A/N: There was quite a nice flow of new followers after the newer chapters and I'd like to thank you all for allowing me to be an accomplished storyteller, knowing there are people eager to read my words. Thanks! :3

She collapsed on the muddy ground, as thin water rivers ran down her neck, making their way into the back of her shirt, but she ignored the cool, ticklish sensation altogether. Her body had numbed with the cold sometime in the middle of her running there, the place she only visited once, in her darkest of nights, but that she remembered so well. The exact spot. The exact depth her trembling fingers had to dig in the sticky clay the dirt had turned into.

The rain had started suddenly and heavily, just as she watched their backs turn on her and soon disappear out of her sight. But she stayed there for longer after she lost sight of them, indecisively biting her lips. Darkness still reigned when the last shadow of them crossed that road and, by the time she moved from that very spot they left her in, the sun was rising.

Maybe she believed enough time had been wasted, when she got right to business the moment she reached the searched spot. But she knew it had to be done. So she dug and dug, her nails hurting from all of the mud getting pushed inside of them, each of their corners nearly bleeding. And finally, one of them bled. Not because of the mud, but by hitting something solid, something tough - something made of metal. But now that she was so close, she realised maybe she did not want it back. Her other hand reached for the metal box, but hesitated. And the hole she had sacrificed each nail to dig was filling with water fast.

"Let me get that for you," a hand reached from behind her.

She winced, but immediately relaxed, recognizing the voice beneath a hoarseness she had yet to get used to. The hand sank into the now overflowing water pool and took out the metal box too easily from the ground it had cemented into, season after season, rain after rain. She was surprised of how that arm still carried so much strength, despite...

"You followed me... sensei?" she murmured, as if there was a secret between them that she just became aware of.

Kakashi knelt opposite from her, placing the metal box between them. He proceeded to do these things slowly, as if all of his energy had been wasted in the last task. A bottle of transparent liquid hang in his other hand, a reminder of why seeing something like the past steadiness in him had been so uncommon to her eye.

"Kept an eye on you for as long as you remained at my front door. One hour. Twenty minutes. And forty-five seconds," he replied. He sounded tired, bloodshot eyes not looking at her or anything in particular. Just like the three of them, he had had no sleep the previous night, but that was really not the source of the tiredness in his voice and bones, of course.

The rain stopped soon enough, but they did not move, nor talk. Each of them had their own thoughts to dwell on. Sakura stared at the metal box. Kakashi stared at his bottle.

"The inside must be dry. I doubt anything happened to it," but her voice carried that same doubt and worry. And still she did not dare touch it yet.

"Will you wait for me, so we can open it together?" Kakashi suddenly raised his eyes from the bottle to the currently dreadfully looking young woman before him. She nodded, as she was not really planning on opening it too soon, but wondered what she was supposed to be waiting on.

The older man crawled closer to the circular hole filled with muddy water and, without leaving the bottle off his hand, used the other hand to take out as much of the dirty liquid as it was possible. Sakura watched him attentively, wondering where it was all leading to.

She saw him looking into the hole and shuddering once. And then he dropped the bottle inside, covering it with the earth her nails had earlier scratched, in a hurry, as if afraid it would try to jump back out on its own.

He shuddered once more, but did not hesitate once, turning back to face her again, getting hold of the box and opening it. Indeed, the photograph inside was dry and intact, untouched by rain or time. He dared not to touch it with his muddy hands.

"You may have acted smarter than me, Sakura. I burned mine - the one with my old team, I mean. After the war. But, then again, those ones can no longer come back," he inhale once, slowly. It sounded like something recent had taken too much out of him.

"They are not coming back," Sakura shook her head at the nostalgic photograph.

"But they still can," Kakashi nodded wisely. Sakura decided to take that as an old man's rambling. Although, Kakashi was not an old man, she realized. Not yet. But the way he was right then, he seemed exhausted and past. He might as well have been an old man. Or a ghost.

But he didn't know what he was talking about. So foolish, even as a hypothesis. "You're the only one who thinks that."

"But you do, too," he retorted, his eyebrows raised with superiority.

She looked up at him in disbelief. What was he talking about?

"Why did you take it out, Sakura?" he dared to pick the photograph up, with the mud now dried on his hands.

She looked at it, truly acknowledging its existence for the first time. So bright in colours. So smooth and clean. So untouched by the years.

"Things will never be the same again," her head shook again.

"No. But the question is whether they'll be able to change for better or worse," Kakashi nodded once more.

And the picture in his hand stood in the air, like a barrier between them.

The weakness in her body was not such a bother, not until she tried to sit up. There was a rush, as if energy had been disconnected from her knees and all the way down. She managed to steady herself, but shuddered as the sick taste rose up her throat, and it took a great will and restrain for her not to throw up right there and then. In a confused movement, she picked up her scroll of interest and almost left the spot, but a wicked curiosity made her shake slowly into place, turn around once more, and pick up the scroll that had almost taken her life, as well.

It seemed like a long journey, back to the little cozy house, but as soon as she was in, she placed the scroll with great care in her bag, lying againt the coach. Just after, stumbling on her own feet, she made her way to the bathroom and left the gross taste come and do its thing. 5 minutes later, she was still lying there, on the floor, trying to focus and come back to her senses. As far as logic took her at that very moment, she was sure they shouldn't find her there, and in that state. If there was anything she surely didn't want anyone see her be, ever again, it was helpless.

She crawled to the washing basin and used all of the force her arms held to pull herself up. Once she was there, she turned the cold water on and washed her face agresively, using her warm's skin shock as a tonic.

She shudderred, as the cool sensation embraced her body altogether. It was not a benefic kind of tremor and a sort of panic mixed with embarassment hit her at the thought of falling ill in that house and possibly having to be taken care of by those two. And so she breathed in and warned herself sharply that such state of body and mind would not be allowed to last.

But she did need somme rest, as much she had to admit. No matter the blood loss, she had probably had no more than half an hour's bad res in more than two days. And so once more, she had to leave the safety of having the burden of her body weight so mercifully supported by the sink, and walked slowly, her feet mostly trashing around and barely raising from the floor as she stepped, reaching the 'guest' bedroom she had seen earlier, when inspecting the house.

But as soon as she reached it, no matter how exhausted, she knew she didn't want to be there. There was something too cold, too hostile about a room never lived in. It was a nice, tidy room, but there was nothing of comfort about it, even though the bed in it looked as comfortable as any other. And so, even though stupid, or crazy, or maybe both, she walked away once more and, clinging to the metal bar along it, pulled herself up the stairs. It was no easy job and she almost fell, for more than once. But she reached it. The really welcoming room. She went in and did not bother to try and close the door behind her. She wouldn't have had the strenght, in any case. She crawled under the covers and it almost felt as if the bed still kept the heat of its owner.

She fell into a most peaceful sleep.