Tempers were running quite high when we arrived at the Akatsuki hideout. Naruto had barely been able to control his worry and irritation before, but our encounter with Itachi seemed to have thrown him off. He had been silent since, and so had Lady Chiyo and Sakura. I did suspect it was for completely different reasons, though. Kakashi hadn't said or done anything since he'd asked if I was okay, but I knew the encounter had shaken him. Hell, it had shaken me. The implications behind Itachi's words replayed over and over in my head like a broken record.

"And you, senpai, you move fast. I guess your patience has been rewarded after all these years."

I shook my head to get rid of the memory. I'd speak to Kakashi about it when we got back home, he wouldn't lie to me. But for the time being, we all had a mission to accomplish.

It didn't take long for Team Gai to arrive, by that time, Sakura had studied the seal on the hideout's entrance and declared it a very real obstacle. Good thing we had other four people to help with that. The other four seals that completed the array were promptly found thanks to Neji's byakugan and radios were distributed before team Gai rushed into position. I scaled the giant boulder and crouched right beside the seal before counting down. All five seals were ripped at the same time, rendering the boulder a regular piece of rock again, and a fraction of a second later, Naruto was hitting it with all his might.

Debris flew everywhere like projectiles, the entire team took cover and waited for the last pieces of rock to fall before rushing the cave.

What we found was not what we had been expecting.

There were three people inside the cave, one of them was dead. Gaara. The other two were simply there, waiting, mocking us. A blonde man, the younger one, Deidara I believed, was sitting on Gaara's lifeless body, smiling. This day was going downhill fast, and so was the mission. But what concerned me most was Naruto's silence. He was fighting the urge to release Kurama with everything he had. I could see it in the way his eyes shifted from blue to orange and back again to blue, and the way his chakra levels rose andebbed like the tides.

"Well, finally, I thought you guys would never get here. My man Sasori was getting impatient, hmm." Said the blonde man.

"I apologize for the delay, your front door seemed to be locked, we were forced to make our own." I retorted.

A little banter went a long way when you wanted to show your enemy you were not afraid of them. We probably should have been, though, these two had managed to take down a Kage with a tailed beast sealed inside of him after all.

"Well, it's all good and well, but we were just leaving-" he paused to take a molded piece of clay out of one of his pouches. "You can keep the cave, by the way, it was starting to get a little too crowded anyway, hmm."

"I don't think so, sweetheart." Said Sakura behind me.

Good, someone needed to speak up soon before these two thought we were a bunch of cowards.

"Stop flirting and get going, Deidara. I would rather get this over with sooner rather than later."

The other man, if he could even be described as one, had an odd shape to him, as if beneath his cloak he'd been walking on all fours instead of upright. His appearance was quite unnerving.

Deidara made a hand sign and his clay figure expanded into a giant bird with a quiet poof. The thing then proceeded to grab Gaara's prone body and cage it inside it's beak. The whole thing was quite disturbing, and I had to grab Naruto's sleeve to keep him from rushing ahead. We were faced with two s-rank ninja with unknown abilities. Yes, one was a demolitions expert and the other a puppet master, but that was as far as our intel went, and rushing into a fight like this half blind was a sure way to get killed.

Deidara jumped on the clay bird's back and took off, still taunting all of us as he exited the cave.

His intent was pretty obvious.

I turned to Kakashi and Sakura and nodded to them. Kakashi took one moment to look me in the eye as if he had something to say. Then the moment was gone, and so was he with Sakura at his heels. When Naruto tried to turn and follow them, I tightened my grip on his sleeve. It was such a hard grip, I could feel the mesh and ninja wire hidden under his jacket.

"Think." Was all I told him.

He froze.

Think.

He understood. They were trying to lure him away so they could capture him and do the same they had done to Gaara. He couldn't avenge his friend if he was dead.

I turned to Lady Chiyo and nodded. There was no time for politics here, no time for rivalry, hatred or even bitterness. She was the one with the most information about our enemy, we needed her, as much as I hated to admit. I couldn't tell if the old woman was up to the task, if I was being honest. She looked shocked to see her grandchild again, and not in a way that boded well for us.

…

Kakashi ran after Deidara at the fastest pace he could manage. He needed to put some distance between him and the cave anyway, so he was glad for the excuse. He had almost said something back there, but he wasn't sure what yet. Itachi's words had bothered him more than he cared to admit. Yes, he cared for Akane, a lot in fact. But it wasn't that kind, was it? It couldn't be. He had known her since she was six and he was eleven, she was like a sister. No, that seemed wrong, a partner, a very close comrade, a friend. When Kakashi had lost everything the only people he'd had were Akane and Gai, and he had latched onto them like a man drowning. Because he had been drowning. Gai was the embodiment of the optimism he no longer had, and Akane, he didn't really know.

At first, she had been a way for him to make amends with Obito after he died, but at some point along the line, he started enjoying her company. She trusted him, wholeheartedly, if only because Shisui did. She took an interest in him later, calling him out for neglecting his health and forcing him to think about everything he was too happy to suppress. Kakashi didn't think Akane realized what he had done for him, to him.

He was very uncomfortable with Itachi's insinuation. Had he really been interested in her like that? Was he that twisted? Akane was seven years younger than him. True, age gaps started to seem less and less important when you reached your twenties, but would that mean he had been grooming Akane? He wanted to puke at the thought. The worst part was that it wasn't the thought of having feelings for her that put him off, it was the implications behind that that did.

Kakashi was spiralling. Akane loved Itachi, she had told him so the night before, and he respected that, but she seemed sad, tired, and almost defeated by the entire situation. Was it starting to fade? Was that any of his business? No. Not, it wasn't. But the thought of Akane falling out of love with Itachi gave him an unparalleled amount of relief, not for him, but for her.

Kakashi had never said so, but he knew Akane's love for Itachi would end up killing her. Itachi had never felt the same, and his priorities had clearly not been aligned with hers. It was unhealthy, even he could see that. But even in this case he wasn't sure it wasn't his bias talking. Kakashi had opened himself to Akane more than he had ever done to anyone else. She knew him, saw him for who he was, for what he was: A broken, lost twenty eight year old with more power than he knew what to do with. At first, he had fought because he'd had nothing, no one to fight for. That had changed when he met her, and now he wasn't really sure it was a good thing.

Was he in love? He didn't feel like it. At least it didn't feel like what had been described as love. No, he didn't get butterflies in his stomach when he saw her, he didn't get nervous, he didn't blush or stutter. But he did feel comfortable, safe around Akane. Every time he opened the door to her and Naruto's apartment he felt more at home than at his own place. When he saw her sad, dejected, disappointed or afraid, his heart went out to her. When she was in danger, he moved faster, hit harder, fought better because the thought of losing her was more than he could bear.

He had once thought about it. Really considered what he'd do if he lost her. His mind had gone blank. Akane didn't just hold his heart and soul, she was his heart and soul. She knew everything about him, even the things he hadn't told her -and he'd told her a lot. She just knew. She was his partner, his friend, his kouhai.

Hatake Kakashi would have burned the world to the ground if something happened to her. He had told her as much. She had responded she would too. Akane had sat there under the sun in training ground 44 and told him what she would do if he died. The horror didn't surprise him, it didn't put him off. The violence she would unleash if she were to lose him did nothing but reassure him they shared a soul. It didn't feel like a big deal to him because she was describing what he would have done should she die before him. She had called him family, and the term felt just right. They were family, they navigated through life together, helping each other, supporting each other. Akane was the only family he had left.

No, it wasn't love, it was much more than that.

Hatake Kakashi should have been frightened by the things he was willing to do to protect her, to avenge her, but he was strangely at peace with it. He was a shinobi, his life revolved around violence and death, there was very little that could shock him. He would make an enemy of the world if it meant she would be safe.

"You know, for having worked with Akane-san for so long, you sure have little faith in her abilities." Sakura's voice cut through his mind and brought him back to the present.

She had noticed his unease.

"That's not it, Sakura-chan," he said, shooting her a fake smile before leaping to the next log. "I'm just a little distracted is all."

"You do know I'm a spy, right, sensei? If there is something my leach of a master taught me to read is people's feelings." she sighed disappointedly. "You should talk to her, iron things out before they get in the way of your missions."

Kakashi could not believe he was receiving relationship advice from a fifteen year old. He didn't even want to think about it as a relationship relationship, just a family matter. Oh he was in denial all right. He would keep denying it until someone confirmed it wasn't grooming or pedophilia, even if Akane was twenty one years old. He would have to figure it out quickly. He didn't like feeling like a dirty old man taking advantage of someone. Not that he could take advantage of Akane, the woman could spot gaslight from a mile away. He didn't even know why he was so anxious about it, he'd never thought about her like that. Nope, not thinking about Akane like that, not in the middle of a mission, not ever, it was disrespectful. He had beaten the shit out of other men for doing so before, he'd be a hypocrite if he did now.

Hatake kakashi looked up to the sky and asked Kami to help him. He didn't know which one, he just hoped one was feeling gracious enough to put him out of his misery so he could be done with the damn mission. These would be a long couple of days.