Chapter VIII: Cinderella Prototype

Thompson-sama had a strange taste in decor, favoring high ceilings and stone floors as well as random busts of foreign men aligning narrow hallways.

Team Seven paid no attention to their rather alien surroundings, focusing intently on a figure slouched in the center of the lobby.

"Yo."

"..." The greeting bounced off Team 7's stony faces and into the equally cold, marble hallways where only darkness accepted his carefree salutation.

The contrast was quite stark between the leader and the rest of the team. Sakura saw that Kakashi had changed into his regular mission fatigues and looked quite healthy and content. Kakashi saw that his team had not eaten dinner and was quite cold and miserable. Naruto was always the dead giveaway.

"I bought ramen." Might as well satisfy the one with a beast within first.

"RAMEN!" The kitsune threw his arms up in the air, setting his sedated prisoner free to fall like a sack of potatoes on the stone floor. Despite his rather long history of ninja training, Sasuke only watched the freed man escape to his tiled refuge with a notable thud. He crossed his arms and huffed. Wasn't his interrogation first anyways.

Kakashi motioned to where Naruto's treasure lied and hoisted the re-imprisoned hostage onto his shoulder.

"Sasuke, your room is across Naruto's. Sakura, yours is on the opposite hall, last door," the leader directed as he shifted the man's weight.

"And what are you planning to do with him?" Sasuke indicated the survivor dangling across his team leader's shoulders.

"A special wake-up call is in order for our new friend."

"Hmph." Sasuke turned to retire for the night. How unfortunate that this mansion did not come with its own interrogation rooms.

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"Umm..."

"Hm?"

Sakura had not changed out of her torn dress, too absorbed in the amount of color displayed in the floral designs and gold leafing of her surroundings. Her awe had been short-lived when she discovered something that gave her a moderate amount of distress.

"Why... is your bag on the table?" Sakura feared that she already knew the answer to her question. The size of the bed had caught more of her suspicion than her fancy the moment she entered after her attention waned from the walls.

On a glass coffee table, a second backpack sitting comfortably next to hers made Sakura realize the great burden of married life.

Kakashi glanced at his pack, blinked, then walked past her to examine the bags at a closer proximity.

"Is it unsightly?"

"I wouldn't say it that way." Though I think that would be exactly what I would have said, Sakura thought, planting her palms on her hips and raising an eyebrow.

Kakashi twisted his head to look over his shoulder at the kunoichi. Sakura held her ground, expecting him to say something. She shifted her weight to one leg and crossed her arms. Somehow spending time with her ex-teacher wasted much idle time, yet Sakura never felt as if she was truly wasting time and was sucked into Kakashi Time.

A clock chimed somewhere in the mansion, signaling midnight. Kakashi unzipped his vest and carelessly threw his headband and his gloves in a chair by the coffee table. The metal of the hitae-ate clattered against the wooden backrest and teetered a bit before landing on the rug and the gloves overshot the armrest, slapping the wall before falling dejectedly to the floor.

Such haphazard aiming stunned Sakura who expected less plebian behavior from a ninja.

"Take a shower and go to sleep. I'll take the floor." Sakura broke out of her reverie and sighed, making her way to the bathroom. In a moment of mild curiosity, she delayed shutting the door and peeked behind her.

She had a good view of his back. Sakura made a mental note to give a short lecture on assaulting furniture with various articles of clothing on seeing Kakashi shrugging off his vest and attacking the coffee table again. Sakura saw him running a hand through his hair and reached over his back to pull his shirt over his head.

The jounin heard the click of the bathroom door close as he pulled his shirt off. He looked behind him at the closed door in question for a moment before returning to his task. On the other side of the door, Sakura frantically turned on the tap and preoccupied her mind with something other than the hot blush spreading over her face.

Damn hormones. Sakura scrubbed extra hard as if scouring her flesh would rid her mind of what she had just witnessed as well as any thoughts that might follow. Avoiding any visual contact with the mirror until she had covered herself with a bathrobe was also necessary.

She forgot to bring a change of clothing into the bathroom.

Well, she had a bathrobe on and it wasn't like she was sleeping in the same bed as Kakashi-senpai. With this in mind, Sakura walked confidently out of the bathroom, brilliantly ignoring her roommate until he plopped a hand on her head.

"If you go to bed with wet hair, it'll smell in the morning." Sakura gave a short laugh to the man who stood before her.

"I didn't expect anything like that from you," she retorted, rolling up her eyes to look at her superior and indicating the buffeted coffee table. All she wanted was to sleep, wet hair and all.

Besides, why did he hone such an interest in hair care?

"Sit down." Sakura avoided eye contact as she sat rigidly at the edge of the bed, dangling her legs off the side. After all, all men were biologically similar. None of them were to be trusted, Sakura thought as she felt the mattress depress behind her.

"Ow!" A towel was shoved rudely into the kunoichi's hair and commenced to dry her hair rather roughly. There was a small duration of time where Sakura needed to find anything to keep herself awake.

"Kakashi-senpai?" Sakura mumbled. Drowsiness threatened to shut her systems down soon.

"Hm?"

"I'm eighteen. I can dry my own hair."

"I know." Tired eyes opened slowly with strained effort.

"...You act differently without your mask on." Now she was desperate. No one knew what this man did in his spare time (other than reading, but that occupied more than his spare time), and primetime television had given Sakura an iron resolution that men should never be trusted to be alone with another female.

"You talk more. And you tend to be a bit more...a bit closer. Physically." There was an emphasis on the last word. Last thing on her mind was following through this whole 'marriage' thing.

There was also another bone that needed picking.

"Why are you drying my hair?" Reasons, all developed from nostalgia, flooded Kakashi's mind but never touched his face. Personal questions he usually avoided due to their intimate nature. Psychological intimacy never ceased to be a subject of discomfort.

Sakura struggled to stay awake, unaware of what was running through her former teacher's mind. There was that trademark delay again. Maybe he was stalling. Or finding the answer. Or worse yet; he had an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"I've never had a little sister." The reply caught her off guard. Little sister... She repeated the phrase in her mind several times and smiled. Well, Team 7 had always been a family, and it was actually fun having sibling-like entities around her. Though previously she had thought of Kakashi as more of a fatherly figure…

Scooting into the bed to make room for her legs, Sakura sat cross-legged and relaxed despite the scratching she felt at her scalp.

Little sister. She could get used to that.

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If anyone had seen Sakura an hour after she had flopped down to sleep, her open eyes and blank stare would have made the impression of a freshly slaughtered corpse.

Until she sighed.

She couldn't sleep. Even after all the excitement and horror she had witnessed at the party, she couldn't sleep. A glass of milk would be nice right now, she thought, stepping softly out of bed and jumping over Kakashi who was supposedly asleep.

As Sakura made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen, she heard a deliberate hissing noise. Looking about the pantry, she wondered who else would be awake at such and ungodly hour.

"Come! Get in, quick," a feminine voice rasped as a hand beckoned through a crack in a door of a closet. Sakura did a double take of the hallway and slipped into the room with her summoner. Before she could open her mouth, the woman shushed Sakura.

"They've closed the borders. You can only stay for several days here." Sakura squinted in effort to see any noticeable contours of the owner of the panicked voice. The muted moonlight that seeped through the crack of the door was of little help.

"Why do they want Kakashi and Sasuke?" Sakura asked. This woman seemed quite intent on keeping her team safe. Why, Sakura decided she needed to know after she gained information.

Even in the inhumanly sparse light, Sakura sensed the woman shake her head vigorously.

"They don't need it, but they want it." The woman stopped abruptly and listened intently to the silence. Sakura could not hear anything. Maybe the lady had a sixth sense, since she ran out the door and to the adjacent window in such a hurry to escape.

"Don't talk in front of paintings," were her last words before she vanished through the open window pane.

"Wait!" Sakura ran to the window. There was still more she wanted to know.

"Who are 'they'? What about the paint—" The mystery woman had vanished.

Sakura quickly left the room and hurried back to bed. Pondering on the barrage of incomplete information, she could not help feeling lost and insufficient. She had and idea what 'It' was, but not 'They'...

Sighing, the kunoichi decided that a meeting was in order in the morning.

But not in front of paintings.

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Author's Notes:
I've received some reviews that asked for more description of Kakashi's face. The reason I resisted writing any description other than 'cute' was because that's all we know of Kakashi, and to go beyond that would, in my opinion, destroy the sense of detachment we (I?) sense in our favorite ninja.

And yes, I'm back.

"Fanartist"