[ Week 31, Day 7 | Dream ] things fall apart
Warnings: war, violence, death
You used to think dying was just staying asleep for a very long time.
That when little girls exploded in front of your eyes in little pieces that rained down on you and matted your hair red and wet, it just meant they were going back to sleep. Because before you are alive, you are asleep. And when you are sleeping, ( Read more... )
You used to think dying was just staying asleep for a very long time.
That when little girls exploded in front of your eyes in little pieces that rained down on you and matted your hair red and wet, it just meant they were going back to sleep. Because before you are alive, you are asleep. And when you are sleeping, ( Read more... )
But he was just a boy! He's just a little boy!
When a man earns a throne for himself, it is always glorious. It is well renowned across the lands, people fear him and his title and the weight of that throne. Not a lot would try to start war with this 'king' but there are also others who are foolish enough - out of fear - to try and fight the occupant of this throne.
What they don't realize, this throne that comes with a suit of armor and a name plate and a mask that is only a diplomatic image, these bigs shoes and gloves and swathes of blue and green fabrics is only there to hide a little boy who never grows up. The little boy who does not want to be a lost cause and thinks that being groomed to be a king is the only way. The little boy who looks at other mothers and fathers with their little boys and wonders why his own palm is empty, and like any other child, they would reason that oh, because I'm going to be a king and not them. So it's okay.
When it's never okay to choke on silence like that, when it's never okay for children to hear things from adults this way. It's never okay for children to go through this. They're children. They're Konoha's future and is this how Konoha's future should be dominated with?
Armored kings with skills of a god but hollow and so broken from within?
(Oh how the truth is always glorious.)
Is this what Konoha wants? Is this what Konoha stands for?
Iruka tries. He really tries in his classroom to avoid such a thing and while five year olds or six year olds can go through loss, while he cannot be there for everyone (even when he tries desperately to be), having something is better than nothing. Having something solid, one that doesn't die in the ground or gets burried under rocks is better than nothing. Iruka chooses to be that little something and wait within Konoha's gates.
But Kakashi had nothing. And when he had something, it had been taken away too. And why did no one look? Why did not one ask?
It takes a moment for Iruka to realize that the Hitomi in his hand has been recording this entire time. When he does, he pulls his hand down and keeps his gaze averted, an act of giving Kakashi some sort of privacy. Any privacy.]
Kakashi-san...
[Why in heaven's names does no one ask about these people! They're our people! They bleed for us why does everyone keep quiet? Why?]
Your Hitomi is broadcasting.
[Iruka says softly, and swallows past the tightness of his throat and blinks away the grief that threatens to explode behind his eyelids. It comes out polite, soft and tries to maintain non-invasive when nothing can get more invasive than this.
Still, Iruka tries.]
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It reminds Kakashi of the looks that he received at the funeral, standing quietly next to Minato as the rain fell, the pitter patter breaking up the thickness of the silence, the deafening expanse. It was the kind of silence not reserved for funerals, but for the moments after. When you think your hand was the one that held the knife which slit open a father's stomach, instead of his own. And maybe their hands were as responsible for that slicing in the end, for all the storm clouds they had chased into his eyes and into his head, stripping him of honor and rank, of any worth. (I believe White Fang was a hero, Obito said years later, and it was not until Obito began to see the future for Kakashi that Kakashi finally understood what that meant.)
Those looks that came, and the eyes that followed his every movement in the days after, were sometimes just as suffocating as the moment of discovery itself. A reminder of the feel of the remnants of his father's life in his hands which were too useless to do anything other than perform the futile action of stuffing them back in his body, as though that would be enough to bring him back from the dead. And every time they looked at him with those eyes, Kakashi couldn't help but remember his father's sightless eyes watching him as he pressed his guts back inside.
It's a memory that curdles the stomach and heart. Shoots straight to his fists.
He closes his eye against it, takes a breath and waits for the eventual words of pity -- pity that he doesn't need from anyone, has never needed because even at eight he understood too well that pity would not bring back a father from the grave. Or reattach children's heads back onto their bodies.
When he responds, his expression is impassive. Unreadable. ]
I'm aware.
[ Said almost as though he's heard this many times before. Maybe he has -- the words Iruka has not said, but Kakashi can hear in his voice. ]
Is there something you needed?
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[Just that I don't think you should sound like that, speak like that. I don't think it's nothing, I don't think it's fair that you are exposed like this. What you choose to tell the world, when you choose to pull your mask down, it's a choice you should make. I'm sorry that I saw, and I'm sorry everyone else too. You didn't want this. Why would you?]
No.
[Iruka's face irons itself and he gives Kakashi a bit of a smile. But it's pinched around the corners because he's not sorry for the blood on Kakashi's hands, he's not sorry for Kakashi's rock like facade, that this is how he's evolved, how he's grown to be.
He can't be sorry.
(How can you be completely sorry for something that you're a part of, too? That this is the kind of thing you teach your kids? Kakashi was a child too. He was taught the same thing.)
Except Iruka is.
It isn't for the grown man who looks at him impassively through the small screen. But for the little boy who carries too many scars from the inside, with too small hands that Iruka can see clearly looking right back at him. Iruka sees the boy that people didn't bother to look at twice. Just a boy. Behind the mask, behind the thicker eyebrows and the stronger jawline and the scruff that lines it.
(They say the ones who are the most quiet, the ones who shows indifference and acts like all is right in the world, are the ones who needs that extra hand.)]
I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Kakashi-san. If there's anything you need…
[It isn't pity, but regret so strong and a certain helplessness that comes with someone who can't change the past. Or fix anything.]
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I'm fine. Thank you for your concern.
[ But the truth is, Kakashi doesn't want it. Doesn't need it. Iruka's concern is better placed in Naruto or Sai or even himself. Not wasted on a man who's well beyond fixing if only because there is nothing left to fix. And Kakashi can see it in Iruka's eyes, that desire to nurture, to heal. He'd seen Iruka with children, with Naruto. Seen how he wraps them in his arms when they are wounded, as though they are all butterflies with broken wings that he gently holds in his palms until they are ready to take once more to the sky.
But Kakashi has never dreamed of the sky. Has never wondered what was beyond the clouds, the expansiveness of what was above, when he was too busy trying to keep his feet on the ground, placing one foot in front of the other and never looking in any direction except back. At the shadows of his footprints traced through the bloody weight of the past. His body was not meant for flight, or to be held the way children are held in Iruka's eyes. ]
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(Sometimes, holding on to something is the only way to keep it from crumbling completely.)]
All right.
[Iruka nods this time, tips his head forward a bit in a polite gesture. He can't do anything for Kakashi now and certainly not then, but he can be extra attentive. He knows he can't hold Kakashi, even if that boy is still there (they never go away).
But he can at least ask, can at least look back when no one else has -- did, back then.]
Then, try to get some rest.
[The smile is a little more genuine this time.]
Good night, Kakashi-san…
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