~A/N: Oh hey guys! I just wanted to say real quick, this is a KakaSaku, but there's not going to be any Sasuke bashing going on here. I realize he does make a pretty good antagonist for KakaSaku fics, but I really love him (and I actually like the SasuSaku pairing in cannon even though it will not appear here) so yeah, there's no Sasuke hating here. Just thought I'd make that clear from the start.

Two: Stirring of the Wind

Tsunade tapped her fingers nervously on the desk, while Jiraiya stood silently looking out the window. How she had even managed to become Hokage over her white-haired friend, she would never know. Sure, she was probably smarter, but when push came to shove she couldn't really say that she was more reliable than Jiraiya.

"It's not my thing," Jiraiya murmured, without looking over.

"Huh?" the blonde asked, realizing she had spaced out looking at her friend.

Jiraiya turned to face her. "I was just thinking. Being in charge. It's not my thing. You're far better suited for leading people than I am."

Tsunade smiled. Somehow her old teammate could always read her like a book. Although preferably not like the kinds of books he wrote, even though she knew better. She'd forced Kakashi to tell her once when she got the suspicion that Jiraiya had modeled one of the heroines after her.

"Yeah, but you're still more reliable than me."

Jiraiya snorted. "Well that's always been true, yet you've always been the one to lead us. Doesn't mean I won't still be here as your right-hand man. Nothing will ever change that."

"Good," Tsunade sighed. "I'm not sure how well this desk would treat me if I had to deal with it all by myself."

Jiraiya resumed looking out the window, his hands folded behind his back. "I'm sure you would manage."

"I don't know," Tsunade said, leaning back and kicking her feet up. "I think it would be pretty rough."

"I didn't say it wouldn't be."

She smirked, feeling bold and deciding to mess with him a little. "Shizune has this habit of hiding my sake from me. What would I do without you there to find it for me? I'd be lost without you baby."

Jiraiya could hear the smile in his friend's voice. He was about to make another joke when he heard a knock at the door.

"Come in," Tsunade called, frowning because they weren't expecting anybody. None of their agents were out on recon missions, so she wasn't waiting for any reports.

Jiraiya raised a questioning eyebrow at her, but Tsunade just shrugged as one of the guards led an unfamiliar man into the room.

It was no one from the village, Tsunade was sure of that. The man's face was one she would have remembered, with sharp features and upturned eyes. Long blonde hair tied in a low ponytail cascaded down his back, and he was dressed quite well. Too well to have been from a village of shinobi, the Hokage decided.

Knowing Jiraiya would have already come to these conclusions, Tsunade stood to great the stranger.

"Welcome. I am the Hokage, Tsunade. May I ask what your business with me is? I do not recognize you as being from around these parts."

The man before her bowed. "You are correct, milady. I am a messenger from Lord Sasaki of the Land of Silver. He has a request to ask of you. I can assure you that milord will make it worth your time to read."

Tsunade exchanged a glance with Jiraiya, but reached forward to take the Lord's letter. She held it out so Jiraiya could scan it over his shoulder. If this surprised the messenger, he didn't show it.

"There's been rebel activity up in the Land of Silver?" Jiraiya asked as soon as he had finished the letter. "But that region's been stable for years."

The toad sage would know, Tsunade thought. No one had traveled the land as extensively as he had.

The messenger nodded. "That is what has milord so troubled. For hundreds of years, the Land of Silver has enjoyed peace, but lately there have been many attacks—"

"Attacks? Lord Sasaki didn't mention those in his letter!" Jiraiya exclaimed, and Tsunade had to force herself not to hit him over the head. Better the messenger didn't know that.

It was too late now; the messenger realized his mistake and clammed up, refusing to elaborate when Tsunade asked him for details on the attacks that he'd mentioned.

"So what, Lord Sasaki wants us to send an army to fight for him then?" Tsunade asked, rubbing her temple.

"No, Lady Hokage. Milord wishes for you to send a team to investigate. He believes that this rebellion has been started by someone from within the Land of Silver itself, and thought that a team of your shinobi would be able to infiltrate the city and discover the rebels' identities."

"Hm," Jiraiya said, pursing his lips together in concentration. "You want someone who can gather intel without it being traced back to the royal family, is that right?"

"That is correct, sir."

"Very well, I will consider your request. I just need time to deliberate with my advisers before I make any final decisions," Tsunade said. "You will have your answer by tomorrow. I will have a room prepared for you."

"Thank you, milady," the messenger said, bowing again, before leaving the room.

As soon as the door was shut, Jiraiya turned to Tsunade. "I don't like this."

The blonde sannin raised an eyebrow.

"This sounds complicated," Jiraiya continued. "That region has been at peace for centuries, so why would it suddenly start getting volatile now after the war? I have a feeling if we get involved in this, we're going to end up getting ourselves sucked in."

"It's just a simple recon mission. One of our ANBU officers could handle it alone. It's hardly anything to worry about. Besides, I know some of our top ninja who are starting to get a little restless."

Jiraiya ran a hand through his hair. "There's something about this mission I still don't like, but you're right. One ANBU could handle this. And if it comes back that something more is going on, then it's not our problem."

"Unless we want it to be," Tsunade said. "It's good money, Jiraiya. You know as well as I do that the Land of Silver is loaded. And with all the damage and rebuilding we've had to do here over the past few years, we could use the extra resources."

"I suppose you're right. Well, who were you thinking of asking to take the mission?"

It didn't take Sakura long to make the trek over to Kakashi's apartment. After years of training with him, she knew where he lived. They'd often gone back to his place when Team Seven was younger after a particularly hard training session if they had small injuries that needed to be treated, since he lived close to the training grounds.

She knocked on his door, not entirely sure if she expected him to be home or not. She didn't exactly know her former teacher's habits outside of being late and reading Jiraiya's dirty novels, but she wasn't sure there was much else he liked to do besides read and fight.

A few moments later, the door opened. Sakura could tell he was surprised to see her.

"Sakura? What's up?" he asked, looking down at his former student with surprise. She wasn't one to actively seek him out if there wasn't something going on.

"Nothing really," she said. "I just hadn't seen you in a couple weeks and I had a question I was wanting to ask you."

"Okay, here, let me grab my jacket and we can go for a walk."

Sakura waited outside as he disappeared for a few seconds before coming back with a coat and two scarves. He draped one around her shoulders before wrapping the other around his neck.

"You looked cold," he said. "Now what did you want to talk to me about? If it's about your training, I really don't think there's much more I can teach you about using chakra control to come up with your own technique. You're better at it than me already," he added with his signature eye smile.

"Well it's sort of about my training," Sakura started. "You see, I feel like I've been getting really out of practice lately."

Kakashi nodded. "Yeah, I guess I haven't really been around. Sorry about that. You guys go from not being able to get rid of me for the past seven years to not seeing me at all. We can go spar sometime at the old training ground if you and the boys feel up to it. Knowing you four, you'd beat anyone else who you tried to train with."

Sakura smiled. "Even the ones who joined the ANBU Black Ops?"

Kakashi frowned, and when he didn't say anything, Sakura began to wonder if bringing it up had been a bad idea.

"No. Even you aren't that good," he said softly.

"Oh."

He looked down at her, a strange look on his face. "What makes you bring up ANBU?"

"Nothing, I was just curious if I'd be as strong as them."

"No."

Sakura couldn't help but be offended at how quickly he'd answered. But maybe he meant she just wasn't strong enough at her current level.

"Not yet?" she asked, hoping for clarification.

He nodded. "Yeah, not yet."

"But someday? Someday I'll be strong enough to join them?"

His eyes narrowed. "Maybe someday. Why the sudden interest?"

Sakura glared at him. "I'm just asking! Geez, what's with you today?" She almost felt bad. After all, she hadn't seen him in weeks, but then she remembered that he probably had better things to do than spend time with his old student, so she should be grateful that he'd even bothered to talk with her.

Kakashi sighed. "I'm sorry. I guess I've just been sort of tense lately with all this peace."

She couldn't help the smile that came to her lips. "Yeah, I totally get it. It's not that I'm not happy we won or anything, but it's sort of hard to come back to. It's like I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not fighting or training."

Something about her words struck a pang in his chest. She was nineteen. There was plenty for her to do besides fight and train, even if she was a ninja. He wondered, not for the first time, if he'd ruined her life that day he'd agreed to take her on as his student. If he'd ruined all their lives by pushing them too hard and never letting them have the time to do normal things and make normal connections with normal people.

"Kakashi? Kakashi!"

He realized he'd been spacing out and Sakura had been calling his name.

"Sorry, what?"

"I was asking if you were still with us," Sakura laughed. "Guess you weren't."

He smiled. "Sorry, I was just thinking."

"About what?"

He waved her off. "Nothing of importance."

She frowned. "Oh, okay."

They walked in a comfortable silence for a few more blocks, waving to the fellow shinobi that they recognized, but never stopping for conversation. They were almost a mile away from his apartment before Kakashi remembered she'd said she wanted to ask him something.

"Sakura? Wasn't there something you wanted to ask me?"

She fidgeted under his gaze. "Well, it's not really that important."

"Come on, spit it out. You've never been shy before."

"I was just curious about ANBU, that's all," she said quickly. "After all, you were in them before you started training me, right?"

His eyes narrowed again, and Sakura got the feeling that he wasn't happy about the question. "Why the sudden interest?"

She threw her hands up in the air. "I don't know! Maybe because I spent basically every day of the last seven years either fighting you or fighting with you, but I don't really know a thing about you! And the Black Ops came up in conversation today and I was just curious, that's all."

She was mad. Kakashi could be difficult, even on good days, but he was never this angry about it. Most of the time it was all done in teasing, but with the way he was acting, Sakura kept getting the feeling that she'd done something wrong.

"Don't you have better things to do besides ask your old sensei about his past? Come on you're nineteen," he said, trying to change the subject.

"Despite what everyone seems to think today, I can remember my own age," she snapped.

"Then don't you? Come on, surely you've got friends to go hang out with, boys to go on dates with? What are you doing hanging around me?"

Sakura looked at him like he was a total idiot. "I spent all of my adolescent years being trained by you and Lady Tsunade, when do you think I had time to make friends or date boys?"

Kakashi was taken aback by her words. He'd never really thought of it that way. Sure, they'd trained a lot, but he and Tsunade hadn't really ruined her life that much, had they?

"Come on, you've never been on one date?"

She glared at him. "If you have to know, then no. I haven't."

"Not even one?" At first he'd been teasing, but now he was honestly shocked. After all, he'd seen the looks she got when they walked through town.

She shook her head. "Not one. Ino told me once that most of the boys were too afraid of you to ask me out when I was younger, and then ones who did finally work up enough courage later were too scared of Tsunade."

Kakashi frowned. Maybe he really had been too hard on her when she was a kid. But she didn't seem to resent him for it.

Maybe that's because she doesn't have any idea what she missed out on.

Maybe she didn't know she was supposed to be mad that she missed out on all of those things. And that made him hate himself even more.

It convinced him all the more to make sure she was kept off of missions for awhile so she would have a chance to see what it would be like to live the life of any normal shinobi in the village. She wouldn't have to be constantly fighting. She could go months without taking an assignment. She could go out with her friends, find a nice guy, settle down.

Yes. He was all the more convinced that he would never let her do something like join ANBU, because he had been sure that was where this conversation was headed.

"Kakashi? You're spacing out again."

"I'm sorry."

She laughed. "It's okay."

"No. I mean, about everything. I'm sorry. I should've let you experience more when you were younger, instead of just training all the time."

"It's alright. It's not like we really had a choice. We had Itachi and Orochimaru and the Akatsuki to deal with, and then there was a war going on. None of that was your fault."

"I guess you're right," he said, unconvinced, but wanting to let the subject drop.

"Looks like I'll have lots of free time now," she said brightly. It was too bright, and Kakashi knew she was faking it.

He ran a hand through his hair. "It sure looks like it."

She bit her lip. "It's not like I want another war or anything, but I don't really know what to do with myself now."

"I know the feeling. Maybe some easy missions will come up."

"Yeah," she mused, "maybe. But since Sasuke's still injured and Tsunade is convinced that Naruto needs to start learning how to be Hokage so she can retire"—with Jiraiya, Sakura wanted to add, but she'd been sworn to silence—"we probably won't get a mission any time soon."

"Cheer up. We're a village of ninja. Something's bound to come up sooner or later. The world can't stay peaceful for too long, you know."

She grinned up at him. It was a true, genuine smile. "We're awful."

He smiled back. "I simply prefer to think we appreciate the different things in life."

"You know," she said, trying to hold back a smile, "you could also say murderers appreciate the different things in life."

Kakashi raised his hands in a defensive position. "I'm just pointing out that our definition of fun may not be completely rational."

"I'll say. Race you back to your place?"

"You're on."