Kakashi's dreams are vivid. They rip him apart and leave him screaming, they'll leave him in moods for days. When he wakes his ears are ringing and with the taste of copper on his tongue.
When he was young Sakumo had taken him to doctors. Would worry, and comfort and not know what to do, what was even causing the problem. The diagnosis wasn't helpful. Kakashi was a genius, his mind runs ahead and he gets stuck in his thoughts; he can't get back out and his vivid imagination born from his genius traps him in dreams, nightmares, his mind.
By the time Kakashi's about to enter the Academy night terrors are common. His mask chokes down the screams on his lips and no one notices the black under his eyes.
The earliest dream he remembers is snapping teeth that leave him bleeding red in the dark corners of his mind. Growling and rumbles that echoed from nowhere and the impossibility of waking up. The worst one he remembered was right after his mother died. A light had guided him through his mind, carried him above the trees of Konoha and was smothered by the darkness. Kakashi woke to an ache in his chest, a loss, and tear tracks. Sakumo woke to his four year old son screaming with eyes blown wide open, standing stick straight in the living room, and never asked.
The nightmares reach a fevered pitch.
He's become a real shinobi, but his mind still spits out terror. Kakashi hates this weakness, on a mission this couldn't happen and it won't be long before he'll be sent out. He doesn't sleep, not for days, slowly acclimating his body to less and less sleep. He draws up schedules to work out how his new sleeping habits would work. Kakashi knows that if he plays his cards right he'll find a way to avoid sleep even on the brink of collapsing.
Except it doesn't work, instead of even getting tired or becoming sloppy his mind only moves faster and faster and Kakashi finds it hard to keep up even in the day. He'll think of things for the barest second before his mind moves on, twitching at every sound. Kakashi can't keep his thoughts in order.
He tries to think of things longer, tries to work on hard equations to stretch out his thought process, to just slow down.
When Sakumo goes to tuck him in for the night, only one week before the Academy's final he finds books far above Kakashi's level even with his genius. There's no way Kakashi would have been able to comprehend some of the scrolls.
That night Kakashi had passed out and the walls bled red, his watch bubbling crimson.
When Kakashi wakes up he doesn't really wake up at all. He's thirteen and Rin is gone, it's only been seven hours but he still feels like he is dripping in the dead bodies that he doesn't even remember killing.
Three things happen after that mission, three immediate things.
The first is that the whispers become closer to screams. Kakashi has always known that those mired in their position hate him, envy the way he constantly progresses. Technically Kakashi is a jounin but to the chunnin it's 'not right' for him to give commands. It's become common for it to get quiet when entering rooms but now it gets louder as each man becomes bolder. If Kakashi cared more, if he was only a few years younger he would have stared them down and reprimanded speaking to a superior like that. Some of them still remember a mission gone bad, the start of the war. "Just like his father," they say dismissively, not bothering to lower their voice, not bothering to look at him. "Comrade-Killer-Kakashi," their kids tell each other. They think he can't hear, so their voices pitch loudly and giggle.
The second thing is that his dreams bleed into the day. He'll find his hand dripping in sin while shopping. When he visits the stone he sees Rin kneeling thumbing at her Soul Timer. Sees her eyes and knows, team seven never talked much about Soul Timers but Kakashi noticed the matching zeroes on his teammates watches.
His dreams wash over him in the morning. He'll find himself awake at barely dawn and recall every blistering moment that his mind conjured. One day he's drowning in sand, the next running from a figure or being strung up, choked and poisoned.
The third thing is that he's a little bit of a monster. Where he has lost some respect he's also gained some. A few of the younger jounin or chunins that had not risked enough in the war were horrified. A thirteen year old recovered from a battle field of bodies. Blood soaked his hair, and poured from every wound that he had inflicted. He doesn't even recall much past Rin but the recovery team had found piles of kiri-nin. They skid past him in the Kage building, stare at him and imagine Uzumaki red hair on him.
His dreams scare him, but not as much as he begins to scare himself.
His dream is fluid, floating through thoughts, colors, people. It's like he's drowned himself in an abyss of his mind and now he's just looking around at the broken pieces of memory.
Except now it's Obito, and Kakashi wants to run. He knows this dream has seen a thousand times, seen it dripping in red, in grief. But instead of an image forming around them, of a forest floor covered in rocks it's just Obito. Their sitting, like children on a swingset and together they toss their feet back and forth. Obito is so vibrant (just the way Kakashi knows him to be) that their surroundings look grey, he can't even see past Obito, not that he really wants to. Maybe they are on a building, it sort of feels like that. Kakashi doesn't really mind the gray abyss he's in anymore, right now he could probably lay on the edges of these geometric spires forever.
Next to him a black eyes are tilted up, as if star gazing. The lines of Obito's face, the clothing that looks so smooth, every tiny hair on Obito's arms. Kakashi can't breathe, his throat is choked and Kakashi can't breathe.
"It's odd," Obito states as mild as a summer day, "that you would be here, this place is my safe haven, Bakashi," and here Obito swung his hands off his lap to rest behind him. Leaning back and twisting to face Kakashi, he looked as if to be considering something. "My grandmother told me about my mom and dad, she said that the moment my mother's soul timer went off my mother cried tears of joy, that she sobbed as she introduced herself to my father. I don't really remember them all that well, but I think that they were extra meant to be together ya know?" Obito spread his arms wide, it was such an Obito gesture that Kakashi almost ran into them, almost buried his face into Obito's neck, almost. "Of all the people with soultimers," Obito whispered, "they were meant to be together because they completed each other."
Obito's disposition changed suddenly he curled up and his scars seemed to become an angry red again. "I think you're here and I think you complete me, I think maybe everything hurts and I think maybe you're in my safe place because you're my safe place."
Obito suddenly wasn't the preserved picture of peace Kakashi held in his eye. "Please don't leave," was all Kakashi could plea, broken words falling from his lips "Please," and Kakashi couldn't handle an Obito who wasn't Obito, don't leave, don't leave. The special fire, the only 'will of fire' that Kakashi had ever seen was being muffled by the hard look in Obito's eyes. An Obito that was Obito was leaving, an Obito that was Obito was being forgotten.
Kakashi paused, was his mind forgetting? This Obito was a conjuring of his mind to replace the perfect Obito that he'd left to die.
Oh, everything hurt.
He loses it, he loses his mind to bloody fists punched into walls.
Obito completes him.
Obito who had a broken soul timer.
Obito who is his soul mate.
Obito who is deaddeaddeaddeaddead.
A/n: Guess who has no motivation, is a terrible writer and made a series about soulmates that stopped being about soulmates? This writer. Anyway hopefully that provoked some emotions from you dear reader, but I'm just trying to get back into the things I'm into… so yeah. Drop a comment, tell me what I should write (with or outside of this series) help me get back into writing! Or don't!