My update for May. I'm in the middle of finals and I've just added a comparative world literature minor to my English Literature major. I should be studying, but the company president is coming to visit on the day that I'm working and I'm freaking out a bit right now and would rather not think about it. You may reap the benefits of my anxiety.

Also, I recently got a tumblr. It's under the same name as this account, but it's mostly just Korra-spam. Read and review please! I can't always reply because of things in my real life, but I do read every review I get and they make my busy days a bit more bearable.

Disclaimer: Do Not Own Naruto.

Alms Dealer
by moodiful819

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As Kakashi stood in front of the memorial stone, he had the startling realization that for once, he did not know what to say.

It was raining, the water soaking his clothing making it as heavy and bitingly cold as the weather around him. The forecast had predicted rain, but his umbrella had flipped on the way here in a sudden gust of wind. Now without any sort of protection from the rain, his trademark orange book was melting in his hand as he focused on the hand fumbling around his pants pocket.

Perhaps his awkwardness came from the fact he was out of practice. After all, no one he really knew had died since Jiraiya, and Obito and Rin before that. And while Jiraiya's death was still raw in the minds of many, it was not as strong for the sharingan-user. While Jiraiya's death was saddening for Kakashi, it did not carry the ritual familiarity of Obito's and Rin's deaths and was more of a dull ache than a sharp pain.

This new death was something completely different, however.

It had caught everyone by surprise. Even now six months later, Kakashi still felt as if he had been blindsided and the pain of this death did not fall into either the dull ache of Jiraiya or the sharp, familiar pains of his old team.

Because really, how do you prepare for the death of your only female student?

In all honesty, he had never imagined it to be her. He'd always imagined getting that knock on the door for Sasuke first. The defector seemed the most likely to go first with Naruto being a close second. Even the idea of losing Sai had crossed his mind, and he had in each scenario imagined his responses and just what he would say to the others and the kind of speech he would give at their funeral, but not Sakura. Never Sakura.

So when he did get that fateful knock on his door and found not just an Anbu operative, but the Hokage as well with news that Haruno Sakura had never made it back from her mission alive, it was no stretch of the imagination to say that Kakashi had felt as if the floor had been pulled out from under him. It was as if he had been in freefall. To this day, he was still falling.

He had been one of the first to know, but it hadn't been he who told the team. Instead, he passed the news onto Tenzou and it was the Mokuton-user who had broke the news to the remaining members of Team 7. He had no memory of what he had told Tenzou or what his kouhai had told the team, especially since Naruto had been away on a training mission at the time. He never found out how Naruto took the news. He never really found out the details of anything because he made sure he was on a mission the day of Sakura's funeral.

Call it cowardice, but the computations to guide him were never there. He didn't know how to take Sakura's disappearance from this world. Unlike Sasuke and Naruto, he had no speeches prepared for Sakura. He had always lived with the assumption that even in their dangerous line of work, Sakura would always be there. Now that she wasn't, he had no idea what to say.

Six months later, it seemed the words still escaped him. Her death was more tangible to him now, but unlike Obito and Rin, there was no real penance to be made, yet she carried the same regret. He regretted her death much more than he expected he would; perhaps because her death could have been prevented. If he had spent a bit more time with her, if he had taught her a little bit more, she might not have died.

It was this line of thinking and the shame that came with it that had prevented him from going to her funeral. Not only that, but he simply didn't want to admit to her death. There was so much unexplored territory to be had with Sakura, and in the fogginess of his grief-stricken mind, he had no clue what that meant. All he knew was that he was better at speaking to an engraved name than a photo with a face attached to it, but even that seemed to be failing him at the moment.

Shifting his gaze from his feet to her name, he rubbed the back of his neck in agitation. "I'm not quite sure of what to say," he began truthfully. Though they had known each other for seven years, he couldn't say he had known her well and the regret pooled for a second, clenching in his gut and he flinched, but not because of the cold.

Again, he was fumbling in his head for words. The annals of his mind were open to every bit of vocabulary he knew, but every sentence he strung together fell apart as soon as it was built. Anxious, he flicked his gaze to his upturned umbrella and his melting book. His gloved hand fumbled awkwardly in his pocket, flipping the few coins he had in there. He needed a beginning, something to start them off, an explanation…

Suddenly, he had it.

Moving aside his book, he picked up the weather-beaten bouquet of her favorite flowers from under his book. Flowers in hand with his selected words in mind, it seemed as if he now had too much to say rather than not knowing what to say. He wanted to apologize for not attending her funeral, to say he would miss eating her bentous for him, to say he would miss seeing her at the hospital and that regardless of what she thought, he had always thought her to be a capable ninja.

Clearing his mind, he calmly set the offering down in front of the stone and straightening his back a bit, he cleared his throat. Setting his feet apart, he smiled fondly and began.

"I'm sorry I'm late…"