"Okay," Yuki tapped the butt of her pen on the table as Haruka set down steaming cups of tea. "This is where we bring out the big guns."

Haruka chuckled and opened a magazine that had been sitting on the counter for three weeks. It always amazed her how time seemed to warp now that she was an adult; things had always seemed to drag along when she was a teenager. Each day felt like a week, a month was a year, and a year was a decade. Ever since she'd had the baby, however, it seemed like the opposite. A day was a second, a week was an hour, and a year was a month. The most obvious example was her son. It seemed like only a few weeks ago he was this amorphous potato that slept most of the day. Now he was this little man that had his own personality and was learning to walk, talk, and use a toilet. It happened in smaller ways, too, like the magazine. Haruka swore she had picked it up at the store only a few days ago. When Yuki came over that morning, however, she realized that had been nearly a month. Since the baby hadn't been feeling well and was taking an uncharacteristic mid-morning nap, Haruka could finally read it in peace.

"Don't get too carried away, mom."

Yuki shot her a menacing glance. "Look, sweetheart. I'm not some knocked up 19-year-old we have to get hitched before she shows too much and people start talking."

Haruka nearly spat her peppermint tea on the table. "Well, that was a low blow. I didn't know you felt that way about me." She was feeling irritable from the morning sickness that had dragged her out of bed just after five. Between the lingering acidity in her throat and lack of sleep Haruka didn't feel like taking her mother's slights sitting down.

Yuki waved dismissively. "What I'm saying is Kakashi and I have to be careful. He hasn't said anything but I already know: we could piss off a lot of people if we don't do this right. He's a kage. The people who he invites, or rather, who he doesn't invite, will be taken note of. At the same time we can't invite everyone because that would be a security nightmare."

"So you are looking for the most effective guest list you can develop," Haruka rubbed her chin. Finally, she thought to herself. A chance to feel like an ambassador again. The idea of feeling useful assuaged some of the earlier hurt. As if sensing her intent, Yuki slid the notebook across the table to her daughter. Haruka took it and the pen and began reviewing the notes Yuki had already scrawled in her lovely, calligraphy-like strokes. "Gaara is going to decline."

"The Sand is the Leaf's closest ally, though," Yuki cocked her eyebrow and leaned back in the chair.

Haruka nodded. "Yes, and you should invite him for that exact reason. Just know that he will respectfully decline on the pretext of not being able to excuse himself from his duties."

A brief pause fell between them before Yuki spoke: "…Because of you?"

"Because of me," Haruka sighed. "We're both grownups but I can imagine the idea of sitting through his ex-girlfriend's mother's wedding would leave a foul taste in his mouth."

"What if he doesn't decline?" The ghost of a wicked smile tugged at the corners of Yuki's mouth.

"Then make a point of seating us as far from each other as possible," Haruka sighed and continued down the list. "Inviting the elders is smart. We'll have to have the girls from town help us make sure it's the most traditional, by the book ceremony in history. If we're successful you'll buy some goodwill from them for a time."

"Anyone specific you think I should channel on this?" Yuki rested her chin on her hand. "I'm guessing 'Tsunade' is not going to be your answer."

"No," Haruka shook her head. "Tsunade's grandmother, the Empress. We'll need to get photos from her wedding to Hashirama. Hit up the grannies in town that might remember it. We can't carbon copy the affair, but a few head nods to tradition would go a long way."

Yuki rubbed her hands together conspiratorially. "Ooooh listen to you baby! It's so nice to hear you talking like your old self again."

Haruka smiled. "I have to admit, it is nice getting to stretch my legs here. Kakashi's so careful around me I feel like a bully when I ask him to share news."

Yuki shrugged. "Say what you will but the man does respect his office."

"Then it's our job to make a point of making sure he gets the respect he deserves." Haruka nodded. "Starting with picking an auspicious date."

...

The time was growing short. Yuki sat on the roof of the house, unable to stay inside any longer. It was near freezing outside; a cold wind came barreling down on Konoha from the north, bringing heavy black clouds with them. It was like the whole village had been covered in a blanket of steel wool so the light barely peeking through enough to tell day from night. The fierce gales ripped through the thickest coats, chapping skin and chilling bones. Yuki knew that any minute now the first few flakes of winter snow would cascade down from the heavens. This had been a favorite childhood game of hers: trying to predict and be present for the first snowfall of the year.

Yuki remembered catching it by surprise for the first time when she was about four or five. Nature called her late in the night and she rose to use the toilet. As she toddled her way to the bathroom, she had to pass from one traditional windowless building to the next. In that precious gap she had seen the purest white flakes break the perfect blackness of night, and it became an obsession. Sure, over time Yuki gained the power to make the snow fall whenever she willed, but it was never as special as it was on nature's time. The first few years she was often off on her timing, missing the snow by hours. At the end, though, before the Third Shinobi War, Yuki had gotten good enough to dart outside seconds before it hit.

This morning when she woke up that old feeling kicked in, like her inner child gently knocking on a forgotten door in her mind. The snow is coming, Yuki. Go and see.

Then again, in the loneliness of another person's house, it could have just been her subconscious pushing her outside. Out in the open, Yuki was always more comfortable. The sky belonged to no one. The openness, the freedom, and the potential to take off were always there. Yuki wouldn't, of course. Over months of internal struggling, she had at last decided to let that safety net go. For better or worse, she'd decided to hitch her wagon to Kakashi. That conclusion offered her more than she could ever dream of: safety, love, and comfort. It only seemed fair to trade some of Yuki's impulsivity and vagabond ways for that kind of security. What that meant for her, however, was that Yuki had to delve deeper into herself. Go digging for the parts of her she had forgotten, the things that had been "Yuki" before the free-bird nature and control issues had kicked in.

Despite the weather Yuki wasn't feeling the chill. She wore a hoodie and sweatpants only to keep up with social expectations about this sort of weather, however, for her it felt balmy. The same way her daughter resisted the effects of intense heat, Yuki was acclimated for incredible cold. She could be out here on the roof in bare skin and Yuki would be fine. As long as she had lived, Yuki had never been in a situation where it had been far enough down the thermometer for her to be fazed. Not that the concept was impossible, just simply she had never encountered such a freeze.

Yuki was feeling antsy waiting for the snow to fall. In just a few short months, after the frost had cleared and the spring flowers shot their way up out of the snow, Yuki would be getting married. As hard as she had pleaded with Kakashi for a winter wedding, ultimately his persistent logic and reason that it would be inhospitable at best and exclusionary of foreign guests at worst had won out. She was going to get married again.

The whole idea was absolutely terrifying. She felt like a child being taken to a new school for the first time. There was an understanding of what was to come, the expectations, the benefits, and the drawbacks. Yuki had been through this before, but this far into her life, it felt like a butterfly getting shoved back into the cocoon. She had been so sure of who she was and what she stood for. Her priorities were unchanging and her future was set. Then that magnificent, patient, fluffy haired bastard had to come along and make her fall madly in love with him. Yuki had to become the way she currently was to survive. Every horrible thing that had happen to her, every hurt she gave and received, had shaped her into this. But with Kakashi, Yuki got to see a different possibility. If she could trust him, if Yuki could let Kakashi in, she wouldn't have to be a lone wolf anymore. She was a streetwise stray getting a shot at being a pampered little house pet. The idea both simultaneously thrilled and horrified her. She desperately wanted this, to be loved, to have a family again, but that meant she had to hope. 'Hope' was a four-letter word to Yuki. Hoping only meant she was disappointed and hurt in the end. But the same little Yuki inside her that warned her of the coming snow was telling her maybe this time it would be okay. Maybe this time, her hope would pay off.

As Yuki sat there, fidgeting with the string of her hoodie, the first few flakes began to fall. An honest smile split her face, an automatic and pure response to the first thrill of winter. "I mean, come on Yuki," She mumbled to herself, her childlike side gently taking the reins. "What's the worst that could happen?"

…

Kakashi was taking a brief coffee break from the insane amount of paperwork cluttering his desk, the floor, and every other semi-flat surface they could spare. It was miserably cold. The heater in his office had given out two days before and the part they needed to fix it had to be shipped in. Shikamaru had gotten a fair fire burning in the old-fashioned fireplace but it did little to cut the chill unless you were right up alongside it. The pleasant smell of wood burning, the warmth, and the comfort of the leather chairs by the fireside were too great a temptation. Kakashi knew if he caved in to the cravings of his flesh he would be out cold in minutes. Shikamaru had given in only a few minutes before and was dozing peacefully. Kakashi let him nap. His baby was teething and he and Temari weren't getting nearly enough sleep. Kakashi stoically manned the helm alone. The warmth of the mug in his hands hopefully would keep his fingers nimble enough to write. In an hour or so when Shikamaru came to, Kakashi decided he would send him to pick up a couple of packets of hand warmers. If Kakashi couldn't make it, he would summon one of the hounds to sit under his desk and lay on his feet. Just as he was about to turn back to his work, he spied a familiar form coming down the street. Her movements were awkward; she was hunched over and lumbering along slowly. Through the fog of his window, Kakashi noticed Yuki wasn't alone. A few of the local kids were trotting alongside her, watching with interest at something she was doing. Kakashi wracked his brain for whatever scheme she could be up to. Was she smuggling water balloons and the kids had noticed? That would be awfully wicked if she were planning to ice over a road. He could almost picture her setting up an icy slip stream right into a huge pile of trash bags or something. He cracked the stiff knuckles of his left hand and shook out the tension building in his muscles.

"We talked about this," Kakashi muttered under his breath, his heart sinking slightly. Yuki had been doing so well. Her pranks lately had been benign at best. She had gone out of her way to try to do little nice things for Kakashi, like setting out his clothes for the next morning or running things down to his office that he had forgotten without him even asking. Part of him had really hoped it would stick but Yuki was only human. She was bound to have relapses. A tiger really couldn't change its stripes, after all.

Just as Kakashi set down his coffee mug to go to the door, Yuki had drawn close enough that he could see what she was doing. The source of her awkward movement was due to how she was nearly doubled over with a child in front of her. The girl had her hands up nervously but Yuki was holding on reassuringly. A small pool of ice was around them, appearing as effortlessly in front as it disappeared from behind them. The little girl's feet were nestled just inside Yuki's. Under both of their feet, Yuki had formed tiny skates of ice and was slowly and deliberately gliding, her feet pushing off side to side to get the little girl used to the movement. The other children were chittering like birds, tugging at Yuki's sleeve from time to time. She would turn her head and say something. They would fall back respectively only to creep inches closer again until Yuki and the girl were engulfed.

A strange mixture of emotions swelled inside Kakashi. Never before had he witnessed Yuki behave with such gentleness. Her treatment not only of the child in her arms displayed maternal tenderness and her patience towards the other children seemed completely out of character. Kakashi had never known this side of Yuki existed, nor would he have guessed it was there. He had observed Yuki with her own child, but this side of Yuki was no longer something she could offer her daughter. Haruka was grown when she came back. She needed an equal, not a parent, robbing them both of this experience. Nor was it something she could really offer her grandson. This sort of joy, this privilege, was a parent's alone. Yuki crossed the occasional line but she would never take away a baby's firsts from its parents. Yet here she was with a bunch of strange children gently teaching them how to skate. His mind began to wander, wonder what else about her he had missed. What would she be like with a child of her own? Being in a stable relationship had done Yuki's behavior wonders. Would getting a second chance at motherhood be the next step in her healing process?

As delighted as Kakashi was at seeing the real Yuki creep her way out of the fortress she had built inside of herself, the thought of fatherhood was still not something he was comfortable with. He had loved his father but lost him young. He had missing out on huge swaths of time with Sakumo and experiences with him that could have shaped Kakashi into a better man. Minato had compensated somewhat, but he had also left Kakashi far too soon. Losing his sensei had reopened that old wound with a serrated knife.

It had been those emotional injuries which led to his hesitation to take students, not to mention his closed off attitude. Kakashi was strong armed into it taking on Team 7 and found himself a colossal failure at teaching. As much as it would have helped Naruto for Kakashi to talk to him about Minato, he kept that information to himself. The excuse Kakashi gave himself was he did it out of respect for Minato's wishes that Naruto be kept safely in the dark. Part of Kakashi admitted it had also been to protect himself, however. Reaching out, trying to connect with Naruto on a deeper level, would have exposed Kakashi too much. It demanded a vulnerability from Kakashi he was unable to offer. The same could be said of Sasuke. That was another child placed in Kakashi's care that would have benefitted from a father figure. If Kakashi had somehow managed to reach through the mire of his own pain and loss, to extend his hand to someone just as hurt and broken as him, maybe things would have gone differently for the last of the Uchiha. Especially when Kakashi reflected on how much that would have done to make up for his mistakes with Obito.

Kakashi looked around his office. Outside of fighting, killing, and hunting, everything Kakashi touched went up in flames eventually. Yuki was strong enough, determined enough, that however Kakashi fell short in their relationship she could take it. Despite her encouragement, regardless of what a good parent Kakashi was realizing Yuki could be, all he would eventually end up doing was screwing the kid up. But it would have plenty of people to love and care for it, he heard Yuki argue for the fifth time in his head. Haruka, Neji, Satoru, Naruto, and Hinata to name a few. All Kakashi could think was that they were people with enough of their own problems to deal with. It would be grievously unfair for Kakashi to ask them to compensate for his shortcomings as a parent. In fact, Kakashi couldn't make up his mind what would do more damage, him being an absentee dad because of his job, or when he retired and was around more? How could Kakashi be a good dad with no real solid, consistent father figure to draw from? That's if Kakashi discounted his history of standing idly by as children in his charge put themselves in grave danger or drowned themselves in a totally consolable pain and misery.

Love the hell out of them.

That was the answer Yuki had given him when he raised these same concerns a few nights before. She had said it so easily, as if he had asked the answer to a basic addition problem. Like it was the only answer. Worse yet, she followed it up with more hard facts he wasn't ready to deal with:

"Be ready to hurt, too," Yuki had said as she snuggled up alongside him. "You thought losing your friends and family was bad? Get ready to rip your own hair out when you let the kid out of your sight. To want to literally take every pain they ever experience, every stubbed toe and broken arm, and pray that it will magically transfer to you right then and there."

"What if they hate you?" Kakashi asked quietly. "What if you screw them up so bad you ruin their life and they hate you?"

Yuki gave a bitter laugh. "Look, at some point, no matter how good of a parent you are, they're going to hate you. Something about you will piss them off. They will find a way to blame their problems on you. Then they'll run out and make a ton of mistakes and push you away. It's like getting your kneecaps beaten with a baseball bat. Then you get to feel like a total moron because you will tell yourself that if hurting you makes them feel better, then that's okay. Just as long as it fixes them. If hating you helps them get through whatever it is, you're happy they hate you." Yuki sighed. "There were a couple points when I first came back into her life that I thought Beki was going to stab me. And you know what? If that had cut down on some of the teenage angst I had to ride through with her, I would have taken the stabbing."

"You are not doing a good job convincing me here." Kakashi shrank into the sheets. "This sounds like the worst idea in history."

Yuki shrugged. "You get through it. And when you do get through it…" She shook her head. "I don't know how to explain it. You know when you're on a mission where you're tracking a target, right? Really slippery type. You think you've lost them a couple times. You pick the trail back up, you stalk them down, then the whole big showdown breaks out." Yuki gestured at the ceiling, clenching her hand into a fist, her face twisted in an intense expression as if picturing a familiar memory. "And you're just, like, fighting for your life, right? Your honor's on the line. Your duty. But the enemy is good enough you just might not walk out of that dingy alley. And then at last, there's that moment when you take them down. You win. There's this flood of accomplishment, relief that you made it. You set out with this impossible job on your plate but you did it. The mission may not have gone flawlessly, you made mistakes, but at the end of it all none of the details matter because you got the job done."

Kakashi listened silently. "That's what parenting is like for you?"

Yuki nodded. "You get this crying pink glob of a person and it's all yours. You're best damned friends, you're the worst of enemies. They go out in the world and get convinced you're an old-fashioned idiot with no idea what you're talking about. They love you. They hate you. Then," Yuki smiled, almost sadly Kakashi thought. "You see them do something just like you would, just like you taught them. Or they randomly thank you for something out of the blue that you did without so much as a second thought. That's when all the fear and the anxiety finally ebbs."

"Ebbs?" Kakashi cocked an eyebrow. "It doesn't go away?"

"Do you stop worrying about Naruto carrying sharp objects in his mouth?" Yuki asked.

Kakashi went quiet. "I can't help that he's a moron and walks around with kunai between his teeth all the time."

"Even though he's a grown up, he knows better, but is choosing to do it anyway?" Yuki pressed.

"I still yell at him," Kakashi sighed. "Okay. So you're telling me that it's going to be something I'm going to love more than anything else, it's going to hurt me worse than anything else, and that pain and anxiety is never going to go away?"

"Nope," Yuki shook her head.

"What if we just get another dog?" Kakashi looked at the wall, embarrassed by his own childlike cowardice. "One of those little ones so you can put it in onesies and carry it around in your purse."

Yuki leered. "If I have to stop being mischievous and selfish, you've got to give me a baby to dote on. I won't have time or temptation to act out if I have a tiny Kakashi with floofy baby hair to keep me busy."

Back in the present, Kakashi realized he had been glaring out the window for about twenty minutes. His coffee had long gone cold and the fire was low. He sighed, set aside the tepid mug, and picked up his pen. "I'm not going to get anything done today at this rate."

He plugged away at the reports as quickly and efficiently as possible, ignoring the way the words "baby Kakashi" loomed threateningly over his shoulder.