August 18th-19th
Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name. ― Cornelia Funke
The further they got into River the more Shikako had begun to feel unmoored, adrift, moving her limbs without feeling any real connection to them, or the ground, or anything except the chakra she can feel. It had all been missing, in the temple, once the ritual had started its final crescendo, and on the long walk out of Wind when Shikako had finally had time to slow down and think about what just happened. She had had to keep careful track of her breathing and the scrape of nature chakra down her throat and into her lungs to keep centered and aware of the present moment.
Waking up in the middle of the night next to their fire in River during what should be shift change, it takes effort not to cough or wheeze, to just lay there for a moment and enjoy the unpleasant sensation as proof that she's alive, that she escaped, that somehow she managed to shut the door against Jashin by flinging herself far back to before the Jashinists had even begun to turn the nob.
She sits up.
"Eh?" Naruto says, voice quiet. Shikamaru's chakra is low and lazy and quiet; he's asleep. "Something wrong?"
Equally quiet, Shikako says: "It's my turn for watch... isn't it?" and is hit all over again by how unreal this all feels, how familiar, how wrong.
"Nuh-uh." Naruto shakes his head emphatically, despite his hushed tone. "You got hurt so you don't have to keep watch tonight. We decided."
"Oh," she says. Right, this had happened last time. She should have remembered.
Shikako sits up a little more, brings her knees up, wraps her arms around her knees, and curls forward. Like someone else is writing the words into her mouth, like this is a pre-recorded sentence, she offers, "Are you sure? I know you must be tired, you used so much of the Kyuubi's chakra..."
There's a pause, Naruto watching her, and... last time around, she'd thought he was trying to decide if he was tired enough to need to take her up on that offer. This time... this time, she sees that the look is more considering. That Naruto is wondering if Shikako needs to take a watch, if this is part of her needing to move forward with the mission, move under her own power, keep going forward to keep from stopping and never being able to start again.
Shikako has really, really missed Uzumaki Naruto.
"Nah," Naruto says, "it's fine."
He looks at her though, still, with worried eyes. Naruto is young, although not much younger than when she last saw him, and Shikako expects the frustration over having to comfort someone again to rise but it never does. Shikako thinks about Naruto's hand twisting in the sleeve of her jacket. About how it had felt, 11 months ago, to have that sword in her chest pulling her down and feel Naruto's chakra tear into the room, strong and warm and safe.
In the morning, she'll have to get up and start walking again. She's not going to let Naruto or Shikamaru carry her. But for now... last time, Naruto had told her about seeing the Kyuubi, but Shikako really doesn't want to repeat that conversation and feel the wrongness of it, like a watching a video where the sound is a few seconds off.
She wants something different. Something better. She wants to be sure that she's here, now, in this moment, far away from Hot Springs, and she wants to be able to stop thinking about Hot Springs.
"Naruto, can I... can we sit closer?" she asks, just as he opens his mouth to probably tell her about the Kyuubi.
Naruto closes his mouth and then, in the same quiet volume but somehow softer than ever, he says, "Yeah, Shikako-chan, we can sit closer," and half-crawls, half-scoots across the ground to sit shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip with her. His chakra is warmer than the fire, loud and bright to Shikako's chakra senses, like napping outside on a summer day.
She leans her head against his shoulder, unable to stop herself, and after a moment's hesitation Naruto wraps an arm around her. It's like being hugged by the sun. It feels nothing like being restrained.
Thinking about the sword through her chest is actually easy, now that she's using it to avoid thinking about other, worse things. She tells Naruto, "When I was... when you came into the room like that, I knew everything would be okay."
"Even though I was using...?"
"Yeah," Shikako hums. "It's still you, Naruto. And the Kyuubi isn't so bad."
Naruto hesitates, and then tells her about the Kyuubi's name again, and seeing her-and-Gelel in the seal, and it's all so painfully similar to the last time this happened but the weight of Naruto's arm across her back is enough to stave off the worst of the deja-vu.
And then Naruto asks, "Do you remember?" which Shikako is pretty sure he hadn't asked, last time.
For a moment she thinks he's talking about the eleven months she erased, but then — no. The Kyuubi. Kurama.
"Not the way you remember it, I think, it was all just... so much," she mumbles, tired again now that she feels safe, her eyelids feeling glued shut. "We were like a field of stars."
"Stars?" Naruto asks.
Responding just seems like it would take so much effort. Shikako manages an affirmative hum, and then she's out like a light.
Aoba wakes up in the morning with the taste of blood on his tongue, with his head still fuzzy and turned around from the long session with Inoichi. He's on the couch — hadn't even been able to make it all the way to bed — and Genma's plants on his kitchen table across the room help him remember when he is.
He's still heavy with exhaustion, but terror pricks at him. Will Shikako get back to the village alive? Will she drop dead in the Hokage's office again? Will they be able to investigate Hot Springs and stop those monks before they can perform the ritual? Is Aoba really safe, or is that thing they were summoning lurking just out of his perception, watching?
His shower is warm, his soap sudsy, but Aoba doesn't feel anything but grimy and cold still. He skips breakfast and goes straight to the hospital.
Aoba loses time in the waiting room, thinking about Shikako, and trying not to think about her — he knows she's probably having a long, boring walk through River, and that it's most likely that she'll arrive safely. She did last time, after all, and this time Tsunade-sama sent Kakashi after her and her team.
It's just that when he blinks, the image painted on the back of his eyelids is Shikako standing in front of him, unwilling to give up, the smell of burning human from her explosive seal, the white-blue gleam of a barrier seal. Blood on her hands. His blood; her healing jutsu had failed but the seals had worked. Aoba is so weak, and she's still fighting.
A staff twitched through the air. One two three. On four, a staff slamming through her stomach. And what had he said, right before, hadn't that been important? To be a priest of Jashin is to know—! To be a priest of Jashin i — — –
A nurse calls his name.
"Yamashiro Aoba," she says, like this is just another morning, just another check up, like Aoba hadn't — like he —
(Go - to - hell - ! she'd gasped, still standing in front of him. They'd dragged her away. Shikako, on the altar, and Shikako only has eyes for him, like he should be able to help her, but he can't. He can't because — because — )
Aoba stands, follows the nurse. It's a full work-up; the nurse does his preliminary examination (weight, reflexes, that kind of thing; nothing invasive, nothing that even involves using chakra on the nurse's part) and asks him no questions. Aoba doesn't think that most of the questions she might ask would reveal anything particularly classified, but she barely speaks.
Which is fine with Aoba, because he's caught up in trying not to think, trying not to feel, trying to compartmentalized like he should be able to and failing.
What the nurse is doing doesn't reach him.
Nothing happened, and nothing is going to happen, but Aoba still feels... wrong. Unsettled in his skin, and he can't even say if that's an effect of the time travel or if it's left over from the long session with Inoichi.
Aoba lingers in that last moment of hopeless eye contact with Shikako, watching tears well in her eyes. She looks so young, and so old, and so, so far away. He's failed her, he's failing her right now, and on the edge of arriving, imminent, nearly immediate there's something and Aoba can't describe it but it's coming for Shikako and then for him. The priest approaches with the cup, and Aoba can't feel the edge of it press into his throat because he's numb, he's sliding away, and the thing that had been lingering just out of reach is now coiled, waiting to spring.
All Aoba can feel is its anticipation.
All Aoba can hear is its incomprehensible words.
All Aoba can do is nothing, trapped between staying here with Shikako and fleeing as quickly as he can towards death in the hopes that knowing death isn't the same as being able to stop it. Aoba could escape, he's sure he could, the slow creep of death is already a thin gossamer veil between him and the thing, but how could he leave Shikako alone to face it?
It's approaching. There hands are on her mouth. The cup is tilted, blood runs over, and —
Tsunade-sama is in the room.
She's starting up a diagnostic jutsu, hand bright with green medical chakra; Aoba isn't so far gone that the spark of a jutsu being used doesn't pull his attention back to. He's not a sensor, but this close her chakra is clear and clean and cuts straight through the memories.
She's watching him carefully.
"Back with us?" she asks.
He says that he is.
"Do you know where you are?" she asks.
He tells her that they're in the hospital, a private examination room, and is sure of his answer. He hasn't spent a lot of time in there himself, but all Konoha nin recognize the hospital.
"Do you remember why you're here?" she asks.
His tongue gets a little tied. Why is he in front of the Hokage in the hospital? He doesn't feel injured. Is it... was it something about his neck? Was it? He asks that, about his neck, and touches it with light, hesitant fingers, but it's smooth, whole, not even a scar.
"No," Tsunade-sama says. "Not your neck, not really. It's August 18th. You had a session with Ibiki and Inoichi yesterday."
That doesn't sound right. August already, and a session in T&I... had he lost time? What did he do? He asks Tsunade-sama about that, all of that.
Her lips purse. "It's August, 61 years after founding. You gained time, about eleven months." She goes on to say that Inoichi and Ibiki had been verifying his story and retrieving time sensitive information.
Tsunade-sama, he says, I don't think I am back with you
Gathering intel from people... is not Uchiha Sasuke's best skill.
His best skill is probably putting up with Uzumaki Naruto, or maybe telling which tomatoes at the market are at peak ripeness. Other decent skills: shurikenjutsu, setting things on fire, memorization, and other fine Uchiha traditions.
But gathering intel from people, well. Sasuke can navigate the library, eavesdrop, and perform a myriad of other indirect methods of information gathering techniques with proficiency, if not experience. What he can't do is... gossip.
'Desperate times call for desperate measures' is the kind of thing civilians say to each other to excuse ethically problematic or logistically unreasonable choices made in the heat of the moment. Ninja have to do better than that, and the Shinobi Code has a couple of heavy-handed commands on the topic, but Sasuke likes what he's heard Shikako mutter to herself on more than one occasion:
Panic is the enemy.
Some special jōnin showing up out of nowhere and asking where Shikako is doesn't mean that anything is wrong, necessarily. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons someone might want to speak to Nara Shikako, and not all of them are bad. It might be good. It might be nothing.
But maybe it isn't. So Sasuke hasn't panicked, but he hasn't been idle, either.
He'd gone to see Nara Yoshino first. Both Shikako and Shikamaru were on the same mission, and if anything was wrong she'd have heard. She'd invited him in for tea and her forehead had creased a little in worry at his careful question, but she'd shaken her head, sighing, and said, "If there were really something wrong, I'd have heard from the Hokage about it. It sounds like you probably talked to Yamashiro Aoba; he was probably checking up on something she wrote in one of her reports."
And that had almost appeased him, especially with the distraction of Yoshino asking if he wanted to make dinner with her — which he had, because otherwise he'd be going home to eat alone, and she would eat alone, and Sasuke likes Shikako's mom — and then another evening of training.
But by morning Sasuke is unsettled about it again. And he needs more information. And Sasuke sure isn't going to succeed in weaseling information out of anyone about some tokujo he's never heard of before, so the reasonable, rational thing to do is... to ask for help. It's the best allocation of resources. It's much better than pulling a Naruto and just busting into Tsunade's office. Sasuke goes to the florist.
Ino and Chouji are both still recovering from the mission the Rookie Nine took against the Sound Four. Kiba, too. It's a thought that sits heavy with Sasuke, knowing they got hurt on a mission for him, and when he enters the flower shop and Ino looks at him with her newly slit-pupiled eyes, the knowledge that she'll never been the same no matter how much she heals jolts through him, reverberates.
But he tries not to show it. She's still Ino. She came to talk to him every day when they were waiting for Naruto to drag Tsunade home. The only thing she loves more than knowing everyone's business is proving that she knows it.
Before the bell above the door has even stopped ringing, Ino is saying, "Sasuke-kun! Taking an interest in ikebana?" and waving a handful of small, vivid flowers at him that Sasuke can't name.
The tone is cheerful but... it clearly takes some effort. He doesn't know Ino well — has been avoiding getting to know her, specifically, and most people in general for years — but she spent weeks in May and June being forcefully optimistic about Shikako's condition. This has that same edge to her voice, but this time it's Ino herself who's been hurt because of him.
"Ah... no," Sasuke says, stumbling a little for words even though he knows that Ino doesn't seriously think he's here for flower arranging supplies.
Her lips curl, and Sasuke doesn't know Ino well, but he wonders — would that have been a giggle, before? Ino has always been a little slippery, but this expression is a little too... sly and sharp. Or maybe that's in Sasuke's head. Maybe he's seeing changes that aren't there just because her eyes are different.
"I was wondering what you know about a special jōnin named Yamashiro Aoba," Sasuke says, a little rushed, before she can keep poking at him. "Yoshino-san says he's in Intel?"
Ino raises her eyebrows at him. "You asked Yoshino-oba before me?"
"It's not like I was trying to avoid you," Sasuke explains hastily, although he doesn't know if that's really what Ino is thinking and he kind of wasthinking about avoiding her, but — "He asked me about Shikako. He stopped by our training grounds and asked me where she was, and then left as soon as I told him she's on a mission. And I thought that was weird, so..."
"Oh," Ino says, and he can see that she's not interested in teasing him anymore. Her gaze is focused, a little blank, her version of the thinking face Sasuke sees so often on Shikako. "He was my father's kohai, and I've met him a couple of times," Ino says. "He knows everyone. He stops by to see Dad a lot. And.." Now she's frowning, eyes focusing back on Sasuke. "...a runner from the hospital came by earlier to tell Dad that his session with Aoba was postponed by Tsunade-sama."
"Isn't your dad retired?"
"They call him back for important interrogations," Ino says, and now there's a crinkle of worry on her forehead, between her eyes. "I'll see if I can find anything out, okay? But I'm sure it's nothing bad for Shikako, not if Dad is involved."
"Right," Sasuke says, giving a firm, confident nod. "Thanks, Ino." He's more worried now than he was when he came in. Still — at least he's not alone with this.
Lightning had struck the tower only a few days ago, and then Anko was finally assigned something to do again, now that her work with Intel is on... shaky ground until they can prove one way or another whether the piece of Orochimaru inside her cursed seal is self aware enough to be spying on everything Anko sees. And it's kind of a great assignment, if Anko is being honest: Kurama Yakumo isn't too much trouble, yet, and this is probably about as close as anyone will ever let Anko get to being a jōnin-sensei.
(Well... things have been better under Tsunade than they were under the Sandaime, but look: Anko isn't holding her breath. There's still plenty of people who don't want to see her advance, even if Tsunade doesn't seem to care one way or the other.)
Anko is looking forward to the opportunity to prove she can work with a kid. And then late morning on the 18th, a Yamanaka jōnin comes to relieve her from her mission and tells her to go see the Hokage.
"Why?" Anko asks, frowning. She hasn't fucked up. She hasn't even barely had time to fuck up.
The Yamanaka shrugs at her. "Bet the Hokage will tell you," he suggests.
Anko scowls, hands the scroll back to him — snaps it back into his waiting palm with a loud smack — and then takes off for the tower, craving dango but not actually willing to stop and get any before she goes to see the Hokage. She's not going to risk pulling a Hatake on Tsunade.
She gets waved on through to see the Hokage, and stands in front of her, back straight. And... as soon as the door closes behind her, the security seals go up. Yikes.
"I didn't want to take you off your current mission, but you were specifically requested," Tsunade says. "With any luck, you'll be back to your assignment with the Kurama girl in a couple of days."
"Specifically requested?" Anko asks. Who would even request her? It's not like Anko has the kind of reputation that draws civilians. This whole thing is irregular, which Anko hates. Missions that are weird are usually bad.
"By Yamashiro Aoba." Tsunade sets her elbows on her desk, lacing her fingers together. She looks at Anko with a steady gaze. "I asked him who he'd trust to have his back, and he said you."
That — that goes through her like a jolt. Anko likes Aoba, enjoys his company, loves the way he starts talking like he's hot shit when he gets drunk but plays unassuming and humble hard in public. Aoba is a good comrade. Aoba is everyone's friend.
Anko hadn't realized that she was Aoba's friend, though.
"Sure, missions with Aoba are great," Anko says. "Intel mission?"
"Not quite," says Tsunade. She sighs. "The mission isn't with Aoba. It's for Aoba. An in-village assignment."
And that's not just irregular, that's alarming. But Anko is well trained; she only stands a little straighter and listens.
Aoba has had a traumatic experience. The details — anything Anko learns from him or works out on her own or overhears — are considered S-rank, which is why Anko is being assigned babysitting duty: he has information they need, so they can't just leave him alone until he can compartmentalize or go slowly enough to let him process, but Tsunade is "not in the habit of breaking our own people, if it can be helped," so Anko is going to help keep him together.
From the privacy seals to the mission rank to Tsunade's tone, everything about this mission is serious and important and entirely aside from Anko's spiteful desire to prove everyone wrong and be trustworthy and loyal... Tsunade wouldn't have pulled her from the Kurama girl to do this unless it was serious. As much as the Yakumo girl was kind of a fluff assignment while they decided what to do about the new information they've gained on the seal, Tsunade had been clear that Anko's real goal was to turn Yakumo into an asset and that consistency from her babysitter would be important.
Instead: Aoba and his S-rank secret. Tsunade must not be afraid of him letting much slip, since Anko is still a potential infosec security risk.
Before turning her lose to go looking after Aoba, Tsunade gives her some bizarre instructions:
Remind him of the time, the date, and the year.
Remind him that Nara Shikako is a genin.
Assure him that Nara Shikako is alive and well and that Hatake Kakashi is on his way to check on her and her team.
Anko isn't sure what to make of all of that... but it's not her job to make anything of it. Anko's job isn't to dig. Tsunade's got people on that already. Anko's job is to lead Aoba around the holes they leave until everything can be filled back in.
Tsunade dismisses her. Anko goes to buy dango and then hover around T&I and wait for Aoba to be done talking to Ibiki. She'll take him to lunch. She'll knock this mission out of the park.
Aoba spends the whole day with Ibiki — except for a short break at one, when Anko stops by.
"Ibiki could bring you food," she says, practically lounging on the briefing room table, "but he has terrible taste and I can't let you spend literally all day here. So buck up and come eat lunch with me! It's literally my job to make sure you get some sunlight and nutrients."
"I doubt that that was on the mission scroll," Aoba says.
Anko waves her hand dismissively. "Like there was actually a mission scroll! No, you rated verbal instructions only. You're a VIP, Aoba. I'm surprised you're still talking to peons like me 'n' Ibiki."
He doesn't feel like joking, and he doesn't feel like going out and looking at people and places that seem like ghosts, but... Aoba's lips quirk. "I feel it's my duty to give my time to the masses."
That draws a cackle out of Anko and she springs back to her feet. "The masses want to buy you yakitori and dango, so let's go." She holds a hand out to him, impatient.
And, well, who's he to stand between Anko and dango? Aoba is the one who told Tsunade he'd feel most comfortable, out of everyone currently available, with Anko looking out for him, watching out for him when he slips. She would have been near the top of the list even if everyone had been in village.
He holds out his hand, absolutely intending to make Anko haul him out of the chair he's been sitting in most of the morning, since his check up with Tsunade. Instead Anko grabs his whole arm and pulls, then links elbows with him while he's still off-balance.
"Did you really do all that paperwork I saw Ibiki carrying with your sunglasses on?" she asks, leading him out of the room.
It hadn't been paperwork, really, just Aoba writing and writing and writing in between sessions of follow-up questions from Ibiki. Still. "Yes."
"You're so lame. You're not supposed to wear your sunglasses inside," she says.
With good humor — this is an old routine of theirs, comfortable — Aoba shoots back, "Well, Mitarashi, you're supposed to wear more clothing outside, but I wasn't going to say anything about it."
They get yakitori. And dango. It's a day for food on skewers. Anko really does pay for it, and insists they eat it in the park and she tells him all about Kurama Unkai, the acting head of the Kurama clan, and how much she hates him and his gross, wrinkly face.
The last time he lived this day, he didn't go to the park. He didn't hear anything about the Kurama clan, let alone one of Anko's inspired, vicious dissections of why, exactly, this particular old man is the scum of the earth.
It doesn't keep him from checking his throat, it doesn't keep Shikako's voice from ringing in his head, and it doesn't keep everything from feeling slightly less real, but... it's good. It's getting there.
Anko returns him to T&I. "I'm going to go sleep in Ibiki's office or something, but I'll come collect you before you get buried alive in forms required in triplicate," she says, and considering Ibiki would never leave sensitive information in his office and that most people are too afraid to even knock on the door, Ibiki's office is probably the best place in the division to take a nap.
For this round of writing out paperwork, Aoba does actually take his sunglasses off. Eventually Ibiki appears, carrying two hot beverages and wearing his Anko-scowl that means Anko has either flouted common social convention, annoyed him, impressed him, or some combination thereof. One of the mugs turns out to be tea for Aoba.
Mint tea, specifically. Not Aoba's favorite.
Ibiki shrugs at him while he sips his own coffee, unapologetic. "Hokage-sama says no caffeine for at least the next week."
Aoba sighs, but wraps his hands around the mug anyway. It's not really about drinking it, anyway, although it will help clear the phantom taste of blood. It's mostly about the warm, immediate sensation of holding a drink. And the smell. Ibiki has more questions, and he's trying to keep Aoba grounded.
"And what about her foreign bingo book entries?" Ibiki asks, when they've gotten to that part of Shikako's stint in Intel."
"Well, they all still had her as a chūnin," Aoba says, with a good amount of humor. He lists all of the information he can remember from Cloud and Rock's Bingo Books, and when he goes through the skills listen in the Rock book, Ibiki frowns.
A serious frown. Displeased.
"Interrogation?" he asks.
Aoba shrugs. "I guess? I never saw her do it on our missions together."
There's a pause, while Ibiki mulls this over and (coincidentally and not at all to buy himself time, Aoba is sure) takes a sip of his coffee. For something to do, Aoba also takes a sip of his tea. It's fine. A little bitter, probably dried mint steeped too hot, but at least it tastes like something.
"Did I ever call her in for a talk?" Ibiki asks, like it's an idle, inconsequential question.
Aoba's eyebrows jump. He'd never put this together before. "Uh, yeah, the day the Books came out you called her away from her shift for awhile. She... said you gave her a tour. Also, the boys in the aviary swear — swore — would have sworn? Uh, they tried to haze her by having her deliver something to you and you... invited her into the department for a cup of tea."
Frighteningly enough, Ibiki actually looks pleased. Maybe even delighted. He asks, "Did she go to the special jōnin Bingo Book review?"
Aoba feels a real smile steal over his face because: "She did. I got all caught up talking to Tessen so she sat with you. And then, during the scar competition, you made a joke about getting a papercut and she was the only one who laughed. Ibiki, I think—"
At at moment, his mind working on a slightly different tangent, Aoba remembers what came after Ibiki's papercut joke and he... falters. On second thought, Aoba considers, the bitterness of the over-steeped tea really just accentuates the taste of blood in his mouth. He'll have to go back to just... clutching the mug for safety.
He tries to finish up what he was saying despite the small hitch in his words ("—I think you were friends," he manages.) but Ibiki isn't going to let that sort of thing go, of course.
Partially Ibiki is looking for information, but he's also trying to help Aoba work through things, and no one has ever worked through anything by avoiding it.
Ibiki doesn't ask, though, he just... looks at Aoba. He waits. Ibiki is a very good at his job.
"She showed us her injury from that mess with the Sound ninja," Aoba says, eventually, envisioning the way she'd pushed her sleeve up, the way Anko had admired it. "Bone spikes from that Kaguya they fought. Anko had acid spray burns. It came around to her again and... she won."
"She won?" Ibiki prompts.
"She pulled up her shirt in back and showed us where the sword entered," Aoba explains, and helpfully draws a line over his own heart. "A through-and-through. She was — she is thirteen. They were calling her Shikabane-hime, you know, it even made it into the Books. Maybe they won't, this time, if she doesn't drop dead in the Hokage's office."
"Tsunade isn't going to let that happen." Ibiki's tone is almost, almost gentle. Reassuring, but factual.
Aoba nods. "Shikako would probably argue that we should let it happen. She'd say... it had tangible benefits last time that will be hard to reproduce this time, and she came out of it just fine."
"Kakashi isn't going to let that happen," Ibiki says, and his tone is a little more dry.
It lets Aoba look up at him, wry smile covering up a grimace, hand on his throat and agree: "No, he won't. Not even if he has to fight Councilman Shimura himself."
"I think we'd all love to see that fight." Ibiki drains the last of his coffee.
Talking time is blessedly over, for now. Ibiki waves him back to his papers and Aoba goes gladly, writing down pages and pages of information that has nothing to do with Nara Shikako. It's a poor distraction, but it will have to do.
Hours later and after a few more rounds of gentle prying from Ibiki, Anko reappears to drag Aoba home. She talks, and talks, and talks, filling his ears with more gossip about the Kurama and complaints about the stall where she bought her vegetables this week and so on and so forth.
She only asks one question. When the sun is down, and the dishes are done, and Aoba is unearthing extra bedding for her for the couch, Anko takes it... but hesitates. And then she asks, "Do you want me to keep watch?"
Aoba isn't in danger. Aoba doesn't even really feel like he's in danger, except for the knowledge of the thing out there that he just barely escaped. They're in the middle of the village. There's no real reason to have a watch. But the way his room is set up, the best vantage point to keep watch from is the corner of the room that his bed is pressed in to. Aoba would benefit from having a comrade that close when he's falling asleep and waking up. Also, she likely took that nap earlier specifically preparing to offer this.
"I don't need it," Aoba says, honestly. "But it would be... good. If you don't mind."
"It's my job not to mind," Anko asserts. "C'mon." She flounces into his bedroom, the tail end of a blanket trailing out of her arms and fluttering behind her. They don't really need all that extra bedding, but Aoba isn't going to argue. He's so tired, and he needs to sleep somewhere he knows it's safe. Next to a watchful Mitarashi Anko is about the best he can do.
It takes Ino a full day to pull together information, and even then it's not much. Sasuke thanks her anyway, though, because... she tried. And he knows a little more than he knew before.
Still, in the end he only finds Yamashiro Aoba by accident — late afternoon outside a dango stall, he's standing with the proctor from the second round of the exams, Mitarashi Anko.
"I can't just have dango for every meal, Anko," Aoba is saying.
"Sure you can!" Anko says, slapping money down on the counter and placing her order — and probably Aoba's as well; she orders a lot of dango.
(Or, what Sasuke would consider a lot. Sasuke doesn't really like dango, so... maybe it's a normal amount?)
"Okay," Aoba acknowledges dryly, "but I don't want to."
"Tough, you said you didn't have a preference, again, so I got to choose, and this is what's happening."
"I said I didn't have an appetite—"
"—same thing!" Anko turns, hands on her hips, which accentuates things Sasuke tries not to look at. "If you're saying you finally want to make a choice, then we'll go get whatever you want! But if you're just complaining and have only gotten as far as 'not dango' then suck it up. I'm not picking for you again."
Aoba sighs, a ragged aggravated sound. He rubs his throat, which is looking a little red in a way it wasn't two days ago, although it doesn't otherwise look injured. The man behind the counter of the dango shop has their order ready at this point, and gets Anko's attention by clearing his throat.
This seems like a good time to interrupt.
"Excuse me, Yamashiro-san," Sasuke says.
Both of the special jōnin turn to look at him, although Anko quickly turns back to the dango stand to finish her business there. "Uchiha-san," Aoba says. "Can I help you?"
"I want to know why you were looking for my teammate, Nara Shikako, the other day," Sasuke says, firmly but trying to sound reasonable, and not demanding, and like the kind of person you'd want to tell things. "You left before I could ask why you were interested in where she was."
"That's not even any of your business," Anko says, holding her order of dango and leaning around Aoba to peer at him suspiciously. "How come it matters to you so much why someone would want to see her?"
"She's my teammate," Sasuke says.
"So?" Anko counters. "You'll have lots of teammates, kid. Anyway, how do you know it was anything? Maybe she borrowed a book from him or something."
Okay, it's not impossible that Shikako would trade books with a special jōnin. Who knows what she gets up to when Sasuke isn't watching her. But it's unlikely.
"You were in a rush," Sasuke says, directly to Aoba, almost as if Anko hadn't even spoken. "Like something was wrong. She's my teammate. I need to know."
Aoba's hand has drifted to his throat again, and Sasuke doesn't miss that, although he doesn't understand what it means. This close up, he can tell the irritation is probably just from Aoba touching his throat too much.
"You don't need to know," Aoba says.
"I do," Sasuke insists. Not knowing is practically killing him.
"No, you don't," Anko says, flatly, her hand coming down firmly on Aoba's shoulder, as if he needs the support. "Give it up, kid. C'mon, Aoba."
They shunshin away, and Sasuke can't follow.
Kakashi knows how to run. Kakashi knows how to bolt from one side of the country to the other while pacing himself. Kakashi rests only a few hours on his way to the Land of Rivers, and then only a little more when he begins to search for Naruto, Shikako, and Shikamaru.
He knows how Shikako and Naruto would prefer to traverse the northern edge of River, like that Shikako will insist on saying as far away from the border of the Land of Rain as is reasonable, no matter how far north they were in Wind. He also knows the kind of paths Shikaku or Asuma would prefer; Shikamaru has surely picked up their habits. They might also be moving under constraints of chakra exhaustion — if that part weren't likely to happen and important, Tsunade wouldn't have mentioned it — and that narrows things down further.
Naruto probably isn't chakra exhausted unless he summoned Gamabunta or something, and anything that would require that would have gotten a much more alarmed reaction out of Tsunade. So it's probably one or both of the Nara. Naruto has made excellent practice with his summoning contract, but Kakashi is pretty sure he doesn't have the rapport built up with the toads needed to get one of them to carry his teammates(s) for several days straight.
Neither of the Nara would want to be carried by clone for pretty much any distance except in dire circumstances. They must be walking. Kakashi and his dogs check bridges. He finds their trail. He finds them.
Before he even sees them, he knows from Pakkun that they're alive and none of them smell like they're in pain. Shikako really smells like blood, but... well, she's a little more vicious than Naruto and Shikamaru, and they're not exactly clean from this mission either, anyway. The blood is all old blood, though, by about three days. They're safe.
He catches up with them quickly because Shikako senses him coming and they stop to wait for him. it's late afternoon, well before when he'd expect the kids to make camp when they're trying to get home, but they look exhausted. Especially Shikako.
Shikako, in fact, looks terrible. Worse even than she looked after the second round of the chūnin exams. On her feet, still, but it's hard to say that that actually means anything when it comes to Nara Shikako. She walked home on single-digit chakra readings from that mess with the Sound ninja.
"Kakashi-sensei!" cries Naruto, overjoyed. He's missing his jacket — Shikako's got it. Weird. Unsettling.
"Yo," he says. Casually. He's already dismissed the pack; all of them are tired and deserve to rest. "Taking the scenic route home?"
"Shikako-chan is out of chakra," Naruto explains.
He'd guessed it from how she looks, but hearing it confirmed practically gives Kakashi a heart attack, although he doesn't so much as twitch outwardly. How had Tsunade known? What does it mean? These are questions Kakashi can't answer. But he can do as Tsunade has ordered. He can save Shikako from... whatever it is that's wrong, because surely it's not just chakra exhaustion.
She's breathing really carefully, very regularly, like she's focusing on it instead of just letting it happen. On the edge of a panic attack, maybe? It's hard to tell if she's masking her chakra from instinctual panic the way she had the night after the fight on the bridge in Wave or if she's just that low, but the rumors about how low she was when she came walking into the hospital at the end of July are probably overblown.
Shikako is probably hiding again... and now that Kakashi studies Naruto a little more carefully, Naruto looks a little less energetic than usual, too. And there's only one thing that really makes Uzumaki Naruto tired, that makes Shikako hide. Shikamaru's mouth is tense in a manner that on Shikaku means the man is very displeased.
"Because of a C-Rank?" Kakashi prods. "That's strange." But none of the kids rise to the bait and tell him. He's kind of proud, but mostly suspicious. His genin are supposed to tell him things. Maybe Shikamaru is being a bad influence.
(Maybe it was really actually that bad. So bad they can't speak of it. Kakashi understands that.)
"You're strange," Shikako accuses. Her voice is too quiet, like it was when they first met and she was still trying to fade into the background.
"I'm fine," she adds, which is the number one way to tell that she is not fine. Shikako's hunched her shoulders, and is looking a little pale. Her grip on the sleeves of Naruto's jacket looks a little tight.
"She needs to see Hokage-sama," Shikamaru interjects, flatly. He's carrying his own mission pack, and now that he notices that Kakashi sees that Shikako's is missing. Sealed away, probably.
"Well, then we'd better get going," Kakashi says, and smiles a bright smile that he doesn't mean. Shikako is alive, he's gotten here in time, but Kakashi isn't going to save her by half-measures or take any chances. Without waiting for Shikako to respond (argue) or anticipate (plan against) the necessary course of action, Kakashi maneuvers Shikako onto his back in a manner that has her automatically wrapping her arms around his neck and lets him hook his arms under her legs.
Piggyback complete.
(Kakashi learned this maneuver from Gai by having it used on him over and over again. It's impossible to resist. Useless to struggle. Truly the most dangerous grapple in Gai's entire repertoire.)
"Kakashi-sensei, I can walk," Shikako sighs into his neck. She's slumped against him, though, wrung out.
"Nope!" Kakashi says cheerfully, in a way he doesn't really feel. "We'll be moving too fast for you to walk." He turns to Naruto and Shikamaru. "I'm going to get Shikako back to Tsunade as fast as I can. We won't be stopping. If you can't keep up..." He hesitates.
"If we can't keep up we'll stick together," Naruto says, with his usual brand of sudden, surprising conviction. "Shikamaru and I can take care of each other if you've gotta go ahead with Shikako-chan."
Shikamaru nods in agreement and hikes his pack a little higher — except doing that means Kakashi can tell how light it is, and hear the rasp of paper from inside the bag when things are jostled. That's Shikako's pack. Shikamaru's must be the one sealed away.
Kakashi takes off before Shikako can argue anymore. Naruto and Shikamaru try to keep up, an effort that's helped by the fat that Kakashi has been running for days and has to pace himself if he wants to get to Konoha at all, but fall behind eventually.
Shikako falls asleep within a half hour of the run beginning, and Kakashi has to make sure she stays on his back with the careful application of chakra to stick her clothes to him. He's careful to keep his chakra from permeating her clothing, mindful of her hypersensitivity, and moves as smoothly as he can so that she can get some rest.