I am in a Kakashi-Gaiden-angst craze. Beware.
Killing is getting old, but he still does it anyways.
He's done it so many times that now he doesn't even have to think, blink, breathe; he just is and his body automatically does. Sometimes he has to stop himself, remind himself that he isn't another psychotic half-machine, half-murderer. That he can think, and that he doesn't live to kill.
But sometimes he forgets.
At night, when the job is over and the whole sky is slinky, dark and musty with dusted moth wings – when he slips through the door of his empty apartment and into the cold, tiled bathroom –
He washes his hands, but the blood always seems to cake in the most troublesome ways, stubbornly clinging. Sometimes he can't seem to rub it off, no matter how hard he scrubs. Sometimes he scrubs so hard the bleeding starts all over again.
When he's done, and only when he is done washing his hands, he takes off his mask. It's a weird habit of his, and it's almost become a worn ritual. A lot of times his mask is even worse off than his hands, the red paint on it is so blurred with the red blood that it is horrifically indistinguishable. The drying red blood eventually becomes the streaky red paint that marks his mask; the kind of paint that never fades. Even, he thinks wryly, if the color is a little off, and it's not nearly as vibrant.
He's given up trying to clean it, knowing that it'll probably only be worse the next night. He might as well save his energy for something better.
Most nights he's too exhausted to take off his vest, so he just leaves it on. His feet stumble tiredly to bed and he collapses, most of the time because he's flat-out drained, and always because he feels he can't stand anymore, he's so heavy.
It's an odd feeling, but a comforting feeling nonetheless, when he falls onto his bed, the mattress squeaking familiarly. Over the years the mattress has deflated considerably, matted into a squashed heap, a kind of surrender spelled out on the tired wrinkles of its sheets. He's come to like that mattress.
As he lies there, the weirdest thoughts come to haunt him, so bizarre it scares even him. Flickering memories about long-past regrets, sometimes half-crazed desires, moonlit madness drenched in nonexistent cocktails. The ceiling has become a sort of friend companion, maybe even a psychiatrist of sorts. Even if it is rather drab and white, at least it listens. He's come to like his ceiling.
A lot of times he sees the faces of people he doesn't know, and yet he does know, hazily. A lot of times it's the people he's killed perhaps only an hour ago. He tries not to let it bother him, and most of the time it seems to work, much to his surprise.
But most of the time he sees Obito and his goggles, Rin and her smile, and his sensei…
Sometimes he nearly drowns in his thinking. Lately it's been getting harder to know exactly what is really reality, and what is his partial insanity. The line is getting too blurred for his taste, and yet he can't help but like the feeling, as deluged as it is. He can't explain it.
He's come to learn that a lot of things you know but you just can't explain. Like the reason he did the same thing, night after night. He knew why he did it; he just couldn't explain it to other people. They wouldn't understand, anyways. They'd just think he was plain crazy.
Perhaps he was – but then again, if he was crazy, how would he know?
He never really went to sleep. When he closed his eyes, it wasn't true slumber; only a fitful rest, a fleeting visit to the past, to say goodbye to people he never had the chance to say goodbye to, or hello to people he had never thought to greet and should have. It was a blissful sort of oblivion, or at least as near to it as he could get, but he always knew it wasn't real.
He knew he was fooling himself.
When the morning light began to burn his eyes, he would finally sit up, his long legs swinging over the edge of the mattress, slumped, eyes still tingling madly. He would get this sort of sagging, airy smile – but of course no one ever saw it, not even himself. He never kept any mirrors around the house. Glass had always frightened him in inexplicable ways, for reasons he remembered all too well.
He really wasn't sure why he always smiled – he certainly didn't have any reason to. But it was just there, always, always there. Just like the creeping insanity that fluttered in the darkest corners of his mind, the insanity that would take over one day, he was sure.
He smiles just because, and he likes it that way.
-
But tonight is different than all those other nights, so very achingly different.
Because when the moonlight spills onto the streets, onto his livid hands, something inside throbs, so briefly and sweetly.
When he sees the man, the despicable, half-crazed shadow, he sees someone else, too. He sees himself.
Already, his left hand is pulsing, crackling blue with the sweet, low call of a thousand deadly birds, so shining and dazzling it is nearly blinding –
His charge is short, quick and effective, plunging through the man's chest in a sickeningly thrilling sensation; blood engulfing his arm, sloppy splatters chilling his veins. He rips out the heart, clenching it in his fist for a moment, feeling its feeble squirming, and feels for all the world like he is holding onto a fish, a gasping, dying fish.
He gives it a fatal squeeze, blood squirting onto his already sopping hand. He does it just to be sure.
The man lurches over, and he catches a glimpse of hollow, sunken eyes, so empty and haunting…
But he can still see himself reflected in those eyes, and it truly and deeply frightens him. He flings the body aside, not waiting to watch the blood pool in the moonlight.
He is staggering through the darkness, breathing in the bloodied air, moonlight setting patches of his silver hair aglow.
He clutches onto the doorknob, twisting it and not caring that he is smearing it with his guilty, bloody fingerprints. Limping heavily, desperately to the bathroom, he slams the door shut and drowns himself in the cold, biting water.
Scrub, scrub, harder and harder…
He wants to rip out his eyes, just so he doesn't have to see his hands, see those hollow, hopeless eyes…
He is praying as he splashes in the sink, praying to the gushing of the sink, praying a delirious prayer, heart hitching. His fingers are numb with cold but he doesn't care, just keeps washing until he thinks his hands will drop off. Good, he thinks, you deserve it.
He keeps washing until his fingers are shaking, twitching, until he can't move them. He doesn't turn off the sink, because he knows he can't – just lets it run on and on, babbling his prayer over and over in watery, accusing tones.
He trips and stumbles to the door, fumbling with the doorknob and failing miserably. He tries again, his whole arm shaking uncontrollably, and finally he manages to open it, heaving it away from his chest.
He staggers towards his deflated mattress and keels over before he reaches it, lays there panting on the ground. He remembers his mask, the sullen husk around his face and reaches up with his trembling hands, rips it off. He wishes he was ripping off his skin instead.
He crawls, half-wriggling on his stomach towards the mattress, clutching madly at the edge and pulling himself up onto it. He falls, face-down, into it, suffocating himself in its sad, knowing smile. A scream runs up his throat but latches onto his tongue, leaving his throat aching and the air still silent. He bites his tongue, forgetting the pain, only knowing that he wants to scream but can't.
Right now he can't think, his whole mind a universe of screams –
And the only thing he knows for sure is that he is killing himself.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Dang. I feel all emo-y from reading all these beautiful, depressing stories about Kakashi/Gaiden. And of course I was inspired to write one myself, in my sordid attempt to relieve my current angstiness. :x Agh.