Chapter Text
In hindsight, maybe Sakura had been a little too ambitious when she decided to try making her own stasis seal. In her defense, she’d done very well in her first six months of training under Lady Tsunade. So well, in fact, that on the rare evening off she’d received to celebrate her thirteenth birthday, she got a wild idea in her head.
I should try sealing, too. Kakashi-sensei is good at it, and so is that gross old pervert Naruto went off with, too. She worried about Naruto’s safety sometimes, but if shishou trusted Jiraiya-sama… that wasn’t the point just then, though. No, she just wanted to make sure she wouldn’t fall behind Naruto or Sasuke.
Sasuke, who’d abandoned them for the last of the three sannin. It was funny how things worked out sometimes. Waking up alone on a cold bench to an ANBU agent in a cat mask hadn’t exactly done much to nurture her romantic feelings for Sasuke. In fact, it had been a sort of wake up call, though Sakura hadn’t had much time to think about romance either way. She needed to get stronger so Team Seven could be together again one day.
She already had Tsunade teaching her medical jutsu and her strength technique and her overall stamina and taijutsu was improving rapidly under Gai-sensei and Lee. Her chakra reserves were still growing, so elemental ninjutsu would be foolish to focus on, and genjutsu was downright dangerous to try and practice alone. So, sealing.
Unfortunately for Sakura, she was so buoyed by her good mood that she was overconfident. Soaking up knowledge from books was her thing, and sealing was relatively safe—she wasn’t making an explosive tag, so it would be fine! All she was doing was making a little stasis seal for the not-quite dead strawberry plant on her desk, after all. It was just a good thing her parents were never really home anymore, or else she would have run the risk of being interrupted. They already hated the fact she was a kunoichi, after all.
She was nearly done with copying her first attempt, a chakra-laden finger poised to activate the seal, when a bird smacked into the window.
Sakura gave a very un-shinobi-like jerk, and her brush swiped left instead of right as her left hand, still pulsing with chakra, landed atop the paper to balance her body.
There was a blinding white light, and then total darkness.
“Sensei, sensei! It’s a girl!”
“Don’t be stupid, Obito, sensei just cleared the area and—”
Sakura heard the argument cut off, the second boy’s voice having come closer. Head pounding, she cracked an eye open.
“She’s alive!”
“Can you just be quiet for five minutes, Naruto?” She groused, then, opening her eyes wider and taking in the figures before her, she realized the voice didn’t belong to Naruto (though he was wearing goggles in the same garish shade of orange her teammate favored).
“Who’s Naruto?”
Sakura shot up, ignoring the way her head pounded, finally on guard now that she was fully conscious.
“Who are you? I’ve never seen you around Konoha before.”
The boy instantly got defensive.
“Oh yeah, well I can say the same for you! And who uses their forehead protector as a headband, anyway?!”
“Obito.” Two voices, one clearly a man’s and the other far more girlish, scolded the boy at the same time.
Obito …Why did that name sound familiar? She didn’t have time to ponder that, because the man who’d just spoken was suddenly in front of her, dropping down to kneel so he could better examine her and—
Hashirama’s saggy balls, it’s the Yondaime. Who was very dead. Or at least, who should have been dead.
“How do we know she’s not an enemy?” The boy who’d originally been speaking to Obito asked, and Sakura turned her head enough to see—
“Kakashi-sensei?”
“Kakashi- sensei ? Do you know her, Kakashi?”
Sakura’s attention, split between so many people already, turned to the only other girl. She was pretty, in a way that made her stomach flutter. Brown hair in a bob, purple markings on her cheeks that made her look a little like an off-color Inuzuka, and brown eyes that were almost certainly soft most of the time, but were now hard with judgment.
“We need your name and registration number,” the Yondaime’s voice prompted her to look back at him, mouth still slightly ajar.
“Haruno Sakura, sir. Oh-one-two-six-oh-one.”
“That’s impossible,” the tiny Kakashi snapped. Sakura felt her ire flare up. First he abandoned her after failing to give her much of any training, and now he was accusing her of being a spy? She opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind when the formerly-dead hokage beat her to the punch.
“Kakashi, now isn’t the time.” Then, almost apologetically, he turned to Sakura. “I’m sorry, Haruno-chan, but I’m going to have to bind you until we can get back to Konoha. As a loyal shinobi, I’m sure you understand the precautions we have to take in wartime, yes?”
Sakura nodded dumbly as her mind began whirring a mile a minute.
Wartime? A young Kakashi? A living Yondaime hokage?
What exactly had she done to that seal?
Having her chakra sealed was a strange feeling, one that made her want to squirm. She couldn’t, though, because that would draw the attention of the Yondaime, who was carrying her. (She did make a note to see if he could tell her how to get back to her own time once she found a moment to tell him the truth about her origins—the history books said he was a sealing master, after all, and the ease with which he sealed her chakra proved it). That off-kilter feeling was what she blamed for taking so long to realize why the name Obito sounded familiar.
It was carved on the Memorial Stone, one of the two names Kakashi-sensei pointed out as his old teammates. The other was Nohara Rin, which meant…
Sakura glanced at the brunette from the corner of her eye, fighting the urge to turn her head more fully.
“So, Sakura-chan, the Harunos must be a civilian clan, huh?” The Yondaime’s voice interrupted her thoughts before they could turn back to how pretty Rin was.
“Yes, from Iron, but—” But her parents hadn’t immigrated to Konoha by that time, if her estimate on the year was correct. They would soon enough, since she would be born at some point in the next year or two, judging from her estimates based on…well, not much other than how young Kakashi-sensei looked.
“But?” Obito, peered over at her, then flailed as he nearly lost his balance and tumbled from the treetops. From farther away, she heard Kakashi-sensei snort.
So he was always a jerk, I guess.
“Why don’t we save the questions for Hokage-sama for now, Obito?” The Yondaime prompted, a note of humor in his tone.
That reminder made fear flash hot through Sakura’s veins. The Third had been a kindly old man when she was growing up—a little creepy around young girls, looking back, but almost grandfatherly in the interest he took in everyone at the Academy. But Sakura had somehow landed herself in the middle of the Third Ninja War—even a kindly old man couldn’t afford to be soft in such times.
Even as her nerves grew, Sakura couldn’t seem to stop her gaze from sliding over to Rin. She was just so pretty, it wasn’t fair. Neither was it fair how her cheeks heated up of their own volition whenever she caught Rin looking back at her.
Their exchange went on for the rest of the time it took to get back to Konoha—maybe an hour, judging by the position of the sun. No matter, Sakura’s stomach was in knots from more than just the threat of interrogation as the Yondaime set her on her feet and led her into Hokage Tower.
Kakashi-sensei, Rin, and Obito were forced to wait outside as the Yondaime escorted Sakura into the office. The second the heavy wooden door swung shut behind them, she knew a privacy seal activated, feeling the faint buzz of chakra run across her skin.
The Sandaime looked only marginally younger than he had in Sakura’s time, but his gaze was much harder than she’d ever experienced before. As his future successor explained the situation, none of the suspicion left his gaze, even as he addressed her.
“Haruno-kun, was it?”
“Yes, Hokage-sama,” she bowed respectfully.
“Would you like to explain, in your own words, how you came to land in the forest just outside the borders of the village?” Even though he phrased it as a question, it was obviously a command. And she was an ever-dutiful shinobi of Konoha, so she couldn’t deny him…
“You’re going to think I’m crazy or lying,” Sakura blurted out before she could stop herself.
The Hokage’s gaze sharpened that much further, and he put his pipe down.
“Why don’t I be the judge of that, Haruno-kun?”
It took everything in her to straighten her spine and start her story about the sealing accident. Her drive to get stronger, the fact she had been in her bedroom to practice sealing unsupervised on her birthday, the bird and the disastrous outcome its flight path had wrought with the line of ink and her chakra-laden finger.
There was a moment of silence in the office as everything sank in, and Sakura felt her nerves grow as she awaited some kind of judgment. Or, more likely, to be pronounced a spy and dragged off for interrogation and execution.
And then Minato spoke up.
“ When are you from, Haruno-chan?”
Her head whipped to the right to stare at him, eyes wide.
“How—?”
“You were trying a stasis seal, which deals entirely with space-time. You knew your registration number without hesitation,” he smiled, a twinkle in his eyes, “and then, of course, the small matter of calling Kakashi Kakashi-sensei .”
At that, she watched the Sandaime’s harsh gaze turn into something purely calculating. If she were honest, it was almost as terrifying as the glaring had been. But he didn’t direct his next question at her.
“You’re saying time travel is possible, Minato-kun?”
“Apparently so. I think we should pull Kushina in to help dissect what went wrong, though. One stroke shouldn’t have been capable…Sealing is largely about intent, as you know.”
The Sandaime gestured to the corner of the room, and an ANBU agent in a painted mask stepped forward. He ordered them to fetch the woman the Yondaime suggested (it could only be Uzumaki Kushina, the famous Red Hot Habanero of Konoha!). While they waited, the attention shifted back to her.
“And how far in the future are you from, Haruno-kun? If this is true?”
“It was March 28th, 78 AF, sir.”
The Yondaime whistled.
“Thirteen years. Quite a feat, Haruno-chan.” He sounded impressed. After only a brief pause, he scrunched his nose and asked, “Actually, is it alright if I call you Sakura-chan? Using your last name seems so formal now.”
“Uhh, I guess?” Sakura was blindsided by the request. The Yondaime, who wasn’t yet the Yondaime but still arguably the most powerful shinobi in the village, wanted to call her by her first name?
Hmm, now that she thought about it, he looked a lot like Naruto. Acted a little like him, too…
Nope, not creating any more revelations for myself today. She swiftly shoved the train of thought to the back of her mind.
“Someone with knowledge of the future,” the Sandaime spoke up again, his voice slow and measured. “It’s lucky that Minato-kun found you and not an enemy. Kumo and Iwa aren’t kind to their prisoners of war, and Kiri…” He let the end of his sentence dangle threateningly, and Sakura tried not to flinch. The Bloody Mist was referred to as such for good reason, after all.
“All’s well that ends well,” the Yondaime cut in cheerfully. Some of the tension bled from Sakura’s shoulders, his mood putting her at ease. “Now, you were interested in sealing but didn’t have a teacher, right? Kushina might be interested in helping you out with that, but I’m curious. What was your primary focus, Sakura-chan?”
“Oh! Um, I was being trained as a combat medic by Tsunade-shishou.”
Both men lapsed into stunned silence for a moment. The Third picked his pipe back up to take a hearty puff.
“Tsunade-hime came back to the village?”
Sakura was only mid-way through her explanation when Uzumaki Kushina arrived. She was loud and boisterous and her face shape was exactly like Naruto’s and—
Nope, not today . She was not going to think about the fact she had inadvertently learned her teammate’s parents were the Fourth Hokage and the Red Hot Habanero of Konoha. That was a problem for later Sakura—preferably so late she was back in the future where she belonged.
Unfortunately for her, after she sketched out the seal she’d been trying to make when the accident happened, and pointed out which stroke went wrong and how, she only received bad news about the outlook of that return trip.
“Sakura-chan,” Kushina, who had been casual with her from the very first time she laid eyes on Sakura and her pink hair (proclaiming her a cousin despite Sakura’s protests), laid a hand on her shoulder. “That shouldn’t have been enough to send you back in time. Even if it had been your intention to time travel, this single stroke shouldn’t have had this kind of impact, ya know?”
“So I can’t just…do it again and go home?”
Two sets of eyes looked at her with pity, while the third was calculating. Almost, dare she think it, pleased with the outcome.
“It’s too risky to try. It could send you further back in time or worse,” the Yondaime explained gently. “We can work on a way to get you back to your home, but there’s no telling how long it will take, especially with the war…”
“Ah, that’s one thing I hope Haruno-kun’s presence can help out with,” the Third finally spoke again, his gaze still holding a pleased glint. “You mentioned you were good at memorization, yes? An eidetic memory?” He waited for Sakura to nod, then bobbed his head in a similar gesture himself before continuing. “I’m sure the Academy textbooks covered the war we’re currently involved in. I’m hoping you would be so kind as to use your knowledge to help your village, ah, speed up the victory process, if you will.”
Sakura wasn’t necessarily surprised by the request—why wouldn’t the Hokage want to cut down on casualties and resources wasted? But the Yondaime voiced protest.
“Sandaime-sama,” the future hokage spoke, “If Sakura-chan alters the future too much, she might be unable to ever return home. Even this meeting could—” He cut himself off and looked guiltily down at Sakura, who felt a chill run down her spine.
She’d heard of the butterfly effect before, how even the tiniest flap of a butterfly’s wings thousands of miles away could change the trajectory of the future. She had just been so hopeful to return home that she hadn’t considered…
“If the efforts to send her home are almost certain to be fruitless, then, should we not take advantage of this gift? Surely you want to support your village, Haruno-kun?”
Sakura was no fool—she knew there was a time and a place to express her desire to go home, and now wasn’t it. She dipped her head in agreement.
“Of course, Hokage-sama. I would be happy to assist the war efforts in any way I could.”
When she lifted her head again, the old man had a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes that made her stomach turn.
“Excellent. You’re truly a loyal shinobi of the Leaf, Haruno-kun. If you’ll take her to Intelligence, Minato-kun, we can have her new papers made up. After a mindwalk, of course.” He turned back to Sakura, whose blood chilled at the prospect of a Yamanaka invading her brain again. “Just for the sake of precaution, you understand. And I’m afraid your medical training might be a little stilted without Tsuna-chan here, but you’re more than welcome to take courses at the hospital.”
Finally, Kushina spoke up again, a fire in her blue eyes.
“Hold on, Hokage-sama!” She looked down at Sakura, a charmingly crooked grin on her face that totally didn’t make her heart flutter . “You still want to learn sealing, right? Why don’t you let me take you on as an apprentice, ya know?”
Notes:
Planning to upload a chapter a week, since everything is already written out and beta-read. It feels so good to finally get back into chapter fics! 😊
Chapter 2
Summary:
Dinner at the Uzumaki-Namikaze apartment.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Sakura was ashamed to admit she cried after the mindwalk. It just felt so invasive and cold, not like when she let Ino practice on her while they awaited their second chuunin exams that had been set to take place in Suna in a few months. (Ino was always gentle and soft and let Sakura cradle her head on her lap so gently during the possessions, even if it was technically more like Ino cradling her own head.) Neither the Yondaime nor Kushina-san judged her for it, though. In fact, they even let her have a moment to gather herself before they left the building, her new registration papers in hand.
She was doubly thankful when she saw the current iteration of Team Seven waiting for them just outside. The boy with very Naruto-like goggles, Obito, immediately launched himself at her, grabbing her hands and peppering her with so many questions in such a rapid-fire manner that Sakura wasn’t sure where one ended and another began.
“Obito, let her breathe!” Rin scolded. Then, turning to Sakura, she smiled.
She’s so pretty, was all Sakura could think. She was still feeling off-kilter from everything that had happened to her that day, but she could at least still recognize when someone was attractive.
“It’s getting late,” the Yondaime observed, glancing up at the sky. “Why don’t you three have dinner with us tonight? We’ll get takeout, my treat.”
Rin and Obito agreed enthusiastically, while Kakashi, torn between glaring at Sakura and looking sullen, just grunted in affirmation. They were halfway to…well, whichever restaurant they were going to get food from (Sakura was starving and in no position to be picky, no matter where they ended up), when Obito stopped dead in his tracks, his face scrunching up as he realized something.
“Hey! You said us three, not four—does that mean Sakura-chan is gonna be living with you? Because there’s no way you’d kick her out, right sensei?”
Rin tried to hide a snort of amusement behind her hand.
“Obviously she wouldn’t be trusted to live alone, idiot,” Kakashi answered before either of the adults got a chance. “She could be a spy—”
“Kakashi.” The Yondaime’s voice wasn’t quite sharp, but there was a clear undertone of warning in it. “She’s been cleared of all suspicion and reinstated as a shinobi of Konoha.”
Kakashi stubbornly didn’t respond, but rather than continue to scold him, the blond man turned back to Sakura.
“Which reminds me—before Kushina starts your training, we need to see what level you are. I know you said you were due to take the chuunin exams soon, right?”
Sakura nodded.
“Since the exams have been suspended here due to,” he gestured vaguely in the direction of the village gates, “Circumstances, this will be your only chance for promotion until you take missions in the field.”
It went without saying that she probably wouldn’t be allowed out of the gates until she’d handed over every bit of knowledge she had about the Third War. The Hokage might have been a kindly old man in her past (or was it her future? Ugh, whatever), but he was the village’s military dictator above all else.
“Okay.” She agreed easily—if she got promoted in the past, then she would have no trouble acing the exams when she returned home. If Tsunade-shishou would let her take them. There was always a chance she’d say sending Sakura was needless if she’d already been promoted, but then again, the hassle of finding another genin ready to fit into Team Ten would probably sway her.
But she shouldn’t be thinking about those what-ifs. Not now, when she wasn’t even certain if she could go home. Instead, she put on a smile that she hoped was convincing and tried to pick up on what exactly Obito was talking to the Yondaime about—training the next day, from what she could gather.
The smell of lavender and antiseptic wafted into her nostrils, causing her to realize that Rin had slowed her pace just enough to fall in step beside Sakura.
“So, what was Kakashi-kun like as a teacher? It sounds like you never met Obito and I, or I’d ask about us, too.”
Sakura tried not to flinch at Rin’s sunny smile.
“Well…” she trailed off, glancing nervously in Kakashi’s direction. “He was a skilled jounin, I guess.”
Rin’s brown eyes darted between Sakura and Kakashi for a moment, and then she nodded, mouth set in a little frown. She dropped the subject altogether after that, and the two girls lapsed into silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable, though—if anything, Sakura felt a little more at peace than she had before. Even when Obito started trying to pepper her with questions, just being boxed in by Rin and Kushina-san helped her keep from snapping at him in a knee-jerk reflex (he really was far too much like Naruto, and it made her heart ache).
Somehow, they managed to get their food and get to the Namikaze-Uzumaki apartment without Obito asking too loudly about anything that would be classified as a state secret. Unfortunately for her, that restraint ended the moment Kushina activated a privacy seal on the door of the apartment.
“So what’s the future like, Sakura-chan? Am I the hokage yet? Is Minato-sensei? It can’t be Bakashi, he’s too—”
“I would make a better hokage than you, you crybaby.” Kakashi snarked back. The ensuing argument gave Sakura enough time to start eating her tempura.
“Don’t worry,” Rin leaned over to whisper in her ear. The sensation of breath ghosting along Sakura’s neck made goosebumps rise on her arms. “Those two are always like that. Boys, right?”
For the first time since her distressing day in the past had begun, Sakura let out a genuine giggle. She tried stifling it behind her hand, but it was too late—the boys’ attention was gotten.
“Hey! Are you guys laughing at us?” Obito pouted.
The mood stayed light all throughout dinner, and Sakura had to admit to herself that she was a little envious. There had been moments when her own team bonded like this, but it was always overshadowed by the bad times. And once Sasuke had fled the village, Kakashi-sensei abandoned her, and Naruto had gone off to train with that pervert sannin, she had been able to see the truth: the boys of Team Seven had never needed her.
“You alright, Sakura-chan?” Kushina’s voice interrupted her downward spiral of thoughts.
“Yeah,” she replied on instinct, then stiffened her spine and corrected herself. “I mean, yes, Kushina-sama.”
The woman pinched her cheek for her trouble.
“None o’ that formal stuff, you hear me?”
“Yes, Kushina-sa—” She cut herself off at the warning look she got, then swiftly corrected herself. “Kushina-san?”
“Well, it’s a start, I guess,” Kushina grumbled. After a moment, however, she broke into a grin and ruffled Sakura’s hair. “I’ll have you calling me Kushina-nee in no time, ya know!”
Sakura smiled back, but her chest ached at just how similar Kushina was to Naruto.
Dinner was an interesting affair, to say the least. It reminded her a bit of the Team Seven meals she’d had in her own time, few as she’d gotten to have. Looking back, everything had fallen apart so quickly—they’d only been genin for a few scant months before they’d been tossed into the chuunin exams. Before Orochimaru had struck and everything had gone from bad to worse.
Before everyone left Sakura behind.
Well, not everyone . She’d blossomed under Tsunade-shishou, Teams Ten and Gai had stepped in to help her get field experience, and her friendship with Ino had rekindled. S ometimes, when they were curled around each other during a sleepover, Sakura thought that maybe one day, they would have more than friendship, but Ino only liked boys and Sakura couldn’t afford to lose her best friend again.
Still, her time with Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei shaped her more than an outsider might have expected. That was why she felt so relaxed in the raucous atmosphere in the Namikaze-Uzumaki apartment that night, being so used to the sound of two bickering teenage boys that she nearly lapsed into her own usual role of scolding. She managed to bite her tongue in time, though when Rin sighed wearily beside her, she couldn’t help leaning over to whisper in the other girl’s ear.
“Boys are so dumb.”
Rin turned to smile at Sakura, and suddenly it felt like all the air had gone out of the room.
She’s so pretty. Maybe even prettier than Ino. That thought alone brought heat rising to her cheeks, and she quickly dropped her gaze to her plate.
Sakura couldn’t wipe the grin off her face for the rest of dinner.
It was only as she and Rin were alone in what was to be Sakura’s bedroom, laying a fluffy blue duvet over the generously sized bed while the boys were tasked with washing the dishes under the supervision of both adults, that her mood dropped.
“In your time…” Rin trailed off, looking hesitant. Sakura braced herself, having a sinking suspicion of what was going to be asked. She was proven right a moment later.
“In your time, am I dead?”
Sakura dropped her gaze from her, breaking the eye contact they’d been holding in the mirror. She heard Rin’s exhale sharply.
“Obito, too?”
Sakura nodded numbly. Then, lifting her head back up, she turned and met Rin’s eyes again, this time without the mirror as an intermediary.
“I’m sorry—” She said, at the same time as Rin asked another question.
“Do you know how—?”
They both stopped talking, a tense moment passing while they waited for the other to finish speaking. When it became apparent Rin wouldn’t budge, Sakura resigned herself to being the one to break the ice.
“I don’t know, I’m sorry. Kakashi-sensei…well, he wasn’t exactly fond of me, and he didn’t share anything about his past besides pointing out your names on the memorial stone.” That, and the fact he’d all but admitted that his Sharingan had come from Obito at some point before the Uchiha’s death, but… Well, even if she could never go back to the future, should she really be divulging things like that freely? There was no need to cause Rin even more distress.
“Do you know when?”
Sakura had to shake her head again. Then, compelled by those soft, fluttery feelings that seemed to be a near constant around the brunette, she spoke.
“But since I might not be able to go home…Maybe I can stop it.” Maybe none of them needed to die.
“But that would make sure you couldn’t go home, right?” Rin frowned. Then, the look of concern on her face deepened. “What if that means you won’t be born!”
Sakura felt a little wobbly, having someone care about her like that only hours after meeting. But she tried not to let it show on her face as she shook her head.
“I could die at any time. That’s just what happens to shinobi.” She was trying so, so hard to be mature about it, even though the thought of not existing terrified her.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, ya know!” Kushina’s voice, tinted with amusement, rang out from the doorway. Both girls whipped around to look at her. Sure enough, the woman was grinning, a twinkle of mischief in her eyes.
“What do you mean, Kushina-nee?” Rin tilted her head in curiosity, making Sakura’s heart flutter once more with how cute the other girl was.
“There used to be legends about time travel in Uzu, ya know? And the stories go that one soul can only exist in one place at one time.” Her violet eyes widened, as though she was only realizing something. Whatever it was, she didn’t share with the girls, though. Instead, she just said. “So that means you’re safe here with us, Sakura-chan! Now, I gotta go remind Minato-kun about something—the room is looking great! We’ll have to go shopping soon to get some more decorations.”
She disappeared down the hallway without a backward glance, leaving two very confused thirteen-year-olds in her wake.
“That was weird, right?” Sakura asked, eyes darting to Rin as she awaited confirmation.
“Yeah.” Rin nodded. “She usually doesn’t keep secrets unless it’s something we don’t have the clearance for.”
They didn’t have to say anything to know they were thinking the same thing.
We need to find out!
Sakura had a sneaking suspicion that whatever it was probably spelled something unfortunate, though they wouldn’t know until they figured it out. So, there was nothing left to do besides finish getting her new room in order. The only thing left to do at that point was fold and put away the handful of outfits Kushina had given her, old dresses from her own genin days that were probably going to be a bit shorter on Sakura than they had been on their original owner—Sakura’s parents were both tall, and with her latest growth spurt, it was becoming apparent she would inherit those genes, at least in part.
“You know, we should go shopping tomorrow, after sensei tests you!” Rin grinned, her brown eyes sparkling, making Sakura’s heart thud in her chest.
“Sure!” She agreed readily, eagerness lacing her voice. Then, trying not to sound desperate in her excitement, she cleared her throat and corrected herself. “I mean, uhh, that sounds good. But I don’t have any money yet.”
Rin’s brow furrowed, her mouth forming a perfect circle as she realized the flaw in her plan. But she was beaming again an instant later.
“Hold on,” she held up a finger and bounded out into the hall. Then, in a voice loud enough everyone in the apartment could hear, the brunette announced, “Sensei! We need to take a D-rank tomorrow after Sakura-chan’s test, okay? I need some more pocket money.”
The Yondaime laughed.
“Aren’t you too old for a D-rank, Rin-chan? I’m sure we can muster up something more suitable for a chuunin. Besides, you don’t want to rob the poor genin’s of their money, do you? I’ll see if we can get a C-rank while I turn in Sakura-chan’s results, alright?”
Rin must have given him some outward sign of approval, because a moment later, she slipped back into the room, still grinning.
“A C-rank should get us enough to buy at least one good outfit—plus some mesh armor for you, I think. And gloves—You studied under Tsunade-hime, so you have her super strength, right?’ Rin’s eyes were back to sparkling in admiration, and Sakura felt her stomach flutter. “Do you think you can teach me? I’ve got pretty good chakra control!”
“I don’t have it perfected yet,” Sakura admitted. “I haven’t even been her apprentice for a year yet.” She saw Rin begin to pout, and rushed to reassure her. “But I can try! I know the theory, it’s just the application that gets tricky, you know? It’s all about perfect timing.”
Suddenly, Rin’s arms were wrapping around her, squeezing her in a firm hug.
“Thank you, Sakura-chan!”
Kushina chose that moment to poke her head back into the room, but thankfully didn’t say anything about how red Sakura’s face was.
Notes:
Hope everyone is having a good week! c:
Chapter 3
Summary:
Sakura has her own chuunin exam, Kidkashi is a little shit, and Kushina isn't subtle about her desire to adopt Sakura.
Chapter Text
The next morning dawned cool and clear, with the taste of promise in the air. Sakura was excited to prove herself, not just to Kushina, who had eagerly offered to take her on as an apprentice, but to the others, too. (Mostly, she wanted to show Kakashi-sensei she wasn’t useless, wasn’t someone to be ignored or shoved to the side.)
Unfortunately, she let something slip as they were eating breakfast.
“You’re a sealing master, too, right Yondaime-sama?”
The blond set his steaming mug of tea down onto the table a little more sloppily than befitted such a skilled jounin.
“Yo-yondaime?” There was a gleam of panic in his blue eyes. Kushina, on the other hand, snorted.
“Don’t act so surprised, ya know! Everyone knows the old man is handing you the hat after this war is over.”
“Still-!” He spluttered and stumbled around a few attempts at a rebuttal, but eventually gave up and took a long, slow sip of his tea.
“I’m sorry,” Sakura apologized as he set his mug down again (more gently than the last time). “I know I shouldn’t tell you this stuff, in case it changes the future too much. Especially since Hokage-sama is going to use me to hopefully end the war early, but…”
The adults exchanged a look, unusually solemn, and Sakura felt her heart clench. She suspected she knew what was coming next, and that it had tied to why Kushina all but fled her bedroom the afternoon prior. Still, she had to brace herself as the future Yondaime spoke.
“Sakura-chan…” Her fingers began twisting and pulling at the fabric of the black and cream dress she wore, one of Kushina’s hand-me-downs, as she awaited the bad news. “We want you to be prepared for the possibility that we won’t be able to send you back. Time travel hasn’t been possible before—in fact, neither one of us are sure we could duplicate what you did to end up here. But with the knowledge the Hokage is asking of you, there’s a very real chance it will alter events too much.”
Sakura knew she shouldn’t cry. Not that it was shameful to show emotion in the privacy of home (as much as her current location could be considered home), but she’d barely had time to get to know the Yondaime and Kushina.
Despite knowing it would only make her first impression that much more pathetic, her eyes started misting over. Hastily, she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, knowing it would do no good to try and hide it.
“I figured that would be the case, eventually,” she admitted. “I just… I guess I hoped…”
“You hoped there would be more time,” the Yondaime finished her sentence for her, tone gentle.
Miserably, Sakura nodded.
The Yondaime looked at her with a serious expression, but somehow, there was still a twinkle in his blue eyes.
“We can't do much about the time-traveling now, but while we look into the possibilities, you'll have to be careful to use my name instead of Yondaime. I’d like for you to call me Minato-sensei like the others, Sakura-chan.”
“Yeah,” Kushina agreed. “And with your hair, there’s no way you don’t have some kind of Uzumaki heritage. So you should call me Kushina-nee, alright? And you might as well call Minato-kun sensei, since all the other kids do.” She shot him a suspicious glance, then added, “But you can’t have her as a student, ya know! She’s mine!”
Sakura tried to calm her fluttering heart at the prospect of maybe being related to the Uzumaki Kushina—it was true that her parents had immigrated from Iron, but Sakura didn’t know anything about where her father’s parents had come from. He’d married into her mother’s family, and his hair was a dark red…
Meanwhile, Yondaime-sa— Minato-sensei held up his hands in self-defense, bringing Sakura’s wandering mind back to the present.
“I won’t steal her! But I thought you wanted to combine Sakura-chan’s training with my team’s?”
“I do, just don’t try and poach her, ya know!” Kushina got out of her chair to stand behind Sakura, resting her hands on Sakura’s shoulders. “She’s my star student.”
“Kushina-san, I’m your only student,” Sakura tilted her head back to look at the woman while Minato tried to hide his snort of amusement. “And you haven’t even seen me in action yet.”
“None of that now. I told you it’s Kushina-nee! But I guess if you aren’t comfortable with that yet, you should use shishou. You are my apprentice, ya know!”
Sakura ducked her head, nodding. Then, she tried to finish her breakfast as quickly as possible, so she could wash the dishes. She didn’t feel right staying there without doing something to earn her keep, after all. But Kushina ( shishou , she had to remind herself) shooed her away from the sink and told her to relax until it was time to leave.
“You can think about chores later, after you’ve had time to settle in a bit more,” Minato explained as he sat next to her on the faded (but still extremely comfortable) blue couch. “Speaking of which, you and Rin were going shopping after the mission, weren’t you?”
Sakura’s eyes widened, and Minato-sensei laughed.
“Rin asking for a mission for pocket money, right as she’s helping you settle into your room? I might never have been a teenage girl, Sakura-chan, but I’m not totally ignorant.”
She flushed, but didn’t say anything in response. At least, not until Minato reached into one of his vest pockets and handed her a small stack of ryo.
“I don’t know how likely it is that you’ll be able to come on a mission with us, but in case the Sandaime doesn’t let you, I’d still like for you to be able to buy some of your own things.”
“Minato-sensei, I can’t!” She tried to shove the money back at him. She needed to earn her money, she couldn’t be dependent on charity when she was already taking so much from them. After all, what normal twenty-something couple in love wanted to have a thirteen year old girl move in with them?
“You can and you will,” Kushina-shishou interrupted, standing in the doorway to the kitchen with her arms crossed. “In fact, I’ll be giving you a weekly allowance, as my apprentice, even after you’re allowed to start running missions. Of course, ya gotta use some of it on sealing supplies, ya know!”
Sakura wanted to cry again, this time from gratitude. Instead, she choked out a heartfelt, Thank you both! and let herself be led off to Training Ground Three for her testing.
“Nervous?” Kushina-shishou asked, ruffling Sakura’s hair as the gates to the training ground (and three other figures) came into sight.
“No,” Sakura answered, only lying a little bit. “I was already training for the chuunin exams, and Tsunade-shishou and some others taught me well.”
But if she failed to meet Minato-sensei’s standards, it would be such an embarrassment.
Rin and Obito greeted her enthusiastically, taking one of her arms each and all but dragging her into the training ground.
“I can’t wait to see what you learned under Tsunade-sama,” Rin gushed.
“Yeah! I wanna see you punch a hole in the ground!” Obito crowed in excitement. He reminded her so much of Naruto that while she had a brief flash of annoyance at his lack of volume control, she felt her heart throb.
I’ll never get to be on a team with Naruto again.
“Alright!” Minato-sensei clapped his hands together, grinning from ear to ear. “Let’s get started, shall we? Since Kakashi is due to receive his jounin promotion soon, I’d like for you to spar with him first. If that’s alright with you, Sakura-chan?”
Sakura wanted to tell him no, that she was well aware of just what her former teacher was capable of even at twelve, but then Kakashi-sensei opened his mouth.
“Why does it have to be me? She won’t last long enough for you to get enough to evaluate her on.”
What little respect she’d harbored for her former teacher went up in smoke. Strength and medicine hadn’t been the only things she’d picked up from Tsunade—her temper had also blossomed under the woman. So, Sakura rose to the occasion with a taunt of her own.
“What, scared you’ll get beaten by a girl with pink hair , Hatake?”
She heard someone (Obito, if she had to guess based on the dynamics she’d seen so far) snort in amusement behind her. But Rin had the reaction that surprised her the most.
“Don’t underestimate girls, Kakashi!” It was an unusually vehement declaration for someone who seemed so soft-spoken, but then again, looks were also deceiving when it came to Sakura herself. Her heart fluttered a little at the encouragement, and she had to try desperately to regain her focus as she and a now irritated Kakashi slid into starting positions.
With the combination of her temper and the desire to look cool in front of Rin (and Obito, too, she guessed), Sakura leapt into action as soon as Minato-sensei finished explaining the terms of the spar and gave the signal for them to begin. She wasn’t on the offensive for long, though—just as she’d known, Kakashi was insanely skilled. His movements were scarily fast, just a tiny bit slower than she’d witnessed during their disastrous Wave mission and the Sound invasion. As such, she knew her chances of winning were slim.
But not impossible.
He wasn’t as capable as the Kakashi of the future would be, and she was going to use that to her advantage.
“Some shinobi you are,” he remarked sarcastically as she rolled out of the path of his leg as he attempted to kick her. “Do you think they’ll let you go out on missions if all you can do is dodge? I thought you said Tsunade-sama taught you? You seem too weak—”
Sakura saw red. It was one thing to make little snide comments in the hopes of goading her into slipping up, but to insult Tsunade-shishou? Adrenaline rushed through her veins, giving her a renewed burst of energy, and she lunged.
Her fist managed to clip Kakashi’s shoulder, and Sakura had been so mad she’d forgotten she shouldn’t use her enhanced strength technique on him during what should have been a friendly spar.
She felt the bone shatter more than heard it. The shock of her own actions gave Kakashi enough of an opening to land a punch to her solar plexus (with what was his only functioning arm at that point).
As she flew a few feet backwards across the training field, too winded from the impact of his fist to speak, a single petty thought circulated through her mind.
I should have tried to break his jaw instead.
“Time out!” Minato-sensei’s voice cut across the field, stopping Sakura from resuming a fighting stance once she found her feet again. “Kakashi, stop.”
Sakura dodged a fist crackling with lightning just in time, still feeling her chest ache from the earlier hit. And suddenly, she was watching Minato-sensei grab hold of Kakashi, careful not to touch the potentially shattered shoulder, giving Sakura an opening to—
Have her own arms grabbed and trapped behind her back, a glance over her shoulder letting her know it was Kushina-shishou doing the grabbing.
“That’s enough,” Minato said sternly, gazing between Sakura and Kakashi with a frown. “You’re both shinobi of Konoha, and I expect better behavior from the both of you.”
Sakura hung her head in shame, not even looking up when Kushina-shishou let go of her arms.
“I’m sorry, Minato-sensei,” she apologized. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that.”
Kakashi scoffed, and Sakura felt a vein twitch in her forehead. But to her eternal testament, she didn’t snap back.
“Sakura, I expect you to heal Kakashi’s shoulder.” Sakura nodded immediately—she’d been planning to offer anyway, because she wasn’t sure how far along Rin was in medical training, and from what Tsunade had mentioned about the hospital reform she enacted as Hokage, the medics at the hospital weren’t likely to heal Kakashi as thoroughly as she could.
“And Kakashi? You know better than to provoke a comrade, let alone to say unkind things about Tsunade-sama.”
He didn’t make any indication of apologizing, though, even as Obito harassed him over being a bad teammate (“She’s never going to be my teammate, dumbass.”) and Rin frowned at him. Sakura expected her to also receive a look of disapproval, but instead, Rin only looked at her in that soft, understanding way that made her want to lean over and—
No, she couldn’t ruin what could very well be her only friendship in the past by kissing Rin.
Instead, she explained to Rin all the steps and intricacies of healing shattered bone as she got to work on a very grumpy Kakashi’s shoulder. If her cheeks were a little pinker than usual, well, everyone else must have blamed it on the exertion of the spar.
The good news of the day, after her totally unprofessional slip-up that resulted in a wounded not-quite-teammate, was that Minato-sensei affirmed she was chuunin level when they reported to the Hokage after things had settled down a little more. He also took the time to ask for a B- or C-rank for the team, just as Rin had requested. Sakura wasn’t envious of Rin, she really wasn’t! But a small part of her ached when she thought about how she’d been treated on her first team.
The Hokage acquiesced easily, handing over a scroll to Minato-sensei without hesitation and telling them they could leave as soon as they were ready. But before anyone could turn to leave, he spoke again.
“I’m afraid Haruno-chan won’t be joining you,” said the Sandaime. Despite the kindly tone he put on while telling Minato-sensei this, Sakura couldn’t help but feel an ominous chill run down her spine. The feeling doubled when he turned his gaze from Team Minato to her.
“I’ll need you to stay back to provide some information to Intelligence.” Dread bubbled up in her stomach. Would she have to have another mindwalking session with that strange Yamanaka man? She didn’t want to! It felt so violating when it wasn’t Ino, and—
A tanned arm settled across her shoulders like a thick, comforting blanket, and Sakura turned her head to look up at its owner. Kushina winked at her, then focused on the Hokage. She must have seen the goosebumps rising on Sakura’s arms, or the tension in her posture, and wanted to help.
“Since she’s my apprentice now and all, I’ll sit in, too. If that’s alright with you, Sakura-chan?” She made a show of asking for Sakura’s permission, positioning herself to help protect Sakura if anything bad happened.
“Of course, shishou,” Sakura rolled the word across her tongue as naturally as she could. It felt so strange to call anyone but Tsunade that… But Tsunade was nowhere near Konoha now, wouldn’t be for over a decade, and Sakura had a great opportunity ahead of her. She was a decent medic already, but now she could learn sealing from a true master.
Kushina grinned in response, looking so like Naruto once more that Sakura felt a lump form in her throat.
“Well, it’s settled! Minato-kun and the kids can go out and have their adventure while me an’ Sakura-chan help with intel.” She gave Sakura’s shoulder a squeeze as she focused her attention back on the Sandaime. “Is there any way we could book Training Ground Ten long-term? I wanna get her all caught up on the basics of explosive tags this week.”
From the corner of her eye, Sakura watched as the Minato-sensei stiffened. Across from all of them, she could have sworn the Sandaime went a few shades paler.
“I’ll ask that you don’t blow up our newest shinobi, Kushina-chan,” was all the old man said, though.
Unflappable as ever, Kushina laughed.
“No way! Sakura-chan is gonna be a master in no time. Isn’t that right, Sakura-chan?”
“Umm, yes?” Sakura’s eyes were wide as saucers as she answered, but as much confidence as Tsunade had drilled into her during her first apprenticeship, it still shook her to have such confidence placed in her. Kushina didn’t seem disappointed in the lack of certainty, as Tsunade would have been.
“We’ll work on it,” the redhead said, still grinning. “Alright, let’s get going, Sakura-chan! The sooner we get out of Intelligence, the sooner we can start blowing up the training ground!”
The protests of both the Hokage and Minato-sama fell on deaf ears as Kushina dragged Sakura out of the office.
Chapter Text
By the time Sakura was done having her brain poked and prodded for all the information she could remember hearing or reading about the Third War, she felt like a deflated balloon more than a person. Fortunately, Kushina was able to read the room better than her son (and he was the son of Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou, there was no reason for Sakura to try and deny what the facts in front of her nose were). Instead of taking her to the training grounds, she steered Sakura straight to the apartment.
Having an evening of rest was a little frustrating— she wanted to get stronger, and she couldn't do that if she couldn't get back to training! But Kushina-shishou ordered tempura (after declaring they would order in and have Sakura's favorite food of choice) and after the mental beating she’d just taken, not to mention the actual spar from even earlier in the day, she couldn't find it in herself to argue. In fact, as soon as her rear end hit the soft couch cushion, she felt like she wouldn't be able to get up ever again.
Once the food arrived, Sakura noticed Kushina-shishou activating a seal on the back of the apartment door. She didn’t ask, but the question must have been clear in her eyes, because Kushina winked at her.
“It’s just a little extra security measure, Sakura-chan, don’t worry!”
That answer didn’t exactly soothe Sakura’s nerves. She wasn’t a fool—she’d learned enough under both Kakashi-sensei and Tsunade-shishou to get a pretty decent handle on certain political machinations within the village. And, more importantly, how those things applied to her in her current situation.
“So the Hokage is using ANBU to spy on me?” She wasn’t offended, really. She had only been in the past for two days, and there was always the slightest chance that she was some freak genjutsu prodigy fooling the Yamanaka mind reader assigned to her. Konoha was in the midst of a war, after all—Sakura would have been more upset if she hadn’t come off as a potential threat.
“You’re taking it well,” Kushina-shishou observed as she helped Sakura unpack the bag of steaming hot food.
“Well, yeah. I mean, I’m still a stranger, really, and you’re the jinchuuriki…” She paused, then asked nervously. “Oh, is that a secret? Because Naruto—”
Naruto. Gods, she had slipped up and mentioned Naruto and now she could see Kushina-shishou had questions and—
“Calm down, Sakura-chan,” Kushina-shishou instructed as she grabbed Sakura by the shoulders. “I won’t get angry, I promise.”
“But the timeline—” Sakura stopped herself, then sighed. “I guess it’s pointless now, isn’t it? I’m not getting home. You and Minato-sensei were just trying to be nice about it at breakfast.”
Kushina-shishou squeezed her shoulders once, then let go, allowing both of them to sit at the table and start eating in silence. Sakura needed a few moments of peace to start processing everything, if she were honest. And her new teacher was kind enough to not say anything when a few tears slid down Sakura’s cheeks and into her rice. She was halfway through her meal before she finally steeled herself enough to commit to her decision (not that staying in the past had ever been her decision to make). The least she could do was save the people who had been kind enough to take her in.
Besides, if Kushina-shishou and Minato-sensei were really Naruto’s parents, she could save him the heartbreak of growing up an orphan. But first, she needed to check something.
“You said that people in Uzu didn’t believe that a soul could be in two places at once, right? But do you think everything that happened in my past is going to happen no matter what?”
Kushina-shishou set her chopsticks down, chewing her last bite of food thoughtfully.
“Well, I think the fact you’re here now , and you probably won’t be born again, is enough to think that the future can be changed, ya know? Otherwise, all your intel on the war would be for nothing, and I doubt that’s going to happen.”
“But how can you be sure?”
“Just a feeling.” Kushina-shishou tapped the side of her nose. “Besides, you've already likely changed the outcome of the war with the information you've given, ya know.”
That much was true, even if they wouldn't be able to see any results for a while yet. But could Sakura take the risk of letting Kushina-shishou know her future fate when there was still a possibility everything would play out just as it had originally?
It was a chance she'd have to take. For Naruto's sake, and maybe for her own—it would serve Sakura well to help her mentor, her strongest ally in the past so far, to live. So, taking a deep breath, she started to explain herself.
“Uzumaki Naruto was my teammate…”
After a long evening of recounting everything she could remember from the history books about the kyuubi attack (which had happened months before she was even born), along with everything she could remember about Naruto (because of course Kushina-shishou wanted to know about her son), Sakura fell into a deep sleep. She lay boneless in her bed until Kushina-shishou came bursting into her room the next morning to drag her new pupil off to training.
Training itself was… actually fun. She'd become used to the brutal dodging sessions with Tsunade-shishou and the excruciating taijutsu training with Team Gai, so the tasks Kushina-shishou set before her for warmups seemed like a breeze. Sakura ran beside her for a full lap around the village, and then they slipped into Training Ground Ten to run through katas. Only, they weren't the usual Leaf style katas taught in the Academy. They were more fluid, almost like something that would come from Kiri.
“Are those from Uzushio?”
Kushina-shishou nodded, ruffling Sakura's hair in approval.
“Yep! It's an old Uzumaki clan style. It was one of the few things I picked up before I left home to come to Konoha, ya know!” She sounded proud, but Sakura wondered if part of it was a front.
She has a home she can never go back to, just like me. The thought struck Sakura like the blast from an explosive tag. There were only ruins left in the place where Uzushio once stood. Ruins and ghosts and bittersweet memories. It made her feel more connected to Kushina-shishou than before, and she vowed to do her best to be a good student.
“Can you teach me? If I'm going to be your apprentice, I need to learn everything I can from you, right?”
She earned another hair ruffling for her words, but after that, Kushina-shishou sank into the first form and began talking Sakura through the motions.
To her surprise, it felt like her body didn’t have to fight to maintain the flow, as it had when she was learning the Academy style. In fact, Sakura felt more confident than ever before, copying her teacher’s motions almost automatically—in fact, it was like her body knew which direction to move in before she could see what Kushina was doing. Sakura wasn’t the only one who noticed, either.
“You’re a natural, Sakura-chan!” Kushina patted her on the back as they rose up after the third set. “You’ve gotta have some Uzu blood, ya know!”
“Maybe,” Sakura conceded, but she couldn’t keep the note of uncertainty out of her voice. “But wouldn’t I have had bigger chakra reserves if I was part Uzumaki?”
Kushina furrowed her brow.
“Whaddya mean? You held up in your spar against Kakashi-kun pretty well, and you used a lot of chakra there.”
“Well, I guess? But I had to build those reserves up with meditation and training every day with Tsunade-shishou, especially once she told me she was going to teach me how to make a byakugo of my own. But when I graduated the Academy, I barely had enough to hold a henge for five minutes.”
Kushina-shishou’s jaw dropped, but Sakura continued on before the woman could say anything.
“I know, it was really bad.”
“Why did growing your reserves wait until after graduation and not in the Academy, Sakura-chan?”
At that, Sakura looked down at her feet, embarrassed.
“There was a boy—”
Kushina-shishou let out a groan.
“Sakura-chan!”
“I know! And I didn’t even like him, not really! But Ino—my best friend—liked him and he was stealing all her attention and I had to get it back somehow…” It was a childish plan, in hindsight, and she felt shame flood her veins, hot and uncomfortable.
“So really, there was a girl?” Kushina-shishou sounded a little more amused than disappointed at that, enough for Sakura to lift her head up hesitantly. “You know, Rin-chan has been looking at you nonstop since—”
“Shishou, please!” Sakura buried her face in her hands, listening to her mentor’s cackling for a moment.
“Alright, alright, I’ll stop teasing.” Sakura raised her head again, cheeks still flushed, only to have the color grow that much more vivid when Kushina-shishou added, “For now.”
Luckily, they really did put Sakura’s love life aside for the rest of the day. They ran through a water bullet jutsu, something Sakura hadn’t gotten a chance to learn since her training had mainly focused more on taijutsu and medic ninjutsu. Then, when her chakra reserves dipped to just below half, Kushina-shishou dragged her out to lunch (Ichiraku’s—she really was Naruto’s mother) and then back to the training ground for sealing practice.
It took Team Minato a week to return to the village.
Sakura prided herself on having not blown up the training field a single time during those seven days, too. Well, she hadn’t blown it up unintentionally. But Kushina had asked her to use her enhanced strength during more than one spar, and then there had been a need to test the explosive tags she’d made on a few unsuspecting trees. Of course, when she moved onto more…aggressive exploding tags, more than just the trees ended up as collateral.
She and Kushina-shishou were just leaving the Tower after having to report the destruction of three training dummies when they spotted a familiar quartet heading in their direction.
“Kushina!” Minato-sensei called out cheerfully before flash stepping to his girlfriend’s side. It was honestly cute, how he was so excited to see her he couldn’t even wait long enough to walk like a normal person. And speaking of cute…
“Hi, Sakura-chan!” Rin looked astoundingly perky for having just come back from a mission of some length. She beamed at Sakura in a way that made Sakura’s heart flutter, even as she stumbled over her own greeting.
Why was Rin so pretty? It wasn’t fair!
“Do you still want to go on that shopping trip?” In addition to the butterflies in her stomach, when Rin asked that one simple question, Sakura felt like she was soaring.
“Yes!” She couldn’t even bother to mask her eagerness. “But don’t you have to turn in your report first?”
Rin deflated a little at that. From behind them, Minato-sensei chuckled.
“Don’t worry about it, you two. It’s Obito’s turn to handle the report, anyway.”
Obito groaned in protest as Rin, who seemed just as ready to dive headfirst into bonding as Sakura was, wasted no time in grabbing Sakura’s hand and rushing off for the shinobi shopping district. She paused only once, a few steps into their journey, to turn and ask Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou a question.
“Is it okay if Sakura sleeps over tonight?”
Kushina-shishou laughed and gave her a thumbs up, telling them which training ground they’d be using for joint practice the next morning, and with that, Rin started dragging Sakura away once more. Either she didn’t see or was nice enough no to comment on Sakura’s bright pink face, because wow, she was holding a cute girl’s hand and they were going shopping together and then they’d have a sleepover and—
“So what kind of outfits did you usually wear back home?” Rin asked as they trotted along the streets, winding their way out of the administrative district. “No, let me guess!”
She glanced over at Sakura, her gaze calculating. It had the same effect on Sakura as any look Rin gave her: butterflies in her stomach. It didn't help that they were still holding hands, but Sakura wasn't about to draw attention to that and have Rin pull away. Instead, she waited quietly for her to make her guess.
“Your eyes are such a pretty green, and you don't seem to have trouble moving around in this dress, or even sparring in it. So I think you wore a green dress—and I think the dress was sleeveless, but that you wore long sleeved mesh armor underneath it.”
Sakura's face felt hot from the compliment about her eyes, but she couldn't deny that it painted a pretty picture.
“Before I started training under Tsunade-shishou, I did wear a dress.” Rin started to grin, undoubtedly thinking she'd guess everything correctly, but Sakura went on. “But it was dark red, and I didn't even think about mesh armor until…well, our first C-rank went pretty badly. It made me realize how easily I could die. But I still didn't start wearing a mesh undershirt until my training with shishou.”
Rin’s eyes widened, her grin replaced with a more concerned look.
“Well, we're getting you mesh armor today,” she declared emphatically. “What did you wear after you started training under Tsunade-sama?”
“Oh, a vest in the same color as my old dress, And a pink medic skirt over shorts—like yours, but my skirt was a little shorter.”
“We could match,” Rin suggested, back to grinning. “But I still say you should consider green for your top.”
By the time Rin led Sakura up the three flights of stairs to her apartment, Sakura felt dead on her feet but utterly content. She was full of dinner (barbecue), loaded down with shopping bags, and glowing with the joy of bonding with someone on a deeper level. Over the course of their antics, the two girls talked about anything and everything (while keeping in mind not to say anything about Sakura’s origins from the future), and it turned out they had more in common than not.
They were medics, for one, and originally felt as though the boys in their teams far outstripped them—in fact, not falling behind was the primary motivation of both of them for their dedication to the medical field.
“But no one at the hospital is a combat medic, so I’m usually forced to stay behind,” Rin had said glumly over their meal. “That’s why I was hoping you could help me with learning Tsunade-sama’s enhanced strength.”
Sakura had agreed readily to the request again, with the same enthusiasm she had the first time in her new bedroom, and then the topic turned to what training Kushina-shishou was doing with her. Rin’s eyes had widened in awe when Sakura explained about the explosive seals and the training dummy casualties.
They talked and ate until finally, they noticed the sun was beginning to set. That was when Rin took Sakura by the hand yet again and began heading towards what Sakura knew to be the direction of standard shinobi corps housing.
“You live alone, right?” Sakura asked as she put her bags down in the entryway and pried off her sandals.
“Yeah,” Rin nodded, handing over a pair of slippers (plain white, but somehow perfectly sized to Sakura’s feet). “My parents weren’t exactly supportive of my career choice, you know? Especially once the war started…”
Sakura reached out to grab Rin’s hand, giving it a squeeze.
“It’s hard, having civilian parents. We’re already at a disadvantage in the Academy, but then they just…they just don’t get it.”
“Did your parents kick you out, too?” Rin asked as they settled side by side on the couch and she began putting the handful of medical supplies she’d bought into her kit.
“No,” Sakura shook her head. “Or at least, not yet. I think they might have wanted to, though. Guess they got their wish, in a way.” She laughed, trying not to sound too bitter.
“But you’ll go back, won’t you?”
Sakura shook her head, stomach dropping. Had she read everything wrong? Did Rin want her to go back to her own time? She tried to answer with as straight a face as she could, not betraying her struggle (it was all too easy, considering it wasn’t the first time she’d harbored more than friendly feelings for another girl she considered a friend).
“Kushina-shishou and I think I’ve probably already changed too much.”
They lapsed into silence for a moment, and Sakura had to resist the urge to start toying with the hem of her dress. Rin put her medic kit on the coffee table in front of herself, then turned to face Sakura.
“Is it wrong of me to be happy? I want you to stay, Sakura.”
Sakura’s whole body felt like it would fly apart at the seams, her heart racing while her palms began to sweat and her stomach seemed to turn into a thousand butterflies.
“Really?” She knew her face was red, knew she was giving herself away, but she just couldn’t help it. Rin wanted her to stay!
“Of course I do, Sakura,” Rin replied, leaning closer.
Leaning closer?!
“I know we haven’t known each other for long, but I really like you, Sakura.”
“You—you do?”
“You like girls, too, don’t you? I can feel your pulse whenever we hold hands, you know.”
“Rin?” Sakura’s voice was reduced to a pathetic squeak, and her face felt so hot she was sure it would explode. What was going on? Was this a dream? A genjutsu? Had an enemy captured her and figured out she had more than friendly feelings toward—
Lips, chapped but still somehow soft, pressed into hers, and Sakura’s mind emptied of all other thoughts.
Notes:
😇😇😇
Chapter Text
Sakura went to training the next morning exhausted. She hadn’t been able to sleep much the night before, too busy replaying the kiss over and over again.
Rin kissed her! Then they slept in the same bed, and when Sakura woke up they were cuddling!
It was like she was living in a fairytale, honestly. As they moved about the apartment, they tried to avoid eye contact, blushing and giggling whenever their hands brushed over breakfast or brown eyes met green from across the table.
At least Sakura wasn’t alone in her sluggishness—Rin also seemed to walk a little more slowly as they approached Training Ground Three that morning. Sakura knew, from the way Rin shifted around all night, she’d been in just the same predicament. But neither of them seemed bold enough to address what happened head on. At least, not yet.
“You two must have stayed up all night talking,” Minato-sensei teased as they slipped through the gates.
Sakura had to bite the inside of her cheek hard, to keep from blushing. Kushina-shishou must have caught the motion, because she winked at Sakura and diverted the topic.
“That’s a great new outfit, Sakura-chan! The green compliments your eyes, ya know.”
That perked Rin up, but Sakura could see the faintest hint of pink dusting her cheeks.
“Yeah! I thought a dark green would help her blend in with the trees, but this shade is also the same kind of cool tone as her eyes, right?”
Sakura watched as Kakashi rolled his eyes and Obito tried his best not to look bored. Minato-sensei, on the other hand, actually seemed mildly interested in what was being said (or at least, he could pretend as though he was interested). Still, they did eventually break up into pairs for warm ups and sparring, and Sakura shuffled off to work with Obito as instructed.
“I want you two to work on genjutsu,” Minato-sensei instructed, while Kushina-shishou started talking to Rin and Kakashi about whatever the focus would be for their own spar. “Obito, just because you haven't unlocked your Sharingan yet doesn't mean you can't start getting a leg up on what it means to craft a good illusion. It should also help you get a better feel for how much chakra you're using. Sakura, you already have good chakra control. Excellent, even. But you never received any specialized genjutsu training, did you?”
Sakura shook her head.
“Then it's settled. Run through your warmups, and then I want you to practice casting a few illusions on each other. Nothing like Hell Viewing, though.”
With that last warning, he moved back to the tree line with Kushina-shishou, so they could watch both sets of students.
Over the course of their battle, Sakura found that she and Obito were actually fairly matched. At least, when it came to genjutsu. Of course, once Obito awakened his clan's bloodline limit, all bets were off. She wasn't a genjutsu specialist, nor did she want to be, so all she needed to do was become competent enough to succeed in whatever mission was thrown her way in the future.
It was actually fun, weaving together illusions to try and fool Obito. And it was equally fun to try and break out of his—catching his trick by noticing a flower blooming that was out of season, or realizing the smell of the area she was supposedly in didn't match up to what her nose was telling her. All of this while they were trying to have a spar, too, which made it that much more fun. Judging from the grin on Obito’s face, he was also having a good time.
Neither of them walked away unscathed after four (or was it five? six?) rounds. Sakura had to tap out after having her left calf scorched by one of Obito’s fireballs when she didn’t break out of his genjutsu fast enough. Obito, meanwhile, similarly threw in the towel because he was bleeding freely from a water bullet that had pierced clean through his right bicep. Both of them barely managed to simultaneously announce I give before collapsing to the ground in identical heaps.
Unfortunately for Sakura, her legs folded beneath her in a way that made her medic skirt press into her raw, blistering calf. A wordless, pathetic little whimper left her as she hastily flopped forward, falling face-first on the grass so her calf was freed from its torture.
“Sakura! Obito!” Rin’s voice was the first she picked out from the various sounds of concern. Sakura tilted her head to the side right in time to see Rin approaching her.
She picked me first. She said my name first , Sakura thought giddily as Rin knelt beside her. Sadly, her sense of duty won out over the prospect of being pampered by her maybe-girlfriend, and she slowly rolled over, careful to keep her calf from touching the ground.
“I have enough chakra to heal it,” Sakura said, her hands lighting up with the telltale green chakra of medical jutsu. “You should go take care of Obito. I got him pretty good with a water bullet.”
Rin looked at her for a long moment, brow furrowing, before she finally nodded and moved to attend to Obito.
Sakura hadn’t meant to hurt Rin’s feelings, but Obito really did need the help more than she did!
Maybe next time I should just pretend to have less chakra, she mused as she finished patching up her leg, running her hands over the muscle one last time to ensure the skin was as smooth as it had been before the spar. Watching Rin fuss over Obito made her a little jealous.
But she still came to me first. And she hasn’t kissed Obito. Sakura paused, then realized there was no way she could know that for sure. They’re best friends, right? Maybe…Does she kiss all of her friends? But she asked if I liked girls too, so doesn’t that mean—
“You should probably find something else to think about before Rin-chan sees your face,” Kushina-shishou’s voice was suddenly whispering in her ear, drawing Sakura out of her ever-spiraling thoughts.
She jerked her head around to look at her mentor, who was grinning like a fox (fitting, given who Kushina-shishou housed inside herself).
“I’m not going to pry,” Sakura’s mentor assured, never dropping her grin. “But a big part of adult relationships is communication, ya know.”
Sakura knew she was right. If she wanted Rin to be her girlfriend, and she very much did, she needed to stop dancing around the subject before they ended up hurting each other’s feelings. But it was hard, especially when she’d never had her feelings reciprocated before—not with her forced feelings for Sasuke, and certainly not with Ino. It was hard for her to wrap her head around the concept that maybe, just maybe, Rin liked Sakura as much as Sakura liked her.
After that pep-talk, she made it a point to sit next to Rin during lunch at a nearby family restaurant, trying not to blush whenever their knees knocked together or their arms brushed. More than once, she saw Obito give them a suspicious glance, but Sakura and Rin would just stare him down until he ended up being the one to avert his eyes. He even blushed when Sakura caught his eye and then let her gaze slide between him and Kakashi, who wasn’t paying attention to anything other than his meal.
That’s not going to end well, Sakura mused. She hadn’t seen the two boys do anything but bicker, and that wasn’t a good basis for…whatever it was Obito was interested in with Kakashi. Then again, boys were weird, so maybe that was their way of flirting.
If that’s the case, Sasuke and Naruto should get married. The thought made her giggle into her miso soup, causing Rin to turn and look at her.
“What’s so funny?” she whispered, her breath ghosting against Sakura’s ear, making her shiver.
Sakura turned her head as quickly as she could without seeming suspicious, hoping that maybe, if she was fast enough, she could get another kiss without anyone noticing. Alas, she only caught Rin’s cheek, her lips ghosting over one of the purple marks on her face.
“I’ll tell you later,” she whispered back. “It’s about my old teammates.” She dropped her voice further before adding, “and yours.”
Rin turned her head again to look at Sakura, eyebrows raised. Her gaze dropped to Sakura’s lips, and for a brief moment, Sakura wondered if they would kiss right there in front of everyone else. But then Rin reached out and swiped her thumb along Sakura’s lips.
“You had some paint,” she explained, showing the smudge of purple that had rubbed off on the pad of her thumb.
“Oh,” was all Sakura could say, her heart still hammering.
“Ugh,” Kakashi interrupted, voice laden with disgust. Both girls snapped their heads around to look at him, glaring. “We came here to eat lunch, not flirt.”
Sakura felt her temper begin to flare again (he was just so good at riling her up!) but Rin beat her to the punch.
“Just because you’re too miserable to get a girlfriend doesn’t mean the rest of us are,” she snapped.
“I don’t need a girlfriend,” Kakashi immediately shot back. Sakura and Rin opened their mouths to retort in tandem, but were unceremoniously cut off.
“Can we all just finish our lunch, please?” Minato-sensei cut in before the bickering could devolve into an all-out fight.
After the rest of the tense lunch, Sakura was supposed to head to Training Ground Ten with Kushina-shishou, while Rin needed to head off to the hospital for more lessons.
“I bet I could learn much more if you were the teacher,” she complained as they stood in line at the register, waiting to pay for their meals. “And you could start teaching me the enhanced strength technique, too.”
She’s so cute when she pouts, Sakura thought dreamily.
“Maybe we could ask Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou to start pairing us up for training?”
“That’s a great idea, Sakura-chan!” Kushina-shishou’s head was suddenly right between Sakura’s and Rin’s, and that mischievous grin was once more stretched across her face. “We can start tomorrow, ya know!”
It was good enough, so with a promise to see each other the next morning, the girls paid their bills and went their separate ways.
Luckily, Sakura had sealing practice to keep her mind occupied for the rest of the afternoon. She was still surprised at just how easily it seemed to come to her, now that she had a teacher to give her proper guidance. It was almost as simple as tree walking, really, and Sakura had been able to do that without much thought since Kakashi-sensei first showed them how. Kushina-shishou seemed to be similarly impressed.
“The more I see you work, the more I’m convinced at least one of your parents came from Uzu, ya know.”
Sakura flushed with pride at the praise, but shook her head.
“I’m not that— ”
“Nope,” Kushina-shishou held up one hand. “Downplaying your skills isn’t allowed here, Sakura-chan. Take the compliment!”
Sakura knew she’d have more trouble with that than she would any seal, but she nodded her head meekly and said no more about it. She had a storage seal to work on, anyway.
“Hmm,” Kushina-shishou mused as she watched Sakura’s brush strokes. “I wonder if those lines,” she pointed to some of the curved lines slicing the sealing circle into thirds, “got smudged somehow…”
Sakura had picked up on some of the various intricacies of how lines were connected to attributes in seals by then, but couldn’t quite pick up on what her mentor was saying. So, she waited for Kushina-shishou to spell it out.
“It might be suitable for some kind of time travel.”
Oh. That… that made a lot of sense. While a stasis seal dealt with time, a storage seal like the one she was crafting dealt with space (there were some storage seals that had built-in stasis attributes, but Sakura’s trip into the past was still a little too raw for her to feel safe working on one just yet).
If you smudge the sectioning lines… Sakura tilted her head and squinted, and suddenly she could see it. There was one question she had, though.
“But what kind of low-grade ink would you have to use for it to smudge that badly?”
“There are a few sellers around the Hanabira and Akasen districts who water down their sealing ink to try and cut costs,” Kushina-shishou explained, nose scrunching up in disgust at the mere thought. “We’ll stop by the only shop I use after this, so I can introduce you to the owner. He’s an Uzu immigrant, really nice. If I tell him you’re my apprentice, he’ll probably give you a little discount, too.”
Far be it from Sakura to turn down a bargain. First, however, she had to finish her seal.
She let Kushina-shishou inspect it after she was done, and then, as a final test, she tried sealing something into it—this time, her forehead protector, since it was the thing she had closest to her.
It sealed and unsealed beautifully, and as she tied the protector back into its usual place as her headband, Kushina-shishou told her they would start working on layered seals next.
“You’ve done a good job with explosives, and I know stasis seals aren’t on the table yet. And learning how to layer seals is one of the most important parts of becoming a seal master, ya know! That will open the door to more time-delay explosives and trap seals.”
Sakura could practically feel her eyes start to shimmer in excitement at the prospect. Medical ninjutsu was rewarding, yes, and she was good at it! But it looked like she was shaping up to be even better at sealing, and with one of the only two sealmasters in the village as her mentor? The sky was the limit.
She might have no choice but to live out the rest of her life in the past, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t carve out a place for herself there. It didn’t mean she couldn’t become a legend in her own right.
Chapter 6
Summary:
Rin finds out what happens in a mind walking session.
CW!This chapter alludes to mindwalking being similar to sexual assault
Chapter Text
The next time Sakura was called into Intelligence, it was during one of her training sessions with Rin. The ANBU agent lingered around the gates of Training Ground Three, and even though she couldn’t see their eyes from behind their mask, she felt them watching as she and Rin bent over the small crater Rin managed to make in the ground just moments before.
Her hackles raised, and she slowly positioned herself so she was obscuring Rin from view, making what she assumed was eye contact with the agent the entire time.
“Sakura?” Rin called out hesitantly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Sakura replied, hoping Rin would pick up on the unspoken I’ll tell you later to her voice.
As it turned out, later came almost immediately. The ANBU agent finally looked away, the ominous bird mask turning to face Minato-sensei as the war hero approached. Sakura turned back to Rin.
“I didn’t like the way that person was watching you,” she admitted. “I know it sounds silly, but…”
Rin looked at her seriously for a moment, then broke into a grin.
“But you want to protect me, huh?”
“Of course!” Sakura stammered out, flustered but adamant in her conviction. “You’re my girlfriend, and I—” She bit down on her tongue after realizing what she’d said. Despite the fact it had been weeks since the kiss, and there had been more sleepovers (and more kisses) since, they’d never actually defined what they were. Was calling Rin her girlfriend too much? Would she be angry? Would—
“Hey,” Rin’s lightly callused fingers came up to rest on Sakura’s face, ghosting over her cheeks and tilting Sakura’s head until she had no choice but to look her in the eye. “Why are you embarrassed? I happen to like it when my girlfriend wants to protect me.”
Butterflies exploded in Sakura’s stomach, and she felt her hands begin to shake as the adrenaline of her imagined mistake wore off.
“Is it really okay?” Sakura asked, praying to every god there was that this was all real, that Rin was really saying she wanted to officially be Sakura’s girlfriend. Before she got an answer, though, someone else called her name.
“Sakura-chan!” Minato jogged over to them, getting there just as Rin pulled her hands away. “They need you in Intelligence. Do you need me or Kushina to come with you?”
Sakura felt her heart rate speed up yet again, her body tensing up in defense even more. She didn’t want to go back to Intelligence. She didn’t want to have to sit through another Mind Transfer Justu. Her skin began to crawl, and a lump welled up in her throat.
The war was almost over—that one supply line (Kannabi, from what she remembered in her old Academy textbook) had been destroyed the other week and Iwa was being starved out. Plus the other knowledge they’d extracted from Sakura since her first day in the past was being put to use on the other fronts, too. So why did they still need her, when she was sure she had nothing else to give? By then, circumstances had changed so much that she wasn’t even sure any of the knowledge from her original time would be useful.
She felt Rin’s hand slip into hers, and while it didn’t entirely stop the dread from welling up within her, it certainly helped her stop shaking.
“I can go alone,” Sakura answered, trying to put on a brave face in front of her girlfriend (her girlfriend!).
Naturally, Minato-sensei saw right through it.
“You know what, I think I might want to sit in on this. Since I’m due to head to the front lines soon, you know. It’s easier to get a leg up if I’m getting the information from the source, right?” He smiled at her, and Sakura felt a weight lift off her shoulders.
“Right,” she replied, voice a little wobbly.
Rin walked with her to the gates of the training ground, only letting go of Sakura’s hand at the very last minute.
“Rin-chan, you’re still coming over for dinner, right?” Minato-sensei asked. He received an enthusiastic nod in response.
“Good! You don’t need to wait for six, just come home with Kushina after practice, alright?” He looked over at where Kakashi and Obito were trying to kill each other in a spar (as usual) and sighed. “And help her keep an eye on the boys for me? I’d hate to have to fill out a casualty report on both of them.”
Rin giggled, but agreed readily. Her expression sobered a bit as she looked at Sakura one last time.
“I’ll see you in a few hours,” she reminded her.
Sakura was so adept at reading between the lines at that point that she knew exactly what Rin was trying to say, and melted.
I’ll see you in a few hours, because you’re strong and you can get through this.
Rin was waiting for her when she and Minato-sensei emerged from the Intelligence building later that afternoon. Kushina-shishou was there, too, looking…not quite angry, but certainly not as cheerful as usual. But Sakura's focus was on Rin.
Rin, who marched right up to her and grabbed her hand and didn't let go, even though their teachers were watching.
“Let's go home, shall we?” Minato-sensei suggested. He didn't bother waiting for anyone to answer before he started heading in the direction of the Uzumaki-Namikaze apartment, Kushina-shishou jogging a few steps to catch up to him and leaving the two girls to follow behind them.
Rin didn't ask Sakura if she was okay, much to Sakura's relief.
I probably look terrible enough she can already see the answer is no. Just like every other mind walking session she'd had, Sakura felt so drained. In fact, if she hadn't had Rin's hand to hold onto, she might not have been able to pull herself up the stairs and into the apartment.
“Here, sit down,” Rin gently steered her to sit on the little ledge separating the entryway from the rest of the apartment, then pried off Sakura's sandals and slid on the fluffy purple slippers that Sakura had bought just the other day (if the shade matched Rin's face paint, well…).
“Thank you,” Sakura whispered, failing to keep her voice from wavering. They lapsed into silence for a moment, during which Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou’s voices could be heard floating from the kitchen, where they’d started working on dinner already.
“This has gone on for too long,” Kushina-shishou snapped. “She’s thirteen, ya know! I remember what it felt like, to have it done to me when I came to the village. And she’s been put through it every week since she’s come here, ya know!”
Sakura sucked in a breath, her whole body tensing. So Kushina-shishou had been forced into a mind walk once? She supposed it made sense—Konoha wouldn’t want a jinchuuriki without loyalty, but shishou had been what? Ten? Eight? Sakura felt her stomach bubble with nausea at the thought.
“I know, Kushina,” Minato-sensei assured her in a low voice. “The war is all but over now, so—”
“I’m not waiting for the war to be over!” Sakura had never heard Kushina-shishou so angry at Minato-sensei before. That it was over her well-being made her want to cry. Someone was looking out for her. Someone who knew what it felt like, and who had some kind of leverage.
“Kushina, please,” Minato-sensei tried to soothe. “I’ve been working on him. Especially after the last mission I went on. He said he wouldn’t need to call her in anymore. I was just as surprised as you.”
“If he won’t stop abusing her, maybe—”
“Shh!” Minato-sensei interrupted his girlfriend with a hiss. Then, more softly, he added. “I know, and I agree. But let’s wait to talk about this later , alright?” Later, as in when the two could retreat to their bedroom and activate the multitude of silencing and privacy seals they had there.
Silence once more settled in the entryway, while the sounds of chopping and frying and stirring began wafting from the kitchen once more.
“Sakura…” Rin trailed off, looking uncertain. To buy herself some time, she quickly changed out of her own sandals, then helped Sakura stand so they could head towards the bathroom to wash up. “What happens when they make you go to Intelligence?”
Sakura grabbed her girlfriend’s hand and gave it a squeeze to keep herself steady. Then, she took a shaky breath and explained exactly what went on in a mind walk. How it felt to have someone you didn’t implicitly trust enter your brain and rifle around. How vulnerable it made her. How violated and empty she always felt afterwards. How she had nightmares about the Yamanaka man doing more than just looking at her memories, and how she wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop him.
Tears started rolling down her face as she thought about how awful it felt, and how Kushina-shishou had been forced to endure it at such a young age. That her mentor’s torture had also been under the Sandaime’s direction didn’t escape her notice, either.
She felt Rin pull her into a hug. Sakura’s vision was too obscured by tears to see, but the warmth of being enveloped by a person she trusted helped soothe her. She felt a little pathetic, standing in front of the bathroom sink and sobbing into her girlfriend’s shoulder, but that was what partners were for, right? And really, if it was Rin, then it was okay. Sakura knew she wouldn’t judge her for showing emotion.
Neither of them said anything after that. When Sakura felt stable enough to pull back from the embrace, both of them washed their hands and then worked on making Sakura’s face less red and puffy. The last thing she needed was for Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou to figure out she’d been crying—not that they would judge her, either, but they clearly had enough on their plates already.
Their efforts were in vain. Though neither adult said anything to them, Sakura immediately spotted the way their eyes lingered on her face when she entered the kitchen. Thankfully, they let her and Rin set the table in peace, and when dinner was finally served, they turned the topic to work.
“I’ll be asking the Hokage to add you to our next mission, Sakura-chan,” Minato-sensei announced. “You’ve been here for weeks now, and I think that’s long enough to keep you cooped up.”
“I told you not to try stealing her from me, ya know,” Kushina-shishou pouted. Sakura could tell it was all in good fun, though, and giggled into her hand. From the corner of her eye, she caught Rin grinning.
“Really, sensei? Can she really come with us?” Rin’s excitement was palpable.
“I’ll do my best to make it happen,” Minato-sensei promised. “I don’t think I need to remind you not to stay up every night talking, if it happens to be a longer mission.”
Sakura felt her cheeks grow hot, and she shook her head vigorously.
“No, sensei!” She and Rin answered in sync.
“Then it’s settled. I can go ask tomorrow morning, if you don’t mind leading training, Kushina?”
“I guess I better spend as much time with my apprentice as I can before you yank her away from me,” Kushina-shishou grumbled playfully.
“Good! Then it’s settled,” Minato-sensei clapped his hands. “You two make sure to have your mission packs on you tomorrow, just in case we need to leave immediately. I’ll send word to Kakashi and Obito later, so they know to do the same.”
With the hope of finally escaping the village (and the ever-looming threat of being hauled off to Intelligence yet again), the rest of the night felt like a dream.
She and Rin washed the dishes and watched a movie with their teachers and got ready for bed, only parting for their respective baths. Even when they settled under the blankets of Sakura’s bed, they curled close to one another, whispering and giggling and exchanging little kisses (and blushing after each one).
It was everything Sakura had ever wanted in a relationship. She knew adults did even more things, but she and Rin were still only thirteen—they had time to be sweet and soft with each other, even in the midst of a war.
Sakura was still on cloud nine when she woke in the morning, especially when she realized she and Rin were curled around each other, unable to be apart even in their sleep. Not even the sound of a camera shutter ruined her mood, though she did turn her head to raise an eyebrow at the culprit. Beside her, Rin stirred, and the look she leveled was a little less friendly than Sakura’s.
“You two just looked so cute,” Minato-sensei defended himself. “This is going straight into your wedding album one day, and you’ll thank me then.”
The mention of a wedding successfully distracted both girls, their faces erupting into matching blushes while Minato-sensei grinned and sauntered down the hallway.
Married to Rin! It was too soon to think about that, of course, but…well, wasn’t every girl entitled to dream about her wedding?
No matter how she justified it, though, Sakura and Rin had a hard time making eye contact without blushing as they went about their morning routines. And when their hands brushed at the breakfast table? Just as it had during that first kiss, Sakura’s chest exploded with butterflies.
Chapter 7
Summary:
Sakura's first mission outside of the village since she landed in the past.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Yeah, let’s go!” Obito’s enthusiastic shout rang out in the late morning air as Team Minato approached the village gates.
Sakura and Kushina-shishou were with them, but instead of seeing them off at the gates as she’d done before, Sakura marched right past the gate guards alongside her teammates, unable to keep the grin off her face as she turned to give Kushina-shishou one last wave. (At least, she thought, she managed to keep from yelling like Obito.)
She was finally free—in a sense. She was still a loyal shinobi, of course, but for the next few days, she would be free of the worries of being dragged into Intelligence for another mind walk.
They were due to head northwest, towards the border of Waterfall country, in order to clean up the last few straggling Iwa shinobi who were running loose into Fire and killing civilians. It was, in some ways, a wetworks job, and it would no doubt be the source of Sakura’s first kill, but… Well, she had to do it sometime, right? She was a trained kunoichi, and killing was part of her job. She’d just been fortunate enough to grow up in peacetime, in the world’s most secure hidden village, and killing hadn’t ever been a necessity.
Well, arguably it had been a necessity in Wave, but she had been in no position to kill back then.
“Are you happy to finally be out?” Rin asked as they prepared to take to the trees, keeping her voice to a whisper.
“Yes,” Sakura whispered back. “And I didn’t want to get rusty, you know?”
Rin giggled.
“Careful, you’re starting to sound like Kushina-sensei.”
“Hey, what are you guys whispering about?” Obito wedged himself between the two girls as he spoke, making no attempt to hide his pouting. “Aren’t I your friend, too?”
“Of course you are,” Rin sighed in fond exasperation. “But what if we’d been talking about girl things?”
Obito tilted his head in confusion, even as they all funnelled chakra into their legs and leapt onto branches of the nearest tree.
“Why would that bother me? Girls do all the same things as boys!”
Sakura felt a swell of appreciation for Obito in that moment. There was still a clear divide in how kunoichi were treated in comparison to their male counterparts, but he didn’t seem to acknowledge it—not in an insulting way, but in a manner that made it clear he genuinely thought everyone was equally capable. (It was refreshing, because even Naruto, as much as he’d grown on Sakura in the end, had still held onto some beliefs about needing to protect Sakura because she was a girl.)
“We were talking about how glad I am to finally go on a mission again,” Sakura offered up.
“Oh! Yeah, it’s gonna be amazing,” Obito agreed enthusiastically as they sailed through the trees. “You’re always really good in practice, Sakura! I can’t wait to see you in action!”
Ahead of them, closer to Minato-sensei, Kakashi snorted. This, as always, set Obito off, and he pulled away from the girls to go bicker.
“They should probably just kiss,” Rin suggested with a giggle, speaking low enough that the boys wouldn’t hear them. Sakura had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from bursting into laughter.
They made it to the border by the next afternoon, after a suspiciously smooth journey.
It wasn’t that Sakura expected every B-rank mission to be trouble from the start, of course, but considering they were still technically at war, it made her a little wary. That, combined with the fact that it was her first ever B-rank mission, had her on high alert. If her first C-rank had gone so disastrously wrong (and, if she were honest, her first D-rank as a genin hadn’t exactly been a stellar experience), then a higher ranking mission was sure to be just as much of a problem, right?
Rin, who knew about Sakura’s Wave mission by then, picked up on her girlfriend’s distress and made sure to stay as close as possible while still remaining in the formation Minato-sensei had them in.
In the end, that proximity was what saved her life.
The team was closing in on a known drop-off spot for Iwa and Kumo runners when Sakura felt the tiniest flare of foreign chakra coming from the right side of the trees. She acted on instinct, reaching out and pulling Rin into herself right as she saw Minato-sensei, Obito, and Kakashi stiffen and turn to face the group’s eleven, eight, and two o’clocks, respectively.
A fuma shuriken came hurtling out of the treeline in the same instant, burying itself into the ground where Rin had been standing a moment before with a heavy thunk.
None of them needed to be told what to do—they all worked seamlessly together, even Sakura, and sprung into action at once as the group of Iwa shinobi descended on them.
Sakura knew she couldn’t use her explosive tags in the fight, not when her teammates were so close, but she was far from a one-trick pony. Using the handful of elemental jutsu she’d been able to pick up since her arrival in the current year, she sliced through one nin with a water blade, ripping a hole through his femoral artery that would kill him if there wasn’t a medic with Tsunade’s level of skill on his team.
Sakura didn’t have time to watch the man bleed out, though, because she heard a soft choking noise behind her. Her heart was gripped with icy panic, because she knew that voice, and knew it meant the person it belonged to had been hurt.
Whipping around, she acted on instinct, checking only to make sure Rin was clear of the path of her fist before she sent chakra spiraling down her arm and swung.
Punching through a man was a very unpleasantly wet and squishy experience, as it turned out, and the softness was only broken up by the sensation of shattered ribs scratching the skin of her hand.
While she extracted her hand from the now very dead man, she took stock of her girlfriend, eyes rapidly scanning to see where she’d been hurt. It didn’t take her more than an instant to see the sword lodged in Rin’s abdomen.
Something closed off in Sakura, and she went into what she’d heard Shizune refer to as medic mode.
“Don’t pull it out,” Sakura instructed. She knew that Rin knew that, but she also knew that shock was liable to make people behave erratically and forget any training they’d had. “Obito!” She called out, knowing he was the nearest one to them. “Cover me!”
She didn’t wait for him to say anything in the affirmative before she started working, her hands glowing with an intense green chakra as she gently eased the sword from her girlfriend, using the hand supporting Rin’s back to heal the wound closed as she went. Inch by inch, Sakura poured all her effort into making sure the flesh and organs were knit back together as seamlessly as possible, until finally, Sakura was able to toss the sword away and help Rin come to sit down.
“Here,” Sakura fished a blood replenishing pill from one of the storage seals in her thigh pouch. “You didn’t lose too much blood, thankfully.” Also thankfully, the sword hadn’t been poisoned.
I might have lost her if it had been. That single thought was what finally eased her out of her strictly business mindset and back to earth. Where her girlfriend was sitting next to a corpse with a hole in his chest, looking mildly stunned.
“Rin!” Minato-sensei called out, rushing over to them. Sakura glanced up only long enough to see the rest of the Iwa nin had been disposed of—none more violently than the one Sakura had just killed, though it looked like Kakashi had electrocuted one and that was a pretty close second as far as gruesomeness.
“I’m okay, sensei,” Rin croaked out, but her voice was trembling just as much as the rest of her body. “Sakura saved me.” She reached out slowly, and Sakura met her halfway, taking firm hold of the hand and lifting it up to press a kiss on the back, giving it a squeeze for reassurance as she lowered it back down. She didn’t let go after that, though, nor did she care when she heard Kakashi give a little huff of disgust at the open display of affection.
Sakura didn’t care. Nor did she care about the fact she’d just killed someone for the first time in her life.
She’d kill a thousand men without batting an eye if it meant keeping Rin safe.
Minato-sensei must have had an inkling that Sakura had never killed before, because that night as she took first watch, he sat beside her to talk. Rin’s head was resting softly in her lap, Sakura’s fingers carding gently through the chestnut-colored locks as her girlfriend drifted to sleep, and Minato-sensei took care to keep his voice low enough so as not to disturb her.
“Sakura, I know you were raised in peacetime,” he started. “But there was an invasion during your first chuunin exams, yes?”
Sakura shook her head, knowing exactly what he was asking, even if he was being wildly indirect about it.
“I never killed anyone before, sensei,” she replied, keeping her own voice to a murmur. Still, she felt Rin shift, and knew that even though her eyes were closed, she was listening to every word of the conversation. “I don’t feel bad about it, if that’s what you’re worried about. It was to make sure Rin was safe, and I’d do it again as many times as I needed to. I would protect any of you without regrets, but…”
But Rin more so than anyone.
Minato-sensei’s brow furrowed for a moment, but then he looked down at the not-actually sleeping Rin and his features smoothed out.
“I know.” He sighed, then added. “You know, us civilian borns are stronger than anyone gives us credit for. Stronger than most clan born shinobi.”
That caught Sakura off-guard.
“Sensei, you’re a civilian born?” That certainly hadn’t been in the history books!
“ And an orphan,” Minato-sensei added, his lips twitching with amusement at her surprise. “But I grew up during the Second War, so that wasn’t as much of a disadvantage as it sounds like it was in your time.”
Sakura dropped her gaze to Rin again, stopping her motions in order to admire her girlfriend’s face. Rin, too, had gone through some of the Academy during peacetime, and her parents seemed to have fought against her career choice even harder than Sakura’s.
“You two are talented shinobi, and I’m proud to be your teacher.” He snorted, then added, “Or one of your teachers, at least. I know better than to try and take you from Kushina.”
Sakura tried to stifle her giggles. When the urge died down and silence began creeping back over the campsite, Minato-sensei stood to move to his own bedroll on the other side of the pit where their smokeless campfire had cooked their dinner only hours before.
“You did a good job today, Sakura,” he ruffled her hair. Then, with a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes that Sakura could only just make out in the moonlight, he added, “And you, too, Rin.”
Rin finally gave up feigning sleep, sitting up slowly in order to beam at her teacher.
“Thanks, sensei.”
“Make sure to wake up Kakashi for second shift in a few hours, alright?”
“Yes, sensei,” they answered in unison.
They only waited a few minutes after Minato-sensei settled into his bedroll before Rin whispered a question.
“You were the one that set up the trap seals around the perimeter, right?”
“Yeah,” Sakura confirmed.
“Good. We’ll have plenty of warning if someone tries to surprise us.”
Before Sakura could let herself flush with pride at her girlfriend’s confidence in her sealing skills, Rin was pinning her to her bedroll and kissing her.
Two days later, as the team stood in the Hokage’s office to give their verbal reports, Sakura tried not to let any anxiety show on her face. She was certain, especially as she spoke about her takedown of the two Iwa nin, that the Sandaime would call out to her after everything was said and done and make her report to Intelligence yet again. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be alight as the others finished telling their version of events, just waiting for the news of yet another torture session. She tried not to stiffen noticeably when the Hokage opened his mouth, but something must have given her away, because Rin's hand slipped into her own and gave a squeeze.
“Hokage-sama, I'd actually like to discuss a few things I noticed about the site of the attack,” Minato-sensei said, effectively cutting off whatever the Sandaime had been about to say. Minato glanced over his shoulder at the team, then back to the village leader with a pointed look on his face. “ Alone, if you don't mind me dismissing my students.”
The old man looked very much like he did mind, but he merely shook his head.
“Very well, Minato-kun.” His gaze swept across the four young people, seeming to sharpen when they landed on Sakura and Rin's joined hands. But whatever he was thinking, he didn't say it. Instead, he bid them all to go collect their pay before the mission desk workers switched shifts for the night.
“Oh, and Sakura-chan,” Minato-sensei called out just as Sakura reached the door, having allowed Rin to lead her out by the hand. “If you wouldn't mind collecting my portion, too, I'd appreciate it! We'll have takeout tonight—Kushina knows my usual orders at all the restaurants in the village, so pick anywhere you like!”
Sakura tried to smile, rather than grin at him. But she knew what he was doing, and she appreciated it more than she could put into words.
By staying over to talk with the Hokage and then giving her a task to do right in front of the old man, he was ensuring she wouldn't be summoned to Intelligence for at least another few hours.
He was buying her time.
Sakura felt so happy, so cared for, that it took her a moment to register Rin trying to pull her hand away as they left the tower with their pay in hand. Luckily, she had a tight enough grip that she noticed before her girlfriend could totally disentangle herself.
“You're coming over for dinner, right?” She gave her best impression of sad puppy eyes.
“Can we come over, too?!” Obito asked, interrupting Rin before she could answer.
Sakura looked to her for an opinion first, and was relieved when she nodded. It was hard to turn down Obito, when he was so supportive. He truly was a good friend, and he and Rin were best friends long before Sakura came into the picture— she wanted to make sure that bond remained strong.
“Sure.” Sakura gave him a thumbs up with her free hand, then shifted her gaze to Kakashi and added, “You should come, too.”
“No thanks.”
“Come on, Bakashi! Don't be such a stick in the mud!”
“I spent enough time with you on the mission, why would I want to extend that?”
“Hey!”
Sakura rolled her eyes at the predictable lapse into bickering, while Rin started giggling beside her. Then, Sakura got a devious idea. Grinning, she leaned over to whisper in her girlfriend's ear, making sure she was loud enough that the two boys would be able to overhear.
“I don't think even kissing would fix those two.”
The twin noises of protest from Obito and Kakashi sent both girls into peals of laughter, right there in the middle of the street.
Notes:
You can pry the "Sakura's fist kill is made by punching through a man" bit out of my cold, dead hands. I will use it in every genin Sakura fic I can. c:
Chapter Text
The war officially ended a month and a half later, after tense back-and-forths with Iwa, Kumo, and Kiri—or really, just with Iwa and Kiri, since Kumo refused to admit any wrongdoing and merely disappeared from the scene altogether. Suspiciously, their retreat took place after Minato-sensei came home from a solo mission in which he had to travel northeast, towards the border of Hot Water (which Kumo had been using as a base of operations for attacking villages in Fire).
Sakura vaguely remembered hearing some murmurings as a child about how the Raikage had been scared of Konoha’s Yellow Flash, mostly after the Hyuuga Affair. The general consensus among her civilian neighbors had been that the incident never would have happened if the Yondaime had still been alive. Unfortunately, Minato-sensei had been dead for several years by that point, and wishing was just about the least useful thing you could do to change an outcome in a shinobi village.
Luckily, Sakura had already changed things so thoroughly in the months she’d been in the past that she was fairly sure the same sad fate wouldn’t befall any of her precious people this time around. That the war was over a whole year ahead of schedule was proof enough that she could change things, make life better for those around her.
And so, Minato-sensei was due to be inaugurated ahead of schedule, a few weeks after the peace treaties were signed into effect. Sakura hadn’t been called into Intelligence once after the treaty, though she’d been forced to go before the Sandaime signed anything—apparently he’d wanted to make sure none of the countries involved were planning on reneging.
She suspected that was what made Minato-sensei so eager to accept the position, despite the heavy burden the title carried. He wanted to make sure nothing like that ever happened again to anyone he held close.
It was almost unbelievable to Sakura, how she’d somehow become one of the incumbent Yondaime’s precious people in such a short span of time. It helped that she was Kushina’s apprentice and possible distant cousin, of course. Even then, they hadn’t been under any obligation to take her with them when they moved into the official Hokage residence after the inauguration. Yet when Sakura brought up the idea of finding an apartment in Rin’s building, they shot her down so swiftly, so thoroughly, that she couldn’t help but feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Somehow, Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou had become more like parents than her own mother and father had been for a long time. The thought didn’t upset her as much as it would have before her time travel mishap, though. In fact, she found herself totally at peace with that, as well as the fact that she would never be able to go back to the time she came from. In fact, by the time she’d been pulled in for her last mind walk, Sakura had stopped thinking of herself as living in the past altogether.
The night before the ceremony, after Sakura had sealed away all her belongings in preparation for the move into the Hokage residence the next day, she headed straight for Rin’s apartment. She figured Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou would want a night alone, with the whole place to themselves.
Rin must have been waiting for her at the door, because when Sakura climbed the final flight of stairs and landed on the fourth floor, she saw the door to Rin’s unit fly open and a familiar head of brown hair poke out.
“Sakura!”
Sakura’s heart fluttered as she waved at her girlfriend with enthusiasm. She all but sprinted to make it the few yards to the door, where Rin was beaming at her.
“I missed you,” Sakura blurted out. Then, realizing how clingy she must have sounded, her face, ears, and neck began burning with embarrassment. To her relief, though, Rin also blushed. Their smiles became smaller, but somehow even more genuine.
“Me, too.” She reached out and grabbed both of Sakura’s hands with her own, leading her over the threshold and into the apartment.
Both of them ignored the fact that they’d seen each other only that morning, during one of their regularly scheduled healing and sealing combination lessons. (Sakura felt pride not only at the fact she was learning about seven layer seals, which is what most jinchuuriki had, but that Rin was getting ready to surpass her in medical jutsu—her girlfriend was just so cool!)
“Do you want to help me make dinner?” Rin asked as Sakura finished changing out of her sandals and activating the privacy seals she’d made specifically for her girlfriend’s apartment (if Rin ever moved out, she doubted the landlord would be thrilled with having to scrub sealing ink off the door). “I was thinking about nabe, maybe.” October had just arrived, so the weather was beginning to cool off, making nabe a perfect fit.
“That sounds good,” Sakura agreed.
They fell into an easy routine after that. Sakura had never been allowed near the kitchen at her parents’ house, and she’d never felt comfortable enough to try cooking in the Namikaze-Uzumaki house, but with Rin, she’d blossomed. She would never be a professional chef, or really impress anyone with her skills, but she was at least confident she could feed herself with more than takeout.
Besides, learning to cook with her girlfriend was kind of romantic, wasn’t it?
“You know,” Rin said as they finally settled down at the table with their food, “I saw Kakashi at the market earlier, and he was wearing the outfit we got him.”
Sakura nearly choked on her broth.
For Kakashi’s thirteenth birthday and promotion to jounin the month before, the whole team had chipped in to buy him a full outfit—mesh armor, flame resistant pants, and even a shirt that they’d had custom made with a built-in mask. Sakura and Kushina-shishou had even created a few seals to embroider into the lining of his pockets, to give him extra storage room and a little extra protection from blades.
He’d acted like his usual disaffected self when he opened the gift, so Sakura hadn’t been sure if he actually liked it. Hearing he was actually wearing everything, though, made her feel a lot better.
She hoped he wouldn’t live as dangerous a life as he had in her old life, especially since it seemed he wouldn’t be getting the sharingan (and therefore adding a target on his back), but he was still a genius, and geniuses were all too often pushed past their limits in the field. (She vaguely remembered Sasuke bragging about how smart his brother was, when they entered the Academy, and look what happened there. Though, that was another thing she hoped to prevent—Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou were aware of the Uchiha Massacre, and with Minato-sensei’s new position and Kushina-shishou’s closeness with Itachi’s mother, Mikoto, Sakura was sure they could avoid it.)
No matter, the clothes were a good start.
“Well, at least we know he likes them,” Sakura giggled. “It’s still so hard to get a handle on what he’s really feeling. Even when he was my teacher, it seemed like he was always putting on an act.” Except when one of them had really been in danger, like the Wave mission, or when Sasuke and Naruto had nearly punched holes in her on the hospital rooftop, or—she didn’t really want to think about any of it. The past was the past, and it had all led her right to where she was truly needed.
“I think Gai is breaking him out of his shell,” Rin replied. Then, she set her chopsticks down. “You haven’t met him yet, have you? Maito Gai.”
“Oh, I’ve met him,” Sakura shuddered. “He was the teacher who helped me with my taijutsu, when Tsunade-shishou was too busy.” She leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper as she added, “You know, he had a student that was like a clone of himself.”
“No,” Rin gasped, eyes widening in horror. “ Two of them?”
Sakura went into the tale of meeting Gai-sensei and Rock Lee at that slight prompting. She was particularly pleased to note the way Rin scowled when she got to the part about Lee calling her a beautiful blossom and asking her out. It was nice to have someone feel jealous over her affections.
“I don’t think I want you to meet Gai, then,” Rin admitted. “Even though I know he isn’t a threat.”
Sakura scooted around to the other side of the table and kissed her girlfriend on the cheek, grinning broadly when she saw how flustered it made Rin.
Kakashi was wearing his new outfit again when Team Minato met up for the inauguration the next day. Naturally, Obito called him out on it immediately.
“See? You do care about us, Bakashi!”
Kakashi grumbled, but he didn’t outright protest past a weak Shut up, Obito.
At that, Obito had the strangest reaction: he gaped in surprise, yes, but then his ears began turning red.
Sakura and Rin looked at each other, and with just that one glance, they made an unspoken vow to interrogate Obito later (because it was no good trying to get any information out of Kakashi, obviously). First, however, they had a teacher to cheer on.
As Minato-sensei’s team, they were given seats of honor alongside the clan heads at the very front of the crowds. It was a cushy spot, though not as close as Kushina-shishou’s—as his partner, she was allowed to stand on the balcony of the Hokage office for the ceremony.
“Hello Obito-kun, Rin-chan, Kakashi-kun. And Sakura-chan, it’s nice to see you again,” a gentle voice called out to her as she slipped into her assigned chair.
Leaning forward to look past Obito and Rin, who were sitting to her left, she saw a face that was becoming increasingly familiar to her.
“Mikoto-san!” She’d met Mikoto several times by that point—she’d even helped Kushina-shishou run training once, when Minato-sensei had been on a solo mission. Sakura thought she was the second prettiest person in the village, only behind Rin as far as looks, and her elegance with a blade was unmatched. Kushina-shishou had mentioned Mikoto used to be an ANBU captain, before she became pregnant with her first child. And speaking of that child…
“I’d like to introduce you to my husband, Fugaku,” she gestured to a stern looking man two seats down from her. And then, she took a small, pale hand and prompted the person in the seat directly to her left to stand up. “And my son, Itachi.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Sakura, Rin, and (to Sakura’s surprise) Kakashi replied in sync. Obito, meanwhile, gave an enthusiastic wave to his clan’s head family. He’d unlocked his sharingan right after the war’s end, on a freak C-rank gone wrong, and had been basking in the approval of his fellow clan members since.
Sakura herself was fighting hard not to squeal—Uchiha Itachi was the cutest child she’d ever seen. He was even more adorable than she remembered Sasuke being!
And then, another adorable face popped into view, leaping up from the chair beside Fugaku.
“And I’m Shisui! Hi!”
Mikoto laughed, a soft, melodic sound. Then, she beckoned Shisui to come closer.
“Shisui-kun, these are the Yondaime’s students. And Sakura-chan,” she gestured to Sakura, “is my friend Kushina’s apprentice.”
Both little boys’ eyes widened.
“Does that mean one of you is gonna be the next hokage?” Shisui asked. “Sandaime-sama was Nidaime-sama’s student, and Yondaime-sama is kind of like Sandaime-sama’s grand-student, since he trained Jiraiya-sama and Jiraiya-sama trained Yondaime-sama.” He followed up his explanation with what he undoubtedly thought was a sage nod, waiting for the others to be impressed with his logic.
“Yeah, me!” Obito declared, grinning broadly. “ I'm gonna be the Godaime one day!” In a testament to how patient he was becoming, Obito didn’t do more than glare when Kakashi snorted derisively at the statement.
Shisui peppered Obito with question after question. It was cute to watch, and Obito was clearly thrilled with the positive attention.
Good, he deserves some appreciation from his family.
Mindful of the quieter boy and just how bad his mental health must have been to get to the point of killing his whole clan in her past life, Sakura turned her attention to Itachi.
“How old are you, Itachi-kun?”
“Four,” he replied, still looking so comically solemn.
“That’s an important age,” Rin replied, turning her attention to the boy, too. “Are you going to enter the Academy after you turn six?”
“The elders want me to go next year,” Itachi answered. “But Mama said no. Shisui is in his first year, though.”
Sakura thought Mikoto was right in her decision. There was no sense in tossing him into things so early on. He deserved time to be a child before he had to think about killing.
“Well, Shisui-kun is older than you, right? And I’m sure he wouldn’t mind telling you some of the things he learns, since he’s your friend,” Sakura offered.
“But I want to be a medic, and Shisui doesn’t know anything about that.”
That…certainly was new information.
She exchanged another look with Rin, and they both nodded in wordless agreement for the second time that morning.
“Well, Sakura and I do, and we’d be happy to teach you. As long as your parents agree, of course.”
“Would you?” Mikoto looked at them over Obito’s head (the latter still chattering away happily with Shisui). “Kushina says your two are quite skilled, and it would put me at ease, knowing Itachi is with two kunoichi I trust.”
Sakura felt heat creeping across her face, her stomach doing somersaults. Uchiha Mikoto thought they were capable kunoichi!
“We’d love to, Mikoto-san,” she eagerly accepted. Just then, two ANBU agents emerged onto the balcony, signaling the immediate start of the ceremony.
“Wonderful. We can discuss details later, but I appreciate it, Rin-chan, Sakura-chan.”
With that, everyone settled back into their seats to watch the dawning of a new era for Konoha.
Chapter 9
Notes:
This has a sentence which, while not SA, has some elements akin to SA (pinning down, clothing repositioning/removal, etc.) so please read with caution! If you need to skip that, you'll want to jump from "But Sakura knew her girlfriend, could sense her anywhere, even in the midst of an ambush." and pick back up at "She punched her way through the first nin..."
Chapter Text
With the war over and Minato-sensei busy, Kakashi ended up being the one to lead most of the team’s missions. There wasn’t much to do immediately after the war, mostly courier missions and political escorts, but even those could prove dangerous depending on which border you were near.
Just weeks after Minato-sensei’s inauguration, they’d had to involve themselves in a veritable bloodbath in Grass on a mission to deliver sensitive documents to the Wind Daimyo. They’d taken out five Iwa-nin and sealed the corpse of a very strange man-plant hybrid that had tried unsuccessfully to kidnap Obito in the chaos. Intelligence was still working with medics to figure out what he was, and if there was a possibility of more of them.
However, the most dangerous mission they encountered ended up being near the border of Water Country.
The day after Rin’s fourteenth birthday, Minato-sensei summoned them to his office bright and early. Still rubbing sleep from their eyes, Sakura, Rin, and Kakashi waited silently for their assignment. It felt a little empty without Obito, but since it appeared the thing was after him in particular and not just any Uchiha, judging from some of the things it had said before Kakashi killed it, he’d been temporarily grounded from missions outside the village. (Luckily, Minato-sensei had taken that as an opportunity to start Obito’s hokage training, if more than a bit prematurely, and Obito didn’t complain too much whenever they all went to lunch together.)
“This is a B-rank,” Minato-sensei said as he handed a scroll over to Kakashi. “A trusted source confirmed there are some documents with sensitive information about a potential civil war in Kirigakure at the border of Water, on the peninsula. They’ve provided coordinates, so all I need for you to do is retrieve them.”
“Yes, sensei!” All three chimed in unison. But Minato-sensei didn’t dismiss them yet. Instead, he beckoned all three of them closer to his desk, leaning forward so he could lower his voice.
“If you get even the slightest hint of a trap, an ambush, anything, you abandon the mission and come home immediately. Do you understand?”
There was the briefest moment of pause as the request sank in—it wasn’t surprising that he wanted to keep them all safe, but he seemed unusually serious. Like he was sure some kind of bad luck would befall them, and he wanted to make sure they were prepared to get home safely. Still, Sakura, Rin, and Kakashi agreed (Kakashi more reluctantly than the other two) and only then did he let them go.
Just like her first mission with Team Minato outside of the village, Sakura had a sinking feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong, but it seemed she wasn’t alone in her feeling this time. Not only had Minato-sensei given his ominous order about abandoning the mission at the first sign of trouble, but Kakashi let them stop only long enough to grab their packs before they rushed out of the village.
It was a rare sight to see Kakashi so outwardly affected. Usually he was calm, cool, and collected under threat, but his eagerness to get things over with showed all too well with the pace he set. Minato-sensei’s warning alone shouldn’t have been enough, so surely there was something else…
After they set up camp that night, already halfway to their destination, he gave some insight into just what the fuss could have been about.
“There are rumors the sanbi finally respawned somewhere in Water,” he said, voice low despite the plentiful security seals Sakura had tossed up just moments before.
“So sensei thinks we might run into it? But we’d definitely see a giant chakra turtle coming in time to get away, wouldn’t we?” Rin asked, brow furrowing. “Or does he think they’ve sealed it into someone already, and they’re just waiting for Konoha shinobi to come by in order to kill us?”
Kakashi shrugged.
“Well, if the rumors are true,” Sakura started, “I think I’d rather deal with the turtle. Kushina-shishou had an expert sealing done on her, but if Kiri made any mistakes on the seal…” She shivered as she remembered Gaara’s bloodlust from Shukaku, the crazed look in his eyes as, half-transformed, he’d slammed her against a tree with a massive claw and nearly ended her life.
Rin reached over and slipped an arm around Sakura’s waist, drawing her closer. She’d heard the story, after Sakura had woken up from a nightmare about being back in the chuunin exams during one of their usual sleepovers.
“We’ll just be on high alert, like sensei said.” Rin reassured her, then, leveling a hard stare at Kakashi, she added, “And we’ll also leave if anything goes wrong, like he ordered us to. Right, Kakashi?”
Kakashi glared back at her.
“We’re not genin, Rin. Something going wrong for a kage-level shinobi like sensei is different from your definition.”
“You know very well—!” Rin bit off the end of her sentence sharply, taking a deep breath and tugging Sakura even further into her side to calm down. Even if they’d been teammates for years, she couldn’t yell at her team leader. (Besides, Kakashi would almost certainly pull rank on her, and that would lead to a fight no one needed.)
Sakura tilted her head to the side, resting her cheek on her girlfriend’s shoulder in an attempt to help soothe both of their frazzled nerves. It worked well—by the time Rin and Kakashi went to bed so Sakura could start first watch, the atmosphere settled down to something more suited for a mission with friends.
They reached the first of the coordinates on their list by mid-morning the next day, but found nothing of interest. Not so much as a scrap of paper or residual chakra from jutsu use.
“Maybe they found out the information leaked?” Sakura suggested. It also wouldn’t be uncommon to have a mole, someone feeding Konoha bad or outdated information, but she didn’t want to jump to such a drastic conclusion just yet.
The second location proved much more successful. They uncovered three separate scrolls, plus signs of lava—something that only one living person had, according to the Bingo Books. Buoyed by their success, they moved to the third and final set of coordinates, getting there before the sun began sinking into the horizon.
That was when disaster struck.
Or, more accurately, when Kiri-nin struck.
Kakashi sensed them first, being the most technically skilled of the three, but he didn’t have time to act fast enough to get to the girls, who were sealing another scroll they’d just stumbled upon. In fact, all he was able to get out was a single shout before they were all plunged into battle.
“Eight o’clock!” His words immediately sent Sakura and Rin whirling around in the direction he’d indicated, fists raised and glowing with chakra.
There were too many enemies all at once. At least ten, and all of them strong—jounin level, if Sakura had to guess. She was barely holding on, using her fists and a few swiftly-placed explosive seals to take down two before they could get used to her fighting style.
And then she heard a sickening impact, the sound of air rushing out of someone’s lungs, and she knew those noises. Had heard them over and over again in her nightmares.
“Rin!” Sakura whirled around, detonating the explosive seal she’d planted on a third shinobi as she did so, her eyes frantically scanning for her girlfriend.
“Sakura!” Rin’s voice rang out at the same time Sakura finally found her, so far away she was nearly out of sight entirely. But Sakura knew her girlfriend, could sense her anywhere, even in the midst of an ambush.
Rin was being pinned down by hands, so many hands, belonging to too many men, and they were tearing through her shirt and unrolling a scroll and Sakura was sprinting—
She punched her way through the first nin who landed in her path, slicing her arm open on his sword in her haste to make it in time. Blood streamed from the wound even as her body automatically started stitching the wound up, leaving a crimson path as she hurtled towards Rin.
Rin, who was being drawn on.
They were putting a seal on her girlfriend.
There are rumors the sanbi finally respawned somewhere in Water. Kakashi’s words from the night before echoed in her head, and Sakura nearly stumbled in horror at the realization.
She was nearly there when suddenly, Kakashi was beside her, covered in viscera and his right hand crackling with lightning. Neither of them needed to speak—the sound of chirping birds filled the air around them, serving as the only warning the group of Kiri nin would receive.
Kakashi knew enough about sealing to understand they needed to eliminate everyone else before they got to the man working on Rin. Especially because he was clearly untrained—Sakura could tell he wasn’t layering the seal right, even from the millisecond she’d had to glance at it before she had to focus on taking out a short, stocky shinobi intent on slicing through her legs with his chokuto.
Kakashi worked much faster than she did, tearing through three men in the time it took Sakura to kill the one. She didn’t have time to beat herself up about it, though, because Rin was in danger and whatever got her to safety faster was the best course of action.
Sakura, fueled by too much adrenaline, yanked the man away as soon as she was able, tossing him bodily over her shoulder and leaving Kakasih to deal with killing the piece of trash.
But it was too late. Rin was fully sealed by that point, writhing in pain at the faulty sealing. Sakura knelt down beside her, uncaring that her legs were getting coated in the blood pooling from the slaughtered enemies around her, and sent a burst of soothing chakra through her girlfriend’s temple. It didn’t knock Rin out—that would be too dangerous with the uncertain state of her seal, but it helped deaden some of the nerve endings.
“Sakura,” Rin looked up at her with big, teary brown eyes, and Sakura felt her heart plummet. “They said they were going to make the seal malfunction. That I would—”
Sakura gently shushed her girlfriend, taking the time to lean down and kiss her. It was brief and chaste, just the barest brush of lips, but it was enough.
“They messed up the seal pretty badly, yeah, but have some more faith in me, ya know?” She teased, imitating her mentor in the hopes it would start to set Rin at ease.
It worked, at least in part, because Rin let out a watery giggle and nodded. In the background the faint noises of Kakashi getting information while also exacting revenge on the sole survivor of the Kiri squad filled the air, but Sakura didn’t focus on that. Instead, she unsealed her own sealing supplies and observed the extent of Rin’s new seal.
In a proper seven layer jinchuuriki seal, the seventh layer needed to be connected to the sixth layer, as well as the fourth through first layers, but not the fifth. The seventh layer was the containment area for the tailed beast, the sixth were sort of like the bars of the cage, and the fifth was a sort of free space, room for the human whose body contained the beast to visit. The other layers were more standard storage and space time seals, all working in tandem to make sure the body was prepared to house the tailed beast.
Unfortunately, through what Sakura could only guess was a terrible combination of ignorance and orders to ensure the seal failed, they had turned Rin into a ticking time bomb instead of a jinchuuriki proper.
But over the past few months, Sakura had discovered she was naturally talented at sealing. And if there was a second thing she had an inborn knack for, it was solving puzzles. She could fix it. She could save Rin. She just needed the time.
She took a moment to examine the various lines and symbols closely, her mind a whir of activity as she pieced together what was out of place and what needed to be changed or eliminated entirely. It was a mess, but it was a fixable mess, and that was all she could have hoped for.
She let out a sigh of relief as she uncapped a bottle of sealing ink and dipped her brush in—a narrow one, but not her finest one, as those would need to be used for the tinier detail work closer to the job’s end. Gently, she began dragging the bristles across Rin’s skin, careful to not make any big, jerky motions or press too hard. Every fiber of her being, all her intent, was focused on fixing the seal and making sure Rin’s seal became completely stable.
Slowly, very slowly, it came together. Sakura switched brushes twice more, each one smaller than the last, until finally she was placing the last, nearly invisible swirls on the very edges of the seal. Luckily, a nice side effect of sealing ink being chakra-infused was that it dried instantly, so the second she’d finished, Sakura was able to ease Rin up into a sitting position.
“Does it hurt anymore?” She asked worriedly as she rifled around her pack for her spare shirt—Rin’s pack was nowhere to be seen, probably destroyed in the chaos, if she had to guess.
“No,” Rin replied faintly as she let Sakura slide her arms into the arms of the vest top. Her voice was scratchy and hoarse, as though she’d been screaming. As though she’d been through torture. Which, judging from what the original seal had been crafted as, didn’t surprise Sakura.
She only wished she could have had a turn at hurting the ringleader of the operation.
Speaking of which, Kakashi had finished with his information extraction at some point during the sealing, and was standing just behind Sakura on alert, seemingly waiting for another wave of enemies to try and attack. Sakura knew she could trust him with their lives—that was why she’d allowed herself to give her attention so fully to the sealing, instead of keeping one ear out for any strange noises. But it was over, and no more shinobi seemed forthcoming.
“I’m going to carry you,” Sakura announced, shifting into a kneeling position. “Shishou said she needed to be on bed rest for a whole day after her sealing, and we need to get home now.” She didn’t say it aloud, but even if there hadn’t been precedent for a new jinchuuriki requiring rest, Sakura would have carried her. Rin was her girlfriend, whom she loved, and she’d been through something traumatic and—
Loved. She loved Rin.
It seemed silly, to feel like it was such a revelation, but up until that moment, she’d never thought too deeply. She loved Rin, but this love that she was acknowledging now was deeper, stronger. The love she saw in Minato-sensei’s eyes whenever he looked at Kushina-shishou.
A forever kind of love, rather than just a teenage couple sort of affection.
Mind reeling from the revelation, Sakura waited only long enough to get Rin’s nod of permission before scooping her up and taking the lead on their journey back to Konoha.
Chapter 10
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Sakura only let Rin out of her arms when they broke for camp at night (far away from the Kiri border) and then again when they approached the village gates. Kakashi sent one of his summons ahead to Minato-sensei as soon as they cleared the gate check, with a warning that something had gone wrong. Then, Sakura slid an arm around her girlfriend’s waist and helped her walk all the way to the administrative district—to his testament as a serious jounin, Kakashi didn’t even make a single irritated expression at the sign of affection. He understood it was more for function than anything, and he even got on Rin’s other side and braced her in a similar manner when it came time to climb the stairs in the tower. Or at least, he tried to.
“I’m not that weak,” Rin huffed, clearly irritated by what she perceived as coddling. Kakashi shrugged and moved back to his previous position several steps ahead of them.
“Your body is under a lot of stress,” Sakura responded immediately, trying to sound more calm than what she felt. She was worried about everything in the seal working properly, but she didn’t want to take it out on Rin. Especially not when she knew exactly how frustrating it was to be treated as weak. “I promise I’ll let you go once sensei and shishou double check my work.
Rin huffed, but when she turned her head towards Sakura and found her girlfriend looking at her with big, pleading eyes, the tension bled out of her shoulders.
“Fine.”
Sakura didn’t say anything else, not wanting to push her luck. It wasn’t the first disagreement they’d had, but she knew it could have blown into something bigger if she’d pushed the matter. Rin was letting her help for the moment, and that was what mattered most.
The Hokage’s office was cleared out of anyone else by the time they ascended the last few steps and were waved in by the secretary. Minato-sensei was on his feet in an instant, his eyes darting over all three of them before landing on the way Sakura was curled around Rin.
“What happened?”
“There was an ambush, sensei,” Sakura started out slowly, suddenly feeling ashamed.
Why hadn’t she sensed anything in time? Why had she let Rin get taken?
She felt a pinch on her arm, drawing her out of her negativity with a little hiss at the unexpected sensation. Whipping her head to the side, she saw Rin looking right at her, frowning, while Kakashi took over the job of starting the official mission report.
He went through the basics, covering their arrival to the border, turning up empty handed after the first stop, but finding scrolls at the second location, and then the third. He unsealed the scrolls in question and handed them over to the ANBU agent on guard that afternoon, who promptly melted back into the shadows after securing the items.
Silence descended on the room for a moment, before Minato-sensei finally raised an eyebrow, silently requesting Kakashi to go on. Sakura felt the muscles in Rin’s side tense under her hand, preparing to relive the attack, and she tried not to let any of her own anxiety bleed into her posture. But then, instead of starting to detail the horrible attack, Kakashi sank into a deep bow.
“I let my guard down, Hokage-sama.” His tone was just as still as his body, too formal compared to a standard mission report their team would give.
“Kakashi?” Minato-sensei looked at his student in confusion, then glanced over at Rin and Sakura.
“We were ambushed.” Kakashi straightened up, finally starting to explain himself. From there, he spoke about the attack from the Kiri nin, Rin being taken, and covering for Sakura while she worked to repair the seal. He also talked about the information he’d gathered from the man who’d sealed Rin, before Kakashi sliced his head off with his blade. (Sakura still wished she’d been allowed to end him, wished she’d been allowed to take her revenge on him for the suffering he’d caused Rin—for the trauma her girlfriend would have to live with for the rest of her life.)
After Kakashi finished his report, Minato-sensei, looking a little shell-shocked, once again turned to the girls.
“Rin, I’ll need to look at your seal. Kushina, too, if that’s alright?”
Wordlessly, Rin nodded, leaning into Sakura’s side just the slightest bit. Minato-sensei’s eyes caught it, however, and his expression dropped into something more sorrowful.
“Actually, I think it would be best if just Kushina looked at it first.” He waved his hand, and the ANBU agent who’d taken the scrolls from Kakashi earlier re-emerged from the shadows. “Have Kushina come here immediately,” Minato-sensei ordered. In an instant, the agent was gone.
“Thank you, sensei,” Rin bowed her head. “They didn’t—I wasn’t—but…”
Minato-sensei shook his head.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Rin.” He paused, then amended, “Anything that isn’t vital to the mission report, that is.”
She let out a soft giggle, and Sakura finally started to relax at the sound.
Sakura stayed with Rin during Kushina-shishou’s examination, holding her girlfriend’s hand as she lay down on the couch in the little room adjoining the Hokage’s office, meant primarily for the sitting Hokage to rest if needed.
Kushina-shishou let Rin pull up her own shirt (or Sakura’s, since she was still wearing the green vest she’d been given the day before). She took a cursory glance at the seal while Sakura explained what it had originally looked like before she’d gone to work with her own ink, nodded, then leaned in closer to begin studying the finer details. Sakura watched the muscles in Rin’s stomach tense as Kushina-shishou grew closer, and squeezed her girlfriend’s hand in what she hoped would be a comforting gesture.
Heavy silence permeated the air for a long moment, until finally, Kushina-shishou pulled back. She looked so dreadfully serious that Sakura felt her heart plummet. But then, a second later, her mentor broke into a broad grin.
“You fixed it perfectly, Sakura,” she praised, and Sakura felt her knees finally give out beneath her, impacting the (thankfully carpeted) floor.
“Sakura!” Rin called out in concern, tugging on their joined hands.
“I thought I messed up,” Sakura admitted, tone wobbling dangerously. “I was so worried I’d gotten something wrong and you would die and—”
She was cut off by Rin springing off the couch to kneel in front of her, tugging her in until Sakura was crying into her shoulder.
“I love you, Rin,” she admitted through a mouthful of her girlfriend’s hair. “I was so scared when I saw they’d taken you, and I couldn’t get there fast enough.”
Behind her, she heard Kushina-shishou take a few steps closer. Then, a gentle hand was resting atop her head.
“You saved Rin’s life, Sakura. No need to cry, ya know!”
The words only made Sakura sob harder. In fact, she was still sniffling by the time they emerged from the room, causing Minato-sensei and Kakashi to look at them in alarm.
“Nothing,” Kushina-shishou answered with a laugh. “Sakura’s still not used to hearing me praise her, ya know?” She was teasing, but Sakura knew it wasn’t out of malice—quite the opposite, she knew Kushina-shishou was giving her an out from having to explain anything.
Sakura didn’t let the opportunity pass her by, nodding along in agreement and trying not to sigh in relief as the attention shifted back to Kushina-shishou.
As she let the sound of her mentor’s voice wash over her, she felt Rin’s arm slip around her waist, giving support just as Sakura had given her earlier.
Just as Kushina-shishou finished her analysis of what Kiri had done with the seal and just how Sakura had fixed it (“She's brilliant, Minato. And she's my student, ya know! I trained her!”), another ANBU agent emerged from the shadows.
“Hokage-sama, Sandaime-sama is here to see you. He says it's a matter of some urgency.”
Ice shot through Sakura's veins, her arm automatically reaching up to encircle Rin's waist and pull her even closer. Simultaneously, Rin's grip on her tightened. Both girls knew that nothing good ever came from meeting with the former Hokage, and with him showing up at such an eventful time…
Minato-sensei’s face, previously filled with a mixture of pride at Sakura's accomplishment and Rin's resilience and sorrow for exactly what one of his beloved students had endured, pinched in irritation. It only lasted a moment, the emotion flashing so quickly that Sakura nearly hadn't caught it. But it had been there, and Sakura had a feeling she knew what he was concerned about.
The timing of this urgent visit was too perfect, and a shinobi knew better than to believe in things like coincidence. But Minato-sensei relented.
“Let him in.”
When Sarutobi Hiruzen stepped into the room, Kushina-shishou took the slightest step to the right, partially blocking his view of Sakura and Rin. Something warm bloomed in Sakura's chest, and she squeezed Rin's side as hope began to try and overpower the fear and distrust that seemed to naturally arise at the sight of the old man.
“Minato-kun, it's come to my attention that there was a serious incident near the border of Water.”
The dread came back twofold, but now it wasn't just for worry of what the Sandaime would try to have done to Rin. No, now she was also concerned there was a mole amongst the Minato-sensei’s guards. There was no other way he could have known so quickly, barring the former Hokage actually working with Kiri to orchestrate the whole thing, but that was much too far-fetched. For all the pain he'd caused Sakura (and probably countless others), it seemed like he really was doing it for the sake of the village. He just had very twisted ideas about how to go about it.
She wasn't the only one to take issue with the fact that such sensitive information had leaked. Minato-sensei's face darkened just the slightest bit as he moved to sit behind his desk, then gestured for the old man to take a seat in the chair across from him. Sakura couldn't see her mentor's face, but she would bet it was equally troubled.
“If I may speak freely? As the former Hokage,” the Sandaime asked, not giving Minato-sensei any room to ask his own question. The old man also didn't wait for Minato-sensei's go-ahead, charging on regardless of what anyone else in the room had to say.
“I believe, given our history with Kiri, it would be safest to ensure young Rin's mind wasn't also tampered with when she received the bijuu. A few mind walk—”
“Absolutely not.” Minato-sensei didn't need to slam his fist on the table or shout. His voice was warning enough, cold enough that it felt as though the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees. “I never had any doubts of Rin's loyalty to this village. Or Sakura's, for that matter. And I certainly don’t think Kushina would have ever held any ill will towards the village her great aunt helped found.”
The Third opened his mouth to protest, but Minato-sensei headed him off once more.
“You seem to have a penchant for forcing young girls to endure mind walks, Sarutobi-sama. But believe me, that ended when I took on the mantle of Hokage.”
A deathly silence filled the room, and Sakura had to resist the urge to shrink even further behind Kushina as she watched the Sandaime’s expression grow stony. Instead, she tugged Rin that much closer to her and began shifting her feet into a stance that would let her defend her girlfriend, if the need arose. Not that she didn’t trust Minato-sensei and Kushina-shishou to do so, but…there was always something a little slimy about the Sarutobi Hiruzen she’d become acquainted with over the last few months, and since there was clearly at least one ANBU agent still loyal enough to him to leak information, it was better safe than sorry.
“Everything I’ve done has been for the good of this village,” the old man shot back, voice trembling with anger. “You dare accuse me—”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Sarutobi-sama,” Minato-sensei cut him off, his own expression as icy cold as his tone. “I’m merely reminding you of who wears the hat now.”
The former Hokage’s expression shuttered, an eerie void of emotion replacing his previous anger.
“Very well, Minato-kun.” He stood from his seat. “I only hope you don’t come to regret this decision.” He swept out of the room imperiously after that, his eyes locking onto Rin as he did so.
Sakura, barely holding back a snarl, went to step in front of her girlfriend. Before she could, however, she found Kushina-shishou was already there, blocking both girls from the old man’s line of sight. Both girls stayed put rather than risk peeking around their protector, though they did move their hands from resting on one another’s waists to lacing their fingers together, giving little squeezes until, at last, the sound of the door shutting behind the Sandaime sounded, and they let out loud sighs of relief.
“Well,” Minato-sensei broke the silence at last, chuckling nervously. “That was one way to end the day. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like barbecue. Why don’t you three go get cleaned up while I find Obito, and we’ll meet at Yakiniku-Q in an hour?”
Sakura’s stomach picked that moment to growl loudly, and the rest of the tension fled the room as everyone started laughing. Even Kakashi, usually serious and unsmiling, couldn’t hide his slightly trembling shoulders.
Notes:
Thanks for coming along this journey with me! c:
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