"Truth is not relative, our understanding of it is."

Teacher's Pet

by Blue Jeans

"Ah, Sakura!" A voice interrupted Sakura's dinner as she slowly looked up from her medical notes. Tsunade had been working her like a vengeful slave-master, as if the time Sakura took off was really her own decision. This was the first time she had a chance to even look at the medical scrolls Tsunade had assigned to her before the surgery and as much as she wasn't a fan of ramen, Kakashi's invitation had sparked that nostalgic memory concerning Ichiraku. So, on her one night off early from under the Hokage's thumb, she found herself lounging at the small restaurant.

When her eyes scanned over her shoulder, she saw, to her surprise, Umino Iruka to be the one who called out to her. Her former teacher smiled a greeting while settling himself down a stool over. Sakura blinked, a little startled. Iruka had been her Academy teacher almost three years back, and despite being the best female student in his class, they had never really been close. "Iruka-sensei, what are you doing here?" she queried, not quite sure what to say. In the back of her mind she thought of Naruto right away, but that was only because he was the only person she had ever been able to link to Naruto before Team 7.

"Uh, just having my dinner," Iruka answered easily but Sakura felt he was keeping something from her. "So, how's my brightest kunoichi doing?" Iruka asked and there was something really familiar about his personality and Sakura felt the urge to roll her eyes at him. She drummed her index finger against the wooden counter-top, studying her old teacher with a quizzical eye, after all, if she was to deduce Iruka's personality from past experiences than he was certainly acting out of character now. Sakura just couldn't put her finger on exactly what it was that made her feel this way. No, not his face, it didn't look any different from the last time she's seen him at the Academy when she was sent there for an errand. "Uh, Sakura?"

Sakura blinked. She leaned back, eyes widening slightly as if she was coming out of a trance. "Sorry, Iruka-sensei," she apologized, laughing nervously for staring at him so openly. "I was just thinking of something. I didn't quite catch what you were saying...?"

A past expression he had worn...

"Well, I was just asking what you were doing here." Iruka repeated himself. Before Sakura could answer though, the waitress, Ayame, came over and asked Iruka what he wanted. The familiar way that Ayame addressed Iruka made Sakura ponder if he was a regular at Ichiraku's. Naruto had always liked this place too... Perhaps, Iruka came as often as Team 7 used to, Sakura thought. Well, that may be true but that certainly wasn't what gave her pause.

"I'm studying," Sakura replied when Ayame went to attend to another customer. She tapped on the scroll she had been reading and Iruka glanced at it with a bit of curiosity. "Tsunade-shishou let me off earlier today so I thought I'd catch up on some reading." She was also there to be in the presence of Team 7's past, but she wasn't about to tell Iruka that.

"I didn't know you liked ramen," Iruka remarked off-handedly as he glanced up from her scroll. "That wasn't the impression I had."

Sakura gave him a look and the forced grin on his lips suddenly made Sakura wonder what he meant by that. "It's not my favorite, sure, but..." she trailed off as she studied her former teacher, a different type of light-bulb seemed to go off in her head. The fact that he had waited for them when the second part of Chuunin exam was done, when Naruto hugged him so enthusiastically that Sakura was almost embarrassed, and the expression Sakura saw on Iruka-sensei's face then, one that she didn't understand at the time. He was close to Naruto in a way she had never been and that means he knows Naruto in a way she also didn't. Of all her teammates, the only records that stubbornly remained out of her authorization was Naruto's own. She was sick of not being the one who didn't understand and didn't know. Sasuke's harsh words when she had first commented about family, Naruto's incessant blabber that never included anything about his past, and even her own teacher's mystery on how he had a Sharigan when he wasn't a descendant of the Uchiha clan, the slaughtered clan... "What do you mean that's not the impression you had of me, Iruka-sensei?" Sakura asked with all the casual curiosity of a civilian, except her eyes narrowed ever so slightly with a shinobi's hunger for information.

Iruka rubbed the back of his neck nervously as he waved his other hand in-front of him in a placating manner. The fact that she was Tsunade-hime's student gave a lot of people the impression that she wouldn't pause to smash their heads into a wall if they offended her, and Tsunade's infamous short-temper didn't help. This wasn't necessarily true, but it did put a dampener on her dating life, not that Team 7's reputation and her running herself into the ground hadn't already restricted Sakura's choices and chance meetings. It would have been somewhat flattering though if someone would at least take notice, Sakura sometimes thought this whenever she was in a huff of feminine vanity. The most disheartening thing was, even Ninja like her former teacher Iruka treated her as if she was going to explode at any moment! That really pissed Sakura off. After all, Iruka had been her teacher before and even if they didn't know each other very well, at least he should have known that she had more control of her faculties than that.

Sakura's glare was probably what made Iruka say what he did at that moment though, but that may also have been the fact that Iruka had never been smooth with women in general. "Well, from what Naruto told me, I got a different impression, that's all! It's nothing bad! He only said good things about you." Iruka quickly added, in case he caused Naruto grievous injuries or death despite Naruto's healing abilities. He didn't want a misunderstanding to occur because he didn't specify to Tsunade-hime's apprentice the types of comments Naruto made about her.

Sakura was immediately hooked by this little tibit since Iruka didn't make mention of their own acquaintance being at the root of his assumptions. Whatever Naruto had told him had certainly left an impression that overruled Iruka's own. Then again, that was one of Naruto's specialty, seeing what others missed. Sakura raised a disbelieving brow and the knuckles in her right hand cracked when Iruka offered no other forms of explaination. Her slight tactic of intimidation worked a bit better than she had expected when Iruka swallowed a bit harshly and blurted out rather gracelessly. "Th-that is, he does like you!! I mean, you're his teammate and all." Iruka mumbled, adding that last bit almost as an after-thought.

The atmosphere suddenly dropped ten degrees as Iruka stared at Sakura and Sakura stared back, but her expression was that of utter shock. "E-excuse me?" That Naruto talked about Sakura, well, that wasn't too surprising since they were teammates. The fact that Naruto talked about Sakura to Iruka concerning his feelings for her... well, that did give her pause, considering what little interactions she had witnessed between the two. But to hear that Naruto liked her from someone else, even with that tacky bit at the end to smooth out the seriousness of such a comment, that was almost like a confession and it stopped Sakura cold. Up to this point, Sakura had never taken Naruto's requests for dates seriously. He didn't like her like that, he couldn't like her like that, because she had always assumed he was just trying to annoy her about the fact that Sasuke was never going to look her way. Even after all this time, that one belief out of all her others concerning Naruto, remained. Mostly due to the fact that Sakura never had to question it until now. And who was Iruka-sensei to Naruto, anyway, to say such a thing to her? Why did she not know this after all this time?

Sakura was angry with herself for being so blind and, of course, she turned that frustration out onto the first unlucky person at hand, Iruka - the messenger.

Iruka was completely silent now, his mouth a grimly sealed in a line of rebellion. For a Chuunin teacher, Sakura had a feeling that outside of the classroom, he didn't know how to talk to women very well or else she would never have heard even a whisper of this out of him. His words might even have placated a civilian girl into believing that lame excuse Iruka gave at the end, but Sakura was a shinobi trained to read underneath the underneath and Iruka hadn't been smooth enough with her to make her doubt her findings. Inner Sakura leered, because if Iruka assumed that she was going to pry the information out of him through sheer force then Sakura was going to pry it out of him through sheer cunning, or a combination of both. Sakura refused to be blinded any longer about her teammates, they were too important to her, and Naruto, surprisingly, had been the hardest nut to crack. After what Naruto had done for her, the least she could do was to get to know him better, and that included the important people in his life too. Inner Sakura insisted all this with a wicked grin spreading across her lips. And if in the process she just happened to confirm what she suspected that he really felt about her, this time she would take those feelings to heart, and wouldn't that be all the better for everyone?

Sakura smiled at Iruka pleasantly, showing teeth. Then she shifted over to sit right next to him. There, on the tip of his forehead, she saw a drop of sweat forming and a very thin line of a hidden frown. Her medic-nin eyes immediately noted the slight increase in tension in Iruka's shoulders while the rapidity of his breathing changed as well. Good, she got him exactly where she wanted him. At least he was far easier to read than Kakashi-sensei ever was. "And what, pray tell," Sakura begun slowly as she leaned forward while Iruka leaned back, "were some of these good things that Naruto likes about me, Iruka-sensei?"

"N-nothing," Iruka answered wtih a nervous chuckle, then cleared his throat in embarrassment at this clear sign of intimidation. The chopsticks in Sakura's other hand made a loud, snapping noise and Iruka's gaze shifted quickly over between Sakura's clenched fist and Sakura's eerily cheerful smile. "Nothing bad, you know that!" Iruka amended quickly, since the obviousness of his lies were directing him down the road of doom. After all, Iruka had been one of the few people to see Sakura break walls and boulders apart with her bare-hands and that had been quite an experience to remember now. Fact of the matter was, despite her struggle through the last trial of the Chuunin exam three years ago, Sakura's second time taking it was almost a frightening sight considering how much she had grown in such short period of time and how quickly she trampled the competition.

And to think that his pink-haired former student, of all his students, would one day be the most intimidating...

"You already said that, Iruka-sensei," Sakura chided her teacher with a promise in her eyes that spelled nothing good for the Chuunin. Despite everything, Iruka still stubbornly refused to elaborate. It was not his place to tell Sakura something like this. Even if Naruto never said it directly, since the boy was never really good at articulating such things, Team 7 changed Naruto's life. Sakura, Sasuke and Kakashi were the first people other than Iruka to matter to Naruto like that. These important feelings were not things Iruka had a right to point out if Naruto's own teammates still hadn't taken notice. Sakura's fist slammed against the counter-top, rattling some of the wears and making Iruka wince. He couldn't help but jump a little at this display, but Sakura was already straightening, tired of Iruka's misconception of her, especially if it wasn't going to get her what she wanted. "Look, I'm not going to hurt Naruto if he said something stupid. He's my important teammate too, and even if, at times, he's a completely perverted idiot, he's brave and loyal when it matters." Sakura glared at Iruka while he widened his eyes at what she was saying. Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps Naruto didn't just care about his teammates but that this one, at least, cared for him back. "So, my question to you, Iruka-sensei, is what do you mean when you said he likes me? And who the hell are you to Naruto, anyway?" Perhaps she did take after Tsunade in the short-temper department, Sakura conceded silently to herself. But Iruka couldn't just say something like that and expect her to leave it alone! Even if not now, Sakura was going to hound him to the ends of his days to pry the information out of him, even if she had to do it out of his cold, dead hands, she would.

Sakura was practically growling at Iruka and glaring at him just as fiercely when he didn't answer her immediately.

Iruka's own expression changed slowly as he too suddenly understood the situation in a different light. Sakura's over-protective stance on Naruto and her not liking ramen but being at Ichiraku anyway, this must all pointed to one thing and one thing only... "You really feel--!!" Iruka begun, index-finger pointed at Sakura with shock and astonishment.

"Iruka-sensei!!" Sakura snarled, fists clenched on the counter-top of Ichiraku's as all her knuckles cracked ominously. Iruka froze, realizing his error too late. It was exactly the wrong thing to say at that moment. After all, Iruka had never been smooth with the ladies and now he was going to have to pay the price.

End.

- Four - in Asian culture is a number associated with death because the pronunciation of it is similar to saying death.

- You may notice that, several times, during the story Sakura is given advice or 'words of wisdom' by her mentors. I didn't want her just to accept these answers because Sakura's older now so she's bound to question more what she is given, even if she is still more submissive to authority than either Naruto or Sasuke will ever be. Just because she doesn't contest it as much as her teammates doesn't mean she believes everything she's fed.

- The purpose of this fic was to smooth over a few unanswered moments of awkwardness in the 2 and 1/2 year time skip and the subsequent reunion, things that weren't explained when Naruto came back to town.

- I had Iruka call Sakura in a very intimate way without any honorifics because in Volume 28, when Iruka saw Team Kakashi off, he said Naruto and Sakura's names without honorfics when addressing them to Tsunade and Jiraiya. It may not be what he uses to address them in person and it may just be the translation I had, but it was the only thing I had to go on... Because of that, I also had to fit Iruka into the story-line to show that there is some relationship between Sakura and him after she graduated for him to warrant calling her in such a way!

- I deliberately left whether or not Sakura completely resolved her guilt over Ichigo unfinished. It isn't something she's going to get over or stop thinking about ever, he is her first after all. The main point of it was that I wanted to move her to a point where she realizes that she can't afford to let it stop her from moving forward and getting stronger. I also didn't want to diminish Ichigo's death by saying "And she was over it!" in a three day time period - impossible in real life considering how deeply Sakura felt it. Let me just leave it at the fact that she will still think about it on occasion and it had changed her and her perspective on a lot of things. Unfortunately that's all the time I really had for it and despite it being the catalyst of this story it will have to remain unresolved after all.

- Slight change: Iruka actually said something completely different in that last sentence that got him in trouble with Sakura in the past version but I thought it unfair since that type of sentence kept getting cut off in the manga. So in the spirit of Kishimoto, I decided to leave it the way he intended it - a.k.a. drive the fans mad! And, yes, Sakura hinted herself that she knew a lot more about her teammates than before when Team Kakashi was traveling to Suna to rescue Gaara. The fact that she knew about Itachi, the fact that she wasn't surprised that Naruto was the container for a demon - though it still remained news to her - and her own confession on researching the Akatsuki and Orochimaru, all meant that Sakura did a pretty damn thorough search on the backgrounds of her teammates. However, because the facts are missing on Naruto, I thought Sakura would be a bit frustrated that her only information source - Iruka - wasn't being all the cooperative. I'm also a NaruSaku fan, can you tell?

- Iruka's piece kept getting changed because I am still somewhat peeved by it. It is the only inconsistent piece that is a bit out of character in here. I hope this version is better than what I started out with.