Note: Naruto is not mine.

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"You can't tell me you really need these anymore," Kakashi said, plucking a faded, thoroughly dessicated bunch of dried flowers out of a paper box that had been in her closet. Sakura had recieved the original, fresh bouquet from Sasuke the same year he'd come back. To tell the truth she'd forgotten where she'd put them.

"They're sentimental. It's a girl thing, I guess," she sighed. They were cleaning out her apartment before they moved in together into the new house. It was probably the hardest thing she'd done since she left her parents home. "I don't need them." Sakura watched him crumple the box into a trash bag that was already half full of her accumulated memories. She was making progress. She hadn't winced this time.

It was taking a good deal of her willpower, and a generous helping of Kakashi's dry and occasionally derisive comments to part with certain things. Among them, a big stuffed bunny Naruto had won for her at a festival, a stack of fashion magazines and solved puzzle books, that were at least two years old or more, and an otherwise beautiful sword with a big notch in the blade. She did the honors for a hairless, much-loved doll herself.

Seeing her hesitation when they'd started, he had made her ask some hard questions. First, if the village were being evacuated, what two things would she miss the most? That was easy enough. Her photo album, and the quilt her mother had made her. So those were the first things to go into the box.

What did she need to get through an average day? The average week? Suddenly, her wardrobe was cut in half, and the clothes she no longer wore were bagged up to be tossed or given away.

They took a few breaks over the course of the day. At one point, Kakashi seemed to derive a good deal of entertainment, by asking her if she wore a particular pair of daisy-patterned panties any longer, while stretching them out to display the holes in both front and back. A short wrestling match ensued, as she tried to grab them away from him. Sakura really couldn't say who had won, as they were both laughing so much by the time her clock prompted them to get back to work.

It took them till well in the evening to finish carrying the last bags down to the curb for the waste collector to pick up in the morning. Shinobi or not, they were both exhausted.

"Am I staying or going?" he asked.

Really, after all this time did he still feel the need to get permission? "Staying," Sakura said, grinning wryly. "And don't forget, your place is next."

He shrugged, "That's alright, I don't have that much to go through."

"That's what I thought when we started here," she said, throwing a dust rag at him.

"We'll see." Kakashi said, catching it.