Chapter Thirteen: Heat
The heat was incredible and had been for the past week; Sakura couldn’t believe it could actually get this hot or humid. Never in her memory had the temperature risen so high in Konoha nor had the atmosphere gotten so heavy and sticky. Of course her building’s central air had, like many of the apartment buildings in the city, a major meltdown on the first day of the heat wave leaving her to slowly dissolve into an uncomfortable puddle while trying to fall sleep each night. If it had merely just been hot or humid she may have been better able to handle it, but the combination of the two uncomfortable elements made for a potentially deadly amalgamation.
Almost absently the medic wondered if it was possible to have one hundred percent humidity in such lethal heat without having rain. The clouds had rolled in two days prior and a complete lack of movement within the air itself had ensured that they would stay until some other outside force moved them or it rained. She had been fervently hoping that it would be the latter; Sakura could do with a nice rain shower to clear the air. Unfortunately her hopes had been thus far ignored despite the ominous presence of heavy dark storm clouds.
Sighing she gave one last push at the frame of the door to her small balcony, attempting to inch it open just a little bit more in the futile hope of luring the nonexistent breeze into her stifling bedroom. Once she was satisfied that her door was open as wide as the frame would allow, she drew her sheer curtains across to at least pretend to create some privacy from any prying eyes while still allowing the air to circulate. Normally her training would scream at her for the foolishness of leaving her balcony door wide open over night, but with the stifling heat her comfort won out over sense. She was able to at least lend some justification to her actions by figuring it was too damn hot for someone to even think of attacking or trying to break and enter, never mind actually following through with their plans if she could judge by the lethargy seeping into her own limbs.
Going to her bureau she opened one of the deeper bottommost drawers, the one filled with all the clothing she had purchased on a whim. These were clothes she had picked up thinking maybe one day she would have a reason or – and she inwardly blushed to think – a person to wear them for.
After her recent birthday she had been tempted to relegate the dress Genma had given her to this drawer as well, convinced she would never have an occasion to wear it, but for some reason she just wasn’t able to consign the, she hated to admit lovely if not provocative, dress to the drawer filled with clothes she was fairly certain she would never wear. Instead, she had dutifully hung it on a hanger at the back of her closet, now next to the Icha Icha dress Jiraiya had sent to her, where she had hoped that it would stay out of sight and out of her mind.
The undergarments the perverted sannin had provided to go with the Icha Icha dress had been relegated to the drawer. She had to admit that there was nothing wrong with the bra and panty set – especially since no one other than herself was likely to ever see her in them. But, for some reason she just couldn’t bring herself to don such intimate apparel from the lecherous old man – particularly knowing that the letch would know what he had given to her and would be able to picture it, she shuddered at the prospect. Knowing what she did now about the dress she wouldn’t be particularly surprised if the undergarments were also borrowed from one of his dirty little orange books. Sakura would probably never know for sure though as the only person she could actually ask other than Jiraiya was Kakashi and he had enjoyed her in dress just a little too much, she feared the undergarments would just be pushing it.
Shaking her head to clear unwanted thoughts of Icha Icha inspired apparel from her mind, she went back to sorting through the assorted and carefully folded tops, skirts and occasional dresses and eventually came to the sleepwear. The silky fabric of the night dresses and miscellaneous pieces of lingerie felt cool and welcoming against her skin. With a grin of triumph the green eyed kunoichi pulled a tiny silky cropped tank top out along with the matching flared but equally tiny silky shorts from the very bottom of the drawer.
Happily she shed her sticky modified medic’s uniform to take a cool shower and slip into the silky nightwear with a sigh of pleasure. Not bothering to dry her hair she grabbed a jar of body crème, her one true expensive luxury, and returned to her bedroom. The pink haired woman settled herself on a chair, yawning and stretching a little, arching her back against the back of the chair while running her fingers through her hair to gently shake the remaining moisture from it.
After an extended moment she shivered a little and relaxed her back before extending her legs outward as far as she could, flexing her toes a couple times in the process. Feeling better after her little stretch she propped her legs up on her dresser to apply the expensive lotion. It had been something her mother had insisted she do, something small to pamper herself everyday. If she didn’t do it for herself no one else would and all women deserved at least a little bit of pampering.
Her obsession with this particular lotion had started while on a mission in the Land of Grass. Their client had been the president of a major cosmetic company specializing in lotions and soaps. His son had made a gift of it to her in thanks of her services rendered. While there, she was able to treat him and his girlfriend for food poisoning, a result of the girl’s well meaning attempt to make him dinner. It hadn’t exactly been part of her mission, but Sakura had felt compelled by her medical training to help where and when needed. To express his thanks, he had given her a couple jars of one of his family’s most popular products, an expensive body crème. She had hesitantly accepted and, after discovering how much better it worked than any other cream she’d tried, she had taken to using it every day. When she ran out she had begun having it specially ordered though the local body shop – it was very expensive, but more than worth it.
Carefully, so as not to waste any she smoothed the crème into her legs. The kunoichi sighed already feeling a little cooler since taking a shower, slipping into the skimpy pajamas, and now applying the cool crème to her legs. A slight sound started her from her reverie, casually she glanced up to survey the room, her heartbeat increasing slightly as possibilities drifted through her mind. Nonchalantly, the kunoichi reached for one of the many stashes of kunai she had secreted around her apartment. Her eyes lit upon the open balcony and she paused.
A familiar silhouette slouched in her doorway with one hand extended toward her sheer curtains, seemingly frozen where he was. Hastily she rose to greet her unexpected visitor, forgetting her somewhat less than appropriate attire. Sakura wondered what he was doing there and why he had stopped at the doorway instead of entering. All of her boys had an open invitation to her apartment, especially if they needed help, and though he had never utilized it, the invitation was always open to Kakashi.
~*~*~*~
Painfully Kakashi made his way to the gate, noticing as he passed through it that he had lucked out and managed to time it just right since no one seemed to notice him limp quietly into the village. Not even pausing to consider his options, the elite jonin set off directly for her apartment. He’d never before felt the need to use her ‘open door’ policy, but he wisely realized that he was in no condition to go and wait for her to come to him at his own place. The Copy Ninja hoped she would be home, as he didn’t think he would be able to make it to the hospital after stumbling all the way to her apartment building.
As he made his way, with an increasing lack of coordination that he put down to blood loss, he let his mind wander. Kakashi wasn’t particularly surprised to find that it settled on the pink haired medic he was currently on his way to see. While he was away, he had found himself thinking of her at odd moments, something that had bothered him at first but had eventually been able to attribute to her current area of research and the help he had been giving her with it. Sakura had asked him, if he could without jeopardizing either himself or the mission, to try and answer a couple questions she had about how he used his Sharingan in an actual combat situation. Consequently the silver haired man had found himself thinking of her rather than her questions. He hoped his former student wouldn’t ask him if he had had a chance to try and ponder the queries she’d put to him as he had ended up spending more time thinking of her than the information she’d requested of him and he wasn’t particularly sure how he could explain it to her with out annoying or embarrassing the younger medic.
After several minutes of awkward but still mostly stealthy travel, he found himself at her apartment building. Upon looking up to her balcony, he heaved an inner sigh of relief at the fact that her light was on and her doors wide open – she was home. Almost clumsily he landed on her balcony, still managing to remain silent, unfortunately as he moved he realized that he had managed to reopen his wounds. Cursing quietly, but still feeling thankful that he had arrived, he raised a hand to brush aside the sheer curtain she had drawn across her open doors. Bringing his gaze up to his hand on the sheer fabric, Kakashi froze, his eye wide with surprise.
Sakura had just entered her bedroom, wearing the least amount of clothing he had ever seen her in, even in comparison to the tiny top and short skirt she had worn to her birthday party at the pub and the Icha Icha dress she had worn that one time to check up on him. Privately, Kakashi couldn’t decide which had been worse, opening his door to find her in a replica of an Icha Icha dress or coming across her in this pair of miniature shorts and cropped tank top. Before his mind could wager a guess she plopped herself down on a chair and stretched.
As she arched her back against the chair – to crack it, the rapidly fading logical part of his mind guessed – her top rode up to the point where it revealed the very hint of the bottom of the curve of her breasts. To make matters worse she raised her hands to her hair, shaking the damp strands and unintentionally inching her tank top up just enough to completely reveal the full lower curves of her breasts and firmly etch the image in his mind. Managing to stifle a groan, he felt thankful once again for his mask as it concealed his immediate physical reaction very well. He was tired, weak and injured; he did not need this sort of test of his self control or the additional blood loss. Just as Kakashi thought he wouldn’t be able to take it any longer, Sakura shivered slightly before releasing the innocently appealing pose and extending her legs, curling her toes a couple times before propping them up on her bureau next to her.
Completely entranced he watched as she opened a jar of something that he realized with a slight surprise smelled of the same scent he usually associated with her, revealing the source of the very light subtle floral scent. The younger woman then began to carefully and methodically rub it into her legs, starting at her ankles and working her way up to her knees. Once finished with her shins and calves she started working on her thighs, her fingers easily skimming up to and under the silky shorts she was wearing. It was at this point that he found himself unable to take it any longer, and with the combination of exhaustion, blood loss from his wounds, and the all too enticing sight in front of him, he blacked out. Somehow he managed to stay on his feet, but at the same time he was unable to prevent a very soft sigh from escaping from his mask covered lips, alerting the kunoichi to his presence.
~*~*~*~
“Kakashi?” Sakura asked as she moved closer to him, “What are you doing here?”
She drew back the sheer curtains to see one wide nearly white eye staring at her in what she could only equate to panic. Clearly the elite jonin had caught her in her less than decent night apparel applying lotion to her legs – not exactly the best of circumstances she had to admit to herself sheepishly. Granted, both Naruto and Sasuke had walked in on her at far less convenient times; Sakura had even lost a couple decent but cowardly boyfriends that way. She had to grin to herself at the thought that if her former teacher despite all of the instances she had proved to him otherwise, still thought of her as the same silly little twelve year old she had been when they first met, he had probably just been forced to face the physical reality that she had indeed grown up. Sakura almost laughed at his dazed expression… until she noticed the blood. What was left of his vest and shirt seemed to be soaked in it, so much so that a small pool was rapidly forming at his feet.
“Oh!!” Her eyes went wide at the completely unexpected sight. “W-w-what...” the medic gulped and tried again, “W-what happened?” Sakura asked feeling terribly guilty for her amusement temporarily overriding what should have been initial concern.
When he made no move to answer her, she tried waving her hand and snapping her fingers in front of his eye. Receiving zero response, she realized he was completely in shock. Somehow Kakashi was managing to stay on his feet, but for all intents and purposes he was dead to the world, entirely unconscious. Hastily Sakura reached out to pull him into her room, all her previous thoughts and amusement at his predicament flying from her mind.
Momentarily, the distress of the situation had her at a loss; she wasn’t sure what she should do first or where she should settle him to do it. Kakashi looked to be in bad shape – really bad shape – much worse than she remembered seeing him in for quite a long time. Briefly, the medic wondered just what sort of mission he had returned from that brought him back to the village with such dangerous and clearly life threatening injuries and why someone at the gate hadn’t forced him to go to the hospital. Or rather, she couldn’t figure out why someone at the gate hadn’t called for backup to get him to the hospital before calling her in to help deal with his obviously serious injuries.
After a moment of indecision, she decided to leave him standing in the middle of her room long enough to grab a bunch of clean towels, bandages, and medical supplies from her bathroom along with a basin of warm water. When Sakura returned he was still where she had left him, and if she guessed correctly, he hadn’t even moved so much as an inch. Carefully, she arranged several of the towels on the floor and forcibly managed to settle the injured shinobi down into a sitting position on them. She would have liked for him to lie flat, but she could see from his torn and bloodstained vest the wounds on his chest extended over his shoulder and continued across his back making it difficult for her to settle him down completely until she had dealt with either the injuries on his back or those across his chest.
Gently Sakura pulled off his forehead protector, replacing it with a thick bandage; the last thing she wanted would be for him to mistake her for an enemy and try to use his Sharingan on her. Though it had never happened the fact that it could never left her thoughts when she treated him, especially when he was in such a state where he might not realize what he was doing.
Next, she removed his vest stiff with both dried and fresh blood. The kunoichi wrinkled her nose in distaste, feeling very happy that she had hardwood flooring in her room which made for easy clean ups when dealing with an injured friend. She grimaced in sympathy at the deep gashes running across his chest over his shoulder and across his back. Sakura had been able to tell from the amount of blood loss that he was pretty badly injured, but she hadn’t quite guessed just how badly until seeing how deep some of them were.
It wasn’t like Kakashi to allow himself to become quite so seriously injured during a mission. She felt a brief pang of guilt as she wondered if the questions she had asked him might have been the cause of his uncharacteristically poor state. Hastily she pushed her feelings of guilt aside; she could deal with them at a later time, to concentrate on the man in front of her.
Making the decision that his shirt would be unsalvageable, she pulled out a kunai from his pouch and cut both his over shirt and undershirt away. She made sure to be extra careful when pulling the fabric from both of the partially closed and open wounds, not wanting to cause a patient undue pain, especially not this one.
The pink haired woman debated over letting him keep the mask; upon closer inspection she could see that it too was stained with fresh blood. Sakura felt her cheeks heat at the most likely implication. Not sure how she felt about unintentionally giving her former sensei a nosebleed, she quickly pushed the thought from her mind, forcing herself back to dealing with the crisis at hand. Since she could see that the bulk of his injuries seemed to be on his back, chest, and arm, she decided to let him keep the mask – though she did carefully saturate it with some warm water to get as much of the blood out as possible without inadvertently drowning him.
Unbidden, her mind returned to what she had mentally labeled as the ‘Icha Icha Incident.’ She still didn’t really know what to make of the whole episode. Looking back on it, she had felt red hot embarrassment as some of his actions, which had puzzled her at the time, suddenly made sense in the context in which he had placed them the next morning with his not so anonymous gift.
After further thought about it she had been horrified to find that it didn’t bother her nearly as much as she felt it should have, and much to her further disgust Sakura had found what she considered to be a perverse sense of pride in the fact that she had been able to affect the famously stoic man. Kakashi read dirty novels in public without batting an eyelash so the fact that she had been able put some cracks in his outward façade of impassivity secretly pleased her more than she would ever like to admit. Granted, if she were to be completely honest with herself, she would also admit his reaction probably had a whole lot more to do with the dress than the woman wearing it. Still, she thought of it as an accomplishment – not one she would ever share with anyone – but nonetheless still something of an achievement.
Sakura felt her face heat as she realized that her rationalization for the reasoning behind her ability to get a rise out of her former sensei that one time had rather just been proven wrong. Faster than she would have thought possible, she let that particular line of thinking drop, even though a small part of her persisted in pondering just a little at the possible implications of the slightly disconcerting discovery.
Viciously, she pushed all inappropriate thoughts of him from her mind to concentrate fully on his current condition, minus his apparently recent nose bleed. The elite shinobi was seriously injured and needed her help him – not for her to sit there ogling him and remembering the one other time she had been able to get a physical reaction out of the man. Unfortunately, she had found that ever since her holiday at the hot spring with her friends her former sensei invaded her mind far too often for her liking, and rarely in what she would term appropriate thoughts. Mentally she made a note to somehow get back at Ino for cracking open the door she had always kept firmly shut for her own peace of mind.
Quickly Sakura cleaned his wounds as best she could before gently shifting him so he lay on his uninjured side, allowing her access to both his chest and back but also giving his body a chance to relax a little and rest. Taking a deep breath she lay both palms flat against his back: this was clearly going to be a two handed job. Forcibly calming herself, she concentrated and sent inquiring tendrils of chakra into his system, looking for additional injuries as well as encouraging the healing process of those that were immediately apparent. As the medic scanned his system, she noticed something not quite right, something just a little bit … off.
It hit her like a load of bricks, and she pulled her hands away from him so quickly one would have thought that he had burned her. It was poison. Quietly Sakura cursed, she was well versed in many kinds of healing, but poisons were not exactly her specialty – there were just too many of them! She could easily treat most of the poisons shinobi commonly came across, and the pink haired kunoichi knew general methods of dealing with just about anything else, but unfortunately the general methods were both time and chakra consuming and could be highly labor intensive depending on how long the poison had been in the person’s system and how far it had spread.
The medic in her could unfortunately already rule out all poisons with which she was familiar and move onto the unfamiliar. She could tell by its sluggish movements through his bloodstream that it was of the slow time delayed variety. Kakashi was lucky that it didn’t seem to have spread as quickly as it could have in spite of the length of time it had probably been in his system as well as his physical exertions to reach her apartment. Most likely he hadn’t started to actually feel the effects of it until he had completely stopped moving, coming to a halt on her balcony. Mentally sorting through different extraction methods, Sakura quickly matched his symptoms to a one of them, though not an exact poison. It would be painfully tedious but possible to remove it from his system without damaging him, even though it had clearly had at the very least several hours and the aid of his intense physical activity to help it make its way deeper into his system.
A faint groan startled her from her somewhat panicked reverie. On moving back in front of him she could tell that he was partially cognizant, but what she could see of his forehead was covered in sweat and he seemed to be in a lot of pain. Snapping herself out of it she placed a hand against his chest, took a deep breath, and settled down for what could be a very long and uncomfortable night.
Before she actually started, the kunoichi paused to gently brush some of the sweat and hair from his forehead with her free hand. “I’m sorry Kakashi. This is probably not going to be pleasant for you, and I don’t think I have enough chakra to spare trying to make it less… painful…”
He groaned again softly and she took it as an assent or perhaps an acceptance of her preemptive apology. Just as she started the sure-to-be long and painful process of removing the poison a wisp of a breeze toyed with her hair as the sky opened up, releasing all of the trapped moisture from the air in the form of heavy rain.
Four and a half hours later found her still hunched over him; the strong blue glow had faded to a dim glimmer, and the rain had ceased falling, leaving a welcome sense of relief. The pink haired medic had just spent the better part of her night laboriously sifting through his bloodstream to strain out all traces of the poison and urging them back out through the entry wound. It was difficult, tedious and bloody work, but eventually, just as the glow from her hands began to flicker, she finished, heaving a huge sigh of relief.
Sitting back heavily, Sakura wiped the sweat from her forehead, unknowingly smearing a streak of his blood across her face. She carefully assessed her work: her chakra was just about depleted and she had not had a chance to heal his actual wounds. The green eyed woman grimaced but knew they would have to wait.
She sat for a few moments trying to catch her breath and figure out a game plan. Belatedly she realized she probably should have sent away for help from the hospital once she figured out that it was poison, but somewhere deep down she had been loathe to betray the trust of the injured shinobi lying before her. Kakashi had come to her, not the hospital, and she wanted to prove him right for coming to her for his confidence in her abilities. Hell, it was the first time he had ever actually come to her instead of hiding out in his apartment and forcing her going to him. The pink haired woman wanted him to continue to come to her when he was injured instead of holing up and pretending his injuries would go away if he ignored them long enough.
Almost painfully Sakura cleaned his chest, shoulder and back again then moved on to treat the gashes with antiseptics. While she was waiting for the ointments to dry a little, she removed what she could of his unnecessary clothing: sandals, pouches, leg wrappings and gloves. When the kunoichi had finished she found the bandages she had brought in with her and as gently as she could while still remaining firm she bound his chest as tightly as possible. Once the ugly wounds had been covered she used the remains of her chakra to pull the injured jonin up and settle him on her bed.
The waves of pure exhaustion hit her as she tried to straighten herself and Sakura found that she had to sit down quite suddenly. The vague idea of staggering to and crashing on the couch in her living room faded into her exhausted mind. Sighing and giving into the all too appealing thoughts of sleep, the exhausted medic slumped against the side of her bed and let sweet slumber take her.
