Month 1
Sakura quickly walked into the café, nearly barreling into the poor greeter at the door. She apologized with a deep bow then rushed past the front stand to her favorite booth near the back of the teashop. Once she reached her destination, she sat with a curse as Ino tapped her watch with her perfectly sculped brow risen in faux annoyance.
"I know, I know, Pig. I was so close, but an appointment ran over," Sakura grabbed the glass of water waiting for her and squeezed a lemon into it, careful to avoid any seeds falling in.
"Sounds reasonable, but I do love torturing you with your fear of turning into Kakashi-sensei," Ino wagged her brows at her best friend. Sakura was always the punctual one, and any disturbance to that timeliness sent her into a tailspin of anxiety. Ino had no clue how she'd managed to put up with Kakashi-sensei's perpetual lateness for years, but somehow the rosette hadn't combusted yet.
"Thanks, Pig. What a great friend to use my worst nightmare against me," Sakura feigned a glare and opened the menu as if dismissing her friend. But they both knew Sakura was just using it as a distraction; she always ordered the same thing.
"We both know that's not your worst nightmare," Ino said smugly, sipping her own water slowly through her straw. She waited for Sakura to look up from her charade and received the genuine scowl she'd been aiming for.
"You are ruining my one day to leave early, Pig." Sakura set aside her menu and patiently waited for their server.
"Oh, I'm just ruffling your prim feathers, Forehead. Someone has to every once in a while. You're too used to getting your own way," Ino's crystal blue eyes danced with mirth at her best friend's continued scowl. Ino was glad to see her friend taking a breather, even if it was just the time set aside for their midday meeting.
"I would say the council is doing a great job of ruffling my feathers now, Ino-pig," Sakura grumbled as she set aside her menu. Ino raised her brow in confusion and was about to respond when their waitress showed up to take their orders. As always, Sakura ordered an almond tea cake with icing and jasmine tea, and Ino ordered the chai with a splash of milk and a half serving of sweetened rice cake. Once they were back to their relative privacy, Ino prompted Sakura to continue.
"They are blocking me at every turn with the children's hospital. It's impossible for me to read every single scroll in the archive to look for the mere mention of ill mental effects on children. And they know that!" Sakura thrusted a hand into her hair in frustration. None of the scrolls she'd borrowed from the archives had anything close to what she was looking for. She was back to square one.
"They're sending me on a wild goose chase, Ino, and I can't figure out why. They can't actually hate children…can they?"
"I mean they're so old, I'm not sure they remember what children are," Ino grasped Sakura's hand in comfort. "I'm convinced they just see little walking kunai and shuriken, maybe a bandage every once in a while when the other villages start to become more antagonizing."
Sakura chuckled despite herself at the image of little kunai swinging on the swings and shuriken running through the marketplace. She had no doubt that that was exactly how Konoha's council saw them, well not exactly. They wouldn't see the fun of being children; they would see the sharpening of metal to kill. The waitress came out with their order, momentarily silencing their conversation again as they said their 'thank you's' and the customary prayer to start eating.
"Ino, would your clan happen to have anything on the toll of mental stress on a shinobi? Even if it isn't about children, I can easily show a link between what isn't handled at the onset being a festering wound. Something is better than nothing." Sakura squeezed her friend's hand with her plea. The Yamanaka clan were the experts on all things having to deal with the mind; Ino was her best resource.
"We might have something, Sakura," Ino started but shook her head harshly when she saw her friend getting too excited. "But honestly, it's more likely to be framed as a negative interrogation strategy: a warning to not damage a target beyond mental repair so that they stay useful, or a warning for us not to go too deep and lose our own psyche in the process. I'm not sure there will be anything about how to use our techniques to help process trauma."
Sakura felt some pressure rise from her chest; she had a potential starting point at least. She took a sip of her tea to wash her cake down. "That might be enough, Ino. It might be the only thing I've got that's more concrete. Would your clan be willing to share it with me?"
Ino swirled her tea in her cup with a slight frown. Clan secrets were hard won, and they couldn't risk just anyone seeing their sacred knowledge. She wasn't at all sure she wanted the Konoha council to have any more information on the Yamanaka's gifts than they already did with many of them being a part of the Intelligence and Torture and Interrogation units respectively. Luckily for Ino, it wasn't her decision to make, yet. But, her frown deepened, one day requests like this would be.
"I'll ask my father. That's the best I can do." Ino tipped her lips in a small closed-mouth smile. "I can't promise anything, Sakura. You may be my best friend, but I have to protect my clan."
"I get it. Thank you, Ino; that's all I can ask of you." Sakura nodded gratefully. If the Yamanaka could give her anything, that could make a world of difference for the children of Konoha. Ino shrugged her shoulders as if to say, 'Don't mention it,' and took the last bite of her rice cake. Her stomach gurgled for more, but she fought back the urge to order another slice; she was on a diet and she had to stick to it, no matter how deliciously enticing another slice sounded.
"If that doesn't work, I could always ask members of my clan if they'd be willing to testify to the council. Many of them have served in the T&I division, and they know the damaging effects of mental health when it comes to extraction," Ino suggested then looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to them. She whispered: "There have even been those who were pushed too far and had to leave the unit after what they'd seen and done. They might be a better reference than anything the scrolls could provide. But you didn't hear that from me."
Sakura nodded her understanding at Ino's silent warning: the underneath the underneath. A Yamanaka prided themselves on their ability to extract information; it was their family's sacred technique, so to become too overwhelmed with torturing a mind to the point of breaking was a great shame to the shinobi and the clan. Once a Yamanaka joined the T&I unit, they were expected to stay in it until they retired or died, whichever came first. To quit was to permanently retire as a ninja. Sakura was thankful every day that Ino had chosen the Intelligence route, something that would keep her from the dark underbelly classified as protecting one's village.
The conversation shifted a little as the girls finished their desserts and got an extra serving of tea. Ino suggested that Sakura talk to Shikaku Nara, head of Konoha's Intelligence and Strategy division, to see if the Nara clan had any information in their vast knowledge of medicinal herbs and techniques. Sakura was already planning on talking to Shikaku, but she welcomed the suggestion as a confirmation that she was on the right path.
The conversation shifted again to the festivals and holidays coming up in a few months, their wardrobes, Hinata's upcoming wedding, and the need for a girls' day before Hinata's big day. Sakura enjoyed the opportunity to just talk with her best friend. With growing up and their work schedules as increasingly in demand kunoichi, it could be weeks before they laid eyes on each other, much less have time to actually have a conversation again. Sakura vowed to change that; their lives would only get busier as they got older, and she didn't want to lose their close friendship.
As an hour trickled by, Sakura disappointedly felt that she should get going to the Nara district; she didn't want to get to Shikaku too late or stay until a rude hour. She hadn't had interaction with the older man in quite a while, but she still wanted to make the best impression she could. Before Sakura could initiate a goodbye, Ino held her hand up.
"There is something I wanted to talk to you about, Forehead." Ino set her teacup down and pushed it to the side. Sakura's eyebrow rose at Ino's suddenly serious demeanor and she mimicked her friend's action.
"What's up?" Honestly, Sakura was raking her brain for something that could have caused the switch in behavior. She didn't keep her pulse on the rumor mill of Konoha, but if Ino had had something juicy, she would have no doubt shared it within seconds of her sitting down.
"My clan's been talking." Ino's voice was difficult to place. It was sharper than usual, but her words trailed off to a softer end. Ino looked down at her nails as if avoiding her next words, but then looked up directly into Sakura's jade eyes with determination.
"You're going to have to give me a little more to go on, Pig. Talking about what?" Sakura prompted. Really, what could her clan be talking about that Ino thought she would have any information on?
"It hasn't gone unnoticed that Itachi still doesn't have an heir. They're curious to see how long the Uchiha clan will wait." Ino gave her a pointed look, and Sakura's eyes narrowed with recognition. She frowned and tipped her chin down. Sakura looked away, worrying her lip with her teeth. How much of the Uchiha clan's actions, of Sasuke's life, could she share? Should she share? It wouldn't be long before Sasuke broke things off with Kanami, so would telling Ino about the list be so bad? Then again, Ino had a tendency to blab about things that weren't a security threat; telling Ino could be the equivalent of shouting it from the rooftops.
Sakura looked back up into Ino's patient stare and decided to test the waters. "Why is your clan interested in the actions of the Uchiha?"
Ino shrugged, trying to give an air of nonchalance, but Sakura could tell it was clearly forced. "Call it projection. My clan isn't exactly pleased that I'm not married yet; I'm practically a spinster. They're interested to see how the Uchiha clan is handling Sasuke."
Sakura gave Ino a sympathetic look. As the heir to her clan, Ino was fully aware of her eventual duty, but unlike the Uchiha clan, the Yamanaka were not as strict with who married in or out of the clan. Ino had been waiting for Shikamaru to propose to her for what seemed like years. Yet like every other decision, much to Ino's perpetual annoyance, the lazy bum was taking his sweet time. They were both seeing other people for physical release in the meantime, as most shinobi who weren't engaged did. Ino and a jōnin a year ahead of them had almost standing appointments, and Shikamaru and Temari hooked up whenever she was in the village or he had a mission to Suna. Knowing the younger Nara's avoidance of anything that was "a drag," it was more likely he would propose after he and Ino already had their Ino- and Shika- for the trio. That obviously wouldn't fly if Ino's clan was thinking about giving her a deadline too.
Sakura looked into her best friend's eyes and saw something rarely found in the beautiful cornflower orbs: fear. Ino was afraid that whatever the Uchiha clan was deciding with Sasuke could be her fate too if Shikamaru didn't get a move on it. Of course, they both knew that Ino could propose herself, but she was afraid that Shikamaru would say yes only because it would be too troublesome to say no. With all the drama behind clan marriages, Sakura was thankful she could remain blissfully on the outside as moral support. She checked her gut feeling and it wasn't screaming at her to keep her mouth shut, so Sakura grabbed Ino's hand and told her the truth.
"His clan gave him the list," Sakura sighed, knowing that she didn't need to elaborate any further. Ino's lip trembled but she pulled her hand back and tossed her hair, sending waves of blonde silk dancing in the afternoon sunlight. Ino examined her perfect manicure in an attempt to control her feelings. Sakura let her sink into that well-practiced persona.
"Let me guess, there was absolutely no declaration of love for Miss Priss, and he's going to go through with courting whoever's on the scroll?" Ino smirked cruelly, waiting for Sakura to confirm it. Sakura nodded.
"I'm not surprised. I read her as all wrong for him the moment I met her, not a wonder that Sasuke saw the same thing. But breaking up with civilian girls can be a hassle," Ino continued on, then stopped suddenly, letting her expression fall and the chink in her armor show again. "What's annoying is that I don't know if Shikamaru is thinking the same way with me, or if he's just waiting on Temari."
"Shikamaru and Sasuke are two totally different men, Ino. You know that. Sasuke's following the list for his clan and for his brother. Shikamaru's probably taking so long to propose because he's too lazy to go ring shopping. Who's to say the threat of losing you won't be enough to light a little fire under his ass?"
"Yeah, you're right, Forehead. I'm a catch," Ino said with a watery smile. She dabbed at her eyes primly to keep tears from ruining her makeup.
"We could always kidnap him, force him to the altar. It'd make a great romantic ballad that the poets will sing for ages," Sakura gave her friend a mischievous look to cheer her up; she hated to see the usually confident and go-getter woman disheartened.
"That'd be too troublesome," Ino gave a mock impression of Shikamaru's deep voice, not too concerned with perfect mimicry. Both girls laughed. Obviously, those would be the exact words he would use when the blindfold was pulled off his eyes and he realized that he'd been kidnapped for his own wedding.
The kunoichi talked a few minutes longer before paying their tabs and heading out the door. They promised to meet up again with Hinata and Tenten and then headed on their way: Ino to the Intelligence headquarters, Sakura to the Nara district. She hoped that Shikaku would be there and not in some meeting or another. She really wasn't looking forward to traversing the entire village on the rest of her time off.
As Sakura walked to the Nara compound, she attempted to organize her thoughts into a proper pitch for access to the Nara records, but thoughts of Ino kept drifting in, distracting her from her mission. She desperately wanted to do something to help her best friend, who had had her sights set on Shikamaru for quite a while. And it was obvious that Shikamaru loved Ino; he would have to to put up with the sheer amount of time it took Ino to get ready for anything. For all Shikamaru would complain about, for some reason Ino had escaped the "troublesome" label. Surely, Shikamaru had to be aware of Ino's feelings for him. But he hadn't exactly broken things off with Temari, so Ino wouldn't break things off with her fling until Shikamaru did with his; it would just be too embarrassing for her if he chose someone else.
'Even Naruto had dropped his arrangement when he eventually became aware of Hinata's love; how could Shikamaru not know that Ino wanted to spend the rest of her life with him? Maybe I could talk to him? But if I do, then Ino won't have the comfort of knowing that he proposed because he wanted to.' Sakura's thoughts came to an end when she saw that she was approaching the Nara main house. Even though she had been to the Nara district before, it always struck her at how quickly she could arrive there from the center of the village. And even more surprising was that the main house was the first one anyone came to: just out in the open for friend or foe. The layout of the Nara clan's housing was so different from the Uchiha compound, so much more open and connected to the village than what the Second Hokage had relocated the Uchiha to.
As she drew closer to the main house, the deer grazing happily outside looked up cautiously, their tails turning up, as they evaluated her presence. If they sensed she carried ill intentions, they would bolt towards the sacred forest, alerting the clan to danger. Their eyes widened as she approached but they walked closer to her, recognizing her from the time she had spent as a chunin logging medical herbs and renegotiating bargaining terms for the hospital's supply.
"I'm sorry; I forgot to bring sugar cubes or a salt lick," She gave them a small bow as an apology. The deer flicked their tails in offense at her nerve to show up without a gift and went back down to grazing, ignoring her presence completely. Sakura laughed and strolled up to the main house to knock. The door slid open and Shikaku stepped out to the porch with a shogi board. He held his hand out for her to take a seat at the table that was always ready for a game in beautiful weather. Sakura smiled and took a seat, waiting for him to set up their game. When she visited as a chunin, Shikaku had taught her how to play the game of wits.
"Shogi is a game of strategy," he had told her, "but not of strategy to win. Strategy of your opponent and their will to win. You will always learn the truth of your opponent: what their intentions are, what they are willing to sacrifice, who they are to their very being. A game of shogi will tell you what words will not."
Sakura had taken his lesson to heart and had used shogi to learn much about him, Shikamaru, and Yoshino. Yoshino was impatient, barely waiting for her opponent to make their move before she had moved her pieces again on the board. Sakura knew that Yoshino must have been fierce in battle as an active kunoichi, but her impatience had its predictable downside; she made mistakes. It was easy to bait her into a trap by taking so long that she lost her temper and made a move, not pausing to examine the trap that she would fall into a few short moves later. Shikamaru was calculating; he forced Sakura to always be thinking 20 moves ahead, to look at every possible outcome no matter how small. His ability to see so many different paths helped her look at problems from multiple angles and form a solution where she may have only looked from one angle and gotten stuck. Shikaku, however, was a blend of both his wife and his son. Of course he was calculating, but he was also decisive. He evaluated the best course of action and moved with conviction, not afraid of his choice but also not afraid to recalculate with new information. Playing shogi with the Nara main family had taught Sakura much of the skills necessary for handling the political underbelly of running a hospital. It was only fitting that she come back for another lesson.
Once the board was ready, he let her make the first move. Sakura moved her fu into place, initiating their game, but not the true war she was waging. They remained quiet for most of the first game, capturing each other's pieces and reintegrating them back into their own forces, both studying their opponent through the board. Shikaku claimed the first game without much difficulty, then reset for their next. He made no comment on her obviously rusty skills and lack of focus. Sakura took deep breaths to quiet her mind and body and fixated on the board.
"The deer said you were troubled," He spoke calmly, leisurely moving his keima forward.
"Un," Sakura grunted, reevaluating why he would make such a move when none of her fu were particularly close to his side. "I've been reading scrolls." She moved a fu on the other side of the board to clear some way for her kyosha to move forward on her next turn.
"For the children's hospital I presume?" Shikaku moved his fu forward, planning to cut off the path for her kyosha and lining it with his keima.
"I've run into a dead end, Shikaku-sama." She growled in frustration and moved her fu to claim his. She placed the ivory piece on her side, waiting for when it would be a good time to deploy the little soldier as her own. "I've searched almost every scroll on medicine, and there are only a few medicinal remedies for quieting the mind, but nothing that specifically links it to trauma. Either nothing has been documented, or they've hidden everything so well the archive managers can't even find anything."
Shikaku examined the board carefully. He could move his kaku diagonally to capture one of her fu but that would leave him directly open to an attack from her keima, which would be foolish. He looked at the arrangement of all of her pieces, wondering where her strategy would take him this time. She usually leaned heavily on feigns and getting her opponent to underestimate her, springing the trap when they were fully lulled into expecting her to make another move and so discarded the move she had just made.
"Perhaps you'd be better off collecting sources now, rather than looking through the archives." He picked up his fu and sacrificed it to her keima instead.
"Well I was going to ask if I could see the Nara archives again. You think that's a bad idea?" She twirled his captured fu in her fingers, surprising him with a counter from her kaku that captured his fu and kaku. He surely hadn't expected her to move so aggressively so early, but he nodded his head at her tried and true method.
"You've pulled some new tricks now that your brain remembers your skill," He gave her a smile that left her preening. That is until he moved his kyosha to capture her kaku. "Aggression is admirable, but as you know with my wife, it can typically come back to haunt you. Feigning is not always a bad strategy, Sakura."
Sakura nodded then. Looking at the board, she saw a place where his captured kaku could come in handy and moved it back into play. They were silent for a bit, focused intently on their game. Each took into account the other's positions, how many pieces they had in reserve, and how each of those pieces could be deployed against their original side. Sakura's mind lit up with a strategy, but she kept her brow furrowed as if she was still trying to figure out how to win. "If I feigned, if I told the council I was going to gather data and present it to Suna…how well do you think that would work?"
Shikaku stroked his goatee, thinking deeply about her proposition. Suna was a friendly village since the 5th Kazekage, Gaara, had taken over, but Konoha was always wary about other villages implementing new techniques for their shinobi. One couldn't fight an effective war if they didn't know what supplies their allies had, and it was always better to have a plan for betrayal than to be blindsided in faith. Going to Suna could work, and he told her so, but gave a caveat.
"If you make that threat, you have to be ready to follow through or else you'll lose all negotiating power. Are you sure that you could abandon Konoha's youth for some amount of time if Suna did in fact want you to set up your hospital?"
"I have to be; I want children to grow up healthy, and if I can reach more than just Konoha's children, than that's even better, Shikaku-sama. Besides, if Suna is actually willing to listen about the needs of their children, that might be a wakeup call to Konoha's own arrogance," Sakura bit out, taking another of his pieces but sacrificing one to set her trap.
"Then it seems you know your plan," he moved his kin to take her last gin and smiled, seeing the opening towards her gyoku. On his next move he would be able to take down her king and win the game.
"It seems I do," Sakura smiled, moving his captured hisha into play and moving diagonally to the square directly in front of his gyoku. Shikaku studied the board intently, wondering how he had not realized her plan to move all of their pieces in an opposite diagonal path. He sighed with his head down then smiled at her, conceding defeat. Sakura smiled back with confidence; this may have only been her first win, but it was one she desperately needed.
Author's Note: To everyone who reads, gives Kudos/favorites, leaves reviews, follows/subscribes, bookmarks, or any other way you show your interest, a huge thank you. I'm glad that you are receiving something from me telling the story I want to tell.
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