Something Like That
By gelfling
gelfling8604@yahoo.com
***
LSD melts your mind, not in your hand.
Does this have to do with the dragon in your pants?
I'm going to be a lobster when I grow up.
***
How many people made promises they knew they couldn't keep?
I love you. I'll always stay with
you. Nothing will harm you while I'm
here. I'll make everything all right.
How many promises did people make that they kept? How many did they break? How many did they want to break, deep down inside. How could one tell? Did anything ever make sense?
Nothing ever stayed the same; it was always changing, people dying and going away and stealing little parts of the left-behind soul, people living and coming in and giving little parts of their soul to the waiting. It was always like that, always changing and never changing. It was the wind and water, shifting and swirling but always water and wind no matter what the season or time was. It was always the same. It was always changing.
Kakashi wasn't really a people person. He worked well in groups, could mingle and tease and insinuate himself into any conversation usually with some hidden innuendo or acting like a lost idiot in desperate need of the bathroom, but he wasn't really a people person, and there was a good reason behind that.
Kakashi understood people.
He understood what drove them, what made them tick and how to make them angry and how to make them relaxed; that skill—understanding—truly was one of his most useful assets as a shinobi. Any drunken idiot with a knife could kill, and after a couple years training the arts of ninjutsu could be manipulated by the not-so-gifted—those things didn't make a shinobi unique. Useful, but not unique, and usefulness had its limits.
The hard thing about being unique was making sure you weren't unique where it showed. You were secretly unique except when you weren't to the people who needed to know. But you couldn't be unique all the time; it ticked people off, and scared them. That created unnecessary complications. Complications = = Bad!
So he couldn't tell Sakura that Sasuke was not perfect, partly because she wouldn't believe him and mostly because it would hurt her too much, and that would be bad for her and bad for the team and bad for him. Badness all around like flies at an all-night takeout diner.
Her illusions, foolish as they were, helped hold the team together. The rivalry between Naruto and Sasuke that would grow with time and passion into something that could be twisted and dark that would tear wounds through them that would never heal or could be warm and elastic, but still capable of destroying the team. They hurt each other; they hurt Sakura hard who never hurt them as much as they hurt her and it just…
He knew how to fix it. He'd have to probably yell and knock some heads together, tell them to stop being so self-absorbed and selfish, blind to everyone else except themselves and actually start doing it, that thing that would hold the team together and make them indestructible, unbeatable and—
It was so irritating.
--and then they would achieve their individual goals through teamwork. They were capable of it, it was right at their fingertips when they weren't thinking with their egos and desires, but actually thinking rationally and…
Stop. Breathe in. Breathe out. Good. All right!
He couldn't force them. He knew that. It was just so…nerve wrecking to watch them blunder and dance on the edge of the knife. He had learned not to get nervous about what people did a while ago, since he couldn't control their lives and they always managed to sew things back up together, except the times when they didn't and usually died or something stupid like that. Adult fiction was so much more entertaining than watching kids fall flat on their faces. Still…
It would be so easy to tell Sasuke that Naruto would never hurt him, could never hurt him, no matter what he did or how he felt. Naruto was clumsy, but not cruel. It would be easy to tell Sakura that Sasuke actually did care about her the way she did about him, but she didn't love him romantically at all anyway; she liked the idea, but she wasn't in love with him. It would easy, then messy, but it would make things smooth.
--At times like that, Kakashi would stretch, watch to see who was looking, and then wander off somewhere to take a quiet nap, tranquility filling his chest cavity idly while he practiced one of his many…'hobbies'--
And artificial. A lie. Fake. It would unravel, this thing that held them together as a team if he pointed out the strands, so it was better just to trust them that they would make it out okay and not make any promises. No more promises. Promises were evil things. He always broke the ones he made.
So…Kakashi wasn't a people person. It was hard to have that knowledge and not make use of it, so he avoided the whole mess altogether when he could.
He had been quietly relieved when Naruto managed to break down the walls isolating and driving Sasuke slowly insane with his locked-in ghosts and suicidal hatred and forcibly shoved himself into the other boy's life whether he had wanted it or not; for the better. But Kakashi had seen it coming, so it didn't surprise him though it could have easily gone the other way, could have shattered them both. Easily.
It didn't though, and the team was a little bit stronger and a little bit weaker because of the sudden shift in relationships. Sakura was the one now isolated instead of Sasuke, with walls that couldn't be smashed down a hammer but had to be taken down with a delicacy that neither Naruto nor Sasuke possessed. Kakashi realized he might have to see to her personally…if she would allow her teacher treating her like a friend. She might not; he might be able to steer someone else better suited for the job in her direction like Ino or Lee, perhaps even Iruka-sensei, but that would be tricky. It would take work. It was something to muse on, certainly.
But right now, even though Sakura's isolation in the team was a growing problem, it wasn't murderous. The creature that has taken to stalking and observing his two other students was. Sure, he hadn't killed anyone yet, but that didn't mean anything. Hell, Kakashi had a bed, but that didn't mean he was in it every night. …Sometimes he was in someone else's.
He had hurt the village pretty bad previously, but this wasn't about a grudge—grudges took up too much energy, and Kakashi always lost interest halfway through--it just wasn't safe to leave him to his own devices.
Kakashi had considered physically throwing him out of the village, and discredited the idea immediately. He had observed him silently before realizing that he was still being detected, and deliberately stopped trying, making a point to make his presence known at sometime.
Kakashi understood this one too.
He was hungry and lost. He had always been lost, but he had been lost with a purpose, lost with a destination in mind. There had been something for him to do, a point for him to make, but now because of what Naruto went ahead and said and did and shattered down his wall with the same mallet he had shattered Sasuke's, he was now lost without a purpose. He didn't have a destination anymore, didn't have a purpose anymore except to find out how someone became un-alone. How someone became happy (whatever the heck that was—and Kakashi rolled his eye). How someone became loved. He was more unstable now than he was then—he just wasn't as homicidal, which was a small improvement.
It's a vague destination and not the best kind to have, but it was what he had and what he wanted so he went after it, starting with the first obvious place which was Naruto's apartment and, more specifically, Naruto's bedroom, watching what went on inside with a spying jutsu Kakashi had already copied.
He had grinned the first time he saw it.
It was amusing and ironic, like the day he found an illustration for sexual education in his adult fiction novels right next to an advertisement to buy more cucumbers.
The terror of darkness and blood and hate having the same perverted interest as himself was too much of a temptation for him to pass by unteased. But…he didn't get a perverted high out of voyeurism—he was actually there for a point. It was a stupid place to learn that point, to discover one's place in the world and how one started to belong to something and how one was loved, but it was a place to start, so he did. It didn't make it any less comical.
Kakashi already offered him the gay edition of Icha Icha Paradise. He doubted he'd ever get the issue back, and kept on making the point to get it the next morning and kept on forgetting all about it. He'd get it back eventually when he wanted it enough, right now it was going to a good cause, and that was enough to make him satisfied for the moment.
"Geez, don't you have somewhere you have to be?"
"Your kind sleep."
"My kind wants my book back—without drool, please. Sheesh, I have to admit this was fun in the beginning, but now it's just boring."
"Go away."
"Nah, it's bad enough I have to be freezing at home and here—at least at home I get to see more than just a little leg. I get the full enchilada…how can this interest you for this long? It's so boring now…"
"They're your students."
"Yeah, they sure do learn quickly, don't they? I'm so proud of them, and I only had to lend Naruto-kun a couple books and a few tips, and look where he took off with them. Added his own personal touches too. I'm proud of that boy. And anyway, I'm not the one getting off the show."
"Go away."
"I'd tell you to go climb a tree, but since we're already in one…well, that'd be kinda silly, wouldn't it? Awwwweeee…someone's blushing; don't you just look like the sweetest little—Ow!"
"Fuck off."
"Well that was nice! That was my hand you know!"
"I was aiming for your head."
"You're not very good at physical combat, are you? Far too used to your weapon… …see you later kid. You don't have to say good-bye or anything, since your jaw might break from the strain. I'd hate to be responsible…sort of. My head, eh? Huh…funny kid. Stupid kid. Funny, stupid kid."
***
A/N: This is an experimental piece, meant to continue on in TWO more chapters, no more, no less, because I need to learn to control my big mouth! I have a big mouth! I emphasize experimental; I'm trying to get a grip on Kakashi's character, it's so very elusive.