Disclaimer: NARUTO and its characters were created and are owned by Masashi Kishimoto. Original characters and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement intended.
Title: Heaven Hold Us
Pairings: ShikaNeji, KakaGen, InoKiba
Rating: M / R (language, themes, violence etc.)
Genre: Drama/Angst/General
Summary: A series of Post-War BtB one-shots [BtB Flashforward]
Timeline: Post Fourth Shinobi World War. 4 months after the War.
HEAVEN HOLD US
III
by Okami Rayne
"Fuck me, that's rich. After all the hand-me-down-sensei-shit you've pulled over the years, never mind tonight?"
Ah, tonight.
Tonight, and every single night since the first night Kakashi had stood here. Here, outside the grim and lonely building with its graffiti-scarred walls: SCUM, MURDERER, BASTARD, GUILTY.
Guilty.
That word alone stretched its bold poster-red scribble in a cursive scrawl across the entire length of the cinderblock wall. The only word that hadn't begun to flake or fade over the past four months. Stubborn as a bloodstain. A damning brand and indelible reminder every night Kakashi stood here, lurking beneath the sickly sodium light of the single lamppost stationed just outside the building.
Kakashi stood directly beneath its sallow glow – right in the blindspot of the grainy security camera which twisted in an idle crawl from side-to-side every few seconds. A recent addition. Along with the newly installed chain-link fence. A deterrent for vandals. A cautionary suggestion, more than an actual threat.
Honestly, Morino Ibiki's face was all the threat the village needed.
That face, with its many, many scars, did some pretty heavy lifting when it came to T&I deterrence. Well, that face, and all the hidden boobytraps Ibiki had left so artfully scattered across the grey-grass compound and the crushed-gravel pathway leading up to the building. Of course, Kakashi knew the dangers and their placements. In fact, the concrete halo of safe-space he'd found was spared for a very specific reason.
Ibiki had planned it that way.
Planned it so that Kakashi was within pissing distance the night the copy-nin had stood and listened to the harsh iron scrape and the death-knell clanging of the heavy wrought door being welded into place. Warded too. Chakra seals. Kunai rigs. All the bells and whistles that come with T&I party favours.
Only there hadn't been a party.
No bunting, no banners, no "welcome home" or open arms for the wayward, prodigal son. Naruto's heart might've rolled out the long red carpet, but the village's memory was both longer and redder, and cut from an entirely different kind of cloth.
And they'd sooner hang this man from that cloth, than wash out the blood.
Or risk more bloodshed. Not that there was any chance of that here. Ibiki had taken precautions. Because never mind the actual prison cell itself, the whole damn building was a powder-keg rigged to blow if the inmate so much as twitched a little too close to the bars. A challenge, most certainly, when said inmate was blindfolded, bound, possibly gagged, and locked-up tighter than all the ugly red tape surrounding his pending sentence…
…and his unpardonable sins.
GUILTY, the wall screamed. Louder than the silence. Louder still, than the tiny voice that whispered into that silence, telling Kakashi – as it told him every night – that the fate of his tragic hand-me-down, as Genma had so crudely put it, was once again, completely out of his hands.
But the blood, however, was still beneath his nails.
And he wasn't sure how he felt about that.
What he felt about that.
Hadn't been able to untangle himself enough after The War to truly follow the emotional threads back to the unstable source inside him. He knew only that there was always that yank and rattle behind his ribs where all his wonky shelves were sitting sideways and shoddy, precariously duct-taped together. He hadn't touched them since the first slapdash job. All bent nails and splintered wood, ornaments shoved so far back even Genma, with his incredibly long and dangerous reach, couldn't hope to retrieve them...or maybe he'd almost succeeded.
Genma.
Another yank and rattle. Similar, but not quite the same, as the shudder he always felt, just before the air pressed a little harder in his lungs.
The same feeling.
Every damn night.
Every. Damn. Night. Since the first night he'd stood here.
"You never told us."
Kakashi stiffened at the voice, the hairs at his nape lifting. It was a wonder his heart hadn't Chidori-ed itself straight out of his chest.
He'd masked his chakra, hadn't he?
Glancing sidelong at the wall, Kakashi stared for a long moment, then inched his head a little closer, ears pinned, and eyes narrowed, listening out – just in case he'd imagined it. Wouldn't be the first time he'd stood here at the wall, having all sorts of unspoken conversations in his head with the figure on the other side.
Not the case tonight.
"Kakashi."
The dry scrape of his name, like snake-scales over velvet…parched, a little cold, yet still veined with something deep, smooth, unnervingly hypnotic…and uniquely Uchiha. Itachi had spoken the same way once.
Once.
But now, Sasuke's voice…something had definitely shed itself…as for what that was and what was left behind? Kakashi couldn't tell or even begin to imagine – not because he couldn't, but because he could…he could imagine too well…and too much.
Four months was a long time to daydream.
A longer time still, for Sasuke to play dumb.
Seventeen weeks of detainment, in a flammable cinderblock matchbox, and Sasuke hadn't spoken a single word in all that time. Or so Kakashi had been told.
Why speak now?
Frowning, Kakashi tipped his head closer and leaned into the wall, pressing his bare ANBU-tattooed shoulder into the cold brick, just hard enough to feel the sting of a scrape. A reality check, because no, he wasn't imagining this.
"Sasuke…" he hedged, keeping his own voice painfully neutral.
Gifted with this excellent opportunity and this unexpected chance…he had no idea what the hell to say – so he obliged the cryptic opening and grabbed onto the hook – line, and sinker.
"I never told you what?"
From the other side of the wall he heard the faint rattle of chains, tinkling through the needle-slim bars of the ventilation grate mounted overhead.
"You never told us what you dreamed for the future," Sasuke said, his voice falling into that bottomless hollow somewhere between resignation and reflection, an echo from another time. "Now I understand that was because you didn't think you deserved to have one."
Bombs away.
Winded, Kakashi froze at the epicentre of the blast-site and stood rigid for a long shocked second, feeling the words rock his already tired, empty, and oh-so-uncomfortable-world.
Hook, line and sinker, Hatake.
Ibiki didn't even have to try.
The flashy "blow your balls off" pyrotechnics and disco-show chakra wards scattered all over the place were all for show. Sasuke himself was the only weapon Ibiki had ever needed in his sadistic prove-a-point arsenal. Hells, for all Kakashi knew, Ibiki was the one who'd spray-painted the walls.
Teeth grit, Kakashi scowled at his own stupidity – or perhaps, his susceptibility. He was smarter than this.
All evidence to the contrary…and not for the first time, Hatake.
"What was it you were so afraid to want?" came the disembodied voice once more, lacking both the menace and the mockery that'd once slithered through Sasuke's words as cold-blooded as the vengeance in his veins.
The lack of disdain bothered Kakashi far less than the part of himself that might've preferred to hear it. Because surely, it was 'better the devil he knew' rather than the 'whoever' or 'whatever' Sasuke presently was…or wasn't…or wanted Kakashi to believe him to be.
Shit. What the hell am I doing?
Everything he shouldn't have been doing and everything Ibiki was counting on him to do, just to say, "I told you so". It was tantamount to prising a snake's jaws open to check for venom while it was coiled about his neck. Cunning didn't die easy. Sasuke had lost his arm, not his mind. Well, in all fairness, he'd lost that loooong before – but who was Kakashi to judge? Even now, he could feel his brain cranking into old familiar patterns of skittish eccentricity to escape the discomfort of the present moment…and the memories it was threatening to resurrect inside him…
Stop it.
He blinked hard, stared at the wall until the graffiti swirl came back into focus.
GUILTY.
A sobering slap in the face. Because the past four months could no more erase the past five years from the hearts and minds of the people than Kakashi could erase this graffiti from the wall keeping Sasuke on one side and Kakashi on the other.
Only, which side of the wall did Kakashi truly stand on?
Or rather, which side did he, himself, truly deserve to be on?
Those thoughts, those questions, threatened to lead him to The War...to the wreckage...to everything hanging on threads inside him. Is that what Sasuke wanted? Or was this just what Genma would call "a consequence in action"?
Leave, said everything sane and self-preserving inside him.
So of course, he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he shouldered past the debris still hanging in his shell-shocked head and groped along an unseen wall which felt far more insurmountable than the one standing between them now.
"Four months," he said, his tone laced with a levity he didn't feel and probably failed to deliver. "My dreams of the future, hmn? Surely you have something more significant you wish to say to me."
Apparently not.
Sasuke said nothing more.
Either he didn't care to engage any further or he was waiting for his former question to be acknowledged – or worse yet, answered. The proverbial 'ball' whistled and crackled like an uncontrolled Chidori in Kakashi's silent court.
He batted it back. "You still have a future, Sasuke."
"Hn. About as undeserved as the one you never tried for."
Kakashi's expression arched. He leaned back from the wall and scoffed a silent bitter laugh into the cold night air, staring off incredulously into the dark for a long moment. He waited as the shelves inside him steadied. Unsettled by the chilling stillness in Sasuke's voice, falling so deceptively light from yonder-prison-wall.
He's baiting you…and you're allowing it.
It was so glaringly obvious, so embarrassingly predictable and yet here he was encouraging it all the same. He shook his head in amazement before he let his gaze track up to the ventilation grate from which Sasuke's words had so softly drifted…and that's when Kakashi's brain hit a spectacularly stupid guardrail and went spinning ass over elbow into a seriously dangerous thought.
What if he's not baiting you?
Had Ibiki been privy to such a ludicrous idea, he might've cracked a laugh and maybe bust a rib in the process.
But still, despite his immediate dismissal the thought dusted itself off and dug in its heels. So Kakashi gave it a moment, maybe a minute, to unfold its logic. If Sasuke knew Kakashi had spent the past four months lurking outside his cell like some deluded closet cheerleader for Team "Red-Carpet-Redemption", then why wait until now to engage? What could the Uchiha possibly hope to gain by provoking one of his only possible defendants in a world hellbent on condemning him to rot behind these walls – or someplace far, far worse?
Unless he truly doesn't give a damn anymore.
Sasuke had never claimed otherwise. In fact, he'd fought emphatically and relentlessly to prove he cared for nothing and no-one. Sure, it had always seemed a little "my student doth protest too much". And definitely nowhere near as black-and-white as Sasuke had wanted it – or needed it – to be during his various psychotic breaks with reality. He'd blown fever hot and subzero cold...but this lukewarm-grey area was…disturbing to Kakashi.
What was real?
What was a ruse?
For all his cunning, Sasuke had always had a shitty poker-face when pushed or prodded in all the wrong places. Unless he, like Kakashi in the Hatake's weaker moments, had developed some crazy self-preserving mental gymnastics. Perhaps that's what was currently in the works. Perhaps Sasuke was making it look seamlessly calculated on the outside whilst struggling to spontaneously choreograph everything from within without rehearsal, understanding, or even a clue as to what the hell he was doing – and more importantly, what the hell he was even feeling in the fallout from The War...and everything that had preceded it.
Shit. Suddenly, it was so god-damned hard to tell with this one.
This one.
Exactly the same, yet so terribly unlike all the ones before. Kakashi winced. This was too close to him. Physically. Emotionally. Torn, he leaned into the wall again, then eased away, not trusting himself.
Truly he never had.
Not with Obito.
Not with Itachi.
And certainly not with Sasuke.
Three was supposed to be the charm but he'd known better than to try, to test – to risk.
But what if you had?
Another risk, even asking that question. He'd spent a life-time pulling personal plugs, careful not to circle the drains lest he go swirling down into darkness. Foolish, that he hadn't anticipated that darkness rising back up the pipes. He should've predicted it...and at the very least, prepared for it.
As Shikamaru had done.
Well, in as much as one could prepare for such things...such things that Kakashi wouldn't, couldn't, allow himself to think of. Not if he was to keep himself steady in this unstable time, much less sane.
And you think it is sane to do this instead?
To come here, to this place of all places, again and again, projecting his fantasy "what if's" onto the building as if that alone could erase the writings on the wall.
GUILTY.
Damn. He must have caught an ugly strain of Genma's old infectious masochism – or perhaps there was something much worse and far more pernicious at play. Something which Genma had always called him out on. Something which Kakashi had never allowed himself to confront, even at the tipping point, when his involvement with Nara Shikamaru's darkness had almost plunged Kakashi right back into his own…
"Taking on Asuma's penance…because you can't stand to face your own…"
Even now. Even when that penance was shackled and bound right here in front of him. Only it wasn't really, was it? There was, as there had always been, a great and looming wall between him and Sasuke – ever since the first day Kakashi had set his mismatched eyes on the kid. It'd slammed down between them before Kakashi had realised it was even there; an edifice build years before, on the bones of other losses. And from that time it had only grown, higher and higher between him and that orphaned boy, that angry teenager…and now, here it loomed between him and the man on the other side.
And Sasuke knew it.
As perhaps he'd always known it.
GUILTY.
It took a lot for Kakashi to keep the pain from his voice. But his words sing-songed up his practiced throat with that time-honoured lilt of false-cheer he'd used countless times in the past. "Is this really what you want to talk about, Sasuke? My 'undeserved dreams' of the future?"
"…No."
"Then what?"
Nothing. No more words. No more movement. No sound at all to suggest even a ghost of conversation had been raised between them. Just the wall that'd always been there. The wall…and the doubts and suspicions still nailed into its mortar on both sides. Cursing softly, Kakashi turned his back against that wall, tipped his head against the cruel and unforgiving brick – GUILTY – and felt his skin prickle from the cold slither of a chill that went bone-deep.
A few dead leaves skittered by his feet, dark and furled as carapaces.
Another cold crawl across his skin.
"Sasuke…"
A dog began to bark somewhere.
Kakashi's body stiffened and his ear cocked at the sound – at the distinctive pitching of the bark. It had a ninken's pattern. Almost Morse-code repetitive, and increasingly louder, tapering off in a rumble that suggested a growl before tearing back up into an escalated howl. Territorial. Aggressive.
And not one of his.
Inuzuka?
Shit.
"Go," Sasuke said quite suddenly. Only now there was an edge to his voice – not a cutting edge. Perhaps it might've been that. Weeks, maybe even days ago, had he chosen to speak. "Just go."
Kakashi didn't go.
Even when the dog kept baying and the breeze picked up, chasing the leaves across the concrete yard and the ash-grey grass, swirling, sparking – wait, what?
And then the dog stopped howling.
The night went oddly still…
A hair-raising quiet, electric with tension. With chakra. Both Kakashi's and Sasuke's. The faint whiff of ozone. Lightning and static. The whistle and crackle of a white-hot voltage cob-webbing across the walls.
Shit.
The seals Ibiki had slapped around the compound glimmered to life; a flaring blue-white glow that cast long and warning shadows. Kakashi stood rooted, fingertips pressed hard against the brick at his back, well aware of the screaming danger even as he strained to hear what went unspoken beneath all its suppressed energy…all its suppressed emotion.
"Sasuke," he cautioned, a wasted breath.
Or maybe not.
Instantly, the sigils dulled.
The light shrank.
Sasuke's chakra cut out like a blown fuse, the static popping away until only the barest sizzle remained, crackling at Kakashi's nerves like errant sparks from faulty wires.
God…
A bead of sweat rolled cold down the copy-nin's neck.
He swallowed hard.
And as if in mimicry, Sasuke cleared his throat. A tight, uncomfortable sound before his voice cut out through the vents again; a brittle, self-preserving stab in the dark, swinging blind. "I'm not another name on your Memorial Stone. Don't come here, stand here, expecting me to fight for some future you never had the balls to fight for yourself."
Strategic words. Sharp and rusted. A bloodied shank, looking to get up under Kakashi's ribs. And hell, they just might have – if the last word of the next sentence out of Sasuke's mouth hadn't broken off halfway into the damning thrust.
"Better yet, don't pretend you aren't used to losing every Uchiha you've ever tried to save, sensei—"
Sasuke's voice cut off as quickly as his chakra had.
And it left behind the same cold-sweat silence.
Sensei.
Floored, Kakashi's head rocked forward, but his eyes drifted shut in something that felt so awfully close to peace, his brows drew together in immediate confusion. Had anyone observed him, they might've thought he'd bent forwards to be sick. Honestly, that was a strong possibility. His insides were doing a strange little twist, though it didn't feel altogether wrong…just…
Sensei.
Kakashi sucked a breath. His head remained bowed, torso tilted as if to come forwards, fingertips still poised against the wall behind him, fully braced to push away. But he didn't. Instead, he flattened out his palms, crushing them back into the wall to impress what he didn't have the wisdom or the words to say.
And that didn't feel wrong either.
Maybe because it wouldn't have felt right.
Words and wisdom had never reached Sasuke.
But something has.
Was that more false hope on Kakashi's part? Maybe. But just like Sasuke, he'd take his stabs in the dark too. Thankfully, he didn't need words for that. All he needed was to do what he'd done every night since that very first night four months ago.
He stood and he stayed.
Stood outside the grim lonely building with its sad sorry lamp and its ugly vandalised walls. Stood with his back to the sentence of GUILTY in the stillness and the silence.
Stood…and stayed.
Stayed through the long, bleak night as the wind blew colder and the baying of the ninken came once more…then again…and again…and again.
A/N: To those (and for those) who still follow my works and return to this series as I write my originals – I thank you with my whole heart for your continued love, support and interest despite the passage of time. My writing feels terribly rusty and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't freaking out about posting after so long. But I needed to step sideways for a moment and exercise those calcified parts of my writing muscles by running them around the BtB yard. I can't make promises with fanfic updates, as they truly are sporadic and dependent on stolen time. For every kindness shown by those amazing people leaving me messages/feedback here and at my various haunts (AO3, FB, dArt and Tumblr), I am so grateful. You keep my cup brimming up and over when the road feels long and the well runs dry – which it certainly has been these past few months, so my appreciation for your thoughtfulness and your willingness to reach out and share your messages has impacted me massively – THANK YOU. With love – and tea…and hell, some biscuits too, this time around! xx