OOOOOOOOO
The pale moon was casting long shadows across the village by the time he started home. He dropped off the balcony that wrapped Iruka's apartment building, landing lightly on the rough flagstones below. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and ambled in the direction of his own flat.
The streets were unlit and deserted, though they could have been packed with citizens for all the attention he was paying his surroundings. What Iruka had told him over dinner was certainly not the whole story – the chuunin had paused for too long in the narrative that Kakashi was sure that he was carefully choosing his words, omitting pieces that he didn't particularly want to share.
Even so, the disjointed bits were fascinating. Kakashi's steps slowed until he'd almost stopped, too caught up in his musings to worry about the approaching, unthreatening presence.
"Penny for your thoughts?" The Hokage crossed her arms and dropped a shoulder against the wall.
"I talked to Iruka."
She made a soft noise under her breath. "And?"
The question hung in the air for a long moment before Kakashi figured out how to put his myriad of thoughts in words. Surprisingly, the numerous ideas collapsed into one, very simple, fact. "It is…exactly…what I would have done."
That comment was enough to bring Tsunade off the wall. "Really?"
"He doesn't know me, Hokage-sama, but even so…even so…" Kakashi trailed off, shaking his head.
He was immensely grateful that she understood without him needing to verbalize the rationale. For all his preachings on 'seeing beneath the underneath,' he hid himself behind a plethora of masks, and he knew, for a fact, that Iruka had never seen anything other than the outer mask.
The other man should not have been able to predict his actions. Iruka believed that he had hung Kakashi's outer form on a personality that his brain created to help him get through his injury. The truth, though, was downright scary to Kakashi. The thought that a single person with minimal exposure to him could strip away all his protective barriers to reveal the true soul underneath terrified him.
And he had to wonder if, given the chance to spend as much time with Iruka as his counterpart had, he would follow the same path.
Whatever that was.
He could only speculate, and he had to snicker a little. Iruka probably had done more damage by not telling him – it allowed his mind free rein.
Even under the masks, he was still a bit of a pervert.
OOOOOOOOO
A scarce two streets away from the jounin and hokage, a shadow detached itself from the wall and slunk along the gutter at the base of the building, following a lone figure who was striding purposefully home from the all-night stop-and-shop with a plastic bag of groceries swinging from the crook of its arm.
The shadow braced under the overhang as the figure juggled groceries, keys and a well-polished, antique doorknob. When the door was finally kicked open, the shadow darted forward, hands snapping up to muffle the shout. Momentum carried them both over the threshold and into the dark recesses beyond.
The door slammed violently shut behind them.
OOOOOOOOO
Outside the window was disconcertingly quiet, especially if you knew what was going on inside. All he could hear was indistinct chattering from the streets below and a scolding quarrel going on between two birds who'd chosen to nest in the eaves, but as he ducked through opening, sound bombarded him on all sides.
The dull roar of conversation – which was contained in the room by chakra shields and doubled by the muffling – made any individual words indistinguishable. Kakashi's eyes widened at the number of high-ranking officials packed into the hokage's office, including both Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura, the village elders, the guild leaders, the head ANBU officer, and even some of the leaders of the shinobi branches –Interrogation, Intelligence, Research, etc.
Tsunade looked furious.
She was standing on the outskirts, allowing the arguments to roll over her, waiting for the emotions to stabilize before she weighed in.
"What's going on?" Kakashi muttered, pitching his voice to carry to her ears even under the extraordinarily vocal participants.
"You're not going to like this." She snapped back.
OOOOOOO
Something about the early morning breeze swirling gently through the village was off, but Iruka couldn't quite put his finger on it. The wind nipped at his exposed face with a slightly sharper bite than he'd expected given that spring was hovering just around the corner, and he pulled his sleeves down to ward off the chill.
He couldn't help but mutter, "Curiouser and curiouser," under his breath, allowing his lips to twitch up into a smile.
"Quoting stories again, Iruka-sensei?." The voice came from the air right beside his ear.
Iruka almost fell over a low vegetable stand one of the shop owners had just put out into the street as he turned towards the sound. "Kakashi-sensei?" He paused to glare at the guiltless heads of lettuce, before turning back to the jounin. "Good morning."
"Morning." Kakashi patted the vegetables as he passed. "Don't worry, his bark's worse than his bite."
When Iruka rolled his eyes, he laughed. "You know, talking to yourself is the first sign of mental instability."
"Oh, that's rich coming from you. You're the one talking to the foodstuffs." He glanced sideways at the jounin as Kakashi fell into step with him.
"Yes, but that's still a step up from blathering to myself."
"Blathering?" Iruka couldn't quite keep the indignation from his voice, but he was distracted from it quickly. "Are…are you walking me to work?"
Kakashi faltered a step. "Would you rather I not?"
He just shook his head, not entirely sure what he should say to that.
As they reached the main intersection, in front of the hokage's tower, Iruka veered left around the base, heading for the Academy entrance.
"Where are you going?"
Iruka pointed vaguely in the direction of the low building. "My classroom?" He'd meant for it to be a statement, but it came out as more of an unsure question.
"It's Saturday."
"It…really?" Iruka waded through his brain, trying to figure out just where, exactly, Friday had gotten off to. He swiveled around and climbed up the stairs towards the mission room. "Guess I'm working over there, then."
"Maa, I'll see you later, Iruka-sensei." The jounin touched his fingers to his brow, inclined his head slightly, and vanished.
"I guess…" He was left in a cloud of confusion on the deserted steps, muttering "I really thought he was going to ignore me again after I told him about my coma."
Only to remember the comment about talking to oneself, and he had to settle for shaking his head at the oddness of it all.
The mission room was completely empty until exactly thirty seconds after he sat down at the desk. Two trail-weary shinobi lugged themselves through the door, and they turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. From that moment on, he was continuously working. One group would leave to be replaced almost instantly by another.
After a couple of hours, he realized that, though they all looked vaguely familiar, he didn't know a single one.
"Busy day, eh?" A non-descript shinobi offered him a sympathetic smile and bent to help gather the reports scattered by the instantaneous disappearance of the previous group.
"Thank you." Iruka slid the stack into one of the drawers. "I've never seen it like this." As if on cue, three more shinobi and a kuniochi materialized in the center of the room. Iruka cursed under his breath and then murmured to the other man, "And you can just pretend you didn't hear that."
He let out a heartfelt laugh, "I heard nothing. But I will get out of the way. Those four look like they're going to start knocking heads together if they don't get some service." He grinned when Iruka rolled his eyes and dodged the group advancing on the desk as he headed for the door.
The woman sneered at Iruka. "It's about time, chuunin. You should be doing your job rather than chatting."
Iruka dropped his gaze to the woman's report before slowly raising his eyes back to her face. "You've filled out blocks 14, 22 and 28 wrong. You'll have to fix them before we can accept this."
She snatched the paper out of his hand with enough force to tear the bottom left corner. It seemed a little more violent than absolutely necessary.
Though the rest of his shift was just as busy, it was decidedly less eventful. None of the other shinobi seemed inclined to interact with him beyond dropping their papers into his outstretched hand. He left the hokage's tower and had to admit that he was a little disappointed when Kakashi wasn't waiting for him outside. The relationship between the two of them certainly wasn't the same, he'd still enjoyed dinner between the awkward moments, and he was rather touched that the jounin had sought him out this morning.
"Looks like you survived." The shinobi from the mission room had just emerged from a store next to him, a paper-wrapped book tucked under his arm.
"Yes," Iruka paused significantly, "Barely."
A snicker, "Should I ignore that as well?"
The comment made him smile. "As long as you're not planning on reporting me to the Hokage for derision." Iruka turned towards the other man, "I'm Umino Iruka."
"Himura Shishi."
"Shishi?" Humor crept into the edges of his voice.
"You're laughing at my name?"
"Sorry." Iruka rubbed self-consciously at the back of his neck.
"Relax, I'm just giving you a hard time." He winked. "Ah, Hatake-san."
There was nothing threatening in the way the copy-nin approached them, but Shishi took a small, but significant step away from Iruka. "I need to be going." The man waved to Iruka, nodded respectfully to Kakashi and headed off down the street.
"Following me around again?" Iruka teased.
Kakashi's hand crushed his uniform sleeve into his upper arm, and Iruka gaped down at the tight grip, but was cut off before he could protest. "Be careful."
With that cryptic warning, he was left alone in the middle of the street.
OOOOOOOO
Old houses have their own voices, which complain loudest at night when the human inhabitants aren't masking them. Iruka's apartment creaked and groaned of it's own accord, and he'd long since learned to tune out the typical noises.
What brought him out of his dreamless sleep, however, was not a typical noise, but a soft squeaking of the floorboards that he only associated with a person walking down the hall. He dropped noiselessly out of bed, arming himself as he slunk to the bedroom door. The door crackled as he pressed his back to it, and he cursed the fact that he hadn't yet found time to replace the ancient and over-worn door.
The hallway beyond was empty. He crept along the edging floorboards, but only made it halfway before he was seized.
No amount of thrashing could free him. One strong arm compressed his chest to the point where he could barely breathe, pinning his arms to his sides and making his vision swim in bright pinpoints of light. His weapon dropped from nerveless fingers and clanged ominously on the floor. He tried to cry out, but couldn't get any sound past the obstruction.
The unmistakable sound of a metal blade sliding free of a sheath echoed obscenely loud in the darkness, and he had a chance for one last, frantic struggle before the kunai slammed home. The wielder deftly executed a killing stroke with practiced ease, avoiding ribs and piercing his heart.
In the last moment before his vision completely darkened, the pressure loosened, and he screamed.
OOOOOOOOO
Bet no one saw that coming! (so to speak) Don't worry, neither did I.
Sorry for the terribly long wait, but I wanted to make sure that I had both chapters done, because I was afraid I might get lynched if I left it off here.