Playing the Game

A/N: Chapter two is a different approach for me; more internalisation, less dialogue. It's kind of the antithesis of exciting, but bear with me. I'm a sucker for irony. Groundwork must be laid and character dynamics must be established.

Also, if you hadn't noticed, this story will toggle between Kakashi and Sakura's point of view.

---

Three days, thought Sakura. How many ANBU missions can realistically be completed in three days?

To be honest, she had no clue. She didn’t know much about the black ops except that ANBU missions often landed its members in the hospital, and she only knew that much because she was occasionally the one to treat such injuries.

It was 11:47 in the morning and Team Kakashi was set to depart at noon. They hadn’t talked about it, but she knew they’d wait for their captain, just for a little while, until Naruto couldn’t take it anymore.

Sakura glared at her impatient friend, who was pacing in front her on the newly rebuilt bridge they’d frequented as genin. It had been a tawny brown with red trimmings, then, but was now painted white with green railings. She wasn’t sure whose idea the change was, but at least she once again had a place to sit on a pillar and think every once in awhile, if she wanted to. However, with the village in a constant state of chaos since the Pain attack, she’d had little opportunity to find time for herself lately.

11:53.

Sai was leaning against one of the posts, looking out over the stream and sketching idly. Her face softened as she watched a slight smile tweak his lips, a sign that he was totally absorbed by his artwork. His true smiles were so rare that she was always glad to see them – similar for both Naruto and Kakashi, actually. Naruto grinned like a fool all the time, and Kakashi-sensei crinkled his eye in a way that made people think he was beaming, but Sakura knew that most of her teammates’ smiles were lies. Over time, she’d come to know the difference, just as they recognized the subtle discrepancies between her various smiles – excluding Sai, who still had a difficult time interpreting facial expressions and social situations in general.

Sakura felt so selfish that Sai was here, on this bridge, waiting to take on a possibly suicidal mission for someone he only cared for in an intellectual sense. However, she also knew that Kakashi was right in that leaving the alarmingly pale boy behind would be more selfish still, depriving the group of a talented long-range fighter in order to prevent her own guilt should Sai die in pursuit of her personal goals. Sasuke was part of Akatsuki, now, a group that had shown that it had the initiative to directly attack the village. The Uchiha had shown that he was more than willing to attack the village himself, if she were honest with herself. Sasuke was no longer only a Team Seven problem; he had become an issue for all of Konoha and even beyond.

11:57.

Of course, if Danzou had his way, Sasuke would be killed on sight. Naruto had slung around all of his newly-found clout in order to secure the orders to take Sasuke in for questioning before a final decision was made about his fate. Even if they managed such a seemingly impossible task, it was likely he’d still be executed, but they had decided as a group that they would deal with that when it became a more immediate issue.

11:58.

She leaned her too-wide forehead against a cool, painted pillar. Knowing that Kakashi was probably not coming was not quite the same as actually confronting that fact, she decided, but she would just have to face it. Inhaling deeply, she turned to address Naruto, whose constant pacing would drive anyone to violence –

Suddenly, his feet froze in place, head swinging towards an end of the bright bridge in one sinuous movement. “He’s here,” Naruto said simply.

Sakura’s gaze followed Naruto’s intense stare. There was nothing in the space he was focused on but she knew from experience that his senses would not be wrong.

When the form of four bedraggled ANBU appeared before her in a puff of smoke, Sakura’s shoulders sunk in relief.

She pointed at Naruto with one well-tended finger, laughter bubbling in her belly. “You lose!” she screeched obnoxiously. “It’s 11:59. Pay up, sucker!”

Naruto stared at first at Sakura, then at Kakashi, his jaw dropped in obvious surprise and dismay. “I can’t believe it. You cheated, Sakura-chan!” He glared at his teacher in suspicion. “What did she give you to make you early, Fishlips-sensei?”

Kakashi removed his ANBU mask to reveal a pout. “I’m hurt, Naruto, that you would accuse me of such underhanded dealings. And it’s not nice to call your sensei rude names.”

“I wouldn’t call you Fishlips if you’d stop hiding them,” Naruto grumbled, sulkily weighing his little froggy wallet in his hand, lamenting its sudden diet. “We don’t care if you have buckteeth, you know. You’d still be the same old Fishlips-sensei to us.”

Sakura tucked her windfall away and threw her arms around Naruto’s neck to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Naruto-kun!” she cooed, more girlish than usual. “Imagine how many new kunai this will buy!”

“You’re so mean to me, Sakura-chan!” Naruto whined.

“If you weren’t prepared to lose, you should not have accepted the terms, Dickless,” Sai piped up, though he didn’t look away from his sketchpad.

Sakura giggled and walked towards Kakashi as Naruto began to fume, yelling one of his standard insults at Sai.

“Thanks, Kaka-sensei, for helping me win my money back,” she said as she approached.

He tried to give her a smile in return, but she could see that he was too exhausted to give a proper greeting. The grin dropped from her face.

“Are you hurt?” she asked. “Is there anything I can –"

“No,” he cut her off. “But thank you, Sakura.”

“Sit down for a minute,” she ordered, suddenly brisk.

He just stared at her quizzically as she dug in her pack. She glared back at him until he complied with a sigh. Finally finding what she was looking for, she pulled out a bento and handed it to down him.

“I brought you one, just in case.”

Surprised, he tried to protest. “But—"

“You need sustenance if you’re going on back-to-back missions like this. Eat it, sensei.” Eyeing the food warily, he continued to hold the container away from his body. “I didn’t poison it, you know,” she insisted, scowling.

“Not intentionally,” he muttered under his breath, still eyeballing the bento as if its contents were much more sinister than they appeared.

“Oh, honestly!” she grumbled, finally realizing what all the fuss was about. “I didn’t actually make it myself. I bought it from that place you like by Ichiraku’s new stall.”

“Oh. In that case…” he said happily, misgivings forgotten as he opened the box.

“My cooking’s not that bad,” she protested weakly, heat rising to her face in embarrassment.

Kakashi just gave a non-committal grunt as he poked his food around in ritualistic pre-consumption inspection, one of his many idiosyncrasies. It was part of his fastidious nature, she guessed, though he insisted he was merely being a good ninja.

“You probably wouldn’t have to check every meal for toxins if you weren’t so annoying all the time,” she snapped waspishly. “You give people extra incentive.” Though disgusted with her leader, she turned apologetically to his ANBU teammates. “If I’d known you would be coming here, I’d have brought some for you as well.”

“Well, isn’t that just sweet,” one of the men laughed. Sakura could tell the three were amused at her team’s antics. Kakashi seemed to be more reserved around his ANBU squad, so maybe it was a shock for them to see him teased so mercilessly. Naruto tended to ignore things like propriety and she had to admit it had worn off on her, somewhat.

“Oi, Sakura-chan! Where’s my bento, eh?” her blonde friend called over excitedly.

“Moron!” Sakura turned to face Naruto in order to give her sensei a little privacy for his meal, even going so far as to block the sight of him from her teammates. As much as his reluctance to show his face irritated her, she was beyond the point of trying to sneak a peek. Well, at least when he would know about it. “We ate right before we came here, Naruto!”

He pouted. “But you only let me have five bowls of ramen!”

“We’re going to run all day, you idiot. You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I never get sick from ramen,” Naruto objected, clearly affronted at the perceived slight to his most trusted choice of cuisine.

She rolled her eyes, ignoring him in favour of the conversation she heard beginning behind her.

“Report the mission completion to Hokage-sama,” Kakashi was saying, “and tell him I’ve embarked with Team Kakashi. He might be upset at first that I didn’t come in person, but remind him of the time-sensitive nature of the mission.”

The woman with the cat mask seemed uncomfortable with this. “But, Hatake-taichou,” she began formally, obviously nervous, “that’s against policy.”

Kakashi sighed. “If he presses, tell him that I said to remember the numbers game.”

“The numbers game?” the woman repeated blankly.

“Just do it. That’s an order,” he barked, patience gone. The three ANBU, sufficiently cowed, hurried away from the bridge to do his bidding.

Sakura turned back towards Kakashi. “Aw, they’re scared of you! Isn’t that cute,” she teased.

“I wish I remembered when my team did as I told them. Maybe I could if such a time had ever existed.”

“You can’t have everything, old man,” she said sagely, offering him a hand up. “Maybe you’re just senile.”

He took the hand, not bothering to dust off his filthy uniform.

“Okay. Move out,” he commanded.

Despite his earlier words, the three younger ninja obeyed without hesitation.

---

The mission was a failure – and not just on a technicality. It was a complete and utter letdown on so many levels, too boring to even qualify as a catastrophe. Either their intel was faulty or Sasuke had somehow caught on or simply changed plans, because he wasn’t where their information indicated that he would be. They’d doggedly followed a number of trails but, eventually, all of them ran cold. The only things they’d confirmed were that Sasuke was still alive and continued to travel with the group dubbed Taka.

“What are you trying to say, Sai-bastard?” growled Naruto as Team Kakashi flitted through the trees on their way home.

“I am merely stating fact,” Sai returned in his usual monotone.

“How is it a fact that you would beat me in a fight? That’s – that’s –" Naruto struggled to find the word he was looking for. “That’s speculation! And stupid. If we ever fought I would definitely win.”

“I said a spar, not a fight, shit for brains.” It irritated her, and Naruto even more so, that Sai delivered every brand of insult in the same deadpan.

“What the hell difference does it make? I’d still kick your ass!”

Sakura grunted as she kicked off a little too hard from a tree branch, leaving splintered bark as evidence of her frustration. The boys were disappointed – hell, they were all disappointed – and taking out their aggravation in their usual fashion. At another time she too might lose herself in the exchange of increasingly confrontational badinage, but she just wasn’t in the mood.

As usual, Naruto wasn’t about to oblige. “Sakura-chan!” When she didn’t acknowledge him, he pulled abreast and gave her a sharp poke in the ribs. “Oi, Sakura-chan!”

She reached over and grabbed the offending digit, bending it backward painfully. “What, Naruto?” she replied casually.

He howled dramatically, yanking his finger away and sucking on it as if that would help. When sufficiently recovered, he asked indignantly, “Will you please tell Sai-teme that I would totally kick his ass in a spar?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you wouldn’t.”

“What do you mean I wouldn’t? Of course I would –"

Sakura sighed. “A spar is defined as a non-lethal mock duel between two allies, usually for training purposes.”

His face screwed up in confusion. “So?”

“Non-lethal,” she repeated. Seeing that he still wasn’t getting it, she gave up. “Naruto, you most likely wouldn’t win a spar with Sai because he’s a long-range fighter and you’re a close-combat specialist. You have one – exactly one – mid to long range jutsu and Rasenshuriken is most definitely lethal.”

Upon seeing the dejection marring his normally cheerful face, she almost regretted her frank analysis. Awkwardly, she offered, “Spars aren’t battles. They don’t really mean anything. If you recognize when and how an opponent has the advantage, then you can figure out how to overcome it.” In a rare showing of thoughtfulness, he nodded seriously. “Besides,” she added with a sudden smile, annoyance forgotten, “if anyone can beat the odds, it’s you, Naruto.”

His sunny grin returned and he turned back to Sai with newfound excitement. “See, Sakura-chan says I would win, too!”

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” she groaned.

As the argument renewed, Sakura tuned it out once more. She tried to concentrate on her footing, carefully calculating which branch to leap to next, attempting to slowly increase the distance she was comfortable jumping. No matter how hard she tried, though, her mind kept returning to places she’d rather it didn’t.

She didn’t know why she was so disappointed. The last “Sorry, never seen anyone like that,” in a long string of similar responses had left a bitter taste in Sakura’s mouth that she couldn’t shake. Though the mission had been a maddening dead-end, she’d been on others just like it that hadn’t left her with this feeling of disenchantment.

It’s just that they’d gone so long without news of Sasuke. After his botched assassination attempt at the Kage summit, he’d all but disappeared – until now. Finally, murmurs of a man with mysterious eyes and a ragtag band of followers had reached the normal haunts, had found the right combination of ears to filter back to Konoha. It was all the motivation Team Kakashi had needed, but in the end, their efforts had been fruitless once again.

Perhaps she’d built it up too much in her mind. Maybe she’d worried herself sick with all the “what if”s and somehow convinced herself they would be true. What if the one time they were down a man or two, Sasuke actually showed up? What if he thought Kakashi didn’t care about him anymore and wouldn’t come back? What if – But none of it mattered anymore. They hadn’t found him after all.

The scenery passed her by in sickening monotony. There were conversations, mostly because Naruto couldn’t abide by silence when he was upset in the same way that Sakura currently craved it. Words were exchanged, but nothing of importance was said. Eventually, the sun waned and Kakashi signalled a halt.

They made camp with the efficiency of familiarity, each shinobi handling the same preordained tasks he or she usually did without discussion. Having settled on rations bars for dinner out of pure laziness, they were relaxing – or, in Naruto and Sai’s cases, wrestling good-naturedly – when Sakura decided to switch the normal routine up. She moved over to where Kakashi-sensei was sitting against a tree, signature orange book in hand.

She plopped down beside him, idly observing the grappling match across the clearing. Kakashi surprised her by speaking first.

“He listens to you much better, you know. I’m not quite sure that’s fair.”

“You don’t beat him enough,” she said simply, quirking her lips.

“He’s lucky to have a friend that gives such sound advice,” Kakashi added.

Sakura only grunted in reply, leaning her head against the tree and closing her eyes.

After a moment, he spoke with uncommon hesitation. “Are you all right, Sakura?”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t be?” She opened her eyes but kept her head reclined, searching for a hint of stars through the forest canopy.

So this is why he’s so talkative all of a sudden, she thought. She could count on one hand the number conversations he’d initiated with her besides this one and she was pretty sure all the others had been mere scoldings.

“The obvious,” Kakashi answered, ostensibly still reading his dirty little book though he hadn’t turned a page since she’d sat down.

She sighed. “I’ll be fine. I’m just a little … tired. Of everything.”

“Life gets that way sometimes,” he said sensibly, but she could tell that he was unconvinced.

“You mentioned a numbers game, before,” she said, quickly switching tacks. “What did you mean by that?” She was sure he knew that she was changing the topic but hoped he’d ignore it. Being the most evasive person she knew, he really should.

“Ah,” he replied, seeming to oblige. “I was referring to a couple of things. On a literal level, I was reminding our friendly Hokage of the fact that Sasuke’s little entourage brought his group to four, while ours totalled three without me. Assigning a mission with one on one odds is rare enough, but to purposefully assign a ratio less than that is ... reckless. Suicidal, even, when dealing with shinobi of Sasuke’s calibre. Now, while we know that Hokage-sama simply recognises our value and means only to reiterate his vast respect and utter confidence in our abilities, someone else might assume otherwise.” His light tone of voiced belied the gravity of subject.

“You mean it would be traceable evidence of his favouritism,” she spat sarcastically.

“Precisely. You were always my smartest student, Sakura-chan!” Kakashi ruffled her hair with his free hand as he’d done when she was younger. She scowled in annoyance and neatened her pink mane.

“Do it now, Sakura-chan!” Naruto called, startling her. She’d forgotten the other two were even there. When she realized what he meant, she grinned wickedly and darted a lightning quick hand towards her sensei.

He caught her wrist as the tips of her fingers brushed his mask. Ruefully, she extracted herself from his grasp. His stare was perplexed; her reflexes could not rival his even now, and he knew that she knew it.

“Pay up, sucker!” Mockingly, Naruto echoed her words from the bridge. Scurrying to her side, he held out his hand in expectation. Sakura moaned sadly as she was forced to return every bit of the money she’d won for Kakashi being early. Naruto laughed gleefully, his grin especially foxy in the dim of twilight. He danced away from the pair happily, shoving the wad of cash into Sai’s unimpressed face.

“Earlier, he bet me that I couldn’t get your mask down before we got back to Konoha,” Sakura explained, giggling nervously. “Well, I bet him, actually.”

“You really thought you could get it that way?” he asked, incredulous.

She snorted. “Of course not.”

He was still staring at her in confusion. It seemed that for once, she’d really stumped the Copy Nin.

She started to laugh, but stopped. It was just like him not to understand. He never did, when it came to things like this. Fighting to keep the sudden, possibly irrational anger out of her voice, she explained tightly, “Naruto’s still on genin pay-scale. Do you really think he could afford to give me that much in a bet?”

He appeared sceptical. “If he didn’t have the money to spare, why would he make the wager to begin with?”

She rolled her eyes. “I bet him that you would show up early – not like that’s much of a gamble. I only won because I sort of cheated.”

“But if you never intended to keep the money, why bet at all?”

She was definitely annoyed now. Why wouldn’t he give it a rest? “To see the look on his face,” she snapped. “And it’s the only way I’d ever collect from a skinflint like you anyway.” Standing up abruptly, she faced away from him and finally said what she had come over to tell him in the first place. “I’d like to take third watch tonight.”

“You – wait, what?” She was unsurprised at the shock in his voice. Third watch was the most undesirable shift, so Kakashi usually took it himself. “Why?”

“It’s quietest. Is that all right?” Her voice had lost its hard edge. She regretted her small temper flare up, now. It seemed so silly in hindsight.

He was still and silent behind her. Unexpectedly even to herself, she answered the question he hadn’t come out and asked. “I’m sorry. I just ... I really thought we’d find him this time.” She found herself blinking away sudden, stinging tears. “I don’t know why I’m always so foolish.”

“Hope should never be foolish,” he replied soberly.

“But sometimes, it is,” Sakura whispered.

For awhile, Kakashi said nothing. Finally, he offered, “I’ll take second watch, then.”

“Thank you.”