Summary: For years now Kakashi has been missing, and Naruto, by himself, has changed. Now, Naruto demands that Kakashi makes up for all the minutes that Naruto had spent missing him alone. NarutoKakashi (Naruto on top, that's right kids. You've been warned.)
Disclaimer: Naruto and co. do not belong to me.
Warnings: Yaoi, male on male, age differences, somewhat AU setting, Naruto x Kakashi - in the order of seme x uke (or top x bottom)!! You've been warned! Twice!!
Author's Notes: Ah, I'm writing fanfics again, and what a time I picked! The night before my final exam! I must be terribly prepared...or so my extremely-honest consciousness tells me.

"By the Window Awaits"

by CloveeD

Prologue: Yearning

Pretty much, he says, they pretty much all died. I wrote the total number of deaths in the report this morning, but I can't remember how many there were anymore.

Sometimes he despises the entire existence of shinobi villages. To be painfully honest, they were just training villages and villages of children who would kill each other off in the near future. And then those who survive would again train villages and villages of children to kill each other again. It was as if someone was convinced that bringing up killer children like breeding rats was completely natural, and that those who were strong enough to survive were given the right to be creative about how they were going to kill each other in order to make more killers. Breeding rats. Disgusting.

But then he thinks to himself again for the tenth time that evening, it couldn't be true. It just couldn't be true, his cruely cynical theory about the meaning of the existence of the villages of shinobi - because he remembers. Naruto remembers the people who brought him up to be a shinobi. He remembers the calming smiles on the man who treated him to ramen when he was just a small rat. He remembers the crinkle of the smiling, exposed eye of his second teacher who spent days thinking up new ways of helping him strive for strength. Naruto remembers, therefore, it couldn't be true - this cruelty that flashes across his eyes in the village that he grew up in.

There had to be something more.

War.

War for such a long time that children were recruited to sneak bomb notes into the enemy's camps. Vaguely, Naruto wonders if Kakashi sensei had thought along the same lines when the man himself was merely a small boy who had graduated as the youngest shinobi. Sensei was sent into war front as well. Sensei must have felt this at least once - this feeling of silent despair, when seeing child after child missing limbs or parts of their skulls as they were sent back on stretchers, the ones who still had remains, that is.

But sensei seemed like he ended up fine, Naruto thought aimlessly as he slurped at the remains of his ramen. Though it was mainly because by the time Naruto was born, the war was over. But Kakashi sensei seemed fine when he taught them - Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto - during their early teenage years of shinobi life.

After that, Naruto didn't see Kakashi sensei again for six years.

This would usually be interpreted as some kind of abandonment on Kakashi's behalf, but Naruto, having had so few precious people to remember, wants to think differently.

Kakashi sensei must have gone on some kind of important, secret mission, that prevented him from saying hello and bringing fresh milk and vegetables, squatting on Naruto's window ceil. For six whole years.

Naruto believes that firmly. Which his current fellow Anbu shinobis thought was unbelievable, because Naruto was now the single most realistic, calculating, emotionless Anbu member in the Hidden Village of Fire. He was the one to enter enemy camp first, and he was the last to leave. He was the one to emotionlessly take out a scroll and make a list of all those who died during the mission, and he was the one to calmly hand it to the administrators in front of family members waiting anxiously at the office for their children to come back safely from battle field. And, he was the one who quietly leaves the office as parents and seniors start sobbing and howling after the death list had been announced.

How can such a disgustingly cruel, emotionless person believe, with such a naiveity, that a shinobi who was missing from the village for six whole years, is still on a righteous mission, and would come back with that smiling, slightly dazed expression covered by a thin layer of stretchable mask?

Well...

So what? Naruto thought back at their disbelieving faces, everytime the whisper behind his back as he sits quietly at the edge of the ramen stand.

So what?

So what if it was pretty much impossible that Kakashi sensei was still alive? So what if it's entirely possible that Kakashi sensei had already became a missing ninja if he had managed to stay alive? So what if Naruto was disgustingly lacking reactions to the sky-high number of deaths that he had to put down on paper? So what if Naruto, as detached as he was, was still holding onto one last thread of wishful thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, his last surviving precious person would come back smiling, with open arms, telling him that Kakashi sensei was sorry he was late, that Kakashi sensei was just lost on the road of life?

Come back...

Come back...!

I miss you!

I trust you!!

I believe in you!!

I'm waiting for you...!!!

...To be continued...

Author's Notes: Prologue, therefore slightly shorter. Do tell me what you think :)