The Window: Chapter 20...
Title: The Window
By: Silvershine
Pairing: KakaSaku
Rating: M/R/NC-17
Warnings: Slush...
Window
Chapter Twenty
Frosted grass crunched under foot as Sakura took a shortcut across the park. Last summer this place would have been teaming with children playing on the swings and climbing frames, but now winter had descended on Konoha and everything had fallen asleep. From outward appearances, it would seem as if the village was in stasis, lying dormant until spring; but life still pumped under the surface if you knew where to look.
When Sakura entered the hospital she was greeted by a waiting room full of bodies, and a blast of air so hot it made her face tingle. Everyone came down with the sniffles in winter. And at least half of them thought they were on death’s door and needed hospitalising. Sakura unwound the red scarf from around her neck and moved through the drippy crowd to the reception desk.
“Is Tsunade-sama in yet, Ai?”
The receptionist looked up from her computer screen and smiled pleasantly. “No, Haruno-san,” she said. “She’s been and gone.”
“And she looked sober to you?”
“…yes, Haruno-san.”
“Oh, good.” Sakura sighed and with a soft goodbye, she headed down the east wing corridor to find the locker room.
“Morning, Haruno-san,” a passing medic smiled at her as he went past, and Sakura perfunctorily smiled back.
Three nurses with pink hats and the exact same hairstyle overtook her. “Morning, Sakura-chan,” they chorused. One of them added, “Have you seen Daisuke-sempai today? He’s wearing the sweater his grandmother threatened to knit him - it’s adorable!”
“I’ll keep my eyes open for him,” Sakura replied amicably, before slipping through a side-door and into her designated common room. There was only one other person in there, and she sat by the radiator, hugging a steaming cup of hot chocolate to her lips with an expression of weary bliss.
“Good morning, Hinata-chan,” Sakura greeted her.
Hinata started and gasped as a few flecks of hot liquid spilt down her front. “M-Morning,” she mumbled, turned red and lowered her head.
That was unusually jumpy, even for Hinata. Sakura peered at her curiously. “I can’t hear your thoughts, Hinata, so there’s no need to act so guilty when I interrupt them,” Sakura said lightly as she moved to her locker. “Besides, everyone already knows you think Naruto’s ass is cute and that you abuse the byakugan to look through his clothes.”
“I - ah - um - do - I-I wasn’t thinking about that!” Hinata cried in alarm.
“You’re still thinking about that kiss, aren’t you?” Sakura guessed, shrugging out of her coat to sling it in the locker. She turned to see Hinata’s face had turned an even darker shade of red.
“You heard about that?” the pale girl whispered.
“Yes, from Naruto. And you know what you should do now?” Sakura asked.
“W-What?” Hinata stared at her in dread.
“Kiss him again.”
“Oh, no! Kissing Naruto the first time was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to summon the courage to do!” Hinata cried. “I’m not sure I could go through all that panic again. And he just stood there, Sakura-chan! So I just wound up walking away very fast…”
“So you didn’t see what that kiss did to him, huh?” Sakura flopped down on the seat opposite Hinata and pressed her hands to the radiator. “You should have seen him, Hinata. Naruto was wandering around all day yesterday that something had set off an exploding tag next to his head. We had to say everything twice because he was so distant.”
“Oh no… I’ve traumatised him,” Hinata whispered sadly.
“Well, you definitely surprised him, and at least I don’t think he’s in any doubt that you’re interested.” Sakura smiled at the girl before her. “You don’t have to worry. Naruto is a very forward person once he gets a clue… he’ll do most of the work from this point on.”
Sakura disliked playing match-maker, but she couldn’t deny there was something about Hinata and Naruto’s relationship that interested her. It was just… simple. All Hinata needed to worry about was overcoming her shyness, but Naruto was there for her, and there was nothing standing in their way. No one would look down on them for any relationship that developed between them, and they were two kind-hearted, un-jaded people who were capable of a clean, uncomplicated love. There was no chance of their relationship being debased by perversion.
Theirs was the potential for an innocent love, and Sakura couldn’t help but want to nurture that and watch it grow.
Some would say that was living vicariously through her friends, but it suited Sakura just fine. After what she’d endured… she couldn’t bear the thought of others not finding the happiness that she herself had missed.
“When you get the chance,” Sakura said at last, gazing out the window at the frosted trees and railing, “You should tell him how you feel. Tell him everything.”
Hinata was watching her carefully, and finally spoke up. “It’s not the same you know.”
“Hm?” Sakura glanced up at her.
“At least I have the excuse of not knowing how Naruto-kun feels about me to make me hesitate,” she said. “But you… you know how-”
“Eh - Hinata-chan you’re so strange! Most girls love to talk about themselves and the boys they like, but you always try to change the subject!” Sakura said cheerfully and got to her feet. “Well, I have rounds to do. I’ll talk to you later!”
Ok, so perhaps she was doing exactly what she’d accused Hinata of, but Sakura didn’t feel like talking about depressing things that morning, and she really did have rounds to do. She had stitches to remove, infections to kill, poison to neutralise and a cold cure to invent (or at least the latter was what people seemed to expect from her when she explained there was no known jutsu that could cure the sniffles).
There was only one last patient to see before lunch, and Sakura paused outside the examination room when she spotted the name on the chart.
Kimura?
With a hint of dread, she pushed open the door and stepped inside. A young boy sat on the hospital bed within, a bulky white cast on his arm and playing what appeared to be a thumb war game with an older man. Sakura recognised them instantly, since this boy had been her patient two years ago as well - Kimura Yoshi’s husband and their son. She could only be relieved that the woman herself was not with them.
“Didn’t I fix that arm two years ago?” Sakura asked as she approached. “Don’t tell me you broke it again.”
“Sorry,” the boy said sheepishly. “It was during training a few weeks ago. I’m a genin now!”
“Then I’ll probably see you in here more often then, huh?” Sakura said, taking the boy’s arm gently in her hands to examine it more closely. “I bet you’re looking forward to getting this thing off. Looks like a lot of people have signed it though. Any pain?”
“Nah, it just itches.”
“Well, give me a few minutes and then you’ll be able to give it a good scratch,” Sakura collected the cutting tools from the nearby cabinet and rolled up a chair to sit beside the boy. She smiled at the boy’s father as she arranged her equipment. “It’s nice to see you again, Kimura-san. How is your beautiful wife?”
“You know Yoshi?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“We’ve talked a few times during work,” Sakura said softly as she began cutting away at the hardened plaster cast. “She’s a very nice lady. And she always wears such lovely dresses, don’t you think?”
They weren’t perfectly innocent questions. Since the time that Yoshi told her Kakashi had bought her that blue dress, Sakura had held a few questions that she’d never been able to answer. The main one being, was it possible to buy a dress for a woman without her husband realising? Sakura knew the only way to get answers was to surreptitiously fish for them.
“There’s one dress she wears often,” Sakura went on, “and I’ve been meaning to ask her but I never got round to it. It’s a lovely blue one, and shimmers like peacock feathers, and I wonder… do you happen to know where she got it? I’m attending a wedding in a few weeks and I’d love to get myself a dress like that.”
“I know the dress you mean,” he said, stroking his short beard. “The one with the lace at the shoulders?”
“That’s the one, sir.”
“I believe it’s from Suzuki’s. I think.” Then he chuckled. “Well, I really should know. I bought it for her birthday last year after all, but my memory’s not particularly good. I suppose it could be from any boutique in town, I’m afraid.”
Sakura’s hands paused their work for a fraction of a moment, before a small touched her mouth. “Is that so?” she murmured. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.”
Once the cast was off, the boy gave his arm an earnest scratch and flexed it happily as if it had never been broken twice over. Sakura smiled as she bid the pair farewell, made a hash of the resulting paperwork, and then slunk back to the locker room to collect her coat and scarf. She would get lunch on the way to the Hokage tower where she would spend the rest of the day running around after the Hokage, because even though she’d been formally dismissed as an apprentice over six months ago, not a lot had changed. Tsunade still expected Sakura to be around to pick up extra work and would still explain the more advanced medical jutsu that Sakura tried to learn, if Sakura took the initiative to ask for help. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that, regardless of Sakura’s new status as a simple upper tier medic rather than apprentice, she was still one of the few people that Tsunade trusted implicitly. Sleeping with her sensei hadn’t changed Tsunade’s faith in her as a confident and medical successor.
Unfortunately, all that meant was that Sakura was stuck with the same amount of work as before, only now she didn’t get any of the perks that had once been afforded. But Sakura didn’t mind so much. There was still so much left to learn, and Tsunade was still willing to teach her. Even if it wasn’t in any official capacity, it was enough.
She walked in through the entrance of the Hokage tower with a bento box in one hand and a canned hot drink in the other. No sooner had the blast of hot air from the heaters hit her face this time than someone was hurrying forward to confront her. “There you are!” It was Kimiko, who Sakura vaguely knew from administration. “Tsunade-sama has been waiting for you - you’re to go up immediately. She says it’s urgent.”
“Why? What’s happened?” Sakura asked.
“I don’t know, but she says it concerns you.”
Kakashi, Sakura thought instantly, and all but fled away up the stairs, trying to avoid knocking anyone over in her rush but not always succeeding. She crashed through Tsunade’s office door, out of breath. “Tsunade-sama! What is it?”
Tsunade looked up at her. “Oh, good! You’re here.” Then she held up a colour chart. “Which do you think I should paint the walls with? I was thinking maybe Meadow Sunshine or Forest Green. What do you think?”
Sakura stared dumbly at her Hokage and the colour chart while she attempted to catch her breath. “Well, actually,” she began, “I quite like Bubblegum Pink, but-”
“Useless girl! Why on earth did I think it was a good idea to ask you?” Tsunade waved her away. “Shizune! Shizune get in here and help me pick a colour!”
Sakura gratefully retreated to one of the empty desks at the edge of the room where the clerics often worked and quietly devoured her lunch, even if it was a little jumbled up now after that hasty dash. She’d really thought that perhaps there had been news of Kakashi. Bad news. Like perhaps he’d been found dead somewhere and Tsunade wanted to break it her to her gently.
It was quite irrational really, but for the last six months Sakura had been reacting that way pretty much every time Tsunade called her ‘urgently’, even though it was always about some other tedious detail that could have nothing further to do with Kakashi.
As far as she knew, Kakashi was alright. Last she’d heard, he was very far south, enjoying summer while Konoha endured winter. He sent little updates every now and then to Tsunade as per his part of his contract, but it was never more than a few lines attached to the leg of an eagle. The last one had roughly gone like this:
“Hello all. Enjoying Cape Buto. Weather is nice. Food is vile. Give regards to Team Tenzou. Bird keeps pecking me, so I’ll keep it short.
Goodbye.
Kakashi xxx”
So at least Sakura knew he was relatively safe and alive, even though it gnawed at her that he never really mentioned her. Even in the longer letters he occasionally sent that went on for a few paragraphs at least, he only mentioned her name in passing the way he did Naruto or Sasuke’s name.
Odd… for a man who professed to love her.
While Shizune continued to insist that Ocean Blue was a far more suitable colour for the Hokage’s office than Forest Green, Sakura picked at her pickled vegetables and sipped at her now only lukewarm can of tea. She remembered how she’d bumped into Hinata at the hospital the very day Kakashi had left Konoha. The Hyuuga girl had been even more nervous than usual and very peculiar, and when she had inquired after Kakashi and Sakura had told her that he’d left, she had abruptly burst into tears.
It had been quite a strong reaction for even Hinata, and Sakura had quickly gotten to the bottom of it.
At some point the previous night, Naruto had confided in her that Kakashi had confided in him that he loved Sakura, and that Naruto had been forbidden from mentioning it. So Hinata was upset for two reasons - the first being that she’d once again failed to keep a secret entrusted to her, and the second being because she felt the situation was just too cruel.
“But he loves you, Sakura-san!” she’d cried. “He only left a few hours ago - maybe you can still catch up to him!”
Sakura had sat down very quietly and thought very carefully.
Yes, she could still catch up to Kakashi. But then what? What had this revelation changed in the long-run? Presumably he was already aware that he was in love with her, so telling him what she knew would not likely sway him from his decision to leave. And though she could suck it up and tell him that she felt the same, was that any more likely to change his mind?
Because if he loved her, then it meant he hadn’t left her because he’d grown bored of their relationship. If he loved her, the only reason he would want to leave was because it was kinder than staying and finding themselves alienated a little more each day by their own home.
He’d asked her if she’d understood why he had left…
She realised she did now. Sort of.
A strange kind of peace had eased the knot around her heart and she’d smiled at Hinata and reassured her that everything was ok. She wouldn’t follow after Kakashi, because that wasn’t part of the plan. And at least she felt better, knowing that he had loved her after all.
But what about now? Was six months enough time for him to forget? He’d covered a lot of ground in those long months since his departure, and Sakura didn’t doubt that he’d come across several exotic foreign women. He was a philanderer by nature, and though he had told Naruto that he loved her, did that mean it was the kind of love that lasted? The kind of love that could withstand to test of time and be remembered when he next saw a disarmingly beautiful face?
It wasn’t impossible that he’d been with other women since then. She’d even had a dream one night of Kakashi making love to a faceless, unknown woman, the same way he’d used to make love to Sakura. Even though it had just been a dream, she had a feeling it was her subconscious seeking to remind her that Kakashi was Kakashi, and his heart did not work the same way hers did.
So for six long months - and then some - she’d been waiting. For exactly what, she wasn’t entirely sure. But in the mean time, it had been just as Kakashi said. His departure had changed something about the way people looked upon their relationship. No longer had it been seen as a sordid little affair of a perverted teacher lusting after young flesh and a promiscuous girl using her body to get ahead. Since his departure, it had gained some sense of vindication.
For some, it was as simple as seeing Kakashi’s face. At least it was for Ino. It seemed that the moment Ino had seen Kakashi as he really was, she had forgotten why she’d ever been opposed to Sakura’s relationship with him in the first place.
“Now I know what you saw in him,” she’d said to Sakura for days following his departure. “It’s sad that he’s gone. Now that I think about it, you two look really good together. He’s not as old as I thought, you know?”
Of course, Ino was especially vapid and she would forgive any man a sin if he had a pretty face. But for others at least some similar sort of reaction had taken place. Perhaps because Kakashi had for his entire life hidden himself from the village and kept all details of both his appearance and his life a secret, he had unwittingly made it difficult for people to trust him and his intentions. When people had heard the infamous copy ninja was sleeping with his student, his aloof, eccentric nature had only served to damn him. But when he’d stood there before them, in civilian clothes with his normal, albeit handsome face open to their scrutiny and perhaps even when he’d embraced Sakura lovingly - because now she knew that it had been love he’d felt for her - they had understood him. He had been a simple man to them that day, not that strange masked figure who floated through the village streets, whom everyone knew but at the same time… was a stranger.
And then it had somehow gotten out that he’d loved her. Sakura didn’t know if Naruto or Hinata had said something to someone else, or if someone had overheard Hinata breaking down to Sakura in the hospital (hospitals not being the most private places in the world) but eventually it had been common knowledge that Hatake Kakashi had loved Haruno Sakura, and then he’d left the village a noble and wronged man.
There were still plenty of people who did not approve of that relationship, but with Kakashi gone there was not much fuel for their gossip anymore, and they were drowned out by those who talked instead about the Great Tragic Love Story of the Copy Ninja and the Hokage’s Apprentice. What a handsome man and a spirited girl, they said, and what a shame everyone was too close-minded to let their love bloom. Forgetting, of course, that these were the very same ‘close-minded’ people who had once whispered behind their hands about scandal. People’s memories were awfully short.
Sakura didn’t care for hypocrisy, but at least she was thankful to be able to once again walk down the street without being heckled and work at the hospital without being given cold shoulders by her colleagues. After she’d proven that she worked as hard as ever, with or without the benefit of being the Hokage’s apprentice, she had regained a lot of the respect she’d lost.
She could breathe again. And she knew that if Kakashi hadn’t left, and that if they’d stayed together, clinging to the tattered remains of a misplaced relationship, the condemnation would have continued until one of them snapped.
That was why Sakura had convinced herself to let him go.
But she was still waiting for something; some kind of sign of what to do next.
“Sakura,” Tsunade called her, bringing her out of her thoughts. “When you’ve finished your lunch, can you photocopy these? I need fifty copies of each.”
As Sakura leant over the copying machine, her chin resting in her palm while the panel of light slid back and forth with a low hum beneath her, she wondered what her future held. If Kakashi returned, would it work out between them? Would he still be interested? What if he was still interested but didn’t want to return? Could Sakura leave and go look for him?
But Sakura didn’t want to leave Konoha. She wasn’t like Kakashi, because her attachments to her friends were not so easy to dismiss. She couldn’t leave Naruto, or Sasuke, or the home she’d grown up in with its familiar streets and alleys and building. She couldn’t become a traveller… she had too much stuff she would have to carry with her - hair dryers, make-up, shampoo, all her clothes and her medical books - and it just wasn’t possible to be Haruno Sakura and a displaced wandered living off the barest essentials.
More than anything, she just wanted Kakashi to come home. Never in a single one of his letters and notes had he expressed any kind of regret that he’d left, or that he missed Konoha. And with every month that passed and with every time he failed to mention her name in any meaningful sense, Sakura’s confidence waned that he still loved her. What if he was unhappy out there on the move? What if he blamed her? What if what had once been love had been twisted into bitterness and regret and he now wanted nothing to do with her?
The copy machine went quiet and Sakura collected the thick wedges of printed paper to begin sorting them into the correct piles. One sharp paper edge caught the side of her finger and she hissed in pain as a thin line of blood appeared. Odd, how she could be run through without so much as a gasp, but when she got a paper cut she felt the need to whimper and swear as she sucked on the pathetic wound.
Priorities… that’s what she needed.
“Sakura-san, is everything ok?”
Sakura jumped at the sound of his voice, even though she knew she shouldn’t have been that surprised, seeing as how the Reprographics lab was right next door to the poisons Research and Development lab. “Shinra-kun!” She pulled her finger from her mouth and waved it reassuringly at the man standing in the doorway. “It’s nothing, I just got a papercut. I’m so clumsy.”
He nodded. “Are you done with the photocopier?” he asked, holding up his own wad of worksheets. “Only I need to…”
“Oh - go ahead!” Sakura grabbed her work and moved to a free table to allow him access to the machine. As she went back to sorting her copies into piles, she watched Shinra’s back as he stood programming the machine. She’d spoken to him on several occasions since they had first met at that bar where he had bought her a drink and Kakashi had taken that red-haired girl in the back, mostly because Tsunade had decided Sakura had reached a point in her unofficial training to get more closely acquainted with poisons and antidotes, and she was spending every other day in the Poisons R&D lab where Shinra worked.
Through their conversations, Sakura had learnt many things about this man. He was quiet, but he wasn’t shy, only absorbed in his tasks and work so thoroughly that it was hard to distract him. And he had a good heart. He’d always been kind and polite to Sakura, even for the short time after Kakashi’s departure when most of the people in this building still scorned her for one reason or another. However, he wasn’t terribly good at explaining how some of his poisons worked to Sakura, and as a result, she had sometimes spent hours with him in his lab working under his watchful eye.
If she guessed his age, she would put him somewhere between herself and Kakashi, though she suspected his personality made him appear older than he actually was. And for all intents and purposes - he ticked the necessary number of boxes that made Sakura sit up straighter when he entered the room. Intelligent, a genius in his field, kind, good-looking, and carried himself with an air of dignity and restraint.
If her heart hadn’t already been stolen by Kakashi who was now carting it over hills and dales somewhere in the south, she might have been very interested in this person. Only, like most men she set her heart on, she was quite sure he was indifferent to her.
“My sister’s getting married next week,” he said suddenly, making Sakura pause though he didn’t look around at her.
“Congratulations!” she exclaimed. He did look around at her then, and he expression was very serious. “Um… it is congratulations… right?”
“Oh, yes. He’s very nice.” He nodded thoughtfully. “The only problem is, I don’t have a date.”
Sakura suspected she knew where this was going, and a tingle of alarm and excitement ran up her spine. “Is that so?” she asked slowly.
He turned to lean his back against the running photocopier. “I was hoping you could help me in that area,” he said to her.
“You mean… you want me to help you kidnap and drug some poor girl into doing your bidding?” she asked.
“Ordinarily. But perhaps something a bit simpler?” he suggested.
Sakura swallowed. “You’re asking me to go with you, aren’t you?”
“Obviously you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said quickly, which was possibly the first hint of insecurity she’d ever seen in him. “I was just hoping that-”
“Yes, of course,” Sakura interrupted. “Of course, I’ll go with you. I’d be happy to.”
He stared at her in surprise and then smiled slightly. “I thought maybe you were still…”
“You have to move on at some point, right?” she said gingerly. “I’ll go with you to the wedding. I want to.”
But she wasn’t sure that was entirely true, and as she made her way home that evening, she convinced herself she was doing right. The river beneath the bridge had frozen over, and she paused at the railing to peer down at the thin sheet of ice covering the water’s surface. Six months ago she’d thrown a very beautiful, very expensive dress into this river because of one woman’s lie, and not for the first time she felt a pang of regret - only now it was deeper, because now she knew that it hadn’t been an empty gift, and god only knew what Kakashi had felt when he’d watched her throw it away as if it was.
Sakura found herself irresistibly seized with the urge to contact him. To read his words, if not hear his voice, and tell him all the thoughts and worries on her mind. She wanted to write a letter and ask him if he still thought of her, and if it was ok that she was going to a wedding as another man’s date. Was it ok to move on? Was it ok to try and fall in love again?
She continued homeward, her heart thoroughly sunk. If she knew of a way to contact Kakashi, she would have done it by now. She always contemplated writing him letters, but where the hell was she supposed to send them? He moved around so much that by the time any letter she sent reached his last known location, he undoubtedly would have picked up and left long before. Only Tsunade had the means of emergency contact with Kakashi, but Sakura didn’t want to ask her. Tsunade did not always respect privacy as she should, and any message she forwarded from Sakura to Kakashi would almost definitely be circled twice around the office before being sent.
Inside her apartment, Sakura slipped off her shoes and her coat and carefully folded her scarf. She ate the pudding she’d been saving in the fridge and then went to catch up on her reading in bed. Outside the sky filled with a pale grey - a colour that reminded her so sharply of a certain man’s hair - and then began to snow, as it often did these nights. Sakura watched the soft flakes pass over the flared light from the street lanterns and heaved a soft sigh to herself. Kakashi would hate to have missed the snow.
For as long as Sakura had known that man, she’d learnt that he cared little for most types of weather extremes. He was indifferent to rain, wind, and heat waves, but at the first sight of snow, he became a veritable encyclopaedia of snow facts.
“You can always judge the temperature by the shape of snowflakes,” he’d said to them, during their genin training days when the snowfall had gotten so thick on their mission that they’d been forced to stop and take shelter under the trees. “Between three and ten degrees, they form star shapes. Between ten and eighteen, they look like plates. Between eighteen and twenty-three, they fall in little columns, and become needles between twenty-three and twenty-seven. And then between twenty-seven and thirty-two, they fall like plates again.”
All three children had really not cared in the slightest and had shivered dramatically beneath the boughs of the trees. “So what does that mean?” Sasuke had asked grumpily.
“Well, these flakes are plate-shaped…” Kakashi sighed, holding out his hand to catch the stray snowflakes, “so its either fucking cold, or really fucking cold. Take your pick.”
“Sensei, how is it you know so much about nothing at all?” Sakura had grouched to him.
“When you’re as old as I am,” he’d said, “you too will have had all the time in the world to learn about many useless things.”
Gradually, her memories faded into dreams, and before she realised it, she had fallen asleep amongst her text books, with visions of snowy hair and warm embraces to keep her company through the night.
Fresh snow crunched under foot as Kakashi steadily made his way across the dormant field. “Morning, friend,” he muttered to the soggy scarecrow he passed that hung limply under the snow piled on top of its hat and sleeves. The snow had to be at least six inches deep on the ground alone, but it still continued to fall unrelentingly.
It was going to be one of those winters, it seemed.
Kakashi tugged his scarf more tightly around his nose and mouth and looped it over his head to simultaneously keep his ears warm. There wasn’t much further to go. Up ahead he could already see the road that he’d travelled down countless times before, and he knew that following it would lead to the gates of Konoha in roughly one mile. But when Kakashi leapt the ditch and found himself on the grassy roadside verge, he cut straight across into the trees on the other side. The road was nothing but slimy, slippery slush, and he didn’t really want to make his grand re-entrance into Konoha with a wet ass after taking one misjudged step. Not that anyone was expecting him.
But he had seen one or two kites gliding around silently in the skies and he was willing to bet at least one of them was acting as Konoha’s eyes and ears. It wouldn’t surprise him if news had already reached the Hokage that a suspicious character was creeping through the snow towards the village. Hopefully they would recognise him, or he might find twenty ANBU suddenly materialising in the surrounding woods to push him down on the ground and strip-search him. Twenty ANBU might suddenly materialise anyway even if they did recognise him, depending on how vindictive Tsunade was still feeling. Was six months enough time to forgive and forget that he’d defiled her favourite apprentice?
Well, he was about to find out.
As he’d expected, the entrance gates were blessedly absent of any overbearing greeting party similar to the farewell party that had seen him off. He made his way humbly beneath the arch and in an instant he was home. It was almost as if he’d never left. No one paid much attention to him as he slipped through the streets, and certainly no one seemed to recognise him. Perhaps because his face and hair was mostly obscured by his scarf, or perhaps because it was snowing hard enough to severely limit visibility. Either way, Kakashi made his way towards the Hokage tower unmolested. What he really wanted to do was go home and climb into a hot bath, but no doubt Tsunade was aware he was back by now and she would expect him before her desk as soon as physically possible.
When he stepped through the doors of the Hokage tower, the blast of warm arm on his face was almost uncomfortable after such prolonged exposure to the cold. His clothes suddenly felt hot and itchy, but he stoically made his way up the stairs until he was before the office door he’d spent that last sixty miles visualising in his head. He only hesitated for a second or two before opening the door and letting himself inside.
Shizune’s head popped up. “No visitors, please. The hokage’s very busy,” she told him formally.
“Yo,” he greeted, holding up a gloved hand.
The woman frowned and peered at him. When her mouth dropped open and her eyes flew wide, Kakashi guessed that she’d probably recognised him. “You’re back,” she gasped.
“I need to see Tsunade-sama,” he said. “It’s quite urgent.”
“Oh… um… of course, go right ahead.”
He murmured a soft thank you and pressed on the handle to Tsunade’s inner office.
It was safe to say he was expecting Tsunade, being that she was the Hokage and supposedly the sharpest tool in this shed that was Konoha, to be drumming her fingers knowingly on her desk and saying something along the lines of “I’ve been expecting you,” or “What took you so long?”
It was also safe to say he’d expected her to at least be sitting upright.
The moment he closed the door behind him, Tsunade sat bolt upright in her chair with a snort and a piece of notepaper stuck to her chin. “I’m awake,” she said quickly in a slurred ‘I’m not really awake at all’ tone and clumsily fixed her hair. “What is it?”
It was as she was belatedly peeling the paper from her face that she finally seemed to get a good look at him. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She definitely sounded surprised, but there was nothing to say it was pleasant surprise or disappointment she felt as she appraised him. “What are you doing here?”
“I have some information I thought would be of interest to you,” he began, cutting straight to the point. “Hanging around Giiza, you tend to hear some things whether you want to or not. Am I correct in saying you have an escort mission planned next week for some family across the salt pans?”
A small smile crept across Tsunade’s lips. “You would.”
“Well, there’s going to be-”
“An ambush?”
Kakashi sighed. “You already knew…?”
“Kakashi, I have spies posted in every possible corner of the land. This information is at least two weeks old; it’s useless to me,” Tsunade said evenly, straightening her hair clips. “And I refuse to believe you trekked all the way from Giiza in this weather to tell me some mundane little plot that, even without being forewarned, could easily be quelled anyway. And you couldn’t have posted a messenger bird?”
“I felt like a walk.” Kakashi shrugged.
Tsunade’s snort was derisive. “Your lies are as bad as ever,” she remarked coolly. “What’s really going on here?”
Kakashi merely smiled and shrugged again. “It appears I’ve wasted a trip, that’s all. I hope you don’t mind if I stop by for a few nights while I wait for the snow to ease up?”
“The exile was imposed by you, not me,” Tsunade reminded him. “Do what you like. I don’t really care. Though I daresay certain people will be happy to have you back for a while.”
“Ah, yes. Naruto is probably missing having someone coming around to clear out his fridge. I dread to think what six month old milk smells like by now. And Sasuke probably misses picking on his poor, old teacher.”
“You know, that wasn’t who I had in mind…” Tsunade said quietly.
A beat of silence passed, and Kakashi idly scratched behind his ear. “So… is Sakura here?”
“Smooth.”
“Yeah…”
“Sakura’s not here, Kakashi. She doesn’t even work here anymore,” Tsunade told him with a scoff. “What do you think I am? A tyrant?”
Kakashi blinked at her in confusion. “Sorry?”
Her smile widened. “A woman in her condition can’t be working. She’s at home, putting her feet up… eating peanut butter cakes, and so on…”
The confusion persisted on his face for a moment or two, and then suddenly went slack. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but seemed to forget what it was he wanted to say, and then the confusion was back.
Tsunade flipped her hair back. “Problem?”
Kakashi swallowed. “Why didn’t you tell me…?”
“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Tsunade shot back, guiltless.
His gaze wandered away from her, unseeing. He looked faint. “May I be excused?”
She gestured to the door. “By all means.”
Without wasting any time with the common pleasantries or farewells, Kakashi turned and threw open the door - caught Shizune who suddenly pitched through it, having been listening on the other side - and exited with a slightly tenser stride than with which he’d entered.
Shizune straightened and gave Tsunade a severe look. “That was very cruel.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tsunade replied innocently.
“Telling him about Sakura’s ‘condition’. What condition would that be, Tsunade-sama?”
“I was under the impression she had a bit of flu this week,” the Hokage replied, picking up her forgotten coffee cup.
“No, Tsunade-sama, Sakura does not have the flu this week,” Shizune ground out.
“Oh. My mistake.” Tsunade sipped her decidedly cold coffee. She noticed Shizune glowering at her and smiled craftily in response. “Oh, come on. I could see he was winding himself up to avoiding her. At least this way that won’t happen.”
Shizune deflated with a sigh. “You’re a psychopath.”
“No, a sociopath. There’s a difference.”
By: Silvershine
Pairing: KakaSaku
Rating: M/R/NC-17
Warnings: Slush...
Window
Chapter Twenty
Frosted grass crunched under foot as Sakura took a shortcut across the park. Last summer this place would have been teaming with children playing on the swings and climbing frames, but now winter had descended on Konoha and everything had fallen asleep. From outward appearances, it would seem as if the village was in stasis, lying dormant until spring; but life still pumped under the surface if you knew where to look.
When Sakura entered the hospital she was greeted by a waiting room full of bodies, and a blast of air so hot it made her face tingle. Everyone came down with the sniffles in winter. And at least half of them thought they were on death’s door and needed hospitalising. Sakura unwound the red scarf from around her neck and moved through the drippy crowd to the reception desk.
“Is Tsunade-sama in yet, Ai?”
The receptionist looked up from her computer screen and smiled pleasantly. “No, Haruno-san,” she said. “She’s been and gone.”
“And she looked sober to you?”
“…yes, Haruno-san.”
“Oh, good.” Sakura sighed and with a soft goodbye, she headed down the east wing corridor to find the locker room.
“Morning, Haruno-san,” a passing medic smiled at her as he went past, and Sakura perfunctorily smiled back.
Three nurses with pink hats and the exact same hairstyle overtook her. “Morning, Sakura-chan,” they chorused. One of them added, “Have you seen Daisuke-sempai today? He’s wearing the sweater his grandmother threatened to knit him - it’s adorable!”
“I’ll keep my eyes open for him,” Sakura replied amicably, before slipping through a side-door and into her designated common room. There was only one other person in there, and she sat by the radiator, hugging a steaming cup of hot chocolate to her lips with an expression of weary bliss.
“Good morning, Hinata-chan,” Sakura greeted her.
Hinata started and gasped as a few flecks of hot liquid spilt down her front. “M-Morning,” she mumbled, turned red and lowered her head.
That was unusually jumpy, even for Hinata. Sakura peered at her curiously. “I can’t hear your thoughts, Hinata, so there’s no need to act so guilty when I interrupt them,” Sakura said lightly as she moved to her locker. “Besides, everyone already knows you think Naruto’s ass is cute and that you abuse the byakugan to look through his clothes.”
“I - ah - um - do - I-I wasn’t thinking about that!” Hinata cried in alarm.
“You’re still thinking about that kiss, aren’t you?” Sakura guessed, shrugging out of her coat to sling it in the locker. She turned to see Hinata’s face had turned an even darker shade of red.
“You heard about that?” the pale girl whispered.
“Yes, from Naruto. And you know what you should do now?” Sakura asked.
“W-What?” Hinata stared at her in dread.
“Kiss him again.”
“Oh, no! Kissing Naruto the first time was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to summon the courage to do!” Hinata cried. “I’m not sure I could go through all that panic again. And he just stood there, Sakura-chan! So I just wound up walking away very fast…”
“So you didn’t see what that kiss did to him, huh?” Sakura flopped down on the seat opposite Hinata and pressed her hands to the radiator. “You should have seen him, Hinata. Naruto was wandering around all day yesterday that something had set off an exploding tag next to his head. We had to say everything twice because he was so distant.”
“Oh no… I’ve traumatised him,” Hinata whispered sadly.
“Well, you definitely surprised him, and at least I don’t think he’s in any doubt that you’re interested.” Sakura smiled at the girl before her. “You don’t have to worry. Naruto is a very forward person once he gets a clue… he’ll do most of the work from this point on.”
Sakura disliked playing match-maker, but she couldn’t deny there was something about Hinata and Naruto’s relationship that interested her. It was just… simple. All Hinata needed to worry about was overcoming her shyness, but Naruto was there for her, and there was nothing standing in their way. No one would look down on them for any relationship that developed between them, and they were two kind-hearted, un-jaded people who were capable of a clean, uncomplicated love. There was no chance of their relationship being debased by perversion.
Theirs was the potential for an innocent love, and Sakura couldn’t help but want to nurture that and watch it grow.
Some would say that was living vicariously through her friends, but it suited Sakura just fine. After what she’d endured… she couldn’t bear the thought of others not finding the happiness that she herself had missed.
“When you get the chance,” Sakura said at last, gazing out the window at the frosted trees and railing, “You should tell him how you feel. Tell him everything.”
Hinata was watching her carefully, and finally spoke up. “It’s not the same you know.”
“Hm?” Sakura glanced up at her.
“At least I have the excuse of not knowing how Naruto-kun feels about me to make me hesitate,” she said. “But you… you know how-”
“Eh - Hinata-chan you’re so strange! Most girls love to talk about themselves and the boys they like, but you always try to change the subject!” Sakura said cheerfully and got to her feet. “Well, I have rounds to do. I’ll talk to you later!”
Ok, so perhaps she was doing exactly what she’d accused Hinata of, but Sakura didn’t feel like talking about depressing things that morning, and she really did have rounds to do. She had stitches to remove, infections to kill, poison to neutralise and a cold cure to invent (or at least the latter was what people seemed to expect from her when she explained there was no known jutsu that could cure the sniffles).
There was only one last patient to see before lunch, and Sakura paused outside the examination room when she spotted the name on the chart.
Kimura?
With a hint of dread, she pushed open the door and stepped inside. A young boy sat on the hospital bed within, a bulky white cast on his arm and playing what appeared to be a thumb war game with an older man. Sakura recognised them instantly, since this boy had been her patient two years ago as well - Kimura Yoshi’s husband and their son. She could only be relieved that the woman herself was not with them.
“Didn’t I fix that arm two years ago?” Sakura asked as she approached. “Don’t tell me you broke it again.”
“Sorry,” the boy said sheepishly. “It was during training a few weeks ago. I’m a genin now!”
“Then I’ll probably see you in here more often then, huh?” Sakura said, taking the boy’s arm gently in her hands to examine it more closely. “I bet you’re looking forward to getting this thing off. Looks like a lot of people have signed it though. Any pain?”
“Nah, it just itches.”
“Well, give me a few minutes and then you’ll be able to give it a good scratch,” Sakura collected the cutting tools from the nearby cabinet and rolled up a chair to sit beside the boy. She smiled at the boy’s father as she arranged her equipment. “It’s nice to see you again, Kimura-san. How is your beautiful wife?”
“You know Yoshi?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“We’ve talked a few times during work,” Sakura said softly as she began cutting away at the hardened plaster cast. “She’s a very nice lady. And she always wears such lovely dresses, don’t you think?”
They weren’t perfectly innocent questions. Since the time that Yoshi told her Kakashi had bought her that blue dress, Sakura had held a few questions that she’d never been able to answer. The main one being, was it possible to buy a dress for a woman without her husband realising? Sakura knew the only way to get answers was to surreptitiously fish for them.
“There’s one dress she wears often,” Sakura went on, “and I’ve been meaning to ask her but I never got round to it. It’s a lovely blue one, and shimmers like peacock feathers, and I wonder… do you happen to know where she got it? I’m attending a wedding in a few weeks and I’d love to get myself a dress like that.”
“I know the dress you mean,” he said, stroking his short beard. “The one with the lace at the shoulders?”
“That’s the one, sir.”
“I believe it’s from Suzuki’s. I think.” Then he chuckled. “Well, I really should know. I bought it for her birthday last year after all, but my memory’s not particularly good. I suppose it could be from any boutique in town, I’m afraid.”
Sakura’s hands paused their work for a fraction of a moment, before a small touched her mouth. “Is that so?” she murmured. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.”
Once the cast was off, the boy gave his arm an earnest scratch and flexed it happily as if it had never been broken twice over. Sakura smiled as she bid the pair farewell, made a hash of the resulting paperwork, and then slunk back to the locker room to collect her coat and scarf. She would get lunch on the way to the Hokage tower where she would spend the rest of the day running around after the Hokage, because even though she’d been formally dismissed as an apprentice over six months ago, not a lot had changed. Tsunade still expected Sakura to be around to pick up extra work and would still explain the more advanced medical jutsu that Sakura tried to learn, if Sakura took the initiative to ask for help. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that, regardless of Sakura’s new status as a simple upper tier medic rather than apprentice, she was still one of the few people that Tsunade trusted implicitly. Sleeping with her sensei hadn’t changed Tsunade’s faith in her as a confident and medical successor.
Unfortunately, all that meant was that Sakura was stuck with the same amount of work as before, only now she didn’t get any of the perks that had once been afforded. But Sakura didn’t mind so much. There was still so much left to learn, and Tsunade was still willing to teach her. Even if it wasn’t in any official capacity, it was enough.
She walked in through the entrance of the Hokage tower with a bento box in one hand and a canned hot drink in the other. No sooner had the blast of hot air from the heaters hit her face this time than someone was hurrying forward to confront her. “There you are!” It was Kimiko, who Sakura vaguely knew from administration. “Tsunade-sama has been waiting for you - you’re to go up immediately. She says it’s urgent.”
“Why? What’s happened?” Sakura asked.
“I don’t know, but she says it concerns you.”
Kakashi, Sakura thought instantly, and all but fled away up the stairs, trying to avoid knocking anyone over in her rush but not always succeeding. She crashed through Tsunade’s office door, out of breath. “Tsunade-sama! What is it?”
Tsunade looked up at her. “Oh, good! You’re here.” Then she held up a colour chart. “Which do you think I should paint the walls with? I was thinking maybe Meadow Sunshine or Forest Green. What do you think?”
Sakura stared dumbly at her Hokage and the colour chart while she attempted to catch her breath. “Well, actually,” she began, “I quite like Bubblegum Pink, but-”
“Useless girl! Why on earth did I think it was a good idea to ask you?” Tsunade waved her away. “Shizune! Shizune get in here and help me pick a colour!”
Sakura gratefully retreated to one of the empty desks at the edge of the room where the clerics often worked and quietly devoured her lunch, even if it was a little jumbled up now after that hasty dash. She’d really thought that perhaps there had been news of Kakashi. Bad news. Like perhaps he’d been found dead somewhere and Tsunade wanted to break it her to her gently.
It was quite irrational really, but for the last six months Sakura had been reacting that way pretty much every time Tsunade called her ‘urgently’, even though it was always about some other tedious detail that could have nothing further to do with Kakashi.
As far as she knew, Kakashi was alright. Last she’d heard, he was very far south, enjoying summer while Konoha endured winter. He sent little updates every now and then to Tsunade as per his part of his contract, but it was never more than a few lines attached to the leg of an eagle. The last one had roughly gone like this:
“Hello all. Enjoying Cape Buto. Weather is nice. Food is vile. Give regards to Team Tenzou. Bird keeps pecking me, so I’ll keep it short.
Goodbye.
Kakashi xxx”
So at least Sakura knew he was relatively safe and alive, even though it gnawed at her that he never really mentioned her. Even in the longer letters he occasionally sent that went on for a few paragraphs at least, he only mentioned her name in passing the way he did Naruto or Sasuke’s name.
Odd… for a man who professed to love her.
While Shizune continued to insist that Ocean Blue was a far more suitable colour for the Hokage’s office than Forest Green, Sakura picked at her pickled vegetables and sipped at her now only lukewarm can of tea. She remembered how she’d bumped into Hinata at the hospital the very day Kakashi had left Konoha. The Hyuuga girl had been even more nervous than usual and very peculiar, and when she had inquired after Kakashi and Sakura had told her that he’d left, she had abruptly burst into tears.
It had been quite a strong reaction for even Hinata, and Sakura had quickly gotten to the bottom of it.
At some point the previous night, Naruto had confided in her that Kakashi had confided in him that he loved Sakura, and that Naruto had been forbidden from mentioning it. So Hinata was upset for two reasons - the first being that she’d once again failed to keep a secret entrusted to her, and the second being because she felt the situation was just too cruel.
“But he loves you, Sakura-san!” she’d cried. “He only left a few hours ago - maybe you can still catch up to him!”
Sakura had sat down very quietly and thought very carefully.
Yes, she could still catch up to Kakashi. But then what? What had this revelation changed in the long-run? Presumably he was already aware that he was in love with her, so telling him what she knew would not likely sway him from his decision to leave. And though she could suck it up and tell him that she felt the same, was that any more likely to change his mind?
Because if he loved her, then it meant he hadn’t left her because he’d grown bored of their relationship. If he loved her, the only reason he would want to leave was because it was kinder than staying and finding themselves alienated a little more each day by their own home.
He’d asked her if she’d understood why he had left…
She realised she did now. Sort of.
A strange kind of peace had eased the knot around her heart and she’d smiled at Hinata and reassured her that everything was ok. She wouldn’t follow after Kakashi, because that wasn’t part of the plan. And at least she felt better, knowing that he had loved her after all.
But what about now? Was six months enough time for him to forget? He’d covered a lot of ground in those long months since his departure, and Sakura didn’t doubt that he’d come across several exotic foreign women. He was a philanderer by nature, and though he had told Naruto that he loved her, did that mean it was the kind of love that lasted? The kind of love that could withstand to test of time and be remembered when he next saw a disarmingly beautiful face?
It wasn’t impossible that he’d been with other women since then. She’d even had a dream one night of Kakashi making love to a faceless, unknown woman, the same way he’d used to make love to Sakura. Even though it had just been a dream, she had a feeling it was her subconscious seeking to remind her that Kakashi was Kakashi, and his heart did not work the same way hers did.
So for six long months - and then some - she’d been waiting. For exactly what, she wasn’t entirely sure. But in the mean time, it had been just as Kakashi said. His departure had changed something about the way people looked upon their relationship. No longer had it been seen as a sordid little affair of a perverted teacher lusting after young flesh and a promiscuous girl using her body to get ahead. Since his departure, it had gained some sense of vindication.
For some, it was as simple as seeing Kakashi’s face. At least it was for Ino. It seemed that the moment Ino had seen Kakashi as he really was, she had forgotten why she’d ever been opposed to Sakura’s relationship with him in the first place.
“Now I know what you saw in him,” she’d said to Sakura for days following his departure. “It’s sad that he’s gone. Now that I think about it, you two look really good together. He’s not as old as I thought, you know?”
Of course, Ino was especially vapid and she would forgive any man a sin if he had a pretty face. But for others at least some similar sort of reaction had taken place. Perhaps because Kakashi had for his entire life hidden himself from the village and kept all details of both his appearance and his life a secret, he had unwittingly made it difficult for people to trust him and his intentions. When people had heard the infamous copy ninja was sleeping with his student, his aloof, eccentric nature had only served to damn him. But when he’d stood there before them, in civilian clothes with his normal, albeit handsome face open to their scrutiny and perhaps even when he’d embraced Sakura lovingly - because now she knew that it had been love he’d felt for her - they had understood him. He had been a simple man to them that day, not that strange masked figure who floated through the village streets, whom everyone knew but at the same time… was a stranger.
And then it had somehow gotten out that he’d loved her. Sakura didn’t know if Naruto or Hinata had said something to someone else, or if someone had overheard Hinata breaking down to Sakura in the hospital (hospitals not being the most private places in the world) but eventually it had been common knowledge that Hatake Kakashi had loved Haruno Sakura, and then he’d left the village a noble and wronged man.
There were still plenty of people who did not approve of that relationship, but with Kakashi gone there was not much fuel for their gossip anymore, and they were drowned out by those who talked instead about the Great Tragic Love Story of the Copy Ninja and the Hokage’s Apprentice. What a handsome man and a spirited girl, they said, and what a shame everyone was too close-minded to let their love bloom. Forgetting, of course, that these were the very same ‘close-minded’ people who had once whispered behind their hands about scandal. People’s memories were awfully short.
Sakura didn’t care for hypocrisy, but at least she was thankful to be able to once again walk down the street without being heckled and work at the hospital without being given cold shoulders by her colleagues. After she’d proven that she worked as hard as ever, with or without the benefit of being the Hokage’s apprentice, she had regained a lot of the respect she’d lost.
She could breathe again. And she knew that if Kakashi hadn’t left, and that if they’d stayed together, clinging to the tattered remains of a misplaced relationship, the condemnation would have continued until one of them snapped.
That was why Sakura had convinced herself to let him go.
But she was still waiting for something; some kind of sign of what to do next.
“Sakura,” Tsunade called her, bringing her out of her thoughts. “When you’ve finished your lunch, can you photocopy these? I need fifty copies of each.”
As Sakura leant over the copying machine, her chin resting in her palm while the panel of light slid back and forth with a low hum beneath her, she wondered what her future held. If Kakashi returned, would it work out between them? Would he still be interested? What if he was still interested but didn’t want to return? Could Sakura leave and go look for him?
But Sakura didn’t want to leave Konoha. She wasn’t like Kakashi, because her attachments to her friends were not so easy to dismiss. She couldn’t leave Naruto, or Sasuke, or the home she’d grown up in with its familiar streets and alleys and building. She couldn’t become a traveller… she had too much stuff she would have to carry with her - hair dryers, make-up, shampoo, all her clothes and her medical books - and it just wasn’t possible to be Haruno Sakura and a displaced wandered living off the barest essentials.
More than anything, she just wanted Kakashi to come home. Never in a single one of his letters and notes had he expressed any kind of regret that he’d left, or that he missed Konoha. And with every month that passed and with every time he failed to mention her name in any meaningful sense, Sakura’s confidence waned that he still loved her. What if he was unhappy out there on the move? What if he blamed her? What if what had once been love had been twisted into bitterness and regret and he now wanted nothing to do with her?
The copy machine went quiet and Sakura collected the thick wedges of printed paper to begin sorting them into the correct piles. One sharp paper edge caught the side of her finger and she hissed in pain as a thin line of blood appeared. Odd, how she could be run through without so much as a gasp, but when she got a paper cut she felt the need to whimper and swear as she sucked on the pathetic wound.
Priorities… that’s what she needed.
“Sakura-san, is everything ok?”
Sakura jumped at the sound of his voice, even though she knew she shouldn’t have been that surprised, seeing as how the Reprographics lab was right next door to the poisons Research and Development lab. “Shinra-kun!” She pulled her finger from her mouth and waved it reassuringly at the man standing in the doorway. “It’s nothing, I just got a papercut. I’m so clumsy.”
He nodded. “Are you done with the photocopier?” he asked, holding up his own wad of worksheets. “Only I need to…”
“Oh - go ahead!” Sakura grabbed her work and moved to a free table to allow him access to the machine. As she went back to sorting her copies into piles, she watched Shinra’s back as he stood programming the machine. She’d spoken to him on several occasions since they had first met at that bar where he had bought her a drink and Kakashi had taken that red-haired girl in the back, mostly because Tsunade had decided Sakura had reached a point in her unofficial training to get more closely acquainted with poisons and antidotes, and she was spending every other day in the Poisons R&D lab where Shinra worked.
Through their conversations, Sakura had learnt many things about this man. He was quiet, but he wasn’t shy, only absorbed in his tasks and work so thoroughly that it was hard to distract him. And he had a good heart. He’d always been kind and polite to Sakura, even for the short time after Kakashi’s departure when most of the people in this building still scorned her for one reason or another. However, he wasn’t terribly good at explaining how some of his poisons worked to Sakura, and as a result, she had sometimes spent hours with him in his lab working under his watchful eye.
If she guessed his age, she would put him somewhere between herself and Kakashi, though she suspected his personality made him appear older than he actually was. And for all intents and purposes - he ticked the necessary number of boxes that made Sakura sit up straighter when he entered the room. Intelligent, a genius in his field, kind, good-looking, and carried himself with an air of dignity and restraint.
If her heart hadn’t already been stolen by Kakashi who was now carting it over hills and dales somewhere in the south, she might have been very interested in this person. Only, like most men she set her heart on, she was quite sure he was indifferent to her.
“My sister’s getting married next week,” he said suddenly, making Sakura pause though he didn’t look around at her.
“Congratulations!” she exclaimed. He did look around at her then, and he expression was very serious. “Um… it is congratulations… right?”
“Oh, yes. He’s very nice.” He nodded thoughtfully. “The only problem is, I don’t have a date.”
Sakura suspected she knew where this was going, and a tingle of alarm and excitement ran up her spine. “Is that so?” she asked slowly.
He turned to lean his back against the running photocopier. “I was hoping you could help me in that area,” he said to her.
“You mean… you want me to help you kidnap and drug some poor girl into doing your bidding?” she asked.
“Ordinarily. But perhaps something a bit simpler?” he suggested.
Sakura swallowed. “You’re asking me to go with you, aren’t you?”
“Obviously you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said quickly, which was possibly the first hint of insecurity she’d ever seen in him. “I was just hoping that-”
“Yes, of course,” Sakura interrupted. “Of course, I’ll go with you. I’d be happy to.”
He stared at her in surprise and then smiled slightly. “I thought maybe you were still…”
“You have to move on at some point, right?” she said gingerly. “I’ll go with you to the wedding. I want to.”
But she wasn’t sure that was entirely true, and as she made her way home that evening, she convinced herself she was doing right. The river beneath the bridge had frozen over, and she paused at the railing to peer down at the thin sheet of ice covering the water’s surface. Six months ago she’d thrown a very beautiful, very expensive dress into this river because of one woman’s lie, and not for the first time she felt a pang of regret - only now it was deeper, because now she knew that it hadn’t been an empty gift, and god only knew what Kakashi had felt when he’d watched her throw it away as if it was.
Sakura found herself irresistibly seized with the urge to contact him. To read his words, if not hear his voice, and tell him all the thoughts and worries on her mind. She wanted to write a letter and ask him if he still thought of her, and if it was ok that she was going to a wedding as another man’s date. Was it ok to move on? Was it ok to try and fall in love again?
She continued homeward, her heart thoroughly sunk. If she knew of a way to contact Kakashi, she would have done it by now. She always contemplated writing him letters, but where the hell was she supposed to send them? He moved around so much that by the time any letter she sent reached his last known location, he undoubtedly would have picked up and left long before. Only Tsunade had the means of emergency contact with Kakashi, but Sakura didn’t want to ask her. Tsunade did not always respect privacy as she should, and any message she forwarded from Sakura to Kakashi would almost definitely be circled twice around the office before being sent.
Inside her apartment, Sakura slipped off her shoes and her coat and carefully folded her scarf. She ate the pudding she’d been saving in the fridge and then went to catch up on her reading in bed. Outside the sky filled with a pale grey - a colour that reminded her so sharply of a certain man’s hair - and then began to snow, as it often did these nights. Sakura watched the soft flakes pass over the flared light from the street lanterns and heaved a soft sigh to herself. Kakashi would hate to have missed the snow.
For as long as Sakura had known that man, she’d learnt that he cared little for most types of weather extremes. He was indifferent to rain, wind, and heat waves, but at the first sight of snow, he became a veritable encyclopaedia of snow facts.
“You can always judge the temperature by the shape of snowflakes,” he’d said to them, during their genin training days when the snowfall had gotten so thick on their mission that they’d been forced to stop and take shelter under the trees. “Between three and ten degrees, they form star shapes. Between ten and eighteen, they look like plates. Between eighteen and twenty-three, they fall in little columns, and become needles between twenty-three and twenty-seven. And then between twenty-seven and thirty-two, they fall like plates again.”
All three children had really not cared in the slightest and had shivered dramatically beneath the boughs of the trees. “So what does that mean?” Sasuke had asked grumpily.
“Well, these flakes are plate-shaped…” Kakashi sighed, holding out his hand to catch the stray snowflakes, “so its either fucking cold, or really fucking cold. Take your pick.”
“Sensei, how is it you know so much about nothing at all?” Sakura had grouched to him.
“When you’re as old as I am,” he’d said, “you too will have had all the time in the world to learn about many useless things.”
Gradually, her memories faded into dreams, and before she realised it, she had fallen asleep amongst her text books, with visions of snowy hair and warm embraces to keep her company through the night.
Fresh snow crunched under foot as Kakashi steadily made his way across the dormant field. “Morning, friend,” he muttered to the soggy scarecrow he passed that hung limply under the snow piled on top of its hat and sleeves. The snow had to be at least six inches deep on the ground alone, but it still continued to fall unrelentingly.
It was going to be one of those winters, it seemed.
Kakashi tugged his scarf more tightly around his nose and mouth and looped it over his head to simultaneously keep his ears warm. There wasn’t much further to go. Up ahead he could already see the road that he’d travelled down countless times before, and he knew that following it would lead to the gates of Konoha in roughly one mile. But when Kakashi leapt the ditch and found himself on the grassy roadside verge, he cut straight across into the trees on the other side. The road was nothing but slimy, slippery slush, and he didn’t really want to make his grand re-entrance into Konoha with a wet ass after taking one misjudged step. Not that anyone was expecting him.
But he had seen one or two kites gliding around silently in the skies and he was willing to bet at least one of them was acting as Konoha’s eyes and ears. It wouldn’t surprise him if news had already reached the Hokage that a suspicious character was creeping through the snow towards the village. Hopefully they would recognise him, or he might find twenty ANBU suddenly materialising in the surrounding woods to push him down on the ground and strip-search him. Twenty ANBU might suddenly materialise anyway even if they did recognise him, depending on how vindictive Tsunade was still feeling. Was six months enough time to forgive and forget that he’d defiled her favourite apprentice?
Well, he was about to find out.
As he’d expected, the entrance gates were blessedly absent of any overbearing greeting party similar to the farewell party that had seen him off. He made his way humbly beneath the arch and in an instant he was home. It was almost as if he’d never left. No one paid much attention to him as he slipped through the streets, and certainly no one seemed to recognise him. Perhaps because his face and hair was mostly obscured by his scarf, or perhaps because it was snowing hard enough to severely limit visibility. Either way, Kakashi made his way towards the Hokage tower unmolested. What he really wanted to do was go home and climb into a hot bath, but no doubt Tsunade was aware he was back by now and she would expect him before her desk as soon as physically possible.
When he stepped through the doors of the Hokage tower, the blast of warm arm on his face was almost uncomfortable after such prolonged exposure to the cold. His clothes suddenly felt hot and itchy, but he stoically made his way up the stairs until he was before the office door he’d spent that last sixty miles visualising in his head. He only hesitated for a second or two before opening the door and letting himself inside.
Shizune’s head popped up. “No visitors, please. The hokage’s very busy,” she told him formally.
“Yo,” he greeted, holding up a gloved hand.
The woman frowned and peered at him. When her mouth dropped open and her eyes flew wide, Kakashi guessed that she’d probably recognised him. “You’re back,” she gasped.
“I need to see Tsunade-sama,” he said. “It’s quite urgent.”
“Oh… um… of course, go right ahead.”
He murmured a soft thank you and pressed on the handle to Tsunade’s inner office.
It was safe to say he was expecting Tsunade, being that she was the Hokage and supposedly the sharpest tool in this shed that was Konoha, to be drumming her fingers knowingly on her desk and saying something along the lines of “I’ve been expecting you,” or “What took you so long?”
It was also safe to say he’d expected her to at least be sitting upright.
The moment he closed the door behind him, Tsunade sat bolt upright in her chair with a snort and a piece of notepaper stuck to her chin. “I’m awake,” she said quickly in a slurred ‘I’m not really awake at all’ tone and clumsily fixed her hair. “What is it?”
It was as she was belatedly peeling the paper from her face that she finally seemed to get a good look at him. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She definitely sounded surprised, but there was nothing to say it was pleasant surprise or disappointment she felt as she appraised him. “What are you doing here?”
“I have some information I thought would be of interest to you,” he began, cutting straight to the point. “Hanging around Giiza, you tend to hear some things whether you want to or not. Am I correct in saying you have an escort mission planned next week for some family across the salt pans?”
A small smile crept across Tsunade’s lips. “You would.”
“Well, there’s going to be-”
“An ambush?”
Kakashi sighed. “You already knew…?”
“Kakashi, I have spies posted in every possible corner of the land. This information is at least two weeks old; it’s useless to me,” Tsunade said evenly, straightening her hair clips. “And I refuse to believe you trekked all the way from Giiza in this weather to tell me some mundane little plot that, even without being forewarned, could easily be quelled anyway. And you couldn’t have posted a messenger bird?”
“I felt like a walk.” Kakashi shrugged.
Tsunade’s snort was derisive. “Your lies are as bad as ever,” she remarked coolly. “What’s really going on here?”
Kakashi merely smiled and shrugged again. “It appears I’ve wasted a trip, that’s all. I hope you don’t mind if I stop by for a few nights while I wait for the snow to ease up?”
“The exile was imposed by you, not me,” Tsunade reminded him. “Do what you like. I don’t really care. Though I daresay certain people will be happy to have you back for a while.”
“Ah, yes. Naruto is probably missing having someone coming around to clear out his fridge. I dread to think what six month old milk smells like by now. And Sasuke probably misses picking on his poor, old teacher.”
“You know, that wasn’t who I had in mind…” Tsunade said quietly.
A beat of silence passed, and Kakashi idly scratched behind his ear. “So… is Sakura here?”
“Smooth.”
“Yeah…”
“Sakura’s not here, Kakashi. She doesn’t even work here anymore,” Tsunade told him with a scoff. “What do you think I am? A tyrant?”
Kakashi blinked at her in confusion. “Sorry?”
Her smile widened. “A woman in her condition can’t be working. She’s at home, putting her feet up… eating peanut butter cakes, and so on…”
The confusion persisted on his face for a moment or two, and then suddenly went slack. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but seemed to forget what it was he wanted to say, and then the confusion was back.
Tsunade flipped her hair back. “Problem?”
Kakashi swallowed. “Why didn’t you tell me…?”
“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Tsunade shot back, guiltless.
His gaze wandered away from her, unseeing. He looked faint. “May I be excused?”
She gestured to the door. “By all means.”
Without wasting any time with the common pleasantries or farewells, Kakashi turned and threw open the door - caught Shizune who suddenly pitched through it, having been listening on the other side - and exited with a slightly tenser stride than with which he’d entered.
Shizune straightened and gave Tsunade a severe look. “That was very cruel.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tsunade replied innocently.
“Telling him about Sakura’s ‘condition’. What condition would that be, Tsunade-sama?”
“I was under the impression she had a bit of flu this week,” the Hokage replied, picking up her forgotten coffee cup.
“No, Tsunade-sama, Sakura does not have the flu this week,” Shizune ground out.
“Oh. My mistake.” Tsunade sipped her decidedly cold coffee. She noticed Shizune glowering at her and smiled craftily in response. “Oh, come on. I could see he was winding himself up to avoiding her. At least this way that won’t happen.”
Shizune deflated with a sigh. “You’re a psychopath.”
“No, a sociopath. There’s a difference.”