Mission Impossible
Chapter 1: Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures
Sasuke made himself comfortable on the sofa in Sakura's office. He kept a careful eye on the kunoichi as she did her paperwork and answered questions from the nurses that came in every now and again. If he knew his teammate, she would undoubtedly be falling into her default coping mechanism that usually had him, Naruto, Kakashi, and sometimes Sai, shaking their heads: overworking herself to the point of passing out. Sometimes it got so bad that none of them would see her for days, only getting notified of her situation when either Ino or Shizune called to get one, if not all, of them to drag her out of her office.
For a world-renowned medic-nin, she sure is shit at taking care of herself.
He inwardly cursed his mother, but immediately felt guilty because honestly, it's his mother! So he settled with cursing his clan elders instead.
After Itachi had made it clear that he was showing interest in Izumi, which despite being an Uchiha, was still an "outsider" by the elders' standards, they had started looking onto him. Of course, his mother being who she is didn't have any qualms telling them to shove it up their asses. Thankfully, some of the elders were able to see just a sliver of reason and proposed that if Sasuke were to have someone he was interested in then they would try to convince the rest to let him be.
Now the main issue was that Sasuke didn't have anyone he was interested in. The only girl he ever came close to seeking out was the pink-haired medic in the room – and even this, whatever this is, isn't what he'd call "interested"!
In comes this mission.
He had to restrain himself from running his hand down his face because that was sure to catch Sakura's attention, and he'd much rather his parents explain the situation to her. It would certainly be less humiliating on his part.
It's been almost five months since his mother told him the news, and now even Itachi and his dad were sending him expectant looks. In all honesty, he probably wouldn't mind having an arranged marriage all that much if they gave him enough time to get used to the thought, but eighteen was far too young to get engaged, and Uchiha engagements typically last year or two before getting married.
Ye – no. He likes the freedom he has right now thank you very much. Not to mention that the prospect of having someone he didn't know get all up in his personal space annoyed him to no end.
What if they don't understand the concept of personal space? Or even personal time?
This time he did run a hand down his face, Sakura's curiosity be damned. Clan politics were one of the main reasons he was grateful he wasn't taking over for his father.
"I'd ask you what's wrong," Sakura's voice pulled him out of his reverie. "But you have your inner monologue face on, so I'm not even gonna bother."
He looked at her only to find her shuffling through her paperwork again, not even bothering to look up at him.
See? Sakura, he could deal with. She'd been around him long enough to know his tendencies and to know how he liked things and what he preferred. She may have been an annoying fangirl once upon a time, but at least she had the sense to grow out of it. Some of the women in their clan, although far less deranged and at least relatively watered down, were fangirls. The thought of it sometimes sent a shiver down his spine.
"Sasuke, I know you like to brood every now and again, but you're bumming out my office," Sakura said. He could hear the tease in her tone. "Hospitals are dreary enough as it is."
"Aah."
She and the rest of his team knew him well enough to actually decipher his single-worded grunts, and although he would make exceptions for them, replying with actual words, and sometimes full sentences if he was feeling talkative, but he didn't want it to get to their heads, especially not for a certain loud-mouthed knuckleheaded blond he had the unfortunate pleasure of being best friends with.
"Is that your way of telling me to get out of your office?" he asked.
He wondered if anyone actually knew him well enough to hear the intended banter, but perhaps he wasn't as monotonous as he always thought because the edges of her lips quirked up ever so slightly. If he wasn't looking at her right at that moment, he would have missed it.
"It's my way of telling you to go find Naruto so he can balance out your perpetual negativity with his bolstering, albeit sometimes annoying, positivity," she replied. He could hear the smile in her voice.
"Does that mean Kakashi should be here instead of me?"
This time, Sakura did look at him. One-eyebrow-raised, what-are-you-talking-about kind of look.
"What do you mean?"
Sasuke sighed as he leaned back into the sofa. It was one of the more comfortable pieces of furniture in the hospital, he could distinctly remember Naruto complaining how it wasn't fair that the rest of the chairs felt like cement while the doctor got the comfy ones.
"His perpetual laziness would probably be a good partner for your workaholic ass." He didn't bother hiding his smirk when her pen stopped moving.
"Sasuke I'm giving you ten seconds to get out of my office before I throw this table damn table at your face!"
"Mikoto-kaa-chan can we have ramen tonight?" Naruto asked from his place on the Uchiha's sofa.
"Didn't you just have that for lunch?" Itachi asked from the chair beside him. "You're worse than Sasuke with his tomatoes."
Naruto indignantly sat up. "Hey, at least ramen actually tastes good!"
"Yare, yare, Naruto," Kakashi drawled, lifting his eyes from his ever-present orange book. "If you don't keep your voice down, Fugaku-san is going to want to talk to you again. Do you want that?"
Itachi wanted to laugh at how the blond paled. His father, although a constant presence in their household, was fairly more of a background character during his brother's team's visits. But one time during a particularly loud fight between Sasuke and Naruto, he had come out of his home office and ordered the two inside. Shisui hadn't let either of the two live it down for weeks.
"Ita-chan is right, Naruto," Uchiha Mikoto said, coming into the living room from the kitchen. "The amount of ramen you eat is getting unhealthy. I'm surprised Sakura-chan hasn't talked to you about it."
"She has," Kakashi informed the Uchiha matriarch. "He just doesn't listen."
The jonin went back to his book, although not completely reading it. Mikoto had long since stopped nagging him about his choice of literature and simply opted to give him the stink eye whenever he read it in the presence of children. And since Sasuke and his team were no longer defined as children, the retired kunoichi had let him be.
There were really very little places to hang out in Konoha, so if they weren't all huddled in one of their apartments or in Sakura's office, Team Seven could usually be found in the Uchiha manor. Mikoto liked having them around, mainly to give a little life to the house. Itachi and Shisui were recently given a mandatory vacation from ANBU because, in the Hokage's words, overworking the "brats" isn't good for their eyes because of their Sharingan, so at least she had people around the house more often. But Itachi was still a young man and he was spending more and more time with Izumi, and because they were always a package deal, that meant Shisui was with them most of the time.
So Mikoto was more than happy to welcome her youngest son's team to her household whenever they came over. This time however, she knew they actually had a reason to come. Judging from the constant giddy state of her late best friend's son, they had received their mission from the Hokage. What surprised her was the fact that neither of the two brought it up.
"Ita-chan, will Izumi-chan be joining us tonight?" she turned to her eldest, who looked up from the scroll her was reading.
"No. She's on a week-long escort mission."
"How come Shisui isn't here?" Naruto asked, looking around for the curly-haired Uchiha.
Naruto liked Shisui. He was the only Uchiha he really got along with. Sasuke had told him once that it was because they were both pains in the ass.
"Probably busy flirting his way through the female population," Itachi replied without much thought.
Mikoto shook her head at the exchange and returned to the kitchen to finish dinner.
Naruto liked staying in the Uchiha manor. Despite being the main house of one of the oldest and most noble clans in the Land of Fire, they were never the stuck-up preppy kind that Naruto always associated with nobility. Well, Sasuke was a little stuck up, but he guessed he could attribute that to the 4 foot-long stick in his ass than to his family. Itachi-nii certainly didn't act like that.
It was no secret that Mikoto-kaa-chan likes Sakura-chan far too much than what was healthy. Sasuke had told him it was because she always wanted a daughter, and since Itachi-nii only ever brought Izumi-chan home and Sakura was the only girl Sasuke could be around without having the urge to Chidori them, the two girls were all the Uchiha matriarch had to pamper and spoil.
In Naruto's mind, the recent mission was just another elaborate attempt at trying to get the two together, but Mikoto-kaa-chan was probably growing a little more desperate if she actually went ahead and gotten the Hokage involved.
I'm surprised Fugaku-san didn't stop her, he mused. Hm, maybe the old man secretly likes Sakura-chan for the teme too.
If you asked him, Sakura-chan could so much better than his ice-cube of a best friend, but ever since that crazy crush she had on him when they were genin, she hadn't shown interest in anyone else. He knew for a fact that she was slowly accumulating a fanbase, because honestly, Sakura-chan is pretty! Not to mention that Tsunade-baa-chan had trained her into becoming an extremely terrifying woman. Yeah, his female best friend was a catch, and he, having had liked her in the past himself, know that first hand.
Sasuke-teme was another thing. A completely whole other thing. Naruto's pretty sure the guy just doesn't have feelings, period. He'd witnessed him deliberately stomp on a Valentine's gift a girl gave him right in front of her and walked away! Sakura-chan had then proceeded to give him a whack on the head that sent him flying a could of meter away into a building and lectured him on how to treat women even if he wasn't interested in them.
"Did you see her face, Sasuke?! Even if you don't return their feelings, it wouldn't hurt to treat them like people! You know, because that's what they are!"
"They're annoying."
"I used to be annoying too, but you certainly treated me better."
"You still are, and I had to deal with you every day back then. You would have only grown more annoying if I treated you like how I treat the rest of those pesky fangirls."
It was conversations like those that led Naruto to believe that although his teammate had a brick for a heart, there was definitely an exception for Sakura-chan. Does the teme like her? He's not really sure. Could the teme like her, on the other hand, was an entirely different question.
Sakura-chan was special to both of them. To him, because she was his first crush and his first female friend, to Sasuke because she was the first fangirl that grew out of being one and eventually, by some miracle, managed to earn the teme's respect and even acknowledgment.
Sakura-chan and the teme were a confusing topic. Yes, they were close. Aside from himself, Naruto thinks that Sakura-chan's probably the only person Sasuke really considers a friend. Everyone knows about her childhood feelings for their teammate, but there were still some people, Mikoto-kaa-chan for example, that liked to believe that since she hasn't dated anyone in the span of five years, she still had feelings for the youngest Uchiha.
"Ita-chan, could you please send your brother a crow and tell him to be here in an hour? And tell him to bring Sakura-chan with him," Mikoto-kaa-chan called from the kitchen.
"He's probably in her office," Kakashi-sensei provided. "He's on Sakura-duty today. Well, more like he appointed himself to Sakura-duty today."
Itachi nodded. He knew of the system Team Kakashi had developed to make sure their kunoichi wasn't working herself to death.
Initially, he thought it was unnecessary. Surely the best medical ninja in the Shinobi Nations didn't need three – sometimes four – of the most reckless shinobi to watch after her when health and taking care of people was in her job description.
But then all three of them were out on separate missions once when Itachi opened his doors to the Hokage's assistant. She asked if his brother was there since both Naruto and Kakashi were out and Sai couldn't be bothered because he himself was preparing for a mission. He had shaken his head and Shizune muttered something about being as reckless as her teammates, and Itachi immediately knew who he was referring to. He had offered to be the one to, in his brother's words, drag her out of her office, and was surprised at how underkept and overworked she looked. Despite that, the pink-haired medic still put up a fight and he had to place her under several genjutsu and knock her out cold before he had gotten her out of her office.
Sasuke had raged when he found out because it defeats the purpose if you physically harm her! You're supposed to be the smart one! Why are you acting like Naruto and Shisui combined! And Itachi knew the protectiveness his brother harbored for his teammate was not out of pure comradery.
So he sent his brother the message and continued to read the scroll in front of him. Dinner was going to be entertaining.
"Sakura, it's time to go," Sasuke said, standing in front of her table.
"Just a few more minutes," the rosette replied.
Sasuke rolled his eyes. He'd told her they were leaving in twenty minutes when his brother's crow dropped the letter. He figured the time limit would give her enough time to at least finish what she was doing at that moment, but Sakura wouldn't be Sakura if she wasn't giving him a daily headache.
"Sakura you're putting the paperwork down or I'm going to use Susanoo on you again."
Itachi had used Tsukuyomi on her once, and even though it had enraged both him and Naruto, he had to admit that that seemed like a lot less hassle on his part. Of course, Sakura wouldn't shut up about how humiliating it had been for her, and even went on and gave Itachi the cold shoulder for at least a week – a feat in itself because his brother and his teammate were actually very good friends.
Of course, he couldn't use the same technique his brother did, so he opted instead to use his Susanoo on her, which according to Sakura, was a hundred times more humiliating because she was actually conscious for it. It was a one-time thing, but he liked bringing it up for the sake of making his annoying teammate begrudgingly agree with him.
True enough, the mention of the incident made the medic tense up, and it was only through years of exposure to it that Sasuke didn't flinch at the Tsunade-like glare the rosette sent his way.
"Fine."
Dinner with Sasuke's family was nothing new to her at this point. Over the years, the Uchiha manor had become like their second home. They've been over so often - and even slept over so often - that Mikoto-chan and Fugaku-san had an extension built to hold her and Naruto's own rooms. Neither of them complained of course, but it bothered Sakura how despite being somewhat friends, and seeing that he came over with them often enough, Sai didn't get his own room.
Maybe he's still bitter because of the whole "replacement" issue.
When Sakura and Sasuke got to the manor, they were greeted to the sight of Shisui and Naruto arm wrestling on the coffee table. Itachi was on the sofa reading some scroll, while Kakashi-sensei was reading his daily dose of porn.
"Ahh, so the happy couple arrives!" Shisui cheered upon seeing the pair.
Both teens stepped away from each other. That was the first mention of their apparently new status ever since the mission was given. Part of Sakura still couldn't believe that something so foolish would be considered an A-rank mission, but kept her mouth shut because after all, it was Mikoto-chan who requested it and even though her second-mother figure – first being Tsunade-shishou, of course – had her own quirks, something told her that the woman wouldn't go this far just for fun.
"Shut up," Sasuke grunted, walking into the living room and sitting next to his brother and purposely ignoring the cheers Naruto offered in support.
What crime could I have committed in my past life that I have to deal with these idiots at once?
"Ita-chan, please call your father and tell him dinner's ready," Mikoto requested, coming out of the kitchen. "Come, everyone. We'll explain the mission when Fugaku-kun joins us."
Sakura tried not to fidget under everyone's gaze – Fugaku-san expectant, Itachi-nii curious, Shisui and Naruto annoyingly amused, Kakashi-sensei intrigued, and Mikoto-chan a weird mix of apologetic and hopeful. Sasuke blatantly avoided her gaze, but if she looked closely enough, she could see the hint of color on the tip of her teammate's ears.
"Well, Sakura-chan?" Mikoto-chan asked.
It was cute, she thought, how Mikoto-chan still asked her how she felt about it when it was obvious that there was only one answer. The Uchiha matriarch had explained why Sakura had to be the one to do it, and although it is embarrassing, her logic did make sense.
Out of all the Konoha kunoichi, she was the only one Sasuke was close enough with to actually develop "feelings" for. In fact, now that she looked at it, they would make sense. They were on the same genin team, which is where they would have found their bond, then when Sasuke had gone and "betrayed" the village to spy on Orochimaru to get intel on the snake Sannin's plans for Itachi's cursed seal Sakura had been one of the few people who believed he hadn't turned dark, and when he returned from said spy mission, Sakura and Naruto had trained with the other Sannin, having established themselves as their heirs, which meant that the missions they took on were far more high-ranking and high-risk than the average jonin. Not to mention that Sakura was the only girl Sasuke willingly spent time with. If they went with this narrative, they would have a typical teammates-to-friends-to-lovers story. It just made sense.
"Right now, you don't have to actually be a couple yet," Itachi spoke, earning her attention. "It would be suspicious if you were to immediately be boyfriend and girlfriend. You might be close, but there needs to be a build-up."
"If you ask me, the Shrimp having human feelings is already unbelievable," Shisui teased, earning a laugh from Naruto and a glare from Sasuke. "But Itachi's got a point. I think it's a known fact that Saku-chan's got her fair share of admirers. Why not let the twerp cause a little drama by actually making an effort?"
"Stay out of this," Sasuke barked, glaring at his cousin.
"Shisui has a point, though," Kakashi said, deciding to join the conversation. After all, it's not every day he gets to plan his little student's courtship, and with how their lives are going at the moment, this may be the only courting Sasuke will ever do, and the only one that won't make Sakura-chan shiver in disgust.
"Both you and Sakura are fairly popular in the village. It would do well for people to see you slowly treat her differently."
"I already treat her differently," the youngest frowned. "I actually talk to her, I train with her, I – "
Sakura's mouth moved before she could even think. "You're going to make a horrible boyfriend."
The silence that followed was strangely comforting. It was a testament to how at-home she felt at the manor that she didn't mind calling him out in front of his parents and his brother.
Sasuke frowned at the accusation. "I would make a decent one if I actually liked the girl."
"Well too bad for you, I'm the one you're stuck with." There was no venom there. Sakura said it like how one who share their observations about the weather, but Naruto knew for a fact that had this conversation taken place when they were genin, their kunoichi's emotional-driven self would have definitely exploded in tears and heartache.
If the bastard doesn't get his shit together, Sakura-chan might go from fake girlfriend to fake wife.
This idea came to me while I was studying for our exams and it wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it down. I wanted to wait until I got at least three chapters written but that would have just pushed me into a state of laziness. At least publishing this gives me a little push to actually add something to it.
Anyway, I hope you like this and don't forget to tell me what you think in the reviews! I hope y'all are staying safe!
