A/N: This is a pretty quiet chapter, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! I also commissioned fanart for this chapter, which you can find published with this chapter on my Archive of Our Own page.

The night of her breakdown, Sakura returned to camp with Kakashi, her mind still heavily focused on the shinobi she'd killed. The way Kakashi had held her while she'd cried had done a lot to lighten the burden she carried, but it still wasn't enough to erase the memory of killing such a young ninja, and it would never erase the memory of Naruto dying in her arms. That night at camp, when she had nightmares about them both, she had woken up and told Tenzo that she'd take over his watch. She'd spent the rest of the night alternating between sitting in a branch high above their camp and taking walks around the perimeter.

Although Kakashi had been quiet when they'd returned to camp, it wasn't until the next morning that Sakura noticed how reticent he was being with her. At first, she thought that he was just being his normal aloof self, as he was definitely being stiff with Tenzo and Genma too—but at least he would respond to them in full sentences. By contrast, the few times Sakura had attempted to converse with him, she'd only gotten grunted, noncommittal syllables. It occurred to her that the night before might have embarrassed him, so she let him be, assuming that he'd relax a little once some time had passed.

When they returned to Konoha, Kakashi stopped them at the gates and told them to take the next day off, and that training would resume the day after that. Without waiting to see if they had any questions, he disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

Genma and Tenzo had invited her to go out, but she told them she was tired and just wanted to go home, and for once they didn't complain. She normally would have found that suspicious, but they'd been especially nice to her since the night before, and she guessed that they had heard her crying. She tried, and failed, not to be embarrassed by that.

That night, she had more nightmares about holding Naruto while he died, only for him to turn into the boy she had killed. When she woke up in a cold sweat, she repeated to herself what Kakashi had told her—he was a ninja, he wanted to kill me—and it helped a little.

Her day off passed calmly, with chores and meditating and a little bit of fun with her summons at the training grounds. While she watched her spiders cavort in the sunshine, she admitted to herself that she'd hoped to run into Kakashi there, so she could thank him. Still, spending time with her summons was fun. Kin took the opportunity to pointedly mention that one of Kakashi's dogs wore sunglasses and how much she liked them, and Sakura promised the large spider that, should she ever see sunglasses designed for someone with eight eyes, she would absolutely buy some.

That night, back at her apartment, there was a scratch at her door and Sakura opened it to find Uhei—the bandage-sporting dog that Kakashi had once used to disarm her—waiting for her on the other side. Petting him, she took the scroll he carried, unrolling it as he disappeared. Inside, she found a short note in Kakashi's handwriting, reminding her that there was training in the morning.

She found herself looking forward to spending time with the team again, to her surprise. Although the day off was nice, she'd started to feel like she belonged to Team Ro, and they to her. It was a feeling she hadn't really known since her brief Team 7 days, and she found that it was becoming something very important to her.

Her first day back to training, she arrived at the grounds to find that only Tenzo was waiting for her. "The captain wants me to help you develop strategies involving your ninjutsu," Tenzo explained after he greeted her.

"Okay," Sakura said with a smile, though inwardly she was frowning. She'd been sure that she would see Kakashi today and would be able to thank him. She supposed it would have to wait.

She and Tenzo worked together for several hours, focusing mainly on how he could teach her to better use her ninjutsu. They focused particularly on an earth release jutsu she had learned during her time under Ibiki's tutelage, one that sent a volley of earthen spears shooting from the ground. By the end of the session, Sakura felt more confident that she could use the jutsu in concert with Tenzo—him driving the enemy to her with his wood release, and her finishing them off with her spears.

It didn't stop her from thinking of Kakashi, though. It was strange for him to not oversee her training himself—especially when they were working on something they hadn't really worked on before. She'd thought his reticence at the end of their mission had been because of embarrassment, but the part of her mind that always thought the worst reared its ugly head. What if her breakdown had made him lose respect for her? What if he'd returned to his original position of regretting having her on the team? The thought bothered her more than she liked to admit.

After all, Sakura had a lot of experience with being rejected from teams. After losing Team 7, she'd been bounced from one team to the next, and each one had rejected her as too difficult to work with. She thought she'd gotten over it long ago—after all, being personally mentored by Ibiki and then briefly by Tsunade had taught her a lot—but here she was on a team again, and the possibility of being removed from it left her uneasy.

That night the nightmares came again, and when she lay awake afterward, shaking in her sweat-soaked sheets, the memory of Kakashi holding her came to her and she grabbed onto it like a lifeline. She usually didn't like to lean on people—people tend to let you down—but there in the dark, for only a minute, she let herself lean on him just a little. And even if it was just the idea of him, it made her feel a little calmer… stronger.

When she showed up for training the next morning and found only Genma there to meet her, she could only frown at him. The thought returned to her that Kakashi was intentionally avoiding her, and it made something tighten in her chest.

"Captain wants me to work with you on grappling today," Genma said as he stretched, ignoring the frown on her face. "He says you need to work on your hand-to-hand skills when you're unarmed and low on chakra. Grappling will help with that."

Knowing that Kakashi had passed her off to Genma put her in a sour mood, and she sulked silently as he beckoned her closer and began to put her into a grappling position. With their chests touching and one of his arms beneath hers, the other one on her shoulder, they struggled against one another. After a failed attempt to bring him down, she complained, "I really don't want to be grappling with you."

He just smirked and returned, "Of course you don't. I'm not Kakashi."

Sakura stiffened. "What—" –the fuck is that supposed to mean, was what she was going to say, but in a swift movement Genma curled one of his legs around the back of hers and threw his weight forward, knocking her off balance and onto her back.

She landed hard, the air shooting from her lungs, and as she gasped to get her wind back, she glared at him. He just stood above her, his voice smug as he said, "You get distracted too easily."

Between pants, Sakura gritted out, "Fuck. You." Pulling herself to her feet, she faced off with him again. If the smirk on his face was anything to judge by, he could see the blush that his comment about Kakashi had caused. Scowling, Sakura came for him again.

For the better part of the morning they fought, alternating between grunts, curses, and occasional instructions from Genma. Often, he would taunt her with some insult or another to get her riled up, which almost always ended up with her landing on her back, or on her face in the dirt with his knee between her shoulder blades. One of those times, he'd called her Black Widow, and had been surprised when she'd managed to keep her head long enough to successfully throw him.

He'd barked, "Good!" and then he'd stood up and proceeded to soundly throw her three times in a row before he'd let her take a break. It was clear that she only won when he let her win, but by the time noon had come around, she was doing much better than she had at the beginning of the morning—even if she was filthy and completely exhausted.

Genma finally called a halt to their session, and they both took a seat on the ground as they took long drinks from their water bottles. Looking at her thoughtfully, he said, "I really figured calling you Black Widow was going to get you to lose your cool."

Sakura shrugged, grimacing slightly as the motion pulled at her sore muscles, and said, "I guess it depends on who's saying it. Sometimes it doesn't bother me that much."

Genma gave a huff of laughter. "You, not getting bothered by something? Impossible."

She rolled her eyes in response, but for some reason still felt compelled to explain. "When I was younger, Ibiki-sensei told me about the black widow spider. They're not native to Konoha—they don't belong here. But they've managed to dominate their niche in the ecosystem, even more than their native counterparts," she said, lifting her chin slightly as she looked at him. "Did you know that my parents never made it past genin? A lot of people thought I didn't belong here, too."

Genma hummed thoughtfully and lay back on the grass, folding his arms behind his head. After a moment's consideration, he mused, "Black widow spiders are also really fucking creepy. So, you have that in common, too."

"Idiot." Sakura made a face at him, but her heart wasn't really in it, and her expression smoothed out as a comfortable silence fell between them. Pulling her legs up to her chest, she set her chin on her knee and, after a long moment, asked, "Is he avoiding me?"

Genma considered what she'd asked, and then admitted, "Probably." He paused, as if unsure of how far he should go, and then continued, "He's not very good at letting people in."

Sakura frowned a little. "He lets you in. And Tenzo."

Genma reached down to slide a senbon from his thigh holster, twirling it between his fingers as he replied, "He's known me since our academy days, and he's known Tenzo since his first years in ANBU. It took a long time for him to be comfortable around us, and I'm still not even sure he is—not completely."

Her frown deepened. "Still, just because he's awkward doesn't mean he gets to ignore me."

Sliding the senbon between his teeth, Genma chewed it for a moment as he stared at her, narrow-eyed. "How come you're not mad at him about it?"

Blinking, Sakura asked, "What do you mean? I am mad at him about it."

Genma scoffed at her. "Please. You're irritated at best. You're nowhere near how mad I'd expect you to be over your captain ignoring you. I mean, think about it—he foisted you off on me. He assigned you a grappling lesson. That's pretty much busywork."

The familiar feeling of her pulse quickening came to Sakura as her temper began to rise. "Are you seriously giving me a hard time because I'm not angry?"

"I'm just pointing out that you're not as angry at him as you've been before." He waited a beat, and then continued, "You have a harder time getting mad at people you trust, don't you?"

Sakura opened her mouth—and then snapped it shut as she stood, turning away before he could see the flush rise to her cheeks again. "We're done here, right?" she asked, ignoring his question.

The amusement was clear in his voice as he responded, "Guess Kakashi's not the only awkward one."

Huffing, Sakura began to stomp off. Of course, that wasn't enough for Genma, and he called out to her retreating back, "You're going to have to go to him—he won't come to you."

But she just shouted, "Shut up, Genma!" and flashstepped away.

That night, Kakashi sent dogs to his three teammates, giving them orders to do basic physical conditioning the next day. Bisuke, he dog he'd sent to Genma, returned with a note with a single word written on it—Coward—but Kakashi ignored it. Instead, he returned to the dossier he'd been compiling of the information they'd found in the missing nin hideout. It included the location of several other such hideouts, which Kakashi was currently marking on a map.

It was work he didn't need to do himself; he was essentially just making the information more organized, and that was something that the more scholarly agents at headquarters generally handled. He knew he was just using it as an excuse to avoid Sakura, but he didn't know what else to do. Right now, it seemed like the only option he had to deal with his problem.

When he'd held Sakura while she cried, Kakashi had been forced to consider that Genma and Tenzo were right—maybe he did have feelings for her. The thought absolutely terrified him. For one thing, she was his teammate, and one he had already butted heads with. For another, she was fourteen years younger than him, and even if she was clearly an adult at 25, that was still a large age difference. And then there was her horrible temper. She was nothing like the women he usually spent time with, when he could be bothered to spend time with them. He typically preferred women who were easy to deal with, and who didn't expect a lot from him.

He knew that he needed to put an end to the feelings that he had, for all of those reasons and more. But he didn't know how he was supposed to do that when they spent so much time together—hence why he was avoiding her.

That couldn't last forever, though.

The next evening, as he was finishing putting together his notes on the mission, there was a fairly jarring knock at his door that made his stomach drop. He knew without opening it who it was—her specific brand of irritation really came through in her knock—and he actually debated pretending like he wasn't home before snorting at the idea. Genma was right; he was being a coward.

When he finally opened the door, she was standing there with a determined frown on her face. "Sakura."

"Captain," she replied, and he was reminded again that he still hadn't invited her to use his name.

They both stood there in awkward silence for a long moment. He noticed that she had shadows under her eyes and wondered fleetingly if she wasn't sleeping, but he soon quashed the thought. That wasn't his business.

The silence must have worn on her, because she finally burst out with, "Why are you avoiding me?"

He couldn't keep his single open eye from shifting away, idly tracing the frame of the door. "I'm not avoiding you. I've been busy."

That seemed to make her angry because she stepped forward, invading his space until his startled gaze met her glare. "That's horseshit and you know it," she said challengingly.

He had to fight the urge to step back from her, telling himself he didn't care how close she was. A combination of irritation and shame flashed through him from being called out, and the irritation came through in his voice as he amended, "I've had a lot of paperwork to do."

The look in her eyes told him that she still didn't believe him, but to his surprise she backed down, taking a step back as she sighed. After a moment, in a quieter voice, she said, "I just wanted to thank you."

He raised an awkward hand to the back of his head, wishing he was doing anything but having that conversation. "You don't need to thank me."

She seemed a little awkward herself, fidgeting a little as she spoke. "Genma and Tenzo are making me go to the bar tonight. You should come." When he didn't answer right away, she continued at a slightly faster speed, "It's better when you're there. Genma's not as obnoxious."

He was trying to avoid her, he reminded himself. Spending time together when they didn't have to was a bad idea. Still, the way his pulse had picked up when she said it was better when he was there was undeniable. Before he could convince himself not to, his mouth was open to say, "Okay."

She smiled at him and he looked away, turning to get his keys in complete spite of the fact that he didn't know why he was doing it. He ignored the part of his mind that was loudly protesting that this was a stupid idea, instead focusing on how good a cup of sake sounded.

In moments, he'd locked the door and was following her into the street, telling himself that he would just treat her like a normal teammate. That was all he needed to do—just treat her like Genma or Tenzo. He did his best to ignore the fact that he was backing himself down from his decision to spend as little time around her as possible.

"I'm glad you decided to join us, Captain," she said easily as they walked toward the bar.

Reminding himself that, if he wasn't going to avoid her, he at least needed to stop treating Sakura differently than his other teammates, he responded, "You can call me Kakashi when we're not working."

She looked up at him, the green eyes that he'd been noticing more and more widening with surprise. "Okay... Kakashi." A smile spread across her face, and without thinking, he opened his Sharingan to capture it. He tried very, very hard not to like the way his name sounded on her lips.

Slowing her pace slightly, she nodded her head toward his slowly whirling eye and said, "Why do you open your Sharingan sometimes outside of battle? I've noticed you doing it before." Smirking a little, she added, "Trying to learn my secrets?"

Kakashi gave a short, amused exhale as he closed the eye in question. "Something like that." Agreeing with that was certainly better than admitting to the slowly growing collection of Sakura snapshots he had filed away in his brain.

"It's kind of creepy," she said, and her tone held a teasing note that he found way more pleasing than he was comfortable admitting.

"Deal with it," he returned, and when she laughed, a smile tugged at his lips beneath his mask.

Somewhere around the time that they arrived at the bar and he held the door open for her, he was forced to admit that he was really, really bad at avoiding her. He knew better, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. And when he spent the night glancing up from behind his book to catch glimpses of her laughing at whatever stupid thing Genma and Tenzo were bantering about, he was also forced to admit that he was bad at treating her like any other teammate.

And then she would catch his eye and smile, and he would have a hard time remembering why either of those things were important at all.