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When they said Haruno Sakura would one day surpass Tsunade Senju, they weren’t exaggerating.
She's notorious across Konoha and Suna for her talent since she was sixteen. She saved the Kazekage's life when she was sixteen. She'd spent the past two years ferried between Suna and Konoha, in attempts to help train their medics with Konoha's revolutionary medical system.
His eyes darted over her face. Her eyes are shapely, she has a large forehead, and she smelled clean. It's hard not to notice these things when she's hovering over you. She was attractive too, so she probably stole some hearts in the process.
That day, she was his medic. After their session, he activated his sharingan, surprised at how less strained it was to do so, and he could see her back, her long hair flowing over her shoulders. The strands lifted as she stretched and cracked her knuckles and she hummed happily. He could see all of this in slow motion. She turned to him with a blinding smile.
"How is it?" she asked him.
He blinked as he looked away.
He then stared at his hands in wonder. He could see so clearly. She put down the clipboard, and he glanced back up at her, mouth open.
Her eyes were curved in a laugh.
“Is it really that great?” she asked him. “Sasuke and Kakashi look at me like I’ve grown an extra head or two the first time around.”
“I haven’t seen this clearly in years,” he admitted.
“Really?” she said. “There was a lot of build up, and—” she spoke offhandedly about things he doesn’t really understand, something about ocular pathways, but he listens anyway “—oh! I must really be bothering you.”
“No,” Shisui said. “You sound like a really passionate person, Haruno-san.”
He looked at her intently. A bright blush flared prettily over her cheeks. He watched it with interest.
“You should probably turn your sharingan off,” she coughed awkwardly. “You shouldn’t have it on needlessly.”
“You’re right.”
His red eyes flickered back to black. He met her eyes.
That's when a nurse swung the corner of the room, hand on the door frame, and hollering her name—breaking the spell between them. She swivelled her head around.
“Haruno-sensei?!” She calls out. “You need to come! Shizune-sensei needs you.”
She signed him a slip.
“You’re good to go! Come back after your next intensive mission—or if anything weird happens.”
Before he could thank her, she was flying out the door, and she and the nurse made a beeline down the hallway.
To be honest, Shisui didn’t like socializing. He preferred being home. He was always tired, and he was twenty-seven. Most of his life in ANBU, and he barely had friends beyond Itachi, Izumi and Sasuke and some others he barely talks to these days. Others are dead. Realistically speaking, either you crack or you find something to hold onto for comfort that didn’t include the complexities of human emotions.
Itachi had a obsession with his brother’s training. Kakashi-senpai had an odd fixation with his plants, Jiraiya's books and since recently, tormenting his cute little "genin" (they'll always be his genin no matter how old.) For Shisui, it was his mother and his mother’s cat.
Which is why Haruno Sakura is both uncomfortable and intriguing when the Hokage sends him to get her apprentice.
“Haruno-san?”
She wasn’t in her element, and her head is buried into her folded arms, and she looked like she was sobbing her heart out. She looks up—frazzled, hair not-so-perfect—but her eyes are rimmed with tears, and her cheeks are red and tear stained. It’s not a pretty sight, and she struggles to cover it, when she ripped out a tissue from the box, and she rubbed her face.
“I’m sorry!” she said. “I um—Can I help you?" She struggled to compose herself.
“The Hokage wants you,” he said kindly.
“Ah."
He shouldn’t have asked.
“Is everything alright?”
“I’m—a patient died,” she said. She sniffled. “On me.”
He knows that in his line of work, men die, comrades die, and everyone deals with it in the best way they can—apathy or anger or training. That’s why this is both unnerving and new. A patient died on her—and he imagines her hovering over the bed of someone who she doesn’t know, and barking orders while she wants the patient to live. She's got a very earnest face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn't be bothering you with this. I should be used to it by now after all these years but..."
He understands, because his friends died on him too. You never get used to it.
“Knowing you, I’m sure you did all you could.”
“But it feels like I didn't do enough,” she replied shortly. She hardened her eyes, and she wiped her face, fixing her appearance in the mirror. "If only I was..."
Faster. Stronger. He wanted to be faster. Stronger.
He crosses the distance between them, and he places a hand on her shoulder. She looks at him in the mirror.
“It is enough,” he said. Forgive yourself. "I'm sure they knew you did everything you could."
Her gaze flickers to his hand on her shoulder, and she looks down at the floor, biting her lip. He squeezed his hand on her shoulder, and he then flickers out of the window, taking this as his cue to leave.
She touched her shoulder.
Momo, mostly his mother's cat, rubbed against his knee, and he absentmindedly gave her an affectionate rub. He leant back against the wall—staring at the picture of his father and him when they were younger—when his mother came by.
“What happened?”
“Hmm?”
His mother—Naori—is still his mother, even if it’s been years since he’s been a little boy, and she places a cup of tea down.
“You've been quieter,” she huffed.
“Just thinking,” he said. He looked at his father's bright smile, and he’s just thinking about a girl with a lot of passion. “Just thinking about Father.” Because what if they hadn’t given up on his dad—would he still be here?
His mother’s face dropped a tad, and she smiled sadly.
Momo then found his mother's cup interesting, and she nearly knocked the cup off, and he scooped her up to avert the catastrophe.
He had just come back from his mission, he had just reported in, and then the Hokage Tsunade Senju looks at him, and she says the words he’s been dreading all his life.
“Your mother is in the hospital. You should go see her.”
He nods immediately, and he flickers out the office, out onto the streets, making a bee-line over the roofs towards the hospital's grey building, into the lobby, past the receptionist and past all the nurses—to that familiar signature of his mother, and then he senses that she isn’t alone, and his mother is on the bed, and she has a few bandages. It’s resting on a pillow, and Sakura’s there as well.
“There you go,” she said. “All good. Please take care of yourself Uchiha-san.”
His mother smiles at her, and then they look over their shoulder to see Shisui. Shisui still has his mask on, so Sakura gives him a questioning look.
“That’s my son,” Naori told her.
He pushed up his mask, and Sakura’s eyes widened and then she smiled.
“She’ll be okay,” she said. “Your mother just fainted from low blood pressure, and she had been carrying something hot at the time. Your cat alarmed the neighbour, and they rushed her to the hospital this morning.”
He stared at her and nodded slowly as he listened.
“I’ve healed the burns,” she continued, oblivious to the way he’s staring at her. “She should be fine. I think you should really come in for a diagnosis about low blood pressHUH—”
He scoops her up into a breathless hug. She squeaks.
“Thank you,” he whispers into her hair. Cotton candy hair blurs his eyes. His mother looks alarmed. “Thank you.”
He then let her go abruptly, realizing what he did. His ears steamed.
She coughed politely before continuing.
“It's my job,” she said with a laugh. He felt light-headed. “You should really bring her in for a check up.” He nodded numbly, as she left the room. He refused to meet her eyes.
“A nurse will be in to discharge you soon, okay? I have to go soon.”
He meets his mother's impish grin, before he strides up to her and hugs her too.
"Shisui! I'm not going anywhere!" She laughed. "You silly boy."
He doesn’t know that when Sakura leaves the room, she stops, brushes off a leaf, which was on his uniform, and she felt the warmth creep into her cheeks. One of the nurses glanced at her curiously.
"Haruno-sensei?"
He just glanced at the door when he hears her talk to the nurse as they leave.
After his mission, he was in the Hokage’s office again.
You could be ANBU captain, flee-on-sight, possible candidate for ANBU commander, and if your Hokage was Tsunade Senju—you'd still feel like a misbehaving genin. Only fools would dare to anger her, and he's no Uzumaki Naruto.
Senju Tsunade’s a lot less formal than her predecessors, but she’s efficient, barking orders, setting clans on their toes, making his superiors grumble, and setting Konoha in order. The Uchiha elders were generally disgruntled about another Senju Hokage initially, but she's been good to the clan. She had kept hinting at Itachi that one day, she'd stick him behind this desk so she could go off on a nice vacation in her retirement.
Itachi pretended not to get her hints.
“Can you give this to Sakura,” she said. “She’ll be over the moon about it. She’s been badgering me non-stop about it for months, and the elders finally agreed to this.” Ah, that's why she's upset. The council.
“Yes, Tsunade-sama."
“Dismissed,” she said. “Why is there so much work, Shizune?”
Tsunade groans, and Shizune smiled at him on the way out.
“Because you skipped on half of it, Tsunade-sama,” she retorted. “Seriously.”
“I needed to stretch my legs!”
He chuckled, and he left them, trying to find Sakura, and perhaps she’s in her office, hunched over her paperwork or tending to a patient. He pushed up his mask as he enters her vacant office. Something is wrong. A pillow was strewn on the ground, along with her coat. The sign outside the door didn’t read busy. There’s a broken bottle on the floor, and her window is pushed up, and the curtains billowed like ghosts.
He stepped outside the window, following the trail, and he sees her resting hands on the rooftop railing—two metres above, and she watched the village with a glum expression. The wind blowing through her hair.
She was crying again. He frowned.
“Haruno-san?” he asked her, as he stepped over the railing.
She wiped her eyes immediately as she turns to face him, her eyes downcast, and she nodded. “Yes?”
“Is something wrong?”
She looks up at him. He doesn’t like it when she cries. It doesn’t look right, and it doesn’t feel right.
“I just had a fight with my team,” she said.“They keep trying to protect me, and Sasuke told me I was—” she sniffs “—I should just leave the fighting to him and Naruto. I should just stay back.”
He winces. But she’s on one of the more intimidating teams in Konoha. Hell, Kakashi-senpai used to intimidate him when he was younger, because of how good he was. He can only imagine the insecurity. Sasuke's no longer that pouty ten year old who wanted to surpass his brother.
“This is why I can’t stand my team. I’m no ordinary medic. I’m Tsunade-sama’s apprentice.”
Then she began to tear up again, and he said, “He says that there was no way I was any faster than he was, and Naruto has an endless source of chakra inside him . Because he is an Uchiha. Big whoop.” She stomped her feet. There’s a hairline crack from her impact. He eyed it warily. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this. Tsunade-sama always tells me that my emotions are the death of me.”
She looked away, and in a smaller voice, she said, "It’s never enough, is it?"
He felt annoyed at his cousin. But for Sasuke to get into argument with someone means he actually cares, so he doubts it means that he was belittling her. He was just bad at being gentler. It's an Uchiha thing. Shisui had always been a mama's boy, so he had always been more observant.
"I used to train Sasuke, you know?" he said with a laugh. "I know what he's like." He pushes up his mask.
She stared at him with wide eyes, as if she's processing this information.
“He could have put it nicer though,” he said. “Because our Hokage is a very formidable woman in battle, and Konoha is very very thankful to have her at the helm. He wouldn’t have the guts to say that in front of her. He won't have the guts to say that in front of you again if you challenge him to a spar."
Her eyes glint with a challenge.
"You're right!"
“Here,” he said. “Lady Hokage said this would cheer you up.”
She took the stack of papers and read the cover, and then she flipped through the pages.
“Seriously?” Her face goes through a million expressions. Calm to confusion, slow befuddlement, wonder, then just pure happiness. “No way!”
“What is it?”
“The hospital is getting more funding!” She hopped and jumped like a child—startling him. His sharingan activates on reflex. “I’m so happy! I’m so—” She hugs the papers. “Finally!” She twirls around, whooping and jumping.
He grinned as he watched her. She turned around with a sparkle in her eyes, and her hair flared around with the movement, and he’s seeing this in slow motion, and she swivels around to look at him.
“Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?”
He sees Sasuke after the clan meeting later, and Sasuke looks ruffled. He snapped at Izumi when she asked him how his team was. Sasuke tried to walk away, but Izumi follows him. Shisui stays away from the more temperamental Uchihas and their impending—
"The hell did I do?" Izumi asked Sasuke.
"Nothing," Sasuke snapped.
"The hell it's nothing!"
—explosion.
Itachi just looked confused.
“He got into a fight with Haruno-san,” Shisui explained.
“Sakura-san?” Itachi asked. “Did he apologize?” He furrowed his brow. Shisui found it funny how Itachi automatically assumes that Sasuke was at fault.
“No idea," Shisui said with a laugh.
Itachi then gave him a curious look.
"Aren't you supposed to be past your teenage hormonal phase, Sasuke?"
"Teenage hormonal—"
Somewhere along the line, she turns into ‘Sakura’ so he’s ‘Shisui’ after one of the members of his squad are injured, and he's at the hospital waiting for the report on the poison sample. For a week, he came by. He offered to walk her home. His mother ran into them at one point, and she gave them a rather curious look.
One evening, when he found her sleeping during lunch on her desk, he lifted her up and planted her on the patient's bed so so gently so as to not wake her up. She's low on chakra. He left his jacket over her shoulders.
He didn't know that she snapped her eyes open as he left, and she sat up, holding his coat.
She had come by. Itachi tells him that she asked for his address. Itachi gave him another curious look. Mikoto just watched him with a raised eyebrow. Mother and son look identical in that moment.
Sasuke turned to him. "Why did my teammate drop by your house?"
"Hmmm..." Mikoto said. "I do wonder."
Itachi just hummed as well. "Indeed."
"No clue," he said.
Shisui excused himself with a laugh. He doesn't know what his mother has been telling Mikoto.
His mother was home, and Momo twirled around her legs and eyed him lazily.
"Haruno-san brought this over," his mother told him. She handed him a bag, and she gave him impish look. Shisui took the bag from her with a raised eyebrow, and he found his jacket, folded and a note written on pretty paper. It has cherry blossoms print on the corners.
Thank you.
She's probably going to have terrible handwriting eventually—bred after years of writing reports and documenting—and there's something about it though.
He stared at the paper for a long time.
Momo hopped into the bag and lay on his coat.
One evening, they met in the middle of the market place, because he went to buy tomatoes, and she was coming home from work. She greeted him. She's disheveled, and she could use some sleep, but her smile was bright when she saw him.
Something fluttered inside his belly.
She inquires about his mother. He said she's fine, and you? She's fine too, and she's unconsciously tucking hair behind her ear.
They are interrupted by her mother. Her mother and her are having a bit of a shouting match. Shisui just watched in amusement, because she's like a child in front of her mother—not the impressive medic.
“You haven’t come to see me and dad in a while. Dinner. Tonight. Also, I hope you're not eating take out every day—”
“Seriously, mom!” Her eyes darted at him. He smiled. At least now he knows where she gets her vibrant personality from—a mix of Tsunade and her mother. “Not now !”
Her mom turns to look at him, squints and a smile splits over her face. “Oh! Uchiha Shisui? You mean the Shunshin no Shisui? Aren’t you the boy who she liked?”
“Mom! That was Sasuke! And I don’t like him anymore.” She refuses to meet his eyes. Her ears flare up.
“No, no.” Her mother laughs with a wave and an evil glint in her eye. “She had a hero when she was growing up, and since you are the flee-on-sight Uchiha boy and good at genjutsu—” her daughter turned to look at her in horror “—she wanted to be just like him when she grew up.”
Shisui grinned. He can hear her heartbeat.
“Mom!”
“Okay! Okay! I’m going! Sheesh!” She poked her daughter in the ribs. “Come home for dinner tomorrow, before your father cries his eyes out. Even Naruto visits more than you."
"For food," she snapped.
"Whatever!" her mother said. "At least he likes my cooking! You were such a picky eater. Anyways—" She looked between them, and her lips curl into a smile "—I hope I didn't interrupt your date."
He felt that flutter again.
“Mom!” Sakura yelled. “Geez!” She stomped her foot, causing some of the shoppers to look in their direction.
Her mother laughs raucously with a wave in her direction.
"Come home tomorrow!"
"My parents are always so intense," she huffed.
She trails off with a sigh, and then she looks at him with a question.
"I was your hero?" he asked her then.
Her blush is so pretty, he thought. Her eyes darted away from him.
“Um… Because I heard you were really good at genjutsu… and I was a genjutsu type... ”
She then shyly admitted that she wasn't that great at genjutsu, since she'd been so busy with medicine.
“Why don’t I give you a few lessons then?” he asked nonchalantly. “You can teach me some healing.”
"Really? That would be great! Let's swap lessons!"
And because he can't help it, he leaned in, and she glanced at his collar bone.
"I got a question though."
And she glanced at him.
"Am I still your hero?"
She gave his shoulder a flustered shove.
Hero, he thought later, as he's walking home. He was like a hero to her. His thirteen year old self would have liked to hear that with his grandfather's legacy looming over him.
"He has really gorgeous, intense eyes, and he's sweet," he heard as he was passing by the Yamanaka flower shop. He glanced at the pink pony-tail and her back facing him, and Yamanaka Ino grinned at her.
"Does that mean that you like him or something, forehead?"
She didn't reply, but her ears were red.
Sakura turns away to wrap a bouquet, and Yamanaka then slid her eyes over to him. Yamanaka gave him a grin that wasn't very nice—but the implications are clear. He decided to move away in case he got caught. Though her mortified expression would be fun to watch. The word intense and gorgeous in Sakura's voice rang in his head all the way home.
"Shisui," he heard Genma call out to him. "There you are—why are you grinning like an idiot?"
"Don't worry about it."
She thought his eyes were intense and gorgeous.
He listened half-heartedly to what Genma told him. Something about helping out for the next chuunin exam.
"Got it?"
"Mhmm... senpai. Do you think my eyes are intense and gorgeous?"
Genma's nose twitched, and his senbon wiggled threateningly.
"You weren't listening to anything I said, huh?"
Her first lesson is bright and early in the morning, and she’s yawned five times, when he leads her atop the Hokage’s mountain. Her hair looks rumpled, and she looks grumpy, and he thinks she looks adorable.
“Where are we—” she yawned again “—going?”
“You’ll see,” he said. They perch themselves on the Nidaime’s pointy spike of hair, and she just watches him. She turns around and regards the place. “First lesson.”
“What are we doing here?”
“You wanted to know what it felt like to have the sharingan activated for the first time, right?”
She blinked at him, and then he performed the genjutsu, and the world around her got sharper. She turned to look at the sun rising over Konoha. He knows what she’s seeing. She’s seeing the world in slow motion, and the clouds are painted red, and she can see Konoha wake up, and the world is sharper, brighter.
He turns to see her and memorize this expression of hers.
“It’s so beautiful,” she gasped. She watches a bird flutter it's wings slowly as it flew by.
“Yes,” he said. His own eyes are alit. He smiled at her own awe and the sunrise reflected in her eyes. “It is.”