Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, something like his would happen.

Number of words: 1,229

Pairing: None, but I guess if you look reall close it could be Naruto X Sakura, but it's more of a friendship thing

Rating: T

Summary: She states this flippantly like it was usual to hate the person who provided for you, to hate your sensei-and-everything-else-important "I used to think: So what if Naruto and Sasuke were so strong I was still on your team, you owed me."

Warnings: This is not even in the canon universe. It's like Heroes. Except with Naruto characters and guns. Because I felt like it.


He finds it strange that the last place he sees her is the bridge in the compound. The one they had waited on for him the very first time they met. She was 12 then his mind tells him and he can see the obnoxious training dress she used to wear. But she's 19 now and he feels like she's a completely different person. Maybe she is. He doesn't know, he never stayed long enough to find out.

She grew her hair back out his mind whispers and he wonders why he keeps focusing on the past and what never was.

But it's true, her long rose hair is pulled out of her face by a black hair band, and the obnoxious red dress seems to have been put away for today. Today, he notes, she's all black leather and lace, three guns hidden under her clothes. And he finds that it hurts because the girl in front of him is not the Sakura he knew.

"Hello, Kakashi-san." Her voice interrupts the night. "Long time no see." She doesn't turn to face him and instead takes a long steady drag out of the cigarette in her hand. He represses the urge to go up to her and pull it from her hands. He lost that privilege a long time ago.

"Sakura, how are you?" His voice cracks slightly and he curses himself for it.

"Oh, I've been better. Got myself an actual teacher, you see." Her voice is mocking and he wishes he could find it within himself to be angry. He wants to say: "But I did teach you." But he doesn't because he realizes he never did, focusing on Sasuke instead. And to some degree Naruto.

"I used to hate you, you know." She starts. But no, no he doesn't know. " I still do actually, but back then it was a lot stronger." She states this flippantly like it was usual to hate the person who provided for you, to hate your sensei-and-everything-else-important. He was their caretaker, put in charge of three orphans and he's sorry that he fucked up okay, he's sorry, but it's not like he had been the picture of mental health. But he doesn't say that. She wouldn't listen.

"I used to think: So what if Naruto and Sasuke were so strong I was still on your team, you owed me." Her voice is flat but he still feels like she's accusing him of something. He could just invade her mind with his eyes like some common criminal but he can't bring himself to.

"I used to look in the mirror and think: Just because I'm not as strong doesn't mean I'm any less than them right? I manifested right? I could heal the sick and bring the almost dead back to life, that had to count for something right?" She takes a deep drag of her cigarette and he knows that as she does she's healing whatever damage she may be doing to her body. "And then Sasuke left." She laughs bitterly, before finally turning to face him.

… He almost wished she didn't. Her eyes are chips of frozen beryl ice and he feels a shiver crawl up and down his spine. "You pulled your disappearing act and left Naruto and I to fend for ourselves…" She turns away again and where she grips the railing the iron breaks. "No one wants two orphans whose teacher has abandoned them Kakashi-san." Not even themselves, it's unspoken but still there.

"We spent months trying to keep our heads above the water, Naruto and I. Paying bills that you used to help us with. Then Naruto wanted to leave, but I was okay with that, because I believed in him. He said he was going to bring Sasuke back and then you would come back and then everything would be okay, we would be back to normal. We'd be a family again. I don't think we ever were and if we were, if, then we were the most fucked up family I had ever met. And you know what? I fucking believed in him. I believed in him until it felt like my heart would burst." She ripped the iron bar from the metal of the bridge and sat down on the ledge her feet swaying just above the surface of the water.

"But then I had to pay for myself and I worked and I worked and I worked until I ached in my very bones. And the whole time I kept believing that Naruto would bring you two back to me and we would all be happy again. What a fucking idiot I was." She scoffed and blew out an impressive ring of smoke, fingering the .45 automatic she had on her hip. "Tsunade-sensei, just after I manifested my second ability, told me so, and then in the same breath she asked me if I wanted to be her apprentice."

Her eyes softened slightly and it makes Kakashi forlorn because it isn't for him, it'll never be for him, he realizes. She'll never look at him with those green eyes and smile and heal his injuries.

"And she taught me and she paid attention to me, and do you know how good I felt? How appreciated I felt? Because for once in my life I felt like I was doing something right." Her hands were gripping the edge of the bridge, crumpling the old metal, and he idly wondered whether it would last the night.

"But then Naruto died trying to bring Sasuke back." She chokes on a ring of smoke. "And it was like all my breath left my lungs. Because you had killed the first good thing that ever happened to me." She chuckles bitterly and he wonders whether it's because she doesn't want to cry or just because she finds their situation truly humorous. "Well… Technically Sasuke did. But I'll deal with him later."

"Deal with him?" Kakashi voice shakes slightly.

"Yes, exactly like I'm going to deal with you right now." Her eyes are cold and he hasn't even noticed that she'd pulled her gun out fully until it was staring him in the face.

"Any last words Kakashi-san?" She say this calmly even while the barrel of her gun is between his eyes. He thinks he could move, he could probably figure out a thousand ways to get out from under her gun, but he can't because his mind is having trouble equating this thing with Sakura, his little Sakura.

"I'm sorry." He whispers, and feels abominable because the words sound empty even to him.

"No you're not. You're not fucking sorry at all." The barrel trembles slightly against his forehead. And he wonders again why he's not trying to move. It's probably because he feels like he deserves this.

And then it hits him like a shot to the heart. He does deserve this.

"I am truly sorry, Sakura." He whispers.

"Goodbye…" She shoots him right in between his eyes. "… Kakashi-sensei." She bends down over his rapidly cooling body. "I don't forgive you."

She flicks her cigarette butt over his body. No one will find him for hours, gunshots are expected at the training grounds.

And no one will truly mourn him anyway. Anyone that could died or stopped caring a long time ago.