Word Count: 704
A/N: Just a little something I wrote when I felt like exploring Kakashi a bit more. Dedicated to everyone who has reviewed my ongoing story Duplicity.
The pale moonlight slipped in silently through the window, jealously carressing milky white skin and draping a dormant body in ivory. It was quiet, but not overly so; the world was moving, the crickets were chirping and the cicada that often visited his window sill buzzed off into the cool night air.
There was a body on the bed; completely motionless and looking like the corpse he wanted to be.
(Kakashi didn't like living.)
Kakashi's back ached from the lumpy and rarely used mattress and he knew he was going to be sore in the morning if he didn't move.
(Kakashi stayed still)
It was a tradition, you see; every year Kakashi would hike up to the Hatake Estate (hike like a civilian and not like the ninja he's always been) and lie in his mother's bed and listen.
Kakashi hears many things, like his little brother's crying ringing out through the halls of the (too empty) house, and like his Aunt Emiko puttering about in the kitchen. (Sometimes he can even smell her soba.) Most times though, he hears his team; other times, he hears his father.
Sensei sometimes sits on the side of his bed and strokes his hair, calling him a bad boy and asking him why he let Obito and Rin die (Kakashi never has an answer for him); othertimes Sensei stands in the doorway (eyes flashing) and asking Kakashi why he failed his son.
(Kakashi never has an answer for that either.)
On years that Rin isn't busy she comes to visit him too. Her visits are usually quick and simple (she never has anything to say), she crawls on top of Kakashi and kisses him until he can't breathe, sucking out his life jealously and abruptly leaving him to gasp for breath in a horribly familiar way. Rin never says anything, but Kakashi knows what she's thinking. If I couldn't get what I wanted in life, I'll get what I want in death. And Kakashi lets her, because Kakashi has never been able to deny Rin anything (and because Rin is too strong).
When Obito comes to visit him, Kakashi generally wakes up blind. He doesn't mind, not really. He figures he deserves it anyway, and even if he can't physically see, he'll never forget Obito's socketless eyes and gaping grin (permanently burned into his memory). Once, Kakashi tried to dig out his eye and give it back. Obito wouldn't accept it. It was a curse, Kakashi knows now; he welcomes it with open arms.
Before his father comes to visit, Kakashi makes sure to break all the mirrors. (Because sometimes Kakashi can't tell who is who, and seeing a tanto tangled in his intestines is giving him too many thoughts--history will not be repeated). Sakumo never has much to say to him either, which is okay with Kakashi; at that point he's usually wretching from the putrid (familiar) stench.
Every once in a blue moon, everyone else comes to visit Kakashi too, and those are the nights that Kakashi requests S-rank missions--they generally leave him alone if he invites more people to join them. (They get lonely, they say.)
Kakashi likes his visits he thinks (they've been visiting him for eighteen years), they keep him company (whether or not they're good company he's not sure; Kakashi's never been good with people), they make him want to be stronger and it's not like he has the right to complain, anyway (because he deserves it).
Some years, he stays all through the night, curled up in his mother's bed, nose buried in the musty pillow that still retained a scent of her perfume. Those nights, he generally meets Gai in the morning, those mornings he's gloriously smashed before noon.
The years that he doesn't, he leaves around three and runs, usually until he collapses, sometimes until he wants to just lay down and die.
This night though, Kakashi is staying, sitting up on the uncomfortable mattress and staring out into the overgrown garden, watching moonlit wraiths glide about the courtyard, feeling whispery hands caress his neck; feeling a cold body smother him as he struggles to breath.
It really was a beautiful night.
(But not for Kakashi.)