A/N: In this universe, obviously Kakashi did not quit the ANBU (which I believe he was once part of), and hasn't yet become a Jounin instructor. Obviously eventually he will, and I plan to skip ahead a little and have him teach Team 7 soon… well, you'll see. We'll get to Sakura and Naruto soon.

Anyway, on with the fic:

Kakashi sees himself in a mirror and loves his own reflection.

Look-Alike

Kakashi watches him fight, and he is in love. Not with the boy, of course, but with the graceful fluidity of him, the uncaring eyes, the lack of acknowledgment. It is beautiful and strange and frightening to see. Itachi fascinates him in a totally different way than anyone before, except maybe his teacher.

But then, Yondaime had always smiled, in the end. After everything, the illusion of invincibility would be gone and behind it would be that caring person whom Kakashi respected for more than his battle talent. For Itachi, there was no end and no smile. The boy simply continues, reducing alert levels little by little but never quite stopping.

Kakashi knows that person. He's been there, in that terrifying life of always holding out, mission after mission after mission until there is no longer any reason or desire to relax, until everything simply blurs and it's hard to believe that you were born in a time of peace, that such a thing even exists. It is cruel, but he loves watching Itachi because Itachi is what he used to be, what he could be, if he needs to. Kakashi doesn't have it in him to feel pity or sympathy.

The boy finally slows from his fight, and Kakashi, who never does interfere (for perfectly practical reasons, he doesn't want to startle the boy) comes out from the shadows and watches openly as the corpse of the enemy nin is efficiently bagged for later investigation. Itachi is still young, and short for his age to boot, so Kakashi takes the body bag from him silently and puts it over his shoulder.

Their teams are still scattered, Itachi's A team is off putting up a barrier and Kakashi's own B team is looking for a base of operations. On their shared frequency there's a hushed conversation going between Genma (who only joined to pay off his mortgage quickly) and one of the new recruits who just joined this month. From the way the man's voice cracks Kakashi can tell he will not survive the ANBU for two years. In a little while he will disappear, or quit, or be hospitalized. He's seen it all before.

The boy—man beside him has been in the ANBU for much longer than two years. Itachi joined when Kakashi was just barely starting to think about quitting, and for some reason that might have made all the difference. Kakashi could have been a Jounin by now, his own obligatory two year tour is long finished, but he's still here, and so is Itachi. Maybe he stays to watch the boy who isn't a boy anymore, and maybe he stays because Itachi brought out his own need to kill, to keep going despite his sanity telling him he should stop. Kakashi doesn't joke about the ANBU anymore, he knows why it's bad for you and why the obligatory tour can be cut short for a variety of reasons and why no one's obliged to stay. The fact that he does it all anyway could point to a masochistic streak he'll probably never get rid of.

Why Itachi stays? He doesn't know. Never asked and never intends to. A man's reasons and demons are his own and no one should have to explain the things in their heads. Keeping quiet about your mental health is something Kakashi can understand intimately, remembering his own two years of silent penitence, with Obito's face always behind his eyes. By now it's faded to the back of his mind, and maybe if he hadn't stayed in the ANBU he would be alright now, a normal Jounin, maybe with a lover or some friends and drinking buddies.

He doesn't have drinking buddies or friends or a lover. He doesn't think he ever will anymore. He doesn't know anyone who would really understand. Not ask questions, sure, but that's not enough anymore.

So instead he spends his nights and days and afternoons doing the jobs the rest of the village tries to forget about, with the silent leader of A team at his side. Itachi watches him, and Kakashi stares back without fear. Sometimes his mind tries to tell him he sees something in the boy which is terrible, and that he should say something or do something to help, but he doesn't and he won't, ever. It doesn't even matter whether whatever he could say would matter to Itachi, Kakashi just doesn't want to.

It is a perverse pleasure, to see someone else who is as blood-streaked and tired and old as him, and still enjoys it, still keeps going. It makes Kakashi hungry to continue, too.

He thinks of Itachi as his comrade. He would save the boy, if he has the chance. It goes without saying that Kakashi will give his life for his teammates, and for Itachi's teammates, and for Itachi himself. He isn't so sure Itachi knows it, and if he does most likely he doesn't trust Kakashi to really save him. It's probably for the best, Kakashi doesn't really trust himself either. In a way, it is good that Itachi is someone who will never ask him for help, who Kakashi cannot imagine dying.

He thinks Itachi would kill for him, if he found he needed to. It is an evil thought. Kakashi can't quite accept everything he sees in that boy, no matter how much he thinks of them as alike Itachi is always one step away, one step less human, more destructive than him. He isn't so sure it's a bad thing. Sometimes he thinks he should try to be colder, just forget about everything and become a killing machine. It certainly looks easier: Itachi is always calm and collected and no matter how many times Kakashi has watched the boy sleep he never seems to dream. Kakashi dreams, and he wishes he didn't.

Sometimes he wonders if this isn't an obsession. It feels like and yet unlike what he felt watching Obito die, that sort of endless anger, sadness that seems impossible to contain or overcome, total isolation, like being stuck in a room training alone for days and days without another human being in sight. It feels like that all the time, with Itachi, watching those huge black eyes ignoring him, or sometimes staring back openly. When he is ignored Kakashi thinks Itachi is trying to tell him to go away. Or maybe he really doesn't know he's being watched. Or maybe he just stops caring. When he is watched in return Kakashi has that silly insane feeling that Itachi knows his innermost thoughts and just doesn't give a damn. The fact that he knows makes Kakashi look back at himself in horror at his own thought. The fact that he doesn't care just encourages Kakashi.

Sometimes he wonders if this isn't more, if he isn't crossing a line he really shouldn't be, with a seventeen year old boy. Kakashi cares about his comrades, it is the only real moral he keeps with any regularity, and he would never hurt him. And then, he looks at Itachi and wonders if there's even something there that he can hurt. He wants to touch so badly, just some sort of intimacy with another person who understands a little of what goes on in Kakashi's mind. It is obsessive, the way he wants to get closer and closer until Itachi has to acknowledge him.

He thinks of it sometimes, but eventually realizes he likes Itachi better as that untouchable glass person he is in real life. He doesn't really want to touch the boy, would obviously never hurt or even encourage him. He thinks that doing any of that would make Itachi more human than Kakashi wants him to be. He doesn't think he could stand it, seeing Itachi vulnerable, the way he himself is sometimes, when he's relaxed enough to just say whatever's on his mind. No, keeping him at a distance keeps him exactly the way Kakashi wants him, cold and ruthless and uncaring.

And if Itachi isn't like that, doesn't talk or look vulnerable in the end, well Kakashi isn't sure that it wouldn't be even more frightening. After all, ANBU is one thing, but sometimes he thinks that Itachi is just born like that, with that frightening emptiness. Kakashi isn't like that and he can't accept it.

He realizes that the kind of intimacy he sometimes craves is exactly what he shouldn't pursue. He knows with a doomed certainty that Itachi is possibly the only person who understands him, and also the only person who has absolutely nothing to say on the matter. It might be that he doesn't care, but somehow Kakashi thinks that he is simply incapable of helping.

Sometimes, Itachi reminds him of a mirror. Kakashi can see himself in the boy: that quiet certainty and coldhearted disregard he himself was so famous for. He wonders what that says about himself, that the person whom he wants most is the one who is also exactly like himself, a dark mirror of the things he hates most. A narcissus complex that is ignored the only way Kakashi knows how: by pushing it off on someone else.

He tries to tell himself that what he really wants in Itachi is someone to justify his own empty, hungry way of life. He wants to see another person who lives in the same world Kakashi does and doesn't care. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes he just feels like a pedophile, because Itachi is 9 years younger than him and not even legal and nothing should, in theory, make thinking of him like that right.

Theory doesn't work in the ANBU. It doesn't work in real life at all. In the end of the day all Kakashi has to fall back on from his own insecurities is Itachi's outward certainty in his own existence. Whether it's wrong or right, he has nothing else.

Sometimes he thinks that's all he deserves.

END

A/N: Kakashi still blames himself for too many things, maybe. I don't think he ever quite forgave himself. Itachi brings out that cold-heartedness he used to live in, before Obito. Despite having changed, sometimes it's easier to go back to the old pattern and try to forget.

I think Kakashi is not even thinking of Itachi most of the time here, but of himself. It's more a Kakashi introspective than anything else.