Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
It's like watching a tape he's seen many times before. All the scenes are familiar, expected.
Except the actors are different.
Kakashi watches as the regular routine is played out. It is morning; the sun shines brightly after last night's shower, and the faintest hint of muggy humidity makes the air buzz.
Naruto constantly attempts to get Sasuke's attention; it's as though his main ambition in life is to get that one person who has never given him the time of day to notice he exists. Sasuke, as ever, ignores him. The only sign the young Uchiha even gives that he can hear Naruto at all is the way his lip curls ever so slightly when Naruto's loud, jarring voice fills the air.
Leaning against the posts, Obito tries to get Kakashi to talk to him. He talks, pokes Kakashi in the shoulder, chatters, smiles and laughs, but Kakashi never acknowledges him, and never speaks. Obito is trying to talk to a brick wall, and the brick wall isn't about to talk back.
The day, all the days, go on like that, no one ever breaking through or making any progress, and a chance is lost.
After one particularly loud insult, Sakura jumps up and yells at Naruto to shut his mouth. She is bristling, enraged as the short-tempered girl is wont to do. Her green eyes glint with anger as she defends the boy she is slavishly devoted for.
Rin quietly and gently tells Obito that Kakashi isn't going to talk to him, and tries to change the subject. It doesn't work.
The arbitrator can't do her job when the two boys she's supposed to be mediating amongst don't listen to a word she says.
Sasuke himself never says a word. His eyes stare anywhere but at his two "teammates"; usually straight in front of him, dark, glassy and brooding. Sasuke is caught up in his own little world, dreaming of something dark and violent, dreaming of the day he can break loose from Team Seven and have his revenge. His future does not have any room for his team.
Kakashi stares blankly at Obito and Rin, hoping that they will soon stop talking. He has better things to be doing than listen to his "teammates" debate proper behavior. Much better things.
He doesn't care, he never has, and he hopes he never will. If he does come to care about them, that will complicate things in so many ways that he may not be able to survive it.
They are…just alike, in so many ways, but Kakashi can discern tiny differences in at least two of them.
Rin was far gentler than Sakura. Rin never raised her voice even in the most dire of situations; she was everything that was fair-minded and mediating. She genuinely tried to level out the dire opposites of her teammates, and all Sakura ever does is separate them even more. Sakura is chaos, and Rin was the calm that chaos begot once it was all gone.
Kakashi grew out of it. He's not sure that Sasuke ever will. Sasuke shows no sign of defrosting or in any way letting go, and Kakashi fears that even if what happened to him happens to Sasuke, it won't make any difference. Sasuke is too far gone, too deep inside his own world of truth and lies.
Naruto, on the other hand…
He's just like Obito, in every way. He's always smiling, always laughing even when there's no reason to be. Naruto is constantly light and floating, just like Obito always was.
They're both social rejects of the highest degree, with few friends and even fewer who are close. Obito and Naruto, despite their bright personalities, have been outcasts their entire lives.
There's no difference. None.
.
Kakashi knocks on the doorframe before stepping into the room. Naruto looks blankly at him from the bed.
The boy is covered nearly from head to foot in bandages, swathed around his forehead, arms, chest and legs. A light hospital shift sits over the bandages on his chest, pale green and clashing horribly with his golden hair. His blue eyes flicker only slightly.
Kakashi sits in the chair by the bed. "How are you feeling, Naruto?" he asks quietly, peering intently at his student's bewhiskered, bandaged face.
Naruto stares up at him, his face devoid of all emotion. "I'm…I'm…sorry I couldn't bring Sasuke back, Kakashi-sensei." His voice is barely audible.
Kakashi flinches. Naruto is so like Obito that it's almost impossible to breathe; the air in the room becomes oppressively silent, full of buzzing white noise.
"Don't…worry about Sasuke, Naruto." Kakashi clasps the fingers of his hands together as the afternoon lengthens. "If he wanted to leave as badly as you've said, then I doubt that there was anything you could have done to stop him. In order to be saved, someone actually has to want to be saved."
Naruto grits his teeth, his knuckles tightening; Kakashi can hear the raw, burnt skin on his fingers stretching and cracking, blood and pus oozing out anew underneath the bandages. "It's not fair," he mutters slowly. "Why couldn't he just stay here, with us? Why weren't we good enough for him?"
The next words nearly make Kakashi's heart stop. "Why wasn't I good enough for him?"
Kakashi leans over and puts a hand on Naruto's shoulder; the boy flinches and winces, screwing his face up, and Kakashi immediately lifts his hand. "It'll be alright, Naruto."
Naruto smiles a smile from a broken mouth full of broken teeth.
Kakashi realizes that he was wrong.
.
Naruto always smiles. It's his trademark, as much as the whisker scars, the Kage Bunshin, and "I'm gonna be Hokage!"
But it's different from how Kakashi imagined it.
Naruto's smile is false on that day. It has been on every other day. Naruto has probably smiled no more than a handful of times in his entire life, and apart from that, it is simply the mask.
Naruto's smiles are false and untrue, lies made to hide a sad, pervasive truth.
And if that is the case, then Obito never smiled either.