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Part 22 of February Prompts 2020
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SakurAlpha's Fic Rec of Pure how did you create this you amazing bean
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Published:
2020-02-25
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1,490
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the capacity to act

Summary:

“I’ll deal with it.”

Work Text:

She honestly couldn’t have been less surprised.

It was no secret that Naruto and Sasuke were both great ninja, and probably the most powerful in the world.

That didn’t make them great people, and Sakura didn’t like the way being Hokage and Co-Hokage weighed them both down like vagrants carrying stones in their pockets into a river.

But she would have liked them to tell her that to her face, rather than just running away with nothing more than some hasty, bullshit note for her.

‘We can’t do it anymore, please take care of our family and the village. --Naruto & Sasuke’

So Haruno Sakura, last of her name, breathed out and crushed the note in her hand, tossing it behind her without looking to see it land in the bin and got to work.



First came getting rid of Homura and Koharu; they had their chance to do good for the village, but their views had grown archaic and stagnant and she didn’t need their poison in her ear.

She allowed them monthly meetings where they were allowed to stand before the clan heads and give their opinions and advice on official business, but Sakura had no time for them in the months following the departure of her former teammates. Hinata reported once that they’d tried meeting with her in private and secret and Sakura had Ino and Shikamaru deal with them.

“The world doesn’t want or need a set of second-hand Danzou running about. Stay retired or leave the village. My patience with you is at an end.”

She didn’t like to wear the robes of the Hokage, especially since she still had to carry around Sarada in a sling that also hindered her movements, but it had been necessary that particular meeting. That and her killing aura let out just a tiny bit, but enough.

She’d asked Sai to accompany them back to their home and that had been the end of it.

Then came the issue of the truly ridiculous amount of paperwork she’d thinned out, traced the origins to and then set about dividing the efforts among the departments where trusted advisers could review material as they came and only send it her way if the civilian council she’d set up and the clan heads couldn’t reach an agreement,

She still did paperwork, but only at about a third of what her predecessors had to do. Same with meetings that didn’t meet at least a six out of ten in importance for the village and the shinobi nations.

Reading dry requests for training field equipment and status updates from the farmlands at the edge of the border were less important than raising her daughter (the one neither Sasuke nor Karin could bring themselves to care for beyond birthing) or keeping the hospital afloat or training the next generation of ninja to heal and be diplomatic, rather than just killing drones.

Shino, Sai, Lee, Tsunade and Karui (of all people) seemed to understand her mindset best when the first academy graduates from her first year as Hokage were sent afield and proved excellent at coming back healthier, happier and more alive than previous teams.

“Well, at least you’re trying to give peace a chance,” Karui hummed almost respectfully as Sarada and ChouChou babbled and wobbled about in what had once been the Uchiha quarter and now stood as medic teaching schools, group homes for orphans, treatment centers, gardens, farming and the one home at the epicenter where Sakura resided with not only Sarada, but Hinata and Boruto as well.

Hinata hadn’t wanted to be any trouble, but when Sakura realized she had been heavy and expecting a mere month after Naruto left, and her clan was giving her grief over trying to abolish the cursed seal tradition, Sakura had insisted--throwing in her assistance on writing up a signed order to have said tradition denounced, removed, put in the grave. Hopefully before Hinata went into labor.

Honestly, there were a lot of practices many of the existing clans had that needed to be looked over, secrets be damned.

Still, she always insisted to her offices that she was to be home, every day, by six. Eight at the latest.

Sometimes she would take scrolls home, but only to go over them well after she was sure Sarada was asleep in her bed and she’d had herself a meal.

Burning the candle on both ends seemed to be the biggest problem, from first Hokage to the last; she wasn’t about to make the same mistake.

And if she found herself slipping, Inner was more than happy to remind her of the most important things.

“SLEEP. BRUSH YOUR TEETH. SIGN THE CONTRACTS FOR WAVE IN THE MORNING. DON’T FORGET YOU PROMISED TO VISIT INO TO SEE HOW INOJIN’S TEETHING IS AFFECTING HIS COLIC.”



“Gentle push, Hinata. Gentle push, the head’s nearly free.”

Almost lazy from the gas and air Sakura had allowed her in the room she’d been given at the Haruno House, Hinata took another breath and did as she was told; Sakura’s hands at her knee and her opening, giving support and order much better than her last hospital stay.

Hanabi and her father were downstairs in the living area, watching Boruto and fretting, with Kiba and Shino on the staircase in the even that boiled water or more gas would be needed. All on high alert and probably feeling out of place in the presence of a home birth with their girl in the hands of the most powerful kunoichi in the shinobi nations.

Sarada had taken a seat at the window, hands in Akamaru’s thick pelt and looking for all the world like a fellow guard dog observing for predators on the horizon.

“So, what do you think it’ll be, Boru-kun? A little brother or a little sister?” Hanabi asked the tiny blond as his mother upstairs groaned like a bear.

“Dunno,” Boruto answered plainly, tilting his head up towards the stairs and itching to go check on things.

“Little girl,” Sarada said imperiously, but with a little smile thrown over her shoulder at the little boy, “Hinata-san didn’t eat as much as she would have if it was a boy.”

Kiba literally barked a laugh and Shino chortled behind the buzz of his hoard of insects Sarada loved so much.

“And how do you know that, Sara-chan?” Shino questioned, teaching habits obliging him to probe at a growing intellect that would inevitably land in his classroom down the line.

“Mama told me.”

And she was right.



They came back eventually, but it was to a Konoha thriving rather than just moving along at the same pace it always did from one time to another.

Sakura felt them enter the village and wandering around from one place to another; old monuments still in place, but new shops and people to be seen after five years of traversing the globe at their own goddamn leisure.

Sakura did not feel the need to greet them, but sent Inner off to inform her Anbu, advisers and Hinata while Sakura was herself quite preoccupied with the open heart surgery of a five year old from one of the group homes near her house she was doing pro bono.

As she did twice a month for anyone that didn’t have the money and asked for help.

The healthcare system from the last three hokage had been a travesty, but she’d done her best to improve that area as well. The care Konoha offered in recent months was leagues ahead of the surrounding nations--save for Sand, which was about the same due to Temari offering to be go-between with the medics and joint council when she moved in with Shikamaru. Kumo wasn’t far behind, but had a late start since Karui had offered up Omoi to be the go-between and he was a good field medic but tended to digress a lot in meetings.

Her train of thought digressed itself when she felt annoyance, closing and suturing the child, feeling two distinct chakra outside the ward, hovering like fireflies that had simply wandered in without purpose.

“Want me to throw them out?” Shizune asked from the catwalk beyond glass above the surgeons, through the intercom that had been installed during Tsunade’s reign that still had that little fuzzy quality.

“No, I’m done,” Sakura grit out, doing one last check and pleased that all looked well for the child, “I’ll deal with it.”



Kakashi actually had the balls to try and act as the diplomat between the three of them, but that proved futile when Naruto kept putting his foot in his mouth and Sasuke seemed to try not being flippant or blunt or rude, but kept failing.

Sakura would not bend the knee and back down from her position behind the Hokage’s desk.

Her friends and allies remained behind her when she put her foot down and kept it down.

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