-1The pale hands are capable and with them he builds. With the one hand he makes a box and with the other he makes a cage and he is uncertain who will go in which so he leaves by the gate to train his team. Seating in the tree across the way from the waiting children he fingers the red book in his hand not quite the orange of the adult material he hides behind. His sensei left this for him and he almost knows what it means, but all he can really see is the diagrams for contraptions meant to hurt himself. The warnings from beyond a thousand, thousand heartbeats of indecision are purely incidental and so his sensei is as much a faithless liar as the men he grew to hate. He smiles watching the boys fight like dogs in the dust.
If he were of a kind with Iruka having already embraced his nightmares like the child he may never have or the baby brother lost. If he were like that man he would abandon the iron cage and fashion the wooden box into a flowerbox to grow the youth before him - cherry blossom girls, sunflower boys, and the twisted little bonsai he hasn't the patient to properly prune. But he is not Iruka anymore then he is Gai who builds nothing allowing himself to be the lattice his children grow upon through they overshadow him, and may devour him. Still Gai has met his nightmare, has eaten them and if there exist something beyond them it is as unnoticeable as the scar above his heart. Over the top of his book his eyes narrow while the ghost boy stares at him with eyes like glass. "Kakashi-sensei?"
He walks away. Behind him lays a cage, a box, and an iron cast face - the fourth of many to come and as he turns it over in his hands he decides that it doesn't really look like his mother. Maybe it's the way it looks like it screams? He looks to the black stone before him for answers among the names. The names on the stone scrolling through a thousand conversations he's never had. A hundred, thousand hours he might have had if the pieces fit better tighter. She doesn't like him, she thinks she loves him, he's sure he loves her, he can't stand to near him, the feeling is mutual. The grime lined deep in his overworked fingers says it's all a delusion of survivor guilt.
The blood on his shirt is as red as his eye and the bright glass eyes in the window say, "If I hadn't died you wouldn't care." Sensei hated mirrors, he said no one could look in one without beholding evil. Mirrors are not instruments of enlightenment, but creators of illusions. He stops waiting for the genius to return and looks behind at the Other one. The bright, blue glass eyes stare at him from the white, white sheets through the cold, cold bars and they say "you only care because I nearly died". And he can't deny it hand tight around the bright red gem black cracks spiraling out of it. Shaking his head he looks behind him and the cage is still open waiting. At his feet his newest mask sort of looks like Rin, but Rin was never so cold. Not until she died and left him here alone.
"He's just like me." "He looks like the fourth." "Dead last." "Genius." "Jinnchiruki." "Survivor." "Avenger." "Protector." "Hokage." The characters on the stone swirl like whirlpools and the tomes in a madman's eyes so that he's forced to look away from the mirror before him. Years spent watching the dance and he still can't hold the characters still enough to fit in the things he has made. Abandoning the doll-like fetishes he turns back to the Maiden only to find the spikes are still too dull, too close together - he doesn't want to kill anybody. He notices a cool breeze behind him. The sun is bright so that the shadows are deep and dark and welcoming in the cage. There is only one exit he realizes. The wooden box thing lies abandoned, he still isn't sure what it'll be though he supposes he could sand it.
"Sensei?" He ignores the bright bird eyes like: A green stone around a slender neck Christmas colors green and red like poison holly. a blue pond, a blue sky clearly opaque clouds shuttle and skip, blood stains the river. The ground at night slick with blood and the past times of murder "perhaps you were right." Bird eyes like birds chidori, thousand birds screaming, hands like wings fluttering through a dozen, dozen hand signs and each one worse then the last. A hundred thousand hand signs, a hundred thousand hours, a hundred thousand conversations with Obito. Obito laughs bright black bird eyes and Sasuke laughs dull, fever bright eyes and the kind one always dies. But it's survivor guilt and now he has a shiny new toy Mangekyo Sharingan. All he has to do is pull his hand out of the gaping hole.
The sky is lovely dark and deep, but he has promises to keep. The children are looking at him. He hasn't anything for any of them, but he tells himself he just… He hasn't anything for the girl, has never understood them. The boys though, the boys have things awaiting them - an iron maiden for one and a pretty ash cool box for the other. The iron maiden for his competitor and a box for his successor, one deserves one more then the other, but which one? Who goes to rest in the cold, hard ground and who gets to bleed his talent into the ground forever stunted? Which one is better? Which one is worse who should he hate? "He's just like me. He's just like me. He's just like me." They always get in the way and he hates them the kind little boys with the happy, happy glass eyes. And the little boy is looking at him with eyes as still as heaven and twice as cheap. "Hatake, will you train me?"
He is backing slowly into the cage he's made.
"No, I have another trainer for you."