Black Bough

There are no natural sounds in the lower basement of Root. 

Sakura is fifteen years old, sleep deprived, and content to listen to the hum of fluorescent lights and air filtration overhead while praying for her head to spontaneously combust.

She pays close attention to the neutral tone of M0-4’s quiet exhale as he considers how to continue the lesson, feeling petri-small under the hazy blue of his eyes peering at her through strands of snow-blonde hair. He is the same age as her, but Sakura feels immature and simple by comparison, his silences holding noticeably more than hers, full of things he knows and suspects and ponders.

Yesterday was a repetitive affair of coming to consciousness and losing it in quick succession as M0-4 invaded her mind with purposeful force, the experience intended to feel like the worst migraine she’s ever had, amplified, the pain designed to disorient, to fluster, to make it that much harder to wrestle control of her thoughts, grasping at memories like trying to catch fish with no chakra and bare hands while concussed. The day was filled with involuntary tears and foaming at the mouth and seizing against the chains binding her to her chair, until M0-4 reset her mind, wiped drool and saline and mucus from her face with textured napkins that stung her overheated skin, gave his soft-spoken feedback, and began the process again.

Today, they are talking.

“There is nothing more powerful in this world than desire,” he instructs, straddling the black stool he’s pulled up to the examination table.

Sakura hasn’t been permitted to bathe in seven days, as part of this anti-interrogation training. She must be ripe by now, she thinks, as M0-4 studies her eyes intently. He’s unbothered by any bodily odor, his focus elsewhere. She wonders what is left for him to see on the surface, when he’s already been inside the deepest corners of her mind.

“Shinobi have no desires,” she parrots M0-3, but M0-4’s eyelids lower slightly in disapproval.

“We have different desires,” he corrects. “Suppressed desires.” His hand is a hot pressure on her knee, and Sakura tries not to tense, tries to focus on counting her breaths, counting the hammering of her heart against her ribs.

“Find them, and use them,” he says, like the words are somber.

Sakura nods her understanding.

When he pulls his hand back from her knee, she is careful not to miss its warmth.

…

For once, Kakashi gets to her first.

Sakura’s weight sloughs into his arms and chest like a landslide, seconds before her failing body can land with unfortunate precision directly on her ink-spattered chin, the speed and force with which he catches her making her feel heavier than she is. The blood and ink on her half-healed skin smears onto his clothes and hands, implicating him, involving him in ways impossible to ignore.

He’s swift in pressing two fingers to the pulse in her neck, noting the way her handler is wrenching himself up from the grass despite his ravaged pathways, an obsessive gleam in those black eyes that spells immediate and vital trouble. Her pulse is abnormally slow—to be expected, given she lost consciousness—but is stabilizing rapidly. Pulling back her eyelids one at a time with one hand, holding her weight with the other, Kakashi confirms enlarged pupils consistent with decreased blood flow to the brain, and breathes a bit easier.

Reassured, Kakashi makes a point to support Sakura’s head as he lowers her to the grass like a glass ornament while he tries to quickly size up this newly upheaved situation before things spiral any further out of his control.

The phantom pressure of her extended chakra stifling his core moments earlier lingers, with Kakashi still trying to unpack the moment he realized she was choking off his life force, like throwing a wet blanket over fire. It was a brand new sensation. A brand new concern. A growing explanation. One Kakashi would like to stamp into dust until negligible. Until no one who would exploit it can find it, or would even know to look for it.

An explanation he’s willing to bet the traitorous little shit kneeling on the ground has had knowledge of the entire time he’s been living in the shadow of the Leaf. One he withheld from Kakashi. One he withheld with purpose.

How unfortunate, Kakashi thinks, both eyes trained to Sai’s twitching muscles, to his black pinpricks for eyes and bloodstained knuckles, his fingers digging into torn up grass as he struggles to stand and stumble to where Kakashi arrived before him— finally, he thinks, unable to release the grudge he’s held since he heard Sai declare the ease with which he stole Sakura away from them all, the statement as infuriating as it is accurate.

How unfortunate, that two of his former students would be training nearby on this particular day, at this particular hour; that Sakura would pick a fight with Sai, and that, unlike the spars Kakashi has witnessed—ones where Sai leads her into a seemingly deadlocked exchange designed to wear her out before she eventually tires herself into unconsciousness—she would win.

That she would win like this.  

In front of them.

Members of the only two clans with magic fucking eyeballs Kakashi can’t mislead. Two of the only people in the entire village who would be able to tell yin from yang and spot the moment they become one, become something else entirely, something impossible; be able to see the way Sakura’s chakra just unfurled and took shape, just for a moment; just long enough to hint at something terrible and great and worst of all unique.

And it is unique.

What a terrible coincidence it is, for the genin Sai lured into Danzō’s underground snap trap at age eleven to grow into such an unheard of ability.

A coincidence, he thinks, staring down at the pale pink strands of Sakura’s hair absorbing the ink smeared on her bloodied cheeks—a shade of pink Kakashi has never seen on another Leaf villager—and at the thin veins in the skin of her eyelids, covering the vibrant green of her irises the old pictures of her never did justice. Green like elm leaves at the peak of summer. Like new growth. Like the basic elements of life.

Green eyes, like neither one of her parents.

He feels three sets of eyes on him, right now, and attempts to keep his body language at ease despite the scrutiny.  He steps carefully over Sakura where he’s laid her out, hiding the mild panic growing from an ominous place inside him so deep and dark and always right that its accuracy got old before he’d reached the age of ten.

He feels Hinata shift forward, likely to attempt first-aid on Sakura, and quickly discourages it with a firm, “I wouldn’t,” that comes out a little more honest than intended, if her displeased huff is much to go by.

“Just let me check her—”

“She’ll live,” he says, trying to sound less sincere, mostly out of habit.

He hears a muttered dick behind him from Sasuke, and doesn’t bother arguing the point. He has a feeling Sai won’t take well to Hinata’s help just yet. Those black eyes aren’t seeing reason; her handler’s chakra got cooked enough to fluster anyone.

What a terrible coincidence this would all be, Kakashi thinks, standing between her unconscious body and the ill-timed witnesses to her daunting ability.

If only that were all he truly thought it was.

Taking a cleansing breath, Kakashi slips his hands into his pants pockets and stretches out his neck, rolling back his shoulders. Feeling a little looser, he forces both of his exposed eyes into  thin curves that allude to a smile, the entire effect lessened by the fact his Sharingan is still out and spinning, draining chakra and patience. He is thankful for the mask over the lower half of his face, hiding the way his jaw clicks and his nostrils flare.

“Well. That escalated a bit further than I would have liked,” he says, to fill the silence while he sizes up the others in the clearing, noting the lack of surprise from Sai regarding Sakura’s little performance. That, and the lethal tension in the looks he keeps shooting Sasuke and Hinata while they mostly likely gape and glare.

Sai knew. He knew exactly what Sakura is capable of, and kept quiet. Kept others quiet, too, Kakashi is willing to bet.

He needs to get his students out of here.

Sai—being the freak of nature he is—is already recovering, wiping blood from his mouth with a grass-stained hand, pushing himself to standing once more on marginally less steady legs than he started the day with. He has, miraculously, enough energy left to give Kakashi that sterile look he’s taken to interpreting as a tepid threat not to say or do anything unnecessary. To let Sai handle things. To not interfere.

Kakashi has the urge to take the arrogant look in those black eyes and burst it underfoot like one of his ink beasts. Kakashi glances back at the drying blood mixing with chakra ink on Sakura’s neck, shoulder and arms, noting the glossy burn on her lower leg visible through charred cotton, and the red-rimmed bruise forming around her pale neck. The urge to rip her loyalty away from him is unexpected and inconvenient in its potency.

Sakura is by far too forgiving of her handler. There is no ‘former’ about the imbalanced relationship between them, that has become painfully clear. She is still firmly under Sai’s thumb, subject to her conditioning, obsessive in her desire to follow orders, to obey and protect him, regardless of what it costs her.

For the sake of the Leaf, Kakashi cannot tolerate the current state of her loyalty. For the safety of Konoha, he can’t let it be Sai she trusts most. As soon as the immediate crisis is averted, Kakashi will implement a better plan.

For now, he needs to keep the two overgrown brats edging closer to Kakashi alive, before Sai decides it would be more ‘convenient’ to dispose of the witnesses.

The sleeves of Sasuke’s lavender robes enter Kakashi’s peripheral vision as he steps up beside him. He has his hand tight around the handle of his chokutō, his Sharingan active, his breaths coming soft and lethal with suppressed desire to act. Kakashi would very much prefer he continue to suppress it. He already has one body to carry. He doesn’t need another. That, and the council will have his head on a spike if one of those pretty red eyes gets so much as a scratch on them.

“That was more than a spar,” Sasuke says, slowly, as if still defining what he thinks he just witnessed.

Kakashi gets the feeling that it was just a spar, mostly. If it wasn’t, someone would be dead, and it would probably be everyone but Sakura.

Sai’s eyebrows lower further over his eyes as his stare fixates on the Uchiha, making Kakashi’s hackles rise. Even with the way the former Root operative struggles to wrangle his discordant chakra, Kakashi acknowledges the power-gap between this shinobi and his former student is still a wide enough chasm to be of serious concern, especially given the fact Sasuke doesn’t seem to fully recognize it, if the way he’s fondling that sword handle is any indication.

“Sure it was,” Kakashi disagrees. “You must not have seen how much fun they were having.” 

Sakura was having a blast at the end, nearly having the blood vessels in her face burst open.

It doesn’t bode well, after that show of skill, that apparently there is a remaining member of Root who Sakura is convinced can kill her and Sai with a 100% chance of success, given the fact Sai appears to be only a rung or two below Kakashi himself, and Sakura some ambiguous powerhouse he can’t quite place on the ladder scale now that he’s factoring in whatever bullshit cheat skill she just unveiled like a grand opening to Kakashi’s new hellish normal. He’s not used to shinobi in his own village nipping at his heels like this, uncomfortably close to catching up, or in Sakura’s case, potentially flying by him on a technicality. 

He’ll need to make sure he remains a few steps ahead, if he wants to prevent them from throwing off the scales currently keeping them safe from the noose—keeping the council docile, complacent in their assumption Kakashi can keep the two of them under control. He’s not sure how he would fair, after witnessing that, if the two of them decided to come at him seriously as a unit.

At minimum, he predicts he’d lose the eye Obito pushed on him like a bad White Elephant gift. Even when it's closed and covered, Sakura looks at it too often and too intently for him not to believe it’s the first thing she’d go for in a genuine attempt on his life.

This morning, he didn't believe she could actually take it from him.

Seeing how quickly she can move with some proper motivation, Kakashi is now re-evaluating that presumption.

It’s imperative the council not catch wind of how formidable she and Sai truly are. Not yet. Not until Kakashi has had time to think. Which is why he’ll need to shut his former students up, before they get anyone killed or, possibly worse, better utilized.

The few crows circling overhead cast thin shadows over the damp grass—damp, because Sakura brute-forced a bizarre mutation of the Kiri nin’s mist technique with very little effort—and Kakashi (after studying those crows with suspicion a few tense seconds) takes another deep, self-soothing breath, assessing the damage those two managed to do to the training ground with primarily taijutsu, the grass torn up, the ground blown out into a crater in the center of the clearing, the beginnings of scorch marks he can just make out in the more distant trees with his Sharingan out, forewarning of further damage he’s yet to see.

There is a lot, he thinks, letting his eyes drift back to Sakura’s pale, ink-stained face, noting the unrestricted rise and fall of her chest to steady his unease, he is yet to see.

“Why don’t you and Hinata take Sakura back to my place for now,” Kakashi says to Sasuke, without taking his eyes off of Sai, and hopes his order will not be mistaken for a suggestion regardless of tone.

As he ignores Sasuke’s incredulous look, a small hand grips the back of Kakashi’s jōnin vest; Hinata’s fingers tremble.

“That wasn’t yin or yang.” Hinata’s voice carries resolve, even if it comes from behind his back. Caution is warranted, in this situation, he thinks. He appreciates that about Hinata: her hesitance in the face of undeniable threats. He would have taken her words seriously even without the Byakugan.

What he does not appreciate, however, is the massive target she just painted on her back by voicing that particular observation.

Kakashi can still see Sakura’s fist closing around air, can still sense that inexplicable pressure enveloping his technique, as if she were squeezing his chakra core, as if it were a physical object—one that can be broken. Not somewhere he’s been touched before. Not somewhere he plans to be touched again.

From the hostility currently being directed at them all by her handler, Sai is less than keen on anyone else finding out about that little party trick, and is prepared to do something drastic.

He subtly looks behind him at the electrical burns forming on Sakura’s hand and arm, despite having been nowhere near him when he activated Chidori to get their attention.

Kakashi feels it like the sun bearing down overhead: he’s getting closer to the truth. To the reason she was recruited. The reason Danzō waffled on whether to kill her or not. The reason Sakura survived an encounter with Itachi, and the reason Danzō believes she is worth retrieving.

“Are you sure?” Kakashi says, tone purposefully dismissive. “There was a lot of dust in the air. Maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you.”

Hinata’s nails dig into the fabric of his vest, hand no longer shaking. Kakashi silently wills her to get the message and stay silent while he thinks of a way to appease Sai long enough to get his students to safety.

She doesn’t listen.

That’s the problem with silent warnings, he thinks, too late.

“Yes, I’m sure,” she hisses, “It was both, wasn’t it? Is that even possible?” she asks, and Kakashi doesn’t curse, doesn’t let himself react, tries not to make this any worse than it already is. Sai is watching Hinata too closely now, and Kakashi might not be able to protect her if she buries herself any further. “Yin and yang. Or something…something altogether different.”

It’s near enough to the truth Kakashi suspects that it puts her neck ever closer to the chopping block. Dangerous enough, that one word of it to the wrong people could cause a great many problems for Kakashi and his preferred way of doing things.

Shaking out the muscles of his arms and legs one at a time, like he’s warming up, Sai is giving Kakashi the hardest stare he’s ever had the pleasure of receiving. He is waiting to see what Kakashi plans to do. He is saying, Are you going to keep them quiet, or am I?

The crows dip lower overhead, their wings spread as they glide in lazy circles, displaying unnatural interest in Sakura’s prone form.

One problem at a time, he thinks.

Kakashi unsheathes a handful of kunai from his thigh holster and pitches them skyward, each finding a home in the small heart of a crow, felling them like paper weights. Their bodies land in bloody heaps of black feathers, forming a misshapen circle around the group of shinobi in the clearing, twitching on the ground, their black eyes reflecting a red glaze over the membrane.

Hinata jolts, her hand twitching against his back in surprise.

Sasuke tenses for an entirely different reason.

It’s concerning and revealing, the fact Sai does not. He knew who those crows belonged to. He was just pretending not to.

Evidently, Itachi hasn’t lost interest in Sakura since he met her in the land of Rivers.

What a pain in the ass this is all turning out to be.

“Is he close?” Sasuke’s voice has gone stoic, all thoughts but of his brother instantly consumed.

“No,” Kakashi says, and hopes it’s the truth.

“Then why—”

“You’re mistaken. Both of you,” Kakashi interrupts, more sharply this time, before Sasuke can get more worked up or Hinata can elaborate on her theories. 

He feels Hinata bristle, Sasuke’s eyes a skeptical blade he can’t decide where to point, both of his former students missing the way Sai’s eyes almost lose that threatening glare at Kakashi’s words.

“No,” Hinata snaps, that chip on her shoulder rearing its head at the worst possible moment, and Kakashi nearly lets himself swear. “I’m not. What was that? What did she just do?”

Sai takes a menacing step closer, placing his boot carefully on the grass, meticulous in his movements, down to the inhale. Kakashi’s time is running out.

Sai’s calculating glare swivels once more to Hinata’s partially hidden face, standing behind Kakashi as she is, and the ‘solution’ his chakra promises is sincere enough that Kakashi holds an arm out in front of her, pulsing his own chakra in warning, a reminder to stand down before Kakashi is forced to do what he wants to do anyway, still brimming with a suppressed desire to punish the offenses committed against the young woman passed out on the grass. Offenses spanning years, ones Kakashi can only imagine in creative bursts of self-torment while he tries to sleep.

“Now would be an excellent time to follow instructions,” he says, measuring his tone, when his former students hesitate to move. “There are sedatives in my apartment to keep her down. Bring her there and wait for me. Don’t speak to anyone until I say so. That’s an order.”

He can feel the charged glance between Sasuke and Hinata as they deliberate on his instructions, and tries to disguise his frustration with their insubordination as he urges, “Don’t start thinking for yourselves now. Do what I say and you’ll still have heads to question me with.”

“But—” Hinata starts, and Kakashi allows his own chakra to flare further, lets his fury at Sai whip the air in the clearing into a brief spiral, because if his students won’t recognize when their lives hang in the balance, he will gladly make himself the bad guy and spare them the pain of that particular lesson.

“You’re useless here. Take her and leave or I’ll handle you myself.”

Sai’s thin eyebrows twitch upward as his students flinch from him, from the stinging truth of their hindrance when not boxed and ribboned into a joke, and Kakashi shoves down the incoming surge of guilt, because if they’re so useless, who’s fault is that? Who chose to shelter them, to keep them from being whisked into the underbelly of the village and utilized the way Kakashi has been, the way Sakura will continue to be, once she’s off of probation? Kakashi expended inordinate amounts of effort to keep Team 7 out of the council’s sticky hands as much as possible. This un-militant ignorance is the cost of that effort.

This time, his order sticks.

The air warps as Sasuke flickers to Sakura’s side, scooping her up in the same breath he and Hinata disappear from the clearing, their chakra signatures blinking out in well-trained synchronicity.

Sai’s thigh muscles tense in the same moment, but Kakashi is waiting for it, and Sakura’s last hit on her handler has slowed him down enough that when he moves to intercept them Kakashi is able to dart forward and clamp a hand around his bicep, body-flickering them both in a whirl of motion into the depths of the charred trees where Sakura apparently let loose with her katon-blade, hurling them into the cloud of ash and debris still hovering over the forest floor, brittle branches snapping underfoot as Sai jerks out of his hold and leaps a good few paces back, eyeing Kakashi with more curiosity than hostility.

The enclave of broken forest is too small to consider a clearing, the space layered in charred boughs, severed and seared, and half disintegrated leaves and mulch. Some of the trees look like they burst and splintered where the edge of Sakura’s tantō likely grazed them, the heat and force of her swings destructive enough to leave large splits in the soft earth below, exposing roots.

Kakashi perches the balls of his shoes on the side of one such toppled and cleaved oak in a comfortable squat, burnt into a patchy black and white husk leaning on its fallen brethren, barren of the leaves it had before Sakura cauterized it. He looks down at Sai with painfully acquired shinobi-neutrality, forcing a calm between them that Sai eventually concedes to, leaning his own back against another half-fallen trunk and crossing his covered arms tightly so that muscles bulge and the litany of cuts Sakura gifted him with begin a fresh bleed. That is one good thing about Sai and Sakura: they’re seasoned shinobi. They have the patience for communication in the midst of conflicting interests, if the situation warrants.

“Their inconvenience has surpassed their usefulness,” Sai says, sounding far too reasonable to be fair, shuffling his boots into a more optimal position beneath his shadow, “You’ll feel better once it’s over with.”

Kakashi pulls a kunai from the pouch on his thigh as he thinks, looping his index finger through its metal ring, and gives the blade a spin. “Yeah, that’s not how this works.”

The former Root operative looks up at Kakashi with skepticism, patches of shadow from the remaining tree cover swaying onto his pale face and retreating with the wind, ash rising and swirling between them, coating their skin and filling Kakashi’s nose despite his mask with a heady, smoky scent that itches and burns on ever inhale. A few embers continue to glow around the edges of the felled logs. Kakashi hopes none of them catch.

“They’re unnecessary to you. Sakura and I are better fighters,” Sai says, and when he tilts his head to the right like a bird watching a slug, the laceration on his neck weeps. “It would be wiser to ally with us.”

“And here I thought you’d already sworn loyalty to the Leaf.”

Sai doesn’t take the bait. He just stares, and waits.

Spinning the kunai once more before grabbing it by the hilt, Kakashi sighs and scratches his mask with the blade’s edge, careful not to cut through the fabric. He’s unpracticed in having to explain this to someone, not having gotten to this part of the Leaf shinobi manual with Sakura, yet, and has no idea where to start. “It’s not a matter of better or worse. People have independent values separate from mission necessity.” The blank stare he receives is not promising. Okay, new angle. “Why do you want to kill them?”

Sai’s silence and narrowed eyes say Kakashi is being a willful idiot, which is fair. It doesn’t take much thought to conclude Sai views this as a matter of cleaning up Sakura’s mess, having not been planning for her to reveal that skill to anyone just yet. If ever.

Kakashi lowers his hand holding the kunai, letting it swing loosely between his fingers like a pendulum on a clock.

“So you’re going to just kill anyone she uses that ability in front of? Is that the plan? Seems a bit undercooked.”

Sai uncrosses his arms and slides his hands into the pockets of his gray fatigues, casting his gaze around their perimeter, vigilant as always. It feels like an insult, the implication being the threat lies outside of their little huddle, and not where Kakashi is perched above him on his tangled stack of fallen trees. “Simple is often best.”

Kakashi, despite himself, is morbidly intrigued. “How many times have you done this?”

“None that she remembers.”

Memory manipulation. Figures. They really do have a Yamanaka, then. It’s possible Sakura doesn’t even know how far she’s actually progressed in her abilities; that every time she’s passed a certain limit, Sai has had her memories regressed. Sakura wouldn’t question it, from what Kakashi has seen.

He’s been keeping her just powerful enough, and no more.

It makes Kakashi angry. Very angry. Angry enough to do something about it.

But Kakashi is used to ignoring his bigger feelings.

New tactic. “If you kill them, you’ll be forced to run. You’ll lose the protection of the Hokage.” Kakashi tosses his kunai up a short height, and catches its tip between his index finger and thumb, watching daylight glint off its edge. It feels unfair for all this to happen on such a sunny day, warm weather and all. But isn’t it always. Some of the worst days of his life have been seventy degrees fahrenheit with partial cloud cover. “That’s what you wanted right? Protection? You didn’t want Root to have her, but you couldn’t keep her safe by yourself. That’s why you brought her to the village—by all means, correct me if I’m wrong. Wouldn’t want to speak for you.”

He catches Sai’s facial twitch from the corner of his vision, and refocuses his eyes on the other operative’s face. Calling it an expression would be a stretch, but something about the set of his eyebrows and lips communicate impatience, as if he’s too well trained to volunteer information, but watching Kakashi flounder for truth is too irritating to properly ignore.

Bracing his forearms on his knees, Kakashi hazards a guess at the cause. He thinks back to when Sai first came to him, young and determined and clear in his objective. He approached Kakashi specifically. Not the Hokage. Kakashi. 

Kakashi shifts his weight to slip his kunai back into his weapons pouch, and considers with new weight how desperate Sai was for Kakashi to extract her, along with how little he appears to support her integration into the village. It’s his indifference to the village, to them being here at all—given his willingness to sacrifice that by killing active Leaf shinobi to cover Sakura’s tracks—that begins to lead Kakashi to his answer.

When he does, he feels it like being doused with cold water, or standing under a waterfall, the weight of it hammering down on his head and shoulders until his teeth break. 

“You didn’t bring her to the Leaf,” he says, slowly, gauging the veracity of his claim by watching Sai’s dark pupils dilate, and gains certainty in his words he would much rather not have. “You brought her to me.”

It’s an unpleasant moment, when the tension between them thickens, and his own words settle into his gut the way ashes leaf down to the forest floor.

Kakashi doesn’t bother disguising his disbelief, is frankly floored at the lack of objection in Sai’s face, and he can’t stop himself from blurting the first question that comes to mind, which is an appropriately unhinged, “Why the fuck would you do that?”

With a pedantic sigh, Sai unsheathes his hands from his pockets and begins to stretch, bracing palms on his knees and falling into a deep side lunge, seemingly done with the current conversation. “I’ll kill them quickly. They will not feel pain.”

A chill rolls down his spine, and Kakashi grimaces. He’d quietly hoped they’d moved past that discussion. Apparently not.

“If you’re here for me, killing those brats is unlikely to get you whatever you’re looking for,” he warns, losing some of his nonchalance to the awareness that if he doesn’t talk Sai down from this, there will likely be no way to keep Sasuke and Hinata breathing long-term, but the warning fails, Sai not bothering to stop his stretching, bouncing in his low lunge before switching legs.

“If you want to keep Sakura with you, you will have to make some concessions,” Sai says, unaffected, and finishes stretching out his hamstrings, his shuffling kicking up debris, and glancing up at Kakashi with that lecturing stare of his, as if his words are less a threat and more an inevitability Kakashi is too slow to grasp.

With a loaded inhale, trying not to let that one stick under his skin like a burr, Kakashi brushes his hands on his pants and stands, balancing on the precariously supported tree trunks without wasting chakra, and prepares himself for a particularly vexing fight. Obito’s eye throbs from how long it’s been open, and the pressure building in his head does not bode well for the next shit show about to be thrown in his honor. He can’t afford to cover his Sharingan, yet.

Sai may be injured, but Kakashi is well past underestimating him. He will have to fight seriously without drawing more attention to them, if they’re going to reach an understanding. And they really, truly have to, or Kakashi is going to have to make some very hard calls he’d rather not be cornered into.

If he kills Sai, he loses his grip on Sakura. If he fails to stop him, he loses his grip on everything else.

Something tells him Sai will not be simple to subdue. But the fact he’s not charging past Kakashi in active pursuit of the two witnesses says more than his threats; he’s open to dialogue, to letting Kakashi offer an alternative solution, if he can convince him before he runs out of time and chakra.

As Sai rolls his right shoulder back, massaging into the tissue, his stare is an expectant weight adding to the pile of responsibilities already resting on his shoulders. 

Kakashi sees black ink begin to writhe in the shadows beneath his feet, without a clue as to how or when Sai managed to put it there, and thinks, despondently, This is going to take a while.

…

Hinata has a stomach for most things.

She can smother udon in togarashi until her taste buds go numb. She can irrigate infected wounds in windowless hospital rooms without gagging on the sour air that makes it past her cotton mask. She can set a bone through a patient’s screams. She can watch her teammates bleed and throw themselves at ill-advised objectives. She can keep her head bowed under the weight of her clan’s insidious scorn, can pack everything she owns into two cardboard boxes at age fourteen and kneel on the Hokage’s sandal-worn floor and beg for shelter, beg for apprenticeship.

Hinata has a high tolerance for most things that make others glance away and plug their senses.

Things like the truth.

Which is why Hinata can’t shake the feeling they should not have left Kakashi’s side just now, should not have obeyed the dismissal and left him alone with the other half to Sakura’s madness. Sai, she’s been told, is what he’s called. Somehow, having a name does not suit him. Like naming a rattlesnake. Building a birdhouse for a vulture.

Naruto described Sai as machine-like when he regaled her with the tale of their benign encounter over a sushi dinner. But what Hinata just saw in him resembled frightening intelligence, not robotic processing; long-term planning and the predatory patience to match. There is nothing mechanical about that shinobi. He’s an animal of the worst variety, and it feels like all of this, somehow, is exactly what the animal wants: Kakashi, away from them, away from everyone but him, isolated, desperate and malleable.

Sakura is no better. Hinata is not convinced she ever was.

She believed Ino immediately, when she shared her updated description of their former classmate. Of what she’s become. She couldn’t share the details of where Sakura has been or why she’s suddenly back, but she could say enough.

It’s all very shocking, supposedly, but from where Hinata used to sit, staring at the back of her pink head during drills and lectures, Sakura has always been ruthless, in one way or another. She didn’t force a smile for propriety. She didn’t entertain small talk or ‘waste’ her time training with inferior students. Even back then, she looked down on those she deemed lesser or weaker. She was focused and ambitious. While Ino mooned over Sasuke’s eyes, Sakura watched the way he placed his heel before striking out with his practice sword, and then tried to copy it. For fuck’s sake, she didn’t even speak to him outside of training, like she saw him as a human goal post.

Sasuke may look at Sakura and see his former rival, the top kunoichi with green eyes and a pretty face he used to have to look away from during a spar or risk holding back on accident, but when Hinata looks at Sakura, she sees the girl crouched in front of her during practical training after putting her on her back in the dirt, looking at her like an insect and telling her in that soft voice of hers that she should ‘probably quit if she’s not going to take it seriously.’ That she will ‘probably die’ before her clan accepts her, unless she starts to ‘train like she means it.’

Everyone is so fixated on the fact this ‘Sai’ person turned their Leaf shinobi into a monster.

No one is asking what kind of monster Sakura might have been all along, to have willingly followed him out of the village.

Not like Hinata hasn’t tried to pose the question herself. No one wants to hear it. Sasuke said Ino is ‘hypersensitive’ and ‘too close to the issue,’ when Hinata told him what Ino had said about her, about the things she’s capable of—though leaving out Ino’s panicked rationalizations, her frantic justifications and excuses.

He’d watched the green tea leaves swirl in his cup, sitting cross-legged on the deck of the Uchiha main house she and Naruto helped him refurbish one bloodstain at a time, sitting on the labor of their team, the ultimate symbol of what it took to rebuild and trust each other, and ignored her warning. 

‘She survived,’ he’d said, in that flat way of his, and took another sip to savor. As if survival is all that matters. As if strength is all that matters.

Hinata would like to say to him, At least Ino has a reason to be so blinded.

At least Ino has a reason to have obsessed over her absence and waited with bated breath for either her return or her burial. Ino and Shikamaru are the only ones who can boast a close relationship to Sakura before her disappearance. She kept everyone else, including Hinata, at an indifferent distance. She may have sparred with Sasuke, but she didn’t talk about her feelings with her head pillowed in his lap like she did with Ino. She may have let him help her sharpen her kunai once or twice, but she never leaned her back against his chest and closed her eyes to rest on their lunch break like she did with Shikamaru.

What excuse does Sasuke have, to see Sakura’s pink halo out of the corners of his eyes when Hinata is trying to talk to him? What role did Sakura have in his life, to be so fucking impossible to replace?

What reason does he have to watch Sakura the way he did in that clearing when she unsealed that impossible, terrifying technique like relieving a grape of its skin, his fists tight, the flinching of his thyroid cartilage protruding from his throat, his lips parting from their determined line as his brows furrowed and his stomach flexed.

Hinata can stomach her teammate’s putrefying injuries, or fleeting looks of disappointment.

It’s the way Sasuke’s eyes lust after Sakura’s power that’s getting hard to stomach.

He looks altogether too comfortable running along the rooftop with her in his arms in a princess carry, letting her filth-covered head roll over the lavender collar of his shirt as they approach the first intersection that will lead them to Hokage tower. As if he’s not at risk of having a knife sticking out of his throat the second she wakes.

It takes a second for Hinata to realize he doesn’t plan to take the turn, that he’s actually planning on bringing Sakura to Kakashi’s apartment, and she grabs the back of his half-open robe to yank him to a halt, rattling the ceramic tiles underfoot as they skid to a stop.

“What are you doing?”

Sasuke doesn’t emote beyond shifting Sakura up higher in his arms and glancing back curiously at where Hinata has grabbed his shirt. “Following orders.”

“Are you crazy?” Kakashi may have given a treasonous order, but she didn’t for a second think they would actually follow it. “We need to bring her to Lady Tsunade.”

“Kakashi said—”

“Kakashi is wrong!” A few civilians are beginning to look up at where they’re balancing on the roof, and Hinata tries to curb her pent up frustration and lower her voice. “He’s trying to shut us up, to—to control the narrative, he’s suppressing information and it’s borderline treason.”

“He has good reasons.”

“Not that he’d ever share them.” Sasuke’s eyes darken, and Hinata takes a calming breath, letting go of his shirt and switching tone, hoping to appeal to his higher thinking. “Sasuke, we have a probationary shinobi of unknown allegiance who just demonstrated an undocumented power that nearly killed our sensei. You saw what I saw. I know you did.”

Sasuke doesn’t immediately respond. She takes this as progress, until he says, “Telling the Hokage puts her at risk. Kakashi trusts us to recognize that and use discretion.”

“And staying silent puts all of us at risk,” she hisses, glancing nervously at the rubbernecking crowd below them. “Are you seriously so obsessed with her you can’t see reason, after all these years? She’s not the girl you used to spar with after school, Sasuke, she’s practically foreign nin! I’d think you would recognize that after her psycho boyfriend put Ino into hysterics. She’s a stranger, and a dangerous one.”

“And who decides which powers are dangerous?” The words are spoken softly, but his eyes flash with a fury Hinata should have known better than to trigger, her words coming back to bite her in their thoughtlessness. She didn’t consider the parallel he may be feeling, between the prejudice he’s often faced for his eyes and Sakura’s tenuous status in (technically) her own village. “Who decides when being too strong for comfort is reason enough to be put on a leash?”

Hinata closes her eyes, steadying herself. “You know that’s not what I meant,” she tries, but she knows she’s barking up the wrong tree. Sasuke knows more than most what it is to crave power, to crave strength, so much so he’d tried to throw away anything Itachi hadn’t already taken from him to have it, before Naruto dragged him back kicking and screaming. Of course he would empathize with Sakura, left to his own interpretation—he and Naruto both. 

Hinata may be disinherited, but she’s not an orphan. She can’t share the dark, weighted looks her teammates exchange in silence the way Sakura could have. The way even Kakashi does.

But that alternate history doesn’t exist. She may not be the teammate they wanted, but she’s the one they have, and she’ll die before she lets them be taken advantage of by a ghost.

When she opens her eyes, she sees Sasuke’s back as he walks away from her in the wrong direction, as per fucking usual, as he angles his chin toward his shoulder to say with a sneer, “Don’t be scum.”

Hinata can’t stop herself from scoffing, the idea that Kakashi’s Will of Fire applies here so ludicrous it would be funny, if it weren’t so painfully misplaced. Hinata rushes to catch up, glaring at his stoic profile while careful not to lose her footing.

“She’s not your teammate, I am, and I’m telling you to listen to me.” Her voice cracks on the sore subject, and Sasuke has the nerve to look put out by the recurring argument, but softens when he sees the pain and frustration on her face. It gives her courage to continue. “She unified yin and yang. That’s not fucking possible. This is dangerous, and way, way above either of our stations. Above even Kakashi’s station. This information goes to the Hokage and no one else.” She doesn’t care if she sounds more pleading than firm. Whatever gets him to listen. “I know you know I’m right,” she says, and hopes she isn't bluffing.

Sasuke stops and thinks, and Hinata holds her breath. Kakashi isn’t making sense, has been behaving differently ever since Sakura returned from wherever she’s been. It’s bizarre how closely he is guarding someone he met only months ago—someone he won’t let anyone else near, hoarding her, sequestering her away in the name of protecting everyone else. He’s more loyal to the Hat than anyone she knows, and yet suddenly he’s putting this would-have-been student’s safety above the entire village? He couldn’t be more obvious in his savior complex if he tried. The last thing she needs is for Sasuke to join him, to turn his back on her logic and chase after a past that doesn’t exist outside his wistful imagination.

She sees the moment his shoulders untense and his jaw muscles twitch, and knows he’s accepted her argument for what it is:

Correct.

And yet, what he says is, “No.”

It takes Hinata a moment to process. She smooths her hands on her white shinobi dress, hyper aware of the sweat starting to swell on her palms.

“What do you mean, no?”

Sasuke turns his head to stare back at her in profile, the sun highlighting the brown undertones in his black hair that have started to show with the warming temperatures of spring. “I trust Kakashi.”

Hinata is shaking her head before he even finishes the sentence, grabbing his shoulders and attempting to twist him to face northwest and push him forward, toward the Hokage, his toned shinobi’s body unyielding to her efforts as she whispers in a rush, “This is insane. You’re all acting insane.”

“Then be insane with us,” he says, on the surface flippant, but there is an undertone of sincerity to the words that makes Hinata stop shoving and look at his face properly. “Be with your team, Hyūga.”

After a long breath of silence, feeling far above the pedestrian sounds of the street that’d felt so close only moments before, Hinata rolls her eyes and lets her hand fall from the fabric of his sleeve before settling into a light jog along the original path toward Kakashi’s apartment, with every intention of regretting this later.

Watching pink strands of blood- and ink-matted hair whip against Sasuke’s curse mark as they run, Hinata desperately wishes it were as easy to change her own mind as it is to change her cardinal direction.

…

Sakura is accustomed to waking up disoriented.

She is familiar with startling into awareness with anti-shinobi shackles wearing red grooves into her wrists, ankles and throat. She is used to her own blood and filth hardening her clothes; used to damp caves and basement rooms with sloped floors with metal drains her captors routinely hose viscera and human waste down at the end of each day. She is used to convoluted arrays of rusted tools left on display for her to imagine increasingly creative and barbaric uses for. She is used to taunts through metal bars and moldy bread and globs of spit and semen in her water and time passing slowly until one of two things happen: she breaks herself out right on schedule, having gathered as much intel as possible, or Sai’s boot-steps echo down blood-splattered stone hallways, keys hanging from his gloved fingers, chiming against each other musically while he takes his time on his way to her cell.

She is acclimated to waking up in more civilized holding cells, as well. Used to the clinical setting of the deepest basement in Root, concrete illuminated under poles of fluorescent lights. She’s used to clean metal chairs, used to M0-4’s steady hands, tying his shoulder-length hair back from his eyes with leather cords he knots three times, his fingers corpse-cold against the skin of her temples.

In fact, Sakura knows how it feels to wake to danger without even having fallen asleep.

She knows blood-soaked spider lilies and crimson skies and red wheels that turn her mind over like tilling fields, gentle hands that bring more suffering than any brutish violence she has ever been subjected to, eroding her anger and arrogance, stripping her down to her bare elements like a fruit tenderly peeled and cored; she is used to humiliation, the indignity of how she leans into his touch when it doesn’t bring pain, the way he’s starved her of sensation other than hurt to the point she buries her face in the calloused palm of his hand as she accepts the oath, accepts its searing thumbprint on her chakra core, like a blacksmith’s signature hammered into a blade.

It should not be comparable, jolting to awareness in a sunny room where lethargic plumes of dust circulate, fine particulates reflecting the flakes of light that thread through half-closed window blinds and into her face, sparking flashes of green and blue in her eyes when she blinks.

It should not turn her brain to liquid, her lungs to lead, as she rolls off ballpoint-blue polyester and into the space between the walnut coffee table and couch in a deep crouch, tasting something earthy and aromatic in the air she vaguely recognizes, throwing her gaze over peeling gray walls that could use a fresh coat of paint, a stout brown bookshelf losing its color from the layer of untouched dust covering the spines of its books, dulling red to orange, blue to gray, green to yellow. Her feet are unsettlingly bare against the faded ash-toned area rug that ends just past the couch, giving way to glossy wood slats leading out of the living room into a narrow hall.

She spares a glance at her exposed arms (both still there, that’s good), and at the charred edge of the hole in the lower leg of her pants framing the pristine skin of her shin. She remembers Sai’s exploding ink almost taking her leg off in her carelessness, and clicks her tongue against her teeth. She tries to recall how she lost consciousness, but the thick fog deep in her head has her putting the thought off, focusing on getting her bearings before wading further.

The front of her tank top is stiff, chafing and familiar, but a gentle press of her hand to her jaw confirms the wound of origin has smoothed over into unblemished skin. The dried blood and ink at her shoulder is streaked, like there was an attempt to wipe it away with cloth abandoned midway. Her arms are in a similar state, partially crusted with the rusty remnants of cuts no longer there. A testing flex of different muscle groups confirms that the weight that has slowed her limbs since refusing treatment after Wind has been lifted.

Someone healed her.

Someone healed her properly. M0-3 proper, she’d risk saying.

“In here.”

The voice from beyond the hall is aloof, masculine and familiar, but her frayed mind struggles to place it. She snatches a thin mustard throw from the seat of the couch and twists it, wrapping its ends around her wrists while easing her way to standing. She moves with animal quiet, feeling individual grains of wood under her toes, listening to domestic tinkering the closer to she gets to the kitchen, peering around the corner to watch the back of a silver-haired man wearing a jōnin vest over a loose charcoal shirt, the long sleeves of which are pushed up to the elbows, showing scarred forearms tensing minimally as he lifts a glass carafe fogged with heat over a conical contraption that feeds down into another similarly sized carafe sitting on the white tile counter. The water is dripping down through a filter, hitting the glass bottom in droplets that grow in number slowly, the rising liquid gaining stronger color in numbers, sand becoming bark, becoming soil.

She knows him, but she can’t convince her brain, can’t convince her senses that there is no danger here, that this is not an illusion or an enemy because she can’t feel him, her senses are scattered, her perception inexplicably dulled to the point of a butter knife.

A firm hand comes down on her shoulder, and Sakura twists with her full speed, catching the assailant’s wrist in the throw blanket and burying her heel in their abdomen while tugging their arm out of its socket, the air leaving their chest in a hiss between teeth that resonates deep in her subconscious, her eyes clearing as the throw is used against her, snapping around her wrists and then pulling taut around her throat, binding her hands to her neck as the side of her face meets the wall with bruising force, a steel forearm at her back, his other hand actively tugging the fabric back against the strength of her arms.

“No roughhousing in the apartment,” Hound says, his voice muffled by the cabinets in front of him, his back still turned. “The landlord is surprisingly inflexible when it comes to repairs.”

The burbling of liquid being poured competes with the thud of her heart against her chest, logic slow to build itself into recognizable structures, slow to ease the haze of instinct into a manageable mist.

She knows the heat of the man at her back. Cheek still pressed to the wall, Sakura turns her chin further, until she can see black irises set in white sclera like buttons on a doll’s face, until she feels his viscous chakra lapping at her skin, the tide coming in and out from the shore, her senses returning.

Sai.

She slumps against the wall, and he lets the blanket fall slack. Sakura slips it from her neck and wrists, tossing it onto the floor of the hallway. She doesn’t apologize, not with her ears still ringing from being slapped around the training ground, but she pats his chest twice with her palm as she drags herself past him into the kitchen, the absence of adrenaline leaving her hollow. Behind her, the sound of Sai popping his dislocated shoulder back into place pierces the fog in her mind, loud like a bottle uncorked in a small space. The tension that plagued them since her return from Wind has been eradicated, clearing her focus for more pressing developments.

First and foremost:

“Who healed me?” she asks, trying not to sound like she’s asking who to kill.

If while examining her someone happened to recognize the mark on Sakura’s chakra core for what it is, it would be pertinent to quietly eliminate them. She needs to find out who healed her and how skilled they are, how much they know. M0-3 thought it was a scar, or at least that’s what he reported. If whoever healed her has made a similar mistake, they can walk this off like it never happened.

It would be ideal not to have to throw away Hound’s tentative trust over this.

“No need to thank them. I made sure to pass on your appreciation,” Hound says, wisely avoiding the question. 

Finished pouring hot water over the brown sediment-slush she’s now recognizing as the coffee grounds Hound hasn’t shut up about since she met him, mostly from their distinct, acidic aroma, Hound sets the carafe down on the counter. The brief glance he spares her over his shoulder indicates how little faith he has that her ‘appreciation’ wouldn’t be a kunai in the back of whoever got close enough to her body to heal her while she was incapacitated. 

He is inconveniently sharp, in ways like this.

Sai’s arm brushes hers as he passes her on his way to the kitchen island, pulling out a cheap wicker and metal stool that whines and creaks as he takes a seat.

It takes her a second, running through mental lists of who Hound would trust enough to let treat her injuries, to notice the purpling bruise on the left side of Sai’s jaw, swollen and precisely placed, a hit that would have knocked him unconscious for precious seconds.

As Hound deftly hooks his ungloved fingers through the white ceramic handles of two mugs, plucking them from the decorative metal ‘tree’ they were hanging from, Sakura notes spots of discoloration on the knuckles of his right hand, such a dark purple they’re nearly black. Even with her memory slowly reforming itself, she is pretty sure she asked him not to hurt Sai, but to be completely fair, she doesn’t think she finished that sentence before losing consciousness, so she can’t quite manage to feel betrayed. Before she can feel anything too strongly about this, Hound turns fully to face her for the first time since she woke, setting the mugs on the island counter noiselessly.

The front of his vest is spattered with the linear, brownish-red evidence of an arterial spurt, stretching across the chest.

Sakura puts a hand on Sai’s shoulder instinctively, looking rapidly between the two men in front of her, Sai watching Hound dully while drawing invisible seals on clear-glazed granite, Hound staring directly into her eyes with palpable intent, the playful facade momentarily winking out, replaced by the intensity of a man who wants her know what he is capable of; wants her to know he can land the type of blow on Sai that results in a thorny rope of blood like what he is displaying on his vest, letting her see what he could have hidden. For Hound to make clear the strength he has been so conservative in showing… It is a drastic change in approach.

Evidently, the events of today will not be swept accommodatingly under the proverbial rug.

The moment passes, the muscles around Hound’s gray eye superficially contracting with an implied smile Sakura is starting to associate with his waning patience, as he says, “Sit down.”

His tone is deceptively conversational, an offer to take a seat. Sakura rigidly tugs out the stool beside Sai and sits, propping her left heel against the thin metal foot bar, the toes of her right foot brushing the cool hardwood as she taps her nails against the counter, slowly and repetitively, like the whispered ticks of the clock on the wall above the pristine stainless-steel stove. The pungent scent of coffee filling the small kitchen is grounding, keeping the pin in her anger.

“Still waking up?” he asks.

She was sedated, she infers. Explains the lingering dulling of her senses, the flustered state of her mind.

“Seems so.” Sakura glances down at his gored vest, then back into that watchful eye. And then, since they aren’t pretending it didn’t happen: “How’s the…?” She peters out, unsure how to define exactly what occurred in the clearing, trying to piece the events back together like broken fragments of a glass bowl.

A pinprick of unease splinters her calm as the moment before she lost consciousness flashes in her mind's eye, a hazy blend of burning plastic and white rage; of total and utter control over the elements, uniting all, finding the black seed and prying it open until it’s filled with light.

She did something to Sai, and to Hound.

Something interesting.

Something new, and yet, something unquestionably known to her.

Watching the way her posture stiffens with this revelation, this rush of curiosity so fierce it makes her blood hot, makes her fingers twitch with the urge to abandon this conversation and immediately being trying to understand, recreate, explain, Hound hums in answer—a low, foreboding vibration—and Sakura finds it suddenly difficult to look away. And so she doesn’t. Neither does he.

Sakura has done something impressive, and strange, and inherently, inarguably threatening to Hound’s careful hold over her since re-entering the village.

Her mind works quickly to amend the context of this interaction. The uncharacteristic theater of wearing that bloodied vest. The way his gray eye sticks to her like sugar to a wet finger. The way he is openly wary of his next word, his next thought, like walking a wire over a chasm of unknown depth.

There are four prongs on that mug holder on the counter. The two mugs on the counter match the stand, the same exact ceramic blend, and there are two more hanging off the holder. They’re a matching set. A drop of water glistens in the curve of the handle of both hanging mugs, missed in a partial dry job. There is little reason for Hound to have recently washed them. Even if he’d had a cup for himself before she woke, he would only need to wash one.

Unless he’d had a guest or two while Sakura was sleeping. Unless he didn’t want her to know he’d had guests. Unless he (being the type of paranoid shinobi she reluctantly admires) thought Sakura might notice if two of the mugs were missing from the four scratched up prongs of the holder, and so hastily rinsed and rehung them when he heard her begin to rouse.

She pushes herself to think more deeply.

If that is Sai’s blood—and it is, she knows, Hound would not look at her this way if it wasn’t—then whatever happened between them likely happened fairly quickly after Sakura lost consciousness, while the two of them were still keyed up enough to get drawn into an altercation. 

And yet, neither Sai nor Hound would leave Sakura completely unattended in such a state of vulnerability, she’s fairly certain. If she were taken to a medical facility, she would still be there now, likely being interrogated regarding the situation that led to her injuries while she’s on probation. The fact she’s here, in Hound’s apartment, suggests he’s keeping this close to his bloodied vest; he wouldn’t willingly add witnesses to the situation if he’s trying to keep it quiet. Kakashi would have to trust someone significantly more than he trusts most, to let them heal the type of injuries he and Sai likely sustained while keeping their mouth shut about what caused them. And after seeing Sakura do…whatever that was…the fact she’s not in anti-shinobi cuffs means he’s not even informed the Hokage. Not yet.

The only other two shinobi nearby who’d already been involved by proxy were his students, the little mouse and the Uchiha, and Sakura highly doubts the little brother has the patience or control for medical ninjutsu.

So perhaps it’s the girl. The girl healed Sai, which means she’s the one who healed Sakura.

Sure, it could have been someone else, but Hound is on a tightrope right now, balancing a threat in one hand and a promise in the other. He wouldn’t risk angering her with a bold gesture like this to warn her off hurting someone she doesn’t even know exists. Not after what she just showed him. And that vest is a warning. Of that she’s certain.

She almost laughs.

No wonder Hound didn’t want to tell her. It’s one of his little students, his hand-fed veal.

“What’s her name?” Sakura asks, and watches that gray eye sharpen as Hound’s thoughts retrace hers in the time it takes a whip to crack. “The girl with the medical ninjutsu you barely trained.” 

Sakura can’t recall ever having looked directly at the girl with crystal-spring chakra, only peripherally picking up her black, medium-length hair and pallid skin. Something rattles in her memory, a detail she’s forgetting, but it doesn’t stick. She won’t be difficult to find, regardless.

“Hinata.” Sai answers before Hound can deflect, tilting his head to the right and eying the full pot of coffee on the circular rubber protector on the counter behind Hound, who is looking eerily chipper, sliding out a cabinet drawer and placing a white napkin on the granite slab. She almost startles at the light pressure of Sai’s fingers against her back, calluses catching on cotton as he draws seemingly aimless circles into her shirt. It takes her a moment to recognize the characters being traced into her back, to sound it out in her head and make sense of the message.

‘Hyūga.’

White eyes below black bangs glisten in her memory, like a reflection on water. That could explain the fight between him and Hound. Sai would never willingly let a Byakugan user examine her. Sai may not know the truth about the ‘scar’ on her chakra core, but he knows she has taken great pains to keep M0-3 from examining it too closely. Hound has no idea what line he just crossed.

Or, she thinks, studying the bloody signpost on his chest, maybe he does. Maybe he realized too late how much of an issue she would take after the fact, how much danger he put his little lamb in by having her ‘help,’ and this is his improvised method of warning her off retribution. A blatant tit for tat: Kill my student, I kill your handler.

It’s the type of language Sakura can understand, and it says something far more valuable about him than Hound seems to fully comprehend.

From the cool depth of his washed out stare, prepared for backlash, he has no idea what good news he just delivered—how the blood on his vest, paired with Sai’s current docility, is an answer to prayers Sakura has been too pragmatic to harbor.

It takes a few calming breaths to not get caught up in the thrill of learning something so unquestionably good about Hound: that he is as-strong-as or stronger than she’d hoped; that he is fast and decisive enough in combat to land a potentially fatal injury on Sai; that he is willing to do what the Leaf should have done from the start, and hold Sai’s life over her head until she behaves; and most of all, that he’s capable of withholding, even briefly, mission-critical information from his own Hokage based on his own ideals and objectives. That he has ideals and objectives outside of the Leaf’s choking parameters.

Her chest bubbles with hope so thick it’s hard to breathe. Because Hound was never truly a threat to her or Sai’s lives, to begin with; he desires their successful integration into the village more than anyone.

But Sakura can think of a few shinobi whose existence he could threaten, and for the first time since arriving, Hound has—whether he realizes or not—tangibly, remarkably, chosen Sakura and Sai over the best interests of his village.

It dawns on her:

This could be why Sai chose the Leaf.

This could be the answer to the question Sakura has been asking all along: Why are we here?

They’re here for Hound.

Hound could tip the scales in their fight to break free from Root, if they’re careful, if they’re smart. Sakura had already inferred this, that getting on Hound’s good side while here was essential to the coming conflict, an essential step to their ultimate survival. But Sai has always operated on long-term plans far beyond the future Sakura sees. She thought they’d settled here for the Hokage’s protection. She was wrong.

Sai never planned to settle in a village.

The plan has always been to go rogue, when the time is right.

He just wanted to round out their team, first. The Hokage’s protection is just a convenient umbrella under which they can do so.

She wants to bite her own tongue and curse her slow brain, always several steps behind Sai’s seemingly endless well of strategy. All this time, she had independently begun planning to sink her teeth into Hound, to test him, to uproot him from this place by way of attrition, meanwhile Sai had already constructed not only the mission but the method.

Sai should have told her. She’d have been in a better mood, if she’d known this escapade in Konoha had a worthy point.

“Stop smiling. You’re giving me hives,” Hound says, and Sakura wants to laugh at his lazy suspicion, her lips tightening with the urge.

He doesn't know what to do with the revenant glee she’s struggling not to let slip. If Sai wanted her to avenge every wound he’s ever received, Sakura wouldn’t have time to do anything else. Hound’s simplistic understanding of her and Sai’s relationship is showing. But Sai is unharmed and unconcerned, and Sakura doesn’t often concern herself with things below Sai’s notice or care.

It has been frustrating, following orders of those who won’t even threaten, can’t even threaten, what she holds dear. This is a nice change of pace.

“How refreshing,” she mocks Hound. “I didn’t know you were capable of honesty.” If not in words, in action, the way that bloodied vest speaks.

Hound quiets his breathing further than its usual slow rhythm, and it’s as good as a flinch as far as his tells go, the way he studies her with his half-open eye. “That didn’t feel like a compliment,” he says, and Sakura half-smiles despite his request to refrain.

This is the best-case scenario.

If Hound can overwhelm even an injured Sai in a fight, he might be able to hold out against M0-1 long enough to buy them some time; maybe do more than buy time; maybe do actual damage.

If having Hound on their side was desirable before, now it is a necessity worth actively pursuing.

And maybe Hound knows this much, if not the extent of their plans for him.

That could be the third purpose of the violent display on his vest, Sakura guesses. He may not know who she and Sai have been arguing about, but he can put two and two together to make four; he knows there is someone in Root who Sakura does not believe they can beat; he wants her to do the exact mental calculations she’s currently doing, and come to these same conclusions about his ability and worth. He wants to be deemed essential. He is attempting to place himself above Sai on the rungs of power Sakura adheres to, not just for her respect, but to coax her toward himself further. Toward the Leaf. This is his backhanded play to draw her toward his strength, moth-to-flame, deeming his more gentle approach too costly in time they no longer have.

Sai’s fingers are firm against her back as he signs slowly in Standard, and it’s partial language with only one hand, but she gets the message. ‘Talk. Alone.’

Sakura could not agree more.

She puts her hand on his thigh, and signs, ‘Tonight.’

He flattens his palm on her back to confirm he understood, and lets his hand slide down and away from her body, as Hound drags his watchful stare off Sai’s arm long enough to turn around and investigate the interior of the gray-painted wooden cabinets behind him, pushing bags that crinkle into one another, looking for something specific.

It’s jarring, this modern little apartment. This pretend civility. It feels cramped and stifling, the soft ticking of the clock that reads almost 4:00 pm, the electric hum of the fridge, the whir of the air conditioning unit kicking on as they arrive at the heat of the day. Hound does not fit inside this drywall box with white and gray walls and dust thicker than air any more than she and Sai do. He barely belongs on that long wooden deck overlooking the overgrown garden she is still learning to properly explore, still learning the names of the different edible greens and fruits that flower on trees. He belongs on his own lands, not skulking around someone else’s.

That, or he belongs on land too harsh for anyone to own, outside the village walls, strapped to his weapons more than the other way around, letting his head tilt back and his quartz-gray eye close in muted bliss as the wind climbs the rocks around them, cooling the sweat on their skin. He is stronger than the Leaf. The blood staining his moss-green vest is testament to that. He doesn’t belong here, has been living in denial of his own place in the world, his own needs.

Sakura is going to free him from his delusion. He is going to help them escape the final veins of Root, and then he is going to break his own chains, bolted into the ground before the Hokage’s rotting wooden throne. While he’s busy trying to cultivate her loyalty, she’ll bind him to her and Sai’s sides with those neglected desires of his, and one day, he’ll thank her for it.

The strong are pulled to one another, like dragging a magnet through sand. Hound will not be able to help himself, once he’s accustomed to having a squad that runs beside him instead of behind.

“Well, now that we’re all awake and accounted for,” he says, scraping the ceramic bottom of a little lidded jar along the cabinet shelf as he removes it, “let’s catch each other up on a few significant developments. I’ll start.” He places the small vessel on the counter by the napkin. “The Hokage has been informed that there was a mild training mishap today, the witnesses have been bribed into agreement, all of our glowing reputations remain unscathed, and the milk in the refrigerator expired four months ago.”

Sakura is not surprised. By any of it. 

“Cream?” She doesn’t manage to conceal her hope. The Anbu back at HQ offered each other cream and foam with their coffee. It stuck to their upper lips in a sweet-looking film she was hard pressed not to ask for a taste of.

“There’s sugar,” he redirects, nodding toward the beige dish with a lid Sakura is already partially standing on the foot rest of her stool with hairline balance to reach across the counter and pluck from the jar, revealing pristine white cubes of sugar Sakura hums at the sight of, slinking back into her seat, taking the lid with her and setting it on the counter with a satisfying clink.

While passing through a village market on their way back from Wind, Hound saw her studying a wicker basket of sugar and snuck some while the seller’s back was turned. He placed a cube just like those directly onto her tongue, citing the low likelihood either of them will live long enough to suffer the consequences of a sweet tooth. His eye caught tellingly on the purple strokes on her tongue, careful not to let his fingers touch. 

Hound always encourages her small indulgences, thinks they will soften her, warm her. She wonders how far that encouragement goes. If his minor appeasements will be the gentle slope down which he begins to slide.

“The word ‘developments’ in this context suggests you’re about to share new information,” Sai says. He has his chin propped on his left fist, his stare flat, but there is a lack of tension in him she hasn’t seen in months. Sakura is not the only one here who respects strength. If he hasn’t noticed already, Hound will be pleasantly surprised—or unnerved—by how quickly Sai warms to him after having an artery split open. “I don’t believe you intended to start, after all.”

A drop of annoyance colors Hound’s otherwise unaffected expression, or what is visible of his expression, between the eye and face coverings, and tosses two cubes into one of the mugs before removing the cone from the carafe and dumping it in the porcelain sink with a pseudo-careless clatter—pseudo, because without looking he managed not to hit any of the clean, unused bowls and plates in the sink he probably leaves there while he’s gone to make this grave plot masquerading as a condo look inhabited.

“You didn’t know the milk was expired,” says Hound.

“There is no milk in the refrigerator,” Sakura says, an educated guess, while stretching her arms out on the counter in front of her, examining the ink snakes on her skin with lingering distrust while trying not to yawn, the memory of fangs sinking into her neck still fresh.

It would be very like Hound, to make up even a mundane fact to share, just so he can pretend to meet his own criteria of providing ‘new information’ without giving an inch.

Grinning hatefully with his gray eye, Hound grasps the pot of coffee firmly by its black handle, plastic squeaking in his grip, steam curling upward as he pours it first into the mug with sugar. “Paradox-milk aside,” he continues without denying, and pours coffee into the mug without sugar, “it’s your turn.”

He swipes the heat protector from the counter behind him and slaps it onto the island before setting the carafe down quietly, placing his palms down on the counter with his arms in an acute angle as he leans some of his weight onto the granite, his eye a heavy weight keeping her and Sai from being stirred up by the AC beginning to blow, both of their loose, intentionally arrogant postures congruent with their lack of incentive to divulge anything he hasn’t already discerned on his own.

At least not just yet. Not until he's been pulled closer to their point of view, and is less likely to run to the Hokage with every word that leaves their lips, once whatever grace period they’re currently inhabiting expires, this fascinating moment where Hound has chosen to hold back on spilling Sakura’s secrets, for whatever reason he believes he is doing so.

After a moment of unbothered silence, Hound narrows his eye further. “How strong are your mental barriers?”

Sakura braces her elbows on the island, resting her chin in her hands with her fingers bent and pressing into her cheeks. There is a faint coffee stain above the blood on his vest, a speck of brown from water sloshing when he poured water over the grounds. The clock on the wall ticks faintly and unobtrusively, the kind of clock one buys when they’d rather not notice time passing but won’t allow themselves the reprieve of ignorance.

The question is for her.

“Decent.”

More than decent.

“Decent enough to withhold information about your abilities during your mind-sifting procedure, once the paperwork clears?”

So, he knows about the deal she made. She wonders when he found out.

Beside her, Sai straightens his spine, and Sakura presses her tongue to the backs of her bottom teeth, avoiding his pupils she knows just slid ominously toward her from the corners of his eyes. She hasn’t had that particular discussion with Sai, yet. She was hoping to prevent him from learning of it until after the fact. If he’d known earlier, he probably would have held back less, maybe broken a femur to watch her crack her teeth in a grimace as she tried to crawl out of range.

Hound studies the renewed tension between them with a pleased taper to his eye, apparently satisfied with this development. “My, my. Keeping secrets is a healthy developmental milestone.” To Sai: “Don’t be too hard on her.”

At their collective, dour quiet, he drums his fingers on the counter and adds, with a thoughtful air to his condescension, “You didn’t know you could do that, either, did you? The whole—” He makes a soft popping sound with his mouth behind the mask, miming with his hands the moment she burst Sai’s technique.

The question is directed at Sakura, but it’s Sai’s eyelids that lower by fractions.

Tentatively, Sakura reaches for the mug with sugar. Hound covers its opening with his palm. Sizing up the stubborn glint in his eye, Sakura clicks her tongue against her teeth and slinks back into her seat.

“What do you want to know,” she asks, with no intention of answering his questions and every intention of gathering intel about his objective based on what he asks. And then, nodding at the mug, because she’s bored and a hot drink sounds frustratingly good, “And stop pretending you’re not going to give me that.”

“Coffee is for people who want to cooperate,” he says.

Annoying.

“We are cooperating,” she says, leaning her crossed forearms on the chilled surface of the counter, letting her hair fall into her face as she tilts her head, showing off the dried blood on her neck which Hound’s eyes can’t help but study, a tightness around his eye that speaks to not particularly liking the memory associated with the stain. “Sai, aren’t we cooperating?”

“Your students are alive,” Sai says, sitting his weight back on the stool, seemingly tabling any irritation toward her for later. “The village isn’t burning.” He angles his head as he pretends to think, as Hound eye-smiles so hard it’s little more than a thin curve of irritation. “I’d call that tolerance.”

“And here I thought I’d beaten the sarcasm out of you,” says Hound.

“Sarcasm is his ‘love language,’” Sakura says, wispily throwing out one of Hound’s favorite terms to weaponize, snaking out a chakra thread to snap the mug out from under Hound’s other hovering hand before he can grab it and into hers, only spilling a couple of drops on the counter in the process, the liquid sloshing up to the white rim. “Be grateful he speaks to you at all.”

As Hound scratches his jaw through his mask, perceivably retracing the amount of time it took for Sai to utter a single word to him aside from lifelessly relayed, bare-bones information, Sakura uses another chakra thread to pluck an extra sugar cube from the now-undefended jar and drop it into her coffee with a small splash, at which point Hound’s focus shifts to trying to decide if that makes her lazy or over-achieving.

“Taste it first,” Hound objects, bored and seemingly on principle, to which Sakura replies, “I can smell it.”

“If you’re trying to give yourself a cavity to get out of this conversation,” he retorts, “I’m sorry to inform you it takes much longer than you think and requires significantly less flossing.”

Sai’s fingers brush hers, and Sakura lets him slip the mug from her grasp, steam curling up past his dark eyes as he takes an interrogative sip. His eyebrow twitches down, and he sets it down in front of her again, mood noticeably darkened.

“Coffee is an insufficient motivator,” Sai determines.

Unencouraged by his declaration, she floats another sugar cube into the drink, before Hound clicks the lid in place with a heavy hand. “Sakura.”

She nearly lets herself shiver from that sharp note in her name, looking up at him through thick lashes, curling her lips into a seductive upward tick.

Sakura knows that tone, recognizes it from the final leg of their mission in Wind; the tone of Hound trying to coax her to water, cradling the back of her neck and lifting the lip of the canteen to her mouth, insisting she drink; of Hound dousing the fire she started in her venom-delirium, swaddling her in his corded arms, both of them drenched and breathing hard from how viciously she fought his aid, as he dragged her through the ashes into the soothing balm of the creek bed.

That’s the sound of Hound trying to save her.

And from the heavy set of his brow, Hound doesn’t even begin to see the danger in that.

Question is, What does Hound want to save her from, now?

Needing a few seconds to think unobserved, Sakura pushes away from the counter, sliding off the wicker stool, and walks away with silent, bare feet, coffee mug firmly in hand as she passes through the shadow of the hall, collecting the blanket she dropped on the hardwood on her way to the living room, where she deposits it on the arm of his neglected denim-blue couch.

Hound follows her. He swipes a pale stone drink coaster from the side table by the couch, setting it lightly down onto the wood top of the low coffee table. Sakura sets her mug down directly on the wood beside the coaster, just to watch him pointedly relocate it.

“You’ll be walking a fine line, when the time comes,” he says, as Sakura begins to slowly pace in front of the colored spines of the neglected bookshelf, her arms crossed under her breasts, nails digging into her arms as she tries to think past the remnants of sedatives in her bloodstream. She can’t help but think these shelves are sparse and untouched compared to the well-loved books at the main house, decorative, compared to the creased spines crammed into all available spaces she’s come to expect from him. “I’m trusting that you’ll take the necessary precautions.”

Interesting phrasing, the use of the word ‘trust,’ there. As if Hound has something to lose, if she gives too much or too little information when they mine her memories.

Pivoting on her heel, Sakura leans her hips against the bookcase, meeting his overcast eye with appropriate apathy. “A fine line? Precautions?” she asks, letting her head tilt down to the side, watching his body language carefully as he tucks his hands into his pants pockets with his thumbs hooked over the seams, mirroring her as he cocks his head to match. “I’m just fulfilling my end of the agreement,” she lies. “You’ll need to speak clearly, if you want me to understand.”

Hound ‘smiles’ cooly with his visible eye. Sakura returns the expression with mirth.

“If you aren’t careful, they’ll call off your little deal,” he says, and Sakura feels her smile sharpen into something a little too honest, a little too mean to play off, as he adds, “I’d hate to see you disappointed.”

That is a half-truth, if Sakura has ever heard one. If she has learned anything about Hound, it is that he very much would like to see her disappointed, in most circumstances. “How selfless,” she says, instead of everything else she wants to.

“I’m full of altruism,” he agrees, and Sakura lets her eyes drop to the cord of dried blood crusting his vest.

Sure he is.

Movement behind him draws her gaze to where Sai lingers in the darkness of the hallway, leaning his side against the wall between generic paintings of flower pots Hound most definitely did not pick, the tattoos on his crossed arms appearing darker in the low light where his sleeves are folded carefully up at the elbows, controlled, sterile. His eyes watch her carefully, without judgment, to the point of being unhelpful.

A brief study of Sai’s relaxed posture—letting his head fall to the right slightly as he stares back at her, expression placid—confirms Sai intends for her to navigate this at her own discretion, but as of today is not seriously opposed to talking strategy with Hound. She is the fulcrum of this interaction, Sai’s eyes are telling her. Whatever it takes to secure Hound’s cooperation going forward, whatever it takes to coax him toward their goals, Sai is silently condoning.

Sakura’s eyes slide back to Hound who, she would bet, if she could see beneath that thin mask covering the lower half of his face, has tensed his jaw in irritation; he doesn’t like it when she visibly looks to Sai for answers when she’s talking to him. It’s a hot button of Hound’s; one Sakura likes to push.

“Go on, then,” she prompts, dipping her chin in expectation, the wooden shelf creaking against her weight as she shifts to get comfortable with the shelf digging into her ass. And then, with a smile that makes Hound’s uniquely expressive eye narrow. “Advise me.”

After a moment of letting the dust circulate undisturbed, considering how irritated to be by her general attitude, Hound takes a seat on the couch, falling back into the stiff cushions with a quiet and completely fake groan of fatigue.

Resting his arms on the back of the couch, Hound balances his left ankle on his right knee, the light from the window brightening the silver of his hair toward white.

“That was my advice,” he says, flippantly. “Be smart.”

Still too loyal to say more. But too invested in her to say less.

Where his sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, the skin on Hound’s scarred lower arms shifts with the muscles and tendons underneath as he drums his fingers in dull thuds on the flat tops of the back cushions. He bounces his left foot on his knee gently, a symptom of restlessness that might be real. He’s wearing black training shoes in his own apartment, dried mud dusting the sides—more evidence this is not a home to him.

Sakura doesn’t scoff, but she wants to, bracing a hand on her hip, sizing him up. Why does he bother playing at this type of normalcy, Sakura wonders. He’s not particularly good at it.

She avoids the grooves in the wood with careful steps, the balls of her feet sticking to the glossy coating on the floor as she rounds the coffee table to stand directly in front of him in the narrow gap between the furniture, allowing herself a moment to openly assess him—from the blackened, red-rimmed bruises on his knuckles, to the the smears of dirt on the knees of his pants, to the few brown and white animal hairs clinging to his vest near the collar, above the dramatic arch of blood. Dog hairs, again. She wonders where they keep coming from.

Petting strays, she assumes.

Sakura watches light bend in his pale gray iris. The cool air of the air-conditioned room steals moisture from her mouth and skin, and she’s reminded of the desert in a sensory way.

They really did get along in Wind, she thinks, reluctantly. More than get along. They worked well together. Would have worked even better as a squad, with Sai to complement their strengths, if there was enough trust to split between them.

“You don’t trust the council,” she infers.

She’s standing closer than he’s comfortable with. She can see it in the stillness of his body, the stagnation of the apartment infecting him, fixing his eye to her face like he’s never looked anywhere else.

“I trust them to do what they think benefits them.” He glances at the blood and ink on her neck and arms, then settles on her face once more. “They can be lovably slow to recognize consequences. They make mistakes, often.” He curves his eye in a false smile. “It’s part of their charm.”

She aims for honesty, when she asks, “What are you trying to avoid?”

“Effort.” Sai barely disguises the snark, examining the cuticles of his nails. “He’s avoiding extra work.”

Sakura sweeps her right hand toward Sai, raising her brows at Hound, who is performing a poor imitation of not having heard the quip, picking dog hairs off his vest like plucking splinters from his skin. Pinching a brown hair between his thumb and index finger, he holds his hand over the edge of the couch and rubs it off his fingers the same way he deposits seasoning over a hot pan, a dry, brushing motion that Sakura’s ears are slowly becoming attuned to.

“Does Shimura know you can do that?” he asks, and Sakura does not outwardly react, leaving her hands loose at her sides, glaring neutrally down her nose at him. “What you did in the clearing?”

She holds her silence.

She remembers electricity burning inside her, her fingers plucking the chords of Hound’s power like a harp before they cut her down to the knuckle. But the entire memory is singed at the edges, and it will require time and patience to reconstruct the technique she’d pulled from her subconscious mind.

Just like Itachi said you could, she thinks, and viciously swipes the thought away.

Whatever hidden well of knowledge Sakura has within herself, Itachi knew about it. Itachi found it, and hasn’t let her out from under his bloodied thumb since.

Hound taps his right index finger slowly. Lift, and tap. Lift, and tap.

No, she thinks. Root does not know. Could not know.

If Root knew, they never would have let her go. Would they? A cool glance at Sai’s face proves helpful. He moves his head slightly right and then back to center. An order: say ‘no.’

“No,” she says, with more confidence than she feels.

Hound sees the doubt in her, catching it as it slips through the cracks in her guard. She is certain he sees it. But he lets it pass. “Then there’s no reason to overextend your faith,” he says, slow and cryptic, but Sakura understands.

Anything about herself she or Sai judged too sensitive to share with Root, withhold it from the council. It’s as clearly put as possible, barring treason. Sakura finds she reluctantly appreciates him weighing in, despite not having needed the advice to begin with. There’s something… reassuring …about Hound’s provisory support in this.

“Did you know you could do that?” he asks, again, this time without the mocking veil of tone. He is sincere, and serious. “Are you aware of what you did, and how?”

The vibrations of the AC unit rattle through the walls. Sakura doesn’t glance at Sai where he lurks in the opening of the hall, doesn’t draw attention to his quiet observing, focusing on holding Hound’s penetrating stare at bay, letting it stick into her like senbon in a concrete wall, never breaking past the surface layer.

Did she know? That she could see and understand the depth of a person beyond the physical plane? Yes. Did she know she could touch energy? Compress the core that makes a shinobi, threaten to snuff it out?

She might have, she thinks. She might have known. On some level, she knew.

But she hadn’t tried it. Hadn’t proven it was possible.

Either way, the question is the opposite of harmless.

Sakura only has a hazy memory of grasping the core of Hound’s power, his chakra, his essence, and squeezing until she couldn’t breathe. Her memory is slightly more clear when it comes to breaking Sai’s technique, but only by fractions. But what she does recall implies things both impossibly good or catastrophically bad for her.

If she’s remembering correctly, what she used back then, that wasn’t yin, and it wasn’t yang. It was both, she thinks.

Simultaneously.

Yinyang, she thinks, and the word tastes like an unuttered curse.

She can’t gauge from Hound’s covered-up expression and concealing posture what he’s already figured out. The Byakugan user likely suspects, if they were paying attention, and possibly the Uchiha, as well, depending on how well he can use those eyes. If he hasn’t already, Hound will cross reference their words and his own perception against hers. 

It occurs to her, belatedly, that perhaps this is the reason Sai and Hound fought. 

Hound made it an early point to inform her that the ‘witnesses have been bribed.’ He’s anxious about protecting the weaklings from being picked off like field mice once Sakura realizes what they’ve seen, and worse, understood, their clan traits giving them a unique advantage in seeing obscure techniques for their bare elements. One that could have gotten them killed the second they saw Sakura release those last two techniques, in order for Sai to keep the council and Hokage in the dark. Especially now that Sakura knows Sai does not intend to stay with the Leaf. He would want to scrub clean any records of their abilities before they leave. But she’s sure he has his reasons for not taking care of this now; it would have caused far more problems to be caught killing the last Uchiha and a Hyūga than it’s worth. He would not have gone through with it, anyway.

Maybe Sai just wanted an excuse to fight him.

Either way, she’s glad the Uchiha lives. She has uses for him. Or hopes to.

She’s been staring down at Hound longer than is natural. The light piercing between the blinds puts a glare in his gray eye, but he holds her stare steadily, unwilling to blink, watching her wheels turn, awaiting her next move. She lets him sit in his unease, enjoys the way his gaze sharpens and his hand stops tapping idly on the back of the couch, suddenly more interested in staying perfectly still, conserving movement, than he is in appearing relaxed.

Pivoting her thoughts back to the moment, she guesses this also feeds into Hound’s sudden anxiety about letting the council dig around her head. He must not be confident the silence he’s talked his students into will hold, and he’s concerned with controlling how that information is delivered. He wants to figure it out on his own, and then decide how to proceed.

And he will figure it out, eventually. It could be a good opportunity to appear to be exercising trust by confiding in him, while only revealing information he was going to dig up for himself later, regardless.

She could tell him about the uncounted hours bent over dying enemy shinobi—bound and hidden in caves near the border of Fire only Sai knew existed—testing her skills, experimenting in small increments with rotating batches of subjects, feeling her way through their energetic pathways, playing with the molecules she manages to touch, wondering and wondering and wondering. 

She could tell him about the limits of her curiosity, the nightmares she has of attempting to explore her affinities for yin and yang, dreams where she severs her own pathways by accident, bursts her own core, mutates her own genes, proliferates cancer cells and decays her skin and damages her chakra until it’s unusable; until she’s unusable.

It’s impossible to solitarily become a master of yin or yang without risking death or worse. There is a reason there are so few who even attempt to use yin or yang releases, and even more reason why the majority of things one can actually do with the two most volatile elements are considered forbidden jutsu. There is no other element with such heavy restrictions on it, such careful and limited application. Sakura has barely scratched the surface, and look how much trouble she’s gotten herself into, already. It’s partly why she’s bargained for access to the Hokage’s library, hoping for more specific information regarding yin and yang than she’s been able to inconspicuously get her hands on previously. She didn’t know that she should be researching what can be done with both yin and yang used in harmony. She hopes the Hokage’s library will offer insight into the mechanisms of what she’s unintentionally achieved. She needs to figure out if she used yin and yang, or if she used yinyang.

Yinyang is not just the combination of yin and yang. It is an entirely different element made up of two parts of a whole, and Sakura has never met a shinobi capable of using it. If she can perform such a technique, it’s beyond high-risk information.

It will make her the most valuable shinobi produced by Konoha in centuries, or it will make her dead.

If that’s what she used.

But Hound is still Leaf.

‘Don’t overextend your faith.’

His advice is good. She can’t expect him to keep her secrets for her. Can’t expect him to actively betray his village (yet), if the information she gives him proves too valuable for his fickle sense of morality to justify concealing later on, regardless of his projected willingness to subvert the council.

Let him determine exactly how forbidden the jutsu she just revealed is or isn’t, on his own. Let him speculate about what she can and cannot do.

She cannot rely on him fully. Not yet.

With a forcibly bored sigh, Sakura sits down on the couch closer to Hound than he would have predicted, tucking her knees to her chest and dropping her head back over Hound’s forearm, her heels sinking into the cushion beneath her as she wraps her arms around her knees, grasping her elbows to keep herself tucked in and at ease.

Turning her nose in toward the crook of Hound’s arm, she feels his muscles tighten as her lips graze the fine hairs and scars on his forearm, replacing the smell of coffee and dust with his woodsy, unwashed scent as Sakura glances at him from beneath her lashes.

He smells like summer, when it’s only spring. He smells like the fight he just won. He smells like grass that’s been ground down by a heel, and sweat that’s been allowed to dry on his skin.

Hound’s face is angled toward her, giving his right eye a clearer view, his head cocked in interest. His stare is a cold river current, attempting to peel back her intentions, and it cools her head appropriately. He lowers his eyelid in harsh skepticism, trying to put words to the way she’s leaning into him.

He isn’t wrong, to expect a motive. Sakura does not know how to lean on anyone but Sai without a desire to use them. She doesn’t intend to learn, either.

This is his second weakness, that Sakura has uncovered: he is rigid and untrusting, but he is too opportunistic for his own good, too wary of the consequences of rejecting her physical closeness, too aware of the potential for manipulating her loyalty via physicality. He’ll let her get too close, on the off chance he can mutate her intent, use her own actions against her; he will discount his own atrophied trust for a clean shot at securing hers. He is overconfident that he can remain unaffected, that he can tie her to him with her own efforts to control him.

If (Sage forbid) she ever needs to kill him—now that she knows he can take Sai in a fight, and therefore her, at least until she masters that subconscious reservoir of power—she’ll need to do it up close, like this; take the coward’s way. It’d be ideal if Hound were the type to let her slip a blade between his ribs while he slips between her legs, but given his general competence and rumored immunity to sex appeal, she’ll have far more luck fostering casual touch between them that doesn’t raise his guard overly much.

For now. 

Sai and her may have found a way out of ‘red-light’ missions, but only a fool would abandon a skill set entirely once one has acquired it.

Physicality is probably the fastest way under a shinobi’s skin Sakura knows. There are mental and emotional consequences to allowing a powerful nin to touch you regularly; once one becomes accustomed to repeatedly allowing a shinobi close enough to cause harm and not suffering consequences, one will begin to subconsciously believe that the harm isn’t coming; they lower their guard and begin to trust, whether they want to or not.

Sakura is more familiar with that type of grooming than she’d like to admit, being a product of Sai’s carefully planned and tactical affection—clunky as it was, when they were younger. Hound has already begun using this technique, although non-sexually, since the first night he tugged her down into a loose embrace to soothe her bloodlust. She is certain he believes she hasn’t noticed.

She will use that to her advantage.

Steam curls sluggishly from the mug on the low table before them, thinner strands of heat compared to when she first set it down. She’ll need to drink it soon, or it will grow thick and cold, unpleasant to taste.

“Is your chakra core damaged?” she asks, hoping the words land by design, twisting the part of him that wants to trust and be trusted into a handhold, pulling his attention away from the question he asked her in favor of fixating on the intricacies of her inner world.

“No,” he answers, uncharacteristically direct. Sakura nods against his arm.

Good.

If he’s injured, he won’t be useful.

M0-1 is looming over the horizon. There is no time left for nursing wounds. She needs him focused and willing to throw himself at her enemies like the speckled bird feed he scatters around the Hatake main house garden.

“Aren’t you going to drink your sugar-water?” he asks, without looking at the mug on the table. “You’ll hurt my feelings, if you waste my earnest efforts.”

There is a point hidden in the blunt words, a blade wrapped with careful folds of velvet. Sakura ticks one corner of her mouth up once more, a motion his gray eye snags on before returning to studying her eyes, looking for something specific she’s disinclined to give him.

Sakura digs her nails into her arms until they’re sure to leave red crescents behind. The edge of the cotton sleeve of his shirt shifts against her cheek as she rolls her head toward his hand, where he still taps his index finger against the couch’s back. Her eyes find Sai’s as he rests his temple against the wall at the edge of the hallway, his arms crossed, his chin dipping ever so slightly in quiet agreement with thoughts she’s yet to have, his foresight allowing him to approve of actions she’s yet to take.

She hides her canines, when she says to Hound, “I wouldn’t dare.”