Chapter 2: Promotion

This is another short chapter, but it goes hand-in-hand with chapter 1. Future chapters will be longer (about the typical length of "Coffee's" chapters.)

Koharu and Homura looked like they had eaten something rather foul during the rest of the meeting, but that aside, Sakura's nomination to Medical Director carried on without much drama. Secretly, Kakashi presumed the council was pleased that Tsunade was stepping down; for all her gifts, the medic could be a difficult woman to both persuade and reason with on multiple fronts. There was also quite a lot of bad blood between Koharu, Homaru, and Tsunade, as can happen when one calls the others a rude (but befitting) label such as "cowards."

He anticipated the council may try to use Sakura's age and inexperience as a means to manipulate her at some point, but Kakashi was already safeguarding against that possibility. While he couldn't protect Sakura from what would be the most stressful and trying aspects of her new role, his personal principles remained the same no matter his station: No one was going to fuck with his teammates.

The two months prior to the transfer of power moved quickly, a flurry of paperwork and signatures and announcements that bored Kakashi with their monotony, much like most of what he did those days. He observed as Sakura settled into her new role quickly, overworked and ambitious, and when the first month was over, he asked Yamanaka Ino to give him briefings once a week on any important projects in the medical division. He told himself it wasn't spying because his job was to know the comings and goings of the village, and he knew it wasn't an additional burden on Ino since she regularly went to the meetings and reported to him on T&I matters once a week anyway. He did, despite those rationales, insist that Ino not tell Sakura he was checking in on her; he knew she could be wildly insecure at times (a fault of his making) and didn't want her to assume he felt she needed supervision.

He was unsurprised when there was an uptick in requests for impromptu meetings with him from his ANBU squad. Since becoming Hokage, Kakashi had endured a number of both subtle and not-so-subtle asks from other shinobi, both male and female, about his former student's availability status. With Sakura's promotion, she became the primary healer for his ANBU squads, and more exposure meant more inquiries for him. Unfortunately for them, Kakashi's answer hadn't ever changed: Sakura was unmarried, but as far as he knew, she had an attachment.

For as long as he had known his team, there seemed to be three absolutes: Naruto wanted to be acknowledged by everyone and become Hokage; Sasuke wanted to avenge his family and rebuild his clan; and Sakura wanted Sasuke to return her love and become stronger. Despite more mistakes and mis-steps than he could count, Kakashi had been very deliberate in his early decisions as the Sixth to help his former students toward some of their aims: He secured an extended term for himself to give Naruto ample time to earn his jounin rank, gain some maturity and enjoy his youth before he would replace Kakashi as the Seventh Hokage; he successfully made the case for Sasuke's safe release and reinstatement as a member of Konoha; and he made sure to bring Sakura along to see Sasuke off when he departed for his self-imposed redemption quest in hopes that the Uchiha would allow Sakura to join him. While Sasuke didn't take her up on the offer, he had left her with the promise of...something, that at the time had satisfied all parties.

And then nothing happened. Sasuke continued to travel, intent on protecting Konoha from beyond its gates while Sakura protected its citizens from within. Both seemed perfectly content with their roles, and no one but Kakashi seemed perplexed by the turn of events. He watched Naruto wed Hinata Hyuuga and father two adorable children, which started a wave of attachments and children among that generation of shinobi to secure Konoha's growth for decades to come. And still, Sasuke remained abroad, Sakura remained what seemed to be blissfully unmarried, and the Uchiha compound remained empty.

Kakashi was a patient man and didn't truly have a horse in the race, but he couldn't help wondering: What the hell was Sasuke waiting for?