Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or any of the characters therein. I do not make any money from writing fanfiction.

Her bag landed with a thump on the thin mattress.

How was it even possible to feel this tired?

Sakura let her exhausted form crash onto the bed with a ladylike 'umphhh'. The box spring let out an unpleasant screech in protest. Honestly, compared to most people who could have slept on it, she wasn't such a bad candidate. Even if she did need a shower.

The pulsing was back. That one spot on the crown of her head throbbed in sync with her heartbeat. All day she had felt it growing, insistently demanding her attention, but she had stubbornly refused to acknowledge it. Now that she was alone with nothing else demanding her attention, the throb was adamant it was going to make up for lost time.

It was going to be one hell of a migraine.

She opened her bleary eyes and stared up at the ceiling. The cheap light fixture flickered and hummed.

On…

Off.

On….Off, On…

Flicker, flicker, flicker. Jabs of pain lanced through her exhausted brain.

Each stuttering flicker outlined the filth hidden in the bottom of the dish. Dead flies and patches of – well, she wasn't really sure what type of grime the rest was – jumbled together in a pile of death. The little insect bodies curled in on themselves, legs bent and broken at strange angles…

White limbs poked out of the ground. Last night's rain had washed away the mud from their skin, leaving the air clean of everything but the smell of rotting flesh.

All across the field, they poked out like remains after a harvest. A leg here, an arm there. Fingers just breaching the muddy ground. Reaching for freedom.

Reaching for air.

No.

No, she was lying across a bed – in a crappy Inn, yes – but she wasn't there.

Wasn't there to see the way the fingers had been curled in defeat, bent and broken…

She reminded herself to breath. In and out.

On…

Off.

On…off, on, off.

On…

The throbbing intensified. She threw an arm over her face and buried her eyes in the crook of her elbow. It didn't help. Rolling over, she pushed her pack off the bed and lay face-down on the musty pillow. She could still hear the filament click each time it lit up. Her ears rang with the sound.

Breath. In and out.

It was no use.

The image of limbs sticking out of the upturned ground was burned onto the backs of her eyelids. She couldn't believe they had stumbled across the scene only this morning; this had to be the longest day of her life.

The village was massacred by the Jashin extremist they had been tracking. The S-class criminal's method was always the same. Attack a village, wait for everyone to flee and then finished them with a landslide jutsu. The sick bastard fed off of their fear.

She felt no pity when the raikiri sliced its way through his chest. She was just grateful he hadn't managed to recreate Hidan's immortality technique; the battle had been a near match. Not that the rest of the new recruits seemed to remember that fact. She had spent the entire battle and the rest of the day healing her squad, pulling some of them back from the brink of death. Yet after the battle, they had spent the remainder of the day loudly reminding each other of their heroic feats. Each and every one of them seemed to be under the impression that they singlehandedly defeated the murderer.

But if they had set out a day earlier, could they've stopped him? Would the village still be standing? Would she have had to endure walking away from the devastation, watched by the eyes of the dead?

Children's eyes.

God, her head hurt.

A soft click came from the room's entrance and the light bulb stopped flickering. The silence was blissful.

She shifted to get a look at who turned off the switch.

Kakashi stood in her doorway. Her Captain, she had to remind herself.

His Anbu uniform was stained with dirt and ripped in several places, but he didn't seem concerned by the dried blood clinging to his clothes – he had refused medical treatment after the battle, ordering her to tend to the rest of their five-man squad while he dealt with the body.

But now he stood in her doorway, staring at her with an impassive eye.

Sakura sat up, her headache momentarily soothed by the cool shadows of the room. Was he finally going to let her check him for injuries? It was about damn time – she inherited her Shishou's bossy and commanding attitude when it came to her medic duties and she didn't like anyone telling her when, or in what order, to heal her comrades. Genin sensei or not, Kakashi had pissed her off.

Kakashi didn't say anything to her, but his gaze dropped to her feet. Without a sound, he crossed the distance between them and… why was he kneel-

Oh.

Straightening up, he handed Sakura her Anbu mask.

"When you're not wearing it, keep it hidden. There's no point in having one if people can associate it with your face."

Sakura bit back a groan. Accident or not, it was still humiliating to be lectured on something that even an academy kid would know.

"Gomen, Kak- uh, Captain. It just slipped out of my pack." The excuse seemed pretty lame, even to her own ears.

Thankfully he seemed amused by her slipup. The entire mission, he hadn't taken any attitude or misconduct from the Anbu freshman. It was the group's first mission together – future squads would be determined on individual strengths and how well each ninja worked with others. She was probably the only one who wasn't secretly terrified of their captain.

But then again, if the first time she had been on his squad he had tied one of her team mates upside-down from a tree branch beside a dormant beehive for falling sleeping on his night watch, she might have been skittish around him too.

She slipped the cat-mask back into her pack.

"We'll be heading out tomorrow morning," he stated. Sakura was glad he didn't say 'at dawn'. So far, every morning of the mission he had had everyone up and moving before the sun rose. And he had devised increasingly creative ways to wake up anyone who decided to catch a single moment of sleep more than he allowed.

"Do you need to pick up some more medical supplies while we're in a town?" he asked.

"Yes, Captain. Mainly bandages though."

Looking vaguely distracted by her answer, Kakashi nodded.

From the other side of the door, the faint creaking of floorboards gave away the movements of her three other teammates. They were still jumping around from room to room, exaggerating the tale of their mission each time they recounted it to each other. As if every one of them hadn't been there. Honestly, they were like little girls at a slumber party. When they returned to Konoha, Sakura was sure that their tales would spread across Anbu freshman ranks like wildfire

Kakashi tilted his neck back, obviously picking up on his subordinates' scurrying.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say some of Naruto's bunshin made it into Anbu," he joked.

Sakura could only crack a faint smile. Her headache was coming back full-force.

Kakashi paused, taking in her lack of response. Two thin eyebrows drew together in concern as an eye roamed over her pale face and slumped posture.

"Are you doing all right?" His concern was evident in his tone.

"Yes, Captain." She forced a bright smile onto her face.

Crap. Drained or not, she had to be stronger than this. Even if Kakashi once had been her guardian and sensei, he was her captain now. If she lost the confidence of her superiors, there was no way in hell she would be assigned a permanent Anbu position.

Kakashi didn't look convinced.

He stepped forward until he was toe to toe with her. Startled, Sakura leaned back as he bent forward, invading her personal space; one of his hands gripped the edge of the mattress beside her hip while the other snaked out and flipped open a compartment of her medic belt.

It was empty.

"How many have you had?" His voice was resigned. She had expected him to raise his voice and reprimand her, but she wasn't going to complain.

"Three," she replied, shifting uncomfortably in his close proximity. Trading blows with the murderer and repeatedly healing her team had plunged her chakra to a dangerously low level. She had had no choice but to consume her soldier pills. The accumulated side effects of ingesting three in one day were probably responsible for her headache now.

His gaze went back up to her face. She could see he disapproved, but she returned his stare the best she could.

Letting out a long sigh, Kakashi stepped back and then eased himself down onto the bed beside her and stared off into space. She felt as if he was looking far beyond the walls of the dingy bedroom. He didn't seem inclined to speak again anytime soon.

She couldn't figure out what to say to him. It was ridiculous. He was one of her boys. Her brother-comrade-life. She didn't have a name for their relationship, but whatever they had been, it was different now.

Anbu was different. It was the elite of the elite.

And he was a freaking Commander.

For most of her life, she had seen him as her tardy, slightly perverted sensei. When she was a genin, he was the one who had lent her comforting words when their team was breaking apart and teased her about her disastrous attempts at cooking in the wilderness.

Even as she grew older, she had no problem rambling for hours on end to him – he was the only one who would listen without interrupting. The man beside her had wrapped her sprained ankles, bandaged her training injuries, and given her a piggyback ride home after she exhausted herself training for the chunnin exam with him.

And two years ago she had spent nearly every day with him to prepare for the jounin exam and had been on countless missions with him after she passed.

She had seen him naked on several occasions, accidentally and for medical purposes, slept with her limbs entangled with his in cramped, leaky caves and in frigid climates, and in recent years had posed as his lover on a few missions. He had always good-naturedly put up with her horrendous acting – if it hadn't been for his own practised acting, she knew their missions surely would have failed.

But sometimes, just sometimes, she forgot who he was.

This morning she saw the man beside her move as if he was possessed by Kami himself. Slashing and twisting, he had played a game of life and death. The last time she had seen murder creep into his eyes was during the Fourth Ninja War when she and Lee had been herded together by the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist and specifically targeted as she, the medic, and the taijutsu master were two of the biggest threats. She had thought that she would never forget the terrific rage in his eyes, but apparently her memory couldn't compare to reality.

"Umm… Captain…" she started.

"Kakashi," he interrupted.

"I uh…, what?"

"Just Kakashi. You can call me captain in front of the rest of the squad if you want. But you don't need to now."

"Oh, ah, sure."

He waited for her to continue, but Sakura didn't speak.

He fixed his gaze on the far wall. "It won't get easier," he mumbled.

Perplexed, she turned to face him full-on. Her brow creased.

"What won't?" she questioned.

"Seeing that. Wondering if people would be alive if you had made other decisions."

Sakura dropped her gaze. Had she been that easy to read?

"Those questions aren't ever going to go away, and they don't get any easier to answer," he paused, but went on, "but dwelling on them won't save anyone else."

Now this was the man she knew. The one that read her mind and was completely in sync with her on the battlefield and off.

"Hmm, I know," she trailed off. Sakura closed her eyes and cradled her head in the palm of her hand. There was no way she could hide anything from him, so why even try?

A warm hand gripped her shoulder and very lightly pulled her closer to him.

Her lips perked up in a small smile. The man tried, he really did. Captain or not, apparently Kakashi didn't feel as though anything between them had changed.

A heavy thud came from the next room over and all sounds of scuffling immediately ceased. Tension leaked through the walls; the room next to theirs was worryingly quiet. Kakashi let out a long sigh.

" –n't believe I'm stuck with them," he muttered. "They better not have broken anything important."

Sakura let our nervous giggle. She really didn't want to be in other rest of her team's shoes at that moment.

Kakashi hefted himself off of the bed with exaggerated reluctance and padded over to the door. Half in the hallway, he hesitated.

"You know," he began awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck, "you can come and see me, or something, if you," he paused, looking for the rights words to express himself. "If anything about the mission needs to be discussed," he ended.

How was the warrior that she saw this morning the same person as the friend who stood in front of her, slouching in her doorway, awkwardly offering his company?

"Thanks," she replied softly. "I think I'm going to go into town to buy some more supplies soon, but after can I come see you to bandage you up? I could make some medical notes for the mission report too, if you want some help with that."

"That would be appreciated, Sakura. I'll see you later then."

He turned and walk out of the room as noiselessly as he came. Her teammates were undoubtedly going to experience another bout of his wrath, but she knew that he wasn't truly mad at them – he just found a perverse pleasure in making them squirm. But what was he going to do to them this time?

As she lay back on the bed and pondered how Kakashi managed to tie a man to a tree branch without waking said man or the bees, she didn't realise until much later the absence of one thing.

Her headache was gone.

Author's Notes:

1) I'm nearly done high school! After I write my calculus exam, I'm free to write whenever I want! Oh, the possibilities… *stares off into the distance, starry-eyed* I can't wait. So many story ideas, so many updates to come…

2) Reviews make me deliriously happy. Embarrassingly so, actually. (Anonymous reviews are welcome, although I would love to be able to reply to thank you for reviewing).Thanks for reading and I appreciate all feedback.

Love, KaKiara.