Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological twistedness. It is rather explicit. Do not read if unwilling to endure the content. Please, click the back button.

These Are All Things You Don't Understand

Chapter One

The first time Kakashi fucks, it is in preparation for a mission. There are no sweet words or heavy sighs - not even any moans or grunts or sweaty foreheads meeting when a kiss is broken.

There are no kisses.

He is eleven years old, and both of their masks stay on. He isn't meant to enjoy it. He is going undercover as a prostitute, and prostitutes only need to be very skilled at giving others pleasure.

But this is acceptable because Kakashi has never really had pleasure. He is - content when a kunai whistles through the air and hits a target dead on, right through the heart, and if he was a poetic boy, he would think it symbolic. (But he isn't and he doesn't - he simply sees it as a job done. He is good at doing his job). He likes to rile Obito up and watch the boy explode. It makes him want to smile, but he doesn't because trust is a foreign word to him (he couldn't trust his own father to do the right thing for him - live for him, not die for him) and he doesn't even trust his mask to hide him.

Emotions are a weakness, after all, and he tries to tell himself that the way his sensei grins at him doesn't make his stomach warm and his chest ache. Emotions are a weakness, and Kakashi isn't weak. He can't afford to be; he has a job to do. He has a village to live for, and he will only die when the village needs him to - when he can do no more, when there are no more enemies for him to kill or missions that he is perfect for.

Like this one.

There is no other choice, Sandaime says. There is no other boy (only eleven years old - sharp and deadly and beautiful and tie-less and willing to do anything the Hokage orders. No father to clench his jaw and have quiet words with Sarutobi and no mother to cry hysterically into her pillow but only when she thinks Kakashi isn't awake - because she knew what she was signing on for when she raised her child as a shinobi - she knew, and she still did it and why - ) who has the necessary skills.

The Sandaime says, "Konoha calls on you to complete this vital mission, shinobi," and he doesn't look up from his documents. Kakashi listens to the skritch-scratch of a pen moving automatically across paper and is not tense. He is placid and cool, and he doesn't wonder where his sensei and his teammates are because they would be here if the Hokage deemed it necessary.

He is used to working solo anyway - he was only assigned to an actual permanent team last year.

The Sandaime says, "Read the file." It is abrupt and Sarutobi's voice is somewhat ragged, but he smokes his pipe a lot and that is to be expected.

Kakashi reads it and does not flinch. Words like "infiltrate" and "masquerade" and "A-rank" and "eliminate" and "requires willing participation" march across the mission scroll, and the Hokage's breathing seems uneven.

The pen continues to move mindlessly across treaties and laws and bureaucratic minutia. Kakashi rolls the scroll up precisely.

"Accepted, Hokage-sama."

And now a choking catch in Sarutobi's breath: "Kakashi, you don't have to!" It is let out in a rush - it is a break from the dignity of his office, a descent into emotion. (Emotion is a weakness.) He takes a deep inhalation and says more evenly, "You can say no, you know." And the older man's gaze, locked on Kakashi, is asking for him to do so. The pen has stopped its noise, and the office is silent in the echo of numb creations.

Kakashi does not know how to refuse his village - or that it is even an option - and he doesn't know how to reassure burdened men or how to blunt the razor that is his blank stare running fine, thin lines down Sarutobi's ribcage in a vivisection. He knows that he is a shinobi, and he knows that his sensei's grins are not for him.

Most of all, he knows - with every drop of his blood - that he is what Konoha wants him to be, and if Konoha wants him to be a whore, then he will become one.

Sarutobi seem to be waiting for him to say something, but Kakashi doesn't know what the man wants him to say (he doesn't know a lot of things, for a genius) and so says the only thing he can. He repeats, "Accepted, Hokage-sama."

The old man slumps only a little, and if Kakashi was not who he is, he wouldn't even notice. This is when Sarutobi says: "There is no other choice." They are quiet words murmured in the the manner of a mantra, and Kakashi knows he is not meant to hear. Louder, now, and intended for Kakashi's ears, the Sandaime says in a tight voice, "You will need to train for this. Report to ANBU headquarters and ask for the Cat."

As Kakashi turns to leave, his sharp gaze misses the way Sarutobi closes his eyes and brushes withered fingers against deep crows feet.

He misses out on a lot of things - sacrifices a lot of things for stupid reasons that he believes in. He misses out on a lot of things and doesn't even realize it (and this is not true; some section of his too-intelligent brain does realize it. Kakashi secretly wants in a way he and everyone else thinks Hatake Kakashi to be incapable of. He wants that bright smile to be just for him and for nimble hands to run down his spine - he wants firsts and lasts and middles and those blue eyes that understand entirely too much. He wants too much and knows he will not have it because IT IS NOT FOR HIM. He is not for him. Prostitution and missions and assassination and the way of the shinobi is for him, and firsts and lasts and middles will never involve those nimble hands or chapped lips stretching in a bright, self-satisfied smile against his hip bone.)

But a cause is all a person needs as long as they believe in it, and Kakashi believes in Konoha in a very blind, deep, dumb way. He believes in his blue-eyed sensei, and this belief is neither blind nor dumb, only deeply rooted in Kakashi's being even to the places that he does not know exist.

It is his belief in the Yellow Flash (nothing more than belief - emotion is a weakness, and it is only belief and knowledge of the things that break a man) that makes Kakashi pause as he reaches the heavy doors. He does not turn, and his voice is quiet and calm. "Hokage-sama."

"Yes, Kakashi-kun?" The man's voice carries a faint trace of hope, but hope is one of those foreign things his team is trying to teach him and Kakashi cannot place it.

"May I ask a favor, Hokage-sama?" Respectful. Monotone.

"Anything." Guilt is one of those things Kakashi knows intimately. (Sakumo. Sakumo Sakumo Sakumo. Father. Traitor.)

"Sensei is not to know."

There is a pained silence, a whispered "As you say", and the swish of a door as it closes behind the boy (ninja, only eleven years old - sharp and deadly and beautiful and tie-less and willing to do anything the Hokage orders. No father to clench his jaw and have quiet words with Sarutobi and no mother to cry hysterically into her pillow but only when she thinks Kakashi isn't awake - because she knew what she was signing on for when she raised her child as a shinobi - she knew, and she still did it and why - ).

Firsts and lasts and middles will never involve those nimble hands or chapped lips stretched in a bright, self-satisfied smile against his hip bone.

The first time Kakashi fucks, it is in preparation for a mission. There are no sweet words or heavy sighs - not even any moans or grunts or sweaty foreheads meeting when a kiss is broken.

There are no kisses.

He is eleven years old, and both of their masks stay on, and he doesn't even know the man's name beyond his designation of "Cat". He isn't meant to enjoy it. He is going undercover as a prostitute, and prostitutes only need to be very skilled at giving others pleasure. He doesn't enjoy it, but the Cat trains him to respond to certain touches with specific expressions and sounds. They know the target, Ikari Waya, likes young boys, but none of the boys have ever lived past Ikari's interest in them, and intelligence is uncertain as to whether Ikari likes to force his lovers or see the parody of lust in children. (And Kakashi calculates that he has a twenty-nine percent chance of coming back alive. He has one-fifth of a percent chance of coming back unharmed.) Kakashi learns a lot.

He learns that cloth isn't the only thing that can hide a face, which is necessary because he will have to forgo it for this mission. So his mask comes off after the first round, and he learns how to slide expressions over his face like water in a seemingly natural way. The Cat laughs when Kakashi masters the half-scared, half-intrigued expression of a certain type of virgin, and it is a hoarse, once-full sound that would make a lot of ninja flinch.

As the week wears on, Kakashi continues to meet the Cat after training with his team. Sensei hasn't noticed anything is wrong, but that is simply due to Kakashi's innate character and the war with Iwa - and Sensei and the war is what Kakashi is doing this for, so he doesn't mind.

On the sixth day, he whimpers so perfectly (with his cheeks flushed and his silver hair clinging to his forehead in wisps and his neck bared as he rides the Cat) that the ANBU actually grunts, clenches his previously guiding fingers around Kakashi's hips hard enough to bruise, and buries himself in Kakashi's pale, gleaming body.

The Cat leaps out of the bed when he comes, pulling up his pants jerkily. (Kakashi is the only one who is naked - it teaches ease with vulnerability, the Cat says.) He mutters, "I'm finished," as he leaves the room, but it is not the end because Kakashi still has one last lesson to learn. He kneels in ready-stance on the bed, still naked, and waits for someone to dismiss him, but no one does. Fifty-three minutes later, the man returns. From his trace body language, he is angry and reluctant and has orders to follow that he resents. Kakashi wants to tell him that emotion is a weakness, but he stays silent and impassive.

"You are not to fight beyond the capabilities of your chuunin self. I'll give you that much slack this one time," the man grits out.

Kakashi is quiet - calm - as always. "...I am a chuunin."

From the ANBU's tensing frame, Kakashi knows that his trainer was unaware of this. The Cat's control slips in entirety. (And Kakashi thinks to himself that this man must be a rookie.) "Fuck. Are you telling me they're sending a chuunin on this kind of mission?"

Kakashi believes this to be a hypothetical question, but the Cat evidently wants him to say something. So he does, and it is oddly honest for once. He is genuinely curious. "Why do you care? You didn't before."

The ANBU twitches once and takes in a sharp breath to speak before lapsing into silence. It is a few minutes later when he finally does speak, and his voice is glacier-cold and his demeanor that of a wall. Kakashi approves. "Realistic skill level, shinobi?"

"Jounin, Cat-sama."

"Advanced to Chuunin at what age?"

"Six, Cat-sama."

"...You are not to fight beyond the capabilities of your four-year old self. Clear?"

"Yes, Cat-sama."

Blink: and the Cat is on him and in him and beating him and tying him up, and it would be rape but for all that Kakashi has given his consent beforehand.

Kakashi knows that Sensei would kill the Cat anyway, and he is glad he does not know the man's name (even though he knows the ANBU's scent and the sound of his voice - even though that has been all Kakashi has needed to track someone for the past three years). He will be able to recognize the Cat on the street from a mile away and always avoid him, and he will do this because he respects his fellow ninja enough not to attach a face to that mask.

He knows better than anyone how necessary masks are.

Kakashi is unconscious by the end of it, and he wakes up to a medic-nin healing him. He thinks the medic is a woman, but her shape is androgynous and she wears an ANBU mask. He realizes he is still in ANBU HQ, and he tries to swallow the taste of blood away. It doesn't really work, but he didn't expect it to. The medic continues healing him, not looking up from his rope-torn wrists as she speaks.

"I have been ordered to inform you that your efforts are not good enough. You did not hold up the illusion of masochism - anyone can scream in terror and as such does not need practice. Your mission will be delayed until you have mastered this. It is now 0300 hours - you meet with your team in five hours. Get some sleep."

He tries again to swallow the taste of blood away and tells himself that the thick feeling in his gut is hemorrhaging.

He manages to stay conscious through the next session. He blocks out the pain (like his entire life has trained him to do - he is who his village and his father want/ed him to be) and moans and arches in faux-pleasure instead of pain with a wanton smile on his naked, bleeding face.

It is such a wrong expression for an eleven year old to have.

(When his facial muscles were finally taught to smile innocently at the beginning of this training, he couldn't stop the cynical thought of 'Sensei and the others would be so disappointed.' Because Rin and Obito and the Yellow Flash have been trying for so long to make him smile - to help him be normal, and it is another first that has been given to the village. Firsts and lasts and middles...)

The Cat fucks him five times, and Kakashi is raw and mangled and still smiling at the end of it. After, when lying in pain and nuzzling as instructed against his trainer's rigid body - silently begging for more pain: PLEASE, SIR, DO ME ONE MORE TIME - he thinks detachedly that the Cat is funneling his anger toward his superiors into this act just to be able to get through it.

Again it runs through Kakashi's mind that the man must be a relative rookie.

The Cat isn't the kind of person who would enjoy this, which isn't to say that he doesn't do a thorough job. When ten minutes of Kakashi's cuddles and caresses (with broken fingers and torn wrists, but he must love the pain) pass, he snaps out, "Fine. You're ready." The man shoves Kakashi away from him immediately and swings his legs off the bed. "Meet with your team as usual and inform them that you have been contracted in an assassination uniquely suited to your family techniques." He is silent for a moment before burying his hands in his dark brown hair and whispering, "Kid, I want to ask you to forgive me for what I've done, but I have no right."

Kakashi sits up stiffly, dizzily, and stares at the ninja's taut back with blurry vision. "Cat-sama, there is nothing to forgive."

There is a loud crack - and the Cat is gone. Kakashi looks at the hole in the concrete wall and doesn't understand.

The meeting with his team goes surprisingly well. Kakashi shows up at 0755, as usual, but does not participate in his usual staring contest with the sky. He simply stands at attention, waiting. Obito is running late, like always, and for some mysterious reason Kakashi feels something that he thinks is relief. He is puzzled but does not allow it to show. Sensei notices, turning towards him with concerned blue eyes and a small, incongruous frown.

"Kakashi-kun?"

Kakashi hadn't planned on telling anyone except Sensei that he is being sent on an assassination mission, but orders are orders and at least they won't know what he will do in order to complete it.

"Sensei," he acknowledges. Then: "Wait."

The man's eyes are questioning, but he knows his student well and simply returns to chatting with Rin.

It is forty minutes later when Obito shows up, breathless and red-faced. "Ah, I'm sorry I'm late! There was an old lady who needed help getting her groceries home, but she kept forgetting where she lived!"

Rin rolls her eyes, but Kakashi simply clears his throat slightly. When the Yellow Flash looks at him, he says, "I have been ordered to inform you that I am being sent on an assassination mission."

Rin's gasp is nearly drowned out by Obito's sudden onset of spluttering. The blond jounin's eyes narrow as he asks flatly, "For how long, Kakashi-kun?"

Kakashi does some quick math and decides the truth (a week. A month. Three months. Forever) would be too suspicious. "Unknown, Sensei."

"Why you?" The line of his teacher's mouth is furious and hard and sharp. Kakashi has known for years why enemy nin fear the man - has known since - (Never mind. Later. This will come later, maybe. But here: Minato does not know what Kakashi saw all those years ago - does not even know that Kakashi has seen anything.)

"The mission is uniquely suited for my family techniques."

Obito finally manages to speak, jumping in with a: "What! Why don't they send me?! I'm WAY better than you!"

Kakashi simultaneously suppresses a flinch and swats down a strange urge to vomit. He instead stares at the Uchiha impassively, knowing that Obito is reading '...you are such a loser' in his stony appraisal. The boy glares in return.

"...I did not ask."

Rin chooses to speak up and dissolve the tension. "Well, he'll be fine if the mission center thinks he can do it."

Kakashi very purposefully doesn't correct her - the Hokage himself gave him the mission, and Kakashi suspects that the Sandaime fully expects him to come back beaten to a pulp - if at all.

Obito takes Rin's words and puts his own spin on them, as usual. "You're right! They probably thought it would be too easy for me."

The urge to vomit is stronger this time, but he beats it back. He tunes Obito out and looks at the Yellow Flash instead. The man has been too quiet. His eyes are resigned and tired now, but his mouth has barely softened.

"Kakashi-kun, let me talk to you for a moment. Obito-kun, Rin-chan, go ahead and start running. Five laps around Konoha, twenty if you stop for a break." He ignores the pair's protests and curious eyes as he grins and sing-songs, "Get sprinting or I may be forced to pull out Those Pictures and post them all over the village..."

Kakashi notices that their teacher speaks with a false sense of mischief, but the other two don't, and they start running so quickly that it looks like they have used Sensei's signature technique. When they are no longer in sight, the Yellow Flash turns to him with a strangely inscrutable expression that looks out of place on his normally mobile face. Kakashi decides that he prefers it when his sensei acts like an idiot.

There is silence for a few minutes, and now: "...When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow."

"Do you expect any problems?"

Kakashi feels phantom pain all over his body - feels the new, whisper-faint scars on his wrists burning - and replies without hesitation: "No, Sensei."

The man sighs and puts his hand on Kakashi's shoulder. Kakashi resists the newly ingrained reflex to shy away that is at odds with his old suppressed desire to lean into the man's touch; if he is tense, well, he has always been antisocial.

"Just - Kakashi-kun, you know I hate this. You're - you're too young!" As if that would save him - as if that would save any of them. "You shouldn't be given an assassination. Even with the war, those are for ANBU." The blond's customary smile is vacationing in Iwa, and his voice and eyes are pleading and worried. Like the Sandaime's.

Kakashi stiffens and twists his shoulder out of the man's grasp. His gaze is cold and flinty. "I will be fine." I am not so weak goes unspoken, but the unspoken is always more important with him - his silences say so much, are what matter, and the Yellow Flash watches him walk away with a damnably hurt and worried expression. (There are perhaps two others who would see what Kakashi reads so easily in his teacher's blank body language.) Kakashi ignores this; he is not coldly furious because he isn't used to being underestimated. He was a chuunin at six, after all, and that came with a few disbelieving looks and patronizing words at first. But Sensei knows better than that, dammit.

Still, the icy affront melts away too quickly, and it is his belief in the Yellow Flash (nothing more than belief - emotion is a weakness, and it is only belief and knowledge of the things that break a man) that makes Kakashi walk away without apologizing. He tells himself that this clash can be used as a necessary distraction - one that will perhaps keep his teacher from digging too deeply into his mission - and then he tells himself that there is no fear that he has finally managed to push the man away. (That this time is the last time - that maybe this two hundred and seventy-third distance is the one that will finally make the man give up. It is for the mission. It is for Sensei, because people break too easily. It is for Kakashi himself because this mission can't break him, but he thinks, somewhere deep in a place that he is not aware of, that Sensei's full knowledge of it just might.

Sensei's full knowledge of it just might.)

Emotions are a weakness.

He lied to the Yellow Flash. He leaves Konoha immediately after their meeting, not the next morning, and does not glance back. (Kakashi has his reasons all lined up in a neat row in his mind. There is no need to count them because he does not doubt, and even if he did check them over he would willfully miss all the implications. Shinobi are so very proficient at living lies, after all, and sometimes the important reasons aren't the good ones.) He pauses in a clearing ten miles away from the border between Fire and Grass, and it is here that he undergoes his transformation. He removes his uniform and mask and burns them with a quick Katon; the ashes are deposited in the stream. The clothes he pulls out of his pack are barely fit to be called such. The trousers are a size too small with about five inches missing from the hems, the cheap material riddled with holes in strategic places that call attention to his arse. His too-large shirt is cropped almost to his belly button, the missing cloth wrapped around his bare feet, and the neck is so big that it almost slips off of one shoulder. He quickly trims the too-neat style of his hair with the only kunai he has and uses water from the creek to slick it down. He then thrusts the kunai in a log and watches the tool of his trade float away. He cannot have any weapons on him; what he does is take his single senbon and push it sideways into his foot - not in the sole, but in the slight arch that doesn't carry as much of his weight. It will still hurt when he walks, but he can bear it without sign, he knows. It is his fail-safe, in case he ends up so beaten by the end of this that he cannot access his chakra.

When he glances at his reflection in one of the shallow pools of water surrounding the creek, he nods in satisfaction. He is a pedophile's dream, all glowing skin and vulnerably rounded cheeks, his wiry young body shown to perfection in a very waifish way.

He destroys all evidence of his passage in the clearing and goes on his way without taking a sip of the water. He will not eat or drink until his cover is established, and there are no distances too far or measures too drastic.

He makes it to the third alleyway away from the red light district in Iwa before he passes out.

A/N: First multi-chapter story with actual plot, the idea for which came up while chatting with Eidolys over on the Yonkaka comm at LJ. I think I'm kind of nervous. Almost fifty fics, and nary a multi-chap until this one...I'm a little out of my comfort zone, to say the least. In any case, feedback is appreciated. This is Yonkaka - Namikaze Minato and Hatake Kakashi - in future chapters, whether they actually enter a relationship or not. Kakashi is as in love with Minato as it is possible for him to be, in case that isn't clear.

Erm, do you think this will get my account deleted?

Anyway, tell me where I went wrong - possibly even where I went right. Favorite lines would be nice.