the span of years

rating: m
genre: friendship/romance
pairings: kakasaku
POV: alternating Kakashi, Sakumo, Sakura
other notes: prompt fill for KakaSaku Month, Week 2: Same Age or Gen Swap AU + Told in Reverse
word count: 2,710


lvii.

The sun soaks into his old bones and Kakashi hums in pleasure.

"You sure you aren't part cat?" Sakura teases. She cards her fingers through his hair.

Kakashi leans into the touch. "Don't let the Pack hear you say that."

"Of course not," Sakura laughs. "There aren't enough meaty bones in all the country to apologize properly for that insult."

She leans forward and presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Come sit with me."

Sakura rolls her eyes but circles the bench and folds herself into his side.

"I feel old," he says.

"Hey! What does that make me?" Sakura demands.

Kakashi cracks open an eye and stares at his gorgeous, incomparable wife.

Her hair has been grey for years now but her eyes are as green as always and her smile still as sweet.

He kisses her softly at the corner of her mouth where the legacy of that smile sits. It's so comfortable resting there that the laugh lines have long since settled in to stay.

"Eternal," he says.

Sakura laughs and swats him on the shoulder.

He catches her laughter on his tongue.

"If you're old, I'm older," she grouses, submitting to the kiss.

"Never," Kakashi says.

Sakura pulls back.

The light is low and warm, and it turns her hair almost pink again.

"I love you," she says.

She's always been the most spectacular thing he's ever seen.

"Sit with me until the stars come out?" he asks.

(Sit with me forever?)

Sakura leans forward and presses a kiss to his temple, his cheek, his chin.

"Always."

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xxxi.

"Do you, Hatake Kaka—"

"Yes! Of course!" Kakashi interrupts.

Tsunade-sama rolls her eyes and hits him over the head.

Sakura muffles her giggles with her mouth pressed against the back of his hand in a reassuring kiss.

"Let me finish, brat," Tsuande-sama orders.

Distantly, Kakashi is aware of the sound of his tōchan and Naruto sobbing on each other, but everything that is not the tears welling in Sakura's eyes and the blush sweeping down her cheeks and the white of her kimono is insignificant in this moment.

"Do you—" Tsunade-sama glares him into silence "—Hatake Kakashi, take this woman, Haruno Sakura—"

"Yes!"

He's waited long enough for this. (He'd have waited forever.) He has no interesting in waiting any longer.

It's all—the grief and the blood and the fury and the sorrow and the hurt—it's all worth it when he can look Sakura in the eyes, press a kiss to the heel of her palm and whisper "Hello, wife."

Sakura kisses him sweetly on the mouth.

"Hello husband."

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xxiiv.

"Sakura," Kakashi pants into the hollow of her neck.

Sakura's nails prick his shoulders and she urges him on with her heels pressed into his ass.

"C'mon, Kakashi, sweetheart, please. Please." Her voice cracks clean through on the last word, sobbing as he manages to get a thumb on her clit to trace sloppy circles.

She's hot and wet and perfect around him and he never—Kakashi grunts as the walls of her cunt flutter, clamping down—he never thought he'd get this, get her.

"I need, I need—"

"I know," Kakashi tells her, "I know. I've got you. Gods, Sakura, you're so perfect."

"Please."

Kakashi hitches her further up the wall and Sakura tilts her hips and there—

She digs bloody crescents into his skin and Kakashi slaps a hand over her mouth.

"Sakura, baby, you have to be quiet."

The hospital is not the place for midmorning quickie but Kakashi has been gone three weeks without her and he aches in all the places she's been missing.

Sakura wrenches her mouth free and swoops to kiss him messy: teeth and tongue, all violent desperation.

"Kakashi," she whines.

Kakashi pulls her down harder to meet him.

They crash together.

"C'mon, Sakura, I need you to come, for me, please, now now now—"

Kakashi bites down on her shoulder.

It's enough.

When she's done spasming around his cock, he lays her down on her desk and eats her out until she's crying and trembling and she can barely bear to let him stroke her hair, whispering how much he missed her into her temple as he holds her close.

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xxiv.

"You know," says Naruto-sensei, scratching the back of his head.

The Hokage robes fit him, turning him into something even more larger than life, but he'll still always just be Naruto-sensei to Kakashi.

"I just can't figure out who I'm supposed to threaten," he finishes.

Sakura scowls. "Naruto, if I remember, we had a conversation about you trying to scare my date off over twenty years ago."

"I know!" Naruto-sensei says. "That's the problem! Kakashi-kun couldn't even throw a kunai three years ago!"

"Actually—" Kakashi starts, insulted at several layers of implications inherent in that statement (first off, yes he could throw something as simple as a kunai when her was three, what does Naruto-sensei take him for?) but Sakura interrupts him.

"Naruto," she smiles sweetly. "Two words."

The Beloved and Respected Rokudaime pales at the honey dripping from her tongue.

"Snow. Princess."

Sakura's smile is so sharp and vicious and lovely that Kakashi falls in love with her all over again.

"Right!" Naruto-sensei says. His voice squeaks. "Have a great date you two, ramen is on me!"

Kakashi blinks, and the blond is gone.

"Are you going to tell me—"

"No," Sakura says.

"Not even if I do that thing you like? You know, the thing with my tongue?"

Sakura tips her head back and tugs him into her by his belt loops. "Nice try." She draws him down into a kiss that is too dark and filthy for a bright summer day.

"Do we have to go for lunch?" Kakashi manages when she finally pulls away with a sharp bite to his lower lip.

Sakura laughs and does her best to tidy the hair her fingers have made even more unmanageable.

"Yes."

Kakashi sighs, but they go.

They get kicked out of the restaurant when their game of footsie gets too competitive and Sakura almost breaks the table.

As he sucks bruises down the line of her stomach, Sakura a spill of pink hair and so much bare skin across his sheets, Kakashi can't bring himself to care.

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xviii.

Kakashi hitches her closer and grits his teeth against the feel of her front plastered against him.

He's got his thigh shoved between her own, one knee pressed high against his hip and and elbow around his neck.

"Gods fucking damnit," Sakura-sensei snarls.

He can almost feel the phantom touch of her teeth to his neck as she curses quietly in the hot dark.

The broom closet they're shoved into in an attempt to avoid the passing patrol that was not supposed to be there is much too small.

Kakashi swallows thickly and hopes she can't hear the way it catches at the back of his throat.

"Alright," Sakura-sensei whispers, "from the mission brief, we know they have a sensor. Limited range, but we're fucked if they get close enough; you can't conceal you're chakra well enough to fool them—"

Kakashi winces at the reminder.

He's a jōnin. He should be better than this.

She pinches his other hip and Kakashi barely manages not to flinch.

"Don't do that, it's not your fault. The only person I know other than me who could definitely hide their chakra enough is Tsunade-shishō; I told you when you were thirteen that you shouldn't dismiss iryōjutsu. Anyways, it's too late now, but I think I've a genjutsu that should hide us well enough, provided they're only performing a passive sweep."

"How can I help?" Kakashi asks.

"Make sure we don't fall over while I set this," she orders.

And then Sakura-sensei pulls away with what minute space is left to them and shifts to turn around, fitting her spine along his chest and her head under his chin.

Kakashi flails for a moment, unsure of where to put his hands, but Sakura-sensei just snorts and shoves one up against her stomach.

"Make sure I don't slip, will you? This is going to be finicky."

She goes mostly lax against him, retreating down into focus, her fingers shifting smoothy through hand seals.

Kakashi swallows again and tries not to think about the way his hand spans the space between her hips.

He doesn't wonder if her could encircle her completely with both, thumbs dipping down to tease the edge of her underwear, her breasts pressed against his chest and her mouth at the hinge of his jaw.

This is not, he reminds himself, the fucking time.

She's so warm and he aches with the way she trusts him so thoughtlessly with her body, the way she turns effortlessly into his arms.

Kakashi feels something drop over them, like the mist off a waterfall, enough to make him shiver.

Sakura-sensei's spine straightens and she pulls ever so slightly out of his grasp.

"There," she murmurs, "I sure fucking hope this works. Shishō is going to kill me if we get caught on a milk run. And I'm going to track down whatever fucking chūnin team messed up the recon this bad and give them a refresher on paying attention to detail."

His fingers twitch at the silken venom in her voice.

They wait silently, the sound of their breathing too loud, and Kakashi tries to not drown in the familiar scent of her: the faintest trace of something floral undercut by loam and iron.

He wants to lose himself in her, and all he has are reasons for why it's a bad idea, why it'll never happen.

Finally—an age, an eternity later—Sakura-sensei relaxes.

"They're gone," she says.

Kakashi agrees; he heard the soft shuffle of their feet as they passed.

Sakura-sensei flashes through another set of hand signs and Kakashi can practically feel the genjutsu as it sloughs off his skin.

"C'mon, Kakashi-kun," Sakura-sensei says, smiling up at him over her shoulder, "we've a mission to finish."

The door doesn't dare creak as they slip out of the closet.

Kakashi's palms ache with the loss of her.

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xv.

"So," Obito drawls, following Kakashi's line of sight, "Sakura-sensei, huh."

Kakashi shifts his gaze abruptly to Sai-sensei who is doing his best to avoid a violently graceful taijutsu sequence.

He winces when Sakura-sensei sends him sprawling. That's going to be a broken bone.

Or three.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kakashi says, dismissing the accusation implicit in Obito's voice.

"Sure you don't," Obito agrees, annoyingly cheerful. "You absolutely aren't checking out Sakura-sensei's ass in those shorts. She looks amazing, by the way."

Obito is laughing through a bloody mouth when Kakashi sends him flying.

Kakashi has the sinking feeling he did not win this one.

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xii.

"Hi there, Team 7!"

Kakashi, Rin, and Obito whirl, startled.

Instead of their sensei, who is very very late (not that that is terribly unusual, but usually he sends a toad with a message to warn them if he's going to be especially late), a woman in an undone jōnin vest waves at them.

"Naruto got sent unexpectedly on a mission, so he asked me to take over for a couple days, just until he gets back, instead of leaving you to your own devices."

She's got pink hair and a smile almost as brightly obnoxious as Naruto-sensei's and Kakashi would dismiss her right off the bat except that—

Well.

There's a purple rhombus on her forehead and she appeared behind him without him noticing even a whisper of her and, once, just last year, he caught green eyes laughing behind an ANBU mask when his tōchan was summoned to the Hokage's office in the night.

Anyways, Naruto-sensei might be an idiot, but he's a capable idiot.

And he cares about them, his team.

Naruto-sensei wouldn't send someone untrustworthy to lead them in his absence.

"You can call me Sakura-sensei," she trills.

Kakashi glances worriedly at Rin out of the corner of his eye; his teammate is practically trembling.

"Haruno-sama"—Rin bows deeply—"it's an honour to meet you."

Obito blinks, mouth agape, at their teammate.

Rin is always polite and respectful to adults, but she's never obsequious.

Who is this woman?

Wait—

Kakashi takes another look at the purple rhombus that the woman wears like a crown.

This is Haruno Sakura?

He kinda always just thought she'd be taller.

"None of that now, Rin-chan!" Rin blushes. "Sakura-sensei is just fine. Naruto told me you're thinking of becoming a mednin. We'll chat later, yeah? But for now—"

Kakashi tenses at the sly grin on her mouth.

It's much too reminiscent of Naruto-sensei at his most mischievous and cruel.

"I think we should start off with a little game of tag." Her grin splits higher. "First rule is: don't get hit."

Where her heel comes down, the ground gapes.

Kakashi bolts.

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iii.

It's—

She's just a girl, Sakumo thinks when she comes out into the waiting room where he's spent the night, fingers threaded through his hair tugging until, along with the purple bruises pressed under his eyes and the clothes he's yet to change out of, he imagines he looks a mess.

She's just a girl, but her jaw is set.

Her hands are clean but she still smells of viscera under the overwhelming tidal wave of disinfectant.

He doesn't need her to say it for him to know.

"I'm so sorry, Hatake-san," the doctor says, "we tried our best, but it was just too late."

He collapses back down into a chair, presses a closed face to his mouth to trap the howl there.

"If you'd like, I can take you in to see her."

She's too young to have eyes so old.

What is he going to tell Kakashi?

"I— Please, Haruno-sensei. Yes. I'd like to see my wife."

Haruno Sakura smiles, a thing so soft and so sad that it shatters his heart all over again.

"Let's sit for a while first," she decides.

She's decidedly ungrateful as she flops into the seat next to him.

She's too young to carry grief at the creases of her mouth.

It's quiet in the pre-dawn hour, the light not yet kissing the horizon and spilling a blush across the sky.

They sit, the two of them.

"Thank you," Sakumo finally says.

She turns to look at him, hair whipping around her face, startled, but he doesn't look back.

"Thank you for doing what you could," he continues.

"It wasn't enough," Haruno-sensei spits.

He does turn now, one hand cupping her cheek like he's a child of his own, like she's just a girl and not a doctor with blood on her hands.

"Sometimes it never is. But, still, I thank you. No one else could have done more, I know this."

Her fingers flex panicked against the back of his hand, but she doesn't pull away.

"Thank you."

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nulla. initium

Sakura sighs and leans harder against the glass.

They're so small.

"What are we doing here, shishō?" she asks. Her head lolls on her neck so that she can look at her teacher.

Senju Tsunade stands with her arms crossed as she watches.

"Because," she says, "this is where I come to remember."

Sakura raises an eyebrow. "Remember what?"

"What we're fighting for."

Sakura turns back to watch the newborns slumber on, safe and warm in the nursery.

"And what are we fighting for?"

Tsunade-shishō throws her head back and laughs, a brash thing filled with years and grief and joy. "The future."

Sakura purses her lips in consideration and taps a nail on the glass, thinking.

The Will of Fire.

Yeah, she can keep fighting for that, through the miles of blood, against the grasping tide of death.

Sakura blows a kiss at the glass to make Tsunade-shishō laugh, and turns away, back to the lab.

Poisons won't find antidotes for themselves.

Behind her, a grey haired bundle rolls over.

Neither of them have any idea what will come.

But there's hope (there's always hope).

They'll make it through to the end.