Kakashi has just enough presence of mind to stagger to his feet and move slowly down the hall as wounds he'd thought long healed were torn open again. With each choking sob that ripped free of his chest, another wound opened in his soul, another memory was brought to the front of his mind and laid bare. As he moved aimlessly through the house, he battled the onslaught of memories long repressed. He comes back to himself, shaking free of the memories once, finding himself in his study. Looking around the room and seeing nothing, Kakashi draws a deep breath and whispers a curse. Glancing back at the door, he walks over to it and pushes it closed. Sliding his hand to the lock, Kakashi feels almost physically drawn to look back over his shoulder at the picture of his parents on his desk. Fingers going numb, he fumbles with the lock for a moment, then staggers over to sit on the edge of the couch. Still staring at the picture, Kakashi feels the memories beginning to come back, bearing down on him like a huge destructive wave. Tearing his gaze away from the picture, he drops his head into his hands, clamping them over his ears as if that were enough to keep him from hearing. He squeezes his eyes shut, as if this would keep him from seeing.
He looks up at his father, smiling proudly as he holds out his first report card. "I got all A's Daddy! Ms Yukio says I'm the best student in the whole class!"
His father looks down at the bit of paper being help up to him, showing no interest in it. He turns his cold gaze on him, making him frown and lower his arm as he steps back. "So you're good at something besides killing? Why would I care? Get out of my face you little bastard."
Kakashi gasps and squeezes his eyes more tightly shut as he sobs, "You were the bastard, Father! Damn you for your hatred!"
"Daddy! It's my birthday today! Can we go to the park? My friend Obito says that on your birthday the man that sells ice cream will give you a free ice cream!"
"Why the hell would I want to celebrate you taking your mother from me? Go away damn you, I have work to do."
Whimpering Kakashi shakes his head, trying to stop the next memory from coming.
"Daddy? Daddy, can I come in?" He looks up at the closed bedroom door, his favorite teddy bear, a gift from Ms Mimi, clutched to his chest. "I had a bad dream, I can't sleep."
"You're my bad dream. Go back to bed you little bastard."
Kakashi slides off the edge of the couch, not noticing the pain of his knees slamming against the hardwood floor. Hands still clenched over his ears, he utters an inarticulate and choked scream of mingled rage and pain as memories continue to bombard him.
"Happy birthday, Daddy! I made this for you at school!"
His father takes the crudely made card, full of the innocent and sweet love that only the young have, barely gives it a glance, then tosses it in the trash. "Get out of here you little shit, I'm busy and you're annoying me."
Drawing himself back from the flood of memories with all the effort he can muster, Kakashi slumps to the floor gasping in pain. He tries to draw around him more positive memories; time spent with Ms Mimi, the closest he had to a real parent when he was young. When he thinks he's stopped the flow of memories, he relaxes with a soft, relieved sob only to have the horrible flashes of memory from childhood flood over him again. This time they came so fast, he only got snippets, each coming quicker than the last until it was hard to discern one memory from another as they ran together.
"I wish you'd never been born!"
"I hate you, you little bastard!"
"Your mother deserved better than you!"
"You're useless, I wish you were dead."
"You're a waste of space, get out of here!"
"Why don't you just go off somewhere and die already?"
Kakashi claws his way out of the last flash of memory, the pain of the little boy he'd been following him out of the memory. Sobbing, Kakashi pushes himself up into his hands and knees. He remains in this position, too weighed down with pain to move, for several minutes. With a choked sob, he lifts his head, his gaze automatically straying to his desk and the picture waiting to rip deeper into old wounds once again. With supreme effort, Kakashi forces his gaze to travel not to that picture, but to the only other one on his desk. Staring hard at the image of himself and Sasuke through the blurry haze of tears, Kakashi tries to fight the painful memories with happier ones of time spent with Sasuke. It's not long before some of the painful memories associated with Sasuke begin to creep in around the edges and a wave of defeat washes through Kakashi. He once again hears Sasuke's voice, yelling in accusatory pain and anger that Kakashi couldn't understand his pain and the memories roll in once again.
He looks up at his angry father, scared and nervous. The man holds out his baseball with one hand shaking it, his other arm swung back to point at the broken window behind him as he yells at him. "Look what you did you little bastard!"
He pulls his gaze away from his father only briefly to comply, looking at the window he'd just accidentally sent his baseball flying through. "I'm sorry, Daddy! It was an accident! I didn't mean to break the window!"
"It's not enough that I feed you and buy you clothes, now I have to replace broken windows? You're getting too expensive to keep!"
Kakashi hears a noise; a voice. Whoever it was seemed to be calling to him, calling his name. Before he can make his mind give him the name of the person the voice belong to, another memory sucks him under.
He stands holding a plate of oddly shaped and slightly burned chocolate chip cookies. He's covered in flour but so happy with his accomplishment, he doesn't care. "Happy Father's Day, Daddy! I drew a picture for you, and Ms Mimi helped me make you some cookies! They're chocolate chip! Ms Mimi says they're your favorite."
He turns around from whatever he was looking at on his desk. He barely gives him a contemptuous look, before turning back to his desk, leaning over and dismissing him. "I'm not a father. You're just a mistake in my life. You're no son of mine."
Kakashi hears the voice again, this time his mind immediately provides a name to go with the voice: Sasuke. Opening his eyes, he looks over at the study door, still closed. He hears a loud knock and Sasuke's voice again. He can't pull himself far enough from the barrage of memories to be able to understand what Sasuke was saying, but just the sound of his voice triggered something in Kakashi and he knew how to fight the flood of memories, the crushing weight of pain. Closing his eyes as fresh tears begin to roll down his cheeks, Kakashi stops fighting, and instead embraces the memories. Rather than fighting to hold the past away, blocking it from his mind, he voluntarily pulls the past to the front of his mind. He watches his father treat him cruelly again and again, but gives it no power, letting the pain remain in the past. He'd already felt that pain, and he'd survived it. Kakashi hears Sasuke's voice again as one last memory grows slowly in his mind, this one a memory of his choosing.
He was standing in his father's office, watching the older man glare at him for his intrusion. Part of him that still loved the man and longed for his approval cries out, but he ignores it. Squaring his shoulders and lifting his head, he locks his gaze on the other's. "Father, why do you hate me? I asked Ms Mimi, but she won't tell me. She's hiding something from me, but I don't know what. I want to know. I think I have a right to know."
"A right? Are you serious? What the hell gives you the right?"
"Years of abuse from the man that was supposed to love me and care for me! That's what gives me the right!"
"Fine, you want to know why I hate you, you little bastard? I'll tell you! It's because you killed your mother! She died bringing your worthless hide into this world! She gave her life so you could have life! You aren't worthy of her sacrifice! She loved you so much from the moment she found out she was pregnant, even knowing that it would most likely kill her. She was so excited to find out she was giving me a son that she'd already chosen a name for, because she thought that's what I wanted. She was what I wanted however, not you. Never you! The only reason I raised you was because it's what she wanted! She made me promise that I'd raise you! I'd have much rather buried you with her, or at least put you in some damn orphanage somewhere, because when your mother died, you became an orphan."
He feels a flood of pain, not at what his father said about him, but at what he'd said about his mother. No one had ever told him that his mother died in childbirth. He'd always assumed she died shortly after he was born. When he was a child he'd made up fantastical stories about his mother doing heroic deeds to save his life when he was just a baby. In his imaginings, she'd loved him enough to give her life, making up for the love the glaring man in front of him never gave him. To have it confirmed that she did love him enough to give her own life, which she did by continuing a pregnancy she knew would likely kill her, made him ache even more for the woman he'd never had a chance to know.
"You disgrace her memory by treating me the way you do, and by denying me your love. You are also denying her last wish. What must Mother be thinking up there in Heaven? She must be heartbroken. She must be ashamed of you. I know I am."
The memory fades away slowly and Kakashi curls up into a ball, fresh sobs ripping from his chest, making him gasp for each breath. Pressing his forehead to his knees, Kakashi sobs out the pain that the memories had brought back to the surface. Pain he'd thought long healed, but now knew had only been deeply suppressed. He feels a warm hand brush his cheek and imagines it is his mother, come to comfort him in his grief.
"Mother, I tried to love him," he sobs quietly.
AN: This chapter was hard on me for reasons that I think should be obvious. It was written bit by bit over three days time. I could never write long each time I sat down. Once I figured out how it would end, the last memory, it got a little easier to write, but was still tough on me. It got so bad, and I didn't want to write this chapter so much that I had my left wrist start hurting pretty badly yesterday. It didn't take me long to figure out it was likely psychosomatic in origin. (Er, excuse me for the big word. It means that I was so messed up in my head with not wanting to write it that that mental resistance became a physical problem to help me resist.) Once I finished this earlier however, my wrist miraculously stopped hurting and hasn't since. (In other words, I was right. It was in my head. XD)
Now we get a bit more of Kakashi's traumatic past. I don't think I could hate his father any more than I do right now if I tried. In the back of my head I'm grumbling about him faking his death and bringing him back just so I can kill him. . I'm not going to, but that's the level of my hatred for the man. lol
On a more amusing side note (or at least it is to me. lol) I listened to the same CD for the last three chapters. (The Long Road by Nickelback. Their best CD to date in my opinion.) And while writing chapters 33 and 34, the same song kept distracting me, leading my muse to new story ideas. (If you're curious the song is "Figured You Out" and if you've heard it you might get an idea of what kind of story she was pushing. lol) But surprisingly, or maybe not, the song didn't distract me a bit during this chapter. (Which is odd since I was going out of my way to find things to distract me from having to write this.)
On another side note, I'm planning a one-shot piece that I'm going to concentrate on after I write chapter 36. Don't worry, I'm writing it for Sasuke's birthday which is Thursday, so the hiatus from Saving Sasuke won't be long at all. I may even get it finished tonight because my muse has already given me the plot and outline as I was out paying bills today. (Got to do something when it's that hot and you're forced out. It was either concentrate on a new story idea or not how overheated I was.) I likely won't post it here because it's pure smut. You can however look for it on YG, or AFF if you have accounts in either place. ;)
EDIT: Fixed several unexpected boo-boos. Italics didn't show up in some spots. Not sure why.