House of Crows

Chapter Five: The First Doubt

I picture you in the sun,

Wondering what went wrong.

Once upon a time, the Hokage's office used to be a very quiet room, usually only occupied by Tsunade in a drunken stupor, a couple of clerics working silently in an adjoining room, and sometimes Sakura herself completing forms and signing papers that really the hokage should have been doing herself. Disorganisation was worryingly rampant, and on certain days Sakura honestly wondered if she was the one actually running Konoha for all the work she did around that office while Tsunade took prolonged catnaps in her chair. Life was not very hectic at the top – or at least that had been true before the tensions had restarted with the Iwa.

Tonight the office was bursting with activity. Over fifty of the most elite shinobi in the village were now gathered together in that relatively small room, talking and laughing while Sakura squeezed between them, handing out colour coded mission scrolls. All these bodies made the office stiflingly hot, and the odd stream of cigarette smoke blew over her from time to time, making her cough and swallow hard against rising queasiness. And everyone looked so very much alike in their uniforms that figuring out which scrolls to give which shinobi was difficult. Black scrolls to the ANBU, red scrolls to the jonin and specialised jonin, blue for the chunin and white for the medics. She passed a red one to Shiranui Genma who opened it and sighed; and then she passed a white one to Yamanaka Ino who read hers with a look of unadulterated despair.

Sakura thought she was doing quite well until she got to the cluster of 'elites' in the corner, when, as was usually the case when she got within five feet of her superior, her nerves got shot to hell. She did her best to hide it and reached out to casually hand a red scroll to Kakashi, but as he moved to accept it, Sakura released too quickly for fear of his fingers accidentally brushing against hers.

The scroll clattered to the ground.

"I'm so sorry!" She dived to collect it.

"No, it's fine…" Kakashi did the same.

Fingers crossed and scorched. Sakura whipped back upright and moved on to the next jonin, leaving Kakashi to collect his own scroll from the floor. The sooner he was gone from this office the better. She wouldn't be able to relax until then.

"Ladies, gentleman… little quiet please," Tsunade said, her voice breaking over the chatter as Sakura handed the last scroll to the man she'd formerly known as Captain Yamato. "Now this operation is a big one and you all have your own individual missions to complete. Some of you will be working in teams, the others alone, but see this as several parts of the same objective. If you mess up your part, you mess it up for everyone. So listen very carefully and hold your questions till the end. I don't have to remind you that the success of this mission is vital to the survival of this village."

Quiet descended as everyone listened to their Hokage outlining the history and objectives of the plan. Sakura stood at the side of the room, sucking anxiously on the ends of her hair and staring resolutely at the corner of Tsunade's desk. The fine hairs along the back of her neck prickled with awareness, and in her paranoia she felt like Kakashi was looking at her out of the corner of his eye the way she was looking at him, even though she knew in reality his indifference to her was not an act. He was undoubtedly focused entirely on every word from their Hokage… something that Sakura herself was struggling to do.

"…we have confirmed the syndicate is operated at its top by mercenaries. The earth country has paid a lot to enlist their aid against us, and their influence throughout the five nations is absolute. However, the people pulling the strings of this syndicate are unknown to us, and in order to take down an enemy, you first need to know them. This is why the missions you have been given are split equally between deep reconnaissance and disassembling the known lower sects of the organisation. Hopefully this will prove the fastest way to understand who we're up against. Take no risks, cover your trails, and remember at all times what is at stake here if this syndicate prevails. Taking it down is key to defeating Iwa."

It was another excruciating hour before Tsunade finally dismissed everyone. Sakura couldn't stop her eyes from drifting over to Kakashi as he turned to leave, and for a brief moment their eyes met. All the shame and guilt washed over her again, leaving a large lump in her throat that threatened to choke her. Then he was gone, out the door with the rest of the fifty-man contingent.

With only the Hokage to see her, Sakura sagged against the wall, feeling drained.

"You look as miserable as I feel," Tsunade commented to her dryly. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing really," Sakura said half-heartedly, troubled by far too many things to elaborate them effectively. "Just a bad day, that's all."

"Bad days are nothing. Everyone's days are bad now. What you're having is a tragic day." Tsunade's painted lips curved in a slight smile as she leaned over her mission briefing notes. "Trouble at home?"

Sakura stood awkwardly, unsure if she had the energy to formulate some believable white lies or if she should just make some excuse to leave. Her misery must have been more obvious than she realised if even the overworked Hokage had noticed, but at least Tsunade had ascribed it to something else. After all, it was no secret by now that Sakura had bailiffs knocking on her door every week, and that was enough to make anyone stressed and miserable. And while that was one of Sakura's most pressing concerns, it was not the main source of her stress.

"Your mother left you with a lot of debt, Sakura," Tsunade went on. "There's no shame in feeling a little overwhelmed. It's not fair to have to pay for someone else's excesses, especially when you're young and living on a shoestring already, am I right?"

"I don't mind," Sakura said, moving to sit down in a chair beside the Hokage's desk. "It's not like she gambled it away or anything. She just spent more than what was coming in, mostly on me and my education, so I can hardly resent her memory."

"Of course not. But you can still have a commiserative drink." And as she said this, Tsunade miraculously produced three enormous bottles of sake from their hiding place beneath her desk and laid out two cups between them. "At least sake can cheer anyone up in a crisis."

Sakura regarded the cups with dismay. Some weeks ago she had enjoyed a cup of sake with another superior, and just smelling the aroma of the alcohol was enough to remind her of that unpleasant mission. Neither was commiserating with sake a habit that Sakura wanted to pick up anyway after seeing her Hokage float through some of the hardest patches of her job in a boozy haze. It must have been nice, but Sakura feared that if she took to drink to forget her misery, she would be drunk all day every day. Nevertheless, a little drink now would do no harm, although it was more out of politeness than anything else. "Thank you, shishou."

As Tsunade poured the sake into the two cups she sighed. "To be honest, you're not the only one with troubles. This syndicate has me worried."

"Shishou?"

"It's everywhere, Sakura. It was overlooked for so long because until recently it was just a petty crime syndicate; a bit of money laundering here, some dirty intimidation and corporation blackmail there, but that was all. They're undoubtedly here in Konoha, and some recent intelligence indicates that there are spies among us."

Sakura's eyes widened, and she shot a furtive look around the office as if she might see one of them hiding behind the curtains or pretending to mop the floor. They were, of course, alone. Save for the group of chunin working diligently in the adjoining office, and they were probably safe as they'd been there since the creation of the universe.

"How far up?" she asked.

Tsunade gave a malcontent grimace. "Our sources beggar belief in how deeply they claim our ranks have been infiltrated… but half the time these things are rumour or propaganda to make leaders start jumping at their own shadows," Tsunade said wearily, taking a deep mouthful of her drink. "I've even heard that I'm part of this mafia."

Sakura looked down at her own cup and tentatively brought it to her lips, but the moment the bitterness touched her tongue, she had to fight the urge to spit it back out. "Ugh – shishou, I think your stash went bad."

"What are you talking about? It's fine." Tsunade threw her an incredulous look, to let Sakura know she was a cretin. "You have no appreciation for fine wine."

Apparently not; her voluntary aversion seemed to have spread to her taste buds. Sakura set her cup down with a cough. "You're right. It's probably just propaganda," Sakura said. "So there's no need for witch-hunts yet."

Tsunade gave her a suspicious look. "Only a spy would try to deflect a witch-hunt."

A laugh broke free from Sakura's lips before she realised it, and all too suddenly she was acutely aware of how long it had been since she'd laughed, even at a passing joke like this. It must have been so long she'd forgotten how to laugh properly, because Tsunade's eyes narrowed at her as if Sakura had just clucked like a chicken.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Tsunade asked. "You look a little peaked."

"I've not been feeling so well lately," Sakura admitted softly.

"So Kakashi tells me. He says you've been taking a lot of sick leave off team assignments. Really, Sakura, the last thing I need are people going sick during a crucial point in our campaign. But if you're sick, don't overdo it, because the next to last thing I need are people making themselves even more sick out of sheer stubbornness, and you really don't look well." Tsunade's gaze swept her figure with disturbing criticism. "You haven't been quite right since that mission to Jonan if I recall."

Was it that obvious? Sakura rubbed a thumb over an clammy palm and shrugged as if she knew nothing of this. "Haven't I?" she said vaguely.

"I know that was a rather unpleasant mission," Tsunade said quietly. "Kakashi told me what happened."

Sakura jumped. "He did?" she breathed, wide-eyed with horror.

"Strictly off the record, of course," her shishou said, nodding. "No one else has to know you had a run in with Uchiha Sasuke. God knows I can't spare any ANBU to send after him right now, and then there's the paperwork. You can see I have enough of that to contend with! So as far as anyone knows, you didn't see him, ok?"

For a moment Sakura sat stiffly, staring at the fingers clenched tightly in her lap. "Yes," she said at last, finding it a small relief that Kakashi had said nothing else. If he had, Tsunade would already have torn into her…

"I'd be surprised if that was what was still bothering you," Tsunade went on. "It was six weeks ago. But you still look awfully pale."

Sakura shook her head tiredly. "I'm alright, really," she stressed. "It may just be PMS anyway."

"Why would it be PMS?" Tsunade asked flatly. "Aren't you on the injection? Haven't you stopped menstruating yet?"

Sakura shot a nervous glance towards the clerics in the adjoining room. Spies or not, she would prefer not to be overheard. She was never easy discussing female matters, even with other females. This was probably all thanks to having a mother who conducted life as if these things didn't exist, and now the blunt frankness of her shishou sometimes left Sakura flustered. "Um… I came off it some months ago," she whispered. "It was giving me migraines."

"Well, that's a bit inconvenient for a kunoichi, don't you think?" Tsunade asked. "What are you taking instead?"

"Nothing?"

"Nothing?" Tsunade repeated, only louder. "Well, what the hell are you thinking?! Do you know why Konoha loses more female shinobi than male each year? It's because they get pregnant and drop out, and half of them wind up single mothers one way or another, so you can pretty much kiss them goodbye!"

"Well, I…" Sakura struggled to formulate a reply. Was she being accused of irresponsibility here? "But, shishou, I-"

"You have to be careful, Sakura!" Tsunade said. "And you can never be too-"

Sakura couldn't take it anymore. She had to interrupt. "Shishou, you don't have to worry! They said it would be like another year before everything was back to normal, and I'm, like, totally celibate anyway."

Tsunade held off her launch into a fierce safe sex lecture and frowned at her apprentice.

"Well. Not really by choice," Sakura finished bashfully.

"Oh. I see." Tsunade gave her a very sympathetic look, as if Sakura had just admitted to a terrible life-threatening condition. "So you don't…"

Sakura shook her head.

"Have you ever…?"

Sakura shook her head again, although this time with a little more red about her cheeks. It was a blatant lie of course, but she would sooner drop dead than admit out loud to that incident.

"Well, alright then. I'll let you off," Tsunade said, composing herself to pour another cup of strong sake. "If there's one thing that annoys me, it's seeing people display irresponsible behaviour. It's like no one bothers to take care of their own body anymore."

Sakura stared pointedly at her hypocritical shishou.

"What?" Tsunade asked innocently, taking a long sip.

"Nothing, shishou," Sakura said, just as innocently. "May I go now?"

"Of course. Good luck on your mission."

"Thank you, shishou."

In truth Sakura had been too distracted during the meeting to read her own mission scroll. Normally she might go home to study it, but right now she was swayed in the direction of the cafeteria by the grumbling of her own stomach. By and large the food in the cafeteria was considered the worst in all of Konoha, but there was something about their bean buns that Sakura wasn't able to resist. Right now she couldn't get enough of them, and they were perhaps the only thing on the menu that didn't turn Sakura's stomach. After all, just a whiff of the soup-of-the-day was enough to make her want to retch lately. She didn't know if this was due to a nose-dive in the cafeteria's standards, or the stress had left her frailer than usual.

Apparently a lot of the other shinobi who had attended the meeting in the Hokage's office had also had the same idea. When she arrived in the large cafeteria on the ground floor of the tower, it was already filled with the sounds of other people talking and eating. The food may have been bad, but at least it was free, so like everyone else, Sakura took a tray and filled it with as many spicy bean buns as was humanly possible to eat in one go, and went to find the seat.

As she tucked into her warm, tangy bread, she rolled open the mission scroll and began reading.

Great. Another team assignment. She sat back with a sigh and wondered what to do. She didn't mind Naruto and to a lesser extent she could just about tolerate Sai if he made an effort to behave himself. But Kakashi…

Just the thought of him left her with an uncomfortable feeling that settled between her shoulder-blades as if she was being watched. She hadn't been proud of herself for backing out of all those missions. Yet what could she do? Sakura went to pieces whenever he was near… she couldn't handle that.

There was no pretending everything was fine and normal when she couldn't even look him in the eye.

Kakashi's fingers tapped an indecipherable rhythm on his mission scroll as he rolled it lethargically across the table beside him. Almost everyone else in the cafeteria was busy reading their scrolls and chatting over the mission, and while Kakashi should have been doing the same, he found himself staring off into space more often than not. This was because when the crowds parted just right, he caught a glimpse of a pink-haired subordinate sitting at the other end of the hall reading up on her own mission.

This, he thought, was probably about as close as he could safely get to Sakura these days.

Back when they'd returned from that mission, he'd hoped things would remain the same. To her credit she'd tried for a little while, but where before she'd bumped shoulders amicably with him or tweaked his nose through his mask to get his attention, now she shied away from him. In an unguarded moment he'd once tried to ruffle her hair as he often liked to do when she said something cute, only for her to jerk away out of his reach. She'd tried to cover it with a smile as if it was a joke, but there was no hiding an instinctive reaction like that.

Over the days and weeks she'd withdrawn from him little by little until there was no mistaking that there was no recovering from this.

She barely spoke a word to him unless she had to. There would always be some excuse to leave if she found herself alone with him, and whenever a mission was assigned to their team, she seemed to develop a mysterious illness. But since she'd filled in as medic for Neji's team two weeks ago, he was forced to conclude that the only thing she was allergic to was missions involving… himself.

He'd planned to simply sit at his table and moodily watch Sakura from a safe distance as he'd been doing most days recently when she didn't realise he was nearby, but when Shizune sat down beside him suddenly with a tray, his intense solitude was interrupted. "Hatake Kakashi, you need to go to hospital," she said, throwing the onions out of her salad onto his empty plate.

"Am I dying?" he asked.

"No, but-"

"I'm not going if I'm not dying."

"You might be dying, if that's any consolation. But you need a check-up at the hospital to ascertain that though," she explained, nibbling at her sandwich.

"Mm." Kakashi was out of retorts. His mind had wandered off as he watched the oblivious pink-haired girl on the other side of the hall munching on a bean bun while reading through her mission scroll at the same time.

Shizune followed his gaze. When she spotted Sakura, she sighed. "That girl…"

"Huh?" Kakashi turned to her sharply. "What about her?"

Shizune shot Sakura one last disapproving look before concentrating on her sandwich. "Don't get me started on her. I keep telling her, but does she listen? Oh no."

"What?" Kakashi pressed.

"For starters, she's working too hard. One of Tsunade's clerics quit two weeks ago, and Sakura's been picking up the slack because she thinks Tsunade will have to start paying her, and no matter how many times I tell her, she still believes Tsunade will notice and give her a bonus to pay off her debts. The vulture's are circling, Kakashi, she's going to lose her mother's house whether she likes it of not, but she won't admit it. And I'm worried she's gone back to dieting. Just look at her."

Kakashi looked. "She looks alright to me." Shizune probably hadn't just spent the last few minutes watching the girl demolish an entire stack of bean buns.

"Yes, well you're a man," Shizune said dismissively. "She's been turning her nose up at food and I'm worried she's getting thinner. Maybe you could talk to her for me? Get her back on missions and out of the office. She's just making herself ill over these money problems."

Kakashi honestly doubted he could say anything that would be of any comfort to this girl, but he was disturbed to think he hadn't appreciated Sakura might have had other problems going on that he'd known nothing about.

"She's been a bit strange since that mission to Jonan," Shizune noted speculatively. "Is it really true that she had a run-in with Sasuke-kun?"

"Yes, well that would be enough to shake most people's confidence," Kakashi said darkly, with a sharp edge to his tone that made Shizune look side-long at him.

"That bad?" she murmured.

"I was there, remember," he sighed, not taking his eyes off Sakura for a second.

"Must be hard, being attacked by someone you love…"

But that wasn't even close to the reality of the situation. "Do you want the truth?" Kakashi asked her.

Shizune frowned at him. "Truth?"

"He didn't attack her," he said impassively, continuing to roll the scroll beneath his fingers. "She attacked him."

"Meaning?"

After a moment he shrugged his shoulders and came to a resolution. "I'll have a go," he said quietly, and got to his feet to slip between the tables toward where Sakura sat. She hadn't noticed him, absorbed as she was in her mission scroll. But when his shadow fell across her plate, she looked up with bright expectation –

- which dimmed rather sharply when she recognised him.

"Hi!" she greeted perkily, and he might have been fooled if he hadn't witnessed the dullness enter her eyes. Her lips may have been quirked up in a sham of a smile, but her eyes were blank and hostile. He had her cornered and she didn't have any reasonable excuse to leave without being too obvious. She clearly resented this.

"Hey," he said smoothly, taking a seat next to her and noticing how her whole body shifted into a slightly more defensive posture. "How are things?"

"Fine." She now levelled her fake smile at her scroll, and her hand compulsively tucked her short hair behind one ear in a gesture that betrayed her anxiety. "I'm very busy though."

Now what? He could sense she was trying to get rid of him, and he glanced helplessly back at Shizune who was giving a discreet hand-signal under the cover of her sandwich – the Konoha signal for 'mission'.

Good point.

"The mission coming up," he said, nodding to her scroll, "it would be nice if you came along for once. Ino's lovely, but she has commitments to her own team, and it's been more than two weeks since you last did fieldwork. Don't you miss it?"

"I do," Sakura said carefully and with great patience. "But I'm busy. I'm not sure I can do field assignments right now."

"Shizune says you're picking up more office work," Kakashi said. "Is that really befitting of the Hokage's apprentice? Are you even getting paid for it?"

Sakura shot Shizune a venomous glare; one that said woman dodged by pretending to be searching her plate for a lost pickle. "It's not a problem."

Her whole body was angling away from him, and you didn't need six months of an intensive ANBU behavioural course to recognise what her body language was saying. Go away. I don't like you. You have nothing to say that I want to hear.

Kakashi took a slow, deep breath. "Your priorities seem a little muddled right now. I'm not sure I understand why you're passing up well-paid fieldwork to toil for free in an office… unless there's something else that's putting you off missions." As Kakashi finished, he noticed how Sakura's lips had gone a shade paler, and that fake smile had slipped as she flicked at bread crumbs.

"I'm just busy," she said more quietly and with far less conviction than before.

Kakashi looked to the long window running across the wall behind her. Outside was the tower's gardens, and from the grimy black clouds hanging low overhead, it looked as though it was trying hard to rain. "If you hate me," he said slowly, "you have to tell me. We can make other team arrangements for you."

Her jaw locked in a clench, and her glassy eyes remained riveted on her scroll. "I don't hate you," she said with a stiff voice. "Don't be ridiculous. Why would I hate you? I'm just busy, that's all."

He didn't believe her in the slightest. "Ok," he said dully. "I just think you need to know that I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what? I can't think of anything."

"Sakura… I know that Sasuke was important to you, but I had to do it-"

"I was the one who betrayed him," she whispered. "Not you."

He hesitated. "Is that what's still bothering you?" he asked, as he slowly reached out to touch the back of her fingers. "Or is it something else?"

Her hand snapped away before he even got close. She blinked once and suddenly a hot tear was streaking down her cheek. In an instant her pretence was destroyed and she abruptly jumped to her feet, her back angled towards him so he could no longer see her face. "Sorry, but I promised Naruto I'd see him five minutes ago. I better go."

She gathered her scroll up and quickly walked away. Kakashi had to admit Shizune was actually right. Sakura was definitely skinnier than usual, and he'd thought she was too skinny to begin with anyway.

Dismayed by the failed encounter, he slunk back to his former table and slumped pensively into his chair. Shizune could only stare at him in astonishment. "What did you say?" she demanded. "Only you could try to pep talk someone and have them burst into tears."

Kakashi sighed. "Yeah, well, I'm probably the last person she wants to hear from right now."

"I thought you two got along?"

"Not since Sasuke." He pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered just how long it might take him to perfect a time-space jutsu that could send him back to that day in Jonan where he could promptly kill himself before he ever even thought about taking Sakura on that mission. Screw time paradoxes; it was the most realistic solution he could think of right now.

"Oh, cheer up, she'll straighten out eventually. She's a smart girl." Shizune gave him a friendly nudge with her elbow, but Kakashi only grunted. "You have a team mission coming up, don't you? Maybe she'll decide to come along this time?"

Kakashi sighed and shrugged. She may decide to come along on a mission, but he doubted it would be with him.

Sakura had no intention of finding Naruto, but she had no desire to head home either, as 'home' was a place that was nothing more than a cold, empty house where the quiet stretched without anyone else to interrupt it. The brush with Kakashi had shaken her slightly, and the evening was drawing in, so she decided to drift in the direction of Ino's place. Ino wasn't much of a comforting sort of friend, but she was at least guaranteed to take Sakura mind off her current troubles.

The quickest way was through the restaurant and café district, but these days Sakura tried to avoid that avenue as much as possible. She must have been more stressed about the bailiffs than she realised because it had begun to affect her health in small, unpleasant ways. Sometimes she only had to catch a whiff of some sizzling sweet meat on a grille for her stomach to turn in a threatening way until all she could stand to even think about was something plain and inoffensive like bread and water. On her way to work it had become so common for the smells emanating from the dining district to make her gag that she had learnt to take the long way around; a route that took her past the training grounds. They were more or less always upwind from the dining district, so Sakura could make her way to and from work without suffering spasms of nausea.

That was the route Sakura took today as she made her way to Ino's. As she passed the training grounds she paused and linked her fingers through the wire fence to watch the inordinate number of shinobi training beyond it. Out of habit she searched amongst them for a familiar face – or rather, a familiar mask – but he wasn't there, and it was hard to say if she found that fact a disappointment or a relief. His presence terrified her as much as the thought of him exhilarated her. It put her in the most uncomfortable position of longing to see him when they weren't together and desperate to get away from him when they were. She knew it was an absurd and silly way to think and feel, but she could no sooner change her contradictory ways than she could change the orbit of the moon.

"Moocher!" Ino greeted Sakura the moment she opened the door.

"I'll pay you back one day," Sakura promised emptily as she scooted past her friend before she could be turned away. "I just wanted to borrow your shower for a – oh, hey, is that udon?"

"You're not invited!" Ino said firmly, if not a little futilely as Sakura was already in the kitchen, sniffing around the bowl of steaming noodle soup.

"Oh, please, be kind," Sakura begged. "All I have in my fridge is chocolate pudding and its driving me mad, so it's either you or the trash cans outside."

Ino's mouth twisted unhappily. "If it weren't for the smell, I'd think you were joking," she said dryly as Sakura sniffed herself in panic. "Alright. Fine. But why don't you get some proper food for once?"

Sakura shrugged and watched eagerly as Ino fetched another bowl and carefully tipped a quarter of her broth into it. "No money. It just seems to disappear. Between all the bills, and trying to pay off all of Mom's old debts before the sharks come to break my legs… there's not much left."

"You should talk to the hokage about being paid for your apprenticeship," Ino said.

Amidst shovelling noodles into her mouth, Sakura explained. "No way. She sees it as a favour she's doing me, so she'd sooner dismiss me than pay me. And the hospital won't pay a part-time medic as much as a full-time one. And I guess I'm not doing as much fieldwork these days…"

Ino gave her a suspicious look. "Yeah, I've been the one picking up your slack there. How come you're turning down missions now? I thought you liked them."

"I do…" It was just that some days she didn't want to even begin to contemplate dealing with Kakashi, and that was when she opted to stay in the office. As depressing as it was to be stuck by a desk while her teammates traversed the land looking for mischief (or stumbling into it by accident), it was a great deal easier on her nerves than enduring long hours out in the field with her superior. She'd thought she could cope after returning from Jonan, but his perfect indifference to her after all that had happened always made her uneasy and clumsy. "I just get bogged down with other work sometimes." She moved to take a sip of Ino's drink, but the moment the liquid touched her touched she spat it back. "Eurgh! What is that?"

Ino gave her a look that was a mixture of annoyance and surprise. "What? It's just a bit of wine and lemonade. You like wine and lemonade."

"I think your wine's gone sour," Sakura told her, wiping the bitterness from her lips with the back of a hand.

"Yeah, whatever. It tastes fine. But listen to me and stop trying to change the subject – holing up in that office is not healthy. I order you to take the next mission that comes your way," Ino declared. "Weren't you assigned one by Tsunade today?"

"Yeah." The white medic scroll was safely packed in her bag. "Team assignment to track down a crime lord in the wind country."

"Oh, I envy you," Ino said, stroking her plait. "Mine's a long-haul solo to the rain country of all places. Some rich guy is suspected of funding the crime syndicate, so I guess someone has to go infiltrate his household staff and keep an eye on him, and it's listed officially as 'idiot-proof'. Still, six-months is a long time away from home, isn't it? And even then I think that's a bit optimistic."

"Wow…" Sakura said, shocked. "Are you going to eat that radish?"

"You can have it if you swap missions with me."

"Hey, I'm not that hungry."

"You wouldn't think what with the way you just inhaled that udon," Ino said pointedly. "I thought you were on another diet anyway."

Sakura blinked in confusion. "Why?" What had given her that impression.

"You've been skipping lunch at the hospital a lot lately too. I bet you've lost a couple of pounds at least." Ino gave her a scrutinising look that echoed a similar one Sakura had been given only a short while ago. "Are you ok?"

Sakura glared at her. "Oh, don't you start. You're as bad as Tsunade-shishou! I think you're both just trying to embarrass me."

"Oh? What did the big lady say to you now?"

"Same as you. So I forgot to put some make-up on this morning – that doesn't mean I'm on death's door just because I have eye-baggies or whatever. Then she started going on at me about birth control. Can you believe that? She only stopped when I told her I was a virgin, though I'm sure those clerics overheard and had a good laugh about it."

Ino looked at her confusion. "Sorry?"

"I said, I bet those clerics had a good laugh about it."

"No…" Ino frowned at her. "Sakura, who are you trying to kid? You're not a virgin."

"What are you talking about?" Sakura laughed uncertainly. "Of course I am."

"Sakura, who do you think you're talking to? I can tell a virginal bud from a plucked blossom any day of the week, and you my friend, are the latter. And only just recently, I'll bet."

Sakura stared at the other girl, agog. "How… how is that even remotely possible?"

"I don't know, it's just pure instinct. Maybe something about the way you walk, or stand, or sit with your legs tightly crossed as if you regret ever spreading them for some reason?"

"Oh god…" Sakura pressed her hot face into her hands, utterly appalled. If Ino could tell that much, she could probably tell who had 'plucked' her just from sniffing her hair or something. "Is it that obvious?"

Ino's hands slammed onto the table with her eyes wide and her mouth curved into an outrageous grin. "Oh my god, Sakura! I was totally messing with you – I can't believe you fell for it! And I can't believe you really have done it! Argh! I'm so proud of you!"

Sakura's hands clapped over her mouth with a gasp, which, in retrospect, was a tad incriminating. It took her several seconds before she regained her composure. "Yeah, I know. I was playing along."

"Ok, I may not be able to tell a virgin from a non-virgin, but I can at least tell that when your voice goes up, you're lying," Ino snorted. "Now tell me everything. Everything."

There was only so much you could keep from a friend like Ino. She had a nose for drama the way a shark had a nose for blood, and both could detect it within a three mile radius of wherever they happened to be. Sakura switched on a vague, bored look, hoping to fool her friend. Sometimes if you pretended there was no drama to be had, you could convince the shark to swim away.

Trouble was, Sakura wasn't that good an actor.

"What's to tell?" Sakura said with a shrug. "Nothing, that's what."

Ino's eyes bore unblinkingly into hers. It was terribly unnerving, and Sakura felt increasingly uncomfortable until one shifty sideways glance had Ino raising her chin in victory. "You did sleep with someone, didn't you?"

Sakura said contritely, "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Who was it?"

"I don't really want to talk about it," she reiterated loudly.

"It must have been really bad then," Ino baited. "I bet he didn't even take his socks off."

He hadn't even taken his shoes off, but that was beside the point. Sakura sighed and drooped on the table. "I'm really not in the mood to talk about it Ino. It was a long time ago, so let's just…" Sakura trailed off as something Ino had said before gnawed at her synapses. Something wasn't right here. It had been a while ago; several weeks in fact. The mission with Kakashi had been in mid-July, and now it was almost September… so-

Her thought was interrupted when Ino snapped her fingers before her nose. "Way to zone out, Moocher," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Didn't you hear what I said?"

"No," Sakura said honestly.

"I said when are you going to pay me back for all these free meals you keep cadging?"

"Soon," Sakura said, less honestly. "Hey, can I borrow your shower?"

"What's wrong with yours?"

"Heater's broken."

Ino tutted but shrugged nonetheless. "Knock yourself out." Although that could have been genuine advice rather than a figure of speech.

Ino's bathroom was much like her own, in that it was more of a traditional wet room than anything else. Sakura slid off her clothes and dropped them in a pile outside the door before turning on the water heater with the practised ease of a girl who had been mooching this utility off her friend for some weeks now. But as she was reaching for the shower gel to begin lathering up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the far wall and paused with a critical frown.

An uneasiness that she'd been suppressing since Jonan once again clawed its way to the forefront of her thoughts, and unconsciously she passed a hand over her abdomen, trying to reassure herself that everything was exactly as it should be. Perhaps there was a little bit of swelling, but as a medic she knew that this was water retention and nothing more.

It could all be explained naturally by the fact that her period was due, of course. And it had to be due soon, because she'd only just realised that her last cycle had ended almost a week before the mission with Kakashi… and that had been almost seven weeks ago. She hadn't been keeping track after coming off the Injection since she'd been warned that her periods would restart slowly and irregularly, and that it could be another year before she returned to normal fertility, but she'd thought they'd finally been settling down to a more or less monthly cycle. To suddenly return to skipping periods perhaps wasn't that unusual, considering the circumstances…

But as Sakura began meticulously washing her arms, a new seedling of worry had sprouted in her mind, and it refused to go away.

Next Chapter: Ultimatum