Impossible to Forgive

Chapter 13: Tenuous Situation

"Kakashi, what the hell are you doing?" I stood in front of his desk with my hands on my hips and a murderous look in my eyes.

He quickly swung his feet off his desk and tried to make it look like he had been doing paperwork, "Uh, nothing."

"Don't lie to me, I saw you reading. Don't tell me that it was one of your dumb pervert books."

Kakashi held up the book that he was reading, and it was a large medical textbook. "I finished my paperwork early and I found this in the desk; Lady Tsunade must have left it behind. I was curious so I started reading it..."

I sighed and rubbed my temples in pure frustration, "The village is in a state of alert, there is a group of rogue ninja attempting to assassinate you, a powerful mind control genjutsu has been stolen, and you're reading for fun. Do you realize how tenuous your position is right now?!"

He scratched the back if his neck feebly, "Well, I really can't do anything until Team 8 completes their mission, and me sitting here worrying about it isn't going to get things done either."

I sighed and let some of my anger diffuse, he did have a legitimate point. "Fine. But of all the things that you could read, a textbook?"

Kakashi flipped it back open to a page near the middle, "It's actually surprisingly interesting. I don't know why I've never looked into this stuff before. As a ninja I know a lot of anatomy, but only how to kill people with it not save them. Besides, the methods that they have listed in here are really quite interesting. Do you know how defibrillating works? It's really quite cool."

"I really don't care."

"Oh." He quickly recovered his excitement, though. "Well, even if you don't care, I still find it fascinating."

"Well..." I sighed again, "At least this is better than your usual choice in books."

Without looking up Kakashi flipped the next page in his book, "You know, you're the only person besides Sakura who gives me a hard time for what I read. No one else cares."

"I care. It's not appropriate for the Hokage to read such books."

Kakashi shrugged, "They were written by Jiraiya who was a great ninja and a Sannin."

"That has nothing to do with anything and you know it. When we were younger, I never would have thought that you'd turn into such a pervert."

"When we were younger, I never would have thought that you'd become such a stick-in-mud, but here we are."

He flipped another page nonchalantly with his feet up on his desk.

I glared at him, "You know why I'm the way that I am." All of my anger was with instantly replaced by sadness, "I've become my mother."

Kakashi looked up from his book, "Never say that. You're nothing like her."

"No, I've become just like her."

Kakashi sighed, "Well if that's what you think. But it's still not too late to change."