Title: Reminder
Summary: Kakashi and Sakura are talking in bed about the past and the future. AU.
Rating: T
Genre: Angst/Romance
Words: 625
"He never deserved you."
"Huh?" Sakura caught Kakashi's eye, looking at her hazily as he lay resting with his arms folded behind his head.
"You wonder why Sasuke-kun isn't here with you." Sakura's mouth dropped in shock, she pulled the covers over her modesty and inched further away from Kakashi.
"When I do the things I do to you, when you call me to ask if it's okay for you to drop by." Sakura stilled, now his voice was right on the back of her neck as he continued. "You know I'm not him."
She heard him take a breath. "Sasuke-kun doesn't do the things I do for you. Neither here in bed or outside of it." Kakashi rested his head on her shoulder as she whimpered, after all, she believed him to be undeservingly cruel.
"That's because he never existed. Or rather, he no longer has the chance to."
She hunched over, pulling away from Kakashi's body and the tangled bedsheets surrounding them. One hand held her stomach and another grasped the sheets as though she were reaching for Kakashi's discarded clothes in order to show him the door.
"Stop." She begged helplessly.
Kakashi sighed. "I'm saying your thoughts out loud so that you can understand just how ridiculous and nonsensical they are." He said firmly, like a leader.
Sakura turned her head away from the half-nude man, silently allowing tears to descend down her cheeks.
"Do you remember when we were kids and he said, he wanted to kill a certain man and then revive his clan?"
"Ah." Kakashi thought it made sense now. Though if he'd given it more thought perhaps Sakura's dream would have been more obvious to him. "I do."
"I thought he would come back for me." She replied. Anger furrowed her brows and her lips were tightly pressed together, as if to suppress some sound like a wounded animal.
"And he did." He reminded her.
"To kill me, not to love me."
Kakashi pulled Sakura gently into his warm embrace, holding her there tightly.
"You know, at any other time I would take you thinking of someone else when we are together as an insult."
Sakura did not move.
Surely, he didn't mean to make her feel any more guilt, she was already wracked with it. Not simply because of the image burnt into her memory of Sasuke taking his last breath, awestruck by the blade she'd pierced through his heart.
More so that she would forever see his face in his daughter's expressions whenever Karin paraded her throughout the village, escorts surrounding her so that Sakura could never get close enough to finish what she'd started.
"Sakura, look at me."
When she complied he observed the white lines tears had painted along her beautiful flushed face. Kakashi brushed her cheeks with his finger tips and stared into her eyes.
"I am not Sasuke and I never will be." He said. "I want only the best for you and every day I see you at work and on missions you make me so proud. You make the whole of Konoha proud."
"I have duties to this village which mean I can never say that I won't leave you." His grip on her tightened so that she could not let go but it was not unpleasant. She frowned but said nothing in his arms.
"I can never say I won't betray your trust." He said inhaling the scent of her hair. She moaned, ever so slightly.
"But I will love you like no-one else can."
Sakura clung to him, fingers pressed into his firm back and buried her head in his chest. His heartbeat pulsed gently against her skin.
"Kakashi?"
"Hm?"
"I know you're not Sasuke, and I'm glad."
