Ryouma wasn’t quite sure when the conversation had jumped from people breaking to the village itself, but he knew the timbre of Kakashi’s voice well enough by now to know that what he was saying mattered. Quiet, intense, with a husky undertone as though he was shaping these words together for the first time. As though it was the first time he’d even really let himself think them...

There was a bench nearby, solid wooden planks braced against the wall of a kimono shop already closed up for the evening. Ryouma tugged Kakashi toward it. “What do you mean?”

The bench bumped his shins. He blinked hazily down at it; apparently his depth perception was off, too. He could manage a controlled fall well enough, though, even with Kakashi hovering as if he thought Ryouma would slide off the bench and into the street at any moment. Kakashi himself condescended to sit only after Ryouma was securely braced against the rough plaster wall. Then he dropped down on the other side of the bench, resting his arms on his knees and hunching over them a little.

“We fight until we die,” he said. His voice was bleak as the Snow Country tundra. “Or until we break and they kill us, or until they break us and we kill ourselves.” His hands flexed, left clenching around right, covering the shiny burn scar that radiated out from the center of his palm. “I saw the Hokage today,” he added abruptly. “Do you remember Orochimaru?”

“I heard the stories,” Ryouma said slowly. He wasn’t sure what this had to do with anything, either, but Kakashi never rambled. There was a point here somewhere. “He was researching forbidden jutsu—experimenting on people, an’ he didn’t just take volunteers.” Mitarashi Anko never talked about it, but everyone in the village knew she’d been one of the only survivors. The one who’d turned her own sensei in.

“He was pissed about Minato-sensei being chosen as Yondaime, an’ something happened. You’ve got your pick of half a dozen rumors as to what. But he left the village, and Jiraiya-sama went after him and never came back, either. Except for the Yondaime’s funeral.”

“Minato-sensei told me they found people buried in the walls when they broke into his labs. Mostly kids.” Kakashi turned his head, glancing up at Ryouma. His eye was almost black beneath the shadow of his hair. “Sandaime-sama let Orochimaru go. There should have been a kill squad, but he called it off. Couldn’t kill his own student. But my father—”

His voice broke. He drew a deep, chest-rattling breath, dropped his head again, stared at his hands.

“Your father disobeyed his orders to save his teammates,” Ryouma whispered, remembering that fight at the Stone, Kakashi’s voice snarling around the White Fang’s bloody story. “And the village hated him for it. Hunted him until he killed himself to atone for it.”

He made his own choice because he thought he knew better. And he was a lot smarter than you.

Kakashi’s hand slid over his face, another mask, a shield. His voice came muffled through his fingers. “I found him.”

He’d never said that.

Ryouma set his teeth and shoved away from the wall to lean against Kakashi’s side, wrapping an arm around his back and resting his chin on Kakashi’s vest-padded shoulder. Kakashi didn’t pull away. Under the vest his muscles felt rigid as iron, brittle as porcelain, as though he were holding himself together by sheer effort of will.

“You loved him,” Ryouma said, very quietly. “And the village killed him.”