The Golden Bough

AN: This wouldn't leave my head, even though it's Christmas and a nice, fluffy time of year and I'm supposed to be working on my other fic, Performance (which you should totally go read), instead of writing weird pseudo-angst. It's ever so slightly an AU in that I've incorporated hints of superstitions from around the world regarding the power of plants :-)

Naruto doesn't belong to me, otherwise Kakashi and Sakura would be kissin' everyday.

When she returns it's been six months and three days too long. He knows this because when it hits the eight thousandth hour since she left him at the village gates, he stops dead in his tracks and the dogs trailing around him plow into the backs of his knees.

"Kakashi," she says, strangely devoid of surprise, and it's only then that he realises he's in almost the very same spot he was standing in all those months ago.

"Sakura-chan," he says in reply. Behind her, the curious faces of Izumo and Kotetsu peer from within the warmth of the guardhouse, visible only barely through the haze his breath is making in front of his eyes. It's very cold.

"If I didn't know better," her tone aims for light but comes off a little accusatory, "I could believe you've been standing there since I left."

He blinks, once, twice, as all the colours of the world come rushing back in sharp relief in front of his eye. Disorientated, he manages his usual vapid smile as he holds out a hand for her heavy travel pack, ignoring the way her green eyes are peeling apart the very essence of his being with every careful pass over his body. She's checking for injuries, current or healed, but the way her eyes look so impossibly bright wounds him deeper than any steel.

All at once, Kakashi realises that she's hit the mark: his physical body certainly hadn't been waiting by the gatehouse for her, but he is quite sure everything else that made him Kakashi had been.

"You're over four thousand hours late," he says instead, following as she wordlessly invites him to accompany her to the Hokage Tower with a jerk of her head. The dogs melt away into the surroundings as they walk, and he's left with only the sharp gaze of a small pug boring into his back. Those four thousand hours were a mystery to him; he'd have to ask Pakkun how the life of Hatake Kakashi had been progressing since Sakura missed her midsummer deadline.

She doesn't comment on the strange way he keeps time. Team 7 are the only people who seem to accept that it flows differently for him; not in an unconventional sense, nor is he any kind of time traveller, but the days and hours and minutes by which people set their lives, all synchronised with one another, have little in common with the rhythms by which Kakashi's life moves. If he says she's four thousand hours late, then Sakura will believe him over anyone else.

"When did you start counting?" She queries, finally finding the lightness she's been aiming for in her voice.

"When you said goodbye," he replies, and watches as the tentative levity is chased away from her gaze. "The first time."

"Hmm."

He feels a little vindictive.

They walk in silence, footsteps crunching on the pockmarked ice of the cobbled Konoha streets. It's almost the dead of winter, and the shining trees that give the village its identity have deepened to the rich darkness of the evergreens, their spiny boughs decorating the shops and houses that line the main thoroughfare. Greenery is so deeply ingrained in their lives that even when it is thorny and bitter, and wont to hurt and prick fingers rather than delight, the citizens of Konoha cannot help but hold it close. It's a good metaphor for how Kakashi currently feels and if things were a little different he would share it with Sakura, who had always appreciated the poetry in nature.

But things are not different - except they are - and so they trudge beside one another in the cool light of a low sun, exchanging nothing but the mingled clouds of their breath.

Three days pass after her return before he runs into her again and this time her eyes are full of theories. She has been speaking to people, and they've told her about how he's been - or not been - over the last year. He can see the questions threatening to break out of the polite way she murmurs a greeting while clutching a scroll in her slender fingers. Sakura is the only person he's seen for weeks who is not wearing gloves, but then the bitterness of the Snow Country weather she's returned from must make the winter of Konoha feel like struggling spring. Nevertheless, it's a practised motion as he stretches his hands out and traps her pale white fingers beneath the heavy wool of his own.

Speculation plays itself across her face before she gives him a small smile, a real one, and takes a little time in extracting her hands from his warm grasp and heading off on her business. She may have theories about how he's been living but for now he has investigated his own: he's still allowed to touch her.

It buoys him through the rest of the day. The good mood must have been rolling off of him in waves because when he sees her again that evening, couched between Naruto and a lazing Sai in Ichiraku's only booth, he's invited to sit with them and three pairs of gleaming white teeth shine under the heavy yellow lights.

"Something good happen, sensei?' Naruto asks, his blonde hair the second brightest thing Kakashi has noticed in months; the top spot still occupied by the vision of Sakura's eyes by the gate.

"More like something bad didn't happen," he replies, expression hidden beneath the thick blackness of his winter mask. Really, Naruto's bright locks are shining more fiercely than anything the sun has produced in weeks, and he has to close his eye briefly against the potent glare. He sends a flicker of a look towards the amulet hanging from around his student's neck for confirmation; of course Hinata would be as skilled a weaver of lover's charms as she was a tracker of enemies. It's made of valerian, the life-giving plant, and is woven into a hypnotic Uzumaki spiral to bring health and happiness in one fearsome package. He realises he's still staring at it when Sai pipes up.

"I really am sorry, Ugly." Miracles abound: Sai actually does sound sorry. "It's just that I think it's best that I accept Ino's alone, at first. At least - I think that's what I should do?"

They're continuing a conversation from before his arrival and so Kakashi retreats back into silence, content to let the hot steam of ramen warm his chilled face.

"I agree, and of course I understand, Sai." Sakura's voice drifts to him through the background haze of conversation, and the older ninja realises he's watching her speak more than listening to her words. "I wouldn't like to interfere with her first attempt at a lover's charm, so I'll make you something for the summer solstice instead."

Sai and Ino? He feels he truly can't have been paying attention to have missed that revelation.

Sai gives their medic one of his smiles without artifice and turns to Kakashi, cheek propped in one pale hand. "Since you're not making one for me, Sakura-chan, why don't you just make an amulet for Taichou instead? I don't think I saw him with one in the summer, so it's not right to miss two." Ever innocent, the artist doesn't notice the way his dinner companions have gone deathly still, nor how Naruto's chopsticks echo in the quiet as they drop in disbelief against the cheap lacquered wood of the table.

Unperturbed, Sai smiles towards Kakashi, who is staring down into his bowl of slowly congealing noodles with a kind of stern intensity he doesn't usually conjure up outside of the battlefield. "Did anyone make you a charm for the summer?"

Kakashi grits his teeth as he hears Sakura's pulse increasing. "Mah…" he coughs.

It's impossible to pull off his trademark nonchalance and he can tell she resents it. "I can't recall…"

No. He knows as well as she does that Kakashi does not have anyone else to make him the required charms and amulets and little luck-bringers that colour their daily lives. It's part of their whole problem.

"Well, I'm already making one for Naruto," Sakura forces out with a shrug. "What's the harm in another?"

The harm, Kakashi thinks as he meets her bared teeth and angry blush with a carefully bland expression, could be very great indeed.

The next time they meet he's staring directly into the sun, hunched over in his usual seat in the cafeteria. If she notices the wide berth the other occupants have given him she doesn't comment on it, simply sits herself down in front of the window so that he can no longer burn the image of the hazy orb into the back of his brain.

"Do you want bad eyesight in both eyes?" Sakura comments, and it is lighthearted enough, normal enough, that he pauses in his slow readjustment to sunless vision to focus his gaze on her face.

"I'm cleansing," he offers like it's not nonsense.

A snort. "And what sight was so terrible that you need to raze it from your mind by setting your coronea alight?"

You. Your face when you realised you'd been cornered into doing something for me. Me. My face as I'm sure it looked the day you left, and the day you came back. He doesn't say anything out loud, just blinks until the hot ache in his eye spills over into uncontrollable wetness.

There's a tut, and a sound like silk sliding over metal, and then Sakura's palm is pressed against the curve of his eye with her hand wreathed in cool chakra. He feels like dying before the first whisper of her energy comes within an inch of his face.

"Are you alright?" She whispers, and he knows she's not talking about his sight.

"Not really," he whispers back weakly, pulling away and placing his head on the table between folded arms. "Sorry, can you go?"

There's a pause. "I- I wanted to tell you that I haven't been listening to any of the rumours."

He breathes out a laugh, head still cradled in the protective circle of his arms. "Pakkun informs me that you should."

"Pakkun does?" Kakashi can almost hear the gears in her intelligent mind working. "Kakashi-" Sakura's voice is quieter still. "How many campfire breakfasts have you had this year?"

She's good, but then of course she is. If anyone apart from Team 7 wanted to know how many missions he'd taken they'd ask him outright and he could just as blatantly lie, or they'd divide the time into neatly packaged segments that he could twist and turn as he pleased. There were five people alive - no, four, he corrected himself - who knew that Kakashi's missions were measured in the ashes of the flames he so carefully nurtured in the field.

"Over three hundred and forty."

"Three hundred and forty…" Sakura repeats, counting. "That's... two days off per month."

"What can I say?" Kakashi replies. "I'm showing my age."

"Who approved this?" Her voice is flat, showing her anger. But it's not at him, not yet, and though every fibre of his being is telling him to get up and run away from her and her anger and the fury when she inevitably turns to him, Kakashi knows he cannot, could never, run away from Sakura.

"If I ever become a missing nin," he says idly, avoiding her question, "they should send you after me."

That silences her long enough for him to pick up his empty tray and take it to the counter. It's not running away if he's simply finished his lunch, and the older shinobi jams his hands into his pockets to make sure his strategic retreat cannot be called a hasty evacuation.

He's contemplating whether there's enough time to grab a cup of tea before Sakura snaps out of the confusion he's left her in when the whispers around the cafeteria finally filter through his consciousness. They'd been completely ignored until he separated himself from her presence, because as usual, when he's faced with her there's nothing in his world except how Haruno Sakura looks at Hatake Kakashi and how much he can get away with looking at her. He pauses in front of the drinks dispenser, eye still trained on her unmoving form while the beady eyes of the vultures in the cafeteria flicker between them.

The murmured words are harsh.

"- a disgrace, has she really so little shame?"

"... reducing our brightest and best to misery…"

"-driven him half to death"

"Just shows up again-"

"-obsession?"

Kakashi's hands tighten into fists in his pockets at the way Sakura's back is gradually stiffening. It's bad; he had forgotten how highly the general ninja populace of the village regarded him. A stalwart, Tsunade had said once, someone of ordinary mortal prowess to look up to in their era of gods become men.

No wonder the people of Konoha hated the woman who had brought him to his knees.

The tea pours noisily into the cup behind him and it's as though a spell has broken. The whispers fade out of his attention and again the only person in the room that holds his focus is her. It's a tense situation and for once all the power is in his hands. If he walked out now, surely the crowd would turn on her, left there alone after driving him off.

Kakashi's lone grey eye slides shut. Right now the cafeteria is as much a battlefield as any he has ever fought on, and he could no sooner leave a comrade behind here than in the midst of enemy fighters. This, he thinks, is probably more dangerous.

She starts when he drops back into his seat before her, the tea sloshing precariously in the thin paper cup. It's far too hot and he's picked it up without the protective holder but the searing heat is nothing compared to the pang in his chest at the spiky wetness outlining her vivid green eyes.

"So tell me," he starts. "How exactly does one go around burning their coronea?"

He thinks he's found his answer as her shaky smile paints itself indelibly into his mind.

It's late. She's at his front door and it's so similar to how she appeared last year that he almost closes it again, but then the sharp tang of blood assaults his nostrils and he suddenly hauls her forward by her shoulder.

"What happened?" Kakashi feels his throat closing up in something like panic at the shabby bundle of fur in her arms. Guruko had always been the most impulsive of his dogs.

Sakura is pushing past him into his dark apartment, ignoring the ineffectual way he's plucking at the motionless shape in her arms. "Get me some light," she orders, moving with unerring accuracy to the kitchen at the back of his house. She's been here before (probably more than anyone else alive) and her projected sense of calm worms its way into his panic, soothing him.

He's usually too unconscious to see her legendary medic mode in action but right now he's immensely grateful for it as she gently lowers the biscuit-coloured dog to the kitchen table, stripping off her bloodied jacket and reaching to peel off her gloves.

"Light, Kakashi," she barks, and he flicks on a switch to reveal the scene in all its bloody glory. Guruko looks dead but the ninja can tell he's not - not yet - and then suddenly he's all action, setting the kettle to bring Sakura clean boiled water and piling towels by her side. His Sharingan eye whirls crazily as he watches her pull a syringe from her pouch along with some foul-smelling herbs he recognises as papaver somniferum: the opium poppy, the strongest narcotic. His small partner must be in pain if that's where she is beginning.

"What do you need me to do?" His voice still holds panic but he'll be damned if one of the boys dies on his watch. She blinks at him, momentarily distracted from her intense focus, and Kakashi realises that with the late hour he'd been lazing maskless around the house. "Should I get an Inuzuka?"

Sakura shakes her head, hands never ceasing in their preparations. "No need." The cool blaze of her chakra lights the shadows of the room and Kakashi can see its reflection in the eyes under the counters, under the chair - it's the rest of the pack. "I trained on dogs," she explains, occupied with arranging the opium pods around Guruko's still head, the thick sap oozing into the wounds with gentle coaxing. "Besides, he's one of my own, and I always heal my own."

Her expression is strangely intense as she gets to work.

It takes no more than ten minutes before she ceases in her healing and starts to carefully wash the matted blood from Guruko's brown fur. Kakashi pushes away from the counter as soon as the glow disappears from her hands, moving her unprotesting body out of the way as he washes the ninken on the table with infinitely patient gestures. He's smoothing the ruffled coat with a subtly shaking hand when he repeats, "what happened?"

Heaving a sigh, Sakura washes her hands in the sink before taking the bloodied cloth from his hands, replacing it with a fresh one. The kettle is whistling and Kakashi realises with a start that she's been cleaning around him for some time. There's no trace of the impromptu surgery but he can still feel the intense gaze of the dogs from their positions around the room, as eager to hear the answer as he is.

"I don't know." She is not telling the truth.

"Tell me." It's not a suggestion and he knows she can hear the command in his voice. Despite the year and the awkwardness that has stretched between them, Sakura is still one of the few people who understands the complex bonds he shares with the dogs. In matters that concern the ninken Kakashi has to take charge, has to act like the alpha he is, and that overrides any of the foolishness - so Pakkun named it - that arises between humans.

But Sakura isn't part of the pack, not really, and so she murmurs, "...I'm not sure if I should."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want you to get into trouble."

"I see." He levels a stare at her, the first properly penetrating one he has given her since she left the village, and feels satisfaction as the kunoichi begins to squirm nervously under the weight of his gaze.

"Just- I'll tell you, but you need to promise not to-"

"Did someone hurt him, Sakura?" Kakashi had been too panicked when they arrived to take stock of the injuries, but now that he thinks about it the deep gouges in Guruko's sides had looked too clean to be an accident.

There's a low growl from underneath the table, and Sakura visibly flinches when Bull separates himself from the shadows to stand in front of her. Kakashi snaps his fingers and the mastiff pulls away, reluctantly, taking up his standard position just slightly to behind and to the left of the ninja.

There's a sudden salty scent in the air and his eyes snap back to her as she tries to hold back her tears. "I- I'm so sorry." Brushing a hand impatiently across her eyes she looks up into the light before continuing, "it was my fault. I- I was walking home when these two idiots decided to start on me. Guruko saw them and-" she stops, gesturing towards the now peacefully slumbering animal.

Ah. Kakashi suddenly understands, because while Guruko is impulsive he's also highly protective of the people he considers family, and Team 7 definitely qualify in the little dog's eyes. Still. "Who attacks a ninken with kunai?" The ninja muses, shaking his head.

"Two overconfident chuunin who are now unconscious in the snow," Sakura replies. "I really am sorry, Kakashi, but he was just so fast that there was nothing I could do-"

"He won?" The voice comes from under the sink and both ninja turn to look at the frowning face that peers from behind the cabinet door.

"I suppose he did, Bisuke," she agrees before holding out a hand tentatively, as though uncertain of the dog's reaction. When the blonde mongrel trails a wet tongue across her fingers Sakura is too busy looking pleased to be disgusted with the drool; in that moment the rest of the panic that had gripped Kakashi leaves him in a rush and he laughs into the quiet kitchen, dispelling the tension.

"That's good," the shinobi says with just a hint of a smile, "but are you telling me you've left two ninja bleeding out in the cold?"

Her glare is far too amused to be serious as she replies, "oh, don't pretend you care, and that you're not going to grill me on who they are." At his unrepentant shrug she shakes her head, laughing herself, before turning to open the cupboard door and pulling out two mugs - the two they always used - and filling them with the hot water that hadn't been used to clean Guruko. She reaches a hand into her pouch and pops a few leaves into each cup before thrusting one at him.

"Mint, for your head," she says, almost shyly. "I always take some after a procedure."

His thanks is lost in the sudden emergence of his dogs from their hiding places in the kitchen, clambering over themselves to get closer to Sakura or himself for a pat or a scratch under the chin, and all at once it is as though the last year hadn't happened, and they were still Kakashi and Sakura, friends and comrades and family - nothing more, but certainly nothing less.

When she leaves an hour later, striding out into the cold dark night with a smile and a promise to bring him a charm for the battered little warrior still sleeping on his chest, Kakashi can't keep the smile from his face, and it only widens when he feels the weight on his vest shift drowsily.

"Boss?" Guruko says hazily, and Kakashi places a comforting hand on his head, smoothing a finger over the prominent whiskers that tickle under his chin. Ninken aren't pets to be coddled, but he'll make an exception this once.

"Extra biscuits for a month, Guruko," he whispers, feeling the muzzle underneath his palm curve upwards in a smile.

The charm is a few days in coming and when Kakashi doesn't see Sakura around the village he has to convince himself she hasn't run away from him again. It is the busiest time of year for medics - peak fitness and ninja skills bowing before the common cold - and he supposes she's in high demand after her sojourn around the continent.

Still, he chides himself on getting his hopes up when a run-in with Naruto reveals she kept the pair's weekly ramen date without interruption. Of course she would put him lower on the priority list than before, charm or no charm, and it is all Kakashi can do not to send her a note telling her to forget about it. That would be churlish, let alone revealing that he expected more from her, and that was the last mistake he wanted to repeat with the kunoichi.

He cannot help but weave his way through the short days in a fugue, so much so that he misses the approach of Midwinter and is shocked to open his door to the crowds milling around the streets outside his home. His apartment - built on old Hatake land, making him a reluctant landlord - borders a forest known for its hawthorne groves; the villagers must be on the hunt for flora to use in their wreaths.

Sakura's pink hair stands out amongst the swaddled mass of people: she still isn't wearing a hat or gloves, and for the first time since she graced Konoha once more with her presence the ninja looks pleased to see him.

"Perfect!" She exclaims, pushing her way through the busy crowds to reach his side. "You're just in time."

He raises his eyebrow expectantly.

"I need your permission to go into the woods behind your house," her explanation is breathed out as she hauls him down towards the lane that leads to the forest, "because I think every other tree in Konoha has been plucked bare."

Sakura's face is screwed up in a moue of frustration and Kakashi keeps his smile to himself, letting her drag him along without complaint. Though it was for her own convenience he's still unreasonably happy that she was thinking of seeking him out, and this warms him enough that he ignores the glances she shoots him from the corner of her eyes.

They pause while Kakashi unlocks the small gate separating the apartment grounds from the Hatake forest, a small gathering of trees and brush that would be more suited to being labelled as a copse. He had always thought his forebears had grander ideas than their reality, but right now Kakashi feels like the owner of the best land in the Fire Country at the way Sakura's green eyes light up at the sight of the untouched shrub.

His companion wastes no time in gathering strong hawthorne branches and holly boughs, expertly twining them together in a rudimentary circle before beginning a complex weaving pattern with the individual twigs and leaves of the plants. It's women's tradition and the shinobi feels a little like a spy, but she continues unperturbed so the actions cannot be secret.

"Can I help?" He offers hesitantly.

"If you could find me some hellebores I would be very grateful- though I doubt there'll be any, there's too much shade here…" distracted, Sakura waves a hand in his direction, leaving him to hunt on hands and knees for the elusive white flowers. They work in companionable silence for a time, falling back into the easy atmosphere they'd enjoyed in earlier years when their friendship was less complicated.

Kakashi begins to feel content before the feeling is made cold in his chest with Sakura's sudden words into the quiet.

"Kakashi…" she begins, and the way she looks over her shoulder, not quite meeting his gaze, has his hands fisting anxiously in the dirt. When she doesn't say anything else he clears his throat a few times before answering, "yes?"

"I-" her gaze drops to the ground. "I was hoping we could- um, talk. About- about everything that happened."

He exhales heavily, hands clutching at the frozen dirt for purchase as his world spins around him. "You want to talk." His voice is level but it's only a matter of time before it breaks, and so he stands up suddenly, his abrupt action causing his companion to fall backwards onto her rump. She scrambles away from him and Kakashi closes his eye against the hesitant fear he can read on her face.

"Well I think I said everything I need to say," he continues, voice cracking on the last note. Thrusting the handful of white flowers he had collected in her general direction, the ninja makes to leave the quiet copse when Sakura stands, her work scattering heedlessly at her feet.

"Wait, please." It's not a command but it might as well be for all his ability to resist. Reluctantly, the jounin pauses at the gate, furiously avoiding the way Sakura is looking searchingly into his face. "I really think we should talk this out."

The metal groans under his crushing grip, but he can't ignore her request and so Kakashi drops his head in defeat. He should never have walked the dogs that day she returned; should have declined joining Team 7 for dinner and should have left her in the cafeteria to the mercies of the ninja populace. Saving Guruko's life he could accept as a necessary evil but in all other cases Kakashi knows with sudden clarity that every interaction he has with her will slowly drive him insane.

Thinking back to the bitter memory of their last conversation in the depths of last winter, Kakashi nods in unwilling acquiescence. "Alright, let's talk."

Even with his back turned Kakashi can perfectly picture the hesitant relief on Sakura's face and he can't help but bare his teeth in a humourless response. "So do you want me to embarrass myself again, or did your year of wandering give you another way of repudiating everything I am?"

It's a hollow victory as her teeth snap shut on her carefully rehearsed words. "Let's... just start from the very beginning."

AN: I have another 4-5k words mostly finished on this but I wanted to get it out on Christmas - so it's now a twoshot! The rest will likely be up sometime this week unless I'm too busy with whisky and/or cheese.

I love angsty, slightly mad Kakashi so much.