Nineteen
The air in the bar is thick with smoke and the smell of cheap alcohol. Sakura sits on the barstool closest to him, wearing a button-up blouse and chatting with a man who wandered in to tackle a stack of paperwork for his job at the hospital.
She's growing up, sprouting like a seed that has broken its own shell and pushed out its roots in moist soil. Her hair is longer than he's ever seen it; it's pleated in a thick braid down her back, glaringly vibrant with its strange color.
She's leaning on her elbows, batting her eyelashes in such a pathetic way that Kakashi can hardly resist chuckling at her.
But he keeps quiet, for her sake. For her dignity.
It's probably the first time she's been drunk, he muses. And—oh, may the powers that be please forgive him—she really did blush quite prettily. And the growing bulge at her, uh, "chest area" made it rather hard to focus on anything else.
But he's her teacher and it's wronger than wrong should ever be allowed to be. He's known her for seven years and she's trusted him for seven years.
She's just a child, she's just nineteen, and he doesn't even remember being nineteen; just a vague feeling of being terrified and relaxed at the same time, of fighting more wars than he could count and downing more drinks than he could hold.
But she's nineteen no matter how badly he wishes he could change it, and when she looks at him there's something decidedly devious in her eyes that he isn't sure he likes.
The man with the paperwork glances over at her and sees her staring past him, and then he glances at Kakashi too and runs a quick hand through his graying hair before gathering his things and scurrying off.
Kakashi is glad to see him go, but for a reason that he can't quite place.
Sakura grins at him and creeps closer, and he must be stupid, because he sighs at her, shakes his head, and knocks her out.
He walks home with Sakura's head lolling around on his shoulder, and he wonders what could have happened between them if maybe they'd met just a few years later.
She's witty and attractive, and a growing danger to enemy shinobi. If he'd met her now, at nineteen, he probably would have pursued her.
But the thing of it is, he met her when she was twelve.
(And time really does change everything.)
Fin.