Categories > Anime/Manga > Naruto > Broken In
Disclaimer: "Naruto" © Masashi Kishimoto.
Genre: Angst
Rating: Pg 13
Pairing(s): Kakashi/Sakura
Summary: As Team 7 disintegrates, the two members still in Konoha are left to contemplate the events that have come to pass.
Author's Notes: The 'Time-jump' scenario is wonderful to work with. Nobody knows what happened during it. :)
Broken In
Hatake Kakashi is going insane.
He has yet to have it fully diagnosed, but he does not like hospitals - let alone Tsunade. In fact, he doesn't much like the Sannin at all. Except perhaps Jiraiya. Jiraiya is the one who provides him with the infamous orange cover to hide behind, the smut he buys not so much to read but simply to feel a little less alone. When he comes upon situations he is not able to deal with (usually the ones that do not involve killing), Kakashi disappears under a façade of paperback novels. A mask upon a mask. A layer upon a layer.
Yet...he does not fight against the realization, for insanity is the one thing he can count on. It has hounded him, more faithful than his dogs, and over the years it has developed into a twisted game. To see which will come first, his death or...something else.
But on occasion, when he wakes up in the mornings, he likes to kid himself that everything will be alright. That his world is not a hell-hole of fucked up promises. That Sasuke never ran away. That Naruto never left. Then he swings his legs over the side of the bed and the tinkling of the dog tags at his throat tells him otherwise.
-
Haruno Sakura is going insane.
Tsunade has already noticed her steady deterioration during training sessions. In the way her hands shake when they have not yet started to spar, the way she shivers and not a leaf is stirring in the topmost branches of the tree standing just outside the Godaime's open office window. Sakura notices her stares but smiles and tells her nothing is wrong then demurely clasps the offending appendages behind her back.
She has not slept for more than three hours at a time - she can't. She still has to catch up to her boys. She wants them to be proud of her, proud of what she has accomplished. The more she shakes, the more she no longer needs them to watch over her.
She is cool during the human autopsy Tsunade watches her perform - slicing into specimens that are not as preserved as they should be, each cut, each incision letting out another hiss of putrid stink, another drop of blackened blood. She is able to break, heal, and break again the limbs of missing-nins under Ibiki's merciless instruction. But in her own room, swathed in her own colors, her hands still tremble.
Sakura lies to herself sometimes. She likes to pretend her universe is still whole and impregnable. That she and Ino still bicker over Sasuke. That Naruto is still there to infuriate her. Then her mother knocks on the door to tell her dinner is ready and it's such a normal/ /action that she disintegrates into quiet sobs.
-
Today is the first time in months Sakura has seen her sensei. He saunters past her in the bustling street and she is hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia so strong she can feel her fingers begin to quiver. For the first time in months she is reminded of her teammates and the fact that she forgot them, for even such a little while, /hurts/. She tails Kakashi with much trouble. These past weeks being re-enlisted into the ANBU has done much for sharpening his (though neither will admit it) softened skills.
He does not seem surprised when he turns around on his doorstep to find her calmly standing there. He smiles, so damn familiarly, with only that one eye of his and she accepts his invitation to come in. Sakura sits at the table while her sensei prepares two cups of tea. They sit, steaming mugs in hand, and neither says a thing. Time melts away yet both do not begrudge the silence. For the first time in months, they are able to lose themselves completely in their thoughts knowing another - just across the table littered with bills, kunai, a fragmented flowerpot - is in the same precarious state of mind. After about an hour of meditative stillness, she starts to fidget absentmindedly with her teabag. Right, left, right, left, unable to stop. The Copy Nin glances over and abruptly, the tranquility becomes a suffocating blanket until she lays a gloved hand over his larger one and everything goes downhill from there.
-
It is early morning when Sakura leaves Kakashi's apartment. She finds it ironic how the first time she spends the night in a man's bed, it is her teacher's - even more so that they do not do anything. The prospect of sex is not intimidating in the least to both of them; shinobi (especially kunoichi) rarely stay virgins for long, but it is the very idea of such an act with one they know intimately. Sex is not terrifying. It is sex with someone you know that is so frightening for the Hatake prodigy and protégé.
So when Sakura finds herself in her sensei's bed after a rather heated, rather enjoyable set of kisses, she looks down and jade green locks with mismatched blue and he panting, her breaths small gasps and the Sharingan is whirling lazily in impudent opposition to the heavy, heady atmosphere and Sakura remembers to breathe - breathe - then she utters a muffled, strange noise and Kakashi all but pushes her off and they lie side by side on his rumpled bed and they breathe, really /breathe/, because they know that this is wrong, /wrong, wrong/.
They lie there for hours, neither moving or sleeping, simply thinking. The alarm clock on his nightstand beeps suddenly into the darkness, bursting into their hazy minds and jolting them from their numbness. She blinks rapidly as he stretches and both of them climb shakily out of bed. They do not look at each other. They do not need to look to tell each other that both their worlds are falling apart. That whatever glue that holds what's left of Team 7 together is slowly decaying. If there even is a Team 7 at all anymore.
-
It is early morning when Sakura leaves Kakashi's apartment. She lets herself quietly out the front door and that afternoon, when she passes her sensei in the street, they look to each other and he winks in that nonchalant way of his as she bares her teeth in a smile-grimace and that moment is over in a split-second and she cannot explain why it happened in the first place.
Then Naruto returns with all his bullheaded ways and she knows.
Genre: Angst
Rating: Pg 13
Pairing(s): Kakashi/Sakura
Summary: As Team 7 disintegrates, the two members still in Konoha are left to contemplate the events that have come to pass.
Author's Notes: The 'Time-jump' scenario is wonderful to work with. Nobody knows what happened during it. :)
Broken In
Hatake Kakashi is going insane.
He has yet to have it fully diagnosed, but he does not like hospitals - let alone Tsunade. In fact, he doesn't much like the Sannin at all. Except perhaps Jiraiya. Jiraiya is the one who provides him with the infamous orange cover to hide behind, the smut he buys not so much to read but simply to feel a little less alone. When he comes upon situations he is not able to deal with (usually the ones that do not involve killing), Kakashi disappears under a façade of paperback novels. A mask upon a mask. A layer upon a layer.
Yet...he does not fight against the realization, for insanity is the one thing he can count on. It has hounded him, more faithful than his dogs, and over the years it has developed into a twisted game. To see which will come first, his death or...something else.
But on occasion, when he wakes up in the mornings, he likes to kid himself that everything will be alright. That his world is not a hell-hole of fucked up promises. That Sasuke never ran away. That Naruto never left. Then he swings his legs over the side of the bed and the tinkling of the dog tags at his throat tells him otherwise.
-
Haruno Sakura is going insane.
Tsunade has already noticed her steady deterioration during training sessions. In the way her hands shake when they have not yet started to spar, the way she shivers and not a leaf is stirring in the topmost branches of the tree standing just outside the Godaime's open office window. Sakura notices her stares but smiles and tells her nothing is wrong then demurely clasps the offending appendages behind her back.
She has not slept for more than three hours at a time - she can't. She still has to catch up to her boys. She wants them to be proud of her, proud of what she has accomplished. The more she shakes, the more she no longer needs them to watch over her.
She is cool during the human autopsy Tsunade watches her perform - slicing into specimens that are not as preserved as they should be, each cut, each incision letting out another hiss of putrid stink, another drop of blackened blood. She is able to break, heal, and break again the limbs of missing-nins under Ibiki's merciless instruction. But in her own room, swathed in her own colors, her hands still tremble.
Sakura lies to herself sometimes. She likes to pretend her universe is still whole and impregnable. That she and Ino still bicker over Sasuke. That Naruto is still there to infuriate her. Then her mother knocks on the door to tell her dinner is ready and it's such a normal/ /action that she disintegrates into quiet sobs.
-
Today is the first time in months Sakura has seen her sensei. He saunters past her in the bustling street and she is hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia so strong she can feel her fingers begin to quiver. For the first time in months she is reminded of her teammates and the fact that she forgot them, for even such a little while, /hurts/. She tails Kakashi with much trouble. These past weeks being re-enlisted into the ANBU has done much for sharpening his (though neither will admit it) softened skills.
He does not seem surprised when he turns around on his doorstep to find her calmly standing there. He smiles, so damn familiarly, with only that one eye of his and she accepts his invitation to come in. Sakura sits at the table while her sensei prepares two cups of tea. They sit, steaming mugs in hand, and neither says a thing. Time melts away yet both do not begrudge the silence. For the first time in months, they are able to lose themselves completely in their thoughts knowing another - just across the table littered with bills, kunai, a fragmented flowerpot - is in the same precarious state of mind. After about an hour of meditative stillness, she starts to fidget absentmindedly with her teabag. Right, left, right, left, unable to stop. The Copy Nin glances over and abruptly, the tranquility becomes a suffocating blanket until she lays a gloved hand over his larger one and everything goes downhill from there.
-
It is early morning when Sakura leaves Kakashi's apartment. She finds it ironic how the first time she spends the night in a man's bed, it is her teacher's - even more so that they do not do anything. The prospect of sex is not intimidating in the least to both of them; shinobi (especially kunoichi) rarely stay virgins for long, but it is the very idea of such an act with one they know intimately. Sex is not terrifying. It is sex with someone you know that is so frightening for the Hatake prodigy and protégé.
So when Sakura finds herself in her sensei's bed after a rather heated, rather enjoyable set of kisses, she looks down and jade green locks with mismatched blue and he panting, her breaths small gasps and the Sharingan is whirling lazily in impudent opposition to the heavy, heady atmosphere and Sakura remembers to breathe - breathe - then she utters a muffled, strange noise and Kakashi all but pushes her off and they lie side by side on his rumpled bed and they breathe, really /breathe/, because they know that this is wrong, /wrong, wrong/.
They lie there for hours, neither moving or sleeping, simply thinking. The alarm clock on his nightstand beeps suddenly into the darkness, bursting into their hazy minds and jolting them from their numbness. She blinks rapidly as he stretches and both of them climb shakily out of bed. They do not look at each other. They do not need to look to tell each other that both their worlds are falling apart. That whatever glue that holds what's left of Team 7 together is slowly decaying. If there even is a Team 7 at all anymore.
-
It is early morning when Sakura leaves Kakashi's apartment. She lets herself quietly out the front door and that afternoon, when she passes her sensei in the street, they look to each other and he winks in that nonchalant way of his as she bares her teeth in a smile-grimace and that moment is over in a split-second and she cannot explain why it happened in the first place.
Then Naruto returns with all his bullheaded ways and she knows.
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