The last interlude before the last stretch of this story. 3-4 chapters remain. This is rated NC-17/Mature, though it's probably mostly worksafe as far as those kinds of things go.

I don't know if everyone has/knows about mayflies, so thought I'd mention they're these insects that can live years as nymphs, but once they become adults, they live 30 minutes to one day (a few species up to three days). They have no way to use their digestive system as their mouth parts are vestigial and don't function. They don't eat in their adult lifespan, only breed and die. I scrapped this chapter three times (thirty+ handwritten pages) before I happened to be outside the night the mayflies appeared very thick. They inspired me, as they are similar to our beloved ninja like that--they live short lives and die so the next generation can live.

I hope you like this, but I hope you understand the reasons, too. This chapter starts where the previous one left off.

(also, ffdotnet is acting oddly, so sorry if formatting is rubbish)

Live, Kakashi; it's my final command as your sensei and your Hokage.

in a letter from Namikaze Minato to his former student (see HR 2)

I will give my life for love.

In mid-summer, the streets of Konoha were often invaded. Flooded. Littered with bodies.

Mayflies.

Choking the air, crawling, waiting, on walls and trees and leaves and doors. Waiting to die, never taking their brief existence in hand, never taking the moment to live. They waited, apart from one another, unwilling to take a chance because their brief lives weren't really their own, after all.

They were born to die. To prolong the species, for the good of all, breeding offspring who would repeat the cycle. More brief existences.

Afraid to live and born to die.

As Kakashi lay in Minato's arms, his mind wandered and it occurred to him there in the dark that shinobi weren't much different. Devoting brief lives to their village, bearing offspring they would never see grow to their full potential, some they would never see at all. Afraid to reach out, to hold one another close and exist together, to take that chance, because they, too, were born to die.

Born to die... He couldn't help it; he gripped Minato's arms tighter around him, sliding back against his sensei's chest. It was their last chance before everything ended. Their last chance to reach out.

Shinobi were born to die. It had taken death to finally force them to live.

Minato's lips on the back of Kakashi's neck surprised him, almost as much as the hand slipping down his stomach, below the waistband of his pants. Given the chance, Minato wasn't wasting any time and Kakashi had to agree...they had already wasted two lifetimes. He groaned when the hand wrapped around the base of his already solid arousal and tugged. Callused fingers dragged along hot flesh and Kakashi groaned again, hips moving on their own, his body realizing the urgency before Kakashi had fully registered it.

An answering noise from behind drew a shiver through is body. Minato's cock, seated along the dip in Kakashi's backside, twitched and he could feel the man push, grinding against him. Grasping for contact. Like the mayflies, aware of his own time running out. "Kakashi..."

It wasn't romantic, but what did desperation know of romance? It was pure need that drove Minato to yank and tear at Kakashi's pants, his own, seeking more contact, immediate and hot and crucial.

Shinobi were born to die. A rare few chose to use that brief existence to live.

Minato pushed into the heat of Kakashi's body, hands gripping pale hips, shuddering when a moan broke the quiet, shattered it and filled the space with panting, hoarse whispers, frantic 'I love you's and 'I'm sorry's communicated with bodies and hearts and words and groans and movement.

Minato raked his hands up Kakashi's back, left a trail of gentle kisses along the range of his spine. Fingers tangled into silver hair as the man below him rocked backward on hands and knees, meeting every thrust, whining for more, for everything, persisting despite death and uncertain future.

It was what shinobi did. Persist. Continue. They also feared. Kushina had tried to tell them that it was okay to love and live, to take life by the hands and embrace it. Even okay to fear it, so long as it didn't paralyze them into inaction. Hot tears on Kakashi's back as they neared completion only reflected his own as they pooled on the sheets below. Tears for Kushina. For themselves. For comrades lost and loved and held at arm's length out of fear.

When Minato came, it was explosive, the culmination of years of tense, anxious foreplay and he didn't hold back. He let his voice fill the void between them. Kakashi's name broke from his lips between gasps, between moans and trembling wails of ecstatic grief.

And Kakashi cried, sobbing, not bothering to hide his pain and regret, but no longer hiding his love, either. No longer just a vessel, but a conduit. No longer waiting, living.

"Minato...sensei, sensei...oh, gods... Minato..."

Minato lowered himself to Kakashi's back, tan cheek against porcelain skin, pink and flushed beneath him. He kissed and touched and memorized. They loved and lived more in those quiet moments afterward than the summation of their previous existence together. Kakashi shuddered and sighed, dropping to the blankets, both rolling to the side, but keeping close, holding on as long as possible because this was it. Their one chance to be more than brief existence.

They lay again in silence, breathing together, one inside the other, one beside the other. One.

"I love you, Kakashi, and I'm sorry--" Minato brushed a lock of hair away from his sleeping lover's cheek. He wanted to see him, while he still had the chance to gaze upon that beautiful, marked face. "I'm sorry for what I have to do."