There's another thing that makes a shinobi useful to have around: his stamina.
The house is built within a month, with all the fixings and outside decorations that she could possibly need. The final look is a modest one floor building, everything that she didn't ever think she'd be able to have for herself. Even the neighborhood is sweet, if a bit run down on the edges of the village proper, quiet and sleepy. It's a place Kakashi helped her buy land in, using his connections to cut her a deal with the Hokage, just as he did for the costs of material to build her home.
The rooms are spacious and still need to be filled but she's certain that life will help in that regard. Gai has already brought her a housewarming gift—pots and pans for her to cook recipes she still doesn't know but will when she has the time to learn. (Evidently, whores don't often cook for themselves.) She wants to make something tasty for Kakashi, to thank him.
For everything.
For Nana, these are tasks she doesn't think she'd have been able to achieve on her own. From being a young girl sold to a brothel, to being an adult who's only contact with the outside world had been men looking to sate themselves, Nana knows she would have failed at every step.
Kakashi seems to understand this, patiently explaining everything even at the hint of a question on her face. He doesn't embarrass her for her lack of knowledge, doesn't look down on her as he teaches her how the world works. Somehow, he's very gentle with how he treats her. More careful than he'd been before.
When she makes mistakes, Kakashi kisses her.
He kisses her a lot, actually. Rather than sex, there are days that all he does is kiss her. And sometimes, he'll hold his hands to her cheeks and look at her as if she is precious, as if she really matters to him. It's the first time anyone has ever looked at her with such an expression, and sometimes it's almost painful.
She doesn't know how much more her heart can take.
Luckily, Kakashi also helps in the area of her work and she's able to find a reason to leave the house that they've wordlessly come to cohabitate. Where all other establishments turned her away for her previous work—or the owners were more interested in what she was unwilling to give—Kakashi finds her some work with the Akimichi clan, waiting tables for them and cleaning dishes at their BBQ place. It's the kind of work she's never done before but she acclimates well to the restaurant and the kind, family feeling.
Nana looks back on her life, where she came from, and can't believe it sometimes.
She wonders if she stored up all her luck throughout her unlucky life just for this, for the house she built with Kakashi, for the job she can take pride in, for the name that used to mean nothing but is now the name her shinobi calls out.
Things are good—great—for a while.
Then, they aren't.
...
...
...
Nana senses the distance more and more as she waits for him to come to her, but finds that the length of time that it takes for him to come back builds. First, it's a few days, then it's a few weeks.
Now, she hasn't seen him in one month, two weeks, and five days counting.
Busy with missions, she first assumed. Busy with friends, she added, knowing he needs his own time with other people. Needs some time alone to think, which she understands—even she takes advantage of the spaces between his visits to spend more time on herself. Nana is still learning how to read and write and prefers to do it by herself, at her own pace.
But now, she isn't so sure that's all it is.
Akimichi Chiomi, a fellow waitress, agrees heartily when Nana confides about her worries.
"Could be another woman," she guesses. "How is your sex life?"
Nana tries not to flinch at the question and the thought of Kakashi with someone else for what he could readily get from her. "It's... It's as it always is when he comes back. We're active," Nana says, feeling the heat in her cheeks and baffled by what she could normally discuss without batting an eye. She is—was a whore.
Perhaps the civilian habit of being more subtle is growing on her.
"Huh, well, is he talking about anything in particular? Maybe he has something on his mind." Chiomi brightens. "Maybe he wants to ask you!"
Nana blinks. "Ask me? Ask me what?"
"Marriage!"
Oh, she wishes.
"It's not that," Nana says sadly. Could it be? She shakes her head, more certain. "He doesn't feel nervous around me, like he wants to ask something... He feels," she swallows and has to whisper the rest, fearful of her voice breaking into a sob, "he feels unhappy."
Like he needs to confess something, she adds silently.
And the rightness, the truth of that statement does something awful to her. Nana bows her head, miserable.
"Nana-chan," Chiomi murmurs, concern and pity in her expression.
"Maybe he's finally realized what he wants in life." And that she doesn't belong there, in his.
Nana has never felt like she belongs there, not when she's still never seen his house for herself, or been out into town with him as a couple. She wonders everyday what she is to him, only knowing what she wants to be.
"Maybe he finally sees me as I am, without the pretty kimono and the need for secrecy with others. Maybe he doesn't like me, so much as he liked the whore."
Some men are like that. Some men want what they can't have, and as soon as they get it, they throw it away.
"I hope you're wrong about that," Chiomi says, voice soft as she places a hand to Nana's forearm. "Just know, my family loves you. Here, you'll have a place for forever."
"Thanks." With those words, she knows, whatever he wants to say to her, if he wants to throw her away, she'll survive.
As long as she has a place to work, she'll always survive.
At least, that's what she wants to believe.
...
...
...
She thinks she'll understand him better if they could talk like they used to, when it was just them.
Nana wonders at what she isn't getting, why he's drawn away and why he looks pained when he sees her.
And perhaps, it's because she's changed. Because she has.
The Nana of before was a world by herself. Now she mingles with strangers everyday, learns to speak politely, and trains herself to become a new person. One that can adapt to the fast-paced, noisy atmosphere of the restaurant. She becomes exuberant, matching the energy of the Akimichi clan, bubbly as she talks to children, laughing and cracking jokes.
Sometimes she takes that attitude home with her, and it blends in. It becomes an extension to the self she'd built up in the brothel. And she only vaguely recalls the girl she was before that, if any trace of her is even left. Somehow, Nana gets the impression that it's actually very difficult to know your real self.
But she wonders now if Kakashi doesn't like the person she's becoming.
Because when she laughs now, his expression tightens, his returning smile looking a bit wooden.
And Nana thinks that's the worst part, feeling like they're slowly becoming strangers to each other.
...
...
...
When Kakashi finally returns, it's with a purpose.
"Nana, we need to talk."
Her heart sinks to her stomach but nonetheless, she nods. She follows him to her bedroom, growing more worried with each step they take. Kakashi isn't even looking back at her, not even when he opens the door and walks in.
She's used to him waiting for her, and the difference is so startling, that Nana freezes in the doorway.
She blinks when he finally turns to look at her.
"Come here," he says gently. More gently than he has any right to with that expression on his face. Blank. Cold. It's made worse by the mask still on his face.
"Kakashi..." Nana trails off, forcing herself to take the final steps into the room.
"Don't be afraid," he almost whispers.
"But I feel like you're about to say something scary."
Kakashi brings his gaze to the ceiling.
"Y-You're not... you're not leaving me, right?" she asks, her voice trembling, praying, hoping that he denies her quickly. That he sets her at ease—that they finally break the barrier that had formed almost without her noticing it.
He doesn't.
"Kakashi," she prods.
"I look at you, I just see you, and I feel so guilty," he confesses.
The words leave her stricken. "Why?"
Kakashi meets her gaze.
"Your happy ending. How can it be with a man that's choked you in your sleep, that used to pay you for sex?"
"Kakashi."
"That entire time, your debt, I could have easily paid it. But I didn't—I made excuses, I ignored it. I let you stay there, for my convenience. Because it was easier for me to escape what I felt for you, if you only existed in that place."
"Kakashi."
"I'm not—I'm not good for you."
"What does that even mean? You've helped me—."
"I've killed people, Nana. I've killed people."
"Kakashi—."
"I killed one of my best friends."
"That doesn't—."
"Everyone I've ever loved has died. My parents, my teacher, my teammates. If you also—."
"I'm not going to die on you. I work at a restaurant—."
"Just knowing me can get you killed. Don't you understand? People all over want me dead! If anyone outside of Konoha—fuck, even people who are in Konoha—found out about you, they would use you to get at me."
Nana stills.
"Nana, there are terrible people in this world. I can't always be here to protect you. I can't..."
"P-please," she begs, shaking her head now. The tears she'd been begging off have finally started to fall, slipping down her cheeks in rivulets. His expression blurs as she finds she can't stop herself from crying, even as she palms her eyes.
Kakashi brings his hand to her shoulder, almost seems to tug her closer before that hand falls limp at his side. He sighs.
"How could I give you a happy ending?" he asks in a whisper. "No one I've ever known has had one."
"But you are my happy ending," she murmurs weakly, wondering just why he can't see that. Why he has to say these things to her. Why they can't just find a way—why he's so quick to admit defeat. Why he can't fight for her.
"Losing you would be the end of me."
"Why are you leaving me then?"
And then he says what she suspects is the real answer to why he's come to end things.
"How do I deserve to be happy?"
Nana, not having an answer to this for herself, says nothing.
Because she doesn't understand the world they live in. She doesn't know who deserves to be happy or not, if even she's worthy of it. She doesn't understand what makes a good person. She doesn't understand whether or not Kakashi's actions are unforgivable.
But she also doesn't know, just what exactly made him convinced that he's undeserving of her. She scours her brain for the answer, her memories of the painful truths he's told her. Obito, Rin, his teacher, his father.
The promises he's made and broken. The sea of pain he still wallows in. The memories he still lives in.
Kakashi Hatake is a defeated man, she realizes.
For all the things she thought of him as, that word had never fit in before.
So why now?
"Don't just give up!" Nana cries, dashing her tears away with her fists and reaching for him. "Don't call it quits just because things might go wrong. Things can also go right."
"When nothing ever has?"
"We're standing in the proof of it, Kakashi. This house you built. That I'm right here. With you. That I lov—."
Kakashi pulls away and turns as if he's been scalded, headed for the door faster than she can keep up.
Still she dogs him, running to catch up, her heart painfully beating as she watches him cross the threshold to their doorway.
She's desperate.
"Hatake Kakashi!"
He doesn't look back.
So she shouts, so she screams. "If you leave me right now, I won't let you back in," she lies. "I won't," she lies. "Never again," she lies.
It's either he can hear the untruth in her voice or he simply doesn't care anymore—maybe he never did?—but regardless, Kakashi leaves. She watches him, eyes stinging with tears, jaw tightened and lips pushed together to keep herself from crying out to him again, to beg him to stay now that he's made his choice. She burns that image of him into her mind, hopes it sticks, that she never forgets.
Doesn't matter if it was a lie, now with the rage and hurt in her, she makes that vow again. She prays she can keep it.
But it doesn't matter, because he never comes back.
(What she regrets the most is that it's those words that were her last to him.)