The villagers were ecstatic, of course. The mercenaries were defeated, the magnate was ruined, and the bridge was safe. Everyone patted the ninjas on the back as they passed, and Kakashi could tell that Naruto and Sasuke were trying hard not to show how much of a toll the fight had taken on them.
Tazuna and his family were all at the back of the crowd. He looked just as jubilant as the other villagers, but Tsunami and Inari were trembling.
"You're okay!" Naruto cried out when he saw them. "We heard the mercenaries talking about getting you too, but I guess Sakura arrived in time?" He glanced at Sakura, who seemed to be preoccupied with watching the water flowing under the bridge.
Tsunami nodded stiffly. "Yes. She…dealt with them."
Inari was crying, and his mother tucked him closer to her skirts. Naruto took a step forward.
"It's okay now, crybaby Inari," he said, but the boy only cried harder, and Tsunami physically moved her body in front of him before Naruto could get closer. Her expression was one Kakashi had seen many times on mothers determined to protect their young from threats.
Tazuna looked as confused as Naruto. "What's wrong, eh? These folk saved us, and the bridge. We always knew things were going to get a bit bloody."
Tsunami made a snorting noise, sharp and loud.
"I was in a bit of a hurry getting back here," Sakura spoke up at last. "So I didn't have a chance to clean up. Maybe I'll just go on ahead and do that now."
Tsunami and Inari just glared at her.
"I'll come with you," Kakashi said before the girl could run off alone again. "Naruto and Sasuke, you keep watching Tazuna, just in case. At a distance."
Naruto grumbled, but Sakura was already running so Kakashi took off too, wondering what she had done to the mercenaries that made the woman and child she'd saved so afraid of her.
Before long they had reached a wooden dockyard a short walk from the family's house.
"They dragged them out here," Sakura said quietly, slowing down to a walk. She had a fistful of braids in her hand and was stroking them nervously. "It's really not that bad."
It…wasn't the worst thing Kakashi had ever seen, but to Tsunami and Inari it had probably seemed excessive. The two mercenaries had been decapitated with such force that their heads lay several feet from their bodies. There was a great deal of blood, though Kakashi hadn't noticed any on Sakura or the civilians.
Sakura bent down to the nearest body, untied its still-sheathed sword and quickly patted down the pockets. Seemingly satisfied there was nothing else of value, she dragged it back toward the packed earth of the riverbank.
"I take it you've killed people before now?" he said, gingerly carrying one of the severed heads and placing it with its body.
Sakura shrugged, tossing the other head carelessly. "I guess so." She wiped her hands on the grass. "I figure we burn these and then maybe use those buckets over there to wash off the pier?
"Sure." She was all business, and once again it was a sobering reminder that this woman was not the twelve year old girl of a month prior. "What do you mean, 'I guess so'?"
Sakura formed the seals for a fire jutsu, and within seconds the bodies were blackened beyond recognition. Within minutes they were little more than ash and a few metal fastenings. When the smell got too much, they retreated back to the pier and started sluicing bucketfuls of water over the bloodstains. "Not killing allowed Inside," she told him, voice flat. "But when we go Outside, we can't remember what The Watcher makes us do. This," she gestured at the blood, "wasn't difficult, so I guess it's not my first time."
"And the…looting?" It was a distasteful thing for a paid ninja to do; it gave the impression that your village was poor, and your shinobi were little better than savages making corpses just to steal the shirt off its back.
"Waste not." She shrugged again. "I don't want the swords or anything, but it seemed a shame to just burn them."
"Is that how you got that sword?" He nodded at the katana on her hip. "Or did it come from Inside?" He hoped he was using the terms correctly.
Sakura glanced down at her sword like she'd forgotten she was wearing it. "It's from Outside."
"It's nice." It was: the handle was wrapped with flashy red silk in one of the more complicated styles, and the first time she'd unsheathed it he could tell it had been well made and well kept.
"It's cursed." She threw another bucketful of water on the sticky blood. "I only use it so that nobody else has to touch it."
In truth, he didn't know what to make of that. He'd hoped to find Sakura alive and well, or at least alive and with the expected amount of trauma for a young girl who had been held captive for an entire month. But this woman claimed it had been years, and her traumas were so complex and disturbing that Kakashi had no idea how to help her. He wasn't suitable for this, he realised. He could maybe hack it as a normal jounin teacher, but Sakura needed professional help. He'd just have to get her back to Konoha as soon as possible, and hope that they declared her fit for reintegration.
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'As soon as possible' turned out to be almost immediately.
Tsunami refused to have them in the house a moment longer, so despite Tazuna's protests they packed their things and prepared for an immediate start. Sakura hadn't left anything at the house, so she simply waited outside.
"She saved your life," Naruto argued, offended on her behalf. "You should be thanking her, not kicking us out."
"That's enough, Naruto." Kakashi placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. "Time for us to go."
"She's a hero," Naruto said, and Inari spoke up for the first time since the battle of the bridge.
"There's no such things as heroes."
Kakashi wouldn't say it aloud, because Naruto would get the wrong idea, but he privately agreed that Sakura wasn't a hero. She was an incredible ninja, that much was clear; but he knew better than most that there was nothing heroic about the shinobi life. Naruto still seemed to think their work was about valorous deeds and the adulation of the masses, and Sasuke seemed to think the village's investment in his skills left him free to use them as he pleased (namely, to kill a certain man), but in truth they weren't allowed to have their own desires. They were weapons, unthinking tools, and in that sense Sakura was far beyond even his own capabilities.
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"I can take first watch," Sakura offered, the first night on the road.
Kakashi shook his head. "That's alright, you just rest. Things are going to get very busy once we're back in Konoha."
"Busy how?" Sasuke asked, sitting up on his bedroll.
"Well for starters, our C-rank escort mission turned into a lot of extra work that the three of us didn't get paid to do." He'd have to put the food and accommodation they received, as well as other more creative things, against the cost of Tazuna's bill until he could make the report look reasonable. "And then there's the fact that we found Sakura."
"Technically she found us," Naruto grinned.
"In any case, she's been gone a whole month." He turned to Sakura. "You'll end up being interviewed when we get back, just standard stuff to find out what information you may have shared, what kind of support you might need after a traumatic experience…"
"Whether I'm going to snap and start killing people in the streets," Sakura supplied. "I get it."
"You wouldn't do that!" Naruto argued. "Sure you look different, but you're still Sakura."
"Thanks, Naruto." She gave him a small smile.
"You're still Sakura," Sasuke agreed, "but you are different. You're older, and way more skilled."
"And way less annoying, I hope?" Her smile turned wry.
Sasuke looked away, staring at the dark ground. "You weren't really annoying."
"Nah, you were right; I was a bit of a brat." She scratched one of her scarred cheeks. "I was weak, and self-centred, and I cared more about my appearance than anything else." She flicked a handful of her chaotic braids. "Clearly I don't have that problem anymore."
"You're still pretty." Naruto said, a blush darkening the spaces between his whisker marks.
It was true: Kakashi had memorised the photo of Sakura as a genin, and she'd been a cute enough kid. As an adult woman his age, her striking features were a little overwhelming.
Sakura laughed. "You're gonna make me vain all over again with talk like that."
Naruto laughed too, and even Sasuke's mouth twitched with a small smile.
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They were stopping for an early dinner on the last day of their trip when Sakura asked Kakashi to cut her hair.
He'd seemed perplexed by the request. He seemed perplexed by most things she did, which was of course the problem. "Why?"
"It's long and uneven." She fingered an unbraided section that just grazed her neck. "This is probably the shortest bit, if you need a guide where to cut."
"But isn't it…important to you?"
Was he really going to make her say it? The boys were eating dinner closer to the fire, too far away to hear. "When we get back, I don't want everyone in Konoha looking at me the way you look at me."
It was clear, now that she had known her would-have-been teacher for more than a day, that he never removed the mask on the lower half of his face. The forehead protector over his sharingan had also stayed put since the day it had somehow taken her out of Inside. She itched to examine it, ask all the probing questions that Sensei would have encouraged; but this sensei was clearly protective. She couldn't push him without losing him, and currently, she needed him.
"And how do I look at you?" he asked, tone suggesting he knew exactly how he looked at her but wanting her to say it.
"Like I'm crazy. Like I'm dangerous."
"Are you?"
She hadn't expected him to just come out and ask; it kind of impressed her. "Crazy? Probably a bit. Dangerous? Depends who asks."
"I'm asking."
"Then no, I'm not dangerous. If I wanted to hurt you I'd have done it by now." She turned around and sat with her back to him. "Now will you please cut my hair?"
He made a noise like a huff of frustration, but she could feel him sit down behind her and remove a kunai. She tried to ignore the instinct to rip it from his hand put herself in a less vulnerable position, letting him raise it to her shoulders and start hacking through her poor hair. She said she trusted Hatake Kakashi, and she meant it. Now she needed to prove that he could trust her.
The first few braids began to fall away, the loose hair unravelling. She gripped the goggles around her neck to stop herself flinching. She could do this. She could store it in her bag instead of on her head, and if she did go back Inside without it then she'd simply trade other things.
Kakashi kept talking. She wanted to believe it was a kindness, that he was keeping her mind off the increasing lightness of her head. But she knew he just wanted information.
"How did you get so good at…everything?"
"I had a lot of time to practice." More time than he realised, seeing as she barely had to rest.
"And the place where this Watcher kept you all; tell me more about it."
Another rope of hair fell to the ground. "There isn't much to say. It was just a void. Rocks and darkness in every direction. And time goes faster Inside than it does out here. A month for you is, I don't know," she considered her scars. "Ten years? More? For us."
"So you really lived ten or so years in the last month? This," he patted her shoulder, "could just be cosmetic. I know of a kunoichi in her fifties who can make herself look twenty-something, and some genjutsu-"
She bit back a growl of frustration. "It's not a jutsu. I mean, it is, but not like that. Nobody zapped my body ten years older then made me think ten years had passed. I remember it all."
"Okay, okay" Kakashi soothed quietly. She might have liked being comforted if it were Karin or Sensei, but from Kakashi, who didn't understand and would never really understand, it just felt condescending. "It's just that time-space jutsu of the magnitude you're describing are extremely rare, basically theoretical, and would take a phenomenal amount of power."
"I once asked Sensei if he knew much about sharingans. I had a Hyuuga girl in my class at the academy, so I'd already seen the byakugan, but I only knew about the sharingan from books." Books about the Uchiha family, that she had read because of the boy sitting on the other side of the clearing arguing with Naruto. "Sensei seemed to think they were as strong as ocular jutsu could get."
"It's true, the sharingan is strong," Kakashi acknowledged, "but I've had this one for half my life and it's never done what you're describing."
"Until it did." Sakura twisted back to look at him. "You took me out with it. And you only have one, which means the other one must belong to The Watcher."
"The other one was destroyed." His voice was quiet. "It's hard to believe anyone could have recovered it from Obito's…remains; but it's definitely one of the things I'll be raising when we get back to Konoha."
"That's fine then." She turned back to let him finish her hair. "Just don't let anyone take yours and dissect it or anything."
"That would never happen."
"Never say never."