Killing Time

Author's note: Thanks to moor for the prompt: "Don't worry, I thrive on neglect."

Summary: Oneshot. Kakashi could not stomach the thought that by ninja standards he had been old before this person had been born and he would be older after this person was dead. You weren't supposed to bury children. …He knew what to do with Sasuke the boy. He knew where he stood, knew how to make the rules and, to some extent anyway, how to follow them—but he did not know what to do with Sasuke the man.

Disclaimer: Naruto does not belong to me.

Present Day

The flat is dark and cool after the summer sunshine. Kakashi has stepped inside a tomb. He leaves the shoji open behind him in the vain hope of bringing light and fresh air into the place, and he pads across the polished wooden floor towards his objective.

He is here to make amends for the time he has killed.

Sasuke has never been the messy sort. On missions, Naruto had always made enough mess for an army, and Sakura, OCD as she was in other ways, had never seemed compelled to neatness either. It was Sasuke who had been the compulsive cleaner—Kakashi remembers finding it quite strange to see that a twelve-year-old boy had voluntarily folded his own clothes and so neatly packed his own possessions into his knapsack, even towards the end of a journey, when even Kakashi just haphazardly shoved things in his pack, too tired to worry about order and neatness.

There is a strange pang for such memories—I was so young then.

He is so much older now. And Sasuke, once—and in some ways forever—a twelve-year-old boy, is as old now as Kakashi was been then. It is cliché to wonder where all that time has gone, but Kakashi doesn't have to wonder: he knows exactly where all that time has gone. He can only marvel at the fact that he hasn't done anything better with it.

Here he is, so many years since he last came here, and nothing has really changed. Maybe there are some new lines in his face—he avoids mirrors, and anyway his face is usually covered—and he isn't as fast with shuriken as he once was, but otherwise he's the same man he was the last time he'd come here, back when Sasuke had first been released from prison, back in the days when he'd still held onto some foolish hope that he alone could save Sasuke. He is still that man.

But the flat is a mess like it had never been before, and as he approaches the main room and takes in the slender figure curled on his side, back facing him, he knows Sasuke is not the same man.

Time can't change Kakashi but time is everything for Sasuke because it is what separates him from the last time his life had held any meaning for him. The older he gets, the less he can remember of his mother's face, of her voice.

"Sasuke, get up."

Sasuke's slender form does not move.

Eighteen Years Earlier

Sarutobi had never given up on Orochimaru, not really.

Kakashi had always avoided walking past Konoha's high-security prisons. The idea of cells scared him the way bridges and spiders scared others. But now he found himself standing in front of the highest-security prison in Konoha, accompanied by Sai—the only other person willing to confront Konoha's newest maximum-security prisoner.

"You're supposed to go inside," Sai directed unhelpfully. Kakashi found himself grinning at the man.

"Good point, thanks," he said sardonically, watching Sai process his tone with uncertainty.

It felt ridiculous to be making jokes, considering what he was about to do, what he was about to see; but the whole situation was surreal. Not so long ago (only six years?), he had had to give this maximum-security prisoner a talk about wearing deodorant regularly, about not punching Naruto when he did something annoying, about being nice to girls who had feelings about him while not giving them false hope.

Not so long ago, he had taught this maximum-security prisoner how to keep his sleeping roll dry when it rained on missions, how to spin a shuriken perfectly in high winds, how to budget for missions to other countries where the exchange rate was poor. Not so long ago, this maximum-security prisoner had been a young boy.

Conditions in these cells weren't great and Kakashi could not, for the moment, stomach the thought that by ninja standards he had been old before this person had been born and he would be older after this person was dead. You weren't supposed to bury children.

Kakashi walked inside with Sai, swallowed by the cool darkness. He felt like he was leaving something of himself behind outside, something that he might not get back. He heard the door shut behind them and had the brief impulse to burst through the doors and run back outside, but he mastered the urge. Hands shoved in his pockets to hide how they shook, he allowed the ANBU to lead them along the dark hall towards the only cell here.

Sasuke's chakra had been cut off and he was blindfolded because he had to be: vision was a passive thing in others but in Sasuke even sight was a weapon, and Kakashi knew what that was like. It seemed ridiculous to see Sasuke sitting there, the cloth tied tightly over his eyes, without any other bindings, but the chakra-binding was the real imprisonment, and anyway, Sasuke wouldn't go anywhere. He had no reason to do anything but die; his usual sources of motivation were all either dead or moot now.

Plain bars blocked the world from Sasuke, and Kakashi stood before them now, observing his former student—the student he had prized above the others. He would always love Naruto and Sakura but Sasuke had been something more personal to him, in ways he wasn't sure he was capable of even understanding. He had been bonded to the Uchiha for life before Sasuke had even been born but that only accounted for so much of the ache in his chest in the years after Sasuke had deserted Konoha.

"I know those footfalls," Sasuke remarked, his voice slightly raspy from lack of use. The sneer was audible in his voice but it was only a shadow of its former glory.

Kakashi hadn't been able to bring himself to go to the chakra-binding but Sakura had gotten extremely drunk and told him in confidence that Sasuke had not made a sound, though the process was apparently excruciating.

Sasuke had simply looked at her and Naruto with the intent and focus that he had never been able to give them before he had left Konoha, as Tsunade stood behind him and hit the base of his spine with the seal that was the last nail on the coffin.

"Welcome, Kakashi."

Brutally ruining the lives of hundreds of people seemed to have made Sasuke more glib than Kakashi remembered him being. There was a touch of Orochimaru's sly teasing tone to his voice, and perhaps a hint of Itachi's dark humor. And yet wasn't this greeting his means of battling him once again? Sasuke was the boy who would always fight, and fight, and fight. It was a comfort: perhaps there was will left in Sasuke yet.

"Well, considering no one else in this village has any interest in seeing you, it's not so surprising that I'm here," Kakashi replied in a hard voice. He wanted to show Sasuke they would not be playing by his rules; they would be playing by Kakashi's rules.

"Your charity is appreciated," Sasuke retorted, leaning back against his wall comfortably. His yukata hung open, revealing awful bruising on his chest, and chakra burns. Tsunade hadn't been gentle with him. Kakashi tried to reconcile this broken, beat-up boy with the man who had destroyed Konoha, and found he could only feel the urge to heal the burn marks marring his otherwise smooth, young skin. Self-control had always been in short supply around Sasuke.

Do not favor him.

Do not coddle him.

Do not bend to his will.

Do not praise him more than necessary.

And most importantly, do not interfere with his living situation.

These were the rules he had set for himself after his first day of teaching Team Seven, and he wondered if he had succeeded or failed in following them—and if perhaps, had he broken his own rules or followed them better, they might not be here now.

Sasuke could always sense Kakashi's chakra; it was even more familiar to him than that of Naruto or Sakura. He'd known the moment Kakashi had entered the building—chakra or no chakra of his own, he could sense it in others. He couldn't see anything, now, but he could imagine Kakashi slouching in front of the bars, regarding him with that single visible dark eye, and he wondered what he would have found in meeting that dark eye. Regret? Disappointment? It was hard to imagine anything else from Kakashi, though he had spent years trying to decipher the gaze that Kakashi had always set upon him. It wasn't pity, it wasn't disappointment, it wasn't dislike…

…But it wasn't a happy look, either.

He felt like he couldn't breathe. He thought of Naruto and Sakura, watching as Tsunade bound his chakra. This was worse. That look Kakashi had always had had felt like a weapon.

"I think you should go," he said. He felt Kakashi's chakra shift away, and then he heard footsteps, and then, once more, he was alone.

Leaving the prison cell brought the same relief as crying. Kakashi stood, blinking, in the sunlight once more, sickened by the transition. He doesn't belong there. Especially out in the world again, he was hit with the knowledge of just how young Sasuke was. He is a child.

"Did that go as you intended, Kakashi Sensei?" Sai was genuinely wondering. Kakashi laughed again.

"Thank you, Sai," he said instead, and walked away from the prison.

Eight years passed in a haze after the day Kakashi visited Sasuke's cell. He tried dating and then went off it, then tried it again. Naruto was made Hokage. Kakashi often saw Naruto and Sakura for drinks and ramen, and Sasuke was always the elephant in the room. For someone who had only actually been physically present in their lives for a few years, his absence was overwhelming, and their smiles never reached their eyes, and their laughter always quieted down just a bit too soon.

The frequency with which they saw each other began to dwindle. Naruto's Hokage duties ramped up, so he had the excuse of lacking in time. Sakura was running the hospital, now, so she could say didn't have time too.

And all the while, Kakashi had nothing but time. He had too much time. He felt like he was just killing all his excess time... until...until what?

Time was like sake. He'd drink and drink and drink just to be drunk but if the bottle was empty, dim light through green glass, then he would be empty too.

And then one day, he found himself being summoned to Naruto's office, and Naruto and Sakura were waiting for him there. They looked like worried children about to confront a parent about something bad they had done.

"We want to let Sasuke out," Sakura had announced in a rush as he'd slouched into the room and kicked the door shut behind him. Kakashi had wanted to laugh.

"It feels like you're asking for permission," he'd replied with some amusement. They were looking at him worriedly, and he felt uneasy. "You should do what you think is right."

"This isn't about right and wrong," Sakura insisted, her eyes growing wet with tears.

"Then what it is about?" Kakashi had shot back. He felt a little like Sasuke, all things considered, with such sulky, obstinate retorts. Naruto was pacing like a caged tiger now, and Sakura crossed her arms over her chest.

"We can't live like this anymore. I know you can't, either," she had said, her voice growing stronger with conviction. "Ever since he got back, we've just been going through the motions of living, but we can't live, because we know he's stuck there in a cell and it's our doing!" She was crying in earnest now. "I don't remember the last time I slept properly," she choked.

"I sleep just fine," said Kakashi flatly. The look of disgust that Sakura and Naruto both gave him was scalding and his gut twisted with guilt.

"I write your prescriptions, you idiot," Sakura seethed in a low voice. "You sleep 'just fine' but only because you go through enough sleeping pills to kill a dog."

"Maybe you should try it, Sakura," he said lightly. "Do what you want. You've obviously already made your decision."

He left them then, and met Genma and Iruka for a midday drink that turned into being very drunk at nine o'clock at night, when everyone else was just getting started, and then he was leaning against a building on a sidestreet, emptying the contents of his stomach. He had to brace his hands on the wall as he trembled and sweated out the alcohol, bile dripping from his mouth. He wasn't usually this emotional.

He had known Sakura had been judging him for those pills. And he had known she had been right, today. There was nothing remotely like living to his life right now and there hadn't been for almost a decade. And then before that, there had just been war.

And before that, there had been Sasuke.

He couldn't really remember much before that, not anymore anyway.

He was supposed to be the grown-up. Time was supposed to have shaped him into something better than this.

Swaying and sick, he had walked for a bit, hoping the cool air would calm his nausea. He'd walked past the Uchiha complex and had seen a light on and he knew it had been done.

Sasuke was free.

He was a little clumsy from drink but he was in the bingo book for good reason, and he was now spying on his former student with the expertise only a former ANBU soldier could bring to the situation. He watched through the windows as Sasuke went about arranging his few things, his movements robotic and mechanical, like he was simply going through the physical motions, his mind far off. We've just been going through the motions of living, but we can't live.

Maybe no one could live while Sasuke was alive; Sasuke was a ghost reluctantly trapped among the living. He'd died the moment his trembling child's hand had slid aside the shoji and revealed the dead bodies of the people he loved the most.

Sasuke had been a child those years ago when Kakashi had visited him in prison, but the figure walking through Sasuke's flat was a man. Kakashi walked away, feeling like he had seen something shameful.

He knew what to do with Sasuke the boy. He knew where he stood, knew how to make the rules and, to some extent anyway, how to follow them—but he did not know what to do with Sasuke the man.

The recovery from that hangover was surreal. He'd stumbled home and taken a bunch of his pills, and had awoken a day later with the vague notion that he had stumbled upon some nasty secret. It took him another day for the fog to clear and for him to realize just what that secret was.

He had been lying on his bed, wondering if he could take more sleeping pills and just sleep through this damn headache, when there was a knock on his door that felt like someone had hit him with a frying pan.

"Come in, Sakura," he called, sitting up and cringing. The door across the room opened, revealing Sakura in her medic-nin uniform, looking haggard. It occurred to Kakashi that he ought to have put on a shirt before she came in, but it was nothing she hadn't seen before. He'd at least pulled his mask up in time.

Sakura usually remarked on the bachelor nature of his flat, but she didn't bother on this day.

"I'm sorry for talking about your sleeping pills," she said in a dull, perfunctory voice, though he knew she was genuine.

"Sit down, Sakura," he said, and pulled his feet back to make room on his futon for her. She sighed and did as he told, and he was hit with the strange combination of antiseptic and her perfume. It was so like Sakura, to wear perfume even amid this strange turmoil, even when she was letting the rest of her appearance go to hell with her mental state. He found himself smiling slightly. She hid her face in her hands.

"I thought it would help," she said in a small voice. "But I think it actually might be worse now."

Kakashi remained silent. Sakura would keep talking eventually—she always did. "Kame, he didn't even say anything while we did the paperwork."

"Probably didn't have much news to catch you up on. He's been sitting in the same room, underground, for almost ten years with no visitors," Kakashi finally said sardonically.

"Hinata said when we brought him back that his return wouldn't be good for any of us. And do you know what, now I get it—because every single thing seems to come back to him and I can't get away. Everyone reacts to him even when he's not present; he has these magical powers or something that make me just lose my head. It's like he's put us all under a fucking genjutsu."

Kakashi waited, leaning against the wall, surveying Sakura warily. "I was with Shikamaru for three years," she began with a low laugh, "but then Sasuke comes back and I just…well, until I was twenty seven, I had only been with one person. In the last week I've been with three different guys, and they're all guys who were affected by Sasuke in one way or another. It's like—well, I don't even know. I know it's about him but I don't know what my goal is, or anything. It's not just me, either—I know it's you, too, and Naruto. It's like Sasuke comes into the picture and we're all just thrown into darkness, like it's mischief night, total anarchy, and we completely forget ourselves."

His mouth went dry as he recalled something Genma had said to him a few days ago. Iruka had brought up Sakura, for some reason—and only peripherally. But Genma steered the conversation back to Sakura with the force of someone who had been waiting for an opportunity, though in classic Genma style, he'd said it so casually that if Kakashi hadn't known any better he would have thought it was an off-the-cuff comment.

You could hit that any time you want, Kakashi.

He'd just thrown the comment out there and Kakashi hadn't known how to respond. He chose to simply roll his eyes at Genma and allow Iruka to move the conversation on, and he'd forgotten about it.

Sakura was looking at him now, her green eyes filled with a certain resolve. He knew the motions for sex so well. So did she, apparently. He could remember her when she was twelve.

"Am I next on your list? Is that why you're here?"

She looked away and shook her head as though getting rid of water in her ears, and then got to her feet. The relief he felt when she did was like his soul coming back to his body and he realized now he'd been holding his breath, waiting for the moment Sakura attempted to seduce him.

"That's disgusting, sensei," she said acidly, but she wasn't looking at him. "I came to apologize. And to make sure you knew Sasuke was out now. He's living in his old place."

She left without saying goodbye.

The day passed swiftly; Kakashi left his flat to meet Genma and Anko for a drink. He wasn't too keen on drinking so heavily again but he couldn't stand to be in his flat any longer, especially after Sakura's brief visit. He couldn't stop thinking of her words, and the look in her eyes. What if he'd not spoken when he did? Would she have continued, and attempted to seduce him?

The image only brought disgust and a certain sense of second-hand embarrassment when he pictured Sakura crawling onto his lap and straddling his hips. His mind had involuntarily replaced her with the image of Sasuke doing the same thing, and he had felt that same tightening somewhere deep inside him. He'd had to get out, he'd had to distract himself.

The bar was frenzied darkness. The whole village seemed to be there. According to Genma it had been like this the past two days, since Uchiha Sasuke's release. No one was talking about it but there was a dangerous hysteria slowly bubbling over. Kakashi entered the bar and made his way to Genma and Anko in the corner. He happened to spot Naruto, Sakura, and some other ninja of their age group, but he ignored them and slid into the booth where Genma and Anko were already waiting.

"Your opportunity has presented itself, Kakashi," Genma remarked with a jerk of his head. Kakashi followed the motion and saw he had been talking about Sakura, who was now very flushed in the face, clearly extremely drunk, as she clumsily climbed onto a bemused Kiba's lap. "It's so pathetic. Someone needs to just take her home already," Genma added significantly.

"She's a grown woman. She can do what she wants," Kakashi said with a shrug, though he couldn't pretend to himself that the image wasn't worrying. Anko snorted.

"If it were the Yamanaka kid or someone else, I'd agree with you. But that isn't how Haruno behaves. She doesn't have a fucking clue of what she's even doing. She's going to end up getting hurt," Anko argued, though her tone lacked bite. She seemed to be enjoying watching Sakura make a fool of herself.

"Mistakes are how you learn," Kakashi replied offhandedly. He watched her. It's like he's put us all under a fucking genjutsu. Indeed it felt like an illusion tonight. The heady atmosphere extended to everyone and he felt something off-kilter in his veins and when he glimpsed Naruto, who was on his way to being blackout drunk, he knew Naruto felt it just like he and Sakura did.

They would never be free of Sasuke until either they or he died. They were all just killing time.

Eventually there seemed to be some sort of scuffle where Sakura was; and Kakashi watched her slink away from the group, pushing through people towards the door, unsteady and knocking into other patrons.

"She's going to get killed," Genma observed, that same casual tone. Kakashi rose from the booth. There was only so long he could ignore her self-destructive behavior; at a certain point, Genma was right.

He was still the grown-up.

Out in the night he followed her as she stumbled along. He could hear her crying.

"Don't go to his flat, Sakura," Kakashi said loudly, catching up to her. When Sakura turned to look at him, her eyes were red and wet. It had begun to rain, just a bit, and he watched goosebumps prickle along her fair skin. She was swaying and he reached out a hand to steady her.

"I just—" she began, and then leaned into his chest. Kakashi sighed and directed her towards her own flat. They walked in silence, his grip tight on her upper arm, though when they reached her front door, she wrenched out of his hold and unlocked the door herself, with only minor fumbling.

Her flat smelled like her perfume, and Kakashi found himself inhaling it slightly. It was a comforting scent. He watched her kick off her shoes carelessly and stumble to the refrigerator, where she took out a large bottle of water and chugged it. Across the kitchen table, hands shoved in his pockets, he watched the water trickle down her jaw and chin, and along her neck, to darken the red fabric of her dress. It was a surprisingly erotic image.

When she set the empty bottle down and wiped her mouth, her eyes were a bit clearer. She wasn't so sodden drunk anymore, anyway. And there was that determination again.

"Kakashi," she began, moving round the kitchen table towards him. He wanted to step back but decided against it, still pondering the possible sequences of events. He was tired but it had been a while since he'd last been with someone, and anything to stop thinking of Sasuke…just for a few moments…

"We can't undo this, once it's done," he admonished her, as she came to stand before him. Sakura was so pretty but right now she looked so worn; she looked like her namesake at the end of spring, when the blossoms were ready to fall. Her beauty was so transient and already fading. It made him feel a little less terrible about what they were about to do—she wasn't a little girl, not anymore.

She stood on her tiptoes and closed her eyes as she tugged down his mask and pressed her lips against his. He felt her breasts brush against his chest as she placed her hands on either side of his face.

She doesn't have a fucking clue of what she's doing, Anko's harsh voice broke through the haze in his mind. He thought of Sakura crying in the rain, he thought of Sasuke's silhouette in the window, of Sasuke in the prison cell, so young but so old in so many other ways. The rumors of the sexual violence Orochimaru inflicted upon his pets hadn't been forgotten by Kakashi, and he'd seen enough of the world to know the look that such victims got as they grew older—that knowledge you could never un-know, that the world could really be that cruel.

When you were young, emotionally young, you wore your hopes like ornaments, piling them on freely, for all to see. As you got older you started feeling silly with so many, and so visible, so you started to peel them away, one by one. That day in the prison cell Sasuke had borne no such ornamentation.

But Sakura, like Naruto, continued to carry her hopes for all to see, even now after everything. Why else would she be acting so desperately, if she didn't in some way think that things could get better?

She's going to end up hurt.

I know it's about him, but I don't know what my goal is.

Sasuke didn't have goals anymore.

Kakashi knew what that felt like.

Sakura did not.

The shame on her face when he pushed her away was all the confirmation he needed: he had nothing to give Sakura. She was still, relentlessly, seeking her own happily ever after.

Back out in the rain, he'd laughed at the thought that she would ever try such a thing with him.

Kakashi knew better than anyone that there was always something sexy about the taboos, and Sasuke was as off-limits as he could possibly get. It had been a trick of the mind under the influence, he had decided initially, and then he was walking to Sasuke's flat the very next day after Sakura's kiss.

As he drew to the front of the door and watched the shoji slide aside, he knew he had been bullshitting himself completely. If he were after taboos, Sakura would have done just fine.

The shoji hit the frame with a thin thwack. Sasuke was looking at him with a complete lack of surprise, his dark brows arched, that old combative look glimmering in his eyes, and tucked in the curve of his smooth lips.

"I thought you needed someone to check up on you," Kakashi explained, not bothering with traditional greetings. Sasuke leaned against the frame and folded his arms over his chest, and let out a callous laugh. In spite of the heat, he wore long black pants and a long-sleeved black shirt that fit loosely over his body. The boyishness in his face that had once made all of the girls in Konoha chase after him had melted away, leaving an inherent elegance in its place that adolescent girls could never understand or appreciate. What you found beautiful changed as you got older; the transient things like flowers were nice but Kakashi found himself longing for something more enduring, some sort of proof that not everything was so impermanent and changeable.

Yeah, I'm completely fucked, he thought. He was giving up because he knew it would happen sooner or later; he had never really controlled himself around Sasuke and so why start now? He walked up the steps to where Sasuke was leaning with a challenge in his eyes.

All this time, Sasuke had really been the one to call the shots. Sakura had been right about that—everything seemed to come back to Sasuke and the last Uchiha knew it. Last night was evidence enough that Sasuke's distant presence alone could overturn the behavior of everyone in a town built otherwise on self-control.

If Kakashi had broken any of his stupid rules, it was only ever because Sasuke had led him to it. Sasuke had dictated everything, for everyone, and Kakashi wasn't going to play that way anymore. Sasuke was no longer a child; the body he now shoved inside the flat and against the wall was definitely that of a man. He could feel the hard planes of this man's chest under his hands, could feel the muscles tensing underneath as Sasuke instinctively balanced against the shove. Years of wasting away in prison couldn't quite take the ninja out of Sasuke and his reflexes hadn't been too dulled by time or disuse. The thought of this thrilled him. They were on equal footing.

Now the real fighting could begin.

"Don't worry," Sasuke said, pulling down Kakashi's mask, his voice a little deeper, a little rougher, than Kakashi remembered it, "I thrive on neglect."

Present Day

What does it mean, to say you wasted time? It implies there is some finite quantity of time, like a pile of stones to skip across the river. The goal is to make the most of each stone, to skip it perfectly, three times at least. Some people get more than others. Some people, like Sasuke, just pelt them angrily, as fast as they can.

And some people, like Kakashi, never throw them at all—he cannot say where his stones have gone and he wonders if he had ever thrown them at all.

But as Kakashi approaches the still form crumpled on the futon, he thinks maybe time is an animal you hunt, a shifting shadow between the narrow trees in the darkness; you can tear after it with a knife or you can let it stalk you.

He kneels down next to Sasuke, and, gently, turns him over. His face is smooth, the eyes open. Shisui. Obito. Itachi. Sasuke.

Perhaps, time is a genjutsu. Or a bottle of sake.

Sasuke has bled through; once more Uchiha blood stains the tatami.

It's not until you get up close to the animal that you realize it was you all along.