Well I hope, when you can't hear what I am thinking;
you know I can't always talk but I'm always listening
in an absence, where you hate to feel uncared for,
pretending there's nothing that you're not prepared for.
— Surrender, The Antlers
For a long, long time — longer than he likes to remember — Obito has been his hero.
He'd been his hero in a narrow sense, because cynical, bitter fourteen year-olds don't have heroes. They don't look up to anyone, because they don't like looking at anyone. But he'd tried to be like him, less rigid, less of a jerk.
Better.
(That hadn't worked out well in the end, but Kakashi possesses nothing if not doggedness. Every time he fails, he only has to remember that he'd left him under that boulder, still alive and in pain, after giving Kakashi his light. Every time he fails, he wishes he'd slit Obito's throat.)
He'd been his hero in a broad sense, because just as Kakashi had struggled to carry his eye, he'd struggled to carry his legacy as well. Unlike Obito, Kakashi wasn't carefree, charismatic, or compassionate, but as long as he lived, a little bit of Obito did, too.
(It'd been surreal to discover that Obito lived, that he'd been talking all along to a real ghost instead of a false one. How many times had he spoken to "Obito" about unmentionable weaknesses and dark thoughts? How many times had Obito spoken back?)
The first time Maito Gai sits up, unassisted, through sheer willpower, it is the day of Neji's funeral. There are lots of funerals after the war, but half the village shows up because, in saving Naruto, he'd saved them all. Gai doesn't want to attend the funeral lying down.
(He wants to stand, really, but the doctors say that is impossible, that he'll never walk again. When told the news, he'd gotten quiet and scrunched his face up, because impossible is one of those words Gai doesn't like very much. Impossible hadn't cowed him from fighting Uchiha Madara. Impossible is for people who don't try hard enough.)
Watching his friend beating the odds — no, not just beating the odds, but beating them into submission, or facing them like he did Madara even when the probabilities of destiny stacked heaven-high against him — Kakashi realises something very important.
Perhaps it's the lonely fourteen year-old in him, or the savage nineteen year-old, or the empty twenty five year-old, or just the cancellation of an imminent apocalypse. Perhaps it's that, though the sitting position must be putting agonising pressure onto his back, Gai starts smiling as soon as anyone enters the room. Perhaps it's that Gai challenges him to see who can build the most number of houses in a day "when I get better", which they both know is never.
(Never is another one of those words that Gai dislikes. He's suspicious of the finality of it, since the only things that are eternal should be youth and death. Always is a better word. Always do your best. Always be yourself. Always remember the important people and the important things.)
Somewhere, somewhen, somehow, Maito Gai became his hero.
(Kakashi will never tell him. Gai would hate it.)