An Inch of Gold

Epilogue

Author's Note: Here it is, guys? Are you ready?

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When she wakes, a comfortable, protective warmth rests beside her, and someone's even breathing tickles the back of her neck. Sakura shivers in response and blinks, trying to force back the confusing tides of unconsciousness.

When she opens her eyes finally, Kakashi is bent over her, his eyes crinkled in amusement.

"Kakashi-sensei...?" Sakura wonders. "Did I faint again?"

Mortification fills her at the very thought.

"Well, if you did, you're not the only one," he tells her cheerfully, and Sakura doesn't understand the implication in his voice.

Until she pushes herself up and feels the hard-muscled thigh beneath her palm. Suddenly she is completely awake, and she turns around to see blazing black eyes glaring up at her. Her brain registers their position—legs tangled, Sakura lying on Sasuke's chest as he sprawls beneath her—and she squeaks in wordless shock.

"Hey, asshole, what are you doing to Sakura?" Naruto's voice breaks through the heavy silence, and the blond boy leans over to give Sasuke to the stink eye.

"Probably saving her from something," Sasuke mutters, beginning to pull himself away. To Sakura he grunts, "Get off of me."

She is quick to comply, still trying to recapture her train of thought, while also trying to commit to memory the sensation of being so close to Sasuke. It's hard to do, since all the blood in her body has rushed to her head and is adding to her dizziness from waking up.

Sasuke does not seem to share her fluster. "What happened to us? The last thing I remember is walking through that strange distortion."

"Me too," Kakashi replies gravely. He is staring at something beyond them, looking thoughtful. "The simplest explanation I can think of is that our walking through the distortion disrupted it and there was fallout. It would explain our unconsciousness."

And why everything hurts, Sakura thinks. Though she has no injuries on her body, everything feels sore, the same way it feels after she's finished a heavy weight-lifting workout.

She reflects on Kakashi's words, and frowns. "That doesn't make sense, though. There have to have been a lot of other people who went through the barrier, even just by accident. What's so special about us that we could stop it?"

Kakashi shrugs. "It might have something to do with the Sharingan. Sasuke and I both have one; perhaps it interacted with whatever the phenomena was and cancelled it out."

"I guess..." Sakura agrees, remembering that nothing happened when Naruto or his clone went through. "But what caused it in the first place?"

Kakashi does not respond and strides a few feet away, staring at the ground with a frown. He kneels down and presses two fingers to the ground. "Kai!"

Spindly, faded symbols radiate outward. She expects to see them form into a sealing circle, but instead only about a quarter of them appear; the rest look as if they were cut away with a curved blade.

"That looks like a Memory Erasing Seal," Sakura says, recognising several of the characters from her studies. "Do you think someone used it on us?"

"Not someone," Kakashi replied, straightening up. "Me. This is my work."

His students gawk up at him in shock.

"Are you kidding me?!" Naruto demands. "Why the heck would you that? Now we're standing around like idiots trying to figure out what happened."