FicWad

The stranger turned down the final street that would lead him to Namiko's home. He was in luck because in the window he could see a candle burning. He discreetly moved closer to the house, careful to not appear too sneaky. Now was not the time to be mistaken for a theif and have the Konoha police chasing him. There would be plenty of time for that later, but not now.

He continued to creep closer to the lighted window until he was almost sitting on its sill. The stranger positioned himself in the shadows, where he felt most comfortable, and watched eagerly through the window.

There Namiko sat, rocking back and forth in an old, wooden chair. She was smiling to herself, and whistling a soft tune while she knitted a small blanket that was already long enough to cover a small boy. Namiko was as beautiful as the day he left the village, and he would have been content to stay in the shadows and watch her for the rest of night, but he couldn't. He was there for a reason, and he couldn't spend the entire night peeping through her window.

He moved to her door, quietly opened it, and quickly stepped inside. "Namiko," he said softly, "I've come back."

There was a gasp, and the clatter of knitting needles on the floor. Namiko sat motionless with her eyes fixed on the stranger cloaked in a blue cape standing in her doorway. The cape was similar to one she had sewn for an old love, except more ragged and beaten up, as if it had been abandoned in the street. The stranger's face was still hidden under the hood of the cape, but slowly he pulled it back. She didn't need to see his face because as soon as she heard his voice, she knew who it was.

"Kenichi," she whispered as his hood fell back to reveal the same straw-colored hair she remembered. She reached up timidly to touch the bearded face of her former love, just to make sure that it was real and not just a memory coming back to haunt her.

"Yes, Namiko. I have come back for you."

"Kenichi, what are you doing here? You are an outlaw and the ANBU have been looking for you since the day you left. Why did you come back?"

"I came back for you. I came to take you from Konoha so that we can be together, away from the scum of this village. We can travel to a far away country, just me and you, and settle down to raise a family."

"Kenichi, I can't go with you. You left me and the village behind 5 years ago. It's too late for us. Too many things have changed."

"It's not too late because I still love you. That much hasn't changed in 5 years and it would never change in 500."

"Too many things have changed," Namiko cried out as she stood up, letting the half finished blanket fall. Then Kenichi's eyes slowly moved down her body until they stopped on the bulge from her belly. From the size, it was obvious that Namiko was pregnant, at least 8 months so. The last bit of love he felt for Konoha was destroyed, upon seeing the only woman he had ever loved carrying the seed of another man.

"No, no, no," he whimpered as he moved closer to Namiko,"Who? Who did this to you?"

"No one did this to me," Namiko said, turning her back to Kenichi's outstretched hand, and focusing her gaze out her window. "After you left, I was alone and in sorry state. But as bad as I was, there was someone who was even more devastated when you left. Naturally, we gravitated towards each other, mutually consoling each other. As hard as I took your leaving, your brother took it twice as hard. We spent a lot of time together, talking about you, wondering where you were, if you were all right, or if you'd ever come back. We both realized that we would need to move on, and soon our conversations moved from wondering about you to wondering about us. It took years before anything became of our friendship, but when it happened, we both accepted it as inevitable."

"So the baby that you carry now is..."

"Yes, he is your nephew," Namiko said, "the Yondaime's son."