the choices we made (oh baby, you're tattooed on my skin)

rating: g
genre: angst/tragedy
pairings: kakasaku, sasusaku
POV: Kakashi
warnings: there are no happy endings here
word count: 461


"Do you ever wonder," Sakura asks him. "If we gave up too much?"

She's dry under her umbrella, but the rain has long soaked Kakashi to the bone. Sakura doesn't step close enough to share her shelter though. Instead, she settles into place a few steps behind him, a proper distance between them.

Kakashi doesn't look away from the memorial.

"Do you ever wonder," she continues, and Kakashi does not want to hear her questions. The two of them made their decisions a long time ago, all they can do now is live with them. But, of course, Sakura ignores the threat of his silence, as she always has. "Do you ever wonder if it was worth it?"

The rage hits him suddenly, unexpected. He refuses to give her the reassurance of a reaction, so he breathes and shoves the emotion down, as has become his habit. "Go home to your husband, Sakura," he tells her, his voice not as free of bite as he would like. The anger is answer enough, more answer than he wanted to give her.

"Kakashi," she tries.

"Don't."

She huffs out a hurt little sound which cuts his rising rage to the familiar shreds of something more bitter.

"Please." He would only ever beg it of her. "Just don't."

He shouldn't be surprised when she doesn't have mercy on him. Sakura has always had a talent for ignoring him when he begs.

"You didn't come to Sarada's party. She missed you."

And Kakashi does not want to deal with the accusation in her voice. Gods, Sarada. That little girl with her black hair and dark eyes who looks nothing like her mother and all too much like her father, but when she smiles.

Well. It isn't fair for Sakura to bring Sarada into this.

"I'll make it up to her. Go home to Sasuke, Sakura."

Sakura nods, and moves to leave. "I miss you, Kakashi," she whispers, changing her momentum to dart forward.

Her admission punches the breath from his lungs, his insides crushed more efficiently then any jutsu, leaving him too off-balance to evade the soft brush of her fingers down his face. Her thumb pauses over his lips for the briefest of moments. He is incapable of reacting with anything more than a pained inhalation.

"Sakura," he begs again. "Don't."

But she is gone, across the clearing before his words can hit the air.

If he felt like torturing himself any more today, he would swear he hears a murmur of "I do wonder, somedays," as her presence fades from his awareness. But today, Kakashi will just stand in front of the memorial and let the rain wash her touch from his skin.

(Her touch has never—will never—completely leave him.)