Hi friends! Thank you all for continuing to support this story.

Sakura's training arc is drawing to a close, and I have been trying to make sure things are properly set up for the next arc. I hope you do not find some of these details tedious.

Comments and constructive criticism are warmly welcomed.

Chapter 20

"Do not conflate "chakra pressure" with "chakra flow": this difference is key. The primary way to create chakra pressure is through strong chakra control; a shinobi with poor control, who tries to create pressure through pure chakra volume and flow, will likely be drained dry within a quarter hour."

– Achieving Genjutsu Mastery, Vol. I Ch. V

The cemetery is quiet in the evenings, empty save for the occasional chittering of birds and the swaying of branches overhead. That's why Sakura often waits until the sun is low in the sky before she heads to the edge of Konoha and through the gap in the somber stone walls, her arms laden with afternoon groceries and her sandals tapping furtively across the uneven steps.

Haruno Kizashi's grave is plain and austere, the headstone identical to the ones around it, empty save for the name etched into its center. It is both a punishment and a mercy.

As always, Sakura offers the grave a bow and sweeps a week's worth of dust off the stone before setting a small bouquet onto the base. She lights a stick of incense and lets the smoke curl around her face for a moment before placing it into the incense holder by the flowers. Then, she stands up and gathers her groceries.

She never stays long.

Twilight grasps at her ankles as she turns away from the lonely grave and the smell of incense, begins the meandering journey back to the entrance gates. The steps are wrapped in shadows now, and Sakura has to examine the path carefully as she walks, head craned precariously to peek over the tops of the paper bags.

The ambush comes too fast. She barely has time to turn her head before her back is slammed against the cemetery wall, the worn stone knocking the breath from her lungs. The bags tumble out of her arms, cabbages and fruit and cans of tea hitting the ground and rolling away.

Dizzy from the impact, Sakura stares uncomprehendingly at the dark fabric of her assailant's coat for a moment. A flak jacket, she realizes, and something clicks. A shinobi.

Instincts kick in. Striking out blindly, Sakura manages to wiggle to the side and scramble up the wall, her hands and feet glowing with excess chakra in her panic. There's no time to look back—she runs along the wall as far as her legs can carry her, ears straining for the sound of following footsteps she knows she will not hear.

Half-formed thoughts flit through her mind as she careens forward with a balance she hadn't known she possessed. Why would a shinobi attack her? Who? She considers the possibility of it being Shisui or Itachi—but no, she's been with them often enough to recognize their chakra by now, and they had never physically attacked her in their trainings. Sakura channels even more chakra into her legs.

Where could she run? Stories like this happened to Hyuuga heiresses and powerful scions, not to people like her. Nobody would come looking. Reaching the end of the wall, she leaps without pause into the trees, cold sweat gluing her shirt to her back. Only now does she realize her mistake: she had run away from the village instead of towards it.

The training grounds!, a voice shrieks into her mind, deafening like a clap of thunder. It is both new and familiar, like a memory from a half-forgotten dream, and Sakura listens. Hopping onto another branch, she angles towards the training grounds with blind trust. Please, let me make it. Branches whip at her hair and claw at her ankles until one meets its mark, striking her shin in the semi-darkness and causing her to tumble to the forest floor. By some miracle, Sakura manages to land on all fours, scratching her palms in the process. She doesn't stop to examine the damage, darting to her feet and taking off again as fast as she can.

She falls into the training grounds: the trees just suddenly stop, and Sakura finds herself crashing into thin air. Stumbling to a stop, she immediately flattens herself against a nearby tree trunk and scans the clearing for any sign of movement, frantically stretching out her senses for any chakra signatures. She finds none.

Her legs buckle and she slides to the ground, desperately trying to recover her breath as quietly as she can, the gasps seeming to ring through the clearing. Her measly chakra stores are nearly depleted after her run in spite of the chakra-saving techniques she had used. And her attacker is still out there. She should head to the Hokage Tower immediately, just as soon as her legs start working again—

"Done already?"

Sakura jumps out of her skin at the sudden materialization of chakra beside her, turning and trying to scoot away all at once.

"I-I don't—" she starts, heart in her throat, when she finally sees his face.

"K-Kakashi-senpai!"

The relief, the disbelief, is almost painful, but it immediately becomes clear that something is wrong. Kakashi lounges casually against a nearby tree, posture perfectly relaxed, but his aura seems to freeze the air around him. The lone eye fixed upon her does not comfort, as it normally does, but cuts. Sakura's relief slowly drains away.

"Kakashi-senpai?" It comes out timid, hesitant. She's witnessed his sharpness before, his danger, that time she'd accidentally broken into his house—but this is nothing like that.

Now, he feels dark. It makes her keenly aware of the fact that she is just an Academy student.

She flinches violently when a kunai embeds itself into the ground by her feet.

"I'd expected more from you, after that show you put on yesterday." His voice is light, mild, terrifying. "Maa, let's see what you can do, then."

Sakura has no idea what he's talking about, no idea what he wants her to do. Her legs feel like jelly and her arms barely strong enough to hold her up. She scooches back another inch. "What do you mean?"

A flash of silver glints in the moonlight, and ice crawls up her spine as she watches another kunai dance between his fingertips, the faint light twisting just so to reflect off the kunai stuck in the ground. No, she thinks with rising horror, he can't be meaning…he can't be meaning for me to fight him.

But the look in his eyes is cold and ruthless, and she realizes that yes, that is what he means. And that he knows she knows. And there's no escape. With shaking fingers, she pulls the blade from the ground, the handle slipping from her grasp several times before she succeeds. Drags herself into a standing position.

"W-why?," she manages to utter, kunai trembling in her palm. The concept of actually fighting him is utterly ridiculous. She cannot even hold her own against Shikamaru in shurikenjutsu. To wave a kunai at this clearly seasoned shinobi—it is a farce.

He flicks the kunai and it whistles past her cheek too fast for her to even twitch a muscle in escape. Sakura stumbles back belatedly as several strands of long pink hair drift to the ground, mind frozen from shock. This is not Kakashi. That uncaring, cold look in his eyes—this is not the boy who taught her how to jump across rooftops, who comforted her so gently before the Memorial Stone. She doesn't know this boy.

"Because you seem to think you're ready," he finally responds, something tense stretching within his voice, ready to snap. "Now come on, before I lose my patience."

His tone is final, brooking no argument, no contestation of his verdict no matter how opaque the accusation is to Sakura. Seeing no way out, she swallows down the words and laboriously gathers herself into the best fighting stance she can manage, limbs nearly locking in fear. He merely watches her languidly, hands in his pockets. She isn't sure if she imagines the condescension dripping from his gaze, but it makes her cheeks burn with shame even as her body continues to shake. With a small cry that dies into a hiccup, she lurches forward and swipes clumsily at his arm. And again. And again.

He evades without seeming to even move each time, posture oozing boredom and indifference even as his aura slowly seeps through her skin and begins to suffocate her. He's toying with her—has been since the cemetery, and she feels overwhelmingly outclassed even though he hasn't even gone on the offensive. She isn't sure if it's desperation or mania which causes her to speed up, kunai stabbing forward in jerky motions at a target she just couldn't reach, missing by a hairsbreadth each time—a distance she knows may as well be a kilometer if they judge based on skill. He isn't even looking at her now, face buried into a little orange book he pulled out of nowhere. She doesn't know why, but something about that act is what finally breaks her, and she starts to cry.

"I-I didn't mean to," she whimpers as she takes another futile swing, "I'm sorry, I d-don't—I'm sorry, I-I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Blinded by tears, she trips and lets herself collapse to the ground, kunai falling from numb fingers.

An instant later, her back is pressed against rough tree bark, the tip of a kunai resting just beneath her chin. The feel of cold metal snuffs out her voice, leaving her hiccuping with a sense of terror mixed with fatalistic resignation as she stares up into those dark, unreadable eyes.

He lets her wait for a moment, two, and then lowers the kunai, stepping back with a sigh.

"Why do I even try," he mutters to himself as he runs a hand through his hair. The aura around him dissipates like a dandelion in the breeze, and suddenly he is the Kakashi she knows again, exasperated, grumpy, tired. "Do you at least understand my point now? Stop showing off when you're just a pup, all bark and no bite. People are starting to notice. Powerful people. Dangerous people. People you won't be able to handle if they find you."

Sakura hiccups and raises a shaky hand to wipe at her nose, the words only half-registering in her mind. Tears again begin to stain her face even as she tries to nod, her voice continuing to fail her.

He hesitates, watching her silently for a few seconds, and then stretches out a hand towards her head, retracting it when she flinches back violently out of pure instinct. She doesn't catch his wince. "S-sorry," she manages through more hiccups, "I d-didn't m-mean to…." She slides back to the ground, hiding her face behind her bangs.

Kakashi grits his teeth as he watches her, mind torn between guilt, uncertainty, and self-loathing. This is why he shouldn't even try, he knows. Everything he touches—really, he should just leave, right now. He takes a step back, fingers clenching into fists in his pockets.

And then a shaky hand touches his leg.

"S-sorry," she says again. Through the haze of shock and lingering fear in her mind, only one thought breaches the surface.

He hadn't hurt her. He hadn't betrayed her. He is still here.

"I d-didn't mean to make you mad," she whispers. She tightens her grip on his pantleg.

Moments later, she feels a soft, careful hand settle on her head.

"I'm not mad," he says, crouching down beside her. He hesitantly gives her a pat, then moves his hand to the nape of her neck. The warmth seeps into her skin, soothing the tremors wracking her body until the tears stop and the hiccups are few and far between. "And I'm sorry about your hair," he adds awkwardly into the stillness, touching the few strands which had been cut short by his kunai.

That startles a laugh from her. "It's okay, Kakashi-senpai. It's just hair."

"I saw you the other day," he explains after a moment. His voice is quiet, unsure. "When you were showing your friends your chakra control with the leaves. It's not a genin technique."

Sakura gathers her courage and chances a look at his face. He doesn't look angry, but a slight frown curves beneath his mask. "You were there?"

He looks away. "Not just me."

Something heavy falls into the pit of her stomach. "So someone already knows?" She feels cold, panic starting to creep back into her mind. "What are they going to do? Is there anything I can—is it too late? I—I'm sorry, I didn't—"

"Maa, it's fine. I took care of it," he cuts in, giving her an eye crinkle. Sakura reads between the lines. He took care of it for her. She swallows a lump in her throat and tugs on his sleeve.

"Thank you," she whispers, and, "I'm really sorry." He had warned her before. She just hadn't realized…. "I thought it would be safe at Shikamaru's."

"Someone is always watching, Sakura-chan." He ruffles her hair and then pulls her to her feet, his grip firm now but still careful, still searching for any sign of discomfort. "Someone is always looking for the next prodigy."

"Prodigy?" The word doesn't sound terrible. In fact, it sounds…nice. Does Kakashi think of her as a prodigy? Sakura, a clanless girl with no kekkei genkai? It makes her feel…useful. Special.

"It's not a good thing," Kakashi says sharply even as he rests a gentle hand on her shoulder to guide her forward. Maybe for people like him, but not her. "Don't you know what happens to the sharpest knife in the drawer?" The look in her eyes is full of innocence, confusion, trust he does not deserve. "It is the one used to make the cut."

He lets her mull that over while he leads them out of the training grounds, surreptitiously scanning her body language to check that she really is more-or-less back to normal. Perhaps he shouldn't have brought out the kunai, he thinks, wincing internally. This is why he isn't cut out for this kind of stuff, why he really shouldn't care. While she seems mostly recovered, her aura is still slightly subdued, and the guilt slowly swallows him until the urge to run away becomes nearly overwhelming.

"Kakashi-senpai?"

"Hm?" He affects an air of lightness.

"When do you think I'll be ready to handle it?"

The question stops him in his tracks. He looks down at her.

"Why do you want to handle it now?" he asks eventually.

She can't read him yet, doesn't know him well enough to discern the shock hiding behind his words, but she does sense…something, about this moment. As if she were balanced on a precipice, and the answer she gives could shift the world. So she considers her response carefully, weighing each word in her mind to see whether they ring true, testing each syllable to make sure that she means it. Then she takes a breath and says:

"There are people I want to protect."

He stills completely, eyes focused on hers with an intensity so strong it feels as if he really is piercing through them and into her soul.

"Your precious people?" His voice is impossibly soft. She nods. And he looks at her with something like wonder, something like pain in his chest, at this child who should have been just like him and yet does not resemble him at all. He looks at the Will of Fire.

And, slowly, he crouches down to her eye level. (And the rational part of his mind screams at him, tells him no no don't do it you can't you're weak you don't deserve to—but it is ignored, squashed out despite his best efforts by an old, rusty emotion, something he hadn't felt in so long, something impossible, something which feels like hope—)

"Then be patient and I'll help you protect them until you're ready." (No no NO why—) He gives her his eye crinkle. "But you have to promise me something in return, okay, Sakura-chan?"

Sakura hesitantly takes his proffered hand and nods. "What is it?"

"Don't fail."

He shakes the tiny palm in his and prays that this time fate would not be so cruel.

.

.

.

(He should have known better.)

Author's comments: Ah yes, classic Kakashi—trying to protect a child by employing shinobi intimidation tactics. Well, at least he's trying….

On a more serious note: looking back at what I've written so far, I know that the first few chapters are a bit rough that this training arc has been a bit of a patchwork. A part of me wants to rewrite it so that things flow better; however, I am refraining from doing so because I believe it is better to finish this story than to make the beginning better without ever arriving at the end. Thank you for sticking with me on this ever-changing journey.

Until next time!