.

Any man who claims ones emotions cannot

lie to them is an utter, helpless fool.

When she squints at her window and realizes that it's dark outside, the sun having risen and set again since she dropped into her bed, she decides that it's probably time to get up and move around a bit.

She doesn't bother with shorts—she just gets herself out of bed and slides into her fuzziest pair of slippers, in nothing but those and an oversized t-shirt.

Of course, because she chooses not to put pants on, Kakashi has to be out in her living room, sat down on her rug beside Rei. And he has to take in her appearance with a bland look that has her blushing for no discernable reason.

"There's a couch."

"Ah," he says. "But there's also a dog."

No arguing with that logic.

Hiwa troops into her kitchen and gets a pot of coffee going.

God, she's tired. It's not the kind of tired that she can fix with caffeine, but there's nothing else for her to do but try.

She feels like she's just gone through a breakup and that's not fair because it's from a relationship that she never really had in the first place. Not that her emotions seem to have gotten the memo. It's like somebody took her and threw her into a blender, dumped her out, swirled her around in their glass a bit, then tossed her into a food processor for good measure.

While the water starts to heat in the coffee maker, arguably the most expensive appliance in her kitchen—Hiwa doesn't mess around when it comes to her coffee and she's glad whoever furnished her apartment seems to have picked up on that—she starts to rifle through her shelves for a mug to suit her current mood. Something ugly and massive. A chipped old thing she grabbed for a handful of ryo is what she ends up with, one of the mugs she got at a second-hand shop a week or so ago when she wanted quantity over quality.

And as she settles into the idea, she realizes that good coffee in a shitty mug is exactly what she wants, right now.

Her hair is still in what was left of her updo, a rat's nest of pulled weaves and wisps of hair fallen loose. Without thinking, her free hand goes to her hair, feeling around at the mess and shoving things back into place where she can.

"Bit late for coffee, hmm?"

It's a testament to how out of sorts she is that she jumps at the sudden voice.

The hand nestled in her hair yanks painfully, but the more annoying result is that the mug slips from her fingers and shatters on the floor.

Hiwa stares down at the mess, unable to muster up any kind of reaction.

Rei pads over and whines. She keeps out of the kitchen, though, because with the scattered bits of glass there's not any way she'd be able to wade through without getting a piece or two stuck in her paw pads.

Kakashi pops up beside Rei and takes in the sight with an impassive eye, the book hanging at his side.

"This feels apt," Hiwa hears herself say as her hand drops down and dangles at her side.

And while her coffee brews on in the background, Hiwa grabs the garbage bin from under her sink and starts to pick up the shards, on her hands and knees, putting them in one by one.

She wonders what's going to happen, with her and Genma.

Where do they go from here?

Her cards are down. But his are tight to his chest, and they can't move forward until he either folds and steps away from the table or lays his flat for her to see. At least, she won't let them move forward until he does.

Kakashi's gaze burns at the nape of her neck as she drops another chunk of porcelain into the bin.

Which isn't entirely his fault at this point. If she let him a couple of days ago, they would have their resolution. She's just pretty sure he was about to walk away without waiting for the dealer to put down the river card and that's not what she wants, either. He might have been content to let the game go unfinished, and in a lot of cases, Hiwa might be inclined to do the same, but it would have haunted her if they didn't see it through.

She wonders if it would have haunted him, too. And it makes her feel petty that she hopes it would have.

Is she expecting too much?

Something hot bites into her finger and Hiwa jerks her hand back, hissing out a breath between her teeth. She looks down at her finger. A bead of blood pokes through the pad of her index finger, bright red against her porcelain skin.

And then, without a word, Kakashi meanders through the glass sea to squat in front of her. With one hand he grabs hold of her wrist and inspects the superficial cut. The hold is firm but careful, enough that he can pull her hand closer to him but not so tight that she couldn't easily pull her hand back, despite their astronomical difference in physical strength. Then, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a grey handkerchief that he deftly ties around the finger in a makeshift bandage.

It's quick, efficient, but painfully gentle.

The kind of gentle that comes from having destructive hands. A gentle wrought from squeezing something important too tight by accident and breaking it, and now being unable to shake the awareness that death follows your touch like gold in the wake of King Midas.

Except that for Hiwa all his touch does is leave tingles and firecracker sparks along her skin.

Her heart thumps heavy in her chest.

She wonders how somebody with such a wide streak of assholery can hold this quiet kindness in him, and whether thinking about them as a leaf and bark instead of a tree is the right perspective to view the man through.

She knew this was coming, she'd sensed it since she'd gotten back to the village, but now least of all she's equipped to deal with this. But she doesn't know how long she can shove it back—as she's seen with the whole Genma situation, her heart isn't feeling particularly obedient these days, and she feels like she's gotten herself stuck in a losing war with forces coming at her from two fronts instead of one.

Kakashi rests his elbows on his knees and lets his hands hang loose. "So," he says. "You planning on filling Genma in on what's going on with the Nara, or are you going to let him rot in ignorance forever?"

She sits back, her legs tucked under her. She brushes a couple of stray hairs behind her ear with her good hand.

With no immediate path for retreat open to her, Hiwa resigns herself to this. The energy to fight anymore long dried up. She's strategized. She's sent out her troops. Now? She sits back and lets things play out on their own—her injured hand is too weak to grasp the figures on the war table, much less move them about.

"Jiraiya?" she asks.

Kakashi smiles that uncomfortable plastic smile of his and says nothing.

She takes that as 'yes'.

"Are you asking me about this for gossip material?"

"Mah, merely looking to satisfy my own curiosity."

Hiwa nods. "I'm not planning on telling him."

"Oh?"

"Why bother?" she asks. "What can he gain from knowing?"

"He should know about the goings on of his own marriage."

"To do what?"

Kakashi tilts his head, making no move to answer.

"He can't do anything but feel bad about what happened," she says. "And I'm fairly confident that he will if he finds out. Feel bad, I mean. So what's the point?"

"You'd be upset if roles were reversed and he kept this from you."

"Yeah, I would. And if he ever finds out, he'd be in his right to get upset, too." She tosses another chunk of the mug into the bin. "If things get worse, I'll tell him. But right now, when there's no actual issue yet? I'd rather take the chance of keeping his nose entirely out of this. He shouldn't have to worry about this unless it's unavoidable."

For a minute or so, the only sound is the clink of porcelain against porcelain as she keeps going, Kakashi watching on from his spot a few feet away.

Hiwa sighs.

More to herself than him, she says, "I don't hate him. I don't think I'll ever be able to hate him because even after everything that's happened since we got back, I know that if I went to him with this mess and asked for help, he'd drop everything in a heartbeat. Just like he did for me when I was a complete stranger to him. And I can't repay that kindness by throwing stones."

He isn't trying to hurt her; what he's done since they've been back has left her hurt and confused. Intent hasn't followed execution, she doesn't think.

She sees collateral damage in her pain, not a directed attack.

Hiwa presses the heels of her palms into her eyes.

Every time she tries to wrap her head around things—his actions, her own feelings—her mind feeds her a different take on things, another shitty abstraction, each more difficult to parse than the last.

"You missed a piece."

She moves her hands and looks to where Kakashi's pointing. She puts it in the bin, along with all the others, but when she glances back to where Kakashi was she finds he's gone, disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Rei pads over and curls herself around Hiwa like a stinky, oversized blanket, her head rested in Hiwa's lap. Hiwa sighs and runs her fingers through Rei's fur.

"Why can't people be as easy as dogs?" she mutters.

Rei huffs.

"Yeah," she says. "Too good to be allowed."

She gets one day of peace.

One day where nobody knocks on her door or barges in through her balcony, she has nothing to do, a full fridge to sustain her, her partner curled up around her like a safety blanket, and a fresh stack of books purchased for herself the night before after Kakashi left in an attempt to maintain her sanity. She reads and for a while, she isn't thinking about how many days left between now and the tenth, what Hiruzen might have said to Jiraiya and Shikaku, what kind of verdict Genma is going to lay down on her, and the fact that as the days go on, the fact that she's got a growing urge to unravel the mystery of Kakashi, the most gentle asshole she's ever met.

One day where she lives in the world of her books and not her own.

The peace is nice while it lasts.

She knows, though, that nothing gold can stay.

Somehow, when Jiraiya breaks her streak of peace the next day by knocking on her door while she's in the middle of her first cup of coffee for the day—which she drinks at five in the evening, her whole sleep schedule off-kilter at this point—something in her gut tells her that it's got nothing to do with the Nara situation.

Rei was gone when she woke up, probably off to hunt. She hasn't been doing enough of it lately, not wanting to leave Hiwa alone for too long. So she's almost relieved that the apartment is empty, even if it feels a bit lonely, this way.

"Come in," she says, setting down her mug.

Jiraiya's face is grim as he lets himself in and shucks his shoes by the door.

For propensity's sake, she asks, "Nara?"

"No," Jiraiya says. "Lord Third told us both to fuck off because Kusa hasn't backed away from our borders and negotiations aren't going as well as they should."

Hiwa closes her eyes. "You're sending me back out."

"I don't have a choice."

A short, tight breath leaves her because the tenth is less than a week away and it was hard enough being out of the village, last year, and the thought of being away again this year, unable to visit her dad on the anniversary for the second year in a row, more years than not, has her throat tight.

She doesn't know what's going on on her face that gets him, but she sees how Jiraiya's expression falters like she'd slapped him.

"There's nobody else?" she asks, her voice hollow.

Jiraiya stares at her, his jaw working. Carefully, he says, "The only other agent I have that Lord Hokage approved of for this mission is currently in Wind Country."

And the unsaid 'instead of you' dries up any other token protest she might have tried for.

"When do I leave?"

"Tonight, if possible."

She nods.

He pulls out a scroll from his jacket and hands it to her. "We're sending you into a village right near Kusa—Yomitan."

"Yomitan," she says. She racks her brain for what she remembers about the place. "Largest artisan and farming village in Grass Country, a stone's throw from Kusa itself." A hotspot for weapon making, vital crop farming, and cloth production. It's like the Elemental Nations version of the crafting row most video games have. "You want a gauge of what their current output is looking like?

"Got it in one."

"Things are that bad," she says, a statement and not a question.

"We'll be declaring war in the next couple of weeks if things don't improve."

"And they're not responding to our aggression?"

Jiraiya scowls. "We haven't been aggressive enough to warrant a response, far as I'm aware," he mutters. But he shakes his head. "Doesn't matter. All you need to know is that tensions are going to be high and so is the risk, with this mission—"

"I know."

He holds up a hand. "But the usual rule still stands. Ninja who abandon their duty are cowards, but dead spies tell no secrets. You hear me?" he says. "No stupid shit."

"Yeah. Yeah, I hear you."

"Good."

He turns and heads back towards the door.

He hesitates, though, before he leaves, his hand wrapped around the doorknob. "I am sorry, kid," he says. "Alright? If I had anybody else—"

"You'd send them," she says. She manages a weak smile for him. "I know."

And with that settled he heads off, leaving Hiwa to her thoughts and an empty apartment.

.

.

She walks out of the gates alone after the sun's set, that night. She doesn't call Rei to her side until she's already taken her first steps past the gate.

Like a ghost, she slips away. She says no goodbyes.

It's been like this for years—leaving alone, the village none the wiser of her absence as it's at her back. But this is the first time she can remember that it's felt lonely.