When Tsunade finally passed away, everybody had been upset. A week after she was buried, the elders had called a council with all of the jounin and ANBU of the village. They needed a new Hokage. The obvious choice was Naruto, with the way he'd been going on all his life that he wanted to be Hokage. He was old enough now, he had become strong, and he wanted to do the very best for his village. He was, however, discarded for the position based on a lesson learned from Tsunade. She was more likely to drink sake than do the paperwork that came with being Hokage, with Naruto, he'd more likely go for ramen, but he would not be happy actually being inside the village all the time, stuck behind a desk and going through papers all day. Until he calmed down, he simply wasn't suitable, nor suited, to the disciplined life of the Hokage. Naruto pouted, but understood.
Kakashi's name was put forward – he had taught Naruto after all, and if the only criteria for Hokage was "strongest Konoha nin" then he could certainly slip into that category. Of course, his tardiness might become an issue, as well as his habit to read Jiraya's books rather than whatever he was supposed to be doing. That his handwriting was nearly illegible was another contributing factor. He also turned the offer down flat the instant he'd returned from getting himself a coffee, and any man that didn't want the job as much as Kakashi didn't want the job clearly wasn't suited for it.
Other names were thrown out for consideration at random. Gai? Too enthusiastic and weepy. Ibiki? Had quite enough on his plate with his current work load. Hyuuga Neiji? A branch member of the Hyuuga clan – they wouldn't let him become the Hokage. Inuzuka Kiba? Too active to be confined to a desk, particularly with Akamaru always with him, and they didn't really want the Hokage tower to smell of dog all the time. Aburame Shino? As heir to his clan, he had other priorities. Nara Shikamaru? Too inherently lazy, and he had interests in Sand. Silence fell as the collected ninja felt as though they had run out of ideas.
"What about Haruno Sakura?" Kakashi suggested, breaking the silence like a sledgehammer to a sheet of glass, only to hear little more than crickets chirping beyond.
"The Hokage is supposed to be one of the strongest ninja in the village, Hatake," reprimanded one of the elders. "Haruno Sakura -"
"Is." Kakashi cut off, a fierce tone in his voice, the kind that brokered no argument unless you wanted to start losing body parts.
"- the weakest in your team," argued back the same elder.
"No, she isn't. I can still beat her half the time, but it's hard as hell and I need to use my Sharingan if I'm going to have a serious chance at it. She regularly beats Naruto, Sai, and Yamato. I help her set up spars against different shinobi at random intervals throughout the week, because she's tied to the hospital and can't get out, but still wants to keep herself sharp. She's getting so sharp these days I think the next person to approach her will get cut just touching her," Kakashi said, a dangerous fire burning in his single dark eye.
The elders considered this, all of them frowning. They hadn't liked their first female Hokage much, particularly compared to the Third, and they weren't keen on having a second so quickly. The rest of the gathered shinobi however, were considering the pink-haired kunoichi more evenly.
"I remember you set up a spar for her with me once Hatake," one of the ANBU said. He chuckled. "Man, was I embarrassed to get my ass handed to me on a silver platter by a teenage girl with pink hair. She picked me up for a second round and asked me to take her seriously. I still ended up with my face in the mud, but at least the spar lasted longer than ten seconds."
Kakashi smiled beneath his mask. He remembered that one too. He watched all of the spars he'd set up for Sakura. It helped him think about who he should ask next to challenge a different aspect of her technique.
"She has a sharp mind, and a cast-iron stomach too," Ibiki put in. "She's helped me out with interrogations a few times. Got a will and resoluteness to her that is hard to come by."
"Really Ibiki, when was it suitable for a mere chuunin -" an elder started to ask.
"Sakura hasn't been chuunin for some time, elder. She's been jounin for several years, and an ANBU level medic for almost as long. She's never been interested in becoming ANBU, but she's the best medic Konoha has. She's got the clearance," Ibiki answered the question before it could be finished. He liked Sakura, and he wasn't ashamed to back her for this position. She knew more about how Konoha was run and who all the shinobi in it were than the elders did, of that he was certain. Not that he could tell them that and still keep his position.
Ibiki caught Kakashi's eye, and nodded appreciatively, thanking him for his suggestion of Sakura as Hokage. He wouldn't have thought of it himself.
"If Haruno Sakura is a jounin, then why is she not present?" demanded another elder.
"She's probably busy in the emergency room right now," Shizune answered, closing the door behind her as she returned from fetching herself a coffee. "She'll get here when her shift at the hospital is over, or if the meeting doesn't last that long, she'll wait for the transcript in the mail."
Kakashi checked the watch Naruto had given him for his last birthday. He got a new one every year, which was just as well, as that seemed to be the extent of their battery life.
"Her shift ended half an hour ago," he said.
"Then it's a surgery," Shizune said. "She's wonderful to watch in surgery. She's never lost anyone on her table, and I honestly have no idea how she does it, considering the state of most of her patients." The purple-haired woman added a raised eyebrow and let her gaze permeate the room. A lot of the shinobi in the room shifted in their seats, aware that the assistant to the previous Hokage disapproved of the risk-taking that got them so damaged.
"It's a jutsu," Shikamaru said, speaking up for the first time since his name had been suggested for Hokage. "I asked her to describe it to me once. She didn't want to, said that once I knew I would wish that I didn't, so I didn't press the matter. When Sakura says I'm better off not knowing, then I'd rather not know."
Ibiki, Shizune and Kakashi all nodded. They all knew that the secrets of the medic nin were the kind that even seasoned, hardened shinobi were made nervous by.
"Sorry I'm late," a voice called from the door. Sakura.
All of the room's occupants looked up to see the girl they were discussing – and in the case of the elders, disapproving of – enter, a large splash of blood on the front of her medic uniform and a few splashes on her upper arms and neck.
"You're a mess Sakura," Kakashi observed, moving over to let her sit beside him.
"Well, pulling fifteen shuriken from a man's back, removing almost a kilo of shrapnel from his rather destroyed looking intestines, and then making sure he'll actually survive after all of that isn't exactly an activity that you can really stay clean through. I washed my hands and face before coming, but I don't generally keep a spare change of clothes at the hospital," she answered, her tone peeved at her old team leader and best friend, as she joined him, only noticing that everybody was staring at her once she had seated herself.
"What? I know I'm very bloody and a bit late, but I didn't think I was so fascinating as to disrupt the meeting so much, or has a new Hokage been decided and I walked in as you were all finishing up?" she asked.
One of the elders coughed. "Miss Haruno, you have been nominated for Hokage, and an uncomfortably good argument has been made by various members of this meeting in support of the suggestion. What do you have to say to this?"
"I get the funny feeling I'm not your first choice, actually," Sakura said, raising an eyebrow. "I know that Naruto wants to be Hokage,and that he has – and will continue to – work very hard to achieve the position." she said, glancing at him, only to get a shrug in return. "So I want to know why the nice long line of men in front of me aren't getting the job, but I am."
"You accept then?" the same elder asked.
"It's because Naruto would grouch all day about being stuck in an office with mission reports if he actually got the job," Kakashi added quietly to Sakura. "And everybody had enough of the Hokage dodging the paperwork with Tsunade."
"Ah, and you turned it down too, didn't you Kakashi?" Sakura said, almost sweetly. For a moment she pursed her lips in thought, arms crossed over her chest and drumming the fingers of one hand on the upper arm of the other, spreading the blood around again.
"I'd just as soon not be the Hokage," she said at last. "But I know how to do the job already from helping Tsunade-shishou, and if I take it then we won't have to suffer the loss of an active field nin." Sakura raised a hand to her forehead and sighed, rubbing at her temples as though trying to alleviate a headache, the slight green glow of chakra at her fingertips indicating that she probably was.
"This council recognises that you, Haruno Sakura, are the most suitable candidate for the position of Hokage. Do you accept?" demanded the oldest of the elders, slamming the butt of his cane onto the floor, emphasising his words.
"Yes, I accept. Just don't go and put my face up on the cliff. At least, not before I'm dead," she said, withdrawing her slightly glowing fingertips from her forehead. "Please."
"You nominated me, didn't you Kakashi?" Sakura hissed as they stepped onto the street.
"Yep," he said happily. "Had a bit of fun proving to the elders that you were strong enough as a shinobi to fill the position, but they were clearly convinced."
"You, me, training field one, right now," the cherry blossom growled, her fist already around Kakashi's collar so that he couldn't run or poof away.
"You're that unhappy about it?" he asked nervously as he was towed by his only female student through the streets to the training field she had specified.
"I barely have enough time to myself as it is without adding all of the Hokage duties to my time table. I am constantly on call at the hospital when I'm not on shift. I am chief of ANBU health maintenance and prisoner treatments. I am teaching academy students about healing jutsu every Monday. On top of all of this and now Hokage paperwork, I am dragged out by Ino, every Friday that I have free, to some club or pub so that I can watch her pick up some random stranger for the night, am forced to share ramen with Naruto every Tuesday lunch time, and I have to somehow have enough stamina at the end of every day to make myself a healthy evening meal before I keel over!" Sakura yelled, as she dragged Kakashi through the market and up the hill, throwing him over-arm the last fifteen yards into training ground one.
"I'm going to get my butt whooped, aren't I?" he asked, twisting just in time to land on his feet rather than his head.
Sakura rolled up her sleeves and pulled her fighting gloves out of her pocket as she stalked up to where he was still crouched from his land.
"What if I offered to make you dinner every night?" he suggested, latching onto the only thing on Sakura's list of things that he could actually do anything about.
She was still coming.
"And I'll wash the dishes afterwards," he kept going, backing up away from the still angry kunoichi.
She pulled back one fist, slowly.
"And I'll clean your whole house once a week, and give you massages after you've had dinner," he pleaded, still backing away.
Sakura's fist came down, hitting the ground in front of her before Kakashi had even registered that she had bent. He swallowed hard when he realised that meant that her speed had improved again, and his single black eye dilated in terror as the wall of earth reared up over him like a tidal wave.
He tried to turn and run from it, but his feet couldn't move. He brought his hands up to form a substitution or transportation jutsu, but his chakra wasn't flowing the way it usually did – he realised she must have done something while she was dragging him here, and he hadn't noticed because he had been too busy staring at her face while she yelled at him.
The wave of earth crashed over and behind him, burying him up to his neck when it all settled.
"No Kakashi, you will not be required to do any of those things, enticing as the offer is," Sakura said, walking up to him and squatting down so that she could look him in the eye. "What you will be required to do, is start being on time for things. You will get to your annual physical every year, no dodging. You will hand in mission reports promptly and legibly. You will have your Sharingan examined by an ocular specialist every month like you are supposed to. You will stop drinking your liver into an early grave, and you will not say anything that you know will make me deeply unhappy with you just because you enjoy seeing me get riled up – or I will retire you from active duty and personally light all of you Icha Icha collection on fire come your next birthday. Am I making myself perfectly clear?"
Kakashi gulped and nodded meekly.
"Do you have any questions?" she asked.
"Well, yesterday I was looking for you because I wanted to ask you something, but I couldn't find you, and then today... well..." Kakashi fumbled with his words, which was unlike him.
Sakura sighed, planting her hands on her hips in frustration.
"I was wondering if you would do me the honour of a date on Sunday, Haruno Sakura, and maybe one day let me ask you to marry me," Kakashi said. "I promise to be good, behave myself and be on time, and everything."
Sakura's stern and frustrated expression melted into a smile. "I'd really like that," as she jutsu'd him out of the earth that had him trapped, she added firmly "but don't think I'll let you get away with stuff just because of that Kakashi."