A/N: Okay, here's Chapter 2. I got a very negative review, and for the love of God, I usually don't care. But when the flamer does not pay enough attention to the work and rips on the author as a person...that's when it gets simply...offensive. I have never before considered deleting a review, but after a few days of agonizing, I finally caved and decided that rather than having someone get offended at the absolute raving madness that was driveled in that piece of filth masquerading as a review, I had better take it off of the review page. I myself try to be polite when giving negative comments. And I try to keep them constructive. --sigh-- If anybody wants to read said review, go to my forum, antilogic fiction. I still have no posts there, so I'll welcome any feedback. In this chapter, there's lots of angst! Warnings?
Legal Stuffiness: I do not own Naruto or any of the character therein. Kishimoto Masashi, sole proprietor.
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Chapter 2: Otaku
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He watched as she slept. It was nearly midnight. Kakashi saw her pale brow furrow in distress, and reached out, smoothing it with a finger and making soothing noises. She was having another of her nightmares. Tsunade had sent them too soon. He had argued against it, but the Godaime had overruled him. He had told Tsunade that Amaya needed time to rest, to heal her emotional scars. Too much had happened too quickly. Sasuke's kidnapping, her pregnancy, then Itachi's impromptu appearance and her miscarriage, finally Kabuto's death…Now, he lay in the same bed with her, trying to comfort her in the only way she would allow him to: when she didn't know he was doing it.
They were close now, but miles apart. She relied upon him, but put up barriers. He wasn't allowed to touch her for any reason, and the subject of Kabuto was taboo.
During the daylight hours, the four Jounin ran a storefront on the water, and a restaurant one street over from the store. Sasuke and Shizune sold medicines that Shizune manufactured in the shop, Sasuke providing security and haggling with customers. Amaya cooked in the restaurant, and other than bussing tables and taking orders, Kakashi was free to laze about and gather information from all of the gossip that came through the Wave Country. He also often got yelled at by Amaya. That actually got him a lot of tips from his fellow hen-pecked husbands. People came back time and time again to hear her colorful insults, but mostly to eat her food. It was, to say the least, divine. The amazing thing was that she did it all on her own, with no help.
Like at Ichiraku's, the kitchen was open, and people sometimes came just to watch the small woman cooking. During hours when they weren't busy, Kakashi would, as well. She had a kind of grace and rhythm in the kitchen that he had never seen before. Her face etched in concentration, eyes half-closed most of the time, she knew her kitchen like the back of her hand, and could probably do any of the work needed there with her eyes closed completely. Just like at their first meeting, she flowed. Her movements were liquid as she stirred soups, baked, chopped, and did any of the multitude of tasks that were necessary for cooking. A month into their mission, their restaurant, "Otaku," was the most popular in town. The men came to watch her and to eat, and the women either came with their men, or came to flirt with Kakashi. He couldn't wear his mask or forehead protector here, so he went bare-faced, and wore an eye patch. The ladies of the village said that it made him look dangerous and sexy.
When the women flirted with Kakashi, Amaya would snort and yell at him for bothering the customers. If the men flirted with Amaya, Kakashi loomed over them, cracking his knuckles or making vague threats. No one had pursued anything further. It became known that while the woman had a sense of humor about her husband's good looks and charm, Kakashi was possessive of his wife, and was willing to prove it. The arrangement worked very well. Until they closed for the day. Then, he would clean, making sure to put everything back where it belonged, and she would nearly always go upstairs and cry.
He hated it when she cried. If he came within three meters of her, he usually ended up dodging kunai. Sighing, he lay down next to her, putting his eye patch on the night table. He wished that she would try to relax around him, that there was some way for him to comfort her without getting his head or any other appendages he might want to use later cut off.
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He was finally sleep. Amaya wasn't sure how much more of this she could take. Every night, he sat there staring at her. Every night, she was sure he was pitying her, and she didn't want his pity, damn it! Why the hell was she here? Kakashi was the one who did all of the information-gathering. She just cooked the food. Opening her eyes, she turned her head to the left, looking at his sleeping face. The angular yet soft planes were shadowed, yet highlighted by the dim light coming in through the window. His hair all but glowed in the moonlight. Then there was that scar. It was long, and it hadn't taken her long to figure out what had happened there. No one had to tell her that his eye wasn't his own. You can't just have one Sharingan eye, unless someone did it to you on purpose.
For the past week, she had been staring at that scar more and more often. He never talked about it. He didn't talk about the dreams, either, but she knew he had them. Kakashi tried, in his way, to make her comfortable. She knew he tried. But it just seemed far too much like he was pitying her. As it was, she had to fling a kunai at him every time she ended up crying, because he always came over to her and tried to…hell, she didn't know what he was trying to do.
She was thinking of Kabuto less often now. Was that fair? He was her husband, and she knew what was right and what wasn't. It wasn't right to stop thinking about your dead husband after only a month. That made her question things. Amaya didn't feel like she was ready for those questions. So, at closing time every day, she ran upstairs to their apartment, and she cried. At first, her tears had been for Kabuto. Now, it seemed more like they were for her. She felt guilty. She was alive, and he was dead. And she was starting to forget.
It was a long time before she fell asleep.
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"Kakashi! Get off your ass and get more sake!" He groaned. Amaya had been especially verbose today, and she was providing entertainment for the customers by using the kitchen knives and the ladle to make him do what she wanted. He rose from his stool and blocked the ladle with one hand and then caught it in the other. He sighed, and then walked into the kitchen to give it back to her.
"Here you are, dear. Please don't use bad language in front of the customers. It's bad for business." He knew that he sounded tired. He was tired. Kakashi hadn't slept a wink last night. Not long after he lay down, he noticed that she was awake. Awake and watching him. Had she been awake before, when he tried to soothe her? If she had been, then he was in for it. Kakashi knew that touching her was off-limits. He walked to the back of the small restaurant and got two more jugs of sake. "How much is needed now, Amaya-chan?"
"One."
So much for her being verbose. She never did like being set down, so maybe that was it. He warmed up the sake, and brought out cups for the customers. They thanked him, and slipped him a tip and a sympathetic look. He smiled at them and pocketed the money. Retreating to his stool in the corner, he watched Amaya cooking. Her hair was pulled back into a thick knot on the back of her head, as usual, and a few wispy strands were escaping it on the sides. Her face was tense as she drained water from yet another pot of udon.
Nearly six hours later, Kakashi shooed the last of the custom out, and locked the doors, drew the shades, and turned off the stove. Amaya made a move to go to the stairs. Kakashi caught her arm. He knew he shouldn't have, but he didn't want her crying. "Why do you cry?" He asked, not really looking at her.
"My husband died."
"Hn. You loved him?" Amaya moved so that she was standing directly in front of him, her dark eyes burning into his. She reached up and yanked off his eye patch.
"Look at me. Look into my eyes, Kakashi. What do you see? What do you think?" He did as she asked. He saw anger, and something he couldn't readily name. But grief? He didn't see that.
"You don't want me to tell you what I see, Amaya. You'll want to hit me."
"Try me, asshole."
He bristled at that. He never called her anything other than what he was supposed to. But she had the nerve to call him that? "Fine." His tone was acid. "I think you're scared. You're guilty. And you're pissing me the fuck off. Now, are you going to stop pitying yourself and get on with your life, or are you going to kill yourself slowly with your crying?" Her hand trembled, and it drew back, but he didn't care what she was about to do. She slapped him. "Told you you'd want to hit me, didn't I?" His lips twisted into an angry smirk.
Amaya wrenched her arm away from him and pushed him against the counter, pulling a kunai and pressing it to his throat hard enough to draw a small trickle of blood. "Hatake Kakashi, I'm warning you right now. If you fuck with me, I'll make your life a living hell. Don't presume that you know anything about me."
His hand rose slowly, his mismatched eyes never leaving hers as he took hold of her wrist. "It isn't presumption, Amaya. I know you. Do I need to remind you of the day Kabuto died? About what you said? Do I?" She flinched as if he'd struck her. "You ignore what you did. You ignore what you said. I can't touch you, even to help you up if you fall. Isolation isn't good for you. Why won't you let me help you?" He watched her eyes seething. Once more, he was reminded of the blood-spattered image she presented in the depths of Orochimaru's hideaway, just before she'd passed out. It wasn't the anger that reminded him of that moment. It was the utter anguish and desperation that hid behind it.
Kakashi flung her hand away from him and pushed past her to the stairs, picking his eye patch up from the floor on the way. He cursed under his breath as he climbed all the way to the roof, locking the access door behind him. He was sure she wouldn't follow him, but he wanted to be sure he would be alone. There was a bit of training equipment up here, with a couple large blocks of wood, and some weights. He walked to the largest wood block, and started hammering it with his fists. The soft thwack of his bare fists hitting the wood sounded over the rooftops, and in a very few minutes, red stained the wood, his knuckles bleeding, dripping, dribbling the redness over his fingers and onto the slate roof tiles.
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Shizune shook her head at Kakashi. "Kakashi-niichan, what did you do?" She looked at his hands, and then to Sasuke. "Get me some antiseptic, cotton balls, and the tweezers. Bandages, too." He had splinters embedded in his hands, and abrasions, and one big gash. "What happened?"
"I touched her."
Sasuke set the things she had requested on the table. "You should know better than that, Kakashi. She said not to, didn't she?" The man nodded. "Haven't you learned by now?"
"She pissed me off." He explained to them what had happened, and Shizune's eyebrows tried to climb into her hairline.
Dabbing the antiseptic onto his left hand, she said, "So you don't think she ever really loved him, do you?" The silver-haired man started, obviously surprised by her observation. "What about you, Sasuke?"
Sasuke shrugged. "They were friendly enough. Damned well had a hell of a lot more sex than most people. But other than that, it seemed to mostly be her trying to be what Kabuto wanted her to be." Shizune thought about this for a few moments. She hadn't really known Kabuto very well, though they worked together at the hospital. Amaya had been a friend, but she didn't get the chance to see the two of them together that often.
Sasuke had told her about the way he'd found Amaya and Kakashi. The woman obviously had her issues to work out, but Shizune wondered why on earth she jumped him. Kakashi was cute, but it would take more than Shizune getting shit-faced to make her that easy. She started pulling the splinters, and Kakashi winced. "Stop being such a baby. It can't hurt that much."
"Yes it can."
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A/N: Grrr. The stupid upload manager is still broken. It won't let me add the division bars, so you get my double-dashes instead. Hope you like the chapter. and as far as I'm concerned, if you flame, you can bite me. If the person who flamed the first chapter read the second, you can actually kiss something that I don't show in public very often. Other readers may enjoy it, so if you want to express your displeasure, do it in a way that won't offend them. Thank you very much. Out.