Dividends

dividend (noun)- a quantity to be divided

Time to make one last appeal for the life I lead

Stop and stare

Yeah, you'd do anything to get what's fair

But fair ain't what you really need....

Oh, do you see what I see?........

The building across from Asuma's is called the Suicide Tower, because all of the Slot Machine Bums ,and Pigeon Chasing Alcoholics, and Broken Lollipop girls often climb up there to jump off. It's the tallest building on this side of town other than the Great Stone Faces who's stern stone set lips discourage any kind of candid actions like that. The Suicide Tower is generally the best place to fly if you're willing to try it out. Just to see if you actually can like everyone keeps saying of course.

It's not tall enough to cause a scene for every idle passing stranger, content in their rib cage canned universe to see. But if the fall doesn't kill you, the vacant eyes of the cobblestone streets below certainly will. I can imagine that the blood makes daisies sprout, pilfering up through the cracks like headstones.

Oddly enough, people still live in the Suicide Tower. Despite it's reputation for blood and guts there's an influx of tenants may'be every week. May'be because the rent is cheap and the upkeep is really good. But perhaps it's for something different. Something darker. The excitement. May'be they like the idea of the excitement.

The possibility of pure bloody chaos. They all enjoy the fact that they might one day just be looming at their kitchen window ironing a shirt crisp, and see a desperate body shoot flailing past, a downward spiraling rocket. Something way more exciting than the calls of murmuring voices from behind window bars, and the puppet's dance of male and female shapes joining silhouettes, pressed behind brocade curtains against the backdrop of lemon yellow lamplights at night.

As luck would always have it, Asuma's apartment where I've decided to stay....lives in the immediate vicinity, and the Suicide Tower is right outside my window; it's claw like roof tiles seeming to scratch at the plate grass like an angry tree.

The sickness lasts for days and for years, it seems. And mornings wind up into balls of bed sheets, my head poking just above them, and my eyes always seeming to find the window, hoping may'be for some of that excitement.

My stomach keeps churning and churning. And stillness of just before dawn breaths are shattered by the urge to vomit becoming an iron will. The bile comes hot and fast and demanding. And clenched jaws and closed tight lips aren't enough resist it. The days go fine. And the nights sweat out the day's missing fever.

In nightmares I dream of neglected spirits and golden doe eyes. I see the curve of Kakashi's smile and his bones curve away from me. Everything is lost in an instant, and I wake-up screaming, pillow clenched in fist, stomach turning, and Asuma barely sifted awake beside me.

I keep telling myself that it's Her. That's it's Her magnetism, and the way She looked at me, grinning, when she pulled that fabric taut across her belly. I keep telling myself that it's Her belly that is making me sick. Thoughts of them nestled between the sheets, him whispering words to her that belong to me, and she grasping and caressing parts of him that belong to me. I cry about this, but I began to realize that it's something more.

It's Asuma who finally makes this all clear to me. Somedays he wakes up and is fine, smoking, kissing, heeding. Then other days he is the charcoal black eyes and the iron grip. He's the man that I wanted....that I want Kakashi to save me from.

One day when he beats me to my knees for something I've said, when he leaves me there like a puzzle that has been knocked off of the table and needs to be re-pieced again; I sit and wrap my arms around my middle like I always do when I'm trying to keep everything in. Except this time it's different. This time I clench my forearms tight against myself and something clenches....kicks back. Something inside of me.

This is not something that needs to be kept a secret, I realize.

Except for from Asuma because as soon as I feel the kick. Firm, but gentle. Piercing yet subtle. Simply saying I'm here and not I'm here to hurt you. I know that the baby is Kakashi's. My first instinct is to cry. I sit there in the middle of the floor and rub my belly. My suddenly seemingly round belly. An overflowing belly.

And my hands work, and I try to bring myself to cry. My mouth gets hard and dry, but the tears never come. My nose is bleeding from Asuma's fists. The blood drips down the soft philtrum of my lips and on to my tongue in stringy rivulets. And I can't help but to smile.

Because I'm having a child. Me. A child. A baby. Kakashi's baby. It's like having Kakashi, a little bit of him inside of me. Something Asuma's greedy violent love can't take away. I feel happiness creep in a little. A few tangerine rays of sunshine peeking in over my shoulder. Warm and good against the back of my neck. This warm, good love. A baby.

"Kurenai." Asuma says, and his voice sounds strained when comes padding back into the room, barefoot and devoid of Cigarette. He stresses each individual syllable of my name, his words pressed malleable like cake icing that has been spread too thin. The way he always sounds when he's hurt me and is "sorry."

"Kurenai." he repeats and I try not to rub my belly again as he comes towards me. But the glee is becoming an itch to touch it, touch it. Touch Kakashi. Kakashi.....

"Kurenai? Are you okay, honey? Say something."

In just a few seconds a part of me that was an organ has become a Life. A stomach has become a Belly. Which is something large and beautiful, the core of a fruit that will soon overflow with new beauty. Asuma takes my arm at the crook of my elbow, and gently pulls me to my feet. I sway a little, dizzy, and he steadies me with an arm around my waist, his filthy fingers touching the cloth over my belly. Touching Kakashi. I shove him off, but he doesn't seem to notice.

His eyes glow with repentant light. "I'm so sorry, babe. Are you okay?" I smile "I'm fine." He wipes the blood from my face and I don't even wince. Suddenly, I know how this is supposed to go. "I'm fine, but I just need to run out one second for something." I say.

"Oh." says Asuma and his head bounces back like a rebounded basketball. Then "Oh." and he recovers, shrugs and turns his back. His eyes are on the kitty shaped clock hanging on the wall. The one he got me whatever holiday he even bothered with a gift. "You will be back though. Won't you?" he asks the black plastic cat face. It doesn't answer him, and for once neither do I.

At Kakashi's doorstep I have a thousand thoughts running on roller-coaster tracks through my mind. They crash and explode against one another and by the time Kakashi comes to the door the words are raining down into my mouth, burning bits of rubble.

But the sight of him washes all of that away. He takes my breath away with the obvious beauty that was apparent to me the first time I laid eyes on him naked and vulnerable, between moon beams that touched down through the windows, and with eyes that built soul-tie bridges between us.

He's hastily pulling the mask up over his nose, his hair swimming to the left on strong legs in that endearing way. Fully clothed and rumpled clothing at that, and yet I'm remembering him. Every scar and curve and line of his body. Every minuscule breath of his touch. Soft tongue and softer lips. Imploring eyes.

I want to hold him. I stand there staring at him there, and then subconsciously my hands touch my body, my belly, where he is also. I want to touch him even as he looks at me, and the bored answers in his eyes become confused questions. When he looks at me and recognizes me, and realizes that I'm here and instead of where I should be at this moment, and at every moment until the mission.

"Kurenai?" he asks, and reaches up to scratch at the back of his head. "What are you doing here? I thought..." I hate the harsh whisper in his voice, so I cut him off. "We need to talk, Kakashi."

He stares at me blankly, then half turns putting one arm up and leaning back against the doorframe to gaze behind him into the comfort of his house. When he looks back at me his face is desperate, eyebrows making desperate arches above those pleasurably inky eyes.

"Is everything alright, I mean is...are you alright?" he asks me.

I sigh. "Anko's in there, isn't she?" I say. Because it can't really be called a question. I can tell by the hushed hurry of his voice. The almost defensive hunch of his shoulders against the doorframe. And that one solid arm stretching like a bar between his body and the entrance. Between me and the entrance. He stares at me, hollow eyed and I can see that his fingers are starting their familiar tremble.

I think of her interlocking her strong fingers with those delicate flitting ones. I think of her hands in his hair, and her mouth on his body swallowing it down like sucked on and bitten into lemons. He keeps giving me that stare with those shaking hands, and for some reason I'm now determined to get inside the house.

I don't care and I think that she should see. I at least need to see her, need to tell her something. To spit the aching words burning inside my mouth into her face and burn the beautiful glowing skin off. I know just what I'll say. See you don't have him. He's not all yours, the way you thought. I have a part of him deep inside just the way you do. He's just as much mine as he is yours.

I step forward and Kakashi doesn't resist me. He keeps his eyes on me, but moves back so that I can claw into his space. I close my eyes and breathe in his air. Now that I think about it, I can't count how many times we've been in my apartment. Countless nights spent loving, lounging, jerking, on my pillows, my counters, my carpets, my bedsheets. Not once did he grapple me over to his place.

I look around at the low ceiling. The plain furnishings. Potted plants, bookshelf, couch. I watch, touching things. Dusting my fingertips. Tracing lazy circles on his carpet-less floorboards with careful steps. My belly yearns.

He's watching me, running shaking hands through his hair. Trembling, seizing fingers that move as if they're dancing around a spitfire. I've never seen his hands shake like this before. I stop walking, stand and stare. We gaze at each other face to face for one wild second. Then he folds those dancing hands together behind his head and opens his mouth to say something, but I speak faster.

"Kakashi, I'm pregnant."

His jaw moves, but his eyes die. I look away. I can hear him exhale, hear him turning his footsteps walking circles. "Kurenai." he begs me. "Yes." I say finally, turning back to look at him. His hair gripped tightly in those shaking hands. His skin looks ready to explode. But his eyes are lightless. Dead.

"That's impossible." he breathes. I walk towards him. Take his hands and put them on me, on my belly, on him in me, on Us. As soon as his fingers fold around the tautness of Us he jerks back as if burned. He turns away, mumbling swear words in furious strings. He turns his back to me almost wrenching his own hair from his head it seems with those spastic hands. stare at his broad back.

And then the tears come.

Warm and fast. Washing down my cheeks. This is not the way it's supposed to be happening. He was supposed to be...happy. "Kakashi." I choke out. Now it's my turn to beg. His shoulder blades tense like the word, like me saying his name stabs him, he still doesn't turn around to face me when he says "It can't be mine."

I think that I have just had an abortion.

Those words, full of pure malice, melted sugar hate kick me in the stomach. Knock the wind out of me. Knock me over with a force that might as well dislodge the fetus from my flesh, now. "Kakashi!" I scream. "Don't say that!" I'm not understanding. I beg him. I touch his arm, but he whirls around manic; those dead eyes pressing into mine, trembling hands push the hair from my face even as he says "I'm sorry, Kurenai. But I can't be the father. It's not mine. It's...."

"It is yours!" I scream. He tries to shush me. He puts those delicate fingers like bone white silk gags dancing across my mouth. But I bite him. Hard enough to draw blood. He jerks back, yelping, shaking those bone white silk gags where they have begun to unravel in sticky cherry juice red. And I'm screaming at him "It is yours! It is!"

He pleads with me "Keep your voice down, please." cupping one dripping hand under the air to catch that precious red. "It is yours!" but it's too late. Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered when she first came in. Somehow, subconsciously I knew she was always there like a neglected spirit. The tormented ghost of a happiness that died before it could even breach the coastline of joy, just waiting in the corner for an opportunity.

She stands there beside the bookcase in a doorway that must lead to someplace that makes it easy to creep in and watch. She's wearing a large shirt that drapes from her shoulders, hiding her belly from him and in that instant I realize that he doesn't know, and she never told him. Now it's probably too late.

Her eyes are war trenches. Dug deep into her skull and pitted to be filled with the barbed wire that runs down her cheeks in salt water drops. Even though I was the one screaming she's not looking at me, only him. Only him. And he stares back at her stricken, the hands shaking and spraying blood like a rotating sprinkler.

He doesn't try to speak, and neither does she. I feel the moment is beyond explanation. Beyond words, beyond breaths and feelings, now. That time is all gone, and there is only room for action. She walks up to him and slaps him.

His face careens to the side, neck twist, and he does nothing. He doesn't even crank his face back over to look at her. He just stands there, staring dully to the side when she hits him again. And again. And again. And again. And the slaps turn into fists. And soon he's sinking to the floor, cradling his chin to his knees while she pounds him. Chipping away at his skull, crying. Screaming in sounds that transcend language. The pure animal shrieks of a mother disowned, of a lover betrayed, of a woman scorned.

And I'm sorry that I'm this...this thing that causes the heart wrenching roars, guttural primal cries to burst from the chest of a woman. A woman who's beautiful. Who's civil. Who's just like me. I'm ripping open.

She hits him until she can't lift her arms anymore. Until the belly gets in the way, and she's doubled over heaving for breath in between the screaming sobs. When she can finally move, she turns past me and sobs out the front door.

Kakashi doesn't move. When the door slams behind her, the sudden silence is more destructive than all of the screaming noise. It echoes a heavy truth that pushes me to move towards Kakashi, and refuses to let him lift his head.

"Kakashi." I whisper, words faltering again in this fractured moment. This broken-ness. When he lifts his head, the mask has slid down around his chin. His right eye is large, the flesh purple and crusting over, and the tiny slit of an iris that points out is neither inky nor gorgeous. It's hateful.

Full of deep, ugly hate. "Kurenai, get out of my house." he commands softly and flatly. And so I know that what he's really saying is get out of my life. So, I leave without argument.

Well, things are taking a turn for the dramatic here aren't they? Whew, can you feel the tension in the air? What happens next, you ask? Well, there is another chapter just waiting for you.....^.^