Fic: Worth It
Mar. 10th, 2011 07:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oroburos69Title: Worth It
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_of_scarlet
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choosing not to warn for plot reasons
Summary: She turns fifteen today.
Pairing: (Sakura/Kakashi friendship)
Length: 1500 words
AN: Sequel to Something To Look Forward To. Doesn’t make much sense without that one.
She woke up two hours early and lay in bed for three, watching an industrious spider spin a web across her ceiling. Sakura considered catching it and putting it outside, but couldn't muster the energy.
She'd begged off training and work for the day by telling Tsunade that she was having a birthday party. She had nowhere to be and no one to see but Kakashi, and he would be late anyway. There was time. It was fine.
Her alarm blared. Sakura hit the snooze button. Thirty minutes until she got to see if Kakashi had lived through the week. The thought gave her the energy to roll out of bed and into the shower.
Sakura leaned against cheap, ugly tiles, and closed her eyes. The mildew in her bathroom had grown again, stretching spindly black fingers across the walls. She should clean it.
The water was lukewarm at best, cold at worst. Sakura shivered as it turned from best to worst, and rested her head against the tile. Her bones ached and she wished she could go back to bed.
Her alarm went off again and Sakura shut off the water. She didn't bother with a towel, just squeezed the water out of her hair and combed it with her fingers until her neighbour yelled at her through the wall. Sakura blinked, then wandered into the other room to turn off the alarm with her toes.
All her clothes were dirty. Sakura bit her lip and sat on her bed, still dragging her fingers through her hair, tugging ruthlessly at the tangles. She still hadn't washed her sheets.
The water on her skin dripped down, leaving cold lines and goosebumps. Sakura grabbed her cleanest looking shirt and yanked it over her head. She had four minutes before she would be late and no eggplant.
She grimaced and grabbed a pair of pants. So long as she didn't run into an Inuzuka, who really cared if they were dirty? Though Kakashi would be able to smell it...Sakura sighed and threw the pants back, digging through her laundry to find the folded pair of clean shorts hidden underneath.
Sakura pulled her wallet from the jumbled pile of clothes and counted her money. She had twenty ryou, just enough to buy Kakashi lunch.
________________________________________
"Sakura," Kakashi said. He pushed away from the wall and slouched toward her.
Sakura stretched her lips in a smile and held up a grocery bag filled with four eggplants and a couple of juice boxes. She had a folded coat hanger, a container of olive oil she'd snuck out of her mother's kitchen, and salt and pepper packets from a poorly guarded restaurant in her pockets.
You're here," Sakura commented. A wave of relief filled her and she clutched at the emotion with only a hint of desperation.
"Happy Birthday," Kakashi said. He eyed the bag with a hint of amusement. "You're cooking?"
"We are," Sakura corrected him. "Come on, let's go." She set out toward Team Seven's old training grounds.
"I'm a terrible cook." Kakashi fell in step beside her, and Sakura felt a rush of something she couldn't name. It was good, though.
"So am I," she told him, ignoring his nod of agreement. "That's why we're going to cut them up, skewer them, and cook them over a fire. That's at least fifty percent ninja stuff, so we can't possibly screw it up too much."
Kakashi hummed thoughtfully. "Do you think that will help?" His elbow bumped into Sakura's shoulder, directing her toward a less crowded route through the street.
"If not, I brought juice boxes," Sakura replied, feeling oddly fine with the thought of failure. She smiled.
"The training grounds?" Kakashi asked, cluing in to where they were headed.
Sakura refused to hesitate at the hint of disapproval. "It's my birthday, and I'll wallow in nostalgia if I want to. And you have to come with me because I blew my grocery money on these and I don't even like eggplant."
"You didn't have to get them," Kakashi said uncomfortably. "I mean, you could have gone out with your friends. I'm wasn't—I'm not going to..."
Sakura bit her lip to keep from saying something nasty and settled for the truth, "If you hadn't come to my apartment last week, I would have spent today stitching up idiots, healing bigger idiots, and trying not to strangle civilians."
"Civilians?" Kakashi prompted her, giving her a faintly disapproving look.
"Oh dear me, how sweet of you to volunteer at the hospital. Do you know when the doctor will see me?" Sakura said in a high pitched whine. "Miss? Will you get me a drink? And lunch? And a sponge bath heh-heh-heh?"
Kakashi made a choked noise. Sakura suspected he was trying not to laugh.
"Or my favourite, 'Why are you pretending to be a ninja, sweetie? It's such a nasty profession,'" Sakura finished. "Of course, that last one was my grandmother, so maybe it doesn't count," she said, rolling her eyes.
"Your family doesn't approve of you being a ninja?" Kakashi asked.
Sakura snorted. "No. They really, really don't. It got so bad that I moved out. It was better than fighting with my dad every night." Probably, she added silently. Her apartment's only saving grace was that it didn't pitch a screaming fit every time she came home.
"That's too bad," Kakashi said. He stopped, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Sakura blinked and realized that they were in front of the posts he'd tied Team Seven to almost three years ago. There were three posts, but she was the only one there. It didn't feel right, but after two years she was almost used to that.
"Okay, great. You get to start the fire, because I didn't actually think that far ahead when I left this morning. I'll...chop these up," she said, looking around for a handy rock to use as a chopping block.
Kakashi disappeared into the trees, presumably to find some firewood.
Sakura found a boulder with a relatively flat top and started slicing the eggplants into thin strips.
The firewood crunched when Kakashi dropped it beside her. "So other than working in the hospital, are you enjoying being Tsunade's apprentice?" he asked. Sakura nearly giggled, because subtle that was not.
"Meh. It's okay," Sakura said. She pulled the coat hanger out of her pocket and unfolded it. "I mean..." Her hands shook for a second and Sakura closed her eyes, sorting her thoughts into nice little categories until she didn't feel like screaming. "I hate the hospital. Right now I keep telling myself that as soon as I get full accreditation I can quit working there and go back in the field."
She doesn't tell Kakashi how much she regrets not asking him to train her before she'd gone to Tsunade. Some things aren't meant to be shared.
Kakashi's hand brushed over her shoulder.
Sakura swallowed. He had always known what she was thinking, before. She didn't know if she was happy that he could still read her so well.
"Are you close to full accreditation?"
"Another four months," Sakura said. She'll be the youngest medic in Konoha when she finished. "I'll have finished in two years instead of five," she told him, just in case he didn't know.
"That's impressive," Kakashi said.
It made the last two years feel worth it for the first time in months, so Sakura dropped her knife and gave Kakashi an impulsive hug. "Thanks," she muttered into his shirt, quiet enough that he wouldn't really be able to hear.
He put his hands on her shoulders like he wasn't quite sure how to hug her back. Sakura squeezed him carefully, mindful of her strength, then let go.
"Okay, you can stab the eggplant slices with this," she told Kakashi, handing him the coat hanger. "Then coat them in oil and salt and pepper."
"Will this work?" Kakashi asked, testing the point of the wire with his finger. It wasn't very sharp.
Sakura shrugged. "I have no idea. I couldn't think of anything else to do with eggplant." She gave the vegetables a dubious look. They were so...purple.
"It's good in soup," Kakashi said, threading the coat hanger through a slice of eggplant.
Sakura cracked open the container of oil and dipped her fingers in it. "All I have for cooking is a microwave, and it only works if I put in the time in intervals shorter than twenty seconds. We're stuck with open flames."
Kakashi laughed. His laughter sounded different from how she remembered. Less real, like the wind could blow his happiness away. "You've been eating out a lot?"
"Hospital cafeteria," Sakura admitted. A drop of oil fell from her finger, splashing into the container.
He gave an exaggerated shudder. "You eat that crap?" Kakashi held out the eggplant so Sakura could coat it with oil.
"It may be formless masses of grey gruel, but it's free for staff," Sakura said, wrinkling her nose. She had gotten used to the food and slightly addicted to red jello, but that didn't make it any more appealing. "If I hold the stick can you get the salt and pepper packets open? My hands are oily."
Kakashi handed her the coat hanger and ripped the tops off the paper packets. "You know, when you said party I pictured funny hats and music."
"If it bothers you that much, you can hum," Sakura told him, a smile quirking the corner of her mouth. "And as for hats..." She fished a pair of sparkly party hats out of her back pocket. "I found these in a storage room in the hospital."
"At the hospital?" Kakashi asked, giving them a sidelong glance. He dusted the eggplant skewer with salt and pepper, then sent a tiny fireball toward the pile of firewood.
"Yeah, I don't know either." Sakura leaned over and hooked the rubber band under Kakashi's chin and settled the hat in his bird's nest hair. It looked idiotic, and she snickered evilly before putting on her own. "There. It's party town, now."
"I feel funner already." Sakura had no idea if he was joking. He sounded completely serious, but then again, he usually did. It was mostly in retrospect that she understood Kakashi's sense of humour.
"Do you want a juice box? I've got fake berry and fruit punch," Sakura asked, oiling the rest of the eggplant slices.
"Fake berry would be nice, thank you." Kakashi held the coat hanger over the flames, just high enough to keep the eggplant from lighting in fire.
She grabbed a luridly bright blue juice box from her bag and handed it to him. "Kakashi..." Sakura said, uncertain if she really wanted to ask. Today was going so well and she didn't want to ruin it.
"Yeah?" His eye crinkled up in a smile, and she felt okay, like everything was okay. Sakura smiled back, basking in the feeling.
"Why...why did you stop?" Sakura asked before she lost her nerve. His answer was more important than the sense of calm, but she missed it nevertheless.
Kakashi twisted the eggplant skewer, angling it closer to the fire. He gave a shuddering sigh and answered, "I guess...I was ready. I had everything set up. My will was updated, I had a mission briefing the next day so someone would look for me, I'd debated and re-debated the merits of putting down a tarp...I was so prepared," he concluded unhappily.
He pulled the eggplant back from the fire and looked at it carefully. "And then I—I tried, but I couldn't make myself cut deep enough. It hurt, and I couldn't...I don't know. It made dying not seem worth it, either."
Sakura shivered. Her hands shook, a quiver in her wrists that travelled to her fingers. "Why didn't you try again? Or just let yourself bleed out? If you hadn't put those stitches in, you would have been dead within hours."
"I don't know." Kakashi said. He hadn't looked at her since she'd asked him why. He adjusted the angle of his hitai-ate, mumbling something she couldn't hear, then spoke up, "I don't know why I wanted to die, and I don't know why I wanted to live."
Sakura hugged him because she didn't know what else to do. "I don't want you to die," she told him, hoping that would mean something. Kakashi had cared what she thought, sometimes. "And I think the eggplant is done, but the important thing is that I don't want you to die."
Kakashi wrapped an arm around her and held her head against his chest, knocking her party hat askew. He buried his fingers in her hair. Sakura heard fabric rustling and realized that he had pulled his mask down. "It's delicious," he said. His voice cracked.
"Really?" Sakura asked. "I was expecting charcoal-like slime." She didn't move. There were tears in her eyes, and she didn't want Kakashi to see them.
"Do you want some?" Kakashi asked. He sounded sharper without fabric muffling his voice, like the mask had caught his emotions before she could hear them.
"Yeah." She twisted enough to nibble at the eggplant. "It is good," Sakura decided. Much better than hospital food at least. She let go of Kakashi and shuffled back.
"I got you a birthday present," Kakashi said suddenly, like he'd just remembered. He passed her the coat hanger and pulled a plastic box out of his belt pouch.
"Oh? You didn't have to," Sakura said happily. No one had gotten her a present in ages. She pealed the lid off and grinned, caught a little off guard, but pleased. "Thanks."
"You asked if I liked cake, so I figured that maybe you did," Kakashi said quietly, looking away. He was a little flushed, but smiling.
"I do," Sakura told him, lifting the squished vanilla cupcake out of the box.
She felt good, like things were okay. It was good.
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Beta:
lady_of_scarlet Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choosing not to warn for plot reasons
Summary: She turns fifteen today.
Pairing: (Sakura/Kakashi friendship)
Length: 1500 words
AN: Sequel to Something To Look Forward To. Doesn’t make much sense without that one.
She woke up two hours early and lay in bed for three, watching an industrious spider spin a web across her ceiling. Sakura considered catching it and putting it outside, but couldn't muster the energy.
She'd begged off training and work for the day by telling Tsunade that she was having a birthday party. She had nowhere to be and no one to see but Kakashi, and he would be late anyway. There was time. It was fine.
Her alarm blared. Sakura hit the snooze button. Thirty minutes until she got to see if Kakashi had lived through the week. The thought gave her the energy to roll out of bed and into the shower.
Sakura leaned against cheap, ugly tiles, and closed her eyes. The mildew in her bathroom had grown again, stretching spindly black fingers across the walls. She should clean it.
The water was lukewarm at best, cold at worst. Sakura shivered as it turned from best to worst, and rested her head against the tile. Her bones ached and she wished she could go back to bed.
Her alarm went off again and Sakura shut off the water. She didn't bother with a towel, just squeezed the water out of her hair and combed it with her fingers until her neighbour yelled at her through the wall. Sakura blinked, then wandered into the other room to turn off the alarm with her toes.
All her clothes were dirty. Sakura bit her lip and sat on her bed, still dragging her fingers through her hair, tugging ruthlessly at the tangles. She still hadn't washed her sheets.
The water on her skin dripped down, leaving cold lines and goosebumps. Sakura grabbed her cleanest looking shirt and yanked it over her head. She had four minutes before she would be late and no eggplant.
She grimaced and grabbed a pair of pants. So long as she didn't run into an Inuzuka, who really cared if they were dirty? Though Kakashi would be able to smell it...Sakura sighed and threw the pants back, digging through her laundry to find the folded pair of clean shorts hidden underneath.
Sakura pulled her wallet from the jumbled pile of clothes and counted her money. She had twenty ryou, just enough to buy Kakashi lunch.
________________________________________
"Sakura," Kakashi said. He pushed away from the wall and slouched toward her.
Sakura stretched her lips in a smile and held up a grocery bag filled with four eggplants and a couple of juice boxes. She had a folded coat hanger, a container of olive oil she'd snuck out of her mother's kitchen, and salt and pepper packets from a poorly guarded restaurant in her pockets.
You're here," Sakura commented. A wave of relief filled her and she clutched at the emotion with only a hint of desperation.
"Happy Birthday," Kakashi said. He eyed the bag with a hint of amusement. "You're cooking?"
"We are," Sakura corrected him. "Come on, let's go." She set out toward Team Seven's old training grounds.
"I'm a terrible cook." Kakashi fell in step beside her, and Sakura felt a rush of something she couldn't name. It was good, though.
"So am I," she told him, ignoring his nod of agreement. "That's why we're going to cut them up, skewer them, and cook them over a fire. That's at least fifty percent ninja stuff, so we can't possibly screw it up too much."
Kakashi hummed thoughtfully. "Do you think that will help?" His elbow bumped into Sakura's shoulder, directing her toward a less crowded route through the street.
"If not, I brought juice boxes," Sakura replied, feeling oddly fine with the thought of failure. She smiled.
"The training grounds?" Kakashi asked, cluing in to where they were headed.
Sakura refused to hesitate at the hint of disapproval. "It's my birthday, and I'll wallow in nostalgia if I want to. And you have to come with me because I blew my grocery money on these and I don't even like eggplant."
"You didn't have to get them," Kakashi said uncomfortably. "I mean, you could have gone out with your friends. I'm wasn't—I'm not going to..."
Sakura bit her lip to keep from saying something nasty and settled for the truth, "If you hadn't come to my apartment last week, I would have spent today stitching up idiots, healing bigger idiots, and trying not to strangle civilians."
"Civilians?" Kakashi prompted her, giving her a faintly disapproving look.
"Oh dear me, how sweet of you to volunteer at the hospital. Do you know when the doctor will see me?" Sakura said in a high pitched whine. "Miss? Will you get me a drink? And lunch? And a sponge bath heh-heh-heh?"
Kakashi made a choked noise. Sakura suspected he was trying not to laugh.
"Or my favourite, 'Why are you pretending to be a ninja, sweetie? It's such a nasty profession,'" Sakura finished. "Of course, that last one was my grandmother, so maybe it doesn't count," she said, rolling her eyes.
"Your family doesn't approve of you being a ninja?" Kakashi asked.
Sakura snorted. "No. They really, really don't. It got so bad that I moved out. It was better than fighting with my dad every night." Probably, she added silently. Her apartment's only saving grace was that it didn't pitch a screaming fit every time she came home.
"That's too bad," Kakashi said. He stopped, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Sakura blinked and realized that they were in front of the posts he'd tied Team Seven to almost three years ago. There were three posts, but she was the only one there. It didn't feel right, but after two years she was almost used to that.
"Okay, great. You get to start the fire, because I didn't actually think that far ahead when I left this morning. I'll...chop these up," she said, looking around for a handy rock to use as a chopping block.
Kakashi disappeared into the trees, presumably to find some firewood.
Sakura found a boulder with a relatively flat top and started slicing the eggplants into thin strips.
The firewood crunched when Kakashi dropped it beside her. "So other than working in the hospital, are you enjoying being Tsunade's apprentice?" he asked. Sakura nearly giggled, because subtle that was not.
"Meh. It's okay," Sakura said. She pulled the coat hanger out of her pocket and unfolded it. "I mean..." Her hands shook for a second and Sakura closed her eyes, sorting her thoughts into nice little categories until she didn't feel like screaming. "I hate the hospital. Right now I keep telling myself that as soon as I get full accreditation I can quit working there and go back in the field."
She doesn't tell Kakashi how much she regrets not asking him to train her before she'd gone to Tsunade. Some things aren't meant to be shared.
Kakashi's hand brushed over her shoulder.
Sakura swallowed. He had always known what she was thinking, before. She didn't know if she was happy that he could still read her so well.
"Are you close to full accreditation?"
"Another four months," Sakura said. She'll be the youngest medic in Konoha when she finished. "I'll have finished in two years instead of five," she told him, just in case he didn't know.
"That's impressive," Kakashi said.
It made the last two years feel worth it for the first time in months, so Sakura dropped her knife and gave Kakashi an impulsive hug. "Thanks," she muttered into his shirt, quiet enough that he wouldn't really be able to hear.
He put his hands on her shoulders like he wasn't quite sure how to hug her back. Sakura squeezed him carefully, mindful of her strength, then let go.
"Okay, you can stab the eggplant slices with this," she told Kakashi, handing him the coat hanger. "Then coat them in oil and salt and pepper."
"Will this work?" Kakashi asked, testing the point of the wire with his finger. It wasn't very sharp.
Sakura shrugged. "I have no idea. I couldn't think of anything else to do with eggplant." She gave the vegetables a dubious look. They were so...purple.
"It's good in soup," Kakashi said, threading the coat hanger through a slice of eggplant.
Sakura cracked open the container of oil and dipped her fingers in it. "All I have for cooking is a microwave, and it only works if I put in the time in intervals shorter than twenty seconds. We're stuck with open flames."
Kakashi laughed. His laughter sounded different from how she remembered. Less real, like the wind could blow his happiness away. "You've been eating out a lot?"
"Hospital cafeteria," Sakura admitted. A drop of oil fell from her finger, splashing into the container.
He gave an exaggerated shudder. "You eat that crap?" Kakashi held out the eggplant so Sakura could coat it with oil.
"It may be formless masses of grey gruel, but it's free for staff," Sakura said, wrinkling her nose. She had gotten used to the food and slightly addicted to red jello, but that didn't make it any more appealing. "If I hold the stick can you get the salt and pepper packets open? My hands are oily."
Kakashi handed her the coat hanger and ripped the tops off the paper packets. "You know, when you said party I pictured funny hats and music."
"If it bothers you that much, you can hum," Sakura told him, a smile quirking the corner of her mouth. "And as for hats..." She fished a pair of sparkly party hats out of her back pocket. "I found these in a storage room in the hospital."
"At the hospital?" Kakashi asked, giving them a sidelong glance. He dusted the eggplant skewer with salt and pepper, then sent a tiny fireball toward the pile of firewood.
"Yeah, I don't know either." Sakura leaned over and hooked the rubber band under Kakashi's chin and settled the hat in his bird's nest hair. It looked idiotic, and she snickered evilly before putting on her own. "There. It's party town, now."
"I feel funner already." Sakura had no idea if he was joking. He sounded completely serious, but then again, he usually did. It was mostly in retrospect that she understood Kakashi's sense of humour.
"Do you want a juice box? I've got fake berry and fruit punch," Sakura asked, oiling the rest of the eggplant slices.
"Fake berry would be nice, thank you." Kakashi held the coat hanger over the flames, just high enough to keep the eggplant from lighting in fire.
She grabbed a luridly bright blue juice box from her bag and handed it to him. "Kakashi..." Sakura said, uncertain if she really wanted to ask. Today was going so well and she didn't want to ruin it.
"Yeah?" His eye crinkled up in a smile, and she felt okay, like everything was okay. Sakura smiled back, basking in the feeling.
"Why...why did you stop?" Sakura asked before she lost her nerve. His answer was more important than the sense of calm, but she missed it nevertheless.
Kakashi twisted the eggplant skewer, angling it closer to the fire. He gave a shuddering sigh and answered, "I guess...I was ready. I had everything set up. My will was updated, I had a mission briefing the next day so someone would look for me, I'd debated and re-debated the merits of putting down a tarp...I was so prepared," he concluded unhappily.
He pulled the eggplant back from the fire and looked at it carefully. "And then I—I tried, but I couldn't make myself cut deep enough. It hurt, and I couldn't...I don't know. It made dying not seem worth it, either."
Sakura shivered. Her hands shook, a quiver in her wrists that travelled to her fingers. "Why didn't you try again? Or just let yourself bleed out? If you hadn't put those stitches in, you would have been dead within hours."
"I don't know." Kakashi said. He hadn't looked at her since she'd asked him why. He adjusted the angle of his hitai-ate, mumbling something she couldn't hear, then spoke up, "I don't know why I wanted to die, and I don't know why I wanted to live."
Sakura hugged him because she didn't know what else to do. "I don't want you to die," she told him, hoping that would mean something. Kakashi had cared what she thought, sometimes. "And I think the eggplant is done, but the important thing is that I don't want you to die."
Kakashi wrapped an arm around her and held her head against his chest, knocking her party hat askew. He buried his fingers in her hair. Sakura heard fabric rustling and realized that he had pulled his mask down. "It's delicious," he said. His voice cracked.
"Really?" Sakura asked. "I was expecting charcoal-like slime." She didn't move. There were tears in her eyes, and she didn't want Kakashi to see them.
"Do you want some?" Kakashi asked. He sounded sharper without fabric muffling his voice, like the mask had caught his emotions before she could hear them.
"Yeah." She twisted enough to nibble at the eggplant. "It is good," Sakura decided. Much better than hospital food at least. She let go of Kakashi and shuffled back.
"I got you a birthday present," Kakashi said suddenly, like he'd just remembered. He passed her the coat hanger and pulled a plastic box out of his belt pouch.
"Oh? You didn't have to," Sakura said happily. No one had gotten her a present in ages. She pealed the lid off and grinned, caught a little off guard, but pleased. "Thanks."
"You asked if I liked cake, so I figured that maybe you did," Kakashi said quietly, looking away. He was a little flushed, but smiling.
"I do," Sakura told him, lifting the squished vanilla cupcake out of the box.
She felt good, like things were okay. It was good.
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