A/N: Another old fic I never posted here. Set either sometime between Part 1 and Part 2, or else sometime vaguely after canon, I guess? Naruto and Sasuke are who-knows-where. Somewhere not in this fic. It's not really important.

Written for shortitude on LJ, because, as she said, Kakashi totally has this coming to him.

On a Thursday morning at approximately 0930 hours, Hatake Kakashi slouches through the door of the Hokage's office to turn in his mission report from the previous day's assignment.

"What's this?" Tsunade says with a wry smile as he hands her the two (largely empty, messily filled-out, and slightly crumpled) pages. "You're only half an hour late turning this in. Who are you and what have you done with Hatake Kakashi?"

Kakashi doesn't dignify that with an answer (it was more rhetorical anyway), and the Hokage chuckles as she briefly scans the pages before dropping them atop one of the many teetering piles that cover her desk. "Sakura must be a good influence. And since she turned her mission report in two hours early, I guess that cancels out your thirty minutes."

"That girl is going to be an amazing kunoichi someday," the copy ninja comments mildly, shoving his hands into his pockets and staring sideways out the window, already thinking about what he wants for dinner and which Icha Icha book he's going to spend the rest of the day reading.

Tsunade briefly arches one slim, golden eyebrow. "Someday, huh? I'd say she already is, no thanks to you."

That startles him a bit, and the silver-haired jounin doesn't stick around long after that: the Hokage is busy and there's no reason for him to waste her time, but the real reason is those words. They bother him just a little, a niggling sense of doubt worming its way deeper and deeper. It's certainly true that Tsunade had taught Sakura more than he had, and that they hadn't seen much of each other of late, but did that really mean he hadn't helped her at all? Did that make him a bad sensei?

After walking in circles around Konoha for nearly an hour while trying (and subsequently failing) to think about something else, he eventually gives up and decides to go find her.

She's at the training grounds, of course. She's been there for a few hours already, too, judging by the amount of sweat drenching the back of her shirt and plastering locks of her hair to her face. As he saunters up, she's pounding away at a dilapidated-looking dummy, and a part of him is surprised that said dummy is the only piece of equipment in the vicinity that's showing any signs of abuse; she must be practising her control, not that she really needs to.

He watches her silently for a while, gauging her stance, the force of her blows, searching for things she could improve, trying to find something to say or some piece of advice to offer or maybe just trying to convince himself that he should forget about this and go home.

He still hasn't managed to do any of those things when Sakura finally pauses, panting, and half-turns to face him, flexing her heavily taped hands and sounding just slightly annoyed.

"Did you need something, or were you just planning on standing there and watching me? Because it's starting to creep me out a little, Kakashi-sensei."

"Just passing by," he says offhandedly, shoving his hands a little deeper into his pockets and slouching even more, though he doesn't stop looking at her or make any move to leave. The look she's giving him shifts from vague annoyance to equally vague confusion tempered by a hint of skepticism, and she fiddles needlessly with the end of the length of tape supporting one of her wrists as she stares back at him, trying to see through his obvious lie to his real reason for being there.

"Did shishou send you?" There's a note of concern in her tone now; she's obviously thinking of her two missing teammates, wondering if Kakashi's come to give her some sort of bad news. He didn't come here to worry her, so he has to say something, and it ends up being the first thing that comes to mind.

"Actually, I was just wondering if you'd be interested in sparring sometime. Your hand-to-hand combat skills could still use a little work—"

"I know," Sakura cuts him off, irritation returning as the primary emotion on her face and in her voice. "Shishou has been working with me on that, she's just been too busy lately to spend much time sparring with me—"

"—Which is why I'm offering. You were my student before you were hers, you know." Sakura rolls her eyes and starts to turn away when he adds, "I just wanted to make sure I taught you as much as I could, since I might not have done that before."

It almost sounds like an apology-Kakashi seems just a little off-balance and uncertain-and there had been a time that Sakura would have let him struggle on until he finally did manage to string together enough fittingly contrite words; but while she can't help taking some pleasure in watching him squirm a little, she's through feeling sorry for herself for being useless, for being left all alone, for having her sensei leave her to get over her weakness on her own instead of working with her to help her through it. That time has passed. She's over it now, she did find a way to get over it on her own, and she isn't taking even a half-step back into the mire of self-pity.

"It's fine, Kakashi-sensei," she says with a small smile. "You don't have to worry about that. I'm proud to be Tsunade-shishou's student. I've come so far, and learned so much—"

Her old sensei gives her a dejected look, nearly approaching a pout. "You make it sound like you never learned anything from me. I did teach you some things."

Sakura arches an eyebrow, mirroring the very expression Tsunade had turned on Kakashi scarcely an hour earlier. It's a little unnerving, actually, how close of a resemblance there is between the two kunoichi at that moment.

"Yeah? Like what?"

"Like the importance of teamwork," he answers immediately, only to see Sakura's other eyebrow join the first in its apparent attempt to hit her hairline.

"So 'teamwork' is why you focused solely on Sasuke for a while, and then all but abandoned me when Naruto and Sasuke left Konoha? If I hadn't gone to Tsunade-shishou and begged her to train me—"

"How about looking underneath the underneath?" Kakashi interjects, ignoring the fact that Sakura has him over the barrel on that first point.

"Which is supposed to mean what to a bunch of clueless, impatient twelve-year-old kids? We all thought that either you just really liked riddles, or you were telling us to watch out for that underground attack of yours."

"…I taught you to climb trees?"

She actually laughs a little at that, turning her back on him and laying into the practise dummy again. "Yeah, and then instead of taking me aside to teach me how I could actually use that skill, you just had me sit around and do nothing until Naruto and Sasuke caught up. And then you still didn't teach us any practical application for it."

Kakashi notices that she's putting a lot more force into her punches, and that the dummy is starting to dissolve into splinters beneath her merciless assault. He also can't help suspecting that Sakura is superimposing a certain masked face on the dummy, and narrowly resists the urge to take a discreet step backwards.

Finally she quits pulling her punches and hits the wooden dummy squarely in the chest, reducing it to a pile of toothpicks with that single blow, and once again Kakashi has to resist the impulse to inch away. But Sakura just stands there motionlessly, silently, her back still to him, shoulders hunched, fists clenched at her sides, head slightly bowed. Kakashi doesn't dare speak; he doesn't really know this Sakura, isn't quite sure what to expect from the suddenly very grown-up-looking girl standing in front of him.

"…It wasn't so much that you didn't teach me anything…because I know you weren't really the best teacher for someone like me," she says at last, her voice low and quiet and surprisingly controlled. But she doesn't cry about this sort of thing any more; she saves her tears to shed for others, not herself. "I just…don't understand why you didn't make any effort to spend any time with me after Naruto and Sasuke were gone-like they were the only reason you'd even think of spending time around me." Her voice drops even lower, and if not for his excellent hearing, Kakashi would have missed it entirely: "…Like they were the only thing we had in common, and we had no bond of our own."

Those words are the verbal equivalent to a slap in the face, and they sting a great deal more than any physical blow ever could have, because Kakashi knows all too well what it's like to be left behind, and the fact that he'd more or less abandoned Sakura to her own devices leaves him feeling more than a little guilty. (Obito would have been ashamed—or, more likely, angry enough to try to stuff his fist down Kakashi's throat.)

The silver-haired jounin heaves a sigh and scratches at a nonexistent itch on the back of his head. "Maybe…we could get together every now and then…"

"Doing something not related to work," Sakura says firmly, crossing her arms over her chest as she turns to face him fully. "Dinner. Once a week. Your treat."

Kakashi sighs again (inwardly this time) because he knows that tiny, petite little Sakura is capable of putting away a disproportionately large amount of food, especially when someone else is paying and she's trying to stick that someone with an outrageous bill. Aloud he just says, "How about Tuesday nights?"

He's gratified by the huge smile that instantly lights up her face, and can feel himself smiling in return as she says, "That would be great, sensei."

He nods his own acceptance, and with a brief "I'll see you then, Sakura" turns to go.

"By the way, Kakashi-sensei…"

He glances back at her over his shoulder. "Yes, Sakura?"

"Just so you know, if you ever ignore me like that again, I'll make sure you stay in the hospital as long as Tsunade-shishou tells you you're supposed to," she says, her cheerful tone a direct contrast to the thinly-veiled threat it's delivering, and then she gives him a smile that is all sunshine and rainbows and daisies and completely, obviously, unapologetically one-hundred-percent fake.

And very, very familiar.

…Maybe she had learned something from him after all.