the sun goes with you, chapter four : blind
I've been finding it hard to say how I feel, as of late
There's a depth to my fatigue, it's getting hard to explain
There's a dirt on my skin and it doesn't seem to wash off
Set sail or call to port, this wind's tying round my neck in knots
-tell me, ziggy alberts
The fire pit was situated at the heart of the snow country base, surrounded by a circle of wooden benches which enveloped a large and magnificent fire. The fire crackled loudly as operatives found their places amongst their friends and waited for the tattooing ceremony to begin; Ibiki found his place standing in front of the fire to address his subordinates, his dark figure silhouetted against the flames that danced against the black night sky.
"Alright, rookies. In the middle," Ibiki called, and Sasuke stepped forward toward the fire, content to stay at the back of the tiny group. At least thirty agents had come for the ceremony, not including the eight rookies that now stood at the front of the pack. Sasuke didn't recognize anyone.
"Now, I'm not really one for sentimental words," Ibiki continued.
The chuckle that arose from the crowd told Sasuke that this was an understatement.
"So I won't be saying any, except for welcome, and that your village and country thank you for your commitment to their continued safety. This year's rookie ceremony is going to be conducted by Yuuto, your base medic and camp mother. And as is the custom of this ceremony, I have something for the rookies. A gift, if you will."
Ibiki held out his fist; in it was clutched a fistful of long, black strips of fabric that dangled down from his hand.
Please don't be blindfolds, Sasuke thought.
"Blindfolds," Ibiki announced. "Traditional and symbolic of trust and inexperience. When you get your own rookie in a few years they'll get the same treatment. The mentors have also been blindfolded – not to symbolize anything, but just for fun. They're waiting to meet you now, and it's cold, so no fussing about putting these things on."
Sasuke sighed. In the old days – before he was born, or maybe before he was old enough to realize what had been happening beneath his nose – Uchiha clan traitors, being led from imprisonment to their clan-meted execution, were always blindfolded. To the Uchiha, taking a person's eyesight from them was the ultimate symbol of weakness, the final debasement – the last insult as you died, blind by the hands of your brethren.
Still, Sasuke took the blindfold that was handed to him and tied it around his eyes without complaining, even when Ibiki stopped in front of him and stared with hard eyes and did not walk away until he was satisfied that Sasuke could no longer see.
Ibiki was one of the old soldiers who remembered why it was a good thing that the Uchiha were massacred. Sasuke could sense the distrust that rolled off the old ninja in waves. He could also sense that Ibiki knew exactly the significance of blindfolding an Uchiha.
Sasuke shifted uncomfortably, bumping shoulders with the rookie next to him, as his other senses leapt to fill in the void left by his missing eyesight. He reached up to touch the blindfold, wishing he could rip it off. He didn't know how Kakashi did it for all those years, even if he'd only had the one eye obscured.
"Welcome, rookies!" Sasuke heard Yuuto's booming voice exclaim from several yards away. "Welcome to Ice country! As I'm the only one here - aside from our dear commander - who's met each and every one of you, it's only right that I get to introduce you to your new family. For those of you with short memories, I'm Yuuto, the camp medic. Has everyone got their blindfolds on?"
The question was met with the sound of shuffling and chafing fabric as the eight rookies nodded their heads and shifted awkwardly. These sorts of theatrics did not agree with Sasuke and did nothing for his already irritable mood.
"Then bring in the mentors!" Yuuto roared. There was much clapping and laughter from the crowd as the sound of ice crunching beneath boots filled the air. "Don't you dare touch your blindfolds, you scoundrels!"
Sasuke was acutely aware of the warmth of approaching bodies; the line of mentoring operatives was being led to stand face to face with the line of newcomers. A breathing body stopped directly in front of him. Sasuke could tell that the mentor was shorter than him, but nothing else could be deduced with that stupid blindfold on his face.
Other than the fact that the person in front of him smelled like soap and tea leaves and something distinctly familiar and melancholy that he could only define as home.
"Operatives, prepare to meet your new rookies. The mentors may now remove their blindfolds."
There was rustling as eight operatives pulled the blindfolds from their faces; he heard laughter and clapping from the others, but not from the agent sitting across from him.
He hoped this meant that his mentor also did not appreciate these sorts of histrionics. He could work with the silent type. Please be the silent type.
"Mentors, please remove the blindfolds of your pupils."
Sasuke felt his hair being ruffled as a pair of hands reached around his face and warm breath on his cold cheek as the operative leaned forward to free his vision.
Fingers brushed across his cheeks, pushed aside his hair. Soft.
The fingers fumbled with the knot briefly before finally loosening it, letting the blindfold fall to the ground between them. Sasuke opened his eyes to look into the face of his new mentor.
He found himself staring into the discontented green eyes and frowning face of Haruno Sakura.
Her hair was shorter, and she was ever so slightly taller, markedly thinner… but it was her, there was no mistake.
"Sasuke?" she whispered.
No.
No.
He blinked once, twice, three times – attempted to dispel the obvious genjutsu he was placed under, but nothing changed. Never before had he thought to doubt his own eyes, the one sense that never failed him.
She was standing right in front of him, short pink hair swirling around her face as the bitter, icy wind whistled through the night, the flames of the bonfire reflected in her searching eyes, cheeks flushed from the cold and lips pursed in an unhappy line.
And she was wearing the same thing as everyone else here – the same black and gray Anbu uniform, the same Anbu symbol emblazoned across her vest – and if he'd looked, he would have found the same Anbu tattoo on her left shoulder. She can't be.
What felt like hours passed in the span of a single second.
"You?" Sasuke demanded finally, and his voice was biting but also - and he hated this - weak.
"Me," she said slowly, and her voice was unreadable. "What are you doing here?"
Her voice was drowned out by the shouts of rookies and mentors as one by one, the rookies were released from their blindfolds – their voices were joined by interjections and hollers from the crowd of operatives behind them. Still, he could hear that she wasn't exactly happy to see him.
Who could have thought that after all these years, he'd find her here?
"I could ask you the same thing," Sasuke said stiffly. "I'm here because Kakashi sent me—"
"Kakashi sent you?" she asked sharply, and she sounded angry and startled, and betrayed, almost. "He wouldn't. You're lying."
"I'm n—"
"Operatives!" Yuuto bellowed, sounding entirely too upbeat and unbothered for the situation at hand. "Introduce yourselves to your rookies!"
Sakura sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I guess I don't need to introduce myself to you."
"Don't you?" Sasuke seethed, because he was quite certain this was not the Sakura he once knew, sitting across from him in full Anbu uniform, short pink hair framing her unhappy face. This woman looked like a stranger to him. A stranger whose every contour he knew like the back of his hand, a stranger who was accusing him of lying as the first sentence out of her mouth after five years.
She blinked, as if this was not what she had expected him to say. "Cheeky."
Yuuto appeared behind her shoulders, large meaty hands clapping down on her. "Haruno! Don't be a spoilsport. Introduce yourself to your rookie!"
"I already know him," Sakura said accusingly – and Sasuke knew the accusation wasn't leveled at the medic, but at himself.
He didn't know she could sound that way towards him.
"Tradition!" Yuuto barked. "Introductions must be made!"
Sakura glared up at the large mustachioed man, but then relented when she sensed that she was fighting a losing battle. "Alright, since I already wrote it."
She reached into her pocket and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper. It looked awfully akin to a scribbled-on napkin as she flattened it against her thigh. She waved Yuuto away, and the medic was all too happy to oblige, flouncing off to butt into the business of other mentors and their rookies.
She sighed and glanced up at Sasuke again, as if to say are you really going to make me do this before looking back down at the napkin.
"My name is Haruno Sakura, and I am your new mentor. I know that I did not choose you, and you did not choose me, but I hope that we can be friends."
Her voice faltered slightly, and their eyes met.
"Because of that, I will promise you the same things that I promise all of my friends: I promise to protect you always and to help you understand when you find this new life to be too difficult. I promise to keep my door open for you. I promise that as long as I am with you, no harm will come to you, and that I will defend you until my last breath. I promise to stand behind you and to support you when no one else will. And…"
Here she trailed off, her eyes fluttering back down to the paper in her hand.
"I promise to lay my life down for you, if need be. We are all your family now; welcome." She said these last words with a strong sense of finality.
For a moment, Sasuke was rendered speechless.
For what was supposed to be an introduction, she had certainly created more questions than she had answered.
Their eyes met again briefly as Ibiki spoke. "Mentors, you may now seal the Anbu tattoo on the left shoulder of your rookie."
"Give me your arm," Sakura sighed, holding out her hand.
"First tell me what you're doing here."
"Same thing as everyone else," she replied dismissively, sighing again as she reached out and grasped his forearm; with her other hand she pulled down the collar of his shirt, revealing the skin of his left shoulder to the elements. The hair on his arms stood from the cold.
"Freezing to death?"
"Do you understand the commitment you are making?" she murmured, keeping her eyes averted from his.
"Of course I do," Sasuke said. "I don't understand –"
"A chronic affliction of yours," Sakura muttered, and she sounded weary, forlorn; some of the fire had gone out of her voice. She placed her palm flat against his exposed skin, and the warmth of her fingers was frustratingly distracting on his arm. How long had he wondered exactly what her touch would feel like, after all of these years?
"It's not too late to back out, Sasuke. Go back to Konoha, meet someone, revive your clan. I thought that's what you wanted," she continued quietly as she pulled a kunai from her hip pouch. Her other hand did not budge from his shoulder.
Sasuke could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Excuse me?"
"Don't do this. Go back to the village. Be happy. Be safe."
"I want this. I wanted to join," he told her, confused.
With one last unhappy look, she lifted her palm from his shoulder momentarily and let the kunai in her other hand make a shallow cut in his skin – his blood dribbled down his arm and spotted the white snow. She made a deeper cut into her own palm, letting her own blood pool slightly in the cup of her own hand.
"Then welcome to the brotherhood, Sasuke."
She laid her bloody palm against his shoulder and for a moment, his skin grew unbearably hot as their blood combined.
When it cooled, she withdrew her hand, and all that remained was the familiar swirl of the Anbu symbol, tattooed into his skin with her blood, a permanent, dark red mark. The cut she had made into his arm had disappeared.
He watched as the laceration on her own palm receded and then vanished, leaving not so much as a scar behind.
"How did you do that?" Sasuke asked – he'd never seen someone heal themselves so effortlessly without the familiar glow of medical chakra.
"Huh?" she asked distractedly, as she looked over her shoulder.
A raucous cheer had gone up among the operatives, and they rushed toward the fire to congratulate their new comrades. There was much clapping of backs and shaking hands; the closeness of the bodies made Sasuke uncomfortable. He turned to look at Sakura, to ask her again what she was doing here, to ask her what she meant when she said it wasn't too late, to ask her anything, maybe even how she had been all these years… but she was gone.
He scanned the crowd for her pink head, but she was nowhere to be seen in the mass of people. Eventually, his eyes lit upon a figure on the outskirts of the crowd, following Ibiki away from the celebration.
No you don't, Sasuke thought, gritting his teeth. She was not going to walk away without any sort of an explanation. Not again. He could still not believe that after so many years of silence, he had found her in a remote ANBU base in Snow Country - and that she thought she was going to run off again. He extricated himself from the throng and went after her.
..
..
..
"Morino," Sakura called out as she chased after the receding figure. She knew he could hear her, but he kept walking. "Morino, damn it, I know you can hear me."
Finally, he paused and turned to face her. She stopped when she was just feet from him, the clouds from her breath closing the distance between their bodies.
"You promised me!" she said angrily, willing her eyes to light him on fire, resisting the urge to stomp her foot in the snow, knowing it would just make her look childish. "We had a deal, Morino. What's he doing here?"
"The deal had to be adjusted to meet the staffing needs of the base," he said, his gaze unrepentant.
"And you didn't feel the need to let me know?" she seethed. Her anger was threatening to boil over; she felt the familiar pull of her chakra, whispering, telling her to let go, to show him how angry she was instead of just telling him. "And that's your answer to staffing needs? Uchiha Sasuke? You couldn't tell me, Morino?"
"You were on a mission when I found out."
"I'm always on a mission, and you seem to manage to talk to me just fine when you need something else from me," Sakura snapped. He had had no problem getting her a scroll telling her, a month into what was supposed to be a two-week mission, that her directive had been extended. Or to add a new kill to her list, or to tell her to pick up the special egg noodles he liked from Suna on her way back to the base. "You can't just go back on our agreement. Send him back."
"Don't presume to tell me what to do, Haruno. I don't take orders from you," Ibiki's eyes narrowed, but she refused to be intimidated by him.
"And I don't take orders from you. I'm here on the hokage's command. The same hokage," she said, letting her voice take on some of the petulance that she felt, "who agreed to the terms that you're changing. And I know that you can't afford to lose me. Send him back."
"Are you threatening to desert your post, operative?" he asked quietly.
"You uphold your end, I'll uphold mine, commander," she said through gritted teeth.
"Take it up with Kakashi, then. He's the one who signed off on it. I just put in the request for new recruits."
Sakura froze. So it was true - Kakashi had allowed this to happen? He of all people knew very well exactly how much she would object to this. And to send him here, have him right under her nose, as if they were taunting her… if Kakashi thought that she would just let this one go, he had another thought coming. She might even have to make a stop in the village on her next trip to Fire Country, to remind him that she was no longer a girl to be walked over whenever he felt like it.
Ibiki, seeing that he had won, turned and kept walking toward his quarters.
"Morino," she called after him again, once she was sure that the shock of betrayal would not seep into her voice.
He stopped again, not bothering to conceal the annoyance on his face.
"I have new orders. To the outskirts of Kiri, starting tomorrow. I can't be his mentor." She hesitated before adding, "Please."
"Take him with you," Ibiki said, waving a nonchalant hand in the air.
"You know I can't do that."
"Then he'll wait for you to get back."
"Like hell he will," Sakura snorted mirthlessly, the irony of the statement not lost on her. "Listen. Ibiki. Come on, don't do this to me. I thought we were friends."
"Friends has nothing to do with it. It's my understanding that Lord Sixth is worried about you. Wants you to get back to your roots. Your roots being teamwork."
"Then I quit."
"Yeah, Kakashi said you'd say that. He said you can either head straight back to Konoha and get put on indefinite medical leave until you get a proper attitude, or you can stay here and show the Uchiha the ropes."
She laughed then, without humor. "He doesn't need a mentor, Ibiki, and he especially doesn't need me."
"His brother is the whole reason we have this mentor program, because of what happens when you take your eyes off an Uchiha. People still don't trust him. The optics would be bad if we just let him loose without supervision or gave him special treatment."
"I don't give a damn about the optics."
"You want my advice, Haruno? I always thought you didn't need it, but looks like you do. Sit down, shut up, and do what you're told quietly. That's the fastest way to get what you want, and the fastest way for things to get back to normal for you."
She changed tactics quickly. "I'll take whatever missions you need me to take. Twenty of them. Two hundred. Anywhere you want, anything you want."
"Then he'll wait for you while you finish your new assignments," Ibiki shrugged.
"Just give him to someone else. We'll both be happier."
"I'm done arguing with you, operative. Good night." With this, he kept walking, his steady plod crunching through the iced surface of the snow.
Once he was out of earshot, Sakura let out a frustrated groan, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingertips. She would not stand for this. In the morning, she would… what? Send an angry scroll to the village? Argue with Ibiki some more?
For a moment, she stood and watched the snowflakes swirl lazily through the air, stark white against the pitch black sky.
Again, it was almost beautiful; the flurry of ice crystals glinted in the moonlight as the small clumps of white floated down from the sky. She angrily wiped at her eyes, getting rid of the frustrated tears before they froze on her lashes – tears, a reflex from her past life that simply refused to leave her no matter what happened.
Of course, of course he was sent here. It perfectly followed the seemingly endless downward spiral of her life that had started five years ago. No, that had started ten years ago. With a last huff, she turned to head back to her cabin…
And walked straight into the folded arms of Uchiha Sasuke.
"Shit!" she exclaimed, jumping back. Her hand was already curled around the handle of a kunai in her hip pouch, ready to strike.
"Did you just try to have me sent back to the village?" Sasuke growled at her dangerously. The familiar scowl on his face told her that he had heard their entire conversation.
"Jesus Christ. First of all, don't ever sneak up on me again," she warned, ignoring his question. "Second of all, that conversation was private. Eavesdropping is rude. Goodnight, operative."
She pushed past him, willing him to let her go.
"Stop," he commanded, grabbing her shoulder. She sighed; obviously, he would prefer to do this the difficult way. Without turning around, she concentrated her chakra onto the surface of her skin, exactly where he was touching her.
After a millisecond, he snapped his hand away, burned.
"That is no way to speak to your ranking officer," she said quietly. The words felt foreign on her tongue, and her voice felt like it belonged to someone else. Before she could crack, she continued on her path, determined not to give him any ground. She was an adult now; gone were the days when a stern word from the last living Uchiha could turn her into a puddle.
"Sakura, wait," Sasuke called again, and she stopped. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that he would just give up, go away, leave her alone, the way he'd always been so good at…. "What is going on?"
She refused to look at him; tears were welling in her eyes once again. She found that she desperately wanted to tell him everything, and simultaneously wanted to never see him again. "Please, Sasuke. Let it go. Goodnight."
And with those final words, she continued on the lonely path to her isolated cabin. She knew that he was watching her back as she left; she did not give either of them the satisfaction of turning around.
It was a sleepless night for all involved.
Sasuke tossed and turned in his bed, his head swimming with questions as he stared at the ceiling. The image of his first sight of her all these years later wouldn't leave his mind – her wary green eyes, the angry snap of her clear voice and the rain-like hush of her whisper, the swish of her blush-pink hair over her shoulders.
The tears he'd seen her wiping off her cheeks, alone in the ice as the snowflakes swirled down around her, and the erratic puffs of her breath into the dark night.
The burn of his skin where he'd touched her. Sasuke rubbed his palm where the skin was still red and angry from the assault.
What was that?
He wondered if she'd been here the whole time – wondered if anyone else knew that this is where she was.
He snorted mirthlessly when he remembered that he'd half expected her to be the base medic and how he had scolded himself afterward for even thinking that this was where she would turn up.
Well, here she was. Five years later, he'd found her.
Sakura was Anbu. Sakura, the same girl who'd once been able to do nothing but ask him to stay as he walked away from everything he'd ever known, who'd insisted she loved him year after year until she disappeared into thin air, Sakura who had once been so loud and vivacious that the way she was now, all hard edges and biting words, seemed downright alien. She looked tired, weary, and both astonished and utterly unsurprised to see him standing in front of her.
It took him a few hours to pinpoint the biggest difference.
She'd lost everything about her that had once made her soft.
Across the base, in her cabin that was isolated from the rest of the barracks - the girl cabin, she'd been told, as if girls were wild animals that needed quarantining - Sakura did not toss and turn like Sasuke. Instead, she remained perfectly motionless, as if by staying still life might not see her and might just pass her by, might decide to leave her alone this time, might forget about her entirely.
She watched the fire flickering in the wood stove, the fire that she'd set before she'd set out for the ceremony. In a few hours, it would burn itself out and nothing but embers would remain. Then, she would rise, and she would depart on another mission – business as usual.
Except now, everything was different.
No. She couldn't afford to think that way. Things couldn't afford to be different.
Her thoughts returned to Sasuke, as they often did at this hour of the night when sleep escaped her (which was most nights). He was the same, as she knew he would be – taller, but still – porcelain skin, intense stare, inky black hair, and demanding voice.
Beautiful.
It didn't matter now. Not after everything that happened in the last five years.
Not with what was coming.
to be continued…
A/n: So my beta read this while he was drunk, and tbh I wish you guys could read his comments - which include telling Sasuke to "go back to being a terrorist, you goth piece of shit," referring to Yuuto as a frat star conducting a toga party, and Sakura as a crossfitter doing keto... Unfortunately this may have been his last chapter beta-ing for me so if any of you lovely people are looking to get on the early release list... I'm good fun, I swear!
Also, I worry that I've made Ibiki a little bit of an asshole, but he's done a lot for Sakura, as will be made clear in coming chapters.
read and review!