Chapter Text
Sakura sighed as they caught Tora the cat for the second time in the same day. It was their official third mission, and they had just enough time to get one more in if they rushed. She grabbed the cat by its scruff before Naruto could get even more scratched up than he already was. The cat slumped in her hold and she nodded at Naruto's grateful look. "Let's go, we can get one more in if we're quick." That got her two teammates energized, and they rushed to the Hokage Tower where the missions desk was stationed.
Sakura smiled as they arrived quickly, and reported to the Hokage about the newly finished mission. They then went down and nabbed another mission before heading out. They were to gather some wild flowers that were growing on top of the Hokage monument. They were done in thirty-five minutes and returned to the Tower within the hour. That would have grabbed another, but Kakashi decided to finally get out of the shadows and ended their group discussion on whether to take the extra mission or not. "It's late, the desk will be closing in five minutes. We will meet at the bridge tomorrow at nine in the morning and we will being going over the training regime I have decided on for each of you." The boys nodded, and Sakura tilted her head. Kakashi dismissed them, and, having forgotten the chat they had earlier, Sakura began to walk towards her childhood house. Kakashi, taking it as her having decide to gather some clothes, followed. He watched as, as soon as they had arrived, she jumped to the roof and opened a window to her room. He waited five minutes, then went in. "Sakura?" He froze at the sight of her cut off hair from the open door to a bathroom.
"Kakashi-sensei?" Her eyes widened in realization, and she rushed around her room. She gathered her things and stiffed it in a bag she had on her floor. Kakashi looked at the bathroom, and the stark contrast between rooms. It was almost like a one-eighty, as if it had been designed by two entirely different people. Maybe it had been. The bedroom looked as if it had barely been lived in. New. No scuff marks on the walls from furniture, or childish mischief. The bathroom looked used. The tiles had small marks of the walls, and outlines of a small body of the floor. It was as if she lived in that room and not her bedroom. Even then, it still looked relatively new.
"Sorry, I forgot about our discussion. I'll be done in a few minutes. Just let me get a few things. Luckily my parents are already gone otherwise the lights would have been on. And my door would have been open..." Sakura mumbled that last bit, but Kakashi still caught it. As she was caught up in packing, Kakashi decided to look for the basement she had mentioned before.
His steps were soundless, as if he weighed a feather. He found the basement. And he felt enraged. Scratch marks on the door, low enough, he deducted, to be made by a four or five year old child. Some were higher, but lesser. There were even some marks on the door knob. He ventured in and his anger grew as he noticed drops of blood on the grey cement ground. The dust that clung to the walls, but not the floor. There was a dog bed in a corner. Just big enough for a small pre-teen to sleep in. There was a stench of vomit that permeated the room. He stilled. A vent were somewhere along a wall, given away by the slightest hiss of air. He reached up and pressed on a brick that would be much too high for anyone below five foot to be able to reach. He pressed it, and the wall next to it slid back and opened. Kakashi tensed and hid be the wall. There was a camera on the roof. He huffed and ran to the other side. Due to the lack of technological advancements, all that would be caught was a dark blurry figure. Then there was a key code. He cursed internally as he looked at the numbers. Some were worn, and others had a small coat of dust collecting on them. He pressed '1587' as they were the most worn, and based on how faded the numbers were. To his luck, the door opened. He stepped in, and clenched his fist as he caught sight of multiple syringes filled with, what he assumed to be poisons. Small boxes with rare and lethal poisonous plants surrounded the room, but was otherwise empty bar a file on the table. Some of the syringes were empty. He took one, as well as the file, and left. The door closed behind him, and he rushed outside of the camera's view, relaxing at the sound of the wall closed a few moments after he rushed up the stairs.
He went back to Sakura's room, and his the files in a storage scroll he had. He stayed silent and looked around as she gathered clothes in various dark colors, the opposite of what she had been seen wearing every day un until today. Even yesterday she had been wearing a bright red 'I'm here, kill me' dress. And then she stopped. "That's it, I think. Oh!" She reached up, and Kakashi caught sight of a scarred needle hole on her arm, near the inside of her elbow. His anger surged up, but he stopped himself from acting. Sakura grabbed a small box on a shelf. "This is for you." She tossed it to him, and then grabbed her bag, ready to leave.
"Let's go. I'll open this at the apartment." It was a fifteen minute walk earlier, but now that they were jumping the roof tops, it was ten minutes. Shorter than Sakura had thought, but a good distance from her old house.
They entered the apartment in silence, Sakura's attention was on her financial instability, while Kakashi's was on what he had seen in the Haruno Family's Basement. Both were attempting to make a plan on how to address and remedy their own concerns, but struggling to do so.
Kakashi cleared his throat after they had sat down in the kitchen, "I'll start making dinner in ten minutes. You can help if you wish, but otherwise I'm going to open the very thoughtful gift my adorable little Genin gave me." his eye curved into his signature eye-smile. Now that Sakura thought about it, she never did give Kakashi that gift in her first go around, her parents had taken it from her as she was leaving the house because she had eaten breakfast that day. they had said that it was their 'property because you used our money to buy it' and what not. It was the same reason Sakura hadn't taken any money from the house. They would find some way to reclaim it, be it by the court system, or via a more malicious approach. It was one of the reasons she had wanted to take that fourth mission, to pay back the value of the book. She had left the money in an envelope that she kept with her. She would give it back, in public so that she would have witnesses, once her parents were back so that they would have nothing left to lord over her head.
And to think this was all because they didn't want her to be a ninja. Her biological parents had wanted her to take over their family's trading business, specifically the financial aspect of it, while her husband would be the face of the actual trades. They were angered by her want to be a ninja as they would be unable to force her into a marriage, the age of consent being sixteen, as if she did become a ninja, as her potential and progress had show, she would be out of her parents' control and would be able to live her life as she pleased.
Her path in life would be her own to forge, and even if she died, as she had before, she would die a happy death knowing she had been in control of her life. and then that stupid God had to come a crush her barely gained independence with the knowledge that her life was in the hands of beings that cared little to nothing about her world.
Sakura snapped out of her muses at the wound of tearing paper. Kakashi was opening her gift. In the clumsily wrapped gift, Sakura barely recalled, was a book on team trust building exercises. In her original timeline, she had researched Kakashi Hatake and found the countless fails of Genin teams before hers, and assumed with the lack of a team to lead, he would be left floundering on how to cultivate trust between them. As such, she went out and found a book on exactly that, how to improve trust between teammates. Speaking of, she had a small amount of money left, if they went on enough mission tomorrow, she could get both of the boys a small gift. It might be wasteful, as she was trying to save up money to move out of Kakashi's home, but it might provide her the closure she desperately wanted. She thought of it as a way to say goodbye to the limp and bloodied corpses of her family. She would get Naruto Jiraya's book The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi, whose protagonist he was named after, and she would get Sasuke the Executive Order Danzo gave Itachi to massacre the Uchiha clan, after he took the calming medication she would buy him.
The world ran on money, after all.
"Sakura... did you mean to get me this book?" Kakashi's voice was incredulous, a tab bit annoyed and hesitant all in one, as he lifted the grey book out of the small box it was placed in. A depiction of four white humanoid outlines were tossing a ball around, smack dab in the center of the cover, with the words 'Team Building for Dummies' floating above it. Sakura nodded with a small smile on her face. she purposefully widened her eyes just a tad to make it seem like she earnestly thought it was a good gift, and not an insult to his capabilities. After all, she was just a naive, abused little Genin, fresh out of the Academy.
"I did a bit of research on your history as a Genin teacher, and found out that we were your first team, so I got this! I skimmed it in the book store and it had some good ideas to build good foundations of trust. I didn't want to skip that stage of team bonding, so I wanted to give it to you, just in case you weren't sure where to start. This is specifically targeted for new Genin teams, so it should provide some good insights until you know which direction you want to go in."
"How thoughtful of you," Kakashi's eye twitched just a bit, "I'll look over it after missions tomorrow. Thank you, Sakura." His voice cracked, and he almost looked pained to say it, but Sakura hid her amusement behind a bashful smile.
"Of course, Kakashi-sensei!" She chirped and leaned back a bit. she bit the inside of her cheeks to prevent the laughter she felt bubbling up from escaping her. "By the way, where will I be sleeping for the night? Do you have an air mattress or some blankets? I mostly just grabbed some clothes and things to keep up with my hygiene." She wasn't opposed to sleeping on the floor, she had done it multiple times before; on missions, after Pein's attack, during the war, etc. Maybe she could also use this as a way to slowly reintegrate into the past.
"... I entirely forgot about that." Kakashi's body slumped over. Was he really that tired? "I'll go get you some blankets and tomorrow we can go shopping for things you need, like a futon." Sakura hummed in agreement, mind running through costs and needs.
"Alright, but for now I think I'll stick to the floor with a blanket or two if possible. It's... what I'm most used to. Also, I would prefer to keep my debt to you on a minimum. I will be buying things on my own money from missions, and if I need help in covering costs and you decide to help me, I will be paying you back." Her amusement died off. It was best to keep off of depending on people, otherwise she might fall back into bad habits. She knew Kakashi, knew he would never do to her what her parents had done to her, but things like that left a mark.
"Sakura, do you remember what I said when we spoke earlier today?" She side-eyed him.
"We spoke about a lot of things today." She almost laughed at his deadpanned expression.
"When I spoke about you deserving nice things? Do you remember that?" His eye narrowed at her dull expression.
Sakura had genuinely forgotten, she was so caught up in her own head most of the time, it was hard enough to keep track of everything that was going on in her mind, add in that of the outside world... "Yeah?" She looked out the window to avoid meeting his gaze.
"Was that a question or an answer? You know what, never mind that. You deserve good things, just like most other people. This includes your physiological needs; shelter, food, water, clothing, sleep, being readily available to you. As your team leader, I am responsible for ensuring that you, all three of you, are being given at least the bare minimum to survive. But I, as a concerned person, am taking it upon myself to ensure that your needs are met. As far as I am currently aware, everyone in this team had had a rough past few years, but Sasuke and Naruto have a bed to sleep in at night that is not being taken from them. They had been getting their own funds from the council of child welfare because they are orphaned. They have had the chance to save up money for years. You have not had that crutch." Technically, he was spilling all her teammate's private information, but at least it showed that he trusted her.
(A/N: You guys have no idea how much I wanted to put: 'Technically, he was spilling all the tea, all the drama.' I am my own demon JFC.)
Sakura hesitated, thinking about her situation. A helping hand would be appreciated, and he was her team leader and partially responsible for her. "Alright. I am grateful for your hospitality, and kindness." Wow, she thought she'd say that to Kakashi of all people. The man had practically abandoned her after Sasuke and Naruto made themselves scare, and all her trust in him went out the window. Things were already vastly different from her first go around, but she wasn't sure that was a good thing.
"Here are some blankets, you can set yourself up where ever you want in the living room. I'll go start dinner while you got comfortable." She thanked him, and then moved to a corner nearest to the windows. The living room was large, but mostly empty. It had a small table in the center of the room, and some cushions on the floor, as well a one wall full on bookshelves. It was probably filled with those porn books he was obsessed with. She glanced at it, yup. Full of porn books.
It was, from what she had seen, the most organized room he had. It looked clean, so she had no qualms about sleeping on the floor. It was cleaner than the basement she had been locked in most of her childhood. She wondered how long it would take until joking about the abuse she faced was acceptable. Only time would tell. Literally.
Just as she finished setting up her temporary sleeping area and was setting her things off to the side Kakashi popped up to tell her that dinner was ready. They ate in silence before turning in for the night.
She stared at the ceiling for a long while, before she drifted off to sleep. The blankets were definitely softer than she was used to, but it was a good start to being her reacclimating to a bed, or futon.