Chapter 1: Prologue: dig up the bones but leave the souls alone
Chapter Text
Unlike what everyone seemed to believe, it did not start with seeing dead people. That actually didn't come until much, much later.
I.
It started with the Smell.
Of decay and rot. That only Sakura seemed to pick up, not that she would have described it that way. She was only 4 years old, and didn’t think anything strange of it. To her it smelled kind of sweet, and perhaps, a little sad.
It felt, like sitting in the kitchen watching dust particles swirl in the sunlight coming through old curtains while her Mama cut up vanilla beans, maybe too much, the scent ripe and heavy in the air. Cutting her fingers on the knife, blood in the mix metallic and unfamiliar then. Waiting for the cookies to bake for an eternity, aging, but when she looked around no one would be there anymore, not even ghosts. Cookies already forgotten and stale on the counter. Sweet, and a little sad.
The first time she realized the smell didn't really go away, she thought it was coming from herself. But no matter how much she washed up it never really left. She would catch a trace of it playing in the woods, ever present and almost comforting after a while. Or suddenly, when walking with Mama to the market through town. She would stop confused, tugging the hand that was holding onto her own, but by the time Mama looked back in question the smell would already be gone from her senses. Forgotten.
On a particularly hot and boring summer day a few months after her 4th birthday, nose itching, Sakura got curious enough to try and follow it to the source. If there was one. That day, summer solstice, felt on the edge of something, air still and heavy but the smell more cloying than usual.
She remembered in a daze tracking the scent through their little traditional house to the shrine proper, then into the sprawling courtyard, until reaching the old cherry tree planted right on the edge of their property. She didn't really see anything that could be the source, but the earth beneath her feet thrummed with something she couldn’t quite name.
So she dug. And dug. Enthusiastic in a way only a child could be getting covered in more and more dirt. Bony little fingers sinking into the ground, air sweltering but the earth cool and soft beneath her nails under the shade of the tree.
She found a cat.
Or at least the remains of what once used to be a cat.
Probably a dear pet to someone long ago that was buried beneath the old cherry tree before Sakura and her Mama had ever lived there. Sakura had never had a pet though, and did not know the custom of burying the dead occasionally applied to them. She hadn’t even seen a human funeral yet.
She might not have known what was done to bodies after death but she understood Death itself. No one had explained yet, but standing there suddenly Sakura knew it, deep within herself, without question. There was an end, that existed for all beings.
Hot air, cold earth, sometimes heavy, sometimes faint smell of vanilla.
For Sakura, for Mama, for the trees that cast their shadows on her form now, for the birds she could faintly hear outside of her window when she had woken up that morning. An end, a beginning, and another end, for everything Sakura knew and yet not knew to be.
She also knew what a cat was, so she could clearly see that what she dug up was a long dead cat. A few of the bones still had bits of fur and desiccated skin clinging to them.
She took the remains to Mama, hands gentle and reverent on the dirty bones, to show her what a treasure she had found. Mama seemed surprised but Sakura did not quite understand the expression on her face. Had she been a little older, a little wiser, maybe she would have seen the minute panic on Mebuki’s normally serene features. Sakura of 4 though, did not really care, still so excited by her new little discovery.
She had found it.
Haruno Mebuki on the other hand knew this day might have been coming.
But she looked at Sakura poking the bones with childish glee on her face and thought maybe, just maybe, she had found the bones accidentally whilst digging around in the yard. Children did that, right? She gave Sakura a couple of cookies, after she made the girl wash the dirt off of her hands. Sakura seemed loath to leave the bones alone though, so at the end Mebuki caved and helped her clean at least the tiny cat skull to keep for now. It was unnatural for a Haruno, to hold, to keep, so perhaps this was actually nothing but a child playing with a toy. She told her little girl what an adventure today must have been, and chose to believe that this was not the start of something.
Mebuki did not start feeling stupid about that before the fifth time Sakura came home with the corpse of one animal or another.
They buried what she dug up under the old cherry tree again, only that very first cat skull had remained sitting pretty on Sakura’s bedside table eyeless sockets judgemental every time Mebuki walked by, with soft prayers and Mebuki decided it was time to stop ignoring reality.
“How do you find these things, Sacchan?” she asked.
Sakura tapped her nose, smudging some dirt over it, and said that she smelled something and just followed it. Said that the Smell came from them.
Mebuki hummed in what could have been but was not really true understanding. Death was simple yet complicated, especially for a Haruno, their customs a little more so to explain fully to a 4 year old. For now though she told Sakura, privately thinking that while they were in Konoha at least, “What is dead belongs under the ground, honey.”
What is dead belongs underground?
Somehow that felt strangely wrong to Sakura and she asked Mama why so.
“That’s the way it is here,” Mama told her, and Sakura prepared to argue but they were already done re-burying her precious treasures. She felt the tears burning behind her eyes. Mama sent her to wash her hands with a sad look.
Sakura could only glance back at the old cherry over her shoulder as Mama led them back to the shrine, and she accepted. Because Mama had said so, and that was enough reassurance for now.
She never went searching for buried animal corpses again, and learned to ignore the Smell as best as she could.
But sometimes, on the village road or when walking near a park, the familiar scent of death and decay would reach her nose, and the presence of something long gone itched in the back of her mind. She could almost feel the cold but so very soft earth on her small fingertips, under her nails. Sweet, and sad, and ever present if she just paid attention.
She moved away.
II.
Sound came next.
While growing up Sakura started hearing things. She was just shy of 6 years, and incredibly proud of that fact.
She couldn’t exactly hear words or anything. It was more like white noise. Constantly in her ears, the voices of what she didn’t yet know to be ghosts past and present all mixing together. Sometimes pleasant, sometimes grating. Yet, each passing day the voices got a little bit louder, the words almost clear.
It wasn’t as loud by their shrine located on the outskirts of the town, but whenever she went into the town proper, and she was old enough now that Mama allowed short trips on her own, the not quite buzzing would start.
There were times Sakura just sat and listened for hours on end in the closest park, hoping she could parse it out.
Children in the neighborhood started calling her creepy for that.
Mama found her once sitting on a bench, she had probably zoned out again but was too late coming back this time. Blank eyes looking at the maple leaves scattered on the ground, so so red and so so dead, humming a tune she heard on the wind that day. It was late fall, it never got too cold in Konoha but the chill was slowly setting in, Mama must have been worried. She asked if Sakura was okay, and in her voice there was an urgency Sakura did not pick up.
“Can’t you hear it Mama?” she asked head tilted, but Mama told her that she couldn’t. That Sakura was a very special little girl. Sakura pouted at the “little” part for the sake of it. She was almost 6, not a baby, but her attention remained on the humming that was now coming from leaves.
Sakura was finally 6 years old, when Mebuki caved in and took her to a cemetery for the first time.
The smelling alone could have been handled by ignoring it. The occasional Haruno had been blessed by one of the Senses.
Mebuki’s own mother had been the last to awaken any. It had only been hearing, though unusually clear.
But even then Haruno Akari, named for the reddish purple color of her hair like red plums just as she had named her granddaughter Sakura after her soft pink hair, had been the first one to do so in several generations. Harunos, a family older than all the shinobi nations combined, had considered the ability to be dying out. Akari had been good at what she did, but she was thought to be an outlier.
Mebuki herself did not have any of the Senses, and yet her baby girl had awakened two in the span of a couple of years.
She explained as they walked hand in hand towards the largest cemetery in town that when people died they were buried in the ground, just like those bones she had dug up so long ago. Most people in Konoha that was. She talked about the Uchiha, a founder clan along with the Senju. Uchihas believed in burying their loved ones after death. She went on to tell Sakura about how the custom of making elaborately decorated and sealed coffins for it, which Mebuki uncharitably thought were ugly, had started with the early Uchihas.
“There are other ways too,” Mebuki said in what was not really reassurance. Some, only a minority in Konoha, burned the bodies instead. Though the Uchiha had looked down on that practice as blasphemous, to them the physical bodies of their ancestors were just as sacred as their souls. Shortly after the formation of Konoha as a village, their way of things had caught on with them being such a powerful and well-respected clan. Nowadays cremation was only done by a few families here, or in emergencies in the field for reasons Mebuki chose to gloss over for a child that did not yet know wars or bloodline thieves existed.
Instead she told Sakura burial was the most prevalent custom here because the ground was soft in Konoha, land plentiful. They kept their dead, and then enacted stones and monuments because they wanted a place to visit and grieve.
“Grieve?”
“It means to feel sadness, Sacchan, especially when someone dies. Because that person is gone.”
Face adorably scrunched up Sakura said, “Gone? Why would they be gone?”
Mebuki’s face went through several complicated expressions before she settled on an amused huff.
“You are right dear, I suppose for you, they wouldn’t be gone.”
All was well if she never really understood the feeling, Mebuki thought, Harunos don’t grieve anyway.
The scent of decay she used to follow around like a puppy when she was smaller got stronger with each step as they walked, the voices louder than ever before. Sakura looked ahead, and on the green neatly trimmed grass sat rows and rows and rows of stones. It didn’t feel right.
There was a strange electricity on her skin, that not quite buzzing in her ears.
Sakura could understand now, albeit vaguely, that what she had been hearing were the voices of those that had passed away. Mama again told her what a special girl she was, but that what she could smell and hear she should never tell other people. That other people did not smell or hear the dead.
They did not?
Stupefied Sakura nodded. The feeling of something not being quite right starting to overwhelm her the longer she stared at the cemetery.
“What is dead belongs under the ground,” she heard herself say. Although this time it was even harder to believe the words.
Mama murmured her voice low, “Yes, though not quite like this.”
When Sakura looked up at her confused once more, she only said, “I’ll explain more when you are older Sacchan.”
They got ice-cream on the way back. Hers was a lemon popsicle, it was supposed to be sour, refreshing, but the overly sweet smell of death did not leave Sakura’s nose.
The noise continued in the background.
It got somewhat worse over the years.
The voices were exciting to hear at first, and Sakura still remembered listening intently for long periods of time to pick up even the smallest of words, but now the constant noise tired her and she started getting headaches. Sometimes it was hard to focus on what the living were saying.
She slowly got better at tuning out the voices though, or focusing on particular sounds instead to drown out most of the others. Mama gave her a journal, her grandmother’s, and Sakura learned more about the gift of Sound. How to better manage her responses to overwhelming sounds. How to meditate.
At some point she started making her own notes on the worn pages. At first she was hesitant to do anything to the journal but Mama reassured her that no object left behind had to be sacred. With a knowing smile on her face, Mama told her that the dead did not mind.
When she saw the now determined glint in Sakura’s eyes, she said, “You don’t have to care about legacies either, Sacchan,” as if she could read what Sakura had been thinking about leaving behind in between the pages.
“Yes, maybe it’ll help someone down the line, or maybe it won’t, and the paper will crumble away. As it was meant to do. It is all fine.”
Mama took her swimming. Naka River ran through Konoha, waters heavy with history, not that Sakura knew that yet.
There were off-shoots of the river as well as little lakes strewn all around the great forests that surrounded Konoha on all sides. She said being under the water might help Sakura, as it used to help her own mother. When Sakura first went under all she could hear was the sound of the current and the entire world had been muted. It was beautiful. Peaceful.
Water called to her, just as the earth did.
She would go swimming, away from the town whenever days got too loud, let the water quiet the world, then quiet her own brain. And when she was tired enough she would drag herself ashore and lay down among the greenery dappled with sunlight, damp earth under wet skin.
Nothing but the sounds of cicadas lulled her to sleep.
III.
She could parse out what the voices were saying by the time Sakura started attending the Konoha Ninja Academy. She tried replying back sometimes, the ghosts never replied back.
She still couldn’t see them but recently she could almost Feel the dead. There was a feeling to them. But not really. There was knowledge, but not sensation. Perhaps it was the absence of actual feeling that made it noticeable. The air seemed to collapse in on itself when a ghost, or what Sakura assumed to be a ghost, was there. She avoided walking through them as much as possible.
She almost danced on the roads when walking. People looked at her strangely then, more so than usual at least. Not that she really noticed, all attention focused on the shimmering air and the voices that accompanied.
Sakura was 7 when she started her ninja training like most of her agemates in Konoha. She had wanted to join because she wanted to learn about their village, understand a little more about all the stories she overheard from ghosts that walked through the streets. The physical training was a bonus. Mama had started teaching her how to dance, but Sakura thought it would be good to know how people here lived and fought.
She figured she would stay in the academy for a few years and get what she could before she seriously started training under Mama as a shrine maiden instead, learning the traditional Haruno fighting styles she had been trained in by her own mother. Delicate fans, sturdy bows. Spirits in their ears, bones in their hands.
There were still enough civilian kids in the beginner classes that Sakura didn’t stand out by virtue of being non-clan alone. It was also a blessing that no one from her own neighborhood attended. Yet, Sakura didn’t have any friends. Not that she hadn’t tried, and not because of her strange Senses. She took great care to ignore them when there were people around now, Mama had said so. But children were intuitive, and they picked up on things even if they didn’t know why, couldn’t really explain.
It hadn’t started out bad. There was a girl in their class, Ami, with beautiful bright purple hair and lovely brown eyes. She was civilian like her but still popular with most of the class, because she did so well at the ninja training. She had wanted to befriend Sakura at first. Sakura was not really a fighter, yet, but she was strong, hours and hours of swimming giving her the muscle condition most kids their age didn’t have. She was resilient too, and a little competitive. Ami had liked her. And Sakura had liked her back.
Then she noticed something. It wasn’t the Smell that was so familiar to Sakura clinging to Ami. Though that would come later.
Sakura did not understand why her senses were so confused because Ami was clearly alive, when one day she had touched Ami’s arm with her own when they were sitting close together, and in the same instant she was struck by the realization that Ami would die. And perhaps soon, although Sakura did not know why or how. She just knew she could Feel the absence of something under her fingers, nothing where there should have been life.
This wasn’t the same as the ghosts Sakura so carefully avoided running through, but almost, almost the same. She recoiled back. Ami did not notice at first but as Sakura continued to avoid her after her startling discovery the other girl grew angry, her brown eyes colder than what Sakura had grown used to. Other kids seemed to pick up on the shift of dynamic rather quickly, and soon they became hostile as well.
Sakura had hoped to make friends in the academy, really. The neighborhood kids, all civilians as well, had long written her off as creepy but Mama had said ninja kids were all weird too anyway. But as Sakura watched Ami’s profile from her seat, she thought she was reluctant to get close again. Ami would be gone soon. Well, Sakura knew she wouldn’t really be gone. Everything went away, and came back, and went away again. Again and again. So it wasn’t fear of death or loss that made her hesitant, but all the sensations being around Ami, knowing and not knowing what was coming confused her.
There was a shadow of something she still couldn’t see, yet the faint smell of vanilla slowly getting richer.
Would they bury her too? she wondered. Would Sakura hear her call when she walked by, the way she used to cheerfully tell Sakura good morning when she walked into the class? How terribly sad.
It hadn’t been this hard making friends when she was smaller, Sakura thought, because to 4 year olds digging around and finding old animal bones had been an adventure. Children pretended to hear the voices of imaginary friends all the time. This was before her spells of zoning out on her Senses had started scaring the children around her, before she got better at handling it.
How strange was it that they all grew up to be disgusted by things they used to play around with. To fear the inevitable just because they did not understand. Sakura felt blessed for the world she knew, and cursed for the one that had started feeling so isolated from others.
Mebuki refused to be surprised at this point, when one day Sakura came home with slumped shoulders, and told her she had started feeling Death in the air, in people. Not quite, but close. It was actually one of the older Senses, one that used to awaken first in Harunos in older times, that had made them aware of sickness early enough to make them sought out healers. Before they were fighters and priests.
“Why can’t I really touch them though?” Sakura asked. Her hand waving through something, something Mebuki knew she could not see, but seemed to know to be there.
Mebuki smiled sadly, “It is a dangerous thing, love, to be able to touch the dead.”
Sakura lowered her hand.
“It would make you forget, that you are not supposed to hold on.”
Ami did not show up to class one day. Then not for another week. A month. Not many people questioned it since it was common enough for civilian kids to drop out of the academy after a year or so, though it was uncharacteristic of someone as enthusiastic about the training as Ami had been. When Iruka-sensei told the class she had been really sick and had passed away, Sakura tried to act surprised enough that no one would notice the knowing look in her eyes.
It was an actual surprise when Ami’s family came to their shrine to ask Mama for the funeral services. It was an elaborate affair that was going to take several days. Sakura tagged along with Mama to Ami’s family home to watch how she purified the place, how she purified herself with prayer and washing.
They weren’t going to bury Ami, not really, after all the ceremonies were done they were going to cremate her. Sakura was confused when she overheard, because she had thought most civilians wanted their bodies buried in those ugly coffins in Konoha, bodies trapped away from the rich earth, silent stones with loud ghosts. She had known there were other ways, but had really not thought about what that had entailed.
“They are Uzushio descendants,” Mama told her after they returned home following the wake. The family would join them at the crematorium later. Her hand came down on Sakura’s head softly, ruffling the pink strands, “You can tell by the bright hair, we seem to share the same trait.”
She explained once upon a time people from Uzushio, a distant island surrounded by whirlpools, had lived in Konoha. They had been some of the ninja founders in fact, along with the Senju and the Uchiha. But slowly they had died out, just as their lands had been destroyed, their techniques forgotten. Most that remained here were distant cousins and descendants that were scattered amongst the civilian population. Some customs had survived, barely, but they had.
The shrine they lived in in fact had been modeled after Uzushio shrines of old, dedicated to their gods, adorned with their spirals.
“What gods do we believe in Mama?” Sakura asked.
“None? All? Harunos know Life and they know Death, they practice all religions where people need it.”
She traced the Haruno Circle on her sleeves.
“All gods are eventually forgotten and replaced by new ones, Sacchan. They are just like us that way.”
Sakura saw the gravesite later where Ami’s ashes were placed, the stone was impressive though different from those she had seen in the other cemetery. There were flowers, the scent of incense strong yet not enough to obscure that of sweet sweet vanilla. Mama told her some of the ashes would be going to Ami’s family, where there would be a shrine for her inside their house as well. That didn’t feel quite right to Sakura either.
Trapped inside coffins, trapped under the ground, trapped above ground in little shrines inside four walls. Trapped, trapped, trapped.
Her feelings must have shown on her face because Mama said, “No, not quite like this either.” She didn’t explain what their own family did, and Sakura did not ask.
That night she dreamed of open fields. Worms disintegrating flesh in the humid summer air, feeding flowers that would soon bloom vibrant violet. Millipedes crawling out of bones that would slowly disappear into the soft cool earth. Taking days, months, years.
One day someone would stumble upon them, or perhaps not.
It didn’t matter. It felt right.
IV.
She had not intended to become a ninja, no. She had wanted to be a shrine maiden, like her Mama.
But then.
Sakura was 8, when the Uchiha Massacre happened.
And her world changed.
Chapter 2: 1. seeing ghosts in the light they disappear
Notes:
oh my word, thank you to everyone who read the prologue and enjoyed it. i did not think people would be this into what is essentially In A Week by Hozier The Fic Starring Sakura but here we are lol
i will try to keep to the creepy/whimsical style i started with as much as possible but it might take a backseat when the actual plot and more dialogue starts kicking up, i hope you will still be interested in Sakura's journey here and to beyond. now let's go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sakura came out from under the water with a splash, startling a coyote that was drinking from the river back into the woods.
She smiled and dragged herself onto the bank, towards where she had left her bag and outer clothes. She was startled away from her things and slipped, falling back into the water quite ungracefully, when she suddenly spied something moving in the corner of her vision.
Not something, someone.
When she looked up again there was a teenage boy, right there, crouched on the bank.
Sakura was about to shout, but she noticed the boy looked, well, almost faded out from the fabric of reality. She wiped the water away from eyes, blinking. He was still there.
The realization was almost immediate then, that the boy was a ghost, and Sakura started laughing because somehow she had expected ghosts to be see-through. They were not. Not really.
Though the faded quality to him was not the most shocking thing about the boy. No, it was the lack of eyes, one eyelid closed and crusted over with dried flecks of blood, the other socket fully empty and mangled around the edges with raised bits of cut open tissue. Weeping still, blood slowly leaking down his pretty face. Drip, drop. Where the blood should have fallen down from his chin onto the earth there was nothing. Absent-mindedly Sakura thought, looking at the closed eye, that he had beautiful eyelashes, long and curly. Like his hair.
His clothes looked wet. He looked like he was dripping water everywhere actually, like he had come out of the river just like Sakura a second ago, but the ground below him remained dry. No blood, no water. She reached out to touch. When the ghost startled away from her this time, she blurted, “Sorry!”
There was something oddly familiar about the boy. The color of his dark dark hair, his high cheekbones. Sakura had a million questions on her tongue, but what came out next was, “Did you feel that?”
The boy looked surprised for another second, delicately shaped eyebrows raised, and replied with an awkward but soft chuckle, “Yes, I felt it. Weird, but not really uncomfortable.”
They remained silent after that for a minute, Sakura still standing half in half out of the water, he still crouched on the bank. It felt momentous. It felt like the start of something. It felt, quite frankly, a little anticlimactic.
“You can see me?”
Sakura made sure her face was turned completely towards the ghost, “Can you?”
He laughed fully this time, “In a fashion.”
Sakura thought it suited him, the laughter, the grin that remained on his face even after. His features were built for joy. She wondered how much he had had the chance to experience, the boy didn’t look older than 16. She hoped, but the bloody eyes told another story.
She wanted to stay, to ask. To listen, she didn’t think she had ever heard this voice on the wind before. But it was already getting too late. The sun had set a while ago, even before the sudden awakening of Sight had rooted her to the spot, and the water was getting colder. Mama would be expecting her for dinner.
She finally stepped out of the river, wringing water from her short hair. She had only looked away from the boy for a split second to reach out for her clothes.
“What’s your name?” she asked, turning back towards him.
But he was already gone.
She only heard the distant howl of a coyote in reply.
The day after, while Sakura walked down the hill into the village it was eerily silent. She heard no voices, saw no ghosts. She almost thought the boy on the river bank had been a fluke.
Iruka-sensei was standing alone outside, a twitchy scarecrow watching the barren dusty earth of the courtyard, when she finally arrived at the Academy. “Good morning, Sakura-chan,” he said, though his voice suggested anything but, “Classes are canceled for the day.”
“Classes will actually be suspended for the entirety of the week,” he said wincing.
She stared, not at the man, but at the courtyard and the building behind him. Something was wrong, though she could not pinpoint what. It wasn’t just Iruka-sensei’s palpable anxiousness either. Something was waiting, suspended in the air around them. A pressure steadily growing behind her eyes.
She rubbed the little cat skull, her very first, that she usually carried around with her in her pocket. Hoping it might settle her nerves. It didn’t. She silently thought about how animals never left ghosts behind. They knew better. They lived, they died, and unless humans intervened, they rejoined the circle of life as they should.
Not all dead people turned into ghosts either. Most didn’t, in fact. There usually needed to be strong emotions involved for the dying to leave imprints on the world in the shape of ghosts. It didn’t necessarily need to be anger or hatred either that made one stay, love was just as strong, maybe even more complicated. Though more often than not, especially in the world they lived in, death tended to involve trauma and strong grudges. This, Sakura had learned over the years, as a lot of the voices she heard out in town belong to ninjas, stories of incredible violence, of deep regret on the wind.
Most children did not become ghosts when they died, for that very reason. Despite physical anchors kept by families, bodies in little ugly coffins, ashes under shrines. They just hadn’t lived long enough, loved or hated hard enough, to stay. Unless, something truly terrible had kept them from passing on. The Academy grounds tended to be empty of that void feeling Sakura had come to associate with spirits hanging about, not many voices interrupted her focus in class.
Iruka-sensei seemed to grow more and more anxious under her silent unfocused stare. “You know what,” he clapped once, “This will be a good break to focus on your individual training Sakura-chan!”
She didn’t bother correcting him on how she didn’t usually have individual training back home, not ninja training that is. She hummed in agreement, and turned around to walk back through town and up the forested hills back to their shrine.
The Academy was one thing, the rest of the village being this quiet was another. Not even the living was on the streets, shop fronts closed, morning markets silent.
She didn’t feel anything in the air. She could see nothing.
Another day passed before Mama told her the classes had most likely been canceled for a week because of the Uchiha Massacre. When she came back from town with a somber face, Sakura had been taking Iruka-sensei’s advice on “training”, by laying out on the porch and staring into the distance. Hoping she might, perhaps, see, a flicker of something in the woods. Mama said she was not the one who would oversee the ceremonies, there were plenty of higher ranked priests in Konoha for that, but she had heard about what had happened from the other villagers.
A tragedy, they said, heads shaking. Came out of nowhere. How could this have happened? One boy, they whispered, scared, one boy killed all those people in a single night?
They said they would pray for the survivor, the poor boy. They did not reach out their hands. Poor, poor boy.
Sakura thought, instead, of the boy she met by the river with no eyes. Her hands reaching out to emptiness. The same dark hair. He was an Uchiha, wasn’t he? Had he died the day before? Why was he by the river so far away from the Uchiha District then? Drip, drip, dripping over stones that remained bone dry. It didn’t make any sense.
She didn’t tell Mama what she saw. She wasn’t sure.
Sakura spent most of the rest of the week aimlessly walking through woods, bare feet sometimes sinking into the muddy ground, sometimes wild grass tickling her between the toes. For more training one might say, too anxious to go back into town. She figured any event that was coined a “massacre” should have been deafening to her Senses. But she remembered shuddering how still the entire village had been. She went by the river, to the exact same spot, several times, but the boy never appeared again.
“It’s wrong,” Mama commented over dinner, on the last day of her tragedy induced vacation, “Disrespectful. You know Uchihas did not believe in burning.”
Well, Harunos didn’t believe in it either, not in the same way. But one thing Sakura had come to know was that all these complicated rituals were for the living, not for the dead. Though they still believed, while that’s neither what the spirits truly wanted nor what the earth craved, in respecting what people wished to do for their own. As long as they weren’t hurting others.
But there were too many bodies, and none of their own priests left to conduct the usual funeral rites in the Naka Shrine inside the Uchiha District, or bury them. The Uchiha priests were just as dead on the street. Blood seeping into cracked stone, adorned with symbols of delicate round paper fans. Red, and white, and red again. The Hokage and his council had made a decision to get rid of them all, quietly and efficiently, in their own way instead. There was no one left to put up a fuss about it anyway.
“Poor boy,” Mama said.
Except one.
Sakura went back to the Academy after the week was over, feeling tense and out of sorts. She had gotten so used to perceiving the world a certain way that the lack of it all made everything more jarring. She noticed almost everyone was back in class as well.
Uchiha Sasuke was still absent.
Does he know yet? Sakura wondered. That there were no bodies, not even the ashes kept. Did they ask his consent, or even inform him at all? But everyone knew better than a kid, didn’t they.
Would he miss having no graves to visit someday? Would he make his own?
Notably Hyuuga Hinata was also absent. She figured the Hyuuga clan might have been a little more prickly about the situation than the rest of the smaller Konoha Clans, as she saw the Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi were in their usual seats bantering. Well, Ino, voice loud and bright like bells, was bantering at Chouji who was patiently listening, and Shikamaru who was impatiently ignoring her in favor of trying to nap. It was an aggressively normal scene despite what had happened in the village just last week. Perhaps it was so, specifically because they were trying a little too hard to make it feel normal.
There were a few kids, non-clan but still from ninja families, that were milling around the room acting unnaturally casual. After Ami’s passing the year before no one bothered her anymore. The way the other children had collectively decided on when it came to dealing with Sakura seemed to be just ignoring her existence.
Uzumaki Naruto was scratching something onto his desk at the front, at least that actually felt normal. The Inuzuka kid, who gave her the stink eye every time they paired up for an exercise, was trying to coax his dog from under the seat. The puppy was making a horrible high pitched whining sound. Sakura wondered if the animal knew. If he could feel what Sakura had suddenly lost the ability to.
She quietly went to her own seat in the back of the room, nodding to Aburame Shino who sat in front of her. He politely nodded back. Sakura had always liked Shino, so quiet besides the scuttling and chittering you could hear if you were close enough to the boy and paid enough attention. Sakura liked that too.
Her deskmate, the only other civilian kid that had made it to the end of the second year, did not return after that day.
She was walking along a narrow section of the Naka River again, foraging for mushrooms. Mind as quiet as the village below. Moist woodlands and river bottoms were a good place for morels to grow, though they could be notoriously hard to locate.
She found more than mushrooms.
Sitting on her path, this time legs submerged in the shallow water idly kicking back and forth but not displacing any liquid, was a familiar boy. He looked back at her with terribly empty eyes, but he was smiling. Secrets in the curve of his mouth.
Maybe forever unspoken. If not for Sakura.
“My name,” he said, “is Uchiha Shisui.”
Notes:
for those of you wondering, for now i will be keeping to a weekly update schedule (most likely posting between saturday and sunday after i had some time to read over what i wrote and edit) as i have written a bulk of the early chapters, but eventually might scale down to biweekly because i have a full time job ahahahha
i haven't been this inspired to write anything for a while though, so by hell or high water this fic is going to be finished. rest assured loves, and see you next week <3
Chapter 3: 2. i’m just walking with a ghost
Notes:
i know i said i'd update saturday/sundays after i've had time to check my work but i got off work early today, and had some time to unwind as well as a glass of rosé, so you know, why not spread the joy. let's go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Whether he knew or not, and Sakura strongly suspected he had an idea shrewd as he was, Uchiha Shisui had completely changed the trajectory of her life.
She remembered the day she met Shisui for the first time, the second time. Humid air, chilly water, mushrooms covered with dirt still in her basket. When she had gone back into the village after her little excursion, the streets that had been so eerily still and quiet the week before had suddenly been alive with voices.
And Sights.
When she had first awakened the gift of Sound as a kid, Sakura had tried speaking back to the ghosts. They had never replied back though, so she had given up the whole affair pretty quickly. It wasn’t even that she felt embarrassed or silly talking at empty-not-really-empty air. Maybe the dead were just not meant to interact with the living that way anymore, she hadn’t questioned it much.
Shisui had been the first. To be seen, to have talked back.
He hadn’t been the last.
Suddenly Sakura could see a whole other village full of new, well old, and dead dead dead, people that existed on top of the one she knew. She could pinpoint from whom exactly the voices she was so used to hearing were coming. It wasn’t just the air shimmering around the edges anymore, void of something so inherent to life, and disembodied sentences. The moment they realized that Sakura could actually see them, the ghosts had started speaking to her.
Turns out the dead had lots of stories to tell, and a lot of free time on their faded hands.
Shisui could basically go everywhere in Konoha he wanted. And then some.
It was an unusual thing, for a ghost around these parts. Most could not leave the cemetery grounds where they had been laid to rest, couldn’t cross the walls that surrounded their perfect little shrines inside old homes. Shisui though had died in the Naka River, carving its way through the entire village, forever in motion. Sakura knew, because the ghost always reflected how the person had died. Whatever else came before Sakura wasn’t sure yet, he always dodged answering and Sakura never pressed, but it was clear that Shisui, waterlogged clothes on tragically young shoulders, had died drowning.
Though most likely unintentionally on his part, he had done something very Haruno in nature. His life had fed the ayu sweetfish on the river bed, his blood had washed downstream to where the willow moss grew. He was in here, in the river, in all the life around it. Sakura thought, if only the circumstances of his death were not as tragic, he would have passed on in peace.
But even after his body was gone his ghost had remained, bloody holes for eyes staring her down, water not dripping where he stood next to her seat in the classroom.
“You need more friends, Sakura-chan,” he winced looking around, “Okay, maybe even just one.”
Sakura scowled at her notes in answer, she never actually talked back when there were other people in hearing distance.
“The living are not meant to be alone.”
Sakura looked up at him, pretending she was staring at the clock on the side wall, and hoped he could hear her pointedly think, I am not alone. After all, Sakura was never really alone.
Shisui sighed exasperated, “That’s not what I meant, and I think you know that.”
So, not because Shisui had pestered her to but because she had always liked him, at the start of their third year Sakura chose a seat next to Aburame Shino, offering him a shy smile.
They weren’t actually friendly at the start, but had a cordial enough relationship. Both children were polite, though quite introverted, and had had the unfortunate shared fate of being ignored by most of the others around them. Him, for the bugs crawling under his skin that the other kids found gross. Her, well.
“I didn’t know beetles could fly,” she said one day, when she saw a few of them hovering over his shoulders before class when they were the only ones there. Out of his coat, and skin, where he tended to keep them in fear of spooking the other kids.
“Some can,” Shino said, voice steady despite his hands drumming on the desk, beat in time with the buzzing of his bugs, “Why? Because under the hardened outer elytra wings, some possess softer alae wings underneath that actually allow flight.”
He let another one fly out from under his sleeve, onto the hand Sakura had hesitantly stretched out. It had a shell with a pretty pattern, mottled black, brown, and white.
“It looks like a carpet beetle, though our kikaichu are technically a separate parasitic species that can utilize chakra.”
“Cool,” Sakura whispered. She could almost spy Shino’s lips curve into a smile, mostly hidden behind the high collar of his coat.
Shino invited her to his family’s estate. They had beautiful sprawling gardens and greenhouses where they raised most of their colonies, and all the different plants that the wildly varied insects thrived off of. One of his aunts, who looked after the honeybees, had handed them slices of soft honey cakes to snack on while they strolled around the place.
Shino told Sakura that the aunt had cousins who worked with bald-faced hornets, paper wasps, yellowjackets. All different patterns of black, and yellow, and deadly.
They settled in one of the clearings side by side, and Sakura watched mesmerized as Shino shrugged off his coat, letting his entire colony slowly crawl out of the many burrows in his skin. Black, brown, white, beetles settled on the plants all around them with a low hum. It was spring then, the air pleasantly warm but not yet unbearable with Konoha’s usual humidity. Taste of honey remained on her tongue, sticky and sweet. Denser than vanilla but still familiar.
Shino liked to talk. One might not have known that if they only saw him at the Academy, but he did. He knew lots of things, about insects, not just his own, and about plants and habitats. He liked to talk, about nature and everything in it, reciting facts like they were precious ninja techniques. Sakura, who had grown up listening, listening, and listening, to nature live and dead, was a perfect companion.
“Why are you so fine with this, Sakura-san?” he asked, as they both watched a beetle climb up Sakura’s leg before Shino extended his finger to transfer it onto his own arm. She supposed that was a fair question, given the way their peers had always reacted to Shino, no matter how odd their own powers or families were.
“I like insects,” she shrugged, simple, “They pollinate plants, disperse seeds. They can control other pest populations. Even can be a food source. For birds, fish, even us.”
There was an atlas moth, majestic and beautiful, translucent white patterns on rusty brown and red, perched on the trunk of a tree Sakura pointed at. Uncommon for the season but still there, clinging to life.
She smiled, a little mischievous, “Though I like decomposers the best.”
When Shino met her gaze, dark glasses down his nose, she noticed his eyes were compound eyes like that of an insect’s. Reflecting the light in mesmerizing colors she couldn't even name.
It was the middle of their fourth year when Inuzuka Kiba had once again been paired with her for a hand-to-hand combat exercise. Shisui crowed in delight, he liked to run commentary on her fights whenever he was present, and he seemed to have a thing against the Inuzuka in particular.
“As annoying as his big sister, truly,” he huffed.
He has a sister? Sakura raised her eyebrow, and expertly did not respond to Shisui complaining about how one could clean only so much dog hair out of his and their best friend’s clothes. Wait, you have a best friend?
She had come a long way from when she had first started ninja training. Sakura had always been on the strong side for a kid her age with the amount of swimming, hiking, and dancing she did on a regular basis. But she had lacked the instincts for fighting, if not the coordination. Shisui had been a game changer. He knew how to fight, really fight, especially in styles unique to the Fire Country. He knew how to use chakra, at least at some point when he had had it.
Sakura spent hours in the dense forests of Konoha, listening to Shisui, learning how to mold whatever small chakra she currently had. Repeating katas over and over as the sun set over the Naka River, pink and gold.
When she took her position across from Kiba he wrinkled his nose at her like usual, which Sakura deigned to ignore, also per usual. Since they had first met Kiba had been a little antagonistic to her, he had said she smelled weird, like wet dirt and dead leaves.
What was unusual was when Kiba had made fun of how she smelled once again during the spar, Yamanaka Ino, blazing with the self-righteousness of an 11 year old, came onto the scene ignoring Iruka-sensei’s plea to not interrupt the fight.
“Shut up, Kiba!” Yamanaka Ino yelled, pale yellow primroses for hair, soft blue forget-me-nots in her eyes. “You smell like a wet dog!”
Sakura didn’t know if Kiba could tell this too if his nose was so sensitive, but to her Ino smelled like the earth, damp and soft and cool, filled with dead plant matter breaking down, filled with new plants sprouting into life. She was bold, and strong. She smiled at Sakura, kind and sweet.
She was instantly Sakura’s new hero.
Sakura watched the other aspiring kunoichi run around the field while the flower language instructor Iruka-sensei had invited for the day tried to corral them into order. Ino sat next to her underneath the tree, weaving cosmos flowers into a crown, as she talked about what she had learned about flowers from her own mother. Sakura liked listening to her more than their guest teacher anyway. Ino told her she would bring Sakura yellow roses. Sakura though, would always leave white chrysanthemum blooms in her wake wherever she went. For Ino one day, for Shino, for Mama, and for herself too.
Ino reached out to lift a strand of Sakura’s hair, “Like the sakura flower in the springtime,” she let it drop and put the newly completed flower crown on her head, “the cosmos is the most beautiful flower in autumn.”
The gentle early fall wind carried away Sakura’s soft giggles, though the blush on her face remained.
She liked the flowers, pretty in Ino’s hands, in her own hair. But she thought she could be like the rosy russula instead, breaking out from the ground under the shade of old pine trees.
Corral-pink merulius, feeding on dead oaks. Pink oyster mushroom. Growing, growing, growing along fallen beeches.
There was a lot to the life flourishing in the temperate forests of Konoha.
If you just knew where to look.
Sakura sat down in her seat after the genin graduation exam, with the quiet calm that came with knowing she had definitely passed. Five whole years had gone by, a blink of an eye, an eternity filled with ghosts. Laughter in sunlit flower shops, easy silence in butterfly gardens. Over the river, the patience of a young teacher as sweat dripped down her face. Under the arches of a shrine gate, the love of a wise mother as she twirled and her arms shook.
She tuned out most of Iruka-sensei’s speech before the announcement of the teams, listening instead to the ghosts that could come far enough into the Academy and liked to chatter at her whenever she was there.
“Team 7,” Iruka-sensei said, and the ghosts curiously quieted down, “Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke-”
He spoke unlucky legacies into lucky numbers.
“And Haruno Sakura.”
Notes:
you know, i had to google so many mushrooms for this story... in other botanical fun facts yellow roses are for friendship, and white chrysanthemum blooms are associated with death (sometimes rebirth) and are used for decorating graves haha i never said i was subtle
on a related note, you can pry inoshinosaku from my cold dead hands (although that's not my endgame in this story), but just you wait i'm gonna fill this fic with so many different sakura relationships, new friends new rivals new teachers, that i always wished to see depicted more :D
Chapter 4: 3. all the rowboats in oil paintings
Notes:
first of all, i'm so sorry for skipping last weekend's update everyone! but i got a concussion and i wasn't allowed to look at any screens for a while ahaha, so even though i had the chapter draft ready i didn't have the opportunity to edit and post it :( i'm better now tho, the update schedule will be back to normal lol let's go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Team 7 had a rocky start, under the lazy gaze of one Hatake Kakashi, under the curious watch of all of Konoha’s ghosts. Kakashi-sensei looked at them like he wanted to be anywhere else on earth. The ghosts looked at them like they were already a tragedy.
Perhaps they were always meant to be a disaster.
Sakura did not know everything, though she knew a hell lot more than anyone perhaps should. She was under no illusions, there was something peculiar about her new team. Something important. Something that had the dead, and the living, constantly watching them. A little curious, a little on edge.
Villagers mostly avoided Naruto, just as the ghosts shied away from him. They used curses, unfit to hurl at a child so bright. She hadn’t known Naruto that well before, but as soon as they had done team introductions one thing had been clear to Sakura, he was warm. Energetic. He got distracted a lot, but he was genuinely friendly under all the bluster. Yet ghosts too glared when they passed, talked around them with vague terms Sakura did not know the meanings of.
She didn’t know what allegiance even the dead had left to hide the answers she was seeking, but she would figure it out some day. She always did.
Sasuke avoided the villagers in return, like he could see the Uchiha ghosts among them that Sakura couldn’t see. Sakura had asked Shisui what happened. Once, when they had first met, when she first assumed he had died in the massacre. Shisui had told her that he had been lost in the river long before that.
When they listened to Sasuke’s introduction on the rooftop together he had only said, “If he is like this, I think my worst fears have come to pass.” Sakura leaned back and tilted her face up like she was turning towards the sun, but in reality trying to meet Shisui’s gaze standing above her in question.
“I know you will always be more aware of the world than the people around you, Sakura,” he laughed, with a defeated sound so unfamiliar, “But some stories even you are too young to carry the burden of.” He refused to elaborate after that.
Sakura wondered if Shisui knew his own tells. The way his lips curled up when he wasn’t actually smiling, the way his eyebrows pinched just a little above eyes long gone. She noticed the way he always turned towards where Sasuke was as if he couldn’t help it, but disappeared shortly after like he couldn’t stand to occupy the same space when the boy unknowingly got too close. She thought he looked, guilty. What is it that he reminds you of?
And then, there was Kakashi-sensei.
“Hatake-taichou, huh?” a man in a beautiful porcelain mask had said in passing, gloved hands trying to hold his intestines in and mostly failing, “Good luck, Sakura-san.”
Kakashi-sensei smiled a lot, but didn’t really. He talked, yet said nothing about himself. She wondered if her new teacher slouched so much, because of the grief heavy on his shoulders.
Sometimes, it just hurt to look at him.
Sasuke hadn’t exactly been thrilled with his choice of teammates. The deadlast, and the airhead.
It could have been worse, he supposed. The Uzumaki could get on his nerves on the best of days, but at least he wasn’t a sniveling suck up, and in certain ways he was easy to predict. To manipulate, with a pointed insult or two. The Haruno, not so much. Sasuke had only sat next to her for a brief period of time in their final year, but he did not understand anything about the girl.
As they carried groceries for the old man running the civilian bakery downtown, Sasuke took the opportunity to stare at his relatively less annoying new teammate. She was standing in front of the shop’s big windows, staring out dazed, while Naruto chatted with the owner.
The way sunlight fell into the airy shop made Sasuke remember the first day he had taken the seat next to her by the windows. She had kept staring at him in class and Sasuke had put up with it as long as he could, the tick in his eye getting worse by the minute. He finally turned towards her, snapping at her to turn back to the board when he abruptly realized she wasn’t looking at him at all. She was staring out the window, beyond him, with an almost sleepy expression on her face.
She made a questioning noise when she realized he had addressed her. “Oh,” she smiled, she was still staring, though never quite at him, “Don’t you think the leaves are beautiful today, Sasuke-san?”
The leaves were the same as they were yesterday, or whatever amount that remained on the branches were. It was approaching winter. She was unquestionably weird, but she wasn’t a fangirl, and she never actually bothered him. The zoning out aside, she was a perfectly competent and acceptable seatmate for the year, which had instantly put her above any of the other girls and some of the boys in class.
At the end of the day, how annoying his teammates were did not matter. He would only need to deal with them for however much time it took to rise through the ranks, and be able to go after that man. And then he would never need to talk to them ever again.
He lifted up the flour bags in his arms a little higher, and turned away from the windows.
Naruto quite honestly liked his new team. He liked the way Sakura never shied away from him. He liked how Kakashi-sensei never really yelled at him. He even liked that Sasuke always challenged him, as much as he was a total bastard.
They were filing old declassified mission records in the tower archives today. Sakura had asked if that was a thing genin were even allowed to do, but Kakashi-sensei had waved them off saying something about how it was good for them to learn the inner workings of their village, and “contents of this room are mostly PG-13 anyway”, before disappearing to, wherever he disappeared to.
Naruto had always had a sensitive nose, he didn’t really mind the smell of old paper but the dust in the air made him sneeze. Sasuke sent him a disgusted look, which he responded to by sticking out his tongue. That had been a mistake, he could feel the dust settle on his tongue too, prompting a coughing fit. Sakura, unbothered as always, lifted a little flask from the bag at her side and handed it to him, without even looking up from the papers she was sorting on the floor.
Naruto was bad at papers, but he was good at people. He noticed the small things, he had to, with the way he grew up. To know how easily the mood in a room could shift, how fast he could become the target of that mood, how to mitigate it. He talked loud, smiled big, and he squinted his eyes so hard it looked like they were closed. But through slits, he watched people.
Sasuke pretended he was above such tasks but he could be frustratingly meticulous when it came to the kiddie missions they were assigned to. Maybe that was the ‘Uchiha’ pride Naruto heard so much about. Sakura tended to be more easy going, she didn’t berate him like Sasuke did over small mistakes. He sometimes wondered if she even noticed, she could space out a lot. But deep down Naruto didn’t really think so. When she looked at you, actually at you, and not above you or wherever her eyes strayed so often, there was always something sharp in her gaze. Something hungry, heavy. And waiting. Naruto noticed the rare times it happened, and couldn’t help but think she was perhaps seeing entirely too much.
Sakura looked at him like she was confused sometimes, but that was okay, she didn’t look at him like she couldn’t stand him, and that was wonderful. Sasuke could be mean, but he was mean to everyone, not just to him, which was refreshing. Kakashi-sensei was weird, but he was funny too. Naruto looked around the room and thought one day, soon, they would be going on the same type of missions in these records. Together, with his new team.
This was the start of something epic.
Sakura had seen Kakashi-sensei before, before they were ever a team, she was sure. She didn’t linger usually, but there were certain places that had always had their draw for Sakura’s Senses in Konoha. The forest, the cemetery, the memorial stone.
Of the people who became ghosts, their ghosts tended to be attached to places, mostly where they had died or where their bodies were kept in some shape or form. It was the reason Sakura disliked coffins and shrines. The dead weren’t meant to be kept that way. Trapped forever in places they had never meant to be. Rarely, but still possible, they could be attached to objects.
Rarely, Sakura saw half formed apparitions around the monument itself.
Names traced over and over again, in grief, in anger, in despair, unknowingly binding whatever of the spirit remained to stone.
She figured Naruto and Sasuke did not know why their teacher came late to training. She didn’t see the point in divulging that he wasn’t chasing cats or helping old ladies cross the street. She still passed by him on the way to the training grounds sometimes. She didn’t acknowledge that she saw him and neither did he, though she knew there was no way he hadn’t known she was there if he was the ninja everyone told her he was.
She was ready to walk on ignoring her teacher once again when a young girl appearing from behind the stone caught her eye. Short brown hair, faded brown eyes. She had bold purple lines along both of her cheeks. She waved, though Sakura’s eyes remained on the hole in her chest.
Charred, bloody.
Kakashi watched his new students from behind his book while they worked on the newly commissioned community garden for their latest D-rank mission.
He still wasn’t entirely sure about this arrangement. Their files were lackluster, the introductions alarming, but they brought out something in each other, in him in his weaker moments, that Kakashi couldn't help but be curious to see.
Naruto, surprisingly handy with tools, was repairing the broken parts of the fence around the lot, talking a mile a minute about how he learned to use each tool with frankly concerning anecdotes. Sasuke, painting the completed sections a cheerful blue color with aggressive motions, as if the fence, or Naruto’s retelling of the time he had changed all the locks in the Academy, had personally offended him.
The jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi twirling a hammer rather clumsily. The last survivor of the Uchiha flicking paint away from his hands. Yet, the strangest part of the trio was still the little Haruno, hands buried in the soil as she mixed compost in, looking like she was having the time of her life.
“Why do you look so happy, Sakura-chan?” Naruto asked before Kakashi had a mind to. “This is boooooring, can’t we take more exciting missions instead?”
The boy valiantly ignored the Uchiha scoffing at him over his dripping paint roller, “You know, do more important things, like fighting bad guys! Rescuing princesses!”
Sakura turned a sweet smile at him, he noticed she had a dimple, “This, Naruto-kun, is the most important thing we could ever be doing.”
“Pfffft, I think I’d rather be fighting bad guys.”
“This,” she said, hands now sprinkling seeds into the holes she had made in the ground, “Helps the community. We are nurturing something. Building, growing.”
She said the oddest things for a 12 year old sometimes.
“There is little actual glory or honor in fighting, Naruto-kun,” she continued, patting the ground she covered over the seeds, hands steady, voice steadier. There, Kakashi thought, like that. What kid just says shit like that?
Naruto, never one to be deterred in the face of reason, or melancholic philosophy, laughed, “You are so weird Sakura-chan.”
Sakura just hummed. And Kakashi thought he might actually be going crazy, because the melody was almost familiar. From a long, long time ago.
The ghosts refused to tell her where the damn cat was. They perched on the roofs like particularly gruesome lanky crows, and watched Team 7 run around the entire village laughing and laughing.
Sakura stared at a man leaning against the lamp post by the alley she was contemplating going into, to dig through the trash cans to find the cat as a last resort. She stopped and pretended to lean down adjusting her sandals, and waved away her teammates to carry on to make eye contact with the faded man. He had been garroted, with ninja wire. The skin of his neck where the wire had cut into was sluggishly bleeding, his face purple and bloated. When he laughed his voice came out in choked wheezes, though still rich with humor.
“Sorry, I can’t help you either kiddo,” he said.
“This is a Konoha tradition. Not even you get to break that.”
Notes:
finally getting into Team 7 dynamics, i have much in store for these idiots :DDD
i assume at this point you might have realized all chapter titles are song lyrics, mostly from songs with a certain vibe that i've been listening to while writing this, and others with lyrics related to death and loss in one way or another. drop a comment if it's a song you recognize and if you think it fit well!
Chapter 5: 4. there is a silent peace in the tragedies
Notes:
posting a liiiittle late (although it's still the weekend so, you know, i'm still on my loosely defined schedule lol) because i got too distracted yesterday playing Cult of The Lamb :D i do highly recommend it btw. anywho, let's "meet" some more ghosts eh? let's go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
One way or another, mostly through Naruto’s cajoling, they finally got their first C-rank mission. Sakura doubted the Third Hokage would have given them the task, no matter how indulgent he was to Naruto, unless he felt they were ready to take the bridge builder to his village. Or at least Kakashi-sensei was.
Tazuna wasn’t a princess by any means but Naruto would finally be getting the escort mission he wanted. Sakura herself couldn’t help but be a little excited about the prospect of travel.
They would be going outside the village together for the first time. To be fair, this was Sakura’s first time going outside the Konoha borders. She had wandered around the forests surrounding the village proper, had even gone over the intimidating walls when no one was looking but she hadn’t ever strayed too far. And Fire Country was big and sprawling, even beyond Konoha’s borders.
There was a calling in her. To see what was beyond these borders, beyond any borders. Sakura knew their family had been nomads, before the shinobi nations had even formed, and some time after that. At some point the Harunos had somewhat settled in Iron Country, though a lot of them still traveled. Life, and Death, called across the continent.
Sakura’s father too had been a monk of the Fire Temple, outside Konoha. Sakura had never actually met him, but from Mama’s stories knew he was a joyful man named Kizashi. Mama had met Papa while on her own pilgrimage away from the Haruno lands. She used to say she had fallen in love with the way he connected to nature around him. Sakura looked nothing like her father she was told, she was Haruno from the marrow of her bones to the tips of her hair, but they had that in common.
Haruno’s didn’t marry if they didn’t want to, and Mama had not, not that the monks’ vows would have allowed them. So a pregnant Mebuki had bid Kizashi a loving and cheerful goodbye, and had carried on her journey. Ultimately, she had enjoyed the climate of Fire Country too much to leave. She had settled at a local empty temple as its new caretaker.
Sakura was born, right here, in Konoha. One day, she hoped to die outside it.
“Alright, my precious students,” Kakashi said with a clap as they walked out of the tower, “Since this is your very first long mission outside Konoha, we will go to each of your houses today and I will supervise your packing.”
They would be leaving bright and early tomorrow morning. Sakura couldn’t wait.
They followed Sasuke to his house first. The young Uchiha himself looked the opposite of pleased. Shisui for his part had disappeared as soon as Kakashi-sensei had announced their route. Despite that, Sakura was kind of eager to see the inside of Uchiha District. When she was younger, when the massacre had resewn the fabric of her reality, she would walk as close as she dared to the district’s outer walls. Neither Mama nor Sakura knew what was done with the ashes after the Hokage and the council had decided to burn all the bodies, but she had never seen a single Uchiha ghost, other than Shisui, in the village. Not even around the edges of the district.
Sakura wondered if they were trapped in the district somewhere, tragedy alone streaking their souls onto what used to be clean tatami and wellkept cobblestone paths. She wanted to see how Sasuke lived with those ghosts, if there were any.
Sasuke had always been the elephant in the room since Sakura’s own awakening. She was desperately curious, but had been unwilling to actually try and get close to the other Uchiha boy in class when Shisui became uncharacteristically reticent whenever he was around.
They both awkwardly hovered around the truth, of what it would mean to talk to the other Uchiha. To learn what had really happened that night.
She didn’t know what she was expecting, but as Sasuke led them with a clipped pace to the heart of the district where the main house was located, all she noticed was how desolate the place was. No physical evidence remained of that night of course, but despite the lack of ghosts she could see, there was just an emptiness in the air. Like no one living had bothered to even come check in on the sole Uchiha, had opened any windows, sweeped the roads, in years.
The main house itself, a big and lonely, perhaps once lovely, structure, smelled like a bakery. Vanilla, soft and hazy in the air. Sakura knew it wouldn’t smell like that to anyone else. Maybe to them it smelled dusty, old. More likely, it smelled like fresh anger, aged grief.
She was about to follow Naruto and Kakashi-sensei to Sasuke’s room, when a voice stopped her cold in the hallway.
“Oh, dear.”
There was a woman, standing in the darkness where the daylight didn’t quite reach, in front of another imposing shogi door. First thing that struck Sakura was just how beautiful the woman was. Ethereal in a way, even beyond her faded form. Long sleek hair, Uchiha black even in death. High cheekbones, delicately arched brows.
Once you started looking for it the resemblance was unmistakable. Sakura was standing frozen across from Sasuke’s mother.
Rather unkindly, she wondered if Sasuke’s resentment alone could have shackled her to this place.
When the rest of the team reappeared, packing finished efficiently in a matter of minutes as expected from Sasuke, the woman had already disappeared between the shogi doors. What happened here?
She took her little cat skull out of her pocket by habit as she joined the boys, the bone was warm from the heat of her body, surface smooth to the touch as always. It was a brittle little thing, light enough to carry around if she was careful, yet something incredibly heavy and ancient in the empty grooves of the eye sockets. The cat offered no answers.
Naruto was next. Her confusion grew as they walked further and further into the civilian sector of the village. Sakura herself lived close by, though more on the outskirts closer to the forest, but she hadn’t known he lived around here, passing the border between the actual civilian sector and what the locals called the Uzushio Quarter, as scattered as it was.
Sakura had never been close to Naruto while they were in the academy. He was loud, which Sakura didn’t really mind after becoming friends with the other particularly loud blonde in their year, but he could be obnoxious. Then again what child hadn’t been annoying one way or another. The other children very pointedly ignored him, though Iruka-sensei had always been nice, so Sakura had assumed it was a ninja thing she didn’t understand and had let it go.
She hadn’t thought further about the ostracization until it was staring her right in the face when they were out in the town together doing missions. It wasn’t just the children, and it wasn’t dumb schoolyard bullying. It had been jarring at first to see other adults respond to Naruto with sneers, even the ghost so beloved to her scoffing when he walked by. It still baffled her.
At least, as they walked further into the older neighborhoods, less and less people glanced up. Older civilians simply did not care who they were and what ninja did.
Another thing that became clearer as they reached the apartment Naruto was staying in, right in the middle of Uzuhio Quarter, was a ghost.
Naruto, had a ghost and a half.
No, that wasn’t entirely right.
At this point Sakura was familiar with ghosts of all kinds, all ages, all deaths. Some echoes, some impressions. Naruto’s, if it was a ghost, was something she hadn’t ever seen before. It didn’t always appear, though there were sections of Konoha the apparition grew stronger with no rhyme or reason. Sometimes around training fields, sometimes in the market. Around the Hokage Tower, especially. Here, as they stood in the barebones apartment, Sakura could almost make out the shape of a woman, standing over Naruto. It felt hot. She breathed in, and her tongue burned.
But, there was another one too, half an impression.
It didn’t have a shape, but it made Sakura imagine pretty swirls carved into skin, into walls, when she closed her eyes. It didn’t have a sound, but she knew there was a voice, just trapped somewhere it couldn’t reach her ears as if she was submerged in water. Trapped, in a 12 year old boy who more than made up for the volume.
Kakashi-sensei seemed surprised but pleased that Naruto had everything necessary to go on a long term mission outside Konoha. Frankly, his kunai were more numerous and in better condition than the few ones Sakura had gotten with her first D-rank paycheck. Naruto bragged about how they have been a gift from the Third. Though it was Iruka-sensei who drilled into his head how to take care of his weapons.
“It was hard to get used to it at first but now the routine helps me focus,” he said, prompting a hair ruffle in praise from Kakashi-sensei.
“A basic well-maintained weapon kit is essential, and perhaps one day you will have your signature weapons to take care of as well,” sensei smiled.
A signature weapon. Huh, now that was an idea.
“Do you have parents, Sakura-chan?” Kakashi asked, gentle as he could. As far as he knew his remaining student was a civilian, had a loving home with well-adjusted parents, but they lived in a harsh harsh world he knew better than most. Hell, his other students knew that. He didn’t want to assume anything about Sakura, and put his foot in his mouth.
“Yes, Mama should be home at this hour.”
“And your father?”
“Never met him,” she shrugged with ease. Okay, so maybe his little civilian also had her own baggage. It would only be fitting, for someone on Team 7.
“You live in a shrine?” Naruto gasped excitedly, as soon as the building came into sight over the narrow stone stairs they were climbing.
“Mama is the shrine maiden,” Sakura grinned back at him, “I wanted to be one too when I grew up.”
An attainable dream, rather peaceful one. He couldn’t help but ask, “What made you decide to become a ninja then, Sakura-chan?”
“There are questions in this world, Kakashi-sensei,” she replied, still smiling, “That I can only answer through steel and blood, not prayer.”
This kid.
Sakura bowed once when they reached the gates, the team following after her. When he raised from his bow Kakashi noticed a short woman sweeping further up the walkway.
Now he could see Sakura’s outfit was a miniature version of her mother’s, color scheme the same as miko's, brilliant red and pure white, though cut differently in a way it wouldn’t hinder shinobi movement. The woman’s strawberry blonde hair was tightly tied behind her in strings, unlike her daughter’s loose pink braid.
Kakashi was terrible at talking to other human beings on a good day, but Haruno Mebuki as she introduced herself, was not a ninja, which made this even a trickier conversation to have. As if the woman could divine Kakashi’s inner dilemma she smiled at the kids and said, “Why don’t you boys let Sacchan show you the grounds, while I talk to you teacher?”
Kakashi nodded, relieved, “We will do the packing after.”
He watched the kids immediately run off as he recalled the bell test. He hadn’t been expecting much, but had had a vague idea what to challenge them on. Admittedly he hadn’t kept up with Naruto, too scared to even think about Minato-sensei, but it was hard not to hear about the boy in the jounin grapevine. Genma could be annoying that way. It had been easy, too easy, to use his rashness against him. A warning that guts alone couldn’t win fights. Sasuke, he knew, would have solid Uchiha taijutsu and ninjutsu foundations at least, but too much pride, and would need humbling.
He had the least idea of his civilian student. There had been a blurb about her potentially being adept at genjutsu in her academy file. But he could have never expected what he got when he actually put Sakura under a genjutsu. He knew she was under it, he could feel the technique latch onto her chakra. And yet.
“Oh,” she had said, calm as you please, walking towards the genjutsu construct Sasuke bleeding on the ground. Kakashi was ready to consider her a failure, when she had looked up and murmured, “All these different wounds, Hatake-san, they are not supposed to bleed the same.”
If she was aware this was in fact a genjutsu she didn’t bother dispelling it. Kakashi watched stunned, as the girl turned her back on a teammate and walked away back into the clearing. Her willingness to work with the team had put him at ease later on, she was friendly, she seemed to like Sasuke and Naruto, but Kakashi couldn't entirely forget the way she had given him the chills.
He didn’t know how to articulate his confusion, or worry, to the girl’s non-ninja mother. At the end he mumbled something about Sakura saying strange things sometimes, and asked if she had any ninja ancestry, or someone around previously who might have shown her things she wouldn’t have otherwise seen.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the woman reassured him, green eyes the exact shade of her daughter’s alight with humor, “Sacchan just has a very active imagination.”
Kakashi couldn’t help but feel like he was the one being laughed at.
While Kakashi-sensei was busy talking to Mama, Sakura tugged on the boys' wrists as she ran towards the dark forest behind the shrine, through a path laden with sakaki trees. Sasuke was quick to shake her off when she slowed down, but Naruto shyly slipped his hands into hers.
She squeezed his hand once to let him know it was okay, and Naruto squeezed back, a blinding grin taking over his face. His hand was warm, she could feel his heartbeat steady and strong through the contact. Ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump. Alive. Sakura liked holding onto him.
Sakura finally let go of Naruto’s hand to wash her arms at the natural stone basin with the wooden ladle resting against it. Naruto, eagerly but awkwardly mimicked her motions. Sasuke didn’t seem inclined until both of them staring at him expectantly made him huff and wash his own.
They stood in front of a statue, in between two trees bowed over it, thick trunks strung with shimenawa. Though the stone was so weathered by age you couldn’t tell which god it had once belonged to. It didn’t matter.
Sakura believed in no gods as she believed in all.
She bowed twice, clapped twice, before bringing her hands together in silent prayer. Naruto once again followed her without question. He was murmuring something in prayer though it was low enough that Sakura couldn’t make out what he was saying. This time, Sasuke refused to follow their actions and stood to the side with a scoff.
“Do not be rude, Sasuke-kun,” she tutted, “If you ever need to ask for grace one day, you want someone to answer.”
Notes:
this was probably clear since the prologue if you remember, but old Konoha/Uzushio religion was modelled after Shinto (maybe i'm just nostalgic for when i used to live in Japan haha) and then i went ahead and made the Uchihas Christians who considered them heathens and started full coffin burials lmaO. like promised as they travel and meet more nations i'll incorporate different and interesting funeral or burial customs from the world :D
who is excited for Wave Arc shenanigans? any guesses how it's gonna go yet with ghosts involved? i guess y'all will see next week~
Chapter 6: 5. fish are swimming slower every year
Notes:
happy labor day weekend gang, i for one am glad for an extra day to get caught up on my shit lol. so i know people in the comments last week were excited for Zabuza (and potentially feral ghost kiri children) but i didn't realize how big Wave Arc would be? we are definitely splitting it into more chapters than i initially thought, because rn i'm pacing this to 2-3k words per chapter. so no Zabuza this week :(, but next week? i promise you. so let's go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
They gathered at the village gates at dawn.
Sakura had been up long before that. She had shouldered her pack and headed out into the forest when it was still quite dark, after bidding Mama a soft goodbye and receiving a little safe travel charm with a wink in return.
It would have been wrong to call it silent. The forest was more alive at night than it ever was in the daylight. She couldn’t even hear the crunch of leaves under her feet from the symphony of cicadas, crickets, and bess beetles. Once upon a time she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference, long afternoons with Shino had taught her each had a unique cadence.
The insects chanted, the wind whispered. Through it all she could faintly hear a bigger animal run through the bush out of her sight, along the river across from her, maybe a fox, perhaps a tanuki. This section of the Naka River had always been quite lively.
“I wish you could come with me,” she said when she came to a stop.
Shisui smiled, indulgent as always. “Even if I wanted to,” and she heard the implied lack of actual want considering who else would be on the mission, “I cannot.”
“I am tied to the Naka River, always. You can’t carry an entire river in your pack can you?”
Sakura shrugged. Shisui wasn’t always with her every hour of the day, he couldn’t be. But he appeared to her consistently enough that she never missed him. And deep down she had always known, that as long as Naka River was in reach she could call for him. She was excited about this mission, she was, but it would also be the first time she would be so far away from Shisui’s presence.
“Come on, ‘kura, chin up. I’ll be waiting, right here, to hear all about your first big mission when you come back.”
She wondered, futile as it was, how it would have been like. If he had lived, Shisui would have been an adult jounin about now. How would it have been, to have him as her teacher. To go on missions together. To have everyone know she was Shunshin no Shisui’s, as much as she was Sharingan no Kakashi’s student. Perhaps even more so.
She took the long way down the hills towards the gates. The village itself was quiet compared to the forest, but not completely so. Ghosts did not sleep after all, and Sakura collected their well wishes and goodbyes meandering through the empty streets. She had time.
When she finally arrived at the gates she was almost surprised that Kakashi-sensei was there on time. Though their client, probably still hungover, looked extremely displeased by that fact. Sakura didn’t mind. Dawn was one of her favorite times of the day, slight chill in the air, breaking light almost fragile, infinite possibilities unfolding.
She considered the road ahead of them. Glanced at her teammates to see if she could read the same excitement she was feeling on their faces, postures. There was something warm about Naruto, just as there was something cold in Sasuke. They balanced each other in a way Sakura found fascinating, watching them stand across from each other. What are they thinking? Feeling?
She imagined her hands peeling away skin, digging through muscle, touching bone. She wanted to know where she would fit in.
Kakashi glanced at the water puddle on the road, and then glanced at Sakura. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised that Sakura was already staring at the water with pinched eyebrows.
She turned towards him in question, and Kakashi gave her his usual closed eye smile, putting his finger towards his lips. They had to talk about what Kakashi had dubbed The Genjutsu Problem in his head, eventually, but for now, he saw an opportunity.
He subtly let his own genjutsu blanket the area, silently thanking Kurenai for never letting him slack on the skill, and ignored Sakura’s unimpressed stare on his back.
Let’s see how this plays out, hm.
Naruto was used to violence, physically beaten into skin, cruel words seared into thoughts. At least he had thought he was.
He didn’t think anyone could be used to watching their teacher be torn to shreds. No one should be used to that level of brutality. He simply froze up. Sasuke didn’t. It was almost an out of body experience, watching Sasuke jump into the air, a plan in motion, to stop the two nin that came out of nowhere. Wondering, helpless, why Sasuke hadn’t so much as blinked at the carnage before taking action.
In that same disconnected way he was watching everything unfold around him, he also noticed Sakura hadn’t paused either. The second Kakashi-sensei had been ki- taken down, she was already moving to cover their charge. Even Sasuke looked more upset than usual, but her face had been expressionless. It made Naruto shudder.
In between the commotion and Kakashi-sensei reappearing, thank the gods, to save them he hadn’t even noticed that his hand had been scratched and was sluggishly bleeding. The wound was purpling, it smelled strange to his sensitive nose.
“Their claws were poisoned.”
“Don’t we need to return to the village to make sure he gets medical attention, Kakashi-sensei?”
Oh. Poison. That made sense, he could feel the burning sensation radiating from the back of his hand slowly crawl up his arm. Normal cuts didn’t quite hurt like this. He couldn’t entirely focus on Kakashi-sensei discussing why they had been attacked with Tazuna, all the ninja politics went over his head, but one thing was crystal clear, he couldn’t let it end like this. He couldn’t be the reason their first mission fell apart before it had even begun. If he wanted to be a ninja, if he wanted to be the Hokage one day, he couldn’t just freeze up in the face of danger and let others save him. And he didn’t want to be left behind by either Sasuke or Sakura, not when they had just started feeling like an actual team.
Before his brain caught up to what he was doing the kunai was already digging into his hand, letting the poisoned blood seep out. Clean the rot, right here, right now, onto a fresh start.
“No, I’m okay, we have to carry on,” he hoped his voice was steady despite the fresh pain he had inflicted on himself, hoped they understood, “We will protect the old man, and make sure he gets to where he is going.”
So maybe he wasn’t used to violence, not ninja violence, not yet. And he didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing. To dislike violence, as much as people would scoff at him for being soft hearted. Naruto didn’t mind that, not really. But if this was the path he had chosen, he needed to get stronger. He had thought he had been doing extra training lately but clearly it wasn’t enough. He had to learn, to not freeze up or recoil back, to act when it was needed.
And that would start right here. With this mission.
Truth be told, Kakashi would have taken the kids back in a second, and hoist the now definitely higher ranked mission onto whatever jounin he could harass at the tower. But all in all, the kids hadn’t actually done too bad. Sasuke was a given, and he knew Sakura had been ready to act for her part. Naruto, though, had surprised him once again. He really should have expected it, it wasn’t just the looks, the boy was a reflection of Minato-sensei through and through. He was stubborn when he needed to be, couldn’t ever refuse someone that asked for help. The thought would have made him cry if Kakashi was capable of such things.
It was both a little sad and relieving that they didn’t seem to be too traumatized by what had happened earlier. He watched amused as Sasuke matched Naruto for a mouthful of the dry protein bar after they settled down for camp, as if they were engaged in a competition to see who could eat more and enjoy it less. Kakashi muttered, “You guys know those are called rations for a reason, right?”
When Naruto looked up confused with granola falling from his mouth, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and changed topics.
“We will take watches in shifts,” he said, “I’ll be the first, then Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura will take the final watch. First watch is usually the easiest, it’ll be good practice for you guys to sleep at first and then have to wake yourself into alertness in the middle of the night.”
“Since this is your first time outside Konoha, I’ll of course oversee all of your shifts.”
“Waaaah, but don’t you need any sleep Kakashi-sensei?”
“I’m a jounin, Naruto-kun, I can do at least this much.” Kakashi barely slept on missions anyway, not that they needed to know that.
Seeming to have been appeased, Naruto and Sakura engaged the bridge builder in stilted conversation, while Sasuke glowered into the fire, until it was time for them all to turn in.
The boys’ shifts went by pretty uneventfully. Around 3am he roused his most adorable, and most creepy, student from her slumber for the final watch. The witching hour, how apt. When she was up he gestured towards the woods and whispered, “We need to talk.”
The boys would hopefully be too tired to wake up again to their voices but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. Frankly, he had no idea where this discussion was going to go. At least she looked a little apprehensive. Kakashi didn’t think he had ever seen her not at ease or peacefully zoning out before.
“I’m a Haruno,” she began, and took a pause as if that was supposed to explain anything, “We have, hm, very good Senses, so to speak.”
“Good senses?” he deadpanned, “That lets you see through any genjutsu?”
She awkwardly laughed and rubbed the back of her neck, a gesture she seemed to have adopted from Naruto recently, “I’m not quite sure how I can explain this, but I just don’t see the world the same as most people.”
“Is this an unregistered doujutsu? You said it was a Haruno thing.”
“Aha, nothing as fancy as that.” She gave him a closed eye smile. Kakashi was now realizing it was quite irritating to be on the receiving end of his trademark expression.
When he kept staring at her unimpressed she finally relented, “There is chakra in all living beings. In us, in animals, even in plants.” Yes, yes, Kakashi was familiar with the concept of Nature Chakra.
“It is not actually seeing so much as it is knowing, that there is a disturbance in where that chakra should be naturally flowing. Nature has its ways, its own signature, hard to miss when man interferes with it, no?” She shrugged as if she hadn’t just revealed an incredible level of sensory ability, “I just always know.”
She can feel nature chakra? To this degree?
Academy had called her “potentially adept at genjutsu”, fuckers probably had no idea. At least Kakashi finally had his answer. It was an interesting application of chakra detection as far as traditional Sensor ninja went, but it would be undoubtedly advantageous. If she also learned how to cast genjutsus, not just detect them like she did, she would become a little terror.
If he hadn’t known team 7 was slated to be a frontline assault team he would have thought there was something at play here, pairing her with an Uchiha. Together they could actually turn into a complete nightmare. Alas, as tempting as it would have been to drop the two of them at Kurenai’s door and call it a day, there was still Naruto, who would never have the subtlety to be on an ambush or subterfuge squad filled with eerie and morose genjutsu masters. Eh, he was growing attached to all of them anyway.
Still, no harm in some extra training.
Sakura mulled over the conversation she had had with Kakashi-sensei last night while they broke camp. She hadn’t lied, technically. It was just that the truth, the whole truth with its decaying skin and naked bones, was not something people other than Harunos could ever fully comprehend. Mama had taught her that long ago.
It wasn’t entirely chakra sensing, nature or otherwise, that gave Sakura the ability to detect all genjutsu, although it surely helped. After Shisui had coached her in accessing chakra, she had realized ghosts did disturb nature chakra where they stood. All living things had nature chakra no matter how slight. The dead, well, they were a void where life once had been, where life should be now if they hadn’t stayed behind so unnaturally.
But what Sakura had was actually an inability to be caught in any genjutsu unaware. She was telling the truth when she had said she didn’t see the world in the same way. Since she was 8 years old, coming out of the water, light fracturing the world into new colors and shapes within a dead boy’s empty eyes, her vision had been filled with ghosts. Sakura always saw the world in layers on top of each other, she would always notice a genjutsu as if it was another ghost faded onto her reality.
In the end, Kakashi-sensei had called her a Sensor Ninja.
It was not a bad title. Ironic in a way, considering her own Senses. It was something Sakura could don like a cloak, something people could at least understand, as she wandered through this ninja filled strange world.
While the rest of the team were finishing packing up their bedrolls, she made sure the little campfire they had lit was completely put out and wiped the dirt and ash away from her hands. Before she rose from her crouched position, she reached into her pocket.
She stroked the little cat skull once, loving, before surreptitiously leaving it on the ground. She glanced back once as she walked away from the clearing, dappled sunlight over old bones and young shrubs.
It wasn’t a goodbye, Harunos had no need for such things. As she sped up to join the boys she silently prayed, May the cool rains fall upon you, friend, may these bones be bleached by the warm sun.
May I one day join you on your journey back.
Notes:
so bit of a filler chapter i admit, and not my best work so far, but we gotta get to where we are going somehow right? Sasuke pov and the first Zabuza fight will be coming up next, and we'll get to see more Team 7 bullshit ahahaha
something that's gonna be slow going but i want to explore is the perhaps unnatural stance of Harunos on relationships, Sakura herself is i think a contradiction, because we already established that Harunos don't grieve or miss people, yet she is already too attached to Shisui when she shouldn't be. will this cause problems? who knows. def something that needs to be reconciled with how attached she will become to her team as well hm
Chapter 7: 6. moisture from their breath, covers to bring our death
Notes:
posting a little early as a treat because we are celebrating lizzy's death over here lmao. can't fucking believe i was online to witness reigen vs sans tumblr sexyman poll of 2022 kill the queen of england, this sounds like absolute nonsense and i hope it's in history books someday. since this is a story about death and mourning on a lot of levels i think here Sakura would say "rest in pieces you colonialist witch", okay enough jokes let's go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The waters weren’t too choppy, but she felt like the boat was almost vibrating. Maybe she was the one shaking. It wasn’t the waves, it was the ghost hands raising out of the water, not quite latching onto the boat as they passed. She let her hand dangle from the side and pass through them, it felt like nothing, perhaps she imagined the spray of the water being colder than usual.
Wave was a little island close to the coast of Fire Country. Surrounded by water, people had naturally followed Water Country customs more often than not, though the place itself was far enough from Kiri that when they had reached out to their ninja for help they had been ignored. Sakura would soon come to learn Kiri had its own problems to take care of.
And after Gato had truly taken control, no one in Wave had the resources to reach out to hire ninja like that again. Not without a level subterfuge. She could hardly blame Tazuna, for wanting to save his town, his family, no matter what it took. She gazed out at the water again far as she could see, the incomplete bridge barely coming into sight with the mist rolling in, and wondered how many of these ghosts had been here before, and how many had joined the waters after Gato. How the world had once again tilted out of balance, for profit, for the greed of old men, who cared neither for human life nor nature.
Kakashi-sensei would carry on with the mission, because despite all his laid back attitude she could tell he cared, for people, for justice. Naruto had a bleeding heart too, openly so, not yet jaded by a lifetime of war, and he had something to prove. Sasuke perhaps cared not for the woes of Wave, though he too moved like he had something to prove, to himself if not to others.
For her part, Sakura decided she had a debt to collect. For a hundred ghostly hands that could no longer collect it. When Life and Death were out of balance, a Haruno could even the scales.
Kakashi had known things would get fucked the moment he let Tazuna talk the team into help guard him against Gato. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Gato or the man’s grubby reach, but there was something to be said about Team 7’s luck.
His premonition seemed to come true in the form of a legendary sword hurtling through the air, before embedding itself on the trunk of a white birch tree, with a very recognizable man standing atop it. It could be argued, depending on what ninja age the speaker was from, that the demon was even more infamous than the sword.
“Step back kids, that’s Momochi Zabuza, a missing ninja from Kiri. He is not the same as our previous opponents.”
Missing nin or not, times must have been hard if a shinobi of Zabuza’s caliber was taking jobs from the likes of Gato. But there was nothing for it. He tilted his hitai-ate up to uncover his Sharingan, casting a red glow around his face in the thick mist. He wasn’t going to lose any more teammates.
Not these kids, not today.
Before Sasuke knew it there was a ninja, tall, imposing, standing across from them on an even more imposing sword. Before he knew it, his new teacher had revealed something, blood red and oh so familiar, that rattled Sasuke even more than the missing nin.
He hadn’t hesitated back on the road, and he had been so smug about it too, but now the killing intent pressing down on him was too much to even think of moving. Of breathing. The mist wasn’t the same as Konoha’s fog, and the ninja across from him not one he knew with long hair and slighter build, still Sasuke was stuck, suddenly, violently, in the memory of that terrible night. Just as helpless, just as weak.
And if he couldn’t handle even the reminder of such killing intent, how was he ever supposed to go after the real thing?
He had trained, day and night and day, until he fell into an exhausted sleep devoid of dreams, or nightmares. Foolishly he had thought he was getting better, stronger, he had taunted Naruto for being a scaredy cat hadn’t he? But this fight was on another level. He couldn’t even follow their movements, let alone defend himself or the others, before Zabuza was behind them. If it hadn’t been for Kakashi, who he was startled to realize had been toying with them on all their training sessions so far, they would all have been dead.
He still didn’t understand how Kakashi had a Sharingan, and why Sasuke hadn’t known about it. Even if he was an estranged cousin, somehow, why hadn’t he at least shown up once after that night, or talked to him before Team 7 was formed? Who was he? The sight of that eye filled him with doubt, and the doubt filled him with bitter anger. At least that he knew how to handle.
“Run!” Kakashi shouted at them from inside the water prison Zabuza finally caught him in, his voice muffled but his panic clear, “This is not a fight you can win!”
No way. If even the deadlast could muster up the resolve to carry on with this mission, Uchiha Sasuke couldn’t back down. He had to be better. He had to prove to himself he could go up against enemies in the same leagues as that man, and come out as the stronger.
They needed a plan. He fell back towards Sakura’s position first. He hated to admit but Sakura had a solid foundation, her fighting style reminded him of his own curiously at times, but more importantly she was unflappable, she would be their best option for defense right now. He didn’t want to be dependent on either of them, He wouldn’t have needed anyone else to help, but at least for now, Sasuke trusted Sakura to watch their back and protect the bridge builder.
That left Naruto to assist him on the offense, God help them. When the other boy let Zabuza’s kick send him closer to where they were standing Naruto murmured, “Hey Bastard, listen up. I have a plan.”
His first instinct was to scoff and argue back about his own plan, but he didn’t have one. And for all his idiocy in general Naruto could be infuriating as an opponent, he didn’t think like most ninja. Naruto was grinning, and despite the situation, despite his own misgivings, the expression relaxed something in Sasuke. It was easy to match Naruto’s energy like this, he couldn’t ever afford to fall behind. He listened and nodded.
“It makes me sick, seeing you brats play at being a ninja like it’s a game,” the man taunted from the water, “By the time I was your age, I had already dyed my hands in blood.”
The callous remark made Sasuke bristle, what did this man know? He hadn’t killed, not yet, but his hands had been covered in blood regardless. He could never wash the stains out, from his hands, from the floorboards in what used to be his home.
He gripped the demon wind shuriken Naruto’s clone tossed to him. His mouth too tasted like blood, but it was finally easier to breathe.
Maybe there was something, to be said about teamwork.
Objectively speaking, out of the three of them Sakura was physically the strongest. Especially, when the other two had done the bulk of the fighting as she was guarding Tazuna. So when the young strange ninja finally disappeared with Zabuza’s body in tow and Kakashi-sensei had passed out, the boys helped secure his body onto her back to carry to Tazuna’s house.
The trees were smaller here compared to Konoha’s ancient evergreen forests, their trunks not as wide. She had always felt comfortably hidden back home amongst trees, here they were too exposed. It didn’t reassure her. She puzzled over the encounter as they slowly trekked through the foliage.
Kakashi-sensei had called that young ninja a Hunter. They had said they were here to kill Zabuza, and both them and Kakashi-sensei seemed to believe the man had indeed died. Sakura had never seen the exact moment someone died before, but she knew Zabuza wasn’t dead. Just as she knew how the earth yielded to her hands over buried bones, just as she knew the air was scented with vanilla over gravestones.
Once they reached Tazuna’s humble house, his daughter Tsunami let them in and helped them settle Kakashi-sensei onto a bed with worried eyes, and a quiet promise of hot food soon. The three of them huddled into the room together and watched over their sleeping teacher, all of them silent. Tired, she leaned her body against Naruto’s, dropping her head against his shoulder. On her other side her thigh pressed against Sasuke’s, and for once Sasuke didn’t move back. He must have been just as tired, after the stunt they had pulled.
Sakura hadn’t had many friends growing up, that is, until Shino and Ino had come into her life. Ino was physically affectionate by nature, bright and bubbly, hair tucked behind her ears without thought, soft hands holding onto her own whenever they got the chance. Shino too was very touchy with Sakura, perhaps because no one else had ever let him be as such. He let Sakura drag her fingers across the burrows on his skin, always curious about what lay beneath. He liked draping himself over Sakura’s back, the buzzing under his skin the most comforting melody after a while.
She didn’t know if the way she was with her other friends were normal, and she didn’t particularly care. At least Naruto seemed to enjoy it, though he was shy about seeking it out sometimes, gestures hesitant, as if Sakura would suddenly back away. She never would. Sasuke would never ask, but she was glad he didn’t move away from them now.
Sakura herself relished in the physical contact. For someone who couldn’t touch half of the people she could see, it made her feel real, there. She breathed in, out, focused on the warmth she could feel from their bodies so close to hers, and remembered they were alive. That she too was alive.
With the adrenaline draining away she could feel the exhaustion creeping in, but Sakura didn’t think she could sleep even if she tried to. She didn’t know what they were supposed to do now. She had to talk to Kakashi-sensei, about Zabuza, about death, about bodies in the ocean instead of on land.
Kakashi woke with a start, and a niggling feeling that he was forgetting something important.
At least Naruto seemed to be in good spirits, vocally relieved to see him wake up. Sasuke and Sakura were more subdued in their reactions, though he could still see the way their bodies relaxed similarly. When was the last time there were people on missions with him that cared if he woke up or not? The last time anyone had been this happy to see Kakashi? He shook his head, he must be getting sentimental in his old age.
After they settled back down, with more homemade, simple but delicious fare from their host, it was Naruto again who broke the silence, “I can’t get my mind off of that masked kid. How did you know who they were, Kakashi-sensei?”
“I don’t know who they are, Naruto. But that mask is recognizable by itself, it’s a pattern only a subset of elite Kiri nin wear. Colloquially they are known as the Undertakers, since they dispose of corpses. So thoroughly that it’s like they never even existed.”
Sasuke scrunched his face in displeasure. Naruto just looked confused. “Why?”
Sakura was staring at him from underneath her lashes, gaze uncomfortably soft and sad. Well, they had to learn sometime.
“Even after death, ninja corpses tell too many tales.” He sighed, this really wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be having with essentially toddlers, while he was recovering from a Sharingan hangover, but. They have to learn sometime. “An enemy ninja can still learn much about the skills of the ninja from what they leave behind, about their secret techniques, about their villages. It’s not a risk most ninja villages are willing to take.”
It would be the same for Kakashi one day, the eye implanted into him alone was far too valuable for Konoha to ever risk, even if his body was not Uchiha or had similar pathways to deduce how the original would have worked. One day, he too would be disposed of, silently and without a trace.
“Shinobi’s bodies are not their own. Not in life or in death.”
His body hadn’t been his own since Obito’s final gesture. He would have been bitter at his friend, but he doubted his body had ever been his, long before that.
“It must be the most terrible way to die, for some,” Sakura said, she was still looking at him, “To not be able to return to the land that gave you your name.”
She couldn’t have known, there was no way she possibly could have known, but Kakashi felt the words strike him and lodge somewhere in his own throat. Between an eye lost and a heart gouged out.
None of their bodies had been their own. He wondered absentmindedly, even if Hunters hadn’t gotten to him first, would Zabuza even have anyone to bring his body back anywhere, to bury him, to mourn over him?
Bring his body back? Wait, something wasn’t quite right.
With the grace of a sledgehammer Sakura solved his quiet dilemma, “But Zabuza isn’t dead.”
“What?! We saw that other kid kill him! Sensei confirmed!” Naruto yelled. Sasuke promptly smacked him on the head for the volume.
Of course. Fuck, of course.
Without reserve Kakashi explained; the usual on sight disposal protocols, the kinds of grotesque trophies taken for bounties, the precision of senbon, the death like trance that had fooled even him. Sure he had been tired from the fight using the Sharingan again, stressed about the kids’ ability to match the Hunter if he started another confrontation, too aware of their civilian charge, but he had let it go too easily. He shouldn’t have. He really fucking shouldn’t have. It had been an amateur mistake.
“But, how did you know, Sakura-chan?”
Sakura shrugged and didn’t elaborate, infuriating as always.
It was reassuring at least, to know some things would never change.
Notes:
so far i will not be changing the main plot as much as i'm choosing to interpret it differently through Sakura's new powers and personality, like in canon she stays behind during this fight too, but here i specifically chose to see that as the team actually trusting in her strength for defending, instead of, you know, Kishimoto forgetting she existed during fights lmao
also i don't know why but making Kakashi a potty mouth in this fic just felt right? it's gonna be a real treat when Sakura starts picking up his bad language and gives him even more grey hairs than she already is djkhskhad. speaking of other headcanons for this universe (or i guess i should say canons? i'm the goddamn author) now we are getting into why this Sakura is so physically affectionate, there'll be a lot of good old platonic skinship between the trio even before any romance comes into the story :D
Chapter 8: 7. all of these ghost towns i keep traveling through
Notes:
i'm alive!! sorry for skipping last week gang, i was out of town for a work conference for a couple of days and then went to see my in-laws over the weekend etc... see, these were all planned way beforehand so i could have said "no update next week" at the last chapter's notes, but honestly i was cocky enough to think i'd find time in-between to finish writing, lol, lmao. it's me, A FOOL. really a tragedy that you get the mentality to finally write the fics you always wanted, but no time to write them. still, let's go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There was a confrontation coming on the horizon, but they had time still. Kakashi-sensei had to rest and heal, and somewhere across Wave, Zabuza had to recover as well.
The first day after their sensei woke up, he was still bedridden with chakra exhaustion. The team, now less worried but more restless, took to exploring, well, “patrolling” their surroundings. Naruto headed out towards the sparse forest again, what he thought he might find there Sakura did not know. Uncharacteristically, Sasuke chose to stay around the property. He looked more fidgety than he would usually allow himself, but he had volunteered for guard duty fast enough, like he wanted to talk to Kakashi-sensei, and couldn’t wait for either of them to leave. Sakura let him have it gracefully, she decided to head into town instead.
No one bothered her on the way there but she hadn’t really expected anyone to. Despite her bright coloring she had a tendency to just fade into the natural background, as if she was always supposed to be there. Anywhere.
The town proper was predictably in disrepair, most shop fronts closed down, likely unable to survive under Gato’s financial chokehold on the island. The people though, were in even worse shape. Not that they were many out and about in the first place. She figured most of the able bodied workers at this time of day were trying to complete the bridge under Tazuna’s lead, under Gato’s nose. But those who stayed behind, those who hadn’t joined Gato’s side or hadn’t yet been driven out of their homeland, they all looked worn down, whether sitting on their porches or aimlessly walking down the street like her. It wasn’t just physical, sunken cheeks and drooped shoulders, it was in the way they moved too, as if movement no longer held purpose. A certain tightness in the eyes, tired and lost.
Sakura knew they lived in a cruel cruel world, had heard it all from Konoha’s ghosts before, young and old. But seeing wounds on the dead had not actually prepared her for the sight of suffering on the living, when there was still time and opportunity to turn back, when there was something to be done. It made her feel unsettled, viscerally so. It felt stranger, than the peaceful acceptance of dying itself.
A couple of kids ran past her chasing after a ball, just as patched up as their clothes. Their enthusiastic play did not manage to lift her worsening mood, when her eyes kept straying to the children’s abdomens distended from what must be malnourishment. The air smelled faintly of something sweet, not of the Scent, but of rot and sickness, just close enough. It always reminded her of monkshood and bittersweet nightshade, in shades of bright purple. A first friend lost, ashes in the dirt.
Sakura was suddenly so thankful to Tsunami, for sharing what precious little food their family had with strange ninjas, simply on the faith that they might finally change things. That there would be a better tomorrow worth the sacrifice. She wished she had some money on her, she knew Fire currency was still accepted in Wave and with the political upheaval in Kiri was more valuable than Water currency, but even if she gave it away here what would it solve? There was nothing the people here could buy that wasn’t being controlled by Gato’s prices, no matter what currency they managed to get their hands on.
Despite it all, there were not many ghosts around town. She wasn’t entirely surprised. They didn’t have enough land to bury their dead here, not like Konoha did. Besides, Wave people belonged to the water.
She remembered the ghostly hands their boat had moved through. Remembered, the bodies belonged to the water, the souls didn’t have to.
She completed her exploratory walk by the shore, and watched the waves until it was time for her to go back. She wondered whose bones laid beneath the water on the soft bank, and whose got to wash away into the ocean beyond.
Kakashi was up on the second day, and ready to supervise extra training. They would all need it.
The missions they had taken within the village until then had been more about observing their dynamic and building camaraderie than actual training. The times where they had done physical training outside of D-ranks, Kakashi had given them general conditioning exercises, barely building above what the academy had started. He had thought, perhaps foolishly so despite it being peace time, that he had time.
He wasn’t stupid enough to think he could fully escape teaching, at least not with this team assignment, but he didn’t know their first mission would go pear shaped like this. Well, that was on him really, he should have seen Team 7 luck coming.
He was actually proud of the team for holding it together so well in a life or death situation when he had been trapped. They had shown the potential before, but it had been something else to see the teamwork Kakashi had failed so many before them for lacking. They kept proving to him, that he hadn’t made a terrible mistake by deciding to carry on with the mission instead of bundling them all up and hightailing it back to Konoha.
He told them it was time to kick things to high gear.
“That sounds fun!” Naruto trilled, always excited for the opportunity to act.
“Is it fun?”
They all turned as one to the pint-sized kid that entered the room, bristling with righteous anger and bitterness, so disconcerting to see on a face that might as well be 4 years old.
The kid ignored their host’s attempts to “Shhh Inari!”, and rather rudely pointed at their faces, “But Mama, they are all gonna die.”
Well. Kakashi didn’t really know what to say to that, so despite technically being the responsible adult in the room he was helplessly relieved when it was Sakura who got up from her seat to crouch in front of the kid with a soft, “Inari, is it?”
“Everyone will die.”
Goddamnit, Sakura.
Uncaring of Kakashi glaring at her exasperated, she tilted her head and smiled sweetly, “Eventually. But for us, right now, you have my word it will not be today nor tomorrow.”
“No one can beat Gato or his men.”
Naruto took that opportunity to jump back into the conversation. “Listen kid, we will!” He pointed to his chest with his thumbs, confident, though not yet entirely earned, “We are the heroes. Of course we’ll beat the bad guys!”
“Heroes?” The baby scoffed, “That’s stupid. There is no such thing.”
No, there isn’t.
“No, there isn’t.” Sakura echoed his thoughts, green eyes on Naruto reproaching. She turned back towards the angry toddler, “But, we don’t need heroes.”
“We only ever need people, like you or me, ninja or civilian, to do the right thing. One day at a time. Change doesn’t have to be a miracle Inari-kun. It just needs some work, and a little bit of faith.”
Faith? Kakashi didn’t know if he had left any. Work? He would definitely be putting them all to it.
The first thing he could instill in the kids was the usage of chakra, to the point that it became instinctual. For movement, and travel. They had walked through the Fire Countryside and had taken a boat to Wave. It was all fine and dandy when they were escorting someone like Tazuna, but they would need to learn how to travel by chakra soon, no matter the terrain.
First through forests, then through lakes. Ninja were faster than boats when need be, but more important than that, unless they could at least stand on water they couldn’t reach the likes of Zabuza, who would immediately retreat to where he had the advantage.
But first, trees. Konoha ninja had to be like birds after all. Ever flitting through the trees, bright plumed killers hidden among the foliage, plunge diving for fish straight into the water.
While the boys took a run at their trees eager to test their finer chakra manipulation, Sakura walked up to her own with measured steps and laid her palm fully on the bark.
She could feel the nature chakra flow within the tree if she concentrated, but more importantly she could feel the dead cells forming the outer bark respond to her when she reached out with her own chakra. She let her chakra move through the phloem, and cambium, then sapwood, slow and careful, until it reached the heartwood. She recognized the live and the dead, intertwined within the layers of the tree, and the tree recognized her.
She knew right then, as she always did, just how much to push. She let the chakra in her palm dissipate and coated the bottom of her feet with it instead, and casually strolled up the trunk until she reached the first branch she could comfortably stand on. She let Kakashi-sensei’s amused “Well, are you two just gonna let her show you up like that?” wash off of her back, and considered the branches above.
She could show off more, couldn’t she?
She hadn’t spent years exploring the forests surrounding Konoha to not be able to climb a tree with chakra, or without. If she failed here, Shisui would have been appalled.
She patted the rough bark with wandering fingers, uttered a prayer, and leapt up.
In between training they shadowed Tazuna and the bridge crew to make sure they would be safe while the construction was steadily progressing, hidden behind the now natural misty weather. Kakashi-sensei figured they still had a couple more days of grace left but it didn’t hurt to be cautious, and he had said while the boys concentrated on mastering the trees, she could graduate to water walking. And there would be plenty of practice space around the bridge itself.
So that day, it was Sakura alone accompanying Kakashi-sensei while the boys remained in Tazuna’s backyard. Though she didn’t feel alone for too long.
There was a ghost on the bridge.
Several, actually. But it wasn’t surprising at all to see the same face in Inari and Tsunami’s photographs staring back at her. Sakura subtly nodded at the faded man, and couldn’t help but smile when the ghost seemed shocked.
That never got old.
After Naruto had followed an upset Inari out following their brief conversation, through hiccups Tsunami had told them what had happened to her husband, and Inari’s father figure. Kaiza, had been made an example of. Even after everything had gone down, his body had been on the incomplete bridge for days, the family unable to claim him while Gato’s dogs kept watch. When the tyrant had decided his point was made they had tossed the body from the bridge to the waters below. A final way to hurt the townsfolk who had adored the man.
It was hardly surprising the ghost was trapped here on the bridge, even if the body might have been washed away by the currents. His blood was on this concrete. His wishes tied to the steel.
He wasn’t a pretty sight either. Tsunami had spared them most of the gory details but Kaiza had been beaten to death. And it hadn’t been quick.
Ghosts reflected the body at the moment of death, this she had known from the river water that followed Shisui everywhere. By the time Kaiza had finally succumbed, his limbs had been mangled beyond repair, his skull had been caved in. Sakura got the distinct feeling that the ghost was smiling at her, and at Tazuna now back at work, but it would have been impossible to tell with his face such a bloody mess. Eyes swollen shut, nose broken, making what had been once cheerful and rugged features unrecognizable.
Would drowning have been more merciful for a man of Wave? She didn’t know, and it wouldn’t matter. In the end no death was easy, not on the person, and definitely not on the ones who stayed behind.
It was then, with wary glances at both Kakashi-sensei and Sakura, some of the crew approached Tazuna. She could see the frustration on the old man’s face, but he didn’t have anything material nor any words to convince them. He couldn’t ask them to stay and share Kaiza’s fate when they too had families to take care of. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, but either their own belief in Wave’s future would carry them through the work or it would not.
When a small group of workers left, Kaiza’s ghost, and the ghosts of all the workers that remained on the bridge, stared at their backs, silent. Until they too were lost in the mist.
It was another day, time slowly running out, when Naruto shyly asked for Sakura’s help before attempting the chakra exercise again. She explained as best as she could, keeping to the theory of chakra alone, and not exactly sharing her own way of doing it. Still, Naruto gave her a big hug and was in good cheer, even though the theoretical explanation did not seem to help much. Kakashi-sensei told her Naruto was just the type of person who would learn by doing and feeling for it himself, they just needed to give him time and not give up on him. She could do that.
Sasuke did not seem inclined to ask for help, and Sakura did not offer what would be unwelcome advice. She had a feeling the competitive feeling Naruto inspired would help better than she could anyway. Surprisingly, Sasuke was more relaxed than usual. If “relaxed” could ever be used in association with the young Uchiha that is. Whatever he had talked to Kakashi-sensei about Sakura figured it must have at least eased his mind a little, despite the looming battle. He seemed, concentrated, more focused and eager.
“It makes sense why I was placed on his team,” Sasuke said after he had reached a new height on his tree and had flopped down to the grass to rest while Naruto fumed, “I don’t know about you two losers though.”
Good point, Sakura didn’t know it either. She would have liked to say serendipity, but she knew the way ghosts followed Naruto’s form with barely concealed hatred in their eyes, and wondered. Are things ever that simple?
She laughed instead, throwing her water bottle at Sasuke’s head, and to his credit he didn’t even need to lean up before catching it with a deft hand, “Oh Sasuke-kun, how about you come call me a loser once you can join me on the bridge.”
Well, there was no reason she couldn’t throw her hat in the rivalry ring.
Notes:
another filler chapter, so to speak, but the battle and the conclusion is coming right up! i think i mentioned this either in notes or in a reply to someone before but i'm trying to strike a balance between what Sakura knows and cannot yet know. in a lot of ghost stories she knows literally everything because they immediately tell her the entire story. but wouldn't that be too easy? like here she can't immediately make the connection between Kakashi's Sharingan and what Sasuke talked to him about because she simply doesn't know, Shisui has no eyes after all :D and some ghosts like their secrets~
on an unrelated note, NONA THE NINTH CAME OUT! and i've been kind of spiralling about it the whole week, i cannot recommend The Locked Tomb series enough if you haven't read it. like i credited a couple other ghosts fics here as my initial inspiration, but what actually spawned this story was definitely the necromancy (and the sheer genius of Tamsyn's prose) in TLT. i can never match up, and this fic was intended to be in a different tone anyway, but gosh one can aspire
Chapter 9: 8. lay me down, let the only sound be the overflow
Notes:
oops skipped another week, it's a longer chapter than usual but also ngl it gave me a lot of trouble? even though i knew what needed to happen, for the life of me i couldn't decide what order things should go or from whose pov, but we eventually got there. slightly related, Hozier's new song Swan Upon Leda came out, and i can say this chapter's editing was basically entirely fueled by that lmao. if you want give it a listen, and let's go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sakura hung upside down under the bridge, crouched with her hands and feet spread over the new concrete, while it was Sasuke’s turn guarding Tazuna above.
Naruto had come in late at night from training, almost close to morning, and they had decided to leave him to sleep in. He had seemed quite happy with himself last night, even though he was barely on his feet, but Sakura didn’t doubt as soon as he showed up Sasuke was going to tease him for skipping guard duty.
There was something in their banter that eased Sakura’s nerves, but for now she was thankful for the silence. She had to concentrate. She was finding that the concrete was much harder to cling to than trees, who not in so many words told Sakura what she needed to do. She had no such hold on inanimate objects.
Even water, ever in motion and unpredictable, was easier for her to get a grip on. There were no cells living and breathing, or dead and decaying, on the surface of water for her to converse with, but water itself echoed with a feeling. Water itself was life, and could easily become one’s death. There was never apprehension when she stepped on the waves, Sakura had always loved the water. Her solace in silence, her chest heaving against the current.
She managed to walk back up to the surface of the bridge, without falling down into the water like she had done the first day much to Kakashi-sensei’s amusement. Kaiza settled down next to her, his broken legs dangling over the barred edge. She knew then that they had finally run out of time.
“Are you ready?”
She let her shoulders roll back in a stretch, in the approximation of a shrug. Do we have an option not to be?
He laughed, “I hope you won’t be joining me here today kid. But no matter what happens, thank you. For staying. For trying.”
She nodded back at him, a silent acknowledgement. The fate of these ghosts, the fate of the bridge, the fate of the Island of Wave would be decided in the next few hours, right here. She was glad to be a part of it, no matter which way the pendulum of Life and Death swung.
This time she could see that Kaiza was grinning back at her, mouth stretched over broken teeth, the cut on his lip split and bleeding, forever.
This time, she would be ready.
When the mist rolled in over the bridge, unnaturally thick, Sasuke was ready.
At least he wanted to be. His arms shuddered and he tightened his grip on his kunai to stop it from being noticeable. He had to be better than he was. He was better than he was. So it was a relief when Kakashi gave him the go ahead, movement was always easier than trying to stand still, and he dispatched the water clones around them in a blur. And while Kakashi blocked Zabuza’s line of sight from them, he squared off against the young Hunter for his own fight.
Haku, their name was, was incredibly fast. Not so fast that Sasuke couldn’t completely keep up, but a challenge. He wasn’t sure how long he would have the advantage.
“I don’t want to have to kill you, Sasuke-san.”
The other ninja didn’t sound confident, it wasn’t that, not really, but they spoke with a detached tone that grated on Sasuke’s nerves. It reminded him annoyingly of Sakura, when she got that blank look in her eyes.
Unbothered, even when Sasuke escaped from their sharp sharp water needles or gained the upper hand, they said, “But if it helps the one I care about the most, I shall.”
His advantage in reach and speed came to an abrupt end when Haku constructed a dome of mirrors, made of ice, his breath fogging up in front of him, around them on the bridge. He was visually and physically cut off from Kakashi and Sakura, although he could still faintly hear their voices. Suddenly each mirror was occupied by a Haku, and Sasuke didn’t know which one was real. He tried sensing the chakra of the real one but all the mirrors were equally saturated with their chakra, and there were no other ways to distinguish. It has to be a genjutsu, he thought. But if it was he couldn’t see through it. He had never been good at genjutsus, not then, blood red bleeding into a world black, and not now, blue mist freezing into pretty white snowflakes.
There were more and more senbon, faster, sharper. “The outcome is already decided, because your eyes cannot see the truth.” Sasuke bristled, he was so angry his temples were starting to throb.
He hadn’t gone down yet but he had accumulated quite a bit of damage. When he took a second, too long but unavoidable, he realized the puncture wounds were all superficial. Haku was disabling him, slower and slower, they had to be saving the death blow for later. Sasuke didn’t appreciate being toyed with like prey. He had to put a stop to this, but between the mirrors and all the Hakus within them moving asynchronously, he still couldn't figure out the weapon trajectories.
He needed to see them. If he could start dodging again he would have the upper hand. He thought he was at least physically stronger than Haku, he just had to figure out which one was the real body and go for the jugular. He narrowed his eyes, he had to focus.
This time, he would be faster.
Naruto knew something was wrong, the second awareness came back to him. Sakura wasn’t curled up against his back, and Sasuke wasn’t already sitting up on the next futon scoffing at them. The house too, was quiet, no noise downstairs of Tsunami puttering about in the kitchen or Inari haunting the hallways.
He was already too keyed up by the time he made it out of the house, so it wasn’t difficult to find the thugs cornering Inari and Tsunami. They weren’t even ninja, just mean men with rusty weapons. He wasn’t scared this time, he was ready. And this was what it was all about. Coming in the nick of time, saving the day.
He had seen enough about people, the worst of them, to know that ultimately Sakura-chan was right, that there were no heroes. But didn’t the other side of that coin mean if no one chosen person was a hero that everyone could be? He could be the hero. Inari could be too. His own and his mother’s. He ruffled the little boy’s hair, the way he would wish someone to. “You can handle things here, right kid?”
Inari blubbered at him, overwhelmed, and Naruto laughed. There was nothing wrong with crying when you were happy. Or sad. Emotion didn’t weaken ninja no matter what the dumb rules said. He could cry, he could laugh, and he could still come save the day.
Naruto was feeling pretty good about his victory but he knew things went from bad to “absolutely fucked”, as Kakashi-sensei would say, the moment he reached the bridge. It wasn’t two bit hired muscle they were going to go up against anymore, Zabuza had finally come back. When he jumped next to Sakura in front of Tazuna, Zabuza sneered at them and said, “You should have stayed home brat.”
He turned back to Kakashi-sensei, “You might as well take your remaining kids and go Kakashi, your other boy cannot match up against Haku nor his technique. Not even you could actually.”
“Is that so?” Kakashi-sensei said, “A kekkei genkai? I thought Kiri had purged all of those.”
Naruto didn’t understand any of that, but across from them the remark made Zabuza get scarier somehow. His instinct had already been going crazy, but the killing intent that suddenly bore down on them rang alarm bells down in his gut. It made his fingers itch, his teeth ache.
“Naruto-kun.”
He glanced to his left, Sakura tilted her head towards the ice dome and gestured for him to cover her position. He didn’t quite like the idea of staying behind, but it was only fair Sakura got her turn to team up with the asshole. And something told him that he would be needed, somehow, right here.
“Of course Sakura-chan. Go kick ass, I got this.”
“Kids, what are you doing? No, Sakura, damn it, stay with Tazu-”
But Sakura was gone in a poof behind the ice barrier before Kakashi-sensei could even finish. Zabuza laughed, but it was cruel, grating to his ears, “Seems the pink one is just as eager to die.”
“That’s the problem with you soft Konoha nin, you act like this is all a game, that it’s easy. You don’t live with death, having to kill to survive. Unlike your snotty brats, Haku understands the weight of the shinobi title.”
Zabuza bragged and bragged about Haku, and how they had been molded. Naruto didn’t like the way the man spoke about the other kid. As if they were nothing but the collection of their techniques and well aimed steel. His nails, lengthened into claws, were digging into his hands. His canines, longer sharper, broke the skin of his lip. He didn’t notice.
The mist thickened around them and Zabuza seemed to disappear from sight entirely. Even with his weird eye, Kakashi-sensei started to have trouble with locating the other man, Naruto didn’t see the blows connecting but he smelled Kakashi’s blood in the air. He tilted his head and breathed in, past the salt of the ocean, past the coppery tang of blood. There was a predator here, but they weren’t the only one, something in him recognized the intent hidden in the mist and responded. He could still follow where Zabuza was.
There was a clone across from Kakashi-sensei, taunting, intangible. The real Zabuza was moving, awfully close, behind Tazuna. But suddenly Naruto’s sight was sharper, his chakra felt stronger. When he called for his shadow clones, they popped into existence with a new feral energy, to surround the old man and block the swing of that gigantic sword. Naruto grinned. Mad and eager.
This time, he would not falter.
“Hello, Haku-san. A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”
Several Hakus stood from the mirrors and replied to her greeting, just as polite, but with an echo that chilled her more than the ice that had gathered around them.
It really was a beautiful trick, a good one too, to be able to stop Sasuke in his tracks. Regardless of the ice kekkei genkai, the technique hinged on several genjutsu layered on the ice mirrors. Unfortunately for Haku, no genjutsu could ever fool Sakura. She didn’t have time to play though, she had to end this before they caught onto the fact that Sakura wasn’t dodging because she was fast, she could just follow the real Haku.
She kept her front to them, and she wasn’t entirely sure if they could see out of all the mirrors simultaneously, but behind her back she awkwardly made the sign of the tiger, the common ending for all fire jutsu. Trusting Sasuke to immediately be ready, she dodged behind his body and moved with him as he let a stream of fire loose around them in a circle.
Sasuke’s fire was a beautiful thing, bright and destructive. Though ultimately it didn’t seem to work. That was interesting. Sakura had thought the destruction of the mirrors could perhaps break open the technique, but it seemed as long as Haku was fine and maintaining a steady flow of chakra the mirrors were virtually unbreakable. Haku, probably wasn’t.
“Oh, how neat.”
“Sakura, stop complimenting the enemy.”
“Thank you, Sakura-san. But it does not matter, I cannot be caught.” Sakura hummed noncommittally and dodged just in time to avoid another handful of senbon to her chest, although her arm wasn’t unscathed. She wasn’t fast enough, not like Sasuke, even if she could see where Haku would be aiming from.
Haku didn’t come at them with any flashy techniques, but they were consistent. They would tire out both of them sooner or later. Though there was eventually a shift, it felt like Sasuke was moving better and better. Was he catching on to the patterns or was he purely getting faster?
Her attention wandering to her teammate cost Sakura. Haku must have noticed as well, because the next volley was all aimed right at her, and even knowing what was about to come she wouldn’t be able to dodge. She braced herself for the pain, but before anything could even touch her, Sasuke was there.
“There is no way, I’ll let you show me up again,” he smirked, blood fresh and bright and red pooling on his lip, “Loser.”
She was at least fast enough to catch Sasuke before he crashed to the ground, and slowly let him down, careful of the numerous senbon protruding from his still body. This had to end now, there could be no more hesitation. Sakura focused her chakra in her hands, just as she had done for the trees, for the water. Then she pushed more and more, and then some, above what she would normally need, flooding the system in her fingers with discomfort.
She leapt up, fist out, and shattered the mirror Haku was actually hiding in.
Zabuza was a tough opponent, just like last time. And he liked to talk too, now that he thought he had figured Kakashi out.
“You overestimate the value of your pretty little eye.”
Kakashi was tempted to laugh. Had there been a single day he had overestimated the power of the Sharingan? A single minute where he had seen its eerie reflection in the mirror, and had not thought of crushing defeat?
“You keep going on and on about my eye, but did you really think that was my only trick? You know, I, too, wore a porcelain mask once. And surely I didn’t earn that mask by just fluttering my pretty little eyelashes at my enemies.”
His hand was still bleeding, good. Before the other man could move again, he slammed his hand to the ground, and summoned his pack in a chorus of growls and snapping teeth. No, he didn’t overestimate his eyes, he didn’t even like using it. Then again he didn’t always have to. If you can’t trust your eyes, you can always depend on your nose.
He was not panicking about Naruto’s chakra whirling around them, raging and corrosive and awfully familiar. He was not thinking about how couldn’t even feel Sasuke’s chakra anymore. The only constant was Sakura’s chakra, lower than he would like, but cool and steady as always. Instead he was focusing on sharp fangs, Kiri blood under steady paws.
He could hazard a guess now, based on what he knew about Kiri, why Zabuza was here, why he was stooping low enough to work for Gato, to raise enough money to make a second attempt to free his country. Did the ends justify the means? Did his motives matter at all? Kakashi had killed countless people even if in another life he could have been friends with them, and he would kill countless more if they happened to be on the opposite sides of an ever shifting global power struggle. Empathy, in ninja work, was a dangerous thing.
Kakashi let his chakra electrify down his arm. It was too easy. He didn’t like using this technique, not after, but it was his strongest weapon. It was the weapon that would let his kids get off of this bridge and live another day.
The chakra accumulated in his hand, wild, violent, electric.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
Haku stood in front of her. They didn’t look shocked, nor angry. There was just something terribly empty about their expression. It halted Sakura’s movement, chakra in her fingers burning back into nothing.
“Go on, Sakura-san, finish what we started. If I have lost, I no longer serve any purpose.”
When their story didn’t seem to move neither Sakura nor her blade forward, not yet, Haku changed tactics. Voice still blank, but the intent uncharacteristically mean compared to what she had observed so far from the hunter, they whispered, “I killed your comrade.”
Sakura glanced behind her where she had laid down Sasuke’s prone body. He was hurt alright, but he wasn’t dead. Not by a long shot. She knew this, just as she had known Zabuza too had not perished under Haku’s careful senbon. What she didn’t know was why Haku again was pretending. They really were softer than they needed to be, but Sakura appreciated that. She smiled.
“I don’t believe in a life for a life Haku-san, that is not how the earth turns.”
“But if this is your wish, if you really, truly want to go,” she looked them in the eyes, the mask had broken with her hit, their temple bleeding, but Haku was still so ephemerally gorgeous, “I will fulfill it.” It was not a unique story though it was tragic, the way Haku had found acceptance only with Zabuza, harsh as the circumstances had been. But the earth would accept Haku too, this time with no conditions. Whether they had ice in their blood or not. Whether they were powerful or weak. Whether they had served a great purpose, or none at all.
Something thawed in Haku’s eyes then, “You would have my thanks.”
“I wouldn’t need it.” She gripped her kunai, she didn’t want to hesitate, she didn’t want to dishonor. And she was curious too, morbidly so, how the moment would Sound like, how it would Smell. “It was an honor and a pleasure to have met you.”
Across the bridge from them Kakashi-sensei, with Naruto’s assistance, had been fighting Zabuza. In the periphery she had noticed Kakashi-sensei finally immobilize Zabuza with a pack of vicious dogs. Naruto’s chakra, even more vicious, all around them. The fight was coming to an end, theirs, and hers. Victory didn’t feel like much to Sakura, it didn’t make her shiver with excitement, not with fatigue. From one moment to the next, Life and Death carried on, with her as its messenger.
She moved towards the other ninja, and then, a lot of things happened at once. Haku stiffened. They looked back towards the other fight, and in an instant the peaceful expression on their gentle features were replaced with panic, then swift resolution. Sakura paused, and Haku moved.
It happened in slow motion. It happened faster than she could blink. She watched, frozen, despite the lack of ice, knowing what was about to happen but unable to move in time to do anything about it. If there was anything to be done at all. It wasn’t her call.
There was the sound of a thousand birds chirping, and then, a moment of silence. It was that kind of loud silence, where people were trying too hard to be quiet and not quite managing. Small, unintentional noises. Everyone's labored breathing still echoed. The crackle of lightning dissipating was unmistakable. From her position Sakura could register Zabuza’s face looking down in resignation. She registered, Kakashi-sensei’s own, devastated before he quickly schooled his expression. She couldn’t see his face, but Naruto’s howl pierced the air. Though more important than perhaps all of that, she saw Haku smile.
And she thought, and here was a heart that loved another more than itself, here is now a heart out of the chest cavity bloody still beating with aftershocks of love and lighting, and oh there had been another heart hadn’t there long ago that did the same.
She thought, where is my heart now, and where will it be?
She saw the gaping wound, charred around the edges, ribs curling over the emptiness where hearts are supposed to be.
In soft brown eyes and bold purple lines she remembered, I have seen this before.
Notes:
remember when i said that i would not change the canon, just interpret things a liiiiittle differently? so, i lied! idk i just really wanted Sakura to be the one in the ice dome with Sasuke instead of Naruto, and shuffling the fights around was one of the reasons the order of events was a challenge to figure out! and was also the reason instead of Kyuubi being triggered by witnessing Sasuke go down, Naruto is slowly amping up to it on the outside without realizing lol
but then again the canon did not change that much did it huh, sorry Haku, and sorry to one of my loyal readers fictional_letters, who was praying for them to live haha my bad :D stay tuned next week for definitely more death, probably more ghosts, and maybe more shit going off the canon rails
Chapter 10: 9. waves up off of the pavement, will carry you in
Notes:
miss me? i know, i know, i know, its been a while. honestly last few weeks were kinda hectic both in terms of work and social obligations, buuuut i have been still writing bits and pieces every chance i got it’s just that it took some time for this chapter to come together :D anyway i took an edible and feeling hella creative so maybe i’ll finish the next chapter tonight too and y’all will get a double update weekend huh let’s go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Haku was dead before their body even hit the ground.
Naruto wanted to scream but what came out of his mouth could have only been described as a howl. He hadn’t even known he could make such an unholy sound. It tore through his throat unbidden, filled his mouth with blood and sharp canines.
He hadn’t even known, that he had moved towards Zabuza, intent on doing something, anything, before Kakashi-sensei intercepted him with a strict, “Stay out of this Naruto.”
The fight between Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza moved, not deterred by the body that used to stand between them, not even for a minute, and Naruto circled the two men from a distance unsure what to do still. He couldn’t bring himself to glance back to where Haku had crumpled to the ground. How had the world not stopped with Haku’s fall? How had not Zabuza? That unforgivable fucking scumbag, he thought, snarling around too many teeth.
Naruto hadn’t seen someone die before, Kakashi-sensei’s stunt on the road notwithstanding. The violence then had been sudden and shocking, but the ploy itself had made Naruto think, deep down, that things like that weren’t real, permanent. This was permanent. He was going to start hyperventilating when Sakura alighted next to him, wind blown hair escaping out of her braid, limbs a little shaky, but eyes as sure as always. Her hand on his shoulder steadied him without asking.
“Sakura-chan,” he breathed, suddenly so, so tired, “Where is the Bastard?”
Those glass green eyes turned on him, a slow blink, a twitch in the corner of her mouth for the first time unsure, and he knew, he knew, but he couldn’t turn around to look behind them, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t. Haku- Sasuke- Permanent permanent permanent. And Naruto’s own vision clouded over in red.
Suddenly Sakura grabbed his jaw, and pulled his face down to hers, Oh, her hands are sweaty-, “Naruto.”
He blinked out of the strange crimson haze, startled.
“Don’t worry, Naruto-kun,” Sakura said, and despite himself he relaxed, because Sakura just knew things too didn’t she, “Sasuke-kun will be okay.”
Unfortunately there was no time to ask for clarification, not that Naruto thought Sakura would provide one. Someone interrupted them, and the vicious fight that was coming to an end between the two other ninja across the bridge, with the tap of a cane.
Gato was a smaller man than Naruto had imagined, as the “big evil boss”. He sounded big, but his words were dishonest, pathetic. There was a small army of thugs behind him that looked even more so. But none of that mattered, not really, until the ugly little man walked between the groups, self-assured they wouldn’t touch him in a way that grated, and kicked Haku’s head. If it wasn’t Sakura’s hand squeezing his shoulder suddenly, painfully, Naruto would have darted forward to kick him ten-fold in return.
“What the hell are you doing, you creep?!”
Kakashi-sensei looked upset but with their fight over, now without cause, he didn’t look like he would intercept Gato before Zabuza moved again. Sakura looked angrier than he had ever seen her before, but she was the one holding him back. And Sasuke- Don’t think about that right now. Why was it that their team was more upset than the man who had raised the kid?
Naruto turned towards Zabuza, screaming, “Do something!”
“Like what, kid?” Zabuza had the audacity to shrug, “Haku is dead.”
Naruto knew frustration. He knew despair. Frankly, there hadn’t been much else when he was growing up. In some ways, hearing Haku’s story, it had been easy to imagine being the other. It could have been Naruto, who finally left Konoha unable to suffer through more abuse, it could have been someone other than Iruka, kind and loving despite everything, that took him under their wings.
And Naruto couldn’t imagine how he would have felt after finally having such a bond but losing it in the worst way. He could kind of picture it a little now, now that he had his own team, and the thought that they could leave him behind was already chilling. As if he hadn't mattered at all, discarded, forgotten. He craved nothing more than acknowledgement, his face on a mountain never to be forgotten, ever. What had Haku craved? Had it been enough, to live like this? To die like this? Hearing Zabuza talk about Haku as if they didn’t feel a thing, as if they were really just a tool, was too much.
“He gave his life for you.” Naruto hadn’t known anger could be this encompassing, and scorching hot. His chakra responded to it like it was born to be ignited with rage.
“Kid,” the man sighed and when Naruto looked over there was a single tear making its way down Zabuza’s cheekbone to soak the blood-stained bandages covering the lower part of his face, “Not… Another word.”
Oh. Haku, I wish you knew. But maybe they always had, maybe that was why- Tears came unbidden then, and all Naruto could do was let himself cry. With bittersweet relief, with grief, blood dripping down his knuckles onto new concrete, salty ocean air on his lips indistinguishable from the taste of his own tears. He cried, for Haku, and then for Zabuza too, for the man would not cry more for himself.
“You were right, you know.” Zabuza ripped the bandages around his mouth with his own teeth, arms still useless at his sides, “I’m glad, that my last battle was against you all. I’m glad Haku had a chance to meet your team.”
What was that shinobi rule again? “No matter what happens, true shinobi must never show their emotions”. What utter bullshit. Gato was still talking, his hired thugs jeering, rekindling the anger in Naruto’s heart to overpower the sadness that had gotten a hold of him watching Zabuza’s heartbreak.
He felt the tears sizzle off of his face with the heat of his chakra still roiling just below his skin.
“Would you lend me your kunai, boy?”
Naruto tossed his weapon to the older man, and let himself go fully under the thrall of his own chakra again, pulsing, red, eager to tear into the mob alongside his once enemy, natural as anything.
This fight, one last time, would be his way to honor both shinobi he decided.
He hadn’t even known, that goodbyes would be so much harder than he ever thought they could be.
Sakura bent down, eyes focused solely on Haku’s face, knowing nothing would pass by Naruto, nor Zabuza, to reach them right now. Naruto’s chakra made her shiver, but it was a little familiar too somehow, corrosive but warm at her back. At the periphery of her attention was Tazuna, standing as far away as possible from the fight next to where she had left Sasuke, and Kaiza flickering in front of them. The ghost wouldn’t be able to do anything of course, but Sakura supposed it was the feeling that counted. Kaiza had always been a protector, hadn’t he?
Her hands were gentle when she closed Haku’s eyes, she felt their eyelashes with the tips of her fingers as she retracted her hand, reverent. They had been frozen during the fight, now the melting ice ran across their face in facsimile of tears Haku would have never shed. She couldn’t stop staring, Haku’s face was beautiful in death, even more than it had been in life.
Their hair smelled sweet now like syrup, cold, drizzled over warm fluffy pancakes, sitting at the counter waiting, waiting, waiting for someone who would never come on time for breakfast. The pancakes too would grow cold and stale. Haku’s face was cold to the touch, and she wondered if it had been just as cold when they were alive, ice running through their veins. She hadn’t had a chance to touch then, only porcelain, cold too but sharp, breaking under her fist.
She wasn’t sorry, being sorry would have felt too much like disrespect.
She had always found comfort in Death, in all the Senses it had deigned to grace Sakura’s world. But she glanced behind her at Sasuke, lying prone away from the fight, and forward to Naruto’s back, shielding them all at the front, and she wanted them so differently. Not cloying honey nor faint vanilla, ever sweet. She wanted Sasuke’s expression sour, annoyed but endearing too, like he just swallowed a lemon. She wanted Naruto’s features spicy, with rage so righteous, that it burned like hot peppers. But she never wanted to see them sweet. They were just different.
She was shaking a little now and she knew it must be due to finally coming down from the adrenaline high of the fight. It had been brief, and Sasuke had borne the brunt of it, but Sakura had never fought like this before either. The prospect of dying itself had never been scary, victory itself hadn’t felt like anything but passive curiosity, but the fight itself had been, something, with opponents so far beyond her league respect and frustration had warred inside her chest in equal measure. She wasn’t used to feeling this strongly about anything. She had wanted, to be better, stronger, and for what? To prolong the inevitable? Or to finish it faster? What was the point? She wasn’t sure.
Her limbs trembled, but when she lifted Haku her legs were sturdy still like the earth, she moved her arms gentle as the water washing away the past, birthing ghosts onto mossy river shores. What was the point, indeed.
The sound of flesh ripping, followed by a thud that seemed to echo along the bridge finally broke Sakura out of her thoughts. She hoped Gato’s spirit would not stay, ghosts rarely interacted with each other but the ones who had stayed behind on this bridge would make Gato wish he had gone to whatever hell he believed in.
Zabuza, and Naruto together, had been a whirlwind and taken out quite a bit of the mob but there were still a lot of armed men standing on the bridge with them. Even without Gato to guide them or pay, their aggression seemed to need an outlet, focusing now on their team entirely. And they were all exhausted. Sakura didn’t have a chance to put down Haku again and take a defensive stance in front of Kakashi-sensei and Naruto before an arrow thunked right in front of the armed men.
“Stop where you are!”
And there Inari was, holding a crossbow, with the rest of the villagers behind him decked out in their makeshift armors and all manners of weapons from harpoons to shovels standing ready behind him. “This island is our home, and we won’t let you terrorize us anymore.”
While the group was chasing away the thugs, with the help of some shadow clones from Naruto and simple illusions from Kakashi-sensei, Inari flew by her to join the fray. Bright and fearless and alive.
“No heroes, right Sakura-nee-chan?” He yelled out, grinning.
She knew she was smiling back, and she thought Kaiza was too, “No heroes at all.”
“Kakashi.”
Kakashi would never admit it until the end of his days, but he almost startled when he heard the voice. This was the second time Zabuza had been not dead when he had thought him to be. Resilience didn’t even begin to cover it at this point.
“Could you do me a favor?”
“What is it?” Short of picking up their crusade to liberate Kiri, which Konoha would have its own designs on anyway, Kakashi figured most things were within the realm of reason to provide for a dying shinobi’s last request.
“Can I- I want to- See their face.”
He sighed, lowering his headband and finally closing his Sharingan. He was exhausted. The fight had taken a lot out of him, physically, against someone of Demon of the Mist’s caliber, and emotionally, having to use Chidori again. A whole storm in his hand tearing through cartilage tissue like paper muscle hot blood on his face- Get it together, Hatake. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last.
He turned over Zabuza so the man wouldn’t be lying face down, careful of the wounds, not that it would matter much longer. And he didn’t even have to call for Sakura before the girl was making her way to them with Haku gently cradled in her arms. She lowered the kid, face too peaceful, too youthful to be here, next to Zabuza carefully.
With seemingly great difficulty Zabuza turned his face so he was gazing at Haku’s own, expression pinched, though Kakashi didn’t think it was about his physical wounds anymore, “I know I don’t deserve it, but if I could, if it was possible at all… I would want to go to the same place as you.”
Sakura kneeled over them, hands clasped in a traditional prayer pose.
“You can Zabuza-san,” she said as if there was no doubt at all, no need to ever worry, when she spoke like this somehow it felt unquestionable, “You can go together.”
It was easier, dying was, than surviving your comrades and loved ones. Kakashi knew if he ever made his psych eval appointments, his assigned therapist would have probably had kittens over it, but he was a little jealous of Zabuza. Of getting to go out, together, in a fashion. Of finally resting, and letting go.
And Kakashi had never been a religious man, how could he for fucks sake, if there was a god they must have really hated him. But he couldn’t help but imagine too, looking at the two Kiri nin, hearing Sakura speak like there was an after, that maybe one day he could see everyone again. Even though he didn’t know how he could ever face them, would he even know what to say, could he ever apologize enough? Would he be able to ever tell them, the years upon years worth of words he had spoken silently to a memorial stone that could never answer back?
Lord knows I don’t deserve it either, he thought, But I hope we all can go to the same place, one day.
What the hell, he should have never agreed to becoming a sensei, having kids was making him unnecessarily sentimental. There was no point in musing about the impossible was there? This life had to matter, it had to be enough. When it was his turn he hoped he could at least have what Zabuza had, if nothing else. Someone for him to look at, and someone to watch over him.
“Don’t look away,” Kakashi said, when Naruto turned away overwhelmed as Zabuza took one last rattling breath.
“This was the end of a man who lived life fully to the last second.”
Notes:
for real i thought i could finish Wave finally here, but the chapter was going to be humongous so splitting the finale in two! did anyone peep the change in the tags? mwahaha
quite excited to wrap this arc up, i constantly think about this story and write lil sections for it but unfortunately i’m not a linear writer, like i keep adding drama to the Gaara Rescue and the Uchiha Brothers arcs lmao can we just like get there? filling up scenes in between the things i already dreamed about is sooooo hard :’)
Chapter 11: 10. but the arms of the ocean delivered me
Notes:
ey, double update weekend indeed! and it’s a little longer than my usual chapters because i just wanted to fiiiiinally wrap up Wave lol i’m so glad a few people in the comments hoped i wouldn’t bury Haku and Zabuza, because lemme tell ya it had always been my intention from the start to explore different death/funeral customs and we have so much opportunity for that here using different elemental nations! let’s go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Awareness came back to Sasuke in shivers.
He was so cold. He didn’t think he had ever felt the cold like this before. Not just on his skin but crawling under, penetrating down to the bone, shivering from the inside out. Uchihas, after all, always ran a little warm. Even before he had learned any clan jutsus, Sasuke’s fire bright chakra had always kept him at a body temperature above most of his peers. It had been the same with the rest of his family. Once upon a time there had been someone who ran even hotter, whose touch had meant warmth and safety and affection. Though now anyone’s body heat next to his own made him break out in hives. He wanted to think he was above such a reaction, he should be stronger than this, but he couldn’t help it.
It had been an annoying adjustment period to learn how to sleep next to his teammates without waking up sweating from nightmares. Naruto was uncomfortably warm sometimes. Sakura at least had the decency to have freezing hands and feet that, while just as annoying, did not make him want to claw his own skin off when she accidentally brushed against him during the night. It had quickly become apparent that Sakura sleeping in the middle of the two boys led to the most restful nights for all of them.
Sasuke’s gaze finally focused enough to see a head of sunshine gold hair, and realized his legs were uncomfortable not because of the attack or lingering coldness, but because the dumbass was sprawled over them, blubbering into his knees. He had the most bizarre urge to reach out with his hand and pet Naruto’s head, maybe that would stop this mess, but his arms were thankfully too stiff to cooperate with the insanity that had just possessed him.
He lifted his eyes, at this point hardly surprised, to a curtain of pink and striking green eyes looking down at him calmly. From this position he could see every single pale lash that surrounded that frustratingly serene gaze. His head was resting on Sakura’s lap, it wasn’t uncomfortable, but he wanted to get up and move away regardless.
“My, my, Sasuke-kun,” she said, voice soft enough that he doubted even Naruto would have picked up as close as he was, “What pretty eyes you have.”
What?
Sakura kept staring at him, making direct eye contact. She had always been a little brazen about that compared to everyone in class, but this felt a little different. She looked into his eyes, and he couldn’t help but feel like she was searching for something. It was an unsettling combination of both not being seen and being seen entirely too much. He was tempted to ask, he knew Sakura would answer bluntly as always, but Sasuke also knew whatever airheaded shit that came out of her mouth would only lead to more questions he didn’t want to deal with right now.
He cleared his throat instead, he was so thirsty suddenly, “Where is the Hunter in the mask, what happened to them?”
“Haku, and Zabuza too.. They are dead, Sasuke-kun.”
Oh. That’s- What? What else had he expected? This wasn’t schoolyard sparring, being shinobi meant real fights, warm blood cold bodies eternal death. Sasuke had already learned that young in the most visceral way.
“You look like you lost a fight with a porcupine, Asshole, I’m surprised you survived,” Naruto said. It probably would have landed better as an insult, if he wasn't trying to wipe his tears and snot away with his sleeve. Was it really surprising? Thinking back to the fight now, Sasuke could tell the other young ninja had never planned to kill him from the start. He didn’t know how to feel about that. Anger would have been his default emotion, but he was still too cold, and bone tired, to feel much of anything.
They finally let him sit up to the side, leaning back on a completed section of the bridge barrier. The mist had already lifted, chakra made and natural, but Sasuke felt like he could still see miles and miles out into the sea from his position. The light of the sun reflecting off of the water below was suddenly so clear. Some of the town folk that had shown up with the little brat, Sasuke heard all about the “epic” battle that happened while he was out from Naruto, helped clear out the bodies and debris. Zabuza and Haku, laid side by side, faces turned towards each other looking eerily like they were just asleep, were left unbothered. The workers seemed to agree to let ninja deal with other ninja.
Tazuna, the only one who came to idle by them, perhaps still on edge after living through an actual fight so close, jokingly said, “Maybe we should name this bridge The Great Naruto Bridge once it’s completed, huh?”
He was surprised when Sakura cut in with a sharp “No”, even before Naruto’s grin could completely take over his face.
“Come on Sakura-chan,” the boy whined, “Wouldn’t it be so cool?”
The expression on Sakura’s face made it quite clear that she did not think it would be “cool” in any shape or form. But that’s not what she said, because everything had to be difficult with her.
“A name is a powerful thing,” is what came out of her mouth instead, “A name carved in stone, forever, spoken by generations even longer, is a powerful but dangerous thing.”
Kakashi looked already done with the conversation and moved away, Sasuke sincerely wishing he had the energy to get up and follow suit.
“Our names don’t belong here, Naruto-kun, it’s not right.” Perhaps it was the look in her eyes or the finality of her tone, but the idiot quieted down quicker than Sasuke knew him capable of. Sakura turned to Tazuna instead, smiling, and breaking the tension, “If you are looking for names, I think Kaiza-san deserves the honor.”
“Sakura-nee-chan,” the kid sniffled. When did this little brat get a crossbow?
“I know not all memories tied to this bridge are happy ones, but still Kaiza-san was an inspiration. He was strong and steady, like the concrete under your feet, but he was hopeful for change too, like the one this bridge will bring to Wave.” She winked and looked a little to the side suddenly mischievous, “I think he would have liked you remembering him that way.”
Tazuna’s family didn’t have a body for Kaiza. This was a gesture that was as meaningful as it was bittersweet. Sasuke clenched his hands, half in frustration, half trying to get his circulation back, he hadn’t had any bodies to mourn over either. At first everything had been too much to even think of having to deal with funerals, if he even could have, with no more Uchiha priests to preside over the ceremonies. What was an 8 year old even supposed to do? And by the time he could have maybe figured it out, the government had already made the decision. Of course they had, what happened was highly political in nature and a state matter with That Man still at large. Who cared what Sasuke thought or wanted. He had been a little relieved, that he didn’t end up having to deal with the aftermath after all, and then he had felt guilty for feeling that way in the first place.
Like he was shirking his duty to his family in some way.
But he had taken up a cause, hadn’t he, that would absolve it all. He would get the revenge they deserved, restore honor to his family’s name if not to their remains. And maybe then, wherever their souls ended up, they would feel at peace. Bodies or not.
Sasuke could mourn later.
“I still can’t believe it.” Naruto said, when everyone else had left, and Team 7 stood solemnly around the Kiri nin, “They had gone through so much to deserve dying, just like that.”
Deserve was a strong word. Did any of them deserve anything?
Sakura understood something she didn’t think Naruto had had the time to learn just yet. Hundreds of people died, thousands, millions. Few of their deaths had any meaning. Most were untimely, unexpected, undignified. Like Haku, Zabuza had chosen his moment. It hadn’t been pretty, it hadn’t been peaceful, but he had gone out the way he had wanted to. That was something to be admired.
One day, she could only hope to be so lucky.
Kakashi-sensei hadn’t coddled them when he had explained how Hunter nin operated before, and he didn’t coddle them now when he said the normal protocol would be to seal up their bodies and take them back to the village. Especially Haku, who had a kekkei genkai that might be of interest. Zabuza had no such thing, but he was high profile enough that Konoha would have appreciated the bounty. Naruto quickly let them know what he thought of that. Kakashi-sensei didn’t put up as much of a fight as a jounin should have, but she was coming to learn the man operated under no one’s moral code but his own.
Ultimately they wanted to bury Zabuza and Haku side by side, overlooking the bridge. Kind of ironic, but the view was pretty. “So that they can be together,” Naruto said, “That’s what Haku would have liked I think.” And Sakura could appreciate the sentiment, but-
Oh, dear, that’s not how it works at all.
People native to Kiri believed they came from the water and would one day go back to it. All over the Water Country and surrounding islands, people had laid their dead to rest in water for a long long time.
She only knew from books she had read, and Mama’s occasional tales of travel, that important people of Kiri were laid to rest in intricately made boats, together with precious offerings of golds and pelts and weapons. Even for those who couldn’t make it to the water, who didn’t have the means, their graves were surrounded in stones to look like boats on land, their seafaring ways tied so strongly to everything they did even off of the water. Only for the Daimyo of the Water Country, there was usually a huge procession, ceremonial archers in heavy set kimonos adorned with the seal of the Daimyo’s house would light their arrows before aiming at the pyre within the huge boat the Daimyo’s body had been placed for sailing, along with riches Sakura couldn’t even imagine. A brilliant column of flame floating out into the ocean, the royal households would stay on the shore watching over, until even the last embers had disappeared into the waters below. Sakura had even seen paintings of it.
On the smaller islands though, they wrapped up their dead in pretty red shrouds, and sailed out together to let them go in the open sea with song and prayer, to be consumed by sharks, believing they would become part of the life in the ocean again that way and their spirits would protect their people from shark attacks in the future. She liked the thought of that a little better.
She had to say something. Do something. She had wanted to restore the balance, didn’t she? Even if it was a tiny bit, even if it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, as much as she could. She could at least do right by two lost souls.
“No,” she turned towards Kakashi-sensei, “They are Kiri, sensei, we can’t bury them like this.”
“What do you suggest, Sakura-chan?”
She firmly said, “Those who come from the water must return to water.”
“What does that even mean?” Sasuke replied. She didn’t blame Sasuke for not knowing, not really, Uchihas had been traditionally very closed against others’ customs. Had Sasuke even had the time or peace to practice his own customs, let alone think about field disposals or water burials?
“Why, Sasuke-kun, it means we must honor their own traditions and lay them to rest in the sea.”
They sailed out together on a boat Tazuna was gracious enough to land them, Zabuza and Haku’s bodies both wrapped up in shrouds salvaged from whatever Tsunami could find as extra fabric in their house. It wasn’t ideal, but it was something. Shifty the waters may be, but the people of Wave were solid, with good hearts and care in their actions.
Naruto cried the entire boat ride, because of course he did. Tears slowly dripping down his chin onto his chest untouched, as his hands were busy rowing. She didn’t envy Naruto. How could she grieve something that had always been the ocean’s to take? How could she, knowing no one ever truly went away? Sasuke for his part was side eyeing all the wet spots on Naruto’s jumper and looked largely unaffected by the proceedings. The younger Uchiha was no stranger to death of course, Sakura hadn’t expected him to be as shaken as their bleeding heart teammate in the first place, but there was a tight look in his now coal black eyes.
When they were a good distance away from the shores, the still incomplete bridge barely visible from the mist that had rolled in again, Kakashi and Naruto lowered the bodies gently to the water one after the other.
Sakura didn’t know any prayers native to Kiri, she couldn’t assume they would like her own. Silently, as she watched the patchwork shrouds descend into the darkness below, she could only hope they found peace wherever the currents took them.
Contrary to popular belief Kakashi knew some medical jutsu. Incredibly basic, but passable for an emergency. He knew he wasn’t doing it entirely right, he didn’t have the precise chakra control for it, so it burned a little patching up wounds instead of painlessly healing. Still, he probably owed his life a hundred times over to Rin and her insistence that he learned something. What did people think, that when he escaped the Konoha hospital, he was bleeding out somewhere? Actually, that did sound like what his friends would say.
Kakashi closed the senbon punctures on Sasuke, they had been so precise, barely bleeding and not in any way close to something vital, with short bursts of medical chakra. He noticed how Sasuke’s eyes flickered red, though the boy himself didn’t even seem to realize it. It seemed instinctual, wanting to steal, to possess, copying techniques others had created with years of blood and sweat and tears in the blink of a pretty red eye. Too bad for the kid, there wasn’t much you could copy about medical jutsu unless you had the control for it.
Kakashi hadn’t gone into this mission, or even into the battle with Zabuza and Haku thinking it would trigger it, but of course it had, Sasuke was a prodigy. He could already feel the headache from how teaching the baby Uchiha was going to be. How do I help you, when I can’t even help myself? How do I make sure, that I don’t burden you with the curse of these eyes when I show you their techniques?
It was calm out here. The mist felt like a damp cocoon, isolating them from the rest of the world in a peaceful bubble, instead of the threat it had been before hanging in air thick and cold. He was pretty sure the waves had been a little rocky when they were first sailing out to Wave, but now, here, it was as if the seas knew, the water still and clear at the end of a life that had been so violent and turbulent.
Kakashi really needed to stop feeling envious of dead men.
Sakura was staring at Sasuke’s eyes, Sasuke was staring at Kakashi’s hands even though the medical chakra had sputtered out, Naruto who had finally stopped weeping was staring at the sword still nestled in the boat by their feet.
“What about the sword, Kakashi-sensei?”
What about The Sword, indeed. He told them the sword’s name, shuddering like the name alone could summon whatever possessed the Seven Swords of the Mist. Rightfully, it belonged to Kiri one way or another, but taking it there was nigh impossible. Kakashi didn’t even want to think about what Konoha would want with it, it would be a bloody leverage, instantly a target of the rest of the Swordsmen or their wannabes. Truth be told, he didn’t want to deal with the damn thing at all.
“So what do we do then?”
“I don’t know, Naruto,” he wished he had an answer, that’s what teachers were supposed to have wasn’t it, “I don’t know.”
The sword was, apparently, legendary. Sakura’s initial instinct had been to toss the humongous thing in the water with its owner, to rust, to break down, to become one with the ocean floor. But Kakashi-sensei said it wasn’t just Zabuza’s sword, not really. It had been passed through generations of Kiri nin.
“Well, maybe we can at least leave the sword here like a grave marker, even though there is no real grave,” Naruto suggested next.
It would have been a nice gesture, symbolic and all, despite the political upheaval it would possibly cause according to Kakashi-sensei, but-
“It’s stupid,” a voice cut in.
Sakura raised her head from the sword, almost as tall as her, to look into the pale gray eyes of Momochi Zabuza, standing next to Kubikiribōchō, in all his tall dead glory.
“You are just gonna leave my sword here for any ruffian to find and steal?” To his credit, Zabuza did not seem all that surprised that Sakura could see or hear him.
Frankly, Sakura was quite surprised, and a little miffed, to see Zabuza here. She had said, hope bright in her chest, clawing up from her throat perhaps still too naive, she had said “You can go together.”
But Zabuza was here, alone.
Already? She hadn’t known it could be this quick. All the ghosts she had met had died way before, and they themselves couldn’t always remember how or when they came to be.
“Konoha ninja really are stupider than I thought.”
Ok, well.
“There is no way it’s going back to Kiri so, I’d rather your team has it.”
Sakura sighed, interrupting a whisper-shout discussion on what to do between Naruto and Sasuke, “Kakashi-sensei, we need to take the sword back.”
“Sakura-”
“I know. Sensei, please. Let me have it.”
Zabuza-san gave me permission, was an asinine thing to say as much as it would have been true. Sakura could only hope that Kakashi-sensei saw something in her eyes, in the turn of her mouth so stubborn, that convinced him that this was important. That she would make this work, because no one else could.
“You know what?” Kakashi-sensei sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose over his mask, sealing their fate not that he would ever know, “Fine.”
Kubikiribōchō hummed with energy. “I don’t fucking know, shrimp,” Zabuza said before she could ask, “The sword is older than me.”
And it was. The steel was old, and Sakura wasn’t an expert on blades, but there was something even older, shapeless and hungry within the steel. Something that had existed before the metal ever took shape. How much Death has this thing seen? she wondered, shivering despite herself.
“Hey, maybe my senpai was here too, while I was alive, not that I would have known. Maybe we are all bound to it somehow in the end.”
Sakura raised her eyebrows at the newly minted Kiri ghost, And that’s supposed to be encouragement for me to take this sword?
Zabuza shrugged.
She could do worse.
Notes:
how about that folks? did you think this was going to be a Sakura gets Kubikiribocho story because that came to me later, and we will have to build up to her actually using it and how Zabuza still being here impacts that going forward. also wanted to explore the difference in how Sasuke vs Naruto react to death and grief, i think Naruto needs to learn to accept without breaking down emotionally too much, but Sasuke is definitely too used to repressing his feelings and needs actual processing that is not violent or angry, i’d call Sakura a happy medium but that would be a lie Harunos are weird as all hell in this universe lol
it’s thanksgiving weekend next week so i’m *not* promising an update this time haha, but i will be working on this fic more so, we’ll see. i’m planning a training interlude before Chuunin Exams tho, i have uh some thoughts :)
Chapter 12: 11. but your memory is here, and i’d like for it to stay
Notes:
sup gamers? admittedly i was a little busy playing Pokémon Violet last weekend but this weekend i finally finished part 1 of our interlude before the Chuunin Exams :D my spouse and a lot of my friends are degenerate mtg players who were up at 3am for an online tournament, and i was up too, which lead to me sitting down to write all this while hanging out on discord so you can thank them lmao let’s go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When they finally set out from Wave back to Konoha, Kakashi chose to be, optimistic. They had saved a nice town, defeated an evil boss, and his genin had gotten some actual battle experience under their belts. Though admittedly the circumstances couldn’t have been less ideal. That was Team 7 for you.
Kakashi was half listening to the kids bicker as they walked, he had finally talked to Sasuke about his newly awakened Sharingan and Naruto had been loud about it to say the least, asking Kakashi to teach him something cool if “Sasuke is gonna have fancy eyes and Sakura-chan gets a big sword”, half thinking about how to fudge his mission report in a way that they didn’t get in too much trouble. He would have to tell everything to Sarutobi-sama of course, considering the political ramifications, but the more of this mission was kept off the written records the better. At least for now.
He knew this day would come, from the moment the last loyal Uchiha’s folder was given to him. Okay, that was a lie, from the day the little brats had actually passed his test, if they were trash he would have failed them and flipped off the council no matter what they had to say about him. But Kakashi was still apprehensive about actually dealing with the Sharingan. Kakashi himself had been a little less than a full person, a little more than a legendary eye the day he had returned to Konoha with one less teammate and one more heartbreak.
It didn’t matter he hadn’t really known how to use the Sharingan, he was a genius wasn’t he he would figure it out, it didn’t matter his body could not handle the strain for long periods of time, he would fight for Konoha using “everything” in his arsenal or he would perish like so many others. Sasuke at least had been born with a body destined to wield its techniques, physically. Mentally, expectations both from outside and from within were harder to prepare for. Old warhawks with greedy delusions, young rage blind to consequences.
Though Sasuke hadn’t been the only one to awaken something during that clusterfuck of a mission. Naruto had been on that bridge, feral and unyielding, a nightmare given flesh. One of Kakashi's worst nights, and he had had a lot of those, from over a decade ago suddenly back again with fangs and claws at the ready. Naruto had used that chakra, unconsciously, but he had used it, seemingly so naturally. As someone more in the know than most of Konoha, Kakashi was aware the seal had never been perfect, nothing so last resort could have been. Jiraiya-sama had reassured Sarutobi-sama and the council again and again over the years, and with no appearance of Kyuubi’s chakra they had relaxed behind the useless gag order. If Naruto could access its chakra this much, the seal was weaker than they all wanted to believe. But, could Naruto always do this and just hadn’t, or had something changed? The boy had been himself after the fight though, bright and compassionate, not a single sign of Kyuubi’s influence remaining, and Kakashi had looked.
In certain ways, talking to Sasuke about his legacy was easier than talking to Naruto, as tied up in laws and old debts as Kakashi was. Though deep down he knew, if it came to it, if Naruto needed to know the truth to be effectively trained, Kakashi would break any law. That ’s what he owed to Minato-sensei’s memory. For now he would continue to observe, and not do anything incriminating. At least not overtly, not yet.
Kakashi rubbed his face. And to think, he had assumed the one civilian on his team would give him the least problems. Before they had even left the confines of Tazuna’s house he had sealed Zabuza’s sword. Sakura had looked quite put off by that, but he couldn’t really let her carry such a thing on her back the entire way. Not that he doubted she could physically, but if anyone saw them, if the world traveled to the wrong ears… He couldn’t risk it, not now, not before she was good enough to handle that kind of burden. To have a name, to have a history, was a dangerous thing in the shinobi world.
I’m so so sorry, Minato-sensei, if we were even half the trouble. Kakashi clapped his hands to halt whatever his three walking headaches were talking about, and with a chipper-adjacent voice announced, “We are going camping!”
“Camping?”
“Yes! Well, we will rest up for a day after we get back to Konoha but then I’ll take you guys on, uh, a camping trip for a few days.” He wouldn’t have rushed it, but the exams were right around the corner, this would be the only opportunity.
“A camping trip.” Sasuke repeated with a scowl.
“To train of course, what do you take your old sensei for?”
At least, both of the boys looked significantly more satisfied with that. Sakura hummed noncommittal, and Kakashi feared to think about what that was even supposed to mean. He told them that the previous Team 7 had a remote location in the forest they used to train. And he privately thought that it was remote enough that he could start Sasuke on the basics of Sharingan without oversight, address Naruto’s usage of Kyuubi’s chakra as subtly as possible, and let Sakura handle Kubikiribōchō without causing a scandal.
“There was another Team 7?!” Naruto asked.
“Of course there was Dumbass, the numbers get recycled with every class.”
“Well! How do they know who is who?”
“Most people call us Team Kakashi, Naruto-kun.”
“Okay, okay nevermind that, was the older Team 7 at least cool?”
“Ah,” Kakashi hedged. Cool? Perhaps. Powerful? Sure.
Tragic? Most definitely.
“Don’t concern yourself with that Naruto-kun,” Kakashi’s weirdest kid said, in that voice that had started to give him nightmares, “No old legacy should dictate our life.”
“We just need to be this Team 7, here and now.”
And maybe she was right. Maybe Kakashi only needed to focus on these kids in this life. Unburden them of Team 7’s legacy.
He could only try.
The day after they got back passed in a blur of Kakashi coaching them on mission reports, unpacking, not being able to see Mama because she was off on a short trip to a remote village close by to offer her services, and repacking. They were going to meet Kakashi-sensei at the usual bridge before heading out on a “semi-unofficial short training trip”. But, Sakura had a plan, of sorts.
For whatever reason, even though they all knew Kakashi-sensei would show up late at least an hour, and that was on a good day, the rest of the team always kept meeting at the exact time. It seemed like wasted time, really, it’s not like they were training or doing anything on the bridge, but Sakura just liked being in the same space as Naruto and Sasuke. She suspected the boys enjoyed the relaxed time there just as much, bickering or not.
Sometimes she would just listen to them argue about the most mundane things, sun shining down on all of them, warming her from inside out. Sometimes she would zone out, watching the little river that crawled under them carrying a cool breeze, to listen to whatever ghost wanted to chat with her when they saw her out and about.
So, she knew she had some time. She headed towards the Uchiha District. What Sasuke didn’t know, wouldn’t piss him off. Hopefully. There were just some things the living Uchiha could not help her with.
Another ghost, in one of those pretty animal porcelain masks she was coming to recognize, had told her they didn’t patrol much around the Uchiha District anymore, with the sole occupant being a kid with a strict routine that had bored them out of their minds after the first year of paranoid observance. So, this probably wouldn’t send up any red flags to anyone, though as his now genin teammate Sakura thought she had a valid enough excuse to be hanging around this desolate section of the village.
It wasn’t long before she stepped onto the District’s main path that the same beautiful woman from that day, long black hair, elegant arched eyebrows over eyes just as black, appeared next to her. Sakura had briefly wondered about that, if she had been limited to the main house, but the woman had been the matriarch of this entire place. She could go wherever she wanted within these walls. Though, that wasn’t much was it, when the entire world remained outside.
She glanced at her from the corner of her eyes, head still facing the road ahead. There was a huge blood stain, in the center of her chest, ruining the pretty house kimono the older woman was wearing. Sakura wondered about that too.
“Hello again, dear.”
She kept walking, as if with purpose towards the main house, she didn’t bow, “Hello, Uchiha-sama.”
“Oh honey, call me Mikoto. You must be one of Sasuke-chan’s new teammates. He talks a lot about you two, you know.”
“He does?”
Mikoto gave a polite chuckle, “Well, he complains to himself, but I think he means well. I enjoy hearing about your team regardless.”
Sakura made it to the door of Sasuke’s house and knocked like there was anyone inside, shuffled in place looking around as if she was just waiting for her teammate to come open the door already. But her eyes found Mikoto’s. The woman was still smiling, every word, every gesture had been polite and polished but her eyes were sharp, assessing. She didn’t look it, not with the genteel manners and the fancy kimono, but Sakura had the distinct feeling that Mikoto too had been a shinobi. She knew something, she had to. The blood stain on her chest oddly suited her. She knew Mikoto must have realized what she was staring at, questions plain on her young face.
Can I ask? But she remembered Shisui, the same aristocratic features, the same tragedy pressing down on ghostly shoulders, secrets held down his throat no matter how much he spoke or how loud he laughed.
Why would your son do this to you? To his brother? What happened here, really?
“I wanted to thank you,” the woman said abruptly. If she was aware of what Sakura really wanted to talk about instead, she didn’t seem inclined to go there, not today, “I know he’s been lonely.”
“I don’t really know now, if I was ever able to reassure him to be honest,” she smiled, and it was as pretty as it was resigned, “I really can’t do anything anymore, can I?”
Mikoto was better at faking her smiles, she thought, it didn’t look as forced as Shisui’s fake cheer when he wasn’t actually happy. Her eyebrows were relaxed, over eyes just a shade lighter than her son’s. Would Shisui have looked at her with the same eyes, or a different color in the infinity between black and gray, if he could have?
No, there wasn’t much the dead could do. Besides watching the living pass by, sight unseen, voices unheard. Mikoto couldn’t take care of her son anymore, and Sasuke was alone. He hadn’t asked for the company, and he never would, but Naruto and Sakura had walked into his life regardless. And with Mikoto’s advice, Sakura could help, even if it was just a tiny amount.
“I’m glad, that he has your team to look after him now.”
She grinned at the woman, difficult questions left for yet another day. This was something a Haruno could do, for the living and the dead, “You are welcome, Mikoto-sama.”
Naruto ran at her as soon as she was within sight, and threw his arms around her shoulders in a hug. Warm as always.
“Where were you Sakura-chan? It was so boring waiting here with this sourpuss without you!”
She leaned out of the hug and with her best deadpan delivery, Sakura said, “Ah, you see I was on my way here, when I got turned around by a ghost.”
“Did you ‘get lost on the road of life’ too?” Sasuke scoffed, “You are really picking up the worst habits from Kakashi.”
The man in question decided then to drop from the tree overlooking the bridge, “You have to start calling me sensei, Sasuke.”
Sakura and Naruto laughed the whole way to Konoha’s gates.
They didn’t go far. The place Kakashi-sensei led them to, through the forest that surrounded Konoha on all sides, was maybe half a day’s run from the gates. It took a little bit longer, because Kakashi-sensei made them practice running with chakra on the thick tree branches on and off. They switched directions so much that when they finally stopped, Sakura wasn’t sure where they had ended up in relation to Konoha anymore.
He came to a stop in a clearing, surrounded by trees so tall, big branches tangled over their heads, that sunlight barely reached the ground they stood on. Eerie wasn’t the right word, but the place certainly had a presence.
“Kakashi-sensei, where are we?”
“Whatever do you mean, Sakura-chan?”
She sent him an unimpressed glare. There was something important about this place, something that had Sakura’s Senses on high alert. She crouched down with her hands coated in the slightest amount of chakra and touched the ground beneath her feet. There was blood in this earth, fire, chakra, and death. There was history, soaking down down down tangled in the roots of these ancient trees, so oppressive Sakura wondered if others could feel it too. Kakashi-sensei knew, she was sure.
And then a woman took shape.
It was familiar, this presence, hot air burning down her throat whenever Naruto was close. Sakura stared, ignoring the boys complaining about her not helping unpack. She threw a “I’m appreciating nature” line back with a wave, and turned her back to the group.
“Who are you?” She whispered to the apparition in front of her.
The woman looked young, she flitted in place with energy so bright despite being dead, that Sakura could picture a healthy flush on those cheeks if the color hadn’t faded entirely from her.
She was in a comfortable looking dress and had no weapons. Sakura couldn’t imagine her being in a fight when she had died and taken this form. Her bare feet were covered in blood, and she could see blood running down her legs that had dried perhaps a long time ago, but she couldn’t see any wounds on her person. Most ghosts she met, violent ninja deaths and all, did not need to say anything before Sakura could glean some amount of information from the ghost’s form itself. She had no idea now. Not who, not how.
“Aww, you can’t tell? I’m Kushina!” She snapped her fingers, “Or hm, Akai Chishio no Habanero?”
Well, the title was fitting she supposed, what must have been bright red hair in life cascading down her back, but Sakura still tilted her head in confusion.
“Really? Nothing? What are they teaching you kids at the academy these days?”
She pouted, a little exaggerated, “Don’t I remind you of someone?”
The resemblance wasn’t as apparent as the one between Sasuke and his mother, but now that it was pointed out Sakura could see Kushina in Naruto. It was in the laugh really, the attitude rather than the looks she hadn’t passed down to her son. She looked back and forth between the two and nodded to herself.
“There you go kiddo!”
This presence, only vaguely present in Konoha, had always been tied to Naruto too, hadn’t it?
“I wish I could always be with Naruto, ya know?” She sighed, looking over Sakura’s head to where the boy was annoying their teammate and she laughed, “But I can’t, not completely, not as I should have been. I can only see, or hear at all, sporadically. My other half is different of course.”
Other half? Sakura remembered half a ghost in swirls, but not really, impressions even fainter than the woman across from her but no less present somehow. Always, always tied to her sunshine warm friend.
Oh Naruto, who are you? Why is it that everyone fears you so?
Kushina might have answered, reasons why falling down from her lips like blood down her long legs, she seemed more forthcoming and friendly then most ghosts Sakura had met, but all ninja knew how to act. Sakura thought at a glance Mikoto and Kushina seemed polar opposites, in energy and in manner, but they had both been ninja after all, and they had both been mothers, fierce and loving and tragic enough to remain behind, whether they had wanted to or not.
Instead she asked something more benign that was puzzling her right now, “Why can you appear like this here?”
“Why?” Kushina grinned, and it was bright and beautiful but a little wild too, so very like her son, “I died right here of course.”
Kakashi-sensei was arguably fantastic in many ninja arts, a genius most people in Konoha would say, though the emphasis put on the word changed depending on who you were talking to. That said, he wasn’t necessarily a kenjutsu master. He was just fine using his tanto when necessary, but mostly he depended on his own hands, and elemental jutsus, pilfered across the nations but honed with his own sweat and blood. He said he could coach Sakura at least on the basic forms of sword wielding, but he would see about talking to an expert to help her better handle such a unique sword once they got back.
Sakura was in the middle of practicing such a basic form, sweat dripping down her face, Kubikiribōchō was heavy, when Zabuza chose the materialize for the first time since Wave, “You need to lower your center of gravity more, shrimp.”
It was embarrassing, but Sakura startled so badly she flat out dropped the sword. She had the vaguest and most bizarre feeling that the sword was quite unhappy with that. She sent Zabuza a flat look.
“What? If I’m stuck here, I might as well make sure you don’t ruin our good name.”
“I wish you weren’t stuck here,” Sakura murmured softly. The boys were busy with their own training across the clearing, she didn’t think anyone could hear her, but it was always good to be careful.
“If wishes were fishes,” the faded man grumbled.
Sakura picked up the sword and steadied her feet. Zabuza had always been the chatty sort she supposed, taunting comrades and opponents alike, but now he talked with a melancholy that seemed uncharacteristic. But Death always changed things, Sakura knew that.
“It wasn’t right, was it? The way we grew up,” Zabuza said, eyes on the trees and not on the sword anymore, “The way I made Haku grow up.”
No it wasn’t. But he told her he had reconciled himself to Kiri’s violence before Sakura had even been born. And it had been home, no one wanted to see their home fall to ruin the way Kiri had. Sakura didn’t know, she didn’t think there was anywhere she would die for, no one patch of earth more important than another, the way Haku and Zabuza had. But Haku hadn’t died for a place, had they? They had died for a person, and that, that had felt like something to her.
It seemed more common no matter what villages or their books on heroes said, more understandable perhaps, so many stories of love and hate and grief tied up in other people that Sakura had heard from the dead and alive alike. Zabuza too told her a story, one of revolution. It seemed shapeless but that too was made up of people, strength for a righteous cause bubbling up and out of their veins like lava. And maybe they would finally change things, or maybe not.
“Bah, what should a dead man care about what happens to this world?”
“Well, you are still here.”
“My blood is on this sword, my violence, my choices, my ambitions. Kiri, is in this sword. And I wanted to go with Haku, I did but-” Zabuza huffed, “I think I can hang around to see what becomes of it a little longer.”
“But more importantly, what if you die and we get stuck in this sword together forever? No thanks, I should make sure you can at least survive to see your tweens.”
“I’m already 13, Zabuza-san.”
“Could’ve fooled me. Now, drop that left shoulder more.”
Sakura smiled, he really was soft on kids under all that rudeness wasn’t he, and lifted up her new sword, shoulder down, for another swing.
Kubikiribōchō was a curious thing. It responded to Sakura’s chakra eagerly enough, but it was hard to handle still, like it had a mind of its own. She was curious, what was it truly, that had bound Zabuza’s ghost to the blade, and what would it take for it to bind hers. She was a Haruno, their deaths were not governed by the likes of old grudges and legacies, in concrete or in metal. She belonged to the world, her blood mixing into water, her bones grinding into dirt.
But she wondered still, just how much of her blood would it take? How much of her violence, her choices, her ambitions.
How much would it truly take, for her, from her, to stay.
Notes:
meeting the mothersss :))) i think i mentioned this before in a comment but a lot of times Mikoto tends to be either an unsuspecting victim or a knowing participant along her husband in the massacre, here i want to go for something more complicated in the middle, Itachi takes after his mama after all, and this is why she remains and Fugaku doesn’t. in other mother related headcanons i didn’t check Kushina’s height but i imagine her tall as shit, and Minato as a short king lol
anywho is it just me or are these chapters getting longer lmao? i’m also halfway done with the part 2 of the interlude before the Exam arc so be on the lookout for that next weekend, Shisui unfortunately didn’t fit here but he’ll be back then along with *another* ghost that’s long been expected i assume :D in other editorial notes, the vibe of the song doesn’t fit what i pick for chapter titles but discovered a new band this week Queen Bee, a j-rock/fashion punk band whose song Inuhime i listened on a loop while editing this chapter. the lead Avu-chan is openly gender non-conforming, which is super cool!
Chapter 13: 12. my ghosts are not gone
Notes:
merry crisis, happy honda days, hope everyone had or is having a good break! you know i should really stop saying “see you next weekend” and then disappearing for several weeks lmao, i am working on this fic i swear but adult life is hard so sometimes you write two chapters in a day like you are possessed and sometimes it takes you two weeks to figure out a single scene. but the chapters are in fact getting longer so hope that’s some compensation? anyway here’s part 2 of the interlude before we move on to the Chuunin Exams let’s go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It was loud.
They were waiting on the bridge for Kakashi-sensei to show up again, he had “big news” to share apparently, and it was terribly, terribly loud. Sakura usually enjoyed Naruto and Sasuke bickering and mock sparring as they waited, but today it was not helping at all. Today, she felt over-sensitive and strangely apprehensive. Something had all the ghosts of Konoha in a tizzy, all manners of chatter, cheerful, complaining, curious, filtering to her ears. She hadn’t seen this much activity since the Obon festival, but she couldn’t focus long enough to figure out why.
From her perch on the railing, Sakura considered how high the drop to the small river actually was.
She leaned back, and without warning let her body drop to the water below.
Ah, blessed silence.
She didn’t hear Kakashi-sensei arrive or announce that the Chuunin Exams were finally here.
Sakura walked with Naruto towards his house, arms looped together, after both Kakashi and Sasuke had split off. She had never stated it outright, but she didn’t really like letting him walk alone in the village. She had a feeling Naruto knew anyway, the wet strands of her hair were dripping all over his sleeve, but he still nestled in close instead of moving away.
She was vaguely aware of the three little chakra signatures following their steps but when she nudged Naruto discretely he just grinned at her and she let it be, until the trio revealed themselves. Konohamaru, his name was, swore at Naruto, voice still high pitched with youth all boisterous, stance still shaky with only pretend confidence, but he was laughing too. And the kids seemed nice to Naruto, excited to be around him, which instantly endeared them to Sakura.
“Come on Boss, play ninja with us!”
Sakura was kind of tempted actually, she hadn’t had friends at that age to run around “playing ninja”. And when she had finally made friends she was already in the academy learning to be one. When Naruto looked at her in askance she shrugged. Why not?
“Hmm, you look a little too pretty to be a ninja onee-chan, but if you want to play you are okay in my book.”
“Oh, Konohamaru-kun, don’t you know?” Sakura sent him a wink, and when he turned bright red her eyes met a giggling Moegi, “Pretty is the most dangerous way to be a ninja.”
Udon ended up being the one who grabbed the wrists of a still sputtering Konohamaru and a laughing Moegi to run ahead. Naruto and Sakura gave them a little bit of a head start before giving chase. The sun was shining, she could hear the children’s screeching laughter ahead of them, and despite her clothes still dripping water Sakura felt warm, and happy and playful-
Up until the moment they turned a corner after the kids, only to see a stranger holding Konohamaru up by his scarf in the middle of the road.
Sakura slowed down to a stop behind Naruto, who Moegi and Udon immediately ran behind, and looked at the two ninja that were blocking the way. Their clothes seemed strange, the weapons on their back stranger. She was instantly curious, she wanted to ask who they were, where they had come from, but Naruto had more immediate concerns.
“Put him down!”
“Oh come on now, this brat is the one who bumped into me, I’ll just pay him back.”
The foreigner gave Konohamaru a shake with the scarf in his grip and Sakura could see Naruto bristling, ready to rush forward when Konohamaru let out a quiet whimper. Though he didn’t quite get a chance to do anything before the other boy had suddenly dropped Konohamaru and was clutching their hand. Sakura sighed. And raised her head along with the others to see Sasuke lounging on the branch of a tree overlooking the road.
“Great. First a screeching ape, a drowned rat, and now a cocky squirrel. You Konoha nin are really something.”
“Get lost.” Sasuke said, casually tossing with a rock up and down, ever the charmer.
The ninja went for the weapon on his back, much to his kunoichi companion’s voiced displeasure. Sakura ignored them and wrung out her hair, passively staring out. There were a couple of ghosts, ninjas definitely, standing atop the fences that lined the street watching the interaction between the Konoha and Suna nin. She thought one of them might have been poisoned, what she could see of their skin was tinted blue, bloodshot eyes, a mouth that kept foaming as they talked with the other. It was easier to tell what the other ghost had died from, they had been dismembered, flesh hanging in torn shreds from where once upon a time their limbs had been. They were betting on if the little Uchiha could take the Suna nin. If Sakura could have talked to them right now she would have put her money on Sasuke.
But then, without a word both ghosts disappeared, completely, from all of her Senses, all at once. Sakura didn’t have a chance to question it, didn’t even have time to warn Sasuke, before the reason suddenly appeared amongst them.
“Kankuro, stop.”
And everything froze.
The Smell hit her first, her very first Sense, her strongest, always. Sakura’s normal sense of smell was not strong, not for the living that is. When the other ninja fully materialized, the sand swirling all around them, she almost choked on the overpowering smell of burnt sugar, the minute you looked away from making caramel before everything went wrong. She knew whatever it actually smelled like was strong enough that she noticed Naruto recoil back, his nose the most sensitive out of all of them. And she knew, she could guess, that it could only be blood. Coppery and not sweet. Blood, hot, wet, spilt onto sand, blood, evaporating under the desert sun but the stain remaining on every grain.
The screaming came next, the wailing, so many voices half formed melded together. Sakura thought today had been loud, but that had been nothing, nothing, in comparison to the sound that she was hearing now. When she looked up to find the source, frozen to her spot, she saw not a ghost but a horrifying amalgamation of body parts, a twisted arm, a broken leg, a skull split open into so many bone fragments moving in bloody bloody sand, behind the newcomer’s back.
“You are a disgrace to our village. Have you forgotten why we are here?”
The real voice was raspy, but the tone strangely even, coming from a face so boyish and young. Light jade eyes, lighter than her own but so so close, met hers for a split second before moving on as if she wasn’t even there. She noticed in the periphery of her vision the other two Suna nin recoil away as soon as the redhead’s attention turned to them.
Sakura wondered if this is what fear felt like. Horrors she did not yet know could exist given flesh standing mere meters across from her. She knew they were talking, she vaguely followed in a trance, something about exams, something about introductions, but her eyes were glued still to the monstrous spirit writhing around the gourd on the stoic young ninja’s back, alarm bells in her head wringing Wrong, wrong, oh gods above and below, it’s all wrong.
She didn’t think she was breathing until they were once again alone on the street.
“Why didn’t he ask my name?” Naruto whined after the departing Suna nin.
“Good,” Sakura managed to whisper, throat dry. She thought she was shaking, enough that Sasuke was giving her a concerned look, but she met it with a pitying look of her own.
“Whoever that boy really is,” Whatever is in that sand-, “I don’t think you want him to want to know.”
They didn’t have training the next day, and Sakura found herself on a familiar path. The forest along Naka River was as welcoming as it always had been, but why would it not be? It was stranger to think that perhaps the Sakura coming back here was the one different from the Sakura that had left all those days ago.
The air was muggy with summer still in season, but the river she walked along was a cool refrain. The climb was a little harder though, with the sword on her back.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on who you asked, Sakura was not going to be able to use Kubikiribōchō in the exams that Naruto and Sasuke had explained would be held in Konoha in just a few days. She had a feeling the sword was equally upset about this, but Kakashi-sensei, who she had tracked down again shortly after the encounter with the Suna nin, was right. She wasn’t comfortable enough with it yet, and to announce that a Konoha genin had snagged one of the Seven Swords in the middle of an exam where ninja from all nations were going to be present was perhaps not the best course of action.
Though she had managed to wheedle permission to spend more time with Kubikiribōchō before the exams, when Kakashi-sensei would seal it up again and keep an eye on the thing. Kakashi-sensei was bemused as to why she wanted to “spend time with a sword” when she couldn’t be seen with it outside nor even practice inside without supervision, but when she had told him she had wanted her Mama to bless the metal he had just thrown the thing at her with a sigh, leaving with a mumbled “You know what? I don’t want to know.”
But she had another person to see who she thought would like to know.
“Really, Sakura-chan?” is what Shisui greeted her with, as soon as she came to a stop by the stretch of trees where Sakura had always thought as theirs. She wondered how Kubikiribōchō felt like to Shisui’s senses, or whatever had been left of them in death.
“You know, I didn't think you’d get into this much trouble on your very first C-rank mission,” he said after Sakura had given him a brief summary of what had happened in Wave, “But it’s you, so maybe I should have expected it.”
Sakura almost felt bad about what she was about to do, but it was her, so really, Shisui should have expected this too. She hummed as she concentrated her chakra along the sword, and thought about bloody concrete over unrelenting waves.
“What? Who the hell is this blind punk?”
And then Momochi Zabuza was standing on the edge of Naka River, looking quite put off, probably because for the first time Sakura had called for him instead of the man appearing randomly.
She didn’t know what kind of reaction she was expecting, but Shisui just sighed like he was decades older than he was, and turned towards the other ghost, “I don’t know whether I should be offended you don’t know who I am, or proud that I was, you know, good at my job.”
“Since not all of us liked announcing our name and presence by swinging around a very big, and might I add, a very recognizable sword.”
Sakura refrained from pointing out that Shisui had had a title in life, and from what she had finally seen of Kakashi, and of Sasuke, during the mission in Wave, had he had his beautiful eyes now he might have been just as recognizable to Zabuza.
“Whatever, brat.” Zabuza huffed, an aborted motion to grab a sword from his back before realizing the weapon was in her hands now.
The two ghosts bristled across from each other and she almost laughed despite herself, there were ways ghosts could influence each other, but she didn’t know without chakra, without the weapons they had known life, what these two thought they would do.
“I don’t know the first thing about maintaining a sword.” She said after a period of silence only punctuated by the rush of the river and the sounds of wildlife around them. Her feet were submerged in the water and Kubikiribōchō was laid across her knees.
“That’s fine, shrimp, Kubikiribōchō is actually very low maintenance. Besides, you know,” Zabuza waved a hand between them unamused, “The haunting, apparently.”
He valiantly ignored Shisui snickering and muttering “Welcome to the club, buddy”, and said, “It maintains itself as long as it feeds on blood. Your enemies, ideally, it is an Execution sword. But you can bleed your own hand on it occasionally.”
“My blood is on this sword” he had said, disappointed ambition, but not dead yet hope, in every syllable. How very literal.
His piece said Zabuza disappeared, and Sakura noted that he at least had some measure of control over his own manifestation. But she would remember the way she had called for him with a burst of her own chakra, and wondered if it would always work, whenever, wherever she needed. Though she would not have the pleasure of his company for the upcoming exam.
“Sakura-chan,” Shisui said when it was just the two of them sitting on the bank again, just the damp earth, the mossy rocks, the ever flowing water, Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Shisui, the two of them first and always, “I’ll be with you during the Chuunin Exams, whenever you need me.”
“I know better than anyone legacies come with prices, but I can’t help but be glad, that with this sword you’ll still have someone with you, in places where I can’t be.”
Sakura waited for dusk, not because of any spiritual significance, but because she knew it wasn’t Kakashi’s regular visiting hours. This time tended to be deserted around the village overall, Konoha was a ninja village before anything else, and the day started early. Dawn was the most active time of day, ninjas going out on training or on missions first thing in the morning, markets setting up along the civilian sectors just early. Around the time the sun was going down most people would either be going home or already inside somewhere else.
Plus it was out of the way enough that she was confident she wouldn’t run into any more foreign ninjas.
Though when she finally stood across from the memorial stone, she didn’t quite know what to do. She didn’t know which name, she would have traced it if she could, she only had an image in mind, a tragedy crackling like lightning in her own chest.
While they were out “camping”, Kakashi-sensei had given them all strips of paper to test their chakra natures. Sakura’s had indicated an affinity for earth and water, she had been pleased but hardly surprised. Naruto had wind, and she thought it suited him, as wild as it could be soothing. Sasuke of course had the fire she had been told all Uchihas had the affinity for, and surprisingly, lightning. Kakashi-sensei had joked about how between the three of them they had command of all elements. Someone else might have called it fate, Sakura knew there was no such thing, not really.
That was elemental chakra though. She sat down cross legged in front of the stone monument, she didn’t know how long this would actually take or if it would even work, and focused on her Yin chakra instead. Sakura had always been good at manipulating her chakra the way she wanted, as little or as much as possible, a scalpel or a sledgehammer.
Yin release existed outside of the five elements, it used spiritual energy to create something out of nothing, unlike its counterpart Yang release, which focused on physical energy. Yin release came to Sakura with an ease that should have only been possible with years of training, but Harunos had always been spiritual.
“I’m Nohara Rin, I’ve heard about you,” when the ghost she had been hoping to meet finally appeared she was smiling, “Nice to meet you Sakura-chan.”
Rin wasn’t a full ghost. None of the spirits that had gotten attached to the monument were, no remains of theirs existed in the soil below them, but their names in stone had been traced over and over by the living, with their anger and sadness and guilt perhaps just as tangible. Much like the others she had seen here in passing before, Rin was a half formed apparition, with her lower body trailing into mist instead of a body, whatever shape it might have been in at the moment of death.
The most distinct thing about her was the wound in her chest, flesh surrounding it charred by lightning down to the ribs she could see poking out even now, like that was the only thing Kakashi-sensei could recall. Over and over and over again. She remembered Haku, would the wound in their chest be the only thing Sakura could recall one day? Did you smile like they did? she wondered, Did you choose this too?
Sakura closed her eyes, the image of a ripped out heart burnt into the back of hear eyelids, as she listened to Rin’s story about their own Team 7. She kept cycling her chakra slowly but methodically, how she usually did when she meditated, but Yin chakra had a different purpose. She didn’t think Rin would suddenly disappear on her now, but she thought her voice was clearer, her presence more solid, when Sakura was focusing her chakra like this.
“Did you know you have very precise chakra control Sakura-chan? I can feel the way you are moving yours now.”
“How does that feel?” she mumbled, “When you no longer have chakra of your own?”
“The feeling is different now compared to when I was alive, almost like I am looking at something from behind a glass wall. But I can still tell you have excellent control, you could have been a healer, you know.”
“I used to be a healer,” she said, and when Sakura opened her eyes again Rin was looking at her hands with a bittersweet expression, as if she was seeing her own ghosts. Rin told her of a war they had been too young to fight in, a weapon she had been too young to carry, the one Kakashi-sensei had to even now.
A healer. Sakura thought it still suited the woman across from her, with her soft eyes and kind smile, for all the good it had done her in the end. Did you understand then the weight of a life in your hand? What it meant to give it as well as to take it away?
When it had become too dark out for her to just be sitting in front of the memorial stone without raising questions, Sakura finally stood up and dusted her pants. She traced her fingers across Rin’s name, and smiled at the ghost in thanks. For coming when she had called, for sharing her story as painful as it must have been.
There was another name too, right next to Rin’s, and Sakura imagined that name had been traced over just as much as hers, maybe more. That name had a physical anchor as well, unlike the young woman across from her, but his ghost wasn’t here.
“Wherever he is,” Rin said, her faded fingers ghosted right above hers over Uchiha Obito, “He isn’t here.”
Kakashi walked into the dingy bar intending to get a drink, and forget he ever had students, maybe, only to see Genma, Kurenai, and Asuma already crowded into one of the booths in the corner. Why Genma liked third-wheeling those two, Kakashi would never understand.
His hopes of still being able to sneak out without being noticed and just have a drink home was dashed when Genma leaned out of the booth, arms waving, and hollered his name for everyone in a mile radius to hear. Kakashi ran an exasperated hand through his hair, what was it about him, anti-social as he was, that drew the most cheerful and loud, and annoying, people to him?
At least the bar wasn’t that crowded, Kakashi had chosen this place specifically because it was a hole in the wall that only ANBU and some select jounin frequented. He knew the more popular and well established bars in the village would be crawling with foreign ninja right now, and Kakashi was not feeling up to playing subterfuge tonight. And lo and behold, the topic of conversation at the table seemed to be Chuunin Exams. He was slightly surprised that both Kurenai and Asuma had nominated their teams this fresh out of the academy, but he would be the last person to talk.
“I nominated my brats too,” he ended up sharing. It’s not like they wouldn’t find out tomorrow if they hadn’t already. The lineup of Team 7 was usually gossip worthy, even on a non-international event day.
“You. Hatake -I fail every single team I’ve ever been offered- Kakashi, are nominating fresh genin to the exams? You?”
Kakashi shrugged. They had earned it, and strange as the feeling was he was sort of excited to see how they would handle the exam. He was sure they were either going to crush it, or knowing their luck, something would go horrendously wrong. But then again, for once, it would be the proctor's problem and not just Kakashi’s. It would be a good learning experience regardless, and he was going to tell the table as much.
But he hadn’t even taken a sneaky sip of his drink before Genma announced, “Well at least, your mini-me is doing well I hear.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“You know, pink hair, a little weird,” he gestured with his hands, “Ye high.”
Asuma frowned at the other man, “Don’t call Sakura-chan weird Genma, Ino-chan adores that girl.”
“Hey man, a few jounin saw her haunting the memorial stone for the last couple of days like you do, and she doesn’t even do anything apparently sits there and meditates with her eyes open?”
“Meditates?” Kakashi wouldn’t put the practice past Sakura, she was raised as a shrine maiden and seemed to still follow a lot of their teachings, but the location was odd.
“Raido thought she was doing something with her chakra, but couldn’t really tell, isn’t that weird? Seemed harmless enough that he didn’t stop her.”
Kakashi chose to answer that by putting his head on the table and turning away from Genma’s laughter.
“Like I said, weird, like you.”
Kakashi sincerely wished she would be nothing like him.
Sakura sat on the stone steps leading up to their shrine, right under the torii gates high above her. Mama had returned to Konoha from her trip, bringing satchels of dried tea leaves with her from the small village she had visited by the northern coast of Fire. They had brewed some together after dinner, black tea leaves scented with bergamot oil so distinctive, the faint citrus-like taste on her tongue. Sakura never took her tea with sugar, the back of her mouth was always sweet when she inhaled the air.
The mug warming her hands, the brew warming her throat, Sakura had told Mama of her adventure through Wave, ghosts she had lost to the ocean and ghosts she had brought back with her to land. Mama had never awakened the Senses, but she understood more than anyone else could, she always listened and put Sakura’s mind at ease.
“You have a gift most will never understand,” she had said, finishing her own tea with a contented sigh, “A gift, that I know will not feel like a gift at times. But it is a part of you, will always be a part of you, no matter what path you choose, peaceful or turbulent. And you should use it as you see fit.”
“You have done so, so well, Sacchan. And I know, tomorrow too,” Mama had the same green eyes as her, bright green with life, Haruno with death, “You are going to be amazing.”
When she leaned back on the step above, the stone digging into her spine deliciously, and looked up, the sky seemed dark and unfathomable. But there must have been stars above, waiting, watching, to see what would unfold down below once tomorrow arrived with all its chaos. Decades of rivalries and violence contained within the walls of a village, enacted through the bodies of children who did not yet understand their history. Did Sakura understand it any better just because she had heard the unforgotten on the wind? Was it easier to die in the exams now, than to survive longer only to die after? Would someone she saw today and smiled at be the one to kill her years later?
But she had chosen this path, to learn and grow in a different way than she could have in another life, she had chosen her teammates over prayers and fans, she wanted to continue to see it through. She knew her team would be waiting for her tomorrow, and they hadn’t needed to ask or to confirm, because they too knew Sakura would be there waiting for them.
Sakura knew love. Despite everything else, she had been surrounded by it.
She had grown up in a beautiful little home, generations of Haruno care and strength in her mother's arms. She had the love of a good friend, insects chittering in her ear. She had fallen in love herself, flower petals under her fingers. Naruto and Sasuke though, they didn’t have anyone. Anyone but the ghosts that trailed after them with sad eyes and unheard words.
Sakura vowed she would fill them with love, with life.
The way mushrooms grew on the dead, and nurtured the soil for new beginnings.
Notes:
look i imagine if Kakashi ever saw Sakura was just in the water under a bridge when he showed up for a team meeting he would shrug and say “you two deal with that, i’m not paid enough for this.” moving on! Zabuza and Shisui finally meet! Rin’s here! level 10 Sakura learns Summoning! can she take a single step during the Exams without running into more ghosts or horrifying monsters? we’ll see, i’m really excited to get to some of the scenes in this arc :D
i might take a break from updating until i fully finish writing the entire Chuunin Exams so that i can get back to a more regular updating schedule with already written stuff so there is no uncertain wait in between? maybe, inspiration is inspiration. you know this fic has been basically this the entire time lol, so thanks for putting up with me everyone:
Chapter 14: 13. i know i’ll wither, so peel away the bark
Notes:
guess who’s baaaaack? the Chuunin Exam arc is finally here and so am i :D it’s been a while gang, writing has been slow because, you know, the earthquakes that killed over 60K people in my home country, i do art on the side so i’ve been busy with charity commissions, my job had a big move, lgbtq+ rights are being rolled back all across america, and now there is a historical election going on etc etc, life amirite? but we aren’t here to chat about all that, we are here for more talking dead people so let’s go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sasuke was the first one to the bridge, as usual.
He knew he was early, his time under Kakashi’s tutelage had not yet eroded years of ingrained clan manners. Nowadays it tended to be more due to his impatience to do things rather than keeping up any sort of appearance as a clan heir, but Uchiha Sasuke would not be late anywhere. Thankfully neither Naruto nor Sakura were late today, they must have been feeling jittery about the exam themselves, though one would be hard pressed to tell from Sakura’s pleasantly neutral face.
They walked to the academy together without any words exchanged between them. It was perhaps uncharacteristic, but they hadn’t needed to say anything before either, to know they would all be meeting here this morning. Despite himself Sasuke acknowledged the two were kind of growing on him. He would be glad to finally make chuunin and be rid of them for sure, but for now, it eased his mind to know he would have the two idiots by his side during the exam.
When they finally arrived there was a commotion in the hallway, and Sasuke scoffed. Was this really their competition? He caught the back of Sakura’s bright white kimono-like top and pulled her away from gliding her way up the stairs, ignoring the people around her like usual.
He interrupted the bandaged ninja’s spiel, “I don’t care. You better let us through. And drop your third rate genjutsu while you are at it.”
“So you figured it out, eh?”
Sasuke had always been particularly sensitive to genjutsu. He had the innate Uchiha talent for it surely, but he had never focused on it during his early training, without a Sharingan it hadn’t seemed particularly pressing. And he didn’t know how much of his ability had been altered by that night. He couldn’t break out of a genjutsu, not as he should be able to, without almost triggering panic attacks. He would be caught dead than address the particular problem though.
Perhaps it was a good thing that Kakashi did not care what his students thought, and had decided on making Sasuke break out from genjutsu after genjutsu during their little “camping trip”, while Naruto was busy trying to regulate his chakra better and Sakura was enthralled with her new sword. When Sasuke had asked when he would be casting the damn things, Kakashi had waved it away, and explained there were no good targets currently. Naruto was too easily fooled unless he focused, which was difficult on a good day, and he had said, with the most particular grimace on his masked face, that Sakura was “incapable” of being caught in them.
Sasuke did not like that one bit, but he wasn’t touching that question with a ten foot pole. Though this did result in Sakura being recruited to cast simple genjutsus on Sasuke in between her physical training, to get used to the feel of it, and Sasuke being subjected to easy illusions to start breaking before the horrid things in Sharingan no Kakashi’s arsenal.
He had never been the “stop and smell the roses” kind of guy, but during those few days he had learned to appreciate all his senses, and not just his newly improved sight. The feel of real tree bark catching on his fingertips, the ambient noise of the forest, the shifting wind. Though sometimes it was even simpler than appreciating those little details, sometimes you just had to remember you had only walked up two floors and not three.
“It was easy,” he shrugged, all practiced Uchiha confidence, “Right, Sakura? You are the best in our year at understanding the art of illusions.”
Sakura blinked back at him unimpressed, “Of course I noticed it. We are on the second floor.”
Incited by that wonderful deadpan comment things almost came to a brawl, before a green clad ninja with the most atrocious bowl cut Sasuke had ever laid eyes on was catching both his and the previous boy’s kicks in midair. He was almost impressed.
“Hello!” The boy said and bowed gracefully towards their group, after pushing both their legs away like nothing, “I am Rock Lee! You are... Sakura-san?”
Oh no, Sasuke thought, you have got to be kidding me.
“Would you like to go out with me? I’ll protect you with my life!”
Sakura looked at the guy from under her pale lashes, with that endless green gaze Sasuke and Naruto had both been slowly getting an immunity for, but the bowl cut guy flushed from head to toe as she scanned him. She stepped closer to the green eyesore moving out from behind Sasuke, and Sasuke bristled in irritation, then got irritated at himself for being irritated in the first place. At least Naruto seemed just as annoyed, huffing behind them both.
“I am flattered, Lee-san, is it?” she said, “But your life is a precious thing, you shouldn’t just dedicate it to strangers.”
As Sakura broke the guy’s heart, casually as she pleased, Sasuke finally noticed the long haired Hyuuga glaring at him with arms crossed over his more boisterous teammate’s back. He elected to ignore the other ninja when he asked for his name. Sasuke could recognize a Hyuuga, haughty and pale, from a mile away, he didn’t need to know their given name. He was sure the other boy recognized him as a Uchiha on sight as well, they must have both been brought up into clan rivalries. Sign of respect or not, and Sasuke was already so low on respect to hand out, first names didn’t really matter, did it?
Ultimately, after all the posturing in the hallway, Sasuke wasn’t really surprised to be challenged to a personal fight before the exam even started, but he was kind of surprised it was the Rock Lee boy and not the Hyuuga.
“And besides, you know,” Lee wagged his impressive eyebrows toward Sakura.
Naruto was up and taking guard in front of her in a second, “Hey! Back off!”
Sasuke met her eyes with the flattest look he could manage. She shrugged back at him, What do you want me to do about it?, and he wanted to fight her a little just for that. He ended up accepting the challenge.
Sasuke had always been a proud child. How could he not be? With an important surname, though he did not yet know the weight of blood that coated each syllable when it came tumbling out of his mouth, a good family. And the best brother in the world, so strong, so amazing, pudgy hands clinging to a sleeve begging for his attention, the reassuring touch on his forehead, though he had not known about the blood that stained those once gentle hands either.
It was always, always, always blood, wasn’t it? In your veins. Cut open from wounds.
Rock Lee was fast. Frustratingly so. Sasuke barely managed to duck a kick, and realizing he wouldn’t be able to dodge again as Lee rotated with his own momentum to go for another with his opposite leg, he could only steady himself to block. He was surprised when the boy managed to get under his guard and knock him over. Sasuke felt his eyes burn, with frustration and shame.
Sasuke could admit to himself, if not to anyone else, that he wasn’t proud. What did he actually have to be proud of anymore? But if he didn’t cling to his name, his pride on the outside, where would that leave him? Where would that leave his ghosts?
The green-clad kid ranted about geniuses. Not that he would ever know, but Sasuke did understand him, because Sasuke was skilled, sure, but he had measured himself against the likes of a once in a century genius his entire life. He still trained hard, obsessively so.
He had his renowned eyes now, finally, but could they do what Sakura’s calm green gaze could, incapable of being felled by any genjutsu? His chakra was fire bright and strong, of course it was, but could he burn someone the way Naruto’s endless corrosive energy could? He was supposed to be the top dog but his teammates, nobodies next to him, had over and over shown him things that made him feel lacking in their presence, even for the short time they had been together. The unshakable calm or the unwavering faith, he had neither. However, just like them, he was stubborn too. He could be an anxious mess inside, he could doubt until the cows came home, but he would get up and chase his ambition regardless, because what else was there to do?
He was still glad when a booming voice interrupted whatever move Lee was planning to take them down with in the air. There had been a manic look in the other boy’s eyes that Sasuke recognized from his own, he wasn’t sure either of them could get up after Lee was done. With the interruption though, Lee lost his grip on him, and Sasuke was falling. Sakura caught him before he could flip himself, sturdy as anything. He swatted at her shoulder to let him down. There was only so much embarrassment he could take right now.
The exam hadn't even started, and he was already feeling so done.
The auditorium was packed, crackling with the tense energy of all the living in the room, and of the dead.
Sakura’s attention zeroed in on a blur of primrose yellow, and she steadied her feet with a grin before she had an armful of Yamanaka Heir.
“You made it!”
And before she could reply back there was a weight across her back, hands draping across both her shoulders and Ino’s. A dry voice right next to her ear said, “Surprised? Why? We all made it.”
She turned her eyes from Ino’s to meet Shino’s inhuman gaze over his glasses. She grinned at her friends, leaning back on Shino’s chest with arms still around Ino’s tiny waist. She had missed them. She hadn’t had a chance to meet them for a while, not since Wave, or Team 7’s camping trip. Even before, they unfortunately hadn’t had much time to hangout like they used to, all busy with their new genin teams and missions running around greater Konoha. She saw Naruto talking to the rest of Team 8, while Sasuke stood silently with the boys of Team 10. It looked like their entire academy class was here. She wondered what their senseis had been thinking.
There were other Konoha shinobi in the room too, ones that were vaguely familiar and ones Sakura had never even seen before. The older boy that approached them was one such ninja, a sort of brotherly but condescending smile on his face, as he told the gathered rookies about their competition. It was exceedingly kind of him to divulge this much information to strangers even if they were all Konoha nin, and not that Sakura didn’t believe in kindness in the ninja world, she was teammates with Naruto after all, but it still put her on edge somewhat. None of the ghosts paid attention to Yakushi Kabuto in any way that was concerning though, so she shook it off. Maybe she was just finally feeling the pressure of the exams. Especially so when Kabuto-san showed them what he had on Sabaku no Gaara.
The Sand nin’s record was obviously intimidating, Came back from every mission without a scratch?, Sakura knew how scary that sounded when even Naruto and Sasuke, usually so eager for a fight, were looking down at the cards with pinched expressions. But she had already known, had felt it viscerally so, looking at the tangible weight of the bloody sand across Sabaku’s back, and the intangible one made up of ghosts she couldn’t number hidden within.
It wasn’t as jarring as it had been when they were directly under his attention, fleeting seconds screaming as empty jade eyes had judged her unworthy, but even now Sakura was aware of the corner of the room all the ghosts avoided. Not even Naruto’s dogged cheer, nor Kabuto-san’s scuffle with the pissed off Oto nin, managed to distract her from the Death waiting grating scorching, always and forever unsatisfied and searching, at the periphery of her Senses.
It was a relief when the proctors arrived and Sakura finally had to focus on the exam. Do or die Haruno, she mentally slapped herself, she couldn’t be shaken up so badly when her teammates were already moving on to their seats with determined faces.
At least, the first part of the exam was easy, all things considered.
Sakura wasn’t stupid by any means, although she wasn’t all that studious either. She had always liked history but she had never excelled at the more technical classes they had to sit through at the academy, team formations and weapon trajectories did not manage to catch her interest nor focus. That didn’t quite matter because the room was filled with ghosts, flitting around the genin and the proctors, laughing to themselves, sharing their own exam stories. Chuunin Exams, Sakura realized, was quite the entertainment for the dead of Konoha who had once been ninjas. She wondered how exams were like to others, the silence of the room perhaps nerve wracking, when to her it sounded more like a dysfunctional family gathering.
She tapped her pen against a question she couldn’t even make heads or tails of, and made eye contact with a faded young man who had half of his body burned. The ghost was happy to tell the Haruno all he could see of another examinee’s answers. She grinned down at her own paper, to not look too suspicious grinning at the empty air above her desk.
The proctors had to know she was cheating, her rhythm was unnatural, but she knew, sharing another conspiratorial smile with the ghosts who cackled freely around her, they could never ever guess just how. And if they couldn’t catch her, it didn’t matter.
When she was done she leaned back and closed her eyes. She hoped Sasuke and Naruto both were doing okay.
Naruto was anxious.
Of course he was. There were predators in this auditorium that set his senses going off the rails, worse than what had gone down in Wave somehow, and that had been before the dude with the glasses had spooked his teammates further with the information he had shared. Naruto sensed, more than he consciously knew, that the way Sasuke stiffened wasn’t quite in anticipation. He felt the way Sakura zeroed in on the red haired sand guy was in quiet dread, not in interest.
He was ready to crawl out of his own skin, adrenaline with no outlet thrumming inside his veins after Sasuke’s impromptu fight with the Lee kid and the unfamiliar ninja that Glasses had intercepted, and the test wasn’t helping. Taking tests, sitting still, had always been the thing he had struggled with the most in the academy. He was good at doing things, even at failing, and trying again and again. That didn’t tire him. But he was so abysmal at putting his thoughts on paper, especially in a structured way that was expected in tests like this. He stared down at his blank paper, and the paper stared back at him.
After what felt like an eternity, the scary looking man at the front of the room finally announced that it was time for the tenth question. Naruto sighed, it was all or nothing now.
“First, you must choose whether or not to answer the question.”
“Choose? What happens if we don’t choose to answer?”
“If you choose to not answer, you will lose all your points and immediately fail. Of course, your teammates will be disqualified with you.”
There was a cry of outrage from almost everyone in the room, but Morino Ibiki only smiled, a little mean, a whole lot satisfied. Naruto tensed in his seat, because he was a prankster, and he knew when a prank was about to be played on him.
“Why would anyone choose that then?!” someone yelled out.
“If you choose to answer, but get it wrong…”
There is always a catch, he thought. You just have to decide if being caught is worth it.
“You will never be permitted to apply for the exams. Ever. Again.”
Naruto ignored the commotion that followed the final rule’s announcement. This was a lose-lose situation, and that was stupid, because what would be the point? There had to be another scheme at work here, but it didn’t take long for people to raise their hands one by one, followed by their teammates, relieved and angry and everything in between. The room was becoming more and more stifling despite the number of people decreasing. The smell of nervous sweat permeating the place was putting Naruto on edge.
He couldn’t see what kind of face Sasuke or Sakura were making from his seat, and turning back to look at them would have been a show of weakness even he was aware was a terrible idea. But he couldn't just get up, nor raise his hand. It would have been the safer option, he thought Sakura would take his decision calmly, and Sasuke would be pissed for sure but he would have to get over it. They could wait for another day, another chance, they could.
But.
He wanted to continue on. The only issue was, he wasn’t blind to his own capabilities, there was a chance he wouldn’t be able to answer the coming question. The blank paper in front of him was a testament to that.
He didn’t really care if he stayed a genin forever, he would find a way to be Hokage regardless. It’s not like anyone had believed he could even be a genin, had actively tried to stop him in fact, but he was here now, wasn’t he?
Could he take Sakura and Sasuke’s ninja careers away though, if he failed this test? Sakura had told them she had decided to be a ninja, not a shrine maiden, because there were “answers” she wanted to find. Naruto didn’t know what, but he knew she at least deserved the chance to seek them. And Sasuke. Well. Sasuke had a goal, an “ambition” he was dead set on, and while he might eventually forgive Naruto if he just delayed their chuunin advancement if he took the chance away forever the last Uchiha would never forgive him. Naruto couldn’t even guess what the other boy would do. For all his calmer, even begrudgingly caring moments, Sasuke was primarily a creature of badly repressed anger. Naruto had a feeling he might do something drastic in response.
Really, thinking about them like this, what they would think what they would want what they would need, Naruto realized he was already way too attached to his teammates. Their adventures had just begun. He wanted to keep waking up to Sakura latched onto his back even when it made him sweat through the night, he wanted Sasuke to yell at him more while they sparred because then the other boy was looking at him and he was seen. He wanted to learn, and grow, together, under Kakashi-sensei’s reluctant but kind care, as much as he put on a show of indifference.
They were a team. The team that Naruto had always wanted. He knew they were it, down in his marrow he could feel it.
But.
Despite the risks, for his own sake, he wanted to give this everything he got. He had resolved to act, to not get left behind, and giving up without even trying felt too much like the Naruto that had not yet known the feel of poison burning through his hand, the splatter of blood against his whiskered cheeks.
There would be missions in the future too, with just as impossible choices, he had already gotten a taste of it in Wave. If he quit here and now, what did that say about him? His resolve? If he ended up being the one to raise their hand, would Sasuke and Sakura ever really respect him again? Not being acknowledged by them was a scarier thought than the possibility of them being angry at him, hating him even, if he ended up getting the tenth question wrong.
At the end his answer was just, Fuck you, I’m not going anywhere. Kakashi-sensei would have been so proud of him.
And much like his passionate outburst that had essentially concluded the first part of the Chuunin Exams with a bang, the second part started with literally another.
Ibiki wasn’t even done with his explanation about the design of the test, when he was pelted with the broken glass of the window a fishnet clad kunoichi came barreling through.
Naruto liked Mitarashi Anko on sight.
Oh, she was as weird as they came, but he couldn’t help but get caught up in her energy. A lot of ninja were just so serious, even his teammates, as much as he adored them now, had trouble matching his more frantic energy on occasion. It was kind of fun to see higher ranked ninja like Anko, crazy to the bone, but competent and respected, and feared, in measure. Naruto wanted that. The way everyone’s eyes followed Anko, like they couldn’t quite help it.
He didn’t want to lose what made him him, his emotions, neither joy nor anger or sadness or the madness underneath, just to get through the ranks and become Hokage. Grandpa Third was nice and all but, he thought he could be more passionate than that.
He knew the older kunoichi was trying to scare him, scare everyone really he just happened to be a convenient target, and she was succeeding based on the spike of adrenaline he detected from the candidates closer to him. Naruto had always been abnormally sensitive to the way people’s mood shifted, fear, aggression, the primal things that moved beasts in the darkness of the forest, eyes glowing teeth sharp. These were things that he had always understood the most. Anko was a predator too, and when she realized she didn’t have the same effect on him as the others, she huffed a laugh close to his ear.
“Good, kid, you’ll need that attitude in there,” she whispered before she moved away to a respectable distance to explain the rules to the remaining genin.
“Things are getting serious, huh?” Naruto said, when they were standing behind the tarp to receive their scroll, signing his name on the wavers they were handed to absolve Konoha of any responsibility if they died during this portion of the exams, “Like, we can actually die in there?”
Sakura put the Heaven scroll on her back underneath her clothes, hidden from sight from the loose fit of her pretty kimono top, and smiled at him sweet as anything.
“Oh Naruto-kun, you can die anywhere.”
Notes:
a more Sasuke and Naruto focused intro to the new arc to see what the boys are feeling going into what is going to be an absolute shit show of an exam, but don’t you worry Sakura gets her spotlight next chapter ehehehe i’m really excited for that since one of the first scenes i ever wrote for this fic was everybody’s favourite Sakura scene, with a little twist… we’ll make the Forest of “Death” earns its name yet
Chapter 15: 14. howling ghosts they reappear
Notes:
“surprise bitch, i bet you thought you’d seen the last of me” fjdhfjsfg after almost 2 years i’m back again perhaps with the longest chapter i’ve ever written :) frankly it was hard to feel inspired with the state of the world, so many countries are descending to outright fascism, there was effectively a coup in my home country that is still a mess, we have all been witnessing a genocide on our screens for over a year and most of us are helpless to do anything while our governments condone it… i never really stopped thinking about this fic though, and sometimes you can’t do anything *but* write so, here we are once again let’s go
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Forest of Death” was a part of the original Hashirama Forest.
Sakura knew the stories, all Konoha children did, but she had never been physically inside. Only higher ranked shinobi had regular access to the holy heart of the forest, or even to the parts that had been sectioned off as dangerous training grounds. Sakura found that she liked being in here now. It made her feel tiny, in a way it was a relief. To just be a part of something living and growing and dying in equal measure, an ecosystem she couldn't even begin to dream of. To be just that small, inconsequential, made her problems seem smaller as well.
In the grand scheme of things Sakura was nothing but one day food for the flowers.
She didn’t forget the waivers they had just signed not blaming Konoha if they died in the exams, the way Naruto’s pen had struggled before he overcame his nerves with his usual cheer, but when had Death ever made Sakura anxious? She was sort of looking forward to the week they were going to have, trying to survive against nature and the other teams, in the Forest of Death. The name alone made her shiver in anticipation.
There was only the problem of Sabaku no Gaara, hunting with free reign in the same forest. Sakura had no intention of ever crossing his path no matter what kind of posturing fight Naruto or Sasuke thought they were looking for.
She let the boys figure out their plans, bickering about passwords and signals as they made their way deeper into the forest, distant screams breaking up their dialogue now and again. Sakura concentrated instead on circulating her own chakra, a stream of steady and cool energy, in contrast to the burning touch of both of her teammates. She had some practice with it now, felt the way her Yin chakra separated, knew the intention required.
The forest was as strange as it was familiar. Sakura had grown up in Konoha forests rich and tall and humid, the way the trees closed in on them here were the same, the sunlight that barely made it through to the ground between the thick leaves above. Though the air was denser in the Forest of Death, the chakra heavier in the ground and in the vegetation.
The ghosts were not really silent, they were buzzing in the periphery shaking the air with it, but they didn’t talk, empty eyes and empty mouths. She closed her eyes, yet the darkness that came over was not the lack of vision from her own. Between one step and the next Shisui appeared, eyes just as empty, mouth full with a laugh instead.
Sakura relaxed her gait, slowing down behind the boys, and whispered to Shisui to find the Suna kid. Shisui was gone again with a grin and a wink, and Sakura focused back on her teammates. Naruto was moving forward to the bushes, loudly announcing he had to take a leak, and Sasuke waved him away with a disgusted scoff. They hadn’t come across other teams yet, and if they weren’t lucky they would need to start tracking soon. Maybe scout better ambush positions and eventually somewhere safe enough to camp in.
Sasuke had already started tapping his foot, impatient to move on, when Naruto finally walked back into the small clearing.
Sakura blinked only once.
“That’s not Naruto.”
“Sakura- What-”
Sakura looked Sasuke in the eye, knew he appreciated the gesture after he had awoken the Sharingan even if he wouldn’t ever admit it, and resolutely whispered, “That’s not Naruto.”
She didn’t need to look at Naruto, or whoever was pretending to be him, to know she was right. Naruto had his ghost in Konoha, the half of a soul that clung to him, and Kushina’s unmistakable aura hot and heavy on her tongue after she knew what to look for.
The stranger across from them looked like Naruto, talked like Naruto, laughed like him even, but they didn’t have his ghosts. Sasuke rolled his pretty eyes heavenward, but he subtly moved in front of her, the other hand behind his back a quick familiar signal. Without hesitation fire bursted from his mouth at the Naruto look-alike mid speech. Though the body didn’t burn, both of them watching as it melted away like candle wax, and from behind the flames and sludge a new figure emerged.
When the ninja, now revealed to be from Kusa, glided towards them, like they had melted out from the shadows themselves instead of a burning body, one minute only a figment of fear between the trees the next an all too real threat, Sakura froze up again.
She honestly felt a little stupid. She had been so worried about running into the boy with the blood red hair and an entire desert worth of ghosts on his back. Her focus had been too narrow, there were other ninja from all over the wide wide world that had sneaked inside Konoha for the duration of the exams. There were scarier enemies that Sakura had not yet met.
And the one standing in front of them now, liquid movement strange grace, was quite dead.
They were moving and talking as Sakura and Sasuke stood frozen still, but Sakura was certain she was looking at a dead body. She didn’t think anyone else could have possibly noticed. It was in the way their cheeks slouched down and did not quite move in sync with their mouth, the complicated layering of skin, fat, muscle, and fascia that had become loose, losing their fight against gravity in death. More than that, the way the smell of sweet candy rotten took hold of Sakura’s lungs with each panicked breath.
But the eyes, those eyes were bright and gold and alive.
She didn’t understand.
There was something really fucking wrong with that shinobi.
Sasuke was getting, as Kakashi would have put it, “real fucking tired” of being rooted to the spot with killing intent so strong he had to deal with traumatic flashbacks in the middle of combat. If only he knew, just how much Kakashi would relate.
The strange Kusa nin was toying with them. It felt different than the sheer pressure Zabuza had exuded, Zabuza had seemed self-assured at first but his strength was wild and desperate. This shinobi had the strength in spades, Sasuke could feel it in the air, but it wasn’t wild. It was controlled, eerily so, every movement malicious in its grace.
He was so tightly wound looking for the next movement that he didn’t even realize they were plunged into a genjutsu, there were no hand signs, not even a word, he was suddenly torn apart flesh a spray of blood dead dead dead-
Sasuke snapped out of it with a quick jerk of his arm and a new stab wound on his leg. Kakashi had been right, physical pain, while a last resort, was an excellent way to hurl yourself out of a genjutsu you couldn’t break with your own chakra. But if it kept on going like this, his sensitivity to genjutsu was going to become a huge problem, he only had so much blood to waste. He swore on the Uchiha name that if when they got out of this mess, he would suck it up and give his all to Kakashi’s training so that he would never be caught unaware by a genjutsu. Ever again.
Trembling, he glanced at Sakura next to him. Haruno -could never be caught by a genjutsu- Sakura, yet she looked horrified. There was an entirely unfamiliar blank look on her face that Sasuke couldn’t even make heads or tails of. One thing he did understand though was that they had to leave, and they had to find Naruto, but first they had to move or die.
Before the next attack caught them Sasuke hauled Sakura by the waist and threw them both up the tree and hopefully out of the range of the Kusa nin.
He was too optimistic. The enemy could not reach them, but apparently their snakes could. It was Sakura’s aborted shout of his name that made him drop her and grab a handful of kunai to launch against the biggest snake he had ever seen coming up behind them. He landed back next to her panting, “Sakura, give me the Heaven Scroll.”
“No.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes were starting to burn, “Sakura. This isn’t the time to be stubborn-”
“Sasuke-kun,” she was glaring at him. How dare she just glare at him- “The scroll doesn’t matter. There is no guarantee they will let us go if we give them the scroll.”
“Well well well, aren’t you a smart little pest.”
The shinobi materialized on a branch about thirty feet away from them. Too far to engage hand to hand, too close for comfort still.
Sakura didn’t fully turn to Sasuke, not when it would have meant turning her back to the enemy, but her gaze caught his own anyway. Her eyebrows were furrowed, but her eyes had steeled. She moved a step forward, spine straight, hands casually moving to meet across her back where he knew an extra weapon pouch laid on her waist almost hidden under her top.
“Besides,” he could spy the edge of her smile, “What happened to never letting me show you up again?”
Sasuke took a deep breath to quell the sudden flush of heat in his chest. You little bitch. He had almost forgotten she could be just as infuriating as the deadlast.
His Sharingan came blazing to life. She was unfortunately right, this was no fight about a damn scroll, not about an exam, there was something seriously wrong here. The Kusa nin was definitely not a genin, the chakra too intense, the intent too different. As much as he would have liked to put his memories in a box and never think about them ever again, he thought the pressure was uncomfortably similar to that of His.
They had to fight their way out of this mess, and pray that luck was on their side. He wished he had gods to pray in, but he had forgotten how.
Admittedly, Naruto had not had the most fun time during Kakashi-sensei’s little bootcamp.
He wasn’t sure he liked the way Sakura and Sasuke would sometimes both turn to him, at the same time, each pair of eyes unnerving in their own way.
Sakura was, well, Sakura. He had gotten used to it somewhat over the time they had been a team, from the initial blank gaze to that something that felt yawning and hungry within when she actually focused on you.
Sasuke’s new crimson eyes were different. Everytime they landed on him Naruto felt his pulse skittering, something ancient and angry inside responding to that gaze. He felt the odd urge to submit, then rage that he had the urge in the first place. But then he would catch Sasuke’s lips in a smirk, and it would all turn into a challenge again that at least felt normal, present, easier to parse than whatever it was that took over him in those brief moments.
Claws instead of nails, fangs instead of teeth, tearing at its chains, then flesh, then reality itself. Another gaze, just as red, blooming in answer. Slipping out of his grasp before he himself could wear the skin of a beast more than human.
He was getting a better understanding of this strange feeling though. Kakashi-sensei had had him extensively describe what he had felt while fighting against and then with Zabuza on the bridge. He told Naruto to try and be mindful of it, to take a moment and try to recognize that feeling, how exactly it started, where in his body it came from. To try and understand instead of fighting against it, whatever it was.
So when the huge snake swallowed him whole, he was expecting the indignant howl that echoed in his head, then out of his throat. Naruto was no easy prey.
This time, when his chakra started boiling over, he was ready for it.
When his shadow clones were done shredding the snake from inside out and dismissed themselves, Naruto landed in a heap of serpent guts and blood with slit pupils dilated red eyes blazing. He carefully wiped his face with claw tipped fingers, he was covered in saliva and god knows what, and it was hell on his sensitive nose, but at least he wasn’t snake food. He wasn’t sure how he didn’t realize such a big creature had come up on him unnoticed, Naruto was usually very sensitive to predators around him. Not that you even needed to be that sensitive to notice a snake that was two stories tall.
He looked around the clearing. It was unnaturally silent for a forest that was supposedly inhabited by all manners of mutated and dangerous wildlife. Was it the snake that had scared off everything around them? Or was it something else? He had to find Sasuke and Sakura asap.
He had a suspicion they had their own snake to deal with.
Sasuke’s eyes were on Sakura’s back as she jumped forward, and faster as she had gotten the Sharingan could never miss her pull out the end of a length of ninja wire. They hadn’t ever actually practiced the move before, but they had talked about it under another night sky below similarly ancient trees.
Sakura raised a right fist filled with chakra towards the Kusa nin, but they both knew such a telegraphed hit wouldn’t connect. When he predictably batted her away, Sakura was already rolling with the motion to move behind him. Like this he and Sakura were on either side of the enemy, and with her left hand Sakura flung out two kunai tied with the wire.
The man easily dodged both projectiles again, but Sakura hadn’t been aiming for him. She had been aiming for Sasuke, who swiftly caught both and brought the wire together in his hands trapped between the sign of the tiger.
Good thing both of his teammates had taken to keeping their ninja wire oiled, and highly flammable.
He breathed in air through his nose and with a whisper of Katon! breathed out fire from his pursed lips, catching along the wire and racing towards the Kusa nin.
“Ah ah, fire again? Getting a little predictable, aren’t we Little Uchiha?” he said as he neatly put out the flames coming towards him. Sasuke was partially frustrated that their attack had failed, and partially relieved he didn’t have to watch the guy peel out of another melting body. Though, some of the flames had caught on his hitai-ate, and when he waved them away there was a different symbol on the metal.
Oto. Of course he knew there were Oto ninja in the exams, but everyone was an enemy, so why the disguise?
They didn’t have time to regroup again before there was an explosion of smoke, and the Oto nin was standing atop the head of the biggest snake Sasuke had seen so far today. Or in his entire life. It was covered in slick purple scales that looked iridescent where light managed to reach them from the canopy, the amber eyes matching its summoner were intelligent. He couldn’t even see the end of its body curling down and around the branches below.
“Man, I’ve had it with snakes today.”
Suddenly, there was bright chakra, there was familiar heat, and there was Naruto slamming into the newly summoned serpent with flesh shredding claws and blazing red eyes.
Not like Sasuke’s own, no, but bright crimson almost the same. Is that… is that really Naruto? He had been deceived once today by a Naruto look-alike already, but that chakra was unmistakable. Sasuke was sure he had felt this energy before. In Wave, on that cursed bridge. He hadn’t seen Naruto fight then, trapped as he was in his own fight in the icy dome, but he had felt it.
Naruto landed on another branch a little ways away completing a triangle formation with him and Sakura, grinning with whiskers on his cheeks prominent like fresh wounds. “You two losers just couldn’t finish without me, could you?”
Just like Sakura, Naruto knew exactly how to push his buttons. The annoyance snapped him out of the panic the sight of the summon had caused, and he was relieved and pissed off that he was relieved in equal measure.
“I hate you,” Sasuke said, “I hate you both so much.”
But despite it all, they were growing on him. He might not have chosen them, chosen anyone at all, but this was his team now. And they were going to end this fight together one way or another.
Sasuke had always been confident in his abilities, perhaps too much so, as a genin. Wave had been a wake up call, and so was Lee, that there were people that were stronger than him out there. He felt inadequate measured against even his two idiot teammates at times, but he knew they would never run away. If he couldn’t stand up and fight here too, what hope would he ever have against Him?
“Alright! Time to show the reptile who’s boss! You with me this time, Sakura-chan?”
Sakura answered by flinging a genjutsu at the Oto nin. Magen: Narakumi was a simple D-rank genjutsu that made the target see a horrifying vision of their choosing, but Kakashi had Sakura cast it on him over and over again until the sight of Sakura’s hand forming the rat seal alone almost made him cringe.
The man didn’t even flinch as he simply flared his chakra before the genjutsu could latch onto him, “You are more trouble than you’re worth”. But of course, the initial attack was again only a distraction, while Sakura alighted next to Naruto already having casted another illusion on him. Or more accurately his kunai.
Naruto flung a storm of kunai at the giant snake who didn’t even bother to dodge, catching the tiny projectiles on its tail. But under Sakura’s illusion the explosive tags that he so favored had been hidden, and Naruto activated them with a savage grin, making what looked like only needles along the tail explode into fire and blood. The summon roared and trashed, and the Oto nin neatly jumped off its head closer to Sasuke, who immediately launched his shuriken and threw himself after the metal. The man caught the shuriken with ease, but Sasuke took the advantage to kick from below the occupied arm, only for his leg to be met with the man’s raised knee.
He didn’t even seem bothered by Naruto and Sakura engaging his summon behind them. His eyes were focused only on him and he seemed to be humoring Sasuke with the taijutsu exchange. He got gradually faster, looking more and more delighted as Sasuke kept matching him with spinning eyes.
“Not bad, Sasuke-kun. To have such mastery over Sharingan so young, a worthy successor to the Uchiha name indeed! You really are his brother aren’t you?”
Sasuke felt a red haze descend on his vision that had nothing to do with his doujutsu. Who the fuck-
“Who the fuck are you?!”
“I am Orochimaru of the Sannin,” the man said like that was supposed to explain anything at all, a self satisfied smile stretching, stretching, and stretching his face until all his Sharingan could focus on was that grotesque mouth.
So he saw those painted lips open around unnaturally sharp fangs. He saw the bite coming. He saw Sakura’s bright green eyes widen, rushing towards him with a scream he could have never imagined her capable of. Ahead, from between the mess of snake viscera and bone, he saw Naruto hurtling towards them gaze unholy red.
A hissing whisper of, “I look forward to seeing you again, Sasuke-kun,” before his neck was on fire.
His last coherent thought before he passed out was, For fuck’s sake.
Naruto had barreled into the fight the way he barreled into most things in life. Brash, loud, with more strength than people suspected him capable of.
Because Sasuke and Sakura were his. Naruto didn’t have much to call his own, so what he did have he cared for possessively. The darkest parts of his mind roared, angry, spitting, hellfire red, to see Sasuke pale as a ghost clutching at his neck, Sakura crouched over him protectively though she was shaking like he had never seen before.
He had wanted to become stronger to catch up to them, to bask in the glow of their acknowledgement and begrudging respect. But now what he wanted was not only to catch up but to push forward, stand around them, in front of them like an impenetrable shield, a protector.
“What did you do, you creep??”
“That’s very rude, Naruto-kun,” the man clicked his tongue. And before Naruto could even ask how the creep knew his name, he unhinged his jaw, and the said tongue, impossibly long, shot forward like a whip and coiled around him.
“Hey! Get off of me!!”
The tongue retracted back towards its owner, uncaring of Naruto’s flailing, and once he was close enough, the sudden surge of malevolent chakra had him instinctively cease his struggle.
He felt more than saw the hand that suddenly made contact with his abdomen, frozen as he was in front of the man’s sickly yellow gaze. Predator. This wasn’t like Anko’s posturing, this was a real predator.
“How fascinating,” he hissed, close, too close, his breath on Naruto’s face reminiscent of being inside the stomach of the snake hot humid acidic. “When he is consumed with rage he starts losing himself, and the Fox’s chakra starts leaking out… I would have expected tighter seal work from that bumbling fool. Oh well.”
The Fox? What seal?
The hand that had touched him paradoxically gently a second ago dug into him with all five fingers, the chakra in each point intense enough to stop all further thought. The forest disappeared, the sky, the trees. Air disappeared, and with it the howl trapped in his throat.
“Sa—” Before he could manage to utter either of their names the darkness enveloped him for the second time that day.
For what felt like an eternity Sakura stood across from “Orochimaru”.
He had introduced himself like the name itself was supposed to invoke fear, but she didn’t know why. She was trembling from head to toe, there was no point in trying to even hide it. Sasuke was whimpering behind her, hands clutched to his neck, and to the side she had barely managed to stop Naruto’s fall by pinning him with some well thrown kunai.
Orochimaru dusted himself, and Sakura watched helplessly fascinated as the rest of what had been the dead body the man was wearing crumbled like dirt and fell away.
There was something still so unnatural about him, but at least she could see it was no longer an obviously dead body speaking. It was something much worse.
She would have said the gold eyes that finally met her own felt like staring death in the face, but Death had always been known to her. Perhaps not always gentle, but familiar. Orochimaru’s regard was anything but. She was pinned to a spreading board, a butterfly with wings fixed and no way out. His gaze was formaldehyde down her throat burning, her tissues her cells freezing, her insides to be dissected simply for cruel pleasure.
“Look after your teammates well, little girl,” he said and smiled at her, a mockery of human expression, “I have such wonderful plans.”
Before she could blink, he was gone. She stood alone, battered and bruised, both of her teammates out of commission.
Sakura was not panicking.
Well, she was, but if she told herself enough times that she was absolutely not panicking, her body and brain might eventually get the memo and calm down.
She ran up across the branch to detach Naruto from the trunk and let him down. He was out but he didn’t seem too beat up by whatever had happened before he managed to find them. Sasuke in contrast was burning up, the bite on his throat was already inflamed and pulsing. She didn’t think it was poison, Orochimaru easily could and would have just killed them if he had wanted to, but the sight of the strange wound made her anxious. There were worse fates than dying in the shinobi world.
She leaned Naruto back on a tree trunk, sat in front of him with her back to his chest, and secured his legs to her middle and his arms over her shoulders with the coil of rope and extra bandages she had in her leg pouch. Once it felt like he wouldn’t just fall off, she gingerly got up and lifted Sasuke up bridal style. Oh how she wished he was awake to be annoyed by that. Now she just needed to find a suitable shelter to hide until at least one of the boys woke up.
She eventually found the grove of a tree big enough to lay both of them down and started cleaning their wounds as best as she could, starting with Sasuke's bite. The task helped her calm down a bit more and concentrate on methodically circulating her chakra again. As a Haruno, manipulation of Yin chakra came to her easier than most, but it still took some focus. In the fight against Orochimaru she had not had a second to think about, let alone cycle Yin chakra enough to call back Shisui.
“You were right, there is something majorly wrong with that Suna kid, he just literally crushed several teams. But he is way over by the east sectio- Sakura, what the hell?”
Sakura didn’t look up from wiping Naruto’s face with the towel she had wet with a little bit of water from her canteen. What on earth was he even covered with?
Instead she asked, “Who is Orochimaru?”
The wheezing sound Shisui let out at the name almost made Sakura giggle despite the situation. So, it wasn’t just a random enemy, not that she had truly believed that, but something important had just happened to them. She just had no idea of the magnitude yet.
Shisui’s brief explanation on who Orochimaru was, legendary, ex-Konoha nin, was interrupted by three chakra signatures approaching their location, rapidly. It couldn’t have been a team just passing by, Sakura had learned from Kakashi-sensei by now that no Team 7 was ever that lucky.
She stood up from where she had started laying down a trap to secure Naruto and Sasuke’s location and marched across the clearing. She would face whatever was coming head on, and keep it away from the boys as long as possible.
Naruto was still fully out despite looking okay, but she wasn’t sure what technique Orochimaru had hit his abdomen with and that was starting to scare her. Sasuke’s fever was reaching dangerous levels and the only way to get him, get both of them, medical attention was to get them out of the forest.
She had to protect them until then and complete the exam for the whole team herself if she had to.
“You must have been up all night standing guard, eh?”
Three Oto ninja, vaguely familiar from the first stage of the exam, landed in the clearing. “Well, as of now, consider yourself off duty girl. Just wake dear Sasuke and we’ll take him off of your hands.”
She knew violence was guaranteed, that death was a possibility, but whatever was happening here was more than a regular exam she was sure. It felt too much like Wave, bigger fates at stake, for it to be chalked up to village tensions.
They were here for Sasuke. Orochimaru had been here for Sasuke. That would simply not do.
Sakura didn’t deign to answer their taunts. They could talk all they wanted.
Because she had already decided that Team 7 boys were hers.
Hers like the bones that lay under their feet, hers like the spirits that whispered through these trees. Her eyes that saw their ghosts and thought I’ll make you two live. Her hands that decided she’d hold onto their souls until her own breath leaves.
And even then Sakura thought she would stay around. Harunos did as they pleased.
“Shisui,” she rasped quietly, and moved forward to meet the Oto nin, Death at her back and Death in her eyes, “Watch them for me.”
Notes:
soooo what do we think :D tbh i had the start and the end of this chapter written over a year ago but for the life of me i couldn’t decide how i wanted the Orochimaru confrontation to play out because i changed the order of combat and who did what again, and i’m so bad at writing action which is why it took so long but hopefully it won’t take as long for the rest of the Sakura vs the Oto nin fight lmao
i edited this chapter while listening to the newly released Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtrack, especially the main song Lumiere on a loop. i highly recommend checking it out, and the game itself, what a coincidence that dealing with death and grief are major major themes in the game hm
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