eyes i dare not meet in dreams
Who: Castiel, Hatake Kakashi
Where: Kakashi's apartment in Sector 4
When: May 22nd, night time.
Summary: Castiel decides to interrupt Kakashi's dream and then pays him a visit.
Warnings: MAJOR TLDR. Introductory post starts with Kakashi's dream which has spoilers for the Pain Arc in Naruto. The following tags in the log will lead to actual physical interaction. To see the battle that is being abstractly described in the post, check out this AMV. (Note: everything in this video is mirrored.)
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Konoha gasps for breath.
Its foundation shakes, splitting apart at the bedrock, buildings crumbling down in the shockwave blast that sends bodies flying, crushed apart. Flattened under the power of a man who thinks he's god, with ouroboros rings in his eyes that hold all the power of the elements in them.
The smell of blood, it's everywhere. A coppery metallic stench that fills the air like the sounds of cries and screams, mothers rushing for safety with children in their arms. Shinobi rush towards the sites of battle as explosions sound throughout the village, earthquakes rumbling underfoot, uprooting the buildings, flattening them where they stand. Hundred-foot centipede summons crash through streets that once were filled with the sound of children's laughter, their pincers stabbing, hungry for lives that can't outrun them.
Kakashi can't stop to fight it, can't stop to save the women and children running away from what he is running towards.
From a distance too far, he watched Iruka fly back from the force of the blast.
Watched him fall, the way rain falls, crashing down, down, down, onto the rocks, breaking apart, then back up. He looks and sees the extended hand, ready to pull, and the sharp black spike. He can read the intent in those circles, those rings. And in that moment, he knows what Pain is about to do. Pictures it before it happens: a man who thinks he has the eyes of god, reaching out and changing nature in a way it never should, wrapping gravity around Iruka and pulling him in.
That black spike glints dark and sharp and ready to drive right in.
Right through the heart.
And he thinks he can already smell the blood in the air even when gravity has not yet moved and stands still, and everything in his mind spins to a halt as Kakashi channels all of his chakra into his feet and lets himself go.
The world becomes a blur.
He fights against the gravity that holds him back.
He won't be late this time.
He can't be late.
Gravity does not wait.
It has no pity.
Like the man who thinks he's god.
~
Nothing works.
The man who think he's god resists every attack, bending gravity at his will to blast away every attack, pulling men towards him like the moon pulls the tides, impales them with black spikes. Flays them too easily. He is relentless in this battle, his other body, the one with six arms outfitted with strange weapons, shooting off missile explosions that explode in flashes of fire and smoke that burn Kakashi's throat, drives dust and dirt into the air and too much smoke. Six bodies and an eternity of circles in his eyes that see every attack before it even comes. Kakashi does not know if he will survive this battle. If he will live past this fight, that flashes by too quickly, not at all like the missions that went on forever. Especially the kill at the end. That always took longest, every second yawning so wide he felt it pass like hours instead -- the feeling of his hand passing lightning through a man's chest and the life that left the heart a moment later.
Nights like that stretched on for an eternity, and sometimes he thought morning would never come.
Daylight was for the living, for the people who looked in the mirror and saw their own reflection, which Kakashi never saw back then. He'd look in the mirror and see the reflection of someone else. Someone with a red and white face and holes cut out for his eyes, which were not completely his own, because one of them belonged to Obito. He would look in the mirror and there would be someone else standing there, someone who was not really alive and not quite dead, but was trying to be alive or figure out what alive meant, and in the middle of all this being and not being alive, he was busy ending lives. Putting them out with his hands. He never asked why he did it or what they did to deserve it because the answers belonged to the rich man who lived in his castle far away, and the elders who wafted above the ground in fine silk robes that smelled of camphor and jasmine and not at all like the blood and dirt and the stink of death that was the smell of men who were boys and boys who were men like himself with no faces.
Only hands. Hands to kill, hands to put out the lives they were commanded to take without knowing why they should, and hands to bury the dead or the empty boxes that signified them.
Those hands, the feeling of a man dying by them, they remembered the moment because they could not forget the flesh and blood feel of life disappearing because they were told it must. And he was not really sure if it was because it was his own hands that were doing it that dragged out the moments as long as they did or if it was because he was living for someone else. For Obito who wanted to see the future, for Rin who made him promise to live on, and for a teacher who gave up his life to save his and the rest of the people in the village. Living for three people who were not himself made life slower and longer and made death even more so. The memories of him and him and her and everyone else who he lost along the way, every breath he took without them or for them crawled so slowly, he must have lived a thousand lifetimes by the time he finally reached this moment.
Lightning screams in his hand as he lets it fly, rushing towards a man who is not god, and maybe towards death.
He can only hope he will survive.
~
It's living that's most difficult.
Living, when there is nothing left to live for, or when you've forgotten why you do in a world where boys are never really boys. They spend their childhoods running through mud that is made up of blood from the throats of grown men they cut down in the quiet of night, with only the wind and the trees to bear witness and keep their secrets (the secret is that there is never a choice. they want you to believe there is but in the end you are standing in mud that fills up your shoes and runs between your toes and a rock too large for you to move because you are too small), so no one ever really knows the truth or how they all go mad living a life that is not a life because it doesn't belong to them.
This is what they are all told when they are young: it is an honor to die for your village and have your name carved into the stone of heroes and legends. It is an honor to die, so it's the living part that's harder, the living part that remembers what he was like when he was alive, that can't forget the face attached to the name or the truth that is never told because no one knows it (they think they know it, but they never do; no one could know the feeling of that mud filling up your shoes). So the truth is the accusation swimming in a hundred pinwheel eyes that demand justice; justice for the empty coffin they bury with a picture inside, justice for the picture and a pair of goggles that he'll never wear again, and justice for the only thing left of him implanted in Kakashi's head.
"I'm going to become your eye and see the future for you."
Sometimes it was all he ever heard, in the silence after missions when the mud filled up his shoes (but it wasn't that mud, no, not the mud made up of blood that belonged to him, which you never could wash off because that blood was his, and it was all you had left of him) and the feeling reminded him of the rock he couldn't move. And maybe it was Obito's voice saying Kakashi's name the way he always did in his head that kept him alive, that gave him a reason to keep on living even when he sometimes forgot why he did in a world where boys are never really boys.
His voice, and Kakashi's name, and a hundred pinwheel eyes, and too many promises that he could never keep that brought him to this final moment, trapped in rock and rubble he doesn't have the strength to move.
The irony isn't lost upon him.
The earth is cold and hard, silent in judgment.
(It's loud, this sound of your heart thundering in your ears, pounding, pounding, pounding against the roar of Konoha crashing down around you in shuddering cracks of wood and steel and blood and smoke, timber cracked and foundations scorched, buildings and comrades razed to the ground. You can barely breathe with how trapped in you are, concrete embracing your body in a crush of chest and spine. There's metal and shrapnel carved deep into your back, and lungs gasp, gasp at the memory of grey-blue swirl of Rinnegan eyes that can never be the eyes of god.)
Kakashi looks up at the cloudless sky above, his heart gasping for life, lungs pounding for breath upon another broken promise.
Obito... Looks like this is as long as I'll be able to be your eyes...
Where: Kakashi's apartment in Sector 4
When: May 22nd, night time.
Summary: Castiel decides to interrupt Kakashi's dream and then pays him a visit.
Warnings: MAJOR TLDR. Introductory post starts with Kakashi's dream which has spoilers for the Pain Arc in Naruto. The following tags in the log will lead to actual physical interaction. To see the battle that is being abstractly described in the post, check out this AMV. (Note: everything in this video is mirrored.)
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Konoha gasps for breath.
Its foundation shakes, splitting apart at the bedrock, buildings crumbling down in the shockwave blast that sends bodies flying, crushed apart. Flattened under the power of a man who thinks he's god, with ouroboros rings in his eyes that hold all the power of the elements in them.
The smell of blood, it's everywhere. A coppery metallic stench that fills the air like the sounds of cries and screams, mothers rushing for safety with children in their arms. Shinobi rush towards the sites of battle as explosions sound throughout the village, earthquakes rumbling underfoot, uprooting the buildings, flattening them where they stand. Hundred-foot centipede summons crash through streets that once were filled with the sound of children's laughter, their pincers stabbing, hungry for lives that can't outrun them.
Kakashi can't stop to fight it, can't stop to save the women and children running away from what he is running towards.
From a distance too far, he watched Iruka fly back from the force of the blast.
Watched him fall, the way rain falls, crashing down, down, down, onto the rocks, breaking apart, then back up. He looks and sees the extended hand, ready to pull, and the sharp black spike. He can read the intent in those circles, those rings. And in that moment, he knows what Pain is about to do. Pictures it before it happens: a man who thinks he has the eyes of god, reaching out and changing nature in a way it never should, wrapping gravity around Iruka and pulling him in.
That black spike glints dark and sharp and ready to drive right in.
Right through the heart.
And he thinks he can already smell the blood in the air even when gravity has not yet moved and stands still, and everything in his mind spins to a halt as Kakashi channels all of his chakra into his feet and lets himself go.
The world becomes a blur.
He fights against the gravity that holds him back.
He won't be late this time.
He can't be late.
Gravity does not wait.
It has no pity.
Like the man who thinks he's god.
~
Nothing works.
The man who think he's god resists every attack, bending gravity at his will to blast away every attack, pulling men towards him like the moon pulls the tides, impales them with black spikes. Flays them too easily. He is relentless in this battle, his other body, the one with six arms outfitted with strange weapons, shooting off missile explosions that explode in flashes of fire and smoke that burn Kakashi's throat, drives dust and dirt into the air and too much smoke. Six bodies and an eternity of circles in his eyes that see every attack before it even comes. Kakashi does not know if he will survive this battle. If he will live past this fight, that flashes by too quickly, not at all like the missions that went on forever. Especially the kill at the end. That always took longest, every second yawning so wide he felt it pass like hours instead -- the feeling of his hand passing lightning through a man's chest and the life that left the heart a moment later.
Nights like that stretched on for an eternity, and sometimes he thought morning would never come.
Daylight was for the living, for the people who looked in the mirror and saw their own reflection, which Kakashi never saw back then. He'd look in the mirror and see the reflection of someone else. Someone with a red and white face and holes cut out for his eyes, which were not completely his own, because one of them belonged to Obito. He would look in the mirror and there would be someone else standing there, someone who was not really alive and not quite dead, but was trying to be alive or figure out what alive meant, and in the middle of all this being and not being alive, he was busy ending lives. Putting them out with his hands. He never asked why he did it or what they did to deserve it because the answers belonged to the rich man who lived in his castle far away, and the elders who wafted above the ground in fine silk robes that smelled of camphor and jasmine and not at all like the blood and dirt and the stink of death that was the smell of men who were boys and boys who were men like himself with no faces.
Only hands. Hands to kill, hands to put out the lives they were commanded to take without knowing why they should, and hands to bury the dead or the empty boxes that signified them.
Those hands, the feeling of a man dying by them, they remembered the moment because they could not forget the flesh and blood feel of life disappearing because they were told it must. And he was not really sure if it was because it was his own hands that were doing it that dragged out the moments as long as they did or if it was because he was living for someone else. For Obito who wanted to see the future, for Rin who made him promise to live on, and for a teacher who gave up his life to save his and the rest of the people in the village. Living for three people who were not himself made life slower and longer and made death even more so. The memories of him and him and her and everyone else who he lost along the way, every breath he took without them or for them crawled so slowly, he must have lived a thousand lifetimes by the time he finally reached this moment.
Lightning screams in his hand as he lets it fly, rushing towards a man who is not god, and maybe towards death.
He can only hope he will survive.
~
It's living that's most difficult.
Living, when there is nothing left to live for, or when you've forgotten why you do in a world where boys are never really boys. They spend their childhoods running through mud that is made up of blood from the throats of grown men they cut down in the quiet of night, with only the wind and the trees to bear witness and keep their secrets (the secret is that there is never a choice. they want you to believe there is but in the end you are standing in mud that fills up your shoes and runs between your toes and a rock too large for you to move because you are too small), so no one ever really knows the truth or how they all go mad living a life that is not a life because it doesn't belong to them.
This is what they are all told when they are young: it is an honor to die for your village and have your name carved into the stone of heroes and legends. It is an honor to die, so it's the living part that's harder, the living part that remembers what he was like when he was alive, that can't forget the face attached to the name or the truth that is never told because no one knows it (they think they know it, but they never do; no one could know the feeling of that mud filling up your shoes). So the truth is the accusation swimming in a hundred pinwheel eyes that demand justice; justice for the empty coffin they bury with a picture inside, justice for the picture and a pair of goggles that he'll never wear again, and justice for the only thing left of him implanted in Kakashi's head.
"I'm going to become your eye and see the future for you."
Sometimes it was all he ever heard, in the silence after missions when the mud filled up his shoes (but it wasn't that mud, no, not the mud made up of blood that belonged to him, which you never could wash off because that blood was his, and it was all you had left of him) and the feeling reminded him of the rock he couldn't move. And maybe it was Obito's voice saying Kakashi's name the way he always did in his head that kept him alive, that gave him a reason to keep on living even when he sometimes forgot why he did in a world where boys are never really boys.
His voice, and Kakashi's name, and a hundred pinwheel eyes, and too many promises that he could never keep that brought him to this final moment, trapped in rock and rubble he doesn't have the strength to move.
The irony isn't lost upon him.
The earth is cold and hard, silent in judgment.
(It's loud, this sound of your heart thundering in your ears, pounding, pounding, pounding against the roar of Konoha crashing down around you in shuddering cracks of wood and steel and blood and smoke, timber cracked and foundations scorched, buildings and comrades razed to the ground. You can barely breathe with how trapped in you are, concrete embracing your body in a crush of chest and spine. There's metal and shrapnel carved deep into your back, and lungs gasp, gasp at the memory of grey-blue swirl of Rinnegan eyes that can never be the eyes of god.)
Kakashi looks up at the cloudless sky above, his heart gasping for life, lungs pounding for breath upon another broken promise.
Obito... Looks like this is as long as I'll be able to be your eyes...