Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto & etc.
Rating: M (MA in later chapters).
Pairing: Hatake Kakashi x Haruno Sakura
Comments: Discarded and no longer being continued. Re-written as Milk Moon, with possible and probable duplication of some/most scenes, though they will be edited, I'm sure. I'm leaving this up on because I might actually want to go back and compare the two someday, then crack up laughing over how much of an idiot I am.
- - -
Chapter One
- - -
Sakura looked up at the sky - hands covered in some sticky, nasty, reeking substance and face covered with white powder - and said (with great dignity), "I really - really, you hear? - don't like this one."
The sky - being, after all, the sky - did not deign to answer her. Then again, the faint rumble and the dark clouds appearing in the sky could be a sign of its displeasure. She rested her hip against the table, blew out another frustrated breath. Swore softly at the mixture slowly turning to mush beneath her hands. A simple recipe, delicate in nature; something to let the time pass. Something necessary that she could turn to, using it as a flimsy shield and shakier excuse.
And even this fell apart around her.
Five jars stood sealed and ready before her, ten more empty and mocking as she stared. She counted again, as though the numbers changed between then and now.
Two years ago today.
Her fingers shook lightly as she shoved the failure away, wiped her hands impatiently on a towel. Don't rush, don't worry, don't think about unnecessary things. Simple rules to follow, easy rules to break.
She poured her last bit of ingredients into her last clean bowl, swearing to pay attention this time.
All in all, it should have been easy.
One, two, three. Let go, start all over.
Just a simple courier mission, a little light guarding. It wasn't like they knew the rumors would come trickling in.
The pungent smell of medicine - bitter, harsh, sharp - had long since failed to keep her from half-dozing. Sakura stared blankly at her hands, methodically mixing and kneading, occasionally rubbing at a hardened piece of soon-to-be-ointment until it crumbled back into its parent mixture.
Tedious work - most of it was, really - but important. Little bits of miracle in tightly shut jars, there for the tired. The wounded.
The dying.
She flinched at the word, no matter that it was her own mind using it.
It had been nothing more than an abandoned cottage; no suspicious papers, no lingering presence - just a place that had been left to die a greenery-choked death long ago. They had all relaxed then, breathed a little easier. Both relief and disappointment had attacked her in turns, but they were welcome after the constant dread tied to her heart.
Welcome, until they disappeared and apprehension returned, gleefully pulling her back into that spiral.
Her hand slipped, knuckles slamming against the side of the porcelain bowl and dull pain flared anew.
Shaking off her reverie - unwanted memories, still holding enough force to twist her stomach painfully, bring bile easily to her mouth - Sakura gave up on her second badly mangled batch, bumpy and unusable and slowly turning into a mushy mess worthy of its predecessor.
"Are you done watching?" she asked, as though she wasn't frustrated and tired and angry and just completely at a loss.
"Are you done working?" he countered, wary and almost hesitant in his words.
Awkward.
Distant.
She felt her shoulders stiffen as she turned; stilted, polite, cool. "Did you need something, sensei?" And cursed herself for being this way.
He hesitated, as though words ran through his mind, rolled into his tongue, and were bit back after a moment of thought. Then he simply smiled - stiff, forced, unreal - and shook his head. "No, nothing at all."
Well then.
She grabbed a failure, pounded into it a bit more. Hardly necessary - it was already too far gone to be made into anything remotely useful - but it gave her something to do. Gave her a reason to turn her back on him for the hundredth time. Gave him a chance to escape before they had to face the problems between them.
They were good at avoiding that conversation. They'd had two years.
"We need to talk," he said when she thought he left and had let her shoulders droop a little, let her hands fall limp in the bowl, let out the little quivering sigh that she'd been holding in for all that time.
Well, shit. That broke tradition.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she lied blatantly, clattering her things as she set bowls aside. The same gambit never worked twice, and he certainly seemed to have his mind set.
The jerk.
The jerk.
The jerk.
"Sakura..."
She ignored the faint exasperation and slight plea curling into his words and stabbing at some place in the vicinity of her heart. It was, she figured, the same place her memories were stored.
"I'm busy," she replied, willing her hands not to shake.
She dropped the glass.
"Sakura, listen to me."
She ignored him.
"This has been going on far too long."
She resisted the urge for a childish snipe of "Oh, really?" and knelt to gather the broken porcelain.
"Sakura."
A shard sliced at her palm, drawing a thin line of blood.
"It wasn't your fault."
She sucked in a breath. Let it out again.
Tried - really, seriously tried - to ignore the hitch in her breathing, the unnaturally hard pounding of her heart. "Then who takes the blame, sensei?"
She glanced at his face. It was hard to tell his feelings behind that mask, hard to know if that was grief or worry or exasperation in his eye, hard to even look at him for that long moment.
"Will you shoulder it?"
He glanced away, and she knew then that his lips were compressed, his eye was bleak, and there were hours and hours of nightmares probably somewhat identical to her own hidden behind that calm demeanor. Perhaps he wasn't so hard to figure out after all.
"Then, knowing how I feel - would you let it go?"
- - -
He looked restlessly at the horizon, as though it would fall away and show him... Something. Something different, something important, something that would make it all click into place, smooth and easy.
But it didn't, and he knew it wouldn't.
"I'm working on it," he said, and the girl scoffed - or perhaps it was just an incredulous half-laugh, choked with tears she had never let fall.
He'd watched her, of course, as she stood there and hours passed. Watched as she went through batch after batch, only to come out with the smallest amounts of ointment ready to be sealed into a jar. Noticed the tense muscles, the jerky movements, the moments she would stop as though she wanted to look over her shoulder.
But that would show curiosity, interest, acknowledgement.
That would break their little game - a harsh, cruel, cold game, one neither had really started and neither could quite end.
First it was the rush of attack, wind cutting across his face. He saw it; the hand tightening around the sword, muscles tensing to strike; knew he had to reach them before it happened. Knew he had to save her. Knew he couldn't fail.
Then it was the weight of impact, and blood trickled down his arm. Blood that never should have spilled. An impact he should not have felt.
She gasped in pain, and his eyes met hers.
He hated himself for falling into this pattern, for acting more like a child and less like her teacher, her confidante, her friend.
But that day, her eyes had been large and wide and accusing and shocked and hurt, and he never wanted to see that again. Never wanted to be the one to bring those emotions forward.
She cradled that still body in her arms, as though he would begin breathing again - as though the blood were nothing more than decoration.
Then there had been through the sympathetic looks afterward, the curious glances, the soft whispers as they passed through the village. They were his friends, everyone would say. I see, everyone would respond knowingly.
She knelt by the coffin, lightly stroking the lid in silent goodbye. And even then, she didn't cry.
They didn't know a damn thing.
Kakashi blew out a breath, running his hands through his hair - distracted, irritated, frustrated. Worried, off-balance. Sakura was gaunt again, hardly eating, hardly stopping work long enough to breathe fresh air. It was like she fought against the reminders of time's passing by ignoring them all. She'd mastered the art in the past two years.
He looked at her - she glanced away, frowning, brows pulled together. He recognized the signs; fingers rubbing at her thighs, shoulders moving restlessly against her will. She was having her headaches again, probably plagued by memories, nightmares. Some part of him wanted to take the weight of sorrow from her.
Another part acknowledged grimly that she had to face it, even if she hated him for it.
- - -
The tree stood strong as she leaned against it, oblivious to her situation, oblivious to her impending doom. Oblivious to her heart pounding - disbelieving, panicked, relieved, frightened.
His eyes were different from anything she'd ever seen. Before they'd been aloof, cool, disdainful. Now they were something like cold and distant and... focused. Not on her. Not on this place. They saw something in the future, the goal he had yet to reach. They saw his victory, and they saw his pain.
"Sasuke-kun..." Her voice broke as she begged him to return to the boy she knew. Pleaded with his eyes to flicker, just a little, with any sort of emotion. Recognition. Caring. But he simply stared her down, taking another step forward.
"Come back," she whispered - pled, begged, argued. They've been looking for him, did he know? They wanted him back. Everyone wanted him to return. They'd help him get stronger; she'd do anything for him. They missed him, they loved him. She loved him. She still loved him.
But her words were ignored, perhaps not even heard, and his sword was unsheathed.
"Annoyances." He frowned - the faintest downard curve of his lips, a brooding line to his brow. "I left you all because of this drivel. Fight for your friends? Together we'll all become stronger? Don't bother." His fingers flexed lightly, his words flat, lilting in an unusual cadence, almost as though he were speaking without paying the slightest bit of attention.
And even then, her heart leapt a little at the sound of his voice. Even when he spoke in a way totally alien. Even as he showed no intention of leaving her alone.
"I should have killed you when I had the chance." Conversational, bland, regretting missed opportunities.
Her heart skipped a bit, painfully, and pounded again in her chest. Slammed against her ribs, as though wanting to commit suicide. Wanting to burst with the pain.
She knew, then - faced now with this new Sasuke, different and changed and nothing like her love, nothing like the boy, as though everything had been erased - that she was going to die. It is a simple thing, really. He wants to kill her, and right now she feels like she's dying. Why bother fighting?
Sakura knew tears were slipping, sliding down her cheeks. Knew that if he noticed them, he hardly cared - or perhaps considered them evidence of her sniveling weakness. She didn't even glance at the sword as the tip raised from the ground. Her eyes stayed on his. They never flickered, never changed, never even seemed to be paying attention, as if her death wouldn't even mean that much to him.
She jumped forward then, angry, and there was pain, pain, ripping skin, muscle, cold steel, hot blood, stop, it hurts, HURTS, and then her arms were wrapped around his neck, and her flushed cheek was pressed hard against his and she was whispering, maybe praying, maybe only thinking, "I love you."
And she felt him shove her almost immediately away. Felt the sudden surge of pressure. The gust of wind.
His eyes were glazing a little as she stared, his hand still pressed her chest - fingers stiff and hard and unyielding. Then it fell to his side, and he was saying something. She couldn't hear, but his lips were moving. Or maybe it was just his breathing. Then - perhaps it was slight movement, perhaps it was a sound - she looked over his shoulder.
And stared into the eyes of her teacher.