Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, but I have created this crack pairing for your pleasure.

Set roughly one year pre-series start.

They meet on the first night.

Konohagakure has sent an envoy to Kumo and he is leaving the Raikage's office for his own apartment.

The sun is setting, with the spectacular tapestry of exploding colors common to Kumogakure. Nii Yugito sits on the slanted roof, staring almost obsessively at him. Blood-crimson dying sunlight stretches fingers across her perch. She pays them no mind, and continues to stare.

The naginata at her shoulder leans into her thin back; Yugito is far better off with a slender-bladed katana, but she has found that a naginata is good for intimidation and capitalizes on this.

She knows his name. Hatake Kakashi, the infamous copy ninja of Konoha. She thinks that he certainly doesn't look like much.

Scarecrow. With his long, loose limbs, loping walk and over all bored demeanor, the name certainly fits. Much better than shinobi anyway; if it weren't for the heavy green flak jacket and hitai-ate, Yugito never would have guessed he was a shinobi.

Suddenly, he looks up. In the gaze of the one eye that is visible, Yugito sees…absolutely nothing. That black eye (she can only tell that it is black from such a distance because of her Nibi-enhanced eyesight) is as opaque as black glass, as glassy as a one-way mirror and as reflection-less as mud.

She has never looked into someone's eyes (eye, in Hatake's sake) before to only see nothing. Yugito is used to seeing hate, fear, resentment, disgust, and sometimes pity shining like wound on the face of others to pierce her mind with their arrows. This is something else entirely.

In that moment, Yugito is both bewildered and fascinated.

That one visible eye closes and crinkles upward in what might be a smile (the mask obscuring the lower half of his face makes it hard to tell) and Hatake waves genially, before walking off in that continued blasé nature, oblivious (or maybe just uncaring) to the fact that he is being observed with fascination by no less than a dozen of Kumo's ANBU.

The teenager's pale eyebrows shoot up behind the security of her blank porcelain neko mask.

Well. That was…unusual.

When she gets home, Yugito lies on her bed, shoulders behind her head and her long silk hair strewn about her body, thinking about opaque mirrors and glittering moonshine.

On the second night, they speak.

It is not night, exactly. It is nearing sunset, and the sky is banana yellow streaked with scarlet maidenhair.

Kakashi is sitting outside a restaurant, reading his favorite Icha Icha. The ANBU from yesterday has been watching him for nearly two hours; far from irritating him, he finds it rather amusing. Her stealth (Kakashi only knows it's a she by the long silvery blonde hair cascading down the ANBU shinobi's back, bound tightly in a wrapped ponytail) is better than Kakashi has ever seen in any ANBU, but he knows she's there.

Kakashi feigns a yawn. "You can come out now."

From her hiding place, Yugito winces. "Am I really that bad?" She moves to sit on top of a nearby awning, plainly in view of Hatake, drawing her left leg up to her chest.

"No, not really. You're quite good actually. But I've been in ANBU much longer than you have, and after a while, you pick up some tricks."

Yugito at this point takes a major step. From where she sits she raises her long, slender hands and removes her mask.

Kakashi starts a little bit when she does this. It is extremely unusual for an ANBU member to remove their mask while on duty; it's forbidden in Konoha. But he has the idea that this girl probably doesn't hold to standards and acceptable practices as much as others.

Yugito sighs and looks off in another direction, running her hand through her hair. The shortest hairs of her bangs, nearly reaching her shoulders, are loose after a long day of work, and flutter loosely in the breeze. In the golden sunlight, her normally pale silver hair looks like gold, every strand glittering; her skin seems much warmer than it's usually cool alabaster tone. She knows she shouldn't have done that; the recklessness of youth combines with a belief that if life ends, life ends, and there's nothing that can be done to stop it.

She turns her eyes on him, and Kakashi is as dumbstruck as the girl was the day before. Her eyes are old as the mountains surrounding the village. In those black, blue-rimmed depths (there is something undeniably strange about her eyes; the black doesn't seem the black of irises; instead, Kakashi could swear that the black are her pupils; he immediately scoffs at this belief, and dismisses it from his mind) he sees emptiness. Her eyes are old on a young face, experienced and much more weary than his will ever be.

"How old are you?" The words are out of his lips before he can stop them, because Kakashi finds himself curious about the girl with a young body and eyes as old as eternity.

"Sixteen."

The answer surprises him. It is the first real surprise he's had in a while. The girl is tall with ancient eyes, but he would have put her at closer to fourteen, maybe even thirteen. She is quite thin, and for the most part the soft curves possessed by a grown woman are only just beginning to emerge. Her long arms are devoid of spare flesh, they are lean and muscled, and pale as ice.

"Come sit down." The girl slides down from the awning with the fluid grace of a cat, too graceful to be entirely human. She tugs uncomfortably on the long white wool scarf looped around her neck before slipping into the seat across from his.

"My name is Hatake—"

"—I know who you are," the girl blurts out. Yugito frowns. She doesn't normally behave like this; she's not a normal teenage girl, giddy and unable to keep her mouth shut.

"Well then," Hatake asks, bored, flipping the page of his book. "What's your name?"

Yugito half-smiles, the smile exposing far too many teeth, small and sharp. "Nii Yugito."

They speak for maybe half an hour more. They don't say a great deal, but the silences are filled with words. Questions, mostly.

What's your grief with the world?

Why do your eyes seem so strange when I look at them?

What happened to make you so old? What happened to make you so opaque?

What are the things you see, that others don't?

Who are you, really? When did your heart lose its way?

There are no answers for any of these questions.

Eventually, as the sun begins to flicker and die, the light it sputters out growing dimmer with each passing second, Yugito stands to leave. Before she does, she hears the word, "Where do you like to eat?"

The third night, friendship become something stronger, even if neither knows it.

Yugito sighs as she stares into her bathroom mirror; there are no other mirrors in her apartment. There is little need for her to brush her hair; in the tight bandage-wrapped ponytail she always adopts, her nearly waist-length hair always appears neat. Her bangs have fallen in front of her face again, and she decides not to bother with them.

That man, Kakashi, is an enigma. Yugito has heard that he has the Sharingan eye, and covers it up behind the hitai-ate draped over his left eye. If she didn't know better, she'd say he has lazy eye. Certainly seems the type.

The teenager is a little disconcerted by her own behavior. She's setting herself up for disappointment and the agonies of rejection. Obviously, he does not know what she contains, and when he finds out, he will be repulsed, as all are.

Yet oddly, Yugito's insatiable curiosity keeps drawing her back. He's foreign, fresh, remote. He seems so unaffected by the chaos that is her life. And that is what keeps drawing her near, like a cat with the scent of mackerel on it's nostrils.

In the end, Yugito goes with her normal black clothing; the only concession she makes is to remove her hitai-ate and wear a different scarf; she doesn't even take off her katana.

The scarf she puts on is the only nice thing she owns. It is made of midnight satin, crisp and lustrous. It serves a utilitarian purpose as well, hiding the seal that snakes around her neck like a broken necklace adhered to her flesh.

As always, Yugito shudders when she sees the seal naked in her reflection, and somewhere she hears the Nekomata scream, hears an animal struggle against its bonds…

The young girl roughly wraps the scarf about her throat to banish her fears. Having no jewelry, not even so much as a worthless trinket like those sold to children at festivals, she knots it about her neck instead of securing it with a pin.

Yugito's silvery-blue eyes, the pupils contracted to slits in the naked light un-softened by any glass covering, before she leaves the apartment empty once more.

It is just sunset when she steps outside to wait. Long black shadows stretch across the streets, and she paces up and down waiting for him to show up.

It is nearly an hour before he does. The yellow light has become a bloody mauve-red, and her eyes almost seem purple in the light when she glares at him. "You're late," Yugito mutters flatly.

His eye crinkles upward and he murmurs excuses. "Oh, well I had to help some old lady across the street and—"

"—Never mind." Yugito rolls her eyes upwards, and in that one moment her pupils momentarily contract and expand. Though Kakashi gives no outward sign of it, she knows he is disturbed. "Just come with me."

As they walk down the street, Kakashi notices the looks being shot in their direction. The people shy away like rats exposed to light, their eyes black with malice and fear, bristling like dogs readying for a fight.

For a moment Kakashi assumes that their hate is being directed towards him, the Leaf nin, until he realizes that none of these villagers are even looking at him. They are looking at Yugito.

In that moment, he is confused. Why do they hate her? She who has no evil on her soul, she who has nothing but today and tomorrow, she who walks with fluid steps and brittle eyes, she who is beautiful—yes, beautiful?

Thoughts are banished when they reach the destination. It is a booth restaurant like Ichiraku Ramen, but the food they serve is different.

Yugito smiles slightly. She has come to this place because the vendor is one of the few food vendors who treats her with anything resembling civility, and because he serves one of her favorite foods.

"Tuna sashimi, please?" Yugito smiles at the vendor as he asks them what they want.

The vendor turns to Kakashi. "And you, sir?"

Kakashi nods absently. "Just some soba, please."

The food is delivered to them almost instantly.

As Kakashi moves to remove his mask, Yugito for some reason holds her breath. She doesn't know that many people have been trying to get Kakashi to remove his mask for years, without success.

The booth is unlit, relying on the light of the sun while there is still any left, and in the red-brown light filtering through the cloth flaps, Yugito can't see his face very well. She does, however, reflect that she likes what she sees.

"You remind me of a lot of people."

Her ears prick with this. "Oh?" Yugito asks between bites of luscious sashimi. Ah, it's as good as always. "And who do I remind you of, Kakashi-san?" She turns and paints a slightly challenging smile on her thin face.

"Can't say," he shrugs. "It's hard to tell."

They continue to eat in silence, utensils clipping softly over plate and bowl. As Yugito moves to pay, the knot in her scarf slips. Her blue eyes widen. Before she can do anything, it flutters to the floor like a raven-winged bird and lands in a heap.

The scar-like seal is visible to the naked eye, black and livid against the backdrop of her ivory throat.

Yugito chances a nervous, self-conscious look in Kakashi's direction. The expression in his eye is not opaque. It is far away and somewhat sad. He does not look away, does not avert her eyes. Yugito feels braver.

She dives for and retrieves her scarf, wrapping it securely around her throat, before they leave.

Yugito smiles and thanks him. Kakashi is confused.

"For what?"

"For not looking away."

When morning comes, Yugito wakes up to find that her scarf is gone, and her bedroom curtains, white like everything else in the house, flutter in the breeze.

On the fourth night, he leaves.

Yugito sits atop that same roof. This time, her mask is left off.

It is twilight; the sky is deep wine purple laced with veins of ultramarine midnight blue and sleek black ore. She sits and watches, as her first real friend leaves.

As Kakashi walks beyond the gates, he turns around and waves, smiling behind his mask. As he catches her gaze, he realizes that her eyes are not merely ancient, but sad as well.

Yugito smiles and waves back, her long loose silver-gold hair caught in the twilight breeze, undulating like a glittering banner.

Then he is out of sight forever, and instead of weeping, Yugito leans back and laughs for the first time in her life.

How was that? I'm amazed that no one else seems to have thought of this pairing before; there aren't any stories mentioned under this combination of characters. I just had this vision in my mind, of Kakashi and Yugito in a booth together, and this flew away from there.

I suppose any "romance" isn't explicit, but it was always meant to be implied. Take it as you will.

R&R