"Indeed," Neji says for the umpteenth time. "I see."
He's not fool enough to say anything of substance to Orochimaru.
Orochimaru smiles at him. He's old now, over sixty, which makes the smile a good deal less intimidating. If he were to turn on Neji in earnest, he'd be a formidable opponent, would no doubt kill or break Neji, but under these circumstances… he's an old man Neji's been sent to give a message.
Still, as the smile goes on and on, it crawls uncomfortable up his spine, the knowledge that he was sent as a kind of peace offering: that he was selected as the messenger because frankly he's Orochimaru's type.
Hanabi's quick to point this out when he can finally return home, smirking up at him from where she's lounging on the couch. Hinata sends him a shy glance from her place in the corner.
"I'd imagine I'm a little old for him," Neji says, as mildly as he can: he has no business speaking out of tune to Hanabi. Hinata's worthless – barely even an exorcist at all, the great shame of the family – but Hanabi's a genius crusader in addition to being of the main line, and so she's the Hyuuga heiress and Neji's … well, Neji's the sort of pseudo-outcast who might very well have ended up being given to Orochimaru, if Orochimaru had been glancing at Hyuuga rather than Uchiha boys seven years ago.
He has no illusions that he would've come out of that kicking and screaming the way Sasuke has. Neji's a realist. Neji settles, resigns himself.
Perhaps that's why Sasuke dismissed the very idea of Neji, why Sasuke's currently letting himself be defiled by a beast who at least never gave up on him, and – this is not a productive line of thought.
"Mmh," Hanabi says lightly, with the easy arrogance of someone who's always been loved best. "I suppose. He could never seal a crusader who's come into their power."
"Ah," Neji says, equally lightly. Light as hoarfrost. "I should call Mikoto-sama. If you'll excuse me."
Hanabi waves him off.
It's a short conversation. Mikoto Uchiha is relentlessly polite and cold as ice, far more intimidating than Orochimaru. She has little patience for Neji, or for anyone else really.
"He's denying all involvement," Neji says. "He won't say what he intends to do about Sasuke."
"I would have expected nothing else."
And Neji, it remains unsaid, was sent as an empty gesture. He doesn't know Orochimaru well enough to read between the lines.
He steps back into the room to find someone who could, only of course there's no sending Kakashi Hatake to Orochimaru now.
"Ah, Neji." Kakashi offers a lazy wave, wiggling his fingers. Neji bows politely, to this odd man who's never let himself be known to Neji, this man who finally took Sasuke away only to hand him over to someone else.
This man, frankly, who might become his brother, because Uncle Hiashi is quite keen on arranging a marriage. Hinata would never dare to disobey, and Hanabi's always been a pragmatist: it's Kakashi who's never quite said yes or no.
Currently he's flirting outrageously with Hinata, which is no matter because if he did accept a Hyuuga bride it would obviously have to be Hanabi. Kakashi's always been drawn to strong people, has only scorn to spare for anyone he perceives as weak, including Neji. Kakashi, under the deceptive scarecrow smile, is a predator born and bred.
And Kakashi never tried to hide his involvement with Sasuke, but clearly that's over now, and while Hanabi's rather younger than Kakashi – well, so is Sasuke.
If he did marry her, she'd be adopted into the Hatake clan. Which would mean Neji would be offered Hinata, so he could inherit Hyuuga without the main line being disgraced.
It's so beneath him, so shallow and so pathetic, to wish his little cousin wed off in order to secure his own inheritance, his own belonging.
But in the end people's happiness is always paid for with other people's. Everyone understands this, Orochimaru told him once, and Neji could only agree. We have all read our Leviticus. Orochimaru's long square fingers touched Sasuke's forehead, like Fugaku's had that once, that only once, just before Sasuke was given away. Even Itachi, the greatest crusader who has ever lived or likely ever shall, was appointed his task and must carry out his sacrifice.
Even at age ten, Neji had been vaguely insulted by the extreme lack of subtlety. He had indeed read his Leviticus. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites – all their sins – and put them on the goat's head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.
Only the place Sasuke was brought wasn't so very far, and certainly he wasn't set free into the wilderness.
Neji cannot condemn it. Sasuke alone cannot be worth more than the millions who would have fallen to slaughter if negotiations fell through. The one thing that would make him worth more – Uriel – has not been taken away from the world, though certainly nobody anticipated that Orochimaru would seal him.
Once upon a time Neji assumed that was why Itachi had consented: because without the seal, Sasuke must have been supposed to kill Orochimaru years ago, would surely have gone nova before he was broken in.
But Neji has long since ceased the futile endeavour of trying to understand Itachi.
Kakashi, who might actually have a shot at it, never seems to try. He smiles at Neji now, a smile wider than but just as meaningless as Mikoto Uchiha's, before making his excuses. Hinata scurries after him, and Hanabi gets up from the coach, coming to stand in front of the window. It's storming outside, which she's always liked.
Neji's ashamed to ask her, but also curious. Hanabi's always been ineffable as clear water, somehow out of reach, but right now she seems approachable: a girl tying her heavy dark hair into a ponytail. She's in that awkward stage where her sharp, spine-freezing eyes sit incongruous in her pudgy face.
"You'd really marry him, wouldn't you?" Neji says. Hanabi has always had the luxury of speaking her mind, and tends not to respect people who don't.
She gives him a rather cynical look. "I'd want to know him better before I decided. But I'm not principally opposed."
"He's quite heavily involved with the shifters."
"I don't mind that. Our purpose, what matters, is the demons. Shifters are irrelevant. They're the humans' problem."
"I should think this issue with Sasuke," Neji says, so dryly his voice almost rasps, "has shown them to be also our problem."
"Tch. Could you wipe a shifter?"
"Obviously."
"There you go. Sasuke's far stronger than you."
"That's a matter of opinion."
She lifts an eyebrow. "He cleansed the north." The that was hot is almost as heavily implied as the I could've done that.
Neji lifts an eyebrow of his own. "I suppose if you're into Sasuke, that'd at least give you and Kakashi something to bond over."
She snorts at him, disappointingly unprovoked. "I've never met anymore more obviously gay than Sasuke. Except possibly you."
Neji freezes.
Hanabi blinks. "I don't care. I'm not going to tell."
Neji forces himself to grit out, "You're perfectly entitled to tell anyone you please."
This is how it is. Hanabi was born to the elder brother, and so Hanabi is the princess, able to destroy him or to forcefeed him mercy. If Neji hadn't been the younger brother's son – if, if, if…
He'd thought he'd made his peace.
Hanabi turns around, leaning her back against the glass. In the half-dusk, the image is of her suspended against the storming sky.
Once, years ago, he'd have been tempted to push her, break the glass until she fell.
Of course, if she did, Michael's wings would carry her.
"You shouldn't have to bow and scrape," she says. "I don't understand why you do. You're strong. God knows you could take Fugaku Uchiha."
He looks past her shoulder. "Fugaku's a figurehead."
She shrugs agreement. "For the record, you could probably have a good go against Mikoto, too."
He smirks. Speaks treason now, to this girl who already has enough dirt, enough sin on him that a little more doesn't matter. "Not your father?"
She smiles, a hungry smile, the smile of the archangel who commands the armies of God. "Time will tell."
xxxxx
Naruto wakes up in the morning with an armful of Sasuke, looks down at him and feels like his entire chest is filled with a star expanding and expanding, ready to erupt in a blaze fit to light the whole universe. Sasuke grumbles, sleepy, but Sasuke always grumbles in the morning, and he doesn't roll away. The room is cold, outside the shield of the double duvet, and Sasuke's icy fingers curl under Naruto's chin. "About maybe sealing the beastmad shifters," Sasuke says thoughtfully, looking interested. Naruto feels like dying, actually dying, unable to contain the enormity of his feeling. "Kabuto has some research on that."
"Yeah?"
"You have to know he's been experimenting on shifters."
"Heard Orochimaru wants to live forever," Naruto agrees, breath hitching as Sasuke stretches. "But really, he's doing full on human experiments? I mean, I know he's made a few shifters disappear, but…"
"He wants the healing," Sasuke says.
"Oh. Um. Mmh."
"Tch." And then Sasuke's leg over his, Sasuke sitting up still wrapped in the duvet, straddling Naruto's thighs. "Pay attention."
He's shocked at his own voice, which comes gravelly and strange. "You're the only thing I can pay attention to."
"Really?" Sasuke's voice so light. He leans forward just a finger's breadth. "You can't pay attention to your," and his mouth twists around the word, "pack being used a guinea pigs? You'd rather…"
"Yes," Naruto says, sitting up. Tipping Sasuke forward, so he' straddling Naruto's hips instead, Naruto's knees going up behind him. "Yes, yes."
"Great priorities for a leader," Sasuke tells him. Dry still, but responsive to Naruto's fingers dragging softly up his arms.
Naruto swallows. Breathes in Sasuke's air, tries to match his pulse with Sasuke's, calm it down. "I don't like it, that you're more important. Nobody likes it, I guess, it's – it's maybe not how it should be. But there's no use pretending. You come first."
Sasuke lifts an eyebrow.
"Don't say it!"
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to! I know I've been – uh, quick. But I have – I will have great stamina. I just need…practice. Then you can come first."
"Unlikely."
"Uh huh," Naruto insists. "I never go back on my word."
Lies, lies, because he promised, I will save you, which was really just another way of saying, I will save us, because he can't do without Sasuke, can't live without Sasuke, he never could.
He touches Sasuke's jaw, his chin. Sasuke's hands find Naruto's spine, stroking down his back.
He hasn't even kissed Sasuke – isn't going to kiss Sasuke until Sasuke wants him to – and already it's like a tornado in his ears. His cock pulsates between them. And Sasuke's – it might just be that it's morning, and it's not on anything like the same level of arousal as Naruto, but Sasuke's kind of hard too. His hands mould against Naruto's shoulder blades, and Naruto's coming out of his skin. Kisses the side of Sasuke's mouth, under his lower lip, kisses around his mouth until it opens for him
He's edging closer to it, he's so close when the door opens.
"Good morning," Shino says. His high collar hides his mouth, but there's no mistaking the smirk. Just behind him, Temari rolls her eyes.
Sasuke twists around, face impassive now. He's been walked in on so many times, he's far past embarrassment. Not so far past annoyance.
Suddenly, Naruto's quite happy that they're still dressed. "Shino."
"Getting in some morning gymnastics, I see."
"Fuck off," Sasuke tells him, completely level. It's a voice for giving orders, a voice not permitting disobedience.
Shino blinks.
"Let's all," Temari starts.
Naruto puts a quick hand on Sasuke's arm. Sasuke's expression makes him squeeze, before taking it away.
Shino starts to say something, but Shino is no longer relevant.
"Why are we pretending," Sasuke says, "that they have any say in this?"
Shino says, "Excuse me?"
But Sasuke's speaking to Naruto. "I played nice yesterday, I'm still not sure why. They have no choice in this, they'll obey or they'll die. This ridiculous farce – we all know I can make them. You could make them yourself, Kyuubi would eat him alive."
Without interference, sooner or later Rock will die on its own, either from the demons or from the humans. But that'd be a waste, Rock has a lot of strong fighters, a lot of useful people.
"I want them to want to follow me," Naruto says. "It's better if they come willing."
"Jesus," Temari mutters.
"Why? It's better to be feared than to be loved." His mouth twists into this strange, sweetsour shape. "For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes its grasp."
"I'm not into the whole divide and conquer approach. And Shino's doing well with Rock, they love him. So that's good. We'll work with him. Right, Shino?"
Sasuke rests his arms on his knees, looking cruel and speculative. "Or we could just make an example of him. Make it clear who's in charge."
"We've got our hands full with Orochimaru, we don't need a shifter insurrection on top of it. Don't be fucking stupid."
"A Prince," Sasuke says, and he's smiling at Shino the way Orochimaru will have smiled at Sasuke, when he made Sasuke memorise this, "should disregard the reproach of being thought cruel where it enables him to keep his subjects united and obedient. For he who quells disorder by a very few signal examples will in the end be more merciful than he who from too great leniency permits things to take their course and so to result in rapine and bloodshed; for these hurt the whole State, whereas the severities of the Prince injure individuals only."
"I asked you yesterday," Shino says, "can you control him?"
He understands now, smells strongly of the understanding, that if Naruto can't, then Shino's done for.
Sasuke's curled up in bed in his pyjamas, and he's terrifying as a force of nature. "You killed an exorcist," he says. "You know the penalties."
Shino looks to Naruto. Yesterday, this was because he believed Naruto was in charge of Sasuke. Today, it's because he understands that what he says won't matter to Sasuke, that he's not even human to Sasuke. "She wasn't even any good."
"She was a worthless fighter," Sasuke agrees. "But she was good at shielding. Otherwise your village would have been long gone. Shielding like that, as you very well know, is what keeps demons from constantly appearing in populated areas. She was worth hundreds of thousands of lives."
"Yeah," Naruto cuts in. "That's true. But she's gone and she's not coming back. No point wasting more people." A pause, stretched to breaking point. "Sasuke, enough."
This time it's Naruto speaking without allowing the possibility of dissent, and in the end Rock means more to him, by far, than it does to Sasuke. This is a big part of why Sasuke played nice yesterday, and it makes him subside now: Sasuke has no strong feelings about Rock one way or the other, and so the bond fills him with Naruto's convictions on the matter. Sasuke fucking Shino over would be Sasuke cutting off his nose to spite his face, because Naruto's outrage and distress, even the echo of them, will be stronger than Sasuke's satisfaction.
Sasuke always has been one to cut off his nose to spite his face, though, and he's been manipulated too much.
"This is important to me," Naruto says. "It doesn't matter to you. So give me this, you bastard."
"Fine." In the blink of an eye, Shino's suddenly steady again, because Sasuke again projects submission. It's a little bit like Kyuubi trying to wear a human face, the berserker beast shining through. Still, he lets Naruto be in charge of him for this little while, and so Naruto squeezes his shoulder and then slips out of bed to make nice with Shino over breakfast.
Temari stares at them with flat hungry eyes. This is her life, this has always been her life: being sensible, reining in the boys who will be boys, and who will ultimately only really listen to each other.
There's the knowledge that she told Sasuke the truth, that time with Shikamaru and Sakura: Naruto's it, he's the only possible option. And the knowledge, sharp now like a claw in her intestines, that they'll never, never be free from under the exorcists' heel.
If anyone could have managed, it would have to be Naruto, and now that'll never happen.
Naruto's strong, maybe the strongest of them all, and with a direct link to Sasuke mind – with her and Shino, they could've taken him, if he'd really stepped out of line.
But she knows, cannot deny that she knows, that if it came down to it – Naruto might fight with Sasuke, might fight him viciously and brutally, but the second she or Shino turned on Sasuke, Naruto would be absolutely on his side.
She had to give up on her dreams a long time ago. She hadn't realised she hadn't given up on Naruto's.
xxxxx
"I'd like to see you," Hanabi Hyuuga's crisp no-nonsense voice tells him over the phone. It's hours since Kakashi kissed the back of Hinata's hand in a parody of chivalry, since he returned from the conventional splendour of the Hyuuga stronghold to his own shitty flat.
Sasuke's things are everywhere.
Sasuke still has a bloody key, though Kakashi can't expect him to ever use it again.
Hanabi continues. She really never has been one to wait for someone else. "Neji deserves an answer if he's getting Hyuuga or not. Which depends on how I like you."
Kakashi chuckles, charmed despite himself. It's condescending in the extreme to be charmed by her as though by a kitten that's clawed your finger bloody, but then Kakashi's looked down his nose at humanity as a whole since he was three years old. "Not on how I like you?"
Her voice remains perfectly matter of fact as she points out, "I'm the best you could get."
"Maa," Kakashi drawls, discovering Sasuke's shirt in the laundry basket and standing stupidly in the middle of the room, dirty cotton in hand. "The heart wants what it wants."
"Yes. But you can't have that. And I'm certainly what your head wants." He gets the impression she shrugs. "If you're not interested, that's fine. I'd like to let Neji know either way."
Hanabi, he knows, is privileged enough by the system to criticise it. To find the clan structures archaic, to favour an absolute meritocracy. A world where Fugaku would never dare dream of ordering Neji anywhere, where crusaders would rule absolutely and efficiently over their domain.
He could point out that the Council knows better these days than to risk giving an order that might not be obeyed: that they would never attempt to force Itachi or Hanabi or indeed Kakashi himself anywhere against their wishes.
Certainly they never sanctioned any of the exorcisms he performed for Minato.
"The only thing I'm in the market for right now is a rebound."
"Fair enough," Hanabi says lightly.
It is fair enough, but it's not true. A rebound is a step towards getting over someone, and he won't get over Sasuke, any more than he ever got over Minato. He supposes that's how he is: someone who doesn't get over the big things.
Someone, more significantly – more alarmingly, more pathetically, more amusingly – for whom unrequited loves are the big things.
"Aren't you at all tempted by Neji?" he drawls. "He'd be convenient."
Hanabi snorts. "Even the humans have understood that a man who's not prepared to die for anything isn't fit to live."
"Ah," Kakashi says, ending the call. He hasn't done the dishes: drinks from a glass still greasy with the imprint of Sasuke's lips.
He's still in the kitchen, slouched once more in the stuffed chair he's using with the table – which Sasuke always gave him crap for, snobby little bitch that he was – when his phone rings again, Minato's name splayed over the screen.
"Hmm?"
His voice comes honeyed, slow and thick and rather sweet, but the imminent risk of him terminating the call must be obvious, because Minato for once cuts to the chase, "I'm not calling for myself, Kakashi. I'm calling for Sasuke."
"Sasuke has my number."
Minato does the smart thing in ignoring this statement. "There are issues with the seal. To the point I'm contemplating if we should just cut it off and bank on Kyuubi being able to heal him."
"Are you attempting to threaten me? That never was your strong suit."
A silence, either confused or pretending to be confused. "I've no interest in harming Sasuke. On the contrary, given his bond with Naruto. But the seal is causing considerable damage, which makes me consider…"
"It's pointless," Kakashi says. Minato should know this already, because Naruto will: if Sasuke hadn't, he'd have mutilated himself years ago. "The seal is burnt into his soul. The physical mark's just a manifestation. If you remove it and Kyuubi heals him, it'll reappear."
"That's unfortunate," Minato remarks. "He won't let Tsunade examine it, but…"
"He won't let me near it either."
"Still," Minato says, and it's not a question, "you'd be willing to have a look."
Kakashi drops the phone without bothering to end the call.
Slouched in the stuffed chair, he has that freefall feeling, like when you're about to fall asleep but come abruptly awake because you feel you're going over an edge.
He falls so long and so hard that he startles when the phone rings again. For some stupid reason he picks it up.
Itachi briefs him on an upcoming mission. It's not the first time Itachi's declined a mission because he prefers another one, and then expects Kakashi to pick up what he's discarded. Kakashi no longer minds.
"Did you know?" Itachi asks then, in a voice he doesn't use about work. Kakashi's come to think of it as that, as work, rather than as a holy calling. "About Sasuke. That he commanded that level of power."
"I assumed."
A silence.
"Why?" Kakashi drawls. "Did you make a bad bargain, trading him in to Orochimaru?"
"I wouldn't say that."
"No matter. I reckon he'll inherit Oto, once he's killed Orochimaru."
"Oh? And then will he inherit Hatake, when he kills you?"
Kakashi shrugs. "He can have it if he wants."
"I thought you were going to let Hanabi Hyuuga make an honest man out of you."
Kakashi shrugs again. It's a habit he's picked up from Sasuke. "I suppose I couldn't leave Hatake in better hands than hers." She'd revitalise the clan, reclaim its importance, its power. "I'd have to say she's a little young for me."
"Fourteen, isn't she? Sasuke wasn't any older when you involved yourself with him."
"Sasuke wasn't a child. You'd seen to that."
"We'll have to agree to disagree."
"Goodbye, Itachi."
Sasuke was of course unforgivably young, but Kakashi's committed so many unforgivable acts, statutory rape doesn't merit much consideration.
He's lost in a labyrinth of his own making, faulty decision after faulty decision caging him in. None too eager to find the heart, because it will be blackened, putrefied. He will need to cleanse it, and won't be able to. His head lolls back, he stares numbly at the ceiling. Perhaps that's what he needs to do: do an Itachi, cleanse himself of these impure human emotions.
He's lost Sasuke, like he lost Minato. This time too, he did it to himself.
xxxxx
Two days later he brushes wind-swept hair out of his face. He's completed Itachi's hand-me-down mission, and stares into the distance: at the skyline of Mist Town, just at the edge of his vision.
Sasuke was nine during Mist Town Massacre. He was tiny for a nine year old, could have been mistaken for seven or even six, particularly with Orochimaru's large hands all over him. Ruffling his hair, stroking under his chin, closing around his shoulder. Sasuke still knew, then, still knew it physically and instinctively, that those touches were wrong. Stood basically trembling with desire to get away, every muscle in his body locked against squirming.
Until suddenly the demons were close enough, and the seal opened. Orochimaru lifted his touch away with extreme haste as the light enveloped Sasuke, whose eyes were spinning red and feral. There could be no doubt, not the slightest hint of it, that Sasuke would go nova before he allowed Orochimaru to lay another finger on him, would burn them both out of existence if Orochimaru tried.
Afterwards, when the demons were gone and the bloodbath done with, when Orochimaru had had his stupid duel with Jiraiya and Jiraiya had been crippled – after all this, when Sasuke was small again and alone, no longer a punishing archangel but a little boy with dirt under his fingernails and his eyelids heavy with sleep, Kakashi picked him up. Sasuke's eyes were still spinning, the redness bleeding out gradually. For some stupid reason he remembered Sasuke as he'd first seen him, in the hospital bed after a failed mission, and then running after Itachi through a summer garden. Sasuke always did have killer instinct, but for a long time it was unhatched. It had broken through its egg shell now, broken out into the world so that Sasuke was brimming with it, burning with it almost to the exclusion of everything else, in love with his calling, with the mission, which was the only thing left, and – Kakashi was looking at himself.
Sasuke still trusted him, at that point. Sasuke was a little fool, and Kakashi was a big one. Because Sasuke for a long time had that unearned trust in him, looked at him with his eyes full of this completely unmerited belief.
In the end of course it was untenable, like Sasuke's refusal to succumb to Orochimaru was ultimately untenable. After all, Kakashi tells himself, there's no such thing as someone who doesn't break under torture, it's just a question of how long, how much, before it happens. And Sasuke held out for a long time. It was after Naruto was gone, going on four years after Sasuke was left to Orochimaru's tender mercies, that he caved.
At twelve, Kakashi surmises, he still knew Orochimaru's touch was wrong, but the knowledge was intellectual, a matter of principle and pride. The emotional instinct to shrug away had been eroded. Orochimaru still dragged his fingers under Sasuke's chin, and Sasuke now could snort and step away from him easily, hurt and humiliated but also eased by the touch. Orochimaru laughed, no longer threatened by physical distance, because he'd finally made Sasuke his, seeped into his bones and his thoughts. His praise – his real praise, hard-earned and harsh, far from the extravagant, omnipresent flattery – made Sasuke glow as well as glower.
There was even – Kakashi had seen Orochimaru kiss a very small Sasuke, who bit and screamed and struggled. Tears slipping down his face, from eyes absolutely crazed with hatred. But eventually Sasuke stopped struggling all the time, and decided to survive. Eventually, perhaps, it started to mean that at least someone wanted him, at least for something.
He's seen Sasuke – later on, after they were involved with each other – he's seen Sasuke kiss Orochimaru. To shut him up, certainly, but with every appearance of enjoying himself. Has, generally, seen Sasuke speak to and even touch Orochimaru quite naturally, in the way of people who are deeply familiar with each other, who dominate each other's worlds. Perhaps, if he's playing shrink, Sasuke did this in order to exercise power over Orochimaru in the only way he could. Perhaps he did it in order to punish himself. Kakashi never asked, and Sasuke never told him.
But yes, Kakashi decides, now that it no longer matters: Orochimaru was the ground Sasuke stood on, for all it was riddled with earth quakes, sudden sink holes.
Once, when Sasuke was in his bath tub, Kakashi had sort of brought this up. He'd come home to find Sasuke sitting in the bath, looking rather like a mythical figure out of some heroic legend improbably transported into everyday life.
"Have we been watching The Little Mermaid again?" he drawled, dragging a fingertip up Sasuke's arm, chasing goose bumps over the damp skin.
"Hn." Sasuke's thick, heavy hair was tame for once, slicked to his face. Kakashi saw Sasuke all the time, saw him so often that his beauty hardly registered anymore, but it dawned on him new and sharp in that moment.
He traced the deep bruising around the seal. "Do you still mean to kill him?"
Sasuke frowned. "Obviously."
Kakashi shrugged. Tilted Sasuke's chin up for a kiss, because Sasuke would probably leave soon if Kakashi didn't manage to shut himself up. "I meant you seemed less overtly hostile to him lately."
Sasuke had already been stiff and unresponsive under his touch, and this didn't change. When Kakashi released him he sighed, looked past him.
Kakashi reminded himself that he'd already come to grips with the fact that he wasn't important enough for Sasuke to fight with, so there was no reason to be cut by it now. "I suppose," he said lightly, "it's like that story says."
Sasuke lifted an eyebrow. "Your old favourite?"
Kakashi hummed non-committaly, stroking Sasuke's throat until Sasuke shrugged him off.
"You can love a rabid dog," Sasuke intoned, "and still understand that it needs to be put down?"
"Mmh." It was from a story that had touched him, back before Kakashi built his walls too high to allow that. Before he learnt to live life lightly, breeze through things so they couldn't touch him.
That's something Itachi told him, probably quoting too because God knows Itachi has never managed a native or original understanding of the human condition: Isn't that what you're trying to do? Living life so lightly as to barely allow the possibility of a human touch.
"Ah," said Sasuke, an eyebrow and a corner of his mouth titled up. "I suppose each man must kill the thing he loves. But weren't you talking about Itachi when you said that?"
"Ah," Kakashi echoed, sinking down on the floor and leaning his head against the edge of the tub. "I suppose I was."
Understanding that something needs to be done and being able to do it are not synonymous. Kakashi understands perfectly and has for years that he needs to kill Orochimaru, kill Itachi, and take Sasuke far away from them.
He turns his back on Mist Town and memories and walks away. This is all – what is it they say? A feeling that can never go anywhere. This is all a feeling that can never go anywhere, will never amount to anything, never do anyone any good.