Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work. - Aldous Huxley
Morning in the Land of Rice dawned clear and bright, and Kakashi was awake to watch the light of day bleed red and orange across the sky. The shinobi compound in the Rice Village was surprisingly comfortable and plush for a military facility. Even so, Kakashi had never been comfortable sleeping anywhere that wasn't home. He had gotten perhaps a healthy three hours of sleep in his unfamiliar setting, but he found it oddly satisfying to watch the sun rise, even at the price of rest.
The wedding would take place in less than six hours. At exactly eleven o'clock that morning, he would be seated in the second row on the bride's side of the room. He would not be focused on the happy couple. Instead, he would be eying the rest of the room for possible insurgents. Of course, since he was on vacation, he wasn't getting paid to make sure disaster didn't strike, but it was in his nature to remain constantly vigilant in all situations.
According to custom (and Sandaime Hokage), he would have to suffer the annoyance of sitting still for a long period of time dressed in nice clothing. His dress kimono hung from the knob near the top of the bathroom door; it was simple and black with spiraling silver designs spreading across it. It was also unbearably thick and hot, even in the cool weather.
Kakashi arched his back, stretching out the knots of exhaustion that had begun to form. He was tempted to sneak down into the kitchen to see if he could bribe one of the cooks to give him an early breakfast, but it was unlikely that the cooks would even arrive for work until around seven, more than an hour later.
Instead, he tugged his mask over his face, tied his headband on, and slipped out the window.
The morning air was cold and clear, as of yet untouched by the warming rays of the sun. Land of Rice had transitioned into late fall and still had a while before the first snow fell. He couldn't imagine that winter could be prettier than fall; the leaves on the trees were every shade of orange and red, yellow and brown. Fallen leaves crinkled under his feet as he walked through the cold morning. Kakashi had never seen the Land of Rice when it was snowed over, though it was rumored to turn the landscape into a beautiful powdered haven.
He walked down the deserted main street, crunching dead leaves as he went.
The tea shop from yesterday was the only shop that seemed to currently support life so early in the morning. A group of older men whom Kakashi assumed to be a handful of the village's older shinobi were crowded around the middle table inside. To their left, Kaeda carried a tray of tea.
The perfect smell of morning tea was too great to resist, so Kakashi succumbed to the urge to wander inside.
Kaeda bustled the tea tray over to the side and hurried over to where Kakashi sat. "Good morning, Hatake-san! I didn't expect to see you so early today!"
He had chosen to sit down at the table next to the old men, most of whom were staring at him with intense interest. "I didn't expect to be here. I hope you're doing well this morning, Kaeda-san."
"Oh, it's so early! I'm tired as can be! Can I get you some tea?" the waitress tittered brightly. When he nodded, she fled into the backroom to begin cooking up his mystery breakfast.
The old men continued to stare at him interestedly, but he paid them no mind. He was well-versed in the practice of ignoring annoying gapes and even more practiced in overlooking hushed comments. He had walked through villages of people stained by blood, carrying the heads of murderers in his hands. He had paraded through encampments of enemy refugees bearing the public order to kill their leader. He did not blush so easily under the stares of men.
One of the men finally spoke. "Hatake Kakashi? It's an honor to have you in the village."
Kakashi knew good and well that it was no such honor. He was a man that most people fled from; if anything, these elders saw him as more of an omen than an honor.
The man continued to speak. "May I be so curious as to ask why you've traveled all this way?"
Ah, yes, the innocent questioning of his business.
"I'm here for the wedding," Kakashi replied smoothly, accepting the steaming cup of tea that Kaeda handed to him. He set it down on it's coaster to cool. "Trying to use up some long overdue vacation time."
Another elder, a man with waist-length gray hair, nodded sagely. "Ah, yes. Have you been to see the wedding decorations? It's going to be an enormous party."
"I think I'll let the setting be a surprise." Kakashi swished his tea around in his cup. "As a shinobi, a positive surprise is always welcome."
The old men chuckled in agreement, sipping their scalding coffees and teas. They went back to tittering to themselves, occasionally stealing glances Kakashi's way whenever he tugged his mask down to take a sip of boiling hot tea.
Kakashi finished his tea and finally began to feel the fatigue of a sleepless night. He calculated the amount of sleep he could get before the wedding with the five hours left he had and surmised that a good two-hour nap was most definitely within his reach.
The old men had been fundamentally wrong about the grandeur of the wedding just by understating the sheer size of it. It was being held inside a concert hall; the stage had been cleared away and a runway of thick red carpet had replaced it. Hundreds of chairs had been lined up on either side of the aisle in rows. The walls had even been painted brilliant blinding white for the occasion. Flowers lined the sides of the middle aisle and were wound through the diamond-shaped holes in the trellis arch.
Kakashi had been seated in the third row near the middle aisle, just as he had expected. It wasn't so close to the daimyo's son that he would look suspicious, but he wasn't so far away that he wouldn't be able to get to him should disaster strike. He was seated on the bride's side, so no one would be the wiser. In fact, he wasn't exactly out of place among the bride's family and friends.
Most of the guests on the bride's side were shinobi from the village. The men had obviously not been given a dress code; most, if not all, of the shinobi males wore the standard village uniform of black bodysuit and a gray flak jacket. The women wore unimpressive, austere kimonos, and a few of them were even still dressed in their jounin uniforms. Kakashi envied them; he was currently being suffocated by his heavy, stiff dress kimono.
The hall had filled up quickly; anyone who showed up late would be barred from the procession and would not be able to attend, therefore forfeiting bragging rights. This was standard procedure with political weddings, though Kakashi had been assured by several members on both the bride and groom's sides of the wedding that it was totally not a political marriage. That was the funny thing about political marriages: they were never, ever for power. They were love stories about a man and a woman destined to meet. They were everything except power plays and wealth grabs.
Kakashi was curious as to who the bride was; that, he had not been able to find out. She was merely a daughter of the Hotaru clan; no name or age had been given, save her status as the heir to one of the most powerful families in the Rice Village.
The identity of the bride, Kakashi had been told, had been one of the biggest draws of the wedding, save for the fact that it was daimyo's son's wedding. She could be any one of the three daughters of the main branch of the Hotaru clan, two of whom were rarely ever seen due to their careers as kunoichi of the village. The third daughter acted as diplomat to the Land of Wind, and was therefore almost as hard to get hold of.
Truthfully, Kakashi was still at a loss as to why so many low-class knuckle-draggers who claimed to be part of the family had been invited, but he supposed that most families had their hillbillies hidden somewhere.
Fifteen minutes remained until the procession was slated to begin, and he had yet to spot a single member of his team. He hoped they remembered that the ceremony started at eleven; he had told them as much literally only two hours previously. Of course, he really wouldn't be surprised if they were having trouble forcing their charges to get a move on to get to the ceremony; as far as he could remember, his team had never been late (and had been the sole reason he himself hadn't missed their deadline).
Come to think of it, why had he been so early? It wasn't like he had to fight for seating. Perhaps he had developed an unhealthy interest in what was even taking place during the wedding? No, that didn't sound like him; he really had no interest other than a curiosity to find out who the bride was, and that was merely celebrity curiosity. Maybe he had just hoped that the sooner he got to the ceremony, the sooner he would be out of that dreadful kimono. Plus, he would be that much closer to his meeting with Obata-san.
Finally, his team had come through the door, each of the three jounin paired off with one of the hillbilly nobility. Machi, his second-in-command, looked irritated, but then she always seemed to be annoyed by something. The two other men seemed tired but content with their positions; the taller of the two was being manhandled by a woman three times his girth and the shorter man was being lavished with attention by a person whom Kakashi could not assign a binary gender to, and therefore reserved judgment.
Now that he had found his team, he could concentrate on trying to spot Obata. Not that he was desperate or anything; he would meet her again tomorrow. The concert hall was packed tight; there had to be nearly five-hundred people in attendance. As observant as Kakashi was, he would still be hard-pressed to spot her in the crowd, especially if she was anywhere near the back.
He totally, absolutely, was not being nosy. At all.
Kakashi's curiosity was staunched (barely), or at least redirected, as the procession slowly hummed to life. The first to walk out were the bridesmaids, who were escorted out arm in arm with the groomsmen, some looking happier than others. Each wore matching kimonos; dark plum for the bridesmaids, pastel pink for the groomsmen. The pairs separated as they neared the daimyo's son; the men fell in behind him, the women settled in off towards the side behind the bride's place.
As the final bridesmaid took her place, the bride stepped out onto the aisle escorted by her father, and Kakashi, well, no longer had to search for Obata.
The room burst into a chorus of hushed whispers. The woman was clad entirely in white. She strutted down the aisle attached securely to her father's arm, staring ahead with her chin lifted high. Everyone in the room was captivated, Kakashi included, though he was more confused than hopelessly enamored at that point. Still, she was breathtaking, and he almost wished he was in the daimyo's son's position. Almost. (He really had no intention of getting married, if he even lived that long.)
As Obata passed by the third aisle where Kakashi was seated, she picked out his face in the crowd and caught his eye. Her gaze flickered over his face, tinged with an emotion that he couldn't place, then she turned her attention forward to the man who would become her husband.
Had she been intending to tell him that she was married? Had she even believed him when he said he was attending the wedding? She was a kunoichi, was she not? Statistically, she had a sixty-six percent chance of being a kunoichi if two of the three sisters were. So of course she knew his reputation since she had mentioned him by his nickname; she had most likely seen through his lies the moment he told them.
Kakashi's next question was, would she even show up at the tea shop tomorrow? And if she wasn't planning to, why had she kissed him?
He supposed he would find out at noon.
The non-kunoichi women in the vicinity were all sniffling and dabbing at their eyes delicately with tissues. A few of the men were even wiping emphatically at their cheeks with the sleeves of their uniforms. Personally, Kakashi had never been one to regard weddings as events special enough to cry at, particularly not this one. The daimyo's son looked as though he was already half-drunk and ready to dive into the sake. The groomsmen were eyeing the bridesmaids relentlessly, and the bridesmaids looked to be too tired to even function. Obata stared ahead blankly as if she were silently praying for for lightning to strike on the wedding. In all likelihood, she probably was.
Frankly, he was three lines of fake vows away from falling asleep in his chair.
"And do you, Hotaru Obata, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?" The priest watched her expectantly, his hand held outward waiting to join the two together.
Obata hesitated, but Kakashi doubted that anyone but him noticed. "I do."
The priest nodded to the daimyo's son. "Then you may now kiss the bride."
The nobleman swept his new bride backwards and planted a sound, wet kiss on her lips. Kakashi would have been lying if he said he didn't want to dig the man's fingernails out with own bare hands; he suppressed his desires quickly. He had done worse to better men for less than kissing a girl he liked. It was best if he pushed the thought of (in his opinion) well-deserved murder out of his mind.
Kakashi caught a flash of Obata's severely irritated face before the new bride slapped on a sucrose happy smile.
An irritated bride was not a bride who wanted to be at her wedding. Obata was irritated about her predicament, which meant two things: she didn't want to be a bride, and she wasn't on a mission.
All shinobi are trained actors; they have to be in order to play their roles effectively. Any shinobi worth their paycheck would have been able to slap on a happy grin and kiss back with some enthusiasm, but Obata looked more or less personally offended by physical contact with her groom. That was neither a shinobi on a mission, nor a happy bride.
The likely reason for her irritation was that she had been caught in the middle of her family's attempt at a power play and forced to go along with it. Kakashi had seen the same thing happen in Konoha several times; such activities came with the territory of being born into a tight-knit clan. In Konoha, if a child carried the name Hyuga or Sarutobi, they were almost guaranteed the same fate.
Perhaps, if he asked her, she would tell him, and perhaps she would explain why she wanted to see him again.
If the kiss was any indication, she didn't want to see him because he was a great conversationalist.
The bride stepped away from her groom sooner than was customary at weddings, but didn't begin the long trek back down the aisle. Instead, she reluctantly grasped his elbow, clutching at the man's arm with nails that looked suspiciously more like talons than neatly manicured nails.
From the corner of his eye, Kakashi caught movement from the groom's side. Someone raised a hand, preparing to throw something that was decidedly not flowers or rice. Kakashi didn't dare move; whoever was raising their hand was not the shinobi to be worried about. That one, a boy who hardly looked to have even hit puberty, was an obvious distraction.
The daimyo's son had not picked up on the movement, but his new wife had. She hadn't moved, hadn't even tensed up, but her eyes flickered over the boy with deadly intent, and the child paled in response. He lowered his hand, but her eyes kept searching, searching for the true insurgent.
Kakashi caught the movement from his angle before she was able to see it from hers. All at once, the three members of his team sprang up to tackle the shinobi who was running full speed at the daimyo's son. Kakashi lunged and yanked both the bride and the groom down and drug them off to the side.
The daimyo's son lolled half-drunk and confused, crouching down behind the stage and trembling like a girl. He tucked his head down in his arms, and that was where he stayed. Obata kneeled beside Kakashi, who had his hand on the small of her back. She glared at her new husband and rolled her eyes.
"Are you hurt?" Kakashi asked, mumbling quietly into her ear.
Obata shook her head. "I'm fine. I had a hunch that something would happen."
"Pretty good hunch for a civilian," he teased, quietly so that only she could hear.
She smirked, but placed a finger to her lips signaling him to hush. "Not here, tomorrow. Go tend to your team. It looks like they've got our insurgent."
Kakashi nodded, and left the two behind the stage. If there was only one insurgent, as there appeared to be, then the pair was in no real trouble. If the shinobi really was connected to some sort of political uprising, there would be more insurgents, wouldn't there? Somehow, Kakashi got the feeling that the attacker was more of a fluke, or maybe a publicity stunt, than anything serious.
The attacker was a teenager maybe a couple of years younger than himself. The boy trembled; he couldn't have been more than a chunin. He seemed to realize that he was being faced by four shinobi of a higher rank; word vomit was threatening to spill out of his mouth in front of the entire wedding party.
Kakashi gave him a once-over, his visible eye cold and discerning. He turned to Machi. "Take him to a holding cell. I'll see that this mess gets straightened up."
Machi nodded. "Do you want us to interrogate him?"
The boy trembled. He didn't need interrogating; he's probably just spill his guts on the way to the cell.
"Get what you can get out of him, then leave the rest to the Rice Village." Kakashi winked at his lieutenant. "We're just here for the wedding, right?"
The two men from the team took the boy by the arm and led him out. Machi folded her arms over her chest and looked out at the wedding party. A group of several jounin was racing up and down the aisles, corralling people back to their seats so that they could watch the newly wedded couple walk out. The priest was trying to coax the daimyo's son out from behind the stage. Obata just looked on in exasperation, occasionally interjecting that they should just forget walking out and get on with the day.
Machi nodded. "Right, just here for the wedding. We didn't just end up neck-deep in a political uprising or anything."
Kakashi chuckled. "If that's what this was supposed to be, this was the most pathetic uprising I've ever seen."
His lieutenant watched as a Rice Village jounin was punched in the face by a wedding guest. "Somehow, I don't think this was meant to be serious."
"You're right, but we'll worry about it later, once you've gotten the information and I've sent a letter to the Hokage."
Machi turned to leave, eyeing Obata while the woman stood alone in front of the wedding party. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, taicho."
Kakashi caught her sideways glance. "I know what I'm doing, lieutenant."
"Do you, Kakashi? Really?" Machi asked as she walked out.
She patted Obata on the shoulder as she passed and murmured something to her that Kakashi couldn't hear, then she flashed a look over her shoulder. Another wordless warning, be careful.
A/N: I rewrote the second half of the chapter. It fits a little better now, I think.