"Truth is not relative, our understanding of it is."

Teacher's Pet

by Blue Jeans

Tsunade glared at her empty sake cup. Shizune was not in the office, sent in Sakura's place to retrieve some important documents from Morino Ibiki concerning the information gathered from that Sound-nin they had captured not too long ago. It was a miracle that they had gotten this far, though Ibiki wasn't the captain of Torture and Interrogation for nothing. Orochimaru was on the move, this they already knew, and none of it sat well with Tsunade in the least. Whatever news that would come to her in the next few hours would determine just how bad her day was going to be and she didn't doubt that it would only get worse from here.

Under the light of the afternoon sun, Tsunade groaned.

Worst of all, as soon as Shizune left, Tsunade realized that she was out of sake! With a growing pile of paperwork, along with the Chuunin guards placed at the door (at her own, earlier request), she had been unable to leave to replenish her supply. She was also out of lackeys to send out and retrieve the brand of sake she preferred. She was even tempted to create a Genin, D-rank mission just for this situation alone.

Damn it! Of all the times for Sakura to have an emotional breakdown, this certainly wasn't the right one. Four more days, Tsunade tried to reassure herself. Four more days and Sakura would be back on track and Tsunade won't be out of sake ever again. She would have her cute-apprentice back by then so that half this paper-work would be done for her and sorted out by order of importance. When Sakura came back Tsunade would only have to look at the documents that required her special attention and...

Tsunade thudded her forehead against the currently half-rolled up scrolls before her. She didn't know if she was going to make it through these next four days with just herself and Shizune, not when Shizune had to pick up a lot of the work Sakura was not there to do, as well as Shizune's own work. Sakura had apparently become more integral in Tsunade's day-to-day activities than even Tsunade realized. The Godaime silently pondered on what would happen when she started to send her pink-haired assistant on missions again.

Perhaps she had been a little too harsh concerning Sakura's reaction to losing a patient...

Sakura did have to learn that patients died and skill wasn't always what was involved in saving them. The odds of survival weren't just numbers. Those numbers were predictors of the possibility of success, the probability of error and the proportionality of the luck on their side. Even if Sakura didn't want to admit it, the operation that Saitou Ichigo went through only had a 70 percent chance of success. The complications of the boy's previous life-style and the earlier surgeries he had already under-gone before Tsunade was ever Hokage had lowered that ratio to 50 percent. The fact that his parents waited this long to operate on him...

It hadn't been a pretty picture no matter how Tsunade had looked at it. This being Sakura's first death certainly didn't make it better, but it hadn't been that much of a surprise and honestly, that was why she had given Sakura the case. Her student had just been too proud, too sensitive and too inexperienced to understand that doing everything right didn't mean the end results would be predictable. And none of those things that drove Sakura away now were things that Tsunade could fault her for, but if Sakura didn't learn emotional restraint then one day she would have to pay the price for it.

It was just how things went and Tsunade would have to be cruel to prevent future disasters.

That Sakura was learning this now, in the safety of Konoha and not on the battle-field, was a blessing. Sooner or later Sakura would have had to learn to turn off that soft-heartedness she had, at least enough for it not to be self-destructive. These types of errors would one day cause Sakura's life if Tsunade didn't smash it out of her student. This type of softness, Tsunade decided as she looked out onto Konoha a bit wastefully, was not something a ninja like Sakura could afford to harbor. Regret, Tsunade learned first hand, was a blindness that would render a person useless, no matter how skilled they might have been. And death did not choose victims through fairness.

Tsunade heard her door swing open then, breaking through her thoughts on the past. "Shizune," Tsunade greeted with a heavy sigh. "I'm glad to see your back. Before you report, I want you to go get me some sake."

"Already done, Tsunade-shishou," a voice answered while the Godaime froze before spinning abruptly away from the window.

"Sakura!" Standing at the door was her student with a nervous smile. In her hand was a jar of the sake that Tsunade had been hoping for since she ran out of it right after Shizune left the office. "What are you doing here, Sakura?" Tsunade asked carefully, her face now serious as her initial joy at seeing both drink and student faded. "You know I forbid you to work until you got yourself together."

Sakura nodded swiftly as she crossed over to Tsunade's desk. The pink-haired apprentice set the jug of sake down and stepped back again. "Tsunade-shishou," Sakura said and then bowed deeply at the waist, much to Tsunade's amusement. "I came to apologize!"

"And what exactly are we apologizing for?" Tsunade asked when her student didn't straighten.

"I had asked to be your student but disregarded my own reasons these last few days," Sakura answered with her head lowered. "Sasuke... Naruto... Kakashi-sensei, even..." Sakura paused as if grasping at words that Tsunade knew her student had already thought over carefully. Well, at least now Tsunade knew that lazy bum Kakashi did talk to Sakura like she had ordered the man to. Maybe Tsunade underestimated how much the Jounin cared about his only female student, though that was highly unlikely. "I came to tell you that I have not lost my will to fight, Tsunade-shishou. I will get Sasuke-kun back and this time, I won't let Naruto fight this alone."

"That's good to hear," Tsunade answered airily, her hands on her hips as she studied her pupil. "But, you still haven't answered my earlier question. Why are you apologizing?"

Sakura's face was not visible but Tsunade did not need to see her student's expression to know Sakura meant every word she said. "I am sorry I disappointed you, Tsunade-shishou. I am also sorry for failing to save my patient. I tried to be stronger and follow the shinobi code, but as a medic-nin, I believe that I should have been able to complete that surgery successfully. This conclusion I arrived at, however... I will not allow it to stop me from getting stronger."

"Are you that proud, Sakura?" Her apprentice tensed at Tsunade's questions.

"Excuse me, shishou? Proud?" Sakura asked, head up and eyes round with surprise.

"Yes," Tsunade answered. "Proud. Do you truly believe that saving a life is like taking a test?" Sakura did not answer and looked back down onto the ground. Tsunade sighed at this, tired of not being able to read Sakura's expressions. "Stop bowing like an idiot, Sakura. Straighten up and look at me." Her student complied though there was still hesitation on Sakura's face and in her posture as she stood quietly before Tsunade's scrutiny. "You did everything by the book, Sakura. The surgery went perfectly."

"Shishou--?"

"Let me finish, Sakura." Tsunade cut her apprentice off. "If the only factor to that child's survival was how you cut him open then we would have had more successful surgeries." Tsunade let her arms fall to her sides as she sighed and looked up thoughtfully. "Sakura, being a medic-nin is not just about saving lives and healing others." Sakura gave her teacher an 'Are you serious?' look, but Tsunade ignored it as she walked around her desk and leaned against the edge of it, right in front of her pupil. "Your job is also to understand what can and cannot be done, who needs to be healed first and who can wait, to ensure the maximum amount of lives saved with the power that you have. There are limits to our skills and some wounds we cannot heal, but even you know that there will be situations in the future where you will not be able to save everyone and sometimes that choice means that you have to decide who lives. When you are forced to make that type decision Sakura, the correct course of action you take is also the job of the medic-nin."

"Theoretically speaking, that was just a routine surgery and I did not have to make that type of decision then," Sakura interjected heatedly, her temper overruling her need to be submissive.

"Theoretically speaking, Rock Lee shouldn't be a ninja right now," Tsunade answered evenly. "Theoretically speaking, Gaara of the Sand should not have ever been made the Kazekage." Tsunade watched Sakura stiffen before her student gave the office a quick look-around, as if to check to see if anyone would have overheard Tsunade say such things. "Sakura, theoretically speaking, Naruto would never be Hokage no matter what he does and Sasuke should have succeeded in killing him two years ago." Sakura's shoulder tensed and her student visibly shook before she stiffly straightened again, green eyes burning fiercely as she looked into Tsunade's eyes. "You seem to get it now, huh? What should have happened doesn't dictate what does. Even if you are 100 percent correct, it does not mean you will win or that you will succeed. This same is true the other way around. I had watched you operate on that boy, Sakura, and you did nothing wrong. If you had, do you not think I would have stopped you or stepped in to correct your errors?"

Sakura closed her eyes and there was that naked expression of anguish on her face. As the Godaime and as a doctor, Tsunade saw such looks before, but Sakura would be one of the first shinobi to be so honest about it. The girl must have learned this foolishness from Naruto, Tsunade sighed to herself silently. After all, such a change took both tremendous courage and tremendous stupidity, the typical Naruto seal. It was hard to tell at times though, since Sakura had always seemed to have a side to her that was also remarkably like Naruto himself when she wasn't being guarded.

"Then, why, Shishou?" Sakura asked at last, her voice carrying every thought and every emotion she had felt in the last three days. She opened her eyes and looked directly at her teacher then. "Why wasn't it enough?"

"That's life, Sakura." Tsunade answered evenly. It was the only answer she knew. The Godaime paused. Her own eyes looked away as she remembered a certain teammate who had once asked a remarkably similar question before another had answered with these same words. It had been a long time ago and she had not thought about it for almost as long. Tsunade tried to remember then, how she had felt when she had heard those words before.

Sakura was silent, even when Tsunade looked up to her student again when she could find no answers in her own memories. There was an expression on Sakura's face that was remarkably like Naruto's own when he didn't like an answer that someone gave to him. However, Sakura was different from Naruto in one fundamental way, she did not call Tsunade up on it or ask Tsunade to defend the answers her mentor gave. Instead, the girl stayed politely silent and that rebellious look on Sakura's face eventually smoothed and faded in the quiet of the Godaime's office. "I know you don't like this, Sakura, and nobody does. But it is still a fact, nonetheless." Tsunade finally added wearily.

Sakura frowned, her lips opening at last, as if to protest. "I--"

"Tsunade-sama," Shizune's voice interrupted them as the dark-haired woman walked into the room with her arms full of scrolls. "I really think we should ask Sakura to come back." The assistant sighed as she nudged the door closed with her elbow while balancing the documents in her arms. "I would never want to--" Shizune paused as she turned around, looking up to see Sakura standing there with an amused quirk on her lips. Shizune's eyes widened. "Sa-Sakura!"

Sakura grinned a bit impishly at her sempai. She gave Shizune a wink before looking back at Tsunade. "So," Sakura said instead as she glanced passed Tsunade at the cluttered desk. "I'm going to guess that no one has organized those documents since I've been gone."

Tsunade huffed and crossed her arms under her chest, glad that neither of them had to have another awkward conversation about Sakura coming back or the incident that made her leave. Tsunade was also a little bit relieved that Sakura was back to normal. It did surprise her though, since she really hadn't expected Sakura to have recovered this quickly. Did she underestimate her own student this time? Well, with Shizune's entrance she could just get Sakura right back to work. It was better than doing the stupid paperwork on her own and she didn't even need to ask for Sakura to come back. Not that she'd have asked otherwise without some form of crawling and groveling from Sakura, Tsunade consoled herself silently. "You can start by organizing this mess then, since you're so eager." Tsunade ordered as she walked back to her seat and sat down heavily.

Shizune and Sakura shared a look and a silent smile.

"Tsunade-sama," Shizune said as she walked over to the Hokage, setting the scrolls down on-top of the piles already gathering on the Godaime's desk. "Morino-san's reports concerning that Sound-nin are here, but I also picked up a few of the records you had asked for earlier. Morino-san," Shizune said with a slight wrinkle on the bridge of her nose, "included a summary of the most important details that you should pay attention to." Sakura quirked a brow at this, her interest perked by what she heard. It seemed that she had gotten back at a crucial time. Tsunade, however, didn't bother to look at her current pupil nor did she fill Sakura in on what the other had missed. Well, Sakura wasn't a Chuunin for nothing, and information gathering was a skill she had to have in order to become what she was today. It would have just been easier if Tsunade didn't go out of her way to make Sakura's life more difficult.

"Good," Tsunade nodded as she glanced over the scrolls, ignoring the slight frown her apprentice was shooting her. "Clean up the rest of the desk before you leave today then, Sakura." Sakura nodded sharply before her eyes wondered distractedly over the fresh pile of work Shizune brought from the head-quarters of Torture and Interrogation. Tsunade didn't even have to look at her to know Sakura was wearing her puppy-dog face. "If you're finished with your other duties by tonight, maybe I'll let you look over these and see if I missed anything."

Sakura blinked and looked sharply to her teacher, her expression of barely contained excitement made her eyes shine brightly. "Right away, Tsunade-shishou!"

This time it was Shizune and Tsunade's turn to share a look and a silent smile.