Kakashi looked at Tae-san with slightly widened eyes; as close to the look of an enwrapt child as he might be able to get given his age.

He could see their relationship exact in his head, memories of the way his father acted bouncing off a quick-tongued, spritely young woman who made him weak in the knees. Their interchange was suddenly so very real in his head that it was almost crippling, and his heart gave a strange twang of emotion.

He realised only then that in his imaginings of his parents, he couldn't quite put a face to his mother, and his expression twitched with uncertainty, with a tentative kind of fear.

"......What did she look like?"