Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 42 – Breathe
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 4,089
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 42 of ? Unbeta'd.

It hurts.

It hurts and hurts and hurts and hurts.

Sakura is tossed about on waves of pain, consumed by way her breathing labours and how her chest feels it has been dipped in lava, like there's been a hot line of electricity slammed through her, and she distantly, vaguely, wonders why on earth she'd wanted to live so badly.

Death hadn't been so bad, really, in the realm of painted grey with Hatake Sakumo.

But she'd chosen this, this as she struggles and fights and she can hear Hatake-sensei and feel his chakra and he's doing something but she–she doesn't know what it is. Just that his voice is very reassuring, very strong, telling her that she's going to be okay, she's got this, that it's all going to be fine. He just needs her to keep trying. Can she do that for him?

She doesn't have the words or the energy to tell him that she'd made the choice to do so, that she is going to, that she is going to keep this resolve and that she's going to change–

All of that is washed through with pain, like a laundry cycle on spin, and when she struggles to keep her eyes open, it's so tempting to give in, give up, but her sensei is there, urging her onwards towards life, and she chose this, didn't she? She wanted this?

She doesn't quite remember why, in the moment, but down in the core of her, Sakura knows this solidly, knows that Inner is there, bracing herself for the moment when she gives up and Inner has to take up the fight and she–

She doesn't want to step back. She wants to keep breathing, keep going, keep–

About damn time, Inner snarks, and it's like hands covering hers, her willpower bolstered and supported rather than taken over, and even though it's her body that's struggling, it's they who bend their mind to it.

To breathing in. And out. And trying to stay conscious as Hatake-sensei talks, low, steady words that flitter around the edges of her comprehension, but that comfort her anyway.

He does something to numb the pain and she feels like she's floating away and, for a moment, she's terrified but that's chased away by the fact that he smiles slightly, when he sees her watching him.

"Rest," he says, like he's a long, long ways away. "I've got you."

And Hatake-sensei has been nothing but trustworthy, the entire time she's known him (it feels like forever but it hasn't been all that long, not really) so Sakura relaxes her tether on consciousness and allows herself to be chased away from the pain.

She'll wake up again. He'll make sure of it.

Sakura is far too still, far too pale, with bruises blossoming on her skin like sickly flowers, but she's breathing and he's managed to get her stable enough that he can move her.

He's going to take that as a victory and ignore the rest of everything he's not dealing with emotionally right now. There are some new nightmares he's had added to his arsenal and he is not looking forward to the first time he has to cope with them.

Even with her being stable, though, he doesn't want to just pick her up. That's too much movement for her ribs, the shift to carry her, and he doesn't want to risk it.

So he grabs one of the sliding doors leading into the courtyard and tears it off its track. It'll do to keep her flat. He doesn't need it for long, after all, and he thanks fuck they're in the village though he also dreads that he's going to have to explain how all of this happened while they were in the village.

It takes some careful coordinating to transfer Sakura from the altar to the door. She whimpers, once, but doesn't wake and, more importantly, keeps breathing.

Kakashi gauges his chakra levels and—

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu," he murmurs as his hands fly through the seals of it. Then there's a shadow clone with him, as solid as he can make it (which is easier with him only having created the one).

More importantly, the clone has enough chakra to shock Sakura's heart again, if it becomes necessary.

(He hopes it won't be necessary.)

"Get her to the main gate," he orders. "Make sure she stays stable. I'm getting Ino and then we're going straight to the hospital."

As soon as they're off of the estate he can translocate them over there. It'll cost him in chakra but that's nothing compared to their lives.

His shadow clone nods sharply.

Kakashi leaps out of the courtyard, heading over the roof. He doesn't look back to see how his clone will manage—his shadow clone is him, after all, to where once it disperses he'll have its memories—and, instead, he focuses on where he would have flung Ino. On where she would have landed.

He hadn't been thinking, exactly, when he'd grabbed her and thrown her away from the courtyard. Just reacting.

Under the stretching branches of a willow tree is where he finds her. For a moment, he thinks she's not breathing, but she is, she's just unconscious, chakra levels very low. A soft brush of perfume wafts through the air. Something floral, something that he decides he's imagined, since a deep breath doesn't carry more of it to his nose, and Ino doesn't wear perfume out in the field.

She's dirty, covered with scrapes and scratches, but that's nothing to be worried about and even as he picks her up, he's relieved.

Using too much chakra at once is practically a rite of passage for Genin, he thinks. And nothing that sleep won't fix. I'll take her to the hospital, since we're going anyway, but she doesn't need it.

And he's grateful for that. Grateful that one of his students isn't near death or with grievous injuries.

And grateful, too, that I won't have to explain her near death to her father, he admits. Technically, Ino's still on my team under a trial basis.

They're long past the time frame Inoichi had originally given Ino—but they hadn't been, when they'd started this mission. Inoichi's approval had been given before they'd left but he knew good and well that this mission had been a test.

But I'll worry about the passing or failing of that later. Right now, I need to get Sakura to the hospital.

As he heads to the main gate, Kakashi casts a long look behind him.

I'll be back in a day or two to gather all our supplies but then… then, I don't think I'm coming back here for a long time.

He won't say never. He doesn't dare taunt fate that way.

As they pass through the wards, he leaves them fully powered, a precaution against whatever the hell had happened on the estate, a hope to keep it from following them back into the village proper. The gates, he makes sure he closes and locks, wrapping the weft and heft of the wards up in his blood.

If anything or anyone tries to get through them, he's done what he can to make sure he'll know about it.

That's that, then, he thinks, and takes both his girls to the hospital, fast as he and his clone can take them. Thank fuck I didn't take them out of the village, if this is what happened on a mission inside of it…

I really don't understand how Ino finds civilian celebrity news so scintillating…

She's tried to explain the appeal to him before but it never quite makes sense to him.

Inoichi is halfway through breakfast, alone, and pouring through a newspaper to see if there's any actual news he doesn't already know (the answer will be, like it usually is, a solid no, but he always checks) when he feels Ino's presence in the village in for the first time in weeks.

He tilts his head slightly, eyes going unfocused, as he determines that she's either asleep or unconscious, that Sakura's injured, and that their Hatake-sensei is heading towards the hospital. In duplicate.

Shadow clones always make my head ache, he grumbles to himself, even as he finishes his tea. People shouldn't be able to duplicate their minds like that.

There'll be a story there and one he's interested in hearing.

But Ino is fine.

He hopes Sakura will be too but, really, so long as Ino is fine—and she seems to be, from what he can glean of Hatake's thoughts and the depth of Ino's own somnolence—he's not particularly concerned.

I'll give the hospital time to check them in, fix them up, and then… then I'll go looking for more answers.

He doesn't like that his daughter is unconscious and that Sakura is injured. After all, they'd been out on what was just a training mission. Hatake had been very clear he didn't want them out on a true mission at the moment. Training missions are usually safer.

But I know good and well that shit happens on missions, Inoichi thinks. Even the most innocuous of missions can go horribly wrong in an instant.

So… he'll see and he'll find out and he'll talk to his daughter. Then he'll decide where to go from there.

Kakashi leans wearily against the doorframe and watches his girls as the sun filters through the windows of their hospital room. Everything feels unreal and insubstantial, like the mists of exhaustion have softened the edges of the world and blunted his emotions.

It is almost definitely a sign he needs sleep; it's been a very, very long twenty-four hours.

Ino's good. As I'd thought, it's just a mild case of chakra exhaustion and once she's slept it off, she'll be good as new. As soon as she wakes, she'll be discharged. She'll have to take it easy on the chakra usage for the next day or two but I was going to give them time off anyway.

Even if everything had gone according to plan, he'd have given them a day or two off. If only to do laundry and to properly rest. It was standard protocol for missions.

Sakura…,

She's too pale, almost washed out, and her breathing is shallow. Tsunade-sama has seen to her and now she's properly treated but, for now, she's still hooked up to machines to keep track of her vitals. Just in case. Shizune is murmuring to two of the hospital staff as they pour over her chart.

Now, now Sakura's mostly just sleeping as her bones knit themselves back together, as the healing chakra that has been sunk into her body does its work.

Fuck, I'd like some sleep myself.

He's had harder days, harder nights, and been forced to do more with less energy and capacity, but having had all this happen, having had it happened in his old home, has left him feeling exhausted and pained.

I think I understand better, now, what Minato-sensei meant when he said taking a Genin team to train had been one of his heaviest responsibilities. I'd always rolled my eyes—surely running the village was more important and harder to do? But I think I get it now.

Sakura's too still body will haunt his nightmares. Ino, unconscious under the branches of a tree, will likely join too, dreams of where she hadn't been just unconscious, since her presence in his life is so tied to Sakura's.

As it should be, since they're a team.

So now, rather than sleep, Kakashi watches over them wearily in their hospital room and broods. His own injuries, he hasn't bothered to have treated and no one has insisted upon it. None of them are serious. All will heal by themselves. It's fine.

The rest of it, though… is rather not fine with him.

I never wanted a Genin team. It would be too much work. I had better things to do. I wasn't suited for training kids.

Privately, though, he thinks that part of him had just… not wanted this. Not wanted to get attached. Not wanted to cope with what happens when things go wrong. It is awful losing companions, it never gets any better, but when he's alongside other ANBU, uniformly made of the best of the best, no matter what their actual rank is…

The missions are harder and the death rate is higher and it is never easy… but…

Somehow, it's harder, when Genin are involved.

Shizune gives a few more orders to the medics, in a low-voice, before she sweeps past him out of the room, giving him a look that he can't read, and he's not the least bit surprised when Tsunade-sama speaks up behind him.

"I'd like to hear your mission debrief," she says, and it's not the healer that he's facing now, but rather, the Hokage.

"Yes, Hokage-sama," he says, though he also knows this is a power play. She's angry with him—Sakura had been her student, before he'd taken her—and she's got to know he's running on empty and needs rest.

But all the better to speak to me now, before the girls wake up, to make sure we can't get our stories straight.

He gets it.

Their mission had been a simple training mission. It shouldn't have ended up like this.

He glances at the girls, one more time, and then follows his Hokage. Shizune and the medics she's directing will make sure they're okay.

So now it's time for me to face the music.

The most aggravating part of that is that he really has no explanations for what the fuck happened. Everything that could go sideways, had gone sideways, and none of it should've.

They don't leave the hospital.

Instead, Tsunade-sama heads to a small little room, one with a cabinet full to bursting with supplies, and a haphazardly set table and a pair of chairs that have seen better days. The door locks, though, and as he stands and she takes a seat, Kakashi can feel the thrum of security jutsu come to life, separate from the hospital's wards.

"Take a seat," she orders.

He does so, though that raises some eyebrows internally. Debriefings aren't usually done this way, when they're in person.

"Tell me what happened," she orders.

Their second class, Tenten decides, went a lot smoother than the first. Even if it had cost her a fair bit of money to get her first aid kit up to snuff before Shizune had gone over it with a fine tooth comb.

She still has to go and buy a few things but, thinking of the humiliation that would've occurred had she not spent the money beforehand… well…

A+ for effort, she thinks and smiles faintly as she packs her things back up, tucking the list of supplies she'll have to hunt down into one of her pockets. She still needs a few things but they're things she actually hadn't known about.

Shikamaru heaves a heavy sigh and does the same, no quiddling about with his supplies now that the lesson is over. He's always at his best when he can actually do something, instead of having to sit and wait around without anything to focus on. He's missing different things than she is (apparently the Nara have a fair bit of knowledge about healing–she hadn't known that until he'd said it in class) but, overall, she thinks his list of things missing is no longer than hers.

"Are you going to see Lee?" he asks.

"Yup," she says easily. "You're tagging along, then?"

He laughs. "I could just be asking to be asking. My mom would be so pleased."

"What, with manners?" she says, slinging her bag over one shoulder and realizing– "Hey, where'd Shizune-sensei go? I'd wanted to talk to her about one of the things on my list. Didn't she say last time that she'd be available for questions after a class?"

He shrugs. "It's a hospital," Shikamaru says. "Shit happens."

Tenten grumbles under her breath. "Fine," she says, "but if we see Shizune-sensei on the way, we're stopping."

Shikamaru doesn't bother answering her, beyond a snort, which she takes as agreement as they leave their classroom. He nods to his cousin on the way out, she's amused to see, though Tenten doesn't needle him about his manners there.

She suspects he's still being tracked about actually showing up.

"How is Lee doing this week?" Shikamaru asks as they walk through the halls of the hospital, heading for her preferred staircase to get to him.

"He hasn't reinjured himself," Tenten says lightly. "So he's optimistic about getting out of here. I think Tsunade-sama wants to keep him a bit longer, partly because he's proven he can't be trusted to take it easy with training on his own."

Which… well.

She's not wrong.

The stairs are quieter and emptier than the hustle and bustle of the hallways. A little bit cooler, too, which is nice. The classroom had been well-ventilated but, even so, she always finds them stuffy. It's probably a personal failing.

They lapse into silence as they go up one floor and then, on the next–

She sees Shizune down the hallway. The glass window in the stairwell door gives her a glimpse.

"Shizune's there," she says, and without waiting for Shikamaru, yanks the door open, heading purposefully down the hall.

"She's probably busy," he grumbles behind her. "Working."

"This isn't the emergency floor," she says. "If she's not talking to a patient then she's totally free game until she tells me otherwise. Sequacity through implied orders is boring."

Though, despite saying that, she hesitates as Shizune enters one of the rooms.

Well, I've come this far, she decides. There's another stairwell at the end of the hallway. I'll peek into the room she's in and see if she's free. If not, then I just keep going. No need to be quite as rude as Shikamaru's muttering about me being.

And she has no idea if he's muttering because he just doesn't want to bother or because he actually thinks it's rude. She doesn't know him well enough to be able to guess, either, since they'd never even been classmates in the Academy.

The last thing, though, that Tenten would have guessed she'd see would be Shizune reading a chart over–

That's Sakura, Tenten realizes, and she's shoved out of the way as Shikamaru does what he'd literally just been complaining about her maybe doing and opens the door.

"What's wrong with Ino?" he asks, and it's just then that he realizes that in the bed one over, Ino is there.

"You're not supposed to be in here," Shizune says. "It's not visiting hours on this floor."

Tenten slips into the room too, at that, since it means there's no greater a reason they can't be in here. Otherwise, Shizune would have led with that.

Shikamaru has pulled Ino's chart from the bottom of her bed, which makes Shizune sigh heavily.

"And you say I'm rude," Tenten mutters, even as she leans over his shoulder to read.

He doesn't bother to answer her though, as they read, she can tell he's relieved.

"Chakra exhaustion?" he asks. "That's the worst of it?"

"That's the worst of Yamanaka-kun's injuries," Shizune confirms, maybe because Shikamaru sounds concerned. "Really, it's mild enough that if she hadn't been brought in with Sakura-chan, we'd have just had her sensei take her home to sleep it off."

"Ino never got hospitalized while on Team Ten," Shikamaru says, under his breath, and Tenten doesn't know what to make of that observation.

Did he not just hear what Shizune had said? Ino wasn't even here as a precaution.

"Is Sakura going to be okay?" Tenten asks, once it becomes clear that Shikamaru is having a whole moment over Ino sleeping off having over-extended herself.

For someone who is so smart and analytical he's really got huge, gaping blind spots in his judgment about the strangest of things.

Shizune sighs. Again. "Yes," she says, half-smiling. "She'll be okay. And that's all you're getting until either their sensei or they themselves are awake and can make their own choices about who gets what information."

"Where is Hatake-sensei?" Tenten asks, realizing he's not there. "He's okay, too, right?"

"He's debriefing Tsunade-sama about what happened on their mission," Shizune says. "He'll be back after that. He hasn't left them alone, I promise."

That's… that's actually rather sweet. She'd have pegged him as a 'go out and get revenge' kind of man than a 'hovering hen' type. But then, she doesn't know him very well.

"Do you think we can sit with them for a bit?" Tenten asks, deciding that she's not doing anything more important for the rest of the day. Nothing that can't wait. "Just in case Ino wakes up?"

She doesn't think that Shikamaru has plans on leaving anyway. Which is…

Well.

That's going to be a problem, its right there, obviously brewing, and she doesn't need to be a genius to see that Shikamaru is taking Ino's not-even-an-injury personally. She feels a headache coming on and wishes, for the first time, that it was the other guy on Team 10 that had joined her in classes.

Chouji probably wouldn't like seeing Ino in a hospital bed any more than she does but there wouldn't be this whole—

Shikamaru takes a seat by Ino's bed.

-thing. It's going to be a thing.

Shizune looks so very tired.

Tenten almost wishes she hadn't thought up the whole 'follow Shizune to pester her with questions' bit, now, but she can't entirely regret it because knowing her friends are in the hospital is important and useful and she's glad to know it.

"Alright," Shizune says. "But you're to be quiet, not disturb them, and when Tsunade-sama kicks you out of here, you have to go."

Tenten shrugs a little and, since Shikamaru's by Ino, she takes a seat by Sakura. Ino would want her to. She knows that much, even though Tenten, personally, is better friends with Ino.

"Thanks, Shizune-sensei," she says and, since Shizune is lingering there, watching all of them with exasperation, no matter that two of the four of them are unconscious, Tenten figures it can't hurt to ask. "Did you have time for some questions about the course material?"

Kakashi feels the utterly absurd urge to cackle at the expression on Tsunade-sama's face once he's done his bland recitation of everything that happened on his mission.

It's just. Her face.

He manfully resists the urge to start laughing and waits for her to get over the series of what the fucks she's thinking her way through. He's glad she's not saying them out-loud, though, because he's never truly mastered the art of being nod-crafty and making it look sincere.

He's too sarcastic, Minato-sensei had said, once upon a time. No one is going to believe him if he just smiles and nods.

"And no idea who the intruders were?" she asks.

"Unfortunately, no," he says. He leaves off his intentions to review what had gone on and see what had been recorded by Obito's eye to see if he can figure it out. "Chuunin level, though, at the very least. A standard team of four."

Tsunade-sama raises her eyebrows. "And when I ask your students, they'll tell me the same thing?"

"If I was going to come up with a story," he says acidly, "it would be either much more ridiculous or much more believable, Tsunade-sama. With all due respect. They'll tell you the same thing."

She laughs and he knows she believes him. Something in him relaxes. She's not going to take his team away from him.

He obviously needs sleep because, even to himself, that thought it irrational and over emotional. Over invested.

"Get me your written report in the next twenty-four hours," she orders. "Otherwise, consider yourself and your team on medical leave until I say otherwise."

"Yes, Tsunade-sama."

"One last order," she says, smiling like the devil she is. "Get a shower before you go back to brooding over your chickadees. They're in good hands."

"That's an official order?" he asks dryly.

"It is now. Listen to your Hokage. Shower. Change clothes. Eat something." She flaps her hands at him, actually shooing him away. "Go on, get."

He gets.