So...Wedding is next chapter. Um...the headrest issue here: you actually did apologize to your headrest if you knocked it around. I'm using a bit of creative license here and saying that not everyone used them, since I can't find who/what/when/where people used them and it seems to have been something attached to the elite or the rich. Yeah. And if you're picking up the idea that Kakashi is a man with a certain kind of experience you would be right, but he picked that experience up in his youth, when he was Sakura's age, and since then hasn't had the time for that sort of lifestyle or activity. But he is genuinely interested in Sakura, he can barely keep his eyes off her. Yes.
Thanks for the adds to various alerts and favorites lists, as well as my lovely reviewers from last chapter: angel897, InARealPickle, Raikira, Linnorria, IncandescentMind, Kagomaru, Prescripto13, nickule, twinkletoast, and Sovereign State. Thank you all so very very much :)
The next update will probably be in a few weeks, just so you know.
Edit 6:15pm PST: It should be noted that this is taking place months after chapter 3, it's winter here which is why Kakashi seems like he's having deja-vu or something like that.
Enjoy!
Kakashi woke to the sound of a shoji door sliding open. It wasn't yet dawn, and Sakura's mother was already awake. He contained a groan at the early hour, the previous day's cold journey catching up with him to some extent. There was nothing he wanted more that morning than to curl up in his futon and stay warm. Sakura had peppered him with questions the night before, and they had talked together for a few hours. She had dozed off in the middle of a question, her cheek pillowed on her head rest. Glancing over at her in the darkness as Ume pottered with the fire, a smile ticked at his mouth. Her hair almost looked purple in the low light, a far-cry from the fiery hues which had fascinated him the night before as they spoke.
If Ume was awake she would probably appreciate some help, so he sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His elbow knocked his headrest away and he scowled at it. At home Kakashi preferred comfort rather than the appearance of his hair each morning, and slept with a pillow rather than a headrest. He was wholly unused to how one treated headrests, with the various rituals associated with them, but he knew enough that after knocking it around he was supposed to in essence apologize to it. He decided he would do that after he felt awake, which would be after he got dressed, and not a moment before. Headrests were for people who could afford having hairstyles, or for people who wanted hairstyles. He was neither. The headrest would be replaced and apologized to later.
The shoji slid again and Tenzou appeared, already dressed for the day. Kakashi almost shrugged himself back into his blankets in resignation. He was old if Tenzou was waking up before him—dressed before Kakashi had even gotten out of bed. Sakura mumbled a little in her sleep, turning away from the growing light of the fire as Ume unbanked it to start cooking breakfast. From his half-sitting position, Kakashi couldn't help but envy her deep sleep. It had been pleasant to talk to her about life the previous evening, but telling her about his injury had had Kakashi sleeping fitfully. Dreams of the past, not nightmares, had plagued him. Obito's dying words, his wish that Kakashi make sure Rin knew how much the Uchiwa had cared for her, his father on a litter owned by the Sarutobi clan—gasping at every rocking motion, the lines of worry etched into Sarutobi-sama's face as he looked for his nephew in the group which had returned, and the sight of Obito's lifeless body at the Uchiwa family funeral.
He hadn't told any of that to Sakura. She would know eventually, but those weeks spent in the countryside fighting rebels had been far too terrible to recount to a woman he barely knew and wanted to impress. He told her about the daring fight when he had lost his eye, about how Obito had saved his and his father's life shortly after, of Asuma's constant whining about being away from Kurenai. He told the few parts of the tale which made her smile, ones which had him smiling back at her in the growing darkness as the banked fire had burned even lower.
"Kakashi," his eye tracked over to Tenzou's face as the brown haired man waited awkwardly for the samurai's attention. Tenzou's voice was soft, as though he were trying not to wake Sakura. Kakashi almost wondered if it might benefit both of them to see how much noise she could sleep through but decided that it might be taken well if he were to use a practical joke to wake her up in her own home. She would probably hit him, or Tenzou.
"I have your clothing in the washroom. The water is still fairly warm as well, which was a happy discovery this morning." There was a certain slyness to his servant's tone that had Kakashi narrowing his eye at the younger man, half contemplating asking an embarrassing question about the possible presence of previous unhappy discoveries involving Tenzou's history with morning baths. It was true that lately they had only been heating their wash water until it was pleasantly warm in the evening, but stone cold by morning, but he had only failed to tell that to Tenzou once.
As he got out of bed Sakura started to wake, rubbing at her face as she tossed a little. Kakashi felt the breath go out of himself for a moment, watching her. It had been years since he had watched a woman wake up, let alone as slowly and innocently as she did. He almost had to tear himself away, and only the somewhat hollow reassurance that, in a few months, they would always wake up next to one another gave him the willpower to leave.
After breakfast Kakashi caught Masaki as the man was about to leave for the day, intent on making sure that his shop was opened up correctly. The straight set to his mouth and the slight squint to his eyes told the world that he did not expect his employees to have handled themselves correctly since the previous afternoon. Kakashi took care to keep his tone light, undemanding.
"Masaki, is there anything I or Tenzou can do for you while we are here? Any repairs, or something to be built?" The shorter man hesitated for a half second, his eyes subtly flicking around the house before his gaze finally found where Sakura and Ume had settled themselves. The squint in his eyes eased somewhat at the sight, it seemed, and the breath he took to speak was relaxed.
"You are here to get to know my daughter, so what you can do for me is to do that. As for Tenzou-kun, I believe my wife would know far better what needs to be done," at this his voice raised a little to get Ume's attention, "If the shop hasn't burned down I might be back at midday, if it has I will try to return before nightfall." And with that he was gone, and Ume was calling Tenzou over to set him to moving firewood inside. Kakashi listened, from where he stood, to her instructions as well and moved to follow his servant outside.
"Kakashi-san, I would prefer it if you came to sit with Sakura and I," Ume's voice had a particular quality to it, one which Kakashi could have sworn he had heard once before—a playful attitude with a touch of crazy, almost. Because of that touch of crazy he moved cautiously back to where the two women sat around the fire and gingerly tucked himself into the blankets they had laid out—probably strategically, too, he noted as he ended up much nearer to Sakura than Ume. He must have looked concerned, or some consternation must have made itself available on his face, because Sakura smiled sweetly at him before launching into an explanation.
"We don't do much in the winter, my father wants us both inside and warm. Anything which he needs help with outside he will bully one of his employees into helping him with. Or sometimes Ry—" It was out of the corner of his eye that he caught the tiny, silencing move of Ume's hand as Sakura spoke, and the young woman quickly changed tack, "Sometimes one of the men from the village will offer to help him, he can be fairly adamant and so Father will give him a small job just to get him to go home. He can be quite persistent." A brief surge of curiosity coursed through him at the scene he wasn't supposed to see, but he kept it to himself. They couldn't burn through their conversation topics in a single day, so Kakashi changed the subject after a polite, "if only more people would follow such an example."
"Sakura I seem to remember that you embroider?" Her eyes, the color of grass, widened happily at his words and her hands twitched in excitement as she replied.
"Yes, would you like to see what I've been working on?" At his nod she was quickly standing and retreating into the house. The sudden loss of her warmth was felt immediately as his left side seemed much colder than it had only moments before. He smoothed a hand over the rumpled blanket Sakura had left behind in her haste, almost absently tracing the pattern with his index finger. Across from him Ume was writing what seemed to be a list with a scarily familiar glint to her half-smile.
The sound of Sakura's quick footsteps returning had him turning his attention up towards her, and as he saw a similar smile on her face he realized why Ume's tics seemed to trigger memories—the last time he had seen and spent time with Sakura he had witnessed and admired her personality and quirks. It made sense that she would take after her mother, and that she had picked up certain manners and habits from the woman. Unbeknownst to him, as he was re-seeing her, she was re-seeing him as well. When she had returned to Iimori after becoming engaged, her first few nights home were marked by fitful sleeping as she remembered Kakashi and worried.
Worry was new to her, and it had settled into her stomach unpleasantly for the last several months that the man she was marrying was only six years younger than her father, that he would ignore her and take a mistress and claim that woman's children as his own, that she would somehow be a horrible wife. She hadn't taken her concerns to her mother or father because they loved her despite all of the troubles her pink hair had brought them, and she was uncertain about whether they would choose her happiness or her wellbeing. But seeing Kakashi coming into the house behind her father had somehow allayed the fears of the past months. There was a strange calmness to him which was a balm to her spirit, he didn't seem capable of the things which had worried her for months.
She settled back into the blankets, warmed on the right side by Kakashi and Sakura moved subtly closer to that warmth since her side had gone cold in her absence. With a little pride mixed with a touch of shyness she handed her latest project to her fiancé. As he gently touched her work and gave it his complete attention, she looked at his profile and tried yet again to commit it to memory. His face had faded so quickly from her memory from their meeting in the summer, only his shocking white hair and his sad, serious eye had remained to any extent. She hadn't seen his blind eye all those months ago. That eye hadn't clouded over as most blind eyes she had ever seen—two sets, her grandfather's eyes and the eyes of her childhood tutor—rather taking a stained reddish hue which had looked like it was blood red in the firelight the night before. It served to remind her that he was a warrior, toughened by that life.
The picture he had painted the night before had been sweeping and grand, but it was a picture in which he tried to minimize himself. He downplayed every triumph he had had and magnified those of others, and Sakura had noticed. The tale was still wonderful and engaging, but the short periods of silence gave away that he was editing the experience as he spoke. She wasn't sure he was editing himself out or the nastier sides to war. But as he turned the fabric he held to see new angles, giving light praise at what he saw, she felt that he was as genuine here as he had been the night before. He didn't seem to adjust his words to suit who he was with, because he acted the same here as he had when her mother had been absent.
Ume had worried herself sick over Sakura's request, saying that the wedding was too far away to possibly allow such behavior—until Sakura had made it explicitly clear that she was not planning on sharing a bed with Kakashi, only a room. Even then she had heard her mother's hissed warning to him before bed, and seen how tense he had instantly become. But the long conversation the night before had been something Sakura needed, worrying about how he might change when not under the watchful eye of her mother. He hadn't, he was the same person no matter the situation, it seemed.
They slept next to the fire again that evening, facing each other across the distance between their beds. In the firelight his hair looked almost as orange as her mother's which had Sakura almost giggling as she pointed out the change. His smile changed his entire face, his eyes crinkling closed for a moment before he opened his good eye to look at her.
"And your hair looks purple in the early morning. That will surely never fail to fascinate me, I think." At his words she smiled a little, feeling a blush flash over her cheeks. They lapsed for a moment into silence as Sakura didn't know how to respond and he seemed content enough as he was. It was enough to spur her into asking a question which had unnerved her for months, a question she hadn't wanted to bring up to her mother—although it was certainly more proper to ask her mother than Kakashi, so she brought it up in a round-about way.
"What will you do if I don't have a child within a year?" her voice was small but steady with the conviction of the question—Samurai were permitted to divorce their wives if more than a year went by with no prospect of having an heir, or to claim an illegitimate son or daughter as their true heir and force their wife to raise the child. He did not seem the type, but she still needed to know. She would be moving far from home, from her parents, and if he were to abandon her it would be a difficult journey homewards, and that was if the local lord did not deem the separation shameful for her—in which case she needn't worry about her journey home, because she would be ordered to kill herself. Kakashi frowned before answering, his face showing a little of his puzzlement while his voice stayed light.
"We barely know one another, a situation which will improve only slightly tomorrow. I won't see you again until your family makes the trip to Fujimi in the spring for our wedding, and we won't be able to talk until late in the evening on the day itself…I don't plan on our doing anything more than sleeping." It was hard to tell but it almost looked like a tiny blush crept up his cheeks, an answer to her own earlier one.
"I don't plan on anything more than sleeping side by side for a long time, Sakura, not until we know each other. People will start rumors that there is no baby because I don't want to touch you, or that you're barren, they will shake their heads at me for being foolish enough to be trapped in a spell and at you for luring a well-to-do samurai into marrying you. But they have no part in our lives, and we will have children when we are ready for them. I also don't make a habit of returning things in favor of something new," a ghost of a smile crossed his face before he continued—likely at the implication of her background as the daughter of a merchant, and of the troubles merchants encountered with people trying to return things they had already used.
"Besides, Asuma's uncle has promised to give me an Akita puppy as a wedding gift and we will have to spend a good amount of energy training it to be a good dog, we wouldn't have time to worry about a baby as well." The joking tone he used combined with his careful words had Sakura smiling as the last of her worries were lifted. She liked him, and his honesty. He seemed to know what was the honorable course of action, but he was also aware of how others would view the two of them. He had given voice to some of her exact concerns, and laid them to rest. She chose not to comment on her relief, only smiling as she started to speak.
"We had a dog when I was a little girl, his name was Ueno and he was an idiot. He chased carts and startled horses, one day a horse kicked him even. He walked in circles for a week afterwards, but it didn't stop him for long." Kakashi laughed softly, his eye leveled steadily at her as she spoke about her life in Iimori.
The morning of the fourth day was still and freezing as Kakashi and Tenzou readied themselves for the journey home. Sakura had made breakfast that morning, her technique gently criticized by her mother while Kakashi and Tenzou looked at Ume in disbelief—the young woman's cooking was far better than either of them typically managed, and Ume didn't think it was good enough? Kakashi vaguely knew that it was for his and Tenzou's benefit that Ume was trying to improve Sakura's abilities but he felt her abilities were more than adequate. Sakura was also giving tiny clues as to how she felt about her mother's words, a faint clenching of her fingers, brittle smiles, and few words.
The past few days spent in close proximity to her had given him wonderful insight to her—she was every bit as vivid as her hair. So, as Ume paused to take a breath in her worrying over if Tenzou had correctly packed everything in his bags, Kakashi took Sakura's arm and slipped away and out to the wrapped porch. Her smile was bemused as she followed him, closing shoji behind her as they walked. Once outside he waited for her to turn back to him after shutting the cold out of the house, stepping close to her and lifting a hand to her cheek.
Her skin was warm under his palm, his fingers, as he swept his thumb over the apple of her cheek. He was marrying a beautiful woman, but he wouldn't see her again for several months so this made sense, to give them both something to hold onto between now and then. So with a tiny huff of a laugh he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her lips. After a moment, as she got over her initial shock, she hesitantly pushed back, returning it. As they kissed he took one of her hands and brought it up to rest above his heart before cradling her face with both of his own.
It didn't last long, he had meant it as an innocent thing and he intended to keep it as an innocent thing.
"I'm sorry for—" Sakura stopped him by poking him—painfully—where he'd left her hand on his chest.
"Stop it, I've wanted you to kiss me for two days. Silly samur—" her teasing voice was probably what did it. It also might have been the way her lips were a bit reddened, or the certain tilt to her face, but it was with a smile that he stopped her teasing with another kiss.
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