Much of the dialogue in this is from the scene at the end of Chapter 145/144 of Dreaming of Sunshine. The original scene, from Shikako's point of view, was about 2,300 words. The title is from "The Bridge Builder" by Will Allen Dromgoole.
Thank you to the Agenda for their long, long support in getting this finished! Also to Linny and Morne (and maybe some other people? I'm sorry if I'm forgetting you!) for their comments and enthusiasm.
Wolf-senpai is in the canteen.
Or... Kakashi, rather. Kakashi-senpai. He's not ANBU Wolf anymore — he's not supposed to be Wolf anymore, in Tenzō's thoughts or in reality. That's a hard transition for Tenzō to make, thinking of someone by the name they use outside of ANBU instead of by their ANBU callsign. Kakashi will always be 'Wolf' to him, a little bit, and when he's spoken to Kakashi outside of ANBU masks, well.
Maybe it's something broken with his senpai, or maybe it's something broken with Tenzō, but 'Hatake Kakashi' just seems like a thin veneer, a pale caricature built to hide the full-fledged person that is Wolf-senpai. His senpai was always so raw with the Wolf mask on. Not open, but everything was so terribly, obviously close to the surface. Every wound still bleeding. His body language so much clearer, his words always to the point.
Wolf-senpai had dicked them around, made jokes, but he'd never said anything he didn't mean. He'd never been anything less than completely present in the moment, every moment, dealing with everything and everyone with live-wire immediacy. Hatake Kakashi is Wolf with the colors washed out. Hatake Kakashi is Wolf but obscured, abstracted almost to meaningless.
Hatake Kakashi... is alive, at least, and ultimately is the same person that Wolf was. Deep down.
So. Kakashi-senpai is in the canteen. Wearing his wolf mask, but not being Wolf. It's obvious that he's still Kakashi, anyway, because he brought reading material. Not the smut he reads in public but some kind of scroll.
It doesn't matter.
Tenzō doesn't care what's on the scroll.
He cares that Kakashi is in ANBU headquarters.
Tenzō abandons his previous plans for food and — tentatively — company.
In regards to the former, there's no way Tenzō could eat. He can barely breathe, and has to consciously move at a relaxed pace. As for the latter... no one in the canteen is talking. There's a ring of empty seats around Kakashi, not just his table left clear but the tables around him, and even most of the tables beyond that. There's at least one ANBU agent who's chosen to eat leaning against the wall rather than trying to select a seat near Kakashi — the canteen just isn't that big, and ANBU Wolf's reputation looms even years after he's left.
Maybe, Tenzō soothes himself, maybe it won't be a big deal. Maybe his senpai will just... listen to him. Hear what he's saying. Maybe, if Tenzō is very lucky, senpai just needs another favor, one that couldn't wait until Tenzō next chose to indulge in a meal outside of ANBU headquarters.
He approaches Kakashi. Kakashi doesn't look up from his scroll.
"This is against procedure," Tenzō tells Kakashi-senpai.
He can practically feel all the air get sucked out of the room by the spectators, although none of them are so unprofessional as to audibly gasp.
Gasping is a waste of breath, anyway, a useless emotional reaction. Emotions are a waste of energy, unproductive, a dangerous flaw. Or so Tenzō was told; he's not actually sure what talk the regular ANBU get about that.
"Is it?" asks Kakashi-senpai. The question is idle and dismissive. If he were reading a book instead of a scroll, this is where he'd flip a page to punctuate his disinterest regarding the conversation in general, the person speaking to him in particular, and especially the very concept of 'rules' and 'procedure'.
Senpai always just does whatever he wants. But not this time. Not this time, not this.
"It is, and you know it," Tenzō insists. His hands do not form fists. That would be letting senpai win much too early, although it might eventually become necessary. Senpai had been the one to drag Tenzō over metaphoric hot coals until a reaction of some kind could be coaxed out of him, and sometimes showing a reaction is the only way to make senpai stop.
At the time it had burned like acid, and when he'd finally snapped angry, frustrated words at Wolf-senpai after weeks of endless needling, fear had immediately crept up on the heels of his anger. He'd been light-headed and guilty and had anticipated that now the reconditioning would start. But Wolf-senpai had said, Good, I knew there was a real person in there somewhere, and Tenzō has been fumbling his way from anger towards other, more difficult emotions ever since, groping around for them like a blind civilian.
"Do I?" asks Kakashi-senpai. It's the same tone he's always used to wind Tenzō up, but these days he doesn't do it to keep Tenzō from slipping back into his ROOT conditioning. It's just meaningless manipulation — or maybe it always has been.
"That mask doesn't belong to you anymore." Tenzō doesn't care about being overheard, but he keeps his voiced lowered because his senpai makes him want to shout. "That's why you had to turn it in when you were removed from the ANBU roaster by the Third—"
The wolf mask twitches slightly; Tenzō is physically acknowledged for the first time and Kakashi interrupts to drawl the most damning, terrifying question Tenzō can imagine:
"Oh, by the Third?"
Even for a phrase only four words long, there are always a dozen or more very subtle things Kakashi-senpai might or might not mean to imply, hint at, evade, highlight, or otherwise gesture towards. Those are generally the sort of meanings to be puzzled out during cardio or in the shower or while staring up at the ceiling at night or occasionally in the middle of everything going straight to hell because it turns out you should have thought a little deeper about what Hatake Kakashi said when he said it.
These four words have only two obvious meanings, and senpai's obvious double meanings tend to have the most immediate relevance.
First, this is a dig at Tenzō: this is a reminder of what Tenzō did to him, of how he betrayed Kakashi. The Third removed me from ANBU, that's who you're trying to pass the blame onto? Kakashi is asking. That's how you sleep at night, that's how you justify yourself? You don't take any responsibility?
Second, this is a foreboding hint at the likely reason for Wolf's reappearance: a gesture to the obvious danger that Tenzō has been... ignoring, admittedly. The Sandaime ordered me removed? Kakashi is asking. What makes you think the Sandaime's orders still mean anything when the Godaime has held the Hat for over a year?
The first makes Tenzō's stomach clench and roll at the same time. The second makes his stomach drop out completely.
Tenzō hasn't been avoiding Senju Tsunade. That would be impossible; Tsunade-sama is his direct superior. He receives all of his missions straight from her. But he can't help but feel that his position in the village is tenuous at best, now that Senju Hashirama's granddaughter is Hokage. Under Sarutobi Hiruzen, Tenzō was stable, at least. He knew what to expect, he knew what to do and say and be.
His first reaction when he heard Jiraiya-sama had successfully brought back the Slug Princess to be Godaime hadn't been the sudden release of relief, to his shame. No, his anxiety had only ramped up. For a few blinding seconds Tenzō had panicked.
Would she consider his very existence bloodline theft? Would she want more tests? Would she want experiments? Could he ever be safe in Senju Tsunade's Konoha? He still doesn't know, he doesn't know, but more than a year of being ignored has uncoiled that tension. Tenzō was never really safe in Sarutobi Hiruzen's Konoha, either, after all.
What he's completely failed to consider is that Tsunade's return might be a danger to Kakashi-senpai. And for months now, that danger has been building and building... last Tenzō heard, Kakashi was back out at the border, in the war, no longer being coddled in the village with a command position — probably because he still wasn't keeping out of the hospital. Probably because, like Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzō, any compassionate public persona Senju Tsunade has must be a carefully crafted fiction.
Tenzō's senpai is a weapon to the village and nothing more. They're all weapons for the Hokage.
"You have not been officially reinstated," Tenzō says, although this is grasping at straws and they both know it.
"I might have been," Kakashi shoots back, and turns back to studying the scroll. It's a new recruit scroll, and Tenzō recognizes it at a glance — it's the ANBU member who had chosen the Bat mask most recently.
Tenzō keeps an eye on the new recruits. He can't do anything for them if... if anything goes wrong. But at least he can know. He can see. Bat is a young recruit. Very promising. Possibly coming back after an injury, Bull had said.
"Wolf-senpai," he says, "you can't be here right now." It burns to have to call him that again, to even have to say any part of this. His jaw aches, the result of frustrated teeth grinding.
Kakashi has a point that Tenzō really wouldn't know one way or the other, but he's also admitted that he hasn't been reinstated. Maybe the Hokage is still considering. Maybe this is a trial run. Maybe Kakashi just snuck in because he could.
Or maybe he's looking at ANBU Bat's full-length training report because he's considering her as an addition to his new ANBU team.
ANBU has many unspoken rules. Right now, Tenzō is about to break the one about no domestics in the canteen... a rule Tenzō is already, admittedly, dangerously close to breaking on an emotional level, although he's contained himself out loud. Kakashi has returned to ignoring him, looking back at the scroll. Rules mean nothing to his senpai, they never have for as long as Tenzō has known him, and he should have known an appeal to regulation would never work. He'll have to step up this argument, and Kakashi won't leave with him to have this out in one of the secured meeting rooms, so he'll just have to do it here.
And then a new combatant enters the designated personal argument circle.
It's Bat. She's young, her file had said she was young, and her hair is up in two ridiculous buns. Bat has failed to read the room, somehow, and is bounding across all the open space, between the tables, heedless of its status as no-man's-land.
"Senpai! You're back!" calls Bat.
For a moment, Tenzō thinks oh no and I'm too late and he's got a team already. Then he watches Kakashi put the scroll away as he stands, watches Hawk follow Bat into the dead space around him and Kakashi, and realizes who Bat must be. Tenzō doesn't know if her identity makes this better or worse in the long run, but at least it means Kakashi probably hasn't started recruiting. Yet.
Hawk is following behind her, his mask a painted spector that hangs in Tenzō's vision like the afterimage from glancing at a signal flare on a pitch-black night — Tenzō doesn't like seeing the Hawk mask in use again, not the least because he's sure that this Hawk is unaware of the mask's previous owner.
The other two members of Hawk's new team, Towa and Komachi, they split apart, weaving away from Bat and Hawk, taking up places on opposite sides of the room. Towa starts speaking to Lizard; there must be wagers laid about what senpai is doing here. They've spread out to get the best possible view, collectively, of this non-fight.
"Just for a bit. And no one willing to greet me when I got here," Senpai says, and reaches out and taps his knuckles on Bat's mask. It's affectionate. Almost tender — as close to tender as one can get in the middle of the ANBU canteen. Wolf-senpai would have never. Or, at least, he never would have for Tenzō. Maybe there are some ways Kakashi-senpai is more real than Wolf-senpai. Maybe it's just that Bat is more real than Tenzō ever could be.
Hard to say.
Kakashi leads the way out of the canteen at an unhurried pace. Bat and Hawk fall in behind him, walking shoulder to shoulder, and Tenzō walks farthest back. A parody of a diamond formation, like they're a team already, like Wolf-senpai is back, although Tenzō sincerely doubts he'll ever work directly with his senpai again. Theirs is now a relationship of distance.
The rest of the argument he needs to have with Kakashi-senpai is still on the tip of his tongue, their audience still no kind of deterrence. Tenzō hisses, "Because you aren't supposed to be here."
His students being here to overhear it isn't any worse than everyone in the canteen watching it happen. Maybe it's better, even. Kakashi cares about them.
Instead of replying, Kakashi turns right. There are a couple places this way could lead to, but none of them are exits into the village.
"So, how was your very first ANBU mission?" he asks Bat. A light, casual dig for information and also an indication of concern. For all that Kakashi sounds like he couldn't care less, he wouldn't ask if he didn't want to know. He wouldn't even speak to Bat if he didn't care.
"It was pretty fun, but my taichō is a stickler for the rules," she chirps.
Hawk trips her with reflexes Tenzō has more often seen him use in battle. Bat isn't expecting it, so she stumbles a little, but hardly breaks stride otherwise — Tenzō doesn't have to slow down to keep from running into her.
She giggles.
Hawk warns her, "I'll send you on a mission with Ocelot-taichō and then see if you complain. She wouldn't let you get away with things like that."
Kakashi hasn't looked back at them and hasn't made a sound in reply to this small slapstick routine, but his shoulders have tensed, drawn up a little, in that particular way they do before someone chuckles. Amusement. Hawk and Bat amuse him. Were all of his missions with his genin just like this, did he laugh with them often, or is this just how they are off-mission? Wolf-senpai had only rarely made jokes, and almost never laughed.
"See, Cat? Hawk is a stickler for rules," Kakashi says as they exit the dim tunnels of the mountain and onto one of the secure ANBU training grounds. Kakashi-senpai wanders only a couple of meters away from the entrance to the training ground — the entrance that is also the only viable exit. Leaving the training ground any other way will bring an ANBU patrol swarming to check who you are.
This training field is where he last saw Wolf-senpai, years ago, Tenzō realizes, stepping out onto the carefully maintained training field exactly as he had then.
Wolf-senpai had been recently escaped from the care of the ANBU medics, on strict orders to rest and regain his chakra and not put any stress on his recently healed wounds, so of course he'd already been at their training ground working out the stiffness that comes from days of being too exhausted to move.
Tenzō had come straight from the Hokage's office, guilt and relief twisting in his stomach.
One of these days I won't be able to go back for you, Tenzō had told him, keeping his face as ROOT-blank as it had when he'd met his senpai — the best way to cover up unhelpful emotions like desperation or grief. One of these days, senpai, I won't be able to carry you home.
And without pausing his stretches, Wolf-senpai had said idly, Well, maybe you shouldn't, as if leaving Wolf-senpai behind was any kind of real choice. As if Wolf-senpai himself hadn't taught Tenzō better than that.
I won't have to, Tenzō had said.
And Wolf-senpai had looked at him, his head turning slowly like he was afraid of what he'd see, and asked if that meant Tenzō was finally taking his chance to captain his own team.
No, Wolf-senpai, Tenzō had said, it means I just came from Hokage-sama's office, and he agrees with me that Team Ro should be disbanded.
That day, Tenzō hadn't stood between his senpai and leaving the training field, so Wolf-senpai had left, before Tenzō could even attempt to apologize or explain. Today, for this conversation, Tenzō does block his way, has come to a halt far enough from the exit to not be obviously blocking it, but still close enough that Kakashi will have to get past him to leave before this conversation is over.
Kakashi finally turns to look at Tenzō again, slouching casually, and adds, "He can ensure I don't get into trouble," in a tone so unpointed that the words come right back around to practically gutting Tenzō.
Hawk can bring me back safely, Kakashi-senpai is carefully not implying, the way you almost didn't, over and over.
Tenzō surprises himself by the sudden and vicious protectiveness that washes over him when he considers Kakashi-senpai selecting someone that young and that new for his team. It's not that he doesn't trust senpai with subordinates. Obviously he does. Obviously Tenzō was lucky to have him, obviously Kakashi-senpai has done very well with his genin team, with Hawk specifically.
But — but he had raised concerns about Wolf-senpai for a reason, and Hawk has only been ANBU for a bare year, and neither Hawk nor Bat should have to watch senpai inch closer and closer to killing himself with every mission.
"I don't know how you got in," Tenzō says, grinding the words out to cover up this years-old ache, "but you don't belong here anymore. I will go to Commander Zou. Or the Hokage."
Because hopefully neither of them had let Kakashi in; hopefully that scroll he was reading was stolen from secure ANBU archives. Otherwise Tenzō's biggest nightmare is starting up again right where it left off, almost down to the centimeter, only this time he and his senpai won't be on the same team and Tenzō will be even more helpless in the face of his senpai's self-destructive whims than before.
Senpai says, "Mah, you should relax a little, Cat. It's bad for your stress levels to be so wound up." Lazy and careless and absolutely cutting.
Tenzō knows he's at fault for the tension between them. He knows that his senpai doesn't want to hear this and doesn't care for his opinion. But Kakashi is the one who taught him to care for his teammates and it's never been fair that Tenzō has gotten so much shit for caring so much.
He's had nightmares about carrying his unconcious senpai miles and miles in the dark. Nightmares about his senpai in battle beside him, there one minute and then just — gone. Reality blurring into horror, every nightmare too close to what he'd actually been living at the tail end of Wolf-senpai's tenure. Tenzō isn't overreacting and Tenzō isn't letting senpai do this to Hawk and Bat.
"I'm sorry," Tenzō grits out, "if I prefer you alive."
Kakashi-senpai's posture shifts, a movement too small to be called a jerk, too smooth to be called a flinch. A pause, like with his whole body, like Tenzō has broken something open, because his body language stays open. Like he's listening.
"Well," says Kakashi-senpai. "Here I am. Alive."
Or maybe not.
"Here you are. Alive." Tenzō's mouth twists, struggling hard to keep his face neutral even behind the cat mask. Failing. "And still doing your best to change that."
"No? Hokage-sama has an assignment that keeps me pretty busy." The same almost-innocent, mocking tone as always, the same dismissal — as if him being kept busy isn't part of the problem and the long string of hospital visits can be fixed by sending him out to war.
"I heard," Tenzō says, almost cutting Kakashi off. Tenzō is very aware, and he doesn't know why he ever hoped for better out of the Godaime. "I guess I should have known you'd find another way, regardless."
Senpai's latest stint out of village was probably a test to see if he was prepared to go back into ANBU. And returning to being Wolf-senpai is asking for it to get even worse — because Hatake Kakashi has to be seen taking a break at some point, Hatake Kakashi needs to be kept in good shape, but Wolf-senpai? There's no lurking PR nightmare for running Wolf-senpai into the ground.
Kakashi-senpai twitches back a little, head tilting like he's trying to look at Tenzō from a new, more informative angle. He stutters, "I'm not— I am actually just here to make sure the kids are okay. That they're not… doing what I was. With ANBU," as if Tenzō has legitimately caught him off guard.
Bat glances at Hawk, clearly just as surprised at this reasoning as Tenzō is.
Quieter, like he's trying to be reassuring, like Tenzō is a frightened animal, Kakashi-senpai clarifies, "They aren't. They seem happy."
A little wistful, Tenzō says, "We had moments like that," and then swallows, regretting speaking before thinking. "Didn't we?" Tenzō adds, voice soft.
He's considering, not for the first time, that everything about the way his senpai treated him might have been manufactured to make Tenzō more useful, more pliable, more loyal. Being angry is the first step to being a real person, and only real people become great ninja, Wolf-senpai had said. And Wolf-senpai had also said, How can I lead someone if I don't know what their real limits are? The most dangerous flaw is the one you can't see, can't plan for, can't anticipate.
Tenzō has always desperately wanted senpai's every move and gesture to be genuine — and yet he's always doubted, and sometimes in recent years thought it would be a relief to be told it was a lie.
If every interaction between them had been to manipulate him, then at least there's a reason that his opinion about his senpai's death wish has never mattered. And it wouldn't hurt too badly for it to have been a calculated powerplay of some kind, since it's not like Tenzō can say he got no use from his association with Wolf-senpai: Wolf's non-ANBU identity played an important part in pulling Tenzō from ROOT and into normal ANBU service. It's doubtful there are more than a handful of other people in the village who could have succeeded done gotten Tenzō out and kept him there, and out of those who might have been capable, surely only Hatake Kakashi would consider going that far for a new teammate.
It had been terrifying to lose that protection, although he's never regretted it.
"We did," says Kakashi-senpai after Tenzō's question has hung in the air for a moment like something that might be dangerous to approach. Kakashi says this like he's realizing for the first time that they might have done more than work together professionally, like he had never before even considered it. "Yeah..." he says. "Sometimes."
And that's... worse. Not a conscious manipulation or a real friendship.
Tenzō can remember his first quip, after months of studying his senpai's matter-of-fact understated humor. It's nonsensical, if taken out of context. In retrospect, not even very amusing. But it had startled a small, rare laugh out of Wolf-senpai, released tension for the whole team, and Wolf-senpai's hand had clapped down on Tenzō's shoulder. Friendly. Approving.
Meaningless.
It probably should have been obvious, but how would Tenzō have known? He had nothing to compare it to. It had all meant so much to Tenzō, every gesture of trust and familiarity, like he was getting a peek into what it would be like to freely associate outside of ANBU. His senpai is still the closest person to him.
There's no good reaction to this revelation, no reason to think that Kakashi-senpai would care, and Tenzō has a more pressing issue to deal with: the way Kakashi-senpai is still throwing himself into dangerous, chakra-intensive activities as if his death wouldn't rip a hole in the world.
This is the closest his senpai has come to admitting that what he'd been doing in ANBU had been wrong. Probably the closest Tenzō will ever come to hearing him say that Tenzō made the right choice to go to the Hokage and get him thrown out. But Tenzō doesn't believe for one moment that Kakashi is going to slow down, even acknowledging his past destructive behavior — he just got back from his most recent jaunt in the field.
"You'll die if you keep this up," Tenzō says. The words leave a residue in his mouth like spoiled food. That old familiar desperation claws at his throat like vomit. How many times has he said these words? They've never worked and they never will, because Tenzō's worry and grief has been something for his senpai to brush away like a miscast C-rank genjutsu.
This time there are two people listening who Kakashi-senpai does care about. People who might persuade him where Tenzō failed — or who could at least try to persuade the Godaime.
Kakashi-senpai jerks like Tenzō has said something upsetting, something surprising, maybe something offensive. Maybe he didn't want his genin knowing. Either way, he's off-balance.
"Wait. Tenzō. It's — the thing that you noticed—" His words rush out like he hasn't thought them through. "—it was healed. So you shouldn't... worry."
Tenzō says, "What?" and the question is torn from his throat hoarse and hollow. Wolf-senpai had been very clear that there was no cure, no acceptable stop-gap, that his chakra exhaustion would just get worse and worse until the eye he was unwilling to give up eventually killed him. Tenzō can't imagine that his senpai actually got it removed.
His senpai's shoulders tense and hunch defensively, like Tenzō's surprise is an attack. He asks, "You didn't think the Hokage would send me out if I wasn't cured, did you?"
Of course she would. Why not? Danzō would have done it. The Sandaime had been doing it, and he hadn't stopped out of concern for Kakashi's well-being, not really. Tenzō had just gone into his office with dozens of examples of Wolf-senpai jeopardizing their missions over the years because of his slowly decreasing chakra capacity. Objectives almost missed. Missions nearly compromised. A calendar of every time Tenzō had had to carry his senpai all or part of the way back to the village.
What is it that you're requesting, Cat? To be removed from Wolf's team? the Sandaime had asked, cloying smoke drifting from his losely-held pipe as he looked over Tenzō's documents spread out on the desk.
Removing me won't solve the problem, Sandaime-sama, Tenzō had said. Wolf-senpai is a very good captain and will never have a team that doesn't enable him. He'll killed a team or fail a mission before he dies or retires.
I had hoped he could be convinced to have the eye removed.
He'd rather die, Tenzō had said.
The Sandaime had sighed and put his pipe out and given the order to disband their team and strip Kakashi-senpai of his mask. As you've taken such an interest in this, I leave it to you to inform him, the Sandaime had said. It would have been kinder for him to ask Tenzō to gut himself
Tenzō knows that the Senju Tsunade has done a lot for the village and that they really needed her leadership — and better her than Danzō — but she's under even more international pressure and personnel constraints than the Sandaime ever was and a medical genius of the Godaime's calibre probably has a much better idea of exactly how far she can push Kakashi to get the most use out of him.
Not that Tenzō can say that. All three of them are fairly close to the Hokage; they wouldn't want to believe that of her. It would only make Tenzō look disloyal, which he is not. Better Tsunade than Hiruzen, better Hiruzen than Danzō, better Danzō than Orochimaru.
"Just like that?" he asks, because Kakashi sounds like he's saying fixing it was no big deal. "No more problem, everything is fine now?"
He looks his senpai over like he might find proof of this claim, but there had barely ever been any visible signs of his decline in the first place, so whether he's cured or not he looks just the same as ever except that he's uncomfortable, like he wishes he could stop anyone from ever speaking to him ever again. Shoulders hunched like he can hide from this.
Kakashi says, "You say that like it was easy," and Tenzō supposes he's implying that it wasn't, but how would Tenzō know that? Why would he assume that Tsunade had fixed it? His senpai had been clear in the past that it was a terminal condition.
"Ask them—" Kakashi waves absently at Bat and Hawk. "—if you don't believe me." Kakashi is retreating again, making this conversation anyone's problem but his.
Tenzō turns and looks at Bat, and behind her, Hawk. Of course Kakashi's students would know.
Bat straightens a little when Tenzō looks at her, like she's surprised to be recognized as still here, witnessing this conversation. Hawk isn't likely to join this conversation even if his life depended on it, Tenzō is sure, and looks to be pretending very hard that he can't hear anything that's being said.
So, it falls to Bat to provide the information Tenzō needs. She takes a step forward into the conversation from where she's been lurking outside of the immediate combat zone. When she speaks, it's with a deliberate nature that means she's probably ducking around classified information; Bat is young and not yet practice enough to make censoring herself sound natural.
"Operation; Miracle... was a medical enterprise spearheaded by Tsunade-sama," she says, "that returned the shinobi in question to full field readiness."
Tenzō has been waiting anxiously for years. Staring up at the ceiling at night trying not to imagine how it will happen, if the body will be retrieved, what the funeral will be like. Bat's measured, halting explanation tells Tenzō almost nothing... except that it's over. And given his senpai's incredulous, You didn't think the Hokage would send me out if I wasn't cured, did you? it's been over for... awhile. Months, based on when the Godaime started sending Kakashi out again.
Tenzō stares at his senpai. It's stupid to feel injured by this, but just months ago Kakashi was pressuring him into helping with his students, leaning on Tenzō's guilt and worry. "Were you ever going to mention this? I would have liked to know."
Kakashi-senpai grits out, "I didn't mention it in the first place. You worked it out." Then, with his body posture slipping from I'm uncomfortable to this conversation is over, senpai adds, "You'd have worked it out again," like an accusation.
"Right. Of course I would have."
Plenty of time to tell Tenzō, but... he hadn't. It hadn't even occurred to Kakashi-senpai until this conversation. Until he'd made his concern, his emotions, directly Kakashi's problem. Because their relationship is a professional relationship that Tenzō has read too much into, because any signs Tenzō has taken to mean something more were either thoughtless acts of reflex or deliberate gestures meant to manipulate Tenzō.
When Tenzō had brought up the eye for the first time, waiting until he and Wolf-senpai were alone in their ANBU quarters, every line of Wolf-senpai's body had tensed like he was expecting an attack, making Tenzō's pulse quicken. Theirs had been a mask-off squad at the time and Wolf-senpai had looked at him with one eye closed and the other half-lidded with contempt. You don't know what you're talking about, Wolf-senpai had told him in a tone sharp enough to cut.
"Sensei, that was cruel." Bat's voice is a delicate but firm intrusion. She's more confident with Kakashi-senpai than Tenzō has ever been, but... of course she would be.
It had been a cruel thing to say, a cruel thing to do, she's not really wrong, but Tenzō had been cruel first. Going to the Hokage had been a betrayal. Not just on the surface level, going over senpai's head, but deeper than that. Tenzō hadn't been able to trust Wolf-senpai not to die on them, not to fail a mission, not to get them all killed. He'd doubted and then he'd used that doubt as a weapon to cut Kakashi away from the life he wanted.
Everything Tenzō has is because of Kakashi-senpai and Tenzō had spit on that bond. Hadn't been willing to die for it. Kakashi had never asked for Tenzō to worry or grieve or care about him at all, had maybe never even considered that those emotions were on the table for Tenzō. He had just wanted Tenzō to be loyal. He had just wanted Tenzō to trust him.
"Stand down, Bat, you don't need to fight with Wolf-senpai on my behalf." He just wants this conversation to be over; if Wolf-senpai isn't back under the mask for real then this is none of his business and he should let Kakashi-senpai spend time with his team.
And Bat doesn't need to get caught up in this, anyway, in trying to mediate it, fix it, make Kakashi-senpai play nice. There's nothing to fix except what Tenzō deliberately broke beyond repair.
He tries to explain to her: "Once you burn that bridge there's no going back. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised I wasn't told."
Kakashi-senpai shifts uncomfortable. "I meant... I thought you were keeping tabs," he says, grasping at an explanation to soothe Bat's feelings on the matter and seem like a good role model. "I thought you knew," he tacks on. "Because you knew before."
The worst part is that there seems to be some hint of truth to this excuse and Tenzō just... doesn't understand.
"How would I have known?" Tenzō demands, and can't keep from throwing his hands into the air in exasperation. Because he hadn't been keeping tabs in the way Kakashi is suggesting he might have, but Tenzō has been paying attention and it was awful. "Your many and varied hospital visits? The way you tried to pass your students off to me?"
Keeping tabs close enough to get the information Kakashi-senpai assumed he'd have would have required trying to get the information out of one of Kakashi's students without Kakashi's knowledge... or breaking into hospital records. Hard to say which would be the worse choice. Maybe Kakashi-senpai can break into whatever part of the village strikes him as most interesting, but Tenzō's not keen on giving the Godaime reason to decommission him.
Senpai at least looks sheepish, if not exactly sorry. "Ah… in my defence that was before it was fixed... I should have told you. I'm still…" Senpai pauses, like he's searching for words. "...not really happy you made me leave, even though everything worked out better. For the best. But I didn't leave you in the dark because of it."
Oh.
"I knew it wouldn't make you happy with me. I did it to keep you alive. It was a trade off I was willing to make." Tenzō pauses, clarifies: "Would be willing to make again."
He crosses his arms. Kakashi-senpai has agreed that it was the right thing do do, so now — okay, Tenzō doesn't know what now. Maybe things will be better. Maybe senpai will ask him for more strange favors.
Senpai nods like they've come to some kind of agreement. He says, "Well. I'm not back. And also not dying. So there shouldn't be any need for that?"
"Hopefully not, because I don't have any more bridges to burn," Tenzō says — a quietly muttered admission.
Slowly, Bat reaches out and pats him twice on the shoulder. Comforting him.
Tenzō glances at her, but of course she can't tell because of the mask and he can't see her expression either, nor does he know her well enough to read her body language. He has no idea why she'd care enough to touch him.
Shifting awkwardly, senpai says, "I don't actually know where you're trying to go with this metaphor, but you said it twice so it probably means something."
Tenzō's not sure how he'd explain. Probably best not to — it would just mean explaining how over-attached he'd gotten, how he'd read something into their relationship that wasn't there. Kakashi seems willing to slowly reconstruct their professional relationship, and Tenzō's not going to push his luck on that end. Senpai is probably only pretending not to understand so that Tenzō will take a hint and drop the subject.
Before he can brush the topic away, though, Bat says, "It means you're friends, and now you need to, like, say that and then hug and make up, or beat each other up on the training field. Whichever." She sounds irritated to have to explain it.
Kakashi-senpai makes a small, offended noise. "We're friends," he insists, as if that was never in question.
This is one of the longest conversations he and Kakashi have had since Tenzō went to see the Third about Kakashi's deteriorating effectiveness in the field. There had been years in there where they hadn't talked at all. Tenzō asks, "Wolf-senpai, that's how you treat your friends?" and can't keep the emotion out of his voice.
"There's a reason I don't have many. You and Gai. So... yes?" Kakashi jerks his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the field behind him, where things had broken apart years ago. "We could spar," he suggests, and Tenzō thinks — the way his voice raises, it's like he thinks Tenzō might say no.
As if Tenzō could ever say no to his senpai.
When it's turned from late at night to early morning, they sit in the grass, side by side, breathing hard, the training ground a mess of jutsu damage and tangled mokuton. Bat and Hawk are long gone, so it's just them on the training field, their shoulders brushing, their masked long ago discarded. For a long time they don't speak, only considering, and then finally, slowly, they start to go over their sparring session. Weaknesses, strengths, new things they've noticed about each other. Tenzō has noticed that Kakashi-senpai definitely has more stamina than before, although he tactfully doesn't mention that.
From there, as the conversation peters out, Tenzō expects Kakashi-senpai to excuse himself; he's probably already spent more time than he really has on Tenzō. But instead, Kakashi pats his vest, takes out a ration bar, frowns at it, and then looks at Tenzō — "Let's get real breakfast," he suggests. "Your treat."
Tenzō sighs to cover up the way his heart jumps at the invitation. "Senpai, I paid last time."
"Ahh," Kakashi says, "but I forgot my wallet at home."
"We could stop by your apartment to retrieve it," Tenzō says patiently, knowing that this is absolutely a losing battle.
Senpai gives him a hangdog look, like Tenzō has really wounded him. "Are you saying you're not willing to buy your poor old senpai a meal? After how roughly you just treated me?"
Tenzō is absolutely sure that he's more roughed-up from their fight than Kakashi-senpai is, even if it hadn't been as one-sided as it used to be, but there's probably no use arguing that point. Instead he says, "I'm picking where we eat."
"I suppose that's fair," Kakashi muses. "I'll pick our next training field."
"Our... next training field?" Tenzō blinks at Kakashi. "We could just come back here?"
"Ah, no, there's this really strict captain who doesn't want me hanging around ANBU," Kakashi-senpai says. "He's pretty scary. But don't worry, I have a good training spot scoped out."
There's really only one place Kakashi could be talking about: the training field Kakashi's team uses. That's even more of a gesture than the spar itself, but Tenzō doesn't think it would be productive to comment on it directly. Instead, he says, "Well... I'd hate for you to get in trouble, senpai. I guess we can train wherever you want."
Kakashi stands and smiles down at him, his eye closing and curving up. "Good," senpai says, "because your taijutsu needs work. Let's go." He holds a hand out to Tenzō, which Tenzō takes without hesitation, letting his senpai pull him to his feet so they can go have breakfast together.
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