The Aftermath
Kakashi wakes in the hospital, which he should have expected. By the feel of his not-so-aching limbs, he's slept for more than thirty hours, and his chakra has replenished enough that he doesn't feel like a dead weight is dragging along behind him; if he were to guess, he'd say he's at 9% of normal. It's early enough that the light filtering in through the gauzy curtains is a dingy gray, like stale dishwater. Probably, he has an hour before someone comes to check on him.
He's hauled himself out the window in ten minutes. Nine blocks away, when he thinks no nurse would follow him that far, he stops, collapses back onto his butt on a roof, and focuses on his breathing until his vision stops swimming.
All in all, a successful mission.
He means to check in with the Hokage that morning, but Kakashi loses another few hours on that roof again. He tries not to think of falling asleep with the steady rhythm of Iruka breathing by his side; doesn't quite manage it. It's easier to slip into sleep when he's imagining the cadence of Iruka's breath, which should be concerning except that right now, Kakashi is just grateful to be getting any sleep at all.
Kakashi wakes with a start to the sun directly overhead. Granted, he's more disoriented than he would have been if he'd just stayed at the hospital, but no one's bothered to haul him back, so it should be fine. He closes his eye to the glare of the sun, tuning in to his chakra. He can feel a thin trickle of it gathering behind Obito's eye, but everywhere else it's still dangerously low. No change from this morning. It'll be four days of bedrest for his chakra to replenish completely (naturally this means roughly two weeks of B and A class missions instead, which he can do with 50% or less of his chakra reserves).
His first stop is Tsunade's office, where he crashes through the window with much less grace than normal.
"Hatake Kakashi!" She screams, unnecessarily in his opinion, as he rights himself from his fall and accidentally upends a stack of paperwork.
"I'm here to report," Kakashi says as casually as he can manage.
Two Tsunades swim in and out of his vision, and he blinks, hoping the dizzy spell passes quickly.
"Speak of the devil," a voice says from behind him.
Kakashi startles badly, but when he turns around, it's only Gai standing there, watching him with a frown on his face.
"Gai." Kakashi's hand comes up to the edge of his facemask, the corner where it meets his hitae-ate, as if to remind himself he's not wearing his ANBU mask. "Fancy seeing you here."
"Gai has an appointment," Tsunade growls, "Unlike some jonin."
Kakashi blinks.
"Would you rather I write up my report, instead of giving you a verbal briefing?"
"I would rather you stayed in the hospital when you're supposed to," she snaps. Gai's frown gets even deeper; Kakashi can tell if he stays, he's sure to get a lecture not just from Tsunade, but from Gai as well.
"I won't keep you, then, Godaime," Kakashi murmurs. "I'll write up my report for you. Perhaps I'll even file it at the mission desk."
"You know very well—"
But Kakashi is petty enough to use up what little chakra he's built back up to substitute out into the alleyway behind the Hokage Tower, just to leave her hanging. He leans against the brick wall for a handful of long, exhausting minutes.
So, Kakashi goes home; a chorus of barking greets him at the front door, which follows him all the way to his bed. At least the ninken can keep watch while he sleeps again.
True to form, Tsunade forbids him from taking missions for a week. Rooster alights on his roof with only a whisper of movement from the tiles sometime that afternoon, a sound he only hears through years of practice listening for it. She leaves him a scroll where Tsunade's jagged, angry script yells at him almost as effectively as if he were standing in her office. Rooster is gone by the time Kakashi finishes reading the missive, ending with the baffling and if I even hear a rumor that you're not resting over the next five days I will personally knock you out myself and haul your scrawny ass back to the hospital. It's just as well, he thinks, since he has nothing to say to either Rooster or the Godaime.
(He does find it funny that chakra exhaustion gets him longer than failing his psych evaluation did, but Kakashi isn't a Hokage, is he? He wouldn't know about those kinds of decisions. Maybe he does wonder if one leads to the other, if constant exhaustion leads to burn out and depression, if depression might lead to constant exhaustion, but he's not paid enough to think like that, so he tries not to wonder, if at all possible.)
Kakashi goes back to sleep. He can afford one more day lost to chakra exhaustion, after all.
Unfortunately, he does need to report to Tsunade. Given that she doesn't want to see him and that Kakashi's mission really isn't the kind that he can forget about until Tsunade orders Hound to report.
So, when he wakes again in the middle of the night from a typical nightmare, his heart racing and the stench of blood clogging his senses, he figures it's as good a time as any to get that written. He takes a moment to breathe, the way Pakkun showed him years ago, before hauling himself out from under the ninken pile still snoozing on his bed.
Kakashi doesn't have a desk; he still lives in the same space he moved into since leaving the Hatake Estate at seven. For any normal adult, it might be too small, but the space suits Kakashi just fine. Besides the genkan, there's room for his bed in the corner farthest away from the window; a wall with the fridge, stove, and sink that serves as the kitchen area, a low-lying chabudai and the two zabuton he brought with him from the estate, and an overstuffed couch, too small to comfortably seat more than one, by the window. The couch is his favorite perch on the days he's feeling particularly lazy, as it gets the most natural sunlight in the house. Not wanting to wake the ninken, Kakashi tiptoes to the chabudai, only the weak yellow light of a streetlight outside to see by. There's a stack of empty scrolls under the loveseat that he pulls out, along with ink and brush set that he's amazed hasn't tipped and spilled along the tatami mats.
Contrary to popular belief, ANBU missions do get filed away at the Hokage Tower along with every other mission out there. The verbal reports to the Hokage aren't the only evidence of those missions. Kakashi has heard many rumors surrounding ANBU over the years and, were he the talkative sort, may have asked those gossips just what they thought happened to all that knowledge when a new Hokage took the mantle. Of course, the original scroll Tsunade gave Kakashi self-destructed two hours after he left Konoha—it's true that that information was too sensitive to risk sending out into the field. Typical protocol would have Tsunade give Kakashi a duplicate report for him to complete after the verbal debrief.
Kakashi has never been typical. And he's always been a little petty.
Besides, it's so late as to be early morning now, and the awful, oil-slick memory of Rin's blood on his hands won't quite fade away, even as he stares at the wood grain of his table. His eidetic memory will help him fill out the basics and might keep him focused enough to prevent a self-hatred spiral. Kakashi picks up the brush with a mental shrug. That's as good of a reason as any to be petty.
He feels much better by the time the sun has risen and spilled light into his quarters. He's finished the report six times over, restarting from scratch for increasingly nit-picky reasons (deliberately misspelling Akino's name, deciding after the fact that his descriptions of places and events were by turns too vague then too descriptive, slowing down his frantic scribbling when the kanji became unintelligible. The first report took about twenty minutes to scribble down his thoughts, and the last takes over an hour, challenging himself to write as neatly as possible.
Sometimes work can be the best form of meditation.
By the time he's done, he thinks he has a report that even Tsunade could not find fault in.
From the other end of the room, he hears the snorting and snuffling of the dogs all waking, and he knows it must be well into the morning. Bull's groan tells him it's just after nine. Kakashi sets aside his pristine report, even signing it with what some might call a proper signature instead of his standard he-no-he-no-mo-he-ji. Then, he gets up, leaving his pile of discarded reports abandoned on the floor by his table, and starts to get breakfast ready.
Kakashi has never been much of the prankster type. He doesn't remember the years before his mother's death, but the time after had left no space for leisure, and then after that, he'd been so focused on proving to Sakumo that he could do it; that he could be enough for both of them (and then later, he'd been too focussed on proving to everyone else he didn't need Sakumo when he was gone), that there had been no time left for himself. And when would a chunin have time for tricks or pranks during a war, anyway (not that Kakashi was a chunin for more than a month, after the third war began, but that's beside the point)? So no, Kakashi has never been the type to pull pranks or elaborate schemes, or jokes.
He's never been the type to do anything, except be a killing machine.
When left to his own devices, and without the leash of Hound around his neck or the pressure of Tsunade or Danzo bearing down on him? Who might he be? Kakashi isn't sure he knows. He isn't sure he exists, to be honest.
(And here is a secret that Kakashi didn't know was a secret until just recently: he has thought about it, quite often. Not—not any specifics, like the how, or the when, or the where, but he does often wonder. Lifetimes ago, when Kakashi was a grieving genin, he'd made a promise to himself: that he would never take his own life when he had someone depending on him. Kakashi isn't—wasn't?—isn't Sakumo, and just turned six, it had seemed selfish and petty and horrible, what he'd done to Kakashi. What he'd left behind.
But Kakashi doesn't have anyone or anything tying him here except his stubborn duty to Konoha. Hatake Kakashi could die, he thinks, but Hound is too valuable. We cannot afford to bench Hound, Tsunade had said, and it is true; it has been true. It's oftentimes been the only thing pushing—pushing those kinds of thoughts out of his head.
And it scares him, a little. What is Kakashi without Hound? Is there a Kakashi without Hound?
Hound is the closest Konoha has come to stripping a Shinobi of their humanity, creating a killing machine with no regrets, objections, or morality outside of the mission parameters. Hound's only flaw is when he gets home and has to make the horrible transformation back into a human, back into Kakashi. Back into the soft flesh and blood person, who likes eggplant and camellias and has a soft, beating heart despite nearly two decades of trying to turn the thing to stone. )
At any rate, the sun is up, all eight ninken have eaten breakfast, and Kakashi is hardly thinking about the horrible nightmare or any other awful thing in his life. When he stands, he doesn't get lightheaded, and a quick scan of his chakra shows it's replenished to almost 20% of his normal levels.
Why not cause some problems?
During the height of the third Shinobi war, Kakashi never once made it to the Mission Desk. Lately, though, the Godaime has been handing him missions requiring hand-delivery to the mission desk instead of the Hokage. While an official peace treaty has yet to be forged, Kakashi can guess it's on the horizon from this change alone. So it's not unheard of for him to show his face at the Mission Desk, but it does always cause a stir. When he alights upon Hokage Tower (on foot again, just to be safe), it's to a rather large crowd milling about. Kakashi hesitates, unsure if he wants to deal with all the attention should he appear in the center of the crowd.
So he jumps to a tree farther off, so he can walk as lazily as he pleases instead, tapping his knuckles on one of his pouches to feel the reassuring weight of his Icha Icha there. Kakashi is here because, against all odds, it might be a good day; he won't let his own social anxiety mess that up.
Gai is standing just outside the entranceway to the Tower, arms crossed and his Disappointed Expression visible from a hundred meters away. Kakashi's stride wavers, as he briefly considers turning tail and retreating. The meeting in Godaime's office only three days ago looms in his memory.
"My Bitter Rival," Gai calls, loud enough to have heads turning his way. In the blink of an eye, he's at Kakashi's side. Kakashi, still chakra-depleted, is annoyed and envious at the speed. "It seems our Esteemed Hokage was right to guess I might find you here today! I owe her sake now."
"You should know better than to bet against that by now, Gai."
"Must a Shinobi bet on what the outcome is, or what he hopes to be true?" Gai asks cryptically. Kakashi is instantly suspicious.
"It's not like you to be rhetorical."
Gai slings an arm around his shoulders and laughs, head thrown back with the force of it. He hums in response, too mysterious by half for Kakashi's liking. It's even more suspicious. Now that he's noticing, Gai is steering them inside the Tower, sidestepping some Shinobi in the crowd around the mission desk. Kakashi's grip on his scroll tightens. Kakashi's eyes rove the length of the room on instinct: three jonin-sensei and their genin teams, four chunin, a door opening behind the desk signaling a shift change.
No danger, he thinks. No danger.
"It's good to see you uninjured after a mission," Gai says. The arm around his shoulder squeezes once, (here: the touch of warning). "And yet the Lady Hokage intimated that you'd been admitted to the hospital."
"Gai—"
They're interrupted by a commotion, and a gruff voice yelling "Sharingan No Kakashi!"
Both Gai and Kakashi's heads snap up, to where an older Shinobi is eyeing the two of them suspiciously behind the mission desk. Oukami has worked the mission desk since before Kakashi had made genin, a withered, retired shinobi from the Third Hokage's generation. His temper is worse than some missing nin Kakashi has encountered. He's pointing a knobbly finger at Kakashi, his expression thunderous. Kakashi grins beatifically at him.
"I thought I told you never to set foot in here so long as I lived!"
"Ah, Oukami-sama, surely Kakashi-san is only doing his job?"
Against all odds, Irkua is sitting at the table by Oukami, one hand gripping the sleeve of his haori. He must have come in with Oukami during the shift change. His eyes flicker to Kakashi, too quick for anyone else to notice.
"You'll learn soon enough that, of the shinobi I warned you about, Hatake Kakashi is the worst offender."
"Maa, I'm hurt Oukami," Kakashi replies easily enough. "I'm only here to do my job."
To be completely fair to Oukami, he did see Kakashi through some of the worst parts of his life; and Kakashi has never really cared about the minutiae of mission reporting on top of that. The reports, the money, the protocol, everything outside of hunting down some enemy nin seemed tedious and unnecessary when he couldn't wash the blood of his friends off his hands.
And there was that one time that Kakashi had re-written chapter seven of Icha Icha Paradise and handed it over to Oukami while the Yondaime had happened to be giving a surprise inspection, come to think of it.
His grin turns more genuine then, not that anyone would be able to tell. He holds out his mission scroll while Oukami visibly recoils from him. Of the few times that he's had to come by the mission desk, he tends to avoid Oukami for this reason. What wonderful luck that he's here today. There's a long, awkward pause while Kakashi holds out the scroll and Oukami refuses to take it. The shinobi around them start to whisper; Kakashi can already hear the dreaded Friend-killer start around the room. The chunin, he thinks, no doubt spelling out the myth of Cold Blooded Kakashi to the impressionable youths, another generation to fear and deride him.
"I'll take your mission scroll, Kakashi-san," Iruka says into the silence. The other three chunin at the mission desk turn sharply to Iruka with matching worried expressions.
"You'll ruin your morning, Iruka," one of them whispers.
Iruka ignores them to smile at Kakashi, hand out. Kakashi hesitates for a moment before Iruka adds, "I have S-level clearance, so I should be able to accept your reports."
Kakashi tilts his head, handing over his scroll. It makes sense considering his other job. No doubt listening to every shinobi in Konoha spill their secrets would grant you high security clearance. The two chunin sitting at the mission desk grimace, scooting their chairs away from Iruka in the least subtle way imaginable.
"When did you start working the Mission Desk, my good friend?" Gai asks, pulling away from Kakashi and sending Iruka his classic thumbs-up.
"Hello, Gai-san," Iruka says with a smile, "Only this last week."
"His standards already rival Oukami-sama," one of the mission desk workers says.
Her eyes flicker to Kakashi; he can practically smell her anxiety. Oukami is smirking at Kakashi, as if in triumph. Kakashi's expression doesn't change. The dull thud of a stamp rings sharply around the room.
"Thank you for your work, Kakashi-san," Iruka says with a smile. Oukami's expression drops in an instant, and he snatches the report from Iruka's hands.
"You can't just accept any report from the higher-ranking shinobi! I already told you they are duty-bound—"
"Kakashi-san's report is textbook perfect," Iruka says, "Turned in promptly, filled out neatly, concisely, and descriptive without compromising mission secrets. Oukami-sama, you shouldn't let old grudges cloud your judgment."
Kakashi watches all the color drop from Oukami's face as his eyes dart through the scroll. Denial, grief, and anger, all flash through his expressions. One of the other mission desk workers taps him on the shoulder as if worried he may faint at any minute.
"I thought I told you, it's just Kakashi," he tells Iruka, who flushes a very nice pink.
"What have you done to this scroll?" Oukami sputters, as if pulled out of a nightmare. "Is it trapped to disintegrate after you leave?"
Kakashi keeps a smile pinned onto his face, even though the novelty is quickly wearing off. Kakashi doesn't live and breathe for this village only to be insulted by retired shinobi. Gai settles a hand on his elbow again, clearly sensing something off.
"You'll just have to wait and see, Oukami," Kakashi says.
With a series of hand signs, he substitutes himself away.
Dumb, impulsive reaction, but he'd done so without thinking. His vision whites out when his feet land on the floor underneath a ginkgo tree, not a hundred meters away. He takes a staggering step, pulls down his mask, and pukes up his breakfast at the base of the tree.
"Rival!" Gai exclaims. Ah, so he'd accidentally taken Gai along for the ride.
"I'm fine, Gai," he says, pulling his mask up and leaning a hand against the tree to keep from toppling over. There goes all the chakra he's managed to regenerate.
"It's very clear that you are not, Kakashi," Gai rumbles, and it's a shock enough to hear his name from Gai that he doesn't bother to argue. Gai is frowning at him, thunderous, a look he's not seen since their more explosive days as genin. "Every mission you take leaves you chakra exhausted or with near-death injuries, it seems. Even the unending passion of your devotion has some limits, Rival!"
"I know my limits."
"You are an extraordinary Shinobi," Gai continues, "Unmatched by any of our enemies. And the village abuses that fact."
Kakashi pulls away from the tree, the stench of his own sick turning his stomach. Gai's hands are clenched, so tight a vein is pulsing in one hand. While Gai himself is not ANBU, he's a good enough jonin to have helped in numerous ANBU missions; that last mission with Gai flashes into his memory, and Gai's horror at witnessing the level of carnage Kakashi himself found normal.
"There's nothing to do about it," Kakashi replies, fighting the strange churning of his gut. "We both have a duty."
"I've recommended to the Hokage to pull you from ANBU."
"What?"
Kakashi feels dizzy again, and he can't tell if it's just from chakra exhaustion or shock. Before he realizes what he's doing, he's pushed Gai up against the tree, his hands fisted in the collar of his flak vest.
"Why would you do that?" he asks quietly.
Gai's hands come up and grab him around the wrist, but he doesn't move to push Kakashi off. Of the shinobi in Konoha, Gai is one of the few who can stand toe-to-toe with Kakashi. It's one of the reasons their rivalry survived as long as it has.
"You don't belong in ANBU, Kakashi," Gai says, his voice grave like it only ever is on a dangerous mission. "You have a kind heart, my Rival, and those missions are slowly killing it. I cannot watch it go on."
"You don't know what you're talking about," he snarls.
His hands are shaking where they're gripping Gai's vest, and he can feel his chakra sparking to life at his elbow; the Chidori waiting. Gai is his only friend; there is no danger here, but the betrayal he feels slicing through his heart won't listen. Kakashi shakes Gai, once, so his head thunks against the bark of the tree roughly, not enough to cause any damage.
"Don't I?"
And would the Hokage listen to Gai? Would she pull him from ANBU? She cannot afford to bench Hound. She wouldn't do it until he's dead and buried; until the Sharingan is ripped from his head and his still beating heart fed to the enemy.
She wouldn't do it.
What is Kakashi without Hound? Is there a Kakashi without Hound? What would there be left to do, in the empty days without ANBU missions? When the shuriken is not needed, it might be better to smelt it for its base parts instead of leaving the thing to gather dust in a closet, forgotten, discarded.
(You are not a shuriken, Kakashi.)
"Am I interrupting something?"'
Iruka's voice snaps Kakashi out of it, and he lets go of Gai and takes a few steps back. Looking between the two of them, Iruka frowns. Gai pushes away from the tree and laughs, more jovial than he has any right to be.
"Not at all, Iruka-sensei!" Gai says, exuberant as ever. "A cool, hip Rival such as Kakashi is bound to have his competitive spirit riled every now and then!" His smile drops for a moment, and he doesn't look at Kakashi as he adds, "Right, Rival?"
"Gai and I have been friends for a long time," Kakashi dutifully replies. "It's nothing."
"Such passion!" Gai shouts, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. "My friend, my rival, please think on these words of mine. I'll leave you in the care of Iruka-sensei."
Bafflingly, he shoots Iruka a thumbs up before clasping Kakashi on the shoulder and heading off, heading toward town. The two of them watch his departure for a long moment.
"I'm sorry for the Mission Desk, earlier." Iruka breaks the silence at last.
He's scowling down at the floor, uncomfortable or angry, or both. Kakashi shrugs.
"It's nothing," he answers. "I don't have the best reputation with the Mission Desk."
He doesn't have the best reputation with anyone in the village, but Kakashi doesn't say that. From the twist in Iruka's lips, he's thinking something similar. For a moment, Kakashi listens to the wind rustling in the leaves, he hears birds chirping in the distance. Soon the ginkgo tree will lose its leaves for the winter, but for now, they shine golden in the afternoon light. Kakashi has always liked September; the Hatake compound used to have forests of ginkgo, beech, and maple trees, and Kakashi used to love getting lost in them when the leaves were golden and the maple trees were flowering.
He hasn't thought of those trees at the Hatake Compound for years now. It's a bit startling.
"Look," Iruka says suddenly, pulling Kakashi out of his thoughts. When Kakashi blinks Iruka back into focus, he looks determined. "I want to be friends. Is that okay?"
Kakashi looks at Iruka, and thinks of Iruka's gentle smile on the rooftop of T&I, saying it's so good you're alive. He thinks of Pakkun saying you need more than one friend, Kid. Obito's blood-soaked laugh lines, tears streaming down Rin's face.
"You," Kakashi begins, then has to stop when it feels like his throat is closing up. "Want to be friends. With the Friend Killer?"
"I want to be friends with Kakashi," Iruka corrects. "If that's something you'd like."
Iruka's skin almost glows in the afternoon light, even dappled in shadow from the foliage overhead. Kakashi can't quite believe he's real.
He opens his mouth, but it doesn't feel like he can get any words out. Instead, he nods his head. Iruka's shoulders drop in obvious relief, a smile slowly creeping up his face.
"Okay," Iruka says, almost to himself. "Then, as my first act as your friend, I'm giving you this."
From one of the pockets of his flak vest, he pulls out a folded-over slip of parchment, holding it up for Kakashi to take. Kakashi hesitates before taking the paper from Iruka, unfolding it to a short list of names written in precise, if cramped handwriting. He raises his eyebrow.
"Here are some high-ranking medical-nin also specialized in trauma therapy and PTSD. Please go talk to someone."
He takes a breath; deliberately does not crush the slip of paper in his grip. A lie sits on the tip of his tongue before he remembers that it would be pointless.
"I want to be your friend, Kakashi," Iruka says, and something about it is softer than the first time he'd said it; it makes Kakashi's heart stutter in his chest. "And that means I want to help you. Please consider it."
Well, how is Kakashi supposed to say no to that?
He nods, and Iruka smiles, clearly delighted.
"I'll consider it," he says, shocked to hear the fondness in his own voice. "Thank you, Iruka."
Iruka flushes bright red, and his smile gets impossibly wider. Something warm travels up the length of his spine, warmer than the afternoon sunlight, than a roaring hearth.
Kakashi feels helpless against it.