A/N: This chapter took a sharp left turn into territory I never once considered it ever going through. Um. More on that in the end notes.
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Oh dear. It was as Kakashi feared. His mate's pack had harassed the black female snake that Orochimaru was growing increasingly fond of. They growled softly and waved their tails in distress when they smelled her scent. Kakashi had no idea how to communicate about someone who was not present, so he decided to keep visiting regularly. They would have to get used to her scent eventually.
He forgot to ask himself why they would have harassed her. It came as a surprise when his own mate started acting uncomfortable around him. Every time he motioned in the direction of the base, she whined, no longer as happy about the idea of moving there as she had been. Though cold weather arrived and the air prepared itself to host snowflakes, she seemed determined to stay put. One morning, after the latest in a series of nights disturbed by anxiety, Kakashi flung himself out of bed. Do you really want a snake around small, helpless mammals? Orochimaru had asked that exact question. Kakashi had heard it. He facepalmed. How could I have missed that? That's why she's been upset with me!
But he had no idea how to make amends. They accepted Orochimaru, but only because he'd been able to mark Orochimaru in front of them. It probably helped that the Snake Sannin was human. He still had no idea how to discuss the black female snake as a topic, so how could he possibly tell them that she was not dangerous? For that matter, was she not dangerous? He assumed so, because Orochimaru probably had a way to tell her not to eat wolf pups. He hoped.
"Orochimaru?" he asked. "Do you have a way to tell your girlfriend not to eat wolf pups?"
"I can turn her aside, yes," the snake replied. "Why do you only ask that now?"
"Well, I have complete confidence in you. But my pack doesn't."
"Those fools." Orochimaru hissed, but in an amused way.
Kakashi chuckled. "You seem so much happier lately. She's good for you, isn't she?"
"Perhaps."
"Have you told your mother about her?"
"Of course," Orochimaru replied, but in a way that made it clear he hadn't thought of it for a long time.
"Give her an update," Kakashi said with a big smile. "Go on. You know what, it's been a while since I saw her myself. I'll come."
They both paid a visit to the gigantic snake statue that filled what was supposed to be an empty stage. What'd the captain call her? Amita? Amita was enormous, her coils rising well over their heads. Her mouth, if it could open, was wide enough to swallow a human whole with zero visible bulge. Not seeing her for however many weeks it had been made it easy to forget how imposing she really was. They both took a moment just to admire her.
"Hello, Mother," Orochimaru said.
A sudden thought popped into Kakashi's head. Hey, did we ever get around to checking her strength now that there are two snakes in the world instead of just one? Kakashi blinked. Where did that thought come from? It felt like the kind of thought you got for a reason…
Nothing visibly happened. But after taking some steps toward her, Orochimaru paused. "Do you feel something, Puppy?"
"Yes."
Come to think of it, had she seemed this imposing the last time they'd seen her? Her size was unchanged; everything about her appearance remained the same. But what inspired the sudden considerations of how easily she could swallow a person?
Again, nothing visibly happened. They both waited. As trained shinobi, they knew better than to distrust their senses. That training came in handy now, even though they were both as removed as they could be from the ninja life. The ninja life wasn't all bad…
Then, flickers of light began to trace their way down her scales. So many flickers moved in so many ways that the eye could not hope to track them all. Yet, they seemed like parts of one whole. The flickering lights moved along her body towards her head, gaining strength as they did so, until Kakashi's knees threatened to give out. He knew what he must be looking at. Without looking, he detected a similar wobbliness in Orochimaru's soul. For all his confidence, the snake had never faced anything remotely like this and he knew it.
The lights filled the room with their aura. Kakashi swore he could feel his body being repaired. Their impossible-to-describe glow filled Amita's eyes - so many colors! - and stayed there for a little while. Then, as if she spat it out, the disembodied angel zoomed out from her head into the open air.
Neither Kakashi nor Orochimaru would have described themselves as particularly religious, but they both fell to their knees. Without a body to constrain it, the angel took a form that had the approximate height and width of a human body with light peeling off of it and filling the air around it with swirling arcs. It seemed to be constantly evaporating. But they could feel its strength in their bones, and knew it was in no danger of disappearing anytime soon. The very concept of words fled the room. Neither the demon nor the snake could think in words, much less speak. For what felt like a long while, their existence was pure sensation. They simply experienced what it was like to see an angel, without having their experience diluted by thought.
Kakashi remembered what it had been like to see the moon and wonder if he could guide his life by it, and to see a tree immediately after emerging from the false world and be amazed by how real it seemed. Seeing an angel was like that, but a thousand times purer. Pure experience. Direct contact. The outside world laying its hands directly upon his heart, no mind nor false world to interfere. No distance. If the angel's aura hadn't been so gentle and healing, he would have been fried to a crisp instantly.
But it was. The angel's aura was not only gentle and healing, but also patient. How long did they gape at it before remembering that they wanted to speak to it? There was no way to know. Then, once they did remember, there was the challenge of figuring out how to speak to it. The angel's aura still banished the concept of words from the room. There was no way to speak to it. Except…
Ridiculous. I'm a demon. Kakashi thought this not in words, but in tones of embarrassment and shame, accompanied by memories of times when he had felt out of place among his peers. I can't. Powerlessness. Can I? Hope, plus memories of recent times where things he had believed turned out to not be true. Hello? Can you hear me? He knew he must keep his soul firmly inside his body or else the light would hurt him. He tried to project a message from it while keeping it still. It was bizarre, a contradiction. How could his soul possibly influence something it couldn't touch? He blushed again, remembering that he did not have the long-range acting aura that angels did. He couldn't do anything from a distance.
Orochimaru had more success. The snake gasped. Kakashi watched with envy as his companion engaged in meaningful dialogue with the angel. He switched to demon vision and saw currents of what looked like air mixing with his companion's soul. His heart beat fast. Primitive instincts activated. Want. He moved his hand. Want. The glowing energy he saw swirling around inside his companion, looking stronger and stronger every second as the angel's aura strengthened it - Want. He grabbed Orochimaru's arm. WANT.
His hand blazed with pain. He gasped and toppled backward, stunned. He still wanted to be near that beautiful thing, but he couldn't move. He squeezed his eyes shut and let himself cry. Please, I'm not even real. I'm just a living illusion. I want so badly to be real. Please let me have just this one taste. A ravenous hunger tortured him so much that he feared he would go insane. Please!
He opened his eyes to find the angel hovering directly over him. The sight of it soothed him, bringing him back from the edge of insanity, but he continued to be tortured. He wanted to touch the angel, but he didn't dare. Why did it cause him pain when it was what he wanted more than anything? He reached out a hand, hoping that he could physically touch it at least.
But when one of its wisps drifted over his hand, he felt precisely nothing.
He whimpered. Lonely lonely lonely want want want. He switched to demon vision, but just like before, he couldn't even see that there was an angel there. He cried out in rage. Want! Hunger! He switched back to regular vision, glared at the angel, and felt truly terrible in a way that he had always known he would feel if he dared to feel anything at all.
The angel seemed sad. At least, something about the way it shaped itself suggested slumped shoulders. Kakashi snarled. It took all he had to keep from attacking it. He wanted, he hungered, he hated, he suffered, he yearned to destroy. A screaming, raging tiger was what he held at bay. WANT! It felt like a bottomless pit had opened in the middle of his heart, and he would never be satisfied again.
"Puppy? Puppy." Something shook his shoulder. He turned his head to find Orochimaru looking at him with concern. The sight of his favorite snake provoked no rush of affection. No adoration, no love, no care. It meant nothing. As Orochimaru met his eyes, concern turned to wariness, then to fear. And that meant nothing.
Kakashi looked back up at the angel. He understood now. He had never understood before why a demon, no matter how tortured, would seek to destroy a world full of beautiful things. He and Orochimaru had hypothesized all kinds of explanations: that demons were unable to perceive the beauty and constantly strove just to feel something, that they lived in a constant state of agony and needed healing, that they destroyed other things because what they really wanted to destroy was themselves. The one thing they hadn't hypothesized was that demons might genuinely hate the world and all of its beautiful things. Angels were the embodiment of everything that the world was and every ounce of beauty it contained, and the sight of one had destroyed his ability to feel satisfied. He would never be happy again now that he had seen an angel. He had been so careful to avoid ruining himself, but he had been ruined anyway. He hated that.
"I know why demons are the way they are." Habit compelled him to help his companion with their research, one last time.
Orochimaru didn't dare ask why, but desire bubbled up to the surface of his soul.
"Because we exist in a state of being perfectly satisfied, until this world strips it away. Little by little, beauty and kindness and all of those things wear us down, until finally they punch a hole straight through our soul, creating a neverending hunger." Kakashi sighed. "I can't patch that hole. I am never going to be happy again. And it's all because I saw an angel. No, it's also because I saw so many other things before this. This world has done nothing but grind me down. Angels reveal the truth, so now that I've met one, I can't use denial any longer. I hate everything that has ever hurt me. I hate this world. I hate angels. I hate all of it."
"Puppy -"
"Shut the fuck up!" Kakashi whipped his head around and snarled at his former companion. "If you want to live, you'll stay quiet."
Orochimaru obeyed, for once. The angel extended some of its light between them, protecting the snake. Kakashi didn't care. He hated everything just as much as he hated Orochimaru. The walls. Amita. Everything. Want. He remembered following that impulse into a baby's body and being satisfied. Because he hadn't yet lost the ability to be so. Because he hadn't yet seen all of the things he could never have.
He looked up at the angel again. Its aura soothed, healed, made everything right. The hole inside fed on that and grew larger, sharper, more demanding. Kakashi turned away before he went entirely insane. He had to get out of there. He went up to that other level of reality and tunneled through it to a distant location. He ended up in the middle of the ocean. He extended darkness from his body in the form of a whale and dove into the depths. He needed time to plan out his revenge. This world would pay.
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Habit prevented Kakashi from destroying anything immediately. He spent weeks simply traveling around the world. He had once looked forward to having an opportunity to do so. He once would have enjoyed it. But now, no matter where he went or how fast he traveled, he couldn't move fast enough to soothe the restlessness inside him. Want.
It was torture to be in any place. He stranded himself in the middle of a desert. The broken rocks and tough, impenetrable dirt stretched as far as the eye could see. Solid, substantial, real. All they did was remind him of his own illusory existence. Want.
At the bottom of the ocean, he allowed himself to experience some of its pressure, imitating swaddling. His body reacted as it should have: slowed heartbeat, slowed mental activity, a subjective feeling of being soothed. This only made his thoughts turn sour. Why is the ocean kinder than all of humanity? The better he felt, the more his rage grew because he should have felt this good before. Want!
The inner restlessness scattered his thoughts, so it took him a full week to remember that he had a way to fend off unpleasant feelings. He tried to summon the false world back. But he couldn't do it. He had no idea why, but the ability to enter the false world seemed to have fled from him. Perhaps the sight of the angel prevented him from using any kind of denial, as he had said to Orochimaru. Perhaps he just wasn't using the right technique. Perhaps the false world could not be summoned at all. Whatever the case, he couldn't escape that way. There was no escaping the constant WANT.
It might be a combination of things. He certainly felt like a trapped tiger lashing out. That part of their conjectures had been accurate. He wanted to rip out the part of his soul that had a hole in it, if that was possible, if it wouldn't leave an even larger hole. That part of their conjectures had also been accurate. But being trapped by the false world? No, that hypothesis had not been right at all. The exact opposite was true. After approximately two weeks, he found a moment of enough mental stability to remember the experience of seeing the angel. It had been a direct, unfiltered experience that would have fried his soul if it hadn't been so gentle. Well, now he was having the exact same kind of direct experience of the wider world, and the wider world was not so gentle. He laughed harshly upon figuring this out. My soul is frying. That explained why it was increasingly difficult to remember things…
No matter where he turned, no matter where he went or what he did, the hole inside called to him. Want, it cried out at all hours of day and night. Want. He shivered with rage, pain, sadness, desire, whatever it was, he didn't care, it just hurt so very much. He leveled a forest and felt nothing. He reached into a human's body with his darkness and watched their soul die. He felt nothing. Nothing but Want.
I'm going to go insane. I'm going to kill myself. Despite having these thoughts very distinctly, it took him about a month to remember that he and Orochimaru had gathered information about this. Could a genjutsu master compress him until he tore himself to shreds? It would hurt, but only for a little while. He struggled to remember more, feeling like there was something more he could remember if only he tried. Eventually he found it. That's right, we wanted to talk to the angel about the tangle. What did the angel have to say? Is the tangle my answer?
But he couldn't possibly go back to any of the places where he and Orochimaru had been. The Want! would echo off every wall, every stone, every familiar thing, turning him into even more of a screaming ball of agony than he was already. He destroyed a small village out of rage at this fact. Nothing. Nowhere. No escape. No silence. No rest. Too much. WANT.
Please…
At long last, when he had finally stopped praying, stopped hoping, forgotten about it entirely… The false world came for him. Kakashi woke up one morning to find himself spiritually suspended in a cocoon, or maybe it was a block of ice. His body slept on a nest of leaves on the ground, but the leaves and the dirt seemed very far away. He stared at them for a while, doing nothing. He did not enjoy the blissful relief; his soul was where joy originated as well as pain, so he couldn't enjoy anything. But he came as close as he could. This is better, he thought dimly. By the standards that he and Orochimaru had set, it was better. Those standards said he should not harm people, should live a peaceful life, etc. In fact, the number one thing they said was that he should not ever go insane. Oh. Damn. I failed. He did not like having failed. The standards were his life now that his feelings had gone away. He existed only to meet them. He was a tool.
I guess I should get up. Despite thinking that, he continued to lie on the ground. His stomach growled, but it was just as far away as the dirt and leaves were, so he did not care. The whole morning passed. It was not beautiful. It was not ugly. The forest around him existed but also did not exist, winking out of reality every time he blinked. Ah, now everything is just as illusory as I am. That's better. That makes more sense.
Day turned to evening. He had passed over the equator, so it was summer where he was. His whole body felt lethargic and awful from not eating or moving for so long. I wonder if it will die… He closed his eyes and somehow went to sleep.
He woke up to find himself in a tent. He was on his back now instead of his stomach, and a blanket was draped over most of his body. He sighed. Damn… People. They're going to expect me to move. My body should be frozen in ice just like the rest of me is. That would make more sense.
Strange people came and attended to him. They had green skin, with varying shades of red mixed in. They looked at him but did not speak to him. When they saw his eyes following them around, they began to speak to him in short, clipped sentences. He did not move or speak in response. It wasn't long before they returned to silence. Kakashi eventually realized that he had a completely different skin color than they did. Ah, that's it. They don't expect me to be able to understand them. I'm very obviously not like them. His pale skin was equivalent to their green skin, and they seemed to get redder the more they tanned. He wondered what naturally dark-skinned members of their folk would look like. Red from birth, or another color entirely?
They investigated his body, poking and prodding it, searching for a sign that something was wrong. Their faces were very still, but if they found any sign of ill health they involuntarily made a high-pitched trilling sound. After performing a pinch test on his skin, one of them made that sound, summoning several others. They poured water down his throat. After failing to find broken bones they investigated the functioning of his internal organs next, which meant they lay on top of him and pressed their ears right up against his abdomen. One of them made that sound again while listening to his stomach, causing others to bring him food and feed him as if he was an infant. It was much easier to eat this way than if he had had to feed himself. Kakashi could make himself open his mouth, close his lips around the feeding instrument, chew and swallow. It reminded him of feeding Tomoda. He had that program he followed… The feeding instrument was very curious. It was a single pointy stick, like a miniature spear. He noticed that the green people didn't have teeth. Sometimes they had traces of liquid around their mouths. Green skin. Feeding on liquid. It's like they're a combination of plants and insects. He wondered what kind of animal they saw him as. This was probably a veterinary tent. They treated him like an unusually docile dog, feeding him a mix of meat and vegetation in precise, even quantities. They'd probably determined that he was an omnivore from his teeth.
But there were also signs that they did not see him as just an animal. Sometimes they made repetitive low-pitched brrr-brrr-brrr sounds while studying him. If another green person happened to be in the room, they would come over and join the first one, study Kakashi while making that same brrr-brrr-brrr sound. After they had fed and watered him and determined that he was not in a health crisis, two of them spoke to a third. They used the same short, clipped style they had when trying to speak to Kakashi. "Apa k-k-budi ta," one said.
"T-t-budi ta," the third replied. Kakashi had seen him a lot, always supervising while others did the testing. He was probably the head doctor.
"K-k-budi mana do," another insisted.
"Apa tzzz," the doctor said. "Tinuma. K-k-budi ta. Dapa zz ta a, dio." The two others lowered their heads. Hmm. They started out saying different things. The other two said k-k-budi and he said t-t-budi. But now he's saying the same thing as them. They must have persuaded him to agree to whatever they were suggesting, but he's making it clear that if it goes badly they will be the ones blamed. Whatever they intend to use this "budi" to do to me, it must be controversial.
"Budi" turned out to be their word for a specialized member of the community in charge of feeding the others. They really are like insects. This person had the ability to move, but not very well. Kakashi was picked up and taken out of the tent to see them. He understood why when he saw the budi. They could not possibly go indoors. Strange structures sprouted from their spine, shoulders and arms, looking like a cross between ferns, antennae and gills. The structures constantly twisted, attuning themselves to the breeze. If they encountered a patch of sunlight, they would freeze in place and try to catch as much light as possible. The budi was covered with fur that the structures frequently wiped themselves against. It did not look like regular fur. They must both filter-feed and photosynthesize. Orochimaru will find this interesting. Their abdomen was swollen, and their legs were short. Their legs were extra hairy, and they sat in a puddle of their own liquid excretions. Makes sense. If water soaks into the ground, it can dissolve minerals in the soil and send them upwards through dilution. Using liquid as roots. How inventive.
The budi's mouth had lost the ability to open and close. Their lips were fused together into a tube shape. Kakashi realized what the subordinate doctors wanted to try. They want to give me some of their food? As the subordinate doctors talked with the budi, the budi made some of those high-pitched alarm trills. But they must have agreed, because Kakashi was lifted up into a seated position and brought face to face with them. If he leaned over, crossing the width of the puddle, he could drink from the budi's strange mouth-thing.
Kakashi realized he felt a little closer to his body. Receiving food and water might have helped, or it might be because he was surrounded by strange people that Orochimaru would definitely want him to gather information about. Whatever the cause, he had gained the ability to move. He imitated their brrr-brrr-brrr as best he could, then tilted his head and said, "Hmm." Must learn to communicate with them. Habit and instinct both said so. He tentatively leaned forward, saw and heard no sign of alarm, then leaned forward some more. Carefully using his lips alone, he sucked from the budi.
It tasted like sap, but thick in a way that suggested it contained a good amount of protein. Oh, this is good! After only a few sips, he sat back and made a long drawn out "Hmmmm." He opened and closed his left hand, then his right, then broke out into a full-body yawn. Before he even knew what he was doing, he got up and moved to an open area to stretch. It was as if his body was acting on its own. He let it. The more his body acted on its own, the less effort he had to spend to take care of it.
The green people chattered excitedly. The standards say that I must benefit people and make the world a better place. I am very successful. Kakashi looked around and saw green people staring at him. This was their camp, and as far as they were concerned he was just an injured animal that they had rescued from the forest. There was no more for him to do here. I must report my findings. He turned toward the budi, knelt down so that he was on their level, placed his hands over his heart and held them out while saying, "K-k-*tongue click*" K-k- seems to be a prefix that means approach. Hopefully it has a more general positive connotation as well. And a tongue click could mean anything; I just needed something to attach the prefix to. Hopefully they take it the way I intend. He nodded once, then got up and walked away from camp towards the deep forest. As soon as he was out of sight, he sprouted demon wings and flew up into the air. He was going home.
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All that his standards commanded was to report his findings. They did not specify how fast, and he could not feel any sense of urgency, so he maintained a totally average flying speed. It took several days to reach the hidden base. As he landed in a foot of snow, he idly wondered if Orochimaru would have food ready. It had been difficult to remember to give his body opportunities to act on its own. He was quite sure he hadn't given it enough.
He yawned, pushed open the door and walked in. He followed his soul sense down to the research room. Orochimaru had lots of papers on a desk there, but was pacing instead of looking at them. "Hi," Kakashi called.
Orochimaru jumped a meter in the air and spun around. A bewildering mixture of emotions crossed his face. He was unable to speak.
Oh, that's right. I threatened to kill him last time I saw him. That's not meeting the standards. "Don't worry," Kakashi said. "The false world's active. I am a tool, and my job is to perform the last set of functions I was assigned. That means telling you all the information I have gathered while I've been traveling the world." Orochimaru still gaped, unable to speak. Mah, I'm going to have to wait. Kakashi's eyelids drooped. "Do you have food ready?" He didn't get an answer, so he said "I'll check the kitchen" and walked away.
Lunch had been eaten an hour ago. Nothing was still out. Kakashi lay down and waited for his body to begin moving on its own. It twitched, but in the absence of sunlight or wind it couldn't get up. Have I become part plant too?
That was how Orochimaru found him. The snake stared down. Kakashi would have stared back, but that would have involved moving his eyes, which his body didn't want to do, so he stared blankly up at the ceiling instead. Orochimaru eventually spoke. He whispered, "What the hell, Puppy?"
"Well, I was going to try to get revenge. But my longstanding habit of not fighting or destroying anything, thanks to you, prevented me from doing so immediately. Before I could get myself to do it, the pain started eroding my memory, so I really couldn't think straight or make plans. Basically I was locked in my body with a very loud voice that called out 'Want want want' every second of every minute of every hour, even when I slept. It was very distracting. It hurt. I tried to summon the false world back, but it didn't come. It came much later, when I wasn't expecting it. I think its coming and going is controlled by some part of me that is not conscious. I don't know why that part took so long to act. Anyway, here I am."
Orochimaru continued to stare down like he didn't know what he was looking at. "So," Kakashi said. "I met some green plant-insect people. Want to hear about them?"
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Orochimaru did not want to hear about the green people. He left for a while, then returned looking like a ninja. He hauled Kakashi to his feet and demanded to know if contact with an angel - an embodied one - would result in further insanity. "That depends on how it affects the false world," Kakashi answered. "I still have this vague feeling like somewhere deep inside, I am a screaming ball of rage. I just can't reach it."
"You are still insane, but it is buried. For now." Orochimaru hissed. "That'll have to do. Summon Purple here. And tell your dog clone to make damn sure it's Purple or some other angel, not one of those storytellers."
Kakashi did as requested. He had to wait a while before he received a return message from his dog clone. Presumably, the dog clone had to explain something to somebody. When eventually someone could be teleported into the base, the someone was not Purple.
It was Orange.
Orochimaru and Kakashi stared at him in shock. They hadn't expected to see anybody they recognized who wasn't Purple. Truthfully, they hadn't expected to see Orange ever again.
True to form, Orange had come prepared. He had a small pouch of dried fruit to munch on. He opened it, popped a piece of something yellowish into his mouth and chewed on it while saying, "Many, many stories are flying. Heart begs to follow the chase."
"I suppose that's a good thing," Orochimaru said. "We need someone curious. Puppy here went insane about a month and a half ago. He looked at me like I meant nothing to him, threatened to kill me, said he hated the world and everything in it. Typical demonic insanity. Now, as you can see, he is docile. But it's not because his hatred of the entire world has abated; instead, the false world prevents him from feeling anything at all, including hatred. For as long as the false world keeps ahold of him, he will help us. If it ever slips, he'll go back to trying to destroy everything. There is no way to know how long the false world will stick around, so we'd better take swift advantage. I need the help of an angel in order to do that."
Orange's eyes glittered. "What part?"
Kakashi sighed. "Definitely not a healing part. I don't want any healing." Is the false world already beginning to slip away? I feel some impatience. We don't have long. "Let's not discuss that now. I have to tell you everything I've experienced." The three of them sat down. Kakashi described everything as best he could - the insatiable wanting, the effects it had on his memory, the way it fed on beauty and turned everything good in the world into a source of agony. "I wanted to come back to have Kurenai kill me, but I knew that seeing places and people I remembered would torture me so badly that I wouldn't be able to stand it. Mah, what a conundrum. Perhaps that's why the false world came back: because I had no other option."
Orange looked thoughtful. "Hmm. Lightbringers are peaceful at all times. Feel very much a pouring in, a, a glass spilling."
"Whereas Puppy feels like a glass emptying. He blames the angel we met for that," Orochimaru said.
Kakashi shrugged. "Well, the want never felt so bad before, so meeting that angel must have changed it."
Orochimaru shot him a look. "What do you mean by 'before'?"
"This wanting is the first thing I ever experienced. When my mother's soul passed by, I felt it. It's why I latched onto her, how I found this body. Haven't I told you that before?" He could not remember. "I've always felt this way about souls. The sight of souls makes me hungry."
"Fuck," Orochimaru swore quietly. "If it started that early, then it's not because of trauma. Demons might be literally created as insatiable appetites. If that's the case, then demonic insanity is incurable." He narrowed his eyes. "No. No, we're missing something. When you first lost your mind, you said that you started out being perfectly satisfied and over the course of your life became this ravenous monster. Now you're saying the opposite. Which is it, Puppy? There is an enormous practical difference there. I need to know what actions I should take."
Kakashi scratched his head. Everybody else seemed interested, but he was just bored. I guess that's a good sign. All he could say was, "The wanting wasn't as bad before."
"Why? What caused it to become worse? If the sight of the angel worsened it, how? What about the angel did this to you? You're too vague!" Orochimaru was mad and Orange was furiously chewing. They wouldn't let him get away with so little.
But so little was all he had to give them. He shrugged. "I don't know."
"Goddamn false world," Orochimaru spat. Orange laughed maniacally. The angel was loving this.
I'm still hungry. I want a nap. Kakashi stole Orange's pouch of snacks while the angel was laughing. Orange immediately stopped laughing and grew deadly serious. Kakashi didn't care; he poured all the snacks into his mouth at once and threw the empty pouch back at Orange. It caught the air and fluttered to the ground just beyond Orange's knee. The angel looked betrayed. Whatever. "That's all I know."
"I'm glad your son isn't here to see you like this," Orochimaru said with a glare.
Kakashi blinked. "Huh?"
"Time passed, Puppy. Since you weren't around, I reached out to your pack myself. I must have changed their mind about snakes, or maybe the snow did it; either way, your mate came here. She made peace with Kokutan and settled down in that room we made for her. She missed you, Puppy." Orochimaru looked down. He wouldn't say it, but he and her had bonded over their shared loss. "I forcibly escorted her and the pups back to her pack because I feared that you would return to destroy this whole base."
His pained whispers spoke volumes. Kakashi understood what was being said. He'd broken his wolf mate's heart twice over - once from her thinking he was dead, and again from her new friend and confidant driving her out into the cold with no explanation. He'd broken Orochimaru's heart just as badly. Orange's eyes were wide. He could not care about something so trivial as lost snacks. Kakashi looked at the angel and wished the false world did not exist. He looks so full. Of sadness, but still.
"And now you return, but only as a fucking tool," Orochimaru whispered. "No. Not a tool; a zombie. A walking shell of your former self. A self that truthfully is still gone, but pretends it isn't." His fists clenched. "And you act like nothing has changed and I'm supposed to be happy to see you again." His voice made it clear that he was not. Not at all. He lifted his head to glare at Kakashi again. "You told me you hated me. Well, I must inform you, the feeling's fucking mutual."
Hearing that was a shock. Kakashi blinked helplessly. He had never thought that the snake would say such things. For decades, their companionship had been unquestionable. Hearing that was like having the ground disappear beneath him.
Orochimaru's face softened. A vulnerability showed clear as day. "Isn't it?"
Kakashi remembered the last time he had felt like this. His ground had disappeared the night his mother was killed. Then, too, he had hung suspended over a gaping void. Dangling helplessly, all he could do was wonder why his body continued to survive without him.
Want.
He heard the void speak to him.
Want.
Its voice grew quieter.
Want.
Orochimaru wasn't dead.
Want…
Kakashi's hands hurt. He looked down and realized his fists were clenching. His legs tensed too, then his chest. His heart beat fast as rage bubbled, then simmered, then boiled. Want! His eyes dilated. He took a deep breath. What right did anyone or anything have to do that to him? How dare they!
Orochimaru closed his eyes. He turned his head away.
Or he tried to. Kakashi reached out and grabbed the snake's shirt, yanked him close until their noses were almost touching. Orochimaru's eyes flew open, as any ninja's should. They stared into each other's eyes and read whatever there was to read there.
"I. Want. Everything," Kakashi growled. "I want what you have."
Orochimaru panted with fear. "What is that?"
A screen of glowing mist filled the air between them. Despite it, Kakashi could see the glimmer in his companion's eyes, that look of interest in the world that would never die. The mist and that glimmer looked exactly alike. "Everything. This world. The gods. You have everything, and I want it."
.
A/N: "Kokutan" is the result I got by googling "japanese for ebony."
I understand why Kakashi unexpectedly went into demonic insanity. I've been reconnecting with my inner child lately, and I was a very angry child. That was a surprise, but one that makes sense. Everything after that is just bizarre. Why is he experiencing great conflict when I am not? Why is he falling back into the false world as a result of his rage being too painful, when I perceive reconnecting with my inner child as pleasant and enlivening?
Is it possible that this story, normally a journal, is leaping out of that role and becoming an actual story? Because this all seems to make sense for his character, if not mine. Or maybe...am I predicting the future? Because I only seriously reconnected with my inner child, like, yesterday.
Whatever the case, this is a story that's definitely not ending anytime soon.
