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Playing the Game	By : erincthomas Category: Naruto > Het - Male/Female > Kakashi/Sakura Views: 2679 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, the characterisation would be a lot more consistent. No more Kakashi doing the good guy pose, please. No profit made from this.

Chapter List
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Kakashi woke feeling as if he'd lost twenty spars in a row. As he half-heartedly attempted to smother himself with a pillow, it dawned on him that the rest of his body should probably hurt even worse than his head did. Why didn't it?

Stretching out his long limbs carefully, a sharp sting of pain in his right calf brought him crashing back to reality. His head was pounding because he had a raging hangover. Everything else was only mildly sore because Sakura had bullied him into a healing.

On one hand, he was impressed with her initiative. On the other, he was aggravated at the deliberate invasion of his privacy. Objectively, though, he conceded that had he been a little less drunk he probably would have realised that in fact, he had been in need of medical care.

He glared at the jumble of soiled bedding that bumped his foot as he got out of bed. They reminded him that someone had been rooting around in his things and also that blood stains were awful to try and get out. Why had he refused her offer to have them laundered?

He checked his clock, mildly shocked to find that it was almost two in the afternoon. That was a grievous case of oversleeping, even for him. Not that he had had anything better to do anyway. It was either do laundry, write his mission report ... or, hadn't Sakura said Mogusa would be out of surgery in the morning? Surely all the drama would be over by now. If he was lucky, they'd all be discharged already.

Getting dressed, he decided that he'd head over to the hospital after all. Now that he was relatively healthy, no one could force him into treatment (again). Maybe he'd even thank Sakura if he saw her ... but probably not.

The weather was lovely, if a little muggy; it was a perfect day to wander about with one of his favourite novels. If he meandered in the opposite direction of the hospital, well, he'd still get there eventually. Awhile after he passed Ichiraku's, he spied Naruto headed towards him, Hyuuga Hinata in tow. She was moulded to his side, presumably to avoid being jostled in the crowd. When he spotted Kakashi, he waved exuberantly with the hand not occupied with Hinata's.

"Oi, Kaka-sensei!"

Kakashi stopped in front of the couple, only barely lowering his book. "What brings you out on this fine, hot day? There are lots of fun activities to do indoors where it's cooler, for people like you two. For example, I'm pretty sure there's a more interesting way to make the phrase 'attached at the hip' literal – but then again, what do I know?" He smiled at Hinata's deep blush and hitched breath. She kept nervously darting her eyes towards Naruto, but naturally, all insinuations were lost on him.

"We're going out for ramen! Want to come along, Kaka-sensei?"

Excellent. Free food. "Sure," he said, and Naruto grinned happily. Interestingly, Hinata covered up a frown.

They made their way back to the ramen stall and ordered, Naruto carrying the conversation as Hinata occasionally laughed softly or agreed. Naruto would drag him into it as well, but mostly, Kakashi just read and waited until they were distracted to eat.

When the ramen was running low, Naruto turned to him with a distinctive gleam in his eye. Kakashi knew that now that the boy had exhausted his first love, he'd turn to his next: training.

"Yamato-taichou finally has time to work with me tomorrow! We're going to try and make a new wind attack. I want to try something long-range because Sakura-chan says I need to. You should come, Kaka-sensei!"

It had been quite awhile since Kakashi had helped his student with any jutsu. To be honest, he was mostly redundant at this point but that's not what Naruto's request was truly about. "I have to check my mission status, but I might be free." As most of his teammates were shored up in the sickbay, a team mission was unlikely, but solo missions weren't uncommon.

Naruto's face fell. "Oh. Right. Missions." Hinata's hand found its way to his arm and squeezed. "I wonder if we'll do any joint missions with Rain like we sometimes do with Sand. Maybe Konan will request me and then Danzou will have to let me go, won't he?"

"I wouldn't count on Rain for anything, if I were you," Kakashi remarked darkly, without thinking.

Naruto stiffened at the implication. "I know you say I shouldn't, but I trust Konan. You weren't there, Kakashi-sensei. She wouldn't betray me."

What if she thinks you betrayed her first? As the question rose unbidden in his mind, his lips thinned into a hard line under his mask. "She's loyal to you, maybe, but not to Konoha as a whole."

"She signed the treaty," Naruto reminded with narrowing eyes, no trace of gormlessness left in his visage.

Kakashi was sorry he'd said anything at all, but now that he'd started down this path he should follow it to its conclusion.

"If Suna had been suspicious of Ame and spied on its peace talks with Konoha, what do you think would have happened?"

Naruto stared blankly, dumbfounded by the question. "Gaara would never do that," he answered automatically.

"Hypothetically speaking, if that spy were discovered and consequently forced to silence all witnesses –"

"Gaara would never allow—"

"Be that as it may, if Ame ever found out, would their relations with Suna be damaged? With Konoha? Would Ame keep the information to themselves to be used when most advantageous for them? Would they pretend that nothing was amiss until our guard is down and delay striking until the opportune moment?"

"Like at the Chuunin exams," Naruto whispered, looking stricken. "What exactly are you telling me, Kakashi-sensei?"

"I'm telling you not to trust Amegakure when it comes to the village. That's all."

"That situation you just—"

"Was hypothetical," finished Kakashi, glancing at Teuchi and Ayame, who were puttering about in the back kitchen, banging pots loudly and talking cheerfully. If they had overheard anything, they had the good sense to pretend otherwise. Dropping his voice even further, Kakashi added quietly, "We owe the Ame alliance to you, Naruto. If it comes down to it, you'll need to run damage control with Konan. I thought you deserved to know about this but I doubt Danzou would agree. Do you understand?"

The chopsticks in Naruto's fist dropped to the counter in splinters. "I understand." Though he obviously tried to shrug it off, Naruto couldn't quite meet Kakashi's eyes.

Hinata moved closer to comfort him, glaring at Kakashi over Naruto's shoulder. He could see the accusation in her pale eyes. How could you add this burden to his shoulders? she seemed to be saying. How Naruto boosted her confidence, Kakashi mused idly. In her efforts to stand up for Naruto, she even occasionally stood up for herself.

Slowly, he pulled out some money. He could only handle so much guilt at once, after all.

At this, Naruto looked up, smile fixed back on his face. "I've got it, Kaka-sensei. It doesn't feel right if you pay."

Amused, Kakashi returned, "Weren't you all complaining the other day about your stingy captain?"

"Yeah, but it's too weird if you change all of a sudden, so I'll pay this time. You can get the bill next time."

Chuckling, Kakashi stood and turned to leave. Behind him, he heard Naruto call, "I'll see you tomorrow, Sensei!"

Not bothering to reply, Kakashi hurried away, eager to distance himself from his near brush with treason. Too distracted to even read his book properly, he soon found himself in front of the hospital doors. For a moment, he just stared at them until a memory rose of a lost Ino doing exactly the same only yesterday. He shook his head and entered the building with a frown beneath his mask, once again ignoring the front desk staff's attempts to waylay him.

Once at the appropriate ward, he nodded at the nurses stationed in front of it but didn't pause. The woman who'd confronted him the day before was curiously silent today, letting him pass without a word.

He opened the doors to find a world turned upside down. What yesterday had been an exceptionally quiet, organised ward with mostly pleasant-looking workers had obviously erupted into chaos. There were nurses with tear-streaked faces running around in such a hurry that good amounts of the documents in their arms ended up on the floor instead of at their intended destination. The centre hub where he'd found Shizune yesterday was unattended, files strewn about arbitrarily. Somewhere, a woman was wailing, her screams echoing eerily throughout the corridor.

Kakashi stood there, observing the confusion with a blank expression. What the hell had happened here?

Eventually, a tired-looking man approached. "Kakashi-san? Can I help you with something?" His voice was flat and his eyes held a distinctive way normally seen only on a battlefield. The man was in shock.

"Is Shizune-san in?" Kakashi couldn't recall the man's name but did recognise him as a medic.

"No, I'm afraid she is not. I appreciate what you must be going through, but this is somewhat of a bad time –"

"Sakura, then?" Kakashi persisted. "I know they were treating my squad, so it's them I'll talk to, if you please."

The medic winced. "I see. I understand you must have questions, but they're in interrogation right now. For them to be implicated in the death of one our own is certainly a blow, but we all have the utmost confidence –"

"Interrogation? What are you on about?" A cold feeling began to settle deep in Kakashi's stomach.

"You don't know them as I do, Kakashi-san. They could never be so negligent as to – I know they'll be exonerated!"

"Exonerated of what, exactly?" he snarled, finally losing patience.

The medic took a step back, intimidated. "I'm so sorry. I thought you knew. Nakajima Mogusa died today." He fidgeted under Kakashi's piercing stare. "His death has been deemed suspicious."

It rained during the funeral. It rained a lot in Konoha, so the weather wasn't unusual, but it seemed oddly appropriate in this case. Kakashi stood, back straight and head down. On his left was Shiori, supported by crutches, and on his right was an exhausted-looking and partially bandaged Ryoji. They'd insisted on being able to attend the ceremony despite their medics' vocal disapproval and had found their places by his side without planning or comment.

Mogusa's wife stood before the modest gathering, sobbing through the eulogy. She clutched a baby to her chest and let a timid toddler hide in her skirts as she said, "A kinder, gentler man I never knew." The sentiment was a strange one to be applied to a shinobi, but Kakashi knew it to be true nevertheless. "Mogusa was a loving husband and father. As he was patient and strong in all things, so too will we have to be strong to endure life without him." Done with her prepared speech, she turned her face up to let her tears mingle with the falling rain.

"Daddy!" cried the child at her feet. "Where is Daddy?" He let out a wail and buried his face in his mother's shoulder as she knelt to embrace him.

Before Kakashi knew it, the funeral was over and the attendees were filing away slowly. Many were approaching the newly widowed woman to offer their condolences. Kakashi was surprised to spot Hyuuga Neji formally bowing to her.

"I have not forgotten the role Nakajima-san played in saving my life," he was saying. "I regret never having the opportunity to repay that debt."

"Thank you, but my husband saved many lives and never expected anything in return. I'm sure he'd appreciate you being here."

As Neji exited with his usual elegance, Kakashi spied Sakura and Shizune approaching. At the sight, the grieving woman abandoned all semblance of grace to sneer angrily. "You! How dare you show your faces here?"

"Please, Nakajima-san, our names have been cleared and we wanted to pay our respects—" Sakura pleaded.

"I've heard how you let my husband die. You can't fool me –"

"Mogusa-san was a highly respected colleague of ours," Shizune interrupted deftly. "We are devastated by his loss. We're so sorry this happened, Nakajima-san."

"You should be!" the woman snarled. "You robbed these children of a father and –"

Even from a distance, Kakashi could see Sakura's shoulders tense with unspent emotion. Shizune intervened. "It's obvious our presence makes you uncomfortable, so we'll be on our way. We wish your family better fortune in the future."

The pair hurried off, leaving the widow huffing in anger, new tears tracking down her cheeks.

"Well, that was ugly," remarked Shiori, shaking her head. "I feel bad for them."

"I don't know. There wouldn't have been that much of a fuss if something wasn't fishy," Ryoji argued, rapidly blinking bloodshot eyes.

"Sakura-san saved your life, you know," Shiori returned, a bit of heat making its way into her voice. "She was very meticulous with me. Her talent is real."

"Even the most talented make mistakes," Kakashi said with a shrug.

"Their names were cleared for a reason," she insisted.

"Yeah, probably," conceded Ryoji.

"It's likely we'll never know exactly what happened," said Kakashi in a monotone, giving no indication as to how he felt either way.

The three remnants of the previously four-man platoon stood in silence for an extended period of time. Then Kakashi nodded at his teammates and, without a word, turned on his heel and walked away.

When he saw her next, she was screaming. He had been looking around the training fields for Naruto and Tenzou, an anger burning deep in his gut that he wanted to work off by sparring until he was spent. Instead, he found Sakura looking like a drowned rat, standing in a cavernous crater of her own making and surrounded by split earth and uprooted trees.

She was howling hoarsely into the sky, face turned up towards the falling rain. Then abruptly, the yelling stopped and she was punching the ground ferociously. The earth literally shook with her fury.

He could barely make out the sound of her weeping over the rain and the rumbling of the ground underneath her fists.

But he could tell when her sobs turned to words. "I'm sorry!" she cried. "I'm so sorry! I sh-should have asked you – I never told you! Your hair was beautiful and I never fucking told you!"

Feeling like an intruder, Kakashi backed away silently before she detected him. Years of practise had taught him that grief was meant to be suffered in solitude.

A/N: This installment is shorter than usual. I'm not entirely happy with it, either. Writing it didn't come as easily I would have liked. This chapter has to connect a lot of disparate elements, and as a result, it feels a little disjointed. I've sat on it for awhile, but after careful deliberation, decided to post it as is. I could make it flow a little better, but it would require adding some filler and spacing things out some more -- and filler is never worthwhile for a reader OR for an author.

So Chapter Five will simply remain disjointed. This actually fits the content and the character's emotions at the moment, so I'll accept it.

Next chapter, though, I'm very excited about. It was extremely fun to write and is really where the story takes off. Up 'til now has actually been a sort of extended prologue.

---

Also, after a couple of reviews/comments, I feel the need to clarify. What I said in the beginning of this story about Playing the Game not being a romance was a little confusing. It will NOT be a typical romance story but it IS still definitely going to be a Kakasaku. My plots/character interactions are just as convoluted as ever, so please excuse me from explaining further so that I don't give myself away.

Thanks for reading so far. Kakasaku fans may be few and far between, but they're loyal nonetheless. Constructive criticism is welcomed.
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