FIC Grey Dawn, Part One - Quiet

Beloved, Grey Dawn Remix - VNV Nation

It's so quiet I can hear

My thoughts touching every second

I spent waiting for you

Circumstances afford me

No second chance

To tell you

How much I've missed you

Just a little fic written for a prompt from Vernajast and because I needed something to fulfill my angst quotient. Semi-AU, post-Kyuubi where Minato didn't die. Kakashi is 17ish. Overall rating M.

It had been a long time, a few years, actually. Neither brought up the fact. It stirred up too many memories, best left unmentioned, not forgotten, never forgotten. Their last mission together, they had been a team, broken, cracked at the edges, but still, essentially a team. A team of three. And the mission before that, they had been four, back when they were strong and whole, together.

They couldn't even honestly say they regretted what had happened, the two disastrous final missions of Team Minato. That implied they would do differently if given the chance, and none of them could really have changed their choices, not as they had been then. In their defense, they had been true to themselves, to their beliefs at the time. But that hadn't been enough to stop what happened. They couldn't stop what happened. And now there were only two. Drawn close, but pushing, falling apart.

Kakashi was all business, as Minato had expected. He missed the days when it had been just the two of them, before they were four. Before the closeness was strained, before the smiles came to a halt. He'd grown, he noticed, and realized with a pang that Kakashi had turned seventeen over two months past, was just shy of his own height, now. He was still thin and lanky, but he'd broadened through the chest a bit, grown sleekly muscled. He looked like what he was. An assassin, paid killer. His mind whispered the word. ANBU. He moved with a deadly grace that had only been hinted at when he was young. Minato should feel proud that he had helped train such a shinobi for the village. But instead, he mourned the little boy he'd first met twelve years ago. He'd been quiet then, not silent. Minato much preferred people to tools.

Kakashi moved swiftly through the thinning treetops, communicating only in sharp, abrupt hand signs, only when necessary, keeping his distance, mentally and physically. Minato wanted to shake him. No one else could hear or care if Kakashi called him 'Sensei' instead of 'Hokage-sama,' or 'Yondaime-sama.' No one here to complain about liberties taken if he called him 'Minato,' just once. And he wanted to hear his name from those stubborn lips. He only now knew just what he'd been missing, what exactly he'd lost in his life. Even silent and stiff, unyielding, Minato needed him in his life again.

He looked as if he needed Minato, too. Or someone. Anyone. The uniform clung tight, stretched thinly across his body, but his armor wasn't as snug, even cinched as close as it would go. He'd lost weight recently. Minato cast back over reports from the last several months, trying to remember just how many missions the man had taken. He frowned when he realized the number, the difficulty, and knew he probably hadn't recalled even half of them. He decided despite the extra work for his office assistants, he'd add a list of those very details to his monthly reports when he got back. He needed to know when his shinobi were being overextended... or doing it themselves. The more Minato thought about it, the more he knew Kakashi had become like this the day they'd lost her. Hard. Cold.

They ran without word or rest until late evening. Kakashi was pushing them hard, and despite sparring, training, Minato was slightly winded, even a bit sore. Damn being Hokage anyway, the paperwork, the meetings, the formality, and everything else that had changed, kept him away from missions, from the day-to-day contact with his shinobi... from Kakashi. Kakashi silently unwrapped a ration bar and brought out his bedroll, obvious in his intent to take the more difficult second watch. Minato sighed, but even this didn't extinguish the small bit of pleasure he got in being out of the village, away from prying eyes... together again with Kakashi.

He unwrapped a ration bar as well, wishing Kakashi wasn't so stubbornly pig-headed as to deny them a plump, juicy rabbit or some grilled fish. They were still within the borders of Fire Country, if barely. He absently crumbled a drifting, gold leaf, inhaling the dusty scent and took another bite of the bar, scowling slightly. Damn, but he hated this new honey and spice bar. It was dry and near flavorless, for all its claims of spice. The old, discontinued peanut butter one was much better. Moist, chewy, flavorful. He sighed again. Then, as Kakashi lay down for sleep, he smelled the faint hint of peanuts above the dry smell of leaves scattered about their campsite. 'Brat,' he mumbled under his breath, uncaring if he heard.

He woke to a clinging dampness. Mist obscured everything. Tiny droplets would have made everything sparkle with tiny, brilliant rainbows if there had been any light beyond the faint grey marring the darkness towards the east. He stretched, trying to work a stubborn kink out of his back, and wondered if the sun was taking the day off, or maybe sleeping in. He smiled at his own joke, and turned to share it with Kakashi, but the man was nowhere in sight. Kakashi returned shortly, dropping from a tree with two apples and a handful of nuts.

Minato would have kissed Kakashi where he stood if he'd brought out a thermos of good, black coffee, but he wouldn't complain about the breakfast. It definitely beat another ration bar. "Thank you, Kakashi."

He only shrugged and set half of his offering on a flat rock before taking up his pack and leaping up again into the trees.

"Kakashi!" Minato called out. He leapt to a lower branch and seated himself comfortably. "You know it's unsafe to eat while running. Choking hazard." He tossed the apple once, almost able to feel the masked scowl aimed at him. He knew Kakashi was close by, knew he would have stopped the moment he hadn't felt Minato's still unhidden chakra following behind him. "So you might as well come out, because I'm not eating until you show yourself and come have breakfast with me."

Kakashi came into sight on the limb above, walking upside down, and dropped, flipping mid-air to land lightly by his side. He slid the porcelain mask to the side of his head and pulled the fabric down around his neck, carefully keeping any emotion, any hint of irritation from his features.

Two out of three masks gone. That's as much as I can hope for, I suppose. Minato bit into the apple, and a bit of juice ran down his chin. He smiled at the taste of the tart fruit, but was careful not to let any juice get on his clothes or the rest of his skin. He knew the scent would linger and Kakashi would fret that it would compromise the mission.

Kakashi carefully cut into his apple with a small kunai, eating the slices straight from the blade, sliding them into his mouth with no wasted motion. He cracked the nuts open with the handle of the weapon, sweeping the shell fragments into his hand when he was done, to bury along with the apple core.

Minato continued at a slightly slower pace, cracking each nut against the shell of another until the last remaining one. He grinned at Kakashi, tossing it into the air, zapping it with a small spark of chakra, and it split neatly into two pieces, each landing in his outstretched palm. "Still nothing to say, Kakashi? Not a 'Good morning, Sensei,' or a 'You should conserve your chakra and not waste it on frivolous tricks, Hokage-sama?'"

Kakashi re-capped his canteen and stood abruptly, readying himself to leave.

"No, Kakashi. Sit! And for once, listen to me, don't just hear the words." Minato wanted to get to his feet and pace, but he held the desire in, needing to explain this in a manner Kakashi would understand. "We were a team, Kakashi, and we are again. Have you forgotten everything you ever learned from me, from them? This isn't what you learned about teamwork from Obito at Kanabi Bridge, Kakashi, or what you learned about working toward a common goal with Rin in Mizu no Kuni."

Kakashi recoiled as if slapped, and Minato knew he was listening, albeit reluctantly.

"Rules and regulations are important, but they aren't everything. How you interact with your team is as important. You can follow every rule to the letter and fail a mission because your team doesn't trust you. Your team can trust you implicitly, but you can lose their trust or worse, their lives, and fail the mission by ignoring the rules heedlessly. You need to discern when rules may be set aside, Kakashi, and temper your judgment, so you return home with your team intact and the mission complete. Balance the components. I'm proud of all you've accomplished, but you can always improve or learn more. So can I."

Minato paused for breath, and his eyes were bright with memories and unshed tears, both for those they'd lost and for what it had done to the two of them, especially Kakashi. He'd started to change, had truly learned from Obito's loss. Then they'd lost Rin so soon after. And each other as a team. They were no longer sensei and student, had become Hokage and ANBU. They'd lost their easy closeness, but Minato wanted it back. Surely they could work and regain some form of their bond?

"Despite being Hokage, the Council allowed me on this mission because my skills are necessary for its completion. They assigned you to protect me and to assist in completing the mission because you're one of the best damned shinobi we have and because we were a team. When you refuse to acknowledge that bond, you handicap us, put us at a disadvantage. I can't work this way. Don't be a silent shadow, Kakashi, or refuse to acknowledge what we had, what we were, what we still should be. If you truly don't care, put a kunai to my throat right now, here in Fire Country, before we cross the border, before we put our own people at risk to recover us or clean up the aftermath of a botched mission." Minato held his own blade out to Kakashi, waiting.

"I don't believe you don't care, Kakashi. You lost too much, withdrew too far, but deep down, you do still care. And I'm as much, even more to blame by being so busy as Hokage that I didn't do anything about it. Come back, be with me again, be part of this team, even if it's just for now. Please?" Minato dropped the kunai to the branch with a clatter, tiredly fell to his knees beside it.

Kakashi's voice was husky, as if rusty from disuse, or fighting emotion. "Yes, Sensei." He knelt beside Minato, head bowed, still quiet, but no longer silent.

Minato placed a hand on Kakashi's shoulder for a moment, just touching him, being with him again before letting go and rising to his feet. "Thank you, Kakashi. I've missed you. Now that we've got the mushy stuff out of the way, we do need to move out, though. You don't plan on pushing harder or faster than yesterday, do you? That damned deskjob is taking a toll on me." Minato grinned down at Kakashi as he got to his feet and jumped to another limb. "I'll take that as a yes," he chuckled, as Kakashi flew through the upper branches.