Great Lakes & Expectations chp 20 (draft)

“Hatake-san, the Hokage would like to see you.”

Mr. Me startled, but got up and wandered into the office after gently putting his book back into his pants pocket. 

Well, this day had been tremendously shitty, but at least she now knew what his name was. That would be convenient, because she planned to never, ever, ever refer to their first meeting in Iron and it seemed like she was possibly stuck with his slouchy ass for the duration of her life in Konoha.

He reappeared a few moments later, slightly opening the door. His shoulders were slumped even more than usual. 

“Rejina-hime, would you come in?” The Hokage called. 

She glanced at the clock. Technically, she was off the clock in about ten minutes. 

She stood and walked into the office, past his extended arm. He shut the door quietly behind her, and stood by it. 

“Hokage-sama.” She bowed a little. Probably not as low as she really should, but it was unreasonable to expect her to kowtow to the floor every time she came into his office when she was his personal assistant and proxy. 

Her back muscles would revolt. 

“I’m sure you remember Hatake-san.” The Hokage said, gesturing back at the door. Regina didn’t bother to move. It wasn’t like Mr. Me had left. 

“Your father trusts him to care for your safety in certain matters, and I believe that your families have been close in past.”

Oh, did he?

“All right, then.” She said. It wasn’t a point worth arguing. Thus far, Mr. Me was very non-confrontational and not threatening. Definitely not a companion worth protesting too much about, when compared to some of the other shinobi- some of whom she also recognized from the same movie premiere. The one who had tried to assault her wasn’t among them so far, at least. 

“All right, what?” The Hokage asked. He took a long, lingering sip out of her princess mug. 

He winked. 

“I assume Hatake-san is going to be my required escort to see the Fire Daimyo. Am I incorrect?” 

His pinky twitched in the ceramic diamond ‘ring’. She could swear he was holding back a grin. His eyes were too bright. 

“You are correct.” He took another long sip out of her cup. Was there even anything in it at this point? His throat didn’t seem to be moving. 

He was just drawing attention to it. 

“Do you need more tea, Hokage-sama?” She took the bait, trying to look as disinterested as possible. 

“Yes, please.” He made eye contact. “Thank you for finding my favorite mug.”

“It’s a good choice. It really brings out the color of your eyes.” She held out her hands for it. He handed it over with a decided lack of formality. 

He seemed to enjoy fuckery. She honestly should have guessed that from Tsunade and Jiraiya. And also Orochimaru’s weird-ass, terrifying sense of humor evident in his contract for her and his mental warfare campaign against literally anything Jiraiya liked. 

All signs pointed to this man being the head troll of a legion of trolls. The troll king, if you will.

She was probably not going to return his mug. 

“That’s all.” The Hokage said, looking outright amused. 

“Cool.” She turned around. 

Mr. Me Hatake was pretending to look bored, but his shoulders were stiff. 

She looked him up and down, and turned back to the Hokage. 

“Hatake-san has recently been retired from ANBU, and is a very qualified candidate to replace me in the office of Hokage.” The Hokage said conversationally. “So you’ll be expected to work together fairly frequently. I do hope that you develop a good working relationship.”

She didn’t really have anything to say to that. It made sense to make them work together then. But the way he said ‘recently’ made her suspect that his retirement was both unplanned and unwelcome. 

And possibly effective as of two seconds ago.

“I have an appointment now.” The Hokage informed the room at large. “Hatake-san, please assist Rejina-hime with preparations for this meeting.”

“You busy now, then?” She asked her new mandatory friend. He didn’t move. “I assume that’s a no.”

She had to open the door herself because he seemed to be in shock. Unless the Hokage was really terrifying and this was a Medusa situation.

He eventually blinked slowly and turned his feet towards the door. 

She held the door open for him. Mr. Me walked through it as if he were in a trance. It was actually pretty disturbing. He was not at all there in the moment. 

“Okay, well.” She handed off her mug to Chiharu, who had been unfortunate enough to not look busy, and smiled. “The Hokage would like more tea, but I’m off for the day. Could you…”

“Of course.” Chiharu said pleasantly. “This is his mug, then?”

“Yep.” She’d tucked the ‘# 1 Hokage’ mug into her locker earlier anyway. Regina turned back to Hatake, who was slowly making his way towards the door. Like a concussed slug who was suffering from sudden onset depression. 

“Hatake-san, come with me, please?”

She bossed him towards the hospital. He was… not doing great. 

“So… your retirement. That was planned?” She asked, trying to get his attention. 

“No.” He said shortly.

“I’m sorry.” 

She meant it. This was definitely not a promotion. 

“I’m sure this isn’t what you wanted.” 

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t really have to.

They went into the hospital, where Regina removed a fat stack of papers and put them onto the nurse’s station. 

They looked at her warily.

“I need Uchiha-san released into my care immediately.” She showed lots of teeth when she smiled. What she knew was too many teeth. 

They didn’t like it. Of course they wouldn’t. He was a baby coma patient. 

But Tsunade was never going to come into Konoha, so Regina had to bring her new duckling to her. 

She turned to Kakashi. “Just so you know… I’m gonna need you to carry him at some point.”

He stared at her. 

Regina held out her arms and flopped her hands around. “I’m not very strong. I can’t carry an eight year old all the way to Tea Country.”

“We’re leaving the village.” His voice came out flat and unamused.

She smiled with her lips closed. “Mmmhmm! Have permission and everything.” She held out the paper the Hokage had stamped early that morning. Jiraiya hadn’t named a shinobi, but technically now Mr. Me was on a C class mission taking a sickly child to a place where Tsunade would look at him. 

He read it, and his eyes slid closed. 

“Sorry, again. But you were the most convenient shinobi at the moment.” she shrugged. “And you said you didn’t have any plans.”

“I did not.” He sounded offended. 

She stared at him. “Fine. I assumed you had no plans because you didn’t protest.”

“Am I allowed to protest?” He asked, sounding a bit pissy. 

She thought about it for a minute. 

“No, not really, huh? Unless you want to wear that ugly hat, and you’d still have to work with me.” Regina pursed her lips. “When you think about it, your position kinda sucks.”

“But good news.” She raised her eyebrows. “Today, you get to save a small kid from a coma. That can’t be your worst day on the job.”

He didn’t comment. But he did follow her into Uchiha Sasuke’s room without any grumbling or weird body language. She took that as a win. 

She stood by the bed as the nurses went through the process of removing needles, checking vitals, and showering her with paperwork. 

Regina signed it all without any flourish. It was hard to take her eyes away from the bed. 

The kid was small, with dark hair and pale skin. He looked rough- and he was breathing hard. 

“Genjutsu.” The nurse said, with a tight face. “He hasn’t woken up once.”

“Yes, I know.” Regina said quietly. 

The nurse stared through her. “Where are you taking him?”

“Tsunade-hime.” Regina didn’t react to the small gasp that elicited. “She says the longer we wait, the more damage he suffers.”

Mr. Me didn’t even let her try to pick Sasuke up- he swept the little boy up in his arms and followed her back out without a word. 

They walked to the gates in silence. Regina provided papers and no clarifying information to the obviously curious gate guards. They looked at her companion and opened their mouths, but left them alone. 

They ran south- Mr. Me was obviously cutting her slack in his running speed, but she thanked Tsunade for her foresight in whipping Regina into decent enough shape to run with a little bit of chakra. It wasn’t impressive by shinobi standards whatsoever, but she was pretty fast for a civilian. 

They made the border into Tea a few hours later, and slipped into the town Tsunade was still staying in. 

Oddly- Me, Hatake had taken point. She hadn’t told him where to go at all. 

Or maybe not so odd. He had probably been one of her ANBU from the start. 

Regina wondered at the odds of that. Why was this particular dude everywhere? Konoha was huge. There were literally thousands of shinobi in it. Why was it always this guy?

Tsunade was leaning against the doorway with a glass of alcohol in her hand. The ice clinked against the glass as she swirled it around in her hand. 

“Rejina.” She said warmly. “Good to see you immediately ruined at least five other peoples’ day. I trust you aren’t bringing Kakashi-kun and a small child to defect with you?”

So she hadn’t misheard him the other night. His name was fucking scarecrow.

Regina blinked. “No. Technically I adopted a second one at the same time, probably couldn’t leave him behind.”

“Have him shipped with your luggage.” Tsunade suggested. “Well, come on in. Bring the kid with you.” Then she disappeared into the rooms. 

Regina led Mr. Me who was a scarecrow in a field into her old room, where Shizune had laid out a futon. He put Sasuke on it, then returned to her side. Shizune covered the boy with the thick blanket.

The boy’s breathing was shallow. His skin pallor was bad. 

It made Regina feel uncomfortable. Her natural reaction when she encountered a problem was to fix it. But she’d done what she could. She wasn’t a doctor. And if anyone could fix it, Tsunade could. 

It still made her tense up with stress.

Mr. Me shifted awkwardly, and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Tsunade walked in on her bare feet a few minutes later and sat herself down on the floor, legs gracefully folding under her, straight into seiza. 

She lit up her hand with medical chakra and scanned the boy’s head, obviously concentrating. 

Then she checked his chest, and opened his eyelids. 

Tsunade sat back and sighed. She made meaningful eye contact with Shizune.  

“That’s one hell of a genjutsu.” She removed her jacket, revealing her shoulders. Then she leaned over, bringing more medical chakra in her hand to Sasuke’s temple.

Regina swallowed, hard. Next to her, Hatake made a noise. 

She looked at him. He was definitely *not staring* at the half-foot of cleavage on display.

‘Same, my dude. She is dreamy.’

But still. She coughed. He turned to her, and she shook her head slowly. Tsunade would probably fling him out a window if she caught him. Shinobi were made of sterner stuff than Regina, which seemed to be Tsunade’s excuse for beating offending ones to a pulp. 

Regina was soft and sad and therefore only given mildly disapproving looks. 

He seemed to understand, because he suddenly shifted into an entirely different person. 

It was uncanny and disturbing. Every time she’d seen him, he’d obviously been a socially awkward person with issues with personal intimacy. No one wore a mask like that all the time if they didn’t have severe issues. He didn’t even take it down to eat- just popped it down when he had to, faster than she’d been able to catch. Not that she’d really tried yet.

It was like his whole energy changed. His spine shot straight up, his shoulders squared. She couldn’t see his actual face under the mask, but she could tell his jaw was clenched. His exposed eye was hard and piercing.

Suddenly, she saw why he was a candidate for Hokage. And probably someone to be feared.

She did not like it.

Regina felt the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up. It was like he’d undergone an entire personality shift in a millisecond. 

She stopped looking at him. She did not move away. Regina refused to flinch.

She did not like Hound. That much was certain. 

Slipping into Hound had seemed like the rational choice, given that Kakashi was weak and given to perversion and failure. 

Hound didn’t know what to do about the fact that she’d obviously perceived him as a sudden threat and gone cold. She’d been the one to note his lack of professionalism, after all.

Rejina-hime stared at the opposite wall with intensity. A muscle flexed in her jaw. Her body language was tight and defensive, and he could tell her pulse had increased rapidly. 

Yet another failure. Hound doubted that her earlier demonstrated trust would be extended again soon.

He watched clinically as Tsunade-hime began opening tenketsu and dispelling the complex genjutsu Itachi-kun had inflicted upon his younger brother. Shizune-san was evidently checking diagnostics and watching.

That was another separate Kakashi failure. If he’d been paying better attention, maybe Itachi wouldn’t have done this at all. What kind of leader was he?

A friend-killer, an unintentional traitor, and now a clan-killer by association. It was no wonder that Sandaime-sama had removed him from ANBU and assigned him to basic protection duty. 

He heard a choked kind of cry, and noted that Uchiha Sasuke was now conscious and crying.

The little boy was fast and obviously overexerted- the instant his eyes had shot open he’d sat up and tried to claw Tsunade’s eyes out. Shizune had to hold him down, which had to be a delicate balance.

Then he seemed to realize Tsunade was not attacking him, stopped, and started bawling immediately. The tears ran down his face, making his tiny chest shudder. 

Regina sat down next to him, watching Tsunade run more chakra over his body. She reached out slowly to touch his back, trying to telegraph her movements so that he didn’t freak out and hit her. She wasn’t as fast as Tsunade. 

He actually leaned into it, hiccuping and crying. He was evidently exhausted from being in a genjutsu coma for more than a week, because he tired himself out pretty fast, leaning over and passing out on her lap, clawed hand in her hair. 

Tsunade-sama huffed, evidently satisfied with a job well-done, and walked out of the room for another drink. 

“That went about as well as could be expected.” Shizune said uncomfortably. She leaned back to sit on the floor.

This was the second time in a week a tiny child was attempting to rip Regina’s hair out. She did not care for the experience. Was this parenthood? 

She slowly and carefully massaged the tiny hand open and re-oriented him so that he was pressed up against her torso, sitting on her lap. 

The tiny hands immediately shot back up and around her neck, tangling in her hair. 

She felt her lips disappear into a line. 

At least he wasn’t pulling this time. Her hair would probably survive. 

A silvery-white strand of her hair fell into her lap. She tried to think positive thoughts. 

Shizune crawled across the empty futon, behind her, and then brushed her hair out of the child’s grasp, up into a high but messy bun. 

“Thank you, Shizune.” She said, gratefully. 

Hatake- she couldn’t call the dead-eyed person in the room by her earlier nickname- just watched them both. 

She didn’t shudder. 

Shizune stared at him, looking distinctly unfriendly. 

Slowly, he seemed to fold in on himself, into the person Regina’d thought she’d met before. She knew better than to really believe it now.

It didn’t make her feel better. She hugged the sleeping child on her lap just a little bit tighter.