a/n: This is a sort of prequel to a fic I've been writing for a few years now, and am finally ready to begin. I found this in my drafts from a little over a year ago, tweaked it to fit where the story currently is, and am ready once and for all to put it out in the world. This will come in three parts which I'll post over the course of the week. I hope you guys like it. I really, really miss kakasaku.

ps - the first part of each chapter are lyrics that i am not cool enough to write. highly recommend googling them and listening to the songs they come from. i am advertising this because i can't find decent links to them anywhere lol. anyway yes. listen.

pps - to any puppy love readers, I have not forgotten you. It's been a very long and busy while since I've updated but I am still working on that story. It's only about halfway done, and not having it done bothers me every SINGLE day of my life lmfao. I hope you're still here. Thanks for bearing with me while I dip my toes back into the water. I love y'all.

xo

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you paint yourself white

and fill up with noise

but there'll be something missing

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Solitude was a state Kakashi was used to all his life. While it had been somewhat difficult to come to terms with once the post-war celebrations died down, in time it became one more thing to stop dwelling on, to get used to.

His team did not seek him out. They had their reasons; they all simply went their separate ways, working toward their own goals. He didn't fault them for that, nor did he not ponder whether they faulted him for falling out of touch. He wasn't sure where the responsibility lied anyway.

If he were being honest with himself, they hadn't been a team for years. There may have been an ounce of hope, the tiniest glimmer of something to hold onto, when the four of them had fought together on the battlefield. But they hadn't really been fighting as a whole, just individually toward a common end. Even then he'd known it was wishful thinking. By now he had learned, with a faint bitterness on his tongue, not to hope for anything.

He decided to try and count his blessings instead. He had a roof over his head. He had two properly functioning eyes now, both of them his own. He was healthy, even for his age, and could still work with ease.

He supposed being alive should count as a blessing. Not many ninja lived to his age—that in itself was an achievement, even if it was by pure chance that he hadn't died by now. Even if the days loomed ahead of him with static, heavy obligation, ticking down the seconds until he disappeared into thin air or was buried unceremoniously in the Konoha cemetery—even in this perpetual emptiness, slowly leeching at him with a hollow trickle he barely noticed anymore—even now, Kakashi was still alive. That had to count for something.

After a while, though, he stopped caring whether it did.

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He wasn't in Konoha often these days, but when he was he didn't do much. With the exception of some scant grocery shopping or taking the dogs to the vet, Kakashi mostly spent his time reading on rooftops or catching up on sleep.

He was quite popular around the distribution office. A jounin sensei without an active team was in the highest demand for missions. It meant he had no obligations to a routine structure, and he had more than adequate experience as a leader of ninja no matter the rank. Given Kakashi's extensive history, too, he was particularly prone to assignments of the solo and highly classified variety.

Sometimes it felt like the time he was away stretched longer and longer, the end so distant and elusive that the thought of returning home itself was abstract, unreal. He was never truly excited to be home; it was simply a relief that he could finally hole up for a few days without distraction. All he looked forward to was being able to read his books in the dusty sunlit silence of his apartment and make sure his resilient little plant hadn't withered beyond salvation.

There were days when he got out of the house for a walk, if just to escape his own head for a while. He would go to the convenience store, open book in hand, for some nikuman, onigiri, cup ramen; he found any excuse to get some fresh air and not have to cook his own meals. He would inevitably pass by Ichiraku on his way, and each time he felt the slightest lurch in his stomach.

After the fourth war, he used to go there by himself for old time's sake to chat amiably with Teuchi over a bowl of miso ramen or, if he were in a particularly pleasant mood, tantanmen with just the right amount of hot chili oil. Once in a while he would run into Naruto, who was often there with friends—usually Sai or Iruka or Kiba—and they would catch up for a bit before Kakashi ducked out and left his former student with the check.

It was all in good fun, of course, and each meeting left his spirits higher. But then Naruto joined ANBU, and Teuchi got busy with the peacetime tourists, and going there felt more like a chore than anything.

Kakashi reasoned that he had enough of those already as he walked past the ramen stand one cloudy evening. He bought his food from the corner store, went home, and slept off the remainder of the mission he'd returned from that morning.

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Tsunade had known Kakashi longer than he'd known her. Maybe it was lingering respect for his father, or rather guilt—or maybe it was for his history in ANBU and the war, the fact that he could be trusted to discreetly and thoroughly follow through with whatever she needed. Maybe it was because he could hold his liquor better than her—but then again, almost anyone could.

Whatever the reason, it gave her the idea that she could approach him on a personal level. She called him to her office one day when he'd dropped by the jounin lounge to look at mission postings.

"Kakashi," she greeted tersely as he stood before her desk, hands in his pockets and back in its perpetual slouch. "Are you taking proper care of yourself?"

He didn't miss a beat, despite being distracted by the small flock of birds that was gathering on the railing outside her windows. "Sure."

Tsunade sniffed sharply, crossing her arms over her abundant chest. "According to the records, you've just accepted your sixth mission assignment of the season. That makes this the sixth consecutive one you'll take without more than a few days' rest in between." A shapely brown eyebrow arched at him, concerned in her subtle way and challenging all at once. "Don't run yourself ragged. Despite popular belief, you're not dispensable."

"Thank you, Tsunade-sama." Both of his eyes smiled at her. He still found it strange not to have one covered.

For a tense stretch of a moment, she said nothing, just stared at him with an unmistakable flare of amber. When he didn't move but to let his face fall out of his smile, she chewed at the inside of her lip, eyes narrowed.

"Alright then." She removed a scroll from a desk drawer, tossing it to him as easily as he caught it. "Don't die out there. And I don't care if you come back with a goddamned paper cut—go to the hospital when you return. You're long overdue for your annual."

There was a reason for that, one she knew well. After years of sharingan-induced comas and watching comrades die on surgery tables, he dreaded the hospital more than anywhere else. A little tough love wouldn't change that.

"Of course," he said. As usual, she didn't look appeased, but sent him out regardless.

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Unfortunately for him, there weren't many home remedies for an infected stab wound. He'd returned from his solo mission a day or two before—the specifics eluded him as they'd blurred together in long, deep stretches of sleep.

Eventually either Pakkun or Genma, who had likely bullied his way past the seals on his door or windows, had done the honorable thing and went to fetch a nurse. At least he assumed as much when he woke to the burning, sterile odor of rubbing alcohol.

There was a sensation of cool hands on his back, one keeping his shoulder in place so he was propped on his side while the other was a palm pressed gingerly into his clammy, fever-damp skin. There were hushed whispers behind him that he couldn't quite make out, and he distinctly felt the weight of one of his dogs curled against his ankle.

He'd been expecting to wake to the frigid green-gray light of the hospital, so he was vaguely relieved to find the wall beside his bed at home instead, the scratches and pock marks made visible by the low light of the lamp above him. It was evening; his room softly glowed orange from the streetlamp outside his window. It didn't quite illuminate the whole of the room, from what he could see—the corners of the space still clung to shadows that masked the water stains on the paneled ceiling, the small cracks in the wooden trim.

"Kakashi-sensei?" a unmistakably feminine voice asked, one he recognized.

"Sakura?" He didn't realized he'd said it until she squeezed his shoulder, the pressure a short acknowledgment. She must have seen he was awake by how stiff he'd suddenly become.

"Don't move," she urged gently at his attempt to roll over. "I have to finish getting the infection out of your bloodstream."

He conceded silently, trying to make sense of this half-woken moment. It was hard to believe that someone was…here. There was something strange about having another person here in his room, the place that was at once private to him, his home, yet was somehow just as inconsequential.

It wasn't that he was uncomfortable. Kakashi simply felt aware of everything—the hum of chakra burning in his blood, electric and not his own beneath his muscles; the quiet rattle of his old air conditioner; the presence of a girl he hadn't spoken to beyond a hand wave or polite pleasantries in at least two years. A girl he'd known in the most vivid period of his life—a time which often seemed more a dream in a fever not unlike this one.

For a brief while he wondered if this, too, was a dream. His mind felt hazy around the edges, his body sore and unpleasantly warm. A tingling numbness covered his side where Sakura was healing him, mending whatever he hadn't thought to fix.

He wasn't sure if he should say something to her. His breath was shallow and long in his throat, hair matted to his forehead, arms sore and skin damp with a thin, wan sweat. It wasn't the best time for small talk. Or any kind of talk, really. What was there to say besides an apology for something he couldn't name?

He wasn't sure how much time passed, but she too said nothing else until her hands left his back. There was a hesitance to the motion, as if she weren't sure she was finished, but she withdrew them once the thread of her chakra dissipated, fading slowly into nothing instead of the harsh snap he remembered from other medic-nin.

"You can lie down now, sensei."

"Okay." The word left his mouth much quieter than anticipated. The rawness in his throat had vanished entirely, as had the heat in his upper body. He rolled slowly onto his back, finding the sheet cool against his exposed skin. Sakura had cut his undershirt open from the bottom hem up to his neck. She'd left his mask intact.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed when he opened his eyes again. He wasn't expecting her to be so close, or to look so different. Older, perhaps, was the better word.

The first thing he noticed was that her hair was not short like it had been during the war, but instead was long enough to fall down her back, sort of like it was in her genin days. It looked nearly red in the dim light of his bedroom, bright and thick as he remembered Kushina's to be when he would come to fetch Minato in the mornings and find her brushing it in front of the mirror.

His initial reaction was to wonder if this was some sort of projection of Sakura—younger, wanting to help him as much as she used to—but she was taller, even sitting down, and he could see the curve of her shoulder, a little broader and straighter than it used to be, and the way her shirt clung to a slim waist.

Stop. His eyes immediately fell closed, and his jaw tightened. Something in him lurched at the sight of her sitting on the very edge of the mattress, her hands in her lap—he couldn't remember the last time he'd spoken to her, let alone seen her. Part of him wanted to ask what she was doing there, but after all this time of nothing, he wasn't quite sure how to speak to her now.

"Do you feel any better?" He dared to open sleep-heavy eyes again to find her face neutral, her eyes on his own face. "You look better."

"I think so," he replied, because he wasn't sure how else to respond. None of this felt real except for his injury. There was a lingering tension in his back and sweat at his hairline, but he no longer felt the split of skin in his middle, nor the sear of infection that he'd only become aware of in its absence.

"Good." A smile touched her mouth, not quite matching the rest of her expression. "You should take a shower. I'll change your sheets." She moved to stand.

"Sakura."

"Yes?" She turned, hand poised to tuck hair behind her ear. The movement was so delicate and small that it caught him off guard—he never thought her to be a particularly delicate type, but everything she'd been doing since he came to was done so carefully, and it just…it felt wrong, in some odd, distant way.

It was likely in response to her surroundings. He could sense the way he appeared: dirty, only halfway awake, arms laid against his sides on irrevocably rumpled sheets. The layer of dust in his room from his constant absences. The sparse furnishings he'd never thought to change. She looked so entirely out of place here.

"Why are you here?" he asked instead of whatever it was he'd intended to say.

Her arm fell slowly to her side. Now she was really looking at him, a presence to her eyes that hadn't been there before.

"Does it matter?"

Shit. He'd offended her. She didn't sound angry, but he could tell she was by the way her posture grew stiff. "I didn't—"

Sakura started at the same time. "That's not—"

The pause was awkward, thick. But it loosened her up immediately—she let out a sharp sigh, swiping hair away from her neck and over her shoulder, and turned her gaze to the window.

"I just meant…I'm glad you're better." Her tone grew softer as she spoke. She looked at him again, searchingly, but he wasn't sure what else to do besides look back. "Just—go take a shower, sensei. You have blood on your sheets."

Something told her that she wasn't in the mood for him to say otherwise, to tell her he could handle it on his own. Kakashi followed her order, albeit at a rather sore, lethargic pace; he let Bisuke jump to the floor as he stepped to his chest of drawers to find a change of clothes. His current ones, the same undershirt and sweatpants he'd been wearing on his return trip, stuck to him in wrinkled patches.

Once more, fleetingly, he thought about how she must see him—filthy clothes, unkempt room, untended wounds—and felt the need to apologize for something.

"I hope whoever begged you to fix me up didn't bother you too much." He gave her a vacant smile with his eyes, hoping it came across as some kind of grateful. "You must be busy."

"No." She paused, eyes quickly returning to the window. "Nobody sent me here, actually."

He was puzzled by her admission, as well as her demeanor—it was shy, clammed up in that same way that didn't sit well. More of that hesitance. It didn't suit her at all.

"I'm not on duty right now. I was just in the area and thought I'd stop by." She scratched at her arm in long, slow strokes. "One of the dogs let me in when I got here."

Bisuke pawed guiltily behind his ear with a hind foot. Kakashi resisted the urge to raise a brow at his ninken—he didn't realize his seals had been weak enough for either of the two to dispel. He'd have to rectify that.

"I'm sorry, Sakura," he said, voice still rough from sleep and sick, the old honorific catching in his throat before he could say it. "I'm sure you didn't come here expecting to patch me up."

"Don't apologize." Her hand absently traveled up and down the sleeve of her shirt, some civilian garment he'd never seen her in before. She really wasn't here on work orders, it seemed. "It's a good thing I came by, or else that could've…it would have been really bad."

He tried to think of something else to say—something reassuring, perhaps—but he'd never been particularly gifted at that. Especially when it came to her. Kakashi simply nodded his agreement, reaching for a towel in the cabinet.

"Anyway," she said with a huff of a laugh, "go. Get in the shower. I don't need you getting another infection."

He held his hands up in mock surrender, trying to keep his tone light for her sake. "Fine, fine."

By the time he returned to his room, clean and rid of his lingering symptoms, she was gone.

He hadn't really expected her to stay. If he were a better mentor or team leader or whatever he was to them, he would have asked her to stay, or to catch up, or at would least properly thank her before sending her back off into the night. He could chalk this one up to illness. But what would happen the next time he saw her or had the opportunity to speak with her? Would there be a next time? Given the tense, short way he'd certainly come across to her tonight, he wasn't sure she would seek him out again.

He slumped onto his neatly made bed, the fresh sheets crisply stretched over the mattress, but something stopped him from settling in.

On his comforter beside him was a note. He held it near the lamp to read the narrow scrawl of words.

Please take care of yourself, it said, the first word underlined as if it were a prescription. He stared at it for a long minute, then set it down by his books and sank into bed with heavy limbs. He pulled down his mask, rubbing a calloused palm against his stubbled cheek, brushing the hair off his forehead with a deep exhale. When his hand hit the bed again, he was met with another surprise.

A small box was perched by his pillow; he picked it up in a careful instant. It was wrapped in iridescent green paper and adorned with a yellow ribbon. Deliberately, he peeled away the gift wrap with his thumb, only to find inside a new pair of fingerless combat gloves identical to the ones he always wore.

Confused and only partly serious, Kakashi's first instinct was to look to his calendar, but hadn't changed it in months, and he'd been asleep on and off for days and wasn't sure exactly when he'd returned.

"Bisuke," he mumbled into the dark, too-quiet space, "what day is it?"

"Pretty sure it's the fifteenth," the dog replied in his usual rasp, hopping back on the bed to curl at the end. His owner hardly noticed, though; all he felt was the unnamable constricting in his stomach.

It was the fifteenth of September. Kakashi's birthday.

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He wasn't sure how to deal with the situation once it had passed. All he knew was that he thought about it more than he meant to.

Often he found himself turned toward the mirror with an odd posture, searching for a glimpse of a scar running along the skin of his side. But Sakura was thorough—this much he knew. She never liked to leave scars. Scars were a sign of an unfinished job, one she hadn't completed to the full extent of her abilities, and she never left them if she could help it.

No one seemed to know about his unfortunate circumstances that night, either. Genma hadn't ribbed him about a dramatic brush with death, for one, and Tsunade never summoned him to cast more doubt about his health, physical or otherwise.

At this, Kakashi recalled how Sakura had seemed awkward in the small space of his room, and he eventually came to the conclusion that she had been embarrassed to be there in the first place and decided to stay discreet about it. A multitude of reasons existed that could hold true—ones he could only begin to think of—so he left it at that.

For a few weeks he thought about saying something to her. There were opportunities—at the very minimum, Kakashi could have easily stopped by the hospital to thank her for healing him, or to get the annual he'd half-promised. He vaguely remembered where her apartment was and could have visited her there as well, but he was sure her hours were too irregular for her to be home often. Leaving a note felt too formal for whatever kind of acquaintance they shared.

In the end, he worried that none of it had happened, and so he refrained from saying anything at all.

The gloves were the only indicator that it hadn't simply been a figment of his imagination, some desperate wish for help in a moment of illness or a dream that was just realistic enough, something with just enough straws to grasp at to fuck with him in his waking hours. He didn't dwell on what it would mean if his mind had projected such an image of him—sick, rotting, dying alone until practically resurrected by a student he'd failed, a girl kind enough at heart to still bring him a birthday present and waste her time healing someone who did not deserve so much, least of all from her.

Before he even saw her again, before he could even think of anything to say, he was sent on another mission.

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This particular assignment had taken months longer than it was supposed to, no thanks to unforeseen developments in their intelligence as well as how delicate the situation was. Their infiltration into a land in the midst of an uprising, one under military rule, had to be done extremely carefully so as not to draw any suspicion or bring Konoha under fire.

As the team leader, Kakashi could not—and would not—allow his team to die for something that was directly under his command, something that was ultimately up to him. Because of his extreme caution, he'd had to spend months with three strangers, holed up in a safehouse in the middle of nowhere. Nothing to do but train and think.

As skilled but relatively young ANBU operatives, his other teammates were serious and quiet ninja who hardly spoke to one other. He was used to the veteran agents, ones who were willing to cut loose a little when there was nothing else to do. It'd been a long time since he had seen Yamato or Sai or any of his old Team Ro members, and it would have been nice to see a familiar face, to hold some conversation that wasn't related to a highly possible death.

It occurred to him more than once that Naruto was now a member of ANBU, and he wondered how someone so full of life, so unabashedly exuberant and accepting of the world, fared in the ranks of such a dark and unfeeling organization. He found that he had no desire to find out—instead he was simply grateful that his former student hadn't been placed on his team.

He spent Christmas and New Year's in hiding, reading the same novel he'd been rereading for months as he'd only been allowed to bring one. Their cabin was mostly uninsulated, undecorated, the mattresses on their bunks hard and unyielding and their blankets barely thick enough to stave off the mountainside chill. He found himself missing his dogs, who he could rarely summon in such a precarious environment, as well as his own bed, lit warm by the sun that streamed through the windows every afternoon.

He spent spring in a foreign country, disguised as a stranger, working toward an assassination that meant the death of several officials.

And in the end, his team was caught in the crossfire.

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On paper, the mission had been a success, despite the fact that three Konoha shinobi were dead, their corpses left on foreign soil.

Kakashi had no time to mourn them in his escape. He'd barely made it out alive himself.

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When he woke up to the harsh, sterile stench of chemicals, he had no idea where he was—it was too dark to see, and he could barely move. A steady rhythm of beeps sounded somewhere close to him.

A hospital.

His sore muscles loosened, sagging his entire body against the bed. Konoha. Where he'd crashed, he wasn't sure, but someone had found him and brought him back. Relief welled inside his chest, rippling into his lungs, allowing him to let go of the breath which had seized in his throat.

It was difficult to assess the damage when he couldn't get a visual. He could feel his leg bound in some kind of cast—his knee had been damaged in the fight, as he was starting to recall—and there were bandages on his hand and around his chest. His mask had been swapped for a sheet placed right above his nose, and for a moment he was reminded of the way dead men were carried off to the morgue: a sheet over their bodies, even if blood mercilessly stained the white, as a sign of respect.

He was alive, and the others had died.

His teeth clamped together inside his mouth; his jaw clenched so tightly it trembled.

"Hatake-san?" a mild voice asked as it approached, and after a startling movement against his eyes, he could see. Light pierced his vision. He must've had a head wound.

"How long have I been out?" Kakashi's voice crackled at the edges.

"Three and a half days," the nurse replied. Her attire did not go unnoticed—dark gray scrubs instead of white; a Fire Country insignia instead of the Hidden Leaf's. "Border patrol brought you here for emergency care once you crossed over. How are you feeling?"

The question echoed in his mind, niggling at the back of his head until another once surfaced. Do you feel any better? And suddenly, more than anything, he wanted to be back in his apartment. The desire gripped his chest as if a hand had reached inside it. He didn't deserve to, but he wanted to go home and sleep this off in solitude, to sweat this out of his system, even if it killed him like it would have the last time.

It's a good thing I came by, or else that could've…

"I'm fine." He closed his heavy eyes. "I'll be fine."

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Nearly three weeks passed before Kakashi, fully healed, entered the gates of Konoha.

As expected, Tsunade gave him some "time off"—which was, as all experienced ninja knew well, a guise for a mandatory mourning period. A great deal of the time, trauma and grief didn't choose to set in until days, weeks, even months after whatever incident had caused them. What she didn't seem to understand was that he'd had more than enough time to think about the mission before he'd returned to the village.

For Kakashi, guilt was the only type of mourning he experienced anymore. It was selfish, he knew. He was sure those ninja had gone into the mission knowing the risks, knowing they would die. A few times he had to remind himself that this was a requirement of any ANBU agent. Their jobs, while largely being the least recognized, were the most dangerous of all.

Their deaths, sudden and brutal, hit too close to home for him. The reminder of his failure was more than unfriendly. The lives of three talented, sharp, young shinobi were gone while he was still alive. He was the team leader, the one who was meant to protect them even if it meant sacrificing himself. He thought about his own cruel fate with a vacant sort of irony—even now, he was the one left behind, the one alive to shoulder the darkness in the wake of their deaths. Would he ever be able to make amends for the people who had died beside him?

For him?

By him?

Kakashi had forgiven his father, was proud of him for sacrificing his reputation and livelihood to keep all those other men alive. But the more he experienced death and lived to tell, the more he understood why his father had taken his own life.

There was a hollow comfort in the thought of living a new life after this, one where he wasn't the cause for so much hatred and death. Every now and then the image of his one full, living team—Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura—flashed behind his eyes for a brief, dull moment, one that would grow sharper, acutely more painful if he thought about how much of a lost cause they were for him.

Part of him ached for the days when he could at least pretend things were simpler, when the three of them were young and uncomplicated and just wanted to learn how to defend each other. But that time had lasted only so briefly. His three students had always, would always be complicated; he just hadn't seen as much until it was too late to do much for them.

It was on his worst days that he thought about Sasuke in particular. The one he'd never truly known beyond sharing in understanding the emptiness of death, the hateful burn of revenge, the grief that had plagued them both into a withdrawn sort of life. Kakashi wasn't sure how different Sasuke would have been if he hadn't taught him surefire killing techniques, or how to use a sharingan, or if he hadn't honed in on that blind, furious hunger for power.

His instincts told him, as they always had, that there was little he could have done for the last Uchiha. Their clan was born into fire and strength, all somber and silent. Sasuke had inherited what the dead had bled out and left behind, and Kakashi had seen him nearly burst at the seams with it. But now he was back and had been dealt with by those he'd wronged—now he was the constant they had always craved. He'd become calm, gray, impassive. Somber and silent as if none of it had ever happened.

Sometimes Kakashi wished it hadn't. But then someone would knock on his door or send him a message, forcing him out of solitude, and he would get up and keep existing exactly the way he always had—the only way he knew how to.

Once he spent a few nights at the bar down the street, either aided by empty conversation with Genma or Kurenai or simply spent alone, he found it easier to move past what was plaguing him. He'd learned by now how to cope with things, how to forget just enough to survive and how to tamp it down whenever it resurfaced. How not to think about the things he couldn't change.

After three decades in the business, he was an expert at staying numb.

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.

Per the request—or, rather, the urging—of his ninken, he found himself in the supermarket not long after his return to buy dog food, as well as some human food that wasn't just rice or whichever items still lingered stale and inedible in his cobwebbed pantry.

His usual route took him right past Ichiraku, as it always did. He wanted to ignore it, especially the potential for impromptu socialization that he truly did not feel like engaging in, but he hadn't eaten a real meal in weeks—months—and the tantalizing steam billowing from behind the restaurant's wrinkled noren was like a siren's call.

The moment Kakashi walked in, shoulders hunched to pass through the curtains, he slipped into a seat at the end of the bar and waved a casual hand at Teuchi, who greeted him with enthusiasm.

"I'll be just a minute," the man called as he walked into the back room of the restaurant. Kakashi smiled with very little energy, just enough to be polite, and let his chin rest in his palm. A brightness in his periphery drew his attention to the opposite end of the counter.

Sakura stood there, tapping her foot slowly, subconsciously as she looked at him. She smiled at him in her pleasant way, hands in the pockets of her crisp, starch-white medical coat, one only surgeons or high-ranking medic-nin wore at the hospital. Kakashi was suddenly very aware of himself—his back went stiff; his fingers tightened against the fabric covering his jaw.

"Hey," she said softly, shifting where she stood. Reluctant.

"Sakura-chan," he said with practiced nonchalance, none of which he'd had the last time he saw her, and creased his eyes into a smile. "It's been a while."

A few beats passed before she made the decision to come and sit next to him, her steps measured. Her knees locked together once she hopped onto the stool. Her hair was in pigtails not entirely unlike Tsunade's, except these were thick, haphazardly woven pink braids, and it was the same length it had been when she came to his house last year, if not longer.

"When did you get back?" She stared up at him with spring-green eyes, brows creasing beneath her seal.

"Oh, uh…about a week ago."

"Good," she breathed, gaze fixed on the wooden counter. He heard her breathe an unstable sigh. "That's—that's good."

Kakashi nodded awkwardly. There seemed to be more she wanted to say, so he waited.

"I was so worried about you," she finally whispered, swiveling toward him ever so slightly. "I heard you were at a medical outpost, and I wanted to come and heal you myself, but—" She sighed again, this time with eyes closed and an edge of something close to frustration. "Since it was an ANBU-delegated mission, no one would tell me where you were. I don't have the clearance to find that kind of stuff out either."

A hollow thump resounded inside his ribcage. It shouldn't have surprised him that she was willing to go to such lengths, but it did. Sakura had always been the kind of person to take care of things herself.

I don't need you getting another infection.

"It's okay," he told her, putting as much of the sentiment into his voice as he could muster, which admittedly was not much. "I survived." Unfortunately, he thought fleetingly. "It just took a bit longer to heal than usual."

He recalled the silver-pink scars that now ran in lines across the back of his shoulders, his thumb, the sides of his knees and one down his shin. While he didn't particularly care about them—they were just some of many now—she would care. He didn't mention them.

Her hand tugged at a pigtail, looping the loose end around her finger over and over and over.

"You know, I miss our team," she said with a despondent smile. "It was so much easier to keep track of you three back then."

Kakashi should have said something, and he could have. But then Teuchi returned, reaching over the counter to place a huge bag full of takeout containers between the two of them, and the moment was sufficiently interrupted by the crinkle of thin plastic and a polite exchange.

"Here you go, sweetheart. Shizune-chan said it's on the tab this time; she'll have someone from the office come and settle it later." The man grinned, lines deepening jovially around his eyes.

"Thank you so much, Teuchi-san. We've got a long afternoon ahead of us, so I really appreciate you putting this all together on such short notice." She returned his expression, her cheeks lifting into a sweet, youthful expression. Kakashi felt an almost painful twinge of nostalgia.

"No problem at all. Kakashi-san, the usual?"

"Sure," he responded, not quite sure what he was agreeing to and not really caring. Sakura was gathering the bag in her arms, about to make her departure, and the moment closed in on him.

"Well, I have to go," she said, her smile turning rueful. "But I'm glad I ran into you, sensei. I can rest a lot easier now that I've seen you with my own eyes."

The words twisted his stomach with guilt. "Sakura," he said, though he wasn't sure where he was going with it. "Wait."

She paused for a half-second, one that would have gone unnoticed if he didn't know her, and turned around.

"Oh—I almost forgot to tell you." Her smile was still there, though a corner of her mouth twitched, faltering just a bit. "Tsunade-shishou wants to you to drop by her office for something. She told me to pass that along if I happened to see you."

Before he could give her any kind of response, she left the shop in a blur of pink and white, and he was left as alone as he'd hoped to be when he arrived.

Kakashi barely finished half his meal once it was placed before him. Ramen, he realized, tasted much better with company.

.

.

Tsunade was unusually quiet when he made it to her office several hours later, long after courtesy would have granted him a more enthusiastic—or in the Hokage's case, aggressive—greeting. But he swiftly realized that this had little to do with his habitual tardiness.

"Kakashi," she said from where her hands were folded before her mouth, elbows placed rigidly on her desk. "Take a seat."

It was a command that he felt was in his best interest to follow, so he carefully slumped into the chair beside her desk. The windows outside showed the evening approaching the darkness of night on the horizon; the room itself was still and tense, lit only by a few lamps. It was then that he noticed the lack of Shizune in the room. Dread crept beneath his ribs in an instant.

"This isn't about you being Hokage," Tsunade muttered, reading his mind. "Right now I couldn't care less about that."

His shoulders slackened, though with hesitance. "Oh?"

Her gaze cut toward him, fierce and unyielding, but he could sense foreboding lurking there.

"The uprisings in the north have become a cause for concern among the council members." She said the words as if they tasted bad, crude and sour. "You did your part there, and you did it well. But the assassinations caused a backlash that has sent other prominent villages there into a state of militarization, which could not only affect our trade and delegation agreements, not to mention our peace agreements, but could cost the lives of hundreds. Thousands, more accurately, especially now that our allies are putting the blame on us."

The image of his only female ANBU teammate, spine broken and neck fatally slashed, flew to the forefront of Kakashi's head. His other teammates had faced similar fates—one had been practically flayed alive; the other was stabbed once in the skull and twice in the chest, hard enough to break ribs and puncture a lung.

The wooden arm of his chair was hardly enough for his fingers to grip as his knuckles went white. He said nothing.

"They want us to bulk up our defenses." Weary, she rubbed fingers into her forehead, the middle one pressing into her seal. He wondered how it felt, if it hurt when she did that. "I personally believe we already have enough here—you, me, Sakura, and Naruto, who is stronger than ever. He's also improved drastically from his battle with Pein, which was the last great threat to this village. But—"

Kakashi stiffened as she huffed a sigh. He already knew exactly where she was going with this.

"Sasuke," he said, half to her and half to himself. Tsunade nodded slowly, eyes closed.

"The council thinks he's our trump card," she told him, opening them after a dense pause. "And I'm inclined to agree, all things considered."

"He still has several years left in his sentence, Tsunade-sama. This isn't the best precedent to set for other situations like his."

"Now you're thinking like a Hokage," she murmured, a grim smile stretching across her lips. "But there aren't any other situations like his. We forgave him for things other people did, pardoned his punk ass, and then we left him to his own devices. How many other rogue nin can we say that for?"

The question was a rhetorical one. They'd never quite known what to do with Sasuke, who was at once a victim of a tragic story, a citizen of Konoha, and a thorn in their sides. An unknown. It was why they'd sealed his chakra off in the first place—both as a punishment of sorts and a reassurance. It was why he'd been unofficially kept in the village, living as a civilian.

Tsunade grit her teeth in the silence and reached to open a desk drawer. What she pulled out—a bottle of cheap sake, likely the only kind she could sneak in here without causing a commotion, and a cup—did not surprise him.

"Drink?"

"Yes," he replied as she pulled out another cup, letting them clink around on the desk when she filled them, some spilling onto the chipped wooden surface in her haste. She downed hers in one go and promptly refilled while Kakashi let his mask slip down to drink his own. Tsunade had seen his face on more than one occasion, usually when bringing him back from the dead, and he had long since stopped caring that she knew what he looked like.

"Alright," she declared, her resolve back in motion. "We need to test the waters before we take any more action."

"You mean send him back into the field."

"I do."

His first instinct was to tell her no, that this was likely not a good idea, but there was enough evidence to prove otherwise. Sasuke had exhibited exemplary mental stability and responsibility since his return and subsequent trial, so much so that at this point there was no reason not to trust him.

And yet, Kakashi was hesitating.

"I want to put him in a familiar setting first—back with his original team," Tsunade told him, each word measured. "Should something happen, and I have reason to believe that it won't, I think you three are the ones best equipped to handle him."

Better safe than sorry, he thought to himself. Ever since the village was destroyed and rebuilt, this had been the way.

"Have you told them about this?" He recalled Sakura's tense disposition when he'd seen her earlier. Had she known then?

"I don't have to." One of Tsunade's golden-brown brows arched, daring him to challenge her. "This is what they've wanted since day one."

Tsunade didn't have to give anyone a choice—she'd made her decision and it was his duty to obey it. The sake swirled against his tongue, heavy in a way that made it difficult to swallow, stinging too sweet and warm between his teeth.

"He has to return to our forces at some point, Kakashi," she continued when he didn't respond. "I'd rather let him off early on good behavior than chance another devastation that we could easily have prevented."

He nodded, because he saw her point. Truly, he did. The ninja working in the northern forces, the ones sparking all the chaos there among innocent civilians, were ruthless killing machines. Ones he had seen firsthand and didn't particularly wish to again, especially not in his homeland. But he knew by now that devastation could come from anywhere, always when they least expected it.

"What do you need me to do?" His voice was low to his own ears, gruff in a way he didn't like.

"We're only restoring access to half of his regular chakra stores for the time being. I want you to monitor him and report. Make sure he's ready for the other half."

Kakashi nodded. Accepting it. Trying not to question it. "Alright."

Tsunade tipped back the rest of her drink and slammed the cup back onto her desk, sighing weightily.

"You need to trust me." She stared at him hard, the way that no one could ever defy. "I'm not just doing this for me. Or for them."

He finished off his own drink and pulled up his mask. "I understand. Cross my heart."

"I don't think you do understand, Kakashi. But you will." Her stare finally left him when she turned to face the windows. The sky was finally dark. "Dismissed."

She didn't have to tell him twice. He stood up after a moment of lingering in thought, then left through the doorway without another word.