If there was ever a night when Sakura had thought that shit had utterly hit the fan, it was this night.
In a clearing somewhere between Fire and Mist country, Sakura was knee-deep in mud and up to her elbows in blood. The rain poured heavily down upon her. It made her hair stick to the sides of her face and the back of her neck. Droplets of water dripped off the tip of her nose and clung to her eyelashes, but she didn’t dare wipe them away. Not when Genma’s life hung by a thread beneath her fingertips.
Around her, the clash of battle raged on. Steel-on-steel echoed through the clearing, ricocheting of the trees and fading up into the night sky high above. Nearby, Itachi and Shisui held off their attackers. The ones that had managed to set such a carefully crafted trap that Genma had no choice but to sacrifice himself to keep the rest of them safe. What Sakura wouldn’t give to wrap her fingers around their throats.
She didn’t know how long she worked. All she knew was that her other teammates were still fighting tooth and nail. There had been eight when the battle began. How many there were now, she didn’t know.
Out of the corner of her eyes, a quick streak of light seized Sakura’s gaze, a strip of moonlight peeking out between the clouds caught the edge of a blade. She looked up just in time to jerk her head to the side where a kunai had been on path for her eye. It grazed her cheek, but her hands nor her chakra waivered from her fallen comrade. Not even as the enemy nin who had thrown the deadly weapon advanced on her.
He made it as close as two yards away before Itachi flickered between them, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, his katana raised for battle. Under the brief light of the full moon, the blade gleamed red.
Sakura spared them no more notice. It took all her concentration to close the large gash in Genma’s side before she began the tedious task of sealing blood vessels closed and repairing organs. His muscles would need to be stitched back together as well, but that would be last after she stemming his internal bleeding and got his blood pressure back to safe levels.
Time passed without meaning until the sounds of battle grew fainter before cutting off abruptly with a wet, gurgled cry. Sakura glanced up sharply, ensuring it wasn’t one of her own teammates. When she found both Itachi and Shisui still standing some years away, exhausted and bloodied, but otherwise unharmed, her gaze dropped back to the task at hand.
“How is he?” Shisui asked, joining her soon after.
“Holding on for now,” she told him. “If he survives this, he has a long recovery ahead.”
Over the sound of the rain, Sakura barely heard Itachi’s footfalls through the muddy ground as he joined them. “Can he be moved?”
Normally her answer was ‘no’, but they were in the middle of unincorporated country, which left them open for another attack. Not to mention, the night was growing later and the rain didn’t seem in any hurry to lighten up soon. In fact, it seemed like there was a chance it would worsen.
“Yes, but not far,” was her answer as she finally let her chakra flicker out.
Without hesitation, Shisui bent down and picked their fallen comrade from the soggy, forest floor. Shisui had lost his ANBU mask at some point during the battle, revealing his mud and blood-stained face. His Sharingan was still active and spinning slowly as he scanned their surroundings as if expecting another impending attack.
Itachi removed his own mask and clipped it to his hip as his deadly eyes did the same. “There’s a border town less than ten miles from here. We will make for that.”
With that decided, the shinobi disappeared into the trees without another word, leaving only corpses in the muddy earth behind.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the small town. In the shadowed alley between an inn and a dark clothing store, Shisui and Sakura stood with Genma propped between them while Itachi went in alone to secure a room.
A crow summoned them not long after and after pinpointing Itachi’s intentionally leaked chakra, Shisui flickered all three of them into a room near the end of the small inn. Inside, there were two, queen-sized beds, but that was all Sakura took in before they were moving. Itachi helped Shisui lower Genma down onto the one closer to the center of the room. Away from any threats that may come through the window.
As they situated their unconscious teammate, Sakura shrugged off her pack and dug for her supplies. In her storage scroll, she withdrew an IV drip with antibiotics and blood, and made quick work of hooking Genma up to both before she returned to her work with chakra.
Sakura had no sense of time. She worked well into the night. Until Genma’s pressure stabilized and her chakra finally flickered out of life from her hands. On the bed beside him, she sat back of her heels, her eyes roving over the needle in his arm up to the bag hanging from the bedframe. Double and triple checking that there were no kinks. The lights from the bedside lamps cast just enough light for her to see.
It was the sound of rustling from the next bed over that finally pulled Sakura’s gaze away. Itachi was still awake and to her surprise, sitting on the edge of the bed watching with a piercing stare as if he had been there the entire time. The only reason she knew he hadn’t was because he was no longer covered in blood and dirt.
His armor was gone, piled in the corner along with his pack and katana. He had changed into a black shirt and a pair of standard shinobi pants. Something he could quickly slip his armor over if they needed to make a quick escape. His hair was slightly damp too, but not from the rain. Rather a shower. The place she suspected Shisui had disappeared to if the faint rush of water was anything to go by.
“He’s out of danger for now,” Sakura said. She murmured the words in the quiet of the room, but even then her voice sounded rough. Her throat was dry with dehydration from expending so much chakra over the course of the night.
With only a whisper of fabric, Itachi stood from the bed. He crossed the room to his pack and returned a moment later with a canteen. He pressed the palm of his hand between her shoulder blades to help support her as she tipped it back to drink. Only once she’d had her fill did she pass the container back to him with a fleeting smile of thanks.
“I want to keep an eye on him over the course of the night,” Sakura continued, her words still murmured but her voice not quite as hoarse. “Make sure there’s no changes for the worse.”
Itachi nodded. “Shisui and I will take turns. You need to rest.”
“We all need to rest,” she countered softly.
She grimaced slightly as she untucked her legs from under her, her muscles stiff from sitting in the same position for so long. When she glanced back up at Itachi, she found him frowning.
He didn’t immediately reply but she watched with interest as he sorted through the pile of medical supplies she had dumped on the bed until he found a piece of gauze. Her brow arched with curiosity before she hissed faintly as he pressed the bandage to her cheek. With everything else going on, she had forgotten about the injury there.
“I can heal that,” Sakura said, raising her hand.
Itachi shook his head once. “Do it in the morning. You are exhausted.”
She opened her mouth, only to close it as her hand fell. Those words had never been truer. She wondered if given enough time, if she could fall asleep right there, sitting up.
Her eyes fluttered closed as Itachi used his canteen to wet the gauze before he gripped her chin with one hand and wiped the blood and grime away from her skin with the other. She had the faint thought to ask him why he was doing it, but in her current state of exhaustion, she just couldn’t find the energy to form the words.
“I’m sorry,” Itachi said after some minutes.
Brows furrowing, Sakura forced her eyes open. Her confusion only grew when she noticed the small frown pulling on the corners of his mouth.
“I should have gotten to you sooner,” he explained quietly. “You trusted me to have your back and I failed you.”
An odd expression passed her face. “You didn’t fail me, Itachi. I had no doubt that you would be there. You’re my teammate and my captain. I trust you. With everything.”
There was a soft smile on her face as she finished. Still, he searched her expression a moment longer before the stiffness to his shoulders finally eased. Silence fell between them again as Itachi resumed dapping at her face, even quieter than before as the sound of the shower suddenly cut off.
There was a strong sense of familiarity between them, one Sakura couldn’t remember having before. She had been on Itachi’s team for near that of a year, yet he had never been this open with her. As if tonight he had finally accepted her in ways she had yet to fully understand. Onto some deeper level. One that went as far as his relationship with Shisui and Genma.
That thought made her relax fully into his touch as he cleaned her face until he was nearly entirely keeping her head up as the weight of what they had just gone through weighed down on her. Only the shallow breaths from Genma and the faint shuffling of clothes on the other side of the door from Shisui to fill the quiet.
When the door to the bathroom finally opened, Sakura was blinking sleep from her eyes. She peered blearily at Shisui as he walked out and eyed their injured teammate.
“Is he stable?” he asked.
Sakura opened her mouth, but before she could reply, Itachi nudged her knee. She glanced back at him as he nodded towards the now-open bathroom. “Go shower and then rest. You have earned it.”
“Yes, captain,” she said with a small, teasing smile.
She saw the corner of his mouth twitch before she gave one final, lingering look at Genma and finally pushed herself up. Her knees felt a little weak and she ached in placed she couldn’t remember aching before, but the thought of a warm shower and then a big bed kept her moving. It wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable as her mattress back home, but as long as it didn’t have bugs and didn’t smell, she wouldn’t complain.
Using what little chakra she had left, Sakura disobeyed Itachi’s order and healed the cut on her cheek before she scrubbed her face and the rest of her body clean. She stood under the warm spray of the shower until she was nearly asleep on her feet. From her pack, she pulled out a shirt and a pair of shorts similar to Itachi’s in case they needed to make a quick getaway before she brushed her teeth. She could always run a brush through her hair in the morning.
Shisui was already asleep when she entered the room, but Itachi was seated in a chair against the wall at the foot of Genma’s bed with a book in hand. She dropped her bag next to Shisui’s at the foot of their own bed before she made another check on Genma. Still stable.
“I will wake you if anything changes,” Itachi murmured.
She flashed him a faint, grateful smile before she slipped under the sheets beside Shisui. He was on his side, his back to her as he faced the window. His breathing was light, his shinobi instincts keeping him from falling into too deep of a sleep.
With Shisui at her front and Itachi behind her, she had never felt safer and she drifted off quickly, knowing that if anything were to happen, her boys would have her back. That she had absolute trust in.
