Icarus

Once burned, twice shy.

-

You can say a prayer if you need to,

Or just get in line and I'll grieve you

Can I meet you alone?

Another night and I'll see you,

Another night and I'll be you,

Another way to continue

To hide my face.

-I Never Told You What I Do For A Living, My Chemical Romance.

AN: Kishimoto's timelines suck, and someone really needs to start pointing out his inconsistencies. It's stated that Gaiden was ten years prior to part one of Naruto, but that's impossible, seeing as how Yondaime was supposedly 'killed' twelve years before part one.

I don't get it. Do you?

Written in about half an hour, and unedited liek woah. For Kimi no Vanilla, as she's leaving for Japan and I won't see her in months. I'm sorry it's not the best, babes. -chu-

-

The first time he used Chidori, his hand bled for three days afterwards. His chakra control wasn't yet perfect; his sensei told him as he observed the process. Kakashi had flushed hotly and been glad -not for the first time- of the mask that hid his face. And then the Fourth Hokage of Konohagakure had smiled and told him to keep trying, that he was doing great, and he'd showed him a trick or two to keep the chakra from burning his hands.

Yondaime could have told him something, anything else. He could have said, 'You should quit as a ninja,' and Kakashi wouldn't have taken it personally. But that open, honest, naked little nudge of approval was enough. In some ways, Kakashi hated his sensei. Hated the way that he reminded him of another nameless figure in his past. Hated the way he could smile and keep smiling, even though they were in the middle of a war, even though they were fighting for their lives. Even though they and ninja like them were dying so that other people could keep their lives.

The second time he used Chidori, his sensei stopped him. Gave him a little frown that seemed to rescind some of the approval he'd bestowed upon him earlier. Kakashi hated seeing that look on other people's faces. That desolate, disconsolate look of mourning that almost made it seem as though he already had one foot in the grave. So he ducked around his sensei and attacked anyways, and maybe he was injured more than he should have been, and maybe he wasn't.

His sensei saved him from what would have been a fatal sword strike. Kakashi escaped with a mere minor injury. Somewhere else, someone else, in another time and place, had died for less. But because Kakashi had his sensei and his sensei had promised to always watch over them, everything would be all right.

The third time he used Chidori, it was because he couldn't cry. He used it to protect the person he could protect and avenge the person he couldn't save, and he let his emotions take over. He resisted the urge to tear the man limb from limb, and reminded himself with a shinobi's cool competence of what had to be done.

Remember the mission.

Screw the fucking mission.

Afterwards, he reached for her. The eye in his skull was a reminder of who loved her, and why he'd loved her, and that Kakashi would never be good enough.

She'd taken his hand and Obito's heart and Kakashi had never felt more envious of a boy…man, about to die.

The fourth time he used Chidori, he thought it would kill him. But then, he'd kind of been expecting that.

Yondaime came to visit him in the hospital. Kakashi wasn't looking at him, didn't really care to acknowledge his presence at all. So the elder man simply eased himself into a chair at Kakashi's bedside and said nothing for a very long time.

"Sensei…" at long last, the boy spoke. His voice didn't shake or waver, but it was strangely inquisitive, as if he were a child. But Hatake Kakashi had never been a child. That option had been revoked the moment he was six years old and graduating from an academy that taught him how to kill. He wasn't wearing his mask, and his eyes were tracking something that wasn't there. It was dark outside, and cold, but neither of them were about to complain.

Kakashi's hands were fisted in his sheets, and his body was wrought with tension.

"Yes?"

"…Why do people have to die?"

It was a simple enough question, Yondaime supposed as he watched his student. Carefully, quietly, he reached forwards and tugged at Kakashi's hands until he loosened their death grip, and then he turned the boy's hand palm up and traced the life line with one gentle finger. It branched off many times along the way, paths that could have been but weren't. Paths that should have been but aren't.

"Anyone who lives can die at any time. There is no safe life, or perfect existence," he began after a deep breath. Kakashi's hands had gone limp, and he wasn't sure which reaction he preferred. But the boy's fingers were cool and his palm was dry and the little whorls on the pad of his thumb weren't caked with blood, so maybe something could be salvaged still.

"And there are people who would willingly give their life for others. Like what Obito did for you…" There was no sense in hiding the wound. Without attention, it would bleed and fester and boil and never, ever heal. Yondaime regretted it, but the poison had to be bled out. He didn't want to twist the knife more than he had to. "And what you would have done for Rin."

Kakashi's hands clenched and he jerked them away. Yondaime settled back into his chair and smiled.

"They do it because they can. And because they care. And because sometimes, people have to die, just to make life valuable. It doesn't make it any less terrible, but it teaches us a lesson that sorely needs to be learned. Life is precious, Kakashi. The most precious gift anyone can give. Obito's eye wasn't his only present to you."

Kakashi looked up at him, and there were tears in his eyes and scars on his fourteen-year-old heart, and so the fourth Hokage stood and nudged his student over further on the squeaky old hospital bed and sat down beside him. He wrapped one arm about the boy's shoulders and rested his cheek against the mop of spiky silver hair. Kakashi hated gestures of affection. But he tolerated it, because no one was watching and because his eyes were closed. Obito couldn't see, couldn't feel…

"I never knew," Kakashi said softly, so softly, his voice not unlike the muted chirping of his thousand birds. "I thought…I thought he was stupid and useless and I never knew…"

"Ssh," Yondaime murmured. "It's all right to mourn, but don't think about the what ifs and the might-have-beens. All right, Kakashi?"

Kakashi was looking straight ahead, both eyes open. Studying his toes, as his foot twitched involuntarily. Foolish. Ninja were supposed to be able to control their motor skills. Both eyes were unblinking, and the raised red scar across his left eye glistened as if with blood. They'd put a patch over the sharingan to conserve his chakra, but somewhere along the line he'd torn it off. "…And what about shinobi rule twenty-five?"

His sensei laughed. A genuine laugh, not an origami imitation. It wasn't dry, it wasn't cruel, it was happy and contented and it sounded like he'd never known pain a day in his life, but Kakashi knew better. He'd seen the scars, pulled taut against the older man's skin. Scar tissue is always tougher than the original skin. Tougher and less pretty and more jaded but it's twice as hard to make it bleed afterwards. Kakashi wonders if his sensei remembers how to bleed.

"I like to pretend it doesn't exist," the Hokage said with a quiet, careful grin. "Rules were made to be broken, after all."

Kakashi let himself be held and huddled against the man that would one day lead Konohagakure, by the man who's held him all through the years and the blood guts and the glory, and he doesn't say much of anything else. At some point, he fell asleep, and when he woke, he was alone.

He's lost track of how many times he's used Chidori. The chirping of the thousand birds isn't nearly as impressive as it'd once been. And maybe he's a little jaded and maybe he's a little older, and maybe he doesn't smile any more, but at least he's alive. There's a tattoo on his shoulder and the taste of blood in his mouth and a mask on his face to shadow his soul, but he's alive.

The Yondaime Hokage has been dead for six months. Kakashi remembers catching his body as he fell. He remembers how the other man's hands had still been warm, and how there'd been a small smile on his bruised and bloodied lips. He remembers how his eyes had still been opening, staring up at the open sky, and how Kakashi's own hands had been trembling too badly to close them.

Eventually, someone had removed the body from his arms. Eventually, someone had picked him up, too, and carted him off the infirmary so he could be patched up and sent to fight another man with a family, another boy with a sister, another enemy he didn't want to have a soul.

The Yondaime Hokage has been dead for six months.

Kakashi hopes that wherever he is now, he's happy. And he makes a declaration, solemn and honest, standing over the monument as the sun creeps up and over the mountains. It's a declaration he renews every single day, and one he'll continue to renew as long as it takes.

I'm still alive, Obito. Sensei. I'm still alive.

Four months later, Rin's name is scratched ontoto the monument. Soin reciprocation,he adds her to the ever-increasing list.

I'm still alive, Obito, Sensei, Rin.

…I'm still alive.