As you can clearly see, my job requires a lot of my attention and by no means leaves me enough time to write angsty, hurt-comfort oneshots.
A relic of the past, Kakashi thinks. The memorial is freezing cold and covered in snow, enough that the names all blend together, unreadable.
Aren't we all, in the end? It's Obito's voice in his head that answers, soft like he only ever heard it once. Soft like one of them is dying.
Kakashi sighs and moves his hand away, his fingerless glove sticking to the stone until he tears it free. A smidge of red remains.
It was warm when he left for his last mission and it's snowing now that he is back. That more than anything should mean something to him, but the dots take too long to connect and he gives up too soon. His hands are shaking and he should go home. He should also probably go file in his report, make sure his superiors know that he is back. He should take a cool shower to wash off blood and grime. Eat. Sleep.
You talk too much for a ghost, Obito.. Kakashi would like to smile, but it comes out lopsided, plastic. The mask is sticking to his face and his breath turns to ice on the fabric.
Which one of us is the ghost, I wonder.
Kakashi knows that his friend might just be right. It's been long since he talked, really talked, to anyone that wasn't long dead. Sometimes he thinks that while the war was over, he still very much lives in the middle of it. A perfect soldier, all the more deadly for having nothing to lose. A perfect, quiet ghost, pale as the snow all around.
You don't really think so, do you? You're alive, Kakashi. You can do more than kill or get killed.
"They're loud sometimes, aren't they?" That's not Obito's voice and it takes him a moment to realize it sounds so out of place because it isn't. He spins around, startled.
"..they?" The snow hasn't stopped falling, but the man holds an umbrella above them. He radiates enough heat that Kakashi feels the burn of it.
"The ghosts. I come here to argue with them too, sometimes."
"You came here to argue with ghosts..?" Kakashi asks and it comes out more incredulous than the situation warrants. It's not the same, though. Obito argues with him all the time, not the other way around.
"Not this time." Iruka laughs, pushing something into his hand and Kakashi takes it on autopilot, only belatedly realizing he is now holding the umbrella. Because Iruka can't, because he is shrugging out of his winter coat. "Yuugao-san told me you're trying to freeze to death up here. Thought I'd ruin your fun." he says.
It's so ridiculous. Stupid enough, like something Obito would have said. Maybe that's why Kakashi doesn't protest the coat getting wrapped around him, warm and smelling so familiar it hurts.
He opens his mouth to say something, but what is there to say, really?
He left on a mission in the middle of summer and he came back and everything is different, coated in snow and unforgivingly cold.
He wants to ask how long was he gone. He wants to ask if Iruka was worried, he wants to say thank you, hello, help me.
He doesn't know where to begin and so takes the easy way out; he passes out.
When he comes to, much, much later, he is back on that familiar couch in a house that has too many ghosts. He hears laughter from the corridor and sound of footsteps, sound of life:
Even ghosts need a home.
He gets up later at night when the sounds have quieted down and he doesn't feel so much like a trespasser. There is a pile of clean, soft looking clothes next to the couch on a chair and he takes them, changes into them without second thought. Maybe he should feel more uncomfortable about waking up in his underclothes, but he doesn't miss sleeping in his stiff uniform.
The sweatpants he pulls on are thick and warm and the hoodie hangs on him, too big in a way he is surprised to like. He rolls his underclothes into a ball much in dire need of washing and pushes away the temptation to just Katon the hell out of it. Not in someone else's house, he won't.
He is probably in need of taking a good shower as well.. and he will, as soon as he gathers enough will for it.
He leaves the room barefoot and walks noiselessly across the corridor, way too familiar for only having been there twice. All the doors are left ajar and all the rooms he passes are dark; everyone is asleep, as they should be, at the hour of ghosts.
Taking the metaphor a bit too far, aren't we..? Obito's voice almost startles him, he has slept, what else does he have to do to get rid of him? With that in mind Kakashi angles into the kitchen, hoping to find some fruit.
He freezes on spot when he finds the light is still on in the kitchen and there is a person by the kitchen table, bend over a stack of paperwork. The person is not Iruka and that more than anything makes him hesitate whether he shouldn't just turn around and leave.
"Stop lurking, for god's sake." It's a female voice and when Kakashi takes a step closer, he recognizes Mitarashi Anko in the artificial light of the room. "You stink like a troll carcass, Hatake. Soup's on the stove, eat. Should be light enough not to come right back out."
Kakashi nods his agreement and gratitude, not having enough energy to muster annoyance at the insult. She doesn't see the gesture and he doesn't care.
The soup is mostly water and vegetable, exactly as advertised. He doesn't bother with a spoon and bowl, pours a bit into a mug and drinks it like that. It's warmth spreads through his whole body and even before he is done completely, he feels revived. His hands have stopped shaking and he finds he no longer wants to crawl under a bed and stay there until his heart gives up.
"Tough one..?" Mitarashi speaks up at the exact same moment Kakashi forgets she is there and he jumps a bit in his seat, dropping the empty mug to the table. It stays in tact, but the noise is enough to make him wince. His eyes flick to the open door of the kitchen, but.. it shouldn't have been enough to carry upstairs and wake anyone up, hopefully.
"Long one." he corrects once the echoes are gone as well. "Lost track of time." In the dead of night it doesn't seem so strange to admit that. Besides, Mitarashi looks like she understands. He thinks she just might.
"Just a bit over four months. The winter's early this year." she answers a question Kakashi didn't ask. He is grateful none the less, even though normally he would be worried about getting read so easily.
That thought startles him again and his hand flies up, groping over his face to realize what he already knew; his mask is gone, lost somewhere between the memorial and Iruka's kitchen. He would like to say that he minds, but, again, he doesn't have the energy for it. Mitarashi is still staring down at her paperwork, occasionally making notes in a notebook by her left elbow. Not commenting, not looking at him. Not judging.
"Can I take a shower here..?" he asks when a minute ticks past, interrupted only by the scratch of her pen. He has a shower at home, but he also has a fridge full of food gone bad, a bowl of rotting fruit on the counter and the company of ghosts. And he has no idea where his shoes are.
"Other side of the corridor, left door. There's a clean towel on the washing machine. And spare toothbrush. Use both, thank me later." Mitarashi recites in the tone of voice people use when they are repeating words entrusted into their care and points towards the door.
Kakashi uses both and makes a note to thank her later.
When he gets out of the bathroom he is dragging his feet again, warmed up and pleasantly full after eating. The kitchen is dark and the house is silent so he goes back upstairs, fully intending to drop back onto the couch and wake up never.
All the doors in the corridor are ajar, but one of them is opened fully; it isn't a coincidence since he can easily see all of them have been moved. He heads into the room he is supposed to go into, makes no noise on the carpet inside.
It isn't the same room he woke up in, obviously, but he is too tired to think about it too deeply. There is a large bed in the middle of the room and what else would he even need?
Kakashi climbs in there quietly, half asleep even before his head finds the pillow. The blanket is heavy and smells of pine needles and sea and when he inches closer to the warm, warm shape occupying the other half of the bed, gentle arm tugs him closer and keeps him safe.
In his dreams his ghosts are quiet and the snow is chased away by sun.
Nothing like off screen cuddles to shut the ghosts up, right?
Leave me a note.