The Spaces In-Between

Reflection

Kakashi stared at the ceiling above, listening to the soft breathing of his wife.  She had been completely wiped out after their training today.  He smiled in the darkness.  She had definitely surprised him.  After all these years, she still remembered the hand signs he had taught her so long before and tapping into her chakra as she had done was an added bonus.  If she could really learn to focus her chakra, she would be more than capable of defending herself from formidable foes.  

He rolled on his side and rolled her carefully against him.  God he loved her.  More than words or actions could ever express.  He gently tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear.  His mind going back to the first time he saw her.  He had been sitting in the tree when she materialized into his field.  She had looked so joyful as she ran through the field, her arms spread out.  He had laughed softly as she tried to do a a cartwheel and ended up landing flat on the ground.  She had not been very coordinated then and scrawny as a bean pole.  He had been annoyed at her appearance in his territory.  Yet her display had intrigued him enough to leave the tree and approach her.

Kakashi's mind rolled over all of their adventures and his slow progression to falling in love with her.  Friendship shifted to more as they had grown older.  He remembered how innocent she was due to being isolated by her psychotic step-father.  She had no real knowledge of the inner workings of relationships.  He was really the only person she had known and his mind had always been much older.  He knew early on she had latched onto his heart, while she was completely oblivious.

That first kiss... it had been something he had been thinking about for awhile.  Rin had been an annoyance because the only girl he wanted was the one in his dreams.  He had even tried to open her eyes to Obito, who had loved her so greatly.  He often thought had they both not died that eventually she would have taken notice of Obito and they would have been together.  He smiled, knowing that they were now together in the afterlife.

Pain went through him as he thought about the first time he had seen Y/N so badly bruised up.  He had never wanted to kill someone as badly as he did her father.  She was so small and fragile.  Even though they were the same age, he understood so many things that she did not then.  He had been forced to grow up and be a man at four years of age.  To see her so broken had ripped his heart to shreds because he could do nothing to save her.  He had started loving her then, thinking about her often as he went out on missions at such a young age. 

Kakashi had fought what he wanted for a while, not wanting to mess up his special friendship but each time they met he fell more and more for her.  He was well aware that it was not something she had even thought about.  Yet that day as they were wrestling and he looked down at her, all out of breath with her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling.  He knew he had to kiss her, wanting nothing more than to be her first kiss and her his. When he had awkwardly pressed his lips to hers, he felt a spark that would only grow stronger as time went by.

He was going to confess all to her then only to have her violently sucked away and into the nightmare that almost killed her.  He vowed as he saw her bleeding that he would do whatever he must to find a way to protect her.  Yet he broke that vow as his own spirit was broken by the loss of his friends.  A cold anger swelling in him so deeply that it almost cost him that one precious girl when after a years passing, he saw her again.  She represented who he had been before everything that had happened and for a moment, his bitterness had overcome him as he looked at her for the first time in such a long time.

But love... when he looked into her eyes, that love overwhelmed him again.  Had they been older when he kissed her again, he would have poured out what he was feeling towards her under that brilliant sky.  Yet fate and life was cruel.  He wondered if he had somehow managed to bring her to him then, what life might have been like for them both.

Yet those were dark years in the Land of Fire.  So much death and destruction.  It was completely possible she would have been killed in that time had she been with him.  The thought brought a shiver to his soul and he thanked God that she had been kept safe, far away from the blood and gore that had permeated the land of the shinobi.  No, it was better they had been separated all that time, giving them the chance to grow up and mature.  Something wiser than themselves had kept them separated.

Y/N made a sound and her eyes opened.  She gave him a sleepy smile and stole his heart all over again.  "Kakashi... what a look you have..."

He kissed her before she could probe further as to why he was thinking so deeply in the night.  She softened as he rolled over on top of her with a need that was far more than physical.  He drank deeply from her mouth, remembering how long he had wanted her.  The years of pain and separation riding him hard as he ran his hands over her body, consecrating every detail to his mind.  Y/N ran her fingers through his hair and he groaned deep in his soul.  How many times had she done that, making him crazy.  She shifted restlessly beneath him as he tasted the sweet skin on her neck, the faint smell of the perfume he had bought her infiltrating his senses.  

Kakashi needed Y/N more than anything else and always had needed her.  She was his light in the darkness, the rest for his soul.  As he slid inside of her, he was transported back in time to all the nights he had closed his eyes, thinking of her.  To the times of horrors where in the brief pauses of madness, he wondered where she was and what she was doing.  To the years where the darkness was so much that her image could not even shine against it.  All of it was pouring out him as he made love to her.

"I love you, Y/N," he moaned as they reached the pinnacle together and he poured himself out into her.  As he lay there for a long moment after, he had a calm surety settle upon him that tonight they had created new life.