Title: Seasonal
Summary: The years start with winter. Spoilers for Kakashi Gaiden.
AUTUMN
The Hokage stands a few paces in front of him, coat fluttering in the wind heavy with carbon dioxide. Kakashi can only see his back.
"I'm sorry, Kakashi," he says, looking determinedly at the landscape of skeletal trees swimming in fire. In his arms is a baby, wrapped in silken sheets stained with blood. "I have to do this," he says quietly. "I have to—" His voice wavers. He stares down at his son, gaze glassy as the boy blinks up at him with his large innocent eyes—so blue, like the hidden sky, like his own.
From behind, Kakashi watches, eyes cool and flat. He refuses to say anything, especially not when he's circled with seals and tied to a tree with trap wire. It sinks into his armor and slices through his clothes, drawing more cuts on pale skin than any one ninja has ever managed over the span of his ANBU career.
Minato looks back once into his angry stare. He grins, wide and fake, eyes curved into smiles. He says, "No regrets, Kakashi-kun."
SUMMER
"Kakashi-kun," she says, a smile hidden in lackluster eyes. "I…" She hesitates, the smile falling from her eyes to her lips. She utters, finally, "I'm happy." But they're sitting in the crimson mud, drenched in blood and surrounded by the corpses of enemy and allied nins alike. He doesn't know why she's happy with that.
Maybe she's lying.
"You know that right?"
He holds her in his arms, grip loose, and her head tilts back, facing the sky, short brown locks sliding over his forearm. He stares at one of the colored markings on her cheeks. He's never realized how deeply purple they are. It reminds him of grapefruit.
A warm hand clumsily threads through his bangs. He blinks slowly. It falls. He thinks she's trying to grin at him, like she used to when Obito was still alive, but all he sees is a grimace.
"Don't forget, Kakashi."
He can never tell with her.
SPRING
Rin pulls out a clean scalpel from the pouch at her side and touches it to his skin, tears spilling from her eyes. She needs to numb the area with chakra but they don't have enough time.
Obito's screaming, and suddenly the eye's out completely and the same knife, wiped hastily on her skirt, touches Kakashi's grimy facemask.
"I can become your eye," Obito had said. "From now on I will see the future."
But Obito's buried under a giant boulder and he's crushed and blind and dying.
There was something in my eye—!
He's nothing but a liar.
WINTER
Kakashi can't see the blade of the tanto, but he can see the blood, dripping liberally from the coarse cotton shirt onto the tatami.
"I'm home," he says out of politeness, just like every other day, except today he walks into the kitchen to fetch some cold water and a clean, cotton rag.
He doesn't want the floor to stain.
*Some lines from Obito's section have been lifted from the translation I have of Kakashi Gaiden.