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the-roadkill-cafe · 7 years

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Throwing a Stone In a River Part 4

Summary: When Sakura graduates from the academy, she suddenly finds her head invaded by the ghost of Uchiha Shisui. Her inner is gone, but not forgotten, and she struggles with impulse control more than ever before. But also, Shisui gives a lot of unsolicited advice - useful and otherwise - and does not shut the fuck up. He’s not thrilled about current events.

Rating: T

Author’s Notes: First of all, I’d like to thank @tozettewrites for allowing me use of her prompt and for coming up with the idea. The story would not exist without her. This story would also not exist without @jaycrowind, who cheered me on and nagged me as needed in order to get the writing done, only to immediately beta it for me so it looked presentable. Thank you so, so much. Thanks also to @phoenixyfriend, who became an impromptu sounding board and whom I bombarded with many many questions. Finally, thanks to @surfacage, who was probably very surprised when a random stranger popped up in their messages asking about Shisui, but very graciously answered my questions. Thanks for helping me out, and thanks for all the artwork you do for the Naruto fandom.

Chapter Tags/Warnings: discussion of suicide, discussion of eye trauma/gouging, manipulation, hallucinations, loss of bodily autonomy

If you think I've missed a tag or that one should be added, please let me know. Thanks!

Many many thanks to @jaycrowind for beta'ing, @elenathehun, @phoenixyfriend, and @jaycrowind for their ideas and suggestions, and @beyondthemoor for her cheerleading. They're responsible for pushing me into finishing this chapter.

Previous Part: Part 3

In the end, Sakura decided to compromise with Shisui and ordered lunch at a tempura stall, gratefully consuming a full plate’s worth of fried vegetables and shrimp. She still spitefully ordered a small bowl of anmitsu for dessert though and savored every morsel. If he didn’t like being in her slow body that liked to eat anmitsu, he could get out.

‘I really, really don’t think it works like that,’ Shisui paused. ‘I don’t even know how I got stuck inside you in the first place! Trust me, there are more interesting ways to be inside someone else’s body.’

‘What?’ Sakura blinked out into space, her spoon held half way between the bowl and her mouth.

‘Oh, oh shit, you’re like, twelve, right? Pretend you didn’t hear that. I mean, it’s not like you even know what it is-‘

Sakura cut Shisui off. ‘Did you just make a sex joke?’

‘It slipped out! I swear I’m not trying to be creepy.’

Sakura let Shisui stew in silence for a few moments. It wasn’t like the joke had been about her. Still, if the only way she had to make Shisui watch his mouth was by letting him think she thought he was a creepy pervert, she’d take it.

‘I,’ Sakura began once she thought he had waited long enough, ‘am not an idiot. I do in fact know what sex is.’

‘Are you sure about the first part? Because I could’ve sworn that you forgot to check if you could cut yourself loose from some ropes,’ he replied.

‘If you don’t shut up about that I’m going to order some dango for the walk back.’

‘Fine, geez, can’t make a joke around here…’

Sakura ignored him for the sake of her own sanity. All she wanted to do was enjoy her anmitsu in peace and maybe drink a gallon of water. She definitely didn’t want to spend her lunch bickering with a ghostly voice inside her head. If he even was a ghost, which she still wasn’t entirely convinced of.

The rest of her lunch would’ve passed without incident, except that after Sakura had paid her bill, she decided to use the bathroom. As she locked the stall behind her, it didn’t take her long to realize her conundrum.

‘Can…can you actually see what I see?’ Sakura asked, facing the stall door awkwardly.

Luckily for her dignity, Shisui seemed to recognize the problem immediately. ‘I…yeah. As long as your body can perceive it, I can too.’

Sakura fingered with the zipper to her dress as her face gradually grew warm. It shouldn’t be that difficult to use the bathroom with her eyes shut, right…?

‘I’ve definitely seen worse things in my life than a girl using the bathroom.’ Shisui said dryly.

‘That’s not the point! How am I supposed to use the bathroom with a boy in my head?!’ Sakura wailed. She fought the temptation to stomp her foot.

‘Well first you sit down on the toilet seat,’ Shisui began with a snide voice.

‘If you weren’t already dead I’d kill you myself,’ snapped Sakura. She glanced quickly around the stall and then determinedly shut her eyes.

‘Ooh, yes, I’m so terrified of a twelve year old genin.’

Sakura managed not to screech like a tea kettle, but it was a close thing. Instead she pulled on the zipper to her dress.

‘Should I hum or something?’

‘Be quiet, I’m busy trying to pretend you don’t exist.’

Several awkward minutes later, Sakura left the bathroom. She knew her face had to be clashing horribly with her hair but she couldn’t bring herself to calm down. That was the worst experience ever.

‘Let’s just…pretend this never happened,’ Shisui said.

Well at least they finally agreed on something for once. Then again, Sakura supposed it had to be equally uncomfortable for Shisui to be in a girl’s body, and one several years younger than him apparently, as it was for her to have a boy in her head.

Having plenty of time left before Kakashi expected her back at the training grounds, Sakura ambled back. At this point the double layered vision she had walking through the village was no longer surprising. Given the apparently supernatural nature of Shisui’s possession of her, Sakura supposed this might be her new normal.

‘Is what I’m seeing…your memories?’

‘I think so. It’s reasonable; you’re already getting some kind of bleed over from me,’ replied Shisui.

Sakura observed the faded, ghostly images with renewed interest. Depending on when Shisui died and how much older than her he was, she could gain a new insight on what the village looked like before disasters like the Kyuubi. As that thought came to mind, Sakura flicked her eyes to the horizon again, hoping to catch another glimpse of the dreaded bijuu. It wasn’t like she’d get another chance to see the now dead Kyuubi, and without fear of danger at that. Unfortunately for Sakura, the terrifying mirage did not appear.

For a moment Sakura was tempted to ask Shisui about the Kyuubi or even the Third Shinobi War, but just as the intent began to coalesce into actual words in her mind, an image of her parents, waking up exhausted from the nightmares they still had over a decade later surfaced. She grimaced. Shisui probably wanted to answer those kinds of questions just as much as her parents wanted to, which was to say, not at all.

Instead she asked, ‘So if you weren’t a desk chuunin but a jounin, what were your specializations? How were you usually deployed?’

‘My specializations changed based on who you talked to,’ Shisui said with a chuckle. ‘If I were to describe it…hmm, probably a kenjutsu user supplemented by mid-range ninjutsu and genjutsu. I was a burst melee front line shinobi, usually deployed for either assassinations or sabotage, though sometimes I also accompanied intelligence gathering missions as well, either as a specialist or as the muscle.’

If he had been a burst melee shinobi, it was no wonder he emphasized speed so much. Burst melee shinobi were unlike sustained melee shinobi in that, despite their strong offense, they couldn’t keep it up for extended periods of time. Whatever they chose to specialize in, all burst melee shinobi dispatched their enemies as quickly as possible. Depending on the squad, they either acted as a secondary offensive force to sustained melee shinobi, or they remained behind with medical squads and other support shinobi.

‘But why would other people not describe your specializations the same way?’

Shisui hummed thoughtfully. ‘Based on certain abilities I had, there were assumptions people made about what I was and wasn’t capable of doing, and how I preferred to fight. Other people had a tendency to think I focused more on either ninjutsu or genjutsu. I was no slouch, of course, but I knew others who were true masters in those areas. I’m much more generalized by comparison.’

Sakura frowned as she continued to make her way to the training grounds. The topic inadvertently turned Sakura’s thoughts away from asking Shisui more questions and towards her own team. Her quick mind glossed over what she knew of Kakashi, which was more than she thought. Yesterday she only knew that he was a weird shinobi that, despite all appearances, was definitely a part of the elite. Now she knew he was a former ANBU member and in spite of his smaller reserves of chakra, was considered a sustained melee shinobi that specialized in ninjutsu.

It was too soon for Sakura to tell what Naruto was going to choose to specialize in, but based on his stamina alone he would also be meant for ongoing combat. Sasuke at this point could choose to either be a solid all around mid to close range fighter, or focus on improving his ninjutsu, of which she knew he did the best in amongst their class. Which just left her. Sakura clenched her fists.

If nothing else, today highlighted that Sakura didn’t have much of anything that was useable in the field. She was the least physically capable of her team, not just in speed and strength but also in taijutsu; she had no ninjutsu whatsoever; genjutsu was a mystery…Sakura was becoming mortified to realize that the only thing she was good at was memorizing things and battle strategy and tactics. She was a paper ninja.

‘I’m…a terrible shinobi…’

‘Yeah,’ Shisui replied. ‘But a lot of genin are. That’s what training and your jounin instructor is for. Not everyone gets to start out as a talented genius.’

‘But where do I even start? I need to fix everything,’ Sakura said.

‘Well, you start with physical conditioning.’ Shisui paused. ‘Like getting faster.’

Sakura huffed out loud. ‘Ugh, how did I know you were going to say that?’

‘A strong body is the foundation to being a strong shinobi.’

She sulkily seated herself at the base of a tree in the wide training grounds Team 7 had trained in earlier. Naruto and Sasuke weren’t back yet, and if Kakashi was, she couldn’t sense him. Now that she had eaten and rested for awhile, she felt significantly better, though her legs still felt a little like jelly. It was as good a time as any to work through what direction she wanted to take her shinobi career. She flicked her thumbs back and forth while she thought.

As much as Shisui’s suggestion rankled, it was probably the best solution for now. Sakura didn’t have any idea what she wanted to be, as a shinobi. There was more to it than just taking missions and completing the objective. There were all the administrative shinobi, usually semi-retired or with career ending injuries, peppered with able-bodied shinobi to help defend the village in case of an attack. There was the medical corps, where she would have her choice of becoming a hospital medical ninja or a combat medical ninja. ANBU, the Academy, Intelligence, Research and Development…there were plenty of places for shinobi other than on the front lines.

‘It might help if you remember why you want to be a shinobi in the first place,’ said Shisui.

Sakura scowled at the air. ‘Can you not listen to my thoughts for five minutes? And why can you hear mine but I can’t hear yours anyway?’

‘Probably something to do with the Yin chakra. It’s the chakra of mental and spiritual energy. I’m not really an expert on it, like some fuinjutsu specialists, or the Yamanaka or Nara,’ Shisui answered. ‘I don’t exactly go looking through your memories or your thoughts, you know. They just appear. Especially your thoughts. Try meditating or something, maybe that will fix it.’

She dropped her head back against the tree. Physical training, meditation, none of that mattered if she didn’t also pick up a few jutsu along the way. Both of her parents had earth nature chakra, so she probably did too. Doton jutsu were good. They were mostly defensive, which would complement the offensive nature of her teammates. She should learn a few genjutsu too. She didn’t know if her parents knew much in the way of genjutsu, but they’d probably teach her some Doton ninjutsu if she asked and proved she was taking her shinobi training seriously.

But before she could follow that train of thought, she heard the faint sounds of bickering. It was soon followed by Naruto and Sasuke walking down the path. Sakura felt her brows rise. Did they actually eat together, or had they met each other on the way back? Either scenario was surprising. The fact that they were arguing was at least familiar to her.

Naruto waved when he saw her. “Oi! Sakura-chan! Are you ready for the mission?”

‘Mission?’ Sakura blinked. She reviewed the events before lunch and realized she didn’t actually know why Kakashi had asked them to return after lunch. At the time, Shisui had been criticizing her performance during training.

Naruto didn’t seem to notice her confusion. “Heh, this will be so easy. We won’t even need Sasuke. Between you and me, we’ll have this done in no time!”

“All you two would do is slow me down anyway. I’m better off doing it alone,” Sasuke said.

Sakura ignored her two teammates. She was sure at some point it’d get hammered into their skulls that they needed to work together as a team; no need for her to remind them.

‘I wonder what kind of mission we’re going to have.’

‘Something boring and awful. All missions for genin are terrible, it’s a fact of life,’ Shisui answered.

‘Oh yeah? What are they like?’ Sakura asked Shisui.

He made a non-committal noise. ‘Oh, you know, body retrieval, trap and bomb dismantling, chasing cats, that sort of thing. Just stuff that’s a pain in the ass but needs to be done.’

‘One of those things is not like the other, Shisui,’ Sakura said dryly. ‘You’re just messing with me, right? We’re not even in the middle of a war, there are no bodies to get from anywhere. Besides, Kakashi-sensei wouldn’t send three green genin out into an active battle zone, right? Shisui? Hey, I’m talking to y—’

Her internal tirade was cut off by Kakashi’s sudden appearance. Thankfully, he had foregone the chakra smoke this time. “Well, I see we all managed to get here on time. Hopefully you’ve had a full lunch, because we have quite the mission today. I made sure to get an extra special one, for our first time as a team.”

The three of them crowded a little closer to Kakashi. Naruto and Sasuke seemed excited, Naruto moreso than Sasuke, but Sakura found she couldn’t be with Shisui’s answer still weighing on her mind. She kept going over what she knew about various kinds of traps and how to properly disarm them, along with proper storage techniques for corpses.

Kakashi held up a scroll. “Today...” he paused dramatically, “we have been asked to finish roofing someone’s house.”

There was a beat of silence as they processed his words. Then almost as one their shoulders slumped, though Sakura’s did for reasons different than her teammates’.

“What? That’s crap!” Naruto shouted. “We should be doing something like defeating a corrupt daimyou and his army of samurai, or rescuing a princess! Not roofing someone’s house!”

Sasuke didn’t say anything but his expression clearly communicated his disgruntlement.

For her part, Sakura was relieved. Roofing sounded a little disappointing and not at all what she had been expecting but it was a better option than what Shisui had said.

‘I knew you were just joking,’ Sakura told Shisui.

‘You say that now,’ he replied.

“Maa, well, everyone needs to do their part, and sometimes your part is helping to repair someone’s house,” Kakashi replied. “A local construction crew has a few members out sick or otherwise unavailable, and they need more people to finish a client’s house. That’s where you three come in.”

“This is really a mission that genin take?” Sasuke asked dubiously. His brow furrowed as he crossed his arms. As Sakura glanced at him, an image of a small, slightly chubby, sulky Sasuke superimposed itself over her teammate. Her lips twitched and she felt a sudden swell of affection and nostalgia. She had the vague impression that he had hardly changed at all.

“It’s not just a mission genin take – it’s the mission you’re all going to complete.” Kakashi’s mask shifted as he smiled. She didn’t trust it for one second. There had to be a catch.

Fifteen minutes later, and Sakura found out that the catch was that the construction crew wasn’t just missing a few people – everyone but the manager had skipped out of work for the last few days and Team 7 had to do the majority of the work and have it finished by the following day. The house in question was a typical home of Konoha, with one flat section of roof for shinobi to run across and the rest gently sloping towards the ground for rain runoff. They learned this in between the manager’s profuse apologies and angry side comments about his unreliable crew.

“I’m sorry for such short notice, shinobi-san,” the craggy-faced manager said. “You just can’t trust those lazy Wave bastards that have been flocking here lately. My apologies for the language, sweetheart.” The last bit he directed at Sakura.

“It’s no trouble at all, Iwase-san. My team is ready for the work; they’ll have it finished in no time,” Kakashi reassured the man.

He bowed in response. “You shinobi are a bit pricey, but I hear great things about you lot. Finish it up today, and you’ll be getting my crews’ paychecks.”

“We’ll be sure to do an excellent job. You heard Iwase-san, kids. Get to work,” Kakashi said.

The three of them began to fasten the tool kits that were scattered around and nimbly climb up the ladders to the roof of the house. Just as Sakura was nearly at the top, she heard Iwase-san talking to Kakashi.

“Are you sure that little miss should be up there?”

Kakashi, however, had already pulled out his book and was reading it without a care in the world. “Hm?”

“I mean, shouldn’t she be doing more delicate work? Like bringing the boys some refreshments?”

On the roof, as Sakura pulled off sections of old tile, she felt her blood boil. She had gone through the same exact training as Sasuke and Naruto at the Academy, and had passed the same test. She was as much of a shinobi as they were. As she pulled up a particularly stubborn piece of tile, she imagined it was Iwase’s face.

‘I’ll show him delicate work!’ Sakura scowled down at the roof.

‘Easy now. You can’t actually kill your client. Calm down and work out your frustration later; save your energy for the mission,’ said Shisui.

‘I don’t need you to tell me that!’ She snapped.

The internal exchange caused her to miss Kakashi’s response, if there was any, but she didn’t miss the way Naruto looked from Iwase to her.

He shuffled closer. “Oi, Sakura-chan. That roof guy is right; it’s okay if you don’t want to help us fix this stupid house. I know girls get tired faster and you’ve trained hard already today. You can just relax because I’ll have this done in no time!”

Sakura flushed with shame and embarrassment. ‘Even Naruto thinks I can’t do this!’

She glanced at Sasuke to see his reaction. There was no way he hadn’t heard Naruto’s words. Naruto’s lowest volume was only just short of a full yell after all.

But Sasuke only started working on his section of the roof, ignoring them entirely. She bit her lip. Did that mean Sasuke agreed with Naruto? Or was it that he thought she could work on her own? Sakura wilted.

‘So you’re just going to give up?’ Shisui prodded. ‘I thought you were going to prove your client wrong?’

Sakura gritted her teeth and gripped the tool kit hard between her hands. As much as she hated to admit it, Shisui was right. She was tired, true, but she hated giving up even more than she wanted to skip their ridiculous mission.

“That’s okay Naruto,” Sakura finally said, smiling a poisonously sweet smile. “If you can manage not to let your stupidity stop you from being a shinobi, I’m sure being a girl won’t keep me from finishing this mission.”

She leaned in close and dropped her smile as she grabbed his jacket. “Now if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll throw you off the roof.” Then she shoved him away from her so she could start roofing.

As she worked, her foul mood only increased. The respite given to her from lunch only lasted her so long. Before Sakura knew it, she was exhausted and her limbs were trembling with strain. It turned out roofing was really hard work. Not only that, the temperature peaked as the sun reached high overhead. There was no breeze to provide relief and Sakura refused to be the first to ask for a quick break. Sweat dripped down her face and arms, causing her to stop every few minutes to wipe it away.

Nearby, it seemed Sasuke and Naruto had similar thoughts. Both worked relentlessly, and every few tiles they pulled up, they would glance up to check the other’s progress before throwing themselves back into it at a seemingly faster pace than before. Sakura huffed to herself. Boys. She couldn’t deny that their rivalry was going to help them finish the mission faster, but they were also going to exhaust themselves. On a real mission, they’d get themselves killed.

‘Now that’s the way you should be thinking during a mission.’

‘That’s enough out of the peanut gallery.’

In short order, the three genin were collecting small stacks of new tile to nail into the roof. Their collective poor mood had only grown as Kakashi and Iwase both sat in the shade, one drinking from a canteen of undoubtedly icy water and the other reading and occasionally giggling to himself. It was with this cloud hanging over them that things finally came to an explosive head when Sasuke brushed into Naruto, causing him to slip on the roof and drop his stack of tiles.

“Hey, bastard! You did that on purpose!” Naruto shouted as his tiles clattered to the ground below.

Sakura rolled her eyes and knelt down to start hammering in the wood tiles. It was about time they started fighting; they could hardly go a few hours without it.

“Don’t blame me for your incompetence,” Sasuke snapped. “You can do that all on your own.”

Naruto stepped closer into Sasuke’s space. Sakura eyed them warily. An argument was one thing, but they weren’t actually going to have a fist fight on a roof, were they?

“You bumped into me and made me drop my tiles because I’m beating you. I’m not stupid!” he insisted.

‘That’s debatable,’ Sakura thought uncharitably.

‘No need to be so mean, Sakura.’

Shisui sounded awfully amused for someone who was telling her not to be mean to her teammates. In the background, Naruto and Sasuke continued to argue.

Sakura diligently hammered in her tiles one by one. Even though it was beginning to cool at long last, she was completely covered in sweat, making her job difficult. She cursed as the hammer slid in her slippery hand and she hit her thumb.

She sucked her thumb and hissed when she pulled it out to peer down at it. It was a bright angry red and throbbed in time with her heart beat. As she finally considered stopping for some water and to ice her finger, the voices of her teammates crescendoed.

‘Sakura, duck!’

‘What?’

Sakura looked up instinctively at Shisui’s warning. She had just enough time to take in Sasuke dodging a tile that Naruto had flung at him before it hit her squarely on her accursed forehead.

Sakura reeled almost drunkenly, stars bursting across her vision. She tipped backwards and began to slide down towards the edge of the roof. Only some reflexive instinct had her flailing and grasping at the roof until her balance recovered enough for her to ensure she wouldn’t fall off.

There were twin surges of anger inside her and she was caught between the urge to clutch her head and do something about her teammates. A barely coherent impression of ‘those damn brats!’ and the burning desire to hurt them decided it for her and before she knew what she was doing, Sakura grabbed one of her own tiles and threw it with unerring accuracy at Naruto. He yelped when it connected with his chest and the force of it knocked him on his behind. A nasty part of her wished he had fallen off the roof.

In her head, Shisui was a fuzzy, static ball of irritation that made her aching head feel that much worse, which was compounded by her still throbbing thumb. Her other hand twitched with a need to punch her teammates that was not entirely her own.

“You moron!” Sakura’s voice was ragged as she struggled not to scream. “You hit me in the head!”

Naruto staggered to his feet. “H-hey, Sakura-chan, it was just an accident, I didn’t mean to—”

Sakura cut him off. “What did I tell you about leaving me alone?” She too climbed to her feet and started stalking towards Naruto.

Down below, Iwase was watching the exchange warily.

“Hey, shinobi-san, I think you need to do something about your kids. That little miss looks like she’s ready to murder someone,” he said.

Kakashi hummed a bit, unconcerned. “I’m sure they’ll sort it out. These sorts of things happen all the time with new teams.”

Back on the roof, Sakura seized Naruto’s ear. She twisted it roughly as she pulled him towards the edge of the roof, her temper lending her strength.

“No, Sakura-chan, don’t throw me off the roof!” Naruto squealed, his voice breaking on the high pitch.

“Too bad!” She snarled.

As she strode towards the edge, her foot kicked Sasuke’s tiles.

“Hey!” Sasuke jerked as his tiles went tumbling down the roof to the ground below.

‘This is going to be such a disaster.’

‘Shut up, I’ve had it with everyone!’

“Don’t get me caught up in your stupidity,” Sasuke continued.

Sakura stopped. “This wouldn’t have happened if you two weren’t so stupid.” She insisted. She tightened her grip as Naruto tried to squirm out of her hold.

“Don’t blame me because you’re too slow to dodge a brick.” Sasuke’s hands clenched and unclenched reflexively. He didn’t seem to know if it was appropriate to grab her the way he would Naruto. Or maybe he was just trying to keep himself from shaking her. Sakura bared her teeth. The way she was feeling, she wished he would. She would throw him off the roof too.

And then his words registered. For a moment, all seemed to go silent. And then she heard Shisui snicker in her head.

“I’m not slow!” she roared.

She lunged towards Sasuke with her free hand. She should’ve known better; he was far more agile than she, and dodged her easily. What he failed to account for was the slant of the roof. As he tilted backwards dangerously, his arms began to pinwheel. At the sight, Sakura momentarily forgot her anger.

“Sasuke-kun!”

His hand grabbed her shirt. The three of them only had a split second to stare and realize the coming consequences before Sasuke’s weight pulled them all over the edge of the roof.

The three of them lay tangled together, wheezing and groaning in a pile of limbs. Sakura had been lucky; she landed across Naruto and Sasuke, both of whom had taken the brunt of the fall, along with her weight.

“I think you ripped my ear off,” Naruto whimpered.

“You deserve it, moron,” Sasuke snapped back.

Sakura kicked her foot without seeing who she was aiming at. “Both of you, shut up.”

‘I told you this was going to be a disaster.’

‘You can shut up too.’

A shadow fell over them. Sakura looked up to see Kakashi staring down at them. “Now what have we all learned today?” he asked them brightly.

The three of them stared at Kakashi, all simmering with resentment and loathing.

“If you don’t learn to work together as a team,” Kakashi said, “you’re going to fall off a roof.”

Sakura rolled off Naruto and Sasuke and left them to figure out how to untangle themselves. She had a roof to finish and she planned on going home sometime today. Sasuke and Naruto soon followed her, and they resumed their work in stony silence.

By the time they finished, lunch was little more than a daydream and Sakura’s stomach was a gnawing pit of hunger, desperate for dinner. But the house was completely roofed and their client was pleased. Sakura might have felt more of a sense of accomplishment when she was handed her cut of the mission pay if her body weren’t aching everywhere.

Kakashi clapped his hands with faux cheer as he considered them all. “This has been such an illuminating day, hasn’t it? I think we’ve all learned a lot.”

‘I learned a lot about how much I want to punt my teammates all the way across the continent,’ Sakura grumped to herself.

“You’ve all worked very hard today and I look forward to seeing the same effort tomorrow,” Kakashi said, his solitary eye crinkling. In it, Sakura swore she saw the depths of hell. “So I will see you tomorrow at six am sharp.”

He reached out to ruffle hers and Naruto’s hair. As his hand reached towards her, panic suddenly spiked in her throat. She saw an image of someone else’s fingers moving towards her, grasping at her eye. Or was it her own hand? Blood was dripping down her face and she could hear water and she couldn’t stop the hand she was going to lose her eye no no no no

Sakura broke out of her paralysis and slapped away Kakashi’s hand. It hovered in the air for a moment and she could clearly sense his surprise. And then he let it fall away and acted as if she hadn’t done anything at all.

“Bye now.” With a wave, Kakashi disappeared.

Naruto and Sasuke were staring at her. She swallowed hard underneath their scrutiny. “It’s just been such a long day, and I didn’t want him messing up my hair,” she laughed weakly, trying to play off her sudden panic.

“Your hair is already a mess from sweating all day,” Sasuke pointed out bluntly.

“Well it’s not like I know where his hands have been or anything!” Sakura said as she grasped for excuses. “So, I have to get home now. See you tomorrow, Sasuke-kun! And you too, Naruto,” she added as an afterthought. With that, she dashed off into the darkening night.

Her jelly legs and bone deep exhaustion made the trip home longer than usual, but when Sakura came home, the house was filled with the smell of dinner. Her mouth watered in response.

Shisui chanted an unending litany of ‘food food food’ as the smell registered for him as well. She rolled her eyes. He was awfully concerned about food for a guy who was dead.

‘It tastes good,’ he said defensively. ‘I don’t need to be alive to appreciate the finer things in life.’

‘You are going to be murder on my weight loss plan,’ Sakura said.

Thankfully for her sanity, Shisui quieted down again when she sat down for dinner. She was able to make it through the meal and some conversation with her parents peacefully, and in fact she was almost able to forget that there was a ghost in her head. Instead, she got to be a normal twelve year old, complaining to her parents about her awful team and her weird jounin instructor.

After dinner, Sakura trudged upstairs for the bath. One of her parents had already drawn it earlier, so all Sakura had to do was wash herself off before she could relax in its soothing warmth.

Of course, once she was in the bathroom, she found herself facing the same dilemma as she had earlier that day, but even worse.

‘How am I supposed to take a bath with you in my head?’

‘Try closing your eyes again?’ Shisui suggested. Sakura groaned into her hands.

‘I can’t just close my eyes the entire time I take a bath.’ Sakura dropped her head against the wall.

‘Well, you can either get over it and take a bath, or just never take one ever again and reek for the rest of your life,’ he said.

Sakura shifted in place. It wasn’t that different from public bathhouses. There were some that didn’t separate by gender, even in Konoha. And she really wanted to soak before she went to bed.

‘Fine. But don’t you dare make fun of what I look like, or I’ll eat anmitsu for the rest of this week.’

Sakura stripped off her clothes and Shisui remained blissfully quiet. She paused while she folded her clothes, feeling suspicious of his obliging silence, but nothing was forthcoming. A few seconds later she was seated on the low stool and scrubbing away the day’s grime and sweat. Underneath the warm spray, her muscles loosened gratefully.

Once she was properly washed off, Sakura climbed into the deep bath tub and let herself relax and start to contemplate the day’s events. She stared unseeing at the pale islands that were her knees. Water dripped down her back from her pinned hair. The combination of water and her lowered guard resulted in a deluge of thoughts that weren’t her own.

-the clan never had a chance to begin with, he had been working against them the entire time-

-his hand ripped out his eye while he used the other one to brutally beat his body-

-he wasn’t one of the prized shinobi of the clan for nothing, and he needed to get away to warn him-

-no one could have his other eye, it was too dangerous-

Suddenly the impressions seemed to jerk inside her head and then Shisui’s presence seemed to expand in her head.

‘What did you just see?’ his voice was dark and heavy with intent. Sakura pulled her legs close as she processed the mental images. She had known all along, hadn’t she, that someone had hurt Shisui very badly before he died.

‘I said, what did you see? Tell me now Sakura,’ he demanded.

Sakura ignored his words. ‘Who…,’ she swallowed. ‘Who ripped out your eye, Shisui?’

His mental presence seemed to break in an odd way that Sakura instinctively associated with shock. It solidified again and this time was a nearly impenetrable wall that hid thoughts behind it which Sakura could not discern.

When he spoke again, his voice was hard and even, and for the first time she really believed he was a jounin. ‘What makes you think someone took my eye?’

‘I saw it,’ she answered in a small voice. ‘And then… and then you gave the ANBU boy your other eye. You…’ She furrowed her brow as she recalled her nightmare.

‘You told him he was your best friend and that you were giving it to him for safe keeping.’ Sakura’s voice became shrill as her horror mounted. ‘You gave him your eye! And then you jumped into the Naka River! I saw it!’

‘You saw how I died?’ Shisui pressed.

‘It was a little confusing; I had a nightmare about it, it was so awful, I couldn’t move at all except to pull my left eye out and give it to the boy. But I didn’t see very well what happened before then.’ Sakura hesitated a little. Shisui sounded slightly calmer. It was no wonder that his death was a sensitive topic. ‘Shisui… would you like to talk about it? Is that why you came back? To get revenge on the person who took your eye?’

Shisui’s presence remained impassive for a long time, so long in fact, that Sakura thought that maybe he hadn’t heard her or had fallen asleep. And then she felt him sort of shudder, or maybe ripple, and then she felt grief begin to emanate from him as his mental presence shrank in on itself.

‘I… forgive me, Sakura, I just can’t talk about it. It’s too difficult. Please, let it alone.’

‘Oh.’ There was a part of Sakura that wanted to keep pushing. What about the ANBU boy with Shisui’s other eye? Why did Shisui feel the need to commit suicide? And surely he would want to confront the person responsible for hurting him in the first place? Then again, the only way Shisui could do that was through her, and if this person could maim a jounin and escape, then killing her would be too easy.

Shisui’s plea struck a chord in her. It was clear his death was too new and he hadn’t come to grips with it. It probably bothered him that she was reliving it. It seemed like it was a private, intimate thing, and here was Sakura, watching it and picking at the scabs with hardly a care at all for how Shisui might feel about it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she offered lamely.

‘It’s fine. How about you just go to sleep now. You have to wake up early tomorrow, after all.’ With Sakura’s acquiescence to Shisui’s request, his voice became normal again and no longer the oppressive thing it was before.

Sakura made a noise of agreement. She climbed out of the tub and proceeded to finish her nightly routine.

Eventually she made it into her bed, collapsing into it with a grateful sigh. She could only imagine what kind of awful training and missions would be in store for her tomorrow. And that was before Naruto did something stupid to make things worse or Shisui started in on his nagging comments. She curled up beneath her covers and closed her eyes. But for now, sleep.

Not long afterward, the nightmares started.

#roadkill writes #throwing a stone in a river #haruno sakura #uchiha shisui #sakura ft shisui

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