'I have some business to attend to tomorrow morning, so if it isn't urgent then I can join you in the afternoon.' Sasuke told Kakashi.

'Alright.' And that settled it.

Team Seven stayed on late into the night, each focusing on their own interests. Much of the time they spent together usually passed like this. After so long of knowing each other, there was no need for conversation anymore. Simply being in each other's presence was comfort enough for them to enjoy the rare peace they could get in their line of career.

Eventually, Sasuke had to leave, and the group just waved him off as he closed the door behind him.

After another few hours of companionable silence, Sakura was fast sleep while seated at the table with her head resting on her arms, and Naruto was sprawled on the couch with his legs on Sai's lap while the artist was sketching in his sketch pad.

Seeing that he could still catch a few hours of sleep before preparing for the mission and meeting Sasuke at noon, Kakashi strode over to the kitchen counter to pick up Sakura's jacket. He then gentled spread it over her shoulders before lifting her in his arms to carry her over to her bedroom.

After depositing Sakura onto her bed and making sure the blanket was wrapped securely around her, he left by the bedroom window – not before closing it behind him to prevent the cold draft from blowing through.

Sai simply watched the older shinobi's movement throughout the short activity while continuing to sketch absentmindedly.

As a kunoichi, Sakura could do with more caution – but her lack of reaction might be because she had become so close to the copy-ninja that she no longer registered him as a threat, even when unconscious.

Naruto and Sai ended up sleeping over, and Ino found a half-naked Naruto walking out of the bathroom that was beside the bedroom when she went to visit Sakura in the morning.

'Hey, it's Ino!' Naruto greeted the Kunoichi. 'Did you bring breakfast?'

Rolling her eyes, she deposited a bag of freshly baked bread on the kitchen counter and walked to the bedroom to look for Sakura.

Everyone was already used to finding some other fragment of Team Seven along with the one they were actually looking for.

'Sakura, are you alright?' Ino entered the room without knocking.

Sakura was in the middle of strapping on her shinobi pouch.

'I'm fine?' Sakura replied quizzically.

She was supposed to meet Ino for lunch after her morning shift at the hospital and it wasn't like Ino to forget an appointment, so there was no reason for Ino to come finding Sakura at her house.

Ino studied Sakura.

Her friend looked a little pale and haggard, but that was the common appearance of medics who had to deal with long shift hours. She looked fine otherwise.

'Did something happen at the hospital recently?' Ino probed.

That morning, Kakashi had dropped by at her family's flower shop. At first, Ino wanted to inform her father that he had a guest, but she stopped when Kakashi called her out to talk to her. It was odd, because the copy-ninja usually came only to look for her father for some secretive shinobi business or another. This was a curious turn of events.

Apparently, Sakura had been acting a little off, and Kakashi wanted Ino to check on her since he would be away on a mission.

Ino personally hadn't detected anything wrong over the past few days, and even now, Sakura looked perfectly under control. However, Kakashi's paranoia was what had kept him alive through all sorts of suicidal missions and it was not something to lightly dismiss.

'Nothing.' Sakura replied a little too quickly.

As capable a kunoichi as she was, Sakura was never one to excel at deception missions – that was for people like Ino to handle.

Deciding to let her friend off the hook for now, Ino told Sakura that she had decided on a sushi restaurant for lunch and would be waiting for Sakura outside the hospital at noon.

There was plenty of time later to grill Sakura on her issues.

Sakura fed her boys before chasing them out to start the day.

Alone in her apartment, she took the time to organise her research files, binding some of the related ones together. It all ended up in a high stack on her dining table.

On hindsight, she should have kept Naruto here so that she could get him to carry the files over to the hospital for her – even Sai would have worked.

Sakura sighed. She has been distracted and off her game lately.

The only reason she had gotten a day off in the middle of the week was because Shinzune had noticed her constant absentmindedness and encouraged – or more of forced – her to take some time off. Sakura was initially given three days off, but Sakura insisted that she would take either one day or nothing.

Medics usually only had one day of rest per week, and every other day would be filled with different shifts – usually long. Their work was hard but fulfilling, and it required a certain breed of people who were willing to subject themselves to these conditions.

Gathering only the important notes to take with her, Sakura left her apartment without locking the door – there was not much point in their world of shinobi.

'Haruno-sensei, we've received an ANBU in the emergency ward.' The medic on duty at the service counter informed her when she entered the hospital.

Usually, emergency patients would be dealt with by the medics on duty, but Sakura or Shizune would be personally called to examine the patient if it was an ANBU or jounin. They were almost always the ones who get the worst injuries that would require expertise, and saving the lives of their village's protectors was something Konoha always upheld.

There was also a more unofficial explanation, which was to quickly get these high-ranking shinobi out of the hospital before regular citizens become aware that there had been something out there strong enough to hurt their village's elite forces. Panic among the people was never a good thing.

Sakura hurried to closed off section of the emergency ward that was meant for shinobi and took stock of the situation.

The ANBU was in shock from massive blood loss, and there were multiple stab wounds on the surface. With her palms glowing green, Sakura pressed onto the chest of the unconscious ANBU and pushed a minute amount of her own chakra through his system. Broken ribs, torn ligaments, organ trauma – no poison. In short, this wasn't all that bad. Just surgery coupled with chakra healing would do the trick.

Sakura had to wonder why it looked like the shinobi had been barrelled through with knives when "covert" was the mantra of ANBU, but she didn't bother to find out – she never did. How people got injured was never her concern. Her job came after.

The medic who was transferring the ANBU into a surgical room was cowering at the entrance in front of another imposing man whom Sakura presumed was the Captain.

'Do not remove his mask.' The Captain ordered.

The medic looked at Sakura pleadingly as she walked toward them.

'Take him into the room and prepare for surgery immediately. Must sure to take off the mask.' Sakura directed the medic before the frightened girl hastily pushed the bed away.

Sakura and the ANBU Captain stared each other down.

There was no protocol stating that ANBU had to take off their masks when brought to the hospital, but there also wasn't one to state that they had to have their masks on even in life-threatening situations. ANBU were simply encouraged to hide their identity as best they can, because an exposed identity would lower their efficiency and effectiveness on difficult missions.

ANBU were always imposing, and any regular citizen would find them frightening, even if they subconsciously knew that these people were the elite forces protecting Konoha. Even regular shinobi find being around ANBU unnerving. Sakura, however, probably had many friends already drafted into ANBU – Sasuke she knew for sure, since he disregarded the secrecy and told his teammates anyway. This was also why Sakura knew that underneath those masks, there were ordinary people who had lives just like any of them.

'I will do what is necessary to treat my patient, and you have no right here to stop me. You can try doing it by force, but I assure you that it will be a lot more trouble than it's worth.' Sakura smiled pleasantly at the Captain before leaving to carry out her job. She had her reputation as the Hokage's apprentice, and not a medic to be taken lightly.

Two hours of surgery later, Sakura was now sipping on coffee in her office, writing up a report on her latest patient. All shinobi who went for treatment had to be reported to the jounin commander, and in this case, the ANBU commander.

They were always a tough case to handle, because the reports cannot be too explicit in describing how the wound had been inflicted. A simple "knife wound" had to be termed as "deep lacerations". This was to prevent anyone from piecing together the mission objective of the ANBU by going through the list of injuries and their causes.

Sakura had never liked so much manipulating.

There was still an hour before lunch, so Sakura decided to head to the research wing of the hospital to check on the progress.

They were developing a new drug that would replace the traditional soldier pills in that the repercussions would be less severe. Shinobi will still be able to use it as a quick source of energy, but they will not have to face the migraine and possible physical backlash that would come afterward from lack of proper nutrients to the body. The effectiveness of the pill would also be simultaneously boosted.

If the research and manufacturing of this new drug goes well, it could also bolster Konoha's economy when they get the drug out on the market. It would take a while before other villages can figure out how to produce the drug, and by then, Konoha would have the reputation as its source.

Sakura initially advocated to keep the drug for Konoha shinobi use only, but Tsunade convinced her that the drug would be out on the black market anyway, so they might as well take the chance to sell it first.

Sakura entered the research lab that looked like it had been visited by a tornado.

In the world, there were two different types of scientists. One was the type to label every sample and piece of document neatly and keep everything well organised. The other was the type to write down everything anywhere on the spur of an eureka moment or random train of thought.

Sakura was the latter. Udon, her assistant, often tried to clean up the place, but he wasn't allowed to touch many of the key documents because Sakura would only be able to find it in her "organised chaos".

Unfortunately for Udon, there were more researchers in the lab who were more messy than neat, so the majority ruled the domain.

'Udon, can you look through these papers I drafted yesterday? I want your opinion.' Sakura requested.

'Sure. I'll get it back to you after lunch.' Udon was already flipping through his own stack of data and drawing conclusions on another sheet of paper.

Flipping through the research log, Sakura noted the things she missed when she had been away, but there hadn't been much progress. This was how things usually went with research. The research would stagnate until a key component or concept is found, then the rate of findings would exponentially increase.

'I guess I'll see you later, Udon. Make sure to get some sleep.' Sakura could see the hint of eye bags under his eyes.

'Speak for yourself, Sakura-nee.' Udon retorted.

Well, they were all medics.

As they had planned, Sakura found Ino waiting for her outside the hospital when it was time for lunch. The medics had two different shifts for lunch, and Sakura got the earlier one.

'I've been waiting all morning just for this.' Ino complained the moment Sakura got into earshot. 'There was so much to do.'

Ino helped out at the interrogation department, and in times of peace, they were usually the busiest. Crime and espionage played out a lot more often when there wasn't any impending war to worry about, and shinobi could focus on sabotaging other villages from within.

By the time the pair reached the sushi restaurant, it felt like Sakura's ears were bleeding from Ino's non-stop rant about anything and everything, and Sakura only got her reprieve when Ino was choosing from the menu.

'So, what's going on with you?' Ino finally switched her focus.

Sakura remained silent. She knew that Ino could see through any lie she would say, but she didn't exactly want to tell the truth either.

'Does this have something to do with Kakashi?' Ino probed.

'Wha-' Sakura began. 'No, why would you even ask that?'

Ino observed her friend. Naturally, anyone would first guess that the eccentric ninja had something to do with her mood since they were so close, but Sakura was obviously blind to that fact. She treated everyone how she liked and never really analysed her own actions.

'Then what's the problem?' Ino pressed.

Sakura sighed.

When Ino was determined to get something out of a person, she never gave up. She might not get it immediately, but she would keep pushing to wear that person down until she finally claimed victory.

It wasn't worth it to fight back so hard.

'I lost my patient. Last week.' Sakura admitted.

In her line of work, death was a familiar friend. However, this didn't mean that Sakura had to get used to easily accepting the death of people, especially someone that she had grown to care about as a patient. The death this time hit her harder than it ever had in years, because the patient was only twelve years old. The boy had been hospitalised since he was eight, and had been one of her first long term patients.

Just when it looked like he was getting better, his illness rebounded and got increasingly severe, to the point that nothing else could be done to save his life. The worst part of it was that his friends had visited him almost every day, and it reminder Sakura so much of her own group of friends. At twelve years old, they had all just graduated from the Academy and were eagerly looking forward to the life ahead of them. No one deserved to have that possibility robbed from them.

Ino saw that there was nothing she could say to her friend as comfort, because she personally couldn't understand what it was like being a medic to face all that pressure everyday, so she merely scooted into the booth beside Sakura to hug her.

Kakashi had been right, but Ino had no doubt that Sakura would get through it eventually, even if left on her own. Her friend wasn't mentally weak, and she was too professional to let it hinder her future work.

Speaking of Kakashi…

'Why didn't you tell Kakashi to stay with you?' Ino asked after Sakura composed herself again.

'What for?' Sakura was puzzled.

'I'm sure he would have if you asked.' Ino ignored Sakura's question.

Sakura knew that Ino was right, because both her and Kakashi had dropped missions at the other's behest before, and there was even once when Sakura simply decided to forgo the mission when she found out Kakashi wouldn't be able to go with her. Sai offered to help, but there were just some days when a girl didn't want to spend time alone with a creepy artist who had no sense of privacy – don't get it wrong, Sakura still loved Sai.

This time, however, there was no real reason for her to stop Kakashi, and the mission was only going to be four days long.

'Right.' Sakura said, deciding not to ask Ino why he had to stay. Who knows what Ino was up to?

After a moment of silence, Ino rolled her eyes at her friend.

One was a medic and the other was a war veteran. Both were intelligent and had exceptional observation skills. It was almost a crime for them to be so oblivious.

A/N:

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