Her eyes stared apprehensively at the tall wooden walls that seemed untouched by the passing of time. And she wondered quietly if what lay within it held a similar fate. A part of her wished that it did.
A part of her just could not let go.
She neared the gates, slowly, and was stopped by one of the guards. He scrutinized her form trying to discern her face from the shadows. "Name?"
She glanced at him and reached to pull down the hood of her black cloak.
"Haruno Sakura."
Tired eyes squinted at the paper work that continues to tower the wooden desk.
"Tsunade-sama?" She turns her head to the younger man and signals for him to speak.
"A missing-nin has approached the gates, and wishes to speak with you." Her ears perked up at the information and cautiously inquired to the identity of the culprit. Her eyes widened at the whispered name and ordered the chuunin to bring the kuniochi to her office. A small smile lifted the corners of her lips.
The little girl couldn't stay away.
She trudged quietly down the streets of Konoha. Everything remained as it was since the last time she saw it. She felt like she was looking through a picture. Her head hurt at the thought.
Tsunade-sama had lectured her and informed of the repercussions of her actions, but she knew that the older woman was quite delighted at her return, and felt the warmth of her welcome seeping towards her.
Yet she knew that she didn't belong here.
She didn't belong in the past.
She doesn't want to.
She walked on at the dead of the night. The streets were empty and dark, the sky beaming down with moonlight. She did not know what had induced her to retrace her steps to the border of Konoha. It was like her feet walked without her consent.
She gazed around and realized that she had nowhere to go.
She sighed, and thought of her options, and decided to take a familiar route to the edge of the village.
She always did find some sort of relief there.
The grass softly bends to the whispers of the breeze and she felt at peace. She takes a seat on the damp grass, her back against the tree. From the hill where she seats, she has a good view of the sleeping village, and her eyes flew to trace its every feature. She inclines her head at the figure that seats not too far from her.
Her eyes carefully appraise him, even he seems unchanged, she thinks almost begrudgingly. Perhaps it was the mask that hid half of his face. He glances at her and catches her eyes with his. She pulls away, somewhat unsettled, and cast her eyes downward to the village.
"How did you know you?" She mutters almost child-like.
And she feels thrust back to the past, a feeling of uneasy rises against her gut.
She thought she had escaped. She thought that she could
Her gaze traces the structures of the village down below, the village where she grew, where things are not what they seem, and where sometimes people are not what they seem.
She shakes her head out of contemplation.
This place, it held too many memories.
She tilts her head to his direction, waiting for his response, and finds herself still under his gaze. "I didn't." He says quietly, but she could hear a slight tone of anger in his voice.
She didn't blame him.
His gaze shifts away from her. When she had left, he thought of how it would be when she returned, how he would deal with it, how he would deal with her. But nothing prepared him for this. And his anger was bubbling beneath the surface.
He was curious to why. He wanted to know.
He abruptly stands, "When you're ready to talk to me, you know where to find me." He says tersely, eyes avoiding her form, and quickly melds to the night.
After everything that has happened, he didn't have to demand for answers.
It should have been given to him without provocation.
He thought he had fallen asleep in the middle of the field, and her apparition was nothing more than a dream. A dream that was not unusual for him. He stared at her, waiting for her to vanish into the night. But she looked more melancholy than he could remember, and when she broke the silence, he heard her voice that was mellower than he last heard, its vibrant tinge lost in his memories.
And he knew it was no dream.
Because in his dreams; she was happy. They were happy.
The breeze played softly with her pinkish hair, and it looked longer than he last saw it. Her eyes, the life in it seemed to drown with something he could not discern in the darkness of the night.
He was a torn man.
Relief swept over him knowing she was alright and that she had come back, but he still teetered with anger and he had no qualms letting it be known to her as he left her briskly; fearing what his anger could do to her.
He hasn't seen her since that night.
And he couldn't deny the feeling of something breaking inside him. But maybe it has been breaking since three years prior—on that day when she left—without a reason, without a simple goodbye.
Maybe that was what so hard about it.
She left without telling him.
She left with his heart.
She glances above to his dimly lighted window, contemplating on what she should do. She has admittedly avoided him for the past days since she saw him that night of her return. It was a simple concept, she told herself; she was just not ready to talk with him.
With him it was always like that. She was uncertain and unsure.
She didn't know what to say.
And for Haruno Sakura to not know what to say was indeed a big problem.
But this afternoon when she spoke to Ino she caught a bit of news that she found, to her apparent surprise, disturbing. And it tugged a familiar place in her heart that she believed should have been immune to.
She knew then, at that moment, that she had to speak with him. She had to know.
She sighed and made her way to his apartment door.
He opens the door to her knocks and looks at her questioningly as if she was intruding.
They stare at each other, neither willing to break the silence.
He sighed. He didn't have time for this.
"Can I come in?" She asks timidly. Not taking his eyes off her, Kakashi reluctantly steps away to let her in, a silent debate raging in his head.
"Sakura, is there anything you need?" She looks down at the floor. "I have so—"
"Is it true? Are you being sent away to a S class mission?" She peers cautiously to his face.
He nods. "I leave tomorrow evening."
"How long?"
"For awhile." His answer is clipped, and he stares at her expectantly. She does not move and he slowly turns his back to her and makes his way to his bedroom. "There are things I h--"
"Kakashi, I'm sorry." She blurts out. He stops mid stride and muscles stiffening.
"It doesn't matter now." He says; his tone edgier. She only came to speak with him today because she knew he was leaving. And the thought of her being left behind did not sit well with her.
And that hurt.
Her selfishness hurt.
She expected this kind of reaction from him, but to hear it.
It hurt.
His anger hurt.
She bows her head in defeat. "Maybe not to you it doesn't, but to me it does. I can't leave things as they are."
"You did three years ago. What's different now?"
"What do you want me to do?" The sound of her voice rose from its timidity.
"What did you expect, Sakura?" His fists tightening as he turned to face her. "Of everyone, you should know how it feels to be left behind without much of a good bye or even a warning. It's not going to just go away with an apology."
Her lips formed a thin line, what he said was true. She brushed back the tears that were forming. She had told herself repeatedly, she would not cry anymore. She would not cry for anyone. Not even for herself.
And the anger she felt now seemed unjustified and it turned to a feeling of shame.
"You're right." She says as she looks to him. Only then he realizes how much older she looked—more tired, more sullen. "The reason I didn't say good bye was because I knew you would try and stop me. And I knew that that would have been enough."
She approaches him with caution, afraid that he would push her away. She reaches to his silver mane as she brushes it away from his face. "My resolve to leave was not resolute. But at that time, I believed I had to leave." She shakes her head. "It wasn't to look for Sasuke, but more to look for something I felt that I have lost."
"Did you find it then?" He asks, voice close to the edge.
She shakes her head. "No, but when I returned I realized that what was happening between us was partly the reason I left. Because I felt th—"
"That I would leave you, just as he had?" He finishes for her, and her eyes widen at the revelation.
"I…I…hadn't thou--" She stuttered.
"Or was it because you didn't think I would have been an enough reason for you stay?" He hated this kind of confrontation. It always left him more drained than his missions.
But as he watched her fling lies at him, every fiber of his unspoken anger rose to her taunt, and he slowly, almost predatorily, shortened whatever semblance of a gap that existed between them.
"Tell me, did you really decide not to say goodbye to me because I would stop you?" His voice rising from its monotonous pitch with each escaping word, and she instinctively backed away from his continued approach. "Or was it the realization that I couldn't stop you?" She stopped when she felt the cold press of the wall against her back, her fingers tightening into fists.
"That all this time you have spent with me, I was merely replacing him." He said tauntingly as he towered over her form, his eye drilling through hers with something akin to hatred. "That in the end it was he whom you still wanted."
The sound of flesh against flesh stopped his tirade, as he watched her shake with anger. He reached for the red welt on his cheek. "I can't believe you! I can't believe I came here for this!" She pushes him away from her, face streaked with tears of frustration. "Of everyone, I thought you would understand."
He looked away from her. He couldn't stand how broken she looked. "How can I understand when you left me with nothing to understand?"
She freezes at his words, and turns her eyes at him as he took a seat on the couch. He looked lost, and his eye was laced with unadulterated sadness.
She brushes away her tears and looks away. "I'm really sorry." She says in a bare whisper. "I didn't mean for it to be like this. It's just this place…it brings too many memories."
He thinks quietly of what to say.
She is fragile because she believes she is.
But he knows of the strength she possess, the resiliency she often undermines.
"Even if you wander away from this village, the memories will not fade away." He slouches against the cushions, head thrust back. "But you already know that, that's why you came back."
She slides down to the wooden floor; too many thoughts were swimming through her head.
"Yes. But I came back not because of that." She laughs rather ruefully.
"I came back because a part of me, did not want to forget. You were right you know. I left because I was afraid I would drown in the past."
She carefully picks through her words.
"Since I have returned, I still feel the pull of the past in this village." She clutches her head as she shakes it. "I don't know. It feels things have changed but at the same time it hasn't." She chuckles, a thought swimming around her head.
He glances at her, in the corner of his eye. "What?"
"You're a bad teacher, you know?" Her lips curl in that sad nostalgic smile of hers. "Your only students have so far been of the extreme end: An avenger, a masochist, and a zealot."
"A masochist?"
"It does seem like it, sometimes though, right?"
He shrugs. "Depends on how you look at it. You could be mistaken for a hopeless romantic."
"Romantic, maybe…a long time ago…but now….hopeless…its more like it." She laughs.
Her laughter tinkled softly in his ears, just like in his dreams. He looks away from her, a kind of fear enveloping around him, because if this was all a dream he didn't want her to disappear in front of his eyes.
"Kakashi?" She calls out to him. He takes a deep breath quietly wondering where all of this is headed. "Kakashi?" She repeats again, now with more urgency. He glances at her direction, watching as she closes the distance between them.
She fidgets under his gaze. "..Uhh..I..I..just be careful out there ok?"
He nods and quietly looks away; the awkwardness of the moment wraps itself around him.
He stands and shrugs it away.
He reaches out and tilts her face towards him, apprehensive green eyes stare back at him. "Sakura, will talk more about this when I get back, ok?"
She remains silent, her gaze more sad than confused. "But what if you don—"
He runs his thumb softly across her lips, and she quiets. She wants to wrap her arms around him but fears his rejection.
"How long?" She asks timidly. His hand falls from her face and he runs it through his hair.
"Two to three months minimum, half a year max." He watches her face fall on his revelation. She shakes her head and gives him a big smile, and it doesn't quite reach her eyes.
"I'll be here when you get back." She tiptoes and leans in to give him a quick kiss on his exposed cheek. A genuine smile tugs her lips seeing his eyes widen with surprise, "I'll see you later. Be careful."
Not waiting for a response, she turns away and heads over to the door, when she is stopped by the hand around her wrist. She looks back at him questioningly, while being pulled closer to his figure, her heartbeats becomes louder in her ears.
His face does not give away any answers. He does not have any to offer. He just knows he wants to hold her close as he had only done in his dreams during this past three years.
And as they stood in the doorway wrapped in each other arms, their thoughts though separate dwell on their uncertain future—both trying to search for a sliver of hope that had far too long been suppressed by doubts of the past.
finis
disclaimer: I do not own naruto.