Title: Glass Towers

Disclaimer: No money is made off this work of fiction. Naruto is not mine. If it was, I would be rich and I wouldn't be writing this, now would I?

Summary: Damn him. Damn Hatake Kakashi for reducing her to this. And damn herself a thousand times over for loving him all the same!

Pairing: KakaNaru

Note: I thought I'd try to write a KakaNaru fic to re-acclimate myself to the work, and hopefully jumpstart my muses on Soundscape and ParaSur to ParaCont. Of course, I started thinking, in a society where ninja tend to die young, and therefore marry young, what would happen to a marriage with an age gap of almost two decades after a decade has passed and the very things that drew them together holds them apart? Love is not always passion and understanding. Sometimes it's ice and duty. I think, in a world of shinobi, this might be the only thing holding a family of ninja together when a common enemy is gone and everything has changed.

~*~

Hatake Uzumaki Naruto stood at a window in the Hokage's Palace and stared out over the village. She could hardly bring herself to admire the view anymore. She turned away from the window when she sensed her husband approaching the room.

"The Dinner is in a few minutes," he said, watching her with a single dark eye, "I trust you can behave yourself for a few hours?"

She remembered there was once a time when his mere presence had been enough to make heat pool in her belly and a single dark look would sweep her breath away. Once, she had been a beautiful kunoichi, powerful in her guile and confident in her capacity to seduce and destroy, a silk and velvet fan that hid the steel frame and razor sharp cutting edges, now, the velvet and silk was all that remained. This man, for love of this man, she had allowed herself to be plucked from her niche among the kunoichi. He had whispered to her that she would be his beautiful blade hidden in silk, and she had followed him, and he had made her into a trophy wife, much in the way that Uchiha Sasuke had made her long time friend, Haruno Sakura from a beautiful and powerful medic into a tired and worn woman whose only purpose was to pump out as many Uchiha spawn as her body could take for the one time avenger, her previous beauty withered in the face of the Uchiha's determination to restore his clan. Oh, Naruto was luckier than Sakura in that she had kept her beauty, but what was beauty in a cage? They were, the both of them, changed from beautiful roses whose thorns were long and sharp and dripped deadly poison into harmless withered blossoms pressed between the pages of a book.

"Do not concern yourself with trivial things, Rokudaime-dono," she said coldly. "Neither my child nor I will embarrass you before the Kazekage and Raikage."

Kakashi said nothing as he studied her for a moment, an unidentifiable emotion in his eyes, and Naruto felt her breath catch with hope. Then the moment passed, and as quickly as it had come, his eyes cleared and Kakashi nodded and left. Naruto kept her face impassive as she watched his departing back and turned back to the window, smothering the feeling of disappointment with furious disgust. Fool! Fool to think with her heart! Fool to harbor such irrational hope!

And her thought turned toward the guests for the night's upcoming diplomatic dinner.

Oh, the Kazekage and the Raikage! What must Gaara and Killer Bee think of her now? The three of them were birds of a feather, Jinchuuriki together, and Gaara had been the youngest of the Five Kages, and Killer Bee had taken power after his brother had passed away in his sleep, an unusual way to die for a shinobi, much less a Kage, and here she was, the Nine-Tails Host, and what had she accomplished? Nothing. She had put into power a man whom she loved, only for him to reduce her to this, a shadow of her former self. She did not think she could look her fellow Demon Hosts in the eye for the shame of it.

Damn him. Damn Hatake Kakashi for reducing her to this. And damn herself a thousand times over for loving him all the same! Because while she could not tolerate this gilded cage, she loved him too much to leave it. If she left Kakashi and their two children and went into the village, the people would likely turn on her and her reputation was too far lost to be of any help. If she took her children and fled, she might be given succor in other villages, but other countries would see the Leaf as weak and attempt to attack. She was trapped, and Kami help her, for she could not bear the thought of being separated from Kakashi or if he were to take some hurt because of her departure. She could not bring herself to shame either of them in such a manner.

Oh! Fool that she was! Fool! Fool thrice over! A Fool she was for loving him, for letting him worm his way into her jealously guarded heart. A fool once again for allowing herself to be tied to him with their children! And a fool a third time for being so weak as to hold onto a futile hope that things would return to what it had once been.

~*~

The Dinner had not gone well, Kakashi thought as he tucked his son into bed that night. He knew it could not have gone better if it had not been for the cold, still presence of his wife beside him. What had happened to the warm, vivacious woman that he'd initially married? Still, Konoha had gotten the treaty with Suna and Kumo in the end though, but only for love of Naruto, as the Raikage and Kazekage had made clear.

He could sense Naruto next door, likely also tucking in their daughter. Her chakra had turned cold and impersonal over the years, but was still sharp with the hint of darkness that came with being a demon host. It would warm slightly with love in the presence of her children, but he feared that one day, even their children would be unable to warm Naruto's steadily closed off heart. He listened as she spoke quietly to their daughter and Rin's quiet reply, followed by the sound of the shoji door opening and closing and the rustle of her plain sleeping yukata as she moved about, and her bare feet made near indistinguishable sounds on the tatami, and despite the distance between them, the sounds of her presence and the sensation of her chakra sliding across his skin were familiar and comforting to him.

As he left his son's room and made his way to his own bedroom, he paused at the door to his wife's room. He placed a hand on the shoji door, and he could sense her presence inside, steady but cold. The birth of their daughter had nearly killed her, Kakashi remembered, and her recovery had been difficult. He'd given her everything he was sure she'd needed, and given her space when she'd asked for it. He remembered that their love had been cooled, but she had been no less passionate. Then their son had been born, and it had been more difficult still. Was that when—No. Kakashi cut off the thought. He could not bear to look too closely. It hurt that after years of love and devotion that she'd suddenly turned away from him. He knew that it was unlikely that Naruto would ever return to him, and yet, he held onto hope.

He stood there, remembering when they'd first been married, how they'd play a game. He'd stand outside her door, and she's respond by asking who was there, and he'd reply "It's me," and she would throw the door open, and invite him into her room. They'd talk about the day, and they'd make love. But it was different now. It was evident in the way that her chakra had turned in his direction, and he knew she knew that he was there, but not a word came from her room. Just tense, wary silence. Kakashi sighed and as he had for every day of the past five years since their son had been born, he dropped his hand to his side and went into his own room, and prepared for bed. As he had, every night in the past five years since his son had been born, he'd cast a sad and longing look at the door that joined his room to his wife's before putting out the lantern.

He hated that bland, polite face that Naruto showed to the world nowadays. He missed his warm, vivacious wife, whose smile could light up a room with its intensity. He missed having her close, missed having her in his bed, most of all, he missed being able to take her into his arms and whisper his love for her into her ear while she giggled and swatted at him playfully for skipping out on work to flirt. He missed how they had once been close, when there had only been trust and understanding between them instead of this terrible impersonal coldness.

He wondered, as he crawled into his futon, when it was that Naruto had stopped loving him.

~*~

Owari