"What I'm saying is, Zabuza and Haku don't have to be our enemies. They're working for Gato for money, and if they find out that he sent mercenaries to kill them..."

"The problem here," Kakashi says after a moment of thought, "is that they have no reason to believe us. We have no evidence, and the only interaction we have had with them had been... violent."

Sakura scrunches her face in thought. "...This might sound strange, but I think they might believe us if Naruto is the one to talk to them."

"Naruto?" Kakashi asks blankly. The blonde would not be his first pick for peacebroker. "Why Naruto?"

"He has this... skill," she explains delicately. "Under the right circumstances, he can convince pretty much anyone out of everything. It's pretty unbelievable - there was a man, Pein... he destroyed the village and killed pretty much half of the population -"

"He what?"

"- and then Naruto went off to talk to him face to face. Somehow, he got Pein to sacrifice his life in order to resurrect everyone he killed, as well as get his right hand woman to pledge the allegiance of both herself and the entirety of the village of Amegakure."

"Resurrection? That's possible?" Kakashi asks, grabbing on to what seemed the most unbelievable. "I know of Edo Tensei, but to bring the deceased back to true life...?"

"I've seen Edo Tensei too. What Pein did wasn't it - no black sclera or disintegrating skin. But you have to possess the Rinnegan and sacrifice your own life to do it," Sakura adds quickly, and he wonders if his desperate hope was that obvious. "Or have the Rinnegan and be incredibly, stupidly stubborn," she amends.

"The Rinnegan exists?" He asks again, suddenly aware of the common thread within all his questions. "...I see that the shinobi world undergoes some pretty big changes in the next decade, then."

"No kidding," Sakura groans. "It's all Naruto, I swear. My life would never have been so weird if I hadn't been put on a team with him." The words themselves do nothing to dampen the sheer fond nostalgia within her tone.

A hint of horrible suspicion rears its head. "In the future, are you and Naruto...?" He trails off, unsure of how to word the question. He wasn't necessarily interested in the love life of his future students, but the knowledge would be useful in understanding this future Sakura's motivations (as well as any... conflict within the team in the near future, he thinks, remembering a similar dynamic on his own team.)

"...In a relationship...?" Kakashi nods slightly. "Oh, no." She laughs a little. "No, there's nothing there. He's like a brother to me - a seriously overpowered brother who can be really stupid at times. Besides, I'm too busy running the hospital to add even more obligations. Maybe in a few years, when we finally finish rebuilding the village."

He accepts the information with another nod (if things had been different, would Rin and Obito have become the same?) and changes the topic. "I might not have any particular desire to keep Zabuza and his subordinate alive, but I would rather not fight two dangerous missing nin while protecting a genin team. As long as Naruto won't be at any danger, I suppose it wouldn't hurt."

The unspoken question there is, why does she have such an investment in the survival of two missing nin, especially when Team 7 had gotten out of the engagement relatively unscathed?

It speaks to Sakura's experience that she tells him with no further prompting, "My team was pretty traumatized by our fight with Zabuza and Haku. It would be better if Team 7 could see death firsthand under... different circumstances, especially since Zabuza and Haku are pretty decent people."

She pauses briefly before adding casually, "Besides, the survival of another member of the Seven Swordsman could do wonders for the revolutionaries in Kirigakure. Since the current Mizukage is under the control of Uchiha Madara, his early deposal can greatly change the sphere of the shinobi world for the better. And having Zabuza as an ally would mean a possible alliance between Konoha and Kiri."

"...I didn't choose you as advisor just because you were my student, did I?" He asks slowly.

Sakura grins. "Well, I can't speak for Rokudaime-sama... "

Things had moved very quickly, after the war had ended. The peace had held, for unfair trade agreements had seemed a paltry excuse to fight and kill people that one had fought alongside for so long. There had been some grumbling about Konoha – after all, the main offenders had both been Uchiha, had both originated from the village.

That had ended when Tsunade had pointed out, sweet smile on her lips, that as it happens, so had the team that had ended both them and the war, and all four (five? six?) of them were still loyal Konoha shinobi who would definitely fight for the sake of their village. If, of course, some idiot had thought Konoha was deserving of war.

They reconsidered very quickly after that.

A few months after the war, Senju Tsunade had announced her resignation of the post of Hokage and named Hatake Kakashi as her successor. It wasn't the nomination that had surprised most of the shinobi world. It had been the fact that he accepted.

(Most of, because Team 7 had always had a closer look on the inner working of their sensei, and Sakura had a good idea of Obito's last words to Kakashi before he faded into dust.)

Sasuke had again left the village in some confusing attempt to find meaning in his life and absolution for his crimes – and was promptly dragged back by a red-faced Naruto, who had announced that if he was going to look for anything, then he better have the two of them by his side, dattebayo! A week staying in the village had turned into a month, and when a year had passed, Sakura had realized that maybe her teammate was finally done running away from his problems.

Team 7 was used to the unusual. They had each surpassed the expectations others had placed upon them, and have done the impossible. They had spent months fighting alongside temporarily resurrected Hokages, against a zombified Uchiha Madara and the goddess Kaguya who had apparently been manipulating his resurrection for her own. Sometimes, Sakura longed for the days when all she had to worry about was a missing-nin, or a bandit or two.

When Kakashi-sensei had called her in to his office and dismissed all but one of his ANBU from their immediate vicinity to tell her that Uchiha Obito – war criminal, mass murderer, and Kakashi's best friend – was somehow alive and had apparently been disguising himself as ANBU for the past few months… well, Sakura had barely been surprised. The remaining ANBU in the office – Obito – had waved at her then, and she could do nothing more than sigh.

"You didn't tell Naruto or Sasuke yet. Why me?" Sakura had asked. After all, it had been Naruto who had convinced the Uchiha back to the side of the light, and Sasuke who was his only (estranged) family. Outside of a brief period of teamwork while saving Naruto's life, she barely knew the man.

"Obito insisted," her sensei had replied mildly. She raised an eyebrow.

"You're the only member of Bakashi's team with enough brains and maturity to be trusted with the information," Obito had explained curtly.

"What he means is that Naruto would probably announce without the slightest regard to political considerations, from the very top of the Hokage Monument, the survival of – what was it, Obito? 'The coolest guy he knew.'"

"...I thought we agreed to never talk about that." Obito had complained, crossing his arms.

"Then, what about Sasuke?" Sakura had asked. Her sensei gave her a half-lidded look that conveyed volumes. "...Never mind."

[A/N: Post-Naruto canon AU blatantly stolen from black. - by which I mean, I asked her politely for permission. One more chapter before I need to kick my ass in gear and start actually writing new chapters for this...]