A/N: Okay, so this is the second instalment that I wasn't gonna write but look who's back again. Lol. I hope you guys enjoy reading tho.
Have a nice day you all! RR.
The second time Hatake Kakashi fails, it is as a friend.
Friends were a complexity the four-year-old Kakashi could never understand. With the IQ of a genius and a demeanour of a loner there weren't many that could put up with a kid better and stronger than them, so he had learned to make the world spin to his own rhythm, turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the scorns of envy and disgust he had previously been surprised by.
At the age of four he enters the academy and among the sneers and mockery of his fellow students he turns his head away and pretends that he is unaffected. Still, despite being the unrivalled prodigy, he is yet a child and the fact that a girl, Rin his elder by four years, stared at him training from behind the trees, her eyes for once filled with awe and staggering wonder rather than the hate he had come to associate in his peers, caused him to miss a shot. Rin perked up at the peculiarity and vanished quickly behind the bush leaving him to mull over this in his own head. He will never agree to it but the next time he saw her sitting in the class, a few rows down from his seat, he couldn't help but stare a bit too long at the strands curling behind her ear and the charcoal eyes furrowed in concentration and his heart warms at the realisation that perhaps a person like him can also earn a few friends.
The next week he prepares a small chat in his head and vows to talk to her but that day as he walks home he realises that something was far too wrong. He had been accustomed to the awed whispers as he had passed but the gazes that had once held admiration and fascination, with a bit of jealousy, were now mixed with accusation and hate. He stumbles through the house and hears the people yelling inside the rooms. That day as he hears the word failure associated with his hero, his heart crumbles a bit and he stays frozen in place as the gaggle of people depart, leaving a heavy solitude to settle in their wake. That is the first time in his life he sees loneliness and desperation flicker in his father's eyes and he is too scared to ask him the truth. They sit down for the same dinner, for the whole coming month and he pretends that he could not see the tears streaming down his father's eyes. He is mad (at the deplorable state of his father) but he is also scared (for he still is his life, his world) so he just glares down at the dinner and hides his flinch at the hurt that flashes through his father's face. The day he returns home to the hollow numbness of his father hanging by a thread a part of his heart freezes forever. He realises that friends are not just worth it and that he will prove his father wrong in his compassion, so he just settles to glare at the laughing figures of his father's comrades and walks down the road, his funeral robes merging with the shadows as the heavens pour down their regret.
All the thoughts of friends that had started to warm his heart come to an abrupt halt and in his vengeance he passes the academy within a year, expending all of his energy towards honing his skills. He doesn't expect to end up in a team, with two people who are much older than him and clicks his tongue in distaste at the obnoxious banter of Obito and the shy care of Rin. He tells himself that he won't stray down the same path, that he will keep all the people at an arm's length because friends were the people that never deserved his compassion but still he feels himself warming, he finds himself loving their love and can't help but waver in his resolutions until all he could see was their faces, their smiles, their laughs and he realises that he would gladly take a kunai meant for their heart. It is this comprehension that leaves him staggering on his feet.
He is made jounin by the age of twelve and he is given a mission that for once causes jitters in his spine but he feels Obito slapping his arm and Rin's soft words of assurance and even in the era of demolition and annihilation he feels a Ray of hope warming his insides.
He takes a kunai meant for Obito and suddenly the word is coloured through his father's perspective and it is then that the first pangs of failure hit home. He grasps the fact that he had failed his father, by not being able to see the compassion hidden under a veil of supremacy and he vows to never let another person he holds dear fail by him. That is why he grabs Rin and promises that he will always protect her.
The grief that eats at his insides is magnified because for once he allows himself to wallow for his own father too and the tears he sheds are mixed with the desperation and regret he had been scampering to hide.
He promises that he will always protect his members because as Obito's smile at the face of death flashes through his mind he finally realises that friends truly are worth it.
He spends his days partaking in missions and suddenly finds his nights taken by seeing a particular girl walk home from the hospital. Her antics never fail to amuse him and he wants to walk right beside her but he doesn't want her to think that she is weak in his eyes. He cannot explain the flutter in his heart at her sight and he finds her wonderfully beautiful, kind compassionate and strong. That is why he follows in the shadows because although he is proud of her strength he also cannot bear the thought of something happening to her. So he vanishes in the shadows and smiles in the veil of darkness at the mellow tune coming from beneath.
His heart freezes at the news of her kidnapping and for once he is resolute in his words and follows after the kidnappers just as the news hits his ear cords because for once sensei cannot realise the importance of the promise he had made; because the sensei doesn't know that he had already failed once and he can't bear to fail twice. Because they don't realise that his heart is still that of a fragile twelve-year-old.
The ringing suspicion in his brain at the hollow smile Rin directs at him is answered when she stops midway. The ninjas are after him and he turns in a fit of anger as to why she was doing it. The tearful look that he is awarded throws him off the balance and the words that follow breaks the small string that had been holding together his heart.
In the back of his mind he understands the truth inside her words but in a turmoil of emotions, he refuses, turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to her pleas. The face of Obito swims by his vision and he pushes her fragile form behind him because come hell or high water he will protect her. He will. He needs too. He so desperately needs to.
Nothing could've prepared him for her body hanging limply from his hand and the tears of grief and sorrow that blur her eyes (those beautiful beautiful eyes). It is for the first time that his heart stops and the blood freezes down his veins. The tears run down his cheeks and the sudden spark of pain that takes over his heart makes him feel as if the Chidori had gone through his own.
The last thing he remembers is the swirl of mangekyo and the tormenting voice of Obito screaming at his senses. He never wants to crawl out of the darkness that engulfs his senses.
The next time he wakes, the roof of the hospital zooms in and out of his consciousness and he wants it all to be a foul nightmare but the ache in his body is persistent and the tears that flow down his cheeks are still fresh and unbidden. This is the first time that he closes his eyes and wishes to never open them again.
The looks that he had once overcome with an easy sense of authority, were now unbearable and cold and his heart aches at every whisper because he himself can do nothing but affiliate himself with the cold accusations. In the end, he was only a man who had become the murderer of the one person he vowed to protect with everything he had. Life was terrifying like that.
He feels himself falling into the deep dark dome of his own mind, his regrets overtake his consciousness until he cannot fathom the reality from the nightmares. The breath closes in his throat and he feels the walls crashing down on him, the visions blur and the hollow figure of Rin, looking so forlorn mixes with the ironic smile of Obito and he stumbles out of his home.
That night he stands in front of the stone, his mind in overdrive and the sudden intensity of downpour is hardy felt by him. The sky darkens in hues of grey and the shadow of the night settles long before the rain beating down on his broken body subsides to a drizzle. He feels hollow suddenly, his eyes swollen yet dry as a desert and the place in his chest that had ached so very much was now numb in denial. His world feels like a void, eating up his insides and in his melancholy, he can't help the disregard for his life as he submits his application for ANBU the next day. Because the only thing that he could fathom now was that he had failed, failed as a saviour, failed as a leader, a commander, as a ninja, failed as a friend, and that realisation was enough to destroy the very essence of his spirit.
He feels no remorse as his blade slashes through the neck of a Kirigakure ninja, the blood splattering across the mask that covered his hollow reality from the ruthless gaze of the world.
The second time Hatake Kakashi fails, it is as a friend. A friend who could not, for the love of his life carry out the one vow he had made.
And as he jumps over the branches, his clothes still wet from the blood of his massacre he realises that nothing would be able to patch down the broken tendrils of his heart. A part of him apprehends that he deserves it and another of him, a part that is in mayhem burning away the awareness of his mind, craves it.
So the cold-blooded assassin smiles as his eyes shimmer with the grief of a void that had taken over his self: a void so frightening and yet so beautiful.
THE END