Title: Archipelago's Lament
Description: Sakura had become quite the thief. [AU]
Disclaimer: No ownage, no sue-age

A/N: Ahh, it's been awhile since I've written these two. Just some documents that have been stirring within my hard drive. It probably dates back to last November. Hope you enjoy!

My hands are up above me

And you whisper you love me

She had noticed his hands first. When she took her graded assignment from his outstretched arm (an interpretation essay on the motifs of Emily Dickinson), Sakura glanced at his taut alabaster skin, how his fingers were slightly gnarled as if harboring the detriments of carpal tunnel. Her own fingers shook, taking the neatly stacked papers from him and never daring to stare into his lone, flint iris.

His hands spoke. He was, by nature, a very laconic man – his voice a soft snowflake fluttering in a still, abandoned city. It was deep, gentle and warmed like molasses when relaying the motifs of what ifs and might have been's. But his hands continued to speak, even when his supple lips were sealed tight. They moved and danced, dusting off white residue from chalk or clasping a black-inked pen as if it were a dear friend.

Sakura let her feet tuck under her seat. Her eyes roamed over his lean figure, all but imagining him as the Apollo of this room where everything gravitated towards that lonely pupil. It was a deep chasm – cinders of Carthage dusting his retinas – and harbored something too impenetrable for her own emerald to unearth. She liked to think it was a love lost, a shrouded past teeming with gleaming tragedies and fingers slipping away from friction.

He was celestial after all – too enigmatic for Ra's exuberant tendencies – cradling burnt out stars within those war-torn hands.

"Miss Haruno..."

Sakura locked eyes – planetal gravities – with his. An abyss so deep, folds and folds of crumpled wads of maybe and perhaps. Her lips felt swollen, barely fitting around her almost-whispered words. "Yes, Hatake-sensei?"

He may have smiled, a flicker of amusement so brief upon his lips that it might as well have been void. His head tilted slightly, silver shag ruffling slightly from the peculiar habit when asking questions about poetic devices and Miss Emily's copious almosts. With a fluid gesture towards a scrawled sentence upon the board, he asked her once again.

"What does this mean?"

He was infamously known for his blunt quandaries – his almost-there smile, his bleeding eye – and Sakura fought down a smirk. She read the line. And then again.

"To wander – now – is my Repose –
To rest – To rest would be
A privilege of a Hurricane
To Memory – and Me"

Miss Emily waved shyly from the confines of ivory chalk and dust. Sakura stared at the board, feeling her fingers constrict around her worn pencil.

"She cannot rest. There's something missing and she can't ..."

The words left her mouth and as her eyes widened, she attempted to catch the fluttering verbs and nouns.

He gravitated towards her, however, before she could sweep all of the broken sentence under the red stains of her cheeks. His fingers, long and slender – having perhaps stroked and caressed the soft curves of another –, touched his thin lips in thought, his thumb resting underneath his chin. Eye far away into the mind of a deranged woman – who, after the smell of blood lifted from her door, wore only ceremonious white – he let his lithe form, comprised of bleeding comets and the stardust of Betelgeuse, come to a stop by the edge of her desk. She dared not to face him, and he neither for his irises never left that distant, reclusive world.

His voice was warming. "And just what is missing, Miss Haruno?"

Sakura did not trust her lips any longer, trying to hide her pale face beneath her coral tresses, peering out periodically from a world of sweet-smelling roseate. He waited. She was compelled.

"Love."

It is only him and her now – alongside the vivid memory of twisted sheets and hands smuggling in the moon's heat. The desk is slick with sweat and his tie – precariously looped around his neck moments before – is askew and tickling her chest. Lips are bruising.

And between chaste kisses he says no, we can't, but his fingers trace the buttons of her shirt anyway. She is still grasping his silver locks because no, they shouldn't but here they are. His flint eye is a sad, fathomless chasm still burrowing deep. A murky, crimson iris smiles.

"It was an accident."

She smirks wanly, "Like this?"

The erasers have been clapped, dust caking their bodies as his Volvo hums between every curve of their flesh. Sakura closes her eyes and leans in, not really caring if friction will catch her or not. His mouth is tugging her lip.

"Don't leave me here..."

The last traces of her sentences are lost within her moan, his hair tickling her cheek as he buries his head deeper within her collarbone. Words are rippling through her mind, soft stanzas of almosts becoming shattered, and Sakura lets her lips press against the hollow of his throat.

Night is winking at them, moon blushing hues of yellow as he grins an ironic smile.

"I'm taking everything away from you."

The satin ribbon falls through her fingers. He's standing in the doorway now. He's missing his tie.

"I don't care."

"Is that what she's missing?"

He whispered these words until they were merely dust motes filling the oxygen between them. The clock was ticking, counting down the minutes until she straddled the leather backseat and he cradled her head in his hands that have both saved and killed – metaphorically and literally – the hyperboles rested within her heart as Sakura remained silent.

Ino stabbed her back with a dull pencil.

Kiba continued snoring.

And Naruto was rehearsing lines for when he asked her to marry him.

They wait as cobblestones escape beneath their feet. His laugh is gentle as he settles a hand upon her head, ruffling her coral tresses affectionately. It is in this moment of here that she feels so young.

Her lip pouts, a swollen cherry red, and dares to question, "And what, Mister Hatake, is so amusing?"

His eyes, mismatched and somehow harmonious, continue to shine as he reaches down with a finger to swipe the blob of vanilla kissing her cheek. Putting the ice-cream-capped finger into his mouth, he suckles on it with a quirk of a smile.

"You're so messy, Sakura-chan."

She pretends to huff indignantly, stomping away from the chuckling man, and tries to keep the betraying words from caressing her throat –

Haven't we always been?

The summer solstice is today, she thought absently. The class continued, a garble of giggles, sighs and chatter like her fellow students couldn't see the air warping around her and him – wrapping them up so tight in a vacuum of heat and mistakes.

The pencil continued to dig into her back and she reluctantly turned around, a mishmash of blonde and blue hitting her corneas at full speed.

Ino grinned brightly, her azure skies glinting in the fluorescent lights, "Sasuke-kun's looking at you!"

But her mind was still racing from the grey iris smoldering, taking her in – drinking her greedily.

Sasuke is too late.

She is lying in the abandoned road, a flickering streetlight saying stop, stop, go. He reclines on the curb. Her hand traces the smudged yellow lines and dares to cross its double bars to get to his side.

"The summer solstice is next week."

Her words sound slow and lethargic, as if she is happily melting. He looks up from where he was staring at her hand, precariously residing over the double-yellow line, and raises an eyebrow.

"Should I be concerned?"

His voice is teasing and innocent wrapped in a cocoon of I need you now, please. Sakura laughs.

"Well, you'll probably need to stock up on the sunscreen, Count Dracula."

His lips stay silent, but the crimson orb is chuckling quietly. It regards her in a slowed-down time, the hours bending and minutes frying across the pavement she reposes upon.

He never whispers sweet tales of how they'll elope. Nor does he promise her tomorrow.

But as Sakura lays between him and this fading, yellow line –

– She does not wish for forever.

There was a note resting upon her car seat. It was merely folded once and Sakura could see the small print she had come to speak and live.

Her hand remained on the door handle, fingernails chipping off their emerald coating. All was still and she could feel his hand circling around her waist.

"Tell me no, Sakura.."

The ghostly fingertips traced just beneath her jaw.

"Push me off.."

She leaned back and could sense the memory of his lips brushing just against her ear.

"Scream and run away."

Sakura turned around and watched as Kakashi stepped into his blue Volvo, shutting the door quietly, and pretended to merely adjust his mirrors.

The sun was racing against the clouds, climbing towards the very pinnacle of the sky.

Sakura moved the note aside and revved the engine and rolled her windows down.

He had warned her so many times, prayed for her to please report him to the authorities...

But now he was through with almost and sent Emily his most genuine regards.

Scrawled hastily as if he could no longer breathe were the words:

Follow me.

A/N: I liked writing this. The beginning is a little iffy for me but when I stumbled upon the first, past scene, I think I really got the ball rolling.

Quick explanations: This is an AU and is alluding to a student-teacher relationship. I do not promote this in any type of way. It's merely here for the sake of the drama in the story.

Summer solstice: when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky at noon, marked by the longest days (June 21st).

Soundtrack whilst writing:
The Jester - Sum 41
With Me - Sum 41
Keep Driving - Woodale

Hope you enjoyed!

- - H. 92