The edge of disaster is Sakura's home. Better than coffee, sweeter than cake, keener than knives--it cuts her to the quick, and Sakura’s flaws bled out, excised like tumors, leaving only steel. Every wound an opportunity, a battle against death, and Sakura will win this war if it’s the last thing she does.
It will, of course, be the last thing she does.
Kakashi long ago fought her war, bled and wept and died inside, burnt away the excess, the dross of himself. He hadn’t had enough steel to reforge himself, and he’d been forced to settle, the fragments of what he could have been rattling inside his flawed self.
Sakura is far more successful. The unyielding anvil of Tsunade forged and reforged her, the smelting furnace burning away her weaknesses, the ashes of them turning into strength instead of powder.
She won, he lost, and Kakashi thinks about it too much.
***
In a lot of ways, Kakashi is a ghost. He’s not the kind of person you know, but the kind of person you’d known. Everything about him was past tense, like he’d died long before anyone had met him, and just kept walking around. You could remember talking to him, could remember seeing him, but there was never a now to him, only a past.
It worries Sakura, that she couldn’t think of him in any other way. He still breathed, still walked the streets of Konoha, still took missions and fought and trained like everyone else--but he was never today, and always yesterday.
There isn’t time for her to find him. She has too much work, too much training, and too many goals to put them aside for one man, but still, Sakura worries.
***
Tsunade is old. It’s not a common thing for ninja, and she resents it bitterly. Her bones ache, and her hair is grey, and her entire world died before she did. She covers these things with illusions, but it doesn’t make them untrue.
For all her mourning, though, she doesn’t regret living. The children born after her are fools and dreamers, and she takes great satisfaction in making them strong enough to withstand everything she could not. They are seedlings, and she a gardener; the waterer of the wilting, the protector from the frost, and the gatherer of the deadfall. Her seedling grow strong, and become Konoha’s trees, hiding their hearts behind their leaves.
Tsunade is old, and has too much time to think of these things. Too much time to drink and mourn the past, too much time to be alone. And perhaps she plants her loneliest bramble bush beside her cherry sapling for that reason. One had grown along the ground, never reaching for the sun, and the other had grown fast and strong and tall, its cohort fallen behind.
They will do well together.
And those bastards in the council can go suck piss through a straw, because Kakashi will never belong to them.
***
Sakura reacted, slamming her fist into the closest body, and kicking the next closest into the ceiling before she realized that the bright flash of light had been a camera, and the shouting had been people yelling Happy Birthday.
“But it’s not even my birthday!” she said, laughing as the room burst into song. “It’s in a week!”
The genin she’d punched into the wall wobbled to his feet, still holding the shreds of the banner, and tugged his teammate out of the rafters. Sakura healed them both in a second, muttering a quick apology, before turning to the room full of her friends and co-workers who were bringing Happy Birthday to a particularly tuneless conclusion.
“Seriously, My birthday is on the 28th.”
“Well we know that,” Ino told her, grinning at her. “But you wouldn’t have been nearly as surprised on your birthday!”
Sakura had to admit that that was true. The cake was big enough to feed most of Konoha, which was great, because both Naruto and Chouji were lurking beside it. The conference table in the centre of the meeting room was piled high with gifts--though the high part came mostly from the enormous wooden box in the centre and the extravagant green and yellow bow on top that spilled waterfalls of streamers down the sides.
“I didn’t suspect a thing!” Sakura said, fighting down the urge to squeal like a four-year-old.
Tsunade laughed, walking forward through the gathered shinobi. They parted like grass around her, instinctive deference to her power. “I’d hope not. ANBU planned it.”
Sakura smiled so wide that it hurt her cheeks, and dove forward to hug Tsunade. “Thank you!”
Tsunade hugged back, and it was a little like being wrapped in iron bands, but Sakura didn’t mind. “Hard work deserves an award, don’t you think?” There was a hint of amusement in her voice that set off warning bells in Sakura’s head.
“Yes?” Sakura agreed after a second, suddenly a bit uncertain. Shizune was frowning at Tsunade, which was never a good sign.
Tsunade pressed a drink into her hand. “Drink up!” She drank from her own cup, watching Sakura with the intensity of a hungry hawk, her eyes gleaming with ominous delight.
Sakura’s smile faded, and she took a tentative sip, the fumes burning her nose. The amber liquid tasted like fire, thick as syrup, strong as Tsunade. “Mmm, good,” she said, looking for somewhere to put it down and forget about it.
“Drink up,” Tsunade said again, licking a bead of liquor from the corner of her mouth. “You can’t be sober on your birthday.”
“Technically, it’s not my birthday,” Sakura said, trying very hard not to be mesmerized by Tsunade’s chakra aura pouring down her skin like honey, sticky and golden warm. Heat rushed down her throat as she drank more, the alcohol burning all the way to her stomach. “I’m still sixteen,” she added, her eyes half-lidded as she watched Tsunade, star-bursts of happiness blooming when Tsunade nodded in approval.
“Good girl,” Tsunade said, her smile a perfect reward for draining the cup, “Why don’t you go mingle with your friends?”
Sakura snapped out of her haze, the taste of fire thick on her tongue, heat risen across her cheekbones in flushed pleasure. The dredges of the cup stared at her accusingly, and Sakura frowned at them for a long, displeased moment. She’d been practicing fighting off Tsunade’s will, but she suspected that Tsunade had been pulling her punches.
Ino approached slowly, watching Tsunade walk away. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Sakura said, looking for Shizune, who’d disappeared into the crowd with Tsunade. Something was up, and she really wanted to know what.
“Liar,” Ino said, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder. The gleam of interest in her eyes was well hidden, to anyone who wasn’t her best friend. “What did she give you?”
“I don’t know. A drink.” Sakura tilted her shoulder, telling Ino classified; telling her to research on her own. Chakra auras were hush-hush, outside of killing intent, which everyone and their dog could do. Only jounin and above were supposed to know about the more interesting uses.
The taste lingered in her mouth, a puzzle that Tsunade had given her. Sakura smiled at Ino, distracted by the thoughts spinning through her head.
***
“A dog?”
Sakura eyed the enormous crate that Tsunade had placed on the conference table, beside the equally enormous cake. Something inside it stirred, then quieted.
***
“I...” Kakashi cleared his throat and reread the scroll.
...stripped of his rank, position, and assets, and declared a dog of the Hokage...
It wasn’t a mission scroll. “...Lady Tsunade?” He should be angry, but right now shock was outweighing that, and he was hoping that it was a joke. A really terrible joke.
“You read it,” Tsunade replied, and damn, she had a fantastic poker face.
He could barely feel the scroll in his hand, his fingers gone numb and cold. His other hand was equally cold, sweat slicking the metal brace that ran from his elbow to his knuckles. His mask fluttered over his lips, and he knew he was breathing too fast, but he couldn’t stop, because there was no way in hell that Tsunade had that good of a poker face.
“It’s her birthday,” Tsunade said, nodding at the scroll. “Seventeen is a big year.”
Kakashi blinked, and checked the scroll again.
...in keeping with tradition, the previously mentioned dog shall be passed on to the Hokage’s Apprentice as a birthday gift.
Minato had given him Pakkun for his birthday. Kakashi didn’t think it actually counted as a tradition, though.
He considered a great many protests, but all of them relied on moral arguments or appeals for mercy, and Tsunade didn’t give a damn about those things. “Did I do something wrong?” He couldn’t think of anything he’d done that would warrant this punishment. At least, nothing he’d done recently.
“ANBU dismissed,” Tsunade said, and the room was immediately, though not visibly, emptier. “Sit,” she ordered him.
It made sense in a weird way. Despite all the legends, he wasn’t that great of a ninja, and after blocking Sasuke’s final attack six months ago, he could barely bend his left wrist at all, but Tsunade had been talking about rehabilitation, not this.
He’d thought he was still useful.
Kakashi dropped to his knees.
“You are an idiot,” she told him, nudging his side with her toes. “You know as well as I do that Sakura won’t require that kind of obedience from you, and neither will I. Up, on the couch. I have a lot of things to tell you. ”
He got to his feet, and obeyed. The couch sagged under him, and he sunk into it, the dizziness clearing. “You enslaved me.” The words spilled out of his mouth, and Kakashi wanted to take them back, or at least make them false.
“Actually, Danzo did.” Tsunade threw an ivory-coloured afghan at his head, then leaned against the edge of her desk, arms crossed under her chest, which was less enjoyable than it usually was.
“Three weeks as interim Hokage and he passed more laws than I did in my entire tenure. Most of them no one outside the council ever heard about. He circumvented the anti-slavery laws by using the amendments to personhood laws that granted the Inukuza dogs the same status as any other shinobi. Vague wording allowed Danzo to use it as the basis to qualify ANBU members, former and current, as people who are owned, thus superseding their contract to the village as a whole.”
Kakashi wasn’t certain what that had to do with him, or why it meant that he had to be a dog. Nothing had actually changed since the law passed, at least not that he’d heard of. He couldn’t quite express that sentiment, though, and so settled for blinking at Tsunade, and hoping that she’d change her mind, or look away long enough that he could run far, far away.
“After you broke your hand, the council started trying to retire you.” Tsunade told him.
“I’m still useful,” he protested, because it was only his hand. It was even still attached. “You said I’d regain most of my mobility. Even if I don’t, I can still run courier missions. My legs are fine.” He’d been doing them for the last month, and yeah, they were kind of boring, but he wouldn’t complain any more if it bugged her.
“You’re going to be fine. Minor limitations to your abilities at best. I value you very much, and you are still a very important part of my forces.” She looked exasperated, and Kakashi thought that he was probably missing something, but his thoughts were chasing their tails in endless circles. Like dogs.
He was a dog. Legally.
It was a hard thought to get past.
Kakashi spread the afghan across his lap, hooking his fingers through the holes and trying to understand. “Then why--?”
“They were trying to retire you and turn you out to stud. Rock is offering fifty million ryo for your semen, five hundred million for you. Alive.”
He choked. “Why?”
“Because they’re filthy perverts?” Tsunade guessed. “But that was more of an insult on Rock’s part than anything we’d really consider. The council wants to retire you and force you to marry, potentially to multiple women, and breed you.”
His entire body cringed at the thought of commitment and strangers with nakedness that lead to babies. He wasn’t prepared for that kind of thing. Babies needed special certification, probably, and he was certain that he didn’t have it.
Tsunade waited until he gathered himself (which was harder than it should have been). “Obviously, I was against that, and but the amendment to the ANBU Rights bill allowed me to order it, and the council would not shut the fuck up about it.”
“Okay,” he said, slightly calmer now that he was starting to see the shape of things. “So this is a political play. Could you explain more? Perhaps with details.”
“In a way, yes. They were using you as an pawn, trying to force me to approve several laws. I’m using you to force an annulment of the laws that Danzo passed while in office.” Tsunade grinned, enormously self-satisfied, and clearly not caring about the dog thing nearly as much as she did about winning.
“There was no other way?” Kakashi asked, though the thought of being married to many different strangers was causing him to realize that this was hardly the worst of all fates.
“Sakura has never been a part of ANBU, she just moved into a new two bedroom apartment, daily attention from a medic-nin will speed the healing of your arm and if the council wants to support Danzo’s decision to make ANBU the personal property of the Hokage, they can damn well deal with the consequences of that. Seriously, it’s win-win-win.”
“Except for the part where I’m her pet dog, but other than that, all wins,” Kakashi agreed. Tsunade must have cast a calming genjutsu at some point, because he was far less upset than he knew he ought to be.
“Pfft. Like you won’t enjoy the vacation,” Tsunade said. “And when I win, it’ll be illegal for anyone to own you, and everything will go back to the way it should be. If I’m really lucky, they’ll word the new laws loosely enough that I can use them to expand the personal freedoms of kunoichi and bloodline carriers.”
Kakashi nodded because Tsunade had stopped talking and was watching him expectantly. “So. I’m a dog. For the greater good. Or something.”
“And a birthday present,” Tsunade added cheerfully. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a thin white collar, silver identification tags shaped like flowers dangling from a D-ring. “Sakura’s going to be so surprised!”
***
So far, being a dog was boring. Tsunade had used it as an excuse to give him a full check up, which had been cold, awkward, and ended abruptly when he realized that a dog couldn’t be written up for insubordination. Tsunade had then pointed out that a dog could be put in a box with air holes and wrapped up like a present until it was given away, and the check up had resumed until the rubber gloves had been donned and Kakashi had decided that he quite liked enclosed spaces.
In retrospect, he liked them less. There wasn’t enough light to read by, and the air holes were all placed so that he could only see the ceiling, most of which was blocked by the streamers coming off the enormous bow on top of the box. Tsunade’s office was quiet when she wasn’t in it, only the barely-there presence of three very confused ANBU guards to disturb him.
The collar was annoying, the tags clinking and chiming every time he took a breath.
Clink-chime-clink. Hi, my name is Kakashi! If I’m lost, please return me to Haruno Sakura at Apartment 802, Towering Cedar, Redwood Road. Chime-clinky-clink.
Chime. 31 year old jounin male, last vaccinated on March 20th, 110 AF. Clink-clink-clink.
He sighed and rolled onto his back, stuck his fingers through the air holes that Tsunade had punched through the wood with her finger tips. At least it was Sakura. Of all his students, she was the only one who’d ever been responsible enough to keep a pet alive for more than a week.
Maybe not much more than a week, but she wouldn’t actively kill one through stupidity like Naruto and Sai, or malice, like Sasuke.
The door opened, and Kakashi snatched his hands back. Footsteps approached his crate, loud enough to be a warning, and Kakashi tensed, drawing his feet up so he could break out if he needed to, before forcing himself to calm down. The lack of response from ANBU meant that it had to be Tsunade.
Her shadow blocked the light. “This is the stupidest idea I’ve ever had,” she said, and Kakashi bit his tongue to keep from agreeing. “You still alive in there?”
“Yes?” he responded, uncertain if she was talking to him.
“Good.” His crate jerked and lifted, sending him sliding into the back, before leveling out as Tsunade balanced him over her shoulder. “I was just going to wrap a bow around you, you know.”
“Does anyone know?” Kakashi asked, holding very still, trying not to make Tsunade lose her grip.
“Shizune knows I’m getting her a dog. I told her I was getting Sakura an older one who needs a loving home.” Tsunade sounded way too pleased with herself.
“I’m not old!” Kakashi protested, irritated. Tsunade might look younger than him, but that didn’t mean she was!
“You aren’t a puppy anymore, Kakashi, even if you act like one.” Tsunade told him, cheerfully. “Older dogs are better, anyway. They’re housebroken.”
“This metaphor is going a bit far,” Kakashi muttered, his cheeks heating up with irritation. “People are going to think you’re insane.”
“Fantastic. If I’m insane, maybe they’ll finally let me retire.”
Kakashi felt the chill of incoming responsibility and tucked himself deeper into the corner, making the crate wobble alarmingly. “Not it!” he said sharply. He never wanted to have to be the Hokage, and it was very rude of Tsunade threaten to retire. Every time she did, people started mumbling about making him the Hokage, and Naruto got this look like he’d gone and stolen all the ramen ever and eaten it in front of him.
“Don’t worry. Dogs can’t be Hokages.” A sharp thud came from the side of the crate, and Kakashi jumped before he realized that that she’d slapped it.
“You...” For a second he saw himself, a fly in a web much, much bigger than Tsunade was letting on. “...are magnificent,” he concluded, admiring her deviousness.
Hinges creaked, and she swung him around, maneuvering around an obstacle he couldn’t see. The air changed. They’d entered the main hallway, from the smell of burnt coffee and old paperwork. Kakashi reached out with his chakra to find out how many people were watching. Late afternoon on Sunday meant that new mission assignments were up, and the quiet buzz of conversation told him that the hall was far from empty.
“Now hush,” Tsunade said. “Surprises are best when they’re completely unexpected.”