Author's Note: Here I heave a loud, dramatic sigh. I'm as sick as a Dawg, and I miss my best friend; On top of this, strep throat isn't good for fanfiction writing. However, I hope Khazia won't be too embarassed if I dedicate this little mind muck to her. I'm sorry, girl. Something about every attempt at KakashiSakura I make just turns it into drabbly, unconnected angsty crap. You have my mind's CD track stuck on 'Pretty Girl', by Sugarcult, and it spawned this little munster.
Anyway, to repay my wonderful friends, I'm making a promsie right now: All of my dearest friends shall receive a story dedicated to them. This keeps me on my toes, and makes my amigos very, very happy.
Next, one for MayanGirl6, bowserjr, EnduranceInTribulation, kikofreako, Kyiri Makroni, and anyone that I might have forgotten. The pairing of your choice, my friends! Just review, so I remember who you all are, OK!?
She's beautiful, as usual. Even with the bruises to more than her ego.
His spiky, ghost-pale shock of gray hair dares make the smallest shift as he leans a little bit more into the darkness of his guest room, eyes straining towards the figure obscured by the billowing curtains. The tray in his arms presses into his gut, the steam from the kettle's spout rising in a wispy cloud of white into the chilly air.
The little, curled form of his student beneath the white sheet stirs with a groggy, half-conscious moan. He knows it's time to confront her once more, and he can't help but feel the smallest bit of reluctance tugging at the back of his head. He could stall, yes, but it's better for her to be back when Sasuke wakes up. Or, at least she says so.
Sandals scuffing on the dusty, wood floor, (She's the only visitor he ever gets; Not even Asuma is still alive to need a place to sleep off a round.) Kakashi gingerly picks his way across the parquet planks. His lip works against his yellowed teeth, or what's left of them, as the words begin to form on his tongue. He should be beyond caring: Beyond tirelessly attempting to convince her that she's wrong, beyond following the screams until they lead to her tiny apartment, beyond holding her tiny, shattered form as he brings her to the asylum of his ghost-ridden home. He really should be beyond the affection, as a Jounin, as her sensei. As a Shinobi. As a man who's not in love.
But, the carousel of words has creaked to life, and the pantomime begins once more. Women are stupid, when they want to be. They seem to have mind blocks on the most dangerous things to them. Matters of the heart, no matter how much they know about bringing them about, are something they just don't know how to end or sense when they're falling apart.
But, in her defense, it's not really a matter of the heart as much as it is a lack of heart.
The bulging tumor beneath the worsted blanket shifts, and a flash of bleary jade signals that she's come around. She gazes at the dim, indigo-tinted room as she gropes for her bearings, surprised but not really surprised. She'd been here more times than they can both remember. He's changed her out of her red shirt (It was even more red with the blood on it.), and slid her into one of his old, long sleeved Shinobi uniform shirts. This fact neither embarrasses or amuses her. In fact, it's more of a habit. The scratch of the navy cloth against her skin as she heals has become something of a fixture in her chaotic life. And the fabric is old enough to be soft, and has that cheerful, long-standing smell of dog that so clearly marks Kakashi-sensei.
"Good evening." he says, mask bulging as his lips curl into a smile, visible eye crescenting. Kakashi never removes his mask, not even in the somewhat-privacy of his own home. There are two faces on earth he can't bear: the one he sees when he looks in the mirror that reminds him so much of Konoha's White Fang, and the stomach-curdling smirk of black stubbled cheeks when she returns to his arms.
The blood splatter beneath her left eye twitches with her lethargic blinks, organza strands of rose-colored hair framing her cheeks as she tried to build up a sure picture of where He is, and if He's coming back after her-
No. That's alright. She'll just go right back to him when this is all over. And they both know that.
As though they are two old friends enjoying a casual lunch, Kakashi clacks the two coffee mugs on the tray he's brought together, shifting them from the way so he can reach for the tea pot. The tags on the bags flutter as he drops them into the cups, and steam rises up in comforting curls of smoke as he pours the water, knowing that her parched throat is crying for sation.
"Wh-where-" she begins to ask, but pauses. One slender hand presses to the aching, swollen blotches of purple on her face and neck, and she has all the answer she needs. Her memories flood back like the water into her cup, and suddenly the evening's gaps are filled in.
Eyes hungry, she feels him press the lukewarm cup into her hand through the sleeve hanging over her fingers, and she feels the depression where he sits shift. One of his large hands swats Pakkun's sleeping form, and the dog grumblingly abandons his perch at her feet. The world is beginning to wake up again, but Sakura still can't rouse herself enough to really see the problem destroying her for what it is.
Her stomach is curdling, and the scent wafting from the rim of the cup tells her it's rose. Her favorite. He keeps it around for when they have these little meetings, she knows.
"He did it again, huh?" It's more of a statement than a question. He knows full well who 'did it', and exactly why he 'did it'. He also knows he's 'done it' so many times that he wants to kill the bastard.
Guiltily tilting her head down, she stares at her dank, tiny reflection in the opaque tea, a curtain of raspberry-colored hair shielding her from the judgmental gaze she knows he's giving her.
"He-He's had a lot of stress on him, lately-"
"Why? Bartender out of his favorite whiskey?"
Sakura cringes, and Kakashi knows he's stepped over the line. Everyone's stepping over the line lately, in her life. Sasuke doesn't know his boundaries (because she doesn't tell him where they are), Ino's forked tongue doesn't know where to draw the line, and Kakashi is the last person she needs criticizing her.
She has no defense for Kakashi's censures. For Sasuke, she just closes her eyes and tries not to make him so angry next time, and she just turns away when she hears the rumors her old friend has spread slithering their way into people's conversations like snakes in the grass. But, her last safety net stands up, and she's completely unprotected. Her protection is in him not saying anything, really.
She doesn't have anything to say, so she doesn't. No excuse she could conjure could hide what his grey eyes see and don't. It's better to just submit; Kakashi-sensei knows the truth. Let him have his way, just like Husband does.
The first gulp of the tea hits her stomach and nearly makes her wretch. It's sweet and full, just the way she likes it, but at the same time too warm and too strong. The roof of her mouth smarts at the blend, but she swallows past the pain and enjoys the warm, abundant feeling it gives her.
He sips his tisane as though he's in the presence of a lord, quietly avoiding where the conversation might climax into a shouting, reprimanding fit. He learned long ago not to confront it. That's just Sakura's way, no matter how wrong it is.
This has been their little tradition for they-don't-know-how-long. Kakashi follows the screams until he finds her, gathers her frail, broken body to his chest, and carries her to his home to hear Sasuke's latest excuse.
She gives a fragile gulp, pale lips swollen from the warmth of the cup's rim. He can tell by the red that isn't swelling that she was crying; Probably pleading on drunken ears for him to cease, or silently weeping as she lay in a crumpled heap outside their home, both for the child she is and the child she's carrying.
Surprisingly, she doesn't flinch when his flat, calloused hand slides through the sheets and tenderly caresses the swelling of life on her abdomen. She was able to keep Sasuke from kicking her in the stomach, at the very least. Her child stirs beneath his hand, quieting that fear.
"You don't want to bring a baby into that home." he says, succinctly and quietly. He can just imagine following the screams to the Uchiha complex and finding the dead body of a little girl beside her unconscious mother.
She swallows tentatively, her high voice on even higher tenterhooks than usual.
"It's his. He's the father. Why should I keep it from him?"
If it were a less perilous matter, Kakashi might have looked up and given her a flat, 'Well, duh.' look. Unfortunately, two lives were riding on his ability to negotiate at the current time, so one of his old expressions might not be the best thing to try out on her.
Instead, he takes a nonchalant sip of his tea, lolling his tongue into the red-tinged drink. He would love a shot of tequila in this. Tea was so bland, even the strongest, oddest varieties he'd been forced to swallow. Unless it was spiked, the drink tasted so flat, so rosy-
So much like Sakura.
"If not for you, you should leave him for it." he states, more of a detached thought than a suggestion for the well being of his student.
Sakura knows he's asking for an explanation, one that she'd hidden time and time again. And one she'll continue to hide, time and time again. It's no thrill to bait him knowing that he's just swallowing the blackened lies and still seeing the truth.
"He-he loves me. He really does." she recants. He does love her. She sees in in his eyes when he leers at her curved waist, and places a freezing, commanding hand on his child as it grows beneath her skin. It's what she prays is in those black-tomed eyes when he touches her, and forcibly takes her lips in meetings of tongue and teeth. There has to be love there. There just has to be.
They both know there isn't.
Tongue clicking, Kakashi sips a little more at his brew. Naruto loved her. Akatsuki removed Kyuubi before Konoha could save it's ramen-loving sunshine. Lee loved her. An Eighth-Gate saved his entire platoon and won half of the war between Raigakure and his village. Gaara loved her. An embittered Kazekage was struck defenseless by an Iwagakure assassin. Sasuke loved her. Until a bottle of Gray Goose seemed more appealing, and she didn't want to be with him in bed anymore.
Kakashi loved her. He let her get away with letting Sasuke destroy her. He might as well be dead, too.
They've danced around the issue enough to satisfy him, but it's not enough for their ritual to be finished.
"He just gets angry, sometimes." she adds, almost as an afterthought. She doesn't feel she needs to comment that he shouldn't be taking it out on her. Why state the obvious?
She knows her rights, even where Sasuke doesn't. But the fear of being shunned, the gossip, the uncertainty of divorce- it all makes a beating and the smell of other women on Sasuke's clothes seem preferable.
Where Kakashi went wrong and taught her that fear was alright, he can't pinpoint.
Against everything he believes, and against every principle of well good he's had drilled into his head, Kakashi lets her deny herself a human (and Shinobi) right. He uses the excuse that 'he cares', even though he knows that somebody who cares would put an end to this mad merry-go-round of breakdowns and bruises.
"I understand."
Yes, he understands. It's the way, that he makes her feel. It's the way, that he kisses her when the fight's over; It's the way, that he makes her fall in love.
It's the way that she can't stand to give up on Sasuke. That's why she won't leave him, or his den of violence and drunken beatings.
Hi empty mug tacks the ground with a dull "thunk" as he leans over and captures her lips and spirits them away for a moment.
Her face throbs with pain, but she more than accepts the warmth of Kakashi's touch; It's been forever since Sasuke touched her with such care, or kissed her with anything more than frenzy and tanked arousal on his sharp breath.
Her legs part as he crawls closer to her frail, trembling form, her back going rigid against the headboard of the guest bed. Her eyeslashes tease his face as much as the throbbing of his heart against hers tease her love-lorn, broken soul. Arms and fingers knitting in a tender embrace, Sakura loses herself again, knowing that this time when she falls, there'll be more than a man pickled in alcohol to fall back against.
Kakashi's words are always prefunct, sharpened, and sure to their target. His body language and feelings, which he can make as obvious or as subtle as he wants, are always the same. He never needed to say he loved her. Sasuke's half-conscious mutters of the phrase into her breast have made her numb to the words. In fact, it's probably better at all that Kakashi not say it.
Like wise, she doesn't need to return the words for him to know that she does, too.
He slides over, rubbing circles in her shoulder blades as their hearts press together. Her temperature spikes, both from the fear that she'll be caught with a handful of the thing she loves most, and the hardened want coiling in her soul.
The heroes have gone, both of Kakashi's age and Sakura's. Asuma, Kurenai, Naruto, Lee, Tenten, Tsunade, Neji, Hinata, Kiba, Gai- Every one now faces on a photograph and names scrawled onto a stone, with memories tagged to their edges. Sasuke's gone, mostly of body and completely of mind and heart. Itachi's death wasn't enough for him: Instead of peace, he found utter despair, which a bottle and a woman's body he found could bury for a few hours.
It was standing on a barren world, and being the last ones alive. Sakura was all that was left, and Kakashi was all that remained of the happy days before Shinobi life kicked in, and stole the lives of those they called precious. Both their occupations and it's aftermathmatics.
The pounding at the door breaks the kiss, and Kakashi catches the gasp as he lunges away from her to answer it. No, it was her decision. She wants to go back to him, she'll go back to him. In a way, it's her punishment for retreating to her fears.
He's neither surprised nor expecting when the door opens to a leering pair of onyx eyes and slouched shoulders beneath a shirt bearing the Uchiha crest: Sasuke's a man, now, and he can wear it, even if he still acts like more of the spoiled child he was than ever.
"I'm here to pick up my wife." he snarls, spittle pungent with a night of booze and another woman's biting lips. He went to have a night of Forgetting It on the way to pick her up, Kakashi immediately guesses; It's nearly noon, and Sakura's been with him for nearly two days, now.
Kakashi can think of a million reasons to kill him right than, but they all stay locked within the imprisonment of his mind, for the time being. He just scowls down at the mussed, perfume-scented head of black hair with distaste. He's like the baby sitter for the irresponsible parents: Sasuke wants Sakura because she's his, and like everything else he can't forget, he'll never forget that she'll always come back to him.
A rustle at his side, and Sakura's redressed in her bloody clothes, averting her eyes like a beaten animal and taking her place at Sasuke's side. He watches the sick glint in his eyes as the Uchiha swipes at his wife's waist, pulling her to his hip as it bucks with the after-affect of his tete-a-tetes.
"Good day, Kakashi." he slurs, before dragging Sakura away in a flash of pink and a desperate glimmer of verdant jade that he interpets as a plead to undo the mistake she's made.
Unfortunately, Kakashi can't help her if she doesn't want to help herself.
He shouldn't love her. He really shouldn't. Too much entrapment of emotions, and too many times he has to feel that pang as she walks away one more time. Too many feelings, and emotions running away with his sense.
And so, just like every other dusty face in his photo album of friends gone, Kakashi goes to make an adamant mental reminder to scratch Sakura's name off his heart, because she's as good as gone and doesn't hold him or the relationship they could have above a no-good drunk.
And to preapre the guest room for another visit.
A/N: Have mercy on your poor, strep-ravaged little Insomniac racoon. I saved a man's life last night. You wouldn't kill a hero in glasses, would you?...