II
Sakura didn’t have enough chakra to flicker them all the way.
When the world blurred together again, they were still about 2 kilometres away. She collapsed onto him, her body heavy on his. He was barely 10 kilograms heavier than her - the lack of muscle under his skin and the abundance of it under her’s made for the smaller weight disparity. He used to be able to carry her with a single arm…
Words couldn’t describe the split second feeling of fear that filled him the instant she went limp.
He caught her, as she collapsed, and held her tightly. His hand gripped her upper arm and he felt the warm, wet patch of blood soaking through the black fabric of her jonin uniform under his fingertips.
Blood wasn’t uncommon for shinobi. It was as common as sweat and tears…the only problem was that it was still warm and wet. Sakura’s uniform was already covered in dried crusty patches of blood, her hair was matted with it too. She was here long enough for any remnants of blood on her clothes to dry.
“Sakura, you didn’t heal it?” His voice was soft, inaudible to anyone but her.
She only answered with laboured breathing.
They were too far from home…too far from anyone he knew. Too far from a hospital. They weren’t in a populated place right now. It was as empty as could be in a large city like Mustafa. The buildings here were run down. There was probably a local clinic somewhere, but it was too early, or late, for any local clinic to be open.
Everything was closed right now.
Frantically, he pulled them into a small alley and laid her on the ground, propped up on his chest, as she sat in between his legs.
He quickly tore off the sleeve. It was easy to rip the fabric, much easier than it should have been. He wondered how long she had been a jonin…he wondered if it was a the war that made the fabric so fragile. It sounded like paper when the sleeve tore away from the rest of the shirt.
It was bad.
But it shouldn’t be this bad - she was a medic - it shouldn’t be this bad.
Her arm was sliced open, almost to the bone.
Sakura wouldn’t have let it get this bad…she shouldn’t have. She was smart enough to know she had to heal such a serious injury on the spot. Did she not have enough chakra? His eyes drifted to the byakugou mark on her forehead…
Was she conserving the seal?
Sakura…she overestimated herself. What good was conserving the byakugou if you were going to die before you had any chance to use it?
He could tell it was done by a tanto - it was a clean slice through the meat of her arms. He had
inflicted plenty such wounds when he was in the anbu.
An injury like this in this world would warrant an entire month of rest and recovery before a person could even think about performing regular tasks again. But for Sakura, to heal such an injury was as easy as flicking a kunai to a target. Even a half decent medic would be able to close up the wound without much struggle.
He rethought his original theory…about the ‘war’. He had assumed it was perhaps a minor scuffle, between Konoha and one or two other great nations. Of course, a ‘scuffle’ between any great nation could never be minor, but he didn’t think, didn’t want to think, that another Great War could have broken out.
But it had to be right? Why else would Sakura be conserving the seal so adamantly? Why else would she have the Head Medic’s bracelet around her wrist? Why else would she…
He shook his head, he could ask her all the questions he wanted to when she was conscious, when she wasn’t bleeding to death.
Kakashi fell into practised movements - movements that were ingrained into his mind. How to save an injured comrade, how to check for signs of blood loss, how to properly assess a comrade to see if they were worth wasting chakra on, how to check for signs of death…
He moved almost completely on muscle memory; Kakashi could have laughed at the notion, muscle memory from a past life? He used the fabric he had torn off to slow the bleeding. He tied the cloth tightly around her upper arm, knotting it until the fabric looked like it would cut through her skin.
His palm reached to touch her forehead, it was cold.
He ran his chakra through her body.
He laid her on the concrete ground and moved to kneel beside her. With one hand he pried open her eyelids, green eyes stared back up at him, glazed.
He put his ear beside her nose, she breathed deeply.
Sakura was pale, paler than she normally was. He should be checking for other injuries, for internal bleeding and broken bones - but he didn’t have the luxury of time right now.
Sakura had chakra exhaustion, the symptoms were easily detectable. At least it explained why she didn’t heal her wound.
Chakra exhaustion was common amongst shinobi - no shinobi could say they’ve never experienced it. It generally wasn’t something to worry about, sleep and food was often enough to bring up a person’s chakra levels. The problem now was her arm, and how she didn’t have enough chakra to heal it and he didn’t even have any chakra to perform healing at all.
A wound like this…
In one swift movement, Kakashi manoeuvred his student on his back. He hooked his arms under her legs as he bent at the waist. Her arms were limp around his neck…he couldn’t balance like this.
“Sakura,” he called to no answer. “Sakura,” he jumped slightly to hoist her further up his back.
“Hold on,” he said to no one but himself.
2 kilometres…it was a distance he could have covered within 5 minutes, while carrying an 80 kilogram Gai on his back, when he was still Kakashi Hatake of the Leaf. But now…with only 50 kilograms weighing heavy on his back, it seemed like an impossible task.
He had to lean forward more than would be efficient, if he didn’t Sakura would fall off his back.
Kakashi took a step.
He cursed this world.
It wasn’t like him was it? To be so angry at nothing.
He moved to run - or whatever you could call the desperate half-sprint, half-stumble he was doing. Every 50 metres or so he jumped to hoist her up his back again when she was beginning to fall. He made sure her head rested on his shoulder, beside his ear so that he could hear any changes in her breathing.
He was only half way when he finally tripped. He managed to catch himself this time, but just barely.
Sakura’s hair clung to his black medical mask - drenched in sweat, and practically waterboarding him. It was never a problem back in Konoha. Perhaps it was the material, perhaps it was the chakra, but he never had a problem with breathing when his mask got wet, not until he came to this world that is.
Kakashi’s arms were too busy being hooked under Sakura’s legs to pull down his mask to take a breath.
He cursed this world.
Kakashi continued his shaky sprint, tripping over his own feet as he desperately scrambled to his safe house, almost a kilometre away.
His body screamed at him to stop, to breathe, to rest. His legs ached, his arms shook and his back was starting to give. His breathing grew heavy as his mask threatened to rob him of much needed oxygen.
He couldn’t breathe.
Kakashi took in shallow breaths through his sweat soaked mask. He had gone through oxygen deprivation training before…a lifetime ago…he could handle this.
He couldn’t stop.
If he did…he’d never forgive himself.
He didn’t know how long Sakura would last. She was just in a war - probably - she was chakra exhausted, who knows how long she had had the injury? And who knows how much blood she had already lost?
He cursed this world. He wasn’t angry for no reason. He had all the reasons in the world.
He cursed this world. The world that made him too weak to carry his own student for just 2 kilometres. He cursed this world that took away his chakra, that forced him to stumble and heave as he tried so desperately to get to a safe house where he kept medical supplies.
Even if he did get there, would stitches be enough?
He wouldn’t let her die.
He wouldn’t.
He promised, to himself, to his students, to his comrades. He promised he would never let a single one of them die. Not when he was here. Not when his body was still able to move. Not when he could still breathe. It was a promise that had faded to the back of his mind over the years he had spent here.
Kakashi’s eyes blurred. It was just the sweat.
“S-Sakura…stay strong, we’re almost there.” His words were barely a whisper against his own harsh breathing…against Sakura’s shallow ones.
Kakashi pushed her up his back again as the sweat soaked through his sleeves.
“Come on…come on”
He couldn’t sprint anymore. If he fell again, he doubted he could pick himself back up, let alone carry Sakura to the safe house.
It was in his sight. The abandoned little shop that he had made his own.
He couldn’t breathe.
He started to breathe with his mouth, taking in large gulps of air, the moisture of his sweat on the mask making the air feel more like water than oxygen. Spots frayed his vision as he started to veer to his right. He felt like he was going to puke. The hairs on his body raised and his heart pounded in his head. His ears rang.
Still he moved forward. He could have been on the verge of death and he would still be moving forward; because he wasn’t going to lose her. He wasn’t going to lose Sakura, his student, his…only connection to home.
He would never forgive himself if he did.
So, he trudged forward. Spots lining his vision, legs shaking and body breaking.
Kakashi shoved the door of the shop open, the bell hung to the door chimed softly as he fell to his knees. He twisted to let Sakura fall off his back as gently as possible, at the same time pulling down his mask under his chin and taking in a large breath.
His mind moved faster than his body could. He ran before he even stood back up. He stumbled pathetically over himself as he crawled, stumbled, ran, to his stash. His hands tore at the flimsy piece of rotten wooden floorboard getting in the way of him and his medical supplies.
He grabbed haphazardly at anything that could help Sakura. A bottle of betadine, bandages, needles, still sealed in plastic, scissors, thread, still pristine and unused, a cautery pen. He stumbled back to Sakura at the front of the store, using his hands and knees more than his feet.
She was pale and sweaty. Her breathing was sporadic and shallow and her skin was cool to the touch.
Kakashi ripped open the packaged needle.
His fingers didn’t obey him. They shook as he tried desperately to thread the thread through the tiny hole of the needle.
“Fuck!”
The more he failed, the more he shook.
He hastily stuck the thread in his mouth to bring it to a point.
He opened his eye with the sharingan, the hole of the needle seemed to get bigger and the point of the thread smaller. He stuck the thread through the hole quickly and knotted the end.
He reached for the bottle of betadine with his other hand, his hands trembling as he struggled to open the bottle with a single hand. Once he got it open, he drenched the needle and thread in the antiseptic - the white thread soaked up the antiseptic, turning brown. He poured some on her wound just to be safe.
Kakashi didn’t have to sterilise. Unlike him, Sakura actually had training in medical ninjutsu and an infection was quite literally the least of his worries right now. Sakura could heal an infection, she could not, however, bring herself back to life. But it was a force of habit he supposed…if Sakura didn’t wake up for another couple of days or hours to heal the oncoming infection, it would be good to at least make it as sterile as possible.
Kakashi stuck the needle through her skin, the blood soaking the already brown cotton thread red. His hands were shaky as he sewed her up. He could hardly see where he was sewing with all the blood flowing out from her wound. His fingers shook - more than they should have.
An injury this severe wasn’t as common in this world as it was in the shinobi world. Kakashi was 15 years out of practice in sewing up wounds as deep as this. They taught first aid at UA, sure, but unlike in the shinobi nations, students rarely had the opportunity to actually practise - so as much as he would hate to admit it, he grew out of practise.
In the back of his mind he wondered whether he should have cauterised the wound first. The cautery pen lay forgotten on the side, small drops of blood covering it. No, he shouldn’t have. Sewing her up was one thing, cauterising her wound was another, he didn’t want to leave more damage she’d have to heal.
His eyes were glued to the needle and thread pulling her skin taut.
“Pill”
Kakashi dropped the needle, letting it hang by the thread when he heard her speak. His eyes flew to her face, her eyes were still closed, her lips pale.
Pill…she had a soldier pill.
His hands flew to the pouch strapped tightly on her leg. Kakashi’s fingers fumbled as he unzipped the bag and dug for the food pill. His fingers found purchase on a small canvas pouch. The blood on his fingers stained the beige fabric as he pulled it out of her pouch.
He hastily opened the fabric wrapped around the food pills. The small black circular pills were tiny - smaller than he recalled; although he could just chalk that up to his memory. She had three of them in her pouch, each shiny and untouched.
Kakashi took a single pill in his hand and pressed it against her lips. Sakura parted her mouth weakly, he pushed the pull inside and she swallowed.
Soldier pills took effect quickly. They gave a shinobi enough chakra to fuel them for three days.
Sakura kept her eyes closed as she brought her hand up to the injured arm
“Pull out the thread,” her voice was barely a whisper.
Kakashi did as he was told, he cut the knot on the surface of her skin and pulled out the cotton thread, undoing all his haphazard stitches and earning a stifled grunt of pain from Sakura.
Her hands glew green with chakra and for the first time since she collapsed on him, he breathed a sigh of relief. Kakashi sat back on his heels as he watched her heal the wound.
“You scared me, Sakura,” he picked up the mask from the floor and pulled it back over his face, laughing softly.
The mask wasn’t fully dry yet, but it was enough that he could breath without feeling like he was being waterboarded.
Sakura laughed, scoffing a little, “what a rare occasion.” Her voice was still soft.
The wound stitched itself closed right before his eyes, muscle and skin threading back together. Her arm fell back to her side once she was done. She sat against the metal of the aisle divider. Her eyes were still closed and her breathing was still a little shallow, but she looked less pale - perhaps thanks to the soldier pill, perhaps because of her skill with medical ninjutsu.
Kakashi let himself slouch.
His safe house, a little abandoned store in the middle of a deserted area of Mustafa, was now even more messy than it was the previous day. Blood pooled on the tiles of the floor, medical supplies were scattered beside him and Sakura lay propped up in front of him.
The cuffs of his hoodie were stained red with Sakura’s blood. His hands felt sticky as the blood started to dry down.
“Sakura,” he started, his voice soft, “Let’s get cleaned up, there’s a bathroom at the back.”
He had never actually used the bathroom. The store was abandoned, he didn’t pay the bills, so there wasn’t any running water, but the soldier pill should have been enough for Sakura to perform a minor water style jutsu. He didn’t really like making use of her like this, but the other option was slowly wiping the blood with small squares of alcohol swabs, and he wasn’t sure he had enough to clean the both of them up.
“You’ll need to use water-style”
A single green eye looked at him, “Ah…so lazy…can’t you even have a little pity for your student and perform the water-style yourself?”
His heart skipped a beat.
“I can’t,” he said, sounding a little sadder than he would have liked.
Finally, Sakura opened both eyes and looked at him. She moved herself to sit up a little straighter. He felt oddly…insecure now that she was looking at him. He felt this back in the alley too…
Sakura tilted her head slightly as she studied him, “I didn’t feel your chakra network back then…you-” her brows furrowed, “you can’t perform jutsu anymore, sensei?”
Kakashi swallowed, meeting her eyes. “I don’t even have chakra anymore, Sakura,” he laughed dryly.
It was one thing to experience it. It was another thing to say it outloud…to admit it. He had never admitted it in his years living in the world. For one, no one knew what chakra was and second, he sort of just accepted it. It wasn’t the sort of acceptance that came with understanding and peace, it was the sort that came with the more shinobi part of him. It was acceptance in the form of endurance.
He would endure the lack of chakra…because once he was dead it would come back to him, right?
It was different to admit it so openly. That he didn’t have chakra anymore. That he couldn’t feel the warm thrum of life in his body, that he couldn’t feel the connection with others.
“Oh…”
Sakura, just like every single shinobi, knew just how important chakra was. It was a life force, it was part of their being, intertwined with their blood and soul. It was a gift from the Sage of Six Paths to their ancestors; a way to connect, to form understandings between one another. It was a connection to every living being in the elemental nations.
And he didn’t have it.
It was a bitter sort of feeling. Like fate was playing a cruel joke on him, telling him he had no more connection to his home other than memories of a place that he could never again return to.
Kakashi stood and held out his hand to Sakura, he didn’t want to ponder it any longer, “come on, before the blood dries”
They washed off in silence in the bathroom.
Sakura filled two buckets with clean water from her water-style, one for herself and one for him.
Kakashi faced himself to the wall as he took off his hoodie and started to wipe off the blood that had seeped from his hands to the cuffs of his hoodie and down to his forearm with a wet washcloth. The white hoodie was ruined…although, Kakashi supposed it could look good as a statement piece - no one had to know it was real blood.
Once he wiped himself clean, he threw the rag into the sink and started to wash the cuffs of his hoodie with the clean water still remaining in his bucket. The smell of iron filled the room, to him it was foreign. The smell stung his nose and made him a little nauseous, to Sakura…well she probably couldn’t even smell it anymore.
“Sensei, do you have a spare shirt?”
Kakashi tilted his head slightly to the sound of her voice but kept his gaze to the wall in front of him. He looked down at the hoodie he was washing. He wore a plain shirt underneath, so he could spare her the hoodie.
“Only my hoodie, it’s a little stained though,” the blood on the cuffs had faded to a dull brownish-red. More like a spill of chocolate milk than blood.
He supposed it was still better than her jonin uniform. Other than the vest, one of her sleeves was completely torn off which made for an odd outfit to say the least. The dark fabric of her uniform masked the red stains, but not the smell, he doubted many would take kindly to the stench of blood, sweat and war. Though…the smell stuck to her skin and hair as well.
“Catch,” he tossed the hoodie behind his back.
He heard the sound of a wind-style jutsu and felt the hum of chakra as she dried the sleeves of his hoodie, and the ruffle of clothes as she put it on.
“Done”
Kakashi turned around. Sakura’s clothes were piled up in her hands, her shirt, and vest.
His hoodie wasn’t even too big on her, it fit pretty well actually. Sakura still wore her jonin pants, with the bandages wrapped tightly around her thigh and her pouch strapped around it. It wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, but better than wearing the full uniform.
“Was it a Great war?” He started.
She tensed slightly, “Yes”
“You’re not rushing to get back?” It was sort of a stupid question. Of course she was. Sakura above all else was a shinobi for the leaf, and a shinobi could never abandon their village in times of war. Especially a medic like her, every second she spent off field was a second that could have been spent saving a life.
There was silence for a moment, before she sighed and walked closer to him, sitting on the toilet beside the sink. “I don’t know how to get back, Sensei,” her voice was soft even in the small tiled bathroom.
She coughed out a laugh, “I guess I was sort of hoping one of them would find a way to bring me back”
His mind drifted to what she had said earlier…Obito. Obito was the one who sent her here. Was it a ghost? An imposter? Obito Uchiha was dead, he was as dead as Rin, Minato, Kushina and…him.
“Are you sure it was Obito, Sakura?”
Kakashi leaned on the sink.
She replied a little softer, the remnants of her laughter fading,“Verified”
Verified…he had so many things he wanted to ask her, he didn’t know how to start. The room was silent once more.
He coughed, “ I saw your bracelet, you’re head medic? What happened to lady Tsunade?”
The room grew cold as he asked. It was a little trick of chakra. Sakura let her chakra fill the room, he felt her unease, anger, sadness…even if he no longer had chakra. The emotions were more dull than ‘usual’, but he could still feel it.
“She…I don’t know. The five Kage battled Madara but-” she paused to take a breath. “Madara reappeared on the main battlefield and the Kage didn’t”
“The masked man? Is he…that strong?” the five Kage? Fighting one man?
It had been 15 years since he had the experience of fighting the masked man. It was a little hard to remember how good he was, all he knew for sure was that Madara had a dojutsu that made him untouchable.
“No…” Sakura sighed slightly, “It’s a little hard to explain. The Masked man was Obito, he was pretending to be Madara…the five Kage were supposed to take down the real Madara while the alliance fought off Obito”
And here Kakashi thought he was starting to understand. 15 years did a lot to dull his memory. Fuzzy memories of fuzzy faces and unfamiliar vocabulary, at the very least he could remember who the Madara Uchiha was.
“Allience?”
“Shinobi alliance”
“Madara, he was brought back using edo-tensei?”
“Yeah”
“Was it Orochimaru?”
“No, Obito”
“And…Obito, he was the masked man?”
“Mhm”
That meant the dojutsu ‘Madara’ had was…kamui. He sent Sakura here with kamui. Kakashi’s sharingan had kamui. He hadn’t had the chance to really use it properly, but he knew it was there…
So many things…if he hadn’t been a genius, he wouldn’t have been able to keep up.
Obito was alive. He-
“The main battle was with Obito?”
“And Madara too now”
He started the war. He was fighting alongside a reanimated legend of the shinobi world and…kamui had enough power to traverse dimensions. And he had kamui…but not the chakra reserves to match.
Still, “Sakura, how much chakra do you think is needed to span dimensions with kamui?”
Sakura studied him. She already knew what he was thinking, she was smart.
“You still have the sharingan?”
He nodded, and opened his eye, flashing the spinning red wheel for a moment.
Sakura stood from the toilet and placed a hand on his shoulder, “You don’t have a chakra system…how do you use the sharingan? Do you have a new internal power source?”
Kakashi flinched slightly when her chakra invaded his system. The familiar life energy was foreign in this body…it felt weird…it felt bittersweet.
“I don’t know how it works, I don’t even know if it's fuelled by anything but normal nutrients and energy…but- well,” he scratched the back of his head…how to explain? “But uh I do have a different sort of power, it has nothing to do with fueling the sharingan though.”
She tilted her head, her chakra still running through his system. It felt weird, he realised, because her chakra wasn’t running through a chakra system like it normally would, it was running through his blood stream. It made him feel warm and tingly but cool at the same time.
“I’ll bite, what is it?”
“A kekkei genkai of sorts…I haven’t told you anything about this new world you’ve landed yourself in, Sakura,” he laughed. “You’re awfully calm”
“Well, you’re here after all, sensei,” she smiled.
Right. That was the difference wasn’t it? Kakashi had been plunged into this foreign world with nothing to grab hold of but memories of a past he could never return to. He plunged into this world as a resident, he came here with a new body, with a lack of chakra and no remnants of home to speak of. Sakura…she still belonged in the elemental nations.
Sakura had her jonin uniform, her chakra system, her soldier pills, she had Kakashi, and she still belonged to Konoha. A feeling of jealousy washed over him, it was short lived but it was there nevertheless. The feeling that it had to be him to lose his chakra, to lose his home, to lose his purpose. Of course it was him who this happened to.
“I have to be calm, sensei,” she added. “I’m a medic, I was in a war…I can’t afford to not be calm in case they find a way to bring us back all of a sudden”
“And besides, I trust you…it’s still a little weird, by the way…seeing you here, alive and well.”
Us. His heart beat a little faster at the thought of returning to the elemental nations…even in the midst of war. It would be…he didn’t know. Would it be torturous? That he could return home, but not have any chakra of the sort? That he would be able to feel the warm hum of the life energy on the surface of his skin but never any deeper unless someone was running their chakra through him?
Would he be able to live like that?
He wouldn’t be able to perform any missions above a C-rank anymore - and that was if he was being generous with his own skills. He simply wouldn’t be able to keep up without chakra. He’d be no stronger than a low level chunin.
Would he just retire? Live in the village quietly, watching, unable to do anything if a new threat appeared in the village? His stomach dropped at the thought.
He felt her chakra recede from his body, a reminder of how he would never belong in the elemental nations again.
“Your body is still receptive to chakra, I can lend you chakra to try and strengthen your hold on the sharingan,” she looked at him and all he wanted to do was hug her and see home again.
“You don’t have a chakra system anymore though, you have no coils or tenketsu points…I can’t say exactly what that means without more study, but my guess is…you wouldn’t be able to perform any jutsu even if I did give you chakra”
He knew that. He knew that, but it didn’t hurt any less when she said it.
“Ah…of course,” his eyes turned into crescents.
She frowned, “I don’t particularly know how it works, how chakra would interact with your body. I don’t know if it’ll act as a sort of energy source that your body can convert to use or if it acts as a foreign matter”
“Your body is receptive to it, but I don't know how it works,” she repeated. “I don’t know if there’s a limit or if there are side effects. For now though, I would refrain from lending you my chakra until we know more. It may cause some pretty bad side effects if the chakra is treated as a foreign matter”
He nodded along to her explanation. She was right in her reasoning. If she introduced chakra into this body, his bodily systems may go haywire. Civilians who had smaller chakra systems couldn’t be lent too much chakra because of this. Their chakra coils would overload and they would get a sort of chakra poisoning from the foreign chakra entering their systems.
“The world here works differently, Sakura”
“I can tell, it’s more modern. The buildings are like the ones in the hidden rain, but…cleaner.”
Kakashi nodded, “And, perhaps most importantly, almost everyone has something like a kekkei genkai. They’re called quirks, special abilities - sometimes passed down through parents, sometimes unique”
“You have one too?”
“The sharingan is considered my secondary quirk, my primary is ‘mind-control’”
Sakura’s eyes were filled with curiosity.
“I can control people who answer my questions or speak to me. The mind control doesn’t go that deep, only surface level, simple commands and such”
“Like a genjutsu? Can you still cast genjutsu with your sharingan, sensei? Can you use the sharingan to boost your mind control quality? Have you tried?”
He smiled a little at her questions…just like when she was a genin, “I can perform genjutsu still, but it gives me really bad headaches, I haven’t tried to use the sharingan with my quirk”
At that, Sakura frowned, her brows furrowing. “And kamui? If a genjutsu is enough to…” she trailed off, “how is your limit with kamui?”
“Not good, not as good as it used to be, but I can use it. It won’t put me out of commission or anything”
“What’s the biggest thing you’ve transported?”
“Maybe a large knife, like a butcher’s knife”
Sakura’s frown deepened, “We are not going back with your kamui”
“Ah, Sakura…don’t you have trust in me?”
“No,” she scoffed.
It was comical how fast she replied. He let a laugh escape his lips…he had missed this. These interactions with people who knew him. People who lived how he had lived. People from home.
“You won’t be able to transport a person, let alone two across the multiverse, sensei.” So serious…she had grown up. “Even if I gave you all the chakra in my seal, who knows what would happen to you? You might land yourself in a coma!”
“Also, might I remind you, there’s a war going on, and once I use up the chakra in my seal, I won't be able to heal you nor the shinobi alliance?”
He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “How long do you want to wait before we try?”
“A week, at most. Maybe three days…”
“If no one comes, we’ll use my kamui…you should spend the time gathering your chakra”
Sakura nodded.
A sudden thought popped into his mind.
“Shit”
“What?”
“We’ve gotta go home”
Aizawa and Yamada…he had forgotten about them.
He had wanted to bring Sakura here to the safe house in order to talk and figure things out, but all the business with her injury had taken up too much time. He pulled out his phone from his pocket. 3 am…he cringed at the thought.
He didn’t like the idea of his guardians worrying over him. What he didn’t like even more was the possibility of them calling the cops, which would undoubtedly lead to a line of questioning on Sakura’s appearance, unregistered quirk and relationship to him.
Kakashi stopped leaning on the sink and tugged at her wrist. He still had to clean up the mess he made.
Once he was at the storefront, he hastily packed everything that was unopened, unused or still clean back under the rotten wooden floorboard. He took the used needle, thread and almost empty bottle of betadine in his hands.
“Sorry, Sakura, do you mind washing away the blood?”
She shook her head and her hands wove the signs for a minor water-style jutsu, her vest and shirt tucked under her arm as she did so. While she did that, he left the store in search of a dumpster - which luckily for him, was right beside the door. He threw the blood soaked items into the dumpster, his items blended in with the other needles, syringes and bloodied cloth.
He heard the soft ring of the bell of his little store. Sakura joined him a moment later. She wasn’t holding her clothes anymore, he assumed she had sealed them away in a scroll in her pouch.
“My name is Hitoshi Shinso”
He met her green eyes, “You’re Sakura Haruno, an unregistered orphan, my childhood friend and your quirk is ‘chakra’”
“Anything else?”
“I’m going to try to get you enrolled into UA, a ‘hero’ academy”
Sakura choked back a laugh, “Hero?”
He only nodded in response. He had grown used to the term in his time here. To Sakura, however, the term was as foreign as the world. It was a childish sort of word, used only by starry eyed civilian children.
“Be cordial with Aizawa and Yamada, my guardians. It’ll make it easier for you to enrol. And uh..let me do the talking”
“You’re expecting me to stay?”
Kakashi’s heart skipped a beat, “No, it’s for…convenience is all. If you get enrolled we’ll be able to be together at all times - we’ll be able to discuss our plans more”
He knew what she was asking. Enrolling into an academy wasn’t exactly the sort of thing a person would do if they were looking to leave a week later. He supposed it was a tiny selfish part of him that wanted her with him. A tiny part of him in the back of his brain that told him if ‘they’ did find a way to bring her back, it wasn’t certain they would bring him along as well.
Did his kamui even hold enough power to tear through dimensions? He didn’t know. But for now, he would indulge in his selfishness, even if Sakura only stayed for 3 days or a week.
He didn’t want to think about what would happen when they finally got back to the elemental nations…or what would happen if he couldn’t go back with her.
She nodded and for a moment she paused as if she had something to say.
“Sensei, something’s been bothering me…” Kakashi saw the glint in her eye and he knew he wasn’t going to like what she said next.
“How old are you?”
He didn’t want to answer that.
“Fifteen…and you?”
She had been 15 when he…left. He wondered how time passed across the multiverse.
Sakura smirked and Kakashi knew he would never be able to live this down, “Sixteen, as of a month ago…or I guess a month ago in the elemental nations…what’s the date today?”
“April 28th,” his eyes narrowed. Not only was he weaker than his student…he was also younger…by just a couple months.
“I’ll be 16 in a few months, you’re not much older than me, Sakura. I still have you beat by a couple decades, don’t forget that”
Sakura smiled, none of it was going through her head. “Sensei…maybe I should be your teacher,” she laughed.
“Sakura, I’m still 3 decades your senior,” the way his voice cracked every once in a blue moon made his argument a little weak - but she didn’t have to know that. “Just- just flicker us back to the alley, please”
She laughed and put her hand on his shoulder, “Roger!”
And once again, chakra filled his body.