Chapter Text
It has been a month since Team Seven returned to Konoha, and a gentle sense of normalcy is starting to return to the four members. The routine of training – the familiarity of it, the company of their teammates, the physical exhaustion – helps them push that horrifying mission of theirs to the back of their minds.
Most days, their moments of worry are outnumbered by moments of peace and laughter. The forest still haunts their dreams sometimes, but the nightmares are less and less frequent, and sleepless nights are no longer the norm.
This night was another quiet one, and the quiet night has turned into a quiet morning. On this quiet morning, Naruto is startled awake by the loud ringing of his alarm clock.
He rolls over with a grumble to turn off the noise, kicking his blanket off himself. He lies there for a moment, on his stomach and with his face pressed into his pillow, groggily trying to remember why he set an alarm this early anyway.
His sleepiness disappears with the realization.
Team Seven has a mission today.
The realization summons a mix of excitement and worry in his gut. There’s no need to worry, though, he knows; they’re staying inside the village for this mission, and it’s only a tiny insignificant D-rank. Gardening. Something they’ve done a million times. This mission is easy and safe, and it’s easy and safe on purpose – Team Seven needs to get used to doing missions again. They’re shinobi, and shinobi can’t be scared of missions. It defeats the purpose of being a shinobi. That’s how the Hokage had put it anyway, when he gave them this assignment.
Kakashi hadn’t agreed with the Hokage; he seems to be disagreeing with the Hokage a lot, lately. After their meeting with the Hokage, Kakashi had assured the genin of Team Seven that it was okay to be scared of missions, and that they could call off the mission at any time. They didn’t have to force themselves to get back to doing missions if they didn’t feel ready.
Naruto hadn’t been scared at the time – no one is scared of gardening – but he’s starting to get a little nervous, now. He’s not scared of gardening, but he hadn’t been scared of doing a C-rank mission at the harbor, either. And, well, considering that that mission at the harbor almost killed his teammates, maybe it’s only healthy to be wary of missions that sound easy.
Then again, though… Naruto is, at his core, an optimist. His last mission was awful and terrible and dangerous, but he has enough faith and common sense to know that the chance of a repeat of that is small. Especially with this D-rank. They’re staying inside Konoha; their chances of running into a group of bandits or a missing-nin are impossibly tiny.
Naruto decides to save his worry for missions that might actually get dangerous. For now, he decides to just be excited. Excited that things are going back to normal for Team Seven, at least a little bit.
With a decisive nod and a grin, Naruto rolls himself out of bed. He has no time to lie here and overthink; he has a mission to get to.
He makes his way out of his bedroom, stepping over the empty futons that are lying on the floor. The futons are Sakura and Sasuke’s; they sleep over occasionally, whenever they don’t feel like handling the silence or the nightmares by themselves. It’s a hassle to drag the futons from the closet in the middle of the night, so Naruto just leaves them on the floor instead, even though it’s been a while since his teammates’ nightmares got so bad they needed company. Naruto’s own nightmares have steadily gotten less frequent as well, though he still has nights when he jolts awake in a cold sweat with the phantom smell of blood in his nose. He knows that Sakura and Sasuke always keep a blanket on their couches in case that happens.
Careful not to trip over the futons, he makes his way to the kitchen. Breakfast is instant ramen, he decides, grabbing one of the cups from the cupboard, and then a second cup. He’s been getting into the habit of eating bigger meals, lately – he had to gain weight after their last mission, after all. He doesn’t mind at all; who is he to say no to the idea of eating twice as much ramen as normal? The fact that he’s actually able to afford this amount of food now helps, too.
Sakura had helped the rest of Team Seven calculate how much they needed to eat every day in order to get back to a healthy weight, and with her help, the entirety of Team Seven is now back to a proper weight. Their faces aren’t nearly as thin these days, and Naruto can’t count his own ribs in the mirror anymore. They’d all lost some muscle because of the lack of proper food during their mission as well, but they’ve been regaining it with training. The new training regimen that Kakashi thought up for them is really good.
Naruto boils some water and pours it into the cups of ramen. As he waits for the ramen to be cooked, he walks back to his bedroom to change out of his pajamas. It’s still early, but it’s already warm outside; he definitely won’t be needing a jacket today.
By the time he’s put on a T-shirt and shorts, the ramen is done. Naruto carries the cups to the table, chopsticks between his fingers. In the middle of the table, a little potted cactus stands – a gift from Iruka, who’d heard Naruto complain about the plants that had died when he was gone.
Next to the cactus, there’s a picture frame, with a picture of his parents. It was a gift from Kakashi, and Naruto cried what felt like liters of happy tears when Kakashi gave it to him. According to Kakashi, it’s one of the only pictures that were taken of Minato and Kushina in which they aren’t in uniform, and in which they don’t look all stiff and professional – one of the only pictures in which they look the way they would have looked as parents.
In the picture, Minato and Kushina are standing in front of an orange wall, the paint shiny like it’s still drying. Kushina is holding a paintbrush that’s dripping with paint, pointing it dangerously towards Minato’s face. Minato is laughing, and the photograph is a bit blurry around his face, like he was actively trying to dodge the paintbrush when the picture was taken. The colors of the photograph have faded a bit over the years, but it’s clear that both of them have orange paint in their hair and on their faces.
It’s a cheerful picture; a happy moment. Kakashi hadn’t mentioned who had taken the picture, but it really only could’ve been him. Naruto is grateful to the fourteen-year-old Kakashi for taking the picture, and to the current Kakashi for giving it to him. Naruto would’ve already been happy with just the knowledge about his parents that Kakashi has given him, but actually having his parents’ faces in front of him somehow makes him even happier. It kind of makes him feel like they’re watching over him.
Naruto grins at the picture and turns his attention to his breakfast. As much as he’d like to sit here and be sentimental all day, he has a mission to prepare for.
With the grin still on his face, he leans forward and starts to shovel the ramen into his mouth.
Sakura brushes her teeth above the bathroom sink, her eyes idly following her reflection in the mirror.
The door to the bathroom is open, and gentle noise drifts in from the rest of the house; the sounds of her parents listening to the radio downstairs, occasionally talking. The radio is crackling out some civilian radio station, the voice of the host just barely unintelligible. Sakura used to listen to the civilian radio stations sometimes when she was still in the Academy, but she finds that she’s lost interest in it, now. There are more important things than some radio host’s opinion on the latest songs.
She appreciates the fact that it’s not silent, though. Silence always makes her feel on edge; always makes her far too alert to every sound. The mission has sharpened her senses – it’s like she’s always looking for dangers, now. It’s a good skill to have, but it’s annoying now that she’s safe again. Annoying, and tiring. Do adult shinobi just have to function like this?
But, well, a little bit of background noise seems to be a good enough remedy for Sakura’s over-alert senses. And it drowns out the part of her brain that likes to overthink, too. She’s done a lot of overthinking about today’s mission – mostly about everything that could possibly go wrong – but right now, her brain is quiet. She just feels calm, and ready.
In the comfortable not-silence, Sakura brushes her teeth. Her right hand is at her side, twirling a kunai around her index finger. It’s a tip that Kakashi gave her; fidgeting with a kunai might help her get used to using her right hand again. Apparently, he’d once broken his wrist when he was younger, and the kunai exercises were how he’d gotten his wrist back into shape. It’s a helpful tip – apart from the occasional muscle soreness after a particularly difficult day of training, Sakura’s arm rarely bothers her anymore.
She finishes brushing her teeth, and puts the kunai into her weapons pouch. If everything goes well, she won’t be needing any weapons for this mission, but she’s put on her weapons pouch and her shuriken holster anyway. She’s even packed extra weapons into her backpack, sealed into a scroll – one of the first jutsu that Kakashi taught Team Seven when they got back to training. In total, there are eighty kunai and fifty shuriken on her person at all times. She’s determined to never run out of kunai again.
Her mom calls it paranoid. Kakashi calls it smart – “Always expect the unexpected” is what he says, after all. Sakura herself thinks that it’s good to be prepared, but that she should also try to trust the fact that she’s safe again. It takes a lot of effort to constantly make sure that she’s prepared for danger, especially when there’s no need to. She’s at home; there’s no need for her to sleep in her clothes with a kunai hidden underneath her pillow, and her mom is right about that.
Still, though. For a day like today, there’s no harm in being a little paranoid. It’s almost a little thrilling; the new knowledge of everything that could go wrong, and the fact that she can do something to keep things from going wrong again.
She gives herself a grin in the mirror and turns away, stepping down the hallway towards her bedroom. It’s still early, and she’s pretty much ready to leave; she still has time to read a little bit. She’s been wrestling her way through a bunch of medical ninjutsu books from the library, increasingly complicated literature. It’s really been worth the effort – during training the other day, she managed to heal a bruise on her arm, and she’s trying to teach herself to make cuts stop bleeding. Her medical ninjutsu is nothing life-saving yet, but it’s a starting point.
She picks up the book she was reading from one of the stacks of books in her room, and she settles on the floor, in the patch of sunlight that spills through her window. Her hair falls in front of her face as she sits down; she brushes it behind her ear. She’s been thinking about cutting her hair shorter – she hadn’t liked how tangled and dirty it had gotten during the mission, and she really hadn’t liked the realization that an enemy could’ve easily grabbed it during a fight. Maybe she’ll cut her hair really short, like the boys. She still has to make up her mind about it.
She opens her book, bends over it, and makes it a game to read as many pages before she has to leave.
Sasuke sits on the doorstep to his house, putting on his sandals. The front door is open; the fresh air from outside mixes with the air inside the house, the summer breeze mixing with the gentle scent of the spices that he used to cook breakfast. It’s not an unpleasant mix, and after he’s finished putting on his sandals, Sasuke sits there for a moment, giving himself a moment to just breathe.
He’s about to leave for a mission. The last time he left for a mission, he could’ve died. His entire team could’ve died.
He gives himself a moment to think about that fact, and then he gives himself a moment to let that fact make him determined.
That last mission could’ve killed him. It could’ve killed his entire team. And Sasuke is never going to let that happen again.
To him, this new mission feels like a way for Team Seven to redeem themselves, even though it’s just a minor D-rank. It feels like a way to not make the mistakes that they made with the last mission. To do things better.
This time, Sasuke won’t underestimate his teammates. This time, he won’t try to take on the mission like it’s a solo mission. This time, he won’t snap at his teammates just because they’re there, and he’ll work together with them, and he’ll trust them. They matter to him and he wants to protect them, but he cannot protect them if he pushes them away. That’s what he’s learned, after all, so that’s what he’ll do.
He’ll keep those promises to himself, even if this mission truly is just gardening.
Sasuke gets to his feet and slings his backpack across his shoulders. He closes the front door behind himself, locks it, and leaves.
Team Seven is meeting up at the training grounds, so Sasuke sets out in that direction, walking through the empty streets of the Uchiha compound.
The compound is silent around him, just like it always is. The silence has always been there, but it’s only recently that he’s actually noticed it, and that it feels bad. Despite the silence, the Uchiha compound still always felt like home, but now his home just makes him feel anxious and lonely.
For a while, he needed Sakura and Naruto’s company to combat the silence and the overwhelming feeling of being alone, but he’s slowly been getting used to the silence again. He’s not sure if he’ll ever be entirely comfortable in this silence again, though – not like before. He’s too used to the comfortableness of having his teammates around. It almost feels like they’ve become his home, and the Uchiha compound has become simply the houses where his clan used to live.
Maybe he’ll move into an apartment, like Kakashi did at some point; he said that there’s a specific kind of silence that hangs around empty clan compounds, and that it’s not healthy for the mind to live in that silence for too long. Naruto said that one of the apartments directly below his has been empty for a long time, so maybe Sasuke will move there. With Naruto as his upstairs neighbor, he’ll surely never have to endure silence again.
He smirks to himself. He’s genuinely considering living as Naruto’s neighbor. Sasuke tries to imagine his own reaction if someone had told him that two months ago. He would’ve never imagined willingly being within a fifty-kilometer radius of Uzumaki Naruto, let alone considering him his friend. Now, though, the idea of living within earshot of his teammate sounds almost comforting to him.
With those musings, he walks through the Uchiha compound, and he makes his way to the training grounds. Sakura and Naruto are already there, sitting on the grass; they wave at him as he approaches.
“Morning, Sasuke,” Sakura greets him. She’s twirling a kunai around her finger.
“Morning,” Sasuke replies. “Sensei’s not here yet?” The words feel familiar in his mouth.
Naruto shakes his head. “Nope.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s late,” Sasuke replies. Those words, too, feel familiar, but his scoff is fond. Not annoyed, like it always was before Kakashi became important to him.
“He’s got a few more minutes,” Sakura says with a shrug. “He said he’d be on time.”
Sasuke gives a thoughtful hum in return; as much as he doubts Kakashi’s punctuality, he doesn’t doubt his honesty. Ever since Kakashi spent four days of the mission hiding the fact that his wound was making him sick, it seems that he’s gotten very tired of lying to his genin. As far as Sasuke knows, he hasn’t lied to them since.
Sasuke shrugs and sits down next to his teammates. “Guess we’ll wait, then.”
In an apartment building on the other side of the village, the fourth member of Team Seven is also preparing for today’s D-rank mission.
His flak jacket, weapons pouches and forehead protector are laid out on top of the shuriken-patterned bedsheets – the last parts of his uniform. The rest of his uniform, he’s already wearing.
Kakashi is sitting on the edge of the bed, tying his pant legs to his ankles with bandages. The window is open, letting in fresh summer air and the sound of birds. He listens to the noises from outside as he works, letting the sound calm him down.
Kakashi’s recently been noticing that his hearing is picking up quiet sounds like that again – the chirping of birds, the pattering of rain on the ground, the rustling of leaves in the wind if the wind is particularly strong – and he’s grateful for it. That persistent ringing in his ears is still present, but it’s quieted down a lot. He rarely needs his Sharingan to compensate for the hearing loss anymore.
He shrugs into his flak jacket and puts on the weapons pouches, and he gets to his feet. His legs feel strong underneath him. Which is important; if Kakashi thought that he wasn’t strong enough to protect his students in a worst-case scenario, he would’ve called off the mission.
As he puts on his forehead protector, he leans his weight onto his bad leg a couple of times, testing its strength. His leg can handle his weight easily, and he shouldn’t have expected otherwise; his leg has been recovering very well. The scar is a lot less stiff nowadays, and his limp is almost unnoticeable.
Satisfied, Kakashi slants his forehead protector to cover his Sharingan and walks over to close the window. His gaze lands on the picture frames on his windowsill, and he pauses. His attention is drawn by the picture of Team Seven – particularly by the grumpy expressions on Sasuke and Naruto’s faces. Expressions that Kakashi hasn’t seen in weeks.
Kakashi picks up the picture frame, amused. Team Seven was so different back then. Naruto and Sasuke can actually tolerate each other’s presence now – they’re getting along really well, even – and Sakura’s smile has taken on some sort of confident edge, as opposed to her overly-sweet smile in the picture.
And Kakashi himself remembers that his own smile in the picture was faked, while now, he can’t imagine faking a smile at his students again. It’d feel like lying, and he’s promised his genin that he’d be honest with them.
Maybe they should take a new picture soon.
With that thought, he puts the picture frame back down and closes the window. Time to go.
With a backpack filled with more supplies than they’ll hopefully need, Kakashi walks towards the training grounds. He briefly considers taking a detour to visit the Memorial Stone, Rin’s grave and the Hokage Rock – just in case this mission does somehow escalate and he somehow ends up away from home for weeks again – but he decides against it. His students are waiting for him. Somewhere along the way, his living teammates have become a higher priority than the teammates that he’s lost. Tenzou says that that’s healthy, and Kakashi is inclined to believe him.
His students are waiting for him at the training grounds, each with a little backpack around their shoulders – most likely chock-full of weapons and food and medical supplies, just like he taught them. They shout for him as he approaches the training grounds, and they wave. Kakashi gives a little wave back, unable to hold back a smile.
“Good morning,” he greets them. “Are you guys ready for this?” In a quieter tone, he adds: “And, like I’ve told you, it’s all right if you’re not ready. I’ll call off the mission at any time if you need me to.”
“I’m ready,” Sasuke replies with a shake of his head. “No need to call off the mission.”
“Same here,” Sakura says.
“Yeah,” Naruto agrees. “It’s just gardening. We’ll probably be fine.” He looks up at Kakashi; “What about you, sensei?”
Kakashi shrugs, giving the question some thought. There is a part of him that is absolutely terrified; their last mission has given him a painful reminder of everything that he has to lose, and it has given him the harsh realization that he doesn’t want to lose it. This new mission scares him because, no matter how safe it sounds in theory, it still feels to him like he’s exposing his students to danger, again. Ideally, irrationally, he wants to hold his students in his arms forever and make sure that they are healthy and happy and never in danger ever again.
That’s not what his students want, though. These three genin want to become strong shinobi when they grow up – and Kakashi will do everything in his power to make that happen. And the first step towards making that happen, is helping his students get more confident about taking on missions again.
So it doesn’t matter that part of him is terrified. His fear is entirely outmatched by his resolve – his resolve to help his students become the strong shinobi that they want to become.
So he smiles, and nods. “Yeah,” he replies, “I’m ready for this, too.”
Naruto smiles back at him, and he pumps a fist into the air. “All right,” he says, “let’s go, then! Our mission awaits!” His eyes flicker over to his teammates, and he pauses. “Also, one more thing – if we finish this mission and we’re all still in one piece, can we--”
“--get ramen together?” Kakashi finishes his sentence for him, and he laughs when Naruto pouts up at him. “Sure. It’s pretty much a team tradition at this point. My treat.” He huffs an exasperated laugh; “Just… please don’t start any ramen eating competitions again when I’m paying for your food. I’m glad you’re eating well, but five bowls of ramen for each of you is a bit much.”
“Six,” Naruto grumbles in response. “I ate six last time.”
“I bet I can beat that,” Sasuke reacts, and Kakashi sighs.
“I’m going to be so broke,” Kakashi mutters, solemnly hanging his head. He’s being dramatic, but it’s all a façade. The truth is that he’ll gladly go all the way into bankruptcy if it means that his genin are alive and having fun and eating well. “Just-- Let’s just go and finish this mission successfully. I’m going to need the pay.”
They leave for their mission then, laughing. And at the end of that sunny day in July, Team Seven goes out for celebratory ramen.
-END-