Diplomacy
That very night, Sakura received a sealed note. It was delivered at three in the morning, through her bedroom window via courier bird. The steal stamped upon it was red. Sakura's breath hitched; she'd only ever heard about the seal color. It meant one thing: ANBU.
With trembling fingers, she eagerly tore through the envelope and read the note. Apparently, she was to meet with the ANBU squad in twenty minutes at the shed. Sakura hauled herself out of bed and mentally bemoaned her late shift at the hospital as she dazedly climbed into the spare ANBU gear. The straps were a lot trickier at three in the morning and alone than they had been with Neko there to coach her through the uniform's intricacies, but she managed. With this, she stuffed a banana into her pocket to eat on the way and grabbed her travel pack, which she'd taken to carrying with her at all times, leaving her dingy flat in under five minutes. She finger-combed her hair on the way to the shed, chomped through the banana and stuck a soldier pill to the roof of her mouth with chakra. She did not want to get caught eating it when she inevitably had a need for it.
All in all, Sakura was proud of making it to the shed a short eight minutes after the summoning, but was surprised when a sizable amount of ANBU was already there. With both Kakashi and Tsunade as teachers, punctuality wasn't something she was really accustomed to expecting – not from Tsunade because she often got held up at meetings and the like and not from Kakashi because… he was Kakashi.
"Do we have to wait for anyone else?" Sakura asked the group at large.
"No," an agent to her left replied. She recognized him as Kuma-san. "We are all here."
"But – wasn't the summon in ten minutes still?"
"The twenty minute summon was set for you specifically," Kuma informed her. "Usually, agents are supposed to be able to answer a summons in under ten – five is preferable."
By that estimate, her eight minutes were nothing to brag about. Sakura simply nodded and lowered her head. Hopefully the ANBU weren't expecting her to be some kind of prodigal fighting machine…
But she had little time to worry about disappointing them because the squad took off immediately after her arrival. Instead of exiting Konoha through the main gate, as Sakura had done every single time in her life, they stole away like thieves in the night through a hidden area of the wall, which seemed to have been primed exactly for this purpose. There were no Kotetsu and Izumu to give a leaving permit to, just their quiet footsteps and the rustling of branches in the wind, the call of an owl, the sniffing of a wild cat. To Sakura's surprise, she was able to keep up fine with the squad's pace as they rushed toward Suna. After what Naruto and Kakashi had put her through the last time (and was it only a week ago?), she felt like she could have probably kept up with anything. She didn't even have to make use of the soldier pill in her mouth as they actually made camp for the night. Sakura was surprised that the ANBU would actually bother with such a mundane act… but she supposed they were human after all. This she saw first hand when they took off their masks to eat and sat together in a circle, eating together quietly, all of them men and women at the end of the day.
Sakura was forced to take the soldier pill out of the roof of her mouth in order to properly eat (and go to sleep) and blushed when some of the ANBU agents looked at her funny.
"Hn, interesting," Kuma-san commented. "How many of those did you store up there?"
Sakura frowned. "Just the one, taicho."
Kuma didn't question her. "I can't help but notice that pill looks odd though. It is a soldier pill, right? Sleeping pills or recreational–"
"It's a soldier pill," Sakura confirmed. "I make my own, that's why it looks different."
"You do? Isn't that time consuming?"
Sakura shrugged. "It is. But frankly, I don't like how the food dye of the standard issue pills interacts with some of its base components, so I scratched it… and changed some other things." She held up her spit-covered pill for Kuma to inspect. "I know these look a little ghastly and they do take a lot of work to make, but they're worth it, in my book."
"What exactly does the food dye do to the normal pills?" Kuma-san inquired with interest. Some of the other ANBU also seemed to be paying attention. Somewhat flustered, and mindful not to come off as a swot, Sakura tried to explain the overall idea behind her new recipe and why she preferred it to the standard issue pills. Slowly, Neko, then the other ANBU began to ask questions until even the Awabi guy asked her (rather tetchily), whether these pills had been tested by anyone other than her. Sakura replied that no, they hadn't, which earned her suspicious looks from the squad. The truth was, she had created the alternate soldier pills because she had needed them – and hadn't told anyone about her invention until now. Not even Tsunade. Especially not Tsunade.
The thing was: soldier pills were considered a drug and thus rationed carefully. With her excessive use of watered-down shadow clones to stay ahead of the competition, Sakura had needed way too many soldier pills than what was healthy (or affordable) in order to function, so she had worked on a recipe of her own, that would help her to stay energized during her long days of working at the hospital, studying, researching and training. In fact, she had created various different pills to cater to her needs. She saved the less energizing, more nature-based ones for her day to day needs, then she had a few which were emergency pills for surgeries – these were the pills she'd taken during her run to Suna – providing a medium output of energy that lasted for long stretches of time, and then she had her combat pills, which she had created for the specific purpose of surviving life-threatening situations, where immediate power was needed. They were terrible for the body, but they got the job done well. She had only used these last pills twice: once, to field test them during the chunin exams in Suna, and the second time, also in Suna, on the Gaara recovery mission. She'd taken one right before her fight with Sasori. It had most likely saved her life.
She told the ANBU that she had created the pills for personal use and not to sell them, which was why no one else had ever tested them. It was not a lie, but not the full truth either. If Tsunade knew just how many pills she'd bombarded her poor system with, she'd get the wrong idea. Sakura didn't want that to happen… but she also didn't want to stop using the pills. People like Tsunade just didn't understand people like her, people with a smaller than average chakra poll. She had to find some way of keeping up with Naruto and Sasuke. She just had to. But the ANBU didn't need to know any of that.
Reluctantly, Sakura passed some of her pills around, explaining about the three types there were. Some appeared skeptical, others cautiously intrigued.
"It is too risky to test them now," Kuma-san said, "but I would be delighted to see more of your pills when we arrive back at Konoha. Feel free to stop by headquarters any time, Kurage."
Sakura fidgeted uncomfortably. She didn't actually want the ANBU to test her pills… then her shishou might find out about them…
"Er, I mean, I wouldn't want to impose. The ANBU commander probably wouldn't be alright with me waltzing in like that, taicho…"
The ANBU exchanged amused glances and Sakura felt like she'd just made an idiot out of herself somehow.
Kuma said bemusedly: "I can assure you the ANBU commander wouldn't mind. Now – about our patrols tonight…?
The conversation ended there as the guard shifts were discussed. Sakura hoped uneasily that her pills would be forgotten by the time they returned to Konoha.
The rest of their trip through the desert was uneventful. Once again, they made it to Suna in a record-breaking three and a half days. Once there, Sakura and the ANBU split ways. Neko did teach her a chakra-flaring pattern that would alert the ANBU should anything happen, but other than that she was on her own. Apparently, Tsunade hadn't informed Suna she was sending Sakura over in fear that the message might be intercepted by the Akatsuki, but Sakura was well received regardless. That was good, as the funeral was a few days away, though she would have rather preferred if the kazekage hadn't been so welcoming; dining with the man who had almost choked her to death once was not a very relaxing experience, especially if added to the fact that scorpion dishes were considered a delicacy in the village. Mercifully, Gaara's siblings Kankuro and Temari were present for most of these dinners, and also bigger talkers than the kazekage, so she could get away with not speaking a whole lot to Gaara – and the scorpion actually tasted fine once one got over the fact that it was a scorpion.
During these days, Sakura paid various visits to Chiyo's remaining brother, Ebizo. The old man was rather leery of her at first, but Sakura was nothing if not stubborn. She insisted on spending time with the man in order to learn more about Chiyo's life, simply out of respect and admiration. Ebizo accused her of trying to spy for her village, but finally agreed to tell her silly anecdotes about his sister 'and nothing else, girl! You hear?'.
This was fine by Sakura. It had been exactly what she had wanted. She had just been hoping to learn a little more about the woman she'd nearly died alongside. It was the respectful thing to do. Ebizo had seemed moved by her words and actually devoted much time to the task of talking about his sister with her. She had learned about Chiyo's oddly macabre sense of humor from him and how she had regularly given the poor man heart palpitations with her jokes. Sakura had found out that Chiyo had once been the leader of the infamous puppeteer brigade, back at its most powerful; she was taught Chiyo's favorite card game and discovered that she was terrible at it, for it was very intricate; and Ebizo had even showed her the first puppet Chiyo had made, back when they'd both been young children.
It was shaped like a funky-looking crocodile, only bright pink instead of green or brown. Ebizo had insisted that he'd never show Sakura Chiyo's actual battle puppets, but Sakura had assured him that she had no interest in seeing them. The childhood puppet had somehow felt more meaningful – not only was it something extremely personal to a puppeteer, but Sakura had already seen all of Chiyo's battle puppets back in action. Ebizo had grudgingly accepted this explanation and even let her draw a sketch of the pink crocodile. Sakura wasn't a great artist, but she was determined to put in the effort.
She'd spent an entire evening on getting the proportions and everything just right – she intended to frame it back at home. Having a picture of Chiyo out in the open might give Konoha nin the wrong idea of her allegiances, but no one would understand the significance of the pink crocodile. It was the day right before the funeral and she would be leaving soon afterward… the sketch needed to be perfect by then. Sakura hadn't explained any of this to Ebizo, so she was surprised when, as dusk touched the desert and she was forced to resort to a candle to keep drawing, the old man had asked her her if she wished to accompany him to the village's water reserve once she was done. He wanted to show her something else: the place Chiyo had spent most time at.
Sakura went gladly. Though Ebizo made a show of tying a bandage around her eyes and leading her around in circles before they entered the facility that contained the small underground lake, it was worth it when they arrived. The water was dark, but a small glass window opened up above it, the stars reflected like fireflies in the night. There were candles all around the lake, which Ebizo flickered on with a jutsu. The old man showed her how to fish – Suna style – and Sakura felt like he was teaching her an entire way of life more than anything. Ebizo, she could tell, was a very wise guy. As they fished, the old man told her a few more anecdotes of his and his sister's childhoods, of how they had taught each other to fish after a mission in Wave and how Chiyo had made their own fishing rods in a bout of inspiration, and that it had actually used their creation as inspiration to make her first puppet.
Sakura made no secret of how much she loved this tale.
They fished in silence late into the night.
The morning dawned and Sakura prepared for the funeral. She found a shop that sold traditional Suna ceremonial garb – the sand village actually dressed in white for burials – and busied herself with finding something appropriate. As she was trying the clothes on, she couldn't help but listen to the village gossip, which was mostly centered around the esteemed elder Chiyo and her upcoming burial. Sakura was delighted to find out that the people of Suna were much more generous in giving the old woman credit for her battle against Sasori… though she wished they wouldn't dismiss her intervention so completely. It seemed that the people of Konoha and Suna were a lot more similar than one would think.
She ended up buying a set of funeral robes as well as a traditional Suna attire she found beautiful and a few armbands. She'd just been leaving the shops when someone tapped her shoulder and, turning, she found herself face to face with Gaara. Sakura couldn't help it: she jumped a mile high, prompting people to turn and stare. She berated herself mentally. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Now she'd given everyone the impression she was wary of the kazekage.
"I hadn't expected you to honor our culture like this," Gaara said, thankfully ignoring her faux pas, as he looked pointedly at her shopping bag. He was already clad in his funeral robes.
"Nothing wrong with helping out the locals a little…" Sakura replied with a slightly forced smile.
Gaara nodded. He seemed uncertain. "Yes. You have… really helped us out." He gestured subtly around them. "I know they may not emphasize this… with their words." Sakura gave him an awkward stare. Gaara continued: "The people of my village… they are easy to condemn the foreigner, too slow to trust and too fast to judge. Our kind is a prideful one, and yet we live in squalor. It is what makes us… us. It can be… hard, sometimes. I am trying to change things… but it's slow-going."
"Er… right."
She really couldn't get a read on the guy. The kazekage fixed her with his penetrating stare. "I know I have treated you wrongly in the past. What I did to you… was bad. I don't expect you to say or do anything, right now or in the future, but I wanted you to know that what you have done for my brother, despite what I did to you… It… it means something. It means everything. I am immensely grateful to you. As kazekage of Sunagakure no Sato, I would like you to know that your saving my brother will never be forgotten."
Sakura was so astonished that she just stood there for a second whilst Gaara looked at her steadily.
Right. She was supposed to say something. "T-thanks. I mean – you're welcome? You're welcome. And it was no problem. Er. Yeah."
Gaara chuckled. "Indeed. Now, let us make haste – or we will be late for Chiyo-baa-sama's funeral. You have come such a long way… it would be a shame if you missed it. She will receive a burial of the highest honor… I think you will like it."
Sakura nodded and mutely followed in his wake.
The funeral was indeed something to behold. Chiyo's body was carried through the village in a beautiful casket, three young children walked ahead of the procession, singing a heart-wrenching tune, a beautiful local song which Sakura had never heard before, until they made it to the outside at sunset. Then, each of the elders, presumably the people who knew Chiyo best, stepped forward to say a few words about her. Each spoke of something different. Some cited Chiyo's bravery in battle, others her unyielding loyalty to the village, her sacrifice for Gaara was of course always mentioned… Sakura found Ebizo's speech especially emotive.
But then, right after Ebizo was done, one more elder began to talk, his tone feverish and excited. The others eyed him strangely, like he hadn't been appointed to give a speech, but no one interrupted him. The old man then began to rave about the greatness of Suna, about the golden years of the puppeteer brigade with Chiyo at its helm and how the old woman had restored their honor by single-handedly defeating Akasuna no Sasori and avenging their nidaime kazekage. The crowd seemed to be hanging onto his every word, cheers following this declaration. Sakura's name was never mentioned, but no one seemed to care. This, the old man finished ardently, this more than anything else, made Chiyo the greatest of heroes, her defeat of the great Sasori, a battle that would forever to be remembered by history.
The man was a good speaker, this couldn't be denied, but he had a faulty memory of all the times he'd skipped over Sakura's involvement in recent events was anything to go by. Still, he had barely managed to finish what he was saying before being cut off by frenzied cheers from the crowd. Sakura just stood there in shock. Why wasn't anyone interfering? Why wasn't anyone speaking up for her? She was short, but if she stood on her tiptoes, she could barely glimpse Gaara whispering furiously to his two advisors. And yet the crowd continued, chanting 'Sasori's Slayer' louder and louder and louder, and still no one seemed to care that it had been two people who had slain him, not just the one.
Sakura felt very, very small in that moment. She sunk into herself, unsure what to do. Should she say something? After all, she had been there too, she had helped defeat Sasori too. But on the other hand, wouldn't it be dishonorable, to cause a fight at the sight of Chiyo's burial? Because one would break out, she was certain. Many of those in the crowd were still cheering like fanatics and she didn't fancy going against them. That was when Kuma-san broke free from the tumult and stepped forward, next to the old man.
"This is false!" Kuma exclaimed loudly. "With all due respect, the elder Chiyo would have never won that battle if not for the presence of Haruno Sakura there! History will remember Haruno just as much, if not more! You have Konoha to thank for Sasori's passing!"
"How dare you!" the elder roared. "How dare you show such disrespect!"
"You filthy liar!" one of the other elders screamed at him. "Besmirching Chiyo's memory like this!"
"The only liar here I see is you, mam!" Kuma called out to the woman.
"Damn you, Konoha scum!"
Pandemonium broke out. All around Sakura, people started pushing and pulling at her, grasping her hair painfully and crowding around her to the point where she could barely breathe, barely hear anything other than loud, agitated voices talking over each other, talking about her. Then the sand moved of its own accord, tearing her free from the mob, pulling her out, toward the front. Sakura shrieked, terrified Gaara was going to kill her, and some of the ANBU moved toward her as if to help, but then the sand dropped her off right next to the kazekage himself.
"Enough!" Gaara shouted. She hadn't heard him raise his voice even marginally in the entire time she'd been in Suna, but now he was loud – so loud, the entire crowd stopped dead in their tracks at once. "You are all spitting in her memory," the kazekage snapped angrily. "Every last one of you. Cease your squabbling at once, for we have a woman to bury. This is the funeral of an elder of our village, an elder we owe a great deal to, who has lived and died honorably, who traded her valuable life for mine. If you disrespect her passing, you disrespect me."
Slowly, an air of false calm took over the crowd again and some of the solemnity of the moment was recovered. People were still whispering, but overall the burial was finished without further incidents. Sakura returned to the kazekage mansion, where she'd been staying these past few days, and went to bed early – but couldn't sleep. She worried that the next day would be worse.
This prediction turned out to have been very much founded, for she was woken from her excuse of sleep at dawn by an emissary from the kazekage. Her presence was required, the man said. Sakura followed him to a conference room, also inside the tower. Even an entire floor away, she could hear loud voices. When the door was opened, the sheer unpleasantness, the noise-level, the stuffiness of the room and the aura it gave off were almost unbearable. Sakura felt her gut churn with dread. To her surprise, the ANBU team from earlier were all there, along with the elder council, Gaara himself, his two siblings, and some people she didn't know but looked important. To her even worse surprise, they were arguing about her. Sakura sat down uneasily.
"What's going on?" she questioned.
Kuma-san leaned over to whisper quietly in her ear.
"Sasori had a large bounty on his head. We are trying to decide which village should collect it."
Sakura frowned at him. "Why don't you just split it?"
"Suna is insisting that Chiyo did all of the work."
Sakura sat back in her seat, scowling. Great. She was called upon by Kuma-san a minute later to narrate the events of her fight against the missing nin. She began talking, trying to explain to the best of her ability, but the council was interrupting her so often that she couldn't even get a word in edgewise. It was extremely frustrating, she felt like they were trying to keep her from speaking, like nothing she said would be heard. Her input didn't count for shit.
Sakura balled her fists and sat there, stewing in her anger and wishing she could stab one of those odious elders with a pen. Across the room, she could tell that Gaara had a similar expression on his face… but his self-control seemed to have significantly improved since they were twelve, because he did not try to choke anyone to death this time, even though he looked like he really wanted to.
They sat in that room for the entire day, Sakura developing a raging headache that even medical ninjutsu couldn't fix, and yet, by nighttime no agreements had been reached.
The sun had already set hours ago and Sakura was extremely exhausted. She especially hated the feeling of not being able to do anything. For all that she'd saved Kankuro and helped kill Sasori, the elders treated her like a little girl. The only Konoha nin who seemed to get a minimal amount of respect from them was Kuma-san. At first, when she'd realized that the ANBU was there as a diplomat, Sakura had been shocked. In her understanding of them, Konoha's shadow forces were the farthest thing from diplomats she could have pictured… but over the course of the evening, she'd come to understand just what a good choice Tsunade had made in appointing someone like Kuma for the job. Anyone that wasn't completely hardened was going to get eaten by the council like rabid wolves. There was something about Kuma's aura, right then, in that room, that demanded respect, that demanded to be listened to when he spoke.
Sakura wished she could be like that. She was only understanding now why Tsunade-shishou hated the council so much. From the looks of it, Gaara and his siblings were on her side, but the kazekage couldn't rule without getting the green light from the elders, and the elders were determined not to give Sakura any credit at all. Even with Kankuro standing up and literally screaming at the council as a way of speaking up for Sakura, with Gaara losing his temper and Kuma-san thundering at the elders whether they were prepared to let go of their alliance with Konoha, no agreements had been reached. Sakura feared that they'd spent the entire night at each other's throats too when Temari suggested they take a break. The noise level in the room lessened somewhat as the various factions considered the merits of this proposal. Sakura glanced around, noting how, besides for Kuma, the rest of the ANBU seemed tenser than a medieval bow and wondered whether they wanted to jump out of the window as much as she did.
Finally, it was agreed upon that a short break was in order. This was the first and only agreement that had been reached so far, in over nine hours of arguing.
"Is this really all just about the money?" Sakura ranted angrily to Kuma. "I just can't believe everyone was making such a fuss over some shoddy coins!"
"Don't look so surprised," the ANBU said. "Money moves the world."
"But Konoha already has a lot of money, and Suna are our allies," Sakura complained. "Why can't we just give it to them and basta?"
Unfortunately, this was the wrong thing to say. More than one of the elders, who had lingered the area, heard her words and pounced upon the opportunity like vultures. The council had smelled weakness.
"That's right, girl!"
"We are allies, aren't we?" some old woman cried. "I've had it with Konoha's selfishness! Always taking and never giving, even when they are much better off!"
"Even the girl admits they don't deserve the money!" the old man of the speech crowed.
Next to her, Kuma-san looked livid. Sakura shrank into herself. Shit. She'd given them the opening they needed… oh shit. The rest of the elders had smelled blood and all of them circled around her like sharks in the water.
Sakura swallowed, realizing that her offhand comment might have been a mistake. But by then, it was too late. She could no longer take her words back.
A/N: I think this should be obvious, but I do not condone it in any way. I have never taken drugs of any kind in my life (if one ignores alcohol) nor will I ever. A friend of mine once started hanging out with a pretty drug-addicted crowd and I pestered her about it until she stayed the fuck away. So no. Don't do drugs, kids.
Sakura is a fucking idiot for messing with soldier pills. This story is dark, a tale about her finding her feet in a complicated world. It bears no reflection on our society so don't even try to copy what she's doing.
PS: I've started reordering some of the chapters, changing lengths and scene cut offs because I wasn't happy with the pacing. This is why it will seem like I have updated, but in truth only a few changes have been made.