Chapter Text
The wave of grief that rises in her is cataclysmic. As it breaks against the shore and spills out onto the sand, Sakura does not know herself.
She cannot claim to know herself on any given day, but in those moments in the supply closet she is a stranger to her grief – a grief she had not expected to feel this intensely.
Are you happy?
In the wake of the wave, an ember smolders in her chest.
If it wasn’t for you ninja and your squabbles, my only son would be alive! But he’s not, he’s dead.
Heat grows into flame that pulses through her veins and tears at her throat as she screams – sharp and furious. The shelves in the supply closet go flying, sending buckets and basins of needle packs, gauze, and crackers to soar through the air like shrapnel. The organized supply room turns into a trash heap as she knocks over the cabinets and shatters the wood that made them. Even within the soul drenching ache, she knows she must contain the magnitude of her feelings to this tiny supply room.
She can control herself enough to do that.
“She has not known grief.” Sakura cries. Her cheeks burn and her vision blurs. She turns, looking at the vague outline that has lodged himself in an empty corner. Blinking the heat from her eyes, she sees the crumbs of saltines and graham crackers dusted over his jacket, that in his self-preservation he hadn’t been able to dodge.
Her rage stills, and her limbs weaken and fold beneath her as she settles into the eye of her hurricane.
“She has not known pain, or suffering, or what it means to tear yourself apart for your loved ones. She knows nothing of this life and nothing of what got me here and she is miser for it.”
Tears, because that is what they are, drip hot down her cheeks.
“How can she say that?” Sakura wails beneath the blinding heat of emotion that she at first couldn’t name, but now knows is anger, rage, grief.
“She spoke in grief–,”
“You cannot defend her. Not here. Not now,” she spits, as Itachi slides down to sit beside her. Even then, Sakura knows that it’s futile. She can’t ignore the parallel between her anger and Takeshi’s mother’s. As stupid and ironic as it was: to be angry about events out of their control.
“I am not defending her, Sakura. She had no right to place blame on you for this – the boy was dead as soon as he came to your table, but you will never receive an apology from her.”
Itachi’s voice is almost gentle when he speaks, and Sakura tries to keep from bursting into tears again.
“You will never cross paths with her in a way that is not marred by anger, but that does not mean that she will never feel remorse for what she’s said, or shame.”
“How can the civilians living here not know?” Sakura asks, breathless, “How can they not know the price of blood and pain that goes into what we are and what we do? I have teared myself apart, killed my old self and been reborn into the shinobi I am today. I have lost, I have lived, I have killed, and I died, to be someone in this village. It feels like everybody knows each failure I have endured, each crime I have committed, each breakdown, each embarrassment. The whole village knows my stupid exploits – in T&I, fighting Anko, working until I cannot stand, running and behaving like a child and making stupid mistake after mistake, getting probation after probation, disciplinary action after disciplinary action. My lesson is humility, yet even when I have no ego to spare, the lesson is hammered in again, and again.”
Sakura is tired. It is a feeling that she has long known, but despite the familiarity there is no respite. The lead in her bones keeps dragging her down into the depths no matter how hard she paddles to keep her head above water. No matter how much air she breathes above the sea, paddling never gets easier.
“You are neither fool nor child. No one thinks you are.” Itachi says, firm, yet Sakura cannot look at him – cannot let another person see how much her strength has failed her, how close she is to drowning.
“Sakura,”
She shakes her head, refusing.
“Sakura, look at me.”
Her tongue is bleeding with the force of her teeth against it, but she looks at him. Looks at the dark grey eyes that had been glassy and bleeding just hours ago, and the remnants of blood smeared pink on the side of his nose and lightly crusted at the tips of his eyelashes.
“You are strong,”
Despite the half yellow fluorescents barely shedding any light, she can see his eyes. The flecks of iron that ring the deep pool of black in his pupils. The whirlwind lessens in her head.
“The strongest shinobi in this village are some of the most broken people that exist. It’s an unfortunate prerequisite. Happy, sane, well-adjusted people do not fight for their survival like we do. The civilians cannot grasp what goes on in the shadow, and they are always quick to praise good deeds and actions, and even quicker to shame and slander our profession. Yet they rely on us, just as we rely on them.”
If Sakura strains her eyes, she can almost see bare filaments of red, woven carefully and discreetly into his iris. The faintest outline of a ring and the jagged edges of the tomoe peek out at the edges of his pupils, just waiting for a burst of energy to reveal this manifestation of pure chakra. She wonders then, what his mind might look like. Is it a library with some neatly organized shelves and a stash of messy memories shoved far, far away? Like her? Is there a trap door under an ornate carpet that leads deep into a maze where, like her, the worst of him is locked away?
“Every single shinobi knows what you have lost, and what you have gained in the process. I envy you, and your honesty – how unafraid you are to share and fight and feel. How you can lean on those around you full heartedly and pick yourself up again and again. You are not scared to fail, and each time you stand back up, you are stronger.”
“When I fail,” Itachi swallows and Sakura follows the bob of his throat – there is a smear blood there too – until he speaks again, “it is catastrophic.”
“When I fail… I cannot handle it; I cannot pick myself up with grace as you can. I cannot function. I cannot face my mother in the eye, my clan, my friends, my Hokage. I cannot bounce back and grow from it because I stagger and stagnate.”
“That isn’t true.” Sakura’s voice is hoarse and quiet in her rebuttal, but he continues as if she hadn’t spoken.
“When I was younger, and more arrogant, Orochimaru offered me the same deal that Sasuke took – come with him and unlock my full potential.”
He leans his head back with bark of gruff laughter, and Sakura’s eyes are again pulled to the smear of blood along his throat.
“When the Senior Council learned of this, they offered me a counter-mission that was even more horrifying to consider. Let your ambition be fulfilled, they said, go with Orochimaru and learn what he has to offer, what secrets he keeps, and what horrors he plans to commit.”
His eyes close as he recites his next words like a prayer, lips forming gently around a sentence that that Sakura knows, echoes in his mind each waking moment.
“Kill the members of the Uchiha Clan to demonstrate your loyalty to Orochimaru, and when you return, you will have saved Kohona from total annihilation.”
Sakura watches his chest rise and fall as the cold horror of his memory settles around them.
“I won’t bore you with the details of the geopolitical situation of Konoha a decade ago, the Third Shinobi War, nor the civil politics that led to the Senior Council believing they could eliminate the Uchiha in its entirety in the name of stability. But this test of loyalty for the village required that I abandon my loyalty and love for my clan – that I abandon any hope of peace that I might beg the Gods to grant when I pass into their halls.”
Sakura pulls a shaky breath. She had heard, of course, in muffled council meetings, and read over careless shoulders the aftereffects of this offer – Danzo’s trial and the rehabilitation of ROOT shinobi. However, it was different to hear directly from Itachi that Konoha had asked him to massacre his entire clan.
“Intervillage politics were not nearly as broken as they could have been, so I was allowed to decline, both the Council, and Orochimaru. Yet, Orochimaru has set his sights on Sasuke, who chose to follow as a traitor. I do not know why he felt the need to leave, why he felt the pull of ambition so strongly as to betray the one alliance we freely choose. He will get stronger, I’m sure he has already, but the village will not take him back with open arms.” His voice does not shake per say, but it is far from the steady baritone it usually is.
“Sakura, I could not prevent Orochimaru from taking him, I could not stop Sasuke. I could not get him back. I couldn’t protect him. All my rescue missions have ended in failure; I cannot get him back no matter how much I try. Each time I get closer and closer to snapping every time something happens, and it takes everything in me to make sure I do not.”
The memory of his glassy eyed stare flickers through her mind – the sound of breaking glass coming from the darkness of the Main House. Itachi shakes his head, as if shedding some memory, eyes far away again. “I have thought about what I could’ve done differently, what I could have said or done to stop Orochimaru, to stop Sasuke, and I can think of nothing save accepting the mission that the Council had given me all those years ago.”
Sakura feels horrifically cold as he speaks once more. “I fail poorly Sakura,”
“Saying no, is not failure,” Sakura whispers.
The Uchiha are passionate and chaotic in the relationships they form, historically going mad from the intensity of loss. Sakura admires that passion, an echo of her own feelings towards her precious people. Though, she had not thought that the bond between the brothers was so strong that Itachi would ascribe failure to the rejection of familicide.
He shakes his head with a soft curve of his lips. “I cannot weather the storms as well as you can. I do not know how you are able to keep fighting and pushing. I think I have forced myself into a corner of perfection many, many years ago, and now I have no safety net. I feel that I cannot fail without repercussion – I cannot be less than perfect in the eyes of my clan, especially now that Sasuke is gone.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice hurts as it leaves her throat.
“There is nothing to apologize for. We’ve both paid for the arrogance of youth.”
Sakura nods, her eyes meeting the flint of his. The intensity of it crushes the air out of her lungs.
“I know you, now.” He says, as if he hasn’t just confessed to seeing her soul laid bare and refused to run from it. Her heart settles.
“And now, I know you.”
Itachi forces her out of the closet only after she starts hacking up blood again. The pinching in her spine from the Kabuto’s senbon had grown to be slightly unbearable, especially as she tried to clean mess she’d created in her enraged tantrum. Itachi had discreetly wheeled in one of the trashcans and quietly helped her collect the now unsterile, now trash from the floor, and even helped her sweep.
Sakura felt ill and woozy, and collapsed against the leather couch as soon as they were back in her office. The blood in her lungs had swelled in volume to the point where she felt a little like she was drowning. Physically this time, less so mentally. It didn’t stop her from taking a powernap while Itachi went to find Tsunade. The drowsiness of chakra exhaustion, blood loss, and the slow depletion of adrenaline in her system had slowly lulled her into a doze, interfered by the red flags her body was desperately waving to make sure she didn’t die in her sleep.
“You have some nerve getting rid of that summons by yourself,” is Tsunade’s form of greeting as she bustles into their office.
Sakura wakes with a bloody cough.
“Oh boy.”
Despite making it through an invasion and its political and medical ramifications, Tsunade looks like she does on any other day. Her dark green coat, embroidered with creeping vines and leaves at the lapels, is free from blood and carnage, and the stupid white flaps on the Hokage hat swing around her shoulders. She sheds the hat quickly and bee lines for her apprentice.
Tsunade’s hands are ice when she presses her fingers into Sakura’s back and siphons chakra into her. Sakura is rocked with a wave of nausea as the beat frequency shifts and the pitiful amount of food that she had managed to get down at some point earlier in the day spills out onto the couch.
“Oh boy.” Tsunade says again, her chakra pulling slightly away. “Keep it together, keep your chakra as still as you can.”
“Hi Tsunade-shishou,”
“Shut up.”
She tries to do as she’s told but the healing chakra feels like an invasion and her mind is loud loud loud and her stomach is roiling. The scalpel that Tsunade pushes into her back is quick and icy sharp.
Itachi helps her wipe the vomit from her legs, still quiet, but decidedly less green now that he wasn’t the one who had to do this. When Sakura had initially asked that he remove the senbon from her back, he had looked at her, looked at her back and over the course of a few seconds paled to the point where Sakura was worried that he’d pass out. She’d expected ANBU to have strong stomachs, but seemingly not when it involved minor surgery.
Sakura groans through Tsunade digging into her thorax but is rewarded by the ring of a bloody senbon rattling in a dish.
“According to Uchiha here you got pretty banged up.”
Sakura spares another glance at Itachi, who’s now sitting silently at her desk and watching the two of them. He has one of her textbooks open in front of him but it’s the same page that she had left on before she left.
Sakura feels like a child being chided for leaving the ice cream out, a feeling that Tsunade always managed to elicit in her and doesn’t answer.
“Creation Rebirth patched you up nicely – how much chakra do you have left in your reserve?”
“I had a maybe a fourth left before I killed Kabuto, but after Chidori I’m completely empty.” Sakura says, wincing as she feels the jostle of the last senbon being pulled from her body. “My regular reserves took the brunt of healing from Chidori and then soldier pills have kept me going since being in the hospital.”
“I’m glad you survived it.” Tsunade murmurs, her hands finally leaving Sakura’s back. “It would have been a pain to train another apprentice,” she says with a dramatic sigh and Sakura huffs a laugh. Warmth spreads through her chest at the praise.
“Alright I’m going to heal you up with chakra, keep yours as still as you can.”
Sakura grips tightly to the cushions of the leather couch as she feels Tsunade’s chakra slip into her back again.
“I’m going to vomit again.”
Itachi is suddenly there with an emesis basin and Sakura retches bile as the world around her spins and tosses her out of her body.
Eternity lasts for approximately 3 minutes and suddenly Tsunade pulls her chakra away. Sakura’s face is clammy and cold, and the bare parts of her skin stick painfully to the leather of the couch as she collapses. Her stomach still tumbles around in her body like in a washing machine.
“You need to rest.” Tsunade says, gently wiping her back clean. “The nurses told me you had 4 soldier pills?”
Sakura’s eyes are stitched with lead, and Tsunade’s voice is distant. “I think it was something like that,”
“Take her home Uchiha. Don’t let her use any chakra until she’s slept.”
Bird chirp and sunlight, gently warming her face, wake her. As she opens her eyes and stares at the cream expanse of the ceiling, framed by crown moldings made of dark oak, memory does not rush in coming back to her.
She takes a breath, savoring in the crip air that flows blissfully unimpeded deep into her chest, and breathes. It had been a long while since she has had the time to sit and breathe, to let her mind be still and receptive and appreciative of the simple things her body can do – what she takes for granted. Slowly drowning in your own blood could make you do that.
As she sits and breathes, the sheets around her pool, soft and cool from the breeze flowing through the open window. Distantly, it carries the sound of clashing metal and the ebb and flow of shifting chakra. Sakura hadn’t realized how sensitive she’d gotten, if she is now able to sense not just signatures, but the movement of chakra all the way out to the Uchiha training grounds.
She was in the spare room in the Main House, a room she was greatly familiar with thanks to Mikoto’s hospitality. Sakura doesn’t know how long she’d been sleeping, but the fullness of her bladder suggests that it had likely been a while.
Her legs shake like a newborn deer’s as she walks into the bathroom. As she relieves herself and steps into the shower, the bone deep ache in her bones makes her shudder. Her head, full of cotton clears in contact with the stream of water, and she’s surprised that the water sluicing from her is clear and not marred with blood and soot paste that she had been expecting. Someone had helped.
The routine motions of caring for herself take over, and she outfits herself in one of her spare grey Konoha T-shirts that she’d left at the Compound, and a pair of old black cotton shorts. The T-shirt is soft – worn down by hundreds of wash and dry cycles that have elapsed since she won the shirt in a raffle at the Academy. Though rationally she knows she does not need them here, she stashes a few stray bits of weaponry in her pockets, which soothes the anxious pull in her chest at being bare.
Inner and the bud are silent in her head when she sits back down on the bed, which sinks beneath her weight like a cloud. She sits and stares at the rug between her toes.
Takeshi is dead. Kabuto is dead.
Sakura thinks she should feel more, but she’s just numb. With the last vestiges of sleep chased away by the spray of the shower, she was worried she’d melt into an emotional puddle and slip down the drain or throw a fit and trash the bathroom like she did the supply closet. But emerging from the steam-filled bathroom she feels just as calm as she did when she woke up. Just as empty. A pang rolls through her stomach.
And hungry. Inner whispers finally in their headspace.
By sight and sound the Main House seems empty, as she pads down the dark hardwood of the hallway, but chakra sense finds Itachi sitting in the living room. He’s sitting on the couch, she sees, as she makes her way down the stairs, engrossed in some novel, and his chakra settles around him like a massive fluffy cat. He doesn’t turn as the floorboards creak gently beneath her feet, but she’d be a fool to think that he didn’t know she was there.
“Good morning,” Sakura’s voice is rough with sleep and disuse. She guesses she’s been out for at least a day.
Itachi looks up from his book. His sleek dark hair is clean and tied securely in place at the nape of his neck, save for a piece of hair that had been a casualty during the invasion. The pin in his hair is testament to his attempt to wrangle it back in place, but the strand had escaped to cup the line of his jaw.
Sakura half expects to see his cheeks dripping in scarlet, bloody halfmoons under his Sharingan eyes. However instead of the spinning tomoe she sees only deep grey, set over pale cheeks.
“Good morning,”
Sakura nods and stops herself from searching for smears of blood across his skin, wandering over to loot the kitchen. She knows Mikoto always has leftover rice for stir-fry in the back of the fridge and knows that the egg carton is never empty here. She’s satisfied, and almost gleeful when she finds both and cracks each egg into an odd mug she finds at the back of the cabinet. She’s just about to bring the cup to her lips when she’s interrupted.
“Are you going to eat those raw?”
Itachi is hovering at the wide doorway, his book still in his hands. She doesn’t feel any pointed judgement at the question, but she still bristles at being caught acting like a raccoon.
“I didn’t want to wash any dishes.” She admits, the mug with her eggs still hovering at her lips.
Itachi sighs and gently nudges the cup from her hands, shooing her towards the island chairs. The gesture is so Mikoto that Sakura obeys without thought or fuss.
“Go sit. I’ll make something and do the dishes too.”
Sakura sits for all of two minutes before the discomfort of being personally cooked for itches her out of her chair to hover by Itachi’s shoulder. Despite her desire to help, he is frustratingly organized so that whatever her fidgety hands touch ends up adding extraneous steps to his succinct protocol. He doesn’t say anything to force her back to the chairs though, just thanks her as she passes items already within his reach.
He plates the steaming omelet and rice into bowls Sakura had set out on the island and without further pomp they eat.
The food is good, simple fare, yet good – much better than the raw egg she would have choked down. The omelet is deliciously delicate, breaking apart with her spoon and he’d turned dry leftover rice into a fluffy mound. She should have expected that he’d be a good cook even if he did live with his parents. As much as she’d slowly savored the first bite, her empty stomach sets her pace.
“Does it hurt?”
Sakura pauses her barbaric shoveling. “What?”
Itachi gestures at her arm with his spoon before he goes back to his meal. Sakura glances down at her left arm. To her surprise she sees a swirled motley of scar tissue tracing the chakra pathways down her arm. Abandoning her meal, she traces the Lichtenberg figures that stem from the tips of her fingers to her knuckles, to the mass of where her chakra pools in her palms. The fissures spread out in millions of branches as they travel up her chakra pathways and seep into her veins travelling up and up and up. They fizzle out her shoulder, Sakura sees, as she pulls up her sleeve to follow the new scar.
Where she’d blocked off her arm from the rest of her body to absorb the impact of Chidori, the dense filaments come to a screeching halt. Looking down her shirt, she sees the thinner scars spread down through her chest, following the nerves down her body and through her left leg, where the electricity had sought a path to the ground. She’d taken extensive damage from Chidori that spread beyond her arm, and she feels her heart skip a beat at the horrifying thought of what would have happened had she not blocked her arm off. What would have happened if pure chakra and plasma had coursed through not just her arm but the rest of her.
As she pushes chakra through her arm and swings her arm around in assessment, Sakura shakes her head in awe. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“I haven’t seen a lightning scar before,”
The scars seem to be just that, scars healed over and surprisingly unrestrictive. Yet vividly she remembers the burning scent of flesh and prickly scent of plasma, the splatter of gore that used to be Kabuto on the ground beneath her feet and the satisfaction of coming out alive. Her mouth is dry. Without the soot, and the blood, and the pain, and the acrid smell, she almost thinks the Chidori scar is beautiful.
Sakura smiles. “Neither have I.”
The rest of the day is spent in quiet contemplation – or at least, the obviously healthy avoidance of it. Itachi ghosts around her as they sit on the couch and read. He even makes them lunch when Sakura stalks her way to the kitchen again after a brief set of stretches. The afternoon finds them lounging on the floor of the living room with a shogi board between them – with Sakura staring at the pieces hoping that they will magically move to a more optimal position. She fidgets with the silver general she holds in her hand, already regretting having picked it up.
“LITTLE COUSIN!”
The yell is so loud that she startles, her knee banging against the table and shifting the pieces on the board. Well, at least she has a new board to study now.
With a groan she rubs her knee as Itachi asks after her and the offender struts into the room.
“Shisui, quieter next time.” Itachi chides.
“You’re always quiet, I’m bringing some life and light into your life!”
Like all Uchiha, Shisui sports the same inky black hair and fair complexion, but his hair flops around in a chopped mop held back by the hitai-ate tied tight around his forehead.
“Hey Anko! Sakura’s here!” Shisui leans back out through the doorway he just entered.
Sakura had met Shisui several times over the course of the years both in the context of the Main House and the hospital – if those professional calls even mattered. She had met him first when Mikoto had lured him over to dinner while Itachi was away – mainly to help with some of the spring cleaning (compensated with dinner) and babysitting. They hadn’t been able to get much of the spring cleaning done, since Shisui had brought with him a gaggle of little cousins with whom Sakura had spent the whole evening tossing around a ball and sharp weaponry with. In addition to being fun and boisterous, Shisui was kind and humble, she had discovered, as they had watched the kids pass out in the living room of the Main House.
Sakura hears shuffling and curses and then the emergence of fishnets and purple hair.
“Anko!” She stands, ignoring the thrum in her knee, moving to embrace the lady.
“Pinky! Glad you’re alright and not suicidal,” she says, forcing the air out of Sakura’s lungs.
“Always a good thing to be,” Sakura says, laughing.
“We’re here to drag you guys out for fresh air.” Shisui says looking between the two of them. “Neither of you have seen the light of day since the invasion.”
Sakura looks at Itachi, puzzled. “You haven’t been out?”
Sakura had inquired of the timeline shortly after breakfast, learning that she’d been sleeping for far, far longer than she’d thought, apparently waking several times but only conscious enough to use the restroom. According to Itachi, Mikoto had helped clean her up when they’d first returned to the Compound.
Itachi shakes his head, heading for the hallway to slip on his sandals. “Where’s there to go?”
“How about the Jounin headquarters to see your friends, huh asshole?” Anko laments after a brief pause to give Shisui a pointed look, shoving open the door again.
The walk is filled with mindless chatter supplied by Shisui and Anko. Despite being a few inches shorter than Itachi, Shisui has his arm flung around his younger cousin’s shoulders. Itachi doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t shrug off Shisui’s arm, and though his hands are in his pockets, his shoulders are loose as he walks down the gravel path from the Compound into the village.
Sakura doesn’t know who she pictured Itachi hanging out with – who his friends were nor who he confided in. Throughout all she’d known him it hadn’t really occurred to her to consider what he was up to, but now, as he endures the familial banter between the three of them, she wonders what other relationships the eldest Uchiha brother might have. She watches as the three of them trail ahead of her.
Shisui has no qualms about being touchy-feely, but Anko, on the other hand, had yet to touch Itachi in any way. While still walking in tandem, she’s careful to not let even her khaki jacket brush against him. This is surprising, considering Anko’s lack of boundaries with human touch – at least from what Sakura has seen. The purple haired woman had always been touch-prone, either embracing or being embraced in some form or fashion. She’s even surpassed Sakura’s own stringent personal touch boundaries and hugs her without thought – an action that Sakura has grown to appreciate.
Yet despite the bubble that Anko seems to be running into with Itachi – she has no similar obstacle with Shisui. As she orbits around them as they walk, Sakura notices that she smothers Shisui as she would any number of other friends that she’s had, her hands clasping around his forearms or slapping against his back, or even just bumping into him every now and again.
As Anko makes another orbit, she bumps into Sakura, knocking her into their conversation.
“Whaddaya think?”
“I don’t think I know Izumo and Kotetsu well enough to weigh in.”
“Oh, but that makes it better!” Shisui leans his head back to look at her. “You don’t know them well enough, and they don’t know you. You have the bias of only seeing what’s on the outside and what their interactions are in front of strangers!”
Itachi takes Shisui’s distraction to lightly disengage and shift over towards Sakura’s side. He gently tugs on her sleeve.
“Through there is the weapons shop I was mentioning before,” he says, as he gestures down a dusty street. The dark blue rafters heavily shade the street, but enough sunlight breaks through for her to make out the painted sign. She nods when she sees it.
“The best kunai in town?” She asks. “You swear?”
“The best kunai in Konoha. I swear.” He confirms as they pass the street.
Sakura turns back towards Anko.
“I think the private interactions amongst friends are the most telling ones.” She addresses Shisui when she speaks. “It’s where they’d be the most comfortable, the most willing to interact in a way that feels natural for them.”
“But we might not be the people they want to know–wouldn’t they be more comfortable and feel most natural around strangers or acquaintances?”
“With that reasoning you’d say that Ino and I or Itachi and I were interested in each other.” Sakura hears Itachi chuckle as a smile crawls onto her lips.
“Pinky!” Anko wails. “The answer to whether you and Itachi-chan would bone is not what we’re trying to figure out, I-zu-mo and Ko-te-tsu. Yes or no!?”
Sakura throws her hands up. “Yes! Fine! I think they are!”
Despite her initial reluctance to leave the serenity of the Main House, Shisui and Anko’s plan to air them out was a good one. The carefully sorted gravel paths turned seamlessly into the packed earthen streets of the village, interspersed by concrete curbs and shrubbery that managed to survive the invasion. The dust around the whole village had settled, and the street signs are caked in a layer of dust that Sakura can swipe off with her fingers. Like the shrubbery, civilians mill about, interspersed with Genin dutifully sweeping up the debris and rubble. Sakura is glad she is no longer a Genin, clean up was always one of the worser missions.
The sun begins to set around the time they start making their way up the Hokage Mountain. The sunset settles over the carved stone, sinking shadows into the Hokage’s already stern expressions. Tsunade’s head is still being carved, covered with a massive white tarp that flutters in the distance beneath the network of pulleys and ropes brining civilian stonemasons down for the day.
As they climb, Sakura gets a better view of the village beneath them, and the street lamps and lanterns that slowly flicker on, illuminating the streets in a rainbow of color. Gazing out across the village, Sakura’s mood sinks as she sees the islands of darkness where the invasion had hit the hardest. Yet, shinobi and civilians alike crawl over the village like ants, patching up their lives and moving forward, celebrating.
As music begins to drift through the streets, faintly making its way up the mountain, Sakura wishes with all her tired heart that she felt the same lust for life. She wishes that she felt the urgency that pushed the civilians out into the streets for the impromptu festival; the urgency that made them kiss with abandon and dance to the spin of the music. She wishes she felt the same thrill of having survived.
All she feels now looking out into the life beneath her, interspersed with the rubble, is quiet – the sorrow of having lived and lost, of knowing that wanted to or not, she would not see Takeshi ever again.
The sense of clarity and peace she had felt this morning had slowly dissipated, and the damp sorrow had returned with the set of the sun. She knows that there was nothing she could have done to prevent his death, but traitorously she wonders if she hadn’t broken up with him if he would have lived.
Sakura is embarrassed by the hypocritical thought as soon as she feels Itachi’s shoulder brush with hers. She didn’t realize that she had paused until she felt him standing next to her, his eyes fixed on hers and his eyebrows tilted into a gentle question. The past is ripe with things she could’ve, should’ve done. Actions she could have taken and alternative outcomes that would have been right within her grasp. Yet thinking to what Itachi had said about his family, about what he wonders about when it is late at night and the sting of failure creeps into his thoughts…
It serves no purpose. The thought comes clear and cold as the water from a mountain spring. What they could’ve, would’ve done wouldn’t have been sacrifice. It would have been appeasement, and meaningless suffering.
As she studies his face and the quizzical tilt to his eyebrows, she passes him a soft smile. “I’m alright.”
They continue up the stairs and into the groove that shelters the Jounin Headquarters. As she passes through the chakra wards – surprised that she was allowed in – she gets rammed by Anko.
“I knew you’d be allowed in!” She hisses victoriously and then drags Sakura over to the group that had gathered without answering Sakura’s outraged questions.
All the ranks have dedicated Headquarters spread across the village. Even the Academy students have their haunt. Granted, that haunt is the Academy, but the Academy training grounds are for Academy students only, even if the kunai are always dull and the materials are constantly busted despite the constant refreshment. Sakura has not been to the Academy since she graduated.
The Genin Headquarters are empty and cold. Since Genin could range from preteens to old men, there was little to no camaraderie despite Konoha’s best efforts. While the space was furnished and clean, containing enough snacks to feed an army, it was hardly used. The little conference rooms where teams could write their mission reports were only used when there was no other place to go. Even then, the majority of Genin teams aimed for Chuunin due to better missions and higher pay which necessitated some element of team bonding only available when teammates shared their homes with each other. There was no need to mingle with ninja they weren’t training with and missions with whom they’d never take.
As the greatest stopping point for the majority of ninja in their career, the Chuunin Headquarters were more utilized. Double the size of the Genin Headquarters, it had an air of corporate professionalism found in most offices. There was art on the walls and low care plants at the windows. The resting areas were cozy, yet bland in a “hundreds of people use this space every day” way. The conference rooms were worn yet clean, tables and chairs showing obvious use after years of working Chuunin. Sakura had been to the Chuunin Headquarters once or twice, but the space had never been a comfortable one for her. It felt too open, with too many people going in and out for her to want to remain in there for longer than a few minutes.
All headquarters were heavily warded – both for protection of assets, but also to protect the space for each rank. While Chuunin could enter the Chuunin and Genin Headquarters, the Academy students and Genin were barred from the upgraded Chuunin space. Due to her own rank as Chuunin, Sakura had not expected to be able to pass through into the Jounin Headquarters, but having been able to pass through without any noticeable bodily harm assumed that it was simply because of her status as Med-nin that allows her to travel freely within most of the village infrastructure.
As Anko pulled her through the Jounin Headquarters Sakura sees that the space is much, much cozier than the Chuunin corporate house. The couches are mixed and matched in various colors and styles – a plush green couch sits pushed against one wall, with a bright yellow brick right next to it. A dark red couch that to Sakura looks quite agreeable, sits tucked away against a different wall. Hallways push from one side of the house – because it seems to Sakura that it is actually a house built into the mountain – and she sees fluorescent lights illuminating a kitchen stocked with absurd quantities of sugar snacks and protein powders. A crockpot sits on top of the fridge decked out in magnets and pictures and notes, the contents of which Sakura can’t make out. The tables in the living room are pushed to the side, laden with snacks and drinks and ice. A TV sits on one side of the room, playing music. Gaming consoles and board games spill out from the TV stand, interspersed with random weaponry. The walls are covered in art and throwing boards full of kunai and shuriken. It takes Sakura a second to realize that she’s been invited to a party.
There are Jounin milling around with their faces flushed, brilliant smiles plastered on their faces. The thrill of having survived had seeped into the shinobi as well, not just the civilians in their impromptu festival in the village below. The room isn’t packed, but there are a few ninja dancing in the middle of the room, enjoying themselves and any partners they pull to the makeshift dance floor. Something in Sakura’s heart softens.
Anko doesn’t let her stare for long, clasping her arm and pulling her towards a group of shinobi. Sakura follows Anko’s lead, mingling with Jounin she’s only seen in passing. Laughing, drinking, inhaling the spread of snacks set to the side. She ends up settling into the red couch she had seen when she first entered the room.
Her drink is cradled in her hands and her stomach is full and her head pleasantly fuzzy. As the lighting dimmed, the music had gotten louder, freeing the flow of alcohol until Sakura found it difficult to sort out the chakra signatures of those around her. There was something nice though, she found, about letting the blend of people become just that – a blend of people. It was like a nice blanket settling over her senses assisted by the alcohol percentage of the drink Anko had made for her.
Itachi, who had left to get himself a drink, reappears and settles next to her on the couch. Sakura shifts as the cushions dip beneath his weight as his arm settles over the back of the seat. She’d receded to the couch to avoid the shenanigans that had begun to overtake the Jounin crowd as the night progressed, like Anko and Genma furiously making out on the yellow brick couch.
“Are they going to remember that?” She asks, but upon seeing that Itachi hadn’t heard her she leans in closer to yell it in his ear. She emphasizes her question by bobbing her head in Anko and Genma’s direction.
Itachi leans in, his breath a warm gust across her ear. “They never do, and even if they did—” He points to the sign on the door scrawled in sharp kanji and decorated with stickers in markers it says: What happens in JHQ stays JHQ!!!!
Seeing the sign – its bizarre, Academy days-esque energy makes her laugh.
“How often does that happen?”
“Genma and Anko? Quite often. There’s nothing like the feeling of survival after a battle, and the two are too stubborn and too horny to do anything without the buffer of alcohol between them – why do you think they’re drinking buddies.”
As Itachi speaks, she can feel the rumble of his voice in his chest and the solid warm curl of his chakra that makes something in her stomach flutter. Anko must have put something in her drink.
“Fair enough.”
Itachi angles his head towards Kurenai and Asuma sitting on the fluffy green couch across the room. They’re all but kissing. The two have their heads close together, their hands intertwined, and soft smiles settled on their lips. It’s almost strange to see them like this.
“They’re a little more public – and actually in a relationship.”
Sakura nods, it was old news that Asuma and Kurenai were an item, but daylight never had them displaying any sort of displays of affection. The two had been Jounin instructors for her friends and Asuma had taken her and Ino and Chouji to the Chuunin Exams. She remembers being younger and seeing what imposing figures the two were and Sakura feels like a little kid again, peeking at them like this.
“Is your cohort like this? The Rookie Nine?”
Sakura shakes her head. “Naruto was the glue that bound us together, and now we are all spread too far apart to gather like this. Perhaps one day we can.”
“There’s nothing like a war that brings a village together.” Itachi nods towards the makeshift dance floor. “They were all Jounin that went through the Third Shinobi War together, who lasted through proxy wars masqueraded as post-war missions.”
The Third Shinobi War was taught with such a historical lens that it was sometimes difficult for Sakura to remember that Tsunade had been in it, that Kakashi had fought on the front lines with the Jounin currently around them. She mentally does the math.
“You were still too young – to be in the war,”
“I was, but I was in active service early enough to catch the tail end of it.”
Sakura swallows and Itachi’s voice is almost too quiet to hear.
“That’s the thing about a war – it never really ends.”
They part ways when a drunk Shisui stumbles into Itachi. The feeling of familial duty claims him, and Itachi bids his farewells in order to safely see his drunk cousin back to the Compound. Sakura feels too restless to go back with them to sleep, though she walks them out.
The sun had long set over the village, and the stars shone brightly from her view of the mountain. The chilly air was sweet after the heat of JHQ, and Sakura sits and lets the breeze cool the sweat that had gathered in a sheen over her skin. It was then that she feels Kakashi’s signature perch above her.
Sakura stills, surprised that she hadn’t felt him coming. The surprise is quickly smothered by the smell of burnt skin and split hair and electricity that nearly blinds her. The memory of bright white heat and the screech of Chidori rams a shudder through her that she cannot stifle.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
Sakura knows, knows in her slight panic that Kakashi is looking at her and knows how fragile he is right then. Sakura tries not to move, not to show the interplay of memories as they surge through her mind. She’s alive, she reminds herself, Kabuto is dead.
He came to find her, not the other way around.
“Sakura.”
“Kakashi.”
He pushes off his feet and Sakura rises, falling into step beside him, careful to make sure that her steps are purposeful. She ensures that she does not stray from his side, does not fall behind, nor shows any hint of hesitation.
They walk, a walk that slowly turns into a jog, and then a sprint as the stars pass over them and the path down the Hokage Mountain gives way to the village streets and rooftops. Sakura forces on her breath, on matching the pace of her white-haired teacher. They run and run and the hazy fuzz of alcohol that had left Sakura loose and warm slowly dissipates. The rubble of the Konoha wall looms fast and dramatic in front of them.
Suddenly Kakashi stops, sitting down on the wall just meters from where the snake crushed her just a few days ago. Meters away from the plane of black tiled roof where Kabuto had exploded around her hand Chidori up her arm.
He was running to his problems for a change.
“I’m alive, Kashi.” Sakura reminds him, her throat dry as he stares at the crater that had yet to be fixed. She remembers the crushing feeling of the snake on top her, the feeling of her spine breaking, her organs loosening from their correct positions. She’s uncomfortable by how quickly those memories fold back into her brain after ignoring them for so long.
“When I had just become Jounin, my team was dispatched to Kannabi Bridge.”
Her voice freezes in her throat. “Kashi, you don’t—”
Now that they’re still and illuminated by the light of the moon, Sakura can see the torn thread of his pants, and the wrinkled and dusty cast of his jacket. His mask is still bloody, and there’s splatters of dried gore in his greasy hair. She can’t make her lungs move as heat barrels to her eyes. No one must have seen him for days. He must’ve–
“Minato-sensei was needed on the front lines, so Ob—”
He pauses. His voice had not wavered, but Sakura knows.
“Kakashi, I’ve read the mission papers you don’t—”
He ignores her. “So Obito, and Ri—”
“Kakashi, please.” Sakura tries to be forceful, but he pays her no mind.
“So Obito and Rin were under my command.”
“We don’t have to do this, Kashi.” Sakura whispers.
He listens this time, pausing for long enough that Sakura almost starts to relax. “I need you to hear it – I need to tell you.”
Sakura lets her breath escape in a rattle, as she settles into this moment that she knows Kakashi will never have with her again.
Sakura lets him speak, lets the mission report take life as he recounts the events in his life that they have ignored. The events that force him to face her in the wake of Chidori tearing through her arm.
When he finishes, his gaze is far, far away. At some point Sakura had laid down to look at the stars–the heartbreak at seeing him dissociate was enough for her to avoid looking at him–but now she sits up.
“It isn’t like last time. You didn’t kill me. I didn’t die.”
“I’m sorry, Sakura.”
Somewhere, somehow, she knows that his apology isn’t just for Chidori. It isn’t for nearly accidentally killing her. It’s an apology for his role in her life, the way he underestimated her when she was younger, for the way he couldn’t help when she needed it most. It’s an apology for himself, and who he is and what he is in her life. It’s an apology she has never heard, for an offense she had long forgiven him for.
“I know.” She swallows past the chunk in her throat, past the force of love that she feels for him, for one of her precious people trying his best. “I forgive you.”