Kakashi: And don't let Gai do anything stupid.
Mirai: Stupid by my standards, or yours?
Kakashi:
Kakashi: Stupid by Kurenai's standards.
Mirai: Smart. He'll live longer.
The day after the cremation, his eyes were red-rimmed and bloated and sore as he stepped into the cemetery. The urn was cradled to his chest, held tightly in his arms even though he was exhausted to the bone. He walked slow and determined steps down a route he had walked many times before, but never alone, till he was at her gravestone. Maito Akiko. A loving mother, a cherished wife. A strong lady. While no longer pristine, the granite was largely clean and well-maintained. They had just cleaned it a couple months ago, and some streaks of dirt and pollen were already starting to show.
Gai stood by the grave, urn still tucked away in his arms, and he didn't know what to do. Mama, we're here, he was supposed to say, but the words don't come out. Mama, he tried again. Hadn't he done this a hundred times before?
"Let's tell Mama," Dai used to say. Gai would take his hand, and they would traipse down here together, father and son, and Gai would do the telling, while Dai punctuated the narrative with exclamations and agreements. "I graduated!" He'd tell her, or "I passed the chunin exam!".
He had told her about Choza-sensei, what a nice and good man he was, the barbecues they had together as a team, and how he hoped to beat Choza-sensei in arm-wrestling one day (he was so strong!). Genma-kun was like a cool older brother that always looked out for him, and Ebisu-kun was a little hard to work with, but he was skilled and dedicated.
He had told her about his rival, and how he thought he might be starting to close the gap between them, though he's still far behind him, but he was sure that his persistent hard work and rigorous training routine would get him there. He was worried for Kakashi -- some very tragic things had happened to him, and Gai didn't know what to do other than drag him out for challenges or food or just to be with him.
He had told her about the first time a mission didn't go so well, and they almost didn't get to come home, but Genma's quick thinking saved them all, and now all the more he needed to train more intensely, run faster, punch harder.
Gai had released plenty of words at his mother's grave, even if he hardly remembered what she looked like or what she sounded like anymore. In her death, she had been a patient listener, and he had told her everything that had ever happened to him.
Today, it is five days after the fact, and Gai did not know how to tell her that Maito Dai was dead.
He tried again. "Mama." A croak, but it was better than nothing. "We're here -- I'm here." The skin around his eyes had been rubbed red and raw, and when his eyes filled with tears again, Gai felt like giving up. He knelt -- crumpled to his knees, really -- and set the urn down. He glared at the urn, and this was the crux of the problem, really, the fact that he'd never had to tell her anything alone. Dai had always been there with him, a booming voice beside his bright, cheerful one, and he'd never needed any strength apart from that to say the things he wanted to say.
How was it that it still ached so deeply, a knife in his gut, a crushing squeeze in his chest? How was he ever going to live like this? He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, pressed up hard enough that white spots bloomed and fuzzed behind his eyelids, and still grief bore down on him on every side, all-consuming.
Both Choza-sensei and Genma had offered to come with him, and maybe he should have accepted, but he had wanted to do this by himself.
When the wave of emotion subsided a little, and Gai felt like he could breathe a little more again, he pulled his legs out from under him and sat himself cross-legged by the grave.
"Mama," Gai spoke again, voice wavering still, but third time's the charm, and he was determined to see this through. "Dad's here. He ... opened the eighth gate ... to protect me." His hands ran up and down the sides of the urn. "We always thought you could be buried together, but... there wasn't... we couldn't..."
He fell quiet.
The trees murmured a gentle rustling comfort as a breeze threaded through the cemetery. Gai was so tired. He hadn't slept in days, and there was still a lot to do. He needed to take a look at Dai's documents and officiate any necessary transfers -- the deed to the house, his finances. His belongings, and his shinobi records. The approval to open her grave so he could bury the urn with her coffin was still pending. Gai stared at the grave, and stared at the urn.
He could do it himself.
He was strong. He was fast. What were they going to do? Surely they would not be so inconsiderate as to make him dig his dad back up. Didn't dad always tell him to forge his own path? Gai stood, gently picked up the urn, and set it against the gravestone.
huge fan rn of the idea of kakashi internally struggling with how to manage his anger toward gai for opening the eighth gate versus his sheer relief that gai is even alive after doing it.
like some days, he’s so caught up in the idea that gai and him aren’t really so dissimilar after all — they’ve both broken more promises than they’re willing to admit, and they’re both self-sacrificial — and he’s furious that gai would sacrifice himself to defeat madara after he promised him that they’d be eternal rivals. he’s so furious that there are some days where he finds it difficult to even look at gai.
and on other days, he’s so grateful that their sacrificial nature never actually succeeded for either of them and that he has the chance to get old with gai when he never thought he’d get any older than his mid-20s. these days, he almost can’t bear to let gai out of his sight, even though he knows now that nothing worse could happen to gai than him overdoing it.
i can’t imagine how it would go over when gai finally brought it up (other than them having an argument/fight, both about gai’s use of the gates during the war and him teaching them to lee), but i really love the idea of approaching it from a before-gai-wakes-up pov where kakashi is in gai’s hospital room whenever the staff allow him to be (and sometimes even when they don’t) and no one is really sure if gai will ever wake up. i think kakashi’s frustration/emotional turmoil would be especially prominent at this point bc his anger is tinged with his fears that gai will never wake up or there will come a point when someone (kakashi himself) will be forced to sign off and pull the plug. and maybe kakashi starts subconsciously preparing himself for this possibility, even if he hopes — prays — it’ll never happen.
ugh i just looove the idea of him grieving someone who’s still alive and having to deal with that complicated mix of sorrow, anger, and relief, especially given that all the other times he dealt with death were quick in comparison that he feels completely out of depth trying to deal with this
thinking more about my last post but from gai’s pov. i think gai firmly believed that he was going to die if he opened the eighth gate and accepted — if not embraced — his fate when he did. and when he finally does come to in the hospital after the war, he’s more than a little shocked that he didn’t (and is probably very confused upon waking up about why the afterlife looks so much like a konoha hospital room and even more confused about where dai is)
he’s also immensely relieved that he survived both the gates and the war in general. he’s grateful he can grow old with kakashi too and be able to see his students and mirai grow up (neji included, bc in my heart of hearts, he did not die) and have children of their own and play a role in all of their lives. he’s grateful for the chance to see kakashi as hokage, even though he wasn’t awake for the swearing in ceremony, and is just as excited when naruto is sworn in (even more so when he realizes that this means kakashi is finally retired and they can finally be Together without the end of the world or paperwork interferring). he wouldn’t trade it for the world.
i think there’s a lot of merit in the "gai can’t settle down and feels trapped after going from 100 before the war to 10 after" ideas — and i eat them up every time — but i also feel like some people forget how disciplined gai is, even if he is exuberant and puts 1000% into everything he does. as silly and exaggerated as gai’s self rules are, dai also taught him how important it is to rest, to give yourself some time to recuperate and let your muscles heal themselves before jumping into your next challenge
and i think bc of that, gai is very careful about how much he pushes himself in his physical therapy exercises and his everyday activities, especially after he’s first released from the hospital. he imposes new self rules that are less extreme but no less disciplining as a way of being more forgiving to himself and to not worry kakashi and lee, tenten, or neji.
at the same timehis bad days — typically few and far between — are Bad, precisely bc of how infrequent they are. like, "i refuse to let you in the house and there’s a 80% chance i’ll lash out if you do try" bad. he tries his best to avoid them, because he hates yelling at anyone with anything other than youthful joy (much less his students or kakashi), but he also realizes sometimes the pain can’t be stopped. i think these days, his physical aches especially meld with his mental ones and it makes it even harder for him to break out of his mental spiral
i think it’s a toss up as to whether kakashi being around makes these kinds of days worse. gai has always found comfort in kakashi (even when he was actively trying to push him away) and he loves him more than anything in the world, and having someone around to ease the mental pain helps ease the physical pains too. but kakashi also has a tendency to hover sometimes — even if he tries to hide it behind his cool and hip demeanor and has proxies do it instead, like gai’s students or his anbu guard — and sometimes his anger with gai (and his misplaced, unfulfilled(?) grief) seeps through the cracks, which in turn exacerbates gai’s inner turmoil and his own frustrations with himself
still no thoughts about how their argument about either/both of their feelings goes down, but i think it’s one of those that brews over a long period of time, starts boiling proper on one of the days where gai’s physical and kakashi’s emotional pains match up, and truly boils over in the following weeks after both of them have calmed down (along the lines of some mutual outburst, one of them going "i didn’t mean to say that. i shouldn’t have said it. i don’t mean it," and then mutual vague cold shoulders until someone sakura, tenten forces them to grow a pair and figure it out)
