Chapter Twenty Seven:
Konoha gates were indeed a welcome sight even in the darkness of 3am (they'd pushed quite hard to keep the journey short). ANBU were awaiting collection and the second they were in reach of the gate they sprang to take control of the potential threat. Their escorted agent went willingly of course, asking how long she'd be detained before she could speak with the Hokage, even elegant as she walked in the middle of a 6-man holding cell formation in heels.
Sakura and Kakashi remained on alert until she turned the corner past the row of shops.
"I need to handover to Tsunade." Sakura began, her hands already on his face, the green chakra reading the damage. "It doesn't look as bad as I expected."
Kakashi responded by taking her digits to the edge of the mask and peeling it back. He knew what she saw as she took a sharp gasp. The sharingan had been steadily bleeding down his face for the last hour of the run, the blood absorbed into the black fabric, seeping through onto his face no doubt.
If she hadn't given him the chakra pills, he would indeed be in a worse state.
"I'll get take-out if you'll come by after." he bartered.
He watched her reactions as she fought to demand to fix him now. Sadly, the report to Tsunade came first, they had a potential risk demanding to stand before their Hokage after all.
Sakura reported back and headed straight to Kakashi's apartment via the rooftops. Half of her was aware she still had sweat from the fast run back, still had the adrenaline keeping her awake despite the lack of sleep and was still very much aware there could be a call to arms to the Hokage tower if things didn't go well.
But the other half rationalised that Kakashi needed healing, he'd been around her when she'd been sweaty before, she was absolutely starved and they had played their part in this mission. It was in someone else's hands now.
So she launched her body to his balcony, gripping the railings with both hands and landed softly on his stones, letting herself in through his doors to the living room like it was her own place.
No ninken greeted her this time, Sakura considered it odd, he usually liked to call them as soon as he returned and needed to pass out for a week to regain what sleep deprivation stole from him.
Sakura noted the take-out on the table though, the smell of real food.
And the smell of shower gel.
She turned her head towards the parted door to the bedroom, noting the shadow that passed her eyesight as Kakashi pulled another top from his drawer, sliding it over his towel dried hair and ever-present mask.
"I'm claiming your share of dumplings if you don't hurry up." she complained, aware of how hungry she actually was now food was before her, the delicious scent weaving into her senses and making her mouth water.
"So mean to your sensei." The grumblings from the bedroom echoed back to her.
She grinned to the plates and cutlery already set out on the table, lifting out the boxes of food and splitting them equally.
He joined her shortly after, taking a heavy seat.
She could see how tired he was, now the adrenaline of running on high alert for hours on end was trailing off.
"You look terrible." she commented unnecessarily.
"Hm."
"You take a pill at least?"
"Two." he responded, leaning his elbows on the table, no care for standard manners, not that he needed them with her, and rolled down the mask to eat.
Sakura had seen him without a mask a few times, in fact, she'd wager she'd seen his face more times than anyone else alive at this point, but he still took care to keep it up most of the time. It spoke volumes to how tired he was that he wasn't even trying to conceal his features now. That and the two pills he'd taken.
His sharingan was voluntarily closed, but the tissue around it was red and puffy, like a night of a teenage girl crying over a boy for hours on end. The blood was gone at least.
"It hurts, doesn't it…" she guessed, noting how his eyelid seemed to flicker like it was uncomfortable. "You're getting worse." She set down the idea of eating, hands stretching out.
"Eat first." he insisted quietly, still strong in his tone, unrelenting really, but soft.
They ate quietly, both too exhausted to make much conversation. But it was a comfortable silence.
Kakashi finished first, taking plate and rubbish to the kitchen to clean. She heard the kettle start to boil, heard the water run into the sink, heard the cupboards opening for tea.
She noted the used weapons that had returned with him set to one side, ready for sharpening and strengthening again. She noted the bag of laundry he'd dumped to the side of the pack, to be washed when he had the strength.
Sakura finished her plate and walked over to the pocketed scrolls he'd lined on the desk.
She located the one with her book in quite easily. Her fingers toyed with the binding on the scroll.
"It's yours." he answered without the question, collecting her plate and returning to the kitchen.
"What we said, about the bloodline limit-"
"It might take a while, but if you want to learn them. I'll teach you." he cut her off again, proving how well he knew her.
She tucked the scroll into her pocket, she'd address it later.
"I might be busy with the samples you brought back for a while." She followed him through to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe. "The flowers." she clarified when he didn't say anything. "Thank you."
"Hm." He remained with his back to her, eyes out the window above the sink, direction towards the Hokage tower. Where his concern was.
"I know you don't want to hear this." She approached slowly, a hand to his arm to soften the blow of her words. "But perhaps you should think of taking it easier with the Sharingan." The words were said as soft as she could, but she still internally braced for the verbal backlash of denial from him.
Again, it was testament to how tired he was that he put a hand to hers, passing her a sad smile behind the mask.
"Yeah."
"Com'on, I'll heal you."
"Are you well enough tonight?" he asked, slowly turning in his space to finally concentrate on his partner, rather than the missing nin he'd focussed all his attention into.
"You took the brunt of this for us. I've got enough to heal you." And probably a few others too, but that was purely because of how much Kakashi had taken on, of how protected he made her so that she didn't need to be on extreme alert the entire journey back. She supposed the chakra control and age difference also played factors in it. Other than slammed tired, she felt fine. Thanks to him.
"Hm."
"I'll make the tea if you want to relax on the sofa."
He slipped past her as she moved to the kettle, taking over. She heard his footsteps lead away but instead of the living room, they went to the bedroom.
She rolled her eyes at the kettle as it finished its boil, he was learning his limits the hard way it seemed.
"Naruto's returning." His voice trailed to her ears suddenly, like he'd just remembered.
"To the village?" she asked eagerly, two mugs filled and carried to the bedroom.
"Hm. Political training is a bit more eventful than planned. Making a lot of friends in a lot of places. And… stirring up a few places. Jiraiya wants him to take an active role in Konoha politics now."
"Soon?" she asked, setting the teas on the bedside table and sitting cross legged next to him as he leaned on the headboard.
"Hm." He lolled his head on the pillows to look at her. "Your shoulder?"
"Tsunade thinks the justu she used has damaged some chakra pathways and the more I use it, the more damage it is doing. She's recommended rest." She passed a weary smile to her partner. "Guess we're both off the market for a while." She nodded at his eye and took his stillness as consent to start the healing. She set one hand into his damp hair for balance, the other hovered over the damaged eye.
"Sakura." He breathed her name like a prayer, both eyes closed. His hands reached up, one finding a shoulder, the other wrapping around a bicep.
Sakura felt every hair stand up as he followed the path to her waist, easily urging her from her crosslegged seat to straddle his lap again.
A position she'd taken a few hundred times to heal his eye before.
This time, in his bedroom, in the darkness, so close to him, it felt alive with electricity. The connection buzzed against her skin. The position put her chest closer to him, and as his tiredness caught up to him, his head drooped forwards, closer and closer.
His arms wound tighter around her waist, urging her up on her knees, urging her to crush the distance between them.
"Kakashi." she echoed back. "I…" she began "I want that talk at some point."
"Hm." His grey eye opened and Sakura felt an intensity from it she hadn't had before. "Later."
"I th-"
"Just let me have this." he pleaded with a murmur and rested his head to the top of her chest. Nothing erotic, no cheeky tongue, no saucy kisses.
Just an exhausted man, realising his mortality, taking comfort from his partner.
Sakura felt the arms embrace her with a hug instead and she gave in on the idea of healing him like that.
"You've barely slept over the last week. Hell, the last month." The inner medic was crawling out, a lecture on the edge of her tongue. "You need to relax, release the tension and responsibility… and crash."
"She's still in the village." Kakashi voiced against her skin. Ever the warrior, his concern was with the foreign chakra they has escorted back that was now getting ready to be set before the Hokage.
"So are most serving ANBU." she countered. "Let me heal you tonight, please."
"Hm." He let her fluff his pillows, let her relax him into them and pour in her healing chakra.
When she sat back, done, he felt like he was hovering on the exact precipice between dream and wakefulness, his system no longer in agony, his limbs finally rested, his chakra regaining strength from her peaceful flow through his network. "Stay." he urged, tightening fingers on the warm body over him.
"I need to shower, and sleep." she answered, a voice like an angel. And when the weight of her body left him, a caress of her chakra trailing behind, he dropped into sleep thoroughly.
At 6am, Sakura was at the Cenotaph.
She'd returned to her apartment, taken off the very outside layers of her uniform and laid down on her bed without even pulling back the duvet.
She'd woken from dreams only half an hour later feeling shaken.
She'd dreamed about her ghosts.
All 13 of them.
Dreamed about being in the camp with them, of sharing stories and laughter, of complaining about the food, of trading jutsu techniques, of passing funny messages through hand signals behind the Captain's back. And it had been beautiful, but she'd known there was something wrong; that this didn't happen, wasn't going to happen.
But she didn't have the words to say anything.
In her dream she just recoiled further into herself, quieter and quieter until one of them asked her what was wrong.
She started crying, trying to tell them something was going to happen whilst they offered confused reassurances that nothing bad was ahead.
The tears followed her into reality and she woke in need of comfort.
In need of Kakashi.
She rolled out of bed, heading for her sandals and straight to him.
But there was a book slanted against her shoes, leaning on her backpack.
A book that held the peace she was desperate for.
Awaiting her.
Answers waiting for her to find them.
A gift from Kakashi, a piece of him left with her.
She dropped to her knees before it, like a forgotten gift from above. She sat next to her sweaty pack of worn clothes, propping it on her knee using the overhead light to hunt down words to give her an explanation.
But at 6am, Sakura was at the monument with a fully clean bag packed, showered and gripping a mission scroll like it was life or death.
The book had no answers, only more questions.
She scoured its pages once, then twice, frustrations devouring the sadness she felt.
Nothing to help her.
Nothing to dull the ache she felt everyday.
Nothing to explain the 13 names under her fingers.
Nothing to justify the child that would grow up to a single parent.
Why their squad, their team, their mission, their village?
13 ANBU agents died and she had no explanation, no validation, no rationalisation for their deaths.
She could give the facts of the missions, she could repeat the same lines she'd read in the nin code about honour and death in duty.
But there was nowhere giving her the why.
She wanted to give them the answers they needed. To give them peace. To give them the reasons why they had been denied a future.
There was no apology to encompass her failure to that.
And she could hear Kakashi's words rattle around, words she knew she should listen to: to die in battle is the greatest glory.
But the longer she thought of it, the more it twisted in her mind.
Until the words were entirely corrupted and she had gone back to the Hokage tower, back to the mission board, knowing full well Tsunade had not yet filed the papers to put herself and Kakashi on medical rest.
She took the S-Class report that had been hanging there for 2 months.
The one that had the highest price tag, because it had the lowest chance of success without serious injury or death.
So she was going to run, into the field, into battle, into the worst danger the mission board could offer, and she would roll the dice of fate. She would challenge the fortune of the battleground that claimed so many.
She would complete her mission, of that she was sure, but if she didn't make it back, then the life that had been lost would not be one of a parent, or a spouse, or a mastermind tactician. If Sakura lost her life in that fight, so be it, she would be part of the great glory. Where she could rest with those she had lost.
Finally just rest.
If she lived… she'd extend her hand back out to the devil and dance with him over and over. Until she was a name on the monument.
It was a dark epiphany rooted from the sleep addled mind, grown in the shattered logic of her utter despair. She thought she finally saw clearly, finally had a plan. But in truth, she had stared at the damn history book that gave her no answers and the pain had cracked her at her core.
She shouldn't have survived when they didn't.
She should have gone with them then.
Her fingers traced the etched names of her comrades, tears starting anew.
She'd be with them soon… if just in name.
Kakashi would hate her.
A sob ripped through her at the thought of him and her raw emotions crashed her to bruised knees.
He would hate her for thinking like this. For abandoning him on the battlefield.
For being another name he had to visit.
Another anniversary on a calendar.
Another day to feel sad.
He would be so disappointed.
She sealed the cries inside her mouth with a hand and felt the tears stream over the back of her fingers.
But she had done so much for him, she had taken missions with him when she had been so set against it. He had burst her bubble and she had gone along thinking she was happy.
But what did she do for herself?
She was the one who had to live with the pain, who couldn't even sleep without it.
She'd do the S-class for Konoha.
She'd achieve the mission, but the odds were stacked against her survival. As long as she took down the target, that was all that mattered.
An assassination job.
To a lightning nin who was traced back to killing one of Konoha's own on an unsanctioned mission. The elders had authorised a strike back, but one that wouldn't be traced back to Konoha in any way.
An eye for an eye.
Under the highest level of secrecy- nobody could know it had ever happened.
S rank.
Kakashi loved assassinations; when the danger got hotter than what should be handled, when everything was hinging on the actions of one nin. When the possibility of a war tittered on your next move.
In a slice of raw honesty, yes, she wanted him to go with her.
She wanted him beside her.
She wanted to fight with him.
But… she couldn't ask him, not for this. Not for what she was risking.
Yet she found herself outside his apartment as the sun's rise teased the skies.
She had no idea how long she had been there, but he had obviously awoken to the distress of her chakra and padded barefoot out of the bedroom with sleepy eyes.
Regret stabbed through her, she shouldn't involve Kakashi.
But a selfish drive spun overtones through the darkness, she wanted him to come with her.
So she stepped into his kitchen and extended the scroll out.
He rose an eyebrow, his eyes raking down her appearance.
She didn't care.
"You slept?" he asked, no move to take the scroll.
"I need to go." She extended the scroll further to him, the tip touching his bare chest, the sleep pants and mask the only things on him.
"You're on medical leave." he replied, leaning his hip against his dining table.
"Not until the paperwork goes in."
With a sigh, he took the scroll and unrolled it. It didn't take him more than three seconds to read the briefing and re-roll it.
"No." he spoke.
"I need to go."
"No." He set the mission brief on fire with a katon too fast to have seen woven and he stepped closer to her. His hand reached out to the strap of her pack, to remove it from her.
She darted back.
"I'm going."
"No." His tone turned firm, unwavering, yet concerned.
"You wanted me to be back on missions, this is the mission I choose. This is what you wanted." Sakura snapped. "You didn't want me to waste away in a small village, I'm choosing not to." Her phrasing started the alarm bells in Kakashi's mind.
"What happened, Sakura?" His hands caught her as she tried to skate past him, back to the balcony. "You haven't slept, have you?"
"I don't need to sleep. I need to be out there. I need to do this. For Konoha. For me. For me, instead of for you." Her red rimmed eyes gave away her mental state.
"Not this one." He ran his hands down her shoulders, to take her shaking hands. "Not like this. This isn't you."
"No." She broke his hold using a wrist release technique, putting distance back between them. "This is me. And this is what you wanted, for me to have the confidence to be who I used to be. I used to take S-class missions by myself then. And this would have been a walk in the park for us."
"Sakura, we don't do these types. Serving the elder's whim. We never have."
"I need to do this…" A weak woman was hiding behind a false bravado.
A pause held between them. He saw the expression she wore, he saw the shake in her hands, the way she stood firmly at attention to keep her legs strong.
She was adamant to take the mission, the most dangerous mission on the board, and he wasn't sure he could say exactly why, but he knew it wasn't for anything positive.
It would be reckless to let her go.
So Kakashi did what he needed to do, what he should have done a while ago.
He gave her a reason to stay.
"You said you wanted a conversation with me." Kakashi started, tone soft as if to negotiate with a woman on the edge, holding a switch that could end them. "About us."
He broke out the last resort, the emotional bait, the one way to keep her with him when he felt so close to having her slip away.
For Sakura, it was like something finally clicked, a confirmation settling in her mind, like the raging waters had finally settled. She could see ahead clearly now the storm had passed, but her destination wasn't changing. If anything, it just set her plan.
She softened like a puppet with taut strings cut. He could see her posture relax, see her features lose their tension.
She smiled kindly to him, slowly and emotionally.
Yet he felt like he was already facing her ghost; she was walking away from him.
He tensed as she finally stepped closer to him, reached out to him and brought herself close.
He felt her fingers on the edge of his mask, felt the cold temperature on them, like she'd been standing in the cold waters of training ground 8 for weeks on end.
Gently, like she was scared of him darting away, she took down his mask and pressed her body to line with his.
Poked up on her tiptoes, she rose and closed her lips to his.
Sakura felt the warmth in his return, the way his arms banded around her, the heat in the kiss, the hesitance and confusion fighting against giving in fully to his will.
As far as goodbyes went… this was enough for her.
One kiss.
He snared her as she tried to pull away.
"I know I shouldn't." she whispered. "But we're not student and teacher anymore, you're not my ANBU mentor. There's a million reasons why we haven't… but I just needed to give in once."
"Sakura." He wasn't an idiot, he knew what he was hearing and it sounded like the end.
Her lips returned to his for a soft peck. Short and sweet.
"Twice." she corrected, but as he opened his eyes to check if he could see the smile he thought he heard, he caught the tail end of her fingers cascading through signs and he was left clutching pink blossom with a tingle on his lips and a deeply unsettling sensation that it was the last time he would see her.