Foreword: based on this idea from the fic "Permanent Marker" (/s/7498289/) and inspired by bluebackstabber's EruRi fic along the same lines: the words others say about you become etched into your skin. Those that are repeated grow in size.
Originally posted to tumblr: (ephieshine dot tumblr dot com /tagged/my-writing)
Part I is rated T for language and slight sexual content; Part II will be rated M for sexual content. Part I is Kakashi-centric and does not contain mentions of the ship.
Part I
The beginning of his life is filled with love and affection, terms of endearment rained upon him as easily as water. Son. Darling. My love. The words start at his chest, just above his tiny heart, speckling the hidden skin there, radiating out to his armpits, his hips, his belly, and his throat. Big, shaky black chicken-scratch, the way he'd later learn his father wrote. Woven between them, smaller curling script, elegant: baby. Kakashi. Beloved. He doesn't remember his mother, for she died months after his birth and her name is taboo under his father's roof, but the words stay with him, on him.
His father mourns, but his parents had been well-liked. The neighbours help out, call him adorable, sweetheart, such a quiet boy! And sometimes by accident: Sakumo—oh, sorry! gets tucked under his chin, a funny little secret.
He enrolls in the academy at four, and graduates within a year. It's too easy, really. He doesn't talk much to the other kids—doesn't have time to before he graduates—but they certainly talk about him. Genius, he gets called. Prodigy finds its place on his shoulder, right beside a snide stuck-up. That's the last one he finds on his body before his father fails the mission and kills himself.
Bastard. Orphan. Son of a traitor. Nastier, cruder words, some of which he doesn't even understand; big ugly block letters that grow with every iteration. Sometimes he hears them shouted, just outside the estate, and watches in disgust as the words stretch out across his ribs, seeking more real estate, and he's helpless to stop them.
By five, he's got more words on him than most teenagers, and he doesn't realize until later they're telling in a fight; words reveal secrets about you that others can exploit.
::~::
The Hokage doesn't give him time to ruminate, places him under Namikaze Minato's care as soon as the paperwork goes through. He moves into their home eventually, gets spoiled by Kushina. A couple new words just above his hip: dear and be careful with that. Love and darling grow, but not son, never that anymore.
He meets Rin and Obito, both of whom are older than him. But when they go to the public baths on missions, he secretly envies the plainness of Obito's skin, marked only with harmless words like prankster, annoying, and stupid. (He doesn't see the smaller words, the ones Obito covers up the same time he eyes the imprint of love and son on Kakashi.)
He clashes with Obito, doesn't really talk to Rin. He's never known kids is own age, and Minato's not great with resolving conflicts between his students. Cheater, uptight. Obito sneaks the words, tiny as they are, onto his stomach. (In retaliation, Kakashi gets dumbass, loser, and idiot onto Obito.)
Regardless, they enroll in the Chuunin exam as a team, and they get through the Forest with few mishaps. In the first round however, Rin gets knocked out by a girl from Sand, her clothes in tatters after a nasty wind jutsu. His own fight having gone smoothly, Kakashi watches over her unconscious body in the medical huts—something she flushes beet red over once she wakes up—and accidentally sees the words little bitch and whore's daughter scrawled on her left breast, the same place on Kakashi where love and darling and son reside. He doesn't think of her as naïve in his head ever again.
He's matched with some loon named Might Gai for his final round, who he expects to defeat in a mere few seconds. A brazen kid, yelling encouragements and good wishes to him before the battle starts. Kakashi's a bit drunk on the energy of the crowd, and he takes off his protective vest in a blatant display of superiority. Won't need this, he sneers, and Gai's eyes flicker to his shoulder.
In the end Kakashi wins, of course. But beaten and bloody as Gai is as he's carried out on a stretcher, Kakashi has to admit he underestimated him. Kakashi's got a broken nose, a dislocated shoulder, and an alarming lack of chakra left; Gai had gotten up an unbelievable number of times before finally succumbing to unconsciousness, and Kakashi doesn't understand how.
In the months and years following the fight, R-I-V-A-L blossoms in bloated letters encircling his calf. Later on, years later, he asks Gai how he knew that stamina was his weakness and Gai smiles. "It's written all over you," he says, a big grin on his face. The old faded words genius and prodigy on his shoulders darken again.
::~::
The war goes on, gets nastier. He learns that there are truly no rules in the shinobi profession. You take what the world gives you, accept the words others toss at you. You fight back, because that's all you can do.
He stops noticing the way all the new words appear after particularly bloody missions. There are too many to count, too many to grimace over. As they fan out into the borders of the Fire Country he gets words in other languages, ugly slashes he doesn't care to try and decipher. He doesn't look into mirrors anymore (and his hair suffers for it). The only time he reads them now is when he's injured; a broken tibia forces him to take off his shoes and roll up his pant leg for Rin to tend to. Murderer. Shinobi. Evil. A myriad of curses spat out from mouths of people he's killed. The worst of them: Please have mercy. Rin never says anything.
After Obito dies, he finds on his ankle a tiny word he's not seen before, a bright candle against an ocean of obscenities. Friend, it says.
::~::
Then he kills Rin, fucks up another mission, and closes himself off as Minato brings him into ANBU. He's the youngest when he first joins, and some are in awe of him. Resilient. Unbreakable. Others, suspicious. Emotionless. Ruthless. Friend killer.
The years fly by, missions and targets one after the next. He gets more blood on his hands than he can quantify, and starts to forget who put which words onto him. Not my baby, please! on his upper arm is the one that haunts him the most. He requests a long-sleeved uniform, wears it always, despite the stifling heat of Konoha summers.
One mission he remembers vividly, and the word Senpai gets plastered just above his knee in child-like writing.
::~::
Sometimes he wonders what it's like to be invisible, unknown. To not be talked about, because at this point his chest is covered in black ink. He's never seen anyone with words on their hands, but he's still in his teens and the words are creeping their way there, sneaking onto his arms, curving into the crook of his right elbow. Some days he feels like they weigh him down; the sheer number of them makes him look seventy, when all's been said about a person. But no, he thinks, perhaps there's been no mistake. Perhaps it's because shinobi don't live to seventy; perhaps it's better to have gotten the words out of the way early, dirty as some of them are.
::~::
He gets older, and his father's infamy in Konoha no longer precedes Kakashi himself. Handsome, he finds on his thigh one day. He scoffs, pulls Icha Icha Paradise higher to cover his face. (Pervert.)
He finds a lover, a civilian girl who doesn't completely understand that the life of a shinobi is not heroic and desirable in the least. But her hands are soft and her breasts softer—he admires at the few words on her skin—and he's just surpassed Minato in height. So he courts her for a few months, fucks her for a few weeks (in the dark of course; he's learned his lesson about letting others see his words) before she brings up the topic of marriage, and he disappears with ease, courtesy of years of shinobi training. Bastard balloons, the end of the word circling round to his back, where he can't see it anymore.
::~::
His reputation grows, and so do his titles and rumours. Sharingan Kakashi. The Copy-Ninja. The Man of a Thousand Jutsus. A phenomenal lover. (One of those last two is an exaggeration; he'll let you decide which.) He knows these, expects them.
What he doesn't expect: hero gets etched across the left side of his face, the word bisected by the scar that had gotten there first. It's covered by the mask he already wears, and he prefers it that way.
Minato-sensei and Kushina die, and Kakashi adds another mask, another layer, afraid someone will see the lie, that bullshit piece of a word, hero.
::~::
The Third Hokage forces him to leave ANBU, and soon after that, three little brats appear in his life named Thing One, Thing Two, and Thing Three (or as others call them: Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura), and a whole slew of new words appear, marching across his chest. Irresponsible. Awesome. Weird. L-A-T-E. Cool and strong get bigger, and so does handsome. He doesn't mind them, not really. But it is strange that handsome has hints of Naruto's scrawl, too.
Then, Sensei. The word appears one morning and his heart jumps to his throat. It's a girl's writing, naïve and sweet, perfect strokes meticulously mastered, imprinted onto the back of his left hand. He's horrified at it, scrubs at it in his sink. (Like that's ever worked.) When it doesn't come off, he gets fingerless gloves, thankfully not uncommon for a shinobi, covers the word up with haste.
The years with the brats go by shockingly quickly, and he's aghast at the word old on his collar. After Sasuke deserts the village, he looks into a mirror for the first time in years, searches for the word failure that he's certain should be there.
It's not, and there's a brief moment he considers carving it into his wrist with a kunai himself.
...to be continued.
reviews and feedback are always appreciated! :) Part II should be up soon. warning though: I didn't read the manga ending, so it's most likely gonna deviate from that.