Amidst all the hectic trying-to-write-my-stories phases, I do little drabbles based upon the stories I'm writing, but they play no pertinent role within the storyline I have planned out. Thus, drabbles. Or rambles to those who aren't in tune with FF (Fan-Fiction) speak. This is a one-shot, meaning I won't have a second part or another chapter. Just this one. . . little. . . piece.

Fun fact. Kaori is modeled after me - a girl who thinks she knows everything about the world, stubborn, young, naive, and someone who actually needs someone strong and more mature to keep her standing. And in my story, Kakashi's just the person for the job. It's no surprise then, that my real name, Caroline, means "womanly." Kaori is a name of Japanese descent meaning "womanly" as well.

Kakashi, and the whole of Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto.
Kaori and this drabble © ME!

Thanks in advance for reading! ;D Enjoy!
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It was stark and pale and horrible behind her eyes. And for whatever reason she chose to simply sit there and allow herself to glimpse the scene with gaping mouth hanging there continued to further befuddle her. Just plain white, that’s what it was – and she’d like to say she liked the fact that it was such a color, if white was even a color at all. However, the color liked to starve her from the inside out for some reason. White was the color of snow on a cold wintery blustery day. White was the color of his hair when the sun hit it just right. It was the color of the milk she drank every morning, and of the cream he insisted on having with his coffee because he couldn’t drink it the opposite hue.

How she would love to have it be black now – the spots hurt, blinded her, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t turn away. Perhaps it might be black eventually if she kept it up, or maybe blood-colored if she dared to pull a thin cover down for a split second in between her and the light.

“If you keep staring at it that way, you’ll go blind,” he said, making her thoughts and whims audible, but she didn’t really want to tear away from it. It kept her warm, and while it was a horrible sight to behold at the moment, she felt hot from it. “Not even my eyes can handle it, come on,” he continued to coax before his hand gingerly grasped the back of her neck and maneuvered it to face him instead of the blinding sun.

It was all scarlet with the occasional spots of green and black dancing around in circular patterns about her face and maybe even her entire head. “But now I’m cold.”

“You just make it a figment of your imagination like you do with everything. Looking at the sun isn’t going to make you warmer, Kaori. Just like looking at ice won’t allow you to feel any colder. Only when you come in contact with it will you–”

“But I was in contact with it. I mean, I saw it, didn’t I? Eye contact.” While she retaliated, her vision went black for a bit, causing a cold rush to overcome her head and cloud all of her senses as she became accustomed once more to the normal surroundings. She wanted to hold her head, wanted to take the pain away, however, her nerves were taken aback by the sudden readjustment from bright to rather insanely dark and dim within the apartment. “I’m cold. . . I’m cold. . .” she managed to get out preceding two large hands coming upon either side of her head, two fingers massaging each temple.

Naturally, he wasn’t exactly a medical expert, but she was eccentric and crazily alone in this world and oddly enough, unable to do many things on her own – after all, she was still only a child. Despite the fact she had been under the care of a real doctor for seven odd years, she refrained from being able to understand why things happened the way they did – body-wise and even in the grand retrospect of all. “It would behoove you to lie down till the pain wears away,” he spoke scholarly. She hated when he used over proper words. It was just another reason for the man to make the girl feel like what she was. Young; to him, ignorant on nearly any subject; and too naive for her own good.

“But I’m fine.”

It was that ridiculous stare that he always gave her, but she wouldn’t see it this time with closed oculars. “Says the girl who stares at the sun aimlessly thinking that her eyes won’t rot out of their sockets.”

“You make it sound so much more grotesque than it really is,” she snarled back, whisking his gentle hands away and flopping from the window seat to the bed in a few cautious steps due to shut eyes.

“Those are the complications,” he retaliated finally. “I merely make my job to state them for your well-being.”

“Well, you can shut up now,” a groaning and muffled voice spoke lowly from within the pillow.

“Gladly. I’m gonna go drop off some dirty stuff at the laundromat. And I expect you to still be lying there when I get back,” he added at the last second while kicking the double sliding doors open to the closet and hoisting a load of ninja gear and heavy equipment into his arms. “I can get you some ice?” he also suggested.

“No. Go throw yourself in the washer while you’re over there.” Five minutes was the maximum amount of time he’d be gone – plenty of time to get rid of a small headache. And didn’t she make it obvious that she was cold already? ‘Brain freeze – yeah, Kakashi, that’s just what I need,’ she thought angrily to herself.

His footsteps padded to the door, sandals scraping the floor five times before she heard him leave and lock the apartment up. She hated the sound of keys, because, naturally, it meant she would be taken prisoner once again. Sure, it was better to be under house arrest rather than being taken hostage or a real prisoner, but it was all the same. Kakashi refused to make it any better, tended to make it worse, in fact.

“I can do what I want,” the seventeen-year-old girl hissed, pushing herself off of the bed, eyes now adjusted a bit more to the darker surroundings within the apartment. Confined to a bed for five minutes? Yeah, right. She’d just be doing what she always did when he came back – same old thing that she did day in and day out.

With a bare foot, she kicked the box out from under his bed and curled her toes around the handle of the small stereo that accompanied the cassettes within the container. Her legs crossed automatically as she sat on the floor with fingers already fumbling through his collection of ancient music. The man was ancient, by her standards, after all. Yet candidly enough, she found some solace within the music. And stupidly enough, it was for the fact that they reminded her of him. Indeed – stupidly.

She managed to find some weird case with his chicken-scratch handwriting upon it. It would be in vain to even try and decipher it. Regardless of being able to read it or not, with a push of a button, a slide of the cassette, and another press on “play,” some oddly calming synthesized music reached her ears.

It was similar to most of the music that was in the box, though this had a feel of tribal sounds and wind. . . if wind did have a sound or a song to express it. Swaying as she rose to a stand her feet managed to tap to the beat that was all too predictable. The man’s vocals were nice, mellow, and automatically Kaori knew that this was another one of Kakashi’s obvious favorites. They all sounded the same, at any rate.

However, as soon as she became accustomed to the easy-going swaying motions that the music sent her dancing to, the keyboard uncannily changed into some sort of synthesized strings with a chorus backed up by it. To say it threw her for a loop of change would be a lie. Music was something that, no matter how predictable she thought it to be, had an indefinite amount of possibilities and routes to take into the next measure or verse. The tempo remained the same, but the increase in volume and sounds only caused her to dance harder, swinging herself around and probably making her headache worse. But such petty things didn’t bother her at all, especially while she was dancing.

She almost felt savage – the drums weren’t exactly that of the normal bands of the times, and adding that to the fact that she was disobeying her guardian once again by doing something that she wanted to do where she could get away and feel how she wanted to, be who she wanted to, and think about nothing. . . she felt nearly as freelanced as the music itself. In a greater addition, her tousled chestnut hair had cascaded from the loose bunch at the back of her head down all the way to where it naturally rested just below her mid back and barely caressed her waist and hips.

Her loose and overly large violet smock that she wore fell off her shoulders even further as she threw her hands up and skipped in circles around the bare and open floor between the bed and the closet and small kitchen just in front of the door. And her bare feet twisted with ease upon the wooden boards of the floor, allowing her to move even swifter and increasingly more out of control.

Amidst all the spinning and twirling with closed eyes and a wild smile over her features, she managed to collide with something soft yet firm. Her first instinct was to grasp behind her to sturdy herself and the object that she had managed to crash into now with wide open green orbs. Though, upon further physical contact, she knew that neither her or the unidentified object – now identified in her mind – were not going anywhere so long as she were trapped.

“Thought I told you to stay lying down. You can’t simply obey me for five minutes?” an exasperated voice sighed just above her head before releasing her and pushing her aside so he could travel to the refrigerator.

It took her a few quick moments to regain her composure, her heart still hammering in her chest from the odd and abrupt encounter. “Oh, and like you ever obey anything Tsunade-sama actually tells you?” Kaori managed to snap back in order to maintain her position in the game.

“At least I have respect for her.”

“And who says I didn’t have respect for you?”

“You have a funny way of showing it,” Kakashi spoke before twisting open the cap to the light beer and pulling down his mask to take a quick swig. “You picked a good song, by the way,” he said dryly and raspily, eyes squinting from the taste of the rich liquor. “One of my favorites.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I mean, you say that they’re all your favorites. Really, I think you’re just having a knack for nostalgia almost all the time. But you’re nearly thirty. I guess old people have the right to be a bit nostalgic on certain occasions,” she shrugged as she relayed the last bit of opinion from her mind.

He mildly blinked at her, rose a brow, found he needed another swig of beer much too soon after his first swallow, and did so before even thinking of questioning her. “. . . Old?”

“Your hair’s already white. . .” she pointed out jeering a finger at the mass of gravity-defying hair upon his head.

“I was born with white hair.”

“So, you were born old?”

“Sure. And you were born stubborn and completely idiotic.”

“At least I’m not an old man who takes care of little girls because he’s too old and brittle to do a real mission. Tsunade-sama’s retired you because you’re way too fragile now-a-days. Your fighting days are long gone, Hatake-san.”

Perhaps that was hitting a little bit below the belt. After all, he had taken out numerous ninja and fought for her defense upon the many attempted captures and hostage-taking situations she had been in. “And you say you have respect for me?” he inquired of her just to make sure.

“It’s playful banter. You do it to me all the time,” she said, half-choking at the fact that she might have got him in an actual heart-wrenching topic. “I’m just returning the favor.”

“Seems like a lack of respect to me. . .” he spoke lowly in that mellow voice of his before drenching it with another swallow of golden beverage. “After all, if you’re going to make fun of my age, at least be a bit more politically correct with it.”

“Like respecting your elders?” she ridiculed with a crazed and dazzled smirk and mischievous viridian eyes as she now stood approximately five feet away from him.

The baffled gape with furrowed brows that he sported her caused the quick smile to grow just as he came into realization of what she said. “. . . You little minx!” His beer was on the counter with a clink and a gleam overcame his half-hostile, half-playful face before he made a swiping move to grab her for payback. It amazed him that she still didn’t know who was boss around here.