What the New Year Brings

Note: Happy New Year everybody! Hope you're having a good one so far! Thank you as always for all the wonderful reviews! Would it be wrong if I said reviews are like crack to me? Just a little wrong...maybe? Anyway...just a heads up that this chapter is going to be a little different in tone from the previous ones. It's what my muse told me to write and I like to listen to my muse.

Also, I got the info for the tradition mentioned below from "New Year Traditions in Japan" by Imperage on YouTube and page 126 of "Japan, a View from the Bath" By Scott Clark which I also found online.

Chapter 11-The First Time Kakashi Shares His Past

"C'mon, Sakura. You don't have to walk behind me. I wouldn't have asked you to come along if I didn't want you with me."

I was trying to give him a respectable distance, but what he says is true, so I quicken my pace to catch up to him. I find that even though he walks slowly, lazily almost, it still takes me two steps to catch up with his single long-legged one. Damn me for being vertically challenged!

I gaze up at his one exposed eye and am glad that I'm walking on his right. I can read him like a book just by that one facial attribute.

He catches me watching him from the corner of his eye and he reaches his hand out to me. When I take it, his eye as expected, creases happily as he smiles beneath his mask. And there it is, also as expected, my fickle heart beating extra beats. Stupid heart, always making me fall for the wrong guy! Why do I even listen to you?! Why couldn't you make me fall for someone my own age?! And revenge, power-seeking, emo boys don't count! For crying out loud, do you enjoy getting stomped on?!

Kakashi slows to a stop and I slowly stop beside him. I watch in silence as he dips a rag into a bucket full of cool, clean water that he has been carrying. Then I watch as he carefully and lovingly washes a few select names on the memorial stone.

Another New Year's Day tradition. To wash the gravestones of those who have moved on before us. It's an act of purification that cleanses and refreshes the dead, but in a sense it's purification for the living as well.

All these years that I've know this man, I've known his tardiness to be caused by these people whose memories are forever etched in stone, yet I know nothing about them. But something about being with Kakashi right here, right now, upon his request, gives me the guts to be daring.

"Who are they?" I ask, keeping my voice low in respect.

"The closest thing I had to a family." Kakashi says softly, giving me a sad smile.

My heart is clenching again, but this time for an entirely different reason.

"He, was like a father to me." Kakashi says, gently trailing the damp washcloth against what I recognize to be the Fourth's name.

"He, was like my brother. My irritating, annoying little brother, but still my brother." I'm shocked to see the cloth dampen the clan name "Uchiha" followed by the first name "Obito." My mind quickly connects this person, whoever he is, to Kakashi's mysteriously implanted Sharingan. Could it be?

"And she, I loved like a sister."

As he washes the engraved name of "Rin," I watch the water drip from it like streaming tears.

"My team, when I was younger." Kakashi answers my question before I even ask it.

I take my turn reaching out my hand to his. He takes it and this time our fingers entwine, the warmth of my hand warming the chill of his soaked one.

"And your real family?" I ask quietly, leaning against him so that my left arm and shoulder presses hard against his right.

"They're not here. My mother was a civilian and even though my father was a shinobi, he was disgraced. Doesn't change the fact that he was a great man."

"No. I'm sure it doesn't." I say, wondering exactly what had happened, but Kakashi has already revealed more than he has in all the 10 years that I've known him.

"People you love come first." Kakashi says, lifting up my hand to his masked lips and giving it a soft kiss. "That's what he died for and was disgraced for, in case you're wondering."

I think my body temperature just grew 10 degrees warmer and I don't care if it is January, I could dump that bucket of cold water over my head right now!

"How could you be disgraced for an honorable philosophy like that?" I ask, trying to keep my voice even in contrast to my again racing heart.

"You'd be surprised, Sakura." He answers, kissing my hand for a second time, this time placing his kiss on the inside of my wrist of my upturned hand.

Oh, God, Kakashi! What are you doing to me?!

As this thought streaks through my mind, another comes. One that burns me with anger:

What right do people have to judge love?!

To be continued...