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Cenozoic
"He pants against her lips, the space between them like a chasm and he reminds himself – this is not how it's supposed to happen." - Hatake Kakashi and Yuuhi Kurenai. The dawn of an era.
"How many more do you have?" Kakashi asks, peeking across the table at her.
Kurenai rifles through her reports for a moment, then looks up at him. "Only two more." She grabs another takoyaki from the plate between them and pops the doughy ball into her mouth.
Kakashi stretches his arms and lays his copy of Icha-Icha open-faced onto the table. "This is the part where I brag about how easy ANBU reports were in comparison."
"This is also the part where I remind you filing 'Target eliminated…I think' doesn't constitute a report," she says pointedly, eyebrows raising in challenge.
Scoffing, Kakashi scratches at his ear disinterestedly. "That was one time."
"And I'll never let you forget it," she quips back, smirking, before returning to her report.
Kakashi shakes his head. It wasn't his fault the nin had some freaky regeneration jutsu a la Orochimaru in place. And the worst part? That wasn't even his worst mission with ANBU. Not that she'll ever know.
He stops to think about that. Because between Kurenai and Guy, they should know these things the most out of anyone (except maybe Asuma, but dead men don't make for great conversationalists he figures and damn, maybe that one should hurt more when he thinks it).
But Kurenai just rolls her eyes, and this is familiar, and at some point, 'familiar' becomes the norm, the necessary, the intrinsic. The war has ended. Konoha rebuilds. The cemetery grows ever wider.
But this –
This image of Kurenai putting pen to paper, her brow furrowed, her hair unkempt, a half-eaten ball of takoyaki resting between her thumb and forefinger – her hunger forgotten in the face of obligation – Kurenai has never shirked her paperwork and somehow this is…comforting in its normalcy.
And then a shrieking child is bursting through the door and in the time it takes Kakashi to recognize Shino rushing through the threshold with an exasperated but tender frown, the young Mirai is already flinging her arms around her mother's neck.
He still doesn't connect the dots sometimes. The dots named 'Kurenai' and 'Asuma' and 'child'. (He does, obviously, in the most basic way of knowing how such things come about – and he doesn't need Icha Icha to tell him that.) But in a way, he still can't quite reconcile this 'shinobi' way of life they lead with anything even remotely connected to family. Raising one. Being one. That's not the life he's known. And maybe that's the former ANBU in him talking but take Guy, or Iruka (or even Rin and Obito if he lets himself think too long on it) – or anyone he's ever known who's held a kunai and paid for it, and they could tell you easily enough –
There is no space for love in the 'inbetween'.
In between missions, in between war, in between duty.
Mirai makes her way over to Kakashi after greeting her mother, her eyes glinting with amusement, her hands reaching for him. He moves from his seat and squats down to her level, one hand resting atop her dark hair as he pats it affectionately. "What have you been up to, huh?"
She giggles, a bodily squirm really, and then her eyes catch sight of his copy of Icha Icha along the table and she motions anxious fingers to it.
"Quite the discerning taste, young one," Kakashi muses, grabbing the book from the table. "Want a peek?" he asks, flipping through the pages.
Kurenai beams a takoyaki at his head.
Ah yes. The familiar.
Mirai laughs as though she knows something secret and just then – there in the lines of her mouth and the curve of her nose – right there is where he sees it.
Asuma.
Kakashi thinks maybe there is space in their lives for such love.
He is already regretting this.
"Where the hell is my other shoe?" Kurenai yells from her room down the hall.
Kakashi sits on her couch with a very curious Mirai staring at him as he hoists her up with his hands beneath her arms.
Kurenai stumbles into the hallway, slinging her purse over her shoulder and hopping into the living room while she slides her previously missing shoe on. She stops to check her image in the mirror across from her.
It is…uncomfortable, he finally realizes.
Perhaps it's because she hasn't been for a night out without him in such a long time. Or maybe because there's a two year old in his grasp and isn't that just the craziest thing. Or maybe it's because Asuma's picture still sits on the end table.
Or maybe just because he suddenly realizes Yuuhi Kurenai is quite…quite pretty.
Pretty in an unruly-hair, languidly-cocked-hip, gracefully-deadly-wrist kind of way. Which isn't a way he's used to finding pretty. Or any way he's ever seen really. And that's when he realizes it's also her particular brand of pretty.
The kind that comes from the pride in her gaze when watching Team 8, the kind that comes from the tick in her jaw when she's focusing on a genjutsu, the kind that comes from the haughty way she brushes off his (often) inappropriate jokes, the kind that comes from the brilliant smile she gives her daughter – whole-hearted and unrepentant.
And damn. Was that supposed to happen?
She looks up at him as she's brushing imaginary lint from her dress. "Are you sure about this?" She motions to the infant hanging in his arms, a bit unsure to be honest, and he doesn't blame her.
But he had given his word, and hell if he'll break it now.
"I'm fine, I promise. We're fine." He gives the child a tentative shake and then watches as Mirai giggles.
Kurenai's eyes widen imperceptibly and he isn't sure if it's at the fact that Mirai laughed so easily in his arms or that he literally just shook her fucking child and he realizes belatedly that that was probably a bad idea to begin with.
"Honestly, Kakashi, you don't have to watch her for me. I can ask Hinata ...or…" She motions a thumb back at the door, as though they were just outside, just a call away.
Kakashi lowers the child back down to the ground. "Kurenai, go."
She worries her lip.
"Go have fun."
She nods finally, and she's pretty all over again. Pretty in the way she hugs her daughter goodbye. Pretty in the way she brushes the hair back behind her ears. Pretty in the way she leans down and plants a kiss along his cheek, her whisper of "thank you" lingering along his skin, just above the edge of his mask.
And then he's sure.
This was not supposed to happen.
"You know, you're not actually any good with children," she points out, rolling her hands through the air in a gesture he doesn't really recognize but assumes it's to reference…this.
'This' being his former students resorting to hair pulling in a sad mockery of 'sparring'. Naruto's whiny "Sakuraaaaaa" is choked short and all Kakashi can really do is chuckle as Sakura punts Naruto into the tree line.
"I didn't teach her that," he says, maybe in defense, but it comes out more in admiration, and anyway, it's not like he asked for this gig in the first place.
Kurenai sighs and stands beside him, crossing her arms. "You've taught them enough," she teases.
But something shifts in him then, because when he looks out on the field he's reminded that there are only two of them when there should be three, and that there may never be three again, and nothing he can do will ever change the fact that he hasn't taught them enough to overcome that.
And maybe that was his fault, too.
(He knows, he knows he can't think like that, but he does sometimes – and it's easy when Rin's bloody chest is still a vibrant reminder – to think that maybe too much is his fault.)
He looks out at Naruto and Sakura across the field. Two, where there should be three. And Kurenai is wrong. She is just so, so wrong. He didn't teach them enough.
"No," he finally says, head cocked her way, a sad smile hidden behind his mask (but never hidden, because she sees more than he would like and this is something they both understand). "I really haven't."
She doesn't say anything at first, and he is grateful. But he's never liked this kind of melancholic silence anyway, and he digs the toe of his boot into the dirt, watching the motion while he stuffs his hands into his pockets, and what a sad, sad sight he must seem, and God, this is not how he imagined this afternoon unfolding so he turns to invite her to sake with him but instead she stops him with a determined huff.
Stretching her arms high into the air, she glances over at him with a mischievous glint to her eyes. "Want to show these runts how it's done, then?"
It's a much better idea than sake, he has to admit, and it's not exactly easy to say 'no' to Kurenai anyway, so it's no surprise to either of them when he flicks out a kunai with a nod toward the field.
She winks at him once before she is off, and her eyes are just so red, and he thinks maybe that should mean something, but it doesn't.
It's just her eyes.
It's just Kurenai.
And maybe that's the meaning he's looking for after all –
Or maybe he's getting sentimental in his old age and red is just red and eyes are just eyes. Maybe Kurenai is just Kurenai.
(She isn't, and hasn't been for quite some time.)
He watches her sip at her champagne, hold it there a second, let the glass linger on her lips a while. It comes back with the mark of her lipstick tinting the edge. In a way, it is all at once nostalgic and all at once terrible.
(Asuma told him once he meant to marry her, champagne flutes clinking between them – he was dead nine days later and Kakashi hasn't drunk the stuff since.)
They don't attend many weddings. There aren't many weddings, really. Not for shinobi, at least. They've known this from the start. They know this even now.
(No space in the 'inbetween' he reminds himself. He should have known.)
When Kiba and Sakura take to the floor for their first dance, Kakashi sees Kurenai glance at her bare third finger. He wonders if Asuma ever said anything in the end, if maybe she keeps the ring stuffed inside a drawer in a forgotten room of the house, or if maybe it's still gathering dust atop Asuma's untouched end table, never to be seen again.
The way she looks now, he thinks maybe she wonders the same thing.
She gets up to leave, and Kakashi finds himself standing. "Leaving already?"
She stops, shoulders slumping slightly. "Just grabbing another drink."
He glances to her near full glass of champagne sitting idly on the table.
He licks his lips, glances at the couples slowly flooding the dance floor. "How 'bout a dance first?"
The thing is, that's not what he wants to ask. And he's also sure it's not what she wants to hear, but it's all he's got right now.
Kurenai chuckles darkly, her back still to him. "You know I've got two left feet."
"I'll lead." He always has anyway.
For a moment, he's sure she's finished humoring him, ready to walk from him and the music and the dim, warm lights at their backs. But then, she turns, slips her hand into his and leads them silently to the dance floor. His hands rest along her waist instinctively. They move without hesitance. And there among a throng of people and unsurprisingly sappy music, Kakashi dances with Kurenai.
When her hand curls into the fabric of his shirt and she presses her face to his chest, it all suddenly makes sense. "It's okay to still need him," he says.
It makes sense because he still needs Asuma, too.
Her fingers dig into his shoulder. Something like a sob – but choked and defiant – is expelled against his chest.
It makes sense because he also still needs Rin. And yet, it's this moment where he's dancing with Kurenai, his hand folded over hers, his breath pooling in her hair, that makes the least sense of anything.
("Thank you," she whispers into him at some point, and it isn't until just then that he realizes it's not what he wants to hear.)
Because he still needs her most of all.
Even when he isn't sure precisely how.
"Kakashi!" she yells, and it's all around him, reverberating through the stone.
They pull the debris off of him, and somewhere in the midst of the noise and the pain and the slowly inking black of his vision (with that one good eye, because he can't rightly say the one Obito gave him was ever really good, not in the way he needed, at least) – Kakashi recognizes the shrill tremor lining Kurenai's voice.
But he cannot give it name. Some things are far more fragile than they seem.
She's searching for him beneath the rubble, overturning stone, frantically digging, and then there – there. A hand, his fingers flexing, and the arm attached to it, and then his chest, and he's reaching for her – or maybe just the air, but she grips him just as fiercely – and then his shoulders, his torso, pulling him from the wreckage – there are many hands reaching for him now but he only has mind for hers – and then his legs, his knees, climbing over the crumbling stone, he falls into her and she catches him, her arms are light, her hair brushing his bloody cheek, sighing as she pulls him free (but still not free, not from her at least) and he's coughing into her shoulder, his mask torn, her fingers fumbling along the back of his neck and when he stumbles further into her, her sharp, worn shoulders bracing him as he falls he thinks maybe –
She's hugging him, he realizes. And he's hugging her back. And they hold each other after the breakage – trembling, bleeding.
"If I'd known this was all it took to get a cuddle," he coughs out, laughing under pain, "I'd have taken this mission sooner."
She smacks the back of his head lightly, still conscious of any injuries, and he winces dramatically, but it's enough to make her pull from him, eyes frantic on his, her hands coming up to brace his cheeks and she looks at him. Really looks at him.
Her thumbs brush along his cheeks, and with the mask torn from most of his face, her touch grazes his split lip and where it should hurt instead only feels like…like an altogether different kind of burning.
"God, you're so…so…"
"Suave? Sexy?" He pauses. "Charming?" He almost says it hopefully, dangerously.
Kurenai closes her eyes and then leans her forehead against his, their breath pooling warm between them and he is struck silent by the intimacy of it, the tenderness. His hands shift along her shoulders, winding down her arms, her dark hair curling around his touch.
"Not you," she whispers, as though to herself. "I couldn't make it through a second time."
And then he nearly stops breathing, his lungs heaving under the ache of his bruised ribs.
She seems to realize she spoke it aloud, her eyes snapping open, her breath hitching in her throat, and then she moves to pull from him, but he catches her by the elbows, keeps their foreheads braced together.
"Just…just a moment," he breathes painfully, his fingers curling along her skin, his mouth parted in keen anticipation. For what, he doesn't know.
He only knows that he is spinning.
Spinning and spinning and –
He blacks out, slumped against her.
The spinning doesn't stop, he finds. He wonders if it ever will.
There are many graves he visits, but none so much as Rin's. He thinks maybe he's unhealthily attached to the morbid, after all these years. He talks to a ghost that will never talk back, and if he thinks too hard about it, he'll realize that it isn't a ghost at all, not really, not truly. It's himself. And isn't that just the absolute icing on the morbid cake?
Because he doesn't talk to anyone else about this kind of shit. And maybe he should.
(Not maybe. Definitely.)
But then he catches sight of Hyuuga Hinata laying flowers on Neji's grave and he's reminded that they all speak to ghosts in this village.
That's how Kurenai finds him. It's her hand on his shoulder, and him turning slowly to her, his hands stuffing into his pockets (where she can't see them shaking), his gaze downcast and chest throbbing (full of it, aching with it, this thunderous rage of what could have been, and should have been, and isn't – this rage he sees just as fierce in the red gleam of her own eyes – for Asuma or something else, he isn't really sure but then, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter in the end because – )
He reaches for her before he realizes what he's doing, winds his hands around her frame and pulls her to him, buries his face in her neck and just breathes. "I miss them," he whispers into her hair. He doesn't think it needs mentioning who 'they' are. All of them. Each of them. Even each other (who they were once, he misses this, too).
Kurenai's hands hover uncertainly in the air, and then they are tentatively wrapping around his shoulders. "Kakashi…"
It makes him grip her tighter.
Her breath puffs out against his ear in a half-gasp, half-sigh – somewhere between needing and wanting and never knowing why. Somewhere between Rin and Asuma and Obito and Mirai.
He doesn't rightly know why it matters so much that she doesn't pull away.
But it does matter. And she does pull away. And perhaps that tells him everything he needs to know.
His touch lingers on her shoulder, an errant curl of dark hair caught between his fingers. He cannot take his gaze from it.
"I'm going to see Asuma," she says.
Part of him expects the tightness in his chest (but most of him doesn't – most of him is bewildered and angry and…and guilty).
Kurenai lets her hands fall from him. "I think he'd like it if you came."
Kakashi lets out a rueful laugh at that, his hand stilling around her curl. He doesn't let it go though. "I don't really think he would these days," he says lowly, eyes flicking to hers and staying there.
And there is that red again. That brilliant, unblinking red.
Some nights he wants to blot it out, but mostly…mostly he just wants – he just wants…
Kakashi steps toward her, his mouth parting, the hand at her shoulder slinking into her hair while his other pulls his mask down purposely and he doesn't think he can stop himself anyway, not when the back of her neck is warm where he braces his hand and not when he hears her suck in a breath as he nears, his nose brushing hers and her lips are right there, her mouth, her fucking mouth and then her eyes –
Her eyes are wide open.
And this is where he stops.
He pants against her lips, the space between them like a chasm and he reminds himself –
This is not how it's supposed to happen.
They stand like this for many moments, long enough that Kurenai's breathing shifts. First a short, static burst and now – now an even, slow pull.
Yes, take control. Take control of whatever this is between them. Because he can't.
Kurenai breaks away.
As well she should, he thinks, and then unthinks it a second later. Because if he keeps thinking that everything is his fault, then that's not really fair to her, is it? He isn't the only one in this equation, after all.
The mask returns in the silence between them.
"You will always be Asuma's friend," she says, fingers curling into fists at her side. "You will always be mine." She says it perhaps with a bit more force than is necessary.
He understands all the same. Even so, he doesn't think he can go with her.
She doesn't say more, and he doesn't answer, but when she pulls away, her fingers lighting along his arm in farewell, and when he stands stock still, watching her leave, he begins to wonder if there aren't ghosts after all.
If they aren't here even now.
If they aren't, perhaps, ghosts themselves.
It's one of the hottest days of summer yet. Kurenai sits on the floor in front of the fan, snapping the front of her tank top back and forth. Kakashi sits beside her, arms holding his weight along the floor as he leans back.
"This is ridiculous," she says, and it doesn't really need saying, but he's used to this, so he only hums in response.
Besides, talking takes energy, and it's too damn hot for that.
She brushes the plastered bangs from her forehead, and then she stills, and then she smirks, and then she's glancing back at Kakashi. "Want to go for a swim?"
He raises one semi-interested brow her way but doesn't say anything.
"Oh, come on," she presses, leaning back to brace her own arms along the floor, mirroring him. She throws her head back and lets out a frustrated sigh, eyes sliding closed. "This heat is killing me."
He takes a moment to notice the arch of her neck, sweat-lined and bare, the graceful sweep of her collar bone, and then his eyes trace down the lean muscle of her arms, and the lines of her legs where her shorts end, the gleam of sweat off her calves. Abruptly, he tears his gaze away and frantically back to her eyes, but hers remain closed, and he wonders if maybe he'd have liked her to catch him.
But it's a stupid thought, and he doesn't know why he thinks it. Doesn't know why he thinks a lot of things these days, really.
Clearing his throat, Kakashi straightens up a bit and crosses his legs. "Only if it's skinny dipping," he replies wolfishly, and yes, yes this is easier. He leans toward the fan and mouths strange noises into it, chuckling his amusement at the sounds wobbling out in response.
Kurenai laughs beside him, shoving him good-naturedly. "Don't block the air, you hog." And then she's sitting up beside him, pointedly not answering, and this is enough he thinks.
This is enough, because now she's making the same strange noises into the fan and beneath his mask he is smiling (in a way she doesn't have to see in order to know and he's alright with that actually).
They're laughing. And it's enough.
It isn't really.
It isn't exactly like he means to form any kind of attachment to Mirai, truthfully. It just sort of…happens. The little monkey easily finds her way into his office and his ninja pouch (don't tell Kurenai about that one, he reminds himself) and even his fucking living room window and God knows what else that he hasn't been witness to but somehow…somehow it doesn't bother him.
Sometimes he finds her staring off along the wall, at nothing in particular, this funny little crease in her brow, her eyes focused and intent – at absolutely nothing. And then she blinks, shakes her head, flashes a blinding smile his way. And he wishes more than anything to know what she sees. If she sees anything at all in the first place, or if maybe it's just a way to tune out the unnecessary, some unearthly plane calling to her, some peace he couldn't even fathom, because every time she turns that smile back to him, it's like she knows something he doesn't. That glint in her eye. That quiet, mischievous knowledge. And then suddenly she is all Asuma. In all the wrong ways (and just a bit of the right ones).
"Have you ever thought about it?" he asks suddenly, eyes on the little girl playing ninja in the hospital hallway. In the room behind them Tsunade is giving Guy his examination. His wheelchair sits empty just outside the door.
Kurenai turns to Kakashi from where she sits along the waiting bench next to him. "Thought about what?"
Kakashi nods in Mirai's direction. "What are you going to do if she wants to grow up just like you?" He pauses, sighing. "Just like her dad?"
Kurenai's lips purse together and he's sure she's gotten the meaning, but he doesn't push further in the wake of her silence. No one ever told them what they were getting into when they signed their lives away to their village. No one ever told them what it meant to be shinobi, not in the long run, nor in the end of days. And his father had – well, his father hadn't exactly lit the way, he supposes.
But he likes to think that his father had wanted more for him, just like Kakashi had wanted more for Rin and Obito. Just like he's sure Kurenai wants more for Mirai.
"She will be who she's always been. She will be my daughter, in whatever she does."
Kakashi's eyes flick from Kurenai to the empty wheelchair beside them and then down along the stark white walls of the hospital.
Blowing an exhausted breath from her lips, she runs her hands through her hair, then bunches them in her lap. If he looks close enough he will see how they wring themselves, he will see the unsettling rise of her chest when she breathes deep that insultingly sterile hospital air. "There is no greater mistake than wanting to protect something by caging it." She says it with some semblance of finality he isn't sure she feels.
He glances down to her hands and watches her rub at her bare third finger and he wonders how the skin isn't rubbed raw at this point, but then, Kurenai's never been afraid of a little blood.
He's just so tired of visiting graves. Eons and epochs and nothing changes. Except maybe him.
He chances a glance at her face, and finds she's looking dead at him.
(Except maybe this.)
It happens when they least expect it. It happens when they are lying panting in the grass beneath a half moon, their midnight spar pushing them to exhaustion.
Kakashi curls his fingers into the dewy grass and closes his eyes to the stars.
"You told me once that it was okay to still need him."
Kakashi's eyes snap open from their drowsy fluttering, his muscles coiled in keen anticipation.
"You were only half right," she says, and he can hear the rustle of her movement in the grass. He cranes his neck a bit to catch her sitting up with her arms wrapped around her knees, her back to him, and the night breaks along her form like nothing he's ever seen before.
A cradle of moonlight in the hollow where neck meets shoulder, her dark hair a curtain, and he isn't sure what would ruin him more in this moment – to see that gleam of red in her eyes or not. So he just breathes in silence beside her, his fists curling around the grass beneath him. It's stifling beneath his mask, and he can't rightly tell whether that is her influence or not.
Kurenai heaves a heavy sigh, glancing up at the moon, and she seems lighter somehow. Calm. Ready.
For what, he isn't sure. But he thinks he may be ready with her. Wherever that may lead them.
(He should be terrified at the idea but instead he is simply…reconciled – he already knows he will be ready whenever she is, however long that takes.)
"You forgot about the part where it was okay to still need you."
Kakashi sits up himself, not abruptly or stiffly, but with the kind of assurance that comes from knowing exactly where he stands. They keep their backs to each other. "And do you? Need me, that is."
He can hear her sigh again, but it isn't a defeated sound. It's freeing, more than anything. "I think I do," she says without falter.
Kakashi's brows crease, and he twists to look at her. He finds her peering over her shoulder as well, but not at his face. Her eyes are steady on his hand where it braces his weight along the ground.
Something stirs in him. It isn't anger, exactly, but it comes out like it, nonetheless. "I'm not looking for pity."
She shifts just a bit closer. "That's not what this is."
He clenches his jaw, turning toward her as well. Their fingers inch closer in the grass. "And I'm not looking for some sick sort of dependency."
"That's not what this is either."
Kakashi lets out a tremulous breath, raking a hand through his hair. "Then what the hell are we doing, Kurenai?"
She stills, her eyes drifting off into the night – that red, that stark, that itch in his gut – and it isn't 'just Kurenai' anymore. Never will be again, he's sure. Kurenai's face settles into something he used to know – a girl, a woman, with calloused palms and dangerous eyes and a laugh like something hidden (a lover's secret, he sees it now, and he isn't afraid anymore to admit to wanting to know it intimately).
"I don't know anymore," she whispers breathlessly, and then she's standing, staring down at him with her fists clenched at her sides. She shakes her head, swallowing tightly. "I don't know, Kakashi."
He stands as well, his hand finding purchase at the back of her neck when he leans in toward her, his other hand dragging the mask down from over his lips, and he doesn't let those wide eyes stop him this time.
Maybe this is exactly how it's supposed to happen.
In the space between his mouth and hers he finds all the reasons they do deserve this, and none of the reasons why they don't.
Eons and epochs and each dawn anew.
It happens in the pale glint of morning.
It happens when she kisses him back.
"When you do," he breathes against her mouth after, "When you know – " He stops, licks his lips, almost leans in again but then catches himself, closing his eyes and pulling from her, his hand brushing along her jaw just before he turns and walks away.
She doesn't call out to him, but in the end it doesn't matter.
Kakashi slips his mask back on, his fingers lighting briefly over his lips.
It doesn't matter because she had kissed him back. She had kissed him back.
He tells himself he will only look back once –
(The next time it happens, she's the one to kiss him first.)
– He looks back twice.