Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 54 – Recrudesce
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 3,888
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 54 of ? Unbeta'd.
The festival they'd been at last night had been fun but, so far as she knows, they hadn't really solved the problem of how to tell dead people from living ones.
Tenten is kind of glad that that's Sakura's problem and she's just got to help out, as a friend does.
As a friend does...
Or, perhaps, as a teammate.
Because Tenten finds the solution she was looking for to all her agonizing in a rather anticlimactic way, the day after the festival and the whole ghost confession.
It's not the library's fault.
Nor is it Hinata's fault, though Hinata is with her-Tenten hasn't been looking things up regarding teams when Shikamaru and her are studying together; given everything, even she can see how tactless that would be-and, well, it sort of is Hinata's fault for remembering that the solution exists then making her work to find it for herself.
But I can't get mad about that, Tenten thinks, rereading the words thoughtfully. If she'd just handed the solution to me, it wouldn't have meant anything. It would've gone from being the answer to my own decision to just another question to struggle with.
The book she finds is surprisingly dusty, given that it's about the legalities surrounding teams, their development, formation, and deployment, and the laws that support them.
On the other hand, she supposes that's not that strange at all, that most people wouldn't go and read something so incredibly dry.
And it's not even strange that it's not common knowledge. People might shuffle teams around for Chuunin Exams but that's different. Everyone knows it's just for the exam. And wartime rules are different, so this wouldn't have applied then...
She checks the library card, at the back of the book, and there it is, just two names back, Hinata's name in her neat penmanship.
Two years ago.
Tenten holds her place in the book with one thumb and with her free hand scribbles a note to Hinata:
You were trying to find a way to get put on a team with Naruto, weren't you?
Then she slides the note over and bites the inside of her cheek, hard, to keep from laughing when Hinata goes tomato red from neck to hairline.
Because it's the library, all Hinata gives her is a reproachful look, to which Tenten mouths the word 'sorry', and goes back to reading about the solution to-well, a lot of things.
Now I just... need to do it.
Which is intimidating all by itself but, like, Tenten's part of Team Gai. She's got this, now that there's a clear path forward instead of her just circling her thoughts.
She rereads the section again, making notes this time of what forms she'll need to fill out, in triplicate, and where she'll need to bring them.
Assuming that-well. I should probably ask them first. Okay, so fill out the forms, ask them, then if they say yes...
Tenten's notes turn into little scribbled doodles all in various stages of dramatic despair. They look suspiciously like Lee.
Then I get to tell the boys. That's going to be fun and not at all awkward.
Even in her own thoughts, the sarcasm oozes.
Emphasize that this isn't permanent, she reminds herself. It's not. Not in the way they'd care. Team Gai would still be my primary team.
Tenten quietly crosses out a few of the more self-destructive sad little doodles and underlines the word temporary.
But I think it's what I need.
And there's not a single member of Team Gai who'd argue with pursuing that.
"I'm going to go," Tenten says. "Meet you tonight?"
Hinata studies her thoughtfully, her pale eyes taking her in.
"Yes," Hinata says. "Tonight."
Tenten smiles, hating the way it feels a bit nervous, and then goes and checks herself out of the library.
The book comes with her.
Most books can't leave the library but the dry ones, the boring ones on the legalities around being a ninja, those can. They're not dangerous, if a civilian reads them, and they don't give away secrets.
She still gets a ten minute lecture from the librarian about taking good care of the book, which Tenten endures solemnly, and with the full knowledge that the lecture being only ten minutes long means they already trust her to some degree.
Her next stop is the administrative offices, where she stands in queue for what feels like ages and ages but isn't more than half an hour, and makes her request for the forms she's going to need, if this all goes well.
It takes three desk Chuunin to find them and, when they do, the forms are yellowed with age.
She ignores their speculative looks, thanks them for the papers, and takes herself off home.
Once she's locked in her room, having evaded her parents and having discovered that neither her brothers nor Sakura are around (thank goodness), Tenten spreads the forms out on her desk and stares at them.
Part of her feels sick.
The rest of her is quivering on the inside, like she's a dog about to be let off her leash for the first time in ages.
Her eyes dance over the words that top the form:
TEMPORARY TEAM REASSIGNMENT REQUEST
And she takes a deep breath, takes a seat, and settles in to complete the paperwork for it.
The question-is she sure about this?-has already been answered.
There's other questions, definitely, and Tenten knows there's still the chance that they'll say no, and she'll have to be okay with that, if they do, but...
But if that happens, at least I will have tried. It's better to have tried and failed than not have tried at all. That's something no one on Team Gai can deny.
And, traitorously, come the thoughts: And it's something for me to do, while my team isn't fully functioning. Also, I think this will fulfill that thirty-four years...
Which, as she bends her head to the paperwork, she smiles about.
That's nothing to scoff about either.
After Hatake-sensei dismisses them, Sakura feels like nothing more than a worn and wrung-out old rag. She's so tired.
She's pleased, too, though because the lesson had been the closest she'd gotten to being fully active since she'd been injured.
Getting closer! Getting back to normal!
Though the shape of her new normal, well, she's not sure how to feel about that or what, exactly, it'll be yet.
"Do you really think the ritual gave me my new ability?" Sakura asks Ino, once Hatake-sensei is long gone and she's gotten her breath back. She's still flat on her back, staring up at the sky. She knows she's a total mess and it's funny to think that, a year ago, she'd have been upset about that.
What if someone saw her and thought she was ugly?
Now, though, she's just glad that it means she can train hard again. It's okay, to not look her best, while she's doing her best.
Ino studies the treeline of the clearing they're in inscrutably, before she turns her gaze to Sakura.
Even seeing her eyes, Sakura doesn't know what Ino's thinking.
"I don't know," Ino says, "but I didn't want the possibility to be overlooked. I've never heard of a ghost being able to give someone a present before, you know? But, equally, I don't know if there's a ritual that can give out gifts either. You had two really weird things happen to you, on top of dying—"
"I got better!"
"—so I thought it was better to bring it up. There's a danger to getting your mind set on something, thinking it's a sure thing, but then it turns out to be not."
Sakura sighs and peels herself up off the dirt.
"I guess," she says, rather glumly.
"How are you feeling?" Ino asks as they fall into step with one another, leaving the training ground.
"Tired," Sakura says, after a moment. "But not too tired. Hungry."
"Still up for going to the movie later?" Ino asks. "I'm sure we can postpone our experiment if we need to. Hatake-sensei was glad you were able to keep up. There's still the competition to check out this weekend, with Hinata and Tenten. We don't need to do everything to figure out your new ability."
"I'll be fine," Sakura says, not wanting to slow down now that she's finally getting to where she doesn't need to, quite as much. "There's still hours to go before the movie starts, right? Plenty of time for food, a wash, and a nap, Mom."
Ino laughs.
They bicker about where to go and, given the time of day, they wind up picking up take-out and heading back to Ino's place.
Since the shop is busy, after waving at one of the Yamanaka cousins—Sakura's not sure which one it is manning the counter-they go around the back, and up the stairs into where Ino lives.
"Your dad's not home?" she says, as they step inside.
Ino's home always smells like flowers, which makes sense, given the shop downstairs, but more than that, Sakura has always loved the way it feels so comfortable. Ino's home is bright and full of soothing blues and yellows and purples. It's as if everything's been chosen deliberately to be in harmony.
"He said he'd be back tonight," Ino says, shrugging. "Grab some cups and go sit down."
Sakura does as she's told.
Somehow, after not being here for a while, she feels a little awkward sitting on the cream cushions on the dining table's chairs, but Ino doesn't even seem to notice, too busy getting out plates and cutlery.
There's someone playing the koto, though she doesn't recognize the song. She looks for the radio, but doesn't see one.
Probably in the living room, she figures. It's pretty, though.
"Do you think Hatake-sensei is okay?" she asks, as Ino takes a seat and they both serve themselves.
"Okay?" Ino says, frowning. "I mean, how could he be, really? He will be, but that's not the same sort of thing."
"It's just...," Sakura trails off, not sure how to put it. She eats some noodles, first, trying to figure out how to say what she wants to say. "Isn't it kind of terrible, though, the way that he's—he's really not got very much, does he? He got pulled from his own life, and he's picked up the threads of another him's life, and he seems to be doing okay, but... but who does he talk to, other than us? We couldn't even find his dogs for him. And now I'm talking to his dead dad and, like... none of him is his own now. If that makes sense?"
Ino considers the matter, looking thoughtful.
Sakura listens to the sound of the koto and tries to relax a little. It's one of those things that's been—not bothering her, not exactly, but crawling in around the edges of her thoughts about Hatake-sensei.
She has people to talk to, these days, when something is bothering her.
Who does Hatake-sensei talk to, other than her and Ino, when all of Hatake-sensei's friends would be...
Would be Kakashi-sensei's friends?
"Lately, I've been thinking along similar lines," Ino admits. "Not so much about him not having his own life, but that he's alone in it."
"There's us," Sakura says, "but what if we're the problem or..."
He just wants to talk to people who aren't teen girls? Sakura feels that she really couldn't blame him for not always wanting to talk to her and Ino. There's days where she doesn't want to even talk to herself, after all.
"I mean, we're awesome, and don't you forget it," Ino says, pointing her chopsticks at Sakura. "But no, I get it. Dad sometimes spends the evening talking with me, but other times he's out drinking with Chouza-san and Shikaku-san. And, I think, while Hatake-sensei is a bit of a loner, who prefers to keep to himself... I mean, the dogs would have been company, right?"
"One of them could even talk," Sakura says. "His name was Pakkun and he was pretty funny. Kakashi-sensei didn't bring them around us too often though. I don't know why. Maybe because he didn't trust us with them or them with us. We were sort of... prone to disaster, even when the missions were easy."
Ino grins at her and, after a moment, Sakura grins back.
She is grateful, though, that Ino doesn't point out that the one mission they've done as the 'new' Team Seven ended in terrible, terrible disaster.
"I was thinking," Ino says slowly. "Thinking that if we can't find the summoning scroll so that he can access his dogs that there's maybe another option."
"What, another way to summon animals?" Sakura asks. "I don't know much about summoning in general, honestly."
"Me neither," Ino admits, "though I know that the stronger the summon, the more likely they are to be able to talk and the smarter they get. That's not what I was going for, though. I've been sort of thinking, like, what if we bought Hatake-sensei a dog? A nin-dog. From the Inuzuka."
Sakura blinks.
"I'm not even sure if there's a litter coming or available right now," Ino says, looking a bit awkward. "I was going to do some more research into the whole thing, before I brought it up with you, but then you started talking about kind of the same thoughts I'd been having, so..."
"I think," Sakura says, "that I like the idea. I don't know if he would, though. Getting someone a dog is... like going 'here's a huge commitment, have fun!'"
Ino grimaces. "I know," she says. "It's another of the reasons I wasn't sure if it'd be a good idea. Especially since Hatake-sensei is used to working with summoned dogs, who can go back to their own world and their own lives when they're not with him. If he got a dog here, it'd be with him all the time."
"So it would have to be a nin-dog," Sakura agrees, nodding. "Because it would have to be able to keep up on missions and go where he goes and be smart enough to handle all of that. Do the Inuzuka even sell their dogs?"
"They do," Ino says. "That I know for sure. It's a pretty rigorous process, though, and they're very, very picky about who they sell to. I think Hatake-sensei, with his known love and care of nin-dogs in particular, though, would qualify for one."
Sakura considers it.
As she does, they both go back to eating—hunger waits for no one!
"I don't know if it's a good idea or not either," she admits, after a few minutes. "I think that, maybe, we should do the research about it and give it a bit more time to see if there's any obvious drawbacks to it, before we even breathe a word of it around Hatake-sensei."
Ino looks relieved. "Yeah," she says, "yeah, that's fine. That's about where I was at. I think it'd be good for him but, like, we don't always want or can handle what's good for us."
Sakura can't help but sigh a little at that, torn between giggling and feeling some whole way about that.
"I wonder why we're like that," Sakura says. "It'd be way easier if everyone was able to get the things they need and also handle them. Not just for Hatake-sensei, I mean. I mean, like... everyone."
Ino shrugs a little. "Probably because, if life wasn't a fight, then what would be the point of it? No one treasures the things that are easy, Forehead. People have a bad tendency to look at the easy things and go 'oh, I can't trust this, let's ruin it by looking for what's really going on'."
The worst part is that Sakura can't argue that.
They finish their meal in silence.
"I'll do the dishes," Sakura offers. "If you want to go and shower first."
"Alright," Ino says, though they both know that the host is supposed to put the needs of the guest first. "I'll be quick about it."
But, the thing is, Sakura likes doing the dishes, and Ino hates them, and it's a small thing.
I wonder if it's true, Sakura thinks, as she gathers everything up, once Ino has bounced off towards the shower. There's that song, right? That goes something like 'time will take you back to believing'. If you'd asked me a few months ago how I felt about being on a team, I wouldn't have guessed I'd be here right now.
She treasures it, in this moment, not wanting to not treasure it, when it's true that people don't tend to value the easy things.
And this has been easy. Oh, not the training, not the mission going wrong, but Ino and I and Hatake-sensei. That's been the easy part. We just... fell into step. It's great. It's easy. Sakura laughs quietly to herself, up to her elbows in sudsy water, realizing she's grinning down at the dishes. I hope it stays this way. I can take anything, even ghosts.
By the time Ino wanders back out into the kitchen, in fresh clothes and with her hair damp and fluffy about her face, Sakura has finished the dishes and cleaned the counter.
"Your turn," Ino says.
"Don't ruin all my work," she retorts, and they both laugh.
Sakura passes through the living room on her way to the bathroom and she pauses there, because it's no radio playing at all, not that she can see.
But she still hears a koto.
She bites her lip, then hurries on towards the bathroom.
I've been able to see every ghost so far, so maybe I'm wrong that this is part of it too. But... but if there's a ghost in Ino's home, I don't want to know about it. I don't want to have to ask her about it.
It's not that Ino would be upset (though maybe, and she wouldn't want that either), but it's also that... if there's ghost here, then it's probably a sad story.
And she's never told me a sad story about her family before. In that case, then... if it happened, she doesn't want to talk about it.
Her curiosity isn't worth indulging at the cost of her best friend and teammate's privacy.
As she gets into the shower, she realizes-
I'm going to have to be careful about that. All the time. People aren't going to like hearing about their dead loved ones just hanging around. I'll have to be careful. It went okay, with Tenten, but we also didn't discover any close relatives of hers... just old neighbours. It could have gone so much worse.
The problem with trauma-
Well, no, one of the problems with trauma, actually...
-is that no matter how strong you are, no matter how trained you are, no matter how much you tell yourself it doesn't matter...
There comes a point where it does matter and it will no longer be ignored.
Kakashi watches Ino and Sakura go, noting the way Sakura is lagging behind slightly, but from exhaustion rather than a want to talk to him-please, no, he is running hard up against his capacity for talking right now-or anything else.
Ino grabs her by the wrist and they wander off.
Kakashi takes a breath.
Then another.
And feels the way the foundations of him are beginning to shake apart.
It's too early for him to go to the Memorial Stone, talk to his family, and it-
For a second he feels breathless, winded, because in a crystalline moment of clarity he realizes that, with Sakura's gift-
With Sakura's gift-
His mind shies away from it.
He disappears from the training ground in a cloud of smoke and leaves.
There's things he'd wanted to do today but, now that the girls have been dismissed, there's nothing he needs to do, and he both is glad and furious over the lack of distraction.
If it was important enough, he'd make himself do it.
But the only thing important enough now is dealing with this.
And he does not even know where to begin with any of it.
But he does know how to fall apart and, once fallen, he's never been unable to put himself together in the aftermath.
No one needs me right now.
The stairs on the way up to his apartment aren't empty, but they're not bustling either. He raises a lazy hand to those neighbours who bother to do the same to him and then, feeling like a boulder is coming for him, gets inside his apartment as soon as he can.
He sets every ward he's got on passive status to active. Normally, he doesn't bother. Many of them are war-time, ANBU wards. Ones not needed in normal life.
It would very nearly take an act of war to even get through his wards now.
Also, several of them muffle sound. If he starts screaming (sadly likely) or sobbing (depressingly, this is also likely) or laughing (the least expected but not a total no chance in hell) then at least he won't disturb the neighbours.
He's not the cook the other him had been-though, fuzzily, he wonders now if this was the sort of thing that drove him to learn to cook; had it been a coping mechanism? Should he look into it?-but he makes himself food. Quick and easy things. Things that reheat well. Things that can sit in the pan or on the counter or in the fridge and be there when he needs sustenance later.
He doesn't eat now.
He does grab a bottle of sake, though drowning his sorrows isn't really his style, just in case and then, very carefully, he goes and finds a whiteboard that the other Kakashi, the one whom had belonged to this timeline, had stuffed in the back of the closet, along with a pile of markers.
It would be easier, if he could just cry, but he's shoved it all down too far.
It takes something a little more tangible to bring everything up and to the forefront for him to deal with.
(He wishes he could ignore it, still, but he can't, that much is clear-and better to be dealt with now than before it impacts anyone else.)
Then, deliberately, he begins to write the things he's not wanted to think of, in no particular order:
1. What if I cannot get my dogs back
2. I might be stuck in this time permanently
3. Hiruzen Sarutobi may or may not have been present when my father committed suicide
4. Sakura nearly died and now sees and talks to ghosts
5. Sakura talked to my dead father
6. People were at the Hatake Estate that who shouldn't have been
He stares dully at these words for what feels like a long, long time.
When the first panic attack comes, the one that shakes him apart right down to the bones, this time he doesn't fight it, just welcomes it in.
Like an old friend.