[ 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... )
And he knows the answer to his own question. He's seen it in the eyes of every shinobi in the village who has lived long enough to see exploding bodies and demons who destroy the protector of their hopes and dreams. He's seen it in the eyes of those who have lost loved ones to war and at the hands of trusted brothers who betray their clan.
Will he have to watch everyone he loves break to pieces and spill their blood all in the name of peace? Is this the kind of shinobi he has to become to protect all that is precious to him? He already understands what it is to lose someone he loves. To feel the hole in his heart and soul, burning and festering like a wound he's only heard of and never experienced until now. A hole he feels will never heal.]
Is this the kind of shinobi I have to become? The kind of shinobi you were training Team 7 to become?
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He had failed them. Had failed Team 7, in the deepest way any teacher possibly could. And he will always carry the weight of that failure in the memory of Sasuke's chakra, the way it screamed with killing intent. He had not known how to hold onto Sasuke in any other form other than the absent space his memory filled, because his eye was always turned back instead of forward. So he could not see a future where Sasuke would want them dead, a future where he would have to actualize the horror of killing his own student, when he was too busy thinking of a twelve year old boy who would offer his life up for his teammate. A boy who sat alongside him on a river bank, with scorched hands and dark eyes, catching a firefly in his hands.
Don't kill it, Kakashi had said.
And Sasuke opened his hands to let go, watching it fly up into the stars, but that was before Itachi and the violence of the truth, the horror of it crushing out any hope of that boy who let fireflies go returning back to a place he could never see as his home.
He'd stand on that riverbank now and kill them all. Extinguish the stars along with millions of fireflies burning up in the night.
Warriors souls, lost forever in clouds of smoke.
(All Kakashi had ever done was teach Sasuke how to punch through a man's heart with a fist of lightning.)
He had not really trained Team 7 in the end, had he. Naruto and Sakura became the strong shinobi they are now because of Jiraiya and Tsunade. Because they found teachers far better than Kakashi, whose only contribution was turning his back on Sasuke and leaving him tied up in that tree. He could have done more and he didn't. Doesn't know, either, what kind of answer Naruto expects. ]
You don't remember this... because it hasn't happened to you yet, Naruto.
[ Kakashi begins softly. ]
But... you decided you would change the ninja world forever. You said that the shinobi system was broken, that you would break the cycle of hatred and find a way to create peace your own way. I believe that you will lead us all to this better way, Naruto. For yourself, and for the next generation.
[ But not for Kakashi.
It is too late for him, after all. ]
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[ Kakashi finishes with a gentle arc of his eye. ]
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But he can't.
Not today.]
You're wrong, Kakashi-sensei.
[Spoken with the voice of someone who's throat is tight and burns with the effort not to cry.]
I'm not strong.
[He doesn't feel strong. He doesn't have any answers. He doesn't even know what to do now that everything he's worked for his entire life is gone. He feels lost. He feels the weight of a lifetime of pain and anger and frustration and sadness pushing him into the ground. And he has to wonder if the Gods made a mistake. Maybe he's not a perfect copy of himself. Maybe he's only the half that he fears. The dark, bitter half that he hates and would cut away if only he could.]
I'm not strong!
[The Hitomi falls into his lap. Fingers grip his hair. It's too much. The images in his head that aren't his and the ones that are his and the ones that belong to the Kyuubi and the pain wraps itself around his chest and squeezes until he can't breathe.
I'm not strong enough for this. I'm not strong enough to pretend that I don't hate them all for laughing and smiling and they all have the same look in their eyes! They all knew! They knew about me and I was the village idiot for so long I don't know how to be anything else! They were all right about me. I'm the monster. I'm the one who destroyed the village and took away their most precious Hokage. The precious stupid bastard Hokage that I was foolish enough to admire and hate so much for choosing me! Why ME!? I'm nothing! I'm weak. I'm stupid. I'm the monster you all hate and I really am the monster because I want you all to suffer for hitting me and kicking me and looking at me with those eyes that tell me everything you're thinking. You want me to die for taking away the people you love. You want me to die and you're afraid of me. You're afraid I'll let the Kyuubi out and I will. Someday I will break and the Kyuubi will make me explode like that child and you'll all die and it will be my fault. I'm not strong! I'm not strong enough. I'm not strong enough to stop my best friend from leaving. I'm not strong enough to bring him home. He left! He left me! Why did you fucking have to leave me!? You both left me! You promised you wouldn't ever leave me! You promised with your smiles. You promised and you didn't say it, you never said it, but I pretended you did. You promised to love me. I'm not strong enough for this! You promised me you'd make me strong!]
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To see them now, storm dark and shot through with tears, sends a sharp stab straight through Kakashi who had never thought he'd see the day when Naruto would look at the world with eyes like that.
It's enough to make Kakashi get up and pull on his vest, walk out of his room and down the hall to Naruto's. He knocks twice on the door. ]
I'm coming in, Naruto.
[ Says softly, before sliding the door open and letting himself in, gaze falling on his student almost immediately. ]
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He's not dead!]
Make it stop.
Please.
[Please say I'm not this weak, fragile, broken monster who hateshateshates!]
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He's no good at this, he's never been. He'd learned to swallow down his tears, long ago. When he stood by his father's coffin with dry eyes and the taste of it in his throat. That sea. Threatening to overwhelm. To drown. And maybe that was precisely why he learned to swallow it down in the first place. It was safer that way.
Kakashi slides the door shut behind him and makes his way over to Naruto, then crouches down, reaching a hand out to gently curl over his student's shoulder, giving it a squeeze.
He's not sure what else he can do right now, other than be here for Naruto. ]
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He wants to fall over and cry until he can't shed anymore tears.
Can a person run out of tears? Has Sasuke run out of tears? Do the shinobi who carry the weight of the village and Fire Country on their shoulders ever run out of tears?
Naruto's frantically tying to find the answer to all of it. To broken shinobi and headless children and how can anyone have peace when bodies are littering the ground and the Earth is stained with the blood of those who live and fight and die. And for what? Peace? What peace is there in a world full of monsters and hatehatehatehate and broken shinobi who never cry?
One hand wraps around Kakashi's wrist, holding tight and using Kakashi to ground himself, to stop the shaking, to keep from falling into the floor and disappearing forever beneath the chaotic thoughts that are filling his mind and falling in fat salty drops.]
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Peace is the kind of thing only possible in a world with no war. In a world where there aren't winners and losers and children who bury each other in blood-caked dirt. The thing about victory is that no one ever really wins, in the end. It is only an illusion, a word whose meaning is as hazy as the smoke of funeral pyres when there are too many bodies to bury and not enough of the living to do the work of burial.
(In the end, it's never dying that's the most difficult part.
Living is far more difficult.)
Kakashi looks down at the hand wrapped around his wrist, closing an eye as he listens to the horrible, sobbing sound leaving Naruto's throat. And Kakashi's not even really sure what Naruto is crying for. For children with cut-off heads that roll neatly across the floor, for that eight year old boy on his knees with his hands full of his father's guts, or for himself. For Sasuke and Sakura and all the other children who grew up with battlefield songs in their ears and glory before their eyes. That was what war was supposed to mean, after all. The great stuff of heroics and legend and stories long after you are gone.
(Sometimes all you get is a line carved into stone with ten thousand other names, in memorial.)
What is he crying for. And does it even matter.
Kakashi supposes it doesn't. Not really. Naruto is coming apart right before him and Kakashi doesn't have any of the right words to stitch him up. Doesn't know what else he can do, either, when he is the cause of this in the first place. Those sounds cut through him, the feeling all sharp and jagged like a fist straight to the chest, and after a moment or two of listening to Naruto gasp and sob and choke on breath, Kakashi tugs Naruto forward and into his arms, closing his arms around his student and pulling Naruto's face against his chest. One hand tentatively moves up to cup the back of his head.
If he doesn't have words, at least he has this. ]
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Instead, he wraps his arms around Kakashi, the way he had Iruka, and holds on tight to the man he respects and can honestly say he loves like family. He doesn't know what Kakashi is to him other than a teacher, but he knows that if he were to lose Kakashi the way he lost Jiraiya he would be just as heartbroken and angry. Because Kakashi is like Iruka. He is family.
But Kakashi has never held him so close or offered him this kind of support and comfort before so Naruto takes it. He takes all that Kakashi is offering to him like a desperate little child who has never been praised or loved or held or wanted or needed. He takes it like a greedy teenager who has always wantedneededwanted this man to accept him completely despite being the most unpredictable idiot member of their broken team.]
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The boy who will one day not only become Hokage -- but will change the world.
Uzumaki Naruto, the most surprising, most unpredictable ninja Kakashi has ever known.
Who pulled him straight from death and back into the fury of life once more. Kakashi owes him his breath, the beat of his heart and the blood that flows in his veins. This body that is here is only alive because of this boy he holds in his arms, this boy who doesn't realize the magnitude, the gravity of actions that are yet to come, a future he has not yet lived.
He holds onto him because there is little else he can give, little more he can do, and lets his hand smooth down Naruto's back in soothing strokes that he hopes will help him calm down. He'd seen mothers, fathers, hold their crying children this way. Rocking them in their arms with hands sliding up and down the length of their tiny backs. And Naruto may not be a child anymore, but he thinks maybe the gesture might have within it some kind of comfort he cannot provide any other way. ]
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It feels good.
To be held like this.
And it feels so much like he imagined it would feel if he had a father that he doesn't want it to end. It calms his breath and his mind and everything that had been overwhelming him before becomes fuzzy and fades to the back of his mind. All there is now is Kakashi and Kakashi's hand on his back and the sound of his heartbeat against his ear. It makes Kakashi so real and human he has to wonder:]
Why?
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Hmm?
[ He hums in question, quietly, still sliding his hand up and down Naruto's back gently.
At least he's calmed down a little... ]
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I feel like I'm home.
And despite the strain in his voice he forces himself to ask:]
Why didn't you hate me?
[Even Iruka had looked at him with those eyes before everything changed. Before Iruka had risked his life and defended him against Mizuki. As if Naruto were the cause of his loss and pain. But Kakashi never had looked at him that way and he wants to know. No, he needs to know.]
It hurt you to lose him, didn't it?
[The way it hurt Naruto to lose Jiraiya.]
The Yondaime. Your sensei. He died because of me. But you didn't hate me. Not like the others.
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And he never was sure, watching Naruto run through the village, seeing him get into fights with other children, just what it was that made him keep his distance in the first place.
The fact that he was Minato's son, or the fact that he harbored the beast that killed Minato.
(But Minato had made that choice. He'd chosen to give up his life, just as he'd chosen to put that thing inside his son. And Kakashi should've been more understanding about it, should've been more supportive, perhaps. They all should've. But he was angry and hurting and the loss was too great. Too much that he decided it was a fine time to stop living, to stop being a person and to erase his face and name, trading his own in for another mask and the secrecy of shadows at night.)
Kakashi sighs and gently pulls back, so he can look Naruto squarely in the eyes. ]
Yes, it hurt, Naruto.
[ He begins softly, hands framing Naruto's shoulders. ]
But I never blamed you for Yondaime-sama's death. It wasn't your fault, after all. It was Kyuubi. And anyway... I don't know how I could possibly blame you, or really hate you... Especially when--
[ Kakashi stops abruptly, when it suddenly occurs to him that Naruto doesn't know. He doesn't find out about his relationship with Minato until later, after all.
His fingers slowly drop from Naruto's shoulders. ]
Naruto... have you ever wondered who your father was?
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But as he's looking at Kakashi he can't help wondering:
Do I look like him? Do I have his eyes? Was he energetic like I am?
As if suddenly he knows Kakashi has all the answers.]
You knew him?
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