Note: Do I know how child services works in the real world? No
And considering that Konoha is technically a military dictatorship in a ninja world with chakra, child soldiers, and massive wars, should I care?
"I think you should reconsider this option, sir." Her aura was downright scary, though her face remained calm and collected as she stared the man down. He gulped, shuffling in his seat.
"Well, ma'am, no disrespect-" he flinched as her eye twitched, "but we can't simply allow for you to take over care of her when her living space seems to be adequate."
Mikoto frowned. "Have you and your people been over there recently?"
The man nodded. "Yes. And Kizashi is also a close partner to us here and the kind of things you are accusing him of don't seem to fit. He is a nice, and caring man."
"One who just lost his wife."
His eyes widened. "Mebuki died?" He shuffled through paperwork on his desk. "Nothing we have here says Mebuki died. Kizashi said she was out shopping."
"She wasn't."
"I'll have to confirm what you just said, but even then, grief is no reason to remove a child from the care of their parent, so unless you have another-"
"Please." Mikoto leaned forward, face masked with a pleading expression. "Please just let me take her home." The man went to refuse her, but he caught her sad eyes- and the cash-filled envelope she slid onto the desk- and couldn't refuse her.
"Alright. I'll talk to my superiors about the change."
"No. I absolutely refuse."
"Auntie, please?"
"Shisui, why in the world do you need to stay here. You have a perfectly good home to stay at, with a perfectly good bedroom."
"But Auntie-" He pouted. "What will my cute little cousin and pinkie do without me?"
"They'll be fine." He gripped his bag tighter as she stared at him. He opened his mouth to protest again but soft crying came from the other room. "Fine. Share Itachi's room until the storage room gets cleared out."
He nodded and slipped inside, and sighed as she turned towards Sasuke's room. He had stopped crying, no doubt because of her Itachi's presence, but she knew, that unless Itachi got him to sleep, he would just start up again after he left.
"Shisui?" She muffled a yawn. "Why're you here?"
He stepped around the stack of papers by the door and stepped inside, sitting on top of a stack of books beside her.
"I bribed Auntie to let me stay."
"Huh? Oh. Cool." She said, staring at the scroll in her hands with what looked like deep concentration.
"Are you even listening?" She nodded before yawning again "When was the last time you slept."
"Yeah." She said half-heartedly, moving the scroll slightly.
"Sakura." Shishi took the scroll. "When did you sleep last."
He stared at her, waiting for a response, but she only blinked and shook her head as it dipped to the side. She reached out for the scroll in his hand but he swatted it away.
"Nope!" He said with false cheer. "You need to sleep and I'm going to make sure you do."
She groaned, the movement quickly turning into a yawn, but didn't argue further.
Over the next few weeks, she lined her shelves with scrolls of information and her walls with different connections that things had to each other. She was slowly but surely piecing together the madness that was the hidden leaf village, though anything that happened in the future was hidden by a notice-me-not seal keyed into her, Shisui's, and now, Genma's chakra.
Mikoto had been a great help, Sakura suspected, in piecing together the Uchiha related affairs that Sakura had mapped out. She was the only member of the main household that walked into her room unannounced, but she was trusted well enough that Sakura didn't mind. Whenever she was stuck on an issue now, one not related to time travel, she asked Mikoto for her advice. Occasionally, it would fall through and Sakura would need to pick up new pieces, but for the most part, Mikoto was a solid informant.
She learned, by standing around Mikoto often enough, that she was training again, despite her position as wife of the clan head, and that many of the clan elders refused to speak with her. The few exceptions, of course, were the ones everyone considered insane, and the ones that Shisui bothered on a daily.
She also learned several of Mikoto's best and most secret family recipes.
"I can't possibly-"
"Sakura, don't be silly. You have as much rights to these recipes as anyone else in the clan."
"I'm only an honorary clan member. You said so yourself. If anything, I'm part of Shisui's family."
It is true that Shisui spoke up for her, vouched for her, gave her an invitation to his family as a cousin not of blood, but that didn't make her family. Not in the sense that truly mattered.
"Sakura." Mikoto stared at her, placing the stack of recipe cards in her hands. "I do not have a daughter to pass these on to. Take. The. Recipes."
Sakura took the recipes."
Her teachers sighed at her when she returned to school, not because she had been gone so long, because her grades did not slip once when she was away, but because she paid even less attention in class than before. When it came to sparing, she took more hits than she gave, so they knew she wasn't a clone, that she actually attended the lessons, but her lack of participation was an issue.
"We know she's smart. She could graduate early if she wanted to. She just isn't applying herself." Her teachers tell Shisui when he goes to pick her up one day.
"I'll try to talk to her about it." They nodded at him and walked away.
'Tomorrow.' He thought. 'I'll ask tomorrow.'
Sakura needed a real fight. Not a spar with academy kids who were around 6 and didn't know how to fight. She needed the adrenaline that came with danger, that came with the fear of fighting a tough battle. Normally, she'd ask Shisui, but he was out of the village on a mission. He told them during dinner the other day. So now, she was marching her way to Genma's apartment, hoping that he was home.
She knocked on his door twice. He didn't respond. She walked inside.
"S-Sakura!"
"I can come back later. You seem a bit tied up."
"Wait no-" Sakura walked back outside and shut the door, sinking to the floor with the pure essence of 'What The Fuck.'
Genma was tied up in shinobi wire to a chair. In the middle of his living room. His shirt and pants suspiciously missing from his person. She steeled herself and opened the door again.
His eyes sang relief as she came back into view.
"Who did you piss off?"
"Not so much piss off as accidentally get pranked by."
"Pranked?" Thoughts of Naruto passed over her mind's eye. His bright smile and careless laugh from when he was a genin.
"Iruka. That kid is such a troublemaker I swear. God knows what kind of shinobi he's turn out to be."
"A sensei. At the academy. Iruka was." Her voice trailed off, memories of her teacher's limp corpse were fresh in her mind. She started again. "Iruka was my academy sensei, the first time around."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
They stayed in silence for a few moments before Genma grumbled. "Can you get me out?" She nodded and undid his restraints. Immediately after, he ran to his room and threw on some clothes.
"What did you need me for anyways?"
"A fight." At his raised eyebrow, she continued. "Shisui is on a mission and I need a fight and you're the only other person I can think of who would spar with me without questioning why a six year-old was on par with an adult of the village."
"Ah." He turned towards his room again.
'Is that a no,' she thought before Genma looked back at her.
"Training ground?"
"One of the ones in the Uchiha forest.
Note: Yoooo, how's everyone handling their Coronacation? (Yes I understand that people are genuinely hurt because of it but I use humor to cope with my crumbling reality so-) I've been drowning in school work. When your school is already mostly online, (we still did work on campus, in classes, but everything was online) nothing changes except the time you wake up I guess.
I won't apologize for how late this chapter is.
I'll tell you I've been writing a different Sakura fic and she gets a SWORD in that one. (also has kiri so bonus points for that) and that I don't know when it will be done but its currently 12,177 words long as of this moment and I'm barely where I want to be, which is whatever, so when that rolls out I'll make an announcement in the notes on this fic somewhere.
Something fun? My birthday is on Wednesday, April First.
