#or have to do emergency laundry to get the stink out from blankets/pillows right when I get back

[quicksilversquared]

I'm down to just the last-minute stuff needing to be packed and I am so glad that my mom said not to bother with my winter coat, she has a spare, because now I have just enough room in my luggage for stuff.

....thankfully there are multiple things that will not be making the return trip back (ornaments that are being given as gifts and leftover cranberry-nut bread from the staff party because almost no one had any because everyone brought desserts; my mom was super excited to hear that I'm going to be bringing it, though lol; also materials to knit/crochet several cat blankets that I will leave with my parents to give to their cat-fostering friend), because otherwise I would have concerns about having enough space for gifts.

[kuriquinn]

Walk A Mile [7/?]

Cover & Disclaimer

Chapter Beta: None at the moment, but I’ll send it to my beta when she gets back from vacation. 

AN: So, this is a bit of departure from the usual format, but it’s kind of a time-skip. The first week of the swap, with a lot of things needing to be adjusted to hehe. I put a little bit of plot in places...but really, this is totally filler that I had too much fun writing :D Hope you enjoy reading it!

“Kakashi-sensei!”

SLAM!

The sound of a door being thrown open and hitting the wall yanks him from his dreams. Kakashi vaults upward and snaps, “Reinforce the barriers and send the first wave!”

The familiar surroundings of his living room come back to him, and his dream fades away. The panicked, slightly confused face of Sasuke Uchiha swims into view.

No, wait—not Sasuke. Sakura, he remembers. Must not have gotten enough sleep. Head’s still pounding…

“What is it, Sakura?” he mumbles—maybe; his words are rather slurred.

She frowns at him. “You sleep with your mask on?”

“Not usually,” he replies, rubbing at the scar on the left side of his face and squints up at her. “Is there an emergency, or do you just enjoy shouting yourself hoarse before sun-up?”

Sakura’s expression becomes pinched once more.

“I…have a…problem,” she reveals jerkily. 

“That’s remarkably self-aware.”

It’s possible the lack of sleep is affecting his normally easy-going manner.

Sakura draws her borrowed mouth into a thin line, emphasising her expression of utter agony, and glances meaningfully downward. It takes a beat before Kakashi follows her gaze, fixing on something in the southern hemisphere of her borrowed body. Once he does, her total panic makes sense.

A very dark part of him wants to laugh, if only at the absurdity of the whole situation, but Sakura would never forgive him for it. Instead, he schools his face into neutrality and says, “Go take a cold shower. It’ll help.”

Horror overtakes her obvious humiliation, probably at the notion of a shower, but it’s early and he’s exhausted and wouldn’t be doing her any favours sugar-coating things.

“Look, you have three options,” he yawns, falling back against the couch cushions. “Either take a cold shower, which you should do anyway because you’re beginning to stink, or you could wait it out. It’ll eventually go away. Or there’s the old-fashioned method…”

He trails off meaningfully. She doesn’t understand him immediately, but when she does, it looks like she might have a nosebleed.

“What the hell is your problem?!” she snarls. “You can’t say stuff like that!”

“Why, because you’re a girl, or because you’re a kid?” Kakashi challenges.

“Either! Both!” she yells in frustration. “And because this isn’t my body! Besides I’d never… I couldn’t—!” Her face is so flushed with blood now he’s surprised she’s still having a below-the-belt issue. She shoves a finger in his direction. “You’re a pervert, Kakashi-sensei!”

And then stalks away once again slamming the door behind her.

He winces.

And I thought it was just the boys I had to worry about property damage with, he thinks tiredly, curling into the couch and hoping he can get back to sleep.

SLAM!

The door is open once again, and he groans, pressing his face into the couch cushions.

If she does that the whole time she’s here, I’ll never get my security deposit back…

“Kakashi-sensei?” her tone is quieter this time, ashamed.

“What, Sakura?”

“Uh…where’s your washing machine?” she asks, in a tiny voice he would never have thought Sasuke capable of. “I might possibly…maybe…sort of have to do a load of wash.”

He cracks an eye open against the couch cushions. Why…?

“And, uh…do you by any chance have any other sheets?” she squeaks.

Kakashi groans, pulling the covers of his head.

Shit.

ナルト

Sakura paces back and forth in front of the chain-link fence of the usual spot, glancing around every now and then for some sign of Kakashi or Sasuke.

She’s not completely sure how she lost track of her teacher that morning, since they left from the same place. One minute he was behind her, and the next she heard him say he’d catch up, and when she turned around he was gone without even a puff of smoke.

As for Sasuke, he’s uncharacteristically late, and Sakura can’t help worrying.

What if he got caught by my parents? What if my mother says something embarrassing to him? What if Dad makes a really tasteless joke and Sasuke punches him? Oh, I’ll be in so much trouble when we switch back, and we’ll have failed Lord Third’s mission, and…

She inhales sharply and tries to clear her mind.

There’s nothing she can do about any of those things right now.

What she can do is stand here and wait for her teammates so that they can go to wherever Naruto is and make sure he and Condor haven’t killed each other yet.

Sakura tries really hard to just sit there and wait – to lean against the uncomfortable fence and meditate (or whatever it is Sasuke does when they’re waiting for the rest of their team to arrive in the morning). But she can’t stop fidgeting. Every few minutes she crosses her arms or shifts her weight or gives into the compulsion to check the very white, baggy shorts for signs of dirt or grease from the fence.

She starts to wonder if Sasuke wears white shorts just to show off how effortless he finds being a shinobi. As if he doesn’t even have to worry about getting dirty unless he feels like it. She always thought he was just naturally cool, but it might just be that Sasuke actually puts energy into it. It’s the only explanation she can come up with for how he always looks so unruffled, and yet twenty-four hours in his body she feels like a mess.

She’s sweating – is it just me, or is his body-temperature higher than mine? – and is hungry again, even though she ate all the leftovers from dinner the night before this morning.

And, of course, there’s the addition of an extra –

Her thoughts flounder for a moment, her cheeks turning red.

Appendage, she supplies, forcing herself to fight back the mortification and think of things in the same distant terms a doctor might. 

It’s not really working.

The point is, the new addition makes even walking feel utterly foreign to her, and that’s the absolute least of the problems associated with her new body.

When Sasuke finally does arrive, Sakura’s worried questions die on her lips as she takes in his rumpled, red-cheeked, veiny-eyed form.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she cries in lieu of any greeting, hands on her hips as she looks him over.

Her normally pristine hair is a tangled mess under his care, brushed in the front but a complete matted nightmare in the back. Sasuke’s borrowed cheeks are reddened by infinitesimal scratches, probably from a rough scrubbing with a cloth, and his eyes –

“You slept with my contacts in, didn’t you?” she hisses.

“I forgot, okay?” he barks, not sounding anything like his usual calm self even with the borrowed voice. “I don’t know how to take them out, or put them in for that matter, and until I do I’m not about to walk around bumping into things.”

“My vision’s not that bad!” Sakura snaps.

“Well, I had more important things to worry about,” Sasuke growls, eyes shifting from left to right to ensure they are alone. In a lower voice, he goes on, “I couldn’t find…where do you keep your…” He trails off, frustrated, and then tugs at something beneath the fabric of the tunic he’s wearing. She recognises the thick strap of a sports bra. “I was going to change this when I woke up, but the only ones I could find were…”

Realisation dawns on her, and warmth floods her cheeks too. “You dug through my underwear drawer?!”

“It’s not like I wanted to! Besides, from the look of them there’s no way to get the damn things on or off, at least with this one I can just pull it over my head!”

Sakura decides to take pity on him. “If you can’t find any sports bras in my drawer, you have to go down and check the laundry room. I wear them the most often because of missions, so they have to be washed out a lot. Maybe my mother did a load – wait.” She shoots him a sharp look. “Are you saying you put that thing on again this morning? It’s filthy!”

“I didn’t put anything on, I slept in it.”

“You’re not supposed to sleep in a bra!”

“How the hell am I supposed to know that?” he counters. “I shouldn’t even be thinking about bras, let alone yours!”

“Say that a little louder, I don’t think they heard you in Kiri,” a familiar voice says, and a second later Kakashi materialises in a puff of smoke. “Yo.”

Sakura lets out a half-groan, half-wail of humiliation while Sasuke glowers at their teacher.

“So, who’s ready for training?” the jōnin asks mildly.

“I hate you,” Sasuke informs him, and Sakura nods in agreement.

ナルト

Naruto wakes to the sun streaming through a window right into his eyes.

With a groan, stretches and yawns, then freezes as his brain catches up with his current surroundings. He is in the wide-open living area of a farmhouse, perched on a makeshift bed of pillows and blankets. He remembers Captain Yamato offering them to him yesterday when he couldn’t get comfortable on the spare sleeping mat –

Because he has cumbersome wings and claws and the weirdly shaped body of an ostrich now.

“Aw, man, it wasn’t a dream!” he wails, throwing his head backward in frustration. “I thought for sure when I woke up all this would be fixed! Aw, man, this sucks…”

“How do you funny little creatures not break your necks in your sleep with all the tossing and turning you do?” Condor wants to know, sitting up on his own sleep pallet. He shakes his arm. “And why does my arm constantly feel like it’s got pine needles sticking into it?”

“Yeah, well, I feel like I slept standing up in a closet…”

“You both snore,” Yamato informs them with a yawn, also sitting up on his bedding.

Condor sets his hands on his hips in indignation. “I beg your pardon, I do no such thing!”

“Yeah!” Naruto pipes up. “And I couldn’t have snored because I didn’t sleep! So maybe it’s you that was snoring, you creepy faced weirdo!”

Yamato blinks at him, bleary eyed from waking, and then glances at Condor. “What’d he say?”

“He says your mother wears army boots.”

“Oi! I did not!”

A knock on the door interrupts the potential bloodshed, and after a sharp look in Naruto’s direction, Yamato goes to open it. Outside, the rest of Team 7 are standing on the landing; Kakashi expression is drawn and exhausted, while Sakura and Sasuke bicker with one another.

Whoa. Now that’s weird…

To an outside observer, it already looks odd to see Sasuke Uchiha haranguing Sakura Haruno, who is clearly trying to tune him out, arms crossed and face pulled into a scowl. It’s even odder because Naruto knows it’s actually the other way around – with Sakura raving at Sasuke – and that has never happened before.

Condor shivers.

“I don’t even know them that well, and that’s just unnatural,” he says.

Naruto nods. “Funny, though.”

“Sakura, Sasuke,” Kakashi says, putting an end to the very strange argument. The two of them glance up. “This is Captain Yamato. He’s going to be working with Naruto and Condor for the duration of this…situation.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Sakura says, offering a shy wave.

Sasuke frowns and gives the man an appraising up-and-down look. Then he turns to Kakashi. “What’s so special about him? He doesn’t look like much.”

“Sasuke!” Sakura chides.

“Yamato’s Mokuton is going to be very helpful keeping the Nine-Tails under control,” Kakashi explains. “On that note – Condor, have you had any more trouble with the fox spirit?”

“Only in that I didn’t sleep at all last night trying to keep the thing from eating me,” the bird snorts.

“You big liar!” Naruto snaps. “You were snoring the whole night, remember? Stop making things seem more dramatic than they are! If I can’t hear the fox, you can’t hear the fox.”

“I’ve already told you the reason you can’t hear him is because you’re thick.”

Naruto bleats at him in wordless anger, and Kakashi clears his throat.

“Yamato can work with you on that a little then. Meanwhile, Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke – it might be best to revisit some basic skills today. Like taijutsu.”

“Are you seriously going to teach a bird taijutsu?” Sasuke deadpans.

“Don’t be like that, he’s still Naruto,” Sakura tells him. “I’m sure he can figure it out.” She smiles hesitantly at Naruto and wanders a little closer. “Hey, Naruto – are you going okay in there?”

He pulls away, shuddering. “No offense, but it’s really weird to have Sasuke look at me like that. No, scratch that, it’s not weird, it’s creepy.”

Sakura frowns in confusion and asks Condor, “What did he say?”

“He’s afraid you were going to kiss him,” Condor informs her with a straight face.

“You idiot bird!” Naruto bellows and vaults across the room, intent on destroying him. Condor, meanwhile, darts out of the way blowing raspberries, while Sakura and Sasuke begin to shout angrily at them both.

He is distantly aware of Yamato and Kakashi exchanging glances.

“Trade you?” they ask each other.

ナルト

When Sasuke returns to the Haruno household later, he is exhausted. Honestly, he doesn’t remember ever feeling this tired before.

Did Sakura not do any training before we switched bodies? These muscles feel like they’re on fire…

He’s barely got the energy to eat the meal Mebuki puts before him (he’s dimly relieved that there’s nothing sweet in it), and he must look as tired as he feels because Sakura’s parents don’t try to talk much with him.

There’s a minor moment of awkwardness afterward when Mebuki reaches over to feel his forehead – he jerks away before he can stop himself, but seeing her mouth can firm in suspicion, Sasuke mutters about having a bad headache.

“Got some mind grains sprouting?” Sakura’s father asks with gentle amusement, while Mebuki tells Sasuke to go up to bed and she’ll bring him some honeysuckle tea.

He trudges up the stairs and once again starts the laborious process to get ready for bed; he’s quicker about it today, once again leaving the lights off the whole time. He only turns them on again to take Sakura’s contacts out, having had her explain the process to him before he returned home.

These things come with containers, right?

That takes him longer to hunt down than he’d like, and the actual removal of the lens leaves him swearing and his eyes twitching in both reflex and annoyance.

Am I even going to be able to get the damned things on again tomorrow?

He waves it off as a future problem, squinting at Sakura’s reflection in the mirror. It’s blurred now, but as she said, not enough to make him blind.

Just annoying, he thinks as he stalks out of the bathroom, just like her.

ナルト

SLAM!

“Kakashi-sensei!”

He grabs his pillow and presses it over his face, groaning into it in dismay.

“Don’t kill her,” he mutters to himself, “Think of the paperwork.”

“I need you to go to Sasuke’s place and sneak in and get some things for me without anyone seeing you, it’s urgent!” she tells him, all panic and tension in her voice.

Kakashi shifts the pillow to one side, shooting her a bleary, exasperated frown with his one good eye. “Sakura…you’re literally walking around in his body. Go get whatever you need from his apartment yourself.”

“But…but I can’t go wandering around his house without him there!”

“Why not? He’s wandering around your house without you there.”

“Well…well even if I wanted to, I can’t exactly go now and I really, really need your help!”

Her bottom lip juts out, eyes wide and teary, and Kakashi thinks it’s just him being stunned that Sasuke could ever look so pathetic and helpless that has him sighing in agreement. “Fine.”

“Thank you!”

“But I’m only doing this the once,” he tells her, going back to press his face back into the pillow and cursing. “Damn it…only the second day…”

Sakura clears her throat. “And Kakashi-sensei?”

“What?”

“I’m hungry.”

ナルト

“Ow!” Sakura cries, ducking an angry beak. “Naruto, stop – ow! I’m sorry!” She holds her hands over her head. “I wasn’t trying to kick you – ow! – I just overshot and you were – ouch! – in the way!”

Her teammate hisses at her, rearing up and flapping his wings at her.

 ナルト

“Let’s try this again,” Kakashi says wearily.

Sasuke scowls, but then dutifully pulls his face into a wide smile. The slight narrowing of Kakashi’s right eye tells him he has once again failed.

“This is ridiculous,” he complains, dropping the false visage.

“It was better,” his teacher offers, and when Sasuke raises an eyebrow at him, he shrugs, “Okay, not really. We may be going about this all wrong.”

“If you try to tickle me I will stab you in the throat,” Sasuke informs him pre-emptively.

Kakashi ignores him. “What’s the first thing you notice about Sakura when she smiles?”

“It’s genuine,” Sasuke says immediately, surprising himself with how instinctive the answer is. He’s never really considered the question before, but he knows instantly that it’s true; Sakura’s smile is untarnished by darkness, anger or pain. “Happy.”

The word is foreign to him.

“Alright,” his teacher says. “That in mind, I’m going to ask you to do something difficult. And I know it’s difficult because I have to do it every day, too.” Sasuke shoots him a questioning look, abruptly curious, but Kakashi continues.  “Think back. To the last time you felt something like what Sakura feels. Think of happiness. Peace. Something that genuinely made you smile to see.”

“That doesn’t work for me,” Sasuke bites out through gritted teeth, because Kakashi knows full-well the last time he was happy about anything.

“Then work on it, because learning to smile might be your only saving grace in succeeding at this mission.” Kakashi straightens up. “I get that you have your goals, but the mark of a good shinobi is to compartmentalise their emotions.”

“I know this already.”

“Note that I say compartmentalise, not ignore. The more you ignore, the more builds up and the more likely you are to explode with all those pent-up feelings later. Or make stupid choices,” Kakashi goes on. “I really advise against stupid choices, because that gets people killed.”

“I advise against switching bodies,” Sasuke grumbles. “That gets people killed too.”

Kakashi blinks at him. “Did you just make a joke?”

ナルト

Naruto stares down at the large container in front of him, and then looks up at Yamato. “No.”

The jōnin sighs, unable to understand him, but clearly noticing the refusal.

“Come on, Naruto, you have to eat something. You’re not going to keep your strength out without eating healthy.”

Naruto glares at him. “I want ramen.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Ramen. I want ramen. Rah-men!”

“I want ramen, too,” Condor pipes up from where he’s watching the exchange.

“You’ve never even eaten ramen,” Yamato reminds him.

“I don’t care, I want it.”

Yamato sighs, shoulders slumping.

ナルト

 “Kakashi-sensei!”

SLAM!

“Sakura, if it’s related to food, bodily functions or laundry, I don’t want to hear it,” he tells his pillow.

“No, it’s…um, I think I broke the lid off your electric kettle and…I didn’t mean to, I swear! It’s just…I think I was holding it to tightly, but I didn’t realise, so…”

She trails off, and Kakashi sighs.

He has never pictured having children before, and living with Sakura – who he never in a million years imagined he would live with ��� has shown him the wisdom in that. It’s like dealing with a teenager and a toddler all in one.

“I’ll pick up a new one on the way home,” he tells her.

“…’Kay.”

Well, at least he doesn’t have to worry about her taking all the hot water…

He feels little guilt at chuckling over that.

ナルト

“How do any of you guys walk properly with one of these?!”

ナルト

“What are you talking about, you don’t want any?” Mebuki demands, hands on her hips. “Anmitsu is your favourite.”

“I’m…watching my weight,” Sasuke mumbles uncomfortably.

“Oh no, none of that,” Sakura’s mother sniffs. “You know how I feel about that dieting nonsense, Sakura. If you’re going to be training so hard, you need to keep your strength up.”

“This isn’t exactly going to help with that,” Sasuke deadpans.

“Well, we can’t always be sensible,” Kizashi says. “Where would the fun in that be?”

They are both watching him now, and Sasuke winces, knowing he has to play along. Swallowing thickly, he takes a spoonful of the jelly dessert and just hopes he can keep it down long enough to throw off suspicion.

ナルト

“Get your butt out of my face!”

“Get your face out of my – oh for goodness sake, must you be so crass?”

“At least I’m not a sissy,” Naruto mutters as they continue their slow trek across the floor. “Now shut up before we get caught.”

“You two wouldn’t be trying to sneak out, would you?” a deceptively calm voice asks behind them.

Condor and Naruto freeze, and then very slowly turn around. There’s a click and a flashlight turns on.

Captain Yamato looms over them, the shadows making his face seem even more hollow than usual.

“It was his idea,” Naruto says immediately, shivering at the sight.

“My idea? Why would I want to sneak out of these lavish accommodations?” Condor asks in a high voice, and then points at Naruto. “He’s the criminal mastermind – not me!”

Yamato’s eyes narrow, and Naruto crack.

“I just want some ramen!” he sobs, throwing himself at the jōnin’s feet (or at least trying to, he still isn’t used to his knees bending backward.”

“What was that about me being a sissy?” Condor asks, contemptuous.

ナルト

“Sakura, if you don’t stop slamming the door in a panic every morning, I will take it off the hinges.”

ナルト

“Your biggest issue is that you’re used to a body that has mastered its ability to control its anger and impulses and channel it into other things,” Kakashi explains to Sakura, while in the background Sasuke impatiently ducks Naruto’s clumsy kicks. Several feet away, Yamato corrects Condor’s grip on a kunai. “Sometimes it seems as if you have a second self that filters all of that for you. When you first switched, you mentioned a voice in your head?”

“Yeah – well, sort of,” she says. “I mean…I always thought it was just my conscience of something.”

“I guarantee you, most people’s consciences aren’t loud enough to have a voice,” Kakashi says dryly. “Both your parents are genin?”

“Well…Dad’s a chūnin. Barely. But they haven’t been active since before I was born, and only because of the war,” Sakura explains.

“And your father’s family?”

“Isn’t from here,” Sakura says. “Mom is, though, but I don’t know much about her side of the family. Grandmother was a Konohako, so…”

“Ah,” Kakashi nods, recognising the term. It’s a surname given to illegitimate children whose legal parents won’t recognise them. “And not even an idea where that lineage came from?”

“I would have to ask my mother.”

“Which you can’t right now,” he sighs.

“And asking Sasuke to find out probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” Sakura agrees.

He’s not exactly tactful…

“Right…”

ナルト

“What the hell is an exfoliator?”

ナルト

“I was just thinking,” Naruto says, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness.

“Did it hurt?”

He snorts, side-eying the bird in his body. “Really? Nothing more creative than that?”

“It’s been a long day. Don’t worry, I’ll reach my stride soon enough.”

“Do you think maybe all this would be easier if we stopped giving each other a tough time and just tried to work together?”

The two of them slowly glance over at each other, sizing one another up. Then, in unison, their turns their backs on each other.

“Nah!”

ナルト

“Kakashi-sensei!”

He cracks one eye open, waiting for the slam of the door, and then smirks when he remembers that he took it off its hinges night before.

ナルト

“I don’t understand,” Sakura says, frustrated. “I mean, it completely defies logic!”

“I know,” Condor nods.

“It’s like…I would understand if I was looking at something…you know…but I’m not looking at anything. I was literally staring at the wall just now, noticing the way the paint is curling and – and it happens!”

“It’s an utterly rubbish system,” Condor agrees. “Obviously it’s faulty – I mean, I don’t even find your species appealing at all. But now I – ” He makes a face and looks at his lap. “Oh damn. It’s happening again.”

“Don’t draw attention to it!” Sakura hisses, pointedly looking away from him.

She notices Sasuke and Naruto standing over them, identical looks of horror on their borrowed faces.

“What?”

ナルト

Sasuke considers the long, wet locks of pink hair spilling down his chest and back, frowning critically.

Keeping all this clean is such a waste of time. If there wasn’t all this hair, I could be in and out of the shower in minutes.

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices a pair of scissors sticking out of a first-aid kit.

ナルト

“I don’t care if you’re used to eating it to help digest your food – if I catch you using my mouth to eat sand, I will sit on you until you pass out!”

ナルト

“What do you mean, you still haven’t found anything?” Kakashi demands early one morning after skipping out on Sakura to visit the graveyard and then the Hokage’s office. He’s trying and failing not to sound exasperated. “It’s going on a week now.”

Inoichi shrugs apologetically. “We’re combing the records as fast as we can, but so far nothing.”

“And our investigations to the shrine have yielded no information either,” Lord Third says gravely. “Inoichi and I have read the Akimichi and Nara clans into the situation, however. Given their ancestors involvement in helping to seal away Noburo, it was thought they might have some insight that was perhaps…misplaced by the Yamanaka.”

“And has it?”

“Not yet.”

“Great,” Kakashi groans. “So what do I tell the kids?”

“Nothing,” Inoichi says. “As before, we’re looking into the matter. They’ll have to be patient.”

“Have you even met my team?”

ナルト

“He’s late.”

“I noticed.”

“He’s later than you. That never happens.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

Sakura glares at her teacher, wanting more than anything to punch him. She’s not sure if that’s just her annoyance or some inborn reflex that’s part of Sasuke’s body. Either way, she hopes Sasuke arrives soon to keep her from trying something so stupid.

“Oh.” Kakashi says suddenly, his visible eye widening a bit. It flits to Sakura, flashing with something that she’s tempted to call panic, even if she doesn’t know the reason for it. “Oh, fuck…”

“What?” she asks, following his gaze to the familiar figure of Sasuke in her body wandering toward them.

She has a few seconds of trying to figure out why his looks bother her today, and when she makes the realisation, it is as if the bottom of her stomach has dropped out. She goes absolutely still, barely aware of Kakashi’s continuing murmured curses.

“I would’ve been on time if your mother let me out of the house,” Sasuke complains to them in place of a greeting. The accusing explanation is as close to an apology as anyone has ever heard from him. “I had to wait until her back was turned.”

“I can see why she didn’t,” Kakashi blurts out, and then clears his throat when Sakura’s fists clench. “Now, Sakura…”

“My. Hair,” she seethes at Sasuke, eyes fixed on the messy, chin-length monstrosity that has replaced her lovingly grown-out hair.

“Just so you know, this is the opposite of blending in,” Kakashi informs Sasuke. “If Sakura’s parents weren’t suspicious before…”

“It’s fine,” Sasuke shrugs it off. “I said I saw it in a magazine and decided to try it. They seemed to buy it –”

“Are you kidding me?!” Sakura demands – but the sound comes out as a squeaky whine as Sasuke’s voice cracks.

“Stop that!” Sasuke snaps, looking around lest someone be walking by to hear. This just enrages her further.

“WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!” Sakura screams. “I gave you specific instructions and you – just – how – why – it – how dare you?!”

“It’s hair,” Sasuke tells her slowly, like she’s missing something important. “It was getting in the way, and making…washing more inconvenient.”

She’s too angry to even get embarrassed, can only sputter in response.

“It will grow back,” Sasuke goes, taking rare advantage of her incoherence. “Besides, you’re a shinobi, not a princess. You ought to concentrate on improving your battle techniques instead of your looks.” He shrugs. “It’s not like you grew it out for some important reason.”

Sakura opens her mouth and closes it several times.

She knows that he has a point about her hair – that keeping it long is an unnecessary hazard, that every lesson she’s ever had on proper gear and appearance stress the importance of short hair. That only the supremely talented shinobi keep their hair long, showing that they have no fear of it being an impairment in battle.

But at the same time, her hair was hers. It was important to her. And he not only disregarded her wish for him to take care of it, but he hacked it to pieced.

It’s the first truly horrible, mean-spirited act he has ever committed against her. He might be short with her, lack patience and encourage her by way of criticism, might offer her blunt truths which sting at first but which she slowly comes to see are meant to help her –

But he has never been intentionally mean or hurtful to her. And this…

This is a very personal insult, and he doesn’t care.

She can see that he doesn’t care, and this knowledge above everything else makes her suddenly desperate to make him understand.

ナルト

Sakura suddenly turns on her heel and marches off.

“Oh, this isn’t going to be good,” Kakashi mutters, indicating to Sasuke that they ought to follow her. Sasuke tells himself it’s because his teacher told him to, and not because the look in Sakura’s borrowed eyes just now filled him with a very sharp sense of unease.

If she notices them following her, she doesn’t say anything, and before long they come to one of the public training grounds. Several groups of young Academy students are spread out in the area, practicing throwing shuriken and kunai at targets nailed to the posts.

Sakura marches up to the large post right in the middle of all the groups and methodically brings out a few handfuls of shuriken.

“Huh,” Sasuke snorts as he and Kakashi come to a stop several feet behind her. “Now she wants to train?”

If I’d known all it took was to make her mad, I’d have done it ages ago.

“I seriously doubt that’s what this is,” Kakashi says tensely.

The words have hardly left his mouth when, once again methodical very deliberate, Sakura begins to toss the shuriken.

And misses.

Once.

Twice –

Two dozen shuriken later, none of them have hit any part of the target.

“Wait…” Sasuke says, frowning. “What’s going on? Even in my body, she should have better aim than that.”

“Oh, she does,” Kakashi tells him.

When her ninja tools are exhausted, Sakura stomps forward, snatches the shuriken from where they are embedded and returns to her previous position. Then, she repeats the exercise.

“She’s missing on purpose,” Sasuke realises. “Why?”

“Well…technically, she’s not missing anything,” Kakashi reminds him, and Sasuke’s eyes go wide. At the same time, he notices that the lively din in the training grounds has started to go quiet as the other kids begin to take notice. There’s a growing whisper around them, and the sound of chuckles behind people’s hands, and it finally occurs to Sasuke what Sakura is doing.

She is very publicly torpedoing his reputation – a reputation he doesn’t even really care about.

Or rather, one he told himself he was above actually caring about. Right now, watching the pointing and sniggering from a bunch of younger kids, an unfamiliar sense of panic and embarrassment fills him.

“Better hope that doesn’t turn into village gossip,” Kakashi muses out loud. “If it gets around that Sasuke Uchiha can’t even throw a shuriken, we might not be considered for higher ranking missions in the future. Which I’m all for, because I’ve been meaning to catch up my reading, but –”

Sasuke isn’t listening to him anymore, instead stalking forward and grabbing on to Sakura’s wrist before she can throw another volley.

“You’re having an off-day today, aren’t you?” he says loudly, and then drags Sakura from the field.

It irritates him that it’s a lot harder than usual to do, and eventually he has to stop trying even though they aren’t even out of the training field. He hopes there aren’t any prying eyes and ears paying attention; Kakashi lingers in the background with his hands in his pockets.

“Nothing,” she snaps. “Just getting rid of something unimportant. I mean, you don’t care what people think of you, right?”

“This is not the same thing!”

“It is too! It’s something that means a lot to you, right?”

“It’s different from cutting hair!”

“That’s not the point!” she snaps. “It’s something that meant a lot to me, and I told you to take care of it, and you just…cut it all off.”

“But it’s hair,” he protests, still not understanding. “It’s not permanent, it’ll grow back, so it’s not important –”

“But it was to me!” she cries. “And I thought that you’d at least…” She trails off, swallowing and hangs her head. In a quieter voice, she murmurs, “Never mind. You never care about how people feel anyway, I don’t know why I…I don’t know why I thought…”

Her shoulders begin to shake, and Sasuke realises a beat later that she’s really crying now.

He fights down a note of panic, not knowing what he’s supposed to do, glancing around to see if anyone around is paying attention to the fact that Sasuke Uchiha is standing there crying in public! He shoots Kakashi a look pleading for help, but Kakashi shrugs, looking as uncertain as him.

This isn’t exactly an area either of them are comfortable in.

He clenches his fists, then frowns down at them, remembering that he’s in Sakura’s body. And if Sakura noticed him crying, even over something ridiculous, would she just stand there?

No, he realises.

Before he’s even aware of his body moving he approaches Sakura and pulls her into a tight embrace, winding his arms around her borrowed body and fitting his head into the space of her shoulder.

“There are so many worse things in the entire world to cry about, cut hair shouldn’t be one of them,” he murmurs in a low voice, trying to fight off his own discomfort knowing that Kakashi is watching – knowing that the people in the training field are probably watching, too. “But…if it’s important to you…I should have asked your permission first.”

Sakura is tense within his hold, but a moment later relaxes against him. He hears her sniff and then clear her throat.

“Sas…” she begins, and then coughs, straightening up and pulling away. In a loud, exaggerated groan of annoyance, she says, “Sakura, you’re choking me.”

But as she pulls away, he sees a brief flicker of a smile on her face, before she adopts scowl and stalks away from him. Sasuke watches her go, staring at the back of her borrowed neck, which is flushed with colour.

“Huh.” Kakashi is looking down at him now in speculation. “Maybe there’s hope for you after all.”

つづく

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クリ

[texting-an-alien]

The Welders: Chapter Five

Chapter Five: Everyone is a Leprechaun 

“So, where do we begin?” Barney asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Well first, how can you be so calm when I totally just walked in here with a bit of knowledge about you people and you acted like it was the most normal thing to happen today?” I asked. I know they had touched the subject before but it still seemed off that if they were so high security about who my identity, why did they walk me through their super secret camp.

“You’d be surprised how many people we get here. Usually it’s people from other camps, mostly the West. In order to even get here you have to have an ampoule, so we knew you must already have knowledge about us. Which now that we talk, you obviously don’t," Barney explained, standing up.

He motioned for me to join him and I immediately stood, followed by the three others.We walked back to the library type area, through the front doors, and overlooked the camp. It was in sort of a square shape with each structure quite close to each other.

“Who are these people? I mean, there are quite a few," I said, noticing more and more people every time I shifted my eyes.

“I have been told that my explanation is much too scholarly. Patrick and Ferris," Barney replied and looked to the two boys behind us. “How do you feel about explaining us to her? I feel like you would have a much better connection than I."

“Sure," Patrick said and Lee nodded. Barney gave us a quick smile then left us 5 standing on the steps of the very large mansion in a very large camp.

I looked back to everyone else and as soon as the heavy door banged shut, everyone, including me for some reason, let out a heavy breath. Now that I could naturally breath again, I looked to the land of apparent gypsies.

+++++++++

“So you want to know who we are?” Ferris asked. We were walking down the very center of the camp, heading towards the trailer that Patrick had emerged from earlier. Lee and Delia had left us once we had stepped away from the house, and I definitely wasn’t complaining.

“That’s what I asked," I mumbled and Patrick glared at me. even in  another world he was still acting like a protective older brother.

“What do you know about Celtics?” Ferris asked.

“As in the sports team?” I questioned.

Patrick chuckled but it was Ferris who clarified, “No, as in Welsh, Irish, and Scottish. Like an entire culture."

“Um, I’m sure I must have learned about it in geography or history," I responded.

“Everyone here is part of that culture. In some way we are all related to each other, mostly Irish descent. There are a few Scottish here and there and only one Welsh. Most of us come from different clans unless you have odd aunt or cousin. You and Patrick are from the Preston clan, I am from the Sinclair clan, Lee and Delia are Fletcher and so on. At some point, hundreds of years ago, one of our ancestors turned resulted to Wicca, a kind of Celtic witch." Ferris rambled.

“Why would they turn to...you know. Magic?” I asked and we stopped walking for a moment. No one had stopped us, just an average day in a secret community.

“It had to have been something either terrifying or deadly. Sometimes both. Celtics were very much into gods, the Wiccan were hunted a lot of the time, so if you turned to them, you were kind of devoted to them for a long time. None of our families were descended from an actual Wiccan so we turned to helping or assisting Wiccans in order to receive… whatever our clan needed at that time," Patrick finally said.

“So there was an entire group of one to two people from every clan helping a group of Celtic wizards with their laundry and bathroom cleaning?” I summed up.

Ferris and Patrick exchanged looks before shrugging.

“So then why is there a special place for you guys to live? I mean there are a lot of people descended from scottish clans and Wiccans, but I would guess most of them are in Europe. What are you doing in Oregon?” I asked.

“Over a period of time, the original Wiccan assistants had children and they went on to assist them. It continued for generations and generations. We began picking up bits and pieces from the Wiccans… spells, magic, knowledge or whatever you want to call it. That’s who we are. We are not complete Wiccan but we have bits that allow us to well, craft magic just not use it." Ferris responded.

Now this was confusing. I looked to Patrick who had a very calm and normal expression, not at all surprised by the information Ferris had just shared. For some reason I felt a severe feeling of astonishment and betrayal.

“This is a joke right? Your totally kidding with me," I said, taking a step back and forcing a smile. “I mean, there is no possible way we are descended from Harry freaking Potter. This is all joke."

“I really didn’t want you to find out like this. grams didn’t want you to find out at all," Patrick explained, crossing his arms and

“Are you saying I’m a leprechaun Hagrid?” I joked, but was somehow still deadly serious. That was yet another one of my many talents in sarcasm and drama.

“Not technically, you just very very distantly related to people who used to know some witches in Scotland from around 500 BCE. We’re called Welders, we make magic," Patrick stated simply.

“This sounds like the part of the orientation when you go into family details. I’m gonna leave you to go do more work and sincerely apologize to Barney for digging around in his office. Go meet some people, have fun." Ferris said, clapping his hands together and before we could say anything, he was walking back the way we came.

I was left alone with my cousin, who was still watching as the ginger walked away from us

“So…” I started and turned towards the other small, barely alive condominiums. “You gonna introduce me to the family?”

+++++++++

You know how in the movies you see trailers and campers filled with pillows, dangly lights, weird rugs, all hippie like? That is what it was like inside of Patrick's camper.

At one end, there were two mattress stacked up to make a makeshift bed, covered in patchwork quilts and a pillow that was definitely one of grandmas. There was a couch with a knitted sweater and a pair of jean pants over the back while a card table was opposite of it, littered with poker cards and strange pieces of glass. From the ceiling hung double strands of slightly burnout christmas lights, an old 50s tiny chandelier, and it appeared that he had stapled pictures of me, grams, and other people to the walls. Literally, the walls were covered in little polaroid pictures. There were blankets laying over some folding tables as well as the couch and the floor. Oddly enough, it slightly smelled like cigarette smoke even though I was 100% sure that Patrick didn’t smoke. Then again I couldn’t be sure of anything seeing how I was suddenly a leprechaun from the dawn of time.

It was obvious he had been here for a lot longer than I would have ever guessed.

“Cozy," I said, as he began to shrug off his coat, throwing it to the couch. He motioned towards the chairs  and I gladly sat against the pillows and blankets on the couch and watched as he sat down on one of the folding chairs, scooted over to me, and sighed.

A very uncomfortable and violent silence fell over the both of us. I glanced around the room while Patrick picked at his fingernails and bit his lip. I wasn’t sure what to say, I mean, what do you say to someone who found out they had been lied to for a large period of time and now they were stuck in a trailer.

He is still my cousin, still my big brother, I just have to take it in a little slower. I thought.

“Do you smoke?” I asked, it seemed to surprise him and he didn’t respond for a moment.

“Thank heavens, I didn’t think you would ever talk to me again," he stuttered.

“And why wouldn’t I talk to you again? You lying, betraying, sneaky, really crappy, weirdly magical person who may or may not be a hippie," I replied.

“That’s my name don’t wear it out," Patrick remarked and we both grinned. Leave it to him to take what was supposed to be half an insult as a major joke.

“You didn’t answer me," I said, changing the subject. Patrick furrowed his brow in confusion and I rolled my eyes. “Do you smoke or not? This entire place stinks of something."

“Sometimes," he replied and a look of disappointment washed over my face and he quickly defended himself by saying, “Not all the time I swear, I’m not addicted or anything. I only do it when I’m stressed or when we’re having a stupid poker game. Besides the smell is not just me, both Lee and Ferris do it too."

“And that makes it okay?” I retorted and he groaned.

“You’re just like grams."

“How long has she known?”

“Since she caught me blowing the smoke into the vents."

“I meant about the whole Sabrina the teenage witch thing, but that info was also helpful for when I create a novel about all the secrets in our weird family."

“What side of the family did you expect to get it from," Patrick remarked.

“That makes this whole thing better. I had to get the one special thing about me from my worthless dad," I groaned and leaned back.

“I’m sorry you had to talk about him. Barney can be a bit harsh."

“I already had to talk about him once, let’s not do that again. Come on, please I want to meet new people!” I said way too enthusiastically and jumped up. Patrick mumbled something and very slowly got to his feet, following me to the door.

“Can I just mention how well you are taking all this? I mean you did just find out that you have ancestral magic," he spoke up, closing the trailer door behind us as we stood on a dirt trail.

“Well, it’s a lot more exciting than a history essay."