Title: April 10th

Author: Rot_chan

Couple: KakaSaku

Summary: Sakura's head hurt. It was April 10th. Two weeks ago she had turned 18. But Kakashi wasn't here. Without him everything was incomplete. "Death is inevitable," Uchiha Sasuke told her. Sakura sobbed. "I know." [KakaSaku; angst/romance]

A/N: Review?? I have a headache and I'm super busy with school. Plus my cello teacher is going to kill me. I didn't practice that much this week. :( Anyway, this is angst-y, so no happy endings here, but there is romance. I divided the fic into two parts. Maybe three. What do you think? Don't forget to leave a tip!

::Prologue::

Her head hurt.

Sakura's head hurt and that was the only thing she could think of, the only constant on that day - my head hurts, my head hurts, my head, it hurts.

It was April 10th. Two weeks ago she had turned 18. People would die today, peacefully, and would never remember that they'd had a place and a life on the earth. People would live today, be born today, give birth today. An endless cycle, lambs waiting for the slaughter, all the same in the end...

::1::

It was her first day as a "candy striper", but Sakura didn't see it fit to call herself something as...as callow as that.

The uniform was standard - a starchy nurse's gown with a light pink apron around the front. Her Keds were white; the walls were white; the hospital was drained of color, Sakura mused.

Her orders were simple, as the woman at the front desk instructed: follow nurse Shizune, visit patient rooms 107 and 108, learn about your daily duties. It sounded easy enough.

Though it hardly was. When nurse Shizune went back to work, Sakura dropped a lunch tray and spilled gelatin, couldn't find the staff room to make copies, and walked in on an emotional scene in the wrong patient's room.

These were simple tasks, anyone could do them - why couldn't she? Sakura sighed. At least she was onto her last 'first day' assignment: go into room 107 and remember to knock first! She had already said hello to the boy in room 108, named Uchiha Sasuke. He wasn't very friendly.

Tentatively Sakura knocked on the door marked with a dingy metal plate. '107'. "Come in," a gravelly voice resounded within the room.

Sakura opened the door, her Keds squeaking across the tile - and tried not to stare. This patient, with light silver hair, pallid skin, and hospital mask covering a bad cough, seemed different than the others. He was alluring, and handsome; yet the air in the room was heavily weighted down by a depression, fatigue, malady she could sense. A liquid oxygen tank was in the corner. She held back a shiver.

"...Hello. My name is Sakura." She cleared her throat and said once more, "Sakura Haruno. I'm a volunteer at the hospital."

He stared with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes pleasantly, "Aren't you called 'candy stripers'?"

At this, she couldn't refrain giving a long sigh and a weary smile. "I mean, yes, but - I seriously think that sounds juvenile, don't you?"

His chuckle was short, and wheezy. "Yes, I suppose you're right."

Sakura asked, "What's your name?"

The man smiled. "Kakashi, Hatake. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Haruno." Though it was ridiculous, and his words were simplistic and sincere, she tried not to flush.

::2::

Each weekend Sakura returned faithfully. There were a few other girls also interested in doctoring, but they soon after tired of spending Saturdays wheeling carts and changing bed sheets. But Sakura remained, growing more adept at her tasks and completing them, and finding herself growing closer to the patients she visited. Uchiha Sasuke even spoke to her twice.

She stood in Kakashi's room. As she retied her apron strings, she noticed him pick up a novel from the bedside tray.

"Sakura. Are you busy?" Kakashi smiled. His smile was wonderful. It made her heart turn, but Sakura was much too embarrassed by this realization to even tell her diary about this. .

She was simply tidying the room; replacing his pillows with new covers, taking a lunch tray that was hardly touched onto the silver cart in the hall, sweeping the floor. His request struck her as odd, but she had seen books around his bedside. Maybe Kakashi was ... lonely. It struck an odd chord in her heart, somewhere Sakura couldn't place. He seemed independent and resolute. But he was human.

"Read to me?" He handed her a novel. It was green and red and titled Nine Stories.

Sakura took the book gingerly; walked over to the window, tugged at the blinds and opened it a crack for the air to cleanse the room. Kakashi's silver hair shone in a slant of light, and his dark eyes never failed to gleam. In his stillness - beneath the layers of bandages and IV cords and tired limbs and tragedy - Kakashi was ethereal.

"Do you mind...? About the window, I mean."

He looked serene. "No, not really."

And Sakura read to him. Softly at first in disquiet that she wasn't doing her other tasks, but then vividly, carrying the characters voices within her own. She couldn't resist a good story. A rare winter sun pooled across the linoleum floor and across scratchy hospital bedsheets.

There was banana fish, a girl named Sybil, the death of the innocent, war. None embraced happiness. And all the while, Kakashi kept smiling, quietly, letting her voice carry him to nothing.

::3::

How could almost two months have passed already? It was February 1st; she was still unable to keep her heart from skipping each time she learned quietly that another patient had passed away.

Yet Kakashi remained. And Sakura, despite a nagging in her chest, slowly allowed herself to look forward to seeing the silver haired man each day. And he seemed to look forward to her presence as if she illuminated his room.

Some days they would talk. Sakura would discuss the future and her apprehension. Kakashi would listen not with sympathy but with genuine understanding.

"And where will I end up, do you think? As a doctor, I mean?" Sakura asked one Sunday evening as she gently handed him his dinner tray.

Kakashi teased, "Well, I was hoping you would stay here and become my doctor." At this she had laughed a tiny, airy giggle, but her heart sank. His words brought to the surface something she had been avoiding.

One afternoon she spoke with a nurse named Kin. Kin would always take smoke breaks out by the curb.

"Kin?" Sakura cleared her throat, announcing her presence. The sky was a dull gray. A flock of birds flew from one of the spindly trees on an island of grass near the parking lot.

"Hmm?"

"This is going to sound a bit strange, but - do you know...about a patient named Kakashi? Hatake, I mean."

Kin took a long drag on the cigarette; she tapped it with her finger and the fiery black ash flew to the ground. "Yeah. He's been here for a while. Relapsed actually."

Her heart was in her throat. "From - from what exactly?"

"His lungs. It's chronic."

Sakura didn't need to know this - she should have seen the signs. His coughing, the mask, the breathing problems. It was there in front of her, yet Sakura would not accept that this person could be sick. That he could -

Sakura pursed her lips. Kin stepped on her cigarette. They walked back inside.

::4::

When Kakashi first kissed her, Sakura didn't try to remember the moment. She did not need to engrain this moment, something so taboo between them. She should not allow herself to memorize the feeling of his lips against her fingers, of his eyes glinting with a strange subtle anguish; she should not allow herself to remember the way her breath hitched when he moved closer to her.

And Sakura would not allow herself to feel this because she was going to be a doctor and she was 17 and he was sick.

Yet she couldn't stop her knees from shaking uncontrollably. Sakura was unable to push Kakashi away when he cupped her cheek with his coarse, calloused palm, as he pulled down his mask.

"Kakashi...You're-" But Sakura became mute. Mute when she saw the desire he held for her. A subtle yearning to have greater human contact. A need to fill the gap between them before....

She tried to breathe. Sakura had been kissed before - her first at 13, with an awkward and clumsy boy named Naruto, and many times after. It was a simple yet allusive gesture. She felt his body press against hers, his arm entwine around her back.

Kakashi kissed her cheek first and Sakura's heart thudded unevenly in her chest. She could smell his light scent hinted with musk. She gently reached out and trailed a finger over a jutting collar bone. The breathing machine was a shadow looming over her in the corner of the room.

And then, Kakashi was kissing her. The feeling of his lips, chapped and warm and pressed against hers, made Sakura feel light and limbless; it was the solace to her worries and her fear she held for him. It was fleeting, but wonderful all the same.

She would go to hell for this.

::End of 1::