Uhh..so I'm back? With a crazy new fandom. Oops.
Weapons aren't supposed to feel, aren't supposed to run touch-deprived hands and skin across another's body, feeling heat and warmth, and there's nothing sexual about it.
Not yet.
But there was a girl--
oh god, she was so young
And machines can't run forever, you know, and something always breaks--
with eyes too blue.
And Kakashi is no stranger to blood, he's ANBU afterall, but this time it's different--
and there's darkness and what in the world is she doing in a place like this?
This time he's shaking--
even as the blood drips, drips, drips.
And it's not his fault--
but it is.
She was just there and he couldn't stop, couldn't pause--
Good soldiers keep going, good weapons don't bend, don't break, don't stop for little innocent-eyed girls in too-big clothes.
And this time it was too much, and something desperate and panicking and pained squeezes out between the perfect shields made by a perfect machine.
Because he killed a girl he didn't know in a country he can't remember on a mission he can't talk about.
He comes back from the mission trembling and not quite sure what he is, but Genma is there because Genma is always there and that's part of his charm, you see.
And it's just touching and feeling and the blood-painted shield has finally come off for the first time in months and Kakashi is feeling again and the weapon, so carefully molded and perfected behind an ivory mask, is cracking and splintering into the late hours of the night.
Genma thinks it's a little bit heartbreaking the way he holds Kakashi's shaking body and whispers promises and threats and they both know he's lying but that doesn't matter because Kakashi is human again, just for a little while. And Genma hopes with terrifying clarity that a weapon isn't really a weapon if it has feelings this intense under all that perfection.
Right?
And even as Genma is holding and comforting Kakashi, he knows it'll never last. Kakashi is just too good.
Death made him that way. Molded him and sculpted him and created something perfect but heartwrenchingly broken.
The mask will be fixed by morning and that's okay--
no it's not
because they need him to be a weapon even if it steals his humanity.
It was stolen long ago, anyway, in dark forests full of blood and love and choices that no one should ever have had to make and in a bloodstained village choked in fear and then a flash of courage and hope and sacrifice.
Genma understands far too well that Kakashi will continue, locked and hidden and unfeeling behind a mask of cold ivory and even colder detachment, doing what he does so that those whose hearts are still whole won't have to lose theirs too--
His village is worth his sanity (Genma doesn't think so).
And he just sighs as the sky starts to lighten, just a little, and Kakashi starts to still and he knows that he won't see the man he fell in love with ages ago until the next time the cold mask slips too far into regret.