A/N: I love Kakashi and Lee being buddies. Unfortunately, the one thing that could flawlessly bring them together is, naturally, Gai's death.
O p t i m i s t
Kakashi wrung his hands behind his back and it made him feel like he was four again, like he was four and he'd broken one of the vases again and he had to go tell his father because he still could never remember where the brooms were kept, so he couldn't clean it up.
"Ah, Kakashi-sensei!" Lee smiled brightly, patted the spot beside him on the bench energetically, always the gentleman, always the saint.
For a heavy-hearted moment Kakashi had to wonder how long it would take him to re-learn that smile, how long before the stretch of the lips and the small pinches in his cheeks would look real again.
"How did the mission go?" He asked light-heartedly, eyes wandering off to the children playing around them but as attentive as he always was.
"It went…" Kakashi had the oddest urge to say 'just great' and walk away, let Tenzou or Tsunade or someone do it for him but he couldn't do that, not to Gai. Not to Lee. "That's what I need to talk to you about."
"Did something happen to Gai-sensei?" Lee asked, face suddenly troubled, turning back to look Kakashi in the face with one of his surprisingly serious expressions. Kakashi had to hand it to him weakly, he was much more perceptive than anyone gave him credit for. Well, anyone but Gai. But he didn't really count anymore. "Can we go see him at the hospital yet? Were you injured as well?"
"I- no." Kakashi instinctively tucked his left wrist, still bandaged tightly against the spilt and aching at the back of his mind, into his lap where the boy wouldn't see it. "No. Only Gai."
Lee stood then, quickly, smile beginning to paint his face again. "Then let us go!"
"Lee, it's not that simple." Kakashi said, he had to force the words out, this had to be the hardest thing he'd ever done.
Lee's face fell again, but this time it was worse, it was blank and bottomless and in his ebon eyes terror dawned like the rising of a terrible sun. "No." He shook his head.
Kakashi sighed, began to play with his rough fingertips again in his lap obsessively, had to grip them tightly to calm them. "Lee…"
Lee shook his head again. "No. You're not saying what I think you're saying."
Kakashi couldn't think of anything else to say, so instead he reached into his pocket and drew out the silver plate, dented and scraped, still pinned to the lightweight red cloth. He held it out. "He said he wanted you to have something to remember him by."
Of all the things in the world, as soon as Lee's clammy, shaking fingers clenched around the metal the boy's face darkened, his lips twitched into a scowl, and he threw it against the ground with such force dust raised in a little cloud by their feet.
Kakashi twitched.
"Stupid lying traitor stupid-" Lee growled the insults over and over, just staring down at the headband in the dirt, looping words until all that was left was a weak trail of "Stupid, stupid, stupid, lying, stupid…" whisping out.
"I'm sorry Lee." Kakashi said, looking away, taking a deep breath, loosening his shoulders.
For the first time, he found himself feeling for his late sensei, for all the times he'd had to sit on this bench, had to watch as Kakashi swore at the dirt and held back tears he'd never allow himself to cry.
"Why?"
Kakashi looked up to see Lee void of anger again, more hopeless, and if he'd been like Gai had been he'd have hugged the boy close. As it was, he could barely force himself to look into Lee's eyes.
"Of all the stupid… 'I'll never die'. I don't know why I believed him. Stupid…"
"Yeah." Kakashi couldn't help a ghost of a smile. He remembered, too, how many times Gai had crouched down beside him, had held his shoulders tightly and promised him that he'd live forever, just so Kakashi would never have to lose him.
"Liar."
"I prefer to use the term 'optimist'."
Lee let out a wet laugh, and hugged his arms around himself, looking away and out of the park blankly as if remembering something.
"Do you need to be alone?" Kakashi asked finally.
Lee paused, before nodding, slowly.
Kakashi stood, and as he turned to leave he put a comforting hand on Lee's shoulder for a heartbeat, a parting attempt at comfort.
"Thanks." Lee's voice was laughing again, although by the 's' it sounded like he was barely holding back the sobs.
Kakashi didn't turn around.