HI, GUYS 3 Happy Fire Friday, lovelies :)
Thank you so much for your kind words in the last chapter and I'm sorry I'm having trouble answering comments at the moment. I managed to answer like, four last chapter before anxiety won lol I hate that bitch, she nasty.
Thankie, A, for always having my back 3
Enjoy, y'all :)
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Sakura woke up slowly. She was in a dark room lit by a few candles, staring at the stark wooden ceiling, lying flat on her back on what felt like a sleeping bag. She took a deep breath and promptly choked on it, the pain in her everything bringing her to full wakefulness.
"Hey there, Petal, careful now." It was Genma, lifting her by her shoulders and supporting her so she could take a few sips of a proffered bottle of water. He gently set her down again when she was ready. "Took a nice nap?"
Sakura stared at him, vaguely noticing that the rest of her team was slowly making their way closer to her sleeping bag. Genma had a furrow between his brows even if his tone and words were light enough. He seemed worried but not sad so Sakura cleared her throat and prepared herself to ask the question she dreaded the answer the most.
"Is he alive?" Her throat was scratchy but Genma quickly nodded and the immense wave of relief that came over her didn't let her feel all of the pain.
Sakura took a shaky breath and smiled, her lips stretching painfully because of how chapped they were. Genma brushed her hair with one hand while Yugao drew her attention by squeezing one of her hands and Tenzou sat down at her feet.
"I'm so glad," Sakura sobbed weakly, tears that she hadn't felt forming falling down her face and pooling uncomfortably on her ears. "And everyone else?"
Tenzou seemed to be about to speak but Genma quickly cut him off.
"Everyone is okay, Hime-chan. Asuma is asleep over there and Keiichi hasn't left his side. We asked Boar to come assist us with healing the two of you and he arrived just a couple of hours after to relieve Keiichi. They're taking shifts now." Genma smirked slightly at her, his jaw working restlessly even though his senbon was nowhere in sight. He carefully brushed her tears away. "You fucking scared me, Sakura."
Sakura tilted her head to trap his hand between her cheek and shoulder. She wanted to get up and give him the tightest hug she could muster but she was feeling dizzy even while laying down so she didn't even bother to try. Yugao's hands were in her hair then, brushing some of the tangles but mostly mussing it up even more.
"I'm sorry I worried you," Sakura whispered, "I'm okay. I did it."
She wanted to tell them everything about the fight and how it had felt to have the Byakugou seal finally complete itself but she lacked the strength. That night wasn't the time for such conversations, she would have all the time in the world to tell them all exactly what had happened but for now, she just wanted to make sure everyone was okay.
With that thought, Sakura furrowed her eyebrow and craned her neck to look around the room.
Behind Yugao, she could see Keiichi's back as he sat next to Asuma, one hand on his wrist keeping his heartbeat in check and the other pressing periodically against his torso with medical ninjutsu. Kakashi was nowhere in sight.
"He's securing the remaining bandits on the downstairs floor," Genma offered without her having to ask. Sakura frowned again, not liking that he was given the task to do it on his own but appreciating the fact that he was good enough to be still walking around.
"Where are we?" There were a million other questions Sakura wanted to ask but she settled for that one at first.
"I created a building right where we were, Sakura," Tenzou offered her a tired smile which she tried to return. "We'll probably be here until they send a caravan from the prison and some medics to transport you and Asuma."
Sakura wanted to argue that she could make the trip home but thought better of it. While she absolutely hated admitting any kind of weakness, she still couldn't even sit by herself. She had to give her body some time to get over her chakra exhaustion. Lots of food and extensive meditation were in order.
"Kakuzu?" Sakura rasped and watched with narrowed eyes as her teammates exchanged glances. "He got away, then."
"Yes…" Genma trailed off but when met with her slightly annoyed face continued, "We had him surrounded for a second there, dude was creepy as fuck. Tenzou sent a wood clone but the bastard figured he was being followed just inside Water so… he's gone."
Sakura hummed discontentedly but shrugged her shoulder slightly. It couldn't be helped. They would find the bastard soon enough and when they did, Sakura would make sure she was there.
"I like your new tatt, Wolfie-chan," Yugao's husky voice never failed to calm her down or bring her comfort. Sakura turned her head slightly to grin at her senpai and squeezed her hand.
"I look hot, huh?" Sakura asked cheekily and was rewarded by her teammates chuckling.
"You always look hot, Hime-chan," Genma flirted back and winked at her, his face looking impossibly tired as he pressed the tip of his index finger to the middle of her forehead. "We're so proud of you. But if you ever pull a stunt like that again I swear to fucking Hashirama that I will murder your pinky ass."
Sakura snorted and rolled her eyes but immediately had to fight a wince. Chakra exhaustion always took a toll on the body and even Sakura's perfect chakra control couldn't completely jump back from it. She had truly hit zero per cent of her reserves and while there had been some decimates there to keep her alive, Sakura knew she could have died from trying to save Asuma.
It was a worthy death in her opinion.
"Everyone's injured," Sakura remarked calmly, letting her eyes catalogue her teammate's injuries. There weren't many and most weren't serious but it was enough that she would have sent them to the hospital if they had been in Konoha. "We getting a team of medics?"
"Yep," Yugao popped her 'p' and grinned at her, trying to put her worries to rest. "They should be here later tonight and then we'll leave in the morning, probably. But it's nothing life-threatening, we can wait."
Sakura let her sharp gaze follow their limbs for a few seconds longer before nodding and agreeing with her.
"Shouldn't Kakashi have been back already?" Sakura couldn't help but ask.
At the same time that she was genuinely wondering what was taking him so long, a part of her craved to see him, to confirm with her own eyes that he was in one piece. His absence from the room left a Kakashi-shaped hollow inside her.
"You know Hatake, Hime." Genma shrugged. "He'll be back when he's ready."
Sakura nodded but couldn't ignore the slight pang in her chest at the thought that he didn't have the same urge to see her well and awake. She understood that it must have felt stifling staying in the room with the windows closed and two teammates bedridden but still. It did sting.
Sakura took a deep breath and was satisfied it didn't stutter in her chest. Slowly, with Genma and Yugao's help as Tenzou watched her like a hawk, she sat up.
"Take me to Asuma," Sakura wasn't sure if she was asking or ordering but despite Genma's clear need for protests, he kept his mouth shut and helped her up.
"No chakra," he said, his voice firm and leaving no room for arguments as he helped her the few meters to Asuma's bedroll.
"I just want to do a quick check up, see if we didn't miss anything." Sakura tried to reassure him as he lowered her to sit next to Keiichi.
The Hyuuga offered her a relieved smile but he looked too tired to do anything else. Beads of sweat slid down his forehead and his eyes were drooping and Sakura knew he was nearing his limit. She gently took the hand pressed to Asuma's torso away and let him rest some as she took over. Sleeping had raised her reserves to ten per cent and while it would have been dangerous to anyone else to even be standing up, Sakura's control made it marginally okay to do a simple survey.
Asuma's system was working by itself but only barely so. Sakura had managed to reverse most of the damage done but the internal wounds weren't completely healed and needed constant attention so they wouldn't open again, hence Keiichi's upkeeping. Sakura asked a few questions and poked around with the tiniest amount of chakra she could manage, just enough to see that he could survive until the relief team from Konoha arrived.
"I really did teach you well, ne Keiichi?" Sakura murmured, a bit teasing but meaning it completely. His work was impeccable. She tiredly let her head rest on his shoulder and even though it was more slumped than the perfect Hyuga posture he usually kept, she relished his warmth.
"You should rest, sensei," he replied and Sakura would bet that if she had the strength to lift her head to look at him, he would be blushing. She chuckled weakly.
Just that tiny bit of work had her sweating and shaking and she didn't protest much when Genma scooped her up in his arms and took her back to her bedroll.
Asuma would live, she was sure of it, and after confirming that, she didn't have enough of a reason to fight to keep herself awake. So Sakura smiled slightly at her friends, closed her eyes and immediately fell asleep.
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The Team from Konoha arrived just before dusk and Sakura didn't wake again. Kakashi felt like shit for not being there when she did but the sight of both her and Asuma lying on their bedrolls so still and pale had been too much after a while. Kakashi was exhausted from his fight but he pushed forward with his pack, coordinating with Sakura's for them to stand guard around the building while Pakkun and Kaoru led some of the others on a hunt to see if they could catch Kakuzu's scent.
Thankfully, Shizune had arrived with a team of iryo-ninja to take over Asuma's treatment and take them to Konoha. She had checked Sakura over, looking completely dumbstruck at the sight of the lilac rhombus on her forehead before declaring she would be okay.
Sakura was put under a chakra induced coma for the way back after Genma related she had briefly gotten up to check on Asuma.
The trip back to Konoha was a blur to Kakashi, he was so lost in his thoughts that it was a miracle he didn't kill himself by accidentally jumping on the wrong tree branch.
That day had been one of the worst of his life. Leaving Sakura and Asuma to deal with Hidan had been one of the hardest things he had done even though he knew that it had been the right choice. The fight with Kakuzu, while fast paced and incredibly dangerous, hadn't made his heart stop in fear like it did when he managed to come back to Sakura.
Seeing her getting a fucking spear through her chest was something he hadn't been prepared to. The blood—her blood—was everywhere. It splattered on the skin of her neck and jaw and dripped down to the floor in rivulets and then she had laughed.
Kakashi was sure he hadn't been breathing by that point. His throat felt raw and he vaguely remembered screaming her name but Sakura turned the whole thing around so fast he barely had time to react.
And then Asuma… fuck, Asuma.
Kakashi couldn't believe how close he had gotten to losing his friend. Whenever facing an enemy of that level and having the fight escalate so much, the sight of so much blood… Kakashi had been prepared to lose them both that day.
There wasn't a part of him that believed everything would turn out to be okay because so far in his thirty-two years of life, things hadn't. Now that he was faced with the positive outcome of everyone on his team surviving, he wasn't really sure what to do with himself.
He felt a strange mix of feelings. Both proud and terrified, angry and relieved. If he thought too much about it, it got hard to breathe.
Kakashi spent the first day back locked inside his apartment with the lights off and his mask pooled around his neck as he tasted the staleness of the air around him. He made himself get up and take a shower the next day but when he finally mustered enough strength to reach the cenotaph, it only took one look at the gleaming stone and then he was shunshining back home.
If he had lost someone, he would have gone there. He would have written his report, talked to the Hokage and spent the next twelve hours standing vigil at the memorial. Kakashi couldn't bring himself to do that now that both his teammates had survived.
The day after they got back, Sakura got released from the hospital and Kakashi's life became progressively more complicated. He hadn't slept much and when he did it was always perched on a tree around the village. He thought it was great that Konoha had finally been getting back up on its feet after the Konoha Crush but it was fucking awful having to learn how to be permanently back at the village with all of this free time on his hands.
If it had been a few years ago or even a few months, he would have been sent away immediately after day three in the village, sometimes even earlier than that. And he had gotten used to it. Now, Kakashi had no idea what to do with his free time.
During that week, Kakashi kept himself isolated from everyone else. He didn't talk to anyone safe for Kurenai for a brief moment at the hospital and Usui once he had been accosted at the market. Still, the fresh scent he had associated with Sakura followed him everywhere.
It was on the memorial just when he arrived, on a random tea shop while he walked around Konoha, on the Hokage tower, Usui's office and the hospital the one time he went to check on Asuma. At one point, he could swear that he could smell her around his apartment complex. Kakashi wasn't sure if he was subconsciously seeking out her scent—and consequently, her—or if she was just everywhere he went.
All he knew was that he felt off kilter after spending so much time with them and now being completely apart.
The day Asuma got out of the hospital about ten days after they had returned, Kakashi's presence at the Rusty Kunai was requested. More like demanded in the form of Asuma and Gai storming his apartment and forcibly taking him there.
It's not like Kakashi didn't enjoy these outings, he had long since learned the importance of this particular tradition after a jounin mission, but he had still been feeling off and would have prefered to have summoned his dogs for a night camping in the woods if possible. Still, Kakashi pushed those feelings away and followed his friends to their usual table at the back, strategically positioned so most of them could keep their backs to a wall and watch the exits.
Everyone seemed to be there, even people who hadn't been a part of their mission, and they were well into their cups of sake when Kakashi arrived. Given how Gai had been particularly loud and Asuma particularly handsy when retrieving him from his apartment, Kakashi figured they had been mid festivities before going to get him.
Their usual booth in the back was near the bar and there was a table for six squished behind them and between the counter and the wall. From the booth they could see both the main entrance and the corridor that led to the bathrooms and the back entrance. That day, the table behind them was completely full with their fellow jounin and Kakashi was promptly deposited on their booth by his well-meaning friends.
Across from him sat Asuma, Gai on his left and Kurenai on his right, laughing almost as upriously as their green-clad friend. Tenzou was already on Kakashi's side of the booth when he fell right on his ass from Gai's push and Kakashi was relieved that he wasn't being caged in and had a clear path to the exit if he wanted to.
He drank from the bottle placed in front of him and joined the conversation from time to time but mostly focused on relaxing his shoulder to the appropriately slouched posture he usually kept. Somehow, some details of their mission had been leaked and the whole table plus the friends seated behind them, who refused to stay still for long and inserted themselves in their conversation easily, had been happy in teasing both Asuma and him about it.
Kakashi blamed jounin and their penchant for gossip but mostly Tenzou and the way his mouth loosened when drunk.
It was at least half an hour after he sat down that his attention was brought back to the present when he caught a glimpse of pink hair by the entrance of the bar. The gust of wind from outside brought forth her scent and Kakashi's nostrils flared beneath his mask as he was unable to look away. Genma was guiding Sakura by her shoulder and suddenly pushing her on the booth next to Kakashi before stealing a chair from the table behind them for him to sit on the end of the booth, effectively blocking Kakashi from leaving.
"Sorry we're late," Genma said, smirking around his senbon. "I had to drag Hime-chan out of the office."
Sakura rolled her eyes and pilfered Tenzou's drink for herself before shooting Genma a look.
"I told you I wouldn't be coming, you're lucky I can't refuse free drinks." Sakura turned her drink in one gulp and then moved to get Asuma's, slapping his hand away when he protested. Kakashi tightened his grip on his cup, needing the alcohol to keep himself sane that evening although it was for nothing. Sakura made no move to steal his drink, let alone acknowledge him. Kakashi avoided looking directly at her. "No passing out before you pay for my tab, Jiji."
Sakura looked at Asuma and him, giving them a happy grin that made Kakashi's chest hurt. She took Asuma's hand in hers without any reservations and guided her usual softly glowing medical chakra over it for a few seconds.
"Am I okay to drink, doc?" Asuma asked jokingly but there was affection in his face in a way that he used only for those he really cared about. Kakashi knew the mission had changed their dynamics but he was just then beginning to realise it hadn't been solely because of his and Sakura's cover.
"Barely," Sakura scoffed and retrieved her hand to take a shot. "But I know better than to tell you not to."
"Damn straight," Genma said, filling their cups. "A toast. To not dying."
"To Sakura." Asuma raised his glass and Kakashi caught Sakura's small, uncomfortable smile before doing the same with his.
"To Sakura," everyone around them echoed.
Conversation flowed easily between the jounin and Kakashi was surprised to realise that Sakura knew all of them and was even friendly with some, the most shocking revelation being her semi friendship with Anko. It felt weird, having her so close to him after a week and Kakashi found himself cataloguing everything about her that had changed despite the fact that the sheer act of looking at her made it hard for him to breathe properly.
The first thing that caught his attention, naturally, was the Byakugou seal, branded lilac in the middle of her forehead. It caught everyone's attention, actually, and Kakashi used the distraction that all of their questions provided to look closer without getting noticed.
Her scent was still the same but her hair had gone back to its normal pink and, instead of a ponytail, it was firmly secured into her usual braid. She was wearing the hakama-style pants she had used in the mission but instead of a hoodie, she was wearing a black halter top that clung to her form exactly like their ANBU shirt did. The red haori was something he had come to associate with her and it felt comforting somehow to see her back in it. That is, until it slipped down one shoulder and Kakashi saw that the halter top was actually a bodysuit. A backless bodysuit.
Kakashi avoided looking at her for the remainder of the night. His friends were still constantly teasing them and it kind of annoyed him at first that they would do it in front of Sakura, even to her but the more time he spent there, the more Kakashi relaxed.
Maybe it was because he was well on his way to getting drunk or maybe it was the general warm atmosphere. Kakashi didn't know, but he found himself slowly relaxing and joining in more actively on the conversation, his body slowly letting go of some of the tension it still held. It didn't take long for him to slide down enough on his seat that his thigh bumped Sakura's knee.
The contact immediately brought him to the present, but Kakashi couldn't find it in him to pull back. Sakura was there, she was alive and she was warm. Kakashi breathed a sigh of relief he hadn't known he'd been holding in.
The conversation turned more teasing than he would have liked pretty quickly. Everyone had had way too much to drink at this point and while Kakashi counted himself as still sober enough to walk, he wasn't too far behind.
His fellow jounin were mostly making fun of them, laughing loudly about anything and everything regarding their mission, especially about Asuma's and his currently growing hairs, Sakura's role as his wife and the fact that Sakura had killed her enemy and Kakashi hadn't. Of course, every single good natured jab had an undercurrent of tension. The threat of the Akatsuki hung over their head ominously and Kakashi could tell that despite their jokes, it wasn't everyone that was comfortable with the cover story Kakashi and Sakura had used, mostly those who hadn't gotten to work with Sakura yet.
Still, Kakashi couldn't care much about the conversation going on around him when she was this close to her. Not when he had come that close to losing her. His gaze fell on her seal again before he quickly diverted it to the bottom of his cup.
The rookies and Gai's team had joined two tables in the middle of the bar so they could all sit together well into their night. Kakashi thought it must have been around eleven when most of them arrived, at least three hours after Kakashi's group. It took barely ten minutes for them to notice Sakura.
The pink haired jounin had started making her excuses to leave when their attack came.
"Come on, Sakura~!" Tenten cajoled Sakura, trying to get her to get up. "Ino sent me here and if she sees that you're leaving without even staying with us for a bit, she'll…"
"She'll throw a fit, that's what!" Ino herself finished, placing both hands on her hips and glaring at Sakura briefly before looking at Asuma. Her gaze immediately softened. "Hi, sensei! I'm so happy to see you out and about!"
Sensei. The word hit Kakashi harder than he expected and he fought the urge to scoff. Kakashi could really never be compared to Asuma, Gai and Kurenai when it came to being a jounin sensei. He had never looked at the three of them like children. They had been someone he had to protect, guide the best he could and they had certainly been his, but he had failed them all, as he knew he would.
The image of Sakura with a spear through her chest assaulted him suddenly, and he had to fight to keep his nausea at bay.
"Ah, thanks Ino." Asuma scratched the back of his head and smiled sheepishly. "We should head out to Yakiniku-Q soon, yeah?"
"For sure!" Ino exclaimed happily before shooting another firm gaze towards Sakura, who sighed and raised her hands in defeat.
"Alright, alright!" Sakura got up unsteadily and Kakashi fought the urge to help her. "I'll stay for a while, you harpy, but you're paying for my next round."
"Deal," Ino said and pulled Tenten towards the bar while Sakura picked up the haori she had discarded on the back of her chair and shrugged it on.
She gave a general wave to the table, her gaze falling briefly on Kakashi. He crinkled his eye in a smile and waved back but didn't acknowledge the heavy look on her face. Sakura set her jaw and turned to Genma to place a kiss on his forehead.
"Don't count on me to put you to bed today, Shiranui, you better not inconvenience anyone else with your puking, you hear me?" Her words were harsh but her tone was joking in a way that only two people extremely close to each other could achieve.
"Oh~" Genma laughed and squeezed her arm. "Are you planning on getting some today, Hime?"
Sakura shot him a look and didn't answer, merely turned around with a wave of her hand.
The mood around the table had shifted slightly and the sudden quiet made Kakashi focus his attention back on his friends and not on watching Sakura walk towards her friends.
"Isn't she a little too young for you, Genma?" Kurenai asked, her eyebrows raised. Kakashi's own eyebrow twitched at the reminder that Kurenai knew something about Genma that he hadn't bothered telling Kakashi.
To anyone else there, it may have seemed like Kurenai was being firm with Genma because Sakura was younger than them but Kakashi knew that wasn't the case or at least not all of it. For the past few months, there had been something going on between Genma and Shizune. Kakashi wasn't one to pry but he knew that she had spent some nights there—they unfortunately shared a bedroom wall and it was all too easy for him to identify the woman on the other side.
Despite Genma's reputation, Kakashi knew just how much he was in love with Shizune. He knew that even if his friendship with Sakura seemed to be closer than what was probably appropriate for someone so much older than her, Genma would never cross that line with her, especially if he had something going on with Shizune. Of course, Kurenai only got Shizune's side of this mess and hadn't quite spent any significant time with Sakura yet to understand the situation.
Kakashi sighed into this cup and settled back to watch the situation unfold.
Genma rolled his eyes and didn't acknowledge her look, but there was a certain kind of tension on him when he played with the senbon between his teeth.
"It's not like that, we're friends." He shrugged and caught Kakashi's eyes for a second before Kakashi could divert his look.
"Still," it was Gai that jumped it, his lips pursed and eyes unfocused. "It's not exactly youthful behaviour to be flirting with a girl like that."
Kakashi raised his eyebrows, only then realising that Gai was probably drunker than he looked. He usually wasn't this confrontational even if that was truly what he believed to be the truth. Surprisingly, it was Asuma who stepped in despite Genma's clenched jaw.
"That girl is the only reason I'm sitting here today." Asuma reached for his lighter but didn't grab a cigarette to light, only flicked it open a few times. The mood on the table had shifted dramatically but Asuma didn't seem bothered by it despite the completely distressed look Kurenai now sported. "Besides, no one was calling any of us boys when we were that age."
And wasn't that the truth. Kakashi himself had already been an ANBU captain at the time, completely cut off from his jounin friends but not alone. Sakura was doing infinitely better than him at that age.
The conversation turned towards more casual matters, the amount of alcohol in their system and the years of camaraderie between them not letting the tension evolve into any fights. Kakashi drank two more bottles of sake before movement on the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was Sakura.
She was getting up from the joint tables the Rookies had taken for themselves and putting her haori back on. Next to her, Hyuga Neji got up as well, his hand falling naturally on her shoulder before sliding down to rest on her lower back. Kakashi watched them as they left, perhaps for longer than he should have, a strange feeling settling in the pit of his stomach.
When he turned back to his table, Asuma was staring at him.
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Sakura took a deep breath of the fresh air around her. Post mission sex with Neji almost never failed to put her to sleep but that night was a different story. It took her a few minutes of trying to fall asleep while he gently snored beside her before she silently got to her feet to gather her clothes. Now, she was almost back at the Senju Estate, enjoying the night breeze of mild Konoha air.
She took a long shower, still appreciating the fact that she had her own bathroom even after more than a week home. For a second she considered putting on her pyjamas and trying to meditate herself to sleep but quickly did the opposite. Within minutes she was outside again.
Sakura wasn't one to indulge in cigarettes while in the village and—mostly—sober, but something about that night had made it seem particularly tempting.
She was being ignored. She knew it was bound to happen the moment Kakashi had failed to be waiting for her and Asuma to wake up but it somehow still managed to annoy her. Sakura understood, of course she did, but it still pissed her off.
She had done everything in her power not to attend that night's jounin encounter at the bar but Genma was relentless. She had to admit, it had been good to be there even if she didn't want to meet Kakashi. If he was avoiding her, then he could damn well be the one to seek her out.
Sakura sighed a cloud of smoke into the sky as she walked lazily through the training grounds.
Her head had been all over the place and, if she was being honest, she hadn't really slept well since the night before the fight with Hidan. She wanted to blame it on the usual grief coming back from missions gave her but, ultimately, Sakura couldn't lie to herself.
She had gotten used to sleeping next to Kakashi.
It wasn't only the fact that she had gotten used to sleeping next to someone in bed, this last try with Neji had been proof of it. The problem was that she was now used to being engulfed in his scent and his warmth. The closest she's been to feeling relaxed was when she had been sitting next to him in the bar. And what a shitshow that interaction had been.
The thing was, Sakura had come to terms with the fact that she was attracted to him. It had been easy, really, to appreciate his body, his face, his touch when he was decked out as Hatanaka Kato. Sakura hadn't needed to question the natural physical attraction between them because they had been playing a part.
That night at the bar had forced Sakura to face some awkward realities.
She wasn't just attracted to dark haired Kato. She had sat there next to Hatake Kakashi, fully decked out in his jounin uniform and hiding ninety-six per cent of his body, and felt warm. His shoulder almost brushing hers had made it hot enough for her to have to take her haori off and when her knee had touched his covered thigh… It somehow had felt more intimidating than the time they had to fake having sex in their tent.
That sudden realisation coupled with the fact that Sakura just hadn't been able to sleep well since coming back made her angry. She was way over the time she would have left something like this bother her, Sasuke was the last one she had felt something remotely similar to this and she would not do a repeat of that bullshit. Something like anger and apprehension had made Sakura take her frustrations out during sex with Neji and now… Now she just wanted to walk around a bit and put those feelings in a nicely locked box in the back of her mind. Inner was great at keeping those away.
Sakura walked for a long while after finishing that first cigarette and forcing herself not to have a second one. Damn Asuma and his corrupting ways, she would have to talk to Genma to help her out with quitting.
That train of thought led her to remember the story Kakashi had told her about how he helped Genma quit and something warm settled inside her chest. It didn't hold anything remotely as… frantic as her earlier thoughts had and Sakura sighed in relief.
Inner had done her job and now she only felt affection when remembering those pre-mission days with him.
It took her a few more minutes of walking aimlessly for her to realise she had actually been going somewhere. As usual since coming back from a hard mission, Sakura had spent some hours at the cenotaph letting her eyes roam the characters and reminding herself of her nindo. It really wasn't much of a surprise that her feet took her there when her head was so full and messy.
What was a surprise was the lone figure standing there in her spot.
Maybe it wasn't really a surprise for her to find Kakashi at the memorial, the man always seemed to end up there but it was well past three in the morning and she had figured he'd either still be drinking with their friends or passed out. The sight of his now silver hair made her stomach flutter uncomfortably.
And immediately after, her anger returned when she remembered that the bastard had been ignoring her. Not only ignoring her but actively avoiding her around the village. Sakura didn't know why it made her so angry when she had come to expect this type of behaviour from the man but that was… that was before.
Sakura stepped away from the treeline and made her way towards him.
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It had taken longer than Kakashi had expected for his friends' presence to be too much. The alcohol had numbed him considerably to Asuma's curious gaze and Genma's teasing and Sakura's absence but Anko… Anko had really pushed it.
"Eh~!" Anko had thrown her arm around his shoulder, pushing her chest into his arm as she brought her face closer to his. "You really are getting old, huh? I remember a time you would have been long gone, celebrating with your sweet, young ex-wife."
The reminder that the jounins knew about their cover had made Kakashi sigh and make his excuses. The worst part being that Anko was right. He would have done that if Sakura had been anyone else. Instead, he was stuck feeling off, feeling her scent everywhere he went and having to watch her leave with the Hyuga—the Hyuga, Gai's kid, which turned out to be her boyfriend according to Keiichi.
"Meh, they've only been going out semi-regularly for the past five months, I wouldn't exactly call it dating." Genma had brushed him off but still, Kakashi's gut had clenched uncomfortably.
He went back home and took a warm shower, hoping it would help him sleep. Not that it had done anything for him the past week but Kakashi thought maybe the alcohol would do the trick this time. No such luck.
So his feet had guided him to the memorial. As he had expected, Kakashi had been assaulted by flashes and memories from his last mission. He sent his prayers to Rin and Obito and asked them for guidance. At one point, his head was such a mess he was sure the details of his memories were getting crossed over, the rock that killed Obito falling on Asuma, his arm running through Sakura's chest.
Kakashi brought his mask down so he could take a few gulps of the fresh night air.
Seeing Sakura get impaled like that had almost killed him. He knew it wasn't an exaggeration. If she had died then, he didn't think he'd have the strength to keep going. Enough was enough and Kakashi couldn't lose anyone else from his pack.
He had expected this to happen over four years ago when Sakura was a fresh genin and absolutely useless in the field. At the time he had thought that she would either become a career genin or die early because of a mistake during one of their missions. He had made it a point not to get attached to her because he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
As time went by and Sakura climbed the ranks at the same speed that Kakashi himself had at her age, this scenario started to change. Sasuke and Naruto, the ones he had really been invested in had left him, had left them and with it came a certain bond between Kakashi and Sakura that he hadn't been expecting. The fact that she had started learning medical ninjutsu had helped tremendously in making him more open to the idea that she was pack. She was there, she hadn't left him and he had to do something.
In the years that followed they had gotten closer, especially after he had given her his father's wolves. She was officially part of his pack, his family. Despite not being placed in any missions together and having been mostly without seeing the other around the village, they had made a point to reach out to each other in different ways. Small gifts, tiny acts of affection that held their bond and helped it grow.
Then this mission fell on their laps.
Kakashi hadn't expected to have grown so much closer to her in such a short amount of time. It seemed ridiculous but given their bond, he really shouldn't have been surprised. At this moment in his life, she was probably the one person he trusted the most.
Seeing the end of her fight with Hidan had probably cost him a few years of life and if his hair wasn't already silver, he imagined it would have gone grey a long time ago.
It seemed like his thoughts had summoned her. Sakura was standing a few meters behind him and Kakashi could feel her irritation from a mile away. He brought his mask back up his nose but didn't turn to acknowledge her.
"You've been avoiding me."
Kakashi hummed noncommittally and kept his eyes on the moonlit stone before him. Sakura's perpetually halfway compressed chakra churned dangerously and she took a deep breath to calm herself.
To be perfectly honest, Kakashi didn't need this right now. He hadn't had enough time to process any of the things that had happened and come up with a plan to go forward, and he needed more time. Of course, that wasn't how things worked with Sakura. Despite her calculating personality, she wasn't one to beat around the bush and let things take their natural flow, choosing instead to take any problems head on.
"You know, if you weren't a grown ass man it would be funny that you can't look me in the eye," Sakura said, coming to stand next to him but curiously not looking directly at him. Kakashi watched from the corner of his eye as she traced the characters in the stone with trained eyes in a way that made him think she had done that countless times before.
The crinkle between her brows deepened the longer Kakashi stayed silent and instead of giving up and going away like he was hoping she would, Sakura kept talking.
"Look, if this is about… our cover, you need to stop worrying. The gossiping will cool off in a couple of weeks and I'm pretty sure it's only going around the jounin and…" Sakura sighed a bit and shrugged her shoulders. "We're professionals, Kakashi."
When Kakashi failed to engage, only let out a particularly strong breath, Sakura threw her hands in the air and turned fully towards him. She forcibly pulled on his arm until he was semi-facing her.
"Will you fucking look at me?" Sakura exclaimed, frustration and anger clear in her voice.
Kakashi couldn't not look at her. His eye found hers briefly before raising to the rhombus in the middle of her forehead, thanking the universe for its existence. Her green eyes were like magnets and soon enough, it was physically impossible for him to be looking elsewhere.
"You almost died." Kakashi didn't recognise his voice. It was very low and soft and it almost felt like the words hadn't come from him at all. I almost lost you, he almost said, but managed to keep the words locked behind his teeth. The truth was, he hadn't looked at her because he knew that once he did, he wouldn't be able to look away.
He wanted to drink her in, let both of his eyes scan every inch of her to make sure she's there and alive. Kakashi wanted to press her close to him like he had done every night before without fail and feel her scent on him everywhere he went the next day. Kakashi wanted to run away from this as fast as he could.
"Kakashi… we're both elite shinobi." The fight seemed to have bled out of her and Sakura's voice was soft and her face impossibly understanding, it was almost enough to make him look away. "If I have it my way, I'll die on the battlefield, fighting for those I love."
"I know," he managed to rasp, the words hurting his throat on the way out because, yes, he understood. It's what he expected his own end to be like and he couldn't hold her to different standards no matter how much the thought of it hurt him.
Sakura sighed.
"You need to get used to this," she said and Kakashi finally gathered enough strength to look away, his eye immediately going to the full moon above them. "This mission was a success, I'm pretty sure they'll be putting us together in the future."
"It makes sense, doesn't it?" Kakashi nodded his head and briefly closed his eye before he sighed and looked back at her. Sakura was smiling gently at him but her features were completely closed. He wasn't getting anything from her.
"Go to sleep, Kakashi." She turned away from him, and Kakashi could feel that she was circulating her chakra, getting herself ready to shunshin out of there. "Konoha is going to need you pretty soon, you should get all the rest you can."
With those ominous words, Sakura disappeared without a sound, leaving cherry blossoms in her wake. Kakashi frowned at the petals the breeze carried, his chest constricting with fear and trepidation.
What do you know that I don't, Sakura?
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Sakura swiped her tantou in a wide arc and caught her clone in the throat. She had been focusing her training on using chakra to enhance her physique further and it showed good results for her speed. She was so fast now, she was merely a streak of red and pink on the battlefield.
Her clone used medical ninjutsu to keep itself from bleeding out and the amount of chakra she had poured into it when creating it made it so it could withhold more hits. Sakura finished it in the next five minutes, panting and exhausted but satisfied that at least some of the nervous energy that had been coursing through her the past few days was gone.
Sakura knew that Kakashi was going through something when he started avoiding her, but actually seeing him had been terrible for Inner's self control in keeping everything bottled up. After spending so long watching him wearing a mask and then not, Sakura had become a bit of a master when it came to deciphering his tells.
His face a few nights ago had almost killed any resolve she had.
So she dove right into training herself to exhaustion. That was, until Tsunade had dropped a bomb in her lap that night at dinner.
Apparently, her name had been added to every Bingo Book, the Flee on Sight status she had on some of them being updated to them all, all of her aliases added and catalogued, many of her skills depicted. Tsunade had meant it as a compliment but Sakura hated the fact that she would be recognised everywhere she went.
There was only one person who could have any interest in her being in the Bingo Books like that and Sakura vowed that she would kill the bastard. Kakuzu must have tracked the chunin they had accidentally let get away and between the two of them made sure she would be catalogued with a high bounty. That meant he was going to be coming to collect.
Tsunade had gotten her drunk that night, royally drunk as in Sakura was surprised she could even manage to fight her clone to exhaustion. Apparently, she had some congratulating to do for Sakura to have awakened her Byakugou seal.
Sakura was still trying to figure out how it worked but Tsunade had been entirely unhelpful because apparently, the seal manifested itself in different ways depending on the person.
It was a strange thing, not having anything else to learn from her shishou. Tsunade was still leagues ahead of her from an experience point of view but she had finally said that she had nothing else to teach her. No medical ninjutsu, no battle skill, no trick that Sakura didn't already know. Sakura felt oddly sad.
There was a thought inside her head, however, that didn't leave no matter how hard she tried to shoo it away. Sakura had made it.
Killing Hidan, while terrifying and scary it had been to be faced with losing her teammate, had proved to herself that she had made it. Sakura shunshined to the memorial again, having spent the past two nights there observing the stone.
Sakura looked at the characters and remembered the day she had keeled over and despaired over being left behind. Her nindo had been consolidated in front of that same stone and she could remember how it had been a monumental change in her life. She had decided after a while that she didn't need to cut her hair to become a good ninja, a shinobi that would care less about her appearance than her fighting skills.
She had grown up, realised those weren't simultaneously opposites of the other. Her appearance was as much a weapon as anything else and she had sworn to herself that she would keep her hair in a braid until she could back it up with her skills.
That day had finally come.
Sakura wanted to cling to the days that she could tell herself she wasn't ready, that she still had much to learn, but the truth was it was time for her to face the facts. Tsunade had clearly implied she didn't have anything else to teach her, Sakura was feared across all nations and revered, she had killed an immortal R-ranked ninja.
With shaking hands, Sakura untied her hitai-ate from her forehead. After a moment of consideration, she retied it around her neck and let her hands fall. She looked at the moonlit stone and let her eyes trace the characters once more while she took a few steadying breaths.
She untied the end of her braid, her hands steady now, and thought about her next plan of action. She unwove the very end of her braid and started working her way up. Sakura would protect her friends. She would find Itachi and convince him to work with them if need be. She would drag Sasuke's ass back home. She would stand strong and steady and she would do everything in her power to make sure her friends were safe and happy.
Sakura's hair flowed freely down her back with the Fire Country breeze.
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SO. Imo, Asuma died in canon because Shikamaru needed the character development. I love him so very much but no one can convince me that he was a good ninja back then, pretending to be asleep while his friends were literally in the crossfire a few rows down. Nuh-huh. Shikamaru, like every (cough male cough) character needed something to happen to him to fire up his drive and in this fic, we'll stick with that first Sasuke Retrieval Mission fail... for now. Tbh I felt like I was taking something from him when I wrote this, despite the fact that writing a Sakura x Hidan fight scene has been my dream for a long time now. The more I think about it, the more I want to add something that would kind of give him back the chance to be badass and amazing and actively want to pursue a jounin career but I still haven't decided. Killing Asuma now would make no sense for the advancement of the plot. Sakura already has her own drive and the fire inside her is a fucking inferno, killing him now would only be senseless pain and I don't think it's valid.
On the topic of things that I haven't decided yet... some people said in the comments that they were sad but understood that it would only be realistic for Asuma (or someone) to die and... I do agree with that. Logically, if I think with my head. However, the mere thought of killing one of these characters makes me wanna cry now that I developed them lol And then my rational brain goes and says: "bitch, get over it, you wanted to write something realistic, you gotta kill someone. If you cry that means your readers will cry as well and isn't that the point of art? to make people connect emotionally?" well. Yeah. But also. Fuck, this year has been so awful, do we really need something else out there making us cry? Even if it is cathartic. I can't write or read anything that doesn't have a happy ending bc life is shitty enough, I don't want to create something that people will feel bad about for weeks. But then I go... "what about a character that I haven't developed much?" and again my rational brain comes around to yell at me that that's kind of cheap. Anyway, my point is: I don't know if I'll ever kill someone in this fic. I'm a fucking softie, fucking sue me. Rest assured that if my rational side does win over my emotions, neither Kakashi or Sakura will ever die in any of my fics and there will always be a happy ending even if there's a bit of suffering before. Also, I will most definitely change the warnings in the tags. Speaking off, please take note that this is an Explicit story and that's for gore and all that we've already seen but also for sexual scenes. They will be much more descriptive once the main pairing gets together.
This chapter was very transitional but I felt we needed something chill after the emotional toll the last chapter took on us all, lol. Sakura made it. She's a fucking badass kunoichi and I feel ridiculously proud to have made it this far into her story and to see her progress (and mine).
Thank you all who reviewed so far, you guys have a special place in my heart even if you only did it once and it was just a few words. Thank you everyone who liked and bookmarked this story, sometimes I don't get emails about it but every once in a while I'll check my stats and be in complete awe of how many of you seem to be enjoying this story. Aside from a few bad reviews last chapter, you were all so sweet to me even though I could see how sad/mad/emotional last chapter made you. I appreciate every single one of you.
I really believe 2021 will be the KakaSaku year. I see the community growing and it makes me so fucking happy. Please, keep liking, reviewing and reblogging not only this story but others you enjoy as well. I know it might be a bit daunting sometimes but something as simple as copying the part you loved the most on a review or a line of emoji makes a difference. For those of you that create content, please keep on creating be it art or writing. And link me so I can reblog the shit out of it over on Tumblr.
Love you all 3