Chapter 3
Sakura’s new house- her very own place, for the first time- was small and clean. Iruka had been over once before, when she first moved in a few months ago. Not since then.
“Iruka-sensei!”, she greeted him at the door, leaning forward to draw him into a hug.
“It’s been too long”, he told her as he pulled back. And it had. The last time they had seen each other was the wedding, and then only briefly. Sakura had seemed to have her mind on other things for much of the celebration, a far-off look in her green eyes, even despite the clear joy on her face at seeing her old friends happy.
“It has”, she echoed his thoughts with a laugh, and it was deeper than the small titters he remembered hearing from the row of the classroom where she and Ino used to sit, but still chiming with the same mirth. Whatever was troubling her before didn’t seem to reach her now. “Come in, please, come in.”
She stepped aside from the door and waited patiently as he removed his shoes before leading him down a twisting, wooden-floored corridor to a small cream room.
To his surprise, they were not alone. Both Sai and Yamato were already perched at the table, a teacup in front of each. A third cup signified Sakura’s place at the gathering. Iruka took a seat opposite her, beside Sai, waving a little stiltedly at the other men.
“What kind of tea would you like?” Sakura bustled past and straight through into the kitchen, sticking her head back around the doorway to continue speaking.
She had changed a lot, Iruka thought: Before she would freeze up whenever disciplined for speaking out of turn in class. Now she never stopped moving, never seemed to sit still for a moment. He had seen her as he left for work in the morning, walking back from working overnight at the hospital, exhausted and yet still moving forwards.
She was still waiting.
Iruka asked; “What do you have?”
“Oh, a bit of everything. Black, jasmine, mint…”
“I’ll just have black, if that’s alright.”
“Of course!” Her head disappeared again and Iruka heard the clattering of metal rising from the kitchen.
He turned towards the other guests.
Sai was holding his cup in between his hands, cradling it almost gently as he took a sip. His dark heavily lidded eyes stared down at the table before them.
Yamato was watching Iruka expectantly. As Iruka met his gaze, he gave a timid smile.
“It’s been a little while, hm?”
Iruka tried to remember the last time he saw Yamato. “I think I saw you at the wedding. Only… I don’t remember seeing you much. Just before the ceremony.”
“I had to leave before the festivities could really begin, unfortunately. I had a mission.”
“You didn’t miss much.”
“Except for Kakashi getting drunk and pulling his mask off to give a speech”, said Sai.
Iruka laughed against his hand. That had been quite funny. Especially seeing some of the reactions. “Yeah, Naruto and Sakura were trying to wrestle Lee away from the drinks at the time. Supposedly somebody slipped up and gave him alcohol.” He privately suspected that it was Tenten, from the way she was snickering, but he didn’t know her well enough to form a judgement. She had never been his student, after all. “They were both so upset to have missed it.”
Smiling gently, Yamato nodded. “Oh, yes, they both complained to me about that afterwards.” He tilted his head, looking between the other two men. “What else happened?”
“Hinata cried and Ino actually got mad at Naruto for making Hinata cry, even though she was crying because she was happy to be getting married to him, and Naruto was crying too.”
Sai interjected; “She had had a few drinks herself, though. She was just emotional.”
Sakura reappeared with a tray and moved forward to sit on the sole remaining empty chair. She placed the cups in front of each of them with a delicate clinking noise and then wiped at her brow with the back of her hand before casting a sunny look at her old teammate. “Not as emotional as Chouji: He couldn’t stop crying.”
“In between stuffing his face at the buffet.”
Iruka snickered. “I think I even saw Konohamaru crying towards the end of the night.”
He stopped when he glanced towards Yamato. His face was downcast, staring between the empty cup which he had drained before Iruka's arrival, and the steaming one Sakura had just given to him.
Iruka was about to probe him as to what was wrong, hesitating as he wondered how best to approach the subject, when Yamato murmured; “It must have been emotional for you as well, Iruka? I saw you took on the role of Naruto’s father.”
Iruka clasped his hands together around his mug, even though it was just a few degrees below scalding hot, and smiled a private smile down at the tendrils of heat curling up from the rim.
“It was. Emotional.” He looked across the table. “Speaking of weddings, Sai… Congratulations.”
Sai gave a small, modest smile, his eyes half-closing. Iruka was reminded, as he sometimes was during conversation with Sai, of a cat that had just finished eating a pot of cream.
“Thank you.”
The Interrogation division’s newest recruit’s proposal to the young Yamanaka had been the talk of the village for the last two weeks. In particular, the fact that it had been accepted.
“Obviously I knew it was coming. I mean, did you see them together at my wedding?”, Naruto had told Iruka at dinner the other day, as they discussed the topic. But he did look slightly baffled.
Hinata had given Iruka a slight shake of her head, her lips twitching.
In any case, Iruka himself believed that the two of them would make a good couple. Naruto had been right about Sai: Once Iruka had gotten to know him a bit better, he had really warmed up to him. And his attitude, laid-back yet strangely intense, would match well to Ino’s peppy brashness.
“Things are changing so q”uickly, Sakura sighed. She put one hand against her cheek, smiling at Sai as she chased a spoon around her teacup with the fingers of the other. “I can’t believe you and Ino are getting married.”
He responded in a monotone that had just enough of a hint at inflection that Iruka could have mistaken it for a genuine question; “Are you jealous?”
His teammate just laughed, the sound as bright as her eyes. “Maybe not about the wedding, but in a strange way, I am. I feel like I’m missing out on something.”
Sai raised an eyebrow at her. Yamato rolled his broad shoulders.
Sakura looked back and forth between the two of them and shook her head with a small chuckle.
For a moment, Iruka felt the same emptiness Sakura had been describing. His own life was very much stationary. As much as he loved his students, seeing them grow into their own lives and forming families, sometimes he wished he had more than his work. Not necessarily a lover or a family, but… Something more. He remembered his old team, how they used to be so close they could hold silent conversations like that. Nowadays they barely spoke for longer than ten minutes at a time. Nowadays he didn’t feel that close to anybody.
He swiftly shook that notion away. He had Naruto and Hinata, he had Sakura and Shino and the others. They were all his family. It wasn’t quite the same as having a team, that unshakeable bond of having grown up together but even if they hadn’t been part of his formative years, he had been a part of theirs. Iruka owed it to his children to see them into adulthood, to remain a stable fixture in their lives. Wasn’t that the job of a teacher?
Something briefly touched his ankle under the table. Yamato’s large eyes blinked at him, and then withdrew.
Sakura was speaking. “… It’s just… I’ve been thinking about leaving the village. Temporarily, of course. I wouldn’t stay away for long. I want to take a break. See the world. I keep thinking back to when I was twelve, and we- well, Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi and I, the old team- went to the Land of Waves. There were so many people there who needed our help. There must be other places like that, other people who need someone to help them. Wonders to see.”
Iruka sat up straighter. That kind of talk was alarming. What if Sakura did just… Leave? Take flight? He could still recall all of the years Tsunade was away. If Sakura was anything like her mentor…
Still, Sakura would return, even if she left. Just like Tsunade. He had faith in that. That didn’t make it a good idea, though.
He bit his tongue.
“Well, I don’t think that’s a good idea”, said Sai.
They all looked at him.
“Sai!”, Yamato choked out.
The pale man shrugged. “I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t think you should go. But it is your choice. You’re free to make your own mistakes.”
“Wow”, Sakura shook her head. “Way to give a girl confidence, Sai.”
“Just remember that Ino would murder you if you missed our wedding”, he replied, smiling happily.
The young woman glanced about the table. “What do you think, Yamato?”
Yamato blustered a little, eyes darting about the room, before admitting; "I also don't think it is a very good idea. However, I do think that, if you want to travel and experience the world, you should, while we are at peace and you're able to do so. Even if you end up making mistakes... At least you'll never be wondering, what if?"
Iruka smiled at that. He’d had some… Not so much regrets, but more things he wished he’d done. Paths he wished he had taken sooner.
"I agree", he echoed Yamato's sentiments, "that if this is what you want to do, then you should go for it. Just... Don't forget us. Don't forget that this is your home."
Sakura stared at them all for a moment, teacup hovering halfway between the table and her mouth, and then put it down, patted her legs, and laughed. “Well, I was just being hypothetical, anyway. I know the people here need me.”
Iruka thought, though, that she was deadly serious. She lifted her cup again, taking a sip, and he caught a flash of guilt in her lowered gaze. His heart ached. Oh, no. Don’t feel guilty for wanting something.
Diagonally across the table, he saw Yamato was also watching Sakura with a stormy expression. Glancing up, he met Iruka’s gaze, and the teacher could see his own worry etched on Yamato’s face.
Sakura seemed to notice, because she changed the topic, turning to Iruka; "Anyway, how are things going at the school?"
"It’s going well. Shino is still reluctant to commit to teaching full-time." That got a small chuckle from both Sakura and Sai. "But the kids are great. They’re- happy", he stuttered, marvelling at the thought. "So happy."
Yamato put his own cup down. "And I expect that soon there will be more happy children running around."
It took Iruka a moment to realize what he meant. When he did, he blinked from Sakura to Sai in astonishment.
That was right: The kids were growing up. Soon they too would be thinking about having children of their own.
And, oh, that was a terrifying thought.