@minaa-munch asked:
Five times angered
Hatake Kakashi was a child prodigy assigned to a child prodigy; testing out of the academy and apprenticed as a genin to a teenaged Namikaze Minato at the tender age of five. Kakashi wonders often at the logic of this as an adult, looking back on how he himself had behaved at the end of his teen years and wincing to imagine how it might have gone if the situation had been reversed, a sullen teen Kakashi given a bright and wide-eyed blond boy genius to look after. Perhaps placing a fellow genius-child under Minato’s tutelage had been an effort to keep a bright, rising star of a shinobi from burning himself out, from imploding under the stress of performing in the lead up to the war. Perhaps they thought an adorable still-clumsy boy thrown into the mix would keep Minato from snapping and killing everyone under all that pressure- the Yellow Flash's own emotional support pup, self-serious and grim and cold to contrast Minato's cheery, almost absentminded warmth.
He supposes the why of it doesn't matter, twenty years later. Not when Minato is more than a decade dead. Not when Kakashi is-
In his wise old age of twenty six (older than Minato had ever been, nearly as old as his father when he put himself to an untimely end), put in charge of a squad of genin of his own, Kakashi often finds himself pondering the ways of Namikaze Minato.
What would Minato do, in his shoes?
Why was he like that?
What was his fucking problem-
–
Kakashi makes chuunin when he's six years old. The day he's given his vest, Minato stands at his shoulder with a bright, proud grin, hands folded behind his back because Kakashi has recently started growling at him when he ruffles his hair in public.
Nothing can stop him from doing it in private. It's like a little game they play, where Minato showers him with simple gestures of affection when they aren't in the field, and Kakashi pretends to hate it in order to save face.
Saving face. To whom?
Sakumo does not attend the ceremony, because Kakashi did not invite him. He returns to the Hatake compound a newly minted chuunin with his spine straight and his head held high, his new vest just a little bit too large for him, and he tells his father he's moving into the chuunin barracks. There is no anger. There is no spite. He is matter-of-fact. Kakashi is an adult now. He wants to have his own place.
He wants to be able to buy groceries without being spat at. He's tired of tiptoeing around, afraid to see the ghost of his father looming morosely in the kitchen, staring out at the garden, the decaying houses of the rest of the Hatake compound. He wants to be normal. He wants to be a good, useful shinobi. He wants to shed his dead weight-
Sakumo seems surprised to see him, and a complicated expression flickers over his face. He did not seem to hear Kakashi tell him he's moving out, because he says: "Kakashi, is that a... a chuunin vest? Were you promoted?" There's something awful and hollow in his voice, but that something is always there these days, and Kakashi has decided he should ignore it. "You're... very young."
"I earned it," Kakashi snaps defensively, arms crossing over his chest.
"I don't doubt that," Sakumo still sounds distant, like he's far away even as he's standing in their kitchen in his bare feet and dressing robe, trembling hands twisting in the ends of the tie. "But you're. You're very young, are you sure you're-"
"Father," Kakashi draws himself to his full, still insubstantial height. "Did you hear me? I said I'm moving into the chuunin barracks. I have-" He starts to falter at the dismay, the disappointment visible on his father's face, but then a rush of anger fills him. How dare he, right? How dare he feel disappointment at Kakashi, when he ought to be disappointed in his own pathetic self- "I have to be on my own for a while."
Sakumo is quiet for a long time. Staring. He doesn't ask any follow up questions, he says only: "Hatake aren't meant to be alone, Kakashi," before he turns away, back to staring out the little window in the kitchen toward the front gate.
Kakashi, six, chuunin, spits at the mention of their disgraced name. He turns on his heel, grabs his travel pack he's filled with the precious few things he's allowed himself to care about, and he leaves for his too-expensive, newly assigned room in the chuunin barracks.
The Hatake compound is missing these items: Pakkun, a self-serious young rat killer. A little knife that Sakumo always asked him to cut vegetables with for dinner. It is not missing any photos. It is not missing a threadbare quilt his grandmother had made for Kakashi just before she passed. It is not missing a little bone comb Sakumo had told him belonged to his mother, the little comb he’d used on Kakashi’s hair before.
One month later, Minato is once again standing at his shoulder in the misting, cold rain of early April. His expression is pinched, something that grows only more severe as the brief funeral service concludes and Sakumo's corpse is laid to rest in ground that he doesn't belong to. Kakashi doesn't shed a single tear. How could he? He's too empty, he thinks, like finding his father two days dead when he'd gone home to- gone back to his father's compound to pick up something he'd forgotten but he's forgotten what it was he wanted and-
Minato's hand on his shoulder is gentle, and when Kakashi doesn't draw away from it he runs his hand over the back of Kakashi's head, fussing with his unruly hair like his father used to, but his father is being buried, and there are no mourners here but them, and Minato is not his father but he's warm and solid at his back and his father is already starting to rot even as they lay him in the ground.
"I should have left him out in the woods," Kakashi mutters. Minato's fingers twitch with surprise, and still in his hair. "He already did half the work, splitting his belly open for the scavengers."
"Kakashi-" Minato's voice is strange in shaping his name, like the boy he’s known for a year has suddenly become utterly foreign to him. "Are you- This is the right thing to do."
"Oh," Kakashi says numbly. He supposes if Minato-sensei says so, it must be true. Burying his father where the White Ones won't see his shame, where he'll never see the sky again, where he will rot uselessly instead of returning to the air and soil and the bellies of scavengers must be the right thing to do. "Of course."
Minato's hand falls from his hair to his shoulder, squeezes, and turns him so they're face to face. Kakashi's eyes trace his, and then fall away to settle somewhere just to the left of his shoulder. "Hey," he says. "I know you just moved into the chuunin barracks, but why don't you move into my office, I can convert it to a spare bedroom-"
"No," comes Kakashi's flat reply before he manages to think about it.
"... No?"
"It wouldn't be appropriate," Kakashi tells him flatly. "I'm your apprentice, not your..."
He doesn't know the word to use here, whatever Minato might think of him as in this moment. All he knows is this: he moved into the chuunin barracks one month ago. If he leaves now, after his disgraced father has finally tried to reclaim some of his honor, Kakashi will lose face. They'll think he's mourning the traitor, that he believes Hatake Sakumo was worthy of mourning. They'll think he's weak, childish, and unable to survive on his own. They'll think they can't depend on him, like he couldn't depend on his father. If they think they can't depend on him, they will treat him like they treated his father.
Kakashi twists away from Minato's palm on his shoulder, and awkwardly adjusts his too-small formal jacket, turning his face away to fuss with the sleeves.
"I'm an adult," he insists. "I don't have to do anything."
Minato's mouth is an unhappy line. Kakashi knows he's holding something back, but the older boy’s moods are still a mystery to him when he gets strange like this: a little sad, a little distant, a little angry too. "No," he agrees, "You don't have to. But I wanted to offer."
"I don't need to live with you," Kakashi continues, bristling. "I can go to the shops and cook on my own. I'm a blooded chuunin."
For some reason, that makes him wince. "No, you don't need to. I just wanted to offer." He sounds patient now. Not defensive- awkward. Like he doesn't know why he's arguing with a child.
Kakashi stands there, breathing hard like he'd just run a lap. Embarrassment creeps in along with the awareness that he's perhaps having an inappropriate emotional outburst. He forces his palms flat to his thighs until they stop trembling and bows low at the waist to his sensei. Stiffly, he says: "Thank you for attending the funeral with me, Minato-sensei. May I please have the remainder of the day off from training to sort my father's remaining affairs?"
He stays bowed until Minato's reply finally comes. "...You may," he says, and as Kakashi straightens he brightly informs him, "I'll come with you."
He doesn't ask, because they both know Kakashi would say no. Kakashi doesn't say anything at all, because Minato didn't ask. He turns around and walks toward the Hatake compound, the sun warm on his back.
(Looking back on it, Kakashi can't help but laugh. Of course Minato didn't know about the strange funerary traditions of an insular, dying clan of outsiders. Why should he? As far as he knew, he was listening to a troubled child say something unspeakably cruel about his own dead father.)
–
"Kakashi," Minato's exasperation is clear enough in the hot summer afternoon air that Kakashi releases his fist full of Obito's hair, stopping the progress of his knee toward the older boy's face. Obito isn't quite as swift to react, perhaps because he's not yet the one being scolded. His fist connects with Kakashi's gut, a blow that's hard enough to knock a wheeze out of him.
"Obito, come on," he adds on, and Obito looks sheepish when he steps away, hand rubbing the back of his head before reaching out in a gesture of peace. Kakashi slaps it away, eyes narrowed at the other boy.
"Kakashi," this time, the call of his name is a bark, a reminder of why the nineteen year old is allowed command of entire units of older jounin in the field when he isn't stuck babysitting a trio of brats.
Giving Minato a brief mutinous look, Kakashi takes four steps back, bows stiffly, and says: "I apologize for my behavior, Obito."
"Um," Obito's reply is hesitant, but after a brief look at Minato he continues with a quiet, "It's... fine, Kakashi. You, um. It'll be fine."
"Obito," Minato suggests mildly, "Why don't you go spar with Rin, hm? She's working on something pretty interesting."
"But she said- Oh. Okay, sure. We'll come back in... A while."
Kakashi doesn't straighten from his bow until Obito takes to the trees, and when he glances up at Minato, his sensei is frowning at him. Disappointed. His gut twists, but he bares his teeth, visible in the crinkle at the bridge of his nose and the mean slant to his eyes. "What."
"You know what, Kakashi," Minato says.
"He started it-" Kakashi insists, realizes how childish it sounds, and crosses his arms over his chest. His ribs twinge, and he wonders if having a trained medic on their squad hasn't spoiled him- physical pain has almost become a stranger to him.
"And you were going to finish it, right? By breaking his nose?" Minato sounds almost amused, which just makes Kakashi feel even more twisted up.
Overly emotional.
Stupid, like Obito.
"... No," he finally replies when he realizes the question wasn't rhetorical. "I was going to pull it."
"No, you weren't," he sighs softly. Minato doesn't crouch to look him in the eye anymore, because Kakashi had scolded him for being condescending years ago. He seems very tall, backlit by the midafternoon sun, the weight of his disappointment suffocating everything inside of Kakashi until there's nothing left but.
Irritation.
"Fine," Kakashi crosses his arms and hisses. "I wasn't. But he was being so-"
"Kakashi," he cuts him off, voice hard. "I know it isn't fair, and that he's older than you, but you have years of experience on him and-"
"-And no one else is going to go easy on him in a real fight, Sensei-"
"Don't interrupt me," Minato's natural cheer is starting to dissipate entirely, leaving him looking more like a lean, hungry slip of a teenager than a wise and reasonable jounin-sensei. Kakashi isn't sure which version of Minato is the real one, cheery or grim, or if there is such a thing as the real Minato at all. "This isn't about training him for a real fight. I was going to say you're more emotionally mature than him as well, but I'm starting to wonder if-"
"I am emotionally mature!" Kakashi practically screeches it, fists clenched at his side. He wills his eyes to remain dry. It's difficult in the silence after his outburst, when embarrassment starts to creep in.
Minato sighs. Holds his hands up. "I scolded you first. That wasn't fair, you're right that Obito was instigating."
Kakashi scuffs his shoe in the dirt of the training ground, gaze locked on the trees the older boy had fled into. He mumbles, "Sorry for letting him rile me up. I'll... be calmer next time."
He thinks he hears Minato mutter that's not... whatever, but when Kakashi turns to look at him he's already reaching out to ruffle his hair.
(He was nine years old, the top of his head barely scraping Minato's lower ribs. Looking back, he thinks it's to Minato's credit that the teenager didn't laugh in his bratty fucking face- Heavens know he's done it to his own students enough times.)
–
The old man running the tactical meeting hasn't seen combat since the end of the first Shinobi war, Kakashi thinks. Maybe his observation isn't true, but it feels like it is. He's stooped, his voice catching on consonants like they're sinking barbs into his throat, and half his face is covered in bandages. To Kakashi’s nose he smells like something is rotting him from the inside out, filling up the room and stinging his nose with it every time he jabs his cane into the floor to make a point.
Not that Kakashi is one to judge on the bandages front, not with the fresh ache of the Sharingan still sinking tiny daggers into his skull. His own bandages are covered by his forehead protector, the eye they cover still feeling like it's killing him by centimeters. Minato seemingly hasn't liked leaving him alone since only two of his team had come back from the Kannabi bridge assignment, not with all the drama around him keeping the eye, and Kakashi can’t deny that he’s pressed his shoulder against the man’s arm more often in the weeks he’d been out of the hospital than he thinks he has since they met.
So here they are, listening to some old fool lay out a battle plan for advancing their line further into the land of Earth. He keeps shooting Minato disbelieving looks, and Minato stares doggedly at a speck on the wall over the old man's shoulder, his expression politely neutral, the fingers of his right hand curled around his left wrist so tightly behind his back that both of them have turned splotchy and alarming.
"Tora Squad will take this valley from the south and hold it," the old man rasps, his lone dark eye locked on the map spread over the table. "And the Hebi squad will take Diamond mountain through the tunnel systems."
Kakashi stiffens. Minato doesn't react except to bite the inside of his cheek, brow furrowing. He doesn't argue. Kakashi doesn't notice that he doesn't agree with this conclusion, either. He only notices that he doesn't argue.
"We do not have a completed map of the tunnels of Diamond mountain, and Iwa digs out more of them every day. That would make it nearly impossible for any squad to clear it on their own," Kakashi starts, his voice cold and cool and- he isn't a fool, he understands the concept of sacrifice, but Diamond mountain isn't even an important battle line; there are no significant towns beyond it, the terrain surrounding its foothills and valleys is difficult to traverse. It has little to no strategic value, and: "Hebi squad is staffed largely by chuunin-"
Minato's hand settles flat over Kakashi's mouth, fingers pinching his lips shut harshly enough that he winces. Kakashi doesn't struggle against his sensei's grip, but he feels a stab of simmering heat twist in his gut at being cut off and dismissed like a child, especially when the old man turns to the pair of them and asks: "What was that?"
"Nothing, Lord Shimura," Minato replies cheerfully. "I will correct my pupil on speaking out of turn after the conclusion of this meeting, please continue."
Minato doesn't release his grip on his mouth until he feels Kakashi fix to bite him, but he keeps his hand heavy on the boy's shoulder. He does not squeeze him the way he was squeezing himself, though his fingers give the occasional twitch. Kakashi stands stiffly at his side, agitation growing further with each and every piece of the plan that is discussed, and Minato doesn't say anything.
Kakashi, also, doesn’t say anything, not even when he starts to imagine the dead faces of the Hebi squad chuunin: the pretty brunette that had offered him some rice and broth, the pair of twins with broad smiles that had clapped him on either shoulder when he’d split an earth wall and dragged them to safety. He doesn’t know their names, but he’s seen enough death to know what they might look like rotting in forsaken tunnels, never to see the sky again because their lives were spent cheaply on a useless scrap of territory. Kakashi pictures this next: the old man’s head on a spike at the mouth of one of those tunnels.
They bow as they leave. Kakashi feels like every stiff inch of his vertebrae creak from the effort, and Minato keeps his hand on the back of his neck like he thinks he might need to press him into the polite gesture. As they stride down the hall, Minato's hand falls away from Kakashi, and the boy bites his lip until he tastes blood. The silence between them is thick until they leave the building, and Minato's cheery voice rings out: "Let's hear it, then."
Stiffly, Kakashi replies: "This so-called strategy is going to get a bunch of people killed for no- for no reason at all, Sensei. Lord Shimura is-"
"Lord Shimura is a well respected elder of this village, as well as the former teammate of the Lord Third," Minato replies lightly, though something serious in his voice makes Kakashi's lone eye lock on him. "And you would do very, very well to avoid his notice entirely."
Kakashi bristles. "I'm not going to-"
"Please consider carefully the next thing you are going to say," Minato starts walking again, smile fixed firmly on his face. Kakashi practically stomps along behind him, snarling under his breath.
They walk in silence together for a moment, Kakashi trying to gather his thoughts. Asinine battle plans laid out by noncombatants are not unheard of, but he's never seen Minato suffer a fool when lives were on the line- and the way he'd corrected him when Kakashi had spoken out, and when he'd nearly spoken ill of the man where anyone might overhear... As if Kakashi were an unruly, silly child.
Kakashi is eleven. Minato has never treated him like an unruly, silly child. He'd said not to draw the notice of Lord Shimura. He'd stood blank faced with his hands laced behind his back throughout the meeting. Kakashi looks at him again, notices the tension in the corners of his mouth, his eyes, the careful stillness of his hands.
"... Sensei," he starts, stops. He feels clumsy. Stupid and afraid. "Hebi squad serves best as ranged ninjutsu specialists and back-end support. I believe they would do poorly in the close quarters combat that infiltrating the tunnels of the mountain would necessitate.”
“Yes,” Minato takes a fortifying breath, reaches out and ruffles Kakashi's hair, and laughs. "We'll figure something out, Kakashi. After all, plans never survive first contact with the enemy. Anything can happen between now and the hour of execution."
"... Right." He doesn't ask why the Lord Shimura would like to take the mountain in the first place. Wars are expensive, and the plunder of Diamond mountain would likely fund this one for another half decade at least. Perhaps that is the only value needed to justify drawing a new battle line. They'll run out of shinobi before they run out of money, if they manage to take it. But why send a squad only to die first? It doesn't feel right. Kakashi doesn't understand. He wonders if Minato does.
Why didn't he say anything in the meeting?
"Let's go find Kushina, hm? D'you think she'll come get dinner with us?"
(Not likely he’ll ever know if Minato was afraid of Danzo in quite the same way- he has trouble picturing the man being afraid of anybody or anything. Why was he cautious? What did he know?)
–
“Should I ask her to marry me?” Minato poses the question to open air as they streak through the trees at speed, carrying a message home. When Kakashi stumbles and nearly tumbles headfirst into the ground below, Minato is magnanimous enough to at least pretend he didn’t notice. “After the war, I mean. You know, when everything calms down a little.”
Kakashi wonders how Minato could think things would ever calm down, or that the war would ever end. He supposes Minato remembers a time before the war, but… Kakashi doesn’t, not really. It’s all he’s known throughout his nearly decade-long career, and before that all he had was his father, and the lead-up.
“I’m guessing you mean Kushina?” He replies flatly after he regains his footing, dashing to make up for the precious few steps he’d lost on his sensei because of his stumble.
“Kakashi,” he doesn’t even sound winded. Kakashi hates him, a little. “Of course I mean Kushina? How could I have eyes for any other? Nobody else-”
Tuning out the familiar screed of Kushina’s boundless virtues from her skill with the sealing arts to her sharp wit to her fiery hair and heart, Kakashi resists the urge to roll his eyes and inform Minato that he’s like Kushina’s hopeless little charity case, and he's lucky a fool like him can keep a woman like that's attention. It isn't true. The pair seem like a perfectly nerdy, needy match made in heaven. He would just be saying it to be mean.
His feet are blistered. His ribs ache. He has no patience for hope for an end to the war, for a brighter, kind future. He has no patience for Minato, chattering on cheerily despite the waxy cast to his skin and he bags under his eyes-
“Kakashi?”
“What.”
“Do you think I should ask?”
Kakashi casts a glance at him out of the corner of his eye. There’s something pinched in his expression, but it smooths out under Kakashi’s gaze. That, too, shoves a spike of irritation into his gut- why on earth would Minato feel the need to hide something from him? “Oh,” Kakashi mutters. “You were seriously asking me?”
“Of course I’m seriously asking you!” Minato doesn’t whine, because shinobi of his caliber don’t whine. Often. “My adorable student is wise beyond his years, isn’t he?”
“Certainly wise beyond yours,” Kakashi mumbles, scoffing when his sensei splutters in protest. “Are you asking me because you're afraid she’ll say no?”
“Ha!” Minato practically bounces off the next branch. Kakashi wonders gravely if he's replaced some of the muscles in his legs with springs, or loaded tension wires. Add medical experimentation to the list of things he does to himself out of curiosity, why not? “No, I'm not afraid of that. She's already turned me down!”
Kakashi stumbles again, this time blasting too much chakra to his foot and shattering the branch beneath it. Minato doesn't even look at him when he reaches out and grabs him by the collar, hauling him alongside him as he glides easily through the trees despite the thrashing twelve year old in his grip.
“Oops! Look out, Kakashi-”
“Don't laugh!” Kakashi scolds him, gaining his footing again and fighting to free himself from his grip. “Why are you asking me if you've already asked her and she said no!”
“Well,” Minato replies blithely, like Kakashi was asking genuinely instead of trying to scold him. “The first time she turned me down she said it was because I couldn't cook! So I learned to cook.”
The first time. Kakashi feels faint.
“The second time she said it was because she didn't want to get married and then watch me die in the war. I told her I wouldn't die, but the war has been horrible so I understood her concern.” Minato says he won’t die in the war with the same matter of fact tone that he might make an observation about the weather. “So I figured: well, how about after? What do you think?”
“I think your cooking still sucks,” Kakashi mutters, instead of asking him if he really thinks the war is ever going to end.
Minato’s squawk frightens a flock of birds from the branches above them, and Kakashi smirks as they take flight. Right down to the tone, pitch, and volume, he'd sounded just like Kushina.
Something tells him that the next time Minato asks, she'll say yes. If that motivates Minato to end the war earlier, well. Everyone needs a reason.
(He thinks about fate, sometimes. And hope. But he tries not to have any opinion on either. Both were invented to put the screws to people stupid enough to believe in them, and despite his best efforts, Kakashi can’t help but believe in both.)
–
Kakashi returns to their grave.
After the funeral, after the mourners have left, after Kakashi has gone back to his small flat in the jounin barracks, after he’s removed his mourner’s attire that still fits him from Rin’s funeral, after he’s put on his uniform once more, tied a black ribbon around each of his wrists, after night falls– After, Kakashi kneels before their grave.
He kneels and traces the characters engraved in the cold stone. It’s not right that the stone is cold, and it’s not right that the breeze is cold either. Minato and Kushina were warm. They always felt full to bursting with it, always reaching out to touch him, shake him, squeeze him or stand shoulder to shoulder with him, like some of their heat might leech into him and make him as real and alive and warm as they were.
It never quite worked, did it? But they tried, and now that they’re gone he’s bereft and cold as ever, wilting in the blowing late autumn breeze.
“Kushina,” he greets politely after a long while. His voice is hoarse, like he’s forgotten how to speak. His gaze slides to Minato’s name, and he feels his throat close. Clearing it takes a monumental effort, one that makes his mouth feel hot with the sudden wash of pure feeling. His left palm presses against Obito’s gift, leaking tears, though his other eye is dry. “I wish you’d updated your will.”
Maybe they would have been smart enough not to leave their baby in Kakashi’s care. He supposes it might not have mattered even if they had decided that was what they wanted, should the worst happen- the Lord Third seems determined to keep their newborn the village’s worst kept secret, and even more determined to keep Kakashi far, far away from him.
They couldn’t have known the pair of them would die. He knows that, knows that if given a few months or even weeks they might have updated their plans for the inevitable, might have included him in them, might have asked if he’d care for Naruto in case something, anything happened. They’d have asked him to babysit, showed him how to best care for an infant, a toddler, a kid. He’d have learned with them. He wanted to learn with them. He’d sat with Kushina for eight long months, shared in her excitement, her tears, her hope and joy and– and she’d smiled at him, assured him a dozen times that nothing would go wrong. The seal weakens, she’d said, but it doesn’t break. She could control it, she could–
Kakashi isn’t angry with her, he doesn’t think.
His lone, dark eye fixes sullenly once more on Minato’s name.
What good is genius, he wonders.
He’d stolen the investigation from the Lord Third’s desk– or perhaps he’d been allowed to take it, since nobody had come looking for it. It’s still laying on the floor in his kitchen, spilled haphazardly where he’d thrown it in a fit of. A fit of. A fit of something.
Anger is easiest. He’s clinging to it.
One ANBU guard present at the time had survived long enough to give a statement before succumbing to his wounds. Kakashi had done more than a few rotations with Heron, always found the man to be a bit too… he supposes it doesn’t matter. Kakashi wouldn’t have given such an idiotic statement, even if he was dying.
“You were supposed to have it under control,” Kakashi starts, stops. Starts again: “I wanted to be there when it started.”
He knows well that it’s hard to get what one might want in life. What then is the point in wanting?
Kakashi shuffles closer to Minato’s name on the stone, the dirt beneath his knees seeping cold into him through his pants. He presses his forehead to the granite. Leans away, removes his headband, and presses his forehead to the stone once more.
“You said everything was going to be fine,” he whispers, like his wrath is a shameful secret he holds. Namikaze Minato, hero of the Hidden Leaf, will be the last person that Kakashi will allow to fail him. “But nothing is- it’s never going to be fine again.”
He’d thought maybe… watching Kushina grow the baby, watching Minato fuss over her, letting the pair of them fold him even further into their hectic, happy life, he’d thought he might get to keep them. He’d let his shoulders relax. He’d been looking forward to… maybe not big brotherhood, though that’s what Kushina had started teasing him with. Maybe being an uncle. A godfather, if they would have trusted him with it.
But they hadn’t made those plans, and now the Lord Third wasn’t going to allow him that at all.
Kakashi slumps to the ground, curling tightly with his back pressed to the stone, and he doesn’t cry. He feels the granite catch on his shirt every time his ribs expand with breath. He doesn’t want to feel this way: angry, like this is all something Minato could have foreseen, could have prevented. It was an accident. A horrible accident. There’s nothing to be done, Kakashi.
He should have been there.
If he’d been there, he’d be dead too. And he wouldn’t have to feel this way.
–
Kakashi pulls on cheeriness like a cloak.
He’d really started leaning into it with the acquisition of his genin team– with no idea how to speak to children even when he was one, he’d needed some kind of role model. Someone to emulate to soothe fears and ruffled feathers alike, someone who’d made him feel like for a moment, things might be okay.
Minato’s nigh unshakable and seemingly boundless optimism in the face of everything used to make him want to scream, Kakashi remembers that well. He used to want to shake him and snarl at him, ask him if he thought it was appropriate, but… looking back on it, even Kakashi can admit that his sensei’s attitude had often been a comfort to him in dark times, even if the only comfort it provided was a target for anger instead of fear.
Sometimes he hears Minato’s voice laid under his own when he grips a narrow shoulder and says, “It’s going to be okay, Naruto,” or offers a smile visible only in his lone eye and says, “you’re safe now, Sakura,” or grabs a skinny elbow with a little bit of a playful shake and says, “you’re not hurt, are you Sasuke?” Minato bleeds out of him, like he’s still alive to bleed in the first place, because he was the last man alive that Kakashi turned to when the world felt too hard.
It’s not that he forgives him, exactly, just as it isn’t that he’s angry with him, maybe never really was. Maybe it’s just a kind of understanding that he clings to, these days. What else is there?
I feel no pain as I float across your ceiling, and I -- / I have no shame. / I am in a thousand rooms all at the same time. / Yeah and I have a glass / filled with water and light, and I feel good tonight. / I am climbing up this mountain. / You can watch me. You can watch me.
