Author's Note: I never thought I'd manage to put Shikamaru in this chapter, but I guess my brain likes them too much to not go through with the original plan. Next chapter, we might be bringing in Shikaku Nara and have some legitimate Nara moments. Mebuki and Kizashi Haruno would also be making an appearance, and the siblings have to figure out a suitable home arrangement, now that they might be staying this timeline a little bit longer. Hm...

Forgetting Tomorrow
Chapter 4

Four days earlier...

"I'm so sorry I'm late!" Sakura bellows as soon as she pushes open the door, green eyes gliding over the clipboard at hand while she eyes the horrible marking of whatever the last doctor who's done the reports wrote as a summary of the whole post-mission medical check up.

"Tch." Shikamaru waves it off, and only then does Sakura actually looks up, smiling brightly at the lazy genius when she identifies to his lame posture, sitting awkwardly on the examination table. It's good to see somebody familiar who isn't affiliated to the hospital around when she could. "Busy day?"

"More like just the morning." Sakura scoffs, going over to her desk for a second to put away other patients' medical report. "I've got to handle a genin who overpowered himself with his chakra and nearly got burnt off because of that, and not to mention I possibly am having a patient that has a stroke attack every one other hour, but with no obvious cause to it. So yeah. Busy."

Shikamaru makes an act to look outside the window, frowning. "Sakura," he voices out, tone half-annoyed and the other half questioning. "It's nearly three in the evening."

"Oh, really?" Sakura tries to sound surprised, which isn't working, tapping her pen against the clipboard.

Shikamaru only raises his eyebrow.

She smiles gingerly, glad that he's no Ino nor her own father to start mentioning on about how 'attached' she's been with her work lately, later on yapping about how she needs to take a rest or a long vacation, or, Ino's most favourite words: get laid sometimes. Honest to Kami, those things doesn't really bother her, the fact that people kept pointing out that she might have loved her job very much. It's that when people act like she doesn't know that fact herself that makes her slightly annoyed by the whole ordeal.

Of course she's very well aware she's a... eh, a hard worker. People need to calm down. Sakura knows when to take her rest, to take care of herself. Geesh! Bless Shikamaru and his laziness. Or else Sakura might have another mother hen to shoo away. "Alright," she says, standing up, putting up on her best professional smile. "So, you're going on a mission in a few days."

"Tomorrow," Shikamaru corrects her, scratching the back of her neck. "The Hokage just moved the date this morning. Tch. What a drag."

"Of course it is," Sakura says fondly, shaking her head a bit at his usual trademark, feeling slightly lighter when she realises that—oh, it's been a while, isn't it? Since she's even seen the lazy genius. They weren't very close per se, but Shikamaru once taught her to play shogi during one of their rare missions together, and, well, Sakura thinks it's nice. Well, they kind of got scolded for it when Shino mentioned it in his report—they were really supposed to look after their client—but it happened. There's nothing either can do to change it.

Actually, now that Sakura's thinking about it: as incredibly unenthusiastic as Shikamaru is, he's an excellent partner whenever Sakura needs someone to hold an intelligent conversation with. It's really great, because there aren't a lot of people who can keep up with what she tries to say sometimes.

"It says here you were diagnosed with a high fever straightly after returning from your last mission, which was..." Sakura checks the date, "Three weeks ago. How are you feeling now?"

"Fine." Knowing those answer wouldn't suffice as soon as it's left his mouth, Sakura hears him grunt, probably thinking about how troublesome this whole thing was. Really, this guy could be such a comical fellow sometimes. "I finished the pills, even ate it at the time when I'm supposed to."

"Have you ever felt like vomiting, or well, actually did?"

"Sure. But then Mother threatened to beat me into the afterlife if I don't get better, so naturally, I suck it up."

Sakura raises an eyebrow at that, while Shikamaru immediately looks away, a hint of pink rising to his cheeks. She tries to keep her chuckle at a minimal, silently grateful that the check-up is going better and smoother than she's expected it. Not that she's actually... been expecting it. In fact, she has completely forgotten about it haven't one of the nurse told her that the youngest of Nara has showed up for his appointment. But it's been slow, almost lazy, the atmosphere now that she's here. A completely calmer pace with what she's been going at for the last week. "Your mother sounds very... convincing. And lovely, of course."

"Yeah..." He scratches the side of his neck, then looks at her sharply. "It's because of you, she insists on me making an appointment with you, you know."

"What?" Sakura furrows her brows together as she turns, picking up on a stethoscope. "What did I do now?" She tries to sound childish, just to see if it would annoy him. It does, she thinks.

"She told me about your little bump-in at the market." Shikamaru sounds unhappy, "Troublesome."

Sakura immediately whacks him with her pen. He winces.

"What? What bump-in, you baka—oh. Oh, that. Right. I've forgotten all about that." Sakura immediately smile, recalling back on the twenty minute she spent listening to one Yoshino Nara briefing her about all of the different spices she could use to cook several meals. She actually didn't mean it to expand to twenty minutes but what once was her actually running straight into Mrs Nara—to which she apologised profusely while picking up Mrs Nara stuff, before the older woman identifies the ingredient in Sakura's basket—had turned into a mini cooking session that had helped tremendously when Sakura has successfully cooked the ultimate challenge that very night: curry! "She remembers me?"

"Of course she does. She remembers everything." Shikamaru says that like it's a grudge. "She's a bit disappointed to find out you're a shinobi, though."

"Yeah, I noticed that too." Sakura says nonchalantly, like she's acknowledging a fact, patting his chest in a way to ask him to sit straighter. He does.

It's when Sakura presses the stethoscope to his chest that he says, "Or else she'd be running to gun down my door and tack me to the wall until I agree to marry you."

Surprisingly though, Sakura laughs, while Shikamaru seems to be shrinking in size, muttering something along the line of 'troublesome' under his breath. When she could finally control herself again, Sakura wipes a single tear from the corner of her eyes, patting his chest once more and pressing the stethoscope again. "So she wants you to marry a civilian?"

"Preferably," Shikamaru shrugs. "She comes from a civilian family. But I don't see any difference to it, to be honest. All women are—"

"Are—?" Sakura interjects, giving him an expression to dare him to proceed the rest of that sentence with caution.

Shikamaru noticeably tenses. "Are lethal."

"Nice safe there, dangerous man." Sakura laughs again, then instructs him: "Breathe in." She nods her head when Shikamaru's heartbeat continues to beat in a rather calming pace, and she moves the stethoscope to his back, satisfied. "So, no nausea or headache or anything similar to those symptoms?"

"No." He tells, then perks a bit like he just remember something, raising his arms up to look at an area on his forearm. "Choji kind of stabbed me with a pen yesterday. Bled a bit more than I expected. But eh. I don't think it's serious."

"Did you wash the wound?"

He shakes his head. "I put a bandaid on it."

"Right, but just in case..." She signals him to peel the plaster off while she rolls away, on her swivel chair, to her desk, putting away her stethoscope. He slowly picks on the bandaid, and tries not to wince when his skin suffers as he tug the sticky thing off. "That's a pretty deep stab, Shikamaru. For a pen, that is."

"Yeah. Troublesome." Guess he doesn't want to go into details.

"Alright. I'm going to close in on the wounds now, okay?" She says to him like he's a child, carefully wrapping her hands around his forearm. Shikamaru breathes in. And in the next second, Sakura could feel her chakra flows, until she's certain that his skin has finally healed on itself. "Look at that. Good as new." She proudly says, more to herself than him, and rolls away again to fetch a mineral water. The amount of chakra she's used may be little, but that doesn't mean she can't be too careful. Hydrating one's self is a very important aspect of life, she likes to think.

"Let's get to your blood pressure, then we'll check if there's any sign of that fever left before I can sign on your form to tell the Hokage that you're physically fit for your next mission. That sounds good to you?"

"Sure, let's just get this over with."

Sakura rolls her eyes.

The rest of the appointment goes on swiftly. Shikamaru complaints, here and there, but since he understands how necessary this procedure it, mostly he keeps his mouth shut. He's been pleasant, and Sakura tries not to let the fact that she hasn't eaten anything get in the way of the check up. "Alright, medically speaking, you're a perfectly healthy guy, Shikamaru." She says, as she jots something down on the form with his name splattered on the top of it.

He smirks a bit at that, seemingly smug. "Thanks."

"You should do more doctor's appointments, you hear me? Not necessarily with me, of course, if you don't want to. The hospitals may not have a lot of doctors, but we've got a few great staff here that will have no problem into taking the time to examine you."

"Tch. Too troublesome."

She whacks him again. This time, with her clipboard. "Yeah, I'd like to hear you say that when you find yourself rotting with what you're doing with that lung of yours!"

"As if you don't smoke yourself." He scoffs.

"That was like, two times! Fine, maybe three. And I was stressed." She thinks back about those dark days, shivers, swearing on her life it won't repeat again. Not if she can help herself. Sticking her tongue out at him, she proceeds: "You're a bad influence, Nara."

The smirk on his face grows.

"But no seriously, checking periodically on how's your body doing will benefit you more than it'll do you harm, Shikamaru." She says, handing him the form to say he's okay to go to his next mission. "Think about it alright?"

"Hn," he hums, finally standing up. "Thanks."

"Don't die out there, dangerous man."

"Tch. Here." He pockets something from one of the pouches of his flak jacket and toss it over on her desk—until Sakura realises it's a small bag of chips. BBQ flavoured. She blinks at it for a moment, for the first time never really knowing what to say, and finally hears him mutter: "See you later, Sakura." With that, he finally leaves.

That was four days ago.

It's surprising how short the days could go for her. Nothing much has happened after that. She finally takes the chips from Shikamaru as a queue to go down to the the cafeteria and get herself an apple before continue working for the rest of the day. She means, she knows the unexpected act from the youngest of Nara is probably prompted by Ino's probings or something, but still—it feels like she's hit a certain low point when even Shikamaru's subtly pointing it out for her to take a better care of herself.

Doesn't mean she'll be dropping everything and crawl to her bed or anything like that, because, gosh, there's still so much to do in the hospital—but she's eating now. Or she's trying to.

Four days later, it's been reported that the village might be infiltrated and the next thing Sakura knows, she's been shoved a handful of blood samples for her to identify after, only to be told about three hours later that she won't have to be doing it after all.

"Wait, so I'm off the investigation?"

"Yes," Shizune nods swiftly, eyes never wavering as its held by Sakura's bright green ones, before the older woman moves to pick up more forms. "The Hokage has decided to open the investigation to only a certain small number of people."

"And I'm not on it." Sakura points out—not entirely mad nor was she that curious. If she were to be honest, she's merely just baffled. Never have the Fifth ever does pull something like this—directly ordering her to do something, yet change her mind just as Sakura was about to do it—so, yes. It's all very confusing.

"Yes."

"Any reason?"

"Yes, but it's not something I can tell you." Shizune gives her a small apologetic smile, and Sakura numbly nods, fiddling with her latex gloves. So, Shizune can't tell her. Things must have gone serious. "See it this way," Shizune says some more, "Now you have less things to worry about. I know you've barely gotten any proper sleep for the last five days."

That was only because Sakura has been up observing a man who'd have a cardiac arrest every five seconds.

"I'm fine," Sakura finally dismisses, never really been keen to acknowledge the fact that she's, well—a workaholic—and proceed to take the blood samples from storage. "Well, here. This is patient number one's blood, the second, and the third. These are the datas they've manage to give to me, which, I don't know if you know, isn't a lot."

"Yes, I'm aware."

"I haven't gotten the chance to examine it, since you stopped me... Are you sure you don't need me to—?"

I'm a damn good doctor, she didn't add. Or, well. I'd like to think that I am.

"Sakura," Shizune's voice is a gentle mix of stern and exhaustion, something Sakura has been accustomed to herself, before she say: "Thank you, but until there's any new development, the decision has been decided."

"Okay," Sakura slowly steps down, "Alright."

"You're tired, you should go home. I'm sure Tsunade-sama would understand."

"Right." Sakura lets out, "Wait, no, I still have a few paperworks that needed to be... you know what? Maybe I'll take you up on the offer."

Shizune seems surprised. "Really?"

"Yeah, I don't think I have actually seen my apartment lately." Or Naruto. Or Ino. Kami, it feels like she's been stuck in this building for a decade. Her back certainly doesn't make an effort to deny the hyperbole—not when the ache is particularly intensifying right now. "But—uh—I'll be here first thing in the morning, if that's alright?"

"If you can manage, sure." Shizune smiles, now shuffling more reports.

Sakura finally packs her things and leave. She opens the bag of chips Shikamaru gives her and nibble on one while she's walking out, suddenly is taken aback when her body identifies with the warmth of the sunset cascading gently on her bare skin. She shivers involuntarily, stares a bit more as she recognises the adults and children who were walking by, thinking exactly about the last time she's walked out of the hospital before it's nightfall. Noticing a headache rising, Sakura takes the first step and turn on her heels straight to where her apartment is. Maybe, she thinks absently: she can finally do the dishes that's been calling out to her since last weekend.

Wow.

Maybe it has been a decade since she's left the hospital. Why does she feel so old all so suddenly?

"Hey Sakura!" A new voice interrupts her train of thoughts when she finally spots it's Naruto, her heavy heart losing its weight and she realises that no, she's perfectly in her correct timeline. "Sakura! Sakura!" Besides him, Sakura realises, stand Sai lankily.

"Hey, you guys!" She feels like laughing and crying all at the same time. "Hi, it's been so long hasn't it?"

Naruto immediately pouts. "Yes it has! We were just about to check on you! Sai was ready to drag you out of the hospital—"

"Completely by force."

"But I'd like to think it more as persuading, you know?"

"Ugly, you look like shit."

"Sai!" Naruto chides, like he's barrating a disobedient pet.

"Hah," Sakura breathes, pursing her lips while she cocks her hips to the side. "Surprisingly, I actually miss that."

"Don't mind him, Sakura! He's just being stupid! I think you look very pretty. Well, I mean, you look like you're worn out. But still," Naruto blinks his wide eyes, reassuring her, "Pretty! So, what are you doing out of the hospital? Did grandma personally kicked you out of it again?"

"What? No." Sakura internally groans. That happened one time! "Well, no, not exactly. I was supposed to do some blood samples that she sent over, but she decided last minute that I shouldn't do it. So Shizune told me I could leave early."

"And you walk out of the hospital on your own? Voluntarily?"

"Maybe she's been hallucinated." Sai suggests.

"I'm not being hallucinated. I'm perfectly doing everything on my own free will." She tells those two boys, now continuing her pace to her apartment. She naturally offers the bag of chips to Naruto and Sai, and watch as Naruto happily digs his hand to snatch three. "I guess I just realise that I'm tired. Plus, I need to do some laundry and the dishes need to be washed. I can't keep sending all of my dirty clothes to my mother, you know."

"You send dirty clothes to your mom?" Naruto asks interestedly.

"Only when I'm desperate."

"I'm desperate all the time Sakura!" Naruto suddenly wails. "Can I send dirty clothes to your mother too?"

"You baka." Sakura resists the urge to hit the blond with her mighty fist. "Anyway, I'm not supposed to do that. I'm a grown woman. I've got to stop relying on my parents or else it'd be like I've never left their house. Hence, I'll do my laundry tonight."

"Maybe you should take a day off tomorrow?"

"What!" Sakura yelps, clearly offended. "Naruto, are you insane!?"

"Come on Sakura. It's been a while since any of us have ever seen you. The other day Ino makes a joke about how the universe might as well be swallowing you whole, and we wouldn't be searching because we'd assume you're rotting away in your office." Naruto pauses, "Are you rotting in your office?"

"No! Ino-Pig is crazy! You should've never listened to her." Sakura argues. "The universe won't swallow me whole. I'd fight for it. There's still so many things I need to do."

"Yes! That's right!" Naruto beams proudly. "I'd fight for you too! I'd fight for all of us!"

"Yes." Sai agrees lamely, nodding his head once in approval. "I would consider fighting for Ugly's continuous existence."

Sakura rolls her eyes.

"Hey Sakura, have you heard about the impostors?"

"Impostors?"

"They say there're three of them, masking as one of our own. You know. Shinobi." Naruto looks scandalous while Sakura frowns, wondering if these are the same people that the Hokage has told her to check their blood samples for, until, well, she's being pulled out of the whole thing, that is. "Kiba was the one who found them."

"Oh?" Sakura finally responds, clearly interested.

"Yeah, but I guess the ANBU threatens him or something, because he says he's not allowed to discuss his findings to other people. That still kinda didn't stop him though. He said that one of them is a kid. Just a kid, Sakura! He's a kid and he's already infiltrating a village! Is that possible? Do you think it is?"

Sakura frowns, hard, wondering if these are all true. Thinking about how Shizune seems adamant on not talking about the investigation, Sakura finally decides on saying, "Maybe there's a reason why he's not supposed to talk about it."

"Tch." Naruto pouts childishly, "I can't believe grandma's keeping it as a secret. We have the right to know, Sakura! We can search for more of them if there is!"

"Naruto, calm down. I'm sure the shishou has a plan for it, if it's true."

"Of course it is!" Naruto's stomach suddenly growls, and the blond growls, making a face. Sakura frowns, then turns to Sai for an explanation.

The guy blinks. "He ate cat food."

"It was not cat food!"

"It was."

"No, it wasn't!"

"Naruto, seriously?"

"Sai bought me the wrong food!"

Sai only shrugs, Naruto begins flailing. "Ugh!" He says, stomaching the pain, "I need to go. Ugh. There's a toilet over there! Wait for me, okay? Then we can walk together. I refuse to not hang out with you when you're finally free, Sakura."

"Yes, yes. Just go. Please." Sakura shakes her head a bit, watches as the blond completely flees away while screaming intelligibly.

"He shits a lot today," Sai supplies and Sakura turns to him, raising both of her brows. Silence immediately falls over them then, but Sakura doesn't ponder if it's awkward or not when she sets her eyes to focus on the sky, appreciating the orange and pink colour. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and thank whoever it is that's Up There for this peaceful moment. She has needed this.

"They have pink hair," Sai suddenly says, and Sakura snaps her attention to him.

"What?"

"The impostors." Sai states blankly, the lets his eyes fall on her own set of lengthening bangs. "They have pink hair."

Sakura blinks, not knowing what to say to that.

Author's Note: soooooo... reviews would make me update wayy faster, you know. *gingerly pokes all of you readers*