A/N: So here we are! The final chapter at last! After approximately 4 billion words and even more headaches, we're finally here. To date this has turned out to be the longest story I have ever written BY FAR (and these last five chapters have been over 10,000 words each, so eat it, Nanowrimo, lol), and it's been a great learning experience for me to have not just gone 'fuck it' and drop it halfway through. I don't think I would have been so stoked to finish it if it wasn't for all the great feedback from you guys, so thank you so much for keeping me going to the very end. It's been surprising fun but really difficult to finish this, and I'll be glad to move onto less complex projects now. XD

Thank you for all your kind words guys, and thanks to all the readers who stuck through to the end. And if you only discovered this story this week and was able to read it all in one go, you're a lucky sod. :P

I hope you enjoy the last chapter.


House of Crows

Chapter Forty-Four: A House Falls


Your smiles,

Well they make my day,

You don't know it yet,

But you're everything.


A little sweet. A little bitter. That was the taste in the air that night.

They sat beneath the densest trees on the shore of the lake, listening to the invisible rain hitting the surface of the water and the leaves of their shelter. In the dead of night, the ground trembled and rumbled. Pockets of air belched up through the lake and popped like boiling water.

The cavern was collapsing. Every evidence of what had taken place down there would be washed away and buried for good. The blood, the feathers, the remains of the 'sacrifice'... it was all disappearing.

Kakashi closed his eyes and covered them with an arm. Naruto had told them to sleep, to recover before daylight, but no one was sleeping tonight. Enoki cried for hours, in such pain no one so young should have to experience, and Sakura whispered to him quietly, soothing his agony with chakra and feeding him when it was time. Kakashi couldn't help. There was nothing he could do for his son.

None of them talked. Naruto made the occasional attempt to speak, pointing out an odd glow on the horizon of the south shore, like the sun was rising. Kakashi didn't care. Sakura was too tired to look. The weight of all that had happened lay heavily on them both. The reality of their son's new condition... it was not something that could be spoken of so casually. Neither of them knew what to say. They hardly knew what to think. Naruto just looked anxiously at both of them. He wanted to go back to Konoha and fetch the equipment for an emergency transport, but as of yet he wasn't willing to leave them for even a few minutes.

The glow in the south faded. The sun peeked over the mountains to the east and Enoki finally cried himself into exhaustion and slept. The respite was brief, but Sakura managed to finally doze, lying on the grass with the baby sleeping on her front. It should have a pleasant sight, but every time he looked at them he saw the shadow of that terrible bird hanging over them. He saw Karasu's dead, glazed eyes staring into nothing before his body had just blown away. It was so very different from the boy he'd used to know, always laughing and joking and making Kakashi feel like an uncool stiff by comparison. He'd thought they loved one another.

When had all that been crushed under the heal of murderous ambition...?

As the morning grew older, Enoki awakened, hungry again. Sakura dragged herself up to feed him, looking too bleak and tired to do anything but move automatically. She needed more sleep, but she wasn't going to get any out here.

"What's over there?" Naruto asked, pointing to the south shore of the lake. He'd been staring at it all night and all morning.

Kakashi shrugged. "The estate," he grunted.

His student glanced at him in slight alarm. "I think we should go investigate what that light was. Things may not be over just yet."

"I'll stay here," Sakura said, still nursing Enoki.

Naruto seemed to be doing his best not to look at her. "No, I think we should stick together. Neither of you are strong enough right now if the Syndicate is still in the area."

A scowl settled on Sakura's face, but she didn't argue. She finished feeding him and got to her feet.

"I can take him," Kakashi said.

"I'm fine," she said shortly, moving past him.

Perhaps it was important to her not to let go of her child just yet? Or maybe that now Enoki had finally stopped crying she didn't want to risk disturbing him by handing him over to someone else? It seemed most likely that she was just in a bad mood. Kakashi understood that. He wasn't feeling particularly upbeat right then either, especially not when Naruto wanted them all to trek a mile around the lake to see a house Kakashi wished never see again as long as he lived.

To his astonishment, his wish was more or less granted.


"This is... wow... what the hell happened here?"

Naruto kicked aside a gently steaming plank of wood that had perhaps once been part of a wall, and stared around the courtyard. When he'd been told of the Zuru Estate and how much it was worth he'd been expecting something quite impressive. A multi-levelled mansion, perhaps. A hundred year old zen garden, even. Hundreds of servants, probably.

And while standing in the charred remains of a mansion that had been so stripped and gutted by fire that it was nothing more than a skeleton of black beams, ash and rubble was impressive - especially with the way it steamed and smoked in the early morning mist – it had not, however, been expected.

Lost, Naruto turned to look at his teammates. "Was it always like this?"

Kakashi was looking rather suspiciously at Sakura beside him, who in turn was fussing over an invisible speck of dirt on Enoki's cheek. The baby was as soundly asleep as anyone would be after such an exhausting ordeal, and though it was natural for a new mother to be besotted and fussy over a child, particularly one who had been implanted with a terrifyingly powerful mythic beast, she was clearly doing her to best not to notice where they were standing.

"Sakura..."

She'd gone miraculously deaf too.

"What did you do?" Kakashi asked loudly.

Going a little pink in the cheeks, Sakura shot the two men an annoyed look. "Why are you both looking at me?"

"Because you couldn't look more suspicious right now if you were carrying a bottle of lighter fluid and a box of matches," Kakashi rebuked, running a hand through his hair. "This must have been the light you saw, Naruto."

"It's not my fault no one bothered to put it out..." Sakura said sulkily.

"Remind me not to piss you off," said Kakashi flatly.

"Like that's ever stopped you."

Naruto thumbed his nose and looked away, sensing an argument was about to ensue between them. "I hope no one was inside," he said, looking around at all the black and grey debris that could have been anything in a former life.

"It's abandoned. No one was inside," Kakashi said.

"How'd you know?" Sakura asked him dubiously, sounding a little worried.

"I'd smell it. It'd smell something like burnt pork if-"

"Oh, don't! Not in front of the baby," she hissed, covering Enoki's delicate little ears.

"That sounds like something I normally say," Kakashi retorted.

By now Naruto was beginning to feel less angry with himself for never having noticed a relationship between these two. They were like a cat and a dog, quick to bicker and growl, so much so that it was hard to believe they were the proud parents of a beautiful baby boy. He hadn't witnessed much affection between them, at least not any more than usual, though he supposed it was understandable that they were both short on temper and low on spirits at the moment. Their kid's life had been changed forever, before it had even begun. As tempting as it was to point to himself and say 'it's not so bad being this cool' they knew just as well as he did that his life had been one hell of an uphill trek... and he was one of the lucky ones. Most other jinchuuriki were killed prematurely, hunted by extremists like Akatsuki, or driven insane till they were nothing but unstable killing machines who couldn't be trusted near others. It wasn't easy. It certainly wasn't a life that Naruto would have wished on anyone, and though Kakashi and Sakura were doing their best to pretend otherwise, they were struggling to cope with their situation. That neither had even spoken of what had happened to their son since emerging from the lake was evidence enough that this was a shock too deep for words.

There was nothing left on this estate. Nothing but rubble and remains. Naruto squinted around at the derelict buildings and sighed. No one had stuck around either. There was no sign that the Hatake clan had stuck around after their leader's demise and if there had been any serving staff they were long gone. The estate was well and truly dead.

He looked back over his shoulder at Kakashi and Sakura, bracing himself to bear witness to another frosty exchange. But in the few moments he'd turned his back to check out the damage to the estate, Kakashi had sat down on the stone steps leading up to what was left of the main house, and Sakura had sat on the step beneath him, between his legs. They were both looking at Enoki.

It was Kakashi's hand on Sakura's neck, half entwined with her hair, that caught Naruto's attention the most. And it bothered him. For a few seconds he had to temper the visceral urge to storm over there and kick Kakashi in the face again. Then he saw Sakura smile up at him and... well, the urge to neuter Kakashi didn't quite disappear, but it was at least easier to ignore. Sakura saw something in their sensei. She probably needed her eyesight checked, but Naruto knew when something wasn't his business. Perhaps, months ago, he would have had something to say about them and their relationship, but the time for reproach had long passed. They had a child now. They were, for better or worse, a family.

He walked back over to them, and that hand on Sakura's neck disappeared rather quickly as Kakashi turned to look at him. At the moment he realised his sensei was deliberately refraining from affection with Sakura in his presence, probably out of a perfectly rational fear of physical violence. In a way, that reassured him a little. He didn't like to think Kakashi was unaffectionate towards Sakura. But at the same time it made him wonder if it was such a good idea to do what he was about to do.

"I'm going back to Konoha," he said, lifting a marked kunai out of his pouch to toss it to Kakashi. "Keep that with you. I'll be back in about half an hour with supplies for a site-to-site summon to get you two – uh – three out of here."

The kunai was marked with the seals for Hiraishin. As long as it wasn't destroyed, Naruto could travel between it and the one in his apartment freely. Kakashi weighed it in his hand and tucked it away. "No worries."

"Will you two be ok on your own?"

Naruto realised as soon as he said it that he wasn't really worried about their safety, more about what Kakashi would feel free to do with Sakura in his absence. They'd probably do something horrible... like kiss.

And Kakashi had the kind of face that always seemed to say 'I know exactly what you're thinking'. He just looked at Naruto with a faint smile until the boy flushed and turned to look at Enoki whose little plump arms were waving about, trying to catch Sakura's hair. "Tsunade-sama will be glad to hear you're all ok," he said, before activating Hiraishin and disappearing with hardly a whisper of air.

Although how glad she'd be to hear of a six-tailed jinchuuriki went unsaid.


Sakura's smile gradually faded after Naruto left. Leaning back into Kakashi's chest, she carefully untangled a lock of hair from Enoki's sticky and surprisingly strong fist. It had been growing out for over a year now and was going to have to cut off once she got back if Enoki kept grabbing for it like this. "He's going to come back with another emergency transport," she said aloud.

"I heard," Kakashi responded lightly.

"You still have a chance to leave before he arrives," she said quietly.

Kakashi's arms came down to wrap loosely around her shoulders. She felt his warm breath near her ear, ruffling through her hair. "Is that what you want me to do?"

"No – but – yes." She bit her tongue. "You know what I mean. If you come back with us, they'll put you in prison for sure. You did just commit jailbreak."

"Says the arsonist," he murmured.

"Are you going to take this seriously?" she snapped. "This is your freedom, we're talking about."

"What's so free about being exiled and having nowhere to go?" He shrugged, resting his cheek against the top of her head as he offered his little finger for Enoki to hold. "I'd rather be near you and him, even if the nearest I can get is an underground cell underneath Konoha. You'd visit me wouldn't you?"

"No," said Sakura stubbornly.

"Really?" He didn't sound like he believed that. "Not even conjugal visits?"

Sakura elbowed him in the stomach. "Don't joke," she said, though she'd gone pink in the cheeks. "It's not funny."

"I can't think of anything less funny," he said. "They watch, you know, though two-way windows. It's sick. Especially the way your feet stick to the floor in the viewing room. Not that I know much about this, of course-"

Sakura stood abruptly and climbed the rest of the steps to stand in an agitated, self-conscious way at the top. "You're not being serious."

"No, you're not listening," he said, turning to look up at her. "I'm not going anywhere."

"You're being a noble prat again," she snapped at him. "Don't be so naive – there's nothing to be gained by resigning yourself to prison-"

"Except dignity. For us," Kakashi interrupted her shortly. "Do you realise what kind of situation we're in now? It was one thing to ask me to abandon you with a new baby, but it's a whole other matter to ask that I abandon you with a monster."

"Kakashi!" Sakura admonished. "How can you say that?! Is that what you think Naruto is too? A monster?"

"The monster's inside him, and it's inside Enoki too," he said. "You can't ignore that. Eventually, whether it's five years from now, or ten, or fifteen, we're going to see that bijuu again. And where am I going to be when that happens? Hiding in a hole in some other country, I think not."

Sakura turned away from him entirely, bouncing Enoki lightly in her arms as if trying to comfort him though the boy was perfectly relaxed. As usual, Kakashi could tell when she was misdirecting her anger on him. She was scared. That's all there was to it.

"Do you think so little of me that you'd expect me to jump at the chance to leave you with this burden?" he asked. "I thought I proved to you before that I'm willing to pay whatever price I have to."

"I just want to make sure you can never accuse me of not giving you a choice," she said touchily, casting an arched glance at him over her shoulder. "And don't ever call him a monster again. I'll kill you. Seriously."

He was quite convinced she meant it. "I'm sorry," he said, and they both lapsed into silence for a moment, because they both knew the word 'monster' was something this boy would hear a lot for the rest of his life.

"He's our son," Sakura said eventually. "That's all there is to it."

"I know," he said quietly, "but you're not the only one who's scared. And you don't know how sorry I am that I won't be able to be there for you. That I'll hardly get to see him..."

Sakura's feet stomped down the steps again, until she was suddenly sitting next to him, leaning against him heavily. "You really are scared, aren't you?" she guessed.

He held up his hand which was quaking slightly as he tried to hold it steady. "Look at that," he said.

"That's just because you're on drugs," she pointed out.

"Well, you don't have to say it like that... Enoki will get the wrong idea about me," he sighed, reaching an arm around her shoulders to feel her settle against his side.

This should have been a joyful time for them, but it was all marred by everything that would come next. He enjoyed having Sakura close, feeling her warmth against his side, but how could he really enjoy it when he knew this could be the last time he would be this close to her for months – possibly even years? And how could he enjoy looking down at the baby in her arms and guessing which of his features came from him and which came from her, when all he saw was what the bijuu had given him? In the full light of day, it was apparent that the changes were more than just a pair of oddly shaped birthmarks on his back. His eyes, which had been a dark blue in the picture he'd been given, were now a strange pale yellow. It wasn't a human colour. Any hope that his son might pass for an ordinary boy would be dashed as soon as anyone got a good like at his eyes.

Enoki, oblivious to the fears of his parents gave a squeaky yawn and decided to doze. Despite everything, Sakura still laughed softly, delighted in her new son whatever tragedy had befallen him. Kakashi smiled as well, confident at least that jinchuuriki or not, their boy was easily the cutest in Konoha.

"I don't know how I'm going to manage without you," Sakura whispered, not wanting to disturb Enoki.

It sounded like something Kakashi felt like saying too. "You'll have each other," he said heavily.

"No money though, and no home." She sighed. "That hasn't changed at least."

Kakashi opened his mouth to speak, but quickly closed it. Whatever he was about to say, he changed his mind and instead said, "If you're short on money... you do realise we're sitting in one of the richest estates in the rain country, which has been utterly abandoned and now stands unguarded."

Sakura sat very still.

"I'm sure a lot of that wealth went up in the fire," he went on conversationally, "But who knows what kind of riches might have survived and are just hiding under piles of ash, waiting to be – ah - rescued?"

"Are you suggesting we... that we pillage, Kakashi?" she said quietly.

"Do you have some strong moral objection to this that you didn't have to arson, Sakura?" he asked lightly.

Her mouth quirked to one side as she considered. "You know, they never did pay me for my work here..."

He looked at the steaming ruins. "Oh, they paid."

"Well... there might be a few things..." Sakura stood up and wandered away up the steps again. "No point letting it go to waste, I suppose..."

Sakura's naughty side didn't take much tempting to come out and play. Kakashi smiled weakly to himself and followed her inside the gutted mansion, climbing easily over the mounds of fallen beams, roof tiles, and charred wall panels.

"Priceless Manchu dynasty vase... broken. Tapestry depicting the battle of Sengu Valley... burned." Sakura toed through a heap of ash. "I'm beginning to feel a little bad about setting fire to all of this."

Kakashi kicked open something that looked auspiciously like a jewellery box, but all that lay inside were a couple of plastic rings. It could have been safe to say that in the process of leaving, the servants really had stripped the estate of everything valuable that would fit in their pockets.

In fact the only thing that wasn't smashed, burned, or stolen, was the great stone chair where Lord Zuru had once held audience; the same one Karasu had been using when Kakashi had arrived here. It sat protruding from the wreckage like, and if it wasn't for that chair it would have been impossible to tell they were standing in what had once been the estate's grandest meeting room. Kakashi sat in it experimentally, putting his feet up on the remains of a chimney.

Sakura sat on the wide armrest. "Worth a couple of million at least," she said, running a finger over the patterns of engraved black stone. "But I don't think we can carry it."

"I'm sure we can. Just give Enoki to me and you can-"

"Jerk," she laughed lightly. "You won't get any visits, conjugal or otherwise, if you keep that up."

"Oh?" he looked at her with growing interest, but Sakura's smile was quickly fading, her eyes on something in the distance. Following her gaze, Kakashi quickly realised what she was looking at. "Not quite as deserted as I thought," he murmured lightly. "I spy a few rats malingering..."

Through the steam and smoke were emerging new shapes. Kakashi heard the debris crunching under their feet and as they got closer he began to pick out who they were - upper house members and branch house members. The clan had regrouped, it seemed, after the night's events. But who was leading them now?

Midori, with two small twinned shadows walking in her wake, seemed to move with the most authority ahead of the rest. She stopped a few metres away from the stone chair. Sakura tensed beside him. They were almost certainly surrounded right now.

"We heard from the ones who were last to leave the lake cavern," Midori began, "That Karasu is dead?"

Kakashi nodded curtly.

"Then," she said, sinking to one knee, "you are Karasu now."

And one by one they all mirrored her, going down on one knee with a fist to the floor in the traditional shinobi demonstration of submission. It was how Konoha nin bowed to the Hokage – expect for Kakashi who bowed only to Sakura.

Not all of them went down easily. Some of the upper house members took several seconds before they could force their limbs to submit. Kakashi caught Shushui shooting him a particularly nasty glare as he turned his face to the ground.

Although Sakura's mouth was hanging open in shock, Kakashi didn't feel even the faintest flicker of surprise by this turn of events. He dragged his gaze back to Midori. "Last night you were all willing to watch me die."

"We were complying with Karasu's orders," she answered coolly. "We'll fully comply with your orders too, whatever they are."

"That's interesting," Kakashi said, and out of the corner of his eye he felt Sakura glance sharply at him. "Shushui?"

The man flinched. "Karasu-sama?"

"Take off your jacket and shirt and hand them to me," Kakashi spread a hand over his bare chest. "It's a chilly morning."

There was nothing 'chilly' about a morning in the rainforest. Shushui visibly wrestled with some internal argument before he got to his feet and began to unzip his grey vest and shrug out of his black shirt. He silently handed both to Kakashi, a muscle twitching rapidly in his jaw the whole time, and then retreated to stare at the ground.

Kakashi slipped on the shirt and vest, each a little too big for his frame, and audibly sniffed his sleeve. "Hmm," he hummed with grim displeasure "Now take off your pants."

"Karasu-sama!" Midori ground out. "Please be mature."

"Why are you calling me that?" he asked. "I don't remember agreeing to be Karasu. I'd rather be the king of a landfill than leader of this clan, even though I imagine there would be very little difference. In fact you could say I'd rather be imprisoned by my own Hokage than have to look at any one of your sickly faces again."

"You'd... you'd rather be made a prisoner by your village than be the head of your own clan?" Midori said, bemused. "I don't believe that-"

"Who cares!" Shushui snapped. "He's not fit anyway! His father was exiled because he bred with an outsider, and he's no different!"

"My father walked away from the clan voluntary before he was 'exiled'," Kakashi pointed out. "But you're right, yes, I'm no different than him."

"He's the heir," Midori hissed. "Karasu made it clear that the line of accession was to move back Sakumo's side after his death."

Shushui spluttered. "Yes, but Karasu-"

"Wasn't expecting me to be alive when that happened, right?" Kakashi guessed. "Just how long was he planning to kill me? Can any of you answer me that? I imagine he's been planning to kill me since he heard I was going to have a child, but I wonder if any of you can say how long he wanted me dead?"

None of them could, apparently. The ones most likely to have been confided in like Midori and Shushui just looked at each other, obviously searching each other's faces for some sign that they had been more trusted by Karasu. Kakashi almost laughed. Karasu always kept everyone around him in the dark and had them competing vainly for trust he'd never given. Perhaps one day he had planned for Enoki to be the person he entrusted with all his knowledge and all his plans, but instead he had died before he'd intended... and the syndicate had died with him, leaving all his underlings scrabbling around for some sign of how to carry out a final will he'd never imparted.

Karasu had made it clear that he'd wanted the line of accession to jump to Kakashi's line, but he'd also wanted Kakashi dead. No wonder the little sheep were confused. They simultaneously sought his leadership and spat in his face.

"Perhaps a week ago I may have been tempted by your offer," Kakashi said. "Most of you have been good friends to me over the years. But that was before you showed your willingness to knife me in the back on the whim of your leader." Now Kakashi really did laugh. "I did my best to shelter you all from the wrath of the villages that Karasu was inciting, but then you bit the hand that fed you. So what am I to do? You abominated my child. What am I to do?"

The twins behind Midori crowded a little closer together.

"Um!" A hand in the crowd lifted hesitantly. "I'd just like to say that I wasn't here last night... I got hit in the head during training yesterday and I was with Uncle Eno. I only found out about this bijuu business after the fire... I was busy rescuing the last of the servants."

"Even Sano, who can't dodge a punch to save his life, has more moral fibre than the lot of you put together. Aren't any of you ashamed?" Kakashi beseeched.

"Ashamed of what?" Shushui grunted. "If you won't be Karasu, fine. We'll be taking the true heir – the one Karasu gave his life for!"

"Oi," Midori called warningly, but Shushui ignored her. He'd fixed his sights on the baby in Sakura's arms and was storming towards them.

Kakashi remained relaxed in his chair.

Unnerved by his passivity, Shushui paused, having expected him to rise and block him. But after deciding Kakashi had no intention of moving to stop him, he surged forward the last few steps to grab Sakura's arm. He didn't anticipate that the arm would lash out first to strike him in the chest with roughly one hundred times the usual strength he could have expected in a girl her size.

Shushui rocketed away, sliding and rolling through ash until he hit one of the remaining support beams. It wobbled, threatening to collapse, but there was no need. Shushui laid in the rubble, gasping and clutching at his chest.

Sakura glared around at anyone else who would think of pulling the same stunt, and Kakashi slid his eye back to Midori. "And I think that clears that up," he said. "You're not having our son."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" she demanded.

"I don't care. You're not my problem anymore," Kakashi said with a shrug. "Go back to the cloud country and find the rest of the clan to warn them... because when I go back to Konoha I'm going to tell them everything. All your names, all our safe houses, where your children are... I'll tell them everything, so you all better start running now. And if any of you come near me or my family again, I'll kill you."

"We're your family," Midori told him.

He shook his head. "Since last night, I have no family except for these two," he said, putting a hand over Sakura's.

The girl was tense. After a certain threat like that perhaps she expected his relatives to turn on him and try to kill him. It would be a logical choice for mercenaries who had identities to protect. But gradually they began to leave, one by one. They disappeared as they had arrived, almost silently back into the steam and the smoke like ghosts.

Midori stayed the longest. "Do you remember," she said, "when we all went out to the grille in Otafuku Gai? Me, you, Karasu, Reika, and the others? You joked that you'd mess up one day and get exiled like your old man?"

Kakashi met her gaze unflinchingly. "I remember," he said evenly.

"It wasn't you who messed up. It was us." She began to turn and slip away over the rubble. "You won't see us again, Kakashi, I promise you."

Sakura looked down at the hand Kakashi was holding, noticing his knuckles had turned white. He didn't relax until the last figure disappeared from sight. His voice and face could appear totally unaffected, but Sakura knew he wasn't as indifferent as he pretended to be. She knew nothing of his life before, or his relationship to his family. Hearing that he'd done something as mundane as go out to dinner with a lunatic like Karasu and a psycho like Reika... it made her realise that the way she saw these people was not the same way he did. They'd not just been family to him, but friends too.

She squeezed his hand back. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Mm?" he was still staring off into the mist.

"I'm sorry you've lost them," she said.

It took him a long time to drag his mind back to respond. "I lost them a long time ago, I think," he said thoughtfully. "But I still have my family, don't I? The only family that matters."

She smiled faintly and leaned down to press her lips softly to his. "Naruto will be back soon," she reminded him.

"I know," he sighed. "Let's just stay here until he comes."

At his urging, Sakura slipped onto his lap and laid her head against his shoulder as his arms went around her. Kakashi looked down at the sleeping baby and realised that everything he had ever needed or wanted, and everything he'd been searching for vainly in Karasu and Reika and the rest of his relatives... it was all right here in his arms.

So tell her, a little voice whispered in the back of his head.

"U-um," he began a little hesitantly. "You know I love you, right?"

Sakura snorted. "That's so cute. You stuttered."

Damn. "I'm on drugs, remember?"

"What, you love me because you're on drugs?" Her mouth drew a sceptical line.

"No, I mean-"

"I'm teasing," she said with a cheeky smile, and using the hand that wasn't employed in cradling Enoki she reached up and pulled his head down for another kiss, sweeter and longer than the last.

And that was how Naruto found them when he flashed into being before them holding four enormous scrolls and an exasperated expression on his face. "I knew it."


Sakura supposed it was all to be expected, but it didn't make it any easier to watch Kakashi be led away by ANBU for the second and final time. She didn't protest. If Kakashi had made his peace with his decision, then she would try to do the same. They'd arrived in the administration building of all places, in the Hokage's very own office, and quite a crowd was present to watch Kakashi marched away to the intelligence division, though not everyone understood why. As far as most people knew, going by Naruto's rushed explanation to the Hokage when he'd suddenly arrived looking for scrolls, Hatake Kakashi had just completed an emergency mission to rescue a baby which was rumoured to be his, and not only had he succeeded but he'd also single-handedly brought the Syndicate down at the same time.

There were more than a few cheers and applause as he passed.

It would be a few days more at least until the rest of the news began filtering down through the grapevines and the praise would shrivel. It would be news that Hatake Kakashi had actually been a member of the Syndicate himself. That he hadn't brought it down at all. That the baby rumoured to be his was not only his but a bijuu too. And that he hadn't been on an emergency mission to rescue it, but had in fact been the one to kidnap it after escaping imprisonment and was the one who had turned it into a monster. That he himself was the leader of the syndicate.

Such was the nature of rumours.

Sakura had been prepared for this. She had even been prepared for her shishou to take one pitying look at the baby in her arms and announce that he needed to be isolated and his seal examined before he could mix with the rest of society.

So Sakura's first days back in Konoha had been a cold, lonely ordeal, confined to a bed in an overcrowded hospital, waiting for news of her baby or her lover. Naruto kept her company. Ino visited once but seemed to have trouble meeting her eye when the subject turned to Kakashi, and Tenzou dropped by with a few other jonin to apologise profusely for Kakashi ever existing, but there was restoration work to be done and a myriad of injured and sick people to attend to. For the most part Sakura was resigned to lie in bed, aching and miserable, missing Enoki with a physical intensity that rivalled her emotional need.

Each day was agonisingly slow, made worse by the fact that tomorrow was a big unknown. Would she have Enoki back tomorrow? Would she hear news finally of Kakashi's sentencing? Would they decide she was fit enough to leave and turf her onto the street? Would she spend another night in this place, alone, or would she be sleeping on Naruto's couch tomorrow night?

She cried more often than she was proud of. The nurses, kindly, tried to remind her that her hormones would still be unbalanced this soon after giving birth, but she knew the truth was that she was just plain miserable. If Enoki's seal was found to be corrupted, and Kakashi was sentenced for execution, just what would she have left to live for anyway?

"It'll be ok, Sakura-chan," Naruto tried to reassure her, but the words were getting thinner and weaker every time he said them. He tried to distract her instead by asking questions about Kakashi. When had it started? Why had it started? What the hell did she see in that old fart anyway? Didn't she know he was a pervert? But, wait, since when did Kakashi smoke?

Sakura still got the unsubtle hint that Naruto was at odds with their relationship, but the more he pestered her about it, the more he seemed to be taking it in his stride.

"I saw Kakashi today," he told her on the third day. "In the detention centre, you know? He's spilling his guts down there."

"Not literally, I hope," Sakura mumbled.

"No, I mean he's telling them everything. They have him writing this confession right, with Ino, and it's like forty pages long and his writing is tiny. Him and Ino are a bit weird at the moment actually. She's down there to verify everything he's giving them, but it's like they're not even in the same room, they're trying to ignore each other. It's like when Neji caught Tenten in the public showers and they didn't look at each other for a week. Yeah."

"How is he?"

"I think he's over it by now. Tenten forgave him eventually, but ask him about it when he's drunk and he'll tell you all about the mole on her-"

"Kakashi! I meant Kakashi!"

Naruto folded his arms and looked thoughtful. "He's... not happy. Looks kind of rough actually. He keeps asking about you and Enoki and I can't tell him much. I'm not allowed. I don't even know what to tell him about Enoki... you haven't heard anything, right?"

Sakura shook her head stiffly. "Tsunade's keeping it top secret. Even from me."

He winced. "She means well."

"Does she?" she asked listlessly. "I just want him back. But I don't really know what to do once I have him back. Where am I supposed to go? I think I'll have to raise him on my own, but... do jinchuuriki need special care or something?"

"I don't think so," Naruto said with a shrug. "Just the usual care."

"Do you think we'll all be banned from talking about it... from telling him?" she whispered.

Naruto stilled. "If she tries to, I'll talk her out of it."

Sakura glanced at him uncertainly.

"One of the worst things they did to me was keep it quiet from me," he explained sadly. "I know they meant well, but when I found out all of a sudden the way I did from someone who was trying to kill me, it was horrible. It was easier after that though, because at least then I understood why everyone hated me. Not knowing was just the worst."

Sakura went to sleep with a heavy mind that night, listening to the sounds of the hospital and the sound of some other baby crying in some other room for some other mother. Although she knew the pitch was all wrong to be Enoki, each sound stabbed through her, reminding her painfully of what she was missing. Where was he at that very moment? Was he crying for her? Was he hungry? Was he cold? Was he being poked and prodded and probed by a team of uncaring seal experts who saw him as a thing instead of a human? Were they hurting him?

When Shizune came into her room on the fourth morning with a pile of folded clothes in her arms it was almost a relief. Being discharged was at least a change of pace, bringing an end to this feeling of being suspended in water with no idea what was up or down, even if she didn't have anywhere to go at this point.

"Tsunade wants to see you in her office before you go," Shizune told her as she helped her dress. Sakura didn't know where the clothes had come from, but they fit better than the clothes she owned. For this cool early March weather she'd been given a hooded sweater and the uniform black pants that every chunin, jonin, and their mother wore. She had warmed things to wear, but like everything else she owned they'd been auctioned off with the rest of her house. Was it still up for sale? Had someone bid for it by now and moved in?

Shizune accompanied her through the hospital to the entrance, and even though Sakura had expected a few stares, she didn't know people could be this indiscreet. Some of her medic colleagues even stopped to watch her go past like she was some kind of ghost floating past, and she thanked her lucky stars that at least she wasn't as famous as someone like Kakashi, and once she stepped out the hospital doors, not so many people knew her name, and even fewer knew her face. She turned right.

"Where are you going?" Shizune called, pointing to the left. "The administration office is this way."

"I don't want to see Tsunade," Sakura said, feeling lethargic in her apathy towards her shishou. The woman had kept her in the dark for four days, not visiting her once or sending any news of her child, and if she was going to summon Sakura then Sakura felt like being contrary. "I'm going to go to the bank... see if anyone's made a deposit on my house to put me in the black. Who knows? Maybe I'll have enough to rent a flat?"

Shizune looked surprised. "You should see Tsunade first," she said, and shot a furtive look around them. They were being watched, as it happened, by a couple of smoking medics standing by the entrance, so all Shizune could do was widen her eyes meaningfully at Sakura.

Who suddenly understood. "Oh," she said, and hurried off at once in the direction of the Hokage's tower.

She gave no thought to all the fresh stares she received as she left Shizune behind and all but ran up the steps of the administrating building. A couple of chunin she'd worked with in the past tried to stop her and congratulate her on destroying the syndicate – and also her new baby – but Sakura ducked around them, not stopping once in her beeline to the door of Tsunade's office. She didn't paused to knock either.

Tsunade looked up from the basket on her desk the moment the door burst open, a blue rattle pausing in her hand.

Sakura could only stand there, going weak with relief.

"During our intense investigation," Tsunade said, settling down into her chair with a cough, "we have discovered he likes the blue rattle better than the green one."

Sakura shut the door against any curious noses that would inevitably try to poke their way inside. "Is he...?"

"Safe? Yes. As far as we can tell," Tsunade said, spreading her hands over an astonishing amount of paperwork on her desk. "Come and take a look."

Sakura approached the desk, but she had eyes only for the gurgling boy in the basket. She couldn't have cared less for all the graphs and diagrams and references that Tsunade would show her.

"The seal is Iwa in origin," the Hokage said. "It's not as complicated as the one given to Naruto and they have a history of wearing out after about thirty years so it will need replacing eventually. I worry that where the Yondaime ensured there was as little bleed-through between the Kyuubi's soul and Naruto's soul as possible, that may not be the case here. But for now I can't say it's unsafe. Whoever did this knew what he was doing."

Karasu was just lucky he was dead.

"The council wanted to do more invasive tests, but I managed to convince them it was unnecessary," Tsunade went on. "It's hard to tell whether they're angry we have another jinchuuriki on our hands, or ecstatic that he may potentially be another Naruto. We're going to be under a lot of international pressure because of this, once it leaks to other countries that we have a second jinchuuriki, which I'm certain it already has. There will be sanctions against us for sure... the treaty may even get torn up and we'll enter another weapons race of villages trying to exploit the power of the tailed beasts all over again. If we didn't have Naruto, I'd be very worried we would be attacked directly. As it is I'm sure it won't be long before other villages or independent factions like the Syndicate start to plot Enoki's abduction."

Sakura eased her son out of the basket and smiled at his little round face peeking out from beneath an enormous cap. She'd worried he wouldn't know her or recognise he when she finally held him again, but the extra enthusiastic waggling of his arms when he saw her and the way he immediately latched onto a lock of her hair reassured her. It was hard to believe that a child so small could cause so much trouble just by existing. But talk of broken international treaties and economic sanctions made very little difference to Sakura. What could she do? She hadn't chosen this for her son and she couldn't undo what Karasu had done. She was more concerned about the fact that there could be groups planning to take him away again... although right then she was besotted with the little blue pyjama suit someone had dressed him in. Blue was nice, but Sakura made a mental note to buy him some pink outfits to match his hair.

"Did you hear me?" Tsunade asked.

"He's in trouble, I got it," Sakura said softly, playing with her son's tiny hand.

"Not just from outsiders, but perhaps from people within this village too," her shishou said. "We're fortunate that this village hasn't had any direct run-ins with the Rokubi in the past, but some of the people living here are former refugees from settlements in the mountains of the grass country that was attacked twenty years ago by the last Rokubi jinchuuriki. It wouldn't be wise to underestimate grudges. Naruto had a number of assassination attempts made on him when he was a child by those who lost people they loved in the Kyuubi's attack. It's a wonder he survived to adulthood, to be honest, living on his own for so long."

"But it won't be like that for Enoki," Sakura said sharply. "He has me."

"Yes." Tsunade nodded with a faint smile. "And he'll have Naruto too. I've told the brat that he can expect to start training him in a few years. I'll make sure the same mistakes aren't repeated again. I'm sure Enoki will know love all his life, and I've been told by Naruto that there should be no ban on speaking about his condition. Something about treating it like a shameful thing will make it become a shameful thing. I can't say I'm enthusiastic about the news spreading; it would be nice if everyone including the other countries remained ignorant to the situation, but maybe he's right. There's certainly nothing to be gained by keeping his own condition from him at the very least. When the time is right, you should try to tell him what he is."

Tell him what he is? Sakura blinked, having not really thought that far ahead. She supposed there was lots of things she would have to teach him of the course of his life... how to hold a spoon, how to read, how to brush his teeth, and then there would be stuff about the birds and the bees and then one day he'd have a girlfriend and Sakura would probably hate her...

She held Enoki a little tighter. It was a lot to think about when she wasn't even sure what tomorrow would bring.

Tsunade rolled her shoulders. "Now," she said, "we don't know much about the sealing jutsu used, so there may be unforeseen difficulties. If you notice the seal has changed or parts of it are fading, you must alert me immediately. If the marks on his back get darker or bigger or change in any other way, you must alert me immediately. If his eyes change, or you think his behaviour has changed, or you have any concern whatsoever, like-"

"Like I come home one day and find a giant flaming bird in the place my baby should be?"

"Alert me immediately, yes," Tsunade said, for all appearances deadly serious. "Have the nurses explained to you about feeding him? Burping him? Bathing him?"

"Ah – no."

"I'll send Hinata to you later. She has several younger siblings, so I think she'd probably give you better advice than I could. Have you applied for maternity leave yet?"

"Ah – no, I-"

"I've already taken the liberty," said Tsunade, handing her a folded form that had already been filled out. "You'll be on paid leave for the next six months, though you can ask for an extension if need be. Oh – here's your advance. It's based on the amount you've earned for the past six months."

Tsunade handed her another slip of paper, and when Sakura caught sight of all the zeroes, she very nearly dropped the baby in shock. "Whoa..." she whispered. "But – I've not – that's way more than I've earned in the past six months-"

"Is it?" her shishou interrupted with an indifferent shrug. "Speaking of which, here's your paycheque for your last mission too."

Sakura stared at the second slip of paper she was handed. "But that wasn't the pre-arranged payment-"

"Are you actually complaining?" Tsunade snapped. "You have enough money in your hands to buy-"

"To buy an apartment outright, I know!" Sakura cried. "I just don't understand why."

"Because you were sent off on a simple reconnaissance and ended up infiltrating the heart of the syndicate which eventually led to its destruction. The mission was upgraded in your absence to S-class, and your payment reflects that. But I can always downgrade it again if you're not happy with-"

"No – it's fine! It's good." Sakura stepped back, before Tsunade could snatch it away again. "I'm only surprised."

"Why? This isn't a hand out, Sakura, you've earned this money. And I think you'll need it because children aren't cheap, you know. You have to feed them, clothe them, educate them, and buy them toys and beds and that's after you spend a small fortune baby-proofing your house, because when they start crawling – there's so many ways kids can fry themselves these days."

"I..." Sakura began bemusedly. "I think I probably ought to actually get a house before I can think of baby-proofing it."

"What?" Tsunade flashed her an annoyed look. "What are you on about? You have a house."

"Yeah... but I lost it remember? It went up for auction," she said.

"And was sold, if I recall," Tsunade agreed. "And your debt was settled."

Sold? A small part of Sakura wanted to wither and die, despite the good news that her days of debt were over. Any hope of recovering her childhood home that had belonged to the women of her family for generations had flown straight out the window into the nearest sewer. Sakura waited for Tsunade to get it, but when her shishou only continued looking at her as if she was the stupid one, she burst out. "I don't actually have a spare house! That was the only one I had!"

"Didn't Kakashi tell you?" Tsunade demanded. "You mean to tell me you've been with him for close to six months and he never at any point told you?"

"Told me what?" Sakura was close to throttling the other woman.

"Kakashi bought your house," Tsunade said, slapping her hand down on some kind of ledger beneath all the papers on Enoki. "It's right here in his account details they dragged up a few days ago during the investigation. The third of October, last year, he placed a bid on your house about three weeks after you'd left for your mission to the rain country, and he won it. He's not exactly rich either – that was more than two thirds the money in his account – and the house is still in your name. Hell, if I'd known he'd done this I might not have been so confused as to who this boy's father was for so long. Such an act of stupidity can only be done out of love... or fear of incredible blackmail. I hadn't decided which yet, but you're telling me he never told you he did this?"

Sakura stared at her shishou, mouth hanging open. Kakashi had never told her. Had he forgotten? She'd mentioned enough times to him that she was effectively homeless, and yet he'd never felt the need to alleviate her concern? Why had he done that?

"I'm not kidding about the expense," Tsunade said, throwing open the ledger for her to see. "That was a very selfless thing he did. He has no money left now... did he think you would pay him back?"

If he had, he would've mentioned it to her. "Or maybe he knew his days of freedom were numbered," Sakura said quietly.

Tsunade dropped her head into her hand with a sigh and stared at all the papers on her desk. It made Sakura silently appreciate that between the two of them, she and Kakashi and generated an awful lot of work and headache for this woman.

"How is Kakashi?" Sakura asked after a heavy silence.

"Peachy," Tsunade said ambiguously, though her smile seemed amused rather than sardonic. "He was sentenced last night."

Sakura inhaled sharply, though she tried not to show her shock. Ice cold needles prickles her scalp as she imagined the worst. Execution, she thought. Definitely execution. "What... um...?"

"Five years," Tsunade said shortly.

"Until... he's executed?" Sakura quivered.

Tsunade closed her eyes patiently. "Until he's released, Sakura," she sighed. "The council read his confession over, in which he denied far more than he confessed, I must point out, and recommended a sentence. I recommended another sentence. We wrangled it out a little, but I managed to get it down to five years on account of genuine remorse, a new family situation, and having used his position in the Syndicate to sabotage some of the operations against us, and if he'd assisted in any damage against us, he did so unwittingly. And based on your testimony and Naruto's he also assisted in the Syndicate's inevitable demise. Some radicals might call him a hero... but not the council, since there is some evidence that Kakashi's misinformation was directly responsible for the assassination of half the previous council members. That, along with the other consequences of his deception, cannot go unpunished."

Sakura swallowed. "I understand," she muttered. Five years wasn't too bad, she guessed, considering all that had happened. Except five years was still a long time, and Enoki would be spending his most important developmental years without a father. Another five years and she would be twenty-five going on twenty-six and that still seemed like a lifetime away to her.

"Will I get to see him?" she asked Tsunade. "With Enoki?"

Tsunade smiled widely. "Of course. As often as you like, I suspect," she said. "His confinement is not going to be especially strict."

"That's good, I guess," Sakura said quietly, looking at Enoki sadly. This was going to be a hard five years for everyone.

"I suggest you go home and relax," said Tsunade, eyeing the faint bags of worry under Sakura's eyes and her pale complexion. "I think time to yourself and your baby is just what you need, and if you do need anything else I hope you realise you have a lot of friends who are anxious to help you."

"Thank you, but I think I'll have to learn to be self-sufficient," Sakura said, remembering how it was only last year that she'd been living virtually on pennies, and had frequently mooched off friends like Ino to get by day to day. That couldn't go on. With a small child relying on her now, she had to grow up and take responsibility for herself, and now that Kakashi had cleared her debt she knew she had a fighting chance of succeeding. Perhaps even one day she would be able to pay him back.

"Sakura, raising a child is extremely hard," Tsunade told her evenly. "It's not something anyone can do alone. It's not something anyone should do alone..."

He shishou trailed off, eyes drifting over the paperwork on her desk. She heaved a sigh and then lifted a smile to Sakura. "The basket is on the house. It'll do until you get your hands on a crib."

"I have one," Sakura said, smiling back. "There's one that my mother used for me in the attic. All my old blankets and clothes are up there."

"All set then," Tsunade said, winking. "Take care, Sakura."

"Thank you, shishou." She placed Enoki back in his Moses basket bowed deeply to her teacher, who swivelled away in her chair rubbing at some suspicious eyelash that had gotten in her eye.

On her way back down the stairs, the fact that other people were trying hard not to stare at her made it all the more obvious what kind of scrutiny she was under. Most of them gave her a wide berth, and she didn't think they would be doing that if she hadn't been carrying a jinchuuriki child. Shizune met her in the foyer with a smile. "Do you want me to walk you home?"

"No, it's ok," Sakura said, keen to be alone with her thoughts and her child and her old home. She didn't want the hassle of maintaining light-hearted conversation and reassuring Shizune that she was fine. She wanted time to be herself for once.

She walked the well-trodden path homeward, smiling down at Enoki who appeared to be fascinated by everything he could see from his basket – which was mostly Sakura and the sky and the occasional friendly older woman who, without knowing any better, stopped to compliment her on such a beautiful baby "But what a strange eye colour..."

It could be weeks before word fully made the rounds that the yellow-eyed boy was the village's latest jinchuuriki and strangers on the street would begin shying away from such an unknown quantity. For now Sakura was just glad that her walk home was absent of judgemental stares, and with each step her heart was growing lighter. She was going home. This house she thought she'd lost months ago was still the place she came back to, and a sense of rightness and belonging that had been missing for so long as she'd been ferried from place to place in the rain country was finally reasserting itself.

This was what home felt like. Walking the same road from work, seeing the same houses, and the same gardens and the same dog sitting outside the corner shop, enduring fusses and strokes from passing children. The same peeling paint on the door of number 6, and the same rusted bicycle that had been stuffed between two garages for as long as she could remember. The old life that she'd been afraid of losing when she'd fled to the rain country was back in her hands, only now she was walking back to it with Enoki. And as she turned down her street and saw her familiar garden gate, her heart leapt, and she knew that she'd never been running away from this place because of a child, but because her home had abandoned her.

"Here it is," she said to Enoki as she pushed open the creaking gate that protested always at precisely the same 65 degree angle. "This is what you'll call home from now on. No more hospital, no more probing, no more monsters. Just lots of blankets and cuddly toys from now on, ok?"

Enoki just looked sleepy, however.

Laughing softly, she reached for the spare key under the flowerpot on the porch – the flowers well and truly dead after a hot summer with no one to water them – and found it still there. The weeds needed cutting back, but there was plenty of time for that. She had six months off of work, after all.

"Home!" she exclaimed to no one in particular as she pushed open the door and drank in the familiar smell. It was slightly musty from months of disuse, but it was still warm and held the faintest tint of a scent that had always reminded her of her mother.

But there was something else here too.

"Welcome back."

Sakura straightened sharply, every muscle in her body going stiff with alarm. Had she just imagined that voice? She looked around the hall warily and even poked her head through the archway to the living room. A noise from the kitchen made her jump. It sounded like someone had just opened the fridge.

Either this was one awfully presumptuous burglar or...

Gripping the handles of Enoki's basket tightly, Sakura thumped down the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house. Lo and behold, there was a man rummaging around in her fridge. Slowly he straightened and waved a bottle of spoiled milk at her.

"Kakashi..." she breathed.

"Hello, my love," he said cheerfully, but she quickly realised he wasn't addressing her. He moved around the table and scooped the sleepy baby out of his basket to lift him high and plant a kiss on his cheek. "Have the mean old people been poking holes in you? And dressing you in baby blue? How ghastly."

"Kakashi."

"You'd suit white much better – it would go with your hair."

"Kakashi!"

He recoiled from her slightly. "Or we could stick with blue, it's cool."

"Kakashi. What are you doing here?" she hissed, looking him up and down. He was clean-shaven, his hair had been cut, and he was wearing fresh clothes that looked like his own. It was impossible. Her mind wouldn't accept it. Stress had driven her to hallucinations at long last and the only way her mind could cope with the idea of Kakashi being in prison for five years was to conjure his vision before her. Which Sakura refused to accept. She was not so weak-minded that she'd go mad over a little loneliness.

"What do you mean?" he asked vacantly, patting Enoki lightly on the back.

He really was standing there, wasn't he?

"You're going to be in so much trouble! Five years was lenient! What do you suppose they'll give you now after this stunt?" she demanded. Now her mind was beginning to catch up and rationalise what was happening. Of course he wasn't a delusion. Of course he was standing there. It was simply that he'd broken out of prison again. The idiot had only gone and screwed everything up. If he couldn't even serve one day of his five year sentence-

"I was only cleaning out the fridge," he protested. "Your salad has grown legs and your rice pot is full of dead moths pretending to be rice grains, which is more alarming than it sounds. Not to mention your fish over there is looking devious and fat and surprisingly healthy for having gone six months without food – I'm thinking you had multiple fish in that tank when you left, right?"

"Kakashi!" she all but shouted. She was definitely in no mood for jokes right now.

"You're not pleased to see me," he said flatly.

"Of course I'm pleased to – no, I'm damn well not pleased to see you!" she corrected herself. "You're supposed to be in prison!"

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" he said, affecting an air of indignity that couldn't have wrung more false. "So you can have this guy all to yourself, huh? Well, Sakura, read it and weep."

He slid over a sheet of paper that had been laid out on the kitchen counter beside them and turned away to approach the outside door which he'd propped open before she'd arrived home. There he stood in the sunlight, looking out over the garden while still gently patting the baby that was now decidedly conked out against his chest.

Sakura picked up the paper and began to read.


Conditions and Terms of Home Arrest Confinement

The defendant, Hatake Kakashi, having been fully advised of the alternatives, does hereby acknowledge and agree to the following terms and conditions of home arrest confinement:


"House arrest?" she repeated loudly. "You're under house arrest?"

"That's what it says," Kakashi said.

"But – Tsunade-shishou told me that you were going down for five years."

"Yes." He glanced at her over his shoulder. "Here. I hope you don't mind, but since I technically did buy this house off you..."

She stared at him, open-mouthed, waiting for everyone to come jumping out from behind the curtains to yell "Psyche!", but perhaps this was perfectly real after all. "But... why?" she asked.

"Your place is bigger, and you have a TV. If I'm going to be confined for the next five years, might as well be somewhere comfortable."

"No – I mean, why did they put you under home confinement? Why not prison?"

"Is that what you would have preferred?" he asked, contriving to sound hurt. "Just say it, Sakura, seriously. You wanted me out of the picture. They put me here because I made a very stirring speech about your situation and reminded them that fatherless children are fifty percent more likely to become criminals. I think I made that up, but they believed the tears."

"So basically you cried until they let you go."

"Don't say it like that..." he sighed. He moved to gently lay Enoki back into his basket on the kitchen counter and turned to her, arms held slightly aloft. "And is that all I get? An interrogation? I manage to work out a way to inflict myself on you constantly for the next five years and you just stand there looking horrified?"

"I'm just... you're not..." She was struggling to remember how to speak. For days – weeks – months in fact, she'd been mentally preparing herself for the inevitability of Kakashi's incarceration, of rearing a child alone, and trying not to miss him. "You're... free?"

"To a degree," he said, his arms still held out patiently. "You shouldn't read the small print. It's really depressing. They'll be tapping the phones to make sure I'm not talking to anyone nefarious and if I'm good I'll be allowed out for an hour each day under supervision, and we can only be visited by a list of pre-approved people which doesn't include felons apparently – and then there's this."

He pointed to his foot, and now that she looked, she noticed a plastic kind of bracelet looped around his ankle.

"It itches," he complained.

"Is that a monitoring device?" she deadpanned.

"ANBU standard. Pretty hard to fool too."

Sakura went on staring. His arms were still held open invitingly, waiting. "Sakura," he said. "We can be together... isn't that what you wanted? It's not going to be easy, but I'm going to be here for you and Enoki."

She stared.

"You'll never need a baby-sitter at least," he offered, his arms beginning to drop a little.

Suddenly she moved, throwing herself into him with tears standing out in her eyes. "Oh, thank goodness, I'm so glad," she gasped. "I thought you'd be locked up down in the dark and you'd be so lonely and I'd never get to see you! But – are you sure? About living with me?"

He smiled, holding her close and stroking his fingers over her soft cheek. "I should be asking you that. I kind of invited myself in... I hope you don't mind."

"I don't mind," she whispered quickly, pressing her face to his chest to breathe in that smell she loved so much. "I don't mind. I wanted this, always. Back in Amegakure when all we had was one hotel room... I knew that I wouldn't mind being with you like that. For good."

"For good," he repeated. "I like that."

They lapsed into a quietness that needed no words. Sakura simply held Kakashi tightly, soaking up his warm presence, comfortable that they had a lot of time ahead of them to say all the things they wanted to say. Likewise he enveloped her in his arms, and remembered that feeling of contentment he'd fleetingly had in the ruins of the Zuru estate, when he'd had everything he wanted in just the span of his two arms. He'd come so close to losing them both. Yet here they were, together at last... with a court order demanding it too.

Beside them, Enoki stirred in his basket, sucking his small fist.

"Thank you for buying my house back," she said at last. "Before some other bum bought it."

"What do you mean 'other'?"

"How much did it cost you?" she asked.

He leant down to whisper his bid in her ear, deliberately brushing his face against hers until their noses touched. It had such an effect on Sakura that she gazed at his mouth in a half-lidded gaze until she suddenly comprehended his words. "How much?" she squeaked. "How insulting... it's worth much more than that."

"I'm sure," he said smoothly.

"I should pay you back," she began hesitantly. "I heard from Tsunade it put you seriously out of pocket."

He shrugged. "It's fine," he said. "Just letting me crash here is paying me back."

Sakura continued to look sceptical.

"You gave me a beautiful son who only sometimes looks like a mushroom. If I could put a monetary value on that, you'd definitely have paid me back two-fold-"

"Or was it you who gave me the beautiful son, in which case I owe you twice as much?"

He grimaced. "Look... I figure after everything you went through – that I put you though – it's the least I could have done for you," he said quietly.

"True..." she mused. "But you bought this place back in October, before you knew where I'd gone and before you came to the estate looking for me. So you must have done this because we'd fallen out after the Jonan mission. Was that you way of making it up to me after taking my virginity like that? I suppose it's nice to know my virginity was worth roughly half as much as my house."

He swallowed hard.

"I can think of a great way you can make that up to me properly one day," she said, trying hard not to grin and blush. "Until then I think I should pay you back properly for the house. I don't like being in anyone's debt... not anymore."

"You can make it up to me by marrying me."

He said it before he could stop himself and Sakura blinked at him in acute shock. For a long tense minute she said nothing, although she made several attempts. At last she swallowed and looked down at his collar. "You mean... take your name?"

Damn. He should have known how Sakura felt about the Hatake name right now. "Or I could take yours," he said quickly, a little desperately.

She smiled softly at him, touched by his willingness to concede so easily to such a thing. But... "There's no need to rush," she said, running her finger over his chin and across his lower lip. "In a few months I'll go back to work, and soon I'll have enough money to pay you back for the house in full and then I'll feel like it's truly mine again. And then I'll marry you. If you still want me by then."

"Tell me the truth," he sighed. "It's because I'm a felon, isn't it? I thought all girls wanted the bad boys."

"Maybe a few months of being confined to this house with me will bore you to tears?" she suggested. "Then you might be glad you didn't marry me so soon."

"How could I be bored with you two around?" he asked, kissing the end of her nose. "No two days have ever been the same with you."

Sakura melted.

"But," he said, easing back from her, "if it'll put your mind at ease, I can wait until we're even. This house belonged to you and your mother and your grandmother; I understand. You don't want to feel bought out, and we have a lot of obstacles to work through before we can think of living a normal life."

"Mm," she hummed happily, not wanting to separate from him.

"The first being who is going to change that baby."

"Huh?"

He tapped his nose. "This thing doesn't lie."

Sakura looked over at Enoki who had woken up to wiggle in a discontented sort of way. "But... I don't have any spare diapers."

"There's some here," he said, lifting some of the heaped blankets inside the basket. "Wipes too."

He offered them to Sakura, who just looked at them blankly.

"You've never changed a baby before, have you?" he guessed.

"You have?"

"On occasion," he said with a shrug. "I'll show you."

And quite easily he lifted Enoki onto the kitchen table, blankets and all and began to unbutton his little blue suit. Sakura sat in a nearby chair and watched, intrigued, as Kakashi unwrapped the used diaper – handed it to her, of course – and set about wiping Enoki clean, all the while distracting the infant by making clucking noises and pulling faces. Enoki looked about as intrigued as Sakura.

"You're an idiot, you know that, right?" she observed.

Kakashi looked up from his process in fastening the new diaper. "Why?"

"For waiting this long to become a dad," she said. "After all that 'I don't care' attitude you had when I was pregnant, you're head over heels for him. It's obviously natural to you..."

"And not to you?" he asked, detecting the slightly melancholy edge to her tone.

"I don't think I can claim to be a natural mom. Not after all I let happen to him..." she sighed. She'd already messed up about as badly as it was humanly possible for a parent to mess up... insofar as losing her baby to a crazy crime lord who'd implanted a bijuu into him. The harm of this would never be undone. She just hoped that Enoki didn't grow up to resent her for it...

"Once we get the hang of it, we'll be ok," Kakashi told her. "We can't beat ourselves up for what's been done. We can only look forwards... because that's the only way Enoki will be looking as he grows up."

She smiled. "Thank you."

"You said it, not me," he reminded her. "He's our son. He's happy, he's healthy, and that's all that matters. He's ours, right from the tip of his tiddly toes to tips of his white hair."

Sakura smiled more widely. "Pink."

"Sorry?"

"His hair's pink."

Kakashi looked at Enoki, then at her, then back again. "No it's not. It's clearly white. You take after your daddy, don't you, sweetheart?"

"No, it's pink," Sakura said more firmly.

"That's just the reflection off his scalp."

"No, it's definitely pink."

It was an argument that would never be resolved.


Next Chapter: The Epilogue (Oh, yes indeed)