As my wallet became several ryo lighter and the stool under my bottom became several degrees warmer, I grew to regret my small-minded wish to leave the fence behind; The fence had been my savior. My defender. My metaphorical and literal defense against the revealing of painful truths and monetary insolvency.
Praise the Log… Wooden board. Chunk of dead tree. Patron deity of the Leaf and ninja not quick enough or smart enough to avoid that stab that would have taken their carotid without help.
Praise.
I sighed and continued to, politely, pull beef ramen into my mouth with the understated joy and quiet pleasure that came with good food after a bad day. Or a hard one. Or both. Both?
Yes.
Both.
For all involved. As was expected once the unexpected had happened.
Emotions and deep, personal wounds being aired in the open.
Very unexpected.
It just wasn't done.
Naruto, midway through his third and thankfully free bowl of miso, had his hair ruffled by the waitress. An encouraging word whispered into his ear. A napkin to wipe away the mess that came with you crying your heart out, snot and all.
Sasuke, who had clearly come here for the free food and no other reason, dipped his head lower into his collar and pretended he didn't see anything. Or hear anything. And that the tomatoes in his food were the only food worth having as he plucked them out of the noodles and broth with laser-like precision.
Kakashi had already eaten his entire bowl and I hadn't even seen him do it. Or how. Not that I'd been trying, already knowing what was under there, but it felt targeted this time; his mask and eyes were doing that thing he did when he wanted to emote a smile; we all had our ways of coping.
Emotional difficulties among ninja were normally very - private affairs. Heavily repressed. Buried under the greater part of your extant trauma which, when looked at from under the brutal light of even more brutal experience that often involved dead friends and family, seemed to not be as bad as you thought.
That wasn't true, of course. That wasn't true at all. I knew that. Couldn't do much about it. But I knew.
Wounds didn't heal if you didn't clean them out and put a bandage over them...but that was how it worked around here. If it wasn't a physical problem that could affect a mission, you ignored it. Talking was for people that weren't under orders to never speak about how they'd seen everyone they knew get turned inside out while going for groceries.
You dealt with it. You gained visible signs of instability, an inclination towards suicidal behavior and odd personality quirks, but you dealt with it. Unless you were Naruto. Who was already unstable. And whose odd quirk was talking about his problems and aspirations.
Like a healthy human being.
And not a shattered mass of emotional porcelain in the shape of a man.
What a weirdo.
I kept the next mouthful where it was for a while, just enjoying the moment. Sweet. Sour. More than just a hint of spice to warm my blood and partially make up for the difficult realities of my existence.
Good for him.
"Let's spar, Haruno."
I, mouth full of good food and warm feelings, choked.
Warm feelings were gone. Food was still here.
Food didn't want to be here.
"You've been holding back," the duck haired asshole continued without pause as I struggled not to embarrass myself in public. Into the bowl or down my front. If either happened I would never be able to show my face around here again. "How long?"
Naruto, like the messiah figure he was, gave me several solid thumps to my back instead of watching me die in front of him.
This was the man that would bring about nearly twenty years of peace in the nations. Not letting me die or socially destroy myself was a low bar to clear as to proving himself as the focus of a millennia old prophecy, but he'd cleared it.
And glared at Sasuke while doing it.
What an auspicious start to his legend. How bright.
How very like the next decade or so was going to be.
I pounded a green-coated fist against my chest to help drain the rest of the mess. Cleared my throat. Enjoyed the wonderful sensation of my lungs not being filled with near-boiling hot liquid.
"Haruno."
I held a finger up and took a deep breath, currently in no mood for Uchiha shenanigans. Or any shenanigans, Uchiha or otherwise. My meal had just been ruined and I had half a mind to punch him in the throat. "I'm in the middle of lunch."
"So?"
Three-quarters of a mind now. Getting this sort of rudeness after having bought him food was more than enough reason for me to give him a good knife hand across the Adam's apple. No one would blame me, as long as there was nothing permanent.
Hell, I could punch him through the counter in front of us and get nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
I took a long sip of my broth with a slice of egg, any politeness in me gone with an irritated slurp and a refusal to even acknowledge the boy while I wrestled with temptation and practicality.
Of course, practicality won out. As always. Irritating as it was.
Physical retribution would not go in my favor. That was just the truth. Not because I thought Sasuke would win in a surprise confrontation or anything like that. No. Of course not. Because Naruto would never forgive me if I destroyed his favorite food stall.
I needed that future righteous beating and friendship speech like Hinata needed to spend more time with her father.
…This problem could only be solved in one way I could think of. It stuck in my craw that I'd have to bend to his demands, but it was the only way I could think of to solve this problem.
"You know what? Sure. Why not?" I put my bowl down and spun to face the focus of my ire. The focus who was, currently, not looking nearly as self-assured as I'd have expected from someone that had demanded a match. "Let's trade some pointers. We can talk after."
That this was the most viscerally satisfying solution I could think of was just a coincidence.
My face began to ache.
I'd have to check on that.
Sasuke, not-so-subtly, leaned away from me.
"After you finish your meal, of course." I exhaled through my nose, missing the quiet; Sasuke, carefully, pulled his bowl closer. "You'll need the energy soon."
If we were going to fight, I wasn't going to be the only one doing it on a full stomach. It was only fair.
He was the last Uchiha and the inheritor of several hundred years of techniques and breeding.
I knew more than ten different ways to make someone projectile vomit.
It was only fair.
==========
This wasn't fair.
Sakura had a bloodline limit. She had to have one. And he had no idea what it was or what it could be.
Sasuke couldn't see where else that frigid, evil aura that Sakura sometimes exuded could come from if not a bloodline limit. That she was from a family of nobodies didn't matter. What else could it be if not that? A technique? A seal gone wrong? What could it have been?
It couldn't have been a genjutsu. Sasuke instantly discarded that idea out of hand as all of them, as a team, ambled onto the training ground. Sakura was completely hopeless at those. That wasn't a trick. That wasn't a fakeout. This was something that he was sure about like little else about her.
Sakura might have been capable of hiding her emotions and thoughts from almost everyone around her behind an emotionless wall, but Yamanaka disproved that by existing in her vicinity. What Haruno felt, the blonde acted on. She couldn't have faked how hard she was trying to console the other, much quieter kunoichi over her failure if she'd tried.
If not for that, he would have never been able to guess that Sakura had cared at all.
That was true of a lot of things when it came to Sakura. She kept to herself. You didn't pay attention to her if you wanted to know something. You paid attention to her friend. Or some people did. He preferred not to, personally.
It gave Yamanaka ideas if and whenever they made eye contact.
… That didn't matter. Sasuke felt safe leaving Genjutsu out as an option. It couldn't be any of the other options either. He was sure of that; this wasn't the first time he'd felt this evil coming from her. It had never felt so hateful before, yes...but, there were times over the years while they were in class together, times where there had been a sickly slick feel to the air that stuck to him.
Tacky ink between his fingers. Ice down the back of his shirt. Dark, green and empty whirlpools buried deep in a face as hard and unforgiving as stone; The smell of old meat and disinfectant at the edge of his senses, like that one time he'd forgotten to pay the electric bill when he'd been younger and everything in his fridge had gone off.
Or that cat he'd found under the porch.
Or-
Sasuke pushed that last thought away. He didn't need to remember that.
He'd never forget the smell.
No one else had said anything about it when it had come up. No one had even implied that they'd noticed something strange about Sakura during those times... So neither had he. He'd ignored it. Simple as that.
What else could he have done? It wasn't as if he had any proof that it wasn't just his imagination.
Not until today.
Uzumaki had felt it too. He hadn't said what he'd felt, but Sasuke knew. The dead last's tan had bled out of his skin like still runny paint on a canvas. And he'd been quiet for longer than Sasuke had thought he was capable of.
A whole minute.
He'd thought that was impossible before today. And he knew how it had happened.
That power of Sakura's was real. Those feelings had been real.
… Sasuke would be lying if he said he wasn't looking forward to getting payback for all of the cold sweats and nervous shivers. All of the spars where she'd put in a token effort to beat him before giving up and doing whatever it was she did with Ino.
For hitting him with that because he'd suggested that she cut her hair. And again because he'd asked for a spar.
What the hell had that been about?
He'd have to ask after he made her eat the dirt.
"So. We're here, my cute little genin." Kakashi's long ambling walk came to a stop in the middle of the field. It was the first noise he'd made other than those strange giggles as he'd flipped through his book. The book he'd just snapped closed and stuffed into a pocket to give Sakura and him a once over. "You ready?"
Sasuke nodded. "Yes."
"No one needs to use the restroom?" Kakashi gave his cheek a listless scratch. "Anyone need to let their meals settle? Or, you know…anything?" He hooked a thumb towards the nearby treeline. "We can wait. Take your time. I've got some reading material if you need it."
Sasuke scowled. He wasn't a child. "No. I'm fine."
Sakura's head began to turn in his direction and he couldn't help but tense, the muscles in his arms and legs ready to explode into motion; fingers twitching, curled and ready for him to let loose a great fireball in the kunoichi's face before she could attack.
He began to sweat again as the blood-red bow that was currently sitting at her neck bounced and shifted.
She faced him.
…And nothing happened. Nothing at all.
This time, this time, he found himself able to breathe without issue. Without the feeling of vertigo or the urge to fall to his knees as his legs lost all strength; Her eyes weren't empty, merciless pits of eerie green light. The bright whites and pinks of her qipao hadn't washed out and turned a bloody, flowery gray. Her hair no longer bristled with needles and her slender fingers no longer looked like spider legs.
And the cold was gone.
It had been for a while. He just hadn't noticed. He'd been so on edge and...
What a dangerous bloodline that was.
She blinked at him while he was still off-balance and gave him a nod back. Sakura then walked away from him and around Kakashi, that heavy braid of hers unraveling smoothly from her shoulder, taking her bow with it with a hiss of silk against silk as she vanished behind their teacher. "I guess I'm ready too."
"Really? You're both ready? You're sure?" Kakashi put his hands into his pockets and let out a tired sigh. "I mean, it's been a long day."
…Sakura was right.
Kakashi-sensei was kind of an asshole.
"No shit it's been a long day! And that's because of you, sensei!" Naruto called out from his spot, sitting up against a tree. "You and that stupid stuffed dog!"
Sasuke had to agree. He hated it, agreeing with Naruto over anything, but he had to agree. Fuck that stuffed dog.
They'd been hearing about that fucking dog for an entire week already, when Kakashi wasn't making up stories about helping old ladies with their groceries or fighting ninja squirrels, and Sasuke was sick of it. He'd been sick of it when he'd been forced to save it from Naruto's death trap and he hadn't changed his mind about it since.
And Sakura had said, not implied, that this would be something they were just going to have to live with for as long as Kakashi was their teacher too.
Damn it.
She'd taught him more than Kakashi had so far.
Getting to chunin was going to be hell.
"The dog isn't stupid," Sakura interrupted with some menace to her tone that had him putting his hands up once more. No chill, but undeniable menace. "And they're right. We're here. Let's get this over with, sensei."
"If you're sure." The older ninja took his time putting his hand up, eyes narrowed cheerfully. "You're all sure?"
"Yes!" Team seven collectively roared as one.
"You don't have to yell. The youth these days..." He dropped his hand before Sasuke made up his mind as to whether that great fireball he'd saved up for Sakura could be put to better use. "Start!"
Kakashi disappeared in a swirl of leaves. A swirl that was instantly displaced and scattered before they'd even had time to begin to settle as something ploughed through them.
Fast.
Sasuke was on the farthest opposite end of the field from Sakura before that thought had even finished forming; he was just able to see the log he'd left behind turn into a cloud of splinters and dust.
That and Sakura's hair swinging back into place behind her, tip dragging in the dirt as it shed its length and weight to become something more manageable. Something that reached down to her ankles instead of being three times as long as she was tall and fifty times as dense.
Sakura knew the strangest jutsu.
That was yet another thought that didn't have the time to form to completion before she was coming at him at a dead run, stance near parallel to the ground as her hands flickered and the space between them was filled with shuriken.
No banter. No sizing him up. Right to business... Her jutsu wasn't the only thing that was strange about her.
Not that he had room to talk when it came to banter. Banter found itself taking a backseat as he found himself forced to dodge once more, a rolling flip to his right that left him with ruffled clothing instead of bloody… All debilitating strikes. Those had all been debilitating strikes.
Tendons. Arteries. Major muscle groupings. Fight enders all on their own if any of them had hit.
And none of that was important. They were just a distraction. A distraction, and Sakura's attempt to hold onto the initiative. To keep up the pressure and not give him the time to throw out a jutsu.
Most of his repertoire needed some form of stability before they could be used. The Great Fireball. The Phoenix Flower. A stable position on the ground or-
Sakura slid to a rough stop, her toes and the nails of her left hand digging into the dirt.
Sasuke, brows furrowed in confusion, felt a tug at his clothing.
The fingers of Sakura's right hand gleamed, lines of light extending from them to somewhere behind him.
Sasuke's eyes widened.
She closed her hand and pulled.
A log slammed into the nearest tree with a crunching bang, throwing pieces of wood in all directions as what looked like half of a roll of ninja wire crushed and twisted it into a mangled wreck.
Sasuke, once again at the farthest end of the field from Sakura, took the time Sakura spent standing up to catch his breath. And to take stock of his chakra reserves.
They could have been better. Much better. It wasn't a mystery why that was.
She'd made him use a kawarimi. Medium-ranged. Again.
And she'd made him do it, again, with his own damn technique. The one he'd only ever done once... Or had tried to do. He'd just thought it up a week ago. And he'd never got to finish setting it up before Kakashi had punched him into the tree he'd tried to tie Kakashi to.
How had Haruno figured it out before he had? How had she done it so quickly, with so little setup?
When did she find the time to do so while laying on the ground for hours, motionless, while Uzumaki and him climbed trees?
Sasuke clenched his jaw, kunai spinning out into his palm as the pink-haired girl finished her ascent; hair as thick as his wrist slithered across the dirt, ending just below her knees as she pulled a kunai of her own.
What was she doing? What was the angle here?
Where had all this been when they'd been in the academy?
"That would have been better if I was any good with lightning jutsu. More useful." Sakura broadcasted smoothly, kunai tip under her nails as she cleaned them of dirt. "Good for incapacitating a capture, as long as you're willing to cut them down after. Just a thought."
Sasuke gave the maimed piece of wood and the tree it was wrapped around a thoughtful look from the corner of his eye. He'd been thinking about using fire instead...but that wasn't a bad idea.
As long as you ignored the part where you had to cut the wire. That wasn't so good. It would have been easier to pull the entire tree up instead...and was she trying to distract him?
He widened his stance and put his hands up, eyes moving and ears open for whatever new trick she'd thought up.
"I appreciate the inspiration you gave me, Sasuke. Truly. And I apologize." Sakura admitted that she'd taken the idea from him without visible thought or shame; the first was a lie. It was Sakura. The second…sounded about right. Ino had never given cause for him to believe that was the case. "I couldn't resist."
Of course not.
"Sorry, huh?" Sasuke grunted as she began to make her way to him, kunai still digging in careless contrast to her steps. "Why don't you come over here and prove it then?"
"What do you think I'm doing?" Sakura took another step. "We can talk it out, I'm sure."
It was only Sasuke's wariness that saved him when Sakura's hair, of its own accord, attempted to crush his foot.
There had been almost no warning.
One second it had been limp. Swaying slightly in the breeze that ran through the clearing; her bow rustling innocently. The next it had grown several feet longer and had struck out at him like a snake in ambush, swaying with intent, just barely missing him when he jumped out of the way; one of his kunai leaving his hand to bat hers out of the air as it flew out of a blinding cloud of soil and uptorn grass.
He didn't stand still after that. He wasn't nearly insane enough for that, not after what had just happened. He kept moving, keeping the dust between her and him as best as he was able while his fingers did their work and his chest filled with a familiar fire.
Finally.
He was proven right to have done what he had when her hair whipped through where his chest would have been, yet another hit that would have ended the match and several of his ribs.
He sucked in a breath, as much air as would fit filling his lungs to stoke the flames. Then he exhaled as hard as he could, forcing every flicker and spark out through his mouth in his very own cloud that subsumed Sakura's as a roiling orb of flame.
Great Fireball.
This time, Sakura was the one that was forced to dodge. Her hair retracted even faster than it had extended with an almost reptilian hiss, her escape a hurried one. Nearly frantic as her feet dug divots into the earth, her hand springboarding her above him in the same motion keeping it from being completely undignified.
Her intent was obvious. Another strike with that hair. But...
"Mistake!"
A log found itself split in two and he was where he needed to be.
He was more than quick enough to get into her sphere before she could recover from that miss, fingers reaching out to grasp for the base of her hair. To find himself looking into Sakura's eyes just above his, unworried and unblinking as his kunai came closer to her neck.
"Mistake."
Her hands clamped down around his arm like a vice and Sasuke felt his chances at a quick victory slip away.
"KICK HIS ASS!" Naruto hollered.
Sakura kicked her legs out, shifting her center of gravity and herself out of the way of his kunai by using his arm as her fulcrum; her platform that was forced to spin with her as he switched his blade to his free hand, this time to stab at her before she pulled his arm out at the shoulder.
Sounded like she'd heard Naruto.
Sakura let go and jumped away with one last twist before he could make her bleed, leaving future bruises down to the muscle behind.
He knew how that felt and this was it.
"How many tricks do you have in reserve, Haruno?" Sasuke grunted and flexed his hand as a test. A sharp pain shot up his arm and he sucked in a breath. He could move it without stiffness but it wasn't going to be fun, now or later. "How many did you use up to hound me like this?"
She couldn't have that much more.
"What sort of ninja would I be if I answered that, Uchiha?" Her hair slipped a kunai into her hand, one of those that had fallen nearby; that was at least one more trick. "Don't be silly."
It had been a silly question. But he'd asked it because he wanted to know. "You don't know if you don't ask."
Sakura, in a shocking display of emotion, narrowed her eyes in amusement. "We've learned something today." She leaned her head back just in time for his fist to whiff past her face. "And talking isn't a free action. Good job."
She then coughed, her eyes popping open with surprise as she took a spinning backhand to the floating ribs on the rebound, making her stumble to the side in a late attempt to roll with it.
He'd traded power for speed to get that. He'd been out of position. His stance was weak and a full turn would have given her the chance to avoid it. That had been more of a push than it had been a punch.
Sakura stumbled right into his knee, the sound and feel of bone colliding against bone filling him with a warmth that not even a fireball could compare to.
This. This was where the tides turned.
Haruno wasn't as invincible as she played herself up to be. The heel to her forehead she got that sent her rolling when he pushed himself off with that knee and twisted, doing something very similar to what she'd done to him, was a quick and much needed reminder.
Sakura gradually rolled to a stop.
Sasuke held his fingers up to his lips, ready to fire on her at the first sign of movement that wasn't a sign of surrender.
Sakura, gradually, began to melt into the ground.
Sasuke stopped breathing for a second. "What the fu-?"
A pair of hands grabbed his ankles.
He never did get to finish that sentence. Him being pulled into the dirt all the way up to his neck kept that from happening. That and Sakura pulling herself out of the ground like she was fighting her way up and out of a pond, right in front of his face.
Just...what?
"Was I - fighting a clone this whole time?" Sasuke wheezed as Sakura took a seat right next to his head, her hair momentarily tickling his nose. "What the fuck, Haruno?"
Naruto cheered off in the distance.
Fucker.
"I switched out at the same time as your second kawarimi, actually. So just half the time; You're better than me at taijutsu by far. Of course I wasn't there for when you got in close." She gave his head a gentle pat. He wasn't reassured. "You really should learn how to deal with things like this." The next pat of her hand was slightly harder than necessary. "The things I could do if I was an enemy ninja… Or part of your fanclub."
God, no.
He'd bite his tongue first.
"Aren't we all glad that you're a loyal ninja and adherent to the Will of Fire? And not cannon fodder? That's just - great." Kakashi plodded over to them, taking his time as always while Sakura continued to muss up Sasuke's hair. "Are you two done?"
Sasuke was of two minds right then. The first told him to ask for a rematch. The second told him to-
"I haven't taught him how to pull himself free yet. So, yes."
… Deal with it for now, because she was the only one taking the time to teach him anything new these days.
"Unless he hasn't learned his lesson about not bothering people when they're eating, of course."
Sasuke tried to turn his head to give her an incredulous look. Failed and put a crick in his neck, but kept up the look anyway. "Did you humiliate me in front of our Jounin-sensei (and Naruto) over food?"
"Ninja will humiliate you over less," Sakura didn't disagree.
"Again. Sakura. What the fuck?"
He'd sworn more today than he had in a week. At someone that wasn't Naruto, that is.
The situation warranted it.
"She's right, Sasuke." Kakashi chimed in. "Ninja are astoundingly petty creatures. They don't need much of an excuse to embarrass you at the best of times." Kakashi turned to Sakura. "We'll be doing taijutsu practice all this week."
Sakura went still.
"I have some pointers of my own to give. Of course, if my stuffed dog were to reappear somewhere, I'd be far too busy to think about fitting taijutsu into my newly busy schedule..."
That fucking dog.