Not an hour later an aid informed her that the Hokage had requested a personal meeting with her. Sakura naturally asked why, testing the waters of this new development—of course Kakashi wouldn't put off dealing with something of this magnitude, it was against all sense of duty instilled in ninja who lived to his age—and Sakura received an answer which was so heartbreakingly reminiscent to her letters that she had to agree immediately. The Hokage wanted to speak with her for reasons concerning his own health.

Who better to speak to about the health of the reigning Hokage than the top med-nin of the village?

Who better to doctor, with comfort, an aching heart than one's love?

After a sharp rap of the aid upon the door to his main office, Sakura was left alone until there was a softly called, "enter," from within. Kakashi sat cross legged upon his desk, his thumb paused on the page of a book—a scrapbook of some sort.

Sakura entered the room and closed the door with a click—but after that didn't know how to stand. She'd never managed to be in love, really truly in love, before and so she didn't know how one stood in the room with one's significant other—and obviously she shouldn't stand at attention since…well, Kakashi's current seating arrangement precluded formality.

Kakashi, as she'd debated with herself, had turned the pages of his book towards the end of it. It was a scrapbook, filled with…Scraps. She didn't quite know what to make of that strange behavior…That was when Sakura's eyes followed Kakashi's other hand toward the desk surface, where he picked up what she recognized to be her newest letter to him. With utmost care the letter was pressed flat on the open page before him, and Kakashi gingerly secured it there.

The room was silent.

Sakura was about to draw breath to speak when Kakashi looked up at her. She was pinned by his gaze.

"This book, Sakura-chan, is full of professed love for me," he said softly, the mask bobbing to the words his lips formed, "but on the very first page, my own labored printing stares up at me every time I open it. I daily remind myself that what I was doing could be construed as one of the utmost wrongs—and that with a word this could easily be all I have to treasure." At each word that fell from him, and from, Sakura surmised, his heart, she felt her will to speak dry up in order to preserve the moment.

"However, you seem to have finally asked me something I have not found the answer for yet. What is it that I want? I might ask you the same question—although I fear the response to that, just as much as I fear pulling my mask down for you." Look beneath the underneath Sakura reminded herself—he was giving her the answer right there if she could but find it..

"You want…" she paused for a moment to think, trying to avoid breaking eye-contact with him, trying to be brave enough to say for him that which he evidently wasn't brave enough to say himself... "You want…No, it's something I want…No…" his expression didn't change one iota, "We both want to wake up in someone's arms from whom we have no secrets. Your mask represents your secrets, the things that have only ever gone on in your mind and what you've never told anyone. The notes, all these months, were your mask—because you don't know how to live without one, but you…must keep those secrets as they are." She ran out of thoughts to spill into the space between them, and another occurred to her just as Kakashi took a breath to agree or disagree.

"You can't carry on a relationship with someone who is content to see your face and to live with it when you wear your mask. You needed someone—me—to wear a mask and to protect it just as fiercely as you do your own. The most…fundamental part of who you are is the ability to bear those secrets. It was still a secret that you loved me—but it was bearable now that…" Sakura ran completely out of steam then…She couldn't look further, wasn't able to.

Kakashi filled in for her.

"It has been bearable because I knew my regard was well placed. That when I slipped up, as I knew I would eventually, you had already tested me to the brink of what I could share with you—I let you underneath my mask, so to speak." His hand rose, then, with fingertips touching—just barely—the edge of the cloth covering his face. His eye was steady.

But in a flash, Sakura was there, stopping any more downward progress. Kakashi still sat crosslegged on the desk, with Sakura leaning slightly over it—her hand firmly clenching his wrist.

"If I've been underneath it all this time, there is no need to remove it now. There will be plenty of times later when you can, but right now I don't need that as confirmation from you."