AU - Maito Dai does not save the day and Gai’s team dies.
A/N: Unedited. I just want others to suffer with me.
Konoha lost a team of fresh Chuunins that thundering summer’s day. Their first B-rank, gone way wrong when an ANBU team returned to the Hokage minutes after the Chuunins had set off informing the Sandaime of sightings of S-ranked shinobi—the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist to be exact. An ANBU team had been hastily sent to retrieve them. Too late.
They returned in body scrolls, circled black. Blossoming potential wasted. That is all they were in the end, to the crowd surrounding the memorial.
A blessing none of them were from the elite clans, Kakashi hears some whispers from the back where he stands, hands tucked in his pockets. A bastard, an orphan, and the weirdo, no one cares apart from the money they could earn for the village should they have survived. More eyes stare at the man in green at the very the front, shoulders trembling as he lets loose loud roars of grief.
Konoha’s eternal genin mourns for his dead son; the son who made Chuunin despite the worthless father he resembled. Kakashi watches the man with unfeeling eyes. Genma has no one to mourn him, and Ebisu’s mother stayed behind in her house to grieve—she’s an outcast, no one is sympathetic for her loss. Maito Dai never cared, and never will. That’s how Gai grew up to be, and will never continue to be. Kakashi shuts his eyes, emitting an aura of boredom.
The ceremony ends and the crowd starts to disperse, eager to get out of the rain. Dai never ceases in his crying. Kakashi scruffs his sandal against the ground and looks at the shuddering back of Gai’s father. It’s broad and maybe that’s how Gai will grow up to be, but now he will never. Kakashi is silent as he walks up to the memorial. It has nothing to do with sentiment. He just wants to see the names, freshly carved into the rock, sharp and edged.
Dai heaves one last sob and looks at the small stature standing beside him. Kakashi ignores the man’s gaze and stares dully at the memorial stone.
“I’m a useless father, huh. A parent should never have to bury their child, not if they could have protected them.”
Kakashi tilts his head slightly to look at the man from the side of his eye. The thought is laudable, Konoha’s eternal genin protecting his son’s team from certain death. You have to bury him because you were too weak to protect him, Kakashi does not say, but the truth remains that Dai was safe in the village doing D-ranks while his son went out into the wild for his village and returned as a name stamped into a rock.
“You’re Hatake Kakashi,” Dai continues and Kakashi turns away. He doesn’t know why the man is speaking to him, he should leave. As he begins to do so, Dai says, “Gai talks about you a lot. His Eternal Rival, he always says. I’m glad you were his friend.”
Friend. Kakashi comes to a stop. The rain falling onto him is starting to become annoying. “We were not friends,” he answers.
“Nevertheless, thank you. He was really proud to be your Eternal Rival.”
Kakashi slouches deeper and resumes his walk. He is empty, void of emotions. Friends? Pride? Useless. He has a training session with Minato-sensei to get to.
Eternal Rival!
Kakashi stiffens, his feet coming to a rest. He looks over his shoulder and sees Maito Dai smiling at him, all teeth, a Good Guy’s pose in place. The man is weak, but standing there, holding a smile when he clearly wants to do anything but, he looks like the strongest man Kakashi has ever seen. Kakashi doesn’t think of the dead-eyes of his father—his father who can kill a man with his pinky—and of the blood pooling at his feet as he stares at the man he loved and grew to despise. Maito Dai is weak, but maybe battle prowess isn’t everything after all.
Kakashi gives him a slight nod, and finally, finally leaves. And when Kakashi is late for the first time ever and there is a sunflower leaning against the memorial stone the next morning, he does not say a thing.