Chapter Text
“Weak,” Kin Tsuchi spat at her. “Utterly weak.”
In the center of the battle arena, Sakura was forced to her knees. Her opponent stood behind her, her fingers tangled deeply in Sakura’s long hair as she yanked her head back. She looked down at her with an ugly, disdainful sneer.
Sakura felt shame burn through her. Her pouch full of ninja tools had been knocked from her belt, spilled open and scattered across the ground. There was a knee digging into the square of her back, holding her down, and one of her arms was pulled behind her while the other was pinned beneath her body. Her left ankle was broken, sending sharp spasms of pain up her leg.
Her inner voice screamed at her, full of indignation and raging spirit: You promised you wouldn’t do this again! Get up! Don’t let her beat you!
But she was too crippled, too worn down. Her skin was littered in bruises, in dozens of shallow cuts from Kin’s senbon attacks. She worried the needles were coated in some sort of drug or poison; her movements had grown slower and more lethargic with each hit that had landed, and the weight of her own limbs had begun to make her feel like she was fighting underwater.
Despite her best efforts to finally stand strong, she was in the same position she always found herself in: down on the floor, helpless and defeated, at someone else’s mercy.
Kin’s foot pushed down on Sakura’s broken ankle. Sakura cried out, blazing pain shooting up her calf.
Kin laughed cruelly, and the sound echoed in Sakura’s ears. She pulled again at Sakura’s hair, and the burning at her scalp caused tears to spring to Sakura’s eyes. One of them slipped down her cheek, and Kin laughed harder.
“Look at you!” the Oto-nin taunted. “And you call yourself a shinobi?”
Sakura flinched. Sasuke’s words inside the Forest of Death rang in her head: Then quit being a shinobi. You’re already useless at it.
Kin wrapped Sakura’s hair around her fist, using it to pull Sakura up from the floor. Her knees scraped against the cold floor, her scalp was on fire, and Kin kept laughing.
“This is the best Konoha can do?” she asked. Her eyes gleamed, her lips twisting. “I’m embarrassed for you.”
Stop, Sakura thought, even as her inner voice rebelled against the desperate plea. She felt like sobbing. Please stop.
She tried to see through the pain and the tears, squinting up at the stands. They were all watching her, witnessing her pathetic attempt. Not Sasuke, hopefully—she prayed he wasn’t back yet, wasn’t watching her be yanked around like a doll. Useless and pathetic, just as he had accused her of being.
“Sakura!”
Her head snapped up at the loud yell, green eyes wide. The voice was achingly familiar. Ino. She was leaning over the side of the rail next to her teammates and sensei, staring Sakura down with a look of anger on her face.
“Come on!” she yelled. “Are you really going to let some backwater trash beat you? Kick her ass, Billboard Brow!”
Sakura stared, certain she couldn’t be hearing correctly. Ino… was cheering her on? Ino wanted her to win? There was a lump in her throat, an emotion swelling up in her chest.
Yes! her inner voice yelled back. You heard her! Let’s kick butt!
A sudden determination filled her chest. It chased away the weakness in her bones. She couldn’t let Ino see her lose.
Sakura slipped her hand behind her slowly, careful that Kin wasn’t watching her. Her own ninja tools were discarded on the ground; she slipped her hand into the pouch at Kin's waist, withdrawing one of her kunai and hiding it from sight.
Kin was so preoccupied with laughing, with hurling her insults and yanking on Sakura’s hair. She hadn’t even noticed one of her own weapons being stolen.
Sakura forced her mind to go silent. She twisted her wrist so the blade of the kunai was pointing up, her hand trembling.
It’s just hair, she told herself. It will grow back.
She squeezed her eyes shut tight. And before she could let herself think twice, she brought the weapon slashing up.
The sound of the blade shearing through her hair was horrifying—but also somehow empowering. The world seemed to go quiet in that moment, as she was set free from her opponent’s grasp and went tumbling to the ground.
She shoved herself up immediately. Her left ankle screamed in pain, but she forced herself to endure it and lean the majority of her weight on her right instead. Kin looked stunned, staring at the hair still trapped in her fist as pink strands fell to the floor.
Sakura didn’t give her any time to snap out of it. She kicked her in the chest with all of her strength. Kin’s eyes widened as she flew backwards, landing hard in a crumpled heap.
Sakura stepped up to her. “Going down so easy?” she taunted. “I’m embarrassed for you.”
Kin snarled in rage, her lips curling back. She looked quite unhinged, shoving herself off the floor and spitting dark hair out of her mouth. Blood was trickling down her forehead into her left eye.
“Bitch,” she spat, and two senbon came flying at Sakura’s face.
Sakura’s eyes widened and she barely managed to dodge. The needles had bells tied to the end of them, and the jingle they made as they cut through the air was the only thing that alerted her in time to get out of the way.
She gritted her teeth against the pain in her ankle. Stay focused—
“Ah!”
She cried out as two senbon sunk deep into her left thigh. These ones were silent, no jangling bells. The other two needles had been a distraction, to move her directly into the path of the other pair. Sharp pain shot through her leg. Her ankle crumpled beneath her.
The impact of her knees against the cement floor traveled through her entire body.
She stayed there for a moment, her vision blurred and spinning as she breathed through the pain. “N-Neat trick,” she choked out, pulling the two senbon from her thigh. She inhaled sharply. “But not—n-not too difficult to fi-figure out.”
Kin sneered, wiping the blood from her eye. “Why don’t you try actually dodging them before being so high-handed, princess?”
Kin was right. The trick might have been simple, but it was an affective one. And Sakura had no way to defend against it.
The mind and body were hardwired to react to sound. They could be trained out of it, but Sakura hadn’t been. As the jingling senbon flew toward her, she continued to instinctively dodge them—and step right into the path of the silent, second pair of senbon.
And they were definitely tipped with something. Some sort of poison or sedative. The more hits she took, the more Sakura felt the blood in her veins slowing and a lethargy sinking into her bones.
We can’t lose, her inner voice urged her desperately. She thought of Ino cheering her on—found the blonde’s face in the crowd, her heart catching. We can’t lose, we can’t lose—
Her ankle crumpled beneath her. She whimpered hoarsely as she crashed to the ground.
Can’t lose—
She tried to push herself up, but her elbows gave beneath her weight. The world spun around her, and her vision darkened around the edges.
Kin let out a sharp laugh. “Pathetic!”
The proctor’s words rang in her ears: “Kin Tsuchi wins! She advances to the next round!”
Sakura burned with shame.
★
“It was a valiant effort,” Kakashi said to her. “You should be proud of yourself.”
He helped pull her up from the stadium floor, wrapping an arm around her waist to support her and pulling her own arm over his shoulder. This resulted in him standing slightly hunched due to the height difference. She leaned into him, standing on one foot with the injured one raised, and allowed him to take the majority of her weight.
Her entire body ached. Her knees were scraped and bleeding, and her lower back throbbed where Kin’s knee had dug into it to pin her down. Her bare arms were littered with scratches, and her ankle pulsed with a stabbing pain that shot up her left leg at the slightest movement.
Sakura stared down at the strands of pink hair against the stone floor. She could feel the choppy, sheared-off ends brushing the back of her neck. Her eyes stung with tears.
“I lost,” she said, and her voice cracked.
Kakashi gave her wrist a reassuring squeeze where he was holding it to keep her arm slung around his shoulder. “Yes, but it was still an impressive match. You gave it everything you had.”
The words weren’t reassuring or comforting in the slightest. To Sakura, it was clear that they were nothing more than useless, pathetic platitudes. How sad she must look, how pitiful, that her sensei felt the need to ply her with them.
It wasn’t even true. The match had been so severely one-sided, it could barely even be called a fight. For a singular moment, when she had sliced through her own long locks and sent the Oto-nin flying, she had thought she could actually win. But then she had been immediately overpowered again, immediately dragged back to the ground.
At least Sasuke hadn’t been there to witness it.
Her body felt heavy. She resisted against being dragged into unconsciousness. “Sensei,” she said, her voice becoming slightly alarmed as she remembered, “I think those senbon were coated in something.”
Kakashi’s eye curved worriedly. “What do you mean?”
“I feel really tired…”
Her muscles felt weak. Holding herself up on one foot, even with the jounin’s help, was taking all of her strength.
She couldn’t have been poisoned, could she have? Surely that couldn’t be allowed. But Sasuke had killed that Rain shinobi in the Forest of Death—slit his throat, like it was nothing—and apparently that had been perfectly within the exam’s rules.
The memory still caused a part of her to recoil—the body hitting the forest floor, blood spilling onto the green grass.
Kakashi bent down, forcing her to bend with him. He picked up one of the senbon scattered on the floor and raised it to his face to smell it.
“A sedative,” he determined, throwing it back down. “Designed to weaken an opponent in a fight. Not very strong, and you should be able to shake it off.”
She exhaled in relief. Not poison.
“We should get you to a medic,” Kakashi said.
“I’m fine.”
“Your ankle is broken. If you let it heal like that—”
“I want to watch the rest of the matches,” she insisted. “I can get it looked at after.”
Her sensei hesitated. “…Fine,” he acquiesced. “But right after. Come on.”
He turned the two of them around, helping her back to the stands and up the steps to where Naruto was waiting. Sakura felt humiliated, her failure written all over her for everyone to see, and she kept her eyes downward as they climbed. It was a slow process, Kakashi levering her up each of the stone stairs.
She caught a flash of white-blonde hair in her peripheral vision. She didn’t dare look in Ino’s direction—not when the girl had actually cheered her on, and Sakura had still lost.
Naruto ran up to them the moment they reached him. “Sakura-chan! Are you okay?!”
She pulled herself from Kakashi, using the railing to keep herself upright. “I’m fine.”
“You are not! You’re bruised and bleeding all over! And your ankle—”
“I’m fine,” Sakura repeated, sharper this time. His concern felt like salt in her wounds. She already knew she looked terrible. She turned away to look out over the railing.
“Fine might be overstating it,” Kakashi said. “But it’s nothing that won’t heal—or grow back.”
Sakura bit her lip. She touched the choppy ends of her hair, now reaching just below her chin.
Naruto stepped up beside her and looked at her. “Hey,” he said after a moment. “I think that thing you did with your hair—cutting it off like that—was totally badass.”
She blinked, turning her head. “Really?”
“Yeah, it was so cool!”
“Thanks,” she said, a small flicker of warmth in her chest.
Below them, the next preliminary match was beginning. Shikamaru was facing off against one of the strange siblings from Sand—the one with the purple face-paint who was wearing a bunraku puppeteer’s costume.
The two of them stood facing each other, waiting for the proctor to call the match’s start. The Suna-nin looked arrogant and self-assured. Shikamaru wore his usual resting expression of boredom.
Naruto huffed. “When is it going to be my turn?”
“Relax,” Kakashi said. “It’s the fifth match. We’re only halfway through.”
The boy groaned loudly. “Where’s Sasuke?” he asked grumpily, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did that asshole ditch us?”
Kakashi whacked him on the top of his head. “Watch your mouth.”
“Ow! Kakashi-sensei! Like you haven’t said worse!”
“Do as I say, not as I do.”
“That’s not fair—”
Where was Sasuke? Sakura looked around the large room, but she couldn’t spot him anywhere. He had said he was simply stepping out for a drink of water. He should be back by now. She bit her bottom lip worriedly, barely paying any attention to the battle happening down below.
While searching for a glimpse of where her teammate had gone, her eyes accidentally caught on Ino. She was sitting in the stands with her own squad, and luckily didn’t notice Sakura’s glance. Her attention was fixed on Shikamaru’s fight.
“What’s wrong with you?!” she yelled, fist shaking furiously in the air. “You’re just going to give up?! Not even try?! For once in your fucking life, don’t be such a lazy piece of—!”
Asuma stepped forward and covered her mouth. He said something to her that looked chiding, and she quieted with an unhappy expression, arms crossed over her chest.
“Is Shikamaru really going to forfeit?” Naruto asked. “Man, that’s so lame. Does he even want to be a chuunin?”
Kakashi made a thoughtful noise. “It’s not always about winning.”
“Huh? What do you mean it’s not about winning? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! How can it not be—”
There, entering the room through the door down below—dark hair, a boy dressed in a blue shirt and white shorts. Sakura’s eyes widened slightly, and she leaned forward to get a better look at the figure’s face.
“Sasuke-kun,” she said. “He’s back.”
Naruto stopped his one-sided bickering with their sensei, head snapping around. “What? Where?”
Sakura didn’t answer, her gaze still locked on the other side of the room. Sasuke was standing with his hand on the door, holding it open. He turned back, looking through the open doorway and exposing the Uchiha Clan crest on the back of his shirt. He was saying something, speaking to someone—
Sakura sucked in a sharp breath, her hands tightening on the railing. “What’s he doing with her?”
Entering the room with him was the redheaded Kusa-nin from three days ago—the sensor, whose teammate was responsible for the bandage currently wrapped around Sakura’s forearm.
Naruto squinted. “Hey, yeah. Isn’t that the girl from before?”
Kakashi tilted his head curiously. “What girl would this be?”
“Someone we met in the Forest of Death,” Naruto said. “She was really weird. Sasuke stabbed her teammate in the throat, and she healed him by having him bite her.”
Kakashi’s visible eyebrow shot up into his hitai-ate. “Sasuke stabbed someone in the throat?”
“That’s what you took from what I just said? Kakashi-sensei, I just told you she has freaky healing powers!”
Sakura clenched her teeth. She watched them from a distance, Sasuke and the sensor girl, and something twisted in her chest. Why would they be together? Is that where Sasuke had been this whole time—with her?
A pit of snakes seemed to writhe in her stomach.
Naruto gave her a sidelong glance. “Sakura-chan, you’re not jealous, are you?”
She felt her face flame. “I’m not jealous! What do I have to be jealous of?”
“But your face is all red…”
“Shut up, Naruto!”
Kakashi sighed long-sufferingly. “Children, behave.”
Shikamaru’s match was over—ended by a forfeit, something his opponent didn’t seem very pleased by. Nor was Ino, yelling and lecturing her teammate the moment he returned to the stands. A hint of irritation was peeking through Shikamaru’s usual blank expression as he bore her anger. Choji left the two of them alone to their bickering as he was announced as the next match.
Sasuke was coming up the stairs now. The redheaded girl was gone. Sakura looked away as he approached, staring at her hands clenched around the railing. Her nails were damaged and broken, blood and dirt trapped under them.
“That was a long drink,” Kakashi said, eyebrow raised.
“Hn.”
“You missed your teammate’s fight.”
Sasuke frowned slightly, his gaze flickering briefly over to Sakura. Sakura tried not to shrink in on herself, imagining what she must look like. Dirty and bruised, her hair uneven and chopped at her chin and supporting herself on one foot. In comparison, Sasuke barely looked like he’d been in a battle; his shin was bruised and his clothes were a bit dirt-stained, but that was all.
“Looks like it was rough,” he said. A statement, nothing more, no emotion attached to his tone.
“I’m okay.”
“Did you win?”
Sakura bit the inside of her cheek. Rather than answer, she looked down at her hands in front of her.
“She gave an impressive fight,” Kakashi said. “Like I was just telling Naruto, it isn’t always about winning. She showed a real strength of will down there.”
Sakura didn’t think that was true, but it was still nice to hear him say.
Choji lost his match against the Sound shinobi, but unlike Shikamaru, he put up a decent showing. The screen above all of their heads was deciding on the next battle—was flashing, flashing, flashing…
Kiba Inuzuka vs. Naruto Uzumaki.
“YES!” the blonde yelled, jumping into the air. “FINALLY!”
It was right next to Sasuke’s ear, and he flinched at the volume before glaring. “Moron, shut up.”
Kakashi pat his rambunctious student on the shoulder. “There you go. You’re up. Don’t lose, or else I’ll owe Kurenai money.”
“You need to stop with the gambling,” said Sasuke.
“It’s worked out well for me so far. Gai coughed up that three hundred ryō to me just this morning.”
That, Sakura thought, explained why the green-clad man had been looking at their sensei like he wanted to kill him. She had thought it was just Kakashi-sensei’s natural personality at work.
“You don’t have to worry about your money, Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto said. “I promise, I’m going to kick ass! You better believe it!”
The blonde went down the steps to begin his match. A small part of Sakura—a shameful, selfish part—hoped Naruto would lose. At least then, she wouldn’t be alone in her defeat. At least then, she might not look so painfully pathetic. She tried to squash the feeling down. It was a terrible thing to hope for; Naruto was her teammate, no matter how loud-mouthed and annoying, and she should be cheering him on, not wanting him to keep her company in her failure.
But all she could think was: I’m the only one who isn’t going to make chuunin. They’re both going to leave me behind.
It scared her more than anything else.
And her fears were coming true, right before her eyes. Naruto—idiotic, noisy, last-in-their-class Naruto—was winning his fight against Kiba. Sakura watched, eyes wide, as he fought off Kiba and the dog’s attacks with his barrage of clones. He even turned Kiba’s own strengths against him—taking advantage of the boy’s keen sense of smell and disorienting him by—
“Ew,” Sakura said, her face scrunching up in disgust. “Did he really—?”
“That idiot,” Sasuke muttered.
“So juvenile.” She turned to look up at their sensei. “This is your fault. You’re the one who taught him to use such dishonorable moves.”
“Me?” Kakashi had the nerve to look offended. “I don’t know how you came to that conclusion.”
“One Thousand Years of Death,” she reminded him.
“Hm? What is that, a jutsu? Sorry, never heard of it…”
Naruto came running up the stands back to them, a wide grin on his face. “Did you guys see that? Did you see?!”
“We saw,” Sasuke said, in a tone that somehow conveyed both complete disinterest and extreme judgement.
Naruto huffed, crossing his arms and his grin becoming a scowl. “Bastard, don’t give me that look like you’re better than me! Just wait ‘til the last round of exams—I’ll beat your ass!”
Sasuke scoffed and looked away from him.
“Naruto,” Kakashi said. “There’s no guarantee you’ll face Sasuke in the third round.”
“I will if he wins all his matches! So he better. I’m gonna win all mine!”
“We’ll see about that, loser.”
“Loser?! I just won, asshole!”
Kakashi sighed and put a hand to his head. “I’m starting to understand why my sensei had constant headaches…”
Below them, Hinata’s match against the female Suna ninja was ending with a brutal victory. Brutal for Hinata, as the other girl blew her straight across the room with her fan. Hinata landed hard on the stone floor, her head hitting the far wall. Dazed and in pain, she tried and failed to push herself back up. But her arm kept giving beneath her own weight.
Temari was declared the victor. Hinata made her way back to her teammates, defeated, and the final preliminary match was announced on the screen above them. Ino, and she was up against the other boy from Sand. The redhaired boy with the tattoo on his forehead who looked like he’d never heard of sleep.
Gaara.
Sasuke stiffened slightly when the match was announced. He seemed to stand straighter, eyes sharpening.
Sakura frowned at the reaction. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said.
But his eyes were locked on the match below them—suddenly intensely focused when seconds ago he hadn’t seemed to be able to care less. It made a heavy feeling settle in Sakura’s gut.
Everything was fine at first—seemed fine. The fight began like any of the others. Ino attacked first, going on the offensive and firing off kunai. None of them hit—Gaara was somehow manipulating the sand in the gourd on his back, not moving a muscle as it shielded him from each strike. Ino was clearly very outmatched, wasn’t considered a threat at all, but still, none of it was worrying. Ino hadn’t put a scratch on the Suna boy, but he hadn’t put a scratch on her either—he wasn’t bothering to try.
Then, Ino leapt back to get some distance. She stretched her arms out, placing her thumb and forefingers together. “Shintenshin no Jutsu!”
That was when everything went wrong.
Sakura had never actually seen Ino do her clan’s special mind transfer technique—they had stopped being friends long before Ino had learned it. But she knew how it worked, remembered Ino explaining it to her as kids; and something was wrong now.
Gaara was agitated. He was shaking, and his hand came up to scratch at his own face, to pull at his hair.
He was muttering something to himself. She was too far away to hear.
Naruto frowned. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked. “Ino isn’t even doing anything to him!”
“She’s using her clan’s mind transfer technique,” Sakura explained. “It’s a—”
She was cut off by a scream. Ino’s scream, sharp and piercing.
Sakura’s breath caught.
Ino had fallen down to her knees. Clearly back in her own body, she was clutching at her own head much like Gaara had been a mere moment ago. And the expression on her face—eyes wide, bright with pure fear, her entire body shaking—
And Gaara—Gaara was losing it.
Sakura gasped at the first brutal strike. The sharp crack of bone breaking. She stopped breathing at the way the girl was flung through the air. Horror filled her, as she watched Ino uselessly try to defend herself.
“Why aren’t they stopping it?” she asked. Her eyes locked on the scene in front of her, trembling hands gripping the rail in a death grip. “I don’t understand why they aren’t stopping it…”
Kakashi’s face was grim. “Ino hasn’t forfeited yet. Until she does or loses consciousness…”
But Ino was still fighting—was digging bloody nails into the floor and dragging herself away. A shoulder that was twisted out of place, a knee that didn’t seem to be working properly, blood dripping from her nose down to her chin. And still, trying to force herself up.
Tears stung at Sakura’s eyes. She snapped her head away to avoid witnessing another brutal blow, burying her face in her sensei’s chest.
I can’t watch, she thought, her entire body shaking in horror. I can’t…
A hand pressed against the back of her head. Sakura’s hand fisted in the jounin’s vest.
“Ino Yamanaka forfeits! The winner of the match is—!”
When it was finally over, Sakura dared to peek out from Kakashi’s chest. Ino was being led away on a stretcher. Most of the spectators in the room were silent, speechless from the level of violence and power that had just been witnessed. Sakura could feel the tears streaking her cheeks.
Ino, she thought. With a sudden burst of desperation, she lunged forward to rush down the steps. “Ino—!”
White-hot pain shot from her ankle up to her calf, her foot twisting horribly beneath her. Her vision went briefly black around the edges, and she would have crashed down the steps if Sasuke hadn’t moved at inhuman speed to catch her.
She looked up at him just in time to glimpse the surprise on his face, before he schooled it into blankness. He seemed to have moved on instinct, just as surprised by his presence at her side as she was.
Her nails dug into his arm. “Ino,” she gasped, pain from her ankle still shooting through her. “I have to—I have to—”
Kakashi came up to her and grabbed her arm. Sasuke dropped his own arm and stepped back, allowing their sensei to take her weight.
“Come on,” he said. His voice was somber, his usual carefree manner completely absent from his face. “Lean on me. I’ll help you down.”
They reached the bottom of the steps just in time—the stretcher was being rolled out the door by one of the standby med-nins. Ino’s sensei, along with both her teammates, were following. Choji looked scared, his large body trembling and tucked against Asuma’s side. Even the usually-cool Shikamaru was pale.
Sakura practically pushed him over to reach the other girl. “Ino!”
Ino was barely conscious. Her body was covered in bruises, and Sakura felt sick seeing the damage up close. Red stained her pale skin and blonde hair, violent in its sharp contrast. Her blue eyes, dull and hazy, struggled to focus on the face above her.
“Sakura…?”
Sakura felt a tear slip down her cheek. Her lips trembled. “Yeah, it’s… it’s me.”
Looking at her now, it felt like all the animosity between them disappeared. None of it mattered in this moment. This was her friend, the one person she had growing up. Broken and battered and bleeding, and looking at her with such helplessness.
“You’re going to be okay,” Sakura told her. She tried to say it with firm confidence, but her voice wavered and cracked over the words. “You’re going to be fine. Okay?”
Something on the girl’s face sharpened. Fingers suddenly twisted into her shirt, pulling her forward. Sakura gasped, her face hovering just in front of Ino’s. Blue eyes were glistening with tears, the look in them turning Sakura cold.
“I saw inside his head,” Ino whispered. “I saw, and it’s—Oh, it’s—it’s terrible, it’s—”
Pure terror—that was the look in her eyes. Her fingers left blood stains on Sakura’s shirt, shaking as they fisted tighter at the fabric.
“Sakura… Sakura, he’s a monster.”
★
Not for the first time, Kakashi wished he knew how to comfort someone. He wished he knew how to be a human being, not a barely-functional imitation of one.
Sakura followed Ino as she was led off to the hospital on the stretcher. Kakashi kept his arm around her waist, her arm around his shoulders, supporting her as they walked. She said nothing, face streaked with tears, and Kakashi said nothing either.
Her hand was fisted tightly in his shirt—shaking, knuckles white.
Naruto and Sasuke had both won their matches, so they stayed behind for the announcements regarding the final round of the exams. It would take place next month, at the start of August, and they would have ample time to train. To prepare themselves and strategize, now that they had witnessed the skills of other competitors.
As Sakura was taken to one of the hospital rooms to get her broken ankle fixed up, Kakashi found Asuma in the hospital’s hallway.
“How bad is it?” Kakashi asked. He leaned his back against the wall next to him.
“Nothing that should be life-threatening,” Asuma said. “But she’s still been taken into surgery.”
His head was down, chin against his chest. Down the hall, his two other students were sitting in chairs close together. There was blood on Asuma’s left hand, drying on the fingers resting against his forearm.
Kakashi should say something. He should put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and reassure him.
Instead he said, “You felt that kid’s power, right? That was way beyond genin level.”
Asuma’s lips became a thin line. “I did.”
Kakashi’s muscles still tensed up in memory of it. The power he had felt coming from Gaara when he had begun losing control of himself—when Ino had instantly dropped to her knees—that was way beyond the level of a genin, or even a chuunin. The way it weighed him down, the dark, malevolent feeling of it—
The way it sent his mind back twelve years—
“I haven’t felt power like that since—”
“The Nine-Tails’ attack. Me either.”
Kakashi glanced at Asuma. The man was looking at him grimly, the same shadow in his eyes that Kakashi knew must be reflected in his. That night, that terrible night, when Kakashi had lost his sensei and the closest thing he ever had to a mother. That night, when Asuma had lost his actual mother.
Kakashi attempted to shake the ghost from his shoulders. “You don’t think he’s…?”
“Is that possible? He’s just a child.”
“So is Naruto.”
Asuma grimaced and looked away. “If that’s really the case, then… Suna is likely planning something. Our relationship with them has been fragile for years, and we can’t chalk this up to coincidence. This could be a direct attempt to attack the village.”
Kakashi felt cold at the thought. Unable to breathe, just for a moment.
He remembered Rin. The black seal inked on her pale stomach. Kirigakure’s plan, to have her carry the Three-Tails back to Konoha to release it once she was inside.
(The blood sliding from her mouth. Pieces of her shattered ribcage scraping against the back of his hand.)
“We have to tell the Hokage,” Kakashi said. “If there’s even a chance of it being true.”
“I know,” Asuma replied. He didn’t move, stood staring at the closed door where his student had been rolled through.
Kakashi bit the inside of his mouth. He raised his hand and placed it on the jounin’s shoulder. He didn’t give the man any comforting words—he didn’t know how to.
But Asuma leaned into the touch, like it steadied him. And perhaps, Kakashi thought to himself, no words were needed for this. Perhaps that gesture was enough.