A/N: 10,000 plus words and it's not even the last chapter. Le sigh. XD The last chapter was winding itself up to be longer than I expected, so I'm splitting it up into two. Sorry for the delay in posting. My internet was temporarily cancelled.
Where did I go wrong?
I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
Morning brought the end of the Suna 'vacation'. The Konoha shinobi were to gather at the east gate at midday and from there they would begin their long trek home, hoping to all the resident patriot Konoha deities that nothing had happened in the absence of the Hokage and the most elite village ninjas. But Sakura was not looking forward to the trip home. There was now a legendary stiffness in her back and a soreness between her legs that made it difficult to walk. She woke up feeling as if Tsunade had put her through another rigorous training session the night before – the type that usually rendered her bed-ridden for the whole of the next day.
It wasn't quite that bad though, as evidenced by how quickly she managed to scramble out of bed the moment Sasuke walked into the room and fixed both her and Naruto with the ultimate Uchiha glare. "I leave you alone for one night…"
He was probably being ironic and not at all serious, but one never liked to take such chances with a former psychopath, so Sakura quickly disappeared to get dressed and left Naruto to deal with the Last Surviving Sourpuss.
Her morning had not improved when she remembered she had a serious problem to take care of either. As much as she wanted to purge Kakashi's name from her mind, she couldn't avoid the fact that she had had unprotected sex with him last night, and he had finished inside her. Sakura didn't observe her own cycle closely enough to be sure, but she suspected that it was probably the worst time of the month to take risks. While Sakura was quite open to the idea of having children of her own at some point, 'at some point' did not mean 'anytime soon'. She had her work and training to concentrate on and she was still only just earning enough money to support herself. Pregnancy was simply not an option she could take.
And no matter how cute the thought of little children with fluffy white hair was, when Kakashi didn't even want a relationship, it was doubtful he'd want kids either.
This was a thoroughly depressing thought however, and so Sakura quickly left in search of the nearest chemist. Her morning was destined to turn a darker shade of bad when she discovered the chemist didn't stock morning after pills. In fact, none of them did.
"It's wind country regulation as ordained by the daimyo," the man behind the counter informed her. "Low populations, you see. Birth control is prohibited."
Sakura fidgeted angrily. That was downright backwards. "Is this the same daimyo who slashed funding for Suna and gave most of the missions to foreign ninja villages?"
"That's the one," the chemist nodded.
"You should assassinate him," Sakura told him quite seriously.
"Oh, we did," he replied quite cheerfully. "Not long after Gaara-sama was inaugurated actually. But obviously we're still straightening things out with the new daimyo, so it'll be a while before things change. Come back next year and I might be able to help you."
"Might be a bit late by then, considering what I'm looking for," she told him flatly.
"Oh, right, yeah." He shrugged. "Sorry."
It was a good thing then, she decided, that she was heading back to Konoha that very day. She was a little annoyed at herself for not having the foresight to write an elaborate transportation jutsu scroll like Jin's that would take her instantaneously back to Konoha and save her the hard trek.
By the time Sakura left the chemist it was getting on to midday, and Sakura headed back to the hotel to pack her bag. It didn't take long as she hadn't brought very much, but the bag was slightly harder to close than before due to all the complimentary hotel freebies she'd stuffed into it. As she moved to swipe the unused notepad from the old desk in the corner she found her hand lingering on the marked, scarred surface. It was virtually identical to the one she and Kakashi had…
Her hand curled into a fist and clamped against her thigh. It hurt thinking about it. In a way she wanted to forget about last night, but both her physical and emotional aches only served as a constant reminder. She was beginning to regret it. Deeply. But it wasn't the act itself that she regretted so much as what had happened after it.
Sakura wondered who was to blame. Herself for overreacting to an evasive answer to an important question? Or Kakashi for being so infuriatingly aloof in the most intimate moment of her life?
Slowly making her way to the meeting point at the east gate, Sakura kept her eyes peeled for him, though she hadn't quite figured out if she wanted to avoid him or not. When she arrived, the majority of Konoha shinobi were already congregated there, clustering together in pairs or groups wherever there was available shade. She spotted Naruto and Sasuke sitting beneath the awning of a shop window – Naruto talking animatedly with his hands while Sasuke remained typically impassive. But there was no Kakashi in sight, so Sakura made her way towards her former teammates, suspecting that he was simply late again.
Then Ino stepped in front of her.
"Sakura," she barked, arms folded and eyes fierce. The mere fact alone that she'd used Sakura's actual name rather than her unflattering nickname was a sure indication she was serious. "Is it true?"
There could be question of what she was referring to. Instantly her eyes found Kiba, who until that moment seemed to have been looking at her, but the moment the waves of murderous intent began rolling in his direction, he suddenly became engrossed in counting the number of sand grains at his feet. He was clearly the culprit.
Ino sighed irritably. "Sakura, I am very annoyed with you," she said.
Sakura looked at her feet.
"You finally got your leg over Kakashi-sensei and you didn't come tell me about it!"
Sakura shot her an incredulous look. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize that was a condition."
"It's ok. As long as you tell me one thing…"
"And that is?" Sakura asked apprehensively.
"How big was it? Seriously"
Sakura spluttered and turned bright red. "I'm not going to tell you that!"
"Ah… so he was a bit on the small side?" Ino said cannily. "Well don't worry – size isn't everything."
"Ino!" she hissed. "He wasn't small!"
"Compared to what? A pipe cleaner?"
Sakura blushed again. "If you must know…" After a quick surreptitious glance around to check no one was looking, she gave Ino the a brief, rough measurement with her hands.
Ino gasped and lifted her fingers to her lips in amusement. "Oh, Sakura…" she whispered coyly.
Uncertainly, Sakura said, "He told me it wasn't that big…"
"It's bigger than the one I get to play with, so not bad. Not bad." Ino looked like was enjoying a very nice mental picture. "Not bad at all…"
Sakura felt a twinge of jealousy, but that was customary around Ino, and she was confident that Ino would never make her fantasy a reality. "How many people know?" she asked quietly.
"Well, I haven't told anyone and – no, don't look at me like that – I haven't told anyone. The only reason I know is because I overheard Kiba talking about it with Hinata. I don't know if anyone else heard though... I expect quite a few though, since Kiba doesn't exactly talk quietly, if ya know what I mean."
"Oh, god," Sakura whimpered, pressing her hands to her face.
"Well, to be honest, you don't have to worry, Sakura," Ino said with a shrug. "People won't care who you sleep with. We're ninjas. Our motto is to take what you can get, whenever you can get it. We could all die tomorrow, la la la – you especially with your clumsiness. But if you can find genuine love, and you both really care for each other, what right does anyone have to say it's wrong?"
Sakura stared at her, a little taken aback. "Ino… that almost sounded profound."
"I'm just sayin'…" Ino said with mild annoyance. "People won't give you a hard time over it. And if they do… fuck 'em. Besides, once they realize you're serious about each other, they'll just learn to accept it. I mean… you are serious about him, aren't you? You said you love him, right?"
"I do, but…"
As she struggled to find a way to explain something even she didn't understand, Sakura became aware of a commotion to her left. She immediately recognized Tsunade's voice, and from her brusque, loud tone, it appeared she wasn't happy. It may have had something to do with the dozen or so chunin gathered around her trying to push paperwork under her nose.
"…well, how the hell am I supposed to know?" The Hokage was looking hassled, and Sakura could see she was probably fifteen seconds away from wrapping her hands around the nearest throat and throttling hard.
Before Sakura could move out of range, she was spotted.
"Sakura!" Tsunade snapped her fingers authoritatively. "Get over here now."
Ino shot Sakura a rather unsympathetic smirk and beat a quick retreat, leaving Sakura to face the music.
"Some time today, Sakura," Tsunade snapped. "Come on, girl. I've seen tectonic plates shift faster than you walk."
Sakura sloped over reluctantly, knowing she was about to be roped into taking on at least half of Tsunade's workload. Without fail, Tsunade shoved at least three documents into her arms the moment she arrived and then went back to her argument with a Suna cleric.
"I told you, I'm not responsible for those kinds of things. You'll have to take it up with the man himself," Tsunade barked.
"We would, only we can't find him. He checked out last night," the flustered cleric responded weakly. Clearly he wasn't up to the task of matching the Hokage's temper.
"Well then where is he?" Tsunade demanded, looking around. "Someone! Find me Kakashi."
A cold lump formed in Sakura's stomach. "What's happened?" she asked quietly.
Tsunade made an irritated noise, but didn't answer the question. "Did you check him over like I asked?" she directed at Sakura in a way that was more accusatory than anything.
"Yes," Sakura replied firmly. "What's wrong with Kakashi?"
"Like hell I know," Tsunade said shortly, looking at her watch. "If he's not here in five minutes we're leaving without him and I don't care if-"
"Tsunade-sama!"
Shizune was running up to the group, out of breath. In her hand she was brandishing a slip of paper. "A message for you, Tsunade-sama," she panted.
Tsunade snatched it up and read it through narrowed eyes. Her lips thinned and the corner of her mouth quirked down, and after a moment she scrunched the note in her fist and began striding away. "We're leaving."
"The accounts!" the Suna clerics and chunin called after her.
"Post them to me – I don't care!" Tsunade yelled back, not breaking her stride.
Sakura ran after her, which did nothing for her stiff muscles. "What about Kakashi? Aren't we waiting for him?"
Without a word Tsunade passed her the rumpled note Shizune had handed over and Sakura slowed to a stop as she smoothed it out to read. She recognized Kakashi's familiarly precise and neat handwriting in an instant.
……………
Dear Esteemed Godaime-sama,
I am heading back to Konoha early. Please give my apologies to my students and the hotel staff. I'll reimburse them later. And my apologies to yourself for any inconvenience caused.
Thank you, (and here he'd inserted a one-eyed smiley face)
Kakashi
…………………
Reimburse them…? Sakura looked down at the three folders in her hand. The first one appeared to be an invoice from the hotel they'd been staying at. They wanted repayment for damages to room 4J.
Kakashi's room.
Sakura read the list of damaged items in the invoice. One smashed lamp, one fried electrical fuse, one broken chair, another badly damaged desk, one shattered window, two chipped nightstands and three dented walls.
The first few items she could account for. She seemed to recall knocking over a lamp while she and Kakashi had… and she also remembered him telling her about breaking his chair. But when she'd left his room late last night, she could have sworn that everything else had been pretty much intact.
"Sakura-chan!"
She looked up in confusion to see Naruto waving at her.
"Aren't you coming?" he yelled.
She nodded faintly. "Right…"
The journey back was at least ten times worse than the journey coming. There seemed to be twice as much sand as she remembered, and if anything, it was hotter. It didn't help that her back and legs ached like hell and it was difficult to walk in a straight line without waddling. And if people hadn't noticed that she was walking like she had a wedge driven between her legs, they'd probably noticed the bruising – bruising that Sakura only just discovered herself when she crouched to tighten the straps on her boots and found a distinct series of purple marks on her thigh that might match the fingertips of a large, masculine hand.
If healing jutsu could remove bruises, Sakura would have done so right then and there. But all she could do was straighten up, tug the hem of her shorts as low as possible, and hope no one was looking too closely at her backside.
But that was a bit too much to ask of some people.
"What's with the bruises?" Naruto asked, pointing to her leg.
"Banged myself on a door," she said shortly, in a sharp tone that hinted he should drop the matter.
"Ah, ok," Naruto said, picking up on the hint. "So… how was Kakashi today?"
Sakura snapped an alarmed look on the boy. What was that supposed to mean? Did he know? Who else knew? Did everyone know? How many people would she have to kill? "How should I know?" she barked defensively. "I've not seen him."
"Oh… it's just…" Naruto rubbed his hair. "Has he woken up yet? Last I saw he was pretty comatose and you were the one looking after him. We haven't left him behind have we? I mean, no disrespect to Gaara, but Suna's a pretty vicious village. Should we be leaving him there unattended?"
Annoyed at herself for overreacting, Sakura sighed and shook her head. "No… he woke up last night and he went home early. He's probably back in Konoha by now. You don't have to worry about him."
"How is his sharingan?" Sasuke asked, which was a safer way of saying "How is Kakashi?"
"His eyesight's weaker, but he's essentially fine. He'll live to fight another day at least." But right then, Sakura didn't want to talk about Kakashi. She didn't even want to think about him. Just hearing his name made her chest constrict and a lump form in her throat.
He'd hurt her. And the more she thought about him, the more it hurt. At least Sasuke's rejections had been consistent. He'd never budged an inch to give her false hope so the final realization that he would never love her like she loved him had been gradual and not at all surprising really. His final rejection hadn't torn at her heart as quietly as Kakashi was now.
What scared her most was that Kakashi didn't even have to do very much to crush her. He only had to be himself. Giving evasive answers to important questions and literally skipping town without telling her. What was she supposed to think? How was she supposed to feel? Did he mean to hurt her? Did he even know how much it hurt? Did he care?
Perhaps she had only herself to blame? He'd warned her again and again and she'd never listened – too caught up in her own idea of love to even consider how impossible it was. She'd never looked to the future and imagined what kind of romantic relationship between them would be like. To her gut-wrenching misery, she saw nothing. She couldn't picture it. There was no future. He'd warned her, and all she had done was dig herself in so deep there really was no going back and fixing the tattered remains of what had once been a treasured bond.
Maybe it was best if she simply never spoke to him or looked him in the eye again. Then maybe what was left of her fragile self-esteem would survive under the deluded belief he was simply a fuckwit. Better to avoid him and live in false hope than face him and the reality that perhaps she was the naïve idiot… not him.
These thoughts dogged her throughout the journey. Even when the group stopped to take refreshments and give the genin a break from walking, she could not move her mind past the matter. Every time she mentally prompted herself to move on and think about something else, she would inevitably find herself drawn back to Kakashi. Kakashi and his distant soul and warm lips and the way he'd looked and sounded when he'd hunched over her and abandoned himself to pleasure.
A sharp pang of arousal struck Sakura deep in her belly and her thighs clenched unconsciously against it. But then it was gone and she felt as cold and withdrawn as ever.
Sasuke noticed her uneasy silence. "Are you ok?" he asked, sipping water from his flask as if it was expensive ceremonial tea. He didn't used to drink like that. Sakura suspected it was either something he'd picked up around Orochimaru's lot or just the kind of eccentricity people acquired when they realized they were the last of something.
"I'm ok," she said softly, clutching her own flask so tightly her joints had turned white.
From the corner of her eye she saw Sasuke trade an unreadable look with Naruto. She hated it when they did that. It meant they knew something they weren't telling and one was silently asking the other for permission to speak. It turned out to be Naruto.
"Why did Kakashi go back early?" he asked a bit too casually.
They knew something was up, and what with several of their peers already knowing what had happened courtesy of Kiba, it was only a matter of time before they realized exactly what was bothering her.
Naruto and Sasuke were the most beloved friends she had… but there were just some things she could not explain.
"Naruto says the reason you were in his bed was because you were upset last night."
Sakura looked up at Sasuke with wide eyes. "I wasn't upset," she protested futilely.
"You were crying," Naruto pointed out.
"Yeah, but that wasn't…" she didn't know how to finish that weak excuse.
They traded another look and, with their usual perfect collaboration and teamwork, they closed in for the kill.
"What did he do to you, Sakura?"
"You can tell us, Sakura-chan."
She panicked, realizing they'd jumped the worst conclusion they could imagine. "He didn't do anything to me!" she said with growing frustration, shoving a hand through her hair. "Nothing I didn't want him to do…"
The confused silence from the boys was almost painful. "Then," Naruto began with a frown, "why were you crying?"
Sakura shook her head. "I told you. I messed up. It went all wrong and the last thing I need right now is for you two to give me the third degree. Please. Don't ask any more questions."
They were furious. She could see it in the obvious way Naruto was glaring at the shaking bento box in his hand that was beginning to emit cracking sounds as he squeezed too hard. Sasuke's anger was far more introverted, but she still picked up on the way a scowl had deepened on his face and he was staring off into the distant horizon.
The expressions of two people contemplating murder.
"Stop it," she said sharply, surprising them both. "This is my problem, not yours. You're not to go vigilante on Kakashi."
"He made you cry!" Naruto protested.
"Sad books make me cry! Chopping onions makes me cry!" she snapped. "Sasuke's made me cry and – hell – even you've made me cry sometimes, Naruto!"
"But-"
"Don't interfere! You'll only make things worse and I won't forgive either of you as long as I live."
"Sakura-chan!" Naruto protested loudly. "Can't we just rough him up a little?"
"No."
"Not even shout at him?"
"No!" she ground out.
"What about if we steal his books and bury them in the woods?"
Sakura opened her mouth to automatically deny him, but quickly thought twice. "Ok, that you can do. But nothing else, ok? You're not to even talk about this with him. I don't want him thinking I came crying to you two, because I didn't."
Sasuke sighed and shook his head. "I don't know what it is you see in him," he said bluntly.
"Neither do I," she whispered.
She honestly couldn't remember anymore.
Sakura had, the moment she'd stepped through the gates, intended to head home, unpack, cry a little, visit the bathhouse to soak her aching muscles, go back home, cry a little more, and then fall asleep contemplating the many numerous ways in which you could gut a copy nin without him actually dying on you.
But Tsunade had other plans.
"Sakura. Come on," she ordered with another snap of her fingers to get the girl's attention. It was either a sign that Tsunade was feeling extra hassled and snappish that day, or just because Sakura was looking particularly slow and dull-witted. Whatever the reason, Sakura followed the snapping fingers reluctantly to the Hokage tower where she was unceremoniously dumped with a mountain of paperwork.
"This needs to be done by tomorrow, or else the elder's will have my neck on the line," Tsunade explained brusquely. "I won't manage it on my own."
Sakura looked at the work in despair, feeling as far away from the sanctity of her apartment and bed as she had in Suna. She was never going to get home at this rate. "Can't you get someone else to help?" she asked her master. "Kotetsu or Izumo, maybe? I'm really tired, Tsunade-shishou."
"So am I, but you don't hear me complaining," the older woman replied. "And no, I can't get anyone else's help. You're one of the few people I can trust implicitly and these documents are of a very sensitive nature. I'd ask Shizune, but I've already set her to work on something else."
Sakura sighed.
"You're pale," Tsunade said, looking at her shrewdly. "Have you eaten today?"
Sakura thought for a moment. "No."
"Not trying to diet again, are you? You remember what I told you about how fatty deposits build up faster once you start starving yourself-"
"Yes, I remember, and no, I'm not dieting," Sakura said heavily. "I'm just tired."
Tsunade shot her a fixed smile. "Well, the faster you work the sooner you get home."
The Hokage's logic was appalling, but Sakura was not in a position to argue. She was tired and sore and suffering a queasiness that was the result of forgetting to eat all day, but she had no excuse to slouch off her work. Losing her virginity was not a valid reason to take sick leave.
Ruefully, Sakura picked up a pen and looked out of Tsunade's office window to view her home village. The sky was darkening fast now and she could see the street lanterns flickering on, speckling dots of orange and pink between the dim rooftops.
Kakashi was down there somewhere.
Exactly where was anyone's guess.
Most people Sakura knew had their frequent haunts around town. Naruto could, at any time, be found either at his home, Ichiraku, on route to either aforementioned places, or out training in one of the fields. Sasuke was less adventurous, as he had a strict routine that he lived accordingly to. From midnight to breakfast, he would be at home. From breakfast onwards he would be training, getting lunch with Naruto at twelve, and then go back to training until it was time for bed. Occasionally his routine varied, but that was the essential blueprint of his day.
Kakashi, on the other hand, was notoriously hard to pin down. Whereas most people could find Naruto and Sasuke within half an hour, finding Kakashi was a task that sometimes took the best part of the day, and even then it was far more likely that he'd find you first. One afternoon he'd be standing at the cenotaph, the next he'd be lounging on the bakery roof with a book resting on his face. One time, he'd been found hanging around the Sandaime's left nostril up on the Hokage monument. When he wasn't at home, he could be anywhere. When team 7 had first met, he'd explained rather vaguely that he had lots of hobbies, and as the years had gone by, these hobbies had turned out to mostly consist of walking around a lot and avoiding anyone who wanted to trap him into doing some work.
If he knew what was good for him, he would be at home giving his head a rest. A coma was a big deal, no matter how brief it was, and if he didn't get sufficient sleep, he would only harm his health.
And speaking of health…
"Oh!" Sakura nearly shot straight up out of her seat.
"What?" Tsunade asked, looking up.
Sakura looked towards the window and her epiphany quickly subdued. "Nothing…" she muttered, turning her eyes back to the paperwork.
There was no point worrying about birth control now. The shops would have closed by now and they weren't likely to open again till next Monday.
By then it would be too late.
After falling asleep twice on her surprisingly cushiony mound of paperwork, Tsunade grew frustrated enough to send her home. She hadn't given Sakura a hard time over it, but Sakura knew when her teacher was disappointed in her, but she honestly couldn't help it. The day had been long and trying, physically, emotionally and mentally. Sakura headed back to her apartment, striking off most of the things on her list of things-to-do until she had only one want:
Bed.
But the moment she stepped into her apartment, she knew something was out of place. Normally when she left for a few days, she would come back to a cold room that smelled faintly of dust and emptiness. Tonight all she could smell was Kakashi. For a brief moment she thought it was simply her nose playing cruel tricks on her mind again, but before she could reach for the light switch, she noticed a familiar silhouette on her bed.
Sakura let her bag slide from her shoulder and onto the floor as she leant back against the door. There was no point in turning the light on. The moonlight from the window was enough to se all she needed.
There was no relief at the sight of him. Just a rising note of fear and dread that heightened with each passing beat of silence. Right then, all she wanted to do was melt into a puddle and dribble away beneath the gap of her door and hope he didn't notice. Talking to or confronting Kakashi was low on her list of priorities right then… partly because she was hoping to put it off for as long as possible. All she wanted to do was go to bed, but that would be somewhat of a problem when he was sitting on it.
"I've had a really bad day." She hated how weak her voice sounded. How cracked and broken it came out, as if she was close to tears. Forcefully, she made the effort to strengthen her tone and clear the air in the room. "Should I find it creepy that you're sitting alone in my apartment with the lights switched off?" she asked in false casualness. "Are you trying to strike a mood or something?"
His form stirred slightly. "I couldn't find your light switch."
"Oh…" She pointed across the room to the wall beside her closet. "It's over there. But you kinda have to touch the wall before you touch the switch otherwise you'll get an electric shock. So… perhaps it's good that you didn't find it… um…"
"Interesting," he said, in a tone that implied it really was not. "I got something for you."
Sakura's heart nearly stopped. He'd gotten her a present? Was this his apology? He was holding up a box – not big enough to contain chocolates or flowers, but definitely big enough for jewelry. What had he bought her? A necklace? Earrings? A ring? Was he going to ask her to marry him?
"Are you going to stand there like a lettuce leaf all night?" he prompted when she didn't move.
Hesitantly Sakura moved toward the bed and reached out to take the box. Her cold fingers brushed his warm one, causing a tingle of awareness to shoot up her arm and straight to her heart. It was either him or she was in the early stages of a cardiac arrest.
As she read the embossed lettering on the box that caught in the moonlight, her heart sank.
"I knew you wouldn't get back before the shops shut so I got it for you."
"When they fought, Asuma used to get Kurenai flowers," she said softly, picking at the edges of the cardboard packet. "Shikamaru gets Temari ribbons and Naruto buys Sasuke ramen. What do you get me? You get me birth control!"
The anger that had been simmering beneath the surface all day bubbled forth, moving her arm to throw the packet back at him. Kakashi turned his head away as the box bounced off his chest and clattered to the matted floor. Irritatingly, she could not ruffle his feathers. It had been so easy last night, but today there was a calmness wrapped around him like a secure blanket that not even accusations of true perversion and admissions of lack of underwear would be able to penetrate. It was familiar. This was how he used to be around her before…
Before he'd started wanting her.
Slowly, Kakashi reached down and picked up the fallen box of pills. "You'll thank me tomorrow when you realize the shops are closed for the weekend. By Monday it would be too late."
He held the box out to her again and this time she regarded it stonily. She had the urge to throw it back at him again – preferably in his face this time – but his reasonable patience made her feel immature. The way he could turn a situation around and make her feel small, childish and petty when she had every right to her indignation was infuriating. It annoyed her all the more because she knew he wasn't doing it deliberately. That was just how he was.
With as much calm as she could muster, she took the box again and crawled onto the bed behind him to set it down on the windowsill. Then without further ado, she flopped down onto her reassuringly familiar mattress and curled herself towards the wall with her back to Kakashi. "You can go now," she said shortly, even though there was a small voice inside her pleading for him to stay. Tears were beginning to sting her eyes, but she somehow managed to maintain a steady voice. "Thank you for the gift."
Kakashi didn't move or say anything for a long time. The room became unbearably quiet till the sound of her own breathing seem to infringe upon it. But she had no more to say and it was simply up to Kakashi to decide his next move.
She felt him shift on the bed as he gave a slow sigh. "Do you hate me?"
It was a simple question, but the answer was one too complicated to define in a single 'yes' or 'no'. Yes, she hated him because right then she wanted to hurt him more than anyone else she'd ever known. She wanted to kick and scratch him and say horrible things until perhaps he got a little taste of the pain she was feeling. But how could you truly hate someone when you loved them too much to carry out such retribution?
Her inability to answer seemed to say it all to Kakashi. The mattress dipped and creaked as he pushed himself to his feet. "I'm sorry," was all he said. "I hope one day you can appreciate how much"
Sakura rolled over sharply to see him walking toward the door. Fear clenched her heart and right then she was deadly certain that the moment he walked out this room, this whole devastating and exhilarating chapter of her life would be closed and shut away for good. If he walked out that door, there would never be another chance.
She sat up abruptly with cold tears dampening her cheeks. "Do you love me?"
Kakashi paused, but he didn't look back at her.
"It's a simple question," she told him quietly. "One I've already answered, so now it's your turn."
He turned back to her with his hands shoved in his pockets and a humorless laugh in his throat. "That's not a simple question. That's the most complicated and difficult question in the entire history of questions."
"Only to people like you," she pointed out scathingly.
"People like me?" he echoed softly. "You mean ninja."
Sakura's eyes narrowed at him, but he wasn't looking. Instead he was running an inquisitive finger along her bookshelf, examining the titles in the moonlight. "Love is a fleeting emotion, Sakura," he said, pausing his digit on a copy of biological chakra infusion reference book. "It never lasts. All it does is create bonds that will inevitably be broken and then people get hurt. There's no point or reason to it." His attention moved to the next book on the shelf and he tugged it out to examine the cover. It was her favorite book 'The Greatest Love', well-thumbed and tatty from years of reading. It was a classic. But judging from the unimpressed look Kakashi gave it, he didn't agree. "No point, no reason… these are unnecessary things to shinobi."
She couldn't quite believe the words coming out of his mouth. Was this really the man who valued the lives and well-being of his own comrades above his missions? For as long as she'd known him, he'd never been a stickler for the rules (unless they were ones he came up with). The shinobi guidelines were meaningless to him and she'd always thought he was a firm believer in the human side of being a ninja. Why all of a sudden was he spouting stuff that wouldn't be out of place of the Konoha Ninja guidebook?
"Do you seriously think like that?" she whispered to him, stricken. "Since when has love ever been a weakness?"
Kakashi snapped a surprised look on her, as if he'd only just realized she was there. His visible eye clouded over with a mixture of what looked like guilt and uncertainty. Sakura watched, bemused, unable to comprehend what he was thinking.
Slowly, he replaced her book on the shelf and ran his fingers over his masked lips thoughtfully. "Do you believe in curses?" he asked.
That was an easy one. "No," she said bluntly.
"Neither do I," he murmured. "So how do you explain why all the people I have loved are dead? My father, my teacher, my first and last best friend… they're all gone. How can you say that love doesn't hurt people when I've been paying the price for it my whole life?"
Sakura didn't know how to respond. Her heart tugged in empathy for him, but there was nothing she could say that could fix the lifetime of hurt he'd carried. 'I'm sorry' seemed pathetically small and inadequate. She couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to lose the people she loved, as Sakura was one of few lucky ninjas who still had everyone she'd started with. Her mother and father were alive and well, her friends were strong and capable, and although there had been a few near misses in their time, they were still all there.
Fresh tears gathered as she struggled with her frustration. She wanted to convince him that she could be his friend. That she could bear his love and that she would never let him down, but he would never believe that. And she just couldn't find the words…
Suddenly Kakashi was before her, reaching down to wipe away the tears with the warm cotton of his gloves. "Don't cry," he told her quietly. "It's not your problem., it's mine. I'm sorry for bringing it up."
Sakura sniffed loudly with a shuddering breath as she reached up to feel his hands against her face. The gentleness shocked her. After all the pain and uncertainty she'd been harboring since last night, all it took was one kind touch to let it all come flooding out in the most undignified way. How could he do this to her? How could he be cold one minute, making her think she'd gotten it all wrong, and then the next show her such warmth that she remembered why she'd fallen for him.
"N-no," she croaked, snurching dreadfully and clutching the back of his hands tightly in case he tried to pull away. "I want you to. I want you to talk to me about things. Anything. I w-want everything and I don't care if you can't give me everything I want because all I need is you, and I'm pretty sure that's a line from 'The Greatest Love', but I really mean it and I don't know how to make you see that I… I'd do anything for you. Even if it means just h-having to put up with you."
Kakashi sighed and gave her an exasperated sigh. He knelt down before her to place his hands on her shoulders. "You're a very sweet girl."
Sakura nodded with a wobbly kind of sob.
"And you deserve better than having to put up with me."
"Can't you just try?" she whispered, her voice breaking. "That's all I want."
He looked away and began to withdraw his hands. Sakura grabbed them in her own in an effort to stop him, but she quickly stilled when she noticed the backs of his fingers seemed unusually rough. Peering down at him, she caught the sight of torn, scabbed skin washed a pale silver in the light of the window. She looked up at him quizzically, but he only scowled at his hands as if they had somehow betrayed him. In a way, they had.
"You trashed your room didn't you? After I left? Why did you do that?"
Kakashi closed his eyes and didn't answer.
Sakura dashed the tears from her eyes one last time and took his hands roughly in her own. "Hold them still," she ordered, before placing her fingers against the backs of his and letting her chakra course around their point of contact. The blue glow of the healing jutsu lit the space between them and flickered in the fathomless depths of his eye.
"You never answered my question," she said quietly, watching his face rather than her work. "Do you love me?"
"I told you," he began tiredly. "Love only provides a vulnerability to be exploited-"
Sakura's flow of chakra halted and the room plunged into darkness again. She gripped his hands tightly. "But do you love me?"
His head dropped forward ever so slightly, eye hooded and unreadable. Sakura was not having that. In an instant she reached up to tug his hitai-ate off completely – noticing he'd removed the bandage prematurely, and dragged her fingers down his face, taking the mask with them. She stopped only a moment to admire the beauty contained in the face before her, then took him by the back of the head to drag him forward into a kiss.
He didn't resist, although he was slow to respond. After one light press against mouth, she pulled back, but only far enough away for her lips to still brush and catch against his, coaxing. Kakashi looked inscrutable, if not a little tensed, and so she pressed another soft kiss against his mouth to gentle tap her tongue against his slightly parted lips, politely asking for reciprocation. Slowly, reluctantly, he gave it, reaching a hesitant hand to her jaw as he returned the slow, charged kiss. She kept it soft and light with more inquisitiveness than anything else, testing his reactions to each slide of lips and brush of fingers on skin. Because although Kakashi's voice could freeze up and his eyes could shift to the floor, his kisses never deceived. Each time he'd kissed her, she'd felt something true and honest. There was no hiding his feelings when his lips met hers, whether they were feelings of fear, relief or wild and out-of-control lust.
She felt the apology for last night in the gentleness of his fingertips on her nape, dusting through the soft, wispy hairs he found there. She found the answer to her question in the way those fingers shook imperceptibly.
Sakura gradually broke the kiss and drew her arms tightly around his neck to press her face against her shoulder. His hands touched against her back softly, and for a moment she simply hung there against him, breathing in his scent and enjoying his warmth.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered, barely audible to even her own ears. Something that had been coiled unconscionably tight inside her since her mission with Matsura was finally loosening. A sense of peace and calmness that had eluded her for so long was finally there in her hands.
Kakashi didn't answer, but she didn't care.
"How long?" she asked dimly, nuzzling her nose against his masked neck.
She felt him sigh against her hair and squeeze his arms around her fractionally more tight. "Since your inauguration."
Sakura nearly leapt back in surprise. She settled for giving his ear a rather shocked stare. "But… that was over a year ago!"
"I noticed," he responded dryly.
Struggling to get her head around that notion, Sakura blinked rapidly. "But… really?"
"I don't know. I just… noticed you that day for the first time." There was something in his voice that had changed. He sounded almost relieved to be getting it off his chest. "I had no doubt that you would pass; you're the best kunoichi in your generation – ouch – village – the best kunoichi in the village."
Sakura let go of his ear with her teeth. "Continue."
"I knew you would pass… but I guess it still surprised me. I didn't fully appreciate how far you'd come until I saw your name down in the jonin registry alongside mine. And you were beautiful that day. When you smiled, everyone wanted to smile."
"Why didn't you say?" Sakura whispered into his shoulder, letting her head drop forward in exasperation.
"What was I supposed to do?" he asked. "You were sixteen and you were still getting over Sasuke. How would you have reacted to your teacher declaring his feelings for you out of the blue? I wasn't sure it was love then anyway. I figured it was just some effect of work-related stress and decided that if I kept away from you the temporary infatuation would fade."
Sakura's eyes squeezed shut. "You were avoiding me. All that time it was deliberate?" In a way it hurt to have that long suspicion confirmed. No one liked to know they were being avoided. But on the other hand, she now knew the reason, and for that she could forgive him.
Sort of.
"I didn't want to make you uncomfortable…" he said.
"No, you just wound up making me feel unwanted," she said bitterly. Even so, she wasn't really mad enough to pull away from him. Instead she just pulled tighter against him with every intention of trapping him there until he had finished confessing. "It hurt, Kakashi."
"I didn't think any absence on my part would bother you," he told her quietly. "I didn't realize it did until this last mission. I'm sorry."
"That didn't stop you from trying to avoid me again though," she pointed out.
"I panicked," he admitted. "It only got worse throughout the mission. Every time I thought something had happened to you, I swear I had a small heart attack. I didn't need to kiss you in that gallery. I know a dozen kind of A-rank genjutsu that could have hidden us from sight, but… it was the first thing that popped into my head, and I should have dismissed it but once it started… I shouldn't have done it."
"I didn't mind," she reminded him. "I thought it was quite nice actually."
"And what if you had minded?" he pointed out.
"I would have smashed your face in before I let someone I didn't like that way take advantage of me. You didn't kiss me – I let you kiss me" she said firmly. "If someone gets fresh with me without permission, my usual method is just to lop their rocks off, so just thank your lucky stars."
"This is true," he said, and to her relief he sounded amused.
"You don't have to feel guilty about anything, Kakashi," she said seriously. "I don't regret anything that's happened between us."
The hand that had been smoothing over the back of her head stilled. "What about last night?" he asked. "Do you regret what happened then?"
She closed her eyes and remembered the pleasure he'd given her. And the pain.
"A little…" she whispered. "It wasn't how I imagined it would be, but then I didn't really know what to expect. I don't really have a lot of experience in… you know, that department. I mean, the only other experience I have is with Matsura…"
"When I touched you between your legs before," he said, with such straight-forwardness that Sakura couldn't help but blush, "you flinched. Was that…?"
"It sorta reminded me of the way he touched me," she said with a grimace. "But don't worry! Only for a moment."
She thought she detected a soft shudder run through him. "The last thing I ever want to do is remind you of that man."
"Well… being with you is pretty different than being with him," she said slowly, thoughtfully. "With Matsura it was like having a wardrobe topple on you with the key still in the lock."
Kakashi took a moment to digest that ghastly simile before begging the question. "And me?"
A soft sigh escaped her lips. "Being with you was too different to compare. I liked it when everything got going. But it did hurt, and I was too sensitive afterwards and you weren't sensitive enough, and the fact that I didn't know how you really felt about me didn't help, and perhaps it would have gone smoother if we hadn't been so freakin' pissed at each other, but what's done is done and… no. I don't really regret it. I wouldn't change what happened for the world. I'm sure it'll be much better next time."
He interrupted, disentangling himself from her arms. "I think it would be best if there wasn't a next time."
Sakura stared at him, suddenly short of breath. "What?" Hadn't he liked it? Had she been bad at it? Sure she had tried to throw him off at one point, but she'd gotten into it eventually.
"When I told you love was a weakness, I meant it." She tried to speak but he cut her off again. "Besides which, I'm not very good at it, and you really do deserve someone who can love you properly… someone who sees things the way you do. Not some perverted old goat who'll just bring you crashing down to earth and make you cry every other day."
"But – I don't want anyone else!" she protested. "I want you!"
She couldn't wrap her head around the idea that you could love someone but not want to be with them. It defied everything she knew about love. Occasionally in sad romances it wasn't all that strange that the man would have to leave to take care of some important matter before he could commit fully to a relationship. She used to attribute this to Sasuke – certain that if she gave him enough time and space to fulfill his goal of murdering his own brother, perhaps he would be able to devote himself to love (and in a way, she'd been right, except about the part where she was the one he devoted himself to).
But Kakashi didn't have that excuse. He held no major goals or dreams to aspire to the way Naruto and Sasuke did, and while this was one of the things she liked about him, it also meant there wasn't anything holding him back from a relationship. He had no interest in holding grudges and hunting down old enemies. He did not have his sights set on becoming a famous hero. All he did was traipse around town with a book in his hand and would continue taking whatever mission came his way until the day he didn't come back from one. That was his purpose in life. Why was there no room in that for her?
Or was she simply making the same mistake of applying her romantic ideals and fantasies to real life again? She didn't understand Kakashi's reasons, but then, it was a rare day that she ever understood anything about him. She knew that he didn't think like her, and sometimes she forgot that he was actually a man fourteen years her senior. He was from an entirely different generation than herself and he'd lived and fought through wars that were nothing more to Sakura than boring facts and dates in her academy books.
He was different than herself. Perhaps too different.
"You understand, don't you Sakura?" he asked carefully, touching her face. Sakura flinched away from his hand, letting him make no mistake that she didn't understand at all.
"But you love me…" she whispered, staring at his arm. "And I love you."
Kakashi shrugged. "It isn't always enough. Could you honestly picture us as a couple? I'm not the one you're looking for, Sakura. You have expectations I can't meet and I'm not going to get into this with you only for you to realize that fact at a later time. I can't be a lover to you."
Her breath hitched anxiously and she realized she was on the verge of another round of tears. In hind sight she was grateful for the moonlight to hide how splotchy and puffy her face was probably becoming. "Can't you just try?" she begged. "Please, Kakashi."
He shook his head and his hair and cheekbones caught the light in a way that made him intolerably handsome compared to how she felt. If the Lover's Cactus had been there to see him, it would have bloomed on the spot in a sheer fluster. "I've been trying for over thirty years. All I can ever succeed at doing is making girls utterly miserable, and the last person I want to make miserable is you. I can't change who I am, Sakura."
"Kakashi, stop it…" She coiled her fingers into the material of his sleeve, feeling as if every word he spoke was another hammer blow to the chisel against her heart. It hurt. It hurt more than being run through the chest with a sword. It hurt more than having poison slowly eating away at her insides. It hurt more than anything Sasuke could ever inflict on her. "Please, don't…"
"In ANBU, we used to have follow a saying. 'What happens outside the village stays outside the village.'" He rested a hand on her knee, giving it a comforting squeeze. "We don't have to bring the issues back home with us. We can forget what happened and just go back to the way things were when-"
"I can't forget!" she cried out aiming a strike for his face. He had to lean back to avoid the slap, and when she tried to follow it up with her other hand, she promptly felt her wrists pinned down against the mattress. He leaned over her, restrictive but not threatening, and for a moment Sakura was too angry to do more than huff a soft expletive and tense up against his vice grip. "I can't forget and we can't go back to the way things were before! It's too late! And I don't want things to be that way again."
She paused, breathing hard as she met his gaze defiantly. When his eyes dipped along the line of her bare, exposed neck, hers narrowed.
"And you don't want that either," she said slowly. "Do you?"
"Sakura-"
She surged upwards unexpectedly, her mouth crashing against his. He jerked his head back and released her in his surprise, and Sakura took the opportunity to grab his vest and drag him back to press another desperate kiss against his mouth. "Come on," she breathed, using the same dare as before. "We can try again. You still want me, don't you?"
Kakashi was struggling to keep her hands from divesting him of his vest as well as avoid her mouth. "Sakura – don't do this-" He attempted to stand up and step back, but Sakura went with him, dragging him down to the floor beneath her.
If he really wanted to push her off, he could easily have done it, she decided. He acted coy, but she recognized the way he reacted to her – saw the way his eyes closed when she pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses along the underside of his jaw, heard the way his breath hitched when she rubbed her front against his and felt the way his fingers weren't trying to push her away at all.
Sakura rode on instinct, relying on his reactions in order to decipher what pushed his buttons the most. He took a wonderful shuddering breath when she sat back and ground her hips against his, cradling the growing bulge she felt there between her thighs. But it wasn't comfortable. The excitement was cancelled out by the sting of still-tender flesh, and she knew that if they had sex now it would hurt like hell. But the fear of what would happen if she let him up to walk out the door was what drove her on. Sakura was desperate. She was too close to losing him completely.
Kakashi grunted beneath her, catching hold of her hips to either halt her grinding movements or support them – it was hard to tell. "If you intend to use sex as a weapon, Sakura, you should probably master it first," he rasped. "Points for effort, but your grimace of pain is giving you away."
Her motions stilled and her face twisted with a hundred emotions she could not name. "What do I have to do to make you love me?" she demanded angrily, tugging at his lapels.
He shook his head as hips flexed beneath hers pointedly. "This isn't love."
Slowly, the lines of pain and hurt dropped off Sakura's face until she was regarding him almost blankly. Just as slowly she slipped off him and sat on the floor, hugging her knees in a way that probably looked quite childish, but at that point she didn't care. Kakashi remained on the floor, trying to catch his breath with a hand pressed against his stomach.
"I'm bad with feelings," he said matter-of-factly into the quiet room. "I've messed up every relationship I've ever had. Every girl I have ever taken to bed has gone away hating me because I inevitably let them down in some way. And even if we did go through with it… who's to say it would be worth it? A teacher can't take a student as a lover. People won't accept it. How can a relationship last under that kind of pressure? How long can you guarantee your feelings for me will last when people frown at us whenever we're seen together?"
Sakura's head was slowly shaking from side to side. "You're wrong," she whispered hoarsely. "Wrong, wrong, wrong. We're shinobi. We have to take what we can get where we can get it because our lives are short and if what we have is real then no one has any right to look at us and disapprove. They will accept us eventually… because I have no intention to ever stop loving you."
"Sakura…" He breathed her name in exasperation, which was a bit rich. If either of them had any right to be exasperated by the other's behavior, it was her.
"You have to give us a chance, Kakashi," she pleaded softly. "I can't promise I'll still love you next month, or next year, or into the next decade, and neither can you. But isn't that the risk everyone takes when they fall in love? What's the point in having a heart if you're not willing to use it in case you end up getting hurt?"
"Sakura, it's you I'm worried about," he said patiently. "I told you, I can't give you what you deserve. You're better off getting someone younger and more sensitive than lumbering yourself with an emotional wasteland like me. Any relationship we have is bound to be dysfunctional at best. At worst… traumatizing."
Sakura's eyes squeezed shut and a lone tear rolled down her cheek. "You're wrong," she rasped.
He rolled upright. "Am I?"
Sakura held her breath and said nothing. He had to be wrong. All she wanted, needed and deserved from him was for him to be there to love her. That was all she was asking. When she had nightmares she wanted to wake up beside him so he could hold her and listen to her incomprehensible hysterics the way he had in that backwater inn during their mission. She wanted to be able to talk to him again, trading dry jokes and joint popping contests without fear and restraint like they had before they realized they were in love. All she wanted was what they had had before… interjected with the occasional kiss, hug and occasional fumble between the sheets as they straightened out the kinks in their love making.
All they needed was for him to give her a chance…
"I'd like us to be friends again," she heard him say, breaking her out of her thoughts. "I hope we can be."
Sakura stared at him for a long, hard moment, lips pressed in a thin line. A new revelation suddenly sprouted from the turbulent confusion and anger that clouded her thoughts, and suddenly the tension drained from her body, the corners of her lips lifting in a slight smile. "Ok."
"What?" He blinked, taken by surprise.
"Ok," she said, nodding. "We'll go back to being friends. No more avoiding each other and no mentioning anything that has happened between us."
He nodded as well, but much slower and more cautiously. "Right…" He suspected something, and frankly he was right to.
"Just friends. Not teacher and student or commander and subordinate. We'll be friends."
And then she'd give him three days.
Three days before he came crawling back needing more.
TBC