Scarlet Scroll

On The Nature of Daylight


There was an unpleasant, tepid humidity to the air that day, and since Otafuku Gai was the kind of town that only came alive at night, there wasn't much to do except remain at the inn and try to beat Kakashi at card games on the balcony where there might be some modicum of a breeze. It might as well have been a ghost town below them. A few people were ambling along the winding streets, a few others were sweeping away the evidence of another night of hard partying, but most people they saw were passed out discreetly in alleyways and flowerbeds, rather like corpses. It was easier to imagine this was the middle of some warzone instead of the centre of nightlife and adult entertainment for all the five nations. In the bright light of day, the glamour of the evening was finally peeled away to reveal the flaws beneath; they could see the cracks in the walls and the dirty windows, and even some of the infamous comely women were awake and about, but without their make-up and fine clothes they all seemed pretty unremarkable.

The best thing about playing card games against Kakashi was that Sakura had finally found something he was bad at, though this was also equal parts annoying. She doubted he was trying particularly hard, and teaching the basics of poker was more an exercise of patience. It did, however, keep her mind off other things.

Until Jin walked into her room, unannounced as usual and looking none the worse for being knocked unconscious by Sakura a few nights ago. She didn't bother to look up and glare at him because he revelled in his disregard for her privacy.

"Guess what time it is," the idiot cajoled her, and since he knew Sakura wasn't going to humour the guessing game, he swiftly answered his own prompt. "Pregnancy test time! Be a good girl and pop down to the chemist."

"No," said Sakura stolidly, still refusing to look up from the game.

"Yes," said Jin.

"No," said Kakashi, surveying Sakura's sets of cards laid on the floorboards between them. "Her period already started. Snap."

"We're not playing Snap," Sakura sighed. "We're playing Go Fish."

"We are?"

If Jin was surprised or annoyed at being subverted so rapidly, he didn't show it. Instead he seemed smug. "What a shame. I suppose you'll just have to try harder next month. And if that doesn't work out, there's always the month after that. Maybe you weren't using the right positions?"

Sakura's hands were gripping her cards a little too tightly; they were in danger of bending. Kakashi looked patiently at Jin. "Is that all you wanted?" he asked.

Any further pestering on Jin's part would now just look like the cruel immaturity it was, and the idiot had no choice but to smirk and leave. Though Kakashi and Sakura had been playing quietly before they arrived, the silence between them once he'd left was a tense one. It was Sakura's turn to play, but she just stared glassily at her cards, her mind on the other things that Kakashi had hoped to distract her from.

"You ok?" he asked, taking the opportunity of her catatonia to casually add a few more cards to his hand, mistakenly assuming this would be to his advantage.

"Fine," she grunted, sick of him asking that question for how it forced her to lie. "Any fives?"

They played on, and Sakura noticed she was still winning by a mile, even though she was missing half her turns and barely keeping track of the cards. Finally all the sets were laid out on the floor and there were no more cards to play. She looked at them, wondering what to do next.

"Don't let Jin get to you," Kakashi said, gathering up the deck. "He's a… well, he's an idiot. We both know that."

"He's right though," she grumbled, looking out at the rooftops of the town. "We're going to be here for another month now."

"Nothing we can do about that," he responded evenly. "It's not your fault."

She looked at him in annoyance. "I never thought it was."

He shrugged, shuffling the cards with practised ease and precision that defied his clumsiness with the actual game rules. "Jin and Ari might have you believe otherwise."

"Yes, well, they're idiots," Sakura said.

He nodded. "Exactly." He began to deal again.

"I'm sick of playing cards," she said, getting to her feet to stretch. "It gets boring, winning."

"Not a problem I have much experience with," he admitted.

Sakura moved over to the balcony and looked down over the balustrade at the street below. Although it wasn't as busy as it was in the evening, some of the less seedy establishments were doing business. Kakashi watched her back. "Do you want to go out?" he asked.

She turned from the view. "No." He'd mistaken her interest in the street. She'd only been looking for an excuse not to sit near Kakashi and have to face him. It wasn't that he annoyed her, but in some moments, between others, it was difficult to keep her cool, indifferent attitude up around him. Especially when he tried to be nice and cheer her up. Ironically, this was when she most felt like crying.

Now she stood, looking blindly about the room, picking at moss on the wooden balustrade with her nails. Kakashi wasn't saying anything now, just shuffling cards, and that made her feel even more fraught and restless than before. When she glanced at him she noticed that as he leant forward, something tiny and gold on a delicate chain swung from his neck. It looked like it was the hiragana character for 'ki'. For power? Energy? Life force? It was undoubtedly some kind of charm necklace and rather feminine. Why hadn't she noticed that before?

"What's that?" she asked. "Around your neck?"

He touched the light pendant and pushed it back beneath his shirt with a shrug. "Gift from a friend," he said. "For luck, I think."

Her mother had given her something similar for her eighteenth two years ago, but Sakura had never worn it. She still didn't know what she was going to say to her mother when she returned... if she ever returned at this rate.

"Do you wish you could go home?" she asked quietly.

He shrugged again. "Don't we all?"

Yes, but...

Sakura bit her lip. "What if we're stuck here? For six months until we're reassigned to some other target?"

Kakashi paused and looked up at her, gaze curious. "I'm sure we'll only need a couple more weeks," he said carefully, after a lengthy moment of consideration. "Hopefully we won't have to be here longer than that."

"What if we do?"

"Why?" he asked. "What makes you say that?"

She looked away again and lapsed back into silence. Kakashi waited patiently, but when she didn't answer, he turned back to the cards and began to pair them off, building a fragile little card house. That was too much for Sakura. Just the utter banality of seeing her sensei do something as dull as building a house of cards on the worst mission of her life made her want to scream. How dare anyone be so bored they had to entertain themselves with such trivialities when she was going through hell?

So when he was carefully attempting to balance the last two cards to form the zenith of his masterpiece, Sakura went over and knocked down the base with her toe. The cards tumbled and cascaded. Kakashi lowered his hands and looked at the mess with blank dismay.

"Let's go out," Sakura said.

He smiled up at her faintly. "Then get dressed. I'll be waiting downstairs."

He left cheerfully enough, which was another annoying habit of his these days: he just never got angry anymore, or at least not at her. He pitied her too much to even roll his eyes when she turned into a bitch or a bear.

Alone, she shucked out of her sleeping yukata and began pawing through her rack of 'costumes'. For various reasons, when she left the inn she couldn't draw too much attention to herself, since there was a chance that Hiroshi or anyone closely associated with him would recognise her on the street. As far as anyone in the village was concerned, she was just another woman of the night, and so she had to dress like one.

Fortunately that didn't mean six-inch heels, tube tops and hot pants, or anything else more elaborate than what other civilians wore during the day. The women of Otafuku Gai had a life outside work too, of course.

Sakura's costumes were a mix of day clothes and moderately fancy evening wear. Nothing too expensive or cheap. Her first week in Otafuku Gai had been spent organising a whole new wardrobe, being fitted for clothes she would probably only wear once. Some of it was no longer wearable, having been ripped and torn during countless 'sessions', like the dress she wore when she first went to meet Hiroshi.

She ran her hands over the blue dress in question, feeling the knotted stitching where the straps had been sewn roughly back to the body of the dress by ridiculously practical hands – Kakashi's hands. He lacked the surgeon-like precision with a needle that she had, but all shinobi learned needle-work all the same. Repairing clothes and equipment came with the job, whether you were male or female. Being quite feminine at heart, she was a great lover of clothes, and ordinarily she might have enjoyed a mission where she was given a whole new wardrobe of beautiful dresses to play with, but each dress after she wore it felt ruined afterwards, even if it was repaired, even if it had never been damaged at all.

However, she'd used up most of her costumes by now and she had no choice but to start re-wearing them. Sakura flapped out the blue dress and slipped it on, followed by her green cardigan to hide the repair job, and tried not to remember the way the straps had cut into her shoulders and the seams beneath her arms had torn when Hiroshi had ripped her out of the dress. He'd definitely been the kind of man who started as he meant to go on, and he'd laughed at her expression when he'd pushed her, torn-clothing and all, straight onto the bed barely thirteen seconds after she'd walked in the door. He'd said she 'quivered like a virgin'.

It wasn't until many hours later when she was back in her own little dark room that she began to calm down and think about what he said. Because, no, she hadn't acted like a virgin. She'd acted like a woman who had not enjoyed being grabbed and pushed and her arms held down. Was that so hard to understand? There were no words to describe just how powerfully Sakura was relieved when Kakashi had intercepted Hiroshi's communications the following night and told her that since he'd requested one of his regular girls instead she probably wouldn't be needed. Except Jin and Ari had found this hilarious and had made sure she understood this was because she was a 'bad lay'.

But any hope that Hiroshi really had found her distasteful had quickly begun to fade when he contacted her the following week, again, and again.

She'd gradually learnt, that the more sober he was, the crueller he behaved. Whenever she could, she tried to ply him with drinks before settling down for business, but this didn't always work. Sometimes the guy was in no mood for stalling. And then he'd started to request her more often... last week he'd wanted to be together every night. He'd wanted to see her again tonight, but she wouldn't be going. If Jin or Ari tried to make her go, she would put her foot down. Even if they had no sympathy for how painful sex was for her during menstruation, there would be little gained by sleeping with their target as far as the mission was concerned. Even real mostresses took time off. She was sure Hiroshi would find some other bit to chew on.

And again... she noticed she was physically trembling with relief from the thought of a reprieve, however brief, from that vile man.

A knock on the door jerked her out of her wits. "Sakura, you ready yet?"

She looked down at herself and realised she'd been sitting on her futon, staring at nothing for so long she'd worn the patience of the most tardy ninja in existence. "Coming," she said, and left behind her wearisome thoughts to join him.

Traffic was heavier around the marketplace, and this was where they went first. It was Kakashi who was leading the way; Sakura just trailed after him like a lost sausage, neither caring where they went nor particularly interested. She looked at the wares at each stall without noticing what was on sale, running her fingers rudely over crafted jewellery and fruit and clothing. Kakashi stopped at a booth that appeared to sell musical instruments. For some reason this interested him, but Sakura couldn't think why, until he picked up some kind of fiddle – the seller haughtily corrected her it was a viola – and plucked a few notes with his fingers. It didn't sound like the inharmonious twang it would probably make in Sakura's hands.

"You play?" she asked incredulously.

"Once upon a time," he answered, "I'm probably very rusty now. I'm better with a shamisen."

Oh, god. "I'll pay you not to demonstrate."

"Not a fan?"

They were in Otafuku Gai; the pleasure town. Not a night went by when she couldn't hear some hack whacking away at a shamisen through an open window somewhere; it was the instrument of choice for the highest class of female entertainers. And yes, by now the sound had begun to grate on her. "I've heard cats being booted up the ass that sound better than the shamisen."

Kakashi handed the instrument back to the seller who was looking at Sakura as if he'd never seen such a philistine in his life. He did have a whole shelf of shamisen behind him, after all, so she'd most likely just insulted his bestselling item.

They moved on, and Kakashi bought them both some octopus balls on a stick and a festive kind of mask that Sakura was rather too content to wear. She liked looking out of two little holes in a wooden mask, able to see others who couldn't see her. She was anonymous. Perhaps that was why Kakashi had such a fondness for masks.

This mission was going to turn her into as much an anti-social freak as him...

There was some kind of play going on in the middle of town, so they joined the crowd of people to watch, and that was how they lost most of the afternoon. Sakura plucked Kakashi's sleeve several times to hint that she was bored, but it turned out the play was some kind of production based on Icha Icha, and Kakashi would not be torn away for love nor money.

It was quite silly. There were just a lot of actors running around the stage making rude jokes and pretending to have sex with all kinds of terrible visual metaphors. But then this was probably G-rated by Otafuku Gai standards.

Finally it finished, and embarrassingly Kakashi clapped the hardest of anyone there, though he had the decency to look self-conscious when he caught sight of Sakura's scowl. "It wasn't as good as the book," he said.

"Can we go eat now?" she asked. Her stomach had been rumbling throughout most of the play, so she was glad to head back through the markets to find an open soba bar. One could never be short of cafés and restaurants of all kinds in this town, and though they had their pick of cuisine, Sakura wanted nothing more than a frazzled young woman working over a steaming hot plate, flipping noodles and grunting antisocially in response to orders. When everywhere she looked she saw unrelenting entertainment, it was a relief to creep into a shady little bar where the only entertainment was the badly tuned radio playing behind the chef.

"You up for a drink next?" Kakashi asked, when she finally finished and pushed her bowl away. As always he'd finished way before her.

Sakura shrugged uncertainly. On the one hand she didn't feel like going out and drinking because the thing about living in constant despair was that although alcohol could take it away for a few hours, the come-down afterwards was crashing. Yet on the other hand, she didn't want to go back to the inn because there was a higher chance she'd run into her chaperones, and there were few things she hated more than those two idiots.

"You have to let loose eventually," Kakashi said, rooting around for coins to pay his half. "Don't you think you should unwind?"

"I'm fine," she said shortly.

"I'll go on my own if you don't want to come," he said.

Damn. That meant an evening alone at the inn, and facing her teammates alone was always more volatile when Kakashi wasn't there to mediate. "Fine," she sighed, making sure he knew that he had all but twisted her arm. "If you want my company so badly, I'll come with you."

She knew she wasn't exactly enjoyable company right then and hadn't been for a while, but Kakashi smiled as if nothing could please him more. "Good."

After the soba bar they went in search of a proper bar. Evening was approaching and the slumbering town was coming back to life in its most vivacious districts. Kakashi seemed to have a specific place in mind to show her, and as they took a winding, well-trod path through the town, Sakura wondered just how often he'd been here before to be so familiar with it.

"Hatake Kakashi?"

Said man stopped and turned at the sound of his name, and Sakura peered around him curiously at the woman standing on the porch of a nearby bordello. Unlike the women standing and sitting around her, she was older and heavier, though her face was smooth and full, making her look younger than the grey in her hair indicated.

"It is you, isn't it, Kakashi?" the woman called, tapping a closed fan against her bosom. "I'd know that face anywhere."

Considering very little of Kakashi's face was even visible, this was all the more impressive.

Kakashi seemed non-plussed, and he slowly tilted his head on one side. "Madame Wisteria?" he inquired silkily. "You're looking lovelier than I remember."

A disbelieving hiss escaped the woman. "I, however, don't remember that charm at all," she said. "You were such an awkward young thing when I last knew you. What brings you back to Otafuku Gai? Business or pleasure?"

"Pleasure, of course," he responded without missing a beat, and he really was oozing a lot of charm into so few words. Sakura had never seen anything like it.

'Madame Wisteria' switched her gaze on Sakura. "And who is this awkward young thing?" she asked.

Sakura felt a little flush of embarrassment. She knew she was awkward and young, but she hoped no one noticed most of the time.

And then Kakashi said something she hadn't expected at all.

"This is my friend, Sakura," he told the woman.

Normally when Kakashi introduced her, it was almost always as his 'teammate', or his 'colleague', or even sometimes his 'partner', and Sakura liked that because it always denoted respect and equality, and it was a great step up from the days when he introduced her to people as his 'student'.

But he'd never before introduced her as a friend. And suddenly she knew it was the first time he had ever referred to her this way at all. Did he really consider her a friend?

The significance of her new title was lost completely on Kakashi and Madame Wisteria, and the latter nodded politely at Sakura, who nodded in return. Awkwardly, as becoming of her youth. "How do you two know each other?" Sakura asked before she could think the question through properly in her head. Only after it had escaped her lips did she realise how stupid it was.

Wisteria was clearly a prostitute.

"Back when I was a slender thing like you, my dear," the woman said, "when I was the belle of the house and I had fifteen clients knocking on my door every hour, one day there came a knock on my door like any other. And when I opened it there stood the most beautiful young man I'd ever seen."

Kakashi laughed slightly, sounding embarrassed. Sakura was beginning to really wish she hadn't asked.

"And do you know what he said to me?" Wisteria was going to tell her anyway, so Sakura just shook her head numbly. "He said, 'I heard you were having a problem with a drunk. Please allow me to escort him out.'"

Sakura blinked.

"For you see, one of our clients had got a little rowdy that evening and we were having a little trouble convincing him to leave without pawing all our girls, so I put in a call to the security detail, and your friend Kakashi was the one they sent over."

"Oh," Sakura murmured, feeling guilty for assuming anything otherwise.

"You thought I laid him?" Wisteria looked terribly amused at her expense.

Sakura didn't have the nerve to admit that was exactly what she'd thought.

The woman winked at her. "Only as payment."

"Oh."

"Many times."

"Oh."

"She's messing with you, take no notice," Kakashi said softly, and turned back to Wisteria with that same melting charm. "We'll have to take our leave, Madame. I promised to show Sakura a bar on the North Bank and it's almost happy hour."

"Well, if you fancy catching up for old time's sake, you know where to find me," she said, and then winked at Sakura again. "You too, my lamb. We have many services for the pleasure of ladies as well."

Sakura's throat had just gone very dry.

"Thank you for the kind offer," Kakashi bowed and then began hustling Sakura away since she was stood a little transfixed in the middle of the street.

"Was she really just messing with me?" Sakura asked, a little hopefully.

"Yeah... most of what she told you was made-up," he said, looking a little hesitant. "I was never on the security detail here."

"Then how-"

"How do you think someone such as myself might know someone such as her? How any visiting man around here knows her?"

"Oh." Sakura seemed to be saying that a lot.

"And she was never slender."

That wasn't supposed to be surprising – the visiting-a-prostitute thing, not the liking-big-girls thing, because the latter was a little surprising. Yet even though she knew the mantra that men had their urges which seemed to infer this was something she had to respect, and that Otafuku Gai lay close enough to Konoha that a lot of men had visited it to dabble in pleasure, even if only once out of curiosity, the thought Kakashi was one of them... well, it disappointed her.

She had never held a strong moral opinion on prostitutes, because however she looked it, ninja and prostitutes were two sides of the same coin. She was employed to kill, they were employed to fuck, and at the end of the day, her profession did more harm to the world than the ladies of the night who took money in return for giving pleasure. How could anyone in Sakura's position look down on such women without feeling like a raging hypocrite?

However, Sakura's opinions on the clientele was a different matter. The people who paid for sex... it seemed a sad and grubby way to procure physical intimacy without having to give consideration for the other person involved. She had always mildly held such men in disdain. After meeting Hiroshi, it had hardened into true contempt.

She didn't want to think of Kakashi like that.

But, she thought, as she looked at him and he smiled faintly back at her, he probably didn't see it that way. It had all happened a long time ago...

"Here we are," he announced, gesturing to a drab little entrance that Sakura wouldn't have looked twice at if he hadn't drawn attention to it. The look of the place didn't fill her with confidence of its quality, but she trusted Kakashi and his taste (in some matters, definitely not others) and she kept her reservations to herself before following him inside.

For a public house, it was rather cosy and well-lit, and not particularly busy yet. Each little room had its own wood-burning fire, but the seats around each were already occupied so they headed to the bar.

"Beer," Kakashi said to the bartender.

"Plum wine with green tea, please," Sakura requested. And when the drinks arrived, she carefully examined the glass for lip marks.

At least it passed the cleanliness test.

"Not bad," she said to Kakashi, who was obviously awaiting her approval. "You know your way around Otafuku Gai pretty well, don't you?"

He shrugged. "It's my job."

"To know where all the pubs are?"

"Ah – no. To memorise the map of an area before I'm sent there. Knowing where all the best places to eat and drink is a gift," he said, tapping his nose as if it was a secret he would never give up.

Sakura reckoned his talent lay in hopping so many bars that eventually he found a few hidden gems. She raised her eyebrows politely and sipped her drink. It had been a while since she'd had umeshu, and she'd always enjoyed the sweet taste, but it wasn't as nice as the plum wine back in Konoha. The taste seemed... muted.

Oh, what did it matter. It all came from the same can, she was just being stupid...

Kakashi noticed her sigh and elbowed her gently. "I brought you out to cheer you up, not drown your sorrows. No sighing into your drink."

"Sorry," she mumbled. And then, because he looked as if he was going to say something serious but her – about the mission – about Hiroshi or their vile, idiot teammates – and she just didn't think she could bear that, she plastered on a smile and said, "When did you learn the violin?"

"The viola. I can probably play the violin too, though, they're so similar," he said. "But it's not really what you think. After I got the sharingan, my sensei was doing his best to help me learn how to use it because the Uchiha refused to train me... they were kind of upset that I had it, so I went through a lot of unorthodox ways of testing its powers. I learnt how to play the viola in one afternoon. Kinda made me wish I'd had the sharingan back when I was learning the shamisen."

"Why would you ever have learnt the shamisen?" she asked, disgusted.

"It was part of the mandatory curriculum at the academy," he told her. "They used to believe that a rounded education enhanced a fighter, and dabbling in musical training was part of that. I don't know how much good it did. They must have taken it off the curriculum before you entered the school."

Thank goodness. Sakura mulled over her drink and asked, "Do you think the academy really prepares us for the nature of our work?"

Kakashi shrugged. "How'd you mean?"

"Everything I know, I learned after I left the academy. I don't really remember much of what I learned at school anymore," she sighed.

"You probably retain more than you think."

"Yeah? And how often do you need to play a shamisen in this line of work?"

"Well, it's an unexpected party piece, at least."

"I... I learned to pick and arrange flowers at school," she said, not quite believing it herself though at the time she'd never thought twice about it. "Kunoichi curriculum... learning the difference between an acer rubrum and a red maple."

Kakashi pondered this carefully. "And what is the difference-"

"They're both the same damn tree," she sighed. "And I could tell you which flowers are appropriate to take to a funeral depending on your relationship with the deceased, because I know the meaning of most of the flowers native to the fire country, and then some, but how does that help prepare me for the kind of work that I do?"

"'Nother umeshu, please," Kakashi said to the bartender, noticing Sakura's drink was now mostly ice."

"More wine, less tea," Sakura called after the man, and once a fresh drink was in her hand she did her best not to sigh into it the way Kakashi advised her against. "You know, I actually envy the kids being taught in the academy today. At least under Danzou, they'll be prepared for the crap he'll throw at them."

"And no doubt they're being taught how he's a revolutionary leader of great wisdom and enlightenment," Kakashi said quietly.

"Someone ought to just kill him," Sakura said, meaning every word.

Kakashi touched the back of her hand. "Be careful what you say," he said, even more softly than before. "We're still in the fire country... and Danzou has eyes in unexpected places."

"Literally," she murmured.

He snorted and let his gaze wander the room as he took a deep gulp of beer. Suddenly he was tapping her hand again. "Come on – the seats by the fire are free."

Sakura tried hard not to spill her drink as Kakashi all but dragged her into an alcove of an adjoining room where the smell of burning apple wood hung strongly in the air. The seats were more comfortable and the heat was pleasant enough to take the edge off the intruding chill of the evening. But now Kakashi was sitting opposite her, and there was a small table between them, and facing him instead of facing her drink was more awkward than she realised.

Only because she felt that whenever Kakashi was allowed to look into her face for more than a few moments, he would look right through her and be able to see all the things she desperately tried to hide. She focused her stare instead at the fire and hoped he would do the same. He drunk slowly in silence, but his gaze lingered on her a little more than usual. Perhaps she was being too obvious in trying to avoid his eyes?

"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked.

Sakura held out her hand. If he was going to speak clichéd idioms, he could damn well put his money where his mouth was if he wanted her thoughts.

"Jeez..." Kakashi grunted as he rummaged around his pockets. He found something, blew a bit of lint off it and pressed it into her hand. "That should buy me at least ten thoughts," he said.

Now Sakura raced for something to say. A lot of thoughts bounced around her head and she'd lost track of them already. Right then all she was thinking was how warm this coin was from his body heat.

She could play it cool and tell him she'd been thinking about something as mundane and uncontroversial as flowers. Seeing as how they'd been talking about it a moment ago, it wouldn't be unfeasible. But she felt heavy, and talking about light-hearted nonsense would take more out of her than if she simply spoke of some of things that were really weighing on her mind.

"Why do you think people use prostitutes?" she asked, flicking a glance up to him to gauge his reaction.

There was a little tightening of the muscles around his eye, that could have meant anything from surprise to distaste or just confusion. Perhaps all of the above? "Well," he said, dragging the word out as if he was giving her question some serious thought. "I suppose there's lots of different reasons."

"Like?"

"Maybe some men just want the pleasure without the fuss of courting a girl? Or maybe the girl they like only takes cash up front, you know?"

Now Sakura narrowed her eyes slightly. That was his first reason he'd given, and being a man who had used prostitutes before, he'd probably given her his own reasons. "So it's not something you'd do if you were in a relationship with someone?"

He shrugged, probably beginning to realise if he hadn't already that she was drilling him personally on his reasons.

"Hiroshi's married," she said, gazing into the fire. "He's got five children at home in the lightning country. The oldest is seventeen, she's a girl. The youngest is five, a son. His favourite is his ten year old boy. He thinks he could make Raikage one day. And... he seems to love his wife, but if that was true, why would he spend so much time here with girls like me?"

She didn't look at Kakashi, and he said nothing, though she could tell he was watching her as intensely as she watched the snapping, hissing logs in the fire.

"He talks to you about his family?" Kakashi asked after the silence had stretched on longer than was comfortable.

"He confides a lot of things in me, actually. Do all men do that? Even though they know the woman is only there because of his money...? It's not like I actually give a damn what he's getting his daughter for her eighteenth."

Especially when one of his favourite demands was that Sakura call him 'Daddy' when he fucked her from behind.

"I don't think he'll ever tell me anything of strategic importance, but the more I'm with him the more I know about him... and the less I understand." She swallowed and closed her eyes. Something close to grief was threatening to overwhelm her. "He confuses me. I hate him so much, and yet I know more about him than I know about you, my own teammate, my own friend."

Kakashi leant forward in his chair.

"I just want to go home," she whispered.

"We will soon," he said, sounding so confident. "This month will be the last, I promise."

She looked at him, exasperated. "You don't know that."

"There's no reason why you shouldn't conceive. You're young and healthy and-"

"And did anyone think to ask that of Hiroshi?" she snapped, though her voice was barely above a whisper.

He sat back. "Well, he's had five children-"

"The last of which was born five years ago," she interrupted again. "He's nearly fifty, Kakashi-sensei..."

"We'll be out of here soon," he said soothingly. "I promise."

"You're not listening to me." She looked tiredly down at her hands. "We're not getting out of here this month. Or the next month. We'll be stuck here for the rest of the year, because Hiroshi is sterile."

Kakashi froze, staring at her blankly like he had no idea what she'd just said. "You sound very sure of that," he remarked eventually.

"I told you, he confides a lot in me," Sakura said. "He told me he was sterile weeks ago, so he didn't have to wear a... you know."

"Some guys say that just to get out of wearing it," Kakashi said dubiously. "Are you sure-"

"I never asked him to wear one, obviously!" she hissed. "That would kinda defeat the mission objective! He volunteered the information, and at this point, I don't have any reason to think he was lying."

"Then we'll tell the Jin and Ari. There's no point staying here if there's no chance of conceiving. We can go home tonight."

Sakura looked at him, almost pitying his naivety, and guilty for what she was about to tell him. "I already told Ari," she said quietly. "He said I was lying in order to get out of the mission. They don't believe me, and they won't break their backs to find evidence either way. They're content to spend six months in Otafuku Gai since it's no skin off their noses."

"Then I'll tell them," Kakashi said, getting to his feet.

"They'd think quite rightly that you're relying on my word, and they'd think you were a sucker for believing me," she said. "It won't work. I'm stuck here... I'm stuck with that guy."

She was at least grateful that unlike the others, Kakashi hadn't leapt to the assumption she was lying... but she wondered if the doubtful expression in his gaze meant it was now occurring to him. It wasn't an unreasonable assumption to make; Sakura would have lied if she'd thought for a moment that it could work. Perhaps what was bothering him most was that she'd gone to Ari first.

He had to understand... Danzou had sent them on this mission together to put them both through hell, and if she had a choice between discussing the humiliating details of her mission with a friend like Kakashi or two jerks like Ari and Jin... she would rather go to the jerks every time. Who cared what they thought of her, or how they saw her? But she cared about what Kakashi thought...

Yet it was now only fair that he knew exactly how long they were going to be stuck here.

"We won't be reassigned for another five months at this rate," she told him.

"Do you still want to run?"

She looked up at him and saw the steely resolve in his gaze. "No, you were right the first time," she sighed. "It would just be leaping right out of the pot and into a fire pit."

She dropped her hands into her lap and stared at the drink on the table. It was mysteriously empty. Perhaps that was why she was feeling a little loose-lipped tonight. Most of the time she tried not to talk about the mission at all. Or perhaps she was just sick of ignoring the gargantuan elephant in the room.

Kakashi stood and grabbed her wrist to drag her up too. "Come on," he said.

"What?"

He dropped some change on the table and pulled her across the pub, till they were out the entrance and back on the street. Definitely busier. Sakura was jostled on all sides by elbows and shoulders and loud music was blaring from somewhere nearby, but Kakashi never let go of her hand, even though her fingers with lax and clammy.

"What are you up to?" she called. Kakashi had stopped and was looking around over the heads of the surrounding revellers.

"Over here," he announced suddenly, and began dragging her back through the ground to another building. Another pub – bar or club? She hoped it wasn't a brothel.

Pushed in through the doorway, she was swept up in a whirlwind of warmth and raucous singing. More loud music was playing in here and the ground was shaking – and that was because she was surrounded by people stomping their feet and whipping around like they were trying to crack the floorboards.

Sakura took an instinctive step back towards the door, wondering if she'd intruded into some kind of lunatic asylum. Kakashi pushed her forward, right into the heart of the swooping, stomping crowd, and whirled her around to take her hands. What the hell was he doing? Had he gone mad? "Sensei-"

"Shut up, Sakura."

Then he was moving along with everyone else and Sakura had to stagger along with him, lest she be stomped on too.

This wasn't the kind of dancing she was used to back in Konoha, where clubs played music and people without an ounce of rhythm in their bones stood in one place and flailed about mildly. Nor was it an elegant waltz or the kind of quick-step competitive dancing she sometimes saw on TV. This was just a lot of people in very little space, skipping around to some kind of choreographed mass dance that they all seemed to instinctively know. Even Kakashi seemed to know the steps and where to move. And just when Sakura thought she was getting the hang of spinning and stomping her feet in time to everyone else, they would all suddenly jump sideways, and Sakura would begin staggering all over again.

"Getting the hang of it?" Kakashi called to her over the din of singing and whistles. He was dancing as well as anyone else. The prat.

"No," Sakura said emphatically, but she had to admit it was quite compelling. She would have more bruises on her toes tomorrow than she'd collected all year, but there was a kind of fun mindlessness to prancing around like an idiot.

"Look sharp, Sakura." Kakashi seized her around the waist and lifted her up high, turning in a quarter circle as he did so. Before she had any time to scold him, she realised she'd been deposited in front of a new partner.

Oh, boy. She looked over her shoulder and saw Kakashi was dancing with a new partner too – a woman who knew how to move a lot better than Sakura did.

"New to this?" asked her partner.

It must have been painfully obvious, but fortunately after a few turns and two more jumps, she was picked up and tossed back to Kakashi with few gaffes. That was better. Sakura didn't feel so bad when she stepped on his feet by accident.

Finally, after a little more swooping and quite a bit of whirling, the music stopped and everyone was clapping and shouting gleefully. Sakura bowed to her partner like everyone else then promptly turned and began walking off the dance floor.

"Oh, no you don't," Kakashi grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her back. "You'll enjoy the next one."

She wanted to ask how the hell he knew that when the music hadn't even started yet. When she glanced over at the musicians' stage, she saw one of them was getting out a shamisen. She smothered a grin that threatened to break out across her face and went instead with a contrived gasp of horror. "Oh, you fiend, what have I done to deserve this!"

Kakashi laughed at her expression. Then the drums began, and the strings of the shamisen began twanging away, and a new dance began that was preciously slower than the last which allowed her to keep pace with everyone else a little more easily. He could laugh at her all he liked. Mere mortals like Sakura who didn't have the benefit of the sharingan to help them mimic movement perfectly had to make do with just learning by trial and error.

But he was right, annoyingly. Whereas the last song had been fast paced and the dancing had seemed to follow a random melody of its own, this time the dancers were moving in time to the beats of an upbeat marching song. This was something Sakura could follow. Step, step, turn, clap. Spin, spin, spin – ok, less spinning – back, step, step, turn, clap. And the shamisen wasn't nearly as irritating when it was played by a master instead of a warbling prostitute with her client.

"You're getting the hang of it," Kakashi said encouragingly.

She smiled her appreciation. Now that she had the simple steps down pat, she felt like she was part of the music; the same way she felt when she pulled off a flawless taijutsu sequence. Her body was an instrument – powerful and graceful and, wait, where the hell was Kakashi going?

He'd turned from the dance and collared a young man standing a little way behind him, clapping in time to the music, and without a word of explanation to either of them, he all but slung said man into his previous position. "Keep going," he called to Sakura. "I'll be back in a minute."

Her new partner linked arms with her cheerfully enough. After three spins, Sakura lost sight of Kakashi and was back to concentrating on the dance. She assumed he was just answering the call of nature after all that beer and would be back soon, so she carried on stepping and turning and clapping in time to the music with very little thought of her lost partner. When a new song began, she took the hand of her new partner and swirled and crouched along with everyone else, and she was glad that he was picking it up as he went along too. It was a refreshing change from always being lumped with Mr Smarty-pants who was automatically Good At Everything, and it made her feel less clumsy by contrast.

But two songs passed and Sakura was beginning to wonder what had happened to Mr Smarty-pants. How long did it take to answer nature's call anyway? She tried looking around, but with all these bobbing heads it was difficult to see anyone more than a few feet away.

Another song ended and a new sweeping gigue arrived that involved a lot of flicking ankles while all dancers skipped in a giant circle. Utter madness, and yet Sakura still laughed breathlessly as everyone skipped inwards, crashed, and bounced back again, as if crashing into strangers was a highly enjoyable way to waste an evening, and when she pirouetted she finally glimpsed her lost partner.

Kakashi was standing by the wall, clapping along to the music with all the other spectators.

When the music finally died down, Sakura weaselled away from the dance floor to approach him. "You were gone long enough to fill a lake," she remarked, having to raise her voice over the din. The next song had already started up and it was a loud, fast one – she was quite glad to have stepped out.

"What?" Kakashi gave her a puzzled look, either unable to hear her or not understanding what she meant. "I got something for you."

"From the toilet?" She leaned back. "You can keep it, thanks."

He crooked his finger for her to follow him, and they slipped between the throng of spectators to escape out the door again. The busy street, which had seemed so crowded before, felt blessedly cool and quiet by comparison. Somewhere nearby, firecrackers were popping and showered sparks filled the darkened sky. It was the same as any other night in Otafuku Gai, but this time she truly felt the air of celebration, and she followed Kakashi up a steep alley till they were standing on a corner by a fruit vendor.

He turned to her, cocking his head. "You're smiling," he said.

"So?" She shrugged her shoulders defensively. It wasn't a crime to smile, even though she knew she hadn't done much smiling lately.

"Here." Kakashi reached into his pocket and held out a loop of jingling beads and red silk string. "I got this for you."

She blinked in surprise, her hands slowly reaching up to accept the gift. Pink quartz, painted jade beads, and a charm of a fat, smiling cat with its paw raised. "What..."

"It's a luck charm," he said simply. "Now we both have one."

Her smile flitted back across her face, more uncertainly this time, "Thank you," she said, slipping the bracelet over her wrist and pulling the strings to tighten it. The fit was perfect and the colours were her favourites, but she still looked a little curiously at Kakashi, wondering what had brought on such a fit of generosity.

He understood the unasked question in her gaze. "I know there isn't much I can do for you out here, on this mission," he said quietly. "But if I can make you smile, just for a few minutes...?"

His words brought her crashing back down to earth like nothing else could. Tipsy on the plum wine and the dancing, she had actually been able to forget, for a little while at least, where she was and why she was in this strange town. And forget completely that in a couple of days she would have to go back to Hiroshi.

"And I know you don't like letting me in on what's going on between you and Suda Hiroshi, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I'm right here. You don't have to go to Ari or Jin or anyone else. I want to be able to help you any way I can."

His hands came up to rest on her tensed shoulders, large and warm and strong. Physically, he was one of the most reassuring people she knew. But emotionally...?

"If you need help," he said, "please ask. All you have to do is ask and I'll do everything in my power to help."

She looked away. Hiding in the shadows of her thoughts was her last resort. But for all his platitudes about helping her, she knew there were just some things he wouldn't do and she couldn't ask of him.

When she didn't acknowledge the conviction behind his words, his fingers tightened ever so slightly. "I can kill him," he said, so simply and easily that it took a moment to realise what he'd said.

"Who? Hiroshi or Danzou?" she whispered incredulously.

"Either. Both."

Damn, he really was crazy, wasn't he? Kakashi wasn't strong enough to kill Danzou, and even if he was, the Hokage's supporters would end him before Danzou's body ever hit the ground. Then they'd be the ones to inherit Konoha. As bad as Danzou was, his supporters were far worse. They were as crazy and cruel as him but without their leader to keep them in line and focus that radical energy into blind obedience, it would be anarchy. Sakura didn't think Kakashi could be so reckless, not just for her sake alone. And as vile a person as Hiroshi was, did he deserve to be murdered because he was an unwitting pawn in a scarlet-scroll mission? "If Hiroshi dies I'll simply be moved on to the next man," she reminded him quietly. "And why would you take on Danzou? I thought you had no intention of becoming a martyr."

"I would if that was what you asked of me."

"So what am I supposed to say? 'Go get yourself killed for my sake, please?'" She rolled her eyes and shrugged his hands off. "If I want anyone dead, I'll do it myself, thank you. I don't want or need that kind of help."

"Then you'll at least let me be a friend?" he asked. "You'll stop trying to keep me out of things, and you'll keep trying to have fun?"

"Oh, you think having your feet covered in bruises is fun, do you?"

He nodded. "Looked like it."

"It wasn't so bad," she admitted grudgingly.

"Do you want to go back?" He gestured in the vague direction of the club they'd left.

"No... I think I've had a long day and I'm tired," she said, her head dipping low. "Thank you."

"For making you tired?"

"And for this." She held up her hand to show him the charm bracelet. "And for... offering to kill our boss."

He sighed, like he was disappointed she'd turned the offer down. "I suppose you want to go back to the inn?"

She thought of Jin and Ari, and how likely it was that they were already out fishing for women to spend the rest of the night with. It was probably safe to go back, so she nodded, and turned with him to head back down the alley, back toward the district where their inn lay. Kakashi's arm gathered loosely around her shoulders as they walked. She kept close to his side, glad of the amity he offered. Even if he couldn't kill for her, or magically spirit her away where no one could find her, he could at least make her smile.

And maybe...

"Sensei, would you-"

She cut herself off. The sound of his title froze her own tongue. No, she told herself, horrified. She couldn't ask him that. She couldn't ask her sensei that.

"Would I what?" he asked, squeezing her shoulder cajolingly.

Sakura shook her head, swallowing. "Nothing. Let's just go back."


TBC