Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, and Kakashi is sufficiently evasive, trollerish, and weird. Not always in that order.
"We drink the poison our minds pour for us, and wonder why we feel so sick."
-Atticus
Hatake Kakashi flips himself through the Hokage's window and congratulates himself on a mother well evaded. There is nothing wrong with Inuzuka Tsume, except that she is the over protective mother of one over eager puppy who would get herself killed in short order except for her freakish amount of good luck. Said over eager puppy seems blessed with people who loved her well it would seem, her teammates, her mother, her little brother, her vindictive Nara-sensei and his teal eyed wife, and even Uchiha Fugaku. That last one is odd, but not entirely unfeasible. Just odd that's all, that the stone faced bastard would like anyone who isn't his blood relative.
"You seem to have taken a liking to Inuzuka Hana-chan, Kakashi." The Hokage remarks, and Hatake Kakashi stops congratulating himself. I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
It is the only explanation for this.
In all actuality he'd fallen out of bed sometime just after midnight with the overwhelming urge to wash his hand clean of blood that he knew wasn't there and he hasn't gone back to sleep since, but still. It's the thought that matters.
"Maa, I don't have any idea what you're talking about, Hokage-sama." He pulls out his most recent addition to his bookshelf. Jiraiya-sama actually wrote decently even if half of the book is mostly erotic adult literature involving drama, threesomes, and more drama. It is currently better than most alternatives, because at least humorous porn didn't talk about death and dying. His mind whispered enough of it as it is. Of all the people he'd failed.
Of all the people that he had to apologize to.
"You visited a hospital of your own volition." The Hokage steeples his hands over the pile of paperwork on his desk. "You do have to realize that Inuzuka Hana-chan is not Nohara Rin."
And okay, that stings. That stings because yes, there'd been that one time, one time-or two, or three, or four, or about a million-when it seemed like those big brown eyes belonged in someone else's face, when the concern reflected made him feel like he was back on Minato-sensei's genin team again and that Obito was just around the corner. When if she didn't open her mouth to complain about Idiot Scarecrows, it would almost seem like Rin, or some alternate dimension of Rin.
But he didn't lie to himself, Inuzuka Hana is a passing curiosity that had very few personality traits with his late teammate in common. You were just marveling over how her latest haircut made her look more like Rin again. He quashes the treacherous voice in his brain, and turns a page. You have spent over six years on this passing curiosity, Kakashi-kun. He quashes the voice even harder, although it sounds like Minato-sensei, and turns another page. You should learn to be happy again, Kakashi-kun 'ttebane! That one sounds like Kushina-neechan. That one deserved the most quashing.
"Nohara Rin is dead." Is dead, is dead, is so very dead, I'm sorry. Sorry Obito, it's all my fault. "And Inuzuka Hana is very much alive." He'd made sure of that while checking on her this morning. He needs to visit the memorial stone again after this. He'd spent too much time in the hospital that morning watching what might have been a nearly toasted puppy sleep the sleep of the innocent.
And he'd always had a fondness for puppies, even if they walked on two legs.
The Hokage sighs. "Whatever you say." A mission scroll comes flying through the air towards his head. "There was an incident reported at the Kusa border, go check to make sure that Kumo is not planning an invasion."
He takes the mission scroll, and for the second time that morning, flees an uncomfortable situation.
"Reported insurgency at the Konoha-Kusa border. One incident." The mission report is written in a truly horrible scrawl that would outdo even his own chicken scratch if given half the chance. Was the writer raised by wolves? He muses, and unrolls the scroll further. "One team comprised of Nii Yugito and presumably genin teammates (See information regarding Iwa Chunin Exams) met with Konoha's routine border patrol (See information regarding team members in Appendix A). Team Leader Inuzuka Hana-" And here his mind short circuits. Damn that old man.
He knew who headed this mission and he still gave it to me to check back on. Damn him.
Back to the scroll. "Inuzuka Hana was challenged to a fight by Nii Yugito. There was a minor skirmish on which both sides suffered no life threatening injuries. With Nii put into a position where retreat became necessary the Kumo Team retreated. The border was patrolled at hourly intervals for forty eight hours after the event but no further sightings of the Kumo team can be reported. The rest of the week was uneventful."
The mission report is as dry as sawdust. What did 'minor skirmish' and 'position where retreat became necessary' even mean? Damn her Nara-sensei who works in Intel and could probably make even normal language write in code with as many layers of meaning as there are grains of sand in Suna.
Damn him too.
It's too early for this, despite it being nearly noon. He heads towards the memorial stone.
"I'm sorry, Obito." He traces the name on the black stone with no sense of purpose this morning. Even here, Inuzuka Hana had made memories that plagued him still.
"Tou-san's dead." She laughs. "But then so are you, and his name isn't here." And neither is Hatake Sakumo's name here, although he supposes that their fathers had died for different reasons. One, a freak accident in RnD. The other...suicide.
He pushes the thought away.
"That was nearly a year ago, Hatake-san." A pause. "And I don't think death is all it's cracked up to be." She'd spoken with the jaded cynicism of those who'd seen death at about seven.
And yet, and yet, he'd had seen her running down the street shrieking with laughter with her teammates, had seen the love that she so easily gave to people around her.
A little girl carrying her little brother on her shoulders as they walked home from the park. The sun dyes the sky red above them. He says something, and she laughs, clear, free, and bright.
He pushes that thought away as well.
"I wasn't enough to save you." And he just stays there for at least another hour tracing names and seeing faces.
And remembering that that idiot girl had once told him that someone else had whispered Rin at the sight of her.
It is not enough. It will never be enough. But he has sins to pay for, and his hands will never be clean.
Kakashi checks the border between Konoha and Kusa and he thinks of Inuzuka Hana. He doesn't do it often and he doesn't want to think about whether or not it matters, because it doesn't.
No one should matter anymore. But she fed you. No one should matter. Everyone who mattered died somehow. But she's interesting. And so much fun to annoy. She'd not stopped to speak to him the last time, he'd attempted to talk to her.
And the idea irritates him. She doesn't want to think about me. Stop thinking about it.
He'd been walking down the street after the Chunin Exams in Iwa, musing about whether or not he'd actually made a friend when he wanders through the flea market on the bad side of town.
"Ah, Shinobi-san!" An old man beams at him from a street corner. "You look like you could use another chair!" A chair? I don't need a second-Oh but wait I do.
I have someone who might want to sit down somewhere besides the floor next time. And isn't that a novelty, but surely it's the least he could do given how betrayed she'd looked sitting on the floor in front of his fully stocked refrigerator.
Just the thought of it makes him laugh, rusty and disused, but that childish pout and awfully shocked face is something he is so glad to have forever.
"But I'm such a terrible cook!"
"I have no idea what you mean." She'd burned the fish, and he knew exactly what she meant, but goading her made everything more fun.
"I'll take it." It completely doesn't match with the other chair in his apartment, but that doesn't matter. It's the thought that counts.
He flips a random bill towards the old man and picks up the chair. A second later he disappears in a swirl of leaves.
"You have no comments?" He asks after he replaces the mask. Most females your age and older do have comments. Largely, why are you pretty.
"What am I commenting on?" She asks him with an arched eyebrow that he'd come to find a part of her. "How you got a scar on your face?" Everyone knew why he had a scar on his face. "Why you don't have a harelip or buck teeth?" Is that what they think it is these days? "Am I supposed to tell you that your face is decidedly symmetrical?" He nearly chokes on his rice. Well that's one way to put it.
He eye smiles at her. She grins back, razor sharp, and he likes it. "Decidedly symmetrical?"
"Symmetrical faces are more trustworthy and generally considered pretty." She parrots, and isn't it funny? It's so funny. "The human brain recognizes symmetry as a pleasing element."
His shoulders shake from the force of his silent laughter. No one's ever attempted distilling attractive facial features down to symmetry before. "Generally considered pretty? Pleasing element?" He gasps and for once it's not like he's drowning in blood."You're too funny, Hana-chan."
She crosses her arms and frowns at him. "It's not nice to fish for compliments, Kakashi-san." But then she's serious again, no longer pouting. "I shouldn't have yelled at you." Yelled at me? Oh, that little boy in Iwa.
"You shouldn't have." And his eye smile is once more, a hundred percent plastic. No you really shouldn't have, Hana-chan. Not for a foreign shinobi. "But I forgive you."
"No you don't." She jabs a finger in the direction of his one visible eye. "You only eye smile like you're plastic when you really aren't forgiving me." You noticed?
"I'm attempting to forgive you." He amends.
"Much better." She stands up and makes for the door. "Next time, don't drag a poor under aged chunin into a bar." That makes me sound so inappropriate, Hana-chan.
Just to annoy her, he gets up and pulls out his latest book. And then whistling a merry tune, he follows her out the door. How do you feel now?
And then Gai of all people wanders into his apartment and nearly sits down in the second chair before he's zapped very unsubtly.
"You're not supposed to sit there." Kakashi deadpans while leaning against the counter. "I'm not being welcoming."
"YOSH! MY ETERNAL RIVAL IS SO HIP AND COOL! HE WISHES TO ENHANCE MY LEG MUSCLES BY HAVING ME STAND!" But then Gai becomes serious again, which is always irritating and awful because it proves that he does in fact, think about things that aren't training, challenges, or more training. "Why do you have a second chair?"
"I bought it for a new puppy." He turns around. "A two legged one this time."
It takes a moment for Gai to compute that two legged did not mean disabled, but rather human. "You made another friend?" Gai pumps a fist into the air. "AT LAST! MY ETERNAL RIVAL HAS REDISCOVERED THE SPRINGTIME OF HIS YOUTH! YOUTH!"
Kakashi feels as though he ought to have a migraine, but somehow he can't find one today.
There is nothing he can find on the border, not the stretch that she'd been patrolling, not five miles upstream on either side of the banks. To make matters worse, it's raining, and cold.
He almost suspects that it is a wild goose chase, until he crosses Orochimaru's path out of Fire Country a mile downstream of her three mile stretch. So close. Why so close?
He sneezes. It really is rather cold.
The Snake Sannin is gone, of course. He isn't there anymore, but he'd passed so close to where she'd been patrolling that it almost seemed like he'd wanted to know what was going on there.
And the rushing worry beneath his breastbone is new to him, the song of nononononono not something he'd felt in a long time. What does he want? Whatdoeshewant?
He reminds himself once more that he does not care. He merely collects the information.
"Boss?" Pakkun prods him with a paw. "Are you alright?"
He turns to smile cheerfully at Pakkun. "Why wouldn't I be alright?" There's nothing wrong with me!
Pakkun is completely unconvinced. "You are depressed and angry about something. What's happened?"
Guruko closes in from the other side. "Is this about the girl?" No one's referring to anyone by name but there is only one girl. One living girl at any rate. He amends after a moment's thought. Only one girl that he'd be angry about.
"No." He replies, and turns back to gathering blood samples. "Nothing's the matter."
Urushi sighs. "It's definitely the girl. What did you do, Boss?"
"Nothing." And he hadn't done anything at all beyond the ordinary for her to tell him that he isn't wonderful and that she wanted him to go away, preferably far away from wherever she was.
And then her first reaction to seeing him willingly inside a hospital is to scream. It really bruises one's ego.
"Boss definitely did something." Uhei mutters. "And it has to do with the girl."
"Which girl?" Shiba crowds forward. "I didn't know Boss had a girl."
"She's not Boss's girl." Pakkun frowns. "Although Boss spends a lot of time dealing with her. She's also really little."
"Oh." Bull licks his nose. "But that doesn't mean that she can't be pack. It just means she isn't there yet."
At this point, Hatake Kakashi is sure he wasn't supposed to get out of bed at all this week. Preferably a tasteless, odorless poison that induces a permanent sleep. He muses. Yes, that's it.
He reports his findings back to a Hokage who had to have been out to get him, and then doesn't even think about Inuzuka Hana for another week.
To be fair, the wheezing in his lungs and the coughing probably has something to do with it. The fact that his head feels like it's going to roll off his neck if he does anything like moving also probably has a lot to do with it.
It figures that now I can't get out of bed. He thinks crossly, and then feels the headache pound even worse.
Well, he supposes that he could get out of bed, he just doesn't want to. It's much easier to lie around and stare at his blank, whitewashed walls. Perhaps it would be easier just to stay here forever.
There's a drug store on the corner. There's medicine for his illness just down on the corner. He would only have to get up and stagger down the street, but he doesn't want to.
"K-Kakashi..." It's Rin again. He glances down. His hand is in her chest again and there is blood blossoming everywhere, and then they are both falling down into the darkness.
"I'm sorry." He whispers, but it's no use, they're always falling. "I'm sorry." He repeats, louder this time, but that's no use either. If he doesn't mean it, it never ends.
"Boss?" Pakkun asks worriedly from the other side of the door. "Boss? Are you alright?"
He doesn't respond. There's a blank white wall for him to stare at because for some reason he's awake again. There are his failures arrayed in a line for him to contemplate.
"Kakashi-san?" And oh, there's the hallucinations again, although Inuzuka Hana-chan is a weird thing to hallucinate about. Normally there would be more blood and-He stops that thought. "Kakashi-san? Please stop ignoring me? I'm sorry."
That's funny. Most of the time the apologies go the other way around. He's normally the one apologizing for ki-he stops thinking that thought too. Obito. I haven't visited you in over a week. Are you angry with me?
And then his door falls down. Hmm...how interesting...it's never done that before. I might need a better door.
There's a hand on his forehead now. He grabs it as it tries to leave, and he very carefully checks who the hand is attached to. Oh. It's Hana-chan. "Why're you here?"
She sighs. "Let go of my wrist, Kakashi-san. I'm going to find you some water."
He blinks. "Didn't you say you were busy, Hana-chan?"
She looks vaguely surprised. "We can talk about that later." And then she pulls her hand free and wanders off.
She passes him a cup of water when she gets back. "Sick people should stay hydrated. Also, I'm very sorry, but I had to break down two doors to get to you." That is a very strange thing to apologize for.
He raises an eyebrow, and she gestures towards the door of his bedroom. "As you can see, I melted the hinges off the door, so the wood should still be salvageable, if you want to stick it back on later."
He settles back on his pillows and says nothing. That's weirdly specific, and oh, look, the puppy's trying to run away again. Oh how I hate it when people run away from me. "Where do you think you're going?"
"The corner store to find you some medicine that you despise." In a brief moment of lucidity, Kakashi recognizes that he is being phenomenally silly. I run away from everything all the time. And this isn't even a permanent attempt.
There's a storm outside again, and lightning in the air and he is standing in front of his father's corpse again, blood soaking into the floorboards. "Tou-san."
There should be no response, but-
"Here." She offers "You might want to take these so you don't die."
He glances down at the white tablets and then up at her, the sharingan eye still firmly shut. "But what about the mask?" What will you do about that?
She pulls it off and throws it away without a second thought. "You shouldn't even be wearing a mask when you have breathing difficulty." And he's back again, to that one time he'd gotten sick and Kushina-neechan had found him before he fell of a red bridge-Don't wear a mask when you're sick, Kakashi-kun 'ttebane! That's so irresponsible. "Please, at least know the basics of how to take care of a common cold if you hate hospitals so much, Kakashi-san." Echoes. All of these voices echoed.
His mouth curls upwards in the lazy semblance of a smile, but there are ghosts in this room that she'd never know about, and he intends to keep it that way. "You have a terrible bedside manner, Hana-chan. You should never become a doctor." Please never do. You'll see less dead people that way.
She buries her face in her hands. "You're going to give me a headache at this rate." She moans. "This has been an awful day." You could say that.
Somehow though it isn't that terrible now. He seems to be recovering somewhat, sliding further from Death's door. He glances back up at her. Oh, the puppy's asleep. How cute.
When he wakes the next morning, she's still curled in an uncomfortable position on the chair, shivering slightly as the cold air blows through the open door. Which, now that he thinks about it, she's responsible for since she'd melted his hinges yesterday instead of just picking the simple lock.
Outside the world is painted white. He climbs achingly to his feet, and glances down at the blankets that have fallen crumpled around him and then back at her. I need to get a couch.
Then, very carefully he picks her up and tucks her into a small cocoon of blankets, and tries to tell himself that it's because if he returned her to the Inuzukas with a cold they'd want to rip out his throat and he doesn't want that. It doesn't quite work.
"Koma-senpai." She mumbles. "Sorry." And then she turns around and wriggles farther down his bed. Tiny puppy. He thinks almost fondly. "Damn Hyugas. Make them pay." An eyebrow rises. Tiny vindictive puppy.
But it's a new day, and the year's first snowfall, and somehow he's still alive.
At least you care.
And then he wanders over to at least stick his front door back onto the door frame. There they are, the hinges neatly melted.
It's the work of three minutes instead of half to stick the door back on, and he feels vaguely fatigued so he doesn't do the other one.
Instead he wanders back into his room. There are white tulips wrapped in ivy on his dresser. "Perfect love for all eternity?" He glances back over at the sleeping child still wrapped in warm blankets. Her face is half hidden, but the red fangs on her round cheeks are unmistakable. "I don't think that's what you meant."
Still the flowers are pretty enough, even though they're wilting, and maybe he should find a vase that isn't cracked?
Pakkun tumbles into his room, glances at the bed, and then back at him. "And you said that there was no girl, Boss." He points his short little tail at the sight. "I think that's the girl."
Hatake Kakashi bops him on the head. "You mean that's the puppy."
Pakkun considers the sleeping child still comfortably ensconced despite the snowfall outside the window. "No, Boss. That's a queen." If dogs had shoulders and if dogs could shrug, Pakkun would have at that moment. "Or at least, she'll grow up to be one at any rate."
And perhaps she might. Perhaps she just might if she lived long enough to grow up at all.
The long slow turn of years might not be so bad after all.
Ikigai-a reason for being, encompassing joy, a sense of purpose and meaning and a feeling of well-being. Derived from iki, meaning life and kai, meaning the realization of hopes and expectations.
A.N. And I know that the poll says Itachi first, but somehow, Kakashi decided to make himself known today, so here's about four thousand words on why Kakashi hurts. And as always, he was being difficult so this percolated in my brain for two full weeks before anything happened, and then it all happened at once. Of course, Kakashi, being Kakashi, has to have weird reasons and symbolism for everything. So even chairs and vases and couches have some sort of broken significance in his brain.
There's a lot of symbolism and imagery going on in here. That and Kakashi just has a really broken mind that likes to give him PTSD, hallucinations, and general trauma. He really needs at least two years of hugs.
Thanks to rickrossed (Uchiha Fugaku is a major kuudere, also I hope you enjoy this chapter as it is in fact, Kakashi.), Alizay (I'm glad the last chapter was interesting to you. I did try to flesh out a character that receives very little characterization in most scenes that he's in. The result was very interesting, but I liked it.), Estarc (Yeah, Fugaku is very reserved in his day to day life, so writing him as a child and as a young adult was an interesting and fun experience especially since he doesn't talk much.) and LadyScatty (Nara-sensei and his Vicious Hag are one of the couples that influences Hana the most, and I do have a one shot planned for how Nara-sensei wooed his Vicious Hag to begin with. It should be called Tea House Off the Main Road, but I don't know when I'll find the time to write it.) for reviewing!
And for everyone that favorited and followed. You all are awesome. You all are great.
~Tavina.