The cave was small, more of a hollow carved by the river’s vanished patience. Water still whispered along the stones, seeping through hairline cracks, glimmering faintly in the flicker of Kakashi’s fire. The light caught the sheen of your skin—pale under its red-brown hue, damp from rain—and turned it ghostly. Steam rose from your cloak as it dried, curling toward the ceiling like silent prayers.

Kakashi sat across from you, his back against the stone, mask pulled down just far enough to breathe properly. The heat from the fire felt almost sinful after hours of cold mist, but his gaze didn’t leave you long enough to notice. You were hunched slightly forward, elbows on knees, sketchbook resting on your lap. The pencil scratched quietly, rhythmic as rain.

He remembered when those hands first trembled—years ago, a girl too afraid to speak above a whisper, clinging to her sleeves when the world got too loud. The air in the cave smelled faintly of graphite and primer. The scent had once belonged to fear, but now it was something steadier. Familiar. Anchoring.

Kakashi told himself he was keeping watch, but his eyes kept drifting toward you. The orange of the firelight gathered in the hollows of your collarbones, shimmered over the old rose strands of your hair. A line of it traced the sharp edge of your jaw. Your eyes—small and knowing, reflective as wet paint—flicked up only once, as though aware of his stare, and then fell back to your page.

He had fought wars, lost friends, buried youth itself in the name of duty. But sitting there, watching you sketch in the flicker of a dying flame, he felt something raw and human that the battlefield had long since stripped away. The world outside might have been drenched in ghosts; here, the silence felt holy.

The wind hissed at the cave’s mouth, carrying the smell of wet leaves and blood from the forest beyond. He adjusted his headband out of habit, the single Sharingan beneath it pulsing faintly—always alert, always watching. Yet for once, he wished it didn’t have to. He wished for blindness, for the mercy of unseeing, for the world to shrink to this—just the fire, your heartbeat, and the soft sound of graphite on paper.

You shifted, and the movement broke him out of the thought. The faint hiss of your scaled tail brushed stone, a noise so subtle most wouldn’t notice. But Kakashi had always been a collector of quiet details. He wondered if Orochimaru, in all his sick brilliance, had known what kind of creature he was making—something half-terrified, half-divine. Something Kakashi couldn’t stop himself from protecting.

When you finally spoke, it was a whisper. “You’re staring again.”

Kakashi’s mouth tilted beneath his mask. “Old habit.”

The silence after was easier than words. You drew again. He let his head fall back against the wall. The rain deepened outside.

He thought about all the ways you’d changed since those first missions—your fear sharpened into focus, your hands steadier, your steps silent as mist. But what haunted him most wasn’t how much you’d become like him. It was how much of himself he’d lost to you.

His body ached from battle, but his chest ached more from the closeness of your presence. He could feel the faint hum of your chakra, reptilian and strange, curling against his own like smoke. He’d told himself once that love was a weakness. Now he understood it was just another kind of jutsu—a power that burned through every defense.

You looked up again, the pencil stilled between your fingers as Kakashi rubs your hair softly. His sweet little wife. Scaredy lil thing, that you are.

'' What are you drawing, hmm? ''