Hello everyone. I'm sorry for posting so late. Things have been messy in my personal life lately and unfortunately that spilled into my writing. My old stories (plus the drafts) were deleted and I don't have a copy saved anywhere. I may be restarting Secrets and giving it an overhaul but the main gist of the story will be there. I just need to rework some details since I'm writing some parts from memory. I hope I can finish everything in time.

Thanks to NightGal, Setsuna, laravine, Hana Natsumi Hime, XxXRemusLupinLUVRXxX and everyone who left me encouraging reviews and as well as those who put this story in their Favourites and/or Story Alert.

Being an avid fanfic reader myself, I won't keep you guys waiting too long. I will definitely find a way to finish the story.

Anyway, to tide you guys over I decided to write a little ficlet. Hope you like it.

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He never figured that his life would account for this much. When people start dying around you , one tends to hold a lesser value of your own life and instead would try that much harder to protect those living around you. He fought because he needed to keep his village safe, but he'd once fought because he wanted to protect someone he truly loved. Until now.

Looking down into the green eyes of his daughter, Hatake Kakashi could not help the great swell of love and protectiveness that came over him. This precious bundle was his.

"Our little girl," came the proud voice of his wife who stood by the door looking into their daughter's room.

Kakashi always wondered how she did that. He swore the woman could read minds when it came to their daughter. How did she know what he was thinking?

"You hold her too close when you're being overprotective. And as my numerous experiences have shown you always think that some jobs are only yours to do." Sakura stepped closer to her husband and leaned against him as he wrapped one arm around her shoulders, cradling their child between them. "One thing you need to learn Kakashi is that its okey to have someone help you protect your precious people too."

"I'm sorry... for not being here, and for running off on you when I should have stayed." He glanced at her from the corner of his eye and noted the small almost invisible scar near her temple. "If I had been with you..."

Shaking her head against him, Sakura looked up into the worried eyes of her husband. "We both agreed that it was better for you to be with Naruto at that time and stop apologizing for something you couldn't help. No one, not even Tsunade-sensei, thought that Kabuto would come for me." She pinched his arm when she saw him move to make his argument again. "I'm a kunouchi Kakashi. You can't shelter me from things we've already seen and done... And you can't hide her too because it would be her choice to make when she's ready."

He pulled her closer and leant his chin on the top of her head, "As hurtful as this sounds, sometimes I wish I hadn't fallen in love with you. Because then you would have married into some clan and there would have been people to help you when your husband wasn't around. Sometimes I dream at night that you wouldn't be alone in such a small house taking care of your daughter and being worried about me when I'm out on missions. That you'd have had a better life if I wasn't in it."

Sakura made a move to look up at him but he just held her tighter. "But then I wake up from that dream and see your face and I can't help but be selfish to want to continue seeing you next to me. So I work too hard, and yes maybe I push away those who could help, but I need to prove to myself that I deserve this. That I can continue having you and our daughter with me and that I can protect you both. "

"For a smart man, you can be awfully dense."

Gently pulling away from his hold and taking their sleeping daughter into her own arms, Sakura carefully laid her down the crib. Still looking at her daughter, Sakura whispered her own sentiments to her husband, "You don't need to prove anything to anyone. We've both shown that we can be a family and still be shinobis. We made it through Kakashi...us...together...we made it through."

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Additional thoughts:

I've always asked myself what would be Kakashi and Sakura's situation if they really got together. Kakashi doesn't have family anymore, and given the very minimal mention of Sakura's made me think that she might not have had a very supporting one too. Kakashi is the type of man who would always have the world on his shoulders, and would always take responsibility to its fullest. Sakura is the type of woman who is strong enough to remain herself no matter how much the world may change around her. As a couple they would surely have been under the microscope so to speak because although they may have support from powerful friends, their village is still a place of tradition and Sakura was still Kakashi's ex-student.

So here we have two people who don't belong to a clan, stubborn perfectionists, and most importantly loyal shinobi. What would a marriage between the two REALLY entail?

The image became clear to me as soon as I imagined their modern equivalent is this... highly successful professionals who find a way to balance both work and family. Independent individuals that are learning to compromise and how to deal with situations now that they have someone other than themselves to protect. A young family that is coping with the changes of how society once viewed them as separate individuals, and now they as a unit that needs to function in a community.