Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 45 – Flux
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,370
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 45 of ? Unbeta'd.
True to his word, when Sakura wakes up, Hatake-sensei is still holding her hand.
She's tempted, for a moment, to wonder if he'd let go of it once she'd fallen asleep again and only taken it back up when she stirred but even for her… that's a sad thought.
I'm choosing, instead, to be grateful that he stayed.
Conceptually, she knows that it's not unusual for Jounin-sensei to act in loco parentis when a Genin's parents are either unwilling or unable to be there for their children but it's… it's different, having an adult someone be there for her.
It's new and she has to resist the urge to doubt it.
After all, it's not like her parents are terrible. They just…
She grimaces and reclaims her hand.
"Good morning," he says, not sounding the least bit tired. He doesn't even sound bored and it had to have been boring, sitting there all night. Jounin are pretty amazing. "More water?"
Sakura hesitates a moment, then nods. "Yes, please."
He carefully helps her sit up, though still on an incline, not fully upright, and she feels a bit better after the water—or maybe just from having had more sleep—and once she's drunk what she can right now, she tries a smile. It doesn't feel too fake, to her own surprise.
"Thanks, Hatake-sensei," she says. "Do… do you know if I'll be able to go home today?"
"Either Tsunade-sama or Shizune-san will be coming around nine to check in on you," he says. "But I doubt you'll be going home today, Sakura. You were very badly hurt."
She nods, feeling relieved and not wanting to look at why. "It's not permanent, though, is it? I'll go back on active duty?"
"Yes." And he smiles at her, his one eye curving. "You'll have to take it easy for a bit, but you'll be able to train and run missions soon enough."
Sakura doesn't heave a sigh—her chest still aches and a sigh seems like a bad idea—but she feels better, just hearing that.
"What happe—"
Hatake-sensei cuts her off with a gesture. "A good question," he says, "but until you've debriefed, they've asked we don't talk about the mission."
Sakura bites her lip. "I don't—"
I don't understand.
But there's no time to voice that because Ino leans around the door holding out a bag.
"I," she announces, "come bearing gifts."
Hatake-sensei laughs. "I'm afraid to ask."
"Good," Ino says loftily. "They're not for you."
Sakura marvels at that audacity, which just makes Hatake-sensei laugh again, something warmer and softer and maybe even fonder, as Ino enters the room and shoves the door behind her shut with one foot.
Ino, Sakura is glad to see, looks just fine. She's clean, tidy, and she looks like nothing weird happened to her at all. Like no mission had gone wrong.
"What did you get me?" she asks, even as Ino proves her own words a lie and presents Hatake-sensei with a bag of his own. She can smell the food and her stomach growls.
"Where did you find my favourite food at six in the morning?" he asks.
Sakura glances at him.
"Salt-broiled saury and miso soup with eggplant," he explains. "And I don't want to know how you know that, Ino."
Ino grins at them both.
"Anmitsu?" Sakura asks hopefully.
"Anmitsu," Ino says, pulling out a bowl of the cold dessert and handing it over, with both napkins and utensils.
"Such healthy breakfasts for you two," Hatake-sensei murmurs as Ino pulls out a cup of pudding and sits on the edge of Sakura's bed to eat it.
"We deserve them," Ino says and Hatake-sensei doesn't argue.
Sakura smiles and finds, as they eat their meals, that she can't stop smiling. She mostly listens as Hatake-sensei and Ino talk—Ino isn't giving up where she got the soup from; Sakura suspects Ino made it herself—and revels in how things feel good.
It means, when Hatake-sensei leaves, she can say she'll see him later and sound happy. She is happy.
"I brought you clothes, too," Ino says once the door is shut and it's just the two of them. "And I'll brush your hair for you."
Ino leans over and pulls up a chart from the end of Sakura's bed. Her chart.
"If we're careful," Ino says after a moment, "I think we can even get you a proper turn in the bathroom and a real shower. Want to risk it?"
Sakura holds out her hands for the chart and Ino gives it to her. She studies the impartial list of her injuries quietly and takes a careful breath. Her chest still hurts but not like anything's broken—though a lot had been, according to this—and she frowns.
"We have hope that you'll choose wisely," Ino says.
Sakura stifles a startled giggle. "What, you're using the royal we now? Getting a big head, are you?"
"My head is the perfect size for me," Ino scoffs.
Now that she has a chance to really look at Ino, Sakura can see that Ino looks a bit tired. A little paler than she should be. There's the faintest lines of scratches down one of her arms.
"Are you okay?" Sakura asks quietly.
Ino smiles at her. "I'll be just fine, Forehead," she says. "Just need extra beauty sleep for the next few days."
"You don't need that. You always manage to be beautiful," Sakura blurts, then flushes, because that's an embarrassing thing to just come out and say to her best friend, rival, teammate.
"You are too," Ino says easily. "Hurrah for us, right? I suppose we'll have to declare Hatake-sensei as beautiful under his mask now. Hope that's the truth. Otherwise he'll stick out like a sore thumb on our team. Now what's it going to be? Hang out on this lovely bed of yours or push our luck?"
"You won't let me fall?"
"I've never let you fall," Ino says, offended.
It's true.
Sakura hands back the chart. "Okay," she says. "A shower, please."
Kakashi pauses outside the door to Sakura's hospital room once he's shut it, just long enough to hear the low murmur of voices, snatches of the words 'clothes' and 'hairbrush' and then he leaves, smiling faintly under his mask.
She had said she'd brought gifts, in the plural.
Ino had also said his breakfast hadn't been one—he disagreed with that—so he'd been curious. Curiosity satisfied and with no interest in actually spying on them, Kakashi fades into the growing bustle of the hospital, heading for the roof as the quickest way to get out.
The cool air of the early morning, driven by a brisk wind, chases some of his tiredness away as he steps onto the roof. He's gotten some sleep, these last two days, but with Sakura in the hospital, and his keeping her company, he hasn't slept that much.
Ino will be with her the whole day though, he thinks, taking a moment to stretch the kinks in his back out and then hopping to the next roof and picking up some speed. I'll see what I can salvage of everyone's things from the estate and then get some rest. Do some laundry. Water the plant.
All the boring, commonplace little details that come from being at home rather than on a mission. He doesn't mind them. He never has. They're signs of calm permanence in a life that's been eventful.
I wonder if that's why the other me took up cooking? I wonder if I should learn…
Even with in distracted state, he's not far gone enough to be unaware of the blond that falls into pace beside him.
Kakashi glances sideways at him and is met by a pair of cool blue eyes.
Well. That's not particularly surprising.
They leap down, nearly in tandem, landing on the street that leads to his family's estate, and Kakashi nods his head amiably.
"Yamanaka-san," he says. "I've been expecting you."
Not… right this moment, truthfully, but he'd been expecting the visit at some point and soon from the moment they'd left the estate.
Yamanaka Inoichi studies him with shades of the same disarming frankness his daughter walks through life with.
Kakashi tries not to think about the way Inoichi is almost definitely reading his mind right then. Instead, when Inoichi doesn't say anything, he starts walking down the street.
"Are you coming?" he asks, glancing behind him when Inoichi doesn't immediately follow him.
"Where are we going?"
"Hm? Ah." Kakashi waits until the man has caught up with him to actually answer that question. "Thought I'd retrieve the things we left behind. There wasn't much time to pack, with Sakura's injuries being what they were. You're free to come along."
He's pushing it, he knows that, knows he shouldn't be casually baiting this man, one of the few who know he's not meant to be in this time, that he's not the Kakashi everyone else expects when they talk to him.
But it's still totally worth it, when they stop outside of the Hatake Estate's main gates and he watches Yamanaka Inoichi's expression.
It's nice to see that, even with mind reading, he's caught off guard.
"Before we go in," Kakashi says, "you should know that there's no way to reach the outside world with your mind while we're inside."
Inoichi turns his gaze from the gates to him. "Interesting," he says. "Give me a few minutes."
Kakashi waits, not in any particular hurry to go back inside–and, indeed, if they hadn't left most of their supplies behind he wouldn't have bothered with going back at all–and wonders what he's in for, once they're in private.
Inoichi is like a statue, the wind tugging at his hair and clothes, his eyes distant and unfocused.
Kakashi doesn't fool himself, though, that Inoichi would be in any danger from an attack. No matter how far away he appears, Kakashi expects he's left enough of himself in his body to counter that sort of thing.
And there's me, too.
It's approximately seven and a half minutes later that Inoichi stirs. "Alright," he says simply. "I'm ready."
"Everything delegated?"
"For a few hours," Inoichi says, unperturbed. "A necessity. It's not often I leave the village without notice."
Kakashi nods at that. Clan heads usually don't, for one reason or another, having worked their way up into roles where they're needed in the village.
"Won't waste your time then," he says and, with a kunai, scores a small scratch on his hand and presses it to the gates.
They step inside as soon there's room to do so, and the heavy sound of the gates falling shut behind them cut off more than just the street. He watches as Inoichi shakes his head a little.
"It's quiet," the man says, in explanation. "Blood wards, is it? That explains a great deal."
Kakashi shrugs a little. "The family's been here for a while," he says vaguely, looking around in the daylight at the grounds and buildings.
To his surprise, he finds it doesn't hurt to look at these things. A bench where his father used to sit and tell him stories now also reminds him of the way Ino and Sakura had sat there, their heads nearly touching, as they talked during a break. Stepping into the guest house, he can see signs of them, in the clean floors, the way the dishes are piled by the sink. They've replaced the prior privation of the estate with themselves, loud as clamouring crows, even when they're not around.
There's a lot of pain in this home but the new memories help to ease it.
He lets out a slow breath.
"What did you want to talk about?" he asks. They enter the room the girls had cleaned for him. His pack is here, his bedroll spread across the floor. At a glance, he doesn't see anything missing or any new additions, but he'll go through it all anyway.
If there's a threat lurking here, well, the better to deal with it now. He crouches down and gets started while Inoichi drifts over to one of the windows.
"Ino mentioned encountering something that caused her pain here," Inoichi says. "Pain specific to our bloodline."
Kakashi casts his eye on Inoichi's back and wonders if he's dealing with more the dad or the clan head right now.
"We called it 'the monster'," Kakashi says, rolling up his bedroll. "We don't know what it was or where it came from but Ino's first mental brush with it did incapacitate her. A blinding migraine and, from what she said, an achy mind for a day or so after. As a team, we did discuss leaving, but when the consensus was reached, it was in favour of us staying."
As a team.
"As a precaution, I ordered Ino to use her bloodline as little as possible, though until we were in the Main House, at night, we hadn't been attacked and she hadn't encountered anything that impacted her mind like that."
Inoichi hums thoughtfully.
"She didn't mention if depriving herself of her abilities would cause problems," Kakashi adds, shoving a few memories of the monster in Inoichi's direction.
"Not using them for a few days or a week isn't a problem," Inoichi says, "other than it's hard to do. It's a habit, to use our minds the way others use their voices."
"The first night we were here," Kakashi says, "she started noticing things outside of her bloodline. I think she's going to be a powerful sensor."
But if that matters to Yamanaka Inoichi, he doesn't say as much to Kakashi. Instead, he remains by the window, staring out of it, and doesn't share what he sees or thinks at all while Kakashi finishes sorting his things and packing them.
He doesn't move from there, even when Kakashi says he's going to the room the girls had shared.
Kakashi hesitates, wondering if whatever had so distracted Ino has ensnared her father, but then leaves to get what he'd come here for anyway.
It's more likely, he decides, that he's looking for proof of what had occurred. Following mental traces only his Clan can see.
Sakura's things have been gone through and packed up and he's halfway through Ino's when Inoichi appears at the door.
Very deliberately, Kakashi doesn't look up. Instead, he affects nonchalance as he gathers Ino's hair elastics into their pouch. There's no real reason to do so, except that he's on his home ground, literally, and he doesn't want to be.
Even with the newer, kinder memories to bolster him.
"Find anything?" he asks, genuinely curious.
Inoichi makes a disgusted noise.
Kakashi does look up at that. He tries not to smirk. "I'm going to take that as a no," he says, watching the way Inoichi's frown deepens.
"Nothing," he confirms, sounding disgruntled. "But at the same time it doesn't feel… right, either, and not just because the fact the only mind I can find in here is yours."
"Strange things happened here," Kakashi says. "I can't explain how a team of enemy ninja got through the blood wards in the first place nor why they would have done so either."
"When they left, they had accomplished their mission, correct?"
It's his turn to grimace.
"Yes," he says. "The parameters of it haven't yet been figured out."
Because as far as he's concerned, it's a mess. They'd been separated—which, alright, that makes sense—but he'd wound up first in a closet and then trapped in a jutsu that had…
(What do you see?)
… made him relive memories that he was going to have to look into more. Later. He'd do it later. That's a whole mess that he needs to let sink in for a bit before he goes poking around at it. He's not even done missing his dogs yet.
Ino, as far as he knows, had mostly managed to remain unscathed and uncaptured, to the point where she'd released him from the dream jutsu and had weaponized the monster in order to pull the wall down so that he could get Sakura out.
What, exactly, had happened to Sakura is fuzzier. Her side of the story remains shrouded in mystery, since she's been mostly unconscious, but however it had happened, she'd been captured, bound, and hurt.
Then there's everything that had happened before the enemy had made their move…
He shakes his head and finishes packing everything up, looking around the room to see if there's anything still out of place.
"Is that all?" Inoichi asks.
"You tell me," Kakashi says, slinging his bag over his shoulders and settling so it's well balanced. "Because, so far, you could've just said 'let's do lunch and talk' and we could've done that instead of all of this. We could've had a conversation rather than a field trip."
Inoichi laughs. The laugh has sharp edges in it and he doesn't bother to explain himself.
In revenge, Kakashi hands him Ino's bag. He can carry it.
"Kitchen next," Kakashi decides, once nothing more is found. "A quick bathroom check too."
He'd bet good money there's at least one hair elastic in there and, since Inoichi won't tell him what he's tagged along for, Kakashi can repay him by being obnoxiously meticulous.
"Come on," Kakashi says. "I'll give you the tour you so desperately want and maybe, just maybe, along the way, you'll tell me what you're actually here for."
Tsunade-shishou is not impressed at her showering nor at Ino for having helped her do so.
Sakura, clean and tidy and wearing actual clothes rather than a drafty hospital gown finds it pretty hard to care. Ino listens to Tsunade-shishou's reprimand with calm serenity and then shrugs when an explanation is demanded of her.
"You'd have done the same, Tsunade-shishou," she says.
Somehow, Ino manages to get away with saying that.
If Sakura had tried to say it, she'd have ended up as an inconsolable mess, she just knows it, even if Tsunade-shishou had taken it well, coming from her.
"Out," Tsunade-shishou says, though she's smiling. There's a laugh in her eyes even as her hands glow green, a jutsu reading out numbers that Sakura only knows a little of.
Sakura keeps her eyes on her heartbeat, since she recognizes that one.
Ino leans against Sakura's bed. "I'm supposed to stay," she says, with not even a pretence at shame, reluctance, or discomfort at disobeying an explicit order from her Hokage. "Hatake-sensei's orders and, like, I'd do it anyway."
Sakura flushes with a confused mix of embarrassment and pleasure.
"Go find food or something else that's not supposed to be in here," Tsunade-shishou says. Orders, really, though she sounds less brusque about it than she had with her first order. "Come back in an hour."
"Well," Ino says, glancing sidelong at Sakura with an expression Sakura can't read. "That, I suppose I can do, so long as I can come back. Anything in particular you want, Forehead?"
"Shut up, Pig!" she hisses. She doesn't know why Ino is being like this.
Ino shrugs, laughs, and wanders off with a salute that Sakura can't even pretend is anything other than sarcastic.
"Oh my god," Sakura says as soon as the door closes behind Ino. "I'm really sorry, Tsunade-shishou. I don't know what got into her this morning."
"I like her," Tsunade-shishou says easily. She smiles as she glances briefly at the door. "She's a good friend to you and a clever, capable kunoichi. A little bit of sass behind a closed door? That's fine."
Sakura nods a little, relieved. "I'm still sorry," she says. "You might be too, if she gets it into her head to bring something ridiculous back."
Tsunade-shishou waves that off. To Sakura, that just shows how little Tsunade-shishou knows Ino but she doesn't argue it further.
I wonder why Ino was like that, though? She's pretty outspoken normally but she's never talked to Tsunade-shishou like that before.
Sakura doesn't get any time to worry about Ino, though, as Tsunade-shishou starts another diagnostic jutsu running and Sakura's attention is taken up more immediately by that.
"You're recovering well," Tsunade-shishou says, a few minutes later. "How are you feeling?"
And isn't that the question?
"Depends which way you mean it, Tsunade-shishou," she admits truthfully, being careful not to move too much, just in case that's something that would disturb the readings. "Physically, I've been better but it also hurts less than it did yesterday."
Emotionally and mentally, though, she's less certain of how to put it.
So don't bother, Inner advises. Just because they ask doesn't mean you have to answer.
She's my Kage! I do have to answer!
Only if she orders you to! Inner retorts, immediately, and Sakura doesn't have a comeback for that.
It's true, even though the idea of keeping things from her Kage when asked and not ordered makes her uncomfortable.
"I haven't really thought about everything else," she admits. "I tried asking Hatake-sensei about the mission but he said we weren't allowed to talk about it. I'm pretty sure Ino's under the same order, because she's been really, really chatty but hasn't said anything important either."
"I can confirm Ino is under the same order," Tsunade-shishou says.
"Why?" Sakura asks curiously. "Team Seven's never been told not to talk to one another before."
And it's hardly the first mission that's gone sideways for her team.
"Sakura," Tsunade-shishou says, "you nearly died on a training mission—the very first mission, in fact, that you've taken with Hatake. The rest of your training with him has been in the village and easily accessible where anyone out and about could notice something at any moment. I'm aware that, technically, you never left the village.
But the fact remains that the first time you were completely isolated from the village with him, you nearly died."
Sakura frowns, not sure she likes where that's going. "He'd never hurt me," she says fiercely. "He's my sensei."
Her sometime teacher, her Hokage, nods her head agreeably. Her brown eyes are focused on the green numbers she's double checking against the chart's readings.
"Having spoken to both Ino and Hatake," Tsunade-shishou says, "I'm inclined to agree with that. Nonetheless, in order to make sure…"
"Underneath the underneath," Sakura murmurs. She still doesn't like it. Doesn't like the way it feels like an insult to all three members of the new Team Seven…
But that's because I know he'd never hurt me. If someone had a sensei who was the sort that would hurt them then they'd need this conversation, wouldn't they?
It's a sobering thought.
"Okay," she says. "I get it. I'll answer your questions, Tsunade-shishou, but Hatake-sensei's been nothing but great to Ino and me. None of what happened was his fault."
At least, she can't see how it could have been.
"Then he's got nothing to fear by you speaking to me frankly," Tsunade-shishou tells her. "And you've got nothing to hold back."
I don't advise telling her about me, Inner murmurs. Even for shinobi, I doubt hearing voices is considered a good thing.
Unless you're a Yamanaka, Sakura points out smugly. Then you're supposed to hear all the voices.
"I don't really know what happened for a lot of it," Sakura admits. "Since I was unconscious and all—I don't even know how I was rescued, not really, just that Hatake-sensei was there and saved me."
"Start at the beginning," Tsunade-shishou advises. "Not from the end."
Sakura fiddles with her hair, wishing she'd asked Ino to tie it back with a headband or something to keep it from falling in her face, and nods slowly.
It's surprisingly hard to figure out where to pick up the whole situation. From the beginning? Where had it started? From when they first encountered the monster? Ino's weird zone-outs? Was that all included?
But Ino's zone-outs were probably related to her bloodline, Sakura decides, choosing to leave that out.
The monster, though, she tells Tsunade-shishou about. Their first encounter with it. She talks about the ceramic shards, and how she and Ino had turned that into a game, something to keep them occupied and how at one point Ino went missing. A trip to the bathroom she'd never returned from and the stranger wearing her face who'd shown up in her stead. Then Sakura's own rising conviction that Hatake-sensei wasn't actually Hatake-sensei.
How she'd decided to get away from them and had managed to get rid of Hatake-sensei but the false Ino hadn't been shaken so easily.
Her escape attempt there and then the subsequent, embarrassing, capture. How she'd woken up trapped.
It gets harder to find the words, then, to speak about how they'd tossed her around like she'd been nothing. How she'd been scared and feeling worthless. Sakura tries to focus on the details. The way they'd raised the wall of green smoke. The altar. The ceramic shards having been put back together.
How the enemy had all worn Ino's face.
How she'd passed out.
"That's really all of what I remember," she says, though she remembers so much more.
But talking about internal voices, a personality split from hers due to self-loathing, and Hatake Sakumo's ghost talking to her, telling her she was dead…
Those she keeps to herself.
They're important, of course, but she doesn't know that they're important to anyone else.
Except maybe the way that Hatake Sakumo had insinuated that he and his wife had hired the enemy, Sakura thinks, rather glumly. But I don't think sharing that a ghost of a man long dead told me so while I was unconscious is going to be looked at as anything but a bit of me being…
The word you're avoiding is 'crazy', Inner says helpfully.
Yes, thank you, Sakura says sulkily. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Inner doesn't dignify that with an answer which, after a moment, Sakura decides is probably for the best. It'd be crazy, after all, to get lost in an argument with a fragment of herself.
Wait. Aren't you supposed to be sleeping? You said we probably wouldn't be able to talk the way we had been while I'd been unconscious.
They've still got you on some pretty great drugs, Inner says, a little dreamily. It makes your consciousness fuzzy—
I don't feel
fuzzy!
—so I can reach out pretty easily. Tsunade wants your attention, by the way.
"Sorry," Sakura says, hoping her smile doesn't look as fake as it feels. "Sorry, Tsunade-shishou. I didn't… I missed what you said. What was that?"
For a moment she thinks Tsunade-shishou is going to question her distraction but, after a long look, she makes another note on Sakura's chart and says, "I was asking about your plans for when you're released from the hospital."
"My… plans?" Sakura asks, frowning. "What plans would I…"
"You're recovering well and I expect your rehabilitation to continue along the same lines," Tsunade-shishou says. "But your parents are civilians, aren't they?"
Sakura shifts uneasily. "Yes," she admits. "They're… they're probably not going to be too happy about this, actually."
They haven't even bothered to show up at the hospital, after all, but Sakura refuses to think about that until she's alone and can have a good cry about it. Last night, Hatake-sensei had been really great about ignoring her tears but, she knows, there's still more of them to come. How can there not be? This is… it's personal.
At least you've a plan for it.
Sakura's pretty sure that her amorphous crying-alone-somewhere-sometime concept doesn't really count as a plan but, at the same time, she's not interested in actually scheduling that. She doesn't need to start sticking her feelings in a calendar or anything.
Doing that, she's pretty sure, would make her feel way worse about things. Just based on the anticipation alone.
"For a Genin's own safety," Tsunade-shishou is saying, "during recovery periods for injuries like yours, it is common protocol for them to stay with either their sensei or a teammate who can offer the support necessary without judgement or additional stress."
Sakura blinks. "That's—that's a thing?"
She's never heard of it before but, also, this is her first time in the hospital with Tsunade-shishou really in control of it. She supposes that things have either changed or old rules are now being enforced. It's probably a good rule, actually, thinking about it.
Even if it…
"That's a thing," Tsunade-shishou says. The phrasing of it sounds a little weird, coming from her.
Sakura smiles slightly, then bites her lip. "Ah—then, I guess… I should probably ask them, right? See who has room for me. I don't want to be an imposition or anything, once I'm allowed to leave the hospital."
Then she frowns as she considers her team. Her options.
"I don't know that Ino would be allowed to have me over," she says slowly, glancing at Tsunade-shishou. "We weren't really allowed even sleepovers at her place while at the Academy. I think it's a Clan thing, though she's never actually said."
But, in retrospect, she's pretty sure that, had she been allowed to sleepover, Ino would've asked her to, back when they'd been friends in school. Sakura hadn't ever built up the nerve back then to ask to stay over and though Ino had frequently grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her home for a meal or a few hours of homework, it had always ended with Sakura being walked back to her own home.
Maybe it would be different, now, that they were teammates?
"And Hatake-sensei…," she trails off, her feelings mixed.
"You're uncomfortable with that?" Tsunade-shishou asks, looking at the door for a moment before looking back at her. Her brown eyes are sympathetic though the rest of her face is neutral.
Sakura looks at the door too but it stays closed and, well, if anyone is on the other side of it, she can't tell. She hopes it's not Hatake-sensei since it's clear that Tsunade-shishou is waiting for an answer.
"Not really," she says, trying to figure out how to put it. "He was great on the mission and he's been great in training and everything. It hasn't been weird at all," aside from her constant surprise over actually having attention paid to her, "but we just got off a mission where we had to be debriefed separately in case it had been him who'd caused my injuries."
No one had directly said that, leveled that accusation out-right, but Sakura could read between the lines. They hadn't been worried about her having had an accident or Ino having hurt her. Which had just left…
Well.
Sakura doesn't know how to feel about that. Even Kakashi-sensei had never hurt anything of her directly except for her feelings. Kakashi-sensei had, in fact, gotten between her and danger more than once. He'd been a terrible sensei but he'd definitely always looked out for her on the field.
Hatake-sensei was much better at teaching and she didn't think he'd be any different than Kakashi-sensei, when it came to defending her or Ino—if they couldn't do it themselves.
I think I'm offended on his behalf, she realizes. I'm angry about it. I know the reasoning for it, some people might actually need the space and privacy to admit to their sensei hurting them. But Hatake-sensei… I want to say something about that-
Later, Inner advises drowsily. Take a breath and think it through. You know him better than they do.
You? Advising caution?
Inner doesn't answer her and, as Sakura takes a breath, she realizes Inner is probably right anyway.
It's bad form to harangue the Hokage, right?
"I just… I don't want anyone to be thinking bad things about Hatake-sensei," Sakura finishes, feeling a sentence like that, mild as it is, is absolutely inadequate to express her feelings. "But I'm not sure where else I'd stay. I guess Naruto wouldn't mind me in his apartment but there wouldn't be anyone else living there…"
From the door, a voice says: "Why don't you come stay with me?"