand with it. Before Sakura can so much as blink, the Ino then slams her hand down on the ground, flat against—
Against the words they've written in blood!
The nearest brazier flares up, with flames that claw towards the sky. Three feet, four feet, five feet, six… until it towers over them, ten feet tall or more and burning a deep, sickly green.
Sakura wishes she dared to move, to try and see if the others are doing the exact same thing, or even to attempt an escape. But she feels rattled and broken. Like things have been shaken loose inside of her and the idea of even pushing herself up on one elbow seems like far too much.
She swallows hard.
The ground seems to be moving, weaving and waving as white spots crawl into her vision. Through the scrubbing whitewash of reality, Sakura sees tendrils of the green-black smoke spread across the spaces between braziers like a malignant, malicious fog.
When the tendrils reach each other, they wind through and around, braiding themselves together, forming a—
A wall, Sakura realizes, her stomach sinking even lower. A barrier.
Once the wall is solid—as solid as a bank of fog can be, though the eerie green suggests it's far more dangerous than nature's natural billowing blindfold—the Ino nearest her stands up, shakes her hand out, and reaches for Sakura.
There's no cuts on her hands, Sakura thinks, gagging as the world careens around her as she's forced upright. Her head reels. She's too sick to resist and is dragged to where the lead Ino is working. But how?
It doesn't really matter, even in her pained, confused state, but it does help to distract from the question bubbling up under all the physical hurt:
Where are Ino and Hatake-sensei?
"Do you need a hand?" Boss Ino asks, her voice sounding like it is coming down a long tube, almost like Sakura is being held under water.
"I'm good," the Ino who is dragging her says. "Just right here?"
Her bleary gaze manages to catch sight of the table though she doesn't understand what she sees, just a crazed and complicated pattern in lettering she doesn't recognize. The odd spicy scent is even stronger here, almost dizzyingly so, all by itself, even discarding everything else.
Boss Ino has put the shards back together, kintsugi-style, though instead of lacquer mixed with gold, the cracks between each piece glitter and shimmer with what, to Sakura's eyes, seems to be lightning contained into a thread.
It's… an…
"Yes, that's right."
Desperately and belatedly, Sakura struggles weakly, not wanting to be laid down on that table, not wanting to be anywhere near the lightning infused urn. Standing on its four little knobby feet, the funeral urn, meant to hold cremated ashes, terrifies her.
Her attempt to get away earns her nothing but another short, sharp shake. This one, finally, makes the world spins wildly down into darkness and takes her with it.
Traitorously, Sakura is grateful for this escape. If she's to be the sacrificial sheep then she doesn't want to be awake for it.
And this is the only escape she's been offered.
Ino waits.
And waits and waits and waits until she thinks she might scream but she doesn't, just locks it down, and makes herself stay exactly where she is, because those are her orders and Hatake-sensei had said so.
Down below, she's seen Sakura come awake and then play unconscious and that's a smart move, Ino knows it is, but it's hard to watch.
She does think about trying to get around to the other side of the roof, to where he is, but Ino isn't sure she can manage it without being noticed by the imposters wearing her face, not in these close corners, too close to the enemy below. Even doing the signals had been a risk but that had been easier to angle up and away from the sight of anyone looking up.
That Hakate-sensei doesn't want her to cross the roof is also, well, a consideration. He'd ordered her to stay put.
After all, if he really wanted to come and see her, he would.
I hope he's not trying to reach me via thoughts, Ino thinks and tries not to fret about it. She hates fretting, preferring action. The waiting isn't the problem–it's the lack of knowing why. He shouldn't, since he's the one that ordered me to not use them, but…
But it's another thing for her to worry about.
Ino hates feeling useless and helpless. She'd almost rather be down there with Sakura, sharing her terror—except that, no, she doesn't want to be down there at all, she wants to storm in like a conquering hero, beat the tar out of everyone down there, and save Sakura.
But dreams and actions like that rarely work out in the shinobi world and she's too honest with herself to not know that she's not strong enough to be able to absorb the risks of that action and too smart to try and do it anyway.
I did it in the Forest of Death.
Under that thought, though, comes the additional months of training and—well.
That was with my old team. Shikamaru and Chouji weren't going to let me take that risk alone, so I had immediate backup, and…
They still should've just run away. In retrospect, she knows that, but her heart hadn't let her just leave Sakura and Sakura's team to the whims of fate. In the Forest of Death, there had been no Jounin-sensei to direct them.
Just a bunch of stupid Genin ruled more by their hearts than their minds.
These days, Ino understands better that this means they hadn't been ready to become Chuunin. Not really. Chuunin are meant to lead squads, to think under pressure, and to be able to control their impulses.
Saving their comrades by jumping into danger was admirable in some lights, there was no denying that, but it hadn't been the smart choice.
I don't know that Shikamaru was really ready to become a Chuunin either, she muses. Especially given how scathing Hatake-sensei has been about all of our skills. He might have the brains to plot circles around someone in a one-on-one battle but…
Ino is grateful that that isn't her problem.
But my problem is down below and I'm not sure how to solve it.
Grimly, but with a certain avaricious interest, Ino watches as three of the-why do they have to keep wearing my face?-fake Inos cut their hands open and, in blood, write on the ground. It's too dark for her to make out what they're writing but the act of it, the ritual, makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
Blood, she knows, is a powerful thing when used in ritual. Her father has taught her that, though he's deemed her too young for actually doing any of the Clan rituals. She's also strictly forbidden from mentioning that she even knows any to out-Clan.
Chakra is the soul's life and blood is the body's, she thinks soberly. And they're using both. I don't like where this is going.
She likes it even less when Sakura is kicked across the courtyard like a ragdoll then picked up and shaken out like a dishrag. It makes her ache in sympathy for how painful that's going to be. Whiplash is never fun.
What's Hatake-sensei waiting for? Can't he see what's going on? Shouldn't we, you know, be getting a move on?
Ino shifts uneasily, for the first time considering the idea that Hatake-sensei isn't going to save Sakura. It doesn't jive with anything she's heard about the man and seen for herself.
People who don't care for their teammates are worse than trash. That's what he's all about, isn't it? So… so I'm supposed to have faith in him, right, that he'll make this make sense…it's different from the Forest of Death, isn't it, because he's a Jounin, he'll know what to do…
She dares a glance across the roof, hoping to see another signal or something, anything to give her a clue as to what she's supposed to do, but if there's any indication, she can't spot it.
I think, I think that maybe I should go see what's going on, Ino thinks, narrowing her eyes stubbornly. He might get mad at me for it but I…
Sakura is dropped on the ground, like a piece of trash, which makes her blood boil, though the anger is wiped away into horror as green flames sprout up, fog in languid tendrils reaching for each other, tangling with each other.
I don't like this, I don't like this at all.
She likes it even less that Sakura is in the middle of all of that, alone and injured.
Ino glances, again, across the rooftop to where Hatake-sensei should be, looking in vain for any sign of what she's supposed to do.
Wait, he'd said, the order in the flash of light reflecting off his hitae-ite. Wait.
But what's the signal she's waiting for? And, when she sees it, what will she be meant to do? Rescuing Sakura would be her best guess but, now with the sickly wall of swirling smoke and chakra, Ino doesn't see how she's meant to do that.
Can our chakra blades cut through that? Should they? What would happen if I tried?
Of course, the problem with that is there's no way for her to do it without attracting the notice of the team of Inos down below.
Assuming that I could cut through that like a hot knife through butter—which isn't even likely in the first place—they'd be on me like white on rice.
It would be sheer idiocy to make the attempt. Her mind knows that even as her heart complains ferociously about how it's a betrayal to not even give it a go. Ino tells her heart to shut up, she knows, and returns to her study of the situation.
No matter how little she wants to listen to her mind, she's got to. There's no other choice. Her heart will get her killed and, dead, she can't help Sakura.
Even trying to see what's going on down in the courtyard is near impossible now, obscured by the darkness wreathed in a green undulating barrier.
Okay. So, if I can't help Sakura—and I really can't think of a way that I can—then maybe Hatake-sensei will know how I can help.
Ino scowls at the rooftop across the courtyard, where Hatake-sensei is supposed to be. She wishes, briefly, that she knew the code to ask what she's supposed to do, but she barely knows any of them.
Which leaves her in nearly the same conundrum but… that gives her an idea.
He doesn't know what I know about codes. I could pretend that I hadn't understood his orders and seek him out for clarification.
And, truthfully, had he tried to order her to do anything more complicated than 'stay put; wait' she really wouldn't have understood him. Always before she's relied on her ability to hear peoples' minds to know what to do.
She's never needed these codes. Another thing to learn once she's out of here. Learn and learn properly.
Even if he sees through the lie, well, what's he going to do about it? Lecture me later?
Ino's expression hardens.
Worth it.
Despite the fact—or perhaps in spite of—that the team of Inos down below are obscured by the barrier and Ino can only guess that their vision of her is likewise hazed out into imperceptibility, she still hesitates. This goes against all of her earliest training. Worth it or not…
Ino hates this. Hates this.
But hating it and staying put seems like the worst option. She's already going to get in shit for disobeying orders, what's one more order disobeyed?
Despite the odd green glow of the barrier, Ino keeps low to the roof, crawling on her belly as she makes her way around the courtyard. The roof, like most of them, is kind of gross but she's also pretty gross at this point so Ino ignores that. It's better than crawling through a bunch of bushes.
She gets around to the left side of the courtyard, halfway to where Hatake-sensei ought to be, before she stops, frowning again. Ino glances behind her. The roof she'd been on is dark, of course, but she can see there is a roof and the slope of it.
She looks forward, where Hatake-sensei ought to be.
There's nothing but darkness. She can't make out the lines of the building at all. When she'd been across from him, with the glowing of the barrier between them and twisting the light of the stars into something better belonging in a nightmare full of creatures with forked tongues. Ino hadn't thought much of it then.
Now, though, now... she's close enough that...
Okay, seriously, is something else wrong?
Ino glares at this wall, this barricade of darkness, then at the wall of green smoke, and wonders what the hell she's supposed to do now. If Hatake-sensei is behind the wall of darkness, she can't tell. What caused it, well, she can't tell that either.
And Sakura is still beyond her reach.
If the universe wants me to give up, I'm not going to, she thinks rebelliously. But, okay, I'll grant that this is a pretty good attempt at making it so I can't do anything.
Since the wall of gloom, impenetrable as it is, doesn't appear to be moving, Ino doesn't move either. She rests her chin on one of the grooves in the roof tiles and gingerly checks the thing with her not-trained-at-all sensors abilities.
It's made of chakra, she decides, which is both good because chakra has to eventually run out and also bad because... where did it come from? Who did it? When did they do it? Whose chakra is it?
She's pretty sure Hatake-sensei is beyond the wall but, also, she thinks he might not be. He's somewhere around here and in that direction but more than that… Ino blames her lack of training for her inability to properly tell.
But lack of training or not, it's all I've got right now to work with.
Ino takes stock of her options. She's got herself, which is pretty great, but also: still a Genin, all by her lonesome. She's got all her weapons, her chakra is doing pretty good-which, while thinking of it, Ino wiggles out a ration bar to eat because now would be a shitty time to run out of energy-and she's uninjured.
She's got a lot of things going for her. Just to make sure she stays that way, Ino spends a minute making sure she's still got herself tamped down so much so that she might appear to be a squirrel, would anyone go looking for her.
I am a squirrel. Up on the roof. La la la.
Being silly about it doesn't actually make her feel better so Ino sighs and stops. When things are working out in her favour... then, then she'll be sassy inside her own head again.
So, if Hatake-sensei is beyond that, and Sakura is down there... what do I have that could get me through either one of these things?
Ino considers her chakra blade, carefully, then dismisses the idea. It's too chakra-intensive, too slow, and there's too many enemies about her (she still wants to know why all of the ones in with Sakura are wearing her face–like, she likes her face, it's a good face, but why her face?) to make it a good plan.
Unless I run away, to the other side of the compound, and get the hell out of here.
Honestly, she's pretty sure that's the smartest idea at this point.
But I'm not going to do that.
Because she's not all out of options yet. She refuses to be.
Okay, so... think... what can I...
A break in the clouds above briefly illuminates the roof, just a little more, and the moon above looks like a scoop of ice cream that's been spooned from a container. Heavy and white and-
I'm an idiot. There's one thing that hasn't made an appearance yet. One thing that might make a difference. I even know how to bait it.
Despite the way it kills her to just leave Sakura and Hatake-sensei where they are, Ino does so, slipping backwards until she's on the far side of the roof, away from the courtyard, and then she drops down to the ground, landing silently.
The crickets don't even stop their singing of summer songs.
Ino takes her time, winding around the outside of the Main House, sidling under windows and darting past closed doors. Just because the enemy seem to all be concentrated on the rest of her team doesn't mean she can be sloppy.
But it does mean she's going to have to take a pretty stupid risk.
The window Ino enters the Main House through doesn't look very special. It's just like many of the others. The angle it was at had protected it from the elements so the glass is still there, but time has taken a toll and it wobbles like a loose tooth. Judging that it would take far too long and be too noisy to do the work of getting it open the proper way, fighting against rust and brittle glass, Ino takes advantage of the fact that it is loose in the frame and, with a kunai to aid her... simply takes the whole pane of glass out.
Safer that way, she decides, setting it carefully on the ground, outside of where she could be expected to step if a hasty escape is needed.
Ino knows she doesn't know a lot of things but, well, her clan has been infiltrators for a long, long time, and she'd spent the greater part of a year (almost exactly a year) on a team that had been built around that as their eventual goal as specialists.
Thinking of these small things is nothing.
It's the next step that's the dumb one. If I get myself killed I'll deserve it.
Then, despite knowing good and well that the monster comes out when people are inside the Main House at night, Ino climbs in through the window and lands on the floor of what, at a glance, appears to have been Hatake-sensei's childhood bedroom.
Normally, she'd take the time to explore it, poke through her new sensei's old things, but Ino doesn't chance that now. She's got more important things to do, though she does sweep the room with a glance.
Nothing immediately stands out and so, after making sure no one else is in the room with her-checking the closets, under the bed, the space under the desk which, in the darkness barely moonlit is shadowy enough to hide in easily-Ino leaves the room and heads out to look for Hatake Sakumo's bedroom, the master bedroom.
She doesn't know if she'll find what she's looking for there but it just makes sense and Ino knows that sometimes, that sometimes rational, logical thought needs to be ignored for intuition.
Here monster, monster, monster... I've got a job for you to do...
The darkness falls about Kakashi like a shroud.
One moment he's keeping an eye on Sakura's situation-which is getting worse by the minute-and running through the best way to get her out of there, intact, and figuring how to manage Ino, who isn't answering him when he thinks thoughts at her.
The one time that I wish she disobeyed orders, Kakashi thinks ruefully, acknowledging that this futile hope he'd had to reach her made him a total hypocrite for giving the order in the first place. I'm the one that told her not to use her abilities.
But it would've been so much more convenient and, that she hasn't, is a cause for concern by itself.
Ino knows or, at least I think she does, that I would pardon disobedience in a case like this.
But she's still not answering him.
Between one heartbeat and the next, darkness settles about him. Thick and deep, blotting out the sky, the rooftops, and the scene down below.
For a second he thinks that it will suffocate him, but it doesn't. Nor is it true sensory deprivation-he can still feel the roof under his knees, the breeze from the wind, the flex and shift of his own muscles.
"Saaa," he sighs, and he hears that too.
It's darkness alone and Kakashi murmurs a quick kai, which doesn't work to dispel it.
The question is: am I blind or is the darkness actually environmental?
The fact that the kai didn't dispel it doesn't truly answer that, though he leans towards it being environmental. He doesn't feel a genjutsu having settled around him and he'd been alert to changes.
Maybe it's foolishness but Kakashi thinks he would know.
Nothing attacks him.
Which, if it is a ploy, then it is an effective one, he acknowledges. Pins him down in high alert and wastes his energy trying to figure it out. A chakra sweep tells him it's created at least partially by chakra.
All I wanted was my dogs and a chance to train my girls, he laments. Nothing is going my way.
Before him, the air is brightening, lightening. Yellow light spilling into the darkness like a sauce from a ladle. Warm and golden.
He narrows his eye at it.
In the light, shapes begin to emerge. Not people, not at first. First, though, is the room he had when he was very, very small. The lines of it coalesce into being, there the bed, the rug, the dressers and where he kept his books and scrolls, his inks and the weapons he'd trained with once upon a time.
What?
The fine details, the print on a scroll do not appear. Just the silhouettes of it all, etched in a warm yellow-mustard that fades into sepia. Old with age and crinkled and vague around the edges.
He shifts and grimaces upon realizing that, like a fool, he's fallen into this trap-the roof can no longer be felt and there's no breeze either. He is as disconnected as a ghost and, he thinks grimly, he's watching something that would better be left with said ghosts.
Kakashi watches as a person-shape forms, one that he knows intimately, as it's him, small and young, his hair sticking every which way. He's huddled over a book, cross-legged on the bed, his feet kicking in the air as he thinks.
He tries a kai again, this time funnelling more of his chakra into it, to no avail.
The scene carries on inexorably, despite his wishes, and Kakashi wonders for the first time if, perhaps, this is not something done by the enemy-but rather by the estate itself. Such a sad and sorry place, a story ended in tears and then ignored and avoided. It would explain why he doesn't feel any malice from this forced remembrance.
He wonders if the estate is determined to give it an ending now. Turn the page.
Look, something sighs into his mind, what do you see?
What does he see? The little silhouette of the child he'd used to be, well, there's frustration in that set of the shoulders, an impatience in the way the pages of the book are turned.
Not there, he's chided, the words clear but who speaks them indecipherable. Look harder.
But I don't want to, Kakashi doesn't answer back, though he suspects the opinion is clear enough in the mien and tenor of his thoughts. I lived this once already.
And it had hurt bad enough back then, back when he hadn't really understood anything except—
The paper cut-out of him, painted in shades of sepia-drenched-grey, gives up on his reading. Sets the book aside with a huff and sits up, rather than reading on his stomach before reaching for the book again.
It doesn't take long for him to get frustrated and give up on figuring it out himself.
Kakashi sighs as he goes to get off the bed and stumbles a little, one of his feet having gotten twisted unbeknownst to him in the blankets, requiring him to take the moment to free himself. A small thing, but he remembers the irritation he'd felt in that moment, the sheer irrational offence.
He watches himself and dwells in the ugly emotions this brings up. He knows what comes next. He knows what night this is and he resents this, though that's almost too mild a word for the bitterness turned to steel mixed with and rolling in his uncomfortable anger and disquiet.
Kakashi tries another kai, not because he thinks it will work (though third time is the charm often enough that it is worth trying for that alone) but because it gives him something to do. It changes nothing.
Of course.
He narrows his eye as the silhouette of himself, far smaller and frailer in build, goes to the desk to pick up another book. Kakashi is not looking at that, he doesn't need to, having lived through it before. He doesn't want to, having lived through it before. Instead, he looks at the edges of this memory he's been forced to re-experience.
The edges are papery, worn out and faded, trailing off into nothingness. Tattered and frayed, they go translucent before they allow the darkness of beyond the memory to take over.
Keeping an eye on the memory of himself and listening for anything out of place-the voice, for one, as it is the most obvious enemy he has here and now-he steps over to the nearest edge, reaching out to see if he can run fingers along it, looking for a seam.
Seams can be cut, after all, and he's no Genin just learning how to use his chakra. A pair of chakra-generated shears would be nothing and then he'd be able to cut through the memory as easily as cutting through a grape stem.
No seam is found under his touch or to his eyes. The inky darkness of the emptiness beyond is impermeable and inflexible to his touch. He narrows his eye at it, considering, and just as Kakashi decides to give the shears a try anyway, his cut-out shadow self leaves off looking at reference materials this sepia drenched illusion leaves him, the real him, unable to read.
Kakashi swears.
Time is moving in odd spurts and jolts. He had thought he'd had the time but, no, he doesn't and he is pulled along with the memory, not even given the chance to drag his feet about it. Though he tries. He does try.
Like a marionette on dangling strings, Kakashi is lead down the hallway, to the room his father had committed suicide in.
Most people know he is the one who found his father.
(How could anyone else have done so, when the servants were asleep and he should have been, here in the depths of the Hatake estate?)
Most people do not know he watched it happen.
(Most people will never know that. He would rather swallow a butter pick or a corkscrew than admit it. Drown himself in poison rather than confess it.)
And now he's being forced to relive it, and admonished to watch carefully, as if he hadn't already never needed the Sharingan to have that burned into his memory.
I want out of this.
He bites the pad of his thumb, teeth sharp enough to do so even through his mask. The pain is hot and immediate, enough of a jolt that it should have disrupted any chakra construction around him, but it doesn't.
Instead, he's dragged on, the hallway ending just when he doesn't want it to, his smaller self sliding the door open.
Just as his father kills himself.
The memory is etched in steel, each motion separate from itself. The grain of the wooden frame of the door embeds itself in his mind. Then the low light from a single lantern. Then his father, in the center of the room, bowed with despair Kakashi that hadn't really understood back then, hadn't had the experience to comprehend the weight of that much pain.
The only thing Kakashi has ever considered good about this, where no good is to be found, as he watches the blade rise and fall, is that his father never knew Kakashi was there. Never knew that his final act had been witnessed by the son who revered him.
Watch, the voice croons. What do you see?
And, to his horror, the scene plays out again.