Chapter Text
There was a rushing noise in her ears—gentle and repetitive, like the waves on a beach. She realized it was the sound of her breathing. The rushing noise grew louder with each step she took, coalescing into a voiceless roar.
Her mouth parted.
The counter went off.
Hands, feet, eyes, the Voice growled, watch them—
The shrill screech of chidori filled her ears. Her body moved instinctively, twisting to the side.
Time seemed to slow as his body brushed by hers. A hand, lit by lightning, tore through the air exactly where she had been. Even as his momentum carried him forward, his eyes instantly located her in his peripheral, his head already beginning to turn.
Adrenaline surged belatedly through her veins, but with dizzying speed, as though to make up for the delay. She grabbed the outstretched wrist and leaned back, muscles tensing to whip him around her into one of the stadium’s walls. Mismatched eyes glowered at her as he went soaring through the air. Just as it seemed as though he might barrel into the stadium’s wall, he executed a mid-air flip and landed feet first on the side of the stadium.
I won’t abide by a repeat of that time, the Voice seethed. LET ME OUT!
Sakura snarled, muscles rippling as she crouched in preparation for Kakashi’s counterattack.
He landed with a thunderous boom, the earth beneath her groaning before mutating into a wall that rushed toward her. Sakura dug her heels into the ground and sprinted toward the wall. She broke through it, then ducked just in time as a blast of water hurtled where her head had been.
When the blast sputtered out, she lifted the bottom of her mask and roared, flames erupting from her mouth. A combatting flame battered against her a second later. He had copied and returned the same jutsu.
Her feet skidded back. The skin on her forearms began to blister underneath the combined heat of their respective fire jutsu. In mutual recognition of their stalemate, they both released the jutsu.
Finding him as uninjured as she was (and not quite surprised by it), Sakura’s brows furrowed.
She shifted left. He mirrored the motion. She was vaguely aware that at some point, she had begun grinning like a lunatic beneath her mask, high on the rush of challenge.
She snapped her head to either side, cracking her neck, as she brought her fists up, tight and close.
She could feel the Voice humming in the back of her mind.
Her right foot slid forward in the dirt and then sharply to the right, stabilizing herself as her fist flew to block his first strike. She was already pivoting as his wrist flicked to send the heel of his palm into her larynx. She evaded this, but caught the second fist just barely on her shoulder.
Sakura recoiled and sprung forward in the same breath, forearm locking with forearm, breath harsh against each other’s faces. She shifted an elbow to deflect a fist, only for that fist to twist and fly dangerously close to her side.
Her eyes narrowed as she realized the advantage of his sharingan. It wasn’t that he moved faster than her, but that he could see everything. He could predict from the minutest twitches in her muscles her next movement.
The sharingan isn’t the byakugan, the Voice reminded her in a hiss.
This was…true.
She let him sink a blow deep into her core and used his proximity to wrap steely hands on his upper arms. Their eyes met as she twisted, hair flying in wild disarray. She settled with a solid thud on the ground behind him. He tensed instantly, with animalistic responsiveness. She couldn’t see his face, but she could guess the look on it now.
Before he could pivot, she pressed a hand firmly on the center of his back. This way, she would be able to sense any motions he telegraphed.
When he counterattacked this time, Sakura adjusted herself seamlessly. But as she loaded her fist with chakra, he was able to detect the motion of her strike by virtue of the same means, from just one measly hand on his back, and shifted by a hair to avoid the contact. Her fingers sunk into open air.
Sakura scowled.
There were few words required to describe what transpired next: they proceeded, ultimately, to do their utmost to beat the shit out of each other.
She fought with rounded shoulders, quick and brutish, while he weaved with more elegance, with, perhaps, a greater aestheticism in the eyes of the audience, through his attacks. He had an edge on her in terms of experience—but being the underdog for most of the past decade had hardened her against intimidation, had made her belligerent, scrappy, and mean.
Her attention was consumed entirely by the task of trying to tear him apart, so much so that Time seemed to become an abstract concept—until the counter returned to Sakura’s line of sight. Her eyes widened as she read the numbers there.
Kakashi took advantage of this moment of distraction. An elbow snapped brutally into her cheekbone. Her head recoiled back as she hissed.
In a last ditch effort to get even, Sakura launched forward with a burst of speed. She wasn’t surprised to find the path in front of her fist instantly cleared. She hadn’t really expected it to work—but…she also hadn’t thought beyond that.
More specifically, she forgot about the chakra continuing to build in her fist, growing exponentially stronger each passing second, until it was too late. It was too late to stop herself. Her momentum carried her forward; to dampen the effect of the blow, she buried her hand deep into the ground.
At first, she thought she was safe.
Then— the stadium began to rumble. Just as the counter went off at the ten minute mark, a large crack appeared where her fist had struck.
Her mouth twisted apologetically.
It, sadly, didn’t stop there.
As she gaped, the crack rapidly grew, stretching along the stadium and through the seating. Shinobi shunshined away from the area as the entire side of the stadium split, infrastructure collapsing. When the debris settled on the ground and the structure seemed to stabilize, the ANBU were utterly silent.
Their commander seemed similarly speechless. He had turned to face the destroyed side of the stadium. His assistant quivered at his side.
“It does not appear as though we will be able to finish the evaluations today, sir,” the assistant said nervously.
This was...decidedly not the ‘above reproof’ behavior she had been aiming for. Sakura grimaced.
The commander did not respond. The assistant leaned forward, tentative. “As for, um, Salamander. She won her first spar and just tied her second. With the, uh, copy-nin. Shall I arrange for her to meet her team today…as the hokage instructed?”
The commander straightened all at once and then turned viciously in her direction. “Fine,” he said with vehemence.
Sakura blinked. Fine?
“Tidy yourself up, Salamander, before you enter my office.” He shifted to face the rest of the captains, voice low, seething growl. “Evaluations will be continued once reparations have been made. Get out.”
Her mouth turned down. Disciplinary action, then.
The other captains moved immediately. He snapped his fingers at her when she failed to comply instantly as well.
She made an about-face and exited through the back of the stadium. Adrenaline still buzzed through her, her skin still prickled, like she was having an allergic reaction. Her pace quickened.
There were locker rooms at the back of the stadium that hadn’t been updated in recent years and were thus less frequently used. She headed straight toward them.
The steel door squeaked unforgivingly as she forced it open. She went to the sink and twisted the tap, thrusting her hands—which seemed to burn with heat—beneath the cool water. She inhaled and exhaled as slowly as she could, trying to force the heart rate thundering in her ears down.
Contrarily, her heartbeat seemed to grow even louder and quicker in her ears.
A metallic squeal rang behind her—the door opening to admit someone else. Her body reacted immediately, without conscious thought.
They met like an avalanche: with senseless, destructive force. His fingers curved around the muscle of her thighs, driving her back. She slammed against the counter and then onto it.
His mouth sank down on hers, hard. And then—then—
Hunger devoured every inch of her, until she couldn’t tell if she was the thing being devoured or the thing doing the devouring. She pulled him impossibly tighter to herself, as though through sheer determination she might be able to meld him to her—because then, possibly, she might stop wanting him, like he was something she was somehow, perversely, missing.
Her fingers knotted in his hair and yanked his head back. His eyes angled down at her, mouth contorted.
She had been backed all the way into the mirror. She straightened now, pushing forward. His body—he had been bent over her, almost bearing down on her—flexed with hers, straightening as well. Their ragged breaths filled the communal bathroom.
Sakura’s gaze flicked back up to catch his. He tensed against her, testing the strength of her hold. Her eyes narrowed.
She pressed her lips into his throat. His sharingan spun dizzyingly in response.
Desire boiling in her veins, she slid upward, to the place where his jaw met his neck, then brushed softly against his lips, careful, controlled. Because there was something delicious, she was finding, about the torture of holding back, something blissful and painful that made it all the better.
Her breath rattled in her chest.
A soft, percussive noise sounded behind the door, like the contact of a palm against the metal surface. She yanked herself away just in time, pulling her mask down over her face.
The figure entered just as Sakura walked swiftly past her to the door, head bowed.
Fuck. Fuck.
Her face burned as she walked blindly down the hall. The doors passed by her in a blur. She stopped only when she heard a squeak emerge from a few feet ahead of her. Sakura stiffened as her gaze landed on the commander's assistant.
His eyes were round with relief. “I was looking all over for you! He’s not pleased that you’ve made him wait.”
He grabbed the sleeve of her uniform, as though she were a toddler who needed guiding. (Possibly, in her state of mind, she did). As he tugged her to the commander’s office, Sakura strove valiantly to regain control of her features. The assistant might have been too frazzled to notice anything amiss, but the commander would not be.
She managed to unclench her jaw by the time the assistant eased the door open into the office. The man in question looked less than delighted to see her.
Right. She had just decimated one half of the stadium. Fuck.
“I told you to tidy yourself up,” the commander growled. He eyed the dust scattered over her uniform from the evaluations distastefully.
She soldiered past this remark. “About the stadium. Sorry.”
The broad-shouldered man grabbed a file from his desk and threw it to Sakura. She caught it before it hit her face.
“Read,” he ordered.
Slowly, she flicked open the file and bent her head to read. These were stats, she recognized belatedly. The image pasted on the upper left of the first page was…regrettably familiar.
“What’s this?” she demanded.
“Your team.” The commander’s eyes glinted. “Problem?”
“He’s fought beside me.” That was saying the least of it.
“For one mission,” the commander finished smoothly. “Hardly enough for him to recognize you. His tenure on Hatake’s team was regrettably short, and there aren’t any spots available on the other high ranking teams at the moment.”
She lowered her head unenthusedly to the profile.
There wasn’t anything particularly shocking on it, other than that it was Robin, whom she had never thought she would have to see again, let alone be responsible for. She reviewed his kill count (rather in spite of the cockiness she had witnessed the last time, she guessed) and his specializations cursorily, before stiffly turning to the next page.
A fox mask stared back at her on this page, nut brown skin peeking through its small openings. He was a slim man. Unassuming. She gave a brief pass over the background provided: a kenjutsu expert in his early thirties. His stats remained stable throughout his described tenure—no unexpected dips or mess-ups.
“Why isn’t he a captain?” Sakura said unthinkingly.
The commander’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t seem displeased, however. “Never wanted it,” he responded curtly. “And he performs well where he is.”
She stared at him blankly, before lowering her head to peruse the last profile contained in the file. Here, she found a young woman, just around Sakura’s age, with a deer mask, pale blonde hair, and wide-set green eyes.
“Deer has a unique skill set,” the commander intoned. “She’s looking to diversify.”
Sakura shortly found the history the older man had been alluding to. Until the previous month, Deer had cultivated a prolific career in the seduction and information gathering division.
“Consider yourself briefed,” the commander grunted, tearing the file away from her. “Now get down to meeting room 17B.”
Sakura’s eyes tracked the file, displeased. “Are they waiting there?”
“Yes.” He threw another file her way. She caught it, unblinking. “And that’s your first mission.”
Her nails dug into the manila paper. “Already?”
The man gave a loud, unkind laugh. “As much as I hate to admit it, if you can go toe-to-toe with that menace Hatake, I have no compunctions throwing you in head-first as I would any other new captain. You’ll either sink or swim.”
He snapped his hand and the door swung open, the assistant peering in with a darting gaze, as though he expected to find damage somewhere.
She brushed past him, returning to the hallway once more to head in the opposite direction now. The meeting room she came upon was adorned by a neon yellow ‘IN USE’ sign. She entered without knocking.
She found three figures seated around a round table. One slouched into the table; the other two sat with stiff backs
“You’re younger than me.” Robin was the first to speak, displeasure clear in his voice.
“Right,” Sakura said under breath. The eerie familiarity of his hair color summoned a discomfort that she was able to brush aside mostly, for the moment. She did her utmost to avoid looking directly at it. “I assume you’ve introduced yourselves to each other.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Fox, the oldest, said. His regard was utterly impersonal, and still, somehow the most welcoming of them all.
“I think the only ambiguous mask is yours,” Deer stated evenly.
“It’s a salamander.”
“Whatever,” Robin grunted, fingers rapping against the table top with pent-up energy. “You have a mission for us or what?”
Annoyance easily nudged her trepidation aside, her temper poor as it was. Sakura straightened to her full height, mouth curling.
“Patience, Robin,” Fox remarked. “Our taichou still needs to lay the ground rules.”
It would have been a stretch to say Robin settled at the older man’s words, but his mouth remained shut. Sakura observed this with raised eyebrows.
“Quite,” she said curtly. “I’ll address the obvious first. We all know I’m not the youngest captain this organization has ever had. But I am younger than usual. If you’re thinking I’m new to the position, you would be right.”
Robin stiffened in his seat.
“I’ve heard, however,” Sakura said coolly, “that midlevel teams are less hierarchical than others in ANBU”—she crossed her arms, leaning back into the wall—“So I don’t see any reason we can’t all have input in decisions this team makes.”
Robin’s eyes lit with interest. He wasn’t the only one. Deer also, she noted, looked particularly attentive.
“As captain, though, I will assign mission roles,” Sakura finished dispassionately, “and I will reserve the right to make the final call on any decision-making. I guess you’ll just have to trust that I’m not an idiot, and that I will listen to you as the situation calls for it.”
Robin scoffed under his breath. Sakura pretended not to notice. The sad reality of being captain instead of a team member was that she probably didn’t have the liberty any longer to lash out as she desired. Or, well, she had the impression that that’s what being captain should mean.
“Fox will be my second,” she added, returning her attention to them. The dark-skinned man nodded briefly. “He has the most experience out of all of us. If anything happens to me or I’m not present, he assumes command.”
“You’ve reviewed our files?” Deer asked with sudden sharpness in her tone.
“Yes,” Sakura acknowledged openly. “In the commander’s office just now. I’ll place more weight on the abilities I see you demonstrate during missions, obviously. Speaking of which—”
She tossed the file onto the table. Deer opened it, and all three of them leaned in to review its contents.
Sakura sighed. “Our first mission. Fox will take point. Robin will assist him. Deer and I will be back up.”
Sakura leaned back boredly into the tree trunk behind her, eyes fixed on the small camp Fox and Robin were currently infiltrating. A mosquito buzzed near her ear. Her eyes grew slitted in irritation, and she caught it and crushed it before it could bite her.
Deer shifted her weight on the branch below her.
“Problem?” Sakura grunted.
There was, evidently. That had been clear for the last two hours.
“No, taichou,” Deer said stoically.
Well. This captaining thing was going superbly well.
She found herself, bizarrely, missing the bluntness of Sasuke’s disgust for her. Even Sai’s unfiltered straightforwardness seemed suddenly desirable.
She dropped silently from her branch to Deer’s, settling in a crouch. Deer stiffened instantly, spinning a beat too late. Her eyes were narrowed in resentment.
“Not very convincing,” Sakura said, eyebrows lifting. “I did say I would listen.”
“Can I trust you aren’t an idiot, though?” Deer charged boldly, echoing her earlier words.
Sakura was mildly impressed.
“I suppose you’ll have to risk it,” she reponded silkily. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You could send me on a suicide mission.”
“Hm. I guess that’s true.”
Deer glared at her, green eyes—darker than Sakura’s—almost black under the sparse moonlight peeking through the leaves.
A few seconds of silence passed. Some of Sakura’s humor began to fade.
“To be honest,” she said straightforwardly, “if I were the sort to want you dead for saying something I didn’t want to hear, it would be far more efficient to just do the job myself.”
She held the other woman’s stare for a second longer before cracking her neck. “If I were the sort, of course.”
Deer seemed to come to a decision in the next few seconds. Her voice, when she spoke, was tightly restrained with resentment. “You’re pigeon-holing me.”
Sakura wasn’t sure what she had been expecting to hear, but it hadn’t been this. “…pigeon-holing?”
“Back-up this time, back-up next,” Deer sneered, restraint apparently gone. “You’re going to make me back-up every single time, until there’s a cock that needs to be sucked—because, then, my presence is useful—aren’t you?”
Sakura blinked.
“I’ve already been through three captains like you just this month. I’m beginning to think you’re all the same.”
“I assigned you as back-up because I want Robin to be overwhelmed,” Sakura explained slowly.
Deer stopped. “What?”
“With the combatants split between just the two of them, he’s going to see rather quickly that he can’t take on as much as Fox. He’s going to respect Fox because of it. That's going to keep him line, until he’s willing to listen to me.”
Deer stood on the branch. Her gaze was still hostile, still unconvinced. She processed this for a few moments, stating finally, “If you’re concerned about Robin’s obedience, why not go in yourself instead of Fox?”
“Who do you think he would find it easier to respect—an older, experienced ANBU?” Sakura returned evenly. “Or me? I’d have to ground him into the dirt outside the headquarters and probably send him to the hospital for a week to get the same amount of respect as Fox is about to win now. I’m not altogether opposed, but I doubt our mission schedule is forgiving enough to allow for a week’s bed rest.”
Deer drew back, shoulder suddenly drawn in. “So this assignment had nothing to do with my prior role in ANBU?” she checked.
“It had very little to do with you at all,” Sakura assured. “You’re not the flight risk, here.”
Deer exhaled carefully.
Sakura’s lips pursed. She turned her head from the other woman back to the small camp, fingers tapping absentmindedly against the bark beneath her hands. She cleared her throat. “To be clear, though—from what I saw in your file, you’ve excelled at whatever you were doing in the seduction and information gathering division. Are you no longer…comfortable exercising those skills?”
Deer paused. They watched as alarmed figures began running out of their tents. “I’m interested in broadening my skillset is all,” she finally said.
“Understood,” Sakura said, eyes glinting as combat broke out in the camp.
They both watched as Robin’s triumphant crowing diminished as more bodies piled on top of him. Fox seemed to be exasperated, flicking his gaze over every few seconds and shaking his head.
“That looks like it hurt,” Deer observed conversationally as a kunai sank particularly deeply into Robin’s thigh.
"Good,” Sakura muttered back.
As she had predicted, Fox managed to save the day—and Robin along with it—without either Deer’s or her interference. Mission completed, they made quick time under the cover of night and returned to the headquarters a little past midnight. Most covert operations were undertaken around this time, so none of them were surprised to find the locker rooms crowded.
“That blade needs replacing,” Fox said as Robin wiped his katana with a spare cloth.
Robin’s face looked rather miserable at the moment, with an assortment of bruises in various stages of development blossoming across his face. But, perhaps knowing he owed those bruises—or, the fact that they were only bruises—to the man in front of him, he nodded grudgingly, his arrogance much quieter now.
Sakura, on the whole, was satisfied.
“Did the commander mention anything about what our mission schedule will look like?” Deer asked.
“Typically, the cadence is two or three missions per week,” Fox offered, scrubbing blood from his arms.
“I haven’t been given reason to think our cadence would be any different,” Sakura shrugged, shutting the locker.
“Send a bird with a message. I’m out of here,” Robin grunted, rubbing gingerly at his swollen eye. Deer followed behind him, tossing a wave as they exited.
Sakura waved lazily back, before leaning into the lockers behind her. She watched Fox with interest.
His head tipped up, gaze calm. “Taichou.”
“Salamander,” Sakura insisted blandly.
“You look like you have a question.”
“I have many.”
Fox stared at her politely.
“But I think now is probably not the time to ask all of them,” Sakura said wryly.
He seemed amused, now. “Most new captains I’ve worked under have considered it a weakness to consult me.”
Sakura considered that. Her lips quirked. “I think my, uh, education has taught me that I’d prefer to be the one asking questions. Rather than having to learn things the hard way.”
“I will strive to make myself, then, an ample resource to you,” Fox said smoothly.
“You’re very easy-going, aren’t you?” Sakura noted.
“Is that unusual?”
“Not particularly, I guess.” Raccoon had been similarly even-keeled, similarly affable if not affectionate. She had missed that. Sakura averted her gaze. “Just wondering why you’ve never elected to be captain yourself. The commander suggested you’ve been offered the position in the past.”
Fox was silent for a long, telling moment. His voice was just as calm, however, when he spoke again. “Never been interested.”
“Hm,” Sakura hummed, before shrugging. “Alright.” Perhaps, his qualms were very much like her own—she had been coerced into this position herself, after all.
“See you later, Fox,” she nodded, swinging her katana over her shoulder.
“Goodbye, Salamander.”
She pushed her way through the mass of bodies between her and the door. The air outside was a welcome change to the humid mix of sweat and other bodily fluids that filled the locker rooms. She swept her hair back from her face and made her way to the front of the headquarters.
Other teams, returning from their own missions, passed her by as she walked. She more or less ignored them, until one group entered the same corridor, one that the others gave an instinctive wide berth.
They were so drenched in blood, that very little of even their masks remained white. But it wasn’t the blood that deterred the ANBU around them from nearing. It was Kakashi’s mismatched gaze, livid, stared militantly ahead as he stalked down the hall, the others flanking him.
He stared right through her.
Sakura’s gaze flicked to the front of her as well. She tried her best to ignore him. She really, really did.
Just as he crossed her, her hand snapped out all on its own and latched onto his upper arm.
She shunshined them in the same breath.
Plink. Plink.
Droplets of water hit the base of the sink from the tap she hadn’t fully shut that morning. A hand wrapped around her wrist, brutal in its unrestrained strength, as they corporealized. He shuddered against her, his claim to control so tenuous that it set her own teeth on edge.
Pain registered distantly in the back of her mind.
She ignored it—didn’t bother with the light, instead shifting toward the tap to fill the tub with water. He flinched at the noise, teeth flashing, like a rabid animal. She moved swiftly, pulling off bloody clothing, uncaring if she tore the material.
In a quick flash of movement, she yanked off his mask. His hand snapped to her neck in the same motion. Sakura’s eyes flicked coolly down to the fingers spanning her throat. She stepped forward, and he maneuvered back, eyes manic. Shoulders tight, she pressed forward, walking him into the tub.
He tipped inside with a muffled splash, water spilling over the sides because she had filled it too high. The water in the tub began to turn pink.
As heat sank into his skin, his head tilted back. But the caged look didn’t leave his face. His muscles flexed in the water, like he was readying himself to surge upward at any given moment.
“Stay,” she barked.
Sakura grabbed the bottoms of her shirt and flak jacket and pulled them off over her head together, allowing her mask to go with them. The porcelain clattered to the floor with a small clink, like glass.
His hands, which had curled around the sides of the tub to lift himself up, stilled. He watched her, gaze sharp as a blade.
Swiftly, stoically, she pulled the rest off.
“Fuck,” she choked out as she stepped into the water, knee-deep.
It was hot. She dug her nails into the palms of her hand as she lowered herself. Folding herself in half to fit, she pushed back to the opposite edge of the tub. She rested her elbows on the rim as she stretched her legs.
She stared at him through watering eyes, wincing against the heat. The pattering of the leaking sink echoed in the small bathroom. She was too tired to do anything other than tip her head back, resting against the edge of the tub.
Minutes passed. The water dripping from the sink tap became white noise. His every muscle was cold, immobile against her.
“Calmer?” she asked, though with little confidence that this was the case. He had only resumed the appearance of control, not the genuine thing.
“You listed the ways I wronged you, once. Have you forgotten them?”
Ah. So he was on the offense, then.
She hoisted herself up by her elbows.
“Or,” he continued coldly, “do you think that I am someone who is secretly kind—that I’ve simply been hiding it all this time?”
Sakura’s eyes shifted from the ceiling to him. “No,” she said shortly.
His lip curled.
“I haven’t forgotten,” she hissed lowly.
“So you have no self-respect,” he mocked with empty cruelty.
“You’ll find that I have entirely too much.”
Sakura stood in the tub. Rivulets of water streamed down her body. She leaned forward, hands settling on either side of him, so that her face hovered above his.
“I told you you’d changed everything, after what you did in the palace. You’re no longer someone I can ignore,” she said scathingly. She spoke, then, without thought, without plan—the words flowed from her mouth, canny and cunning, born purely in the moment. “You ruined this for the both of us…so I’ll accept payment in worship.”
He caught her arm. “Don’t,” he warned, the word barely human.
Don’t what? Demean him? Tempt him?
(What was he so terrified of?)
They stared at each other, neither one blinking, until she exhaled, pulling back. She wrapped a towel around herself and exited the bathroom. She angled her head downward, staring at the droplets on the floor behind her. He had followed, like a ghost at her back.
She pushed back her sheets and slid into her bed, skin still damp. He stood in the same place, preternaturally still.
Her face, she knew, was pale with rage. Her voice revealed the full extent of her bitterness. “As you once told me, why postpone the inevitable?”
Her eyes traced the hostility in his body as he settled onto the bed.
Good, she thought. He recognized it too.
(They already knew how this ended.)
A foot—as wide as a chasm, for all intents and purposes—separated them. Sakura didn’t care. Her muscles relaxed incrementally from the their usual state of cold-numb, warmed by the sheer heat his body radiated beside her. She shut her eyes and fell asleep.
Hands branded her skin, in her dreams—calloused and demanding, gripping her tightly. They ripped her from unconsciousness, and suddenly, she was opening her eyes and gasping in the darkness of her apartment bedroom.
She woke up to Kakashi hovering over her, eyes shut like he was straining against immense pain.
“What—”
Sluggish warmth surged through as she realized what had woken him. What he had sensed. She exhaled sharply below him, eyes narrowing. But she didn’t burn with mortification. Instead, she stared at him solemnly. Then, with defiance, her hand shifted downwards to where she had become wet.
He seemed to make a decision, then—and whatever remnants of resistance that had stared back out her from his eyes until now disappeared.
He moved instantly. She shoved him back with her foot on his shoulder.
His gaze flew to hers, seething. Sakura stared at him, somber. Then she thrust her fingers lazily into herself, head falling to the side.
“Apologies for the inconvenience—” she drawled.
She didn’t get to finish the hoarse, smugly-intended remark. He shoved her leg to the side—she let him—and forced her own fingers out. They glistened with evidence of how wet she was.
He stared at it without expression. But as she watched, he lifted her fingers to his mouth, torturously slow. He licked, first, the long, indecent length of her middle finger, then her pointer and ring fingers. He stared at her the entire while, gaze dark, watching her watch him.
An involuntary groan left her mouth.
He leaned forward on his hands, bearing down with the full force of his weight, forcing her legs apart. He bent his head, eyes flicking up to her again, as his mouth hovered over her. Then, he gave a long, slow drag of his tongue.
Her hands tightened in his hair, pushing him greedily into her. In outrageous response, he kissed her there—messily, shamelessly. She gasped helplessly, feeling like she had been punched in the gut.
Before she could recover her breath, his hands tightened around her hips and he rose, positioning his cock at her entrance. She was so shamelessly wet that he simply slid in, even as it burned where she stretched to accommodate him. Her body bowed, receiving him.
She cursed loudly and with feeling. His hand curled roughly around her face, forcing her gaze onto his.
He moved slowly, but with unassuming power, backing her straight into the headboard. He paused there, hip bones pressed against her. Just when she thought he was fully inside her, he moved sharply, savagely, forward, thrusting the rest of his cock into her.
“Fuck,” Sakura hissed, head snapping back into the headboard.
She expected, then, for it to be furious and mindless—to tear at each other until the whole room was destroyed. Hadn’t it been that way the last time? But he didn’t move, now, as she expected. Instead, eyes focused on her face, he pressed tighter still against her, until she was pinned into the bed.
Her head lifted sharply. His gaze roved over her relentlessly, like she was someone he was determined to commit to memory. For impossibly long, neither of them seemed willing to breathe.
When he did move, it was slowly. So slowly, that even in the dim lighting, she could see the way each muscle contorted in his back with precise control. She exhaled loudly, teeth flashing, as her hips curved with his, equally leisurely.
For all that it was slow, however, it was not gentle. It felt, rather, like they were testing each other—as though they had never done this before.
Seeking something like control, she pressed a palm into his chest. He complied wordlessly, pulling her on top of him. (This, too, was unexpected.) She hovered above him, as she had in the tub earlier. With furrowed eyebrows, searching him in turn, she sank back down on him.
His mouth parted beneath her. Sakura stared at it, feeling almost dazed. She pressed forward. His mouth tasted like steel and blood. He kissed her lazily, without rush, as though his cock wasn’t inside her and there was nothing else they might do, except this.
“Kakashi,” she muttered, voice rough.
“Look,” he returned, hands tight around her hips, lifting them up for her perusal.
She was otherwise occupied.
He brushed her lips again, grazing, before his voice sharpened with command. “Look.”
Shaking, she looked to where they were joined. His cock, thick and soaked in her wetness, pulled back torturously slowly.
He thrust into her shallowly—not quite all the way.
She tightened breathlessly around him. He flexed before he caught himself. Eyes flashing, he pressed the base of his calloused palm ruthlessly into the locus of nerves above where they were joined. Sakura’s hips bucked violently against him. His face glowed with savage satisfaction.
“If you do not move,” she seethed, “I will walk out of here and find the first willing person to take your place—”
And then, he was driving her back into the wrecked headboard.
“Fuck, fuck,” she gasped nonsensically.
She could hear the backboard crumbling behind her. She braced herself against the wall, muscles tensing to return his thrusts as viciously as he dealt them. She fucked him with all the insatiable hunger within her, until she felt like she could strangle someone, because all it did was feed her hunger more—
Her eyes flew wide open.
Had he—?
He growled it again, pressing the utterance possessively into the skin of her throat.
Sakura’s jaw clenched.
She felt her body start to tip over the edge, entirely without her permission. A hoarse cry left her mouth as she trembled through orgasm, nails digging into his back.
He stiffened against her, hissing almost hatefully as she closed around him. But the consequences of her orgasm proved too much to resist. He pressed his cock unabashedly into her, fucking his cum into her body, mouth firmly entrenched in her neck. He hissed her name again as he did, and she covered her face with her arm, unwilling to let him see the expression that crossed her face.
She had the delirious, pathetic thought that she could kill him if he left.
Sakura slept like the dead. She couldn’t account for anything that happened in the aftermath—not reliably, at least. If Kakashi had been determined to leave, she would have been no obstacle to him, delirious feelings or otherwise.
As it was, she had a vague, bizarre recollection of eggs and a sibilant hiss like frying at some point. She must have pulled her comforter over her head and fallen back asleep at the disruption, because when she woke up, it was staring at the inside of the blanket. She was certain, however, that those observations had been part of some dream.
Sitting up—and hissing slightly at the soreness in particular parts of her body—Sakura shoved the comforter off of her. As she pulled on clothes, her eyes passed over the apartment. There was absolutely no evidence that another human had been there…except for the very obvious yolk-splattered pan and spatula strewn across her stove top.
Her jaw slackened. Not her imagination, then.
Another realization occurred to her—if this was, indeed, reality. She went straight to her fridge. Flinging the door open, she found the carton of eggs inside (the only item food that was as of yet unexpired), opened and empty.
Her last fucking eggs. That bastard—
“Well. This, I did not expect.”
She spun around, hair whipping around her face.
Lo and behold—it wasn’t dead, as part of her had optimistically expected. The crow sat perched on her window sill, not a feather out of place. A myriad of emotions crossed her face. She settled on stoicism.
At her continued silence, the Shisui’s wings fanned out. It hopped down from the window onto her bed.
“Now, I can’t say I know the copy-nin terribly well,” the crow said indifferently. “But it strikes me that he isn’t someone who typically spends the night. Pity, he didn’t leave any of those eggs for you.”
“You were watching,” Sakura noted, voice dangerous. Not long enough to see it all, she sensed by its words, but enough to have seen him in her apartment--to know, nevertheless. Her teeth clenched in acute restraint.
“If I had known,” Shisui continued blandly, paying no attention to her words, “the possibilities would have been...diverse. Possibly, I need not have gone through my recent bout of healing.”
“If it had been me,” she said softly, eyes narrowing as she stepped forward from the kitchen, “I would have made sure there was none of you left.”
“Alas, I can’t say I’ve missed your prolific, unimaginative threats. I might add, however, that you’re playing with fire, entangling with the copy-nin,” the crow informed her calmly. “If not for my benefit, evidently, to what end?”
Her expression went blank.
“What is your endgame, human?” it asked, with some impatience now, as though it were indeed the instructor it pretended to be.
When she didn’t respond once again, its gaze grew frigid, understanding immediately. “More the fool you, then.”
“Why are you back, Shisui?” she asked, cold.
The crow’s sharingan spun dizzyingly. “We have unfinished business.”
She leaned back just slightly, so that the katana strapped behind her mirror was in her peripheral.
“Uchiha Shisui had two dying wishes that this sharingan has driven me to fulfill. First, that Itachi be safe.”
Her fingers curved around the mirror’s edge.
“Second, that Danzo pay for what he has done.”
Her mouth pursed, fingers stilling.
“Caught your attention, I see,” the crow said with satisfaction.
God damn it. Her fingers dropped from the mirror.
“Very well,” she snapped. “I’m listening.”
Deer seemed to come to a decision in the next few seconds. Her voice, when she spoke, was tightly restrained with resentment. “You’re pigeon-holing me."
