Chapter Seven

The 10th of October

Shadows flickered against the white ceilings as the cool autumn wind rustled through the leaves outside, washing the room in the scent of pine. Sakura's dry eyes fixed on the changing shades of dark, she could barely spare the energy of blinking, her hands rising on her stomach with the slow movement of each of her breaths.

It hadn't stop hurting, each inhale was like needles prickling through her lungs, like cold rough fingers tight around her ribs.

And still she breathed on, unthinking, and still her heart hummed, low, rhythmic, alive, even when it was shards and ash in her chest.

His eyes had been darker than the shadows, they had been the black of a moonless night, and still all she could see was the almond shape of them. All she could smell was the metallic sting of his blood spilling through the gaps of her fingers.

The sheets rustled beside her and the bed dipped as Naruto turned on his side to face her. "Kakashi said he'd try to be here but didn't know if he'd finish off the mission in time. I honestly didn't expect him to say anything. Remember that year he completely vanished, not even you could find him?"

Sakura and Naruto always spent the 10th of October together.

He spent the morning in front of Sasuke's grave, Hinata by his side. Very few people in Konoha knew it was here, tucked away in the cemetery of the Uchiha compound. Tsunade had allowed him to be buried there, even if he only remained in Konoha's memory as a traitor.

Sakura could never stand in front of the dark obsidian stone, the same shade as his eyes, and read the carved characters of his name. She had never even tried it, too terrified of the shattering blow it might be to her. Unlike with Kakashi the grave would never speak back, there was only death and emptiness waiting there.

Perhaps that was also what he had always found at the memorial stone and had taken it as his burden to endure, grief for guilt's sake and not remembrance.

Sakura had never asked him why he had gone there so many times before the war, had never asked him if he had found meaning apart from the pain, or meaning in the pain, or no meaning at all.

Maybe it was all three at the same time, all three at different times.

Naruto would then pass by her apartment. For the first years they lingered there, laying on her bed munching dango and drinking sake, but then he had married Hinata and together they gravitated towards their new home, losing the sake along the years.

All of it, while the village around them celebrated the victory of the Fourth War.

In the evening, they put aside the grief. In the evening they celebrated Naruto's life.

Sakura always tried to fold it the best she could and tuck it into one of the many corners of her mind. Naruto could never shed the soft shade of sadness from his eyes even when laughing with friends around a table.

It always shook through her heart that his birthday was also the day his hand had been stained with the death of his most precious person. The day void settled in the shattered empty place where Sasuke belonged.

In the first couple of years, Sakura had been terrified Naruto would lose his unrelenting light and hopefulness. She had been scared for nothing, he was one of the strongest people she ever knew, and he had had Hinata holding him up to himself, even through the grief, even through his… failure.

"How are things between you two?"

Sakura closed her eyes and almost didn't answer, even the movement of her lips was too hard, but she could feel Naruto's expectant blue eyes on her profile. "Normal, which is all I can ask for."

"Normal as in exactly how it used to be, or as in different but not weird?"

"As it used to be. Well, except we sleep together in the same bed now."

Naruto let out a small squeal that pierced through her ear, the first thing that day that made a flicker of mirth bubble up in her chest.

Sakura's head fell to the side as she narrowed her eyes at him and poked his ribs. "Literal sleep."

"So… you two never… you know…"

"Naruto, please."

The last thing she wanted to talk about that day was the dynamics around her abnormal marriage thing with her former sensei that she had been forced into. Even if Sasuke's death was the reason for it.

"You know that technically the marriage is only valid if you… do it."

"I'm perfectly aware of that, thank you." Even if it was something Sakura preferred to keep safely buried in her mind. Her eyebrows furrowed as she continued watching the changing shadows. "But I'm surprised you know that."

"I married the Hyuga heiress, we were forced into those classes, remember?"

Sakura did remember those six months before the wedding where Naruto had whined about reading old texts that he didn't understand a word of, with a constant head bump on his crown from being smacked by the priest every time his mind wandered off.

His drunken speech on a night at the pub had stayed in her mind, one of the moments Sakura was suddenly aware of how much he had grown from the lonely, definitely too immature, kid that had only ever wanted to be loved. The important lesson for him was obvious, love Hinata the best way he could, and there was no need to complicate all of it by shoving the kami and old traditions into it as if it helped make more sense of marriage.

Sakura supposed that sex being an essential part of marriage was another thing Naruto thought obvious without there being a rule about consummation.

It said a lot about her own marriage that Sakura had yet to even kiss her husband, much less fuck him. Even if in a secret part of her head, she could admit she had been further away from it.

But that was more of a consequence of the physical proximity she was forced into with a very attractive man that she trusted unconditionally than the magical weight of a signed paper and a few sips of sake in front of a priest.

And they joked and they teased and called each other 'husband' and 'wife', but in her heart Kakashi wasn't her husband and Sakura was certain he didn't see her as his wife.

"Sakura-chan…"

She didn't answer the call, Naruto knew she was listening. Her scalp tingled as his fingers tugged carefully on her hair splayed over the bed.

"If Kakashi doesn't show up, you can stay the night here." Naruto patted the bed of the guest room.

Sakura turned onto her side as well, her lips stretching into a smile she knew was nothing but a stiff curve of her mouth even with how much lightness she tried to put into it. But Naruto's blue eyes were turned down to where his finger poked her strands down against the linen.

"You know I like to sleep in my own bed, but thank you, Naruto."

Her hand reached out to hold his in something she wished was reassuring. The hand that Sasuke had used to pierce his own heart with. Sakura and Kakashi had always tried to carry that burden with Naruto, but they knew it would never be the same.

"Do you think he knew how much it would hurt us?" She whispered.

Sakura still hated Sasuke for choosing Naruto's hand to kill him, for forcing that burden onto the person he loved most. It was the one thing she could never understand, the one missing piece of Sasuke that never seemed to fit.

But maybe it was because she had been wrong, blinded in her rose-coloured glasses that saw in him only a broken boy, not cruel, not evil, simply hurting. Even with everything he had put them through, Sakura had never thought Sasuke could be that devastatingly selfish.

"I think he believed he was doing what was best for us." Naruto answered simply.

"He should never have done it that way…"

"I don't blame Sasuke." His fingers flexed around her own as he said it. "I've told you, somehow it makes sense for us… I can't explain it, but there was a moment when… when my rasengan crashed against his chidori… everything went quiet and it made sense. You shouldn't blame him too, Sakura-chan."

Sakura had always known his bond with Sasuke was something she would always stay at the border of, never understanding it fully, but this seemed insanity.

"I'm trying."

Not for Sasuke, but because she trusted Naruto. She truly had, for seven years she had been trying, and still it always seemed to slip away from the cracks in her heart.

Seven years.

A soft knock rasped against the opened door and they both turned to see Hinata with a sheepish apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry I'm interrupting but I thought I should warn you it's almost time."

Naruto jumped out of the bed and Sakura raised herself into a sitting position.

"Of course, Hinata-chan. Thank you." Naruto said in a gentle voice that he always saved for his wife and leaned down to kiss her cheek.

Sakura turned her eyes away, towards the window.

Once alone, she bent down, the heels of her palms pressing into her eyes. Her hands rubbed against her face as if it would help scrape away the sucking hole from her chest.

She wobbled to her feet. Leaning over the windowsill, her fingers pressing down onto the wood, Sakura breathed in the scent of pine from the opened glass and tried to shape her mouth into a smile. Even to her own muscles, it felt like more of a grimace but it would have to do.

The appetizers were laid out on the kitchen counter and Hinata worked on the finishing touches. It always made Sakura guilty that she and Naruto would wallow in their grief while Hinata worked in the kitchen, but even with her shy character she could be strangely persuasive when getting her way. Her stubbornness creeped on people without them noticing it under the polite smile and meek voice.

"Hinata, let me help you."

"Oh no, Sakura, don't worry about it."

"Please, you'll be doing me a favour."

Hinata seemed to understand then and relented. They worked in silence, Sakura's mind latching on to the menial cooking tasks. Their friends slowly arrived, some poked their heads inside the kitchen to greet her and Sakura threw them a smile over her shoulder. Ino was the one to enter all the way and hug her from behind, her chin on her shoulder.

"How are you doing?" Ino asked, her arms squeezing Sakura's to her sides.

"As you'd expect." Sakura whispered, a sudden lump in her throat, as her hands moulded the rice into small triangles.

"And Kakashi? I don't think I've seen him."

Now that they lived together, they also came together to these friend meetings.

"Mission."

"You can stay with us tonight."

Ino was the second to offer it. Did Sakura look particularly miserable that year?

"I'm fine, thanks."

"Just don't linger here all by yourself, Forehead." Ino whispered before squeezing her one last time and freeing her.

Sai slithered onto the spot beside Sakura while his girlfriend left the kitchen. "Sakura."

"Sai." She greeted back.

He stayed beside her, helping her do what needed to be done for dinner. They worked in silence, his company a small comfort that didn't prickle at her side. Like Kakashi.

The dinner went by slowly, but their friends were understanding not to expect anything from her other than her quiet presence at the table. Sakura wished she had enough in her overflowing heart to give more, especially to Naruto.

It was his birthday and the piercing grief in her also flared with the awareness that this was a moment that should be treasured, that should be lived with a bubbling grateful heart, the smiles rising naturally to her lips, light and wide, and not like the painful tug over a stiff mask.

In one moment it could all be ripped away from them.

They were the lucky ones, their losses so little compared to other generations – Kakashi – and still all her chest could do was weep.

She only wished Sasuke could have been there to feel the love around the table, to see how Naruto brought people together with his big heart, to celebrate the joy that it was to be alive. Even if he had lived, would Sasuke ever let out small hidden chuckles like Sai had learned to do? Would he have endured Kiba's rowdiness and even appreciate the chaos in it for Naruto's sake?

Would he have learned to see that there was more than the loneliness in his heart? Would he have learned to be loved by them?

By her…?

What could Sakura have done that would have made him be there with them?

To Naruto, her answer was always the same: nothing.

But deep down, she had always held on to the cruel hope that Sasuke hadn't been unamendable, that the tragedy of his life hadn't been forever stained into him, forever cureless. It seemed crueller to tie him to hopelessness than it was to tie Team 7 to failure.

The blue of Naruto's eyes had glazed over, darkened, even when they were still fixed on a babbling Kiba.

They lowered suddenly and Sakura followed his gaze as it landed on Hinata's hand resting over his own. She squeezed, the golden ring around her fingers glinting, and he squeezed back with a small smile, the edges of his sadness washing away in the love he had for her, she smiled back, the warmest turn of her lavender eyes.

Sakura's eyes fell down to her own empty finger and she crunched the napkin in her fist.

Sasuke's ghost could still sour the sweetest of things in Sakura's life.

She hated him for it.

Timed dragged by in an indolent pace. Sakura smiled at the stories passed around the table, something gurgled like a chuckle in her throat when they remembered all the idiotic things they had done throughout years of missions and learning how to move around the shinobi world.

There was bitter, guilty relief when the guests started leaving, it was her duty to stay until the end. Yamato was the first one, he had a mission early in the morning, next Tenten and Lee, Kiba had drunk too much and Shino had to drag him away, an arm thrown over his shoulder, Chouji took them up on the ride and Shikamaru stood to smoke a cigarette outside. Sakura followed him.

He leaned on the wooden post of the engawa and Sakura leaned on the other side of it, her arms wrapping around herself at the sudden bout of goose bumps from the cool night air. The tip of a cigarette was already poking out of the pack when he extended it to her and Sakura took it.

Her fingers shook as she rolled the lighter and the small flame came alive in front of her eyes. Her palm cupped around it to protect it from the breeze and her eyes watched the tip frizzle, her lips around the filter to drag the smoke in small fast puffs.

The first long drag burned through her throat, down her windpipe to her lungs. Sakura coughed, each jolt like prickling needles rising up to her mouth, Shikamaru chuckled lightly at her side.

"I hate this shit." Sakura rasped while taking another burning drag.

It was why she did it when feeling especially sorry for herself, even if she could never finish more than half a cigarette. Shikamaru was the only one who knew, to anyone else she came out smelling like smoke from standing too close to him.

The first time she smoked had been the first time she kissed. The memory always rose to her mind with the taste of cigarettes in her tongue.

It was slightly pathetic, and still one of the least pathetic things Sakura had done as a teenager, she had cherished it then and she cherished it now. Of all the terrible mistakes and hurtful things she had inflicted on others in the span of that week – it still stabbed through her, smothered her in regret, the memory of her confession to Naruto – having Shikamaru be her first kiss wasn't one of them.

She had left Tsunade's tent, her shishou's bony wrinkled hand imprinted into her calloused ones, and wandered through the makeshift Konoha. It hadn't tasted of home after the desolated cold of Iron Country, so deep and ruthless it had carved her heart into a wasteland.

Sakura found him smoking on a roof, overlooking the camp instead of leaning back to watch the night sky. Something in his eyes had made her go to him, perhaps the glimpse of a shared hopelessness, a shared lurking and always hidden despair.

He passed her his cigarette, Sakura choked, almost coughed a lung out, they laughed. It was that laugh, the first one in a long time, tasting as foreign as the smoke, and the simple heat of his arm against her own that sealed the path of their turning leaning heads, no expectations, no deceptions, no tangling threads.

His lips had been the warmest thing to touch her since Pain's attack, his hands on her waist, on her face, her breast, the first thing other than pain to reach deeper than the surface layer of her skin.

If Shikamaru hadn't pulled back himself, perhaps in a gesture of loyalty to the girl he loved, perhaps because going that far would complicate what was meant to be simple, Sakura would have let him take her virginity away on that one go.

On some rickety roof with the crater of their destroyed home below them, with the brokenness of Sasuke's insane laughs in her ears, with the imprint of her dear shishou's weakened stilled body in her eyelids, with her sensei's self-loathing confession of failure in her empty hands, with her failure to Naruto like ice in her heart.

Nothing like it had happened again between Shikamaru and her. That was why it never had time to degrade into something rotten inside the vicious hold of her hands, a small glimpse of candid solace, crystallised as always the same in its stilled, unrepeated uniqueness.

How far they had come from the despair of those times… and still tonight all those destructive and unstable emotions were simmering right at the barrier of her skin.

Sasuke always brought forth the weakness in her, the shallow, the flaws.

The sound of Naruto's boisterous excited shout waved around them from inside and Sakura looked over her shoulder with a small smile. "Twenty-four… And I swear Naruto is either six or sixty, there's no in-between." Her eyes turned to the man at her side. "Now you, Shika, you've been a ninety-year-old-man since the day you were born."

"And you?"

Sakura looked down at the bright sizzling tip of the cigarette between her fingers and she lifted it to her lips for another long drag. "Today I'm thirteen." And abandoned on a cold bench.

Her head swam from the nicotine on her bloodstream and her fingers grew numb.

"Here." Sakura grated as she extended the half-smoked cigarette to him. "You'll have to finish this for me."

"My pleasure." He whispered as he took it.

Her hand slapped the back of his head.

"You gave up your authority the moment you lit this up, sensei."

"Want to test that, Nara? I'm sure I can squeeze you a mandatory check-up for 8am tomorrow."

His hands raised in a gesture of surrender because he knew Sakura was feeling spiteful enough to follow on with her threat.

She went back inside, the buzz still trembling through her hands and when a few laughs sounded from the living room she changed her course to the kitchen. There were a lot of plates that needed cleaning.

"Did you even leave this place, Forehead?" Ino called out as she wrapped her arm around her shoulders again. "We're calling it for the night. Sure you don't want to stay with us?"

"Completely sure. And don't forget to come in earlier for the interviews on the 12th."

"Gods, Kakashi's right, all you do is think about work!" Ino whined.

Sakura whipped her head to watch her over her shoulder. "He talked to you?"

There was a devious curl to Ino's mouth that meant trouble for her. "What if he did?"

He hadn't brought the topic of her work up again and she had thought it meant he had forgotten about it or been too lazy to bother himself with the matter. There was something in her chest from knowing this and Sakura couldn't place it into words.

"What did he say?"

"That you work so much you two don't have time to fuck."

Sakura rolled her eyes and threw the wet sponge towards Ino, fast enough that she couldn't evade it. She let out a yelp and a series of curses and threats as it splashed against her dress.

"Just go home, Pig."

For good measure, Ino squished her wet chest to Sakura's back in something like a hug. "Goodnight Sakura, and call me if you need anything."

A hand landed on her shoulder. "Have a good night, Sakura." Sai wished and she smiled for him. From the door, Shikamaru took advantage of her turn to throw her a lazy wave.

Hinata and Naruto had a difficult time pulling her out of the kitchen. Sakura found it was the only thing she could give back that day.

"Sakura-chan… I'd still prefer if you'd stay with us." Naruto said as he leaned against the front door of his home.

Her hand rose to his arm and she squeezed. "I'm fine, Naruto, I promise."

His eyes weren't entirely convinced but he still pulled her into a hug, his arms crushing her until it was almost painful, and her ear pressing to his chest where she could hear the strong rhythm of his heartbeat.

Alive.

"Thank you for everything."

"It should be me thanking you, Naruto." Sakura pulled back and smiled up at him. "Make sure you also thank Hinata. She's a saint."

Naruto smiled, his hand raising to brush the back of his head. "Yeah. I got pretty lucky."

"It wasn't luck. Goodnight, Naruto."

"Goodnight, Sakura-chan!"

Sakura threw a final wave at Naruto as she reached the front gate of their home and stepped into the empty unpaved street.

Her head fell back to watch the white glint of the moon, a mere slit around the speckled veil of starlight.

Her heart clenched. Sakura always saw Sasuke in the night sky.

Seven years…

It felt as if she had been carrying it for longer, her heart weary and overflowing, and at the same time it was so piercingly raw, as if it had only been yesterday that he had killed himself in Naruto's rasengan.

Shouldn't it have scarred already? Her own hands had mended ravaged wounds into nothing but pink fresh skin, not one trace of a ragged scar, but this one she couldn't reach. Just as she had never reached even one of Sasuke's.

It was stuck to her eyelids, it was stuck to the creases of her palms, Sakura could never wash it away. Sasuke had been dead for seven years and still it was as if her chakra was sensing the dying beat of his heart now.

Kakashi had held her back, his arms wrapping around her waist as he locked her to his chest. Sakura had thrashed, elbowed and kicked him but even with a broken body after the last battle he had endured.

Steady, Kakashi was always steady.

They had looked down from the cliffs as Naruto and Sasuke collided. The impact exploded in a wave that blew across the entire scenery. Her pink hair had stopped whipping against her face and the dust settled enough for her to see them.

It had been as if they were hugging.

Sakura still wished time had stopped then and that moment of innocence could have lasted forever, a crystal image stilled in time and soaring above it, only potential and with none of the deadliness of reality.

It had shattered with her heart.

Sasuke had taken two frail steps back, pulling himself free from Naruto's arm, viscera spilling from his front onto the earth. His legs had given out as he fell to his knees, a small smirk on his lips – the arrogant smirk that was so very Sasuke, a glimpse of the boy he would always be to them – and then onto his side.

A scream had ripped from Sakura's throat, Naruto had sat back, petrified, his bloody hand extended in front of him, Kakashi had only whispered a choked out 'Sasuke' against her ear.

The arms around her hadn't fought as she ran to him, her hands soaked in her healing chakra.

While the chidori crushed through ribs and muscle, burned the flesh to cut a ragged hole in a person's chest, the rasengan ravaged through their bodies and twisted their organs.

Her hands had hovered above the mangled crater that had been Sasuke's chest, the warm cloying feel of his insides in her hands, the red of his blood stained into her skin. Sakura had fought through the sobs racking her shoulders and the blurriness of tears, but she had already known it was useless.

Sasuke was unhealable.

And yet what pierced her more now was not the gore. It was those dark eyes, slowly flickering away as they fixed on her face, fighting against the inevitable drag of death.

Those last whispered words…

"Why didn't you just give me peace?" Sakura spat under her breath into the silent empty night.

It was becoming too much again, she broke into a run for her apartment. The fingers were tightening around her throat and the air didn't soak into her lungs. She couldn't break and most of all she couldn't break there where everyone could see it, everyone would know.

She slid through the kitchen window and planted her palms on the cool wood of the countertop, her head slumped down, eyes clenched closed, as she breathed in with paced inhales.

"I'm okay." Sakura whispered to herself. "I'm okay."

It wasn't just anguish smothering her from inside out.

It was the shame.

Shame that it still hurt so much, shame that Sasuke still had so much power over her, shame that she couldn't piece her heart together from the first boy that had broken it.

The poison smothering her chest eased slightly with the exercises. Her eyes opened to the watch the dark outside as she fixed the bangs away from her face, soothed the thick lines around her mouth and the prickle of her eyes that showed how close she had been to breaking.

But Sakura didn't break tonight. She didn't break. She didn't cry.

She twirled on her foot and startled back at the sudden figure staring at her.

"Fuck. You scared me." Her words left in a hiss as she clutched the fabric above her frantic heart. "What are you even doing here?"

Kakashi frowned lightly at her tone. "I'm home."

He said it like it was obvious. And it was, but for a moment Sakura had forgotten Kakashi also lived there, she had forgotten she was a married woman.

There was a quiet expectation in him, as if he was waiting for her to say something back.

When she gave him nothing, not sure what she could possibly give him, he added, "I managed to wrap up the mission earlier. Just not soon enough."

They just stared at each other, half his face cast in shadow and the other only lit with the frail light of the moon and the warm glow of the streetlamps. Kakashi was home but he still had his mask on, his brow was still pinched together as he watched her and Sakura tried to find in his eyes how much he had seen from her.

Did he see her almost break? She didn't think she could bear it if he had.

"How was Naruto?" His voice was barely a whisper and still it seemed too loud in the quiet emptiness of the house.

"Better, I think."

"And you?"

In the dark, Kakashi's eyes were almost like Sasuke's. If she saw only their grey turned black and not the lazy shape, it was almost as if she was looking at his eyes again, almost as if she was coming home to him.

Pathetic.

He deserved so much more from her than to have Sasuke haunt him. Kakashi should be only Kakashi and not the vessel of her grief.

"Sakura?"

Sakura felt worse but she didn't know why. She could have blamed it on exhaustion, but the tiredness had always settled as a compress over her bleeding wound, the tiredness was like the green chakra in her hands numbing the pain down until she could pretend it was already a scar.

This year it was as if sharp fingers had sunk down onto her weeping flesh and carved it open once again, turned the nerves raw and the slice cutting down the middle of her chest into a gaping crater.

Why?

"Are you injured?" Sakura said instead.

"I thought you wouldn't ask." He teased.

"Are you?"

He shrugged, "I don't think so."

With Kakashi that could tend between a few scrapes and a gap in his chest that could fit her whole fist.

Her hands glowed green between them.

The crater of Sasuke's chest overflowed her vision and she flinched at it.

She clenched her eyes closed and opened them to see her palms press to Kakashi's flak jacket instead, panic still simmering in her veins.

The worse thing she found was the high concentration of alcohol in his bloodstream. "You should drink some water before going to bed."

Her hands fell away from him while her gaze watched him more closely.

The day Sasuke died Kakashi had been the one there beside her as she cried herself to sleep, his awkward fingers soothing down her short strands. The first year Sasuke had been dead Sakura hadn't allowed herself to cry because of him anymore. She had held Naruto then as he cried on her bed. Kakashi had vanished, they still didn't know if he had taken a mission or hid himself on some of his nooks around Konoha. The next year he left a birthday present on her windowsill with a smiley face and a scar over its eye. But Kakashi never grieved with them.

More, Sakura never saw him in his grief. Only when they celebrated Naruto's birthday and then all that she could see was that he was quieter and his gaze was guiltier. It was the first time she was seeing his eyes bloodshot and smelling the alcohol in his breath even through the mask.

Had he already been home when she arrived? Drinking alone in the dark or had he gone to a bar after the mission, drank on the way back to Konoha? All of those scenarios made the lump press once again to her throat.

A small smile spread in her lips, a frail attempt at comforting him.

Before any words could leave her mouth, Kakashi rasped out, "Don't smile like that."

It disappeared in an instant, morphed into clenched teeth. "What's wrong with how I smile?"

Kakashi took a step forward, his hand falling onto the counter beside her hip to support himself, most likely too drunk to keep himself from swaying. Her stomach twisted as his lightning chakra fluttered through her skin. At the back of her mind whispered the prickle of an alarm.

"I don't like it when you do that. When you hide whatever it is you're feeling."

Sakura was known as a person that kept her emotions open and right at the surface for others to see. It was a better cover than Kakashi's mask had ever been because they had learned to take what they saw as the only thing there was and never look underneath the underneath.

"You do it so many times now. Why?"

"Slightly hypocritical coming from you."

Sakura reached for his face to show for her words.

His hand snapped up to clamp around her wrist before she could brush the fabric, the tendons on her neck jerking with the sharp movement. She let her fingers stretch, the tips brushed down the warm skin of his cheek and came to rest over the line of jaw.

His eyes were nothing like Sasuke's as he searched her face, they were what she had wished Sasuke's eyes looked like when they watched her. Attentive, intense, seeing her and not through her.

Sakura didn't know what he found there, but Kakashi's fingers unlocked around her wrist and he let his hand fall down to the countertop next to her waist, caging her between the cool wood behind her and the overwhelming heat of his body.

"Take it off." Kakashi said it as if it were obvious, as that time as a genin, when Sakura had caught a rabbit on her trap, its body thrashing to free itself from her hold, and had asked him what to do with it now and he had simply said 'Cook it'.

She had bawled all the way through it and refused to take a single bite of the meat. He had drawled that if she chose to go hungry, she couldn't complain. She hadn't, the next day when they settled on their bedrolls her stomach had done all the complaining for her with rumbling growls.

Kakashi had crouched beside her, Sakura's eyes clenching closed, ready for a dressing-down, when she heard the sound of a wrapper and found an energy bar presented to her instead, as he whispered that she couldn't tell the boys. Before she could take it away from his hand, he had pulled the bar back saying, 'There are people not made for killing. Think about today and whether this is the life you want for yourself.'

She hadn't thought, Sakura had buried it deep in her mind, even as his words continued to hiss at the back of it. She hadn't wanted to think about it, because Team 7 had become a place where she belonged, and she didn't want to think of the sacrifices that came with keeping it.

And now here she was, a shattered heart from a dead teammate and married to her sensei.

Kakashi was very different from the ruthless sensei, the neglectful sensei, that had a veiled goofy side and a few sprinkled moments of heart-warming compassion and care. Maybe it hadn't been him changing but her. Sakura was very different from the crying girl that had never had death in her hands. Most likely it was both and how they changed together.

He took a small step closer as she continued unmoved, her fingertips still resting on his jaw.

"Take it off." It was almost an order.

He looked as if he was giving himself up for the kill, the tenseness in his shoulders washing away with clear effort, his head slumping forward to lean into her. A gesture of surrender, his eyes piercingly intent on her.

Sakura hesitated. She had seen his face enough times now that the sense of novelty had waned but she had never been the one to pull the mask down. Her fingertips curled around the fabric and she let them stay there while her gaze searched his face for any sign that he wanted her to stop or he regretted his surrender. There was nothing.

The drag of the fabric was fast, drawing it out would give it too much meaning, and whatever was happening now already suffocated with it.

Kakashi looked miserable. He was still handsome, gentle, it always surprised Sakura how gentle his features were. Not like the porcelain grace of Sasuke and Sai, untouchable and cold, but the lines of his face were kind, warm.

She didn't need novelty for her eyes to be pulled into him, for her fingers to tingle with the need to trace the edge of his cheek down the line of his jaw and that endearing beauty spot at the corner of his lips.

Sakura didn't even understand why she had had the need to lower his mask. Now they were both waiting for something and she didn't know what she was waiting for. What had been their purpose with this? What was meant to happen after she unmasked Kakashi?

Her hand lowered, but not before falling to her temptation and letting her fingertips trace the curve of his cheekbone, down, to the tip of his chin. His skin was warm, cheeks red from the alcohol, prickly with a shallow layer of silver stubble.

Before she could break a boundary Sakura wasn't even sure existed anymore, she pulled away

Kakashi caught her hand and pressed it into his own face.

She frowned, it wasn't even the semblance of a caress, more of a sloppy slam of her fingers against his nose, even if the gesture made the back of them brush his lips. They were soft, softer than any other man's she had been with.

His breath was hot against her skin and it took her a few seconds to understand the words his mouth had shaped against her.

"You were smoking?" His eyebrows pinched together, his tone like a father scolding his daughter.

That damn nose of his, Sakura was certain she had scrubbed the smell off her fingers while cleaning the dishes.

She tried to rip her hand away from his hold, but only managed to distance it from his face. "Who's asking? My sensei? Or my taichou? Maybe my husband?"

Kakashi met the accusation in her voice with a casual turn of his eyes. "Right now, someone that also wants a smoke."

"I can't believe you smoke!"

"Your disapproval has no power now, Sakura."

She pulled back from him with a huff, but his fingers only tightened around her wrist, stopping her there. It sent lightning up her arm, reviving the shrill alarms in her mind, and yet the weight of his dark eyes on her seemed to mute them into nothing.

Her eyes narrowed at him and he raised a cheeky eyebrow at her.

Kakashi looked so much younger without his mask, certainly younger than thirty-seven. It wasn't just because of his grey hair, his age was all in his eyes.

"I showed you mine, you show me yours."

"I already am. As you can see there's nothing here." Her fingers poked at her own cheek to prove her point.

Kakashi hummed as if he was truly pondering the situation. His burning fingers finally released her hand, but before Sakura could take a steadying breath in, a touch on her face made a shiver startle down her spine.

His fingertips, calloused and rough, dragged down the skin of her cheek. Then the back of his fingers traced the edge of her jaw and pressed up against her chin, coaxing her head to tilt back until it was in line with his.

"I don't think I believe you, Sakura."

His thumb tapped her chin and she stilled completely under him. More than tingling, his presence around her burned, it pressed down on her in a way she couldn't quite understand. Did that mean she didn't want it there? She didn't want him there? It was nothing like Hinata's touch that seemed to sooth Naruto's pain and she was nothing like Naruto that could drink in comfort from the simple squeeze of a hand.

Her skin buzzed with his electric chakra and her lungs were once again smothered in her ribs. Sakura was standing at the razor's edge, unsure if she would either kick him away from her with enough force to break the wall behind him or pull him into her until there was nothing standing between them.

Maybe she didn't even need to choose between the two, in days like this, her fucks were always violent, bruising, breaking her body apart alongside her heart. The need for it rose with such violence that her fingers wrapped around the wood of the counter with the force to shatter it.

His eyes, dark and bottomless, as they traced the shape of her lips told her he was thinking the same. It only sent a stab of heat through her belly. Everything else muted, he was only the warmth of his body as it came to rest against her, piercing and irresistible.

His thumb lifted from her chin, eyes attentive to the movement as if he wasn't the one controlling it, as if he was also tingling with the anticipation to know where it would touch her next. Kakashi traced her lower lip, the soft flesh pliant under the weight of his finger.

The touch throbbed between her thighs, they pressed together to sooth the sharpening ache, the swirls in her belly that only flurried lower.

Kakashi lifted his eyes to hers, heavy breaths rasping in his throat, falling through parted glistering lips, waiting lips, smelling of sake. Of promise, of everything her body craved in that still and suspended moment.

It happened at the same time.

Kakashi plunged his head down to meet hers, Sakura sprang up on the tips of her toes, fingers sinking into the loose fabric of his mask to yank him down to her. Neither of them had quite counted that the other would also move of their own initiative, that the other would move with the same violent, thoughtless urgency.

His forehead clashed against her nose, pain exploding in her face, and their mouths never met.

The force with which he leapt back made him stumble on his drunk feet, a stumbling Kakashi was always a disturbing sight. Her fingers tightened around his shirt, offering him some balance before he could humiliate them even further by falling to the floor, her other hand massaging her abused nose softly.

"Shit, I'm so sorry, Sakura." He rushed out.

His hands reached out for her face and she startled back, slapping them away. The thought of him touching her now was unbearable, when moments before her body had wished for nothing more than the shape of them imprinting into every inch of her skin.

"It's fine. My nose can endure Tsunade's punches."

But her pride was definitely a much more fragile thing than her bones, the force of his clash breaking it, now glass pieces on the floor of her kitchen.

Still, it was for the best, Kakashi was definitely drunk, his mind driven on idiotic impulses, misguided choices and grief, his decision to kiss her (if it could even be called that) a lapse in judgement. He would certainly have regretted whatever could have happened in the morning.

"If we needed a sign, this one was it." Sakura commented with a dry chuckle, hoping that acknowledging the stupidity and failure of it, the embarrassment prickling in the air around them, would dissolve it into nothing.

Kakashi offered a small chuckle as well and they shared a few gurgles of laughs. Then there was silence, painful burning silence.

The constant sting of humiliation that had stalked her that day apparently hadn't been enough to satisfy the universe or the self-sabotaging side of herself.

She turned her back to him, hand rising to take a glass out of the cabinet and fill it with water.

What was she thinking? Kissing a drunk Kakashi with the purpose of using him to fuck her, like some random guy she picked up at the bar?

And why on earth was her body aching at the sudden image of him pounding into her, roused by the very real and piercing heat of him brushing her back, his hand gripping her hair to bend her neck back, arm like vines around her waist, when her own nose had felt how much of a mistake it would be?

There was nothing like clashing their faces together to know their harmony when it came to kissing was inexistent.

They had signed the papers and they lived together, but they didn't share a life together, they didn't carry each other's burdens and didn't ease each other's pains. There was no love, not the one she craved tonight, love like Hinata and Naruto's, love like what she had dreamed hers and Sasuke's could have been.

"Sakura…"

Kakashi couldn't give her what she wanted and it was unfair of her to expect that of him. Whether it be a rough fuck with the edge of the counter piercing into her stomach or the tenderness of a single touch of fingers that healed all wounds, it wasn't fair to him.

Her stiff lips turned into a smile as she turned back around, but her eyes didn't raise above his collarbone.

"Make sure you're well hydrated before sleep." She placed the glass of water in his hand, careful not to touch his fingers, and moved past him and out of her kitchen.

Sakura eyed the sofa as she entered the living room, but decided sleeping there would give too much importance to what had happened now. Kakashi was wasted and grieving and Sakura was a gaping bleeding wound, whatever this was it was only a hitch, tomorrow it wouldn't mean anything.

She curled into her side of the bed, already knowing that even through the heaviness of her eyes, she wouldn't sleep. Sakura hadn't slept on the night of the 10th of October for the past six years and, with shame prickling in her chest, she knew she wouldn't sleep that year as well.

On the 11th of October, Tsunade-shishou always forced her to take the day off and Sakura spent it deep cleaning her apartment.

Kakashi was thankfully out of the house, probably so he could avoid her, and wouldn't meddle in her work. There were the ninken, Urushi and Bisuke, but they kept themselves to the shuriken duvet on the floor of their living room and wouldn't hinder her too much.

She had felt the bed dip early in the morning, the sunlight still cool as it washed through the gaps in the blinds. When Sakura had thought Kakashi wouldn't tuck her in as he always did when he left the bed before her, she had heard him sigh and felt his knee sink into the mattress before his hands patted the sagging covers around her back and shoulders.

Now she was crouching in front of their dresser, folding her clothes back into the drawer she just cleaned. Her arms spread around the jumbled clump of Kakashi's clothing, there was a reason she never opened his drawers and it wasn't out of sympathy for his privacy, and dumped them on the floor.

She frowned as her fingers found the touch a light armoured vest. She pulled it out to see that it was an ANBU vest. Her hands searched around the clump for the tighter pants and long gloves. When she found them, Sakura brought them to her face and breathed in. They smelled like her own laundry detergent, floral and fresh and unlike anything Kakashi had used before this thing.

A recently washed ANBU uniform, which also meant it had been recently used.

Her heart dropped.

Sakura knew Kakashi had been ANBU, he never tried to hide the swirly flame on his shoulder and the sight of the infamous tattoo had driven her thoughts too many times.

As a new genin, with only mouth-to-mouth legends of the black-ops and her first impression of Kakashi as a lazy lame sensei, Sakura had never been able to place the two in the same box. The first time she did was on the mission against Zabuza, as she stared for the first time into his sharingan, and felt the electrifying stab of his killing intent in the air.

Later, when she was already working at the hospital and had dozens of ANBU tattered on her operation table, Sakura had worried for the years he had been in the ruthless division, worried over which scars still remained, marked deeper than his skin.

But she had never worried that he could one day be one of these masked patients. For as long as Sakura had known him, she had had the certainty that he was ex-ANBU and it had soothed most of her concern.

She put the uniform aside and went back to cleaning, a new worry stacked on top of her already beaten down heart.

It was a few hours later, when she was already finished and lounging on the bed, a textbook resting over her bent legs and Pakkun pressed to her side, that Sakura felt him enter their apartment through the living room window. She jumped from the bed with the uniform in her hand to find him bending down to rub Urushi's belly.

"Kakashi?"

His back was to her and he looked over his shoulder, an apple stuck in his mouth by his teeth. "Hmm?"

She raised the fabrics clamped inside her fist to show him. "Why is there an ANBU uniform in your drawler?"

Kakashi straightened with a groan like an old sedentary man, and not the ruthless weapon that his body was, and walked away from her to flop down onto the armchair. "Well, you see, there's this custom in the military system where shinobi wear uniforms according to their divisi—"

"Kakashi."

He didn't say anything, his eyes fixed on the green skin of the apple as he turned it in his fingers to take one loud crunchy bite from it. The man was eloquent as always.

"I thought you'd left ANBU."

"I did."

"This uniform, it's not old."

His eyes lifted to hers as he slumped his head back on the armchair, a hint of condescension in his pose. "No one leaves ANBU completely."

Sakura's temper was beginning to boil over, but she forced herself into talking calmly, even if through clenched teeth. "So you still do missions for them?"

Kakashi shrugged, "If Konoha needs me."

"When was your last mission?"

His eyes turned away from her at the question to the fruit in his hand, lifting it for another bite. Sakura stomped towards him and snatched the thing before it could reach his mouth.

"Stop eating your damn apple and answer me! When was your last mission, Kakashi?" Her voice raised into a shout as she threw the apple out the window.

Behind her, Sakura could hear the shuffling of paws against wood from his ninken.

Kakashi looked at her as if they were talking about the weather. "Ten days ago, give or take."

He had left and come home and all the while Sakura had thought it was another common mission. She flung the uniform towards the sofa and pushed her finger to his chest, demanding, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It was confidential."

"The Hokage is my shishou, the amount of confidential bullshit I know about the village is enough to cause another world war." Her finger pressed deeper into his sternum. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What good would it have made?"

Her anger washed away with his words.

"What good, Kakashi?" Sakura whispered back in disbelief.

ANBU was the most ruthless division of their military force, the one with more casualties, more injuries, more psychiatric leaves. Sakura saw those porcelain masks on her table too many times. With some of them, she knew their bodies like the palm of her hand from the amount of times she had been elbows deep into their chests and still she couldn't recognise any of them if they passed her on the street.

Her feet swayed back, a hand rose to her forehead, trying to find some support at the image of silver hair peeking through the white of a mask and his bloodied body under her chakra-soaked hands.

Sakura turned her back to the man on the armchair, finding a few pairs of eyes staring at her from the corridor, tails between their legs.

Kakashi stood up behind her.

"I didn't want you to stop me from going."

Those were the most hurtful words Kakashi could have said to her and they only deepened the bitter ball of anger in her chest.

She sneered at him from over her shoulder and swirled around, her hands pushing against his chest.

"Who do you take me for?" Sakura spat. "Do you think I don't know what the hitai-ate means?"

"But you're angry." He stated, condescension still slipping through his tone.

The last person Sakura needed to treat her like she was a shallow thirteen-year-old girl from a civilian family that knew nothing of this life was him.

"Fuck, Kakashi, I'm not angry because of the ANBU mission! I'm angry because you didn't tell me!"

Those words seemed to finally stir something inside of him, his brow creasing in anger as he paced towards her, hand reaching out to grasp around her arm.

"Why was it my obligation to tell you, Sakura?"

She met his unyielding glare with one of her own. "Why wouldn't it be? I'm your wife!"

"I'm your husband and you never tell me anything."

"That's not true."

"No?" Kakashi let out lightly with a sardonic twist of his lips. "I guess you do tell me of all the trivial things and the gossip from the hospital, but when it hits deeper than the surface, when it matters, you never tell me anything. Every time I ask, you shut me out, Sakura."

He leaned into her, his fingers flexing against her bicep, voice harsh with retrained anger. "Just yesterday I showed you all that I was going through and you didn't show me one thing back."

It was bad if Hatake Kakashi was bring up something like yesterday to the table.

Her arm flayed around his hold, but he didn't loosen it until Sakura pried his fingers away from her.

"What does that matter? Picking at what I do isn't the way to win this argument, Kakashi. This is about you not telling me you're taking ANBU missions."

"What I'm trying to say is that us being married doesn't mean anything."

Sakura took a step back with a flinch as the words hit her like a wave of senbon. His eyes flooded with remorse and his hand reached for her, but Sakura jerked away.

"Oh, it means nothing now?" Her tone was sharp with bitterness, poisonous. "The fact that they chose me to marry you because I am the only woman in the entire world stupid enough to endure you means nothing."

"Sakura, that's not what I meant." Kakashi said with more gentleness in his voice.

There was too much hurt prickling through her, too much muddled confusion for how much it wounded her to hear him voice the words that Sakura had thought to herself the night before.

"The fact that they took away the future I'd planned for, they took away my choice in this. The fact that we're meant to make a fucking child means nothing? A child, Kakashi! You're going to be a father, the father of my child."

It was worse than bad, it was disastrous if the words that rushed out from her mouth were these.

They hadn't acknowledged it again after that night on the red bridge, but it was always looming around them, smothering them, even with how much they tried to pretend it wasn't there.

Now it was out, oppressive and terrifying.

"I'm trying to say it didn't change things."

"And isn't that weird, Kakashi? That we're married and everything is the same?"

Sakura had entered into this thing with the idea of building a loving home for an eventual child and all they had now was the fragments of a lie piercing through their hands.

"I've tried to make it mean something, remember, Sakura?"

Her teeth fist clenched closed, nails biting into the skin of her palm.

"What? Is that why you didn't tell me? There's better ways to make it mean something than moving to the outskirts of the village."

Hurt flashed for a second through his expression but in an instant he had schooled the lines of his face into a blanker mask than even his dark fabric one, down and looped around his throat.

Sakura knew there was more to the house than that, she knew it was cruel for her to dismiss the gesture. The overwhelming gravity of it was what had made her run away, too much and too soon, too terrifying.

Kakashi could easily have picked it up and used it against her, instead he asked with too much openness, "Like what?"

Her eyes lowered to his lips and quickly raised back up when she caught her own lapse, praying that he hadn't noticed it. Sakura blamed Naruto's talk of consummation yesterday, blamed their failed kiss and the tingling of anticipation that still lingered in her flesh from it.

He raised his bisected eyebrow at her, with the same smugness as when an enemy shinobi fell right where he wanted them.

"Is that what you want, Sakura?" His voice came out as a purr, mocking and devious.

He took a step towards her and she stilled, just as she had yesterday. His head leaned into hers, slowly, purposely, and Sakura followed her impulse and leaned away.

There was that prickling again, too piercing, her breath caught in her throat, the air thick and smothering in her lungs. There were fingers that sank into her and ripped her apart in two opposite directions, want and withdrawal, stilling her in place.

Kakashi stopped, a sliver of space remaining between their noses. Her eyes fixed down on his mouth, watched his lips twist into a victorious smirk, no humour or gladness behind it.

"You're the one that's trying to make us stay exactly like we were before." He whispered and his warm breath fanned across her face, a hint of apple in it. It pulsed through her.

Kakashi didn't wait for her to react before moving past her. She countered in time to stop him before he could leave the room.

"I told you I couldn't turn on the switch of loving wife."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then what are you asking, Kakashi?"

He hesitated, his jawbone rising under pale skin.

"Kakashi…"

The words caught around her throat but she forced herself to finally let them out between them.

"What do you want out of this?"

The question was out, free in the empty space between them, too heavy and suffocating in her lungs. The question that reached right into the core of them.

His eyes met hers, serious and honest. "To do my duty."

"Of course, but besides that."

He looked away to the window, fingers curling and uncurling by his side, as silence settled heavily between them.

Sakura was ready to turn around, not bearing the wait for it. It was easier this way, it was cowardly and weak, but she had always been those things, hadn't she? She wouldn't press him, not when she didn't know her own answer to it, not when she was too much of a coward to truly search for it.

His gaze turned to hers, dark grey eyes impossibly tender, even as his words seemed only to be the edge of a blade.

"What else is there besides that?"

Sorry for the blue balls there… but it's for our two sweethearts' good, really. This was the moment the story could diverge in two different ways and it followed the slow burn train.

Welcome to all the new readers! A special thanks to all of you that left comments sharing what you think, I love reading them!

As always, thank you for reading :)