| What Hell Is Like. [closed to Kakashi] |
[Oct. 25th, 2008|02:47 pm] |
[Takes place two days after Heaven Forbid You End Up Alone, and one day after If the Door's Still Open.]
Somewhere in the gentle grey fog that hung around after two days of not really sleeping, Kakashi remembered he hadn't spoken to Obito in over a week. He was too tired for the guilt to crucify him.
When he left his apartment--returning after five minutes to actually lock the door--it was late enough to be early, and almost pitch black. The new spring moon lurked behind heavy clouds. He shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged through Konoha's silent streets, heading gradually uphill. Cold nipped at his heels. Dry mist curled under the eaves of buildings.
The memorial had long crabgrass strands sprouting up around its sides, leaning in to obscure several names carved closer to the edges. He yanked it up, twisting the thin stems between his fingers until they broke.
"Hey, dead last."
There wasn't any particular response; the wind didn't pick up and howl, the mist didn't clear away, the sky didn't lighten. Nothing happened but the dry crackle of greenery shredding between his fingertips. He dropped his hands and let it blow away.
"Had a mission recently--that's why I wasn't here. Got back... maybe six days ago. Rescue mission, actually. You know how recovery works. Baby steps. I needed to stick around because..."
His shoulders slumped a little.
"You ever think Sensei missed a step?" he asked quietly. "Something between sex-ed and getting himself killed? Because I thought this whole thing was simple, but it just keeps getting more... complicated."
He sat down and leaned his back against the stone, arms draped loosely over his knees. Cold seeped through the thin cloth of his ninja blacks and made scabbed skin tighten; his back still hadn't healed.
"But what do you know? You're thirteen. You'd have laughed at me seven years ago." Or been thoroughly confused; as far as Kakashi remembered, Obito had only ever had eyes for the girls.
Well, one girl.
He lifted a hand and traced his fingers down the memorial, finding a name cut two years below Obito's. The elements had weathered the stone, but even without looking he could still find the right kanji. He brushed the fine-cut lines gently, and let his hand drop.
"When you tell her about this, do me a favour and leave out the details? It's bad enough to have one of you laughing, I don't need both." He hesitated, then muttered, "You can tell Sensei. If he's got any advice, I'd like to hear it."
The wind lifted, rustling the grass. If he'd been in a fanciful mood, he might have imagined the cool touch against his shoulder was a hand settling, squeezing gently...
But it wasn't. It was just the wind.
"Guess I should probably tell you what I'm talking about first," he muttered, and leaned his head back. "Remember a while back, when I mentioned a new rookie? Ryouma. You'd like him, I think. Weird sense of humour, lots of tattoos. He's got this jutsu just designed to freak people out. Sensei met him once, but that was after you--"
His fingernails caught against the Konoha symbol etched into his hitai-ate.
"Well, after."
He closed his eye.
"He's good for a rookie. Really good, actually. Stopped some guy taking my head off in the showers a while back." He didn't go into detail; some things Obito didn't need to hear. "Helped me out afterwards, too, when a few people wanted to register a complaint. Could've handled it myself, in case you're getting any ideas that I'm losing my edge, but it'd been a rough few days..."
Weeks. Months. A lifetime, maybe. But if he started thinking like that he'd never stop.
"Paid him back on the riverbank. Or maybe he paid me back. I'm not really sure. But it was..." His lips twitched, remembering Ryouma's dazed comment somewhere in the afterglow. "Nice." He scrubbed his hands through his hair. "Sorry, I'm not making sense anymore. We had sex. Guess it was a bit different, not riding on the back of a mission. But then he went and got himself tortured..."
His voice whispered down into nothing. "But you know that. You saw it." The aftermath, anyway. When he'd run himself into the ground; cut twelve hours into six, sprinted a hundred and eighty miles. Broken a Cloud-nin into pieces looking for his teammates. Found Ryouma barely upright, clinging to the hulk of a felled tree, half his skin burned and blistered and torn away. Tsume with her face and her chakra drowning in rot.
Obito had seen everything, because Kakashi had let him.
Sorry, he tried to say, and couldn't hear himself.
"But I got him home. Haruichi healed him--Tsume, too, for the most part. The medics did the rest. He wasn't... he wasn't okay. Not by a long stretch. But he was getting better. Is getting better. Guy bounces back like you wouldn't believe. Even pinned me to the wall at one point, but I don't think you want to hear that."
Or maybe he would. Kakashi made a quiet noise drawn somewhere between dead amusement and a feeling he couldn't name.
"That makes it twice. My fault; I shouldn't have let it happen. You'd think the broken knee would have been a big clue to stay away, but Ryouma's about as stubborn as you are." He paused. "Not that you--I mean. You know what I mean."
If there was ever a time for the wind to sound like laughter.
"And then there's this other guy," Kakashi continued, collecting himself. "Ginta. He's more like me. I guess you'd like him less--or maybe more. He's got your sugar-fix addiction. He came to the hospital, after Ryouma and I--well, yeah. I don't even know what he was doing there. Fresh back from a mission, I guess." Wearing black and bone and an expression like Kakashi had just reached into his chest and torn out his ribs--right before he'd gotten furious. "I've told you about him before. We had a mission together a while back, in Rain. I almost got him killed."
He braced his head in his hands, elbows against his knees, and laughed like a drowning man. "It's becoming a theme."
The stone was silent; even the wind had settled and died. Far above Kakashi's head heavy clouds scudded across the sky and ate the moonlight away. The air smelled like torn grass and cold spring weather.
"I hurt him. Ginta. On purpose this time. Yelled at him, grabbed his throat--he was already injured, but I did it anyway. He threw a genjutsu at me. Should've been ready for it, but he--" Kakashi stalled, dragged a breath, and carried on. "Kissed me. First, before I strangled him. That's why I strangled him. Which is probably more a comment on my character than his but--this keeps happening."
He shoved himself up onto his heels, away from the memorial. Caught his balance and spun around.
"I'm a bastard. You know that--you told me that. More than once. I'm a jackass and a bastard and a lousy friend. I'm barely a good lay, and I didn't even have sex with Ginta. I just got attacked by the same guy who hurt him and how is that healthy? He should hate me!" He paced, fingers digging into his hair. "He does now, but I had to make him. And Ryouma's not even close. Far as I know, Ryouma thinks I'm--I don't know."
A good ninja. Someone who ran and fought and drugged himself stupid on chakra pills until he could find his teammates and drag them home. Someone who stayed until the morning, slept on the floor, slept in the same bed, tangled between three sets of weary limbs because he couldn't face going home yet. Because he had to stay and guard and make sure that when Ryouma woke up there was someone around to grab onto and force the dark away.
A freak who fell apart on rooftops.
Kakashi slumped down by the stone again and let his covered temple rest against Obito's name.
"I'm so stupid," he whispered. "Should have just let him die out there. Would've been easier in the long run. Better than bringing him back and watching when they send him out again. Because they're going to. And he's going to die. And I can't get him out of my head."
Not just him; all of them. Too many faces written into Obito's sharingan, too many red-edged memories dragged through a mind tangled with exhaustion. Tsume howling her heart broken when Kuromaru had thrown himself down from a mastiff's broad back and run. Haruichi burning his chakra through jutsu faster than Kakashi had ever seen, spinning seals like an artist while his scent blistered black with fear. Ryouma lunging awake with a scream in his throat, three months a rookie and already wearing death on his soul, terrified of what his hands had done. Ginta standing like a shadow in his blood-stained armour, face pale and eyes wide as he danced too close to the edge and pushed Kakashi over it.
He cracked his head against the stone, trying to wipe out the aftermath of a mission gone wrong. It didn't work, but the blow felt a lot like Obito telling him not to be so dramatic.
"I'm tired." Kakashi bent forward, bracing himself over his knees again. His throat ached. He couldn't have stopped the words if he wanted to. "I'm so tired, Obito. It just keeps getting worse and I don't know where to start anymore. After the Fox--after Sensei--I joined ANBU and thought I'd see you all before they'd finished carving his name in the stone. But that was five years ago, and I'm still the best they have..."
And he couldn't kill himself. Couldn't even if he'd wanted to. His father's tanto was long broken, and Kakashi would lay his head on the executioner's block before he stained it with more Hatake blood.
He was still wanted. Still needed. The village could still use him, no matter how many teammates he destroyed along the way.
And his pack didn't have another master yet. Wouldn't until he passed the contract on.
He'd left Shiba with Ryouma for almost three days. Two days. He wasn't quite sure. He hadn't slept since Ginta had jarred him awake, and things were starting to blur together. Food and careful exercise had started to build his chakra back up, even without the benefit of actual rest. He hadn't taken more chakra pills--his coils wouldn't stand it, not after everything he'd demanded of them over the past week. But he had energy now, building from a low flicker to a steady glimmer in his pathways. Not enough for anything really useful, but some.
"I'm not helping myself, am I?" he muttered. "Leaving her with him. Just giving him a reason to come back. Giving myself another damn excuse." He sat back and pressed his palms together, locked his fingers until they stopped shaking. Even from this distance he could still feel the thin thread of chakra that connected him to Shiba.
"Sorry, Ryouma," he whispered, and shaped the seal that cancelled the summons. Chakra wrenched out of him, breaking the link. Sending her back. And that was better for everyone. Ryouma had been out of the hospital for two--three days. If he needed someone to lean on, Tsume had been more than willing to include him in her pack.
And Kakashi didn't need anyone. He had his own pack, even if they weren't here. And Obito, even if he'd been dead for seven years.
He just needed to sleep. And a solo mission, to remember what he was good for.
He stared down at his hands and watched the echo of chakra gleam, outlining the chipped curves of short fingernails. On his right palm, the blistered mark of a recent chidori was slowly fading back into scar tissue. On his left, the purplish line from a kunai puncture had almost healed white; the last remnant from his second mission with Ryouma, when they'd come so close to etching another name on the stone.
He clenched his hands into fists and tried to stop thinking.
It worked about as well as banging his head against the memorial had.
"Missed a step," Kakashi said again, and the words came out cracked. "He could have told me what his secret was, before--he was always smiling, even in the war. Smelled like he was smiling. Never stopped. Even when the Fox came. Did I ever tell you that? It's the last thing I remember him doing. But I guess you saw that, too."
Obito's eye was watering, hidden beneath Minato's scratched hitai-ate. Kakashi pressed his hand over both and took a deep breath.
"He's dead. I know that, and I swore I'd never do this, but--"
He stopped talking. Stopped thinking. Chakra spilled down his arms, pulled from his pathways, and twisted through new seals. Sweat broke out over pale skin as he smashed it into the right shape.
A clone popped into being, standing mute in front of him. It tilted its head to one side. He threw up his hands before it could open its mouth.
"Wait."
More chakra, dragged from pathways that ached, now. He weaved it together, focused on a memory. An image and a scent. A face he missed more than most.
The clone shimmered, blurred, and changed as the henge slipped over it. Grey hair melted into blond spikes. Pale skin darkened, turning brown-gold. ANBU blacks became a jounin uniform, flanked by a flame-patterned coat that fluttered gently in the breeze. One grey eye, half-lidded and shadowed underneath, the other crimson-and-black, hidden by a slanted hitai-ate, became bright and blue. Last of all, the black mask vanished, leaving an easy smile in its wake.
"Hey, kid," said Minato softly. "Missed you."
Kakashi didn't have the words. He just stared, one eye locked on the man before him. Without sharingan-vision to break the lie, Minato looked completely real. And far younger than Kakashi remembered. Shorter, slimmer.
Breathing.
His wounds were gone. The obscene damage the fox had done, Minato's last jutsu, the fall from Gamabuta's back...
He smelled like sunshine and new leaves. Kakashi focused on that and tried to forget the rest. He couldn't look away.
"You know you're taller than me now?" Minato's was low and warm, achingly familiar. He crouched down. "By about two inches, I reckon. Who said you could grow up?"
Kakashi stiffened, tension rolling up his back as he fought against the urge to reach out and grab. Hang on and never let go. "Hormones," he managed.
"Funny sort of name. Make sure you stop listening to him. I like it better when my students don't tower over me." A hand settled on Kakashi's head, fingers furrowing into his hair. He almost stopped breathing. "This is still the same, though."
"Better things to do than brush it." If he didn't raise his voice above a whisper, it wouldn't break.
"Or cut it, apparently." Blue eyes danced, shining beneath eyebrows that arched just a little. "You know scissors aren't actually tools of the devil, right? I don't care what Obito told you--"
Kakashi closed his eye. Reached out blind and fisted his hand into the starched cloth of a jounin vest. "Don't--don't sound like him. Just sit. For a minute." Salt water licked down the left side of his face, seeping from under his hitai-ate. "Just for a minute," he said desperately.
"Sure," said the clone, in a voice that sounded much more like his own. "Want me to count it?"
Kakashi choked on a laugh that wasn't a laugh and snapped the seals. The hand on his head--the fingers in his hair--vanished with a crack of smoke. Ozone wiped away the memory of sunshine and new leaves.
"Sorry," he whispered and leaned his head back against the stone. His fingers shook. His throat burned. "Sorry, sorry, sorry..."
He covered his mouth with a hand and silenced himself. The wind picked up again, stirring the grass gently. On the edge of the distant horizon, the sky was beginning to lighten, throwing the Hokages' monument into shadowed relief against the rising dawn. Yondaime's face looked grimmer than he remembered. Against his back, the stone leeched cold through his shirt. There was no answer to his apology. There never was.
And he still wanted nothing more than to head back home, knock on Ryouma's door, and ask if he could sleep in his company for one more night.
Rule twenty-five.
Kakashi covered his face with his hands, bent over his knees, and tried very, very hard not to cry. |
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