The first time Kakashi went to see the memorial stone, it was not to visit with the dead remembered there, but rather to see the name that he knew would be absent. Hatake Sakumo had not died on a mission, after all. Nothing about his death could have been construed as "protecting the village". Hell, he hadn't even been protecting his son. The stares and whispers were far worse now than they had been when the White Fang was merely disgraced because of a soft heart. Now, they looked at Kakashi with not just contempt, but pity, and that was far, far worse. Why couldn't his father have gone down fighting, like every decent shinobi? If he wanted to die so much, couldn't he have done it with grace, taking down Konoha's enemies?
Kakashi hadn't stayed long, because shinobi did not cry, and the hot tears that spilled down his face shamed him almost as much as his father.
The second time that Kakashi visited the memorial stone, Rin had been by his side, one hand squeezing his with a desperate grip as she fell to her knees before the memorial. Her slim fingertips had traced the lettering engraved there, shivering as the cool stone leeched the heat from her skin in the dying light. Bruised grass left stains on her knee-high socks. She didn't bother brushing them off when she finally rose to her feet, what felt like hours later, and pulled him away. Kakashi's fingers had long since gone numb. Rin's hand was limp and icy in his larger one, as if the stone had absorbed all of her strength and warmth.
The third time Kakashi saw that stone, Rin's hand no longer held his, and his hand wasn't cold. It burned, the sensations of lightning and blood scalding his skin until he could imagine blisters bubbling on his knuckles. He rubbed his hands together, chasing the dry friction, anything to remind himself that the blood under his nails was just an overlay of the sharingan. His hands were clean, not punched through the chest of the one person he swore to protect. It didn't work. The fire burned hotter and the tears that fell from Obito's eye felt like lava against the calloused flesh of his thumb. His hands kept burning, the fire spreading, until Kakashi fell to his knees and pressed shaking palms to the names in the stone. It was chilling as a corpse-inanimate as one, too, and Kakashi could feel his body heat seeping into the stone as hers had that day a lifetime ago, when there had only been one name to mourn.
Twilight dawned and crickets chirped. Kakashi didn't move until his hands were as cold as the stone.
There was no telling how many times Kakashi visited the Memorial Stone after that. It wasn't every day, because there were missions to do and Minato-sensei had scouted Kakashi for ANBU. He was still in his training phase, though, and spent more time in the village than out of it. It was most days, therefore, that he visited Obito and Rin, and each visit was different. Some days, Kakashi would press his hands to the rock, seeking the cold to numb his pain.
Other days, he stood as still as the monument, unable to press forward for the inescapable knowledge that he didn't deserve even that small comfort. He deserved the burn of the lightning in his hands. He deserved to recall the coolness of Rin's hand that day as only a ghost of what had been, a phantom sensation that could never truly be replicated anyway.
Sometimes Kakashi wasn't alone, and on those days he stayed in the crook of an old tree many yards from the monument, silent as others paid their respects to the dead. Kakashi didn't want to speak to anyone else on those days. Or ever, really.
Then Minato and Kushina's names were added to the stone, along with dozens of others, and Kakashi was almost never alone in his grieving. He started coming early in the morning, almost before the sun even rose, so he could get in a few hours by himself with his fallen friends before the mourners came later in the day, forcing Kakashi's retreat behind the treeline. The ones who visited were civilians and shinobi alike, in flak vests and pretty dresses and tiny shoes for tiny feet. At first there were tears, but those soon dried, as did the droves of people. Some still came habitually after that, every week or every month, replacing flowers or just kneeling in silence for a few minutes before leaving. Others visited only once, or sporadically, but they tended to stay longer and talk when they did, as if the dead had ears. But gradually their numbers dropped as people made peace with the deaths, or built shrines in their own homes, or perhaps were sent out on missions again as the village started to recover from the destruction the Kyuubi had caused. Kakashi was glad when he could spend more time in front of the memorial itself. The tree branch that he had claimed as his own had started to lean slightly from his constant weight.
There was one boy who didn't quite fit any of the molds. He came frequently, although erratically, with anything from hours to weeks in between visits. Sometimes he stayed for only a few minutes before leaving. Other times he spent the night in front of the memorial, laying on his side in the grass with his hands cushioning his head as he cried himself to sleep. He didn't speak aloud very often, but when he did, it was mostly too quiet to hear, and Kakashi's perch was too far away to accurately read his lips.
The boy was a few years younger than Kakashi, with a long scar across the bridge of his nose and brown hair in a messy ponytail. His clothes got progressively more ragged, unmended tears in the knee and ripped hems becoming more frequent as the seasons passed. A Kyuubi orphan, Kakashi easily judged. Pre-genin, judging by the lack of hitai-ate. At his age, Kakashi had already been a chuunin, long since responsible for many lives more than his own.
Perhaps he had never truly been ready for that responsibility. Perhaps he still wasn't.
The boy didn't cry like a shinobi. It was all shaking shoulders, ragged gasps, and a snotty nose. The boy wouldn't stay if he saw others at the memorial, but when he thought he was alone… his composure didn't crack, but rather slipped away as if it had never been there at all. He would sometimes stuff a fist in his mouth to muffle his cries, or clutch his knees to his chest and bury his face in them, leaving him incredibly open to attack. The kid had probably not been in a situation yet where he had to worry about being attacked from behind. That was the only possible way he could be so open, so oblivious to his surroundings. People like Kakashi, who spent more nights in trees than in beds, could never cry like that. When the rare shinobi cried at the monument, the tears were solitary, or at least in single digits. They slipped out of tired eyes, or from behind smooth masks. They were quickly wiped away and smothered without a sound.
This boy was different. His pain was written on every line on his face, from bloodshot eyes to trembling lips and broken cries. Sometimes, Kakashi wondered what would happen if he came out while the boy was there. Would the brunette rub at his eyes, try to pretend he was fine? That was what happened the few times someone else showed up at the monument during the kid's periods of mourning. Sometimes, the scenario in Kakashi's mind played out differently. He would approach, and the boy wouldn't notice him coming until Kakashi was right there, a soothing hand placed on the boy's shoulder, like Minato-sensei used to do for Obito. The brunette would stiffen, looking up at Kakashi in surprise, or confusion, but after a moment that reaction would fade and he would accept what little, wordless comfort Kakashi could provide. The daydream normally stopped there, because Kakashi had no idea how to comfort someone who was grieving, had never been any good at it. But he liked to think that he could do something, could maybe make Iruka's cries sound just a little less heart-wrenching, so they wouldn't churn in Kakashi's gut every time he watched that slender body wracked with sobs.
He never did, though, and as far as Kakashi was aware, the boy never knew that he was anything other than completely alone. A few times, early on, Kakashi used a shunshin to escape his tree without being noticed and leave the boy truly alone, although he wasn't quite sure why he bothered. Normally, when others came, he would shunshin to his tree and wait until they left, unless he had a mission or something else to call him away. Shinobi couldn't be too bothered with privacy, not when information was a commodity held in high regard and spying was a quarter of the job.
With this kid, it was different. Perhaps it was because he was so overt in his grief, so visibly shaken, but Kakashi rather felt as though watching was intruding on something intensely private, something that no one else was meant to see. But normally, he couldn't help but stay and watch. Maybe it was morbid curiosity, or perhaps the boy just reminded him of someone else that he didn't want to forget. Obito was a picture of equanimity next to this kid, Kakashi thought one day as his single gray eye watched the boy fall asleep next to the monument, tear tracks drying on chubby cheeks. A dry leaf dropped lightly to land on a dirt-smudged ear, and a tanned hand rose to bat it away sleepily. Kakashi froze, utterly still amongst the gently swaying leaves of the forest as he registered something very strange-a twitch of lips behind a black mask, quirking into the closest thing to a smile that they had formed in literal years.
The boy woke up in the early hours of pre-dawn to find a gray wool blanket warding off the worst of the late fall chill.
Umino Iruka. That was the boy's name, or so Kakashi surmised after hearing it shouted after the brown streak as it tore down an alley, chased by an Academy teacher that was covered head-to-toe in what looked to be some kind of amorphous, possibly-alive sludge. After that, Kakashi picked up the name more often, normally said in combination with an exasperated groan or a roar of rage. The only exception was the Sandaime, whose lips stretched into a smile around his pipe when Kakashi overheard him speaking about the boy to one of his guards. His tone was fond, almost fatherly, and Kakashi wondered if perhaps the Sandaime hadn't perhaps been a bit of a prankster in his own youth, however many centuries ago that was.
Then Kakashi started performing assassination missions, and he no longer had time to wonder about the scarred boy that slept in front of the memorial stone. He had long since completed lessons of a different sort than what the Academy taught, or even what he had learned under Minato-sensei's tutelage. Now he was a finely honed weapon, and little more. He knew exactly how to slide a senbon into the neck of a sleeping woman to disconnect her brainstem. He could seduce someone and leave their nude body lying prone on the mattress, crimson staining rumpled sheets. Kakashi learned how to stalk a man, get into his life, gain his trust and learn of his unrequited love or guilty habits, the name of his Koi fish-and then slit his throat in cold blood while his daughter celebrated her fifth birthday in the next room. The blood on Kakashi's hands no longer belonged solely to Obito and Rin and Minato and people killed in the adrenaline of an all-out fight. Now, his hands were permanently stained, and he didn't think even the stone would be able to cool the fire that burned them.
Not that he got many chances to try. There was mandatory downtime after every mission requiring assasination, but somehow that rule got blurred along with a whole lot of others as the village tried to recover from the loss of life suffered during the Kyuubi attack. Kakashi spent only a few days a month in the village, and most of that was spent with his unit, or in the hospital, when he got too careless. That seemed to be happening more and more lately. Kakashi didn't know if the missions were getting harder or if he was getting weaker, but it didn't matter much either way. He completed his missions and reported to his Hokage. That was his only goal, the only meaning to his life. He just hated that Obito had to witness it all. If possible, Kakashi would have liked to show Obito something nicer than the dead bodies of children-perhaps the Land of Tea Leaves in the fall, or the Land of Hot Springs at literally any time of year. Instead, his sharingan was full of visions stained crimson, and his hands burned more often than not now.
How long had it been since he had last visited the stone? Kakashi tried to sort through the muddled passage of time as his feet carried him shakily towards the small clearing. His body felt so heavy, the boots on his feet like lead as they dragged across dead grass. It was recovering from winter's chill and hadn't quite taken on the lush green of spring yet, but Kakashi couldn't hear the crunch he knew it must have made as he dropped to his knees before the stone. All noise was drowned out by his heart pounding dully in his ears, throbbing in time with his head.
It was hard to breathe behind the dual masks of fabric and porcelain. Cracked lips parted beneath the cloth. Each inhalation sent a stab of pain through his broken ribs. Just two this time-nothing the healers wouldn't be able to mend in a couple of nights. The gash on his right bicep was still bleeding, and Kakashi absently applied pressure with his gloved left hand, the sting barely registering as he blinked slowly at the names before him.
The mission hadn't been too bad. No one died, anyway, other than the intended target. Kakashi was just so… weak. Smoke inhalation from being briefly trapped in a building that had suffered a rather nasty katon made his throat burn, but the broken ribs were much more of a concern at the moment. Even they could wait, though. He just needed a minute to rest, a minute to remind himself of Obito and Rin and all of his other fucking mistakes, because it was getting harder to remember Obito's smile, the one that the sharingan hadn't captured.
Kakashi sat there for minutes or hours, slumped forward with his forehead and shoulder braced against the stone, right hand curled in the grass beside his knee like it would keep him grounded. At some point the sun rose, and Kakashi dimly realized that it was time to move, but his body betrayed him and remained immobile. Birds chirped around him. Kakashi couldn't focus on them. His joints were locked, stiffened with cold and the lack of movement, and just the thought of standing made him grind his teeth together at the idea of the pain.
The bleeding had stopped, he dimly noted. The ribs were still broken, unsurprisingly.
Lack of sleep and the substitution of soldier pills instead of food over the last week must have hit him harder than he expected, because Kakashi only recognized the presence of another person when they spoke, tone hesitant and wary.
"ANBU-san?" Sharp pain streaked through his right arm as his left ripped away to land on the hilt of his kunai. He spun on his knees, left foot bracing on the ground, muscles bunching as he prepared to fight, but his opponent's appearance stilled him before he could draw the kunai. He was a comrade, or so indicated the Konoha hitai-ate on his forehead. Kakashi couldn't retrieve the boy's name from his murky mind at the moment, but the scar across the shinobi's nose was familiar, even if he seemed taller and more muscular now, brown eyes drawn in concern and a hint of fear instead of filled with tears.
Kakashi's fingers flexed around his kunai. His brain moved sluggishly as he tried to figure out where the sudden pain in his arm had come from. His left fingers didn't want to peel apart for some reason. He glanced at his arm without tilting his head. The scab that had formed on his wound overnight had torn off with his sudden movement. Fresh blood seeped through the slit in his black glove and stained the white straps of his brace.
Not an attack, then, which was good since the sudden movement had also reminded Kakashi how unwise it was to twist with broken ribs. The boy had stopped several yards away from him, which was smart, because Kakashi couldn't be held accountable for what he would have done if the boy had touched him without warning. "I…" The voice trailed off, and Kakashi wondered if he was waiting for a greeting. The boy swallowed thickly, audible underneath the chirping of birds. "You're bleeding."
Kakashi didn't think that statement of the obvious really demanded an answer. Flexing his fingers, he broke the crusted blood that sealed them together. He let go of his kunai and he sat back on the hard ground, knees bent in front of him as he leaned against the memorial stone. He really should have left by now, but he didn't fancy trailing his blood against half of Konoha to make it back to ANBU headquarters and the medics there. Half-numb fingers fumbled with a pouch on his hip as he pulled out a pad of gauze to press against his forearm.
"I can help." Iruka offered suddenly, one hand rising to hover uncertainly in the air as he took a hesitant step forward, clearly broadcasting his movements so as not to startle the ANBU. Iruka. That was his name. Kakashi's heart was still beating too quickly in his ears from the adrenaline that poured into him at the initial startle, but he didn't move away as the boy approached slowly and dropped to his knees before Kakashi. "I'm not a medic, but I can seal this for you until you get to the hospital." Iruka said, dark brows furrowed as he reached out, ever so slowly, and gently cradled Kakashi's elbow. Their bare skin never touched, but he could feel the warmth of the boy's hand through the cloth of his gloves. He resisted the urge to pull away. It was uncomfortable, the intense awareness of every place they connected. A tanned hand gently wrapped around Kakashi's other wrist and dropped the Copy nin's left hand back to his side so that the boy could remove the gauze and examine the wound himself.
He wasn't really a boy anymore, though, and Kakashi was struck by how long it had been since he had seen Iruka. It had been more than weeks, surely. Months, then? A year? Iruka had a hitai-ate now, had probably been a genin for some time. His voice wasn't fully matured yet, but his musculature was that of a teenager, and his shoulders were broader. The hands on Kakashi's arm were large and calloused, though not as much as his own.
This wasn't exactly how Kakashi had imagined meeting Iruka in person, but it gave him an opportunity to observe things he had never noticed before, with only inches separating their faces instead of rows of trees and leaves. Iruka's eyelashes were short but thick, concealing his eyes as he carefully pulled the edges of Kakashi's shirt away from his wound. Barely visible freckles dotted around his scar like constellations, just a shade off from the rest of his skin tone. Kakashi saw a small scar on the flesh between his thumb and forefinger and wondered if Iruka had gotten it in one of the pranks for which he was notorious.
Iruka's hand withdrew to open one of his own pouches and pull out a small bottle of wound cleaner, and Kakashi realized then that Iruka was fully suited up to go on a mission, a brown backpack on the ground several feet away and kunai in its holder on his thigh. He must have been coming to visit the memorial one last time before heading out.
"This'll sting." Iruka murmured, eyes fixed on the wound instead of the intimidating dog mask that covered Kakashi's features. The warning was meaningless, and Kakashi had far worse pain in his ribs with each breath than the mild stinging of the antiseptic. He had even suffered through field stitches without numbing more than once. His fingers twitched as Iruka dabbed at the wound with the gauze to dry it, but Kakashi made no other movement or show of pain. His breaths were shallow but slow, an attempt to ease the ache in his chest as Iruka worked. Setting the gauze down on the grass by his knee, Iruka's hands started to glow with the faint green of healing chakra.
A medic, this boy was certainly not. The chakra rubbed against Kakashi like sandpaper, drawing a hiss from between clenched teeth as his toes dug into the soles of his boots. "Sorry," Iruka winced sympathetically, and his chakra receded to a more tolerable level as his palm hovered over the wound. A flush was staining his cheeks now as his eyes darted up to Kakashi's mask and then away again, likely embarrassed at the evidently inexperienced attempt at healing. Rin's chakra had always been warm, soothing, almost like it was coaxing the skin to heal itself instead of forcing the tissue together and sewing it closed. The medics in ANBU were less gentle, but efficient, not a single ounce of chakra wasted in their efforts. This was clumsy by comparison, and Kakashi wondered if Iruka had any actual training or if one of his friends had just shown him the absolute basics. Nonetheless, Kakashi's wound slowly started to heal, a scab forming back over the top. Kakashi observed Iruka's face as he worked, the way his lips pinched together and a few hairs strayed rebelliously from the high ponytail that had been a permanent fixture as long as Kakashi had known him.
Iruka jumped as Kakashi's left hand caught his bare wrist, the green glow fading as Kakashi moved it slowly away from his own arm. Slowly flexing to test the healing, Kakashi felt a sharp twinge of pain, but decided it was in no danger of ripping open again until he made it to ANBU headquarters.
Iruka sat back on his heels. "I guess that's enough, then?" He rubbed at his nose nervously as his gaze darted to Kakashi's eyes and away again. Or, where his eyes should be. Konoha's ANBU masks were unique in that a permanent ninjutsu was attached to them, making it impossible to see what lay beyond the eyeholes. Instead, they appeared black, as if constantly in shadow. It was a provision to protect the identities and abilities of dojutsu users. Konoha was the only Hidden Village with multiple dojutsu clans, and the Hyuuga often made it into ANBU, even if only a few sharingan users had ever managed it. Seeing the strange white eyes of the Hyuuga would give away too many secrets before an attack even got started, so it had become standard procedure in the last war to hide ANBU's eyes. It helped particularly in Kakashi's case, since otherwise Iruka would have seen one gray eye, and one black eyepatch covering his sharingan, which would have been even more identifiable than the silver hair.
Iruka seemed less frightened and more just nervous, but Kakashi supposed that was also a reasonable reaction to being so close to an ANBU. The genin stood and took a few steps back as Kakashi made to rise himself. Bracing himself on the stone, Kakashi did his best to keep his upper body immobile as he straightened, knees popping and creaking with the motion. He had spent far more time at the memorial than intended, and his joints were protesting for it, but it was an undercurrent compared to the agony of his broken ribs.
Certain now that he was steady enough to walk, even as his body screamed in protest, Kakashi took a few steps forward, away from the stone. He drew even with Iruka and paused for a moment before placing his hand on the younger boy's shoulder, squeezing it lightly in an echo of what he had imagined doing for far too long, and what he hoped passed as a wordless thanks. His throat felt raw as though it had been shredded, and he was sure any sound he made now wouldn't come out quite right, anyway. The gesture seemed to work, because Iruka's tension melted away and he gifted Kakashi with a broad smile, warm brown eyes crinkling at the corners. A lump formed in Kakashi's throat as he thought of another boy he had once known who could smile so wide.
Then Kakashi was gone in a swirl of leaves, running through the trees towards the ANBU base and the medics waiting there. He felt somewhat dizzy, though he hadn't lost enough blood to account for that. Maybe he would actually take a few days off this time, Kakashi thought as he ran. And maybe, he would see more than just ghosts at memorial stone.