Sakura didn't flinch when Kakashi came tapping at her window, asking for entrance at two in the morning. She didn't do a double take at his bloodshot eyes, or question the stench of alcohol rolling off him in near tangible waves. Sakura let him in, and simply gathered him into her arms. Daylight slowly approached as soft whispers and gentle caresses turned into moans and rough, carnal scratches along each other's bodies.

There were no lack of rumors surrounding the relationship between the enigma that was the infamous copy-nin, Kakashi Hatake and the widely known beauty that was the Godaime's apprentice, Sakura Haruno. This particular topic sparked curiosity within civilians and shinobi alike.

It was also not so much a secret, as an openly exposed fact that the two highly regarded shinobi had problems. Problems with drinking, pills and sex.

No one could overlook how Kakashi sat at the bar; downing bottles after bottles of sake till he was so drunk he could hardly stay balanced in his seat. No one could ignore how Sakura spent her days locked in the medical lab, overworking herself. Yet no one would say a word about it. The bartender would hesitate, but he would in the end, still push the next bottle over to the copy-nin wordlessly. The nurses saw when Sakura slipped a few pills she wasn't prescribed into her mouth, but they pressed their lips tightly together and didn't relay what they had seen.

Maybe it was because they didn't care enough; maybe it was because they didn't feel like they had the right to say anything about it. After all, it wasn't them who'd lost their precious people in the span of less than a year – and for Kakashi Hatake, twice over.

Kakashi is oddly detached and strangely unsurprised when the news arrives. He'd been somewhere between Suna and Wind, and it was in the climax of the largest war the shinobi world had ever seen when a scroll with bolded red words was delivered to him.

'DECEASED' it read. An endless list of shinobi names came after that. He remembers how his tired eyes had scanned the list, how his headache was so bad that day.

When he saw those two names on the list, with their pictures right next to it - the two boys that he had grown used to seeing everyday - he quietly rolled the scroll back up and burnt it with a simple katon jutsu. The jonin who had been travelling with him allowed him a brief moment of silence, before giving his short condolences. They then proceeded to pack up their tents and resume their journey. Kakashi didn't grieve, because death was part of shinobi life and he still had his mission to complete– eliminating the enemies in Wind. How was he to do that if tears clouded his vision? He tore through the enemies a little more cruelly than he usually did, and a bit more viciously than needed, but that was as far as his revenge went.

It did little justice to the boiling, heated rage and hatred that prickled beneath his skin and ran through his veins. But he knew it was useless. The Nins that had killed his students were just doing their job, as he was. It was their duty. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sakura witnessed their deaths before her very own eyes – her very own terrified eyes.

Battle had been raging in the border of Konoha against enemy Nins and while she was needed on the field, she was even more important as a medic, for she healed twice as quickly as other medic-nins. Herself and a few medics had set up a makeshift tent, nothing more than bits of cloth draped over branches and some medical kits. Injured shinobis were brought in hordes to the tent and she had been covered in blood. Bodies of those she couldn't save were piling up on the side, shoved carelessly to make space for those that had a chance. Cries of pain reverberated as procedures took place without proper anesthesia.

The medics around her were dwindling in number, some retching and choking down their vomit at the sheer number of dead bodies and the stench of it, some freezing up at the sight of so much blood and the grotesqueness of the injuries. None of these had been written in their textbooks and the injuries they healed in the clean, sanitized hospital left them wholly unprepared.

It wasn't as if Sakura couldn't smell the stench of blood and tears, of infections and charred flesh. In fact, she could almost taste the metallic tinge on her tongue and it nauseated her to the very core. It wrenched at her heart to simply ignore those that were too far-gone to save. But she ignored the ache in her heart because it was war and there was no time for sentimentalism or for her to mope about her principles and ideals. If she tried hard enough, she could simply ignored the blood that stained her hands and turn away from those accusing eyes.

Her calm and professionalism all but fell apart when a pair of onyx eyes look back at her. She stares for a moment, before he throws up blood all over her.

She wanted to curse the heavens because this would not be the way Sasuke Uchiha comes to an end. It would not. But it was, because Sakura has no antidote for the unknown poison that was in the enemy's knife and the toxic purple is rapidly spreading from his arm to his heart.

They are miles away from anywhere she can come up with an antidote and she thinks it might be too late. All the same, she would not let Team 7 lose Sasuke only months after getting him back. She opens her mouth to give orders to the wreck of a medic that stood beside her, quaking in fear. But before she can even move, he suddenly grasps the front of her shirt, and mumbles, "No." Sakura would slap him, but she's too worried about the blood that has suddenly started trickling down his nose, "What are you talking about, asshole? Let go." She tries to joke but the urgency in her voice is apparent.

Sasuke shakes his head weakly and she rips his shirt open, and the purple is already creeping up to his shoulders. He chokes out, "Don't." Sakura blinks away the tears that blur her vision and murmurs, "Shut up, stupid. You're going to be okay." His onyx eyes are the gentlest they have ever been, the clearest she has ever seen them and he is looking at her with an unidentifiable emotion, like he's trying to memorize her features. It only makes her tears slip out faster, and her lips tremble. His voice is raspy, and her tears fall onto his cheeks and mix with his own, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Sakura, I'm so fucking sorry. Don't cry, Sakura, don't cry. Don't cry for me."

Sakura's cheeks are wet, her head is pounding and her heart hurts but she smiles as brightly as she can, and despite the way her voice trembles, she declares, "I'm not crying." Sasuke smiles back at her, and it's a small smile that quirks the corners of his lips, but it means more to her than anything and it tells her what he cannot say.

I'm sorry for leaving. I'm sorry for hurting you. I'm sorry for the things I've done, the mistakes I've made. I'm sorry I didn't show you love when I had the chance to. I wish I could do it all over again. I want to love you. I love you.

She can't say for sure when his body grew cold but they eventually move his still form aside and she moves on wordlessly, to the next body.

Two weeks later, the group of them are ambushed as they try to move into Suna, and she was rapidly running out of chakra. The fight had been going on for a good three hours and she had spent most of her chakra the previous night, desperately healing the survivors of the last battle. The last battle, the one before the last, the one that was taking place now, and the one they would have maybe tomorrow. The battles all blended into one and she didn't try to keep track. If she did, she would picture the corpses upon corpses that piled as far as the eye could see. The corpses of people that had fallen by her hand.

Her bloodied, tainted hand.

She was drawn out of her internal monologue and mechanical movements when the ninja on her left had quickly relayed to her the news that squad 18 had been sent out to aid them and it lifted Sakura's heart, if only a little. Naruto was on squad 18, wasn't he? God knows that she needed to see him now.

She's barely dodging the hits at this point, movements slow and sluggish, and her calf is torn open - a horrible gash so deep that she could see her bones. Sakura turns and places a solid kick with her uninjured leg that collapses the enemy's head in when she sees Naruto's squad entering the battle with them. She notices how members of his squad are injured, and realizes that they must have been attacked even before joining this battle. Sakura is desperately looking for Naruto, and Sakura is so distracted she doesn't notice the man who's ready to shove an axe into her body.

She hears Naruto's familiar voice and his cry of 'Sakura!' and she turns back, only to be knocked to the floor with a hot splatter of red on her face. Naruto, with his vibrant blue eyes, has a massive axe impaled through his body, along with all the other injuries that litter his already battered body. Her joy at seeing her ball of sunshine is short-lived. She scrambles to get up, and drags him off to the side, quickly trying to heal him. But she can't seem to find enough energy in her to do it. Her hands won't work the way she wants them to, and her chakra refuses to go where she commands.

Naruto simply looks up her, trusting and believing, even as her hands slip on her pouch, even as she shakes when she takes out the painkillers. She curses when she can't get the bottle to open, and when she cuts herself on the sharp edge by accident. She finally gets to the pills and she quickly slips two between his cracked lips. A ragged sob rips through her body without her permission, because she can see the image of the dead Sasuke in her mind and she is so scared of losing Naruto too. Naruto suddenly grips her hand tightly in his, and her hands are freezing cold but his are pleasantly heated. She vaguely notes that it should be the other way around – wasn't he the one dying? "It's okay, Sakura. It's okay." His smile is warm and he's like the sun, so kind, so loving and full of life. Why can't she save him? Her own eyes feel like lead and she vaguely notices that her stomach is oozing blood from an injury she can't remember receiving.

But she won't give up like this. Hell if she wouldn't save him. She lost Sasuke, she will not lose Naruto too. Her muscles shake and scream in protest as she pulls her hand out of his grip, and the familiar green glow pulses over the wound. She grits her teeth against the pain. Naruto lets her do it, and silently caresses her hair, and looks at her with those bright, bright eyes like she hung up the moon and the stars. Sakura sees it clearly when light begins to fade from his eyes, and when the blood won't stop pouring out. She sees it when the green glow stops emanating from her hands because she's exhausted quite literally all of her chakra. He pulls her close and presses kisses over her forehead, nose, cheeks, and lips. The kisses taste like blood, sweat and his lips are chapped, but it doesn't matter. He is achingly sweet and she wants to scream.

She wonders why she hasn't been struck down by lightning or some sort with the number of times she had sworn at the skies and spat on the names of the deities.

"I love you, don't you forget that, Sakura-chan. It'll be alright," he beams up at her and it's so bright, so joyful, and so very Naruto-like and she bites her lips so hard it bleeds but she can't hold back the choked, strangled cries that escapes, "Hush, don't cry. You are lovely when you smile, Sakura-chan. So don't ever cry, not for me."

It sounds so much like what Sasuke said and she forces her tears to stop, and she makes herself quiet. If they don't want her to cry, she won't. He looks happy when she smiles, "I won't cry if you don't want me to." She dries her tears with her sleeve and strokes his golden hair until his eyes fall shut and never open again.

Sakura throws herself recklessly into battle after battle and laughs in the face of her enemies, a devil-may-care smirk playing on her lips as she mercilessly rips their flesh into tatters. She almost relishes in the way their blood splatters on the ground, and she wants to clap her hands at the sound of their pained groans and last breathes. Her comrades stare at her in a mix of horror and morbid wonder when she attacks their enemies with an animalistic elegance - snarls ripping from her throat and lean muscles all coiled and tensed.

You shouldn't do that, they say. Don't jump into battle so carelessly.

What did it matter? She remembers two pairs of eyes. Onyx and sapphire. They belonged to two boys. Different like moon and sun. Like night and day. Her boys. And they were dead.

The only thing that keeps her not falling off the edge completely is Kakashi Hatake. His image in her mind was what she clung onto when the nights were difficult, when her hands trembled so hard she couldn't even tie her wristguard right.

Sakura feels a rush of relief and a myriad of emotions when she sees the copy-nin at a base camp.

Kakashi is alive. He is safe. He is here.

She doesn't know what to feel, and she can tell he is the same as her, even though the mask obscures most of his features. Then she realizes it doesn't matter what they feel – they could figure the tangled mess that was their emotions later.

So she runs as fast as her legs can carry her and throws herself onto him, fingernails digging sharply into his sinewy back and she buries her face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in. The smell of sweat, blood, musk and a scent that was so familiarly Kakashi. He reciprocates and supports her weight with calloused, strong hands, and he smiles for the first time in what seemed like forever as her silky pink hair blinded his vision.

They quietly sit in the tent and Sakura spends her time running her fingers through his silver hair, and tracing the lines of his bare face with a quiet sort of desperation, as if he would vanish if she so much took her eyes off him. Kakashi leans into her touch, and he finds comfort in her embrace, in her slender curves and presses kisses onto her slightly roughened hands.

Boundaries are blurred. Neither of them questioned what they were doing. It didn't matter anymore. Everything hurt and it was all Sakura felt these days - a dull, constant ache that pulsed in her chest. All she knew was that seeing Kakashi, touching him, made it better. All of a sudden, there's a strange urge, an uncontrollable need that rises up between them and Sakura finds herself on her back, Kakashi's mouth on hers and hips grinding against her own. She kisses back twice as hard and rips his back bloody with her nails as he grips her waist so hard it bruises.

When they emerge from their tent with the salty scent of sex in the air that didn't take an Inuzuka to recognise and donning crumpled clothes, no one says a thing. Not even when they request to be on the same squad.

At the burial, Kakashi openly sheds the tears that Sakura could not. She could not, because the words rang in her head, a constant screeching, "Don't cry for me."

And because Kakashi knew that, he cried for the both of them. The emotionless, calm, apathetic Kakashi Hatake wept at the foot of their graves for all of Konoha to see and he sobbed for Sasuke, the avenger who never got a shred of happiness from his actions and Naruto, the golden boy who should've become the hokage and lived the life he so wholly, completely deserved. He cried for Sakura, and he cried for himself.

The days after that are tough. Some days were a lot harder than others.

When days like that happen for Kakashi, he feels so numb that he wants to stab a kunai into his palm or slap himself silly just to reassure himself that he can still feel. Dead man walking. His eyes are empty and people get chills looking at the cold, glacial grey when he gets into moods like these. Sakura makes it all better. She helps him feel again. She takes his cold hands into her own and warms them, she kisses him gently, then viciously, nipping and drawing blood and she gives him bruises that hurt so good.

"When days like that happen for Sakura, pain is all she feels and she can hardly breathe without it hurting so goddamn bad. Sakura can't stand the sight of blood on days like these because then all she can think about is how her boys died in front of her, their blood soaking into her skin. She feels so guilty that she could die - she's a medic. Her job is to heal and she couldn't even do that. She let them die because she was fucking weak. Kakashi makes it better. He holds her close, he whispers sweet nothings into her ear and he is her lifeline.

Tsunade doesn't know what to do. Kakashi Hatake is a broken man, and Sakura Haruno was not much better. She doesn't realize how bad it is, even though she's heard rumors, until she finds Kakashi drinking a ridiculous amount of sake at her favorite bar. She slides in beside him and he gazes at her through hazy, glazed over eyes. They begin to speak, and it's been a long time since Kakashi opened up to her. He is beyond drunk when she cautiously asks, "Does it still hurt?" She doesn't need to say anymore, because he knows what she is asking. Kakashi mumbles his answer before slipping out of his seat and staggering out of the bar to god knows where, leaving Tsunade to try and drink until she forgets his answer. "It never stops hurting."

She still holds out hope for Sakura until the ANBU captain decides to come waltzing into her office covered in blood, reporting her mission monotonously as if she wasn't inches from death. She sits her down and begins to heal her before she dies from blood loss or something of the sort. Tsunade realizes belatedly that Sakura is crying, when wet drops fall onto her hands. Sakura hasn't cried since their deaths. Tsunade knows that it isn't because her wounds hurt, but she asks all the same, "Where does it hurt?" She gets her answer and she wished that she never asked, "In places that not even you can heal, Hokage-sama."

Tsunade doesn't even notice when it happens, but she is happy when she finally sees it. They're getting better. Slowly, but surely. The two shinobi would never be the same, never wholly pieced together, but they were moving away from the edge of insanity and destruction.

It begins with Kakashi flashing her the familiar and sorely missed eye-crinkling smile. It begins with Sakura declining a mission so she could celebrate her birthday. It all begins when the two start to socialize more, and smile more. Real smiles, not the empty ones that they had learnt to dispense at will. She realizes that instead of Sakura and Kakashi overworking themselves to their deaths, or drinking their sorrows away, they sit at the memorial, and talk. Tsunade doesn't know what they speak about but it was a good change from pills and blood.

They speak about a vast array of things.

Kakashi tells Sakura his story about Obito and Rin. Sakura tells Kakashi her story about her dead parents. Sometimes, they don't speak about serious things. They talk about the sky being blue. Kakashi says it's from the reflection of the sea. Sakura argues and says that it's originally the colour of the sky. Neither of them bother to check if they are correct.

Tsunade gladly accepts their wedding invitation, and cheers the loudest when the two kiss at the altar. Tsunade is the one to deliver their child and she is the one to defend them against the council when they refuse to enroll their kid into the academy earlier.

The power hungry councils had positively lunged at the idea of having Hatake Kakashi and Haruno Sakura's child graduate early and joining the ANBU ranks as soon as possible. After all, Obito, as their child had been named, was the son of the S-classed copy-nin and the deadly kunoichi that had rapidly become one of the most feared ANBU operatives. Tsunade had been dead set against it and she knew it was the right choice when she saw Obito playing with other kids as any child his age should.

Graduating early or not, Obito would become a great shinobi. Not to mention a good looking one - he had girls fawning over him already, with his pale, silvery hair and piercing green eyes. He carried himself in the same lazy, laid back manner that Kakashi did, and fought with the viciousness and fire that Sakura did.

It wasn't a perfect, fairytale story. Lives were lost, pain was present but it was more than enough.