Kakashi's second trip to Wolf Island was both easier and harder than the first. Easier because he'd been given a small motor boat to use, and because he already knew his way around the rocks. Harder because he knew what he'd find. Before he'd been in terror of being too late, of finding Iruka hurt… or dead. But this time there was no hope. He knew that, for him at least, Iruka was already lost.
He tied up the boat, leapt up the cliff and ran along the dusty road to the castle. Somehow no matter how dry and clear the air on the mainland, this place was foggy. Not clean seafog either but reddish smog that seemed to have absorbed the rank odour of the island's blood soaked soil.
Inside the castle he stealthed upstairs, picked the lock, took a deep breath, then swung open the door. Beyond the screen Iruka was sitting on the far end of the bed with his unbuttoned shirt hanging open. Shoulders hunched, head drooped, staring at nothing. Kakashi was shocked to see him so disheveled, or was the word debauched? Dark eyes that were reddened and heavily circled turned towards him. Iruka looked really tired, he obviously hadn't slept well last night, if at all. The reason why wasn't exactly a mystery.
When Iruka saw him he jerked back in surprise, falling off the bed in a graceless sprawl. "Keep away from me. Damn you, I'll never be what you want. Just leave me alone."
Kakashi's guts twisted into a knot. So that was the way it was going to be. "Iruka, I've been sent to get you, you're to come with me. Now." He reached to grab his arms.
His weapons were gone but Iruka wasn't defenseless. With a few quick seals he blasted the other man across the room. "I'm not going anywhere with you, just leave me alone dammit."
Kakashi quickly regained his footing and brushed his hand across the wall. He didn't think he could get any angrier, but for a chuunin the man had power, the stones were chipped where he'd crashed into them.
"I won't tell you again, you're coming with me."Despite his efforts to stay calm, hisvoice was clipped and harsher than he'd intended.
In three swift moves he bound the smaller man hand and foot, slung him over his shoulder, and teleported beyond the castle walls. Iruka didn't struggle as much as he'd expected, and he seemed lighter than he remembered too. It was probably just adrenalin. But if so that wasn't the only thing making his heart pound.
Contact with the other man set sent flames of desire raging through him. The scent of his hair and skin was saturating his senses, and forcing him to use chakra to prevent blood from gathering somewhere that was way too inconvenient right now. He was acutely aware that if he turned his head just a few inches, he'd be able to brush his lips across the caramel flesh revealed by the flapping shirt. The tip of his tongue slipped between his lips under his mask, as if it had a will of its own, craving the taste and texture of that delicious tan skin.
Kakashi bit down on his tongue, hoping the pain would sharpen his focus. Even Morino Ibiki couldn't think up torture this brutal. It wasn't working, he had to stop and calm himself for a few moments, collect his scattered wits before he could go on. He spotted a small ruined house against a stand of weather-beaten trees. It would do. Most of the roof had caved in but the walls were still standing. It would hold his prisoner well enough for as long as he needed.
Seasons of fallen leaves had collected on the floor and matted to form a natural covering, littered here and there with rocks that may have once anchored the roof. Kakashi entered through the doorless opening, dumped Iruka in a corner and untied him. He knelt down, taking a few long moments to reacquaint himself with that treacherously sweet face. Iruka's eyes looked glazed, dead, with his gaze fixed firmly on the floor.
Kakashi felt like hitting him just to get a response. "Dammit Iruka! Look at me! Don't you at least owe me that much?"
He grabbed the teacher's face in his hands, forcing him to look forward. Grateful as never before that his mask was hiding most of the anguish on his own face. "It's alright, I get it. Whatever was between us, or that I thought was between us, is over. I'm sorry if I scared you into something that you didn't really want."
He stroked upwards snapping a hairband, spreading the other man's hair so that it hung loose around his face. Then grabbed his head from behind, roughly this time, and pulled down his mask enough to bruise their lips in a fierce kiss.
"Fuck! I've been thinking about you all the time. Every fucking day. I've been dreaming about you."
He ran his hands down, beneath the open shirt, feeling tight muscles that flinched and quivered at his touch, down further to the waistband of his pants.
His voice was low and dangerous. "Have you any idea how much I've wanted you? How much I want you right now?"
The other man looked up, eyes dead, face blank. "Just do whatever you're going to do and go away. Hurt me, rape me if you like, it doesn't matter."
Rape him? That's what he expected? Kakashi flipped the smaller man onto his stomach as rage flared through him, hot tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes.
He crouched overIruka's limp body, on all fours, breathing words into his ear. "You think I'll force you. For as long as we've been together that's what you think I'll do?"
Iruka's voice had no more emotion than his eyes. "You're not him. You can't trick me anymore so just beat me or kill me, or whatever you've come to do. Be cruel or kind, it doesn't matter, I'm past the point where you can confuse me. I just don't care anymore.
Some note of sincere desperation made it's way through the copy nin's rage, making his mind reel in confusion. "Iruka look at me, it's me Kakashi."
The teacher turned his head and brown eyes met his but stayed completely expressionless. "I told you, you can't trick me anymore. You're good. You look just like him, and sound like him, you even move like him. You really had me fooled for a while. Maybe I wanted to be fooled because I missed him so much, but it doesn't work anymore."
What was going on? Kakashi grabbed the other man's shoulders, sinking his fingers into the flesh. Iruka hissed and flinched in pain. He pulled his hands away sharply then gently lifted the back of the teacher's shirt.
"God Iruka! What have they done to you?"
"Ha! Yes that's good. What have they done." Iruka didn't move. He felt as if his body as well as his heart had turned to stone.
The agony of the truth cut through Kakashi like a jagged blade. So Iruka was trapped in a genjutsu, an illusion. He remembered what he'd seen a week before. The image, copied perfectly by the sharingan, flashed before his eyes. Iruka's back, the back he'd seen heaving and bucking in passion, had been unmarked except for the faded familiar scars. Now it was torn to pieces.
Kakashi's hands started to tremble, despite every once of his will directed at controlling them. He thrust them deep into his jacket pockets. Something small and hard touched a fingertip. It was the letter Iruka had written before he'd left, folded into a tiny square. Kakashi had memorised every word, but it was the last few sentences that stuck in his mind. 'I'm not clever with words the way you are Kakashi, so I'll just say this the way I mean it. I love you with all my heart and I know that you love me. And as long as we both hold onto that one small truth, neither distance nor even death can ever keep us apart.'
A tear seeped into his headband from the sharingan. These were words written by a lover, not a hypocrite. Iruka did love him. He always had. Could the genjutsu have deceived Iruka into thinking that he was having sex with him? It would explain a lot. And he'd run off and left the person he loved most to be brutally whipped. He should have known, should have trusted him. Whoever did this, he'd kill them.
Kakashi rose to his feet. "Come on I'm taking you home."
Iruka rolled over and scooted away so that he was against the wall in the corner of the room. He grimaced in pain as his back made contact with the rough stone. Kakashi caught his hands easily, to stop him from forming seals, then tried to calm the desperate man. "Iruka please, just relax and let me help you. You're going to hurt yourself."
Iruka tried to free himself from the loathsome hands. He tasted bitter bile as his stomach heaved in disgust and he retched onto the ground.
"See, you make me sick. I…I can't take any more. Haven't you stolen enough from me? Just leave me alone, let me die."
The next move didn't really need any thought. A quick blow to back of the skull and he collapsed into a ragged heap. Kakashi slung him over his shoulder and ran towards the path. There was no time to waste on niceties.
Yoko picked up on the unfamiliar chakra the instant she set foot in the castle, and followed in a cloud of red mist. Someone had taken Iruka from her, and that was something that couldn't be allowed. They'd be headed for the break in the cliffs, it was the only place on the island where a boat could land. That was her advantage, she knew this island and they did not.
Kakashi talked gently and calmly as he carried his precious burden, even though he knew Iruka couldn't hear. Finally when they were a few hundred feet from the cliff and the air was fresh with salt from the pounding ocean, he stopped. Someone was blocking his path. Someone shrouded in red mist. He set Iruka on the ground.
"We've been followed and I can't get past him without a fight. I'll come back as soon as I can then we can work this all out."
Fearful of leaving his lover unprotected but unwilling to have him too close to the battle, Kakashi halved the distance between him and his adversary in an eyeblink. She recognised him at once. The Konoha man, Sharigan Hatake. So this teacher was a rare prize if they'd sent their very best to get him back. Hatake would be quite a bonus too. If she captured him maybe the secret for transferring blood limits would finally be revealed.
Yoko stood her ground, so what if he was a famous jounin, the son of White Fang. She's taken the power and the skills of half a dozen jounins. And she wasn't alone. She could feel Ketsuekimusha's blood in her veins, the power of the blood mist enhanced her chakra to ten times its normal level. She could take him, she had to. It was the only way to get back the man she'd made hers. She reached deep into her reserve of stolen jutsus.
Kakashi froze. It was a woman on the road ahead of him. The very woman he'd seen with Iruka in the bedroom, the scene that was burned into his memory. Every conflicted emotion in his body turned to fury.
Iruka woke groggily and rolled into his side. He saw white fire playing in the palm of Kakashi's hand as he faced… another Kakashi. He wasn't even surprised, clearly he'd lost his mind. Everyone was Kakashi now. The battle unfolded like a puppet show. One of the Kakashi's would kill the other, it didn't matter which, or perhaps they'd both die. Neither of them was real, maybe none of them were. Perhaps the copy nin had been a figment of his imagination all along. He smiled to himself, most likely. What real man could be so perfect, so beautiful, so strong? And if such a creature existed how could he possibly be his?
Kakashi molded the chakra in his hand. The fire in his eye burned just as bright. He'd heard that violence was the most intensely lived of all experiences, especially when living was only one possible outcome. And he stood poised on its razor edge. Ready to live or die, for duty…but much more than that, for love.
"Damn you woman, you made him hate me!"
Yoko stopped, her hands half formed into the first seal. She took in the lean scrawny figure, the shaggy white hair, and all at once her mind joined the dots. Sharingan Hatake, Hatake Kakashi, so that's why he was here. He was the scarecrow, her rival, her lover's beloved.
She completed the seals and unleashed a hail of ice daggers. "I'll cut out your heart scarecrow, he's mine now."
"Never."
Kakashi countered with a sheet of white fire that reduced them to harmless water.
She hesitated, what kind of chakra was this? Ordinary fire shouldn't melt her ice. But she had dozens, hundreds, of other jutsus. A moment later blades of flame were roaring towards the copy nin leaving paths of scorched earth in their wake.
Kakashi knew he could dodge them easily but then they'd be headed straight for Iruka. He heaved a wall of rocky soil in front of him. It would let the woman escape but that didn't seem so important now.
The blades slowed but burned through the barrier, demolishing it as if it was a cardboard fake. Well he had other jutsus too, more than a thousand of them. Flaming ribbons burst from the space between his hands, catching the blades and burning them to ash in their hotter fire. Then encircling Yoko in a wall of conflagration. She sent a fountain of silvery bubbles erupting from its center, each one eroding the wall by trapping a flame inside and floating it harmlessly into the sky like a tiny sun.
Kakashi glanced back at Iruka, who was levering himself up onto his elbows. Enough, he had to finish this.
As he flashed through seals the waves below the cliff swirled into the form of a great white beast. Zabuza's water dragon poured up over the rocks, extinguishing the remaining fire and circling the pair like a tornado. Yoko paused in the middle of the seals she was forming. She knew she was beaten. It wasn't just his power, although that was certainly impressive, it was the ferocity of his determination. With all the lives and jutsus she'd stolen, she couldn't match this. But the blood still could. A ruby drop fell from her hand to the ground. As it touched blood oozed to the surface, from deep within the soil, forming thick puddles of crimson. It bubbled like the muck at the edge of a swamp, sending puffs of red into the air.
This soil had been steeped in blood for generations. Blood of murdered innocents that seethed with malice. The dragon let out a scream as deep and desperate as a sinking ship, then melted away into the red mist.
Kakashi gasped for air as the red vapour clung to him, slowing his movements, chilling him with its murderous intent. Even a genius couldn't fight the dead. But then again… If the power of the sharingan could cross the living to another dimension, why shouldn't it be able to cross over the dead? Guide them along the path they'd lost?
He hadn't had time to focus the necessary chakra but the mist was closing in on Iruka too, drawn to his hatred and anger. Fixing the eye where the woman's blood had fallen, he focussed all his energy. The sharingan swirled, there was a pulse in the mist around him, a change in intent from murder to fear. Another pulse… curiosity, and finally understanding, as it started to stream through the tiny portal he'd opened.
Yoko saw the mist disappearing into the ground, her wall of defense collapsing. But Kakashi was close to collapsing too, his chakra so low that there was almost a void around him. She had one last chance.
She drew her sword. So it was down to this, hand to hand. The two most powerful jutsu users in the world, the two who'd taken hundreds of different jutsus, from dozens of different people, would fight their final battle like common soldiers. Well maybe not so common, one of her first victims had been the famous swordsman Zatoichi. She'd taken his life and his skills when she was just fourteen. A ninja genius like Hatake had probably never bothered to master such ordinary techniques.
Kakashi pulled out his short sword in response. Fatigue pressed onto him like a leaden cloak but all he could feel was relief. His available chakra was spent but he hadn't had time to tap into his deeper reserves of strength.
He spoke softly but firmly, his voice carrying across the wet bloody soil. "Surrender now. Just let me take him, there's no need for this to continue."
The woman shook her head. "I'll die before I give him up."
Then so be it.
Kakashi watched as she took her fighting stance. He blinked, it couldn't be. Only the swordsman Zatoichi used that move, and he was killed by one of the Succubus sisters.
A smile curled Kakashi's lips in wry amusement. So that's who he was fighting, the Succubus, no wonder Iruka had been deceived. The feared blood limit siblings whose family had, according to rumour, been the main motivation for the purge of blood limit lines in Hidden Mist. They seduced men with their beauty. Then when their victim's defenses were useless, at the moment of sexual release, they'd take their knowledge, their jutsus and their lives. Too gruesome and bloody even for Bloody Mist.
Under other circumstances he'd have stopped to wonder how Iruka was still alive.
Yoko lunged forward. Kakashi danced away, weaving around her like a silk banner in a breeze, anticipating every move. Slash, feint to the left. Stab forward, take a step back. Strike from above, leap overhead to land behind. This was getting nowhere. She took up the stance for Zatoichi's ultimate killing attack. The air prickled around them with the cutting forces charging her blade. She drove the sword forward to his heart with laser accuracy and lightening speed… it passed harmlessly under his left arm.
As he'd predicted it brought her within reach. Before she could recover her balance, he struck deep into her right shoulder and brought his blade down in a sweep across her belly. She stared at the gaping edges of her wound, more in surprise than pain, and sank to her knees holding in her entrails with both hands.
One blow. That's all he'd needed. Sharingan Hatake truly was a genius. She hadn't really had a chance. There was no shame in losing, the sting came from regret.
Blood rushed in her ears, mixed with her sister's voice. 'Find someone to love and you can live like a normal woman, like me.'
"So Scarecrow, every time he made love to me he thought I was a man." She made an effort at a smile. "Well I suppose that explains some of the things he tried to do."
She coughed painfully and a trickle of blood escaped from the corner of her mouth. Her expression became grim, as if she was fighting back tears. "That means there was no way he would ever have really loved me was there?"
Kakashi stood over her fallen body, kunai in hand, ready to deliver her deathblow. Now he understood. She loved Iruka, just as he did. The infamous Succubus who had used love to lure so many men to their deaths and to steal their power and their jutsus had fallen in love. It didn't justify what she'd done here, but in a perverse way it explained it.
Yoko pulled herself up painfully, reached for the weapon in his hand and pulled it down into her heart. It didn't matter now, there was no escape for them. She'd leave the rest to her Master, Ketsuekimusha. The power of the blood mist would reunite her with her love, in death.
Hundreds of miles to the northeast, a young woman gasped and set down the pot of fish stock she was preparing. Her legs trembled and folded under her so that she was kneeling on the cold tile floor, then she tore at her long white braid, and cried.
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
A.N. Sooo… someone had to write it sometime. A fight to the death for the love of Iruka-sensei.
A. N. 2 I know, I know I'm sorry. I'm too much of a bleeding empath, I just can't do completely villainous villains. Bad Tampopo, back in your box, don't you know that animé villains are evil and vicious, especially the white haired ones (no pun intended but isn't Cowboy Bebop the best ever?).