Chapter Two
Your choice
Your choice.
It was as if Kakashi knew the exact words her heart wanted to see.
They had sent her somewhat pacified mind lurching. There was still so much disquiet in her, even as she followed the street for the red bridge with a decided heart and with the heaviest weight she had ever carried on her back.
Because Hatake Kakashi, the former Copy-nin of Konoha, the former Sharingan no Kakashi, the hero commander of the Fourth Shinobi War, the next in line for Hokage, the most loyal person to their village, even more loyal than the current Hokage, was offering himself to help her defect Konoha.
Marriage and Kakashi didn't fit together but this was worse. This was the one piece Sakura had never thought could be pushed into him, could come out of his own two hands, and yet it had.
Your choice.
Even when she had read it, it had been Kakashi's voice saying them and again it echoed, a company to her own hammering heartbeat and the crunch of her feet on the silent unpaved street.
Sakura finally rounded the corner, a part of her pleading that he would be either late or had regretted his treacherous offer, pleading that she found only a bridge and not a man standing there, a man waiting for her.
A pang crashed against her ribs, jolting through her entire body.
There he was, Kakashi, cut out from moonlight and the yellow shade of the distant lamps, slouching against the red railing as if it were any other day, moulding himself into his familiar silhouette, one that would have melted into all the others of him, inconsequential, identical.
Yet Kakashi was spots imprinting into her vision, lingering on the bridge to mingle with the others already there, in the contour of two boys and a team, and to be present every of the following times her eyes settled on it. Kakashi and every detail of him, waiting for her, a betrayal and a loyalty, raising himself out from the shape of her memories, alone and unique, different and the same.
There was a violence in it, another destructive blow to all that made him and her, to the red weave of the bridge and the form of it in her heart, but also warm shaping hands that built something new from out of it.
She faltered in her step, suddenly frozen in the path under her, the path that led to him, in both of her choices the path always led to Kakashi.
Her heart was a caged bird fluttering against the bars of her ribs.
For an hour, Sakura had had her eyes fixed for on the swirl carved into her hitai-ate, her fingers following its shape, as if she could unbury from the metal all the meaning that she carried for it in her, crystallised since before the Fourth War.
Sakura knew it was still there, safe in her, undying, blazing like fire, but now she could not even feel the flickering warmth of a small flame, a small spark of her Will of Fire. It would taste more like a betrayal if she didn't feel as if Konoha had betrayed her first.
The village had always asked difficult impossible things but now it seemed to ask for everything, it seemed to want to ravage through her, erode all her pieces and take everything that was only Sakura's and should only ever be her own.
But what did it mean for things to be her own? It had seemed so simple then, a clear frontier between her obedience to Konoha and her freedom in face of it, but now she could barely separate the muddle in her actions between what had been her choice and what had been imposed on her, by her village, the people around her, the millions of small and large chances of life.
Her mind had whirled back on the line of her life, everything that had led her to that moment. She had been left with the certainty that most of her life, most of everyone's lives, were moulded by things out of their control. It had always been a terrifying latent realisation lapping at the edge of her awareness and now it had taken full form, heavy and sharp.
Her position in Team 7 after graduating the Academy, Sasuke's defection, Tsunade accepting her as an apprentice, Akatsuki's threat, the war, Sasuke's death, everything…
Even now the thing that felt most her own, her project for the Children's Clinic, was conditioned by the hands and wills of the Council.
Everything was out of her control, the beginning of her life, her own birth. Sakura had been built from the shared genes of her parents and shaped from their hands since the moment she had taken her first painful breath in the world.
Nothing was her own thing, not her life, not her home, not her own identity, not even her choices were her own.
Why should her marriage be any different? Why should she choose with whom to build a family?
Maybe her choice had been made long ago, before she could even understand the scope of it. Her choice had been made the day she first wrapped the hitai-ate around her head and surrendered everything that she was to Konoha. The day she became a shinobi before she became Sakura.
Sakura couldn't choose what path to walk, but she sure as hell would choose how to walk it. That was something no one could ever take away from her.
Kakashi lifted his head at the sound of her steps on the wooden planks of the bridge. He offered her a wide crinkled smile, so forced it bared all of his trepidation instead of hiding it.
"Hey." Sakura whispered softly as she leaned on the bridge beside him, looking down into the speckles of moonlight over the surface of the river.
"Yo." Kakashi answered back just as softly.
Her nails chipped at the faded red paint, as she had done it so many times before. It was entirely different now, there were no Naruto and Sasuke bickering beside her, her cheek pressed down to her palm while she sighed too many time to count. Nor Naruto complaining about Kakashi-sensei's tardiness and Sakura joining him with a fervour born out of boredom, Sasuke pretending he was above being affected by something so mundane, Kakashi arriving with his ready humorous excuses.
Even through his aloofness, Kakashi had always had some random streaks of sentimentality. This was Team 7's meeting point, this was their red bridge, the one that had led them to be there now because of all the times they had stood there before.
Sakura turned her head to watch him, his head carelessly thrown back and eyes on the sky above them. "You're not late, Sensei."
He gave her a small curt chuckle. "You are."
And it was probably the first time. She supposed her excuse now was better than any of Kakashi's ridiculous ones. For one it was true, and then she had just discerned on one of the biggest decisions of her life.
"I'm not here to defect."
Kakashi only hummed as if it hadn't been obvious before. Sakura wasn't carrying anything that spelled that she would be leaving her beloved people and entire life behind, the only weight on her shoulders was from an invisible, unmovable force.
Somehow she still had had the need to say the words, to mark her choice.
Her sweet cruel and homey Konoha. She loved it still, even when the fire didn't blaze, almost didn't flicker, Sakura loved Konoha with her entire being.
Because Konoha was an entire village full of people. It was dinners with friends under the warm air of summer and a cold cup of sake between her hands. It was the scent of oaks, morning dew and hospital corridors, the green of the forest and the different speckled colours of all its rooftops, the teashop with the perfect daifuku each Saturday morning, the bustling market on Sundays. It was five faces carved into a mountain, overflowing with history and devotion, it was the memorial stone and a slouched back in front of it, it was the busy streets and the murmur of life slipping through her window, it was the streets she had grown up in and where the people she loved belonged, where Sakura had always and would always belong.
It was home, Konoha was home.
True boundless freedom was only possible if she existed alone, being the sole owner of herself was being lifeless. And more than of feeling caught, she was terrified of loneliness.
"So why did you come, Sakura?"
"I couldn't let you wait here all night long."
"What else?"
"We really need to talk, don't you think?"
Nothing came from his side, neither agreement nor disagreement, and that was enough sign that, even if he wasn't happy about it, he recognised the need for it.
Kakashi could probably do this entire marriage thing without once talking about it. He could go along with building a family, holding a child in his arms, her hand in her deathbed, years of living together, without once saying a word that acknowledged what they were actually doing.
But Sakura still had an inch of rationality left in her. For all his fame as a genius that could use his brain, Kakashi could be one of the most irrational men she knew when it came to some types of things, like marriage and love and emotions.
"So…" That was the only thing her brain managed to supply.
"So." Kakashi copied with a light tilt to it, bordering on mocking.
"Well, I… I was thinking and… um… you see… we…"
She had readied herself to carry this entire conversation alone, but now that it was the time to actually talk the carefully measured and rehearsed words dissolved like cotton candy in her tongue.
"Always eloquent."
Sakura rolled her eyes and pinched his arm with a bite of chakra behind it. "I'll throw you in the river."
"Please do." He deadpanned and a part of her was tempted to throw herself instead, maybe even drown.
"I'll start with the simple part, then. An apology."
"If you consider that simple I don't want to know what you consider complicated."
Her hands grabbed the railing of the bridge until the wood groaned under them. "Us making babies is complicated."
Kakashi's shoulders tensed with her words and his uncontrollable impulse to irk her seemed to quiet down. At least something good had come out of this, an effective weapon she could use against him every time he decided to torment her.
"I'm so sorry, Kakashi, for all the cruel things I said. I didn't mean any of them, I—"
"No, don't apologise. You were in shock at the news, when I already had my venting, I shouldn't have been making jokes."
"The rape comment it was…" Her hand rose to her forehead and she rubbed the creased skin there, a new bitter wave of regret trembling through her. "If we were forced to… you know, the violation would go both ways."
"I wasn't lying when I said I would never do that to you, Sakura."
"I know. And I'd defect before I ever allowed that to happen to us."
Her eyes turned to him but he was staring at the ground in front of him, without his hitai-ate, hair falling over his eyes so all that was uncovered to her was a glimpse of his nose. Even in the village Kakashi almost never forwent his Konoha hitai-ate. Had he decided to take it off in case he needed to help her defect, the metal plaque burning him with guilt?
"You're one of the people furthest away from scum. Really. It was very low of me to use that as a jab. I'm sorry, Kakashi."
"If we're doing apologies, then I'm sorry for ruining all your dreams for a family."
She shifted to look at the line of chipped paint she followed with her nail. "There was nothing for anyone to ruin."
Sakura had given up the dream of marriage and children a few years ago – seven, her rebellious mind whispered – but now… It wasn't that she had started dreaming of it now, as a spoiled child whose toy she didn't even want was taken away from her. It was that she wanted the choice to be hers, that if it did happened or didn't happen, the choice would be hers and hers alone to make.
And his choice?
Perhaps that was why Kakashi had known the exact words her heart craved, his own heart craved them too. He was the one truly caged to this order from the Council. If she defected, he would still be forced to marry another woman, and at least Sakura was familiar, at least they already shared trust and a deep unbreakable bond.
Those who leave their teammates behind are worse than scum. The words had been etched into her heart, her shinobi purpose, by his own hand.
It was a flame that fevered deeper than the Will of Fire, burned undying and relentless, a flame for her teammates. A flame for Kakashi.
Still, there was a question simmering in her mouth, but Sakura couldn't shape it, her tongue melted and heavy, her heart frantic in her chest at the thought of letting the words out, at the thought of what his answer might be.
'Are you glad it's me?'
Perhaps he would prefer someone other than her, everyone other than Sakura.
She glanced at his profile as if it would tell her the answer to her unnamed question, but there was nothing, his attention settled on the woodened boards stretching before their feet, the lines of his face nothingness. Her head snapped to stare in front of her, it was better not to see him at all, her resolution wavering in face of his distance.
If there was nothing on the surface of him, inside he was bursting, overflowing with things he didn't want to show her. And why wouldn't he want to show them?
"I've spent the past hours thinking about everything in my life." Sakura started hesitantly, her eyes fixed on the flecks of light shimmering in the water. "Everything is so messy now..."
Her words left like a strangled breath and she brought her hands to her face, letting her fingers brush her hair back as if that would help the rest of her words spill past her mouth, as if that would help keep the pieces together under the full earth-shattering weight of her decision.
"I… we're expected to have a child… not right away, thankfully, but eventually. We're being forced to make a family and it probably would be easier to continue on with our lives and have just a paper saying that we're married, but we know the Council will eventually pressure us for that child, it's the purpose of this thing after all…
"I want to give the best life possible to that eventual child… I want to do right by them." Sakura lifted her eyes to Kakashi's, finding them already on her, and let their green reflect the burning determination in her chest. "In all the doubts and fears and confusion over it, this is the one thing I'm certain about."
In the grey shade of his gaze swam a tenderness Sakura almost never saw as he looked back at her. It trembled through her, her heart stumbling in her chest, the words drying in her mouth. She had to rip her eyes away from his dark endless ones so she could find her balance again.
"What I mean is…" She stammered. "I want to do this right. I know it's a lot to ask of you, Kakashi, and I'm not asking you to turn on the switch of loving husband, because I won't turn on the switch of loving wife. But I want to learn how to live together with you, I'm not expecting us to fall in love, but I still want that child to be raised in a loving home."
The silence settled heavily between them and Sakura only had the courage to spare a glance at him, before turning back to look at the river.
"So, um…, I think I should let this out in the open…"
Obliviously sightseeing the ripples of water reflect the moonlight was doing nothing to ease the nerves tingling in her stomach. The longer Kakashi let the silence stretch between them, the more her heart felt as if it wanted to rip its way out of her chest.
Sakura tried to keep herself stout in the face of it, but her mouth was ready to spit out how he should forget about anything she had ever said in her entire life, how it was a terrible, stupid idea. And they should ignore this entire thing. Her entire existence, please. And it was better if she got going after all, flee Konoha, so far away and hopefully buried deep into the ground where she could never come out again.
"This type of things, they aren't for me." Kakashi said carefully, each word measured.
It was worse than the silence. Before there was mortification, but now it grew stronger, more vicious, shaking her heart with the familiar shattering feeling of rejection. Her throat closed in a lump.
Sakura shouldn't have been surprised really, she should have kept her mouth shut and spared herself the humiliation, the realisation of what she already felt was marked into her.
"But from the beginning I was willing to try, to give everything I could to do right by you, Sakura. Whether you wanted to make this just about a piece of paper with no actual weight, or about trying to… um… be a family."
Her eyes opened, the weight lifting from her chest as she took in the meaning of his words. Sakura straightened her head to watch his profile, her voice small, "So?"
"I want to try it too." Kakashi answered with an eye-crinkled smile.
Sakura could only nod as her breath left in a small gasp of relief, all the viciousness slowly washing away from her veins. There was still fear in her and she knew it would only grow, because this agreement made their future even more uncertain, it made everything more difficult when they would actually try to make something good out of this impossible situation.
Her eyes followed down to where he was looking and found that her hand had wrapped around his forearm in a small gesture of gratitude, her fingers actually pressing to one of the few slits of Kakashi's uncovered skin.
A touch that would have seemed inconsequential a few days ago had suddenly gained an entire different weight. Sakura squeezed once before pulling away not wanting to make things more awkward and uncomfortable.
Kakashi took his boundaries very seriously, especially the ones concerning touch. While they were expected to reach something a lot more intimate than this – Sakura's mind was still firm on letting the 'thing' as a vague idea even when she talked of eventual children – it wouldn't do well for either of them to start forcing down barriers and breaking walls.
Trust and respect was the most important thing now and then they could try and spread to other things.
"Should we live together?"
"If you're willing to," Kakashi shrugged. "it would actually help the Council get off our backs."
"Definitely not your apartment then. That hole should have been demolished decades ago."
Kakashi made a feigned wounded sound, very close to the whines his ninken made. "Not an ounce of kindness for your future husband…"
"Shit, when you say it like that." Sakura hissed out. "Somehow it makes it realer than the talk about an eventual child." She turned around to face the same side as him, her back leaning on the railing of the bridge. "Do you think they'll still let us go on missions together?"
A frown bunched the skin above his eyebrows, his first sign of disagreement over this entire thing. "I don't know."
Understandably, Konoha wasn't especially keen on relationships between recurrent teammates, but maybe they could open an exception for them considering the unusual circumstances of their eventual marriage.
During the past years, apart from their Team Kakashi missions, Sakura and he had gained a habit of partnering together. In the beginning Kakashi hadn't been too pleased, thinking Tsunade was making her his babysitter so he wouldn't do anything too stupid or succumb to his wounds in his journey back home, or in the tub at his apartment, or an open street in Konoha, but they had easily fallen together like two parts in a well-honed machine.
They had ended up realising it wasn't simply a concerned gesture over Kakashi, Tsunade had made them each other's babysitters. Whatever change in their dynamics had started with the Fourth War only strengthened and developed.
A drop of longing plinked in her, anticipating the empty space in her life if Konoha decided to stop assigning them their missions.
It really shouldn't have surprised Sakura that the Council would deem her the most suitable match for Hatake Kakashi, they assumed or at least hoped that their comradeship was only a small step to marriage, and not the actual endless abyss.
"So. How did you vent?" She asked.
"Got senselessly drunk."
"I was thinking of doing the same, but then I saw your note. That's the reason this could have been much worse for me. I know you'll always have my back. I can only hope of doing the same for you."
"I'm not asking anything of you, Sakura." Kakashi drawled quietly, still not meeting her eyes.
"You should." Her shoulder shoved his with her words. "All relationships are supposed to go both ways."
He answered with a small uncompromising sigh and a chuckle bubbled up her chest.
"Always eloquent." She repeated the jab he had thrown at her in the start. "Still… this was actually a surprisingly good talk, but we should probably leave it here before we're both overwhelmed, or even more overwhelmed. Let's take this thing… slowly… at our own time. What do you say, Kakashi?"
"Peachy." He deadpanned, not the teasing-Kakashi one, but the brooding-Kakashi, as when they stole the last gyoza at a team meeting or when he was forced to be healed.
Her finger poked his arm. "What happened to you?"
"You did insult my lovely home, Sakura. That is something even my cold heart can't bear."
Sakura knew that there was something more there but she didn't have the energy to dig through it now. After all, they did have the rest of their lives to dig through whatever dirt they had and discover, classify and love all the skeletons in their closets. Where was the fun if they did it all in one night?
So they silently agreed that it was best to stay a few moments longer and enjoy the quiet of a Konoha summer night. The cicadas buzzed along the riverbank, blending with the gurgle of rushing water and the rustling of the leaves around the village when a soft breeze passed through them and Sakura's tresses, tingling her cheeks and cooling the heat of her skin.
The air was stifling with the warm scent of dry grass and the inevitable awkwardness of their situation, but it could have been worse. It wasn't unbearable and Sakura was at least grateful that this thing wasn't ruining the comfort and familiarity of their silences after years of being alone together and away from home, only a small gas stove in front of them and the lively sounds of a forest night.
"Kakashi?"
"Hm?"
"Do you think I made the right choice?"
"You made the best choice you could in these circumstances." Kakashi didn't sound particularly convincing but she accepted it nonetheless, because Sakura needed to believe this was the right choice if she didn't want to lose her sanity along the way. Whatever other choices she hadn't done, didn't matter now.
What-ifs could only bring pain and hold her back and Sakura had always had too many of them haunting in her chest.
Right or wrong, at least it was her choice, it was hers.
Kakashi stepped away from the railing of the bridge. "Walk you home?"
"Sure."
"This brings some memories…" Guy started with a careful tone.
Kakashi's answer was a slow deep breath before letting it out in a sigh. It smelled the same, perhaps less flowery and wilder, but the musty undertone from the earth was still the same and the grassy air waving over from the rice fields as well.
Memories stumbled through his mind, as clear as if it had been the sharingan tossing them forth, but Kakashi held on steady against the turmoil of emotions, of red, red blood against wood and of lonely dinners staring off into the backyard.
Smells were always dangerous to him. They flared life to his memories unlike any other of his senses, they made them burst through the carefully sealed boxes, quieted even if never forgotten, and disarranged every piece of him.
His fingers searched for the key inside his pocket as he moved through the overgrown grass, pushing Guy's wheelchair through the difficult terrain, the marks of an old beaten path still lingering as it lead from the gate to the door. The key barely fit into the rusted keyhole and Kakashi had to use a lot more force than before to drag the door open, while being careful not to break it.
They didn't bother taking off their shoes at the genkan, the house was an abandoned mess, the stink of mould and rotten wood so pungent it made Kakashi's eyes water.
There was a bid of regret in his stomach as he watched the ruined living space. He wasn't sure if because of the amount of work it would take to make the house liveable or if because, deep down, he knew in his cowardice he had abandoned a big, rooted part of his life, his clan and family.
The Hatake manor was as its clan, withered and dying. And now Kakashi was forced to confront it and forced to revive it in his old careless hands. If only he didn't have to drag Sakura down with him, if only he didn't have to tie her down to the clan name as he had always been bound.
His eyelids were forever branded with the sight of her puffy green eyes from the night on the red bridge, the slightly clogged nose as she spoke. It had been years since he had last seen signs of crying in Sakura's face and now she had been crying because of him.
Kakashi's hands had tingled with the need to reach out for her, to pull her into his arms and keep her there forever, safe were nothing and no one would ever hurt her. His heart had burned with the need to carry the entire weight of the world for her.
Any gesture would have been useless, his touch robbing and leeching, a painful omen of what they were being forced to do. His impulse would only have been mocking when he had been the one to put that same weight on her shoulders.
It was Kakashi's curse finally making itself remembered. For a delusional moment, he had thought maybe it had washed away from his blood, maybe no one else would have to die because of him, because of his failures, Sasuke the last one marked with it.
It wasn't death, but a part of Sakura was dying, the future she had wanted to build for herself, her freedom to love whom she wanted taken away from her.
Kakashi always hurt the ones most precious to him.
There was nothing he could have done to stop it, he had tried, he and Tsunade. First they had tried to fight the Council's decision over this program, Kakashi still barely aware that it would affect him too.
He remembered the pride over how Konoha had decided to change its ways, Tsunade at the forefront of the change against the Elders, and establishing a Council with all the Clan Heads to represent the wants of the village. He had never thought of how it could come back to bite him in the ass.
When it came to the decision over the Hatake clan, every single Clan Head had voted for Sakura. With the depth of their relationship and her undeniable intelligence and shinobi skill, they had believed her the perfect match for a marriage and a Hatake child, the clan without flashy kekkei genkai but proficient at making loyal geniuses to Konoha. Had Sasuke been alive, there wasn't a doubt in Kakashi she would have been matched with him, chosen to give an heir and a family to the great Uchiha.
The Hokage had been accused of favouritism when fighting off the decision, she had been accused of wanting to return to the old ways of the Konoha before the Fourth War, of Danzou, when the Hokage ruled tyrannically and alone, all the power concentrated in one person. Tsunade hadn't cared what they called her, she had even told them they could throw her off the chair.
When it was clear the Council wouldn't waver on the woman chosen to bear the Hatake clan's heir, Kakashi had tried to find one for himself. This restoration program was mostly held for the remaining heirs that hadn't or weren't actively trying to find a partner for life.
He had dated a few women for the last couple of years that he and Tsunade had managed to delay the actual order. There hadn't been a single one that had stirred more than a superficial affection in him, but Kakashi had been ready to endure a loveless marriage if it meant Sakura was free from his curse.
The last one had ended badly, they had held on for half a year and even if Kakashi had never deceived any of the women, knowing it wasn't fair to bind them to a lie, she had hung onto the hope that she could steal his heart.
For months she had tried, her warm careful fingers, tender too, sometimes enough to shed a light on a tolerable what-if, searched for Kakashi's beating heart in his chest, but what she hadn't realised until too late was that it wasn't there. Maybe right after the war, she could have, maybe a couple of years earlier, maybe… but that didn't matter now.
She hadn't stolen his heart and he hadn't stolen hers, but Kakashi had managed to break it in his lightning fist as he had always done too perfectly well.
And now here he was, standing on his ruined childhood home, another woman's heart between his ragged hands, the most important heart. He couldn't protect it, he was trying, Kakashi had tried so fucking hard but he was moving against an unstoppable wave and now Sakura was drowning with him.
He was fighting still. Most of all Kakashi wanted to do the best he could for Sakura, whether that meant staying away from her life with a piece of paper and an order binding them together, or that meant rebuilding his childhood home and trying to build a loving marriage with her, a family.
Kakashi didn't know how, his family had been destroyed when he was four. His own father slashing it with his tanto, driving the blade deep into their stomach and letting them bleed out on the floor of that same home. What if that was also in his father's legacy to him, just like the silver hair and the dark eyes, the lighting chakra?
There had been Team Minato and later Team 7, Team Kakashi, but this new thing felt so entirely different, just as his blood family was entirely different from the bonds he made along the way.
He was terrified. Kakashi was so completely terrified out of his fucking mind. Never had he thought he would ever be a husband to someone, much less a father, and now here it was, lapping at his feet, devouring him from inside out, and Sakura's beating heart already bleeding in his breaking hold.
Their words on the bridge had weaved a new bond between them, shaped out of its history and its red. A thread that reached out as a promise through the future, uncertain and still piercingly there. Already it traced, out of the fog, glimpses in his mind, a future mirrored from things of the past.
For the past months, when the Council marked the decision and the reality of it crashed into him, all Kakashi could think about was his father and his mother. Before everything had crumbled, they had been the best family. Kakashi didn't remember his mother, he never had, but the fruitful loving touch had remained still in her home after her death. His father had almost never talked of her, but he hadn't needed to for Kakashi to feel the love that still tied them together, the love that embraced him and raised him as their child.
All he could think about was Minato-sensei and Kushina-san. The snippets of memories from their relationship seen through the eyes of a hurting lonely boy that his father had left behind. Already so young, Kakashi had cast away the dream of that love for himself and still he had craved it with a fire he hadn't quite understood.
He had helped carry their things into their new home along with Obito and Rin, the house a gift from Sensei to Kushina, a place where they could build a shared life together.
Even if Kakashi tried to mimic these models now, he knew he would always fall too short of them. Marriage, fatherhood and blood families weren't for him, they had never been meant for him since the moment he found his father in his study, a tanto to his stomach.
Whatever family he could have would be miserable and now that family would be Sakura.
"How do you feel about this, Kakashi?" Guy finally broke the heavy silence hanging between them.
All Kakashi could do was shrug. "What do you think?"
It was a rhetorical question, but Guy decided it was worth an answer. "I think what you're feeling isn't good, but not for the reasons everyone thinks. Maybe not even you."
All Kakashi answered to the cryptic words was a narrowing of his eyes before moving along into the engawa. It was best to leave that undisturbed.
"Sakura is the best choice for you, Kakashi."
"Sakura is the best choice for anyone. But this was never about choices. She didn't choose me, she didn't choose this."
"Neither did you."
Kakashi turned his face away from Guy, eyes clenched closed as those sightless words ravaged through his chest. He hid his trembling hands inside his pockets and tried to breathe long calming breaths.
Maybe Kakashi would perish from guilt, lungs turned to venom and lead, before they could even marry. But that was wishful thinking, guilt hadn't killed him before, it wouldn't kill him now.
He inhaled deeply and even if there was nothing but weeds left in that garden, Kakashi was certain he could still smell mother's blue hydrangeas that his father had always cherished, even after her death.
It was decided then.
Kakashi let his head fall back. "I guess I better stop mooching meals off Tenzou."
Tenzou would complain for the entire repair time and teasing him for the whole process would definitely be fun. There were always some small silver linings in this chaos of a thing.
"I'm so glad, my friend!" Guy burst out as he gave too enthusiastic pats to his lower back and wrapped his arms around him. "Your home has always been beautiful, it's a shame you've let it come to this."
Maybe it was too much, maybe it was too assuming, but Kakashi decided that he would always prefer to give Sakura too much than too little. He would leave the choice up to her. Besides, even if she didn't want to live there, Guy was right, the Hatake manor was in need of some great restoration and making it a gift for Sakura was the best excuse for it.
He extracted himself from Guy's painful hold and with a nod for the door, showed him that it was time they got going. There was only so much he could endure in one day, Kakashi was already surprised with himself with just how much, but he supposed his sense of duty had always been stronger than his cowardice. Guy's presence was also a small help, even if he would never openly admit to it.
Kakashi stopped on the dirt road and threw one last glance at the abandoned manor, foliage hiding the Hatake crest carved into the gate.
He felt like a child again, walking away from home, greeting the rice fields in front of him before turning to follow the path to the village. He supposed the ghosts would never have enough power to wash away the familiarity built through the first years of his life, the nostalgia for a place where he had once belonged.
Guy sat on the wheelchair in front of him, watching the green grass flutter above the water. It was also familiar to him, even before Obito and Rin died, Guy had had a habit of borderline stalking him and trying to tug him out of his own shell.
He was another friend Kakashi had failed and still, for whatever absurd reason, Guy had never given up on him. The cover of guilt in his eyes never washed away when Kakashi saw the cast around his leg and dragged his wheelchair through the streets of Konoha.
"There's going to be a wedding," Kakashi started. "something small but with lots of booze. It was Ino's idea and she's behind everything. Tsunade seems to be the one cashing in. Don't ask me where she's getting the money. I'm scared to ask too."
"What do you think about it?"
Kakashi shrugged, hands in his pockets as he looked away from Guy to the fields in front of him. "Sakura deserves a wedding. And there'll be an open bar so…"
He spared a glance from the corner of his eye to his friend and found that thankfully he was also looking away from him, a pensive weight over his thick brows.
It was now or never, better to get it over with, all Kakashi needed to do was actually voice the words stuck to his throat.
"Guy." He called as he clamped a heavy hand to his friend's shoulder. "You're my best man by the way."
Just as the words were out of his mouth, Kakashi shaped his fingers into a hand sign and disappeared in a cloud of smoke, Guy had strong enough arms that he could drag his way back into the village.
Hello there! Thanks to everyone that showed their interest in this story, I hope the rest keeps up with your expectations! Let me know what you think of this chapter.
As always, thank you for reading :)