A/N: This story is set after Rin's death, before Kakashi is placed in charge of Team Seven. Basically he's just living day to day, doing ANBU missions, still loving Rin who remains still, and forever, dead.
No KakaIru yaoi. They do, however, develop a strong friendship towards the end.
Disclaimer: No. I do not own Naruto. Non, mon cher!
Imagine being paid to learn everything that is in the heads of these people and then turning their thoughts, words and notes into book form.
What is Ghostwriting?, Andrew Crofts
God Damn It, Kakashi!
'
He was sitting alone in the middle of the room, half turned towards the door. As if he had hesitated in getting up and decided not to move after all. Which was strange, for Kakashi did not hesitate.
Iruka shut the door behind him and walked over. "Kakashi-san."
"Iruka. Just call me Kakashi."
"Yeah…Kakashi." The syllables caught awkwardly on his tongue. Iruka stood for a moment longer, until Kakashi gestured towards the opposite chair. He sat quickly. Already Iruka was wondering if he had made the right decision in accepting the copy-nin's offer. Indeed, the other man was certainly having second thoughts as well.
"Right." Iruka cleared his throat. How were they supposed to go about doing this?
Kakashi got up and went into the kitchen. A quick escape? Or should he, Iruka, grab this chance to make his own getaway?
But no; in few short seconds (but unbearably long, also) Kakashi reentered, carrying two clay bottles of sake. Iruka gratefully accepted the drink, then the sound of corks popping free filled the room.
"Thanks for agreeing to do this, Iruka." Kakashi said. "I wouldn't be able to do it alone. Maa…if you don't want to go ahead with it, I won't blame you. No hard feelings."
His heart sank. Iruka stared at the white haired man before him – damn his cunning! With those words, any possibility of backing out just evaporated into the stratosphere.
"No, Kakashi, I'll do it. It's my first time," Iruka added, "you understand."
"Yeah, but," Kakashi rubbed his face, "it has to be you, somehow. Thanks, Iruka. So how should we go about doing this?"
Well, yes. Good question. Iruka had in fact been wondering the exact same thing, and was at a loss with the question now presented to him.
"Ah….well. You can just start talking about anything – no, wait," Iruka hastily backtracked. "The beginning. Start at the beginning."
Kakashi raised his brows. "That was a long time ago."
Iruka shrugged, settling into a more comfortable position. "I'll listen. You just have to remember."
His attention was wholly on the copy-nin, which was why he noticed it. Pain flared like a signal beacon in Kakashi's dark eyes before it was stuffed out with tired ease.
They were the eyes of a man haunted by memories, by shadows of the past that hung on to his heels and swelled at night – a cocoon of regrets.
This, Iruka realized, was one of the reasons why Kakashi had come to him with his strange request: to write a particular story for him, a story that Kakashi could tell but couldn't pen satisfactorily.
I'll write it, Iruka decided in that moment. I'll write it and take him down the path of closure. I'll make her live again and die again.
"Just remember, huh. I can do that," Kakashi said. He looked at Iruka, eyes creased, his mouth perhaps twisted wryly under his mask.
"Listening may be harder," Kakashi said.
Kakashi's POV.
He speaks, slowly at first, a monologue that Iruka takes notes of, remembering that later he must write it into a story.
'
She had brown eyes. She always thought they were plain, unremarkable. But they were the prettiest eyes a girl could have.
I remember the way they shined when the sun was out and she was smiling, or when she was spinning on the grass, singing a song…when she was eating strawberries, and so happy. I always brought her strawberries, to see her. Smile.
When they were filled with tears – when Obito died. When we attended his funeral and put flowers on his grave. That's when…
[Here a long pause. Kakashi looks down, and his face is concealed in shadows. I think his eyes are closed, shut tight. When he looks up again his gaze rests somewhere else, in a different time.]
It always made me feel helpless. What good is strength, Iruka – for all my power, I could never stop her from crying. I couldn't take away her pain. Only, all I could do was stand there and hold her.
[I begin to see the outline of Kakashi's story. They had a relationship, of course – everyone knew that. And Kakashi's desolation had been plain to see when Rin died. But everyone thought it had been the bond of a teammate, which develops after countless missions together: closer than siblings, more trusted than parents.]
Maa…this is harder than I thought it would be. [wry laugh] I don't think I've given you much to write about, Iruka. Sorry. Can we maybe continue next week.
[Of course…I rise, trying to conceal how shaken I am.]
"Iruka!" The landlady rushes out, halting me at the walkway. It's been nearly a month since I began these visits to Kakashi, once or twice a week. We chat about many things (no longer only the weather), but mostly about Rin. It's her story that he wants me to write, after all.
"What is it?" I take her gently by the shoulders, alert to the signs of distress – but not panic, not fear – that she exudes.
"It's Kakashi-san, he…I mean, I know how you've been coming over and that you two are good friends and…could you please…he is not…" She stammers, not sure how to ask, or what to say, made incoherent by some unexpected occurrence. I zero in on the one fact she has given me.
"Kakashi? Is he okay?" I walk, then run to his room as the landlady wrings her hands, saying something unintelligible.
As I reach the top stair, I hear the sound of something breaking. It sounds like wood. A crash follows. It could be a table that I hear being wrecked, its remnants skidding on the floor. The noises are muffled behind the door, and I stand holding the key uncertainly.
With a quick twist of my hand, it unlocks, and I take a step in.
"Kakashi?"
His back is facing me, haloed by the light coming in from the window. He makes no reaction, and continues to stand like a statue, hand gripping the windowsill, gaze fixed outside.
Behind him lies the wreckage of what was once a table, a vase – a long-stemmed red flower lies on the ground, surrounded by shards, in a pool of water – and an ANBU mask has been flung unceremoniously across the room. A long crack runs down its centre.
Ah. He has just returned from a mission. He has not even changed out of his clothes, and his sleeves are stained with blood.
"I'm sorry. Iruka." Kakashi's voice sounds strange, forced. "Today is no good."
In the scene of carnage, one corner beside the window remains strangely untouched, like a vortex of calm in a hurricane. In it nestles a wooden drawer, on top of which lies only one photograph.
The photo shows a younger Kakashi scowling next to Obito, and the Fourth Hokage grinning out of the frame. In front of them is a smiling girl showing a victory sign. It can only be Rin.
I let myself out.
As the weeks pass I learn how to tease details from Kakashi, how to ask questions in the right way. I also learn when not to speak; sometimes from silence emerges an unexpected emotion, surprising recollections.
Being a ghostwriter is not easy – I have discovered that my task is unusual, but not unprecedented, and there are in fact examples I can, and have, learnt from – for I have to write in Kakashi's own voice. This is understandably made difficult when the man in question is prone to sudden silences and, while never unpleasant, can be disagreeable when the mood takes him.
How he has managed to keep up his blasé façade for so long, I have no idea. What becomes more apparent to me as our conversations (such as they are) progress is that he is a man tortured. Kakashi drowns himself in missions, in carnage, becomes a monster at night in order to be sane in the morning.
I listen, and offer him what I can: my friendship; and he allows it.
If Rin was alive, what kind of man would Kakashi be? Completely different, I have no doubt, for it is obvious that the girl meant more to him than he ever dared show.
"The truth is, it wasn't just my promise to Obito," Kakashi confesses one day. "I swore to him I would protect her, yes – I also swore it to myself.
But I let her die. Oh kami, Iruka, I killed her."
I don't know how to write her story in a way that will bring him closure, for she is in him, and in everything he does. She is in the emptiness in his room, in the photograph on the dresser; in the way he never cooks, as if waiting for that one meal of saury and miso soup to appear. (She used to cook that for him, it was the only thing she knew how to cook). As if until she makes it, he cannot, will not, cook food.
She's in the way Kakashi sits on the windowsill and stares at the night sky, she is what haunts him when he returns from particularly bloody missions and lays waste to his room.
"It used to be worse," Tsunade tells me one day, when she orders me to her office and questions me about what exactly the task Kakashi has given me is. I cannot tell her, of course, Kakashi has made it clear that no one else is to know anything apart from the barest details.
"He wants me to write a book," I say, and grit my teeth for I will say no more.
"Oh, about Rin?" The Hokage throws out carelessly. My expression betrays the answer.
"Of course I know about it. No, Kakashi did not say." Tsunade waves her hand impatiently. "But her death destroyed him, you know. And after your mysterious task, which everyone is talking about, by the way, Kakashi doesn't try so hard to get himself killed during missions. I don't even have to order someone to partner him in ANBU missions anymore, which I used to in case he went on a suicidal mission. Kakashi's sense of responsibility won't let him drag a comrade into some kamikaze charge, after all."
"Oh," I say lamely.
I stand outside Kakashi's door and feel my heart thudding under my ribs. This is not wise. Every rulebook, guidebook, all the advice given by ANBU and their friends tell me that I am about to do something colossally stupid.
Never try and stop your comrade when he is in a rage, after a mission. Like a wild beast, let him rend and tear at his surroundings, until his energy is spent. Only then should you approach, and offer your help. To do otherwise is to risk being attacked, accused, and even – killed.
I make a silent prayer to whichever god may be listening, and step in. A flash of metal. My reflexes save me and I twist away, a kunai grazing my cheek.
"Kakashi!" I shout, defending against a barrage of blows. He doesn't stop, and I have to block his attacks with a kunai. His eyes are dark, blank.
Anger rises in me for the first time, boiling over. I have never been in love, at least not the way he has, passionately, obsessively, yet with terrible restraint. From what he has said, Kakashi never allowed Rin to know the depths of his feelings for her.
And this is it – the backlash, the chasm of loss that opened under his feet, wide with all the things unexpressed which he had buried. One might almost say it's his fault. And now I had to write his bloody story, in the miniscule chance that it might keep him sane long enough to – perhaps – decide to keep living.
"She's dead, damn it!" I shout into his face, see his eyes widen. "Rin is dead! But you're alive!" I throw a kick – impossibly it lands – and he slams against the wall opposite.
"You're alive and you better do something with the time you have! She doesn't have that chance any more! You do, Kakashi! You do!"
Kakashi raises his head and looks at me with terrible weariness, his dark eyes a bottomless pool. I already knew he had no tears left to cry, but this – this anguish, it is worse than any tears I have known.
"There's no point, Iruka." He says.
There's no…what?
I stand with my arms helplessly by my side. No, Iruka, do not drop to your knees.
Slowly I take out a book from my pocket. It is a small, nondescript green notebook, but it is filled from cover to cover.
I throw it, and it lands with a soft whup on his pants. He doesn't move.
"It's your book," I say shortly. "Read it."
I am out of words, having poured them into the book, having taken them from Kakashi's mouth and given them a life of their own…in fact, for the past week while I did nothing but write all day, every day, I have barely eaten, barely slept, as if what came from the pen was not ink, but my life's energy.
I turn and leave, but once outside, my legs give way and I sink against the door.
Hours, or minutes, perhaps only seconds pass as the door closes behind Iruka. Kakashi wishes tears would come, if only so that he could feel something be expelled from him.
But no; there are no tears. He only has sweat, and blood, and heaven knows he's lost enough of that today. Well, he's lost a lot, but not enough. Never enough…
Leadenly, Kakashi picks up the small book. He turns the cover with his thumb.
If you knew what it was like on the other side, here where I am, you would understand why I have decided to write this.
Even though the person I am writing it for will never read it – in fact, no one other than I am likely to read this - I write, and pray that somehow these feelings will lay themselves to rest instead of thrumming madly in my veins.
No, Kakashi thought, it cannot be.
But it was her voice, it was her, her tone, her rhythm of speaking, it was as if Rin was standing in front of him, with that sweet smile on her face.
My time was shorter than most, but I lived longer than many kunoichi have. I had many days of happiness, but always I was too scared to reveal myself to the man I loved.
The son of Konoha's White Fang! What hope did I have, for I was no genius, nor exceptional…
The door opens, and Iruka finds himself falling forwards. He pushes his hands out, catching himself before his face hits the ground. How long has he been sitting here, asleep outside Kakashi's door? How disgraceful, how embarrassing!
But Kakashi does not look angry, or even surprised. He squats beside Iruka. The brown-haired academy teacher, recent ghostwriter and friend, notices that there are suspicious marks on Kakashi's face, what looks like tear tracks. The copy-nin is holding the book in one hand.
Kakashi clears his throat. "A title."
Huh?
"You haven't given the book a title," Kakashi says.
"Yes. Right." Iruka had, admittedly, been expecting to be thrown out, or down the stairs, but instead here was Kakashi talking to him casually.
Kakashi smiles, and there is unmistakable warmth in his eyes, and something akin to mischief.
"I wanted to call it One Man's Salvation by Another Man's Kindness And Brilliant Writing, but that's not catchy. At all. What do you think?"
"Huh? Um…" Iruka says, still confused.
"Nope, that's no good. Try harder, Iruka."
"Goddamit, Kakashi!" Iruka snaps. The sun rises, the light of dawn glows in the pathway, and Kakashi starts laughing.
A/N: How did you like it? Yep, Iruka was supposed to write the story in Kakashi's voice, but he decided instead to write as Rin would write.
While writing this I was listening to Afire Love by Ed Sheeran. Some stanzas were evocative, but it was the melody that really hit the right note for this story.
Thanks for reading! Any comments are very much appreciated.