Disclaimer: Naruto and all characters herein do NOT belong to me.

Warnings: Nothing in particular, just a few swear words. Takes place during the time skip.

O-Wabi

Chapter One

Kakashi hated it when things got quiet around Konoha for long periods of time.

True, he was not an overly social person. A loner by choice, Kakashi always enjoyed the bits of downtime he got every few months. It was nice to sit down, grab some sake, and read old favorite volumes of Icha Icha cover to cover without kunai flying by his head or a punch coming for his gut. It was so nice, in fact, that Kakashi had once asked for a longer break after he had once broken a few ribs in a fight. A week had been granted, as he was hurt and work around Konoha a bit lax that month.

The first three days had been pornography-filled bliss, and the last four a nerve-wracking nightmare. Not since the age of eight had be gone so long without being attacked. He found himself sneaking behind trees waiting for ambushes that didn't exist and waking up under his bed where his paranoid sleeping body had rolled for protection against nothing. Worst of all, he couldn't concentrate on Icha Icha! Even his favorite, often re-read scene of three young kunoichi seducing the hero and then taking turns with him (and then going all together...and then going with each other...and then taking turns with him again...) was impossible to focus on. Kakashi had been horrified. If three nubile, heated begging young things like that couldn't hold his attention, he might as well just give up calling himself a man.

He had never requested extra time off again. Quiet, it seemed, did not suit him. It made him spend all his energy fretting like a caged hamster over just when things would get loud again.

...Like the quiet of this building was doing to him now.

When Shizune had come to his apartment early that morning and told him "Tsunade-sama would like to see you this afternoon at 2 p.m." he'd felt a sudden, strong nervous jolt in his stomach. Something was wrong, so wrong that he'd even bothered to show up on time (it was barely 2:30 now) to see what the matter was. He reached the fifth Hokage's office, knocked on the door, waited for her commanding voice to call "enter," and obeyed.

"You wanted to see me?"

Tsunade smiled at him from behind her desk in a way that made his testicles shrivel up and his insides try to burrow deeper inside of him to escape (though as usual, no emotion showed on his face). It was a cutesy, sugary-sweet simper; the kind she used when she was so enraged whoever had provoked her was about three seconds from becoming a smear on her knuckle. "Ah, yes. I have a few questions for you about Sakura."

Kakashi's squirming insides froze. "Is she hurt?"

A frighteningly girlish giggle. "Oh no, nothing like that." Relief helped alleviate his tension for the merest second until the Hokage went on. "In fact, she's doing quite brilliantly under my tutelage. When you said she had guts, brains, and ability you weren't kidding."

Nervous, confused and internally squirming though he was, Kakashi couldn't prevent a small iota of pride from making itself known. "Yes, Hokage-sama. She's quite special."

"Indeed!" Said Tsunade, rising from her chair and moving to the side of her ridiculously paper-laden desk. She leaned on it and picked up a mug of coffee leaning precariously on the desks corner, still wearing that creepy smile that made him want to bolt out the door. "She's quite fond of you as well." Another iota of pride. "Talks about you all the time, you and those other boys you trained." A pause, and suddenly the smile vanished from her face. "Which made me wonder," said Tsunade in an abruptly icy voice. "With all her talent, and all her respect, and all her potential, why is it that I found myself at first having to teach her basic techniques that she should have learned from you almost a year ago?"

...Ah.

Knowing he wasn't "dead" so much as "DEAD" if he answered unsatisfactorily, Kakashi cleared his throat and said "I suppose you're just a better teacher than me."

A crack as the coffee mug shattered in Tsunade's grip, sending hot liquid gushing over her hand. "Do not try to get out of this by sucking up to me, don't you dare," she hissed. "I want to know why this girl seems to have spent a year in your care without learning a goddamn thing, I want to know now, and if you try to insult my intelligence like that again you'll be scrubbing floors for the next year."

Kakashi took a deep breath and tried again, leaving his arms limp at his sides and keeping his face as relaxed as ever. He didn't want to look aggressive or defensive. "Sakura is brilliant, talented and courageous, but until recently she was a bit unmotivated. Trying to get her to train was rather like trying to get Jiraya-sama to write, oh, a gay love story. That is, I'm sure he could, but good luck convincing him."

That sugary smile was back, which made Kakashi sure he'd given the wrong answer. "Pardon me if I'm wrong, but isn't it your job as her teacher to motivate her? Chouji is unmotivated, but still seems to have learned his basics from Asuma."

"Well, yes, I suppose so. But--"

Tsunade held her up coffee-stained hand for silence, still smiling. "And, you know, she was telling me the most interesting stories the other day! About how when you were teaching them to climb trees, she mastered the technique first...and then, instead of following up or using her motivation--" Tsunade put such heavy emphasis on the word 'motivation' that Kakashi winced "--to teach her anything further, she says you had her lazing about, not training at all while you focused on Naruto and Sasuke."

Kakashi had never in his life felt so wrong-footed. For a start there was the enraged woman a second away from murdering him, but Kakashi was also wondering if Sakura had told that story because she was proud of having finished first, or angry at him for not training her further. "Well, yes, because she'd mastered the technique she didn't need any further--"

"Or her story about the chuunin exam!" Tsunade simpered so loudly that Kakashi fell silent at once. "It seems her teammates fell and she had to protect them. She failed, but proudly told me how she had gained a new insight, a new motivation, a new willingness to learn. And then, gosh-darn it, you went and disappeared for a month!"

Oh no, she wasn't blaming him for that one. "Neither Sakura nor Naruto was in any immediate danger, Hokage-sama." Kakashi's voice was still level, his voice still betraying no hint of emotion. "But Sasuke's life was. I had to focus on him to save his life."

"Without making a single plan or leaving a single message about training in your absence. Leaving Sakura languishing and useless yet again, leaving her to convince herself that her newfound sense of purpose was a delusion and only her sense of worthlessness was real." Tsunade's smile widened until it almost split her face. "Wow, Kakashi, I've never heard of such teaching!" She giggled in such an obviously sarcastic way that Kakashi felt sick, suddenly wrong-footed again. Why hadn't he left behind a training regimen? Both his remaining students could have used it.

Now having to work to keep his expression cool, Kakashi tried to sound sure of his answer. "It's not...Sakura had a tendency to hide from fights," he tried. "We fought Zabuza and she hung back and squeaked...I'd ask her her goals and she'd talk about crushes and giggle. Hell, if she got hit, she'd cry."

"Shut up." Even if Kakashi hadn't been looking at her face, he would have been able to tell from Tsunade's iron voice that her smile had disappeared. He shut up.

"Here's what I understand. You were assigned Sakura, given the duty to train and prepare her. And instead, you gave up on her. You shoved her aside, didn't give her the skills she needed, didn't show her what she needed to know, and then SHOVED HER INTO LIVE COMBAT!" Tsunade's voice rose with every word until Kakashi was surprised that the windows behind her didn't shatter from the force of her voice.

"What the hell is the matter with you? Do you just not like this girl?"

Kakashi's shame and embarrassment turned to anger as quickly as Tsunade's smile had slipped off of her face. Like her? How could Tsunade even suggest that his students didn't mean the world to him, let alone that he might have purposely hurt one of them! "I've done the best I can with what I've been given." Not a man given to shouting, there was still a noticeable tremor in Kakashi's voice. "I was assigned a demon-possessed idiot, a traumatized lunatic and a confidence-impaired bimbo and told to make them into ninja overnight and goddamnit I did my best." Kakashi would later deeply regret speaking of his students in such a condescending way, but the humiliation and rage in him had made him cruel. Tsunade was voicing everything he'd yelled at himself over the past months, and he could actually feel sweat beading his brow. How dare she!

But now Tsunade was studying his face as though looking at some loathsome piece of mold growing on her shower floor. She was silent for several long seconds before saying in her quietest, deadliest voice: "The really astounding thing is how much Sakura admires you." Her voice was so laced with disgust that she might have been talking about Orochimaru.

Then she said, "Get out of my office." Kakashi went.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: answering the questions 1) Why didn't Kakashi and Sakura meet during the time skip? and 2) Why does Kakashi seem to ignore Sakura?
Kakashi is a little OOC, but I don't think we've ever seen him really put under the gun before like Tsunade just did, so this is just my interpretation of how he'd act. :)

An O-Wabi is an apology; when you've done something wrong, you bring a small gift to the person you've wronged, and that gift is an "o-wabi," though the word can also be used to just mean "apology".

Criticism about writing style, characterization, grammar, etc is VERY welcome. Fire away.