B. Believe : A word that Hatake Kakashi forgot the meaning of.

Years of serving Konoha as a ninja left its scars on most everyone. Hatake Kakashi was no exception.

There were some days when he wondered why he kept on doing the things he did. Because out on the field, when the only thing you could smell was sweat, the only thing you could taste was the bile that rose in your mouth, the only sound that you could hear was the clash of kunai against kunai and the blood rushing in your ears and the only thought you could think was when the next attack was going to hit, 'fighting for Konoha' felt like such a useless reason.

He couldn't remember what his reasons for becoming a ninja were. Of course, there was the usual 'following in your fathers' footsteps' and 'I am a prodigy' and the occasional 'I can do it so much better than they can'.

But after a while, even those reasons failed to convince him that what he was doing was right.

Death, murder, assassination, bloodlust, cruelty all in the name of a cause he didn't believe in.

Eventually the only reason he could think of was that if he didn't murder and plunder, he didn't have much of a reason to live. He couldn't do much else.

He could read, write, fight, do jutsus, eat, sleep and take care of his dogs.

He wasn't particularly good at anything else. So quitting was out of the question.

But it sickened him.

Then there came a time in his life when even the mention of Konoha and its 'will of fire' left a bitter taste in his mouth. He was going downhill and fast.

He thought it was mid-life crisis kicking in and that's what he told the Sandaime when he asked what was wrong. The Sandaime looked him in the eye, sighed and smiled sadly.

It scared Kakashi how it felt like the Sandaime knew that he had given up on Konoha and its principals.

That's when he asked Kakashi to teach. Teach children to murder and plunder because he was 'the best man for the job'.

He argued politely with the Hokage that there was no way in heck he was going to train children to become murderers.

But Kakashi was a ninja and he was the Hokage and orders were orders.

So he took on a team. And failed them. A second team. He failed them too. He was going to continue doing this because he didn't want a broken spirit to teach children who still believed to stop believing.

He failed six successive teams after that and took on even more dangerous missions for the sole purpose that if he did them, people who still believed in the village wouldn't have to.

But eventually the ghosts of his past caught up with him and he trained a team of misfits. One believed in the village too much, one believed in some day being able to catch the eye of a boy who wouldn't look at her twice and the third believed in himself so much, he thought he could beat an S-ranked criminal with just a few jutsus and good aim.

They believed too much.

And when sand and sound invaded, he believed without meaning to. He believed in them. He believed that they would stay alive, he believed that when Sasuke left, he had felt some sort of remorse, he believed that Sakura would get over Sasuke and excel in whatever she was doing because the village needed more of those type of blind believers. And he believed that Naruto would fix everything every time it broke because no one else could do it and he believed in it so much that it was no wonder nothing panned out the way it was supposed to.

Kakashi stopped believing that he had the ability to believe after that.

And then Pein attacked and the village was being destroyed and Sakura had chakra exhaustion and couldn't go on and Naruto was nowhere to be found and couldn't fix everything.

He wished he could believe that everything would be okay but it just wasn't.

And then he died. He saw his father and he was so tired that he didn't have the energy to hit him like he had planned to do back when he believed in the afterlife.

And he saw what believing had done to him and then he remembered why he had stopped believing himself.

And then he came back to life and Sakura was fine and Naruto had fixed everything like he was supposed to and Konoha would need to be fixed. And he still couldn't believe.

Life is full of miracles. One day you think you're going to die and the next, you feel more alive than you have in a long time. By the time he was ready to give up on everything, Everything gave up on him.

He had a broken hip and rheumatism to boot. He had to look over his shoulder every few minutes because Naruto might jump him from behind and break his already cracked ribs. He had to walk slowly because chakra-walking was not an option anymore. He had to be told things twice because even his hearing was failing him and he saw double sometimes and some mornings he woke up and couldn't remember what year it was and didn't even know who he was.

It was then that he remembered why he had wanted to become a ninja.

He remembered why and all he could do was laugh and laugh and laugh because it was the most idiotic reason ever and suddenly, it wasn't so difficult believing anymore.

Here lies Hatake Kakashi

Jounin and defender of Konohagakure no Sato

Who lived and died believing in the Will of Fire

He is an example to be followed by all.

'Daddy, why do you believe in Konoha so much? Don't ninjas lose more than they gain?'

'Well Kakashi, why don't you become a ninja and find out.'