Word count: 300.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
The light is beginning to leak into evening, and all is unnaturally quiet as a grim calm settles over Konohagakure with the purple stain of the sky.
Kakashi isn't sure he's young anymore; new death clouds his vision as badly as the white bandage over Obito's freshly implanted eye impairs it. The fog of sake he shouldn't be having mists his mind and makes his limbs feel like water.
His fingers stretch forward shakily to stroke the cenotaph, to touch the newly carved name. He had been a hero during life, but no one had known or appreciated it until his death. He had stood above all of his kinsmen as kind and loyal and brave, self-sacrificing and selfless, traits no other Uchiha seems to understand or possess. Uchiha Obito had been a hero, and out of all the Uchiha on the memorial stone he may well have been the only one who deserved to be there.
And Obito's death has aged Kakashi more than the ravages of time ever could. He will never be young again.
Youth is what one makes of it, and Kakashi himself is an old man.
"It's you." A small voice comes behind him, filled with a mixture of shaking sadness and deep hate.
Kakashi looks round, and sees the curly-headed child who had been glaring at him all throughout Obito's funeral. "Why couldn't you save my brother?" Uchiha Shisui accuses, his eyes boring into Kakashi, lingering on the bandage with something like disgust. "Why didn't you die, instead of him?"
The sake bottle smashes into a million brilliant, glittering shards as it hits the ground, and for the first time in his life, Kakashi runs from the cenotaph, running as fast as he can, and he doesn't even know where he's running to anymore.
