Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Grounded	By : djserani Category: Naruto > Het - Male/Female Views: 2818 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
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Kakashi lay in the same spot on the roof he’d been for the last twelve or so hours. He’d stopped up there on his way home after leaving the hospital, not quite able to face the apartment yet. And since then, he just hadn’t mustered the energy or will to move.
He’d have to go home before too long. It was getting cool outside and he had to see to the pack. Eventually, he did need to get the reports done and turned in, but he thought he might avoid the jounin facility altogether and turn them in to Shizune instead.
Then again, going within a hundred meters of Tsunade might not be the best idea. He sighed. The sun chose that moment to finally drop below the horizon and he sat up. He couldn’t put it off any longer. He leapt from roof to roof and finally landed in front of his building.
He climbed the stairs slowly, his feet feeling like they were filled with lead. When he was facing the door, it took him another two minutes to force himself to push the key into the lock and open it. As he stepped through, he stopped and stared.
The pack was, as usual, sprawled all over his floor. Except for Pakkun, who had pulled Sakura’s sweater off of the back of the couch and was curled up on it. He didn’t know why that messed with him so badly, but then again, nothing in the last twenty-four hours was making sense, so he tried to shrug it off.
“Where’s Sakura?” Pakkun asked as he sat up.
“I—” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know.”
“Oh. When is she coming home?” Pakkun tilted his pug head in inquiry.
“This isn’t her home. She’s not coming here. Come on, I’ll get your food.” He headed into the kitchen and started filling bowls. By the time he’d finished, the dogs were all staring at him. He raised an eyebrow, but they just turned to their bowls.
Leaving them to it, he headed into the bedroom and stopped again. Her pillow was still indented, the bed still messy from yesterday morning. He swallowed hard and turned away from it, stripping on the way to the shower.
He stepped under the hot spray, hoping it would help. But by the time it started to get cold, he knew that it would take a lot more than a simple shower to stop feeling like that. He stepped out, toweled off and went in search of clothes.
It would figure that he’d open the wrong drawer, too. He fought the urge to hurl the damned thing across the room and instead closed it carefully. He pulled the sweatpants out of the bottom and yanked them on.
Turning back to the living room, he put water on and stared at the large bag of tea he’d bought. How could someone be with you for two lousy days and so fully affect your life? How could she have taken over so completely?
He closed the cabinet door, turned the heat off under the tea kettle and sat at the table without it. He pulled the scrolls to him, did his damnedest to write coherent mission reports, then sealed them. His body was out of energy.
He stumbled toward the bed, but after staring at it for a solid minute or two, turned back around and laid down on the couch instead. Pakkun had taken Sakura’s sweater somewhere. He didn’t know where, but in that moment, he didn’t care. He was just grateful he wouldn’t have to see it.
Somewhere along the way, he lost consciousness. He wouldn’t have called it sleep, because for the first time in many years, he had nightmares of collapsing caves and dying friends.

If Sakura’s office window hadn’t been broken, she would have just gone and picked up a few things at Ino’s when she wasn’t home and stayed in her office. But as it was, it was too cold for that and would take maintenance several days to fix it. So, instead, not able to face Ino’s “I told you so” face, she was laying in her old bed at her mom’s.
When her mom had opened the door, she’d taken one look at Sakura and pulled her into a hug. Sakura fought tears for a little while longer, but in the end lost it again. Her mother had steered her into the kitchen, brewed tea, and simply sat in silence with her.
She still hadn’t asked about it, some three hours later. She’d simply given her a yukata of her own as the clothes Sakura had left there were way too small. Sakura had taken a long hot shower and crawled into her old bed.
And that’s where she was now, trying to fall asleep. Kakashi’s book hadn’t been far from her since she found it earlier. She’d only set it down long enough to shower. It was ridiculous, she knew that, to hold on to it like it was some kind of talisman. But she just couldn’t quite let go of it yet.
Because the fact that it was there meant that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t quite so sure about what he’d told her, after all.

Sakura stared at the reflection in her mirror. She looked like complete shit, but she just couldn’t help it. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to, either. She’d made it through the night somehow, though she doubted she’d slept more than a total of about twenty minutes over the course of it.
The shower hadn’t helped, either. She’d tried another long hot one, but it too had basically been useless. All she seemed to think about was the showers she’d taken with him.
She sighed and turned away from the mirror. She pulled the yukata back on that her mother had given her. She’d have to go to Ino’s sometime that day to get clothes.
When she got to the kitchen, she found there was tea brewing and a small plate of cookies on the table. Sakura sat and pulled a cup toward her. She sipped at the tea and tried to eat one of the cookies, but it didn’t sit right. After the third bite, she just set it aside. She sipped a bit more of the tea, then gave up on it, too.
“Sakura?”
Sakura looked up to see her mother in the doorway. “Hi, Mom.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked gently as she sat at the table.
Sakura stared at her. How does one tell their mother something like this? “I…don’t know if I can.”
Sakura’s mother reached out and brushed the hair out of her face, then traced her finger along her cheek. “Sakura, I know you’re a grown woman now. You can tell me.” When Sakura continued to stare at her, she asked, “who is he?”
Sakura swallowed around the lump. She fought the tears, could feel the muscles in her face waging war. And then the tear ducts won the battle and the first drops tracked down her face. “Kakashi.”
Whatever she’d expected, her mother hadn’t expected that. “Hatake Kakashi? Your former sensei?”
Sakura couldn’t look at her. She concentrated instead on a spot on the table and nodded. “Yes.”
“What…what happened?”
Sakura took a deep breath. “A little over a week ago, we got some intelligence that there was a group of missing-nin operating near the border to River Country. They were—” She paused. “Targeting women.” She glanced up at her mother and saw that she understood. “Tsunade grounded us. The rookie women. She knew what kind of social life we had—or didn’t, in this case.” She swiped at the tears. “So, we decided to take care of the obstacle.”
She blushed as she realized what she was admitting to her mother. “I’ve been falling in love with him for a long time, Mom. I never realized it until the night Tsunade grounded us. All of the other girls had someone that they went home with. But as I stood there in the bar, watching them leave, wondering who I would go to, I realized that the person I wanted most, the person I loved, was right there.”
She swallowed around the lump again and her mother handed her a tissue. She blew her nose, then looked up at her. “We made love and any lingering doubts about how much I felt were gone. He loved me too. Loves me.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, we went after the nin and won. Not without injury, but we did. But when we got back here, well, I found myself faced with sharing an apartment along with Ino and Chouji.” At her mother’s chuckle, she nodded. “Yeah, right. I didn’t think so. Well, Kakashi offered to let me stay with him for a while and I spent two of the most wonderful days of my life with him.”
The tears had started again in earnest. “But real life always has a way of intruding and it came time to go back to work. He took a lot of crap from his fellow jounin. I heard about it over and over again at the hospital. And it was too much for him. He decided I was better off without him.
“But—” She swallowed, fighting it, but it was too much. She lost it, dropped her head on her arms and let it go again.
Her mother sat next to her, equal parts shocked, angry and hurting for her. And for him. With no idea what to do, she pulled Sakura into her arms and held her while she cried.

Shizune stared at the man in front of her. He looked nothing like the Kakashi she’d come to know over the years. He had dark circles under his eye, she could see stubble around the edges of his mask and…he stood at attention, though only barely. He looked like he was ready to fall over at any second.
But the real kicker was that his mission reports were complete. And early.
Her first instinct when she saw him was to tie him down and shove senbon needles under his fingernails. Then his toenails. Then into his balls. The entire ward heard the shatter when Sakura had broken her window. They’d seen him leave and she and Tsunade had stood outside Sakura’s door for five full minutes, trying to decide if they should go in and try to comfort her. The sounds coming from the other side of the door had caused even Tsunade to leak a few tears. Shizune had needed half a box of tissues.
But looking at him now, she realized he was no better off than Sakura was. She wanted to do something, but realized that they would need to come to this on their own. Or, at least, it wasn’t her place.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, accepting the scrolls. He nodded, looked at her as if he wanted to say something, then changed his mind, turned and left. Through the door.

It took her two days to be useful again. Tsunade never asked her where she’d been, never questioned what happened. When she showed up at work, she’d simply handed her the patient list and said nothing.
Ino hadn’t even said, “I told you so.” When Sakura had gone to get her clothes, the only thing she did was offer her pancakes and the bedroom if she wanted it. But she couldn’t even stay long enough to eat with them. She wanted Ino to be happy, but she couldn’t watch it.
She was still only held together by a thread. She kept herself carefully composed when she did her rounds and saw patients. But when the door to her office closed at lunch, she let go, let herself feel it. She spent the hour letting out all the stuff that she kept bottled so tightly throughout the morning.
Her mother didn’t push, didn’t say anything to her when she came home at night and went straight to her room. She still wasn’t sleeping. She spent the nights tossing and turning. Or staring at his book, which was never far from her. During the day, it was in her lab coat. At night, in her hands.
She had to get over this, she knew it, but she had no idea where to start. She couldn’t pass the damned training grounds without seeing them train together there. She couldn’t pass Ichiraku’s, for crying out loud, without remembering something.
So, when she approached Tsunade’s office to see the door open, she simply didn’t think. When she heard the words “missing-nin,” she focused more.
“…spotted again along the river, to the north. One of the women in the border village went missing early this morning, so we know he’s still nearby.”
Sakura stepped back from the door, staring. And before she could change her mind, she pulled the lab coat off, tucked the Icha Icha volume into her pouch and left.

“But I don’t know if you’re ready for something like this, Kakashi,” Tsunade said.
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s just a single missing-nin.”
“Well, normally, I’d say that’s an easy mission. But then again, I usually don’t have to deal with cowards.” That had the effect she was hoping for.
Kakashi stared at her, eye wide. “Coward?”
“That’s right, Kakashi, a coward. And I never would have pegged you for one.” Tsunade sat back in her chair, waiting.
Kakashi looked down at the floor, sighing. “You don’t know—” he started, but she cut him off.
“I know enough. I know what I’ve watched my apprentice go through for the last few days. I heard the shatter, I heard her, Kakashi. And I’m looking at you, right now. And the only reason you’re willing to do this, the only reason you’d be more willing to look like this kind of shit than face her, is if you’re a coward.” Tsunade had to force herself to calm down. At the rate she was going, she’d be replacing her desk. Again.
“She’s half my age. She deserves better than me.”
The words nearly broke Tsunade’s heart. She worked to harden it and sighed. “I think it’s up to her to decide what she wants or deserves.” When he looked up at her, she shook her head. “She’s plenty old enough to decide that for herself.” Tsunade spun around in her chair, staring out through her window. “After I lost Dan, I let myself push away the one person that I could have loved. That I did love. And now he’s gone. I’ll never get another chance. Don’t make the same mistake.”
Kakashi stared at her, at a complete loss for words. He wanted to go, wanted to go hunt down the missing-nin or find a quiet dark hole to crawl into.
But just then, Shizune came running into Tsunade’s office. “Lady Tsunade!”
Tsunade sighed. “I’m in the middle of something.”
“You’ll want to see this.” She held Sakura’s lab coat out, complete with her embroidered name. She looked from Tsunade to Kakashi and back again.
“Shit. Kakashi—” Tsunade said as she looked up from the lab coat, but he was already gone.
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