Title: Aspenglow: Part V
Fandom/ Pairing: Naruto/ KakaIru
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Slash, AU
Notes: Written for the KakaIru LiveJournal Christmas song challenge; "Aspenglow"

Time bore the snowstorm away on its ever-flowing rivers and left only stillness in its wake. Mt. Aspenglow, wreathed in evidence of the blizzard, reflected pale gray light into the winter sky even as the sun forced its way through a rolling mass of clouds. To Genma, the ashen glow was like a subtle discoloration on the fur of a great beast, and he moved as though attempting to avoid this beast's gaze, keeping to the shadows as he padded silently over the forest floor. The bobcat left very few tracks in the pristine snow, so accustomed was he to concealing his path from potential enemies or prey. His posture was not that of a hunter, however, but of a searcher, bending all his considerable senses toward locating one individual. Angling down sharply, a forested hill sent him into a quicker, slightly sloppy pace, but the scent he tracked was far stronger by the time Genma reached the end of the slope, and he began to recognize the area. Though he was loath to do so, he slipped from his cat-skin and into his hated, but admittedly useful, human form.

"Raidou!" His own voice sounded strange to him, loud and attention-grabbing as it was. "Get out here, Raidou. We have to talk."

Immediately after issuing the call, he reverted to his true form, waiting primly on the snow for his friend to stir. He was not kept long. Within two minutes, an abnormally slender brown bear came ambling from the thicker brush and woods, scars clotting the tissue about his muzzle and making Genma's stomach turn. The bear's eyes were smiling, however, his mood casual as he joked, "It's been awhile since I've heard your human voice, Genma. It's an interesting change."

"I knew it. You're never asleep this time of year." The bobcat resisted the urge to hiss at his companion, to tell him that he'd only taken that form to find his sorry ass. "When you should be."

"But who would keep you company if I'm hibernating? And interesting things happen in the cold days, if the mice are to be believed."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"So it's true? Kakashi has taken up a den with a human?" Raidou seemed almost to be speaking to himself, and his comments made the cat hiss truly this time. Raidou smiled at his display. "I assume you had a few choice words to give him on the matter."

"Of course I did! He's lost his mind, Rai!" spat Genma, pacing and kicking up snow. "It's completely…wrong! Unnatural…"

"So is my lack of hibernation, but you don't seem as angry about that. Come this way; the trees will give us more cover. I dislike being out in the open like this." Halting Genma's next comment with a small snort of air, the bear began to make his way back towards the forest's edge. Reluctantly, Genma trailed behind him, only speaking again when they were in the embrace of towering pines and aspens.

"Your situation is different, though," he said of Raidou's eccentricity. Hate flashed through the bobcat's eyes; he seemed to be remembering, and his friend did not miss either display of emotion.

"Let me guess at what you're thinking."

"You always seem to know anyway!"

Ignoring his outburst, the bear continued: "I believe you think that I don't hibernate because of what happened to me the last time I did so, and that I should hate humans because of it."

"Should and don't, which I've yet to understand!" Genma was pacing again, pain evident even in his feline eyes. He twitched frantically with each point. "They burned you, Rai, for no good reason, and they would have trapped me afterward! I'd been able to ignore the cruelty of humans until I found you that day. If you won't hate them, I'll hate enough for the both of us!"

"That isn't the path you should take. I haven't. If anything…" The bear turned his nose to the horizon, almost wistful. "If anything, I understand more than ever that a shred of humanity may connect us all. Why do you think you and Kakashi and I have these gifts?" With those words, Raidou allowed his form to shimmer, shifting into the body of a muscular but calm-looking young man with dark eyes and, of course, a webbing of scars across one side of his face. Genma blinked, resisting the urge to show his teeth at the abrupt change, and Raidou crouched to his level, though his eyes remained skywards. "It can only be a sign that some human ideal, some defining aspect, exists within us: perhaps the ability to go against nature. Think: is it 'natural' for a bobcat to seek a bear's company?" He grinned at that, holding Genma's eyes with his own before raising them once more.

"Give Kakashi a bit of time, Genma. He's no pup. He can make his own decisions."

Looking at him, framed as he was by the pale winter sunlight filtering through the trees, Genma wondered if any other scarred human face could appear so strangely beautiful as Raidou's. He followed his friend's gaze to the treetops, and fancied he heard the aspens whisper or sing.

"I have killed."

Iruka looked up, startled by the abrupt utterance which heralded the wolf's return. "What?" he stuttered. His dog-eared copy of The Egyptian found itself placed face down on the coffee table as a thousand different scenarios flashed across his mind's eye, the most notable of which involved an errant hiker reaching an untimely demise at the end of a wolf's claws. He thought better of it when Kakashi snorted, gaze casual but blazing.

"Follow me." It was hardly a request. Iruka stood, noting Kakashi's almost instantaneous reversion to an animal's shape after he finished his command and how beautifully the fire spun gold from his normally steel-tinted fur. His cabin was shrouded in chinks of piercing shadow and pale winter light, almost hypnotically eerie in their contrast. The spell was broken when the human and wolf emerged into the winter chill, and Iruka found himself the target of yet another gaze. A stag, relatively small but well-proportioned, lay on its side in the glittering front lawn. Though it had a broken neck, its condition was otherwise pristine. The young man stared back at its dead eyes.

"Well?" Kakashi nearly snapped, suddenly human once more.

Iruka bit his lip. "You caught this…for me?"

"If you do not want it, I'll be more than happy to eat it myself."

Shaking his head, Iruka explained, "No, it's just… you don't have to go to this trouble; I can buy meat more easily."

"Fresh is better. It's bad enough that you cook it all."

The latter comment made the human blush for some reason. "It's healthier that way."

"It's disgusting and tastes like fire," countered Kakashi in a method of closing the matter. Catching Iruka's eyes, he narrowed his own appraisingly and gestured to the kill. "Is this not…pleasing to you, then?"

The addressee blinked. This was the most the wolf had spoken to him since their conversation at Lake Redden, and certainly the first time he had wasted words on something as superfluous as questions. Two anomalies such as these, combined as they were, made for a very taken aback human, but also, oddly, a happy one. His lips bloomed into a gentle smile.

"Actually," he replied, "I like it very much. Thank you."

It was impossible to gauge the wolf's mood as he nodded gravely in response, still gazing at him as though he were trying to decide whether an additional comment was worth the trouble. His intensity awoke nervousness in the human again, but this time, Iruka covered it by crouching down to observe the stag more closely. "He's pretty," the human found himself saying, reaching out to touch its shaggy winter coat. His hand was intercepted by Kakashi's.

"It is merely meat, and good meat at that. Your human fodder denies you the richness you need." His fingers moved to encircle Iruka's wrist appraisingly. Flabbergasted, the human felt his face heat at the sudden contact, and marveled at the warm roughness of the palm against his arm. "As I thought; too thin," growled the wolf. He released Iruka with an abruptness that equaled his initial grasp, kneeling down to take up the stag by its hind legs. In all honesty, the young man was panicked, his wild imagination sprinting toward the worst possible meaning behind the statement. He'd heard the tales; he knew of what they warned. Surely—surely Kakashi wasn't planning on…

"Don't insult me with that look, human." His eyes were trained on him, scornful but also strangely hurt. "If I wanted to eat you, I would have done so long ago. Human flesh is not so fine that it warrants fattening before consumption."

The flush redoubled and Iruka's eyes jumped. "I didn't mean to…"

"Perhaps you have simply learned to fear. Don't feel ashamed." Kakashi's voice was flat, however, and he did not look back as he brought the deer toward the rear of the cabin—probably to clean it, Iruka reflected numbly. He found himself alone more quickly than he'd expected, and the suddenness of it made his skin prickle with a chill that suddenly seemed unbearable. It led him to wonder how large his mistake had been. Though Kakashi stayed a wolf more often than not, rarely opting for conversation, Iruka was beginning to distinguish two types of silences that could stretch between them. The first, like quiet snowfall, drifted easily as a contented sigh; it was a sign of balance and status quo which only hurtful thoughts, words, or actions could break, no matter how unwitting they were. That hush could be cold, but always gentle; this silence, on the other hand, forced them apart like a wall ice crystals: cutting, cold, and penetrable only at the risk of harm. Its simple presence was enough to cause the young man distress. I really screwed up, he reflected pityingly. Kakashi would surely hate him now.

For a few minutes, he remained in the cold, as though his vigil could somehow cause time to pause or rewind, but he was forced inside when his fingertips grew numb. The house's warmth was an afterthought against the small, miserable darts of pain traversing the cavity in his chest. Mechanically, he tossed a few small logs onto the sputtering fire before moving into the kitchen. How long did it take to skin a deer, if that was even what Kakashi was doing? Should he prepare a recipe for venison, or begin to brown some chicken and beef? His mind wandered in indecision. Stupid; how could he have been so stupid as to think the wolf wanted to eat him?

"This isn't Little Red Riding Hood," he muttered, bitterness threading its way through his voice for the first time in months. No sooner had the words left his mouth than the back door swung open, and Iruka heard the click of Kakashi's claws on the floor. The wolf entered the bright kitchen with a crude linen bag, bloody with residual gore, dangling from its jaws. He found it laden with the best cuts of meat.

"Have you eaten?"

The wolf did not even look at him, instead turning its powerful body and exiting as suddenly as he had come. The door creaked like so many snapping ice crystals as it shut behind the creature. Eyes stinging as though he'd been slapped, Iruka gripped the meat in his hands and allowed self-pity to overwhelm him. He wasn't hungry anymore.

The hunt had done plenty to wear on Kakashi's endurance. Game was especially rare this time of year, and a deer of that size had taken hours to track, not to mention the time he took in hauling the corpse back to the cabin. Kakashi was plenty exhausted by the end of the ordeal, but not so weary that he couldn't afford to wander a fragment of the surrounding forest afterward and—though he wouldn't have admitted it under the harshest torture—sulk.

Whether kind or cruel, he reflected, humans were always, always vexing. It was an ever-consistent trait in their species. Even gentle ones like Iruka could send him into a whirl of inner turmoil the like of which he could not explain, all with a simple, insinuating look. The irony of his misunderstanding had not escaped the wolf; a week earlier, he might have been pleased with the fear the human had displayed. Had he not given reason for it at one point? However, if Kakashi had learned anything over the past few days, it was that even the firmest situations could shift in a moment, and running away from them changed very little.

He mulled over the notion of attempting to explain himself to the human, as the human had done for him at the lake. Truth be told, however, he felt that was against his nature. Wolves did not explain and certainly did not apologize for their actions. Though Kakashi realized he was not entirely a wolf, the prospect of going against that creed made him thoroughly uncomfortable. Surely giving the human a chance to explain himself would not be a violation of personal creed, though. With that reasoning firmly in place, Kakashi gathered himself and made his way back to the cabin in as dignified a manner as possible. Entering the front door as a human, he found Iruka waiting for him, sitting nervously in front of the fireplace.

"I'm so sorry!"

Startled, Kakashi jerked back out of instinct as Iruka all but bowed in front of him, babbling: "For what I said…I really am. It was just the first thing that popped into my mind; I know you'd never—I feel like such a hypocrite." He ran a hand through his hair. "I was just telling that man how he shouldn't stereotype humans, and here I am…"

"What man?" Kakashi blurted, and Iruka raised his head as though puzzled.

"W-When I was looking for you, I met someone. He told me you'd be at the lake. He called it a strange name, though."

Suspicion began to take root in the wolf's mind. "Tsume?"

"Y-…Yes. I think so. He acted like he knew you." Previous intentions all but forgotten, the human shifted nervously under his scrutiny. "He had a toothpick in his mouth."

"And he helped you?"

Iruka bit his lip as though remembering something unpleasant. The flicker of movement did not escape Kakashi's perceptive eyes. He snarled to himself and began to pace about the room. "Genma. He had no right…"

"It's not his fault, really! He was just angry; I think I would have hit me too." The wolf froze at the last comment, and Iruka, realizing he'd made a mistake, backpedaled. "Look, I mean…"

"He hit you?"

Iruka's hand was at his cheek in a guilty admission of the incident. "It isn't important."

"Of course it is!" Eyes blazing, Kakashi whirled, feeling more like he was facing an opponent than one who was in his good graces, and, for once, he struck with words in place of claws. "Do you think so little of me? Do you truly think I would share a kill with one whom I don't value enough to defend? Wolves are not so insincere as most humans. I have a debt to you, and I will pay it!"

"He was just worried about you," returned Iruka gently, though his voice quavered a bit out in the face of Kakashi's anger. "He doesn't trust humans; it's a problem we all have. That's why I feel so bad about what I said earlier. If it's a matter of trust, I'm just as guilty as he is."

Logic did not play a highly important role in Kakashi's life, not counting the most basic postulates such as If you don't kill, you don't eat. Hearing it from Iruka, however, shed a new aura of calm on the situation. The wolf suddenly felt very foolish. Resisting the urge to rake a hand through his knife-gray hair, he tried to find some way to break the silence without feeling superfluous.

"When I said that you were too thin, it was meant out of concern." Kakashi's voice had recovered its usual flat equilibrium. "I don't think you eat enough."

"My father used to say the same thing. But thank you," replied Iruka, toying with the end of his ponytail in an oddly endearing display of shyness. "I didn't think you… cared so much. Oh, that sounded bigoted, didn't it?" A nervous chuckle escaped him. "I'm sorry."

"There's no reason for apologies," Kakashi responded gruffly. He did not say, Neither did I.