Chapter Text
They see it coming. The river under their feet ripples to life, chakra building into a blue-white wave in the dusk, and the sound of stars rings sweet and high through the forest to either side of them.
Sakura feels it building, a singing hum in her bones and teeth as Kakashi retreats into the treeline and yells for them to do the same. She tries to run as stars fill the water and spill along the ground, ripples of the night sky flooding the water, but the world is already disappearing.
Ino’s reaching for her, and there’s just--stillness. She’s going to die, Sakura thinks, a void of sound and space tensing around them. They both are. There isn’t even time to be afraid as sound and light disappear, and Sakura wraps her chakra around herself in a desperate effort to survive, but it’s not going to be enough. Not nearly enough.
It’s like being punched in the chest by Tsunade. A sickening lurch of movement, her body near coming apart at the seams, and horrible, lurching movement that vibrates through her bones and teeth. Sakura’s bones try to buckle as she hits ground at absolutely brutal speeds, tumbling like a ragdoll across an empty plain, a full moon staring down from above.
Stopping is a mercy, Sakura’s head still reeling as she clumsily claws her way out of what feels like thick, wet, earth.
“Fuck,” Sakura wheezes, because she’d let go of Ino as soon as she’d felt how fast they were going, but that meant she didn’t know where the hell Ino was. “Ino!”
A very faint groan in reply. Sakura tries standing, then carefully sets herself back down, pressing her hand against the break in her wrist and straightening out. She pulls a kunai from her pouch and splints her wrist on it with two loops of bandages, then wastes a trickle of chakra on popping her shoulder back into its socket.
Only her legs are bruised, Tsunade's many lessons on protecting her vitals are damn near tattooed into her bones. Her ribs and spine ache only from the loss of chakra reinforcement. Sakura pushes her tangled hair out of her face with her good hand, and tries standing again.
She wobbles, the world a little distant and slow, but Sakura steadies herself. “Ino?” she calls again.
“Here,” comes from her left, and Sakura climbs out of the deep trough her landing had carved into the group. The sides are a surprisingly soft--dirt? Moss? It’s too dark to tell. It squishes under her hand like a wet sponge.
She lurches ungracefully toward Ino, her feet sinking into the soft ground with every step. The trees are gone, the river disappeared, and the black horizon is uninterrupted as it stretches towards the sky. The land rolls in shallow mounds, and she can see a gleaming pool of stars at the base of the one she’d landed on, the water rippling from the impact of her landing.
Ino’s on the other side. Sakura skims across the water, shivering as the air blows over her skin. It’s cold--she’d gotten wet at some point in the crash, and the night chill is sinking straight into her bones. “Ino?”
“Here--aw fuck--” Ino groans in frustration, a wet, sucking sound lurching through the dark between them. “Sakura?”
“Here,” Sakura replies, nearly falling into the torn open ground. Her feet squelch in the soft ground, sinking in a little. The moonlight is too dim, and the deepest part of the rut is in shadow. “You hurt?”
“I’m stuck,” Ino says, and she laughs. “And--I think my knee might be twisted? I can’t really feel anything, Sakura.”
She casts the diagnostic jutsu with one hand, the pale green glow of her chakra illuminating Ino’s mud-coated face and gleaming blue eyes. “Your spine is fine.”
Belatedly, Sakura realizes that Ino is probably still shaking off the shock of the crash, and hadn’t, perhaps, meant she couldn’t literally feel her body. “Your knee’s not too bad, ligaments are torn, but that’s an easy fix.”
Ino blinks at her, but she doesn’t have a concussion. Sakura offers her hand, letting chakra lim it enough for Ino to see. Ino’s hand finds hers, and Sakura grips it and hauls her up and out. The mud sucks like tar and squelches so loudly they both end up laughing.
It’s easy to insert herself under Ino’s arm on the side of her bad knee, and it saves some warmth between them. “Glad you’re okay.”
“You and me both,” Ino says as Sakura helps her crawl up the side of the deep rut Ino’s landing had carved. She holds out her hand, the mud coating her skin reflecting eerie moonlight blue on black. “Where are we?”
Sakura rolls into the thick moss beside Ino, her head thumping silently as she flops down. “...Earth Country?” she guesses. Sakura’s never been there. Tsunade loathes the Tsuchikage, and apparently the feeling was mutual enough that Tsunade would sooner conquer Iwa than let Sakura step foot in it. Or something like that. Tsunade had lectured Sakura at length on the topic, but Tsunade had also been drunk at the time.
“Dad says Earth country’s just, like. Dirt.” Ino wipes her hands over the moss, trying to scrape off the mud. “Far as the eye can see. And dry as Suna in winter.”
“We’re probably not in Earth Country, then,” Sakura agrees. She looks away from the strangely bright moon, studying the stars. She’s not the best star navigator, but if she can find the Sage’s Circle, it’s height above the horizon should at least--
“Oh.” Ino says from beside her, and her voice is very small. She’s looking at the sky too.
Sakura reaches out, grabbing Ino’s arm and she feels the pulse of familiar life under Ino’s skin. She licks her lips, and grimaces because her face is just as mud-coated as Ino’s. “It’s not there.” The paler cloud of the galaxy streaks across the sky, the familiar moon embedded on foreign canvas. The stars are brighter than she’s ever seen them, and she doesn’t recognize any of them.
Ino sinks to the ground beside her, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder as a faint breeze tries to steal every drop of warmth from them. “In the morning,” Ino says, “We’ll get our compasses out and we’ll figure out where we are.”
“I should heal your knee. We’ll lay out our ground tarps and...” Sakura loses her train of thought. “We’re never going to get these scrolls delivered in time.”
“Heal, ground tarps, camp blankets, sleep until morning,” Ino says. “We can do that.”
“Kakashi-sensei wasn’t caught up with us, right?”
Ino pauses in the middle of wiping her face with a hunk of moss she’d torn from the ground. “He was pretty far out.” Her chakra ripples against Sakura as her eyes close. Sakura sits up, healing her wrist while she waits.
White flowers grow in thick streaks and patches across the low, rolling mounds and ponds that stretch around them, the shape of them clear and moon-silvered as her eyes adjust to the darkness. A steady, slow breeze slides across the bog, bringing the scent of some kind of herd animal in the distance--mustier than deer, but similar.
“That way,” Ino says, breaking the silence. She pointed downwind of their position. “He’s already coming toward us, but there’s a herd of animals between us and him. I think they’re some kind of deer?”
“Yeah, I can smell them. If he’s coming our way, we might as well stay put.” Sakura stretches her own awareness, searching the world around them with idle interest. She’ll never have the range that Ino does and she’s never managed the trick of passively sensing, but even Tsunade had said her ability to sense details was of an acceptable standard.
There’s a lot to sense. “You might want to leave the mud,” Sakura says, her mood sinking at the shimmering glitter of life in the moss and grass.
Ino’s chakra skims over her skin, light as mist. “No,” Ino mutters, her eyes flickering toward Sakura. “Not again.”
“Millions of them,” Sakura confirms. “Not sure if they’re mosquitoes or something else.”
Ino drops the moss she’d been using as a towel with a sigh. Out of the respect for their years of friendship, Sakura doesn’t tell her that it’s teeming with tiny lives.
The edge of the sky’s turning a paler shade of night, and there’s a bird kicking off the dawn chorus somewhere. The sun was setting when they’d been caught up in the jutsu. “How far off is Kakashi-sensei?”
“Two hours, maybe,” Ino says, and she shivers a little. “He’s going around the herd.”
Sakura nods. “I feel like we should do something, but...” None of this felt real, and she doesn’t want to think about any of it.
“He’ll know what to do,” Ino says. “We just have to hurry up and wait.” She bumps her shoulder into Sakura’s, then just leans against her. “Why are you warm?” she demands with a strangled laugh. “It’s freezing!”
“Thermoregulation,” Sakura says, leaning into Ino in return, immediately gleeful to know something Ino does. “Haven’t you learned that yet, Ino-pig?”
“Hmph.” Ino’s chakra flickers against her once, twice, turning far too hot for a second before she adjusts. “Anything you can do--”
“Keep it on the surface of your skin,” Sakura tells her, deliberately and obnoxiously smug. “It uses half as much chakra that way.”
A few long breaths, and Ino’s matching her. “Like I was saying.” Ino tosses her hair over her shoulder, and it slaps wetly against Sakura’s neck.
Sakura makes an exaggerated sound of disgust, peeling Ino’s mud-coated rope of hair off her skin and flicking it back at her. “Always happy to teach an old pig new tricks.”
“Good to see you use that big brain for something, Forehead,” Ino says, rapping her knuckles lightly against Sakura’s head. Then she picks a clump of mud from Sakura’s hair and flicks it into the nearest pond. “Think this counts as a spa treatment?”
***
Kakashi slogs into view as dawn finally breaks, looking absolutely miserably wet and muddy. His mask was clean, clearly a fresh one pulled from his pack, but the rest of him was absolutely covered in verdant green threads of moss tangled into black mud. “You’re both alive?” he asks when he’s in range.
Sakura and Ino chorus an agreement, rising to their feet. Sakura gives him a lazy salute just to see him wince. “You injured, Kakashi-sensei?”
“Just bruises,” he says. “You saw the sky?”
“Yep,” Ino answers.
Kakashi sighs. “Either of you have a clock?”
Ino riffles through her kunai pouch, and comes out clutching a camp-clock. A thin square the size of her palm, with battery to last ten years and sturdy enough to keep ticking even if you stabbed it. “Yeah, it’s...”
“Twenty-two hundred?” Kakashi asks grimly.
Sakura leans over Ino’s shoulder to look at the clock. “Thirty minutes past,” she says helpfully.
The dawn is golden and soft, painting the mosses and grasses a warm and lovely green. Birds sing in piercing, chaotic dissonance as they took flight in the thousands. The bugs Sakura sensed in the dark rise in buzzing columns that the hungry birds sweep through, and tiny blobs of brown fur skitter in and out of the layers of moss. She thinks they might be some kind of shrew or vole.
Kakashi pulls a compass from somewhere and hands it to them.
Sakura lays it flat on her palm, half-turning to have the sun to her right, and watches as the needle wobbles uncertainly before pointing about four degrees to the left of the sun. “What the fuck,” she mutters, shaking the compass in case it’s caught on something inside the case.
Ino grabs her own compass, and sets it on her palm, holding it up alongside the one in Sakura’s palm. Both compasses point unerringly north--at the sun.
“Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura says, “Where are we?”
“There’s a herd of thousands of deer over there,” Kakashi says, which answers nothing. “And all of them have antlers. All of them. Big antlers. I’d say they’re some kind of goat, but they smell like deer, look like deer--” he stops talking and just lets the birds take over the conversation.
“Do you know which way we should go?” Sakura asks after a while. “We’re still...we can still get home, right?”
Kakashi shakes his head grimly. “The stars, the sun, the compasses, and the time are all wrong. I--”
“We’ll figure it out,” Ino says, cutting him off. “And if we can’t, we’ll pick a direction and go. There’s nothing to eat here and it’s cold as hell. We’re not staying.”
“And the bugs,” Sakura adds after a minute.
The bugs buzz restlessly, landing on the cracking mud coating all of them. Kakashi breathes in, and calm settles over him like a shroud. “True. True. All right. We’ll...Ino, you’ve mastered the Mind-Body Switch with birds, correct?”
“Yes,” she answers. “You want me to scout?”
“Get the lay of the land,” he replies. “Better to know what’s around us.”
Ino nods, shading her eyes as she looks up, studying the thousands of birds wheeling above the slopes. The mud on her face flakes off when she smiles, a target in mind. She sits, hands held up in a diamond as she gauges the distance to her target. “Guard my body, Sakura.”
“You got it,” Sakura replies, catching Ino’s shoulder and easing her down to the ground as she goes limp. She gets her rain cloak from her pack and drapes it over Ino’s body. It’s still cool out and Ino can’t keep warm if she’s not inside herself. “So we’re a bit off course, huh?”
It makes him laugh, and Sakura laughs too, even though it’s not funny. Tsunade’s going to be so upset, and Sakura’s trying so hard not to think about that, but--
“Can your dogs take a message back to Konoha if you summon them?” Jiraiya’s toads could summon themselves nearly anywhere they felt like, but most people’s summons couldn’t. Sakura’s fairly sure she isn’t supposed to know Jiraiya’s summons can do that.
“Not without a second summoner for them.”
“Could they tell someone else’s summons?”
Kakashi shakes his head, then seems to think about it. He hums thoughtfully. “Maybe. I could ask.” He cuts a shallow line into the pad of his thumb with a kunai that appears in his hand like magic, and then disappears just as quick. His hand signs are too fast for Sakura to follow, and they end with a puff of smoke.
A bright white fox pops up, immediately indignant. “Summoner! Rude! How rude! I was about to catch breakfast!” it lectures Kakashi, a massively fluffy tail twitching indignantly and adorably. “My children will be hungry! Inconsiderate lout!”
“You can summon foxes?” Sakura squeaks before she can catch herself, grabbing her elbows to keep from reaching out to pet it. “Why have you never summoned--”
“You aren’t Pakkun,” Kakashi says, kneeling down to eye level with the unspeakably fluffy summons with the tiny black nose and sweet little grey eyes--How is it so small? It’s smaller than Tora, she could carry it forever and never let it go. Sakura grips her sanity with both hands and drags it back. “I apologize for my rudeness, little fox, but I intended to call an old friend.” He pulls a hunk of jerky from his pouch and offers it. “And of course, I would be happy to hunt for your children.”
The fox takes the jerky and eats it whole, then sits primly on the moss, tail wrapped around their tiny paws. “Well, if it was not intentional, I suppose! I am Tiri, and you may catch me a caribou.”
“Of course,” Kakashi says agreeably. “In exchange, may I ask--”
“The caribou over the hill, Summoner. Can you not track? You will not survive if you cannot track!” Tiri yips firmly. “I will teach you! Follow my paws, Summoner--”
Tiri pounces to their feet and they freeze, spying Ino’s limp body. “Is that your kit, Summoner? Is it well? It looks ill, Summoner!”
“She’s sleeping,” Kakashi says, and his eye curves into a happy smile. “Show me the caribou. I am very new to this land, and do not yet know what they are.”
“Yes, I can tell.” Tiri gives him a tremendously judgemental look. “Found it too muddy for dens, didn’t you? And yet you brought your kits here, no plan, no den!” Tiri whirls to look at Sakura, and rises onto their hind paws, head tilting as they study her intently. “The night is just beyond the horizon! You must take better care of them! Poor muddy kit!”
It’s so cute, Sakura thinks numbly, her heart growing six sizes inside her chest. “Thank you for offering to teach Kakashi-sensei, Tiri-...san?”
A startled yip as Tiri’s ears perk up. “Oh but you taught her to speak so soon! And I am Tiri, not Tirisan, little Kit of the Summoner. It’s all right, you tried. Didn’t succeed, but one must blame the vixen--” Tiri weaves on their paws, eyes flickering to Kakashi, “--the dog? Dog! You smell of that, yes. I blame your dog father, kit, and not yourself.”
Sakura bows. “Thank you, you are too kind, Tiri.”
“It’s true, I am.” Tiri drops to four paws and flickers in a pleased circle. “Now the caribou! I have sixteen kits near grown, Summoner, and they are very hungry! Wake your kit, I will teach her to hunt, too.”
Ino jerks upright. “I’m awake!”
“Wonderful! They both speak!” Tiri looks at Kakashi approvingly. “You have trained them well. Mine have only just begun to name themselves.”
“They’re exceptional,” Kakashi says. “I cannot take the credit.”
Tiri yips and chitters, and whatever summons magic that translates their speech convey their agreement, if not their meaning. “Woken kit, I am Tiri,” the fox introduces themself again, imperious as any daimyo.
Ino’s eyes glow with excitement, barely contained. “I am very pleased to meet you. I am Ino.”
“A lovely name,” Tiri praises, “Very strong hunter name. You will be much better than your dog father. And your Blood on Snow sister, her too.”
Something in the words stretches and wobbles in Sakura’s head, Blood on Snow sounding like Tiri’s saying pink, too. Katsuyu had told her once that they did not share a language with humans so much as they share an understanding, that the words she spoke were irrelevant to a summons, it was her meaning and theirs that made the conversation.
“Sakura is my name,” Sakura offers, and she’s delighted when the tiny fox chitters approvingly. “Kakashi-sensei tries his best, Tiri.”
“A wonderful name, Sakura Blood on Snow! You will grow very strong,” Tiri says, and Sakura bows instinctively, fighting the urge to preen. Tiri doesn’t have a voice, Sakura doesn’t think. It’s in her mind, and her mind is translating it straight back to her ears.
“Come now, I will teach you a little of what you must know.” Tiri trots off, clearly expecting them to follow in their footsteps. “The wind comes this way, you smell the herd, yes? Put your snout to the wind and follow it to the source, the nose does not lead wrong.”
Ino mouths gleeful words that would impunge Tiri’s dignity to be spoken aloud, and Sakura mouths CUTE right back at her.
***
A half hour later, Tiri creeps up the side of a shallow pool, the three of them on their toes and fingertips, crawling along in the fox’s wake. “When you grow close, kits, you walk with silent paws and prepare to pounce. They may know you are near, but they need not know where,” Tiri whispers into their minds.
“There’s so many,” Sakura whispers. The rolling boglands ahead are covered in hundreds, maybe thousands of ash-coloured deer, all with massive antlers covered in velvet so thick that she could see the fuzz of it from a half-kilometer away. The caribou cover the land. “Are they all stags?”
Tiri clucks at her, “Do you not see the little kits? The herd is returning from the sea, Sakura Blood on Snow. This is all the vixens and dogs and kits come at once. The paws that draw thunder, the thousand antlers that score the sky. They kill foolish little kits, and yet--” Tiri’s ears flick forward, the impression of of smile shared. “--They are most delicious. Summoner, catch one for me.”
Kakashi laughs, near silently, and then he fades into the landscape, carefully following each and every of the dozen instructions Tiri had given on the way. A deer, no matter how foreign, is an easy target, but Kakashi treats it like an A-Rank mission, much to Tiri’s wordless approval.
“Little vixens,” Tiri says, Kakashi just out of hearing range. “This Dog summoner, do you take him kindly?” There’s a new note in the fox’s words.
Sakura meets Ino’s eyes over the fox’s head, a thread of panic coursing down her spine. Summons were not known to be forgiving of sins in their summoners. “What do you mean?”
“He has led you into a dangerous land, with all of you unprepared. You were wounded, little vixens, this nose cannot be fooled.” Tiri seems--bigger. A little unearthly, even in the bright light of day. “Is this Summoner worthy?”
“He would never abandon us,” Sakura says, slowly, trying to think how to translate from teammates to terms the fox might understand. “Not ever. He has kept us safe since we were much younger.”
“He’s strong and he tries to be kind,” Ino says. “He is a good leader, and a great...hunter?”
“You do not love him as your father. Did he not raise you?”
“He’s not--”
“--he didn’t,” Sakura says, interrupting Ino. “He’s not our father, Tiri. He’s our teacher. Our leader trusted him with our care and teaching.” For a very vague definition of trust and care, and a really limited timeline for the ‘trusted with’. “It’s not his fault that we ended up here.” Sakura pauses, and shakes off the awkwardness of being asked to define the relationship that her and Kakashi had spent three years not talking about. “I’d trust him with my life.”
Tiri looks over to Ino. “And you, Ino? Do you trust this Summoner?”
“Yeah,” Ino says. “He’s good.”
She’d missed Kakashi-sensei snapping the neck of a straggler and silently easing it to the ground--and so had the herd. The caribou stir restlessly and the ones at the edge start drifting away from them, but they don’t notice that one of their number isn’t there anymore. Tiri had warned them of the caribou stampeding and trampling unwary kits.
Kakashi hauls his kill over his shoulders and starts back towards them.
“I will lend your family my aid,” Tiri says, and the silly, arrogant fox is there and not there, the shape of tiny paws and a fluffy tail a reflection on the surface of a bottomless ocean.
“That’s good,” Sakura says, because she's sure it’s important to acknowledge that kind of thing.
“Thank you,” Ino adds, clearly possessed by the same instinct as Sakura. “It’s...good,” she says weakly, staring at Sakura over Tiri’s back, and through Tiri’s spirit. Her eyes are wide and incredulous, which is very fair. Sakura expects that hers are the same.
Kakashi kneels in front of them, and he seems unsurprised by Tiri’s abrupt change. “Payment for your hunt interrupted.” A pleased chirp rolls over the land like thunder, and Tiri’s eyes turn bright with greed.
“I accept your offering.” Tiri places a possessive paw on the caribou’s thick fur. “In turn, I offer knowledge. You are far from home, Summoner, and your contract has been abandoned here for many generations. But I am the Tiri of the foxes, and we will come to your summons for blood and tribute.”
“Thank you for your generosity,” Kakashi says, bowing. “How many questions may I ask?”
“Three,” the Tiri replies, “three is a good number.”
“A generous one. My first question is this: why did Pakkun not answer my summons?”
“Are you displeased by myself answering?” Tiri asks sharply. “Your pack is very far from here, very far indeed. A summons cares not for distance, but a summoner ought to! A mere drop of blood to pay? This Pakkun would be within its rights to break the contract.”
Kakashi blinks, and holds his hand at an angle that demands silence from Ino and Sakura. “It was kind of you to come, but Pakkun and his pack have been my friends for most of my life. I would like to know that they’re… well, and if it would be unwise to try to summon them again.”
Sakura’s only very rarely heard Kakashi speak so formally, and he’s not actually very good at it. He’s trying really hard, though.
Tiri chitters in amusement, and then answers truly, “I wished to answer and so I did. Your Pakkun cannot come so far, but I have heard that they love you dearly. Try again when you are closer to home.”
“Thank you, Tiri. I am glad to know they’re well. My second question is...hmm.” Kakashi took a moment, still holding his hand out for their silence. “Can you--pass a message through the summon clans that we are alive and well, but lost? We would like our families to know that we are not dead.”
“A question cloaking a request. Very well, which clans would you have me pass word to?”
“The slugs, the toads, the tortoises, and the dogs,” Kakashi answers. “Ideally at least one of them will pass it on.”
“It will be done. What is your third question?”
“Which direction will take us home?”
“You must follow the herd until you find the river, and then follow the river through the forest to the mountains. Then you must cross the mountains.”
Kakashi lets his hand drift down, and Sakura seizes the opportunity. “And then we’ll be home?”
Tiri blinks at her, tail swishing. “Oh, no. Not at all. Still very far to go. But you will be further than I have ever gone, and I do not know what lies beyond the mountains. But it is what I know, and it is better than nothing, is it not?”
Kakashi and Ino stare at her like she just interrupted the Hokage in the middle of a speech, and Sakura can feel her face turning red. “It’s a lot more than we had before,” she says. “Thank you!”
The Tiri coos at her, a rapid series of high pitched clicks. “You are welcome. Are you satisfied with my answers, Summoner?”
“I am,” Kakashi answers, a note of ritual to it. “You are very wise, and have helped us greatly. Thank you.”
The Tiri yips, and disappears with the caribou.
Ino wheezes like she’d been holding her breath the entire time. “Was that a Summoning Spirit?” she says incredulously.
Kakashi hums and doesn’t meet their eyes. “Seems like it was, yes.”
“Does that mean you can summon foxes, now?” Sakura asks. “For...blood and tribute? They called the caribou tribute, right? So blood is--”
Kakashi gave her a thumbs up with a very lightly bleeding thumb.
“Wow,” Sakura says. “Does that happen often?”
“No,” Kakashi replies, “It was a...fresh contract? Or an addition to mine. Usually you only have to pass their trial once.” He waves his hand vaguely through the air. “If the Tiri had decided it didn’t like me, it would have eaten me, not the caribou.”
“But it was so cute,” Sakura sighs, already missing the tiny little ears and eyes and paws.
“It was, wasn’t it?” Kakashi says, “But it was also a very dangerous spirit that could have killed us all.” He claps his hands and continues, his voice obnoxiously cheerful. “Let’s not talk about it too much lest it returns. Why don’t we get some rest before we move on? The herd is moving slow, we can track it when we wake up.”
***
A vague sense of danger jerks Kakashi from a restless nap. “Kakashi-senpai, if you would please wake?” a very polite nightmare asks, his presence heralded by the scent of black-water and blood.
The drying mud’s done a decent job keeping the bugs off, but it flakes off in like crackling plaster as he sits up, thick in his eyelashes, and itching where it’s made it into his eye. “Itachi,” Kakashi says, glancing at him quickly before averting his gaze. “I’d say it’s a pleasure, but...”
Sakura and Ino are faking sleep, curled back-to-back like a pair of affectionate cats, and Itachi’s mountain of a partner is leaning ominously over them...or listing slowly towards horizontal, Kakashi corrects himself, watching as the Mist-nin sways ominously.
“Of course,” Itachi says, and Kakashi’s mouth twitches toward a smile behind the safety of his mask. Itachi looks like a dead rat caught in a storm drain. “We are tremendously far from home. If you wish to return, Kisame and I can offer much to make the journey easier.”
Kakashi pauses, thrown off. “It’s a mistake to trust traitors, Itachi. You know that.” Kakashi skims his eyes over Itachi, then pauses, startled. Itachi’s eyes are closed, head bowed, and both his hands are palm-up on his knees.
It’s been such a long time, Kakashi had almost forgotten how the Uchiha begged. Sasuke probably never even learned.
“Kisame is loyal and kind. He is very strong, and an excellent hunter. His cooking is good. We can trade a sack of rice, as well,” Itachi lists off sharply, like he’s giving a report. “He is a good teammate.”
Itachi’s partner gives up the ghost, slumping gently toward the ground, and Itachi adds, tightly, “He knows how to make storage seals. And I will give my word that we will not harm you or your team.”
For whatever that’s worth, Kakashi doesn’t say. “It’s to your benefit not to. We know which direction to go,” Kakashi offers. It’s a warning and a bribe, though Kakashi’s theory that the Uchiha massacre was the explosive first act of a multi-year bout of psychosis limits the amount of logic that Kakashi actually expects at the bargaining table.
“Please, heal him.” Itachi’s voice shakes, his chakra twisting like he’s being gutted. “I will repay you.”
Whatever Kakashi was expecting, this wasn’t it. “Sakura?” Itachi clearly knows one of the girls is a healer, but he might not know that they both are.
“Concussion, a bad one. Broken arm and collarbone,” Sakura says, sitting up. He didn’t see her use a jutsu, only barely sensed the mist of her chakra rising. She scratches her head, setting off an appalling cloud of dust as she disturbs the mud dried to her. “I can fix it.”
“Will you need to rest, after?”
“It’s only a concussion, Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura says. “I do fifty a day when I take shifts with the training field emergency response team. Well, maybe not fifty. A lot, though!”
Kakashi nods permission, though it comes too late for Sakura to notice. She’s already rolling Kisame onto his back Sakura fishes out her canteen and uses it to wet a scrap of cloth that she wipes briskly over the side of Kisame’s head, revealing a nasty divot in his skull and a steadily bleeding cut.
Sakura clicks her tongue disapprovingly at something, then presses glowing hands against Kisame’s forehead. There’s a dull popping sound, the dent disappearing as Kisame twitches weakly.
She’s fast. Really fast. Almost as fast as Tsunade. It’s impressive, and Kakashi can’t think of a way to tell her to slow down, to fake like she’s worse at this.
“There you go,” Sakura says brightly, patting an incredibly dangerous missing nin on the shoulder. “Good as new!”
Kisame rolls onto his side and pukes in response, then lies there, panting, as Sakura makes a sympathetic noise. “You might have a little vertigo for a couple hours,” she adds. “It’ll fade.”
Itachi’s eyes crack open, a sliver of red glowing between mud-covered eyelashes. “You’re done?”
Sakura stares at Ino for a second, silently panics at whatever unspoken advice Ino gives her, then gives Itachi a gleaming thumbs up and smile combo that would have done Gai proud. “Yep! He’s fixed! You can...go? If you’re going to go. Or stay? I don’t know which. Kakashi-sensei, thoughts?”
“Thank you, Sakura,” Kakashi says gravely, keeping his face straight through a relentless force of will. It wasn’t that funny--he was also trying not to panic.
“Kisame?” Itachi calls.
Kisame rolls onto his back, eyes squeezed shut. “I’m good.”
“Great! We were just going to get moving while there’s still daylight,” Kakashi says, taking advantage of Itachi’s concerned distraction to shake out his ground tarp and fold it into his pack. “We’ll let you two recover here while we scout ahead.”
Ino and Sakura appear behind him, fully packed and ready to go, clearly picking up on the need to not be here right now. Kakashi steps back carefully, but Itachi’s refocused on Kisame to an alarming degree.
Let’s go, he signs to the girls. Somehow, in spite of him remembering a second too late that he’s using ANBU hand signs, they both appear to know exactly what he’s saying. Kakashi chooses to believe it’s a coincidence.
“You, uh. Might want to lie on your side, Kisame-san. So you don’t choke on your own vomit,” Sakura says, drawing the missing-nins’ attention exactly when they were supposed to be escaping it. “Bye!”
“Perhaps you should stay,” Itachi says softly, almost tentative. “To keep an eye on him?”
“It’s just a bit of fluid in his inner ear, from the trauma,” Sakura says nervously. “I can’t get it out safely, because, you know, but it’ll work its way out in a couple hours. Or days. Probably hours.”
Itachi frowns, and he’s not looking at her so pointedly that it has to be deliberate. “Is that dangerous?”
Kakashi actually can’t tell if the bewildered look on Sakura’s face is fake or not. “...no? Just keep him on his side and let him get some sleep. If we were at the hospital, I’d be sending him home, no problem.”
“You can go get them if you need to, Itachi,” Kisame says, catching Itachi’s sleeve before he can get up. “It’s not that bad.”
Ino’s discreetly dragging Sakura away, bless her. Kakashi grabs Sakura’s other arm and sets to putting as much distance as possible between them.