What's Left for the Dead
Summary::Oneshot:: At seventeen, Hatake Kakashi finds that the world has left him behind. Post-Gaiden, Pre-Naruto.
::Author's Note: First published oneshot. Very short. Written during chemistry class one day… clearly I should've been studying. Anyhow, constructive criticism is appreciated.::
He walks through city streets and imagines that they're watching him and smiling, and teasing each other about the old times…He doesn't care if they're there or not, but some days he wants so badly to see them, he stares at the empty air until his eyes hurt, and if he squints hard enough sometimes he thinks he can see an outline of their forms….but as soon as he blinks they're gone.
Story of his life…
He feels the ground beneath his feet as he goes on his way, passing people he's died for so many times, and he sees them but it feels as though they're not there, he's not there, a ghost wandering in a sea of nameless, faceless animals. And as the silence gets louder he starts screaming in his head, and he stomps his feet a bit as he walks, just to feel the earth beneath them, but he can't.
And before he knows it he's there at his black obsidian, numb fingers outstretched to touch the names of his deceased, and it's the most real thing he's felt all day, all month, all year.
He's seventeen years old now, but he doesn't feel much different then he had when he was seven, and he knows it's because the dead don't age.
His fingers slip away from black obsidian and he stomps his feet a little bit as he turns away, and the sunset looks like it might to a person sitting before a movie screen. He wonders when it got so late and some cynical part of him scoffs at his melodrama.
As he's walking home a faceless animal raises a hand in greeting, and he wonders who she's waving to. Surely not him. But it doesn't really matter because the dead don't wave.
And for the millionth time in his million-hour day, he touches his mask and wonders if there's still a face under there, and thinks that if there is it must not have aged since he was seven. Because the day his father died was the day Hatake Kakashi grew old, and the old have only to die.