353A/N: This story takes place a few years after the end of the war. It's rated M for overall theme and later content, and it's going to be a pretty long slow-burn fic.
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The sun was just barely beginning to touch the edges of the sky as Sakura walked through the gates of Konoha. The village was eerily quiet as it always was at the first break of dawn. A light breeze blew past her and she smiled, stretching her arms above her head to work out the kinks in her back. When she pulled her arms down, her hair caught on some of the mud caked onto her forearms, causing a groan to escape her lips. Her good mood was immediately ruined.
The mission she was returning from had not only been one of the most boring intelligence-gathering missions she'd ever been on, but it had also required her to literally bathe herself in mud and stay covered in it for a full week. She'd watched a home in a small village-one that just so happened to belong to their leader-to see if there was any evidence that the rumors of a new leader taking over were true. Sure, she'd gathered enough information to determine that there likely had been a shift in leadership, but she'd done it by laying in the mud with Sai for a week. She would have liked to have been able to throw a few punches at the very least; sitting around doing nothing had never really been her style.
"I still don't understand why you think it's logical to decide who fills out the mission report based on a game of rock-paper-scissors," Sai said from where he stood just a few steps ahead.
Sakura glanced at him and smiled as she fought back a yawn. He was watching her with his usual blank expression, though it was somehow almost funny to see him so calm and serene when he was just as covered in dried mud as she was, if not more so.
"At least I give you the chance to win. If you were still going on missions with Kakashi-sensei and Naruto, you know they would bail the moment you guys reached the village," Sakura replied easily with a shrug of her shoulders, grimacing as she felt the crust on her skin shift.
"They did fill out the paperwork twice, though."
"Yeah, and you were unconscious one of those times and had your fingers broken the other time. And then you had to rewrite the reports anyway because they refused to use any details."
"I suppose you're right," Sai murmured thoughtfully as he glanced down at the scroll in his hand. He shifted his fingers around it and Sakura watched as some of the dried mud fell to the ground, making her wonder exactly how bad she looked right now. She had no doubt that her bathroom would look absolutely horrible after she'd finally washed all of the mud off, and she definitely wasn't looking forward to having to scrub down the entire room after she was finally clean.
The sound of a door opening caught Sakura's attention. Her gaze shifted to the side only to find one of the nearby merchants beginning to set up their stall. It must have been later in the morning than she'd originally thought.
"I'm gonna head home to clean up," Sakura said, scowling as she turned to begin walking in the direction of her apartment and felt some of the mud fall off of her legs. She would no doubt leave a trail behind her.
Sai nodded his head in response and Sakura waved at him briefly before jumping onto a nearby rooftop. She didn't even have to think about her route as her feet instinctively carried her in the direction of home.
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Sakura plopped down onto her couch cushions, kicking her feet up to rest on the coffee table as she read through the letters that had arrived for her while she'd been away. She grabbed the letter from the top of the pile and shifted until she was more comfortable, ignoring the way her tank top bunched up to her waist as she took a sip of the relaxing tea she'd made.
It had taken almost an hour of showering to get the mud out of her hair, and even longer to get it feeling soft again. After that she'd had to scrub her bathroom clean and then shower again just to get the dirt from cleaning off of her skin. Next time, she would make sure to jump into a river to rinse off on the way home, even if it did add an extra day to her travel time.
She placed her tea cup onto the coffee table and was reaching out to grab another letter when a quick knock sounded from her front door. She frowned, her muscles immediately tensing as she cautiously stood. No one was supposed to know that she'd returned almost two days earlier than expected, and while she didn't expect a potential enemy to knock politely on the front door, it did very little to calm the nerves that had already begun standing on end.
Another knock sounded through her small apartment, but this time there was a pattern to it. Three knocks, two taps, followed by one more knock and the sound of a fingernail scratching lightly against the wooden door.
Sakura immediately felt a smile tug at her lips as she jumped toward her front door, not even bothering to make sure she looked presentable before undoing the locks and stepping back. The door swung open, and before she had a chance to look at the person entering her apartment, she was being picked up and squished into a hug that would have been unbearably tight if she had been anything but a ninja.
"I was told you'd be covered in mud. I'm kind of disappointed that you're not."
"Oh shut up, pervert," Sakura laughed, swinging her legs wildly in the air until she was finally allowed to drop back to the ground. She looked up to watch Kankuro's paint-covered face burst into a grin even as she punched him on the arm.
"Is that how you treat all of your friends that you haven't seen in a year?" Kankuro grumbled as he rubbed his arm where she'd punched him. Sakura watched his eyes narrow into a withering glare, but there was a twinkle of humor there that let her know he wasn't actually angry. Most people would have been shaken by that look and been unable to see the laughter threatening to burst through his lips, but she knew him much better than that.
"Only the ones who go an entire year without contacting me even once," Sakura replied, throwing as much snark into her voice as she possibly could, even though she knew the smile on her lips would give away the fact that she was just as excited to see him as he was to see her.
After Temari had moved to Konoha, Kankuro had visited her every month for the first year to make sure Shikamaru was treating her well. Everyone knew that Temari could take care of herself, including Kankuro, but that hadn't stopped him from being overprotective of his sister. Temari had taken it in stride for the first few months, but before long she'd begun kicking him out of the house during the day. He'd wandered around Konoha aimlessly, until the Rokudaime had given him special permission to visit and work with the poisons labs to keep him busy. Sakura had immediately bonded with Kankuro when he'd helped her figure out an antidote to one of the poisons she'd been having trouble with. Plus, there was that whole saving-his-life thing from a few years back.
"What brings you to Konoha, anyway?"
"Why, I'm here to seek out my favorite poisons expert, of course." Sakura watched the smirk grow across his lips and immediately felt herself perk up. It'd been far too long since she'd had a new poison to study, and after the horribly boring mission she'd just returned from, the prospect of analyzing something new was exciting enough to cause a tingle to run down her spine. "And before you turn into a smartass, I'm not talking about Shizune."
Sakura rolled her eyes, trying to feign an air of nonchalance, but she had been planning to say exactly that. It was both amusing and unnerving that there was someone out there who understood her sense of humor so well. "Fine, let me just go get changed first."
She waved her arm to beckon him into her apartment before turning to head toward her bedroom. She knew that Kankuro would shut the door behind him and wait in her living room, just like he'd always done when he'd come to visit in the past.
One she reached her bedroom, Sakura quickly dug out a pair of clean clothes that she'd packed for the mission but had never gotten a chance to wear and threw them on. She put her hair into a quick ponytail and double checked to make sure she hadn't forgotten to grab her pass for the hospital, then made her way back into the living room where Kankuro was standing by her bookshelf studying the spines of her books, just like she'd known he would be. It seemed like the year apart hadn't changed him at all.
"Let's go," Sakura hummed, smiling at Kankuro for a short moment before turning to exit her apartment. She didn't bother to wait for him so that she could lock the door after he'd left - at some point over the years, he'd figured out how to lock and unlock doors with his chakra strings.
When Sakura reached the middle of the street, she glanced behind her to see Kankuro standing at her door with a serious look on his face as his chakra strings worked on locking the door. There was an excitement she hadn't felt in a long time pulsing beneath her skin. Not only was she finally getting to see one of her closest friends again, but she was also getting to exercise her brain by studying the new poison he'd brought her. If Kankuro had come to Konoha for her help, that meant that it was more difficult than he could handle alone, and it had been a long time since she'd been properly challenged. Maybe this was exactly what she needed.
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"This is fascinating," Sakura breathed out, examining the poison that was currently surrounded by her chakra as it hovered above a large bowl. It had been a long time since she'd seen anything this complex, and it was especially interesting for a contact poison. If she had to guess, she would say that this could probably kill a fully-grown man in seconds. "Where is it from?"
"We don't know," Kankuro replied, his voice low enough that she almost didn't hear it. Sakura glanced up, noticing the way his shoulders had tensed and his lips had pulled into a hard line. Whatever had brought this poison to him couldn't have been good.
Kankuro shifted his eyes around the empty room cautiously for a moment before reaching his hand out toward the door to the room. He spread his fingers, and Sakura watched as chakra threads shot from his fingertips to close the door they'd left open. She placed the poison back into the bowl carefully, making sure that it didn't splash at all before stepping away from the table.
"This is the third time we've seen this poison in the last six months, and all three times when we studied the corpses, the poison was only used on our medics. The rest of the team was killed from regular attacks," Kankuro whispered, his eyes narrowing as if to relay the gravity of the situation. "That's why we need your help, Sakura. Whoever is behind this, it seems like they're targeting our medics."
Sakura felt her mouth open in surprise as she glanced away from Kankuro's face to look at the poison resting innocently in the bowl. It was hard to wrap her thoughts around the fact that a poison that was more complex and potent than anything she'd seen before was being used to specifically take out medic nin. It made sense for an enemy to target the medics first, and Sakura knew that not every medic was armed with enough combat skills to defend themselves like she could, but it was a dirty tactic. If someone was going around specifically targeting the medic nins from Suna, and if they managed to take out more than the three that had already died, the potential repercussions could be disastrous for their forces.
A loud knock sounded from the other side of the door that Kankuro was still keeping held firmly shut with his chakra. The sound was so loud and sudden that Sakura almost jumped in surprise, but years of training herself to not respond to pain or shock kept her from moving, even if it didn't stop her heart from feeling like it was about to leap out of her chest.
"Sakura-san, if you do not open this door I'll be forced to break through it."
Sakura frowned, immediately recognizing the voice that was on the other side of the door. It wasn't often that ANBU ever sought her out, and it was even more rare for Yamato to come find her personally. He was one of Kakashi's personal ANBU guards, so the fact that he'd left Kakashi's side was a red flag that indicated something serious had happened.
She turned to Kankuro and nodded her head to let him know that it was safe. He dropped the chakra strings and stepped to the side to allow the door to open fully just in time for Yamato to walk forward, his ANBU mask resting on his face.
"What can I do for you?" Sakura asked, keeping her voice as calm and distantly polite as she could. When Yamato was wearing the mask, she wasn't supposed to let on that she knew who it was, even if the people around them were allies.
"Hokage-sama has requested both of you in his office immediately," Yamato said, his tone the epitome of professional as he nodded toward Kankuro.
Sakura glanced over at Kankuro with a raised eyebrow, wondering what Kakashi would want with both of them at the same time. Kankuro only shrugged in response before quickly moving to return the poison to the flask he'd brought it in.
Yamato shifted from one foot to the other, causing Sakura to look up at him curiously. His shoulders were more tense than they normally were while he was on duty, and she had to fight back the urge to ask him what had happened. It had been years since she'd seen Yamato this nervous, and it took all of her self restraint to not reach out and try to calm him down or relax his muscles with healing chakra.
"Okay, everything's packed away," Kankuro murmured as he stepped up to stand beside her. Sakura could tell that he looked just as nervous as Yamato, but with everything that had been going on in Suna it was easy enough to understand why.
Yamato nodded curtly and turned on his heel, leading them away from the research lab and in the direction of the Hokage's office.
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When Sakura and Kankuro finally arrived at the Hokage's office, they found Kakashi sitting at his desk, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. Sakura recognized that stance as one that he only ever used when he was trying to figure out how to fix something.
"You called for us, Hokage-sama?"
"Please don't call me that," Kakashi grumbled as he watched both of them closely, and Sakura could swear that she saw the cogs turning in his head. She stepped forward until she was almost at the desk, feeling Kankuro remain by her side the entire way. Behind her she heard Yamato close the door to the office, and a few seconds later the locks turned as well to keep anyone from wandering in and overhearing the conversation that was about to happen.
Sakura waited for someone to speak up, glancing around the room that hadn't changed much from when Tsunade had been Hokage. She had the feeling that the hidden compartment in the bookcase no longer had bottles of sake in it and were instead lined with backup copies of Icha Icha, but other than that everything seemed the same.
Her eyes shifted back to Kakashi with confusion when she glanced back at the clock and realized it'd been more than five minutes of silence already. It wasn't like him to delay for this long, since he usually wanted things to be done as quickly as possible if he couldn't avoid it completely.
"Kakashi-sensei, why did you call for both of us?" Sakura asked, tilting her head to the side as she studied Kakashi's face. He didn't answer right away and instead looked away, which only caused her curiosity to flare to life. She went through the potential reasons for calling both of them in her mind; if Kakashi wasn't willing to speak up first, she would have to figure it out herself.
"You only ever call me to your office when you need my healing abilities, or when there's a highly sensitive mission to give me. You sent one of your personal ANBU to get us, which is almost unheard of unless there's an emergency, and the fact that you sent for Kankuro as well means that something must have happened in Suna. Something that may require my abilities."
Kakashi watched quietly for a long moment before letting out a long sigh. He leaned forward and placed his elbows onto the desk, folding his fingers together and resting his chin on them.
"You always were my smartest student, Sakura-chan," Kakashi mumbled, shifting his eyes to Kankuro before closing them. "There's been an attack on one of your brother's personal guards. I'm told that the attacker used the same poison that you came here to seek our assistance with."
For a long moment, no one spoke. Sakura felt her mouth gape open slightly as she took in Kakashi's words. The fact that someone had gotten close enough to Gaara to attack one of his personal guard was unsettling enough, but the fact that they'd used the poison she'd been looking at earlier meant that whoever the guard was must have died. Kankuro had mentioned that there was no antidote or any way to counter it yet, which was why he'd come to her for help. Sakura gulped and felt her stomach drop.
"The guard that was attacked was Chouko-san, wasn't it?" Kankuro asked. Sakura could practically feel the tension rolling off of him in waves, and felt a pang of worry settle into her throat. She reached out and grabbed one of his hands with her own, keeping her shoulders squared and her eyes trained forward even as she felt the way his hand was shaking. Kakashi nodded his head slowly, and Sakura squeezed her hand tighter around Kankuro's as a hiss escaped his lips. "Shit, of course."
Sakura didn't have to ask anything to understand what was going on. The guard who had been attacked with the poison had died, and from the way Kankuro had known who it was immediately, Sakura could easily deduce that they'd been a medic, just like all of the others who had been attacked with the poison.
"What the hell is going on over there?" Sakura breathed out, more to herself than anything else. Her fingers tightened around Kankuro's hand as she heard him sniffle, but she kept her eyes forward, knowing that he wouldn't want anyone to see the tears that were no doubt falling down his cheeks. If this person had been someone Gaara trusted enough to make a personal guard, they would have no doubt been close to Kankuro as well.
"That's what I would like to find out," Kakashi replied, and Sakura immediately noticed the change in his demeanor. The expression he wore now was all business, his official Hokage expression for when things had gotten serious. "Kankuro, your brother has requested that you return to Suna immediately. Sakura, I would like for you to go with him and act as a replacement for the personal guard that was lost."
Sakura felt her eyes widen in surprise - she had been expecting an order to focus on making an antidote for the poison. It wouldn't have been surprising for her to be sent to Suna to study it more closely, but being sent as a guard?
"With all due respect, Kakashi-sensei, I've never been a personal guard for anyone before. Why would you choose me to act as a replacement?"
"You're the best option right now," Kakashi replied. "You're intelligent, with a working knowledge of poisons that rivals Tsunade, and your particular combat style would work well in a situation where you needed to defend someone. The Kazekage just had one of his personal guards attacked but did not mention the attacker being apprehended, which means that the culprit was able to get through their defenses and get away cleanly. It's going to be hard for him to trust any of the people around him right now."
"But why me?" Sakura asked, letting the confusion she felt slip into her voice. She had never been particularly close to Gaara and only knew anything about him other than his status because of his friendship with Naruto. If it was difficult for him to trust anyone right now, why did Kakashi seem to think that he would trust her to be one of his personal guards when she was practically a stranger?
"You're Naruto's best friend," Kankuro spoke up, his voice sounding surprisingly calm. Sakura glanced over to him, only to see his eyes on her and slightly bloodshot. There was a small smile on his lips despite the way his hand was still shaking slightly. "That alone makes you trustworthy to him, but there's also the fact that you saved my life when Sasori poisoned me. You helped in the rescue efforts to save him, and by extension, helped save the entire village. He trusts you."
Sakura blinked owlishly at him, wondering if perhaps Kankuro had gone temporarily crazy.
"Well, there you have it." Sakura shifted her eyes back to Kakashi as he spoke, and noticed that he had already begun searching for a new scroll to no doubt send Gaara a reply. "You'll leave tomorrow for an undetermined amount of time. I'll make sure to speak to your landlord and your mother about the situation so that they can determine what to do with your belongings while you're gone. You shouldn't need your jounin gear, as you'll likely be given a Suna uniform when you arrive to help you blend in."
Kakashi's tone of voice left no room for negotiation, and for a moment Sakura wondered if she should at least try to argue for more time to get her affairs settled. Leaving the apartment she had worked so hard to get, along with all of the furniture she'd had to purchase to go with it, left a bad taste in her mouth.
As if sensing her hesitation, she felt Kankuro lace their fingers together and squeeze. She glanced over at him, and immediately felt the uncertainty melt away as guilt bubbled to the surface. He had a reassuring smile on his lips, but it was overshadowed by the haunted look hiding in his eyes. He had just lost a friend, someone he probably regarded as family. Suna's medics were being systematically murdered, and here she was worrying about material possessions. She shifted her eyes to the floor, unable to look him in the eye.
"I'm sorry for making you leave on another mission right away, Sakura-chan."
Sakura lifted her eyes to Kakashi and studied his expression. There was something akin to remorse for sending her away again so quickly, as his voice conveyed, but underneath that was something else that she hadn't seen from him in a very long time. He was afraid.
"It's okay," she replied, forcing a smile to her lips that she hoped was convincing enough. "You said that I was the best option right now, and I don't want to wait around while I settle things here and risk more people dying-not when I could be helping figure out an antidote and helping to protect people."
"I should have-" Kankuro began, but quickly cut himself off as his fingers tightened around hers enough that it was almost painful, but she just ignored the pain and squeezed back.
There was no doubt in Sakura's mind about how that sentence would have ended if he'd kept going. "I should have been there to prevent it, I should have stayed by their side, I should have figured out an antidote sooner to save them"; these were all things that Sakura had told herself time and time again. Every time she lost a patient, every time one of her friends was injured, she would repeat those same words to herself like a mantra. It never helped.
Sakura leaned to her side and nudged Kankuro with her shoulder, offering him a comforting smile when he finally looked her way. She was still embarrassed that she'd thought about her apartment and all the stuff inside of it for even a moment, but right now was not the time to focus on that. Right now, her friend was hurt, and being there for him was so much more important than berating herself.
"Thank you," Kankuro whispered before looking away. Sakura watched him for a moment longer before turning to face Kakashi once again. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. There was no more time for her to hesitate, not if she wanted to help. She pushed the last of her uncertainty aside and nodded her head once, ready to accept her mission.
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Thanks as always to TipsyRaconteur, cosipotente, and k_waifu for beta'ing and cheering me on when I got discouraged.
I plan on updating once a week for the first 5 chapters, and once every two weeks after that. If I won't be posting on schedule, I'll leave an update about it on my writing tumblr (nyxako-writing). Comments are always appreciated, and I hope you guys enjoyed reading this.
