Because recently I've been internalizing how dark the shinobi world probably is, under all the fluff of anime fillers. And Asuma and Kurenai would have gotten out of this, because of...well...

Enjoy!

There came a time in the lives of many of the better shinobi in Konoha (but the Leaf was not alone in this respect) that they were forcibly retired, weapons no longer taken into battle. The notification came typically six months before that shinobi's 35th birthday, and they were given a list of potential life-partners if they were without one, with the goal being to raise a family and to educate their children to be shinobi themselves. The needs of gay shinobi were taken into account, only needing to donate sperm, but those who identified as heterosexual were expected to carry out a family life.

Konoha wasn't like it's neighbors, with rigid demands on that family life—there was no quota of children to meet, no requirement that they enroll in the Academy, no requirement that they become shinobi. It was just expected that shinobi parents would raise their children to be shinobi. Shinobi rarely married civilians, and were encouraged not to—such disparities in physical strength and of mental stability were not healthy. The government wanted the healthiest population possible, and to prevent ninja from making poor choices a committee stepped in to take care of that for them.

There were exceptions of course—sterility (in the case of Maito Gai, too much tight spandex after all), voluntary retirement and leaving of the village before the notification was given (both Tsunade and Jiraiya), and a few other measures as well. Exceptions were few, because shinobi typically retired either by death or by government request. Few could find it in themselves to retire early, at the peak of their ability, it just didn't feel right to deprive the village of their skills.

Retirement of aging shinobi was just the end of their service cycle—having been trained and honed for the job in their late childhood and early teens, serving actively into their early thirties, and disallowing them from the field when they reached a point in their life that they could not push themselves to be faster any longer. Rather than having the death-rate spike at 36 or 37, many hidden villages retired their ninja at what seemed to be the cut-off between completed missions and death—right around the age of 35. Konoha was just courteous in that it sent out notices six months beforehand, a reminder to put away the shuriken and start looking for a ring.

Hatake Kakashi was 34 when he received his notice, that he only had another six months on the job before they in essence got rid of him. It was March 15th, and his day, he decided could not get worse—he had had to fight toe-to-toe against Hyuuga Hiashi to give Naruto time enough to escape with the man's daughter, one of his ninken—Bisuke—had told him he was not going to be answering summons for a time because he was courting another dog, and he had almost forgotten his appointment to check in with Sakura about his recent shoulder injury. The reason, really, that everything piled up to be absolutely horrible was the kunoichi being assigned to him and why the committee had chosen this particular woman—Haruno Sakura was, as far as anyone could tell, the only person besides Naruto to have gained his trust in more than a decade. Sakura was the only woman he had ever let into his adult life, and that fact had condemned her to living with him. Another footnote of his lifestory: Hatake Kakashi, yet again an hour late and a kunai short.

And he was now 10 minutes late to his appointment, and he debated on whether she'd hit him harder if he showed up and told her or if he waited for her reaction. A deep sigh huffed between his lips as Kakashi set off towards the hospital, shoulders slumped as though he were walking to his death.

Kakashi was wrong to assume that Sakura was unaware of what a minor committee had decided for her. Tsunade had tipped her off that Kakashi was up for retirement any day now, and that Sakura should support him when that time came. Rather than ask her shisou meaningless questions—meaningless in that Tsunade would know little to nothing about the dealings of the retirement committee in regard to Kakashi—Sakura set off to meet with them right away. She was allowed to meet with them in mid-February, and her questions were simple: was she on their short-list for her Genin-sensei, and why?

The answer was readily available, no one pussy-footed around the issue that kunoichi were spread out in Genin cells so that a Jounin might at least know one woman well by the time he was forced to retire and start a family. Sakura was that woman, and it was even better that she had maintained and matured her contact with Kakashi. She had nodded tightly, not speaking so as to not derail the committee head's train of thought.

And then there was the fact that she was a medic, one of the finest in the world. Once they had children, it was explained, the committee might be able to have Kakashi return to the field if he was still battle-ready. If he was not, then Sakura could teach him medical ninjutsu and he could work alongside her in the hospital, providing Konoha with another able medic. Sakura bit her tongue that Kakashi had to be threatened with the harm of his personal belongings (threats against one's person never went far with shinobi, people trained to endure a lifetime of pain) into even going to the hospital. She didn't feel he would be up to spending his days in one. If not for him slipping away on a mission a week beforehand, he would have actually been at the hospital right then, for an eye-exam with an old kunoichi nurse who knew how to treat the Sharingan.

There was also the fact that there was no one else half so suited as her, and Sakura ceded the point—the only other women Kakashi regularly spoke to were Ayame, old man Ichiraku Teuchi's daughter, and Lady Tsunade, neither of them a good match for him. Ayame was a civilian, and might not survive if Kakashi ever had a night terror, and Tsunade…rather than gross herself out, Sakura just decided that Tsunade was still far too in love with Dan, and she was the Hokage for kami sake!

When she finally got home that night, Sakura started packing her belongings. She had little more than three weeks to get everything ready for a move of some sort. She was under no illusions that her introverted teammate would find himself a girlfriend in the next seven months. It had taken her more than seven years to get him to volunteer anything from his past. The underneath of the underneath came to her—the committee members had been trying to tell her that she was the only woman for Kakashi because she was the only one who would have the patience to put up with him.

Whatever he had been expecting when the words came out of his mouth, the jaded little smile was not it. She knew then, he thought, sitting down to behave as Sakura poked and pinched at his shoulder. He was determined to behave, but not before one tiny act of humanity—he permitted himself very few per day, the rest was all acting—gripped him, and he reached both arms around the girl the village had found for him. Sakura's hands rested on him lightly, one still on his injured shoulder and the other in the hair on the top of his head. His face was pressed into her waist, his eyes clamped shut to block out everything, and he hardly dared to breathe because of how close he held her. His ears were free, then, to take in and interpret what some middle-level bureaucrat had planned for him, as she told him what she had found out.

And then he held himself stock still as she explained that if she left his shoulder as it was, no medic would clear him for field operations ever again—it had healed just fine if he were a civilian, but he would never pass a shinobi physical with it now, if she didn't fix it. Would retiring six months early be so bad, if he would be able to see his children grow up? He shook his head and leaned tiredly into her supporting weight, eyes not so tightly closed now that the storm had passed. He knew that the next one was likely already brewing.

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