---------------Kakashi's POV---------------
I fell down into my chair, legs unable to hold my weight, head in my hands.
The door was half open with a large crack snaking down its center from when she had slammed it shut behind her.
What the hell just happened, I thought over and over and over again.
What the actual hell. I was sure that things were going to so great, that things were, well, perfect.
I had thought that Ana was on the same page. Apparently not.
Was this my fault?
At least partially, I knew.
Ana had felt that I had greatly invaded her privacy, something very important to the both of us. Part of me had known when I'd talked to Hokomaru and Tsunade that Ana would not be pleased, but I'd foolishly thought that I once I had a chance to explain why I'd done it (I worried about her. That I loved her.) that she would understand and not be upset with me.
How very wrong I was.
How very selfish I had been.
And what I had said to her? I felt a ripple of shame.
I still did not think that anything which I had stated was incorrect, per say, but that did not mean that I had to fling it at her in a hurtful and insensitive manner.
I wanted to chase after her, to run all the way to the Land of Wind, but I was the Hokage now. I could not leave, and even if did, I would not be able to find her. It would take me three days to get there, and by that time, Ana could be anywhere in the Land of Wind.
Damn it!
I could not stay in that office any longer. A void was beginning to open beneath me, one I had not seen since before the war. That vast emptiness and fear.
Ana was right, in some ways, that I was afraid of making things too real, of getting too attached, and that just made it worse.
For the first time ever, I resented how well she knew me. No one else would have been able to set me so off balance with just a few sentences.
As I stood and pushed in my chair, someone cleared their throat in the doorway.
My mask was back over my nose before I could even think it.
Freezing, I glanced over to see Shizune standing there. I had been so distracted that I hadn't noticed her presence, even though she wasn't doing anything to try and hide it.
"Lord Hokage-"
"Just Kakashi," I interrupted, aware that I was being a bit rude.
Shizune froze, and her too shrewd eyes took in my appearance and the crack in the door with a sad little smile. She must have seen my face before I noticed her, I realized with a twinge of disgust, and the emotional turmoil that surely had been written there.
"Kakashi," she corrected herself and stepped into the room. "I came here because Tsunade wanted to be sure that as the Hokage your shots were all up to date and Sakura was unwilling to deal with your 'aversion to health' today. But, I can always come back another time if you need."
"No, no," I waved her in, "now is as good a time as any. Close the door behind you." I immediately winced at the stupidity of my order.
Shizune stared at the broken door for several long seconds before gingerly moving it a position somewhat resembling sealed.
Carefully monitoring my mood out of the corner of her eye (apparently dealing with an emotionally unstable Hokage was second nature to her now), she placed her medical kit on the desk.
The desk where Ana had just been sitting before- nope. Don't think about it.
"So," Shizune said tentatively while looking over my medical records, "I saw Ana leave the building. Well, more like an angry blur that almost swept me off my feet as it ran past."
I cleared my throat, "What shots do I need?" Anything to change the subject.
"I am shocked, you're surprisingly up-to-date on all your boosters. It will just be this year's flu shot this morning."
I knew why for the first time ever I was not behind. A beautiful blonde medic-nin who had just broken the door to my office was to blame. Because she cared. Because she worried.
As Shizune began to fill a needle with the proper vaccine, I cautiously cleared my throat. "Hypothetically, if two people who are in a relationship had a bit of a... disagreement, and one person asked the other to 'be reasonable,' do you know why it would make the other mad?"
Shizune looked once more at the broken door knowingly. "Well, it depends some on the situation."
"Really, how so?" I asked, trying to keep my tone light, aloof. Like we didn't both know exactly what this conversation was about.
Shizune reached for my arm, and resigned, I rolled up my sleeve.
"You need to relax, Kakashi." She tapped a manicured nail against my deltoid. "I don't know if I could even get the needle in right now."
Taking a deep breath, I slowly loosened my muscles from my fingers up through my shoulder.
Just I felt the arm relax, Shizune continued, "You have to remember other contexts in which certain phrases are used, such as 'be reasonable,' and that different phrases can be weaponized against different genders."
What did that mean? I honestly had no idea what point Shizune was trying to make.
"How so?"
"Well," she stated while packing up her supplies (when did she even administer the shot?), "for example, think about how people talk about emotions. Men are often shamed for showing too many emotions, and just look at what that's done to many of our shinobi," the last part was muttered under her breath, "while women are both expected to show too many emotions and are often dismissed for doing so. One cannot forget the major role that culture can play in this as well; the more unequal the society, the larger the disparity between how the genders are treated."
"Uh, fascinating..." I had no idea that Shizune cared so much about these sorts of social issues. "I did not know you were so, um, knowledgeable about this topic."
Shizune plunked back down her medical kit with a long-suffering sigh. "I have spent over the last decade being the assistant of the foremost female doctor in the Five Great Nations and the first female Hokage. I have had a lot of time in many different places to observe these behaviors. Besides, women talk." That last part was stated very pointedly. I blinked up at her in confusion.
"Kakashi, I am going to be frank. You don't treat a tumor by dancing around it shyly." Shizune put her hands on her hips, and although I was the Hokage sitting in his desk, I felt myself shrink away internally. She was usually so mild mannered that I had forgotten that this was a woman who had spent a decade around Tsunade. "I know that this isn't some silly hypothetical question. When have you ever cared about that sort of thing? You and Ana got in an argument and when you asked her to be reasonable, she lost her mind, right?" One more knowing look at the broken door. I nodded. What else could I do at this point? My own stupidity and rare lapse in emotional control had caused this, and now I would face the consequences of my impulsive question. This is why I rely so heavily on my mask. "Did you ever ask her what it was like growing up in her world?"
"Of course I have! Ana has told me about books, skiing, her family and friends-"
"I did not ask about things from her old world, but what it actually was like to live in it, things that her friends used to say. Like I said, women talk."
Shizune waited patiently for me to finished putting together the implications of her statement.
"What you are saying," I slowly began, "is that the phrase has a different meaning to Ana than it does to me."
She nodded. "Prying something out of Ana is like opening an oyster, but you should have better luck than most. Besides, you have to remember that she grew up in a different culture; her childhood could not have been more different than your own."
I suddenly felt rather frustrated and angry. How was I supposed know about this? Shouldn't Ana have explained why the phrase, which she must have known I didn't intend maliciously, was particularly hurtful to her? Was I not worth giving the benefit of the doubt?
She had never said anything previously about the cultures of our two worlds being different. Although she wouldn't have had to, I realized. She had seen the show; she was already familiar with how our society functioned. For Ana, there would have been little to no culture shock in going from her world to ours. For the first time, I wondered how I would fare in her home world. Some of the references that she made were so strange to me; how much did I really understand about what her life was like before becoming a kunoichi?
Looking around, I realized that Shizune had left at some point while I was deep in thought.
She was someone that I was going to have to avoid for several months; I still could not believe that I had brought up my fight with Ana to her. Utterly embarrassing.
And I hadn't realized when she came and left.
I did not feel like myself.
I had gotten into a fight with my girlfriend, about saying "I love you" of all things, and then had started a conversation about it with one of her closest work friends.
I groaned.
Great, Shizune would definitely talk to Ana about this after she returned from the mission.
Not to mention that after years of being considered one of the most perceptive, if not the most perceptive, ninja in the Hidden Leaf, I hadn't noticed a person who was not suppressing their chakra come and go.
My senses had failed. My lauded intelligence had failed. I had failed to control my emotions. And my sharingan was gone.
I was, without a doubt, the worst Hokage to ever grace Konoha. I had been a fool to take up the mantle, to think that I was worthy to count myself amongst Minato-sensei and his peers.
With a sigh, I teleported out of my office. I was too cowardly to walk down the hall past Izumo and Kotetsu's desk and face questions about the commotion from earlier.
I found myself at the memorial stone staring at names.
I did not move for a long time. No one came to look for me.
---------------Shizune's POV---------------
Leaving Kakashi sitting at his desk, I gently opened the broken door and shut it behind me. I would let Izumo know about the stash of spares still leftover from when Tsunade had ruled from that office.
In the relative safety of the hallway, I allowed myself a moment to take in what had just happened. I shook my head in disbelief. What a strange interaction with Kakashi.
It was the first time that I had seen his face outside of a major medical emergency where he was literally comatose.
And what a frown!
His mouth had almost made a perfect half-circle on his face. It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad.
After years of wearing that silly mask, his control over expressions on the lower half of his face must be lacking.
What had Ana said to him?
It had clearly shaken the man to his core.
She complained about him constantly at work, but in that playful way where it was clear that she found his quirks lovable and endearing. Nothing to cause any sort of worry. Clearly there had been something brewing beneath the surface. Maybe Tsunade would know.
Some part of me felt a bit responsible for the whole thing, which I knew was ridiculous. We had all worked so hard from the shadows, especially Tsunade and I, to bring the two of them together. Assigning them to the same teams, putting them in the same hospital rooms, making them do missions together. And for a while, we had all congratulated ourselves for our success.
For the first time in literally twenty years, Kakashi had seemed genuinely happy. Ana had started to open up more and hide what she was feeling less. Or, at least, so we had thought.
I did not know the man in the Hokage's Office today.
Continuing down the hallway, I saw the Izumo and Kotetsu were frantically whispering to one another. The tower's chunin aides were clearly gossiping about what had just happened.
"How did it go, Shizune?" Izumo had finally noticed I was there.
"I would not send anything of importance the Hokage's way the for rest of the day. In fact, I would be surprised if he were still in his office."
Despite being out of even Kakashi's exceptional hearing range (on a normal day), Kotetsu leaned forward as he whispered, "Did they break up?"
I forced myself to chuckle, "Do you really think that Kakashi talked to me about feelings?" I could at least slow down the gossips. "Why do you ask?"
"Why else would Ana damage the door? She's not like..." Kotetsu trailed off, but my mind finished the sentence for him: Tsunade and Sakura.
"Don't let her hear you say that, unless you want to find your syrup replaced with something even nastier next time. Ana can be just as fiery when she wants." He nodded, and I patted him on the shoulder, "They'll figure things out. They always do. In the meantime, let me show you where I hid the spare doors so that Tsunade couldn't break those too."
----------------------------
Let's see now *does mental math* I have had over four years including three years of having a serious relationship to think about how I had written Ana and Kakashi. Perhaps that much time to think is a bad thing, but there are several serious issues, as I now see them, about their relationship as it happened in the first book. Not that that comes as a surprise to me: I was a sad, forever-alone high schooler who hadn't even come to grips with her own sexuality yet (turns out I'm demisexual, and what a long and confusing path I took to get to a realization that I sort of already always knew...) trying to write a relationship between two adults. Of course there are problems! But every relationship has problems, realistically, so as a writer instead of being disheartened I rejoiced at the opportunities this presented.
I am now almost the age that Ana was in the first book. Fucking strange feeling. (Like how all of these stories that loved growing up, I'm now older than or same age as all the protagonists that I had always felt were so old. Like I'm two years older than Elizabeth Bennet now since she was 20. That one really gets me for some reason.) It is strange coming back to this series after such a long time, but I don't like leaving things unfinished. It drives my anxiety crazy (well, crazier).
So as for this series going forward, there shall of course be no posting schedule. Past me thought that freshmen year of college was crazy; I wish that I could warn her about realities of paying your own rent with only a BA during a pandemic where no one wants to hire an aspiring young editor with zero experience... Oh wait, she still thought she was going to be a great and mighty chemist (lol, should I also tell her that it turns out that doing science is awful and she is going to get a history degree and love it? Turns out chemistry isn't just thinking about science and understanding it, you actually have to do it. Bleh.), which is absolutely hysterical in hindsight!
Oh college, you great time of self-discovery, and questioning everything you thought you wanted out of life.
I have also unpublished the author's note from the beginning of the book (quick recap: I changed my mind on where I wanted some of the story to go so I did a minor rewrite of chapters 1-7 like three and a half years ago, also, freshman in college me was depressed and mopey and wanted to spend a lot of time describing that mopey-ness to randos online. This note is no longer really necessary and I really don't like how the book starts with that instead of, you know, the story). I am also getting rid of the Author's Note celebrating my 18th birthday because I am just not really comfortable about keeping that one online. I had a habit of oversharing back then. I am also considering removing the author's note about the old hiatus the story was on.
Ooh, I almost forgot: I'll see you guys at the next update!