A/N: Sorry for being late; there was a spider in my room.

Chapter 37 — Trapped

Trapped. Trapped. Trapped.

The following day, I found myself at training ground 12. Not long after he'd left the house, Naruto's clone returned with news from Tsunade. The ninja world didn't seem to believe in things like family emergencies, so my training would be occurring on schedule.

Trapped. Trapped. Trapped.

I'd been sent off with one of Sensei's dogs so I wouldn't be walking alone. I'd gone with the stoic one. Spending time with him felt more conducive to my inner mood than Sensei's larger, more cuddly dog. I felt bad that I hadn't thought to ask Sensei their names.

It wasn't hard to locate Tsunade in the field once I arrived. She was sitting in the middle of the clearing, on a bench next to one of the many streams.

She spotted me instantly, and the long walk across the field to her felt awkward. When I was finally only a few paces away from her, I bowed. "Hello, Shishou."

She nodded. "Hello, Headache." She jerked her head toward the other side of the bench. "Sit."

I obliged. Sensei's dog trotted off toward the trees and took up sentinel.

Tsunade frowned, her eyes tracking the dog. "That's overkill. Nobody would be foolish enough to infiltrate Konoha at our current security level, especially after what happened. And you're woefully misguided, not hopeless."

My head snapped to her, eyes wide. "You really think so?"

She snorted. "Did that come across as a compliment? Do you really need to rely on me to tell you that you're not hopeless?"

I nodded, then slowly shook my head. "Not hopeless, but maybe helpless." I leaned back against the bench. "I haven't done a single thing. I'm sick of it." My hands balled into fists. "What's the point of all this training if I never do anything?"

"You must have made a terrible student. Should I be more concerned?"

This gave me some pause. "I was. Not as much recently." I frowned. "It's easier when I've been directing my own training, maybe."

"Yes," she drawled. "You do like doing things on your own, so I'm surprised to hear you say that you haven't done a single thing."

My thoughts felt muddled. I couldn't figure out how to reply. She wasn't wrong, but she wasn't right.

Trapped. Trapped. Trapped.

"From what I've heard, you wanted some involvement on a certain mission, and between you and your little friends, you somehow got approval."

"Guessing you already know the details?" I said dryly.

I saw her turn toward me out of the corner of my eye. "Not the most recent ones yet, though I'm sure I will soon. Between everything we spoke of before, and having your therapist working under me."

"Right. Should we be talking about that here?"

She tapped the bench, and I looked down. Belatedly, I noticed a strange, complex engraving in it.

"Ah. Seal?"

"Didn't even have to set it myself. Ninja greatly enjoy clandestine conversations on benches, as it happens."

I nodded. "That tracks." A pause. "I kind of despise ninja. Do you know what I did that let us join the mission?"

She shook her head. "Not yet."

"I found the Sound bases. I looked at current and historical maps and supply chains, which towns commissioned missions from where, and I found the most likely places. In a single night. Sensei says someone has probably found them before, but nobody would have bothered writing it down. Ninja are… I want to call them insane, but that would be an insult to me personally. I want to call them stupid, but that doesn't cover the willfulness of it. I just hate them."

"You'd make a poor ninja if you didn't." She snorted. "And the word you're looking for is incompetence. Believe it or not, most ninja have some. Otherwise, they'd be very dead very quickly. If you're going to be a ninja who insists on taking personal responsibility, let's see if we can make you one that makes it to adulthood." I met her eyes, finally, and was surprised to see some softness in her expression. She continued, "I've taken a leaf out of your book, as it happens. Every note I've made about you, every note I could find on you, going back to when you first… arrived here, for lack of a better word."

I nodded. "Seems like the sensible thing to do. Are you sure you're a ninja?"

"Not by choice." She pulled out a scroll. "This one was fun to get hold of; it's the notes from your first encounter with Inoichi in the T&I building. He was fortunately very detailed; almost word for word."

I frowned. "And that's relevant how? I've already told you everything about that."

"You did. I have those notes as well, from our first conversation. But sometimes, you must collect pieces over time to get a clear picture of something." She grinned, the twist of her mouth crooked. "Do you remember your little problem with always making healing chakra? And your problem with nearly killing yourself with natural chakra?"

"Hard to forget."

She unrolled the scroll and cleared her throat. "The subject recalled being able to use Mystical Palm Technique, though she described it as something else. According to subject, under the false narrative, healing chakra is called 'reiki', and is formed by, approximate quote: 'you take in energy, and you can use it to heal through your hands'. Subject was requested to demonstrate, and after rubbing her palms together, seemed to produce healing chakra, though it was not tested." Her eyes flicked up to meet mine. "It goes on a bit more, but I think you can see where I'm going with this."

My mouth worked for several seconds before I could find the words. "I don't think I'm… I probably started that way, but when I'm using jutsu, I'm not…"

"You probably aren't relying on natural energy for your jutsu, no. I'm sure you're using your handseals to help you form the correct chakra in your body. However, when you are not making handseals, but instead creating pure chakra or even practising your chakra control, would I be wrong to assume you'd fall back on this method?"

My throat felt dry. "I wasn't trying to."

She shook her head. "When did you learn this reiki technique?"

"I would have been about six."

"And if this was the first connection you made to your chakra in conscious memory, it stands to reason you would still fall back on it. If you've been using the technique from a young age, it may even run on automatic."

I nodded numbly.

She formed a seal in her hands. "This is one of the yang-release seals, though it's often incorporated into other seals. This is the type of energy you want to avoid using in healing, at least at your level." She changed her hands. "This is a yin-release seal, and what we will be working with in the future. Please try it, though do not form chakra yet."

I copied her.

She continued, "This seal will be in every technique I will show you. Most medic-nin eventually graduate from needing to use seals to focus themselves. I request that you never do. You will need to concentrate far more than your peers to avoid mistakes. Understood?"

"Yes, Shishou."

"Good. Form some chakra now, just a little… good. Now." She ducked down and moved a bucket to the front of the bench; I hadn't even noticed it. There were several small fish swimming inside it. She clutched one and yanked it out, dumping the fish unceremoniously onto the bench between us. It flopped pathetically.

"Now, keep the fish alive out of the water."

I stared at her.

"Well?"

"Aren't you going to teach me a healing jutsu first?"

She shook her head. "You've already insisted on doing self-directed healing. Better to get your mistakes out of the way from the bottom up." She nodded at the fish. "Come on. Clock's ticking."

I huffed a small curse and hovered my hands over the fish, trying to sense— how would I even do this? Do I convert the oxygen in its gills?

She hovered a hand above my own. Not pushing any chakra, just… sensing. "What, are you going to micromanage every cell in its body? No wonder you exhaust yourself."

I gritted my teeth and pulled my chakra back. Okay, try letting it feel around on its own, maybe, like with Lee. Then the fish's body can help me direct it… The yin-chakra did not like this method and seemed to slip and pool around like oil.

"I didn't say to ignore it entirely," she huffed.

The fish flopped again, more pathetically.

This is going to be a long day.

It was.

Many hours and a setting sun found us still on that same bench. My longest run of keeping a fish alive had only come to three minutes. Tsunade slowly cycled through them, dumping them back into the bucket for a replacement whenever I started failing. Finally, she called a halt.

I let the chakra fade from my hands and pushed sweat-soaked hair from my face. "Finally tired of watching me torture fish?"

She raised one hand and the water in the bucket lifted, travelling slowly to empty itself into the stream. "Every fish you nearly killed here today may well equal ten people you don't torture in the future." She smiled. "Well done. How are you feeling?"

"Sweaty and gross," I said instantly. Then frowned. "But only sweaty and gross." My eyes widened. "I was on the verge of chakra exhaustion this morning and had barely gotten better. I just spent hours trying to heal. Why aren't I collapsed on the ground right now?"

"Because you used your chakra properly. The only chakra you lost today was what was required to briefly help creatures smaller than your hand. And you know full well how much chakra they need to keep their bodies running."

"Not much," I said quietly, studying my hands. "Wow. Just from using that one seal?"

"That and also me stopping you from overdoing it." She shook her head. "Isn't it nice to have someone around to tell you when you're doing things incorrectly?"

I frowned. "Surprisingly, yes." I stood up and stretched hugely, raising my arms far above my head. "So when will we next do this?"

Tsunade frowned. "Well, you leave in two weeks for your mission, correct?"

I nodded, not bothering to ask how she'd known that. If she could procure documents from T&I, she could presumably find whatever the hell she wanted.

She nodded, pulling out a piece of paper. After a moment of thought, she scribbled down a few dates. "We can revisit later, after your mission. Before you leave, however, I do need you to come with me to the tower for your disciplinary session. I've spoken with the council, and one of the elders agreed to a short meeting next week." She passed the small scroll to me. "Again, this is just a formality. He already knows the situation, and as everything's already settled, the whole thing should only take twenty to thirty minutes."

I shoved the scroll unceremoniously into my pack. "Got it." I turned to leave.

"Haruno."

"Yeah?" I craned my head around.

"What will you do next, I wonder?"

"Train," I said instantly. And then, out of respect for her honesty with me, added, "And otherwise, I don't know. If I knew what to do, I'd just do that."

She frowned and nodded. "I suppose I should have figured. That will be all for today."

Time is a strange thing.

They say that as you get older, your perception of time changes— it speeds up. There is no consensus as to why. Some posit that it comes down to fractions. One year for a ten-year-old equals one-tenth of their life— as opposed to a fifty-year-old (one-fiftieth). Yet others posit that our thinking speed decreases due to the massive increase in neural connections over time.

If it's the former, I had no excuse for how two weeks was becoming five thousand years. As I was transported into the body of a twelve-year-old, I decided that those extra two years of difference were giving my brain the zoomies.

It certainly wasn't impatience. Impatience to save my kidnapped parents. Impatience at sitting around doing nothing but waiting.

And there was no chance whatsoever that the suffocating aura of annoyance and disappointment that Naruto and Sasuke were exuding at me daily was getting to me.

No, it was just science.

It wasn't like I was sitting around wallowing. Every waking hour was jammed with any kind of training I could dig my claws into. Mornings were filled with training with Team Gai. After, I would go straight from the training field to the hospital to check on Lee, with or without Ten-Ten and one of Sensei's dogs. After ascertaining that he was, yes, still unconscious, I would move on to training with Tsunade. If it was a non-Tsunade day, I'd drop by the Yamanaka flower shop, where there was a decent chance I could run into Ino.

The first few days I managed to catch her she was delighted to see me, and more than happy to spend her afternoon studying or sparring with me. After the fifth time, her unfortunate understanding of psychology broke through.

"So, why are you avoiding your teammates?"

"Eh?" I accidentally snipped the wrong leaf from the flower arrangement I'd been working on. Ino clucked her tongue and reached over to turn the flower slightly, and through some strange ikebana magic, it looked good again.

"Naruto and Sasuke-kun. Don't get me wrong; I'm happy to see you. And I understand you're too weird to be excited about living with Sasuke-kun." She huffed out a disbelieving sigh. "But after everything that happened, and everything coming up..." she trailed off meaningfully.

I turned to the side to study our selection of flower branches, incidentally hiding my face. They were mostly sakura blossoms, though I didn't understand how they had them at this time of year. Probably more ikebana magic.

"Sakura."

"I'm thinking."

"No, you're avoiding the question!" she huffed.

"No, I mean," I shook my head and finally met her eyes. "I'm thinking. I kind of upset them recently, and a lot is going on. There are some things I need to work out for myself, but if I'm around them, I can't think."

She frowned and leaned back. "Are you, though? You've been pretty busy lately, haven't you? Sounds like avoidance to me."

I curled my hands together in my lap. "A little bit of both."

She snorted.

"Fine. A lottle bit." I rolled my eyes. "Imagine you were me, and you were living with Shikamaru and Chouji, and they were worried about you."

She paused to consider this. "It's hard to imagine, but I guess I can see it. But how is being with me any better? I always worry about you."

I waved a hand vaguely. "You worry about feelings and stuff. They're worried about, uh, other things."

She put her head in her hands. "Feelings and stuff. Honestly, sometimes we talk, and you seem almost back to normal, and then you come out with that."

"Oh, um. Maybe my added life experiences are giving me increased perspective? I don't know, Ino, sometimes you make it sound like I used to be a fluttery ditz."

She glowered at me. "No, but you were less dismissive of absolutely everything."

I blinked.

She threw her hands up in the air. "I'm trying to help you. Your teammates are probably trying to help you. But you just don't care."

"That's not true," I said, the first tendrils of hurt starting to twine in my chest. Trapped. Trapped. Trapped. "I care a lot. I wouldn't be having these problems if I didn't." The hurt twisted into indignation. "I just want to make everyone safe, and you all act like it's something terrible."

Her glare intensified, and for a moment I thought she might actually hit me. Then she closed her eyes, audibly breathing out. "Nobody thinks that. We just don't want to be left out of it, that's all."

I knew what my honest response to that was, but I couldn't say it. Not when she was looking at me like that. I ducked my head, pretending capitulation. "Yeah, I get it." It wasn't a lie; it was just beside the point.

She breathed out a sigh of relief. "So, will you stop avoiding your team? I'd bet that's part of the reason they're so worried."

"You're not wrong. Spending time with them would help; I'll have to do that." Another truth.

Ino appeased, we resumed our flower arranging. Hers turned out beautifully, of course.

Mine came out looking wilted.

A/N: Remember Sakura's comment about multi-coloured pushpins and string? That's what my storyboards look like right now. (Yes, plural. I have two. Save me.) This chapter kicked my entire ass, but we're through the knot. Thanks as always for reading, and remember to take a water/food break. (This fic is getting long.) Also, reminder that you can see chapter updates / small bonus things / and get hold of me directly on my tumblr, if you so desire.