Monday morning found Sasuke in the conference room of the unfamiliar Jounin headquarters. It was his first day as a Jounin—and it went hand in hand with his first official meeting.
It had been nearly a year since he turned against Madara and returned to Konoha. He spent five months under probation, and once the Hokage dismissed him as a threat to the village, he was able to work his way up in ranks once again. It had been a ridiculously easy process—he was already ANBU level and everybody knew that.
He found it quite strange that his obnoxious blond teammate was not beside him at the moment, though. He had made Jounin before him—apparently right before he returned—and now claimed he wanted to try for ANBU; the Uchiha was pretty sure he wouldn't miss such an opportunity to rub that into his face without having a very good reason.
Acting almost on their own accord, his eyes began to scan the room for familiar faces, and almost immediately caught sight of a pink head in a seat in front of him.
His mouth twisted in a frown.
He had known Sakura would be there, but nothing truly prepared him for the actual situation. There was just something about this once-weak girl being comfortable in an environment of killers, something about her having gotten there before him that didn't quite sit right with him.
He had never enjoyed killing. He had avoided taking lives at all costs—unless it was those of his worst enemies. What happened with Itachi only served to make him even more cautious. Because death was irreversible—and he could not afford to make the same mistake twice. Call him paranoid, but one could never really know when the next piece of truth would be revealed, what possible undersides there were left for them to learn.
He believed his big brother would be proud of him now, though. He had grown strong. He had made Jounin. And he would soon be fighting for the village he had died to protect. It might not be the path he was most comfortable with—psychologically speaking—but he would adapt.
"Now, as our most intelligent team has so eloquently put it," the Hokage's annoyed voice filtered through his thoughts, catching his attention, "these missing-nins are acting stupid." She glared at someone behind him. "And they need to be stopped."
A strained cough shattered the silence of the room, and all eyes zeroed in on his ex-teammate. She had a hand over her mouth and was facing away from the front of the room, as if trying to inconspicuously hide her face from her mentor. Sasuke raised an eyebrow as he realized why exactly that was.
Tsunade seemed to have figured it out just as quickly. "Be careful, Sakura," she warned, sarcasm dripping from her voice, "I think you might be having a seizure."
Then she started laughing, and the tense atmosphere that had previously blanketed the room seemed to dissolve in an instant as others joined in with smiles and chuckles. There had to be an inside joke somewhere in there, he realized. But even though he hated being left out of the loop, he couldn't really bring himself to care—not this time.
She might not be the strongest combatant. She might barely be able to hold her own against a ninja of his caliber. She might be a Jounin only thanks to her medical skills. But there was something about being able to make an entire room of grown shinobi—dangerous, calloused people who had seen it all—laugh that seemed to him a source of a bigger power than he could never even dream about having.
And as he turned his head away to hide his smirk, Sasuke realized that this environment of killers was probably not as bad as he had thought.
At least she was there to light it up.