A/R: Inspired by a wonderful fanart made by Arraveug on the Kakashi/Sakura community on LJ. Yes, I took her nice, sweet sketch and turned it angsty. *blush*

Final Moments

For the first time, Kakashi looked at the medic standing mere feet from him. He had to admit, she had remained pretty calm while explaining about chakra and chakra sealing techniques. He vaguely remembered something similar from his days as a genin but the girl had certainly refreshed his mind in the last few minutes they both had to live.

"Chakra cannot be stopped; it can only be temporarily suppressed – via very complicated and dangerous methods. And when bound so crudely like this rope is doing ours, it will naturally find the path of least resistance out of our bodies. And if that path means completely frying our insides…"

The Copy Nin suppressed a shudder at the thought of all their chakra turning against them. No wonder the enemy had only seen fit to bind their hands and not taken any other preventive measures to keep them from escaping. He and Sakura had been turned into perfect time bombs that would implode on themselves.

"Kakashi… why did you follow me? If you hadn't, you wouldn't be here…" Did he detect guilt in her voice, guilt of all things?

"Don't be silly, Sakura-chan, dying by your side will be a pleasure," he tried to joke. It didn't work, judging from the moisture gathering on her eyelashes.

"I-I'm sorry…" she whispered and he could tell how hard she was trying to keep her voice from betraying how scared she was.

The way Hatake Kakashi understood the situation; he only had minutes to live and a lot to say to the student he never thought he would come to care so deeply about. He wanted to tell her that it was okay to be afraid to die, he wished he could lie to her and tell her things would be okay, he wanted to come up with some brilliant solution to get them out of this mess but mostly, he realized with a start, he didn't want to see her so defeated in her last moments. He wanted to see his Sakura going the way she lived, fighting till the very last minute.

But instead of doing anything, he took careful steps to the distressed medic and silently nudged her to look up at him. As soon as her sparkling (with tears, he noticed with a jolt of pain somewhere in his chest. Was the chakra build up starting already?) eyes met his, Kakashi slowly pressed his lips to hers.

It may not have been perfect and it most certainly had not been planned, but Kakashi couldn't help thinking that out of all the possible deaths he could have had, this was by far the most preferable.

Because not only was he with Sakura but she had stopped crying.