heritage

Chapter Five: Impatience

Dear Naruto,

If you can put down more ramen than you did barbeque at Yakiniku-Q tonight than honestly, I am afraid for your body. I'll just have to get Kakashi and Sasuke to agree to team dinners. Then you won't be able to escape eating good food that isn't just noodles for every meal. But that isn't relly what this letter is about.

Tonight had me thinking... Since the Harunos were technically Uzumaki, I looked through my family's old legal papers to see if we would have been able to take you in. It turns out my parents are better people than I am, because they had tried to. Denied the first few years, but had finally gotten permission a month before they passed. If they had lived, I think you would have been my brother. I wish you had been. At least we can be a family now. Even if I'm too afraid to say it.

—Sakura

—

"The world does not wait for anyone."

          When her eyes fully open, her team remains in the room. They've shuffled a bit, Kakashi taking point toward the door and Sasuke by the window while snacking on a tomato. Naruto is slumped next to her, passed out, and holding her hand. Peering at the window behind Sasuke, Sakura can blearily see the sun setting on the horizon.

Despite having slept for the last several hours, Sakura can feel the exhaustion cottoning her ears. Her forehead throbs with each beat of her heart. Each time she swallows her uvula bobs painfully, swollen and irritated.

Sakura's not surprised at the appearance of her spring sickness. It's early, far earlier than the usual time she has come to expect near the end of spring. But it's almost as if she's been reset, with the way the kami robbed her through the rites.

Sakura swallows once, wincing.

In a blink, Kakashi is at her side with a bottle of water. A short, weak gust of air blows her hair out of her face with how quickly he appears. Sakura lets him hold it to her lips, opening her mouth just enough to let the room temperature water slide down her throat. It's no honey-lemon tea, but its better than nothing.

'Sick,' Sakura mouths at her sensei once she's finished sipping and Kakashi has taken the glass back. Her sensei nods once. He placed the half-empty glass near silently onto the bedside table.

With how close he is to her, Sakura can actually feel it when he flashes his chakra in an oddly familiar pattern. Without missing a beat, the door to her hospital room opens and a shinobi with a familiar mask walks in.

Sakura almost physically startles at the anbu's appearance, taking in the familiar green triangles around the edges and red crescent markings around the eyes. Though she knows Kakashi likely takes note of it, he does not visibly acknowledge Sakura's reaction to the anbu's arrival.

"*Iriomote," Kakashi addresses the Anbu's, voice near silent with how low it goes.

"Taichō." Iriomote greets, returning the handsign Kakashi flashed at him when he walked in with another.

Sakura watches as they communicate with each other nigh wordlessly. With her sensory net torn, she can only use body language to figure anything out.

She still has largely no clue what they are talking about.

For all of her cluelessness, their conversation is quite short. It ends with a snap and a feral grin on Kakashi's part. The anbu walks out the way he came, but seems to vanish from the entryway before the door can even shut.

Sakura blinks tiredly, her vision growing fuzzy around the edges. Regardless of the fatigue that seemed to pull down on each of her limbs, though, Sakura knows she won't be falling back asleep anytime soon. That would mean facing more memories without Hibiki at her side.