Warnings for whole series: a little language, a smattering of violence, implied past character death, alcohol, and angst.
diary.
pt. 5
by vernajast
kakashi x iruka
"I hate Hatake Kakashi."
Kakashi stared slack-jawed at the screen, trying to make sense of the words, but there was only the deafening roar in his ears and a heaviness in his chest that threatened suffocation. But the younger man was still speaking, so with paramount effort he forced himself to back it up, started over, sure there was some mistake.
"I hate Hatake Kakashi." Iruka balled his hands into fists as if to control himself from acting on his feelings in some violent way. "He's...he's just an arrogant, stubborn, egotistic, patronizing, condescending, smug jounin who thinks he can say anything from behind the safety of his stupid looking mask!"
Iruka's face was red when he paused for breath, his hands obviously shaking in his lap. His whole body vibrated with unspent emotion held at bay by force of will. Kakashi's eye was completely focused on Iruka's darker ones, held by eyes that showed an immense amount of hurt, anger, and disgust.
"But do you know what's worse? He's right. I knew it, but I couldn't bring myself to back down in front of Sandaime-sama and the others. I know how they look down on us, as if the chuunin instructors at the academy are just babysitters. Like we're just incubating their 'soldiers' until they are ready to—to hatch! GAH! I don't know when they're going to start respecting the work we do preparing those kids. Probably never after my little outburst. And Kakashi just...the way he looked at me..."
There was a pause in which Iruka and Kakashi took a breath together. The younger man scrubbed a hand over his face before looking directly into the camera, directly at Kakashi, all trace of emotion banished.
"I really hate him, and I hope I never speak to him again."
Those eyes far too cold to be Iruka's stared into the camera for a long moment before he switched it off and the screen went black.
When the video automatically started over from the beginning, Kakashi let it.
"I hate Hatake Kakashi."
It hurt hearing those words again and again from the mouth of the man with whom he had somehow formed a one-sided bond, but Kakashi let it play on. He decided at some point that he deserved the pain and the disappointment. He deserved to find out exactly what Iruka had thought of him because these were the things Iruka believed when he died, and Kakashi had never done anything to correct that when he had the chance.
On camera, Iruka had resumed his diatribe; Kakashi's fingers brushed the screen, Iruka's cheek. "I don't deserve you."
Failed mission. Failed Iruka.
He held his injured side as he rolled off the bed and stumbled back into the living room. Tucked away in the corner, camouflaged by the many layers of dust, was a liquor cabinet constructed of polished cherry and frosted glass. Inside, the bottles were arranged by contents and size, and the glasses stood in neat rows without a smudge or fingerprint to be seen.
Kakashi reached in and took the largest bottle of clear alcohol from the back of the shelf and snatched a glass from the first row with a self-deprecating sigh that was much louder without his mask. He ignored the other bottles that shifted out of order under his rough handling, and though he knew it was childish, some part of him accepted that each movement was perfectly calculated to destroy the order within the cabinet.
It didn't make him feel better, and he suddenly hated the neatness of the apartment. For every book and picture and cushion in just the right spot, he could only imagine Iruka spending his evenings straightening and re-straightening, a neurotic cleaning habit to combat the loneliness he knew the younger man sometimes felt. Knew now, but had never known when he could have done something about it.
He didn't wait to move back to the bedroom, but poured himself a drink right where he stood, downed it, and poured himself another.
He pressed his hand deliberately into the clinging dust on the cabinet top, leaving a large, splayed print, and then raised his glass, whispering, "For you." He drained it again, banging the glass down on the cabinet with a sardonic chuckle that lacked the warmth he just didn't feel.
His feet carried him toward the bedroom. Halfway, Kakashi paused in the hall and poured a third drink, sipping it while he let his gaze slide over the faded photographs of Iruka and his parents that lined the walls. The playground, the training ground, the academy—scenes he had already memorized, but he needed to see Iruka's smiling face instead of the monstrosity waiting in the other room. In frustration, he reached up and flicked the corner of one of the frames, tilting the picture at an angle.
Kakashi might have repeated the action up and down the hallway, and then he might have felt better, but he was close enough to hear Iruka's voice, and it pulled him onward. He followed obediently, balancing the bottle and glass in one hand while the other clutched at his side where it ached with every careless twist of his torso.
Obito remained silent through the whole ordeal, and Kakashi didn't bother to ask why.
The same video continued to play, an endless stream of hate directed at the Copy-nin who had wronged Iruka, and who now forced himself to sit on the very same chuunin's bed with his back propped against the headboard, listening. Two-thirds into the bottle, Kakashi lost consciousness, accepting the embrace of blessed darkness and imagining someone was waiting for him within.
When the sun rose high enough the next morning to shine in through Iruka's bedroom window, it felt as if the rays were landing directly on Kakashi's face, his eye, and he screwed up his features as he slept, trying to avoid the sun and the awakening that was fast approaching.
At first, he was only aware of the headache and easily attributed it to chakra drain and the Sharingan before he rolled over in search of a few more hours of sleep. His injury burned with the movement, and Kakashi was jolted awake by memory and pain: the horror of his mission and the discovery that had been waiting for him at...home. He smelled of spilled sake and found the glass still clutched in his hand where it had landed when he slid into oblivion.
And then, there was Iruka's voice. The video was still playing, the same words.: "I really hate him...never speak to him again...I hate Hatake Kakashi..."
He couldn't take it.
He practically leaped from the bed, stumbled and slumped against the wall as the room spun around him, found his equilibrium, and made a swipe for the keyboard. He mostly missed, only managing to advance to the next video, but instead of bothering with it, he snarled at the computer and decided it didn't matter. In his hung-over state, he only knew that he wanted that voice to stop, to never speak again, because it wasn't Iruka. It wasn't real, and it never would be.
Tripping around Iruka's apartment, nauseated and his feet seeming unable to find the flat parts of the floor, he still managed to gather everything together, even the tattered uniform. He leaned against the frame of the open window and took a last, desperate look around, swearing to himself that he would never follow one of Obito's instincts again (and he could detect his counterpart's unspoken agreement).
Then he breathed deeply, and with the scent of cedar and sandalwood—of Iruka—filling his senses, he fled through that fateful window for the last time.
TBC