War of the Zetsu

**Preview

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Chapter One: Her

Kakashi looked from the stacks of paper on the large wood desk centering the room, to the starry night from the open window. Holding himself in the frame of the divide from the large green carpeted office to the red tin roof that would allow him to escape into the night.

A rather obvious depiction of the white haired nin's uncertainty to deal with the work on one side of him or chase the freedom he so missed under shinning white dots looking down on him.

It didn’t even take a week for the prodigy nin to realize that there was no way Lady Tsunade, the former Hokage was coming back like she’d promised to. Her month-long holiday to rest and recover after the war quickly turned into retirement from the esteemed seat.

One that the blonde bombshell had never truly settled into outside of battle. Leaving Kakashi Hatake of all people, holding the bag. He supposed they were alike in that respect at least.

Hokage, the Hidden Leaf’s Village’s Guide, Leader and Protector was a position neither he nor Tsunade felt suited for, yet the sense of duty instilled in them from close to birth demanded they step into when asked.

‘It isn’t any wonder the woman drinks like a fish.’ Kakashi’s internal groan, mixed with the desire to rub the back of his neck and ease the stress, only intensifies the longer his eyes drift over the daunting piles of reports and missives waiting for review.

The wonder of how many wafer thin documents must be in each individual file to make the insurmountable stacks feel taller than himself doesn't encourage Kakashi to return to it.

Especially not after an entire day of whittling down the singular pile that was only as tall as the desk itself.

Believe it or not, the man does note how the monster-like things disguise the craftsmanship of the furniture that had no doubt been handed down through the generations.

The obnoxious multicolored stacks with seemingly no end screamed silently as only paperwork could to an action oriented individual like himself. While Kakashi longed to be back in the field. Odd, but true, that he was much more comfortable with enemies trying to kill him than he was with the seemingly more duplicitous risk of paper cuts.

Given that he was unable to find himself an assistant like Shizune, Lady Tsunade’s right-handed brunette and her pet pig Ton-Ton; The newest Hokage was stuck with it all on his own.

This is a thought Kakashi immediately tries to store, not allowing himself to look out at the night sky. The notion of being alone in this, or in general really, reminds him of one thing, of one person.....

Even without the benefit of the stars shining like those too precious eyes, the complete image of the woman he could not forget forms like a phantom in his mind. Clear and present regardless of him watching the sake he swirls in his cup.

Not that it was out of the ordinary.

She always seems to be there, floating in the background, reminding him the absolute fool that he was. It was no secret that Sakura had always been in love with Sauske.

With another internal desire to groan and scrub his tired eyes, Kakashi still feels that wriggling and coiling twinge in his gut. That undefinable unease that snaked through his system, remembering that even if Sakura hadn’t been in love with her teammate all of her young life, she had been his student.

A student that is a full decade his junior and a young woman with her whole life ahead of her.

Kakashi respects it, respects her. He never once said or did all the things he secretly craved to say and do.

Well, there was once, but the pink haired, apple eyed Kunoichi wasn’t conscious during it. In that singular slip, the thought of losing her caused a temporary lapse in judgment. Pushing Kakashi to confess not only to himself secretly and internally, but to Sakura out loud in broad daylight.

The only reason it happened at all was because the seasoned warrior truly thought and feared that Sakura was gone. With the image of his forbidden love’s seemingly lifeless body and bruised skin slicing through his eyes like knives, Kakashi knew that it was perhaps the worst image he could ever be forced to bear.

The visual of the most beautiful and radiant woman he’d ever known a battered husk was on its own, something he’d had to pull through more than once in her training and other life challenges.

That particular image, on the other hand, that unique feeling of loss. Of imagining a world without her, was, in a word, unbearable.

The fear that Kakashi would never see the green gems of Sakura’s eyes open again pulled everything he’d been hiding; everything he’d been denying and hating himself for, to the surface.

Those unspoken and unwanted yearnings twisted in the prodigy nin's gut like a knife until Kakashi finally whispered against her unconscious lips. “I need you, Sakura. Please come back to me.”

It is a moment, Kakashi pretends never happened. A moment, like his feelings he’s done his damnedest to bury, like every other failure and skeleton of his many battles as a Shinobi.

‘Even that isn’t true.’ The silent admission comes in a wry laugh. Those experiences, no matter how painful, he kept and learned from. The war hardened and battle experienced Hokage examined, crafted and reshaped the dull instruments used against him into weapons for his personal arsenal.

Sakura, on the other hand, more pointedly his feelings for Sakura were so unique and still so utterly wrong, no matter how many times he tried to process, he’d always come up short for a solution.

In its own way, his own history with Sauske, was an opportune buffer. Pardoning the rouge Shinobi and little asshole that every girl, including Sakura, mooned over as children was accomplished with his then honorary title.

The perception of it being because Sauske, one of the most notorious, deadly and powerful Shinobi of generations, was his former student. Allowing Kakashi to get away with doing it for the woman he wasn’t supposed to be in love with, without anyone being the wiser about it.

It took everything internally and externally for Kakashi to do it.

To grant Sauske the pardon that would allow the last Uchiha to be with Sakura openly. To love her and care for her as he should have. Then the little bastard left her any way.

Left the both of them standing together at the gates. Left Kakashi to stare at Sakura’s watering eyes and hopeless face before it turned from Kakashi in attempts to hide the tears he knew too well.

Tears the raven head asshole made her cry too many times with his heartless treatment of the pinkette. Those globes of emotion that Kakashi wanted to avoid as much as his own guilt.

Guilt for what he’d finally admitted and could no longer pretend wasn’t true.

Even as he pulled the familiar short kunoichi into his chest, and held her tear shaken body, Kakashi knew. That one slip on the battlefield was enough to undo every possible reason or excuse he’d ever had not to admit, not to dwell on those feelings.

It was difficult for Kakashi to think of Sakura in any measure without dissecting it. How in the hell did he, a distant, cold, methodical loner, fall for the warm and bubbly know it all?

Even before the war, the two of them were always placed on missions together. Their history, success rate and familiarity with one another given that he’d trained her prior to Tsunade made their proximity ideal.

The pair of healer and copy nin had an obvious trust that was so deep and a relationship so easy..... Being next to her, falling into step with her, was as natural, as effortless and unconscious to him as breathing....

Chapter Two: Dirty, Maybe… Old? Hardly