Title: Aspenglow Part IV
Fandom/ Pairing: Naruto/ KakaIru
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Slash, AU
Challenge: Written for the KakaIru LiveJournal Christmas song challenge; "Aspenglow"
Notes: A certain reviewer, DarkSapphireDragon, wished to know my reasons for picking Kakashi's particular human clothing. I can only say that, in addition to said clothing appealing to my aesthetics, I felt a military-style jacket would help emphasize his pride and warrior-like ideals. However, as Kakashi is hardly obedient to any sort of higher authority, I made the clothes slightly tattered to show his rebellious side. As for their color…well, black is just cool.

Flushed red, Iruka's face was the picture of panic as he tore over his property, trajectory shifted this way and that by a steadily building wind. He still felt woozy, but illness was nothing in comparison to the worry that choked him, constricting the rate at which his pale breath escaped into the air. The door to the wood shed flew open, and his brown eyes scanned its interior desperately, hoping to catch a glimmer of silver fur in the dark. None greeted him. There were only pine and aspen logs, the scent of which stung his eyes until they watered. A moment of raw emotion found Iruka hating the smell. He made his way quickly back across his lawn, though hopelessness was quick to slow him as he reached the forest's perimeter. What are you looking for? It's gone, a mental voice whispered. It doesn't need you anymore. Are wolves not meant to run free on their own path? Are they not meant to come and go as they wish? It was merely an animal, and animals must wander.

In spite of the logic the silent voice imparted, an ache welled in Iruka's chest as he stared into the forest beyond the fast-falling snow. The wolf had seemed so human, though, he argued; it wasn't fully healed either. To depart now would be foolish of it.

That "humanity" was a product of your loneliness, snapped his sardonically logical half. You hadn't exactly been providing for it during the two days you were throwing up your intestines.

Its point only made Iruka feel worse, more desperate for the wolf to return to his side. He moved toward the woods in spite of his inner monologue's protests:

You're ill. You can't go out in that!

Iruka ignored it, and took off at a run. The going proved especially difficult at the outset, given the sloping hill which made up the first part of the forest, but his straining muscles melted under the sheer force of his willpower. His eyes scanned the area, no detail missed on the trees or ground which seemed to fly past his vision. Snow, falling delicately but with increasing speed, covered his world in a veneer of loneliness and mystery. Even this scenery that Iruka had gazed upon for thousands of times was transformed with winter, each passing season rendering it different as the snowflakes it brought. With such strange beauty, with such wonders, Iruka reflected, would it be so impossible for a wolf to possess a shred of humanity, or for a human to love that wolf? He didn't know a great deal about the world. He didn't know a great deal about himself. The only thing he did know was that he could never stop running, could never stop searching, for the wolf was all he had. If the creature did not want to remain, Iruka needed to know firsthand, so he would never be weighed down by those two dreaded shards of doubt: What if?

Will and the stamina to maintain it were two different things, however. He only had so much strength in his already-weakened state; an addition of cold made him pause to catch his breath. It was then that logic caught up with him. He was unsure where he should even begin to look. This scenario was hardly like his first encounter with the wolf, during which time it was injured, desperate, and easy to predict. The creature could be anywhere by now, and he had no way of knowing whether simply calling or whistling would give him any clues.

"I don't even know if he answers to a name…" Iruka whispered, and, to his shock, someone answered him.

"Kakashi."

Eyes wide, Iruka pivoted in time to see a young man literally drop from a nearby tree, landing as gracefully as a cat on the snow bank below it. His eyes were bright and slit with concentration, the wind pushing his shoulder-length hair in haphazard directions. A toothpick hung lazily from his lip, as did an Army Surplus jacket from his shoulders. Straightening, he revealed that he wasn't much taller than Iruka. "He's called Kakashi. I assume you're looking for him. Wolf with an attitude problem?" After a moment's pause, Iruka nodded. "Bastard almost skinned me the other day. Guess he's finally snapped. That's what hanging with humans can do to you."

"You…you've seen him?" Iruka almost had to shout over the wind, unlike the newcomer, whose voice seemed pitched so that he only needed to speak normally to be heard.

"Not since he came tearing through here yesterday morning, no. But hazarding a guess, I'd say he's at the lake."

"Lake Redden?"

The man grinned through his toothpick. "If you like. Most of us call it Tsume, though." His knowing smirk only made Iruka angry.

"What do you mean, 'us'? How do you know him?" he demanded, marching forward to look the stranger square in the eye. To his satisfaction, the humor left his face. "Are you some kind of zookeeper or something? If you even try to lock him up, I'll…"

A sharp slap knocked him to the snowy earth. "Oh, yeah, what will you do, human? Take him back to your own cage?" Yanked up by his coat collar, Iruka found his face entirely too close to the stranger's, whose teeth were needle sharp. "You don't know jack shit about us, and you sure as hell don't know shit about Kakashi. I owe him a favor, but here's a free piece of advice: stay away and leave him to his own kind. There's no comfort a human can give a wolf. He left you because he realized that—and not a moment too soon, I say. So go back to your nice little box and keep your meddling to your own species."

Releasing his collar, the stranger turned to vanish into the blizzard, leaving the human on the ground behind him. The wind picked up, blowing colder than ever, and tears flowed in rivers from Iruka's eyes, stinging the place where he'd been struck, which, for some reason, had resulted in three thin scratches rather than a simple welt. He gripped the snow under his hands. He was tired—tired of struggling, tired of running, tired of trying to justify what he didn't even understand. However, he was also tired of giving in. Just before the stranger dissolved completely into the whiteness of the snowstorm, Iruka took aim, and threw the hardest snowball he'd ever packed. It struck, and he saw him whirl.

"I don't care!" Iruka howled over the gale. "I don't care what you think is natural or unnatural. I don't care whether or not he hates me! But if he feels it's wrong for me to care, then damn it, he'll let me know himself!" He was standing then. Despite the rage in the stranger's eyes, Iruka continued to shout, railing against every disparaging gaze, every judgment that had ever been passed on him. "I can't stand people like you! What do you know about what he wants? You're just thrusting your own stupid ideals on—"

"Our world was created by those ideals!" the stranger hissed, suddenly looking more like an animal than a human, which, for some reason, didn't surprise Iruka in the least

"Your world," he corrected through gritted teeth. "Not mine." With those words, it was his turn to show his back, and he vanished into the storm.

Lake Redden, a natural reservoir near the foot of Aspenglow, had frozen many times over the years and, as result, had carved out a small valley around its banks. The wind was therefore calmer where Kakashi sat, shifting unconsciously from human to wolf-form as he stared, motionless, at the silvery, half-solid lake. His snow-dusted hair shifted, dribbling ice down to his skin, but he was not as cold as his mother had undoubtedly been in the moments—or even minutes—before her lungs filled and froze. The images replayed themselves over and over in Kakashi's mind, as did countless speculations regarding the human who had birthed him. Perhaps she had been young, too young for excess blood, the result of a long and difficult labor, to course down her thighs and fall in drops on her bare feet. Had that same blood clotted the fur of a wolf pup? Had she been driven mad upon seeing an animal emerge from her body, rather than the squirming human she had expected, or had she been half-mad long before his birth? Her parents might have cast her out simply because she had lain with a man—they did that often enough, and such rejection could certainly have robbed her of sense or hope. Humans were social creatures after all, generally drawing their sense of self-worth from their peers. It was the same with wolves. Kakashi realized that his mother's case was not so vital to the formulation of his self-image as was the fact that he was, in truth, like neither of the species whose forms he could adapt. He was not social; he did not feel the need for others' approval; all he truly longed for was the validity of a moment, the feeling of doing something all-encompassing and purposeful. Similar to a thrilling pursuit and kill but somehow far more significant, that sensation was what he had been chasing his entire life, though he had failed to recognize it when it presented itself. It was the mark of a hunter and an independent thing, neither human nor entirely wolf-like. In this way, he could only be himself. Where did he go from here, though? Where was there left for him to truly live? Despair overtook him at the hopelessness of it all, and he closed his eyes.

A sudden rush of noise made Kakashi's fur stand on end. As a wolf, he rose, lips pulled back in a defensive growl.

"There you are," said Iruka. Disbelief redoubled the wolf's snarls. The man walked unsteadily toward him, shivering as he pushed snow from his shoulders. There was a soft, tired smile in his mouth and eyes and three dripping cuts on his face. "Kakashi. That's it, right? Come on; let's go home."

"Get away from me." Humanity swept him like a winter wind, and he was a little more than eye level from the human, knife brandished. Iruka's eyes widened, but he did not move. "Why are you here, human? I don't need you. I don't want you."

Hurt flashed in the young man's gaze, making something twist in Kakashi. "I…you just left, so I wanted to see whether…something had happened to you."

"Is that all?"

"Why did you spare me that day? You wanted to kill me. Why didn't you?" Iruka took a step forward, palms out in surrender. "I just want to know."

Kakashi gave a cruel, hopeless sneer. "You're a bigger fool than I took you for, if satisfying your petty curiosity is so important."

"That's not it!" A sudden raise in the human's voice made him tense. He curled his lip, and Iruka looked almost guilty. He studied his gloved hands. "It's not the knowing that's so important. It's…it's just you." His tone went soft, tearful. "Just you. I know it was you who helped me when I was sick. Even if you don't respect me, I know you at least think of me as more than food. As far as information goes, that's all I really need…"

By fang and tail, Kakashi thought as he gaped at the human. He's crying. Iruka was, indeed, swiping at his eyes like a child as he choked, "I just didn't want you to go, I guess. Maybe you don't need me like you say. I…I'd really like to say it doesn't matter, but I do care…more than I probably should—"

"And you talk far too much."

It was a strange thing, hearing that someone wanted him in any shape, form, or fashion. Even stranger was the change those honest words could induce in Kakashi. Unable to identify that change, he had long since allowed himself draw up in front of Iruka, long since allowed his all-too-human hands to tweak the human's chestnut mane as his face settled into something both proud and resigned. "Far too much," he said again. "Now. Let's go."

"Huh?"

This time, Kakashi did roll his eye. "I must show you the path to your own dwelling, now?"

"N-No." There was a thread of some strange joy in the human's voice, a happiness that Kakashi had never before encountered. "I'm coming."

However, the human had already shifted into a beast, and could not reply. Together, they left the lakeside behind in favor of walking a path homeward, each step bringing them closer to a future of their choosing.