Because TheRokudaimeHokage asked "will there be more" with a smiley face... There is more :) If it sucks, I'm not sorry, but please review - I'd love feedback on this.

Thanks for all your support towards this. Seriously, it means the world :)

Sakura smiled down at Akio, but it was more like a grimace. She had to try, though – his grin was a telltale sign that he was having way too much fun for his own good.

"No... That's not... Akio –" she cut herself off with a sigh. Training this child wasn't difficult, but damn. Being this boy's teacher was truly a job only for an actual teacher – someone at the academy. But she had no desire to go back, especially since Kakashi didn't –

She cut herself off.

"Mother, what's wrong?"

Akio was in his training gear with a kunai in his left hand, the blade pointed down. If it were a katana, she would have considered it upside-down. But he was getting better every single day she gave in when he begged her to train him to become a ninja. Sakura wasn't too keen on training the four-year-old, but at least he didn't have the dream Naruto had – to be the best ninja on the face of the planet. She understood that he wanted to be something brave, something worth remembering – but she didn't exactly know.

Sakura crouched, brushing a few strands of pink hair out of her eyes as she repositioned Akio's footing. "Move your feet less," she told him, smiling at the enthusiasm that radiated off of his small body. "Focus on the movements of your wrist – if you move your arm too quickly, you're going to use up all your energy and strength."

Akio's grin widened as he nodded.

"Let's try this again."

Sakura took a step back, grabbing her own kunai – even though she hardly approved of using such sharp things around her child – and was about to get into her fighting stance when Akio lunged at her, his knife headed straight for her neck. Alarmed at the speed of which he was at, she managed to easily dodge it, however, and with a sharp kick with her right leg her son had been shoved through the air, landing on his behind a few feet away from her.

Breathing hard, he got to his feet.

"Balance, remember – focus your chakra on your balance as well," Sakura advised. Now, it was her turn to lunge, but to her surprise, he ducked under her arm, and with his right hand retrieved the other kunai from her belt, elbowing her in the process – and then ending his – er, unique attack – he used his left leg to kick her right where he had just knocked the wind out of her, sending her skidding backwards, but failed to keep her balance. His attack wasn't as unique as it was… well, Kakashi would have corrected it with something much smoother and – well, something more like him.

But Akio was not his father. He was a whole other being entirely, and she had to remind herself of that time and time again. That was why she didn't want to train him to the point where he would go and join the academy, where he would eventually learn how to kill someone – she wanted his youth preserved. Or, at least, some part of it reserved.

Landing painfully on her side, with her hip now throbbing, she took in deep breaths. Well, he was certainly learning a lot more quickly than she had expected. And how old was his father when he had first become a ninja?

Oh yeah.

"Mother?"

Sakura sat up to see her Akio looking down at her, his eyes holding concern.

"I'm fine," she said, running a hand over the top of her head, and frowned when she felt that her braid had come undone. Again.

"Mother."

Finding that her eyes had strayed, she looked back up to see one of Kakashi's expressions on Akio's face. Her breath caught in her throat, and she had to shake her head in order to rid herself of that familiar, heavy feeling that had once again – expectedly unexpected, as usual – presented itself once again.

In front of Akio…

It was a painful, heavy feeling that was also painless yet numbing. It was uncomfortable, and often brought stinging tears to her eyes.

Small things brought flashes of his face into her mind's eye. It was ridiculous, because she'd run away for a reason. But she couldn't help remembering Kakashi as vividly as if she had seen him with her own two eyes in the last week when Akio said or did something in particular, that was so like his father. Akio probably knew this. Hell, if Kakashi was here, he'd know it right off the back. The way her son had spoken to her, and the tone he'd used to get her attention – the stern tone that was really hiding concern – it was just so…

It was just so like Kakashi. It was so much like him that it hurt to think about it.

But then guilt stole this feeling away, and for that, she wasn't sure if she was thankful or not. She smiled as best she could at Akio – who saw right through her cheery façade – as she got to her feet. It was selfish of her, to think of him, when she had Akio – who was all she needed – when he needed her to raise him. Without anyone knowing that she had given birth to her old sensei's son.

"Do you want some lunch?" Sakura asked, trying to distract Akio from whatever the hell was wrong with her. If there was one thing she was beginning to hate about Akio as much as she hated about Kakashi, it was their ability to know things that they shouldn't. She already suspected that he'd seen the pictures that she'd kept of home – just a few, but just the important ones, the ones that meant more to her than any others – in her secret hiding place. It sounded childish, she knew, as she looked around carefully, her eyes searching for something. But she didn't want her child to have to bear any judgment from anyone that would know her. Especially his father.

Sakura did not want her child to be treated as something different in the village, if he ever chose to go back there himself. She knew that he might have a childhood similar to Naruto's –as everyone's favorite outcast, for the longest of times – and she knew that Naruto didn't want people to judge anyone like he had been judged because of something he could not and would not ever control.

"I can make it!" Akio brightened, but she knew he hadn't forgotten the look that had passed over her features – she didn't know what that expression was, but she knew it bothered her son to no end. She watched him turn and scurry off towards the back door of the house, dropping his kunai on the ground next to the one he'd stolen from her. Sighing, she picked up the knives as the door slammed shut and dropped them on the wooden table she'd made with his help last month. On it, were all different sorts of weapons, large and small, and each day they usually worked with something different, unless she was only making Akio focus on making his chakra stronger.

Sighing, Sakura sighed, allowing another glimpse of Kakashi to flash before her eyes, and then it disappeared, like she had never even met him. She did not love him; however, she sometimes missed his presence. She would not admit it if it were actually true, and she was pretty sure it wasn't. Maybe it was because he was the father of Haruno Akio, maybe it was because she knew – and admitted, however, not exactly readily – that someday, Akio would have to meet his father.

Someday.

Just… hopefully not till he was old enough to understand why she had run away from him – form everyone in the first place – because Akio had a right to know. Someday, he'd know.

Just hopefully not today.

Or tomorrow.

Or this year, if she could help it.

Unbeknownst to Sakura, Kakashi watched from the tree branches above. He'd seen the training. He'd seen that look. He'd seen through her false smile. He'd seen his son not believe it, either. She looked fine… except she looked a little sad. He'd seen Akio's movements, and had a new appreciation for his teaching methods: apparently, she knew how to teach. She was a quick learner, but she wasn't all that great of a teacher. But the way she was working with Akio – she seemed to have all the patience in the world, but he knew her well enough to know that she didn't want to train him to become something like… something like him. She wanted him to keep his innocence, Kakashi knew this. But she probably wanted him to defend herself. She knew that in her early years, on Team 7, that she had essentially been useless and foolish. She hadn't taken part in many of the fights and had relied heavily on squealing about Uchila Sasuke.

Now, though, he knew she was somewhat different.

That look of – of – he didn't even know what to call it – was because of him. He wasn't stupid. He knew that much. It was hard to believe that after running away from him he could still cause her to hurt. But he didn't actually know if she was hurting – while trying to hide it from Akio – because she missed him, or she was feeling sorry for herself, or if she was worried about something that was unknown to the jounin.

Kakashi watched as she slowly seated herself on the grass as a gust of wind covered the sun with scattered clouds. She looked healthy enough, and since he was here to look at her – to really look at her – he knew what he needed to do. He had to tell her he knew about Akio, about everything – and he had to tell her that he cared for both Akio and Sakura.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, though.

Well, it didn't matter if it was a good idea or not. Eventually, she would find out. If her son started dressing like him – apparently she'd kept some photos of home stuffed away where she thought Akio would not look, and apparently she'd been wrong about that, because Akio had showed them to him – then she would probably catch on. Akio was good at secret keeping, but lying to his mother was not something Kakashi wished to inforce.

At all.

Kakashi was about to jump down and say 'ta-da, look at me' (or something like that…) when she abruptly stood up, and sniveled.

Oh, god – was she crying?

Yes, he decided unhappily as she rubbed at her eyes with heel of her palms, knowing that she was angry with herself – yes, she was crying.

"Stupid," he hear her mutter, and snapped to attention, his ears trained on only her movements and voice. "Stupid… he needs him… stupid!" she cursed and began picking up all those dangerous weapons that Kakashi had been quite curious of. He was going to wait till she put them away – if she was fully armed to the teeth, and if she even thought that he was here to harm her or Akio, she would not hesitate to try and lop off his head as fast as she possibly could, even if he was the father of her child.

He watched as she managed to gather all of them up and take them over to a small shed, near the small house, and throw them all in there at once. She abruptly cut off the clatter of wood and metal clanging together by slamming the rickety door and going back to the table, leaning on it. He could see that she had still kept up with some amount of training. However, he knew that being a mother wouldn't make her as good as she once had been, since Akio's life was more important than her own.

This thought stung him. That meant that Akio's life was of greater importance than him, and he only just now realized it. This boy – he thought he would not care, at first, when he had come to spy on her and seen the slight bump in her belly. He was quick to analyze the satiation and had come to the only plausible conclusion that cool winter evening: that she was pregnant, and that it was his kid, and that she had no way of telling him because she was terrified of what would happen to the child if he was brought back to her old home.

Kakashi wanted to slap himself silly. Akio was his kin. He did matter more, because he was his flesh and blood – he was his son, and Sakura…

Sakura still meant the same to him as she had in Konoha, but maybe she mattered just a little bit more because she was a mother. And Akio's mother, no less.

Well, now was as good a time as any other.

Here goes nothing…

Kakashi jumped down from the branch he had been perched on all morning, ready for anything the pink-haired woman might try, and landed gracefully on his feet in front of her.

"What – " Sakura's eyes darted up, and she on her feet in a moment without hesitation, her fists ready, but she faltered once her eyes communicated properly with her brain that Hatake Kakashi – the father of her child – was standing right in front of her, as calm as ever (or at least, that's what she saw), looking as if he hadn't changed a bit in the last four years.

And in all honesty, he really hadn't.

It took Sakura a moment to fully register who was standing right in front of her. The mask was in place. So was the headband. The uniform… was different. Disturbingly. Only a second's worth of studying the silver-haired man in front of her told her that he was probably one of the ANBU, once again. It would have made her curious, but she was too confused – and a tiny bit scared, for Akio – to be curious yet.

"K-Kakashi?" she stuttered, positioning herself in a defensive stance, ready to fight if she had to. She was unaware of Akio staring out the back window of the two of them. And it took her a moment to realize that that was where Kakashi's attention was. Whipping her head around, she saw the look of recognition on her son's face, and then turned back to Kakashi, who was now looking at her, and was silent.

And then she knew.

"You're dead," she croaked, and sent a kick his way, but he easily dodged it, not even trying to fight her back. He'd clearly been expecting this, and this angered her. How long had he been here? Why had he come looking when she had made it perfectly clear that she wanted nothing to do with to do with anyone from Konoha ever again? How had he found her? Was he here for Akio? But then how did he know, if that was what he was here for? What was going through that meticulous, methodical brain of his?

Sakura wanted to lop off his head with the katana she'd stashed in the shed, but she knew she wouldn't be able to get it in time. He'd easily stop her. And she didn't want that. Not at all.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, relaxing her stance, but her eyes were now sharp. They kept darting between him and her son, him and Akio – over and over again until Kakashi abruptly grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her a few times to get her attention. And with this hold on her, she couldn't very well kill him.

He said nothing. He could practically see the steam coming out of her ears.

It was time to get his honesty on. Oh, joy.

"I came here to see you."

Sakura didn't believe it for a second.

"You came here for him, didn't you?" she hissed, her eyes narrowed. He didn't see hate in them, only worry, concern, anger, and – and –

Was that fear?

Yes.

Yes, it was.

"I came here to see you." His voice didn't waver. His eyes didn't leave her. Akio stayed put, at the open window, where he watched, but he probably couldn't hear them. If they were shouting, then, the boy – who was so much like Kakashi that it made his head spin, yet he was so much like his mother I the smallest of ways that he felt overwhelmed with a sense of something that was probably natural to anyone besides him.

"You… you've already seen Akio?" she asked, her temper slowly leaving her, but she was still glaring with a ferocious might that Kakashi, of course, was immune to, for some ungodly reason.

"Yes."

Sakura swallowed, hard. Kakashi too his hands over her shoulders, and she immediately took a step back, but bumped into the small, wooden table.

"You… you're here," she said, surprise finally showing through. Not the I'm-gonna-rip-your-lungs-out kind of surprise, but the I-might-or-might-not-rip-your-heart-out-with-my-ba re-hands kind of surprise. At least she couldn't kill him.

At least he hoped she wouldn't.

"Yes, I am." He said. He was watching his words carefully. Then again, he supposed he didn't have to, since he would always rank higher than her – he was a better fighter than she would ever be. But when it came to facing a mother's wrath – especially Sakura's motherly wrath – he knew to watch his tongue well enough not to get his innards ripped out from his throat. That wouldn't end good for him, that much he knew.

"And… you've met Akio…" she seemed very disbelieving, as if all her hard work of keeping his son a secret was for nothing. But it wasn't all for nothing; only he knew of the child.

"Yes."

"But… you came here to see me."

"I saw Akio a month ago," he said, figuring that lying would only increase his chances of encountering this motherly wrath that all women seemed to develop once they had loved a child long enough to be ready to die for it at any given moment.

And Sakura would give up her life in an instant if it meant that Akio could live happy and free of judgment and rejection from people. He knew this.

Kakashi sighed, watching her carefully, and decided to take a step back. In case she did try to kill him. He wasn't really in the mood to die. He was in an unusual mood. As he had studied Sakura earlier in the morning – it was midday now – he had noticed that she had changed. She looked older. Her hair had grown longer, and had been in a short braid behind her head, which was now loose and needed tending to. Her green eyes seemed tired, but they seemed to sparkle whenever Akio did something truly and utterly amazing – in other words, he would proudly present to his mother several pairs of ruined clothes and frogs from the woodland surrounding them.

What fun it must be for Akio, to make his mother smile like that, even though he knew something was wrong with her.

"Why?"

"Because I'm his father."

Her right eye twitched, but she stayed where she was.

"Because you're…" she shook her head, taking a deep, shaky breath. He wanted to hold her, then. He was in the mood to be caring, and loving, and he hated lovey-dovey crap that made women turn into a pile of useless mush. But he did want to hold her. And possibly piss her off by kissing her. Yes, that sounded about right – but he couldn't. That was irrational, but he didn't really care, seeing as he was here now, and there was no going back, no undoing all the spying he'd been doing lately.

"I'm not leaving," he said after a moment.

"You… oh, so you're just going to make yourself at home then?" she snapped.

He was as stoic and as calm as ever – or at least, that's what Sakura thought she saw, but now she was beginning to sense his… what the hell was that?

She didn't know what he was feeling, and she was shocked that she even cared in the slightest about how Kakashi felt about all of this.

Sakura opened her mouth to tell him to go away, to leave her alone, to never come back, to let Akio come to him if he so desired, but no words came out. This made her angry.

"You ran away," he said flatly.

"So?" she glared fiercely at him. "It was my –"

"Why?"

Sakura swallowed her excuses and every single hateful thing she could bother to think of and huffed. He must have known all along, then, to be as calm as he was. Or maybe this was a façade – it was very likely that he was just bubbling under the surface with the desire to strangle her till she turned blue for running away like she had. But it had been her choice, and she hadn't intended for him to come looking… ever.

But that was just wishful thinking now, wasn't it?

"I was scared."

"Of what?"

Sakura was going to say "you, Kakashi, along with the judgment that Akio would have to bare if they knew, and the childhood he would receive" and stuff like that, but instead, she simplified all the jumbled thoughts inside her brain involving this and put them into two, quiet words that she said with a look of determination mingling with defeat on her face – an expression that Kakashi didn't like at all.

"Of everything."

"You could have told me –"

"No I couldn't have," she snapped, even though the venom in her words had left, and she suddenly looked more exhausted than he had been last month, when he had last visited Akio.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asked suddenly.

"No –"

The word slipped out faster than she realized, and too late did she slap her hands over her mouth in utter dismay.

Crap.

His eyebrows were raised now.

Shit.

"No?" he asked, and he reached up, and for the first time in a long while, he reached up, and lowered his mask, so it hung on his neck, revealing an angry expression.

Shitshitshitshitshitshit…

"You run away… fail to let me know that you carried my child for nine months… and… the answer to that question is no?"

Sakura gulped, losing her temper no.

She really hadn't intended for him to come along… and find out all of this, let alone know it all… and also find out that she still cared about him.

"I know of Akio," he said slowly, taking a step closer, crowding her against the table, trapping her efficiently.

Akio had disappeared from the window, Kakashi had noticed.

"I know of my son, and where you've been – I've known all along – I know… now… why you ran away-" – she hated the fact that both Akio and Kakasho now both shared the talent of catching on quickly enough to be a nuisance – "-and you don't want me to leave?"

Sakura felt stupid.

Really, really stupid.

Oh well.

"Fine," she snapped suddenly, "I don't want you to go, I didn't want you to find out that you had son because I was almost one-hundred-percent certain that you either wouldn't care, or would order me to do something I didn't or did want to do. I ran away because I remembered what Naruto went through. Although Akio doesn't have a demon inside of him, he would be shunned because he is the bastard child of you and I, and I don't want him to suffer because of that, because of something we did. Would you want that for Akio? Because I sure didn't, so yes – I ran far, far away, to this little place, and decided to keep my son – because for some reason, I felt like I had the opportunity to do something good – to give something good to the world. I don't want him to become an elite killer, I don't want him to have your burdens – but you know what? I think he wants to be like you, and if so, then great, but I want him to be happy, and I want him to be safe, and at the time, it meant that you couldn't try to take him away, kill him, or have him judged by anyone who would come to know Akio in Konoha. Do you understand now, Kakashi? Is that clear?"

It took the silver-haired man a moment to respond.

"Is that all?"

Sakura opened her mouth to shout at him for asking her in such an uncaring tone, 'is that all', but never got the chance to.

Kakashi abruptly reached out and tugged her into his chest, and wrapped his arms around her quickly, smiling slightly as her struggles did nothing to set her free. Eventually, she relaxed, and he loosened his grip. In a matter of uneasy, quiet minutes, her head was against his shoulder, but she was suspicious.

At least she hadn't tried to decapitate him with the nearest object that might or might not do the job.

Over her head, Kakashi glimpsed Akio in the window and nodded ever so slightly at the boy who was the spitting image of him – and her.

His attention was turned back to the pink-haired woman when she pulled away from him, her expression much softer and kinder than before – but she was still suspicious. She had every right to be, but at least she wasn't shooing him away with one of her katanas. He was thankful for the fact that Akio wasn't the one trying to gut him; he was sure that if it had been anyone else, the boy would have killed – so surely, at the age of four – to save his mother's life.

"You're not trying to kill me," he said after a moment of silence between them.

"No, I'm not, Copy Ninja of Obviousness," she muttered.

His eyebrows shot up.

"That sounds childish."

"What's your point?" she snapped.

"I'm just saying."

Sakura took a deep breath, and looked away. She felt only a little guilt, of keeping this from him. Because she had planned on telling him eventually.

She told him this much.

"You were?" he asked, his tilting his head to the side.

"Yes… if Akio really wanted to see you."

"So… if he asked to meet his father, you would let him? Wasn't the whole point of living out here to make sure I never knew?" his tone was soft, but the words were sharp, and cut deep.

Sakura was indeed guilty of that – sort of.

"He knows he has a father I don't want him knowing just yet," she said carefully. "If he asked to meet you… then I would take him to you. But only if he asked me to. If he chose to keep himself from you – he doesn't know exactly what you've done, mind you, but he thinks you're a hero – then I would not force him to meet you. I would not force him to live in the place where I grew up, because if I bring him there any time soon, he will be judged and he will be treated just as bad as Naruto had when he was a child. Does that make sense?"

Kakashi nodded after a moment, slowly.

"Yes," he sighed, running a gloved hand through his hair – the hair his son now possessed – his eyes still locked on Sakura. "I suppose so."

Sakura didn't know what to say now. She opened her mouth to ask him to leave, because of the torrent of feelings that were swarming in her head at the sight of him, at the feel of him, at the smell of him, at his mere presence – when Akio spoke from beside her, and she jumped. The boy was clearly his father's son; he was already as sneaky as him.

"Want to come inside for lunch?" he asked Kakashi, a smile on his face. "I made it myself!"

Sakura said nothing. Her son look happy, to have both his parents here. Not killing each other. Yes, that must have been a happy sight for him.

"I… I guess…" he looked towards the pink-haired woman, since this was her home, and he was technically trespassing. She nodded, and Akio clapped his gloved hands in glee. He began to chatter away, pulling both of them towards the house, the smell of ramen noodles reaching their nostrils.

Sakura locked eyes with Kakashi as Akio led them inside.

Maybe… maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

I might write an actual multi-chaptered story involving this lovely pairing that I have come to love... still thinking about it.

Review?