Chapter 7: Bloodborne, and The Father
Warning: (M) Contains Gore, Explicit Language, and Death.
Rating: (T-M) Not for kids. At all.
Pairings: For now? None. Kind of a Gen-fic.
A/N: I'm gonna be honest with y'all... I only watched a few scenes in Boruto: Next Generations, so I'm probably making this shit up. Also, hi guys, if the sentence starts in bold, it's part of the mindscape and all that.
[. . .]
"All I've ever wanted was peace." - Kakashi.
[. . .]
Chapter 7
Bloodborne, and The Father
[. . .]
Bloody water trickled below the most Powerful Sorcerer's feet.
A red Moon glistened above him, illuminating crimson across the wicked, dark skies that bubbled warped faces of agony he didn't recognize. They spoke distorted words, crying and bending the inky darkness like some form of disgusting, pitiful attempt to break apart rubber. Grotesque maws complete with caustic teeth vomited organs like rain across the entire expansion opened by his own miscommunicated undoing. It smelled like corrosion and human waste.
Beyond him, farther out of his reach, a white ghost of a woman stood in shackles with an evil red eye on the center of her forehead. Her long, flowing hair curled around her in a shell, enveloping the dirtied robes with black, crawling substance-growing eyes, and a snarling mouth. Her lips were red and her eyes were a pale, milky horror, accentuating the horns that seemed to be growing in size the longer he stared.
In her hands, his little boy hung his head with a bleeding trail coming from his left eye. Unconscious.
Gojo stared, contemplating. "So that's what it was," He spoke casually, tilting his bandaged face in mocking intrigue. "This... unusual power."
Kakashi didn't speak.
The woman, however, did.
"I am the mother of all chakra," She whispered, lifting a hand. It rattled the chains bound beneath the thick, goopy liquids, causing a circling ripple to reach Gojo's feet.
Unperturbed by the sight of the coppery goo sliding off the tainted chains, Gojo gave a cheery hum. "No idea what Chakra is, lady. But hey! If you could give me my son back, that'd be great," His cheer held an ominous threat that showed in his teething grin.
The woman didn't react. Her face was as blank as her unnerving eyes—dead to the world in a fitting illusion.
When she didn't reply, Gojo continued.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," He nodded and began walking toward her with relative ease. "You're busy with him, yadda, yadda... But I'm afraid your little daycare center is about to close. I kind of need my son to pay me back for destroying about half of my mansion." His grin tilted as he stopped in front of her, meeting her dead sights in unflinching regard. (It wouldn't be the first time it'd been thrown to shit anyway.)
Her red eye, which Gojo found decorated in swirled pupils and ringed lines, elicited a sticky gurgle when it expanded. Well. Interesting.
Her chains rang like a chorus in their current material plane as she stood, taller than him.
"You understand, yeah?" He asked, sating his curiosity further when he reached boldly for her loose sleeve. His fingers chafed the fabric, gauging. It felt like rubber. "Yeesh. Skimpy material. You're poor, aren't you?"
Undisturbed that she didn't react, he created some space between them again by trekking back with a joyful jump in his step. "I'm feeling a bad vibe here. It's just me talking! Don't tell me I made such a bad impression already..." Gojo mock sighed, shaking his head.
She didn't move. She kept staring, waiting for intent. "And here I thought I was about to make a friend. It's fine! We can let bygones be bygones if you hand my son over to me." His attempt was futile, but it wasn't like he was freaking out about it.
This was just Kakashi's partial domain expansion. No biggie.
Strange, though, how Kakashi was holding this place up if he was out like a light. Not to mention the odd, sentient entity. He'd have grabbed him by now if it'd been just another manifestation of his curse energy. He really underestimated this kid.
"I'm impressed," He acknowledged right away and began circling the tall woman holding Kakashi in a vice-grip. "He's only four and already he's able to manifest his own little domain! I know a lot of folks who can't do that. I'm so proud of him but see, don't tell him that. He's a smug little shit."
He stopped in her line of vision again. "And this is all because I mentioned the name Obito!"
Incidental, his skin raised bumps and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end when a sinister aura enveloped the ground he walked on.
The area reverberated and Gojo's ears were perforated with horrifying screams. He remained unfazed, though.
"Wow. There it goes again," Gojo observed, tilting his head to take a peek at the sky. The faces now had limbs reaching out for him.
He wondered.
"So. It seems names are a thing here. If I say Obito—" The ground shook again and this time, the woman leaned forward with blind, bulging veins around the eyes, elongating her face like a ghastly being. "That happens. Obito's definitely important here."
The domain continued to reach for him and Gojo refused to move.
"What about my little shit's name?"
"You do not belong here," The woman hissed, execrated. Her arms wrapped Kakashi closer to her.
Gojo sighed. "Ah, well. Shoot. Why not?" He decided to ask, contemplating. He'd save from saying Kakashi's name later, just in case his theory proved true. Maybe Kakashi wasn't in control of this at all, but this woman instead. It would explain why the domain was still out, despite Kakashi's insensate, defeated pose.
He queried if Kakashi was keeping the chains on her to keep her from gaining full control. That's what the chains were for, no? They wouldn't be there, not unless this kid of his was holding invaluable information. All it took was a trigger, and since he'd met the boy, he'd been nothing but unstable. Could she have been a sealed creature? Could the boy's mother have been cursed?
And what was that swirled pattern he'd seen in his son's red eye?
So many questions. Such few answers.
She drew back, calm once more. "You are not of this world." Her voice sounded menacing but it appeared to be a command—a command that drew out shadows from behind her. Some were tall. Only two were short.
Only one had a face.
"Oh?" He mumbled, looking right at the vivid face of a scarred, pale boy with dark eyes and a missing eye. "Really? I distinctly remember my birth certificate telling me I was born here. In, you know. Japan. You do realize this is Japan, right? You're not from some ancient time, are you? That'd be a nuisance."
The boy continued to form. His skin grew from bone to muscle, to color.
Dirty, long hair. Torn, brown rags.
This place really was poor.
"Please leave," The voice of a small girl beseeched.
Gojo was so diverted with the child he believed was Obito that he'd failed to notice the other diminutive shadow—approaching, standing, and holding hands with the scarred boy was a little girl with short, brown hair and a bloody mouth. Her eyes looked haunted, and there was a hole in her chest.
Something didn't feel right.
His kid was more fucked up than he thought.
"I will," He said, surprising them with genuine confirmation, "But only if you give my son Kakashi back to me."
Everything silenced in a sudden hush.
Oh. So his theory about name-calling was right. Mentally, he patted his back.
Outwardly, he didn't break eye contact with the little girl with purple, bloodied, stripes. Desperate, she looked.
Dead, he thought.
"...He's your son?"
The voice was raspy. Gojo snapped his head to the boy. "Yep," He answered simply, waiting.
Ticking, he decided on another call. "You don't happen to be Obito, yeah?"
One blink on his end transformed the boy into a taller figure. White hair was a messy spiral on the top of his head, praying onto scars and a half that looked sickly pale than that of normal skin.
Through his scrutiny, he watched the entity stare him down. "You need to leave," Obito? said dispassionately, his words spurted with heavy importance. He looked dead, too.
But this man wasn't solid like that woman. He seemed more of a residual ghost. A man with few words but with a thousand stories behind his eyes.
It seemed Kakashi's Domain constructed a summon of ghosts using his cursed energy, positively to preserve the tangible woman in chains. Domains were strange that way, Gojo thought. Though, wouldn't Kakashi have attacked him if these images were here to protect that weird lady? Domains work to encapsulate the opponent (hence, him, in this scenario), which was established sufficiently if not for the gaping holes he could see from the ceiling of the domain. If Gojo wanted, he could escape at any time.
(Had Kakashi done this to help him, or was this someone else? He'd have assumed it was Kakashi, but the woman swirled with the same, hellbent energy his son carried. Did this all come from her, or was Kakashi built as a vessel, honing this energy and using it himself? The curse energy wasn't ancient. The curse itself.)
Was his son made into a weapon?
What a sick, twisted, reality.
Their energy was grand, and it all came out from one four-year-old boy, who, if Gojo wasn't mistaken, had attacked him in an exuberant, deathly blow and trapped him in here.
Something uncomfortable clenched in his chest. (Could Kakashi have held back? Had it meant, if he deluded himself enough, that the boy had tried not to do more damage than good? Was this why the woman was in chains? Had he really been born to kill him, and the boy knew, and so, therefore, had created a boundary that kept the true power away from hurting him?)
Blinking again, Gojo found no trace of the man he'd labeled as Obito. He was again presented as the quiet boy.
The boy clenched his fist and brought it to eye level. Two fingers stuck out, pressed together like an accursed prayer. It looked like his technique, except the boy's fingers weren't crossed.
He met Gojo's carefree presence, challenging and knowing. The words that fixated out of the boy's mouth were cursed. "Take care of him. You do not belong here."
Before he could say anything to that, the woman let go and disappeared.
And Gojo—
"Release."
The world warped and out the two of them were, just like that.
Back to half of his mansion in flames, and the frantic pacing of a wild Kiyotaka Ijichi blabbering into his phone, sweating. Smoke sizzled around the distressed, overworked secretary, tiptoeing around torn wood and concrete in an attempt to reach for them.
Gojo, cradling Kakashi's insentient form close to him, turned around and met the bewildered gaze of his servant with a brilliant smile. "Ijichi-chan! Guess who has tea~!"
The answer Gojo got, ultimately, could not unsettle the deep worry he'd reluctantly accepted for his first, and only, son.
[. . .]
The water beneath his feet felt sticky and cold. There wasn't anything he could smell—not his tears or the blood—just the sensations of thunderous beats echoing across the infinite, sun-set realm in soothing protection.
Inside his chest, a searing emptiness followed in streaks of golden-white, manifesting before him as the very personifications of the people he'd ached to see again.
But.
It was just him, this time.
And Kakashi was so, so tired.
"You're back," Obito said neutrally.
He looked old, again. Felt old, again.
Felt the same as the day he'd seen Obito die a second time; when he'd finally accepted what he'd grown so long withering in. "I don't know how to stay," He'd murmured instead, water knee-deep, now.
Obito—or the imaginative subconscious he'd made up of him—looked sad. As if he understood. "This won't last forever," He replied.
Kakashi remained still, uncaring of the cold caresses of the blood slowly rising. "It feels like it," He whispered.
Obito fixed the goggles on top of his head—cracked? Dull in color—an annoying tick of his that Kakashi had forever engraved as a fond characteristic the day he'd lost what will he carried. "It's not forever." It's repetition, again.
It always was. "I'm tired of it," Kakashi croaked.
The daylight and the sunset grew dimmer with every escaping solace.
"You shouldn't have to be."
Kakashi narrowed his eyes, and the blood now at the center of his thigh stopped.
Obito sat himself down, coating his pants with something dark. "There are people who care about you here, too."
He scoffed without meaning to. "Nobody does." I don't want them to.
The boy shrugged. "I don't think so. I think I met one of them."
Kakashi held his breath. "They shouldn't," Kakashi said, unknowing. The water rose, and the tips of his fingers tickled with a gorgeous crimson color. "It's not as if I'll stay. I can't stay. I have no purpose, here."
A bitter smile formed on Obito's face. "You always say the same thing. That they shouldn't care. But that's not really your choice, is it? You told me this when I was lost in a gravestone, and now you're telling me the same in death's void. You don't ever change, do you, Bakashi?"
The sun had completely faded away.
"I mean it, this time," Kakashi promised.
It came out as a desperate, ceaseless, vacancy. A promise, he never learned, in his life often came untrue.
"It's not the same," Obito conceded, standing.
The water reached Kakashi's arms, now.
"But it's a fresh start. They're not us."
Kakashi tried stepping forward, but he was in the blood too deep. Too late, as always, to make a difference.
"...They can't ever be us. But you're still you. You can still love, too."
All the lost Hatake could do was keep sinking as his old friend's face slowly faded into murky darkness.
"You're not alone, anymore."
Lost in the red, deepened depths of his soul.
Lost...?
I... Lost...
[. . .]
"We lost the moon. We have no moon," Boruto hissed at him, stepping forward. "No moon. Did you all fail to mention this? That before these idiot aliens arrived, there was a big, stupid, one too, datteba'sa!?"
Kakashi rubbed his face as Sarada and a few others turned to him for explanations. "It was common knowledge," The 60-year-old mumbled, emitting an exhausted sigh.
Metal Lee frowned at him, "But... Lord Sixth... Lord Seventh repealed that, remember? He..."
"Actually," Sarada interrupted, crossing her arms in a scowl, "He didn't. Lady Tsunade wanted to because civilians wouldn't comprehend the existence of alien life, but she decided against it because she wasn't in any position to do so anymore after Kakashi-jiji took the role. It was mentioned in the textbooks. If you would've read it, Boruto," She snapped her head at him, narrowing her eyes, "You would've known that. This is nothing new."
The Blonde scowled back at her. "Fine. But my point in mentioning this out of the blue is because the moon is fucking gone, people. As in, whatever you sealed in there was undone," Boruto's mouth twisted to the side, and the jagged scar across his eye become more prominent under the intensity of his glower. "...Uncle Sasuke was right. It was only a matter of time before she'd break free somehow, someway."
Sarada's expression pinched, and she looked away, at the mentor of her parents. She dared not continue with whatever Boruto was about to say. "Ojii-san... We know that... Kaguya Ōtsutsuki was sealed, but how? You were there. Are you sure there isn't any way we can replicate that?" Her hands fisted on her clothed sleeve, and her eyes sharpened.
They have had these conversations too many times for Kakashi to count, and every time, he had to disappoint them. (Had to hide.) At the very least, the only thing that Sarada managed to grasp right was her endearing relation with him. Maybe it was sad that after a decade she finally broke the habit of being too formal with him.
If only he could tease Sakura about it now.
But she was gone.
The memory pierced his heart. Kakashi winced. "...I'm afraid not, Sarada. I've told you all already that Naruto and Sasuke were given the power of the Sage of Sixth Paths. They—"
"And Momoshiki," Boruto butt in, tone low. "Code. Everyone. Doesn't matter. But could he?"
Everyone turned to him with heavy silence.
Boruto stared blankly. His lone eye filtered in a wistful, dangerous edge that sunk into Kakashi's presence. The Old Shinobi met his eye with a challenging opposition. "Would he be able to do anything? Give me anything of that? You never did give me a straight answer, datteba'sa."
Kakashi shook his head. "The truth is I don't know, Boruto. And I wouldn't trust that. Your eye—"
"Fuck my eye, right now. And this Karma," He flexed his hand smeared in blue, "I'm asking you if he's capable of giving me answers. He's part of the clan Kaguya was part of, no? And Kaguya. That's another shitshow, datteba'sa. She's free. As in, free. Uncle Sasuke mentioned once that they wanted her. If we give her away, don't you think they'd leave us alone?"
"First of all," Sarada hunched, "How the hell would Kakashi-jiji know? You're the one that has an alien warlord stuck inside you. Secondly, we don't know if she's free. She could be the Ten-Tails for all we know. And thirdly, if she was, what makes you think the enemy would leave us alone? She could be a grand scheme that's part of their plan to complete whatever annihilation bullshit they're coming up with!"
"Hypocrite," Boruto mumbled, but he was punched on the shoulder for it. He grimaced.
"The moon was in a different dimension," Kakashi pointed out. "Toneri of the New Moon—"
"Who gives a shit about that blind motherfucker! He's to blame too! And that's beside the point, she could shift dimensions like Uncle Sasuke used to, can't she? So who's to say that she isn't out and about right now? What the fuck do we do when we encounter her out here too, datteba'sa!? Dad is gone, and Uncle Sasuke was wasted for nothing—" He cut off when he felt Sarada's killing intent. He swallowed, reluctant. "They're... gone. We can't seal her away."
Boruto's scarred, beaten look was too reminiscent of his old student's. And Sarada was just the combined tragedy.
They looked just as lost as he was.
Lost...
Lost...?
I... Lost...
[. . .]
"Don't lose sight of the civilians, my eternal rival." Gai's once boisterous voice expressed itself in a stern monotone.
Kakashi whipped his head back to look at Gai, eyes wide and chest heaving. The ground quaked and the wheel-chair bound Shinobi gave him a determined smile, hand caught with his own.
"Gai, what are you—"
"I'm here to help!" He clapped, knuckles whitened tight from how hard he held onto him. "I will save more than you, my friend! How about it? One more challenge!"
The twisted sadness wasn't hidden in his greying eyes. "Gai..."
"Come along!" He urged and began moving past him, toward the wrecking caves of their Resistance bases. With words caught in his throat, he hurried after his best friend, unable to conjure much in his wilting haste.
He was too old. Too battle-worn.
They ran together into battle anyway, just like always.
There was so much screaming that Kakashi had trouble aligning which voice belonged to who by the time they entered the cave. Civilians ran past him, some stayed to cling but he assured them to keep running far away from here in his deep, commanding voice.
He placed the facade of the Sixth Hokage, both in hopes that the people could be guided by his passionate leadership, and to hide the deep seeded doom he felt.
He knew this was their last stop. Sarada wasn't here to punch her way through and get to them in time.
And based on Gai's tired smile, he knew it too.
"I'll see you on the other side, my eternal Rival." And yet his words never faltered with brimming promise. Always with the presence of hope.
Kakashi hadn't said a word but a determined nod.
He'd parted ways with his friend of many years—maybe a man worth more to him in his eyes—and focused on those that were still alive.
He'd ignored many bodies and dodged the wreckage, entering a haze of the wars he'd already lived through.
If this was his last, he vowed he'd go just as Obito did.
No more running.
No more hesitation.
He pushed past the lingering sadness.
No more pain.
He managed to rescue enough, managed to lose plenty more, but he didn't give up.
He couldn't.
"Kakashi!"
Gai was on the floor, wheelchair gone and rocks bent into his broken legs. Kakashi felt his pumped heartbeat sink when he caught sight of him. "Gai!" He yelled back, running toward him.
He punched through one of the rocks with a palm bound in purple electricity, freeing him. Before he could help him up, however, Gai smacked his hand away. "Go, help those trapped in the clinic!" Gai instructed, still budging through the ache. "I am fine! They need their Sixth Hokage!"
Kakashi hadn't lingered by his side that time. He prioritized those that were left, ravishing through each section of the last clinic built before Sakura had died. There were so many dead, so many already injured from past battles, and some on the brink due to the lack of medical assistance. Some were still sleeping, never to know, and let go.
He had done his best. They ran to the safety exits, and Kakashi didn't dare watch, knowing that the wails and cut-offs were of those who were still caught under the forcing debris.
It came to one more person, just one more—
And he had pushed Gai hard enough to create distance, hard enough to take his place.
The last thing he heard and saw was Gai—and the desperate call of his name, just as the rocks came down to take him too.
[. . .]
He came about to consciousness with Gai's shout echoing in his ears in the place he liked the least.
The hospital favored disparaging him. It entailed memories for the young Hatake of vivid experiences of a life he'd seemingly lost decades ago, before his actual death at the hands of Alien-like Gods that bore their chakra power.
And while this Hospital was much different than that of his time, the lucid bone-white was an execrated recollection that served its purpose to haunt him. The smell was the same except with further added toxicities he could only hope he'd never have to encounter as long as he was conscious, and, conceivably, the same smell of his new father he'd never wanted nor asked for.
Said man was silently hovering over him, turned away in a quiet meander outside the window of the room. It was rare to find the eccentric idiot so quiet, but Kakashi wasn't complaining—not when just the sight of him simmered a rage so cold he felt like dying.
The last thing he remembered was Obito.
When will it end? He asked himself as Gojo's face turned around to look at him. Why is it always him?
"You're awake," His father spoke with a languid smile. There wasn't an ounce of bullshit-fueled glee in his tone, nor was there any ridicule present on his face.
His smile looked forced instead, looking like it didn't fit quite right on his face.
Fascinating.
Remaining quiet, he took in his father's peculiarity before giving the room a quick once-over. It appeared to be the same enclosure he'd woken up from the first time he came to be in this world. The broken bottle and window ceased, cleaned, and repaired with proper toddler-proof locks. Exhausted, he hadn't even entertained the idea of escaping this time around.
"It's about time," His father said, and Kakashi looked at him with a frighteningly blank expression. Gojo was unphased. "You were out cold for a couple of days. Four, to be exact."
Days? He thought, incredulous. What had he done that warranted days of unconsciousness? Surely passing out from an impending Panic Attack wouldn't knock him out for four days. And in this cold?
As if reading his mind, Gojo gave a quick brush of his fingers over the blanket, covering him more. "You were such a sleepy head," He joked, but Kakashi wasn't in the mood for jokes.
"What happened?" He drawled, reluctant for answers but too curious not to pass up the chance to know more. His throat came out raw and painfully dry, and so he coughed, disregarding his father's brief flashes of concern. If he'd been knocked out for days, it was no wonder he fell into a kaleidoscope of memories of his old life, and of a very vivid one where Obito specifically starred in.
It might've been real, probably. But it wouldn't be the first time that Obito inhabited his dreams.
Whatever he'd said might've just been his subconscious fighting with him all over again.
"You gave us a little scare," Gojo said with an aversion to the answer, his smile dropping for a second. "Your curse energy became dangerously low. Your heart stopped beating."
"Oh," Kakashi said lamely.
Was that all? Kakashi didn't care for it.
It would've been better if he did die.
'You're weak.'
Kakashi's ear twitched at the voice of his old friend, but he didn't dare react.
Again, it wasn't his first time hearing voices. He only hoped they'd lessen as time went by.
"Yep," Gojo chirped, and Kakashi noticed his fingers twitch when he let go of the blanket in favor of whatever was bulging in his sweater's front pocket. "Luckily, you survived! I brought something that'd make you feel better as a celebration."
On his palm rested a small Mochi container. It looked half eaten inside the plastic. When he saw his lit-up expression, Kakashi wanted nothing to do with it.
He abruptly didn't have the energy to entertain anything about his father. His body was consumed by the cold cot and he allowed it to simmer in its uncomfortable depths, uncaring that his father had stopped smiling when he noticed.
His eyes lost their shine, and he wasn't in the room anymore.
Just like when he was in the red water.
Depleted.
"Hey."
His shoulder shook and Kakashi chanced a lethargic peek at his nagging parent.
"Don't do that," Chastised his father, who kept dangling the offered food at his face. "You just woke up! Eat something, ne. You'll feel better."
He didn't have the energy to move.
Gojo stopped messing with the irritating plastic and thankfully put it down at the sight of his reluctance. "You're not hungry? That's fine. Drink some water instead."
Just as he removed the mochi from his pocket, a bottle of water appeared out of nowhere in his hand. "Shoko said you should be fine drinking some water. Since. You know. You're not entirely human, apparently."
That caught his attention. "Huh?" He rasped, fighting his body with confusion and the urge to disappear. His mind was awake, but his heart wasn't in it.
He felt numb.
"Ah," His father's smile returned, "Yeah, not human. Wasn't supposed to say that because Shoko-chan's scared you might dissociate again. So! Water?" He offered the bottle again with a shake.
Kakashi silenced.
Not human?
He'd worry about that more if he cared enough.
His body seemed to disagree. A series of static noises pierced the air, but he didn't look.
He didn't want to.
He was tired.
"Ah... That's not supposed to happen," He heard his father murmur, but, again, he didn't care much about whatever started happening.
Then, as he wished for, the darkness consumed him again.
This time, however, instead of Gai's chilling cries of his name, he heard Gojo's careless, but no less heartfelt voice.
"Sorry."
[. . .]
Megumi, for the better part of him, didn't have much of an opinion on Gojo Kakashi.
He'd seen him about four times the entire period they'd met, and so the feelings of (respect) esteem he'd felt the first time were slightly... short-lived. Now, normally, Megumi would stick with his first impressions and avoid everything and everyone as much as possible. People were either considered good or bad in his eyes, and he treated them the way they deserved to be treated. (He hated both, anyway. Ideals were rather pathetic.)
Training and his cherished sister occupied his mind anyway though, so he hardly ever formed a thorough analysis of someone. He was a kid, and he preferred prioritizing his training. (Even though he loathed it. He didn't want to become a jujutsushi. He never asked to be one. It passed the time, was all.)
For Kakashi... Well, it was weird.
He didn't know what to think.
The boy was quiet, impassive, and mostly but otherwise mouthy. He had a snark to him like Gojo-sensei, except it was further senseless and more... dead than anything. Megumi thought Kakashi was like him, at first. A boy who didn't want to be with someone to be something in life he never asked for. He thought he and Kakashi were the same.
But they weren't. Megumi had a fight in him, he knew. He vowed it.
Kakashi was... like a corpse.
It was a little unnerving.
Megumi wasn't one to think twice about people. Especially anyone related to Gojo-sensei. He was a nuisance he hadn't wanted in his life at first... and details, details. There was a reason Fushiguro Megumi was thinking about Gojo Kakashi at the moment.
The reason was this: the child had blown up half of the (his) house.
The sound was monumental enough to scare Megumi's curse energy out in the hour that it happened, but when he didn't hear any commotion, he went back to sleep.
Until he heard his door break open and a series of curses infiltrate his room. (Wasn't his room curse-proof? He lied.)
He had to kill them all by himself (they were easy, weirdly enough), and when he saw one with eerie blonde hair, smiling at him fondly, he realized they weren't attacking. They were just watching him.
And they... they looked human. Like him.
(Purple stripes? Purple Diamond?
Red, red, eyes?)
Megumi was confused at the time. Bewildered, but he attacked, and they let him, and they disappeared. (Were they protecting him?) It wasn't until hours later that Ijichi came in, frantic and appalled, hugging him briefly and checking him over for injuries that weren't warranted that Megumi found out what happened.
On his way to Shoko's, he had been informed of one thing.
That Gojo Kakashi had destroyed the house.
(How? Why? You know why.)
Megumi thought it was fine. He thought Gojo-sensei deserved it, (just a little, just a bit) because of everything Megumi had gone through. He thought Kakashi was the same as him.
But then Gojo came in to tell him, worried, he saw, that Kakashi had a 'bit of a panic attack'.
"Did you trigger it?" He asked his reluctantly acknowledged guardian suspiciously, narrowing his eyes.
He had expected him to laugh, poke his nose, and deny it. He had expected a gasp of mock surprise and a series of confirmations, imitating sobriety.
What he got instead was a stewing, hurting silence.
(Like he had not meant to do that. Like he had predicted it. But he didn't think it through.)
It sickened him. And Megumi, for all his compassion, had requested to visit Kakashi two days after that night. He was warned, by Gojo and not Nanami, of his state.
Megumi saw him anyway.
He looked dead. Lying there, dormant.
(How sad.)
((It's the same.))
And when he was told Kakashi had woken up, Megumi went to see him. He had said hello, had greeted him, but he wasn't there.
Well. He was. He was sitting, breathing, living.
But the kid was dead.
And what would eleven-year-old Megumi think? That the kid was ignoring him?
No. No, he knew. He had felt that way before but he didn't let it consume him.
But Kakashi did.
Kakashi was gone.
He wasn't a good person. He wasn't a bad person.
He was just dead.
And so Megumi didn't know what to do. What to think of him.
So, naturally, when Gojo had seen Kakashi react to his presence (Megumi hadn't caught the desperation in his eyes when the boy had uttered a kindred name), he had tasked him to hang out with him.
"Shouldn't you be taking care of him?" Drawled the vexed boy to the Egomaniac. It earned him a half-hearted pat on his head.
"He wouldn't want to see me."
So weird.
But Megumi listened this time. He had hung around him, telling him of his sister and his power, but the boy hadn't responded.
At all. He didn't twitch. Didn't eat when he offered.
(He was dead.)
Megumi was unsure, unsurprised, and unhappy.
The boy had never looked him in the eye. Not even before, when he was still cognizant.
Megumi didn't know why, but by the mug of dullness on his face, Megumi guessed he found him inconsequential. He'd be denigrated if he had wanted to make friends. (He wouldn't have cared if he didn't understand.)
There was just one thing Megumi felt for Kakashi, even buried deep.
A mere ounce of respect. (Short-lived, he claimed. But not really.) Because nobody ever stood up to Gojo-sensei, and there he had been, seeing a four-year-old mock and degrade the all-powerful shaman.
He'd even stabbed him; which was scary too, but well-deserved. (He couldn't do that.)
((What happened to him?))
He remembered when he'd asked Gojo about Kakashi three days after he met him and it was the first time he'd seen Gojo so... guilt-ridden.
"Who, the brat?" The shaman droned, waving a hand. "He's stuck in his room. Something about multiple escape attempts."
So Gojo-sensei hadn't kicked him out but confined him.
It was probably why he'd barely seen Kakashi in the (now destroyed) mansion.
It wasn't a surprise that Megumi was allowed to take him outside now. The boy walked, thankfully.
But.
He was dead.
And Megumi?
Megumi didn't want to see him dead. So in the days that followed the destruction of the mansion, he promised Kakashi he would be a better roommate. (Brother, he dared not say. He didn't know him.)
He had asked Gojo if he could take Kakashi to school after that declaration, and the sorcerer went silent for a few minutes after his request. When he came back to himself, he agreed with his usual cheeriness.
Weird, again.
Weird.
Everything about Kakashi was weird.
Megumi had been accompanied by Nanami, who looked just as annoyed as he was when he went to school. But he was here for his sister, who was said to be coming back from a two-week wilderness camping field trip. He didn't want to miss the reunion, but he didn't want Kakashi to be alone either, so he took him with him. Again, though, he saw Kakashi in the lap of Nanami quiet and lifeless.
But Megumi had told him to wait inside. The reunion was a private affair, even for his (almost?) friend.
"What's he doing out here?" Megumi asked the adult, uncaring that the child was right there. He never reacted anyway.
Nanami seemed strained. "It's not wise to keep him inside a room," He informed truthfully.
Megumi rose an eyebrow. "Why?" Gojo had never told him that. Was that why he kept telling him to take him outside?
Nanami was quiet.
The raven-haired boy turned his attentive eyes onto Kakashi, taking in his haggard appearance and unsubtle-like annoyance. Or was it just the dead expression explored? Megumi couldn't tell. Kakashi only ever had one face.
Was he sad? He had to be, right?
He was dead, though.
It wouldn't hurt to ask.
"Is he sad?" He asked Nanami. An adult. He gave straight answers.
Nanami gave a silent nod.
So he was. He was sad.
Dead and sad.
Innocent, Megumi chuffed his shoe into the compressed gravel of the sidewalk. "How can we make him happy again?" He asked, calculating. It was such a stupid question.
But. Megumi had to try.
There was a lot he could do, but a lot he didn't know.
Nanami's answer to that was a resigned sigh. "He needs time." That was all he said.
Weird.
Very weird.
Megumi didn't know what to do, so he decided to nod back and mind his business. If Kakashi felt better being outside, it didn't matter.
His sister was here anyway.
With a tiny smile and open arms, he engulfed his sister while she tightly squeezed him back. She blabbered a soft greeting and squished his cheeks affectionately, to which he took with feigned annoyance.
(His sister was good. His sister wasn't dumb.)
What he didn't see was Kakashi's poor reaction to that reunion. His sister had, though, and she stopped, causing him to frown in bafflement.
"His eye is bleeding," Megumi heard his sister whisper, trembling in place. He instantly regarded the two, with Nanami muttering out a curse as he stood and draped the child comfortably on his chest, with his head on his shoulder.
"Megumi-kun, Tsumuki-chan, a cab will be waiting for you down the street," He informed them, hurried and a little distraught. "I must take Kakashi-kun to the infirmary."
The two nodded.
And while Nanami hurriedly left the scene, Megumi was left to wonder just how much Kakashi was suffering.
He didn't show emotion, so who's to say he wasn't feeling hurt all the time as Megumi had been?
"Who's that?" Tsumuki asked him, confused. "He looks like Gojo-san."
Megumi strapped his seatbelt on. "That's Gojo-sensei's kid."
Tsumuki blinked in surprise. "Whaa? Gojo-san has a baby? He looks just like him!"
"Yeah," Megumi mumbled, "Nanami-san said he's sad."
Tsumuki frowned. "That's not good."
Megumi agreed.
There was a silence before she perked up. "Hey, what if we show him your puppies? Do you think it would make him happy? I know it helped us," Tsumuki tried, smiling.
Megumi would have to see if it would.
[. . .]
A/N: And here is the famed chapter, folks... I am so sorry for the wait. Between hella family shit and other issues, it's become a damn nuisance. I've lost a lot of motivation that sparks at random intervals at 3:00 AM and yeah... I love all of ya. I hope you guys are doing well.
Toodles~
Ana.