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It was high summer in Konoha, so hot the trees seemed to droop, so hot the very mountains looked like they might melt, and yet here Kakashi was, sparring, most improbably, with Sakura Haruno. He blinked down at his former student, discreetly poked one of several rapidly swelling bruises she'd just given him, and pondered the strange circularities of life yet again.

"I miss the old days, sort of," Sakura said breathlessly, flat on her back and staring up at the sky with glassy green eyes that reflected the scattered clouds. He tried to suppress a nervous twitch; she had a way of reading his mind, especially annoying since his usual defence mechanisms of dirty jokes and blatant pornography-flashing only made her laugh. "You know, just- being a genin, still being excited about missions, excited about the team. When everything was still fun. I should have enjoyed it while I had the chance."

There were livid bruises on her pale knuckles, violet and sickly yellow, and her pink nailpolish was chipped. When she was having a good week, her nails were always pink or glittery green; if she'd lost patients at work, or had a bad mission, they'd be bare. Kakashi shuddered before he could stop himself, pulling at his collar. "Hindsight's 20/20," he offered at last, rather lamely. "You couldn't have known war was coming."

She shot him a glance and said dryly, "Ohh, no, as a kunoichi, fighting was not at all in my career plan. Totally unexpected. Shocking."

"Eh," he mumbled, still panting a little, before flopping down onto the grass of the training grounds too, plucking a few blades and shredding them absentmindedly. Why bother standing when he could not stand? "You know what I meant."

"Yeah," she agreed, reaching a hand straight up, like she wanted to snatch the sun from the sky. The shadows of her fingers fell like prison bars across her sweaty face. "I'm glad we're training partners, though, is what I was getting at. I mean, it's sort of like the old days."

Not really, he thought, testing his chakra levels gingerly and wondering just how sore he'd be tomorrow. He was grateful- Kakashi's 'old days' consisted of very little happiness and a lot of blood, and his 'now' was much better, mostly because a certain incredibly pushy and stubborn pink-haired kunoichi refused to let him sit alone in his apartment and brood. It wasn't at all like the old days of Team 7, though, no matter what she said. Naruto, as the future Hokage, was off somewhere in Konoha, busy learning how to be a politician via Tsunade's dubious example, and Sasuke was- somewhere. Sakura was twenty-two now, solid, lethal, wanted in at least eight countries, and confident in a way he'd never have predicted back when she was a shallow, boy-crazy genin.

No, time passed and everything changed, whether he wanted it to or not. This friendship was something new, and it hadn't been nearly as bad as he'd expected. In fact, he'd almost call it fun, if not her angsty reminiscences and the distressing mind-reading- and the damned butterflies he'd been getting in his stomach. She cast him another narrow glance from the corner of her eye, pink brows furrowing, and then she got to her feet. "Let's go again," she said briskly.

He was deeply grateful for the change of subject, even as he was taken aback- when exactly had Sakura learned to read him so well?

She was staring at the sun again, eyes watering. Maybe she just didn't like remembering the things she'd lost, the people she'd failed, any more than he did. Maybe she had ghosts, too.

Maybe she was lonely, and he hadn't noticed, the same way he hadn't noticed the imminent implosion of Team 7 all those years ago, until it was too late. Why else would she want to spend time with him, anyway, of all people? After Sasuke left and she'd begun her healer training, they'd mostly stopped speaking, and then the war had happened and there'd been no room for anything but desperate survival. Only now was Konoha beginning to settle shakily into its new bones. He'd thought of her as a shadow firmly in his past, someone to wave at when they crossed paths in the marketplace, but nothing more- and then she'd come to find him almost a year ago, offering friendship out of nowhere with her typical open-hearted generosity. It stunned him a little, to think a person so pure could forgive him.

Though she had plenty of blood on her bruised hands, too.

"Let's do something else," he said, rather before he knew he was going to say anything at all.

She squinted at him suspiciously, and he promptly whipped out his book and buried his nose in it, praying to all the gods that his embarrassed red flush wasn't visible above his mask.

"Like?" she said finally.

"Ah-" He hadn't thought that far ahead, which was nothing new, but still awkward. "I bet my water dragon can beat up your water dragon?" he tried, feeling foolish.

She snorted in a very unsettlingly Tsunade-esque manner, strapping her gloves back on. It was distressingly hot when she cracked her knuckles. "Oh really? Big talk, Copy Ninja."

"It's only talk if you can't back it up," he corrected, grinning and raising a brow. Sakura grinned back, and the ghosts faded, just a little.

Naruto's attempt to contort his face into 'Displeased Hokage' was quite possibly the most hilarious thing Kakashi had ever seen, and judging by Sakura's shaking shoulders as she sat next to him, she felt the same way.

"You're both in big trouble," Naruto began ominously, and then he stalled, blinking at the ceiling for inspiration.

"Go on, then," a very irritated Tsunade prodded, pouring herself another dish of sake and surveying the scene with glinting eyes.

Naruto's scowl deepened. Kakashi was irresistibly reminded of Pakkun, though he was deeply grateful the pug never wore head-to-toe, eye-searing orange. "You guys did a bad thing with your stupid water jutsu battle to the death," Naruto said at last, tripping over his own feet as he flip-flopped between pacing and waving his finger sternly in their faces. "Now we gotta pay to rebuild the bridge you destroyed, which apparently is gonna take a lot of money we don't have in the budget? Right, old lady?"

Tsunade's pigtails were askew, a dangerous sign. Kakashi cast a considering eye at the open window of her office. "Don't call me that," she snarled, clutching her sake. "And yes." Clearly constant exposure to Naruto was wearing on her nerves; Kakashi could sympathize. How Iruka had survived Naruto's Academy days, he'd never know.

"Right! So, uh, I guess… you guys should have to pay!" Naruto said triumphantly, jabbing his finger at Sakura.

She moved it slowly out of her face, grimacing; Kakashi caught a distinct whiff of ramen. "Why don't we just fix the bridge ourselves, for free?"

"...Oh," said Naruto thoughtfully. "That'd work."

Kakashi disguised his chuckle as a cough. "Yeah," said Sakura, with astonishing patience.

"Okay. Well, go do that, then." Naruto added a commanding flourish with the Pointing Finger of Judgement, then looked to Tsunade for approval. "Hokage-y enough, old lady? Hey, don't you get drunk again, it's not even noon! Gimme that- hey, stop it! Shit!"

Kakashi, never above a little prudent cowardice, dove through the window to the sounds of Naruto screaming and pottery shattering, with Sakura hot on his heels, giggling wildly.

It was Thursday morning before they managed to get started on the bridge. Sakura was much busier than it seemed possible for one small woman to be, though she did drop by his apartment on Wednesday with a six-pack of his favorite beer and an apology for canceling on him four times.

He'd stood there in front of his fridge staring at the beer for quite a while after she left- the only other person who knew what he liked to drink was Gai, who obviously didn't count, since he was insane. Kakashi was fairly certain he'd be insane soon too, if he didn't get a handle on his silly, scandalous, and entirely inappropriate crush. Emotions were damned inconvenient things, and anyway he was far too old to do something as undignified as pining after a pretty girl.

"So what do you do, exactly, that keeps you so busy?" Kakashi asked after a while, unable to contain his curiosity. Their conversations weren't usually very personal, mostly because Sakura seemed to sense how uncomfortable and edgy that sort of thing made him, but it was past time he learned about her life. He was mildly surprised to find he really wanted to know.

She laughed a little, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand and leaving a streak of grey cement, stark against her tan. "If you ever actually went to the hospital, you'd know."

"I go," he protested sulkily. Damn Yamato for refusing to just grow them a new bridge and have it done with.

"When you're literally bleeding to death! I've seen your records, Kakashi Hatake, I know how much it takes to force you through those doors." She pointed a finger at him in a manner not unlike Naruto's, though she was much more impressively intimidating. Probably it was the biceps- the very nice biceps. Or the equally toned thighs. When the hell had he started noticing anything about her thighs? Gods, he was in way over his head. Probably he should be more panicked than he was, but the mischievous way she wrinkled her nose soothed some of the pain. "I'm head of the neurology and ortho departments. Uh, bones and brains, basically. But I do a lot of trauma too, since that's what we get most of."

"Ah, I see." She knew his favorite beer and yet he hadn't even known the most basic facets of her life.

Sakura shrugged, a little self-consciously, and slapped more mortar onto her neat line of bricks. "Yeah."

Kakashi began stirring the bucket of cement in a desultory manner, sweating as the sun beat mercilessly down. He hated sweating, despite the depressing fact that he was forced to do it a lot as a ninja. "You know, Sakura, I think I hear a cat calling my name, it's probably stuck up in a tree, poor little thing-"

She snagged him neatly by the back of his jounin vest before he managed to slither two steps towards freedom. "Oh, no, you don't! No escaping! The water fight was your idea!"

He got rather hypnotized by the constellations of her freckles for a moment, and then, aghast at himself, said darkly, "I still won."

Sakura rolled her eyes extravagantly. "Barely, and it was only 'cause I slipped in the mud. Don't any of your thousand jutsus relate to building bridges?"

He sighed miserably and, foiled, resumed stirring the cement. "Tragically, no."

"That is tragic," Sakura agreed, scowling. She'd gotten more grime on her face somehow, which made her even cuter; it was completely unfair, and Kakashi was beginning to suspect he was at a distinct disadvantage, if not totally outmatched. "Totally suckish. Listen, let's just go steal some genin from the Academy and tell them it's a mission or something, make them do this."

He blinked at her. "That is a completely dastardly, sneaky, underhanded way to get out of doing a little hard work, Sakura."

"Which means you're in, then?" she said slyly.

Who the hell did she think she was dealing with? "Of course I'm in. Let's go."

"Look at the wee baby ninja go. They're doing such a good job," Sakura cooed, taking a luxurious swig of her beer. "Ahhh."

Kakashi, never one to deny credit where credit was due, raised his own beer in her direction; she clinked them together happily. Watching from the shade was much, much better, and perhaps the bridge would be a tad lopsided now, but he'd bamboozle Naruto into thinking it was the new style or something. "I guess I taught you one thing, at least."

She snickered. "At least I never picked up the porn habit. Naruto, though-"

Kakashi sprayed beer all over his boots. "You're kidding."

Sakura winced. "Unfortunately, no."

"Do I want to know how you know that about Naruto?" She shook her head vehemently, going rather pale, and Kakashi chuckled before settling back more comfortably against their shade tree. The beer was ice-cold, thanks to an interesting bit of chakra manipulation by Sakura, the breeze was warm, and the sun, shining through the dancing leaves, was painting dappled glints on the lush grass. It was, all in all, a pleasant way to spend an afternoon- until one of the genin gave a shrill scream, swatted at something, and toppled clean off the half-finished bridge into the water.

"Should we rescue him?" Kakashi pondered. "I mean, by this point they really should know how to walk on water. You picked that up fairly quickly, if I remember."

"True," she said, not at all modestly. She scrunched up her face in thought, then sighed. "But it'll be sad if he drowns. Come on, get up, help me."

"Help you? I know for a fact you're strong enough to pull a hundred kids out of the water," he protested, but he got to his feet anyway, chugging the rest of his beer through his mask.

"Doesn't it taste all… cotton-y?" she asked, heading towards the half-bridge and the children, who were running in circles and making incredibly unpleasant, high-pitched sounds of panic.

"No," he lied cheerfully, strolling easily next to her on the river's surface and giving the kids a little wave. "Is that why you wanted to start training with me, then? To win that bet you made with Naruto and be the first to see my face?"

They pulled the sputtering boy out of the water together; he coughed, choked, flailed for a moment, burped water onto Sakura's hand, and then said meekly, "Thank you, Haruno-sensei. It was-"

"A bug, I saw," she laughed, adjusting his crooked hitai-ate. "You know we live in a forest, with lots and lots of bugs, right? And you'll have to get used to them?"

He looked mutinous, but only muttered, "Ye-eeees."

She patted him on the head fondly and then sent him flying back up toward his comrades, who dove out of the way with impressive speed. At least they had that down.

"It wasn't to see under your stupid mask, idiot," she told Kakashi quietly, lingering atop the river and swaying gently with the rippling surface, watching as tiny fish rose from the emerald depths to investigate her boots. Her thoughtful gaze was just as translucently green as the water, like good jade, and the blazing sun reflected off her hair like a fiery halo. For a moment, Kakashi was reminded of the way he'd felt his first time in temple, decades ago, as a tiny, amazed, overawed boy clutching his father's big hand.

She glanced at him when he didn't say anything, but that was all. She crouched down to wriggle her fingers at the fish and let him think. "Then why?" he said, after a while.

Sakura shrugged carefully. He was heartened to see that she was taking his question seriously; usually, except while on the battlefield, he felt about half a step behind everyone else, but Sakura didn't mind slowing down. "It seemed like you needed a friend. And then it occurred to me, you know, I could use more friends too. And then I found out you like the same shitty beer as me, so obviously it's fate."

"Fate," he repeated, trying valiantly to keep his voice from coming out as a squeak.

"I know, I know, fate's out to get you and all that. Just shut up and enjoy the moment, Hatake."

He considered that, then said, "Fine. Is it really considered shitty?"

Sakura waggled her eyebrows. "According to Ino, yes. But she also thinks that it's totally normal to bedazzle your vagina, so, you know, take it with a grain of salt."

Kakashi burst out laughing, harder than he'd laughed in weeks, so hard that he lost his chakra control and fell into the water with a splash and a choked yelp.

Sakura was clutching her sides and cackling when he resurfaced. "You're like a genin!" she wheezed, staggering all about.

Now that was a step too far. Kakashi dove back under, snatched her ankle, and yanked.

Naruto's eyes were positively bulging this time, and a vein was pounding visibly in his temple.

"He's sort of getting the whole 'scary Hokage' thing now," Sakura whispered, flicking her bangs out of her face.

"Mm," Kakashi agreed, crinkling his eye appeasingly at Naruto, who only looked angrier.

"You two destroyed the bridge again," Naruto bellowed, pulling at his hair. "With your stupid water fight! And now the entire Academy is learning water jutsus just so they can have water fights, Iruka's losing his mind, and the whole village is falling apart because a bunch of crazy little kids think you're cool, and that means I have to do paperwork!"

"Aww," said Sakura, flashing a winning smile. "Sorry, Nar. I know how you hate paperwork. Want me to help you with it?"

He goggled at her, then visibly deflated. "Really? You'd do that?"

"Sure." Another smile. "I mean, this was partially my fault, so why don't you just let me take care of it?"

Tsunade, lurking in the background with her trusty sake cups, gave an overloud snort of disdain, clearly seeing right through Sakura's little ploy; Naruto ignored it, thankfully. "Okay!"

Ten minutes later, Kakashi and Sakura were trotting down the winding stairs of the Hokage tower, both of them clutching an armful of files. Her green eyes twinkled merrily at him over her stack.

"That was a sneaky, sneaky thing to do," he told her approvingly. "I'm so proud."

She beamed. "Right? Listen, wanna get some Ichiraku's and take all these budget forms back to my place? I bet if we really buckle down we can get through it all by midnight."

"Haven't you gotten tired of ramen yet?"

"I'm teammates with Naruto. It's in my blood."

"Ah, true. Still. As a doctor, you must know that all that sodium-"

"Is bad for me, yes, I knooow." Her wide smile nearly stopped his healing heart. "So?"

Kakashi took a moment to gather his wits, then said weakly, "It's a date."