Day 2
The cold gray air, heavy with mist, indicated a thunderstorm was imminent, but Kakashi made his morning visit anyway. Kneeling before the shinobi memorial was someone he hadn't seen in a very very long time. Her shoulders heaved up and down and he heard her quiet, mournful sobs. He approached the figure slowly but was afraid to say anything less she disappeared like so much vapor.
The young woman finally turned to him with tears still falling from her large brown eyes, streaking down the stripes on her flushed cheeks. "I've been waiting for you," she said with a slight smile.
"You're visiting Obito, too?" he said. Obvious, but what else could he say to her after all this time?
"Yes, but I've been waiting here for you."
"It's been a while."
"Yes it has, hasn't it. I guess I've been avoiding you."
"I didn't want that."
"Right, you just didn't want me…"
"Rin…"
The figure stood up to her full height and faced him full frontal.
To his horror she was just as he last remembered her, with her chest cleaved in the center and her shirt dyed crimson. Her right hand reached across her chest to dig into the cavity. With her eyes fixed on his, she pulled out her heart, still beating, and offered it to him.
"This is and will always be yours…"
"No…" he started to back away, but she held it out to him and stepped closer.
"No…" he said again as she grabbed his right hand with her left and forced the bloody beating organ into it.
"Take it to replace your own," Rin said with a cold smile.
'This is not Rin, she never smiled like that,' he thought, and when he looked back at the young woman he saw that the hair and the eyes were now darker.
Then came a stabbing pain in his own chest. He looked down to find a gaping black hole.
-…-…-…-
Kakashi woke with his shinobi uniform drenched in sweat. It had not been a restful sleep at all.
-…-…-…-
"You see, the reason why you have nightmares is because you don't have a positive outlook on life and you don't express your emotions. All your inhibitions are manifested through your nightmares. I never have nightmares," Gai said proudly thinking how well adjusted he was compared to his old rival.
"Since when did you become a psychoanalyst?" asked the masked shinobi, annoyed, but impressed at Gai's unusual insight. The man was not known for his intelligence. Not even close.
"Oh...well...I've had some talks with your...I mean...I'm just quoting Rikako," Gai admitted.
'Great, not only did she psychoanalyze me, but she discussed me with others. How annoying! What has she been telling people?' Kakashi muttered to himself. Still he was curious and had to ask, "You're serious? You never have nightmares? Especially about the past? All that's happened in our lives..."
"Why dwell on the past? It's best to live life in the present, to the fullest! Everything in life is a risk. You have to take the risk with no regrets."
'How simplistic, yet...life is not that simple...could life be that simple?'
Gai had lost as many people in his life as Kakashi. After decades of war, who hadn't? Yet he was the same boy Kakashi remembered from the Academy. Always enthusiastic, always positive, always smiling, and always annoying. But if Gai were to die at this very second, he would die with no regrets, while Kakashi had nothing but regrets.
Did he regret falling in love? He had grown closer to her than anyone in his life, not exactly because he wanted to, but because she forced him to, she who knew the secrets of his past, who ripped them from his mind. Would he have gradually volunteered all that information anyway? If he really loved her wouldn't he have told her everything? Or maybe he could never love or trust anyone to that extent. Yes, she knew him better than anyone alive, well enough to plot stealing his sharingan. No, he did not regret loving her, he just regretted whatever he did that caused her to leave.
The two war veterans continued to pass the grassy knolls of Fire Country, gradually approaching the border between Grass Country, which was marked by large stone tablets at regular intervals and tall grass.
But on this second day, Kakashi decided to break early. One reason was because he was still tired from the previous day, after having a night plagued with nightmares.
"Another break?" Gai asked in surprise.
"Yeah, well, I try to vary the times I use her eye, more likely to hit on a clue that way. You know how she likes routine. It wouldn't be helpful if I kept seeing the same scene," Kakashi patiently explained.
"I see…all right we'll break now and continue overnight!"
Kakashi sighed and decided to worry about that later. They were close to the border now so they wouldn't be running at top speed anymore. They'd be going slower, methodically tracking.
Again Kakashi fell into his meditative state. This time the sun was still up and Gai observed how haggard his old comrade looked. 'He must be more worn out than he's letting on,' Gai thought, a bit sympathetically, after all, there were only a handful of shinobi who could keep up with him. But was there more than a physical change in his old rival? From all outward appearances Kakashi seemed to be the same as he always was, unnaturally calm. But how could anyone stay that calm? Not a cold emotionless calm, but a carefree shrug of the shoulders calm, like nothing special had happened at all, just another mission. Yet they were pursuing the woman that he loved, who betrayed him mercilessly in the worst possible way. Did he love her? Was such a man even capable of such an intense feeling? Gai thought how he had more passion in his little pinky than Kakashi had in his whole body. But then again how well did he really know his old rival?
-…-…-…-
The images were noticeably clearer. The static that had often obscured the images was now relatively minor. Kakashi was able to make out a large room with straw mats for bedding. The gray walls looked old with peeling paint, dirty smudges and crusted blood. He desperately hoped to see something that would identify where she was, but there were many people milling around, blocking any further clues. He saw her walking to the back of the room where a pile of scrolls and books were haphazardly stacked behind a trio of broken statues. She turned and entered another room but then the static and pain came back, the eye pulsed and the pupils contracted. He lost the connection. But now he had another clue.
"I saw a room with books and scrolls of sutra and some broken statues of Buddha or bodhisattva. There were a lot of people there but the room was in disrepair. It was a large room, capable of housing a hundred people. It might be an old temple," Kakashi reported to Gai.
"An old temple? That helps, but there's quite a number everywhere, destroyed and abandoned during the various wars," Gai said thoughtfully.
"Well, tomorrow we'll be able to narrow down her location."
"Tomorrow? You just need a few hours to rest, right? Let's go tonight!"
Kakashi's only reply was a tired sigh.
-…-…-…-
Day 3
His arms splayed, his legs together, he was pinned to a cross with kunai bloodily holding his wrists and legs in place. They pierced the fleshy area between the ulna and radius, between the tibia and fibula. The pain had nearly overwhelmed him, but now all he felt was numbness.
Blood flowed freely from his appendages, pooling at the bottom of the cross, a crimson lake. It was surprising how much blood the human body contained, 5 liters seemed so much more when it's spread out.
It was like the time Itachi had used the mangekyou's sharingan's Tsukuyomi attack. Except Itachi was not here in this red and black void. He wanted to scream but he innately knew there was no one to hear him. He was all alone, bleeding to death, with no one to save him or even to mourn him. So this was how he would pass from this world...
-...-...-...-
Kakashi's nightmares were becoming worse - stronger, clearer, more real, as they came closer to her location. He occasionally had nightmares, but not like these. These nightmares reached into the deepest part of his soul, pulled out his deepest fears, most sorrowful regrets, and intermingled them with current events, creating a false reality nearly indistinguishable from the truth.
The times he woke up in the middle of the night with her by his side, she would hold him, caressing his wild hair until he fell asleep again. But that was after she insisted on analyzing his dreams. What would she say about this one? A fear of death? No, he had never been afraid of death. One could not function as a shinobi with that fear. Afraid of being alone? No, he was used to that. Afraid of dying alone? No, the combination made little difference. Afraid of not being remembered? No, he was the famous copy-nin of Konoha.
But not anymore.
-...-...-...-
"Well, what direction should we head now?" Gai asked his partner at the crack of dawn. He had finally taken a real break and slept for a few hours as Kakashi kept watch after taking his rest first.
"I think we should head north or south, but staying within Fire Country's borders."
"Yes, I see, with that eye as a signal detector, it's like a game of hot and cold," mused the man in green.
'Please don't challenge me to another game...' his rival thought.
"So which way?"
"Let's flip a coin, head north, tails south," suggested Kakasi as he took one out of his pocket. The coin landed on tails so the two men headed south toward River Country.
-….-…-…-
After only a half day's travel, Kakashi signaled to stop. He did want to go too far south in case it were the wrong direction. Gai busied himself with his training exercises while Kakashi tried to locate her. The static was back, indicating that they had gone the wrong direction after all. He could see that she was talking to the handsome young man from before about another job. This time it was an assassination. He could glean no further information as the static took over.
-…-…-…-
"An assassination?" Gai was more shocked than Kakashi. "Who?"
"I don't know."
"I can't believe she would..."
"Why not? That's what we do."
"She's a medic-nin! They have a different outlook on..."
"She's a shinobi," Kakashi sighed.
Still Gai shook his head in disbelief. Maybe he did not know her as well as Kakashi, but to think that anyone he had trained would become a missing-nin, an assassin for hire without a code of ethics...
He now felt that he too was somehow responsible. He had always tried to instill in his students the principles of hard work and believing in oneself, and advised them to make the most of their youth. How could one of his students stoop so low...but then again he had caught that flicker of cold determinationin her eyes, like what Neji had in the beginning. The old Kakashi had it. Uchiha Sasuke and his brother Uchiha Itachi had it. Maybe that came with being a genius.
Gai was grateful that he was never a genius.
-…-…-…-
Author's notes: For some reason, I like writing nightmares for Kakashi.
