Disclaimer: all credits for the awesome Naruto universe and characters go to the awesome Kishimoto Masashi.
A/N - Here I was, thinking how I'd never get to write anything concerning my first favourite character, the one who got me hooked on Naruto in the first place. Kakashi, my love. Blessed be summer jobs and sudden bursts of creativity.
This story was partially inspired by something I remember from my Sociology class - how soldiers act more cruelly when they're wearing masks.
The Masked Warrior
It was a perfectly fine day for playing outside, but little Hatake Kakashi preferred to stay indoors.
The boy absentmindedly scratched his leg while his eyes remained immersed in the world rendered by black-and-white pictures and speech balloons tethered to little drawn people's heads. He flipped a page without realizing it, lost for the quiet ticking of the kitchen clock, voices of his peers outside and soft afternoon shadows creeping over the furniture and bare walls.
Little Hatake Kakashi soon found out that when he was reading, he could slip into another world and emerge from it hours later without even noticing. That was a very neat trick for days like these, when his father was supposed to return from missions. In Kakashi's mind there was never a doubt that his father would come back, but there was this crumb of something, somewhere left in his chest, which nervously nibbled on his thoughts, pestering him with what if?
Kakashi's eyes skimmed over faces fixated in shouts and raised katanas, while his imagination added the twitches of eyebrows and the way sunlight glistened off of weapon's smooth blades. Sometimes the features of the drawn men wielding sables would in his mind shimmer into the image of his father. He would pretend he was the sidekick standing by his side.
As far away as the fantasies would carry him, Kakashi had trained himself to snap out of them in a second. The trigger was the faint sound of footsteps on the stairs outside.
Kakashi's ears cocked and he broke away from the pages, a bit dazed. The hazy feeling quickly dissolved as a smile lit up his face. There was only one person who walked that way.
The key entered the keyhole and began turning in it, and Kakashi jumped to his feet, suddenly embarrassed by the childish comic he was reading. He stuffed it under the small pillow on the sofa and turned in time to see a tall man entering the apartment.
"Tadaima", Sakumo said, and Kakashi ran towards him.
"Otou-chan! How was your mission?"
"Fine, but boy doesn't it feel good to be back home." Sakumo gave him a tired smile, and Kakashi returned a grin.
Father always said the same thing when he returned from missions. It meant that everything was well.
Changed out of his shinobi uniform, Sakumo flexed his stiff shoulders and set upon making them tea, insisting on Kakashi retelling him the events of the past few days. He seemed especially interested in Kakashi's time in the Academy, so Kakashi gave him a brief, lazy report. Shuriken practices were so less interesting to tell and hear than whatever adventure his dad just returned from, but Kakashi humoured him. Sakumo was an attentive listener.
On his part, Sakumo carefully followed his son's words. Everything Kakashi was telling him in his own bored, dispassionate way agreed with what Sakumo had already known for some time.
The Academy teachers all agreed. The boy was a prodigy who would once, dare they say it, match or even surpass the Konoha's White Fang. When Kakashi's sensei told him this, Sakumo smiled as if glad. He might have been glad, but on a larger scale Sakumo was worried.
Sakumo knew what it was like to be a prodigy, and how much one would lose because of the high expectations heaved on their shoulders. Their childhood was first on the line. Another aspect people tended to overlook when dealing with talent was their caretakers' doubled responsibility. The more gifted the child, the heavier the consequences that could arise if the child wasn't molded right.
Orochimaru of the Sannin had been a prodigy.
He watched his son: a mirror image of the child Sakumo once was, only softened by his late wife's lines scattered here and there. Particularly around the chin.
Sakumo asked him another question, and smiled when Kakashi nearly rolled his eyes as he went on reporting what he obviously considered a dull subject. The mission Sakumo was appointed the first time the boy was put in his arms was the hardest he could be given and it lasted a lifetime, but Sakumo was up to the challenge. He had to be.
He would raise this child right for the sake of Konoha and for the man Kakashi would one day become, but mostly for her.
"Otou-chan, it's my turn", Kakashi complained. "What did you do on the mission?"
"You really want to know?"
Kakashi eagerly nodded.
Sakumo sighed and gave in. "Well, we were on our way to Sand..." He carefully tried to tone down the fighting parts as he pictured the mission, cutting out the classified details.
Kakashi drunk in his father's adventure, smiling his mother's eye-crinkled smile.
The dinner was over. Sakumo rose from the table and went over to the sofa. The mission was a success and none on his team suffered anything worse than a couple of cuts and bruises, but he still felt drained. It took three days of running to come back from Suna.
Kakashi's gaze followed his father, as it usually did first couple of hours after he would return to Konoha. He just wanted to relish the fact he knew exactly where the man was for the time being. Real-life adventures were fun to hear, but only when you were positive they had a happy ending.
He remembered the hidden comic only when it was already too late.
"What is this?" Sakumo fished it out and looked at the cover.
Kakashi's cheeks heated up. It was something Sarutobi Asuma gave him a few days ago, saying he was done reading it anyway. Sarutobi Asuma was a year older than him, but Kakashi was put in the same class. He saw other boys reading it, too, so he became curious. He hadn't had a problem with borrowing a few more numbers, but now when it lay in his father's hands, the comic looked so stupid and childish. He didn't want his father, who performed everything Kakashi read about on a daily basis, to think him childish.
"Nothing", he quickly walked over to Sakumo, trying to get it back, "Just some story Asuma-kun wanted me to see. It's silly."
Sakumo observed his son with sobered, serious eyes. Kakashi looked away and squirmed in embarrassment.
The sofa dipped under Jounin's weight. Sakumo sat down and leafed through the pages, returning to the first one.
"The Masked Warrior, huh? Doesn't sound too bad to me. What's it about?" He peered at the first squares of pictures as if seriously considering reading it himself. Kakashi's eyes widened.
The boy sat beside his father, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He looked at the open page in Sakumo's hands.
"It's about a warrior who's not exactly a ninja, but he travels the world seeking justice anyway. He wears a mask and never takes it off. Nobody knows what he looks like or what's his name, so people call him The Masked Warrior."
Sakumo nodded, looking at the man with the covered face.
"Why does he do that?"
Kakashi remembered the pictures on further pages. A crying boy yelling at a burning house.
"He thought bandits burned his village down when he was little, but it turns out it was actually ordered by a rich and crooked daimyo. This daimyo hid himself somewhere in the world, so The Masked Warrior swore he would hunt him down to seek justice, and in the meantime he helps people he meets find their own justice."
Sakumo sideglanced at his son.
"He promised himself he would hold nothing back and lives strictly to the ancient Warrior Code."
"I see", Sakumo murmured, flipping to the second page.
"Otou-chan, do you ever wear a mask?" He wondered about it while reading before. Suddenly, a notion dawned on him, and he quickly discarded the question with a wave of his head. "Of course not. It's more effective when people recognize you." Sakumo's eyes narrowed further at his son's matter-of-fact acceptance of Sakumo's legendary status.
"Sometimes. But I rather choose not to."
Kakashi glanced up.
"Why?"
Sakumo lowered the comic, shaping the answer in his mind.
"When shinobi wear masks, they do it so they couldn't be recognized. It's not exactly like being another person, but more like becoming nobody. Just another shadow in the night. When people hide behind masks, it is easier for them to do things they normally wouldn't do. The self-control slips a bit. I dislike wearing masks, because I want to know who I am and what I do at all times. Does this make any sense to you, Kakashi?"
Kakashi was a bit slow to nod, as he considered the explanation.
Sakumo gave him a small smile. "It will one day. I'm sure of it."
Kakashi grabbed things from the shelves, thrusting them into the cardboard box pressed against his side. He cleaned his father's wardrobe, carelessly removing the man's possessions.
He was offered help, but wanted to do it himself. He didn't mind if something broke or crumpled, because the owner wasn't around to complain. He abandoned his things.
Kakashi shut the wardrobe door with unnecessary force and turned to the nightstand.
The books, the scrolls, the shaving razors and weapons... Kakashi picked up all, and stashed it in cardboard boxes that would later end up in the dark store room next to the bathroom door.
He took things from their places without giving them any thought. Each one carried a memory, and he didn't want to have anything to do with those. Kakashi was now functioning on pure rage. Nothing else would have pushed him out of the bed in the morning. It was the only thing to hold onto. It pushed him into getting over this part immediately, avoiding unnecessary, stupid, pointless delays.
Having stacked full boxes against the wall, Kakashi turned his back on the empty, gaping shelves and opened the store room door. The bare light bulb clicked on, illuminating the vacuum cleaner, old buckets of paint and similar mess. He leaned in to make space.
He was relocating the tool box, when his eyes chanced upon a dusty pile of magazines. Comics.
Kakashi paused, taking the topmost issue into his hands.
Orange cover, a frowning man with a covered face, huge red signs proclaiming the comic's title.
The Masked Warrior.
Kakashi stepped back over mess piled up on the floor, returning to the main room. He slumped down on the ground, holding the pages. His eyes skimmed over the well-known sentences he had read over and over. The pictures welcomed him like a good old friend.
Kakashi remembered how easy it was to slip into The Masked Warrior's world, and fail to notice that hours and nights and days have passed. It wouldn't be easy now. Even if it would, Kakashi didn't want to slip away. He wanted to get over it all.
Still, his fingers turned the pages, resting on the black-and-white people, in their black-and-white world, where people had enemies they could fight clean and fair, and not fathers who killed themselves, ridding their sons of culprits they could take revenge on.
Kakashi's hand curled into a fist, and slammed into the comic lying on his legs. "Kuso", he felt tears coming, and he had promised himself he would never cry. Chuunins didn't cry. Shinobi didn't cry.
When he could see clearly again, Kakashi saw the Masked Warrior staring sternly at his foe.
"I live according to the Warrior Code, because those rules are the only worth following in this unruly world."
'And that's his Nindo. His ninja way.'
Kakashi sat in silence, looking at the comic book in his lap, not seeing it.
When he stood up, he opened the box on top, rummagging through Sakumo's clothes. He knew he had seen it somewhere.
His fingers clasped on dark material, and Kakashi pulled the piece of fabric out. He entered the bathroom, dragging a stool behind him and climbed up to see himself in the mirror.
He pressed the mask, which still smelled of his father, on his lower face. Dark eyes stared from the mirror.
Kakashi put the comics back in their dusty corner, and didn't open them for the next twenty years, when he stumbled upon them by coincidence.
He didn't need to read it once he decided to live it.