Not a Therapy Session (Pt 1)
So. He resolves to find Iruka; maybe apologize for being weird and eccentric. Maybe pretend like that last embarrassing encounter never happened. While he's at it, maybe pretend they've never met and introduce himself again, just to see the bewildered look on his face. Kakashi had quite liked it. He hasn't yet decided which.
Kakashi is a genius, after all, and he always has at least three potential plans for a mission, which change and evolve over the lifespan of said mission. He's already brainstorming possible interception points, where his casually running into Iruka again will seem spontaneous and not at all like calculated stalking.
Should it be troubling that he's treating this like a mission?
At any rate, Kakashi gets to put none of his brilliant potential plans into action, because later that night, Bear appears at his window, his mask practically glowing in the early evening. Kakashi doesn't bother letting him in, but he does take down a single ward to drop the spikes that appear on his window sill with any sudden movement.
There's a silencing ward around Kakashi's apartment, so Bear only flashes him two field hand signs: Hokage Tower, solo, before he's gone just as silently as he came. Kakashi can't help it; he opens his window to inspect the sill and finds a single drop of Bear's blood on the ledge.
Serves him right for not knocking.
Hound is at Hokage Tower less than ten minutes later, staring down the Godaime while she downs half a bottle of sake without a cup.
"A skirmish is brewing on the border of Iwagakure," she says without preamble. "A team of fifteen is en route to meet them. Three jonin squads, twelve chunin. It's all we could spare."
When she looks up at him, her eyes glitter in the half-light; the mark on her forehead almost glows when it catches the flickering of her sconces. Hound waits patiently for the parameters of his own mission.
"Hawk has sent word of an advance guard sent to intercept them." She takes another swig from her bottle, tilting it almost to drain it. She sets it down with a clatter. "Team of five, maybe seven. Somewhere between here and there. Assassins. Your mission: eliminate."
She pulls a scroll from the desk and drops it on the far end. Kakashi is burning to ask questions. How the enemy gained enough intel to send a team to the correct location, time, and place. The far-reaching consequences of a leak somewhere in Konoha, probably on the council itself, given the tight hold Tsunade keeps on her troop's movements. What the fuck Tsunade is doing downing what looks like her third bottle of sake while doing her damn job.
But Hound is not in the habit of talking back to the Godaime, so he remains silent. After a long moment, she sighs and flicks her wrist.
"Dismissed," she says, turning away to stare broodingly out the window. Quieter, almost to herself, adds, "Sometimes, I don't even know why I came back for this cursed job. The Sandaime still breathes, does he not? He should have taken responsibility for the mess."
Kakashi imagines a world where the Sandaime took back the Hokage mantle instead of Tsunade. What would change, really? Maybe Kakashi would have taken Danzo up on his offer to join ROOT. Maybe Kakashi would already be dead from a botched mission. Maybe Danzo kills the Sandaime like he'd promised Kakashi, and the Godaime Danzo leads the entire village on a genocide across the land of Rain, the blood of thousands on all their hands. Kakashi takes the mission scroll silently, obediently, remembering that it's useless to think of the maybes. He's here, taking a scroll from the Lady Tsunade, blood pumping through his veins no matter how often he skirts death. Tsunade doesn't turn to watch him leave, but he's not dumb enough to think he's slipped away unnoticed.
Kakashi sends a clone and three ninken to trail the jonin squad, and sets the rest to tracking down the enemy nin. It takes three days to catch the scent of a handful of enemy nin; six days for the clone to catch up with the jonin squad; and after that, Kakashi plays a glorified game of hide-and-seek until he catches the would-be assassins on their own.
One by one, they start going missing. The first few don't put up much of a fight, and there's no sign of even a struggle by the time Kakashi seals them away in a scroll. By the fourth kill, Kakashi finds out their superstitions are getting the better of them. So far, Kakashi has learned that the assassins are hired mercenaries, a group of missing-nin from all over; with no connections to speak of to any country. The first three marks are B-rank at best, and Kakashi deals with them swiftly, hardly breaking a sweat.
The fourth kill—a missing-nin from the land of Whirlpools, nearly passes out in fear when he manages to catch sight of Kakashi. He's the first to have noticed Kakashi before his knife pierced their flesh, and the nin uses a substitution jutsu at the last moment and reappears on the other side of the clearing, his eyes bulging with fear.
Kakashi has memorized every entry in Konoha's bingo book, but he doesn't recognize this one.
"Jikininki," he whispers. "Stay back."
Kakashi thinks that calling him a man-eating spirit is going a little far, but then again, he's not had a chance to so much as rinse off any part of his uniform, so even the Hound mask is bound to be covered in dirt, and blood by now. The light from the Sharingan sometimes gleams through the eyehole, which one might consider an animalistic flash, if one were being paranoid and romantic.
The waning moon is an oblong shape in the sky, casting the clearing in shades of silver and black. Kakashi slips his kunai back into a holster, passes through the hand signs for an earth jutsu too quick to catch, and the missing-nin gets swallowed up by the forest floor up to the knees in the next instant.
Maybe coming to his senses, who knows, the nin finally flashes through a series of hand signs that sends a modified Katon up into the air, a flare of sorts.
Interesting.
A signal, no doubt, based on the way the man's shoulders relax. Kakashi shunshins away, just out of sight into the branches of a nearby tree. His mission scroll emphasized that he should not be recognized, after all. Plus, Hound gets a sick delight from smelling the man's fear as his eyes quickly scan over the entire area of the clearing. Kakashi gives him almost a full thirty seconds, where he clearly tries to get a hold of himself, and mostly frees himself from the earth jutsu trap before Kakashi descends upon him again. This time, Kakashi's kunai pierces the shinobi's armor, through to the flesh of his side. He feels it pierce deep, just missing the stomach, and he darts back into the shadows before the man can get a good look at him again.
The stench of his blood follows Kakashi into the forest; the smell makes Bull growl menacingly in the underbrush, and Urushi snuffles in response on the other side of the clearing. Under his masks, Kakashi grins, baring his teeth for no one to see.
Three other Shinobi enter the clearing then, no doubt drawn by the shinobi's scream, two A-rank, and the only S-rank. Kakashi recognizes them all from the Bingo Book; Land of Water, Sound, Earth. Two ninjutsu experts (A-rank, Water and Sound, midrange both), the S-rank from Earth, a genjustu user. He adjusts his grip on his kunai, mind whirring.
"You'll blow our cover, Tentou," the Shinobi from the Land of Water hisses, "What are you doing, setting off a flare like that?"
"I thought I saw a forest spirit," the Whirlpool shinobi, Tentou, replies. His eyes are still scouring the clearing, searching for a sign of Kakashi.
"You're bleeding, Tentou," the Earth shinobi says, and takes a step towards him.
"It's a Jikininki. It's come to eat us."
"Not this again," the Earth shinobi replies with a near-audible roll of their eyes. "It was probably some other shinobi."
"From where? Our mission was a secret."
Kakashi watches as the Earth and Water shinobi turn their backs on their last comrade, the A-rank sound nin, to inspect Tentou's wound more carefully. They're both scolding him like mother hens. The Sound shinobi wanders to the edge of the clearing, eyes closed.
The Bingo book didn't mention them being a sensor, but Kakashi can't afford to assume any less. It's the best chance he'll get at a clean kill.
"There's some—"
Kakashi appears at her back without even a whoosh of displaced air, his kunai lodging in her throat. The gurgling splutter of her death throes causes the other three to turn sharply back; Kakashi knows he isn't fast enough to disappear before they catch sight of his silhouette in the darkness.
"There it is!"
"Tentou, you fool, it's a missing-nin!"
The Earth nin runs through a series of hand signs (Doton Tsuna, Kakashi knows, by the penultimate sign), and so he shunshins away as three long tendrils of earth dart his way, wrapping harmlessly around the base of a tree. The S-Rank shinobi creates a water clone and substitutes away to the far end of the clearing; only the Sharingan lets him track her movement. Kakashi turns on instinct to the water clone, adjusting his plan as he goes. He can already feel the beginning of a genjutsu trying to creep up on him.
"You guessed we're all mid-to-long range, huh," the water clone taunts, dodging Kakashi's taijutsu as he aims a kick at her head.
The grin on her face is over-confident; S-Ranks often are when they deal with Hound. He's guessed most of his S-Rank opponents are over-confident to the point of arrogance, and they don't have time for nameless ANBU like Hound. Since he was a child, he's been using that to his advantage. He lets a punch land, relaxes his footing so he's sent flying in the opposite direction just as another set of earth ropes shoot out towards him, barely missing him. When he skids to a halt, he can feel the first whisper of the genjutsu as a sharp pain in his side. Out of the corner of his eye, the water clone smiles. Kakashi staggers, pretending at another genjutsu'd wound.
"I've got you now!" the Water clone shouts.
Kakashi waits until the last possible moment, then disappears into the forest with a swirl of leaves, reappearing just behind the real Water shinobi, his trusty kunai lodging in her back before flickering back into the clearing.
The water clone has evaporated into a shimmering puddle on the forest floor, and the Earth Shinobi is scowling, their hands flickering through the signs for an earth shield. Kakashi runs forward, his own hands flashing through the signs for earth bracers to punch through the wall that will inevitably come up—
Only, the dome that erupts from the ground doesn't pop up between them; instead, it forms around the Whirlpool shinobi, whose cry of surprise is cut off abruptly as he's swallowed up by the earth. Kakashi's rock-solid fist hits the soft flesh of the Earth shinobi, who goes flying backward, crashes through roughly three trees, and does not get back up.
Pure bad luck, that his shadow clone is dispersed at that moment and its own exhaustion comes to him in a dizzying rush.
(Konoha's campsite secured, Kakashi crouched in a shadowy branch high up in the trees; his chakra shielded so no one but an ANBU-level nin might spot him. A flicker of movement; there and gone so quickly Kakashi almost didn't catch it. A muffled sound that could have been attributed to sleeping shinobi, if not for the faint smell of blood on the breeze—the watch killed in a single breath. Kakashi rushes down to ground level chasing a blur of green and black as it darts into another tent. Kakashi follows at pace and tackles the nin to the ground at a Konoha jonin's feet.
"ANBU-san?" the jonin says, their voice somewhat familiar. Kakashi doesn't have time to confirm their identity.
The enemy nin takes one look at Hound's mask and flees.
"Your position is compromised," Hound tells the jonin. "Wake the campsite and move out."
Then he scampers into the darkness, hot on the enemy nin's heels.
The chase lasts hours. If it had been Kakashi and not a clone, he may have noticed the trap in time. As it is, his foot lands on a length of chakra wire, and Kakashi dodges on instinct as it activates and sends an array of senbon flying in every direction. Kakashi manages to miss most of them, but one catches him clean through his Achilles heel, and he disperses in a puff of smoke.)
Bad luck on bad luck, because after this, Kakashi is going to have to track down the last of them before the scent goes cold. He whistles, sharp, and Bull rushes into the clearing.
"One to go," he tells Bull. "I'll take care of this one. Find Pakkun."
Bull barks once and disappears back into the underbrush. He can hear at least two more of the ninken chase after him into the night. Only then does Kakashi turn to the dome of earth, sizing it up. There's not a river nearby, which is a shame, nothing weakens an earth shield like a water whip jutsu. But, he figures that now that he's alone with the last of them, he doesn't have to remain anonymous. In the moonlight, his arm starts to flicker with white-blue electricity, the chirping of chakra like birds in the spring. He runs to the dome, where he can see with the Sharingan where the highest concentration of chakra is huddled, and punches straight through the wall.
The Whirlpool shinobi looks up. Kakashi adjusts his trajectory by degrees toward him. His fist is through the boy's heart before Kakashi registers the tear streaks on the boy's face, the fact that this close up, he can immediately tell the boy was no older than thirteen. No wonder Kakashi hadn't recognized him; he's just a kid.
Was just a kid.
The Chidori leaves electric green after-images in the pitch-black dome as the boy's body slumps to the floor with a wet thud. His heart has perhaps a dozen beats left before it stops. Kakashi listens to his ragged, gurgling breathing until the heart stops beating.
Kakashi's right arm twitches. He closes his eye and tugs his hitae-ate over the Sharingan. Gives himself two minutes to breathe, check on his chakra reserves, and try not to think about a kid sent on a mission and in way over his head. No wonder he was more worried about ghost stories than actual enemies.
When Kakashi was that age, he was already in a handful of Bingo Books. At thirteen, he'd lost count of those dead by his hand. At that age, he had not cried on a mission since his first kill.
Kakashi takes a soldier pill, then cleans up the clearing of dead bodies, sealing each in a scroll one by one. He's low on chakra after keeping a shadow clone for so long, plus the Sharingan and the Chidori. In perfect circumstances, he has two Chidori in him, but even with the soldier pill, he doesn't think he's got enough chakra for another one. He takes one more steadying breath before stealing up into the treetops again, following the familiar scent of his pack.
At thirteen, Kakashi stops counting those that have died by his hand. As the number creeps steadily closer to the triple digits, Kakashi decides he doesn't want to know. He'd rather deliberately lose count than have each one hanging off his soul like lead weights.
In the awful, grayscale time after Rin's death but before Minato's, Kakashi is sometimes convinced to interact with the other jonin from time to time. Minato says he's worried about Kakashi's mental health, although why sitting in a dim room with shinobi and kunoichi twice his age would help is beyond Kakashi.
Still, Kakashi can't refuse an order, and Minato had made it clear it was an order this time around.
Kakashi is nursing a teacup in both hands, sitting at the far end of the bar in the hopes that he won't be noticed. The bartender has left him with a pot of green tea, and for the first hour or so, no one bothers him.
But the place fills up quickly on a Saturday evening. Kakashi has paid for his drink and is about to leave when someone calls out his name. Sarutobi Yukimuda, if Kakashi remembers correctly; briefly held a spot as Kakashi's ANBU commander when he first joined, before Kakashi himself was promoted. He'd curled his lip when Hound had returned from their last mission dripping in blood.
"Konoha's youngest jonin graces us with his presence," Yukimuda says, and Kakashi can't quite tell if it's derisive or teasing. He may be a genius, but he's not the best with people. Yukimuda is surrounded by a group of jonin that Kakashi doesn't recognize, although they all eye him with the same sharp, assessing look. "Come, sit with us."
"He's a kid, Yukimuda," one of the kunoichi says. When she turns to him, there's a frown on her face. "Are you sure you should be here, kid?"
"I'm a jonin, same as you."
He's not sure why he says it, only that the look on her face is annoying him. This causes a chain reaction in the group, who all smirk at him in a way that Kakashi has long learned means they're underestimating him again. Yukimuda frowns.
"Sure, kid," a different shinobi scoffs. "Try that line again when you've killed someone yeah?"
"Yona," Yukimuda says, a warning clear in his voice. "Don't you know Hatake Kakashi?"
"I first killed an enemy at seven," Kakashi replies at the same time. "I've lost count since then."
A stunned silence hangs around their little corner of the bar. Yukimuda looks pained. The other three shinobi stare at him, slack-jawed.
"Cold-blooded Kakashi, huh," the kunoichi mumbles into the silence. "I thought you'd be older."
"You're the Friend Killer?" the last one, Yona, exclaims.
Kakashi's anger spikes. A wave of shinobi around them all turn to look at the brief flare of killing intent, but Kakashi is already gone.
When he gets home, he runs a bath of ice-cold water and sits in it until he shakes so badly he can scarcely stand upright and the tips of his fingers and toes look faintly blue. It's enough of a reminder in itself, that the blood running through his veins isn't as cold as everyone says. Kakashi doesn't need to prove it to anyone but himself.
It takes another three days to eliminate the last of them. By Kakashi's guess, she excels at trapping and evasion, probably more suited to espionage and one-on-one assassinations. Then again, if Kakashi's shadow clone had not been watching the campsite, it's likely she would have mowed through most of the sleeping nin that night.
Kakashi pushes himself to go faster than is probably advisable, pushing chakra into his legs and feeling like a fool, obsessing over the shadow clone's memories for the whole run to where his pack has convened. Pakkun looks ancient in the moonlight, where the other ninken are arranged in a half-circle around him, waiting on Kakashi.
"They're a day ahead of us, boss," Pakkun says.
"Move out," Kakashi replies, and so they go.
They don't stop to rest or eat until he's gotten sight of the shinobi. They have a brief taijutsu encounter before she frowns and disappears, opting to run again. Kakashi's shuriken are painted in her blood though, and he knows the dogs have caught the scent.
"Take a breather," he tells the pack. "We set out again in two hours."
Kakashi pops another soldier pill while he portions out the last of his jerky rations to the dogs. His pack collapses into a heap while Kakashi sits at the base of a tree, his knees curled up to his chest and counts his breaths to pass the time. He counts to five hundred, then again, then once more before he hauls himself to his feet and they continue on.
Kakashi finally puts a Chidori through her chest at dusk on the third day. He knows he shouldn't have used another Chidori, but the chase has drained him enough that he just wants to go home. They've chased her up to the northernmost point of the Fire Country; Kakashi has had to keep his Sharingan activated throughout the chase to avoid her traps, and with the Chidori, he's left woozy and lightheaded after the kill. He wonders briefly if she'd been trying to get back home, where home might have been for her.
"You aren't looking too hot, boss," Bisuke says, looking as worried as a dog can look. Her eyes are so wide he can see white all around her irises.
"He hasn't slept more than an hour at a time this whole mission," Pakkun accuses, baring his teeth in disapproval. "How about we sleep after you seal her away, huh?"
"We can sleep in the village," Kakashi dismisses.
But, it becomes evident pretty early on that Kakashi doesn't have the chakra to even seal the corpse away in a scroll. Pakkun manages to convey both his disapproval and a smug, I-told-you-so air as he sets his paw on the scroll and seals away the corpse with a puff of smoke.
"We're taking a nap break," Pakkun says, as if he's the team leader.
Kakashi's head pounds. He closes Obito's eye, tilts precariously to the left to overcompensate, then eventually, admits defeat and collapses, as slowly as his wounded pride will allow, to his knees.
"Twenty minutes," Kakashi says, and knows without a doubt that no one is going to wake him up in that amount of time.
He blinks awake two hours later: when the sun has fully set behind the horizon. He feels worse than he did when he fell asleep. Bull and Pakkun are already awake, watching Kakashi sleep like a pair of vultures. The rest of the pack has dispersed, and he gets the sense that Bull and Pakkun are only around to make sure Kakashi doesn't accidentally kill himself.
Get himself killed.
Is the wording important here?
Kakashi is tired. Every part of his body aches from early warning signs of chakra exhaustion, and all the sleep has done is make him realize how much he wants to crawl into the nearest hole and sleep again. Possibly for the rest of his miserable life, if he could get away with it.
"Let's go," Kakashi says.
He takes a deep breath before forcing himself up on his feet. It's almost a week's journey back to Konoha from here, two if Kakashi goes at the pace his body wants him to take. Bull and Pakkun set off at their normal pace, although Kakashi can practically feel the disapproval emanating from both of them. Still, they know Kakashi well enough not to baby him.
It's a long and miserable ten days back to Konoha. When he gets back, he dunks himself in the river, ice-cold to shock his system into wakefulness, then heads straight to Hokage Tower. The Godaime scowls furiously when Hound sets nine water-logged scrolls on her desk, dripping river water all over her office.
"I don't want to know," she snaps. "Was your mission successful?"
Kakashi nods.
"One chunin casualty, eight targets eliminated."
Tsunade's eyebrow goes up.
"Eight?" At Kakashi's continued silence, she sighs. "Go get some rest. I expect a full report sometime next week. When you don't look like you're half-drowned and about to pass out."
Hound bows once. He escapes out the window at a normal pace because one more shunshin might actually send him to the hospital.
After, Kakashi ends up on the roof of T&I, laying flat on the concrete with his head pillowed in his hands. He's dumped his ANBU mask and armor off at the barracks, but the walls of the place had felt suffocating after sleeping so long outside, so he'd pulled on one of his jonin blacks and jumped out the window again, still mildly damp from the river.
The sun is low in the sky, probably two hours or so until sunset, by Kakashi's guess. He still can't quite stop masking his chakra, so it's doubtful anyone but ANBU knows where he is. Kakashi feels like he hasn't slept the whole mission; Pakkun might say that an hour here and there definitely doesn't count as sleeping and that he was an idiot for not sleeping the whole mission. The last soldier pill is finally wearing off, causing his limbs to feel weighted down, his chakra pathways aching as his body starts crashing. He's lucky he's already lying down.
Idly, he wonders if anyone would care if he took a nap here. He's spent almost his whole Shinobi career cultivating an eccentric personality, so maybe people wouldn't even bat an eye at it. Sharingan Kakashi, Friend-Killer, porn addict, sleeping on rooftops again.
Most likely, though, no one will think of him. Kakashi could probably disappear entirely, and no one would notice until an ANBU went searching for him for his next mission.
"You shouldn't fall asleep on strange rooftops, Hatake-san," a voice says.
Kakashi blames his near-chakra exhaustion for not noticing Iruka coming up beside him.
"Mah, Iruka-san, I'm just loitering. And call me Kakashi."
Iruka hums but doesn't reply outside of that. There's a scuffling sound, and when Kakashi tilts his head to the side, he sees Iruka has settled on his good side, sitting cross-legged less than an arm's length away. Kakashi could sit up and run a Chidori through his heart before he finished taking a breath.
He shakes his head to clear away the thought—not like he has the chakra for another Chidori, anyway. Nor does he want to.
Iruka isn't looking at him. His eyes are on the sky. With his back to the sun, his face is somewhat in shadow, but the ends of his ponytail glow in pinks and reds. Kakashi has a bizarre urge to push up his hitae-ate and record the moment with his Sharingan, just so he doesn't forget how he looks, half-gilded in fire. By contrast, Kakashi himself feels brittle, like he might burst into flames and turn to greasy ash at any moment.
"Iruka-san," Kakashi starts, feeling both stupid and brave all at once. "Do you think—"
But he runs out of steam when Iruka turns, at last, to look at him. His eyes are almost golden in the sunset.
"Can you tell me again?" he asks, barely more than a whisper.
"Tell you what, Kakashi-san?"
(It’s so good you’re alive.)
"Ahhh, it's not so important," he backtracks. He tries to sit up, switching tactics at the last minute to lean casually on his elbows when he realizes that he can't quite pull himself up to sitting, just yet. "Nevermind."
Iruka looks at him. Really looks. Something about it makes Kakashi feel like his masks and skin and muscles are being peeled off. Until Iruka can see only his bones and messy, beating heart.
"I'm glad that you're alive today," Iruka says. It causes all of Kakashi's breath to leave him in a rush. There's a flicker of hesitation on Iruka's face, there and gone in the span of a breath, before he scoots just a little closer and sets his hand atop Kakashi's fingers on the concrete. "I'll be glad that you're alive tomorrow."
Kakashi's fingers tingle where their skin meets. There may still be blood under his fingernails from his earlier kills, but either Iruka can't see it or he doesn't care. Kakashi's half-surprised that a spark of lightning doesn't shock Iruka from the way he feels it humming under his skin. He's surprised that his fingers don't catch fire like so much brittle kindling.
"You really shouldn't sleep up here, Kakashi-san."
"Maa, Iruka, no one will notice."
"Ibiki will notice."
"He hasn't so far. No one has, besides you."
Iruka hums by his side but doesn't reply to that. Kakashi turns his gaze back up to the sky, now a deep purple from the setting sun. The world swims a little in his vision, but that doesn't bother him too much, right now.
"Do you want someone to notice you?" Iruka asks suddenly. Kakashi's eye snaps open; he hadn't realized he'd closed it. When Kakashi tilts his head to the side, he sees Iruka frowning down at him. "Your chakra is masked, Kakashi-san. Why would you mask your chakra if you wanted to be found?"
"Ah," Kakashi says, noticing that he is in fact still masking most of his chakra. Not that there's much of it to mask, right now. "Are you a sensor, Iruka-san?"
"Not technically," he replies, which is the most interesting answer he could have given, in Kakashi's opinion.
He doesn't elaborate on that though, just continues to watch Kakashi with his piercing stare. After a minute, Kakashi concedes and lets slip the iron-tight grip he has on his chakra. It leaves him even dizzier than before, despite the fact that it should take less chakra to do so.
"I still think you should get home," Iruka says after it becomes clear that no one is going to pop up onto the roof and start grilling Kakashi on what he's doing here. "If you're sure you don't need the hospital, that is."
"But the stars look so nice from here at night."
Iruka tilts his head up into the sky, where a couple of the brightest stars are starting to twinkle in the twilight.
"Hmmm," Iruka hums, not quite agreement. "You can't get up, can you?"
Kakashi doesn't dignify that with a response. To his great surprise, Iruka doesn't pester him about chakra exhaustion, or haul him to the hospital, or yell at him for being reckless and foolish for ending up in this state. Instead, he lays down on the roof in the opposite direction of Kakashi, so their heads are aligned but their feet are pointing in opposite directions.
"All right, I'll bite."
He pillows his head in his hands, eyes turned up towards the sky. He doesn't try to fill up the silence as twilight settles around them into night. Kakashi appreciates it. He stares up at the stars that slowly twinkle into life above them, and doesn't even notice when he drifts off to sleep.