Notes: I was thinking about how the Naruto world prizes its geniuses so very much, and wondered what would happen if it were the other way around—if its geniuses were prosecuted and killed for the sake of equality. Keep in mind that in this world, if you're labeled a prodigy, you're screwed. Therefore, if you were smarter than the rest, you'd best shut up and pretend to be stupid or else.
"Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds."
—Albert Einstein
Ten years after the incident, he found a dusty note buried beneath the anthill windowsill—
All humans must be equal, right? Prodigies are the essence of inequality and therefore are a danger to the village of Konoha.
The mediocre live on and the ingenious falter.
—Sakumo
But that was ten years too late.
The boy sat quietly on the wooden bench, fingers tracing the kunai engravings that laced his seat. His dull eyes scanned the horizon, looking for his father's figure to decorate the premises. Around him, his classmates' boisterous voices were shouting as they engaged themselves in a game of tag, a game he longed to join. The boy looked down at his lap, mouth pulled tightly into a frown. They were always whispering. Always. Something about his father, something about the man being too...
"...perfect."
"Yeah, that damn Hatake, doesn't know how to follow the rules..."
"Uh huh, don't know nothing 'bout equality..."
"...never understood striving for his goals..."
"...always got what he wanted on a silver platter...bet his son's like that too."
The first time he'd heard the hushed conversations, he hadn't understood what a "silver platter" was. He'd tried asking his father, but the man's face had crumpled and turned away, as if repulsed by the very words. His clammy hands had gripped Kakashi's shoulder, and he'd whispered in a disheartened voice, "Forget those words. They…they don't mean much." But his hand was shaking as it retreated from his shoulder, and Kakashi knew.
Lies, the lot of them.
It had begun with a mission—a dangerous one, to Wave Country. From the hour when his father had been debriefed to the hour of his departure, he'd been listless and skittish, as if constantly in a daze. Attempts to talk to the man were brushed off in favor of observing electromagnetic waves strike their windowpane. No goodbyes were exchanged upon his departure; Sakumo had disappeared without ever informing his son.
Kakashi spent the next few days at home, excusing himself from school under the pretense of sickness. His days were spent in idleness as he watched an unruly line of ants make their way up and down his windowsill, carrying tidbits of food to their enclave under the sill. For a brief moment, he imagined himself a hawk looming over Wave Country, watching as the ants, that is, his father and teammates, executed their mission with swift solidity.
Three days passed, and a red circle on his calendar indicated that this was the scheduled day of his father's return. He unlatched the door (though it was still early morning), leapt outside (despite repercussions if being seen playing hooky), and hid in a thicket of branches a foot away from his ant-watching windowsill, awaiting his father's return. An hour passed. A man with dark hair and a jarring scar across his cheek approached the door, a scroll in one hand and a kunai in the other. Kakashi watched him curiously from his vantage point in the bushes, though curiosity soon turned to fear. Three hours passed. The scarred man had left with annoyance flickering about his face, irate that Sakumo was not home. Another hour passed. Boredom and the insufferable heat of the sun soon crept in, and he occupied his time by working out a surprise attack on his father.
Noon turned to mid-afternoon, and it soon became too hot to continue his hiding (the smell of his sweat would surely give him away), so he promptly henged himself into a bucket of water. But it did little to relieve his odor problem—he was still too hot, too smelly, too easily recognized by a shinobi's sensitive nose. A genjutsu would've been perfect for this situation, but he knew none that he could hold at lengths of time, nor any that would've tricked his father. Beads of sweat trickled down his neck, as if reminding him that it was time to admit defeat.
He sighed, resigned for the night, and succumbed to the coolness of his room. He came back the next day, and the next, and the next. No sign of his father.
But when his father returned a week later, a mangled, bloody mess with streaks of dirt decorating his face, Kakashi was in no mood for surprises—something was wrong. Very wrong.
He brought water, towels, and the (secret) stash of bandages he'd discovered in their house's attic a year ago, all the while wondering why his father hadn't gone to the hospital. And when he'd prodded for a reason, his father waved him off, coughing a bitter, "I can take care of my own wounds." But his gaze was averted and his injury so serious that Kakashi knew the truth was hidden behind a patchwork of lies, too deep to unearth with a simple shovel.
The next day, early in the morning, a knock echoed from the doorway, a stark cold thump. Kakashi, slightly concerned that an Academy teacher had finally decided to seek him out for his weeklong disappearance, stayed put in his father's room, praying that he wouldn't be the one to answer the door. To his surprise and relief, his father instructed him to leave the door alone, which he surmised had something to do with the results of his father's mission. Had a teammate come to seek his father out to reprimand him for skirting a round in the hospital? Was it a teammate hoping to fit a drink in before their next dangerous outing?
Three days later, when he finally decided to put an end to his class-cutting and was on his way to the Academy, he'd overheard his teacher cursing his father's name (to a fruit vendor)—something about the man being too damn faultless and not knowing his place, followed by an irate sneer. The fruit vendor bobbed his head in agreement, and the two continued to vent their bouts of anger. Cursing his father was a rather commonplace action, but the new barrage of curse words directed his way seemed to be intertwined with the current mission. Kakashi darted around the fruit vendor's stand, vowing to piece together this new puzzle by the end of the day.
He hadn't dared (or bothered) to raise his hand in class that day, knowing that the teacher would just cast him a withering glare, a glare that was really meant for his father.
They spent the bulk of the school day talking about aiming kunai.
That afternoon, he'd found his father's name in the newspaper, emboldened and at large in the headlines. He read the article in haste, an editorial describing his father's heinous exploits on the battlefield, critiquing the man's lack of tact for Konoha's "equality for all" slogan. He'd gulped, terrified, and reread the previous sentence, hands suddenly tightening around the paper. There were no lies—"Hatake Sakumo, has, once again, flaunted his lack of respect for Konoha's law system, this time through the disregard of our EFA slogan." Kakashi's eyes widened as the words percolated into his brain—this was the drill repeated incessantly at the Academy—"A supporter of flawed ideologies such as social darwinism are to be given…"
"…a six year jail sentence. You hear?" A rough, masculine voice rumbled from a few feet behind the newsstand.
"Yeah. I mean, finally, we get some justice. He's been a damn prodigy for too long, pollutin' our waters."
"Hell, these geniuses just cause stress for us ordinary folk…an' they're frigging arrogant too, always braggin' 'bout how much better they are then us. Can't stand 'em."
"Glad to see he's finally gonna be put in his pla—"
His limbs were quivering spastically at the strangers' harrowing conclusions; his mind was whirling in some off-center universe. His father…the man he'd admired for the last six years of his life, was being—what? Paper grasped tightly in hand, he dived from the bench he'd been crouching on (nearly tripping in his haste) in a mad rush toward home. At the very least, he needed to catch one glimpse of his father, one last glimpse before they sent the man off to incarceration.
That single, fleeting moment was when he first began to question the law.
The strangers he'd left behind sneered at his sudden departure, taking it as the sign of a frail mind. In a slurred, hoarse voice, he muttered, "That's the Hatake brat, ain't he? Betcha my next paycheck he'll turn out jus' like his father…"
Raucous laughter complemented the stranger's statement, marking cheerful agreement from his conversation partner.
Red paint intertwined with blue splotches in a series of pictographs, pictographs depicting the events of Hatake Sakumo's mission. Roughly sketched Rain-nin with heads too small and bodies too big laced each panel, along with a glorified picture of Sakumo killing them in each. By the time Kakashi had taken in the scene, his front yard (where the mocking cartoons had lay their roots) was crowded with rowdy villagers and resentful shinobi, all who were demanding the exile of his father. The logical side of his mind told him to flee (who knew what these men with sharp, shiny stuff could do!), but his feet froze in spot, as though rooted to the earth.
Luckily, the villagers paid him no mind and continued their senseless rioting, leaving Kakashi entrenched in his imagination. As he stood on what now looked like enemy territory, he vaguely recalled his fleeting moment of law questioning, something proclaimed as thoughts of the "trash" in the Academy. It left him feeling torn, like some tattered cloth two merchants had cleaved in half to appease each other, with no thought of its welfare.
"Where do your loyalties lie?" was a common question in the Academy, with its answer (Not Konoha, not Suna, not Iwa, but Oto) being phrased as a code to weed out invaders. The Academy answer was delegated to the furrows of his mind as the indignant cries of rebels tramping about his lawn made their way to his ears. What would a realistic answer to the question would be. Konohagakure no sato? His father?
His thoughts were left incomplete as a shrill screech behind the crowds shattered his trance. His body whirled to face the source of the noise, watching in frozen trepidation as the door to his house opened, inch by inch, degree by degree. His mouth hung slightly ajar (though no words found their way through) and his eyebrows creased in concern with every push.
The long-awaited Hatake Sakumo was finally out in the open.
The crowd's jeers exploded, thrilled that the convicted had finally shown himself. They closed in, like predators on prey, baring their teeth and grinning with feigned ferocity. Kakashi eyed his father, but Sakumo's face remained neutrally blank, carefully avoiding his gaze. It was the same withering loss of life that Kakashi had observed the night of the mission debriefing—the loss that had augmented and was slowly ingesting Sakumo's persona. Staring at the lifeless man, guilt coursed through his veins and his limbs willed to dive to the bushes, bury his head beneath the leaves, and muffle the sounds of the congregation, of the condemning jury. The crowd, the sickly satisfied crowd, ignored his pleas.
His vision felt blurred as he watched a man, the same scarred man who'd knocked at the door days earlier, rush through the crowd, another scroll in hand. There was a grave, apathetic look upon his face, a look sure to bring about an admission of guilt from his father. Within seconds, the man's hand had itself curled about Sakumo's shirt, jerking the shinobi toward the crowd.
"Uchiha." Sakumo spat the word, stressing each syllable with fury. Kakashi strained himself, leaning on his toes, attempting to catch a glimpse of the Uchiha clan logo on the man's back. What met his eyes was a tattered white and red fan, like torn paint off a collapsing fence. He knew why his father was angry. The Uchiha were a clan of prodigies, and more often than not, Konohagakure would be on their cases, questioning the inheritors of the Sharingan. And yet, when it came to a fellow genius, they showed no mercy, treating each case as though battering away competition. And perhaps they were.
Scarface Uchiha whipped out his scroll, and spread it in front of Sakumo's face. His face was expressionless, there was no satisfied sneer, no mocking laughter, no lingering sympathy like would've been expected. Six simple words were etched there, in dark red ink, a color used exclusively to condemn criminals:
HATAKE SAKUMO: SIX-YEAR PRISON SENTENCE
He scrutinized his father's face, hoping to see a trace of regret, a dash of melancholy, but it mimicked the Uchiha's—expressionless. The Uchiha made a hand motion in the direction of the police station, and his father was led away, offering no resistance. Perhaps he'd known, known for too long that this incident would happen. Perhaps he'd guessed that this would be the case days before his return, and had long given up on defiance. Perhaps... No matter his thoughts, his father was leaving. Going, going...
With every step that his father took forward, every step that led him closer to the incarceration center, Kakashi took a step back, feet sinking into the soft mud. There was no need to watch the procession anymore, for the crowd's cheers, the crowd's inhuman cheers, were the only thing left. ...gone.
It was the second time in his short six years of life that he'd ever questioned the law.
The next few days, he went to school dutifully, hoping to evade suspicion from the Konohagakure government. But the whispers were everywhere now, surrounding him, like a mountain of sand, ready to suffocate him. He took his usual seat at the back of the classroom, shrouded behind the safety of the tall boy before him. They were reviewing the uses of genjutsu. genjutsu (n). techniques that use chakra to create illusions, used to distract the enemy. He recited the dictionary definition over and over in his mind, hoping to be ready when he was...
"Kakashi, what is one use of genjutsu?"
Whispering...whispering...they were whispering again. His hands latched onto the edge of his desk, survival instincts kicking into full gear. Whispering...why did they have to whisper about him? Survive, live on...not be like his father...
"Gen-genjutsu? Wh-wha...um...they can be used...when...a person dies to...to clean up the body."
A wave laughter filled the classroom; the answer, his answer, was ridiculous. He breathed a sigh of relief, a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He was glad—their laughter, their deafening laughter had drowned out the whispers invading his mind. When he chanced a glance up again, the teacher was already facing elsewhere, busy quizzing another on the usage of genjutsu. He smiled. So a pretense of stupidity did pay off after all. Who would've known? He remained triumphant the rest of the day, silently applauding himself for his genius.
His luck ran out three weeks later.
End Notes: This is more of an epic story, so expect more soon (next chapter will probably focus on Itachi). Oh, and concrit is welcome and appreciated! (So are flames, if you're wondering)