"So why worry?"
"Because it's your responsibility!"
- Simba & Nala
On some days, the sun did not shine very brightly. On such days, there was little that could tempt someone out of their home, much less someone who rarely liked to be roaming about in broad daylight in the first place. Usually, these days boasted the most cloudless skies and the gentlest winds and air as clear as all of heaven's days. But even pleasant weather could not make the sun appear brighter.
The earth, according to most scientists, revolved around the massive, flaming ball of gas known as the sun, but there was only one thing that Kakashi's world revolved around. And she was neither massive nor a ball of gas, but she was the brightest thing in his life, and when she was not around, it was like night had fallen permanently. Nothing shone as bright as she did.
In Kakashi's opinion, Haruno Sakura was without a doubt the best thing the world had to offer. She was smart and mature, but still retained a hint of childish naïvety that allowed her to keep her youthful demeanor. She was slim and petite, but she packed one hell of a punch. And while she was forever trying to crack through Kakashi's hard exterior, she would defend to the death his right to have one and understood his reasons for keeping himself closed off.
Or so she made it seem. On the rare occasions when the remaining members of Team Seven shared a mission together, Naruto made it quite clear that he was not satisfied with the pitiful amount of knowledge he had about his sensei. The blonde would poke and prod in hopes that he would be able to goad Kakashi into telling the team more about himself, and needless to say, the Copy Nin found this quite frustrating though he never let it show on his face. But Sakura had always treated him with endless patience, and never once had she shown disappointment in the fact that he chose not to open up very often.
It was when he finally did open up to her that he realized he was doomed. Once upon a time, the two of them had gone on a mission together, just them and the road they travelled. And during that assignment, a switch had been flicked somewhere, and Kakashi had never been able to look at Sakura the same as he had before. The girl who was just a friend suddenly became the only woman he could ever imagine himself with.
It happened when they had set up camp and settled down for their first night on the road. They would not reach their destination for many days afterward, and each of those days was painfully silent and awkward, but this one evening had consisted of ceaseless sharing. As Kakashi stared at the wall opposite his bed, he reflected on that night from three years ago.
The tent offered little to no warmth for the two souls within, but it did provide shelter from the gentle rain. Usually, a shinobi would forego the use of a tent in order to save the time it would take to set it up and tear it down, but one Haruno Sakura had convinced her sensei to pitch one to keep them dry. It had been easy - all she had to do was jut her lower lip out slightly and fake a slight shiver to make him cave. For a ninja, he was easily manipulated.
He would insist he was only trying to be chivalrous, but she knew better. He was partial to his only female student.
So partial, in fact, that when they finally settled themselves inside and began to prepare themselves for sleep, he didn't bother to turn away from her when he tugged down his mask. This was not the first time she'd even seen his face, but it was the first time he'd ever willingly shown it to her, and for some reason, that made it all the more special to her.
She was fairly sure there was not a sight more handsome in the world than his face. When she was twelve, she'd said the same thing about a certain Uchiha boy, but seeing Kakashi's face so up close and personal was now proving her wrong. He had a very strong, straight jawline paired with thin lips and a nose that was barely crooked in the middle, likely the result of a break that had never healed properly. A slight shadow of stubble could be seen upon his cheeks, and his teeth were perfectly aligned, but what most intrigued her was the way his mouth was set.
Tilted slightly upward at the left corner as if in a permanent smirk. Seeing him look upon her now with that almost smug look across his face, she knew that all those silly conversations in movies and romance novels about loving someone's smile were all true. It was the best thing her eyes had ever seen, and that might have been what possessed her to make her next move.
He sat still as a statue as she brought both of her hands up to cup either side of his face, the smooth pads of her thumbs brushing over the roughness of his cheeks in wonder. Cautiously, she inched closer and closer until their noses were nearly touching at the tips and their hot breath mingled together in the small gap between their mouths. Her unfaltering gaze met his equally intense, mismatched one in silence for what felt like an eternity before she finally spoke.
"Will you tell me where you got your scar?"
One of her fingers traced along the scar in question, closing his Sharingan eye as her index ran along the length of it. He didn't hesitate when he replied, "I'll tell you anything you want."
Then she closed the short distance between them and pressed her mouth to his lightly. She was careful not to overwhelm him with any sort of passion and so she kept her mouth closed but firmly pressed against his. When he gave no response, she silently pulled away and nestled herself into her sleeping bag with her back facing him. He watched the steady rise and fall of her form until he was sure she'd fallen asleep, and then he settled down for some much needed rest himself.
They did not speak of the strange occurrence the next day, nor did they speak of it for the rest of the mission. In fact, they rarely spoke at all, only communicating when pertinent to the assignment's completion. But two weeks after they returned home, she would slip into his apartment and steal another kiss. It would not be until her twentieth birthday that they would be able to repeat this action without weeks of awkward silence ensuing.
Everything had been so easy before then. He had no feelings for her other than a platonic concern for her safety as his comrade, but following that night, she became more than just a teammate. She'd been about nineteen then, and it wasn't until she was twenty-one that he realized what he felt towards her had been slowly festering inside of him until it had turned into some bizarre form of love.
He still could not say the words to himself. "I love her", "I need her", "She changed my life". But he knew somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind that it was the truth. And, presumably, that was what made his world so dull when she was not within reach. His job and Sakura were the only constant forces in his life. He just hated to admit that it seemed impossible to function when he didn't have the reigns on both.
But he carried on anyway. He would not have anything remotely close to a pleasant day, but he knew if he didn't make at least one appearance in town today, someone would come knocking on his door trying to convince him to go out that evening. So he reluctantly trudged out of his apartment and onto the streets of Konoha.
He knew it would be a bad day because the moment he set foot out of his apartment complex, he heard a familiar voice beckoning him. It was the call of the Hokage, and disregarding the fact that she sounded none too pleased with him, there was no way she would be venturing out of her office if he hadn't done something catastrophically disappointing.
"You! Hatake!"
She approached him swiftly with a determined stride. Her eyebrows were furrowed, forming a small wrinkle between her eyes, and there was something about the way she carried herself that threw Kakashi off. She was not angry - at least not with him. In fact, she appeared to be more confused than anything.
As she came closer, he held up one hand in greeting and dropped it when she was directly in front of him. Traditionally, one was expected to bow before their leader, but Tsunade and Kakashi had established long ago that such a gesture was formal to an uncomfortable extent between two people of their personalities. Any conversation of theirs when viewed from the outside looking in would appear to be entirely casual when in reality, they could be, and probably would be discussing matters of national security.
"You haven't seen your student around recently, have you?" she asked.
"Which one? The traitor or the jinchuuriki?" He had a feeling she wasn't looking for either Sasuke or Naruto, but the temptation to mess around with her on an otherwise boring day was too strong to resist.
"The one you've been sleeping with."
Evidently, two could play at that game. Kakashi, though startled by the bluntness of her words, kept a poker face and stared at her, blinking, in silence for a moment before replying, "Oh. She's on a mission, isn't she?"
A pause. Tsunade's brows knitted closer together. "I didn't put her on any mission."
There was an odd moment of tension as Kakashi watched the gears in Tsunade's head begin to turn. Then, slowly, the Hokage's jaw fell slack and her eyebrows relaxed. If their exchange had been a storm brewing, it would have broken the moment Tsunade cursed, "Shit!", before sprinting away in the direction of Sakura's apartment.
She immediately took to the rooftops and, intrigued, Kakashi followed her. He made sure to stay close behind so she knew of his presence. She did not address him, but she knew he was there, and if she wanted him gone she would say so. Instead, the two of them travelled together, reaching their destination - the front door of Sakura's apartment building - in a matter of minutes.
Tsunade barged into the complex and tromped up the stairs to Sakura's third floor apartment. Had the door been locked, she would have kicked it down and dealt with the backlash from the landlord at a later date. But when she reached out and turned the knob, already prepared to jiggle it into submission, the latch easily clicked and the door squeaked as it swung open enough to allow a crack for peeping through.
Although that crack was perfect for spying, subtlety had never been Tsunade's forté. The blonde simply threw herself into the middle of the apartment and let out a frustrated grumble when she found it vacant. She unceremoniously stomped down one short hallway until she reached a bedroom that Kakashi could admit to being quite familiar with. He'd been welcomed into it many times, but something was off about it this time around.
As he kicked his way around piles of clothes, documents, and trash, he tried to place his finger on it. Aside from the fact that Sakura wasn't in here with him, which was peculiar enough on its own, there was certainly something different about the room that made Kakashi itch. It wasn't until Tsunade had thrown open the door to the closet and let out a cry of angry dismay at finding it nearly empty that Kakashi realized what it was.
On the unmade bed was a small case, opened and toppled over with various medical tools spilling out of it. It wasn't at all unusual to see random objects strewn across Sakura's covers, nor did he consider a syringe or two out of place, but to see her entire medical kit abandoned was bizarre. She always took it on missions, and the only reason he could fathom for her not bringing it along was if she simply did not have enough room.
Furthermore, her closet was absent of everything except a few frilly, formal dresses that he'd never even seen Sakura wear before. If Kakashi had learned one thing about his only female student over the years he'd spent enduring her complaints of having too much weight to carry, it was that she preferred to travel lightly. And with nothing but three gowns and a sundress left in her wardrobe, he knew she wasn't traveling even remotely lightly wherever she had gone.
Still, that begged the question, why? Why did she have so much stuff with her? It did not seem reasonable, but the only idea he could conjure up was that she hadn't gone away on any mission. She'd just gone away. She left. But what had chased her away? As he mulled over this inquiry, he heard Tsunade plop herself down on Sakura's messy bed sheets and blow out a sigh.
"Why do I feel like this is all my fault?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
The Hokage glanced warily up at the copy nin, then quieted her voice and mumbled, "Nothing I tell you leaves this room. Is that clear?"
"Crystal."
The blonde seemed to take in a large breath in preparation for her big reveal. It was unlike her to be so hesitant. Everyone who had ever encountered her knew her to be quick, always making split-second decisions and easily letting her temper get the better of her. Whatever she had to tell him was clearly bothering her, and when she finally opened up, he realized with all clarity what was so unsettling about the secret.
"I chose her to be the next Hokage."
Kakashi stood before her in a long, stunned silence before he demanded, "Now who told you that was a good idea?"
"Well I didn't know she would run away! That idiot. That profound idiot."
Suddenly, Sakura's motives were all too clear. Kakashi had known a couple kunoichi in his lifetime who had turned tail when the going got tough, but Sakura wasn't like that. She usually stuck things out until the end, and if a situation got difficult, she would take it in stride. But everyone had their breaking point. Being assigned such a position of authority must have been Sakura's.
Kakashi felt a strong magnetic pull towards the door. Every fiber of his being told him to go. Go now and find her, before she got too far, but he knew he wouldn't get away with it with the most powerful woman in all of Konoha - perhaps in all the world - sitting right in front of him. Despite the fact that she was the most unorganized person he'd ever known, she preferred to handle situations like these in an orderly fashion. Not that there were runaways every day, but that was all the more reason for her to treat it carefully. Assemble a team and take it step by step until they found her.
If they found her.
All he could do now was talk to Tsunade and try to convince her that it wasn't her fault, even if he had his own doubts that it wasn't entirely her doing.
Surely this was the wrong thing to say at the wrong time, but before he could stop himself, he said, "Sakura would make a terrible Hokage. She's headstrong and temperamental and-"
Tsunade's eyes narrowed at him, and the phrase "if looks could kill" came to mind. With a frosty tone, she grumbled, "You mean she's exactly like me?"
Kakashi paused to swallow the fearful lump that had formed in his throat before speaking again. "No, that's not what I meant."
The woman sighed again. "That doesn't matter right now. What matters is finding her before she gets too far."
At that, Kakashi was suddenly filled with copious, uncharacteristic amounts of energy, as though he were Naruto gearing up for a dangerous mission. His nose was twitching now, already trying to pick up her scent. He fought back the urge to shout, "Send me! I can find her! I have a good nose!" But even if he was the best tracker in the village, he hadn't a doubt in his mind that Sakura had taken extra precautions to make sure she wouldn't be found.
Of course he would still manage to track her down eventually. It would just take a few more men, and perhaps one wrinkly-faced dog.
He had to calm himself down so his voice wouldn't quaver when he reluctantly admitted, "I don't know about that. She really stands by her decisions. If she wanted to leave, she might as well be halfway across the country by now."
"As much as your exaggeration disheartens me, we have to at least try."
And try they would. If Kakashi had any say in it, Sakura would be home by sundown.
Along with being the only one of her cats she deemed trustworthy, Fujo was also the only one who could summon himself to her side. She didn't think this was even possible, until she realized he was not the only summon who did this. Pakkun managed the same feat - appearing out of nowhere, often times scaring half the life out of Sakura and her teammates.
Fujo's ability was not only convenient, but uplifting, as she did not have to expend any energy to keep him there and she'd been longing for some company for the past mile. She'd only ever taken one solo mission, and as she recalled, it was the single most miserable experience of her life. Having to rely solely on her own skill and wit, and furthermore, having no one to talk to about it? Not exactly something she wanted to relive.
But to have one of her most trusted companions by her side as she walked her lonely road heartened her. In addition to the fact that he could talk and would almost always agree with her, Fujo was cute and fluffy, and that was about as much as Sakura could ask of a friend.
However, despite the fact that he was the only living creature within a radius of several miles that she could talk to, he could make quite a nuisance of himself. When he acted in such obnoxious ways, such as the way he was circling her as she walked now, chirping, "Sakura-chan, Sakura-chan, Sakura-chan~!" repeatedly in a sing-song tone, she almost considered sending him away if only for the return of silence.
But that would only end in another mental breakdown.
"Fujo, are you ever quiet?" she moaned, rubbing furiously at her temples.
"Fujo can be quiet if Sakura-chan wants him to be!" Then he tightly closed his mouth and kept it shut for about a minute, before he let out a heavy sigh and gasped, "He can't, he can't."
"He didn't even try."
The slender feline's long black tail twitched indignantly as he muttered, "Sakura-chan is only being mean because she misses Dog-chan."
Sakura came to a sudden halt, her lightweight boots kicking up dust as she stomped them into place. "Sakura-chan is being mean because Fujo doesn't know how to shut his big fat mouth."
Fujo trotted along until he stood before her. He glared up at her with his narrow, green eyes as his tail flicked impatiently, almost as if he was expecting something. It was unusual for Sakura to snap at him, even when he was a bother, and when she did, she usually had a tendency to forgive him quickly and easily.
True to form, it only took her about a minute of hard staring until she deflated and held out her arms to him. He cheerily leaped into them and twisted himself around until she was cradling him belly-up. "Tummy," he demanded.
As Sakura's hands tickled his stomach lightly, he sniffed, "When will Sakura-chan learn that Fujo knows everything."
In a way, that was true. He was not intelligent, but intelligence and wisdom were two entirely different matters. While Fujo was not book smart by any means, he could tell a lot about a person just by the way they carried themselves, and he'd learned enough about Sakura to know full well that there were only three things in this world that really ground her gears.
They were all teammates of hers. While she found plenty of things annoying and unpleasant, she was, contrary to popular belief, quite good at concealing her frustration. It was only when the three men she'd come to rely on the most - those men being Naruto, Sai, and Kakashi - got to her that she took her anger out on other people.
Or in this case, on cats.
Fujo was right, as usual. "Dog-chan", or as he was more commonly known, Kakashi was precisely why she was acting unpleasantly. She would never admit it to Fujo's fuzzy, arrogant butt though.
"I don't miss him," she insisted. "He pissed me off. That's all."
A disbelieving, but amused purr rumbled in Fujo's throat. His eyes slipped shut, and for a moment, Sakura thought she would be free of his judgmental mannerisms if only for a couple hours while he napped. But just before he disappeared in a wispy curl of smoke, he mumbled, "Fujo does not know Sakura-chan's language well, but he thinks that means she misses Dog-chan."
Tsunade's instructions had been quite clear.
There were but two men assigned to tracking down the runaway kunoichi - one being Kakashi, as he wouldn't have allowed it any other way, and the other being Tenzou. The latter of the two did not really know the girl beyond the bond they shared as teammates, but he could blend in with the trees if it came down to stealth.
He was also quite good at knocking sense into Kakashi, and Tsunade had a feeling that man would be at a loss for common sense with Sakura gone.
She had told them in basic, but crystal clear terms that their assignment was not to find her and bring her back. Not yet. They were to find a trail - a scent trail, some belongings left behind, footprints. Anything that would provide them a lead, and they were to immediately report it back to her without taking any action of their own. She would then assign a few more people to their squad. Shinobi known for traveling quickly and taking orders well, so they could follow the trail speedily with the help of Kakashi's nose.
She should have known telling Kakashi not to follow the only woman that had ever mattered to him would be a lost cause.
He stared down now at a red forehead protector that he clutched tightly in his left hand, wringing the coarse fabric of it in his right. Normally, he wouldn't be drawing conclusions so soon. There were many women, and men for that matter, who fancied red and each shinobi was given a choice as to what color they wanted their gear to be. But the road he'd found it on was not a road often traveled - in fact, it wasn't a road at all. Just a field of sorts with soft, lush grass and trees planted sparsely at one end, growing thicker the closer one walked towards the foliage.
So it was not as if anyone would have dropped it there. But what ultimately tipped him off was the tiny heart etched into the face of the metal in the top right corner. Kakashi could recall exactly how that heart-shaped scratch had gotten there.
Ino was spending way too much time with Genma, and Kakashi knew that because Sakura told him the senbon she was currently using to scratch the metal surface of her forehead protector had been given to her by the blonde. For one, Kakashi knew that Ino did not just carry around senbon of her own - she was like Sakura and preferred to use her bare fists instead of weapons, though she was not nearly as good at it - and for two, he was quite sure that Genma would hand Ino the moon on a string should she ask, so one measly needle was no big deal.
Of course, she could have just swiped it from Shizune or gotten it from the hospital, but then she would have missed out on the opportunity to flirt, and while there were many things Kakashi had yet to learn about the girl, he already knew the Yamanaka daughter quite enjoyed flirting.
However, as well as he claimed to know Sakura, he could not figure out why she was defacing her own property. It hardly concerned him at the moment. Mostly he was worried about the fact that, because her hitai-ate was absent from her hair and in the palm of her hand, her bangs were hanging over her eyes and partially obstructing her vision. She could take near fatal wounds to the gut and survive to tell the tale, but God forbid she prick herself with a senbon.
He watched her from behind for a moment, observing the way her body jiggled slightly as her hand shook back and forth, etching something into the metal. He wasn't sure whether or not his next move was acceptable at this point in their relationship, but instead of dwelling on it, he simply acted. He crouched down behind her and brought his hands around to her face so he could pull her fringe behind her ears. Then he craned his neck forward to see over her shoulder and said, "Some people pay good money for those things."
"Some people don't work for a woman who can give them out free of charge."
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like?"
Well, it looked like she was scratching a heart into the face of her headband.
"It looks like you're scratching a heart into the face of your headband."
"Can't get anything past you, can I?"
"Why, though?"
"You ever wonder why Naruto loses these things all the time?"
"Actually... no. But please, enlighten me."
Sakura stopped her work for a moment to glare ominously at Kakashi, as if she wanted nothing more than to stick the senbon straight through his throat. But that would interrupt her project, and she would have to fetch another one or clean the blood from the one she was already using. More trouble than it was worth. So she turned back and continued her efforts.
"It's because all these damn things look exactly the same," she explained. "He takes it off for just one second and sets it down in a room full of shinobi and someone is bound to swipe it, thinking it belongs to them. Well, I'm not letting that happen to me."
She lifted the tool from the garment and set it aside. All done. After dusting off the miniscule metal shavings from the surface, she showed her handiwork to her sensei and beamed brightly at him.
"A heart, though?" he had to ask.
"Hey, at least everyone will know it's mine. Plus, I think it's kinda cute." After what looked like a moment of contemplation, she set the newly modified headpiece down beside her and made grabby hands at Kakashi's own. "Here, let me do yours!"
He hadn't allowed her to deface his property, of course, and it had taken some pointed words and a bit of tussling to get her to back off. But it had all been in good fun, and staring down at that tiny little heart only made his own, significantly larger heart beat irregularly. It was strange, not to mention uncomfortable and disheartening, that he might never share such moments with her again.
But he would, if he had anything to say about it.
His grip tightened around the metal, so much so that the edges began to cut into his calloused skin. "Where the hell did you go?" he muttered.
His own nose would be of little use to him. He was known for many things, and one of those things was his skill as a tracker, but he was not so good that he could rely on his own senses to find her. If he was going after her, he would need help. So, using the blood that already seeped slowly out of the small wounds on his hands, he conjured up a small, pudgy dog just as his partner caught up to him.
"Sempai!" he heard Tenzou call. "Have you found her trail?"
Kakashi ignored the voice and instructed the creature, "Pakkun, follow Sakura's scent trail. Lead the way."
"We don't have orders to follow her, we were only supposed to find her trail." Tenzou watched warily as the dog bounded up into the nearest tree and began to faithfully follow his master's direction.
As Kakashi made to follow his summon, he said, "I'm not gonna lose her, Tenzou."
Tenzou knew this was a battle he would most likely lose, but if he dared to go against his Hokage's word, he would be losing a lot more than just a fight with his sempai. He would be losing fingers, limbs, and certain unmentionable appendages, if she didn't go for his head first. So, with a sigh that reflected the fact that he very well knew his superior's pain, he whipped out a kunai and tossed it at the stout dog, forcing the animal to poof away before being struck by the weapon. The blade landed lodged in a tree branch.
Kakashi let a frustrated growl rumble in his chest as he hopped down from his tree and stared directly ahead, refusing to look back at his kohai. He knew he was in the wrong, for once, but he would sooner cut off his own hand than admit it to his subordinate.
"I know how you are about protecting your teammates." He felt Tenzou step up behind him and before he could take any steps forward to avoid the sympathetic touch he knew was coming, the heavy weight of his partner's hand settled onto his shoulder. "But we can't go around disobeying orders because you're worried. Tsunade-sama will send-"
"I'm not worried about her," Kakashi snapped. "She can take care of herself. I just-"
"I know." Kakashi spared a glance at Tenzou's face and found that it was not characteristically blank. His mouth was curved in a slight smile and his brows had started to knit together in a knowing expression. Kakashi was not an easy man to get to know, and it was even harder to infer things about him that he refused to reveal, but Tenzou was one of only two people in the entire world that could see right through him. The other was the woman Tenzou knew Kakashi cared very strongly for. And while the woodworker had no way of knowing if his words was true, he had no choice but to comfort his friend by saying, "We'll find her. But in good time."
Kakashi had to admit that Tenzou was right. As tempted as he was to blow his responsibilities off and follow her, he was also unprepared. There was no telling how far she'd gotten, and if she had her heart set upon not being found, there was a good chance the trail he'd found had only been set up as a decoy. As much as he hated to, he had to let her go for now.
A half-hearted promise to return to the village seemed to satisfy Tenzou, as the younger of the two walked away after hearing it, presumably to allow the Hatake some time to himself to get his act back together. He stayed there for a moment, staring into the thickness of the trees, and briefly contemplated going against his word and following his student anyway. But he knew that would not fare well with his leader.
Still, he would not abandon her. As a silent promise to himself that he would bring her back home soon, he shoved her forehead protector into his pocket and shuffled on home.
A/N: More Fujo, as promised. :) Hope you enjoyed! The next chapter will be up next month and will be called Coup. Thanks for reading!
