Chapter 3

...It takes me longer to edit the chapters than it did to write them in the first place. I worked through dinner; I'd better post this and get something to eat!

As always, enjoy.

Chapter 3
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There were never any realtors in Konoha to begin with, and the classified ads in the paper were laughable. There are too many secrets in a secret village to promote a healthy, truth-based advertising service. Mostly, Kakashi and Sasuke discovered, you either wandered around looking for “for rent” signs, or you knew someone who had a friend who knew someone that had someplace to rent out. Networking. Unfortunately, most of the people who had friends who knew someone did not want to rent it to them. They might have taken Kakashi on his own, but Sasuke, being who he was and having done what he’d done, was blacklisted everywhere.

The other real estate option was to petition the Hokage for some sort of government-run flat, but Kakashi suspected Naruto wasn’t inclined to give Sasuke any more leeway. He hadn’t had Sasuke farmed out to other countries like the rest of the prisoners, but he hadn’t swooped in to rescue him, either. Kakashi wasn’t sure if Naruto had finally cut Sasuke loose, if this was his silent way of standing Sasuke on his own two feet. Naruto could simply be avoiding him and any further emotional damage Sasuke might cause. A Hokage must be firm, fair, and objective. Pent-up releases of emotions erupting in bad judgments and Kyuubi tails were not something the village could afford on any level. Kakashi was better off hunting for a new place without the Hokage’s assistance.

The real estate search went badly from the start. Their prospects grew fewer every day, especially once it got out that they were looking for a place. It also didn’t help that Sasuke was useless at this sort of thing. No. He was worse than useless. When they were lucky enough to go see an apartment--not having been turned down at first contact--Sasuke generally stood in the middle of the living room with a dark look on his face as if he were contemplating which method of destruction to use on the building. Kakashi didn’t know what Sasuke was actually thinking. (Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all.) Perhaps he didn’t like the paint color, or the view, or the fact that it was on the fourth floor. He didn’t know because all Sasuke did was stand there with his arms crossed over his chest. He never actually voiced an opinion.

After a while, Kakashi began asking questions to try and draw Sasuke out, but he also vented his own frustrations with the search. After living in the same apartment for so long, he’d forgotten how hard it was to find a place that would fit all a person’s needs. It got infinitely harder when he had to account for Sasuke as well. Did Sasuke have a deep hatred of carpeting? Would he feel like gouging his valuable eyes out if a bathroom were tiled entirely in baby pink? What about leaky roofs, lack of a balcony? It seemed like he was piling up a lot of trivial concerns, but he was, he reminded himself, trying to get Sasuke to at least not be worse, and if the constant drip of a leak or seeing himself surrounded by pink in the mirror would push him further away from recovery, Kakashi wanted to avoid whatever might cause that decline. He shivered minutely, remembering the Mangekyou’s power. No. Best not to repeat that experience…especially since that was one of the less dangerous things Sasuke could do to a person.

So, as they toured the latest rat hole apartment open to them, Kakashi again tried to get a response from Sasuke. Sometimes he made comments sotto voice, and others were purposely loud as he engaged the landlord.

“What do you think about the five flights of stairs we just did Sasuke?”

“Did you hear that Sasuke? The bathroom is a communal one for the whole floor. Wonderful, don’t you think, bonding with all our new neighbors and attending to our personal hygiene at the same time?”

“I’m almost impressed with that mold colony over there. It’s come almost six feet already on that wall.”

Kakashi scratched his head and craned his neck.

“I’m not an expert, but it looks like it’s headed toward the kitchen.”

“Why yes, that is a lovely view of the dump. Oh? They incinerate at night? Ah, I can just imagine the warm and comforting glow.”

The second bedroom of the two-bedroom apartment was hardly bigger than a closet, and Kakashi made sure Sasuke knew that he, Kakashi, would not be sleeping in it.

“It will be like a nice underground nest, don’t you think? You should be nice and cozy there, just like when…” And Kakashi realized that he was probably going too far. He glanced at the way Sasuke was clenching and unclenching one hand, and Kakashi could almost smell the chakra building up. He made nice, very quickly, with the landlord and got Sasuke out as soon as he could manage via the ever-so-handy poof-away transport jutsu.

Apologising could come later, Kakashi decided. Now that he’d let go of Sasuke, he thought it would be much more prudent to get to a training ground and see if Sasuke would follow him. An attempted pummeling would do them both good, especially since neither of them were going on missions these days. Well, to be accurate, keeping Sasuke within bounds was his mission. Kakashi got hazard pay for it, perhaps the only acknowledgement that it was still Naruto underneath the robes of office. He was still Konoha’s number one surprising ninja, but he played a lot more political tricks than practical jokes these days. Assigning Kakashi to look after Sasuke felt like a bit of both, at times.

Spending so much time dancing attendance on Sasuke left very little for training, let alone enough to escape that sullen presence for a while. It felt, for lack of a better word, nice, jumping from roof to roof with fresh air on his face, leaving Sasuke in the dust for a minute or two. Kakashi did some calculations while running. He decided the best training ground for them was a rather derelict space abutting the forest of death. Kakashi anticipated destruction upon their arrival, and he didn’t want to tear up a nice, frequently used, or, heaven forefend, his favorite, training ground. Really, Kakashi didn’t know why so many other people believed he was a heartless, thoughtless, perverted ninja. He was thinking about the rest of them all the time. Really he was. Being heartless, well…soft-hearted ninja died quickly and messily.

Not that being heartless was any great benefit in the long run. A ninja needed to balance, because becoming emotionless was both damn near impossible and definitively damaging. You turned brittle and broke that way, much like Sasuke. No matter what anyone else said, Kakashi thought deep inside himself that Sasuke might be beyond repair. But then, there was Sai, and surely he’d been tampered with beyond anything Itachi could have ever dreamed. Sai couldn’t even emote with a smile. At least Sasuke felt, even if it was hate and anger.

Kakashi concluded that anger was at the top of Sasuke’s feel-o-meter at the moment, judging by the way he was pushing himself to catch Kakashi. Sasuke might have beaten him to the training ground if he’d bothered to focus that anger. Kakashi dropped to the forest floor and had enough time to read a page of Icha Icha before Sasuke came down too. He shut the book and decided to take charge of the situation.

“I’ve made you upset. It’s only fair to give you a free shot. But after that…” Kakashi shrugged. “I’ll try not to kill you.”

He flexed and waited.

Sasuke stood still. He scrutinized Kakashi, as if he expected him to turn into a log or to disappear in a puff of smoke. Kakashi looked right back. He did not blink.

At length, Sasuke said “I never could tell when you were joking.”

And then he attacked.

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Toodles!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. All rights remain with its original creator, Masashi Kishimoto. I make no profit from writing these stories.