Chapter Three
Confessions under Starlight
The pen twirled around her fingers as she looked down at the blank piece of paper, the only words written there a simple 'Dear Kaa-san and Tou-san'.
How did one go about relaying the news to one's parents of an arranged marriage with one's former sensei under the orders of one's village council? One didn't, the situation was entirely too bizarre and Sakura wasn't keen on giving her father a heart-attack.
A part of her was tempted not to tell them. Her parents barely came to Konoha these days and Sakura was always too busy to visit them. It was completely possible that she could go about half a decade without them knowing she was married and if she played the cards right maybe even for the rest of their lives.
A long groan rumbled in her throat as she fell limply against the back of her chair. It was nice to ponder it, to believe it was even feasible, but she knew she would never be that cruel to them.
Her mum had dreamed more about Sakura's wedding than she had dreamed by her own. It was a betrayal to her parents to rob them of the free happy future they had wanted for their child, to force them to see their only baby daughter getting married as an order for a breeding program.
Maybe if she lied and said she was in love with Kakashi her mum would take the news a little better. In her parents' minds, he was still her sensei, but she had always been a hopeless romantic.
Her lips stretched into a smile at the evenings spent on their sofa sipping tea as mother and daughter fawned over romantic films, with beautifully written lines, happy endings, confessions under starlight and rain. The forbidden love trope was the most recurrent one, usually between a princess and young lord of different lands, and never about a sensei and student, but those were particulars, the sentiment was still there.
Her own family story had been taken out of a romantic novel. Her mother had eloped with her father, leaving everything and everyone she knew behind just to build a life with him in Konoha. Her mum's dream had always been to be surrounded with little kids at a table and running around, filling their home and backyard with noise, with life. But her pregnancy with Sakura had been complicated and that dream had had to drizzle away into the tiny and quiet richness of one child.
Her mum had passed that idyllic bubble of love onto Sakura during her misguided pre-adolescent years. Her Sasuke shaped fantasy had been moulded out of those films and books, out of her own parents' history. She had dreamed of meeting a boy that she would love deep and wide enough to sacrifice everything for him. Her decision to follow Sasuke when he defected had been a mirror of what her childish eyes had seen in her parents, a sacrifice that only lead to a fruitful life full in love and happiness.
Now it was nothing but the silly illusion of a lonely girl, nothing but a reckless impulse, treason to Konoha.
For so long Sakura had craved what they had, smiling at the small snippets of affection between them, how her mum laughed at her dad's jokes, how he left her little notes on the kitchen counter, how they shared a sweet kiss each morning before one of them left the house and in the afternoon when they returned.
Every time Sakura had heard or seen them fight, the normal disagreements of any married couple, her heart had broken, her stomach tied into knots, betrayal running in her veins as if it was their obligation to be always perfect and simple in their perfection.
It was that perfection that she first searched and found in Sasuke, the cool pretty boy, a perfect student from the perfect clan. Life had always been cynical, sardonic, and Sasuke, the true Sasuke, was the most flawed of people.
Sakura had still loved him for it. His attempt at killing her had only ignited her love, her desire to somehow fix his dark wounded soul, piece together his shards until he was whole, beautiful and perfect again.
Sasuke himself had shattered her fantasy and crushed her heart with it, and, even through the searing heartbreak, Sakura could be thankful. He had helped her grow out of the hopeless romantic heritage.
And yet she found her hand soothing over the skin of her chest, never quite reaching the ache inside it for Sasuke, his death still a heavy dark blotch in her heart and Team Seven's heart.
Sakura had accepted it, moved on from it, as had Naruto, now happily married with Hinata and ready to face the world and shape it into something better, even when it was his hand that had taken Sasuke's life right after they had saved the world together, perhaps because of it. They had all tried to take the blame with him, Naruto's hand a token of hers and Kakashi's too.
She wasn't certain how Kakashi had handled it, but she assumed that not very well. She suspected that the times he disappeared from the face of Konoha he was slouched over a grave settled on the Uchiha graveyard, almost no one knowing it was there as it honoured the life of a traitor of Konoha, like Kakashi had done on the cenotaph for Obito. Sakura had never built up the courage to see the shape of his name carved into the stone, final and inevitable.
She sighed, the tightness in her chest not lifting as her lungs emptied. How had she fallen into this? Wallowing over her dead first love as she thought of softer words to write other than 'I'm marrying a man I'm not in love with as an order for a breeding program'.
Sasuke had shattered her fantasy shaped as a broken boy and unconditional love, but there was still an annoying twinge in her heart that Sakura couldn't seem to get rid of.
'I am getting married on the 4th of September to Hatake Kakashi. It is a small ceremony with only close friends. You are welcome to come if you want to.'
Once the words were branded into the paper, Sakura winced. It was better to make it vague, but this felt too impersonal, like writing to estranged relatives.
A quick visit to the Hokage Tower would have made Sakura and Kakashi happy. But, of course, Ino had felt the need to burst through her office door, forcing her into a wedding with the argument that if she was being ordered into marriage, she might as well reap the fun of a wedding party, all the while making her the maid of honour (which Sakura believed was the true purpose of this thing), and offering herself to take care of everything. Tsunade had been all too glad, cashing in on an open bar.
Sakura had asked Kakashi about it and he had just shrugged like the helpful betrothed he was. A couple of days later, a crying Guy had spent the hours wandering through the streets of Konoha, leaving behind a track of happy emotional tears and speeches over the beauty of rivalry in everything but love. Asking Guy to be his best man was how Sakura learned he was at least okay with the idea of a wedding.
Her fingers loosened around the pen and she crunched the paper before throwing it over her back onto the trash bin. They wouldn't have invites, but she could put one together quickly enough on the computer at her office and send it to her parents. It would be best to explain things face to face once they returned and hopefully not ruin her already difficult relationship with them.
Her shinobi life had always been a point of tension and rupture between Sakura and her parents. They had let it run its course, believing it would come a time when Sakura would give up on her dangerous way of life.
After Pain's attack, her parents had moved away to a village in northern Fire Country, known for its bustling commerce. They had begged her to come with them and continue their trade, return to her civilian roots. In the end they had understood her decision, less because they understood her sense of duty and love for her vocation, and more because Konoha was her home village.
They could touch the callouses in her hands and see the muscles of her arms, the tiny purple diamond in her forehead. Yet, for them, they were only superficial marks of a whim and not the well of knowledge, sacrifice and power built over years. Her parents could never understand the fire of duty burning in her veins, could never understand how she submitted herself to blood, danger and death, could never understand why she hadn't yielded to her own parents pleas not to fight in the Fourth Shinobi War.
Everything had become more fragile, the cracks too deep and her choice too marked after the war. And now…
Sakura was terrified that her parents knowing this marriage was an order from Konoha would open a crevasse impossible to mend, impossible to bridge between them.
Her eyes followed the tip of her pen down the long lines of the chart. What an optimistic delusion it had been to think that all the complicated work to create the Clinic had been left behind now that the therapy centre was a well-established division of the hospital. Even organizing the schedule and personnel while coordinating it with the internal system and the hospital meant more than a simple transposition from the therapy centre to an independent building.
Not lifting the pen from the paper, Sakura turned her eyes to her dango stick and bought it to her lips. She shoved the sticky cakes into her mouth without any care over manners and went back to the schedule and personnel chart.
Sakura wanted to make sure everything was in order, that the project had unbreakable foundations and every little fissure and gap was covered, before the most dreaded stage actually started. The request for funding. An entire clinic, unfortunately, wasn't cheap.
If Tsunade-shishou hadn't been too fed up with being Hokage and with little interest in putting effort on such a big project when her retirement should have started years ago, maybe Sakura and Ino might have had a little more help. When that woman put something in her head, nothing could stop her, not even financial limits. Her ability to keep on gambling stacks of money that seemed to appear out of thin air was proof enough of that.
Or maybe she was losing her touch, Tsunade hadn't been able to stop this ordered marriage thing.
"Sakura, are you even listening to me?" Ino's shrill voice finally managed to break through her concentration on times and names.
"Shouldn't you be worrying about more important things?" Like the reason why they had decided to meet at the teahouse?
"But this this is of the utmost importance, Forehead! Just tell me what you think of these flowers."
Sakura allowed herself a quick glance at the picture below a manicured finger, white gerbera. She also didn't miss the one of blue hydrangeas beside it. In an instant, she was looking back at the printed characters of Hashimoto Ito's name and comparing them to the 3PM column on the side.
"I don't care about the flowers, Ino. I don't care about the wedding. Part of the deal was for you to arrange everything alone and not bother me with any of it."
"You really don't care?" When Ino was met with silence, she ducked to try to catch her green turned down eyes. "You know, I still have that folder we made together with everything we wanted for our weddings."
The image cringed through Sakura and she let her head fall back with a groan. "Don't remind me, please."
"Why not? It's sweet and cute."
She pointed her pen at Ino. "No, it's over-the-top and humiliating."
"We were teenage girls, Sakura, of course it's over-the-top and humiliating. Don't look back on it too seriously."
"Can we please stop talking about that." Sakura ground out, her gaze shifting down to look back at her papers.
Her pen brushed up and down the column, but her mind couldn't pick up the place where she had been before being interrupted by rude embarrassing memories of times that were fortunately in the past. Now she would have to go back to the last correction and repeat some of her previous work, but it was always better than risk leaving something unchecked.
"And if you really want an answer, the blue hydrangeas." Sakura grumbled, just to make sure Ino was satisfied and wouldn't interrupt her again.
"That was also my first choice." Ino's sly smirk was loud in her voice but Sakura didn't have the mental availability to worry about whatever plans she was conjuring in her head.
"Oi, Sakura."
The only reason she didn't growl at another interruption was because she knew Shikamaru would only bother himself with talking to people if he actually had something he needed to communicate.
"Shika." She let out a little too tightly, still not lifting her eyes from her work.
"I just saw your parents."
The pen dropped from her fingers. "Oh fuck."
They had been fast, especially when one of their excuses not to come more often was that it took them almost three days to arrive in Konoha and now they had made it in two.
"They were just passing the Academy."
"Do you want me to come?" Ino asked, her hand coming to rest on hers.
"No, but thank you. I think this is something I better do alone."
"I'll call you, okay?"
Sakura offered only a curt nod while collecting her papers into one thick stack, not worrying about their correct order. She needed to hurry and get to her apartment before her parents, seeing as they were renting out their former home.
As she rounded the table, her eyes caught a loose page of Ino's folder filled with an assortment of complicated deserts. Her feet stopped. "Easy on the sweets. I know it's my favourite but Kakashi hates them. And there needs to be miso soup with eggplant."
Ino's lips spread into a sweet dangerous smile. "I could always use your help, you know."
"No."
Her smile fell a little. "Then don't worry, Forehead, I'll have everything planned to perfection."
"And that's what worries me." Ino's idea of perfection could only mean trouble for Sakura. And Shikamaru, considering the sigh he quietly let out at his teammate's words. Anyone and anything that wasn't Ino, really. "Talk to you later."
Her parents were not only fast in coming to Konoha, they were fast in arriving to her apartment. When Sakura got there, they were already waiting, her father pacing the length of her dining space and her mother sitting at the table, leg worrying up and down.
At least neither of them had died of a heart attack. Yet.
Sakura forced the stiff muscles of her face into a smile as she entered her living room. "Kaa-san, Tou-san, I'm glad your journey went well. I mis—"
"Well? You two were lucky we had the journey here to cool down." Her father cut in without a drop of mercy, leaving her deprived of even a fake greeting after not seeing his daughter for two years.
His tone was rigid, face already red with anger, halting his heavy steps to glare at her. Dad had been the one to pass down his temper to his daughter after all, and later Tsunade had helped break through the tight barriers Sakura had put around it.
"Your sensei? Really Sakura? And for how long has this been going on? Because if I learn it started when you were still a little girl, I don't care if that man is the great Copy-ninja or some hero of your wars, I will find a way to kill him!"
Once her dad finished roaring his threat, he suddenly stopped half way through a step and looked back at her from his rage. "Is that why he isn't here? The coward! Couldn't he face your parents knowing how—!"
Her mum held onto his arm from where she was sitting. "Sweetheart, calm down please. We already talked about how we wanted this to be a conversation, not an argument."
Her dad eased, his hand resting on the back of mum's chair, forcing himself to stay still even if the displeased scowl remained. She had always known how to calm him with a simple touch or the tone of her voice, which had never really been efficient when it came to her daughter.
Her green eyes turned to Sakura, gentle and warm.
"Sakura dear, you need to understand why we're worried. This is a man that we trusted to teach you and take care of you when you were barely a teenage girl. And later he became your team leader. Kakashi-sensei has been in a position of power over you for most of your life. We just want to make sure this is something that grew naturally once you were an adult and not him taking advantage of you or his position."
It had always been one of her mum's fears regarding her shinobi life, set inside a rigid hierarchy and moments of close proximity between men and women, young kids and adult people on missions. She remembered still a conversion from when she graduated the Academy about how she could come to mum if anyone made her uncomfortable or touched her in an inappropriate place.
Tsunade-shishou had had a similar conversation when Sakura came under her tutelage, only it involved much more practical advice on how to handle the private parts of a man that ever tried to force himself on her.
When Tsunade became Hokage, she had fought against the stigma over victims that came forward and developed the department in charge of receiving and investigating complaints and accusations. Sensei-student relationships had always been carefully monitored and nothing had turned up from them. Most scandals that came into light during the first years of her mandate involved ANBU.
While Sakura could understand her parents' worries, a part of her stung with offence that they would ever think something as horrible and disgusting concerning Kakashi. His public porn reading habit could raise some eyebrows and help spread some rumours, but he was one of the most respectful people when it came to others' boundaries.
"I do understand, Kaa-san, but you don't need to be worried. Kakashi would never do anything like that to me or anyone. I promise."
"When did it start, then? Because I have to be honest, Sakura, it was a complete surprise."
Her eyes ripped away from her mum to the window behind her, the understanding and expectant shade of them too unbearable. She forced the words to untangle themselves from her throat, knowing how much they would break through her parents, but most of all her mum.
"It didn't. It's part of a program meant to rebuild the dying clans."
Her neighbour's white cat slipped onto his favourite spot on a roof across the street and Sakura watched him turn around himself until he finally laid down on the warm tiles. Her breath was stuck in her lungs, the silence like thick cement glued to the air around them, and she couldn't force herself to see the effect of her words on her parents.
"What do you mean, honey?" Her mother finally broke the silence, voice quiet, hesitant, already a tremble of pain in it. "So you… you don't… love him?"
Her mouth was too dry to speak, tongue melted to the roof. Sakura's answer was a simple gaze. It made the lines of mum's face downturn in the beginnings of horror.
"And he doesn't love you?"
"But why did you volunteer?" Her dad cut in to ask instead. "I understand that since Sasuke died it—"
"I didn't volunteer." Sakura interrupted with the harsh truth, anything to move the conversation away from him. "It was an order from the Council, Kakashi and I were ordered."
Neither of them were good at hiding their emotions, they wore them on their faces, on their words, on the surface of their beings. Sakura watched every crack spread as her words settled into them and misery carved itself into their skin.
Her mum brought her hand to her mouth as tears rolled down her face. Sakura shared both her parent's traits, while her father was quick to anger, her mother was quick to tears.
"I don't understand… how… how could they order something like that?" Her hand fell to show the twisting line of her lips.
The first time Sakura had seen that sneer in her was when she had been seventeen, telling her parents she would leave for the battlefield in a month. Sakura had cried then, too weak to keep the wet anguish locked behind her eyes. Yet now, even if it trembled in her chest with the same sour ruthlessness as before, Sakura wouldn't cry, she would hold on stout, face impassive, the face of a shinobi.
Her mum's anger wasn't loud and explosive like her dad's, like Sakura herself, it was hissed, almost whispered, and yet it crawled like poisonous smoke in the air around them. Venom and disgust soaked into the creases of her face, the shape of her lips over her teeth and the sharpness of her voice.
"Is it not enough the amount of times you've sacrificed your life for this village? Isn't it enough that they send you to die, Sakura? That you have been doing it since you were only a child? Haven't you given more than enough, too much!, and still they ask for more? Now they also want you to sacrifice your future? Your marriage? Your children? Forcing you to have an old man's babies and become an old man's wife?"
Now it was her dad's time to stop her mother from barging out the door as she stood up and busting into the Hokage's office, his hands resting over her shoulders.
"Where is your shishou in the middle of this? Isn't she Hokage? She promised she would take care of you, she would protect you!"
Sakura could endure the jabs at Konoha but not at Tsunade, her blood boiled with anger but she only curled her fingers into a fist until her joints ached and her nails pierced into her palm. "Wasn't this meant to be a conversation?"
"Can't you see how serious this is, Sakura? How can you just talk about it like it doesn't affect you? Because I know it does, even if you think it doesn't, I know."
Sakura's iron control finally broke. "No, you don't, Kaa-san, you don't know! You don't know anything! You two never understood what it means to be a shinobi and I stopped asking that you do, but all I'm asking is that you trust me, trust my decision and my loyalty to Konoha."
"Decision? You were ordered! Sakura, please… it's not too late. Come with us to Otaru, you'll have a good—"
"No!" Sakura shouted hard enough for her voice to grate against her throat, and her parents jolted back with the force of it. "Konoha is my home and this is where I will always choose to be! I won't have this fight again! I'm sick of it! Sick!"
It was only when true fear oozed out of her parents faces that Sakura realised she had let out a flicker of chakra and it had shuddered through the room, wrapping around it like heavy burning vines. She stumbled back on weak legs, her hands pressing into the safety of her chest, afraid of what they could do.
Their fear was worse than all the anger, the venom and the pain.
Her mum sat down again, hiding her face in her hands to cry and her dad leaned down into her, gently petting her head, but not before throwing an accusing glare at his daughter.
Sakura could only watch, frozen in place, her hands still secured into her chest where they couldn't hurt anyone, and still she hurt them. There was only the gut-wrenching sounds of her mum's sobs and the whispered consoling words of her father.
"It's not so bad." She explained quietly. "Kakashi is one of my closest friends and through this entire thing he has only showed respect and care for me. If you're worried about…" She couldn't force the terrible words out. "He will never force himself on me, Council orders or not.
"I understand if you feel like you can't come to the wedding." They also hadn't come to her Jounin graduation. "I won't lie, I want you there, Kaa-san and Tou-san, Kakashi and I decided we would at least give this thing a try for whatever child that may come. And I want to share such a big change in my life with you… I… I'm sorry I'm breaking your hearts with this and I—"
The lump in her throat was suddenly too tight and she had to let out a little gasp before the words came out. "I'm sorry for all the pain I bring you…"
Sakura turned her back to them, needing to get out before she broke completely, like she had broken down on her kitchen floor a week ago.
"I do understand it, Sakura. You love Konoha more than you love us." Her mum whispered.
The worst part was that it was the truth and worst of all was that it wasn't a jab, it wasn't manipulation and or an attempt at making her feel guilty. There was genuine understanding in her mum's voice, if there was one thing mum had always understood it was love.
It was the understanding Sakura had longed for after so many years and now it felt like shards of broken glass and not the warm embrace of a mother.
"You can stay in my apartment for however long you want. I'll be at Ino's."
She would have to pay Yamato a nice dinner, or maybe arrange a date with that cute medic from traumatology he seemed interested in. It would take him quite bit of chakra to level out the earth of the training ground and grow back the surrounding trees that were now nothing but splintered trunks and loose leaves in the wind.
Her explosion hadn't released anything. There were her parents' wounded scared eyes at the back of her lids and then Ino's stiff frame of when Sakura vented out the careless words 'Sometimes I wish I had shinobi parents like you.'
Inoichi-san had died because he was a shinobi. And even before his death Ino had carried the burden of it, some nights coming to knock on her door with a tub of ice cream, later a bottle of sake, because one of her parents was a day late from a mission and her mind couldn't shut down the worry, the images, the fear.
She hadn't let her apologise, anticipating it and raising a blunt hand at her. 'This is different, Sakura, Otou-san would never let it happen to me.'
Sakura peeled her gloves off and looked down at the raw bleeding knuckles. She had controlled her chakra so it would hurt when she crashed her fist into the ground but not enough to break any bones.
Now that she had finally let her anger explode out of her chest, all that was left was the drowning sorrow hidden underneath it. The heels of her hands pressed to her eyes as a shaky breath trembled out her lungs. It had to be enough to keep the prickling to the back of her eyes and not let the tears overflow.
Sakura refused to cry.
She had cried enough for a lifetime when she first found out, she wouldn't cry now. With a last calming breath, she let her hands fall from her face and her head hang back to watch with unseeing eyes the night sky, before flopping down to the ground on her butt, arms dangling on her bent knees.
"Kakashi." Sakura whispered to the quiet air.
The chakra signature at the edge of the destruction materialised in front of her.
"I see your parents are in town." Kakashi's voice was laced with something more, he knew this thing ran deeper than their current predicament, that this was only one more massive fissure on an already crumbling relationship.
Kakashi was embarrassingly aware of her difficult relationship with her parents, all because of frayed nerves after the war and a heart overflowing with grief, a heart empty with the disillusion of cruel, deadly reality.
A few months after the end of the war, Tsunade had decided it was good for morale and loosening up her shinobi in the midst of the post-war efforts to have an official graduation and celebration for the field promoted Jounin of the war.
Sakura had held a perfect smile on her face the entire day, but halfway through the dinner she had wanted nothing more than to disappear. She had slipped out of a circle of friends, her mind intent on taking hold of the last tempura pieces at the buffet before leaving. Only then Kakashi had finally approached her, strolling along the table and letting out a small exclamation of surprise at seeing her, a pretend play to cover how he was perusing the fried food she knew he hated just to talk to her.
Her eyes had already spied him from across the crowd during the ceremony, farther back and casually leaning against a post as if one of his genin students, the least promising one in fact, wasn't being appointed Jounin before all the others. Whatever sense of avenged pride could have come from that was drowned under the tragic conditions that had made it possible.
He had congratulated her with a few gentle pats to her shoulder and said how he had always known she would get there one day. The words had sounded only condescending in her ears, Sakura knew it was a lie but she wasn't sure if he knew that she knew.
After the needed formality of acknowledging the path of a former student up the ranks, they had gone back and forth with casual talk and some well pointed comments from Kakashi that were surprisingly efficient at ripping something close to a chuckle from her, at quieting the empty hole in her chest in the shape of a dead boy.
And then, when the heaviness in her eyes was washing away and the rigidness of her lips was melting, disaster had struck. Kakashi was an insightful and sensitive genius when he gave things a modicum of his attention. However when it came to passing ones he didn't have the care to linger on, or worse feelings, he was as dumb and callous as a rock.
'Mm,' Kakashi had started, still finishing swallowing. 'where are your parents by the way?'
Kakashi had been too entertained with his orange to see the sudden stiffness in her muscles and how her eyes turned down to watch the crumbs on her plate. 'They didn't come.'
'Obviously.' He let out while munching on his orange. 'Why not?'
'Kakashi-sensei…'
She hadn't needed to explain much else after she started bawling, with one first rebellious tear that burst through the tightly closed lid of her floodgates. If something was enough to turn the gears in Kakashi's head, it was a crying girl, even if only to calculate the best escape route. At least with her, he had been kind, or remorseful enough not to run and instead escorted her away from prying eyes, stealing a napkin plate, and into one of the empty rooms in the Hokage Tower.
Sakura hadn't told anyone of how she sent a letter to her parents and didn't get an answer back and then she had sent another, because the first might have gotten lost in the mail, only to receive one back saying her parents wouldn't be coming. Ino had been grieving her dead father and Naruto was an orphan with too much grief and loss in his life that only made Sakura feel spoiled over her pain.
By accident, Kakashi had slotted himself into the place of perfect target for her outburst and he had probably lamented the fact. Sakura hadn't shared any words but he had seemed to understand what was implied in her tears, his hand presenting the plate with stacked napkins for her to soak through them.
Now, in the ruins of that training ground, his gloved hand pushed into her field of vision and at the tips of his fingers was a pack of tissues.
Sakura pushed his hand away with a chuckle. "I don't need those, you idiot."
"It would be okay. If you did need them."
"Well, I don't."
She could guess that Kakashi shrugged then, before sitting down behind her so she could lean against his back, the warmth and softness of his flak jacket a small comfort. The pages of his book rustled as he opened it and Sakura rolled her eyes. She still didn't quite understand why he had to keep pretending.
"They basically asked if you groomed me. My dad said he would kill you, jounin or not, he would find a way."
"I'm glad." His voice didn't carry a drop of sarcasm.
"Still, doesn't it offend you that they accused you of that?"
"They have a right to. I would also be worried."
That didn't really answer her question but Sakura knew when not to bother pushing with Kakashi.
"The worst part is that I think it broke their hearts more to know this was an order." Kakashi didn't say anything to that. "I don't know if we'll ever recover from this…"
Sakura leaned over to wrap her arms around her legs. She felt so small, so young and childish, like that evening right before the war, seven years ago, when her dejected parents had left her apartment and she had stared out the window through blurry eyes, seeing their fading backs on the street below. Her broken heart terrified without knowing if that was the last time she would be seeing them.
"When I was a weak genin I thought they'd be so proud of me when I finally became strong. So stupid… I didn't really know what it meant, I had no idea what I was getting myself into…" A bitter chuckle rumbled through her throat. "All I left them with is regret."
"I don't think that's true, Sakura. It's impossible for someone not to be proud of everything you've accomplished and the person you've become. I just think they're scared for you."
That was the life of a parent of a shinobi, constant fear and pain. Sakura couldn't blame them for running away from it, she just wished they wouldn't leave her behind, they wouldn't leave her alone…
Her eyes suddenly widened at the realisation that spurred in her mind. Her eventual child would also be a ninja, this entire program was meant to breed shinobi with exclusive genetics, like the Hatake white chakra and their undeniable genius.
The thought was too depressing and terrifying, spreading like ice in her veins, and Sakura needed to run away from that before she lost her mind.
"I think that's the first time you've said you're proud of me, Sensei." She teased lightly. "And of course it had to be in a weird roundabout way."
"Don't call me that, please." The plea came out in a dragged out whine that loosened a giggle from her. "And I just thought it was so obvious I didn't have to say it."
Hatake Kakashi was smooth as always when in compromising situations, as when faced with his clear disregard over her during Team 7 days.
"Not everyone is a genius, some people need to have things spelled out. If we're going to do this thing, you should know I like to have something like that spelled out for me."
"Mm… and what other things are 'something like that'?"
Sakura leaned back against him, the curve of her neck resting on his shoulder so she could watch the star speckled sky.
"That I'm your favourite."
"You're my favourite person, Sakura."
"I meant student, but I accept that as well. Let's see… That you're the one who's marrying up."
"Have you met me, Sakura? I'm obviously the lucky one here. Not that it takes too much to make me that."
"Hey." Her elbow poked him in the ribs. "This is meant to inflate my ego not degrade yours."
Kakashi could have a self-deprecating humour, even when he glorified himself it was always with a clear twinge of mocking for the ones that knew. But this one comment settled too raw and real around them and Sakura couldn't let it slide as a simple joke.
"I know your blaming yourself for this, Kakashi. Don't. If there's someone who isn't at fault here, it's us."
"Sakura… I'm old and… broken. I'm not… I'm not good for you."
"You're always so harsh on yourself. Maybe I'm the one not good for you here. And I doubt I'd take this as well as I am if it was with any other man."
It was the truth, not even Naruto would have been a better alternative. He was too much of a brother to her for him to ever enter the sphere of husband in her mind. Kakashi was the other man in her life that, even with some shortcomings, had always been there and that she knew she could tolerate his close proximity for a lifetime and he appeared to tolerate hers.
While 'husband' was a long stretch, Kakashi was even farther away from a 'brother'. The way she was very aware of his charm, the curve of his back or the low rumbles of his voice was definitely not sister-like. She had even had some interesting dreams concerning him, but had never let them take weight in how she saw him, blaming it mostly on her loneliness and natural uncertainty over their shifting relationship, her sudden realisation that he was very much a man.
"I need to get something out and it's a sensitive topic…" Kakashi started with the most hesitant tone she had heard from him. Already she could guess his line of thought and it seemed both their minds had randomly fallen into the same topic. "I don't mind if you… I'm an old man and I understand that everyone has needs… I don't—I don't mind if you…" He cleared his throat before letting his words out in a rushing torrent. "take lovers outside our marriage."
In an instant her cheeks were burning red and it only spread down to her chest. Sakura was thankful to any god out there that they were sitting back to back. Seeing him would only make this more mortifying and that was probably why he had decided this was the best time to get it out.
One thing was some teasing between friends, Kakashi had teased her a lot when she dated Raidou for a few months a couple of years ago, especially concerning their age difference, which was only ironic now, or even light flirting. Another was talk about lovers and marriage that held an actual weight in their relationship, it was too real again, too raw.
"I think we can wait a little to talk this through, when, well, it's actually… necessary?"
Kakashi was silent and rigid behind her before he finally breathed out, "I made it awkward?"
Sakura could only give him a small unfeeling chuckle. "I think the Council did that for us when they shoved us into a marriage together."
Kakashi, predictably, decided he would pretend this line of conversation hadn't happened moments before by returning to his book, its ruffling sheets the only sound over the stifling air around them. Sakura knew he wasn't taking in a single word of it.
"I can't believe I'm going to marry a man that reads porn in public."
"I can't believe I'm going to marry."
This time she did chuckle honestly, even if its edges were frayed with a hint of despair. Sakura slapped her knees before standing up. "I better get going, I have a lot of work to do tomorrow."
It wasn't a lie, but her motivation to flee was mostly so they would go their separate ways before stumbling into even more humiliating conversations. There was only so much her poor health could handle in one day.
Sakura walked to stand in front of him and offered him a hand. Kakashi held onto it and immediately turned their hands so her back was opened to his eyes, bruises and crusted blood marring it, as if he had already known they would be there.
"It's nothing." She tried to yank it back but his grasp only tightened, fingertips perfectly placed where they wouldn't press on the cuts.
"You did this on purpose, Sakura."
Her eyes rolled and she tried to free herself once more, but the stubborn man continued to still her there, his gaze intent on the inconsequential cuts. Her other hand encased their two and green light flickered for a few seconds in the darkness between them.
She uncovered the back of her hand to show the healed skin. "See, nothing."
Kakashi didn't say anything, he only stared at her unmarred knuckles as if seeing in them the afterimage of before. And just like that, she knew that her attempt to take the undeserved burden of guilt away from him was ruined.
Kakashi didn't take his eyes away from her hand as he asked, "Should I… should I talk to your parents?"
Her parents, right… they were the whole reason why she had demolished a perfectly suitable training ground and the trees surrounding it.
Sakura hoisted him up. "I have no idea."