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Shikako had several thoughts about what could be going on when she received a summons to the tower. Most of those thoughts were vaguely panicky thoughts about what they could have found out about her, and what she was looking into, and how much she knew that she shouldn’t know. What she certainly hadn’t been expecting was to find a very nervous looking Chuunin from Hidden Sand shifting awkwardly on his feet in front of the Hokage’s desk. Also present in the room was Ibiki-san—somewhat concerning—Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke—strange—and Tsunade-sama herself, who looked both deeply annoyed and simultaneously amused.
“There you are, Shikako,” Tsunade-sama greeted, turning an unsettling smirk on her. Shikako froze in the doorway as everyone turned to stare at her.
She still had no idea what was going on. It was just that now she had even less idea of what was going on than she had before.
“Good morning?” she tried. She was trying to figure out what could be the reason for this particular group of people to be in the same room, but the only reason that she could think of for a Hidden Sand representative to be here asking for her had to do with the Garden—and Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei were not read in on that.
“You have a letter,” Sasuke informed her with no small amount of malicious glee when she slipped into the room to stand next to her. Shikako blinked at him, somehow managing to hide most of her confusion at that admission.
What kind of letter would result in the head of T&I and her teammates both being summoned to the tower to deal with?
The Chuunin extended a bound scroll to Shikako, who glanced at Tsunade-sama quickly before gingerly accepting it. “From Kazekage-sama,” he said formally, and bowed to her with an absurd amount of respect.
The glance that Shikako sent Tsunade-sama was decidedly panicked this time. Though that would explain most of the people in the room. She felt a little bit disloyal to say it, but Kakashi-sensei didn’t really have a strong reason to be there. Ibiki-san’s presence was now perfectly explained as a security measure as Shikako was now getting letters from the head of another village—but on the other hand. Shikako was now getting letters from the Kazekage.
What.
“Gaara sent me a letter?” she blurted out, and then couldn’t stop the wince when Tsunade-sama’s expression twitched a little violently.
“Yes,” she drawled, while the Chuunin shrank a little under her flat stare. “Gaara of the Desert, also known as the Kazekage, sent you a letter. Apparently, this letter is also for your eyes only.”
“The Kazekage commanded me to give the scroll to Nara Shikako, and only Nara Shikako,” the poor soul managed to get out. Shikako felt a sharp burst of sympathy. She doubted that Gaara intended to put the guy on the spot, but it was what was happening. “She may share the letter as she needs to, I believe, however. The Kazekage said specifically that her team may be made aware of it.”
Which neatly explained why Kakashi-Sensei was there as well.
“Ah, should I…” Shikako waved the scroll a little.
“Yes, yes you should read it. Apparently, our messenger here was told to wait for a response.” Unspoken but not unheard was that Tsunade-sama wanted very much to know what was going on that required such secrecy.
Shikako broke the seal of the scroll and hastily unrolled it to start reading. Sasuke shamelessly looked over her shoulder at the parchment, taking the fact that she hadn’t moved away when she opened it as permission to read, which Shikako couldn’t argue with.
She did end up regretting it in short measure, however, when she actually started reading the letter, and Sasuke started snickering a little bit.
“Well?” Tsunade-sama demanded, Ibiki-san shifting impatiently beside her. The messenger Chuunin was dismissed from the room, and Shikako could feel him hovering anxiously outside the door. She felt for that guy, she really did, but she was a little distracted as well.
Shikako stared at the scroll. Gaara was…asking for relationship advice for how to be closer to his siblings? And, in general, how to be a better friend.
She really wished that Sasuke would stop laughing at her. It was horribly distracting.
“Um.” She said. Not really her most eloquent response, and she did wish that she could do a better job, but she was really stuck on how Gaara was under the impression that she was good at relationships. She had been fighting with her brother for months now, and they could barely have a conversation on a good day at this point. And yet, here she was.
I would ask Naruto for his advice, but he does not have any siblings of his own beyond you, as his team. I believe that he would advise me to ask you. Also, he is currently unable to be found. Gaara had written. Shikako was briefly struck by the horror that could be the result of Gaara getting advice on how to make friends and be closer to people from Naruto, who was a wonderful person but came off very strongly, which would probably not be great for Gaara, with his personal history.
(This is not, strictly speaking, the truth. More accurately, any time that Gaara had asked Naruto for advice in the past, without fail, the words ‘Shikako said’ were used when Naruto responded. As such, going directly to the source made perfect sense. To be even more accurate, Gaara had also asked for advice from Shikako directly multiple times, and when she had given it it had always been measured and useful—and far more understandable than how Naruto would speak. To be completely accurate, Gaara simply very much enjoyed speaking with Shikako, and treasured the memories of every conversation that he had with her. However, this was not something that he even consciously understood himself, though he was starting to have an idea. Kankurou just started laughing when Gaara tried to bring up Shikako to him, and Temari always made a strange face. Gaara intended to ask Shikako about it, but perhaps that would have to wait for a few letters. Until he had a better idea of how to word it so that Shikako would not think that his siblings disliked her—he was certain that they did not. He just wasn’t sure why they were reacting the way they were to her.)
She was also very much horrified that now she was expected to be providing such advice herself. In an effort to take her mind off of it and—if she was very lucky—have the responsibility taken away from her—Shikako extended the scroll to Tsunade-sama in permission for her to read it.
“I can understand why Gaara, um, the Kazekage-sama, wanted to try to keep this on the quiet side,” she finally offered, not sure what else to say.
Tsunade-sama raised her eyebrows at Shikako and scanned over the letter herself, her face perfectly neutral. Then she handed it over to Ibiki-san, without so much as changing expression at all. Shikako tamped down the urge to fidget nervously. She was not…directly…responsible for this, so she couldn’t be blamed for anything. She wasn’t sure what she would even be blamed for, but…standing in Tsunade-sama’s office feeling like a scolded child was never fun.
Ibiki-san hummed thoughtfully after he finished reading through the scroll. Then he and Tsunade-sama exchanged a series of looks that were entirely indecipherable. Sasuke was still and tense at her shoulder, watching the two of them with the same scrutiny that Shikako was.
Finally, Ibiki-san nodded to Tsunade-sama, then left the room, briefly clapping Shikako on the shoulder as he went.
“Considering your personal history and relationship with him, I am authorizing your correspondence with the Kazekage to be allowed and unmonitored,” Tsuande-sama announced. Shikako’s jaw dropped a little bit in complete shock before she could pull herself together. That was absolutely not what she had expected to happen. Had anything like this every happened in the history of the villages? Shouldn’t someone be looking over anything that she sent out? It was completely not what she wanted. This was so much responsibility. She avoided responsibility. Was she now considered to be one of the people maintaining the village’s reputation? What did this mean?
“I will handle the messenger for now, but you will need to have a response ready by tomorrow morning for him to take back. And Shikako.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I hope you understand the trust that I am placing in you right now. The only reason I am allowing this is because you have proven that if you were to learn anything of a sensitive nature, you would bring it to my attention.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good. Dismissed. Write to the Kazekage. Make it good.”
“Yes ma’am.”
***
As Shikako slunk out of the Tower, Sasuke followed on her heels, smirking audibly, and even Kakashi-sensei had given her one of his happy-smiles before he had vanished in a Body Flicker from the office. Shikako couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing something fairly major in regard to the whole deal with Gaara writing to her.
Something major that wasn’t just ‘the leader of another military village is writing personal letters to her’ that is. She had a feeling that Sasuke was aware of the thing that she was missing, but a half hour of trying to get him to explain later she gave up on him. He clearly didn’t want to tell her, and fine, she would just figure it out at some point.
(Sasuke was fairly confident that she wasn’t going to figure it out, if she hadn’t already. Also, he was fairly certain that Gaara himself wasn’t fully aware of the implications behind his sending private letters to Shikako asking for her advice on his personal life. Tsunade-sama and Ibiki were much more aware of those implications. Of course, they were also trusting that Shikako would be able to deal with them well. But then, she had gotten this far without understanding. It would be fine.)
By that point, word had whipped around the village already, and pretty much everyone in the village from the Rookie Nine had come by to ‘congratulate’ her.
Most of it felt good natured, and she was able to tell them that it was just a matter between friends, but there was still that nagging feeling that she was missing something. The letter was nothing special, really, just a bit awkward…
***
A year and several letters later, Shikako would be staring at the letter from the Hidden Sand Council of Elders in horror, as it was inviting her to visit Hidden Sand and formalize an alliance between their village—and this time, Shikako was able to read between the lines to the carefully worded proposal that she and Gaara should marry.
This, she realized, was what everyone had seen coming. This was what she had been missing.
Oh, no.