Kakashi wasn't exactly happy that Zabuza and Haku were sticking around until Team 7 left for Konoha, but he tolerated them. The two jonin were a little like two very dominant dogs that tried to keep the peace by staying out of each others way. It worked well enough for the most part, even if things sometimes got a little tense during the meals.
Haku, Naruto and Sasuke regularly spent their days with little competitions like seeing who could run faster, throw projectiles with more accuracy or carry the most material to the bridge. Sasuke generally won everything that involved speed, Haku easily beat the other two when it came to accuracy and Naruto tended to liberally use his clones when it came to transporting things. It wasn't quite the same as actual training, but they seemed to have lots of fun and Kakashi was happy that he didn't have to babysit anyone.
Haruka, for her part, had annoyed Zabuza for three days straight about getting kenjutsu lessons. The first thing the swordsman did after relenting was mock her pilfered weapons. Apparently the ronin had had no eye for quality, at all. So Zabuza taught her everything there was to know about good swords before he even let her pick one up again. Most of it went completely over Haruka's head, but she dutifully took coded notes.
It rather unsurprisingly turned out that the katanas were much too big for her to handle, but she did quite well with both the wakizashi and tanto. Zabuza showed her a few different ways to fight with one or both at the same time, but cautioned her that she would need years of practice before she could call herself a swordsman. He actually was a surprisingly good teacher. Rough, a little mean and he expected her to give her best at all times and fully concentrate on the task at hand, yes, but he was also very patient, never demanded more than she could do and would explain something as often as she needed him to to understand it, no matter how simple.
She had a lot of fun teasing Kakashi about how the infamous Demon of the Mist was a better sensei than him. He ignored her for the most part, pretending she didn't exist, but once in a while he would throw a pillow with surprising accuracy and speed.
With Gato as well as most of his men dead nobody interfered with the completion of the bridge, but they took turns guarding it anyway. Kakashi insisted that since he, as team leader, hadn't declared the mission invalid it simply wasn't. Tazuna wasn't particularly happy with that because it meant he owed Konoha pay for an A-rank mission, but he had the common sense not to complain too much.
At least not about that. The bridge builder was convinced that someone was stealing his sake and would tell anyone who was willing to listen all about it. It took Haruka exactly twenty seconds after the first time to figure out that Jubei had invited himself to stay in the house with them, not that she told anyone. The little tanuki had been quite helpful and less sake wouldn't hurt Tazuna.
Both Kakashi and Zabuza discovered the teakettle Jubei liked to disguise himself as—apparently no matter how out of place—as well. They made some odd game out of picking it up and putting it down again in increasingly unlikely places. Haruka had no idea what the rules were or if they just made them up as they went, but both Sasuke and Haku insisted that Zabuza was winning.
When Naruto finally noticed he shouted at the teakettle until it turned back into a crying Jubei and then profusely apologized. The little tanuki was quite the actor. He actually offered Naruto a wad of cash for the sake he had stolen. They argued about whether or not the blond should take it until the money turned back into leaves and then Naruto was yelling again and chasing the summon around the house for being a liar. It would have been a lot more funny if Jiro hadn't suddenly decided that Haruka was the perfect place to hide. He just turned himself into a woven leather bracelet on her wrist, which of course resulted in Naruto following her around and trying to talk him back into his actual form. It unsurprisingly didn't work and since she couldn't take the bracelet off and wasn't quite willing to see what would happen if she cut it, Haruka spent the last four days of their time in Wave hiding from her blond teammate.
When they left for Konoha Naruto and Haku had an embarrassingly sentimental goodbye, while everyone else pretended they didn't exist. The way back was utterly boring, but at least it didn't take them as long as getting to Wave had. In fact, Haruka had decided she quite liked boring, at least for a while.
Because of the upgrade in mission rank they had to report directly to the Hokage almost as soon as they got back. Since Kakashi had been unconscious for most of the important things the three genin had to fill in the gaps. Haruka explained in great detail how and why she had decided that killing Gato would be a good idea and how it had ended with hiring a nukenin instead. At the same time she completely left out Jubei's existence, how Sasuke had gotten his Sharingan or anything to do with Zabuza and Haku after that fight on the bridge. The boys followed her lead without batting an eye. Kakashi seemed quite proud of them, presumably because they were working as a team and not because they were lying to their village leader. Not that she would bet on that. He hadn't gotten along with Zabuza in the beginning, but by the end the two had some weird friendship going that involved a lot of creative and sometimes backhanded insults. It was entirely possible that Kakashi had decided to protect the nukenin by obscuring his whereabouts. After all, he was one of the Seven Swordsman and Kiri would give quite a bit to see him dead and get that sword back.
***
Kakashi gave the Team a week off after the Wave mission and Haruka used the time to look through the papers she had liberated from Gato's safe. They were all ridiculously vague. The only thing she got from them was that someone inside of the village had used Gato to get access to some very illegal black market drugs. There was a single reference to something called the Foundation, but that was it. Haruka made coded copies of the papers and placed them in a storage scroll and hid that behind a lose panel in her ceiling and then she burned the originals. They might never be important again, but Ibiki's insistence that any and all information was valuable and needed to be protected had rubbed off on her.
Sai found her on the third morning after Team 7 had gotten back.
"You said you would take a break," he accused. Haruka stared at him for a heartbeat or two. That was just about the most emotional she had ever seen him.
"I didn't exactly get a choice in the matter you know?"
"He wants to see you," Sai said without any inflection. It was as if the very thought had wiped every trace of emotion he might have had away. Haruka didn't ask who 'he' was. There was really only one option. She'd been meeting Sai's monster today.
"Lead the way."