Beneath Two Masks
::Author's Note: This is my second attempt at writing a Kakashi oneshot. I suppose it could be considered a companion to "What's Left for the Dead" as they share some common themes. I would love to see more reviews this time (asking nicely) and also be aware that this is un-beta-read, and something about the flow feels awkward to me...but maybe it's just me. I'll never know until you review. Oh, and beware of very mild Kakashi Gaiden spoilers.::
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
The wind moaned that night in Konoha, and the dark clouds crouched mournfully under watchful stars. Hatake Kakashi appreciated their sympathy as he sat upon a tattered sofa inside his groaning apartment, a Kunai knife suspended between his clammy fingers, with only the friction between his fingers and the knife's leather handle keeping it from gravity's clutches.
They were crying for him. He wondered whether or not to be comforted. For after all, compassion from clouds and wind is nothing to be celebrated when pity can no longer be extended from family and friends.
The fragile bond between Kakashi's fingers and his kunai broke, and the short knife fell to the floor with a clatter. It took Kakashi awhile to notice, but when he did, he did not pick it up again. Instead he went to the window and looked out upon the squatting city that he called his home, though secretly he knew that to apply the word to such meager circumstances as his were an insult to both the word and to himself.
He laid two fingertips upon the glass, and watched as the cold surface fogged up around his hand. The seasons seemed to be changing again. He looked to the calendar on the wall, and, after a moment of consideration, realized that the date was the 24th of September. His birthday was already nine days past.
Vaguely, he wondered how old he was. His last birthday had gone unnoticed until early October, and even then he had barely acknowledged the change in his age except when seeing it written on mission reports and profiles….
He had turned seventeen nine days ago. One fifth of his natural life was spent, and yet he had wafted through the years as though a breath of wind. And he knew he would continue to do so, up until the day he failed to return from that one mission, forever living by a philosophy of un-life, until his usefulness to his village was spent. And of course he knew that he would never live long enough to see that time; he would not let himself, for the shinobi lifestyle—if it could truly be called one—was the only one he had ever known.
The young man turned away from the window, for he felt the eyes of his village upon him, perpetually daring him with wary hatred to undo the wrongs of his father.
It would take a hundred lifetimes for him to do that, and even if he succeeded he still could not have won their love. It was forever barred from him, as the legacy of his father's disgrace. He felt a sudden surge of self-loathing at the thought, and stood still, arms spread from his body and fingers spread from each other, so as not to spread the filth that seemed always to cover him.
It was easier when sensei was here. And Rin. And even Obito. If only his genius had allowed him to see it.
And what did he have now? No longer one but two cold masks to wear, one for hiding and one for killing, and he wondered whether the face beneath those two masks looked any different than the ones he hunted and killed on a daily basis.
His eyes roved the dark room, and came to rest upon two dim stripes cast by village lights against his ANBU mask, hanging by it's crimson string from a peg upon his wall. As he gazed, he wished he could feel that childish surge of fear he had felt three years ago, when he had for the first time glimpsed the new porcelain illuminated by the moon. It had so poignantly reminded him of a demon, he had been afraid to go to it and put it out of sight. But now he was older and the demon mask was no longer frightening, because it is not in human nature to fear things that are the same as oneself.
And thus life and death continued for Hatake Kakashi, now an awkward young man of seventeen who was afraid to look at his bare face in the mirror, because it is human nature to fear the unfamiliar. He had lost his face to war, his body to war, and his mind to war. But that was the truth, his only truth, and he took it as it came. For that was his Shinobi way.