Chapter Text
Civilian children were scared of the dark.
It made sense, Sakura supposed. They were vulnerable. Defenceless. No innate talent for chakra-manifestation, no offensive jutsu to hurl at their foes. They had never spent sundown prowling through the woods that girdled Konohagakure’s waist, honing their senses, learning the rolling shape of the land and disarming whatever traps their Sensei had set for them in the name of training. They weren’t taught that the scariest thing in the shadows was themselves. When night enclosed their village in its cold, black fist, civilians retreated to the safety of their beds and lit lamps to ward off the gloom.
Shinobi weren’t scared of the dark.
Shinobi weren’t scared of anything – or at least, they weren’t supposed to show it. That was rule thirty-nine from Iruka-Sensei’s classes on proper shinobi conduct. Once you knotted your hitaii-ate around your forehead, you became a representative of your entire country. A physical manifestation of Hi no Kuni’s will of fire.
That was something to be proud of, Iruka-Sensei said – but it was also a massive responsibility. If they were weak, Konoha was weak. If they were afraid, Konoha was afraid.
So, shinobi didn’t fear the dark – they walked in it. But if they were going to scared of anything… Well, Sakura thought it might be a place like this.
Their cell looked out into a large underground cave, made from smooth, pale rock the colour of maggots. The stone floor was cool against her fingertips and ever-so-slightly moist. Stark white light poured from panels set into the ceiling, between the stalactites. There were no shadows here. No corners to crouch in, nowhere to hide.
If Sakura could reach the lights, she could fashion a weapon. Pry out the glass panels with her nails. Crack them into splinters, grip one between each of her knuckles to give her punch claws. But that was wishful thinking when she couldn’t walk up the walls.
They’d fastened the collar while she was unconscious. The heavy iron loop pressed on her windpipe, its edges digging under her jaw every time she swallowed. She could breathe - though it had been hard when she first awoke; when she saw the boys sprawled out beside her, unmoving; when she realised Kakashi-Sensei was nowhere to be seen.
But she had calmed herself. She had remembered rule thirty-nine. She had mastered her lungs, and her fear, and her mind, just like shinobi were supposed to.
It hadn’t helped much. She, Naruto and Sasuke were still prisoners. The enemy still had Sensei, and Sakura was still useless.
“S-Sakura-chan?”
But at least she wasn’t alone.
Sakura hastily scrubbed at her eyes. Shinobi didn’t cry.
Unless they’re happy, Naruto once said, as they started the long trek home from the Land of Waves. He looked far from happy now.
“Sakura, w-what happened, where are we – “
Questions Sakura couldn’t answer. She couldn’t do very much at all, could she? Still, she hurried to his side and braced his trembling elbow, easing him up the slimy white wall at the rear of their cell to sit. The cave had a curious smell to it: faintly fungal, like vegetation left to rot.
“Careful, Naruto. You’re hurt.”
“Ow-ow-ow…”
“What did I tell you? Move slowly, idiot.”
“Sakura-chan…” Sweat fringed Naruto’s top lip. He gazed up at her with big blue eyes. They would’ve been bigger, if not for the purple shiners puffing out from his bloody nose. “Am – am I dying?”
“Idiot,” said Sakura again, but there was no heat behind it. Naruto looked awful. Blood leaked from the split in his lip and half his face had swelled up like he’d been sculpted from black tapioca pearls. But his breath had no rattle to it, and Sakura saw no obvious twists or subluxations in his limbs. He just wasn’t used to waking up in pain. He usually healed like the surface of a pond: a few ripples glancing out from any disturbance, which swiftly smoothed back to still, unblemished water. The collar around his neck must hamper his natural regeneration, much like it hampered her ability to hurry it along.
Technically speaking, bruises were easy to heal. You had to give the damaged cells a boost from your own energy, coaxing them to reabsorb any blood that had pooled beneath the skin. Certified medical ninja could wipe them away like they were rubbing chalk marks off a blackboard.
Sakura wasn’t that good – not yet. But she’d mastered more medical ninjutsu than either of the boys. Sensei said she had a real knack, that she’d overtake him before long. He would still usually heal any small injuries they accrued on a mission, or at least supervise while she tended to her teammates.
But Sensei wasn’t here. And when Sakura reached for her chakra, hoping to mould it into the rivulets of water that ran down the cavern walls, she found herself slipping into another cavern, this one within herself. It hollowed out her chest, cold and dark and utterly empty.
Sakura shuddered. Squeezed her damp, useless fingers into a fist.
“You’re fine,” she told Naruto. “Just don’t move around too much. You’ll only feel worse, and we have to conserve our energy.” So we can face whoever captured us, when they next appear.
Naruto nodded. When he tried to roll his head back against the wall, the metal collar hit it first. His spine tensed, pupils shrinking to black dots – but Sakura grabbed his wrists before he could tear at his shiny new accessory.
“And don’t touch that! It’ll hurt you.”
Naruto, of course, insisted on proving her point. Sakura, who’d discovered the collars’ defence mechanism the hard way, wasn’t prone to sympathy where her knucklehead teammate was involved. She still winced on Naruto’s behalf as he yanked at the collar - only to judder like he'd been electrocuted, yelp, then keel stiff-limbed to one side. Whoever had crafted these collars, they'd gone to great lengths to make them tamper-proof. Any touch more violent than the gentlest tap made Sakura's chakra network flare like she'd swallowed a firecracker, her own powers burning her from the inside out.
No one deserved that sort of pain. Not even Naruto.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said, as residual shocks fitted through Naruto’s limbs.
Naruto curled into a ball, arms around his belly. “Are-aren’t you supposed to say, I hate to say I told you so?”
“Why would I, when I enjoy saying it so much?”
Naruto pouted, nose scrunching. “Sakura-chaaaan…” He peered up at the bright lights, taking stock of their surroundings, then refocused on her. “Ne, Sakura-chan. How're you doing? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
It wasn’t a lie. She had been the first to succumb to the enemy’s poison mist, and the first to fall. As always. She’d already checked herself over, and her only injuries were the bruises on her hip and chest where she’d smacked the dirt. They hurt - a low, throbbing ache - but it was nothing to worry about. Not compared to their current predicament.
Naruto’s eyebrows knitted. He looked like he might press further, before gasping and scrabbling to sit. “Wait! Sasuke – “
“He’ll be fine, too.” So Sakura hoped, anyway.
Their third teammate lay flat out behind Naruto. He’d been prone when Sakura came to, pale cheek smushed against the floor. She had rolled him over, expecting to flush and squirm at the opportunity to touch Sasuke-kun – her Sasuke-kun! But he’d been horribly limp, and there was this ghastly moment where she hadn’t been able to tell if he was breathing, and –
Sakura forced her jerky inhales to slow.
She blew out for four counts, then another four, then another, and only sucked in once her chest quivered, concave. She recited the shinobi rules to herself, one through fifty, memorised word-for-word.
Sasuke was so strong, and smart, and powerful. He was Sasuke-kun. He would be fine. He had to be.
Naruto seemed determined to change that. He scuttled to Sasuke on all-fours and, in flagrant disregard for every basic medical training module they’d sat through at the Academy, shook him roughly by the shoulders while screaming in his face: “Sasuke! Oi, bastard! Wake up!”
“Naruto!” Sakura might have done the exact same when she first regained consciousness, with considerably more tears and snot involved, but that didn’t mean she was about to admit it. Or sit by and watch as Naruto bashed Sasuke-kun’s precious head off the floor. “Careful!”
“I’m being more careful than he deserves!” Naruto crouched above Sasuke, glaring at him from such close proximity he must’ve gone cross-eyed. Sakura suffered a brief yet vivid flashback to a certain stolen first kiss. “C’mon, dickhole! Open your eyes already. Or am I really that much stronger than you?”
Psh! As if. Sasuke-kun was stronger by far. Sakura was sure he’d been last to faint when the cloud of noxious mist gushed from the walls of the narrow gorge Team Seven had been walking along, starting the long trek back to Konoha after completing their latest job. Therefore, the knock-out toxin would still be working through his system.
Sakura was about to tell Naruto as much. But either the enemy had taken down Sasuke hot on Naruto’s heels, or (Sakura didn’t know if this option was better or worse) Naruto’s goad was more effective in cracking Sasuke from his comatose state that any of her pleas, snivels, or professions of undying love. Sasuke’s dark lashes fluttered, delicate as the wings of a butterfly freshly unfurled from its cocoon. His head spilled loosely to one side and he made a quiet, mumbly noise, not quite a word.
Sakura scrambled over, crouching opposite Naruto on Sasuke’s left. She leant down, pressing her face close to his. “Sasuke-kun!”
“Sasuke!”
This time, Sasuke’s tongue found its way around syllables. “Noisy,” he gumbled, smacking weakly at them both. Then training kicked in. His eyes focused, his muscles tightened. Sakura saw it: the moment the boy became a soldier. “The enemy…”
So, he remembered. The ambush had struck without warning, no hint of hostile chakra. When Sakura pressed her tongue to the backs of her teeth, the strange, sweet taste of the poisoned mist was still stuck to her enamel.
“They got us,” she said, softly. “We’re prisoners.”
A dent formed at the centre of Sasuke’s alabaster brow. He reached up to brush his collar but didn’t fight when Sakura pushed his hand away (ignoring Naruto’s mutter of let the teme find out for himself). He craned his neck instead, peering at the two of them, then at their strange underground cell: curved and pale, shaped like a hole in a beehive.
“Where’s Kakashi?” he asked.
“He’ll be fine,” said Sakura, because it was all she’d been telling herself for the last however-long-it-had-been. Judging by Sasuke’s “Hm,” her voice didn’t sound any more convincing out loud than it did in her head.
The lights were so bright they felt heavy, crushing the three of them against the cell floor. There was no variation in the pure, harsh radiance. It was as if they were all on an operating table, laid out beneath the surgeon’s knife. Sakura tilted her head back, squinting directly at the glowing panel until her head throbbed and her vision swam, bile roiling sour against her tongue.
She had fretted over Sasuke and Naruto because they were right here in front of her. Because she could touch them, stroke sweaty hair off their bloody, bruised faces, and convince herself that in some way, no matter how small, she could help.
Sensei… there was no sign of him. No promise he was even alive.
Had they left him in that gorge, out towards the edge of Nendo country? Flak jacket in shreds? White hair splattered red...?
Sakura tugged her bangs. The needlepoint pain in her scalp was grounding, necessary. She hadn’t been hurt as much as she should’ve been in their last fight. Hadn’t fought hard enough, hadn’t done enough to protect her friends…
Sasuke studied her, eyes cool and smooth as river pebbles. “We need to get out of here,” he said.
Like it’s that simple, sneered the Sakura who lived in the back of Sakura’s own mind, arms crossed, steam blowing from her nostrils.
Sakura ignored her. “The collars drain our chakra. If we try to get them off, they turn it against us, somehow. I tried to pour a lot of chakra and overpower the mechanism when I first woke up, but I don’t think I – I don’t – I don’t have enough.”
Sasuke’s gaze slanted away, like she wasn’t worth his attention. Sakura couldn’t exactly blame him. It still stung when those dark, clever eyes alighted on Naruto instead - especially when Naruto perked, bust lip stretching around his grin.
“Oh, you’re on.”
“Wait,” Sakura started – but they’d already begun.
Unlike their usual grudge matches, this one wasn’t spectacular from an observer’s perspective. No punches were thrown. Instead, energy flared from their bodies, gathering over their chakra points, a violet potassium flame for Sasuke and gas-fire blue for Naruto. Sakura tasted the distinct notes – Sasuke’s chakra dark and electric, like stormy nights and volcanic glass; Naruto’s hot summer and fresh leaves. But the signatures were so very faint, prickling only an instant on her tongue before dying away.
Naruto showed the first signs of fatigue. Sweat trailed the whisker-scars on his cheeks. He snarled, canines visible up to the pink arches of his gums, and dropped into a low squat like he was straining over the toilet. He had none of Sasuke’s composure, who sat still as a statue, the only tell of his frustration the tick at the corner of one eye.
Oh, he was perfect. Serene and stoic, the pinnacle of shinobi strength… Sakura might’ve admired the picture he posed, cross-legged and straight-backed beside Naruto’s constipated hunch, had she not longed to bash their heads together. Were they both completely thick?
“Stop before you exhaust yourselves,” she snapped.
Of course, they ignored her.
Sasuke’s eye-twitch spread to the vein in his neck, which jumped like his blood was boiling. The groove dug itself deeper and deeper between his brows. He continued his smooth, careful outpour of chakra – yet it wisped insubstantial into space, dissipating inches off the surface of his skin. Impossible to mould, either within his body or outside of it.
Naruto growled, low and rumbling. Then lower again. His head dropped down between his shoulders. If he had hackles, they would be spiked. His hands flexed out of their fists, fingers bent like claws, and –
Sakura squinted. Was it her imagination? Or were the faint blue wisps of Naruto’s chakra darkening? Veering down the colour spectrum towards red?
Sakura swallowed dry sand. She had seen the dark chakra that poured from Haku’s hall of mirrors, back on the bridge that led to the Land of Waves. She knew the story of the Nine-Tails: how it had vanished the same year she, Naruto and Sasuke were born. The library controlled what texts shinobi could withdraw – a genin couldn’t snoop on S-rank scrolls. But Sakura had always been a voracious reader, and the civilian library her parents frequented was open to anyone. Her research into chakra control had led her deep into the history section.
She’d heard tell of the Uzumaki seal clan. Of the wars fought over and by jinchuuriki. An omen was scarred into the very bedrock of Konohagakure, warning of what happened when a tailed beast lost control.
“Stop it,” she spat again, and now her voice was sharper than shuriken. “That’s enough! It’s not working! You two shouldn’t waste your energy – what if the bad guys come back?”
Naruto jerked. His manifested chakra shattered, red and blue intermingling as if Sakura had twisted the dial on a kaleidoscope. “Aw, Sakura! I was getting somewhere!”
But though bruises swelled around his eyes, those eyes themselves were human. Sakura let herself relax.
They would have to use their injuries as clocks. Sakura had been hit enough in the name of training to tell that the colourful canvas on Naruto’s face was approximately a day old. That must be how long they’d been unconscious - and how long Sensei had been missing. A whole day. And it only took seconds to slit a man’s throat.
Sakura couldn’t think about that. She couldn’t.
Naruto’s capitulation allowed Sasuke to stand down. He let his chakra sink back beneath his skin with what could’ve been – if one was listening very, very closely – a relieved sigh.
Sakura fought off the urge to roll her eyes at him. Sure, Naruto was immature and ridiculous a solid ninety-nine percent of the time. But he was Naruto. Since joining Sasuke-kun’s team, it had come as a shock to realise how often he took Naruto’s nonsense as a challenge.
“What are these collars even made of?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anything that can distort our relationship with chakra so effectively.”
Naruto flopped against the wall with a huff. “No clue. All that matters is that we get ‘em off! Then we can bust out and rescue Sensei and get back to Konoha to tell them we completed the mission.”
“The mission was a C-rank,” said Sasuke, leaning cautiously beside Naruto. His bruising was less extensive, but he must still be stiff from spending so long unconscious on a hard stone floor. Sakura pushed aside all thoughts of offering a massage, if only because Naruto would demand one, too. “We completed it without issue. So, what went wrong?”
Sakura had spent the past hour gnawing on the same question. Team Seven had been hired as protection against rice-thieves in Nendo, the Land of Clay: a small country without its own shinobi village, situated to the north of Hi no Kuni. They’d scared off the bandits for a whole month, as stipulated on the contract – but hadn’t hunted them down and killed them, despite their employer’s pleas.
The thieves would be back, now the Konoha ninja had left. When Sakura asked Sensei why they didn’t take care of the bandits in a more permanent fashion, Sensei had shrugged and claimed that murder would incur a higher cost, too much for their employer to afford.
Sakura wasn’t sure she believed him. They’d been hired by a clay farmer – an older gentleman with the baby-soft hands of a man whose family hadn't worked a day in generations. He was the last in a long dynasty who’d bought their way to the top of a conglomerate that stretched all the way to the Nagaimaki river, fields upon fields of the bright red clay from which Nendo country’s signature ceramics was shaped. He always wore fine silks, even when touring his muddy acreage, and had thrown lavish banquets every week of their stay, presenting Team Seven with ducks roasted in honey and rice cooked with yellow spice pods from overseas. It had made a nice change from food pills - but it told Sakura that their client had money to spare.
Perhaps the bandits were to blame for their current state? Sakura’s recollections of the fight were blurry. She hadn’t gotten a good look at their attackers. All she remembered was bulging black demonic eyes, gloved hands reaching out for her and the claustrophobic squeeze of pure terror as she realised she couldn't breathe. But after that? Nothing.
The theory seemed unlikely, though. The bandits had been painfully thin, skinny as the farm labourers’ rakes - and, more importantly, civilians. They wouldn’t have taken Sakura down, let alone the rest of her team.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked Sasuke. “Did you see what happened to Sensei?”
Sasuke shook his head, expression grim. “He was still fighting when I –“
When the enemy got Sasuke, too. “How many were there? Was Sensei hurt badly?” Was there a chance, however slim, that he was still alive?
Their captors answered the last two of these questions before Sasuke got a chance. The wooden door at the far side of the cave slammed open. Three men marched through – or rather, two marched. One was dragged.
Sakura’s inhale stuck to the back of her throat. Sensei…
If Sasuke looked shaky and sweaty and Naruto was bruised to pulp, Kakashi took the worst aspects of both and combined them. His uniform hung in shreds over his back, as did the skin beneath.
And… oh, by the Sage. His left leg was definitely not meant to be twisted in that direction.
Minus several shuriken, the image was reminiscent of a certain genjutsu from their first meeting. Perhaps, in another iteration of this botched mission – where they had been rescued by a passing ANBU squad and returned to Konoha, safe and sound – Sakura’s inner voice might’ve crowed about karmic retribution. But she couldn’t think of gloating here and now, while Sensei was hurt.
“Hey!” Naruto grabbed the bars that separated their cell from the rest of the cave, bruised face a thunderstorm. “Let go of him! Let go of him, right now!”
“You heard the kid,” drawled one of the shinobi (for they had to be shinobi, even if they weren’t wearing headbands). He nodded to the man holding Kakashi’s other arm. When they dropped him, he hit the ground knees first – an unpleasant experience, Sakura presumed, as one of those knees was bent backwards. Kakashi’s only tell was a quiet grunt. He keeled forward, limp as a fresh kill, and landed face-down on the lumpy cave floor.
“Thanks, Naruto,” he said, mildly.
So, he wasn’t unconscious. That was something. Close to it though, if he hadn’t been able to catch himself. Chakra depletion, most likely.
Their captors had stripped him of his weapons, forehead protector and flak jacket, but they’d left his mask on. Sakura couldn’t explain why that was such a relief.
“Who are you?” she demanded of the two men, voice only quavering slightly. “D-do you know who we are?”
“Right!” Naruto adjusted his headband with the pride of a fresh-minted genin, though it had been months since they passed the bell-test. His grin showed off the dried blood stuck between his teeth. “We’re from Konoha! You don’t wanna mess with us! You think you can get away with this?”
Sakura winced. “What Naruto means, is that keeping us captive is going to be far more trouble than it’s worth.”
Sasuke made a hissing noise. Right - Sakura could've shaken herself. The only thing worse than goading their captors was suggesting that it might be in their best interests to kill them.
She amended herself quickly: “Konoha seeks retribution against anyone who harms their soldiers, you know!” She had read those lines in a textbook, before her final academy exam. Shinobi are extensions of Konoha’s will, and if slain, there must be an answer. How flimsy a shield that seemed, now. What was an answer, anyway? A formal apology? A hundred thousand yen? “But if you let us go – “
“What?” said the first man who’d spoken. He was long and lanky like Sensei. He might have an inch on him, if they stood side-by-side – or more than one, since he lacked Sensei’s awful old-man slouch. There was a strange symbol stitched onto the front of his loose grey tunic, a broken five-pointed star. “You walk away and forget this ever happened?”
Sakura made her eyes as large as possible. “Yes?”
The man laughed. His nose was twisted to one side, as if he’d been punched in the face and never had it reset. Certainly, Sakura understood the urge to deck him.
“As if. But don’t you worry about us, little lady. We can handle ourselves.” He booted Kakashi in the neck. Sakura gasped – but judging by the metallic thud, his collar dampened the blow. “Wouldn’t you agree, Hatake? As one of Konoha’s finest?”
“I think we’d all agree that calling me Konoha’s finest right now is a minor exaggeration,” said Sensei, voice muffled against the floor.
The other man scoffed, planting another kick in Sensei’s belly. He was shorter and stouter than his companion. Older too, with lines around the sun-bronzed skin of his mouth. No hitaii-ate, no hint of allegiance - and no mistaking the pleasure in his eyes when Sensei curled around his shin with a soundless wheeze.
“Sure was easier than I thought it would be to capture you.” His voice was rough and dry as a riverbed in Suna. “I guess legends are often overstated.”
“You still haven’t said why we’re here,” said Sasuke, while Sakura wrangled with her urge to yell out in Sensei’s defence. Her teammate slouched against the slick stone wall, more interested in the backs of his eyelids than the unfolding scene – or in Naruto, who rattled the cell door and demanded that the enemy shinobi let him out so he could fight them properly. “If you wanted Konoha’s attention, you’ll have it as soon as we pass our worry-date. Is that all?”
The taller man ignored him, hunkering down beside Sensei. Grasping his chin, he twisted him to face his students so roughly it was almost a snap of his neck.
Kakashi peered at them through a sweaty veil of white hair. His sharingan remained shut – the collar must prevent him from putting their captors under a genjutsu, and opening it would run the risk of draining whatever meagre reserves he had left. Sakura couldn’t get a bead on his expression. That wasn’t saying much; Sensei’s mask was practically glued to his nose, after all. But she’d thought she’d gotten better at reading him, over the year since Team Seven had formed.
“Tell us what we want to know,” said the man with the twisted nose. “Or you know what happens next.”
Sakura shrunk away from the bars. They weren’t after a reward from Konoha. They wanted information. Information Sensei had. And they’d already gone to extreme measures to extract it.
Those wounds on Kakashi’s back – they weren’t the usual clips and slices from kunai, acquired during battle. It looked like someone had made a concerted effort to strip his skin off, like they’d descaled a fish. His entire back was raw and shiny-pink, like sashimi, from his nape to the waistline of his blood-soaked trousers. Whenever he moved, bare muscles shifted.
Sakura steeled her stomach. Didn’t she want to be a medical ninja? She’d better get used to gore. Still, seeing injuries like this – smelling them – when they were on your friends… It was different to reading textbooks.
How was Sensei not screaming? Or, for that matter, telling the enemy shinobi everything they wanted to hear?
Kakashi just made a thoughtful humming noise as Wonky-Nose yanked his head back, fist buried in his bloody white hair. “Ah, I see. You couldn’t beat it out of me, so you’ll hurt them if I don’t talk. Is that right?”
A shiver crept from the base of Sakura’s spine all the way up to her neck. Sensei said that so matter-of-factly. He sounded almost bored, like he was explaining a new jutsu in terms simple enough for Naruto to understand.
“You can try!” yelled Naruto, fists balled. But he edged closer to Sasuke and Sakura, all the same.
Sasuke said nothing. He watched their enemies with eyes as dark and sharp as his confiscated kunai.
“Shut it, dork,” muttered Sakura, tugging Naruto’s sleeve. “Don’t antagonise them.”
Naruto didn't shrug her off, but he didn't glance back at her either. The tension in his shoulders remained, muscles tremoring beneath her palms. “C’mon,” he spat, pointing directly at Wonky Nose. “Quit picking on Sensei when he’s down. Fight me instead!”
Sensei sighed. “Very noble, Naruto. But stand down, please. If our friends here would only listen, they’d know there’s no point to this –“
“Really?” Wonky-Nose released Sensei’s hair. His face hit the ground with a thunk, though he managed to twist at the last moment so he didn’t give himself a kink in his nasal cartilage to match that of his captor. “I think this is long overdue. We should’ve tried this before we started breaking your bones.”
“I certainly would’ve appreciated it,” said Sensei.
There was a hoarse edge to his voice. He wasn’t unaffected. Blood dribbled slowly from his mangled back – Sakura mentally listed the various clotting agents he could’ve been injected with, to prevent exsanguination. You couldn’t interrogate a corpse. But he’d need bandages and sterile gauze and the attention of a far more experienced medical ninja than her, otherwise, in the long run, he might actually die. They all might actually die, because they couldn’t use chakra, and they couldn’t protect themselves, and Sage, if only she hadn’t fallen first…
Had the others stopped to grab her? Had she been a liability? Was it her fault they were here - ?
“Stop.”
Sasuke-kun spoke quiet enough that only Sakura could hear. Just one word. He didn’t reach out to place a comforting hand on her arm or grant her a reassuring smile. Didn’t even look at her – or at least, not for longer than a single second, from the corner of his ink-drop eyes.
Sakura was grateful. The last thing she wanted was to be coddled.
She counted her breaths again. Sasuke-kun was right. She couldn’t lose control. Even if she had held her team back in the last battle, she wouldn’t do the same here and now.
“Well?” asked Stout. “Which one do I start with?” He stalked along the front of the cage, laughing at Naruto’s attempt to swipe at him through the bars. “The feisty one? The broody bastard? Or…” His gaze settled on Sakura, smirk broadening into a leer. She could see the wet pink edges of his gums. “My, what a cute little girl.”
Sakura shrunk back.
“Don’t look at her like that!” bellowed Naruto. He swaggered between them, shielding her with his body – which was sweet, except he was as powerless as she was. As for Sasuke-kun... He was so still, he might not have been breathing.
A part of Sakura hoped he’d step in and defend her. That’d be nice. Handsome boys did that in films, right?
But this situation wasn’t nice. Nothing about this was nice.
“I vote we start with her,” Stout continued. “Hatake might not be talking now, but when she starts screaming…”
Naruto was the only one screaming at that point: “Don’t you dare!”
Sakura, in contrast, felt a wash of calm. It reminded her of the midst of battle, when she clamped down on her spiking adrenaline and let her training kick in. Of when her body flowed through the motions of a taijutsu move, or her hands formed the shapes of a seal, working in perfect synchrony with no extra thought required. They were going to hurt her, unless Kakashi told them what they wanted. And there was nothing she could do.
But it was okay, because Kakashi-sensei would save her. He’d tell the enemy shinobi what they needed to know.
What was it he’d said in the Land of Waves, smiling warmly even as Zabuza’s monstrous Killing Intent crackled through the air? I would die to protect you.
Sakura looked at Kakashi. He looked at her.
Then he looked away.
“You know what they call me?” he asked Wonky-Nose.
Wonky-Nose scratched at his namesake. “They call you a lot of things.”
“Mm, mm. Quite the list I’ve gathered over the years.”
“All complete bogus,” grumbled Stout. “You were easy to capture, all of you, with our new tech – “
Wonky-Nose stomped on his foot, shutting him up. Kakashi-sensei continued like he hadn’t heard.
“Copy Ninja Kakashi. Kakashi of the Sharingan. Son of the Fang. And – maa, what’s that last one?” If Sensei had control of his hands, he would’ve been tapping his chin, feigning ignorance. Nice to know he liked to annoy everyone, not just their squad.
One of those names was new – Son of the Fang. Sakura slotted it away in her head, where she kept a filing system almost as meticulous as Iruka-Sensei’s when he was on desk duty. Her folder for her genin sensei was still woefully small.
But the next words that spilled from Wonky-nose’s mouth… Even if it was new information about Kakashi, Sakura wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. She wished she could go back and erase the words from her memory, stopper her ears before they could register -
“Friend-killer Kakashi.”
That couldn’t be true. Kakashi-Sensei protected his friends. He’d taught all of Team Seven not to abandon each other, no matter the odds. He’d taught them that nothing was important than protecting the people you loved!
So why –
“Thar’s right,” said Sensei. His eyes were smiling crescents. “You know who I am. You know what I’ve done. You know I’ve killed children before. I’ve ended my closest companions when the mission called for it. And right now, the mission is for me to keep my mouth shut.” He nodded to his team – all of whom stared at him, even Sasuke’s bloodless face registering shock. “Do what you want to the brats. I couldn’t care less.”