A/N: Yeah. So this took a long time. I'd like to thank everyone for their patience - and especially for the excellent feedback that kept coming even through the wait. This chapter just wouldn't end. Mad props go out to Wildhawk and a nameless lurker, who both noticed that "the two hundred and seventy-third distance" didn't rise though the line was repeated. Wildhawk even knew the reason, which is that the Celsius temperature spectrum is 273 degrees. She also knew a cooler reason that I wish I could claim. Way to be awesome, guys.

Oh, and I've gotten a few questions about when this story will end. My response? I have no effing clue. But it will be fairly obvious and I'll make sure to shift TAATYDU's status to "complete".

And now on to the story! XD

Warning: The following fanfiction contains very extreme darkness such as pedophilia, prostitution, and complete psychological mindfuckery. 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 Ten

The next day is surreal. (Remember this word. Surreal. It is such an incredibly fitting description, such a beautifully exact label, and it will show up again.)

Kakashi makes his way to the bridge to meet his team precisely a half hour early. He has not really slept, only dozed lucidly. There is a forty-two percent chance that it shows. (Yes. Yes, it does. When a body is beaten and abused and used and pushed for so hard and so long, small signs make themselves noticed despite all effort.)

Rin arrives after ten minutes. She is reading a scroll on iijutsu, and she doesn't notice him at first. Then she does, and her eyes go wide and her tattooed face lights up and -

Kakashi has never thought much of the girl, but it is strangely - something stunning to realize anew how much she truly thinks of him.

"Kakashi! You're back!" She looks like she wants to tackle him, but Rin is Rin and she holds herself back at the last second. She gazes at him expectantly instead.

Kakashi doesn't know what she expects. "...Yes."

She flushes a little but soldiers on. "No, you don't get it. You're back."

They look at each other, not connecting and not communicating, and now is when the Yellow Flash shows up, full of vim and energy. Kakashi puts the odd exchange in the back of his mind to mull over later and concentrates on not watching the jounin.

Kakashi is - just -

An idiot.

Here. Quickly. Here is what - she is talking about. What he didn't get. What she didn't have the words for:

It is half a day after Kakashi tells them he is being sent on a mission - around nine o'clock in the evening, and Rin is playing with her baby brother in the quiet comfort of her bedroom when there is a gust of wind and a crack of light and -

Minato-sensei.

Otouto begins crying in shock three blinks late, but the man doesn't seem to notice. Rin simply half-gapes.

"...Sen - "

"Have you seen Kakashi?" is what he cuts her off with, not seeming to hear her almost-stutter. His eyes are a shimmer wild and his mouth is a pale line pulled taut (like when we fished in the creek, the stupid little girl finds herself thinking numbly).

She shakes her head dumbly in response, trying to find her center (because her team life and her home life don't mix - have never mixed; no one in her family bothers with her or expects her to actually bring honor to the family name - and here is Rin caught flat-footed).

But Minato-sensei is gone before her tongue knows what to say ask demand, and she spends the next two hours after calming baby Hiroshi telling herself not to worry or jump to conclusions. She doesn't get much sleep.

When morning comes, she ends up at the bridge an hour early. Half again later, Obito shows up, panting and babbling excuses that die a quarter born and astonished.

They count the minutes for an hour, then a fresh slate with five ten twe -

And the Yellow Flash is suddenly in front of them. (She wonders if this is in the process of becoming a habit of his.) He doesn't look at her. Obito is an eruption of noise and gleeful recriminations that fade in the face of a reality neither he nor Rin have seen before.

Namikaze Minato, furious and silent and white-faced. His jaw is a harsh sweep of iron, his eyes made jarring with half-webs of red, and he seems to be staring at nothing. He certainly does not look at them.

He says, "Training is canceled for the day."

"What!" Obito yelps. "We've been waiting here for nothing?! That's such bullshit! The first time that asshole doesn't show up, you cancel?"

Minato-sensei's fingers are lax, not fisted, but Rin watches them tremble and twitch. There is a slow, curling heaviness in the air that makes it hard to breathe, hard to move, and Rin tastes it densely in the fibers of her useless muscles. Minato-sensei's hair seems to crackle with it, and Rin knows that she is nothing, wants to fold in and die - and her knees are giving out -

Instantly the weight is gone, sucked back in and saved for later. Sensei has caught her by the arm, is steadying her gently, and he is normal again. Tired, maybe -

- His eyes meet hers.

Rin doesn't register what he says to Obito, though she distantly sees his mouth moving.

And he isn't touching her anymore because he has left. She does not fall, somehow. Somehow, she manages to stay on her feet, to appear normal, and Obito is acting normally as well. She wants to scream and know if this has all been real, to check that she is awake and she has felt what she has felt and has seen in that stranger's gaze what she has seen.

As she mechanically walks away from Obito, not hearing his squawks of indignation or seeing the slump of his shoulders, she wonders if she has ever honestly known Minato-sensei. She wonders if Kakashi has.

Rin wonders a lot of things. She doesn't understand a lot of things.

She doesn't go home or to the hospital to wheedle some training out of the medics. Instead, she goes to an empty training ground and begins fumblingly practicing a kata. (Taijutsu is her weak point, and she - she just... Disregarded weaknesses matter now.)

And here is three months later again. Here is now again. Here is Team Seven again, united again, together again (but only in the physical sense, because when have they ever genuinely understood each other?).

Obito is exactly forty-eight minutes late. Completely involved in not watching the Yellow Flash, Kakashi ignores him.

That is why the fist that flies his way actually connects.

(This is the real reason, the reason no one here on this bridge even knows exists: Kakashi is now used to not reacting, to not stopping anyone from hurting him. His body disregards such things automatically because Kakashi either does things totally or not at all and in order to - do, he almost completely killed his reflexes. A slip-up would have been too disastrous, and -

Why justify it?)

Obito stares at the masked face he has just punched, goggled eyes bewildered and shocked and mouth soft with surprise. No hint of triumph has fought its way through the disbelief. Rin stares as well, aghast, and the Yellow Flash just watches them, all unreadable face and eyes like lakes on windless days (water and sky reflecting a thousand times blue, glorious surface as still as glass).

Kakashi stares back, barely feeling the throb of his right brow and eye socket and cheekbone - and some part of him analyzes the extremely thorough angle Obito pulled off. The rest of him: there is a blankness in his chest and feather-lightness in his blood that he thinks is a welcome change from the chaos of conflict he has recently become.

He - smiles a little. (Is slightly delirious and weightless and lost in nothing that he understands. Is coming apart at the seams because the ties that bind have been cut or maybe were just never properly knotted in the first place.) Says, "Good to see you too, Uchiha."

He is different now (he knows this with the surety of the color of blood), and it isn't going away on its own.

So this day is surreal. Awkward silence leads to Sensei setting them to sparring, but it is only an hour before the Yellow Flash claps his hands. Kakashi immediately stops his barrage on Obito and turns to the blond, forcing himself to breathe perfectly levelly. (Kakashi sees the slight signs of something is wrong here and i know it now that are evident in the man's half-lidded eyes, in the subtly tighter draw of the right corner of his mouth as he smiles. There is a clenching in Kakashi's gut and a too-clearness in his vision at this development, but he does not acknowledge these physical trivialities - or the way his body feels infuriatingly weak, his breath too short. This is another thing he does not acknowledge: that he knows the jounin so well as to clue in on the man's tells, tells that even the Hyuuga have not caught.)

Kakashi is glad for his mask as he regains his equilibrium - he is almost certain that his cheeks are flushed from overexertion (when he should not be overexerted or even exerted at all) beneath it.

The Yellow Flash is saying, " - So we'll hit up the center for a mission next week. Until then, I want you training extra on your own time. Responsibly, might I add." A dry glance is aimed Obito's way. "With Kakashi's absence, I expect that your teamwork has gotten even worse than usual - " and here Rin sighs - "and if you don't fix it yourselves, I'll fix it for you." You don't want that squats thickly in their brains as the unspoken message.

Obito slumps. Kakashi betrays nothing. (He cannot shake the utter - and here is the word again - surreality of being here. Being in Konoha. Being with - him. Being attacked by Obito and confused by Rin. Being a shinobi. Being Hatake Kakashi.)

Rin speaks up. "Can you show me last Tuesday's kata?"

"Sure. But - hm. Okay, scratch that. Obito, I want you to show Rin the kata."

An expression flashes across Obito's face, gone in an instant but sending up flags in a corner of Kakashi's head. It is - dread? and joy and - ?

Strange.

"No problem, mister-master-teacher-man-dude," is all Obito says, blithe and obnoxious and normal again. Rin looks like she wants to protest, but of course she would never so vocally doubt her sensei.

The Yellow Flash just nods, either adjusted to or ignoring the moniker (that Kakashi has never heard before, and what is the story?). "Go on, then. Wait! I forgot to mention - we're meeting at Jinji's tonight. Seven o'clock, okay?"

"Jinji's?" Obito questions.

"Yeah. You know, it's next to - actually, why don't you just come with Rin."

Here: Kakashi speaks for the first time since his greeting to Obito, cutting off what would probably have been a colorful explosion of protests. "Why?"

The man blinks. "...Right. Right, you weren't here. We've started having semi-weekly strategy meetings. Yes, you are required to attend."

When Kakashi doesn't reply, the blond turns to his other students. "What are you waiting for? Go. Teach. Learn."

The duo heads off, one nearly bouncing and the other with a hint of long-suffering. As entertaining and painfully hilarious as it would be to watch them, Kakashi's attention is drawn to his teacher.

Who is. He is and he is looking at Kakashi.

It is a little - tense. Last night is fresh in Kakashi's mind, and he knows things aren't as they used to be between them but doesn't know how long the Yellow Flash is going to pretend otherwise - doesn't even know whether he wants the man to do so or not.

He finds himself saying, "I am unsure as to whether that was a brilliant idea or a moronic one."

Blue eyes widen a fraction - and surprised laughter lolls out lowly. "I guess we'll see. Either way, Obito takes a closer look at his own form and I can talk to you."

Cold skitters down Kakashi's spine despite having expected this since the too-quick man clapped an halt to his spar with Obito. He tries: "Sensei?"

"Don't, Kakashi. Just - don't. You're off your game. You're overextending, second-guessing your muscle memory. You're hesitating, which I've never seen before and freely admit is a little creepy. Your hits don't have the same strength - just. What..." The blond stop-gaps into silence, a strangely helpless cast to his features.

But he doesn't finish the question, stopping two centimeters from the ledge. (And in this heartbeat Kakashi knows how he wants the jounin to handle the new strangeness between them. The answer is: please pretend.)

Out of sync. This is how Kakashi feels. All of his responses are that blink too slow or too quick, his thought processes swinging between Katsu's and his own. (But Katsu's are his own, kind of. He made Katsu. He is Katsu. ...No. What?)

He realizes the silence has been hanging for too long and hastily jerkily harshly says, "I - know." He likes this response, so he tries it out a second time. "I know. I have determined that the longevity and circumstances of my mission have negatively affected my proficiency. I plan to remedy this as soon as possible." It is more wordy than usual even for him, but in this minuscule fraction of his life, with this sun soaking warmly into the dark material of the mask covering his face - with this man he cannot hide all of his chinks. That is asking too much.

There is silence again for a tenth of a minute while they each measure what they have not said and what they have said and the worth of any of it. In a mutated sort of reverse-psychology, the things worth saying (the concerned ones, the truthful ones, the messy ones) are the ones not communicated.

And now the Yellow Flash turns the full force of his gaze and smile on Kakashi; Kakashi takes it unflinchingly (but it is costing him so much).

"Okay then. Let's fight."

So they do.

This is a mistake. This is such a mistake, and Kakashi knows it the moment the first punch is dodged. Moving so fast - too fast and it is a mistake and he is not quick enough or good enough and fuck he is touching him -

Stop. (He wants to stop so badly, needs to get away away away but he cannot, not yet not yet.)

Don't think.

Every tendon in his body is screaming. This is good. This is very good. This is almost enough to erase the scorching shove of blood pushing hummingbird-quick and fall-hard through his veins, the brash need thickly lodging itself into the spaces between his joints that wants him to find some random stranger and just -

He had to lie to the Yellow Flash after training was over in order to get away from him. The - the total misery of being subjected to so much physical contact with the blond, of knowing all over again and too clearly the gleam in the man's eyes and the vicious genius in his smirk and the feel of hot breath ghosting against Kakashi's ear when -

Kakashi underestimated it. He knows this now - knows that he isn't going to be able to control himself, not when his body has been screaming for sex ever since he first woke in the Sandaime's office anyway. (It seems so long ago, but it has only been - fuck, it hasn't even been two weeks. ...Fuck, it has almost been two weeks.)

He has been running. He has run for fifty-three minutes now, forcing his body to go as quickly as possible and meticulously counting every second as he moves moves moves. He just - he has to get away from Konoha. Away from that man, because Kakashi had managed not to truly think about sex since his wet dream while in the hospital but now he has. And now he wants.

He hurts with how much he wants.

This: it has been fifty-four minutes (and one, two, three, four seconds...), and his breathing is too uncontrolled and his muscles -

His right leg spasms - gives out in a shrug-twitch he doesn't see coming, and his left foot has nothing under it before he can think to use chakra to stick to the branch. Air and gravity, then pain, and now he is face-down in a firm layer of prickly objects, lungs forcefully emptied and skeleton jarred. When after a moment there is still no burst of specific agony hailing an injury, he stiffly turns his face to the side and opens his eyes to find himself at the base of an enormous pine tree. At least, he thinks it is a pine - all he can see is the trunk. The carpet of pine needles poking his mask and the decomposing pine cone protruding from said sea of needles exactly one inch from his left eye are semi-reliable hints, though.

He isn't too surprised this has happened. Kakashi has begun expecting his body to betray him, and, besides, there are more important things.

There is a knot in his throat. He ignores it like he has been for the past twelve minutes (and twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three seconds), focusing instead on the contradictory sensation of having physically turned from solid mass to liquid and managing somehow to still thrum with tension in every boiling sinew, body curling unstoppably rigidly hesitatingly slightly.

But: the knot is tightening, hard and hot and thick and foreign (and afterwards: you child are extremely good with your tongue i believe ling deserves a raise for you). He inhales past it, almost desperate now because whatever this is, it isn't something he is familiar with, and that is all he needs to know. He doesn't want new things. He doesn't even want old things. Old things have changed - today is brutal evidence of that - and new things just keep destroying who he is who he used to be who he wants to be who he should be -

He screws his eyes closed. There is a sound like a gasp, like a choke. (Like a sob - but not quite. This is not the occasion when Kakashi will experience crying for the first time since infancy.)

Kakashi jerks down his mask with weak, fumbling fingers and - breathes.

Breathes.

Breathes.

Here is how he does it: he breathes steadily deeply shudderingly in with his mouth and out with his nose (subconsciously refusing to breathe in through his nose - he cannot stand to smell the fresh pine scent of his father's suicide), his body trembling and revolting against him. All he does is breathe, pouring with the fervor of a waterfall every ounce of his awareness into the action. Thought is gone and sensation is gone and Minato is gone and Ling is gone and Ishida is gone and Katsu is gone and Kakashi is gone.

Kakashi is not here right now. Try again later.

Something prickly digging into his cheek is what brings him back to himself. He opens his eyes, a muscle in his jaw flinching as his blackened one makes the entirety of its severity known to him for the first time. He sees: pine needles. Of course. He examines the organic matter surrounding his immediate line of sight and considers moving.

Watch. This is when Kakashi realizes where he is - fifty-four minutes out from the village while running at top speed, alone and physically incapacitated. He makes to get to his feet in a void-born fling of movement (because his teacher was right and Kakashi really has begun hesitating - because he refuses to do so anymore) but, in a flash of pain and sheer disobedience on his body's end, somehow ends up flat on his back. Intelligently, he doesn't retry immediately. Instead, he takes the pain and rides it (please sir do me beat me rape me one more time), staring up at the lush, interlocking foliage that is blocking his view of the sky. And he -

Smiles. Tiredly wryly darkly - he smiles, and it isn't for anyone. It isn't a lie or a gift or a promise or a tactic or anything except a smile. It isn't a very good smile, at that. It is a little lopsided and really at least half-smirk, and there is too much depth where the wild things are (where the monsters are, the ones most can't bear to admit are in their world), but the important thing is that it isn't a smile the Cat taught him. He doesn't even notice what he is doing.

(He will have exactly five more of these in his life.)

And now he murmurs with curved lips to no one, to the watery shadows of the forest, "Train responsibly."

(If Kakashi was a different person - not a sharp and deadly and beautiful and tie-less eleven year old who is willing to do anything the Hokage orders - he would be laughing hysterically. He is not, though.)

Seven seconds, and he slowly begins picking himself up.

The run back to Konoha isn't as difficult as the last time he made it (hurt and beyond differentiating pain and too far beyond chakra depletion and much too far beyond exhaustion and gladly incapable of any thought other than konoha), but that doesn't mean that it isn't hard going. He doesn't dare to attempt anything quicker than a steady lope, and he is fairly sure that even this pace is something any medic-nin would slap him for.

It takes him at least twice as long to cover the distance again. (He doesn't count this time.) When he arrives, his body feels like lead and he has forty-five minutes before he needs to be at the restaurant to meet with his team.

The Yellow Flash can't see him like this. He - there can't be another talk. Kakashi - he won't be able to handle it. He won't.

He does and doesn't like it when the jounin obliviously showcases how involved he is in Kakashi's life. It makes him despair just a little - awkward and rookie and tentative with the alien sensation - when it happens now because the chances of disentangling himself from the man are so close to nil as to be nonexistent. The sincere concern, the too-real - the man is too real with Kakashi, more real than he is with anyone else, and every time Namikaze Minato is too himself it makes Kakashi want to hope and try. (Last night: dont is what leaps quietly from kakashi's lips now dont dont do that.)

He already wants too much.

Kakashi: in the privacy of his flat, fingers twisting into seals and a murmur breaking the plastic silence.

A cold-faced kunoichi with boyish hips makes her way to the hospital and asks for Medic Masai through tight lips.

It is five seconds before seven o'clock, but Minato is not actually counting. (That is what he tells himself.) Rin and Obito are already here, the latter only on time because Minato escaped before they could remember again to argue about coming together.

Seven o'clock. Minato wants to drum his fingers but doesn't, very aware of his Uchiha's sullen silence and Rin's expectant eye on the door. He -

He doesn't know what to think. He doesn't - he doesn't really know Kakashi anymore, not even as almost-well as he used to. This isn't - this isn't the Kakashi -

But the boy has been gone for a while. It is to be expected that everyone is a little different. Give it a month or two.

(That is what he tells himself. It isn't as easy to believe, but he forces himself to anyway.)

Fifteen seconds to Kakashi literally being late.

He doesn't know what to think. Kakashi is never late. (Give him time.) Minato - refuses the worn thought cycle and wraps his hands around his cooling tea.

Nine seconds.

"So, Rin," Minato says, pulling up a smile with practiced ease and ignoring the girl's jerk of surprise, "how do you think you and Obito did on the - "

"There's the bastard," Obito interrupts.

Minato doesn't notice the subtle lowering of his shoulders, the rise of his chin - he is already raising his arm to catch his just-shy-of-tardy student's attention. (Minato has never realized outside of missions that his blond hair is a beacon.) The boy begins picking his way through the tables, and Minato sits back with a warm grin. He can feel anticipation and slight glee bubbling up through his gut now, worry mostly dismissed.

He turns to his seated students.

"Everyone remembers what to do, right?"

Rin's eyes are shining as she nods, and Minato remembers the girl's crush on Kakashi all over again. Obito is scowling as he says, "Yeah, yeah, we know." The his face lightens a little. "I already gave him my present, huh?"

Rin turns to him instantaneously, mouth down-turned. "You shouldn't have hit - "

And here is Kakashi.

There is a general snap to attention, and Rin giggles. Minato makes a mental note to give her lessons in subterfuge even as he nods in greeting and evaluates Kakashi's movements. Not overly tense, no limp - he is obviously not as bad off as Minato had first thought. Something in him relaxes. He allows Kakashi the time to sit, then opens his mouth to speak.

"So tonight we've got something important to recognize."

Another giggle from Rin. She is fairly vibrating in her seat. Obito tilts his head at her and stares, plan forgotten.

"What the hell was that?" Bewilderment creases the black-haired boy's brow.

Distracted immediately, she defensively says, "What?"

"That noise."

Minato wants to close his eyes.

"What're you - "

"Enough, you two," the jounin finds himself interrupting them with, weary and half-amused. Fuck it. "Kakashi - " and his student is looking at him even as Rin and Obito look at Kakashi - "happy birthday!"

The chuunin: there is no reaction at all for a few seconds, and then a slow blink.

Minato waits for a response beyond that. All there is is a few more seconds of silence, and now Obito is impatient.

"It's your birthday, asshole. Wait, don't tell me you actually forgot it! That'd just be too perf- "

"Shut up, Obito! And you're wrong anyway - his birthday w- "

Minato has been looking at the too-still birthday boy. Now, though, he says absently, "Shut up." The two immediately quiet, probably out of shock. "Kakashi had more important things to worry about." A small twitch of the young prodigy's right index finger.

Obito and Rin just stare at him blankly, and Minato has to remind themselves that they are still simply children despite everything. (It is sometimes easy to forget with his third student, but Minato believes fiercely that Kakashi deserves to be a kid and refuses to allow himself to forget. He hasn't got it down-pat quite yet, but he tries.)

"Kakashi," Minato continues smoothly, "you missed your birthday. You're twelve now."

There is a strange sound that he doesn't have the time to recognize because suddenly - Kakashi is moving, leaning forward and propping his elbows on the table. Suddenly, his masked face is resting casually on his palm - suddenly there is a slight crinkle of the skin around the boy's eyes that Minato identifies as a smile.

But: "I don't have much time to stay, Sensei." And the Kakashi-smile is gone just as quickly as it came, loose posture straightening into ramrod-straightness with it.

"Why not?" bursts out of Rin.

Kakashi looks at her, then back at Minato. There is disappointment (and he shouldn't be disappointed - should have expected this) sinking into every bone of his body, but Minato smiles at him.

"...I suppose I could stay for a while." It is like the words are coming against Kakashi's will, and the chuunin is still looking at Minato. Minato wonders if there is something on his face.

He dismisses the thought as unimportant and taps the table a single decisive time, disappointment gone.

"Alright then! Let's order, hm? And we'll have the waitress bring out the cake with the food."

Kakashi has realized something. He cannot have the Yellow Flash as his sensei anymore.

It seems like an obvious observation, but he has subconsciously and deliberately avoided this thought for a while now - even managed not to realize it this afternoon. Now, though - now he leaps over rooftops more quickly than necessary and knows that he cannot have the Yellow Flash as his sensei anymore. Now he lands in a secluded training ground and knows that he absolutely must be ready for the next jounin exam - now he punches a stump one two three hundred times, not pausing when it finally shatters (takes too long too long) except to switch to a new one, then another, and knows that he needs to be capable again. It will take time, but he can cut it down if he goes hard enough.

Quick. Quick - he needs to be capable again, and he cannot fall into Katsu when he doesn't know how to act, not even for a few seconds. (He does not hate. He is not angry. He is calm. He is numb. He is thinking clearly. The dinner - caving - Katsu - is a sign, and he is centered now.)

He cannot believe that he actually let himself be Katsu for a few seconds. He cannot believe it, so he does not think about it beyond that.

Kakashi tells himself: do not touch him. do not let yourself be alone with him. do not let him see. do not let anyone see. do not look. do not kiss him. do not be weak. do not stop trying not to love him.

There are a lot of things he knows. There are a lot of things he tells himself. There are a lot of punches thrown.

And he begins retraining himself to his former exaction.

He makes it to his apartment before his body gives out on him, the soldier pill from before dinner taking its toll. The last thing he thinks as his bedroom floor rushes up to meet his face is that Medic Masai is going to kill him and he has barely perfected the first kata.

It isn't enough.