I regret to inform you…

That is how every letter of condolence begins. I regret. No one stays to tell you who exactly it is that is doing the regretting, but there are three signatures on the bottom of the letter: the Hokage's, the person's who wrote the letter, and the witness's.

She used to write these, and she used to feel true regret. Regret enough that, when she delivered the letter of condolence, she actually stayed to offer her own comfort. Even if she was rudely thrown out, nearly blown to bits, had weapons thrown at her, was screamed at, was begged to, please, please, PLEASE, tell me it isn't true!

She always stayed, because she did truly regret to inform anyone that their loved one wasn't coming home.

She holds her own letter now, and no one stays.

…Hatake Kakashi died in the line of battle…

… … His body has yet to be recovered.

She sags into her kitchen table, pale and shaking, but not crying. She's used to death. She's used to death ripping her loved ones away without even the time to say goodbye. She remembers her mother and father, fighting to save her life when she was a child and the Kyuubi was destroying her village.

Now she stares at her left hand. A silver band glitters on her ring finger.

"Let's get married!" he'd said.

"Do it right!" she had yelled at him.

He had pulled down his mask, held her hand, and gotten down on one knee with a smile. "I was getting there."

It hurts, like someone is driving hooks into her heart and ripping it apart to take a look inside. Her heart speeds up, her body feels cold, a panic sets in – Oh, Kami, she's alone again – and she can't breathe. There isn't enough air for her to drag into her lungs and her vision gets dark and she grabs onto the corner of the table, hoping she doesn't pass out, can't pass out, she should be used to this!

And then, blessedly, someone knocks on the door and a voice calls from outside, "Iruko! Iruko, I'm so sorry, I just heard about what happened…" It's Mizuki, and he doesn't stop yelling.

She gasps, air comes in, and she holds her breath for a long, composing moment. She catches herself, and then her sanity.

Thank Kami for perfect timing.

:::

"So… Kakashi-Sensei… isn't coming back?" Naruto frowns up at her, as if the context of those words in that order just don't make sense to him.

Sakura stares at her through the verbal barrier of her trembling fists, green eyes wide and watery, leaning towards an unresponsive Sasuke that doesn't look away from his feet.

"That's not right, though!" Naruto barks. "He's supposed to be training us, not getting himself… himself…" He shakes his head, takes a step back. "He's just late, Iruko-Sensei. H-he always is. You just wait and see, he'll be back!"

She crouches down so that she's eyelevel with him, hands on his shoulders, and she tries to tell him without words that, no, he isn't coming back. Because Naruto will go looking for him if he doesn't understand it, and he will never give up finding him for as long as he can search.

She needs to stop him before he tries, not only because it's useless, but to convince herself that he wouldn't find him. Hope is a tragic thing, a dangerous and soul-murdering devastation that will ruin them.

She can't let him do this to himself.

Maybe he sees that in her eyes, because he starts trembling. His fists quaver at his sides, his jaw tightens, his eyes squint, he's trying not to cry.

And she pulls him to her chest and the floodgates open, just as long as she's hiding him, and his hands unclench and clench again in her vest.

He still whispers, though, low enough for only her ears to hear, "You're wrong."

She bites into her bottom lip, shuts her eyes, doesn't have the will to watch Sakura cry and Sasuke withdraw into himself. She would give anything to be wrong. She would give anything to have that name on the letter of condolence be wrong. The Hokage's mistake, the mistake of the person who wrote the letter, the witness's mistake – she doesn't care. A mistake is a mistake, as long as it means that he isn't dead.

But she knows better. Matters of death are taken with pride and self-control, but not lightly. He's dead, or else she would have never gotten the letter.

"I'm sorry, Naruto."

"No, no, no, no, no…"

Yes.

:::

"Thank you for not leaving me alone, Mizuki-kun." She sets out the extra futon she has, laying it down next to her bed. "It's like our childhood all over again, isn't it? You're always there for me when I need you." Her fingers tremble as she smoothes out the blanket and pillow.

Mizuki smiles softly for her sake, a hand coming to settle over both of hers, stopping the trembling. Camaraderie. "That's what friends are for, right?"

She manages a nod. Bites into her bottom lip and can nearly taste blood. "You're… You're a great friend."

He pulls her, without a fight, to him and holds her close, gently, carefully, like she'll shatter if he's too forceful, and pushes her thick, leather black hair over her shoulder. "I'm not, really. If I were, my friend would trust me enough to cry in front of me."

She sucks in a deep breath, smells his cologne, the metallic tang of all shinobi, ink and paper, sweat. He doesn't feel right, doesn't have the same figure as Kakashi, doesn't have the same shade of skin, doesn't wear his clothes the same way, shows too many people his face.

She pats his shoulder and breaks free from him. "I'm not going to cry." She looks away.

"Why?" Mizuki's voice is harsher. Something flashes in the pit of his pale eyes. "Because Kakashi wouldn't have wanted you to?" He sounds even vaguely disgusted.

She almost laughs – almost, but not quite. "No. He would have wanted me to cry." Because even she knows that it feels better to cry. She had cried after her parents had died and, though it had never brought them back, it had made her feel lighter, like she had mourned and that she could move on. Every moment she had had to force a smile had been when she had hurt the most.

She wants this pain to stay, though, for a little while longer.

"He would have wanted me to bawl my eyes out," she's still saying, and she knows it's true.

He would have wanted her to cry like a little baby, throw some flowers and her love at his grave a few times, and then move on.

She doesn't want that, though. Not yet.

And she plays with the silver ring on her left hand. No, not yet.

:::

Three weeks in, still hasn't cried, hasn't taken a day off, refuses to talk about what has happened.

She knows that these are all very bad signs of things to come, knows that she needs to mourn, but she isn't ready to face that reality, not at the moment. Everything has a time and that time isn't now.

But Mizuki is a good friend and he's worried for her.

"Let's go on a date." He watches her expectantly. "Or we can just call it dinner. It doesn't matter." He makes it a point to stare at her and not her apartment, so clean that it looked staged, unlived in, and the air smelled cold instead of laundry and food and life.

He also makes it a point to stare into her eyes, and not the bags under them. Sleep is hard to come by, so she keeps herself busy, even when it means rewashing the walls and crawling on the ceiling to tackle every spider web and every smudge that somehow gets there. Then she has to go back because her hands left prints and that is another thing to wash away.

"We need to get you out of your apartment," he adds on when she just stares at him.

She doesn't want to go outside.

Then she decides that it would look like she's mourning if she doesn't go.

"Okay. Just out to dinner."

And he smiles to surpass her own tired twisting of lips. "Just dinner."

:::

Seven weeks. Not ready yet.

But the Hokage is in her doorway and there's no possible way to tell him that he can't come in and see her obsessively clean apartment or her untouched bed or her dry eyes and the bags under them.

"Of course, Hokage-sama." She steps to the side and he enters.

"Just Hiruzen is fine." He doesn't smile and she knows why.

He isn't here to tell her that everything is okay, he's here to tell her that everything is not okay, and only very cruel people deliver bad news with mirth.

"Would you like to talk about it?" he begins with, giving her the choice to open up, as he claims a seat at her kitchen table.

She looks down at the silver wing. "There's nothing to talk about."

"You know, I vaguely remember having to do this with you before…" He gives her a hard look from beneath the brim of his Kage hat.

"I mourned before," she counters.

"Yes, after I confronted you about it. You were a very stubborn girl… Somehow, it scares me that you've only become more so."

The pain is terrible. She drops to her knees in front of him, rests her head against his knee, and clutches her hands in his robe. "I'm not ready yet," she whispers, raggedly, in agony. "I know what I have to do, it's just that I – I don't want to, not now…"

"The time will have to come sooner or later."

"Later," she says instantly. "Please, later!"

"Sooner." He puts a hand on her head. "Mizuki recently contacted me. He thinks that your withdrawal could be a danger to Konoha."

"W-what?"

"It makes sense, actually. You're in charge of our future, the education of our children, and you handle mission reports. You're a respected shinobi, your students and your colleagues adore you enough to do just about anything you would ask them to do."

"But what does that have to do with –"

Revenge. Revenge against her village for sending her fiancé off onto a mission he couldn't finish, for taking something away from her that she can never get back. It's happened before, has left some very sore scars on Konoha as a village, even more painful reminders on some select few.

She could, in theory, betray her friends and her students and her peers, seeing as how she was emotionally unstable and not properly dealing with the situation.

She lifts her head slowly and looks up at him, unsure, almost afraid, breathless. "Why would Mizuki-kun do that?"

She almost expects him to say, "Out of concern for you and the village," but what comes out of his mouth is something entirely different.

"Because he wants something."

"… What?"

"After he told us the potential danger of leaving you on your own," he explains, "he went on to suggest that you would do best with a caretaker – someone to take your mind off of your loss and keep an eye on you at the same time."

He pauses.

"I don't understand." But she thinks she might.

"He implicated that marriage, your marriage to him, to be more specific, would be the solution to all of our problems."

"But Mizuki-kun wouldn't do that, he wouldn't… We're friends! He knows I don't love him, not like I that, I can't, I would never – !"

"We've recently learned that Mizuki was missing for some time during Kakashi's mission." He cuts her down and leaves her to bleed. Cold horror, no, no, no, no!

"What are you getting at?" Something burns within her. It's familiar, it's bright, it's rage. "What are you trying to say?"

"He told his comrades that he would be taking on a B-Rank mission outside of Konoha, and assigned for a substitute at the Academy before disappearing for three days. Three days before we had news of Kakashi's demise."

He studies her, her rage, her disbelief, her pain.

"Iruko, I want you to think back – when you first saw Mizuki after getting news of Kakashi's death, was there anything strange about him?"

She doesn't want to think back, doesn't want to acknowledge what he's trying to say, but something tickles the edge of her consciousness, a voice screams at her, You KNOW!

And then she does.

"He was there when I got my letter of condolence." She can remember him outside her door, yelling, saying how sorry he was for her loss, and then his speedy exit when she went to go open the door.

She hadn't thought about it at the time. Now it's all that's on her mind.

Because she was the fifth person to know about Kakashi's death – fifth after the witness, the Hokage, the writer of the letter, and the messenger who delivered it. Mizuki had not been any four of the people before her.

How had he known?

"But… even if that is the case… Kakashi's too strong for him to take down…" She feels numb with what's she's saying, her best friend killing her fiancé, her best friend doing it because he wanted her, her best friend trying to make her sound like she could betray her own village.

She curls her hand over her heart, digs her nails through the fabric of her simple black shirt into her skin, feels how painfully her heart beats, can hear it thumping against her ear drums.

Hurts.

"He never would have been able to attack Kakashi and then make it back in one piece," she's still saying, defending, she doesn't even know who.

"He didn't have to attack Kakashi. He just had to make sure he didn't come back." He stands to his feet. "Mizuki doesn't know that he's under suspicion of foul play, yet. However, we are questioning the witness on what he really saw that day." He offers his hand to her.

She takes it. The rage is churning, changing, she's changing, the change is dangerous. "Hiruzen-sama, I need to ask a favor of you."

:::

She is familiar with death. Not just with its aftermath, but with its dealings. She is, after all, a shinobi.

Mizuki is at the kitchen table, a clay cup in hand, happy that she invited him over for dinner, and, yet, troubled.

"I never meant to make you sound like a danger to the village," he laments. He takes a sip from the cup, puts it back down. Wets his lip, acts nervous – so very troubled as he can't meet her eyes. "I was just thinking of what was best for everyone. If you'd rather not, then I would understand…"

She smiles tiredly. "No, I know why you did it. And it's okay. I am unstable, and you were just being a good friend by trying to keep me together." She stands behind his seat, rubs his shoulders, leans down and whispers into his ear, "Thank you. And, I wouldn't mind, really." She looks guiltily away. "It makes me feel like a horrible person for saying this, and I'd give anything if it weren't the case, but… It made me happy when I learned you wanted to marry me." He flushes as she leans in closer, breasts against the back of his neck and shoulders. "I've always liked you, Mizuki-kun. But I never knew you returned my feelings and Kakashi – well, sometimes, people just happen to be there."

"I understand." He turns his head to look at her, look at her lips, tilts his chin down and sees through the low cut of her simple shirt to her breasts. "I had a relationship once too, thinking that you didn't like me the way I like you. When I made the offer, I never knew this would happen…"

She meets his gaze. "Neither did I." Then she straightens up, away from him, away from how he tries to lean into her, and turns back to making dinner with tense shoulders.

"What's wrong, Iruko?"

"I wouldn't mind marrying you, but, it's just that... I was still engaged to him, Mizuki-kun, and I still cared for him, deeply. I'll never know what happened to him, beyond the fact that he's dead."

"He isn't dead," Mizuki croons, "I couldn't kill him. I had to…"

She watches him from under her eyelashes, sees how he slowly turns to his cup of sake, and then, even more slowly, turns to her. His face is ashen.

"You had to…?" Her hand stays on the handle of the pot of boiling onions and green peppers.

"I had to use a forbidden jutsu on him," he all but spits out, then grabs his throat, eyes wide, choking, face red, not breathing. "H-he was-s-s e-ex-p-pect-ting i-i-t-t… W-woul-ldn't l-let-t m-m-me c-cl-clo-s-se…" He gasps, throws his head back, deep breath in, deep breath out, hands claw sporadically at the table. He doesn't fight the truth anymore. The words bubble up into his mouth and he doesn't try to stop them. Knows that he can't and that he shouldn't have trusted the sake.

His handsome features twist into hatred. "He had you," he hisses. "He had you and you're mine! I was there when you needed someone to hold onto, I was there when you needed help, I was there when you had dreams, I became a sensei to stay with you, I did everything to be by your side!" He reaches into his flak jacket. Metal glints. "It was never him, but he was the one you wanted."

He flies at her, kunai in hand, ready to do whatever it takes to make her stay with him, and she can see it in his eyes, his furious, mad eyes, that, even if he has to kill her, he won't let her go.

And she throws the pot in his face. Skin burns, he screams, flesh boils, steam rises, and the kunai drops to the floor.

"You were a really good friend," she tells him. "But he is the man I love."

He sobs, sniffles, chortles, laughs. "You'll never find him." His face is sweltering red and his eyes are swollen shut, but he still smiles at her, widely, insanely, no remorse, no compassion, just rage and pleasure. "I couldn't kill him, but I got rid of him!"

She crouches down in front of him. She puts one hand on his shoulder, feels him coil, ready to strike out and harm her, kill her, take her down with him, and reaches for his kunai with the other.

It's in self-defense, really, though she knows it isn't. He was trying to kill her, though he wouldn't have succeeded in the end.

His blood runs across the kitchen tiles, and she feels pain for the friend she once had in Mizuki. And then she feels nothing.

:::

The scandal is brought to light. Nothing stops Team Kakashi from forming a search party and looking for their missing sensei.

And she wants to go with them, wants nothing more than to be with them when they find him, but she's held back.

"You didn't have to kill him," the hokage says. "We could have learned more if you had let him live."

And this is her punishment. She'll have to wait, leave fate to twirl and twist in another's hand, have faith that they find him alive and all in one piece.

The waiting game is nearly as painful as thinking that he's dead, because the waiting game gives hope that he might be alive, might be trying to get back from wherever he is, and hope is a very cruel, very dangerous thing.

:::

The clothes he's wearing when he walks through the front door are not his. They're a size too big, already worn, so they have to be borrowed, and they smell like smoke and sake. He's wearing a bandana over the lower half of his face and his signature band is missing.

He's sunburned and his hair is longer than when he left, not with the same shine, lankier, and there is a confused, hazy look in his one eye, purple bruises making his gaze heavy, and he stands in the doorway as if he isn't sure if he's at the right apartment, looks at her as if she might not be the person he's looking for, holds himself as if he isn't completely sure if he is who thinks he is either.

It would have been impossible for someone of Mizuki's level to kill the great and powerful Hatake Kakashi, but there are other jutsus, other ways, and a few of them would be disconcerting, confusing, mind numbing.

"'Kashi," she whispers, not all that sure where her voice went, and she stands there, dumbly, wanting to run towards him, hit him, scream at him, tell him to never leave again, order him to never go, hug him, kiss him, love him, Please, let me prove to myself that you're really here.

"I'll expect your mission report once you're put back on duty," she says instead, all business because that is her default and she can't think past him standing there, being there, them alone, Kami, it's been so long. Her body throbs, her heart beats, her breath stammers.

"And, I swear, if it isn't decent, I'll –"

His arms are iron bands around her waist, his face pressed to her throat, and he… he cries.

She wants to know what he went through, what could have caused him to stay away for so long, what caused him to stay away from her for so long, but her tongue is tied and her vocal cords constrict and all she can do is wrap her arms around him and swear, promise, vow without words that she will never let him go again.

She should have let Naruto go sooner had she known.

She should have gone herself.

"'Ruko…" he breathes, hoarsely, as if he hasn't used his voice in a long time. "'Ruko, 'm home."

"I, I can s-see this." Oh, Kami, the time has come.

He isn't dead, he came back, he's alive, he's in her arms, and she finally mourns – for lost time, for whatever he went through, for the pain she felt when she thought she had lost him, for her own stupidity for not looking for him sooner, for everything.

She cries too, holds on just as tightly as he does, and wishes that she would never have to let go of him again.

:::

Life goes on, just like death, and he sleeps in their bed for three days straight while his team takes care of him (as part of their official type: Protection, Rank C mission, as he is a high-ranking shinobi and there are people in the world who love to catch him off guard) and she continues her lessons at the Academy and her hours in handling mission reports.

At night, though, she stays with him, because he doesn't sleep unless she's there. She knows because he will wake up screaming her name, one eye wild, the other flashing crimson, and he won't calm down till she's at his side.

Her desire to know what happened to him should diminish – fear should keep her compliant in not knowing, in not wondering, in not caring as long as he is back with her – but it only grows.

She needs to know so that she can make it better. She needs to know so that she can wipe the terror off his face, to try and help him become the man he had once been, needs to know that this is the man she loves and not merely his body with the mind of a terrified child.

But he doesn't talk about it, in those lucid moments that he has, and she doesn't waste their time trying to force it from him.

He's healing, she loves him, and that is all that matters at the moment.

:::

She comes home and dismisses the team, makes sure that they know she's grateful for everything they've done as they reluctantly make their way out.

Naruto stays behind a moment longer and she hugs him. "It'll be okay," she whispers into his ear. "Some things just take time." Then she moves back and boxes his ears. "Now get home with you!"

And he goes.

Next comes Kakashi's bath. He knows how to use the bathroom, how to wash himself, how to rinse and dry, but the water arises a great and foreboding alarm in him, one that makes him freeze in place, muscles trembling, fight or flight reaction and he doesn't know which way to go.

The first time she tried to give him a bath, he tackled her away from the tub and snarled, animalistic, beastly, not quite human.

He had glared at the water for nearly fifteen minutes before it had seemed to click in his mind that this water, compared to whatever water he had faced before, was not going to rise up and attack them.

She leads him in, sits him down, and lathers up some soap against his skin.

There are more scars than before he left. Angry red lines crisscrossing over his back and upper arms, like claws had ripped into him. He doesn't mind when she touches them, but the medic who came to her house the day after their reunion had nearly lost her hand for even reaching out.

When he's covered in soap, hair slicked back against his face with a thick sheen of shampoo, she coerces him towards the already full tub, naked herself because she knows he won't go in unless she's with him.

He follows, hesitates, grips the edge of the tub and glares at the water as if it's planning something against him, but then has to lower himself into its liquid depths because she is already there.

His back to her front, she rinses away the soap and shampoo. She runs her fingers through his thick hair, carefully tends to his wounds, tries to massage some of the tension from his shoulders.

This should get tiring very fast – she should feel like she's losing herself to tending to a man who had once been so strong and so independent – but, instead, she finds herself hoping that she does get tired of it.

Because if she has to take care of him, that means he can't take care of himself. If he can't take care of himself, he can't leave. If he can't leave, he can't die.

Her logic is faulty and she knows that, but it's tantalizing.

And she has a flashback to the time when she had been in a near comatose state, exhausted from work, fresh from an attack because one of the shinobi who hadn't been able to turn in their mission report hadn't liked what she had had to say to him, and Kakashi had led her to the bathroom.

He had washed her with gentle hands, magical fingers massaging the back of her neck, the soles of her feet, her back, her hands, letting all the tension fall away as if it was the grime and dust of her day. His front had pressed against her back in the bathtub, rinsing her off, touching her sensually, slowly, aware of just how tired she was but arousing a lazy sort of passion that had put her at ease.

She smiles at the memory. No, she isn't going to get tired of this. His fear rips at her, certainly, and she wants nothing more than for him to smile and laugh and be brave and courageous once more, but she can have conflicting wants.

She can be complicated.

:::

She puts him to bed after dinner. He glares at the darkness that envelopes the room once she turns off the lights and he wraps an arm protectively around her waist once she settles down next to him. He growls. Stay away, he says without words.

She turns around and nuzzles her face into his chest, wrapping her own arm around him, grasps weakly at his shirt, holds on. She has woken up in the middle of the night before to find him not beside her. He never leaves the apartment, but, sometimes, she finds him roaring, roaring, at shadows and, other times, he's turned on the water and let it flood up the bathroom, watching it flow, as if waiting for something.

He rests his head on hers. "'Riko…?"

"Yes?"

She counts her heartbeats. One… two… three… four… five… six… seven…

"I'm scared."

It's a monumental breakthrough, and fear and joy say an intimate hello in her chest as she sucks in a deep, ragged breath. "What are you scared of?"

"The monster in the lake," he whispers. "The shadow warriors." He pulls her closer. "The nightmares of losing…" you.

"Well, you don't have to worry about them anymore," she says, possibly more cheekily than she means to, and she lets a smile creep into her voice. "Big, bad Iruko-Sensei will keep them all away."

And he cries.

:::

He isn't as edgy as he goes into the bathroom this time. He watches the water run into the tub with a weary, but cooperative attitude. He washes himself, slips into the tub before she does, and watches her undress.

The teasing smile he usually wears when he's in the mood isn't there, but the look in his eyes is familiar and the hard length against his inner thigh leaves no room for questioning about what is going to happen if she gets into the bath with him.

She shivers, feels an answering throb between her legs, almost feels like climaxing right then and there because, Kami, it has been so long since he last looked at her that way.

He holds a hand out to her and she takes it without hesitation, letting him pull her into his arms, against him, letting his lips touch hers. Slowly at first, relearning old territory, retesting old boundaries, and then deeper, tongues touching, inquisitive, tastes mingling, familiar, but not. Harder, teeth clack, tongues war, hands begin to wander over flesh, grope, hold, closer.

He squeezes and fondles her breasts, breaks away from her mouth and suckles on her nipples like a newborn, watches her with one heated blue eye. Mine, she translates.

He's claiming her all over again, and she's going to help him. Because, whenever he claims her, she's claiming him in turn. It's only fair.

She weaves her hands into his hair and pulls him closer, making little gasping noises as she bucks against his thigh, rubbing her pulsing core against him. "'Kashi…" Water splashes over the rim of the tub. This is going to be messy, she's going to have to clean up, oh, Kami, he remembers her erogenous zones.

Fingers fiddle with her pleasure spots, two ribs down, a few inches over, there's one. Further down, just above her belly button, he pinches and she squeals. There's two. He finds her hips, pushes against them, thumbs tracing their arches, and she groans. There's three.

And she gives as good as she gets, pressing her mouth against the junction of his neck and shoulder, sucking, leaving behind her mark, one hand on his erection and the other tickling behind his ear. He shivers.

"'Ruko!" His pupils are blown wide, white teeth gritting together. He snaps up, traces the scar across her nose from one cheek to the other with his tongue, and then claims her lips.

She shifts, lifts her hips up, and water sloshes off of her in waves. The head of his erection touches her intimate lips and she cries out at the mere feel of him there. So close. But she needs to be closer.

His hands are hard on her hips, though, holding her. "Not yet." He's obviously at his limit. "Just a little more."

She grabs his hands, moves them up to her breasts, and drops herself on him.

Kakashi groans and his head rolls on his shoulders.

She shakes and quivers and feels the burn of him inside of her, more painful than pleasurable. He's too big, it's been too long, she can feel him all the way up to her throat, she can't move, can't think, can't breathe, can't see, isn't even sure if she's alive anymore.

She loves it.

"'Kashi!" She claws at his chest, raises herself, drops back down slowly, cries out.

He thrusts up into her, lifts his head to look at her, watch her writhe and undulate, watch her with a familiar eye with familiar wants in it, lips quirking, flush on his cheeks. "There you go, 'Ruko…" He licks his lips, grabs onto her waist once more and controls the pace. "Just fall apart for me."

She growls and grabs him by his hair, no mercy, and pulls him to her. Their kiss conveys a thirst for each other that they will never be able to quench.

"Don't ever leave me again," she whispers against his mouth, begs, knows that she shouldn't. They are shinobi, but, before that, they're human, and, in either existence, she is familiar with death and its spontaneous ways.

She's happier that he doesn't answer, doesn't lie and doesn't apologize for what he can't control, and he sinks his teeth into her bottom lip instead and drags her back into a soul-hungry kiss.

And she comes undone, just like that.

:::

She has never been so happy to see Icha Icha Paradise in Kakashi's fingerless-gloved hand.

That doesn't mean she can't be sad at the same time, because she's allowed to be complicated, and he's going back to teaching his team, to going outside, to taking missions.

Small missions – D and C Rank only. If the danger magnet that is Naruto happens to transform it into something B or A Rank, though, there is nothing they will be able to do about it.

She twists the silver ring on her finger, watches him go off down the street towards the team's meeting place, and lets the happiness and selfishness duel in her chest.

Yes, Kakashi is healing and becoming independent again.

Yes, she's happy that the man he once was is still somewhere inside of him, slowly coming back to the surface.

But he had been gone for nearly two months, and she had thought he was dead. She wouldn't have minded a little more time to keep her to himself, to have him want her and only her.

She sees a shadow move out of the corner of her eye and twists around to look back into her apartment.

Not a single object moves. Just in case something decides to do so, though, she glares, offering up her most intimidating sensei look. She has made full-grown men piss themselves before with this look. "If you want to cause trouble, you can get out of my home right now, or else I will find you and I will punish you."

The shadow moves again, but, this time, it's to run past her and out of her apartment.

She is the big, bad Iruko-Sensei, and she promised Kakashi that he wouldn't have to worry about them anymore. It should be scared.

:::

Author's Note: I was trying to come up with a feminine version of the name Iruka. Iruko doesn't sound much better, but it's technically feminine.