Hearts Unmasked

Written for the KakaSaku Underneath the Underneath Fanfiction Contest

A/N: Of course I don't own Naruto or any of the characters, but I am indebted to Kishimoto-sama for creating such a delightful world that I get to play with.

Description: Can Kakashi and Sakura carry out a mission to act as a couple without harming their friendship? Slightly AU-ish. Rated T for (eventual) language.

Chapter 1

It started with a bang. The reverberation of splintering wood in the Hokage's office echoed in Sakura's mind, and the trees and ground sped by in a blur as she struggled to keep up with Kakashi, who had taken off like a shot the minute they left the gates. He hadn't spoken to her since and Sakura wondered again what he was thinking. But after all, how in Kami's name could anyone consider them a couple?

"The daimyo of the Land of Honey has need of a couple to help his son, ah, acclimate, to the idea of having a relationship with a woman." Tsunade paused, considering Kakashi's eyebrow, which had risen up higher than she'd ever seen on the mostly stoic ninja's face.

Sakura's face was a study in shades of red, as she struggled to get her emotions under control. "Is he sheltered, or likes boys, or what? " Sakura finally sputtered. "This isn't worthy of a mission! His father should just sit down and have a talk with him, or better yet, hire him a geisha!"

Tsunade's face grew stern as she said, "Konoha is needed. Besides, the pay is A rank mission pay. The daimyo is longtime friends with Homura and Koharu of the Council, and evidently only Konoha shinobi will do. Besides, there is a sizeable bonus if you succeed."

"Ah, nice. Just… who… is to be the, ah, couple?" Kakashi asked, trying to make the smile he didn't feel meet his eyes.

"Don't be obtuse, Kakashi!" Tsunade thundered. "Do you see anyone else here? Everyone else is out on a mission and you two are the only shinobi I have who I think can pull this off. Kakashi, you can maintain a jutsu to make you look a little younger, if you feel it will help the mission. You will find all the details in here," Tsunade continued, handing Kakashi a scroll.

"Shishou?" Sakura tentatively asked.

"Yes, Sakura? This question had better be worth my time. I have a lot of work to do today."

"We don't have to be a real … couple, do we?" Um, wait, that didn't come out right. "Do we have to … "

That was when one of the heavy paperweights from Tsunade's collection hit the back wall with a resounding crash. Any further utterance from Sakura was drowned as the Hokage stood up behind her desk and ground out, with barely controlled rising anger, "You are Konoha shinobi and you have everything you need to know to make this mission a success! You leave in three hours. Now go!"

"Hai." Both Sakura and Kakashi muttered their acquiescence as one and disappeared from Tsunade's office in a combined swirl of leaves and petals.

Tsunade regarded the leaves and petals thoughtfully. "See, you've always worked together so well, and you don't even see it." Shizune came in just in time to see the Hokage pick up a leaf and a cherry blossom petal and lay them together under a glass paperweight on her desk.

"How did they take the news?" Shizune asked.

Tsunade sighed. "About as good as can be expected. I'm not sure this will work, but if anyone can make it work, Kakashi can."

"What about Sakura?" Shizune asked.

"It may take her awhile yet to see it," said Tsunade. "We can only hope, and wait."

Glancing at the special Jonin running ahead of her, Sakura noticed the stiff set of his shoulders. "This looks like as good a place as any," Kakashi said as he leapt down from the tree branches. Sakura followed suit, dropping her pack on the pine needle-covered ground. The air was fresh here, and the loamy soil would make for a nice soft bed under their sleeping bags. Sakura loved how the clean sweet breeze instantly made her relax, and stretched her shoulders. "I'll get water," she offered.

"There's a lake over the hill there," Kakashi offered. Sakura set off, allowing her canteen to bump jauntily against her legs as she walked over the hill. Kakashi's eyes followed the rhythmic bump of the canteen against her bare legs and the sway of her short skirt. "Whoa, old boy," he thought, pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head. "Where in Kami's name do you think your mind is going?" He brought his thoughts under strict control and wondered, not for the first time, if the Hokage's wisdom was infected by that extra bonus.

They finished dinner in silence. Kakashi's body was partially turned away from Sakura so he could eat with his mask down but she could see he was looking off into the forest, his face unreadable. Sakura couldn't stand it any longer.

"What is wrong, Kakashi?" She felt like she might as well jump in with both feet.

"Ne, Sakura, nothing's wrong," Kakashi said, his signature crinkly eye smile showing above his mask. "I've just been thinking about ideas for the mission."

Sakura said, "I know what you mean. People have tried to give me advice about relationships, but I've never had to give anyone else advice. And, I mean, how do you do that by being a couple around a single person? I don't get it."

"Sakura, have you ever had a boyfriend before?" Kakashi asked. Sakura jumped slightly, her mind going in all sorts of directions. "I didn't mean to make you ill at ease," Kakashi said. "Tell me this, then. Have you ever been around a couple who were so right together, and who made being a couple seem easy?"

Was this her normally reticent former sensei? Sakura supposed this new-found willingness to talk was mostly due to the mission, however, she couldn't resist the opportunity to crack the code on Kakashi. He was so reclusive, she didn't think anyone outside of Team 7 knew much about him. So she would draw him out as much as possible. "Well, Ino pretty well beats or talks her boyfriends into submission, so that's a no there," she said. "And of the others, only Shikamaru is in any kind of relationship, but he still denies that Temari is anything but sand under his skin."

Kakashi smiled in spite of himself. "Those are interesting observations, and pretty accurate too, I'll bet. I was thinking more on the lines of the way Kurenai and Asuma were, when Asuma was still alive."

Sakura thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess they always seemed really comfortable around each other. Kind of like they really liked being together and enjoyed each other's company. Is that what you mean?"

Kakashi studied the pink-haired girl carefully. It hadn't escaped his notice how her eyebrows had arched hopefully as she asked the question. Their expression gave depth and life to the jade green of her eyes. Damn Jiraiya, he was going to have to stop reading Icha Icha during this mission so he could keep track of his wayward mind. He really wasn't comfortable with that level of … Kakashi's eye opened wide in shock as he became aware of said green eyes right in front of his face as a cool hand was pressed to his brow. "Do you have a fever? Because you are really spacing out," Sakura said.

Kakashi disappeared so fast that Sakura's head spun. She sat for awhile, thinking that he would surely come back, but she realized she couldn't sense his chakra at all. Sakura sighed to herself. She supposed Kakashi would probably always be the kind of person who shied away from close contact with anyone. What had set him off? She was his medic, for Kami's sake, so it couldn't have been that mini checkup. Perhaps it was talking about relationships? No, Kakashi was one of the most professional Jonin she knew. If he felt like he couldn't do the mission justice, he would have said something. Sakura wondered what it would really take to get under that thick skin [mask, her Inner suggested]. Sakura shook her head sharply, irritated. She thought she had relegated her mouthy Inner safely to a back corner of her mind. Kakashi was pleasant to talk to, though. The few times he'd let his guard down around her, they'd had some really good conversations, and even laughed easily together. Sakura sighed. She wished they could be natural around each other. Kakashi was really a very likeable person.

"Ryo for your thoughts?" Kakashi's smooth baritone over Sakura's shoulder broke into her reverie and she looked up, startling only slightly.

She smiled at him. "I was just thinking how much I like talking with you, and how few good talks we've had over the years. We should talk like this more often."

Kakashi regarded Sakura silently. While he agreed with her, he didn't know what to do with that statement, and he wasn't sure he wanted to own up to that just then. "Well, we do need to pay attention to the subject at hand, and we've got about three more days until we reach the Land of Honey, although we're not due there for a week. So we've got some time to iron this out. We'll need to learn how to be more comfortable around each other in order to pull this off. Let's continue where we left off, shall we?"

Sakura said, "Yes, how come you rushed off like that? Did I say something wrong? And don't tell me a black cat suddenly got stuck up a tree and needed rescuing!"

Kakashi laughed shortly and moved around her, sitting down next to her. "I owe you an apology for that, Sakura. I… just needed some time alone. There are things in my past that make it difficult for me to be around people sometimes, and it just got to be too much at that moment."

Sakura looked at him with a newfound respect. Hatake Kakashi was being honest with her, for once, not hiding behind a fabrication. She wasn't sure how to respond, but since she'd always wanted to get to know him better, she decided not to react in her usual manner. Surprising herself, she laid a hand on his arm. Kakashi stiffened a little, but otherwise didn't move.

"We all have things that haunt us, Kakashi. Sometimes it's things that have happened to us, or ways in which we've acted in the past that we're not proud of remembering," and here, Sakura unexpectedly fell silent, her initial intent to encourage her teammate forgotten as mental pictures passed through her mind.

Kakashi noticed the change in her face. "Are you alright, Sakura?"

Sakura raised troubled eyes to him. It seemed as if he could see unshed tears in their corners.

"It doesn't do any good to remember times you've let yourself down in the past, Sakura," he said. "We all have them. When you say or do things that you aren't proud of, or your mouth or actions get away from you, you need to learn from them and move on. Not that that's easy." Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck. "I know this from experience."

Sakura leaned her head on Kakashi's arm. "I know, and this is one of the times that I almost called you 'sensei' again. I know I don't need to, that we've agreed we are beyond that now as fellow Jonin, but thank you for saying that. Sometimes I just get the feeling that even with all of the advances I've made as a person, being 19 now, with my training with Shishou and my work and research as a medic at the hospital, that the socially inept child I was is somehow stuck to me like a shadow and that I'll never get rid of it. Kind of like that temper of mine." Sakura smiled wryly, looking away. "Perhaps I just had the same thing happen to me that happened to you… memories of past actions fast forwarded through time and became real again, right in front of my face, though you couldn't see them."

Kakashi was silent for a little bit. On one hand, he was deeply shocked. Was it possible that Sakura, with her background, could understand some of the reasons his demons plagued him? He found himself warming to the idea of her as a person. They'd never talked much like this. Perhaps it was all due to their assignment, and would change once they returned to Konoha. He needed to remember that. But he found himself thinking that it would be nice if it would turn out differently. How did he see her, he wondered. A friend? Could he have a friend? Was he ready to let another person into his life as a friend? He honestly didn't know, he wasn't sure how to go about being a friend, and the openness of the conversation scared him, if he was going to be honest about it.

Sakura noticed Kakashi's preoccupation and asked, "Hey, I didn't say or do anything to make you uncomfortable, did I?"

Kakashi looked at her, and in his lone visible eye, she saw a vulnerability that she'd never seen before. "Sakura, I'll be honest with you. This mission is not going to be easy for me. And when we return to Konoha, I may need to go away for awhile. I am not used to being open with anyone, and it is something that makes me want to leave and just be alone."

"Kakashi? You've never told me … would you tell me about your team?" Sakura almost held her breath. This was the one topic that she instinctively knew had always been taboo with Kakashi and she wasn't sure how he would react. But since he had dropped his carefully crafted personal mask for the moment, she was hopeful that they could talk about it and she could find out more about what made him the way he was.

Kakashi reached over and squeezed her shoulder. "Yes, I think I will, but not right now. We need to clean up from dinner and get some sleep. I'll take the first watch."

Sakura slowly let out a breath that she wasn't aware she had been holding. "So you're not mad that I asked?" she said.

"No, I'm not mad, Sakura. I've enjoyed talking with you although I'm not sure exactly why. That's nothing against you, I'm just not used to it. The only people I've ever really talked with at length, personally, are Genma and Gai, and with those two, you can imagine where the conversation goes. Now, let's get to cleaning up."