:O I got reviews. It's safe to say that I LOVE everyone who reviewed and I really just hope this chapter is good enough!
It's looooooong! But I couldn't really get around that.
Warning: contains sexual content!
Please Enjoy!
Chapter two
"You can't stay here Kakashi," Sakura said lightly, picking up a white porcelain cup and drying it with a towel; despite his close proximity, despite how he'd made her feel over a year ago, despite how persistent he was in being with her since and despite the urge to turn and cling to him and drown in warmth and safety, she knew he had to go, and so turned him away.
"Why?" he asked as if the question were a reasonable one, now removing all traces of sexual advance except being firmly pressed against Sakura's back.
"You know why!"
"No, I don't know why." He said in all seriousness. "Where is Sasuke right now?"
"I'm not getting into this." Sakura threw down the towel and shifted out from under him, turning to face him with defiance.
"No, answer me: where is he right now, Sakura?"
"Go. Away."
"Where?" he demanded.
"Shh, they'll hear you!"
"I thought you wanted me to go?"
"You know what I mean Kakashi."
"No, I know what you want," he reached out a hand to trace a line down her cheek and jaw.
"And what's that?" Sakura sneered coldly, jerking away from his hand, "You? Is that what you think?"
Kakashi just stared at her, why did she always deny herself? She was like a silent martyr except she suffered without any recognition at all, and when a single person attempted to give her it she struggled and twisted out from under him and back into misery.
"I don't want you, Kakashi," she said as if she could hardly believe he may ever suggest it, "what I want is for my husband to stop staying out all night, I want a perfect father for my children, not one who never comes home and lies and..."
"And what?" Sakura shook her head; she wouldn't admit his affair out loud in those words. "And what?" he demanded in a display of anger she'd never seen from this placid man.
"You have to go," she sighed dejectedly, "now. My son just-"
"I know, I heard him asking for his dad again-"
"Go away!"
"Sakura, you must stop running away from everything. Why are you doing this to yourself?"
"I'm not running away! That's exactly what I'm not doing! That's what you want me to do!"
"I want you to be happy, Sakura, you know that."
"Why do you care?" she snarled savagely.
"Surely you know why." he whispered, reaching out to her and being pleasantly surprised when she didn't pull back.
"No I don't," she whimpered, finally allowing his embrace, but as soon as she felt his jaw move against her hair to tell her why she clutched him tighter, "No! Don't!"
"You don't want to hear it?" she didn't answer, "But you know it anyway, so it doesn't matter if I say it or not."
He could feel her crying against his shoulder.
"Why did this happen?" she asked in a choked sob. He had no answer for her so he just shushed her and kissed her hair gently, whispering things that people say to the grief stricken, false words of consolation.
This was the format it always took and it always left Kakashi with an empty feeling, like something should have been done or said to complete whatever actually was done or said. Usually he left now, or would be turned out forcibly but he was determined not to be this night. He kissed her pale, wet cheeks with the same adoration as he would use in worshipping an idol. His lips found hers and they responded as eagerly as his own even though her vocal chords seemed to be protesting in hushed groans of defiance.
"Let me make love to you." he whispered.
"No, no just kiss me," she groaned back, finding his lips again and pulling him closer with the hand that had lost itself in thick silver stands. Her fervency caused her to pull him into her and her back clashed against the sideboard in a way that must have been painful, Kakashi thought, but she didn't stop at all, if anything it made her kisses more insistent, more urgent, and in thirty seconds she performed another U-turn, pushing his chest away from her and twisting and turning out of his grasp.
"Don't! He'll come home, he'll see us!"
"He won't, Sakura, you know he won't." He did not allow himself to be pushed away; she was doing it again, struggling and twisting from the one person who wanted her happiness more than anyone, from the one person who loved her.
"Get off me, you don't know what you're doing to me!" she sobbed, still crying. How could he know what he was doing? If he did surely he wouldn't want to cause her the pain, for as long as Sasuke was having his affair at least she could play the wounded wife who still loved her husband, a modicum of something right was there: she loved the father of her children, but now, with every move Kakashi made towards her Sasuke was slipping further and further away and everything was being filled with safety and warmth and one dark grey eye and silver hair and a strong, pale body and love. And it was more pain than she ever wanted to endure.
"No, he trusts me!" she cried when Kakashi held her tight against himself and the kitchen work surface.
"But I love you." Her world fell apart.
"No Kashi," she whispered warily, allowing her weight to fall on him, "You don't love me."
"Yes I do, and Naruto loves you, and Sasuke loves you and your children-"
"Then why do you do this to me? Why do any of you do this to me?" But Kakashi had no answer to her so he stayed quiet. "How can you all love me? Do you know what you're doing to me by just being here? Do you know what you're doing to my children by being here, to my husband? My family? Do you even care?"
"I care about you, Sakura!" he said with an un-Kakashi like vehemence, "and because we all care about you we want this for you!"
"Oh, so you came here looking for sex for me, did you?" she hissed, sarcasm and bitterness biting into the air with her voice, "you're saying that the only reason you came here was to keep me happy?"
"No, of course not, I came because I love you Sakura and if you think that it's selfish of me to want to be with the woman I love then I apologise for being so self-centred as to try and make us both happy-"
"You're not making me happy!"
"Then what would? Leaving you here alone so you can drink yourself silly?"
"I've never-"
"No, but you've thought about it, Sakura you've got a hidden stash of whiskey on the top shelf!"
"And whose fault is that?" she asked, half-laughing at the incredulity of Kakashi, the very man who'd introduced her to the bitter alcohol, to now be reprimanding her for drinking it.
"Sakura," he said very quietly, staring into her green eyes that had dulled with age and her miserable life experience, he longed to make them sparkle again, "come to bed with me," he whispered. He kissed her cheek and neck in that slow, languorous way that he seemed to have copy righted.
"Why?" she whimpered, giving in, he knew she was giving in.
"Because I love you, and I know you love me too, please Sakura tell me you do, I need to hear it."
"I...I can't," she whispered, her voice trembling with tears.
"But you do? Just tell me you do." He began pulling her away from the side and out of the doorway that led off to the right, away from the families' bedrooms and towards the vacant guest rooms. He was murmuring into her hair and holding her by her hips as he slowly moved backwards, bringing her with him.
"I...I do," she whispered just before he sealed his mouth over hers and she wrapped her arms around his neck. He pushed her into the wall of the corridor that led off the kitchen and wrapped his arms more fully around her, drawing little, meaningless patterns on the small of her back. They were moaning into each other and both attempting to pull the other closer. Sakura's fingers got lost in the mane of silver hair that crowned his head, throwing his head band off in the process and opening her eyes to witness the full extent of the scar that ran down his eye. It was breathtaking, it was intimate; it was exactly what she needed.
She pulled away from him to stare at his eyes, one grey, one red, so alike to Sasuke's...but that smile, that smile that she doubted many people had ever seen from the stoic ninja was there, her smile.
His lips descended onto her skin and she could still feel that smile in place, curling just above her collar bone as he trailed kisses up and down her neck. She rested her head back against the wall, moaning gently because she never wanted him to stop what he was doing but she couldn't voice the words because logically she knew he would have to stop, and have to pretend he had never been doing these wonderful things to her, whilst she sat in a dingy, dead kitchen and pretended to be the wounded, submissive wife, waiting for her husband to return from his affair with another.
"Sakura..." he murmured, running heated hands down her back, across her rear and to long, toned thighs. Sakura allowed them to be lifted and wrapped them around his waist when encouraged to do so. He was pressing her into the wall so his hands could reach up and trace the outline of hardened nipples through her shirt; she moaned anew and pulled his face back to her by his thick, silver hair, melding their mouths together and invading his mouth to find his warm, slick muscle and engage in war with it.
Kakashi's hands were kneading her breasts now, intoxicated by every little whimper and moan, every little sound that she made into his mouth until his sex was pressing fully against the straining fabric of his trousers and between her warm thighs.
"Kakashi," she gasped, breaking their kiss and grasping his shoulders and she felt his long, hard length pressing insistently against her centre. She gazed at him with lusty eyes and found his staring back, clear and with a guilt free clarity that she envied. Her hand dipped between them and began undoing his trousers, pushing them down his thighs along with his underwear and pulling her own aside.
"No, Sakura," Kakashi's hand covered her own, halting her progress, "not here," he whispered.
"Kakashi," she whimpered again, a pleading in her eyes, he was making this harder for her. He unwrapped her from his body and slid her to the floor, returning them both to states of decency before taking her hand and leading her down the hallway and into one of the guest rooms. Sakura stood nervously in the doorway as Kakashi entered, his gait unmarred by the shame and immorality that this situation should be drowning in.
She didn't move when he held his hand out to her, standing in front of the bed in the darkened room, unperturbed by the disapproving chill in the air, as if the Uchiha ghosts were watching, judging their actions and deeming them wrong. They were wrong.
"Sakura..." he whispered, trying to coax her into coming to him, touching him, allowing him to love her. She obviously wasn't convinced of something and Kakashi wondered just what he had to do to convince Sakura that he loved her more than he'd ever loved any woman, and he wanted to be one with her more than he had with any other woman.
Eventually she stepped forward and took his hand, coiling closely into his body and kissing his palm before settling back on the bed, her head on the pillows, her pink hair vibrant against the plain white sheets and her knees bent, giving him a view of her underwear under her skirt. She was the perfect vision of readiness for what was about to come and Kakashi's breath hitched at the sight.
He placed a knee on the bed, feeling the dip under his weight and repeated with the other, crawling on the cold, white sheets until he was over his pink-haired prize and looking into those impossible green eyes; they were wet but the moisture had yet to breach the barriers of her eyelashes and spill onto her perfect flushed cheek.
"I adore you," he breathed as he leant down to kiss her lips. He didn't know if she'd heard but either way she moaned into his kiss and twined her hands around his back, beckoning him closer with this movement until his whole body rested lightly on hers and his groin was nicely nestled aligned with her warm centre.
Was she really going to allow him he wondered? There was every possibility that she would not and that was why he stayed on his guard, not allowing himself to become too wrapped up in this goddess in case she suddenly backed out and he could not stop himself. He would never let that happen, he told himself stubbornly; he'd stopped in the throes of passion before and he could do it again. And yet there was something different about this situation; for one he was in love with this woman and he wanted her to feel everything she could.
He had known for perhaps longer than anyone that her marriage was dead, having begun to fall apart from the moment she said 'I do' in front of all her friends, including him. At that point he knew he could understand her and feel comfortable with her and be one with her in a way that wasn't physical, in a way that could have, and did, blossom into love. But he'd returned and changed it all.
He begrudged neither Sakura nor Sasuke of marrying. She'd loved him and believed in him for so long and he was alone and confused and desperately wanted to fill his heart with family and love now that the vengeance had vacated it. However Kakashi knew that if that was what he'd really wanted: Sakura's love and children, then he would never have left. Instead it was a confused and angry twelve year old that had left, his feelings all in the wrong places and believing no one understood him, or at least not the right people understood him. Naruto did and that's what had scared him.
However the other reason he didn't think he could stop was darker, more primal and disgusting than his other honourable reason. Not only was this woman his former student but she was married. Never in his life had a mixture of taboos stirred so much inside him. Perhaps it was just because he was so deeply in love with her that these forbidden things seemed so god damn appealing but the primitive want to taint a student, take another man's property and keep it as his possession was getting ridiculous. He wondered if she'd hate him for it? If she'd be as disgusted with him as he was with himself, or he wondered if to some degree she felt the same.
Sakura was moaning and writhing underneath him. His hands had long since found her breasts and begun to knead the mounds under his skilled hands. She eventually allowed his mouth to leave hers to wonder down her jaw and cheek, distributing kisses and licks to her throat and chest, feeling his lips curve when she wrapped her legs around his back urging him to stay a while over her breasts. He freed the material preventing the visual of her naked skin and took it off over her head, sending a cascade of blossom pink everywhere and making Sakura giggle - a beautiful carefree sound.
As a teenager and before she married and had children her breasts were different than they were now. Despite the level of activity that she undertook on a regular basis and how her body was tight and lean, despite her children, her breasts didn't look the same, not that he'd ever seen them this close before that night, though he'd spent many a night imagining how they might look without the red material of her top covering them. He could tell she was embarrassed of the changes to her body and had become visibly more self-conscious after the birth of her firstborn but now it seemed she didn't care as she arched her back, offering him what he was going to take anyway, and so he took it happily.
Her sounds filled his ears and they told him to continue but the hands crawling up his back and taking his dark blue top with them told him to pull away and allow it to be removed. He did the latter just so he could see her eyes sparkling at him but they weren't, he wondered if they ever would do again.
She smiled and reached out to him to kiss him, one hand losing itself in his tangle of silver hair and the other reaching to touch his skin. His skin was pale and warm to the touch and his chest was all hard planes of taut muscle and the occasional ridge of scar every now and then. The sight of him made her stop for a second and wonder at the injustice of her having this man, she didn't deserve him, she knew it.
"Sakura?" he whispered worriedly looking into the troubled face, eyebrows drawn together, tears that had been perched precariously on her eyelashes leaking down her cheeks. She was focused on a spot on the ceiling and her eyes were unmoving from it. At the sound of his voice she slipped her arms under his and around his shoulders, pulling him flush against her and nuzzling into his hair and shoulder. "Sakura?" he asked again, this is it, he thought, this is when she pushes me away. But if anything he was being drawn closer to her.
"I love you Kakashi," it was barely breathed against his ear as her lips traced its outline and his head turned abruptly, almost meeting her lips. The concept wasn't new to him but she'd never said those words to him before and he didn't know what to do and so he smiled.
Her arms went lax on his back and after a moment he felt the zip on his trousers being pulled down. "Cheeky," he murmured, breathing hot breath onto her face before kissing her forehead. He sat up and she allowed her hands to fall onto the mattress, watching him with her hazy green eyes as he kicked off his trousers. He tugged on the waistband of her skirt and she helped him remove it, followed by her underwear, and when he had her completely naked he smiled down on her again, tracing a line from her collar bone right down to the V of pink curls, his fingers disappearing in between her legs.
"Ka...kashi!" she moaned when his fingers ghosted past her most sensitive flesh, her back arched at his manipulation and her feminine muscles fluttered around him with such hot intensity that Kakashi had to close his eyes to control the urge to be inside her as soon as possible.
Her lips found a spot on his shoulder to content themselves with and she moaned her pleasure out onto that chosen patch of skin.
"Sakura...are you ready?" His voice was broken and needy and it was the best thing in the world at that moment to Sakura. She didn't speak, just nodded against his shoulder before wilting back down onto the mattress. She was a vision, with chaotic pink hair sticking to her skin, two dark emeralds staring at him from half-lidded eyes and a her lips, parted and glistening with saliva, his and hers.
He kissed her again, pulling her bottom lips between his teeth as she pulled him free and he positioned himself against her. It's happening, was running through his head, it's finally happening.
"W...wait!" he halted, his breath hitching at the gentle contact of his head against the warm moisture of her sex, "Kakashi are you sure about this?"
"Yes," he rasped on an in breath, his fingers flexing on her shoulders with the suppressed energy he desperately wanted to use to enter her.
"Kakashi I can't give you anything more than this," she gasped, her breathing coming out in short sharp pants.
"I don't want anything more," he hissed, pushing against her folds.
"I can't give you anything real," she protested.
"This is real," he ground out, pushing into her, tainting them both with adultery.
His forehead fell onto the pillow above her shoulder at the sensation and this pleasure was reflected in his partner's delicate moan. It was real.
They were clinging on to each other now, hips grinding together and breath mingling in the air as they panted, and then he was kissing her, up from her shoulder to her face, he kissed her jaw and her cheeks and her nose, eyelids, forehead, eyebrows, anywhere he could reach and when he was finished he began moving into her.
"I love you," he gasped against her lips, he felt like he couldn't say it enough. She rolled her head back, her eyes drifting closed and eyebrows scrunching together in some emotion he hoped was pleasure.
"I can't give you anything more Kakashi, this is all I have." He could hardly hear her, but he did.
"Don't say that, y...you've given me...more al...ready." He could hardly speak. He was so intoxicated by her, by everything she was and it was confusing his senses. When he closed his eyes they weren't in a dingy Uchiha room anymore but in a proper room, his perhaps, and in a proper bed too, maybe one with shuriken printed covers and a windowsill behind it with two different pictures of two different teams on it. Maybe the pictures would be shuddering with every move he made into her which rocked the bed and banged it against the wall, causing the frames to fall and clatter onto their fronts so the people in the pictures couldn't see the sinful dance they were acting out. Except in this fantasy it wasn't sinful because Sakura belonged to him, and those were his children in the room down the hall.
He felt as if Sakura must be able to read his mind when he felt her hand on his face and he opened his eyes to look into hers, deep abysses of green that went on for miles and miles.
"I...I can't give you...children," she whimpered, her grip tightening as she met him at another upward thrust.
"I don't want children," he grated, rolling his hips forward in a wide circle before coming crashing down again.
"I can't give you-" but he cut her off, sealing her words in with his lips. He didn't want to hear them because it hurt him, both that he couldn't have these things from her and that she thought so little of herself: he only really wanted her.
"Ah...Kashi," she moaned, her head rolling back from his kiss once more, her nails were now marking deep ravines on his back but he didn't really care, she was so close, he was so close.
He was speeding up, each thrust more erratic and urgent than the last and the faster he went the deeper her nails sunk into his skin until she had to move them to his hair before she caused any serious damage. She came clutching his hair, her hips involuntarily flexing upwards to meet his and it was the quivering in her muscles that pushed him down with her until the two of them were surrounded not by the Uchiha room nor his own fantasy bedroom but white, pure white pleasure.
Sakura came down first, opening her eyes lazily now that her body lay relaxed against the sheets to see Kakashi, with his head resting on her chest and his eyes closed with brows still screwed together in pleasure. She burned him into her memory looking just like that, it was a face his usually relaxed stoicism wouldn't allow him to make and it was wild and beautiful. She brushed her now slack hand along his hairline, pushing back the silver wisps that would get in his way once he opened his eyes, but he didn't.
"I have everything I want...here," she heard him say through gasps, his muscles still protesting at the strain they'd been put under. She just hugged him to her, lamenting at the injustice of this situation, of her life in general. She loved this man but she loved her children. If she ever left Sasuke how would she explain it to her children, they were too young to understand the complexity of human emotions or relationships. Besides she could never leave Sasuke, not in the real sense, neither could she leave Naruto, she loved them as team mates and friends and shared a bond with them that had been tested time and time again, this was just another one of those times, she thought, and she would be damned if it was because of her that this bond disintegrated.
Kakashi rolled off her and lay, sprawled on the mattress looking up at the ceiling.
"I'm so tired," he heard Sakura sigh into the blackness. He looked at her and found she had already closed her eyes and was breathing evenly. He looped an arm around her hips and pulled her to him. It was better she slept now.
"Kakashi?" her voice was so tiny.
"Hm?"
"Please be gone in the morning." He pulled her even closer, his face resting in the pink hair, and he felt her hands reciprocate the gesture as they curled around his biceps.
"But I'll be back Sakura," was his answer. He'd go tomorrow but never forget tonight, he'd never allow her to go back on what had happened that night.
She didn't answer, she must have been asleep, or maybe she was just contented with his answer.
Leaving her in the morning was hard, but she'd explicitly asked for him to be gone and so when the sun was coming up Kakashi was sitting on the side of the bed, clothed, and staring at her. She was still all disordered pink hair and tangled cream limbs in her sleep, and even when he reached out a hand to smooth the strands away from her face it still did little to calm the disorder.
"I'll be back," he whispered, repeating his promise from the night before, and then he was gone from the room as if he'd never been there, his only trace being the stickiness between Sakura's thighs and his scent on the sheets.
He found his hitai-ate in the hall, lying crumpled on the floor. He stooped to pick it up and the moment he straightened he knew he wasn't alone. That sixth sense he'd acquired from being a ninja for most of his life told him that up ahead was a presence whose chakra signature was spiking nastily.
"Sasuke," he greeted.
"Kakashi." The young Uchiha was standing in the kitchen, his dark hair sat longer down his shoulders nowadays and under his eyes were the verification of sleep deprivation. Kakashi wondered if he even knew how much like his elder brother he looked these days.
"Did you sleep with my wife Kakashi?" he asked. Perhaps there was meant to be a hint of a threat to his voice but Kakashi hardly deigned to pick up on it, despite his years away training with the snake Sannin when he was younger, he still had trouble giving Kakashi a run for his money. Instead Kakashi leant against the doorframe and slanted his hitai-ate over his eye with his thumb.
"Yes," he answered finally.
In the place of the angry tensing Kakashi expected to see in the younger's shoulders he was sure he was them sag, as if the weight of his confession had been placed upon Sasuke's shoulders instead of those of the guilty, instead of Kakashi's own shoulders. "You weren't here Sasuke," Kakashi murmured quietly, "everyone knows about it." Sasuke had long since averted his dark gaze from Kakashi and the guilt and shame stood out brightly on his cheeks.
"That's what Naruto says," came his reply, his voice hushed and small as if speaking the words was difficult
"Tell her," Kakashi said.
"She already knows."
"Tell her, Sasuke, she deserves it, you know it."
"There's nothing to tell. It's over, me and N...Naruto, we're finished." Kakashi just shrugged nonchalantly but inside he was suddenly gripped by the possibility that Sakura might take Sasuke back.
"Either way, you have to tell her." It was all he could think to say.
"How long have you and her..."
"Just tonight," he answered brusquely.
"Oh...then do you...is there any chance we could-"
"No." he answered before thinking, silently adding 'she loves me'. He had promised himself he'd never allow Sakura to get into the state she was ever again. "Don't make this as it was before Sasuke, she's falling apart, you can see that." he amended.
"So what should I do? Divorce her?" Kakashi shrugged again.
"You should do what she wants you to. I want her to be happy and you're in the way of that, Sasuke..." there was definitely a threat in this comment and Sasuke received it.
"You're not the only one who cares about her you know," he hissed, eyes narrowing.
"Maybe not, but I'm also not the ones who've been betraying her all these years."
The point must have been taken because Sasuke looked away and all the defiance left his eyes in an instant. "I'll talk to her," he said quietly and Kakashi was suddenly reminded of how he had appeared years ago when Kakashi was berating him for his revenge.
There was a creek down the corridor and both men tensed on instinct, ears straining against the silence and three eyes trained on the entranceway to the kitchen. Haru emerged, pushing his hair back from his sleepy face and when Sasuke looked back across the kitchen his ex-sensei was gone.
Change was in the air when she awoke. Sasuke was acting strangely and Sakura had no idea what had brought about this change. When she'd woken up that morning she'd almost regretted telling Kakashi to leave her and the fact he wasn't there made the morning depression mount two fold and then the guilt. She attempted to dispel both these emotions by doing what she always did when emotions overwhelmed her: I have to go and visit Saki today, she had thought, rising from the warm white nest the two of them had created in the night to face the stark Uchiha walls.
Her husband was there when she emerged into their bedroom, still wet from the shower, and he didn't turn away in embarrassment at the sight of a wet and half naked Sakura either - which normally he'd avoid at all costs.
"Sakura," he'd begun but when she'd turned towards him, finding meeting his two dark eyes more difficult than usual this morning, he'd just made to go, apparently the embarrassment of the situation had returned to him because he muttered a 'never mind' before exiting the room, the house and going...Sakura stopped herself from thinking at that point. Where was he going? She knew the answer, without even needing to think she knew but this time as she considered his departure she found in place of the anger and hurt she felt towards him, towards Naruto, towards the situation in general, all that was left was guilt, so bad that she felt as if the bones encasing her lungs were crushing in and squeezing her chest. Self-loathing followed until she found herself sitting on the bed and crying into the towel's material in an attempt to muffle her sobs.
Kakashi hates me, she thought, I can't give him anything, he'll always have to be gone in the morning, and Naruto does and Sasuke. She closed her eyes tight shut, imagining everything around her fading into white, disappearing...
A weight on her side made her start and her head snapped up, senses suddenly as alert as the vibrant kunoichi she once was. And then she was looking down into a sleepy face, dark hair messy and bangs sticking out at right angles framing a pair of liquid dark eyes, large and glassy. Small arms encircled her waist.
"Its okay," her eldest son said soothingly, a reflection of the way she had consoled him in the past, "everything will be okay Mama." She could only hug him back, feeling surrounded by that warm feeling she got with Kakashi that tried to fool her into thinking everything really was okay.
Out of everything she regretted about this situation, marrying Sasuke in the first place, allowing his affair to carry on so long and finally the happiness she had felt by being with Kakashi only for one night, her children were something she'd never regret. And she vowed that whatever may happen she'd always do what was best for her children and she'd never allow her child to see her in the state she was in ever again.
It was the next time she encountered Sasuke that everything really changed, it wasn't just a feeling anymore. It was late and she was hurrying through dead streets to get home. Things were generally quiet around the dead complex but they seemed different tonight: it wasn't quiet, just still.
She'd been called into the hospital at the last minute and had had to stay late to heal wounded ANBU; she was tired and drained of all chakra and just wanted to get home, even if she'd be faced with three young children that she'd have to feed, then calm down enough to put to bed.
Once across the threshold into her house she knew something was off, it just felt like it. Something in the air perhaps, or maybe it was the smell or could it just be her imagination? The same stillness was in the house; in fact it felt as though it was coming from the house and resonating in waves outwards and into the dead streets.
Sasuke was there, standing in the kitchen when she entered and his presence made her start, she hadn't sensed him in the house and she suddenly realised that she'd encountered no children on her way there, maybe that was why everything felt so still.
He was looking at her with that infamous dark gaze and still, after all those years of heartache and betrayal, it made her feel all nervous and fluttery inside like the eleven year old girl she once was.
"Sasuke..." she just whispered, not knowing what else to say. He was never usually there; she never usually had to make conversation.
There was a bottle on the side that until now she hadn't noticed and as soon as she saw it she could smell it in the air, that pungent acidic smell that was sweet and sour all at the same time: whiskey. Even the smell of it calmed her and gave her a sense of safety and comfort and Kakashi.
He took the brown bottle and poured it into two waiting glasses.
"I didn't know about this," he said, gesturing towards the bottle before setting it on the side.
"What do you mean?"
He picked up the tumblers and shrugged. "I just mean I didn't know you liked whiskey."
"I...I..." what to say? In the end she just closed her mouth and swallowed.
"They're in bed." He said.
"What?" she asked before thinking.
"The children, I know that's what you were thinking. You barely think of anything else these days." Was she offended by this? She didn't know; offence seemed like a far away issue when it came to Sasuke and interaction with him. It was such a foreign happening that it made the whole issue foreign and he didn't give her much time to get used to it, because he was then crossing the room and giving her a glass and gliding passed her, sliding open the screen door so the dark air swept into the house. It was cold but still.
He'd left the door open and Sakura wondered if this was an invitation to follow. She didn't do anything, just stood there with a glass in her hand and a bemused expression on her face. If he'd found out about Kakashi would he be acting like this? Somewhere in her subconscious she'd decided that if Sasuke found out about that she had with their ex-sensei he'd either be livid or he wouldn't care at all. But his attitude now was neither of those two, it was calm not livid and he was speaking to her, pouring her a drink, not ignoring her.
She swirled the mixture around in the glass nervously. She wouldn't drink it, not this drink, not with Sasuke, not when it was a symbol of Kakashi. She couldn't because she felt one taste of it on her tongue would cause her to crumple under the guilt.
"I saw Kakashi this morning," Sakura froze, "in my kitchen," he added ironically.
Her grip on the glass wavered slightly and for a second she was sure she'd drop it and it would go crashing to the floor.
'And where had you been all night?' a voice inside her asked Sasuke, and Sakura reckoned that voice had a valid point. The guilt ran both ways, the martial relationship was dead, that ran both ways too and when she thought of it in those terms there was no guilt because there was no marriage. Even so her heart was pounding.
"Look at me Sakura," he said. His voice was cold like the air coming in from the open door but when she looked at him he didn't look cold, in fact his liquid dark eyes, large and glassy, had a humble quality to them, unlike anything she'd ever seen from him. "Come here." Another simple command...that she followed.
He was so casual as he leant against the wooden railing outside the house, but he was so regal, and that was the Uchiha: regal without even trying, like the Hyuuga. Sakura knew she had no place amongst this nobility; she should never have married into it. She thought fleetingly of a circumstance where she'd married into another family, another shinobi family stained with a shady past, as mysterious as the man she would have married with his lazy one-eyed stare and hidden face.
"You were with him last night-"
"And you were with Naruto." The guilt ran both ways.
"He left me you know," he said quietly.
"I-" Sakura cut herself off when the irony of her saying 'I'm sorry' suddenly hit her. Sasuke let out a dry, bitter laugh.
"You know, he still loves you Sakura, he still calls you 'Sakura-chan' and he still talks about how it used to be when we were Genin. He hated what we were doing Sakura. I think...I think sometimes he wished I was you." It was horrible but it made her feel better to know this because it would have caused them both the same pain that she had been experiencing.
She drank and it burned down her throat like a reprimand for thinking these things.
"Will he take you back?" Sakura asked.
"I don't know," he said, "will you leave me anyway?" This question caught Sakura by surprise; she hadn't said anything about leaving him.
"Well, our children-"
"If we can't make this work properly we're doing them more harm than good by staying together," he spoke a lot of sense for someone whose up bringing had been a train wreck, "besides Kakashi's in love with you isn't he?" He was so casual and Sakura wondered when the stoic and highly strung teenager had blossomed into this man who sipped alcohol slowly and bowed his back when he leant against railings, one foot kicking idly in the dirt that served no purpose other than to convey restlessness, it was a Naruto-ism she realised. "I don't want to give them any more reason to hate me Sakura, they want to see their mother happy."
"They don't hate you: they don't know about you and N-" but he cut her off again.
"Katsu knows, or he doesn't know that he knows but he can sense something's off."
"He's your son, Sasuke, he's a genius."
"Hm," he sounded like he wasn't convinced, and after a moment he added, "no, he's all you Sakura." He drained the last of his drink and stood up straight. "I didn't want to be like my father but to Katsu that's all I have been, I will not let my son turn out like my brother or me."
"What should we do?" Sakura asked slowly. Sasuke sighed and a stray breeze rustled his long bangs as if the Uchiha ghosts shared his unrest, but this was all he gave by way of an answer, he didn't know, neither did she. "Are you in love with Naruto?" she asked, ignoring the pain that asking this question caused.
His body went stiff beside her, dark eyes flickering. "Yes," he answered at last, a glimpse of old Sasuke returning, "and...I'm sorry about what I did to you Sakura."
Sakura fought the urge to laugh, all the pain and torment and guilt and self-loathing and 'sorry' didn't quite seem to cut it, but then again something was shifting with this conversation and things were finally beginning to feel lighter.
"So then...we divorce?" Sasuke shrugged.
"If it's what you want, I'll do it." His statement had an air of finality about it but Sakura wanted to make something perfectly clear.
"What I said when you left the first time, it was true Sasuke, I love you, I'd do anything for you."
"I know," he answered, turning to look at Sakura, green meeting grey, "I came back for you, I wanted to love you and I wanted my children with you but then Naruto...you have to know I didn't plan this from the beginning, I meant what I said when I married you."
"I know," she answered, as simply as he had. What was left unsaid was that although her early promises still stood Kakashi had her body and soul and if Sasuke ever left again there'd be no new promises of love or pleas to make him stay, and similarly Sasuke was silently telling her that he'd come back for Sakura but really it was all about Naruto, it had always been about him, he'd just not realised it. And they both understood that.
Even so the bond that held them eternally linked, though gnawed at by circumstance and frayed by betrayal, was still there and this time it was Sakura who was putting her arms around Sasuke's shoulders and whispering in his ear "thank you, Sasuke".
The thing that made the lake so perfect was that it was quiet and calm, a place Sakura could be alone with her grief if she wanted, but the spot was beautiful enough to attract visitors from time to time so her baby daughter would not get lonely when she was away, she had thought.
This was Sakura's private place, a place she'd found whilst pregnant with Saki and she'd spent much time lying on the grass next to the lapping water, being fanned by the green Konoha leaves from the tall Konoha trees, with her hands idly tracing patterns on her swollen stomach and feeling something close to contentment even though she knew her husband was away: it didn't seem to matter in those hours she'd spent there with her new baby.
In this place the sun warmed the lakeside by day and at night the moon shone directly above the water, reflecting back from the lake like a mirror, as if there were two celestial bodies shining out light; Sakura hoped this would prevent her daughter from being afraid of the dark, even at night.
Sakura was there now, standing at the riverside. The lake was situated in a valley so despite it being winter the lake only rippled slightly with the wind, not enough to disturb the fish that played within its waters: so Saki would have something to play with. And this was what she was watching now, fish jumping out of the water then flopping wetly back down creating echos of their movement across the water's surface that spread out and got lost in the wind's natural movement of the water.
She took a big intake of breath and let it out, finally being able to breathe easy after so long. Her husband wasn't at the Uchiha complex but that was okay because he was no longer required to be by Sakura. Every negative feeling that had arisen because of his affair had been erased by that sweetly sour taste and safety and warmth and silver hair and dirty books and masks and mismatched eyes, everything that was her ex-sensei.
Things weren't moving quickly by any means, she was still married and she was still living in the same house she had been with her children and Sasuke, but what had changed was the tension - they no longer felt pressured to share a bed - the lonely nights, the waiting up for an absent husband, the delusion she had put herself through and most thankfully her children's relationship with their father. Katsu was finally interacting with him, training with him, learning how his bloodline limit worked; they seemed to bond over their red eyes and Sakura was glad of it, the boy needed a father and with the marital hostilities put aside Sasuke finally felt he could try a little harder.
Katsu still loved Kakashi who now made more appearances at their home than before, but Kakashi was under strict instruction not to tell the young boy of his Sharingan because one, he would ask more questions about it than Kakashi would care to answer and two, his relationship with his father was a growing relationship but a delicate one also, the Sharingan connected Katsu to his father alone and Sakura thought it would be best kept that way for now.
The only person who seemed to be worse off from the change was Naruto but Sakura had never really seen how he had been before. The day after Sakura and Sasuke had spoken she had been woken by a blond blur rushing into her bedroom and flinging himself on her bed, squeezing her against him and sobbing into her that he was sorry and he loved her and he was sorry again. Sakura hadn't been shocked at this behaviour; it was quite typically Naruto, deliciously predictably unpredictable.
Sakura loved seeing Naruto again but he couldn't quite get the hang of having a relationship with Sasuke around Sakura, not that they ever acted like they did in public. For a few weeks he'd been quiet and resigned but then, on Sakura's insistence, Kakashi had challenged him to a fight, which he lost, but the old team together again seemed to spark some kind of happiness in him.
Kakashi was watching Sakura now from the trees. She'd been standing there for half an hour, still and silent as a stone. She was grieving, he realised, and Kakashi was no stranger to the act of standing sentry over the dead to grieve: he did it daily.
Kakashi had once told Sakura that everybody loved her and though at the time she'd dismissed it he hoped that now she could see it; things had turned out okay because everybody was anchored to Sakura by love and the old, threadbare bonds from Team 7 that had proven themselves to be hard as nails.
He set off to her, wanting her to know that she wasn't alone – never would be alone – with her grief and slipped his arms around her waist. She must have known he was coming because she didn't start at his pressure behind her and she instantly moulded to him.
"Is it Saki?" he whispered against the shell of her ear, "Can you hear her?"
Sakura's long fingers laced with his where his hands rested against her waist, soaking in their warmth and comfort.
"No," she answered at last, finally taking her eyes off the lake and turning her head in an attempt to look at Kakashi, "it's not dark where she is now, she's doesn't cry anymore."
Finished!
Yay Kakashi to the resue!
Hallo! That's the REAL end now, I hope it was okay so do a review to tell me :D Next will be something happier :)
So I tried to make the sex more nicey nice than raunchy raunchy and I wanted a happy ending for it but I couldn't help feeling it was a bit 'then they all made up and it was good again' - tell me what you think because I could critisize it for England lol xxx.
p.s I made SLIGHT changes (thanks Kittel Kat for the review :D:D) but I'm hopeless at proof reading so sorry for inconsistencies x.x.x.