AU. In this world, it takes a lot more than one night for Sakura to say "i love you". Because sometimes a smile is all you can really give.

"Oh! Good morning, Kakashi-sen...Kakashi," I correct myself, trying not to raise my eyebrows at his presence in the kitchen, a plate of breakfast waiting at my usual seat. I tug at my cotton shirt. "You're up pretty early."

"Yes. Well. I thought I'd make you breakfast." He smiles at me, through his mask, and it gives me this urge to throw up. What is with these girls, who think they're in love-

"You didn't have to," I offer cautiously, inching awkwardly towards my seat.

We eat in silence; well, I eat in silence, while he watches. Whenever we make eye contact, he crinkles his eye in a smile and I offer a similar grin. I try not to look up.

"This isn't," I hesitate. "...I mean, it's not going to become a regular thing, right? I can take care of myself."

He stares. "You can take care of yourself."

"I just-I don't want you to go through this trouble, that's all. I mean, Shizune's home right now, right? Shouldn't you be...sleeping in while she's home?" I flinch at the innuendo in my words, the need for incessant babble overriding my generally logical brain.

"Your mother," he corrects softly.

"I-right. My...mom. Sorry. " I forgot that he didn't like that, me calling my mother by her name. She preferred it, I remember, from my childhood at the playground, Shizune much younger than all the other mothers. Just a child, taking care of a child. Just a baby with a baby.

"I just..." Kakashi cleared his throat. "I don't have much else to do, that's all."

That's it, for breakfast. I excuse myself and make my way to school.

...

Everybody's talking about it, at school. Hinata is something pristine, and having this char of black ash across her pearl-white record is something sure to stir up trouble.

Hinata is not popular, per say, but her family is prestigious enough that she is a body known to the rest of the population. As quiet as she was, there was something instinctively effulgent about her.

I don't see her until nutrition break. We sit on the roof, sun glinting painfully against her straight, luminous hair and the tears dribbling down her chin. Pathetic, Sasuke would say, but her perfect hair and beautiful eyes make me direct the word at myself, my dry hair, the bags under my eyes. I'm so tired. I can't sleep.

She doesn't say much, just wrings her hands and breathes.

"How can he not trust me?"

I swallow. It's not you, it's him, everything about him, the way he looks at you when he's calm, when he quirks the corner of his lip at you. It's him, when he's angry, when he's spewing fire and you can only try and not be the target. He's just a little boy who misses his mother, doesn't want to miss his father.

I choose my words carefully, unable to stay collected as she peers those shimmering eyes at me, pure and whole.

"It's not you he doesn't trust."

She doesn't believe it, not by a long shot, but she looks forward and accepts it.

...

Sasuke invites me to throw around a softball after school. I was a big softball star, before they started charging fees, pitching straight into the catcher's mitt.

Needless to say, I'm getting grass in my flats and a good workout. We take a break, leaning against the old oak tree.

There's a group of school girls in short skirts huddled together, staring.

"Why can't they just leave me alone?" Sasuke asks softly, sadly, that little boy from another world. It's like the stages of grief with him, I swear, except it only seems to cycle between black-flame anger and depression. He's suddenly so small, all of his over six-feet form shrinking into that of a mere child.

"Why do they think they can do this to me?"

I bit my lip, waiting for the inevitable.

"Why do they-how could they-think they're in love with me?"

He suddenly turns to look at me, eyes wild and frantic and I swear I swear I see red. My senses are on overload, his face so close to mine. My heart is racing and oh God it's going to burst, a bloody, mangled mess.

"There you are."

My head whips towards the noise, Sasuke's turning shortly after. I glance into his eyes and see the normal, dull matte return. Neji's gaze hardens, as he looks from Sasuke to me. I wonder what he's thinking, what he thinks he saw, Sasuke looking deep into my eyes and now, me looking up at him with alarm and fear. Does he think the fear is based off of Sasuke's volatility, his cruelty? Or does he suspect something more sickening, some torrid love affair.

"Sakura," he acknowledges carefully. He looks at me with that look, the kind akin to pity, like I'm being abused or something. I look away, rubbing my throwing arm, lips sealed.

"Hyuuga."

"Uchiha." Neji grits his teeth. Sasuke stares back blankly, but I can see something smouldering under the surface.

Finally, Sasuke starts to say something back, but Neji hold up a hand. I expect him to explode, weight for him to rip Sasuke apart with words flying like shrapnel, hurling towards his arteries, his heart. Neji was a notorious literate, sentences and vocabulary crafted carefully to the potency of a slab of C4.

If anyone could tear Sasuke down, it would be Neji, with his pale eyes and steady breath.

But he keeps his eyes on me, and his voice is soft but distant, like the altocumulus clouds puffed up high.

"She's not another love note you can crumple up. She's faithful. She's loyal. And she's a tough girl. She'll get over this, she'll get up where you left her..."

The pot in Sasuke's eyes is boiling.

"...And she'll forgive you."

Sasuke breathes out and he leans back, unaffected. "Was that supposed to deter me from something?"

Neji stares back. "I don't understand. Hinata is..."

Sasuke swallows and something in him shrinks. He closes his eyes for a moment, and I think he realizes that there's been a mistake made.

"I do what I have to."

...

Neji walks me home, like Sasuke never would. He eyes the rundown motels, I see the landlord's wife smoking with a man I've never seen before.

"You can do better," he sighs.

I smile politely. I don't invite him in.

...

"Hey, Sakura. Look who dropped by to see you."

Shit.

"Sai," I say weakly. My lips are dry.

Sai smiles back, and so does Kakashi-that uncomfortable feeling grows surly in my belly, the boxes still sitting unpacked in the corner. I wonder where my mother is.

"Do you...do you want to go upstairs?" I offer. He's just standing there, back ramrod straight. Kakashi is seated in the same chair I left him in this morning.

We're just at the base of the staircase when I here Kakashi clears his throat.

"It would...perhaps...maybe leave the door open?"

I blink at him. "Why...I mean, I suppose...I mean if you'd like. If you want me to." I look over at Sai, but his eyes are just a void of black. Nothing.

"I would be more comfortable," Kakashi amended, voice unsure.

"Okay," I echo. We're all frozen there, waiting for someone to make the next move, but I shake my head and break the spell.

"Have fun," Kakashi calls weakly.

"Have fun?" Sai questions. "Does he expect us to-"

"Don't finish that sentence."

Before I can offer, Sai sits down on my bed and leans all the way back. I try not to look when his shirt rides up.

"You never called me back," Sai said softly, playing with the fraying threads of my pillow.

"Yeah. Sorry."

I listened to Sai chatter, carefully avoiding any polite questions he had asked me, not to create to much of a concrete picture of myself. Even the slightest phrase could encourage him to paint that picture, the line of my hand or mouth. He was just too interested, too observant.

I didn't want him to fill in the colour of my eyes because I didn't even know what they looked like myself.

"You visited Naruto, hmm?"

I studied his face for a second, that roasted colour of his eyes next to my jade cotton sheets. "Yeah."

"And you have no faith."

"Is this really a matter of faith?"

Sai breathed softly, meeting my eyes. "I thought you believed in him."

And I want to say yes. But Sai was right; I wasn't the kind of person to have faith, not even in the person I believed in most.

I hated it when he was right and I was wrong. It was happening more and more often, like my mind was playing tricks on what I wanted to be right and what was the truth and nothing but the truth, and whether or not my hands were shaking when I gripped that softball. I couldn't cope anymore, not without shoving the pain onto someone else, waiting for them to leave me.

So, in turn. He hurt me.

"You have a lot of men in your life."

(He'd come back again, though. Every time I stepped back I'd kind of miss him, and he knew that so he would come back.)

"Excuse me?"

"That Uchiha, and the one walking you home today. Then there's the brunette with the spiky hair, and Naruto, and me-"

"I think you should go now," I say quietly, but his eyes have sunken into that horrible beady look. It makes my hand shake and my breath quake, that horrid, horrid fear.

"-how many are you sleeping with?"

I can hear the echo of his words bounce off the walls in the hall, down the stairs to where Kakashi is still sitting in that same goddamn seat. My betrayer, those tears, stinging at my eyes.

"Get out."

"It's a legitimate question-"

"I said just please, get out-"

"-I mean, your mother's boyfriend must be thinking the same thing, all these boys picking you up and dropping you off and whirling you away-"

I spring up, bile rising to my throat.

This shouldn't make me sick, but all I can think of is Sasuke's judging tone, why do they think they're in love with me, like woman are these pathetic, wanton descendents of Eve who know no better than to be taken, goddamn begging for it.

"-although he must just think you're like your own mother."

I grab the baseball bat and slice him in half.

Except not, because it's a baseball bat, and their tips are dull and ineffective. But the look in his eyes in both scenario's were, or would be the same-that horrid, cracked paint look, like a doll breaking in two.

But the difference is in one scenario he's as dead as a doorknob, while in this one he gets to walk away.

...

I can't sleep that night, just like every other. I just keep thinking about poor Hinata, about Sasuke, about Neji you can do better-better than Sai? Better than my mother? I keep seeing faces and hearing words, those accusations, Kakashi watching with that one, watchful eye, boys walking in and out, in then back out. Like my mother, just like my mother. Like I'm in love with you, like I'm worthless.

The room is spinning and I'm feeling sick, sick.

I love you.