[LOG] - In Which Sakura's Motherly Instinct Comes Out Like Woah

[ground_breaker]

Who: Okuzaki Akira, Haruno Sakura
Where/When: Konohagakure, 9/17, Morning
Style: Action
Status: Closed
Rating: Oh, I doubt more than PG.
Warnings: Sleepy pre-teens, possibly angst.

Comments

[ground_breaker]

I'm sure you're learning a lot. Iruka-sensei is a great teacher.

[It's good that he's spending at least some time with Iruka. Because he isn't just a great teacher--he's a support system, a fierce protector, a surrogate parent, an older brother, a friend. For his students, Iruka is what they need him to be.

Maybe she needn't have come at all.

But Iruka had asked, so she did.]

Is he teaching you any jutsu yet?

[ninjasecrets]

I've been working on bunshin no jutsu.

[Akira fidgets a little, thinking of that. He's embarrassed. He's no good at it. His attempts to replicate Iruka are all blobby and mooshed. How can it be this difficult, when he can sketch Iruka with his eyes closed?]

I really suck at it, but I work on it for hours and hours a day.

[Because he doesn't want to do anything else. Doesn't want to think. Doesn't consider that he might be trying too hard, thinking too hard about it.]

[ground_breaker]

[Hours and hours, he says.

She thinks oh, Akira-kun.

He's serious and studious but there's a difference between dedication and obsession.

She wonders what he's trying to forget.]

Everyone sucks at it, at first.

[Except Sasuke, but she really doesn't need to mention that.]

You'll get it, I know you will.

[ninjasecrets]

[Akira's trying to forget everything. Not just about the war. Not just about watching Iruka-sensei being blown to bits, not just about his own death, not just about the marriage, but everything before then, too. He thinks that maybe, just maybe if he can allow himself to be consumed in his work, he won't have to think about it.

And he won't have anymore nightmares.]

Well, s'not like I have anything better to do, anyway. No one's around. [He kicks at a stone, and what he really means is Naruto and Itachi aren't around, but he can't say that, of course.]

[ground_breaker]

[No, they're not, are they? Konoha is stark in the absence of so many people.

The streets are quiet. This copy of the town she grew up in had always been quieter than the real thing, but now it's like a ghost town, and they are only slightly more corporeal than the rest. The ones that left.]

Maybe I can help you out.

[She's subdued, all of a sudden.

But she puts that away because they've reached the training ground, and there are other things to focus on. Ninja arts. Duty.

She can forget her melancholy in favor of those things. Or try to, if only for Akira's sake.]