Didn't you know? Women have to be tough to survive.
So she tells Tsunade thanks but no thanks, this particular kunoichi is taking her own road. Sakura packs her traveling bag and leaves the apartment key under the door for Ino, if she so chooses; she waits on a bench on a hill that overlooks the slowly setting sun. She's felt like Tsunade has taught her everything she can, and it's not enough. To feel the grasses of foreign countries and breath in mountain air, with those special people: this is what she wants, what she needs most of all. This unstoppable force has yet to meet an inmovable object, so she just keeps on going, until she finds herself waiting for the person who will take her the farthest.
And when he says to Iruka, I'm not abandoning my duties, he means it; he's still a teacher, after all, and Sakura is still his student (in more ways that one would care to admit). So Kakashi goes back to his days in black ops, packing only the essentials (and his first edition copy of Icha Icha Paradise, naturally) and leaving behind several coded scrolls for Naruto when he returns from his training, messages of faint encouragement wrapped up in new jutsu, all forbidden of course.
They meet each other on the edge of a blood-red sunset. With a pair of single foot steps, a journey begins.
Sakura traces the kanji in the dirt with a stick, we were here, smudges it out with the heel of her sandal. She sighs, and glances over at Kakashi, who is huddled around a burning bundle in the small stone hollow they will call 'home' for the night. They have been traveling through the forests on the outskirts of the Land of Fire for about two months, going from cave to cave to keep away from prying eyes.
She thinks she has learned a good handful of things during her travels with Kakashi, one of the more pertinent ones being this: There are a million stories out there that need to be told, and theirs isn't one of them. These days will not be found in the great biographical tomes of Konoha history; they certainly will not be found, years later, in the written testaments of Haruno Sakura's years of being part of Team Seven. And if it mentions Kakashi Hatake at all, it is only because he is a great teacher and brought three unlikely friends together, and not because their bodies have laid together on many occasions, naked and clinging and desperate to feel each other (that physical test that lets you know the other is still there).
Dealing with Kakashi is a handful and a half. In the time they have been together, there has been broken bones and bloody lips and darkened eyes and strained joints, and Sakura has healed each and every injury. She heals his body with her chakra energies, learned from scrolls swiped and copied from the hospital library, then rubs and licks and caresses each inch until a body like his remembers what it's there for, and he returns the favor.
In the wilderness, there are no barriers holding them apart. No one is forcing them to tip-toe and call each other teacher and student; they've been teaching each other different lessons since the day they met, no one needs to remind them of it. So when Sakura demanded that Kakashi take her along to find their miscreant of a team mate, how can he say no? He has learned this lesson well: Leave no one behind, no matter the circumstances. And he was not going to leave Sakura behind.
So it has been two months since Hatake Kakashi and Haruno Sakura went rogue, only what they've gone running from is about to catch up.
An event: she awakens to find herself all tied up. She's in a dark room, her hands and feet bound, mouth gagged, hanging by her hands from a low-set metal bar. No windows, and only one door from which no light shines underneath. A giggle escapes her lips before she realizes this isn't a game, Kakashi is nowhere in sight, and there are dried blood stains on the floor only inches away.
She recognizes the men who walk in not by their faces, but by their headbands. She's been captured, she's about to be tortured, and her home village does not have the decency to give her a comfortable chair. Their questions are innocent enough at first, the usual suspects: why, when, how, where, who. Except they know who, they know when and how and where. It's the why that is giving the ninja in the room pause as they question Sakura for a good hour, drilling her on every little detail. (Sakura is half-tempted to tell in great detail the nights spent on top of Kakashi, with the older man inside of her, but she's just vulnerable enough to want to keep those moments to herself.)
We don't want to hurt you, Haruno. It would make the Hokage sad to see her favorite student hurt . . . Just tell us why you left with Kakashi in the middle of the night?
Sakura stares into the eyes of her questioner (which is stupid, he could do illusory techniques on her in seconds with such contact) and says plainly, I went to bring back Sasuke. To make my team whole again. She thinks of Kakashi, of his old team, Rin and Obito. How her desperation had given him some kind of second chance to make things right, maybe.
Her interrogators --- two plain-looking ninja in standard gear --- give each other looks of confusement. Sakura wants to slap the stupid looks of their faces, to shout that Sasuke is still a part of their village and nothing could make it not be true.
The other man looks at her with pity as he says: You are the only remaining member of Team Seven. The others ---- they are deceased.
Seconds later, he's calmly wiping a glob of spit off his hand as the other man is performing ninjutsu to knock the girl out, who kicks and struggles in her bonds until unconsciousness claims her battered mind.
And if she dreams, it is of a field with two boys running freely through it, and she can't tell if the flesh is still hanging on their bones, if there is still life in their bodies. But she herself feels cold as the grave.
Sakura wakes up, a scream dying in her throat. She's lying in a hospital bed, alone, her dirty arms and legs an ugly contrast against white clean linen, blankets that make her hot so she kicks them aside with a weak gesture. Everything feels weak; her body is ebbing alone chakra depletion, which she imagines is what the pills are for. Or maybe they are to make her talk, confess to some unknown sin. Either way, she swallows her pills dry like a good girl, because pills mean a schedule, and a schedule means there is still some order to the world.
And yet. You are the only remaining member of Team Seven. The others ---- they are deceased. These words bloom into her mind and refuse to lie down and, well, die. So she waits for someone to come in and explain what the hell is going on. Someone who she can get mad at and hurt and not care about their feelings because they're only strangers bringing bad news.
So when Kakashi walks in, head bandaged, waving hello, she has half a mind to hurl the nearest heavy object at his face. This --- this was worse. And the stupid little hand wave and blank expression were not doing him any good for his chances of leaving the room lacking a shoe-shaped imprint in his ass.
Kakashi drags a chair across the room, and the sound of it irritates Sakura even further. He sits at her bedside, knees digging into the mattress, looking at her with naked concentration.
I'm sorry, he says, and Sakura slaps him across the face before she even realizes he might actually mean it. He takes the hit without words, just grunts and crosses his arms like it was a regular occasion. Where people didn't die in the middle of the night and people didn't lie to make them feel better.
She asks, how did they die? and if she is afraid of the answer, her voice does not betray her.
It went like this. First, Sasuke: On his way to find Orochimaru, he follows a tip to a place in the sand village, only to be attacked by rogue sand nin. They remember his face from the Chuunin exam; they remember how he dishonored their leader by refusing to fight him. One of them has a multi-tailed spirit --- just like Naruto, Sasuke realizes shortly before their jutsu rip him to shreds, stealing his life.
Naruto: He runs away one day during training with Jiraiya, determined to find Orochimaru himself. He does, and Orochimaru almost kills him in the process. In the midst of defeat, he stares into the eyes of the beast within himself. Give me everything, he says, and loses himself in the feral energies. It kills Orochimaru. It kills him. He dies like he was born: in the maws of wildness, alone.
Now, Sakura: She watches Kakashi's Sharingan, and the spinning motion is a red lullaby that guides her to sleep. He watches her, for a moment, resting in a strange new world, before leaving to face the rest of the village. He has some stories to tell. In the process, he might even save both their lives.
In the end, they both live. It is the worst possible ending they can imagine. Alone, unsure, bound together by a relationship that has lost its meaning. There are a million stories out there that need to be told, and theirs isn't one of them. But they live, because there is nothing else they can do.
And they are fine with that. This is no hardbound memoir of love and peace. This is a life they have made with their own hands. It's theirs, and that's all they can ask for.