Itori - NOT Uchiha Itone ; Part 2 (Naruto)
Kakashi snaps into consciousness at the sound of a noise in his apartment.
He listens carefully for any sound of disturbance, of misplaced air the shape of anything that even hints at the idea his house is not as empty as it should be-
All he hears is water going through the pipes - rushing to a shower, the room over, probably Genma's unfortunate habit of showering whenever he decides is most convenient, which is usually right before he goes to sleep - and if he was anyone else he'd just internally groan and slip back into unconsciousness.
He isn't, though.
Guilt has haunted Hatake Kakashi for most of his career - there's a lot he thinks- no, that he knows he could have done better in life. It was crushing, but at least back then he had the flimsy reassurance that at least, at least he was still a loyal konoha shinobi.
He doesn't have that now. He hasn't had that in a while.
He doesn't even have the luxury of not knowing when it happened, of not knowing what lead to him choosing this life for himself, of why he decided that ripping such a vital support pillar out from under him was a good idea. It wasn't an easy decision, he can't even say that he's sure that he's proud of it - but he knows why he did it, and he knows why he's chosen to continue living with it still.
Kakashi is no stranger to guilt, to knowing that he could've been better - that he'll always fall just short of what he could have been, should have been. But it's a different kind of guilt, he thinks, to walk through the streets of the village you've lived in your entire life and feel like you're doing wrong by simply placing your feet on the soil.
The first night he didn't sleep at all - paranoid that somehow, someone would know. That even if he hid it as well as he could, that somehow everyone could notice anyways. The second day was spent napping - somehow comforted by the idea that as long as he was on a mission, in the middle of something important, that everyone would continue the charade that they don't know he did anything wrong.
He loses time after that - it's been years since that first week, but he remembers the last day of it the clearest of them all.
The seventh day, something inside him snapped. It sunk in that he could never take back what he did. That if anyone was to truly discover what had happened, he would have been disposed of silently as his name was wiped from history books and his friends politely pretended they never knew anyone by the name of Hatake Kakashi in the first place.
It's not that the act itself was awful - hell, there's thousands of ninja - and probably a thousand more for good measure - that, in different circumstances, would do the same thing in a heartbeat. The bad part was that he omitted details in a formal report, that he actively hid things from his home village - not a small thing like 'I saw a kitten on the road' but instead things that could affect it on a huge scale. Something that could backfire spectacularly and harm it in the process.
For as long as he can remember, he's been told the same thing - to harm the village is to harm yourself.
Of course, the full phrase was 'to harm the village is to harm yourself, and to harm yourself is to harm the village' - but Kakashi wasn't a child, he knew that as a shinobi it was expected of him on multiple levels to harm himself for the village. To die for it if asked at any given moment for any given reason - if a reason is even supplied at all.
He thinks he understands it now - it burns and grates and not a day goes by he doesn't consider coming clean, of barring his sins to the world and soothing himself with the doubtful consolation that in the end he did the right thing as he's dragged into T&I and having his mind cracked into shards.
But.
But.
He can't do it, because he's the only thing shielding those two from danger. The reason he did it, the people he did it for, the reason he continues to live with it all -
Naruto deserves a brother, and Itori deserves the comfort of knowing he's safe in his stupid apartment building as he teaches Naruto every mundane little thing Kakashi wanted to pass on himself.
Kakashi cannot take that from them - not when he's the only one keeping them from the hands of the village itself.
He still remembers the mission where he had to go through Orochimaru's lab after his explosive defection - it was a year after he first met Itori, and he remembers heading straight to Naruto's apartment after, and without even thinking checking Itori's too - and that moment was when he realized he was too attached to actually let go, even if he tried.
The next day he hugged them both and didn't let go for a long time after.
He didn't say why he did it - didn't explain himself at all. They both weren't popular with the general public - Itori was a recluse, he never left his apartment, Naruto wasn't liked for..obvious reasons. He remembers thinking at the time that they probably wouldn't get news of Orochimaru's defection for another several months, and the idea of them connecting this event back to it was low, but he just had to have proof they were real and there and not being turned into mindless tools for the 'betterment' of konoha.
So even with the nightmares, even with the paranoia, even with the crushing guilt and sense of wrongness - he can't really say he's done anything he wouldn't do again. To say that if faced with the same scenario, he wouldn't choose the same thing every single time in the end - it would be a blatant lie.
Yet, being assured does not stop the fact he's committed treason. That by actively hiding the entire existence of Itori he's doing active harm to the village. That he continuously chooses to do harm to the village. That every morning the wakes up and chooses his two stupid kid siblings over his home village. If anyone ever finds out, Hiruzen won't even have time to blow his pipe before Danzo sends ROOT to slit his throat.
He lives in state of paranoia that would be seen as extreme to even his peers - so when he wakes up four hours after going to sleep to hearing pipes creak in use, he stays up for the rest of the night. In the morning he takes long and twisting paths to throw off any tails that may follow him, and falls asleep the minute he reaches his brothers' apartments.
They're some of the best protected rooms in the entirety of Konoha - filled with seals carved into every crevice that Kushina, years ago, forced Kakashi to memorize with the intent of him instilling them in his own house; something he never actually ended up doing.
Of course, morning is a bit of a relative term, and he got a little distracted by his thoughts - so he actually ends up falling asleep in on the floor of Itori's living room at four in the morning.
As he sleeps he thinks he feels someone drape a blanket over him and slip a pillow under his head - he lets them though, because there's really only one person who'd react like that to finding a sleeping ANBU operative on their living room floor.
Yes, Kakashi really cannot find it in himself to regret his choice - no matter how awful it tends to be.