Falling for Temptation (A Kakashi Hatake story) Naruto fanfic

Chapter 42: Sick of Myself

         As she sat there, subject to all the same curses that she'd endured and tried to break. Her final act of gratitude was laying herself bare and hoping for a shred of his mercy and maybe by then, she would not betray him and yet as she had received his response sure that she would not trade her brother's soul for her lover's life.

      Any semblance of loyalty and gratitude she had for the man who'd fed her and kept a roof over her head had dissipated I to thin air. She felt her heart cooling down as if covered in frost. Finally, she had decided she could kill him.

      Without regrets and without remorse.

        However, as she left that house of torture she weighed her brother and her lover in her heart but Nhira had already made her choice long before. She'd choose her brother over and over and in any lifetime.

       'So the only way is to retrieve my brother's body first so now, he has no hold over me.'

       It's done.

        She didn't expect to receive such help from Tenzo of all people.

       "Nhira. I want to show you something." She had just returned and had been greeted with Kakashi's sweet kisses but in the dark of night he'd woken her up.

         "What?" She answered groggily, tripping over her feet. Kakashi was uncharacteristically suspicious and after walking a few miles she'd finally shaken off the sleep.

       Tenzo was waiting for them and he led them to a hidden bunker. The iron steps smelled of rust and the two shinobi both wore calm, almost stoic faces and she was almost afraid of what they'd show her.

      That was until they reached a room with nothing but a pine box in it. A coffin she'd recognise even in her dreams.

        Nhira felt her knees weaken as she took shaky steps towards her brother's coffin. After ten long years she could finally touch it and when she lifted the kid and saw her brother's serene face, she collapsed.

        Her ears rang, she couldn't hear anything over the rush of blood pumping nor Kakashi's consolation not her own ugly sobs. For the second time, Kakashi had seen tears stream down her face and felt his heart ache.

       "Hemmy.."

       "My Hemmy, my brother..."

      'So it's her brother.' Kakashi and Tenzo exchanged a look and then returned it to the distraught woman who was weeping and they couldn't tell whether it was grief or relief.

       Or both.

       The scene would forever haunt Kakashi, of how she clung to the box and how she kissed the dead boy's hand and her numerous utterance of 'Forgive me.'

      And he had expected that she would open up to him and tell him atleast part of what she'd been hiding. He didn't ask her secrets just that she confide in him but the night passed and she did nothing but cry over a dead boy. She told him nothing.

        And yet deep inside, he knew he might not understood even if she told him. And he wondered if she would weep the same way if he died because he knew, if he was made to choose between her and the village he would hesitate to choose her.

       He was not ready to make such a choice especially now that he had realised he didn't not know the woman he claimed to love.

       Kakashi arrived home very late that night, past midnight and his first thought was to look for her and as he thought he found her fast asleep by their bed. The blanket wrapped tightly around her like a cocoon.