His Unexpected Gift
mayonaka.ni.sakayume
12.14.05
Disclaimer: Characters property of Kishimoto.
Summary: It's been keeping him alive for years, but he never realized the gift came with lessons attached, or that there's more to surviving than not getting killed.
Kakashi catches himself thinking of the past at the oddest times. At the moment, he's quietly thanking his old friend for the best, worst, best gift he ever got. Like his memories, it's revealed more and more with every chance he's had to study it; the imitation may be what makes it, and him, so famous, but that's only a piece of what it can do. It can recall, too. That's saved his life a hundred times by now, maybe more. And something tells him it'll save him again, maybe when he doesn't even realize he's in danger, now that he knows what else it can do. It's still memorization, but there's more his vision will preserve than jutsus or handseals.
He can memorize instants.
He can take in everything. For just a flash of a moment, that eye is a camera --- but more than a camera. A recorder not just of images, but of sound, and not just of sound but of scent and temperature and texture and taste. He can get a snapshot of the world, of all that there is to it, and Obito's eye lets him hold onto it for as long as he needs. It's an incredible ability, and it astounds him that it took him this long to discover it. Then again, when has he ever needed to capture a moment in that kind of detail? He has a sharp mind. Plans, scrolls, blueprints – those, he can just as easily commit to memory with his own eye. Knowing what the air felt like while he was reading them, or the taste in his mouth at the time, was never important. It seemed like a fitting surprise to get from his old friend, when he first realized it was there, because while Kakashi was busy being a child prodigy, he was paying attention to how the air felt, and what the grass smelled like when you laid in it in the summer, and how many different colors are really in a blue sky. The thing is, even though Kakashi's changed a lot since back then, he's still Kakashi. He doesn't appreciate things like that much.
Didn't, anyways.
No one will ever have the kind of impact on him that his former teammate did, and that's for the best, because you can only shake up a person so much in one lifetime. But that doesn't mean he's completely static. It's just that the only way to change Kakashi is to get close to him, and almost no one does. It takes a lot of patience, and a motive more sincere and lasting than most would be able to come up with, and the truth is it takes a hell of a lot of strength. People with all three are rare enough – never mind that there's still the question of Kakashi even liking this hypothetical patient, sincere, strong person. Obito managed to duck under most of those requirements, but he was a special case. Pretty much anyone else has to hit all the marks.
Looking at it that way, perhaps it isn't as strange as it first seems that he's ended up with Iruka. The man's a teacher, and a teacher of the young and troublemaking, so he's got patience in droves. He's as sincere as anyone Kakashi's ever known, which is both endearing and a little hard for someone used to masks to deal with. And for a chuunin (and a fundamentally average one, at that) he's a lot stronger than most people give him credit for. He surrounds himself with people who are fated to go off and die young, and he knows it, but he lets himself get attached – he stays human anyways, which may not save his skin in battle but is a kind of strength Kakashi knows he's outclassed in.
Maybe that's one of the ways he's rubbed off on him. He's gotten close enough to do that, to leave little wisps of himself lodged in Kakashi's mind and heart, and to Kakashi's great surprise those lingering pieces aren't easily brushed aside. One of them might be the willingness to get hurt, because he has been. Not by his own wounds, like he's used to, and not by anything that leaves a scar. It's the strength to let himself ache for other people, something he's mostly refused to do for the past thirteen years. Iruka hurts for his old students, growing up too fast and losing too much of themselves, and Kakashi hurts for Iruka. There's no comparison there – he doesn't think he was ever as alive as the chuunin still is, and he never will be – but they're not as far from each other as they used to be.
That's not what Kakashi's thinking about right now, though. He's sitting at the base of a broad oak, spring-green leaves whispering in the warm wind that floats by, and getting hurt is the last thing on his mind. Iruka has his head in his lap, shoulders against the jounin's leg, body stretched out before him. Neither of them has said anything in the longest time, but it isn't awkward. Now and then Iruka shifts some, rearranges his head or his back, and sighs in a contented sort of way. Kakashi knows they're content sighs, because Iruka's got his eyes closed, and there's this tiny little smile tugging at the corners of his lips, just enough to count. His hair's slipping out of its ponytail, a few strands at a time, and from time to time Kakashi reaches to brush it out of his face; he blushes then, flickers his eyes open, smiles a little more, goes back to resting. They kissed a little while ago, and Iruka tasted like caramel; the flavor's still on Kakashi's lips, on the tip of his tongue.
Obito never got old enough to have anyone the way Kakashi has Iruka, but he'd appreciate all those little details if he had. That's what he thinks as he takes his friend's precious gift out of hiding, loosening the hitai-ate cast askew over his eye and letting it fall to lay around his neck. The movement rouses Iruka, and when he blinks up at Kakashi he's met not by a half-gaze but by a full one, gray and red and frightening and beautiful. He doesn't know about this part of the Sharingan, and Kakashi is used enough to keeping secrets that it never occurs to him to tell him. He doesn't know that as Kakashi's looking at him now, he's also looking at the late May air around them, and the grass that they're sitting in, and all the million colors in the blue sky overhead.
He used to think it was useless because it wouldn't help him survive, but that turned out to be another surprise. Weeks from now, covered in blood that's only half his own, sleepless out of necessity and sheer paranoia----he'll close his eyes, and the crimson iris will spin, and here he'll be. He'll be warm from the afternoon sun, and the chuunin's head will be tipped against his leg, and he'll be able to taste caramel.
And that will keep him alive for one more night.
He blinks, and Iruka blinks, and when they finally smile at each other he closes that eye once more, its work done. Iruka's are still open, warm and dark – a shade darker and they'd match those of the boy who used to own one of Kakashi's. His today, and maybe even his tomorrow (if that patience and sincerity and strength hold up) – smiling like his yesterday…
Kakashi catches himself thinking of the past at the oddest times.