Getting Lost on the Roads of Life - a KakaSaku Story [CONCLUDED]

Everyone needs someone to cuddle at night

"You cannot just run away, Sarada," Kakashi said, not quite managing to keep a frown off his face but not wanting to admonish the child too much either. "Imagine how Sakura felt after finding you gone."

"I left her a message, she'll understand," Pakkun grumbled.

"You should know better than to kidnap a child and bring her to the Anbu headquarters," Kakashi snapped at the dog. "What were you thinking!"

Sarada, who was walking beside him, tensed and stood still at his angry words and for a moment, Kakashi dreaded she would start crying again. It was the most pitiful thing he had ever seen and he couldn't deal with it at all. Without Iruka, the training session this afternoon would have turned out even worse than it already had because he simply could not get himself to be strict with this child.

"I'm not really angry with the dog," he explained to her quickly. "Nothing happened after all. But still..."

Kakashi sighed and turned his eyes up to the slowly darkening sky. Dozens of trained assassins with their weapons ready at the alarms the child had triggered by just walking in - it could have gone horribly wrong. Luckily, his Anbu comrades had stood down quickly at his hasty command, realizing the tiny intruder with the huge, frightened eyes was no threat.

"The dog only did what he thought was best," Pakkun huffed. "The girl made it very clear to me that she needed to see the silver-haired uncle immediately. And the silver-haired uncle had told me earlier that I had to help the child whenever she was in need."

"Fine," Kakashi said, thinking that she was at least talking to a dog if not to anyone else, "forget about it. But this won't happen anymore, alright? You live with Sakura and Sasuke, Sarada!"

Sarada didn't answer but her pout deepened. Did she not understand that Sasuke was her biological father? Kakashi wasn't sure anybody had told her. Yesterday, he had made sure to say a proper goodbye to her at the hospital, but Tsunade had sent him on an important errand - to get clothes and other things for Sarada from Kurenai - so he had left before everybody else and wasn't privy to what information had been exchanged.

"Are you perhaps hungry?" he asked the girl. It seemed cruel to him to rush her back like an unwanted burden when she had gone through the trouble of finding him at the Anbu Headquarters. He would send Pakkun to Sakura to tell her all was well.

Sarada nodded timidly.

"Okay," Kakashi said, "I will buy you some food and then we head back to the Hokage Tower for the night."

Remembering Iruka's clever reward system for Naruto and lacking a better idea of where else to go, he pointed towards the direction of Rāmen Ichiraku. He was hungry too. An extra large bowl of Tonkotsu Ramen, that's what he felt like eating. It had not exactly been a good day for him and he needed something to make it temporarily better - all the more so because he knew there couldn't be many good days to follow.

The truth was, he was a traitor, unfit to be trusted by his Hokage.

The longer he remained quiet about the experiments, the bigger his wrongdoing. But if he went ahead and told Tsunade about what he knew, he might cause a considerable problem for Sasuke, which he was not ready to do either. But most importantly, they were facing a skilled enemy operating from the shadows, one he had reason to believe was connected to him.

In the hours since coming back from the orphanage he had concluded that taking out that enemy as soon as possible was a priority. It wouldn't solve all his problems, but at least, it would ensure the safety of Konoha, whatever happened to him afterwards. For a while, he had had this plan, hoping he could first remember and then go clean up his mess, but now... he wasn't sure remembering was going to happen anytime soon.