His fingertips brushed across the things on his dresser in the small bedroom of the smaller house he lived in. As they did so his footsteps never faltered, for he lingered on nothing. Not the worn, well-loved first copy of Makeout Paradise, placed there always to provide a moment of nostalgia, not on the ripped pair of gloves the couldn't remember the origin of, and not the freshly washed set of spair masks that he hadn't bothered to put away yet. Neither the half-drunk bottle of sake nor the pack of playing cards left unused. Not even his favored set of twin bells ready to be clipped on to his waist in the event of a necessary pretense of actually evaluating new students.
His pace broke, step faltered, feet came to a stop, though, when his fingertips reached the photo. There had been other squads, other Genin, but team seven's picture was the only one that sat on Hatake Kakashi's dresser, a little bit dusty at the edges and still in the same tacky picture frame that he, Kakashi, had bought because it was the first one he saw at the store. His one good black eye trailed over the image of some of Konoha's most talked-about shinobi. Naruto, constantly looking to Sasuke but thinking about Sakura, Sakura, smiling but waiting for Sasuke to look her way, and finally Uchiha Sasuke himself, sulking and pretending no one cared.
Kakashi forced his legs to start moving again, and allowed his right hand, encased as it was in his fingerless glove, to fall to his side. The white-haired Jounin moved on autopilot, feeling as though he was executing motions he had learned from his borrowed sharingan as he walked out of his front door, as though it wasn't him performing the actions, but something—or someone—else. But then, wasn't that what he was famous for? Hatake Kakashi, Copy Ninja, son of the infamous White Fang of Konoha. Was he then famous for being a shell to Obito's ability?
Before he knew it his thoughts had blurred him so much to his body's actions that he found himself outside without having realized the change in location. In fact, even now he could feel the cool night air of Konoha village on what little skin was exposed on his frame as he moved through the air, the tips of his fingers, his toes, and the skin around the only eye which remained that belonged to him, and out of reflex he was landing as he had been trained to do years and years before on a rooftop. Then he was flitting across, no more than a white-haired shadow in the dark, alone in the chill truth of what every hidden village was when pretenses dropped and night fell: pain.
He could feel tiny movements of Konoha's main water supply through his feet where he sat on the largest water tower. His gloved hands came together from where his forearms formed an angle, propped on his knees. The only places one could see more of Konoha from here were the Hokage mansion and the cliffs beyond the village. Kakashi vaguely wondered how many other shinobi sat here while drowning in whatever tragedies ninja life had brought them, or, like him, just come to wonder at the simplicity that danced with heartache of nothing.
He couldn't truthfully say he had heard her coming. He would have known that most people were there ten minutes before the showed up. She didn't make much of an effort to hide the fact that she had arrived; it was just that one moment he was alone and the next she was there, coming up behind him from the other side of the water tower. He didn't look over at her, didn't utter any word of greeting, because he knew that she would always be sure to beat him to it if he tried. What he didn't expect was to feel the edge of a kunai at his throat and see the trademarked Anko smirk—the stunt that the Tokubetsu Jounin always pulled with the kids at Chunin exams—and hear Mitarashi saying, "Hatake Kakashi," in a voice worthy of Orochimaru on a more Perverted day.
A bit surprised but otherwise unmoved, he sat calmly and replied, "Evening, Anko," and stared straight ahead. As he expected, his lack of reaction inspired disappointment in the spike-haired kunoichi, resulting in the dislocation of the kunai placed against his covered jugular. On another day this might have called forth a slight chuckle from Kakashi, but he stayed silent, staring sightlessly at whatever beyond he might contemplate from here.
"So, Kakashi, why out so late?" Her voice found him again, vibrating evenly in its unsoprano tenor that set her apart from most other female ninja in Konoha. She was in front of him now, facing her side to him and leaning sideways to get closer while smirking. "And not even up to something…or are you?" Kakashi took a moment before responding at all.
"I'm not one of your little Chunin to terrorize, Anko," he said, with just a hint of a smile that faded before it could even be seen through his mask. Her face sobered, and for a while she just watched him witht those reflective snake-green eyes that showed only what she wanted them to. If he thought about it, Mitarashi Anko was much like himself. Low profile in essence, but strong in their own right, that was the same in them both. She had easily more physical pain as a reminder of her past tragedies, knew the dark of Konoha as well as he did… But she remained herself, unchanging, unbending before the trials of the times. She was so at home with her quirks that she made her own fun, and no one who hadn't learned of it before hand could guess her woes. A moist breath left his mouth into the fabric of his mask.
I used to be able to pull that off too… he thought. His own character had been enough. His optimism had been enough to put away the travesties of old, as Uchiha Sasuke could not. Until he didn't know whether or not these traits were his…or just another copy. Just another skin to slip on subconciously over his own. Just another pirated jutsu.
And suddenly his fingertips were reaching for the curve of her chin, drawing her closer. His eye was boring into hers, his body was leaning forward. But her fingertips made him pause, made him stay still for just a moment. And in that second of stillness, he finally felt that this was him, not a jutsu, not a copy. He was here in his own skin.
Then it was her fingers drawing him near, edging at his mask and playing at his neck. Her fingertips peeling away the thin impersonal layer and his moving to her dark purple hair. His knuckles brushing across her eyelids and her lips rising to meet his. His two dark eyes pulling shut and their moon right overhead.