First time really writing Yamato. Still working with him. He's one of my favorite characters (I wish they would just save him already!) and the plot bunny was bugging me. Thus, this odd KakaYama was born. I just got a 34 on an AP physics test, people- please make me feel a little better and take the time to review? I love you guys :D Enjoy!

Shinobi have nightmares. It is simply a fact of life. Nightmares are a manifestation of one's troubles, one's darkness, one's deepest fears, of one's daily life. And a shinobi's life is a nightmare.

But shinobi also have the gift of the imperfect human mind. Memories fade, unable to be preserved forever. Terrifying recollections disintegrate, melding one event with another, easing trauma with the buffer of years gone by. It is this that kept them sane, for surely, without the gift of one nightmare fading after another, shinobi would break like glass.

They still do. Of course they do. But some are held together by glue and stitches, fractured shards of a psyche clinging to each other simply because the memories of blood and death are not as vivid as the day when blood and death weighed just as heavy on their hands and bodies as it did on their hearts.

So, what of those shinobi with picture perfect memories? What of the man who sees a comrade die and every detail is preserved, burned into his brain in a horrid nightmare?

The Uchiha are the answer to that question. For the Sharingan records everything it sees. Some went mad from the memories that constantly replayed in their minds, ripping out their own eyes just so the visions would leave them alone. Others shattered, falling apart into a broken shell of a man, ripping out their eyes and then staying insane because the guilt wouldn't stop, even if the visions did.

This was until a certain Uchiha discovered an ocular jutsu that the clan kept silent. Worthless in any other respect, reserved for the ninja cursed with a perfect memory and a heart heavy with guilt. When smoke is just as acrid twenty years later, screams are just as piercing, blood just as wet, something has to hold the ninja together. Something must stop them from losing their minds.

It was this ocular jutsu that Hatake Kakashi once came across. Well, perhaps that was the wrong way to phrase it. He didn't come across it, he simply reinvented it without ever knowing that the Uchiha had already done so. After all, all the Uchiha were dead but one, and that one wasn't teaching anyone any jutsu.

Now, there is one day a year that Kakashi does not work. He does not take a mission. He does not train. He does not report for duty. One day that has taken the weight of all his regrets and anguish, one day when he is faced with nothing but the horror of too many deaths and not enough left behind.

That day is the anniversary of Uchiha Obito's death.

Kakashi walked slowly towards his bed. His headband was gone, his flak vest was off, and his bed was waiting. It was only ten minutes, now. Ten minutes until twenty four hours of undisturbed nothingness. Until he would wake stiff and sore but relieved, one more year over with, one more anniversary missed.

Oh, nightmares would still come other days of the year. But Kakashi could deal with those. He could take anything but the state of anguish that was his life the day that his first friend had died. To be conscious and know, that ten years ago exactly, Rin had been getting tortured, Obito had been running to save her, and he had been running away, to know that Obito was giving up his eye and dying, and then the exact moment of his death-

He couldn't do it.

And sometimes, Kakashi got angry about that, because it was just semantics. Now it was just 365 times thirteen days ago that Obito had been dying, tomorrow but it would be 365 times ten plus one, and then plus two, plus three- the exact anniversary didn't matter, it was just a silly human ideal. But Kakashi couldn't be both angry and sad at the same time, and while he'd rather just be angry, it seemed it wasn't his choice.

And then, he'd lost more people, more and more, and there were just too many anniversaries to keep track of. It hadn't been with his permission that the pain had all gravitated to rest on one day alone, but it had. And the list had kept growing. Sakumo, Rin, Minato, Jiraiya, Sasuke. All dead or lost. Too many.

It wasn't good that he had so many to mourn that their faces became interchangeable in his nightmares. Sometimes, Sasuke had a hand glowing with white light stuck through Rin's heart. Other times, Obito's face was laughing at him with Orochimaru's voice, or Naruto was dying under a rockslide, or Sakura was falling back, body perfectly healthy but spirit gone-

That wasn't good.

But, one day a year, when the nightmares had once been unbearable, Kakashi now felt nothing.

Oh, some people had muttered he was doing the dead a disservice. They had died for him, the least he could do was remember them. And those comments had never bothered Kakashi. He knew that, too. But his friends, the ones who knew where he was and what he was doing on the day of Obito's death, didn't care. He gave every other day of the year to those that were already dead. He lived for them, to carry on what they had believed in. He talked to them every morning. It was no sin to take only one single day a year and live it for himself.

Kakashi's alarm clock ticked forward. 11:59.

Close enough.

Kakashi walked forward to sit in bed. He drew the blankets up and around himself, sinking into their warmth that never seemed to do much for the cold in his heart. He picked up the small hand mirror resting in his lap. He opened the Sharingan and stared into Obito's eye. It began to spin.

Kakashi usually slept with his shuriken blanket pulled up to his chin, as if it once been acting as a substitute mask but slipped down during the night. Now, the thick quilt was only up to his waist. Plus, the jounin normally slept on his side, whether on a mission or safe at home- now he was flat on his back. Then there was the fact that he was wearing his mask; Kakashi actually slept without it when in Konoha, he had just changed his habits for a few years before he had finally let Team Seven see his was face. There was also a mirror lying abandoned against his hip with seemingly no purpose.

This was a frighteningly usual sight for Yamato.

He was now Kakashi's ANBU guard on those days when he was unresponsive. On those days when not even an earthquake could rouse the jounin, when he was trapped in a genjutsu of endless sleep, an ANBU always stood guard, protecting the copy ninja from any danger from the shadows had been Yamato's duty for years. Ten times, he had had slipped silently into Kakashi's apartment to wait by his senpai's side, wait by his unconscious form. He would sleep until he ran out of Chakra and died or someone dispelled the illusion. That was what he was there for.

Yamato calmly placed his hands on Kakashi's sternum, probing with his Chakra for his senpai's Chakra coils. The jounin would be unsettled if he awoke in a different position then he had passed out- he knew from experience- and so Yamato fought to stop himself from straightening out Kakashi's limbs from his awkward, spreadeagled position. He just reached out, felt for Kakashi's sedate Chakra flow, and jolted it out of its rhythm.

Kakashi's single grey eye flickered open to a half-lidded, bored gaze. He stared up at Yamato in what appeared to be indifference, disobedient silver hair lying limply on the pillow and shading his eye. He cleared his throat and spoke, voice rough and gravely with disuse. "Thank you."

Yamato nodded stiffly. Kakashi took in another shallow breath and made to sit up, but the wood user made to hold him back. "Senpai, your Chakra levels are low. You need to rest."

"I've been resting for twenty four hours. Anything happen while I was out?"

Yamato sat on the edge of the jounin's bed, shaking his head slightly. "No. It was quiet."

"Aah." Kakashi let out a quiet sigh, then actually did sit up, ignoring Yamato's flustered protests. He looked a little sore, a little tired, from the strain of using a Sharingan genjutsu for twenty four hours straight- but also immeasurably relieved. He stretched slightly, then slowly rolled out of bed with a pained grunt. "Thanks, Yamato."

"Thank you for calling me Yamato."

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder, grey eye lit with a mischievous delight. "I'm too tired to try and bother you now. Don't worry. I'll be back to razzing on my favorite kohai tomorrow."

"I'll look forward to it, Senpai," he deadpanned, but maybe he was being serious. Yamato didn't know himself.

Kakashi ignored the comment, just stretched again and gave a jaw-cracking yawn before traipsing out of the bedroom, leaving the wood user to his own devices. Yamato simply watched. He had never been able to quite understand how Kakashi did it. He was so desperate to avoid- what was he avoiding? Yamato didn't quite know what would happen if he didn't sleep through the anniversary of death and agony, he hadn't known Kakashi for that long, but the rumors were horrific. Whatever it was that Kakashi was afraid of, it had to be terrifying, terrifying or excruciatingly painful- probably both. But Kakashi would go from willing to do anything he had to do to escape the memories to just… normal. Or as normal as Kakashi got.

Sometimes, the insanity that was Kakashi gave Yamato a headache. A very bad headache that called for so, so many glasses of sake to just make him forget about all of this.

Then, other times, Yamato thought he was just a little crazy himself, because he didn't find Kakashi's way of coping at all odd. He didn't think it strange at all that Kakashi just woke from the genjutsu, walked out to the memorial stone, and then straight to the Hokage Tower for a mission. He didn't find it strange at all, then sometimes, he did, and the insanity that was Kakashi made even less sense then than it had before.

Everything was just a little crazy. Not just Kakashi; everything in this whole damn village was crazy. Everything and everyone. All the broken shards of a person that made up an ANBU, an ANBU captain, they all drifted apart and shattered, only held together by tenuous strings comprised of ritual and habit and quirks. Quirks like Anko's wild drinking binges, like Genma traversing the village and having sex with anything that had the correct number of limbs and was willing, like Raidou playing his violin so fast and so hard his hands bled, like Gai projecting an aura of energy and happiness, the energy and happiness he gave himself to protect. Everyone knew jounin and ANBU were a little crazy. No one seemed to care they were only that way because they'd lost almost everything and had to fight to hold themselves together.

And Yamato knew he was crazy too. Only a glutton for punishment would stick to Kakashi like glue on the days when the jounin slept rather than confront the ghosts of his past. Because only Kakashi could make him think like this, mope about their lifestyle and whether it was really worth it, giving up everyone they loved and everything that made them human just to preserve the lives and happiness of all those who enjoyed peace within Konoha's walls. Sometimes Yamato wondered if he would end up like Kakahsi- but then he realized that Kakashi was only like this because he had lost everyone he loved and still slaved on, every piece of himself handed over for the village to use. Yamato had never loved anyone in the first place.

So, in that regard, he was safe.

"Yo, Yamato."

Yamato turned, raising his gaze from Kakashi's bed to Kakashi himself. The jounin stood slouched in the doorway, hands in his pockets, half-lidded gaze alert. It probably helped that Kakashi looked a little crazy, too. Yamato didn't know if he could handle it if Kakashi looked entirely normal, looked like a civilian and then Yamato had to watch something that seemed just so normal revert back to running and hiding from memories that would have long ago made a weaker man go mad.

"Is there a reason you seem to have fallen in love with my room? You can leave now."

"Aah… yeah. …See you, Kakashi-senpai."

Kakashi's eye curved upwards, but it didn't even seem like a smile this time. The silver-haired jounin turned, and Yamato followed him out. But Kakashi wasn't leading him to the door, he just moved along to dig through his fridge for something edible. Yamato watched him for a moment, struck by the stiff return to normalcy, then just turned and tried to leave.

The moment his foot was out of the door, a half-gloved hand came to rest firmly on his shoulder. Yamato jumped and twisted, but Kakashi's masked expression was unreadable.

He just stood there silently for a moment, then leaned forward and brushed masked lips against his cheek. "That was a thank you. Ne, Yamato, please be here to do this for me next year? Don't know if I could handle having memories about you, too."

Yamato hated when Kakashi talked like this. He felt sick at the topic of his own hypothetical death and didn't like discussing it. But then he also felt warm inside at the thought that at least someone would miss him.

Maybe that was gruesome, morbid, or disgusting. Yamato didn't particularly care.

"…I'll be here, Kakashi-senpai."