Note: Part 5, wherein the reader sighs and shakes their head on Kakashi's behalf. Poor guy's in for it now. Thanks, everyone, for the comments you've left. And thank you for adding me onto your favorites lists, as well. I love receiving reviews, and I welcome reactions, criticisms, or even just your thoughts on the fanfic or Kakasaku as a pairing. I admit, they're my guilty pleasure ship of Naruto.

Someone commented to me about timing, and that if this were two years after the manga Sakura would be more likely to be turning 18 than 17. Hm... that is a point, sort of. Overall though, you can round six months up or six months down. I probably should have rounded up instead, but I'm basically committed at this point. It's a small fact anyway, and not really important. Either way, in future chapters I have Sakura acting fairly mature, as I think that most people living a ninja lifestyle as presented in the show probably grow up faster and are allowed more freedoms at a younger age than regular kids in a regular world. If my Sakura seems more like a 20 year old than a 17 year old, that's why.

Song for this chapter: "Between the Bars" by Elliot Smith

Lucid

5 – You see my song is like a haiku

It was almost ten when Kakashi cut lazily through the civilian quarter. His latest mission had been local, easy, and ended with a team-celebratory dinner of the spiciest food in Fire Country, which his stomach was still recovering from. As he walked he breathed in the cool, dry air of autumn in Hidden Leaf, and thought of a girl he had no right to think of.

When he saw the same girl walking across the boulevard from him, he believed for a second that he had fallen asleep over his dinner plate and was back at the restaurant, dreaming. There would be no other explanation for Haruno Sakura to be out wandering at night, alone and striding down the same exact street—her street.

Her street.

He remembered now, how she lived in the civilian quarter with her family, in a house with a huge tree and bars on the balconies. It'd been years since he'd seen it.

Drunk on nostalgia, a drug he rarely indulged in, Kakashi jotted over to Sakura. The nostalgic feeling disappeared immediately when he got nearer, overpowered by the fantasy. He knew if he closed his eyes he'd see her pink-painted nails curling around his dick—he took a deep breath and looked over at his former student.

She wasn't wearing pink nail polish; in fact she wasn't wearing nail polish at all. He could faintly see the swirling shadow of calluses on her palms, and in his mind, without his permission, the girly hands around his cock went from soft and smooth to rough and strong. Fantasy-Sakura smirked as she took him into her mouth. The update was not unpleasant.

If anything, it was too pleasant.

The last thing he needed to do was start basing his sordid fantasy on the real thing; a fantasy of Sakura was forgivable, but fantasizing about Sakura—the real young woman instead of the idealized teenage sex-kitten of his perverted subconscious—well that was not okay at all. It lent unappreciated realism.

"Late night?" he ventured.

Sakura noticed him and sighed a hello. Kakashi discreetly let his gaze run down her body from her lips to her thighs, admiring the curves and the hardness in equal portions. Who was he kidding? The sex dreams had taken over his nights completely, and in his subconscious he was already starting to overlap the illusion with the real girl. It was embarrassing, but neither was Kakashi wasn't sure he truly wanted it to stop.

He peered at her closer, picking out her weighted stance, her drooping shoulders. Her hair was oily and in the dim light of the stars and street lamps the pink took on a flat grayish color, like his own. There were dark circles under her eyes, and he could see the edge of her crumpled lab coat sticking out of her backpack.

"You look..." tired, stressed, beaten, older. "Weary," he said at last.

Sakura pushed a sweat-dampened lock of hair behind her ear. She nodded, and they began walking together. She said, "I just co-headed a four hour surgery. No one comes out of those with happy feet. And twice tonight we thought we'd lost our patient."

"You do surgery?" He winced behind his mask when the words escaped. She'd just said she did surgery. He'd never really imagined her at that professional level, given her age—something Kakashi just happened to be thinking a lot about these days.

Sakura raised her eyebrows, and let any offense at his surprise pass. "As the Hokage loves to point out, every time I work on real people, it makes me stronger in the field. Being a medic-nin is more than just patching people up, Kakashi. Sometimes you have to cut them open first. You should know," she sent him a look that was half admonishing, half sly, "you've had six emergency invasive operations."

He was momentarily dizzied by the thought that she'd read his medical file. That Sakura had the rank to read his medical file, even as the Hokage's apprentice. She didn't wait for him to ask, but continued to talk. As she spoke the shadows from the neighborhood street lights danced around her lips and cheeks, forming the words in time. Kakashi watched each syllable rise and dip across her features, and measured them all.

"I've done minor operations alone before, but this was my third time leading a major surgery as second in command. The first two times were with Tsunade-sensei, and this time it was with Shizune." She hiked her backpack up a little higher on her shoulder, and smiled at him. It was breathtakingly disarming. "If Shizune gives me a favorable report, then next time I'll be the only one in charge of the room."

"Congratulations, Sakura," Kakashi said, wanting her to know he meant it. Though he realized he had little right to be proud of how far she'd advanced, he was. "I've never heard of a medic-nin so young running an O.R., and as you pointed out I've been in one plenty of times. Are you the youngest?"

Unconsciously step back, hold. There was being proud of her accomplishments and that was fine and well-deserved, but was he flattering her openly? Where was his head?

And now she blushed, because he'd given her a compliment she didn't have to fight for. Kakashi wanted memorize the picture of it and then burn the picture so he would never have to look at it again.

"No," she said, and smiled a little more. Awe wound through her tone, and brought with it a thread of jealousy. "Tsunade was doing surgeries at fifteen that I'm only beginning to master. Just thinking about it makes me feel like an inexperienced child, even though it must have been twice as hard for her, because she was a child, and yet she was saving the lives of men and women far more experienced."

His gaze focused as Sakura's red face got redder, dipping her head a little. Kakashi let her talk without interruption, filling his mind with the sound of her voice. Later, he knew, he could imagine it wantonly in his dreams, blending with the memory of her blushes. For this moment he just wanted to see Haruno Sakura like she was—open and generous with her thoughts, stressed from the world but still willing to share with a man she barely knew anymore.

Because he asked, and for no more complicated a reason than that.

"I still feel immature like that around Tsunade-sensei," Sakura confessed, kicking a foot along the sidewalk. "Her work is amazing, and we're only discussing the medical field. The stuff she's done as a field-nin, how she came to be Sannin-level... all of it puts me in awe of her, when I sit back and think about it. And when I make a mistake, I feel like a stupid little kid instead of the Hokage's pupil. Even when I've advanced, or when I succeed like tonight, I sometimes feel that way around Shizune or the other upper level medic-nins, too."

She turned her head to look at him suddenly, dead into the eyes. Her stare was speculative as she tapped the back of her thumb against her bottom lip and said, "I don't feel like a kid when I'm around you. When did that happen?"

Kakashi bit his tongue. He bit it very, very hard.

"Anyway," she shrugged, and kept walking, now looking almost nervously away from him, "When I need to strengthen myself I just remember that Tsunade, Shizune, and all the medic-nin I work with were raised here, in this village, and so was I. Konoha made all of us strong, and we make it strong in turn by pushing ourselves harder, by reaching farther. I love being part of that, you know? Having something bigger than myself to fight for."

"Sometimes," Kakashi said gently, because he knew in his gut that this might be one of the most honest things Sakura had ever said in his presence, "Sometimes knowing that you belong somewhere makes the difference between living and dying. It can give you the strength to make it home at the end of the day, and even if at times you think it's all you have, you know that you'll always have it."

She sighed in return, and Kakashi wondered if she was thinking of the boy who threw that sacred feeling away. But Sakura surprised him again, and instead of bringing up her former teammate, she yawned and said, "Wow, has it been a pretty crazy night or what. And tomorrow I'll be a year older."

"Get used to the feeling," said Kakashi. "It doesn't go away."

"You mean that feeling where the world around you is moving so fast, but you're stuck wading through water. And every time you think you've caught up, when you think you're in control, someone puts another hose in the tank and fills it up deeper, until you can't breathe at all?"

He sucked in air through the thing veneer of his mask. Her appearance, his dreams, the late hour: all were pulling something from Hatake Kakashi, draining his spirit like air from a balloon. He could only stare at the image she made in the night, stopped at the gate of her house. Tiredness had encircled Sakura, but still she waited for his response before saying goodbye.

"Yeah." Her preferred metaphor was drowning, huh? "Sometimes it's exactly like that."