Chrysanthemum –
Every single year, Kakash visits those gray tombstones in memoriam of the people he lost. Every year, he doesn't forget. And then the first year he becomes Sensei to Team 7, he almost does. [kakashicentric, sasuke, Team 7, GEN ]
A/N:
Naruto First Arc. Pre-Shippuden, and a little non-CANON at the end. You've been warned. I still like to pretend Shippuden never happened and Sasuke never defected… it's just a little fantasy I still entertain from time to time, so pardon me, Kishimoto.
Chrysanthemum: In some countries of Europe (e.g., France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Croatia), chrysanthemums are symbolic of death and are used only for funerals or on graves; similarly, in China, Japan and Korea, white chrysanthemums are symbolic of lamentation and/or grief.
Severe Kakashi character handling, delving into his inability to deal with grief, guilt etc etc.. the usual. It's been a while, fandom.
It's routine by now.
Every year on this day, Kakashi steps before the same slabs of gray tombstones, lined up accordingly in the neatest order, separated exactly by six inches side by side. Every year, he counts five, and as time goes by, he stops counting when he decides it's pointless to count anymore than his fingers allow him, too, and it takes too much time to use his toes as well to do the math.
So he drops the counting from his routine, and the rest remains.
One step placed before every tombstone, holding to the count of five seconds. Just enough to put a sad-looking bouquet of wrinkled white chrysanthemums down on the slab – it's all he can afford every single year, and he decides it's going to burn a hole in his expenses if the number of slabs continue to increase.
So he stops the bouquet of white chrysanthemums as well, purchasing just enough for one stalk per slab.
He makes it up by spending a minute more now before each slab, making sure his eyes trace every detail accurately. That the names match up, the dates imprinted on gray stones make complete sense and are precise. When a number doesn't tally to the date it's supposed to be imprinted on, Kakashi's willing to pay off his entire ANBU monthly salary to ensure every meticulous detail written on stone is perfect.
And he's used to hearing nothing but the rustling of lalang grass around the death-smelling place when he moves across from one slab to another, in exact chronological sequence in accordance to the order they had died. He's careful to shuffle one feet in front of another so all he hears is the shuffle. . . and nothing else but the sound of his sandals grazing grass.
He's pretty sure they don't like noises around here either.
When he was younger, he remembers bending down to their heights, and brushing dirt and dust off the slabs. He had laid it on the pretext of his obsessiving compulsive disorder for hygiene and cleanliness. In time, his excuses diminished when he grew taller, stood taller, and gave up doing the same thing. He no longer brushed dust off them.
He no longer shuffled from one slab to the next either. Or stop to stare longer than a minute for each one.
And it occurred to him – maybe he was getting tired of this routine.
But something compelled to him to keep going.
Even when time passed, and he became ANBU, and when he quit ANBU.
…It happens the first year he became Sensei to Team 7, when Kakashi stands before the tombstones, and it scares him how it takes him more than three seconds to remember the numbers of the dates he's supposed to remember, who died, whose name is supposed to be where...and by the second year, when he almost forgets about this day until two days before he finally remembers, it hits him that –
That he's forgetting.
And it scares the hell out of him.
The next twenty-four hours becomes a blur when all he remembers is burying himself with self-loathing and hatred and self-imposed guilt by kneeling before every single tombstone and knocking his forehead against cold hard gray stones, until by the second day when he has forgone hours and hours of sleep and his forehead is nothing but a pool of blood trickling crimson droplets down his cheeks, and Kakashi can no longer tell the difference between the liquid of his blood or his tears.
But that doesn't make sense because Kakashi doesn't cry. And hasn't, for years now.
And it doesn't make any more sense either why he's forgetting, because he's pretty sure even now every night when he goes to bed, he still has memories of every person he killed, every person who died for him, every person he saw die before him and he could not save. They haunt him every night.
Yet lately, now, when he goes to bed, all he can hear is the (irritating) sound of Uzumaki Naruto snoring, the (irritating) whines of Haruno Sakura, and the (irritating) grunts of Uchiha Sasuke. Blood in his dreams eventually are replaced by the three grinning/angry/peeved/annoying faces of his pupils. And he swears sometimes he even wakes up to the smallest hint of a smile on his face, when years ago he used to wake up running to the latrine throwing up his dinner because he couldn't forget the faces he had let down and let them simply die.
The following year, on the exact same date, Kakashi decides to make up for it.
He circles the date on his calendar, 365 days before it happens.
He won't forget this time.
He counts down even. Months before.
Prepares aside almost three month's salary of his pay to buy bouquets and bouquets of white chrysanthemums.
Brings gloves and shovel, to clean up the place and brush off every single dirt and dust on the stone slabs.
For redemption.
So it's no surprise when he walks up to the gray slabs this time fully prepared to spend hours there…even an entire day, to finish no matter how menial the tasks are. He's ready to make amends for last year…and the previous years he's messed up bad by almost forgetting.
It's routine now.
One feet before another, the sound of shuffling sandals against lalang grass. The sense of déjà vu and nostalgia that hits him all at once is terrifying, but nothing new. He's used to this.
So it doesn't explain how he's still thrown off-guard, and his eyes widen to the size of saucers, when he arrives at the same scene he's been for years and years now and his eyes fall on the tombstones.
. . .With a single white chrysanthemum sitting in front of every slab.
Forlorn-looking, wrinkled, but fresh and pristine in its white shade. Every single one of them.
They all look like the cheapest thing anyone could afford, but there is something so precious to it, it seared something in Kakashi's heart and stayed.
Someone's here.
He looks around, suddenly wary, but his Juunin sense tells him there is just him.
He moves like lightning, to pick up the nearest chrysanthemum, and stares.
Petals fall into his fingers, and he looks at them. They feel so soft.
And it cues something almost immediately; hits something home in him so fast, he cannot even comprehend.
A single tear falls out of his eye.
In that instant, his forehead lands smack against the nearest stone slab, and his forehead bleeds again.
It occurs to him now how tired he's been all these years. The remembering, the guilt, the eventual healing, more guilt – it's a vicious cycle, and it doesn't end.
"So tired…So goddamn tired." He mutters under his breath, beneath the thick of the bloodflow down his cheeks.
He smashes fist after fist onto the stone slabs, in a pathetic attempt to apologize profusely as much as the Hatake pride and ego allows him to.
And he looks down at the final chrysanthemum in his hand, placed before the marble slab of Sakumo Hatake, and his fingers close over the small dark ink on the underside of the petal.
He looks to the sky.
It rains now.
He lets his head fall back, and lets the first raindrop fall into his eyes so he can't tell the difference between the tears and raindrops that falls onto his cheeks.
Written on the underside of the petal are the words:
If you ever tire of remembering your chrysanthemums, Kakashi-sensei, I can always help from now on.
Four years later…
"So where do you want me to put these chrysanthemums, Sensei?" His pupil shuffles behind him.
It's the fourth year they're doing this. It's routine by now.
Kakashi moves his eye patch over his eye so he knows where his pupil is looking at.
"Just one to each slab. The usual."
"If you say so…I don't get why you didn't just get the bigger flowers, Sensei. I mean, with the paycheck both of us are earning as Senseis, we could at least afford some decent-looking flowers…"
"Would you quit complaining and help with the flowers already, Uchiha?"
OWARI
a/n:
for those who have loved and lost; this fic is for you. Because just like Kakashi, grief is one of life's most difficult thing.