A/N: Finally, the epilogue.

Just before it ends, I'd like to thank everyone who's read my story. This convoluted thing was really a physical representation of all of my emo-angst and ruminations for the past eight months, and I'm really, really thankful to you all for taking the time to read it, and even review it, and favorite it, and watch it… :) It's made me really happy to know that you guys like all this emo-crap! XD

I'd also like to thank, specifically:

Ducky, because without you as my rant-absorber, I wouldn't have been able to concoct the last few chapters of this story; chiguu, for beta-ing the first few chapters of my story, and pointing out all those little weird grammar things I missed; Nyocchin, for indirectly supplying me with the will to finally finish this; and pocky, for being such an unfailing inspiration throughout this story.

I have to concentrate on school these next few years, so after this I'm probably just going to stick with updating UnCT every once in a while, and maybe doing few oneshots.

XXXX

Your Saving Grace
By celinae

Epilogue: Because of Him

XXXX

So, will you be there in the morning?

Yes.

XXX

Sometimes Sakura felt the weight of her portfolio of mishaps, mistakes, regrets, half-assed decisions and choices.

And… he loved her?

Haruno Sakura, medic nin, who lived most of her twenty-one years in the past, and could not face the future?

"I love you."

She didn't deserve it, she knew, even if he was messed up like her, and lazy, and destructive, and perverted.

"I love you."

She didn't deserve that one last chance at something else, not when Naruto and Sasuke and all the broken ninjas didn't have one (except through death).

Maybe they had been bound by a chain, or ensnared into some web they couldn't escape.

mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest one of them all?

Or maybe he was just there, and saw everything, even the things she wanted to forget, didn't want to ever live through again.

Although she despised herself for thinking of him as a savior, and despised herself for waiting at night for him to come back, and hated the way he knew her so well, she—

"I love you."

She loved him, too.

And he,

And he was her single saving grace.

XXX

Nee, Kakashi… do you think fate brought us together?

(The moonlight shining down through the curtains on their entangled bodies, on the glimpses of skin beneath the sheets)

Fate?

Yes, I mean, how the past is sort of the reason for why we're here?

(Shifting, she sighs against his muscled chest; his hand on the small of her back, tracing invisible patterns)

Sakura, Sakura, that isn't fate.

Well, then, what is it?

Destiny.

But, isn't that the same thing?

XXXX