22nd November 2009

Rating: T

11. Terminal

Sakura hummed as she trotted up the winding staircase of the Hokage tower, a bunch of medical case files under her arm. She'd spent the whole morning working on these patients and now they were ready to be discharged once Tsunade gave her the go-ahead. All in all, she was proud of her work, and she glowed with anticipation for the praise Tsunade might impart on her. If she was in a good mood. And if Mars was aligned with Saturn and two moons of Jupiter.

The door was shut to the Hokage's office, but the blinds were open. Sakura glanced within to make sure the Hokage wasn't meeting with anyone important (only Kakashi-sensei, no big deal), before inviting herself in with a bright knock.

"Shishou, I have the-"

"Can it wait, Sakura?" Tsunade interrupted. "The door was shut for a reason."

Chastised, Sakura knew immediately something wasn't right. The hokage was looking tense and unusually serious, while Kakashi had yet to apparently even notice the interruption. He was sitting in a chair before the desk, staring at some unseen point in the middle distance through the open window.

"Sorry," Sakura said, with a blush of embarrassment. "Is… um… is everything alright?"

Tsunade glanced at Kakashi, as if this was his question to answer. The man finally seemed to stir and turned his head slightly to give her a vague smile. "Everything's alright. No need to worry, Sakura."

This left Sakura utterly convinced that something was wrong. Something terrible.

"Ok," she said quietly, and quickly backed out of the office, shutting the door behind her. She paused, but the windows and the door were soundproof, giving her no indication of what was being said. She could lip read, but Tsunade might notice if she was plastered against the glass pane, staring at them. So Sakura dumped the case files in the nearest chair of the waiting room and swiftly made her way down the corridor to the fire escape at the very end.

It was rude to eavesdrop, and possibly quite illegal to eavesdrop on the Hokage, but Sakura didn't like the mood in that office, and these were two people very important to her. She had to know what was going on.

She skirted the boarded walkway that encircled the upper level of the Hokage tower, past the windows and meeting rooms and offices and archives until at last she came to the same open window Kakashi had been staring out of. Making sure not to be seen, she hunkered with her back to the wall, getting as close as she dared in order to hear what was being said.

"…little unusual to come to me directly, but I understand your desire for secrecy in this case," she could hear Tsunade saying. "But I'm afraid that's not much I can do considering the circumstances."

"That's alright," Kakashi said heavily. "I just wanted confirmation more than anything."

"When did you begin noticing the symptoms?"

"The loss of appetite began about three weeks ago… then the nausea and vomiting. Blood in the mouth… you know. All the works." He sighed. "Is there nothing you can do?"

"I can prescribe some painkillers, but there's no treatment. The stoliosis infection's gone deep. If you'd come to me earlier… maybe there would have been some hope of treatment, but right now, I'm sorry to say with the illness as advanced as it is… this is terminal."

A cold, queer feeling gripped Sakura's heart. Terminal?

There was a long, painful silence. "How long do I have?" Kakashi asked.

Tsunade's chair squeaked. "A month, maybe two, but no more than that," she said quietly. "Death tends to be protracted and painful in these cases."

"Well, that's something to look forward to," Kakashi murmured dryly. "A month doesn't seem much all of a sudden…"

"You won't be able to hide it for long."

"I can try. I trust you to keep this to yourself."

"I'm bound by doctor patient confidentiality, you know that," Tsunade replied sharply. "But perhaps you should-"

"I think… for now I just want to go home."

"I see. Take this prescription to the pharmacy. It'll ease the pain."

"Thank you, Tsunade-sama."

"If you need anything else, please don't hesitate to ask."

"I'm grateful."

The office door opened and shut again, and Sakura crawled away from the window, cold and stiff with a dozen different emotions she couldn't name or control.

Kakashi-sensei was dying? An infection? Stoliosis? What the hell was stoliosis? Why hadn't she noticed? Yes, he'd seemed tired and depressed lately, but she'd thought nothing of it. Why hadn't he said anything?!

She was suddenly moved by the enormous and irrepressible urge to do something. But what? It took people whole lifetimes to invent life-saving medical jutsu for new procedures. She couldn't invent one to cure a fatal illness in less than two months! But he couldn't die! He was Kakashi-sensei! Who would lead the team? How would life ever be the same without the man who had always looked out for her?

Should she go to Naruto? He'd want to know. He deserved to know. But what about Kakashi's wishes that this remain private? It was bad enough that Sakura had overheard, yet… oh god, she wished she'd never eavesdropped!

I need to see him, she thought. He needs to know he doesn't have to handle it alone and that he has friends who love him. I can't sit back and do nothing!

Sakura decided to head to Kakashi's place immediately. But it wasn't a swift journey, as she kept stopping to try and figure out what to say when she got there. As afraid of the confrontation as she was however, it only made her more determined to see him.

Her fist shook as it knocked on his door.

"Coming," she heard his flat voice call from somewhere inside, making nervous butterflies burst into life inside her stomach. All the things she'd thought of to say on her way here were suddenly gone from her head. Oh no! She could hear him turning the catch in the door – what the hell was she going to say?

The door drew open to reveal her tall sensei standing within, one hand on the handle, the other holding a lettuce leaf. He looked slightly surprised to see her, but otherwise quite apathetic.

Sakura opened her mouth.

"I love you," she said.

Nothing at all changed in Kakashi's expression, other than the lettuce leaf that dropped from his hand.

Sakura wanted to shoot herself.

"Well – I mean, I love everyone!" she amended hastily. "I love Naruto and Tsunade-shishou and my mom, and you! Especially you! Well, maybe not especially, as in special, but you know what I mean, don't you? I think it's important that you know! I'd hate think we've known each other all these years but I never had a chance to say the really important things to you! I don't want you to go and never have known that I love you. Platonically! You know, the normal way students and teachers love each other. Ok, that sounded more normal in my head, but tell me you understand? You don't have to be alone, Kakashi-sensei. At times like this it's more important than ever to affirm the bonds we have with other people. So… that's why I needed to tell you that I love you."

He stared at her a moment longer, as if waiting to see if there was any more where that had come from. "Ok," he said at last, "Would you like to come in?"

"Please," she said in a small voice.

"I'll make you a cup of tea," he said.

"I should be making you a cup of tea."

"No, I can manage that at least."

His apartment was only a one room apartment, with a bed in one corner, a desk in another, and a tiny kitchen in the other. Sakura watched his back as he dropped a teabag into a cup and turned on the kettle, and then she could no longer bear it; she threw her arms around his middle and pressed her face against his back as sobs began to break from her throat.

To his credit, Kakashi carried on fixing the tea.

"It's not fair," she croaked. "How can life be so cruel?! I don't want you to die! I-"

"Sugar?" He picked up a small packet.

"Yes, please. But I-"

"Milk?" he held up a half empty bottle.

"No, thank you," and when he picked up a wad of green leaves she said, "I don't want lettuce either." What was with all the damn lettuce anyway? Had Tsunade put him on a diet?

"That's not for you," he said lightly, disentangling her arms from about his waist quite calmly. "That's for Shelly."

"Shelly?"

He handed her the tea and beckoned her to follow. Sakura wiped futilely at her tears as he led her to the messy coffee table in the middle of the room, upon which sat a box full of newspaper, straw, and greens. It was tipped on its side, beside this box sat something that Sakura had mistaken for an ugly paper weight, but now that Kakashi invited her to look more closely, she realised it was an ugly animal.

Kakashi sat down next to the table and began waggling a little green lettuce leaf in front of the motionless brown lump. "This is Shelly," he said. "Gai's pet tortoise he's lent to me to look after while he's away on that Sand mission. Only it's not very well…"

Sakura stared as a scaly grey head peeped out at Kakashi, before retracting just as quickly.

"Tsunade was good enough to run some tests on it and give me some medicine, but at this point the most merciful thing might be to just take a mallet to it."

"The tortoise…" Sakura whispered faintly. "The tortoise… has stoliosis."

"Sad, huh? Although it is over ninety years old."

"And you… you're fine."

"At least until Gai comes home and murders me." He gave up waggling the lettuce at the paperweight and looked up at her with a smile. "So. You love me?"

Sakura's blood boiled and the subsequent slap had people stopping three streets away to look around in bemusement. While Kakashi fell back against the bed, Sakura set down her tea next to the tortoise and rose to her feet, summoning all her remaining dignity (which wasn't much).

"Next time you're not dying!" she yelled as she stormed out, "have the decency to tell me so!"

She left behind a stunned Kakashi and a curiously thirsty tortoise who, as it turned out, discovered the cure for stoliosis was in fact tea.