Weeks, perhaps months later, Kakashi awoke to find himself confined to a hospital bed with no real idea of how he'd gotten there. His mind was full of mist and fog, and memory was a slippery knave dancing always just out of reach. Perhaps he had tried one too many Raikiris or Kamuis. Or maybe he had been hit over the head with a lead pipe. Anything was possible. All he really knew was that he hurt much too much to be dead, and that a woman was holding on tightly to his right hand.
He knew it was a woman's hand because though he could feel calluses and scars, it was still soft and delicate and nails that were longer than any man would find practical were dimpling the flesh of his palm uncomfortably. She was obviously a kunoichi, but then who did he really expect to be sitting vigil at his bedside? Cracking his good eye open cautiously, he felt momentarily relieved that the lights in the room were dimmed.
Turning his head to the side proved impossible, but the woman had noticed he was awake and had risen to her feet so that she stood in his field of vision. He opened his mouth to speak but the only sound he could coax from his throat was a rattling puff of air. He tried again. "Sa..kura?"
"Shh, shh, Sensei," she crooned, extricating her hand from his so that she could bring a chip of ice to his parched mouth. She painted the melting bit of ice around his dry and cracked lips, not stopping the circular motion of her fingers even after it was gone. Eventually she seemed to realize what she was doing and, blushing, dropped her hand back to her side.
He was not surprised that she could touch his mouth, only that she would. He was never allowed to keep his mask on in the hospital until the medics were certain he was out of danger. Sakura had probably seen his face a hundred-thousand times in the course of her medical career.
His tongue darted out to collect a little of the moisture she had deposited on his lips. He attempted to ask her how he had come to be in the hospital and why she had been sitting at his side. All he could manage was a gasped and ragged, "How…? Why…?"
"Shh. Shh." She repeated, brushing his bangs tenderly away from his forehead, like a mother – or a lover. "Don't try to talk," she softly admonished.
"I'm sorry that I had to wake you. But there is something that I need you to do for me," she continued in her low, soothing tone of voice. She crawled up onto the bed next to him, careful of the wires and tubes that littered his body. He panicked, wondering if he had lost not only the memory of the cause behind his hospital stay but of the illicit affair he had been having with his former student. He prayed to all the gods that he had not because having sex with Sakura was something one would want to remember.
He heard the monitors he was attached to complain loudly as his heart-rate increased dramatically. The hand she placed on his chest did not immediately help until the chakra she was funneling into his system reached his overly-stressed organ, forcing it into a calm, sedate rhythm that the monitors happily accepted as normal.
She rested her head just above his shoulder. "I'm going to die in three days," she whispered into his ear.
Had her hand not been where it was, pinning him down, he might just have managed to jerk out of the bed entirely. His monitors gave another loud screech before her chakra regained control, evening out his breathing and his heart-rate and probably manipulating the chemicals in his brain because he was suddenly much less concerned with her impending doom than he thought he ought to be.
"Just listen to me," she commanded, still speaking in a whisper. "I'm going to go on a mission tomorrow. A routine assassination. It will be quick and it will be clean and I will get out without anyone knowing Konoha had anything to do with it. And then I will vanish. It would be too much to hope without a trace. That is why I'm telling you now. Because I think you are the only one with any hope of ever finding me."
"I am asking you not to look. Show a complete lack of interest in what has happened to me. Pretend you are the cold, unfeeling bastard that everyone thinks you are and stay out of it. Because I know if you look, you will look in earnest, because you know no other way to exist. And then you will find me, and you will have to kill me, because I will not come back with you."
"…Why?" he croaked, confused beyond measure.
"I can't live like this anymore. I can't handle the guilt. I want to save people not murder them in their beds!" she explained, her voice still pitched low so that only he could possibly hear her.
"Can… ask… for leave. Don't… run," he tried to reason, using the few words that would escape his throat.
"You know that they won't grant me leave. They only let Sasuke retire," she nearly spat the word, "because he was too broken, too damaged to be of any use to them. They will not let me go."
"I am not Tsunade. I am not the granddaughter of Senju Hashirama. I am just the daughter of merchants, of civilians, who scored too high on an aptitude test and possessed too much chakra to go unnoticed by the Academy recruiters. No one will think twice about taking me out. I know too many secrets, and I am perceived to be too weak to not break under torture. I will never be free. Unless I am dead." She paused, her forehead making brief contact with his shoulder.
When she again spoke, her voice was laced with a deep sadness. She sounded bone-weary and near to breaking. "So I am asking, begging you to let me go. To have a life where I do not bathe in the blood of the innocent and the wicked alike every day… every day…" She shook her head viciously to clear it. He could tell she was near to shattering right then and there. "I was not meant for this, Kakashi-sensei. You knew it the first time that you laid eyes on me. I would never have made it this far if I hadn't been sandwiched between Naruto and Sasuke."
She was wrong, but he didn't have the words or the energy to tell her.
"But, but…" She took a moment to compose herself, steady herself, wiping at eyes he knew remained dry despite her evident sorrow. "I don't need your answer now. It will be plain enough when I am either allowed to live in peace somewhere far, far away, or I am dead. Either way, I will be free."
She rose to leave, as careful in her rising as she had been in her descent. But, before going she leaned down to deliver a gentle kiss to his cheek and to whisper once more into his ear, "I am sorry to ask this of you, Sensei. I will miss you. All of you. So much. But it is the only way."
And then Haruno Sakura was gone, and the next time Kakashi heard her name spoken was by a frantic Naruto pleading for his aid in finding her, begging him to send his dogs to track her. "She's been missing for five days," he cried belligerently as Kakashi continued to ignore him. "She could be in the hands of the enemy. She could be hurt somewhere all alone and scared. Kakashi-sempai, she could be dead."
"Sakura is a big girl, Naruto. She can take care of herself. And if she can't, Konoha is better off without her," he replied stoically, returning his attention to his orange-covered book, signaling an end to their discussion.
He could still see Naruto out of the corner of his eye, the disgust and heart-break painted so clearly across the young man's expressive face. It was better that he hate Kakashi now for this than to hate him later for being forced to kill his friend. Still, it was a miserable feeling losing the comforting presence of one student and the trust of another.