The Test
Kakashi hears it first from Genma, who is whispering it to Anko while wringing his hands together.
Umino Iruka’s new interrogation technique is pulling Jonin from active duty. They're dropping like flies.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say Iruka has it in for Jonin," he says, under an awning just outside the Hokage Tower.
It's raining out, enough to keep most of the village indoors while they wait out the storm. Probably Genma thinks no one would be out unprotected on an afternoon like this. More likely, he doesn’t care about eavesdroppers.
Kakashi, currently lounging on a nearby roof just to feel the rain pound on his covered body, is an outlier and probably should not be counted.
"My eval wasn't with Iruka," Anko says, and to Kakashi's ear, it sounds petulant.
"He's only the mastermind behind it all," Genma assures her.
"I heard he pulled an ANBU off active duty," Anko adds. Kakashi can't see her from his position, but her voice sounds smug. "He didn't know at the time, but you know how fast Intel moves around the city."
Somewhere to the east, something crashes in the distance. Kakashi turns his head toward the sound to try to figure out the details. An angry yowl, a cacophony of noise, a rumble of thunder.
Genma and Anko say their goodbyes. Kakashi blinks up into the rain, now less of a downpour and more of a steady trickle. No water makes it through the porcelain of his mask. He half-wishes it would.
"Hmmm," he says, to no one in particular.
Kakashi is still soggy when he lands in front of T&I. The rain has finally stopped, although there's a pressure in the atmosphere that suggests it's only a temporary reprieve. The building has a single light on in the front, but other than that looks distinctly deserted. He stares at the building for a long time, preternaturally still.
The rain starts up again. It washes away most scents, but Kakashi can still hear a pair of footsteps under the din of the rain, muffled by the heavy walls of T&I.
The next instant, he’s gone again.
Kakashi won't say he's not intrigued.
A week later, he hears again from Lady Hokage while turning in an ANBU report. Morino Ibiki in T&I is railing against one Umino Iruka, who’s been shaking up the shinobi ranks with a single 30-minute psych eval. Tsunade stares into her empty sake glass, a frown on her lips. Hound stands at parade rest, waiting for instructions.
“I’ve spoken with Umino,” Tsunade says after a long moment. “I agree that we’ve been lax in our psych evals, and what to do after the results are in.”
Hound stays quiet; Tsunade's sharp eyes track him as if waiting for something. He doesn't so much as twitch a wrist.
“The end of the war is in sight,” she continues. Her fingers tap against the ceramic of her sake cup in a sharp, staccato rhythm. “A country of shattered shinobi in a time of peace. What am I going to do with them all?”
She pours another glass of sake.
“Report to T&I, Hound,” she says after another long moment. Her eyes stay on her glass of sake. “I don’t want to hear about you failing your psych eval.”
She doesn’t call it an order, but he hears it all the same in her easy dismissal. Kakashi doesn’t nod. He’s gone in a whisper of movement.
Ibiki is unimpressed when Kakashi slouches into T&I later that afternoon. He’s scrubbed off every piece of Hound from himself, both physically and mentally, but Ibiki’s nose still twitches as if he catches the scent of a wet dog. Kakashi smiles with his one visible eye.
“I’m here for my psych eval,” he says, and three other shinobi all stop and do a double-take. To be fair to the general population of Konoha, Friend-Killer Kakashi has been notorious for skirting his psych evals since he made jonin at the tender age of 12, all of seven years ago. His hand goes to the back of his neck in would-be embarrassment. “Hokage’s orders.”
“Hatake Kakashi,” a voice calls, and all the eyeballs staring Kakashi down in barely contained astonishment round to the young man at the other end of the room.
He seems vaguely familiar, in a way that Kakashi can't quite place. A scar bisects the skin on the bridge of his nose, and his hair is pulled up in a neat ponytail. Kakashi doesn’t like to make snap-judgment decisions about people, since that tends to get one killed in his line of work, but it does add a point in his favor that he doesn’t tack on any of Kakashi’s monikers to the name. His eyes search the room and land on Kakashi. They’re brown, almond-shaped; by all accounts, nothing singular about them.
Arresting, Kakashi thinks anyway.
He raises one hand in greeting.
“Yo,” he says, and Umino Iruka frowns.
He curls two fingers, beckoning, then turns on his heel and heads off the way he came. Tilting his head, Kakashi follows. They wind their way deep into the bowels of T&I, down into the basement levels. Umino doesn’t speak for a long moment, and Kakashi doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence.
“Tsunade put me in charge of the Recovery Branch of T&I,” he says to the empty, echoing hallway. Kakashi wonders how many Shinobi doubt his abilities when he looks barely sixteen. “For now. Until she can find a more suitable permanent head. My reports are for her eyes only.”
Umino Iruka’s interrogation technique: that’s felled so many jonin. Psych Eval. Kakashi’s head tilts again. With a flicker of sense memory, he remembers Umino Iruka from the months just after the Kyuubi attack, a bitter grieving preteen, too smart for his own good. The snarl on his face when they'd first crossed paths, so at odds with the polite look on his face now. The way they'd been at each other's throats for months before Kakashi was sent on a months-long mission and they lost contact altogether. To be fair to Iruka, Hound has never been easy to deal with, and Iruka had, at the time, not endeared himself to any ANBU.
“Recovery,” Kakashi echoes. “Didn’t think Torture and Interrogation would care much for that.”
Iruka flushes; Kakashi can’t quite tell if it’s from anger or embarrassment.
“You know shinobi,” Iruka replies, curtly. “Can’t get one to talk to a counselor without a direct order from on high. Lumping it in with T&I was an attempt to make it more palatable.”
His eyes stay pointedly fixed on the hallway in front of them, but Kakashi feels the jibe all the same. Another point in his favor.
Iruka leads him into a small room with a desk, an armchair, and a couch. Kakashi slouches onto the couch, taking up the entire length of it. His feet throb once, reminding him that he’s not so much as sat down for the last twenty hours. Maybe he should have taken a nap before reporting to T&I, or Tsunade beforehand. Iruka takes a seat in the armchair, turning away from the desk and towards Kakashi. He has a small notebook in his hand. Kakashi wonders if he can get away with sleeping through this whole ordeal.
“What are you thinking about, Kakashi-san?”
The question catches Kakashi off guard. Every psych eval Kakashi has endured has started with the same handful of questions; mission casualties, injuries, performance issues.
He has the answers that get him out of there memorized by now. Then again, Ibiki wouldn't be on a warpath if anything about this was typical.
“Nothing in particular,” Kakashi says airily. He clasps his hands on his chest and lets his eyes trace over the seam where the wall meets the ceiling. To his left, Iruka’s pen scratches on his notepad.
“Hmm. Are you comfortable? You seem tired.”
“As tired as any Jonin, I expect,” he replies.
“You more than most.” Kakashi’s thumb twitches. Iruka’s pen goes to his notepad again. “I’ve hardly seen you in the village. My guess is that Lady Tsunade keeps you quite busy. I think I’ve seen every Jonin in the village at least once by now.”
“I’ve heard.” Against his better judgment, Kakashi continues. “I’ve heard you’ve been failing all the Jonin.”
“You can’t fail my evaluation,” Iruka says, and Kakashi finally detects a hint of annoyance in his tone.
“By my count, you’ve gotten four jonin taken off active rotation.”
And one ANBU, he adds silently.
“Five Jonin,” Iruka corrects automatically. He flushes again. “And it’s temporary! Just until they start speaking with someone.”
“A fate worse than torture, I’m sure,” Kakashi replies, easily.
“I can’t pull anyone off active duty,” Iruka emphasizes. “That’s up to Lady Tsunade.”
Against his better judgment, Kakashi feels a flicker of smugness slide into his belly. If that’s the case, he has nothing to worry about. He sits up, setting his feet on the floor.
“So what are we doing here, exactly?”
Iruka stares at him, and something about it catches him off-guard again. Arresting. He'd thought it before.
“I want to ask you a few questions. I’d like for you to answer honestly. As honestly as you can.” Kakashi tilts his head and waits. Iruka takes a breath. When he speaks again, the words floor him. “Have you ever thought about hurting yourself?”
Immediately, he thinks of the deep cracks in his bathroom mirror, from a night of frustrating failure and one too many Friend-Killer quips. His hand had come away bloodied but the mirror hadn’t quite shattered, not a month ago. Only a few shards of glass had fallen from the frame. Kakashi hasn’t quite had the time to replace it. Who would care, if he did? He’d let the cuts on his hand heal sluggishly, reopening after every mission from his haphazard wrappings. He still has a scab on his knuckles from it.
Does that count?
He thinks of the ice-cold showers he takes when he comes back from an assassination mission, waiting for his body to respond to the cold. He often comes out of those showers more blue than pink, his limbs aching worse than when he jumped in. It’s the only thing that helps, sometimes. Makes him feel again after so long as Hound.
Does that count?
(He thinks of Pakkun, staring at him in the dark with his bulging eyes. His snuffling in the night when Kakashi pants awake from a nightmare.
“Kid—”
The horrible, croaking sound of his voice when he inevitably says: “I’ve got it, Pakkun, don’t worry about me.”
The puff of smoke that Pakkun’s absence leaves behind, the sharp empty feeling of his departure like a kunai to the throat. Reminding himself that he shouldn't need comfort, that maybe he doesn't deserve it either way.
No way that counts.)
He’s been silent too long, he realizes, when Iruka’s pen scratches on his little notebook again. Kakashi doesn’t know what it means.
"I get hurt every day," he finally settles on; it seems safe enough. True, even. Kakashi is on missions more often than he's back home, and he rarely gets sent on a job with no risk of harm.
"Hmm," Iruka says, inscrutable.
Kakashi is a genius; he's been reading people all his life, looking for weak points. He can see dozens of openings where he could attack Iruka, with his eyes so focused on his notes. Likewise, he can feel every point on his own body that could be exploited at this moment. He tightens his hands into fists, trying to ignore the feeling.
"Outside of your job, do you ever feel…useless? Or Worthless?"
The easy answer is: yes. The incorrect answer is also yes. Kakashi knows this. Kakashi is a single blade in Konoha's ample armory; what is a kunai to do when it is put away again? But Kakashi is smart enough to know to keep that thought trapped behind his teeth.
"I've never thought about it," Kakashi tries for neutral but isn't sure he's succeeded. "Does the job end, after the mission is done?"
After another long pause, Iruka scribbles something on his notepad. Kakashi can normally guess the kanji written based on handstrokes alone, but he's having trouble with Iruka. He wonders how suspicious it would be if Kakashi slipped up his hitae-ate and chanced a peak with the Sharingan.
“Kakashi-san,” Iruka says after almost two full minutes of silence, and something in his voice is softer now, gentle. Kakashi doesn’t think anyone has addressed him like that since before he made genin. Before the Academy. Who has thought to treat Cold-blooded Kakashi with a scrap of warmth in fifteen years? “Do you ever think about killing yourself?”
Another curve ball. He blinks at Iruka, unable to breathe suddenly.
Remembers, viscerally, the stench of his father's stale blood on tatami mats, the hallway light shining on his silver hair. The terrible denial already swelling up his throat, the ancient horror of Sakumo's grey-pale face in the moonlight.
It’s a physical thing, to try to restrain himself from recoiling.
No, he thinks. No, never. No. But when he opens his mouth to reply—
He inhales and inhales and inhales. The thunderous pounding of his own heart deafens him. The room begins to slip away, replaced by moonlight and shadow, corpse-stink and blood.
A hand on his knee. Kakashi breathes out. Iruka is leaning almost out of his chair, his notebook and pen tossed to the ground. His gaze stays trained on Kakashi’s only exposed eye. He’s looking at Kakashi. Really looking. Something about his eyes. Perhaps a Kekkei Genkai? Like he can see right through the mask, all the way to the bloody mess of his insides.
“Kakashi-san,” he says, gentle, so gentle. “It’s okay.”
“I couldn’t,” Kakashi finally gets out, the ragged edges of the truth. “I’m no use to anyone dead.”
“That’s true,” Iruka replies. His hand is still a warm brand on Kakashi’s knee. When was the last time someone touched him without killing intent? A human, even, not a ninken? He can’t remember. “It’s so good that you’re alive, Kakashi-san.” Kakashi looks away from Iruka’s patient, gentle eyes. Tries to pull himself together. “Is that why you’ve never acted on the thought? Your duty to Konoha?”
“Maa, I’ve never thought about it so much. So specifically.” Tried not to think about it. Kakashi is a finely honed weapon of Konoha, and a weapon has no use for grief, anger, or whatever it is that seizes his chest in the dark hours of the night. “What good is a cracked shuriken?”
“You are not a shuriken, Kakashi-san.”
Kakashi is startled by the heat in his voice, the anger.
“It might be better,” Kakashi says, too honest, what is he doing, “if I were.”
Tsunade stares at him with a profoundly unimpressed look. Kakashi does not fidget like a troublemaker in the academy. There's a scroll in her hand, no doubt the report Iruka had to file after their disastrous meeting.
"Take a week off," she finally bites out. The scroll crumples in her hand. "We cannot afford to bench Hound."
They're still in T&I; Kakashi had been asked to stay for a few hours, and for some reason, he had. Tsunade leaves in a hurricane of fabric and anger, and he watches her go without moving a muscle. Wonders if the gossip mill has started up about him yet. It's the only reason he doesn't shunshin away at the Godaime's clear dismissal. Everything about this feels like a mission failure.
He doesn't move for a long time. Deep underground, there's no way to tell the passage of time. Kakashi marks it the way he does on a mission, by the steady inhale and exhale of his own breath.
Six sets of one hundred breaths later, Iruka returns. He's frowning, but Kakashi doesn't think it's about anything he's done. Possibly he's annoyed that Tsunade ruined his jonin streak.
"I already told you that it's the Godaime's decision who she pulls from active duty based on my evaluation."
It's not quite a question. It sounds like one anyway.
"You don't agree with her decision," Kakashi guesses. He watches another flush run up Iruka's face. Can't quite get his eye to look away from the way the color travels down his neck. "Do you think me a danger to my teammates?"
"I think it would do you so much better to remember how to be a person again, Kakashi-sama."
Kakashi is a finely sharpened blade for Konoha; Hound is the nightmare that keeps all the monsters away. When was the last time he considered himself just a person?
You are not a shuriken, Kakashi.
It hurts more in remembering than it did at the moment. It hurts because he wants it to be true. It hurts because it feels like a lie.
"I have a duty to Konoha," Kakashi says; is all he can think to say.
Iruka hums. Kakashi gets the feeling that he has some strong opinions on that phrase.
"So you do. I can't keep you from it. All I'm asking," and here he uncrosses his arms, takes a half-step towards Kakashi perched on the couch, "Is that you find someone to talk to, whenever you get a particularly negative impulse."
What a nice way to say that he thinks Kakashi might be suicidal.
"Who is there to talk to?"
Kakashi already knows the answer, and even if Iruka can't be sure, he can guess. Because there's no one that Kakashi can trust with his secrets, the things that pass between him and the Hokage through a single scroll. No one. Kakashi is a blade, and blades don't need friends, or confidants, or support structures. They don't need to talk out their feelings about being used as tools for death and destruction.
Iruka grins, all teeth, quite unlike all the other soft smiles he's sent Kakashi's way so far. Kakashi would be lying if he said he didn’t find it intriguing.
"You know what they say, Kakashi-san," Iruka replies. "Once a door has closed in T&I, no one can hear you scream."
And the thing is, if it had come from the Godaime herself, Kakashi wouldn't have given it another thought. Anything other than a direct order isn't worth taking seriously.
And yet.
Kakashi tries to forget about it; no rumors are flying around of Kakashi No Sharingan getting benched, at any rate. His week off lasts two and a half days. Kakashi goes on three missions with different jonin squads and one solo ANBU mission before the idea creeps up on him again, almost a month later.
Kakashi only ever goes to the Hatake compound on nights when he's feeling particularly brittle. Like his skin might peel off and reveal nothing but blistering, oozing black goo. Like his ends are all frayed, and a sudden tug might unravel him until he's nothing but a single stolen eye.
He blames the ANBU mission. He's never been good with assassinations.
He's there now, sitting cross-legged with his back to the kitchen island. Nothing blocks his view of the genkan, and he's trying to tell his brain that it doesn't matter either way. No one would bother breaking into this ghost town with the sun almost on the horizon. No one is here but Kakashi.
Kakashi and the Hound mask, lying face-down at his side.
(Ghosts and ghosts and the one they're haunting.)
Blood drips off the tips of his fingers from a surface wound on his bicep. With his adrenaline tanking, he's beginning to feel the dull throb of it. He had the presence of mind to wrap it afterward, but it must have reopened sometime on his run home.
It wasn't a hard mission, in any way except for the way his heart won't stop clenching. The target: a diplomat from the land of hot water, an assassination made to look like ritual suicide, the man's son asleep in the next room over. The mission had gone perfectly, the only hiccup being the diplomat's letter opener, wielded in animalistic fear when Kakashi's sword had ripped into his stomach.
Kakashi had held him as a lover might, to get the right angle, and his guttural moan had echoed in Kakashi's ears, not quite loud enough to wake the son. Instinctively, he'd stabbed over his shoulder, sticking his letter opener into the meat of Kakashi's bicep, but the damage was done.
Kakashi slid his sword out of the man's body with a wet sticking sound, and he collapsed to the floor.
The man's son never once stirred.
Kakashi knows from his dossier that the mother has been dead for a year or so, so the boy would most likely go to live at his aunt's estate.
A better end than most orphans in Konoha, at least.
Kakashi's stomach turns.
He takes a breath, holds it until his eyesight goes a little dark, then lets the breath out in a trickle. At least it wasn't the whole family this time, he thinks watching the way the ceiling swims in and out of focus.
He sits and bleeds and breathes, and despite the hour and his exhaustion pulling at his limbs, he does not sleep that night.
It's a bad night, but it often is when Kakashi runs solo assassination missions for ANBU.
It's not a big deal. He’s alive; the mission succeeded; no serious injuries. On paper, it’s a piece of cake.
The sun rises, and life goes on. Kakashi stands, his knees protesting from so long in an uncomfortable position, and leaves. After finally retreating to the jonin barracks, he quickly decides on going grocery shopping. The smell from his fridge almost makes him turn tail and run.
His first mistake is going out on a weekend. His second mistake is heading to the outdoor market a few blocks away instead of the smaller, less populous grocery store further north.
His third mistake, or possibly his first mistake now that he thinks about it, was leaving the Hatake Estate at all after the sleepless, painstaking night before. It's not new for him to be overwhelmed easily by the sounds and smells of a busy market. Kakashi has many coping mechanisms (some better than others) but he's always managed to make due.
Kakashi is contemplating some daikon, trying to focus on the earthy, subtle smell of unripe vegetables, when someone calls out to him unexpectedly. His eye opens under his hitae-ate instinctively, and his fingers twitch where they’re wrapped around the daikon. When he turns, he spots Gai coming towards him, the crowds of people parting like a water Jutsu. Behind him follows a bewildered-looking Umino Iruka. Kakashi closes his eye under his hitae-ate, tugging at the spot where the band meets his facemask.
Deliberately, he sets the vegetable down.
Kakashi breathes; contemplates the pros and cons of disappearing with an armful of vegetables and coming back after closing to pay the stall owner.
“Eternal Rival!” Gai shouts, setting Kakashi’s teeth on edge. “What good luck! To run into my Fated Rival on my two days between missions!”
“They’re keeping you busy, Gai,” Kakashi says when they’re within range of a normal conversation, volume-wise. Not that that will stop Gai’s shouting.
“Have you met Iruka-san?” Gai asks. He winks in a way that would make Kakashi instantly suspicious if it weren’t for the fact that Gai has not a single conniving bone in his body. “We both aspire to be teachers, you know!”
Beside him, Iruka flushes bright red. His eyes flicker from Gai to Kakashi, a little too quick to be casual. He wonders if Iruka’s time at T&I is all that well-known outside of Jonin circles.
He thinks of the gentle way he’d said It’s so good you’re alive, Kakashi-san.
They’ve been quiet too long. Gai is looking between them curiously.
“We’ve met,” Kakashi finally says, then turns back to the stall vendor and hands him whatever Ryo is in his pocket. He hopes it’s enough.
Kakashi body-flickers away, pretending that his heart isn’t thumping painfully loud between his ears.
(Out on the market, Gai stares at the spot that used to hold his rival and frowns.
“He’s not usually so…” Gai gestures to the empty ground.
“Bizzare?” Iruka supplies helpfully. The look on his face implies that he doubts that. “Perhaps he doesn’t like me much?”
“Kakashi-san likes everyone.”
He says it with such confidence that Iruka can’t bear to laugh in his face. He doesn’t think he’s endeared himself to Konoha’s deadliest shinobi, not since he argued fiercely for his removal from active duty.
“If you say so,” he replies.)
"So, that could have gone better," Kakashi tells his ceiling an undetermined amount of time later.
He made it back to his barracks, which is at least better than dragging himself back to the Hatake compound. Granted, he didn't make it much past the genkan, where he sprawled out on his wooden floors to not at all stew in his embarrassment. To his right, a dog snorts.
"Not your smoothest move, Boss," Shiba says.
He's mindlessly gnawing on a bone, the only one to be tempted to keep Kakashi company, while the rest of the pack snoozes on his couch and bed. Shiba's tail thumps a comforting rhythm against his ankle bone.
"Do you think," Kakashi starts. He sucks in a breath but doesn't look away from the deep crack in the paint above his head. Shiba doesn't move. That's the good thing about nindogs, he guesses. They can't tell or don't care if you're struggling with something, as long as it's not related to the mission or mealtimes. "Do you think I need more people to talk to?"
"You've got us."
Kakashi hums. He tends to agree on that point, but an annoying voice in his head argues that nin dogs are not the same as a real human connection at all. He can't decide if the voice in his head sounds more like Gai or Iruka, at this point.
Gai, he decides. It's very annoying.
"Gai's my friend," he adds.
"The jumpsuit man," Shiba agrees. "Kind of loud. Loyal though. 's all you need."
"Exactly," Kakashi says, and marvels at how well this is going. "I'm glad you understand." Shiba hacks loudly, spitting something out onto the floor before going back to chewing on his bone. His tail thumps against Kakashi's ankle again. "I think this was a very productive conversation, don't you?"
"Sure, Boss. When's lunch?"
The pile of dogs on the couch stirs at the L word, which means it's time for Kakashi to stop moping and actually make something for lunch. He politely ignores the suspiciously wet pile of…something next to Shiba and instead wanders into the kitchen.
Pakkun is already sitting on the counter, frowning at Kakashi as he ducks into the fridge. With the kitchen being all of two meters away from the genkan, there's no doubt Pakkun heard that entire conversation.
"Of all the nindogs, you ask Shiba for advice," Pakkun says, clearly unamused.
"Shiba is a good dog," he gasps, clutching at his chest as if Pakkun had personally offended him.
"Yeah, I am!" Shiba shouts.
"Am I a good dog, Boss?"
"What about me?"
"Boss! Boss! Don't forget us!"
"You did that on purpose," Pakkun accuses while the other seven nindogs swarm Kakashi, angling for praise and pets alike.
"You're all good dogs," Kakashi says, soundly ignoring Pakkun while a cheer erupts around the tiny apartment.
"Good enough for steak, maybe?" Bisuke asks, tongue lolling.
"No, I saw him buy those bone-in pork chops, it's gotta be those!" Uhei says.
Uhei is big enough that he can set his front two paws on the counter—all long limbs, and snuffles around in the bag of vegetables Kakashi hadn't bothered putting away earlier. Bull comes up beside him and sets his whole head on the counter beside Uhei's paws.
"There's still corn dogs in the freezer," Bull says.
"Corn dogs!"
Kakashi manages to avoid Pakkun until lunch has been cooked and eaten, and everyone has collapsed in various areas around the apartment for a post-lunch nap. Pakkun loves the post-lunch nap, so Kakashi startles badly when he shows up at Kakashi's elbow just before cracking open his Icha Icha.
"You need more than one friend, Kid," Pakkun starts, blunt as ever.
"I have a whole pack."
"We are bound by contract to serve you," Pakkun counters. "Doesn't count."
"You don't consider me a friend?" Kakashi asks, and tries his best to look wounded.
Pakkun is unmoved. He scratches his ear with his back foot and stares him down. Kakashi looks down at the book in his hands; he doesn't think he knows how to make friends, is the biggest issue. He didn't even like Gai at first; he wormed himself into Kakashi's life when he was a kid, and by virtue of being the last man standing, won the place as Kakashi's Best Friend-Slash-Bitter Rival.
(Even Kakashi's dearest friends, the ones long-dead, weren't necessarily his friends at first. Kakashi was a difficult child, and it really was a wonder Rin and Obito ever bothered with him in the first place.)
He probably doesn't have another twelve years to start that whole process over again. Shinobi like Kakashi don't tend to live past twenty-five. At nineteen, Kakashi already feels like he's running out of time. Privately, he thinks it'll be a miracle to hit twenty-one.
(It’s so good you’re alive, Kakashi-san.)
"It might be nice," Kakashi finally concedes.
It feels like he has to peel the words directly off his bones, but when they're out there, Kakashi can't bring himself to change his mind.
"Baby steps," Pakkun says, then curls himself up in Kakashi's lap for that nap. "What you really need is a therapist, but a couple more friends will do in a pinch."
"Let's not go crazy." Kakashi rubs absently behind Pakkun's velvet-soft ears, opening his book in the other hand. "I said maybe one other friend. Friendship is a two-way street, you know. No one would want to be friends with the Friend-Killer."
"Sure, Kid."
Kakashi suspects he's only agreeing because of the head scratches, but he's willing to call it a win.
In Kakashi’s first year at the Academy, they start calling him the Copy Cat Nin. He's a genius, after all, and he only ever needs to watch someone two or three times before he's figured out any Jutsu he's taught. Copy Cat Kakashi, they call him, because he's a genius and a brat. Even at four years old, Kakashi knows it to be an insult. He hasn't bothered making friends at the Academy, not when he knows he'd outpace them within months.
The first time Kakashi can bear to look in a mirror after Obito's death, he's so struck by it that he laughed uncontrollably. No human is there to bear witness to it, so Kakashi feels no shame when hot tears stream down his cheeks.
The memory of Obito, mostly crushed, burned into his memory, picture perfect. Copy Nin Kakashi, Sharingan Thief. Kakashi the Copy Cat.
Hilarious. Horrible. Not funny at all. Obito had called him a Copy Cat, too. He thinks Obito would have found it hilarious.
His first friend.
Kakashi hasn’t heard himself laugh in weeks. He’s grateful no one else is around to hear it. In the other room, he hears a rustle, and eventually, feels Pakkun’s warmth on his shins. Kakashi’s hands brace against the bathroom sink. They stay there, unmoving, for a long time. Long after Kakashi’s laughter has died down.
He can’t quite tell which is worse: his deranged laughter or his ragged, uneven breathing in its aftermath.