A/N: This is my version on what should happen to Kakashi after the events from chapter 422.

Disclaimer: Same as always. Naruto is owned by Kishimoto. I'm not Kishimoto, so stop pressing me to turn the manga in a KakaSaku shojo! What?! No one asked for it? Oh, yeah... my mind's playing tricks on me. Anyway I'd like to at least own Kakashi. Please…someone tell me how I can get him all to myself!

WARNING! Heavy spoilers to the very lasts chapters!

KISSED BACK TO LIFE

Tsunade sighed, the blue light in her hands dissolved after giving the check up to the unmoving and apparently lifeless body of Kakashi. If Sakura wasn't used to see her mentor's real appearance—that of a 70 year old woman—the scowl on the blonde woman's face made it even worse.

"Shishou—" the young medic ventured.

"Sakura," the Fifth cut her off in a very low voice, "there's nothing I can do. Not even the prohibited jutsu you were going to do could help him. It doesn't work unless you know the exact procedure. Just the mere memory of Chiyo-sama's resurrection jutsu won't be enough to correctly perform it." Then she looked at Sakura with a very disturbed expression. "You fool! You would have died for nothing! Thank Kami, Yamato called me before you did anything stupid!"

Sakura just cast her eyes to the floor in shame. Wasting her life without any possibility of success when she could be helping so many other people instead, really wasn't a good idea. What remained of the hospital was completely full of injured people. It was her duty to save the most people she could. Still, Kakashi was Kakashi, and he was so much more important than all those unknown people! The moment she made out his unmistakable silver hairs and found him half buried in dust and cracked cement blocks, she lost her mind and better judgment. She would have tried anything to bring him back, but it would have been useless, no matter what. Fresh tears build up behind her eyes, threatening to spill at the mere thought of how impossible it was to save her dying former teacher.

"Anyone in his place would have already died. I really don't understand how he manages to keep breathing," Tsunade added looking at Kakashi's form. "When you deplete all of your chakra, your body can't produce anymore. I've seen it happen before, but all of those men died soon right after. Maybe if they would have held on for a little longer, they would have been able to produce chakra again, but I really don't know. Being that Kakashi is still alive, his body might have enough time to build chakra up, especially after you to put some of your own chakra into his system. This will prevent his chakra channels from closing and in case his body begins remaking chakra, it will be able to flow through him again. This way Kakashi will return to us. But I've never heard of such a thing before. I really don't know if it's possible."

The sobs coming from Sakura's battered form broke through the Hokage's heart. Gently placing a hand on the pink-haired medic's shoulder, Tsunade talked to her in an almost motherly tone.

"If you have something to tell him, take some time to stay here. For all we know, he might even be able to hear you. Maybe you can help him out even without medical jutsu. You've drained most of your chakra, anyway, so you need to rest before going attending any other patient."

Sakura looked at her shishou with the saddest expression the blonde woman had ever seen.

"Do you think I can see his face, now?"

"Sure thing," Tsunade replied with a bitter chuckle. "I'm sure he would have showed you if he knew he wouldn't have any more occasions to tease you about it." With that said, she left.

Sakura sat slowly on the bed near Kakashi's hip with her torso facing his face, but she didn't have the courage to take the mask off. Not yet. She hugged him, instead, placing her face in the crook of his neck.

"There are some things I've never told you, you know," came her voice, somewhat muffled by his vest. "And even some things I only realized just now." She sniffed rather loudly, as if to gather some courage to speak, then began. "I've never told you how much I admired you. Well, at least as a shinobi, since I don't know anything of you as a man. But I've always looked up to you. Even if I didn't learn much jutsu back when you were my teacher, the shinobi I am now, I owe it to you. Because you taught me so much more than simple techniques. You taught me the principles a shinobi lives for."

The mere thought of the things she was about to say now, made her voice tremble.

"The moment I saw you there in the dirt, I began to realize so many things. Even if we're not that close, you are one of the most important people in my life. Team 7 and Tsunade, you all are like my second family. I've been desperate the day Sasuke left, but right now it's like I'm dying with you. I didn't know I cared so much for you. I'm already missing all those things about you that I thought I hated. Your tardiness, your unbelievably fake excuses, your stupid books, your not-a-care-in-the-world attitude. All those little things made my life, the life of a shinobi, less heavy to bear. Now that I think of it, I'd like to be the way you once were. So you see, you still have things to teach me. Please, don't leave!"

Unable to hold her tears back any more, she let them take over and started to cry desperately, clutching Kakashi's vest in her hands.

After what seemed like an eternity, she quieted down and went back to sit at his side. Now that she had told him what she needed, she felt a little better and she finally gathered enough courage to take his mask away. She did it slowly, savoring the moment. After all, these were most likely the last moments she would ever be able to spend with him again.

The face she saw left her completely astonished. He was so... Kakashi. He was handsome, yet in an elusive way. His beauty wasn't ostentatious at all, just like the man he was. The features were delicate, almost fragile, with that only scar that added strangely to his handsomeness.

Sakura found herself touching his face with her hand, tracing his straight nose, his cheeks, and his soft lips. All of a sudden, she felt the need to kiss those very lips and she had to shake her head to break off the spell she had been caught in.

"I can't believe it!" She then said, a little irritated. "I was already missing you, and now it turns out that you're handsome, too! This has to be my fate. All of the beautiful guys I know turn their backs on me." She chuckled bitterly at her pathetic attempt of humor.

"Well, at least this time I won't get a hit on the head like I did with Sasuke-kun."

Her hand was still caressing Kakashi's face, and she wondered what he would have thought if she kissed him. He probably would have just laughed it off in his laid-back fashion. So, why not? It was no big deal. Just a kiss goodbye.

She leaned in slowly, expecting that he would spring up at any moment and laugh at her for thinking he was going to die, but he laid still. When his face went out of focus, she closed her eyes and then her lips were on his. She stayed like that for a moment, then she drew off.

"You didn't protest," she said, very disappointed. "That means you're really dying. You're leaving me behind. Why?!"

And then she was flushed against his battered body, her silhouette trembling with the intensity of the sobs.

"So, I can be proud of my son. I knew it," Hatake Sakumo said to the very son sitting in front of him.

Here they were, in a place out of time and space, sitting around a bright fire while surrounded by pitch darkness.

Kakashi just brought up his hand behind the neck in his usual fashion and chuckled, when he suddenly felt something. Alarmed, he concentrated on the sensation he was feeling, until he recognized what was happening.

"What's the matter?"

"Sakura-chan... she's pouring some of her chakra into me." His brows were furrowed, as he tried to get a better feel.

"Well, it was about time someone found you. Is she your ex-student?"

"Yeah... how is it that I can feel it?"

"'cause you're not dead yet."

Kakashi didn't reply, but his slightly gaped mouth revealed a lot about his stupor.

"If I try hard enough, I can hear her words. She's talking to Tsunade, or better, it's the other way around."

Sakumo let him overhear without disturbing.

"It seems I have no hope to survive."

"Yeah, for all they know."

"What do you mean, father?"

Sakumo just motioned for his son to keep listening.

"Damn, Sakura-chan is so heartbroken. Poor girl. Life has been already cruel enough with her."

"So, it seems she cares about you a lot."

"She's saying that Team 7 and the Fifth are like a second family to her. She had already lost the boy she had a crush on, and now she's losing me, too. That girl just has too big of a heart to live in the shinobi world."

Then Kakashi's eyes widened. He was hearing the part about her newly discovered feelings. It was hard to know he was the one causing her such a pain. He closed his hands in tight fists.

"What is it, now?"

"I want to hold her and tell her not to cry but I can't. Damn it. It's so frustrating. I'd want to tell her I'm not worth the pain."

"What if you are worth it?"

Kakashi was about to ask what he meant when he suddenly went still. He stayed like that for a few moments, then began to trace his face in the same pattern Sakura did.

"What's happening?"

"She removed my mask. She has never seen my face before. She's touching it." Kakashi wasn't really paying attention to what he said. He was focused solely on the feelings Sakura's touch was instilling inside him.

Then the spell was broken and Kakashi laughed heartily. "She's upset because I'm handsome and because I've never showed her my face before." He explained to his father before he could ask. "It's so like her! To switch moods so fast!"

And he fell still again, this time going wide-eyed, jaw agape.

"She... kissed... me..." Kakashi whispered more to himself than to his father to hear, while softly touching his own lips. But Sakumo caught it anyway.

"Ah, you're so lucky you took after your mother. People used to always say that you took after me because of the silver hair, but if you were like me in the face, Sakura would never have kissed you, that's for sure!" He gave a light-hearted laugh. (1)

Kakashi didn't answer, but kept his fingers pressed on his lips.

Sakumo called his attention. "Kakashi, you told me about your shinobi life. But what about your personal life?"

The Copy Nin shook his head, waking out of the stupor before turning to his father. "Not much to say."

"Hm. That's what I thought. You closed your heart when your loved ones died. But now, there are other people who care for you, and who you care for back. Am I right?"

Kakashi just nodded.

"So, what are you doing here? You haven't lived life to its fullest yet. You're missing the best part. That one," he said motioning to Kakashi's lips.

"I cannot..."

"You, silly boy. You're a deadly weapon that's afraid of love. Yeah, you've been a great shinobi. But has just living like a tool made you feel satisfied? Completed? Gratified?"

Kakashi didn't answer.

"The friends you've lost all those years ago are waiting for you right after this place. You can go there now, if you want. But I kept you here hoping that someone could make you change your mind and so that you could go back and live. For real, this time. Loving your friends, and a wife, possibly. Like I loved your mother. Has it made me any less of a shinobi? No. My love for your mother and you only made me stronger."

Sakumo could see the troubled expression that his son was poorly trying to hide.

"Your old friends have waited for you until now, and will go on to wait for you forever. Go to them when it's your time. When you can tell them of the full life you lived. Then you'll have plenty of time to spend with them and you'll have no regrets for those you left behind." He fell silent for a while, then spoke again.

"I have regrets, Kakashi. So many. I missed you and your mother, and I felt responsible for the pain I caused you two. But now you have the possibility to go back. Do you want that nice girl to turn into someone like you after another loss? To became a shell of herself? Don't you want to protect her? Don't you want to feel her kiss for real?"

"Yes—" Kakashi's voice was just a whisper. "I want to." Then he looked at his father with resolution in his eyes and sprang onto his feet, saying in a very low and determined voice: "I want to feel her kiss!" And everything faded away.

Sakura sat up alarmed when she felt weak arms holding her waist.

"Kakashi-sensei!" She cried out while furiously brushing her tears away so that she could see him properly.

He tried to smirk, but it only came out as a lopsided half grin. It was enough, anyway, to bring a beautiful smile to her face. Even with those red-puffy eyes, Kakashi thought she was beautiful. And that smile was for him alone. To just wake up from a coma and just be presented with her smile... Ah, he was a lucky man, indeed.

"I wis—" his dried mouth didn't allow him to speak. Sakura hurried and brought a full glass of water to his lips. He slowly drank its contents.

Then, he tried again.

"I wish I could have woken up in time to feel that kiss for real..." the smirk this time succeeded and did nothing to help the blush that was creeping on Sakura's face. If anything, it only made the young kunoichi blush an even darker shade of red.

"Oh, that... I... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it." She quickly tried to turn her head, but Kakashi's finger caught her chin.

"I'm not upset. In fact, I would really have liked to feel that kiss." He had to put in quite an effort to smile that eye-crease smile of his. Before he could reopen his eyes, he felt her lips on his. The kiss was tender, a mere brush of lips on lips, but caught both of their breathes, nonetheless.

When she withdrew, they both were at loss of words. She spoke first, trying to ease the tension they created. "I don't know why I did it. I just felt like doing it. And, for what it's worth, it had been a very nice first kiss for me." She gave a genuine smile and blushed furiously again.

"First kiss? Oh, I'm sorry. You didn't have to waste it on my stupid request-"

"Oh, no, really. After all, my very first had been with a comatose man, so now I can tell that this one is much better." She smiled again, still red in face.

"Well, if you put it that way... But you don't have to worry, after all it wasn't a proper kiss."

"What?! I know it might not have been the best since I'm totally inexperienced, but—"

"You misunderstand me, Sakura-chan. Your kiss was sweet and nice. A first to me, too, in a way. I've never been kissed by someone who ever really cared for me. But proper kisses are… more intimate."

"Oh. So you mean… wet kisses?" Sakura's face now was rivaling the color of her hair.

Kakashi just chuckled. "Yeah, those ones."

"Oh…"

Sakura's hand was fidgeting with Kakashi's shirt and she seemed to be in deep thought. When she cast her eyes directly to Kakashi's, he knew she was up to something.

She just began to lean towards his face once again when he stopped her.

"Sakura." He purposely left off the honorific. "Even thought I would love to, we can't. You understand, don't you?"

She simply withdrew and nodded to him. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to have the memory of a real first kiss, and not just a half-kiss," she smiled weakly.

"I know. And I know you care a lot about me. I heard everything you said since the moment you gave me your chakra. And your words plus your kiss were the things that made me change my mind when I was longing to meet my old friends again." He said this, while gently caressing her cheek.

"But we also both know that you're very young, and that at the moment, you are probably still scared and confused from what happened. Rushing things is not a good idea, right now."

"He's right, Sakura," Tsunade intervened, while entering the room with a flushed Yamato in tow. Kakashi's face was new to him, too. Though he wasn't one to ogle at men, he had a hard time not staring at the silver-haired jounin's exposed face.

"But I tell you one thing. If you discover you two have feelings for each other, I won't put a stop to it. I can see that you care for each other a lot."

Sakura couldn't believe to her ears. Was Tsunade giving them her blessing?! Did she even want her blessing?! She didn't even know if she had feelings for her ex-teacher, or if she was just going insane from everything that happened in the last hour! Kakashi was right telling her to not rush things. He was right as always, she thought, feeling nostalgic.

"I lost the man I loved too early, and I lost the other man I could have been with after lying to myself and denying it my whole life. I learned too late that a person should always be true to his or her own feelings."

'Oh… that's it,' Sakura thought.

"And how do you know, exactly, how much we care for each other, Tsunade-sama?" Kakashi ventured.

Yamato scoffed, and suddenly found something very interesting to look at out the window.

"Well, we happened to arrive here when Sakura kissed you the first time around," was Tsunade's confident reply. She didn't even had the decency to try and deny that she and Yamato had eavesdropped on the pair's conversation, but hey… she was the Hokage, after all. No need to apologize for something so unimportant.

Needless to say, the so-called unimportant admission left the pink-haired medic almost faint, the blush on her cheeks was suddenly replaced by a ghostly white.

10 years later.

Sakura's hand gently caresses Kakashi's cheek. It's like she's reliving that day from ten years ago, when she discovered her feelings for her ex-teacher.

Only this time, the continuous beep of the machines that were keeping him alive are getting really obnoxious.

She is recalling how they became close after that accident. When she became of legal age, they immediately asked Tsunade's permission to date. Even after that, Sakura had to wait a long time before Kakashi would decide to make love to her. He would always tell her that age wasn't that important and even if she was of legal age, she wasn't still ready for that. And god, he was right. He was so good at looking inside her. That's why when he felt she was ready, he no longer hesitated, and that had been the greatest moment of her life. Well, at least until their wedding and the birth of their two sons.

"Do you remember that day, Kakashi? You told me you didn't know that someone really cared for you, and you just wanted to reunite to your lost friends again. That's how I was able to bring you back after confessing my feelings to you. But today, well, you already know I love you. And our kids love you, too. So, why aren't you coming back? What's happening? Did you forget us?"

She waits, allowing some tears to slide down her face. When there is no response, she thinks maybe this time he cannot hear her, so she settles for the one thing she is sure he will feel.

She slowly bends down and kisses him fully on the lips.

Exactly as ten years before, a few moments later, he is hugging and kissing her back.

"I didn't forget you and the kids. It's just that this time it was so much more difficult to make my way back," he manages to say with a very hoarse voice.

And she knows it's true, because this time he got into a very compromised situation, as the beeping of the machines remind her.

"Well, welcome back, Kakashi," she whispers to him through tears.

"I told you I could never leave you. I just needed a little extra help from my sweet wife," he jokes creasing his eye in his usual smile. "Thank you, Sakura."

The embrace they share is one of the most passionate they can ever remember. Suddenly, unbeknownst to his wife, a wide grin appears on Kakashi's face at an amusing thought: Sakura has kissed him back to life once again.

The End.

(1): I didn't like Sakumo's face when it appeared on the manga. I'm sure Kakashi is handsome due to the reaction of Ayame and her father at Ichiraku ramen. So, I decided that Kakashi and Sakumo are only alike with their silver hair! ;)

A/N: The day I read that damned chapter in which Kakashi seemed dead, I wanted to cry! And the fact that, months later, we still don't know anything about his destiny, well… I couldn't wait anymore and I wrote my own version of what should happen.

Needless to say, Kishimoto will not write anything this romantic and nothing remotely close to KakaSaku, but hey… I'm not Kishimoto! Sadly… :\

As always, many, many thanks to Clearheart for her wonderful editing job!