Chapter Text
Chapter 1: This is My Child Soldier and I'm Keeping Them
“I’m reinstating your ANBU rank.”
Kakashi blinked. And blinked again.
Tsunade did not look up from where she was reading a scroll, one of—many, let’s say, at her desk.
It had been two days and 7 hours since Kakashi and Sakura saw Naruto off at the gates. Sasuke’s been gone for less than a week. Konoha is still in shambles from the ‘Crush’, as it’s been taken to being called, and Kakashi had a list of A-rank missions to complete longer than his arm. But he also had one more student still in Konoha.
“I have a student to teach still,” he said.
Lady Tsunade sighed. She put the scroll down and took off her reading glasses. She looked up at him. She looked tired and genuinely regretful.
“Kakashi. Kid. I’m sorry. But you of all people have to understand. I can’t afford to have one of my best jonin side-lined for the sake of one genin with no clan or clan-affiliated apprenticeship. Sakura Haruno will be in good hands with the genin corps, Kakashi. You can check in on her in between missions, if you’d like. Help her in your free time. But…I’m disbanding team 7. Officially.”
Kakashi blinked.
Lady Tsunade held his gaze in the silence and frowned. She picked back up her reading glasses and scroll, gave him one last look, and then went back to reading.
“Dismissed,” she said.
And Kakashi, like the good soldier he was, left.
.
Kakashi realized that the reinstatement of his ANBU captaincy was probably immediate, but he figured he had maybe 24 hours before someone came to look for him.
Team 7 training was every other weekday on training ground 32. In other words, tomorrow. At about 9AM (7AM for the kiddos). About 16 hours from now.
Kakashi had one more student still in Konoha.
I can’t afford to have one of my best jonin side-lined for the sake of one genin with no clan or clan-affiliated apprenticeship.
And, yes, Kakashi understood that. Konaha was still in shambles. Sasuke and Naruto had left the village, whether that be legally or illegally, and Kakashi was considered the best jonin in Konoha. The village, if it’s to recover—if it’s to avoid getting picked to pieces by other, opportunistic villages—will need Kakashi. Hence, the list of A-ranks longer than his arm.
But he had one more fucking student in Konoha, thank you very much.
And the last time Kakashi abandoned a teammate, he was ten, and he liked to think it technically doesn’t count because that teammate was crushed under a boulder.
I can’t afford to have one of my best jonin side-lined for the sake of one genin with no clan or clan-affiliated apprenticeship.
Okay.
Fine.
.
“You’re late!” Sakura yelled as Kakashi poofed into existence in front of her.
She’d been on the bridge since 7AM, like usual. Of course, sans teammates. Not as usual.
She had an angry scowl on her face, exaggerated, to hide the anxious relief she was definitely not feeling and her hand was shaking the slightest, minisculist, tiniest bit where she was pointing accusingly at her sensei.
“Sorry, sorry!” He said, rubbing the back of his neck and giving her one of his signature eye-smiles. The one that meant he was definitely up to something, “I had to finish some paperwork and it took longer than I expected—”
“Liar!”
“No, no, really! On an entirely unrelated note—" He said, pulling a sheet of paper and a pen out of somewhere on his person, “—I’m gonna need you to sign here.”
He handed her the paper and pen, keeping up the infuriating eye-smile, and Sakura’s hand did not shake even a little when she took it. She eyed it suspiciously.
“This doesn’t say anything on it.” She pointed out.
“Don’t worry about that, my cute little student. Just trust your sensei and sign on the line, please and thank you! This may or may not be time sensitive.” He kept smiling at her. She squinted at him.
On the one hand, this was a blank piece of paper she was supposed to put her honest-to-sage’s signature on with no context or explanation. Kakashi could be making her a co-signer on a gambling debt, for all she knew.
On the other hand, …
Sakura thought about waiting on the bridge that morning, thinking over every single time she’d been just so much baggage for the rest of team seven to carry around.
She had thought about Wave, and the Chunnin exams, and standing on the sidelines, and watching Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi take on all the danger, and not completing even half the laps either boy could do during conditioning and not trying to, either.
She thought about how Kakashi was—miraculously—a well-respected and highly competent jonin, and about how Konoha was still rebuilding after a big change in leadership and an invasion and Konoha—technically—losing a bloodline and how she was only a civilian-born genin.
She thought and thought and then desperately tried not to think as the hours ticked by and she stood horribly alone on the team bridge.
And then Kakashi showed up.
She signed her name on the line.
“Excellent,” he said, yanking the page out of her hand before the ink had even dried and quickly moved through the hand seals of a summoning jutsu. One of his dogs popped into existence with a small puff of smoke. The greyhound with the bandages. He handed the dog Sakura’s carte-blanche signature.
“Alright, Uhei, take this to the administration building, please, to be filed with the AA-13-25b form in my file. Quick as you can, thanks” he told them. They took the instruction to heart and bolted quicker than Sakura’s wide eyes could even keep up with.
She turned to look at Kakashi. He looked nonchalantly back at her.
“So!” He clapped his hands together, gave her another of his eye-smiles, the one that meant he just pulled a fast one on someone. Whether that someone was her or not she couldn’t say.
“Let’s get started, shall we?”
.
Up in Hokage tower, Lady Tsunade felt a migraine coming on.