Genre: Angst
Status: WIP
Summary: Kakashi became a genin at 5, a chuunin at 6. His first break was at 8... Kakashi comes of age earlier than anyone ever expected... angst ensues...
Warnings: coarse language, violence and gore, steadily building angst, spoiler of a name mentioned in Ch 367
Disclaimer: You know Naruto and its characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto, because if I owned them, yaoi pairings would be canon…"So Cold" lyrics belong to Breaking Benjamin Set within Hatochan's Tolerant Intolerance universe, eighteen years before the start of the Naruto series... a prequel to Before the Journey and the Rest... Dedicated to my own sensei... for everything...Hard to believe all this started from a simple Police song, ne?
So Cold
Crowded streets are cleared away one by one
Hollow heroes separate as they run
You're so cold keep your hand in mine
Wise men wonder while strong men die
Show me how it ends it's alright
Show me how defenseless you really are
Satisfied and empty inside
Well, that's alright, let's give this another try
If you find your family, don't you cry
In this land of make-believe, dead and dry
You're so cold, but you feel alive
Lay your hand on me one last time
Show me how it ends it's alright
Show me how defenseless you really are
Satisfied and empty inside
Well, that's alright, let's give this another try
[ Tuesday - early November - 18 years before opening of series
The man walked slowly through the pre-dawn light, savoring the eddying swirls of mist that clung around his feet and the faint smell of wood smoke wafting through the early morning air. He smiled as he breathed out, content as a child with the warm clouds of breath and the slight crisp bite in the air, not quite enough to sting as you breathed, but not the soft caress it would be later in the day. He stopped to enjoy the quiet call of a cuckoo. He didn't often take the time for a leisurely stroll, in truth he was usually far too busy with missions and training, but he remembered his own jounin-sensei teaching him the importance of occasionally taking time to just appreciate life and set things in perspective in their world that too often included death.
Although they weren't supposed to meet yet for another hour, he knew his young charge would already be awake, probably going through his katas even at this early hour. It didn't matter that they had trained till late the evening before, walking home slowly due to the boy's bruised side sustained when he was just the slightest bit too slow blocking a kick. He was almost drooping with exhaustion when they parted company under that blood red sky. A maple leaf fluttered past his vision, and he paused to appreciate the contrast of the dark crimson against the silvery white of the frosty grass, smiling as he realized it was almost the same shade as his stubborn young student's hair. He ran a hand through his own spiky yellow locks, looking forward to a warm cup of tea and conversation with his student's father, hoping things wouldn't be too horribly awkward this morning.
The older man had been in disgrace since the botched disaster of a mission a few months prior, but he couldn't just ignore a former comrade, especially one who was close friends with his own mentor and father of his own student; everyone made mistakes at some time. Unfortunately, the stronger and more powerful and visible a shinobi was, the more glaring those occasional mistakes were, and the more difficult it was to face everyone else afterwards, and to face yourself in the mirror every morning.
He could sense the sky just starting to lighten behind him and hurried his step. The day promised a brilliance all the more appreciated in this season balanced between the end of autumn and beginning of winter. He dug a package from his vest pocket as he approached the wall surrounding the residence. His student's tendency to focus so completely on the mission at hand occasionally left him open to injury, and although the jounin would never purposefully use the young boy, he was hard pressed to ignore the attention of the female acquaintances he had made during their many joint trips to the hospital. The small package contained a set of special chakra-infused bandages he had laughingly beguiled from one of those sweetly smiling acquaintances at the hospital.
After a visit last week to re-align his own dislocated shoulder, she had mentioned the danger the young chuunin courted when he repeatedly injured and re-healed body parts that were already using so much chakra just to grow, and he had asked her if she could locate something to help the boy, as training injuries were an inevitable part of growing up as a shinobi. Most young ninja's-in-training were quite a bit older before they started training at such a high level, but his student had graduated from the academy several years ahead of the normal schedule. Hopefully, judicious use of the special strips of fabric could help ease some of the seeming fragility in the body that belied the strength he knew resided in the boy. He didn't want the boy's body burning itself out trying to compensate for the extra chakra drain that growing combined with healing placed on him. He was already lean and more than a bit bony; his sensei didn't want to see that change to gaunt and emaciated.
He went to the gate and approached the house. Despite the light frost on the ground, he smelled no hint of the smoke scent that should be drifting from the chimney or at least from the smaller braziers in the bedrooms. Even with the older man's current pre-occupation and his son's self-denial and disregard for creature comforts in his quest to become a stronger shinobi, surely one of them would have lit a fire. He knocked on the door, but quickly went in when no answer was forthcoming.
He wasn't sure why, but his instincts urged him on. He toed off his sandals and announced his presence as he approached the kitchen, his bare footfalls still managing to sound loud in the hallway lit only by a single dying lantern. The gray pre-dawn light coming through an open door allowed him to make his way across the formal tatami room and into the garden, searching for the inhabitants of the house. He called out again. Surely the weather was too cold for them to have simply fallen asleep watching the moon from the garden the night before. I know they are geniuses and can be a bit eccentric at times, but still…
The tattered shreds of morning fog combined with the light frost and the pre-dawn shadows made the garden a bewildering maze of black and white, giving a slight sense of unreality, even though he could distinctly feel the chill of the ground through his bare feet. He followed the sputtering pathway lamps toward the sound of a waterfall as the rapidly lightening sky made everything begin blurring into mottled shades of gray, and his footprints showed dark on the frosted grass.
He remembered his sensei's friend painstakingly constructing the waterfall for his wife as she expected their first child, making a quiet tinkling retreat beneath the shade of a small stand of maple trees. It was the same waterfall where that man and his son had built the small shrine after she died earlier this year. They had built a small shrine under the trees where she had loved to sit and play with her newborn son, under the trees where her husband had sung her love songs in the long summer evenings, their young son chasing and catching fireflies, pale skin and hair glowing in the moonlight. He recalled the ever-laughing, pale-skinned, grey-eyed kunoichi and breathed a quick prayer in remembrance. The stark beauty of the scenery gripped his heart as he rounded the bend in the path, to be replaced by sheer utter horror as he took in the grisly scene before him.
The White Fang, former hero of the village kneeled on the ground before the rocky cascade, his legs drawn up under his body, sitting on his heels, formal white kimono open to the waist, sleeves tucked up under his knees. A small table lay to his left, holding a small sake cup, a plate with the remains of a persimmon and a few chestnuts, a few sheets of mulberry paper, and a brush. A pool of sticky darkness encircled him as he kneeled, leaning into the heavier shadows, the sleepy kakko-kakko of a cuckoo from the trees the only sound heard above the trickle of the small fountain.
As his eyes further adjusted to the softly dappled not-light of the early morning, he saw the small mound lying half in the shadows. He had mistaken it for a rock, but the silvery shock of hair revealed the truth. His chakra reached forth as quickly as his hand, searching for any hint of life in the unmoving pile lying motionless in the shadows, icy crystals starting to sparkle on the gray yukata and in the silvery hair as the sun made its relentless way closer and closer to the horizon.
Birds began stirring, and a cricket, hidden in some small pocket of warmth, chirped chin-chiro, rin-rin rin-rin for a moment before the noise was drowned out by a dog in the distance. The boy was so cold; he feared he was too late. Wait, there, the smallest flare of chakra. The jounin carefully turned him over and stroked the pale, cold cheek, "Kakashi," he whispered. "Kakashi-kun, wake up, can you hear me?" Sandaime needed to know this information at once and the ANBU medics would be more qualified to treat the chuunin's hurts than the sweet-hearted smiling nurses at the hospital whose warm hearts would break seeing the fragile, icy, young shinobi in such a state. Namikaze-sensei gathered the small body against his, cradling him close, and pulled in his chakra to make the jump to the Hokage's tower.
