It was early still when Sakura ventured out onto the streets of Konoha. It had become part of her routine to leave her house at ungodly hours of the morning, that her parents had stopped asking where she was going. It might have been more accurate to say they had stopped caring. They had been so proud the day she had graduated from the ninja academy and was named a genin that it came as a shock when they had asked her a year later what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. By that time she had just begun her medical training with Tsunade and had expressed her desire to become a medic-nin.
Her parents had frowned on the idea. They had thought that after their daughter had failed the Chuunin exam the first time around, she would realize that shinobi life was not meant for a woman. They wanted her to grow up and have a proper life like them, get married and raise a family. In their eyes, the life of a shinobi was far too dangerous for their daughter.
It didn't take long for things to fall apart between her and her parents when it became clear she wasn't going to come around to their line of thinking.
She had understood then why shinobi saying number ninety-three existed – A shinobi must have no emotional ties to distract him from his duties. In that first year of being a Genin, she had managed to lose her family and two people who, however unlikely, had turned out to be her closest friends.
After that, she had devoted all of her time to training and missions. She had developed quickly under Tsunade's guidance, so much so that when Tsunade went to the village council again to request their be a medic-nin on each team, they had no choice but to comply once they had seen Sakura's abilities.
After the Genin teams were formed, the person who had the greatest potential was selected to take the medical training, which Tsunade personally taught herself twice a week.
When Sakura took the Chuunin exam again, she was far more prepared and skilled the second time around. As three-man teams were a requirement for the exam, she had been placed with Chouji and Ino. Needless to say, spending five days in the Forest of Death with Ino, had moved them from being on friendly terms to become the best of friends – but even now the two of them could still infuriate one another to no end.
Both she and Ino had passed, and Chouji would take it a third time before he was given the title of Chuunin. But with the exam over, she had no team to return to. Chouji and Ino would go back with Shikamaru and she would be left alone again.
Kakashi was gone on missions most of the time that she didn't even have him. The feeling of achieving the Chuunin level was diminished somewhat because she had no team to share it with. No one wanted to disrupt the bond and unity that the other teams had by adding another ninja, and four man teams were unheard of anyways.
But Tsunade, being the tradition breaking Hokage that she was, decided that in all cases there was room for the rules to be adapted to fit the situation at hand. She selected the team she felt would best handle an additional teammate. She also wanted to see how useful a medic-nin would be to a team in combat situations. She had chosen Gai-Sensei's team, and in the beginning Sakura had feared it would not work. She and Lee were already friends, but she hardly knew Neji or Tenten. She didn't know what kind of problems having a fourth person might cause.
Tsunade was prepared for everything. She had both Gai and Kakashi work with them, putting them through exhausting training scenarios that would benefit from the help of an additional person.
They quickly became a special project for Tsunade who seemed to be looking for Konoha's first elite team since the Legendary Sannin so many years ago. If a four-man team proved to have a lower mortality rate, she would also consider changing the formation of the teams that were put together out of the Academy from three to four with one medical expert on each team.
She got along with Tenten easily. The other girl was hardworking and dependable in any situation. When she had seen how strong Sakura was becoming in her training with Tsunade, Tenten had asked if Sakura would teach her the basics of healing and medicine. Now if they ever had to split up as a team, there would be at least one person knowledgeable about healing in each pair.
She had known it would be a lot tougher to gain acceptance from Neji. He would push her to the limit when they trained and studied her during missions to see how she would respond to different situations. When he eventually accepted the fact that she would not bring the team down, he had eased up on his scrutiny of her. She realized eventually that his actions had a lot to do with him wanting to protect his team. She wasn't sure she could call them friends, but she had followed Lee's example in teasing him on occasion because he was so easy to annoy.
As expected, Lee had been the one who had worked the hardest to help her fit in. She had quickly learned first hand how hard he worked. It wasn't long before she had soon joined Lee in his excessive training and it acted as a sort of therapy to help her forget about everything else in her life. She was so engrossed with training and missions that she was too tired at the end of the day to dwell on anything else – which was exactly what she wanted.
In a weak moment, she had even opened up to Lee up her parents and in turn had found out that him and his father rarely spoke. His family had been shinobi's for generations, and strong chakra users at that. His father had enrolled him in the Academy, hoping to bring out any latent talents but it didn't work and Lee's father had no use for a son who could not use Ninjutsu or Genjutsu techniques. It made sense to her now why Gai-Sensei and Lee were so close, almost like a father and son – even if it had been completely weird to witness their relationship back when she had first met them.
She was looking for Lee then. She knew that like her, he would be unable to spend today doing nothing. Without a doubt he would be putting himself through some kind of impossible challenge as a form of punishment for the failure of their training mission yesterday.
She also knew she wouldn't find him where the group typically trained together. Lee had his own spot in the Konoha forest where he liked to train alone. He had brought her there quite a few times, but she didn't like to intrude on what seemed to be a private place for him, so when it was just the two of them they usually trained somewhere closer to the village.
When she did find him, he was training as expected. He had recently become obsessed with the chakra tree climbing exercise. It was difficult enough for someone to focus enough chakra to their feet, that for someone without this ability it should have been impossible. But the words 'impossible' and 'Rock Lee' did not go together. He had taken the weights off that were normally strapped to his calves to give himself some extra speed. She could see from the marks made with his kunai he was making considerable progress.
She watched him take a significant running start before his foot came in contact with the tree trunk for the first time. He was able to gather up more speed once his foot was planted firmly and was able to propel his body up the trunk for a great distance before faltering and having no choice but to quickly mark a new line in the tree before leaping back to the ground.
He was breathing heavily and reached a hand up to wipe the sweat off his brow. That was when he noticed her standing there.
"Sakura-san," he greeted her in pleasant surprise.
"I thought Gai and Kakashi told us to take the day off," she teased, knowing full well Lee was incapable of sitting around doing nothing.
"Um, well, you know it's just a little light exercise," he said with a sheepish grin. He was silent for a moment, and was serious when he spoke next. "I'm sorry for yesterday. Neji and I should not have gotten so carried away with completing the exercise that we were willing to leave our teammates behind. That will never happen in a mission – that's a promise."
She could hear the regret in his voice, which was why she couldn't bring herself to tell him that was a promise he might not be able to keep. Chuunin took on a lot of B rank missions, and the occasionally A rank ones if Jounin weren't available. There was always the looming danger that something could go wrong and painful decisions would have to be made. Since Neji had been made a Jounin they would probably be handling much more serious missions.
"I made mistakes too," she said to him. "I shouldn't have been so wrapped up in healing Tenten that I cut myself off from sensing Gai-Sensei's presence. That was a Genin mistake."
Lee, not wanting to stay in self-recriminating mode any longer, because he would likely get stuck in an endless cycle of it, changed the subject. "Have you heard from Naruto-kun recently?"
Sakura shook her head. The last letter she had received from Naruto had been over three months ago. He was still training with Jiraiya, but had rarely mentioned what exactly the training was that he was doing and why it was forcing him to stay away for so long. She supposed it was because Jiraiya was worried about the letters being intercepted. But why their training was so secretive she didn't know. She wasn't even able to write Naruto back because he wouldn't tell her where he was.
She tried to make light of the situation. "He's been gone so long, I'm starting to think he'll be a pervert like Jiraiya when he comes back."
"Why did you come looking for me, Sakura-san?" Lee inquired.
"I wanted to see if you wanted someone to train with," she answered.
"I thought we were supposed to take the day off," he said with a raised eyebrow.
"It's just a little light exercise, right?" She said in return and Lee smiled.
She let him go back to his tree climbing exercise after that and began some exercises of her own. They trained in silence until Lee was satisfied for the moment with his tree climbing success. After that he asked if she wanted to test how far her hand-to-hand combat skills had come, and though she knew she couldn't beat him, accepted his challenge.
The next morning Sakura dragged her tired and aching body to see the Fifth Hokage. She had promised herself that she wouldn't let Lee drag her into the absurd and impossible challenges he would make for himself, but in the end she had and now she was paying for it. She had returned home well into the evening and had almost fallen asleep in the shower before finally climbing into bed. She had woken up at two in the morning starving at having not eaten anything since breakfast.
Now she was standing outside the Hokage's personal office, as the two Chuunin guards opened the door to allow her inside.
She was the last one of their group to show up. Well, that wasn't exactly true but since Kakashi was always notoriously late that didn't count.
Tsunade nodded to her in greeting as she joined Gai and her teammates.
"I'd wait for Kakashi, but since he may keep us waiting all morning, I'll go into the mission details now." Tsunade walked around to the front of her desk, not bothering to bring the mission book with her. "As you already know, Konoha has been in talks with the Sand for quite some time. Since their betrayal of Leaf Village three years ago, they've been working to regain our trust and form an alliance. Ultimately, we cannot be sure if this is the Hidden Village of Sand's true motives, but they have made every effort to make their wish for an alliance seem genuine. This could very well be because Konoha has the kind of armed forces and stable society they lack. To make the alliance final, the Kazekage will make the journey to Konoha to work out the final details and sign the treaty. Since, on a gesture of good faith the Sand have loaned us several of their shinobi for our own purposes, we will repay the gesture by having a team escort the Kazekage and his personal guards back here to Konoha.
"Your mission is to go to the Hidden Village of Sand and escort the Kazekage back here without incident. There is a small faction of the Sand that do not want to see a treaty between the two villages and would go to extreme measures to stop it from happening. Watch out for these enemies as you will likely confront them before you reach the Sand village. You will leave first thing tomorrow, so be prepared for a long journey. Gai and Kakashi are needed elsewhere, so you will be carrying out this mission on your own," she continued. Tsunade's gaze fell on Neji. "Neji, this will be your first mission as team leader. That is all. You're dismissed," she finished abruptly.
"Sakura, can you stay behind a moment?" Tsunade asked as the group turned to leave.
Sakura nodded, knowing the Hokage probably wanted an update on the handful of patients under her care at Konoha Hospital
Tsunade waited until she and Sakura were alone before speaking again. "There have been rumours that Uchiha Sasuke is in the Wind Country. Right now, you are the only one available who knows Sasuke better than anyone else. If he's there you'll be able to find him and bring him back using whatever means necessary. This is your secondary mission."
Sakura was filled with numb shock of hearing the possibility that she might see Sasuke soon.
"He'll likely longer resemble the person you once knew," Tsunade continued, "but he must be brought back to Konoha. With our forces finally going back to the numbers they were before Orochimaru's attack, we can no longer afford to have Sasuke at large. Sasuke is considered a missing-nin and we must know what contact he's had with Orochimaru. I do not want to believe he would betray Konoha but we have no way of knowing where his loyalties lie or what extent he would go to to gain power in order to carry out his mission of revenge.
The Hokage's features softened somewhat. "Sakura, I'm telling you first because I knew how this would affect you. I will let you be the one to tell the rest of your team about this – but you must tell them. You'll be endangering their lives if you don't."
Even if Sakura had any protests about the mission – about what Tsunade was asking her to do, she couldn't find the words to voice them.
A cloud of white smoke appeared and then quickly vanished, revealing the form of Kakashi.
"Sorry, I'm late. This guy asked me to hold his place in line at the bookstore."
Sakura's customary cry of liar! was nowhere to be found. She didn't even notice Kakashi standing there until Tsunade dismissed her a few minutes later.
Sakura hesitated before turning the handle and opening the door to her house. She almost laughed out loud at her actions. Her parents weren't going to care where she had been all day or ask why she looked upset. She would be lucky if they noticed her at all.
She sighed and leaned back against the door of her bedroom. What was wrong with her? Chuunin got sent on all kinds of difficult missions all the time that this shouldn't be any different – except that it was. Just the thought of running into Sasuke was almost too much to handle.
Get a grip on yourself, Sakura, or the others will notice, inner Sakura yelled at her. A shinobi is not supposed to show any emotion. That would be her mantra for getting through this mission. Sasuke had deserted her and Naruto, and she suspected Naruto's secret training had something to do with Sasuke. So in reality, Sasuke was the one responsible for tearing apart team seven. Then why, even after all that, was it so hard to hate him?
"Yo," said a smooth voice from her right.
"Kakashi-Sensei!" She cried, nearly jumping out of her skin she was so startled. "What were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?"
He smiled at her from where he was crouched on the window ledge, but with his mask it was difficult to tell if it was apologetic or not.
"I was in the neighbourhood and thought I'd stop by," he explained.
"Liar," she accused. "You live on the other side of the village."
"Doesn't mean I can't drop by and check on one of my students."
"I'm your only student," she said with more emotion then intended.
"Sakura, you aren't the first ninja that has been asked to do something they'd rather not do," he said, growing serious.
"Who said I didn't want to do this mission?" She snapped.
"It's in your eyes and the way you've cut yourself off from life since Sasuke left," he said sadly. "I know the reason you put so many hours into becoming a medic-nin and have trained excessively with Lee – so you're too exhausted to think or feel anything. Unlike Sasuke, you didn't have to runaway from this village to run away from yourself. I've lived through the same pain you have. Eventually it catches up to you and you have to confront it."
She had no response for her Sensei's words. It was strange how Kakashi who had been so busy with missions these last few years could still know her so well.
"You must tell the others about Sasuke," he urged her.
"How do you know I haven't already?" She challenged.
He said nothing, but his stance and exposed eye revealed he knew the truth.
She let her shoulders slump. "If they knew about Sasuke – they wouldn't trust me." What she really wanted to say was that Neji wouldn't trust her.
Kakashi turned so his back was facing her. "I'd have thought by now you would have learned to not be so quick to judge others."
Then he vanished, and she was left dreading the upcoming mission even more.