5 months earlier
"Stop being a baby, Yamato!"
"Well you're not necessarily being gentle, Sakura."
"Do you want to run around the Village with broken ribs because I can arrange that."
"You wouldn't."
"Try me."
The Captain looks up at Sakura as he lays on his side, her green eyes stern as she cocks a dull pink eyebrow at him. They challenge each other. And before it's even begun, Yamato knows he is going to lose.
"Alright, Miss Haruno. I apologize. You may continue," he says with a fancy sarcastic flourish of his hand and a wince as Sakura presses her medical ninjutsu back onto his abdomen.
"God you're so grouchy when you're injured."
He gives a chuckle and then flinches again. His pain makes it hard to laugh.
"These fractures are days old, Yamato," says Sakura, almost chiding him. "Why didn't you go to the hospital and get them examined?"
He mumbles something under his breath, almond eyes closed so he doesn't have to see her scowl at him. The kunoichi presses tenderly down on his severely bruised ribcage and he hisses.
"What was that?" she asks with a smirk. Yamato opens his left eye, head propped up on his elbow, and tries to stand his ground against her glare.
He can't help it. He always loses.
"I said that I hate hospitals." His voice is soft, barely a whisper as he shivers at the thought of antiseptic coated white walls and disease crawling on every square inch.
Sakura snorts. "You and Kakashi sensei both."
"Oh I've always known that our friend hates hospitals almost as much he hates to pay the bill."
This earns him a sweet chuckle from Sakura as she continues to heal his busted up ribs. She's managed to mend the fractures, simply working on the deep bruising that would cause him discomfort whenever he moved around too much.
"So both of you decide to come bother me at my home instead of asking any average medical ninja to treat you? How childish."
She grins as Yamato clears his throat and pretends that he didn't hear her call him a child. The ninja simply watches her face as she works, holding her bottom lip between her teeth.
"Why are you staring at me?" she asks suddenly.
Yamato blushes faintly and he mumbles something incoherently.
"Sorry, didn't catch that." She threatens to press down on his wound once again.
The jonin squirms a little and holds up his hands in surrender.
"I said-" Yamato raises his eyes to hers, cautiously. Everything about him has always been just that. "I said that it's...it's hard not to stare."
Her eyes meet his as Sakura finishes up her medical ninjutsu, the green medicinal glow fading softly. She hasn't said a word in over a minute now.
The jonin tugs down the hem of his shinobi shirt and sits up slowly. His fingers absently trace the leaf village crest on the front of his faceguard as he holds it in his lap.
The silence is deafening.
"I'm sorry, that was out of line. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable." He clears his throat. "Thank you, by the way, for fixing me up." The male ninja stands, her couch's old springs squeaking beneath the change in weight. Yamato, tall as ever, pulls his helmet back on.
In another bout of silence, now thoroughly embarrassed, Yamato tugs on his flak jacket. He tries to slow down his movements, not wanting to seem too eager to get out of cleaning up the mess he just made. But Sakura's eyes haven't left his face.
He feels like a bad friend. Some lines are just not meant to be crossed. The silence rolls on.
Yamato gives her a faint, half-nervous smile and heads for her door. Sakura politely follows him.
He opens up the entrance to her home and is about to step out when he suddenly turns. Sakura nearly collides with his chest. She stares up at him, an eyebrow raised.
Yamato has never been so intimidated by a woman in his life.
Well, Tsunade is rather frightening but that's a different story.
"I apologize if I said something wrong. It's just that," his eyes switch from the ground to holding her gaze, back and forth. "You shouldn't settle for being treated as one of the boys, Sakura." He finally plucks up the courage to look at her.
"Someone needs to remind you that you're worth staring at."
Sakura's eyes flicker strangely, her only response, and Yamato takes this as his cue that he has overstayed his welcome.
"See you around, Sakura." He gives a friendly smile but it doesn't reach his eyes.
He's never seen his teammate act so cold.
And to be honest, it stings a little.
Yamato turns on his heels and is about to jog down the stairs of her apartment complex when Sakura calls out to him. He stops in his tracks.
"Can you cook?"
Yamato looks curiously at her over his shoulder. He ponders this and his hand tremors, once. Nervously.
"Yeah, I'm pretty decent. Why do you ask?"
The kunoichi sweeps her pink hair from her jade eyes and smiles.
Yamato has to hold in a sigh of relief.
"Can I come over for dinner tomorrow tonight? If you're free."
His heart skips a beat, the knot that had previously been tightening his insides releasing the pressure so he can breathe again.
The Captain chuckles and smiles back at Sakura. This time, it reaches his dark almond shaped eyes and Sakura can't help but stare.
"It's a date then."
Sakura reaches out for him. Half-asleep, she lifts her arm, heavy from drowsiness, and searches for his hair so she can tangle her fingers in it. Yamato's favorite wake up call.
But there's no one there. Her hand comes down on the empty half of the bed, clutching the smooth sheets between her fingers.
And there's no scent of sandalwood.
Only the hint of rain water and the charge of lightning before it strikes the earth.
Her eyes open and the memories of last night come back to her in waves as she remembers whose bed she has crawled into.
Kakashi's unmasked face hovering over in the dark as their shadows dance against the wall.
His lips coming down softly on her neck as she arches up into him.
He throws his head back, releasing his own kind of tidal wave, the most beautiful expression of pleasure on his face.
There's the whisper of her name falling from his lips as for the first time in a long time, he easily drifts off into sleep.
Sakura suddenly feels sick.
Her head pounds, a little hungover and the sunlight streaming in from his blinds glares at her, angrily.
She deserves it.
The kunoichi had given in to loneliness. She had been weak. Her sensei had crumbled right before her eyes, stripping himself down to nothing but a Kakashi that she has never seen before.
Yamato's absence had left her stranded in mourning. Kakashi had let her in.
His eyes had opened up like the bloom of a cherry blossom when he looked at her, a softness foreign to his face but still alluring nonetheless.
The mighty Kakashi of the Sharingan, nothing but a splintered, drunk shadow of a man overcome by the death of a friend. How could she not want to wrap him around her?
How could she leave her friend of all these years to sit there and break like an old picture frame in the dark?
She herself had been shattering. So they shattered each other in return.
His eyes and the curve of his lips were just a temptation too great to stand against when sake had replaced the blood in her veins. Grief had overcome the both of them and they decided to dance in a bed that she didn't belong in.
Sakura decides to ignore the past couple of weeks spent with him. She chooses to overlook the lingering stares and the innocent touches. The suddenly awkward exchanges between the two of them.
She chooses to forget the fact that he leaves shivers down her spine.
Instead, Sakura faces the reality of her situation.
He had been mourning. So he drank.
She had been lonely and blamed. So she got drunk.
They slept together, sensei and student, and betrayed Yamato in the worst of ways.
Sakura can only think of the sickening shame he would feel when he found out.
Or worse, when Kakashi realizes that he slept with the lover of his friend, unknowingly.
And she did nothing to stop it.
"Oh my god," she whispers to herself, covering her face with her hands as she lays on her back, naked and tangled up in her sensei's bed sheets. "What have I done?"
She turns over and the side of her face crumples a piece of paper that had been left on Kakashi's pillow. Sakura reaches up and slips it out from underneath her, smoothing it with her fingers.
Sakura,
Had to run a few errands early this morning. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you woke up.
There's breakfast on the table if you're hungry.
See you at the funeral.
-Kakashi
The pinkette touches the note to her lips and stays like that for awhile, concentrating.
She turns onto her back once again, watching his ceiling fan spin until she's dizzy.
A drunk Sakura, on both sex and sake, staring up at the same ceiling fan in the dark as Kakashi hovers over her, his body sliding slowly against hers as her as she moans his name quietly.
She shuts her eyes and forces the thought from her brain.
Sakura had wronged Yamato. She had wronged Kakashi.
The moment that she entered his house, she overstepped her boundaries as student to sensei. She tainted him.
Sakura curses her incompetence as a shinobi. She damns her inability to mourn and cry in the privacy of her home like a ninja should.
Instead she has to do that in someone else's bed, wrapped up in his arms until he makes her forget that it's wrong to be there.
Naruto trains.
Shikamaru plays shogi.
Ino arranges flowers for hours and hours with no sleep, an attempt to find beauty amongst death.
Rock Lee runs and runs until his body literally gives out beneath him.
But Sakura? Sakura sleeps with her sensei to forget the ache of loss.
An ugly acidic feeling bubbles in her stomach as she grows even more disgusted with herself.
One, because she ruined the relationship between her and Kakashi for good. Or it will be ruined very soon.
Two, because she's lying to herself.
Last night didn't mean nothing.
Sakura had wanted to kiss Kakashi. She wanted to face the man behind the mask, to search for the Kakashi that hides underneath the cool, nearly placid exterior.
She found him and couldn't keep her hands off of him.
The kunoichi suddenly decides, with the jolt of that last thought, that it's getting later in the morning and she needs to go home. Genma's funeral awaits her.
The pink haired ninja untangles herself from Kakashi's bed and steps onto the cold hardwood floor of his room. She collects her clothing, left in heaps beside the bed, and pulls it on slowly. The kunoichi looks for her headband, kicking Kakashi's pants from last night and his boxers around, trying to find it.
Turning, she found that he had placed it on the nightstand, almost arranging it like an art piece.
A shinobi who is tired of being a shinobi still loves the Land of Fire more than life or lust.
She ties it in her usual way and quietly steps out into the living room. Sakura knows he's not there. But there's still the weariness in her insides that twists into worry that he might be.
The kunoichi isn't ready to face him after last night. Not yet.
She shuts the double doors of his bedroom behind her. Her eyes linger on the couch where she had kissed him first. The thought replays the moment back to her like an old film, fast and flickering.
Half of her wishes she could take it back.
The other half lies about not wanting to.
Sakura sets his coffee table right and picks up the things he knocked off it, placing them back on the surface neatly. She straightens the overturned lamp and collects the empty sake bottles into her arms.
The pinkette carries them to the kitchen, disposing of them in the trash.
She turns to find another note left next to a nearly empty box of cereal, a bowl, and milk on the table.
Sakura,
I forgot to go grocery shopping this week.
Again.
-Kakashi
Although Yamato and Kakashi are opposing forces ripping through her brain, along with the brothers of shame and guilt, Sakura can't help but smile a little.
If there's one thing Kakashi won't ever stop doing, it's being forgetful.
She cleans up the kitchen, sweeping the broken glass and the splintered pieces of the wooden chair, and clears the table of his weapons and backpack.
For a long time, Sakura stares at the box of cereal.
Do you eat the food of the man who you regret sleeping with?
Do you eat the food offered to you by your sensei?
Do you eat it because you don't regret it?
Sakura sighs and sits down. She pours herself a bowl and eats every excruciating bite.
Kakashi's mismatched eyes, one gray orb and one bright sharingan, stare back at her. Even when she closes her eyes.
"It's nearly time for the funeral," says Kurenai, approaching Asuma's grave with a bundle of flowers in her arms. But she isn't the only one visiting her lost lover this morning. A certain silver haired ninja stands at the late Sarutobi's headstone, his hands shoved lazily in his pockets. "We should get going soon."
The other ninja simply "hmms" back at her, acknowledging her presence but not really accepting it. His mind is off somewhere that she can't follow. That is, until he sighs.
Oh how Kurenai knows that sigh all too well. It's the deep breath of an internal conflict, a man's duty standing against his heart.
The shinobi goes to stand beside her companion. She kneels down and sets the fresh white lilies on Asuma's grave. Her fingers linger on the last few characters of his surname. How many times had Kurenai been excited over taking that name before his death?
Kakashi has left a half empty pack of cigarettes on his tombstone. She raises an eyebrow at him as she rises, dusting the dirt and bits of grass off her knees. The kunoichi adjusts the hem of her black skirt.
"You smoke now?"
"Only when I think about Asuma."
This makes Kurenai smile a little.
"How's your boy doing, Kurenai?" he asks politely, morning still settling onto Konoha behind them. Kakashi iis not ready to move just yet and face the burial of another friend.
"He looks more and more like his father every day." She glances sideways at the silver haired man. "You should come by and see him sometime. Tell him stories about his Dad."
The copy ninja looks up at the sky, tilting his head back. He gives a blink and hums something that sounds like a, "sure, Kurenai, I will". He's always been rather excited about the prospect of seeing her son. Kakashi just usually forgets, as always. But today he brushes the offer off.
The kunoichi and Kakashi stare at Asuma's grave together in silence. A few moments pass and Kureani interrupts his thoughts once again.
"What're you doing, Kakashi?"
He gives another one of those too long sighs.
"I was talking to Asuma. Telling him about Genma."
"That's not what I mean."
The ninja raises an eyebrow in her direction and with just a glance, he knows what she's talking about. He swivels his eyes back to the lilies swaying gently in the morning breeze. October is upon them.
"Drop it, Kurenai."
The kunoichi is nearly startled at the coldness in his voice. Kakahsi has hardly ever been one to get emotional during typical conversation.
But, well, this wasn't one of those talks, she supposes.
"I've known you, very well, longer than most people in this village, Kakashi. I can see the guilt written plain across your eyes."
The ninja shifts, almost uncomfortably, and suddenly wishes he had left Asuma's grave earlier. He was forever getting lost in talking to the dead.
It was so much easier for him than talking to the living.
Kakashi doesn't respond and Kurenai gives a low chuckle.
"It's been a year Kakashi. How could you possibly think that I didn't notice?" She tucks a long piece of her dark hair behind her ear, crimson eyes flashing in his direction to find that Kakashi is already looking back at her. "Like I said, I know you better than most. Unlike your students, I'm attuned to things about you that they are not."
"Enough, Kurenai."
"Why, because you know it's true?"
"I just wanted to spend more time with her. She was never supposed to return any shape or form of those-"
He stops himself, swallowing the words back down from his outburst.
Of those feelings for someone like me.
"Kakashi," the kunoichi suddenly says seriously. "Tell me you didn't."
The shinobi can only stare at Asuma's grave, not willing to look at her in the eye because he knows she can read his reply on his face.
"Do you have any idea what both of you have done?"
"I know perfectly well the damage of my actions, Kurenai," his says smoothly. Always the collected, seemingly uninterested Kakashi. But inside he is panicking. And she knows it.
Kurenai takes a long look at her companion. Before her strange red eyes, the young, sleepy eyed ninja that she used to know at the academy takes his place. But he changes back into the slouched form of the man that he is today. She can see the tension in the shoulders, his eyebrow furrowed in thought and his one stormy eye staring at Asuma's grave but not really seeing it.
The kunoichi lays a hand on his shoulder. Kakashi's own gloved hand reaches up and in one of those rare moments, Kurenai has only shared a few of them with this ninja, he places it ontop of hers.
Tell me what to do, the gesture says to her.
His fingers linger on hers for only a moment before he drops it back to his side, the air around him changing once again as he builds up his guard. Kurenai, no matter how long they have known each other, still only gets mere moments of the man behind the mask.
"We already lost Genma, Kakashi." She turns to leave, the time to head over to the funeral finally arriving. "Don't lose her too."
Kakashi glances sideways at Sakura over the top of Naruto's head.
He can't tell if Sakura is simply engrossed in thought or if she's purposely avoiding his gaze.
The copy ninja turns his eyes back to the front, pushing the latter thought down into his chest where it will fester. His eyes search for hers one more time but the kunoichi does not budge. Not until Naruto whispers something to her. The pinkette leans back in to reply, looking her friend in the face.
Only for a split second does her stare wander behind Naruto's shoulder to meet Kakashi's.
The funeral has begun and the Hokage takes her place amongst the shinobi who have come, shrouded in black.
"I know what you are all thinking," calls the Hokage, staring out at the straight faces of her soldiers.
Shinobi do not cry. Shinobi do not show emotion.
The only sobbing comes from the civilian family and friends of the deceased.
Genma's girlfriend, a rather petite thing with pretty purple eyes and curly brown hair, covers her mouth. He always warned her that this day might come.
Sakura can't help but pity her.
Tears have welled up in her eyes but Yamato can't save her right now. And neither can Kakashi.
She must shoulder the grief alone this time.
Duty before all. The Land of Fire above all.
She swallows the lump in her throat.
"That this is the price of being a shinobi. Dying young. Some sooner than others." Tsunade bows her head respectfully to the parents of the young genin Ryou. His mother is barely standing, unable to cope with the fact that her greatest fear has been realized.
The King of the Leaf Village is giving a eulogy for her only son.
"Is it worth it?" Tsunade asks. Her eyes drift to the pictures of Genma and Ryou, encircled with white remembrance flowers. "I have stood where you are standing countless times. For my own brother." Her eyes capture the gaze of Genma's girlfriend. "For my lover. Others I could not properly say goodbye to. Their bodies lost in the field, degenerating back into the earth that they shed their blood to protect."
From Sakura's left, Naruto Uzumaki's eyes water as he understands Tsunade's subtle allusion to his sensei.
"I have stood where you stand. And I know that death calls for us when we are least expecting it." Her voice gets louder as her resolve gets stronger, the point she is trying to make bubbling to the surface. "I have wished to walk away from being a shinobi before. I have prayed with all my might for some kind of power mightier than me to make me stop caring for ninja who always seem to slip from my fingers far too early."
Sakura glances over at Kakashi and he's already looking at her. The sentiment from last night, the exhaustion of carrying Konoha's symbol, is scribbled into his one gray eye.
"So is it worth it?" She looks out at all their faces. "I didn't get a chance to know Ryou but from his peers and his family, I know that he would've made a fine shinobi. The Will of Fire burned in him the way it burns in the best of us. He died facing a foe that had only blood on his mind. The boy fought valiantly, holding his own far longer against this enemy than anyone would've expected. But Genma..." Her eyes sadden. "Genma outshined many of us as a shinobi. And as a man."
Tsunade, only for a second, looks down at her feet. The face of her younger brother flashes before her eyes. She looks up, her face now fierce and unforgiving. The face of a Hokage.
"Justice will be swift. Genma and Ryou will not have died for this land for nothing."
The mother of Ryou sobs uncontrollably now. Sakura watches from the corner of her eye and her heart cracks beneath her ribs.
She can see it there, in the pools of tears in Mrs. Hashimoto's eyes, the hatred of shinobi. This world took her son from her. They, the headband wearing ninja of her village, are all the enemy now.
"Right this moment, right this very second there are men out there on missions that could die for their Village at any moment, just as Genma and Ryou died."
Lady Tsunade's eyes flicker to Sakura's.
"Death follows the life of a shinobi around like an old friend. But it is up to us to decide that that sacrifice is meaningful. So many of us standing here have loss in their hearts that cannot be explained, only named after who a shinobi see when they close their eyes."
The Hokage places the first white rose on the graves of both Genma and Ryou.
She turns back to her men, to the families of both deceased, and says,
"Honor their memory. Honor their sacrifice."
It happens so fast, no one has time to blink.
On the rooftop of the main building, right beneath Hokage mountain, there's the unmistakable pop of a transportation jutsu. Ryou's mother screams, startled out of her sobbing by the interruption.
The cloud of dust and smoke swirls around the sudden intruders. But surrounded by shinobi, that wasn't such a good idea. ANBU Black Ops begin crowding the Hokage, forming a semi-circle around her as the mini dust storm begins to clear but it still shrouds the figures lingering behind it. Kakashi's sharingan eye is open and watching.
Just as an ANBU is about to perform a binding jutsu to capture the invaders, Kakashi shouts out,
"No, stop! It's not an enemy!"
The smoke clears.
And the Hokage pushes her way through the ANBU.
A blonde kid, his jonin flak jacket torn to shreds with burns encompassing the entire left side of his body, lays on the ground. His eyes stare up at the sky, cold and unmoving.
His father presumably, begins shoving his way through the crowd, shouting his name with the fury and desperation that only a parent can muster.
Someone screams Raido's name as he drops to his knees. Kakashi wouldn't have even recognized him if someone hadn't called out to him. The damage to his already scarred face is terrifying.
Sakura puts a hand to her mouth as Yamato's eyes meet hers from across the rooftop.
From beside her, Naruto screams out his captain's name but the sound is muffled and unclear to Sakura. The earth spins uneasily beneath her and she wants to be sick.
The Captain makes a few stumbling steps forward, his eyes never leaving Sakura's face, even as sticky red blood trickles down from his skull. He coughs and crimson splatters itself before his feet.
A large shuriken sticks out from Yamato's abdomen and his right arm has the white of a bone tearing through his shirt.
So many more injuries plague his body that Sakura doesn't have time to give them a once over.
Yamato is about to fall forward. And if he does, it will push the shuriken even farther into his stomach and most likely kill him.
The kunoichi pushes past Naruto, nearly knocking him down, and races to him. She slides to her knees, not caring if the rooftop burns against her skin, and catches Yamato just before he hits the ground.
His head falls against her shoulder, his faceguard still clutched in his unbroken hand. Sakura supports him by his shoulders, eyes wide with fear. People all around her are scrambling, medical ninja already trying to pry him away from her. There's still some screaming. That father wails. The Hokage barks out orders but Sakura can only hear Yamato as he rasps into her ear,
"I told you I'd be home soon."
Yamato stares up at the fluorescent lights of the hospital as they pass him by.
The pain in his body ravages it's way through every cell until they're all on fire.
He can't hear. He can barely see. Only the lights above and the blur of faces surrounding him let Yamato know that he's moving and in good hands.
At least, that's what he hopes.
There's something like a slap and Yamato is suddenly fully conscious. And fully aware of the extent of his pain.
Sakura runs beside his stretcher and she wants to stop and curl up somewhere away from Yamato's screams. She can't bear it. She can't watch as he writhes and thrashes, his lungs filling up with his own blood.
"Yamato, stay with me!" she calls out to him, her voice cracking underneath the weight of how much work they have ahead of them. His almond eyes go in and out of focus as he turns to look at her.
His unbroken hand clutches at hers as it grips the side of his stretcher.
"Get her out of here," he rasps, blood still trickling down his throat. He swallows, trying again. "Get her out of here! I don't want her to be in there!"
He tries to sit up and the shuriken shifts, tearing something in his stomach further. He takes in a sharp breath which turns into a gurgle as someone shoves him back down.
"Don't move!" Shizune shouts. The Hokage follows close behind them, severely handing out orders for both Yamato and Raido who are being rushed into surgery. She hears Yamato's shout.
"Go, Sakura!" the Hokage demands.
The pink haired kunoichi snaps her head to her master and then looks down at Yamato, hurt smacked onto her face. Hurt and panic. But she still rushes him into the operating wing alongside the medical team.
Yamato's almond eyes stare up at hers and he reaches his hand out to touch her face but he can't close the distance.
"I don't want you to-" he coughs and his blood splatters her cheek, "To see me like this. Especially if I d-"
"Don't you fucking say it, Yamato! Don't you dare say it!"
"Sakura!" shouts the Hokage, "Leave! NOW."
But the kunoichi refuses. She rushes words of encouragement and strength to Yamato who starts to seize on the stretcher.
"Kakashi! Get her out of here before I throw her out myself!"
The copy ninja does as ordered and wraps his arms around Sakura's waist. She holds onto Yamato's stretcher for dear life until she's forced to let go as they disappear behind the doors of the operating room.
"Sakura, stop. He's going to be alright," Kakashi says soothingly. He holds her back from running in after him by her arms. She manages to maneuver her way around to face her sensei, tears streaming down her face as Yamato's blood paints her left cheek. Still struggling, she fights to free herself.
"Stop, Sakura," he orders sternly. The kunoichi still blindly tries to fight him even though he has her arms pinned to her side. She mumbles incoherently about needing to be there to help. About how she can't just stand there and do nothing.
"Enough!" he orders one more time.
The copy ninja pulls Sakura to him as she lets her knees give out beneath her. They both fall together, Kakashi refusing to let her go. Sakura cries against his shoulder, her resistance slowly fading. The shinobi holds her too him by the back of her pink hair, soothing her as best he can without words.
But he stares over her shoulder at Kurenai who is standing there, looking back at both them.
She shakes her head.
Kakashi looks down at the sobbing kunoichi in his arms and shuts his one gray eye, the realization hitting him like a train wreck.
Yamato reaching up to touch her face flashes in his mind, blaring like an alarm.
He's already lost her.