| [Oct. 31st, 2009|12:21 am] |
Ryouma really had been out of hearing range.
"No," said Kakashi. He dropped his chin, almost biting his tongue at the flash of sudden honesty. Sudden words. But Ryouma always did have a way of getting answers out of a person. Kakashi leaned forward, movements cut sharp with cold. "No. I couldn't tell him--"
He stopped. Ryouma's expression didn't flicker; he turned a little more, angling to look over his own shoulder in a way that should have seemed painful, but fell somewhere more natural. Listening, steady, willing to hear whatever Kakashi had to say. There was even an edge of invitation in the uncurving line of his mouth, in the patient, storm-dark eyes.
Living, breathing person. Nothing you found in a stone.
Kakashi swallowed hard, and felt his dry throat click. He couldn't tell Obito. Obito was the reason teammates mattered, the reason Kakashi wrenched himself to pieces trying to get every last one home. The exact, precise, goddamned reason he didn't have more blood on his hands.
Ryouma wasn't any of that. Ryouma was just--someone worth waking up to. Someone who'd listened before, called Kakashi seven kinds of idiot, and still kissed him hard when he'd come back from blackness that'd begun with one dying teammate and one already locked in the ground.
Someone who'd hung around the hospital for a week, wrangled nurses, faced down Intel, dragged Kakashi's ass clear across town in an uncooperative wheelchair, and danced kata in twilight while Kakashi had tried to find words that meant murderer and said I'm sorry.
Ryouma was crouching; Kakashi didn't need to stand again.
"I talk to Obito," he said finally, quietly. "Whenever I can. It helps me--keep things straight. And I owe him that. But he--he shouldn't--"
He hesitated, jerked his chin up and then forced it down. Spoke short and blunt, in front of the marker that wasn't just Obito's, to a man who'd probably already heard too much.
"I killed Tsuyako. Ginta's teammate. She broke under torture and I couldn't carry them both home." |
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