Sakura awoke the next morning, feeling incredibly out of sorts and wishing what had transpired the day before had been a dream, a horrible stupid dream. When she realized it wasn't, and never would be, she pushed herself out of bed with a sigh.
She shuffled into the kitchen, her ratty slippers scraping across the ugly laminate floor, when she stopped. Something over by the front door caught her eye.
Wandering over to it, she plucked it from the ground, and examined it. It was an envelope someone had stuffed under the door. Curiously she used a sharp fingernail to wedge it open and slipped out its contents. A single, gently folded piece of printer paper with scrawling handwriting met her eyes.
Sakura,
I'm sorry. I can't promise anything, because you're right, I am a damaged man. I'm not perfect, nor will I ever be, and nor will I strive to be. I'm just me. And that's all I can give you if you still want to give me a chance.
And Sakura, I really hope you do. After the war, I wasn't obliviously ignoring you – I was deliberately avoiding you. I didn't know how to explain, how to describe how I began to feel about you. It was such a strange, foreign thing, I dealt with it the only way I knew how – repressing it and pretending it didn't exist. Needless to say, this didn't really work.
I'm a mess, Sakura. I've never done relationships because I've always known it would be too much for the other person to handle. But I don't know about you; you might just be able to do it.
Lunch at noon? I'll meet you on the Hokage heads.
Kakashi
Sakura read the letter three times.
And smiled.